Work Text:
Are You a Mirage, Upon This Arctic Tundra?
Cold.
It was always the first sensation that penetrated his senses.
Bitter and acerbic, it gnawed at his fingers and toes, crawling over his skin like marching ants.
The outside world was still dark, his senses still disconnected from his mind. The waking realm was calling, but it was not yet quite time to answer. Deep in the recesses of his consciousness, the man became aware of himself. He found himself enveloped by cold darkness, lying by the side of a small pool of water covered in a sheet of ice. Dirt and stones dug into his back, and pinpricks of light glittered like stars in the space above him, providing just enough light by which to see.
He always awoke here.
Pushing himself into a sitting position, the frosted ground crunched as he moved, and looking around, he took in the dim darkness that surrounded him. Turning over, he got up onto his hands and kneed and crawled forward onto the ice. Placing a hand over it, he knew that though the pool appeared small, it held deep waters.
Warped by the thick layer of ice, he could see the pale face of another man. The square jaw, thick eyebrows, short cropped and dark hair, and high cheekbones were all familiar to him. It was a sight that greeted him with every waking, and he was so familiar with it now that he could draw it in his sleep if commanded to do so. And yet. He knew nothing about this other man. Not his name, not anything except for the features of his likeness. He was a mystery, and question mark the center of a labyrinth of smoke, fog, lies, and deceit. The man was dressed in a dark green military uniform, and he floated there in the cold water, just beneath the surface. If not for the inch of ice that separated them, this man could have been mistaken for sleeping.
In the distance, the sounds of hissing gas and wind upon his skin filtered through the darkness. His senses were beginning to reconnect to his mind, and the flow of information was beginning to pour into his brain. He knew that he would have to awaken soon.
To a new time.
A new place.
But before could leave this place for whatever unknowns the modern world held in store, he bent down and held out his hand. Taking a deep breath, he concentrated, picturing the ice thickening beneath his fingers. Slowly, with the subtle sounds of creaking and cracking, the ice obeyed. One inch grew into two, and the body under the water was pushed further beneath, the uniform becoming obscured by the dark water.
Satisfied, he stood, ready to face the horrors of a new mission.
-8-
Something was wrong.
The Winter Soldier lived an existence that was permeated with Wrongness, and yet, this was wholly different, and it was alarming. The target should have been easy to eliminate, but there was a complication: a man, who moved with speed and strength that were beyond human. There was something about this complication that unsettled him, and dread pooled in his gut for reasons unknown to him.
When he reached the checkpoint, they put him in a transport, back to the headquarters where they had raised him from his coffin of steel and ice. As they traveled, the Winter Soldier retreated back into the recesses of his mind.
With his heartbeat pounding in his ears, he returned to the ice pool, and his stomach lurched.
The ice was cracked.
Scrambling forward, he dashed to the edge of the pool and looked across the surface. The ice had thinned since he had left, and he now looked upon the face of the man, so familiar and yet so alien to him. His eyes were still closed, his long dark lashes highlighted against the starlight-white skin of his face, and yet-
The man’s hand was closed into a fist, just below the point of impact in the ice, where cracks and splinters radiated out across the surface like a jagged spiderweb.
This was bad.
Very, very bad.
This other man could not awaken, under any circumstances. He knew how or why, but he knew it in his very soul: the other man was not to awaken.
With shaking limbs, he sat back on his knees and held his arms out, his palms facing the pool. Using every ounce of willpower his body could muster, he called upon the cold and the ice, praying to whatever gods or monsters might listen, to put the man back.
Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the ice began to knit itself back together. The hairline fractures eased, like an eraser had simply rubbed away their lines. The other man’s body was pushed back under, the thickness. He kept going until the rumble and transport jostled him into the present, and the doors to the van swung open.
Blinking at the harsh lights of the underground hallway, the Winter Soldier was ordered to step down from his seat.
-8-
The car with his targets was travelling across a bridge, in broad daylight. It was as simple as breathing to jump from the helicopter and land on the roof of the vehicle and in one swift motion, his metal arm broke through the glass and grasped the shirt and tie of one Jasper Sitwell. A quick flick of the wrist, and he was flying into oncoming traffic.
One target eliminated.
Three more to follow.
He heard the gunshots from the strike team, and two bullets sank into the front two seats. The car swerved and braked, throwing the Soldier from his perch on the roof. Tumbling through the hair, the Soldier flipped and landed on his feet, using his left arm to slow his momentum, and he skidded to a stop upon the smoking asphalt.
An intense battle ensuing as he and the strike team chased their targets across the bridge and then over it, the bloody and violent clash of forces spilling into the civilian life around them.
When he came face to face with that man, that Complication-turned-Target, the one with the blond hair and the arresting green eyes, the Soldier felt something in his stir.
With every punch, every kick, every blow he received from the target, it rattled something inside him. It was as though each of those hits were not merely impacting his body, but the very ice prison he had spent decades maintaining. He could feel the surface cracking, breaking apart as they fought, at first gun to shield, then knife to hand. He was faster than the Soldier, and stronger too, but he was unarmed. They were so evenly matched, and the Winter Soldier could feel the frustration and panic welling inside him as they battled one another.
When the target nailed a weak point on his metal arm and flipped him over his shoulder, he could feel the wires and mechanisms whirring to re-calibrate. His mask had been dislodged, and as they faced each other again, the Target paused.
His green eyes widened, and a flurry of emotions crossed over his face. Pale lips, slack and open in disbelief. Dirt was streaked across his sharp cheekbones, impossible to be rid of it; every time he washed the grime from the man’s striking features, it would reappear within the hour, like it was a permanent mark. It was just impossible to keep his face clean, a source of frustration to no end. He didn’t know how he knew this, only that he did.
“Bucky?” said the man.
“Who the hell is Bucky?” the Winter Soldier replied.
But as the words left his mouth, he felt deep within him the ice shattering, and another man gasping for his first breath in fifty years.
-8-
Another failed mission.
Another transport.
As soon as he had been secured into place, the Winter Soldier retreated into his mind.
Sprinting to the pool, he could already see the shards of melting glass strewn about the pebbled shore. He could see the silhouette of a face, breaking the surface, as it gasped for air.
His combat suit was instantly soaked through as he crashed into the water, his hands pushing the other man back under.
The other man fought him, struggled against him like his life depended on it. And the Soldier knew it was true. He knew nothing of his surroundings as they wrestled one another; he was only vaguely aware of being pushed down a harshly lit hallway. Panic began to bubble up inside him when his body landed heavily into The Chair. He fought harder against the man in the pool as hard straps dug into his skin, restraining him. There was not much time; he needed to seal the other man way before they turned it on.
Smothered beneath the surface of the water, the other man’s strength began to fade as he was drowned again. Relief flooded him as the man’s limbs went limp, and the Soldier wasted no time in pushing him further beneath the water as he began to freeze over the surface of the pool.
The ice creaked as it formed and thickened, and the Soldier’s brow furrowed with concentration. The other man’s face was no longer a picture of a peaceful slumber. He had been preserved this time with his eyes and mouth open, his arms reaching out for the air above.
As he looked into the eyes of the other man, he saw that it was no different from his reflection upon the water.
We are the same, he thought to himself.
Somehow, he understood now, as though a curtain had been lifted, this one single fact: The Winter Soldier was a piece of this man, a piece that he had carved away from himself and cast into the cold - an offering to the horrors and monsters of the night. Like a lizard that severs its own tail as a sacrifice to its predators so that the rest of the body might escape, the man in the ice had cut off his own arm. They were equal, yet opposite. This man had a body with a robotic arm attached to it; the soldier was a robot body with a human arm.
In this moment of revelation, several words dropped from his lips and rolled across the floor like marbles dropped from a bag.
“But I knew him…” the Winter Soldier said to a room of technicians and suits - all torturers alike.
Then the Chair was activated.
Electricity streaked across the starlit sky in his mind, and he screamed out in pain as it obliterated everything around him.
Everything, except for the man inside the pool.
-8-
A new mission with a repeat target: kill Captain America and protect the helicarriers.
As they faced each other on the catwalk, he could already feel the ice stirring as the Captain said, “Please don’t make me do this.”
The world was breaking inside him, but there was nothing for the Winter Soldier to do except follow orders and pray that things would be okay.
Captain America broke the standoff by throwing his shield, which bounced harmlessly off of his metal arm, but the clang of vibranium jostled him, shaking loose more things inside.
Their battle was as well matched as before, and just like their battle on in the city, each blow cracked the ice, breaking apart more of the careful prison he had constructed around his other self.
He could feel the other him stirring, emboldened by what, he did not know. It rattled him, and against all odds, he failed to prevent the helicarriers from falling under enemy control. The airborne behemoths began to fire upon each other, and the whole structure shook with explosions. Rubble began to fall around them and as the helicarriers shredded one another in the sky, the other man broke through the surface, clawing his way into freedom.
The Winter Soldier clutched his head as the other man’s thoughts and memories began to flood into his brain, flashes of sounds and images that burred past him too quickly for him to grasp at any single one.
In his agony, he cried out, and it was too late for him to dodge the falling support beam from pinning him to the glass floor.
The Winter Soldier looked on in fear as the Captain approached; confusion filled him when the Captain freed him from his steel prison.
“You know me,” Captain America said.
“NO I DON’T!” The Winter Soldier screamed, desperately trying to hold back the tide as the other him crawled onto the shore of the pond, ice water dripping from his body. This was the cause of all his problems; the other him would not be free if it wasn’t for this Complication. Taking a swing, the Winter Soldier's vision narrowed into a tunnel onto his one remaining objective: kill Captain America. Elimination of the Target would stop the horror of knowing; he could put the other him back into the ice, and then he could be at peace.
“Bucky, you’ve known me your whole life.”
Those words pierced him like a knife, and the other man drew breath, shaking with strength as images flew past him like leaves on the wind: leaning on a bar with a smirk, drink in hand; as a small boy on the floor of an alleyway, wiping tears from his eyes; as a skinny teenager, lying in a threadbare bed with the breath rattling in his lungs worse than the howling of the winter winds on the poorly sealed windows; the taste of a tongue; warmth of thin lips; the feel of bony hips, both slender and wide; the cut of two shoulders, at one time sunken and at another, impossibly broad.
“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.”
A million faces flashed before his eyes, the same word on their lips. “Bucky,” they whispered in unison - a mother, a sister, boys and girls and grocers and dock workers and students and colleagues and this man, Captain America, in a million different memories, from the ages of eight to twenty-eight, all calling his name.
The other man staggered to his feet and took the Winter Soldier’s face in his hands. “My name is James Buchanan Barnes.”
“SHUT UP!” said the Winter Soldier, his fist throwing a punch at the Target; in his mind, he was screaming the same thing, tears streaming down his face as he tried to break away from the other man’s grasp.
“I’m not going to fight you. You’re my friend,” said Captain America.
“He’s our friend!” said the other man in his mind.
The Winter Soldier shook his head. “You’re my mission.”
As he brought his fist down upon the Target’s face, the other man screamed, a rumbling war cry that came from deep inside his chest, fighting for control over the body that they shared.
The Winter Soldier fought with tooth and nail, with every fibre of his being.
Cold air pierced their lungs as they heaved for breath, their metal fist raised, ready to deal the finishing blow, poised to punch through the skull of Captain America. A face covered in gunpowder and blood, matted into his fine blond hair, who peered up at him through half lidded green eyes.
“Finish it,” Captain America said, “’cause I’m with you ‘till the end of the line.”
The other man looked back, still dazed and reeling from confusion, but horrified at the world he had awoken to.
And then Steve was falling, and Bucky was hanging from a steel girder, overlooking the water below.
He let go.
The cold river that rushed up to meet him was almost a comfort, like a familiar old friend. After so many years trapped in a prison of icy water, it barely bothered him.
He hauled Steve up to the shore, and a quick couple of pumps on the chest and he was coughing the water from his lungs. Once Bucky was satisfied that Steve would survive - because he would; this was far from the worst beating he had seen Steve endure - he melted back into the shadows.
-8-
James Buchanan Barnes held the face of the Winter Soldier as he cried. Tears splattered onto the pebbled ground beside the pond. They could feel the frost receding; the world was warming, and the ice was melting.
“I was supposed to protect you,” the Winter Soldier whispered. “That was what I was made for.”
“I know,” Bucky said, smoothing away the tears on his face, but it was a futile attempt, as more tears simply took their place. “You did protect me. From so, so much. Much more than I know.”
“I failed my mission!”
“No,” Bucky said, “you didn’t. You kept me safe, but that time is over now. A new beginning is here.”
“Are… Are you going to put me away? Like I did to you?”
Bucky shook his head. “No. You are part of me.”
“But we can’t go back to the way it was,” said the Winter Soldier, and he shivered at the image of a man with a severed arm, desperately trying to sew it back onto his own shoulder.
“No, we can’t,” Bucky said, regret and sadness filling his voice. “We can’t fix what HYDRA broke, but we can still move forward. Together. I still need you.”
The Winter Soldier scrubbed his eyes with the back of his sleeve. “Okay.”
Bucky smiled, a deep and aching sadness in his eyes.
Whatever came next would be hard and painful in unimaginable ways, but somehow, against all odds, he was alive, and so was Steve.
And maybe at the end of the day, that’s all that mattered.