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A year or so ago, not long after he’d finally gotten together with Steve, Bucky had encountered the term Highly Sensitive Person, which opened up a whole new door in his brain. Galaxy brain, he’d once heard it called. That was what it felt like, anyway.
It happened when he finally started seeing a therapist that Sam introduced him to. At the time, Bucky was very cautious after the unfortunate timing of his previous therapist having retired just before the Winter Soldier Trial. Even though Bucky had been acquitted, the judge still ordered him to attend sessions with a court-appointed therapist. It was some dumb legal thing; it wasn’t like Bucky hadn’t already planned on finding a new therapist anyway. He’d made a lot of progress with his last one and was feeling pretty confident, all things considered.
The court-appointed therapist was highly qualified on paper but ended up being shockingly dismissive. Instead of opening up to her, he had felt himself curling inward and withdrawing. He had been frustrated and disheartened enough that he considered actually quitting therapy altogether, or at least taking a very long break from it. It wasn’t that he thought he was suddenly magically cured of all his trauma and never needed therapy again, but after the way that doc had treated him, he was wary all over again. “She was kind of insensitive, Sam,” he’d finally confessed. “I’m not sure that type of thing is actually as helpful as everyone says it is. I appreciate your offer, but—”
Sam cut him off. “Dude, she wasn’t just insensitive, she was the most unprofessional therapist I’ve ever met in my life. Therapist, my perfect ass. Acted like she was in the military. Total quack. Should lose her license.”
Bucky was taken aback by Sam’s vehemence. He knew he didn’t feel completely...cured, or however he was supposed to feel after doing therapy, but he’d just assumed it was because he wasn’t doing it right. He knew he was recalcitrant and combative. His flippant final message to Dr. Petersen during their final session had been more of a tactical retreat from his own discomfort than an actual resolution. He knew he was traumatized, there was no denying that, but he wasn’t really used to people actually being supportive of his feelings or of his...of him. He didn’t expect people to listen to what he had to say, much less believe him, so Sam’s emphatic agreement threw him for a loop. Even though he and Sam had grown closer over the past few months, going from frenemies to...well, friendly acquaintances, Bucky had still half expected an amused smile and a “Naw, man, that’s the way it works, you just gotta try harder.”
He stared at Sam suspiciously for a moment before Sam correctly interpreted his silence and took pity on him. “Look, man, I totally get that you had a bad experience with that therapist. I’m still pretty pissed they assigned her to you. There are a lot of shitty therapists out there, trust me. I’ve had a few of ‘em myself. But they’re not all like that. There are some really amazing ones out there, too, and they’re totally worth it when you find them. Sometimes you gotta kiss a few frogs before you find the One, if you know what I mean. Even with the good therapists, not every therapy method’s gonna work for every person. But that’s why I got a couple recommendations for you, to help narrow it down. I’ve never gone to any of them myself, didn’t think you’d wanna share, but I’ve had multiple buddies and guys from the VA vouch for them. I can at least guarantee they’re trustworthy and not, like, crazy assholes. Or power-tripping sociopaths.”
Bucky felt unexpectedly touched by Sam’s sincerity. His eyes prickled a little and he swallowed to keep his composure as he took the proffered list, saying simply, “Okay, Sam, I’ll check them out. Thank you.” Sam really did seem to care about him, he realized. Maybe this friendship thing would turn out to be—
Of course, Sam had to choose that moment to crack a shit-eating grin and say “Hey, no problem, Jesus-Take-the-Wheel! Good talk!”
God, Bucky hated Sam.
As much as he hated Sam, though, Bucky still went home and looked up all three names on that list.
Two weeks and change later, Bucky sat in the waiting room ahead of his first appointment with the new therapist, feeling punchy and looking for an excuse to bolt. This was a mistake. The new doctor had all the right qualifications, but so had Dr. Petersen. This one came highly recommended and their website described some therapy methods Bucky’d never heard of that sounded very relevant, but...well, it sounded too good to be true. Bucky knew exactly how fucked-up he was. He knew there was no fixing him, he’d come to terms with that already. He was sure any real doctor worth their salt would take one look at him and tell him to get lost. This was just going to be an embarrassing waste of time for all parties.
As his eyes nervously roamed the room, his gaze fell on the stack of books and magazines on a table to his left. Bucky wasn’t fidgety; his sniper’s stillness was too ingrained. But still as he was, he still felt like he was about to fly apart any second, so he needed a distraction. Books. Books were good. He picked the first book off the top of the stack and opened it to a random page before thinking to glance at the actual title.
The book was called The Highly Sensitive Person.
He only got through the first two pages before his ears filled with static and the world tilted sideways.
He was strapped to a table, and his veins were burning. His skin felt like it was on fire, or maybe it was frozen solid, he couldn’t tell. He could distantly hear screaming and it took him far too long to realize that the sound was coming from his own throat. He wondered how long that had been going on.
Twin moons floated in front of his vision. He was apparently seeing double, or...no. The rest of his sight wasn’t doubled, it was just the two lenses. Glasses, he realized, perched on a pale round face that hovered over his own. He blinked, and the blurriness cleared, the face resolved itself into...Zola. He knew that face. And when Zola spoke, he remembered that voice from his nightmares.
Maybe he was in a nightmare right now. Maybe he could wake himself up if he just….
But he couldn’t move. He was restrained by more than just the straps, he was completely immobilized by the fire in his veins. They must have injected him with something.
The moon face withdrew. He heard Zola’s voice conversing with unseen others, all in German. He struggled to make out the words, still not fluent in the language, only catching snatches here and there.
“—subject is showing abnormally heightened responses to—”
“—test serum version—”
“—subject has proven highly sensitive to lower doses of—”
Bucky slowed his breathing, struggling to focus on what they were saying. Maybe...if he could figure out what they were doing to him, to the other prisoners, he could...what, escape? He mentally scoffed at himself. There would be no escape from this. Still, if he had to die here alone on this table like a lab rat, he at least deserved the satisfaction of figuring out their stupid evil scheme. Even if it was an incredibly long shot, it gave him something to focus on aside from the sensation of his every last nerve ending being a live wire.
Zola’s pasty visage swam into view once more. “Ah, you’re awake,” came his voice. Clinical and yet somehow radiating poorly-contained excitement. “Remarkable. No other test subject has survived this long. You are a special one, Sergeant Barnes.”
Bucky wanted to spit in his eye, but he had no moisture left in his mouth. There was another sharp prick in his arm, and he didn’t have to look to see the syringe, the blue fluid it held bizarrely vibrant against the washed-out hues of the room. When Zola’s face once again withdrew, with a chillingly cheerful “We will find out what makes you tick, never fear!” Bucky’s skin crawled. He had the urge to scratch, to brush away the ants, to peel off his skin and rid himself of the taint of this place.
He wanted to turn inside out and disappear. Everything was too much. The feeble amount of light filtering through the window stung his eyes. The faintest of far-off footsteps assaulted his eardrums, and when Zola had spoken directly to him, his sinister voice had been more than Bucky thought could stand. His breathing picked up and his heart rate began to climb again as his senses responded to the stimuli.
The Soldier was so, so tired.
He sat on the bed in his cheap motel room in some backwater town, head in his hands, and tried to make sense of the past twenty-four hours. His hands were steady but his breath was shaky as he drew in ragged gasps of air, overwhelmed by the cacophony of his mind. Discordant images flashed past with no rhyme or reason. He felt dizzy.
Gone was the peculiar calm and the energetic clarity he’d found when he fled the banks of the Potomac, leaving his target and his old life behind. He wondered if it should seem strange that the calm focus had been precipitated by a sudden spike of anger, or that the clarity had lasted just long enough for him to get himself out of the state and into the most out-of-the-way motel this side of the century. Why was able to stay mission-focused as long as he was in immediate danger, but started falling apart as soon as he reached relative safety? He had at least a day before anyone would be able to catch up to him. If they're even looking, his mind helpfully supplied. I was their best operative. They valued me. They were supposed to need me as much as I needed them. But those technicians acted like I was...a threat. Like I was disposable. After all those of years of service…
The simplest, most earth-shattering revelation came to him at 2:00 AM, jerking him awake in a cold sweat. Everything they had told him about himself was wrong.
He had trusted them to guide him. He’d relied on their direction. He’d needed them. He may have been very good at what he did, but it was because of his particular skill set that he’d needed the resources Hydra provided. He was a honed weapon, a precision instrument, and this required expert maintenance by a team of trained professionals. It required access to the tools, equipment, and fuel that only Hydra could provide him. This was always heavily implied even when it was not stated outright. He knew on a fundamental level that if he did not return to base after a mission, he would eventually break down. His body or his mind, or both, would eventually fail him and he’d be left vulnerable to attackers who would either terminate him or use him to further their own agenda.
“It’s for your own good, Soldier,” Pierce had told him. “We help you because we care for you, and because you can help us. You’re an investment. The work you do to shape the future will be worth everything we’re giving you now.”
He had done their bidding without questioning their reasons. It had given him a reason for being. He’d felt significant. He hadn’t realized that he’d needed that feeling like he’d needed air, and they’d used it against him. He’d believed he wasn’t capable of long-term independent thought and action because they’d made him believe he wasn’t.
They trained me like a fucking dog.
Bucky woke with a shout. Steve was immediately awake beside him, a solid comforting presence but carefully not touching until he was sure that Bucky was aware of his surroundings. Bucky, still gasping for breath, turned to him and nodded once which was their signal for “ok to touch.” Steve immediately put his hands on Bucky’s shoulders and squeezed firmly, massaging his tension away until his heartbeat slowed and his ragged breathing evened.
Here’s the thing about Alexander Pierce. He wasn’t a loud man. He never raised his voice and he rarely lost his temper. He wasn’t warm, exactly, but he often projected an air of vaguely paternalistic magnanimity that one might, if one were desperately affection-starved, interpret as caring.
But the thing about Alexander Pierce was that he was dismissive. He would never outright belittle the Soldier; his disparaging remarks were always subtle. He was clever about it. His preferred tactic had been to bestow backhanded compliments or dole out just enough constructive criticism to sow doubt in the listener’s mind.
With only a very few exceptions, physical discipline toward the Soldier had been the purview of the Strike team leaders. Their methods were not particularly nuanced, and the Soldier was far more physically robust than they were. They could not harm him easily, so he weathered their blows with mild annoyance more than anything. It was easy to brush off because he knew he could snap even Rumlow like a twig if he chose to. And he convinced himself that he simply chose not to. Those knuckle-dragging dimwits might as well take out their aggression on someone who wouldn’t break, whose cuts and bruises healed inhumanly fast. It didn’t matter much to the Soldier.
Pierce was another matter. He wasn’t a Neanderthal like the Strike leaders or their tac teams; there was a keen intelligence behind his piercing blue eyes. He was observant and shrewd and he had a knack for telling people what they thought they wanted or needed to hear. He was a leader who actually inspired loyalty, which was an uncommon skill in the backstabbing ranks of Hydra. Uncommon enough that people gravitated to him even more strongly than they otherwise might have, needing to feel like they were protected by the umbrella of his influence and safe from the other more vindictive Hydra heads.
The thing was that Alexander Pierce always knew best. He knew what was best for people and he knew intuitively how best to handle any situation. When he first became the Soldier’s new Handler, the Soldier would sometimes offer tactical suggestions based on what he assumed was his extensive experience as a field operative. He didn’t remember the experiences but he recognized the tactical knowledge that was welling up from somewhere within him. He assumed that must mean he was experienced, and the wipes erased his conscious memories of events but not his instincts or muscle memory or skills (otherwise he would have been useless as an operative, after all).
However, when the Soldier volunteered to undertake a particular mission on his own, knowing in his gut that he was capable of it, Pierce would assign him a tac team. When the Soldier recommended bringing a tac team on a mission that he knew would have a higher chance of success with multiple operatives, Pierce insisted that he carry it out himself, with no backup. The Soldier was never punished when he quietly offered an idea or an alternative method for a given mission, but Pierce always looked at him with an amused little smile and crinkles around his eyes, as if he were tempted to humor the Soldier but had to ultimately pursue the smarter strategy.
The Soldier came to realize that Pierce must have more tactical knowledge and experience than he did, and he eventually stopped making his own suggestions. Of course Pierce was just looking out for them and he wanted their missions to have the highest probability of success, of course he would insist that they use his strategies and not the Soldier’s.
For a while, the Soldier kept trying to puzzle out what he was missing, where his ideas were going so wrong that Pierce looked at him with affectionate pity before implementing a different strategy. But try as he might, there was no missing clue he could find that might explain why his attempts at strategy were so poor. Eventually he concluded that the deficiency was in him. For some reason, he apparently just felt like he must be better at tactics than he actually was. He knew he should just be grateful that they had a leader who actually understood how to plan and conduct covert operations.
It didn’t matter that all his suggestions were dismissed. They were inferior ideas. Thank goodness Pierce was there to set him straight; the Soldier had no idea what he’d have done otherwise.
He realized there must have been a time before Pierce was the Handler and he wondered what had happened then. Maybe all of his missions had gone so poorly that Pierce had been brought in to save them from ruin. After all, they had a greater objective to accomplish; everything they did was in service to a higher cause and it would not do for anyone to let personal feelings (or failings) get in the way of that.
For all his incredible skills as an assassin, the Soldier knew he would have been lost without Pierce and Hydra to direct him. He was obviously missing some integral...component...that would have allowed him to operate independently. He was only a cog in the machine. Despite being an important cog, one that they certainly needed and relied upon, he wouldn’t have been able to function on his own. That was just how machines worked. The Soldier understood that, just like he understood his place.
It wasn’t until after the Soldier left the Captain on the banks of the Potomac and ran that he realized he might have been wrong about Alexander Pierce. It wasn’t until many months later that Bucky realized Pierce hadn’t been a master tactician, but a master manipulator.
That almost made him feel worse, the realization of how thoroughly he’d been duped. Logically, he knew that what Hydra had done to him would have broken anyone, but emotionally, he couldn’t process it. He still felt broken inside. It didn’t matter what anyone told him about how resilient he was, or how his reactions were all normal human reactions to trauma. Everything his brain threw at him was a survival mechanism, and that was how he survived.
He often wondered what was even the point of surviving if that meant he had to live his life feeling so hollow and brittle.
It wasn’t until even later still, long after he’d come home to Steve and started to heal, that Bucky began to understand how being an HSP had factored into the course of his life. The fact that he had been genetically predisposed to be more sensitive to environmental stimuli could be seen as both a blessing and a curse, and Bucky struggled to reconcile both sides of that coin. It was why he’d been naturally skilled with a rifle, being able to innately sense minute changes in air pressure or pick up on noises that no one else could hear. He’d always been extremely observant...and now he knew why. All of his sensory processing was just naturally more sensitive than the average person.
This apparently wasn’t terribly unusual in and of itself, but it also had a very unexpected side effect. His body’s sensitivity meant that he’d responded to a lower dose of Zola’s knock-off supersoldier serum than had been given to the other test subjects...none of whom had survived. Bucky was the only one who had, thanks to whatever random chance had resulted in him being given a lower dose, but his body responded to the serum all the same. Sometimes he wished he’d died on that table rather than survive to become the Winter Soldier.
He knew that if it hadn’t been him, Hydra might have eventually found someone else anyway, but that was small consolation for Bucky. He was sure they hadn’t known what it was about him that was different from the other test subjects, so at the time, he was just an anomaly. They probably hadn’t actually expected any of the prisoners to survive those experiments; it didn’t seem to make much sense for them to plan to turn an enemy soldier into their secret weapon. It had been pure dumb luck on their part that Bucky had not only survived, but that he’d been recaptured after falling to his presumed death. And because they’d still had no luck reproducing that success with any other test subjects, he had become the new Fist of Hydra.
All because of his stupid body and brain being primed from birth to become the deadliest assassin the world had ever known.
Over time, Bucky slowly came to terms with the fact that he’d had no control over any of it, and that being highly sensitive could be a good thing too. He had always been observant, sure, but he’d also always been empathetic. His keen senses made him attuned to other people’s moods and feelings, and he intuitively knew how to respond to them. He could rapidly detect tiny shifts in mood or atmosphere, he could “read the room” very naturally, so to speak. These were all skills that he could use for good, to help people, not just to hunt and kill.
He was very, very good at reading Steve in particular. Always had been, of course, but even more so now. And Steve, while very observant and clever for the most part, had always been so pigheadedly stubborn when it came to himself that he’d probably have still been ignoring his own needs if it wasn’t for Bucky’s sensitivity and intuition. He always knew what Steve needed before Steve even realized he needed anything. And for that reason, Bucky realized, he was glad to be the way he was. Steve needed him, which meant this...thing inside him, this way about him wasn’t just good, it was necessary. It meant that he wasn’t only made for killing. He could use those very same qualities to sooth and heal the people he loved. The one person he loved most of all.
And along the way, almost by accident, he found himself a new family in the process.
After Bucky had clawed his way free of Hydra, after he had spent months frantically clawing at his brain, trying to rid himself of the discordant layers of static and screams in his head, the most terrifying thing he remembered was the emptiness. There was a yawning chasm in his mind where there had once been orders and missions and pain and order and pain but it was at least a known quantity, the pain was expected, and the orders were easy to follow because they told him what to do and he did it, no questions asked, no decisions to be made, and there was an inexplicably comforting familiarity to it.
He had no idea what to do with the void left behind once those familiar things were gone.
The unknown was far more terrifying than anything Hydra had ever subjected him to.
It almost proved to be the end of him.
It was only out of sheer spite that the Soldier survived the horror of unknowing. The idea that he might be succumbing to himself, to his freedom, after surviving Hydra for seven decades, that set his teeth on edge, even when he was half-feral and nearly gone mad. Surrendering to the welcoming embrace of oblivion had been tempting, but it would have proven Pierce right, and that was one thing the Soldier couldn’t abide. Pierce, that smug, arrogant bastard, would have lorded it over him in Hell.
So the Soldier clung desperately to life. Memories began to resurface, but that yawning chasm (privately, Bucky had since taken to thinking of it as the Pit of Despair) remained. At first, he focused on providing himself with the basic physical necessities for survival while he tried to parse the confusing imagery bubbling up from the depths of his shredded brain. But as he gradually became more and more Bucky and less and less the Asset, he began to comprehend the extent to which Hydra had control over him; the complete domination from which he had been freed. He wished he could feel pride, or even just relief, at having escaped, but instead he just felt hollow. Haunted.
Because once the orders are gone, once the triggers are gone, what do you put there instead? If everything you thought you knew has been stripped away, what’s supposed to take their place?
Even after he remembered who he used to be, even after he’d returned to Steve, this question nearly drove Bucky mad all over again. It’s hard to feel whole with so much torn out of the center of you.
So Bucky went looking for something to fill that void. Anything to quell the dizzying emptiness.
In retrospect, he supposed he was lucky not to have fallen prey to addiction, like so many other homeless and traumatized veterans. Like so many others who had fallen through the cracks after the world had failed them. It could easily have happened to him too; it was only the luck of the draw that it didn’t. He had mostly avoided urban centers and heavily populated areas while he was on the run, and he’d never stayed in any one place long enough to have much exposure. Small victories, he thought, if you could call it that. Silver linings, or something.
It took a long time and a lot of failed starts and setbacks and breakdowns, but Bucky thought he had finally found the thread that would allow him to start stitching the edges of the chasm back together. That thread, as it turned out, was writing stories.
Learning to weave his own words was what allowed him to begin healing the fractured parts of his mind, those shattered pieces of the James Buchanan Barnes who had already existed in some form or another. That was difficult enough, but at least he had the shards to put back together. The Pit of Despair was another matter entirely. How do you repair something that doesn’t exist? How do you heal the complete absence of something?
The answer is, you don’t. You can’t. You have to find something else to take its place. And it can’t be just anything that feels soothing in the moment (he had to remind himself, repeatedly, through many sleepless nights). It has to be something secure enough to lay a foundation you can build on. And for Bucky, it was writing, learning to weave his own stories, that taught him to construct the foundation.
I’m in control now, Bucky thought. I’m finally creating my own story.