Chapter Text
When they were awoken from cryo, they met the scientist. To their surprise, their savior turned out to be the king's younger sister, Shuri. She had mapped their brain, invoking the words and following the neural pathways each word had blazed through their mind. All of this while they were in cryo, each word neutralized before they were brought out of cryo. It was a relief, honestly, to wake up and find that they were no longer a weapon. Steve and Natasha had delivered everything they could find on the Winter Soldier, every paper file possible, from every base they had ever been kept in, and Shuri had gone through everything, using any words or phrases. Even the kill switches had been neutralized.
"Your life is now your own, Sergeant Barnes," Shuri told him.
The Asset tilted his head back and looked at her. She returned his gaze.
"We're not...a single person," the Asset said quietly.
Shuri cocked her head, "Captain Rogers…?"
"No," the Asset told her, "not what I meant. I mean, we have, we are, multiple people in the same brain."
"Dissociative Identity Disorder? Tell me what you can," Shuri said.
"There are four of us. We are aware of each other, but we can't control the mind together, each personality must cede control to the next," the Asset explained.
Shuri nodded, "Do you have names for each other?"
"Yes. I am the Asset. There is also the Soldier. James is our newest personality, while the oldest is Bucky."
Shuri was using her bracelet to make notes, speaking while her fingers flew over a light projection of a computer interface, "Can you move easily between each other?"
"Yes," the Asset told her.
Shuri looked up briefly, "If I asked you to rotate between each other and speak with me briefly, would that be a problem?"
The Asset closed their eyes momentarily. When he opened them, he said, "No. We can do that for you."
Shuri nodded and began waving her arms around purposefully. A box of light splayed itself on the floor around their feet.
"All right, let's begin," Shuri said, "Please tell me which personality you are, and a brief synopsis of your function with this body."
The Asset nodded, "I am the Asset. I am the strategist of the group. I am also the most capable spy, and I am the one with the best facility for languages."
"How many languages do you speak?" Shuri asked, her eyes on the data. The light box was scanning the body, and a different map, one of the brain, was where Shuri was focused.
"I am fluent in 17 languages, and am able to function well enough in 23 others," the Asset told her.
"Impressive," Shuri murmured, "what else do you do?"
"I am the one that remembers most of the Hydra information, such as bank accounts, locations of bases, personnel, and how to infiltrate to achieve the objective."
Shuri nodded, "Good. Thank you. Can you ask the next personality to come up?"
The Asset bowed slightly and closed his eyes. When they opened again, the difference in body language and how they held themselves was obvious.
"Who are you"? Shuri asked.
"I'm James. I'm new. The others think I came about because of Steve Rogers and the whole Hydra mess. I'm learning, and like food."
"What's your favorite food, James?" Shuri asked.
"Wow, that's a tough question. I like a lot of fruits, some vegetables, but my favorite dish is stews, because it's all kinds of flavors mixed together and each one tastes different," James said, his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.
"What kind of meat do you like in your stews?" Shuri wanted to know.
"Don't tell the others, because honestly, the Soldier doesn't care and the Asset will tell you he doesn't care when he really does, and Bucky doesn't like it for no reason I can figure out, but fish. I like fish stews best."
"Why doesn't Bucky like it?"
James frowned, "I think because he associates fish with being poor. He likes beef the best, because it's a treat to him. The Asset likes venison best, because he likes the strong taste. But I like fish, because you can add more spices if the flavor of the fish is strong, or you can be a lot easier if the flavor is mild. Plus, fish cooks faster, so I'm more sure of getting food before we have to run away again." He nodded, emphasizing his point.
Shuri nodded, too, and said, "We have excellent fish dishes here in Wakanda. I hope you will be able to try them. It was nice to meet you, James. Could you send up the next person, please?"
"Of course!" James told her, and closed his eyes.
The body language shifted again, and Shuri was almost positive that the next one was the Soldier. Sure enough, when he opened his eyes, they darted about the lab, identifying the exits and anything that could be a weapon. Then he turned his attention to her.
"I am the Soldier."
"I am Shuri. Please tell me your functions within this group," Shuri said, starting the brain scans for the third time. She looked up when the Soldier did not reply.
He was eyeing the lights scanning him with wariness. Shuri turned it off with a pinch of her fingers. The scans would continue to run, but without the lights that told the Soldier what was happening. She also turned her screens opaque.
"I am scanning your brain and mapping who is using which portions of the brain. This is a preliminary scan of the language centers and identity nodes. To fully map who controls what, I will have to ask you, each of you, to do physical activities associated with your specialties, but this is the first step of the process."
"My cohort has told me this. How do we know we can trust you?"
Shuri thought about the question, giving it the consideration it deserved. She answered his unspoken question, saying, "You don't, really, but my brother and I have put the resources of our country to work to help you, all of you. We have shared the secrets of our nation with you, simply by having you here. We are trusting you. Can you do the same?"
The Soldier pulled out the journal and wrote in it, then his body language shifted and another personality wrote in the journal before the Soldier came back. He read the journal and said, "The Asset believes the trust should be mutual. I can see his point."
"Excellent. Then, please, tell me your function."
The Soldier nodded and said, "I am the Soldier. I am the weapon.”
Shuri waited a beat and asked, "Anything else?"
The Soldier shrugged and replied, "No."
"Please?" Shuri said.
"I can kill you with your coffee mug and no left arm. Any further questions?"
"No, thank you, you given me enough," Shuri told him, "I appreciate it. Would you please send up the last personality?"
"If I can. He doesn't want to come out," the Soldier told her. He closed his eyes, and stood for over a minute before the eyes opened again. The person looking at her was the most distrustful of the lot.
"Hello, I am Shuri. I am mapping your personality with brain scans. With whom am I speaking?"
The voice that came out was raspy, as if the speaker were unused to their voice. "I'm Bucky Barnes. The others told me what you were doing."
"Hello, Bucky. What is your role?" Shuri asked.
"I'm the original person. I'm the one that went to war, and lived through Zola's torture, and I was a Howling Commando with my friend Steve. When I fell off the Nazi train, I...I couldn't take the pain, and Tiny helped me."
"Who is Tiny?" Shuri wanted to know.
"He calls himself the Asset now," Bucky told her, "and he helped me in Azzano. He's the one that got us through the fall and our capture by the Russians. They later transferred us over to the Germans, but the Russians kept physical custody of us until the breakup of the Soviet Union."
"That's good background information, thank you, but please, tell me more about you," Shuri said.
Bucky shrugged, "I can dance, but I don't know any of the modern stuff. I know how to talk to people better than the other three, although Tiny is really good at faking it. I'm the cook of the bunch. If we had to rely on everyone else, we'd starve. I'm the one that knows how to work the labor jobs we were using to generate money, because I worked on the docks during the thirties to help keep Steve alive. I'm the basis of the Soldier's skills, because I was the Howlies' sniper. I also helped with the strategies, because if we'd let Steve plan everything, it would have been frontal assaults all the time just because he could take the hits and keep going. The rest of us couldn't, so I helped come up with plans that used everyone’s strengths to get the best outcome."
"Thank you, Sergeant Barnes. I appreciate your cooperation," Shuri said.
Bucky shrugged again and stuffed his hand in his pocket, cocking a hip and grinning at her, "No big deal, miss."
Shuri looked at him reprovingly. "I am not one of your women to be charmed, Sergeant."
Bucky jerked upright, pulling his hand out of his pocket and nodding, "No, miss, you're not. My apologies. Do you need anything more, miss?"
"No, I do not," Shuri said. When she looked up again, the Asset was there.
"If you do not need us any longer, James would like to browse through your market," he told her.
"Yes, that's good, go," Shuri said, immersed in her scans.
The next day, Shuri set up the training room with ways to test each personality's physical abilities. For the Soldier, she set up a barre and music and had him dance ballet. For the Asset, she set up an obstacle course of people and told him to pick three pockets without being caught. For Bucky, she played dance music from the thirties and forties, and brought in a group of dancers for him to work with. Finally, for James, she took a tablet and went with him to the marketplace near her labs.
Finally, a few days later, she went to the village where Bucky had chosen to live and sat down with him.
"Tell me, Bucky, what is the ultimate goal here?" Shuri asked him.
"What do you mean?" Bucky asked, his eyes on the shifting light reflecting off the lake.
"Do you want me to integrate your personalities into one? None of you will be dominant, if I do. Or do you want to keep each personality, and if so, do you want me strengthen or weaken any of them?"
Bucky held up his hand. "Please, may we have a few moments to consult with each other?"
"Of course," Shuri replied.
Bucky rose and went to his hut, returning with a journal and a pencil. He laid the journal across his lap and wrote something, then visibly relaxed. In this manner, they cycled through, writing notes to each other. Shuri waited patiently. Finally, the pencil was laid down and the journal closed.
"I am the Asset," he began, "and after a lot of consultation, we have chosen to keep ourselves. We are actually quite good at working with each other, and we do not feel that you could create a single personality from us. We are too different for that to be easy, and our strengths have kept us alive. Bucky will become the primary personality, unless there is situation where the others are needed. We ask," here he stopped, and when he resumed, it was Bucky, "we would like, if possible, for James to have the ability to grow. He's young, and he might go away or he might continue to grow, and none of us feel that we can make that decision for him."
Shuri nodded, "I would guess that you also want time and space to train as the Soldier and the Asset?"
"Yes," Bucky said, "but I want to be able to be myself, too."
Shuri reached over and touched his hand, "Bucky. That has been the goal all along, to give you the time and the space to be yourself."
Bucky turned his hand over and pressed hers before detaching and tucking his hand under the journal.
"Yeah, but you weren't expecting me to be four selves."
Shuri laughed, "Ah, but that makes it a challenge, and I like challenges!"
Bucky smiled shyly, "Thank you, Princess."
Shuri stood and said, "Pft, if I call you Bucky, you call me Shuri. None of these titles! Let's get started, Bucky. I have to build an arm for you, help strengthen the Bucky paths in your brain, and get a new Black Panther outfit for my brother. I am busy!"
Bucky laughed, feeling the shackles of his past finally slip away. He was fractured, but his pieces fit with each other to make a whole person, someone who could function in society and not be a danger to himself or others.
He could hardly wait to tell Steve.