I don't own it.

I couldn't keep you hanging for too long, that would be cruel. Don't worry, things are looking up from here. One full chapter left after this one. It's long, I'll have to split it into two for you guys.

Now taking votes on which story you want to see next:

Option 1: Berlinterview. Civil War alternate take on the Bucky Interrogation scene. Dialogue- and character-heavy with an action epilogue covering the fallout. 28,000 words, 10 chapters. Bucky and Steve centric with support from Tony, Sam, Nat, and T'Challa.

Option 2: Barton, Undercover. A 5+1 fic based around the idea that in Jeremy Renner's other movies, he's really Clint undercover. 4,400 words, 6 chapters. Clint centric (duh) with Nat showing up in the last chapter.

Whichever option you vote for, rest assured that you'll be able to read both of them eventually. I'd adopt an alternate-days-for-alternate-stories posting schedule if I didn't think that would confusing as anything to keep up with. Over to you guys. Choose wisely. ;)


Chapter Six
Prompt: Lookalike


Bucky came back to himself crouched on the far side of the room, eyes locked in Steve's blue gaze. He was pressed against the wall, head tipped back, chest heaving with the effort of drawing in enough oxygen.

His left hand was thrown out to the side, fingers digging into the wall.

His right hand clamped white-knuckled around his dogtags.

"How long?" he croaked.

"Not long," Steve said. "A couple of minutes, maybe."

Bucky nodded. Closed his eyes. Concentrated on breathing. "I didn't hurt anyone?"

"You didn't hurt anyone." Stark lounged beside him, one hand encased in an armoured gauntlet. Ready to restrain him, if need be, but relaxed.

"Good." Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. His lungs protested the movement. He kept at it. In. Out. The tang of blood caught him by surprise; he twisted his head away and groaned. But it was in his head, he knew that without having to ask. Breathe. His pulse thundered in his ears.

"Bucky."

"Yeah?" he gasped.

"Are you with me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm — I'm here."

He heard the flicker of hesitation, the pain that Steve felt at even having to ask. "Prove it. Please."

"What do you — want me to say?" Bucky gritted his teeth against another whiff of non-existent blood. Eased his grip on the dogtags, breathing hard. He felt like he'd run a hundred miles at a sprint. Sweat ran down his forehead. He wiped it away. "James Buchanan Barnes. Steven Grant Rogers. 1939, I spent two weeks teaching you how to throw a punch without you breaking your fingers. Did the same thing after Kreischberg, 'cept that was so you could learn how to do it without breaking my fingers, 'cause you didn't know your own strength. We used to live in Brooklyn. Now we live upstate. It's 2017, we're technically in our nineties even though we only feel like we're in our late twenties, and neither of us can afford to buy a house."

"That'll do. Thanks. What happened?"

"I — " Bucky screwed up his face, fighting to sort out the clash of sounds and visuals in his head. "I killed you."

A susurration of noise ran through the room. Steve didn't flinch. "No, you didn't."

"Blonde hair," Bucky whispered. "Blue eyes. Five foot seven. One ten pounds. Mole in the left armpit. They showed me the file, then they showed me you. In the flesh."

"It wasn't me. Wasn't you. It didn't happen, Buck, we've talked about this. It was another — "

"It wasn't a nightmare!" He took a deep breath. Unclenched his metal hand from where it had sunk into the wall. "It wasn't a nightmare," he said again, more quietly. "I know the difference. I know — the difference."

"Alright." Steve looked like he was resisting the urge to raise his hands in surrender. "It's alright. I believe you."

Breathe. Inhale. Exhale.

"Lookalike," Bucky said after a minute.

"Lookalike?"

"Bruce said lookalike. It triggered… something. A memory."

"Not a Hydra codeword?"

"No. Just an ordinary, old, natural memory trigger. From — before." He tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. "Rumlow was there."

"Brock Rumlow?" Natasha's voice was sharp.

"Yeah. Him and Pierce. And…" Bucky knew the face but not the name. "Another guy." He didn't think he wanted to know the name. But it came to him after a moment anyway. "Stringer. Ro.. Roger? Robert? Robert Stringer. Rob." He shuddered.

"I don't know the name," Steve said. "Anyone else?"

Various responses in the negative came from around the room.

"Did he work for Shield?"

"Don't know. He's dead."

"Is he?"

Bucky's voice hardened. "I killed him."

"Oh."

He shoved a shaking hand through his hair and bowed his head to his knees. Tears threatened. He couldn't do this. He couldn't. He hadn't been able to do it before; why should he have to do it now?

"Bucky?"

"I need — " He choked down a sob. "I need my notebooks. Please. Someone."

"I'll go," Nat said. The door opened and closed softly.

"And if you could all stop staring at me, that would be great."

"Sorry, man," said Clint. "Sam, did you see the game last night?"

Their quiet chatter filled the silence. After a minute Tony patted Bucky's metal arm and left him alone. Bucky heard his voice start up over by Steve's bed.

"Wanda," said Bruce, sounding far too cheerful. "Come on, let's go upstairs."

"What? Upstairs, why?"

"Cheesecake."

There was a pause. She wasn't stupid. She had to know it was a bribe to get her out of the room. But she was just a kid. Bucky could have kicked himself for not thinking of it earlier. She didn't need to hear this; and from the sound of it, Bruce didn't want to hear it.

Probably for the best. He'd get emotional, and then they'd all be in trouble.

"Fine," she said. "You owe me a double slice."

Bruce laughed. "You drive a hard bargain. A double it is."

Footsteps. The door opened and closed again.

Bucky stared at the chink of light between his knees and deliberately slowed his breathing. It worked; by the time Natasha came back with the backpack — how had she known where it was? He hadn't told anyone — his pulse rate had settled back to normal, thoughts no longer racing at a million miles an hour.

"Thanks," he murmured when she dropped it beside him. A quick rummage in the main compartment turned up the right notebook and a pen. He shifted to sit cross legged, bent over the page, and started scribbling. Fact, fact, fact, and then a tentative hypothesis. Another string of facts, concrete flashes of memories. He scribbled a thick line through the hypothesis and started again. Fact. Fact. Something he'd thought was a fact, but now appeared to be… not a fact. Truth. Untruth. He circled a word. Drew a line linking two prominent images. Fact, fact, fact…

The tangle of contradictory thoughts and images smoothed into something resembling coherence. He saw the pattern to it now, the careful lie they'd fed him; nothing too overt, nothing that screamed we're playing you, sucker. They never treated him like he was stupid. Like a thing, yes; like an animal that could show initiative and take orders, yes; but like he was stupid? No. They were never that stupid, themselves. They knew how to feed him seemingly unrelated pieces of information and leave him to make his own conclusions.

And if that conclusion was erroneous, all the better.

Facts could be deceiving, even inside the safety of his head. Especially inside his head. And a fact that wasn't true was no fact at all.

"Steve," Bucky said.

Steve's head whipped around, cutting off the conversation with Stark. "Yeah?"

"You remember that day we skipped church to go swimming at the Jackson's farm? With the gang and those two new girls, what were their names, uh, Jenny? And Linda?"

"Cindy. Jenny and Cindy. And the Jackson twins came out to join us. I remember."

"You jumped off the dam, hit a rock at the bottom. Got cut up pretty bad."

Steve winced. "Yeah. That hurt."

"You still got that scar in unmentionable places?"

"Think so. Why?"

"Mind checking for me?"

Steve raised his eyes to the ceiling. His hand slipped under the covers. He shifted a little, mouth twisting thoughtfully, and after a second he said, "Yep. Still there."

Bucky nodded and drew a thick line around his verdict in the notebook. "Thanks. It wasn't you."

"What wasn't me?"

"The dead guy."

"I'm… Bucky. I'm not dead."

Bucky laughed shortly. "I know, pal."

He watched Steve's expression run from perplexity through confusion to horror. He'd put it together, then: the fact that Bucky knowing from a scar that the dead man wasn't Steve meant Bucky had to have seen the location of that scar on the dead man. And that was worthy of a few nightmares, itself.

"Bucky — " Steve rasped. He drew a shuddering breath, bracing himself. "Did — did you — "

"No."

Steve deflated.

Bucky drew his own calming breath. Set his back square against the wall. Straightened his shoulders. "I'll tell you. But stop me if it gets to be too much, okay? It's not pretty, and I wasn't the only one hurt just now."

Natasha snorted a laugh. When he darted a look her way, she waved for him to go on.

"Yeah," Steve said. "Of course, yeah. But are you sure — "

"Yes."

"Okay."

"I repressed it." He ignored the stares of Sam and Clint and Natasha and Tony, and kept his eyes fixed on Steve. "After I dragged you out of the Potomac and went off to find myself… I started getting some memories back. Bits and pieces. This one tried to come back when I was in Romania. It's one of the more recent ones. Must have been. Pierce was there, he hadn't been there in person for that long. And I couldn't handle it, couldn't deal with it then, so I repressed it. Consciously. Locked it away again."

"You can do that?"

"Yeah." Duh. "Easy enough once you know how. I don't recommend it. Long term damage is more or less a given, and you can't always control when they chose to appear again. Like now."

"Alright."

Bucky swallowed. "July 4th, 2012." His mouth spasmed in something that wasn't quite a smile. "It was a birthday present. For you."

"Your birthday's 4th of July, Cap?" Tony asked.

"It is." Steve's voice was strained.

"Independence Day, seriously?"

"Yeah. 2012… I came out of the ice in April. Go on, Bucky."

"I didn't know you existed. Didn't even know I existed. Looking back at it now, I… I don't know. Maybe it was a test. Cue some stimuli, see if I remembered anything. Or maybe it was just another power trip. Pierce liked those."

"Did he?"

"Oh, yeah. Rumlow was a soldier just doing his job, but Pierce liked the power, the control of it all. The conscious doublethink. And Stringer…" Bucky sucked air through his nose. "Stringer was something else again."

Sam frowned. "Was it just those three?"

He shook his head. "Rumlow's whole team was there. He wasn't team leader then. I don't remember who was. We were fitting out some new gear when Pierce and Stringer turned up with the guest."

"He wasn't me," Steve said.

"He wasn't you. But he looked… he looked…" Bucky gritted his teeth. "Lookalike. He could have been your twin from before the serum, honestly. Voice was pitched too high and he didn't have that scar, but apart from that…"

"He wasn't me," Steve repeated firmly.

"I know!" Breathe. "I know that — now. But at the time…"

"Yeah." Steve looked like he wanted to vomit.

"You're okay?"

"Me? Fine." His expression firmed. "Don't worry about me."

Bucky snorted. "I always worry about you. Something to do with your stunning lack of self-preservation, I think."

"Speak for yourself, pal. What happened then?"

He sobered. "Pierce threw me a file. Told me to read it. It was — ostensibly — yours. Enemy of the state, agent of mass destruction, mass murderer, general mucker-upperer of operations, that sort of thing. So that I understood why they were doing this, you know. The poor guy got chained up on the other side of the room. He looked terrified. Wet his pants when Pierce and Stringer started talking about what they were going to do for his birthday present."

"Wait," Tony said, "he actually — "

"Yes, Stark, he literally urinated. Don't laugh. It's not funny."

The smile vanished from Tony's face. "Sorry."

"Rumlow and his guys got ordered out of the room. Brock wanted to take me with him, said he had some tactical gear we hadn't finished trying yet. Pierce vetoed that."

"Brock?" Clint asked. "You were on a first name basis with that weasel Rumlow?"

Bucky stared at him. "No. I wasn't on an any name basis with anyone. But." He closed his eyes. Found the memory in its box on the mental shelf. Pulled it forward. "He touched me once. On the shoulder. Barely there, really. A split-second of contact, that's all. And he said… nice shot." Even now, he knew an urge to lean in to that brief touch. "That night, it took me six hours to stop crying. I felt the warmth for the next week. Almost turned myself in for reconditioning, I was that confused about what it was, what it meant. But it never happened again. I labelled it an anomaly and forgot about it."

He opened his eyes.

Clint looked like he'd been blindsided by a truck. "I didn't know…" it was like that.

"I hope you never do," Bucky said.

Steve cleared his throat. "So, uh… Rumlow's team was sent out?"

"Yeah. Left Pierce, Stringer, and me. And… not you. Him. The lookalike. Whoever he was." Bucky looked down at his hand, found it clenched unconsciously on his leg, and straightened the fingers out. Stringer's voice floated through his head, cold and mocking. "Don't tense up, now, Captain. That'll just make this worse for you."

"Buck, you don't have to — "

"I do." He met Steve's worried gaze. "Please. Just let me finish this."

"Okay."

Bucky balanced on the fragile seesaw between crippling emotion and the clipped neutrality of a mission report. Kept his voice level with an effort. "Pierce liked the power plays. The violence. He slapped him around, got him dirty, made him grovel. I watched."

Tony opened his mouth.

"I didn't have any orders to the contrary."

Tony closed his mouth.

"I didn't have orders to participate, either. Thankfully."

"Did they — " Steve grimaced. "Don't answer if you don't want to. Did that happen often?"

"No." Despite himself, Bucky could feel his control slipping. His voice became more matter-of-fact, disconnected from the raging turmoil within. "Hydra had invested too much into me to use me like that. Too much money, too much high tech… they'd already broken me mentally. They didn't need to break me physically as well." His metal fingers twitched. "Any more than they already had, at least."

Steve blew out a long breath. "Right."

"Then Stringer stepped up." Bucky stared across the yawning gulf to the storm raging on the far side. The air was quiet, here. Peaceful. Tranquil, like his voice. "He had… certain appetites. Pierce found him useful. There are some forms of torture even the most violent of men can't bring themselves to perform. And there are other men who delight in them." He breathed calmly. In. Out. "Stringer was sick. Perverse. A deviant, you might say."

The room was suffocatingly silent.

"I'll spare you the details. There was a lot of blood. And… other fluids."

Sam swore under his breath.

"Stringer finished with him. Pierce put a gun in my hand. Told me to terminate him, but to make it slow. Make it last."

Steve went white.

Bucky stared through him, seeing the shattered husk of his twin sprawled across the cold floor. "I had two minutes to make the shot. They wanted him to die as near midnight as possible. They framed it as a test of my abilities. Give me that sliver of tactical choice, see what I'd do with it."

"And?" Natasha breathed the question like a prayer.

"I shot him," Bucky said. "One bullet, upper right torso, on the edge between two ribs where it nicked the lung on the way through. Pierce took the gun back. Strapped me to my chair. And they left me for the night. Alone. With him." The memory should have been upsetting. He couldn't feel a thing. "They hadn't given me permission to sleep. I watched him drag himself to the far wall. He kept looking back over his shoulder, like he thought I was about to leap over and attack him again. And I watched him die."

Silence.

"It took seven hours, forty six minutes, and twelve seconds. His heart stopped at eleven fifty nine and twenty two seconds. Thirty eight seconds before midnight."

Steve was crying. Bucky felt numb.

"What did they cost you?" Clint asked.

Bucky blinked. "What?"

"Those thirty eight seconds. They would have wanted you to judge it to the second, surely; never mind that human physiology is a ridiculously complex thing and you couldn't in a month of Sundays be expected to accurately judge how fast his system would weaken down to the second of heart failure. They would have seen it as thirty seven seconds of error. Of your error. What did it cost you?"

He forgot, sometimes. That Clint had been on the same end of the gun as Bucky himself. Had known the crushing desire to obey the handler's will. Known the paralysing fear of making the slightest mistake. That even before Shield, he'd had taskmasters with impossible standards and rigorous systems of discipline and punishment.

Bucky knew what that was like.

"Pain," Bucky said finally. "There was — pain."

More than that, he couldn't say. Truthfully, he didn't remember. He tipped his head back against the wall and scrubbed his hands over his face, shaking. His eyes closed of their own accord. He couldn't remember ever being this tired.

No, that was a lie. He remembered being this tired perhaps half a dozen times before.

It was more than physical exhaustion. He felt mentally drained, wrung out, laid bare. And — small victories — he was himself enough to admit it.

"I need sleep," he said. "Or space. Please. Sorry."

"Sure, man."

"Of course."

The couch vanished back out into the corridor. There was a shuffle of movement around the room as they said their goodbyes and get-wells to Steve. On the way out the door, Natasha paused. "What happened to Stringer?"

Bucky looked up at her from the floor. "He was on the team for my next mission. It went south; his incompetence nearly got us caught. I snapped and killed him. In hindsight, I wonder if… if Pierce thought I was starting to connect the dots, that the memories were resurfacing. Latent response to the violence, maybe. I don't know. They sent me for reconditioning as soon as we got back, anyway. Wiped me. Started over with a clean slate. And I forgot the whole thing until Bucharest. And then forgot again. Until now."

Sam drew a breath, eyes dark. Paused. Let it out again. "Let us know if you need anything, yeah? Anything. I mean it. Both of you," he added, glancing between Bucky and Steve.

"We will," Steve said. "Thanks."

Clint gave Bucky a hand up off the floor and helped him shuffle across the floor to collapse in the chair beside Steve.

And then the door closed behind the four visitors, leaving them alone in peace.

"Buck," Steve said after a few minutes.

"Mm." Head tipped back against the seat, body melting into the hard embrace of the hospital chair, Bucky didn't open his eyes.

"Thanks."

"For making you cry?"

"For telling me."

"Warned you it wasn't pretty."

"No. It wasn't. But it needed to be said. And heard."

"Mm." He cracked his eyes open to stare at the white ceiling tiles. "I've been reliably informed — by Sam — that open communication is important in trauma recovery."

"Sounds accurate."

"Yeah."

Steve held out a hand. "Come here."

Every bone in his body yawned with the effort of finding his feet. Bucky half-stood, swaying with exhaustion, and let Steve pull him down onto the bed. This close to another warm body, he could feel the fine tremors, almost sub-dermal, that followed a recovered memory. He nestled carefully into Steve's side, mindful of the blankets and trailing wires.

Strong fingers combed through his hair. His mind was blank. He gave himself over to the motion of it. Rhythmic. Calming.

Lying down, he could imagine he was swimming in the ocean. Cool waves rocked him in quiet counterpoint to the trembling. Blue sky. Cloudless. The sun caressed his hair, warming him from the inside. He smelled salt in the air. Heard the hoarse cry of seagulls.

He floated and let the waves lull him to sleep.