Archive of Our Own ^beta

The boy in the alley was all knobby knees and sharp elbows in carefully mended worn clothes. Blood leaked from his nose, smeared across his cheek by the back of a small dirty hand. Scarlet bloodstains speckled his shirt, adding to the mess there. His knees were scraped raw and blackened in places from ground in dirt gained through the tussle.

“I didn’t need your help,” the boy spat at him. The pent up wild fury seemed out of place in his frail looking body.

Bucky couldn’t help but grin at him. “Sure you didn’t. That’s why your face kept getting rubbed in the dirt. Whatcha do to piss off Thomas anyway?”

The kid sniffed, loud and wet. Another trickle of blood slid out of his nose and over his lip despite his effort to keep it in. A pink tongue flicked out to lick it away. “He was calling Ms. Walsh a rude name. Told him to shut his trap.”

Everyone knew Ms. Walsh wasn’t a proper lady, what with her entertaining different men every night ever since her husband passed on from lingering wounds sustained in the Great War. Bucky knew his mama had all sorts of things to say in the shelter of their own home, but she still treated everyone with respect beyond the Barnes’ front door, including Ms. Walsh.

“I’d’ve done the same if I was in your boat,” Bucky admitted.

The boy wiped his hand on his trousers, sizing Bucky up with bright blue eyes. Then he smiled, all split lip and bloody teeth, and Bucky should’ve taken all three as a warning, but he didn’t.

“My name’s Steve Rogers.”

Bucky stuck out his hand, still grinning. “James Buchanan Barnes, but my friends call me Bucky.”

“Wipe him.”

The neighborhood was never the same after Bucky found Steve. For starters, Mrs. Barnes was waylaid during mass a lot more over the years by women and men alike taking time to give her their opinion on the trouble Bucky found himself in “Because of that Rogers boy, Winifred. Lord, the trouble that boy gets into for one his size. He’s going to drag your son into sinning, mark my words.”

And Winifred, well, she knew the kinds of sacrifices Sarah Rogers made to ensure her son lived to see the next new year, and the hours she put in at the hospital. Widowed, yes, but a fine upstanding woman who was raising her son with all the right mores.

That didn’t excuse the trouble the boys got into.

“Standing up for what you believe in is all well and good, I just wish you wouldn’t ruin your clothes so much,” Winifred tsked as she sewed a torn trouser hem.

“But ma, they was beating on Steve something fierce,” Bucky protested.

“You keep talking and that swollen lip won’t heal as quick. Hush, and let me finish.”

Bucky resorted to sulking until his mother abandoned the mended pants in favor of starting dinner before her husband came home from work. His younger sister Rebecca was reading a library book in the corner of the couch, but looked up when Bucky snuck his pants off the sewing table. He pressed a finger to his lips to shush her as he pulled them on, then escaped the apartment before his mother could find some chores for him to do.

He ran the two blocks to Steve’s building, pitching himself up the stairs to the fifth floor, where he knocked on a familiar door. Sarah Rogers opened it a few seconds later, arching an eyebrow at Bucky’s swollen bottom lip and newly mended trousers. Her pale blond hair was pinned up beneath her nurse’s cap, a few short wisps framing her pretty face.

“I’m sure your mother would prefer you home, mo buachaill,” she admonished gently.

“I just wanted to check up on Steve, Mrs. Rogers,” Bucky said, more than a little breathless from his run.

Sarah sighed, but couldn’t quite hide her smile as she held the door open a little wider for her son’s best friend. “Alright, then. Just for a bit.”

Bucky flashed her a grin, then winced as it pulled at his puffy mouth, blue eyes bright in a bruised face as he stepped inside the small apartment. He could see Steve sitting at the kitchen table, waving at him. “Thanks, Mrs. Rogers.”

“Let’s get you something for that swelling first, hm? You both look a mess.”

At least they were a mess together.

“Wipe him.”

Bucky didn’t much care about his appearance until he was thirteen and figured out that girls weren’t the enemy. Then he wouldn’t step out of the house unless his shirts and trousers were ironed just so, his hair was set in pomade, and he’d snuck a drop of his father’s cheap cologne. The first time he wore the stuff, it didn’t go very well.

“What do you think?” Bucky asked, leaning in close so Steve could get a whiff.

Steve wrinkled his nose and then promptly started sneezing. Bucky looked at him worriedly as Steve blew his nose on a handkerchief.

“You alright?” Bucky asked.

“What’d you do, roll in it?” Steve said.

“I didn’t use much!”

Steve wrinkled his nose. “You used enough.”

Bucky sighed and grabbed Steve by the hand, pulling him off the threadbare couch. It was clean and mended at the seams with Mrs. Rogers’ neat stitches, but it had seen better days. “Come on, get dressed. The girls are waiting.”

“You don’t know any girls, Buck.”

“That’s the whole point of going out, Steve. So go put on your best shirt. You gotta look sharp.”

“Girls don’t go for guys like me,” Steve stated mulishly, staying put.

Bucky sighed, scratching at the back of his head. The pomade itched a little, but he wasn’t going to tell Steve that. “Then they don’t know what they’re missing. Still doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time.”

“I always have a good time with you. You’re my best friend.”

“Then come out with me.”

Steve sighed heavily and went to dig up a shirt, giving in as he always did. When he came out, suspenders a little too wide for his thin frame and the collar edge of his button-down shirt rolling up from being improperly folded, Bucky could only shake his head and smile.

“Looking good, Rogers.”

“Stuff it, Barnes.”

Too young for the bars, too old for children’s games in the street, they went to the local soda shop where boys and girls their age and a bit older hung out in order to be seen. Bucky got more than a few looks thrown his way by the girls when they arrived, and he grinned at the attention.

Steve and Bucky made their way up to the soda counter and Mary Beth from down the street, two years older, with her perfectly set hair and wide brown eyes, looked Bucky up and down with more than a little interest. Bucky preened beneath the attention, flashing her a smile that came easier every day. Ever since his mother had told him his smile would break hearts one day, he’d practiced it in the bathroom mirror every morning.

“Didn’t think you cleaned up so nicely outside of mass, Bucky,” Mary Beth said, taking the sting out of her words with a smile.

Bucky eagerly grabbed the chance for conversation with a pretty girl, getting her to laugh and keeping her attention when he used some of his carefully hoarded change to buy her a root beer float.

“I can’t drink all this by myself. You’ll need to help me,” Mary Beth said, looking up at him through her eyelashes.

Bucky’s weakness for a pretty face meant he agreed, and happily so. It took a while before he realized Steve wasn’t around anymore, wasn’t even in the soda shop. Craning his head around, Bucky tried to see out the shop’s windows onto the street, but there were too many teenaged bodies in the way having fun.

“’Scuse me,” Bucky said, giving the girls a nice smile and a polite lie. “But I gotta go. Forgot to run an errand for my ma.”

“You sure you have to leave?” Mary Beth asked, chewing prettily on her bottom lip.

He didn’t, but he knew that Steve left to his own devices could get into enough trouble to rile all of Brooklyn some days. “Can’t really disobey my ma, right? She’d probably ground me, and then when would I see your pretty face again? Never, that’s when.”

Mary Beth giggled, turning to whisper in her friend’s ear. Then she picked up her purse and slid her arm through Bucky’s, smiling winsomely at at him. “I’m sure your mom won’t mind you walking a girl home, now would she?”

His mother wouldn’t, was the thing, and Bucky had no real excuse not to. So he tamped down his worry for Steve and walked Mary Beth home that sunny afternoon, all the while checking every alleyway they passed for signs of his best friend. Mary Beth didn’t notice, chattering away about nothing important, keeping up conversation like any good girl her age learned to do. When Bucky saw her to the stoop of her apartment building, Mary Beth stood on her tip-toes to press a kiss to his mouth, soft and chaste. Bucky was too surprised to do anything except stand there.

“Such a gentleman, Bucky Barnes. Come pick me up tomorrow for lunch. It’s the weekend and we don’t have school,” Mary Beth said.

“Sure thing, doll,” Bucky said weakly, waving goodbye as she entered her apartment building.

He could taste her lipstick on his lips, a hint of chemicals he had no name for, and the root beer float they’d shared. Bucky grinned all the way home and was almost to his front door before he remembered Steve. Swearing, he spun right back around and raced outside, heading for Steve’s apartment first. Easier to start there, then work his way through the alleys. Bucky pounded on the door for a good minute before it finally opened.

“You’re here? You didn’t get into a fight?” Bucky asked stupidly, blinking at Steve.

“I live here, remember? And I can go outside without getting punched,” Steve snapped at him.

Bucky rolled his eyes, shouldering past Steve into the apartment. “Why’re you so mad, huh? You say you didn’t get into a fight, but you’re sure angry like you did.”

Steve just scowled at him and let the door close with a loud bang. “I’m not angry.”

“Coulda fooled me.”

Steve rubbed the side of his nose with one finger, not looking Bucky in the eye when he said, “You seemed like you were having fun. I was only getting in the way.”

Bucky moved without thinking, grabbing for Steve and hauling him in close. He bent his head until they were nose to nose and could look each other square in the eye. “Hey, no. Don’t ever think that, okay? You’re my friend, my best friend. I ain’t gonna throw you away like trash just because a pretty girl wants to kiss me.”

“She kissed you?” Steve squawked, pulling away.

Bucky felt himself go red in the face but he didn’t bother hiding his smile. “Yeah. I walked her home. I, uh, got a date with her tomorrow. You know, she’s got a friend. Bet I could set you up with her.”

“They didn’t pay any attention to me today. What makes you think they will tomorrow?”

“Because you’re my best guy, Steve. And I’m not doing this without you.”

Steve sighed, shoulders slumping a bit, and Bucky knew he’d won the argument, but the win tasted sour in his mouth, and he didn’t know why.

“’Course I’m your best guy,” Steve grumbled. “Don’t know why you need a girl though.”

Neither did Bucky, except it was the thing boys and men alike were supposed to want in their life. A wife and a couple of kids, Sunday dinner on the table after church and a decent job. Grow up, but never out of Brooklyn. Maybe move a half dozen streets over to the slightly nicer part of town if they were lucky. Things Bucky knew he should want, but he knew enough about himself to know he’d never willingly give Steve Rogers up, no matter what tradition dictated.

“Wipe him.”

When Bucky was sixteen and Steve was a month and a half shy of his own sixteenth birthday, a long, late spring storm settled wetly in Steve’s lungs. It started as a sniffle and a faint rasp to his voice when he spoke that Bucky fretted over no matter how irritated Steve got.

“Bucky, I’m fine,” Steve groaned. Bucky ignored him and kept digging through his trunk of clothes for his old winter scarf so Steve could use it.

“The hell you are,” Bucky muttered. He came up victorious with the scarf Rebecca had knitted for him two Christmases ago and slung it around Steve’s neck. “Put this on, will ya?”

“But it’s the end of May.”

“And you’re starting to sound like it’s the middle of December. Humor me, okay?”

Steve wore the scarf. It didn’t help him get better.

The cough he acquired never quite went away, burrowing deeper into his chest. Fever eventually set in, swelling his joints, and a phlegmy wetness filled his chest, making the air rattle in his lungs. Mrs. Rogers took time off she couldn’t afford from the hospital in order to tend to Steve’s failing health through the end of May and into June. The muggy, near-summer heat made his constant fever worse, and Bucky took turns with Steve’s mother to press cool washcloths to his head and body every hour. But for all the love and care they tended him with, it wasn’t enough to stave off a deadly rise in temperature and the delirium it came with.

As befitting their Catholic beliefs, Mrs. Rogers called for the priest on what felt like the hottest night of the year. Bucky went to fetch Father O’Malley from the church, running full speed there and back down dimly lit streets despite his own exhaustion. Mrs. Rogers let them in when he knocked and murmured a weary greeting to the priest. After being outside for the first time in days, the cloying, sickly scent of illness filled Bucky’s nose unpleasantly.

“Thank you for coming, Father,” Sarah told him. It wasn’t the first time he’d been summoned in the middle of the nigh to ease the journey of the dying, and it certainly wasn’t the first time for Steve, but it never got easier for any of them.

Father O’Malley took in Sarah Rogers’ wrinkled clothes and stress-lined face, the dark circles bruised under her blue eyes from long days and even longer nights. He touched her shoulder gently as he stepped into her home, feeling her tremble slightly from grief she’d learned to lock away as a nurse years ago.

“You do good work, my child,” he said.

Bucky perched on the chair he’d claimed days ago when he refused to leave Steve’s bedside. His mother hadn’t ordered him home to be with his family since Steve got sick, merely stopped by once a day to check up on them. She brought a large pot of weak chicken soup that first day, and tea and bread every day since. She wasn’t here now, but part of Bucky wished she was.

Mrs. Rogers moved to sit on the edge of the bed beside Steve’s unconscious form and glanced over at Bucky, taking both boys’ hands in one of hers. “Your mother said it’s your choice to stay through. She won’t make me send you home if you don’t want to go.”

Bucky bit the inside of his bottom lip so hard it bled. “I’m staying.”

Mrs. Rogers nodded, tears in her blue eyes. Then she looked at the priest and said, with quiet dignity, “At your will, Father.”

Steve was too far gone from delirium for Penance, so Bucky spoke for him without being asked. “I know he’d be real sorry for any sins he’s done. It’s Steve, Father. You know how he is.”

Bucky pretended his voice didn’t crack on the words as Father O’Malley looked up from his Bible and smiled sadly at him. “I know, my son.”

Father O’Malley anointed Steve with olive oil from a vial produced from his satchel, rosary beads and a crucifix clenched in his other hand. He touched Steve’s forehead, throat, and heart with the oil, reciting prayers in Latin that should have been soothing but only made Bucky want to scream. Steve couldn’t chew, so the bread of the Eucharist was crumbled into the wine and Father O’Malley coaxed his delirious charge to swallow a single sip.

With the Viaticum finished, there was nothing left to do but pray.

Father O’Malley left well before dawn, but not before speaking one last time with Mrs. Rogers. “Care for yourself as you have cared for the sick and your son, my child. May the Lord be with you.”

And though they weren’t at mass, the response came automatically to both their lips. “And also with you.”

Father O’Malley kissed them both on their foreheads before taking his leave. They sat vigil for the remaining early morning hours until pale pink light pricked the sky in the east. Mrs. Rogers touched her shaking fingers beneath Steve’s nose, still feeling the faint puff of warm air that meant life. She excused herself with a soft murmur and retreated to the kitchen to put a kettle on for tea.

Bucky heard her crying; quiet, gulping sobs that made his own lungs seize in sympathy. But he didn’t go to comfort her, because Steve was still breathing, still alive, still here.

“Don’t you dare leave me, Steve,” Bucky whispered fiercely, leaning over to press his forehead to Steve’s listless, dry hand. “Don’t you dare.”

And the Lord might call the righteous to Him, might take the good ones young, but Steve never saw heaven that summer, though his lungs and heart were never the same after pneumonia and rheumatic fever stole his strength.

“Wipe him.”

In the realm of romance, Steve would follow where Bucky led, would try in the social scene of the day where Bucky succeeded. None of it mattered, Bucky realized one morning when he was eighteen after waking up sprawled on Mrs. Rogers’ couch. Steve was slumped against him after a night out on the town, his skinny body a welcome weight of familiar bony angles that felt right against him the way Bucky knew a woman’s curves never would.

Women were nice. He liked them, liked kissing them, liked fucking them. But Steve—Steve was everything Bucky wanted all wrapped up in a failing body that couldn’t contain him. That was never going to change, no matter how hard he fought it, he realized. Bucky was never one to give in easily, except to Steve, and he was done with thinking about what could be between them if he only found the words to ask. For all their back alley fights and Steve’s righteous fury against an unjust world, Bucky knew this feeling would change everything, but he wouldn’t give it up for anything. He’d take whatever Steve gave him after this, and gladly.

Bucky swallowed thickly as he raised one hand to brush back some of Steve’s sweaty hair, feeling him breathe.

“Quit it,” Steve muttered. “Was sleeping.”

“You’re the one drooling on me, punk.”

“Jerk.” Steve yawned hugely, but didn’t open his eyes. Bucky really shouldn’t have found it cute. “Time is it?”

“Ass crack of dawn.”

“Don’t let my mom hear you curse. I told her you gave it up for Lent.”

Bucky glanced guiltily at the closed door to the bedroom. Mrs. Rogers’ health hadn’t been all that great lately, which was part of the reason he’d bullied Steve into going out last night. He couldn’t care for his mother if he drove himself into the ground and got sick himself, and looking after Steve had always been Bucky’s job, ever since they were young boys.

“Really, Steve? Lent?”

“Not like you were gonna give anything else up. I had to tell her something.”

“But Lent? It’s forty fucking days!”

Steve snickered softly, pressing his face into the curve of Bucky’s shoulder, breathing wetly on the skin there. “Mom hasn’t seen you in a few days. It’s a little less than forty now.”

“You’re a cruel man, Steve Rogers.”

“Liar.”

“Hey.” Bucky nudged him a little with an elbow, trying not to feel his own hands shake. “I wanna do something.”

“So get up and do it.”

“Nah, need you to sit up first.”

Steve grumbled but got moving, finally prying open his eyes. He made a face, stretching where he sat. “What is it you need?”

“Do me a favor and don’t get mad, okay? And don’t punch me.”

“Don’t wha—”

Bucky was already moving, sliding one hand around the back of Steve’s neck and pulling him forward into a soft kiss. It wasn’t the greatest of angle, their mouths both tasted like sour whiskey from last night, and Bucky could smell the lingering cigarette smoke on their clothes.

Shouldn’t bring him back to that bar, Bucky idly thought.

Steve was the one who pulled back first, bringing up his own hand to grip tight in Bucky’s hair, messing up the last bit of pomade stiffness to be found there. He pulled at Bucky’s hair to swing his head around a bit, forcing Bucky to meet his gaze. Bucky was prepared to see anything in Steve’s eyes—hate, disgust, revulsion—but he wasn’t prepared for the absolute longing filling them.

“You thought I’d punch you?” Steve whispered loudly, glaring at him in the gray light of morning. “You?”

Bucky managed a weak grin. “Can’t blame a guy for being worried. I know how much you like to use your fists.”

“Not on you. You have to know that by now, Buck.” Steve shook his head fiercely. “Christ almighty. What am I gonna do with you?”

Keep me, Bucky thought. What he said was “Kiss me.”

Steve was never very good at telling Bucky no.

“Wipe him.”

In the Summer of 1941, the mercury filled most of the thermometer and the air conditioning unit could only do so much in the face of bad insulation and oppressive heat. Bucky watched the droplet of sweat roll down Steve’s neck and wondered how pissed the other man would be if he got up and moved and—

“You’re doing it again,” Steve muttered around the pencil in his mouth. He held his sketchbook steady against his legs as he used a rolled bit of paper to help blend the shading better. Sunlight poured through the top half of the small bedroom window, providing extra light along with the single sputtering bulb hanging from the ceiling. With Steve’s vision not that great, he always needed a lot of light when he painted or drew.

“Doing what?” Bucky asked, going for innocent and missing by a mile if Steve’s exasperated glare was anything to go by.

“You know what.”

Bucky leaned back in the chair, breaking pose, and let his legs fall open as he stretched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The pencil fell out of Steve’s mouth and he failed to catch it, a faint blush scorching high across his cheeks, fighting with the lingering sunburn earned yesterday at Coney Island. Bucky got to his feet and walked over to Steve, never taking his eyes from the other man’s face.

“Buck, it’s the middle of the day,” Steve warned, but he was already setting aside the sketchbook on the rickety bedside table.

“So close the curtains,” Bucky said as he went to his knees in front of Steve.

They were on the third floor, window pointed to the street instead of the backside of another building. The air-conditioning unit took up the bottom half of the window, a thin fluttering of air helping to keep Steve cool as opposed to the apartment, which was fine with Bucky.

Bucky got his hands on Steve’s belt, his mouth on Steve’s cock, and hummed. Steve never got his hands on the curtains.

When he came, Bucky swallowed everything he had to offer, tasting and smelling him like he couldn’t get enough. Pulling off with an obscene pop of his mouth, Bucky moved to wipe at the mess on his lips, but Steve beat him to it. A warm hand framed his face, long callused fingers stroking down to smear the trickles of saliva and jizz back into Bucky’s mouth, stroking his tongue gently with two of them.

“What did I ever do to deserve you?” Steve murmured, still breathless on the come down.

“Think that’s my line, babe.”

Bucky stared up at him, blond hair haloed by mid-day sunlight, lips still bitten-red from holding in his cries. Steve looked other-worldly and unreal, and Bucky could never understand how no one else could see it.

He wanted to remember Steve like this forever, bright and golden and his.

“Wipe him.”

Bucky never held a gun and fired live rounds in his life until he went to Combat Basic Training at Camp Jackson, his ticket to the war in the form of draft papers he wished he could’ve burned. He didn’t know how Steve was doing with him gone, and the not knowing made Bucky’s skin crawl worse than the dirt getting in places he never thought was possible during CBT.

The rifle never felt awkward in his hands, which his drill sergeant picked up on after the third time he buried bullets in the dead center of the bull’s-eye during range testing for marksmanship.

“You ever shoot a gun before joining up?” the drill sergeant wanted to know.

“Do carnival games count?” Bucky asked, staring straight ahead as he stood at attention, sweat beading across his forehead. “I’m from Brooklyn, Sir.”

“That isn’t an answer, Private. I said, have you ever shot a gun before joining up?”

“Sir, no, Sir!”

“City boy like you with eyes like that.” The drill sergeant shook his head, squinting at his clipboard. “Says here your civilian occupation was at a port. I’ve got you down for the Transportation Corps once you finish CBT.”

“Sir, yes, Sir!”

“Waste of a good goddamn pair of eyes, son. I’ve called back the reviewer and am recommending a change in MOS for you. If all goes well, you’ll get a sniper ASI instead and we’ll slot you in with the Infantry. The Army could use a man like you watching our boys’ backs.”

“Sir, yes, Sir!” was all Bucky could really say to that.

Turned out the drill sergeant was right. He was a damned good shot. During the extra weeks of training tacked onto his CBT, Bucky discovered an innate skill he never knew he had. For some reason, the weight of a gun felt right in his hands. His vision was far better and sharper than the standard enlistment requirement. The headspace he went to between the slow beats of his heart was calm and sharpened his attention like nothing else ever had outside of Steve.

With the way the war was going, with men needed in both the European and Pacific theaters, enlistees were being pushed through CBT in droves. Getting promoted meant higher pay, which meant more money Bucky could send back home to his mother with instructions to give half to his best friend. He never wrote down Steve’s name when he wrote home, knowing better than that. He still sent Steve separate letters though, sharing with him stripped down narratives of Army life like anyone would with a friend. Bucky always signed it with sincerely at the end, the formal closing never looked at twice by the men tasked with reviewing the post for confidential military information.

No matter how good you were with a gun, if the Army discovered you liked men as more than just a brother-in-arms kind of deal, they blue carded you. Didn’t matter how needed your skills might be, the United States Army had an image to uphold and maintain. So Bucky kept his head down, kept thinking about Steve even as he talked about girls, and when he got slotted in with the men going to Europe rather than those going to the Pacific, he only prayed Steve’s letters would find him out there in the field after he shipped out.

Bucky got three days leave after his training was finally completed and he graduated with the rank of Sergeant instead of Private, the three chevrons on his sleeves crisp and new. He took a train back to New York City packed with other soldiers, making it a boisterous ride instead of a quiet one. Some men were returning home to say goodbye to their families, while others wanted memories of one last wild night in America to carry with them overseas. The Stark Expo was a huge tourist draw right now, which meant everyone would have a shot to find a pretty girl to entertain.

Bucky went to find Steve instead, eventually pulling him out of a back alley fight after asking around the neighborhood shops for his location.

Steve was a little bloody, a little dirty, still as mouthy and angry as ever, just like when they were kids. Bucky shook his head fondly, pulling Steve in close for a brief sideways hug.

“Don’t ever change, punk,” Bucky murmured into his ear as they walked out of the alley.

The war wouldn’t wait, and the 107th had a spot waiting for Bucky with his name on it. But Steve was a familiar presence at his side and Bucky would take all that today would give him with grace.

“Wipe him.”

The front lines were nothing like the propaganda reels back home. It was probably for the best. If Bucky had known—if he’d had any idea of what war was like—he’d have been too damned tempted to dodge the draft and run for the nearest international border instead of lying to Steve and saying he enlisted while hiding his papers.

“God, I’m an idiot,” Bucky muttered as he opened his C ration with the metal key pulled from the bottom of the can.

A heavy hand smacked against his back, nearly throwing him forward into the small fire as Corporal Timothy “Call me Dum-Dum” Dugan sat down next to him. “I dunno about that, Sarge. That was some mighty fine shooting you did today. Sure saved our asses when we needed it.”

Bucky shrugged him off, making sure to put the tin top flat on the ground so no one would cut themselves open on it. He nudged it closer to the fire with his foot to further get it out of the way.

“Just doing my job,” Bucky said. He looked at what was for dinner and made a face. “Ugh.”

Dum-Dum laughed. “Bet you’re missing your girl’s cooking right about now.”

“Don’t got a girl. Still don’t got dinner, but I’ll eat it.”

“That’s the spirit. And what do you mean you ain’t got no girl? Mug like yours, they’re probably falling all over themselves for you.”

Bucky thought about Steve and the goodbyes they’d said to each other in bed, because they couldn’t be said on the train platform. Dum-Dum poked a thick finger at Bucky’s cheek and he batted it away. “Hey! Watch it. Keep your hands to yourself.”

“That right there,” Dum-Dum crowed. “That’s the face of a guy who’s got a girl. Don’t try and deny it.”

Bucky rolled his eyes and dug his spoon into the mystery meat. He thought it might be the potato hash, but he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t vomit. “Sure, Dum-Dum. A girl. With blond hair and blue eyes.”

“And a knack for cooking?”

Steve couldn’t cook if his life depended on it, but what the hell. It’s not like Dum-Dum would ever meet him. “Better than my ma’s.”

“That’s the spirit. Hey, I think I got the meat and veggie stew. Wanna—”

“No.”

“Wipe him.”

He told the boys they shouldn’t have gone out of their way to get revenge for him at the weapons facility. It was too dangerous, too risky, to fight for one man when they could’ve all been found out and executed for the offense.

“Accidents don’t happen,” Bucky whispered feverishly as the HYDRA soldiers carried him down the corridor, boots dragging behind him against the cement floor. The short figure of the scientist who’d been looking—always looking—and choosing the men one at a time led the way.

Bucky didn’t think his number coming due was an accident. Zola was looking for something specific, was particular about the men he chose to take away, none of whom were ever seen again. Bucky was under no illusion he would be returning to the enslaved workforce and his spot on the factory line.

I wonder what they’ll tell my ma? he thought as he was lifted and strapped down to a table. I wonder what she’ll tell Steve?

She’d hang a gold star in the window instead of a blue one, just like all the other mothers who’d lost a son overseas. But Steve—Steve wouldn’t have anything of him but what was already left behind. Bucky’s heart lurched at that. Steve, who’d taken his mother’s death so damn hard where it couldn’t be seen by the rest of the world, would take Bucky’s even worse. He’d said as much, and Bucky believed him.

The musings of a fevered man were cut short by bright lights being turned on right above him. Bucky jerked his head to the side, flinching at the glare. Zola bustled around trays of tools in a workroom that smelled like piss and blood, even through the bleach.

“What are you gonna do to me?” Bucky whispered.

Zola tied a rubber tourniquet around his arm and tapped for the vein in the crook of his elbow until it appeared. Then he picked up a syringe filled with bright blue liquid and flicked a nail against the tube, making sure no air bubbles were floating around inside.

“First, I’m going to see if you survive. And then, well, I suppose we’ll go from there, won’t we?”

Zola slid the needle into Bucky’s vein and depressed the plunger. It took only seconds before his skin started to burn itself down to his bones.

“Wipe him.”

I’m hallucinating, Bucky decided for the umpteenth time that hour as the column of former prisoners kept marching.

The hallucination marching next to him had Steve’s face, but not his body. Same eyes, same voice, same hands, but nothing else matched. Bucky didn’t know what to make of the change, and so the logical conclusion he came to was “I’m dreaming. This is a dream.”

“Hey, no,” hallucination-Steve said, stepping closer, but not breaking stride. “Bucky, this isn’t a dream.”

“You aren’t real,” Bucky decided. “I’m still in that lab. On that table. This isn’t real.”

Hallucination-Steve grabbed his arm, fingers gripping tight enough to bruise as he hauled Bucky out of formation.

“You boys keep marching,” hallucination-Steve called over his shoulder. “We’ll catch up in a minute. I need to check on Sergeant Barnes.”

“I made you a Captain,” Bucky muttered, scrubbing at one eye with bruised knuckles. “Why would I rank you higher than me in my dream?”

“I dunno, Buck. It’s not a real rank anyway. Come here, please. God, look at you, you’re a mess.”

He was pushed up against a tree, branches blocking out the sunlight, casting them in shade. Bucky tilted his head up, looking for the sky and only catching glimpses of it. Warm hands framed his face, skin hot, but not hot enough to reach the cold in his bones. They guided his head down a bit so he could look the hallucination in the eye. Where once there had been a noticeable difference in their heights, his mind had grown Steve taller than him by at least an inch or two.

Then the warmth seeping through his skin registered, and Bucky frowned, lifting a hand to wrap his fingers loosely around the hallucination’s wrist. Which didn’t disappear, remained solid beneath his grip. Bucky dug his fingers into the pulse beating between tendons, counting time to a heartbeat that didn’t skip.

“It’s wrong,” Bucky said stupidly, blinking rapidly. “Your heartbeat.”

“What? Oh, yeah. My arrhythmia is gone. Serum fixed it. Serum fixed a lot things.”

“Serum.”

“Project Rebirth. I’m not supposed to talk about it, but when have I ever kept anything from you?”

“Project Rebirth.”

“Secret science project. Dr. Erskine he—well. He died, but he was a good man, Buck. He picked me.”

“Picked you.” Christ, he was starting to sound like his mother.

“C’mon, Buck. You’re scaring me.”

Bucky shook his head hard, dislodging Steve’s hands, but Bucky kept hold of him because he didn’t know how to let go. Taking in a heaving lungful of air, he pressed the heel of his scraped up palm against his forehead, trying to grind away his headache into nothing. When he opened his eyes, Steve was still there, stupid blue helmet hanging askew on his blond head, dirty and whole and here.

“You’re real,” Bucky croaked out, staring at him. “You’re real and—you joined some secret science project that turned you into this blond Adonis and went behind enemy lines alone and Steven Grant Rogers what the hell were you fucking thinking?”

Steve opened his mouth to speak but Bucky cut him off by slapping his own hand over Steve’s mouth.

“Don’t answer that,” he told Steve grimly.

Steve grinned against his palm, eyes bright and happy despite the situation. He peeled Bucky’s hand off his mouth, pressed him against the tree, and kissed him so hard their teeth clicked together. Bucky sank into it, sank into Steve, gripping the lapels of his bomber jacket so tight he ripped a seam in the leather. Steve tasted like he hadn’t brushed his teeth in days, Bucky probably tasted worse, but underneath the staleness of too many days and weeks and months apart, he still tasted like Steve.

Like home.

Steve broke the kiss carefully, lips lingering against Bucky’s for a few seconds longer as they just breathed. Then he pulled back, a regretful look on his face. He gripped Bucky by the arm, gently this time, and got him back on his feet without a tree to lean against.

“We got a ways to go before we can make camp. We need to keep moving,” Steve said.

“Lead on, Captain.”

“You know it’s not a real rank, Buck.”

“No? Coulda fooled me, soldier.”

“Wipe him.”

The pub was loud and bright and full of people, just like the bars back home.

Bucky hated it.

To be fair, he’d hate the bars back home, too, if he showed up after escaping a POW camp in Austria. London was no different. As in New York City, the dames here were all gorgeous, looking to give any man in uniform a good time, and Agent Carter was the cream of the crop. Bucky took another sip of his whiskey, back against the wall at the side of the bar, as he watched Steve chat with the lovely agent at a table a pair of RAF airmen had politely ceded them.

Her brown hair was burnished mahogany in the dim light of the bar, lips a smear of crimson, and that dress, Lord, that dress could do things to a man. Bucky couldn’t even blame Steve for succumbing to it, to her, because he would’ve too, in Steve’s place. Peggy Carter’s feelings were written clear as day in the lines of her body for anyone to see if they knew what to look for and he wanted to be angry. He did.

But for all his Irish temper, Bucky had a helluva time staying mad at Steve.

Tipping his head back, Bucky swallowed the dregs of his whiskey, put the tumbler on the counter, and gathered up his coat. Dum-Dum and the rest of the newly formed Howling Commandos were holding court at the corner table still, difficult to see through the crowd of soldiers eager for their stories. All of them were being put up in a nearby hotel for their leave taking in London before getting back to the ugliness of war. Bucky had already spent a good chunk of that free time in the hotel floor’s shared bathroom, trying to wash off months’ worth of dirt and grime embedded in his skin. Another shower didn’t sound half bad at the moment.

Bucky pushed his way out of the crowd, leaving the smoky pub for the foggy evening. The chill in the air made him tuck his hands into his coat pockets and hunch his chin below the flipped up collar. Striding down the street, he took a moment to get his bearings, sharp eyes skimming over London in the dark. Even night couldn’t hide the scars gained during the Blitz, but what said more about the city’s resilience were the people still going about their lives. It reminded him of Brooklyn, and like Brooklyn, Bucky hadn’t gone half a block before he heard a familiar voice calling his name.

“Bucky! Wait up!”

He paused, looking over his shoulder as Steve hurried to catch up. Bucky quirked an eyebrow at him, still amazed at how Steve didn’t need to gasp for air anymore after a short run. “Yeah?”

Steve slowed his pace to a walk, frowning at Bucky. “You left.”

“Tab was paid, remember? By Captain America no less.”

“Thought you weren’t following him?” Steve asked without rancor.

Bucky shrugged. “Yeah, well. I needed a little air. Go back to your girl, Steve.”

Steve sidestepped in front of him, bringing Bucky up short. Steve’s eyes caught his even if Steve’s hands stayed rigid at his side. They were out in public, on a wide open London street, and the pubs were still serving drinks. Anyone could see them, which meant they fell back on old habits from home. Look, but don’t touch, though sometimes looking was more than enough to get caught.

“She’s not my girl, Bucky,” Steve said quietly. “I don’t got a girl. You know that.”

“Do I?” Bucky asked meanly.

Steve frowned, staring down at him, and that just made Bucky feel so angry for a moment, angry at the differences between them now. He reached out and shoved at Steve, but the other man didn’t move an inch, holding his ground in a way he couldn’t even a year ago.

“Why didn’t you stay home, Steve?”

“Because if I had, you’d be dead. You might have noticed I’m not real good at looking after myself when you’re gone.”

Bucky gave him a withering once-over. “You think?”

Steve’s mouth quirked a bit at the corner before settling back into a serious line. “Peggy’s a friend. A good friend, and a gorgeous woman, but she’s not for me. I’ve only ever had one sweetheart and that’s the one who saw me before I looked like this. Unless that’s changed?”

Bucky’s shoulders slumped, tension sliding away like water. He shook his head, feeling more than a little ashamed at being the reason for the hesitance in Steve’s voice, in his eyes. “Nothing’s changed, Steve. I’d say blame my words on the drink, but that’s an excuse, and you don’t deserve that. Sorry.”

Steve checked the motion of his hands, curling them into fists instead of reaching for Bucky. “Come on. Let’s go back to the hotel. I’ve got a room.”

“So do I, or did you forget we got our keys at the same time?”

“You’re sharing. I’m not.”

“What?” Bucky squawked. “How’d you pull that?”

“Rank has its privilege,” Steve said, sounding smug.

“It’s not a real rank!”

“It is now.”

They walked in companionable silence back to the small hotel, bypassing its own pub on the ground floor for Steve’s small room on the third. It overlooked the street, heavy curtains tied to the side of the only window. The electric lights on the ceiling sputtered a bit, wiring probably a little loose. The bed was a double, blankets turned down by the maid. Steve’s bag was tucked away in the small closet.

Steve switched on the small lamp situated on the side table near the bed. Soft amber light shone through the tan lampshade, much easier on the eyes. Bucky switched the overhead lights off, plunging the room into warmly lit shadows.

“Pull the curtains shut this time,” he said, voice a little rough.

“This time, he says. It was you who didn’t pull them shut the last time,” Steve muttered.

Bucky shrugged out of his coat and hung it over the desk chair before shucking off the rest of his uniform with ease. Steve was peeling off his own uniform with the slow carefulness of one still not used to it. Bucky sighed and went to help out.

“You must be an officer. All your kind need an NCO’s help to find your asses.”

Steve’s hand snuck around Bucky’s hip and dipped lower, squeezing firm muscle. “Found yours.”

Bucky huffed out laugh, elbowing him in the sternum. “Fuck you, that’s terrible.”

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed, but they’d always laughed during sex when the mood allowed for it. Steve just grinned, and kept grinning until he was stripped down to his underwear, same as Bucky. For a moment, Bucky just stared, finally able to look without fear of reprisal after a week of shared camp space and jumper flights to get here. Steve’s new body was all straight bones, heavy muscle where none had grown before, no matter how many hours they spent at the boxing gym. Steve was gorgeous, always had been if you asked Bucky, but better than that—he was healthy.

Bucky trailed his fingers down Steve’s chest until he could flatten his hand a little to the left of his sternum, right over his heart. Bucky lifted his gaze from the pulsing beat he could only feel to look at Steve.

“We could just sleep,” he said. He’d honestly be okay with that. Lying next to Steve and listening to him breathe was comforting for him, and Steve knew that. The Lord only knew he needed some bit of comfort in this war, especially now.

Bucky didn’t talk about how the wounds he’d acquired while being held prisoner had all but disappeared. How the sharp pain in his chest that signaled cracked ribs was nothing more than a memory. He didn’t want to think about what had changed in him to do that. The only way he’d ever learned to ignore the world was by focusing on Steve, so he did.

Steve slid his hands down Bucky’s hips, dragging off his underwear and freeing his swelling cock. “I went days thinking you might dead. And then you weren’t, but I couldn’t touch you. I’ve waited a week to get you alone. I’m not waiting anymore,” Steve said, voice coming out more than a little hoarse.

The heat in Steve’s eyes made Bucky shiver, made him reach for the other man with sudden desperation. Steve reached back and pushed Bucky onto the bed, crawling on top of him, and it was both new and not. The way Steve kissed hadn’t changed, but the weight of him had, the new strength that could pin Bucky to the mattress with ease. For once, it didn’t incite a flashback because it was Steve’s hands on him, and he would know those callused, artist hands anywhere. He would always know that touch.

“Fuck,” he gasped, mouthing at Steve’s neck, hitching a thigh against Steve’s hip and arching upwards. “Fuck, we don’t got anything.”

Steve reached one long arm under the other pillow and came up with a small tin of Vaseline. Bucky stared at it, then turned his head to stare at Steve, and discovered that yeah, he still blushed the same, too.

“Do I want to know how you got that?” Bucky asked mildly, raising an eyebrow. “Please tell me you didn’t just walk into a store and buy it wearing that uniform of yours. Everyone would’ve been looking, and believe me when I say everyone.”

“We used it on our teeth,” Steve explained, sitting up a little. Bucky let his legs fall open a little more, rubbing the heel of one foot against Steve’s back. “The USO girls, I mean. Makes your teeth shiny for the stage show. Katie showed me the trick on my first day in the monkey suit.”

Steve slicked up his fingers and trailed them down Bucky’s cock, fondling his balls one at a time with lingering touches. Then he pressed his thumb against the sensitive skin behind them before reaching to tease at his hole.

“Yeah, well.” Bucky groaned as Steve rubbed one finger against his hole before gently pressing in, and he shivered at the intrusion. “Tell her thanks for me next time you see her.”

Steve leaned over him, mouthing at the point of his chin before finding his mouth, finger still moving inside him. When he spoke, his voice came out in a low growl, deep and thrumming. “We aren’t talking about Katie while we’re in bed.”

“You’re the one who brought her up.”

“Bucky.”

“What? You were!”

Steve groaned, but there was a smile on his face. “Don’t you ever shut up?”

Bucky grabbed Steve by the back of his neck and pulled him down into a hard, wet kiss. “Yeah,” he rasped when they broke apart, smirking up at Steve. “You know how to shut me up real good, babe. So get on with it, unless you forgot how?”

Steve pressed a second finger inside him without warning, stretching him open wider, and rubbed them against that spot inside that sent molten fire streaking up Bucky’s spine. Bucky fell back against the bed with a moan Steve easily swallowed.

“Didn’t forget,” Steve muttered against his teeth.

“Bullshit. Get in me, I want you in me, it’s been months,” Bucky pleaded, gripping Steve by the shoulder and the hair, tugging at him. It’d been too long for both of them, and if the hard grip of Steve’s hands was anything to go by, Bucky wasn’t the only one who needed this.

Any other time and Steve might argue it was too soon, but he didn’t. He just slicked up his cock and pressed in and in, and Bucky tipped his head back, mouth dropping open as Steve filled him. The slick burn of him sinking in helped ground Bucky to the here and now, on this bed, where it was just the two of them. Steve’s hands gripped his hips so hard Bucky could feel the bruises forming but he didn’t fucking care.

Steve let out a shaky breath as he bottomed out, cock throbbing inside him. The faint rattle of Steve’s breathing had Bucky thinking of Brooklyn and the apartment they weren’t paying rent on, God he hoped Steve had remembered to buy storage space for their stuff. Then he realized what had flashed him back home, and he dragged his hands across Steve’s ridiculously warm skin and broad shoulders up to frame his face, breath ghosting out evenly and without effort through his mouth, through his nose. Working lungs, working heart, working everything, and Bucky may never get to meet Dr. Erskine now, but by God, his legacy was beautiful.

“I love you,” Bucky said, looking Steve right in the eyes.

Steve groaned wordlessly, surging up to kiss him. The sudden shift in position made Bucky gasp, and he kept gasping as Steve rocked into him, the drag and thrust of his thick, hard cock driving Bucky insane. Steve went slow, so slow, nudging his prostate with every long slide in and Bucky was going to fucking kill him if he didn’t go “Faster.”

“Yeah?” Steve said, licking into his mouth as he twisted his hips just right, the bastard. “What if I don’t want to?”

Bucky braced his feet against the bed, got his elbows underneath him, and shoved upwards, groaning deeply as Steve sank all the way in as they rocked up into a sitting position. Used to be the only time they fucked like this was when Bucky was in Steve, but he wasn’t complaining about the change up, no way in hell.

Steve’s hands slid over his ass, fingers sliding between the crease of his buttocks. Bucky whimpered against his neck as Steve stroked where they were joined, slipping the tip of one finger inside, the ring of muscle fluttering around the intrusion. Bucky’s mouth dropped open at the extra stretch, breath catching on a whine. He shook his head and reached around, gripping Steve’s wrist to pull his hand away.

At this point, Bucky was not above begging. “Come on, like this, I wanna feel you, I—”

Bucky choked on a moan as Steve lifted him up with that newfound strength of his and dragged Bucky back down his cock at the same time he thrust up, hard and hot and perfect.

“Like this?” Steve panted in his ear, holding on and fucking in relentlessly. “Is this what you want?”

Bucky clenched his muscles around Steve’s cock, and Steve’s next few thrusts slowed for a few sinful seconds. “Fuck you, you know it is,” he gasped out.

Steve buried a groan in his chest, teeth scraping against skin as he gasped for air. “Fuck, you feel so damn good around me.”

Bucky couldn’t find his voice after that, just let his body talk for him. He licked his way back to Steve’s mouth for an uncoordinated kiss as Steve shifted beneath him, spreading his legs a bit for more leverage, which in turn caused Bucky to stretch wider across his thighs, sinking deeper onto his cock. Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve’s shoulders and held on as Steve braced himself in the middle of the bed, hands hot and hard under Bucky’s thighs and ass, holding him up so Steve could pound into him and do his damnedest to make Bucky scream. One of Steve’s hands slipped between their bodies to wrap around Bucky’s cock, callused thumb rubbing at the sensitive spot underneath the flushed head.

“Let go, I’ve got you,” Steve rasped, face flushed, hair sweaty, blue eyes hot and intent and looking nowhere else but at him. “I wanna see you come, you always look so good when you come—”

Bucky bit down hard on the curve of Steve’s neck when he came, reeling from the orgasm that stole the breath from his lungs. He let out a sobbing gasp for air, shivering as Steve held himself still with shaky control, still hard inside of him. Bucky took his teeth out of Steve’s skin and nosed at his neck, kissing the hinge of his jaw.

“We’re not done yet, Rogers,” he whispered. “Still gotta get you off, darlin’.”

Steve chuckled thickly, hands stroking up and down his back. “That an order, Barnes?”

“Does it need to be?”

Steve framed the wings of his scapulas with both hands, kissing Bucky quiet as he laid him back down on the bed without separating from him. “No. Not ever.”

Steve sat up and trailed his hands down Bucky’s chest, tweaking his nipples. Bucky batted his hands away, body twitching from the touch. Steve grabbed Bucky’s left knee and pushed his leg out to the side, opening him up more so Steve could see where his cock was filling his hole. Bucky sighed softly, hands clenching at the sheets while Steve looked his fill.

“You got that look in your eyes,” Bucky murmured.

“Yeah?” Steve asked, rubbing his thumb softly over where they were joined, the skin there shiny from slick and sweat and so damn sensitive. “What look?”

Bucky bit his lip at the touch, eyelids fluttering. “Like you wanna draw me like this, all open and wet for you.”

Steve smiled slowly at him, gaze scorching hot. “I always wanna draw you. That’s never gonna change.”

Steve gripped his hips firmly and started moving again, grinding his cock inside Bucky so hard it almost hurt in his oversensitive state. Bucky’s cock twitched gamely, but he knew he wouldn’t come a second time tonight. He didn’t care, just held on and watched Steve chase his pleasure in his body until Steve came inside him, burying his face in Bucky’s neck and gasping for air that returned to him slowly, easily.

Steve’s hands were white-knuckled where they held onto Bucky, whole body shaking, heart beating a wild rhythm that wouldn’t kill him now. The words he pressed into Bucky’s skin were shaky and raw. “I love you. Fuck, I didn’t think I’d ever—”

Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve’s back, burying his face in sweat-soaked hair, holding on tight. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m right here.”

They stayed like that until their skin cooled a little. When Steve pulled out, Bucky hissed a little, waving off Steve’s concern with a roll of his eyes. He stretched languidly, watching unashamedly as Steve walked to the en suite and came back with a washcloth to wipe them both down. He tossed it in the sink when he was done, turning off the light on his way back to bed. Steve dragged Bucky into his arms, pulling the duvet over their bodies. They lay there in silence for a long few minutes, unable to stop touching each other.

“I should head down to my room,” Bucky eventually said.

Steve’s arms tightened imperceptibly. “Stay.”

“It won’t look good if people see me leaving your room in the morning.”

“I’ll tell them we both had a little too much to drink. It’ll be fine.”

Bucky didn’t think it would, but he was too damned tired to argue, at least, not about that. In the quiet, in the dark, Bucky voiced his fears like he had all the times before when Steve lay in bed ill and so close to dying on too many occasions, last rites on the lips of a priest. The only difference this time was Steve was awake.

“You could have a life with her,” Bucky whispered.

Steve cradled his jaw with one hand, thumb swiping over the delicate skin beneath his eye before leaning in to kiss him. “I have one. I’m not living it without you.”

“Wipe him.”

Steve was an idiot—Bucky got off another shot, squinting through his rifle’s scope—a fucking idiot who was going to get the dressing down of his goddamn life—another HYDRA soldier got on Bucky’s kill count list, head exploding like a balloon, red all over the place—once they got through this.

If he keeps running in front of guns that aren’t mine, I’m going to hit him upside the head with the nearest fucking rock, Bucky promised grimly.

He kept shooting.

When it was over and every Nazi in the small convoy was dead, the Howling Commandos regrouped half a mile due east of the bodies. Bucky was the last to arrive at the agreed upon rendezvous point, having covered everyone’s tracks and watched their backs, because that was his job.

“Uh oh,” Gabe said, eyeing him warily. “Barnes is pissed.”

Steve frowned beneath his helmet. “Bucky?”

“We making camp here?” Bucky asked brusquely, adjusting the straps of his pack to a better position.

Monty shook his head regretfully, scratching at a few flakes of dried blood on his neck. He’d been SAS before he joined the Commandos and seemed less bothered by all the bloodshed than the rest of them. That, or he just hid it better.

“A more viable spot is two kilometers away according to the map and intel. We can make it if we double-time it. Nightfall comes early in the mountains, as you’ve no doubt seen. I don’t much care for climbing in the dark,” Monty told him.

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“You,” Steve replied.

Bucky pointed a finger at Steve, refusing to look at him. “We’re having words later. Don’t talk to me right now.”

The rest of the Commandos exchanged worried looks and held a silent conversation via raised eyebrows and scrunched up facial expressions before they all silently picked up their gear and started marching. Bucky took point since that was his preferred position on a march, scouting ahead for safe passage while Steve watched their six. Bucky only had to consult with Monty once when they crossed a goat trail about which direction to take—“No way in hell am I following a goat up a mountain,” Jim said vehemently—before they managed to make it to the marked off rocky meadow on the map.

Snow packed the ground and trees around them, giving the place an ethereal quality not unlike Central Park in winter, minus the mountain they stood on. The air was cold and crisp, without the promise of snow for now. Weather in the mountains could be unpredictable and a blizzard was on the top of their list of things they didn’t want.

“This place would be nice if it wasn’t winter,” Gabe decided as they made camp.

Bucky didn’t stay to hear about how Dum-Dum had plans to take his girl on a world tour once the war was over. He simply grabbed his rifle, because that was habit now, and grabbed Steve, because he never learned to stop.

“With me,” he growled.

“We should probably pitch our tents,” Steve said warily. Which meant maybe he wasn’t completely stupid if he was worried about Bucky’s temper.

“The guys’ll pitch it for you. Captain, remember? Privilege of rank.”

Bucky dragged Steve through the trees, far enough away that hopefully they wouldn’t be heard, but near enough to be of help if things went south for some reason. Steve’s shield curved behind his shoulders like a slipped halo, the vibranium reflecting the fading sunlight.

“What the fuck was that back there?” Bucky snarled, rounding on Steve once they were alone. “You wanna give me a heart attack? Why the fuck do you keep running at the enemy with no cover in sight? Did they teach you that in Basic? Because they sure as shit didn’t teach me.”

“I had cover,” Steve replied evenly. “I had you.”

Bucky closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Steve. No. We’ve talked about this. This isn’t a fucking game. You’ve been on the field for over a year and a half now, but you keep taking too many chances. You know better than that, and I don’t want to hear it about how just because you can heal faster means you can ignore getting hurt. No one comes back from a shot to the head, Steve. Not even you.”

“I knew you were there. I knew you had my back.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that you just fucking ran in front of those Nazis when they had their guns drawn and after you threw your shield without a rebound!”

“I knew what I was doing, Buck.”

Bucky glared at him, lip curling up. “You like to think you know what you’re doing, but this feels like Brooklyn all over again and—“

The only sure-fire way to shut Bucky up was to occupy his mouth. Steve hauled him in close by the lapels of his blue woolen field coat, covered Bucky’s mouth with his own, and kissed him. Bucky kept trying to argue through it, words muffled against Steve’s lips, before he eventually gave up and gripped Steve by the back of his head with both hands. He bit down hard on Steve’s bottom lip before licking at the skin there in quiet apology. The kiss didn’t gentle, though, neither man willing to cede ground in the silent argument they were waging with their mouths.

“Ahem.”

Bucky shoved himself away from Steve so fast he tripped over a rock and fell on his ass. Steve stared at Dum-Dum with a shell-shocked look on his face, what little color he had leaching away. Bucky sat frozen on the ground, wide-eyed with fear, as Dum-Dum looked from one to the other.

Dum-Dum raised one bushy eyebrow as he put his cigar back into his mouth. “Blond and blue eyed, eh, kid?”

“What?” Steve said dumbly while Bucky felt his face flush hot, heart still beating a mile a minute.

“It’s not like that,” Bucky said stiffly as he got to his feet, brushing dirt off the seat of his pants.

“Pretty sure sucking face means it is. Frenchie owes me fifty big ones, because I bet on the two of you being too distracted to notice one of us walking up on you in the woods.”

“You bet on us?” Steve exclaimed.

“You all know?” Bucky said, mouth dropping open in shock.

“What the fuck else are we supposed to do out here, Cap? We bet on everything, you know that!” Dum-Dum shook his head, chewing on the end of his cigar for the taste of it. “And actually, we didn’t know. We guessed. Been trying to catch you out for weeks. Couldn’t hear you two arguing and I drew the short straw to come find you. Jimmy thinks I cheated.”

Steve leveled Dum-Dum with a look that wasn’t quite his Captain-America-Is-Disappointed-In-You one, but it was close. “You always cheat.”

“Prove it.”

“Like you wanted to prove we were a couple of fairies?” Bucky asked in a low voice, clenching his hands into fists to stop them from shaking.

Dum-Dum shook his head, some of the mirth fading from his face. “It ain’t like that, Sarge. You gotta realize none of us would be alive if Mr. Red, White and Blue here hadn’t disobeyed orders—”

“Wasn’t officially deployed by the Army yet,” Steve interrupted, smirking a little. “Couldn’t disobey.”

“I will shoot you, so help me God,” Bucky warned.

“Man after my own heart,” Dum-Dum said proudly. “But I know they don’t teach disobedience like that in Basic.”

Steve shrugged. “Learned it in Brooklyn.”

Bucky scowled. “My gun is right there, Steve!”

Dum-Dum laughed, waving a hand at the two. “Fact remains we’d all be dead if Steve didn’t come looking for you. And Sarge? Hate to break it to you, but you two fight like an old married couple. So yeah, we bet on you.”

Steve looked at Bucky, mouth twitching a little as he fought not to smile. The tension in his shoulders hadn’t disappeared, but it had eased. “They bet on us.”

Bucky glared at Steve, who didn’t look apologetic in the least for finding that funny, and Dum-Dum, whose grin couldn’t be more shit-eating if he tried.

“You’re buying me a drink with that money once we make it back to civilization,” Bucky said, walking away from them.

“It’s my money!” Dum-Dum called out. “I ain’t sharing!”

“You’re sharing the pot, Dum-Dum!”

A cry went up from the camp up ahead as the other Commandos proved once again they were sore losers when it came to gambling.

“You couldn’t have waited until we were on leave?” Gabe complained. “I had money on an argument after Steve got roped into dancing with all the girls again.”

“Steve can’t dance,” Bucky retorted.

“Sûr qu'il peut,” Jacques said with a ridiculous leer.

Bucky reached out and pushed at his face. “Put that away.”

Steve and Dum-Dum approached the campfire and Steve went to sit next to Bucky, not even pretending to hide how he pressed his leg against Bucky’s. It wasn’t obscene; they’d all shared warmth in the field together against the winter before. But the guys were grinning at them with none of the rancor or hate Bucky was expecting, none of the desire to hurt emanating from them.

He felt momentarily ashamed for thinking the worst of them, but a lifetime of habit was difficult to break. Hiding what he had with Steve was second-nature, ingrained in his bones. It was the only way to keep Steve safe back when he was scrawny and sickly, always looking for a fight. If people had known Steve liked men, he’d never have survived that kind of beating.

“You gonna talk about it?” Dum-Dum asked.

Steve shrugged, digging out one of the pressed nutritional bars Howard had whipped up in his lab to compensate for his accelerated metabolism. Bucky didn’t talk about what happened in Zola’s lab, and Steve didn’t ask, but Bucky always found at least a dozen or so of those bars hidden away in his field pack when they went on missions.

“What’s to talk about?” Steve replied, stubborn, like usual. “Bucky’s mine. I’m his. Nothing more than that.”

“What do you mean nothing more than that? I’ve seen the way women throw themselves at you, Cap. If you even think of breaking the kid’s heart—”

Monty reached over and calmly smacked Dum-Dum upside the head without spilling a drop of his tea. “Would you bloody well shut it? You won the pot, yes, but that doesn’t mean they have to talk.”

Grumbling, Dum-Dum finally got around to eating his dinner. Steve quirked an eyebrow at Monty in thanks, who merely toasted him slightly with his tin cup.

Later, when they drew straws for first watch, Bucky came away with second while Steve drew the last. The guys had indeed pitched Steve’s tent for him; whether as an apology for sending Dum-Dum after them or because it really did come down to rank, Bucky didn’t know. He just knew his own tent was staying where it was, packed away with the rest of their currently unneeded supplies.

He laid out his sleeping bag next to Steve’s and methodically zipped them together. Steve just watched silently from where he crouched by the tent flap, cold wind whistling outside.

“They took it well,” he said.

“We were lucky,” Bucky said, grunting as he spread out their bed for the night.

“Yeah, we were. You still mad at me?”

Bucky shook his head tiredly, crawling into the scant warmth of the sleeping bags. “No, just—c’mere, would ya?”

Steve put Bucky’s rifle and pistol within reach, put his shield within his own recovery distance, and slid in next to Bucky. Steve ran hotter now thanks to the serum, and Bucky planned to use that fact mercilessly to stay warm. It was a tight fight, but they tangled their bodies together into a comfortable position for the hours they’d sleep around their assigned shifts.

“Didn’t mean to make you worry,” Steve murmured into his hair, fingers idly stroking the back of his neck.

“You always make me worry. Been that way since we were kids. I don’t expect you to change. Just wish you’d be more careful.”

“Next time.”

“Go to sleep,” Bucky mumbled, pressing a kiss to the line of his throat. “We got a train to catch tomorrow.”

“Wipe him.”

When Bucky fell, the world spun away from him in seconds, too quick to see as the wind stole his screams with icy fingers.

When he landed, the impact lasted for an eternity.

“Wipe him.”

The last act of kindness not wrapped up in Steve that Bucky lost to the ravages of electricity and time was the soft, apologetic voice of a Russian soldier as he hauled Bucky up from his borrowed warm cot.

“Мне жаль,” the man said.

Bucky was too out of it from fever and blood loss, brain still trying to understand the gaping hole on the left side of his body, to make any sense of what his supposed saviors were saying.

He understood what it meant when he was handed over to men dressed in the uniforms of the Soviet NKGB. Despite his fevered and weakened state, Bucky still tried to fight against the inevitable.

Black-gloved fingers grabbed his chin, forcing his head up. Bucky glared blearily at the stoic face staring down at him. Weak dawn light filtering through the forest reflected on the man’s collar pin, six red arms of a familiar image shining bright red for a split second.

“You are the American, yes?” the man asked in heavily accented English.

Bucky spat in his face.

The backhand slap he received in return pitched him into darkness.

“Wipe him.”

He was unconscious when the doctors stitched up the stump of his left arm and correctly closed up the major vein. Whether unconsciousness came from drugs or shock, Bucky didn’t know.

He only knew when he woke up from his nightmare, he found he hadn’t been dreaming at all.

They took his clothes and gave him chains, heavy metal shackles that scraped his ankles raw, and a collar that pressed heavy against his throat. A chain ran from the back of the collar down to his ankles, effectively hobbling him, though they’d left his one remaining hand free. The metal was an alloy he couldn’t break free of in his weakened state, no matter how hard he tried.

The reinforced cell was seven by seven, with lights that didn’t turn off and no window. A low metal bench jutted from one wall, a shiny new addition compared to the pitted and stained cement foundation that made up his prison. A thin blanket was folded at one end of the bench, all the comforts of home. Forced to kneel in the cell, Bucky pressed his cheek against the cement wall and closed his eyes, choking on a huff of laughter that sounded more than a little hysterical to his ears.

“My name is James Buchanan Barnes,” he whispered. “Three two five five seven zero three eight.”

Bucky repeated it until his voice gave out and all he tasted on his lips was blood.

In the morning, or what he assumed was morning, visitors came to his cell. Bucky lifted his head, even if he couldn’t get to his feet, still too weak from surviving an impossible fall. The guards solved that issue for him, dragging him to the center of the cell by his hair and one remaining arm. The cold touch of a rifle barrel prodded the back of his head and he smacked his skull against it because he could. Because that one act of defiance was all that was left to him in a situation that had spiraled out of control the first time he became a prisoner of war months and months ago.

“Go ahead,” Bucky told them, managing to snarl out his words. “Do it. I fucking dare you.”

A tall, uniformed man with dark hair and eyes carried a metal folding chair into the cell, setting it before Bucky. Then he took two steps back and settled into parade rest, attention not on Bucky, but the cell’s entrance.

Not the one in charge, Bucky thought as he let his gaze slide from the soldier to the door. He could hear footsteps far down the hall.

The first thing Bucky noticed upon seeing who strode through his cell door were the gold stars on the man’s uniform. Somehow, seeing that symbol of rank made Bucky go colder than the realization that he only had one arm. In his experience, generals never wasted their time on prisoners who didn’t matter.

The general, dressed warmly against the winter chill which had already sunk into Bucky’s bones, settled himself on the chair with a squeak of metal. He kept his face expressionless as he pulled off his leather gloves and tucked them away, but he couldn’t quite keep the sharp gleam out of his brown eyes. Bucky wavered on his knees, but never looked away from the man’s face.

“So,” the general said in accented English. “This is the Asset.”

Bucky watched as the general’s gaze drifted down his body in a calculating manner, lingering for a long minute on the bandaged stump of his left arm. Bucky tried not to think about what he was missing even as the biting agony of its absence ate into his body with every breath he took.

“I’m not your anything,” Bucky said, words coming out low and raspy as he glared feverishly at the man in charge.

The general sighed in the manner of one who was severely disappointed in a misbehaving child. “Americans. Always so stubborn, so—independent.”

Bucky let his mouth twitch into a faint, grim smile. No one in the cell missed the look on his face.

“I am General Vasily Karpov,” the man said, catching Bucky’s gaze again with his hard eyes. “Consider this the first of many future debriefs. There is no rescue party being dispatched to come find the Asset since it is dead to them, as is its Captain.”

Bucky froze, body locked so tight not even his lungs worked. He didn’t care that they saw, that he’d just handed them a weakness he couldn’t afford to give up. The words the general had spoken were anathema to him; always had been, always would be.

Because Bucky could survive a lot of things, but he couldn’t survive losing Steve.

“You’re lying,” he whispered raggedly.

Karpov shrugged expansively before pulling a folded up newspaper from his coat’s inner pocket. “Am I?”

He tossed the paper on the ground in front of Bucky. Filling the top half of the folded front page was screaming black text five inches high. Bucky’s Russian was rudimentary at best, but he understood мертвых when he saw it, when he heard it. He translated the words into English in his head, tasting them like poison.

CAPTAIN AMERICA IS DEAD

Bucky shook his head, greasy hair falling across his face, sticking to his cheeks. “You’re lying.”

He almost couldn’t get the words out.

Karpov leaned forward, mouth curving into a covetous smile. “The Asset belongs to the Red Room now. We will make of it what we will.”

“Fuck you,” Bucky spat out.

“Colonel Lukin,” Karpov said as he got to his feet, tugging his coat perfectly straight. As he did, Bucky’s eyes latched onto the gold sigil ring he wore on his left pinky, the imprint of a six legged octopus embossed in its smooth face. He felt ill when he recognized the symbol, swallowing back a sudden surge of bile.

The tall man who’d carried in the chair saluted sharply. “Sir.”

“Explain to the Asset its place.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Karpov exited the cell without a backwards glance. Bucky watched the man’s subordinate drag the metal folding chair out of the way before taking up position in front of him. Lukin pulled a slim metal tube out of his uniform pocket and made a sharp motion with his hand. The tube extended into a tapered metal rod that made a loud cracking sound when he smacked it against his palm.

Lukin smiled briefly before schooling his expression into one of neutrality. “What is your name?”

Bucky closed his eyes, feeling wetness prick the line of his lashes, and no. No, he would not give them that satisfaction, not yet. They’d take it from him soon enough, but he’d fight to keep it for a little longer.

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Three two five five seven zero three eight.”

When the blow from the metal rod came, Bucky took it in the face. Bone cracked, cheek muscles going mushy in places from the strength behind the hit. Unbalanced by the lack of one arm, Bucky fell to the cell floor, gritting his teeth against the urge to scream. One of the two soldiers left behind to guard Lukin gripped Bucky by the hair and dragged him back to his knees.

“What is your name?” Lukin asked again.

Bucky spat out a mouthful of blood and broken slivers of teeth. He took in a wet breath, vision blurry in his left eye. All he tasted was blood. “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Three two five five seven zero three eight.”

Lukin raised his arm and brought the metal rod down again. Bucky saw it coming and closed his eyes, but he couldn’t hide from the inevitable.

“Wipe him.”

He healed.

Faster than normal, but not as fast as Steve used to. By what might have been morning, his orbital bone had knitted itself back together again and the bruising had faded from plum purple to yellow-green. Bucky prodded at the damage, so much less than it should be, and couldn’t stop his fingers from shaking.

The gnawing hunger in his gut hurt worse than the bruising at the moment. He’d marched along the front lines with a full pack at half rations. He used to be able to ignore hunger. Not anymore. Ever since Zola’s lab, Bucky had charted the changes he’d gone through in increments, but hunger was the one he noticed first. Near as he could tell, he thought his caloric needs were on par with Steve’s, maybe a little less. Which meant he was hungry.

That didn’t mean he was going to eat what they put in front of him.

The next time Lukin entered his cell, he brought a glass filled with a thick white liquid. He set it on the ground in front of where Bucky knelt before walking out without a word.

Bucky stared at the drink, leaned over as far as the chains would allow to try to smell it, before he picked it up and threw it with perfect aim through the bars of his cell.

“Fuck you!” he screamed, digging his nails into the palm of his hand hard enough to bleed.

Every four hours, through three attempts, Lukin brought him the slurry drink. Three times Bucky threw it out of his cell.

The fourth time, Lukin came in with two doctors and four soldiers who didn’t waste any time pinning Bucky to the floor. The chains hobbling him made it impossible to gain any leverage, and he was forced onto his back, legs twisted up under him at a painful angle.

“It needs to eat,” Lukin told the doctors, sounding almost bored. “General Karpov’s orders. It cannot be of any use if we let it starve.”

“I’m not eating your slop,” Bucky snarled, straining against the hands holding him down and getting nowhere.

One of the soldiers wrapped his hand around Bucky’s chin in a hard grip and forced his head back, clearing his airway. A doctor with graying hair and rough hands slid a thick tube up one of Bucky’s nostrils and down his throat, the slide of it triggering his gag reflex. He choked, swallowing convulsively against the plastic while the guard’s fingers kept his head still.

“Don’t burst its stomach,” Lukin ordered.

The soldiers held him down, kept him still, as the doctors fed him the same liquid he kept throwing out of his cell until his stomach distended from the amount they pushed through the tube. It got to be too much and he gasped wetly in warning, feeling bile burn at the back of his throat.

The soldiers moved quickly, pushing him onto his side as he vomited up all the white liquid. It formed a puddle, mixed with bile on the ground beside him, the sour smell making his eyes water. Snot trickled out of his nose, helping to ease the way when the doctors removed the feeding tube in a brutal yank.

They left, as did two of the soldiers. Lukin knelt down beside Bucky and gripped his hair, using it to lift him to his knees. Bucky swayed there, gasping heavily, stomach sore and tasting blood on the back of his tongue. The tube must have caught on something internal when they yanked it out.

“Since the Asset refused its meals, this is all it is getting. Lick it up,” Lukin said, shaking him like a dog.

“What?” Bucky croaked out in disbelief.

Lukin kicked his arm out from beneath him and slammed him face first into the mess on the floor. “I said lick.”

The cement broke a tooth, split his lip, nearly broke his nose. Lukin’s grip in his hair eased off as he stepped back, but he didn’t leave. Only waited. Slowly, Bucky got his hand beneath him and propped himself up on his elbow. Breathing wetly through his mouth, he stared at the vomit spreading on the floor and didn’t move.

Metal cracked across his shoulders, making him grunt. Shakily, trying to compensate against the imbalance in his equilibrium he still felt from losing his left arm, Bucky pressed his bleeding mouth to the mess on the floor and licked.

Four hours later, when Lukin brought him the slurry drink, Bucky stared at it for a long, long time before he brought the glass to his lips and drank.

“Wipe him.”

The sessions were not always brutal, but they did hurt, and they did reinforce the points his captors wanted to make.

Eventually, they removed the hobbling chain and shackles. Bucky only tried to make an escape for it once, thinking maybe one of the guards would shoot him and this hell would be over. The guards did shoot him, but not anywhere vital, just a graze on his hip. Lukin beat him into unconsciousness as punishment, breaking bone and skin, lacerating organs and fracturing his skull. It took a week for Bucky to recover, tended to in their medical room by dispassionate doctors.

He didn’t try to escape again, though the thought crossed his mind a time or two in those early days.

His body healed at a faster rate than a normal human’s would, which meant long hospital stays in the medical room weren’t often needed. He wasn’t sure what sort of damage his body couldn’t heal from, but if a long fall off a cliff in winter and the loss of his arm at the end of that cold, whistling descent couldn’t kill him, he wasn’t sure what would.

Bucky wished, in his darker moments, that Lukin would go past that unknown limit. The Colonel never did though. He had his orders and performed them perfectly.

What might have been days or could very well be weeks after that first session, Lukin entered his cell and addressed the soldiers following in his wake.

“It needs to be cleaned.”

They dragged Bucky out of the cell, prodding him down the cold hallway. They reached the workroom where the sessions were performed and Bucky couldn’t stop the cold sweat that broke out all over his naked body as they got closer to that door. The soldiers did not bring him inside though, and Bucky felt no relief in the change of routine. Instead, they bypassed the workroom, their destination a large washroom with a drain grate set in the floor. The soldiers deposited him by the far wall and Bucky used it to help hold himself up on shaking legs. Bucky watched as one of the soldiers uncoiled a heavy looking fire hose from a large spigot off to the side.

“What, no baths in this place?” Bucky asked weakly.

Lukin gave him a disapproving look before slapping him across the face. “English is not allowed.”

Bucky panted through his mouth and almost didn’t close it quick enough before the cold water hit him in the chest with a force hard enough to bruise. He yelled in protest, the iciness of it a shock to his system. He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to. All he could do was press himself against the wall and hunch in on himself, trying to make himself as small a target as possible.

The water stopped. Two soldiers stepped forward to drag him out of his huddle, repositioning him against the wall.

“The Asset will stay still,” Lukin said.

Again and again they hosed him down until Bucky couldn’t feel anything, too numb from the cold to even shiver. Only when he couldn’t move did they stop.

“Warm it up and have the doctors monitor its recovery. General Karpov will want to read their report later.”

“Wipe him.”

Bucky moved every time they hosed him down, but slowly, slowly the lesson sank in.

The day he stayed where they put him, holding his breath and gasping for air in intervals, was the day Bucky learned to hate not only his captors, but himself.

“Good,” Lukin said when the hose was turned off and Bucky was left shivering in the cold beneath too many eyes. “Monitor it as usual, but give it extra rations. It has earned a reprieve.”

Bucky flinched at the words, not at the touch of his guards. He flinched because he understood what had happened, what was happening, and knew he could only fight it for so long.

He was already sliding backwards, down into a hole he had no hope of climbing out of. As the guards pulled him out of the washroom, all Bucky could think was that Steve would have found a way to escape already. That Steve would have kept moving, kept fighting.

But Steve wasn’t here, Bucky was, and Bucky had never been as strong by himself as when he was with Steve. In the numbness of the cold, Bucky knew he might forget his own resolve, but he could never forget Steve’s.

I’m glad you aren’t here, Steve, Bucky thought, trying to choke back his fear. But I wish you were.

Maybe if he was, they’d have found a way out long before Bucky learned to stay.

“Wipe him.”

Summer in Arlington was green.

Peggy thought she would always remember how it looked that morning, rows of white graves rising with the hills. The sound her high-heeled shoes made on the winding black road between the dead was muffled beneath the crowd of mourners. For all that they were laying to rest the fallen, the crowd seemed joyous.

And why shouldn’t they be? Peggy mused, not unkindly. The war’s been over for nearly a year.

Over, but not forgotten, never that. Of all the men who perished overseas, there was a singular soldier they’d all come together today to remember. The dignitaries and military brass filling the crowd might be there to say goodbye to a national icon, but she was here to pay her respects to a friend.

“Agent Carter.”

Peggy looked up, pausing mid-stride as an English accented voice caught her attention. When she saw who had addressed her, a smile broke out on her face. “Monty.”

James Montgomery Falsworth offered up a grin in return, greeting her with a quick kiss to the cheek, looking spit-shined and dapper in his uniform. “Peggy. Didn’t think I’d ever find you in this crowd.”

She wrinkled her nose a bit. “It is quite a gathering, isn’t it?”

Monty’s grin became a shade dimmer. “Wish it were under better circumstances.”

“You and I both.”

Shaking his head, Monty offered Peggy his arm and jerked his head at the amphitheater. “The boys are squirreled away in the chapel. Allow me to escort you?”

“Of course, and thank you.”

Peggy wasn’t officially part of the ceremony, though she’d been invited, and the boys had argued for her inclusion in the front row before the stage, dead center. She wasn’t American, wasn’t strictly military, and was a woman to boot. To the executors of this ceremony, she wasn’t necessary. For all the gains women had made during the war, the incremental return to the status quo was disheartening.

Monty led her through the crowd, his red beret a bright spot of color against a sea of drab formal outfits and various uniforms. They arrived in the amphitheater through the East entrance, and the moment Peggy caught sight of what sat on the amphitheater’s stage across from them, she came to a sudden stop.

“Good Lord,” Peggy said, staring. “Have the Yanks learned nothing about discretion since the war?”

“There was actually a lot more to it. We asked them to tone it down, out of respect for our captain, you see,” Monty said, squinting at the cumbersome, patriotic monument taking pride of place on the stage.

Peggy gazed at him in horror and he laughed, guiding her down the colonnade.

“Americans,” she muttered under her breath.

Monty hummed in agreement. “I’ve only known a couple good ones in my lifetime.”

The entrances to the chapel were restricted, but the Marines standing guard let them pass unhindered. Located beneath the amphitheater stage, the white marble room held no casket today, because there were no bodies to bury, only ghosts.

“Peggy!” Dum-Dum cried in greeting, his mustached face beaming at her. “You made it!”

“Dum-Dum,” Peggy said, feeling some of the tension leave her as the others gathered around. “Gentlemen.”

She knew these men, had helped fight a war with them. She might not have been with them day in and day out on the front lines, but she’d fought all the same. They knew that, respected her immensely for it, and had long since folded her into the camaraderie of their small group.

The five of them cleaned up nicely, their dress uniforms heavy with medals, ribbon, and braid. Peggy wore her own medals on her left breast, a good many more than most women received, and quite a few from countries not her own.

“I can definitely say all of you are a sight for sore eyes, except for Peggy. I saw her at the SSR office yesterday,” Howard drawled as he walked into the chapel, hands in his suit pockets.

He’d given up his entourage for today, even if he hadn’t given up the flash, judging by the tailoring on his suit. Today wasn’t about him though, and Howard knew better than to fight for the spotlight.

“Who let you in?” Jim asked with a smile to take the sting out of his words.

“I’ll have you know the President himself requested I be here.”

“Tu es un idiote,” Jacques told him.

Gabe nodded, teeth a flash of white in his dark face. “What he said.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, boys,” Howard said. “See if I make you any new toys after today.”

It was nice, having everyone together again, but it only made the missing holes glaringly apparent. Peggy wasn’t the only one who felt the loss, judging by the way everyone quieted down after a few more minutes of conversation. Her mother had always deplored silence and excelled in the art of small talk like it was an Olympic sport.

Peggy cleared her throat. “So. The Captain America monument.”

All of them groaned, shaking their heads at her words while Dum-Dum threw his arms up in the air in protest. Jacques muttered under his breath “On devrait l’exploser.”

Howard grinned and pointed at him with both index fingers. “I will definitely make you a toy that will do just that, Frenchie.”

“No blowing up the monument,” Peggy ordered crisply. Someone had to be the adult here.

They all looked up at the chapel ceiling, above which was the amphitheater stage and the monument commemorating an ideal, not the man they’d followed.

Dum-Dum snorted, readjusting his service hat. “Rogers would’ve hated it. Barnes, too.”

“Hear, hear,” Monty murmured.

Howard pulled a flask from his inside suit jacket pocket. “I’ll toast to that. Hell, all of us should.”

He passed it around and all of them took a swig from the container. Peggy didn’t think twice about swallowing a mouthful. She’d learned Howard only drank the good stuff years ago.

Peggy checked the time on her delicate gold wristwatch. “I should go. I need to find my seat. You too, Howard.”

“You should be up on the stage with us,” Jim told her.

Peggy shook her head, pinned back curls fluttering against her neck. “I’m where I need to be.”

Here for the ceremony and at the SSR. She was content with the work she’d chosen to dedicate her life to.

They parted ways without saying goodbye. They’d see each other later, when the monument would be partially dismantled and moved after the ceremony to a different spot in Arlington, where only a select few would watch it settle into its permanent home.

Howard offered his arm and guided her out of the chapel, easily weaving through the crowd to their seats. The ceremony was invitation only, with more than five thousand people attending. The majority of attendees hailed from America, but there was a strong showing from numerous Allied countries, and what seemed like an ocean of reporters.

Peggy kept her stride easy, her head held high as the camera bulbs flashed in their direction. For once, Howard ignored the cameras and focused only on getting them seated. Peggy picked up the ceremonial order pamphlet from the chair, quickly skimming the inside. She recognized most of the names, but knew none of them. Aside from the Howling Commandos, everyone speaking today knew nothing about Steve Rogers and everything about Captain America.

“Should’ve done it the Irish way,” Howard sighed, sling his arm over the back of her chair and slouching in his seat. “Gone to a bar, buy out all the booze, and get drunk telling stories.”

“Mm, yes. Terrible for your head, but better a bit of craic than all this pomp and circumstance.” She craned her head around, taking in the crowd filling up the amphitheater, the bunting and flowers on display, the flags of Allied nations ringing the stage. She refused to look at the monument. “Sit up, Howard.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The amphitheater could seat four thousand people, but had standing room for a thousand more. When the ceremony began, Peggy knew from the opening remarks that yes, it would be for Captain America, and tangentially, Sergeant Barnes.

Not for Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes. Maybe Howard was right. Maybe they all should’ve fought to do it their way. It was a battle they’d lose, but they’d probably feel better for trying.

Peggy sat through the speeches and eulogies stoically, one after the other, feeling the sun beat down on her uniformed shoulders with increasing warmth. As the long ceremony finally wound down to the end, the Howling Commandos were asked to rise from their seats of honor on the stage.

They were men of the times, soldiers back from a war that hadn’t really ended for them, if it ever would. Amongst friends they could speak without censor, but here, before the eyes of the world, they kept their peace and offered only a single measure of their grief to the masses.

Gabe was their designated speaker, and so stepped up to the podium, the medals on his chest catching the sunlight. Peggy watched as he rested his hands against the wood of the riser and took a moment to find the words which would speak for him and his band of brothers.

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” Gabe said into the microphone, his voice echoing through the amphitheater, a quietness to his tone. “But I think we can all agree it would’ve been sweeter if they had lived.”

Peggy willed the wetness from her eyes as she watched Gabe return to the others. On stage, General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower implored the crowd to “Please rise.”

The sound of thousands of people getting to their feet rippled through the air. Peggy smoothed down her skirt and squared her shoulders as six honor guard soldiers lowered one of the two American flags with solemn motions, folding it into the sharp lines of a triangle until only the stars were showing. The receiving soldier spun precisely on his heels and delivered it to the Army Chaplain with the stiffness of protocol. The Army Chaplain saluted once before carrying the folded flag over to where the Howling Commandos waited and handed it to Dum-Dum. No words were spoken between them before the Army Chaplain stepped away.

Dum-Dum held the flag for a moment, fingers stroking the folded edges, before he passed it on to Monty. Jacques was next, then Gabe, and lastly, Jim. One by one the surviving members of the Howling Commandos held the honor flag in their hands before Jim carried it over to the monument and sealed it inside the triangular glass case. His fingers stroked the top of the bronze plaques set above and below the flag before he stepped away to join the others. The five aligned themselves together, like always, and turned as one to salute the national flags of the Allied Forces.

A group of P-40 Warhawks in the missing man formation flew through the crystalline blue sky from the south, one pilot peeling sharply away into the west as its squad mates continued on. In the wake of the planes’ roars, a lone, haunting note rode the air as a single bugler blew out Taps. In the stillness, the honor guard began its 17-gun salute at the command of their NCO, the crowd standing, every single man and woman in uniform saluting.

Between the precision crack of guns, in the silence, Howard whispered, “You know, I never understood the concept of saluting. But I get it now. I do.”

Beside him, Peggy nodded imperceptibly, hand held at a perfect, unrelenting angle to her head.

Sometimes, there were no words left to describe the ugliness of war, the loss one felt in the absence of good men gone now from this earth.

Because in the end, words were an inadequate measure of respect for the dead.

“Wipe him.”

From the very beginning, they made him exercise daily in between sessions. Bucky understood they were conditioning his body even as they worked to condition his mind, and he could do nothing about either situation. At every step of the process, Lukin was there with the metal rod each time he faltered and with reprieves when he successfully completed the tasks assigned to him.

“Five kilometers without stopping,” Lukin ordered, glancing at the stopwatch in his hand.

Bucky glared at the treadmill before stepping onto the thin mat. “You know, my dick’s getting tired of slapping my thighs every time we do this. Can I get some pants?”

The cracking sting of the rod at the back of his knees made his legs crumple. He caught himself with his hand at the last moment, saving his face from getting smashed into the machine today by a scant few inches.

“Five kilometers,” Lukin repeated as he tucked the slim rod high under his arm, gloved fingers drumming against its grip.

Bucky gritted his teeth, pushed himself back to his feet, and took the first step of a long run. Exercising was difficult with only one arm. It took effort to keep his balance, but he fought for it. He knew what would happen if he fell.

They’d make him start the run over. He’d keep starting over until he finished it perfectly.

Mistakes were not tolerated. Whether Bucky liked it or not, he was getting better at mastering what they put him through.

The exercising and the beatings he could endure. What left him cold and shaking from fear for hours afterwards wasn’t any type of physical exertion. What Bucky took to calling the brain room was the domain of doctors and scientists, not Lukin. That did not mean they were kind.

The doctors and scientists treated him like an object while he sat strapped in a chair or on a lab table with electrodes stuck to his skull as they mapped out his mind, but he could still listen. And he might not be fluent in Russian yet, but he was getting there, along with half a dozen other languages they were forcing him to learn. Bucky understood enough of what was being said about him in any language to know dying would be preferable to this.

Attempted suicide only brought on an intervention by Karpov and Bucky had figured out the first time that intervention wasn’t kind. It meant pushing his body until he collapsed, earning a break in his sessions with Lukin for however long it took this enhanced body to recover. Then he went through the worst reintroduction to his sessions every time until it finally stuck that there was no reprieve after an intervention.

He hadn’t tried to kill himself in months.

“And I am telling you these scans show that memory isn’t stored in one spot, it’s all over the place. This will require focused, layered attempts. One massive hard burn will produce nothing but a mindless body. We still need it to think in order for it to successfully complete a mission.”

“So we’ll keep the short-term memory intact because it will be easier to erase and burn out long-term instead.”

“I don’t know if we can burn out everything. Memory is associative. It integrates from the senses as well as events.”

“Then cut out its tongue and olfactory nerve. It doesn’t need to taste or smell.”

“You are a fool. It still needs to speak. And how will it distinguish a gaseous danger in the field if it can’t smell anything? No, we are not interfering with those senses. You—draw up plans for an air-purifying respirator that isn’t cumbersome. It will need to fight in it.”

“That still doesn’t solve the long-term memory issues we have here.”

“I understand your concern, but I am vetoing a single hard burn. We will figure it out.”

“You can veto all you like, I’m still in favor of getting rid of long-term, even if it takes multiple attempts. Keeping short-term and implicit memory for mission purposes is entirely correct and useful, but the synaptic associations of events will take root in long-term memory in moments.”

“It takes longer than a few days for them to set from short-term. We’ll recommend limiting its exposure to the length of a mission and burn out the engrams after every use.”

“Then how do we make it not remember during the intervals between missions? Limiting sleep is not an option as it will need to rest in order to perform at peak capacity. But sleep causes memory regeneration and that cannot be allowed.”

“The cryo chamber is the strongest option we have on the table right now. It will produce stasis, not sleep. Memory retention during cryo will be non-existent.”

“I’m still worried about long-term memory. There are bound to be mental repercussion during this process, but erasing an entire life is next to impossible. Where do we even start?”

“Emotional memory.”

“Excuse me?”

“Emotion exists in everything we do. Start from there, follow the associated markers, and burn outwards.”

Lying strapped to the lab table while they scanned him over and over with hospital-like machines far more advanced than any he’d ever seen, Bucky closed his eyes and prayed. He knew what they were going to take away from him and the terror of understanding left Bucky shaking and cold.

Don’t let them take Steve, he thought desperately to himself. Please, Lord. Just let me keep him. You owe me that.

Please, I’m begging you.

But the Lord had stopped listening, and eventually, Bucky stopped praying.

“Wipe him.”

Bucky took an elevator to the top of the building he was buried under once a day if he wasn’t unconscious or recovering from serious injury. Always at the same time, always escorted by Lukin. The elevator had only four buttons on the brass call panel: SB-3, G, 3, and 8. Bucky knew he was housed in a basement facility underground, information he gleaned while listening to the guards talk, because they forgot to censor themselves around him. They never spoke to him, or acknowledged him in any way, no matter how loudly he screamed at them early on during his captivity. Eventually, he stopped trying to get their attention, but he never stopped listening.

“Get up,” Lukin told him precisely one hour after Bucky had finished his liquid lunch.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d chewed food. Sometimes, he would work his jaw just to pretend there was something solid in his mouth, that his teeth were tearing into it. He never went hungry—they fed him daily, routinely—but he missed food. Missed the smell of it, the taste and feel of it. The nutritional slurry and IV supplements kept him functioning, but that was their only purpose.

Bucky followed Lukin out of his cell, his guards falling into step beside him. He kept his eyes on Lukin, not even thinking about doing anything that might construe as stepping out of line, because this one hour they gave him was a reprieve he’d fight to keep.

He stepped into the elevator silently, keeping his gaze focused straight ahead. The elevator clanked and groaned around them as they rose, coming to a jarring halt on the ground floor. The doors opened, and Bucky chanced a quick glance through his eyelashes at the person stepping inside. The elevator was restricted to NKGB agents affiliated with the Red Room, but even then it was accessible only with those who retained need to know clearance levels.

It was amazing what people would talk about around someone they considered beneath them.

“Taking it out again, Lukin?” the officer asked

“Its visual acuity requires daily care. What use is its sniper tendencies if its eyesight regresses?”

“Ha! None at all. Admit it, though. You only wish for a break and it is the perfect excuse.”

“I take no breaks, Sir.”

“So you say. If only we had more agents like you. I would not be so buried in paperwork if that was the case.”

The elevator came to a halt on the third floor, letting the officer out with an absent-minded farewell. The doors slid shut again and they continued their ascent to the eighth floor. When the doors opened, Lukin didn’t need to order him to exit. Lukin remained in the elevator, taking it back down while Bucky and his guards stepped into a small room which had no other door to the rest of the building aside from the elevator, no furniture to speak of, but it had a window.

Over time, Bucky came to dream about this window more than anything else, when he could still dream.

Three glass panes were bisected by wood, the top pane cut in a half circle. The glass was clean and the window didn’t open, providing a limited view of the Moscow skyline, but it was a view. Distance existed up here, far points of interest that he could let his eyes greedily focus on. Buildings, streets, and the sky—Bucky let himself sink into the vista, craving it more than anything.

Being locked away beneath relentless halogen lights and the too-closeness of walls would have altered his vision over time, especially his depth perception, if he didn’t heal so quickly. But even if his vision stayed the same, he still needed to see. Still needed to use his eyes like he used all the rest of his muscles, and the featureless gray and white walls of his world underground would kill the sniper’s sharpness he’d honed during the war if not given these reprieves.

An hour a day, through all seasons, Bucky was brought up to that eighth floor room, an inch of glass separating him from the colors of Moscow and unattainable freedom.

He was thankful.

“Wipe him.”

Bucky was escorted to a small room he’d never been before, which sent his fight or flight instincts into overdrive. Controlling his breathing so as to not draw attention to himself as he’d been taught, he stood where Lukin pointed and watched with a sinking feeling in his gut as a guard came in, dragging a man who had seen better days, better years, behind him. The guard forced the naked prisoner to his knees, hands cuffed in front of him, eyes sunken into shadows.

Lukin smacked Bucky across the side of his face with the metal rod, getting his attention. Bucky let his gaze slide away from Lukin’s eyes and tried to ignore the pounding of his heart.

“This man is an enemy of the state. He was caught disseminating Western propaganda with his co-conspirators at the University, was tried, and found guilty. Punishment was a year in the Gulag and if he did not die, he would be put to death,” Lukin said crisply as he offered up the pistol in his hand, even as the guard primed his own weapon and aimed it at Bucky. “The Asset’s mission objective is to terminate the target.”

“No.”

Bucky didn’t realize he’d spoken until the word had already left his mouth. He stared wide-eyed at Lukin, gaze flickering to the prisoner and back. And then he realized what he’d done, what he’d said, and couldn’t bite back the whimper that escaped his mouth. He hunched his shoulders, waiting for the hit that never came, and reeled instead in its absence.

Lukin studied him with cold blue eyes, judging him in ways Bucky would never understand. Then he calmly turned and gestured for the guard to step back. Lukin didn’t hesitate to use the pistol and shoot the kneeling prisoner in the head. Bucky had seen that explosion of red from a distance, but it was another thing entirely to see it up close. The back of the skull erupted outwards, bits of bone and brain matter and blood spattering across the floor of the small room. The force of the hit sent the prisoner’s body slumping backwards in an ungainly sprawl; the bullet embedded itself in the cement wall.

“The Asset will learn to comply,” Lukin told him.

Then he shot Bucky in the right leg.

Pain rolled through his body, a brighter, sharper agony than the beatings he’d learned to endure. He screamed in surprise, falling to the ground as his leg gave out, nearly collapsing on top of the dead body. Bucky sobbed, the tears coming quicker than they used to, as he scrambled to put pressure on the wound. Warm blood slid between the cracks of his fingers, dripping onto the floor. Bucky whined high in his throat, unaware he was even making the sound as Lukin called for the doctor.

The gray-haired woman entered with a surgical field kit in hand and marched heavy-footed past Lukin. She knelt down beside Bucky, but spoke to Lukin as she prodded at the wound. “A clean through and through. You did not knick the major artery. I will stitch the wound closed enough that it will not lose an excessive amount of blood. Its accelerated healing will do the rest.”

Bucky clenched his teeth together at the feel of the needle digging deep into his thigh, of fingers prying apart muscle in order to see better. The doctor prodded at him like one would prod cattle to get them to move. No one ever touched him with care in this place. Their hands were dispassionate, clinical, unforgiving. Nothing at all like Steve’s used to be.

When the doctor finished, blood was streaked all down both his legs, crusting in his pubic hair, staining the floor. Not nearly enough blood loss to kill him, though he could only wish.

The doctor packed up her things and left. The soldier departed at a gesture from Lukin. Bucky watched as Lukin stepped closer, flinching against the cold cement floor. Lukin merely crouched beside him, digging the metal rod into the edge of the bullet wound.

“Missions do not go exactly as planned. The Asset will learn to improvise in the field when the time comes. It will always be silent, and it will compartmentalize the pain,” Lukin said, shifting the angle to press the tip of the rod down into the wound. Fresh blood welled up and Bucky’s leg jerked against the intrusion. He couldn’t contain the moan that ripped past his teeth, nor the faint twitch of his hand in protest.

Lukin grabbed Bucky’s hand, stretched out his arm in a stress position, and broke his wrist with a vicious wrench. The garbled shout that escaped Bucky’s mouth echoed in the room, black dots sparking at the edge of his vision. Lukin let him go, rose to his feet, and exited the room, locking the door behind him.

Once he was gone, Bucky sobbed out a gasp, rolling away from the corpse. He couldn’t get his legs underneath him, couldn’t use his hand to brace himself. Couldn’t get away.

They left him in that room with the corpse for three days. As Bucky healed through the bullet wound and broken bones he set himself, he watched the corpse’s skin change color as blood pooled in the most downward areas of the body. Watched as it stiffened and the smell of death got ever thicker in the air. Putrefaction heralded bloat, and the corpse’s abdomen distended a little, oozing liquid escaping its orifices and creeping across the floor.

Bucky wanted to puke, but he knew what they’d make him do if he did. Every time bile filled his mouth, he swallowed it down, again and again until he was doing it almost every hour, lips dry and chapped, but not cracked. Acidic snot slid out of his nose and he wiped it away with the back of his aching hand, fingers finally working again.

On the third day, Lukin opened the door, an air purification mask covering the lower half of his face. Bucky scrambled to his feet, feeling the kiss of clean air rushing into the room, practically panting for it, wanting out.

“Clean it up,” Lukin ordered.

Bucky didn’t wait for the soldiers to come get him this time; he went to them. Would’ve run to the washroom if he didn’t already know that any fast pace outside the gym put fingers on triggers and guns aiming in his direction. He held still as they hosed him down, the icy water washing off the cloying scent of death, but he could still smell it, could still taste it. It felt ground down in the pores of his skin after three days in close quarters with nothing to do but watch a body rot.

He couldn’t tell if the water trickling down his face were tears or not. It didn’t matter, though. It never did. Bucky stood in the washroom and shivered until he was air-dried enough to not drip too much on the facility’s floor. They fed him the slurry drink and hooked him up to an IV at the same time, piggy-backing two bags into a catheter on the back of his wrist, one for saline, one for supplements. He ate mindlessly, trying not to think about what he’d left behind in that room.

They let him sleep.

When he woke up, they put him in the room again.

Lukin brought in another Gulag prisoner and told Bucky his mission was termination of the target, offering up the pistol for a second time.

“No.”

Lukin shot him in his other leg. He was tended to by the same doctor with the same unkind hands.

They left him in that room with the second decomposing corpse for three days. Took him out, cleaned him up, fed him, let him sleep, only to bring him back to that room again and again.

“No.”

By the twentieth time, Bucky finally understood that they would keep doing this, keep locking him up with the dead, until he said yes. Until he accepted his mission.

It took four more tries for Bucky to work up the nerve and give up the ghost and say “Yes.”

If Lukin was surprised by the change of answer, he didn’t show it. Merely offered Bucky the pistol, grip first, the guards at his back aiming their Kalashnikovs at Bucky in warning. Bucky’s hand shook when he reached for the gun, but stayed steady once he felt its weight against his palm. Muscle memory, it had to be, because it’d been years since he’d held a weapon. No scope, it wasn’t needed here, as he was only a foot away from the kneeling, sobbing woman.

He never once thought about aiming for Lukin.

Bucky aimed at the target and sighted down the gun, going to that place in his head, the one of calm stillness that ensured he never missed. At point blank range in an enclosed room, he couldn’t. A single bullet to the chest ended her life and now, now his hand shook.

Lukin took the pistol back and used it to shoot Bucky in the right knee.

He screamed wordlessly as the joint shattered, bits of bone tearing through skin and frayed ligament, the joint bending in a way it shouldn’t without the correct support. He collapsed, unable to stand, and screamed, “I did what you wanted! I killed her!”

“The Asset still hasn’t learned to be silent. Its mission is incomplete.”

He still earned a reprieve.

They didn’t leave him in the room this time, for which he was grateful, so fucking grateful. They stretchered him to the small medical room with its adjacent operating room. The doctor on duty pried bone shards and debris from his knee with cold instruments before bandaging the wound.

They put Bucky in his cell to sleep, to heal. A reprieve, because he had killed.

When the bone and cartilage in his knee had re-grown enough that he could walk again, Lukin brought him back to that room, to another prisoner kneeling on the bloodstained floor, and handed him an NR-40 combat knife.

Bucky stared at the blade for a long moment, feeling his lungs contract so tight he couldn’t breathe. He let the air out on a gasping exhale before reaching for the blade. Lukin nodded at the guards, and they hauled the prisoner to his feet, sliding his cuffed hands over the meat hook someone had drilled into the ceiling.

Lukin used his metal rod to point out the kill spots on the struggling prisoner’s body, bare toes scraping against the floor. Bucky watched the prisoner swing a bit with every impact of Lukin’s teaching, mentally marking every spot through the static in his mind.

“Complete the mission,” Lukin ordered.

Bucky used the body’s hand to slide the knife between the prisoner’s ribs right to the hilt, feeling the blade grind against bone when he ripped it out. The prisoner screamed, right in his ear, but he ignored the sounds of a dying man and moved on to the next kill spot, stabbing the kidney as blood made the body’s fingers slippery.

I don’t know me anymore, he thought in a distant, horrified corner of his mind as the body’s hands pressed the knife in deeper, deeper, over and over again.

When the mission was complete, Lukin took the knife from him, flipped it around to readjust the angle, and stabbed Bucky in the side. And he knew, he knew to expect it, but it still came as a shock. Bucky curled around the knife sticking out of the body with a punched out cry, softer than the screams that used to fall from his mouth, but still there.

“The lesson will continue,” Lukin told him.

“Wipe him.”

Bucky learned to stop screaming. He learned to ignore the pain.

The body learned to heal around the scars it carried.

“Wipe him.”

“What is your name?”

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Three two five five seven zero three eight.”

“Wipe him.”

“What is your name?”

“Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. Three two five five seven zero three eight.”

“Wipe him.”

“What is your name?”

“James Buchanan Barnes. Three two five seven five zero three eight.”

“Wipe him.”

“What is your name?”

“Sergeant James Barnes. Two five three seven zero eight three.”

“Wipe him.”

“What is your name?”

“Sergeant Barnes. Three seven zero three.”

“Wipe him.”

“What is your name?”

“Barnes.”

“Wipe him.”

They strapped Barnes naked to the operating table.

He didn’t fight them.

The body’s hand clenched into a tight fist as he stared blankly up at the too-white ceiling, breathing in sterile air that smelled so much better than the underground facility he’d been kept in for—he didn’t know how long. Years, maybe. The only constant was Lukin and pain before more and more reprieves, and the creeping disquiet in the back of his mind that he was forgetting a number.

A portion of the operating theater’s wall near the high ceiling had been replaced with glass. Through it Barnes could see a handful of people moving around an observation area. He recognized no one in that crowd, which wasn’t surprising. Barnes’ interaction beyond a select group of people was non-existent.

The surgeons and nurses moving around him were speaking German, a change that left a bad taste in his mouth. He hadn’t heard English in so long, not unless it came out of his mouth during his sessions with Lukin. English came slower to his mind these days, to his tongue, but it still came.

So it was a surprise when Barnes heard English being spoken by a voice he hadn’t heard for years, making his heartbeat speed up. He turned his head just enough to watch as Karpov entered the operating theater, trailed by a round, nervous man whom Barnes still sometimes saw in the nightmares he dreamed when he slept. Neither man was dressed in scrubs, though every doctor and nurse present were.

“You understand I have a limited timeframe, yes?” Zola said, sounding flustered. “A day, at the most. I cannot miss my conference in West Berlin if I am to keep SHIELD from looking too deeply into my actions. They did not want me to come back to Europe to begin with for the investigation and—”

“We will have you back across the city in time to attend your conference, good doctor,” Karpov interrupted. “In the meantime, have a look at the Asset and let the surgeons know where they need to cut.”

For the first time since the war, Barnes laid eyes on Zola and he couldn’t stop the heavy flinch that jerked the body at the scientist’s first touch. “Why aren’t you dead?” Barnes managed to get out, feeling the body’s fingers scrabble against the too smooth metal of the operating table.

Zola’s eyes swept over him before returning to his face. Whatever the scientist saw there made him frown. “He is still aware. I thought you would be further than this?”

“Conditioning takes time. It is proving a difficult learner, but it learns,” Karpov said.

“My apologies for how I addressed it, General Karpov. But through how many repetitions has it taken for it to learn?”

“As many as needed. You made it so that it heals faster than normal. That modification is useful in some ways, a detriment in others.”

“Useful, yes, but time-consuming it seems. You have been at this for too long, General. Perhaps if you moved on to the second phase as we discussed. The use of higher rates of electricity in my research is proving to be an excellent—”

“The arm, Dr. Zola.”

“Yes, yes. The arm.” Zola bent over the body’s left side and Barnes felt his heart jackrabbit in the body’s chest. “There is not enough bone left in what remains of the biological limb to anchor what you have requested. The casing and expansive anchoring lines will be needed. You will need to take the whole thing as we discussed in the second plan I showed you all earlier.”

“Certainly,” the lead surgeon replied in English thickened by a heavy German accent. “Are you firm on what bones you want extracted? If the weight you mentioned earlier for the attachment holds true, I believe taking one or two ribs on the right side as well might add to the support.”

“So long as the removal doesn’t ruin the spine, then yes. Take out however many ribs you feel is necessary to succeed.”

The feeling of a pen marking across the body’s skin made Barnes grind his teeth and breathe harshly through his nose. A nurse tsked at the sound and tapped a finger to his lips. “Open.”

He thought about disobeying, about keeping his teeth clenched tight against the fear crawling through his lungs. In the end, he knew better, knew what would happen if he didn’t obey. There was only so long one could remain obstinate. Barnes opened his mouth after one last grind of his teeth and the nurse prodded a rubber bit into place. The chemical taste of rubber saturated his taste buds and prompted an excess amount of saliva to flood his mouth and trickle past his lips.

“You may begin,” Karpov told the surgical team before the sound of fading footsteps heralded his leave-taking.

The whine of a bone saw turning on sent Barnes’ heart racing again, saliva gathering quicker around the rubber bit in his mouth. He strained uselessly against the reinforced straps and cuffs holding him down. A firm hand fitted itself over his ruined left shoulder, guiding the body to lie flat on the table.

“The procedure has already started.” Zola smiled down at him, piggish eyes disappearing in folds of skin behind thick glasses. The scientist’s touch was shockingly gentle in the face of oncoming horror. “Do you remember what I promised in the war? You are to be the new face of HYDRA.”

Zola pat his shoulder before stepping away from the operating table. “You may scream, if you like.”

The lead surgeon stepped into Zola’s place, adjusting his grip on the bone saw, and Barnes realized with brutal shocking clarity that they were going to operate while he was still awake.

The first bite of the bone saw into the scarred stump of his left arm and the hot splash of blood against his face drew a garbled scream from Barnes’ mouth, and he kept screaming and screaming and screaming—

He flatlined three times during the seemingly never-ending procedure.

They brought him back to life after every crash.

“Wipe him.”

Barnes did not remember the body’s return to Russia. He only knew he closed his eyes against the unbearable agony of drug-less surgery on the operating table for the last time and opened them again surrounded by the white walls of the facility’s medical room.

What was no longer familiar was the body.

Ugly red vivisection lines cut across the body’s torso, the healing skin still puffy and hot to the touch, hiding the shape of metal where bone used to be. Everything hurt, agony ripping ceaselessly through the body’s nerves, making it impossible to stay asleep any longer.

And the shoulder—the shoulder was—

Barnes stared at the ceiling with wide eyes that didn’t blink as the body’s shaking fingers traced out the shape of cold metal grafted to the body, lining new scar tissue, replacing the shape of the body’s old, ruined shoulder. The fingers moved on, drawing shape for the brain through touch where sensation no longer existed, feeling out the gaping hole dug into the body cavity and lined with metal. The space was deep enough, the shape round enough, to act like a socket for a limb not yet available.

Barnes curled the body’s fingers around the edge of the metal shoulder, lungs sobbing out a scream that made the already healing incisions on the body’s chest and back and spine burn.

“Wipe him.”

With all the metal implanted in the body, further refining sessions in the gym were required to help compensate for the extra weight. Barnes treated the rebuilt left shoulder as something different from the body for weeks through his long recovery, refusing to look at it or even touch it. The day he was cleared for sessions again, Lukin took him to the workroom and he discovered someone had brought in a full length mirror. Barnes’ eyes skittered away from where it leaned against the wall even as Lukin had him kneel in front of it.

“Look at it,” Lukin told him.

Barnes bit down on the body’s lip, shivering at the sudden chill suffusing the body. He didn’t raise the body’s head, not until Lukin smacked the metal rod against the back of the body’s skull. Slowly, Barnes lifted the body’s head, eyes forced to look into the mirror.

He didn’t recognize the body that kneeled in the reflection, all hard lines of perfectly trained muscle and gleaming silver plating. The body’s hair was longer than he could recall it ever being, falling in tangles to both shoulders. The body’s face was schooled to near impassiveness but the eyes were wide and full of things Barnes didn’t want to think about.

Lukin traced the metal rod down the left side of the body’s neck, scraping across the shoulder plating before tapping at the rounded edge of the casing. The sound twisted down the body’s spine and the body’s jaw twitched a little in response.

“This is a reprieve,” Lukin said in a clam, even tone. “The Asset cannot function in the field with only one arm.”

Barnes didn’t want it. Didn’t want any of it.

But he kept looking.

“Touch it.”

Slowly, he raised the body’s hand, watching as it reached for the thing on the left for the first time since he woke up after the operation was over. The doctors had matched the body’s form perfectly; the casing was not bulky, but sleek and refined, a perfect mirror to the body’s right shoulder. Barnes dragged the body’s fingers across the body’s chest, running them over rigid scar tissue that flared all around the embedded edge of the metal. He only registered faint sensation in some of those areas of the body, and the metal, when the body’s fingers finally touched it, was cold. The plating was smooth and didn’t catch on the body’s callused fingertips. Barnes kept going, breathing getting ragged, the body’s chest rising and falling faster than he knew they liked.

The edge of the casing was smooth, but the hole in the carved out cavity was not. Bumps and edges and tiny holes he couldn’t see, could only feel by way of the body’s hand ringed the inside. Everywhere the body touched was a dead, numb spot in his brain, but the mirror let him see, let him understand the shape of the body’s new form.

Barnes curled the body’s fingers into the cold hole inside the shoulder casing, hunching over the body’s knees while Lukin tapped the metal rod to the back of the body’s neck in an even tattoo.

“Remember, this is for the Asset’s use. It must be accepted, not tolerated.”

Barnes kept looking in the mirror because he hadn’t been told he could look away, and breathed out a quiet whimper, still touching what they had forced upon the body as a gift.

“Wipe him.”

“What is your name?”

“Please . . .”

“Wipe him.”

“What is your name?”

“Please, I . . .”

“Wipe him.”

“What is your name?”

“I have no name.”

“Wipe him.”

“What is your name?”

“I have no name!”

“Wipe him.”

“What is your name?”

“The Asset has no name.”

Lukin checked the motion of his arm and stared down at the kneeling Asset. It was crying, great heaving gasps of air that expanded its chest like a bellows. Lowering his arm, Lukin tucked the point of the metal rod—the twenty-second one he’d owned in the five years they had been doing this—under the Asset’s chin and tipped its face up.

“Repeat,” he ordered crisply.

The Asset licked its lips, body shaking, but it spoke. Its voice was raspy and low, breaking on perfect Russian. “The Asset has no name.”

Lukin nodded and flicked his gaze over to the soldier standing guard in the cell. “Get General Karpov. Tell him we’ve made a breakthrough. If the ensuing tests run true, it is time to give the Asset its arm.”

“Wipe him.”

He didn’t fight them when Karpov made his rounds, when Lukin ran him through his tests. He made sure to perform at peak performance at whatever task they asked of him because that was his sole mission at the moment.

He stayed still when ordered. He moved only when allowed.

He did not speak because he was not told to.

The doctors and scientists in their white coats moved around him, laying their hands on the body without care. He did not flinch, either from their fingers or their instruments.

He obeyed. That was all he could do anymore.

After a week of thorough testing, a doctor handed him a pair of pants and he stared blankly at the offering. He could not remember the last time he had worn clothes. He was allowed blankets in his cell but clothing had never been an option for him.

“Put these on,” the doctor ordered brusquely.

When he did not reach for the pants, the doctor made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat. “Someone get it dressed.”

Lukin snapped his fingers at one of the guards. The man in question stepped forward and took the pair of pants from the doctor, showing him how to pull the article of clothing on one leg at a time.

“Basic attendance of needs is one thing we will have to let it keep,” Karpov was saying. “Have we finished mapping that yet?”

“The general area for implicit memory, yes,” one of the scientists replied.

“Good, good.”

He stayed where he was, ignoring the itch crawling up his legs and around his hips from the cotton fabric of the pants. It felt strange wearing them, but he knew better than to voice his discomfort.

He knew his place.

One of the soldiers prodded him to sit on a work bench. A portable light was switched on, brighter than the halogen overheads. He stared straight ahead as a cart was wheeled over, the case it carried biolocked and primed to Karpov and Lukin’s prints.

“Beautiful,” Karpov announced to the room at large over the sound of the case opening. “A stunning feat of engineering. Zola outdid himself. Let’s get it attached.”

He saw the arm in his peripheral, a shiny silver monstrosity that matched the articulation plates of the shoulder casing grafted to the body. Two scientists carried the cybernetic limb over to him while a third finished attaching electrodes to the body’s chest and skull.

“The program is running,” a woman called out crisply. “Attachment may commence when you are ready.”

“Do not move,” Lukin ordered, looking right at him.

He obeyed.

The spiked bulb of the arm’s shoulder joint slid into the casing’s socket hole, the cybernetic sensors at the tips of those spikes helping to guide it into place. He could not feel it, but he felt pressure. Felt the echoing thumps of the interior catches locking into place until it was fully anchored. The scientists let it hang from the body’s side, deadweight that pulled painfully at the body’s chest and spine. But the metal which had replaced half of the body’s ribs, left clavicle, left scapula, and that which encased select vertebrae of the body’s spine, along with synthetic ligaments and muscle, proved to be strong enough to carry the weight.

“Put it in the chair,” Karpov said, coordinating the movements of the entire room like a grand composer.

The same soldier from before got him up, but his sense of balance was critically off. The weight of the arm after years of nothing made him stumble, but he caught his balance before he fell, breathing heavily as the arm swung like a pendulum.

“Training will be required after attachment is complete. A year at the very minimum, General Karpov, to integrate the limb into its range of movement,” Lukin said.

“The cryo chamber is at the testing phase. We will have time, Colonel Lukin.”

He sat in a reinforced chair surrounded by a generator and machines. Heavy metal clamps were snapped into place over the body’s right wrist and upper arm, along with both ankles, and two long sections that locked into place across the body’s chest. The new left arm was moved into a bent position by one of the scientists before the last two cuffs were locked into place. A rubber bit was placed into the body’s mouth, teeth gripping tight before a reinforced leather strap was positioned around its head, mindful of the electrodes.

“Neural network primed for connection,” a voice behind him said. “Internal power source online. Clear the area.”

The crowd of doctors and scientists stepped back and he breathed through the body’s nose rapidly, hearing the clack-clack of fingers on keys and—

The sudden electrical surge through the body made its head snap back as the arm came online. Electric shock cascaded through its nerves, radiating from the cybernetic arm outwards through its body, through its brain. It cried out in agony through the rubber bit, wetness sliding down its face as it jerked against the bindings keeping it in place.

Where once there was nothing, it recognized something.

Weight yes, but pressure as well, a vestibular sense that the limb on the left was recognized as viable. And what was viable could move.

It opened its eyes and watched as metal fingers extended fully before curling back into a fist.

“It works,” someone breathed, sounding pleased.

“What is its designation, General Karpov?” Lukin asked.

Karpov stepped forward to rest his fingers on the back of its left hand. Pinpricks of awareness lit up in its brain, alien and new, registering pressure, but nothing else. Pain pulsed across its skull, down its neck, settling into a throbbing ache. Karpov looked at it, and it let its gaze slide away as it had be taught.

“Designate it the Winter Soldier.” Karpov stepped back, satisfaction filling his face. “Prep the first memory shock pattern and—”

“Wipe him.”

It did not take long for it to learn to compensate for the newly attached arm.

The banked burn in its brain from foreign interfaces could not be ignored, as the internal awareness meant control of the cybernetic limb. It learned to compartmentalize and ignore the new associated pain, relegating it to a background ache that never truly went away.

Equilibrium was quickly attained due to the sole fact that its handlers had continued the upkeep of its body through the years. It had learned to adjust to the inherent strength within enhanced muscles, but the addition of the arm required fine-tuning.

It took an easy grip with its left hand to choke a man to death. A little more pressure would break bone.

A punch, at full speed, could rip through a man’s ribcage and shatter a spine.

The secondary plating of the arm, far thinner than the outside plates, but more malleable and just as strong, sealed the interior against any contamination, liquid or otherwise. It learned how to keep the arm clean for mission purposes, but any damage was tended to strictly by its handlers.

The internal power source was checked once a week during the initial attachment phase, but there was no degradation of energy, and it reported no change to the burn sparking beneath its skull.

It performed beyond expectations in the gun range and with long-range targets outside under supervision.

“Excellent,” Lukin said, flipping through the latest report. “I think it is finally field ready.”

It waited, patiently, for its mission.

“Wipe him.”

“Mr. Stark.”

Howard stiffened at the sound of that voice. A lifetime of learning how to play the public and he still hadn’t managed to stuff his hate down where no one else could see.

“I thought I told you never to enter my workshop, Zola,” Howard said, not looking up from the engineering diagram spread across his work table, paper cluttering up all available space. The changes in the gun Agent Carter had suggested were doable, but the re-tests would take time, and the delay would push back production by about a month. His company could afford it. He wasn’t sure the boys in Korea could.

Seven years on from the end of World War II and Arnim Zola still had the same round physique, the same piggish cast to his face when he squinted. The scientist was balder, with more wrinkles lining his face, suit off-the-rack department store brand Howard wouldn’t be caught dead in and un-shined shoes. Operation Paperclip had created strange bedfellows since the end of the war, a fact Howard resented.

Zola sidled closer but put a halt to his forward motion at a glare from Howard. He had a folder tucked under one flabby arm, the edges crisp and new.

“We had a meeting,” Zola said.

“And I cancelled it,” Howard replied flatly.

“We had a meeting last week.”

“Which I cancelled, like I am cancelling this one. Get out of my workshop.”

It took effort, so much effort, for Howard to keep his voice even. To keep inside the terrible, ugly rage that reared up and smacked him in the face every now and then when presented with a physical reminder of his old grief. Zola brought out the worst in him, as the scientist always did.

Some might say it wasn’t fair to keep hating a man doing his best to turn his life around, or so Zola’s court appointed minders said. Howard was never fond of listening to people who didn’t know any better. Zola was a reminder—a living, breathing reminder—that better men had died while the scientist lived. Zola’s defection to the Allied Forces was accepted with less than polite grace by the DoD. But the military had never been one to throw away perfectly good intelligence, and Red Skull’s head scientist was a coup America couldn’t, and wouldn’t, refuse. Zola’s lawyers built his defense on top of paper-thin truths stretched over lies. Howard laid blame where it was deserved and he would drown Zola in it if he could.

Howard wasn’t military, despite his ties to the DoD. Most of the weapons designs he created he sold off via lucrative contracts, building his fortune on an empire of war, one bullet at a time. Zola was indebted to the American government. Any formulas or engineering breakthrough he discovered didn’t belong to the scientist. Zola had given up his rights to own his creations when he joined up with Red Skull. Howard only wished Zola had given up his life maybe once a day, down from a thousand.

“I just need you to sign off on an increase in budget for the continued research into applied prosthetics,” Zola said. He pushed his round glasses up his nose with one finger, blinking rapidly. “Sign, and I will take my leave, Mr. Stark.”

“Is that it?” Howard asked, gesturing at the folder. “Give it here so I can get you out of here.”

Zola wordlessly handed over the folder. Howard took it and flipped it open, thumbing through the papers. Schematics for legs, hands, arms, most of it theoretical as it always was over the years, even if the budget wasn’t. Howard signed off on the approval box with a messy scrawl before tossing the folder back to Zola. The scientist’s reflexes were still abysmal, and he jumped a little, unable to catch the folder. Papers scattered in a flutter to the floor. Howard turned away from Zola, attention catching on the sound of a familiar click of heels heading his way.

“Agent Carter,” Howard said in greeting.

“Howard,” Peggy said as she entered his workshop. She paused for a moment, watching Zola finish getting his papers together before scuttling out, keeping his eyes firmly on the ground.

“Tell me again why I can’t order a hit on him?” Howard asked. “I have the money for it. I can even pay enough to make it slow.”

“No, Howard. We’ve had this argument.” Peggy stepped closer to the work table, her sharp eyes skimming over the detritus of Howard’s thoughts on paper. “You requested an extension on the shipping date of the new rifle model.”

“They aren’t ready.”

Peggy gave him a knowing look. After so many years of working together, she could read him better than anyone, even his wife. “Really, Howard. If you wanted time to go to the Arctic, I would have granted it.”

Howard sighed, turning so he could lean his weight against the work table. Scientists and engineers worked studiously around his area, a bustling flow of people who knew better than to interrupt the two most senior people in SHIELD. Howard ran his hands through his hair, interlocking his fingers at the back of his skull.

Peggy wordlessly rifled through his jacket slung over the back of a wooden chair. She came up with an old metal flask that had gone to war and back with him. She uncapped it and handed it to him, watching as he took a long swallow of expensive scotch. The weight of the flask and what it carried wasn’t much, and it was bare minutes past noon, according to his Rolex.

“I wasn’t trying to hide it from you, Peggy.”

“I know.”

Because of all the things they did and did not talk about, Steve filled both columns equally.

“I would have asked you to come with me. I didn’t think you wanted to anymore,” Howard said quietly.

She was married now, a mother of two wonderful children whom Howard spoiled rotten whether Peggy liked it or not. Maria didn’t want to have children just yet, and Howard was fine with indulging her on that whim, no matter what the Board of Directors of his company demanded. Younger than Howard by over a decade, his wife was enjoying the socialite life she’d never had growing up, and the influence the Stark name wielded for her charities. The banality of married life worked for now, but Howards knew it would eventually have to change.

Peggy sighed, organizing some of the papers on the work table into more manageable piles. “It’s not that I don’t, Howard. It’s never that.”

Howard smiled grimly down at his flask. “It’s just there comes a time when you have to move on.”

Peggy didn’t flinch. She never had. Not in front of the American Joint Chiefs of Staff soon after World War II ended, nor during the three week debrief with MI5 that Howard wasn’t supposed to know about. Certainly not in front of the SSR jackasses in the beginning who couldn’t see the steely strength housed behind her pretty face. Howard would be the first to admit he knew a beautiful woman when he saw one, but beauty wasn’t enough to hold his attention. Of all the women he’d wined and dined and loved and lied to, only two had ever earned his respect.

Peggy smiled at him, but there was no joy in the curve of her red lips, as there was none in her eyes. Only a distant, melancholy look to her gaze which stared into the not-so-distant past at the shadow of a man whose ghost haunted an empty grave in Arlington. Howard watched as she twisted the wedding band around her finger a few times before taking a slow, deep breath.

“Good luck,” Peggy said, pulling herself straight in that English way she had. She embodied keep calm and carry on like no one else he’d ever met.

Howard heard what she didn’t say as well.

Find him. Bring him home.

“Wipe him.”

Cryofreeze protocol was created through trial and error. The machine, based on Zola’s designs and his research into alien technology, worked, but the process was sensitive to alterations. The Red Room perfected the freezing process on 236 Gulag prisoners over the course of four years. None but the last dozen survived the process, and then only by way of rudimentary wipes. Scientists working under Marshall Karpov’s directions extrapolated that the more refined wipes they had initiated on the Asset would help alleviate the risks.

The first time protocol was broken, the Asset became agitated and uncontrollable upon awakening, killing three scientists before the guards could subdue it. It was transported to the chair and preemptively wiped using the broadest memory pattern on file in order to revert it back to a blank slate.

“I want their entire division replaced,” General Lukin ordered furiously as he looked over the emergency wipe results. “This puts our mission back by a day, at the very least, which is unacceptable.”

The scientists who had disregarded the cryofreeze protocol over the noted concerns of their lesser ranked coworkers were removed from their posts and disappeared. Rumor placed them in the Gulag, or in one of the prison cells above in the Lubyanka building. In actuality, Karpov oversaw their executions and the burning of their bodies at an undisclosed location.

“Failure to follow protocol will result in termination,” Karpov informed the remaining Red Room doctors, scientist, agents, and soldiers assigned to the Project Winter Soldier program after showing a video of the executions. “Your lives are not worth more than the millions of rubles we have poured into the Asset. We created this process for a reason. Protocol keeps it stable. Do not deviate.”

No matter how rigidly the cryofreeze protocol was followed, both to wake it up and put it back on ice, they still did not fully understand the human mind and the stresses that repeated freezings caused it. The years Lukin had spent painstakingly subverting the personality in favor of supposed acceptance of the Red Room and HYDRA’s worldview was a foundation everyone accepted as solid.

It wasn’t, though HYDRA did not know that in the beginning, when they were flush with success.

It was the first time a group of scientists and doctors were cycled through the Red Room with deadly results. It would not be the last.

“Wipe him.”

At the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement, a young preacher out of Atlanta, Georgia, became the voice for a suppressed people, giving words to the injustice suffered in the name of entrenched traditionalism. The ensuing years of racial disruption in America proved essential for sowing the seeds of distrust HYDRA would require for the future. But controlled chaos had its limits, and sometimes a barrier crept up in the shape of a person. So it was with the young would-be President who stood in solidarity with a King.

Marshall Karpov signed off on the termination request sent from HYDRA’s North American headquarters in Washington, D.C. three years later and initiated the mission. The Asset was shipped via freighter cargo from Russia to North America, carefully tended to on the seas by dedicated agents. In Charleston, South Carolina, its handlers unloaded the shipping container that secured the Asset onto a freightliner truck and got on the road.

The drive from Charleston to Dallas, Texas on I-20 West took eighteen hours. They stopped only to refuel. An oil magnate who gave generously to HYDRA’s cause offered up a warehouse he owned in Fort Worth as their base of operations.

The Asset was unfrozen according to protocol, the process taking an entire day. Its handlers dealt with its disorientation upon awakening efficiently, running through the core prep procedures required to test its memory for flaws. Memories of its most recent mission were deemed missing, and a pre-wipe was decided upon as unnecessary.

It dressed itself in clothing of the time, masquerading as a University student, since college ranks had swelled with draft dodgers during the long running Vietnam War. It would carry a backpack with a Texas A&M patch sewn on the pocket to hide its gear. Instead of its usual rifle, it was given a different model, with American made bullets. It dismantled the Carcano rifle and tucked the parts away in the padded backpack before being placed in front of its handler for its mission briefing.

The man it was ordered to kill could not be allowed to continue acting upon his preferred policies. His political legacy was already guaranteed to remain in the public’s consciousness for the foreseeable future and the powers that be had decided that was more than enough success for one man, in one lifetime.

Its handlers drove it into Dallas that November morning, navigating around the security set in place for the President. They dropped it off in front of a bus stop a kilometer away, with instructions to “Use three shots. Do not make them clean. Leave the gun behind.”

With buses rerouted, it walked to its final destination, moving through the crowds of people lining the Dallas street. It smiled apologies at the people it elbowed its way through, affecting a Texan drawl to its voice to place it as a local. It wore a thin windbreaker to hide its arm and a baseball cap pulled low over its eyes. When it approached the Texas School Book Depository, it made its way casually inside to the pre-designated floor.

It locked the door and closed the blinds on the windows before unpacking the pieces of its rifle. It reassembled the weapon in seconds, loaded three bullets, and mentally assessed the parade route map in its head before choosing the window that would give it the best view of Dealey Plaza.

It opened the window and used its left arm as a stand, the metal plates locking into place on the window sill. Despite the swelling crowd below, LOS was acceptable, and it slowed its breathing and heart rate down.

The winding parade of cars and limousines soon filled its scope as it waited for the perfect moment, President Kennedy moving into its crosshairs.

A clean shot would have taken a single bullet, aimed directly through the target’s head. It followed its orders and made three shots, the shell casings clinking to the ground at its feet after every one.

Ignoring the chaos erupting on the street, it left the shell casings on the floor and the rifle near the window. It picked up its now empty backpack and left the room, heading to join the panicked crowd by way of the building’s side entrance. Pick-up was in an hour at a location two kilometers away.

It was told to leave no trace of its presence.

Its handlers had a patsy in place already to handle the cleanup.

“Wipe him.”

In September of 1972, the Asset finished its mission within the acceptable timeframe.

It did not return to its handlers as ordered.

Instead, it stole a car and drove for twenty hours straight before arriving in New York City. It could not remember ever being here before, but the city, it was familiar. The sounds of the metropolis, the smell of it, gave the Asset a severe headache that would not go away. It endured, as it was trained to do.

It had ditched its uniform on the side of the road several states back, correctly deducing that a man in uniform was no longer respected by civilians in this country. People protested in downtown Manhattan before military recruiting offices in numbers that required a police presence. When passing one such group, pain spiked through its head so sharply the world flashed white for a moment. Against its eyelids, a different group of protestors marched, fuzzy for some reason, their clothing out of place in the present where it stood.

It shook its head, the image fading away. Rubbing its nose, it pulled the stolen baseball cap lower over its eyes. Its facemask was gone as well, and everything smelled too sharp, too intense.

It kept breathing.

The headache did not go away, only increased in intensity over the days it spent wandering the streets of Manhattan before being called to Brooklyn. It crossed an iconic bridge on foot in quiet pre-dawn light, keeping company with cars.

It took a train to Coney Island and wandered down streets lined with dilapidated buildings that led to the ocean. The gritty, near-abandoned boardwalk did not sit well with it for some reason. The rides were closed or permanently shut down, the beach mostly empty on an autumn work day. A few stragglers bought lunch from Nathan’s Hot Dogs. The smell wafting towards it made its mouth fill with saliva for a reason it could not comprehend.

It left the same way it had come, by train, following a route it did not understand, only knew that it felt right. When its feet stopped walking, it found itself standing before an old apartment building, the paint on the facade peeling and faded. A sign hanging from a metal overhang by the cracked front stoop proclaimed a room for rent.

Pretty sure we can afford it, so long as I don’t get sick again.

When you do, it won’t matter, Steve. I’ve got your back, remember?

It heard a car stop in the street behind it. Heard a group of people exit the vehicle. A man approached from its peripheral, one hand resting on the gun holstered to his hip and half-hidden by the coat he wore.

“солдат. вместе с нами.”

The Russian was out of place in a world of English. It did not even realize it had clearly understood every word spoken around it for days until that moment.

“Where am I?” it asked, the English words coming out slow and labored, forced past its teeth with great effort.

“оставаться,” the man ordered.

It thought about running, but by then it was too late. The prick of a needle in its neck was familiar, as was the blankness of drugged unconsciousness. When it woke next, English did not exist anywhere except in its mind, where it shouldn’t. Where it couldn’t unless ordered. It knew that.

It did not know how.

“We don’t know what happened,” its mission handler was saying. “The job was done, General Lukin. The Asset never made the rendezvous point. We tracked it to Brooklyn.”

It stared at a point just to the side of Lukin’s head, not making eye contact as it had been trained to do. Standing naked amongst a crowd of soldiers and scientists was not new to it, though it could not remember why.

“Maybe we should revisit the subdermal tracker,” one of the scientists said to its colleague.

“They never stay in. Its accelerated healing pushes them out.”

“Prep the cryo chamber,” Lukin finally said. “Ready the chair. We are putting it back on ice. Current standing orders from Marshall Karpov is it does not set foot on American soil while under our immediate control.”

It shook ever so slightly when led to the chair with its metal bindings and needles attached to wires that were inserted beneath its skin and electrodes that lined the shape of his skull. The scientists and doctors attending to it did not speak to it; they never did. Their silence was unchanging, even as their faces morphed into new ones every time it was awakened and brought out of the cold.

“Double the memory range this time and up the charge. We must be absolutely sure it forgets this. I want—”

Whatever he wanted, it never found out. The split-second whine of machinery coming online was all the warning it had before shocking pain ripped through its head and everything just burned.

It burned.

“Wipe him.”

Lukin stepped down the rolling stairs locked in place next to the private jet, ignoring the way the summer heat made sweat break out on his brow.

“Time has done you no favors, Zola,” Lukin said as the old scientist was wheeled closer to greet him.

“The same could be said to you, Aleksander,” Zola wheezed around the canella pumping oxygen into his cancer riddled lungs. “As I told Marshall Karpov all those years ago, though he never listened when it mattered. There is a scientific process to everything. Miss one step, and it sets the whole of it back. HYDRA does not accept failure, but it recognizes sacrifices made. It is why you are here.”

Lukin studied a man he had not seen since the early ’50s, noting the way skin sagged on bone, the gray cast to his hairless face, bald head shiny in the moonlight. The few agents accompanying the scientist were loyal to HYDRA, not SHIELD. As with the KGB and the Red Room, HYDRA’s infiltration was subtle, but went deep. It’s why Lukin was here in the first place, giving up Mother Russia’s greatest weapon on orders for the greater good of the world, not just a single nation.

Karpov was against this transfer. As such, in deference to his rank and many contributions to the Soviet Union and HYDRA, he was being pressured into retirement instead of being outright killed. Lukin could admit to feeling a bit of unease while waiting for the kill order to come down the chain of command, knowing that one day he would be required to wake the Asset and put his mentor in its crosshairs. Only the order that came down was not one any of them expected.

“You understand it cannot be kept awake for long periods of time anymore? The conditioning breaks down faster the longer it remains out of cryo. It becomes unpredictable at times. I would suggest using it sparingly,” Lukin said.

“You broke what I left you,” Zola said with a dismissive wave of one liver-spotted, shaking hand. “I can work around the remains.”

“Can you? You are not long for this earth, Zola.”

“My body, perhaps. My mind is another thing altogether.”

They watched in silence as Zola’s agents worked with Lukin’s to carefully unload the heavy cryo chamber from the cargo hold of the jet and secure it in the transport truck.

“You were its handler for many years, Aleksander. HYDRA is grateful for your service. Rest assured, I will make certain the person replacing you meets the high standards you have set,” Zola promised.

When it was all said and done, Zola drove away with what Lukin considered his life’s work, leaving Lukin feeling weaponless for the first time in decades.

“Wipe him.”

Every time Captain Alexander Pierce drove past the anti-military protestors on his way to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, he thought about shooting them. The Vietnam War had been over for a year, but the ugly hatred civilians had for returning soldiers across the nation hadn’t abated. Pierce had left his compassion in the jungles of Vietnam. Trying to find it again was a multi-step process his wife kept urging him to finish.

He slowed his speed before turning onto the street that went from public to private property at the security check point. He showed the guard his military ID before he was allowed entry. He parked his car away from other vehicles, under the bare branches of a tree that lost its leaves months ago. Snow still stuck to the ground in small patches from a late winter storm, but at the end of February, the weather was warming, if only slightly. Taking a deep breath, Pierce steeled himself to get out of the car and make his way inside when all he wanted to do was turn right back around and drive home.

“You promised them,” he said out loud, gripping the wheel. “You promised you would see them through and out. Sullivan is the last one you need to bring out. So get your ass in there.”

Motivation in the face of his own personal fears was difficult, but he was a soldier in the United States Army. Pierce would see this through, or he wouldn’t be fit to wear the uniform.

Pierce left his car for the painful interior of the medical facility. He signed in at the security station, got a Visitor sticker slapped onto his chest, and his military bearing got him past a reluctant nurse to where former communications specialist Lieutenant Brad Sullivan lay on a bed, missing both legs from mid-thigh on down courtesy of a Viet Cong grenade.

“LT,” Pierce drawled, stepping closer, letting his hands rest on the metal railing running the length of the hospital bed. “How’ve you been?”

Dull brown eyes opened, though the younger man managed a wan smile for his former Captain. “Alex. Didn’t think you’d make it.”

“Hey, it’s your birthday. I’m right on time.”

“Yeah. Don’t see any strippers though.”

Pierce forced the smile to stay on his face and ignored the bile sliding up his throat as he remembered the promise he’d made in that field three years ago with Sullivan bleeding out right beneath his hands in 1973.

Pierce cleared his throat. “Maybe next year. I drove by your mom’s earlier. She told me you’d suffered a setback, so I came here. She’s got a cake waiting for you when you get out.”

“Chocolate?”

“Yeah, your favorite.”

“I hate chocolate.”

Pierce bit the inside of his cheek until it bled. “There’s a game on soon. How about we get you in a chair, wheel you to the common room? We could watch it together.”

“Think I’m fine here, Alex. Hospital’s got some dog and pony show going on. Told them I didn’t want to be part of it. Fucking politics.”

“Fucking politics,” Pierce echoed.

He stayed as long as he could, as long as Sullivan would let him, before leaving. Pierce headed through the hospital hallways with his head bowed, a tight look on his face. He wasn’t watching where he was going when he turned a corner and nearly ran over a tired looking man in a suit, tie askew, shoulders slumped beneath the weight of misery cared for in this space.

Pierce blinked at him in surprise, because he knew that face from old news casts back in 1975 after the Fall of Saigon. He automatically drew himself into parade rest, despite not wearing his uniform. “Ambassador.”

“Former Ambassador,” Graham Martin replied easily enough. “Not that the title is worth much anymore, at least where I’m concerned. Still gets me through these old doors, though. And you are?”

“Captain Alexander Pierce, Sir.”

The Ambassador nodded absently. “Visiting a friend or family? You’re too healthy looking to be a patient here, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Pierce said nothing about the night terrors he endured, or how he could no longer enjoy the outdoors as he once had in his youth. Vietnam had taken a lot from him, and he was only now realizing the price.

“Friend. Old buddy of mine. Nearly lost him in ’Nam, but, well.” Pierce shrugged, mouth tightening into a thin white line. “We got him out. You know how it is.”

“Not in one piece, I take it, if you are visiting him here,” Graham said gently.

“Are any of us in one piece after leaving that fucking mess and coming home to be spit on?” Pierce sighed, rolling his shoulders to loosen them. “Sorry, Sir. It’s been a long day.”

Graham eyed him speculatively, some of the tiredness in his body fading away. “Tell me, Captain. Were you proud of what you did over there?”

“I was proud to lead my men.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Pierce remained silent. Graham looked away, off into the distant, his eyes reflecting a horror of war Pierce saw in his own every day he woke up and looked in the mirror.

“You know what I thought during the evacuation of the US Embassy in Saigon? That if only we’d had men in charge who could give an order and see it through. Who understood what was at stake and were willing to sacrifice what needed to be sacrificed so that we could bring order to the world,” Graham said.

The former Ambassador glanced back at Pierce, a contemplative look in his eyes. “You strike me as such a person, Captain Pierce. A man of honor and conviction. Am I wrong?”

“No, Sir,” Pierce replied quietly.

“Then I have a proposition for you. I think you will find it enlightening.”

“Wipe him.”

SHIELD was still headquartered in New York City, but there was talk of breaking new ground in D.C. for a state of the art building that could see them through to the next century. When that would happen, no one knew.

It took two weeks for his rushed PCS orders to work its way through his direct chain of command before Pierce finally received the green-light on his transfer. Once final approval was achieved, SHIELD pushed his recruitment paperwork through in record time, and then he was in, in more ways than one.

Graham had insisted he decline an offer of field work as a condition of his recruitment.

“HYDRA has better plans for you than mere grunt work,” the former Ambassador said during their monthly dinner that doubled as a debrief. “The old guard will give up their posts soon enough. You need to learn to see the bigger picture.”

Pierce’s first assignment was to oversee the excavation of any lingering records or materials housed in one of the old SSR’s wartime locations. Camp Lehigh was an overgrown mess, but what was in perfect working order wasn’t privy to those who didn’t need to know.

Pierce flicked on the light of the underground storage warehouse, watching in awe as rows and rows of computers turned on. A raised dais in the center of the room, surrounded by control terminals and screens, flickered into life as he approached.

The glimmer of a man in the machine shined green against a black screen as a modulated voice echoed in the space only Pierce resided in.

“Pierce, Alexander, Captain,” that disembodied voice announced. “Successor to Martin, Graham, Ambassador.”

“He never said as much,” Pierce replied, staring at the computer screen. “What do I call you?”

“You may call me Zola. And the Ambassador never told you because it is never wise to disclose all of one’s secrets at once, Captain. It is a habit you will learn in due time. As for now, you were chosen because of your ideals. HYDRA has use for men such as yourself.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“You have seen war, which makes you the best candidate to wield my finest weapon.”

Pierce arched an eyebrow. “I don’t think the public will be all that welcoming to militaristic rhetoric at the moment, Zola.”

“As I am certain you have seen, an entire army can fail where one man, in the right place, at the right time, may succeed. Instructions will be left at your apartment. We will speak again.”

The computer system went offline, the loud whoosh of dozens of cooling fans going silent. The lights stayed on until Pierce turned them off.

“Wipe him.”

In late May of 1976, a small package was delivered to Pierce’s apartment by an unmarked special courier. He signed for it using the approved alias and spent his night off reading.

Dawn found him sitting in his living room, holding a glass of scotch with both hands as he stared at a file photo of a decorated war hero, frozen by more than just time.

Whether he knew it or not, Alexander Pierce made his choice exactly as Zola’s algorithm predicted he would.

“Wipe him.”

Bringing the Asset known as the Winter Soldier out of cryo was a delicate process that needed no less than a dozen scientists and doctors, along with a fully armed eight-man team of SHIELD’s subverted Spec-Ops soldiers. Pierce watched the process behind a two-way glass mirror and reminded himself that this was for the greater good. Zelmar Michelini needed to be taken out if the CIA was to continue its clandestine work in South America.

“The Asset is ready for its orders, Captain Pierce,” Dr. Eloise McGarrett told him when she entered the observation room.

“Thank you, Dr. McGarrett.”

Pierce entered the ready room unarmed, striding up to where the Asset sat docile on a bench next to a table, dressed in its Kevlar-lined battle uniform which Pierce knew would be too heavy and too hot in the jungle terrain of South America. It had been equipped with its preferred arsenal of weapons, but did not reach for any of them as Pierce approached.

It stared straight ahead while its hands, flesh and metal alike, rested on its knees. Only when Pierce initiated the contact that would designate him as the Asset’s primary handler did it move.

“Я твой хозяин,” Pierce said, pronouncing the command trigger in perfect Russian. Such a tedious language. He’d have to change that. “Look at me.”

The Asset raised its head, blue eyes blinking as its vision adjusted to the lighting in the ready room. Its expression remained blank right up until its gaze latched onto Pierce’s face and something broke in its eyes.

And then it spoke.

“Steve?”

Pierce paused, gauging that one word, one moment of broken pattern recognition coming together again in a shattered mind. Some hint of confused wonder filled the Asset’s eyes as it looked at Pierce, even as Dr. McGarrett sucked in a frantic breath and waved at her colleagues.

“Prep the chair. We need to wipe it immediately!” she hissed, taking several steps back as the guards clicked the safeties off their semi-automatics.

“Wait,” Pierce said.

“Sir—”

“I said wait.”

Dr. McGarrett clutched her clipboard to her chest, practically vibrating on her feet from fear. All the while the Asset stared at Pierce with a confused look on its face, breathing ratcheting up.

Pierce had commanded men in the hell of Vietnam’s jungles for two tours. He knew how to read a situation on the fly and promptly discarded every single instruction given to him on how to handle the Asset.

Instead, he reached out with one hand and gently pushed its hair out of its face, giving it a smile.

“Yeah,” Pierce said, looking it in the eye. “Yeah, it’s me. It’s Steve.”

“Wipe him.”

Nearly ten years on since joining HYDRA and the world was still a mess. Admittedly, some of it was their fault, but at least the chaos they sowed had a purpose. The landslide victory of President Ronald Reagan’s second term had taken four years to create, but they’d done it. The Republican policies coming up the pipeline would leave a tainted legacy not readily apparent; wouldn’t be for a few decades, at the very least.

Pierce had taken leave of his wife after one too many Inaugural Balls, using work as an excuse to extract himself from the political elite. She’d slipped into his absence as she always did, graceful and apologetic, the quintessential political wife protecting her rising star husband. Not for the first time was Pierce thankful HYDRA let her live. It would’ve been a shame to bury her.

Their home in D.C. was on the small side, but comfortable. He had his eye on a larger estate just north of where they were currently located. Their two children, a teenage son and daughter three years apart in age, were spending the week with his wife’s parents. As much as he missed them, Pierce knew better than to take a debrief at home unless he could be reasonably sure of privacy.

He peeled off his suit jacket, tossing it on the living room couch before working to undo his tie. The cufflinks took a little longer in the dark, but he managed by feel alone. In the corner, light from the hallway reflected off a metal arm.

“Mission report,” Pierce said absently, moving aside a gun on the coffee table so his tie wouldn’t get stained by any lingering gunpowder residual from the weapon.

“Mission accomplished,” the Asset stated flatly. “Target terminated within acceptable parameters.”

“Always good to hear. You know, she was on the verge of an amazing breakthrough with retroviruses. A shame, really. I hate to lose good people, but we couldn’t have that. Fear politics is working wonderfully for us right now and we have the midterms to look forward to in a couple of years.”

The Asset didn’t move from its spot, nor did it offer an opinion to Pierce’s musings. Merely watched Pierce with that look in its eyes, the one that spoke of confusion and memory in a mind that was supposed to be wiped to a blank slate.

Moving to the credenza, Pierce pulled out a pair of leather driving gloves. “The Asset did good work today. It always does. Come here.”

The Asset moved soundlessly across the living room, stopping exactly two feet away. Pierce had seen the distance change with every field handler or doctor who handled it. It took Pierce three uses of the Asset before he realized that it put itself far enough away from its handlers to not seem threatening, but still close enough to be within reach for punishment.

Even after all these years, after all the cryofreezes and wipes, it still retained what it had been taught. The Red Room had created a masterpiece for HYDRA’s use. Pierce appreciated their efforts and the results immensely.

It didn’t always know him. Pierce knew better than to even try this when the broken bits of memory weren’t showing through. When he was younger, it was easier, back when he still had an uncanny likeness to the ghost of a man long dead everywhere except in fractured moments of a broken mind. Time was stealing his youth, and with it, a means of control he was loathe to give up just yet.

For all that Pierce loved his wife, loved his children, he loved power more.

“Knees.”

The Asset obeyed, making no sound as it knelt, keeping its gaze focused on the ground. A faint crease marred its forehead, the only expression pushing through the blankness that normally resided there. It kept its arms to its side, knuckles brushing the carpet. Pierce studied it critically for a moment as he pulled on the driving gloves and undid his pants. Pierce had learned through trial and error not to touch it without gloves during these breakdowns. For whatever reason, his bare hands only agitated it.

“Open.”

It dropped its jaw, letting Pierce feed it his cock. It didn’t look at him as it sucked carefully, bringing him to hardness. Pierce let some of the tension from the past week, hell, the past month, wash away in the warmth of its mouth as he fucked its face without care.

He always got such a thrill from this, a heady rush of adrenaline that jolted him over the edge every time. The analogy of playing Russian Roulette was not lost on him, only made him grin. Pierce breathed sharply through his nose, head tilted back as he ground his cock into its mouth, gloved hand gripping its hair to hold it in place as he came down its throat, feeling it swallow around him.

With a sigh, he pulled back, watching as the Asset closed its mouth. It swallowed a few more times, breathing a bit more rapidly, but otherwise remained in place. Pierce dragged his gloved fingers across its mouth, sliding three past its teeth to press against the palate in order to tilt its head back.

It never looked him in the eye, but it always paid attention.

“Good work,” Pierce murmured to it, flashing a satisfied smile.

Pierce tucked himself away and got presentable for the transfer. He poured himself a glass of scotch, taking a celebratory sip, still smiling. Same new President, dead scientist, and he was due for a promotion in the new year.

Secretary Pierce had a nice ring to it.

“Get up,” Pierce ordered as he turned off the hallway light, plunging his home into darkness. “Get the weapons.”

The Asset rose to its feet, gathered up its guns in a perfunctorily manner, and followed Pierce docilely to the front door. An agent waited on the porch, gun in hand, two other armed agents scattered on the walkway behind him. The transport SUV sat in the driveway, lights off, engine a low hum in the night.

“Wipe it, then put it on ice,” Pierce told the agent as the Asset walked forward into waiting hands.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Wipe him.”

The resulting mess of the CIA’s years of interference in South America meant the American people shouldn’t have been surprised when sentiment turned against the United States and the embassy in Bogota was attacked and overrun.

It made news, but the fact that Secretary of State Alexander Pierce was visiting when ELN rebels attacked meant it spread like wildfire.

Pierce’s security team got him out beneath a blue sky gone hazy from smoke, gunshots erupting loudly in the air, but they left too many others behind, including his daughter. Her absence didn’t make him rational, not in the least, but he’d learned to work under severe pressure during Vietnam. Only this time, the situation was markedly worse than jungles and minefields. This time, it was personal.

“The Columbian government won’t authorize any American military action on their soil, no matter how bad it looks in the international press,” Major Jenkins reported.

More than one person in the SHIELD station’s command room shook their head grimly at the news. The pushback from the Colombian government wasn’t unexpected, just untimely. The only person who didn’t look like he was mentally planning funerals stepped forward and tapped at the architectural drawings of the Embassy building spread over the table.

“A frontal attack won’t do anything but ensure we bring home bodies. Our best option is we come at them where they won’t see us,” Deputy Chief Nicholas J. Fury said. He was a tall man, with a no-nonsense demeanor, and seemingly too young to have been injured grievously enough to lose an eye. But Fury was older than he looked, and good at his job. Pierce respected that, when he respected little else.

Pierce rubbed his temples, running through all avenues available to them and coming up with only one. As a father, he wanted to authorize a raid on the compound and rescue the hostages, but as the Secretary of State, he had duties he needed to think of first. He took an oath when he took office, and that meant he couldn’t be a father right now.

“We have to hold off. Wait for better intel and a negotiator from the Columbian government,” Pierce said, biting off the words.

Fury raised an eyebrow. “Sir, I guarantee you that intel won’t be forthcoming any time soon. The Columbian government is going to drag its feet on this mess as retaliation for the instability the CIA has caused them with the drug cartels.”

“Don’t you think I know that? But I can’t green-light an op in the position I’m in. It won’t look good for the President if I do.”

“It won’t look good to anyone back home if you don’t.”

Pierce ground his teeth and exhaled sharply through his nose. “We wait,” he said, the words tasting bitter on his tongue.

“Sir, our best chance is to storm the building though the sewers and rescue the hostages. If we send out a team right now, we can catch them off guard,” Fury persisted.

“We aren’t storming anything! I’m not risking my daughter’s life, or the lives of my political officers, on a raid that’s not sanctioned. We need to negotiate, both with the rebels and with the Columbian government,” Pierce snarled. He wanted his daughter back alive. Her internship with his office was supposed to be a way for them to spend time together, not die together.

“The United States government doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.”

“What do you think diplomacy is?”

Fury gazed steadily at Pierce with his single eye, hands clasped behind his back. “As you say, Mr. Secretary. You mind if I make some calls then?”

Pierce rubbed at his dry eyes, waving Fury off. “Do what you have to do.”

Pierce would learn after Bogota never to give Fury so much leeway when it came to orders.

Fury left the command room and everyone else kept grinding away at the job at hand for twenty-four hours straight. When word came down that the ELN rebels refused to negotiate, Pierce nearly had a panic attack for the first time in his life. Then he got on the phone with his Columbian counterpart and told the man, in no uncertain terms “Find a way to get that authorization because I am getting my people out of there right fucking now!”

“I recommend an immediate assault on the building,” Major Jenkins advised him once Pierce hung up the phone.

“Do it,” Pierce said. It wasn’t his place to order these men and women around, but they knew his background, knew he’d fought in a war before. Better him arm-chairing a military raid than an Ivy League, draft-dodging politician.

When the smoke cleared and the gunfire ceased, the team of Navy SEALS flown in hours earlier from Little Creek, Virginia relayed back the bleak news.

“No hostages! No hostages! Building is empty! I repeat, building is empty!” the Team leader shouted over the radio.

Pierce felt his stomach churn, worst-case scenarios flashing through his mind. Before he could really focus on the heart-wrenching information at hand, the desk phone designated as his started ringing. Pierce snatched the receiver up so fast he nearly clipped his teeth with it.

“Pierce,” he snarled.

Through a crackle of static, Fury said, “Got someone who wants to speak with you.”

Then the shaky, beautiful sound of his daughter’s voice filtered through the line. “Daddy? Daddy, we’re okay. SHIELD got us out. Everyone’s okay. I love you and I’m okay.”

She was crying, but her words came out strong, without any hint of pain. Pierce sagged against the desk, needing the support. He snapped his fingers at the nearest military aide, getting their attention. “I have my daughter on the line,” he said, causing everyone’s attention to shift immediately to him.

“Daddy, Mr. Fury wants to speak with you.”

“Put him back on, sweetheart. And until I see you again, you do whatever he tells you to, understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

“That’s my girl.”

“You alright?” Fury asked once he got the phone back.

Pierce let out a bark of laughter, shielding his face with one hand as he fought back tears. “I am now. My God, Nick. How?”

“Tell your SEALS to check the basement.”

Pierce shook his head, a disbelieving smile on his face. “You executed your plan.”

“It was a good plan.”

Considering his daughter was alive, yeah. Yeah, it was. Didn’t matter that Fury had just carried out an unauthorized military operation on foreign soil and the repercussions of that decision would be a political nightmare. Pierce would make damned sure very little of that fallout touched Fury. It was the least he owed the man, and Pierce didn’t like being indebted to anyone.

“Get them back here safely, Nick,” Pierce said. “Then you’re flying home with me. My wife will want to make you dinner.”

“Wipe him.”

Director Pierce was a well-known figure in the industry of spies and war. Less so on Wall Street, but only because he didn’t make a habit of being seen with the man gracing his office in Washington, D.C.

“Obadiah. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Pierce asked.

Obadiah Stane wore the excess of the 1980’s like one wore fine jewels. The cut of his suit, the neatly trimmed hair, the shine of his Italian shoes, all of it screamed money and power, but Pierce wasn’t impressed. If Stane was truly the man of the hour, he’d be in Howard’s position at Stark Industries from the beginning, not relegated to making backroom company deals in order to secure his place.

“Figured you’d already know,” Stane replied. He leaned back in the leather upholstered chair and stretched out his legs, getting comfortable. “That is your job, isn’t it? Knowing things.”

“Killing them as well. Neither of which is a secret. I have fifteen minutes before I need to leave for the dinner party my wife is throwing. Get to the point.”

“I want Howard Stark dead.”

“So do about twenty different terrorist groups, and I can name another ten off the top of my head who’d want to forcibly employ him. Your want is nothing new.”

Stane smirked, rubbing at the sides of his mouth. “Tony is smarter than Howard, and Howard resents him for it. I’ve spent years cultivating a fatherly relationship with that spoiled little brat, enough that he wouldn’t bat an eye at me stepping in to take over for his father if the worst were to happen. How badly does HYDRA need Stark Industries weapons and engineering designs?”

An in at the top of the most lucrative business in the nation would definitely be a coup, one Pierce wasn’t interested in giving up. Pushing Howard out of the agency he’d helped found had embittered the relationship between him and SHIELD. The resulting fallout meant SHIELD was reduced to using private contractors for their needs, contractors who weren’t anywhere close to Stark’s level of genius. The loss of an edge in this shadowy war was aggravating.

“Use of the Asset will cost you, and not just in money,” Pierce replied.

“I was working under the assumption HYDRA wanted Howard dead to begin with. Unless I’m mistaken?”

“Howard’s death was always in the cards. Whoever said I was adverse to blood money and blackmail doesn’t know what the hell they’re talking about though.”

Stane threw back his head and laughed, the sound filling the office. “You got yourself a deal.”

Pierce nodded, satisfied with the outcome. “Set up a shell company for one of Stark’s subsidiaries, launder the fee through offshore accounts over the course of two years. I’ll give you the Swiss account number the money is to be deposited in once you have everything in place. You’ll need to keep the shell company active for a minimum of five years to stand up to any investigations, but the package will be delivered upon completion of payment on your end.”

“Done and done,” Stane replied, pulling a pair of Cuban cigars from his suit jacket’s inside pocket. “Thought I’d bring a bottle of scotch from Stark’s cellar, but he knows when those go missing. Never keeps track of these, though.”

Pierce accepted the gift and got up to track down his cigar cutter.

“Wipe him.”

“You shouldn’t be driving,” Maria stated flatly.

Howard let out a short bark of laughter, both hands on the wheel. Winter in the Hamptons wasn’t any worse than in Manhattan, but the highways out here were icier, the roads windier. “The airport is twenty minutes away at this time of the night and our pilot is on standby to bring us back to Manhattan. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine, Howard. You’re drunk.”

“Well, how the fuck do you expect me to get through one of those soul-sucking parties you insist on dragging me to?” he snapped harshly.

“It wasn’t a party, it was a charity gala.”

“A bunch of stupid rich people I have no use for wanting to talk about shit they know nothing about.”

“They’re our friends, Howard.”

“Your friends. Not mine. They only like me for my money.”

Maria looked away, mouth twisted into a tight frown. This late at night, her makeup was still perfect, gown a glittering Christmas red. “Sometimes I wonder why I like you.”

Howard wanted to close his eyes, but he was driving. It didn’t matter that no one else was on the road.

“If you didn’t want to go, then we should have brought Tony home,” Maria said.

Howard slammed his hand against the wheel. “For God’s sake, Maria! Not this again. The boy is fine where he is handling production on the West Coast.”

“He shouldn’t be away for the holidays, Howard. He’s your son and he should be home! With us!”

“And if he was home, we would never see him. He acts like he has no parents even when he’s sitting at the dinner table. Waste of a flight plan, if you ask me.”

“If he was home, you wouldn’t be able to forget you have a son.”

The accusation hit a sore spot, one Howard knew he could never fix. One should always be proud of their children, and he was. He was. There were more important things he had to deal with right now, though, not the least being the latest hack into Stark Industries’ mainframe. He couldn’t be certain the files he’d gathered over the years on the Winter Soldier had not been accessed—they were still there, and the firewall remained intact—but Howard knew his programming. He knew when something was off.

Obadiah had laughed off his worry, promising to have an outside security firm come in and run diagnostics on the company’s database. Howard wasn’t sure that would be enough in the end, but it was a problem for their Monday meeting at the earliest.

Howard had resorted to having his driver take alternate routes home the past few weeks, shaking free old habits acquired in a war half a century prior. The world might know where he lived, but they didn’t know when he would arrive. He’d sent Tony away to keep him safe, whether Maria believed him or not. She thought his paranoia was brought on by alcohol, not a gut-wrenching fear of losing the fight when they couldn’t afford to.

“Maria, listen to me,” he said, tongue un-sticking itself from the roof of his mouth. He turned his head to look at her, just for a moment. “There’s something I need to tell you. I think—”

“Howard look out!” Maria screamed, eyes widening in horror as she raised one hand to point at the road.

Howard jerked his head around as the Rolls Royse took a curve on NY-27 just a shade too fast. Standing in the middle of the lane up ahead, thrown into high relief by the car’s headlights, was a man.

A dead man.

The uniform was the same, Howard noted almost absently, the blue woolen coat with the Howling Commando’s wing patches on the side clear as day. His hair was longer than regulation, but the face of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes was the same.

Howard jerked the wheel to the right, slamming his foot on the brakes, Maria’s screams echoing in his ears.

The pedal hit the floor with no resistance. The car careened off the road and slammed head on into one of the many trees lining this section of the road at 70mph. The air bags never deployed. Curiously, the rearview mirror wasn’t damaged.

Exactly one minute later, a black SUV came around the bend and braked to a careful halt next to the man still standing in the road and staring at the totaled car, mindful of the skid marks. The rear passenger side door opened and a black-clad soldier got out. He gestured sharply at the SUV.

“влезать,” the soldier ordered.

The Asset climbed into the vehicle without a word, blank eyed and blank faced, docile now that the mission was complete and its handlers were here. The SUV rolled forward, careful not to leave any evidence of its presence at the scene, and disappeared into the night.

Staring into the rear view mirror while choking on blood, the steering wheel and column crushing his chest, the flash of a headlight shining bright on his past was the last thing Howard saw with his wife by his side.

On December 16, 1991, Howard and Maria Stark died on the side of an icy, wintery road.

The newspapers and evening news anchors of the time would blame it on the alcohol Howard had drunk, maybe the vehicle’s faulty brakes and air bags. Rolls Royce would issue a blanket recall of the model for the first time in years. An investigation would be opened into the Starks’ death, but nothing conclusive would come of it.

Howard Stark, before he died, would blame the accident on a ghost he swore to his last breath was real.

“Wipe him.”

The Black Sea was a glittering stretch of waves to its left, dotted with boats skimming across the surf. The strong sea breeze blowing across its forehead was a cool precursor to the late summer storm on the horizon. It couldn’t smell the sea salt riding the wind, not with the air filter mask on its face. Situated above the road leading to Odessa on a hill, Kevlar body armor camouflaged for the terrain, it kept its eyes trained through the scope of its Barrett M82 sniper rifle, breathing slow and even in the quiet on the hillside.

The vehicle the target would be riding in came around the coastal road bend two hours later, the female driver intent on the road in front of her. She never saw the hit coming, but her reaction time when it shot out the car’s front tires was commendable. Her skill still wasn’t enough to stop the car from going over the side of a sea cliff in the orange glow of sunset. As the car tipped into open air, it immediately changed positions to its secondary sniper nest nine meters up for the follow-through shot.

Stretching out on the hard ground, sunlight fading fast, it sighted through its targeting scope, eyes sharp and searching for movement. The woman’s red hair shone like fire, backlit by the setting sun in his scope as she dragged first herself then the target out of the wrecked vehicle. She knelt over the target on the sand, a Sig Saur clenched in one hand, searching for where the next shot would come from next, but she never saw it.

Dr. Arash Ahmadi could not be allowed to pass on to the United States government the information of Iran’s nuclear program he kept locked up in his mind, too scared, or too smart, to write anything down on hardcopy.

With the target hidden behind the woman and unable to get a clear kill shot, it calculated the most logical position of the target’s head, and pulled the trigger. The slug slammed through the woman’s body just to the left of her stomach to impact the man she protected. It registered a second spray of blood behind her. It waited long enough to see the frustration in her body for losing her charge before it lifted its head away from the rifle scope.

Its mission objective was the scientist. With the target eliminated, it had no reason to continue shooting.

Its handlers would be waiting for it at the extraction point in Odessa in one hour. It needed to get moving.

“Wipe him.”

When an alien army invaded New York City and the Avengers were called up to hold the front line, they were led by a man who wore the colors of an old uniform not seen in decades, who wielded a shield like it was an extension of himself.

In the aftermath, when Steve Rogers’ identity was revealed to the nation, HYDRA was forced to upend plans long in the making, complete others early, and build new ones to account for an aberration in Zola’s algorithm.

The Asset was awakened only once during that initial set-back period, and promptly re-frozen without being given a mission on orders from Pierce.

The name of a Sergeant was being pulled from the pages of history and shared for a new generation raised on quick bytes of information, not cumbersome books. It was decided that, already used sparingly, the Asset would next be used in America only when Project Insight was ready to launch.

International requests for its skill-set were still granted if the need was pressing. It was thought the foreign press would drop the news story of Captain America quicker than domestic reporters. Its current field handler, Brock Rumlow, oversaw its delivery to the appointed countries with a sharp eye and a finger on the trigger guard of his gun during transport.

“Does it ever talk?” Rollins asked, looking out of the corner of his eyes at the black-clad figure sitting in the last seat of the row on the Quinjet.

“When it debriefs to Pierce. Depending on the mission’s needs, it’ll speak. But if you’re hoping to strike up a conversation with it, don’t. Fraternizing isn’t allowed after it killed the last guy who tried back in the eighties,” Rumlow said.

“You’re kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m fucking kidding?”

“Shit, man.”

Rollins followed Rumlow’s lead and kept his gun within reach at all times during the entire flight.

The Asset never acknowledged them until Rumlow released it to do its job, nodding its understanding of the mission, weapon gripped in flesh and metal hands.

“Wipe him.”

News of Captain America’ resurrection and subsequent saving of New York City from aliens with the Avengers had made international headlines all over the world.

A relic of a time gone by, Pierce wasn’t expecting the man behind the uniform to be strictly functional outside of battle. PTSD wasn’t even acknowledged back in the 1940’s, to say nothing of the trauma of coming out of the ice, but Steve Rogers was surprisingly articulate.

“Secretary Pierce,” Steve said in greeting as they shook hands. He was dressed in his Army Service Uniform, the antiquated cut standing out in a sea of modernization. He must have won an argument with Stark, who looked to have outfitted the rest of the Avengers in bespoke designer clothing for the occasion, courtesy of his credit card.

“Captain,” Pierce replied, glancing down as Steve let go. “Quite a grip you’ve got there.”

Steve smiled politely, probably having heard it all before nearly seventy years ago. “Everyone always seems surprised about that.”

“That a soldier knows how to control himself?” Pierce asked, sounding slightly exasperated and more than a little bitter, despite the years between now and when he was deployed.

Steve gave him a sharp look. “You served?”

“Vietnam, two tours. Twenty-first Infantry. Have you read up on that war yet?”

Rumors at SHIELD said the Captain was a voracious reader when he wasn’t wreaking havoc on gym equipment. Pierce idly wondered if Fury had assigned the man a therapist yet, and whether the records were hardcopy or electronic.

“Yes. Not much of a homecoming you boys got once you returned.”

“Not compared to the Greatest Generation, no, and not compared to you.” Pierce raised his glass of scotch in a toast to the Captain, smiling amicably. “I won’t bore you with well-wishes on your return from the dead, Captain. I’m certain you’ve heard it all before. I’ll simply say thank you for your service.”

“Thank you,” Steve said quietly, fingers gripping the glass in his hand a little tighter. “You know, Bucky always said—”

Steve cut himself off, drawing in a sharp breath. He shook his head, weakly waving off his words. “Sorry.”

“No apologies necessary, Captain. I know a thing or two about losing men.” Pierce gave him a sympathetic look. “I know the persona of Captain America will always be popular. But between you and me, I was always a bigger fan of Bucky Barnes myself.”

The look in Steve’s blue eyes was of a man drowning in sorrow, even as his face kept smiling for all the world to see. “Me, too, Mr. Secretary. Me, too.”

“Wipe him.”

Steve didn’t go home to Brooklyn after the Chitauri attack.

Too many memories there, too many ghosts walked its streets for him. It had changed, and it had remained the same, and he couldn’t decide which hurt more. Tony had offered a floor in his tower but Steve had never been a big fan of Manhattan’s gaudy glitz. So he went southwest, to Washington D.C., where the buildings in his new neighborhood didn’t scream modern sensibilities and leave him remembering old storefronts that no longer existed.

The Triskelion was an impossible to miss D.C. landmark, rising higher than the District’s height restrictions allowed so close to the Washington monument. The exception was pushed through by a close Senator friend of former Director and former Secretary Alexander Pierce years ago. It was an intimidating building that Steve learned the ins and outs of as far as his security clearance would let him.

The Army would have gladly taken him back. Hell, the Chief of Staff of the Army had visited him personally to see if he would agree to put on the uniform again.

“Captain America would bring a lot of boys into the fold,” the four star General had said.

Steve politely declined, choosing SHIELD over the military for the sole reason that Nick Fury had asked for Steve Rogers first, Captain America second. It had been a couple of weeks or nearly seventy years, depending on how one counted, since the last person had acknowledged Steve as his own man. And that person Steve hadn’t been able to save, but he was beginning to learn to mourn, in secret, where no one could see.

Because people of today seemed to forget that yesterday for him was a world war, and that wasn’t something anyone came back from whole. A few weeks and intensive immersion in a new American society wasn’t going to change that.

But change was good, and God, he wished Bucky was around to see the progress the country had made. Still a long ways to go for equality in some areas, but America had come so far already. The Civil Rights Movement was amazing, he could’ve done without all the wars America got herself into, and if Steve read the history of gay civil rights one afternoon in his apartment on his StarkPad and subsequently punched holes in his bedroom wall, no one needed to know.

If Bucky had lived, they could have seen it together, could’ve been together, but they’d both missed out on so much.

All the Howling Commandos married in the ensuing years after the war. They had children, stayed in touch, and passed on out of this world one by one. The last to be buried in Arlington, in the area reserved for them beside his own monument—and Steve still couldn’t believe they’d given him a monument, Bucky would’ve laughed himself sick—was Jim, five years ago in a massive ceremony attended by thousands. There was a YouTube video of it that Steve hadn’t been able to make himself watch yet.

Peggy was the only person he knew from before who was still alive, for a given definition of alive.

On the days she didn’t know him, he left so as not to agitate her. On the days she did recognize him, he stayed.

“Are you seeing someone?” Peggy asked one day, her body frail with advanced age, her voice richer for it.

Steve stared at her in surprise. “No?”

She gestured weakly with one thin hand, veins prominent beneath her skin. “Not like that, Steve. You men are always so stoic. Saw too many marriages crumble after the war was over. I meant to ask if you are seeing a therapist.”

And because he respected her, loved her even, as much as he loved any of his friends, Steve couldn’t lie to her. “No, Peggy. I’m not seeing anyone.”

Her eyes were gentle, worried, as she curled her soft fingers around his. “Promise me you will? The combat stress reaction, it’s real, Steve. And it’s not healthy.”

She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, she didn’t know him.

Peggy wouldn’t remember that he didn’t promise her anything, so there was no promise to break.

“Wipe him.”

Steve favored the gym when he wasn’t busy. Reinforced punching bags were his go-to form of stress release here as it had been in New York City after he woke up from the ice. He didn’t trust himself to spar with any of the SHIELD agents or STRIKE operatives who asked. He recognized the look in some of their eyes from his Army days, men who only wanted to prove themselves against Captain America no matter the physical cost. Steve declined, every time.

He knew better than to decline Natasha’s invitation.

“You and me, Rogers,” she said with that quick-silver smile of hers as she leaned on her knees to look him in the eye. “Let’s go a round or two.”

“It’s three in the morning. Don’t you ever sleep?” Steve asked as he laced up his boots.

Natasha arched one perfectly groomed eyebrow, gaze too sharp and too knowing for his liking. “Do you?”

This early in the morning, no one else was using the gym. Night shift was manning the Triskelion command center and saner people were in bed by now. Sleeping only brought dreams Steve didn’t want and couldn’t afford if he was going to survive this new century sane.

“You’re doing it again,” Natasha said.

Steve blinked, refocusing on where she was now stretched out on the mat in a perfect split, feet arched, toes pointed outwards. The position made him wince and want to cross his legs. “Excuse me?”

“You go away sometimes in your head. Not often, and not for long, but you do.”

He pressed his lips together, refusing to look at her as he started to limber up. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to ignore you.”

“You weren’t. I notice things.”

If Natasha noticed, other people might have as well, though maybe not. Natasha read people like no one he’d ever met before. Steve sighed, mentally adding the problem to his long list of things to remember to change, to see, to do.

Maybe he should buy a notebook.

Natasha rolled to her feet in a supple curl of her body. She tied back her hair and gave Steve an expectant look. “Well? Are we doing this?”

In answer, Steve got to his feet and launched himself at her.

Sparring with Natasha was fun. A mixture of deadly beauty and killer grace, she used moves Steve countered only through sheer luck half the time. He felt safe in not holding back with her after she kneed him in the balls and wasn’t apologetic in the least afterwards while he writhed in momentary pain.

“Come on, Rogers. Put your back into it,” she taunted.

Steve did as the lady asked and did his absolute best to beat her.

He ended up failing miserably when he thought about Bucky teaching him to fight, both before and during the war.

C’mon, Buck. Just one more round.

Natasha got Steve on his back mid-memory, jolting him back to the present with two fingers pressed to his throat. She drew a line over his skin there, staring into his eyes. Sweat dampened the edge of her pulled back red hair, face flushed, but her eyes were kind, not mocking.

“Who were you thinking about?” she asked quietly, moving off his chest to kneel beside him on the mat.

Steve cracked a bitter smile and was as honest as he could be with someone he’d fought with and trusted to have his back. Aliens would do that to you.

“Take a wild guess,” he said before getting up and walking away.

Children in America grew up learning about Captain America and his Howling Commandos and his best friend, one Bucky Barnes. In all the history books Steve had read, in the biographies of his life, both official and not, no one mentioned that he’d love Bucky as more than just a friend. Apparently, that was the only story of his life the world didn’t get to know.

The Commandos had kept their word, and kept their silence, out of respect for the dead.

It was only fair he paid his respects to them in return.

Steve drove to Arlington that weekend, taking a SHIELD-issued vehicle instead of his Harley. The motorcycle was too recognizable and today didn’t belong to anyone but him. He left the Triskelion at 6:30 p.m., thirty minutes before Arlington closed. When he arrived, Steve parked as close to the cemetery entrance as he could get. Walking up to the main gates, Steve was unsurprised to see Natasha waiting for him, off to the side and out of the way of exiting people.

“Natasha,” Steve said through a sigh.

“I’m not staying, Rogers,” she told him gently. “I came by to inform the caretakers you wanted to pay your respects after visiting hours. The Captain America monument and the graves of your friends are popular for visitors. I didn’t think you’d want an audience for this. Take a walk around until everyone clears out, then go do what you need to do. No one will bother you.”

Her thoughtfulness felt like a sucker punch, and Steve inhaled sharply. “Thank you.”

Natasha smiled and turned her back on him, presumably heading for her car. Steve watched her walk away, thinking, not for the first time, that he was lucky, at least when it came to having her watching his back. She could have decided not to like him, and Steve had seen what Natasha could do to a person she didn’t like. Taking a deep breath, steeling himself for whatever waited for him inside with the dead, Steve entered Arlington.

True to Natasha’s words, no one bothered him. Most everyone was already on their way out due to the cemetery closing anyway, so he didn’t need to wait very long. Steve followed the map he’d picked up at the Welcome Center to where he needed to go in silence.

The monument the government had seen fit to give him was even more ridiculous in person.

“Christ, it’s hideous,” Steve muttered.

He shook head and walked closer to the three graves that lay to the side of the monument. He knelt at each one, rubbing his fingers over the names etched in stone—Jim, Dum-Dum, Gabe—and noted the fresh flowers and flags surrounding each one. Too many to simply be from the cemetery’s caretakers, which meant visitors had to have brought them. It brought a faint, bittersweet smile to his face as Steve got to his feet, bowed his head and prayed.

He was pretty damn certain his prayers were an incoherent mess, but if any of them were listening, they’d understand. The Howling Commandos had had their own language and hand signals in the field that only they could decipher. Steve still remembered every last one. He’d been better at those than the Army ones. Bucky always used to complain that Steve’s hand signals were terrible.

Steve approached the monument last, needing to circle halfway around it to see Monty’s plaque, then Jacques’, one on either side of the base. As foreign soldiers, they wouldn’t have been buried here, but they were remembered here, and it counted in Steve’s book. His own plaque was front and center on the monument, situated above a faded folded flag locked in glass.

Beneath the flag was Bucky’s.

The ice hadn’t damaged Steve in any way once he was unfrozen and his accelerated healing kicked in. Steve’s eyesight was still laser sharp and the oncoming twilight didn’t hide anything from him yet. Steve pressed his hand over Bucky’s name, feeling the letters bite into the skin of his palm.

He bowed his head to pray, and ended up crying instead.

“I was supposed to live with you, not outlive you,” Steve choked out through gritted teeth.

Because Steve learned long ago, on the old streets of Brooklyn, that living without Bucky Barnes was hell.

And it hurt, it fucking hurt, standing there at his lover’s empty grave, blaming himself for the date etched in bronze that signified an end.

“Wipe him.”

When Clint Barton was finally released from SHIELD’s psych division, Natasha put in paperwork for a leave of absence for them both and disappeared. Steve was the only one who saw them off, handing Natasha a manila folder as a parting gift. She quirked an eyebrow at him before sliding her finger beneath the flap and opening it. Inside was a sketch of Phil Coulson that Steve had drawn from memory, pencil shading out the faint hint of a smile.

Natasha didn’t move while she studied it, eyes taking in every line, every smudge, before she slipped it back in the envelope. She studied Steve for longer than she had the drawing, to the point he became uncomfortable. Eventually, she nodded at him.

“Thank you. He was our handler for a long time. I’m glad someone else remembers him,” Natasha said.

“He seemed like a good man.”

“He was.”

“Take care of Clint.”

Natasha reached up and fingered the tiny silver arrow necklace she wore. “Take care of yourself, Rogers.”

“You know, you can call me Steve. That’s what teammates do.”

Natasha just smirked at him before spinning on her heels and heading for the car. Steve didn’t stick around and watch them leave. He headed back inside the Triskelion and went to find Fury instead. The Director was busy—he was always busy—but he made time for Steve, mostly because he knew Steve would sit in the waiting room outside his office as long as it took until he was seen. Steve was stubborn that way.

“Barton and Romonav leave?” Fury asked.

Steve nodded. “They did. Don’t know where to.”

“So long as they don’t burn down another city again, they can do whatever the hell they want. Barton needs to get away for awhile.”

Steve thought about asking, but then he decided ignorance where those two were concerned might be for the best. “Sir, I’ve come to ask for a mission.”

Fury stared at Steve with his one eye, face expressionless. “You that bored of the politicians, Rogers?”

“Never did much care for them.”

Fury snorted. “You and me both. Guess you’re in luck. I got something coming through the pipeline in Qatar and Hill tells me you’ve aced every refresher course SHIELD has put you through. You up for joining STRIKE and taking care of a little problem for me?”

“Wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t.”

Fury nodded and got to his feet, settling the length of his long trench coat with a roll of his shoulders. “Follow me.”

Fury led him down to level thirty-two, where the STRIKE teams worked out. Most of the men and women of SHIELD’s elite operative teams rotated in and out depending on the mission’s parameters. Down time was part of the gig, and if there was one thing Steve remembered from the war, it was that hurry up and wait was always the hard part.

Most of the guys present in the common room were playing SOCOM, heckling the screen, but they paused the game and stood up when Fury stepped inside. A well-built man with a salt-and-pepper beard and still dark hair came forward. He was closer to Tony’s age than Steve’s, standing at ease as he glanced from Fury to Steve.

“Rogers, I’d like you to meet Brock Rumlow, STRIKE Team One’s leader,” Fury said.

Rumlow extended his hand to shake Steve’s; he had a firm grip. “Good to finally meet you, Rogers.”

“Likewise,” Steve said politely.

“Rogers here is getting bored with the glad-handing. Thought I’d kick him out of the country to give him a break. You up for working with him in the field?” Fury asked.

It wasn’t a question, despite its phrasing. Rumlow didn’t look resentful though when he nodded his agreement. “Could always use an extra pair of hands and eyes on the missions you give us, Sir.”

“Glad to hear it.” Fury glanced at Steve, catching his attention. “STRIKE Team One takes missions from me and select ones from Secretary Pierce at the behest of the WSC. You’re an Avenger, and I’d rather the chain of command not be misinterpreted by a bunch of politicians who wouldn’t know which way to point a gun even with an instruction manual. You’ll work with STRIKE on my orders, not Pierce’s.”

“Understood, sir,” Steve said, feeling a little relieved at that. The last time he’d been under a politician’s thumb, he’d ended up in tights. Sharing close quarters with a bunch of beautiful women hadn’t been all that bad, but it wasn’t what he’d wanted, even back then.

Fury nodded in satisfaction. “Wheels up in sixteen hours. Your briefing with Hill starts now, so get to work, gentlemen.”

Fury left and someone turned off the game console. Rumlow studied Steve silently for a few seconds more before his face broke out into a small grin as he shook his head in disbelief.

“Welcome to the team, Cap.”

“Wipe him.”

Two years later, while kneeling in the middle of a D.C. street with a gun pointed at the back of his head, mind stuck on the shocking mantra that Bucky is alive, Steve had a distant, idle thought that Rumlow’s idea of a team needed some fucking work.

“Dibs on Rumlow,” Natasha told him after their escape while they waited in that bunker for Hill to procure them transport to the Triskelion.

Steve looked up from pulling on his old field uniform, not sure it would provide enough protection. Time had weakened the leather some, and they didn’t have Kevlar back in the war. He’d opted to use his current shoulder harness to carry the shield rather than the one Smithsonian conservators had painstakingly cared for. Steve didn’t trust the integrity of the old one.

“If he crosses your path, sure. He’s all yours,” Steve agreed easily.

Natasha narrowed her eyes at him as she pressed at the bandage covering the wound in her left shoulder. She was using her left arm well enough despite the pain it must cause her. By the time they hit the field, Steve knew Natasha would function as if she’d never been injured. Her ability to work through pain and get the job done was astonishing.

“You want to kill him.”

Steve shook his head. “Right now, I want to kill a lot of people. But my number one priority is finding Bucky.”

He was very much not thinking about Bucky’s situation outside of that. About the metal arm he now wielded and the way it all tied back to HYDRA, back to the war. About what must have been done to him to make him not even recognize Steve when once they would’ve known each other blind. Because he knew if he thought about it, it would only make him crazy, and he needed to be as clearheaded as possible for this mission.

“He won’t be the same, you know,” Natasha said quietly, staring at Steve.

For all her skill at lying, maybe Natasha had taken to heart his desire for wanting a friend. Only a friend wouldn’t be afraid to tell him the truth, no matter how painful it was. Natasha knew a thing or two about mind-fucks, having survived her own and helped Clint through his. But no two situations were alike, and it’d been seventy years and Bucky still looked almost the same as he had that cold day on the train.

“I know, Nat. But I still have to try. It’s Bucky.”

Steve swallowed the rest of the words, the ones that hurt the most, the ones that felt like knives carving up his insides.

I owe him, which a lot of people would argue wasn’t true.

I love him, which no one alive save one other man was supposed to know, and Bucky didn’t know him at all anymore.

“Wipe him.”

It dragged the man from the river, dead weight gripped in its metal fist.

It didn’t understand why it had saved him, why every word he spoke made it want to scream. But some frantic inner drive made it deviate from the mission, made it follow him into the water, and the fall from up high—

I fell once before.

It paused halfway up the riverbank, turning to look back at the still form of a man lying at the edge of the water.

I was such a strange designation.

“Wipe him.”

It returned to the bank vault, finding the place empty except for the chair. No one remained to order it to sit, to stay still, to obey, and the lack of orders left it lightheaded. Or perhaps that was the blood loss.

It closed its eyes, body memory sending shivers down its aching spine. It had no recollection of ever seeing the chair before, but it still knew that prison in its bones. Knew that whatever the chair and its surrounding machinery had to offer, it wouldn’t like it.

That he never had.

“Fucking hell, it came back.”

It opened its eyes and turned, metal arm already raised and firing its gun at the pair of operatives coming into the vault. Its right arm was still sore from the reset of bone, full range of motion not yet obtained. The lacerations, contusions, broken ribs, fractures, and severe bruising were in various stages of healing. It barely registered the pain.

It checked the bullets left in its gun, came to the conclusion that supplies were a priority, and headed for the exit. It paused only long enough to strip a jacket off one of the bodies and slip it on to hide its left arm before leaving, boots tracking bloody footprints out of a place that couldn’t hold it any more.

“Wipe him.”

It stole a car at the edge of D.C. and drove northwest before security checkpoints could be completely set up around the nation’s capital. The highways were crowded, but it stayed on course, keeping to the far right lane in case it needed to make a quick escape.

Chain of command was missing and it had no orders to go on, but it still knew how to function in the world. It knew there was a safe house in a suburb outside of Pittsburgh for use as a secondary extraction point in case the HYDRA sleeper agents in the Triskelion ever became compromised.

It did not know how it knew that, but it did.

The headache got worse as it closed on its destination, the pain different from the constant ache of an altered body carrying weight it shouldn’t. That ache it had learned to ignore—

A white-hot flash of pain radiated outwards from its left knee, leaving as quickly as it had arrived. It jerked the steering wheel to the right, abruptly pulling off the highway onto the shoulder. It kept its foot on the brake even as it ripped a hole in the side of its uniform pants by its knee, cold metal fingers touching intact flesh.

For a moment, it felt like a bullet had gone through the knee joint.

It sat there, clutching at a phantom pain as cars drove by in a roar that matched the one filling its ears.

When it got on the road again, it took the next exit and doubled-back to the Junction for I-79, heading south instead.

It did not know where it was going, but it knew he didn’t have to stay.

“Wipe him.”

It did not understand it needed to rest its body until two days later when it nearly drove off the road sometime before midnight due to the increasing pressure in its head. It slammed on the brakes before it hit the ditch, coming to a hard halt that locked the seatbelt over its chest. It gripped the steering wheel tight enough to crack the casing, staring straight ahead with burning, tired eyes.

Beneath the sound of its harsh breathing, its stomach growled.

It knew the knotted ache in its stomach needed to be addressed as well, but there were no scientists to fix that problem. It had been given a slurry drink before being sent out to the Helicarriers, the white liquid and the supplemental IV solution easing the cramps it remembered. It had nothing like that with him, but it knew he needed to find something to fill the void.

It drove to the next rest stop twenty miles down the road, parked as far away from the group of freightliner trucks taking up space in the middle, and closed its eyes. Instinct led it into sleep when it had never experienced such a thing before. It woke up two hours later biting back a scream so hard it cracked three molars from the pressure. The enamel mended itself in minutes, but the sick, dizzy feeling he woke up with made it impossible to drive for at least two hours more.

“We cannot allow it to sleep.”

It squeezed its eyes shut before finally starting the engine, the words foreign and strange and suddenly there in its thoughts, dredged out of an abyss.

“Mission objective,” it whispered raggedly. “Mission objective is—”

Over. It was over.

No one was left to give it orders, to monitor it, to keep it in the cold.

Your name is—

Which was impossible. He was the Asset, a weapon, and a weapon had no name, only a designation.

“Wipe him.”

The need for sustenance was the first priority after going days without anything except bottled water. It pulled into a truck stop at a Junction, the neon lights of fast food signs glowing against the dark. It kept the jacket on, hiding its left fist in the pocket as it opted for the gas station convenience store over the crowded McDonald’s next door.

The clerk, a bored-looking middle-aged woman with bleached hair, looked up from her magazine but didn’t greet it. As it turned down the small snack aisle, it caught sight of itself in the round mirror drilled into the wall, angled to see the door for security reasons, and it froze.

It did not recognize itself.

The Kevlar body armor wasn’t well-hidden, which it needed to rectify, and soon. Its face held no expression, but there were dark circles under its eyes it had never seen before. It had left all but one of its guns in the vehicle on order to blend in, though it was hyperaware of their absence. He could see the edge of the shoulder holster carrying the Glock in the mirror. It pulled its jacket over the weapon to hide it completely and headed for the back of the store, where a wall of refrigerators kept drinks cold.

It did not see anything resembling the slurry drink, but picked out a handful that were white. Milk and quite a few with protein listed on the label. It did not know what either were.

Standard protocol when arming it was to always provide it with a set amount of local currency. Even knowing what its last mission entailed, the scientists hadn’t deviated from protocol. It found American money in one of the cases clipped to its heavy-duty belt and pulled out the bill fold.

The clerk eyed it warily as she scanned the items. “That’ll be eleven dollars and fifty-two cents.”

It handed over a twenty and got change back before grabbing the plastic bag with its haul and retreated to the vehicle. It did not need gas yet, and so had parked off to the side, away from the pumps. Sitting there, it looked at the items it had bought, reading the labels in the glow of the gas station sign.

It opened one called Muscle Milk first, sniffing the contents. It didn’t smell like the slurry drink, neither did it taste like it. Its tongue tingled as it swallowed the first mouthful, jerking its head back at the new sensation filling its mouth.

It tasted—it was not supposed to taste.

It managed five small sips before the void in its stomach turned queasy and it had to open the car door and puke it all up. Spitting out the last hints of bile from its mouth, it sat there, pressing a hand to his stomach.

Hunger was not new, though he could not remember how it knew that.

The problem was not fixed, which meant it needed what the scientists had given it. It could go back, put itself into their hands again, but the moment he thought that, it immediately rejected the option.

It would not go back.

It needed a place where they would be though, because wherever HYDRA was, the option to be fixed existed. Supplies were necessary; the suppliers were not.

It turned the key in the ignition and got on the road again, the bag of drinks left behind in the parking lot.

“Wipe him.”

The headache never went away.

It followed him down highways and into safe houses it raided for supplies and cash, through occupants that ordered it to stand-down and received early termination at its hands instead. The headache sat behind his eyes, a pulsing agony that got harder and harder to ignore, bleeding through every waking moment it put behind him and remembered, and kept remembering.

Nothing made sense anymore.

Certain smells triggered images in its mind, moments that couldn’t be real. Cities it had never seen before, faces of people it never looked in the eye, and a skinny blond man spitting out blood on a street somewhere—somewhere that was—

They never stayed, those things in his head. They always faded away, lost to the growing static of white noise in his mind.

It moved on.

“Wipe him.”

Nearly two weeks later it found HYDRA stripping a Kentucky base of everything valuable. A stronger presence of soldiers roamed the property here, and it would have moved on if it hadn’t seen them hauling out an older version of the chair from the vault, watching as they put it in a moving truck. It froze in its sniper nest, camouflaged high in a tree near the edge of the property.

Nothing good could come of them keeping such a thing. It hadn’t seen a tail in all the days it had been driving, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be one in the future. If HYDRA thought it had survived—and someone in the scattered cells of the organization must believe such a thing—then they’d come looking for it. Keeping the chair meant they wanted it back and—

No. It was not going back, but it needed answers. Intel-gathering could be tedious, but the results were necessary.

It scoped out HYDRA’s comings and goings for two days before it infiltrated the property—an historical plantation house in Kentucky with limited coverage around the building—and broke the necks of all five sentries first. It had never been here before, but it remembered the code to get into the sub-basement facility, punching it in calmly with a gloved finger.

From there, it was nothing but a slaughter.

It killed swiftly, messily, taking aim over and over again, running through two magazines for the Sig-Saur P516 it had previously acquired from a weapons supply outpost. The soldiers put up a good defense, but they were bottle-necked in the reinforced corridor with nowhere to go. It pulled a small bomb from the back of its tac-vest, armed it, and threw it at the group. The blast took them all out while it crouched safely around the corner and waited for the smoke to clear.

Only pieces of bodies no bigger than its hand remained when it walked through the carnage, intent on dealing with the scientists, who were all terrible with the guns they’d been issued. It killed all but one scientist with headshots, the bodies dropping where they stood or crouched or begged. The momentary survivor was middle-aged, hair silvered and pulled back in a neat bun, asking for forgiveness even as she spit out phrases in English that made it harder to think through the static that had already made its home in his mind, but not by much.

Her Russian was terrible, but those words made it want to stop.

To stay.

It cut out her tongue instead, arm wrapped around her shoulders, metal fingers prying open her jaw as it took the muscle in one clean slice. She collapsed to the floor when he let her go, sobbing out a wordless scream as blood poured out of her mouth and down her throat in a red waterfall. But her hands still worked, and it dragged her to the nearest table, shoving a pen into her fingers. If she knew those trigger words, then she was part of the division which had used it before, who had clearance to know of its existence. A chair wouldn’t be stored here if it had never passed through this place.

“Write,” it instructed. “Does HYDRA know its status?”

She shook her head frantically, but it couldn’t be sure she answered his question. It grabbed her by the back of her neck and forced her to bend over the table, bleeding all over it and splattering half the pad of paper with blood.

“Write.”

YES

It went cold, feeling ice in its veins and a charged burn in its skin that was all remembered experiences in the flesh if not its mind. HYDRA was looking for it. The only reason it could think it hadn’t been brought in yet was the organization was still reeling from the fallout of Project Insight’s demise. That put their reaction time back by at least a couple of weeks, maybe a little longer. It’s how long it had been on the road looking for—he didn’t know what.

“How?”

IMPLANTED TRACKER

“Where?”

ATTACHED TO LEFT HIP BONE

“How far out is the retrieval team?”

She looked at him, eyes full of agony, but also the kind of pride only fanatics clung to. ALREADY ON THEIR WAY. HAIL HYD

It shot her through the head and walked into the adjacent room big enough to house the chair it had seen them remove. The chair was gone, but surgical supplies still remained in the cabinets. It needed to leave, get out of range of the retrieval team, but running without removing the tracker wouldn’t solve anything. She could be lying, but it rather thought she’d been truthful before she died, like penance to a priest.

It paused in its search for a surgical scalpel. It did not know where that thought came from.

Shaking its head, it continued its current mission. Surgical scalpel and gauze, but little else of use to it. It settled everything close at hand before undoing its pants and widening its stance to brace itself. Self-surgery was nothing new while in the field, and both hands remained steady. It used its right hand to feel out both lines of its hipbones, finding the faint bump on the left that didn’t match the one on the right.

Pressing the point of the scalpel over its hip, it slid the blade in until it hit bone and sliced upwards, opening up its body. Blood welled out, warm and thick, impeding its sight. It pulled off its right glove with its teeth, slipping his fingers inside the cut and focusing on the way the bone felt. The tracker was grafted to a spot of bone closest to the surface of its body, the edge catching on a fingernail.

It worked quickly to pry it off, feeling his hip joint protest at the pressure. Some bits fell off in the meat of its hip, but most of the tracker was extracted. When it was out, he crushed it between metal fingers, packed the wound to help stop the bleeding quicker, and departed.

It was passing through a one stoplight town in a stolen pickup truck when it saw a Pave Hawk flying overhead in the direction of the plantation, the thrum of its blades audible over the truck’s engine.

The wound closed up in an hour. It carried a low-grade fever for two hours more before his body fought off whatever infection had tried to set in. The remaining pieces of the tracker, no longer active, moved out of his body over the course of twenty-four hours, pushing through skin.

It kept driving.

“Wipe him.”

The destruction of Project Insight left scars on Washington, D.C.’s skyline that wouldn’t be filled any time soon. The Triskelion no longer stood, torn down from the inside. The ideals it once stood for were being argued about in Congress, with congressional hearings taking up every free hour. There was nothing like a bit of domestic terrorism to bring bipartisan support back to politics. The thing all people shared, didn’t matter what country, was their resilience.

The Smithsonian’s Captain America exhibit re-opened three weeks after the Helicarriers crashed into the Potomac and surrounding area. Cleanup was still happening, would be for a few months more, and people were already talking about making the island the Triskelion had stood on a memorial instead. Whatever was decided would end up as a footnote in the museum. A new gallery room had been set aside at the Smithsonian to fill, historians already working with the museum curators to add another chapter to Steve Rogers’ life. The permanent exhibit became a place where people could pay their respects to their hero.

It bought a ticket online using a laptop three states away to ensure he would make it inside the exhibit. The entry time on the printed ticket was for the last slot of the day, and it walked through the exhibit with slow, weighted steps. The information presented was familiar and not, the history of Steve Rogers written out in neat museum print and broken up all out of order inside his head.

It read everything three times over and didn’t know what it all meant until it saw a black and white picture of his own face peering out at him from behind the museum glass.

It stared and stared and stared, a shivery static screaming through his mind.

“What is your name?”

It bit down on a scream at the sudden sensory overload which spiked through his head, standing rigid in front of the display. Whatever was in his mind wanted to pull it under but it couldn’t afford to drown; not here, not now. Shaking its head, it strode out of the exhibit while dodging every security camera in the place, face hidden beneath the brim of a baseball cap.

It needed answers. It thought it knew where it had to start looking.

Eight hours later, he was hidden away on a cargo ship, heading for Europe.

“Wipe him.”

Project Winter Soldier was the stuff of nightmares, and Steve didn’t even have a quarter of the story.

The file Natasha’s contact in Kiev had provided was thin and incomplete. References were made to pages that were missing, archival footage that was not included, notes photocopied on top of each other so it was difficult to read. Not to mention everything was in Russian and Steve’s Russian wasn’t that great. Translating it with a dictionary was tedious and stomach-churning. What was worse than the notes were the photos. While Steve had always been partial to pictures over words growing up, despite his colorblindness, the ones in the file were damning evidence of a horror inflicted on a living human being everyone—everyone—had thought was dead.

Steve rested his fingertips against the blue-toned photo of the cryo chamber, Bucky’s face almost serene in the snapshot if one didn’t understand what the circumstances were when the picture was taken.

“You keep making that murder face of yours, it’s gonna stick,” Sam said.

Steve looked up from the file clenched in his hands and glanced out the window, blinking at the Manhattan skyline. “That’s an old wives’ tale.”

“All the same, you’re looking a little murderous right now. Might want to tone it down. We’re in Jersey, after all. You start a road rage fight here, we are never making it to Manhattan before rush hour. And Steve? I hate rush hour traffic.”

They’d been on the road for nearly four hours, departing Washington D.C. before dawn despite another Congressional hearing on the horizon. Steve had woken up two days after Project Insight crashed and burned, body healing, but healing slowly. Sam had kept him company through his in hospital recovery while Natasha grimly faced down the Federal government in his place. Congress still wanted to speak with him; Steve had nothing to say to them. They could keep subpoenaing him all they wanted, but that didn’t mean he had to talk.

Fury had gone to ground in Europe, looking for leads on what was left of HYDRA. Its entire operation had been compromised, but not destroyed. Cut off one head, another would take its place indeed. As much as Steve wanted to burn every last location to the ground, HYDRA wasn’t his priority right now.

Bucky was.

He hadn’t processed it yet, not completely. Steve was still working through the shock even these many days later, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Bucky was alive, but he didn’t recognize the stranger in his best friend’s body. Didn’t know what had been done to drive the self-awareness out of Bucky’s mind.

Who the hell is Bucky?

Out of all the hits Steve had taken through the years, that was the one which had left him on his knees, unable to stand again.

Steve closed the file, heeding Sam’s words and ignoring his worried looks. He’d know soon enough what information was in the file. Tony had promised JARVIS’ services and a floor on his tower to replace Steve’s apartment in D.C. Steve wasn’t planning on staying long enough to use the latter, but he’d take the former.

The drive into Manhattan was quick enough, but street traffic was still a little slower in Midtown. Construction was booming still in the two years after the Chitauri attack, a far cry from the damaged capital they’d left behind them hours ago. Tony’s tower with the prominent A on the side was even more of an eyesore, if one could believe it.

Sam was impressed and said as much when they stepped into the restricted-access express elevator that would take them from the private garage to the private levels of the tower.

“Welcome back, Steve. I do wish it was under better circumstances,” JARVIS said.

Sam jumped a little, startled by the British accented voice coming through the speakers. “What the hell?”

“Me, too, JARVIS,” Steve said, tucking the file securely under his arm.

“Stark’s elevator talks?” Sam hissed. “Man, rich people are weird.”

“JARVIS is Tony’s A.I., not his elevator. It’s polite to say hello.”

“Are you serious? That’s pretty fucking cool.”

“Glad you think so,” Tony said as the elevator doors opened on the Avengers’ common floor. “I prefer JARVIS to antiquated elevator music. Hello, Steve. You’re looking less bruisey today.”

Steve nodded at Tony as they stepped inside. “Thanks for helping me with this, Tony.”

Tony waved a hand at him. “JARVIS is fluent in everything except maybe Swahili. Don’t think I ever got around to programming him with that. Russian won’t be a problem. Flyboy’s wings, on the other hand, need a total revamp. I don’t know what the Air Force did to my original design, but they shouldn’t have broken like that. I know that defect didn’t come from me.”

“My wings?” Sam asked, trying not to sound excited and failing miserably.

Tony nodded as he led them into the tastefully decorated common room, the place not looking lived in at all. “You think I’m going to let you go traipsing after Steve here without proper gear? Hell no. Steve has a tendency to get himself into messy situations.”

“Malibu,” Steve said pointedly.

“I was having a psychological breakdown. Doesn’t count.” Sam shared a look with Steve, some of the happiness fading from his dark eyes. Tony didn’t notice, snapping his fingers at the file Steve carried. “Is that it? Doesn’t look like it covers seventy years of records.”

“Because it doesn’t. I’ve only figured out a little of what’s in here during the four hours it took us to drive here.”

But he’d understood enough to know that he wasn’t going to like what was missing any more than he cared for what he already knew.

“I’ve got Hill and Bruce waiting for us in my lab. Natasha is still in D.C. putting the fear of herself instead of God into politicians and Clint is making his way back to the States from South Africa. He was undercover when SHIELD’s data dump hit the Internet. Thor is in Asgard doing Asgardian things,” Tony said as he showed them to the private elevator that ran strictly through the Avengers floors for security purposes.

Steve nodded, mentally ticking off each of the Avengers’ statuses in his head. “Clint alright?”

“He’s flying back in one of my private jets drinking me out of Don Pérignon. Clint’s fine.”

“You said Maria’s here? I thought she was still in D.C.?”

“She was. I flew her out here as well. Would’ve flown you along with her, but you’d already AMAed your way out of the hospital before Happy could pick you up. I left you a message and everything. I know you know how to use your phone.”

“You mean we could’ve been flying in style instead of driving through Jersey? Not cool, Steve,” Sam complained.

Steve shrugged. “I needed time to think.”

Sam didn’t reply, just gave him a sympathetic look that Tony didn’t fail to miss. He quirked an eyebrow at them. “Not happy reading, I take it?”

“Steve didn’t tell you?” Sam replied.

“All I know about what happened in D.C. is what Fury told me on his way out of the country, which wasn’t much because it was Fury, and the data dump JARVIS is currently data mining for me.”

“You’re an Avenger, Tony. Fury would’ve debriefed you,” Steve said.

“Yeah, the short version. Rocks fall, everyone dies. You—don’t get that reference. Never mind. Hill! I thought I told you not to touch anything?”

Tony was the first one out of the elevator and the other two followed. Tony’s lab was a lot like its creator, hectic and wild and brimming with future promises. Maria didn’t look up from the video files JARVIS had arrayed around her, showing the fight on the bridge. Bruce was perusing one or two of them, chatting softly with Maria. Several key frames from different camera sources had been frozen, cleaned up, and enlarged. Bucky was a black-clad shadow in the middle of mayhem and Steve felt his heart clench.

“Glad to see you’re up on your feet again,” Maria told Steve, giving him a brief nod.

“Ma’am.”

“Nope, nope, none of that. This is a shadowy organization free zone. Rank is not allowed. That was in the agreement you signed, right, Bruce?” Tony said.

“I didn’t sign an agreement. You arbitrarily gave me a lab instead,” Bruce replied mildly. He nodded at Sam, giving him a polite smile. “Bruce Banner.”

“Sam Wilson,” Sam said, sticking out his hand without hesitation. “Good to meet you, Dr. Banner.”

Bruce seemed pleased by Sam’s easy greeting and distinct lack of wariness or fear, and gamely shook his hand. “Call me Bruce.”

Maria tilted her head in Steve’s direction, catching his eye. “You should know I joined Stark Industries. Needed a buffer from the witch hunt Congress has going on, and Tony is the most egotistical person I know. Figured he’d be a good distraction.”

Tony snorted. “I also have a lot of lawyers, but that’s not why we’re here.”

“You might want to keep them on retainer for this.” Maria pointed at the file Steve carried. “Is that what Natasha pulled for you?”

Steve cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

“If you want, I can do the read-through, give you the pertinent points after.”

The offer was extended with the best intentions, but Steve didn’t deserve those right now. “I need to be the one to do this.”

“Okay. I am officially unhappy with the choking amount of guilt coming off you. Thought I had the monopoly on that, but apparently not. I hate secrets, so spill,” Tony said.

“It’s Bucky,” Steve said quietly.

Tony frowned. “Your dead best friend?”

“Tony,” Bruce murmured warningly.

Steve choked on a laugh, shaking his head as he flipped open the file and laid it down on the work table. “Not dead. It might’ve been better if he was.”

He hated that he thought that, but it was the truth. Steve would’ve given up anything to go back in time and fight to send out a search party to bring back the body, whether Colonel Phillips authorized it or not. At least that way HYDRA never would have found Bucky, never would’ve—

“Steve, this isn’t your fault” Sam said, interrupting his thoughts.

“Yes, it is,” Steve stated flatly.

Sam went quiet, sharing a worried look with Maria. Tony watched it all through narrowed eyes. “Okay. I’m going to go out on wild limb here and say your dead best friend isn’t very dead.”

“Tony,” Maria said exasperatedly.

Tony ignored her, dragging the file closer to him. He drew a finger through the air, a holographic line following in its wake before expanding. Tony started quickly flipping through the pages one by one, with JARVIS scanning them as he went.

“Definitely not dead,” Tony muttered.

“No, Tony, he’s not,” Steve snapped. “HYDRA found Bucky after he fell and turned him into the Winter Soldier, and that’s who we fought in D.C. That’s who I lost all over again. So you can quit with the dying jokes, because they aren’t funny.”

“Noted. JARVIS, what do we got so far?”

“The files is indeed incomplete, Sir. I have taken the liberty to download the translated pages to your StarkPad. Perhaps Steve would like to review it alone?” the A.I. suggested pointedly.

“This is a team effort, buddy.”

“I’d like to read it first before any of you see it,” Steve said tightly.

“Look, I realize you want to get it and go, but it’s not that simple, Steve. File’s incomplete, HYDRA’s in pieces, SHIELD’s been temporarily decommissioned as an agency, so how are you going to look for your friend when he’s in the wind? You don’t have the resources for something like that and I do.”

“All the same, I think you should let me review the file first.”

“Steve, man, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Sam asked worriedly.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You really want me to answer that?”

“Steve, let us help you with this. It’s going to be a lot to dig through and it won’t be pretty. You shouldn’t have to do it on your own,” Maria said.

Steve shook his head. “I need to. At least for this.”

Tony threw his hands in the air in frustration. “Why are you being so stubborn about this?”

“Because I love him!” Steve yelled, finally losing the tenuous grip on his frayed temper in the face of their misplaced kindness. “I have always loved him, and he loved me, and that wasn’t for anyone but us. Not the history books, not the gossip rags, not the twenty-four hour talking heads cycle everyone calls news. I fucking owe it to Bucky to find him, because I wasn’t careful and I lost him. I lost him, and that’s on me. That’s on me. But I am not—I refuse to lose him again. I can’t.”

The world was blurry and wet, and Steve swore, dragging his hand across his eyes to wipe away the tears. No one said anything while Steve struggled to pull himself together and got nowhere close to succeeding.

“I lost him, and when I found him again, he didn’t even know me. I need to know why.”

He shook his head, not looking at anyone as he picked up Tony’s StarkPad and walked out of the lab. He took the elevator up to the floor Tony had given him once the tower’s rebuild was complete. The place was clean but lacked the touches of home he’d built up in his D.C. apartment. Sinking onto the leather couch, Steve set the StarkPad on the coffee table and put his head in his hands.

If the elevator didn’t ping an arrival, Steve was sure he would’ve started crying and not stopped until it made him sick.

“I’m sorry,” Tony said quietly from behind him.

Steve sat up and sniffed loudly. A tissue box was thrust over his shoulder and Tony shook the box at him when he ignored it. Steve sighed and pulled a few out. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”

“And you think you do?”

“I let him fall, Tony. He was right there and I couldn’t get to him quick enough. I couldn’t catch him.”

“History books don’t mention that.”

Steve let out a bitter laugh as Tony came around to sit beside him on the couch. “History books don’t mention a lot of things about me, and what they do mention barely describes who I am. But if you want to know about Captain America, you can earn a Master’s degree on him these days.”

“Yeah, think I know a little about how that feels.”

Steve stared bleakly at the StarkPad, grinding his teeth. “Natasha said I might not want to pull on this thread. I think she might be right, but I know I need to.”

“Natasha isn’t that great with people one on one unless she’s killing them.” Tony held up his hands in protest at the look Steve gave him. “Hey, it’s the truth. I respect her for it. Really, I do. But telling you not to look isn’t going to help you. She gave you bad advice.”

“And you think yours will be any better?”

“Despite what the gossip sites write about me, I know a little about love and losing it. Well, almost losing it.”

Steve had met Pepper Potts more than a few times over the past two years whenever he swung through New York. She’d make time in her busy schedule to have lunch or dinner with him, or go see an exhibit at a museum or gallery. She was thoughtful and kind, and Steve had seen the way Tony looked at her, like he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what he’d done to deserve her.

“Yeah.”

Tony sighed. “You’re not going to like what you find in that file, and it’s got nothing to do with him and everything to do with you. Because you’re going to see all the mistakes you think you made for this to happen, but you’re not the one who hurt him. And I saw the news, Steve. They found you unconscious on the riverbank. You say Bucky didn’t know you, but if there was nothing left of him, he’d have let you drown in the Potomac.”

Steve squeezed his eyes shut, wanting to believe Tony was right and too afraid of what would become of himself if the other man was wrong. “You know, in ancient times, people fought wars over love. I went to war because I loved him. Didn’t want to live without him.”

And he thought he’d gotten away with it when he put that plane in the ocean, thought he’d find Bucky up in heaven if he was lucky and the Lord was kind, because he’d hidden suicide in sacrifice, dying in sin. But they’d given up so much during the war, up to and including each other. The very least the Lord owed them was to let them be together again.

Steve just never thought it’d be like this.

“It’s not your fault.”

Steve said nothing.

“Pepper is so much better at this stuff,” Tony muttered under his breath. “Look, I’ll keep Congress occupied while you’re gone. I’ve got an idea for an A.I. patrol based off the suit. You wouldn’t be interested in the minor details right now, but trust me, it’ll be great.”

Steve just nodded. Tony’s idea about what constituted minor details was everyone else’s Ph.D. thesis and he didn’t need a lecture right now.

Tony sighed and got to his feet. He hesitated a moment before gripping Steve by the shoulder, the support awkward, but the intent behind it kind. “Stark Industries is funding the Avengers. Which means I’m funding your jaunt around the world. Trust me when I say that’s better than doing it on your own. Flying coach on long-haul routes is a bitch.”

“Thank you, Tony.”

“No thanks needed. Just wait a couple of days while I build Wilson a new pair of wings and we figure out where you need to start looking. Then go find your boy and bring him home.”

Tony left. It took every bit of strength Steve had to reach for the StarkPad and start reading.

“Wipe him.”

“Tony Stark is a genius. I’d never get these babies out of the country by flying coach,” Sam said cheerfully as he stowed his wings in the baggage closet on the private jet Tony had loaned them.

Steve nodded absently, swiping his finger across the screen of his StarkPad, re-reading Natasha’s latest report. Steve was fine with using Tony’s fleet of vehicles while Stateside, but he’d drawn the line at using them in Europe outside of getting them there. Tony brought them too much attention, even when he wasn’t present. They’d abandon the jet once they touched down over there for security purposes.

In the few weeks since leaving D.C., the Avengers, minus Thor who was still stuck in Asgard, had returned to New York City with a new mission to focus on, one which wasn’t about saving the world, just one man. The team divided up chunks of data gleaned from JARVIS’ searches, which were still ongoing, and the restricted network on the server Natasha had discovered in a bank vault, tied to a machine she took pictures of for reference before blowing it up. Steve had been angry for a few hours after her heads up phone call until she arrived back at the tower and cornered him.

“I am not letting you carry this alone,” Natasha had told him evenly, gaze steady and intent.

Steve had known better than to argue with her; was learning to let the others in. It was a slow process when guilt always got in the way.

Through initial information unearthed from the data dump, they’d managed to track down a select few HYDRA bases scattered along the East Coast, mostly because they had those coordinates at hand and the bases’ destruction made the news. Steve rather thought the trail of bodies was Bucky’s doing, and had gone to chase a ghost through several states with Sam by his side.

The next logical location after no new bases were hit over the course of a week was to head to Europe. So far, all the information they had pointed to Europe as the origin of this hellish mess.

“You going to read that for the entire flight?” Sam asked as he sat down in the plush seat across from Steve by the window.

The pair of flight attendants were speaking quietly with the captain as they readied the jet for takeoff. Steve kept his voice low when he said, “What else am I going to do?”

“Sleep? Like a normal person?”

Steve shook his head. Sleep hadn’t come easy in weeks. “That’s not going to help.”

“Nope. Wrong answer. I’m going to put on my therapist hat and you’re going to hear me out, alright?” When Steve didn’t immediately protest, Sam continued with “You want to help Bucky, I get that. We all do. But neglecting yourself isn’t going to help either of you in the long run.”

Steve looked out the window instead of at Sam, uncomfortable with the truth of Sam’s words. “You done?”

“Man, not by a long shot. I’ll stick with the cliffs notes version though, if it’ll stop you from getting pissy. Look, Steve. Punishing yourself like you have been isn’t healthy. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing, because I do. Heard it all in group before. Hell, I’ve done it. You aren’t the only person who wasn’t fast enough to save a friend, but at least you’ve got a chance to get him back.”

Steve winced, having forgotten about how Sam had lost his wingman. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your apology. I don’t need it,” Sam said seriously, catching his gaze. “You need to start looking to forgive yourself first.”

Steve ran a hand through his hair, slouching in the comfortable airplane seat. Sam, like Natasha, had a tendency to force him to be honest, with them and with himself. He didn’t know how they did it, but they did. “I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I deserve to.”

Because all the information the Avengers had compiled so far, and were still compiling, didn’t paint a pretty picture at fucking all. What they were learning about what was done to Bucky made it very clear that Bucky’s job was to kill, but he was just as much a victim as the people who had died by his hands.

“Forgiveness doesn’t happen right away, Steve. You gotta work for it. The thing that finally got me off my ass and feeling human again was knowing that Riley would’ve never blamed me. We were taking on so much fire at the time he died that if I’d tried, we’d both be six feet under right now. From what little you’ve said, Bucky doesn’t seem like he was the type of guy who would blame you either, so put the blame where it belongs. Not on you, but on HYDRA.”

Steve wished he could. Sam made it sound so easy, when it really wasn’t. Rationally, Steve knew he had no hand in Bucky’s torture, but that didn’t stop him from believing he did. Didn’t stop him from wondering how different the world might be if he’d managed to reach Bucky on that train in the Alps and hold on.

Sam took the StarkPad out of his hands and set it aside. “Sleep.”

After takeoff, Steve reclined the chair back into its bed position and closed his eyes.

He didn’t sleep.

“Wipe him.”

He started in Portugal and kept going east, hitting HYDRA bases and outposts he knew existed by way of coordinates shifting through his head. He slipped across porous international borders and kept hunting, kept hiding, kept looking, kept leaving a trail of bodies behind.

It took six months for him to make it to Berlin, to track down the lead surgeon of the team that had operated on him according to scattered hardcopy files he’d discovery through his raids, only to find out the man had died back in 1992. The doctor’s aging son still lived in the same family home, divorced with two children who preferred their mother over a man who kept his father’s secrets and was proud of them.

“I always knew you’d come,” Rüdiger Heim said as he slowly set down his satchel after coming through the front door.

He said nothing, merely kept his gun with its attached silencer trained on the doctor’s son. The man raised his hands, showing he was unarmed, and moved carefully to sit on the living room couch.

“Are you here for the film? The authorities never found it, you know. It wasn’t part of the war, so they never thought to ask for it. It was locked away in a safe deposit box by one of the nurses. HYDRA retrieved it years ago and transferred the film onto tape, and then again onto disk when that technology came around.” He flicked his gaze at the dark hallway leading further into the house. “I keep it in my office safe.”

Rüdiger smiled, the pride he had for his father shining through his eyes. “It was my father’s favorite thing to watch.”

He shot him twice through the heart and once through the head, painting the wall red.

He found the disk in the safe, easily accessible by ripping off the metal door. The computer’s password was simple to hack, the system laughably obsolete, but it still supported the programs needed to run what was on the disk.

He hesitated for a long moment before clicking on the single folder highlighted in the box.

He wished he hadn’t.

He could only make it through the prep phase on the grainy video, a mere four minutes or so. The moment the bone saw whined through the speakers, he exploded from the chair, punching his left fist through the old CRT monitor in a frenzied panic, destroying it. His lungs constricted as a sudden spike of phantom pain shot through the metal arm and into the rest of his body. He lashed out again, destroying the desk and surrounding office furniture until the feeling finally faded.

He left without taking the disk, but it didn’t matter.

The cracks in his mind were spreading, building weak bridges into the dark.

“Wipe him.”

“You sure this is the right address? Doesn’t look like anyone is home,” Sam said.

“It’s after midnight. Most places look like no one is home.”

Steve never got to see Berlin during the war, the city too well protected by German forces for the Howling Commandos to orchestrate any raids within its borders. He’d read about the Berlin Wall and Communism and the Cold War, about the reunification and the good standing the country had with the world again. Progress happened, even if it happened slow.

Steve pushed open the sidewalk gate and started up the walkway. “C’mon.”

“Man, I’m doing a B and E with Captain America,” Sam muttered under his breath. “My mama can never know about this.”

They’d retrieved this address from the only recoverable hard drive they’d pulled out of the last ruined base. Someone had put a bullet through the laptop, damage which had caught their attention while going through the remains. Steve had sent it back to Tony on a Stark Industries jet, couriered by Pepper, who’d been in the middle of a surprise visit at a subsidiary in Paris. She cut her time there short and met them in Prague before turning right back around and leaving Europe for home. JARVIS hadn’t been able to pull much from the laptop, but he’d found the most recent files accessed by the last person to use it.

This address had been encrypted when all the rest were not, so they’d left Brussels for Berlin to see what was hiding here.

Over the months they’d spent in Europe trying to track Bucky down, they realized he had to be looking for answers not available in the data dump. The hardcopy file Steve carried with him had been painstakingly added to over the last half year, but not enough to complete it. The people who’d had Bucky first had been surprisingly careful with their records on Project Winter Soldier, more so than HYDRA ever had. Most of the instructions they’d been lucky enough to find had pointed to a lot of the records being hardcopy only. If that was the case, Bucky’s raze and ruin tour of Europe made a lot more sense, because some of the places he’d hit weren’t obviously HYDRA.

Then again, HYDRA was damned good at hiding in plain sight.

“Door is unlocked,” Sam said, testing the knob with his gloved hand. He pushed it open a bit, then swore, covering his nose and mouth with his hand. “Looks like Bucky already found this place.”

The sweetly rotten smell of decomposition poured out of the front door and Steve grimaced, but didn’t bother holding his nose as they stepped inside the house. He pulled out his small, heavy duty flashlight and shined it on the body sitting on the couch, throwing into high relief the holes in the corpse’s chest and head.

“I’ll clear upstairs,” Sam said. He unholstered his Glock 16 and braced is right hand over his left wrist to steady his gun, letting the flashlight lead the way.

“Watch the windows,” Steve warned. “And watch your back.”

“You, too.”

They both knew Bucky wasn’t here. He never stuck around, never left any real clues on where he’d next go. They always had to dig for clues and guess where he might attack next. They were within the right country most of the time, even if they seemed to miss when it came to the city. Over the course of six months, it had frustrated Steve to know that he was always so damn close to the other man, but never close enough.

Steve cleared the first floor of the house, confirming no HYDRA agents over the comms. Sam gave him the same confirmation, then came back down to join Steve in the ransacked office.

Sam shined the light over the destroyed computer monitor and shattered desk. “Doesn’t look like he was happy when he left.”

Steve grunted wordlessly as he lifted away pieces of the desk with his gloved hands, revealing the desktop tower still mostly intact. “He didn’t get this.”

The computer light was on, cord still plugged into the wall. Steve tapped open the disk drive, pulling free a DVD. He pointed the flashlight at it, reading the faded numbers written there. “Nineteen forty-eight.”

“What, like the year?” Sam asked.

Steve ignored the way his heartbeat raced a bit, either from fear or anger, he’d long since stopped wondering which. He tucked the DVD into his jacket pocket and jerked his head at the door. “Let’s get out of here.”

They left the way they’d come, both men scanning the immediate vicinity for any threats. Steve closed the door carefully behind them before making their way to where they’d parked the car two blocks over. They were staying at a small hotel in Berlin’s city center on Tony’s dime, though the credit card Steve carried was for one Steven Grant, last name held off for security reasons. They tried not to go through Customs with their real passports if they could get away with it. Sam’s wings were a bitch to clear, and once they pinged on any country’s radar, HYDRA knew they were coming.

They’d touched down in Berlin earlier that evening, checked into the hotel, and immediately went to work. Sam had wanted to sleep, but Steve was adamant about checking out the house first, and Sam wasn’t the type to leave him alone on this trip. The other man was a rock solid presence reining in Steve’s messier tendencies, because they both knew Steve hadn’t been thinking straight since D.C.

Bucky always used to drive him crazy. At least some things never changed.

“You gonna watch it?” Sam asked as he closed the hotel door behind them.

“I’m not going to be able to sleep until I do,” Steve said, already getting out his laptop.

“You think you’ll be able to sleep once you do?”

The details of what had been done to Bucky were incomplete, but enough was known now that Steve had driven himself into exhaustion and ugly nightmares off and on through this journey. The choking guilt couldn’t be talked away over morning coffees and evening whiskies. Sam tried, and Steve appreciated his effort to a point, but Steve wasn’t a man of words, he was a man of action; impulsive, impetuous action that he’d always needed Bucky to drag him out of.

Steve couldn’t help Bucky if he didn’t face what was done to the other man head on. But even knowing what they did already wasn’t enough to prepare them for what was on the disk.

They settled on Steve’s bed and waited while the disk loaded. A video window popped up and Steve hit play. The screen remained black for several seconds before flickering into focus. Steve sucked in a sharp breath at what he was seeing, Sam’s long, creative swearing speaking for both of them.

A date stamp in Russian ran across the bottom. Steve quickly took a clip of a frame and ran it through the translation program Tony had made available to them through Jarvis. What came back were two words: Red Room.

“Not HYDRA?” Sam asked, more to himself than to Steve.

Steve magnified the video instead, letting it fill the entire screen.

The camera had been positioned above an operating table, the black and white video grainy from the technology of the time and from age. On that table lay Bucky, naked and strapped down, blank gaze staring up at the ceiling as a team of doctors and nurses moved around him, talking amongst themselves and never to their patient. On screen, Bucky’s hair fanned around his head in tangles, physique well-maintained, though he made no move to try to get free. He lay there silently, passively, so different from the vibrant man Steve had grown up loving.

“Steve, look at his left arm,” Sam murmured.

Steve had been looking at Bucky’s face; hadn’t noticed the stump extending from Bucky’s left shoulder. The scar tissue at the amputated end was thick and twisted, the injury too grievous for even his accelerated healing to cleanly fix. Commotion off-screen drew everyone’s attention in the video, including Bucky’s. Steve watched as Bucky turned his head just enough to see the newcomers approach.

Steve didn’t recognize the Russian man, but he knew Zola. He didn’t realize he was gripping the laptop so hard that he was cracking the casing until Sam pulled his hands away.

“I can turn it off. I’m telling you ,as a therapist and as a friend, you may not want to watch it. It already doesn’t look good and we both know it’s only going to get worse,” Sam said seriously.

Steve clenched his jaw, tendons standing out for sharply against the skin of his neck. “I owe it to him, Sam. This was my fault and—”

“Not your fault,” Sam interrupted fiercely. “I will tell you that for however long it takes, but this? What happened to him? It’s not your fault. I realize you don’t believe that right now, that it’ll take time, but we’ll work on that, Steve. No way in hell am I leaving you alone with your demons. That’s not in my job description.”

They missed part of the conversation going on in the video, so Steve restarted it at a minute earlier. The people in the video talked about Bucky like he was a thing, not a person, which he was to them, Steve realized. They had turned Bucky into the Winter Soldier, made him into a weapon that wasn’t so much obedient as conditioned. The breaking of a man took effort and time. The date stamp on the video said June 17, 1948. The Red Room had had Bucky for over three years by then.

A lot could happen in three years, much less seventy.

On screen, one of the nurses said, “Dr. Zola, Dr. Heim, we have everything in place. We are ready to begin when you are.”

“Oh my God,” Steve choked out, feeling his chest tighten. “Oh my God.”

“Did she just say—is that—?” Sam said weakly, mouth dropping open in shock.

“No, no, no,” Steve chanted, not even aware he was speaking.

On screen, the sound of a bone saw filled the operating room, wielded by one of Hitler’s most notorious Nazi doctors, found by the Red Room to perform this service. And Bucky—Bucky was no longer impassive. An ugly, desperate horror had filled his eyes, filled his face, before it was wiped out by the agony of the saw cutting through his left shoulder without anesthesia.

The sound of his muffled screaming would haunt Steve forever, because he knew Bucky never stopped as they carved ff the remains of his left arm to give him a new one.

The video was sixteen hours long. Sam turned it off five minutes after they’d started it and closed the laptop, pulling it away from Steve’s now lax grip.

“I’m going to be sick,” Steve said in a calm, matter of fact voice.

He couldn’t move, couldn’t figure out how to process what he’d just seen. It was different from the ravages of war, of bloody battlefields and the scream of artillery. Of the bombs and the tanks and the things a man did to survive.

What was on that disk was pure torture, nothing more, and nothing less.

Sam got the waste bucket next to the bed in time for Steve to lean over and empty everything in his stomach. For a moment, after he was finished, they just sat there in silence, shaking in the wake of the horror they’d just seen, before Steve found the ability to move again.

“I need to go,” Steve said, not recognizing his own voice. He got to his feet, grabbing his jacket with numb hands. It took a few tries to get it on.

“Steve, no. You shouldn’t be alone after seeing that,” Sam said, standing up as well.

“No, I can’t—you can’t be around me right now, Sam. You just can’t.”

The rage suffusing him wasn’t pretty, wasn’t safe. Steve didn’t trust himself around anyone right now. Sam must have sensed that, and despite the upset and worried expression on his face, he only nodded resignedly. “Promise me you aren’t going to leave the city. Promise me when you’re done getting your head screwed back on straight, you’ll come back here so we can keep moving. Promise me that, and I swear I won’t tail your scrawny ass from the sky.”

Steve nodded stiffly even as he pitched himself out the hotel door. “Yeah, Sam. I promise.”

Then Steve ran, but he couldn’t run far enough or fast enough to outrun what he’d just borne witness to.

The autumn Berlin night was cold, but Steve didn’t notice. Ever since the serum, Steve’s body always ran warm. A light jacket was more than enough protection against a temperature hovering just above fifty. The twenty or so miles he ran helped as well.

Steve chased his ghosts and ran from his demons, ending up at the Bradenburg Gate, its lit up pillars a solid beacon in the pre-dawn darkness. Breathing heavily, he sat down at the edge of the empty plaza because his legs would no longer hold him up, and he cried. The sobs ripped from his lungs hurt but nowhere near as much as the reason for his tears. Eventually, he stopped, and Steve concentrated on just breathing, staring at the chariot on top of the Bradenburg Gate backed by the night sky. When he felt he could speak, he called Natasha.

“Have you found him yet?” Natasha asked once she picked up the line.

And Steve could do nothing but laugh hysterically into the phone for a few seconds. “In a way.”

“I did warn you, Steve.” Her voice was kind, but she didn’t sound repentant in the least. “This was never going to be easy for you, or for him.”

“Yeah, but he’s always been worth it, Nat. I just—” He cut himself off, not knowing where to start. “We found a disk at a house he hit relatively recently. There was a video on it.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. If you can’t.”

He swallowed thickly, the ache in his legs from running for so long fading. “The video had a date stamp followed by the words Red Room in Russian, according to JARVIS’s translation program. I thought you might know something about that.”

Natasha sucked in a sharp breath. The line went quiet for several minutes, but Steve just waited. She’d spoken little about her past since he’d known her, but these long-distanced phone calls they’d taken to having meant some secrets were told. It was easier, they both found, to confide in a friend when you didn’t need to look them in the eye.

“The Red Room was an offshoot of the Soviet secret police. It was formed before World War Two,” Natasha finally said, her quiet voice flat and emotionless to Steve’s ears.

Steve closed his eyes. “Which meant it was active during the war and probably part of HYDRA.”

“An arm of it, yes, but it managed to hold on to much of its autonomy through the years. I think I know how they accomplished that now.”

“How?”

“The Red Room specialized in assassinations, intelligence gathering, and memory alteration. If they were the ones who turned your friend into the Winter Soldier and owned him first? He’d be an excellent bargaining chip to use against HYDRA’s influence. The Soviet Union never cared much for outside interference in its domestic policies.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“You have no idea. The Red Room was very good at breaking people. At remaking them into what they needed. They took their time, and they had your friend for years before handing him over to HYDRA.”

She let her voice trail off and Steve fought to keep his own even when all he wanted to do was scream. “You don’t think what they did to him can be reversed.”

“The Red Room’s experiments aren’t fool-proof. I think the Red Room and HYDRA kept your friend on ice for a reason, and not just to keep him for future use. You know we’re still working on getting information from the network that controlled the chair in the vault. The decryption is taking longer than expected, but we’re finding things of use. Brain scans and shorthand notes on the wipes, going back years. Your friend wasn’t always easy to control. We found a record of a time he even went off the grid back in the early seventies.” Natasha paused, her voice gentling. “They found him in Brooklyn.”

Steve felt the tears trickle down his cheeks and he angrily wiped them away. He laughed bitterly. “Brooklyn.”

Oh, Buck. You went home, of course you did. And I wasn’t there, and nothing was the same.

Steve knew what that felt like, and before tonight he wouldn’t have known what those bastards must have done to punish Bucky, confused and out of place and time, with no idea who he was.

Steve knew now.

“He was harder to control after that, according to the notes. His missions were kept shorter, the wipes became more frequent. They used him less.”

“They used him more than enough when they shouldn’t have had him to begin with.” Steve cleared his throat loudly, fighting to think around the rage and grief still bubbling up under his skin. “Is the Red Room still active?”

“Officially, no. It became defunct along with the KGB back in nineteen ninety-one.”

“We both know the KGB just changed its name, not its occupation.”

“Yes, but they dabbled in the Russian version of transparency. Closed up shop in a lot of cities. Same with the Red Room. Its main location for the majority of its existence was in Moscow, but they shuttered it after the Cold War ended. If he’s looking for answers, Steve, he’d go there.”

Steve nodded, even though she couldn’t see him. “Moscow. Thank you, Nat.”

“I hope you find him,” she said before hanging up.

Steve pulled the phone way from his ear, tucking it away in his pocket.

“Me, too,” he said to the cold night air, resolve hardening anew again. “I’m not letting you go through this alone anymore, Bucky.”

Steve got to his feet, heading back the way he’d come, a promise falling from his lips into the cold night air. “I’m not letting you go again.”

“Wipe him.”

Steve and his winged friend caught up with him in Moscow, in an abandoned secret basement facility three levels beneath the infamous Lubyanka building and its now empty political prisons.

Inches of dust and grime coated abandoned work stations, filled the floors like dirty snow. The wiring inside the walls was still intact, which meant the electric grid still ran power down here. Most of the lights had burned out though, and only a few lit the facility now, casting scattered ghostly shadows.

When he’d first arrived, he’d gone through the rows of filing cabinets, but they were empty, hardcopies long since removed. The server might be salvageable; for whatever reason, they’d left it behind when the Red Room abandoned this place. He’d dragged it over to the old elevator for later removal, leaving furrows in the facility’s floors, before he kept looking.

He didn’t know how long he’d been down there before Steve found him.

“Bucky?”

Steve’s voice echoed against the walls, as he called out for him, searching him out, finally coming into view. Steve rocked to a sudden stop at the end of the corridor.

“It was made here,” he said, standing motionless in the corridor, staring through the gaps between metal bars into the small cell, white walls grown gray from time and disuse.

“Bucky,” Steve choked out.

He frowned at that name, looking down at his hands, his mind a jumbled mess of life lived in intervals and bloodshed.

Steve approached carefully, keeping his hands in sight, shield resting against his back. He tensed, but didn’t run, didn’t lash out as Steve stepped in front of him, blocking out the cell with his body and his shield. Steve hesitated before raising one of his hands, telegraphing every motion, and touched his face, fingers warm and gentle, but more than that, they felt familiar. They—

A flash of sunlight on blond hair, thin shoulders hunched over a drawing pad, pencil in his mouth.

You’re doing it again.

He blinked rapidly, the memory spinning away into the recesses of his mind. He didn’t realize he’d grabbed Steve’s wrist with his own hands, warmth and pressure lighting up both sides of his brain. He pulled Steve’s hand away from his face and turned it over, frowning down at the broad palm and long, tapered fingers. He tried to chase that memory flash again, but it was gone, and his grip tightened in frustration.

He shifted his grip, and when he ran his right thumb over the calluses on Steve’s fingers, something was there, way down deep, struggling to claw itself free. Something that he’d always known, even when he didn’t know himself.

“You drew me,” he said slowly, the words tasting strange on his tongue, brow creasing with the effort to understand. They weren’t the words he wanted to say, but he didn’t know where to find them in all the languages scattered through his brain.

Steve sucked in a sharp breath, blue eyes wide and wet in his face, shadows from the light down the corridor making him look old and worn. “Yeah. Yeah I did. I always drew you. I never stopped because I was always looking, and you were looking right back.”

He said nothing, just watched as Steve covered both his hands with his own before raising his head and meeting Steve’s gaze without blinking. The urge to look away never came, and the absence of it felt new and strange, left him shivering in the cold.

“You don’t need to stay here. You don’t need to keep running, not by yourself. Whatever you’re looking for, we’ll find it together. I’ve got a car on the street with Sam behind the wheel. We could go anywhere, but I would like it if you came home. Please, Bucky. Come home with me,” Steve whispered in a voice that cracked on the name, shades of Brooklyn, new and old, in the sound of it.

To be unnamed was to be nothing. It—the Asset—he understood that now. He understood what they had stripped from him, even if he couldn’t remember why it was important, or how it meshed with the cascade of memories tumbling like shards of glass through his mind, waking or sleeping.

Nothing in his head made any sense. The flashes of memory felt like they belonged to someone else. He didn’t know how to own what he’d seen with his own eyes, done with his own hands through the years. He didn’t know where to start except here.

So when he said, “I remember you,” to the man on the bridge, to Steve, who he had never let go, what he meant was I’m remembering me.

For all the good it did him, as there was no peace to be found in his mind, because memory was a fluid and malleable thing so easily lost. Moments of a person’s life that existed as flashes in the mind; stored, remembered, forgotten. The sum of one’s parts found in personality, gleaned from all the time they had lived through and shaped into a life.

Steve raised himself higher on the balls of his feet to press a kiss to his forehead, lips warm and dry, the touch gentle, feeling like a benediction in the remnants of the hell they stood in.

Then Steve led him out of the bones of his past, but he carried what was buried in that long forgotten prison beneath Moscow with him to the surface. He knew he always would. Because out of everything he had endured, what died down there belonged to him and him alone.

History was lived and survived by many, but it was only written by the few, by the victors. And victories, as with history, made the world. It showed up in books and movies; in gravestones and museums; in breaking evening news and old storage files; in memory failures and regeneration.

It could be found in the seam of scars on flesh; the glint of early morning sunlight on a metal arm; a mind burned near to blankness and stretched too thin.

The fragments of a life just out of reach, and a name, oh, a name.

“Wipe him.”

“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.” – Winston Churchill