In the basement of the Avengers headquarters, Tony carefully placed a few wires on Bucky's head. He sat in a chair in the empty room while everyone else stood behind him.
Tony explained, "I've never actually used this binearly augmented retro framing, or B.A.R.F., on another person before, and everyone categorizes memories differently so I'm not sure how well this is going to work."
"B.A.R.F.?" Natasha asked, digusted.
"It's a working title," Tony replied, then turned back to Bucky, "so how do you categorize things? By date? By emotion? By person? Experience?"
Bucky said sadly, "I was programmed to remember everything by date and mission in cronological order."
"God," Steve said, horrified, "don't say it like that. Programmed? You're a human being, not a machine."
"It didn't feel that way back then," he said.
"Okay," Tony said, "maybe we should start with a happier memory, one you don't mind us seeing so we can tell if this is going to work or not, otherwise we got our hopes up for nothing. You have to have at least one good memory stored away in there, right?"
Bucky struggled to think about it as Tony walked behind him. Steve said, "1943, before you were shipped out. You saved me in that alleyway, remember? That's a good memory."
"Yeah," Bucky said, smiling.
A scene folding out in front of them on the far wall and the adjacent walls and turning into the 3D space. It was Brooklyn, New York, 1943, and everyone had a 1st person view of Bucky obviously walking down the sidewalk of the busy streets. The view changed, he turned to look down an empty alley before passing another building and searching another alley, this time with two people in front of a wooden fence.
"Not again," Bucky muttered to himself as he ran down it.
A man was beating up Steve. He grabbed the man and said, "Hey, pick on someone your own size!" And proceed to punch and kick him as he ran away. As he turned back around, he said, "Sometimes I think you like getting punched."
Sam laughed and said, "Cap still likes getting punched."
"That's Captain America?" Wanda said, "He's so tiny!"
"Before the serum I was barely 5 foot 4," Steve smiling, smiling at the memory playing out before him.
Rhodey said seriously, "As nice as this is, we're going to have to move on."
Steve sighed and said sadly, "Yeah."
"Do you want that day in 1944?" Bucky asked.
"When you're ready," Steve said, looking straight ahead at the wall.
A train car appeared all around them. Bucky looked over at Steve who was in his Captain America getup just in time to see a Hydra agent behind them with massive guns. As Steve was knocked out, Bucky took the shield and fired back at them, only to be thrown from the train.
He grabbed the closest bar and held on for dear life as the train whipped passed the glacial landscapes and stark mountains. He tried to pull himself up, but the wind current was too strong. A moment later, Steve showed up and huddled along the wall, bracing himself as he tried to reach him, "Bucky!" he shouted.
Focusing on holding on, Bucky didn't say anything, only desperately tried to reach the safety that was so far out of reach. "Take my hand!" Steve demanded as he tried to reach back at him.
Bucky tried. His fingers were right there, but the bar was slipping. It wasn't meant to hold the weight of a grown man. He felt the screws ripping out of the wall. Almost there. Just an inch or two closer.
Too late.
The bar broke free.
"Bucky!" Steve shouted desperately. He tried to reach him but of course he was too far.
Bucky watched as his friend disappeared behind the mountain and the train hurried along the tracks. His left side slammed into the rocky cliff face and tore him apart by the time he reached the bottom and everything went black.
Everyone in the room flinched.
Vision asked, "What happened next?"
"I don't know how long I was there," Bucky confessed, "but it was a while."
Snow appeared before them. A white sky and snow covered trees in the distance. He glanced down at himself, a missing left arm and blood poured out of him.
Footsteps approached, and became louder as they got closer. A man stood over him and dragged him along the ice and snow.
Then he was suddenly on an opperating table in an enclosed room with several white lab coats around him. "Sergent Barnes," Zola said meningly, "he will be the new fist of Hydra."
"Wait a minute," Sam said in disbelief, "you remember them cutting up what was left of your arm and attaching metal to it? They didn't knock you out for that?"
"No," Bucky said, "they didn't."
Tony said, "It's obvious you didn't walk up to them of your own free will. How'd they convince you to join them?"
"They taught me Russian," he said, "agressively, and told me who I was."
A man stood in front of him in a dark room later, and started speaking to him rapidly in Russian while wearing a Russian military uniform.
Tony asked, "Uh, do you come with English subtitles?" Steve glared at him.
Natasha explained, "He's just saying that he belongs with Hydra, and that he's there to work for them."
"I'll just pretend they said it in English," Bucky said.
The man said in a heavy Russian accent, "You are to work with Russian government under faction and juristiction of Hydra. Do you understand what we are asking of you?"
"I understand," Bucky's voice said coldly.
"You are considered our greatest asset, James," he continued, "any misteps from you will be taken seriously and you will be punished accordingly."
Steve interjected, "You say they treated you like a human being at first, but where did that all go wrong?"
Bucky sighed and said, "The only thing I can remember before that happened is this."
New imagery appeared before everyone. Red hair fell over Bucky's face and his right hand tenderly worked it's way through it to it's ends, then the image stopped, and started up again where it began.
Vision asked, "What are we looking at?"
"Red hair," Rhodey said, "but who's?"
"I don't know," Bucky said, "I mean, I might have known at the time, but I don't remember now."
Sam said, "Maybe we can use context clues to figure out who this was. What are you doing here besides running your fingers through hair?"
"I'm laying down," he explained, "in a large soft bed. I didn't have any clothes on and the sheets and blankets were gone. I don't know what happened to them."
Tony said, "Well we all know what that sounds like."
"What if you fell in love with the wrong person," Steve said, "and Hydra didn't like that, so they wiped your memories clean and tried to start over? What year was this?"
"I think," Bucky said, "around 1959 or so, maybe 1960. I can't remember."
Natasha looked at the imagery, perplexed, and said, "We don't know if this was a tragic love story. This could have been a prostitute or a spy he simply got caught up in and maybe he revealed Russian secrets to her and they didn't like that when they found out about it."
"You think he fell for a honeytrap?" Steve asked, and glanced at Bucky nervously.
Bucky rubbed his forehead and said, "I honestly don't remember. Anything is possible, I guess."
Steve asked carefully, "What's the next memory you have?"
The scenery changed before them. The walls were dark, and distant, and blended together. Bucky's arms were locked down and he was breathing heavily.
"Why is everything so blurry?" Tony asked.
"I was crying," Bucky answered.
The men standing around him suddenly turned toward the entrance as the images cleared and a man they knew all too well entered, a man who looked similarly to Steve Rogers. The resemblance was uncanny.
"No," Steve said, horrified, "who is that?! That's not me!"
The man sat down on a stool in front of Bucky and asked in a deep smooth voice, "Do you know who I am?" The image moved up and down slightly. The man turned to one of the officers and said, "I was told he can still talk."
"He's been screaming for over 8 hours now," he replied, "his voice might be gone. He'll regain it eventually."
The man turned back toward Bucky and said, "You recognize me, yes or no." He nodded. "Do you know my name?" He shook his head. "I'm Alexander Pierce. Are any words coming to your mind right now when you see me? Try to say them." Pierce stared him down.
"Fr..." Bucky croaked, "end."
A single memory appeared of Steve beside Pierce in front of the avengers.
"Oh my God," Steve said, still horrified.
"Did you know Pierce looked like you when he was young?" Tony asked.
"I had no idea," Steve said.
Alexander Pierce stood up from his seat and said, "'Friend.' Sure, I can work with that. As long as you cooperate, you'll never get hurt again." He leaned over and grabbed Bucky by the jaw and forced him to look up at him. "You listen to me and these Russians from now on, no matter what." He let him go forcefully. "Clean up your face." He threw a handkerchief at him and the room went dark.
Steve said, "I think I've seen enough."
Sam said, "So Alexander Pierce manipulated him for decades, starting around 1960." He let out a slow long breath to that in.
"Now we know what happened back then but unfortunately memories aren't infallible," Rhodey said sadly, "I have a feeling the government is going to say something like that to us if we try to explain what we just saw."
Wanda said, "What about that book you were talking about before?"
Steve looked at Bucky and asked, "When was the last time you saw that?"
"2009," Bucky said.
The images changed again. This time Bucky was returning all of his weapons to a Russian soldier and unloading them in front of him.
"Mission report," the soldier said coldly. When Bucky didn't answer him, he demanded, "Mission report!"
Bucky stepped away from him as he pulled out a gun to his face. He was dragged away by forces from behind him and slammed into the electric chair before he could blink. Other Hydra agents surrounded him and pointed their guns at him.
"That guy's dead," Sam said as he pointed to each person, "he's imprisoned, dead, imprisoned, imprisoned, we fought all of these guys in 2014, except for this Russian dude and I fought this other guy personally."
"That's Brock Rumlow," Steve said, "He ran away from the hospital after the helicarrier crashed into the building he was in. Who's the guy holding the book to your left?" The images stopped moving.
"Vasily Karpov," Bucky said, "He was actually the one in charge of me, Alexander Pierce was only brought in whenever I acted out too eractically for him to handle."
Steve said, "So he has access to the base, even now. We have to find him, he might be the one with that book."
Natasha asked, "Why didn't you give him the mission report?"
"I don't remember," Bucky answered sadly, "I don't even remember what mission I went on before this."
Tony said, "Vasily Karpov, doesn't sound familiar. We should check Hydra's files to see if he's imprisioned or dead now and try to find Rumlow."