Bucky tried to get comfortable on the floor in the back of the quinjet Steve flew. Uncomfortable memories flooded him after explaining everything to Steve.
He remembered landed at the base in Siberia. Using a revolver and taking the shots to the other winter soldiers. He desperately searched the entire base for any and all paperwork leading to him. Weapons people could use. There was nothing.
Every filing cabinet empty, every desk covered in dust, and every room that used to be full of weapons, cobwebs took their place. He finally looked in the one place the red notebook was always kept.
Instead, horror and fear consumed him as he found out that too, was missing.
As he stumbled outside, he sat on the snow covered ground, knowing he could never truly be free. Whoever had that book could find him and use him again. He'd always be Hydra's weapon of choice no matter where they hid. If he was still alive, they would find him.
The revolver had six shots, and he had only used five to kill the other winter soldiers. He examined it carefully, making sure the live round was in the correct place. He cocked the hammer back, and leveled it to his own head.
As he did, happy memories with Steve flooded him.
He couldn't do it.
He couldn't take the shot.
Bucky then took the live round and threw it in one direction. He dismantled the gun and threw it in separate directions. After putting his head in his right hand and taking a deep breath, he stood up and made his way back to the plane he stole.
He made it back to Bucharest. Back to his apartment. He wrote Always Remember Steve in his notebook.
Back in the quinjet in the present, Sam sat across from him on the floor and said, "You look like a tormented man, you know that?"
"It hasn't been easy," Bucky replied, glancing at Steve who was focused on flying the quinjet.
Everet Ross shook his head as he stood before Steve in a meeting room in S.H.I.E.L.D base alone. "He's a war criminal," he explained bluntly, "he's murdered countless people and those are only the ones we know about. There could be many more we're completely unaware of. If the Winter Soldier is ever found, he's going to be dead where he stands."
"But I knew him," Steve said desperately, "and I saw him come back in his right mind before the helicarrier fell apart over the Potomac. He's an abused victim that can be helped."
Everet demanded, "How can you be so sure? What if it was a front in order to get closer to you so he could finally kill you? You know that's what he was trying to do, don't you? He wanted you dead. That was obviously his goal and he was one step away from completing that."
Steve shook his head and said, "No, no, no! He pulled me from the river."
"We don't have proof of that," he said.
Shocked, Steve stifled a scoff and demanded, "What kind of proof do you need?! I'm still alive, aren't I? How else did I get out of that water while unconscious? Without him I would have drowned!"
Everet shrugged and said, "We don't know that." Steve gave him a look of disapproval but he let him continue. "You have super soldier serum in your DNA. You survived being in the ice for over 65 years when any normal human would have died instantly. Maybe you could have survived underwater just fine too."
"He has super soldier serum in his DNA too," Steve explained as calmly as he could, "it's the only way he survived that fall from the train in the Swiss Alps back in '44. He was a war hero. A prisoner of war! If anything, he should have a Purple Heart because of the disability he now has thanks to the Army. Instead you want him dead."
Everet frowned at him and said, "If he was simply your buddy who went into the ice in the 40's alongside you, then it'd be a different story, Cap, but he isn't. He's a man who's worked with known terrorists-"
"Was cohersed into working with," Steve interrupted, staring him down.
"Do you have proof of that?" Everet asked.
Steve asked, "What if there was a book of everything the Russians ever did to him, from brainwashing to forcing him to kill people? Everything he's done, in one place."
Everet asked, "Do you have it?"
"Not right now," he confessed.
Everet signed and explained, "He's a grown man, Cap, an adult that can make his own decisions. The court of law sees him as a man who decided to join the wrong side and even if he has now decided to do right, he still need to be punished for the wrongs he committed."
Still in disbelief, Steve asked, "But why would he choose to work for Hydra? Just look at the facts! He fought against Hydra and the Nazis by my side, it's on the records, S.H.I.E.L.D's records I might add, but then all of a sudden he decided to work for them-for the Russians-against the US? That doesn't raise any suspicion in the court of law that something might be off?"
He shook his head and replied, "Sometimes people change their mind. You think you know them, but you don't. Look what happened to S.H.I.E.L.D. Look at Alexander Pierce, Brock Rumlow, and the countless other agents we hired over the decades. We thought they were on our side but they weren't, in fact, they never were. We can't prove your old friend was any different."
"That notebook," Steve said desperately, "it has everything they've ever done to him in there. If we could just find it, that would be the proof you need!"
"It's a book, Captain," Everet explained, "it doesn't have a tracker on it, no satellite signals, no radio signals, nothing that can help us find it and it might not even exist anymore. There's no point." He took a look at Steve's disgruntled face, sighed, and continued, "I will say this. I'm sorry you lost a friend and then saw him turn into a monster, only to lose him again in the end. You have my sympathies, but you can't change the past and what he did. Now if you would excuse me, I have other places I need to be." He walked out of the room, leaving Steve alone.
Steve paced around the living room of the Avergers headquarters while explaining everything Everet Ross told him. Bucky sat in an arm chair at the end of the table while Tony, Sam, Wanda, Vision, Rhodey, and Natasha sat around couches.
"They're not going to help us," Steve said angrily as he continued to pace around the room, "They said since you're a grown man you actively made the decision to join Hydra. I know that's not true!"
Bucky said, defeated, "I told you this wasn't going to go well, Steve."
Sam said, "I'm not surprised, this is the government we're talking about."
Tony asked, "What are we supposed to get proof of? You're not going to find evidence he was cohersed into doing anything." He threw his hands up defensively.
"You said you had a concussion because of the fall," Steve said, looking at Bucky as he stood across the room from him, "is there any record of that? Did they ever take x-rays of your head to prove it?"
Bucky frowned and said, "I don't remember any sort of x-ray machine but if they did take one, or simply diagnosed me without taking one, they would have written it down."
"Where?" Rhodey asked.
"In the book I told Steve about," Bucky explained, "like I said, they wrote down everything they did to me in that red notebook. It even included when and where they found me after I fell off of that train."
Tony asked, "Where is this book now?"
Steve said, "We don't know since the Hydra base in Siberia where it was kept was raided after all of their files were leaked onto the internet and S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't care about it since there's no way to track a book."
"Well it was a good lead," Rhodey said, disappointed, "now we're back to square one."
"That can't be right," Natasha said, "there isn't any mention of a base in Siberia in their files. I know because I read every word, even the encrypted stuff in Russian. It barely mentioned you. They really wanted to keep you a secret."
Intrigued, Steve said, "You're saying whoever raided this building had to have known about it on their own and know exactly where it was already. Someone who was originally part of Hydra has to have that book right now."
Sam scratched his head and explained, "That doesn't really help us much. These people that are in hiding have been hidden for the past couple of years, if not longer. The government has been trying to find them for all this time and they still have nothing. We got nothing."
Wanda asked, "I'm still wondering why they would write everything down. That sounds like a huge oversight to leave proof behind like that."
"No it makes sense," Vision explained, "a natural human lifespan is usually shorter than Mr. Barnes has been alive. The Russians expected to use him for many decades, even long after the original people who brainwashed him had died, so they had to write down all of the knowledge they could use against him for other people to use once they were gone. This way they made sure they were consistent with Mr. Barnes. If they weren't consistent, he could more easily break through their tedious brainwashing and it would be void."
"My name is Bucky," he said calmly.
"Very well, Bucky," Vision replied, "who has access to that base?" Everyone turned to stare at him.
He said, "I don't know."
Tony leaned back in his seat and let out an exasperated sigh and said, "As soon as we think we're getting somewhere, we're nowhere again."
"I don't remember who was there," Bucky said, "at least, not off the top of my head."
Natasha asked calmly, "Could someone break into this place if they came across it by chance?"
"No," he said, "if you didn't have the codes you weren't getting in there. It's stronger than a fortress, made to withstand blasts from missiles in case another country attacked it. There certainly wasn't any evidence of that when I was there."
Rhodey said, "There can't be that many Hydra agents still alive with codes to get into that place."
Tony stood up and walked around the room and asked, "What if there was a way to scan Bucky's memories so we could see who we could eliminate and what really happened to him?"
"That doesn't sound possible," Steve said.
"I actually started a project a while back," he explained, "after my parents died suddenly when I was 21, the last memory I had was quite painful," behind his back, Bucky glanced at Steve nervously who shook his head no and waved his hand by his neck frantically. Natasha glanced at both of them, being the only one that noticed that interaction while Tony continued, "I used technology to try and make myself feel better after they were gone. It didn't help all that much since I can't change what actually happened or bring them back to life or anything. My point is, I have technology that can scan memories and other people can see them for themselves."
Everyone paused to stare at him in surprise and awe.
Bucky asked, "Are you sure you want to see my memories?"
"We're only looking for specific things," Steve said causously, "we don't need to pry into everything you've ever done."
"Right," Tony said, "we don't care what you ate for dinner on August 13, 1982, we need to figure out who still alive can get into that base."