Wakanda, August 12, 2016

Dreams were an unusual thing for Bucky Barnes. For the past sixty years, there'd been no reason to dream. What was there even to dream about when his mind wasn't his own? When most of his life revolved around suffering? Around torture. Death.
All he saw when he closed his eyes were terrors. Nightmares. Those he'd killed were ghostly specters haunting him. Those who'd inflicted pain upon him were crowding shadows, their hollow laughter echoing through the void of his mind and inflicting more pain on his already shattered being. Only one face smiled at him with care and love. Only one laugh resonated like a sweet melody, lifting his sorrows. 

Was she here? Bucky blinked, fighting his subconscious from pulling him back into the darkness. Yes, there she was — a beautiful angel come to set him free. His love. His Evelyn.
She spoke, but her words sounded flat. Dull, like they bounced off the walls his mind had built around him. Evelyn then caressed his jawline with the tip of a single finger. It tickled, but... something felt wrong. Her touch, the one he craved so much, felt wrong. She felt like death. Bucky tried to speak, but could only utter a raspy noise from the back of his throat. His heavy eyes followed Evelyn's hazy figure. What was she doing? What was she saying?
He caught sight of something in her hand and willed himself to shake off the lingering daze, to concentrate on—wait. Wait, those eyes. Those weren't Evelyn's eyes. Hers were warm, comforting, beckoning. These were cold, calculating, and... filled with an intent purpose. This wasn't Evelyn. It was... It...

Bucky gasped for breath, desperately sucking in every bit of air the respirator provided. The rapid beeping of the heart monitor alerted every member of the Wakandan medical staff. No longer was there a blonde young woman at his side, but a dark-haired, ebony-skinned nurse dressed head to toe in scrubs.
Rich violet eyes were the last thing Bucky clearly saw before he was wheeled off. Her intense gaze followed him into the all-too-familiar abyss. A gaze he himself had often worn when he wasn't Bucky Barnes, but the Winter Soldier. The gaze... of a killer.

***

The sun's warm embrace woke Bucky up. He blinked against the light entering through the window and turned his head, only to be greeted by an ever brighter light from above. What kind of new torture was this? Wasn't the darkness enough for HYDRA? 
Then he remembered this wasn't HYDRA. He wasn't in Siberia or any other base or safe house belonging to those bastards. His eyelids peeled open, and Bucky recognized the clean white walls of the Wakandan infirmary. Why was he back there, though? Had something happened? Did the Winter Soldier...?
Bucky's eyes widened. He jolted up, grunting upon feeling the restraints cutting into his body and forcing him to lie back down. Slowly, the memories of what had occurred returned to him. The reason why did as well. Tears sprang into his eyes. He shut them, pressed his lips together, and shook his head, praying for it all to just be another one of his nightmares. 

"You're awake."

The sound of Steve's voice snapped Bucky into reality. He looked up, seeing his best friend seated opposite the bed, next to the little table the nurses used. 

"You've been unconscious for nearly fifteen hours," said Steve. "You remember what happened?" 

"Is Romanoff okay?" asked Bucky. 

With a silent nod, Steve opened the blinds to the glass screen in the wall separating Bucky's room from the one next door with the push of a button. Natasha was in bed like him, except she wasn't tied down by her ankles, waist, and arm. Her left hand was wrapped in a protective brace, and she had a couple of visible bruises, but didn't appear to have any other major injuries. She waved from her propped-up position, giving Bucky a weak smile.

"She'll make a full recovery with a few weeks of rest and the treatment plan the surgeon's got her on," said Steve. "It could've been a lot worse, though. One of her broken ribs nearly perforated her lung."

"One of them?" questioned Bucky fearfully, alerted by his friend's grim tone and words.

"Seven in total. You banged her up pretty bad, Buck."

"I didn't mean to. I... I never wanted to hurt her or anyone, but no matter what I do, someone always ends up in pieces because of me."

"That's not true."

"Ain't it?"

"No, it ain't. Romanoff'll be fine. She's a survivor, through and through."

Bucky gave a miserable sigh. Yes, Natasha was tough as nails, and she was indeed one of the few people to have encountered the Winter Soldier and lived to tell the tale (way back in 2009, during a HYDRA mission in Iran, Widow had stood between him and his intended target so he'd shot straight through her to finish the task), but that was neither here nor there. The fact remained that everyone who came near him either died or got seriously injured. Or worse. 

"She should've let me die." He looked away, back out of the window, resenting the sun for shining.  

"I'm glad she didn't," reacted Steve. 

"That's 'cause you don't know what I did."

"Yes, I do."

Bucky's gaze traveled back to Steve. He followed the blond super-soldier as he rose from his seat and walked over. His breath choked upon seeing Evelyn's journal in Steve's hand. 

"I read the pages around your last marking," Steve explained as he placed the diary on the bedside table. "I know what Zola made you and Evy do. Buck, it wasn't your fault."

"How can you say that? Of course it was!" exclaimed Bucky. "Evelyn was in Siberia 'cause of me! If I'd died after falling from that goddamn train like I was supposed to, none of that would've happened! She wouldn't have come lookin' for me, or put herself in harm's way, or been forced to... to..."

He swallowed back the bile rising in his throat. God, he couldn't even say it. To think he'd done that to Evelyn... He couldn't bear it. 

"She consented, Bucky," said Steve then.

"That wasn't consent!" reacted Bucky angrily. "No matter how you spin it, Evelyn was forced to have sex with me! Dying or doing that shouldn't have ever been a choice she had to make! And instead of facin' it together, I handed her over to the Soldier like a goddamn coward!"

His tears burned as they ran down his face. He kept seeing that horrid moment before him, the moment he chickened out and gave control to that monster. It was like the Soldier wanted him to see it, torturing him with the memories they shared.

"You think she blamed ya for what happened?" asked Steve. "That this is what Lucas was talkin' about when he said she suffered 'cause of you?"

"Do you honestly think this wasn't what he was talkin' about?" countered Bucky. "How are you so calm about all of this, anyway? You almost ripped my throat out when I told ya I believed Evelyn and I slept together that night in '41, and now you're just standing there like I didn't basically rape your sister."

"All right, that's it." Steve sat down on the edge of the bed, clear blue eyes on Bucky. "First, you didn't rape her, so stop saying that, 'cause it's making my skin crawl. Second, I blame Zola, not you. Third, I kinda already punched a hole through a wall earlier, so I'm good. More or less. And fourth... I shouldn't have said what I said when you told me about that night. I overreacted, like a typical overprotective brother does, and I'm sorry. Evy was a grown woman, capable of making her own choices, and I'll be the first to admit some of them were more emotional than rational. You'd never do anything against someone's wishes, which Evy's diary proves, too. If you two really slept together back then, it's because you both consented and wanted it, regardless of the situation. And that goes for what happened in Siberia as well.
"Besides, I think it took a lot of courage to give up control. Yes, you could've done it yourself, but that wouldn't have been any better. The guilt would've destroyed you, Buck. Just look at what you tried to do when you read about it. Leaving it to the Soldier was a way to distance yourself from what Zola wanted you to do. It was a way out. Not just for you, but Evy, too."

Bucky was utterly speechless. He hadn't expected this. Not after what had been said the last time they were in a room together. Then again, it was Steve. He was one of the most understanding people Bucky had ever met, and when he made a mistake, he owned up to it. His parents would've been proud of him, just like Evelyn had been.
But Bucky didn't feel that way about his own family. His father would be ashamed, and his sister... Rebecca would be so afraid of the man he'd become. Horrified, even. Just like Lucas. And just like Evelyn. 

"It changes nothin' for me, Steve," said Bucky in a grief-stricken voice. "My point stands. If it weren't for me, Evelyn wouldn't have needed to endure all that pain. I can't go on living my life, knowing that... she didn't get to live hers."

He turned his head toward the window again, averting from his friend. Tears continued to stream. Steve could spin it all he wanted; it didn't matter. It might have been the Winter Soldier behind the wheel, but they were the same person. The same body. What the Winter Soldier did, Bucky did, and vice versa. Being a killer and weapon had already weighed heavily on him, but this... It was the final straw. He was no longer human, but a beast. He had to be put down. If Steve, T'Challa, or the other outcast Avengers didn't want to put an end to it, he would try again himself.

"Not everything between you and Evy was heartache, Bucky," he heard Steve say then. "Not everything was bad. She's been trying to tell you that from the very beginning, when she started her journal with 'My dearest Bucky'. Evy loved you."

"She didn't, Steve. She literally fled to the other side of the world after we slept together. Whatever we had before that night obviously didn't mean to her what it meant to me."

"Or maybe it did." 

Bucky threw his pal a sideways glimpse and caught him picking up Evelyn's journal again. Steve held it out to him. He had to be joking. Did he really expect him to continue reading that horrid thing? 

"No." Bucky adamantly shook his head.

"Ya gotta read the next pages, Buck." Steve put the diary next to his hand. "You need to know what Evy really felt about you. Maybe ya might've hated each other growing up, which I'm honestly still finding hard to believe, but that hatred changed into something else. Something better."

"Steve, I'm asking you as a friend to get that thing away from me."

But despite the severe tone of in Bucky's voice, Steve continued, relentlessly insistent. "Evy never had a relationship, Bucky. She never talked about anyone catchin' her fancy, though plenty of guys tried to get with her."

"Stop."

"That one time, on your birthday, she kissed you. She could've kissed any of the others that were with us, but she went straight for you."

"Steve, enough, I mean it."

"When you got hurt at your match with O'Neal, she refused to leave your side. She wanted to be there when you woke up and make sure you were okay. The thought of losing you terrified her. I caught her whisperin' your name and cryin' over you so many times, I —"

"For God's sake, stop!"

Bucky threw the diary across the room. The book bounced back against the reinforced glass and dropped to the floor. Natasha peered at them from the other side of the screen, her eyes frightful yet curious. Steve clenched his fists by his body, flexing every muscle in his arms, and scowled at Bucky. Finally, the blond super-soldier retrieved his twin's journal and placed it right back on the bed for Bucky to take. 
Damn him, why couldn't this idiot understand he didn't want this anymore? To hell with whatever else Evelyn had written, and to hell with Nemesis. Both were dead, so nothing they learned now would make any difference. Nothing could magically rewind the clock to fix this mess.

"Shuri wanted to put you back in cryo," said Steve, "but I convinced her to do a seventy-two-hour suicide watch first, on the condition I stick around. I'm gonna give ya a moment and check on Romanoff, but I'll be keeping an eye out. If you're not gonna read the diary yourself by the time I get back, I'll read it to you, even though there are some very personal things in the next pages. You owe it to yourself to learn and accept what happened. And you owe it to Evy, too."

With that, Steve walked away, leaving Bucky to his own devices. He bit his lip and shut his eyes, forcing the last of the tears out. Part of him wanted to call Shuri up right now and ask her to put him in indefinite cryostasis. Another part was already concocting a plan on how to end it all. And then there was the part, belonging to the long-lost Brooklyn-boy, that pleaded with him to suck it up and pick up the diary. Just like that, Bucky was stuck in a battle with the fiercest opponent he'd ever had to face — himself. 

***

"So, I'm guessing that didn't go so well."

Steve sighed as he dropped onto the seat next to Natasha's bed. She reached for him with her injured hand. He took it carefully, stroking his thumb over her fingers. That simple act calmed Steve, grounding him to the here and now. 

"I didn't think he could get any worse, Nat," he said. "He already blames himself for bein' the Winter Soldier and killing so many people under HYDRA's command. Nemesis pushed him further down that dark hole, but Evy... I don't even wanna think about what he'll do if he ever gets to the end of that journal. He won't survive it if he remembers he had something to do with her death. And neither will I."

"What did he say about your ghostly visit?"

"I didn't tell him."

"Steve..."

"Yeah, I know."

He sat back in the chair, leaning his head against the wall. After Evelyn — or someone who eerily resembled her — ran away, he'd searched each corridor and room for the better part of two hours before getting the call that the device Nemesis attached to Bucky's heart had shocked his friend with strong electric pulses. The surgeon had restarted his heart, but hadn't dared to do anything else. That thing was still inside Bucky. It was only thanks to the serum flowing through Bucky's veins that he'd woken up so soon, bruises from his fight with Natasha already healing. 
Steve had briefly considered telling Bucky about the woman and his cardiac arrest, too, but seeing him so distraught had kept him from doing so. His friend had enough to deal with. Besides, this gave them the time to look for the woman in question, and for Shuri to come up with a safe way to detach that cursed device from his heart.

"She looked so much like Evy," Steve said pensively. "It was uncanny. If I didn't know for certain my sister was dead, I would've believed it was her."

"About that... how certain are you?"

Natasha's question prompted Steve to look at her and ask, "What makes you say that?"

"I've just been mulling over what Sam said when we got back from California. We've been going under the assumption S.H.I.E.L.D. forged documents to protect Nemesis' true identity and parentage, but what if it goes further back than Nemesis? The SSR was also capable of making people disappear and making sure their agents went completely off the grid and remained safe, and we know Evelyn kept in touch with Agent Carter and Stark Senior. It could be possible that the fire was staged or that the body they found wasn't even Evelyn's. Like Sam said, for an organization like that, it'd be a singe to change the coroner's report."

Steve stared at the former redhead, flabbergasted by what she was proposing. Evy couldn't still be alive. It was... impossible.

"No, that makes no sense," he said. "If she survived, she would've been almost a hundred years old by now. I didn't see an old lady, but a young woman close to Evelyn's age from when I last saw her."

"Steve, you're almost a hundred," rebuffed Natasha. "So is Bucky. And Nemesis still looked like she'd barely gotten through her teenage years."

"But we're super-soldiers. And all three of us spent years on ice. I was literally a human popsicle for decades."

"Carter and Stark could've helped Evelyn the same way they helped Nemesis. She was cooked up in a lab, so maybe Evelyn had a hand in that as well. Maybe she even used the same serum on herself, knowing she would need to step in one day. Don't forget, Nemesis completely vanished for years after the Winter Soldier almost killed her in 1991, and then again after the Red Room. Where did she go during that time? She must've had help from someone, so why not Evelyn?"

It seemed too incredible and yet... Steve was second-guessing everything he'd already learned. Could Evelyn really have survived, having lived undercover for all these years? Could she be a super-soldier like him? Had she found Zola's research on the super-soldier serum and perfected it after she escaped Siberia? If that were true then —

"Cap, come in."

Steve nearly jumped in his seat as Sam's voice rang through the comms. He checked the clock on the wall. Odd. How had they already gotten back from taking Nemesis home to Lucas? 

"Sam, hey," he greeted. "How did it go?"

"Yeah, um... T'Challa and I never left," said Sam.

"What?" Steve handed Natasha her earpiece when she gestured for it and then got up from his seat. "Why not? I asked you to take Nemesis to California so she could be buried at home."

"Ain't no one to take home or bury, Steve."

He and Natasha exchanged a confused look. She glanced at the glass screen to check on Bucky and then mouthed for Steve to go to the bathroom. Acting as casually as he could, Steve went into the little room, leaving the door to a sliver so he and Natasha could still talk if needed. She stretched and turned her head away, pretending to look out the window.

"Sam, what do you mean there's no one to bury?" he asked once he was out of Bucky's view. 

"Exactly what I mean," said Sam. "When I got back to the hangar last night and called the morgue to bring up Nemesis' coffin, nobody answered. We went down to check and found everyone unconscious from an unknown gas, and the coffin empty."

"Wha—empty?"

 "We've searched the entire palace and even the city, but we can't find her anywhere. Nemesis is gone."