They found him just after he left the Smithsonian. Just as he was beginning to realise what a monster they'd made of him. He was walking a thin tightrope of control. One push. One tiny push and he was going to fall.
There were only three of them. HYDRA soldiers. They obviously hadn't counted on him adapting to life outside. Expected him to be a pushover after two weeks without their help. If they'd had any notion of their miscalculation, they would have known that three dozen soldiers wouldn't have been enough to drag him back to hell.
At first he tried to run, tried to avoid the bloodbath that he knew was coming, but they didn't let him escape. They knew how he worked. They knew how to trap him. Corner him. Cage him like an animal.
He didn't break a sweat. But it did short something in his brain. The screaming and the blood. Hit a reset button. And as his mind struggled to reboot, there was only one thought running through his head. The thought. The only thought that he was allowed.
His mission.
Who was his mission?
He scrolled through his memory, what little there was of it that made any sense, until he found a name. The last name. His last mission.
Amy Thomas. S.H.I.E.L.D. engineer.
He didn't remember the brief. But he did remember the face. The address.
He left the bodies lying in the back alley where they had fallen and went to find his target.
There now. Whispered a voice inside his head. Their voice. Wasn't this easier? Not thinking. Not questioning. Just obeying. Better by far to embrace the truth. He was not a man. He was more than a man. A man could not do the things he did. Would not have survived the things he had. Didn't he owe it to his creators to use the gifts that they had given him?
It took no time at all for him to cross the city. But there was a war raging inside his head. Tearing his mind to pieces. His body was working on automatic. That was how he found himself concealed in the garage of a neighbouring house, watching the front door of his mark.
It was from this vantage point that he saw the two men leave the house. He knew those men. The blond one was- was- was- He crushed his head in his hands until the pressure was too much to bear. Another mission? Aborted? The memory of pain splintered up his right arm. And something else. Why couldn't he remember!
He stopped trying.
He had just caught sight of her.
The woman with the limp stepped outside. She smiled and shook the blond man's hand.
Pain splintered through his body again, but this time it hit him in the chest.
He needed to make it stop.
But he couldn't seem to move.
The smile on the woman's face disappeared once she was standing alone. The air was mild, but she wrapped her arms around herself, cast her eyes up and down the street, searching for something. There was a word inside his head. It tasted like snow. And cut like ice. одиноко. How could someone so beautiful look so lonely?
He had to- he needed to-
Make it stop. Make everything stop.
The thoughts turned over and over in his fractured mind, until the sky went dark, and he found himself inside her house. Standing over her as she slept. A lamp on a bedside table had been left on, but she was asleep on a makeshift bed on the floor. The expression on her face was one of contented peace.
He would give her the eternal variety.
Perhaps then the voice screaming inside his head would be silenced too.
He reached down, grabbed her by the throat, and lifted her into the air. Her eyes flew open. She managed to gulp one breath before he slammed her back against the bedroom wall. She struggled against his grip, fingernails clawing helplessly at his metal wrist.
"B-Bucky?"
He leant his weight into her to make her shut up. She choked and bit her lip, reopening an old wound that started to bleed. A thin trickle of blood rolled down her chin and dropped onto his arm. He watched, mesmerised. His grip loosened. Just a fraction. She gasped another breath.
"Please, don't do this. Don't let them win."
A tear hit his arm, mingled with her blood.
Why was he crying?
He had to- he had to-
Kill her.
The voice was back, hissing and persuading. But his fingers wouldn't move, his grip wouldn't tighten. The woman had stopped fighting. She stared back at him, eyes a sea of unnatural calm, resigned to the fate that he chose for her.
"It's okay. Whatever happens, Steve's going to help you."
He dropped her, tore his hands across his face and screamed. The tears kept coming, as he fell apart completely. A moment later, he felt the warm weight of the woman press against his chest. She wound her arms around his waist. He sank to his knees, pulling her down with him. Amy. The red veil lifted from his eyes. He wrapped his arms around her. Almost certainly too tight. And still the tears kept falling. He buried his face in her hair. Breathed her in. Not once did she pull back. He couldn't comprehend her strength.
Amy's touch was fierce and tender, and everything that he hadn't felt for far too many years. He never wanted her to let go. There was a kaleidoscope inside his head shifting every second, until, at last, torturously slowly, his thoughts fell into focus. He was a mess of broken pieces, jagged shards that could never be put back together, but in her arms he felt whole enough to know what he had lost.
"I told you to sleep with your gun."
Bucky spoke the words against the shell of Amy's ear. He would rather she'd put a bullet through his brain than have to live to see the red ring of finger marks that he'd placed around her throat.
"And I told you, I'm a little dopey when someone wakes me up in the middle of the night. Sorry I wasn't more help."
Her voice was hoarse.
God, he could have killed her. His whole body started to tremble.
"Amy-"
"It's okay." She stroked his face with her fingertips. "It's okay. When I came home I stabbed Dan with a pen. He needed five stitches."
She looked so sincere, as though it was any comparison, he almost laughed.
"I could have broken your neck."
"But you didn't."
Amy wiped the tears off his cheeks. Bucky didn't understand why she wasn't running. Except maybe it was because he had her wrapped up in his arms tighter than an Egyptian mummy. He had to let her go. Not yet. She pulled the cap that he had been wearing off his head and pushed his hair out of his eyes.
"I take it the exhibition didn't go too well?"
"I used to be a good man."
"You can be that man again."
"It doesn't work that way, Amy."
"Says who?"
She shifted her weight a little when he failed to find an answer, and he realised that it was probably agony for her to kneel. He loosened his grip, allowed her to stand. Free to leave, Amy simply rolled off her knees and settled at his side.
She sat on the floor, back resting against the foot of her bed, right arm bumping against his left. He could feel her there. Not like she could feel him. Texture was lost to him, temperature too, but pressure, he could feel pressure. So he was aware that Amy was absently tracing the pattern of metal linkages on his wrist with her thumbnail. His fingers twitched. Just for a moment, he remembered what it felt like to reach for a woman's hand.
"I can't do this, Amy."
"Yes, you can." She turned to him. "You're doing it right now."
Bucky shook his head.
"It's too hard."
"What is?"
"Living."
She took a breath, long and deep, and then sighed. He had no right to notice the effect that it had on her body, but she had coupled her grey jogging pants with the tiny blue vest from the night before.
"My dad says life's a test, but I like to think it's a journey. You're just finding the right path again. I don't think it's going to be easy for you, Bucky, but that doesn't mean you can't do it."
She smiled, just a little, but it caused her lip to weep.
"Why are you still trying to help me?" he asked.
"Lots of reasons." Amy's gaze was distant. She dabbed two fingers gently against her lip. "For a start, I should never have let you go to the Smithsonian alone. Of course it was going to be a trigger."
She sounded angry with herself. Bucky wished she would be angry with him instead.
"I don't think it was just the Smithsonian."
"What do you mean?"
"HYDRA found me."
"What?" Amy's voice cracked. All the colour drained out of her face. "Are you okay?"
"No, Amy, I'm not okay. I nearly killed you." He paused, waited for that to finally sink into her head. "I did kill them."
She never gave him the reactions that he anticipated.
"They would have done worse than kill you if you hadn't," she said, looking sad, and small. Her fingers were knotted in the chain of her necklace. The tiny silver cross glinted at Bucky. "People die in wars."
"Is that what this is?"
"It's what it feels like, don't you think?"
"I think I don't understand why everything makes a little more sense when I'm around you."
"It's not me," she said, twisting her hands in her lap. "I'm sure you'd feel the same around anyone who wasn't actively trying to kill you." No. It was her. Bucky wasn't sure of anything. But he was sure it was her. "You just need to meet more people. Good people." Amy slid her gaze to the side. "Captain Rogers was here today."
"No, Amy-"
"He can help you, Bucky."
"He told you that?"
"He wants you to call him."
And then what? They would fill in the blank spaces in his head. And then? What could there be after that? Bucky knew the shapes of the holes in his mind now. Was horribly familiar with them, in fact. Nothing good awaited him. Just pain. Some of it self-inflicted.
He had already decided to leave. There was no staying. Not after tonight. Amy might be willing to play Russian roulette with her life, but he wasn't prepared to take the same risk.
If Rogers wanted to 'help' him, then maybe he also had a plan for what to do with him.
"Tomorrow," Bucky said. Much to Amy's amazement, judging by the look she shot in his direction. "I'll call Rogers tomorrow."
