Chapter Text
Steve sighed as he sat down on one of the luxurious couches in the wakandan palace. It had taken so much sacrifice and effort, but Bucky’s mind was finally cleared of all Hydra programming. Better yet, Shuri had told him that as a side effect to the reversals she had done on Bucky’s mind, Steve still didn’t understand any of that sciency stuff, all of his memories were restored.
That news was music to Steve’s ears. He was finally going to get his old friend back, a relic of the past just like him, a link to the days that he thought he was never going to see or hear of again.
Steve’s internal monologue was interrupted by Bucky walking into the room, beside him Shuri. He looked a little more at peace with himself than when Steve had last seen him. There was no fear of being forced to become a weapon against his will.
Steve walked over to the pair, “Hey Buck, princess,” Shuri nodded and then left the room, probably eager to get back to her labs.
Bucky sat down then, without a moment's hesitation, deadpanned, “I remember everything Steve.”
“Yes I know!” Steve replied rather enthusiastically, “Do you remember Brooklyn? Going to Coney Island? Exploring the Wharf-”
Then Steve saw the pain in Bucky’s eyes and immediately felt ashamed for not thinking of the implications of him retrieving all of his memories. Of course Bucky remembered all of the good times, but he was also tortured for 70 years. For every fond memory Bucky had of his childhood there was one of him killing an innocent person to replace it.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said.
“It’s fine, there’s just a lot to tell you and I don’t know if you’ll be ready for it, or if I’m ready to tell everything.”
“Whatever you want to tell, is fine by me Bucky, but remember, all of those things you did, that wasn’t you, that was Hydra.”
Bucky smiled, “You still have the best Captain America pep talks, don’t you?”
“Well, I’m not exactly Captain America anymore,” Steve laughed with no humour.
“I’m sorry about that,” Bucky sighs, “You do so much Steve and I don’t know if I deserve it.”
“Of course you deserve it, and don’t worry, everything will be sorted out.”
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Bucky and Steve had spent the last day catching up in Wakanda. Bucky showed Steve where he worked on the goat farm while Steve told Bucky what happened to the rest of the rogue avengers.
“Now, pretty much everybody except Sam, you, and I, are out on their own,” Steve started, “Wanda-”
“The witch lady?”
“Yeah that’s her, she’s backpacking around Europe. Last I checked she was living with Vision.”
Bucky looked at him inquizevivtely.
“Oh, Vision’s on Stark’s team the weird laser guy.”
“Aren’t they on two separate teams?”
“Well,” Steve sighs, “It’s complicated, we aren’t fighting Stark and his team anymore, but we’re also not really on speaking terms with him either.”
Bucky looks down to the ground, “After what happened in Siberia.”
“Yes, it’s not your fault, I knew and I should’ve told him.”
Bucky sat down on the wooden bench he had built with help from the young wakandan kids who had often visited him, and started talking in his old Brooklyn accent, “It’s not your fault either punk, it was just a bad situation. What’s going on with the rest of the team?”
“Okay, well, Clint-”
Bucky nodded.
“He turned himself in and is now on house arrest with his family, same thing for Scott, the growing and shrinking man.”
Steve continued, “Natasha-”
“The Black Widow,” Bucky said with remembrance and awe. Steve decided to store that bit of information in his mind for later.
“Yes, I don’t know what she’s doing, she sort of just gave me a burner phone and fell off the map. Sam and I have been living in an apartment in Brooklyn-”
“Sam?” Bucky said with slight disdain, “the wing guy, who got his ass beat by that spider-punk.”
Steve laughed, “From what he told me it sounded like the spider guy beat your ass and he saved the day.”
Bucky just shook his head.
“Don’t worry about Sam though,” Steve added, “He likes to poke fun sometimes but he will always have your back. We’re living in Brooklyn right now, in an apartment.
We have to keep our presence hidden, but I’m sure you’ll be able to do that.”
Bucky nodded again, like he always did when he didn’t want to talk about something. Yes, he could disguise himself, that’s how he assassinated JFK, or killed the innocent royal family of Morocco, or almost saved his son from becoming a lab experiment…
“Bucky, Bucky,” Steve put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder, “Are you okay?”
Steve’s voice led Bucky to get out of his stupor, “Oh yeah,” Bucky said, patting Steve on the shoulder, “I’m fine, just thinking, why don’t we head back to the palace now.” He had already done so much for him, Bucky didn’t want to put all of his emotional baggage on Steve.
He stood up and started walking towards the wakandan city, hidden from view. Steve followed Bucky, “Okay, that’s good, I was just going to ask if you wanted to stay with Sam and I in Brooklyn?”
Bucky stopped.
“We have room for you, Sam works at the VA, I sell my art and sometimes uncover a hydra base with Nat, it would be just like old times.”
He pondered the suggestion. Bucky wasn’t really sure what he wanted to do with his life. Well, he knew that there was one loose end he had to tie up, but other than the fact that he might have a son somewhere, out there, Bucky didn’t know what he wanted to do.
For the longest time he had been a slave to Hydra, now Bucky was on his own and he didn’t know how to be free. The one time he had been at peace was in Bucharest, working odd jobs, living poorly, but independent from people and memories. Maybe he could have the same situation in Brooklyn?
“I would like that punk,” Bucky said with a genuine smile, “But don’t count on me staying.”
Steve frowned, but quickly hid it, “Well you know you are always welcome at the apartment.”
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The next afternoon, the two friends found themselves hauling their bags through a narrow apartment doorway in Brooklyn after being dropped off by a Wakandan jet.
The apartment was on a tree lined street that, unlike the rest of New York, actually smelled like flowers. The brick town-houses were all squished together, but Bucky could tell from the designer handbags the women wore and the uniformed kids walking home, that an apartment in this neighborhood probably cost a fortune.
“So,” Steve began, “This is the place.” He gestured with his hand towards the open concept living room, dining room and kitchen, complete with modern furnishing.
“How did you afford this place?” Bucky asked, sweeping his good hand across the marble countertops.
“Well,” Steve replied with a smile, “When I came back from the ice, the military gave me my acquired pension of, well,” Steve thought for a moment, “a lot of money,” he chuckled, “Nat helped me move it all to a Swiss bank that can’t be traced back to me.
This house is a little too modern for my taste, but the rent came with the furnishing so I’m not complaining.”
“A lot has changed from the 40’s,” Bucky deadpanned.
Steve gestured Bucky to follow him to the hallway as he said, “Yeah, there’s this new thing gentrifry or something, made our old apartment completely unrecognizable.”
They arrived at a room with blue walls and a queen sized bed, “This is your room,” Steve said, “Sam’s coming in 30 minutes so I’ll start making dinner and you can get settled in.”
Bucky sat down on his bed. It was comfy, but just like he had done for the past 70 years, Bucky was probably going to sleep on the floor.
He pondered what his plan should be. Before Bucky could buy his own place and become independent, he needed to find out what happened to his son. The memory of almost being free of Hydra’s grasp still haunted Bucky.
The Soldier jerked the house’s window open and clambered into the bedroom. He had already memorized Jennifer Rees’s schedule, she should be at work right now, and her adobe style house had a wall around it, blocking the view of the window from the neighbors, so the soldier would not be noticed for quite some time.
He moved into a hidden spot of the closet. Jennifer usually only wore casual clothes, stored in her dresser, so the soldier should be safe. His mission objective, kidnap Jennifer, take her to base. It didn’t matter what happened to her after that.
He waited until nightfall, after the girl had come home and was fast asleep, chloroformed her and stored her in the trunk. The suburban California street was empty and the soldier had already hacked into the security cams, so he wasn’t worried about the local police department identifying him.
It was going to be a long drive to the base in Florida. The soldier drove through the night, stopping at an isolated gas station in the middle of the desert to satisfy his heightened metabolism.
He bought some snacks and water for Jennifer, feeling guilty about what he had done. The soldier pushed those thoughts down, they had nothing to do with the mission parameters.
After a day, the soldier opened the truck door, only to find a raging dame, no female. “Where the fuck am I,” she said, “What the fuck have you done?”
He untied her bonds, threw water and food in the trunk, and quickly closed it before Jennifer could get out. They spent 2 days driving through the desert like this. The soldier travelled at a slower pace to ease suspicion, for he suspected that Jennifer’s disappearance was all over the news.
On day three, as the soldier was closing the trunk, Jennifer’s finger became wedged between the lid. He quickly opened the lid, the mission objective was for her to arrive at the base unscathed.
Jennifer took this opportunity to run away from her capturer. Luckily, for the soldier, there were no cars or buildings for miles in the endless desert. He quickly caught up to the girl and took her back to the beat up ford, where the soldier dressed her finger and shoved Jennifer back into the trunk.
Along the way, she pleaded with Bucky, “Please stop, I’m innocent, I did nothing wrong, whatever you want from me I don’t have.”
The soldier ignored her pleas and just kept on dressing her finger. As he dragged her back to the trunk, Jennifer saw Bucky’s face, “Wait stop!” she cried, “You’re Bucky Barnes. You’re friends with Captain America and Steve Rogers! I read about you in comics, why are-”
Her shouts were muffled by the trunk of the car. Having super hearing, the soldier could have heard her, but instead blocked the cries out, they would distract him from the mission.
Throughout driving he couldn’t get the name Steve Roger’s out of his head. Steve, Stevie, images of a skinny kid in Brooklyn popped into his head. Where had he seen this person? According to his file memory, the soldier had never had a mission in Brooklyn.
As the evening turned into night, more visions swam through his mind. Captain America, red, white and blue shield, Coney island, Stevie, Rebecca, Ma. The soldier couldn’t repress these distracting thoughts anymore.
As he lay down to sleep he had a dream. Steve was there, smaller and skinnier than he remembered in his last memory from WW2. The soldier, no Bucky as Jennifer had called him, had fought in the war. Bucky drawled in a thick Brooklyn accent, “I’m with you till the end of the line pal.”
Bucky woke up with a gasp. He remembered the train, Steve trying to save him, Arnim Zola replacing his arm…Everything.
He went to the trunk and opened it. Jennifer came running out, ready to fight, but he stopped her, “What the fuck let me go.”
She attempted to bite him but Bucky held her still, “I’m not who you think I am,” he explained, “There are people right now out to get you in order to keep your father in check.”
“That’s a lie,” she wrathed, “My dad left my mom and I when I was 2.”
“He has been keeping tabs on you since then,” Bucky had remembered overhearing this before his memory was wiped, “They made me kidnap you and wanted me to take you to a facility in Florida.”
“Who the hell are they?!”
“Hydra.”
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Bucky explained everything to Jennifer. Not before removing the tracker from his metal arm and removing security footage from the gas station they were parked at with technology Bucky hadn’t even dreamed of in the 40’s, but somehow, was a second nature for him to use .
As they drove through Texas, Bucky told Jennifer how he grew up in Brooklyn, went to war with the Howling commandos, fell off of a train, was captured by Hydra, and didn’t remember anything that happened between then and a week ago.
Jennifer just nodded numbly as they drove. Looking out the window while trying to process everything she just heard. Should she believe it? Her mind at first said no, but when she saw the confusion and pain in Bucky’s eyes, she couldn’t help but believe his tale.
Finally, she said, “What do we do now?”
They drove through Texas and onto Mexico, ditching the car in the desert and walking across the border. James had some American money that Hydra gave him from the mission, so they discreetly changed it to Pesos and started wandering through Mexico.
Jennifer and Bucky went from town to town staging as an American couple backpacking around Mexico and Central America. Bucky made sure they stayed in the most isolated towns while Jennifer dyed their hair and changed their eye color with color contacts.
It wasn’t perfect, but they managed. Bucky learned, with great surprise, that the year was 2000 and taught Jennifer how to shoot, in case of an emergency.
That emergency came soon enough. Bucky and Jennifer were so careful not to slip up, but it wasn’t enough. Hydra found them, Bucky was shot and they narrowly made their way onto a freight ship headed for China.
The attack in Mexico cemented Jennifer’s belief in Bucky’s story and made Bucky all the more careful. They dressed up as Chinese fishermen, complete with traditional garb and pointed straw fishing hats to hide their faces, and travelled south to the jungles of Vietnam.
Bucky was starting to remember the many missions he had to serve for Hydra during the Vietnamese war. Most importantly, he remembered parts of the Jungle that were so isolated, he and Jennifer could spend the rest of their lives there without seeing a single person.
They lived off the land, in the jungle, for a happy year. It was hard for Jennifer to adjust to the bugs, sweat, and hard work, but she didn’t complain, because the alternative was much worse.
Bucky and Jennifer fell in love. Bucky truly believed that he was finally free from Hydra, so when Jennifer announced that she was pregnant, he was filled with joy. They formed a nice, simple life in the jungle that started to crack when the baby was born.
When Bucky’s ma gave birth to his little sister Rebecca, she almost died because the water stopped working in their old Brooklyn apartment. He didn’t want the same thing to happen to Jennifer, so Bucky took her into the nearest town with a doctor a week before the baby was due.
It was risky, yes, but the alternative was much worse. Bucky didn’t want to lose another person he cared about. A week after Jennifer gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Matthew, named after Jennifer’s brother, they moved back to their shack in the jungle. That was Jennifer and Bucky’s first mistake.
The next details of the memory Bucky was putting through his mind, were extremely painful for him to recount.
Somehow, Hydra found them. This time though, Jennifer and Bucky had a baby to protect. Bucky told Jennifer to leave with Matthew while he distracted the guards. The last memory he had of his son was of him strapped to his mom’s back while his unruly curls bounced against his face.
Bucky was strong, but not strong enough to take on over 100 Hydra goons. They took him back to the base and wiped his memory. Bucky never saw his son or Jennifer again.
Bucky groaned in frustration as he tried to recount the last 15 years of working under Hydra. He tried to find any bits of conversation he overheard or any files he read that even remotely mentioned Matthew and Jennifer, but he came up with nothing.
“Dinner’s ready,” Steve called. Bucky chuckled at the thought of Steve acting like a 50’s housewife, the image fit Steve’s mother henning side of his personality perfectly.
Bucky walked to the dining room table, finding spaghetti and Sam at the table. He put his annoyed thoughts about Sam to the back of his mind. Sam was Steve’s friend and Steve had alre
ady done so much for him.
“So,” Sam asked, as if Bucky was a teenager, “Finally decided to join us?”
Bucky decided to play the teenager part, so he just rolled his eyes and sat down on the other end of the table. Steve came in with a salad bowl, causing the three of them to start eating, rather awkwardly.
“So,” Steve said, trying to start a conversation, “Bucky now has all of his memories back.” He gave Sam a look.
“As if he cares,” Bucky muttered.
“I’ll start caring when you stop trying to kill us,” Sam retorted.
Seeing a fight coming between his two best friends, Steve decided to deescalate it, a skill that, judging on past history, he wasn’t very good at. “Oh come on Sam, Buck’s not trying to kill anyone.”
“The last time we thought that he tried to kill everyone.”
“That’s because Zemo messed with his brain, now all the Hydra programming is out of him, nobody can do that again, so will you please let us have a peaceful dinner.”
Sam seemed to deflate from his anger, but his face still had an expression saying, ‘yeah right.’ He folded his arms and started eating some garlic bread.
“And Bucky,” Steve began, because in all fairness, he had started the fight, no tiff, “Sam does care and please don’t start fights at the dinner table.”
“What are you? Our mom now?” Bucky asked, thoroughly unimpressed. He still sat down though, and tried to be peaceful.
Steve just sighed as the three of them started awkwardly eating dinner again. After about 5 minutes, he decided that tensions were down to low enough level to allow another conversation.
“So,” Steve began, “How was your nephew’s birthday today Sam?”
Sam smiled, “It was great. Isaiah just turned 15 and the entire family was there, they are all team Captain America you know.”
Now it was Steve’s turn to smile, he was lucky to have such a great friend as Sam. One who followed him through thick and thin. He was glad that Sam’s family didn’t treat him like a war criminal like the government did.
Bucky said nothing during this exchange, just overheard them while shoving spaghetti down his throat. Damn, Steve was a much better cook than he had expected.
“Would you like to see some pictures of the party?” Sam asked, bringing out his phone. Even though Bucky had been thoroughly trained, every time he had been out of cryo during his Hydra years, in future technology, it never ceased to amaze him.
Sam showed Steve the pictures. Steve smiled as he swiped through them, making some comments such as, “Wow, he looks just like your dad.”
When they were done, Sam grudgingly showed the pictures to Bucky when Steve gave him a pointed look. Bucky swiped through them. Sam’s family looked like a nice, all around, American family, he could have had that if only he hadn’t fallen off the train all those years ago.
Bucky shoved those thoughts out of his head. He couldn’t change the past, so regrets would get him nowhere. He started to look at the pictures again. One showed Sam’s mom putting candles in a cake, another showed his uncle talking with Sam and some other guys, the last one showed…
Bucky stopped at the last picture of Isaiah’s birthday, it was of Isaiah playing football with his friends, his floppy black hair getting in his eyes. Matthew would be 15 years, 3 months, and 5 days old right now. He still remembered August 10th, 2001, the happiest day of Bucky’s life, the day his son was born.
Now, Bucky didn’t know if Matthew was even still alive, and if he was, he was either stuck in some Hydra cell that Steve and his team hadn’t gotten to yet, or, an extremely unlikely possibility, was safe and sound. Either way, Bucky missed the first 15 years of his life and had failed him as a parent.
He had also failed Jennifer, the one person besides Steve who had ripped the programming out of his mind. The person who had a great life, that Bucky took away from her, but still decided to help him anyways. She was very likely dead.
Hydra would’ve kept Matthew, in order to experiment on him, for some form of the super soldier serum ran through his veins, just because Bucky was his dad, but they had no use for Jennifer. He had heard, back when he and Jennifer were backpacking through Mexico, that Jennifer’s father, an important political figure, had already been killed in a cliche car accident.
A single tear dropped out of Bucky’s eye.
“Buck! You okay?” Steve asked in a worried tone
“Uhh, you’ve been staring at the one picture for about 15 minutes, man,” Sam said in an annoyed tone, then added in a worried tone, “Are you okay?”
Their voices allowed Bucky to wade out of his stupor. He blinked, then handed Same his phone and said, “I’m fine.”
“Are you sure,” Steve asked, “Because that’s the second time this day that you’ve had one of those..”
“Flash backs,” Sam interjected for Steve, “The people I used to work with back in the VA had them all the time. You know, it would help to talk about it.”
Bucky thought about telling them. His first instinct was to just say it was nothing and continue burying his memories, but the more reasonable part of him, made a better argument. He remembered when Steve’s mom died and Steve wanted to handle his grief alone, Bucky obviously would not let that happen.
Maybe he wouldn’t have to handle his grief about Jennifer alone either. Maybe Steve and even Same, though he was still annoying, could even help him find out what happened to Matthew. Bucky didn’t want to put all that on them, but they were obviously curious and eager to help.
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll tell you everything.”
“It all started with a girl named Jennifer Rees.”