First of all, thank you for checking out my story! This started as a one shot and then grew into the monster it is today. If you're curious the entire thing will be about 15k words long, and it's mostly finished but I'm gonna pace the chapters out so I have time to edit and work on my other fic.

Trigger warnings: I mean Bucky Barnes is a trigger warning himself. Other than that there is a suicide attempt, although it's caused by brainwashing and isn't a huge plot point.

Title and the quotes at the beginning of each chapter are borrowed from 'Winter Bird' by Aurora.

'Rest against my pillow like the aging winter sun

Only wake each morning to remember that you're gone

So I drift away again

To winter I belong'

Chapter 1: Winter (cold)

Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division find the Winter Soldier in April of 2011.

He's taken out of cryo with orders to assassinate defector Natalia Alianovna Romanova, code name: Black Widow. Orders: kill, no witnesses. They ship him from the depths of Russia and the Asset finds his target in Brooklyn, New York. She's too well trained for a successful sniper shot, so they lock in direct combat. It's long and bloody, and the Asset miscalculates, he doesn't see the Archer. It earns him an arrow to the shoulder that sends pulses of electricity through his body and he drops. Romanova points a gun at his face.

"Natasha, wait." The Archer's voice gives her pause. "Shield will want to question him."

"He's too dangerous."

"That's what they said about you."

Romanova's trigger finger twitches, betraying hesitation that her impassive face will not. In the possibility of capture, the Asset must self-terminate immediately, and it's not something he has to think about as he retrieves the pill and brings it to his mouth.

The Archer's eyes widen. Romanova jumps, gun discarded, and her fingers dig into the Asset's jaw. "No." She's saying again and again. The Archer is behind her in a second, holding down the metal arm. Later, Bucky will think of it as a strange twist of fate that the arm had been damaged just enough for Barton to stop it from bashing Natasha's head in before she could rip the cyanide out of his mouth. But at this moment, he is only the Asset, and he bites her fingers and screams as she throws the deathly pill somewhere out of reach. "Stop!" She yells in his face, but he doesn't until there's a syringe in his arm and the world falls away.

Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division lock the Winter Soldier in a cell. They interrogate him and he does not speak. They torture him and he does not flinch. They try to reason, and he stares and does not understand. Eventually, there's a man with an eyepatch and he brings a file and says James Buchanan Barnes like that means something.

"If history books are to be believed, I'm staring at a living legend. A dead living legend." The man's single eye is hard and assessing. "Now would be an excellent time to speak."

He doesn't.

It's May of 2011 and Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division bring the Winter Soldier a shrink.

"I'm doctor Harington, you can call me Leo if you want. What should I call you?" Harington asks. The Asset is strapped down in a chair with binds strong enough to hold the metal arm, so he stares at the doctor through a curtain of hair and says nothing. He does it for two hours while the doctor engages in one-sided conversation before finally the man leaves, and they lead the Asset back to his cell.

It's June of 2011 and the Winter Soldier begins to speak.

When doctor Harrington asks for his name, he tells him he's the Asset. He can't answer the question about his age, nor tell them who James Buchanan Barnes is because he does not know, but he tells Harrington about his mission to eliminate Romanova, and how they took him out of the cold and would put him back once the mission was done.

It's July of 2011 and the Archer visits the Winter Soldier in his cell.

He introduces himself as Barton and exclaims that he's brought contraband before pulling out something called a McDonald's Double chicken burger.

"No one can live off Shield's salads and mashed potatoes forever." He explains.

It's the smell that has the Asset accepting the food without much thought. Barton sits across the cell with the bow in his hands. "That won't help." The Asset says because the weapon is too much of an anomaly not to point out.

Barton grins and shrugs nonchalantly. "It's my baby. And you'd be surprised by just how much I can do with these arrows."

The Asset's flesh fingers ghost over his long-healed shoulder. "I remember."

Barton sits with him for exactly thirty-five minutes, but he returns two days later and again the next day, and then again. Usually, they sit in silence, but sometimes Barton talks. He talks about archery and movies and sometimes he brings 'contrabanded' food. Sometimes, if it's a good day, the Asset will talk too, but he doesn't have much to say beyond the forced therapy sessions and killing. He assumes Barton will get that hard look Harrington does whenever the Asset talks about killing like it's second nature, maybe leave altogether.

Completely unfazed, Barton jumps right in to compare sniper techniques.

It's August of 2011 and the Asset becomes James.

Barton's visits turn daily and somewhere along the way he stops bringing his bow and arrows, or the concealed gun he thought the Asset hadn't known about. Instead, he brings his phone to teach the Asset the wonders of modern technology and shows him cat videos on something he calls YouTube. And the Asset surprises himself by feeling no urge to turn the misplaced trust against the Archer.

One day Barton tells him he absolutely won't call him the Asset, but that's all the Asset knows so he thinks long and hard and finally replies with James because that's the name doctor Harrington keeps trying to call him. He says it carefully, testing the way the vowels curl around each other. James is neutral. It doesn't feel like him, but it also doesn't feel like anything. Harrington says when people give him something he should give something back, and Barnes has given him company and – misguided - trust, so the Asset gives him James.

It's September of 2011 and James is allowed to go outside.

Barton and five armed soldiers escort him to a suspiciously empty park and James stares at the trees, unsure what to do with himself and wondering what's the appropriate emotion to feel – Harrington has been trying to tackle emotions for months now, but all James has gathered is that he's doing it wrong.

In the end, he sits on the grass and stares at the sky, thinking about the vibrant blue and how it's missing just a little speck of green. Eventually, Barton joins him on the ground. "Well?" He asks. "Is it therapeutic?"

James shrugs. "No murderous urges so far."

Barton grins. "Now was that a joke? Shit, maybe this outside deal is therapeutic." He follows James's eyes to the sky. "I should do it more often."

James stares at him. "You need therapy?"

"I'm a guy with a bow and arrows working for a top-secret organization, surrounded by assassins and spies." Barton deadpans.

It's October of 2011 and James officially meets Natasha.

They run into each other in Shield's gym – he's been given reign of the building as long as there's supervision – and James almost turns around and leaves. The woman he knows as Romanova stares at him for a long moment before dropping her boxing gloves and approaching. She tries to appear small and unthreatening, and James raises an eyebrow in challenge until she drops the act.

"Last time I saw you, you were trying to kill me." She goes for blunt instead. "Where are you at now?"

He's had enough people walk on eggshells around him to appreciate the directness. He rewards her with his own. "You were my mission, but now you're not."

"Good."

"Does it upset you?" He asks because Harrington said he should make an effort to understand what other people feel.

"You tried to kill yourself too. I'm aware it wasn't personal."

Back then personal wasn't even a concept he could understand, he's not entirely sure he gets it now either. But her words also remind James of what he'd tried to do to himself all those months ago, the command he hasn't thought about since those first days in Shield's cell. She'd saved him. James wonders if he should thank her, but he thinks he's too confused to make it sound sincere and she would see right through. "I was supposed to self-destruct to avoid capture." He tells her instead.

"I know." Romanova says and there's something behind her eyes that makes James realize she actually does.

He thinks about the way she had clawed at his face to get the pill out, impermeable composure giving way to something desperate and wild. He remembers her file - defector, it had said. "They did it to you too." Harrington should be proud, it's the first time he's admitted they had done something and that something had been bad.

"They… unmade me."

James blinks. "I think they unmade me too." The admission sits heavy on his chest.

For a moment Romanova is studying him, then her shoulders relax. "I guess we're lucky Clint has a soft spot for strays."

It's November of 2011 and James is allowed to move out of his cell.

Granted, his new place is an apartment inside one of Shield's buildings, but it's unguarded and the windows have no bars.

Clint – because he is Clint now – and Natasha take him shopping and end up buying two carts worth of clothes and objects they deem as 'necessities' while James mostly hovers in the back and tries to avoid the crowds. Even though Shield has been letting him leave more or less unsupervised – he knows they have a tracker in his arm and Clint tends to conveniently run into him whenever he risks going on a walk – he hasn't been in a populated area since he tried to murder Natasha. He finds it unnerving. He thinks they're putting far too much trust in him considering he still can't remember anything past being taken out of the cold to assassinate Natasha, and his own name gives him pause in a way that often makes him wonder if it ever belonged to him at all.

They drag the shopping to James's new apartment and Clint hums with approval once they finish setting it all up. They bring cans of beer and want to stay up with him, they say it's called housewarming, but James is wound up tight from all the changes and the crowds. Half the time he still can't understand how this is his life, how he has a life now. This is one of those times when it baffles him until his head spins, and he claws at the line between James and the Asset and prays it doesn't snap under his metal fist. Natasha and Clint exchange a look. They don't ask what's going on in his head, they never do. Natasha doesn't have to, and it's written in her knowing frowns and distant eyes whenever he does something not quite human. But Clint treats James like those things don't define him anyway, and somehow that's what makes him breathe easier when he feels like he could drown.

Maybe they've caught on because Natasha leaves shortly after, but Clint stays with him, sipping the beer like everything is normal. James can't find it in himself to speak, and it's a little like those first months of Clint's visits to his cell. Except this time Clint doesn't fill the silence with inconsequential chatter, instead he tells James about his wife and kids waiting for him on a little farm. He tells James about his daughter who's been picking up archery and how his wife will kill him because of the truck he still hasn't managed to fix.

James stares. The surprise that Clint has this secret family is overwhelmed by the absolute incomprehension over why Clint is revealing it to him now. Has he forgotten who- what he's talking to? He tells Clint as much.

"You need to give both of us more credit." Clint tells him. "Do you really think I'd be telling you this if I thought there was even the slightest chance it could bite me in the ass?" And then, because of James's troubled expression adds: "C'mon man, what are you gonna do, regress to the big bad Winter Soldier and decide that your first course of action must be tracking down some poor archer's family on a farm? Have you ever hurt anyone Hydra didn't point you at?"

James looks away. "I don't remember."

"Your file does." Clint retorts. "And I think you've come far enough to understand they were playing you like a puppet." There's a moment of silence. "Now come on, do you wanna see a picture of my youngest?"

He does. They spend the evening scrolling through pictures of Clint's family and he makes James swear to not tell anyone but Natasha – the only other person privy to Clint's secrets – and he swallows the heavy lump in his throat and makes the promise.

It's December of 2011 and SHIELD sends James on a mission.

An unidentified contraption has fallen from the sky in Texas, and they send him as Clint's backup, who is backing up Agent Coulson, an odd man who stares at James with wonder and calls him Sergeant Barnes. He feels no more connection to the title than he does to James, but Coulson starts talking about the war, and something called the Howling Commandos, and then he asks James about Captain America.

"Who the hell is Captain America?" James asks, noting that it was probably the wrong thing to say if the following minute of tense silence is anything to go by. Clint rescues him then, stating that they need to find a good vantage point and dragging him away.

"Let's see if you're as good of a shot as they say you are." Clint says as they're setting up on the roof, Clint with his arrows and James with a gun. It's not tactically advantageous, but James understands they don't want to leave him alone with a loaded gun just yet, not when no one really knows how being out on a mission might trigger him. In fact, both Clint and Doctor Harrington had argued against sending him here at all.

"Who's Captain America?" He asks again because he can't get the question out of his head.

Clint's gaze flickers to him and then back to the field. There's hesitation there, which James hasn't seen from Clint in months. "He was a hero in the forties. According to your file, you knew him well."

"I fought him?" James guesses.

"Actually, you fought with him." And Clint does fully look at him then. "They say he was your friend."

Oh. He had a friend. Of course, people have friends. And James is now a person and was one once before, so it shouldn't be so baffling. But it is. He supposes – and this is a startling realization in itself - he could call Clint a friend. Maybe Natasha too. Although he's not sure he even understands the concept of friend enough to make those sorts of assumptions. But he did have a friend once, before Hydra and the Asset, and that's not a world he can picture in his mind now. If he's being honest, he hasn't even thought about who James Buchanan Barnes was before this conversation, and no one at Shield has brought it up either. Shield only cares about his time as the Asset, there have been plenty of dead-end questions and probing regarding that.

"Not ringing any bells?" Clint's voice is nonchalant, but his eyes remain on James, as calculating as if he was mapping the distance to a target.

"Who was he?"

"His name was Steve Rogers." Clint offers, and he says it in an expectant sort of way, like the name should mean something.

Steve. James twists the name in his head experimentally, and then again: Steve- Steve. "Oh." He says out loud. It's a neutral sort of oh. Oh, I took the wrong turn. Oh, I left the stove on.

"Yeah…" Clint clears his throat. "his plane was lost in the Arctic shortly after you were… captured."

And James's heart definitely doesn't sink at that, because it would be ridiculous to mourn a complete stranger. In fact, all he feels is numb, the cold sort of numb that tends to steal his words and leave him staring at walls until someone – usually Natasha or Clint – drags him back.

"You okay? Because that composure could level Natasha's, and frankly, it's a little disturbing." Clint's voice is light - too light to be genuine.

"Yeah." James's gaze is fixed on the hammer-like object below. "I was just thinking whether we should move to the other side, it might give us a better vantage point."

"We can try that." Clint agrees after a moment. And James pushes thoughts of Captain America to the back of his head, pours all his focus to the mission. If he makes sure to avoid Coulson from there on out, well no one has to know why.

It's January of 2012 and James visits the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

He's not necessarily searching for the Captain America exhibit, he tells himself. Harrington keeps pushing him to get more used to the world, and a museum is a nice, relatively safe place for doing that. He's not searching for the past. In his case, the past is best left buried under several tons of concrete.

But he finds the Captain America exhibit anyway. "A symbol to the nation…" The recording is saying. James's eyes trail a mural on one of the walls - a huge painting of Captain America in costume. He feels nothing, no nostalgia or familiarity, so he moves further. Next, there's a black and white photo of a scrawny man staring at something in the distance. James stares at it for five whole minutes before his eyes flicker to the text above.

PRE-SERUM

Weight: 95 lbs.

Height: 5'4"

There's a different photo underneath. It says POST-SERUM and the man shown is tall and muscular, the same man from the mural. They changed him too, James realizes then. That's at least one thing they have in common. Offhandedly, he wonders if this man could have had some sort of insight into James's enhanced anatomy that Shield does not… If that was the sort of thing they might have bonded over if things had turned out different. His eyes stray to the before photo again and it takes him a good few minutes to tear them away and walk further into the exhibit.

He stops in front of seven mannequins, a wall-sized photo above showing the faces they're meant to represent. James's eyes skip over each unfamiliar face, lingering on Captain America's and then freezing on the only one he can truly recognize because he's seen it in the mirror enough times since ending up in Shield's care. The Howling Commandos, the recording names them. James thinks, this is what seeing a ghost must be like. He can't stand to look at that picture of the face that is his but not, he moves on-

And finds that face staring back once again. A Fallen Comrade, the sign reads, James Buchanan Barnes. Barnes first met Steve Rogers on the playground of Brooklyn…

Brooklyn. James thinks back on his last mission with Hydra, is it possible that the fight taking place in Brooklyn distracted him even way back then? Could that be why he failed when he was meant to be Hydra's most efficient weapon? That would mean something from his memories is not fully lost… but even Harrington would tell him that's unlikely.

There are videos under the wall of text. A short clip of Captain America – sans the helmet – and James in a car, followed by the two of them standing side by side. The not-James from the video says something and they both laugh. James watches these videos loop for a long time.

It's February of 2012 and Steve Rogers haunts James's dreams.

In the dream, they're both just kids, and James is standing in a crowd of children and watching a bigger kid beat up a scrawny blonde. The details are all fuzzy, but he thinks he cheers them on at first. But then he watches the blonde get back up each time he's knocked off his feet, again, and again and again. And he thinks this is all wrong and punches the big kid in the face like his pa has shown him.

"I had him on the ropes." The blonde pouts instead of thanking him as any normal person would. But later he introduces himself as Steve and says 'I don't like bullies' when James asks why he keeps getting into fights.

Steve is much older but just as small when he tells James he should be following him to the war. And James thinks, he's gonna get himself killed and it pulls at his chest until all he wants to do is stay. But he can't. He tells Steve he's enlisted even though it's a lie, smiles like he's coming back when he knows he is not.

Later Steve is bigger, and he drags James back from the very pit of hell. There are biblical flames and red-faced demons, but between this new body and that old I-can-do-this-all-day fury, death itself can't deny him and it opens the gates for them to slip right through.

James wakes up panicking. His head is on fire and his muscles wound up. The dream is seared into his brain and he waits for them to come rip it back out. I don't remember, he thinks over and over as if that might stop them, I don't remember anything.

He's numb and barely functional the rest of the day. Doctor Harrington spends the full hour of their session trying to pry words out, but James stays silent. Clint – who James could've sworn was out on a mission – wonders into his apartment a few hours later. He shows James videos of his daughter learning archery and James manages to get a few words out, mostly consisting of 'she's getting good' and 'I'm fine'.

Natasha comes by later. Blunt as always, she tells him his therapist is worried he's about to go off the deep end, and he better say something before they put him back under guard.

"I'm fine." He tells her just as he had to Clint.

"Define fine."

"You told Clint I was too dangerous to bring back," He says instead, watching the way her expression shifts.

"I wasn't-"

"so why didn't you let me die?" James knows it's the kind of question that can definitely get him back under guard.

Natasha studies him. "Are you having suicidal thoughts?"

"Not right now." He answers honestly. "I just want to know why."

Thankfully, she decides not to press the first part of that statement. "Because I saw myself."

James nods. He's figured as much. "Did Clint save you?"

"Clint saved me in many ways. But I also saved myself."

That catches him off guard. "How?"

"By not letting them win." Her eyes drift somewhere far away. "If they win, they can do it to someone else."

They knock her down and she gets right back up, James thinks suddenly. "I think I know what you mean." He tells her because he won't say 'I knew someone like that once'. Those memories, whatever they are, are his to keep.

Next month is March and Steve is found!

I'm gonna be posting a chapter every 2-3 days. Next chapter coming on Saturday because after that I won't have my laptop until Tuesday and I don't want to have more than 3 days between updates. If you liked it please leave a comment, it always means a lot!

As a side note, I posted a CA one shot a while back and gave a sneak peak of a fic I'd been working on. Well this is not that fic. This is the one shot I started writing to take a break form that fic, and it ended up a 15k long monster lol.