Lots to think about while Bucky tries to dig up his memory of meeting the spy and uncovers some other memories along the way.
Bucky was laying on a bed in a small room off the back of the infirmary staring at the ceiling. Nurse Rains had gotten Steve to carry him up to the infirmary in case anyone saw him, and after quizzing Jim on the spells he'd helped dismantle at the castle while she looked over his leg, she'd started putting the story out that Bucky had gotten caught in one of the nastier trap spells. Bucky had to admit that he wouldn't have thought of the detail of making sure it was a trap that was in the castle since no one knew how detailed the spy's knowledge was of the place, and he wondered just what exactly Rains did in connection with the S.S.R.
After she'd gotten that settled, she came in and performed another examination, muttering as she did so and alternating between the comforting reassurances he was used to hearing when she took care of him and a series of scathing insults directed at whoever had done this. It would seem this spell was more unpredictable than Jim had realized and could have done a lot more damage, and she was nothing short of enraged that someone had dared to use it on a teenager.
"Don't you worry, though, love," she told him. "We'll sort this, you and I. Now, lie back and close your eyes. I'm going to have a look at that memory, and it may be a bit jarring, but just try to relax."
Bucky obeyed, and as he closed his eyes, he felt his mind rolling back to Thursday morning. There was Jim, complaining about the essay, and Kendall taking away House points and continuing with the lecture. In the middle of a sentence about the right way to dry out stinging nettles, there was an explosion of light, a loud, screeching crash, and then Bucky was picking himself up off the floor in a dark room, and he didn't know how the hell he got here and it looked an awful lot like…no. No! He couldn't be back there, he—
His eyes snapped open and he jerked up on the bed with a gasp, and then a small hand was on his chest and Nurse Rains was there and it was okay, he was back at Hogwarts.
"It's alright, love," she soothed, and Bucky swallowed and nodded and she allowed him to sit up. "It's alright," she said again. "I'm sorry about that, I know it was rough. I've got it now, though," she said, tapping a little vial with a silvery memory floating inside. "I'm going to have to have a closer look at this, but in the meantime, why don't you take this and try to get some rest?"
"What is it?" Bucky asked, peering into the cup of pale pink liquid she was offering.
"It's a rare memory modification spell that removes something entirely," she replied. "Odds are good that what we're after is still in there somewhere, but whether or not we can get at it is what I need to look into. That," she said, pointing at the cup. "Is a fairly generic memory enhancement potion. It's not likely it'll bring back what we're looking for, but it won't hurt anything, and I'm hoping it will shake a few things loose—make it easier for us to dig down after this missing one."
"Okay," Bucky agreed, swallowing the potion. It tasted like rice. Rains took the cup back and left the room, and Bucky laid back down, yawning as he felt the potion start to work its way through his body. He wondered if it was making him sleepy, or if he was just tired because he hadn't slept last night.
He wasn't aware of falling asleep, but he was sort of aware of the fact that he wasn't awake—he felt like he was sitting in a theater watching memories roll by on the screen. They were mostly old memories, things he hadn't thought about in a long time. The enhancement potion brought them back as clear as if they were yesterday.
He was in the yard at the church, three years old. Some of the bigger boys were playing and they knocked down a tiny little blond kid and ran off laughing while he sat on the grass and tried not to cry. Bucky approached him and patted him on the back and wiped the blood from off his nose with his sleeve, then helped him get up and find his mom. As clear as if he was still standing there with his hand wrapped around Steve's skinny little fingers, he could see the wonder and the gratitude shining up out of those little blue eyes and he could feel the warm swelling in his own chest deciding that he was going to take care of this little guy and they were gonna be friends.
He was in his living room, four years old. There was a basket with a bed inside and he was standing up on an ottoman to look inside at his new sister. She was pink and squinty and even littler than Steve was, and he was gonna have to look after her too because he didn't know how someone that little could even be alive. She squeaked and opened her eyes and they were blue just like his, and in that moment he was right there, her soft, warm little fingers wrapped around the one he held out to her and his cheeks aching because his face was just too small for the smile that was stretching across it.
Five years old and that same little baby was big now, with fat little legs and dark curly hair, and he was sitting on the floor with his arms out wide as she toddled across the rug. He felt her weight on his lap as she collapsed onto his legs, felt that smile that was too big for his face again when she cackled happily with that laugh like sunshine.
Still five years old, and now he was in a hospital and everything smelled harsh and clean, and his mama was holding him tightly and Mrs. Rogers was scared and Steve wasn't waking up. Bucky had been scared before, when the thunder was loud, or when he got lost, and he was scared of the dark. But this was a different kind of scared, and he felt it twisting his stomach into a knot like he was still on his mother's lap in that hospital chair and his friend who was little and sick was lying on the bed in front of them, not breathing like he was supposed to and not getting better.
On and on they went: His first day of school and how itchy his school clothes were; deciding that even though he didn't like it when people called him 'James', it wasn't so bad when Becky called him 'Jay' because that was her special name just for him; how awful he felt when he accidentally hit Steve in the face with a baseball and how he'd avoided him for a couple of days out of guilt until Steve marched into his room and sat on the end of his bed and stared at him until he talked to him again; that time he and Steve found a sick little kitten in the alley and tried to take care of it and how scared he'd been when it died—he'd been taking care of it as best he could and it died anyway, and if his best wasn't enough to keep it alive that meant the same thing might happen to Steve or Becky one day; the day his Hogwarts letter came and the thrill of excitement and nerves that had almost knocked him over, and the way Steve had burst through the front door with the sheet of parchment clenched in his fist and practically glowing because he'd gotten one too.
He couldn't control what came and went—some memories were pleasant surprises long forgotten, and others were painful things that he hadn't forgotten but had locked away and tried to forget—it all shook loose and flowed through his head, and the pain of something like Arthur's death or the feel of Zola's hands inside his chest cavity would be tempered by the soft, sweet moments curled up in a chair with Becky teaching her how to read or watching Steve smile as he unwrapped the book Bucky gave him for his birthday.
He came awake as slowly as he'd fallen asleep, not realizing he was actually awake until he tried to place the memory he was in and realized that it wasn't one.
"Hey, Buck," Steve said, smiling over from the chair by the bed.
"Hey, Steve." He sat up and then Steve's hand was around his arm, keeping him from going over the side of the bed.
"Whoa, easy," Steve said, pulling him back up and moving him to lie down again. "Rains said you might be kind of dizzy when you woke up."
"Well, she was right," Bucky groaned, pressing a hand to the side of his head. He blinked several times and the room seemed to stop spinning, but it was probably a good idea to stay horizontal for another few minutes.
"She also said it would help if you ate," Steve told him, holding out a plate with a sandwich on it. At least that was something he could eat lying down. And he was hungry. "I guess it didn't work, huh?"
"You mean for finding who jumped me? No. Shook some other stuff loose I haven't thought about in a while, though." He looked over at Steve thoughtfully. He knew Steve used to be little, but it was weird remembering just how little he'd been.
"Good stuff?"
"Mostly." He finished his sandwich and sat up carefully, still feeling a little dizzy, but able to stay up if he leaned against the wall. "Rains find anything?"
"No," Steve told him. "She's still working on it."
Bucky nodded. "Hey, what did she tell people was wrong with me? I mean, I know I'm supposed to have tripped one of the trap spells, but…"
"Oh, yeah. Apparently, you got caught in one that triggered involuntary transfiguration, so they're keeping you in here under restraints until they figure out how to turn it off because you keep turning into things that want to kill everyone else."
"Wow," Bucky said. "That was really one of the spells we took down?"
"Yeah. Schmidt wasn't playing around."
"No kidding," Bucky huffed. "Hey, wait, what about Becky? What'd they tell her?"
"She got the same transfiguration story everybody else did," Steve answered. He grimaced. "She's pretty freaked out about it, but I tried to tell her Rains knew she could fix it, it just might take a little bit. Peggy said she'd keep an eye on her."
Bucky nodded. "Thanks." He hated that they had to lie to her, even though he got it. Once they got this figured out, he'd make sure to tell her the truth.
They talked a little while longer before Rains came back in. She had a sleeping potion she wanted him to take—she and Phillips had some ideas, but they weren't going to be easy and she wanted him well-rested before they tried them. Though Bucky told her he would sleep alright without the potion, she would take no argument and stood there until he drank it. Steve was allowed to stay but only under the condition that he lie down on the other bed and get some sleep as well. If she came back in here and found him sitting up worrying, she would hold him down and force-feed him the sleeping potion, and Bucky kind of wanted to see that but he fell asleep before Steve could respond.
Chester Phillips sighed deeply to himself, leaning back against the door of the private room off the infirmary. He was listening as Gwyneth Rains checked over the Barnes boy—except he wasn't a boy anymore, was he? Seventeen years old and with his Sergeant's stripes—Barnes was a man now. After everything he'd fought his way through, he was more so than a lot of young men his age. When he'd come of age, Phillips hadn't hesitated a moment in granting the official promotion.
Seventeen was still so young, though. And even though his students accused him in whispers of being able to read minds, he had never used Legilimancy on a student before, and it turned his stomach a little to do it now. And though Barnes was putting a brave face on it, Phillips could tell the prospect scared him.
Rogers was scared too, though he was less concerned about hiding it. Phillips huffed an exasperated snort, watching him watch Rains and Barnes. Those two were something else. The way they looked out for each other, he remembered being surprised during their first year when he found out they weren't related. Still, if he was going to have to send children off to war, Rogers and Barnes was where he was putting his money. Rogers had exceeded all the expectations Phillips knew Erskine had had, and had, quite frankly, blown Phillips himself out of the water. Add in Rogers' unending quest for justice and the pig-headed tenacity they both had, and it wouldn't have surprised Phillips overly much if the two of them went out and won the war on their own one of these days.
He shook his head grimly. Good as they were, they shouldn't have to be out there in the first place. A year and a half on, he still hated the Ministry's guts for making the decision, and still lost sleep over what it had cost. The name of every one of his students who had died since this started was seared into his brain forever. And that was why he was about to go digging around inside Barnes' head. Because someone, one of his own people, was out there hurting his boys. And they were going to stop it.
Rains was explaining to Barnes now why they were choosing this route—usually when a memory was modified, a new one was laid down on top of it. It had a layering effect, and double-stacked memories were easy enough to find. Not any easier to unlock, but easy to find. Whoever had done this to Barnes hadn't added anything in to cover it up, which, Phillips grudgingly admitted, was smarter. It was a single layered memory, just like all the other ones in his head. Never mind a needle in a haystack, it was more like a needle in a pile of needles.
Even if they found it, there was no guarantee of getting it unlocked. At least, not any time soon. A memory could stay hidden forever if no one was looking for it, but if someone was going after it, working at it to heal it, eventually, it would always be unlocked. The problem was how long it would take to do it. Days, weeks, months sometimes. Years, too. There was no way of knowing. Hopefully, by trying some more aggressive methods than the Healers at St. Mungo's preferred to use, they could at least knock out the 'years' category.
Barnes was sitting cross-legged on the bed, and Phillips pulled up a chair and sat down across from him. "We don't have to do this if you don't want to, son," Phillips told him, giving him one last chance to back down. Yes, he wanted to catch this spy. But delving into someone's mind was a personal, painful process, and more than he could rightfully ask of a seventeen-year-old. He could hardly hold it against him if Barnes said no.
"Yes, we do," Barnes replied, sitting up a little straighter.
Phillips nodded, pride in his student tugging up one corner of his mouth into the smallest of smiles. He settled back in his chair and began.
He felt Barnes recoil instantly, a natural reaction to someone entering your mind. For a moment, Phillips felt the pressure of Barnes pushing back at him and fighting to force him out, another natural reaction, but then he felt him start to withdraw, following the instructions they had given him. If Barnes resisted, tried to shut him out, Phillips might miss something, and this whole torturous endeavor would be for nothing.
Phillips set to his work as fast as he could, not wanting to drag this out any longer than necessary. He summoned memories and thoughts in a whirlwind, starting with those closest to the surface. He couldn't help but see some of the contents, but he looked at as little as he could. Not so much for Barnes' privacy—you couldn't be delicate in a time like this—but because the contents weren't what he was after. Not yet. This missing memory, it was like a page torn out of a book. It had been ripped out of where it belonged, and the edges would be rough and jagged. He had to look at them all to see if the edges were torn, but he didn't have to look too closely until then.
It was hard to keep track of time inside someone else's head. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, and there were moments where it felt like he'd been in here for all seventeen years of Barnes' life. It was a good life, most of it. Not always easy, but good, and Phillips was glad that there was that for him to fall back on when it got dark. And it was starting to get dark.
He'd come to the corner of Barnes' mind that had a wall around it. He thought he knew what to expect inside—Phillips didn't know a soldier alive who didn't have a wall like this. Barnes lashed out again when Phillips reached it, then drew back, then lashed out and drew back again. Phillips paused, not retreating but not advancing, giving him time. If Barnes kept fighting, he would pull back, call it a day.
Somewhere outside of Barnes' head, Phillips could hear him inhaling deeply, trying to calm the hitching in his breath. "Go ahead, Sir," he heard him say, his voice small but resolute. "I can do this."
Phillips moved forward slowly and Barnes withdrew again. There inside his head with him, Phillips could almost see him sinking to his knees and curling into a ball, drawing himself in tight to keep from interfering. "Steady on, son," he heard himself whisper.
It was dark on the other side of the wall. A lot of the memories in here had jagged edges—they belonged somewhere else, but Barnes didn't want them, had torn them out himself so he could lock them away. It was a good place for another torn memory to hide, but Phillips was going to have to start looking more carefully now.
There was a lot of pain here. A lot of death. Arthur Collins, the first Hogwarts student to die on a mission. Barnes had knelt over his dead body and closed his eyes. A man named Albert, the gut-wrenching warmth of his blood spattering across Barnes' cheek. A nameless Dutch boy, vanishing into the dark. Scores of others—soldiers on a hill, men and boys crying in cages. Rogers's mother, dying sick and slow, and Phillips felt the tidal wave of sorrow in his gut as sharply as Barnes had.
More pain, more fear. James Morita, motionless and unconscious after a bad curse. Montgomery Falsworth, stabbed through the leg and bleeding out in a cave. Timothy Dugan, hand blackened and ashy and crying in pain. Gabriel Jones, screaming into the floor and writhing in the grip of the Cruciatus curse. Jacques Dernier coughing up blood. Peggy Carter pale and unmoving on a hospital bed, her insides torn apart by bullet fragments. And memory after memory after memory of Steve Rogers, broken and bloody and cursed and half dead.
Underneath the fear, there was a nameless, shrieking terror. Phillips had to take a breath and steel himself before going in there. It was dark and disjointed, and for a moment, he dared to hope he'd found what he was looking for. But the chaos didn't come from something being out of place—it came from the broken, pain-filled haze that Barnes remembered this through.
Arnim Zola. Phillips had known the name, known the face for many years. And Phillips had been an Auror for decades and fought in two world wars—he had seen the most depraved sides of men and of wizards, but in this moment, through Barnes' eyes, he had never seen anything as terrifying as the little Hydra scientist.
He had known it had been awful. He had read the reports. Listened to the survivors. Hell, he'd been in places like that himself in the course of his job, seen first-hand the results of some of Hydra's work. But, dear Lord. Dear. Lord. The things Arnim Zola had done to that boy. And he had been just a boy then, only fifteen. God help him.
Phillips had to force down the urge to pull back at what he saw. But he caught himself, stood firm. Because if James Barnes could suffer through that, could fight his way through and come out the other side of it alive, never mind willing to rejoin the fight, then the least Chester Phillips could do was look at it. So he did. He looked. It tore him to pieces but he looked, and there, tucked away between the atrocities, there it was. A memory ripped and torn on the edges, nothing but noise and bursts of light and shadow. Something covered up and locked and sealed, and he couldn't open it, not from in here, but he knew where it was now.
He found it.
Steve hadn't really known what to expect when he'd heard that Phillips was going to read Bucky's mind, but so far it was actually turning out to be kind of boring. They were just sitting there, Phillips in his chair and Bucky cross-legged on the bed, looking into each other's eyes like this was the world's weirdest staring contest.
"How long does this usually take?" he asked Nurse Rains quietly after half an hour.
She smiled at him. "The human mind is a complicated place, love," she told him. "There's an awful lot to look through. It depends how deep this memory's buried, of course, but it'll be some time yet, I'd think."
Every now and then, one of them would twitch a little, but that was the extent of their movement. They both remained still, a look of concentration on Phillips' face and one of wide-eyed expressionlessness on Bucky's.
At the start of the third hour, something happened. Phillips flinched and Bucky gasped, a pained grimace twitching up one side of his face. His shoulders shook slightly as his breath hitched several times, growing trepidation twisting his features. Steve shot a worried look at Rains, and she was watching the two of them intently, but making no move to intervene. Maybe this was supposed to happen?
"Go ahead, Sir," Bucky said quietly, startling them both. His face was equal parts afraid and determined. "I can do this."
"Steady on, son," Phillips whispered, and Steve just caught himself before his jaw dropped open. There was a tender sort of sorrowfulness in his voice that Steve wouldn't have thought him capable of. What the hell was going on in there?
He looked to Rains for an answer, but she just shook her head. "This is where it's going to get tricky," she said softly.
Bucky and Phillips were back to staring at each other again, but it was different this time. Phillips' concentration looked more forceful, and Bucky's face was no longer expressionless, but held a look of resigned acceptance. Steve sat forward in his chair, waves of nerves starting to writhe in his stomach.
It was just another minute or two later that Bucky started to cry. His gaze remained locked on Phillips', tired and sad, and his breathing stayed steady and calm, but tears were welling up in his eyes and spilling silently down his cheeks. Steve immediately moved forward, but Rains grabbed his wrist and pulled him back. "No, love," she said. "You mustn't touch them." Her voice was not entirely steady, and her eyes did not leave the two of them to meet Steve's, but she took his hand in both of hers and held it tight. "I'm sorry."
Steve swallowed and nodded and sat back, not pulling his hand away from hers. It was awful, sitting there and watching Bucky cry and not doing anything about it. What the hell was Phillips doing in there?! Commanding officer or not, if he hurt Bucky while he was in there, so help him…
With a sudden gasp and burst of movement that felt deafening after sitting in near silence for so long, Bucky shuddered and flailed his arms and threw himself backwards on the mattress and Phillips shoved his chair back with a screech of metal legs on stone, flying to his feet and spinning and marching to the opposite corner, a hand pressed to the side of his head.
Steve and Rains both leapt up, she, following Phillips, and Steve reaching out for Bucky and grabbing him before he fell off the side of the bed. He sat down on the mattress and tugged Bucky against him, and Bucky choked and gasped and, with a stuttering sob, began to cry in earnest, burying his face in Steve's shoulder and clenching his fists in his shirt like he had nothing else to hold on to.
"It's okay, Buck, it's okay," Steve whispered, rocking him back and forth and cradling one hand up over his head. "Ssh, ssh, it's okay. I've got you. I've got you, it's okay." He didn't know what else to say, so he just kept repeating the same assurances over and over.
Bucky's tears were violent but brief, slowing after only a couple of minutes, though it took him another one to stop shaking, and another one after that before he lifted his head. "Buck?" Steve asked softly, leaning down a little to catch his eye.
"Yeah," Bucky said, and his voice was only a little shaky, and he sat up away from Steve, though he didn't relinquish his grip on his sleeve. "Wow, that…that sucked."
"What happened?" Steve asked, still worried.
Bucky closed his eyes and shook his head. He huffed a breath and opened his eyes and shook his head again. Whatever had happened, he had no idea how to say it. "I'm okay," he said. He wiped at his eyes with one hand, and he did really seem like he was finding his feet again.
"Did he hurt you?" Steve asked.
There was a fond, grateful smile in his voice when Bucky answered. "No." He wiped his nose and then his eyes again, and though he looked drained and wrung out, he did seem okay now. "He just…" He shook his head. "There's all that stuff you don't wanna think about, and he had to dig through it all. I just had to…put it all back."
Steve nodded. He knew what kind of stuff Bucky didn't like to think about. "I'm sorry," he said.
Bucky nodded. His eyes travelled to somewhere over Steve's shoulders. "Looks like it sucked for him too," he said.
Steve turned his head to follow Bucky's gaze. Phillips was in the corner over by the door, his back still to them, but his shoulders were tight with tension and the way he was breathing told Steve he may not be crying like Bucky had, but he clearly had to pull himself back together. A wave of nausea churned in Steve's gut and he found his own breath catching in his throat. He thought he knew what kind of stuff Bucky didn't like to think about, but what the hell was in there that could make Phillips react like that?!
Arms were moving around his shoulders, and this time it was Bucky hugging Steve. "I'm really okay, Stevie," Bucky assured him, and this was stupid because Bucky was the one who'd just relived all his trauma, he shouldn't be comforting Steve, but Steve leaned into the hug for just a minute until he got his breathing back under control.
"Are you sure?" he asked, looking Bucky over.
"I'm sure," Bucky said with a small smile. He nodded over at Phillips. "It's nothing I haven't told you about," he said, and Steve supposed that was meant to be comforting, that there weren't any new horrors lurking in his head. "I'm pretty good at locking it down by now," he added. "I'm really alright."
"Okay," Steve said, and he straightened up but he stayed on the bed, shoulder still pressed against Bucky's. Phillips and Rains came back over, and he looked like his normal self again. "You alright, Barnes?" he asked gruffly.
Bucky nodded. "Yes, Sir."
Phillips nodded back. "Well done, son. Well done." He rested a hand briefly on Bucky's shoulder. "We found it."
"You did?" Bucky asked hopefully. He frowned. "I don't remember."
"It's not unlocked," Phillips told him. "We just know where it is now. I've marked it so we can find it without going through all this again before the next step."
"What is the next step?" Bucky asked.
"Sleep," Nurse Rains replied. "For both of you," she clarified, shooting a stern look at Phillips.
"No, I can—" Bucky began.
"Buck, you need some rest," Steve cut in softly. He'd been awake for four hours, but he looked like he hadn't slept for a week.
"You do," Rains confirmed. She smiled warmly. "The memory'll keep, love, and the next step's not as hard as this one, but it's not easy either. I'll not have you wear yourself to the bone."
Bucky sagged against Steve a little bit and nodded in concession, though he still looked like he wanted to argue a little. "Okay," he agreed. He also looked like if they left him alone for a couple minutes, he'd fall asleep whether he wanted to or not.
Phillips nodded at him. "We'll get there," he told him, then pulled Rains aside, talking with her quietly as they left the room.
Steve moved to let Bucky lie down, and though he looked exhausted, there was a familiar uncertainty in his eyes as he shifted against the pillows. "You don't want to go to sleep, do you?" Steve asked.
Bucky shook his head. "It's all…" He gestured at the side of his head. "It's all right there. So close to the surface. I don't know…" He yawned. He may not want to sleep, but his body wasn't going to give him much choice in the matter.
Steve moved his chair over so it was right next to the bed and wrapped a hand around Bucky's forearm. "What can I do?"
Bucky looked up at him, and his cheeks were a little pink. "Don't leave?" he asked softly.
Steve smiled and settled down more comfortably in his chair, squeezing Bucky's arm warmly. "Not going anywhere, pal."
Bucky gave him a small, grateful smile, and after a minute, allowed his eyes to shut. Steve stayed where he was, his hand secure around Bucky's arm. Bucky slept for several hours, through lunch and into mid-afternoon, and though he didn't scream or call out, he would twitch and whimper from time to time, and Steve would grip his arm tighter or reach up and pat his shoulder and he would still. He left his hand resting on Bucky's arm, and he smiled when Bucky rolled a little in his sleep and reached over with his other hand, grabbing Steve's sleeve and tugging it closer against him. It had been a long time since Bucky had slept with a teddy bear, but that's how he was holding on to Steve's arm now. Steve didn't mind.
He looked a lot better when he woke up, though there were still tired circles under his eyes. He insisted that he felt better too.
"Really, Steve," he said as he worked his way through his late lunch. "I'm fine. I was really shook up, but everything's back where it goes now. Stop looking at me like that."
After he'd eaten, Rains came in and looked him over and decided he was fit to go on with the next step if he wanted to.
"Hell, yes, I want to. I mean, uh, yes, ma'am," Bucky said, cheeks going a little red.
Rains smirked a little and didn't reply, leaving to get Phillips.
"Alright," Phillips said. He looked like he was back to normal too. Maybe a little grumpier than usual, like he was making up for showing emotion this morning. "You ready for this?"
"Yes, Sir," Bucky replied. He was sitting up on the bed again and Rains and Phillips were both in chairs in front of him. "Um," he asked, his eyes darting between them. "What are you going to do?"
"This is a series of spells designed to unlock your memory," Rains told him. "We've got to pull the memory back up to the surface, then we'll start chipping away at the magic keeping it sealed."
"Chipping?" Steve asked from where he was sitting on the side. That didn't sound like a word you wanted to use around the inside of somebody's head.
"Yes," Phillips said. "Chipping. It's finicky work—don't interrupt once we get going," he told him, pointing a warning finger at Steve.
"Yes, Sir," Steve said. He swallowed. "It's not gonna hurt him, is it?"
"If done improperly, it could," Rains allowed. She turned to face Bucky, who had swallowed nervously at this declaration. "We'll stop before we get that far," she promised. She laid a hand on top of his. "It'll be alright."
Bucky nodded at her, then again at Steve. "Okay," he said, turning back to the two of them. "I'm ready."
They both raised their wands and started muttering spells, and Bucky stiffened and shuddered like someone had just poured ice water down his back. His mouth dropped part of the way open and his eyes rolled back in his head, but he stayed upright. He looked eerily similar to the way he had when Steve found him in Zola's lab, and Steve swallowed hard and scooted his chair a little bit further away so he wouldn't be tempted to reach out and grab him.
Steve had thought the hours sitting there watching Bucky and Phillips stare at each other were nerve-wracking, but they were a piece of cake compared to this. Phillips and Rains kept up their muttering, staring at Bucky's head like they could see through it and occasionally saying things like, "Careful, you're losing the edge of it," or, "If I hold this up, can you get underneath it?" Bucky would twitch sporadically, and his mouth would move like he was trying to say something, but no words came out. His eyes remained rolled towards the back of his head, eyelids fluttering unevenly. He looked like he was slipping away, back into that nothingness he'd floated in for so long after Steve had brought him back from Italy, and Steve couldn't believe he was actually letting someone do this to him. It had better be as quick for him to snap back from this as it had been from Phillips digging through his head.
Though it seemed to drag on for an agonizing eternity, less than an hour had passed when Phillips and Rains went quiet and dropped their wands. Bucky's eyes rolled the rest of the way up into his head and he collapsed back onto the mattress with a soft thump.
"Bucky!" Steve exclaimed, darting forward but catching himself as he reached the bed, just in case they weren't done yet.
"That's all," Phillips said. "He's fine."
"He'll come 'round in just a minute," Rains added. She nodded and Steve dropped onto the bed next to Bucky, brushing his hair back out of his face and looking him over as if he could see any outward sign of whatever they'd done in there.
"He's okay?" he pressed.
"He is," Rains replied patiently.
Steve nodded, looking down at Bucky then back up. "Did it work?"
"Why don't we ask him?" Phillips said, nodding down at Bucky.
"Bucky!" Steve said, looking down to where Bucky was blinking in confusion. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Bucky said, looking around. Realization dawned and he nodded again more certainly. "Yeah, I'm fine." He looked up at Rains and Phillips. "Did it work?"
"Can you see it?" Rains asked.
Bucky closed his eyes. "There's something there, it…whoa, that's weird."
"What?" Steve asked anxiously.
Bucky opened his eyes. "I can see it, but I can't see it. Like, I know it's there, but it's just like a…smudgy spot on a piece of paper where somebody erased everything. It's like I remember the smudge, but I…I still can't see what it was before it got erased."
Phillips nodded, as if he'd expected nothing else. "That's what we thought it would do."
"So, does that mean it worked or not?" Steve asked.
Phillips frowned, and Steve supposed his tone could have been a little more polite, but Rains smiled. "It worked as well as we can manage. The warding around the memory is broken—it's no longer magically sealed. His brain still has to unlock it on its own, though, and that may take some time."
"How much time?" Bucky asked.
Phillips and Rains looked at each other and shrugged. "It's hard to say," Rains told him. "Hopefully no more than a few weeks."
"A few weeks?!" Bucky protested. "No way! There's got to be something else you can do!"
"There is something else we can do," Rains said calmly. "But it's dangerous and we're not going to do it."
"No, it's fine, I can—" Bucky began.
"No," Phillips said firmly, and that was a voice you didn't argue with. His eyes softened just a little. "If we push any harder, we're going to break something we can't fix. We're not doing that."
"Yes, Sir," Bucky said quietly.
Rains smiled and leaned down, placing a hand on his shoulder. "The work of it's over now, and I'm afraid the hard part is the waiting. But it'll come. In the meantime, the best you can do is go on with your daily life and let your brain sort itself out. When you're feeling up to walking, you're clear to go," she said, nodding at the door. "Dinner and early to bed, and you'll be just fine in the morning."
Bucky nodded.
"And until this comes back," Phillips told him. "Remember, the story hasn't changed. I wasn't kidding when I said this spy would try to kill you if he knew what we were up to."
"Yes, Sir," Bucky said again.
Steve had wondered what Rains had meant about Bucky feeling up to walking again, but the spell had left him dizzy and kind of shaky, and even after he made it to his feet, Steve had to put an arm around his shoulder to keep him steady.
"Tell you what," Steve said. "I know Rains said you need to eat, but how about I take you down to our room instead of the dining hall, then I'll go and get some food for you?"
"Yeah, okay," Bucky said.
"I'm sorry it didn't work like you thought it would," Steve said, reading the disappointment on Bucky's face.
"Yeah," Bucky sighed. "I kinda thought after all that it would just be right there."
"Was it really that bad?" Steve wondered. "It looked awful."
"The first part was," Bucky agreed. He furrowed his eyebrows thoughtfully. "I don't really remember the second part. Just sort of a…general weirdness. But I'll be fine," he said, and though Steve was still worried, Bucky sounded like he was convinced of that. "And I'm gonna get it, Steve. This weasel may think he's safe for now, but I'm gonna get this."
Bucky hadn't been lying when he'd told Steve he was alright, but the day's fiddling around inside his head had worn him out. He'd barely been able to stay awake long enough for Steve to bring dinner back to him, and he was pretty sure he fell asleep in the shower for a little bit before getting in bed. He'd been too tired for any of those unpleasant memories Phillips had stirred up to bother him while he slept, and when he got up in the morning, everything was back where it should have been in his head and he felt pretty good.
When he got in to breakfast, Becky rushed over and flung her arms around his middle, making him grunt as she knocked the air out of his lungs. "Jay, you're okay!"
"Yeah, I'm fine," he croaked. He smiled and kissed the top of her head. "You weren't worried about me, were you?"
She drew back and looked up at him. " 'course I was," she said seriously. "Did it hurt?"
"No," he told her truthfully, even though he knew she thought something else had happened. "It was…weird, but it didn't hurt."
"Okay, well, good." She sighed. "You gotta be more careful, Jay."
"I am careful," he told her. "Bad guys are sneaky sometimes. But, hey, you don't need to worry about me, you know? Steve takes good care of me." This had the desired effect of diverting Becky's attention somewhat as well as making Steve blush.
They finished breakfast, and though he would have liked to enjoy his free period, there was a weekend's worth of homework that, extension or not, needed working on. He did take a little bit of time to find Vicki, though, and assure her he was alright.
His teachers were always pretty understanding as far as missions and extensions went, but they seemed a little more gracious about it today, assuring him that he could take a little more time and some of them shooting him the occasional concerned look. Apparently the cover story about what was supposed to have happened to him in the castle had gotten around. "Hey, Steve," he said in Charms. "Exactly what kind of stuff was I supposed to be transfiguring into this weekend?"
"What do you mean?" Steve asked, looking up from his project.
"I mean the way the teachers keep looking at me. I'm guessing it had to be worse than some kind of animal or something."
"Oh." Steve considered. "I don't know exactly. Jim said it wouldn't have been natural things, but, like, hybrid monsters and crap."
"Oh, that's nice," Bucky said. "Real classy guy, Schmidt." No wonder the teachers kept looking at him like that. He felt a little bad about brushing off Becky's worry. He hadn't realized she'd been hearing stuff like that. Still, he was fine, and he'd be able to tell her the truth before too long.
In Potions that afternoon, Kendall was begrudging about the extension, but he seemed content enough to collect the essay from everyone else, warning Bucky and Steve and Jim that they only had two more days for it. Bucky wasn't really surprised—this was one class he had not expected any grace in. Although…
"Is it weird that Kendall kind of looks like he's worried about me too?" Bucky asked Steve. To say he looked concerned was probably stretching the definition of the word, but this would be the first time since arriving at Hogwarts that Kendall had shown anything resembling it.
"He kinda does," Steve agreed. "That is weird."
"I dunno," Jim said. "He's probably just worried you might turn into a demon-lizard or something and try to eat him."
That was a fair point. Bucky wondered if the other teachers had been worried about that too, as well as being concerned for his health.
A couple of days passed and everything seemed to be settling again. People stopped looking at Bucky like they were worried about him, and he got all his homework turned in. He didn't seem to be having any luck on the memory front, though. Whenever he didn't need to be thinking about something else, he'd focus his mind on that smudgy little unlocked memory and see if he couldn't see anything. No luck so far, but thinking too hard about it gave him a headache, which freaked Steve out and Nurse Rains said was the kind of thing that was likely to happen and he should stop thinking so hard about it and just let it come.
Although he was desperate to know what was in there, he tried to keep his mind occupied most of the time. They all met together for their weekly Wednesday meeting, and going through some of the stuff they'd brought back from Schmidt's castle was more than enough to divert his attention.
"Man," Dugan said, flipping through a stack of drawings. "Schmidt may have had a stupid tiny castle, but we hit the jackpot with this!"
"We haven't even seen some of these in the field yet," Monty commented. He was leaning over Dugan's shoulder to study the weapons designs he was holding.
"What the hell even is this?" Jim wondered, flipping over a little device he and Jacques were examining.
Gabe said nothing, absorbed in a stack of journals he was translating.
Peggy smiled, looking up from the stack of maps she was sorting through. "I'm glad you boys are having fun. Remember, anything having to do with the Tesseract or Valkyrie…"
"We know, we know, it goes straight to you," Jim said distractedly. "What do you think this button does?" he asked Jacques.
"You're not going to press it and find out," Steve said, shooting a sharp look across the table before returning his attention to the blueprints he was studying.
"You're not going to press it and find out," Jim parroted quietly, and Steve threw his pen across the table without looking up and hit him right between the eyes.
They spent the rest of the afternoon sifting through Schmidt's things and cataloguing them. They found no mention of the Valkyrie, but Bucky did find a stack of notes on the Tesseract with little scribbles and equations along the sides.
"I still can't believe how much stuff this is," Bucky said as he and Steve waited while Peggy locked everything up.
"It is impressive," Peggy replied. "And until we catch the spy, we're the only ones who can sort it, so I'd expect to be in here more than just Wednesday afternoons."
"Yeah, sorry about that," Bucky sighed. "I really have been trying to get this memory back, I just…"
"No, sorry, I wasn't blaming you," Peggy said, putting a reassuring hand on his arm. "Nurse Rains did say it would take a little while," she reminded him. "It's not even been a week yet."
"I know," Bucky sighed. "I just feel like I'm so close. It'd be nice to have this guy out of the way."
"And he will be, Buck," Steve assured him.
"Hey, what happens when we catch him?" Bucky wondered.
"Azkaban, definitely," Peggy said firmly. "Depending on how much he knows, the S.S.R. could hang on to him for a while, interrogate him. We know what he's done to us, but who knows how long he's been operating, and what else he's done. He may even end up getting handed over to the Dementors."
"Well, I want a piece of him before they do that," Bucky declared. Normally, the thought of someone being given to the Dementors—even if it was someone from Hydra—made him a little queasy. Bucky knew what real despair felt like, and the idea of those monsters just draining the happiness out of a person…He shuddered. The idea of this spy getting that treatment didn't bother him, though. The pain he'd caused and the people who'd died because he kept screwing them over…civilians they hadn't been able to save, Arthur, Michael and Roddy and Stewart from the 49th, that girl Damaris and the old couple from Zurich…The many times the Howlies had come close to biting it because of him…What had happened to Steve in Salzburg (that one still felt like a raw nerve)… All the guys from the 89th and 107th they'd lost…No. Bucky had no problem with this guy having every little bit of joy sucked out of his life.
They caught up with Jim and Gabe on their way to dinner. "You know," Jim said, casting an eye around to make sure the corridor was deserted. "I've been wondering. If Phillips can read minds and all, why didn't he just do that as soon as he knew there was a spy around?"
Bucky had initially wondered that too—especially after learning how painful it would be having Phillips dig around in his head, but Rains and Phillips had explained that to him and Steve before they got started.
"The S.S.R. trains all its intelligence people in Occlumency," Peggy explained.
"Fair enough," Gabe said. "But if he told them to sit down and let him check them out for security reasons…"
"No," Peggy said, shaking her head. "A good enough Occlumens can hide something without making it look like anything's hidden. And whoever this is, they'd have to be good."
"Would've made my life easier if it worked that way," Bucky put in, and they chuckled, though Steve shot him one of those concerned looks again.
They went to dinner, and then Bucky spent his evening focusing first on Vicki Marlowe and how absolutely gorgeous that red hair of hers looked in the sunset, then on studying for his upcoming exams. When he ran out of homework and his brain kept wanting him to think about his missing memory, he focused on how far across the common room he had to be before he couldn't hit Steve with a spitball anymore. Which, given his sniper abilities, turned out to be pretty darn far. He was almost in the hallway. Steve was not as impressed with that as he was.
He let up right before Steve got mad enough to throw something at him, scooping up his stuff and heading back down the hall toward his room, and he found himself walking alongside Donovan. "Hey," Bucky wondered. "What are you going to do when you get out of here?" Donovan was about to graduate, and Bucky knew Colin was already training to take over the 107th, but he didn't know if Donovan planned to continue the fight or step back. Former student soldiers who had already graduated had done both, with a fairly even split.
"I'm not sure," Donovan said. "I'd like to go on to Healer training, but I hear they're desperate for field medics in the wizard units on the ground in Germany. I'm still thinking it over."
Bucky clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, we'll sure miss you around here."
Donovan smiled. "Yeah. It's gonna be weird, not fighting with this team. A year and a half we've been together, most of us." He gave Bucky a friendly nudge with his elbow. "And you and me, right from the beginning, hey? Who'd have thought we'd be here one day?"
Bucky chuckled in agreement. He and Donovan had been assigned to the 107th on their first day. They'd both survived those early missions and Azzano, and here they both were, part of the special forces tasked with taking out Hydra. "We sure have come a long way."
The next day, he went on with more classes, helping Becky with her homework at lunch time and more sorting of their haul from Schmidt's castle after school. After dinner, he did some sparring with Gabe down in the training area. The two of them were still there when Steve came in from riding his bike around like he sometimes did and they helped him fiddle around with the engine for a while to see if they could figure out what was making that rattling noise. Then more homework and off to bed again, and things were kind of feeling like they were normal. Bucky supposed that was good. Rains said to just do the normal life thing and let the memory come back on its own. So, he was trying.
Friday afternoon, their last class of the day and the last class before exams next week was Potions. It was a double period, and it was hot and it was right after lunch and Kendall was just never able to hold your attention the way Erskine could. That nasal voice of his was droning like some kind of insect and Bucky was fighting to stay awake. He was trying to listen, he really was. Sure, this was important stuff to know, and if nothing else, missing steps in Potions could lead to explosions and other unpleasant things. So he was awake. Propping his eyes open with his fingers and forcing his brain to repeat every word that Kendall was saying so that he could make sure he got it, but he was awake. Then Kendall turned back to his desk to pick something up, turned back to face them and sniffed and pushed his glasses up his nose like he did about fifteen times every class period, and something exploded in Bucky's brain.
Glass shattered at his feet as his arm jerked and knocked a tray of test tubes off the side of his desk, and every eye in the room snapped to fix on him. Bucky failed to notice entirely.
"What do you think you're doing?!" Kendall snapped.
Bucky's hand flew up to cover his mouth and he swallowed convulsively, shoving his stool away from the table. "Infirmary," he managed to gasp. "I think I need—"
Kendall backed up a couple of steps and looked at him in disgust. "Go," he said, waving at the door, and Bucky was already bolting from the room.
He ran down the corridor and rounded the corner then stopped, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily. He wasn't sick, but he hadn't needed to fake the nausea surging in his stomach. If he'd stayed in there one more second, had to look in those eyes one more time or hear that voice say one more word…He closed his eyes and his stomach heaved and he forced down the bile rising in his throat. Kendall. God help him, it was Kendall.
Memory exploded into the front of his brain, whiting out the corridor he was standing in and dropping him back into that underground hallway. Jacques had been on the radio, arguing with Jim over whether or not some potions he had found were worth bringing back. Steve cut in to tell him to just bring it anyway. Bucky moved out of the room he had finished with, which looked like a kitchen that hadn't been cleaned any time this century, nodded at Gabe further down the hall, and rounded a corner. He stepped into what was clearly a lab—bloody surgical equipment, vials of potions, and a nauseatingly familiar-looking metal gurney. He'd seen several labs that Hydra used for human experiments since he'd first been introduced to one, and they never failed to make something small and frightened deep down in his soul whimper in terror.
That fear was quickly engulfed by surprise as he stepped fully into the room and found someone was already in it. "Professor Kendall?" he asked. Why in the hell was his Potions teacher here?
Kendall spun around, dropping a sheaf of papers clutched in his fist, looking equally as surprised as Bucky. He shoved his glasses back up his nose like he always did in class as several emotions flitted across his face in rapid succession—fear, anger, uncertainty, decision. Warning bells were going off in Bucky's head—something about this was clearly wrong—and he started backing away, raising his wand. Kendall's wand was already up, though.
"Obliviate!"
A rush of white noise. Images scrolling backwards, sinking out of sight. Heavy gray fog rolling in. Nothing.
"Bucky?"
"Ga-ah!" Bucky lashed out at whoever was grabbing him, forgetting he was standing against the wall until his flailing arms smacked into it.
"Bucky!" the voice said again, and the hands on his shoulders got tighter, and, wait a minute, he knew that voice.
"Steve," he breathed, and Steve was there, and he was back at Hogwarts and he'd run out of Potions class and Steve was holding on to him like he was afraid he was going to fall over.
"Bucky, are you okay?" Steve asked, worry etched in every line of his face.
"I'm fine," Bucky told him, still trying to catch his breath. "Kendall. Steve, it's Kendall."
"Yeah, Kendall said I could come after you. Look, we need to get you to the infirmary—"
"No!" Bucky snapped, cutting Steve off. He grabbed his sleeve and looked him squarely in the eyes, steady as he could muster. "It was Kendall. In Romania. I remember."
Steve's jaw dropped. Bucky could almost see the train jumping tracks inside his head. "You remember?" he whispered.
"I remember," Bucky said again. "Steve, he's the spy."
The boys may know who the spy is now, but there's still a lot to unravel. See you Monday!