Chapter Text
Barnes opened his eyes.
Looked at the time: 6:20 am. Silent. Silent and dark and empty. Empty room — nothing but him.
Steve was to come at 7 am. Morning meal — 7:30 am. Then training up to the 12pm afternoon meal, an hour for reading, 2 hours for gathering intel (people. Social interactions). An hour for training in facial expressions. Half an hour to get to the lake he was allowed to walk around, the quiet place outside that wasn’t forbidden, peace and quiet and calmness and only him, words not needed. An hour for walking around the lake, an hour to get back to the compound (walking back on foot). An hour for interacting with Steve (Steve’s choice for an activity, varied). 7 pm: evening meal. 7:30 pm: an activity with the group. 9 pm: starting turning off for the night.
Schedule was important. Schedule was vital. Schedule was a structure around which he could be built, around which he could live, with which he could function. Barnes needed to follow it. It was logical and restrictive and allowed him to have boundaries he could fall to.
But the time was 6:21 am, which meant 39 minutes not foreseen by the schedule.
Barnes stared up at the ceiling.
He laid silently, silent and immovable, on his back. Straight, arms parallel. He was as geometrically perfect as could be for a human body (an almost human body?). The body ached. (Ached and ached and ached.) The body was a landscape of pain on a good day, but it ached differently sometimes, in a way that had nothing to do with chronic pain or the feeling of an electrical current inside the muscles. It ached for something as if it was endowed with feelings and wishes, as if it could long for anything. It was mostly — besides the arm — a human body, as Barnes knew — was it natural for it to feel? Was it normal for it to long? He didn’t know. (He didn’t know to ask that, even.) He didn’t know what it ached for, either — pain was his baseline. The ability to distinguish one pain from another wasn’t useful to him. (Wasn’t said to be useful, wasn’t useful for them, masters past, masters left, masters wrong.)
He didn’t know.
Steve asked Barnes about his feelings once, but that had got him nothing but a confused look, confused and unknowing in the face of a question that didn’t make sense. Steve stopped asking after that, which showed adaptability of his, and he asked instead of Barnes’ needs, of Barnes’ thoughts, of Barnes’ body, of all the parts of Barnes’ that could be brought to light and shown and studied. A human body had human feelings. (Barnes didn’t know if that was true; it sounded true enough. It was a part of a “you are human” argument Steve liked to make. But Steve made many stupid things sound logical, always did. That was a memory constant.)
Barnes’ mission was to define the feelings. To learn and to find out the reasons, the root of the aches, so he’ll have an answer, so he could give an answer, so he wouldn’t have to be silent and empty and a shell and a memory every time Steve asked. Every time when Steve would frown and be sad. Hence, the mission.
Would now be a good time for that? 6:30 am–7:00 am, figuring out his body.
Changing the schedule was— It was as—
Barnes hadn’t gotten that kind of access, he couldn’t, he wasn’t supposed to, but he couldn’t ask for a change, either, for asking for a change was not in the schedule. (The schedule was vital, important, the structure.)
The body he inhabited just ached. Ached and ached and ached. He closed his eyes. This time was for sleeping. The schedule could be changed later. By him? Not by him. He needed to act on his mission. He was malfunctioning. Steve said malfunctioning was good (when did he say that? When? When?). The body ached. The time was 6:29 am.
The time was— what was the time?
Thinking required powers Barnes did not have, his brain — human brain, roasted brain, serumed brain, memory played with different voices — his brain could not. Not now.
He tried to sleep (11 pm–7 am: sleeping).
(There was a time he had a nightmare, a nightmare horrible and real, and tried to hurt himself and Steve was there, but then he wasn’t, or was it a different night or day or time or year. When? When? When? Or was it there?)
Barnes slept.
The meals’ purpose was to keep the body alive and functional. For humans also — to keep it healthy, to keep it painless and happy and making hormones that made the person in it happy.
The way humans made the meals was different. Not efficient. It was sometimes aesthetically pleasing; it was sometimes not nutritional at all. It differed. Sometimes they had a meal alone, sometimes together. There were fewer rules. There were no guidelines.
Barnes was at his corner, his favorite corner of the kitchen, the common kitchen, the kitchen on the common floor, a place he wouldn’t be bothered. A place from which he looked at them and watched them and cataloged them. Rules and recommendations and patterns.
Widow saw him watching and came closer. She showed her moves and kept a distance, for she was a guard, a watcher. She was competent, and she was easy to understand (she made it easier to understand).
“It’s a social ritual,” she said. “Cooking for everyone, eating together. Cooking is a way to show affiliation. The tradition of eating together is a way to be together and talk.”
That was understandable.
“Query,” Barnes said. “Reasoning for eating inefficient food.”
She changed her face to show emotion. Emotions comprehension was still hard.
“People are just strange sometimes.”
That was unsatisfactory. That was wrong; and yet that was right. That was truthful. That wasn’t possible to comprehend, to compute, to use and to imitate.
Widow moved to the oven, started the motions, slow and deliberate. Showing him. Another ritual to learn. Another facet he could have, another face, another role to play. He watched.
But then there was a sound behind him, a sound sharp and loud and unexpected, a sound behind his back, and so Barnes moved. He turned around, silent, always silent and fast, so fast, hand reaching for a weapon.
Stopped.
They were laughing.
Kitchen: inside the compound, safe space, people are not hostile. Three individuals. Laughing. Laughter: not hostile. A show of joy and humor, accepted in most of the human cultures.
Conclusion: not an appropriate response.
Steve — one of the three sitting at the table — looked up, a frown between his eyebrows. Memory: same frown, different times. Concern, worry, determination.
“You okay there, Buck?” Voice serious.
Barnes nodded. The frown did not disappear.
“We’re fine,” Widow drawled, calm as always. Closer, watching him, guarding him, always on point, always vigilant.
Safe, safe, safe.
Barnes turned back to her, looked at her movements, and resumed.
Safe and inside the acceptable parameters. Alive and showing the signs of contentment. Widow: teaching him a common ritual. Steve: frown gone, relaxing into his chair. Wilson behind him: in conversation with Barton.
Barnes’ body changed, less tense, less on edge. He watched the Widow, wrapping it up already. Tension leaving his body, frozen and hard, turning into normal, turning into almost relaxed.
The door opened then, showing Stark inside, interrupting the easy conversation behind Barnes with greetings and good mornings and insults used by Barton as greetings. Barnes moved back to his corner, trying not to be in the way, not to disturb, not to look (and yet looking).
Stark’s voice sounded loud, louder than the others. He was closer, much closer, and Barnes’ body felt his presence the way it felt danger, the way it felt longing. There was something wrong; there was something right.
Stark turned to his coffee machine, eyes grazing Barnes, but not looking, and he was so—
Different, there was something different.
It was like that before. (When? When?) Was it?
Barnes’ body wanted to be closer, but it was not accepted, it was forbidden, it was wrong, wrong, wrong, something was wrong — with what? With whom? — something malfunctioned.
(Malfunctions were good, for malfunctions gave him this, made him run and run and run and remember.)
There was an intel he was missing, an information forgotten. He didn’t know where to look for it. So he looked at Stark then, because surely he knew, for he was a genius, he'd seen the patterns (only Barnes couldn’t, he wasn’t allowed to, he was forbidden by the handler too).
Who was the handler? He knew that, too. Did he? (When and who, who and when and why and what, all the questions swarming in his head, never answered, never stopping and never silent.)
Widow touched his arm — the feel of her touch so faint and so weak — bringing his attention to their conversation. Barnes looked back at her work, done and ready. Pasta for everyone. He hardly felt anything, his body unresponsive, unfeeling. Sound muffled. So’s the smell. Touch far away and not real.
Nothing.
Barnes looked in a mirror.
The mirror showed a man. A human. He’s seen this human in various forms, many and different. He’s seen Steve’s Bucky, both in photos and memory. He’s seen the Soldier.
Barnes moved his head, mirror’s human moving with him, and felt the need to attack, to growl and to snarl at it. It teased him, it taunted him, it showed him a human, and the human looked back. The human felt real, the human felt living. Barnes watched him more, silencing yells from inside — he was not to, he wasn’t allowed to, he was forbidden to hurt — yells from his ambush, sitting behind glass. The human showed teeth. His eyes were dead, and his eyes were murder. Barnes watched him and watched him and watched, and the more he did, the less the creature behind the glass looked like a human, looked like a person it was pretending to be, eyes going bigger, eyes changing to stone, teeth clattering.
Was it to attack? Was it to turn bloody and uncontrollable? Bursting from glass, claws out and ready?
Was it to kill? An animal hidden by glass and by words. If ever free, will it kill?
(Yes, yes, yes. It did kill, it kills, it will kill. It snarls from containment. It’s angry. It’s empty. It’s death and death and death in a seemingly human body.)
Barnes looked, losing time. He forgot the reason he looked. He wasn’t told what to do. Glass was shining and silver. He looked. He was in an ambush. He was not given orders. He looked. The handler wasn’t around him, around it, the handler was supposed to give it orders, but there was no handler, no orders, only the creature behind the glass, so it waited and waited and waited.
The Asset was ready.
It was cold, it was cold, and it ached. It laid on the floor, not being able to see, but it felt the hardness, the cold from beneath, not ground-like, but floor, and voices. Incomprehensible, but closer and closer. That frightened it, because loud meant danger, and it hurt, and it was cold, and it couldn’t fight. Couldn’t see, couldn’t move, could just lay on the floor. Voices moved, getting closer.
It whined.
“Fucking hell, how long was he — no, no, get out, don’t, you’re making him worse, he’s catatonic already, what in the fucking’s—” Voice was soft, words unclear, but not the tone. Voice was familiar, not so much, but better than others. It didn’t understand the words from the voice, but the voice was soft. It moved closer to the voice.
“Umph. You’re heavy,” the voice muttered. Then, a little louder, “Hey there, Call of the Wild, hey, hey, easy. It’s okay, it’s okay, we’re not going to hurt you, it’s okay.” Softer, even softer, then different, muffled a bit. “Get out of here, I got him. Yes, yes, get out, and get me some fucking shrinks on line, Fri, best of the best and now. How fucking long was he—”
It whined, losing the physical touch of the thing that was the voice, missing it, longing for it. It nuzzled, trying to get closer, pressing into a hard strange texture.
“Here, here, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it’s okay. You’re going to be okay,” the voice came back, and with him appeared a pleasant heaviness on its head.
This heaviness was solid and warm and on it, and it wanted more, it wanted the heaviness to last longer. It made a sound and leaned forward, leaned into. Heaviness moved, cautiously, but didn’t go, did not disappear, no, instead it moved in its hair, petting and stroking, dividing to fingers, a hardness which felt nice, felt good and grounding and happy and calm. It sighed, tense no more, leaning towards every move, every touch, aching for it, aching for closeness.
It sobbed then. From relief and from being held, it sobbed, sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, barely moving, barely making a sound but small, hard breaths, trying not to let the sobs out but failing, and the sobbing led to heaviness disappearing momentarily, leaving it frantic, distressed and cold (so cold).
“Fuck, what am I supposed to — what do you — please don’t — please be okay, fuck—” the voice whispered.
It leaned close to the voice, aching for heaviness, for touch, so alive, so real, so solid.
“Oh, okay, yes, probably touch-starved. Sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll keep it. I’ll hold you. You’ll be okay, I promise, I can fix it, I can fix it.”
It sighed. The heaviness, part of it, grazed his forehead, a texture strange for a — he knew it was a — feeling calloused. It felt good. He felt good.
He sighed and leaned closer.
Barnes was in the kitchen, in the corner, watching. There were three at the table, talking and laughing and not doing anything at all constructive, anything useful. But they were like that: not constructive. Confusing. Complicated. Barnes watched them, watched from his corner, cataloging their faces, the way they changed, the way they looked, the way they showed the inner layers. Steve was easier and harder than others. Easier, for he came with memories, with points to compare to, easier to comprehend, but harder, for memories were incomplete, memories were just parts of a puzzle, memories were wrong sometimes, sometimes no more than a thought, a fantasy. (When was it? When? When? Chanting never stopping, never leaving him alone, never in silence. Questions unanswered, always there, always.)
Widow stood aside, watching along with him, watching him at the same time, watching and guarding. He confused the names with her, for she had too many. She was called the Widow, formal stranger, and she was called Nat, a friend and a teammate, she was called Romanova, a spy and a liar and a rebel (waiting for her execution, perhaps, when decided on a name like that? To be shot down and placed underground without a rock even to mark the place she laid, forgotten and lost and dead). She was a memory, a little girl, Natashenka, lost and forgotten. Barnes didn’t know her. He knew her too well.
She was his guardian, she was his watcher. She was to stop him if he needed to be stopped.
She was watching him now, head bowed a little. She never moved. Barnes was defined by her staring, restrained by it. Not to jump, not to attack, to be chained in his motions. His body wanted that: to move, to run, to fight before being attacked. Her look reminded him to stop. Made him still.
Was his body a human body, not an animal one? What was a human but an animal with a bigger brain — and his brain was alike to the animal’s one, slow and heavy, not ready for thoughts. It wanted safety, it wanted to fight. It learned. Was it human? Or was everything human burnt years and years and years ago? Leaving only pain and ache and longing inside the body, the only human part left.
Barnes looked and saw a place, a place secure and safe, three people around the table, one beside. He didn’t need to hurt them, for they did not hurt him , for they helped him. They fed him and gave him a place to live, to live never hurting, never like before, with his owners past. They talked to him softly and rarely made him do hard things. Only watched him, only talked to him kindly. He watched in return and saw safety, so he stayed, and he knew that for that safety to last he needed to act in a certain way, to act like a human, so he watched and he learned and he talked, even, and he was left safe and fed and not hurt — never hurt.
Only sometimes Steve frowned at him — concern, that face was concern, an emotion humans had sometimes — Steve was— Steve was—
(When was that? When did that happen?)
Is the concept of time just a human invention? What about the concept of memory?
Steve frowned at Barnes. He looked at his hands, nails tugged in the flesh, red. Red, red, red. That was not acceptable — hurting himself was forbidden — the handler forbade it — who was his handler?
He didn’t remember.
“You okay there, Buck?”
Barnes nodded. He needed to act. Action didn’t leave a place for a need of thinking. Remembering.
He turned to the oven. Memory: Widow showing him cooking. Social ritual, human-acceptable. A good way to show affiliation to other humans.
Query: add cooking to schedule.
Sure, Bucky thought, easy and calm as always in the back of the (their?) mind.
(Did he like cooking? Before?
Memory, memory, see-through and elusive.)
With the handler’s permission, Barnes came closer, started the oven. Memory: Widow showed him a recipe. He was good with adapting, he could recreate it. But the movements needed were hard, he realized, unaccustomed to them. Dealing with fragility, measuring small and exact, was demanding, but that was acceptable. Demanding was what Barnes needed.
He cooked.
The door squeaked, interrupting the easy dialogue behind him, showing Tony. Tony greeted them all, exchanging playful insults with Barton, then headed for his coffee machine, starting to talk to Wilson about his robot (his bird?).
Humans made connections with the machines, emotional ones. It was strange. Strangeness was human, perhaps, or was it just humans who were strange; although, machines were sometimes fuller of humanity than humans themselves. Machines like the one that inhabited the building with them, a talking and living creature, human in all but a body. (Tony’s creation.)
And, of course, everything Barnes himself had with humans — that simmering growing bond between. Did it differ much?
Barnes looked at them, Tony and Wilson talking, both of them deep in it, Tony — brighter and louder by his genius, talking something not to be understood (to be awed at?), eyes like fire, burning and yet alive, always alive, so alive.
(Memory: Tony was called a Phoenix. Reasons for that evaded Barnes, but it seemed true, felt true, instinctively. Fire and beauty and life.)
Tony talked and talked and talked, then turned — accidentally, most likely — eyes flying around the room and stopping at Barnes, his look having an intensity of a burning star.
(Was Barnes forbidden to look back? He was, wasn’t he? By the handler. Only the handler was Bucky. Wasn’t he? He remembered now.)
Tony looked in his eyes, right through him, and in his stare was such an inexplicable, all-consuming sadness, surprising sadness, that Barnes stopped breathing for a moment, and—
—same brown eyes, same look, at the dark kitchen, dark empty kitchen at night, nobody but the two of them, fear and shame inside him, but no anger from the other, just sadness, only that sadness, unbearable—
—same eyes with the same look in a dark bunker, dark and horrifying, visions of death, guilt and guilt and guilt, always that, breaking him, leaving no thoughts, nothing, and on top of that, of everything — that horrible, horrible look—
Was he forbidden to look back? Was he? Should he be?
The eyes left him, and his body ached, did a step forward without his input, forward and forward towards—
No, no.
Barnes laid a hand on the oven. It burned, burned and burned (everything’s fire, only he’s the bad one, the murder, and the smell of the burning bodies). He recoiled, put the hand in his mouth, wanted to put it in the mouth to ease the pain, but met only metal; no burn, no pain, nothing and nothing and nothing. Not real.
A memory?
He was back at the moment at least. Looked at the meal, hot and ready. Got the plates and served it, trying not to look, not to dare to.
(His body felt the presence anyway.)
Barnes gave everyone a plate, hoping for it to be enough, then retreated to his corner, watching them. Sitting, talking, tasting, telling their opinions on the quality. Ritualistic. Human?
They were fed, they were safe from dying of hunger, they were on a way to have connections in their brains that made them smile, made them happy. Barnes wanted them in a good mood and wanted them safe. For it was the only way to repay. For that seeing them happy and smiling was like feeling warm after a long cold.
He watched. Watched and watched and watched. He watched Tony, not being able to not. Tony seemed different from the others: a different facial expression, different look. He was unusually quiet, and his movements were cautious.
(Barnes ached to—)
He looked malnourished, actually, tired and malnourished and pale, all that hidden behind the brightness of his eyes and fire of his words. He was tired and sad.
Barnes didn’t want him to be.
Barnes wanted him happy and smiling and carefree.
Query: change schedule. Begin the new mission.
Sure, pal. Mission approved.
(Bucky needed that, needed to care, needed to do something that wasn’t — needed to do the opposite of — needed it.)
That’s how the mission began.