Marvel Cinematic Universe
The Path Not Taken
By Gabrielle Lawson
Chapter Three
Steve watched Bucky, trying hard not to look like he was watching Bucky. He'd convinced Bucky to change out of his tactical gear so as to be less conspicuous. But as he changed, Steve had gotten a glimpse of the bruises on his torso, thighs and left arm. He'd also seen the ugly scars where the metal arm met his chest, like they'd seared it to his skin. Steve had had to unwrap and rewrap the splint, which was now under the sweatshirt Bucky was wearing. Bucky never so much as grimaced. As they had walked out, Hill had put a baseball cap on Bucky's head and tucked his hair behind his ears. He looked like a completely different person. Definitely not the Hydra assassin of the day before.
But he didn't look like the Bucky he'd known in Brooklyn or before the train. Most of his face looked like Bucky. But his eyes. His eyes at times would look right through him. At others they just seemed lost.
Natasha had texted her insights from her interactions with Bucky. The fact that he had a sweet tooth was nothing new to Steve. But that Bucky really only knew what was relevant to his missions—or what little he could remember otherwise—hurt. The Bucky he knew was smart and funny, caring and hard-working. He'd gotten a faraway look to his eyes sometimes after his capture—his first capture.
Now he was probably still just as sharp, but his mind was practically empty. Most of what he did know wasn't useful at the moment. He knew how to fight, but the fight was over. His very impressive hand-to-hand and knife skills weren't needed. And no one was ready to hand him a gun or give him the controls to a vehicle yet. So, what of his mission-ready knowledge could serve him now? If he was observant, he might eventually be persuaded to identify Hydra operatives that had slipped the net. But looking at him, Steve knew that was a long way out. This Bucky was a fish out of water who'd just discovered he could breathe air.
Fortunately, Sam's house was still incognito. No crime scenes, no media presence. To the rest of DC, Bucky was a terrorist. He needed to stay hidden until they had a concrete way to show he wasn't in control then. And to make sure he was safe and unable to be activated. That last part was a tall order.
Sam parked the car. Steve and Bucky exited the back seat. Sam ushered them in the door as Steve grabbed the bag that now housed Bucky's tactical gear. Then he followed Bucky and Sam inside. "You live together?" Bucky asked.
"Temporarily," Sam replied. "You shot up the walls at Steve's place."
"Fury survived." He said it in such a matter-of-fact way that didn't sit right with Steve. But he guessed that the programming had suppressed a lot of Bucky's emotions. Or he just wasn't used to them anymore after seventy years.
"He let us think he died, too," Steve said, hoping to move past the awkward moment.
Sam sighed. "Make yourselves at home. I'm gonna head to the second-hand store and find him some more clothes. You need anything from your place?"
Steve remembered the music coming from the guards' phones. "Maybe my record player."
Bucky moved about the living space like a new pet exploring their new home. Steve sat on the couch and tried to imagine what it was like to lose all his memories and have to start over. "If you have questions.…"
Bucky gave him a look that said all he had were questions. After circling the living room, he stood in the center and looked like he didn't know how to fit in the space. Steve stood and joined him. "We call this the living room. We use it when we want to relax or talk with friends. We watch TV in here." He gently led him into the kitchen.
"Kitchen," Bucky said. "Food is here."
"Yes, we store food here, and dishes. We cook in here." He pointed to the small dining table. "We eat there. Dining area. Some places have separate dining rooms, but smaller ones like this have it in or just outside the kitchen."
He went back out and turned left to head up the stairs. Bucky followed. Steve turned on the bathroom light.
"Restroom."
Steve smiled. "Well, in a home, we say 'bathroom' even if there isn't a bathtub or shower. There's a half-bath downstairs with just a toilet and a sink."
"No urinal."
Who knew bathrooms could be so confusing? "No, not in homes. Everything goes in the toilet. Stand up to pee and sit for—"
"I understand."
Steve was glad for that. He really didn't want to have to potty train Bucky. He flipped off the light. "Right. Sam's bedroom is in here." He turned around and flipped on the light to Sam's room. "We sleep in rooms like this. We keep clothes in them. But we're visiting and Sam only has one bedroom. He'll sleep in here. We'll make do in the living room."
He turned off the light and headed back downstairs. "That's about it in a small place like this. We should keep the blinds closed on the windows at all times. We don't want any nosey neighbors."
"We had a small place."
Steve turned around and smiled. "You remember that?" His Bucky existed in those memories.
"Pieces," he replied. "It looked different, no stairs, but same rooms."
"Yeah well, it was seventy years ago, and we didn't have a lot of money." He sat again. "Sit down and try to relax. It's nice."
Bucky came and sat down. He started to lean back like Steve but bolted back upright.
"It's okay," Steve told him. "You won't sink."
Bucky scooted back farther to give it another try. This time he stayed back but Steve wasn't sure he was relaxed. "Do you know how to relax?"
It was subtle, but Steve thought he saw some embarrassment in his eyes. Steve didn't make him answer. "We can tense our muscles." He demonstrated, clenching his fists and tightening all his muscles. "Or we can loosen them." He did that, sighing as he did. "When we stay loose, we relax. We can sit in a way that's comfortable. It feels good."
Bucky tensed then loosened his muscles. He looked bit more relaxed. Steve leaned his head back and Bucky did the same. Then he gasped and jumped off the couch. He grabbed the sides of his head, knocking the baseball cap to the floor.
Steve sat up. "What is it?"
Bucky was breathing hard. "The machine," he whispered. "It made me forget."
Now Steve wished he'd seen the video, so he could better avoid triggers like this. He must've had to put his head back for that damn machine. "I know. I'm sorry. They'll never do that again. You can come back and relax. You don't have to do anything that doesn't feel good."
"It wasn't two nights ago," he said, as if he was surprised himself. "It wasn't the bank."
"They did it before," Steve said and he hated that realization. Of course, they did. Bucky would never have joined them willingly. They had to erase who he was. But obviously, the memories could come back, so they probably did a lot more times. Which lead back to the machine.
Bucky's breathing had slowed and his hands came down. But he didn't sit. He left the room and Steve watched to see where has going. He hoped Bucky wouldn't punch any walls. But after a few minutes, he heard the sound of flushing water. So, he tried to relax again. He felt tired and sore, and he'd promised the doctor to take it easy. He picked up the remote from the coffee table and clicked on the TV. There was news coverage of the helicarriers firing on each other. Then there was a picture of the Winter Soldier, and the anchor was saying he was still at large and considered armed and dangerous. Steve switched it off.
"I am not armed."
Steve had hoped he'd turned it off quick enough. He noted that Bucky hadn't said he wasn't dangerous. "You're safe here."
"What will they do if they find me?"
Steve took a deep breath. "They're not going to."
"That wasn't my question."
Right. "They'll put you in prison for your crimes."
"Crimes? I thought you were criminals. That's what I was told. Do they have a prison that could hold me?"
Steve considered that. Bucky's arm could crack asphalt and concrete. They probably didn't. "Probably not, but let's not find out. You're not that guy anymore."
"I was yesterday."
"Yesterday, when you were, you didn't remember me," Steve told him. "You didn't remember who you are."
"Today, I know my name. I do not know who I am today."
Steve's chest hurt at that. Bucky didn't say anything more. He sat down on the couch again, didn't relax, and just looked around the room. "What do you do with the hours?"
Steve accepted the change in topic. "Depends. Some people go to their jobs, usually five days a week. Most work eight hours with a break for lunch in the middle. They come home in the evening, eat dinner and relax, maybe watch TV, check their email. I used to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. But they're gone. Not quite sure what I'll do, but I'm supposed to be resting right now. You should, too. Yesterday was a hard day."
"Does Sam have a job?"
"He does. He works for the VA. Veteran's Affairs. Veterans are people who used to be in the armed services, like the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard. He helps people who have gone through bad things, seen bad things."
"What kind of bad things?"
Steve blew out a breath. "Maybe they saw a friend die. Maybe they saw too many people die. Or they have a hard time knowing they had to kill people. Some of them got hurt themselves. You are a veteran; so am I. We were in the Army."
Sam returned to find Steve and Bucky on the couch and no holes in his walls. So far, so good.
Steve looked over the back of the couch. "Need help carrying anything?"
"No lifting, remember?" Sam reminded him. "It'll just take me a trip or two." He walked to the coffee table and set a suitcase in front of Barnes. "This is for you. Clothes mostly, toothbrush, razor things like that." He unzipped the front pocket. "But I also got you some of these." He pulled out a stack of composition notebooks and a packet of pens. "Figured you could use a place to write your memories, your thoughts, new things you learn." He dropped his brows, now questioning. "If you remember how to write."
Barnes took the notebooks and pens. He set them back on the suitcase.
Sam moved on. He put the other suitcase on the floor by Steve. "You get one, too. It'll make it easier to keep the place clean. It wasn't built with three grown men in mind."
He looked around, trying to decide where he'd put the record player. He moved a few things from beside the TV and then returned to the car to retrieve it. When he got back, Steve had opened his suitcase to find five records from his collection. "You guys hungry for lunch?"
Natasha sat back and stretched her neck. There were thousands of files to sift through. And thus far, none of them mentioned 'James Barnes,' 'Sergeant James Barnes' or any other variation of his name she could think of. But then, it didn't surprise her that much. He wasn't a person to them, but a weapon.
She pulled out her phone and dialed Tony. She had something to tell him anyway.
"Natasha, hope you didn't get too singed in all that mess down there."
"Well, I did get shot," she told him. "You do know that Hydra had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D now, right?"
"Kind of hard not to know when you broke the internet yesterday with that mega dump. Been picking through it looking for interesting tidbits."
"I was hoping you could do more than pick." She tapped away on her phone. "I'm sending you my coordinates. Can you bring one of your fancy pocket computers?"
"Well, I was supposed to go to my Pilates class tonight, but I guess I can stop off and get us some dinner. Be there in sixty."
The phone clicked off. She tapped in another number. "Olga, hello. I need to call in that favor."
That done, she decided to gather everything she already knew about the Winter Soldier, or Bucky Barnes. Barnes, technically, was classified 'Missing in Action' as no body was ever found. Easy to know why now. But he had apparently fallen to his death from a train in the Austrian Alps in 1944. Approximate height of the fall was four hundred feet. She paused at that. She hadn't thought even Steve could survive a fall like that. The Hulk maybe, but a human?
She backed up. Steve had said he was captured with his unit in 1943. They were used as forced labor in a factory. Barnes was beaten badly and became ill. Then he was taken away. That was when Arnim Zola, the creepy computer Hydra goon, had experimented on him. Steve rescued him and the others before Zola could finish. He hadn't apparently noticed anything different about Bucky physically. None of the records from the war had mentioned Barnes being any stronger, for example. Only that he fully healed from his wounds and joined Rogers and the Howling Commandos as they took down Hydra facilities throughout Europe. Steve thought something Zola did had to have helped him survive the fall.
So, he survived. But he was probably injured. Maybe he lost the arm then? Now Hydra had him. They gave him the metal arm, eventually gave him the full super soldier treatment. They zapped away his memory and kept him in cryofreeze until they had a mission for him. Which explained why she hadn't found him after he killed her engineer. He was tucked away in a vat somewhere, frozen solid.
But if Zola was successful in making Barnes a super soldier, why weren't all of Hydra's soldiers super?
Tony found her at a conference table. "Lovely place, love the ambiance."
"If you were here yesterday, you'd understand," she told him. She backed away from the table and helped him set out the food.
Tony set his hip on the table and lifted one of his breadsticks. "So, tell me the story, the real story, not the one I heard on the news."
"That would take a few hours," she replied. "I'll give you the Cliff's Notes version. Steve, me and the Strike Team infiltrated a S.H.I.E.L.D ship that was overrun by pirates. Steve secured the hostages and I secured the data. I gave that data to Fury." She took a bite of her spaghetti, twirling the noodles around her fork. "That night, Hydra tried very hard to kill Fury. Shot up his car. He made it to Steve's apartment only to get sniped right through the walls. He gives Steve that data, Steve goes after the shooter. I see him at the hospital where we watch Fury die."
"Fury's dead?" Tony hadn't expected that. "That wasn't on the news."
Natasha just waved her fork. "Steve said the shooter was strong, fast, with a metal arm. I told him I'd tangled with him before. But that's getting ahead of ourselves. We wanted to see what was on that drive. It led us back to Camp Lehigh, where we found a secret elevator leading to a secret computer lab."
Now Tony was getting excited. "Do tell."
Natasha shook her head. "They were ancient, but there was a USB drive. We put it in and this creepy face lit up on the screens. Dr. Arnim Zola. From back in World War II days. Seems we invited him in with Project Paper Clip. But he didn't change his ways. He told us he built up Hydra as a parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D. Showed clips of how they'd manipulated events, led to wars." She put her fork down and laid a hand on his knee. "One of his clips was your father."
Tony stood. "Dad? In Hydra?"
"No, Tony." She watched him, kept eye contact. "Killed by Hydra."
Tony felt his insides get squishy. He needed to move. He stood and walked a few steps away. "Dad—and Mom—were killed in car accident."
"Zola implied it wasn't an accident. That's all I got, but thought you should know."
Tony sat but he'd lost his appetite. He pushed his plate away. "The rest of the story then?"
"S.H.I.E.L.D blew up the lab. Steve and his shield saved my life. We went to a friend's place to lay low. Then we realized we couldn't trust anyone at S.H.I.E.L.D and that Agent Sitwell had been on that ship. So, we kidnapped him."
"S.H.I.E.L.D is trying to kill you and kidnapped him?" How'd they even get close?
"The friend. Sam Wilson." She pointed her fork at his spaghetti. "You gonna eat that? I missed lunch."
Tony waved it toward her. "Sam Wilson?"
"Ex-pararescue. Got these nifty wings. So, with his help, we kidnapped Sitwell. He told us what was going on. S.H.I.E.L.D had this big project: Insight. Three helicarriers, think you helped with their engines. Zola's algorithm was going to help them use those helicarriers to target everyone who might stand against Hydra, killing tens of thousands at a time. So, we plan to take Sitwell to S.H.I.E.L.D HQ, use his DNA to get in and stop the launch of those helicarriers."
"Sounds reasonable if maybe over-simplified." Okay, maybe he was hungry. He pulled the plate halfway back and took a bite.
"Mmm-hmm," she said. She grabbed the wine and tipped up the bottle for a drink. "Then the shooter landed on the car, grabbed Sitwell and threw him into oncoming traffic."
"Who is this shooter?" Tony took his last breadstick.
"The Winter Soldier. Tangled with him before, remember. Credited with two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years. Long story short, we end up fighting him in the street. And he is strong, fast, and he does have metal arm. He's focused, merciless. He shot me, was about to hit me again when Steve got to him. They fought it out hand-to-hand or hand-to-knife, but then Steve knocks his mask off and recognizes him."
Tony expected a twist now. Steve had been a capcicle just two years ago. And if this guy had been around fifty years, Steve had to have known him before the ice cube. "Who?"
"Bucky Barnes, childhood friend and the 'only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country.'"
"Oh, that had to have stung. Wait, gave his life. Died. How is he not dead? And if he's not dead, he'd be in his nineties."
"Well, that's what I'm looking for in the data." She handed him the bottle. "So back in '43, Barnes is captured with his unit. He's experimented on by Zola. Cap rescues him, they fight Hydra. Year later, Barnes falls four hundred feet to his supposed death. Steve thinks the experiments helped him survive. But I haven't finished the story."
Tony had pulled out his computer, but he put it on the table and leaned back. "Go on."
"We were captured, the three of us. The Strike Team. They were going to execute us, but Maria Hill intercepted and brought us here to the dam. Where we met Fury again."
"Ooh, he pulled the old fakeroo!"
"We planned our assault to stop the launch or commandeer the helicarriers. Steve, Sam and Maria infiltrated the Triskellion. Steve gave a Captain America speech—"
"Very inspiring, I'm sure."
"Always. Then he and Sam headed to the helicarriers. We had to swap out a control disk on each of the three."
"And what did you do?"
"I infiltrated the Council. Alexander Pierce was dirty. I stopped him making his not-so-inspiring speech. That's when I started getting the data ready to dump."
"You'd need two Alpha levels to disable the encryption."
"That's when Fury arrived. He and Pierce, under duress, disabled it. Data's out. But Pierce starts blowing holes in the council members' lapels. He threatens to blow mine. So, I used my Widow's bite on myself and Nick killed Pierce."
"Did they get the chips switched?" Man, he wished he'd brought popcorn.
"Cap did the first, Sam the second. Then Cap had to fight the Winter Soldier for the third. Got it just in time. Helicarriers fire on each other. You saw the news. While he's fighting, he talks to his friend. We find them soaking wet on the banks of the Potomac. Cap's half-dead and the Winter Soldier is just sitting there beside him."
That was anti-climactic. Maybe she didn't know how to tell a good story. "That's it, just chitter chatter?"
She smiled. "He must have said the magic words. Barnes doesn't try to kill us. He lets me disarm him, tells us where his base is. Brought him here. Fury had the base cleared." She picked up a tablet. "Sam and I went to check it out. Found this odd machine. I recorded this from the computers there."
It obviously wasn't one of his tablets. He couldn't throw the screen up. There was a half-naked man with long hair and clean-shaven face sitting in a chair surrounded by some sort of halo and computer screens. Pierce walks in and slaps him. Bare-chest speaks. Asks about the man on the bridge. Pierce gives him a story. Then, 'I knew him.' Pierce moves closer, tries the inspiring speech but he's no Cap. 'But I knew him.' Pierce wants to put him in 'cryo-freeze' but he's been out too long, so he says to 'wipe him' and start again. Then the halo turns and Bare-chest screams. "Ouch"
"Yeah," she reached over to stop the video. "Goes on for twenty-minutes. After that, he doesn't remember that he knows the guy from the bridge. Then it's just maintenance: fix the arm, feed him something, and so on. Barnes is just confused, letting it happen. Then in the morning, Pierce comes back, plays a recording of ten Russian words. And he changes. He says, in Russian, 'Ready to comply.' Now he's the Winter Soldier."
Tony stood and paced as he put it together. "He falls four hundred feet, Hydra gets their claws into him again."
"Gives him the super soldier serum..." she added.
Tony nodded. "They had to have used that machine, or an antique version of it, and programmed him with those words. Then they stick him in the ice box until they're ready to have him kill people."
"Pretty sure there's a lot of torture in between there." Natasha turned her chair toward him and leaned back.
"Yeah, there'd have to be." Tony went back and sat. "So, you want to find the Winter Soldier in that data dump."
"I want everything there is to know about him. What they did, what they made him do."
Tony blew out a breath. "There a chance they made him crash my parents' car?"
She put a hand on his arm. "There is. But Tony, he's the not same now. He knows they took his memories. He knows they treated him like an object, a weapon. He doesn't know anything about being a human being. He needs our help. No matter what he's done."
Tony wasn't completely convinced. Yeah, they tortured the guy just a few days ago but if that wiped his memory, he wouldn't remember being wiped. "He doesn't remember anything before the wipe? How does he just believe Steve?"
"That's it," she said. "He does. Just not much. He remembered something from what Steve said. He had questions. Then this morning, he remembered a few days before the wipe. He remembers being in Pierce's kitchen and getting the order to kill Steve and me. That lead to the bridge."
Tony pulled up the Hydra data and had Jarvis sort it. "We've got German, English, Russian, Italian." He'd make his mind up after the data.
"German," she said, scooting her chair closer. "See if we can find what they did to him in '43. And Russian. He has a red star on his shoulder. Maybe we'll find what they did after the fall."
Natasha was exhausted. Even with Jarvis's help, it was a slow crawl. They'd found all they could from '43. The factory he'd been held in was blown up and most of Zola's notes went with it. They only had a single journal entry. Zola had given him a series of injections. It didn't say what they contained, only that the subject had tolerated them without expiring and that his pneumonia had cleared up during the series. At least Steve had gotten Barnes out of that.
Tony was still working, sifting files and translating from Russian with the help of an algorithm. She walked back to where they had kept Barnes. She laid down on the bed there and tried to fall asleep. But all this talk of torture had led her own memory down a path she didn't enjoy. She remembered arriving at the Red Room, the dancing, the gymnastics, the shooting. She hadn't been brainwashed, but she had been programmed in a sense. Indoctrinated, manipulated, pressured. But in the end, she had knowingly gone along with it. And she'd been trying to balance her ledger ever since. Barnes would have a lot of red in his ledger, too. Not his fault. But if he eventually remembered all he'd done, would he crack under the weight of it?
