*flails arms* I was suffering from burnout on my big fic and my brain wouldn't let this drop so have a post-Cap 2 AU in which Bucky Barnes doesn't have to be on the run.

Timeline assumes that the helicarriers fell on April 4th, 2014, the day the movie was released.

You might notice some repeated headcanons and plot devices between this fic, "Your Spirit is Untainted" and another one (the big one, which will be published sometime in the next six months if it doesn't kill me first). These similarities are due to a lack of imagination by yours truly, in her quest for nice tidy plots.

Only general warnings for this fic: descriptions of torture, violence and mental conditioning. Depictions of reactions of trauma. Nothing big.

Updates Monday nights EST.

Image from here: [bit] [.ly] /1QZO60g

This chapter is brought to you by a history geek, though obviously there is no way you can tell.

The man in blue and red had said two words: "Benjamin" and "Chase". A name – Benjamin Chase.

A name meant a person, meant a target.

He had watched the man close his eyes and whisper the words, choke them out before his muscles slacked and he died.

Died of gunshots, of broken ribs and punctured lungs and punches to the face by a metal arm.

He'd killed the man. Dragged him out of the river and watched him die, and left before anyone found him.

The sun had disappeared twice since, and he'd found a little food for energy but didn't dare stop moving. He didn't have a map, didn't know where he was or where he was going. Where the target Benjamin Chase was.

He found himself standing across from a building with open doors. The building with the people walking in and out – "library", it said. They gave out books but he saw computers inside, and he could use it. He'd seen his handlers use them, and the scientists too.

Whoever Benjamin Chase was, the man he'd dragged out of the river wanted him to find him.

He found the computer in the darkest part of the library and clicked around, exploring it – he'd never used one before – until he noticed the printed instructions nearby: "To create a written document, double-click on the icon with a blue 'W' to open Microsoft Word. To play a game, click on the Windows button on the lower-left-hand corner and open the folder named 'Games'. To browse the internet, double-click on the icon with a blue 'e' to open Internet Explorer."

"Internet" – he'd heard the word before.

The screen changed, opening an application, and he typed the words "Benjamin Chase" into the area with the blinking bar; but there were too many results, too many men with that name to find whichever one the man in the river – the man he'd tried to kill – wanted him to find.

He clicked further, and time fell away as it never had before as he followed different – "links", they were named – and searched through the results.

This wasn't working. He'd found a site that would tell him the addresses – sometimes even phone numbers – of the possible targets but there were still too many.

Maybe the target was close – but then he didn't know where he was. He opened a new – it was called a tab – and searched "location" but that didn't tell him where he was. "Map": a further nothing. "Where am I": Alexandria, Virginia, United States of America.

He clicked on the Google Map result to get his bearing, see the locations around him – states, counties, neighborhoods, towns and one large city.

The man had said another name – he said it was his name. James Buchanan Barnes. The first two words sounded familiar but he knew they weren't his.

He searched "James Buchanan" and found it was a president. A useless president, the worst in his office. Well, he thought, he would decide that for himself.

The list: George Washington (the best); John Adams (okay); Thomas Jefferson (good); James Madison (good); James Monroe (good); John Adams – a different one? – (very good); Andrew Jackson (powerful but bad); Martin Van Buren (useless); William Harrison (dead); John Tyler (bad); James Polk (okay); Zachary –

Harrison.

That name was also familiar.

– Taylor (also dead); Millard Fillmore (bad); Franklin Pierce (bad); James Buchanan –

Yes, he could understand why Buchanan was the worst.

– (the worst); Abraham Lincoln (very good); Andrew Johnson (very bad); Ulysses Grant –

Why was Lincoln good if he started a war? But he was shot after the war ended, and he didn't think these people way back when understood how war worked – you killed people while the war was happening, not after it ended – but whatever. And another thing: why would anyone who killed people be good?

– (good but also inept); Rutherford Hayes (okay); James Garfield (also dead? if these men were important why did they keep being killed – and Lincoln had been killed too...); Chester Arthur (good); Grover Cleveland (good); –

Cleveland. Another name he recognized.

– Benjamin Harri –

That was it.

It wasn't "Benjamin Chase", it was "Benjamin Harrison".

Then what was Chase?

He continued with the presidents because he was curious. He knew that feeling should be getting him punished but there wasn't anyone here – the man had been dying –

You killed him, you shot him, why would you kill Steve?

The man had given him a name. He would find the name. He would finish the presidents first, though.

Benjamin Harrison (good intentions but ineffective, like his namesake); Grover Cleveland (again?); William McKinley (another war, and then he was dead – what was with these guys); Theodore Roosevelt (another name he recognized – there was a bear? anyway, very good); William Taft –

There was someone with that name, too. There was a Benjamin and a William and a James and a – a –

Not Grover, though Cleveland was the middle name. A girl. A girl whose name started with "R".

In any case. William Taft (good but ate too much); Woodrow Wilson (good but uptight, got sick towards the end); Warren Harding (also dead but this was illness – and he was bad anyway); Calvin Coolidge (bad economics but awesome guy – he hated the KKK and Bucky did too, and he hated lynching and gave Indians citizenship –

Who the hell was "Bucky"? And why did he like Coolidge so much, and what was he –

He shook his head. His mind was mixing him and this "Bucky" guy up. He didn't care about Silent Cal, Bucky did. Whoever that was. Maybe that was the man in the river.

Coolidge (good, quiet); Herbert Hoover (bad); Franklin Roosevelt –

"FDR", they called him. The man who talked through the radio, who'd made his father happy when he closed the banks, who had the alphabet soup and hated the Supreme Court. Who sat in a wheelchair, and his wife went into the mines and the factories instead of him.

The man who'd started another war, and yet he knew this president was one of the best.

But the site said he'd died. He hadn't died – right? He was still alive, even though the war was winding down he wouldn't die, he'd never –

"Roosevelt's health seriously declined during the war years, and he died three months into his fourth term."

Oh. 1945. It was barely into 1945, though...

Maybe some time had passed. That was understandable.

But there were all these after – Truman he knew, he'd voted for him in '44 as vice president, and Eisenhower – General Eisenhower, Ike – and Jack Kennedy was a submariner – but these guys... Johnson and Nixon and Ford and Carter –

Carter, you know Carter. Peggy Carter.

Stupid, he thought, this is a different Carter. She's English, I'm American.

He was Russian. He knew Russian, he thought in – okay, not Russian. He didn't think in any particular language, but he remembered that he was supposed to be Russian. Soviet. Whatever the difference was.

But these were his presidents – he'd voted for FDR after all – and they were American. He was American.

He felt like he was drowning with all these things he somehow knew – how did he know them? – and he was getting a headache. Back to the map, he told himself.

The map said he was in Alexandria, across the river from the capital of Washington, DC. He clicked on its link and reviewed its divisions: wards and neighborhoods. One of those neighborhoods was Chevy Chase – "Chase".

There was also one in Maryland, next to it.

He returned to the site that told him where the people were, and put "Benjamin Harrison" in and restricted the search to DC and MD.

Nothing. He wanted to punch the computer screen but stopped himself.

Unnecessary violence is not tolerated, someone said in his head. It wastes good weapons and soldiers. Do not act out, Asset.

That word "asset" made him so much angrier all by itself. He hated it.

Okay. Back to the names. He knew there were three presidents he had to know, and one of them had an extra name: "Barnes".

He searched "James Buchanan Barnes" and –

– and –

He switched off the screen to look at his reflection, then back on again to compare it against the pictures. The same face.

Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.

The name "Barnes" sounded right after each of the presidents' names. The man wanted him to find Benjamin Harrison Barnes, but not to kill him? What was he supposed to do if not kill him?

James Barnes had a page on that site with the presidents – Wikipedia – too, and it said he was "survived by three younger siblings: William, Rebecca and Benjamin. All three boys were named after presidents (Buchanan, Taft and Harrison, respectively) and Rebecca's middle name was Cleveland, though Grover Cleveland had no known female relatives named Rebecca."

Yeah, because their parents liked the name "Rebecca" but if she'd been a boy they would've named her "Grover", which Bucky always reminded her about when she complained that she was the only girl –

Oh.

Bucky. Buchanan.

That was a really stupid nickname. At least William got "Will" and Rebecca "Reba" and Benjamin "Ben", but he had to get "Bucky". And then Steve had shortened it further to "Buck" – cue all the "worth a Buck" jokes.

Oh.

Steve.

That was the man in the river, on the ship in the air; the one he'd fought, the one who'd given him his brother's name as he lay dying.

He'd killed Steve.

He couldn't think of that. Steve had told him where his brother was, he wanted him to find him. Get away from – from the handlers.

Steve had been famous. He was in the Army, though he shouldn't have been because he was too small. Then he'd gotten bigger, and he was a –

"childhood best friend of Steve Rogers (Captain America)"

There it was.

He found a picture and confirmed that yes, he'd killed Steve Rogers. His best friend.

Shouldn't he have remembered him, then, if he was his friend, before he shot him? Before he'd punched him into a bloody pulp? But he had – he'd stopped. Steve had refused to fight him and he'd fallen into the river – the Potomac – and Bucky had pulled him out.

But nobody could survive four gunshots, or the broken ribs that would puncture his lungs. But Steve had before, in '31; he'd coughed so hard during a bout of pneumonia that he'd broken two ribs and punctured his lung. He'd been shot before, too – by Nazis, by Hydra. He'd been fine from those.

This was different. The Asset didn't leave his targets alive.

He couldn't remember whether Steve had been a target, though.

Kill him. Stop him from ruining our plans and kill him.

Yup. Steve had been a target.

One bullet in his arm, one in his back and another two through his leg and into his chest. The ones before, during the war, had been flesh wounds. Never hit anything vital. This time they had.

He'd killed Steve.

He couldn't think of that. He had to find his brother.

Why would Steve tell him where his brother was if Bucky had killed him? His job – the Asset's job – was to kill people. Steve had to know it was too dangerous to send him there.

He wouldn't kill Ben. He wouldn't kill Ben.

He still didn't have independent confirmation that he was James Barnes, after all. All those memories could be fake. The appearance could be a coincidence. Captain America could've been wrong.

Independent confirmation – Ben would give him that.

He put the address into the search bar and found directions – that was for a car, he wanted walking directions – and stared at them till he thought he would remember them.

He got mixed up a few times but the location stuck in his head: Chevy Chase, Maryland.

There was a car in the driveway and the door was blue.

He shouldn't enter the front door. There should be another entrance, another door that was unlocked. It was there but not unlocked.

Okay. He should wait.

A man opened the door; he didn't say anything, just stared right back at him.

This wasn't Ben.

This man was old.

Finally he said, "Bucky?"

There was that name again. Independent confirmation, even if this wasn't Benjamin.

"Uh..."

The man looked him up and down and his gaze stopped at the left arm, the metal one.

"Sweet Mary."

The man looked back at his face, his eyes, but he couldn't hold the gaze. Looking into a handler's eyes was like asking for a beating.

This man was a new handler –

But Steve had said that Ben was here.

This man wasn't Ben. What had he done with –

"Oh, no – shit, uh... can you put the knife down?"

– not Ben, he hurt Ben –

"Stop."

He stopped.

"Put the knife away."

He put the knife he held back into his pocket.

"Actually, no. Y'know what, give it to me."

Take out the knife, hold it out.

He was an asset. He couldn't let his handler know that he felt things.

The man who wasn't Ben took the knife. "Come inside."

He walked.

He would usually wait in the kitchen, away from the rest of the house. But this house – the kitchen was in full view of the other rooms. He looked around, trying to figure out where he should go.

There were four pictures on the wall, three in color.

He'd shot Steve four times, three fatal. But how could this man know about that?

"Okay, so, um... food or sleep?"

What?

The man looked him over again and said, "Sleep first. Take your shoes and your jacket off and lay down on one of the couches and sleep. Okay? – er, understood?"

He nodded. He understood.

"Good. We'll... figure out what to do tomorrow."

He had orders: sleep.

He slept, though he couldn't remember what that was like.