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The safehouse wasn’t much more than a hollow carved out apartment building, one of those forgotten places no one lingered long enough to notice. One of the concrete walls was cracked and stained; the other four were decorated and colored with different shades of paint. The floor was lightly damp, and the faint hum of traffic outside trembled up through the structure like a pulse.
To anyone else, it would’ve felt suffocating – it being a box fit for rats, but to him, it was safe. Here, at least, no one knew his name. Here, the shadows were empty handlers, guards, scientists, and empty threats he didn’t have to linger on to. Here, the silence wrapped around him, thin and fragile, but protective. It was the first kind of silence that hadn’t been forced with a chokehold or a gun barrel. It was his own, and he clung to it like a drowning man drifting at sea.
Bucky sat curled against the wall, knees tucked to his chest, the stolen jacket he’d taken shortly after his unpleasant dive in the water clenched tight in his human hand. His other arm – the metal one, etched with harsh ridges and seams, scarred with the weight of history – was pressed tightly across his ribs. The star painted into the steel gleamed faintly in the dim light, its red as sharp as blood even when the rest of the world dulled to shades of grey. He tried not to look at it. He tried not to remember what that mark meant, or how many had died beneath it. But even when his gaze turned away, he could still feel the weight of it, dragging him backward into places he never wanted to go again. His boots were still laced tight, the soles muddy, and his knees stiff from hours of running. He hadn’t removed them. He couldn’t. The idea of leaving himself exposed, even for a moment, left his chest tight and his breath shallow. Sleep came in jagged fragments, brief slips into oblivion before nightmares or the echo of a command snapped him awake again.
And always, always, the memories.
Not whole, not as clear as he wished, but shards of broken glass flashing in the dark: A voice cold as iron calling him ‘asset’, the sharp smell of gunpowder and sweat, gloved hands gripping his chin, forcing his eyes to stay open as faces blurred in and out of vision, and a list of targets recruited with clinical detachment, each one followed by screams, silence, and the quiet weight of bodies left behind. He would see his own hands around a throat or holding a rifle, feeling the recoil, hearing the breath leaving someone’s chest, and yet he couldn’t remember wanting it. He couldn’t remember choosing any of it. He would wake with his jaw clenched so hard it hurt, his throat raw as if he had screamed but made no sound at all.
Then Steve. His face broke through the fog, familiar where nothing else was. His voice, not cold or commanding but desperate, cracking on a name Bucky had nearly forgotten was his. That single word – Bucky – echoed louder than any trigger phrase ever had, lodging in his mind like a piece of shrapnel he couldn’t dig out. It didn’t belong to the Winter Soldier. It belonged to someone else, someone who used to laugh, fight, and dream. Someone who used to care. That name was his and not his all at once, and the harshness made his chest ache worse than any wound.
His stomach growled, hollow, dragging him from the whirlpool of memory. He glanced at the crumpled bag of chips lying against the wall, its colored plastic a strange, almost mocking splash of color against the grey. He had grabbed it in a corner store hours ago without thinking, just another item on instinct, while he scanned the exits and counted the cameras. Bucky didn’t even know why, maybe it was hunger or maybe it was the ghost of a memory — something hazy and warm about sharing snacks with a friend in a movie theater, greasy fingers brushing against someone else’s in the popcorn tub, laughter rising unguarded. He hadn’t opened the bag; it sat there now like a relic, proof that he could still choose, that he could pick up something unnecessary, something human without a handler’s voice directing him to. He stared at it longer than he meant to, trying to remember the taste, to recall what it felt like to eat because he wanted to, not because someone handed him a tray and told him when to chew.
The rifle leaned against the far wall, half-swallowed by shadow. It was clean, oiled, and functional: everything he had been taught to value. Every instinct told him to keep it close, to hold it ready, to sleep with his fingers brushing the trigger. But he hated looking at it now. Every time he did, his hands itched with the memory of how they’d trembled, unwanted, squeezing triggers against people he couldn’t even name. He wanted to shove it away, throw it into a river, bury it deep enough in the ground that the earth would forget it. But he couldn’t, not yet. Weapons meant survival, and survival was all he had left. He was too afraid of what would happen if he let himself be defenseless. He was a hunted man now, and prey in their own game of life or death.
Bucky lowered his head, pressing his forehead into the crook of his human arm, metal fingers curling hard against the fabric of the jacket. For the first time since finding this place, the silence pressed heavier than the memories. It wasn’t just the absence of noise; it was the absence of purpose. He realized, with a hollow kind of dream, that he didn’t know what came next. He had always been good at disappearing, good at erasing himself into the shadows, following missions that left no trace of who he was. But now, with no mission and no orders, what was he supposed to be? Who was he supposed to be? The idea of building a life felt foreign, like asking a weapon to choose its own target. He didn’t even know what made him laugh, or what kind of man he wanted to be, if he was even allowed that choice anymore.
A sound escaped him then, sudden – a half-laugh, half-sob. It startled him, raw and cracked, the kind of sound that didn’t belong in a soldier’s throat. He froze, his heart pounding rapidly, because even hearing his own voice felt dangerous. He hadn’t spoken without a command in so long that he wasn’t sure what he sounded like anymore. The sound lingered, fragile and trembling, before dissolving back into silence. Bucky pressed his palm harder against his chest, as if he could hold the unraveling pieces inside.
The jacket smelled faintly of leather and oil, not his own. He didn’t know whose it had been before. Maybe stolen like he’d done, maybe scavenged from some forgotten storage room. But it was warm, and warmth was enough for now. He drew it closer, burying his face in the fabric like a child might with a blanket, and let the world fade around the edges.
His boot nudged the bag of chips, and the crinkle of plastic broke the silence. It was such a ridiculous sound in such a grim place that, for the barest flicker of a second, his lips twitched upward in something almost like a smile. A jagged, fractured curve, but genuine. Proof that he hadn’t completely lost that part of himself.
Tomorrow, maybe he will open the bag. Maybe he will eat because he wants to. Maybe, just maybe, he will remember what it means to live instead of just survive.
For tonight, he let the silence fold around him, heavy but not unbearable, and closed his eyes. For tonight, exhaustion won out, and he drifted into uneasy sleep, the bag of chips and the echo of a name – Bucky – kept him tethered just enough to the man he had once been.
At first, there was only an empty black void, the kind of hollow dark where commands used to wait, but then a flicker of color bled through, fragile and persistent. A street corner in Brooklyn, cracked sidewalks warmed by the summer sun, and the shouts of kids echoing off tenement walls. He could smell the dust, the faint tang of gasoline, and the heat rising off brick buildings. It was so vivid it almost hurt.
Steve was there – his Steve, not the broad-shouldered soldier with a shield, but the boy he’d grown up with: small and stubborn, with his chin jutting forward like he had had something to prove to the world. He was walking fast, trying to match Bucky’s stride, his hands shoved into his pockets.
“You don’t have to keep watching out for me,” Steve muttered, breath short but proud. “I can handle myself fine.”
Bucky’s laugh had come so easily then, warm and unguarded, rolling out of him in a way he couldn’t imagine anymore. He stepped closer, elbowing Steve before he could duck or scoot away, the gesture easy as breathing.
“Sure you can,” he said, his voice carrying the kind of certainty Steve couldn’t yet believe in himself. “But that doesn’t mean I’m letting you walk into fights alone. You’re stuck with me, Steve.”
Steve glanced up at him then, squinting against the sun, and his mouth tilted into a lopsided grin – half gratitude, half challenge. It had been simple back then: just two carefree friends against the world, no one to answer to, and no one pulling their strings. They had been whole. They had been free.
The memory now blurred at the edges, colors bleeding away until sunlight dulled into shadow. The streets dissolved as the buildings crumbled, and suddenly it wasn’t a boy looking at him anymore but a man – Steve by his side, dirt and grime soaking into his uniform, his voice breaking through alarms, gunfire, and chaos. ‘Bucky? It’s me, Buck.’
Bucky’s hands twitched, reaching out for him, but the dream slipped away like smoke. Steve’s face fractured between the boy and the man, the grin and the desperate plea, until Bucky could no longer tell which one was real. All he could hear was his own name, torn out of Steve’s throat like a wound.
When he woke, it wasn’t gentle. His eyes snapped open at the faintest sound – some distant scrap of metal clanging against pavement far outside, maybe a car door slammed by someone with no idea he was nearby. His body reacted before his mind had caught up, his muscles coiled and ready, his metal arm flexing slightly as his human hand reached for the rifle against the wall. It was a reflex, burned so deeply into his nerves that it couldn't be erased. For a beat, he was the Soldier again: programmed, lethal, and alert. But the sound faded, and the silence folded back in, and he was left standing in a hollowed-out room with no target, no handler, no mission. Just his own ragged breath echoing too loud in his ears.
The weight of his own readiness made him nauseous as he lowered the rifle slowly, his fingers lightly trembling where they brushed the cool metal. It was ridiculous how his body was still primed to kill even when his mind screamed against it. He hated that about himself – hating how much of him was still theirs. Bucky pressed the heel of his palm hard against his temple, as if he could crush out the wires and commands buried there, another silent hope that the pressure alone could erase decades of conditioning. But there was no relief, only the ache of realization: it would take more than one night, more than one stolen safehouse to peel away the layers of what they had made him into.
Bucky sat back down, slower this time, dragging the crumpled bag of chips into his lap. His hands lingered over the plastic, not yet opening it. He studied it the way someone might study a relic from another life: the bright clash against the muted scenery around him was an obvious out-of-place feature. Yet, here it was, a choice he had made without instruction, a thing that had no purpose beyond being wanted. He thought about how strange it was – it felt almost sacred – to sit with a gun on one side and a bag of snacks on the other, as if he had one foot in two entirely different lives and no bridge between them.
Finally, he tore the bag open, the crinkle sharp in the silence. The smell was almost salty, sweet, and comforting in a way he couldn’t explain. Bucky stared down at the several shaped treats, and his metal hand hesitated, then withdrew. He didn’t know why he couldn’t bring himself to let that part of him touch something so small and normal. Instead, he reached in with his regular fingers, pulled out a single piece, and held it up like it might disappear if he blinked too long. He ate it slowly, cautiously, as if testing the world itself. The crunch was startling, the flavor overpowering after so many sterile and calculated meals, but he managed to swallow it down. For the briefest moment, the act of eating something by choice – not because it was handed to him or because someone had barked orders at him – felt like rebellion.
He then ate another, and another. The more he chewed, the more the taste tugged at the edges of memories too faint to hold: sunlight on his face and Steve laughing with his mouth full, his lips murmuring the name ‘Becks.’ A time when the world had been bright enough for things like this to matter. His throat tightened, but he forced himself to keep going until the bag lay balled up and empty beside him. It wasn’t just food; it was small and fragile proof that he was still here, capable of wanting and still human somewhere beneath the scars and steel.
But the quiet pressed in again soon after, the memories returned, and the guilt seeped through the cracks. He couldn’t stay in this place forever. They would come for him eventually: SHIELD remnants, HYDRA stragglers, maybe even Steve. The thought of Steve twisted in his gut, sharp and raw. Steve had called him by his name, almost silently begging him to remember. Bucky had remembered enough to pull him out of the river, and enough to run instead of finishing the job. But then what? He couldn’t face him, not yet, not when every face he closed his eyes against was someone he had killed.
Bucky rose, his boots scraping against the floor, and pulled the jacket tighter around his frame. His eyes fell once more on the rifle, and for a long moment, he hovered between leaving it and taking it with him. The choice clawed at him – he wanted to walk away from it to prove he could, but fear rooted him to the spot. In the end, he slung it over his shoulder, hating himself for the relief that came with its familiar weight.
Survival demanded it.
When he finally stepped outside, the air was sharp with the early morning breeze, the sky a pale wash of color through the cloud-streaked sight. The world kept moving, oblivious to the soldier walking its edges: people drove by, lives continued with laughter, smiles, and arguments in breakfast kitchens he would never see. The normalcy of it was almost unbearable. Bucky stood in the shadow of the concrete, his breath fogging faintly in the chill, feeling the raw wound of how far he was from that kind of life.
Still, he walked, one foot in front of the other, with no mission or orders. Only steps into an uncertain world. His body ached with exhaustion, his mind still crowded with shadows, and it was enough to remind him: he wasn’t just a weapon. Not anymore.
Maybe not yet the man Steve expected and wanted him to be, but not The Winter Soldier, either. Something in between, stumbling forward.
Something alive.