Three years. For three long years, James Buchanan Barnes had been obsessively on the move, fueled by his hatred and little more. His memories, at first, had begun to trickle back to him when he visited the Smithsonian and stared at his own face reflected back to him. A hero. A brother. A friend. A good man. All of the things that Hydra had robbed him of, corrupting him and turning him into a tool for their own devices. He had entered the museum adrift and purposeless, confused and more than a little frightened to face his past. He left with a purpose and a set jaw. He was going to turn the weapon they had made him into back on them. He would make them pay.
For three years, The Winter Soldier buried his hurt in his anger. And even as the memories began to flood back as his mind healed, he refused to allow himself to stop, to feel. Not until the mission was complete. He wasn't allowed to rest until he had put every man responsible for condition into the ground. He drew upon those resurfacing memories: Hydra bases, maps, and names. He used the talents of reconnaissance and stealth, how to acquire the materials he required and safe houses and weapon caches. He ate only what he needed to keep going: long forgotten MREs left behind in flop houses, or food from gas stations and convenience stores: sometimes stolen and sometimes bough with cash he found in the caches. He slept rarely, and only when exhaustion reduced his functionality. And one by one, he began to eliminate his targets.
He never paused for very long. He knew he was being followed. And as much as a part of him wanted to stop; to go back to him: the man on the bridge... Captain America... Steve... he didn't feel like he could let it go or face him until he had cleared the red out of his ledger. He was ashamed of the thing he had become. He had to reclaim that before he could look him in the eye again.
He was almost done. One more facility remained on his hit list. He didn't delude himself that there probably weren't more out there, but this was the last one he could recall. The last one that he knew had ties to the Winter Soldier project, and he knew that they had been working on some of Hydra's more experimental technology. It also brought his mission full circle: back to the US and DC itself. It was dangerous, returning to the city where he was a well-known person of interest, and that's why he had left this one for last.
The facility was deceptively small on the outside, easily overshadowed by Hydra's more notable facilities in the area that had gone down during Project Insight. But that didn't mean that it didn't have its share of defenses - not that it mattered. The Winter Soldier made quick work of the security with practiced ease. And like many of the other facilities, it was nearly over twenty minutes after he set foot in the laboratory's doors. He had rigged the facility to blow, and was on his way out, the first of the detonations already going off deep within the bowels of the building. He had expected that - he had plenty of time to make it out by the time the peripheral bombs would fire... but that's when an odd shock wave caught him, lifting him off his feet. A brilliant blue light filled his vision before everything went black...
When The Soldier awoke, he was in a general warehouse; exactly where he expected to be. But it was empty; uncharred and seemed otherwise wholly insignificant. There was no security save a few padlocks, and no evidence of any Hydra activity.
He was on his feet in an instant, firearm in each hand, even with his head pounding and his ears still ringing from the explosion. Already, he was mentally chiding himself for his guard having been down for... he glanced at his watch... just a few minutes had passed? His brow furrowed. He had to have been moved. And yet, there was no one around, no evidence that this warehouse had been disturbed. His eyes tracked the layers of dust that clung to the empty interior, the layers of grime over the windows. And the soldier couldn't deny the similarity in layout to the Hydra facility he had been in moments before. He had studied the blueprints, and the surrounding buildings. It didn't make sense.
His mouth tightened to a straight line as he trotted silently to the side door, peering out through a window. He braced himself for a few moments, waiting, expecting his movement to have triggered some kind of attention, and letting the ringing in his ears subside and the pounding behind his eyes to ease. The night sky and an empty lot greeted him. Even straining to listen with his enhanced hearing yielded no sounds other than distant traffic. He unbolted the door and slid outside, ducking into a shadow of a disused dumpster, scanning. Still. Nothing. And yet - the neighborhood was virtually identical - the same surrounding buildings, the same street signs. He holstered his weapons and skirted around the building to where he had left the backpack that contained civvy clothes, extra food, and his other emergency supplies: everything that the Winter Soldier owned, packed up for easy transport. But there was nothing there. It was gone. He swore under his breath and tore the mask off of his face, looping it over his belt.
He wasn't used to this - being unprepared, caught off-guard. He had had a definite plan of action after he had taken down this facility - rest, and then... finally... let Steve find him and face charges. But he couldn't shake the feeling that something was really off. He leapt the fence, landing deftly on his feet and ran silently for a few blocks, sticking to unlit areas as the gears in his head began to turn.
Step one: procure new clothing. Simple enough. That late at night and in a bad area of DC, it was not difficult to find communities of homeless men. A few crumpled bills was enough to bribe for a hat and a jacket.
Step two: Steve's apartment. The soldier didn't need rest - not yet. Something was off, and he wasn't going to wait around to find out what. Last he checked, Steve had still at least maintained the decent apartment near downtown DC, despite the security breach two years ago. The soldier had the sneaking suspicion that he wanted to make himself available to be found.
A few hours later, the soldier was on the fire escape, quietly making his way down to the window he knew led into the apartment.
The window was easy enough to shimmy open, but the Soldier immediate knew something was wrong. Nothing in the apartment was the same; different furniture, different wall colors, different accouterments. On the wall, where previously two Harley Davidson Motorcycle prints were framed instead housed two signed posters from Wicked and Jersey Boys. The palette in the apartment was feminine and soft... nothing like it has been last time he had seen it.
The soldier hesitated for only a few moments. Wrong. Was the intelligence he had done faulty? No, he doubted it. From everything he knew... everything he remembered about Steve... he wouldn't have wanted to make it difficult to be found. That curling feeling in his stomach that there was something truly off grew heavier.
He made his way quickly down the fire escape, dropping the last story down to the ground instead of loudly dropping the rusted metal ladder.
He strode through the alley, running a hand through his long, tangled hair absently as he forced himself to think. The sun would be rising soon. He could find a cheap motel, but then what? He needed a direction. Needed a lead. If Rogers wasn't at that apartment, he'd need to figure out where. He was just turning, planning on locating a place with internet connection that he could borrow to begin his search when he stopped dead in his tracks. A news stand was just opening up on the corner, racks of magazines and newspapers being revealed as the older, portly man smoking a cigarette lifted up the panels. And there, front and center of the New York Times was Steve, wearing a perfectly tailored suit and a winning smile.
The headline read President Rogers Calls for Raise of Minimum Wage.
That squirmy feeling in the soldier's stomach solidified into a ten pound weight. "Fuck."
"Hey, you just gonna stare or you gonna buy a paper?" The vendor prodded with a gruff note of irritation.
The soldier leveled a glare at the man until he fell back a pace. Then, without taking his eyes off of him, pushed a dollar and some change at him and snagged the paper, taking it with him around the corner to read.
It seemed impossible. No, it was impossible. And yet there it was no mistaking that face. His eyes roamed over the date, panicked at first that somehow, somehow he had lost more time. That he had been out not for a few minutes but that Hydra agents had slipped his notice and apprehend him, leaving him in stasis for years and a few minutes. But no, the newspaper was dated just as he would have expected, April 17, 2017.
So, the soldier searched the article itself for some kind of explanation. Reading, he was able to piece together some vital information: President Steve Rogers had been elected in 2016, the youngest president in history, and here, just a few months into his first term was pushing for big reform in minimum wage. He shook his head. How? There was no way Steve Rogers running for president would have escaped the soldier's notice. He wracked his brain for some kind of explanation, but the only thing he could come up with sounded something like the pulp science fiction dimestore novels he had read as a kid more so than anything realistic. But then... was that really so beyond the scope of the sci fi horror story that his life had become?
He dropped to a rough seated position, his back resting against the brick and mortar wall as his mind reeled. Could this really be some... weird, alternate time line? What in the fuck had Hydra been working on in that lab? Maybe it was a really good thing he destroyed it when he did, but... how in the hell was he supposed to get back home? He looked back down at the paper, his chest feeling tight as he looked at Steve's smiling face looking out at him. It felt like a punch to the gut just how much he missed him. How long he had been running from him...
The soldier's training kicked in. There was only one real recourse at the moment. He had no contacts, no resources other than the little money and items he carried on his person. His only connection - and a tentative and dangerous one at that - was the man in the paper with his friend's name and face. Would he know him? Would he believe him? How was he even supposed to get close to him? He was the president for God's sake.
Resolutely, he stood up and began to move. If anyone could get past White House security, it was the Winter Soldier. This was precisely the sort of mission he had been trained for. At least now he had an address.