#warm shadows

His first call is to Steve.

You're the other half of his heart, but Steve is the other half of his mind.

Bucky is focused and effective, but he's also terrified of what they're doing to you. But it's clear that you're bait.

Hydra wants the Winter Soldier back, their fist, their deadly assassin.

What better way to ensure they can lure him back and control him than to trap his omega?

Bucky and Steve get very close to finding you four days later, but they're maybe a day too late. Bucky can still smell your scent at the recently abandoned facility. (Of course for Hydra, they dangled that clue, wanting to make Bucky a little more desperate for having been so close and then not succeeded.)

They DO find you on the sixth day after your capture, but Hydra wasn't expecting him this time, so they rush you out of that facility, air-lifted away. You see Bucky at the end of the hallway, and you cry out for him, and it's absolutely soul-wrenching for you both. It breaks Steve's heart as well. You're Bucky's bonded omega, his mate, but Steve cares about you fiercely. He's heard the old lore about packs, and he thinks that must be a lot like how he feels about you and Bucky.

Then you and Hydra completely disappear for almost three weeks. But Bucky knows you're still alive. You have to be, because he can feel that the bond is still there.

It's so difficult for Bucky to even think of doing anything else, but while he and Steve are still looking for you, SHIELD gets reports about a couple of interesting deaths - political figures, they seem like accidents, but it's maybe too convenient that they simply died. They ask Steve to go and check it out, and he doesn't ask Bucky to go with him, but Bucky's not going to let Steve go alone.

While they're in the quinjet en route to the first location Steve's going to investigate, Bucky reviews all of the mission briefing materials, and he's glad he insisted on going with Steve because there are consequential and inconsequential details that seem too familiar.

Too much like his work, or at the very least the work he helped train the Red Room's Widows to do. It's not a one-man job.

It takes them about a week to finally get close enough to the assassin.

When they do?

It's you.

And they've given you a serum.

Bucky tries to stop you, to reason with you, beg you to stop, but you don't.

You're efficient, you're lethal, you're a well-trained asset. Combination of this version of the super soldier serum and more advanced breakthroughs they've made with the Widow programming.

You don't deal any lethal blows to Bucky though - that's not your instruction. Your instructions are to fulfill your missions and invite Sergeant Barnes to join you if you encounter him.

Bucky tries so hard to get through to you.

And he claws back some of your new conditioning, but you shake that off. They told you your alpha would try to resist, try to sway you away, and that if it was clear he was not ready to comply, you should abandon the effort and try again the next time. They assured you the alpha would continue to seek you out, and all you needed to do was keep presenting him with the opportunity, that soon enough he would comply.

But just before you get air-lifted off a roof, Steve catches up (he was fighting off other Hydra goons to give Bucky time with you) and calls after you, too, and Bucky sees another flash in your features.

Bucky thought he was at least getting through on some level, but seeing that when Steve had shown up, too, there had been another chink in the armor?

Of course he'll be more effective trying to break through to you with two.

And then I like to think that Bucky had still been looking into that pack lore on his own just how I'd established in the original series. So now he's determined that he should tell Steve about it and do the ritual to go through with it. It will make them stronger alphas, and he believes it will give them an exponentially better chance to break through what Hydra's done to your mind.

Steve agrees to it - it's not even a question.

They catch up to you again not long after because Hydra is eager to draw in their Winter Soldier with his omega, so you're sent quickly on another string of missions.

You and Bucky engage in a fight. Your liaison (not a handler, remember? in this AU Hydra wants to give more of an illusion that their asset has control and is not being fully controlled by them) had suggested you get close to your alpha, remind him that he needs his omega, that he aches for his omega.

So you do.

And it's true.

But Bucky is the alpha, and he knows the strength of your bond, too. And he bites your bond mark anew to remind you, to dig through the hold they've established. And it's not unsuccessful, but it's not quite enough.

Bucky and Steve are both trying to talk to you, and you hear part of what they're saying, but you're still fighting. Less after Bucky's bite, but their grip still isn't broken, and so out of desperation, Bucky barks at Steve to bite your other mating gland. Steve is surprised, but his already strong bond with Bucky made even stronger by their new pack bond? How fiercely he already cares about you? He hesitates, his eyes asking Bucky if he's really sure about asking him to bite you, neither of them knowing if it will work, if you'll survive it, but Steve can't refuse when he can so personally feel the depth of Bucky's desperation through the pack bond.

So he does.

And it breaks the mental grip they had stitched into your mind.

And then once you're out and safe, then it becomes a happily ever after of you and your two fierce alphas who will defend you to their last dying breaths. And much delicious smut for all three of you, which you all deserve after the nightmare.

I think that's how that would go. 😌

The end.