Begin Again | Sam Wilson

Chapter Thirty One

"What are we going to do?" Brianna asked Sam softly as he cleaned the cut on her lip up aboard their flight back to the US.

He sighed and set the supplies down. Brianna didn't say it out loud, but she knew he was regretting giving the shield up. "I don't know, Bri."

"Let's take the shield." Bucky muttered off in the distance as he stared at the ground. "Let's take the shield and do this ourselves."

Sam turned to look at him. "We can't just run up on the man, beat him up, and take it. Do you remember what happened the last time we stole it?"

"Maybe..." he trailed off.

"Let's see, most of us got arrested and then had to be on the run for two years. I'm sorry, but I can't do that again. I have a family, siblings. My mother just died months ago." Brianna told him.

"What if I told you guys there was potential a way." Bucky said.

Sam looked at Brianna and then back at Bucky. "What do you mean?"

"There is someone I think you should meet." Bucky said.

****

Baltimore, Maryland

Brianna should have known something was off about Bucky's meeting when she saw the look of anguish on his face. She figured it had maybe been an almost victim of his, but who she wasn't expecting was to walk into the house of an older man. She had no idea the history between the two of them besides Bucky saying they had a skirmish in the Korea War, but the tension in the room was thick. Her eyes went from Bucky to Sam who seemed equally perplexed as she was.

"Isaiah." Bucky greeted him from a distance.

The man almost smirked at him. "Look at you."

"This is, um, Sam and Brianna. Guys, this is Isaiah." Bucky introduced them. "He was a hero. One of the ones that HYDRA feared the most. Like Steve. We met in '51."

Brianna had to do the math in her head. They had met also 72 years ago which would have made Isaiah at least 90. However, he didn't look 90. He looked younger. A realization overcame her. He had to be a super soldier, but she had thought Steve and Bucky were the only ones.

"If by met, you mean I whupped your ass, then, yeah. We heard whispers he was on the peninsula, but everyone they sent after him, never came back. So the U.S. military dropped me behind the line to go deal with him. I took half that metal arm in that fight in Goyang, but I see he's managed to grow it back. I just wanted to see if he got the arm back. Or if he'd come to kill me." Isaiah explained.

"I'm not a killer anymore." Bucky whispered brokenly.

Isaiah scoffed. "You think you can wake up one day and decide who you wanna be? It doesn't work like that. Well, maybe it does for folks like you."

"Isaiah, the reason we're here is because there's more of you and me out there."

"You and me."

"And we need to know how."

Brianna could tell the man was getting upset. She had only heard a fraction of the story, but she could already see it was painful for him to talk about. She took a step forward towards Bucky. "Maybe we should-"

She was cut off by Isaiah throwing something at a wall. "I'm not going to talk about it anymore. You know what they did to me for being a hero? They put my ass in jail for 30 years. People running tests, taking my blood, coming into my cell. Even your people weren't done with me."

"Isaiah..." Sam trailed off.

"Get out of my house!" He yelled.

He didn't have to tell them twice. Bucky and Sam scurried outside, but Brianna paused at the doorway. She crammed her head slightly to look at the saddened man, "I'm so sorry you had to go through all that."