"These blood red eyes
Don't see so good
But what's worse is if they could
Would I change my ways?
Wasted times
And broken dreams
Violent colors so obscene
Is all I see these days
These days"
These Days, Black Keys
There is something about certain moments in life where it seems like our entire lives unfold right in front of our eyes. Unlike many might think, it is not necessarily connected to any trauma, but rather to moments so impactful that they leave a permanent brand right in our hearts, straight in our souls. And the funny thing is that these moments seem so ordinary at first that we simply overlook their importance and realize much later that they changed everything.
This story is about two broken souls that meet each other thanks to one of those rare moments of clarity born at one of the most ordinary of circumstances.
X
It was just another spring afternoon.
It was just another coffee shop.
It was just another city.
But he was not just another person.
For the past forty days, he had roamed around small cities and broken into empty houses just so he could sleep somewhere warm, eat more than just candy bars and chocolate and at least take a shower. Breaking into other people's houses seemed to be a second nature of sorts, just like borrowing cars, books and money. Even if he was perfectly able to hide in plain sight, he could not afford to travel by bus or train – it was simply too risky, especially when half the word was looking for him. He made sure to cover his tracks – cars, houses and cities were ordinary and random; he packed light; and he always wore gloves as to never leave any fingerprints at all.
Of course, those were just side effects of whoever he was.
He packed light because his belongings included a backpack, an empty wallet, some brochures he had got at the Smithsonian Institute, a pen, a pencil, a map, a flashlight, a change of clothes and two black diaries. He wore gloves all the time because he could not afford to let anyone see his left hand. And as for ordinary and random, well, these were choices and he finally got to make them for the first time in his life.
He was the Winter Soldier.
That meant he was both the most dangerous and the most wanted man on Earth.
He was sitting at the farthest corner of a coffee shop in a small Austrian city named Perchtoldsdorf. His gloved hands held his cup of coffee tightly as he gazed across the street and watched the pedestrians with an unreadable look in his bearded face. In all reality, he envied them: their normalcy, their perfectly ordinary lives, their mundane concerns, their commonplace habits. The only normal thing he got to do these days was visiting coffee shops and even that was done under very calculated circumstances. Pay in cash, wear a cap, mind his own business, drink black coffee, sit by the window, make no eye contact and leave after twenty-seven minutes.
For the last forty days, that had been his routine: go to the next city, abandon the stolen car somewhere, walk across the town, find an empty and safe house, break into said house, borrow some money and a book, eat something for dinner, read said book, sleep, write his recollections in his diaries, have breakfast (usually apples and some toast), find a quiet coffee shop, and then repeat.
Of course, sleep was another concept entirely.
Thrashing, screaming and wake up drowning in cold sweat thanks to sweet nightmares was more like it. And it was always the same.
It was snowing, he was falling, he was screaming.
Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes.
"Soldier?"
"Ready to comply."
It had been like that for the past month, ever since the agonizing episodes in Washington D.C.. It was like life had been turned upside down, then grabbed ahold of both of his arms, placed a blindfold in front of his eyes, and proceeded to beat him to the ground until there was no air left to his lungs. His mind was not much better than that, though.
"You know me."
"No, I don't!"
"Bucky, you've known me your entire life. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes…"
"SHUT UP!"
"I'm not gonna fight you. You're my friend."
"You're my mission! YOU. ARE. MY. MISSION!"
"Then finish it.'Cause I'm with you 'til the end of the line…"
Whatever was left of his poor, tortured mind just kept replaying the same scene over and over again as if it were the only thing left to his bone. Torture. Pain. Misery. Nothing.
These days... These days were unlike anything he had ever lived even if he could not remember anything at all. These days... These days were like a kaleidoscope of thoughts, a roller coaster of feelings, a whirlwind of questions, a thunderstorm of pain. These days… These days were unbearable, unexplainable, unforgettable. These days…
They had broken him beyond repair, destroyed his life and left him to retrieve the smithereens with his bare hands. One of them was trembling, weak; the other one was a sight he could not stand, a sight that would haunt him forever.
A metallic, robotic, bionic one. A symbol of pain, violence, monstrosities. A constant reminder of the awful, ghastly, horrible things he had done, yet could not remember.
The Winter Soldier. That was his name. That was whom Hydra had turned him into. A monster. A spy. An assassin. A puppet. An animal. A pet. No one. Nothing.
These days, all he could think about was how much he hated them, how much he hated himself.
Who would have known that a single word could trigger a downfall? Well, he knew better than anyone else did that ten simple words had already triggered his downfall.
Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight Car.
"Bucky?"
"Who the hell is Bucky?"
Trapped inside his own mind – unbeknownst to himself. Living inside a cage – unbeknownst to himself. Surviving in a nightmare – unbeknownst to himself. The blindfold had been removed, the fog had been cleared, the straightjacket had been released. A newfound freedom to a man who had never made a single choice in his life. Well, at least as far as he could remember. And considering that they had destroyed his mind, tampered with his memories and broken his spirit, that meant much more than he could begin to comprehend.
A single word had catalyzed all of that and that very word happened to be one of the most important things someone will ever know: his name. Bucky.
That word had put his world to an end.
Hydra was now gone. The very person who had caused the downfall of his world had singlehandedly taken care of that. And without Hydra, he was finally free. But how can one deal with freedom when they do not consider themselves trapped in the first place?
Another puzzle. Another fucking conundrum.
Now that they were gone, he could finally see it – the truth. It was much more daunting and agonizing that he could have anticipated.
Wake up. Scream. Obey. Comply. Kill. Wipe. Start over.
Brainwashed. Tortured. Deprived. Beaten. Manipulated. Coerced. Destroyed. Broken. Gone.
These words were such perfect descriptions of his past that he wondered how the hell he had managed to survive. But the thing was that they had turned him into a machine. By stripping him of his will, of his choice, of his name and of his memories, he was completely gone. Without all of that, any circumstance, any situation was always the same. No feelings. No point of view. No questions. No interpretations. They always meant the same. They always meant nothing. Because in the end, Hydra had deprived him of what made him human.
He had only realized those awful truths now that they were gone.
It should be simple enough to enjoy the pleasantries of a new life if he was not who he was.
Nothing.
He was the Winter Soldier. He was a murderer, a killer, a coldblooded master assassin who had taken the lives of many, many people – people whose names and faces he did not even remember clearly!
And although he had done all of that blindly, although he had not had any choice whatsoever, he had done all of that. The memories might not be there, but the demons were haunting him all the same. And he had an inkling suspicion that they were coming back for him.
It was always the little things: the slight tremble in hands that had never shuttered before, the looking over his shoulders every once in a while, the second guessing of his thoughts, the racing of a heart that he had never paid attention to, the throbbing headache that hammered his brain whenever he wondered who he was, what he had done or whether those bits and pieces he dreamed of were memories or just figments of his imagination.
But most of all, what he dreaded the most was choosing.
He had chosen to go after Captain America – a man he did not know but that had claimed to be his friend, a connection to a past he never knew he had had. He had chosen to pull Captain America from the river and save his life – a man that meant absolutely nothing to him and that was a complete stranger. He had made those choices without even knowing why, just because they felt right, just because those words, that name had meant something and nothing had ever meant anything to him.
It was the first time in his life that something had had a meaning, a feeling. He was indeed a human being.
It was days after that episode that he found out the truth about his identity and the horrible, atrocious things he had done. And he knew that something had definitely changed for none of that had felt wrong before. Now, however, he knew that taking someone's life made him a monster.
A cold-blood killer. A merciless assassin. A monster.
Nothing.
The worst part was that he did not even remember doing any of those things. Bits and pieces, wisps and specs, patches and blotches. Nothing.
Not to mention the fact that all of those things had been done to him. And that he had a life before all of that.
James Buchanan Barnes.
It all came back to the same. Who am I? What am I? Why did these things happen to me? Why can't I remember anything? How can I go on? What the fuck am I supposed to do?
What? Why? How? Who? WHY?
Emptiness hollowed his existence. It was as though he was falling endlessly as a cold heavy wind lulled his body straight to the ground and that feeling was oddly familiar. All the while, those atrocious feelings enveloped his body and clung to it with tight leashes and vicious claws. He could not breathe, he could not move, he could not resist. The only thing that was left for him to do was watch himself hopelessly.
Sometimes he wondered if he was indeed a human being or a machine that had been programmed to obey and kill. Humans felt, humans thought and humans got involved. Now that he knew who he was, he wished he was a machine just so they could wipe him and start over.
But he was nothing.
He had come across a piece in a newspaper that described him as a terrorist, a menace to society, a cold and cruel man who had been responsible for world-changing events for the past seventy years. He was a murderer, a dangerous and merciless killer who had obeyed Hydra blindly and in doing so had ensured their quiet and endless, ever-growing power. They had reaped war, harvested conflict and eliminated every single threat – one by one until there was only a few of them left. He had been their fist, their metallic fist. The Winter Soldier.
The words were harsh, yet truthful. However, they were half the truth.
The other half had to do with twenty-seven years of life that seemed to belong to another man. James Buchanan Barnes. That truth was something he could not even begin to understand. A black book melancholically and darkly bound but whose contents were written in another language – a language he could neither read not speak.
He had gone to the Smithsonian Institution to truly see it with his own two eyes. While destroying his mind and torturing his brain, Hydra had carefully erased his entire past until all he had left were bits and pieces of thin air, wisps and specs of nothing. Dandelion pieces blowing in the wind.
He saw a man with his own face. He saw a man with his own two eyes. He saw a man that was so similar, yet so different from himself. There were no dark circles under his eyes, there was no shadow beneath his gaze, there was no robotic arm patched to his body, there was not that aura of defeat and brokenness that seemed to define who he was. He saw a man named James Buchanan Barnes, a man who had fought alongside Captain America almost seventy years ago. He had been a Sergeant, he had lived in New York City and he had been childhood friends with Captain America – or rather, Steve Rogers. He had helped him defeat the Nazis and Hydra. He had helped orchestrate the plan that would culminate in the death of some enemy named Red Skull. He had been a good man, a kind one. He had been a man, a human being. But then he had died before that. He had fallen off a train in the middle of nowhere and no one had been able to save him.
It was snowing, he was falling, he was screaming…
It was cold, it was too fucking cold…
When he closed his eyes and tried to remember any of that, it was like he was being torn apart, as if they were cracking his skull open while scorching blood ran freely around his body.
James Buchanan Barnes was indeed his name. Bucky was indeed who he was.
No, no, no!
I am the Winter Soldier! That's who I am! That must be a trick! They must have done that!
No, no, no!
I AM THE WINTER SOLDIER!
Then why the hell could he not stop thinking about what he had read in that museum? Why could he not dismiss the idea that that man resembled him so strikingly? Why could he not summon a single thought about his past? Why could he not stop remembering Captain America's words? He had also been deprived of seventy years of his life thanks to Hydra and then woken up to an alien world with no family, no friends, no nothing! At least it seemed as though he had his recollections and even seventy years later, he had remembered his childhood friend.
Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes.
That was his true name. That was his true identity, yet, they had stolen it from him – the only thing a man truly owns. They had taken everything from him – quietly, in the shadow of the world. They had taken everything from him. Everything. And then they had made him into nothing. He was nothing.
Nothing.
His name was James Buchanan Barnes. He was born in 1917. He lived in New York City.
Darkness. Coldness. Emptiness. Brokenness.
These days, those thoughts were lacerating whatever was left of his mind. It was drenching onto his brain cells, rushing to every corner of his skull, hammering its insides with such a powerful strength that he could not even keep his balance. He saw himself standing in front of a graveyard and that was where his lost memories and lost hopes were buried deep under the ground. It hurt so much, as if he would bleed to death, a wound that was entrenched so deeply that perhaps it would never stop bleeding. A scar rooted deep into his soul. Everything else was forlorn.
These days, the throbbing sensation in his head got deeper and deeper and it felt like darkness was spreading through his eyesight and reality came and went every other second. It was like everything was part of an alternate reality, of a sick and twisted endless nightmare. A nightmare into which he was falling forever. Just like he had fallen off that train seventy years ago.
Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes.
The understanding that he had indeed been someone else… the understanding that he had had a life before Hydra… the realization that he had been a normal person… the realization that he had probably been experimented upon… the knowledge that he had been transformed into a machine that worked for the very people he had sworn to defeat a long time ago… the knowledge that his years had been wasted on a cause that he had once despised… It was too much. It was too fucking much.
And it was too fucking cold…
These days, his eyes were burning with tears that he had never shed.
They had made him who he was. They had made who he was against his will. He had been transformed into a robot, a machine, a weapon, a monster. He had been brainwashed. He had been tortured. His mind had been tampered with. His life had been artificially prolonged. He had been given missions and been asked to do awful things just so Hydra could prevail. He was alone. He had no one. He had been spared from a life that he would probably have enjoyed. He could not know. He would never know. There were a million things he would never know or remember and it was all Hydra's fault.
He was a choiceless, nameless, ruthless, brainless, soulless person and it was their entire fault.
They had taken away every single memory of his – sweet, sour, happy, sad, angry, lovely, funny, hurtful. And in doing so, they had taken everything away from him. He was left alone, completely destroyed and broken and the whispers and breezes of his memories were nothing but gloomy stars in the middle of a cold winter night. He was trapped inside a labyrinth forever, a maze whose hedges he could neither see nor touch. His memories were shards of reality, pieces of fantasy, batches of questions. There were no patterns, no fingerprints, no certainties. Shadows in the dusk, shades in the darkness.
These days, he was anchored tightly to a fragile rock in the middle of the vast ocean and sturdy waves were hitting him over and over again as a thundering storm approached in the horizon. He was fishing for his own memories and they were dangling around the baits, swimming below his feet, hiding from his sight and disappearing under the seaweeds. They escaped every single time and suddenly they were nowhere to be seen. The anchor was tightening around his figure and the waves kept clashing on his body until he was drowning and his lungs were filling with water. Darkness was lurking in the shadows and coldness was enveloping his heart.
But it made no fucking sense. It defied every single concept he knew. It defied all logic and rationality. Still, the problem was that he no longer trusted his own mind. It was as broken was he was, broken beyond repair and gone forever. Gone. He had no memories whatsoever, his reminiscences were tattered and scattered illogical bits and pieces that he was trying to patch together with trembling, hesitant hands. His mind was like a blank canvas and the memories were small specs of ink sprinkled across its surface in a scarlet red ink.
Just like blood. And he had far too much blood on his hands even if he had no memories at all.
These days, that name was still reverberating inside his brain till it actually felt like they had branded it there with hot, scorching iron, till it felt like poison flowing through his veins. He heard the whispers of that name every night, all night long and in every single nightmare of his. James Buchanan Barnes. Maybe he had actually been someone rather than a simple soldier, an asset, an object of sorts. Maybe he had had a life. Maybe he had had a name. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
So many fucking questions, so many fucking maybes.
Those revelations were threatening to open some doors that the Winter Soldier would rather keep shut – doors that he had never thought of before, doors that had never troubled him before. They were shaking on their hinges and creaking, screeching so goddamn hard that it was as if someone was dragging their sharp claws on a chalkboard until the surface was so dented that you could actually see the wall peeking behind. The disturbing sound was throbbing inside his ears and mixing with the screeches and vicious screams of his demons, of the ghosts of his past. It hurt so fucking bad that he wondered how much longer he could stand all of that.
These days, he was finally free, but it felt like he was trapped in the confines of his own poor mind. He was tied to an invisible veil and chains made of thin air had him caged inside a dome. Both of his hands were free, yet he was unable to stretch his fingers and grab ahold of the leashes of his own goddamn life. Both of his legs were free, yet he was unable to move them and leave a lifetime of torture behind. The illusion of freedom is far too evil and disturbing – you see it, you taste it and that is about it. You are still trapped and caged and left to watch yourself drown in misery, despair and torment.
The Winter Soldier was free, but he had never felt more hopeless.
The memories were tapping at his door incessantly, recklessly. Nonetheless, as he peeked through that peephole, all he saw was darkness – a deep, heavy, profound darkness that seemed to have lacerated every single being and drenched onto their withered remains. All he ever had to keep him company was his own shadow, but darkness had deprived him even of that. Every ghost of his past was hovering by that eerie-looking door and filling him with such terror and anguish that all he could listen to were the thumping sound of his heart – that hellish organ that he had kept inside its own private chamber for quite so long – and those whispers, whispers from his past, whispers from hell and beyond, whispers of his monstrosities.
He wanted to beg, he wanted to get to his knees and implore to those demons that they left him alone and that he no longer stood deep into darkness feeling his soul burn and his body wither away. A moment of peace to an unworthy man.
But the ebony darkness never responded – if anything, it grew even more to a point it no longer held any mystery, but only pain, misery and desolation. The whispers of his past were like scattered patches that made no sense at all, dandelion pieces that tickled his skin and grabbed his trembling hands with their iron grips. He was left alone and hopeless to watch his own tragedy unfold, a hoarse scream stuck on his throat, a big lump growing inside his chest. A lonely man trapped inside his own sick, twisted and unknown dark little grave.
Solitude and freedom left a bad taste in his mouth.
Dying and living, drowning and breathing, crying and screaming. It felt like that. It felt like all of that.
It was the first time in his life he could actually see, yet the light was blinding. He could finally breathe, yet his lungs were tight. He could finally speak for himself, but the words were not there. He could finally think for himself, but there were no clear thoughts to muster. He could finally live, yet he felt like dying.
Loneliness was still there. Brokenness was still there. Emptiness was still there.
And never had he considered himself lonely, broken or empty. But he had always been all of that. No one. Nothing.
But who the hell was he?
He was nameless. He was faceless. He was heartless. He was soulless.
His routine was always the same: he woke up, washed his face and spent five minutes recollecting everything he knew about himself before writing it down. His name was Bucky, but he was known as the Winter Soldier. He was 97, but looked 27. He was born in New York City, but was kept in Siberia. He joined the Army, but was captured by Hydra. He had been best friends with Captain America, who he had fought over a month ago before Hydra's downfall. He had killed countless of faceless and nameless people, all of whom he was now remembering painfully every time he closed his eyes. He was a murderer, a monster, a puppet, a brainwashed super soldier who had worked for seventy years for a foul, evil organization whose ultimate goal was to control the entire world.
And that was it.
He was nothing.
Half of what he knew about himself was thanks to a museum exhibition. The other half was thanks to the constant news about the Winter Soldier.
Hydra had destroyed his mind and wiped any trace of humanity he had once had. Whatever was left of him was just a shell of a human being, someone broken beyond repair who was simply too coward to put an end to his own life. Life had never been kind to him and even now that he needed it to be over, it refused to go away.
There was still something burning inside his heart – a small flame, but a flame nonetheless. And this minuscule wisp was the very one keeping him alive, instilling some will, some choice to a man who had never had any of that.
Hydra had taken everything away from him. Killing himself would just give them something more.
So he just kept existing.
So he just kept being nothing.
It was just another spring afternoon.
It was just another coffee shop.
It was just another city.
And as he left the coffee shop for his next mission, a single word was written in the coffee shop window.
Nothing.
A/N: hello there! So here's my new attempt at finishing my Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes story properly. Hope you guys enjoy it (: