A/N: I own nothing (shocking, I know).
*SPOILERS FOR THE WINTER SOLDIER* (Although if you haven't seen it by now, you probably aren't going to; silly you.)
Also, be aware that this follows Marvel's Cinematic Universe canon, as has been revealed in the movies to date. Thus, I am ignoring the Black Widow/Winter Soldier relationship from the comics. Whether that relationship happened in the movieverse remains to be seen. As of the recent film, we know only that the Winter Soldier shot the Black Widow several years before the film is set.
The Winter Soldier stared at the poster. "Captain America" was a name he couldn't quite reconcile with the image in his head. He knew they must be one and the same: the costume and the face were identical, but somehow his brain refused to accept that name for the man who had asserted that they were friends. He shrugged, digging his metal hand deeper into the pocket of his denim jacket. Perhaps he could fill in his blank memory in the exhibit.
At first, the Soldier felt stifled by the crowds and the overwhelming, overweening really, Americanism of it all. But there he was, the little man constantly getting beaten up in the few memories the Soldier had managed to force up from under Hydra's conditioning. And then he turned into the larger man he had known more recently as his last mission for Hydra. While the Soldier might have more holes in his memory than a wheel of Swiss cheese, his ability to think had recovered fairly quickly. He began to believe that saving his last target had, indeed, been the right thing to do.
Moving further into the exhibit, the Soldier began to recognize, if only vaguely, as if through a dense fog, the people and things in the images. He sat in the dark, next to unsuspecting innocents, and listened as Captain America's friends - his friends too? - recounted tale after tale of the man and his heroic actions, his high moral principles, his enduring legacy. It made the Soldier want to kill them, if he were completely honest, but most of them were long dead and those that weren't weren't worth the trouble. But their stories, like the static photos and artifacts, reminded the Soldier quite painfully of the memories he should have.
The film strip began its loop once more, and the Soldier left the viewing room. Immediately upon exiting, he was confronted by the image he feared the most: his own. As if he were a driver gawking at a gruesome traffic accident, the Soldier approached the glass stele. He had no doubt now that the man on the helicarrier had told the truth. The picture etched into the glass was his own - a younger, carefree, or perhaps careless, version without question, but his nonetheless. He drank in the long-suppressed details of his life, reading the words again and again. With each reading, a little more returned. With each reading, "Bucky Barnes" became a little more real, even if he still couldn't imagine being the man.
"Hey, man, you kind of look like him!" the unknown voice pulled the Soldier from his pursuit of memories. The stranger nearly lost his life for the interruption.
Finally, the Soldier growled out an acceptable lie, "He was my Great-Uncle. I never knew him."
"Dude, that is so cool!"
The Soldier simply turned his impassive gaze, the one that had terrified too many targets to count as they lost their lives, on the stranger.
"Or not. Geez." The stranger wisely moved on.
The Soldier returned to his contemplation of the brief account of his life and supposed death, but the stranger had broken the connection. The Soldier suppressed a sigh of frustration. He would recover no more memories here. He needed to return to the source. He needed to find "Captain America" (the voice in his head kept insisting on just "Steve" or "punk" - the latter confused the Soldier). Turning away from his cenotaph, the Soldier left the exhibit behind.
The Soldier moved quickly through the city. He had learned it thoroughly in the weeks it had taken for his injuries to heal and his head to shake off (most of) Hydra's conditioning. He entered the Metro at the Smithsonian station, and got on an orange line train toward Vienna. He changed to the red line at Metro Center, heading north toward the man's apartment in Dupont Circle.
The Soldier climbed the escalator at the station, impatient now to see the man he had been avoiding. Somehow, he was sure that the man would be able to fill in the gaps in his brain, would reconnect him to the person he was supposed to be.
When the Soldier arrived at the building, he glanced around quickly, to clear all the possible sniper nests. He was taken aback when he saw several were manned, rifles trained on the man's apartment window, much as his rifle had been weeks earlier. No one had taken his position, though. He was not surprised; only an exceptional marksman could hope to make the shots he had. He ducked into the next building over from the man's and made his way to the roof. He found the rifle he had left there after shooting - killing, he acknowledged with a bare flicker of regret - the man's friend. He checked the rifle and its ammunition, and, finding them in useable condition, loaded the weapon and trained it on those who sought to kill the only man who could save him.
Just after he squeezed the trigger the first time, a blur entered the frame of his sight, but the man's shield knocked over a dead man. The man looked around, and, with a motion both familiar and not, saluted the Soldier jauntily with two fingers. The Soldier added this to his list of things about which he needed to ask the man. Then he methodically cleared the other sniper nests.
Since the man had smiled as he saluted, the Soldier felt he could take the time to pack his equipment properly and take it with him. Nevertheless, he stood in front of the man's apartment door in under fifteen minutes. He couldn't bring himself to knock.
The man, apparently sensing his presence somehow, opened the door anyway.
"Come on in, Buck," he said quietly with that same grin on his face. "I just finished making the hot chocolate."
The Soldier shuffled in. He didn't have a memory of chocolate, hot or cold, but given the little he could recall of his existence of late, he generally preferred things hot.
"Thanks?" he replied, still not sure he was ready to do this, ready to know what he only suspected.
"You can put the weapon in the closet with your coat...or you can keep it with you, if you'd rather."
"Thanks." The Soldier realized that the man must have seen his panic in his eyes at the suggestion that he relinquish his rifle.
"So, the grand tour. It's not much different from my mom's place in Brooklyn, except that the living room and bedroom aren't in the same room as the kitchen. That's the bathroom through the door there, if you want to clean up some. I'm just going to pour the hot chocolate into mugs. And don't worry! I made the real stuff, none of that powdered crap here." He grinned again.
The Soldier felt himself relaxing against his better judgement, against his will really. He hid it by heading into the bathroom and closing the door, giving himself privacy to regroup. He turned on the water, pretending to 'clean up some' as the man had suggested. Over the water, he heard a door open and close. He pressed his ear to the bathroom door to assess if the newcomer represented a threat.
"Steve?" a sleep-muddled female voice asked, "what are you...is that hot chocolate?"
"Sorry, Tasha. I didn't mean to wake you up. Some of your friends followed you back from your trip. Don't worry, my old friend took care of them before I could. He's in the bathroom right now, so if you don't want to see him, you can have this mug in the bedroom, and I'll pour myself another."
The Soldier realized now that the man had company - female company - which explained why the futon in the living room was pulled out and made up as a bed. The Soldier couldn't say why, but this seemed entirely in character for the man.
"No. It's okay. I'll have to face him eventually, right? And if he took out whoever was after me, I should at least say thank you."
"That's the spirit. Marshmallows?"
"Bailey's?" the woman's voice inquired pleadingly.
The man laughed. "This once."
The Soldier decided he had lingered as long as he reasonably could, so he turned off the water, waited a beat, and then exited the bathroom.
"Feeling better, Buck?" the man asked.
The Soldier nodded. Seeing the woman, he understood why the man thought she might not want to see him.
"Did I shoot you?"
"Twice, actually. But only once recently, and so far, not at all since you left Hydra. You did leave Hydra, right?" Strangely, the woman did not seem terribly upset about being shot.
The Soldier nodded, as they all sat at the small kitchen table.
"I'm sorry for shooting you, both times, although I can't remember the first."
He took the mug the man handed him, absently noting the generous handful of white bumps on the top. He thought these might be marshmallows, but he didn't want to ask.
"It's okay, you know."
The Soldier was confused; she didn't seem to be talking about him shooting her.
"It's okay not to remember everything. Some things you don't want to remember, because they're too awful, and some things you can't bear to remember, because they're too...good, I suppose."
The Soldier frowned. "You worked for Hydra? They wiped your mind?"
"The Red Room, not Hydra, and they didn't have to. My training started when I was a small child. I didn't know what I was doing was wrong for a long time, and then when I did, I didn't know how to stop." The woman's voice was quiet, intense and somber. This was not something she enjoyed revealing.
"How did you get out?"
"I got lucky. A SHIELD agent sent to kill me made a different call. He recruited me instead."
The Soldier turned to the man. "Is that what you're going to do? Recruit me?"
The man shook his head. "No, Bucky. As far as I'm concerned, both SHIELD and Hydra are in the past. I just want to have my best friend back, or as much of him as I can have, anyway. And if that's not possible because of what you've been through, well, I'll still consider you my friend, and I hope you'll do the same."
"I don't even know your name. Is it Captain? Steve? Punk?" The Soldier was embarrassed that his brain couldn't settle on one.
Fortunately, the man seemed amused more than annoyed by the Soldier's lapse. "Steve will do. I'm not sure I'm a captain anymore, now that I'm not with SHIELD..."
At this, the woman - Tasha, the Soldier reminded himself - snorted disbelievingly. Apparently she still thought of him as a captain.
The man - Steve - continued, ignoring the snort, "...and you only call me 'Punk' when you're in a good mood and don't mind being called 'Jerk' in return."
The Soldier frowned again. "Jerk?"
The wo - Tasha - half snorted, half choked on her chocolate.
"Don't worry about it for now. It was a thing from when we were kids and I was always getting beaten up and you would come rescue me. Speaking of which, nice shooting tonight."
"Thanks?" He wasn't sure anymore whether his skills were something in which he should take pride.
Suddenly, a flash, a name. "Lorraine? Did I know someone named Lorraine?"
The Soldier sees Steve's grin widen. "Darn right! I introduced you to her the afternoon after Peggy snubbed you in the pub. You were down, because I used to be the 'invisible' one, and now Peggy was ignoring you. You and Lorraine hit it off pretty well."
More flashes. Resentment that the brunette preferred Steve; he wasn't used to being ignored. Blonde hair. Hands everywhere. Tits. Kisses. Stockings. Flesh. Moans and sighs. Pleasure. Release. His face feels warm. The Soldier suspects he shouldn't tell the man just how well he and Lorraine 'hit it off'. Steve might be disappointed.
"I wish I could remember more. Of before, I mean." The Soldier shrugged off a shudder. "I'm pretty sure I don't want to remember ... after."
The man clapped him on the shoulder. "You'll remember what you can when you can, Buck. And I'll do my best to fill in the gaps if I can. The most important thing is that you know you're not alone. Heck, I missed most of the last seventy years frozen in a glacier in Greenland! So we'll catch up together."
A small smile quirked on Tasha's face. "I guess you found someone with shared life experience after all."
The man laughed, long and hard. "I guess I did, although I'm pretty sure this wasn't what I meant!"
"Spoil sport! You're going to disappoint all those gay men waiting for you and Tony to hook up so they can catch you on the rebound."
Now the man looked confused. The Soldier was glad, because he was confused as well.
"But Tony's engaged to Miss Potts. And I'm not gay. Okay, I don't get out much, but ..." his voice trailed off, as he was unsure of where he had been going with that.
"You know that. I know that. Hell, even the gay men hoping for it probably know that. But a person can dream, can't he?"
The man blushed furiously at the thought of being anyone's fantasy.
"I mean, do you know how many letters I've gotten from American girls threatening to do all sorts of damage to me if I should break your heart?!"
The man's blush deepened and he scowled. "Why would they think you're going to break my heart? Or do they mean if you get me to date one of the girls you're always pushing at me and she breaks my heart?"
Tasha laughed. "That's exactly it, Steve! They saw us fighting together in New York. Maybe they've seen a picture of us as we've worked together around DC. And they've decided we're dating. The truth is irrelevant. Don't you read your fan mail?"
"My what? Are you hearing this, Buck? I have fan mail. If anyone had told either of us way back when that I'd get fan mail someday, would either of us have believed it?"
The Soldier's mouth contorted into a long unused smile. "I can't say for sure, but I think I might have expected to get more fan mail than you back then. At least, until the war."
Tasha frowned. "You really haven't seen any of it? The mail room at Stark Tower and the one at the Triskelion are always flooded with mail for you."
The man shrugged. "It's probably not a bad thing that I didn't get it. I never seem to be what they want me to be anyway."
"What do you mean?" It was Tasha's turn for confusion.
"Do you remember, Bucky, how the Senator had me on those bond sales tours before I made it to Europe?"
The Soldier had a vague memory of this from the Smithsonian exhibit and decided that was close enough to a real memory, so he nodded.
"Well, sometimes ladies would come up after the show, saying they wanted to their bit for the war effort. Some of them would get real disappointed when I'd give them ideas about factory or Red Cross or USO work, or even just knitting for the troops or buying war bonds. It was like they had a specific idea that they wanted me to endorse, but I wasn't guessing right about what it was." He shook his head.
The Soldier let out a single bark of laughter before he cut off the unknown sound. Upon reflection, he decided the response was appropriate, so he let himself laugh long and hard, for the first time, probably, in decades. It felt...good.
The man looked confused again. "What's so funny, Buck?"
The Soldier took a moment to contain himself again before answering. "Their idea of doing their bit probably involved warming your bed before you moved on to the next city, not doing factory labor or knitting until their hands were raw."
Crimson flooded the man's face so deeply that the Soldier feared for him.
"Oh."
The Soldier and Tasha began laughing with that.
"Yeah, yeah. Laugh at the ninety-five year old who's still hopeless with women. Real nice, guys."
Both the Soldier and Tasha tried to contain their laughter, although Tasha still let out a giggle now and again.
"Look, it's late. Tasha, why don't you stay in the bedroom. Bucky, you can bunk with me on the futon."
"And gay fanboys everywhere swoon in delight," Tasha teased as she collected the mugs and put them in the sink.
"What now? Bucky and I have been sharing beds since we were kids. It was warmer that way when the heat got shut off."
That the Soldier definitely remembered. Every time Hydra stuck him back into cryostasis, he felt like he would be warm if only the punk were there. He nodded, backing up the man on the point.
"All right, all right. I won't tweet about this. God knows Stark would have a field day with it. You'd never hear the end of it." She headed back into the bedroom.
The man looked at him. "Wall side or not? Either way, the weapon stays out of the bed, though. Next to the bed, on the ground, fine, but not in the bed. Deal?"
"Not wall side then. The rifle'll be in reach if anyone else shows up."
"Okay. Oh, Sam usually comes by to run in the morning. He has a key, so don't shoot him, all right?"
The Soldier essayed another smile. "I won't shoot anyone with their own key."
"Thanks. I don't have enough friends left that I can afford to have them killing one another. There's a spare toothbrush in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. It's all yours."
The Soldier took that as a dismissal and returned to the bathroom he had hidden in before.
When he was done brushing his teeth, the man knocked on the door before handing through a t shirt and shorts.
"Thought these might be more comfortable to sleep in than jeans."
"Thank you." The Soldier changed, leaving his dirty clothes in the bathtub, since there wasn't an obvious place to leave them. Then he left the bathroom so the man could take his turn.
When the man came out, in a t shirt and shorts like he had given the Soldier, he stopped before climbing into the bed. "I'm glad you're here, Bucky. I'm sorry as heck that you've had to endure so much to get here, but I'm glad you're here."
The Soldier didn't know what to say to that, so he pretended he was already asleep.
The Soldier was instantly awake and alert as a key turned in the lock the next morning. He reached down and caressed the weapon on the floor, confirming its position should this new presence prove hostile.
"Dude, there's a Hydra assassin on your futon! With you?"
The man sat up and yawned. "Tasha got in last night, so she had the bedroom. And he doesn't work for Hydra anymore. Bucky, Sam. Sam, Bucky."
The Soldier recognized the winged man from the helicarrier fight. "I'm sorry I tried to kill you. I'm glad I didn't succeed."
"'S all good, man, as long as you don't try again."
"No promises, but I'll try to avoid it."
The winged man - Sam - chuckled. "You must be doing better if you're cracking jokes."
"I wasn't." The Soldier felt the comment self-explanatory, but upon seeing Sam's shocked face and the man's stricken one, reconsidered. "I think I've got Hydra out of my head, but I don't know for sure. And I still don't have much in my head that Hydra didn't put there, so my view of the world is...somewhat skewed."
"Oooookay. Thanks for the head's up, then. Steve, you running this morning?"
"Yeah, give me a sec to change. How 'bout it, Buck? Wanna come?"
The Soldier shrugged. Physical training was neither here nor there for him under Hydra's control. Then again, he was no longer under Hydra's control. "Why not?"
The man grinned. "Great. I think there's a spare pair of running shoes in my closet. Let me get those and some extra clothes and you'll be good to go. Why don't you use the bathroom while I get them?"
Morning necessities taken care of, the three men headed out to the Mall for their run. When they got there, the man kicked into high gear without warning, leaving the Soldier and Sam behind. The Soldier heard Sam sigh.
"He'll be on the left when he comes around. He always is."
"Why do you run with him if his speed torments you?" The Soldier was genuinely curious.
"He gives me something to aim for."
"Yeah. He does that."
Sam started. "You remembering that?"
The Soldier nodded. "I think I am. Even when he was a shrimpy punk with asthma, he was still better than most men at doing the right thing. My memory's full of holes, so I might be missing something, but I have a feeling that he's never done the wrong thing in his life. I guess he gives me something to aim for, too."
Sam nodded. "Yeah, he does that."
The men heard footsteps behind them.
"Aw, here it comes."
"On your left."
But the Soldier was ready, and he matched the man's speed as he passed, keeping with him stride for stride.
Faintly, the Soldier heard, "Damn. Why do I even try?" behind them. If he hadn't been working so hard to keep up with the man - who wasn't even breathing hard - he might have laughed.
A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.