Time to go

Promises

(One day later- unnamed New York shipping dock- three minutes to midnight.)

Bucky's mind was spinning and he hated it. It wasn't a new hate, no, his head had been spinning since he woke up in an abandoned Hydra base all alone and ever since that moment he hated it. He hated the not knowing, not knowing how he knew who Clint was one moment and the next he was choking the life out of him. Not knowing who the faces in his dreams were and why they sobbed or screamed or bled out in front of him. But at the moment Bucky gladly would've traded the answers to all these questions just to get a single glimpse into future. Just to see what will happen when he steps off the boat.

His real fingers tap spastically on his leg, while his metal hand lies dead in his lap. "Clint?"

"Yah?" Clint looked up from the bag he was methodically packing and unpacking for the hundredth time. His fingers shook as he pulled the zipper shut.

"How much longer?"

Clint looked at his watch out of habit, but Bucky knew he was counting the seconds.

"Ten minutes, then we sneak off. The boat should be clear of sailors and workers after that."

Bucky nodded. "Can we go over the plan one more time?"

Clint knew that Bucky had the plan memorized, they had been going over it 'one more time' for hours now. But going over a plan didn't make it any better, and truth be told their plan was really a plan at all. Yet Clint nodded, it made Bucky feel better and it gave him something to do other than pack and unpack their nearly empty duffels.

"We are going to leave this room at 12:07 and sneak off the ship the same way we got on. Then we are going to get to a more populated area and hail a cab. We are going to take the cab to three blocks away from my old apartment and pay the cabbie with cash. Then we are going to go into my apartment, it should be the way I left it. No one should've been in there since I left. We are going to crash there for the night and in the morning we are going to do some research on what the avengers have been up to. Try to figure out where they are and stuff." Clint rehearsed it to Bucky without blinking. "Then we find them and we apologize and hope to god that they take us back. And-"

"And if they don't we don't argue, we do as much good as we possibly can until hydra either catches us or kills us." Bucky finished for him, filling the space between them with choking silence. "I need you to promise me something."

"What?"

"If our plans go south, if Steve hates me and wants me dead. If hydra finds us, I need you to kill me."

"What! No!" Clint almost dropped his duffel on his foot.

"Send a bullet through my brain, snap my neck like a twig. Put a knife in between my ribs and twist, shoot me through my eye with that stupid bow of yours, poison me, choke me, drown me, just kill me. Don't let them take me again. I would rather be dead than in their bloody hands again. I don't want to become a monster again."

Bucky spoke with such force that Clint could only nod sadly, knowing that Bucky meant business. Bucky was a soldier, and he wanted a soldier's death, he didn't want to be put down like a rabid dog after being captured by hydra.

"Say it, say you will kill me before they can get me." Bucky grabbed his arm and Clint almost flinched at the grip, but he didn't move.

" I won't let them get you, I promise." The words burnt up Clint's throat like acid, but he pushed them out anyways.

Bucky nodded, "Thank you."

"But you have to promise me something first. Just one thing."

"Yah?"

"If I run you let me go. You let me leave, if I can't do it anymore, if I become something I can't control. Don't come after me, don't let anyone come after me. You let me disappear forever from everyone's live." Clint's watch beeped, cutting off any chance Bucky had of protesting.

"Time to go."

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Kate closed the door lightly behind Barney and slid to the floor, she didn't understand anything anymore, she just wanted the world to go back to what it was before Clint became an avenger. She remembered the way it was back then, just Clint and her and Lucky and a couple dozen Russian mobsters to deal with. Was it odd that Kate was nostalgic for a time where she got shot at most of the time? A few salty tears dripped down her face, but Lucky, who had sauntered over after she sat down, licked them away and laid his head on he lap.

With a slight smile Kate wrapped her arms tightly around Lucky and sniffled. "Come on Lucky."

Standing up she shuffled up the stairs. "No more sleeping on the couch, tonight I think I'm going to sleep on a real bed. There aren't any ghosts to haunt me in there anymore."

Kate climbed the stairs, not looking back. This was her mistake, because if she had turned around and stayed by the door a few minutes longer she would've gotten her ghost.

__________________________

Clint's hand twisted into his bag and dug around for a moment. His fingers closed around a key chain, a key chain he never understood why he kept. Sentimental value perhaps? A reminder that he had a home once? Clint pushed these questions aside, all it mattered was that he still had the key.

Inserting the key and giving the door a little push open he nodded to Bucky who followed him in. Bucky made a reach for the light switch, but Clint grabbed his hand.

"Don't turn on the light." he hissed "There are people in this building who think I'm dead, if they see light they may get suspicious and I don't want to deal with that right now."

Bucky nodded.

"Keep your voice down too, the walls here are kinda thin."

Bucky nodded again and made his way farther into the apartment, leaving Clint to close and lock the door behind them.

As Bucky lay down on the couch Clint surveyed his apartment. Nothing had changed since he had left, but somehow he felt like there was something glaringly different about his home. He couldn't place his finger on it though, so he chalked the feeling up to stress and his general paranoia of everything. A feeling he had grown after too many years as a spy and assassin.

Padding over he flopped onto the couch next to Bucky and dropped his duffel to the floor.

"We should probably get some sleep." Clint said half to himself half to Bucky.

"I'm not tired, I slept basically half our trip."

Clint nodded. "Same, I could really go for some food though. You know there is this great twenty four hour pizzeria that delivers just two blocks from here. I've been craving it for months."

Bucky sighed. "Yah, and have them deliver it where? Don't you think that would raise a few questions when a pizza man shows up to deliver a pizza to an apartment that has supposedly been empty for over a year?"

"Fine, I guess we'll wait till tomorrow and have it for breakfast. So we can't go get food and we don't need to sleep, what are we going to do?" Clint asked, suddenly realizing this was one of the first times he had talked to Bucky when one of them wasn't dead tired, bleeding out or confused.

"Can I ask you a question?" Bucky said tentatively.

"Yah, whatever."

"Why did you leave New York in the first place?"