It was not in the asset's programming to be curious, to be made susceptible to the littlest suggestion.

They made that mistake long ago. The year was 1966. HYDRA had Nazi scientists who had discovered the alchemy formula. The details in the files were still incomplete, data that will never be retrievable for most of its necessary pawns were dead before they could be debriefed. The most that the team of scientists who then headed the Winter Soldier project had gleaned from the experience was that the man-mold beneath this perfect weapon had a flaw. They fixed it.

The worst kind of weapon was the one that had a conscience, that had a heart. How easily it could defect from the cause. They stripped away his-its own long ago.

The asset was not supposed to question anything; it had a mission, it should have been completed. It shouldn't have jumped into the Potomac to save the blond haired target who refused to fight back. It shouldn't have dragged the man to safety. It should have gone back for debriefing, for reprogramming - not be pulled by a need to learn about its body's history at the museum. It needed to remember it didn't have a name. It needed to go back into cryo-phase, lest the consciousness within the corpse they hollowed out come back to life. The asset was a weapon - a highly intelligent weapon that was given what it needed and was expected to return to base until it was needed in the field again.

It has been weeks since the incident at Washington and its programming was starting to glitch. It had never been away from its handlers this long before; it had been taught too well how to hide in radars. How to become undetected like it were nothing but stray rubbish. It had been hiding in the streets of England, clothed in nothing but stolen too-large jumpers, sweatpants, and a hat. It took shelter in uninhabited homes - stealing what it could ( and only ever what it needed ) - and plagued the streets in its ignorant, aimless freedom. And in its head, defects were starting to take root from the recesses of its mind - memories it shouldn't remember because weapons don't have memories. Weapons don't remember. Yet the defect - the developing virus of buried humanity - told it something else. That it remembered because it wasn't an it at all.

It was a man called James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky Barnes. Its name is Bucky.

His name is Bucky.

Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers were inseparable in both schoolyard and battlefield- Battlefield.

Mission. Mission report. Mission report. Defect found.

Defect. Defect. Return to base. Return.

Bucky. Who the hell is Bucky? Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers were inseparable in both schoolyard and battle- battle- battle- battle-

Words kept ringing in his head and it was hard to think, hard to assess what was happening, hard to remember where he was. England, he remembered after a while. London. Right. Somewhere in London.

Nobody gave him a second glance - in part, thanks to the regular disposition of British folk to mind their own business and have a chinwag about it later on when the person of queer interest was no longer in earshot; another thing entirely as he wasn't dressed as someone you'd willingly give a second glance towards. Unless you fancied yourself getting stabbed or mugged or both or worse. His hair was unruly kept and, if he were to take off his hat, the shine of collected grease would be more than noticeable. He didn't take off his hat.

Truly, he was simply wandering about. His was a downcast gaze for the most part but training, instinct bid for him to continuously and surreptitiously check if he were being watched or followed. That was when he saw her.

Nothing of her was drastically eye-catching. Pretty - objectively speaking - and short with brown hair that near matched his in length, cleaner than his own, and wearing a green coat that covered a dress and tights underneath. She kept to herself - her hands in her pockets, not looking where she was going ( like a lost girl in her own right ) - and Bucky would not have noticed. Should not have noticed. Yet there is a nagging in his mind, like an itch at the centre of your back that you couldn't quite reach or the word that you felt was at the tip of your tongue but for the life of you, you couldn't remember, that bid him to follow her in an attempt to remember. Quiet. Stealthy. She never saw him coming when he, of pure instinct, grabbed her without ceremony from the speeding car that she hadn't paid attention to.

Then she was looking up at him, impossibly wide eyes blinking the shock away. Trained eyes were trained on her as he stood, opposite her own self that seemed to be thrumming with the sudden rush of adrenaline, whilst he was poised and stock still. Too accustomed to the danger that it was normalcy that unsettled him. She'd thanked him but it had gone unheard as he then asked if he knew her.

Clara, lines forming between her brows, only looked up at him. A pause later, she finally spoke.

"Uh, no? Shouldn't think so?"

The voice was unfamiliar to him - her accent was off - but it was her face, it was her who was familiar to him. For some reason, it was enough to jostle his memory but not enough for him to understand why. Was she HYDRA? Was she someone else entirely? What is she? Who is she? He shouldn't know her but her familiarity is enough to puzzle him into a state that could almost be described as unstable. And an unstable weapon is a bomb waiting to explode.

"You okay?" she asked. He'd been staring, not saying anything. "I'm the one who almost died, mate; pretty sure I'm the one who's supposed to be in shock."

There was a lightness in her tone, a genial humour. Her distance, kept at arm's length. Around them, people kept walking past and there were a few who spat cold glances their way, for their being in the way of passersby. He didn't realise she'd led him away from the worst of the crowd and to a corner of an old building, relatively less busy than the sidewalk.

"Breathe," she was telling him. "Come on, now."

Clara's hands were small against him and they were featherlight to the touch as she still kept her distance. Her hands were splayed out on either side of her as if she were taming a wild animal that might just attack at any given moment. It was not an analogy made lightly as there is something feral, something primal in the way he regarded her with shadowed eyes that were concealed by the stiff peak of his baseball cap. Something scared.

"Why do I know you?" he managed to ask, almost grumbled through grit teeth.

"Okay. So," she licked her lips. This is not her first encounter with a seeming mad man who believed he knew her. She won't tell him how her heart raced with a different brand of adrenaline right then. One of hope, one of a thrilled curiosity that fit only too perfectly with this addict's starvation. He noted how her pupils dilated at the thought but how she kept her expression somewhat placid was commendable. "You know me then?"

"I remember you."

"What's my name?"

"I-" he started. "I don't know. But I- I know you. Are you- Are you with them?"

"Who's them?" There was a sincerity there that could not be shaken - the way her eyes narrowed and she shook her head, not even flinching. This was no lie. And she never raised her voice, though there was an insistence about her that was difficult to refuse. "Who are you?"

He licked his lips. "I shouldn't be here."

"Okay, stay with me now. I need you to stay on track. Could you tell me who you are?"

Like a veteran commander, she gave the order with a tranquil authority. As if she were used to being in charge and she looked at him with a focus that he couldn't back away from. It wasn't threatening, no, but there was a force about her that demanded to be paid attention to - that she had answers, somehow; that she could fix this. It was almost transfixing, how there was a trustworthiness that enveloped her. He didn't know her; he'd never met her before - but she talked to him like he could trust her with his life. Yet for all her commanding kindness and comfort, Bucky was finding it hard to breathe. Pressure built at the centre of his forehead. Colours around him started blurring together while words he could not remember slowly started pouring into his head, mixed with the steadiness of this stranger's own resolve. He swallowed.

"Hey, hey," she spoke again, calm and soft. Though there, too, was the tremble of fear there despite it all. "You're okay. My name's Clara, if that helps? Clara Oswald? D'you think you can remember now?"

"No," he shook his head. He pushed himself away and past her as she started to walk away. "No, I shouldn't be here."

"Hey!" She matched his stride, wading through the sea of pedestrians to keep up with him. "Hey, hang on a minute!"

But there was no use. When he broke into a run, he disappeared into the crowd. Gone. Clara stood, after giving chase, to where the strange man might have gone but there was no sign of him. Gone as quick as breath on a mirror. Like a ghost.

(You'll never find him.)