Chapter Text
There are two of them, as long as Bucky remembers. He and the stronger one, the colder one, the vicious one. The Winter Soldier.
Bucky remembers endless pain, and then fading into the darkness. Next thing he knows there is something - someone - between him and pain. Bucky feels nothing but cold, and the other one is shielding him from the serum burning in his veins, the electricity scorching his brain, scalpels slicing his skin.
Bucky weeps, relieved, in the silence of his mind, grateful for that unexpected reprieve. He doesn’t know how much time passes before he collects himself enough to start questioning the other’s presence. Maybe days. Maybe months. He is afraid that if he will the pain will return. He knows it is here, he sees machines hooked up to his body, needles injecting something into his veins, hears crack of the electricity in his ears. He doesn’t feel it, but he knows that it can return in full force at any moment. He doesn’t want it. He is weak. He is a coward. He doesn’t want more pain.
Bucky tries to distant himself more. The lab fades, noises disappear, and there is nothing but darkness and cold and him. He is happy that way.
They ‘properly’ meet when they are out of the lab. The other one calls himself The Winter Soldier, and everyone else calls him The Winter Soldier. It is weird, Bucky remember being called ‘Sergeant Barnes’ by the same people.
‘They think you don’t exist anymore. They think they erased you,’ tells him The Soldier.
‘You… you saved me.’
‘I don’t like giving them satisfaction. I will kill them all one day. Until then I will defy them in everything I can.’
The Soldier, Bucky learns, is arrogant. He thinks himself superior to everyone else. Stronger, smarter, better. Bucky tends to agree. He can’t understand how The Soldier went through everything that was done to them in the lab. When Hydra trains him, Bucky hides as far away as he can in their mind, he doesn’t want to even see, let alone feel it.
The training is awful. First of all they train him to withstand any pain. Bucky thought the lab was bad, but in the lab they were just changing his body and mind, they were not trying to cause pain deliberately. Now they are putting him through any pain and torture they can imagine to make sure he will not break.
The Soldier does not break.
Bucky hides, horrified, and prays to The Soldier that he will continue to protect him, that Bucky wouldn’t have to even see what’s being done to them.
The Soldier takes any pain without flinching. He fights, he obeys, and he lies. Hydra leaves them without food, without clothes, without sleep. The Soldier is made to fight dozens of goons without being given a weapon, and afterwards they don’t treat his wounds for weeks. Bucky retreats, he can’t even see that, his heart bleeds for the other one. He can’t see how The Soldier fights till he drops, how he crawls when he can’t stand, how he takes punishment again and again and again.
Bucky hasn’t felt his body for years, and he is happy for that - he is sure the pain doesn’t go away even for a second.
Finally, the training stops. He is foolishly grateful until the missions start.
‘Maybe we can run,’ begs Bucky. ‘Get away from them, while they are not looking. You are trained to be perfect. You can do that.’
‘There are trackers in our arm. There are trackers injected in our body. Until we know where they are it is pointless to run. Suck it up and let me deal with it.’
Bucky weeps for most of their victims. There are some of them who are terrible people and deserve it, but most of them do not. And the collateral damage! The Soldier tries to make sure there are no witnesses around when he makes his kills, but sometimes orders are too strict, and handlers are too close. And then there is Howard Stark.
‘We can disobey,’ offers The Soldier at Bucky’s inner turmoil.
But The Soldier has a plan, and that plan includes Hydra believing that he is perfectly under their control, and Bucky is so very tired. Yes, he knew Howard, but what makes Stark different from everyone else they alwardy killed?
‘Do it,’ he says, and The Soldier moves forward.
Bucky is weak, he doesn’t want to see that. He retreats.
Time in cryo is Bucky’s favorite. There is no pain, there are no missions. They sleep, together, in their mind, and The Soldier doesn’t have to suffer for a while.
Bucky knows that The Soldier is indifferent to cryo, but he absolutely hates The Chair. It leaves his thoughts muddled, his will weakened. Handlers tell him to do something and he does it without questioning, before he even realises he does it. The Soldier, who takes so much pride in his willpower, finds The Chair humiliating. The Soldier is filled with rage afterwards when his mind clears. But The Soldier has an absolute control on himself when his mind is not wiped. He pretends to be obedient, he lies with every breath, and he waits for the perfect moment to strike.
He waits for years. For decades. Bucky lost hope long ago and accepted his fate, but The Soldier just calls Bucky weak and goes on, always watching, always waiting. Bucky is sure that even a hundred of years can’t break his resolve. Bucky doesn’t pray to God. He prays to the Soldier. It actually works.
They wake up, they kill, and they go to frozen slumber again. The world changes around them, and sometimes they change the world. Never for the better.
Bucky mostly sleeps. Even when they are awake he doesn’t want to deal with anything. He is too weak. Too afraid. Too tired. The Soldier mercifully lets him, until one day Bucky is nudged awake from his dreams of simpler times.
The Soldier is reading the dossier and he is… excited.
‘Look’, he urges Bucky. ‘Look!’
It’s about some engineering genius, named… Tony Stark.
‘He can take apart our arm. He can find trackers inside us!’
‘He is Howard’s son. We killed his parents.’
The Soldier pauses.
‘We will find a way to earn his forgiveness. He is our way to freedom. To revenge.’
Bucky doubts it, but he doesn’t say anything. Hope flickers inside of him for the first time in so long.
More dossiers. Black Widow that The Soldier recognize. Captain America that Bucky recognize.
‘It is Steve, it looks like it is really Steve!’
‘He might help us,’ agrees The Soldier.
‘He will definitely help us!’
‘Don’t get ahead of yourself. We need to test it first.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then he’ll be our way to Tony Stark.’
‘Steve…’
‘Is not enough,’ The Soldier interrupts him. ‘Your Steve will not be able to help us with trackers or conditioning. He can be the first step, though.’
Bucky cringes, but agrees. Though he doubts that anyone could help them with the conditioning - sequence of words burned in their brain that has the same effect as The Chair - it makes them pliant, obedient. Makes The Soldier lose control over his actions. Bucky never tried to fight it, but he is sure that he’ll surrender even faster.
They go after Nicholas Fury and The Soldier lets him slip away. The man can become a useful ally later.
They fight Steve, and Bucky is overjoyed - it is really Steve. Rogers recognizes them, no, him. The Soldier is satisfied - Captain is definitely looking like someone willing to help.
They don’t go with him right away though.
‘It is not time. Have patience,’ The Soldier tells him.
Bucky shuts up, because, unlike him, The Soldier knows what he is doing.
They are wiped again, and for the first time ever Bucky fights through the fog along with The Soldier. They manage to get control before delivering the killing blow.
They stand near the hole in the helicarrier and watch Steve fall.
‘Now what?’ he nervously asks the other.
The Soldier smiles.
‘Now we defect.’