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Human memories can be tricky things to keep track of. Some people have what’s called a “photographic memory”, which means they can pretty much remember everything in detail. Some other people have terrible memory in general, and the less fortunate suffer amnesia either from trauma or illness. And if having either a good or bad memory is a blessing or a curse, that’s up to each person’s opinion.
But we are here for one person’s memory in particular. One that has lost it many times and has been trying to get it back piece by piece ever since he regained his freedom. That person is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Or just Bucky, as he likes to go by.
Bucky was the victim of many rounds of memory wiping and brainwashing during the years he was kept as a pawn of Hydra, which left his mind a scrambled mess ripe for the taking of mind control. He was nothing but a puppet that danced to his master’s tune after being beaten down into compliance time and time again. Naturally, such horrendous abuse that spanned decades left severe consequences that are still present in his psyche, such as a deep-seated fear of going through that ordeal ever again.
That’s one of the main reasons why Barnes started to write down everything that he remembered after he finally escaped Hydra’s hold. It didn’t matter how big or small, how long or short, how detailed or vague they were, he wrote every single last one that popped up in his head. After all, the possibility of losing them once more and not being able to remember them ever again terrified him.
By the time Steve found him in Romania, he already had filled out about a dozen of notebooks with as detailed descriptions of memories as he could manage. He also wrote some side notes, observations, questions, and more annotations on the margins, as well as highlighted and bookmarked some parts and particular memories. At the very least, he was very thorough in his process of trying to regain the lost memories that encompassed decades worth of experiences. Some good and some bad; some wonderful and others downright dreadful. Yet he wanted to have them all accounted for.
Those notebooks carry on their pages as many memories as he can remember, which date back to as far as he can remember as well. So, it’s easy to say that they don’t only represent the pieces that, put together, make what exists of his scattered life, but they are also some of his most precious possessions. Thus, why it was imperative that he guarded them with his life as he tried to evade the authorities back when he was framed as the UN bomber that killed T’Chaka.
He was already prepared, then, to walk away from the low-profile life he was living with only a backpack full of those memories since it was the only thing that mattered to him at the time. Back then, as his mind was still susceptible to falling under Hydra’s Winter Soldier programming, he couldn’t risk losing all the memories he had so painstakingly managed to remember. Even if a good chunk of those pages contained nothing but nightmarish retellings of events anyone would rather prefer to forget.
Not Bucky, though. Because he already knew what is like to lose his memory, so he bowed down to never go through with it again, or at the very least do his best to prevent it from happening. And, luckily for him, despite having fallen victim to the brainwashing and mind control once again, the notebooks remained and he was able to get them back once he was placed under the supervision and care of the Avengers after the New Accords were created and signed.
However, there’s something that always bothered and worried the Sergeant: the fact that he can’t bring himself to trust his own memories, after so many years of wiping after wiping.
Thankfully, though, that changed once Steve reappeared in his life.
It all started after they reunited amid the Sokovia Accords Affair, while Rogers was trying to save and clean the name of his best friend. Then, the Captain only dared to try and see if Barnes still remembered some key moments of their friendship back in the first half of the 20th century. He was still a bit tentative about it, given that he feared to touch a sensitive subject or, even worse, that he mentioned something that the Sarge couldn’t remember at all.
But despite that, Steve persevered in his attempts to reconnect with the man he thought dead for so long. And a big part of that plan hinged on them trying to rebuild what once was Bucky’s life as a young man before they went to Europe to fight in World War II.
And although Bucky had been able to recover a good portion of his memories from both parts of his life, as James Buchanan and as the Winter Soldier, something was still missing in the Cap’s eyes. Something that was only obtained once they both finally shared their memories for real.
It all started one time that Bucky finally dared to share his notebooks with Steve. He had the idea for a long while, but fear always gripped him before he could act on said thoughts. A fear of having one of his worst nightmares made reality; the one that assured him that after so much memory-scrambling, his ability to store and create memories had become faulty, which meant that those memories he had been able to regain weren’t as real as he believed them to be.
Nevertheless, he managed to overcome his fear and gather the courage to be able to show his best friend one of his notebooks. And all the while, he worried sick about Rogers telling him that something was wrong, confirming his terrifying belief that his memories weren’t as trustworthy as he wanted them to be.
But when Steve was reading one of the paragraphs that Bucky had pointed out to him, he suddenly got up and went looking for one of his old sketchbooks, flipping through its yellowing pages until he reached a particular drawing. The one that depicted the scenery where the memory took place.
“Yeah, I remember that night too. It was pretty special,” Steve said, a nostalgic smile on his face.
The night in question was the one in which they went to Rockaway Beach, an experience that still carries the youthful joy of companionship despite the more unsavory moments, like riding back home on the back of a freezer truck after spending all their money. And even though they had already talked about that one, in particular, the confirmation was more than welcomed.
Yet it wasn’t that wonderful memory that made Barnes so happy at that moment but rather having the confirmation that his memory of that day was real, to begin with. And with that came the relief of hoping that all his other memories were as real and valid as that one. Because Steve wasn’t just humoring to make him feel less crazy; no, his memories were real and they mattered to Rogers just as much as they did to him.
“Thank you for sharing this with me,” Bucky said, sounding a bit choked up. “Do you have more?”
The hopeful tone of voice as well as the shine in the man’s blue eyes were enough to widen the smile on Steve’s face.
“Yeah, I can show you as many as you want, we can exchange books too.”
Upon hearing Rogers’ reassurance and his offer to trade sketchbooks for notebooks in order for them to see what the other’s recollections of events were like, Bucky quickly got up to retrieve more of his notebooks while Steve did the same with his. They rejoined once they both had an armful of books to give the other, spending the next three hours going over everything together, reminiscing about the good times as much as they could.
They kept doing that every time Bucky regained another memory, just to keep reassuring the Sergeant that his memories weren’t wrong or defective.
That dynamic stayed the same until a new aspect was added when a new member was added to the Avengers Team/Family, Blake Summers. The young superheroine, being someone with a somewhat similar story to that of Bucky (in regards to being held captive by a secret organization that carried out human experimentation in order to use people as weapons) and who had also lost her memory, found more than one point of connection to the Sarge, despite their rocky start which ended up leading them to get together. Thus, why they eventually started to keep track together of whatever memories resurfaced for each of them.
Even though neither could corroborate for the other that those memories were legitimate, just having their shared support was already good enough. Especially for Blake since she had no one that did for her what Steve did for Bucky. Yet her boyfriend did his best to make her feel validated, understood and believed.
In the end, it worked out for all of them. More or less.