Chapter Text
prelude
CSM James B. Barnes, 32557038. Male, Alpha. Dominant, precise rank unknown. Born 03/10/1917, New York, New York. KIA 02/01/1945.
SHIELD gave him a box of files on all the people they assumed he’d care to know about in the future. Peggy’s file had been at the very top. He’d had to dig around to find Bucky’s, it was near the bottom of a stack of former Howlie agents. He ends up looking through it three or four times a day. There’s a bit of brief information on his childhood and teen years, all facts that someone had probably gotten from Bucky himself because hardly any of it is true. He’d been born on a boat to New York, for one. Then, some assessments by Army officials from his time in boot camp, then in sniper training, then actually deployed. There’s even a couple of letters to Winnie and his sisters that must’ve never made it to the mailing office. There’s just one photograph of him. Steve spends maybe half his time sitting at his kitchen table just looking at the grainy image of Bucky’s unsmiling face.
There isn’t much that a string of numbers can do to one’s emotions. Bucky’s date of birth and date of death do a lot.
*
Codename: Winter Soldier. Male, Alpha, 9-0. DOB unknown.
It’s not a lot of information. It’s a lot more than he’d had thirty years ago, but not any more than what he’d learned after SHIELD first picked him up. His designational rank is fixed now, that’s all. SHIELD can’t even give him a narrow age range. He’s anywhere from thirty to sixty years old.
He’s had a few names since the 80s. He’d been Winter for a long time, but that hadn't felt right. A coworker joked that he looked like a John, and he’d gone by that for about a year. Of all the names he’s tried, he’s known that none of them were right. Eventually, he realized that names really only mattered to civilians, and he hasn’t spoken to a civilian probably for a good decade. Now, people just call him Soldier.
It’s fine. He’s made peace with the mystery of his past. It’ll give him and God something to fight over in the afterlife.