Chapter Text
October 2013
Captain John Walker had been missing for twelve hours, and command was freaking out. Lemar was just pissed off. He’d told him not to do anything stupid like get himself killed—and what did he do? He went MIA.
His best friend, while somewhat of a genius, was an idiot on the best of days.
He either thought he was invincible or did some heroic move regardless of his safety. He’d been able to dodge some bullets so far, but one day, his friend's luck was going to run out, and Lemar wouldn’t be able to handle it.
He paced the small hotel room he was living in. Since it was a spec ops mission, they weren’t in a military base, but shacking up in a fancy hotel paid for by the US Government.
It was just like John to go run after an assassin, something that the German authorities could handle, and get himself killed or worse. If he hadn’t just been awarded the Medal of Honor, he’d be in so much hot water he’d wish he’d never joined the Rangers. Lucky bastard.
There was a tapping at his window, and he jumped. He was on the eighth floor, who the hell, and how the hell, was doing that?
“Lemar! Open the window before I fall and die, please.”
Wait.
That was his dumbass friend.
He ran over to the window, stumbling over his own feet. He flung the window open, and John fell into his arms. He looked like hell—his face was half purple, muddled in bruises, his hair was a greasy mess, and his throat had handprint marks lining it.
“What the hell happened to you?” Lemar asked, his hand firmly gripping John's shoulder.
John chuckled, but there was an air of mania to it. “A lot. This has probably been one of the craziest days I’ve ever had.”
It took a lot to shake John up. Part of the reason he rose through the ranks so quickly was that he was like a rock, unmovable.
“Well, you better get talking, starting with why you climbed through my window instead of reporting to our senior officer.”
John stumbled over to the bed wearily, bringing a hand down his face. “It’s going to sound crazy. Really crazy, Lemar.”
Lemar sat down beside him and bumped his shoulder into his. “Dude, when have I ever left because you sounded crazy? I’m with you to the end, buddy.”
John huffed. “That assassin? He’s Bucky friggin’ Barnes. He’s very much alive and doesn’t look much older than you or me, despite having supposedly died in the 1940s.”
Most people wouldn’t know instantly who Bucky Barnes was—Lemar unfortunately had a nerd for a best friend, who’d made him dress up as Bucky for at least three Halloweens while he dressed up as Captain America. He knew a frightening number of facts about the man.
Most importantly, that he died seventy years ago on a mission gone wrong.
“You’re not joking, are you?” he said mostly to himself. “Captain America’s best friend is also not dead. Are they both immortal or some shit?”
“Beats me,” John shrugged. “All I know is that he’s not dead, and very much not himself. The only reason I’m not dead is because I started spewing stuff out about him and Rogers. It was like it was snapping him out of a trance.”
How was it that their lives had come to this? John was awarded the Medal of Honor, and suddenly they were going all around the world tracking down alien technology and hunting borderline supervillains. Oh, and now, they’d run into Captain America’s dead best friend, whom his best friend had been obsessed with since he was a toddler.
“So, somewhere between fake dying seventy years ago and now, he became a brainwashed assassin. Great. What are we supposed to do about that?”
John rubbed his hands together. “About that…”
Nope. That was his I did something dumb, please don’t freak out, voice.
“Oh, God, what did you do?”
“Listen, clearly, he wasn’t in control of his actions. I couldn’t just turn him in! They’d put him in prison or kill him. Or he’d kill them. Either way, no good outcomes!” John defended. “So I put him somewhere safe.”
“Somewhere safe?”
John cringed. “Yeah. That’s what I’ve been doing. I had to find somewhere I could restrain him properly. I’m pretty sure he’s superhuman, just like Rogers.”
He left John alone for five seconds, and he kidnapped a super assassin and abandoned his post. He was going to strangle him someday over all the stupid shit he did. He was going to give Lemar an ulcer.
“Did you come up with more of a plan after that, genius?”
“I figure we need to fix whatever is messed up in his brain first. I think playing clips of Rogers and telling him facts about the two of them should snap him out of it enough that he won’t kill us. Probably.”
Probably. How did this man reach the rank of Captain? The whole he’s-Captain-America’s-best-friend thing must’ve been seriously messing with his judgment. Or he had a concussion. Or both.
“Just—I know it sounds crazy, but something is telling me we need to help him. I think this could lead to something else…something bigger.”
Lemar sighed deeply. There had never really been a question about what he was going to do. Whenever John did something—stupid, smart, or anything in between—Lemar wasn’t far behind him.
“You know this could impact our careers, right?”
“Yeah,” John nodded. “That’s why I’m giving you an out, if you want it.”
Lemar slapped the back of his head. “Don’t be an idiot. I’m not letting you do this alone. Just tell me what we’re going to do.”
John grinned. “Thanks, Lemar.”
“You should be—I am a saint for putting up with all of this,” he joked.
“Yeah, yeah,” John said, chuckling. “Now, for the plan…”
*
*
*
John slept in Lemar’s closet (in case anyone came in) for three hours before they headed out. They both used the window route, and Lemar swore after that he’d only ever get rooms on the first floor.
The building that John had left Bucky in was an abandoned warehouse. It smelled like dead fish and dead dreams. Lemar seriously didn’t like it.
The man in question was chained up to an anchor, looking very pissed off.
Lemar stopped in his tracks. “You weren’t lying. That’s Bucky freaking Barnes.”
He hadn’t thought that John was lying, but come on, it was pretty hard to swallow. It was insane. Captain America's best friend, who’d met his tragic end defending the world from the Nazi’s. His life was basically a Shakespearean tragedy—and apparently it got worse.
Bucky snapped his teeth at them and tried to struggle out of his chains.
“Yeah, he doesn’t like it when you call him by his name,” John said, pulling a crate up and sitting on it.
Lemar sat on his left. “You weren’t lying. He’s been brainwashed.”
“He can hear you,” Bucky snapped.
Lemar jumped and swore under his breath.
“Yeah, he may not know who he is, but he’s still a person.”
“No shit,” he cursed. “You couldn’t have mentioned that before?”
There was a pause. Bucky sized them up silently while they did the same. It was unnerving to be face to face with a man your best friend would rant about for hours when you were a teenager, someone you once impersonated, someone who you thought was dead.
“You ready?” Lemar asked.
John cracked his neck. “Let's do this thing.”
Lemar handed him a tablet, and John booted it up. They’d spent some time compiling videos and pictures to show him. A lot of them John had used for presentations during school, which was just a little bit creepy in the present circumstances, considering he was very much not dead.
“This? This is you, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes,” John said, showing him a picture from his Howling Commandos days.
Bucky twitched.
John started sliding through the pictures. “All of these? These are you. You were born on March 10th, 1917, in Brooklyn. You had three sisters whom you practically raised. You were drafted into the Second World War, to the 107th Infantry Regiment, and fought in a number of conflicts before being captured by Hydra.”
Bucky was full on thrashing in the chains, muttering things under his breath, but he froze at the mention of Hydra.
John paused, pulling something up. “And this is Steve Rogers. Your best friend. He defied orders and rescued you and a couple of hundred men from Hydra.”
“Steve,” he whispered.
“He’s also from Brooklyn. Both his parents died when he was young, no siblings. You were the only family he had,” John went on. “Everyone always said you were inseparable. More like brothers than friends.”
Bucky was shaking, and not violently. More like trembling.
Lemar put a hand on John’s shoulder. “I think we should take a break. We don’t want to overwhelm his brain and fry him.”
John shook his head. “We need to shock whatever poison is in his system out. He’s been like this for seventy years—it's going to take a bang to shake him out of it.”
Lemar trusted his friend, but Bucky was shaking like he was having a seizure. Words were being mumbled, but they were so low that it was indecipherable. It looked like he was in pain. Like he expected it.
“Dude. Look at him. He needs a break.”
John paused, sizing up Bucky. “You’re right. He doesn’t look too good.” He paused with a sigh. “I just want to fix him. I don’t want to hurt him.”
Sometimes, John got so blinded by a goal that he forgot about things. Most of the time, it was his own safety. It was Lemar’s job to pull him back to light—it was how they worked. They pulled each other back when the other went too far or got lost.
Lemar got up. “Here, we should get him some water.”
Lemar grabbed a canteen from his bag and approached Bucky. Bucky eyed him like he was a wild animal.
“Just some water, dude. Here, watch, it’s safe,” he said, taking a sip of it himself before passing it to him. Bucky watched him with distrust, but took a few gulps of the water. “I’d give you some food, but we don’t have any. This was kind of a spur-of-the-moment type of thing.”
Bucky didn’t reply.
John rubbed the back of his neck. “Sorry about that. I got ahead of myself.”
No reply, just a distrustful glance.
They needed to build a rapport with him if they ever wanted to get anywhere. If this guy had been held captive by people for seventy years, he’d probably seen unspeakable things. Kindness must’ve been a rarity. Or maybe even less than that.
“What would you like us to call you? Since you don’t like being called Bucky.” Lemar asked.
That seemed to stump him. “I…I don’t know.”
A response. That was a win. Lemar nodded slowly. “That’s alright. We’ll figure something out.”
Bucky quickly went back to being out of it, but he didn’t look as wild. Progress. Lemar couldn’t believe this was his life now.
*
*
*
The Winter Soldier was captured by two bumbling idiots. It was shameful. He was better than that. But he, for some reason, wasn’t trying too hard to escape.
The blonde one reminded him of…of something. He couldn’t put his finger on what or who.
His friend treated him like a person instead of an enemy. It was…odd.
They kept saying his name was Bucky and that he knew someone named Steve Rogers. It made his brain itch—feel like it was on fire. He didn’t understand what was happening. Because a part of him was saying they were right.
The pictures they showed him were undoubtedly his face. Those pictures of the Howlies made something inside him twitch.
And Steve…
He knew Steve Rogers.
That was something he knew unquestionably. He didn’t know how or why, but he did know that he’d seen that man, talked to him, laughed with him, everything.
Yet he couldn’t remember anything about him or anyone else.
His brain hurt. He wasn’t supposed to know anything but his objectives, and now he knew the Howlies and Steve Rogers, and it was like trying to fit a peg into a square hole. It just didn’t fit.
“Okay,” John said. “You ready to start again?”
He didn’t answer. It wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter.
“Let’s take it slow this time, alright?” Lemar said.
John nodded. “Yeah, sorry about earlier. Wasn’t very cool of me.”
Who the hell were these guys.
He was the Winter Soldier. They didn’t owe him anything, certainly not an apology. If he were in their shoes, they would already be dead.
It wasn’t very cool of me.
They were insane.
“Okay, this is your sister, Rebecca,” John said, showing a picture. “I actually met her once. I was doing a presentation on you and Rogers, and asked if I could interview her for it. She was very kind. She said that you and Rogers were the worst troublemakers in all of Brooklyn.”
Rebecca.
That sounded familiar.
(Pattering footsteps. Someone pulling the edge of his coat. Wide blue eyes.)
He knew her.
“I don’t have any pictures of your parents, but these were their names: George Barnes and Winifred Barnes.”
Another flash. A smoke pipe. Fresh-baked pies. Calm. Happiness.
Wrong. It was wrong, he shouldn’t—how did he know them, why did he know them?
And John went on and on about things he shouldn’t know, but did.
He really should be trying to escape. He probably could’ve already. But—they were telling him that he was a person, not a weapon, and they weren’t lying. He had a family, apparently. Most of them were dead, and that would probably hurt when he remembered more. But some people were still alive. His sister was in her nineties, and his best friend was still around.
His head hurt furiously. It was hard to come up with a coherent thought through the pain—it was white hot, almost like someone was stabbing him with a white hot poker right through his eye.
But John didn’t stop, and he didn’t ask him to.
“Okay, I think that’s everything I know about you and Steve,” John said.
He didn’t know how long they’d gone over pictures, videos, the works. Every bit of information the two freaks who had kidnapped him knew.
“And that’s saying something—he was like mega obsessed with you two when we were kids,” Lemar butted in.
John spluttered. “Shut up! You were just as into it as I was.”
Lemar mouthed “not” to him behind John’s shoulder.
Did they not realize who he was? That he was a highly trained assassin who’d literally killed two people in front of them? If he really wanted to, he could escape and kill them both.
Yet here they were, helping him. Showing him kindness.
They were hopeless idiots. It was a miracle they weren’t dead.
“So…what do you remember?” John asked after a moment.
He was a killer.
He worked for Hydra.
He was the Winter Soldier, and they should be terrified.
But he was more than that, now.
“My name is Bucky Barnes…I’m not sure about the rest yet.”
Both Lemar and John grinned, and Bucky felt terrified for his future.
*
*
*
“Wait, so, Hydra is still a thing? Damn,” Lemar whistled.
After a few confirmations that Bucky wouldn’t kill them, he’d been released, and they were sitting around a fire while Bucky went over what he knew. He figured it was the least he could do after they snapped him out of the trance he’d been in for the last seventy years.
“Yep,” he said, taking a drink of the soda that John had rounded up from somewhere.
“And they’ve had you this entire time,” John shook his head. “And they’ve infiltrated S.H.E.I.L.D. Did any of your conspiracy buddies on Reddit see this coming, Lemar?”
Bucky didn’t know what the hell Reddit was, but he figured it wasn’t the time to ask.
“A few of them thought that the Winter Soldier was actually Captain America’s evil burnette twin, but other than that, nope. Nothing even close.”
John turned his gaze to the sky with a huff. “What are we going to do about this? S.H.I.E.L.D. has the Avengers under its thumb. They have nukes. We can’t just let Hydra keep going. They could end the world, and no one would be able to stop them.”
Lemar sighed deeply. “You know we aren’t supersoldiers, right? We aren’t gods, or genius billionaires, or highly trained assassins. We’re just guys.”
“I know,” John said simply.
“God, we’re doing this, aren’t we? We’re going AWOL and hunting down a remnant of the Nazi’s. We are so going to die,” Lemar said resignedly.
“No, you won’t,” Bucky said. “I won’t let you two idiots do this without me. Hydra and I have unfinished business, and I don’t think you’ll survive very long without me.”
“Are you sure?” John asked. “You don’t have to. You’ve already had seventy years taken from you. You can go find your sister and Steve. You can go live a life.”
It was irritating to meet someone who reminded him of a man he couldn’t even remember. Even more so when he was being so stupid. They couldn’t do this alone. Why the hell give him an out when he was offering his help?
Besides, he didn’t know how to live. He was barely human. He was a monster.
“No. I may be Bucky…but I’m not their Bucky. I never will be.”
John gave him an appraising look, and suddenly he wasn’t just a kid, he was a captain in the Army Rangers evaluating a fellow soldier. “I think that they’d take any version of you any day. I know I would in their shoes. But if you’re not ready for that, I understand. We’ve got your back. If you want to take Hydra down with us, welcome to the team.”
Bucky gave him a sharp nod. “Thanks.”
There was a pause, and the silence held so much, it was almost stifling.
“Wait. We’re a team? Like the Avengers?” Lemar butted in. “Do we get a cool name like that? WAIT—do we get code names? I already have one figured out.”
John chuckled, and Bucky’s lips gave the barest twitch.
“Dude, so not the moment,” John said, punching him in the shoulder. “But sure. Name us to your heart's content. But we get veto power if it’s stupid.”
Lemar grinned like a movie villain, and Bucky had a feeling that the future would be very tiring.