He wakes up again to meet a cold stone wall, but the images of a snowy mountain and a roaring train are blasting through his mind. It takes him a second to realize where he is- in a hydra cell, again. His head hurts like hell, and so does every fiber of his being. It was terrifying. Everyone he knows thinks he's dead. Steve won't be here to get him out of this one.

A dry laugh escapes his chapped mouth before he can stop it. It's ironic, it was always him saving Steve before, getting the little punk out of trouble, and now he can't even save himself.

He tries not to look to his side, but it's inevitable, and it's not just a nightmare either. Where his left arm used to be was a metal monstrosity, glinting in the dimly lit room, and a network of new scars exposed where the metal ended and his shoulder began. It dug into his skin, and he remembers strangling the scientist next to him before being knocked out by a syringe. He takes a shuddering breath as he moves it, and the now scabbing cuts feel like they're ripping all over again.

"Ah, Sergeant Barnes, you're awake." The short, smug scientist remarks at the door to his cell.

"You stay the fuck away from me." Bucky hisses back in reply.

"Gladly, but they won't." Two armed guards step into his cell, and Bucky doesn't even consider how hopelessly outnumbered he is before he socks the first one in the nose, they pull a gun against his head before he can continue.

"You won't kill me." He sneers.
"You wouldn't have gone through all the trouble with the experiments and the arm to kill me now." Bucky feels the cold edge of the gun digging into his temple.

"You're right," replies the scientist. Bucky thinks his name is Zola.

"You are our most successful experiment yet, like I said before, you will be the new fist of Hydra."

"Yeah, right. Good luck with that."

They lead him out of the cell into a room full of scientific equipment Bucky can't identify.

Looking back, he can't quite remember what happened in there, but he remembers the pain.

So much of it. And it never ended. Always in his head, constant buzzing, throbbing pain. It's not just that day. It goes on all the time, in-between meals, every day, for hours on end, experiments and torture. Random blackouts when he can't handle it anymore.

He starts to forget things.

He plays memory games with himself to pass the time between the experiments. Sitting in his cell, he tries to recall his past. At first it's little things. When was the last time he had water? What did his nightmare consist of this time? And gradually more of his past slips away. When was his birthday? What about Steve's? What city did he used to live in? What year was it?

What were his parent's names?

He does a sharp intake. He can't remember. He tries but the memories are hazy and grey. He pictures their faces in his mind, also hazy. It's because they died so long ago, he tells himself. It's ok, it doesn't mean anything.

"Do you speak Russian, soldier?" A scientist asks him one day, in German.

"Why are you calling me that?" Bucky replies testily, not answering the question.
"I am not your soldier. My name is James Buchanan Barnes, sir."

"Is it?" The scientist asks vacantly, and then there's only pain.

He tries to carve it into his brain. They don't give him anything to write with, so he repeats it over and over.

James Buchanan Barnes. That was his name. He was no soldier. He was not their soldier.

It was getting harder and harder to remember.

How long had he been here? Days? Weeks? Months? The electric shocks and the experiments take the time away and hold it, strangling and distorting his sense of up and down, right and left, long and short. Everything was becoming fuzzy. How had he even gotten here? Was he really just an asset? He was barely human; freedom was an illusion, a pointless dream that, for as much as he knew, didn't exist.
There was only Hydra now, orders, and pain if he didn't obey.

I

He can barely comprehend the voices over the painful buzzing in his head, he doesn't know if he'll recognize them anyways.

"The Skull? The ship? Our plan, all destroyed by that useless American? How could this happen?"

"There is a bright side to this news professor, Steve Rodgers is dead too, he went down with the plane."

"That is-"
Bucky can't hear what they say next, an icy chill had settled over his mind. Everything was perfectly still and quiet. He can't breathe. Steve Rodgers. Steve Rodgers.

All of a sudden, the foggy memories come back in a crashing wave. Vivid color, laughter, lights, music, all of it. Steve Rodgers, his best friend. The Howling Commandos, the train, the war, his life before it all went to shit, the little kid from Brooklyn. It was suddenly crystal clear.

And Steve was dead.

With a roar, he rips his metal arm out of its restraint, and breaks the other ones with it. He leaps from the table like lightning, knocks out the first scientist with a sharp punch to the head that sends him flying backwards, and he snaps the second's neck before he has time to respond.

These monsters did this to him, they killed Steve, they killed so many and ruined so many lives and claimed they were doing it for a real and just cause, and that made Bucky angrier than he ever had been. He was not their twisted soldier, and he fights with every fiber in his body. Guards charge at him with guns and with every bullet he dodges he sends another Hydra agent to the ground. The arm is useful, and it satisfies Bucky to see the very thing they had given him for evil bring them to the ground. It was loud, and every scream was another victory for Bucky. And then he was out.

The wind sends painful shards of ice into his face and chest, but it is nothing like the pain he has already endured. His bare feet sink in the snow but he runs fast, his lungs burning with fire and his eyes squinting against the snow.

He has to get as far away as he could, he never would stop running, and they could never catch him. There was only snow, only the open skies and the mountains and running. He runs and runs and doesn't bother to look back.

But suddenly there are guns pointed at his chest.

He turns to run the other way but the guns are there too.

They're everywhere, and they block the view of the icy mountains and the first glimpse of the sky he has seen in a lifetime.
Faceless bodies, sleek black helmets and a hopeless amount of them. A bullet grazes his side and he can no longer run. The pain catches up to him, finally, and he collapses on his knees.

The almost healed scars from his left shoulder had opened up again, and the blood from the bullet wound turns the snow bright red, like the skull emblem on their jackets. His whole self is freezing, and his blue, trembling fingers indicate he should be feeling the effects of hypothermia, but he just covers them up with the metal hand.

The anger boils and rages, and that is what keeps him warm through the freezing years he has yet to experience.

Two rough sets of gloved hands grab his arms and drag him back through the snow, all the while barking back and forth in German? Russian?
Bucky couldn't think of it. His feet drag limply behind him in the snow and he slumps in their arms. They might have been addressing him, but he stays silent and stoic the whole way back to the base.

Freedom should have felt cold, but the fire he was feeling had consumed him.

"Look at our Winter Soldier." They said, and there was another jolt of pain. There were voices all around, blurry visions of menacing people towering over him.

"You may be a valuable asset, but that doesn't mean you can just go around killing our top engineers and soldiers." More pain. Bucky could barely hear over the ringing in his ears, but he didn't care.

That was his best friend they killed.

He spat at them.

Another lightning bolt of pain that leaves him with fuzzy vision and his throat raw with screams.

His anger is still there though; it's always there on every mission, in every breath. But as time wears on, he finds he can't remember why.