Pairing: Bucky x Reader (eventually!)

Summary: You work for Maria Hill at SHIELD Headquarters, and you are best friends with Captain America. What you didn’t expect when you became friends with Steve was to be hunted down by his supposedly dead friend, James Buchanan Barnes, AKA The Winter Soldier.
 
Word Count: 1889

A/N: Meh. It’s meh. I just gotta get the story set up yanno?

Part One / Part Three

Your name: submit What is this?

-

The Winter Soldier.

You couldn’t get that name out of your head. It was so… sinister. You’d searched up everything you could about this guy, but you barely found anything. He - or whoever he worked for - was good at keeping things secret from the public, and even in SHIELD’s private files (which you searched through with Maria’s explicit permission, of course), you found nothing.

You went home at some point during the afternoon so you could shower and rest after not having had much sleep (or any at all, really) the previous night. Despite how tired you were, you didn’t sleep well that night. Your irrepressible thoughts were making you overwhelmingly anxious. You couldn’t stop thinking about how easily this Winter Soldier guy got to Fury, and how he could easily strike again. If SHIELD was a threat to the Winter Soldier - or whoever he worked for - he wouldn’t just stop at Fury, surely. He would go for more people of importance - Alexander Pierce or Phil Coulson, perhaps. Then you had a thought.

Steve. Steve is SHIELD’s strongest defense. He’s guaranteed to be a target.

“Shit, Steve,” you mumbled, crawling out of bed to get to his apartment despite it being the middle of the night. There was no time to waste; if he was a target, you needed to tell him immediately. Who knew when the Winter Soldier might strike?

You quickly put on some jeans, a shirt, and a jacket before hurrying out of the building. The streets were cold and eerily silent aside from the occasional car that passed by. As you walked, you could have sworn you felt someone watching you; your theories were confirmed when you felt a hand on your shoulder.

You reacted quickly, your heart pounding as you swung round, grabbing the person’s arm and bending it behind their back.

“(Y/N)! (Y/N), it’s me,” the man said. Your eyes widened as you recognised him and you let go of him instantly.

“Sam?!” you almost shouted. “What are you doing here?”

You hadn’t seen Sam Wilson since Stark’s last party at the Avengers Tower, and you had to admit that it was really nice seeing him again. You frowned, trying to figure out what he might need you for, when you remembered that Nat got in touch with him yesterday and told him about the whole Winter Soldier ordeal. She told him to tell you if he found anything.

He laughed a little, loosening up after what just happened. “I found some information on the Winter Soldier and figured you were probably awake, so I began walking to your apartment. Before I got there I saw you walking down the street, so I caught up to you and here we are.”

You grinned, pulling him into a hug. “Okay, just don’t scare me like that again,” you mumbled. He hugged you back and chuckled before you both pulled away. “I need to go to Steve’s as I’m worried he might be the Soldier’s next target, but you should come with me and tell me what you’ve got on the guy.”

He agreed and the two of you began walking.

“Right, so what I’ve got - it’s not all that much to go on but it might give us some clues as to how to get to this guy. He’s an assassin who works for HYDRA. I don’t know any personal details - name and all that - but if we can find HYDRA’s current headquarters then we just might be able to find him and wipe him out,” Sam explained as the two of you entered Steve’s building before walking up the stairs to get to his apartment.

“HYDRA?” you said, knocking on Steve’s door. “I thought they were long gone. And this just puts more of a target on Cap’s back. He and HYDRA have been enemies since the 40s.”

A tired and mildly pissed off Captain America opened the door to his apartment, wearing nothing but a loose shirt and some boxers. You and Sam smirked, and he asked you why you were there.

“If my calculations are correct,” you began, making your way into his apartment and turning the light on before getting comfortable on the sofa, “The Winter Soldier is probably going for SHIELD’s most important figures, which means that you could be next.”

Sam sat beside you and Steve shut the door before sitting opposite you in an armchair, listening to you intently.

“The Winter Soldier works for HYDRA,” Sam explained, and Steve’s eyes grew cold as he furrowed his eyebrows. His thoughts immediately went back to the 40s when he and the Howling Commandos spent that last years of the war wiping out HYDRA bases. It was so weird for him to think about, and he couldn’t get his head around the fact that it was 70 years ago. To him, it didn’t even feel like 5.

“Basically, we’re here to warn you, just in case he comes after you,” you told him.

“And you couldn’t have waited ‘til tomorrow to tell me? I was having a good night’s sleep for once,” he mumbled, walking to the kitchen and pouring himself a drink. You and Sam looked at each other before turning to Steve.

“To be fair to us, we don’t know when he might come for you. If he came for you now and I hadn’t told you about it, you’d be unprepared and the blame would be on me,” you said, folding your arms as you stood up and walked over to him, followed by Sam.

The super-soldier admitted defeat, and thanked you for letting him know. You told him and Sam that you’d spend as much of your tomorrow as possible researching where HYDRA’s headquarters might be, and then you parted ways. Sam, being the gentleman that he was, walked you home and hugged you goodnight. You then got into bed and fell asleep almost immediately, exhausted after the rather odd night you’d had.

-

While you were busy at the Triskelion the next day researching HYDRA, Steve, Natasha, and Sam were sent distress calls from the middle of town. You didn’t help out as you weren’t brilliant in combat, and you figured that whatever it was, they would probably be able to handle it. Natasha had quickly called you at one point to let you know that it wasn’t The Winter Soldier. She’d told you it was Brock Rumlow, who you thought was dead after the Battle of New York. Apparently he was now a HYDRA agent who went by the name of Crossbones, and he was fighting alongside a bunch of others. You frowned. This seemed like a sort of uprising. HYDRA hadn’t been an active organisation for years, and now they’re suddenly attacking? Something wasn’t right.

Despite having your headphones in as you browsed through more of the private files on HYDRA that Hill had given you earlier that day, you could have sworn you heard something from outside of the room, which was suspicious because no one else was on your floor. You took your headphones out and silently pulled out a handgun from the bottom draw in your desk. Cautiously, you made your way to the door and braced yourself before opening it quickly and pointing your gun ahead of you. You couldn’t see anyone, and you frowned. You’d definitely heard something.

You turned back around and your breathing stopped as you came face to face with who you could only assume was The Winter Soldier himself. He looked absolutely menacing, with goggles, a mask, and shoulder-length brown hair covering his face, and a mostly black outfit. His metal arm stood out, not covered by a sleeve like his flesh arm was. Before you could react, he had you in a choke hold causing you to yelp, and the grip you had on your gun loosened before you dropped it, now completely defenseless. With as much strength as you could muster, you desperately reached for the small knife you kept in your pocket and stabbed him as hard as you could in his flesh arm. His grip on you loosened immediately as he flinched in pain and you elbowed him in the face befoe running as fast as you could down the corridor. Shots were fired after you, but you managed to dodge them all.

You made your way as fast as you could to the bottom floor and screamed at everyone you passed to get out of the building. You escaped and ran as fast as you could down the street before you ran into Steve, Nat, and Sam, who happened to be making their way back to the Triskelion. They gathered around you, concerned.

“The Winter Soldier,” you gasped, panicked and out of breath. “He came after me! He was at the Triskelion, but he’s probably out by now. We have to find him.”

“Okay, Nat, look after (Y/N). Sam and I will go after him,” Steve said, giving you a quick hug, reassuring you that you’d be okay, before he and Sam ran off in the direction of the building.

“(Y/N), did he hurt you?” Natasha asked, frowning as she placed her hands on your shoulders gently.

“He tried to choke me, and it hurts a little,” you explained, “but I’m okay. I’m just worried about what he might do to someone more defenseless than me.”

Natasha carefully pulled you in for a hug, knowing that they relaxed you a lot. She rarely hugged anyone, but you were an exception considering you were one of her best friends. You hugged her back as hard as you could without hurting her. “They’re going after him. Don’t worry,” she reassured you before pulling away. You still couldn’t help but worry.

-

By the time Sam and Steve had found the assassin, he wasn’t alone. He had called for backup and was now speeding down the street, gun in hand, along with the other agents.

“Cap, I got the other guys. You go for the Soldier,” Sam said, taking off and landing behind the agents, dodging their bullets before he began throwing punches. That kept the agents occupied, while Cap and the Soldier were focused on each other.

Steve wasted no time, running and immediately sending his shield flying towards the masked Winter Soldier. He caught it in a heartbeat with his metal appendage and threw it back at the captain, still speeding towards him. He began shooting, but Steve now had his shield back on his arm and defended himself easily. He ran up to the assassin and hit him as hard as he could with the shield, knocking the gun out of his hand and causing him to resort to his knife. He pulled it out of one of his pockets and lifted his arm to stab Steve, but he dodged with the shield and managed to knock the assassin to the floor. His mask had fallen. He stood up facing Cap, his hair partially covering his face, but as the wind blew, his face was entirely revealed.

Steve frowned, a number of emotions swirling round his brain. It couldn’t be. There was no way. That wouldn’t be possible. He died 70 years ago. Steve hesitated, but he had to know.

“Bucky?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?”