Chapter Text
Here’s the thing about bein’ under mind-control, the part nobody talks about… that you’re still in there, some small piece’a you is awake… watching. Like being a passenger in your own body. You struggle to break free… but you lose… over and over again… you lose… and it makes whatever you’re forced to do that much worse…
Winter Soldier vol 12 Brubaker, Guice & Lark
It had been two years since the incident in Washington, since his fight with Captain America on board the helicarriers; two years since he learned he had a name, had an identity, since he learned he was a person. Two years of stumbling around in the dark learning to be human again; learning to be free. It hadn’t been easy.
James Buchanan AKA Bucky Barnes was lost. Metaphorically speaking, rather than geographically. After three months in Bucharest, Romania he knew the city well. He had escape routes planned, he had exit strategies. After the incident in Slovenia four months ago he knew the importance of foresight and planning. It was only a matter of time before Hydra caught up to him again after all. He shivered when he remembered being ambushed by Rumlow in the abandoned multi-storey car park, when he found himself frozen in fear at the knowledge that even though it had been two years since he found himself free from hydra, his freedom was precarious and could be ended at any point. One misstep and he could find himself back once again. He couldn’t let that happen.
So on the days when he ventured outside, he wandered the streets of Bucharest, reminding himself of the roads, the foot paths, the back alleys. He mingled with locals in crowded areas, in the markets, incognito of course. People were always looking for him. If it wasn’t hydra, it was Steve and his friend, the flying man. And he was not willing to be found by them yet either.
Before Slovenia he had spent time in Croatia, a whole year before moving on, then followed a brief stint in Hungary when he had smashed the flying man’s drone. His time in Slovenia had been cut short by Hydra and then he had come here to Romania. He found acclimatising to different countries and merging with the locals an easy task. He spoke a lot of languages, every country where he had had a mission, a target, he spoke the language. He was never sure how many languages he spoke, he would turn up in a country and he either knew the language or he did not. His time in Hungary was brief as he discovered he did not speak Hungarian. In his mind this meant he must never have murdered anyone there, - a rare comforting thought.
He knew that he shouldn’t stay in Romania for long, and he was already considering where to move on to next. It was hard, staying ahead of those chasing him and trying to live at the same time. Everything was a struggle. He couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t eat, and he couldn’t remember anything that he wanted to remember despite his attempts to try. He couldn’t even kill himself, another implantation that hydra had put into his head along with those damn code words.
After the failure of Project Insight two years ago, his failure – which still caused him to feel the pangs of guilt and shame that accompanied any mission failure, he had gone straight to the Smithsonian museum after seeing flyers for the Captain American exhibit. Captain America was the man he had been tasked to kill, the man he had failed to kill, the man whose life he had saved from drowning. The man who had called him ‘brother’. There he had seen the history of a man who shared his face, who had a name that Captain America had called him.
Your name is James Buchanan Barnes, Captain America had said. And he had called him Bucky and Buck. He thought of these words sometimes, repeating them in his head, sometimes out loud when he was in his apartment – tasting the words on his tongue to see if they would suddenly start to develop meaning. But they never did. When he thought of himself he tried to think of himself as Bucky. The name James felt even less like him. And he never wanted to think of himself as soldier again.
As Bucky leaned against the wall of a building, surveying the bustle of the market, he fingered his dog tags. He had recently reacquired them from an old acquaintance; kept for 70 years forgotten and dusty in a cupboard in Siberia until they had found their way back to him. They had his name on. They had a date of birth, and some other detail that meant nothing to him. But the tags themselves meant everything. They meant that he was the man in the museum, not just a copy of him. That once upon a time he had been James Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s brother who had been captured and turned into something else. He had been a war hero and he had died in service of his country. That’s what the museum said.
He walked onwards, milling around pretending to look at goods on the stalls. He was thinking that he may need to buy a new notebook. He was certain that he was running out of space and there was nothing worse than being in the middle of writing and realising that he had run out of paper. He had four notebooks now, almost full to the brim of memories. Hydra memories. Winter Soldier memories. But they were still memories none the less. He tried hard, every day so hard, to remember anything else but nothing else ever came. He wanted to remember a time before Hydra; the time written about in the museum, a time when he was Bucky Barnes, Captain America’s brother.
Steve Rogers, he told himself. That’s his name. He had a postcard that had Captain America on it, slipped inside his current notebook. He had stolen it from the gift shop at the museum. He got it out to look at it from time to time, to try and jog his memory of the man. But it never worked. Those memories were locked up tight. The notebooks were only full of death.
He decided to head back to the apartment, going via a place where he could pick up a newspaper and a notebook, and after a short time walking he could hear the sound of sirens coming from the direction he was walking towards. He froze by the side of the road, starting to feel panicked. One thing he had learned about himself was that he should always trust his instincts. And his instincts were screaming that those sirens were for him. He had stayed in Bucharest too long. He felt exposed, he felt people’s eyes on him; something was wrong. The man he usually bought his newspaper from ran away as he approached and Bucky stared at his own face on the front page of the newspaper. The Winter Soldier it said.
He was being blamed for the bombing of the UN in Vienna, which had killed a number of important political figures, among them the King of Wakanda. He closed his eyes for a moment, wondering if it was possible for him to have done this. He chewed his bottom lip with worry as he considered the situation. No, he decided, he had not lost time. No-one from Hydra had found him. He knew he was innocent of this crime. But no-one would believe him. Of course they would not. He was the Winter Soldier; terrorism, political assassinations and murder was in his blood. Who would believe him? Who would care?
He dropped the newspaper back down and, without thinking, turned and hurried back in the direction of his apartment. This was probably a bad idea, heading back. He knew he should leave. He could leave. There was nothing in the apartment that he would be too loath to leave behind. The photograph of Steve would be a sad loss but not an important one. His most precious possessions were his dog tags which he had hanging round his neck. He needed those; he still forgot his name sometimes. When he woke from nightmares he often believed he was back with Hydra, being defrosted, expecting to feel the electricity, the pain, and hear the words and feeling his brain locking into place. When he awoke from nightmares he found himself speaking Russian. He hated speaking Russian.
He forgot his name so often he had written it down again and again in notebooks before he got his dog tags back, and since getting them back he looked at them several times a day. The dog tags mattered. Nothing else did. There were the notebooks of course, in the rucksack hidden beneath the floor boards. That would be a loss but not a desperate one. The notebooks in which he had been diligently recording memories of murder, destruction and horror. So many deaths, so much pain, so much horror. The notebooks were his confession and in the hands of the authorities they would spell his doom.
He stopped at the apartment building adjacent to his own and climbed up the fire escape. It would be worth trying to get the notebooks, he realised. He reached the roof and leaned against a wall and stared at his own building considering his options. He could see his balcony and the door. Looking down he could see police cars and military vehicles and swarms of armed police and soldiers. Was it really worth it? He felt he could manage without the notebooks. If they had had more memories of James Barnes and not the Winter Soldier he might have felt differently. At the end of the day there was nothing precious about his memories with Hydra. He didn’t want to remember Hydra, he didn’t care if those memories were found by the authorities and read. He knew he was guilty. He knew he was guilty of far more than he could even remember. 1954 he had begun killing for Hydra and 2014 was when he stopped. 2015 if you counted what happened in Slovenia, which he did not. That was self-defence, he had been cornered, trapped he had had no other choice.
1954 were his first memories of killing. What had happened before 1954? That was not a place he ever let his brain go deliberately. But he often went there in his nightmares. And he never wrote down those memories. Horror, pain, humiliation. A time before he was the Winter Soldier but after he was James Buchanan Barnes. If he had written any of that down maybe that would justify going back to get the notebooks. No-one could know about those memories. But he hadn’t written them down.
He continued to lean against the wall, staring at his balcony door and continued to consider his options and possible next moves. The soldiers were starting to scale up the walls of his building, while the police officers were mingling around on the ground, clearly not sure what to do. He counted 10 climbing the walls, another 20 down below. They clearly thought he was in the building.
From his very high position he had a good vantage point, he could see far more than they could. Movement caught his eye on the rooftop to the south and he saw a figure dressed in black running across and taking cover, trying to stay out of sight. Was it a cat costume? That couldn’t be right. He had read about Captain America’s team, called the Avengers, was this a member of his group?
He was about to find a new position on the rooftop to see if he could get a better view of this new player when suddenly another person landed on the roof directly above his head. He froze and pushed himself up against the wall. His gaze fell onto the man’s shadow and he knew this was the bird man. Captain America’s flying friend who had been chasing him across Eastern Europe for the last two years. He held his breath. The bird man hadn’t seen him. He hadn’t been noticed. Bucky supposed that he had landed there for the same reason he himself had gone there. For the superior view.
“No sign of him, Cap,” the bird man said. “He’ll be long gone by now, he won’t be coming back here. We’ve lost our chance. But that means they’ve lost him too.” Bucky rolled his eyes as the bird man spoke, marvelling at how incompetent some people could be. The bird man continued, “You better get out of there Cap, else you’ll get arrested probably and then that’s a whole other problem for me to deal with.”
Bucky’s head snapped round towards his balcony door. The Captain was inside. Steve was inside. The man who had said you’re my brother. Bucky could feel his heart beating in his chest very fast. He knew he should leave but he couldn’t. Not now.
When he had seen Captain America for the first time, when he had been unmasked and heard the name ‘Bucky’ he had not recognised the man. But there had been a strong feeling of familiarity. At the museum it had been like reading about strangers, a history that he had been a part of but didn’t know. This man was willing to let himself die rather than kill the Winter Soldier. Steve. He thought the name and the same burst of familiarity he felt two years ago flooded over him once more.
The bird man jumped off the roof from above his head and flew away. Bucky spent a brief moment astounded by the man’s lack of awareness, and also noticed that he had acquired a new drone to replace the one Bucky had smashed up last year. Bucky looked round once more. The soldiers on his apartment roof were gathered together talking, the police down below were still directionless, and the men in charge appeared to be having an argument. Probably disagreeing about the chain of command, he thought. The army assuming they would have the final say, while the police feeling disgruntled at having authority taken away from them.
The bird man had gone round the other side of the building and the cat man was finding a place to hide on the southern roof top. This was his chance. He seized the moment before he could think better of it and hopped onto the wall connecting the two buildings. From there it was easy using the fire escapes to enter his own apartment. He knew he hadn’t been seen. Getting in wasn’t the problem. Getting out would be far more tricky. He was no longer thinking about collecting his notebooks, he was thinking about the man inside.
Bucky slipped silently into the room, and there he was. Dressed in the blue outfit, facing away leafing through Bucky’s notebook.
“Understood,” the man said, talking to the bird man presumably, through a mic. And then he must have sensed Bucky’s presence as he dropped the notebook down and turned swiftly. For a moment they surveyed each other. Bucky felt uncomfortable and wished that he had had more sense than to return. Not for the first time he mentally cursed his inability to make good choices.
Steve broke the silence. “Do you know me?” he asked.
“You’re Steve,” Bucky answered. “I read about you in a museum,” he dropped his gaze, looked at the floor. “Read about myself in a museum,” he continued, “that was weird.”
“Buck,” the man said with urgency. Bucky raised his head, made eye contact. “Do you remember me?”
Bucky shook his head. “No,” he said. He saw Steve’s jaw tighten and a look of what he felt was disappointment flashed across his face.
“I wasn’t in Vienna,” Bucky said. For some reason it was suddenly really important to him that Steve knew this, that Steve believed him.
“That wasn’t me, the bombing. I don’t do that anymore,” he looked back down at his feet. “As if I’d get caught on CCTV,” he murmured quietly. “It’s insulting.” He realised his right hand was shaking and hoped it wasn’t noticeable. He wondered if like him Steve noticed things like that. The little details.
“The people who think you did are on their way,” Steve said.
“They’re already here,” Bucky interjected, “there are ten people on the roof, and a further twenty are covering the exits. Your bird friend is in the air, being useless, and the man in the cat costume is on the roof of the building to the South,” he gestured south as he said this.
“What man wearing what?” Steve asked, sounding confused.
“Cat costume,” Bucky enunciated slowly. He was starting to feel really panicked now. This was such a bad idea.
“Well who is that?” Steve asked.
“I don’t know,” Bucky replied. “I figured he was one of your weirdos. With the funny outfits.”
You’re keeping the outfit right? Unbidden this sentence popped into his head, and he shook it away. This was not the time to get distracted. He had an urge to write it down and then remembered his notebooks. He didn’t want to get them now. Not with Steve right there.
“They’re not planning on taking you alive,” Steve was saying.
“That sounds about right,” Bucky said. “It’s as it should be. And I’m not planning on being taken at all.”
He could hear noises above his head. This was a stupid idea and now he would have to fight his way out. He could have been miles away by now. He took off his jacket and his gloves, sighing as he did so.
Steve must have recognised that this meant Bucky was preparing to fight as he then said, “This doesn’t have to end in a fight, Buck.”
Bucky stared at him in astonishment. “How else do you think this is going to end, Steve?” he asked. “Why are you even here?”
“I came ahead because I was hoping to persuade you to come with me, willingly. It prevents a fight, prevents you from being killed and gives us some control over what happens next, rather than just letting things happen.”
“Control,” Bucky repeated monotonously. He chewed his bottom lip and looked around anxiously. “Do you think Hydra are gone, Steve?” he asked, “Because they’re not. They’re still everywhere and they’re looking for me. If you lock me in a cell somewhere you might as well just hand me straight back over and I can’t…” his voice cracked, gave out. He took a deep breath.
“I won’t let that happen,” Steve said, “trust me. I’ll never let that happen.”
Bucky remembered what he had read in the Smithsonian back in Washington. James Barnes had been captured by Hydra, experimented on and tortured and then rescued by this very man in front of him. And then he had fallen to his death from a train. But he hadn’t died; he had ended back with Hydra again. He couldn’t remember what had happened on the train, but he remembered what had happened afterwards. In Siberia. Those early years. He held back a shudder.
“Oh yes,” Bucky said. “Trust you. Because after all that worked so well last time.” It was deliberately said, aimed to hurt the man in front of him. And it worked, because Steve winced. Bucky felt a pang of remorse. This man was his only ally; it would not do to alienate him.
His head shot up as he could hear the sounds of the soldiers above, abseiling down the side of the building. He held up his right hand, all five fingers and dropped them one by one in a silent countdown. He could see that Steve understood and was preparing himself for a fight, grasping the shield tightly. And then the fight began.
There was a smoke bomb, there were guns. Soldiers through the windows and police in the stairwell. Bucky forgot all about his notebooks, his mind was filled with fighting and survival. He did not aim to kill anyone, but he knew he had hit some of his adversaries just a little too hard. He freaked Steve out who admonished him more than once during the fight. Bucky was fighting for his life, if this meant accidental casualties, so be it. He did not intend to kill, he intended to leave. He knew above all that he must not be caught. To be caught meant to be taken back to Hydra, and he knew he would rather be shot and killed.
As he jumped out of the window a few floors down onto the roof of the southern building he belatedly remembered the man in the cat costume seconds before the man launched himself at him. Another fight. All he wanted was to get away. As the man was distracted by the helicopter which the bird man dispatched Bucky took his chance to get away, jumping off the roof and racing towards one of his escape routes.
Running at full speed was always difficult, hard to turn, hard to avoid obstacles. He crashed into a lorry and that slowed him down so he commandeered a motorbike as it would have taken too long to return to full speed. And then he was thrown off the bike by the cat man and drawn into hand to hand combat. And then there was Steve, launching himself at the new enemy and standing between them.
Bucky was breathing heavily as they were surrounded. By police cars, by soldiers, by men with guns. There could still be a way out. He wracked his brain, assessing, plotting, trying to find an escape route. He wondered if he initiated further conflict if Steve would support him. He wasn’t sure about this, but he didn’t think Steve would try to stop him.
But then, disrupting his thoughts, there came down a man from the sky, in a metal suit of armour, with guns, who firmly instructed them to stand down. Bucky eyed this newcomer up; he could tell this was the most dangerous adversary. He could get away from the others, he knew, perhaps with injuries but this one would kill him. This one could fly. He considered jumping on him, the metal man would fly up into the air and he could disarm him in flight and crash them both. They could get miles out. He decided this was the only course of action open to him and prepared himself to launch at the metal man when he felt Steve’s hand on his arm, stilling him.
“Stop fighting,” Steve said. “Please stop.”
Bucky stared at him in disbelief, and shook his head.
“Please,” Steve continued, “trust me. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Bucky’s eyes were wide, and his breathing ragged, his heart beating a million times a minute. He felt his eyes water and blinked back the tears before they emerged. He knew he had lost. He closed his eyes and tried to calm himself down. With his eyes still closed, quivering, he raised his hands behind his head and allowed himself to be apprehended. He kept his eyes shut as he was manhandled by the police, handcuffed, and shoved and restrained into some kind of mobile cell. He only opened his eyes when he felt he was on the move. He was in a large military vehicle, four soldiers with guns sitting with him, and he was enclosed in a clear cell, strapped in with metal and magnets.
They’d forced him in so quickly they’d only given him the briefest of pat downs. He’d not had any weapons and with relief he realised they hadn’t taken his dog tags; he still had his name. He didn’t have anything but his tags. They were the only thing that mattered.
They drove for 18 hours. Bucky had always been good at keeping a clock in his head. They stopped twice. The soldiers were replaced. No-one talked to him. No-one offered him food or water or even a bathroom break. That wasn’t a problem. Because of the serum, Bucky could go months without water or calories, and he was still having problems eating solid food. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was being locked up and restrained. The problem was that he may end up being handed back over to Hydra on a silver platter. He trembled at the thought. His mind went back to the Chair that took away his memories, the Memory Supressing Machine.
Steve had said to trust him. He had to now, he had no other choice.
In Berlin his containment cell was taken down to the basement. As he was being carted away he saw Steve with a group of people, talking. For a brief moment he made eye contact and then looked away. He felt wrong. Ashamed. Ashamed of himself, ashamed of what he had done. Ashamed of his weaknesses. Reading about himself in the Smithsonian, it had been hard to match what was written about James Barnes to the person he himself now was. He had been good once, selfless, brave, young, strong and smart. That wasn’t who he was now. That wasn’t who he remembered. All he could remember was giving up. All he could remember was compliance. Always compliance. Passive, like now. Always waiting for something to happen. Always waiting for someone to tell him what to do.
And he knew Hydra would be there, they always were, waiting in the shadows.