Bucky usually didn’t opt to work with the Avengers, maybe it was some lingering affect from when Hydra controlled him, or perhaps it was just some sort of strange anxiety that they were always going to be wary of him. Generally, though, the Winter Soldier avoided interacting with them. The exception was Steve, but only just. There were quite a few times that Barnes felt the least comfortable around him sometimes, still hearing Pierce’s instructions echoing in his mind when he saw Captain America.
Or just feeling terribly guilty.
Admittedly though, things had been improving.
Today was one of the few instances that Barnes had been convinced to help. He and Thor were supposed to infiltrate the base, and then signal the others when they had unlocked the blast-door. The complex they were assaulting was some sort of bunker, built into a hill, completely fortified. Bucky and his companion had just slipped inside before the front gate has shut, locking out everybody else.
Well that simple objective had gone straight to Hell as soon as the duo were inside.
Apparently, Hydra had a limitless supply of henchmen to throw at them.
He had no doubt that everyone outside the facility could hear everything he and Thor were managing to utterly destroy on the inside. When they finally caught a break, bodies and debris were everywhere, multiple vehicles were nothing charred, flaming husks. Every alarm was going off, its lights flashing red and yellow.
“Guys,” Romanoff’s voice fluttered over the comm. “We need you to open the door.”
Thor and Bucky stood next to one another, panting as their tried to catch their breath. Their gazes were both on the door’s control terminal, it had been turned into a sparking, sputtering mess of electrical wires and smoke.
“Guys?” She sounded a little more insistent. “Open the door, we’re going to be overrun.”
Thor hesitated to reply, having spotted a room off to the side. There was a clear indicator on the door that whatever was stored inside was explosive.
They looked at one another.
While Barnes had no idea of what the explosion looked like to anyone on the outside, it was downright spectacular on the inside. The containers they had moved were heavy and cumbersome, undoubtedly holding some sort of fuel. Whatever it was though, was beyond both Bucky and Thor. They had expected normal fire when Barnes had chucked a grenade into the stacked crates.
What they got was something else entirely.
The denotation was marked by a brief flash of fire, a normal explosion. But as the canisters went off, purple and blue overtook the door. It looked like lightning, arching out from splatters of blue paste that defied reality and hung in the air. The arcs tore into the blast door, disintegrating metal and concrete into white ash.
Bucky shouted into his radio as the air began to fizzle. “Get away from the door!”
Then a shockwave tore outwards, it blew the entire front of the facility off, sending a wave of concrete and metal flying towards both their allies and enemies outside. Thor and Bucky were knocked onto their backs, shielding themselves as rubble from their earlier skirmish went flying around them.
Thor recovered faster then Bucky, who groaned as he kicked a car door off himself and staggered to his feet.
“Are you alright?” Odinson questioned, eyeing Bucky for a second before he surveyed the damage.
“I’m fine.” He replied, picking his rifle off the floor. He spotted Steve approaching. “Shit...”
“The battle was well fought,” Thor responded, picking up on Bucky’s worry. “And whatever that weapon was, Hydra no longer possesses it.”
While admittedly that was true, he doubted that Rogers was going to see it that way.
And he was hoping to hell that their mission wasn’t to recover whatever it was he and Thor had just used to open the door.
