Chapter Text
He was pain. Cold. Darkness.
Words blared from speakers until they became part of the background. He couldn’t hear them anymore unless he focused on them. He remembered what it felt like to be tired, but he was beyond that now. He could no longer feel his arms or his legs. He knew he moved only because of the rattling of the chains and the shifting pressure of the thing around his neck.
His stomach ached with pangs that sometimes felt like knives in his gut. He was cold, naked, and forced to piss and shit on the floor. Every so often, someone wheeled in with a metal bucket of cold water to clean up.
His only relief from agonizing isolation, the cold cement floor, the chains, and the speakers was the sessions. Armed guards would come in, someone would unshackle him, and then they began. It always took him too long to get his legs under him after being shackled for so long. They didn’t like that.
They never explained their purpose, but it started with a chair and pain that stole things from him. He could never remember what they were, but he felt their absence, like the familiarity of a dream that refused to surface.
Then there were exercises. Lift that. Push that. Punch that. Hold your hand over the flame. Don’t move it. Don’t move it. Don’t….
If he wasn’t strong, fast, or obedient enough, the collar around his neck would come to life with a bite that sent him to his knees. If he dared raise a hand to the collar, the batons would remind him doing so was forbidden. After the sessions, the needles slid into his veins. He’d be returned to the room, shackled, and the ceiling would start chanting again.
At times, he felt himself drifting, but the monotony of the words was periodically interrupted by an ear-piercing siren that jolted every nerve in his body and kept him from true sleep. Nothing made sense.
He wasn’t even sure he was really human. Part of him was metal, like the chains binding him. The silver limb moved and flexed when he told it to, except when he was shackled. Then it was a dead weight, shackled to his flesh arm and tethered to the floor. He couldn’t feel the metal arm except as a deep ache in his left shoulder that screamed whenever he shifted the wrong way or a chain tugged too hard.
Why was he here? What did they want from him? Was this Hell?
He couldn’t remember anything before this, but he knew there had been something. There were flashes occasionally when he closed his eyes, before the siren drove daggers through his skull.
He saw her face frequently—the woman with blue eyes and a kind smile. There was a man with golden hair. He had blue eyes, too. Sometimes he was small, sometimes large, but his voice and his eyes were always the same.
Steve. He called him Steve in his waking dreams. . . if he was awake. He couldn’t be sure. Whenever the man’s face came to him, an ache twisted in his chest so hard it stole the air from his lungs.
He was always surprised when the door opened. The speakers blocked sounds from outside the room. They chanted over and over praising Hydra. They told him he was a soldier for Hydra, the Fist of Hydra. Hydra would bring order and security to the world. He must’ve done something horrible to earn such a punishment.
When the words died suddenly, his ears still rang with them. He wouldn’t go back to the chair. He couldn’t take it again. He reared back, straining against the chains. His left shoulder exploded in agony, but he didn’t let up. The chains creaked and groaned. He screamed, straining, in a moment, he’d….
A jolt from the collar sliced through his chest, neck, and jaw. Even his teeth hurt. He was vaguely aware of a sound coming from his throat. He had no concept of time, no idea how long it lasted, but when it was over, he was folded over, only the chains keeping him from collapsing entirely onto the floor.
Something sharp bit the side of his neck. The room tilted and blurred. Keys rattled. The chains fell away. His stomach revolted, even as hands grabbed and yanked him upward. His feet dragged against the hard floor as he was carried away.
They barked orders in a language he knew wasn’t his own but he understood nevertheless. They shoved him into a chair. Metal clamps closer on his arms and his legs. Another metal clamp circled his head. The machine hummed with anticipation.
The sound of a projector roared to life behind him, casting a dance of light and shadows over a blurry figure that pulled down a white screen. Images of war and blood washed across the screen in macabre, grayish watercolors.
Rough fingers shoved his eyelids open and slipped something cold and metal beneath them. His eyes stung, watering instantly, but he couldn’t blink or move his head.
A needle came into view, blurry at first, but it caught the light and was suddenly the clearest thing in the room. A man in a white coat inspected it before attaching it to rubber tubing that snaked from a glass bottle filled with purple liquid.
No. He was breathing heavily, his heart beating like a wild animal. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”
The man in the white coat remained focused on his task.
An older man’s face came in front of his, with gray hair, hard lines, and dark eyes. He remembered the man from the sessions. The uniform indicated he was a Colonel.
How did he know that?
“Who are you?” the Colonel asked in a foreign tongue.
He should know the answer. He had to have a name. He had to have been somebody.
In his waking dreams, Steve sometimes called him… “Bucky.”
The Colonel’s brow furrowed, his eyebrows knitting together and his jaw clenching. He shifted aside as the man in a white coat approached with the needle.
Another figure in a white coat tied rubber tubing around Bucky’s bicep. The man with the needle approached, inspecting Bucky’s arm, tapping a protruding vein.
“Wait… Please....”
The collar around his neck sizzled enough to steal his breath. He clenched his teeth against the pain, only peripherally aware of the sting in his arm.
The Colonel stood in front of him, eyes assessing, then pointed to someone behind the chair. “Level five this time.”
The machine’s hum grew louder. The clamps tightened. Then everything vanished except the pain and the sound of his scream.
-000-
“Holy shit.” Dugan stepped out from behind the tree, his eyes wide and his jaw hanging slack as he stared at Steve. “Cap?”
Steve glanced at Peggy as the other Howling Commandos slid out from behind trees. There was Morita, Gabe, and Dernier, along with two familiar faces Steve recognized from the front---Happy Sam Sawyer and Pinky Pinkerton.
“Hello, Dum Dum.”
“Mon Dieu.” Dernier stepped forward, gaze darting between Peggy and Steve. “Ai-je mangé du mauvais poisson?”
Steve chuckled. “I can’t say whether you ate bad fish, but you’re not hallucinating. Thanks for joining your old unit for this special mission.” Steve closed the distance, and suddenly the Commandos surrounded him. He was slapped, hugged, and almost lifted off his feet when Dugan wrapped him in an impressive bear hug.
They peppered question after question at him until he raised his hands and gained their silence. “I crashed the plane, I was frozen in the ice, they found me, thawed me out, and the serum did the rest.”
“Holy shit.” Dugan shook his head. He scratched at the base of his neck and looked beyond Steve and Peggy. “You said there were going to be four of you.” He looked at Peggy. “Where are the other two, and by the way, you could have told me about him.” He tilted his head toward Steve.
She smiled and cocked an eyebrow. “And miss the expression on your face? Absolutely not.”
“The others are taking up the rear. Covering our tracks. They should be here any…” he heard their approaching footsteps. “Well, about now.”
He couldn’t wait to see the looks on the Commando's faces when they got their second surprise.
“This would be so much easier if I had the wings.” Sam’s voice preceded his appearance as he stepped out of the treeline next to Bucky.
“Your generation is spoiled. In my time, we—”
“I know, you walked to school uphill in the snow both ways.”
“Shows what you know. Just one way.”
Peggy crossed her arms and gave them a look that was all reproach. “You know this is supposed to be a stealth mission.”
“Dear God,” Dugan muttered.
Bucky stopped, looking stupefied as he stared at equally dumbfounded faces. Silence hovered in the air for several seconds until Bucky cleared his throat and said, “Well, you were making enough noise to scare away all wildlife within earshot. I figured stealth was over.”
Dugan blinked several times, looking between Bucky and Steve. “I’ve gotta be dreaming. There’s no way you survived that fall.”
Bucky glanced down at his boots, and even though this was a slightly different version of Bucky — one that had lived through 80 years of hell that no doubt changed him in ways Steve would never fully understand — the little things in his expression and body language gave Steve no doubt this was still the Bucky he knew. It was in the way he glanced up almost shyly, despite oozing confidence in every other way he carried himself, and in the absent-minded way he raised his right hand to flick his bangs off to the side.
Sam put a hand on Bucky’s back. The friendship between the two was deep.
Steve heard most of Bucky’s story during the trip to Poland, but it all sounded like something out of a science fiction novel. He could barely wrap his head around the fact that Bucky had lived it.
Lived through it.
“It’s a long story.” Bucky adjusted the rifle slung over his chest so it hung at his side and met the gaze of each of the Commandos. “But I did.”
“God dammit.” Dugan shook his head. “Sarge, holy hell.”
Bucky tilted his head and gave a half smile. “Already been there and back.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Dugan jerked his head toward Steve. “He said he was frozen in the ice. You?”
Bucky cleared his throat, his gaze skittering across Steve’s. “Like I said, long story.”
Morita approached, wide-eyed and slack-jawed as he looked between Steve and Bucky. “We’ve got at least two days of travel. Plenty of time to hear it.” He stared at Bucky for a couple of seconds, then broke into a huge grin and laughed. “Damn. I thought I’d seen everything.”
“Vous avez plus de vies qu'un chat,” Dernier said with a shake of his head.
More lives than a cat? If he only knew….
“Malheureusement, je ne suis pas retombé sur mes pieds.” Bucky patted Dernier on the shoulder, noticing the wince Steve gave at the joke about how he didn’t land on his feet.
Dernier’s eyebrows shot upward. “Vous parlez bien le français!”
“Yeah, my French has improved.”
Dugan punched him on the shoulder. “Jesus, it’s good to see you.”
“Really good, Sarge.” Gabe straightened and popped off a salute.
A moment later, Bucky was surrounded by his fellow Commandos, getting slapped, hugged, and elbowed in the ribs.
“Okay! Okay!” Bucky extricated himself, grinning. “You idiots are making too much damn racket.”
“We’re the only ones stupid enough to be out this far,” Dugan said. “Besides, the war’s over, in case you hadn’t heard.”
“I heard.” Bucky straightened his jacket and gestured toward Sam. “This is my friend, Sam Wilson. Sam, these are the idiots I spent most of the war with. Dugan. Morita. Jones. Dernier. Pinky. And Happy Sam Sawyer.” Bucky’s eyebrows flashed mischievously. “I guess we’ll call you grumpy Sam.”
“Oh, you’re a riot,” Wilson said.
“You can just call me Sawyer.” Happy Sam Sawyer shook Sam’s hand. “It’s an honor to meet you. Did you serve?”
Sam shifted uncomfortably as he glanced at Bucky. “Yeah. Airforce.”
“A Sky Winder, huh?” Pinky said. “Flying cadet? Grease Monkey? Kid?”
“Um…” Sam glanced at Bucky, uncertainty flashing across his face. “Pararescue.”
“Pararescue?” Dugan looked at the other Commandos. “Is that an official thing now?”
Morita shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on guys, let's get going.” Bucky clapped Sam on the shoulder. “We’ve got a lot of miles to cover, but before I forget….” He reached into his pack and withdrew a bottle of bourbon. “Dugan, Peggy tells me this is the price you’re charging these days?”
A bright grin broke Dugan’s face as he snatched the bottle, eyes darting to Carter as he lifted the bottle and inspected the label. “Damnit, Barnes. This is the good stuff.”
“Well, let’s just say the exchange rate where I’ve been is favorable.”
“I can’t wait to hear about it.” Dugan stuffed the bottle in his pack. “So, you’re gonna tell us what this mission is, right?”
Steve took that as his cue. “As soon as we make camp for the night.”
-000-
The figure hung from the ceiling, bound by his wrists. A canvas bag was over his head, tied at the neck. He was motionless, possibly dead.
The Colonel held out a gun. “Kill him, Soldier.”
The Soldier stared at the gun. He recognized it as a Nagant M1895 Revolver and knew it could carry seven bullets at a time.
“Soldier, kill him.”
He took the gun. He had killed before. He knew that much, although he couldn’t remember when, or who he killed. Why couldn’t he remember? He probed at the edges of his memory. There was a chair and a voice, images on a screen.
“Take the gun, Soldier.”
He took the gun.
“Point it at the prisoner,” the Colonel ordered, “and pull the trigger.”
The Soldier looked at his target. The man was no threat. He wore a uniform. The insignia indicated he was a lieutenant in the United States Army.
Something stirred in his gut—a feeling, an uneasiness.
He looked down at the gun in his hand and then up at the Colonel. “Why?”
Something hard jabbed into his back and pain blossomed with such sudden intensity that he dropped to his knees. The next thing he knew, he was gasping on the floor, trying to catch his breath and not throw up.
“He is not responding satisfactorily to the conditioning,” the Colonel said. “Level five was insufficient.”
Who were these people, and what did they want from him? He pushed himself up, the plates of his metal arm shifting. He couldn’t remember where the arm came from, but a vision of masked men and a buzzing circular saw flashed in his mind, bringing the sting of bile to his throat. Despite not being flesh, the prosthetic moved almost like a real limb. There was a collar around his neck, and he knew without knowing how he knew that it delivered a jolt just like the one he received from the baton.
The gun was on the floor. He didn’t look directly at it but kept it in the periphery of his vision.
The Colonel stepped closer, leveling a hard gaze directly into his eyes. “You will learn to obey orders, Soldier.”
He brought the metal hand up and ripped the collar off, then dove for the gun, rolling like it was second nature, like his body had done it many times. He came up with the weapon aimed at the Colonel and squeezed the trigger. The gun clicked. It was empty.
Guards surrounded him, their weapons raised. He dropped the gun.
The Colonel smiled and took a few steps closer. “I can appreciate a man with fire, but this is not the first time you have attempted to escape. Of course, you don’t remember that, do you? Let me assure you, there is no hope. You will learn, but I do so very much enjoy the process of educating you.”
The Colonel raised his hand, and the door opened. More guards rushed in. Batons came out. In the fight, he realized he was strong, but ultimately not strong enough. At least he took half the bastards out before they got the better of him. As consciousness faded, a vision came into his head---a man with blue eyes wearing a red, white, and blue outfit.
-000-
Cold water shocked him into consciousness, sending icy tendrils into his nose and throat. He sputtered, pains awakening all over his body. He couldn’t move his arms or his legs. His head throbbed and his eyes and nose felt stuffed with cotton. There was a deep, unrelenting ache in his stomach, his left shoulder felt as though someone was digging a knife into it, and his right leg was on fire.
“Ah, still alive, good. Now we’ll see how fried that brain is,” a voice said in Russian.
“Hopefully salvageable,” another replied. “We may have overdone it this time.”
Where was he?
“The subject has proven more resilient than anyone anticipated.”
“That will prove to be an asset. With the failsafe, we have more effective control.”
What happened? What were they talking about?
“Hopefully, we don’t have to test it. Carrot time?”
“Yes.”
Carrot? A sharp pang in his stomach stole his breath. God, he was hungry.
“Here you go, Soldier.” English, this time.
A hand tilted his head back. The tangy taste of blood touched the tip of his tongue. Something pressed against his lips. Cool water caressed his mouth. He parted his lips and swallowed eagerly. It soothed his dry mouth and aching throat.
He opened his eyes. The face above him was fuzzy. Dark eyes. Gray hair. A uniform. Blinking against the hair in his eyes, he focused on the insignia. Colonel.
He looked around. He was in a dark room. His arms and legs were clamped to a metal chair and there was an angry, red wound in his right leg. A bullet hole. How did he know that?
And…what the hell? His heart sped. Why was he naked?
He blinked at his left arm. It was metal. No, that couldn’t be. He blinked again. He tried to move it, but it stayed there, inanimate, a dead thing. Was he dreaming?
“Easy.” The colonel tilted the glass away. “I am sorry for what they’ve done to you. I’ve told them you’re not a traitor, but they don’t believe me.”
Traitor?
“They think you switched sides.”
What? He shook his head, wet bangs stinging his eyes. “What?” The word emerged barely a croak. His throat hurt. What side?
What were they talking about?
“I don’t think you sold secrets to the Nazis.”
Nazis? He wasn’t….
He…
His chest went tight. His heart thudded. Who was he? A strangled sound escaped his throat. He couldn’t remember. Not his name. Not where he came from. Not even how he ended up a prisoner in wherever hell he was.
“I know.” The Colonel’s voice was soft, soothing.
When the officer’s warm fingers brushed the hair out of his face, he tensed, but it felt good to have the hair out of his eyes and the officer gave no signs of aggression so, after a moment, he took a breath and tried to relax.
Another man in uniform approached. He had hard hazel eyes and brown hair. His insignia declared him a general.
I must be a soldier to know all this.
“What did you tell the Germans about our bases?” The General asked.
“Nothing.” Did he? He took a breath and closed his eyes, trying to push beyond the blankness of his memories. “I don’t think so, anyway.”
“Liar!”
A stinging slap whipped his head to the right and brought tears to his eyes.
“General, please.” The Colonel stood in front of his superior, hands raised. “I believe he’s telling the truth. Any more of this mistreatment and we may kill him. He’s a son of Russia, after all. Until we know for sure, he deserves basic dignity. Allow him some time to rest. Let us investigate further. Perhaps the truth will make itself known.”
The General grimaced.
Please, whatever you think I did, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening… The pounding in his head made it hard to think. His brain was foggy. It wasn't easy to focus on what they were saying.
Why couldn’t he remember?
What did they think he did?
Two men in white coats approached and unfastened the metal clamps restraining his arms.
He stared at the metal arm again. “What is this?” His chest was tight. He couldn’t breathe. Was he having a heart attack? “What happened to my arm?”
Oh, God… Where was he?
“It’s okay.” The Colonel crouched in front of him. “You’ll be okay. You lost your arm in the war. Can you stand?”
The war?
He pushed at the blank wall in his mind. Had there been a war? It felt…familiar…like there was a ring of truth to it. Was he really a soldier?
With what army? The Russians?
English felt more natural to him than Russian. He couldn’t be Russian….could he? He closed his eyes. Who am I?
A dark room sprang to mind. A face with round glasses. He was on a table, staring up into a light.
“Come on, Soldier.” The Colonel slipped an arm around him and lifted him from the chair. “I will take you to your cell and see if I can convince them to feed you a decent meal.”
-000-
Colonel Karpov left their prisoner and found the Doctor in the lab. “How are you enjoying your promotion to General, Doctor?”
Doctor Gusev straightened. “My performance was believable, I take it?”
Karpov nodded. The Doctor had been convincing enough. “Very much so. You could be an actor like Captain America.” Not that the man had been much of an actor, although it probably wasn’t in good taste to think ill of dead men, even Americans.
The doctor adjusted his glasses and grimaced. “Thank you, Colonel, but I prefer science to make-believe. It will be interesting to see if the subject responds to this new technique.”
“We’ve tried the stick. It has not worked. We cannot keep frying his brain without making him a vegetable, and a vegetable makes a poor assassin. Now, it is time to try the carrot.”
The doctor raised his eyebrows. “Another vegetable?”
“You have a sense of humor, Doctor. I’ve always appreciated that.”
“In our line of work, it’s a necessity. But we will have to keep using the electricity to keep his memories at bay. He’ll forget your apparent kindness.”
“He will, but the conditioning will remain. Just like a man knows he needs food, I believe these sessions will prove useful. With the combination of your drugs and my conditioning, he will come to trust me, even when he doesn’t remember his past. In your experiments, you have uncovered some valuable insights. We can use his sense of duty and inclinations to protect what he holds valuable to our advantage.”
“If we can gain access to Dr. Fennhoff, we may make significant progress.”
“They have sequestered him. It’s almost as if they anticipate such a recruitment attempt. Nevertheless, you must never downplay your own brilliance, Doctor. Your suggestions have proven useful. His mind is human, like all others, subject to the same conditions. Reward. Punishment. Pleasure. Pain. No man resists forever. He will associate me with reward and you with punishment. Some part of him will want to please me and will know that I am the thing that provides him safety and comfort. That will be the beginning. It has worked in other subjects.”
“None like him.”
That was true. There was no other like the Sergeant, thanks to Zola. “No, but we’ll see. If it doesn’t, we’ll do the surgery you recommend.” It would be a shame to carve into that brain.
“We have time, of course. The war is over.”
“For now, but there is always another war.” That was the one true constant about humanity.
“I do have something.” The doctor moved to a glass cabinet and pointed to a vial on a shelf that contained a blue liquid. “A new cocktail. It worked on the gorilla for a little while.”
“A little while?”
“The last dose killed him.”
Karpov sighed. “That is not hopeful news.”
“I have adjusted the dosing calculations. We’ll start conservatively, but I believe it will have a positive effect on our subject.”
“I look forward to seeing the results of your work, Doctor. Now, I must get our subject the first decent meal he’s had in a while, and then you’ll come in before he can finish and kick it away, General. We must make sure he doesn’t sleep. A sleep-deprived mind lacks defenses.”
“I’m aware. We have the recording playing in his cell, but he’s been awake for seven days, not that he remembers it. Still, as a man of science, I am interested in seeing how the serum enhances his ability to function on lack of sleep. What is his limit? At some point, I assume his brain and body will simply shut down despite our efforts. I advise that we allow him a few hours of sleep before too many days.”
“Are you getting soft, Doctor?”
“Of course not. There is nothing soft about the pursuit of science. However, if his body shuts down, the project will have lost its primary subject.”
“Ah, well, we can’t have that. How many days do you think?”
“Perhaps another two or three at most.”
“Let’s make it three.” The serum gave the Sergeant a certain resilience others lacked. "The longer he goes without sleep, the less he’ll be able to withstand the stress of the conditioning and the more unstable he’ll become. Now, just in case, do you have the remote?”
The doctor nodded and pulled a rectangular gray box out of a desk drawer. It had a short antenna and three buttons. “The red is complete incapacitation with a risk of termination. The orange produces a sizable stunning electrical charge. The white button activates and deactivates the failsafe.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” The Colonel took the device and slipped it securely into his jacket pocket.