This story is a continuation of the Bucky/Beth the Waitress one-shot in ozhawk's "Soulmate Shorts AKA Crackship Armada," chapter 130, "A Really Long Story." If you haven't read any of the one-shots or continuations that followed some of the one-shots, I would encourage you to do so; they're absolutely awesome! Anyway, I wrote this prologue, but the next two chapters will be ozhawk's work, and then it looks like you guys are going to be stuck with my writing again. Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Prologue

The memories came back slowly at first, bit by bit, like a window that had shattered and whose pieces were now being haphazardly reconnected to form an uncertain mosaic; not the same as before – different, broken, but maybe, eventually, salvageable. At first he had only what he'd been told by the man on the bridge and his own vague belief that he might once have been more (or was it "less") than the Asset. He had been told that somehow, somewhere, he had once been a man named James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. That much he had been told by the one mark he'd ever failed to kill. Then the memories started to return, and with them the affirmation that the man on the bridge knew what he was talking about – knew Bucky.

The first time something came back to him, a flash of a memory echoed in his mind while he was sleeping on a park bench underneath what passed for the stars in this city that preferred artificial lights.

A woman – his ma, his dream filled in – calling to him, "James, dinner!"

"Comin', Ma!"

The next night it happened again and he saw – no, remembered…

Some scrawny blonde kid that his first teacher had made him share a desk and a primer with, announcing in a tone that was far too brassy to be wise coming from such a tiny kid, "You're name's too fancy. I'm gonna call you 'Bucky'."

He'd woken up with a jolt, sweating and unable to sleep for the rest of the night, but knowing one thing for certain… knowing one thing for himself. He hadn't always been the Asset. He was Bucky. But who was Bucky?

At least the memories kept coming, pieces filling in, a legendary ghost story shrunk down to moments and memories, likes and dislikes, a life that had been lived and then harshly cut off and warped into something ugly, and unrecognizable, and unforgivable.

The mark's name was Steve, not The Man on the Bridge.

No, he was so much more than that. He was Bucky's platonic soulmate.

Nine-year-old Steve chasing Robby Dexter all the way to the alley behind the movie theater for pushing Molly Walsh off the swings, and Robby Dexter beating him up for it. Bucky made sure to peel the two of them apart and ensure that Robby knew not to come near his Stevie again.

The same ally, the same old Steve, in another fight over ten years later, and of course Bucky cleans up Steve's mess for him… but maybe this is the last time, because he has a uniform on and draft papers in his back pocket. He's young and scared and he doesn't want to fight – he never has, really; fighting is just something he does because he must. But Steve doesn't see any of this, ever, and Bucky doesn't tell him because the little punk looks downright envious at the moment and he just wouldn't understand this, doesn't get that Bucky wasn't as good as him even way back then. So Bucky pastes on a smile, slings an arm around Steve's shoulders and drags him to a science fair, telling himself that everything will turn out okay in the end, that at least Steve has no choice but to stay safe here in New York, right?

Steve finding him in that hole in the ground where HYDRA's already run experiments on him and put things into his flesh and blood, but again Steve doesn't notice and Bucky doesn't tell him because, honestly, he's much more concerned about what's been put into Steve, what Erskine's serum and this awful war has turned him into.

Night after night and sometimes in broad daylight these things flashed back into his remembrance.

"Let's hear it for Captain America!" and Bucky claps, but he frowns when no one is looking, because already he realizes that no one would applaud if he'd called him "Steve" and he hates that.

Nights spent in enemy territory with the Howling Commandoes without even the comfort of firelight because they don't want to risk an enemy seeing it. Still Dum Dum talks as loud as any of them dare, Frenchie and Gabe bicker back and forth in French, Morita and Monty start up a game of cards and Bucky coaxes Steve into joining in the game because he just wants his best friend to remember to breathe for a second.

Then he and Steve are on a train, clinging to its side, and he's reaching for Steve's hand, only he doesn't reach far enough in time and he falls, screaming, into the snowy abyss below, alive, if just barely, when he slips into merciful unconsciousness.

After that, there were no more good memories. But there were still memories, and they kept coming, though he hated every one of them more than the last. Metal, orders, bone, blood, death, "wipe him," cryo, repeat. For how many years, Bucky wasn't even sure at first. Then there was the man on the bridge, and for the first time HYDRA's orders were disobeyed, and even without knowing who he was – who either one of them were, really – Bucky had dragged him out of that water and saved Steve one more time. Before he ran from him. Because he knew even in the midst of his confusion that whatever he had become, it wasn't this man's – Steve's – fault; it was something that he had to figure out and deal with himself. Right?

But recently he'd realized something else: As his platonic soulmate, Steve would be going nuts because he didn't know that Bucky was okay. Sure, Bucky wasn't dumb enough to think that he was actually okay, but he wanted Steve to think that he was. How to get that knowledge to him, though? He now knew for a fact that Steve would be able to see through him if Bucky showed up in person, and he just wasn't ready for that.

A proxy. He needed a messenger to send to Steve. But who? Someone Steve trusted was the best idea, of course, but Bucky hadn't really seen Steve anywhere around New York City, not by himself, let alone with anyone… which meant that he was going to have to work backwards from where he knew Steve was. He could trail him from Avengers Tower – not that he had a better way to spend his days, really – until he saw Steve with someone he trusted who lived outside of the Tower.

So that's what he did. It was harder than he had expected it to be to, following Steve without making himself known, and it wasn't because of lack of skill on his part. He could expertly conceal himself in a crowd so that no one ever noticed him, let alone the fact that he was tailing an Avenger, there were just moment when he didn't want to. There were moments when he just wanted to be able to unload everything on his soulmate and go to him for help, but he also knew that he wasn't ready for that. He felt there was still too much healing that he had to do by himself first.

So it was a small mercy that he only had to follow Steve for three days before he established one consistency in his daily routine that would fit Bucky's exact needs. He went to a little café every day, sitting at the same table… and talking to the same pretty blonde waitress.

In her Bucky had found his unwitting messenger, now he just had to get up the courage to actually give her his message.

HYDRA was not to be trusted. The former HYDRA operative strolling casually along the sidewalk had learned that the hard way. Where now he blended in, becoming an invisible, unnoticed part of the crowd, he had once been high up in HYDRA's ranks. One downed Triskelion and a few profile-altering scars later and they had just assumed he was dead. They knew he'd been enhanced, and therefore that there was a possibility he'd survived, but they hadn't come looking for him. So he'd turned his back on them and started up his own unofficial group of ex-HYDRA mercs, but that didn't mean he'd forgotten HYDRA.

He hadn't, and he really thought that it was time for them to learn that he'd survived – to learn how he felt about their treatment of him. As small a group as he was leading though, he wasn't stupid enough to think that he could put a dent in HYDRA… but he knew of someone – practically something – who could.

He'd been the Asset's handler more than anyone else during his years with HYDRA, and he'd heard that the Asset had escaped HYDRA, gone rogue in a sense, on his own when his memories started to come back. Presently, that could turn into a disadvantage, or, depending on what angle he decided to pursue, work to his advantage. It was a disadvantage because Sergeant Barnes emerging where he wanted the Asset would make him harder to track down. He'd figure out that he was being chased and run like a bat out of hell because he was remembering that he had something to fight for.

Unless that "something to fight for" was used against him. The moment he had Sergeant Barnes in hearing range, he could use a trigger word on him to get him to revert back to the Asset, but kidnapping Rogers to draw him out was going to be just as impossible as kidnapping the Asset, maybe more so. But there was an avenue that he could take to make that happen too. Trailing Rogers until he found someone outside of the Tower to draw Rogers out, kidnapping that person and then Rogers, and thereby drawing Barnes out… It was a ridiculously complicated idea, but it was the only one Brock Rumlow had, and if it worked, anything would be more than worth it to get his hands back on the perfected mercenary that was the Asset.

Rumlow and the Asset could make a real name for themselves as a mercenary duo for hire… but first he had a point to make with HYDRA, and he knew who he wanted as his messenger.

So he managed to personally trail Rogers for a few days, going completely undetected and quickly noticing someone who should work as bait for Captain America. It wasn't in the nature of America's first hero to let a civilian die because of him – certainly not if the civilian was the pretty blonde waitress that he chatted with every day. With that thought in mind, it didn't take long for Rumlow to craft his plan and gather the rest of his ex-HYDRA crew to help him put it in action.