Chapter Text
The Winter Soldier was incapable of “gentle.”
He dragged the Man from the Bridge out of the water by his shoulder strap, dropped him onto the sand, and stood still for a moment, considering what to do.
Mission Failure.
He’d never had a mission failure before.
Hydra had taken a serious blow today, their years of work destroyed in an instant, and the Asset’s failure would be one heavy blow among many for the day. He would not be punished lightly.
Vague images and words swam in his brain. Wipe him, start over. The feeling that he could never shake, that endless electric current under his skin. An actual current, or the echo of one, used to correct behavior.
Like a dog.
The Soldier shook his head. Doubting his orders was wrong. Hydra was everything, every hope for the future. They would make the world free.
But…
He did not feel free.
He felt caged, trapped. Not allowed to even know this man, the stranger laying on the sand. The one who called him Bucky.
James Buchanan Barnes, he’d said.
The Soldier frowned. He needed more data.
And, since he was still doubting Hydra, he only had one option.
He sat down, next to the Man from the Bridge, and waited.
The rescue flight came quickly, and soon, a large machine gun was pointed in the Soldier’s direction, and a voice came over the jet’s speaker system. “Step away from Captain America.”
Captain America. That sounded…familiar. He filed the term away.
It was better than “Man from the Bridge,” anyhow.
The Soldier did not comply with orders from those who were not Hydra, and thus, remained seated, simply staring down the barrel of the gun in his face.
“I’ll not tell you twice,” the voice came again. “Step away from Captain Rogers.”
Rogers. So the man had a name, as well as a title. The Soldier wondered, briefly, what that was like, before frowning at his own thought process.
He had no use for names. He was the Winter Soldier, the Asset. The titles were better than anything silly like a name. A name told you nothing about a person. His titles told all.
He heard the ramp release from the plane, and looked away from the fixed point of the gun to watch the descent of the redhead spy, as well as another woman he had never seen.
Both were aiming guns at him.
He eyed them without the slightest change in expression.
They didn’t scare him in the least.
No one did.
“Sargent Barnes,” the unfamiliar woman said, and it took the Solider a moment to realize that she was addressing him.
He blinked at her. It was the only reaction she got.
“Sargent,” she tried again. “Are you lucid?”
“I am not a Sargent,” he finally replied. “Hydra holds no ranks.”
She cocked her gun. “If you want me to trust you, aligning yourself with Hydra isn’t how to do it.”
“I don’t care if you trust me,” the Asset replied, tone unchanging. “I want information. When I get it, I am leaving.”
“What, like the location and names of all remaining loyal SHIELD agents?” the woman suggested. “Give me a break. I’m giving you nothing.”
The Soldier was tempted, for a brief moment, to say something about how she wouldn’t really be able to resist the forms of torture he was familiar with – both in giving and receiving. If he wanted information from her, she wouldn’t have a choice.
“Your information is irrelevant,” the Soldier informed her. “It is his that is pertinent.”
The woman’s eyes flicked to the unconscious Captain, then back to the Soldier. “What did he say to you?”
The Asset froze, before slowly speaking again. “Irrelevant. A question was posed. I will receive the answer, and then-…”
And then, what? He couldn’t go back to Hydra. He had nothing. His mission was a failure. Some meaningless words from a stranger and he’d frozen.
But they were so familiar.
In his life, he could remember a handful of feelings. Anger. Frustration. Lately, confusion.
But whatever he’d felt when this Rogers has said those words on the helicarrier… that was new.
He didn’t even have a name for it.
“Then I will fulfil my mission,” he ended. Whatever his mission was, now. He didn’t have any back-up orders.
With him, there was no need for a Plan B.
The redhead’s gun clicked once, as well, and she spoke for the first time. “Like hell.”
The voice was familiar. Unlike the man beside him, though, he could place it.
“Romanova.”
Romanova tensed visibly, and the gun became a little more forcefully aimed toward the space between his eyes.
Okay, no names. He could respect that. “Codename Black Widow,” he corrected. “Who is this man?”
She looked taken aback. “You’re trusting me for information, now, Winter?”
Finally, someone calling him by his actual title. “I trust myself to be able to spot a lie,” he corrected.
They stared at each other for a second, before Romanova lowered her gun - not holstering it or even putting the safety on, just getting it out of the Soldier’s face. “Steven Grant Rogers, codename Captain America. And your best friend.”
“False,” the Soldier corrected. “My mission.”
“Your failed mission,” Romanova pointed out.
If the Soldier were less trained, he might have flinched.
“What are you gonna do about that, by the way?” Romanova asked. “I doubt Hydra’s gonna be all open-arms when you come back empty handed after their worst defeat in a century.”
“I do not intend to return,” the Soldier bit back before he even thought about it.
That took both women by surprise. “You’re quitting Hydra?” the mystery woman asked.
The Soldier inhaled once, sharply, then huffed out a breath through his nose. He supposed to most it would look like a calming technique. In reality, he simply had little other way of expressing irritation then changes in breathing patterns. “Hydra has suffered a severe blow. They will not be thinking rationally. The destruction of a goal can blind them and lead to the destruction of an asset. It is in the best interest of this asset to remain distant.”
“So basically, you’re scared they’ll be pissed and kill you?” Romanova asked.
“I am not scared,” the Soldier hissed. “I am aware. I am calculating. I have a mission parameter set and I intend to take the necessary path to meet it.”
“Oh yeah?” the other woman asked. “And what’s this mission?”
“Discover the identity and past of one James Buchanan Barnes.”
They talk – more like argue, really – for a while longer before the Captain begins to choke on air and the other woman (Hill, Romanova had called her) ordered for them to get on the plane.
For them all to get on the plane.
“You wanna bring him with us?” Romanova practically yelled.
The Soldier had to agree it was a poor plan. He could kill them all, even if he weren’t armed and already irritated. And yet, Hill seemed determined to take him back to their ‘very secret’ base.
Hydra’s top Asset, inside a SHIELD hideout.
No wonder SHIELD had been so easily fooled as to Hydra’s whereabouts. They were all clearly stupid.
“He wants to know who he is. Steve can tell him. We’re not taking him anywhere classified, just to an allied hospital.” She sat in the cockpit, starting the plane, and didn’t even look back at them as they boarded. “And besides – he saved Steve from the water. He’s clearly got some Bucky left.”
The Soldier wanted to protest. He was not this Bucky person. He was the Winter Solider, the Asset. He was a weapon, not a man.
But… he had asked for information, and they were giving it to him.
He chose to play along.
(Of course, by that, he meant keep silent entirely.)
Romanova – Romanov, as Hill called her at one point, she must have modernized the name – continued to argue that they should leave the Soldier behind, but by the time she really got any relevant information out there (including kill count statistics that were a tragically low-ball estimate) they were already in the air.
“Sit down and strap in, Barnes,” Hill ordered.
The Soldier remained standing.
“Suit yourself,” she said, and proceeded to make a sharp turn in the air, as if she meant to send the Soldier stumbling.
He barely shifted.
“Alright,” she muttered. “This is gonna be a long flight.”
The Falcon met him at the roof by punching him in the face.
The Soldier didn’t even stop him, just let him throw the punch. It knocked his chin a bit, but he barely felt it. He barely felt most things.
Then the Falcon did it again.
And again.
And again.
Finally, the Soldier raised a hand, catching the Falcon’s fist. “If you’re done,” he said simply.
“Not quite,” the Falcon said, and slammed his skull against the Soldier’s.
Gritting his teeth, the Soldier had had enough – and he grabbed the Falcon by the wrist, flipping him onto his back and then getting over him, pinning him down. “If you’re done.”
“What’d you do to Steve?” the Falcon spit out. “If you even made a scratch, I swear, I’ll-…”
“He is unconscious from severe facial and abdominal trauma mixed with a brief exposure to water in the lungs,” the Soldier filled him in coolly. As an afterthought, he added, “He’ll live.”
“He better,” the Falcon said. “Where is he?”
“They took him inside roughly at the same time you through the first punch,” the Soldier informed him. “You were distracted.”
“Yeah, well,” the Falcon muttered. “You try not punching you. It’s harder than it looks.”
He then shoved at the Soldier, and so he moved to let the Falcon up.
The Soldier wondered vaguely if that was what it was like to be forgiven.
Definitely not forgiven.
The Soldier glared across the hospital bed, from where he sat at Roger’s side. On the other side was the Falcon – Sam Wilson – who, by the looks of it, was not leaving anytime soon.
Wilson was taking every opportunity to try and… guilt the Soldier. Talking with a feigned casual attitude, about Steve without Bucky.
About how Rogers had frozen when he’d seen “Bucky” on the bridge.
About how Rogers had practically lost his mind over the idea his friend was still alive.
About every little detail about Rogers that he’d apparently “missed” in the past 70 years.
The Soldier wondered if anyone would have cared if the situation were reversed. If he’d remembered this Steve Rogers, and the man had forgotten him. Would anyone sit next to his bedside and try and guilt Rogers into apologizing for doing his job for 70 years instead of…
Instead of what?
Finally, he caved, and asked.
“What would I have changed, had I been present?”
That seemed to catch Wilson off guard. “You mean, besides however long of PTSD and grief?”
The Soldier’s eyebrows knitted together. “What is PTSD?”
Wilson blinked at him. “You’ve gotta be- you seriously don’t know what PTSD is? Did they not have it in the 40s?”
“Is that where I’m from?” The Soldier asked before he could stop himself.
“…Shit,” Wilson muttered. “They did a number on you, huh?”
The Solider frowned harder. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing,” Wilson said. “Nothing at all.”
Steve woke up to a bright smile and a cold, calculating stare.
It took him a second to process the latter.
“Bucky?!” He exclaimed.
“Yeah, sure, ignore me,” Sam muttered, as Steve tried to push himself up. Sam instantly pinned him back down by the shoulder. “Easy, there, you’ve gotta heal up first.”
Bucky hadn’t so much as twitched. He was just staring Steve down. Finally, he spoke. “Who is James Buchanan Barnes?”
Steve blinked. “You are,” he answered.
This answer didn’t seem to make Bucky very happy, because he frowned pretty intensely. “I am not.”
“But you are,” Steve said. “We were best friends as kids. We grew up together. I followed you into enlistment. I think I’d know my own best friend.”
“But I don’t know you,” Bucky insisted, and Steve flinched.
“That’s not surprising,” Steve answered after a second. “Hydra probably did some pretty awful stuff to you, I wouldn’t be surprised if your memories are lost for a while.”
Or forever, he refused to think.
Bucky seemed irritated. He huffed out a sharp breath. “I have no way of knowing how true that is. You could be lying to me.”
“But you’re here,” Steve said. “So you know, deep down, that I’m not.”
The Soldier was quiet after that, letting Wilson and Rogers catch up. They talked lowly, as though to keep the Soldier from picking up all the information they were giving (the destruction of Hydra’s weaponry, the disbanding of SHIELD, and so on) but it hardly mattered. He was hardly listening.
He was, instead, thinking about this ‘Bucky’ person. This ‘James Buchanan Barnes’. He was, apparently, Rogers’ best friend.
He was also, according to Rogers, the Asset himself.
The Soldier let out a slow breath, processing this, only to realize the sound had drawn the other two men’s attention.
“You okay, Buck?” Rogers asked.
“Stop,” he whispered, not even in control of the word as it slid out.
“Stop what?”
“Stop calling me that!” the Soldier stood, slamming a fist into the wall. It was his right hand, so it barely dented it, rather than blowing a full hole in it. He felt a knuckle pop.
He ignored it.
“Whoa,” Wilson said. “Calm down, big guy. You’re not Bucky. We get it. You’re your own man.”
“Sam-...” Rogers started to say, but Wilson must have given him a look (Bucky wasn’t turning to see) because he stopped.
“I am an asset,” the Soldier hissed out. “I am not a man.”
“You are,” Wilson insisted. “You just got told different. For a long time. And somewhere along the way, you started thinking it was right. But it’s not. I promise you, you’re human. Maybe a little different than the run-of-the-mill guy, but still human. Just like Steve.”
“I am not like Rogers,” he bit out. “I am nothing like Rogers.”
“Okay, bad phrasing,” Wilson said. “But what’s wrong with being like Steve? Just, for the record. He’s a great guy.”
“Thanks, Sam, but I don’t think-…”
“He’s weak,” the Soldier said, quietly. “He knew my face and so he would not fight me.”
“And you couldn’t kill him,” Wilson pointed out.
“Shut up,” the Soldier bit out.
“No. You couldn’t kill him, because you recognized him. Why can’t you see who he is now?”
“Shut up!”
“No. You need to hear this. Failing a mission doesn’t make you a failure, Barnes.”
“Shut up!” the Soldier did punch the wall with his left hand this time, burying it into the drywall. Perhaps it was childish, but he couldn’t exactly hit Rogers or Wilson – much as he wanted to, right now – without compromising his new mission.
He would not accept another Mission Failure.
A hand was on his shoulder, and he immediately spun to push it off. But it wasn’t Wilson or Rogers, it was Romanova.
He squared his shoulders. Romanova was a spy, an assassin. She’d been raised on bloodshed and efficiency. If anyone would understand his need to maintain his mission, it’d be her.
Something in his mind shifted, an old mechanism, and even though she didn’t say his key words, he changed his perception of her.
Romanova became, by default, his Handler.
“Asset Reporting,” he said, and with that, any Bucky Barnes that had bled through was buried.
Steve stared in horror as Bucky’s eyes went glassy and distant, and he began speaking, but not in English. In Russian.
“What’s he saying?” Sam asked.
“I wish I knew,” Steve replied.
But Natasha did seem to know, and she looked…horrified.
When Bucky was done, he simply sat back down in his chair, and watched her.
“What did he say?” Steve asked.
“He…he reported.” She breathed out. “I must have triggered something. He thinks I’m in charge.”
Sam snorted, but Steve didn’t really find it funny.
“He said he failed his mission. That he was- he’s compromised. He…requested…Jesus, I can’t do this.”
“Natasha,” Sam said, gently. “What did he say?”
“He surrendered himself to punishment, and…he requested to be reset.” She turned wide, terrified eyes on Steve. “Guys, they were wiping his memory.”
Steve had suspected something like that – you didn’t get a complete shut down like that from trauma alone, as far as he knew – but Christ. To think they were actually getting in his brain and just…flipping a switch, ‘resetting’ him, that was a horror story. Having it confirmed just broke Steve’s heart all over again.
Bucky said something in Russian again, and Natasha replied in a very sharp tone in the same language.
“What now?” Sam asked.
“He keeps requesting a wipe. I told him request denied.”
Bucky sounded desperate when he spoke up again, and the tone made Steve wish he was well enough to get out of bed and leave the room. Natasha barked at him in Russian for a few words, and then demanded, “English, Winter.”
Bucky’s head snapped up to lock eyes with her, and he begged, “I am compromised. I need to start over.”
“Request denied,” she said again. “Live with it, Winter. You can’t just forget this. Remember.”
“I remember too much,” he practically cried. “And not enough. Who am I?”
“Don’t tell him his name,” Sam suggested. “That triggered this to start with.”
“It doesn’t matter who you were,” Natasha said. “It matters who you want to be.”
Bucky seemed to be on the verge of tears. “What does that mean?”
“It means you have a new mission,” Natasha said, and Bucky straightened up immediately. “Your parameters: Leave Hydra, and become your own man. Make yourself up from nothing.”
Very quietly, but in a much less tortured tone, Bucky replied, “Mission Parameters accepted. Ready to comply.”
And then he left the room.
The Soldier had reported, and been given a mission. He was not to reset. He was not to be shocked, he was not to be wiped. He was to remake himself.
Romanova had not specified whether that meant remake the Winter Soldier or remake James Buchanan Barnes, but after consideration, the Soldier decided it was up to him.
So he left the hospital, and went to the Smithsonian.
The Captain America exhibit was extensive, but the section on “Bucky” was small. It told him the basics, though, which is what mattered. He was born in 1917, on March 10th. That made him 97. He grew up with Steven Grant Rogers. He was a member of the Howling Commandos.
The exhibit says he gave his life for the cause. He wondered what cause they meant.
Something told him they weren’t correct, regardless.
He returned to the hospital that evening, through the window, only to find that Rogers’ room was empty.
He left the same way he came in, and staked out the hospital, until the regular business hours were over and all that was open was the ER. He broke in, checking the front desk computers (basic security, laughably easy-to-guess password) and tracking down the address Rogers had on file.
It was real, as far as he could tell.
There was no need to write it down. The Winter Soldier never forgot.
Then again…
Standing in front of Rogers’ apartment door, he couldn’t help but wonder if that was true.