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“Grab my hand!” The desperation on his face, in his eyes, is the last thing you see, and in the end it’s not so bad, because if you have to die at least you died fighting for him, and at least you died looking at him, and at least his eyes are the last thing you’ll see before you go, and—
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There is so much cold and so much pain and then, miraculously, there just isn’t. You aren’t sure if the things in your head are really happening or not. You see a gloved hand reaching for yours, stretching, and it’s a hand you know, and it belongs to someone you love. You stretch out to meet it and just as you’re about to close your hand around it your fist closes, empty, around a tunnel of cold hard air, and—
You’ve got a few seconds before it’s over and if you can’t indulge yourself in the last few seconds of your life, well, when can you? So you close your eyes, and you fall. Try to think about what the warm press of his lips would taste like against yours after eating a penny candy from the old corner shop where you used to spend your work money to see him smile. You try to think about what it would feel like.
And right before you die, you smile.
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There is a noise that makes you nauseous coming from somewhere, maybe above you, maybe beside you on your left, maybe completely inside your head. You dream of someone taking away parts of you, taking a piece of you away and not bringing it back, and it’s one of those dreams that feels so real, and maybe it is, and you know you're in hell. You were destined for hell your whole life, so you're not particularly surprised, but you wonder if it'll be like this the whole time—
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You try to shift in your sleep and suddenly find hard arms putting tight straps around your chest while you scream and scream and scream his name. A pain like pure fire shoots up your shoulder, and you see a face that might be familiar, but if it is, it’s not in a good way. And the face draws closer and closer and you are trying to recoil away from it, but those straps are holding you down too tight and there are memories here that you sent away to die a long time ago. Memories of this same face leaning over you, and you know what he’s going to say before he says it, because he said it then too—
“The procedure has already started.”
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There’s something hard in your mouth and you bite down on it, hard, and scream.
And scream.
And scream.
You’ve been screaming so long that you can’t even really hear it anymore; it’s just become the soundtrack to your dreams and your nightmares. Because when they do this to you, it’s kind of like dreaming—you see things, memories and images and whispers, and the nightmare comes when suddenly you can’t place them anymore—they scramble and get lost, and you scream, and it’s a routine. A beautiful memory of skinny boy with red in his cheeks the color of fresh apples is wrenched from your hands and you cry out, you plead, but it doesn’t stop, it never stops, and the cycle repeats. And so it goes.
You reach for a new memory to comfort yourself, find one of your arm slung around bony shoulders and a blossoming warmth in your chest, and you clutch it tight and beg them not to take it away, but they do. And the cycle repeats. And so it goes, up until the moment you reach for a new one and don’t find anything there.
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“The procedure is becoming increasingly successful involving The Asset, we think with just a few more weeks—,”
“Successful? Increasingly successful? This is a fucking joke—if the procedure was successful, why does he—why does it—still fail every reactionary exam, still display visible signs of—of affection at images and recordings of Rogers? Why does—,”
“Yes, Sir, I understand that there have been some unforeseen—complications—but The Asset is now unable to tell us his former serial number, even his former name—,”
“But I’d be willing to bet he could tell you Rogers’ name! And serial number! Every single God damn time! Explain that to me, Zola. Explain to me how that is a demonstration of the project’s success.”
“Sir, please, we will up the voltage, we will recalibrate The Asset…just give me a few more weeks…”
“You have a month. If he’s not ready by then, we’re going to have a problem.”
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“How was it?”
“S’okay. She’s next to Dad.”
You sigh, try to stop staring at the back of his straw-colored head. He needs you tonight, or maybe you’re just saying that because you need him more, you’ve always needed him more than he’s needed you. He’s smaller and weaker and he gets pneumonia at least twice a year and you need him more.
“I was gonna ask…” You start. You’re nervous.
“I know what you’re gonna say, Buck, I just—,”
“We can put the couch cushions on the floor like when we were kids.” It all starts spilling out in a rush, so you pause, try to pace yourself, try not to reveal too much. You try again. “It’ll be fun, all you gotta do is shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash.” You lean down, pick up the apartment spare key, buying time before you have to look him the eye. You don’t want him to look at you and see the truth of why you want this so bad, why you need this. You hand it to him. His fingers brush yours, and he looks up at you. “C’mon.”
He looks back down at his hands, takes a breath. Seems like he’s trying to gather himself, figure out a way to say no. His eyes meet yours again, and God fucking smite you down, are they pretty, bluest of blues.
“Thank you, Buck. But I can get by on my own.”
It comes out before you even have a chance to filter yourself.
“Thing is, you don’t have to.” Your voice got way too soft at the end. You're makin' it sound like you’re in love. So you put a hand on his shoulder, look him the eye, and tell him. Consequences be damned. After all, you've always been a rebel.
“I’m with ya till’ the end of the line, pal.”
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“What’s your name?”
It’s so cold. It’s so cold. You’re dripping wet and it’s so cold and where are you and why can’t you remember anything from—
“What’s. Your. Name?”
There’s tall man in front of you with an accent and he looks like the kind of man you give an answer to the first time around. What’s your name. It’s so cold.
“It’s. I.”
“Do you know your name?” He cocks his head at you, waiting for an answer again. He has light hair and a clipboard. You realize for the first time that you’re naked.
“I. My name…I don’t. My name.” You don’t know your name. You know a name though, but you also know it’s not yours. Someone else’s name. Someone good. Wish he was here. It’s so cold.
“Good. Do you know any names? Tell me any name you know.”
You smile at the thought of him, even if he seems like more of a concept now than an actual person. You know a name. The name of pure sunlight, a bright and burning effigy in your mind… “Steve…Rogers.” You say it slowly, letting it sit in your mouth a little, make sure it’s real. It’s real. And you know it’s real for sure because after you say it they hit you and hit you and put you in that chair again and.
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You do stay with him the night after his mother’s funeral. He lets you in and as soon as you’re both through that doorway, and his barriers come down, all the way down.
For once he stops feeling like he has to do everything alone, and clings tight to your chest instead, fists small hands in your shirt and cries into you.
You tell him you love him. He says it back. He doesn’t know what you mean.
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“You have a new assignment. I want confirmed death in 24 hours. This is a level 2. You should be able to handle it.” The light-haired man is older now and you know that the others—your handlers—they call him ‘Pierce.’
It’s really cold again. Lately you’ve noticed some kind of correlation between losing time and then being real cold when you wake up.
“I, I’m, uh, I’m confused. Where…am I? What…mission am I on?” Do you not know what year it is? You feel like you might not know what year it is. “What, uh. What year is it?” You see him purse his lips, displeased with your response. You feel shame. You’re not saying the right thing. You try again.
“Where. Uh. Who is going with me? Will Steve be going with me?”
That’s not what he wanted to hear.
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Things get colder, you remember less and less at a time. When you wake up, you recognize some of the people around you, but they always look as if they’ve aged…
Time moves slow, and then slower, until eventually you lose it altogether. You don’t want to give him up, you don’t want to give him up, you don’t want to give.
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There’s this one memory left where you are laying on a table, just like this one, and you are thinking of him, just as you are now. People have…hurt you. Done things to you…you can’t tell him what things…and he’ll definitely come here to get you, to save you, and he’s small but you know he can do it, you just need—
And he does come. He’s different and bigger, so much bigger…but he comes.
So where is he now?
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You remember, you couldn’t stand the way people looked at him after he rescued you, after he “joined the army,” as he so poetically put it. And you hated yourself even more for being jealous. And fuck, were you jealous—not of Steve, no—of everyone else. Everyone who stared, everyone who pointed, everyone who talked to him, touched him, like he was just some, some public spectacle, some example of how the government and army can make a person great. And you just wanted to shake them, grab them and scream that he was already great, he was already perfect, and no one wanted him but you did, you loved him first, and.
You caught her looking at him like that, but…different, somehow. She looked at him and wanted him, but you found out that she’d looked at him like that before the serum.
She looked at him like you.
The only difference was, he looked back the same way.
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You come to gasping for air and before you can do anything they force you into the chair and look at you. The light-haired man…Pierce….is there, again, visibly older than the last time you saw him, standing behind the rest of the men and looking…apprehensive?
“Who is this man?”
They hold up a picture only inches from your face, and it’s a picture of…him, it’s a picture of…
“That’s, that’s Steve. Steve Rog—,”
Pierce slams a fist against a metal table and you flinch back, and he’s got a look in his eye like that answer’s gonna cost you a lot of pain and you just want this all to stop, you just want to see him again, and—
“Who are you? What’s your name?”
The room returns unnaturally quickly to silence, everyone’s eyes return to yours, and you think about the question and you realize.
“I don’t know.”
Your name, you don’t know your own name, how could you not know your own name? You feel panic blossom in your stomach, your hands begin to twitch.
“I don’t know I…I don’t know my name…,”
They start strapping you down to the chair, you know what’s coming.
“I don’t know my…I don’t know my name, no, please, I don’t, I,” You hear yourself starting to whimper down deep in your throat and shame burns on your face, hot tears spill from your eyes, and they force your head back and before you can stop yourself you’re screaming, thrashing—you hear them calling in reinforcements but you can’t stop—you scream and you scream, and his name wrenches itself from your mouth, “I don’t know my name, I don’t know my name, please, no, no, I can’t, Steve! Steve! Please, Steve, they’re going to! Steve—!”
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The first time you don’t remember his name, it sends you into a tailspin of panic. Never mind when you couldn’t remember your own damn name; not knowing his is worse, a thousand times worse. They start strapping you down, you hear them talking about how you’re “unstable,” and it’s nothing new, but this time you can’t remember his name, and you love him more than yourself and the whole fucking world and you can’t remember his name and it’s the worst you ever felt, your whole life, all of it, it’s the worst you’ve ever felt, when you realize that they will take him from you, and that they will win.
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“You need to get this straightened out. I can’t have some souped-up assassin who’s—who’s—,”
“We’ll take care of it, we’ll try our highest voltage, sir…it just seems that for some reason his mind has built some kind of cognitive barrier, allowing him to forget things about himself but, uh, as it seems…not about Rogers…”
“Fix it. Immediately. We can’t have him going rogue, it would expose this entire operation. The next time I come in, he better not know Rogers’ name or I’ll have him kill you all, incompetent, lazy…”
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Weeks pass.
They hold up a picture of him.
“Who is this man?”
You look at the picture as hard as you can. You know him, you feel it somewhere in your chest and stomach, but not in your head. He’s beautiful. But.
“I. I don’t know. Should—should I know?”
They don’t answer your questions. They never do, really. They just ask questions and take notes. Wrong answers equal…
“Do you know this man at all? Would you say you recognize him?”
That’s a different question. Don’t answer wrong, don’t answer wrong. You answer in a whisper—maybe you think if you say it quietly, subdued, they will not hurt you.
“Yes.”
It doesn’t work.
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MISSION REPORT - #32557038 “The Asset” – December 21st, 1988 – 0400 HOURS
#32557038 was due in from mission at 1600 hours on December 20th, 1988. After ten minutes tardiness Strike Team 1 was dispatched to analyze the mission and retrieve ‘The Asset.’ Strike Team 1 returned at 2100 hours with no intel on the failure of ‘The Asset’ to return to Mission Control or its current whereabouts. Special exec. Alexander Pierce was brought in to consult on the issue and after several hours had an idea of a possible location that proved correct. #32557038 was located at 0200 hours in an old condemned tenant apartment building dating from 1902 in Brooklyn, New York, approximately 32 miles from mission location. Reasons for mission failure are currently being investigated and will be reported on further.
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You seek him in your sleep. You don’t even know who he is, not really, but you seek him out with a desperate fervor.
You never find him.
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Eventually your mind starts to feel clean. Not the kind of clean where you’re pleasantly soft and refreshed, but the kind where you feel rubbed raw, scratched beyond all recognition. They send you out on missions and you complete them. You follow orders. You kill a couple driving on the highway. You kill a man in his late 40s while his daughters scream, and you kill them too, because they told you that collateral damage is just part of the job. And what else is there, really? You don’t think you’ve ever known anything else. You’ve never known anything but killing.
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He offers you milk, then shoots his housecleaner. Oh, Renata. I wish you would’ve knocked…
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Sometimes, secretly, you find that you still seek him in your sleep. But you don’t know him anymore, you don’t know if you ever did, and when you finally do find him, you kill him. Killing is all you know anymore. Your mind is full of metal now, and you can't remember a time where it was full of anything else.
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Somewhere in a wet, muddy field in Austria there’s a steel flask buried in the dirt. There’s no alcohol in it. There’s a note that’s still intact, crumpled and smushed inside, written with black ink in a virtually illegible scrawl over the cheap paper. It’s not a long note.
Steve-
You piece of shit, Steven Rogers. I can’t believe I’m gonna die here having never told you. Can’t fuckin live with it. I don’t know why I’m like this, and I know I probably deserve to be shot a hundred times over right in the gut and die in a trench for my sins but damn it, someone’s gotta know the truth, even if it’s just this dirt in the ground, so here’s the God’s honest whole of it: Loved you since I was eight goddamned years old, Steve, and ain’t never loved no one else, and hated myself ever since. Maybe if I bury this secret here, I can be buried with it, and when God kicks me outta the pearly gates, I can live below this piece of dirt forever, with the truth branded on me, b
The note ends there. There’s no signature.
And no memory.
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He’s the hardest target you could ever have imagined trying to take out. And it’s not helping that he’s got you on your toes, wired up, because there’s something—there’s something about him that’s antagonizing your mind, ruining your strategy. You’re coming at him with everything, and you know everything to be lethal, but he’s throwing it right back at you with unnatural speed, strength—and then he catches you off-guard—grabs you by the face, puts his weight first into you and then down, and flips you, and you feel it slide clean off your face. You roll to a stop and stand. You turn and look him full in the face and he looks like he’s seen a ghost.
“Bucky?”