As confused as he is by the reasoning behind his handler's choice to keep him off-mission, the Asset is at least gratified by his handler's promise to go on the Avengers' next mission. At least now he isn't actively holding his handler back while he tries to figure out what he needs to do in order to be battle-worthy. His handler doesn't seem to think that it's something he can train for, which is frustrating, but his handler had also seemed to think it will come naturally, which is at least somewhat comforting.

He can't help wondering if the other Avengers already know what hypothetical thing his handler is looking for. They were all aware of his handler's decision to train him after all, and none of them have yet to suggest that the Asset accompany them on any missions, so the odds are good that they somehow already know that he is lacking in whatever his handler is looking for.

I'm afraid that if I try to tell you you'll just— just do it because you think you're supposed to, his handler had said, and the Asset finds his confusion growing the more he thinks about it. Of course he'd do the things his handler says, that's what he's supposed to do, that's his job.

He huffs in exasperation and tries to focus on something other than his increasingly circular thoughts. Instead he scans the room in front of him, his posture relaxed as he takes everyone in. His handler is sitting with Barton and Wilson on the couch of the common room, Barton in control of the remote as he tries to choose a movie for them to watch. Stark is sitting a few feet away at the kitchen island, his gaze mostly focused on his tablet as he reads over various analyses of the Aether and its comparisons to the Tesseract and the sceptre.

Said sceptre had been taken off-planet by Thor a few days ago, since, as he claimed, the Aether had been successfully captured and moved to a safe location far from Asgard. Apparently it's dangerous to keep too many power stone too close together.

The Asset hadn't quite known what to think of Thor and his departure. The other Avengers had all seemed to like Thor and had wished him a swift return, but the Asset hadn't really had any time to get to know him at all. His handler had given Thor his very own picture though, and Thor had been appropriately impressed, so that has to be a good sign.

"Have you ever watched Apollo 13?" He hears Barton ask and he focuses back to the couch in front of him. Both Handler-Steve and Wilson shake their heads and Barton smiles. "Oh man," he says, sitting back. "It's good. It's set during the 1970s. Based on a true story about a moon-mission gone wrong."

His handler leans forward to read the movie description on screen. "I think I read something about that," he says after a moment, and beside him, Wilson raises an eyebrow. "SHIELD gave me a lot of files to catch up on things," his handler explains. "The space race was pretty interesting."

Barton's smile widens and he sits up, looking excited. "You have no idea," he says earnestly. "I went through a space phase as a kid. I read all the books in the library that I could get my hands on and acquired vast amounts of space facts to overshare." He waves his free hand with a grin. "Did you know the first satellite the Russians launched was called Sputnik? It means—"

Except the Asset doesn't get to know what it means, because everything goes abruptly black.

oOo

He wakes up in the med bay to find his handler sitting on his right, Banner on his left and every other Avenger milling around the room with looks of varying degrees of concern on their faces.

"Bucky!" His handler leans towards him as soon as he realises he's awake, his face sheet-white and obviously distressed. "Bucky I'm so sorry! I didn't even think to warn them about that word. It didn't even occur to me that they might accidentally—" He cuts himself off as the Asset gives his head a groggy shake and sits up slowly, his movements carefully monitored by Dr Banner. "Are you alright?" Handler-Steve asks, his knuckles white on his knees. "I managed to catch you before you hit the ground. But… we weren't sure how you would be after you woke up."

The Asset nods at him, blinking heavily a few times as he tries to readjust to being awake again. Getting shutdown is always a little jarring – although, he has to admit that this is probably the most pleasant environment he's ever woken up in before.

On his left, Banner leans towards him. "I'm just going to ask you a few questions, okay?" He says. "Nothing bad, just a check-up on how you're doing." He nods at the doctor and Banner gives him a small smile before shifting to cross his legs. "Okay," he says. "Can you tell me your name?"

The Asset relaxes internally at the simple question. "The Asset," he replies, and for some reason, his handler tenses beside him.

Banner continues undeterred and the Asset tries not to worry about it. "Do you know where you are?"

The examination continues like that and Dr Banner eventually clears him from the med bay. "Let me know if you have any complications," he says earnestly as he stands from his stool. "Dizziness, nausea, anything."

The Asset nods again, a little dazed at the amount of concern everyone seems to be showing towards him. Hydra had never been this careful after triggering him and it feels a little weird at how big a deal this seems to be. The whole team had come into the med bay, all of them looking as though this isn't a natural and expected part of his programming.

Most of them stay further back from the bed, as though not wanting to crowd him, but Barton approaches his bedside as Banner gets up to leave. "I had no idea that was going to happen," he says in a rush, his hands clenching on the handrailing. "I swear I wouldn't have said it if I'd known."

The Asset flicks his eyes over him, a little confused, since he can't quite understand why Barton is so distressed, but he gives him an accepting nod anyways. "Handler-Steve can instruct you on my trigger words if you need them," he tells him, a part of him wondering why Barton hadn't been trained with his trigger words already.

Barton's face twists slightly and out of the corner of his eye, the Asset sees Romanoff twitch and give him an assessing look, a glint of surprise in her eyes. He doesn't have time to try to analyse any of that though, because his handler speaks up.

"We'll talk about that later," he says decisively. "If anything, this incident is a reminder that we're going to have to figure something out for the trigger words."

The Asset turns to look at him, his brow furled slightly in confusion as a flash of anxiety twists sharply in his stomach. So far in his stay at the tower, the Avengers haven't bothered much with his trigger words, whether in using them or programming in new ones, but maybe now…

He suppresses a shiver and swallows, squeezing his hands together in his lap. Maybe this is the reason his handler doesn't want him to go out in the field yet.

oOo

The Avengers gather in the meeting room after lunch to discuss his trigger words, and much to his surprise, they don't want to re-program him at all.

"Is there any way we can remove them?" His handler asks, and the Asset stares at him, his mind nearly blank with shock as he takes in his words. Removing his trigger words hadn't even crossed his mind before, and the very idea of it is flabbergasting.

The other Avengers don't seem to think so though.

"Deprogramming isn't exactly a legitimate technique," Wilson tells them, shifting a little in his seat. "Most people who claim to practice it are pretty bogus."

"Besides," Barton speaks up. "Most of the time, people are trying to 'deprogram' people who've joined cults and stuff… Bucky's programming seems a little more concrete than that."

"There must be something we can do," his handler insists, and the Asset blinks at him, trying to understand why he would want to sabotage his own weapon like this. Surely that can't be useful to the team— His eyes widen and a cold rush of fear floods through him as he's struck by the sudden thought that maybe, with all his memory/malfunctions, he's too dysfunctional to the team and now they don't want him anymore.

He flicks his eyes around the room and tries to regulate his breathing, hoping to calm himself. My handler said I could join the missions eventually, he tries to reason. And he said it wasn't a bad thing that I can't go on missions, and he discontinued cryofreeze protocols so even if they decommission me, I won't be going back in there—

"If I had to guess," Romanoff speaks up suddenly, her arms crossed over her chest and her face closed off. "Bucky's programming is likely based off of years and years of conditioning. If we want to remove the trigger words, we're going to have to desensitize him to them."

His handler turns to her. "What do you mean?"

Romanoff flicks her eyes over him before looking over to Handler-Steve. "Bucky's trigger words work because the sound of them triggers a conditioned response," she says. "But ultimately, they're just words. If we expose him to the words enough times, he might be able to start fighting them."

"Exposure therapy," Wilson says, and Romanoff nods.

His handler shifts in his seat. "Are we sure triggering Bucky over and over again is the best option?" He glances over to him and his hands tighten on the edge of the table in front of him. "What if that just undoes all the progress he's already made?"

Romanoff purses her lips together. "I'm not saying we start triggering him right away," she says. "If we start by just saying one or two words at a time, and then work our way up, we might be able to desensitize him to the triggering process."

His handler glances uncertainly towards him and under the table, his leg starts bouncing as he thinks. The Asset squints at his restless behavior, surprised at how obvious he's being. Usually his handler at least tries to look more put together—

He watches Steve flash a showy smile at a younger soldier before subtly stepping away and making his way out of camp, heading for the treeline. He gets up to follow, sidestepping a group of soldiers by the mess hall and ducking into the trees, his eyes scanning the forest for any trace of Steve's distinctive colouring.

He finds him about ten minutes out from camp, his back pressed against a pine tree and a lit cigarette in hand. He approaches slowly and watches as Steve takes a pull from the cigarette, a faraway, almost empty look on his face.

He doesn't like that look at all. It's too similar to the look soldiers get when they just shut down, lights on, but nobody home, and he never never wants to see that look on Steve's face. After a moment, he takes a step forward and leans against the tree, crossing his arms. "You know…" He drawls, his eyes watching Steve. "Hiding out in trees is a good way to get shot at by friendly fire."

Steve doesn't look up. "Yeah," he sighs, tapping the ash off his cigarette. "Guess I just needed somewhere quiet."—

"I have something that might help." The Asset blinks back into reality and turns over to look at Stark, wondering what the man intends to offer. Stark shifts in his seat a little and runs a hand through his hair. "It's still kind of experimental," he admits. "But I was looking into it after Clint accidentally triggered Barnes and well, Stark Industries might have something that could help with this whole–" he waves a hand. "–deprogramming thing."

His handler leans forward, intrigued. "What did you have in mind?"

"It's called Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing," Stark tells them. "Or BARF for short." His handler's mouth quirks slightly at the acronym, but he stays silent as Stark continues to explain his device. "It's something SI has been looking into," he says. "Basically, it's a holographic illusion system. We've been looking into the applications for it and I think that it can be used to sort of… re-examine memories, maybe, process them a little better. If it works, then it might help Barnes relearn his response to the trigger words."

"Would it be dangerous?" His handler asks.

Stark shrugs. "None of the initial tests have been worrying," he says. "Of course, it still needs some work before I'd want to try it out, to be honest, we weren't going to release it for a while, it's still being developed but…" He looks around the table. "Well, I'm thinking I might have some free time to work on it coming up."

His handler's brow furls for a second before it smooths out in understanding. The other Avengers don't seem so enlightened. "What do you mean?" Banner asks, sitting up slightly.

Stark flashes him a smile and taps his fingers on the table. "Wasn't sure when I was going to break the news, but I guess now is as good a time as any," he says, his shoulders just a little too tight to be relaxed. "I've been thinking for a while now about getting my arc reactor removed." He taps his chest with a dull click. "I've found a doctor who's willing to do the surgery… but he says it's about a six-week recovery period."

Stark shifts in his seat and breathes in. "With our crazy lives I wasn't sure when would be the best time to do it, but… I kind of realised after the whole thing with Thor that there's never going to be a perfect time." He shrugs. "So I'm just going to have to try and hope for the best." He quirks a smile at them. "I'm not allowed to do any Avenging while I'm recovering, under pains of death from Pepper so… you guys'll have to make do without me for a while."

His handler smiles proudly at Stark and leans forward. "I'll be rejoining the team pretty soon," he tells them. "So, we won't be short a person."

Stark relaxes at that and straightens his shoulders. "Good. Okay." He leans forward. "So I can begin looking into BARF in my spare time then."

The other Avengers begin to nod, but Banner speaks up. "I think," he says quietly. "We should ask Bucky how he feels about this."

The Asset feels his heart freeze for a second before restarting double-time as everyone turns to him. His eyes widen in a deer-in-the-headlights look at their attention, and any words he might have had dry up instantly in his mouth.

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to do Bucky," his handler tells him gently. "If you're not ready, then that's fine."

He flicks his eyes over to his handler for a second before scanning the table. He's not exactly sure how true his handler's words are. While it may be true that none of them will force him into this, it's obvious that with Stark's upcoming surgery, dealing with his trigger words now will be most convenient for everyone. Of course, he still doesn't understand why it's so important to remove the words, but everyone seems to want to.

He looks at his handler, his tongue working in his mouth as he tries to build up the courage to ask what he wants. His handler hadn't gotten mad at him the last time he'd questioned him, so maybe he won't now. He swallows. Of course, that had been in a more private setting and not in front of all the Avengers, so maybe it would be better to just not—

"Bucky?" His handler ducks his head a little to catch his eye and the Asset meets his gaze, his hands tightening on his knees as he chews on the inside of his cheek. He grits his teeth and flicks his eyes around the room again, noting how they all seem to be waiting for him to make a decision. But he doesn't understand why this is so important. Shouldn't they want his trigger words?

"I…" He ducks his head. "I will be useless without the trigger words," he mumbles, his hushed voice barely audible.

His handler's eyes widen, and he seems to give an aborted lurch forward. "Oh Bucky, no," he says, his voice strained and his hand coming up to hover in the air for a moment before he sets it down again. "You will never be useless. We want to take out the trigger words because you don't need them anymore but that— that won't make you any less useful."

His handler's face looks like he's just swallowed a whole lemon and the Asset eyes him a little uncertainly, trying to understand why he wouldn't need the trigger words anymore.

"And." He darts his head up to look over at Wilson, the man leaning towards him. "If we take out the trigger words then we can be sure that no one from Hydra will ever be able to trigger you on any of our missions."

The Asset nods slowly at that, the Avengers' reasoning slowly beginning to make more sense. It's understandable that the Avengers wouldn't want to have a soldier who might accidentally start following the orders of the people they're fighting. (And the thought of being out from under Hydra's control is strangely relieving as well.)

He relaxes back into his chair, his resolve settling. It might still feel weird to think about removing his trigger words, but… but he can probably fight without them. He nods to himself and blinks a little at the realisation. He's… he's pretty sure his handler wouldn't have to trigger him at all, and he'd still follow him perfectly in the field.

Of course he would. He doesn't need trigger words for that. He can follow his handler anywhere. To the end of the line, he thinks with a flare of determined stubbornness.

"Are you sure, Buck?" His attention gets drawn back to his handler who's busy looking concerned. "I can't promise this is going to be easy," he says. "This is probably going to be rough for everyone involved."

The Asset nods again. He's under no illusions as to how hard this is going to be. It had been hard enough to implant the triggers in the first place but… but if it will keep Hydra from getting control of him then… then it will be worth it.

"Yes," he says.

oOo

They don't get started with removing his trigger words right away. They first have to wait for Stark to get the tech ready and make sure it can do what they want. Apparently, the BARF technology, although Stark tech, had originally been designed by someone named Quentin Beck, one of Stark's employees.

Because of this, Beck ends up spending more and more time with Stark as they work on preparing the technology, although the Asset doesn't see much of them, since they've sectioned off one of the unused rooms in the tower as their base of operations.

"It's big enough and empty enough to project your memories," Stark tells him one day when he comes in to get his head measured and fitted for the BARF gear, his footsteps echoing in the white room. The Asset stays silent as Stark rambles, his voice almost covering Beck's quiet tinkering at a computer desk a few feet away.

To be honest, he hadn't spent a lot of time with Stark before the man had offered his BARF technology, so at first, he hadn't exactly been sure what to expect. For whatever reason, Stark had never participated with the other Avengers when they had begun to take him out for activities, so the Asset had never gotten a chance to learn what Stark is like by himself.

Apparently, he likes to talk, a lot.

"I have to admit, I'll be glad when we've erased those trigger words," Stark continues to chat as he holds up a measuring tape, and the Asset flicks his eyes to him, a little intrigued. "I almost had a heart attack when you collapsed," Stark explains. "I thought you'd died or something. Steve literally jumped over the back of the couch to get to you. I swear I've never seen him move so fast in my life."

The Asset blinks, a little bemused but also touched by how affected his handler and everyone else seems to have been by his triggering.

"Okay, look left," Stark mutters, his eyes more focused as he sets down the tape and moves to stick an electrode to his forehead. The Asset complies and breathes in slowly, letting Stark work. He knows, by now, that Stark will not hurt him (at least not on purpose), and that this tech is designed to help him but… he can't help that it reminds him a little of Hydra's work with him.

"If we had more time, I'd make this more portable and convenient, like a pair of glasses," Stark speaks up, distracting him from thoughts of mouth guards and too-tight clamps. "We obviously want to make sure you're not trailing wires once we get started," Stark continues. "But for now, we just want to make sure it works."

He steps away and the Asset is careful to hold still and not disturb the various wires attached to his head. Stark double-checks the connections for a moment, darting around the space and fiddling with the cameras circling the room on tripods. The Asset watches his quick but measured movements and can't help admiring how at ease Stark seems to be among all his technology—

he fights down a smile as he watches Howard shuffling through his papers, his voice chugging along a-mile-a-minute.

"I've been trying to trim down our radios, get them a little smaller and more portable, while also transmitting a decent signal." Howard pulls up a sketch and shows it to him. "And have you seen what they're doing with radar now?"

"And my gun?" He cuts in. "You said you would adjust the grip?"

"Yes." Howard sets down his paper. "Right. Also, while you're here, I was thinking of remeasuring the strap–"

He gets cut off as a harried looking assistant rushes in. "Stark, do you have that proposal ready yet?" She asks. "The meeting is in half-an-hour—

Stark steps back over to Beck and looks down at their collection of monitors. "How we lookin'?"

Beck lists off a string of technical terms that the Asset doesn't exactly understand but he's too busy trying to analyse his last memory/malfunction to really pay attention. His eyes flick up to Stark and he stares, darting his gaze over the goatee and mussed hair that suddenly looks very familiar.

He swallows, his mind spinning as he tries to understand what he's seeing. The man who'd looked like Stark in the memory/malfunction had been called Howard — and he remembers now, his handler had known someone named Howard, had gotten his shield from himbut the assistant had also called the man Stark.

"Okay," Stark says, cutting into the Asset's train of thought and catching his attention. "So I've already tried this out myself so I can guarantee it will not hurt." The Asset blinks and finds himself relaxing shoulders that he hadn't even known were tense at the reassurance. "All we're doing today is making sure it responds to you," Stark continues. The Asset nods carefully and Stark turns to the computer, his hand hovering over a switch. "I'm going to turn it on," he says. "Once it's on, think of any memory you want and we should be good from there."

The Asset tries not to tense at the idea of purposely triggering a memory. He knows that that is the whole purpose of Stark's technology — so obviously he's not about to get in trouble for having memories like he would have with Hydra… But he can't help the uneasiness he feels at revealing publicly that his programming has disintegrated overtime.

Of course, that doesn't seem to matter to the Avengers, seeing how their trying to erase his trigger words altogether so…

He gives his head a little shake and tries to focus, sifting through the various memories he could choose as Stark goes to turn on the machine. Despite how the Avengers might feel about him having memories, he thinks it will probably be best not to choose one from before he'd reunited with his handler. Just to be safe. His eyes flick up to Stark again, and it's probably his recent confusion over him and the other Stark that influences his choice of test-memory.

He doesn't even realise the machine is activated before flickering images begin to project from the cameras around the room. Stark murmurs something to Beck and the picture sharpens, and the Asset can now see himself and his handler as they stand in what appears to be Stark's lab, the robots DUM-E and U wheeling around them excitedly.

He blinks and his mouth quirks up slightly as he recognises the time he and his handler had gone down to Stark's lab and visited the bots. At the time he'd been anxious and half-expecting to be punished, but his handler had done nothing of the kind. Instead he had introduced him to the robots and begun to play with them.

"I think they get lonely by themselves," the hologram of his handler says as he pets a holographic DUM-E. The excited robot soon begins to offer things to his handler as a form of fetch, and the Asset watches as his own hologram begins to cautiously hand the items over to U.

It feels a little strange to watch his own memory from the outside, but it does offer an interesting perspective. He hadn't realised that he'd had the barest hints of a pleased expression on his face while he'd been playing with U.

On the other side of the hologram, Beck types something into the computer and the image flickers out. The Asset looks up to see Stark standing beside the computers with an absolute soft expression on his face. He grins and looks up, catching his eye. "Looks like it works," he says, the smile growing over his face.


AN: So I heard in that in the comic, Hydra uses the word Sputnik as a shutdown protocol to shutdown Bucky, and I thought that the Avengers would be appropriately horrified, even if Bucky doesn't realise yet how invasive his trigger words are yet.

And, even though it's still a few years before Stark official unveils the BARF tech, I figured something as complicated as that must have been in development for a while, and now he will have a reason to focus on it and develop it faster.