I just went to see Captain America: The Winter Soldier a couple days ago, and it was absolutely amazing! While I'm not going to talk about most of the plot here, I will say the Winter Soldier/ Bucky parts really got to me, and I sat through the entire movie feeling really bad for him. So of course it only followed that I'd write something. This is set during the post-credits scene and, as such, there are obvious spoilers ahead. Also, I have a few quotes from the movie that may not be exactly right and a couple details I don't quite like, but I'll come back and fix those once I figure them out. Hope you like this and leave reviews on your way out!

Disclaimer: I don't Captain America or the Winter Soldier; they belong to Marvel. Really, anything you recognize is not mine.

Bits of Old Moments

"I'm your friend."

"You're my mission."

And those words had been true when he'd said them. He had meant it entirely. But now? He couldn't say how sure he really was anymore. About that, about everything. About the present, especially about the past. The past brought to the forefront of his mind because of him. The man who'd called him a friend, let himself be beaten senseless without so much as a fight. The man who'd planted a seed of doubt in his mind which had only grown since dragging his unconscious once-friend from the waters before disappearing without a trace.

But, there was more than just this man he could have sworn looked so painfully familiar. There were the memories, too. Buried and blurred visions from a time long past. One of them showing a short and skinny kid getting battered and bruised by some cowardly thug in a dirty alleyway after failing to be enlisted yet again. Another with the same kid, taller and stronger now, looking down from above, concern in his eyes. Now one more as he leaned out the side of a moving train, hand reaching forward, expression scared and desperate until settling on stricken.

The Winter Soldier held both hands to his head as though their pressure might ward off the painful assault of the past. These memories, they were coming back faster now, more frequently since being brought out of stasis, but only ever in snippets and scenes, never full moments. Nothing enough to help him remember anything beyond that he had once been friends with this Steve Rogers. Nothing to tell him about who he was, who he used to be. And it wasn't at all aided by the fact that the only person with that kind of information was also the one person he couldn't talk to, couldn't face just yet.

But he needed to find out, to learn about the past life he used to live before HYDRA turned him into their frozen, brainwashed puppet. Even if what he found out wasn't him anymore. Because no matter what he might try to do, it would be impossible to try and go back now. It was far too late for that.

So then, in that case, who was he? What was he? His alter ego from the past? The Winter Soldier? Something in-between? Something else entirely? Perhaps for a short while he'd held onto some dying hope that this Smithsonian exhibit he'd stumbled upon might offer a few answers at least, but the endless rows of World War II memorabilia praising the nation's legendary hero did naught but summon up occasional snatches of the past, disconnected and confusing.

Well, almost naught. The assassin found himself standing before one board in particular, one slightly different, peering up with cold, blue eyes at… at himself.

James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes. The same name Rogers had called him. Except that wasn't him. The man Rogers was talking to, the man in the photographs, that was a good man, loyal, honest, and dedicated, supposedly dying in the service of his country. That was Bucky Barnes. That was the man Steve Rogers thought he saw. That name wasn't for the Winter Soldier, the cold hearted assassin who murdered without care. And nothing would be able to change that in the end, he knew for certain. No matter how much he might learn, how much he might remember, the initial reports from the time were proven true; James Barnes was dead. The Winter Soldier had taken his place, lost in a world never meant to be his own, to sift through the blocked recesses of his mind and the memories which sluggishly resurfaced. To puzzle out bits of old moments like the one suddenly emerging.

The same boy as in all his other recollections, this time fumbling with his door, visibly distraught by something. His own hand – or rather, Bucky's hand, for never again could they be one in the same – reaching down to uncover a hidden key beneath a black stone and handing it over. Then words in a voice both his and at the same time not, "I'm with you to the end of the line, pal."

Part of him wanted such a statement to still hold true, but times were changed, the circumstances beyond what either of them could have ever imagined back then. These new lives they led attested as such. So let Steve Rogers search for him all he wanted, offer all the help he could; ultimately, this was one stretch of the journey they each had to take on their own.