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“Begging for your life won’t make a fucking difference to me,” he says; his word robotic, his stare icy cold.
“No, please, I —”
The man has no time to say anything else, because he puts a bullet clean through the center of his forehead. The snow behind becomes dotted in bright red and the corpse drops to the ground.
His assassin walks away, feeling just as dead inside.
When he wakes up, it feels like a jolt of electricity. (Unfortunately, he knows how that feels).
I’m here. Not there. I didn’t do that because I wanted to. That wasn’t me. That wasn’t—
The Winter Soldier — wait, no, that’s not his name anymore, he keeps forgetting — Bucky attempts to take deep breaths to prevent himself from hyperventilating. It fails, because before long he feels like throwing up, although that might not just be from over-oxygenation.
He keeps having these. Dreams. But they’re more than that. They’re memories. Maybe a bit mangled. But even though he’s been brainwashed over and over and over, he knows what he’s done.
They wouldn’t let him forget that. They wouldn’t let him forget his deadliness. They’d never let him forget that he was the Soldier, and that he belonged to HYDRA. That he was their weapon. Their tool. Their puppet.
His memories haunt him. There’s no other word for it. The ghosts of what he’s done, of who he’s killed, sneak up on him at night when he’s most vulnerable and scream at him, swallow him up, fuck him up so badly that he’s left curled up in a ball, covering his ears, telling himself please go away please go away pleasegoaway pleasegoaway that wasn’t me thatwasn’tmetheymademedoittheymademe —
Like he is now.
As slowly as he can manage, he takes his hands away from his ears. It’s okay now. Probably. Mostly. He’s alive, isn’t he? He knows he didn’t want to do any of that, doesn’t he?
Not there, see? here. Not on a mission. Here. In this room. Here.
He takes in the bedroom, small but comfortable, with its plain sky-blue walls and simple dark-brown furniture and the comfortable bed he’s in. The sheets are soft and beige, but soaked with sweat now. Nightmares do that to you. Deep breaths. Here. Not there. Not Hydra.
Steve is too good to him. A monster, that’s what Bucky feels like. What he is. Steve, however, doesn’t seem to think that. He lets Bucky stay in his apartment and doesn’t seem to care that he’s a trained assassin, dangerous even without weapons. Doesn’t seem to care that sometimes he has relapses and doesn’t recognize anyone around him. Doesn’t seem to care that he’s a widely sought-after fugitive and murderer. (Steve says he ought to be considered a prisoner of war.)
Aside from Steve, only Sam and Natasha — Natalia, he remembers her as — know he’s here. They come over often to see if he’s okay. When he feels like talking, he tells them he is. They play along, but they make sure he eats and ask him what he remembers.
Bucky’s thankful, of course, but it’s not like he deserves it. Not the room or the food or the implicit understanding that he’s not a bad person, just a manipulated one who’s been used by bad people. Who’s been turned into a weapon against his will.
He doesn’t understand why these people aren’t afraid of him. He’s broken down during the low points of a conversation and not recognized where he’s in, causing him to seek out a knife or a gun because the only way he was safe back then was when there was a weapon in his hand, because the only way he could be safe was when he acted like a weapon himself. He’s talked in his sleep and he knows the words that have come out of him are words of no mercy, of no regard for the lives he’s ended. He doesn’t talk much, because it’s painful and terrifying and overwhelming.
And yet, they reach out to him anyway.
Natalia can understand most of what he’s been through. She’s been through similar things herself. He remembers her, some of her. He was her trainer. Her lover. Most of his feelings for her remain, but it’s not the same. She used to be his sun, his stars, the only good thing about his past; and while he still loves her, he’s not the same, and neither is she. But she helps him rebuild himself, helps him recover. Back then, she was the only one who recognized he was still a human being underneath his role of Hydra’s most prized weapon. She understands when he tells her he wants to atone for his crimes, even if he didn’t commit them on purpose. And they acknowledge each other and the roles they had in their pasts — she calls him James, he calls her Natalia. No one else is allowed to do the same.
Steve is his safehouse. His home. He’s the holder of the before picture; the one who knows everything about who he was before Hydra turned him into the Winter Soldier. They were inseparable in childhood, on the battlefield; Steve knows every little detail about the real man before the Soldier, and Bucky is starting to remember everything about the skinny little son of immigrants before he was America’s favorite superhero. He knows how he’s always felt about Steve. His face, his image is the only thing that kicked him back into real-person mode. Even when terminating Captain America was the only thing wired into his brain, repeating itself over and over and over again; even when they fought, there was still a part of him that was screaming, you can’t kill him, he’s your friend . It was that part the one that took over, in the end. The one that managed to override Hydra’s programming, somehow. Steve’s presence had always been a sign of home for him. They say home is where your heart is. Maybe he somehow he’s always felt like Steve is his heart.
Sam is new. He knows he sided with Steve and Nat to help defeat him when he was the Soldier, so that’s why he trusts him. Steve trusts him, too, and always seems to be near him, so any misgivings Bucky had about trusting a new, completely unknown person are completely gone now. Sam seems to be always rational, always realistic when he talks to him and how he’s feeling. Yet he always seems to be the most positive, and has managed smiles out of Bucky when it’s seemed near damn impossible. Sam’s the one who started sticking magnets onto his arm once in a while, to start removing from his brain the concept of an alien killing machine permanently attached to his body. To make his arm less threatening to himself.
Friends. That’s what they are. He hasn’t had those in a long, long time, and he hadn’t realized how much he missed that.
He won’t ever be the same James Buchanan Barnes he used to be. He knows that. They all do. Nobody’s pretending to get him back to how he was. He just wants to be a new version of himself. A new James Buchanan Barnes. A new Bucky. One who knows he’s more than what they made him into. (Intellectually, he knows that. Emotionally, it’ll be a long time before he manages to internalize it.)
Maybe that will happen sooner than he thinks. Maybe, with the help of his friends, he can leave the idea of him being the murderous Winter Soldier, like a snake shedding its old skin. Maybe he can learn to like himself again. Maybe he can even forgive himself.
One can only hope.