A/N: Chapter 1/24; Starts in the final scenes of CA:TWS, something about the character arcs spoke to me on a spiritual level and I had to explore that. For those of you who have read my Inside Out, I know some of the motifs may at first seem redundant but I assure you the story is thematically unique.
Status: Target terminated, Mission complete, Operative wounded; Unit in need of repair, multiple flesh wounds.
Report to base? … … …
He shook his head. Running protocol was ineffective. There was an error.
Report to base? No. Base has been infiltrated. Base is HYDRA.
Infiltrated… no. Base had operated as usual. Orders were delivered, target was later deemed non-hostile, orders were then countermanded by operative. Objective in question. HYDRA in question.
Base compromised.
Mission aborted.
Target abandoned.
Operative AWOL. … … …
His mission floated, unconscious but alive, several meters below him. That man. The one who had saved him.
Who the hell is Bucky? Bucky?
He shook his head again and stared back down at the charred stars and stripes below. His mission, his savior, his… no. The man he owed. Eye for an eye. Life for a life. For now.
He leapt into the water and retrieved the enemy agent-the other agent.
Rogers?
No. The other agent. Who is Bucky?
He dropped the man on the shore, vital signs noticeable, and walked away.
Am I?
He had many monikers, code names. Operative 1. The Asset. The Winter Soldier. But those were titles, not him.
'The 107th. Sergeant James Barnes. Shippin' out for England first thing tomorrow.'
He stumbled along the shore. That was his voice, he remembered saying that. And yet, it sounded alien. Even more startling, the memory was more than his voice. He saw that face, the face he had just pummeled black and blue, the face he had left vacant on the shore. Captain America, but not. Smaller, thinner, frailer, weaker. Hurt. He would have easily killed him.
''Cause I'm with you to the end of the line, pal.'
He fell this time. Landing on one knee. His mission had said that, had frozen the unit-no, he had stopped the unit because his mission had said that. This Captain had said that, instead of fighting back, instead of defending himself, he'd shown something incomprehensible, far-off and unsaid, and then submitted. He'd said that like it meant a thousand things at once and, because of that, there was no longer any fight left in him. But he hadn't said that first. The Captain hadn't said that first. He had. James Barnes had.
James Buchanan Barnes.
'Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.'
The memories fit together across stretches of blood and ice. They triggered something deeper.
"Bucky," he muttered as he looked at the dirt, the blood, and mud on his hand, then on the unit.
'You've known me your whole life.'
"Not anymore."
He clenched shut the unit's digits and stood again. He might have been this 'Bucky' once, but he clearly wasn't now. This thing he was now was anything but the man, the friend who had said those things, felt those things as he'd looked at that tiny, helpless kid in a back alley. A kid like that, he would feel nothing for, no remorse. The man he had faced, bigger, better, stronger, he'd nearly killed, would have if it weren't for that inexplicable expression of surrender.
Why didn't he fight back? Why didn't he kill me when he had the chance?
'I'm not going to fight you. You're my friend.'
Why didn't I?
He paused and let his head fall into the unit's palm, hoping that the flood of memories would trickle out, or somehow organize into a life. No such luck. All he had was confusion, a hollow sense of guilt, and his rage. He fought the urge to scream and trudged on, ignoring the fourth thing, the feeling he couldn't identify. Something close to curiosity which he couldn't remember feeling and therefore shouldn't be able to compare this to. More holes and déjà vu all pointing back to missing time.
He was broken, ruined. That he could feel in the creak of the unit and the ache of his flesh. The emotions.
Status: inoperative.
He would normally return to base, endure the repairs, be erased. That felt the worst, the purging. He never remembered what they took, only the feeling of it being ripped from him. That would never happen again. He was AWOL, he'd never not completed a mission. Except with this man, and now he had a feeling that even that wasn't a first. Had he spared him before?
He heard Rogers gasp behind him and picked up the pace.
Steve. His name is Steve. He had him on the ropes.
He swallowed and hardened his face. This wasn't the time to have a cognitive break. He had to figure out what was going on, who he was and why he'd aborted the mission. He had to figure out where these flashes were coming from, whose voice that was. If he was this James Barnes. He had to find the missing parts again.
Status: Mission in progress. Gather intel on James Barnes.
He stopped at the tree line again and looked back. Rogers was sitting upright now, hand on his abdomen, but operational.
'What happened to you?'
'I joined the army.'
He felt like he'd been kneed in the chest. His wind was gone and his head was swimming. What was that? Grief? Anger? It was a flood of emotions long-since erased. Sweat beaded on his upper lip and he fought to breathe steadily. Thoughts flew through his mind like echoes, sounding like him but severed from their source, the emotion behind them.
Why? What have they done to you? Can you go back to the way you were before? What about Steve, my Steve? Not a weapon. A good kid from Brooklyn. My best friend.
Without warning, his stomach rejected its contents and he found himself heaving in the grass. Head pounding and suddenly very empty, he found his feet again and shakily made his way up the hill, stopping several times to retch futilely. His processed, bio-engineered meal was long gone. At this point he was just emptying his resolution.
Did I just attempt to eliminate James'-my best friend?
He looked at his hands again. Those hands were stained with dozens of missions, liters of blood that would never wash away. Innocent? Guilty? Deserving? He had no idea. He never asked, never thought. He just killed, ruthlessly and efficiently. Many more, those not his mission, he'd wantonly caught in the crossfire. Collateral damage.
So much blood on his hands, now that of a man who had once-possibly-been a friend. My best friend. He wiped the unit on his pant leg, trying to smear off the good kid from Brooklyn's blood, but there was just so much of it. Everywhere.
He was bleeding. Much of it was his own blood.
You deserve it, something muttered deep inside of him. He coughed up another retch of HYDRA steeling, leaving him weak and vulnerable. Was this James Barnes? The scared man, abandoned in a factory to mutter uselessly in the dark?
He blinked furiously until it was greenery, not iron panels, before his eyes. He was hallucinating from the blood loss.
He needed to bind the flesh wounds, set his broken arm. He also needed to hide the unit before the public caught sight of him. Dizzy and disoriented he stumbled through the woods, then down a steel catwalk, fire and smoke choking him, then again, in the woods. He leaned against a tree trunk and gagged again, but finally he was empty.
'Who was that man on the bridge? I knew him… I knew him…'
This wasn't the first time. He'd failed to eliminate this man before. On that bridge. HYDRA had taken that from him for some reason, taken so much.
HYDRA had made him empty and then filled him with gore. That much was certain. The man on the bridge, he had known him. Several bridges, several lives. He'd known him, he'd saved him, all until he'd tried to kill him.
Because I tried to kill him first.
He twitched involuntarily, shivering from a ghost shock. He remembered this tactic, there was a scientist… with dogs? No, that had been rewards. What he'd faced, that was HYDRA, that was torture. And not for the first time. Needles and serums and scalpels.
He lurched forward out of the lab and into a pine tree. He still needed a cover and bandaging and he needed them fast. An empty camp-site provided him with an opportunity for both.
There was a clearing ahead, tent pitched and fire still smoldering, but abandoned. A radio chattered nearby, the tone of urgency drawing his attention. Kneeling under cover, he listened to the news report frantically being relayed.
"…confirmed an internal agency attack by a division known as SHIELD. Reports say that the operation was compromised by yet another secret agency operating inside of SHIELD known as HYDRA, and yes, those of you old enough to remember, that is the same HYDRA as first found their fall at the hands of Captain Rogers. Further intelligence has been released revealing that Secretary Alexander Pierce, killed today, was not a victim of this cell but it's ringleader."
Pierce. He knew Pierce. He had been his primary handler.
"…responsible for over two hundred deaths in his time in office, Pierce can be blamed also for the attacks on the capital this week via the assassin code-named Winter Soldier. Regarding this suspect, authorities have little to report, as his whereabouts are unknown. Last seen at the crafts' docking area, he is considered at large. We've been instructed to warn the public that he is armed and dangerous, do not approach. Description as follows: six foot, two hundred twenty pounds, shoulder length brown hair and blue eyes with a metal arm. I repeat a metal arm. Please call the police with any sightings of this man. In further news, Captain Steve Rogers has been reported alive…"
He was a criminal. He'd known he was a killer but hearing that his killings labelled him as a criminal from a news source was jarring. He was a wanted fugitive and his handler was dead, his whole world tossed in the air, the pieces left where they'd fallen. HYDRA sounded like it was a terrorist organization. What did that make him? Was he a bad guy?
Pierce had assured him many times he was helping to save the world. No. Not those words. He was shaping the century. Into what? Something better. According to whom? What was better? Dozens, maybe more people dead. Leaving what?
'If I don't do this a lot of people are gonna die.' He'd said that, Captain America, Steve Rogers.
If Rogers had been stopping the death, that meant he'd been ensuring it. The news reporter had called him an assassin. Was death the only thing he brought? Had his 'good works' been shaping the world by killing people who were dangerous or just in the way? Progress had been HYDRA's goal, but progress towards what? He didn't know. Never asked. Progress didn't require people getting out of its way. It required help and cooperation, not elimination of dissenters. That wasn't freedom.
Sounds like Hitler to me. Fascists lead with control and death. Bullies. There was that voice again. On its heels came another flash.
'I don't like bullies, Buck. I just can't back down from someone like that. It's not right. Beatin' down people who are different, who don't agree. That's not what we're about.'
He was in the chair, handler looking down at him. He felt conflicted, deeply torn through and through. 'I knew him. I knew him.'
'Wipe 'em.' Pierce was familiar with that command. He'd said it many, many times. With dark hair and moustache, less wrinkles. Bruised and bleeding. In a suit and tie and a big grin. Many, many times.
He hadn't agreed, and what had Pierce done? Gotten him out of the way by taking away his mind.
Just another bully.
Something crackled to his right. His earpiece was picking up something. A tinny voice reported Pierce was dead, ordered him to return and be debriefed. He took it out and smashed it in his palm. Something told him it was high-time he stopped being told what to do, what to think. He needed to finds some things out for himself.
A cry went up behind him. He whipped around to eliminate it. Just a bird. He stumbled to his knees. He felt light-headed again. The camp site was starting to seem too exposed. He needed to move on. One shredded shirt, a stolen change of clothing and hat later, he was marching a little more steadily towards the city. Something in him-James-remembered that people who wanted to find things out went to libraries and museums.
This city just happened to host many of both.