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"I had a memory," Bucky announced at breakfast one morning.
Bucky said it the way most people might say, "I had an aneurysm," or "I had a bath in napalm." He'd gotten most of his memories back, but there were still gaps. Mostly of Hydra, if only because those memories made up seventy percent of his life, but also, because he was actively trying to repress them.
The Avengers stopped eating. Except for Tony, but not even an actual apocalypse could stop Tony's appetite.
"What did you remember?" asked Steve, continuing to cut up his pancakes, trying to give Bucky some semblance of normalcy.
"Five years."
Steve dropped his knife. Usually Bucky's answers were along the lines of, "I killed a Chinese diplomat in 1976," or, "Sometimes they put a dog collar on me and made me eat off the floor."
Tony whistled. "That's pretty impressive for someone who didn't even remember how to use a remote last night."
"I remember how to use a remote," said Bucky. "I just didn't remember how to use a TV remote."
Everyone except Bucky winced at the implication.
Steve took a deep breath and picked up his fork. "Okay. What years?"
"1993 to 1998."
"Do you know what triggered the memory?"
"Yes."
"What was it?"
"Sin City."
Steve paled and then glared at Tony. "You showed him a Rodriguez film? What the hell is wrong with you?"
Tony shrugged, but even he looked a little guilty. "You said no war movies."
"What was it about Sin City that triggered you, Bucky?" Steve asked, not entirely sure this would be an appropriate story for the breakfast table. Bucky hadn't touched the pancakes Steve had piled on his plate. That, combined with Sin City, combined with five years, didn't bode well. Even Tony might stop eating.
"So go ahead, doll."
Bucky's Mickey Rourke impression was eerily accurate.
"Go- What?"
"That is the line that triggered the memory," said Bucky.
"Why?"
"Because I've been called that."
"Doll?"
"Yes."
Bucky used to call women "Doll" sometimes before the war, but that wasn't something you called men. Steve prayed this wasn't going to be like the dog collar memory.
"Who called you that?" asked Natasha. She picked up her fork and for a second Steve couldn't tell if she was about to take a pancake or go stab whoever had hurt Bucky. Despite his bad first (and second, and third) impressions, she had ended up fiercely protective of him.
"My handlers."
"At Hydra?"
"At the Dollhouse."
Natasha gave a sharp inhale that would have been a gasp from anyone else.
"You know what that is?" asked Clint.
"Apparently not," said Natasha. "I thought it was an urban legend."
"What is the legend?" asked Thor.
"Programmable people."
"Like Hydra did to Sergeant Barnes?"
"No," said Natasha. "What Hydra did to Bucky was about destroying his identity. The Dollhouse was about creating identities. You got wiped clean and loaded with a new personality, custom ordered by the very wealthy and the very well-connected. Then after five years, you woke up with no memory of it and a truckload of cash. It was all supposedly volunteer."
"What did the clients do with them?" asked Steve.
"Whatever they wanted. Solve a crime, rob a bank, cook an omelet, trick their old high school classmates into thinking they have a life," said Nat. "But mostly sex."
Steve pushed his pancakes away.
Natasha turned to Bucky. "Were you a doll?"
"I was number one," Bucky monotoned. It was even eerier than his Mickey Rourke impression.
"Was the Dollhouse part of Hydra?"
"The Dollhouse gave Hydra what they needed."
"What did they need?"
"SHIELD."
"How could Dollhouse give Hydra SHIELD?"
"Rossum."
Steve was getting tired of Bucky's one-word answers, but Bucky was his best friend who had literally the world's worst case of PTSD, so Steve tried to cut him some slack.
"The Enron of the pharmaceutical world?" asked Tony. "SHIELD had some ties to Rossum, but cut them all right before the company went under in... 1998."
Bucky gave a grim little smile that was eerier than his monotone and his Mickey Rourke impression combined.
"I don't understand," said Steve, who was tired of constantly feeling like he'd missed an episode of the TV show he was watching.
Bucky took a deep breath. "Natasha was not wrong, but Thor was not wrong either. The Dollhouse had a chair. Hydra had a chair too. Theirs was more invasive, but the technology was the same. Epiflourescent lighting."
"Really?" asked Tony. "Did they use neural electric biolinks to-"
He suddenly seemed to notice all the glares he was getting. "Relax. I'm not going to try to recreate Hydra tech."
"The technology was one of Hydra's gifts to Rossum. In exchange, Hydra made friends with senators, congressmen, and SHIELD. The very wealthy, and the very well-connected." Bucky's Natasha impression was strangely not eerie at all, which in itself was kind of eerie. "I don't know if they expected Topher to perfect it."
"What's a Topher?" asked Steve.
"The science guy."
"I thought that was a man named William," said Thor, who looked like he'd missed a whole season of the TV show he was watching.
"You said the technology was one of Hydra's gifts," said Natasha. "There were others?"
"Me."
She frowned. "Hydra gave away their asset?"
"Loaned," said Bucky. "Five year contract, just like the regular dolls. They even made me volunteer, like the regular dolls, because Adelle only took volunteers. She was still pretending the Dollhouse was a humanitarian organization back then. I think she knew there was something wrong with me, but the deal with Hydra was important to Clyde Harding, and she was very good at pretending. They gave me the designation Echo. They wiped me. Then they dressed me up and sent me out."
Steve wished Bucky was still giving one-word answers. He had a flashback to the first time he'd taken Bucky shopping in the twentieth century. Bucky had taken one look at Macy's menswear department and whispered, "Do you think we should tell them someone ripped all their jeans?"
He wondered if the Dollhouse had ever dressed Bucky in ripped jeans. If a client had ever asked for that.
"It's okay, Stevie," said Bucky. "It was better than Hydra. At least they made me like it."
Steve had been right. This wasn't a conversation they should have had over breakfast. Even Tony had stopped eating.
"Then something happened," said Bucky. "There was a technological anomaly. A composite event."
"What do you mean?" asked Steve.
"There are thirty-eight personalities in my head, not counting Echo, the Winter soldier, and Bucky," he said, matter-of-factly.
After a long moment, Bruce said, "That sounds... crowded. I can barely handle two."
"Well, one of them is pretty big," said Bucky. No one laughed, because they couldn't tell if he was joking or not.
"Can you take them out of him?" Steve asked Bruce.
Before he could answer, Bucky said, "I don't think I want them out. I wasn't really aware of them until I remembered, but now that I think about it, Hydra probably didn't teach me the lyrics to "Say My Name." I can access the imprints now. Some of them could be useful. One of them has extensive medical training, and one knows a pressure point that will make your eyeballs pop out. Also, I like having them in there. There's more good than bad in my brain, even with the serial killer."
"Serial killer?" asked Bruce.
"Don't worry. I have him under control."
"Either way a brain scan would be a good idea. One I can't believe we didn't think of sooner. I could take a look if you'd like, although to be honest, I'm not quite sure where to start."
Bucky shrugged. "As long as you don't decide by throwing a dart."
That time they did laugh, a little.
"You ever used that pressure point on anyone?" asked Natasha.
"Yes," said Bucky. "Clyde Harding."
"You're the reason Rossum folded in 1998," said Tony. He actually sounded impressed. Steve didn't think he'd ever heard Tony sound impressed.
"They wanted to weaponize the technology."
"Jesus," said Clint, and Natasha put her hand over his.
"The composite event didn't happen until 1997. By the time Echo had self-actualized enough to make a plan, he knew the best plan was to wait until Hydra came to retrieve him."
"Wouldn't that just give you two enemies?" asked Steve. It was weird and awful hearing Bucky refer to himself in the third person, but at least they'd finally broken his habit of calling himself "it."
"Three," said Bucky. "The Winter Soldier would be returned to my body, but Echo believed he could fight the Winter Soldier and win. I had been out of Hydra's chair for five years, and while the Dollhouse's was more elegant, it was also less efficient."
"Was Echo right?" asked Natasha, and Steve remembered the lecture she'd given him on chosen names and proper pronouns when he'd seen a man- woman kissing her boyfriend in the park.
"Yes. He won. He used the Winter Soldier to take down Rossum. He destroyed the technology. He killed Clyde Harding, Adelle Dewitt, and Topher Brink. Then he started taking down the Dollhouses. There were twenty-three. He killed the staff, restored the actives' original personalities, and burned the Dollhouses to the ground. Hydra was tracking him. He knew they would catch him at the last Dollhouse, but the technology had to be destroyed."
"You let yourself get taken back on purpose?" asked Steve. Somehow, that seemed like the worst part.
"I knew they would send me to kill people, but if they didn't send me, they would just send someone else."
That wasn't what had seemed like the worst part.
"Don't you think we're ignoring the elephant in the room?" asked Clint.
Everyone looked at Bruce.
"That wasn't even funny the first time," said Bruce.
"Bucky basically saved the world. As someone who's had their control taken away, and someone whose guilty pleasure is Say Yes to the Dress, the idea of a world without free will is especially horrifying. People should know what you did, Bucky."
"They can't," said Bucky. "We can't give people the idea. That technology still exists, in potentia. Topher may have been a genius, but he's not the only one."
"I'm seriously not going to try to recreate Hydra tech," said Tony. "Even I can learn a lesson."
"It sucks." Clint looked pissed. He always championed Natasha's causes. "It fucking sucks that people know about what the Winter Soldier did, but not about what Echo did. Okay. Fine. Maybe they can't say it, but I can. Thank you, Bucky."
"Thank you."
"Thanks, champ."
"I give you my thanks, Sergeant Barnes."
"Thank you, Buck."
Bucky looked a little overwhelmed. Steve was about to inturrupt when Clint did it for him.
"Nope. This doesn't cut it. I say we drink."
"It's nine o'clock in the morning," said Natasha.
"So?"
"Good point."
"I can't even get drunk," said Bucky.
"Actually, Sergeant Barnes," said Thor. "There is an ale from Asgard that affects even the gods."
"I sure as shit ain't one of those," Bucky said, and Steve could tell there was another memory there. "Not a god, not a goddamn fucking Übermensch. Fuck Nietzsche."
"It also affects me," said Steve. "What do you say, Buck? Want to get Day Drunk?"
He was pretty sure Natasha hadn't taught Bucky about brunch yet, but Bucky said, "Hell, yes."
That was how the Avengers found themselves completely wasted at eleven o'clock on a Saturday. Thor was teaching Tony an Asgardian dance. Bruce was showing Natasha the Chemistry Cat meme. Clint was passed out. Bucky was on his way, curled up on the couch next to Steve. Some of the personalities in his head were happy drunks but between Echo and the Winter Soldier, he found he was sixty-seven percent a sleepy drunk. Unfortunately, he was also seventeen percent a sad drunk. That was mostly Bucky.
"Steve?"
"Yeah, Buck?"
"They took me back. I got out, but they took me back. They could take me back again."
Steve knew better than to promise they couldn't. He'd already broken too many promises to Bucky. Like the promise he'd made after Azzano, not to let Hydra take Bucky alive.
"They could," he said. "But not for long."
"You'd look for me?"
"Always," said Steve, pulling him closer. "Bucky, if they took you now, I would never stop looking for you. Not unless I was holding your dead body in my arms, and even then, I'd make sure it wasn't a clone or something, because, you know, our lives."
It hurt to joke about Bucky being dead, but it was worth it when he was rewarded with a drunk little chuckle.
"But that wasn't what I meant," Steve pressed on. "Think about it, Buck. The first time, they had you for seventy years. Last time, they had you for, what? Sixteen?"
"Because of you," said Bucky.
"No," said Steve. "That was all you. All of you. That was Echo. He fought the Winter Soldier and won. They have less control over you now, and that was before you got Bucky back. He's the strongest man I ever met. I bet if they took you again, you'd break out in a matter of days."
"What if I can't?" asked Bucky. "What if they find a new way to control me, or-"
Steve pulled him impossibly closer. "Then we'll find you. Not just me. All of us," and suddenly all of the Avengers seemed stone cold sober, and they were nodding and agreeing, and even Clint woke up long enough to give Bucky a thumbs up, probably because Natasha elbowed him.
They were all crying. Not the Avengers. Echo, and the Winter Soldier, and Robert Mynor, and Ernest Carpenter, and Terry, and Roma, and Taffy, and Bucky. For the first time he could remember, they all felt the same thing.
"Do you trust me?" asked Steve.
"With my lives," said Bucky.