A/N: holy crap, guys! 45 reviews for one chapter's a new record for this story, so my HUGE and GIANT thanks to each and every one of you :D (honestly, you guys make me want to Sputnik Bucky more often lol) Seriously though, I'm floored. DANG. Also, I'm sorry for ending the last chapter the way that I did (I'm also not sorry, though, because clearly I'm a terrible person) BUT hopefully getting this next chapter out in a timely manner will help make up for it :) "Hopefully" being the key word. Lol.
One word on the legal details of this story and the whole Sputnik thing: I know nothing about anything legal beyond what I've seen on TV and what I've read to research writing this case. Literally, I know nothing beyond the very basics lol, and I know that if this trial and such happened in real life, it would be BEYOND a circus. I say this because while I've done my best to keep the trial realistic, I'm also trying to maintain a certain flow and timeline here, so the consequences that the prosecutor will face for his actions are the ones that fit the story's needs the best. I'm sure that in real life things would go a bit differently, but I also think that in real life, Bucky would never have gotten a formal trial in the first place and he would have either been killed upon arrest or given a military tribunal. So I'm just doing the best I can and trying to kind of maintain the balance between realism and what'll help keep the story moving the way it needs to. So yeah... I just wanted to put that out there, because I've been very nervous about competently writing all the legal stuff (seriously, ACK) since day one, and I hope that it all translates as passably realistic. You guys can let me know if I fail miserably or squeak by on that one :)
ALSO ONE MORE NOTE. Ahead in this chapter is talk of torture, attempted suicide, and I guess what qualifies as body horror and mutilation, and technically self-harm also. There's nothing very graphic, but there's enough that I feel that a trigger warning is necessary. Heavy stuff ahead, guys.
But anyway, without further ado, behold the aftermath :D I love and adore you all! (And midnightwings96 for her ever-irreplaceable help!)
In her lifetime, Summer had witnessed some pretty chaotic things - her house being hit by a missile, Stark Tower being attacked, and HYDRA nearly killing both herself and her son - but yet none of it had prepared her for something as terrifying and shocking as what Richard Strong had just done to her husband.
The minute that the word "Sputnik" had left Bucky crumpling forward and hanging unconscious halfway over the witness stand, the court had erupted into gasps and shocked shouts and general mayhem. Summer and Steve both shot up out of their seats at the exact same time, not caring one bit about protocol or how the judge was immediately calling for order. Steve leapt over the divider and Summer jumped over it as best as she could, both of them rushing to Bucky despite how security forces were already converging on both Bucky and the prosecutor.
Summer thought the worst. She had no idea what had just happened or what was still happening, and for all she knew, Bucky wasn't merely unconscious but gone. Nothing could keep her away from him.
But despite her best efforts, two security guards grabbed her and restrained her before she could reach him. The judge was still yelling to no avail, and Steve had managed to gently grab Bucky and set him leaning back in his seat to check on him right when a team of paramedics came flooding in through the door, apparently on standby. When they took over and began an initial and quick examination, Steve rounded on Strong and asked him with absolutely murderous eyes, "What did you do to him?"
Two cops were on either side of Strong, keeping an eye on him but not moving to restrain him though nobody seemed to understand what he had done to to Bucky. "I used an old shutdown code in order to illustrate -"
Steve took a few more steps forward and loomed over the shorter man. "Are you HYDRA? How did you know what that word would do to him?"
"Step back, Rogers," Strong replied harshly. "We received a lot of information on Barnes from one of his former handlers, including that shutdown code."
Steve glared at the man, suddenly knowing full well at that moment who was responsible for this.
Meanwhile, Bucky was being loaded on to a stretcher and was still completely out. Summer was yelling questions at the medics and they were ignoring her, and two officers continued to hold her back until Natasha came to her aid and told the men to back off, and that she would take care of Summer.
"Come on," Natasha said, taking Summer's arm and leading her back into the gallery. When Summer fought her, Natasha grabbed her other arm and forced her to look at her. "Summer. Listen to me. He's fine. He's not dead, he's knocked out. You need to get yourself under control and get back in the gallery."
"But he's - where are they taking him?!" Summer asked somewhat hysterically as the medics began to quickly transport Bucky out of the room.
"I'll go with him," Steve said. "I'll make sure he gets to the medical wing at the Avengers facility."
"I'll come too," came Foggy's voice from Summer's right side. "If what he did has any lasting effect on Barnes at all, we can make them burn for this."
"I need to come too," Summer said.
"You two go," Natasha told Steve and Foggy. "We'll be right behind you."
Now that Bucky was out of the courtroom and some of the chaos was dying down, Summer gave in and let Natasha lead her back to the gallery. Strong and Matt were both standing, the latter stunned by events and quickly finding Summer once the judge called for five minutes for the court to get itself together so that he could properly take stock of things after.
"Go be with him," Matt told her. "I'll take care of this."
"Was that even legal?" Summer asked, her heart still racing out of control. "Can they get away with that?!"
"No," Matt assured her. "It could be grounds for a mistrial. I'll call you once I know something."
"Okay," Summer replied, thanking him before taking off with Natasha. Wanda headed out with them as well, and as soon as they cleared the doors of the courthouse, the press was on them like wild animals.
Despite Foggy and Steve's best efforts, the press had caught a glimpse of Bucky being loaded into the waiting ambulance and now speculation was running wild as to what had happened in the courtroom. Even with two Avengers at her side, Summer still had microphones shoved in her face and questions all but screamed at her, and it took all of her self control to not lose her mind and scream at them to back off.
Once they were all successfully in Natasha's car and safe from the cameras and the reporters, Summer let out a breath and looked down at her lap to find her hands shaking almost violently. Natasha quickly got the car into gear and sped away, glancing over at Summer when it was safe and saying, "Try to calm down. He's going to be fine."
"But how did they do that? I don't understand," Summer asked desperately. "How can one word do that?"
Nat shook her head. "There's a lot of ways to control someone. I've never seen one word shut someone down but it doesn't surprise me."
"What if it did more than that?" Summer asked, voice bordering on hysterical again. "What if he doesn't wake up?"
"He'll wake up," Natasha replied confidently. "It wasn't a kill code."
"Why would that man do this?" Wanda asked from the backseat. "He just proved his own arguments wrong. He proved HYDRA's control over Bucky."
"I think he was aiming for something else," Natasha said. "He also just proved that Bucky's still dangerous in ways that none of us might even know. If that code was buried in his brain somewhere, who knows what else might be. It's about fear. Dirty trick, but effective."
Summer dropped her face into her hands. One thing at a time, she told herself, deciding that once she knew that Bucky was okay and she could see it with her own eyes, then she'd freak out about everything else.
With Natasha and her extremely high clearance aiding her, Summer got to go back to medical wing of the Avengers facility immediately upon arrival. Wanda stayed with them, and the very moment that the correct room number came into view, Summer basically threw all of her body weight against the door and flung it open.
Inside the room was Steve, Foggy, two doctors and one nurse, and a still-unconscious Bucky lying on a standard issue hospital bed. His suit jacket was off but he was still in his own clothes, and Steve was at Summer's side as soon as he saw her come in.
"Hey," Steve said quietly, comfortingly touching her arm.
"Is he okay? Is he -"
"He's fine," Steve assured her. "Vitals are fine, all the numbers are fine. He just needs to wake up, that's all."
"Is he going to wake up?" Summer asked, directing her question to the doctor rather than Steve.
"He'll be fine," the doctor assured her without sparing her a glance, prying open Bucky's eyelid to check his pupils. "Seems whatever code that was activated was strictly meant to literally shut him down. I imagine his handlers would have used it in the event of him becoming too violent for them to handle. Safety measure."
"Can't believe that bastard did this," Foggy muttered, shaking his head. "Not only was it beyond unethical, but he could be disbarred for a stunt like that."
"Matt said something about a mistrial," Natasha said, and Foggy nodded.
"If this isn't grounds for that, I don't know what is. It would be a stall at best, but..."
All the words and all the talk and movements becoming nothing but noise to her, Summer hugged her arms to herself and stayed as close to the bed as the doctors would allow. They did their work for awhile longer, checking a few more things and keeping close eyes on the monitors before deciding that all there was left to do now was wait. They left the room and before the door had even closed behind them, Steve was there next to Summer carrying a chair that he set down at Bucky's bedside for her. She gave him a grateful, sad smile and sunk down into the chair, suddenly feeling like she'd been hit by a truck.
Bucky stayed out for several hours. During that time, Matt called Foggy to tell him that the motion for a mistrial had been denied but that Richard Strong had been removed from the case and was being held in criminal contempt. One of the other lawyers on the prosecution's team would be taking over, and the judge had instructed the jury to not allow what had occurred to influence their judgments one way or the other. Whether they'd follow that instruction or not remained to be seen.
Summer's phone rang off the hook. Paul called her in hysterics after having seen the news talking about chaos in the courtroom and the defendant being removed from the premises in an ambulance, and Summer did her best to assure him that everything was fine while still trying to convince herself of the same thing.
At one point after hanging up with him, Summer overheard Steve telling Natasha something that utterly infuriated her.
"Strong got the info from Rumlow," Steve muttered. "It makes sense."
Summer turned her head and stared at Steve with suddenly furious eyes. "Brock Rumlow? The same guy who blew up my house and got Bucky arrested in the first place? He did this?"
Steve frowned and nodded. Foggy then added, "He's on the prosecution's witness list."
"That should be a fun day in court," Natasha sighed.
Summer bit her anger back and turned back to Bucky, leaning forward and placing her palm on the back of his hand. She looked at his face, so deceptively peaceful at the moment, and she wished that she wasn't so powerless. He had all these enemies everywhere - in the government, in federal prison, on the street in the form of protestors who wanted him to be executed for treason - and all it took was one word to shut him down and remind him that even after all this time, HYDRA still had its tentacles wrapped around him. And what could she do about it? Nothing.
Her sad and angry thoughts were briefly interrupted by Wanda appearing at her side, handing her a cup of coffee from one of the nearby lounges. Natasha and Foggy had left the room by then, leaving just Summer, Steve, and herself.
"Oh, thank you," Summer said, gratefully accepting the cup. "You can go if you want, you know. You don't have to stay if you don't want to."
Wanda merely shook her head, putting a friendly hand on Summer's shoulder before replying, "This is what family's for. Right?"
Summer smiled, the other woman's words briefly replacing the cold anger inside of her with warmth. "Yeah. Thank you."
Wanda smiled back before heading back to where Steve was keeping watch, near the door. He was fielding phone calls and pacing a lot, even more agitated than Summer was, and all in all, the day had been hell on everyone.
All Summer wanted was for Bucky to wake up and open his eyes so that she could see them again. Each moment that passed fueled her worries that he might not wake at all, and when three hours had passed with still nothing, she was considering finding the doctor and asking for a shot of Xanax before she had a meltdown.
But then, just as she was praying for the thousandth time for him to wake, his fingers twitched beneath hers. Her head shot up and her eyes shot open, her gaze rapidly moving up and down his form in a sudden burst of hope.
"Bucky?" she said softly, squeezing his hand and then gently rubbing it. When she saw his eyes begin to move underneath their lids, she smiled and then told the two others present to come and see. Steve came to the other side of Bucky's bed while Wanda left to get the doctor.
It took a few more minutes of twitching and slight shifting, but finally his eyes began to flutter open. Wanda had returned with the doctor by then, and as Bucky blinked and his eyes slowly began to focus on the ceiling, Summer called his name soothingly and told him that everything was fine and that he was safe.
"Hello there, Mr. Barnes," the doctor said cheerfully as he approached the side of the bed that Steve was sitting near. "Glad to see you back with us."
Furrowing his brows slightly and staring a bit blankly, Bucky began to sit up. Summer removed her hand for the time being, and the doctor went on, "Take it easy there, soldier. You've been through an ordeal. Can you tell me what your name is?"
Bucky stared at the man, not saying a word.
"Bucky," Summer said softly, "are you okay?"
He turned his head slowly and stared at her as if he had never seen her before in his life. Right then, she knew deep down that something was very, very wrong.
When Bucky first opened his eyes, all he saw was light. Unnaturally harsh fluorescent light. Familiar light. The sort of light that he was used to awakening to. Or at least that was what he thought.
He stared at the ceiling at first, feeling nothing and thinking nothing. Then he heard voices. They weren't familiar like the light, and they were speaking English. He couldn't follow their patterns of speech at first, still too disoriented and confused to grasp very much.
There was a pressure on his right hand. It was warm and soft, and... it was another hand, he realized. That was strange.
All of this was strange.
He sat up in the bed, looking around and seeing nothing but faces he'd never seen before. An old man, a girl with long brown hair, a tall blond man, and a woman with black hair who was the one holding his hand.
The old man was a doctor. He asked for his name. Bucky couldn't answer, because he didn't have a name. He'd never had one. Didn't the old man know that? Why didn't he know that?
Who were these people?
Then the woman with the darkest hair spoke to him. Called him something strange - Bucky - and he looked at her in confusion. The longer that he stared at her, the more pale her face became and the more frightened she looked.
Then the blond man spoke, and that changed everything.
"Bucky," he said softly, "you're here at the Avengers building. You're safe. Everything's okay."
He turned his blank gaze to him next, and that was when he finally understood. He knew that man. He knew his face. He knew -
Two targets, level six.
He was one half of his mission. And judging by his surroundings, Bucky had been captured. These were his enemies, and it was his mission to kill the blond man at any cost.
The woman with the black hair touched his hand again. He didn't even look at her as he swung out his right arm her way, slamming her in the chest and sending her flying across the room. She let out a shocked cry and then slammed into a glass cabinet on the wall, shattering the cabinet's windows before she then hit the floor. Then everything was chaos.
"Bucky, no," the blond man yelled frantically. "Stop, what are you - Wanda, cover her -"
He shoved the old man away in much the same fashion, and then he ripped the IV out of his arm and all but jumped out of bed, heading straight for his target who held up his hands and immediately began to retreat.
"Bucky, listen to me," the target pleaded, "you know me. You know all of us. That woman you just threw is your wife."
Preposterous. He had no wife. He had no name. All he had was his mission, and his mission was all that mattered.
He lunged for the man once he had him backed into a wall. He landed one solid punch to the man's face and was gearing up for a second when suddenly his fist was frozen in the air. In fact, his entire body was frozen and he couldn't make it move a single inch.
He stared at his fist in confusion. It, and the rest of him, was enveloped in a deep red and unnatural glow, as if a sort of energy was keeping him completely immobile. He growled and tried to fight it, trying harder and harder until he was putting all of his considerable might into the struggle to simply move. But he couldn't.
What the hell was happening to him?
Bleeding, in pain, and absolutely heartbroken and terrified, Summer felt hands helping her to sit up as she watched Bucky - no, that wasn't Bucky, that was the Winter Soldier - lunge at Steve. The hands belonged to Natasha, who had just rushed inside the room and was now half-dragging Summer to the corner furthest from Bucky.
"Are you okay?" Nat asked quickly, and Summer shook her head.
"No, he's - he's not - I think he's -"
"I know," Natasha said just as Steve grunted with pain. Bucky had backed him into a corner and punched him in the face. "Wanda, stop him."
As Natasha covered Summer, just like Bucky would have wanted her to in this kind of situation, Wanda sprang into action. Bracing herself, she thrust out her hands and froze Bucky in place with her power, his fist in mid-swing and his eyes unfocused and empty.
Summer was bleeding from her forehead and her lower back was throbbing in pain along with one of her shoulders and a knee that she'd landed badly on, but she barely felt any of it. Adrenaline numbed her and utter panic stopped her from focusing on anything but the fact that her Bucky was gone and an emotionless killing machine was in his place.
"How long can you hold him?" Steve asked Wanda, getting away from the wall and not taking his eyes off of his best friend.
"I'm not sure," Wanda replied. "But I can try to bring him back."
"How?" Summer asked desperately, barely aware of how she was crying as she asked this.
"Can you do that?" Steve asked her cautiously.
"I can try," Wanda said, shifting her hands and curling her fingers to maintain her control over him. "I can look in his mind, try to pull him out from this."
Steve looked at Summer, unwilling to give the okay to anything without her input. She replied by all but screaming, "Do it! Do something!"
Steve nodded, and then Wanda lifted her hand and in doing so lifted Bucky off of his feet as he continued to try to fight and struggle against her. She then pushed her hand out and he was flung backwards, landing on his back in the hospital bed almost hard enough to collapse it. It wasn't gentle, but there were bigger things to worry about than that.
Natasha helped Summer up and moved her towards Steve, who was in front of the bed but at a safe distance away from it. He looked at Summer and grimaced at the blood trickling down from her forehead, but then he turned back to what was happening in front of him and quickly stepped back into action. At Wanda's request, he used the restraints on the bed to strap Bucky to it, and they would likely hold him for awhile because they were reinforced for enhanced individuals. Once that was done, Wanda's power withdrew and Bucky was able to move again, but only in the form of continued struggling and wordless growling.
"Wanda," Steve said gravely, looking at Wanda who looked more than a little apprehensive and unsure, "you don't have to do this if you don't want to."
But Wanda merely gave him a look and jerked her head towards Summer. "Cover her, in case he breaks free and this doesn't work."
Steve nodded then, and the time for debate was over. He went back to Summer's side, and Wanda looked into Bucky's wild, murderous eyes and stood over him as she read his mind. What she found was nothing - absolutely nothing aside from a singular focus and desire to finish his mission so overwhelming that it was almost like a compulsion. There was fear there too, a lot of it, and she found that he was as terrified as he was dangerous. He thought that he was still with HYDRA, that he had been captured by the enemy, and that his mission was to kill Steve. He had reverted back to his most recent programming, his last mission before he had broke HYDRA's conditioning.
Wanda took a deep breath and opened her eyes, hesitating only a moment before raising one hand and sending little winding tendrils of energy from her fingertips to his temple. His eyes became as scarlet as hers at the contact, and he stopped struggling. In fact, he stopped moving at all and stared at the ceiling without seeing it, his breathing calming slightly before Wanda closed her eyes and leaned on one rail of the bed for support before moving beyond the first barrier of his mind into the depths below. She had never done this before and she could only hope that it would work and not simply make things worse.
Summer watched helplessly in a state of fear and almost crazed hope. The fact that an old HYDRA keyword had made Bucky revert back to this and now his chance at remembering again was having his mind invaded and tinkered with by one of their friends - how had it even come to this?
She thought about the kids waiting back at home with Paul before she immediately made herself think about anything else. She couldn't think about what would happen to them if this didn't work, or what would happen legally if Bucky stayed like this. His chance at freedom would be gone, and everything would be over.
She watched and waited, not tearing her eyes from Bucky once as Wanda did her very best to bring him back.
He saw red. Everything was red, and the fight that he had been filled to the brim moments earlier was gone. Something else was in control - someone else - and he could feel her. He could feel her in his head and gently moving about his mind as if such a thing was even possible, and through it all he was powerless. All he could do was lay there and watch and feel what happened next.
Wanda, for her part, felt as if she was grasping at smoke. Finding the real him behind the walls of resurgent HYDRA programming and self-preserving defenses was almost impossible but at the same time a bit encouraging. He was actively fighting her in every way that he could, pushing back every time that she pulled, and yet he wasn't even aware of it. His constant fighting against someone trying to get in his head and possibly control it wasn't a characteristic of the Winter Soldier but of Bucky himself, and she knew that if she reached deeply enough into his subconscious, she would find him there. And she was right.
It took time and patience, but finally she was able to grasp on a real memory and hold on to it tightly enough before it faded. It was just a flash, a memory of the closest thing to a constant that Bucky had ever had, and when the image bloomed behind Bucky's eyes so vividly and clear that it shocked him, it cracked the walls and got through to him.
It was Steve's face, from decades and decades go. Skinny and pale and perpetually sickly, and the most familiar thing in the world when nothing else was.
He was his mission. But he wasn't. He was more than that. He had a name, one that he'd known since before he had known his multiplication tables. He had been there, always been there for him, until one day he wasn't anymore...
Wanda pulled on that thread, and as it turned out, Steve was the skeleton key that unlocked far more than she had bargained for. Without a single warning, the protective walls crumbled and an entire lifetime's worth of memories came flooding back not only into his mind, but hers as well. She couldn't untangle her mind from his or stop was what was about to happen.
The first time he had broken HYDRA's programming, he had done so on his own and had regained his memories slowly over a period of years. Even then, there were still significant holes in his memory, gaps he couldn't fill, and he had expected that to never change. But with Wanda's power flooding through his head and her mind accidentally linking and meshing with his, this time it was far more sudden and complete. Everything unlocked and came back to him - the good, the bad, and the unthinkably horrific.
His entire life flashed through both his mind and Wanda's mind, starting in Brooklyn and running through the mostly happy memories there. He saw his parents more clearly than ever before, his sweet little sister and the little apartment they had all survived the Depression in together. There was laughing and crying and ups and downs, a normal but mostly happy life despite poverty and hardships. Then, one day at school, there was also Steve, and the memories kept coming.
He grew up. He went to war. He left Steve behind. He fought for his country, had his innocence ripped to shreds the first time he killed an enemy soldier and watched his friends die next to him in a foxhole they were taking cover in. The memories weren't just sights and sounds but smells too, mostly the smell of dirt and gunpowder and blood and death. Wanda experienced it all from his firsthand perspective, living the memories for the first time as much as he was reliving them.
Everything he felt, she felt too. She felt his love and commitment to not only protecting Steve but making sure he never had to face the world alone. She felt his longing and his conflicted but true love for a woman with red hair and green eyes who sang like an angel, someone else he'd left behind when he went to war. She felt his fear and dread when he and his unit was captured and taken to a HYDRA work camp in Austria.
Bucky relived every last miserable moment of what he experienced during his first encounter with HYDRA, though in real time it only lasted seconds. He relived being worked to death, beaten when a virus he caught from one of the other POWs left him too weak to work, and then being reassigned to the lab run by Arnim Zola. That was where the real torture began. Soldiers were trained and expected to take beatings and endure worse, but being injected repeatedly with something that made his veins burn like fire and made his muscles feel like they were being torn apart and stitched back together under aching skin over and over... nobody was trained to handle that.
That was when Wanda's own memories started colliding with his. For a moment he was looking through his eyes at a very different life, one that was also familiar with poverty and the kind of love that only a family could bring. But he didn't see any of that at first. Instead he saw cages made of bulletproof glass, heard the screams of people trapped inside of them as their bodies warped and minds melted from the effects of alien radiation. Then it was him - no, Wanda - in one of those cages, huddled in the corner and shaking in terrible, mind-numbing pain. He looked down and saw trembling, pale hands glowing scarlet, and they burned. The fire crawled along every inch of Wanda's skin and finally became too much to bear, and when she screamed with agony, a flash of red exploded within the glass walls.
"She's crying," Steve muttered, watching and ready to intervene and stop Wanda's intervention if it began to appear dangerous.
Natasha watched just as carefully. "I hope she knows what she's doing."
Wanda was still standing over Bucky, though not long after she had begun, she had leaned closer and put her hand directly on the top of his head rather than hold her fingers near his temple. Her eyes were closed and his were wide open, still unnaturally glowing red and completely unseeing. Wanda was indeed in tears, crying quietly and steadily for the last moment or so.
Summer wasn't sure that she had ever prayed so hard in her life as she did in those moments.
Sam then quietly entered the room, watching what was happening with an appropriately bewildered expression. He didn't come alone - Vision was there too, slowly walking inside and coming to a halt next to Summer when he saw what was happening.
He looked incredibly worried as he asked anyone who would answer, "What is she doing?"
"He reverted back to his old HYDRA programming," Natasha replied. "Wasn't his fault. She said she wanted to try to bring him back."
"Bring him back?" Vision repeated, looking at Steve and Natasha in a way that didn't bring them much comfort.
"I'm gonna stop it if this gets out of control," Steve tried to assure him, but Vision merely shook his head.
"No. You have to let her finish. Let them both finish," he said quietly. "If you interrupted, there's no way to know what sort of state either of their minds would be left in."
Summer breathed in shakily and tried to keep holding it together. Dear God she couldn't take much more of this.
Falling. He was falling for ages, down, down, down with no end in sight. A few seconds of terror and trying to reach for his best friend's hand was all that he had before the bar he'd been hanging on broke and sent him falling to his death. And now, unlike before, he was able to remember every last terrifying second of it.
He didn't want to die, not like this. He wasn't done yet. He was too young and he had survived too much to die now, like this, he couldn't, he...
He was.
He hit the ground on his left side, bones snapping like twigs and world going dark before the full extent of the pain could even register. That snowy ravine would have been his eternal grave if not for Zola's work, if not for that unwanted gift that he didn't know had bound itself to his DNA and helped keep his heart from stopping as he laid there bleeding in the snow. Nothing else could have kept him alive but unconscious for three days, until a few Soviet soldiers found him during a routine patrol.
Then, to his horror, all the memories that a part of him was glad he'd never fully recovered were the next to come rushing back. He was forced to live through it all again, remember every last bit of agony that he had endured against his will for the sake of his metal arm. His journey to becoming the Winter Soldier had begun with a surgery, and it was one that he had been awake for the entire time.
Before there had been flashes. He had known that they'd kept him awake for at least a portion of it, but now... now...
Oh God.
They injected him with a paralytic and only a paralytic before getting to work removing what was left of his own left arm. They cut it away with a bone saw, doctors and nurses speaking a language he couldn't understand, while he was forced to lay still and feel every last agonizing moment of it. And he couldn't even scream.
He was still Bucky Barnes. He wasn't their soldier yet. He was himself, he remembered his life, and he was terrified and he wanted to die on that table more than anything he had ever wanted before. He prayed for death, screamed for it in his head, and yet relief never came. And the removal of the arm was only the first step of the operation.
He smelled his own skin burning when they attached not the arm but the metal socket that the arm would be attached to, fused it to his skin and bones and made it a part of him. They burned him, they cut him, and they kept him awake so they could test for nerve function until the surgery was complete.
They were monsters, and nobody was coming to save him from them. He was dead to everybody he knew, because nobody could have survived that fall, and yet he had. He wondered what he had ever done in his life that was so bad and so unforgivable as to be worthy of a punishment like this.
Just let me die, he pleaded with God over and over again, begging for forgiveness for whatever he had done that had warranted this to happen to him. He was sorry for everything, for killing those enemy soldiers who barely fit their uniforms for how young they were, for leaving Steve behind and not being a better son to his poor mama who was grieving his death now. He was sorry for all the times he'd picked on his sister, for every broken heart he'd caused since he woke up one day and realized how much he liked girls, and he was sorry for that time he stole some groceries from a corner store because he was broke and Steve hadn't eaten in two days.
He'd take whatever judgement was coming, whatever was fair, even if it was hell. He'd take hell over this, he'd burn and he'd do his time and he wouldn't question it because at least it wouldn't be this.
Unless this was hell. Unless he had died in that ravine after all, and this was the sum of all of his sins that he would spend the rest of eternity paying back.
Wanda's legs gave out. Steve jumped to go to her, but Vision held out an arm and kept him back. "Don't. Nobody touch her."
Steve looked at the others helplessly. Summer was crying quietly but constantly, in a steady river down her cheeks. Wanda was now slumped over the bed, one hand still on Bucky's head and the other holding his shirt in a white-knuckled fist. She looked like she was seconds from spinning out of control, and Bucky... he was crying now, too.
Then he screamed. It was a blood-curdling, throat-ripping scream that made every other person in the room jump and most of them gasp.
Whatever blood was left in Summer's face drained immediately. Even during his nightmares, his worst nightmares, he'd never screamed like that. He sounded like he was being ripped limb from limb, and... oh God, what if he was?
Wanda held on to him tighter, a sob leaving her own throat before her power pulsed and then the screaming stopped. She had steered his mind somewhere new, to a far less traumatic and hellish memory, to one of her own.
Pietro, stop! I'm gonna tell!
Try and catch me, little sister!
Childish laughter and a boy with a headful of dark waves flooded Bucky's staggering mind, giving it a bit of relief. This memory was warm and sweet, vivid and cherished, just one of many happy days from Wanda's childhood. It was a commonplace theme - Pietro would tease her and sometimes torture her a bit, as all brothers do, and then he'd run off and leave her with just her wits to find a way to triumph in whatever game was afoot. It was no wonder then that one day the scepter would unlock what powers it did in the twins. He had been running since he could walk, and her mind had always been her sharpest weapon.
They were two halves of a whole and as close as two siblings could be. They fought and they schemed against each other and Pietro always stole Wanda's candy from her, but they were inseparable.
The happy memories turned dark then as Bucky caught a glimpse of the day their parents had died. He watched the shell collapse their home and kill the elder Maximoffs, felt the terror and the disbelief and the lost innocence that Wanda had endured. And then, waiting trapped under the rubble with her brother for days while they waited for the undetonated shell emblazoned with the name Stark to kill them... he felt and saw it all.
He felt the rage and the hatred that has festered within her from that day on, the unquenchable thirst for revenge against the man whose weapons had taken her parents and nearly killed herself and her twin too. The drive for justice and for becoming more than just another pair of sad, poverty-stricken orphans had eventually steered them right into the open arms of HYDRA.
That was when the push and pull of their minds landed back on his own memories. HYDRA, that parasite on the whole world and his own personal circle of hell, dominated his every thought and every move and his entire identity, or the lack thereof, for the next seventy years following his surgery. His path to becoming their strongest weapon was long, much longer than he had known before.
Soviet Russia served as the interlude between his service to the United States and his service to HYDRA. They didn't like HYDRA, and like Hitler himself, thought the Red Skull to be little more than a raving lunatic and his beliefs utterly laughable. They foresaw the post-war world before it arrived and took steps to ensure its place within it. They were allied with the Brits and Americans against the Axis, yes, but as soon as that common enemy was defeated, the chess pieces would shift and an entirely new war would be at hand. But this one would not be fought with guns or soldiers. At least not in the conventional sense.
One man with the right skills at the right place at the right time could be more effective than an army, the best Soviet thinkers contended. That was the very foundation of the Winter Soldier Project, and it was a lengthy one.
They broke their American prisoner down the conventional way, not even letting him recover fully from his fall and his surgery before they began. They threw him in a filthy cell that even the rats didn't want to live in, and they used every kind of torture to see him break. They needed him loyal to Russia to be of use to them, and to make him that way, they had to purge his identity from every corner of his mind.
But they never did. Through every cruelty, through every beating and every method of conditioning and torture that they inflicted upon him, he never turned. He desperately wanted to die, and living with the horrific, huge piece of metal that was supposed to be his arm was unbearable, but he still never gave in, even when it would have been so incredibly easy to just lie and go along with it to make the pain end.
But the pain was always there. He felt it even when they weren't beating him or feeding him the vilest of substances, or peeling off his fingernails one at a time. His left arm ached as if it was still there, as he was still laying in the snow with it still barely attached, or even worse, laying on that operating table again.
He knew what was happening to him and what they wanted. They wanted to take him and make him into a weapon, someone who would fight for everything he had spent his life fighting against, and he'd die before he let that happen. So he tried, more than once, to die. And it never worked. Whatever Zola had given him made him heal no matter what happened to him.
When he gave up all hope for death, he also began to feel himself slipping away. Some days he'd wake up in that cell, rotting in filth and blood and listening to the guards outside laugh and gorge themselves on food, and it would take him an hour to remember his own name. It would take even longer to remember Steve's. And then he'd spend hours trying to remember what color Vivian's hair was.
And so, to make sure he'd never forget again, one day he found a tiny, jagged rock in one of the cracks of the cell floor. He picked it up with his hideous, revolting metal hand and then used it to carve out names and words on his right arm to serve as reminders when he would need them most.
He carved out his name, his rank, his serial number, the city he was born in, and the names of his parents. His sister's name. Steve's name. Vivian's name. Her eye color, her hair color.
When he was almost out of room, he cut one last sentence into his arm that he tried to hold on to at his darkest hours. He wrote it as a sort of punishment to himself as much as for his memory, because nothing broke his heart more than thinking about those words.
I'm with you to the end of the line. His promise to Steve after Sarah had died, now nothing more than a joke. He hadn't been with Steve to the end. This was the end, and he was alone. And according to the Russians, Steve was dead after crashing the Red Skull's Valkyrie into the ice, to spare thousands of American lives.
He had broken his promise. He wasn't with Steve in the end, and yet he himself was still alive. It wasn't fair. None of it was fair. He just wanted to die and finally make it to the end of his own line.
When the guards found him bloody and still clutching the rock that he'd used as a poor substitute for a tattoo needle, they laughed before beating him mercilessly. He prayed that they wouldn't stop, but as always, they did. They always did. And he always healed.
He spent a week reading the words on his arm and memorizing them like a prayer before everything changed. The guards woke him from a fitful sleep and dragged him into a room he'd never seen before. It looked like a lab of sorts, and at the center was some kind of contraption of a chair. And that chair was apparently his destination.
Weak, starving, mentally dead and physically not much better, he was shoved into the chair and then restrained to it. He no longer cared what they did to him or how they hurt him, but fear began to trickle low into his gut when one of his usual tormentors approached and began to speak to him in English with a sick smile.
You will not break, he said. After all that you have endured, you still will not break. Admirable, really. This... sense of loyalty will be useful in the future. You see... we've found a much more effective and less time consuming way of persuading you to join our cause. Much more civilized than the barbaric treatment you've been enduring.
That was all the warning he got before the new procedure began. Terrified, shaking, and repeating the words on his arm to himself over and over, begging himself to not forget no matter what happened next, the restraints tightened and a halo-like piece of the machine lowered down and clamped on his head and...
Bucky screamed again. This time, he struggled against his restraints on the bed and screamed not just with sounds but words. Words like no and please came out in a heart-wrenching cry that made Summer cover her face and turn around, unable to look any longer.
Wanda screamed this time too. Steve looked at Vision with huge, scared eyes, clearly panicking at this point. "We have to do something!"
"Wait," Vision urged him quietly. "You do not understand what you are seeing."
"What the hell are we seeing?" Sam asked.
Turning and looking at the two Avengers in question, Vision replied, "I believe that she is deep within his mind, and he in hers. He is feeling what she has felt, and she is feeling what he has felt. They are sharing memories, emotions... their lives."
Summer forced herself to turn around, opening her eyes and dragging her hands under her eyes to try to wipe away some of the tears. "They're... what? What does that mean?"
"It means we have to wait," Vision replied simply. "She is stronger than she knows. I don't think she ever intended for this to happen, but she will end it when the time is right.
Natasha let out a long sigh. "I hope you're right."
"So do I," Vision replied.
Bucky forgot. He forgot everything. His right arm healed without a single lasting scar, all of those words disappearing as if they had never been there at all, and he finally became the Soviet Union's Winter Soldier.
With no identity, no memory, and no moral awareness or compass, it was all too easy for his handlers to train him into a living, breathing lethal weapon. They indoctrinated him, taught him how to speak flawless Russian and multiple other language, and trained him in countless styles of combat. It took time, but he soaked it all up like a sponge; he had a natural talent for it all, the languages and hand to hand combat and sharpshooting, everything that would make him the best assassin that the world had ever seen.
But they found one flaw in their elegant new killing machine. Given enough time, he would start to ask too many questions. He would remember things - small things, but things nonetheless. The damage done to his brain from the chair would eventually heal and memories would start to resurface. This left his handlers with few options.
They couldn't use him how they would have preferred, but they could have the next best thing. They froze their weapon when he wasn't needed, and then when he was, they would thaw him and give him his mission. After he completed it, if he needed another memory wipe, they would administer it. If not, he would be placed back into cryo-stasis until he was needed again.
And that was his life for the next seven decades. His handlers changed, the missions changed, and eventually his Russian comrades became American ones after the fall of the USSR. They sold their relic of an assassin to the highest bidder, the American hand of HYDRA, though what many of those Russians didn't understand was that in reality, HYDRA had never let go of Bucky. They had their tentacles everywhere, including the Kremlin and the KGB and the nameless, "nonexistent" department that had facilitated the Winter Soldier Project. It was merely a logistical transfer to move him to the United States. They'd had him all along.
He killed... so, so many. Even with all of the memories in his grasp, he couldn't count them. He killed good men, bad men, women of both sorts, and innocent children. One innocent child.
Rather than serve his sentence in hell like he had once thought he was doing, he wracked up more sins and reasons to burn. But he never did. Instead he froze, he thawed, he killed, and then he froze again. It was an endless, mindless cycle, but it did finally break one day. And it broke with the utterance of the same phrase that he had once carved out on his arm in haphazard strokes of a rock.
Steve had brought him back. Steve, who had been there before and was still there now, Steve who had not died in the ice, Steve who really would be with him to the end of the line. He hadn't given up on Bucky, even when Bucky had nearly killed him twice.
And because of that, because of Steve and his faith, Bucky had found himself again. For the first time since his fall in 1945, he finally broke free of HYDRA.
He also found love. He found a woman who did not love him at first sight, but who took him in and cared for him when few others would have even considered doing such a thing. He also found a little boy, her little boy, who was different and very quiet but who also slowly grew attached to him and would wrap aluminum foil around his arm to imitate the metal arm that Bucky so hated. The little family took him in and accepted him for what he was and gave him shelter and real human contact when all of those things were so very foreign to him.
Summer brought him to life and made him feel like a real flesh and blood man again with a kiss. Then she brought him back to Steve so that he could start his recovery, and that was the start of his new life as a free man.
He had found a family with both her and with Steve and his new friends. Natasha, Sam, Clint, even Tony despite their complicated history - they let him in, and in time, he also let them in. He fell in love with Summer, became a father to her son, and he and Steve became best friends again. Slowly, he got better. Slowly, he found purpose again.
He had a family again.
But then, thanks to that word - family - the brief calm in his mind was shattered by a sudden pulse of pain that he felt in his very soul. It wasn't his own pain that he felt, but the pain of a girl who had lost her last remaining family to a monster that she had once worked for.
He could see through her eyes again, and this time he saw metal. There was metal everywhere. While he had been in New York helping Summer recover from being hit by a car, across the globe, Wanda was fighting off robots bent on world destruction. It was something out of a science fiction movie but it was real, and she was fighting for her country. She had seen the error of her ways and, after having come to a crossroads, decided to take Clint's advice and fight.
She had been prepared to die. She was anything but stupid, and the city was flying. She knew that death might come, and if it did, she would go down fighting and protecting her home. She made peace with that possibility the moment she decided to stop hiding and start fighting.
But then, as she fought standing in the middle of a church, keeping Ultron from sending the city plummeting back down to the earth, she sensed something. She felt it the same way that she could feel the cool air on her skin and and the breath in her lungs - she felt him, her brother, her twin, breathing his last breath as his life was extinguished.
It was unmistakable. She felt like she had been ripped in half, like the second half of her had just been torn away and now she was left open and bleeding and dying. He was gone, her brother was gone, and so was a part of her that she'd never get back.
Her scream ripped through Bucky's head along with that horrible, heavy pain that had manifested in a great burst of power that had shot out and demolished what surrounded her, as well as accidentally trigger the core that nearly destroyed all of Sokovia. He felt her pain and her horror, that eternal grief that would fade with time but never leave, and her sense of being left completely alone in a world that she didn't belong in. Anywhere.
She was young, but she knew pain. He was older, too old to be as young as he was, and he knew even more pain. And now they knew each other's pain in ways that they would never forget. In the span of minutes, they had lived the other's lives, and Wanda had given him the gift - and the curse - of restoring his entire memory.
Wanda finally let go of him, her power evaporating into scarlet wisps all around her as she gasped and collapsed. Rather than hit the floor, she fell into Vision's waiting arms.
Bucky also awoke with a gasp. The red leaving his wet, tear-filled eyes, his breath came in wild pants as he tried to move his arms and legs to no avail. Not completely sure of what had just happened, his mind was a frantic and overwhelmed mess of memories and emotions, not all of which were his. He'd never even met Pietro Maximoff and yet he could see his face as clear as day in his mind, and he was crying over him. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. He felt like he might explode he felt and thought and remembered so much.
"S... Steve," he called out, yanking against the restraints. "Steve, Summer -"
They were both at his side in less than a second, his use of their names a clear sign that their Bucky was back.
"Yeah, Bucky," Steve said first, leaning over him and giving hm a cautious smile. "You okay? Do you know your name?"
He nodded, eyes wide and a sense of panic bubbling up from being restrained and confused. "Yeah, I'm... what happened?"
His eyes went to Summer next as Steve removed the restraints. She was crying, though she looked relieved, and she was... bleeding.
Steve didn't answer him just yet. Bucky sat up, tears still streaming down his face and heart racing and limbs shaking, and the sound of screaming from near the floor next to the bed stole his attention next.
Wanda was in Vision's arms, clutching her head and wailing. She was hysterical, sobbing and inconsolable, and in between broken, barely coherent words in her native language, the words too much and hurts, hurts so much kept flying out of her mouth.
She had just relived the worst moments of her life and taken on the unthinkable torture and abuse that Bucky had endured in his long, traumatic life. It really was too much.
Vision picked her up and calmly took her out of the room. Her cries faded after they disappeared outside of the doors, and Bucky stared as she went, his own distress and shock written on his face.
"Bucky?" Summer said quietly, looking a little apprehensive and maybe even... scared of him a bit. "What happened?"
"I remember everything," he muttered. Then he lifted his eyes back up to Summer, who was an utter wreck as she hugged her arms to herself and stared at him with watery, frightened eyes. He glared at the cut on her forehead and the way that Natasha was protectively standing behind her, and then he asked in a shaky voice that didn't even sound like his own, "What. Happened?"
Natasha decided to spare the other two and answered him for them. "Strong used a HYDRA shutdown code on you. You woke up and your old programming kicked in. You tried to attack Steve and you threw Summer into a wall."
"I'm fine," Summer assured him when she saw the sudden panic and horror in his eyes. "I am, and Steve's fine too. Wanda stopped you, and then she... she got in your head, and... you remember everything?"
Bucky stared at her and then looked away, feeling a deep sense of shame slowly overcome him from the inside out. He closed his eyes and tried to focus, tried to push away the overload of emotions and memories running rampant through his head, making it feel like he was about to burst. It took him a few seconds, but then he remembered. He remembered waking up and being... that thing again, the monster that he had thought he was free of, and he remembered looking his wife in the eye and throwing her into the wall like she was nothing more than a ragdoll. He remembered attacking Steve, thinking that he was his mission and that he had to kill him at all costs.
He remembered feeling and thinking nothing. After all this time, after all he had endured - the pain, the hell, the death, all of it - HYDRA still had ways to control him and turn him back into a monster.
He started to shake. What if this had happened at home, while he had been sitting on the couch with the kids? What if someone had used the word Sputnik in a historical context and he had thrown Adelaide into a wall the way that he had Summer?
"Bucky," Summer said softly, a trembling hand going to his shoulder, "it's okay. None of this was your fault."
Bucky shook his aching head, holding it in his hands and mumbling, "No. No, no..."
Steve, as helpless as a man could possibly be, touched Bucky's other shoulder. "She's right. It's okay. You're back now. We're gonna make sure nobody can ever do that to you again."
As if they could.
"Bucky, please, look at me," Summer pled softly, trying to nudge him into lifting up his head, and that was when he snapped.
"No!" It came out like a desperate, unhinged roar, and he hadn't meant it to. He jumped off of the bed at the same time, and Summer stumbled back in obvious fear. Natasha quickly stepped in front of her, protecting her, and the rage and confusion that had been etched on Bucky's face faded into something worse.
For the first time since she had known him, Summer was afraid of him. And he couldn't blame her, because he was afraid of himself.
He had hurt her. One of his worst fears had come to fruition, and he stared at her with big, frightened, and shameful eyes that gave away how badly damaged all of this was going to leave him. She stared back with a thousand unspoken words in her gaze, and he couldn't handle looking at her anymore. He couldn't handle looking at any of them anymore.
He turned and all but ran out the door. He didn't plan to go far, just far enough to find somewhere to be alone and fall apart in peace. Summer moved to go after him and called his name, but Natasha held her back.
"Let him go," she told Summer firmly. "We don't know what the hell just happened in his head. He needs space."
Summer's face crumpled and she turned around, the tears flowing anew as Steve watched her with that same helpless, sad expression he had been wearing since this mess had begun. He looked at Natasha and then at Sam, who was still there and had been watching protectively the whole time, and finally he sunk into a chair and dropped his head into his hands.
Natasha put a hand on Summer's shoulder and gently told her, "Come on. You need stitches. And you need to be checked for injuries, just in case."
Summer nodded, wiping her eyes uselessly and letting the other woman lead her out of the room. Sam gave her a reassuring pat on the way out, and Summer gave him a tight watery smile in reply before turning the corner and leaving.
Sam glanced at Steve then and asked, "You okay, man?"
Steve dropped his hands into his lap and shook his head. "Nope."
If there was one thing that was for sure, it was that nobody was okay that day. And chances were that wouldn't change anytime soon.