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He goes back to the Smithsonian seven times. Not for any good reason, no matter how he justifies it. Not for any useful information on the man Steve Rogers once knew - every file SHIELD had is online, and that means there’s a file that says ‘Barnes, James’ somewhere. It would be easy to find, to read, to swallow and digest until his memories consist of more than blood and smoke. So no, it’s not for information that he returns to the exhibit.
It’s not because he enjoys it. He isn’t sure that he enjoys anything now, although he remembers flashes of satisfaction from missions past. He knows that standing in a crowd, looking at pictures of a man he has never been, would not fall under anyone’s definition of enjoyment.
After the third visit he goes through his motivations with a wire brush, desperate to figure it (himself) out. Lying on the floor of an apartment building marked for demolition, he examines his motivations carefully. Forces down the things that try to rise to the surface, flickers of the past from botched wipes. Bloody, desperate things.
When he finds the answer, he laughs. It’s a harsh, ugly sound, and he keeps laughing because there’s nothing else he can do. A man who used to occupy this body was in love with Steve Rogers, and Steve Rogers is still in love with him, and the Winter Soldier has been returning to watch them look at each other with light in their eyes because-
Well, that’s another question. He has time to figure it out.
The fourth visit, he knows why he’s there and he doesn’t waste time looking at different displays. He goes straight for the screen that shows the same clip over and over again. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes laughing, living, looking at each other.
He doesn’t know love, but he can recognize it, and it’s there. There’s nothing in the file he was given that mentioned this, and he guesses that the ‘Barnes, James’ file is similarly lacking, but there it is.
It explains everything Rogers has done to him. For him. The actions of a lost man trying to save a dead one, a beloved. Still, he wonders why Rogers couldn’t recognize the stench of death. Bucky Barnes was gone, gone, gone, and the Winter Soldier was a man in form only, and barely that. You’d have to be truly desperate to not notice these things, he concluded. Truly lonely.
The fifth time he goes, it’s to compare himself to Barnes. He finds nothing beyond the obvious. They share the same face, the same teeth, the same ears. He’s seen his own reflection when he couldn’t avoid it (a ghost should never be seen or heard when it doesn’t want to be), he knows his own mouth has never stretched wide in a grin, his own eyes are blank and bleak. They don’t move or fight the same, he is better than Barnes there. Smoother, faster, deadlier in every respect. He is a tool, Barnes is a man.
That Steve Rogers continues to mistake the two as the same is almost an embarrassment.
He nearly doesn't go back a sixth time. It was foolish to return even twice, this is beyond foolishness. He’s going to be recognized, found, captured by someone. Maybe another faceless organization that knows a weapon when they see it, maybe Rogers, who doesn’t.
As he makes his way through the Smithsonian, he wonders which would be worse.
After that, he stays away. Lives like a shadow on the streets, and it’s no hardship at first. At first, he moves silently and he sleeps with a knife in his hand, and he does not dream.
Slowly, the memories creep in. He had a feeling they would, they always did the longer a mission lasted. Now there is no mission, there is nothing but the dark and cold and a weapon with no one to wield it. As days pass, there are hands covered in blood, sightless eyes, and sometimes - a few, rare times - there is golden hair and thin shoulders and -
He is still trying to force the memories down. It’s a losing battle - he is losing a battle, and maybe long ago he would’ve been frightened by that. He’s the Winter Soldier, a ghost, an asset, he does not lose. Except now, he is none of those things. Now, he does.
Things are fracturing, like they do. Was it too many wipes or has he always been broken, does he dream or is it the scraps of Bucky Barnes pulling themselves together after 70 years of playing dead?
He is fracturing, like he does. A long time ago a man was dragged from the snow, half dead with one arm gone and the other outstretched, still grasping at salvation. A long time ago a man lay on a table, shuddering and gasping, the whispered numbers slipping from his mind. He had one word on his lips, and when it finally departed they knew he had left too.
The seventh visit, he does not go to look at the film clips. He’s had his fill of that brief moment, and his mind is now brimming with a hundred more like it. Soft smiles and touches, things he doesn’t know and doesn’t know to want except now he does.
The first punch he throws hits one of the engraved glass displays and shatters it, and it’s the best thing he’s done in weeks. He flexes metal fingers and bares his teeth at the crowd, reveling in what he knows.
Things are fracturing, like they do. He doesn’t know he’s screaming until a security guard tackles him and presses a hand over his mouth. He bites down, tastes blood and bites harder. There are three guards trying to keep him down, another trying to get his teeth out of soft flesh. He tears away, rolls to his feet and looks for an exit. A guard is on the ground cradling his bloody hand, half of the displays are in ruins and the floor is covered in glass. The other guards stare at him, and he stares at his own reflection in shattered glass. There is blood on his teeth, smeared across his lips, and he has never been farther from Bucky Barnes.
God damn Steve Rogers for mistaking the two of them. For looking at him with wounded eyes and making him wonder, making him remember warm days and a warmer touch. For whispering the name of a dead man to a weapon.
God damn Steve Rogers, because when the inevitable needle sinks into his neck and he starts to fall, he knows that it'll be Steve Rogers who catches him.