Part the first: Contrition

In the beginning, there are words.

Yesterday, today, then, now, never, forever – at first there is no time, only now, only what there always is. Then, suddenly, through the fog and the darkness there come words, words that are nonsense, words like, "You've known me all your life," and "You're my friend," words that confuse him and make him angry and afraid (though he doesn't know that that's what those feelings are called, because he immediately, instinctively shuts away any confusion or feelings, because They don't like it – when he is confused or feels something is when They always get angry and do things that make him hurt and scream). He doesn't understand those words, taunting him about a past he never had, and he wants them to stop (which is dangerous; he's not supposed to want things) because he's afraid of what will happen if they don't. And then there are more Words – not the ten words he hates that enslave him, but another nine that horrify him and shock him and awe him and rock him to his core.

And, somehow, warm him, too. Because he knows them, and somehow, that makes all the difference.

In the beginning, there are words.

Specifically: "I'm with you," says a face, a face that doesn't even belong to a person, a face that belongs to his mission, that exists, insofar as he knows, for the sole purpose of being destroyed by him. "I'm with you 'til the end of the line."

And the ghost of a memory whispers in reply, I know him, and then, somehow, nothing has changed, and yet everything is different. The next moment, in horror, he is watching the one who said the words fall down, down, and something in him screams, "What have you done?"

(Looking back later, he'll realize that it was always words that broke through to him. True, it was also words that pulled him under – They spoke those terrible words, the command words, the ones that made him writhe and scream in agony, the ones that locked his mind and heart away so deep he'd forget they were even there, and there was nothing he could do, he was Theirs to command – but then someone else had spoken another word, this time of love, and somehow it was able to override everything that They'd been able to do. It was this that started it all – Steve only said the words, and his healing began.

Of course, he didn't know that at the time – didn't even know quite who Steve was, didn't know what healing meant. He didn't even know his own name; didn't even know that he was broken.

Still, all it took was for Steve to say the word, and something snapped, and he never went back.)

At first he can't remember much beyond what he was doing at the moment that the words broke through to him, which was punching someone in the face who he suddenly knows that he once knew and protected, but that's enough to tell him that he wants to get away from the ones who were making him do That, and to stop doing it.

He doesn't know much else, at first, except a vague sense of terror, of being hunted and pursued and crushed by something much stronger than he is, and nothing in the world around him is much help (except for one museum exhibit he'll find about a month from now that says that someone wearing his face called James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes died seventy years ago fighting against people he thinks he recognizes as Them), so he runs.

At first, there are days, but those are blurry and unclear, and in memory afterwards he never knows precisely how long it's been. How could he, when for an entire lifespan time has had no consistency, no real meaning? When you could go to sleep (or the nearest equivalent you ever got) and wake up a decade later, when no one would bother to tell you what today's date was even if you asked, when the cell you were occasionally locked in between bouts of freezer storage had no clock, not even a view of the sun - time becomes a meaningless construct, one of the many memories that were either erased or simply discarded as not useful for survival.

He thinks, much later, looking back, that they probably hadn't bothered to erase it. His mind, trapped in survival mode as it was, had probably simply discarded it as Not Useful. After all, if you didn't realize it had been three days since you'd eaten last, then all the better for you, since realizing it wasn't exactly going to help you do anything about it, any more than it would help an engine to be able to comment to its driver that it was running low on fuel. Now, on the road, with nowhere to go except away (far away from Them, and from anyone who might be connected with Them, and anyone who might be intercepted by Them), he finds himself continually confused by the idea of time and dates, and how bound to them everyone else seems to be.

He doesn't know that night is for sleeping. He doesn't know that he needs to eat; or if he does, he doesn't remember.

When hunger finally does make itself known (although he doesn't recognize it, since it has been so long since stomach pangs have been rewarded that they've more or less resigned from service, at least to his trained mind which would only have discarded them as Not Useful), not in the conventional way, but first by lightheadedness, then by a dull, throbbing headache (both of which are easy to ignore), and finally by odd hand tremors that frighten him half to death, because he realizes that this is it: he's "been too long out of cryo," as They used to say, and now he is going to malfunction and drop down in the middle of the street, and They will find him, and bring him back, and erase everything, take everything away - and oh, it's foolish, it isn't like he'd had anything to live for anyway, anywhere to go, anything to do, but he'd really wanted to keep the little that he had remembered...and he doesn't want to hurt people again, he really doesn't, not if he can help it.

Not now that he's found out that they'd been making him do things that were horrible, things he'd never be able to believe he'd done if his memories – which are slowly seeping back, one or two or sometimes fifteen at a time (when that many come at once his head hurts and sometimes he loses himself in blackness) – didn't prove to him that hands bound to his body had done them.

He wonders, briefly, if there's a way that he could destroy himself before he breaks, break himself so that They can't fix him, so that They can't use his empty shell as a weapon anymore. But something holds him back - not fear; he doesn't think he knows how to be afraid of death anymore; instead, it's a niggling feeling that it's wrong, terribly wrong, and he shouldn't do it.

It's a sin, whispers the ghost of a memory, and he doesn't know who had said it or where it had come from, but it feels right, and safe to obey - like a memory of someone he could trust - and he's trying now to listen to the memories as they come up, so he listens and doesn't try to find a way to do it. (Besides, if getting experimented on twice couldn't kill him, and falling off a cliff couldn't kill him, and having his memory erased couldn't kill him, and all the crazy battles he'd been sent into against his will for several decades couldn't kill him, and all the battles the museum said he'd followed the man named Steve into before that couldn't kill him... maybe he's just doomed to live forever.)

That's a terrifying thought, and as it seizes him, his flesh hand – the right one – reaches for his forehead, suddenly, then taps his heart. It reaches for his shoulder, then dawdles suddenly as his brain catches up and asks him what he's doing, and he can't answer. It had felt right, and safe, but he couldn't have told you what it was, or what it meant.

He gets more and more shaky as the timeless hours drag on, which he notes with increasing distress, but his poor programmed mind, conditioned to struggle doggedly through hardship and to ignore pain, can't remember what might cause this, thinks that he must keep pressing on to drive away the weakness, turns with horror from the idea of rest and doesn't even recall that food is an option, not even when he passes a restaurant with people eating outside. The headache that has been lurking in the back of his head as long as he can remember, almost a comfortable companion (since when has he ever been without pain?) gets stronger and stronger, and sometimes his vision will just go dark for a few moments, although he'll get it back just as he is starting to stumble, usually – and one day he just keels over and passes out, just as he'd known he would, and he thinks, resignedly, that he's being awfully weak to still be afraid after all this time, and awfully silly to think that he could actually escape... but then he remembers when They might find him here, they'll make him go back to Doing That, and he'd still rather die than do That again... so he shakes off unconsciousness, staggers to his feet, and somehow drags himself down the street by sheer willpower alone, each desperate, quavering step almost more than he can manage, looking for... he isn't sure what.

There. The stone building with the cross. He can't remember what it's called, but he thinks he remembers...that They...couldn't...had no power there. That it was safe, and...home...

He makes it to the front steps before he passes out, and this time no amount of fighting the blackness will bring him back from it.

ccc

He has no idea where he is when he wakes, slowly fading into consciousness. It takes a good while, but his rusty memory eventually supplies that the thing he is lying on is known as a bed, though goodness knows he couldn't have told you the last time he'd been in one, or even seen one.

After a time, he wakes again – he must have fallen asleep again the last time – and this time he startles upright so fast that he smacks foreheads with the person who'd been bending over him, and promptly passes out again.

The third time he wakes, someone makes him drink something from a mug that is warm and meaty. It makes his stomach feel odd, but he wants more, although he doesn't protest when the cup is taken away; the soldier couldn't want things, after all; that was a malfunction. He is surprised when a voice tells him he needs to stop for now but can have more soon, sounding for all the world as though it actually expected him to be disappointed.

"When was the last time you ate, son?" the voice asks.

At first he is silent because "son" couldn't possibly mean him; couldn't possibly mean the Winter Soldier who is not even human, not really, and has no name and no family; couldn't possibly mean the strange name the man on the bridge called him, who has no memories of a father who has doubtless been dead for decades that slipped by without counting while the Winter Soldier wore his face. But when a face looms over his and the question is repeated and he realizes it is for him, since time means nothing anymore, he still can't say. He can't even know how long he's been asleep; can't even know in whose hands he is, now, though he thinks probably not Theirs, since They've never given him a bed. Maybe it's been ten minutes, maybe it's been ten years.

He tries to raise his flesh hand and finds it's still trembling. (He keeps the metal one hidden, just in case.) He twitches his legs under the blanket to see if they're bound and can't wholly hide his surprise that they aren't. If these people don't know who he is – who he was – maybe they won't give him over to Them, after all; maybe he can still escape when they aren't looking; the door might be locked, but the bed at least is blessedly free of restraint.

"Easy, now, son. Rest, and breathe," says the voice, and he tried to focus on the face that seems to be attached to the voice, but he seems to be malfunctioning; his eyes won't focus and his weak hand won't stop trembling; he thinks his legs are shaky, too. "No one here is going to hurt you. Your body is very weak. It would be best if we could take you to the hospital and get you on an IV. Can I do that for you? Can you tell me your name?"

Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether or not he believes the part about being safe, the direct question nudges him into the subservient compliance of the past decades, and he opens his mouth to answer; then freezes, and panics.

He knows this; the man had told him; the man on the bridge. Yet it feels like a lie; and something in him is telling him not to tell a lie. It's a sin, whispers that voice, to tell a lie, though less urgently before, and he's been finding that he trusts that voice, wants to do what it tells him.

But to say he doesn't know when he does - that would also be a lie. But then… does he? He remembers the man on the bridge saying, "Your name is –" something – but that part of the memory is still hazy because it was before he knew that anything mattered, before he was trying to remember. The name the man had spoken - it had been like another language entirely, something forgotten almost as soon as it was heard in the shock of the discovery, the important Words that followed. But then - wait, he'd seen it in the museum, hadn't he? - had repeated it to himself a hundred times so he'd not forget, and yet now the moment that he's under pressure his mind is empty, empty like They'd always intended it to be. What is his name?

Before he can remember, the blackness takes him again.

It's the next day - though he has no way of knowing that - when the hand begins to give him porridge and mashed potatoes instead of broth, and then bread and cheese and meat the day after that, still in many small doses, waking him up to eat, then putting him back to bed, as if he was…something small, something whose name he can't remember. It's good... though it is also strange, and sometimes his memory claws and writhes a long time before coming up with a name for the food; sometimes when it is all gone he'll lie there trying to think of its memory, trying to recall when he's eaten that food before, until at last the blackness takes him again. For him the time moves in a fog, but then, that is how time always has moved, as long as he can remember it. On the third day – though for him it has no name – he sits up and looks at the face belonging to the hand that had fed him - then looks away, remembering that usually They do not like to be looked in the eye - and, still careful to keep his metal hand hidden in his pocket, still trying to hide who he is, or was (whatever the word might be) just in case the voice doesn't know (though that's foolish, because They always seemed to know more about him than he knew about himself), awaits orders.

"How are you feeling? When did you last eat, son?" comes the voice again.

It's a strange order, but this time he is able to comprehend the questions and choke out a reply to both at once. "I dunno," comes his soft drawl, rusty from lack of use. When had he last had occasion to use it, after all? The soldier's job had been to fight; not to speak.

The head shakes, slightly, in disapproval. "You need to eat every day, you know. You could have seriously hurt yourself. Are you feeling stronger?"

He nods, confused. No one has asked how he felt in a long while.

"Glad to hear it." The hand reaches forward and he realizes now that it is wrinkled; its owner was older. It grasps his flesh hand a moment, and the voice says, "Can you look at me?" so he does.

It is an odd face, he thinks, though he can't pinpoint why, and he quickly buries the question as irrelevant - something the soldier was conditioned to do. "Son, I'm Father Richard Flanner, though most folk here just call me Father Rich," says the man, and his calloused hand squeezes lightly and then lets go. "You're put up in one of the spare bedrooms in the old convent that closed down a decade ago, at St. Mary's parish in Springfield. We found you on the front steps of the church about three days since. Do you remember coming there?"

He thinks he does. He remembers - thinking - the cross means safe. The cross...means...safe...

"Yes, sir," he chokes out in a small voice, and then tries to stand, because this - this lying down and talking feels wrong, dangerous - whether because he'd be punished for it or because he's more helpless lying down, he can't quite remember.

"Easy, son!" says Father Flanner, standing, his hands making a placating gesture. "Didn't mean to startle you. I don't think you're strong enough to leave yet. I just wanted to know - how I could help you out. Do you have anywhere to go - family to find? Or do you need a job or a place to stay?"

He stops halfway through getting up, then a wave of dizziness comes and he stumbles and topples back into bed. The bed is soft, but his fists clench right away, body bracing, instinctively anticipating being strapped down, and he feels terror flood him. It must be a trap. He can't stay. He can't.

"No," is all he can manage to say.

"You have nowhere to go?" asks the man. "Or you don't need help getting your feet under you? It's all right, son; no one here's going to hurt you."

He shakes his head so hard he sees stars. "No," he mumbles. "Can't stay...here...They'll take me away..."

"Who?" asks Father Flanner, taking a step closer. "Son, can't you tell me your name, and what you're afraid of?" He'll look back at this memory long after, when he knows who he is again, and realize grimly that the priest probably thinks he is either a wounded veteran, or a regular homeless man with some trauma, or an abused child recently turned-man with zero survival skills (and how odd to think that his body really is that young), or even an escaped convict; but no one could guess that he is, in a sense, all of these – least of all he himself.

"Son," says the priest, gently, following his gaze towards the image on the wall of a man with red and white shimmering from his chest, "are you Catholic? Would you like to confess?"

The words shoot a panic through him, although he isn't sure he knows what they mean. Confess, confess… so the voice is one of Them after all, isn't it, nagging him to confess – to what, to the crimes They made him do that he still only half remembers, to his defection and malfunction in remembering Steve, to running away?

"I won't go back," he hisses, his voice grating and intense. "I won't do That again." Lurching unsteadily, still weak and ill, he stands up and flees, faltering, stumbling, the older man behind him, calling out as he follows with much lesser survival skills yet much greater steadiness and with the advantage of knowing the place. The fugitive skids around a corner, hoping to find an exit...

And instead comes face to face with the cross. Below it gleams a stone table, and the table makes something churn in his gut, a memory of having been strapped to a table, of having been cut like a turkey and bled like a sacrifice, but there is another memory, too, a very old one that he must have read in a book somewhere, a name for this place.

"Sanctuary," he whispers, his voice thin and ragged, as he falls to his knees in front of the stone table, simultaneously, somehow, drawn by it and terrified of it. It makes him think of blood and life, joy and sorrow, at the same time. He figures it is so familiar because it is like where They had cut him up, and yet he feels safe by it in a way that is wholly alien to the way he always felt in that chamber of horrors, and he isn't sure why, but he feels sure that even if this is a place where someone was tortured and died, it is first and foremost a place of safety and refuge. And he remembers, all the same, that crying this word – this was what someone, somewhere, once did when the word was trying to kill them. "I - need - sanctuary."

Father Flanner stares in bewilderment at the young man uttering the words that have rarely been spoken in an American church in the last few hundred years. Is he a criminal? Is he merely sick and confused?

"All right, son," he says gently, as the man suddenly clutches his head. Maybe he says more, but if he does, the man never hears it, because he passes out again.

ccc

When he wakes up he is back in the bed again, but this time there is a little cross clasped in his hand, not unlike the one in the church, although much smaller. There is no one in the room this time, and he staggers to his feet, feeling stronger already (by which he means he thinks he can walk without keeling over, because honestly that was all They'd ever really cared about). He remembers this – remembers how the Winter Soldier could stand through things that would fell normal human men, and when he fell, he would fall hard, but once he recovered, he could still run very hard and very far and very fast.

How long has he been here? Are they still looking for him?

He looks down at the cross in his hands. It's tiny, and it's got a figure nailed to it, and the figure is twisted and half-naked. A figure of a tortured man. And the figure somehow chokes him and comforts him at the same time, and he's not sure why.

Doesn't matter. He needs to leave now before anyone finds him.

ccc

In the next town, he finds another steeple – ah, that's what they're called – that looks a lot like the one at St. Mary's. He's not in danger of passing out this time – he finds that someone had filled the pockets of his jacket with food wrapped in strange kinds of shiny paper while he was asleep, and once he figures out how to get them open and that they're edible and not explosive (he wastes an entire one testing for explosive properties, but he can't regret what was necessary), he decides to eat one per day until they run out, and finds that so far, he's been able to stave off the darkness, although his stomach still hasn't said a word (silly of him, he thinks after the first few days, to forget that he needs to eat, when he's starting to remember so many other things. Most of the things he's starting to remember seem…off, compared to the world around him, and he's not sure if it's because his memories of different cars, different clothes, different sights are wrong, or just because he's in a different place, or a result of something else They did to him.) But he's still drawn to the steeple; feels that it's calling him to safety, somehow; so he wanders over and peeks inside the door.

It's entirely empty, except for the long rows of seats, facing a gleaming stone table not unlike the one at St. Mary's. But now he can see how it's less like the one that They strapped him to – that one was shiny and metal, like his monstrosity of a prosthetic arm. This one is stone, softened by a white cloth, and by shattered shards of light from the stained-glass windows. It's beautiful, and peaceful, and quiet – and it feels safe. It's a sanctuary, the ghost of his memory whispers, and in his mind's eye there comes an image of a long row of little boys kneeling in a place like this, looking up at –

He takes a few steps closer, trying to remember, and suddenly he's standing in a ray of red light, and he nearly chokes as the memory abruptly changes to one of blood, blood staining his hands, blood staining everywhere –

He looks up, trying wildly to shake himself out of the memory, but it turns out there is blood there, too; above the stone table hangs the image of the twisted body nailed to a cross, and it's dripping blood, and its hands are broken, and he sees in memory flashes of things that till now he'd forgotten, things that horrify him to remember.

Had he… he'd known he was a weapon, had known they'd made him try to kill the man called Steve, had known they'd used him to fight, called him Soldier… but… had he really done all That? He… he can't, he couldn't, he… how? And why?

He's frozen for a long moment, and then he turns and runs. When night falls, it finds him in some bushes between one town and the next, where all the night long he chokes and sobs on the memories of the things the Winter Soldier did with his hands.

ooo

Author's note: Comments are welcome, though of course please keep things civil! (If you don't like my choice to depict Bucky as having been raised Catholic, you may prefer to find a different story.)

It is not at all necessary for you to know anything about Catholicism in order to enjoy this story, but in case you are curious here are a few references explained:

- Contrition is one of the four parts of the Catholic Sacrament of Reconciliation, and the part which needs to be done first. It simply means recognizing your sins and being sorry for them. I chose it as a title for the first part of the story to mirror the fact that here, Bucky is beginning to become aware of the things he did while the Winter Soldier, and to experience regret. Painful as it is, this is a necessary first step to finding healing.

- "his flesh hand – the right one – reaches for his forehead, suddenly, then taps his heart. It reaches for his shoulder, then dawdles suddenly as his brain catches up and asks him what he's doing, and he can't answer. It had felt right, and safe..." Bucky is attempting, through muscle memory, to make the Sign of the Cross. Catholics, and some other Christians, touch their forehead, chest, left shoulder, and right shoulder while reciting the Names of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. We do it at the beginning of prayers and the end of prayers, and when we feel afraid. To a person raised Catholic, this gesture is comforting, familiar, and as natural as breathing. Half-conscious people on their deathbeds have been known to try to move their fingers when someone recites the Sign of the Cross.

- " following his gaze towards the image on the wall of a man with red and white shimmering from his chest, The image is of the Divine Mercy. It depicts Jesus with rays of light, representing his love, mercy, and shed blood, spilling out into the world. It is often found in churches these days, but as it was first painted just before WWII began, it is unlikely that Bucky has seen it before.

- "are you Catholic? Would you like to confess?"" The priest, seeing Bucky looking at the image and noticing that he seems to feel bad about something, is asking him if he wants to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation (Confession). Seriously ill persons typically request confession, as it brings them great strength and comfort. But Bucky is too muddled to remember what "confess" means to Catholics.

- "Below it gleams a stone table, and the table makes something churn in his gut, a memory of having been strapped to a table, of having been cut like a turkey and bled like a sacrifice, but there is another memory, too, a very old one that he must have read in a book somewhere, a name for this place. 'Sanctuary'" The stone table Bucky sees in the church is an altar. In ancient times, a hunted or wanted person could claim sanctuary in a church, for churches were protected areas where it was forbidden to do anyone harm. They were the original 'safe place.' The "MASH" TV series is a more recent account of a situation where a person claims sanctuary in a place of Christian worship.

- He looks down at the cross in his hands. It's tiny, and it's got a figure nailed to it, and the figure is twisted and half-naked. A figure of a tortured man. And the figure somehow chokes him and comforts him at the same time." - The priest, or someone else at the parish, thought to comfort Bucky by giving him a crucifix. A practicing Catholic is very familiar with this image of Jesus in his suffering on the cross. As grotesque as the crucifix might seem, Catholics believe in keeping the memory of Christ's sacrifice ever alive through this image, which Bucky would be sure to recognize in some way.