Chapter Text
The fight had ended in a stalemate, but the American had been able to remove half of the Asset’s cybernetic arm. It was now consumed by the orders drilled into his head.
If the Asset is damaged, it must return to its handler immediately for repairs.
The problem with those orders was that the UN Forces were now between it and its handler’s last known location; likely compromised.
The Asset has developed a fault. Time elapsed since last programming has exceeded standard parameters. Asset must return to base for wipe and cryogenic freezing.
Error: Distance to base exceeds the Asset’s current capacity for movement. Repairs urgently needed.
Emergency protocol: Proceed to unoccupied shelter. Sleep. Consume water. Consume food if issues persist.
Fortunately the Asset appeared to be in a rural area that had for all appearances had its civilian population evacuated. It found an appropriate shelter— a barn void of animal occupants, but still containing hay which could be repurposed into makeshift bedding. The Asset was not bleeding, and while the damage to its left arm inhibited the ability to complete certain tasks, it was able to use the water pump successfully and set up an appropriate place for sleep, which it soon fell into.
The Asset woke with a start to see the area was not so unoccupied as it had appeared. Somehow he had not heard the approach of a woman, who was currently occupied with examining his damaged arm.
“아, 이 상해, 네 팔, 어떻게… 아이고.” She tutted.
The Asset stared. He had not been trained in the Korean language, but this woman did not appear to be afraid of him.
“배고프십니까? 죽을 만들어주겠습니다. 좀 기다리시요.”
The Asset watched in fascination as the woman turned her back to him and ran out of the barn. He could not quite understand why she had touched him so tenderly, or why her words seemed laced with concern.
Nor did he know why he missed her touch already, as if she had filled a need that he was unaware existed. The Asset should not require contact with persons irrelevant to mission parameters.
Yet this touch seemed to unlock a part of him that should not be there.
A weapon has no name. It has no need for touch. No need for feelings. Only the mission.
The Asset must return to base.
The Asset is not in peak operational condition.
The Asset requires repair.
The Asset must…
Must…
His stomach made an unfamiliar noise.
He required… Food?
Emergency situation.
He needed to acquire…
The Asset heard footsteps from outside. The woman was returning. He was too damaged, he only looked up as she returned, approaching him with a steaming bowl in her hands.
“먹을 수 게십니까? 밥을 떠먹이겠습니다.” She knelt in front of him. Using a large spoon, she scooped up some of the porridge in the bowl, before offering it to him. She held it in front of his mouth expectantly, behaving perhaps as a handler might if he were required to ingest ordinary food for sustenance.
In this situation, perhaps he was. Perhaps he should let this woman repair him as a handler would. She did not behave as if he were a threat.
She seemed to notice his lack of understanding, or perhaps thought he did not understand her offer. “독이 아닙니다. 보세요.” She lifted the spoon to her own lips, and ate the porridge. “괜찮지, 먹으세요.”
The Asset involuntarily licked his lips, and the woman’s expression softened. She scooped more of the porridge up, and once again held it up to his mouth expectantly.
So she planned to feed him, then. The Asset was no longer inclined to resist, and ate until the bowl was empty again. That earned him a smile from the woman, who then approached even closer. The Asset froze in place as she tentatively reached up, and ran a hand through his hair in a soothing gesture. “불쌍하기도 해라! 상태가 심하겠네요. 치료하겠습니다. 괜찮을 거예요.”
He could not explain why he leaned into her soothing touch, nor how he managed to fall asleep in her arms.
The Asset was familiar with cold. It was a normal state of being for him. Yet when he awoke to find himself wrapped in a blanket, he had a flash of memory— something from before?
The Asset is a weapon. Weapons have no past. You are the Fist of HYDRA.
A boy with blond hair, shivering on a bed. He placed a blanket over him. Then he waited, watching, until the shivering subsided and the boy fell asleep.
The woman returned, coaxing him to stand. He complied. “집 안에서 자면 더 편안입니다. 오세요.” She tugged on his arm and he followed obediently as she brought him to a rundown farmhouse. It had only one room, but he was surprised when he entered at the warmth within. She indicated that he should remove his boots, and he hesitated, but complied. Stepping onto the interior floor he found that the heat came from below him, and when she motioned for him to sit at a low table on the floor, he found himself enveloped by the warmth.
She went to the kitchenette, and returned with a pot of tea, along with two cups. She poured the tea into both cups, passing him one. She drank from hers, and he copied. The warm liquid increased the cozy feeling that had begun to infect him. The Asset felt himself slipping away from his directives.
James Barnes was okay with this turn of events.
As the next few days passed, she continued to feed him, allowing for his strength to return. When he felt confident in his own ability to use a spoon, they ate together at the low table. He tried to repay her kindness by performing small chores. Although they could not speak the same language, he was able to figure out the source of the warmth— a type of stove that was positioned below the house, sending the heat through the floor. From her explanation as he stoked the fire and added wood, he assumed it was called ondol.
The sleeping arrangement was far more intimate than the Asset could ever remember experiencing.
James recalled sharing a bed before, keeping out the winter chill.
The ondol and mattress on the floor was far more effective than simply sharing the bed, although with each passing night the two moved closer to each other, until there was no space between them at all.
On that night, the fourth they had spent together, he learned that her name was Yu-jin.
He told her that his name was Bucky. He wasn’t sure if that was true or not, but calling himself ‘Asset’ while she curled into his side felt wrong somehow.
“버키의 몸은 진짜 따뜻해지.” She snuggled close to him and let out a contented sigh. This seemed to awaken some long-buried instinct inside of him, and he put his undamaged arm around her shoulders, holding her like something precious; like an old feeling he wasn’t quite ready to name yet.
One he didn’t want to lose.
A week had passed, and Bucky knew he was healing.
He also knew every day he stayed he was putting Yu-jin in danger.
The proximity was clouding his mind, and perhaps hers, although he had no way of knowing. Each day they seemed on the precipice of something bigger, something that didn’t require words.
“버키의 표정은 너무 슬프네요. 아직 가지 마세요. 조금 더 나랑 같이있어줘. 가야하기전에…”
She leaned in close, her eyes scanning his face, resting on his lips a moment before flicking back up to his eyes in a question that transcended language barriers.
He licked his lips almost involuntarily, before tilting his head down and capturing hers in a kiss; a passion borne of tenderness and shared warmth; of her kind devotion to healing the man she had seen within the weapon.
As they lay together that night with tangled limbs, Bucky felt warmth from more than just the ondol. He never wanted to be cold again.
But all good things must end, and Yu-jin seemed as resigned to it as Bucky was.
“당신이 떠나고 나면 그리워 질거예요.” Her expression mirrored the way Bucky felt as he made ready to leave again. She had repaired his torn clothing, patched him up as best she could. There wasn’t much that could be done about his arm, but she had wrapped it in a soft cloth so the exposed metal and wires wouldn’t snag.
It pained him to think he must leave that behind, lest it be traced back to her.
Finally he could delay no longer. HYDRA would find him; they always did.
He turned to leave, but impulsively pulled her in for one last kiss.
As he made his way away from the farm, careful to cover his tracks, he felt like he was leaving a part of his heart behind.
But what he couldn’t know then was that he had left something even bigger with the woman who had healed his body and soul; a reminder of himself that would cause her only grief. One that she would give up reluctantly, knowing that she could not be whole without him to stand by her.
And so to give her child a better life than she could provide, she was sent with so many other war orphans to a welcoming home in America. An Min-ji was one of thousands of Korean and Amerasian children to end up in Minnesota, where she became Sophie Raines.
Sophie had a hard time growing up. She looked nothing like her white parents, and was the only Asian in her small town. Other kids would tease her for things she had no control over. She didn’t know who her real father was. She didn’t remember her birth mother, only her name, and in time that faded too. She had funny eyes, and a funny nose, and never really fit in.
But her parents loved her, and she never wanted for anything. It took a long time for her to come to terms with it, with why her mother would give her up, to not feel so worthless for being abandoned.
Because her parents had chosen her. She was their only child, and they loved her unconditionally.
Things got better for Sophie when she went down to the Twin Cities for college. While she was there, she fell in love with Marco.
Marco Segura was from Chicago. Like Sophie, he was mixed race— his mother was Polish, his father from Mexico. He knew what it was like to never quite fit in to either side of his heritage, to always feel like an outsider even in his own family.
They married after graduation, electing to stay in the Cities. They had a daughter of their own in the mid-1980s, after over a decade together. They hadn’t necessarily been putting off having kids; more that they were both hyper-aware of how much any child of theirs would struggle.
Sure, things had improved since the 1950s, but the child of two mixed race individuals would have a background even more difficult to explain, especially given that the identity of Sophie’s biological father, and therefore his background, was a complete unknown.
Isabel Segura did not like not knowing things. She had always had a natural curiosity as a child, and whenever she couldn’t get a satisfactory answer to her endless questions, she’d do her own research. She often would get stuck on a topic for weeks or months on end, learning far more than she needed to answer the original question.
So when a school project called for making a family tree, thus began her quest to find out who her grandfather was. Not Grandpa, or Abuelo, but the man who had sired her mother.
Of course, the problem with that goal was that it was 1997, she was 11 years old, and the only information her mother could offer was her own Korean name, and her grandmother’s name.
To which Isabel, not quite ready to admit defeat, asked for one more thing.
“Do I have a Korean name, then?”
Her mother blinked. “Well, no. You weren’t born there, and I don’t speak Korean.”
“I want a Korean name.”
Her mother only sighed in exasperation. Isabel was determined now to find one of her own.
Korean wasn’t a very popular language to learn, especially in the midwest. She searched for dictionaries, or lists of names, anything to find a Korean name that would fit her.
Of course, then came the difficulty of actually being able to read these names. Which meant learning the Korean writing system. And stubborn as she was, she managed it.
She didn’t really learn how to speak the language, though. But she found a name she thought would work. So three years after that original conversation, she announced it to her mother.
“My Korean name is Iseul.”
“What? How’d you get that?”
“I looked it up. It sounds close to my name, and the meaning isn’t bad. It means ‘dew’. So that’s going to be my Korean name.”
“I don’t see why you even want a Korean name, it’s not like you have any Korean relatives.”
“I have you.”
Her mother just sighed, a familiar sound to the ever-inquisitive Isabel.
Just like her parents, Isabel attended the University of Minnesota. She couldn’t seem to settle on a major; she bounced between Journalism, Technical Writing, even Political Science, before finally landing on Geography.
What was consistent from the beginning was taking Korean.
Korean was very uncommon as a language course, so she knew it was the right choice to take advantage, and learn some more about this side of her heritage. Sure, her dad rightfully wondered why she’d never done that with Spanish while Abuelo was still around to help her, but she figured that would always be easier to come back to.
With her unusual background, Isabel was often hard to place. Most people figured her for some variation of white, although some of her features had enough of a distinction that someone versed in it might pick out that she was part Asian, or Hispanic, or often thinking she might be Native American (which, with the Mexican heritage, was probably a little bit true.)
Which meant having to explain her interest in learning Korean pretty frequently. While not everyone taking Korean was ethnically Korean, the vast majority were East or Southeast Asian. So she stuck out a bit.
Once she graduated, she didn’t have a real plan. So she took the easy way to maybe start looking for some things that had thus far eluded her: She moved to Korea to teach English.
While she could certainly hold her own in daily life in Korean, she was hardly versed in more technical language. With what little information she had about her mother’s adoption, it took time to figure out where to even begin looking. And to her dismay, while she was living just south of the Han River in Seoul, her mother’s birthplace turned out to be on the northern outskirts— near a city called Goyang.
She’d been in Korea for three years, and while she did find out more about her grandmother, that was where the trail ended. She’d died unmarried, no further children. No other family. No one to ask about the mystery man who had been Isabel’s grandfather. She decided that when her contract expired, she’d go back to the States. She didn’t really want to go back home, so she convinced her grandma— her dad’s mother— to let her stay with her in Chicago until she found a job.
In May of 2012, right before she was due to pack up and head out, news broke everywhere about an alien invasion in New York. Aliens, and gods, and superheroes— well, if they existed, there had to be a way of finding out where she came from. She’d be the first to admit she’d become obsessed.
Isabel never managed to find a job that felt right in Chicago, and she was constantly grateful her grandma wasn’t charging her rent. She was pretty sure she just liked having the company anyway; or maybe having her as a buffer between her grandma and her Uncle Juan, who spent time there when he wasn’t on the road for his truck driving job.
In 2013, a friend told her about a website that was selling DNA tests. Supposedly you could get information about your heritage, and maybe even find distant relatives if they had also done a test.
Well, that piqued Isabel’s interest immediately. If she could find even the smallest clue… She ordered a test, spitting in the tube and sending it back immediately. It took time to process, of course, and each day she’d refresh the website constantly to see if it had finished.
And then, finally, it had.
She eagerly clicked through; the vague details of her heritage, while interesting, were not her main focus. She instead went straight for the section that listed other users who shared a percentage of her DNA. It would guess based on the amount shared and the ages at the potential relationship. After dismissing 3rd cousins probably from her dad’s side she focused in on what was by far the closest match.
James Proctor. Likely to be her first cousin, once removed. Her mother’s first cousin.
And he definitely wasn’t Korean.
Holy shit. She had not expected to get so much so soon, not after well over a decade of searching.
She immediately sent him a message, describing her situation.
It was a few days before he replied, and what he wrote raised yet more questions.
Isabel,
I was as taken aback as you to note our shared heritage, especially after reading your story. What makes it all the more intriguing, however, is the impossibility of it.
As you noted, I should be your mother’s first cousin, on her father’s side. My mother’s.
However, my mother had only one brother, who died in 1945, during the Second World War.
I will give you a few details in hope you can solve this mystery! My mother has passed, so unfortunately I can not get more details from her end. I don’t want to give too much away here in case I am mistaken, but I believe there is someone who may be able to help you. You might have to look more into my uncle’s service record to see what I mean. I believe you can find such things on this website.
My mother’s maiden name was Rebecca Barnes. Her brother’s name was James.
I do hope this helps. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions. Perhaps we may have the chance to meet in person someday.
Best,
James
The message was both informative and cryptic. But Isabel took his advice, looking into who James Barnes was, and wondering who could possibly know anything about his fate.
CAPTAIN FRICKIN’ AMERICA, that’s who. See, she knew exactly who James Barnes was, only she knew him, just like most people who paid attention in history class, as Bucky Barnes, the infamous Howling Commando. And since Captain America himself had reappeared during that attack in New York, there was a living connection to the man to whom Isabel was somehow related. She understood now why James had been cryptic in his message, because how was she going to be able to talk to a superhero?
She decided to write a letter. The man was probably old fashioned anyway, and Isabel was fairly certain calls would be redirected endlessly. If he even had an email address, it was no doubt filled to bursting.
So a letter it was, sending it to the tower in New York owned by Tony Stark; if nothing else they should know where to find Steve Rogers. It’s not like she could pick up a phone book.
It took a few months before she got a reply, and then it was just a form letter thanking her for being a fan. Did they even open the letter? Did it just get tossed after they wrote her return address?
If she had been paying a little more attention to the news instead of her own problems, she might have noticed that Captain America had been a fugitive for a short time. That SHIELD had been taken down after being revealed to be infiltrated by HYDRA. That James “Bucky” Barnes was the Fist of HYDRA, The Winter Soldier, and what’s more, he was alive.