Check the bottom of the document for Trigger warnings.
"Funny thing how when you reach out, people tend to reach right back. Best, then, to make sure your hand is open and not fisted."
-Richard E. Goodrich
"Help someone, you earn a friend. Help someone too much, you make an enemy."
-Erol Ozan
"The challenge is trying to set people free, and help them be 'successful' in the world, which are almost always opposite objectives."
-Bryant McGill
...
Steve's legs itched too much to wait for the elevator. He burst into the stairwell and vaulted over the stairwell, leaping from landing to landing until he reached the lower basement. Tony had given the remnants of Shield the lower levels of the tower for a home base until they got settled. In return for running his security, Maria and her team got the best facilities and security money and Stark ingenuity could give. Unfortunately, it meant it took forever to clear the check lines. Steve hopped from foot to foot while Jarvis scanned his biometric data. He squeezed through the blockade door before it opened halfway and practically ran to Conference Room C, only slowing down to dodge personnel minding their own business.
"Is it really Bucky?" he demanded as he slammed through the door. He slowed down, breath caught in his chest. The far wall was taken up by a big screen showing Bucky unconscious on a small cot. His best friend was pallid and too thin but he was alive. He was clean and had a haircut and he was alive.
Sam, Hill and Stark stood arguing in the corner, but they'd stopped when Steve arrived. Sam walked over quickly and stood by his side, not touching, but close enough his body heat seeped in through Steve's shirt. "He's alive and he's okay. A little malnourished and he's got an impressive number of bruises but he's here, Steve. We got him."
"We got him," Steve repeated, eyes fixed on Bucky's face. "God, he's—" He forced himself to focus. "What happened?"
"That's what I'd like to know," Tony said, jumping into the conversation. "And it'd be a lot easier if someone's trigger happy goon squad hadn't shot my only informant."
Maria glared at him. "We thought he was armed."
"Yes! With little moldy gummy bears, oh what a horror. What was he gonna do? Choke you with them? Maybe increase you're blood sugar and give you diabetes?" Tony spun a tablet across the table to Steve. It was playing the security image from early this morning. Steve watched Bucky stride through the front door, blank faced and menacing, walk into the middle of the room and wait until security filed in and Maria arrived to slowly raise his hands to his head. One of the men at the side yelled. Icers flew and hit Bucky twice in the chest and once in the back before Maria yelled a ceasefire. His grip tightened on the glass and metal screen until his knuckles turned bone white. Thank God they weren't using live rounds. "My security's been getting a little twitchy – not that Miss Secret Agent isn't always twitchy – but this time they thought someone was scoping out the building. Jarvis tracked a new face lingering on the block; normally that's not unusual – people go to work, people come back, we're by a very convenient subway station, yada yada yada—" Stark broke off and Maria continued.
"It's not unusual to have repeat faces, but few people look at the building with intent. This guy practically set up house in the park and watched our people coming in and out for days. We asked some of the surrounding buildings for access to the high-rises and noticed him scoping us out from nearby rooftops." Maria's face smoothed out. "I sent one of my men to question him and he sent him to the hospital. Shattered face, broken ribs, punctured lung. LaBron's good at what he does. The man was no amateur."
Maria jabbed at her tablet and sent some files over to Steve. "Check out the surveillance from the last two weeks. Notice the face in the background? Long hair, scruffy beard, black hoodie." Steve saw the figure in question lingering on the corner in one screen and sleeping on a park bench in the next. "Now check here." The man was walking by the front door, his face shadowed with the brim of his hat. Even with the several weeks growth and the mat of hair, Steve would recognize Bucky anywhere. "LaBron confirmed this man got the jump on him last week."
"Why didn't we pick up on this before?"
"We're lucky we picked it up at all," Maria said, hands pressed against the table. "This Winter Soldier guy is good. Very good. If it weren't for the fact that Jarvis is on high alert since you've been back it might've slipped by us entirely."
"Don't call him that," Steve snapped, eyes lingering on the haunted face behind the glass. Now that Maria pointed it out he saw Bucky always stayed in the corner of the footage behind a crowd of fast-moving people. He looked like just another homeless guy looking for a place to sleep. His eyes lifted to the big screen just to assure himself Bucky was really here. He was safe. "How is he?"
Bruce shifted in his seat at the end of the table. He took of his glasses and wiped them, mouth pinched in thought. "Dehydrated. Malnourished. Exhausted." Bruce rubbed his forehead and sighed. "I'll be honest, Captain, I'm not sure what I'm dealing with. If your theories are right, Sergeant Barnes has some bastardized form of the super serum floating around; I don't know how that's going to affect his base levels or nutrient needs. That's not even counting the massive energy draw from the metal arm.
"I can tell you his BMI is way too low, and he needs as much water as we can give him. That's not even adding in all the information we don't know about how Hydra treated him. I'd love to get a brain scan and a few x-rays, but that's not going to happen without a few thousand dollars of damage and a lot of trauma on both ends. We detected a signal coming from the arm. Jarvis is blocking it for now." Bruce studied the sleeping face on the TV. "He looks like he's been on the run for a long time."
Steve swayed. He felt Sam's hand curl around the back of his elbow and leaned back into the man's strength. Sam pushed him toward one of the roller chairs and sat beside him. Steve looked at him. "What now?"
"Now?" Sam said. "Now we play it by ear. Unless you've got an expert on brainwashed, super soldier, ex-assassin cyborgs I don't know about, in which case we got to talk because first of all – sharing is caring, and second: your life, man."
Maria twitched. Sam, Steve and Tony turned to her with raised eyebrows. Maria stared back, blank faced. "What?"
"Seriously?" Stark said.
Maria met his skeptical look evenly. "You fly around in a metal suit without wings, Stark. Don't tell me Shield didn't have a corner on the weird." She sighed and her iron straight posture loosened a little at the shoulders. "Unfortunately, Dr. Burns is deep underground. If she's still alive we can't find her."
"That's if she's not Hydra," Sam muttered.
Maria's smiled grimly. "If she is then she's very good at hiding it. Dr. Burns earned her expertise working on Natasha and moved up from there. If she was dirty Natasha would have seen it."
"Like she saw the multi-headed snake in the grass?" said Stark. He stopped and snapped his fingers. "Oh, wait." Maria didn't dignify that with a response but then again Stark didn't seem to need one. Natasha had a very different reaction to someone trying to get inside her head than she did an organization she trusted and, to a very large degree, could control. Tony dropped into his chair and spun, head tilted back. "So, here's where we're at: we have big, metal and snarly locked up the Hulk's Room. He isn't getting out of there without a serious amount of firepower and an impressive amount of cunning considering who built it. I.e. – me. Second, Big, Metal and Snarly is also Big, Metal and Crazy, and we don't have a shrink qualified to deal with him. Am I the only one wondering why we're not just locking him up and throwing away the key?"
He looked at Bruce. "If it's the room I can build you a new one."
"We're not locking him up," Steve said through an impressive snarl of his own. "If you try I'll break him out of there myself." Sam's hand clamped down on the back of his neck.
"And that leads us to fact three!" Stark continued. "Which is Big, Tall and Spangly over here is his best friend. Which means we have to try. But Cap, you gotta know that's not your friend in there. I wish to God it was—well, if I believed in God I'd wish—oh, you know what I mean. If it was Rhodey or Pepper I'd be banging down the doors before you could say…whatever it is old timey people like you say."
"Tony…" Bruce admonished quietly.
Stark grimaced apologetically and tried again. "What I'm trying to say, Cap, is this isn't going to be easy. Not for you, not for him, and certainly not for my people in the line of fire. And yes, Hill, they are my people, shut up. What I'm trying to ask is what are you going to do if you can't? If he's nothing but the robot they made him out to be?"
Steve looked from the circle of carefully blank faces to the man sleeping on the TV. Bucky lay face up exactly as they'd laid him, his cheeks hollow. The camera directly above the bed captured the dark rings of fragile paper-thin skin under his eyes. Like he'd felt Steve's eyes on him, Bucky's eyes snapped open. "He's awake!"
"What?" Stark's chair almost tipped over. "Those things aren't supposed to wear off for another two hours!"
They crowded around the screen as Bucky stood up from the cot and looked around the room. "What's he looking for?" Bruce asked as Bucky ran his hands along the walls until he found the thin seam of the door.
"An exit," replied Steve grimly. They watched until Barnes returned to the center of the room. When Barnes threaded his fingers together behind his back and knelt Steve's jaw clenched tight as Sam let out a few choice words. Steve turned to Tony, the muscle in his jaw tight. "What did he have on him when he came in?"
"What?" Tony was pale, his hands clenched at his sides. He took a moment to process Steve's question. Finally he blinked rapidly, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. "Um, clothing: button-up and jeans, socks, combat boots, a knife and…" Stark looked up. "He had a weird leather pouch. At first we thought it was a weapon or poison or something. Turned out to be a bunch of old gummy bears. It's a kind of candy made of—"
"I know what it is," Steve cut him off. "What did he have in his hand when Hill's men shot him?"
Stark's face firmed. "A yellow gummy bear. Cap, I know what you're thinking but we don't know what's in those things. We don't know if he laced them or if… we won't know until we're done running them." And in order to test the candy for poison they had to dissect them and run them through acidic chemicals. Steve shook his head firmly.
"I need those bears, Stark. Now. Don't bother with the tests – if Bucky wanted to be dead he wouldn't have to eat cyanide to do it." And that thought hit Steve in the gut. He looked at the image on the screen.
Stark looked at Banner, who shifted uncomfortably, but didn't say anything. Maria looked from one man to the other and ordered someone to bring the gummy bears to the Conference Room C. "And that's something you don't say everyday," she muttered when she was done.
.
.
There were nineteen bears in total, each one stickier and grimier than the last. Steve tried to rub them clean, but even after he cleaned off the gunk they still smelled like river and brine. "They'll harden eventually," Sam said as he scrubbed a green bear with a dishrag. "My sister buys these in bulk for her kids during Halloween but she never really gets around to distributing them until they're all dried up and hard." Sam had a line of green bears already clean by his elbow while Hill worked on the blues. Stark poked at the reds with a disgusted nose wrinkle, but sat down with the rest of them. They worked quickly. In the twenty minutes since he'd knelt Bucky hadn't moved once except to blink.
"You know," Sam continued as he set the green bear down with the others. "If he's kneeling like that it means its what he's trained to do. It means he expects something, whether it's to be hurt, or given a mission, or whatever." Steve kept his focus on the red bear pinched between his fingers as Sam talked. "Whatever it is you won't know until he reacts. Either he's gonna try and push you to it, get it over with, or he's going to try and keep you from it. Whatever it is you've got to be ready.
"You have to follow his lead in this. Push if he wants to be pushed, draw back if he flinches. And whatever you do, do not touch him if he flinches." Sam finished the last bear and slid the bunch of them carefully into the hand stitched leather satchel, which he knotted and placed in Steve's hand. "I'll be outside the whole time, okay?"
Stark flittered over, "I know I've said this oh… a couple hundred times already, but are we sure putting Mr. Star Spangled Target in the room with the assassin programmed to kill him is a good idea?"
Sam shrugged. "No better way to test how he wants to play this." And out of all of them, Steve was the most likely to come out of this with both Bucky and himself intact. Warm eyes looked Steve over one more time before Sam nodded and pushed him toward the door. "You can do it, Cap."
Steve nodded and set his shoulders. He ignored the uncomfortable churning in his gut as he picked up the tray with soup and water and walked to the door of the cell. He focused on making sure the soup didn't slop over the side and keeping the glass balanced, and the yards between the conference room and the Hulk Cage disappeared until the door was right in front of the toes of his boots. Steve breathed in deep and let the calm settle over his shoulders.
When he felt settled he nodded to the Doorman.
Like all Stark Technology the Hulk room straddled the line between science and magic. The molecules of the walls and door were some kind of self contained magnetic molecule bound by some electromagnetic field which in short meant the Hulk could pound himself into shreds against a material that reformed even as it broke. It also meant the door dissolved into nothing when deactivated.
Steve ducked through the melting door and stopped just inside, soup and cup and gummy bears forgotten as he stared at Bucky. Bucky, who'd been missing for a year. Bucky, who Steve was so scared had been recaptured by Hydra. Bucky was still kneeling on the floor, hands on behind his back.
All of Steve's great plans about going slow and letting Bucky set the pace flew right out the window, over the fire escape, down into the back alley, and into the dumpster. He dropped the tray, careful not to spill it only because who knew when Bucky last ate, and rushed to his friend's side. "Bucky. Bucky, no. Get off your knees." He tucked his hands under Bucky's arms like a parent lifting a sleepy child. It didn't occur to him to be scared; Bucky's legs trembled as he stood, his eyes fixed on a point beyond Steve's left ear. Steve tugged his hands out from behind his back and rubbed the blood back into Bucky's arm and shoulder. Bucky's skin and bone arm was ice cold through the scrubs.
"Let's get you warmed up, okay?" Steve ignored the way Bucky's eyes flickered from the wall to his hands and back, wary like a plenty beaten dog faced with a new master. He tucked an arm around taut shoulders and led him to the cot. Bucky moved stiffly, shoulders drawn up and muscles clenched. Steve sat him down gently on the bed, heart aching at how submissively Bucky dropped onto the mattress. "Let's get your feet up and warm. Here, lift up a minute so I can get the blanket." Steve knelt beside the bed as he tucked the blanket around his friend, fluffing the pillows so he had a descent backrest. "Socks," he muttered as he rubbed Bucky's toes firmly between his palms until ice white skin turned warm pale pink. "They couldn't give him some damn socks?"
When Bucky looked physically comfortable – if as stiff as a cardboard cutout – Steve darted back for the soup. It was potato cream mixed with some sort of supplement good for starving people. He'd tried some before and while it wasn't going to win any chefs awards any time soon it was warm and tasty. He set the tray across Bucky's lap and handed him the plastic soup spoon.
The way Bucky looked at him was heartbreaking.
He didn't actually look at Steve. His eyes flicked in Steve's general direction, small sharp glances from the corner of his eye that didn't actually focus on Steve as much as his general direction. His eyes pinched in the corner, mouth open a fraction of an inch that on anyone else would look blank, but on Bucky read as heartbreakingly confused.
"Eat," Steve said, closing Bucky's hand around the spoon. His hand tightened as he slowly lowered it into the bowl. Bucky lifted the spoon to his lips and paused, the lip of the spoon on his mouth, watching Steve. Then, all at once, he attacked the bowl of soup with the fervor of a rabid dog. He abandoned the spoon entirely to scoop the bowl up and drink, hunched over like Steve might try to snatch it away any moment. His water tipped and spilled onto the mattress but Bucky didn't notice.
It hurt.
Steve sat back on his haunches and let his hands rest on his knees. He kept his body open and watched the door rather than Bucky. Eventually, Bucky chased the last drop and let the bowl fall to his lap. He arranged the bowl and the abandoned silverware, head bowed. His left hand plucked at the sheets, twisting into the blankets.
The hand must have been more sensitive than believed, because Bucky began feeling around the wet spot left behind by the spilled water. His hand patted at the covers, gently at first, and then more frantically as he tried to mop up the water stain.
Steve reached out, to stop him or comfort him, he didn't know and Bucky froze. His hand stopped mid-pat and hovered there. He was so still Steve didn't think he was breathing, eyes fixed on the hand reaching toward him. Steve swallowed. His hand dropped back to his lap but the spell was broken. Bucky watched him suspiciously. "Buck—" he stopped.
Sam had contacted some trauma specialists in the area after they began looking for Bucky but none of them were equipped to deal with a case like James Buchannan Barnes; the flood of information was confusing and many times contradictory, and the only thing they all agreed on was giving Bucky the right to define himself on his own terms.
Sam took Steve aside when all the advice and counsel got too overwhelming. "Listen," he said. "This sounds complicated but it's really not. It's not complicated, just hard. When we find Bucky—" and God bless Sam Wilson for always saying when not if, "you can't treat him like he's the same guy you knew in 1944. No one can go through all this and come out the same person. That may mean learning new favorite foods, or speaking Russian; it can be something as big as a personality shift. Whatever it is, you have to accept him for who he is now."
If any of the counselors or Sam or Natasha or hell, even Stark got right it was this: it wasn't easy.
"Is there something you'd like me to call you?" Steve asked. He didn't know what he'd do if Bucky asked to be called the Winter Soldier. Smile, nod and scream in his own quarters, probably. "I know I've been calling you Bucky, but if there's something else…" he breathed in and tried to radiate calm acceptance. "Another name you'd like me to…?"
Bucky didn't so much as blink.
"Okay," said Steve. "Okay." He pulled the blanket up around Bucky and tucked the edges under his legs. When Bucky was as comfortable as Steve could make him, Steve fell back against the wall and propped his forearms on his knees. He leaned his head against the wall and turned to watch his friend. "Listen. I don't know what's going through your head. I don't know why you decided to come back, or what you want, but I know this, Bucky. I know this. I'm glad you're here. I know I will always protect you. I know I will never hurt you.
"You're my friend. Whoever you are now, whomever you're going to make yourself, you are my friend, and nothing is going to change that. Don't worry about spilling the water. There's more where it came from. You don't even have to talk if you don't want to. I know this room is big and scary, but it's just for a little while. Just until we're sure you're safe. No one coming through that door is going to hurt you, Buck—"
Somewhere in his monologue Steve's eyes had dropped to his hands. He looked up now and felt his heart stutter. Bucky was looking back at him. His eyes focused a little to the left of Steve's and his head was down but he was definitely looking back. Steve reached out again, and even though Bucky's body locked up, he kept going until he could run his hand across the bristle of Bucky's buzz cut. The short scruff was crisscrossed with white scars but it was neat and clean. "I like your hair," Steve said, throat tight.
Bucky looked at him, wary and shy. Steve kept running his fingers through the bristly brown fuzz until Bucky's eyes began to droop. Like a kid he kept forcing them open, eyes fixed as close to Steve's face as his training would allow. His eyes fluttered and closed as his head tilted. He'd wake up with a jerk and look around frantically, eyes darting to every corner of the room before returning to the point just beyond Steve's ear.
Bucky slowly leaned into the wall and gradually sank into a recline. Steve just kept threading his fingers through brown locks, occasionally rising on the tips of his fingers to scratch at spots of dandruff. Bucky's blinking slowed, and then stopped, his breathing evened out in sleep. He could be faking but in the end it didn't matter. Steve kept running his hand through his friend's short hair.
.
.
Steve knelt at Bucky's side until his knees were numb and jolts of pain shot up through his joints. Finally, after he'd had his fill of Bucky's breathing, he dragged himself back into the command room.
The footage from the Hulk Room played across the screen in various angles. Stark, Hill, and Banner stood discussing the footage, occasionally pausing or rewinding a bit to dissect some more. There were guards, physicians, and psychologists crowded together, arguing over where to go from here. Michael Boris, Maria's head of security watched the footage and the ever-rowdier crowd with narrowed eyes.
All the information Steve recovered from Hydra about the Winter Soldier was stacked in ten brown cardboard boxes at the edge of the room. Some of the boxes were half empty, their contents shuffled off to different translators, analysts, and scientists who worked day in and day out to decode the information. The papers in the box are haphazard chaos at best – memos in broken typescript, the spidery scrawl of an Italian technician detailing the correct method to recover the soldier from stasis, the brisk lines of mandarin script from Chinese scientist in charge when Russia lent the Soldier to Communist China ordering his men to equip the Soldier with rounds of poison gas.
Pages and pages of data scrambled into ten different languages, collected from three different organizations, and written by a few hundred personnel over the last seventy decades. A week ago, after they discovered Bucky hadn't returned to any pick up zone and was in fact missing from Hydra custody, the search for locations became secondary to the hunt for training protocols in the hopes that by figuring out what Department X, the Red Room, and Hydra did they could understand the Soldier's thinking patterns.
It was slow going.
The fragile paper threatened to crumple as he moved the pages. Some of them were practically illegible, charred by a warehouse fire in 1991; others water stained and stiff from when Sam clipped a water pipe with his wings on a mission in Italy.
File # 62345b – 1
Director of Operations: REDACTED
Location: REDACTED, Russia
DATE: July 6, 1951
Selection from Section 2, Paragraph Six; of Soldier Upkeep
…However, as it has become clear that my advice on this matter is to be dismissed, I will let the matter rest and transfer the Codename: REDACTED to you by the end of the month, as well as the required maintenance paraphernalia. At the very least, I request you keep the Codename: REDACTED from New York; THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS ARE ILLEGIBLE DUE TO WATER DAMAGE.
In regards to the maintenance and training itself, the juvenile and idiomatic slang, "wiping" is deceptive in name. A full "wipe" is possible, but I must severely discourage it as a full "wipe" removes all experience, common sense, and tactical expertise that makes the Codename: REDACTED such a valuable asset to Department X.
The Blank Slate Protocol must only be used if the PP exerts dominance of the SP. The one time we used the protocol we had to rebuild the Codename: REDACTED from scratch. It had no situation awareness, or knowledge of combat, or indeed, any form of evident intelligence, and resisted the handlers out of basic animalistic instinct. The only memory retained was muscle memory.
We had to re-indoctrinate it using time consuming techniques such as electroshock therapy, exposure therapy, mental and physical recalibration, and emotional trimming. All of these are time consuming tasks, and risky to the handlers.
The PP rose to the surface several times, a grim reminder that while REACTED has been subdued for now, he lingers in the subconscious of the Soldier waiting for the opportune moment to direct the Codename: REDACTED in his wishes.
When you perform the so-called wipe on the Soldier, please focus your attention on the short-term and midterm memory areas as shown, the hippocampus, and the area that creates and stimulates desire…(THIS SECTION DETAILS MACHINERY USE AND BRAIN SCHEMATICS AND CONTINUES FOR SEVERAL PAGES.)
…The exact dosages for each area are calculated to stimulate the preferred effects. For example, it would hardly be desirous for the Soldier to become affectionate, or considerate, or compassionate. However, fear and a desire to please are exceptionally motivating. Similarly, if the Soldier needs to be wiped, it is good to keep the muscle and tactical memory of an operation, so that mistakes are never made again.
As for memory, all moments of training have been stored in the long-term area of the brain. Undesired incidents must be wiped immediately before they settle into this area, as the training and calibration must be maintained at all times.
This is to ensure the Soldier never rebels.
.
A handwritten note in cramped cursive said:
Dr. Brochezni is an idiot. See Lukin, File 5119-098 for handler protocols. Wiping still last resort. Handler protocol rendered good results. Max time out of storage increased to five months.
Then another note clipped onto the side by a wire paperclip wrote in different handwriting:
Degradation of the Codename REDACTED has prompted us to return to Dr. Brochezni's protocol. Please follow the above protocol when Handler-Soldier relations begin to break down, especially if the Soldier needs to be out of Cold Storage for more than four weeks, as it exceeds the number of recommended wipes. See File # 9019-752JL for further details and instructions. Look at File Dr. Blake Andrews for improved Wiping Protocol. Section 14-B/2.
Деградация Codename REACTED побудило нас вернуться к протоколу доктора Brochezni в . Пожалуйста, следуйте приведенным выше протокол, когда отношения Хэндлер – активамин ачинают разрушаться, особенно если активами должна быть из Cold Storage в течение более четырех недель, как это превышает число рекомендованных салфеток. Смотреть файла # 9019-752JL для получения более подробной информациии и нструкций. Посмотрите на File доктора Блэйка Эндрюс для улучшения вытирая протокола. Раздел 14 –B / 2
REDACTED的降解,促使我们回到Brochezni博士的协议。请按照上面 的协议处理程序时,资产的关系开始打破,尤其是在资产需要走出冷库超过四周,因为它超过了推荐湿巾的数量。请参阅文件# 9019-752JL进一步的详细信息和说明。看看文件布雷克 –安德鲁斯博士改善擦拭协议。第14 –B / 2。
.
Obligingly, Steve dug through the boxes, past diagrams of the brain, and medical sheets until he found the files in question. He found them tied together at the bottom of box twelve, two innocuous folders only a few sheets thick still untouched by the analyst team or the translators. They were bound together by a long piece of twine, yellow and untouched.
No one opened this since Hydra went digitized.
He cut the cord and sorted through the yellow, crumbling scraps.
.
HANDLER-SOLDIER PROTOCOL
Written by: Alexsander Lukin
Translated by: Anne Sharlotte Bernadette (Hail Hydra)
There must be one handler, but the handler can have several subordinates. In this case, you must ensure the Soldier knows which one of you is in charge. Only the Handler can directly address the Soldier. You are the one responsible if the Soldier breaks protocol. You are the firm hand of discipline and correction.
You are not its ally, or its friend.
You are not a guardian, or a colleague.
You are the master. The whip hand. The very bridle of Department X Hydra. If you're discipline is weak, if you're will is soft, how can you expect the great beast on the leash to respect and obey? Make no mistake, we have given you the reigns of a great lion, a dragon of fierce might. Do not be fooled by the human appearance. It is cunning. It will pretend human emotion to deceive you.
DO NOT BE FOOLED. It is not a human. It is not your comrade. It is a weapon and will be treated as such.
Confine Soldier to Quarters.
Lower temperature to decrease mobility.
Remove anything that can be used as a weapon.
Remove articles of clothing: Shoes, Pants, and Shirt. If necessary, scrubs can be provided as long as the Soldier knows they are not a reward.
There should be no furniture except what is necessary for Handler Operations.
This exercise reminds the Soldier that it is the weapon and Department X Hydra is the mind. Human instinct must be subverted for the good of the whole.
Do Not Feed the Soldier for 36 Hours.
The Soldier must earn food through its behavior.
At 48 hours, the Soldier should be dehydrated enough to be malleable. If the Soldier resists, remove all personnel from the room and lower temperature.
Repeat until all handlers can safely access the Soldier.
Strictly Enforce Soldier Protocol.
See form B.
Follow Procedure for Handler Operations:
In Case of Mission Failure:
o Confine Soldier to Quarters and follow the steps listed above. No other correction needed.
In Case of Escape
o Bind the Soldier and use a cane on its feet until the lesson that it's paths belong to Department X Hydra sink in. Sleep Deprivation. Allow the fever to settle. A personal touch while correcting is best: beating, skinning, water boarding. No food, four days.
In Case of Unwarranted Aggression
o Make the Soldier kneel with arms held above its head for as long as necessary. When it tries to rise, apply cane to shoulders and back. No food or water. If resistance continues, use electric shock. The pain will remind it of wiping. If aggression continues, feel free to be more creative.
In Case of Questioning Mission Objectives
o Hold the Soldier's head under water until it complies. Remind it that it is a weapon, and we are the handler. A weapon cannot ask questions. A weapon does what the Handler Wishes. Sleep Deprivation: two days.
In Case of Disobedience
o In case of disobedience, the Soldier has decided to assert independent will, which must be brought back into line with the desires of Department X Hydra. In this case, the Soldier has looked at the consequences and decided the punishment is worth independent action. THE HANDLER MUST TEACH THE SOLDIER THAT ALL INDEPENDENT WILL IS FUTILE. You must teach the Soldier that its own decisions will inevitably lead to failure and pain. Be creative. See Folder C for details.
In Case of Attachment
o This is the most dangerous of all protocol violations. The Soldier's loyalty must be first to Department X Hydra. Destroy the attachment. Soldier must terminate attachment on its own. It doesn't matter how you get there. Torturing the attachment has yielded results, but it also makes the Soldier unpredictable. Exception: see (Translator Note: This part was blacked out. Untranslatable.)
For the Basic Reminder
o No food or water. Keep the Soldier kneeling for 24 hours. Remind the Soldier of the pain of each punishment, but do not damage the Soldier more than mission capability.
Form B
Soldier Protocol
Remind the Soldier of these Throughout Handler-Soldier Training:
The Soldier will never look the handlers in the eye.
The Soldier will never initiate contact with the handler.
The Soldier will never speak except to repeat directives.
The Soldier will follow all commands without question or restraint.
The Soldier is not permitted to indulge emotional responses.
The Soldier will greet all handlers on his knees with hands behind its back and will remain like this until told otherwise. The Soldier will get on its knees the moment training starts: even before the handler enters the room. Non-compliance is the same as disobedience.
Hail Hydra.
Steve's hand shook.
He leaned back in his chair and carefully put the pages on the table. He smoothed out the rumbled edges and rubbed a gentle thumb over the names Alexsander Lukin and Anne Sharlotte Bernedette. He wanted to dig his fingers into the spaces between letters and rip them apart like the fragile ribs already buried in the ground.
The unfairness that he couldn't reach into the ground and kill them again stuck like a bone in his throat, a fly in the ointment of getting Bucky back.
Steve looked at the screen in front of him, his reunion playing out for the fifth time. He felt his lungs catch and release: Bucky was here. He was safe. At least, as safe as Steve could make him.
His eyes watched his friend kneel again and again. He watched himself walk into the room and throw caution aside. He watched his friend…
Steve stood up and walked closer to the screen his hands dangling lose at his sides. He watched his friend kneel. He watched him put his hands high up his back. He watched him never make eye contact. Never say a word. Never look Steve in the eye.
Maybe it was too much to assume from one measly interaction but—Steve's instincts screamed like they did before he stepped over a landmine by an inch, before he tilted his head a little to the left and felt a bullet fly past close enough to give him a headache, before he leaped off his bike and slammed his shield into a spinning death motor.
"Sam—" he said urgently, but Sam's name was swallowed by the racquet. The din around him just swelled, all the experts and scientists and doctors and who the hell cared talking louder and louder as tensions rose. Steve spun and slammed his palms onto the table, so hard the table shook and cracked. "Sam!" he said again, loud and angry. Immediately the noise dropped. Steve didn't care that everyone stared at him warily, like he might snap any moment. Sam was pushing his way through the crowd, eyes tight though his face was carefully pleasant. Steve snatched the files with one hand and yanked Sam through with the other. "Tell me if I'm just seeing things," he begged, shoving the folder into Sam's chest. "Tell me if you see it too."
Sam's hand pinned the loose sheets of paper against his chest while his dark brown eyes lingered on Steve's face, cataloging and checking in. Steve knew Sam wanted to get him out of here, get him someplace he could decompress and breathe. Steve trusted Sam more than he trusted the two experts with their five PhD's and eight doctorates between the three of them. He understood, in five minutes, more than Steve's SHIELD mandated shrink uncovered in five months.
In a glance, Sam took in the lax way Steve held his arms out from his body to grapple with anyone who came in through his blind spot, the pale sick tinge in the corner of his mouth, the way his eyes pinched at the corners; loosening when Steve had enough energy to focus on appearances, but tightening again when whatever storm blowing through is mind picked up again.
Then he ignored it.
Sam turned to the papers clutched to his chest. He picked at the stapler in the corner until it loosened its grip on the pages and spread the sheets out so he could take them in at once. Steve was big picture, and he had a memory like an elephant. Sam needed the overall view and had to be able to look back without losing his place.
He read quickly, then slowed and doubled back.
The horrifying words lifted up from the page; decades old passion seeped in horrific ideological fanaticism turned torture into procedure. Into a routine, documented, cataloged and indexed manual for newbies to follow.
Sam read the manual twice, Stark and one of his shrink friends hovering over his shoulder. When he was sure he'd committed the relevant information to memory he looked to where Steve stood watching the footage replay over and over again.
In the months Sam followed Steve around the globe blowing up hidden rebel bases like a Light Side Darth Vader, intimidating powerful officials into opening up confidential documents, and blowing national secrets wide open, Sam had gotten to know Steve really well.
Steve kicked his underwear into a corner and forgot about it. He crashed into walls when sleep deprived or overly excited, limbs flailing. He kept the bed regulation straight and lined his toothbrush, razor, comb, and toothpaste in even straight lines across the counter. He squeezed the toothpaste from the bottom and got downright persnickety when Sam squeezed it from the middle (Sam started to do it just to laugh at the way Steve's face wrinkled as he worked his way into a snit.)
Their first major fight was because Steve kept turning the toilet paper so it went over the roll rather than under it. Talk about downright annoying.
He unpacked his bag in every single hotel room, even if they were only going to stay there a night. First thing he did: pants on the pants rack, seams evenly lined up. Shirts on hangers. Clean underwear in the underwear drawer. Shield beside the head of his bed on the side closest to the window.
What Sam really got a good up close look at was Steve's absolute gift for instinctual, off the cuff random acts of tactical genius.
Steve took one look at a massive mess of random data and clips old footage and created a five-step plan that netted them two Hydra bases in six days. Give him a minute he could take out a base. Give him a minute and one good man he'd take out a dozen. Give him a tactical team he could train and position how he wanted… well…
The SSR won their war the first time for a reason.
Kinda. Ignoring the whole SHEILD is Hydra thing.
Okay, they lost after Captain America died in that plane crash for a reason.
However, ask Steve to explain exactly how he knew that point A would lead to point F, how point B was essential to completing objective G, how point F would help G along even if G happened first… he could sound it out, give you the layout, but so much of what Steve did was instinct that he ended up making Sam more confused and frustrated.
How do you describe Beethoven to someone who's only heard Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star?
It wouldn't have been a problem except Steve was also an incredibly emotional man repressed under post-Depression and WWII stoicism. He was also bullheaded, obstinate, dogged, and any other synonym for stubborn you could think about. When his emotions got involved, a lot of Steve's reasons got thrown out the window in favor of solving whatever problem he saw at the moment.
When it came to James Buchanan Barnes, Steve Rogers had a lot of emotions.
The constant refrain of Save Bucky, Save Bucky, Save Bucky running through Steve's head got them in a pretty fix a time or two, and eventually Sam started asking to check his work.
Steve started laying out the pieces in front of Sam and taught him how Steve drew his conclusions so Sam could compare it to his own mental patterns. Sam was smart. He'd been the top of his class from middle school all the way through college and military training, something that wasn't easy when society stacked the deck against you.
He'd done two tours in Iraq.
Give him a map and he could follow it and he didn't need an explanation to make Steve's leaps of logic.
"Shit," Sam said.
"What shit?" Tony asked, snatching the papers and holding them close to his nose as if that'd help him read it. "I don't see any more shit that what we're used to. What you guys are looking at? Hydra bad. Hydra scum."
"Bucky thinks we're his new handlers," Steve said, monotone. "That's why he hasn't been resisting."
Tony looked from the papers crumbled in his hands to the footage replaying yet again on the wall. "Oh," he said. "Shit."
Trigger Warnings:
Steve approaches and touches Bucky despite indications that Bucky is unable to consent. Touches are totally platonic and in casual areas, but Bucky is unable to resist or protest. You also have someone untrained to deal with trauma dealing with someone who's traumatized and who is expecting violence to be done to them. Steve either does not notice or pushes past Bucky's warning signs.
There is also a section that explains in detail the ways Department X/Hydra trained and treated the Winter Soldier that includes graphic description of torture and dehumanizing language. Please read carefully. If you want to skip it scroll down from one line break to the next.
I'm in the process of moving back to the States so this chapter is very roughly edited. Feel free to tell me if you notice any discrepancies, typos, or odd logic.
As always, if you enjoyed please let me know via REVIEWS.
I am overwhelmed by the response this story is getting and so, so gratefully to every one of you. I love hearing what you guys think.
