Chapter Text
Marc Fischer, 1997
In a compound somewhere deep underground in the Northern California wilderness, the man formerly known as the Winter Soldier squinted down at the smartphone in his hand.
“It says, ‘Create a passcode.’” He looked up at Sam. “A passcode for what?”
Sam watched Bucky suspiciously. He had not yet mastered the art of telling when Bucky was joking (he, in fact, suspected that Bucky didn’t joke at all, and that Steve’s occasional bout of raucous laughter was more out of pity than genuine amusement) – but he found it highly unlikely that a trained assassin and master of most technologies necessary for such a job wouldn’t know why an iPhone required a passcode.
“It’s for the phone,” he answered, deciding to give Bucky the benefit of the doubt. He pointed to the device in Bucky’s hand and explained, “So none of us can get in and peep at your stuff.”
Bucky frowned. “I thought Black Widow already had these triple-encrypted against security and detection-”
“Yeah, sure, all the sensitive stuff is safe. But this is just so, you know, we can’t go through your selfies or message girls on your Tinder account or something.”
Bucky already had his mouth open, presumably to ask what Tinder was, but Sam just shook his head, unwilling to drop that can of worms on Bucky right this very moment. “Look, it’s just a simple numeric password. In your line of work you had to have a lot of those, right?”
Bucky’s thumb hovered anxiously over the touchpad. Quietly, he said, “Never had one I got to pick.”
In the weeks it had been since he and Steve had returned from Wakanda, where King T’Challa had, as a gesture of goodwill after hunting him so viciously, willingly provided Bucky the best medical and psychological care at his disposal, Bucky had been quiet. Sam knew that Steve had at first tried to get Bucky to bunk in Steve's room, but Bucky had refused. That was a conversation Sam had pretended he hadn’t overheard, one held in low, stubborn voices in the kitchen.
“I’m just – concerned for you,” Steve had murmured, palms pressed against the countertop in a wide upside-down V. “If something happens, I want to be there.”
“You don’t mean something. You mean, if I lose it,” replied Bucky, without shying away from the obvious. “I’m not being difficult, Steve, I know better than you do that it’s a possibility.”
“Fine, then I don’t see why you wouldn’t want me there to make sure you don’t hurt anybody – including yourself.”
“Because putting yourself, asleep, in the same dark room as a super-assassin, is just plain stupid, Steve. Come on.”
Letting out a low breath of frustration, Steve had shot back, “And the alternative is?”
“Find the deepest, most secure room in this place,” answered Bucky simply. “Lock me in. Every night.”
What Sam, who was trained for reactions to trauma such as these, might have done would’ve been to sit down, de-escalate, and calmly tell Bucky that what he’s really doing is locking his memories and fears about himself up in his own mind, and that isolation does more damage than healing.
What Steve did was say, “Well, fuck, Bucky, you really expect me to lock you up like a prisoner again? I don’t give a damn if it’s the safest thing-” which had, of course, spawned an argument that ended only when the pot on the stove boiled over and Bucky left to announce throughout the secure compound that dinner was ready, courtesy of Captain Rogers. He said it with a sarcastic little sneer on his face that Sam politely pretended not to notice, and to which Wanda reacted nervously, awkwardly fidgeting amidst the tension between the two men.
That dinner had been boiled cabbage and something Steve had called corned beef, but which did not taste like any corned beef Sam had ever had. You could take the kid out of 1945, he guessed, but you couldn’t take the 1945 out of the kid.
But despite all the training to deal with post-traumatic stress in vets, all the empathy with the condition Bucky was in – despite the swell of pride and compassion and grief that a former POW should evoke – somehow Sam still felt like Bucky was a cardboard cutout of a man, and try as he might to share Steve’s worry and love, he just couldn’t get his own heart to break. “Whatever, man,” said Sam, with a curt shrug. “Just use your birthday, that’s what most people do.”
For a moment longer Bucky thought about this, his eyes lifted just above the phone’s screen. It struck Sam that he should get Steve, because he was absolutely not prepared to deal with the damn Winter Soldier getting all weepy over failing to remember his own birthday.
But something must’ve clicked, because Bucky carefully typed six digits into the phone, then moved on. A second later, bewildered, he asked, “It wants my fingerprint too? Why does it need my fingerprint?”
Sam dragged a hand down his face.
Walking Bucky through his reentrance into the real world had been excruciating. Steve, at least, had been tabula rasa, a complete black slate whose knowledge was drawn entirely from a pre-1945 world. Bucky, on the other hand, had the occasional random moment of clarity and perfect understanding, moments in which it became painfully obvious what kind of information had been uploaded into his head, and what for.
Once, when Sam and Steve were talking about a certain dictator of a far-off country, Bucky spoke up, poking with disinterest at his oatmeal. “No,” he said mildly. “He’s dead. His wife’s been running the country for the past fifteen years.”
There wasn’t a weapon any of them could bring to the table which he couldn’t understand well enough to use after a few moments’ worth of explanation. When Nat had brought their new commlinks, he’d lifted an earpiece between two fingers and scrutinized it carefully, then asked, “Are there satellite scramblers, or we using external dampeners? This kind of tech can get hijacked as long as the other guys have advance warning.”
Unfazed, Nat had replied coolly, “Then don’t give them any warning, Soldat,” which apparently to Bucky had not registered as a threat, because he asked questions for ten more minutes until he knew their communications inside and out. Probably better than Nat did; not that he was snooping, but Sam had passed by Bucky’s room once (Steve had met Bucky halfway and placed Bucky’s room in civilian quarters, which could be locked down to survive a firefight unscathed) and noticed a commlink, taken apart to tiny pieces, by the side of the assassin’s bed.
And Bucky could do almost everything one-handed, from piloting the jet to handling weapons to collecting his hair in a low ponytail at the back of his head. Sam wondered about that at first, but then figured it had to be a logistical thing: the arm had been mechanical, and probably could’ve been fried by an EMP. HYDRA wouldn’t want their number one agent rendered useless by something as simple as a target who was armed.
“Look,” said Sam, reaching over to pluck the phone from Bucky’s one hand. Holding the phone before Bucky’s face, he tapped a few buttons. “See? It don’t need your fingerprint, that’s only if you want the extra security.”
“I already have a passcode.”
“Yeah, well, knowing you it’s gonna be something like, Steve could figure out, or something.”
Bucky frowned at Sam, as if he hadn’t understood. “I don’t understand,” he said, because, and Sam wasn’t sure if this was Bucky Barnes or the Winter Soldier, but the man had no time to waste being indirect. “Why am I making it so Steve can’t access my phone?”
“I don’t know, man – privacy.”
Taking the phone back from Sam, a hint of something like challenge entered Bucky’s voice. “I don’t have anything to hide,” he said, with finality. “Not from him.”
Sam rolled his eyes back into his head in contempt. Again, he could not tell where the guilt of the Winter Soldier ended and the undying commitment to Steve began.
It wasn’t that Sam resented Bucky, or his ride-or-die ‘til-the-end-of-the-line allegiance to Captain America (Captain America? Sam wasn’t so sure anymore, because without the shield Steve was just kind of a really old, really strong regular dude) – but, come on. It would seem over the top to anybody. They were devoted to each other, defined by each other, one constantly checking on the other, as if Steve needed anyone looking out for him, much less the goddamn Winter Soldier. It was like Steve seemed to forget about everybody else in a room when Bucky was around. Which, sure, Sam understood. Childhood friends, war buddies, the dead soldier come back to life. Steve had risked everything to save Bucky, and Sam had helped him.
He’d just underestimated how fucking annoying the guy would be.
It wasn’t just the guilt complex, the odd flashes of hyper-competence, or the reluctant and uneasy way Bucky kept asking questions about a history during which he was in the freezer. There was the fact that he was shockingly bad with names, failing even two months in to remember which one was Clint and which one was Scott (and which one of them had a daughter, which caused further confusion when Steve patiently explained that they both did); there was his weird relationship with Nat, with whom he refused point-blank to train or spar for reasons that Sam could not discern other than he didn’t want to get his ass kicked by a woman.
Then there was that incident when Bucky had used a few words that hadn’t been acceptable for half a century now, but Sam had seen the distinctly uncomfortable look in Steve’s eye when he explained to Bucky why those terms were out of fashion now and had been reminded, briefly, that Bucky wasn’t the only one from 1945. Not to say Steve was prejudiced, because he wasn’t, and even if he had been Director Fury would’ve sorted that right out before he ever put Cap on the Avengers – but old-fashioned habits die hard, and Sam had thought Steve just a little too sympathetic to Bucky’s confusion. Bucky had apologized, this was true, and Sam didn’t want to hold this kind of thing over a guy’s head because, yeah, no shit HYDRA hadn’t updated their weapon with the latest politically correct term, those guys were literal Nazis.
Still. You look at a guy differently, once you hear certain things come out of his mouth.
There was all of this, and there was Bucky’s weird relationship with Wanda, which nobody but Sam seemed to think was weird. He could speak Sokovian with her; he could speak Russian with Nat, but the one time he murmured something at her, she replied coolly and he turned slightly red and hadn’t tried again since. Wanda, though, brightened every time she got the chance to speak her native language, which, sure, fine, but it was already at the point that Sam might walk into a room and Bucky would mutter something to Wanda in Sokovian, and she would burst into giggles. A girl barely out of her teens, sure, Sam could take that; a grown-ass super soldier ex-assassin? Sam had a problem with being giggled at by a dude like that.
Steve didn’t seem to think it was a problem – on the contrary, he seemed to be pleased that Bucky was bonding with someone other than himself. Clint too had no objections, despite taking over as the resident team dad. “Whatever,” he’d said, brushing off Sam’s concerns. “Did you ever stop to think they actually have more in common than her and any of us?”
Which was all well and good – in terms of HYDRA experimentation and, like, Eastern European origins or something, Sam guessed, this made some sense – but then the two of them started spending a little too much time together, and Sam tried to be an open-minded kind of guy but Wanda was barely twenty, and Bucky was ninety-fucking-eight.
“No, no, that’s not fair,” Clint had said, when Sam pointed this out. “He was frozen for most of that. He and Cap – solid, you know, thirty-ish.”
Sam shrugged, seriously. “It’s still creepy.”
“You just don’t like the guy,” sighed Clint. “You’re seeing things that ain’t there. I think it’s good for them both. They could both use somebody to relate to.”
Again: fine. Maybe Sam was looking a little too hard into things. He probably could’ve let that one go, had it not been for an occasion about a week after that, when Sam was minding his own damn business, fresh off a sparring session with Scott, and happened to pass by Bucky’s room. The door was swung wide open. Glancing inside, more out of curiosity than familiar suspicion, Sam kept walking, then stopped, then did a double-take, then asked out loud, “What the hell is going on here?”
Bucky lay prone on his bed, neck limp and eyes half open, while Wanda sat near his head at the food of the bed. Red sparks glowed and twisted around from her fingers to his head. She looked up at Sam not with surprise or guilt, but a sternness in her expression he was unused to. “Shh,” she said, lifting one hand to put her index finger before her mouth. “He asked me to do this.”
The upshot of all of this was that Sam went to Steve, who went to Clint, who sat down with Wanda to gently explain to her that it wasn’t okay to use her powers on anyone’s mind at all – she seemed bewildered, and kept insisting, “He wanted me to do it, he said he needed it!” – while Steve knocked on Bucky’s closed door and said cautiously, “Buck, are you alright? We gotta talk.”
When Bucky let them in, he sat on the side of the bed as Steve pulled up the same chair Wanda had been sitting in earlier, and Sam stood with his arms folded by the door. “I understand that it’s – hard,” said Steve, too gently. Sam resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “I know you there’s a lot of stuff you don’t want in your head anymore. And Wanda can mess with heads, sure, but she doesn’t know her powers well enough yet. She could do some real damage.”
“Damage?” echoed Bucky, looking up at Steve miserably. “Oh, well. That’d be new.”
Sam might’ve laughed, had he not been annoyed as fuck.
“I’m serious,” said Steve cautiously. “She’s rattled around in my head before, back when she was with the bad guys.” Bucky let out a little grunt of contempt and amusement at this, but Steve ignored it. “It’s dangerous. She can implant memories, manipulate them-”
Bucky watched his single flesh-and-blood hand. “Erase them?”
Steve paused. There was disappointment on his face. “Sure,” he continued, lowering his voice. “But what happens when her hand slips, and instead of erasing the Winter Soldier, she erases Bucky Barnes?”
Bucky’s eyes were heavy and drawn, dark bags hanging beneath them. “I am the Winter Soldier, Steve.”
“You know what I mean.”
With a twitch of his face and a half-scowl, Bucky looked away and muttered, “At least then I’d know…”
Loudly, Sam asked, “What was that?”
Bucky didn’t look up at him. He closed his eyes, then dropped his head slightly. “Nothing,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean that.”
There was a beat of silence. Then Steve reached out, and he put a hand on the other man’s leg. “Bucky,” he said. “I understand. I know that you’re just looking for something, anything, to keep you grounded. But – it doesn’t have to be fake memories. I’m here.”
In one fluid movement, Bucky swept Steve’s hand off of him, lifting his gaze to meet Steve’s with an ugly look on his face. “They weren’t fake memories,” he said, his voice burning. “You know what it’s like not to – to know things, in your head, to know things happened, but not be able to remember how?”
“I’m here, Buck-”
“I’m not talking about you, Steve!”
This was the first time Sam had ever really heard Bucky raise his voice, and it took him slightly aback how unlike the dangerous, fine-tuned creature the Winter Soldier he seemed. On the contrary, he sounded – well, kind of…wrecked.
Before Steve could respond, Bucky continued fiercely, “How about my sister, Steve, how about her? Can you bring her back? I can remember her mostly, her face, her birthday, I remember she had a daughter, a little girl-” with a jolt, Sam was reminded of Bucky asking Steve again which one of them had a baby girl, Scott or Clint, “-but – I…”
Bucky stopped, miserable. He forced his next few words out of a captive, unwilling mouth, anger at himself burning in his lips and tongue.
“I can’t remember her name,” he said, like pulling needles out of his throat.
There was a painful silence.
Then, disregarding Bucky swatting his hand away a few minutes ago, Steve leaned forward and took strong hold of his friend’s shoulder. He ducked his face slightly to catch Bucky’s gaze, then looked into his eyes and said firmly: “Your sister’s name was Rebecca. You called her Becca, but she hated it when anybody else did it.” He paused. Bucky refused to meet his gaze. “Her daughter’s name was Rachel.” He hesitated again, then took his hand away from Bucky’s shoulder and leaned back. “Her dad was KIA in ’42. After you shipped out.” Bucky looked up, something flashing in his eyes, but Steve shook his head. “She never told you that. She didn’t want you to know.”
Bucky watched him. “How did you find out?”
Steve gave a very small laugh. “She came to my shows, Buck.”
There was another pause. Bucky stared at a patch on the floor.
Steve added, “You remember that photo of Rachel that Rebecca sent you? You kept it in your pack where the other guys kept letters from their girls back home?”
All at once, finally, a crack of a smile appeared on Bucky’s face. He gave a little shrug. “She was my girl back home,” he said. “The only one I cared about, anyway.”
Silence settled between them. Sam stood there, waiting; Steve said nothing, and Sam gave the slightest shake of his head, clenching his jaw.
“Look, Bucky,” began Steve, finally. “The point is…if you’re having a hard time, letting Wanda mess with your head doesn’t have to be your first resort. I can help you too.”
Bucky didn’t say anything. There was a long silence, wherein Bucky began to pick at a loose thread on the bedsheet beside him. A minute passed, and then Steve got to his feet. He paused just long enough to lay his hand on his friend’s shoulder, then let him go and turned around to leave.
Just before Steve passed Sam, Bucky spoke.
“HYDRA gave her those powers,” he said, his voice just slightly stronger than it had been. “I don’t think – she knew who they really were, when they recruited her. Or they didn’t know about her.” When Steve glanced around, one eyebrow raised, Bucky added, “She’s Jewish. So.”
There was a pause, then Bucky, awkwardly, restarted.
“Anyway,” he said, “what I’m saying is, HYDRA did that to her. They gave her those abilities.” He met Steve’s gaze, determination in the watery blue of his eyes. “She needs to know her power can be used for good. And, Steve…” he paused, seizing hold of Steve’s gaze, “…so do I.”
There was a silence. Sam saw Steve’s jaw jump; then Captain America turned and left the room, jerking his head at Sam to signal for him to follow. Sam spared one glance for Bucky, who did not look at him, and then followed Steve out.
Without pausing outside of Bucky’s room, Sam followed Steve straight into the kitchen, where Steve went to the fridge and asked, “You don’t think Nat’s going to bring pizza tonight, is she?” and then Sam asked, “Man, what the hell?”
Steve looked around from the fridge, a look of feigned innocence on his face. “What?”
“You know what,” answered Sam lowly. He flung his arm out, gesturing back towards Bucky’s bedroom. “You didn’t need me in there,” he said.
Steve considered this for a moment. He closed the refrigerator. “No, maybe I didn’t,” he finally agreed. “But I wanted you there.”
“Oh, yeah, sure, I see what you’re doing,” replied Sam, shaking his head angrily. Despite himself, despite his absolute trust in Steve and the knowledge that somewhere, deep down, this grudge against the Winter Soldier has got to be petty, he felt sick to his stomach. He felt betrayed.
“Look,” continued Sam. “I thought we were going to go in there, sit the guy down, and set him straight. No more creepy magic-bonding with the seventeen-year-old-”
Steve began, “Wanda’s nineteen-”
“-but instead,” Sam continued, raising his voice over Steve’s, “you bring me in there – for what? Couple’s therapy?”
There was a short pause. Steve watched Sam, and the disappointment in his expression was, Sam thought, only really there to cover up the slight shame behind it. As the silence dragged on, Sam refused to speak, demanding an explanation. The two of them locked into a waiting game, each banking on the other’s willingness to admit they were wrong, each failing to recognize the other’s stubbornness.
But it was Steve who flinched first. “Listen,” he said finally, his voice low. “I just – I know that you have your problems with him. And that’s valid. But I wanted you to see him as a real person. As a human being who’s working through his issues and baggage, just like the rest of us.”
“Speak for yourself,” Sam shot back.
“Come on, Sam,” Steve said; he had dropped the disappointed façade, favoring instead now a sense of desperation, as if Sam was the unreasonable one here. “Just – imagine your best friend in the world. The guy you know had your back more times than you can count. He comes back from the war, and he’s messed up worse than anybody you know, and you’re telling me you’re not going to make damn sure he comes to your meetings? Make sure you get him the help he needs?”
“No, Steve,” said Sam, “because number one, I’m a professional and professionals don’t counsel their goddamn friends, and number two, my guy never made it home from the war, remember?”
This hit Steve like a physical blow, arresting him in place, breath tight in his chest and a look of slight horror on his face. Sam met his gaze, hard, for another second, then turned to leave.
Immediately Steve was behind him. “Sam-” he began, reaching out for Sam’s shoulder; but Sam shook him off, batting away Steve’s touch without turning around.
Steve let him go.
Later that night, Nat did end up bringing pizza. While she conversed with Wanda, Clint, and Scott, Sam glowered over his slices, and Steve pensively stared at a slice of pepperoni for a solid fifteen minutes. Eventually, Nat nudged Steve. “Where’s Barnes?” she asked.
He started slightly at her touch. She raised an eyebrow. “In his room,” he answered. “He needs some rest.”
Once everyone was more or less finished, Nat took a plate with three slices (she picked the olives off, and Sam had to wonder how she knew that the Winter Soldier didn’t like olives on his pizza) and went to Bucky’s room. Outside, she knocked on the door. “Barnes,” she said. “Barnes.” There was no reply; she paused, then said, “Soldat.”
Sam pretended not to hear. He saw Steve raise his head slightly, although he didn’t turn to look down the hall.
Nat knocked on the door again. “Smírno, soldat!”
She said something else in Russian, something Sam didn’t understand. A moment later, the door opened. Bucky said something which also might have been in Russian, but he spoke so quietly that Sam couldn’t hear him at all. When Nat replied, her voice was lowered as well.. There was a slight hint of amusement in her voice, and she gave a little laugh and continued, “Umm, zhelaniye…”
The glass in Steve’s hand shattered. Sam glanced up at him, a very distinct look of what-the-fuck on his face. Steve just stared at him, then down the hall, his jaw clenched.
Bucky said something else, and this time Sam was sure it wasn’t English, then the door slammed shut.
When Nat returned to the kitchen, she was triumphantly empty-handed, but before Sam could open his mouth to say anything Steve got to his feet with such force his seat clattered across the smooth floor.
“What the hell was that?” demanded Steve.
His abrupt reaction wiped the smug look off Nat’s face, but without blinking she shot back, “I just brought your friend dinner, why? Mad he wouldn’t talk to you?”
“I heard you,” said Steve. “I heard you say that word. What is wrong with you, Natasha?”
“Oh, please,” replied Nat, rolling her eyes as Sam slowly realized what was happening, that he had recognized one of the words she said. “If you’d stop helicopter parenting him for two minutes, maybe he’d be able to work without you once in a while.”
“This is not a game, Nat!”
“It’s not? Seemed pretty fun to me.”
“You can’t go around casually dropping those trigger words around him. You can’t do that, Nat. You don’t get to. Those trigger words-”
“Those trigger words,” interrupted Nat, speaking loudly and harshly over Steve, “are conditioned into his psyche.” She stared at Steve, her gaze boring into his eyes. “And conditioning can be broken. You can’t protect him forever, Steve. The Winter Soldier had enough handlers that there must be others out there who know those words, and I can’t trust a guy who could go berserk on us at any minute.”
“We’re working on it,” said Steve.
“No,” said Nat, “you’re avoiding it, because it’s hard and it hurts your feelings.”
Steve watched Natasha. Whether the worry in his eyes was for himself or Bucky, Sam couldn’t tell, nor was he even completely sure there was a difference anymore.
“So,” said Steve, finally relenting. “What do you suggest we do?”
“Exposure therapy,” said Sam.
Both Steve and Nat looked around.
To Nat, Sam added, “That’s what you’re talking about, right? Unpack it all, piece by piece. Make it not dangerous anymore. Right?”
“This is HYDRA,” said Steve, more to Nat than Sam. “It’s not like you can put him in a forty-five minute therapy session once a week and expect him to be better by the end of the month.”
“Nobody said that, Steve,” said Nat. “And we’re not exactly amateurs.”
“Oh, really? Since when are you a trained trauma counselor, Natasha?”
“I’m not,” said Nat simply. Nodding at Sam, she said, “He is.”
Steve whipped around, and there was a rush of emotion rising behind his eyes, worry eclipsed by a profound, shaking anger.
“Hold on,” said Sam, holding up his hands quickly before Steve could open his mouth to retort. “Look, Steve, you know I don’t love the guy. But it’s like Nat said – your pal Buck is never going to be able to play with the big kids if he doesn’t get this under control.” He shrugged, watching Steve. “We might as well try.”
Still, Steve said nothing. Sam could see his internal struggle mapped out across his face: his tight lips, the crease of his brow, those narrowed, anxious eyes.
To Sam’s surprise, Nat was the one who reached out to place a comforting hand on Steve’s arm. “Hey,” she said. “You’re not the only one who wants to see him get better.”
Sam wasn’t exactly sure what this meant, but Steve just stared down the hall towards Bucky’s room for a moment, then looked back at Nat, the uncertainty in his gaze coalescing into a dense sense of determination.
He hesitated for one moment, and then he gave a jerky, half-hearted nod.