He sleeps for a handful of hours and wakes with a new memory in his mind and a nameless but familiar emotion in his body. The Soldier rises—he never manages to fall back asleep right after rousing, so he does not bother to try—and locates Sam. The man is still unconscious in his own bed, so the Soldier stands, waiting, replaying this last recovered memory over and over within his head.

When Sam wakes the Soldier gives him a full five seconds to gain his bearings before he speaks. "I am feeling something not in the book."

Sam swears loudly and his body slams back with considerable force against the headboard. His breathing is erratic. The Soldier remains motionless, silent, until the man collects himself. "Bucky, what the hell?"

"I am feeling something not in the book."

With a sigh, Sam shakes his head. His body is trembling minutely as though he has just performed an act of great physical exertion. Or as though he is sliding into shock. "We're gonna talk about knocking later," he says. "And about not standing in the dark in silence like you're goddamn Michael Myers. And probably etiquette as a whole. What are you feeling?"

The Soldier gives Sam what he believes is called "a look." If he knew what the feeling was, he wouldn't be here.

"I just woke up to find an assassin staring down at me like an overgrown house cat," Sam says, motioning for the Soldier to sit. "Forgive me if it takes a second to get firing on all cylinders. What's up?"

"There was a mission in Birmingham." Why he recalls the location but not the date is beyond the Soldier. The mattress beneath him is hard. "I planted explosives. Two in…places with people and alcohol."

"Bars?"

A shrug. "The third outside of a building…a place with money."

"A bank."

"The third failed to detonate. My handler—" He can't see the man's face or bring to mind a name. It hadn't been Pierce. "Was not happy. I was—" His voice catches though he knows the word. The Soldier moves his arms before his torso, bending the left in front of his chest as that hand forms the "s" sign, palm down. The index finger of his right hand points, and he sweeps it down the left forearm to the elbow. Punish.

He had been struck about the head multiple times. The blows had little impact, so he had leaned into one to aide in the reprimand. A flare of pain, a sudden dizziness, and blood had come trickling from his ear.

"It feels…hot. Teeth—" He moves his arms back before his body, bent, left palm lying flat and facing up, and rubs his right fist in circles against it. Grind. "Everything is tight and I want to yell."

"You remember feeling like that any other time?"

He thinks of shoving Steve away from him and into a wall. Knocking the computer chip from Steve's hand on the helicarrier. Grabbing Sam by the collar in DC and dragging him halfway across the table. "Да?"

"All right." Sam's face is impassive. He gives no hint as to the correct answer to this question of sensation. "What do you think that emotion might be?"

"I feel—I think…" He closes his eyes. "Обозленный. Angry?" His eyes open, scanning the man's face with apprehension. It can't be the right answer.

"It's as good a description of anger as I've ever heard. But 'angry' was in the book, remember?" Sam seems to be scrutinizing the Soldier just as the Soldier was analyzing him.

He averts his eyes. "It felt not right. I am not made to be angry at handlers."

"Bucky, emotions can't be programmed. Anger's an involuntary sensation. You can control how you respond to anger, but you can't keep yourself from feeling it." One of Sam's hands rubs at his back, where he collided with the headboard. "Any idea why you were angry?"

"He called me stupid. I'm…" Metal fingers tap at his temple as he searches for the word. "Not stupid? I'm a sniper. You have to know things to be a sniper. The direction of wind and how fast it goes and elevation and…you have to know things. I could make shots over 2000 meters away. I'm not stupid."

"No," Sam says, "you're not."

"And…I didn't make the bomb. What went wrong with it, I did not control." Why had a sniper been utilized to plant explosives in the first place? Who had approved this mission? "I was damaged for it but someone else caused it." He cannot help but flinch as he speaks. This is talking back and that has never been allowed.

"And it's perfectly reasonable to be angry about that. It's not wrong or bad. They were wrong to punish you for something out of your control, okay?"

"They were wrong?"

"Yeah." Sam stretches his arms over his head and the Soldier can hear a crack through his spine. "And you look like you could use some time to think that over, so I'm gonna grab a shower, all right? If you need something you can come in, but announce it, would you? If I open the shower curtain and you're lingering outside it, I'll probably drop dead."

The Soldier remains seated on the mattress. He watches Sam step through the doorway and again remembers Peggy Carter. He can't place the emotion he feels when he thinks of her well enough to determine whether it was in the book. Closing his eyes, the Soldier tries to repeat the process that Sam just led him through so he can pin down the elusive sensation.

She had walked in. Steve had stood up, and so had he. He thinks the first thing he noticed was how beautiful she was. He thinks the second thing he noticed was her eyes. They were locked onto Steve. Everyone's were, in those days. It was inevitable; Steve was a super soldier. He remembers feeling something then: tightness in his stomach, as if the abdominal walls were guarding themselves against an injury.

"Captain," Peggy Carter had said.

"Agent Carter," Steve had said.

"Ma'am." That was Barnes.

Carter had glanced in his direction. It was the shortest look and then her eyes went right back to Steve's. There had been tension in his jaw. Was this anger? Why would he be angry with her? She was their ally and she had helped Steve into Austria to retrieve him. There is no logic in any anger toward her.

Perhaps it is not anger. When he feels angry there is heat throughout him and what he feels now is hollow.

"I see your top squad is prepping for duty," Carter had said.

Barnes said "You don't like music," and Carter's eyes still did not move. He'd felt exceptionally tense and exceptionally empty and the Soldier does not understand how the two sensations can coincide.

[did you ever look at him like that before he changed did you ever even see him then]

The Soldier's eyes open. Was that Barnes? Was that what he had thought?

"I do, actually." Carter again. She had a beautiful voice, a voice not unlike music, and when she spoke, it was obvious that Steve's world had come to focus on that voice alone. "I might even, when this is all over, go dancing."

"Well, what are we waitin' for?" Barnes had asked, but the Soldier doesn't think he'd wanted to dance. He had wanted

[he's my friend he needed me and you all took that away look at me see me don't take him from me]

to put distance between Steve and Carter. He had wanted Steve to rely on him.

"The right partner," Carter had said. She had not looked at him. Barnes could tell from her eyes that her world had come to rest on Steve as Steve's had narrowed to her. They were locked into an orbit that did not intersect with Barnes. The Soldier expects to feel some new and terrible sensation flood him, but Barnes had continued to feel so hollow.

By contrast, the Soldier feels cold. The wrong sort of cold.

James Buchanan Barnes had been—Jealous? Angry?—unhappy that Steve had become Captain America. He had felt obsolete. Steve was no longer frail and looked down upon. He didn't become winded on long flights of stairs or risk death each time the flu made its rounds. He likely couldn't even get the flu anymore. He was the hero he'd always been, only now everyone could see it, and Barnes had felt poorly for himself instead of proud for his best friend.

"I'm invisible," Barnes had said when Carter left. "I—I'm turning into you. This is a horrible dream."

The Soldier physically recoils, as if slapped. This was Steve's best friend? This was what Barnes had thought and how he had spoken to him? And this was the day that Steve had trusted him enough to invite him into the Howling Commandos?

He remembers that conversation now, though he does not want to.

"How 'bout you?" Steve had asked. "You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?"

"Hell no. That little guy from Brooklyn who was too dumb not to run away from a fight. I'm following him."

Too dumb not to run away from a fight. Too dumb. Steve Rogers is not dumb, just as the Soldier is not stupid. Why would Barnes call him that? It's a lie and it is cruel. The Soldier feels a tear slip from his eye but he wipes it away, refusing himself any catharsis that crying could provide.

James Buchanan Barnes was not just a poor soldier, or a careless one. He was not a friend who was too weak to keep himself from becoming a weapon.

James Buchanan Barnes was a monster.

"You all right, Bucky?" Sam asks. The Soldier is not sure when he returned.

He can't form words. He was awful and he has no place here and Steve deserves to know the truth about the person he considers a best friend, but how can he cause Steve more pain? How can he begin to find the language to explain how horrible Barnes was?

"I'm…thinking." He has to force the words.

"Uh-huh." He does not bother to try deciphering Sam's expression, too preoccupied with the evil lurking inside him. "How about you think over some breakfast?"

The Soldier follows after Sam, the weight of guilt and disgust growing with every step.

A/N: The Soldier is remembering the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974. The perpetrators of the explosions were never identified. I went back and forth on whether or not it was in poor taste to use them here, but considering all of the direct historical allusions in the original Winter Soldier comic storyline and the way Marvel movies tend to borrow from real life events (such as the Cuban missile crisis or Kennedy's assassination) I decided to bite the bullet and go for it.

Any shot fired from 1.25 kilometers or more is considered long-distance sniping and is extremely difficult to do. The snipers have to deal with a number of factors such as the direction and speed of the wind, the elevation, the air density, and even the rotation of the Earth.

My characterization of Bucky in the flashback is based on Sebastian Stan's response in an interview with Box Office:

"Do you think Bucky almost wishes he was the one turned into a super soldier?

No, I don't think so…It wasn't like, "Steve's this muscle guy and I want to be him." It's more like, "Oh god—he's grown up and what do I do?"

Translations for the Russian are as follows:

Да = Yes

Обозленный = Pissed off