AN: I read somewhere that pre-serum Steve was colorblind. I do not know if this is canon or fanon but for the purpose of this fic pre-serum Steve was colorblind. I haven't found any mention of the type of his color blindness but in this fic I'm going with monochromacy. Monochromats possess a complete inability to distinguish any colors and perceive only variations in brightness.


Steve is alone when he wakes up. The bed is too small and the room is too white; the walls, the door, his clothes, the light on the ceiling that doesn't shine yellow. For a moment he thinks that he is colorblind again and frail, and his heart constricts in his chest, but a quick look at his hands shows that they are still big and strong and his next breath comes easily, without a wheeze.

Then he sees a mark on the inside of his elbow, almost completely faded. He would have missed it if he had his old eyes.

They took his blood.


The doors don't have a handle, not on his side. Kicking them down doesn't work, and running into walls doesn't bring them down.

Hours later, he punches a wall, frustrated, and the skin on his knuckles splits open and his blood leaves a smear. Red, he thinks, looking at it, he could paint the walls.

They will cut him open anyway.

He chases the black thoughts away, and goes to sit on the bed. He lifts his feet up. The room is chilly and his feet are bare.

He doesn't see a camera inside the room, but he knows there must be someone watching him. Someone will come to him, sooner or later.

He closes his eyes and prays that Sam is okay.


Sam is not okay. Sam is bleeding out on the floor of an empty Hydra base. He played possum when they dragged the unconscious Steve away. I let them, he thinks, and the thought is poison, hurting from the inside.

Sam knows he couldn't have helped. Sam can't move his legs. Sam can't move his arms.

Sam can barely move his head when he hears a sound.

"Where is Steve?" Barnes asks, crouching down.

"Hy- Hyd-" Sam tries but his tongue feels heavy and refuses to form –ra.

Barnes nods, understanding. There is something horrible in his eyes, black and burning and devastating (heartbreaking).

He pats Sam on the shoulder, "You'll live." He sounds sure of it, so Sam chooses to believe him.

Barnes lifts his head, suddenly alert, "Help is coming." He rises to his feet, "I'll get Steve," he adds before leaving.

Super soldiers, Sam thinks resignedly when, a few seconds later, he hears the sound of cars, which must be what alerted Barnes.

People swarm the place; someone checks him over, secures the neck brace and lifts him up on a stretcher.

He manages a shaky smile when he sees Natasha. She's very pale. "Snow white," he tries to say but it comes out garbled. He smiles loopily. Natasha looks toward someone on his left-

Steve?

-who says something about strong drugs and-

No Steve.

He must have said it out loud because Natasha comes closer. "Where is Steve?" She asks, urgently. Sam blinks, slowly.

In a tower, guarded by a monster, he wants to say. It has many heads, its breath is poison and its blood is death.

Sam's eyes close to Natasha's frantic face.


Steve closes his eyes and tries to sleep, but the lights are still on and the light goes through his eyelids and he sees red. He hides his face in the crook of his elbow and it helps, a little.

He manages to fall asleep eventually, but when he wakes up he feels wrong. His limbs are heavy and there is a new mark on his arm. He stares at it until it heals. It doesn't take long.

A cold fear grips him. He was drugged, for who knows how long. He could have healed from a lot worse without being aware of it.

Perhaps I am missing a kidney, he thinks. He doesn't feel like he is missing a kidney. When he checks himself over, he doesn't find any new scars, but it takes a lot to scar him these days.

He doesn't feel thirst or hunger and he knows that he should. He hasn't eaten in quite a while.

He doesn't remember having eaten.

It is a horrifying thought.

"Steve Rogers," he says out loud, for a moment scared he might not remember his own name.

Bucky didn't remember his.

He tries to figure out how long it has been since he and Sam attacked that Hydra base. It is hard to tell. He doesn't think it's been more than a couple of days.


It's been three weeks.


Sam wakes up after four days, feeling like crap.

When Natasha visits him, he knows from the look on her face that Steve is still gone.

"Hydra has him," he says.

"We can't find him," Natasha confesses.

Sam hesitates before saying, "I don't think you'll have to."

"What."

"Barnes went after them."

Her face darkens, "How do you know he wasn't the one who lured you into a trap? Hydra could have gotten him back."

"You didn't see him, Natasha."

"He is a good actor. He did covert ops before. You yourself found some of the mission reports."

"There are things you can't fake." He knows that nothing he says will convince her. "There is no one who knows Barnes's trigger words anymore. We got the last one-"

"They captured Steve," she interrupts, "was it worth it?"

"I think we both know what Steve's answer would be."


Steve is pumped full of drugs when the doors open, he can't rise to his feet.

A man comes inside, carrying a simple wooden chair. He sets it next to the bed and sits down. For a long minute he observes Steve, and then he leans back in the chair and steeples his fingers. "You've been making trouble, Captain Rogers."

Steve glares.

The man smiles, amused, "The drugs are effective, aren't they? We have a lot of experience in keeping super soldiers down."

Steve turns his head the other way, seething.

"Sam Wilson is dead."

Steve flinches.

"The Asset is in cryo."

Steve looks back at him. "You are lying." The words come out slurred.

"Am I?"

"Yes."

The man leans forward, "It doesn't matter whether I'm lying or not. It doesn't matter whether you believe me. You will be questioned and wiped. You won't remember to care."

Steve pales.

"And then, you will be put to cryo until it is safe to use you."

"No."

The man smiles, "Yes."


He is questioned and it hurts.


It hurts.


It hur-


He is alone when he wakes up. The bed is too small and the room is too white; the walls, the door, his clothes, the light on the ceiling that doesn't shine yellow.

The doors open and he rises to his feet, more curious than afraid.

The man who enters is dressed in black, with a multitude of weapons on himself. There is a gun in his hand, pointed down. Blood drips down his face, onto the white, white floor.

The man comes to stand in front of him and raises a metal hand, reaching out.

He shies away.

"Steve?" The man asks.

He doesn't know any Steve. The man makes a pained sound when he hears that. He wishes he knew a Steve because no one should sound like that.

"We need to go," the man says, and hesitates, "will you come with me?"

"Who are you?" he asks.

"I am Bucky. And you are Steve."

"I am not Steve."

"Do you remember not being Steve?"

He considers the question seriously, "No."

"You are Steve."

"Okay."

His easy compliance seems to anger the man named Bucky.

"Let's go." Bucky leaves the room.

Steve goes after him. He pauses in the doorway. The room behind him is all he knows, and the room in front of him is filled with bodies. He and Bucky are the only ones still breathing. He thinks he shouldn't, but Steve relaxes and hurries after Bucky.

In the next room, Bucky heads over to the desk and picks something up from it. He hands it over to Steve.

It's a shield. It is red, white, and blue, with a star in the middle. He fits it on his arm, the motion feeling natural. He's done this before.

He looks at Bucky. There is a star painted on his metal arm. He didn't notice it before. It looks like Bucky's red star could fit into his white one, with room to spare.


They meet some resistance when they go outside.

A man raises a gun.

Steve flings the shield before he can think about it. It knocks the man down and Bucky puts a bullet in him before he can get up.


"I'm sorry," Bucky says once they are in the car, driving away.

Steve is turned in his seat, watching the burning building through the car's rear window. He looks at Bucky when he speaks, who meets his eyes, unflinchingly.

"What for?"

"You were trying to help me, and they caught you. If I had let you find me… If I hadn't run…"

Steve looks confused.

Bucky sighs.

Steve starts playing with the radio, changing the station every few seconds.


They find a cheap hotel to stay in for the next night. It is moderately clean, the springs of the bed dig into Steve's back and the shower is cold. The walls are peach colored, and the bedding is floral. Steve likes it. It's not white.

In the morning, Bucky goes out to get some breakfast and warns Steve to stay inside.

"I want to go outside," he says, belligerently. He can see the sky through the window. It looks so blue.

"People know your face," Bucky tells him, "and they are looking for you."

"Why?"

"Because you are missing."

"I know where I am."

"The others don't. There are people who care about you."

"And is no one looking for you? What about the people who care about you?"

"There are people who are looking for me as well." Bucky answers. He doesn't tell Steve that the only ones who care about him are in the room. "Not as many as there are looking for you."

Steve scowls and Bucky takes it as a good sign. The first few wipes are not that hard to overcome. It is the constant wiping that leaves the most damage. Personality tends to return before the memories. Steve is recovering.

He must be.

"Your face was all over the news," he tells Steve. "There was panic at first, when people heard you were taken. Stark and the others couldn't keep it a secret forever. There are numerous conspiracy theories about what really happened. There were many alleged sightings of you. People are still on the lookout. If someone sees you, everyone will hear about it. We can't afford for that to happen. You need time to recover."

It is obvious that Steve has no idea why there would be panic because he was gone, or who Stark is, but he looks like he wants to argue.

Steve always wants to argue.

Bucky knows better than to let him. "I won't be long. Don't go anywhere."

Steve nods his compliance and Bucky leaves.

As soon as Steve is sure that Bucky is gone, he opens the door and goes outside.

"Going somewhere?"

Steve freezes for a second, and then he looks to the right only to see Bucky leaning against the wall, waiting for him.

"Dammit."

"Go back inside."

"No. It's a free country-"

"You don't remember your own name, but you remember that-"

"- If I want to go outside, I will go outside."

"It's not safe."

"I don't care."

"Don't make me knock you out."

Steve glares, "You wouldn't dare," he turns around.

Everything goes black.


When he comes back to consciousness, he is in the room, on the bed, his head hurts and something smells delicious.

"You knocked me out," he accuses, half angry, half incredulous.

Bucky looks completely unapologetic, "Eat," he says and points at the food on the nightstand next to Steve.

Steve considers refusing, just to be difficult, but then his stomach growls loudly and he snatches the food and wolfs it down. He glares at Bucky, but he seems unaffected.

Bucky snaps a picture of him with his phone while he is eating, then he taps the screen a few times and in the end destroys the phone. "It's time to leave." He tosses Steve a bag, "I got you some new clothes."

"I thought you said that we will not travel by day."

"We will today."

"Where are we going, anyway?"

"I'm taking you home."


It is eight o'clock in the morning when Natasha comes to Sam's home and demands breakfast.

He lets her in. He moves slowly, dragging his right leg. His back spasms and he can't stop the wince.

"I'm fine," he says when he sees how she is looking at him. "It doesn't hurt so much anymore. Doctors said that I will make a full recovery. I was lucky."

She nods, and even smiles slightly when he puts a full plate of food in front of her. She looks tired and worried; nothing new on Steve, then.

He is just about to dig into his own breakfast when his phone pings, indicating he has a new message.

It is from an unknown number.

He opens it and Natasha looks up at his gasp. He wordlessly hands her over the phone.

It's a picture of Steve, eating a burger, followed by the text:

Found him. B.


Bucky and Steve travel for days, at night, occasionally stopping and spending some time in a hotel, to shower and rest. Bucky doesn't hurry on purpose. Steve needs time to get better and Bucky knows what it feels like to be wiped and then to start remembering. The less people around them the better.


The first thing Steve remembers is Bucky, long haired, with a mask and coming at him with a knife.

Luckily, Bucky is a light sleeper and wakes up before Steve can bludgeon him with the hotel lamp.


The next few days are tense.


"I'm not trying to kill you, Steve."

"I remember differently."

"To be fair, I was trying to kill you then."

"Untie me."

"No."

Steve tenses, his eyes narrowing to slits.

"If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead. I've had plenty of opportunities to kill you."

Steve keeps quiet.

"You'll remember soon."

Steve scoffs, "For all I know, you could be the one who made me forget."

"Why would I free you then?"

Steve shrugs, as much as the ropes he's tied with allow, "It could all be a part of your nefarious plan."

Bucky looks at him blankly, and Steve glares back, despite feeling suddenly a bit silly.

Bucky sighs, "I'll untie you in the morning, after I get some sleep."

True to his word, in the morning Bucky unties him. Steve attacks as soon as he is free, but Bucky is expecting it.

Few minutes later, they are both sitting on the floor, bruised and bloody and glaring at each other. The room is in shambles.

"You do know that we are going to have to pay for the damages, right?"

Steve smirks, "I am not paying for anything."


Steve starts remembering more. He remembers his mother, in shades of grey and a woman in red; he remembers a man, strapped to a table, mumbling a string of numbers. The memory ends before he can reach him and see his face but he remembers feeling that he knows him.

He remembers a flying hammer, eating shawarma and drawing a monkey with a shield.

He asks Bucky to buy him a sketchbook and pencils the next time he goes out.


Steve draws and draws and writes down names that feel familiar and words he doesn't know the meaning of but knows he should. He writes down the numbers that the man in his memories mumbles and he is too focused on the paper and the pencil in his hand to see how Bucky goes white when he sees them.


The next day, Bucky goes to a store and returns wrong. Steve notices as soon as Bucky steps inside the room.

"What happened?"

"Nothing," Bucky says, with a heavy Russian accent, and Steve goes cold.

He gets up and approaches him slowly. "Bucky?"

"Who the hell is Bucky?" Bucky asks, bewildered, with no trace of the Russian accent.

Steve knows those words. Knows that voice saying them, in that way. "You are," he says, and he is looking, so he can tell the exact moment that Bucky comes back to himself. It leaves Steve shaken. Something tickles at the back of his mind, impatient and important and he should already know this, but, "What was that?" he asks and Bucky pretends not to hear him.

"Bucky?" He asks again, not willing to let this go. His head throbs, like it is going to split open and spill all his secrets out.

"I get lost sometimes."

"Why? How? I don't understand." He does, somehow, he does does does

Bucky wants to answer, but-

there are screams, inside his head, shrill

-he feels himself starting to slide back down and the blackness closes in, but then Steve's frantic Bucky, jolts him back up and he finds himself being shaken. He grabs Steve by the forearms and breathes heavily. He is trembling, and barely standing. When he looks up and meets Steve's eyes there is something old in them, something familiar.

"Hi, Steve," he manages to get out, "long time no see."

"Hi, Buck," Steve responds and his voice breaks when he says the name.

He helps Bucky sit down on the bed and remains standing in front of him, overwhelmed. Things are slotting into place inside his head. He feels raw and his head hurts but it also feels good. Solid.

Bucky looks up at him, briefly, after a few minutes, and then looks around the room, searching. "Where are Dugan and Morita?" he asks.

"They are dead," Steve answers without thinking, and it feels weird to suddenly have a head full of memories, when just a few minutes ago it was mostly blank space.

Bucky's shocked what drags him back to the present.

Steve takes a deep breath before he asks, "What years is it?" Bucky tells him, confused, that it is 1944 and Steve stays quiet for too long, conflicted, because it is Sergeant Barnes looking back at him from those eyes; not the Winter Soldier, and not Bucky who spent decades as a prisoner and remembers it, but Bucky, as he was before the fall.

Steve wishes-

desperately, selfishly, humanly

-that he stays that way.

He pushes those feelings down and straightens his back. "It is not 1944." Every word he says while trying to jog Bucky's memory feels like a blow. Finally, Bucky blinks, his expression clears and the weight of years pushes his shoulders down.

Steve waits a few minutes to see if Bucky gets confused again, and when he doesn't, he goes to the bathroom and locks the door. He splashes water on his face and grips the sink. He looks in the mirror. "Steve Rogers," he says to his reflection, "Steven Grant Rogers."

After a few minutes, he hears Bucky-

James Buchanan Barnes

- stand up and come closer.

"You okay, Steve?" he asks from the other side.

"…No. You?"

"I could use a drink."

"I can't get drunk," Steve admits, longingly.

"Me neither," Bucky responds sadly.


"I met some Russian tourists while I was out," Bucky explains, after Steve comes out. "I translated for them. One moment everything was fine, and the next it was all jumbled up," he says, tapping his head.

"Does it happen often?"

"Less and less as the time goes by. This was the first time in the last couple of months."

"I wish you had let me help you. Why didn't you come to me, or let me find you. I could have-"

"You were annoying and I was confused and busy and it was my choice."

"But-"

"My choice," Bucky repeats, like it matters more than anything and Steve opens his mouth before-

Oh, God

-it hits him, that for decades Bucky didn't have one at all. Steve knew this, he did, he just didn't let himself think too much about it because it was too horrible to contemplate.

He always shies away from thinking about those decades. Instead he is hunted by that day it all began. He curses that godforsaken train and his serum-enhanced body whose longer reach still wasn't long enough to reach Bucky and prevent his captivity from happening.

Sometimes he thinks awful things-

Of all the Howling Commandoes, why did it have to be him?

-and he regrets them but not and-

Bucky sighs and hands him over a cell phone. "I let Wilson know that you were with me. He probably told the others but I have no idea how they took it. You should probably call them."


"They'll pick us up in a couple of hours," Steve says after hanging up.

"They'll pick you up in a couple of hours."

Steve knew this was coming. "We should stick together," he tries, "Hydra-"

"-is weak right now. Especially after we destroyed the base they kept you in."

"They are still out there."

"I doubt they can ever truly be gone. Cut off one head…"

"At least stay long enough to meet the team." Steve insists, looking decidedly mulish.

"No." Steve is not the only one who knows how to be stubborn.


Bucky is gone by the time Natasha and Clint arrive.

"He left," Steve tells Natasha when he sees her furtively glancing around, "he is not going to suddenly jump out from around the tree."

Natasha glares but relaxes, the tension visibly leaving her.

"So," Clint starts, "how crazy is he?"

"He's not crazy."

Clint looks at him knowingly, "He must have a few screws loose. You don't spend seventy years as a brainwashed assassin and get out of it completely sane. How bad is it?"

Steve relents, "He's mostly good."

"You spent days with him, and that is all you have to say?"

"I wasn't quite myself during that time."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Natasha asks, wary.

"It means that I wasn't quite myself during that time."

"What did Hydra do to you?"

Steve doesn't answer Natasha's question.

He remembers the wipe now, and what came before it. Still, he is bothered more by the time he spent drugged to unconsciousness. He knows now that he spent more than a couple of days in that state. What did Hydra do to him? What-

He feels like there are ants, crawling on his skin and under the skin and-

He doesn't notice that he is scratching at his arm until Clint grabs his hand and stops him. There is understanding in his eyes, the terrible kind that comes with personal experience.

"Don't scratch," he says, "it doesn't help. You will only hurt yourself."

"I heal quickly."

Clint doesn't say You don't, not from this.