Chapter Text
“Okay, one HYDRA speedster I can handle, but two just feels like overkill.”
When Natasha, Bucky, and Steve returned from their mission with an unconscious prisoner in vibranium cuffs, the rest of the Avengers didn’t know what to expect.
The man’s brown hair is buzzed, dichotomous to his charming boyish looks. He definitely isn’t what they would imagine a HYDRA supersoldier to look like, especially one that Bucky attributes countless kills to.
“I don’t know what they did to him,” Bucky says, “but I don’t think HYDRA was the one to give him his speed.”
“Then who was?” Tony asks.
“I don’t know.” Bucky runs his flesh fingers through his hair. “We had been partners sometimes. The memories are murky, especially when I was fresh from the chair. But I remember he was fast. Faster than the eye could perceive. He could vibrate fast enough to go through walls. And more often than not, through people’s chests.” They all cringe at the mental image. “They kept a muzzle on him. I think he was a mouthy one before they got him. But his eyes always spoke more than words could ever say. They tried to wipe him, they did, but I think he healed too fast for it to stick. They stole his identity, his memories, but there was something in him that remembered something. Something that wasn’t changed by them.”
“And do you think he has a chance of getting that something back?” Steve asks.
“I think he does,” Bucky says. “I just don’t know what is left.”
“You said he healed fast,” Clint says. “How fast?”
“Fast enough that they had to keep him in partial cryo whenever they did anything to him. I think the stasis is what caused the damage from the electrocution to stick.”
“So he just needs to heal,” Bruce says.
“It won’t be that easy,” Tony says. “He’s got years of torture to recover from. How many years, we don’t know.”
“The night your parents…” Bucky starts, causing Tony to flinch at words. “That was when HYDRA got him. He tried to—”
“He tried to save them,” Tony finishes, voice barely a whisper. He looks through the one way glass with a new perspective on the man. “And look where it got him.”
“Knowing what he can do, he would have saved them if he could,” Bucky says. “But his back was broken, spine shattered, and he could barely keep himself up, let alone run.”
He knows no matter what he says can quell Tony’s grief stricken distress so he pushes on. “They called him громоотвод. Lightning Rod. At first I thought it was because of the lightning he leaves when he runs but I would hear him mutter it to himself. It must mean something to him, though I don’t know what.”
The cuffed man starts to stir from his forced slumber.
“I guess we’ll have to ask him,” Tony says.
The man is now strapped on a cot, arms and legs restraining him, with an IV feeding micronutrients to the malnourished man’s arm. It’s a wonder that he was able to stay standing let alone run in the condition he’s in.
The man hums softly under his breath, eyes looking around sluggishly.
“Is he singing Poker Face right now?” Clint asks incredulously.
Ignoring his remark, Natasha enters the room, Bucky following behind.
The man stops humming, eyes locking on Bucky. His head tilts curiously. “Soldat.” His Russian pronunciation is nearly perfect but Natasha notes how the words are lilted with an American accent.
“громоотвод,” Bucky responds with a stiff nod.
“You don’t seem too concerned,” Natasha states, eyes boring into the man analytically.
“You’re the Avengers,” he says, his American now twinged with a Russian accent. “The ones who stole away the Winter Soldier.” He grins cheekily, teeth a little too sharp as he does. “You’re the good guys.”
“We’d like to believe we are, yes,” Natasha says, eyes narrowing.
“I figure I’d be better in the hands of the good guys than HYDRA.” He shrugs, grin now challenging.
“Not very loyal to the organization who you’ve been killing for for the last two decades,” Natasha points out.
“Two and half actually, if my calculations are right.” the man looks around. “Though, my memory hasn’t exactly been reliable.”
“I can see why they put a muzzle on you,” Bucky says.
His grin grows sharper. “What, you going to shut me up too? I seem to remember you finding your own way of doing that.”
Natasha’s brows jump up, shooting a shocked look at Bucky whose face goes bright red.
“Didn’t think that was necessary for the debriefing, huh?” He huffs, putting a dramatic hand to his chest. “And to think, I thought I meant something to you.”
“You seem to remember quite a lot for someone who claims otherwise,” Natasha interrupts.
“I remember my time with them. But before it… it’s blank. I get impressions, feelings, but no clear picture. I don’t know my name. I don’t know who my family is. I don’t know how I got these powers. I don’t know my life before HYDRA. But I know that I had one.”
“And you haven’t tried looking for it?”
“There’s seven billion people on this planet,” he says bitterly. “And whoever I left behind, I left 25 years ago. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Why did you stay with HYDRA?” Bucky asks.
“I know I seem plenty lucid right now, but it’s because I’ve been out long enough to remember. They made sure to keep me on a close leash to never have coherent thought beyond being a weapon for them to point. They learned that the hard way.”
“So you didn’t want to kill for them?”
“Of course not!” he shouts. “You think I— I’m not a killer. I— I am but I’m not.”
“I believe you,” Natasha says. She knows killers. She knows what men who are twisted by the thrill of blood on their hands are like, and this man is not a killer. He’s a man who has killed. A man who has been forced to kill against every fiber of his being that screamed for him not to. She doesn’t know what’s more impressive, that he has been able to cling onto that humanity or that HYDRA was able to erase it from him, even momentarily.
“You do?” he says, fight draining out of him immediately.
“Yes,” Natasha says. “I do. You’re not a killer.”
On the other side of the glass, Tony frowns at his holograms. “It’s like he didn’t exist,” Tony says. “No facial match. No fingerprint match. Nothing.”
“Maybe they wiped it,” Clint suggests.
“Enough for me not to be able to find it?” Tony scoffs. “Right.”
“Who do you think he could be?” Steve asks.
Natasha and Bucky exit the room and all eyes turn to them.
“What do you think?” Steve says. “Is he pulling a con?”
“No,” Natasha says, shaking her head. “I think he’s genuine. But he’s also confused and putting on a show. For who, I’m not sure.”
“I knew him,” Bucky says, voice hoarse. “In the days I remembered more, we were…”
“Fuck buddies?” Tony says. Steve glares at Tony, though his jaw is clenched from the new knowledge.
Bucky shakes his head. “It was more than that. He always knew more than I did, about me and who I was, and he’d remind me. He was kind in a way that no one else was. And I was kind when I could be. We were a rare solace in a place that didn’t allot much of it.”
Steve softens, jealousy dissipating. “And now?”
“We’re not there anymore,” Bucky says, not elaborating further, his message clear enough.
“So what do we do with him?” Clint asks.
“We help him,” Bruce says. “Clearly just his short absence from HYDRA has helped him recover a lot. What he needs is time.”
Time and a safe place to recover.
They place him across the hall from Steve and Bucky, him getting his own space enough but not completely alone.
In just the few days it takes to get him settled and quickly realizing his insanely high necessary caloric intake, just getting the right amount of food into his daily diet made his memories start uncovering at rapid speeds.
“Barry,” he says one day during one of his daily checkups with Bruce. “My name is Barry.”
“I was CSI,” he realizes when he’s discussing his dark matter altered DNA with Tony.
“My mom is dead,” he says to Clint, a fact hollow and numb in his chest, an old ache of an old truth.
Little facts about himself return but the where and who still remain.
“I remember cold,” Barry tells Natasha.
“That was the cryo," Natasha says.
“No,” Barry says, shaking his head. “It was a good cold. Cold was good.”
They don’t figure out what that means.
It’s when he’s watching Star Trek: Insurrection with Steve and Bucky when it hits him.
“What year is it?”
“It’s 2016,” Steve says, looking over to Barry with worry.
Barry’s brows furrow. “No. That can’t be right.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve been with HYDRA for 25 years.”
“Yeah,” Bucky says. “December 17, 1991.”
“No,” Barry says. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why?” Steve asks.
“Because… because I remember seeing this in the theaters with my parents.”
“This movie came out in 1998.” Bucky says slowly. “You were with HYDRA then.”
“But I was also a kid.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Steve says. “How could you be a kid and also be a grown man in HYDRA?”
“I don’t know,” Barry says. “But I think… it might have to do with time travel.”
Bucky groans. “Oh, this just got a lot more complicated.”