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I am a question to the world,
Not an answer to be heard
Or a moment that's held in your arms
And what do you think you'd ever say?
I won't listen anyway…
You don't know me,
And I’ll never be what you want me to be.
The Winter Soldier has an excellent memory.
He knows everything that has ever happened to him, and he can usually accurately recount places, too. HYDRA thinks they'd wiped him successfully after every mission, but they hadn't.
Not that he was ever about to tell them. He remembers the torture, too, and he's loyal because he doesn't really have another option, but if keeping a secret will benefit him, then he'll keep that secret. He's not an idiot.
The outside world has nothing for him, and it never will have. He lives for the kill, for the pain and the fear in the target's eyes, for the blood. That is his life, and maybe it's just an implanted concept by the technicians, but it's all he knows what to do with. All he's ever known.
And then a man with a shield the colors of the American flag comes in and brings his whole world shattering down.
He's not Bucky. He's not.
Because anything else would imply that his whole life - what life he has, anyway - is a lie. Would imply that his first memories were hollow and naught but ash.
But he knows it's true, because the name Steve Rogers comes to his lips as easily as if he was born with it on his lips, and he remembers everything but most of all the love and he knows even with his assassin's mind that you can't just imagine something that strong.
He knows it's real, because when Steve falls he's flinging himself right after him.
But he also knows that he's not Bucky. He has Bucky's memories, Bucky's thoughts, but he's not Bucky. Bucky died on a table somewhere deep in Zola's domain, and his last words were his screams of agony as the Winter Soldier was forged out of the burning pain that killed Bucky Barnes.
He's the Winter Soldier, and his life is death. He is not the man who went to war with Steve. He's not even the man that howled expletives at the men who eventually destroyed him.
He's an assassin. He is death.
Nothing more, nothing less.
The Winter Soldier is a murderer. Bucky never was.
Bucky would pray for the souls of those killed on the battlefield. The Soldier could listen to their death screams on endless loop for hours and never be bored. The Soldier lives for pain. Bucky lived to stop it.
They could never be compatible. One or the other.
And Bucky is dead.
Bucky loved Steve. The Soldier does, too, but how much of that is HYDRA making him susceptible to suggestion and then Bucky's memories providing the stimulus?
The Winter Soldier isn't supposed to love anyone. But then, the Winter Soldier isn't supposed to do a lot of things. Looking out for his own interests as distinct from the mission or HYDRA is high on that list, and that's something he's been doing since the start. (He doesn't say "his birth" because he was more forged than born.)
He's also given people advance warning. Not enough to save the principle targets, but enough to minimize the collateral. None of his handlers ever noticed that when he was supposed to fire on the crowds he always shot those who had committed severe crimes in the past and managed to escape their punishment. Not one of them made the connection, since as long as he wasn't trying to contact anyone no one ever monitored what he looked up. That's exactly how he likes it.
SHIELD is dead. He thinks the Avengers are operating out of Stark Industries now. He hears that Maria Hill was hired on at Stark Industries.
Then he makes the connection.
Stark has money, resources, and he remembers from a briefing that he's somehow developed a sentient AI. An AI which has global operating capabilities.
A perfect situation in which to create a new SHIELD. And since Tony Stark is very, very careful about his employees after what the Soldier affectionately calls the Obadiah Catastrophe, it's also a perfect solution to rectify the HYDRA problem.
And the Soldier knows almost every secret of HYDRA's that wasn't released in the SHIELD infodump. He's a perfect source for information, and the new operation will need someone very secret to take care of everyone that needs taking care of.
He knows most people won't think that Tony Stark has the character to accept that in his organization, but the AI alone speaks volumes. Tony Stark has 24/7 global surveillance, and almost no one knows about it. Stark is not the man he presents to the public. He's as pragmatic as Fury, and much less likely to be so duplicitous. Stark's paranoia doesn't run rampant like Fury's: his is directed and controlled.
In other words, weaponized. And Hill is very similar.
The Soldier can empathize.
They're surprised, at first, when he offers his help. They make sure to look at his offer from every angle they can think of, trying to find the layers. They're naturally suspicious.
But once he's made it clear that he's independent of HYDRA, it takes less than thirty seconds for them to accept.
And that part of it makes perfect sense. After all, if an independent with the Soldier's training and record came up to him and offered his services as the dark side of their fledgling new secret organization, he'd be saying yes before they'd have finished offering.
It doesn't take long for him to become the assassin again.
He's top secret, of course. But not Fury-top secret, with just enough red herrings and hints in the system to scream his existence like an alarm when they're all put together. He's Stark-top secret, where Hill and Stark make the decisions and all the records are only in JARVIS' system and JARVIS is the one with final authority of divulging the secrets, and JARVIS is just as good as him at figuring out if someone's lying. Stark looks like he'd be the kind to plaster hints all over the walls, but once again that's merely an example of someone creating a false identity for the sole purpose of misdirection.
(He likes Stark. He truly does. They have so much in common, they two, the scheming and the watching and the deception.)
He's got final say in whether or not to take the mission, but he doesn't think he'll ever use it, because Hill and Stark are brilliant and everything is triple-checked before they call him in, and every single person he's killed under their orders has been utterly deserving of it.
He's not Bucky, and he never will be. But maybe, just maybe, he's becoming someone Bucky could look at with something other than revulsion in his eyes.