Hello, friends! Wanted to mention that as people favorite and follow this story, I get amused by people's usernames. I'm especially fond of the Doctor Who and Nightwing related ones. Especially that Nightwing one :P EXCEPT WHAT DC IS DOING TO NIGHTWING RIGHT NOW IS UNACCEPTABLE.

Review and tell me how I'm doing :D

Chapter 5

"Just lay back, get comfortable," Bruce muttered, moving different things around on tables.

They were in a large, well-lit room full of rows and rows of long tables. He had rolled in a gurney from another room. The Winter soldier stared at it for a second, a feeling kin to loathing washing over him. His nerves were shot and he felt like he was going to burst. But he pushed it all down and got onto the gurney anyways.

"So what are you going to do," Clara asked, watching as the Winter Soldier lay back on the table, eyes never leaving the other doctor.

Bruce walked across the room and opened a cabinet along the wall. "Well, we can't do an MRI—if there's any metal in his head, it'll rip it out—and then there's the more obvious piece of metal."

"So, what then?" Clara asked. "If we can't scan his brain function—You think they implanted something in his head? Like, computer pieces?" Bruce just shrugged. "Think it'll show up on an x-ray?"

"I have some theories as to what's already in there, but I'd like to know what we're dealing with exactly."

"Which is what?" the man in the chair piped in. He never heard the answer, though, because as Bruce approached him to answer, the man shifted into a short, bald, angry scientist.

"Open," a Russian commanded. The Winter Soldier opened his mouth immediately and a guard was shoved in roughly. His eyes frantically darted around the room as they put the apparatus around his head.

The pain from previous experiences rose to his conscious mind and he remembered this part, every time. The feeling of his mind, his brain, everything he was thinking just being ripped apart at its most basic form.

"Begin," the voice said.

But the shock never came. Instead, he blinked and was staring into wide dark eyes, his own frantically shooting around the room, taking in as much of his surroundings as he could. He was leaning up on the gurney, his metal arm propping himself up, his other gripping Clara's shoulder.

"Hey," she was saying, her hand cupping his face. "You're okay here. Promise."

"I remembered," he managed, gasping for air.

Clara's lips turned up, but she still had a professional air about her. "Remembered what?"

He let her go and simultaneously pulled out of her grasp, swinging his legs so that he was sitting on the edge of the gurney. "I—they—"

Banner had stopped what he was doing and came around to stand next to Clara in front of him, arms crossed. "What kind of amnesia does he have, Dr. Maitland?"

"I can't—they shocked me," the soldier breathed, trying to calm his erratic heart. This wasn't Hydra, he chanted in his head. This was not Hydra. Clara was kind and he was getting help.

The doctors exchanged a glance. "Shocked you how?" Clara asked after a second, concern coloring her features.

"After missions," he explained, "I would be in this chair. They'd stick a mouth guard in my face and electrocute my skull with some kind of—"

"Oh, my God," Clara breathed, shaking her head.

Bruce nodded and returned to his desk with a renewed energy. "Well, that certainly proves my theories."

"What?"

"Shock treatment," Clara said, watching Bruce gather equipment and papers. "It's been used to repress bad memories." She looked back to the Winter Soldier. "How often did you have these procedures? Do you remember that? It's fine if you can't."

He shook his head slowly. "As far as I can remember, after every mission."

"Do you remember if Hydra did it to you recently?" Bruce asked, dragging over a metal cart, various tools and papers laid out over the surface.

"A few days ago, I fought…Steve. He called me Bucky—said he knew me," he told them. "And for a little while I remembered him—remembered falling from the train, remembered having what was left of my arm being sawed off."

"Alright," Bruce sighed. He pulled over a large white machine. "Ever had an X-Ray?"

"We'll need an x-ray, just to make sure it's just a simple dislocation and that nothing is fractured."

The bright white walls of the lab, Clara, and Bruce. They all melted away. He was standing in front of Smaller Steve now, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched a doctor flit around his friend's broken arm.

"Ever had an x-ray before?" the doctor asked.

"Not that I remember," Steve answered, fidgeting.

The Doctor smiled kindly and looked at Bucky, who just shook his head. "Ok, so what's going to happen is…"

"Hey? You alright?"

Clara's voice brought him out of his vision. "I watched Steve get an x-ray once. The doctor explained to us how it worked."

"So you'll be no stranger to the process," Bruce confirmed. "If you could lie back, I'll set it up and in bit we'll be able to see what's going on."

Clara helped him recline back, her hand lingering on his metal shoulder so that she was sure he would stay calm this time. "So you saw Steve get an x-ray? Hard to imagine the super soldier needing something like that."

"From what I can remember, he wasn't always a super soldier," the Winter Soldier grunted, shifting. "He had a dislocated shoulder, I think."

"From what he told me once," Bruce muttered, reaching up to the top of the machine. "He used to get into fights a lot."

"Now that's hard to imagine," Clara laughed.

"Alright, if you could turn your head to your left," Bruce requested. Not demanded. "We'll take a few images, just so that we don't have to do this later." Bruce walked away and Clara hopped up on a nearby stool within in eyesight.

"So," she started conversationally, elbow on her crossed legs and her chin in her hand. "From what I saw earlier, you've had quite the day."

"You're not afraid of me. Of what I've done," he noted quietly.

"Are you afraid of what you've done?" she countered with practiced ease. He was silent, just simply watching her. "It's okay to be afraid."

"Alright, Dr. Maitland," Bruce said, returning to the room. "If you'll follow me, we'll get out of the way to take some x-rays."

Clara offered up a friendly smile. "Be right back."

In total they had him take four or five x-rays. He didn't mind, actually. It was a stark contrast to the way the scientists had treated him. There, he was a subject, an asset. Here—he was a patient with a problem. He was someone to be treated, not tested on. The Winter Soldier felt like a real person. For as long as his memory served, he could only remember robotically doing everything Hydra asked of him.

Somewhere along the way, he'd let his guard down enough in his feel-good moment and fell asleep. When was the last time he'd slept? A vision of a tank flitted across his vision. It was cold. So cold. He remembered the first time they put him in there—it was the only time he'd fallen asleep in one. He had tried to pound on the glass, to escape, but he was trapped. And cold. So cold.

But he wasn't in the chamber that he always remembered waking up in when they needed him for a mission. He was out in the snow. Cold. He reached down with his flesh hand towards a twinge in his leg and came back with a knife covered in his own blood. And suddenly it was like his body knew and just gave up.

The Winter Soldier fell to his knees and noticed the splashing of bright red across the snow. Glancing down at himself, he brought both hands shakily to the slash across his stomach, his metal hand only adding to the mind numbingly cold sensation he felt emanating from the wound.

"We have him," someone behind him said in Russian.

"Location confirmed," a voice cracked—over a radio of some sort, his mind made out hazily.

He pulled his hands away from himself, amazed by the amount of blood. He bled? Like his assignments? Like his missions? His mind conjured a fuzzy memory of a man in a suit lashing out with a decorative sword he'd pulled from the way before the Winter Soldier managed to finally gun him down.

Hands grabbed him from all sides. He could hear a chopper in the distance. No, he wanted to tell them. He wanted them to stop grabbing at him. To leave him alone. He just wanted to sleep. He was so tired. So cold.

He woke up yelling in Russian, vaguely hearing a rough "let me go" echo off the walls. A brunette stood up from her stool across the room and approached him.

"Who are you?" he snapped in Russian. "Stop!"

The woman froze mid stride, eyebrows furrowing. She held up her hands innocently. "Hey, now, I'm not gonna hurt you."

"Who are you?" he demanded.

"I don't speak Russian, I'm sorry," she told him slowly.

"Who are you?" he repeated, in English this time. Before she could answer, things were slowly coming back to him. "Connie?"

She smiled and shook her head. "You've mistaken me for Connie three times now," she said, lowering her hands. But the Winter Soldier didn't relax. "My name is Clara."

"Where am I?" he shot off.

"You're in Stark Tower," she responded calmly. "You came here with me." Did he? His head hurt. He couldn't remember clearly. "You've been having memory problems and I've been helping you. Do you remember coming here?"

He shook his head for a second. "No."

"Okay." She crossed her arms slowly. "Do you remember Connie?"

"Yes." He met her at a bar.

"Do you remember Steve? Or any of the events he was involved with you over the last few days?"

Steve. Steve. Yes, he remembered parts of Steve. Small Steve and Captain America Steve. "Yes."

"Alright, good," she smiled. "Do you remember getting x-rays?"

"What?" he snapped. "No." What had they done to him while he was asleep? "Are you with Hydra?"

"No, we're not." Both sets of eyes snapped to the curly brown haired man walking into the room with large black x-rays in his hands.

"He's having a moment," Clara whispered to Bruce.

He nodded in understanding. "Well, I have the answers as to why you're having these kinds of cognitive problems." He pulled out a light box and spread the images out on top.

The Winter Soldier hopped off the gurney and strode over to look at the x-rays they had taken. "What the hell are those?" he muttered.

"These three are electrodes used in the shock treatments," Bruce explained, fingers sliding along different x-rays to point out the bright white shapes that should not have been there.

"What about this one?" Clara asked grimly, pointing to a separate, smaller chip.

"That's the one that worries me," he sighed.

"You think Hydra is tracking me?" he demanded.

"Pretty sure." Bruce stared at the x-rays for a second longer. "JARVIS."

"Yes , Sir?" a disembodied voice filled the room.

"Ask Stark to come down to the lab and to bring an EMP emitter."

"Right away, Sir."