He walks through the museum. People bustle towards a set of banners and when he looks up to them his brain feels like fire. He's felt worse pain, he's felt metal pressed in to his body in ways no one was ever supposed to experience, much less survive. This is different. It starts at the top of his head and slices straight down mercilessly until it turns into a pool of nausea slithering up and down his throat but it is the confusion that accompanies that he is so unaccustomed to. He sees the three story tall images of a man in uniform and instantly adrenaline surges his fist clench. The word target permeates his mind all consuming the instinct to kill branded in to his every cell rushed to the surface.
He ducks his head and walks in to the exhibit. He is met with another picture of the man from the bridge, this time without the helmet. His mind still screams but he remembers the man's words, how he wouldn't fight. He has to know why because under the clarity of the mission there is nothing but a fragile void that hurts when he tries to define it.
The image of the man shifts and shrinks to reveal a scrawny kid, his spine seemingly unable to hold the weight of his body which sags and juts in ways a living thing never should. The kill order fades away and he feels the blank space crumple. A memory seeps from the cracks slowly like fluid from a leaking wound. The edges are fuzzy and it lacks detail like an unfinished drawing but it is there.
"I'll be fine Buck." The scrawny boy says. "It's just a little cough." He is bent over hands braced against his knees struggling to pull a breath past his trembling lips.
"It is never just a cough with you." He tells the boy. He gently places a hand on his arm and one on his back. He pushes him upright slowly. Steve he remembers, his name is Steve. "By tomorrow you'll look like the start of the next pandemic."
"And a few days after that I'll be fine." Steve says. He sighs, or tries to but it mutates in to a rasp followed by a cough. He looks down the street at nothing in particular. "I don't need you pity Bucky, I never did."
"It's not pity, it's friendship."
The picture changes again and with it comes the rage; this time less directed, more turbulent. This time he recognizes the smile in the picture and it makes him want to smile back.
There is a little exhibit shoved into a corner that no one else seems to be looking at but it stops his dead in his tracks. The words jump out at him each of them driving in to his skull and fragmenting upon impact.
Bucky Barnes
Killed in Action
Steve Rodgers
Best Friend.
He is still standing there when the guard comes to tell him the exhibit is closing.
"I think I knew him." He says quietly but no one is around to hear.