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Growing up as a sickly child with a single mother who could barely keep food on the table between paying for rent and the medicine he needed had not been pleasant. Watching his mother waste away to nothing because she gave him the majority of the food to help him recover from his latest illness was worse.
And then Bucky happened.
James Buchanan Barnes with three sisters and two jobs to help his mother feed them, befriended scrawny, sickly Steve Rogers and the two of them are thick as thieves from then on out. He’s there when Steve’s cough is so bad he feels that he might cough out his lungs. He’s there when Steve can’t sleep, because it feels like he’s drowning with every breath he takes. He’s there when Steve’s mom finally passes away.
He very quickly became Steve Rogers’ whole world. And then he decided to join the army. Steve refused to let Bucky go alone because there’s no telling what sort of trouble Bucky would get into without him.
It takes becoming a science experiment to do it. Steve screamed when the pain hit, but refused to let them stop. Steve Rogers would follow Bucky Barnes to the ends of the earth, or die trying.
And of course, by the time Steve catches up, Bucky’s already been declared Missing, Presumed Dead.
The first thing Steve felt when he found Bucky was relief. Bucky was alive. He hadn’t been too late.
“I thought you were dead,” Steve told him.
“I thought you were smaller,” Bucky replied.
The second thing Steve felt was anger. Yes, Bucky was alive, but he was also covered in bruises, the most noticeable of which were on his face. Someone had hurt Bucky, had left bruises up and down his body.
Someone in Hydra.
Captain America had been America’s dancing monkey, getting up on stage to get people to buy war bonds and finance and support the war. Steve Rogers was going to burn Hydra to the ground.
The best way to go after Hydra was to join up with Colonel Phillips, Howard Stark, and Peggy Carter with the SSR. Steve, followed by Bucky and a few others with a grudge to bear against Hydra, spent the next several months tracking down Hydra bases and destroying them. They became the biggest thorn in Hydra’s side.
Occasionally they were sent somewhere else than where Steve wanted them to go next, but rather than arguing with the SSR, Bucky convinced Steve that they should go along with their plans instead. It was one of these missions that led to Bucky falling from the train.
Captain America destroyed the rest of Hydra, watched the Red Skull die, and crashed a plane into the arctic. Steve Rogers’ last thought was of Bucky falling into the ice.
Then he woke up.
Steve woke up in a new century, with nearly everyone he knew dead and buried for years. Bucky, he thinks, dead the longest. Dead for decades while Steve only slept. He spends most of his time after waking in the local gym, beating punching bags into nearby walls, not seeing the bags, but the faces of the ones that had sent him and the others after the train.
“Captain America is dead,” he hears from behind him. He’s only just starting to turn around, when he hears a voice that makes his heart skip a beat.
“You’re lying,” Bucky says. “You’re trying to trick me.”
“There are no tricks here, Sgt. Barnes.”
Steve ignores the man, attention focused solely on the phone in the man’s hand with a video playing – a video of Bucky. The screen went black for a moment and then switched to another video.
“I don’t want to remember,” Bucky says. “Please, I don’t want to remember that Steve is dead.”
“The process to remove your memories will be extremely painful.”
“I don’t care. It can’t possibly be any more painful than living with the knowledge that Steve is dead. Take them away. Take them all away. I don’t want to remember.”
The video stopped, and Steve looked up at the man.
“I can give him back to you,” the man said, “but he won’t be the same.”
Steve doesn’t even hesitate to reply, “Take me to him.”
Steve could hardly breath, barely paying any attention as the man introduced himself as Alexander Pierce, didn’t register the Hydra symbols painted along the walls as Pierce lead him down this hallway and that hallway. Steve barely breathed at all until he finally saw Bucky.
Bucky is alive. Again.
“Bucky,” Steve said, the name falling off his lips in a disbelieving but hopeful whisper.
“Who the hell is Bucky,” Bucky replied.
Steve Rogers’ whole world shattered into tiny pieces and he hit his knees, sobbing.
“What happened to his arm?” Steve asked.
“The fall from the train did not take his life, but it did take his arm. It was replaced in Russia a few years after he was found,” Pierce answered. He refilled Steve’s glass of scotch, and even though it wouldn’t get him drunk, Steve drank it anyway.
“His memories?”
“A machine was used to wipe them, but the machine is not foolproof. A few weeks he was wiped, the memories started to return and when he remembered you were dead, he begged to be wiped again. Now, we wipe him at least once a week when he’s out of cryo. It’s much kinder than letting him remember.”
“You keep him in cryostasis? Why?”
“There have always been theories that the serum used on you would allow you to survive through the ice. We wanted to be able to give him back to you when you were finally found. In the meantime, he has been helping us.”
“Helping Hydra, you mean,” Steve said.
“Don’t lump all of us in with the Red Skull,” Pierce said. “He went crazy and crossed far over the line. He was one man, who forced people to follow him through fear. Everyone here is a willing member of Hydra.”
“Including Bucky?”
“He didn’t at first. It was understandable considering his confrontations with the Red Skull and that chapter of Hydra. But he came to see that we were different. He agreed to stay in our custody and follow our orders before we wiped his memories. His only request was that if you were found, that the two of you be reunited.”
“How long until his memories come back?”
“He was last wiped two weeks ago, so the memories should start returning within the week.”
“I want to stay with him.”
“You are being watched heavily by SHIELD. They are not aware of our existence, and I would prefer to keep it that way. If you can manage to wait a few days, I can insure that those of us within SHIELD are the ones to watch you, allowing you to come here whenever you wish.”
“Three days,” Steve said. “Three days, and I come for Bucky, whether you have your people in place or not. And if he’s harmed in any way…”
“He won’t be. I’ll make sure of it,” Pierce said, smiling.
Pierce came through on Day Two. A SHIELD agent came right to his apartment door.
“Hail Hydra,” the agent whispered, before leading him back to Bucky.
“Steve,” Bucky said, crying. “You’re alive.”
“So are you, Buck,” Steve replied. They spend several minutes just hugging, reassuring each other that they are alive, and they won’t allow themselves to be parted again.
“These people are Hydra, Buck,” Steve said, several minutes later.
“I know,” Bucky replied. “They’re not like the Red Skull.”
“I know. Pierce said you’re here willingly. Are you?”
“I don’t remember everything yet,” Bucky said, frowning. “There are a few things they made me do that I don’t like, but there are a few fragments that make me think I did sign on willingly.”
“If that changes, if you want out, you tell me, and we leave together,” Steve said.
“You’re staying?”
“I’m staying.”
Captain America may have been the paragon of righteousness, but Steve Rogers only ever cared about Bucky Barnes. If getting Bucky back meant playing ball with Hydra, then Hail Hydra.
Tony Stark found a new bottle of whisky sitting on his bar. A red, white, and blue bow was tied around the neck of the bottle.