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They keep Bucky awake sometimes between missions, particularly when the targets are expected to be taken down closer together. They keep Isabel awake, too, sticking her in the cell opposite to maintain stability and control in the Asset. Bucky still listens to Isabel, no matter what she says. He calls her handler, but he doesn't speak unless she speaks to him. The longer Bucky is out of cryofreeze and the longer he goes between wipes, the more Bucky seems to act up. Isabel seems to keep him sedated.
It makes Isabel sadder the longer they're together, seeing how much of her brother is lost, and truthfully, it's nearly all of him. Hydra took what they wanted of him, his protective instinct and his ability in warfare, and discarded everything else. Isabel watches Bucky move, mechanical and unsure, and he doesn't even really look like Bucky. His hair is long, nearly to his shoulders, his face covered in a layer of beard that Isabel's never seen him have before. The Bucky of before never would've been seen like this, so unkempt. He never even had stubble until they were fighting in the war.
Sometimes when Isabel sees him, when he's still and silent, staring ahead, her mind fools her, and she thinks he is her brother. She thinks he's about to look over at her and smile, promise he'll get them out, maybe even crack a joke or two to cheer her up. But when he feels her eyes on him, he looks over with empty grey eyes and there's no hint of recognition beyond her as his handler.
One night, or what Isabel assumes is night, Bucky begins to cry in his cell for seemingly no reason. It's ugly crying, the type where one doesn't hold back. Bucky sobs and wails and snot goes everywhere. He cries and cries until he makes himself sick, gagging out a bit of bile onto the floor.
Isabel tries to talk to him through the bars, but he doesn't seem to be listening. She just waits then until he calms down enough that he'll listen to her calming words. She wishes so badly she could be in the cell with him to hold him, to pet his long ratty hair and wipe away his tears.
Isabel believes that when Bucky is crying or lashing out, as he does on missions when he nearly reveals himself, its himself breaking through the programming. But when she isn't there, his rebellion is always small, mistakable, justified. He's used to being punished for such outbursts. But Isabel has always treated him kindly and cared for him and calmed him down, and so maybe he feels more comfortable crying in this way when he's with her.
"It's okay. You're fine," Isabel whispers, trying to hush him. "Why are you crying? Come on, you can talk to me. You're okay, Bucky. You're okay," she hushes from across the cells, putting as much sympathy into her voice as she can.
Bucky eventually calms down, wiping away the tears and snot with the sleeve of his tattered shirt as though he was a child. His mouth even pouts the way it did when he was little, the dent in his chin becoming more prominent as he does. He looks up and meets her eyes, his eyebrows furrowed.
"Is-is that my name?" He suddenly asks.
Isabel pauses, eyes widening. She hadn't mean to call him by name. Madame Hydra had been very adamant about it, that he was to be the Asset or the Soldier and nothing else. It was all a part of the dehumanization. Isabel hasn't even heard herself referred to anything but the Asset's handler. If Madame Hydra finds out about the slip up, Isabel will feel her wrath.
Isabel gulps. "Yes, it is. But we can't let on to anyone that I know what your name is, or else we'll get into trouble," she tells him quietly, as though it were a secret only between the two of them.
"O-okay," Bucky concedes quietly.
"Why are you crying?"
Bucky thinks for a moment. "I-I don't know. Just… happened."
"Okay. That's okay," Isabel promises.
"Do you have a name?" Bucky then asks.
He never asks questions with anyone else, is punished for it, but he seems to feel comfortable asking her questions. She's never laid a hand on him, but she has been the one controlling him. She supposes her gentleness has run in her favour of getting the Soldier on her side. He's been known to attack at least once everyone else who's attempted to control him, including his own strike team, but never her.
Isabel's eyes widen. This is not what she wanted one of their only conversations to be like. She doesn't know what he's allowed to know. She supposes it would be better for him to think of her only as his handler. If she revealed they were related, he either wouldn't understand, or it would bring back all of his memories and he'd come undone.
"I-I do. Everyone has a name," Isabel tells him quietly. "B-but I'm not going to tell you in case you accidentally use it. No one can know that we talk or that we know each other. I'm only supposed to be your handler, remember?"
Bucky nods at this. "You're one of my handlers."
"Yes, but I don't like treating you like the other handlers do. I don't like it. I don't want to hurt you or cause you pain. So, this has to be a secret, just us." Isabel feels like she's speaking to a child and it makes her want to cry.
"It can be a secret. I can keep a good secret," Bucky promises, eyebrows furrowed in thought. "You treat me nicer than the other handlers. I-I like you."
Isabel's words catch thickly in her throat. She manages a smile at Bucky, who's wide-eyed fear slowly morphs into a pass for a smile, only the corners of his mouth turning up.
"I like you, too."
It takes longer that Hydra had been expecting for their second target of this particular mission to come available. Apparently, the man, a scientist for Shield, has gone off the radar and they were hoping to track him down immediately.
Hydra keeps Bucky and Isabel in the cells until such time, and the days pass by extremely slowly. The only way they have any idea of the time and how many days have passed is when their attendant comes in and hook up an IV to them, feeding a bag of grey goop into their veins. When Isabel asks what it is, the man explains it is a nutritional supplement, instead of them eating.
Being in the cells isn't so much of a problem. The issue comes when the longer that they keep Bucky out of cryostasis, the longer between memory wipes when he's conscious, and some things start to slip through. It isn't that he starts to remember things, just that he begins to do certain things, say things a certain way, that remind Isabel more of Bucky than the robotic man she's grown used to seeing. Sometimes his terrified or blank expression is replaced with that brooding frown he always got when he was thinking. Sometimes he taps his fingers on his knee to some melody in his head. A few times, he hums the melody to a particular song that Isabel recognises as one they used to listen to on the record player at their parents'. Isabel wonders whether he can see the scenes in his head too, of them dancing around the living room, or whether he can only hear the music and see flickers of the memory.
Bucky starts to dream in his sleep, something he never did prior. He thrashes around a lot, acts out dream sequences with his hands. He calls out random names and places and words that would mean nothing to anyone, but Isabel stares in awe. Ma… wanna go home… Brooklyn… Peg… end of the… Steve… line.
When he awakens, he rarely remembers. But Isabel feels a sense of determination. Bucky's got some form of memory within him, even if it is subconscious rather than conscious. Apparently, in his sleep the barrier between himself the memories Hydra repressed falls, or at least weakens, and the memories flood through to him in the form of dreams. She just hopes that one day he'll remember when he's awake, too.
The one day that Bucky meets her eyes and recognition sparks, Isabel's breath catches in her throat. It will only take one memory for him to remember and then all of his memories will come rushing back like a tidal wave. Bucky stares at her a long while, his eyes transitioning from empty to recognition, sadness, fear, horror. It takes hours, and they just stare at each other across the great divide between them, Isabel hoping and Bucky growing frantic.
Suddenly, his head darts around at their surroundings, in the same cells that they'd been taken to when they'd first been captured. It's like he's just woken up from a nap and missed out on everything that's happened to them. It's like the last few months of them being awoken periodically and trained and deployed haven't happened for him.
"Belle? What are you doing here?" Bucky cries, almost yells his voice is so hysterically.
Isabel looks around nervously to the cameras watching them. If she can keep Bucky quiet, if she can get him to pretend he still doesn't remember, they could get out. "Bucky, please! You need to be quie–"
But Bucky's woken up and he does remember what happened in that gap in his memories. He's got a whole lot of new memories, memories of his hands committing unspeakable acts against his will. His mind is running a mile a minute as thousands of images cross his eyes like a horrifying film.
"Oh my God!" Bucky cries, his eyes filling with tears. "What's happening? What the hell have we done?" He stares down at his own hands, one pale and one metal, and his eyes widen, almost as if he could see the blood dripping off them. Bucky's voice is so hysterical, his face so broken, that Isabel can only stare in horror. "What have they done to me? What have we done? Where's Steve? Where's Ma? How many people have I–?"
Bucky cuts off in a strangled sob and he falls to the ground, curled over as though he were in pain. He clutches his head tightly to ward off an oncoming headache.
"Soldier, just calm down–" Isabel tries, but immediately stops herself. She's grown so used to having to call him the Soldier, she's let it slip. She's grown so used to being forced to dehumanise her own brother, she can't stop. And Bucky's expression says it all.
He stops crying, falling silent, and looks up at her with an expression Isabel knows she'll never forget. His eyes peer into her soul, and there's so much regret and disgust and hatred for himself in his eyes.
"I mean, Bucky," Isabel tries hastily to correct. "Bucky, your name is Bucky."
But Bucky's pallor turns green with sickness. Isabel remembers what Madame Hydra had said, that remembering would make Bucky physically sick. But she isn't convinced it's all the memories making Bucky sick. It's a sickness for himself and what he's done and what he's been turned into. And then, he's vomiting all over the floor. There's no food in his stomach to bring up, hasn't been food in there for years. He's retching, gagging, making horrible sounds. It's almost like he's having a seizure, the way he shakes and cries and vomits.
After a few minutes, Bucky stops gagging, takes a few steadying breaths, and sits up, wiping at his mouth. His terrified eyes meet Isabel's immediately and the heartbreak is undeniable.
"Bucky?" Isabel whispers hesitantly, guilt in every inch of her body and mind.
"It's me," Bucky promises in a small voice. "I was here all along, I just couldn't get out. It was like I was watching myself in a film but I couldn't do anything to stop myself. The programming was too strong. I-I'm so sorr–"
Bucky and Isabel flinch into silence when the door to the cells bursts open and ten armed men power into the rooms, their frantic feet thudding the concrete. They slam Bucky's door open and Bucky cries out, curling in on himself protectively. They grab him up and drag him out of the cell. Bucky screams for Isabel, kicking against them, flailing in their arms. He's stronger than them easily, but together the ten of them manage to overpower him and drag him from the room, his screams and shouts and swearing getting fainter the further away he gets.
Within a minute, they've taken him again. After weeks of sitting in these cells, they've removed him within a minute, in the blink of an eye. It hardly seems fair.
Isabel slumps against the bars, silent tears streaming down her face. She waits and after a few minutes, she hears in the far distance the familiar screams of Bucky's mind being wiped once again. The screams echo through the hallways toward her. The sound is tinny, almost as though she were hearing it through the beat-up radio in their living room back home.
She nearly had him back forever. Bucky had remembered her, had remembered where they were, that they were in danger. She'd been more than his handler; she'd been his sister again. She had her brother back for only a minute before he'd been taken away again.
Their chance to get away, to break free, and it's gone. With a few mind wipes and a bit of aversion therapy, he'll be gone again. And Hydra won't be silly enough to leave Bucky out of cryostasis that long again without wiping him periodically. They'll learn from their mistakes, as they always do.
Bucky doesn't return for days. For nearly the entirety of those days, Isabel hears him screaming down the hall. She hears the yells of the other men as they repress his memories again, scream at him to forget, remove everything about him again that made him Bucky.
When he's brought back to his cell, the guards shove him inside and he falls to the floor with a thud. He slowly drags himself to the wall and curls himself into a ball. Any sign of emotion or recognition is gone. His face is blank, his eyes cold and empty. His limp, slick with sweat dark hair hangs at each side of his face like a curtain between him and Isabel.
Isabel watches him a long while. He barely moves, as still as a statue. Any signs of him being even human have disappeared, let alone of him being Bucky.
Isabel tries anyway. "Bucky?" She whispers, but he doesn't respond, doesn't even look up. "Soldier?"
Bucky looks up at that, eyes flicking to her. There's nothing on his face but submission, as though he were looking at his superior office. She supposes he is. He says nothing, just looks at her for instruction.
Isabel sighs and sits back against the wall, looking away from him. "Never mind."
Bucky turns away again, staring silently at the far wall. Isabel copies him. A single tear is left to roll down Isabel's cheek. He's gone. Again.