Work Text:
*
In the end, this is how it’s supposed to go:
There is a man in a ridiculous blue uniform they call Captain America and Alexander Pierce spits his name out in equal parts awe and loathing. He has a file fifty-seven pages thick and the Winter Soldier has memorized every word. By this time tomorrow, he will be dead, his blood another splatter on metal, never to be recalled.
You are shaping the future, the man in the three-piece suit whispers in his ear as he gently holds his head back and slides the rubber between his teeth. Underneath his mask, the Winter Soldier’s eyes are dead, dead, dead.
*
There is a train rushing through the ice and the metal beneath his fingers is fading away. Someone is shouting in the distance, he thinks, in a speck of blue and his hand, it is slipping, slipping, slipping.
*
The Winter Soldier does not know who Bucky is. The Winter Soldier does not dream.
He does not remember Bucky but sometimes, just before he goes under and his face contorts, he remembers the way the name had echoed through the snow, wonders what it’s like to live with a chest full of repressed anguish.
They tell him to grip the sides of his chair, they tell him that he can’t be made into something better if he slips.
He does not tell them that he already has.
*
He wakes up and his eyes are dead, dead, dead.
*
In the end, this is how it goes:
The Captain’s grip is iron against his own and it takes every bit of his strength to twist away. His mask slips, falls, and the world is suddenly a constant stream of sunlight and the stench of dried blood and fires that linger.
Captain America freezes in the middle of throwing his shield and he does not know why. When he speaks, his voice is trembling and he has to look away from the sincerity on the Captain’s crumpling face.
“Bucky?” exclaims the Captain and he thinks of trains and the cold, harsh wind against his face, the way that name, the name they could never wipe off his memory, falls from the Captain’s lips like it has always belonged there.
“Who the hell is Bucky?” he snaps and is, for a split second, terrified that the Captain will have an answer.
*
They put him to sleep and he closes his eyes willingly, lets himself shudder, tremble, be remade under the current. It is not the fall, never the fall he resists, merely the waking up.
He wakes up and his eyes are dead, dead, dead.
*
But I knew him.
His hand, it is slipping.
*
There are two kinds of people in the world, the Winter Soldier knows. People who will die by his hand and people who won’t.
Captain America does not belong in the second group, the Winter Soldier knows. He finds himself wanting to hope that he doesn’t belong in the first, either.
*
“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” Captain America tells him.
His fingers twitch. The train is approaching fast, too fast for him to jump out of the way. The train is rushing towards him and it will take them both down with it. His fingers clenched around the Captain’s throat, they both fall.
“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” Captain America repeats as they’re dropping through the air, as the floor of the Helicarrier closes in on them. For a wild moment, the Winter Soldier wonders what kind of a man James Buchanan Barnes must have been like, that Captain America fell in love with him and never stopped.
They hit the ground together, in sync, and the Captain never stops repeating the name.
*
He watches the Captain fall back on the ground and drop his shield. His eyes, alive and sad and more than a little defeated, stare back into his own, like he’s searching for something. For someone. He hopes, suddenly and with the pang of an unfamiliar ache in his chest, that there’s still something in there to find.
*
There are two kinds of people in the world, the Winter Soldier knows. People who will die by his hand and people who won’t.
Captain America will –
But I knew him.
Captain America will not –
A millimeter away from the Captain’s throat, his hand, trapped in metal, slips, slips, slips away.
*
He wakes up and his eyes are –
He wakes up and wonders if Captain America will wake with Bucky’s name on his lips.
*
The Smithsonian is filled with noises and gasps and laughter and he feels unmoored, lost without a kill order, a mission to complete.
There are pictures, albums, videos devoted to James Buchanan Barnes, Captain America’s best friend, the one he defied the Army to save, the only one who didn’t make it back.
Except, except.
In wide screens in front of him, people he doesn’t remember ever knowing talk about his unwavering loyalty to Captain America, his unflinching aim, his dedication to his country. Even in the grainy videos, James Buchanan Barnes looks at Captain America like he’s the center of his universe.
He has to turn away, look away from the youth shining through the face that looks like his own. He looks away and his eyes are dead, dead, dead.
*
His fifth visit to the Smithsonian is cut short by a man in an impeccable silver suit, leaning against the wall and looking at him with an amused quirk to his lips. He’s wearing tinted sunglasses even though it’s dark inside. When he smiles, his teeth are all edges, sharp and sparkling in the darkness.
Tony Stark tilts his head at him. “So,” he says, “do you come here often?”
*
There was a file with a kill order once: Stark, Howard A.W. and Stark, Maria. A footnote: must look like an accident.
A postscript still further down the page:
Survived by: Stark, Anthony E.
Motion to neutralize: pending further evaluation.
The Winter Soldier only forgets what can be remade.
*
The Internet, if he looks, will tell him that Howard Stark was a pioneer, an inventor, a founding member of what would eventually become S.H.I.E.L.D. It will tell him that he never once stopped looking for Captain America. It will tell him that his sole surviving son only turned up an hour into his funeral, as high as a kite with nictoine stained lips.
It will not tell him what he already knows: that Howard Stark was just a man, and he bled the way all men must when the Winter Soldier strikes, with lips parted in surprise and a flash of regret in his eyes.
“Come on,” Tony Stark tells him. “We’re going to take a little trip.” And then he leans forward and claps him on the shoulder, like he expects death, even death, to stand down for him.
For this alone, the Winter Soldier follows.
*
Manhattan is a cornucopia of sounds, intermingling flashes of happiness and fear and tragedy. Manhattan is bright lights and an exuberance he wants to flinch away from. His eyes zoom in on a minimum of one hundred and fifty-five potential threats every ten minutes. It is a comfort, however small, to know that they won’t be dying by his hands, not today. His fingers twitch by his side.
He turns instead and looks at the man next to him, so terribly sure of himself, so incredibly lost, and wonders why everyone looks so sad in this future he’s worked so hard to shape. His dead eyes burn in the sun.
*
“Bucky,” Captain America says in a hushed whisper as soon as they enter a building that threatens to blind him with its resplendence. He knows immediately that there are thirty three guns trained on him at the very moment, but he likes this place nonetheless, standing unabashed with its beauty of steel.
“I am not,” he means to shout but his voice is hoarse with a lack of use. A name that was once his own is on his lips, almost threatening to unmake him. Not quite, but close enough.
*
He falls into a routine that does not have kill orders and blood splatters and includes a lot of exploring (read: getting lost) in Stark Tower.
“No, really, it’s more like the Avengers mansion,” Tony Stark tells him and pauses to scrunch his nose up. “Or at this point, it’s more like that huge-ass building everyone and their goat has decided is the perfect place to schedule undercover ops from. And yeah, yeah, I know I’m not supposed to be telling you company secrets but hey, it’s my company and let’s be honest, if you wanted to kill me, you would’ve done it already,” and then he leans forward to clap him again on the shoulder. “Am I right or am I right?”
The Winter Soldier is not sure how he feels about this man with Stark, Anthony E scrawled over his file and a building that pierces the sky, but he thinks that it’s the kind of person James Buchanan Barnes would’ve gotten along with, the kind of person he would’ve seen himself reflected in.
*
He fights alongside a group of people who call themselves the Avengers. Apparently, he’s only as likely to defect and go on a mass murdering spree as the rest of them. It is surprisingly gratifying.
Captain America tells him that they’re the good guys, that they’re fighting for what’s right, fighting to give this world it's freedom back. He does not believe him but he remembers what the Captain had looked like seconds away from death, and follows that memory into battle. He does not ask about the one who had taken the freedom away in the first place, even as the answer pulses through his veins.
The wrong side, he finds out, bleeds just as same as the right. When the fights are over, however, no one forces him under or slides rubber between his teeth or attempts to mold him into something better, something new, and it is, very slowly, very nearly, enough.
*
He wakes up and his eyes, well.
Turns out, New York is full of sights.
*
“I fell.”
It is not what he means to say. He is sitting on a wooden table in Tony Stark’s lab, watching him create an outline of his new arm out of thin air. On his lips is every single word he’s read on Stark, Anthony E., although he finds himself adding new details like the way he likes his coffee, or the way everyone takes turns to make sure Stark is periodically extracted from his lab to prevent him from spontaneously combusting.
What he says instead is, “I fell.”
Something softens in Stark’s eyes for a second, although the expression is gone so fast he can’t be sure it was ever there. When he speaks, Stark’s words are soft, laced with resignation.
“We all did, pal,” he says and repeats it, perhaps to himself. “We all did.”
*
Catching up with the future, he discovers very quickly, is a losing battle. The future changes every day, Captain America – call me, Steve, Bucky, please – tells him, and not always for the better.
He tries to focus on smaller things instead, like figuring out how to work Stark’s unnecessarily complicated coffee machine or looking through an ever-growing list of movies he had missed. Sometimes he looks up, from reading an article on Wikipedia, from watching a video on YouTube, from thumbing through a book, and finds Capt-- Steve unabashedly staring at him, the expression on his face terribly fond.
His fingers, they twitch by his side. He cannot, in the end, find it in himself to despise the Captain for loving a man he will never be.
Maybe, he thinks, this is progress.
*
It is also surprisingly nice, he admits to himself, only in the privacy of his floor, to have someone look at him like he can be more than a weapon. To have someone believe in him in ways that does not involve a kill order.
It is surprisingly nice, he acknowledges, but he’s only just figuring out what nice is. He thinks it is something he would like to be, someday.
He is still, you see, slipping, slipping, slipping through the cracks.
*
But I knew him.
The Winter Soldier does not remember, but he’s starting to consider the possibility that he never really forgot. Not completely. There’s no other way to explain why he remembers the Captain’s choice in movies, or the way they used to share blankets in the cold, in another lifetime.
But I knew him.
He wakes up to Steve shuffling his feet at his doorway with a cup of coffee in his hand.
His hand, it is slipping, but only barely.
*
The Winter Soldier does not know Bucky but he is beginning to respond to the name, nonetheless. “What else are we supposed to call you,” says the man with an actual bow he isn’t fully sure is real. “It’s not like we can call you Mister Soldier, first name Winter. That’s ridiculous,” he scoffs and he cannot help but smile.
He, too, the Winter Soldier thinks, is the kind of person James Buchanan Barnes would’ve liked.
*
“He loves you,” the man with the bow tells him as he bandages his shoulder because, yes, apparently the bow and arrow is a deadly weapon and must not be contested.
The Winter Soldier frowns. “I am not,” he starts, and does not quite know how to continue.
“You’re not yourself, yeah, yeah, I know,” the man – Clint – interrupts. He tries to smile but for the most part, he looks very tired and a lot older and something tightens in his chest. “It’s like a fucking fashion trend at this point.”
He looks away, wonders if this is the kind of world he was supposed to be shaping all along. if this is what it’s like to win, he thinks he would like to try his hand at losing instead.
“My point is,” Clint continues, “we’ve all been there, you know. You’re still finding out who you are but that doesn’t mean that he hasn’t known you all this while. That doesn’t mean that he hasn’t loved you all this time.” A pause and then, “I don’t know why, what with you being a colossal ass and everything, but he does.”
He shoves him not too gently, but he believes it still falls under the category of being nice.
*
They’re fighting weaponized robots that look like lizards and breathe fire when he finds himself surrounded by them on all sides. He is fast, but they’re faster and more mechanical, controlled than he could ever hope to be – and isn’t that ironic – and he only manages to take down two of them before the third rips his uniform open with a slash of its tail.
“Barnes, to your left,” Iron Man shouts in his ear only a second later through the putrid stench of his flesh burning, but before he can act, he sees Captain America’s shield zooming in his direction before the robot disintegrates with a crash.
He falls back down on the ground and tries to locate the source of the flesh burning below his chest.
“Bucky,” Steve is next to him in a second, “are you okay? Bucky?”
He looks up and sees Steve looming over him, eyes wide and hopelessly concerned and terrified all at once. He grunts, clamping down on the burn on his stomach as Hawkeye announces in his ear that the last of the robots have been neutralized.
“Bucky?” Steve’s voice is desperate and incoherent and it sounds like it’s coming from further away and maybe he’s passing out but that’s okay. He is okay. They are okay. In this moment, he will let himself believe it.
His hand, it is firmly in place, warm against Steve’s. “Damn it, Steve,” he grunts, and the name falls from his lips as naturally as breathing. “I had him--”
“On the ropes, yeah, I know, Bucky, I know,” Steve finishes for him and his voice is shaking, and his eyes are brimming with unshed tears and his smile is the most beautiful work of transformation the Winter Soldier has ever seen.
His eyes, reflected in a blur in Steve’s own, are unflinchingly, against all odds, alive.
*