Location: Avengers Tower- Library

Bucky spent the rest of the night alone in the library. At first he just wanted to be somewhere no one else was so he could try to get control of himself. The stone in that amulet hadn't just made him dream, it made him remember in bloody, vivid detail. The procedure to screw on his arm, that first mental wipe, being locked away for weeks- cold, hungry, all because he'd accepted a hot cup of soup on a freezing winter's day while working for Pierce.

Those memories kept swirling louder and faster in his mind until he couldn't take it anymore, and so he'd grabbed a book to distract himself with. It was simple- a textbook on car engines. It looked like a textbook from some school, but the contents were familiar and comforting. As he read he could almost remember afternoons spent in a garage working on cars he knew he'd probably never be able to afford but simply loved being around. The mechanics of how they worked came to him as easily as Sunday school lessons had.

The garage would be long gone, the streets paved over, the tenant buildings torn down to make way for apartments, but mechanics never changed much. He had never considered what he might do if he was freed from Hydra. Now, emboldened, he dared to dream of working again in a garage, surrounded by old cars and covered in the familiar scent of engine grease instead of the iron rot of blood. It would be small- he wouldn't draw any attention, and if Hydra came knocking he'd cut through them and continue with his day. Maybe he'd even find a family, eventually. Live the life he'd dreamed of as a kid.

The red tide of mangled, bloody corpses would be behind him, and he'd be free to just live.

But not until he found Echo and repaid Hydra for everything they had done to him, and made him do to others.

When Tony came looking for him in the morning he found Bucky asleep at a table, his hand resting on an open book. He could have sworn he saw a thin smile on the Winter Soldier's face.