Chapter Text
Frozen. The girl had been frozen. That was the first thing that struck him, like ice in his own heart. A young girl, all dark curls and blue eyes... they had frozen her. Left her there with that tin coffin as her resting place, while the facility crumbled around her from the age.
They froze her.
Bucky froze with her, amidst the shuffling and clinking and rummaging in the files. The agents with him kept their eyes professionally trained downward, collecting what they could while they waited. Bucky couldn't. He didn't know why he couldn't. Maybe that was the most terrifying thing, the not knowing. The instinct in him to look closer, to figure this out. The dread that came in the absence when he did look.
He had forgotten something. That was it. He had forgotten something again.
She was it.
He knew her.
He hadn't realized how long he had been staring until there was a hand on his shoulder. "Buck?"
"Hmm?"
"You alright?"
He nodded, but didn't look away from the girl.
"Christ," Sam hissed from behind them. "How old is she?"
"Ten, max," Natasha answered before Bucky could question it himself. "Probably younger."
Steve leaned into Bucky's field of view, raising an eyebrow. "Buck..."
"We've gotta get her out of there," he said without meaning to. His voice came out more unsteady than he had expected.
"Yeah," Steve said, something soft in his voice. "Tony's on his way. He'll try to open it."
Natasha and Sam approached the tin coffin, heavy with the sight. "How long do you think..."
"Decades." Natasha looked up at the cracks in the ceiling, the crumbling cement of the walls, and ran a gentle finger along the glass of the cryostasis chamber. There was a thick pad of dust on her fingertip when she pulled it back. "She was abandoned with the facility."
Sam whispered a curse. Steve squeezed tighter on Bucky's shoulder.
The girl didn't comment.
"Where's the puzzle you all need me to solve in this shit hole?" Tony called from the doorway. The other three stepped away to give him a clear view of the girl. Bucky pried his eyes away then, and couldn't look back.
It was on the third day that she woke up, and on the third day that she nearly brought her hospital room down on her own head. He wasn't there when it happened--he'd kept himself locked up in the compound, digging through his journals since the day they found her--but Steve had showed him the pictures when he got back. The walls had caved inward, but hadn't split. They had been molded, like putty, into sharp, jagged spikes, all pointing inward in the direction of her hospital bed.
They locked her up after that, in a room far too close to a cell for anyone's comfort. Tony said it would dampen any powers she had. He said it was infallible.
Natasha had given her a stuffed blue bunny on her first day locked up, and it had sat untouched in the corner of the bed.
Bucky spent that day in the surveillance room, watching the video feed from her cell.
“Is there anything you need?” Sam asked from inside the room. The girl didn't speak. Her hands clenched tightly together. “We can't help you if we don't know what you need, kid.”
No response.
“Water?” Sam offered. “A snack, maybe? Are you hungry?”
There was a tightness around her eyes at that. Sam took that as a yes. He retrieved a bottle of water and did his best not to watch her drink. From the corner of his eye, he saw her sniff the bottle, take a mouthful of the water, and sit there. Still. Not swallowing.
Tasting it, Bucky realized. Testing.
When, apparently, she found the drink to be safe, she swallowed quickly and downed the rest of the bottle.
He held out a granola bar, and the girl stared at it. Didn't take it.
"She hasn't eaten since we found her," Natasha noted from where she sat beside the monitor. "She's thin as a rail."
She didn't eat the day after that, either. It was the same song and dance, Sam going in, talking, offering her food and water, and her denying it. Bucky's stomach roiled with the familiarity of it.
Could be poisoned. Anything they give you could be poisoned. That's why you always return to us, Soldier. We give you food.
The third day, she wasn't sitting up straight anymore. She stared at the abandoned stack of granola bars like a starved predator staring at its prey, but didn't touch them.
Bucky felt her hunger in his own stomach, like a phantom pain. "I could try."
"No," Steve said immediately. "Buck..."
“She could recognize me.”
“That's exactly what I'm afraid of.”
“She’s not going to speak, Steve. They’d have taught her better than that.” He grimaced as soon as the words left his mouth. “If… if she sees a familiar face, maybe…”
“She didn't recognize me,” Natasha put in.
“You didn't recognize her, either. I do. At least, I think I do… ”
Steve’s eyes jumped to the cameras, contemplative.
“She’ll starve herself at this rate, Steve. Or worse. If there's any shot at helping her, I…”
“I know.” Steve drummed his fingers on the table. “Nat, you go with him. Try to at least get her to eat something.”
Bucky nodded a silent thanks, and set off with Natasha.
She was shaking when they entered. Whether from the hunger or the fear, Bucky wasn't sure. A mix of the two, he guessed.
"Hey, kid," he said by way of introduction. "Can we take a seat?"
She didn't answer. He didn't expect her to. Natasha and him sat in the sterile grey chairs provided along the wall. The girl didn't look at them--didn't look at the granola bars, either, once they entered. She shrank back in her corner, beside the bunny, and stared hard at the blanket on the bed. Steve had made them replace the stern white sheets and blanket with something light purple and checkered. It reminded Bucky of something his ma had made for his sister, Rebecca, oh so long ago.
He set a bag of candies and a slim Jim on the table beside her bed. She studiously avoided looking at them. "They're safe to eat," he assured. "Look."
With a little anxious hesitation, he reached into her bag of candies and popped a chocolate in his mouth. Her eyelids flickered, but she gave no more reaction.
"The rest are yours if you want 'em. There's all kinds of things in there, in case you don't like chocolate. There's these things called Swedish Fish as well, those are my favorite."
Her eyes darted to the bag, and back to the blanket. "If you pick a favorite, we can get you more," Natasha offered. "My friend, Steve, he's got a whole stash of that stuff."
Bucky chuckled. "He'd never admit it."
"It's under his bed."
Bucky thought he could hear Steve cursing him from the surveillance room. It made him smile, just for a moment. His first smile since they found the kid.
Then, he looked at the girl again, and he could see her staring at the bag, just shy of reaching for it. Her nails dug hard into the meat of her arms, halfway to drawing blood. Stopping herself.
He wanted to reach for her. Wanted to coax her hands away. Instead, he sighed.
Natasha looked between the two of them, treading more carefully. "We won't be mad if you eat something. You're allowed."
Her hands clenched tighter.
"You're safe here," she insisted. Bucky knew the girl wouldn't believe her. He never would have.
“I know..." he began, not looking at her. "I know how confused you must be now. I know what they might have told you...”
Natasha looked at him, uncertain.
"What you might have seen, when you were there..."
“Barnes,” Natasha warned.
That made the girl jump. She looked up, for the first time since she’d been brought to her cell, and made dead eye contact with him. Her eyes were wild, then. Curious and afraid and something else. Something small and wounded.
Bucky’s heart clenched. “Do you recognize my name?”
She didn't nod. Didn't shake her head. She just held his eyes and shivered.
“Kid, we need you to tell us how to help you.”
She was crying. He made her cry.
“Can you speak?”
She blinked. A tear pattered on the bed. Natasha stood slowly, as if to gesture him away, but he raised a gentle hand.
Many people looked at him in fear. It was a look he knew well. Terror. The dawning of the realization, the speaking of one last desperate plea.
This… wasn't that.
And he knew her.
He knew he knew her.
It seemed something between them connected, and he could feel what she felt. She was afraid, but not of him. For him. For herself. For what it meant for the two of them to be in the same room.
He took a breath. “You don't know me as the Winter Soldier, do you?”
She swallowed. Tears fell harder.
“I’m Bucky Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes. Is that how you know me?”
Something in her eyes told him that wasn't entirely right either.
“Who am I to you?”
The girl searched for a word, playing it over her lips uncertainly, testing it on her tongue. More tears fell. Her body shook harder.
Around her, the walls rippled unsteadily, like those in the hospital. Natasha pulled Bucky to his feet and threw a dirty glare at the camera. “Infallible, huh?”
Bucky didn't have time to relish in the snide comment. Didn't have time to throw out one of his own. He was reaching for her, his feet moving numbly, his eyes burning. He was crying.
Natasha tried to lead him to the door, but he struggled out of her grip. Just barely. Just for a moment.
He remembered. Finally, he remembered.
A girl, painted in black, framed by cement walls. A word on her tongue. A word which woke him up, when nothing else in fifty years had been able to.
The boom. The floor caving. The girl falling. The hands pulling him back, just like this. His legs numb, just like this. His eyes burning, just like this. His heart racing, just like this.
Just like this.
And then she was speaking. Saying that word, twice… Twice at the same time. In the memory and in the present. Now and then. Then and…
“Dad?”