Silence

They see T'Challa waiting outside when they limp away from the fight.

They snuck past more guards than they count while they were more wounded than this during the war, and the Winter Soldier was not called a ghost for nothing.

They sneak through a side passage Bucky half-remembers to the quinjet and escape before T'Challa can stop them.

They have nowhere to go and no one to help them, but they're used to it being just them against the world.

Bars

Bucky knows how to hide, but their choices are more limited when they need to prepare to break into the Raft. Natasha finds them quickly.

The plan isn't one of his favorites, but it works. Steve's stupid plans always seem to. It's the ones that seem simple that Bucky worries about.

Scott is pacing when they break in. He's used to prison, but this isn't the kind of prison he's used to. There's no room to exercise, no opportunities for entertainment, no population to mix with. It's just them, and after Tony's visit, the others aren't exactly good company. He's babbled to fill the silence, but he stops when the door opens. When he sees Steve, it's a hard fight to keep from bursting into a rousing chorus of "The Star Spangled Man with a Plan."

Clint knows how to deal with prison. The opportunities for escape are worse here than anywhere else he's been, but the treatment is better than some places he's been, so he hadn't been sweating it too hard.

Until Tony came.

Until Tony came and blurted out that he had a family, and now -

Now Clint sits in the corner of his cell and tries not to let on just how bothered he is. He tries not to let the dark thoughts spiral out of control. Tries not to think about Ross taking Laura into questioning, tries not to think about the information reaching a still buried Hydra mole, tries not to think about who else Stark might have let it slip to -

He kept that buried from Loki, and now it's out. Now all his nightmares are one step closer to fruition, and there's nothing Clint can do. Nothing.

Nothing until Natasha slips in right after Steve and heads straight for his door.

"The cameras are off," she murmurs quietly as she works on the lock. "I've made arrangements for your family. They're safe."

Even with the thought of safety, he doesn't dare enquirer further, but he trusts those words from her.

Sam wants to have some choice words with the guards who had gone a little past a touch too rough. He needs to have a chance to talk with someone, anyone, who knows what's going on. Did Tony betray Steve to Ross? Was Steve killed protecting Bucky? Are all three of them on the run? Did Zemo win? Is the rest of the world collapsing while they sit and wait?

Their arrival doesn't answer all his questions, but it answers the most important ones.

Wanda can't see much of anything. The drugs turn the world slow and strange, and the shocks from the collar when she moves too quickly only disorient her more.

But she feels the arms that pick her up, and the fears that dance on the edge of her mind feel like Steve.

Then the collar shocks her again, and she stops trying to understand and just focuses on the gentle rocking motion as he walks.

Funds

Bucky had cash in his backpack, but that's long gone now. All of them have bank accounts, but nearly all of those are being watched.

Natasha and Clint have accounts well hidden enough that there's a chance Tony hasn't found them, and they have bolt holes, both personal and remnant of SHIELD, that hold more. Accessing any of it is risky, though, and time consuming.

They pick up odd jobs as they run, and they access what they can.

It's never quite enough.

Food

Low budget means being careful with the food money. Most of the Avengers are fine, but the supersoldiers quickly feel the strain. Steve won't complain, of course, no matter how much it makes him think of scraping through on rations during the war. Bucky falls back into the habit of sneaking him some of his food until Steve catches him and starts sneaking him some right back.

Clint's parenting instincts kick in when he hears Wands shrug off the lack as something she must merely grow accustomed to again. He starts sneaking her some of his food.

She catches on immediately because Pietro used to do the same thing. She tells him it's not necessary. He doesn't stop.

Natasha starts sneaking him some of her food. He starts sneaking it back. It quickly becomes a game between them, and no one's quite sure who's winning.

Scott eats while tiny to conserve food until he collapses in the middle of a fight. They figure out what it's done to his metabolism after that. He's even loopier than usual when he wakes up, but Sam gets him sorted out.

Sam is so, so done with these idiots.

Age

Steve getting deaged while they were still living at the compound would have been unfortunate. Steve getting deaged while they're on the run is a nightmare.

At the compound, they would have had the brightest doctors and scientists of their day working at the problem. On the run, they have a former electrical engineer and a pararescue medic. Very good ones, but this isn't exactly Scott's field, and Sam's more prepared for punctured lungs and bullet wounds than a kid whose as stubborn as he is sickly.

Wanda is probably their best chance at changing him back, but she's got no idea what she's doing. Bucky has the best idea how to handle him, but none of the others really feel comfortable with "try to keep the fever down with cold rags and pray he's stubborn enough to live till morning." Bucky doesn't feel comfortable with that.

It doesn't help that Bucky is the only one Steve sort of recognizes, and it's making his mind itch to know that the one teammate who has a chance of talking him down is for all intents and purposes out of commission.

Wanda finally figures out how to reverse the spell. Everyone is relieved.

Gear

Bucky's got it the worst, they all acknowledge pretty much immediately. He's lopsided with just one arm, and they don't really have the tech to get him a replacement. He can still shoot one handed, and he relearns how to fight quickly enough, but the stump pains him, and they don't have any painkillers that can help.

Clint doesn't have the biggest problem, but his problem is the most immediate, after Bucky's. He runs out of arrows quickly, and it's hard to replace them. It's not like he can just fletch wooden ones like the archers of old. He and Natasha have stashes all over the world, but they don't always last between pit stops, and sometimes the safe houses are trashed before they can get there. Clint starts using guns when he has to, but he never stops grumbling about it.

Sam's issue shows up next. Ross's men weren't gentle with the wings, and they need maintenance. Sam can do some, and Scott helps, but they start looking pretty patchy pretty quick. They'd be fine if they weren't getting in so many fights, but between Ross's men, Hydra, and the various overly ambitious criminal groups they come across, the wings are getting shot at a lot.

At least when they attack a Hydra base they get more supplies, but Sam never quite trusts anything they get from there, and he keeps having nightmares of being ripped from the sky again. He's just glad that T'Challa seems to have stopped chasing them for whatever reason. One more enemy might be more than they could take.

He also misses Redwing, not that he'll ever admit it.

Scott's suit is still working fine, which he claims is a victory for Pym tech over Stark, but the others catch him eying it nervously. He's told them the stories of what could happen if something goes wrong, and the others always get a bit nervous every time he gets in the suit. Pym would probably be willing to help if they contacted him, but they can't do so safely, so the suit remains as is.

Natasha dumped her widow's bite the minute she went AWOL since she didn't trust Stark not to have a tracking device in it. She uses her guns instead - ones from her bolt holes, sometimes, ones that she brings back to wherever they're currently hiding others, and her teammates learn not to ask her about those.

Steve misses his shield like a physical weight, but he makes do with whatever's on hand. It takes some getting used to, not having a vibranium shield, but he heals quickly and learns faster, not that you'd know it from the way Bucky and Sam talk.

Wanda's never used tech, but she misses other things. Pietro's things, mainly, the ones she had tucked in her room.

She wonders if anyone has touched them. If they have been gathered up as evidence. If Stark has tossed them out.

If he has, she will kill him.

When she remembers the collar around her neck, tailored just for her in a way that Ross should never have known how to do, she thinks she might anyway.

Blood

The world is full of sharks who taste the Avengers' blood in the water. They circle, now, trying to take down the official Avengers, trying to kill the renegade ones.

Hydra, weakened thought it is, hopes it can regain its former glory by snatching new assets to train.

Scientists itch to get their hands on new test subjects.

Those who have managed to keep their looted Chitauri weapons hope that now no one can stop them.

And Ross nips at their heels while they run through the world, trying to protect the people they meet from all the strange threats and from what mundane ones they can.

Natasha wonders if somewhere Bruce is doing the same, and then pushes the question aside. She has a wound to stitch up before she rejoins the others. When it's done, she pulls her jacket over the wound and walks back like it doesn't pain her. It's good enough to fool even a super soldier and a medic, but Clint knows her too well, and somewhere in there, Bucky does too. They don't out her, but they keep an eye on her, and the others pick up on it from there.

Natasha lets them watch. They're so distracted by pretending not to watch her arm that not even Clint notices her leg.

Sam's wings fail the third time they fight Hydra.

He plummets like Rhodey did, but it's not Rhodey he's thinking of. It's Riley, tumbling from a bullet strewn sky.

Wanda's magic snatches him up before he can hit the ground.

"I'll fix it," Scott promises. "I've never worked with them before, but how hard can it be?"

The smart thing to do would be to turn him down, but Sam needs the freedom of the sky too badly after the Raft, and he gave up on smart decisions sometime around the time he met Steve.

When they fight to defend a village ravaged by something that must have escaped from a lab, Sam's wings spark, but he flies.

Scott doesn't get hit much while he's small, but he ends up having to pull the giant trick again, and that one leaves him a bit more vulnerable.

Sam examines the bullet wounds and announces that he's going to have to dig them out before Scott changes back. Scott can't hold it long, so that means there's no time to search for some sort of anesthetic.

Scott grits his teeth and tries not to scream in front of Captain America.

That ends in abject failure, but Cap tells him he did well today, so he feels alright about that after all.

Bucky needs therapy, a new prosthetic, and something for the pain that keeps flaring up in places where if not for the serum, there would be old scars.

All of those are old problems, though, ones he's learned to grit his teeth and deal with. After the third night he woke screaming from nightmares and Steve had to talk him down, Wanda's started hitting him with her magic so he can sleep through the night. He's learned to fight without the prosthetic, and he's had worse pain. He's coping.

Right up until the cartel they're chasing blows up a building, and his one good arm gets crushed in the rubble.

The serum heals it up in a week, but he can't stop staring at it and reliving memories best left forgotten. Being helpless. The loss of his other arm. The pain -

Steve sticks closer than ever during that week and helps as much as Bucky will let him. He tells Bucky the story of the first ever time Bucky broke that arm, and the story is so fully of reckless idiocy that Bucky's sure Steve must be making it up, but Steve won't admit it, and he laughs at the expression on Bucky's face.

"I wasn't the only one who got us in trouble."

"Oh, yeah? Well, how about the time that - "

Steve keeps laughing as they fire old stories at each other, and the warmth of it spreads to Barnes until he's smiling for the first time that week.

Steve heals the fastest of all of them. He gets hit, and he gets back up. He passes on the painkillers and the bandages more often than Sam would like, but Sam can't argue with their tight purse strings and Steve's logic.

Healing takes energy, though, just like fighting does. Energy that, thanks to the shortage of food, Steve doesn't have.

Bucky's face grows grim with old memories from Brooklyn when he finally catches Steve with his shirt off and sees far too much of his ribs. He drags Steve out from behind the curtain he'd been dressing behind and into the main portion of their own room safe house. Steve can probably fight him off, but he won't.

The others' conversation grows silent when they see.

No one much believes Steve's protests that he's fine.

The next day, Natasha's necklace is gone and there's more food in the pantry. Her expression dares anyone to argue with it.

Clint's used to running in the big leagues. He knows how to take a hit. Even better, he knows how to dodge one.

Unfortunately, rolling off a roof onto a slightly lower roof to avoid a knockout blast from Iron Man works better when the second roof is strong enough to hold him.

And this one can't.

He wakes up on a pile of wood to the sound of an elderly woman screaming in broken English that she does not want the repair money, she wants the government men gone, because they have wrecked her house and driven out the nice people who rescued her kidnapped granddaughter.

Clint thinks about intervening, but the woman seems to be handling herself fine, and to be honest, he's not quite sure he can stand just yet.

If he ends up with brain damage, he's suing Stark, he decides. He'll turn himself in just so he can have the pleasure of doing so.

Except, of course, if he turns himself in he won't get an attorney, so there goes that plan.

They stay to fix the woman, Anna's, house. It's only right, after she turned down the money in order to keep Clint hidden.

Wanda finds the work soothing. It reminds her of the odd jobs she and her brother used to do together so that they'd have enough money to eat after their parents died. She works on the roof and patiently tolerates Clint's commentary from below. He is antsy, she knows, because he is not yet allowed back on the roof himself.

All goes well until an old nail, lurking unseen, catches her hand and she cries out.

Sam has swung down from his own place on the roof in an instant, and he starts guiding her toward the ladder so that they can clean it off and hopefully avoid infection.

"That roof is evil," Clint announces the moment he sees the blood.

Wanda laughs. Laughs because of the expression on Clint's face, laughs because of all the battles they've been in since the Accords, this is the one to see her, laughs because Pietro had once said the same thing after hitting his thumb with a hammer.

It is slightly hysterical, but it is a very freeing laugh.

Homesick

Laura knows the drill, and through burner phones and careful messages, Clint eventually manages to get back in touch with her and the kids. They're safe, just like Natasha promised, but the stolen minutes are nothing like being home would be.

Every other time he's been forced to leave them behind, he's been comforted by the image of them safe at the farm. Now that illusion is gone, and it hurts more than Clint dreamed it could.

Scott doesn't dare call Cassie. He manages to get a message through to Hope, though, and he hopes that if it's safe, she'll pass one one on for him.

Apparently, he can't get his life on track for long before it derails again, but he's getting used to that.

He thinks Cassie would be proud of him, and that's what matters most.

And he's starting to be one of them, he thinks, one of these heroes who have given up everything for this fight and who are still going. They're starting to accept him, and he feels, more and more, like this is a strange sort of home.

But he doesn't dare say it out loud for fear of turning it into a joke, and he still misses Cassie.

Sam's parents have got to be going half-crazy by now, but he can't call them. They're not spies or tech moguls with the sort of resources to be sure it would be safe.

Natasha offers to get them a message through her contacts to let them know he's still alive. After he checks to make sure it's safe, he agrees and thanks her.

"How are you paying them now?" he asks, meaning her contacts.

"Same way I always did," she tells him with that secretive little smile. "Calling in old favors. You're worth using them for."

Natasha has no need to spend her favors on herself. Clint is here, Steve is here, Bruce is in the wind, and Clint's family is reachable through other means.

She never lets herself get attached to any one place enough to miss it, but against her will she finds herself missing little things that slipped through the cracks. The security of her room at the compound. The feel of the specially prepared punching bags under her fist. The taste of the coffee from Stark's one of a kind coffee maker.

But she is a spy, and she is long used to giving things up.

Wanda's homesickness is nothing new. She misses her native language. She misses the treats her mother used to pull warm out of the oven just for them. She misses her brother.

Missing the compound is just another weight to the load. She misses paprika in the cupboards. She misses a closet full of clothes that fit as if they had been made for her and that let her move without restriction. She misses Vision.

Clint sprinkles a bit of paprika into that night's stew on her birthday, and the taste is nothing like home, but the wink he gives her as he prepares the treat he scrimped and saved for is just like her father, and that is good enough.

For Steve, home is Brooklyn and Bucky, and he's gotten Bucky back. There are worries, other guilts that prey at his mind, but the longing for another time has finally eased even if it hasn't vanished.

It rears up again sometimes when Bucky freezes, lost in a flashback to another time, but he always come back again, and the ice that has filled Steve's lungs in the interim retreats.

Bucky remembers Brooklyn in flashes, but he's not homesick for it. The only part that seems real from it is Steve, and Steve is right here.

He doesn't miss his apartment. It has served its purpose, and like he has from others like it, he has moved on.

He does miss the chocolate bars he left there, though. And the plums.

Break

It is inevitably that Ross will eventually catch one of them.

It's good that it's not Wanda. Their imprisonment had hurt her the worst.

It's good that it's not Scott. This never should have been his war despite the fact that he's made it his.

It's good that it's not Sam. The guards had been rougher with him.

It's good that it's not Bucky. He would lose his mind if they knocked him out again.

It's good that it's not Natasha. Ross bears a special hatred for her after her betrayal.

It's good that it's not Clint. He has a family that would worry.

All of this is true.

But it is not good that it is Steve.

"Where are they?" Ross demands.

Steve has stopped straining against the straps. He has stopped commenting when one of the doctors comes in and draws a syringe full of blood.

"I don't have all day," Ross growls.

The drugs make him ache with weakness, but Steve still smiles.

"I do."

Steve is the center that holds them together, and Steve is gone. Steve had volunteered to be the one to retrieve the money from the nearest bolt hole, and Steve is gone.

Natasha knows that the smart thing to do is to gather the team up and run.

But if they do that, they might never find Steve, and that stopped being an acceptable consequence of a mission a long, long time ago.

Sam finds an Internet cafe and searches the news. Surely, if Ross had been the one to catch him, it will be splattered in all the headlines.

Unless they're afraid of the fickle public's reaction, of course. Sam knows that they don't pass through the world entirely unrecognized, and he also knows that Ross is slow to find them despite this. People do not trust their governments, and they expect heroes to fall off their pedestals, but they trust the people who show up to save them when the Accords will let no one else intervene.

So perhaps that is why Ross is keeping it quiet, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing.

Bucky had known from the start that he shouldn't have let Steve go alone. It's like losing his arm all over again to be here without him.

He searches the apartment, he waits for Natasha and Clint to hear back from their contacts, he threatens the men he finds lurking around.

When they know that Ross has him but have no idea where, Bucky does the only thing he can think of.

He calls the information number for locating the renegade Avengers that Wakanda has left open. He uses one of the phones that Clint and Natasha swear can't be tracked.

He gives his name and his message and waits while he is passed up the chain of command and his voice is checked against the patterns they're looking for.

It is a gamble, this call, and he is relieved when it pays off, and he is put on the line with the Wakandan king.

"I admit that this is one possibility that I did not anticipate when this was created," T'Challa says.

Bucky has no time for this. He knows all too well what might be happening to Steve right now. Every moment matters, and he does not intend to waste them. "Are they keeping you in the loop about the search?"

"Officially, yes. If you are calling me, however, I suspect that there have been developments I am unaware of."

"They got Steve," Bucky says bluntly, and the failure rips his throat on the way out. "You might not know where he is now, but you could find out. You tell me where he is, and I'll tell you where I am. You can send your people to arrest me, and I'll come quietly. I'm the one you want, anyway. A location for a location. It's a fair deal."

Too many words, too much time, but they all spill out anyway, because this is the only chance he sees to save Steve, and saving Steve is everything.

"I can certainly find out where they are keeping the captain," T'Challa says, and Bucky breathes again for the first time since Steve left for that bolt hole. "But you seem to be suffering under a misapprehension. I have learned the truth from Zemo. I know that you did not kill my father. I no longer seek revenge."

That's both the best news and the worst news - well, the second worst - that he's heard all week. It's good to know that one of their hunters is permanently off their trail, but that leaves him nothing to bargain with.

His hand curls tighter around the phone. "What do you want, then?" He must want something, or they wouldn't still be talking. There must be something. The serum, the arm, Hydra, something.

"I would like to make up for my previous actions," T'Challa says. "I will get your captain out as a gesture of good will with no strings attached, but I would ask your team to speak with me after, if you are willing."

It is a risk, but this is Steve, so Bucky says, "Done," and hopes that he won't have to drug any of his new teammates to get them to the meeting.

Meeting

Steve is out and free, and the meeting, much to Bucky's pleasant surprise, is not a trap and does not end in a fight.

Less pleasant is the main message of the meeting, that there are indications that something is coming to invade the earth, and that Ross is still not willing to listen to reason. The Avengers are still splintered, so they will need new allies to survive this battle. They will need new allies even if they reconcile with Stark and his team.

This threat joins the other clamoring worries at the back of his mind, but he is accustomed to dealing with those. As much as part of him simply wants to sleep under Wanda's influence until he fades away, there is too much to fight for, and he can't leave Steve alone.

So he pushes the worries back and appreciates the fact that there is food at the table they're eating around and that his stomach feels full for the first time in memory.

He puts more fruit on Steve's plate and glares at him until he eats it.

There is talk about other fighters they can gather, about the families they can contact more easily now, about all the things that must be done, but Bucky lets all that wash over him.

There is food on his plate and food in Steve's mouth, and this much, at least, is good.