Resisted
Darkness crept into Bucky's mind, clouded it and put shadows inside. He kept mumbling the words he didn't understand anymore. James Barnes, Sergeant, 325572. It was one of the few things he could still remember and the only one he didn't think he needed to hide. He didn't care about his life – not anymore, they took that away from him. All his sense of self-preservation was gone and the only thing he considered important were his memories.
When he was captured, he was so weak he was glad when he managed to stay awake for a whole hour. At first, they took care of him, replaced his arm, tended to the countless other injuries he had, fed him, let him sleep. He didn't understand he was taken prisoner for a long time. In his feverish delirium, he misplaced his surroundings; he thought he was in care of American doctors; that everything was going to be alright. There was only one thing missing, one person he'd expected to come and have a look at him, even if just a short one. Had it not been for this, he would not suspect something was wrong.
Then his body healed and they started turning him into the weapon they wanted him to be. At first it was easy but they stopped being nice very soon. When he was beaten into a pulp for the first time, he thought no longer he was among friends. Familiar blue eyes kept watching him in dreams, but they never came when he wanted to see them. The first time he ended strapped to a bed with bleeding injuries, bruising eyes and pain in his chest, murmuring his name, rank and serial number in a teary, shaking voice he understood that those eyes won't come. For some reason, they abandoned him, left him in the hands of cruel people who wanted something he couldn't point his finger on. They deserted him, why?
His captors gave him two days in which they cured as many of his injuries as was possible, and began the beating again. They didn't want information which confused him; he thought that if he was taken prisoner in war, he would be beaten to give information. But they never asked anything, nothing important. They were transforming him into a beast, killing the old Bucky within him and they were waking fury, anger and hatred in him. They kept saying terrible things about the country he came from, the people he trusted and replaced them with false information, delusions and stories he didn't believe. And then they beat him over and over and spoke about all the things, pushed those lies into his mind until he could no longer tell the difference.
Bucky realised that some of the facts were false but he couldn't distinguish them anymore. When he was awake, they were telling him the lies and injured him. When he slept, the stories kept haunting him, he saw faces melting into other ones, he saw caresses being turned into acts of violence or peace shattering into chaos, pain and suffering.
He would give them almost everything, all the bits of information that had no personal value to him – positions of their bases, ammunition the American army used, secrets about commanders. But they wanted nothing more than to teach him and nothing less than to change him completely and destroy everything human within his soul.
One by one, facts kept slipping through his fingers. He paid little attention to it at first; compared to the physical torment it was difficult to care about the names of his primary school classmates. But then the information they tried to steal or change was more important and he began to struggle. But he was weak; they strapped him down, tied him with ropes, flogged him, punched him or let him drown for some time. They tortured him to the breaking point and sometimes even a bit beyond it and he was losing himself. He lost all knowledge he had apart from memories of one person.
Repeating his name, rank and serial number helped him concentrate on one thing so he wasn't thinking about anything else; he kept his mind off the person who mattered the most, off those shining blue eyes or round, pink lips. It was hard for him to not think of him, the man whose name disappeared from the shallow surface of his memory, when the soft smile of the man gave him the only comfort he could hope to get. He didn't wish to let go of him, he wasn't prepared and he knew that if he did release the memory, there would be absolutely nothing left of him. Nothing worth fighting for, nothing good, sacred, solemn but only an empty shell full of confusion, pain and hatred.
He realised that if they took this man from him he would soon lose his own name as well. And that was exactly what they aimed to get; they knew he was almost broken and only few threads connected him with reality and his humanity. This far he could resist when they ordered him to do something he'd not want to do and it wouldn't be safe to send him into action if they couldn't be sure he'd not betray.
The only problem was that they didn't know what he was hiding in his heart, what was so precious to him he took a beating almost every day because of it. They watched him 24/7, they tortured him and they were nice to him, all of it without any effect or outcome. He was silent and if he did speak, he muttered the all too familiar set of James Barnes, Sergeant, 325572. It drove everybody insane; after so much time and money spent on creating the weapon, they wanted some outcome; they wanted to fire the gun or throw the knife.
It seemed hopeless. He would not give up the memory and they couldn't dive deep enough into his mind to snatch the obstacle from him and finally make him submit. They even thought that he buried it so deep he could no longer retrieve it himself and therefore he was lost. That appeared improbable though because if it was out of his reach, it wouldn't have such influence on him.
And then he broke down. His body gave in and he screamed from sleep. He screamed a name and in that moment he was lost. They required little effort to ruin this last remnant of his revolt and as soon as they wiped the man he loved, he was blank, empty and unresponsive. Submissive.
...
Darkness takes over his mind but he doesn't fight it; he welcomes it because it means he'll be free. They promised that once he fulfils his mission he can sleep and he was so tired. Being awake was wearing him out because it kept nagging at him that this was not everything. He doesn't know what is missing, but he is searching for something and it makes him unhappy. He falls asleep and the last thing he sees is a familiar pair of lips whispering words he doesn't understand: "I'll save you."
