Chapter Text
He knew it without a doubt.
The moment Yelena had discorporated into nothing but a shadow in the ground, that they were following, death awaiting them or something worse. Even as he fought to hold back Alexei with Walker, guilt shredding at the torn anguish from the supersoldier’s mouth as he cried out for his daughter, he knew they were going wherever his malen'kiy pauk had gone. He couldn’t leave her there, neither could Alexei.
He wondered dimly if Alexei knew what he had truly done in his life, beyond the charade he seemed to play.
But selfishly, he didn’t want to follow. He never had meant to be the good guy, that was all Steve Rogers, the boy he followed, who’s footsteps shone in the dark.
The Sentry didn’t give them a choice in the end, as the four of them debated and cursed each other out whilst the shadows of the living coated the streets in ebony black.
The void engulfed them and Bucky knew nothing more, his senses ripped from him until they slammed back with a force so brutal it made his mind swim in the dark.
“Sergeant Barnes,”
The grating Swiss voice that haunted his nightmares, sent chills down Bucky’s back, just as they did each time he heard it, real or not. White cold fear seeping deep into his bones, the acrid tang of cleaning fluids and chemicals burning into his skin and he knew where - when - he was before he’d even opened his eyes.
Dr. Arnim Zola was standing over his younger, prone body, eyes gleaming with delight as he peered into the pupils, torch in hand, of his longest running, successful test subject. The first true monster that James Barnes had the unfortunate luck of coming across, and it hadn’t been the last by a long shot.
“Anything new you’d like to report to me, Sergeant Barnes? Or shall we continue with your treatment,”
“F - fuck you, fucking krauts,” the voice of a weaker man spat back while his captor chuckled, patting his subject’s face like it was some sort of pet, degrading and humiliating. That had been Zola’s favourite method in the early days.
It only gets worse from here kid, trust me.
“Not doing this today” He spoke aloud, unsure whether he could be heard in this freaky vision as he took the risk. He’d gone through this once before and that was enough. Zola was dead, Steve had made sure of that. Dead and forgotten, sort of.
The current Bucky turned on his heel to march through the steel laboratory doors, his main mission the forefront of his mind, to break whatever show Bob was trying to put on. He didn’t get one step out before two broad, and heavily armed Nazis punched through the entrace he’d been trying to make his escape through, each taking an arm without missing a beat, and dragging the supersoldier backwards. It didn’t seem to matter that he could overpower them with a simple shove, or that his vibranium arm could snap their necks like twigs, as much as Bucky fought, wildly and blind with fear, it did nothing. He was as weak as he’d been back then.
“Did you think we were finished, Sergeant?” Tight straps enveloped his body, binds that he could easily free himself from, now held him fast as he was forced back onto the ice cold table, staring up into the eyes of the monster that had created him. The younger Bucky was in the corner, shaking like a coward, barely capable of keeping his eyes up, beaten down like a dog long before he had been saved that first time. He was weak.
The Soldier hated him. This hadn’t been what happened, this was all wrong.
Darkness was oozing from his eyes, thick and putrid, speaking out to him. Reading out his deeply repressed fears, thoughts, promises. It had eyes, as violet as the sky, speaking into his blackened soul, knowing and tearing things that should never have been touched. The Void knew it all.
“This isn’t real, you can’t - I’m out - you’re -” Stumbling over his words like a petrified infant, he hadn’t changed much in the decades that passed.
“Shh now, Soldat, you know this is what happens to bad children. You brought this on yourself, and you will learn from your mistakes, my child.” Zola brushed over him, seemingly ignoring the words as the younger Bucky continued to quake in the corner, both of them keenly aware of what was to come, yet doing nothing to change the outcome.
It wouldn’t matter. He was dead, they all were.
Bucky strained against the bonds with everything he had, the leather biting hard into his skin, cutting lines of blood which seeped and pooled against the titanium table, but the restraints didn’t even creak. The backhanded slap that followed his pathetic attempt bloomed red across the soldier’s cheek, stinging just as harshly as it had back then. Helpless as the day he was born, shame and disgust ran in rivulets down his back.
So weak, these Americans, just snapping like twigs. Lets see how long this one lasts till it breaks.
Those were the jeers the krauts made as Bucky had been yanked from his cell, Dugan and Morita’s tinny yell did nothing as he was hauled by the back of his neck, blood dripping from his lips as the last dying cough ripped itself from his throat. He wished pneumonia had taken him that day. They hadn’t been wrong, he’d snapped like a twig, only death hadn’t taken him, it still refused to.
“No!” Another backhand and Zola talked over him, as he always did. He hadn’t been a person here and he hadn’t been a person then.
“Schnapp dir eins, ein junges,” Despite knowing he couldn’t change the past, Bucky still fought against the hold, desperate to do something, just anything.
“Ja, Herr Doktor” One of the brutish men left, a smile promising blood as Bucky swore filth out of his mouth, only stopping when the other guard jabbed an electric prod into the side of his neck. The shocks were enough to momentarily freeze the man, flashes of a chair and the ashy taste of rubber filling his mouth while his body seized in response. He never had got used to the reaction electricity had on his body, despite the familiarity he had with it.
“Why don’t you do anything? ” He spat at his younger self. He’d forgotten how he’d gotten here, why he was here, every single thought was back in this room, like he’d never left, the vision no more than the constant flashbacks that had filled his early freedom up. The younger Sergeant Barnes quivered, eyes flickering between his older self and the doctor still looming over the table. “ Just do something ” Bucky begged.
He wouldn't do anything.
“You know he won’t, mein kleiner Soldat,” The heavily accented voice cut through the man’s desperation, a gentle hand carding its way through his hair, “You didn’t before, so why should he now?”
The doors slammed open as the Nazi soldier dragged in a young private by his hair, his dirt streaked face filled with terror as he fought with all his might to get away. It was pointless as the boy was forced to his knees, a gun to the back of his head and Bucky’s head was forced to turn harshly to face the kid he sentenced to death, mere inches away from his own.
“This is your fault, Soldat, remember that,” The accented voice whispered in his ear as the gun went off, warm blood splattering his face, coating it in red that he wouldn’t be able to wipe off for days. Another drop in the ocean, another son that would never return home, another body that could never be mourned.
Private Jacobs hadn’t been the first, and he most certainly wasn’t the last.
“Anything new you’d like to report to me, Sergeant Barnes? Or shall we continue with your treatment?”
In a blink they were back again, the present Bucky Barnes standing and watching his own torture like nothing had happened, even as he felt the drying blood of the boy he’d murdered still coating his skin.
This time he didn’t wait. Yelena and the boy needed him, needed someone, and the being in the sky needed stopping. He couldn’t bow into his weakness, not yet. He needed to protect her, like he had failed to before.
A thunderous glare at the doctor, who’s voice echoed in his skin, and Bucky pushed through the doors, no German kraut stopping him this time. He was never a good person but by God he was going to prove to all those fucking politicians and media hawks that he wasn’t that creature anymore. He was going to save his goddamn паук , even if it meant he was stuck in this torment for eternity.
“Zhelaniye”
The immediate terror that seized his body at those words never seemed to fail him, a knife in his heart as his mind ached with the phantom pain that he expected to come but didn’t. Even after years of having them wiped clean from his mind, the attachment and knowledge of the power they had still created shockwaves strong enough to make him stumble to the ground.
A howl followed as electricity burrowed its way through the newly mutilated Bucky Barnes. Armless and coated in a sweat but just as determined as he had ever been. It couldn’t have been long since he’d been ‘rescued’ from the snow, judging from the length of hair the younger Barnes had and the still leaking wound pressed against his side. They hadn’t even removed the whole arm yet. General Lukin stood before the Winter Soldier project, frowning at the continued shrieks which echoed in the Siberian bunker. He seemed more put off by the machine not seeming to work than the noise emitting from the prisoner.
“Fennhoff and Zola were certain this method would work,” The man growled, slamming down papers onto the tray holding the newly printed red book, not even a crease in its spine foreshadowing the moments still to come.
Bucky didn’t need to hear anymore as he started searching for a new way out, not trusting the doors the first time around after last time. There had to be a crack somewhere, an exit he could get through without triggering whatever monsters lurked in the void. He wasn’t quite sure how real this was, and, if he was being honest to himself, Bucky couldn’t trust that his brain would be able to tell the difference. For all he knew, one wipe could take all that reconditioning he’d done and throw it out the window and he’d be the Winter Soldier. Who knew what damage he could do like that, stuck in this motion again and again.
He couldn't kill again, he couldn’t be locked up again. He couldn't prove to Sam he was still that broken, twisted man, no more put together than he had been when they first had the displeasure of meeting. Somehow the thought of Sam’s face, staring down at the Soldier with nothing but disappointment and expectance hurt more than the torture he watched himself go under.
“Now, now Soldat,” Aleksander Lukin was no longer in front of the convulsing, shrieking man who had just been outfitted with the long outdated headphones that initiated his fall as they filled his ears with the Russian that would come to control his every waking thought.
Now the Soldat’s first successful handler was in front of the old, weathered man, cruel icy eyes picking out his lies just as easily as they had before, a smirk lacing his scarred lips as it curled up before his project.. Bucky couldn’t stop the automatic flinch away, putting more distance than necessary between him and his second monster, the reflex forever ingrained into his being.
Weak, Soldat, weak.
“Your lesson isn’t over. Kneel, malen'kaya ptichka,” Bucky only glared in response, halting the shudder at the nickname. He hadn’t heard it in so long, yet the memories and unfiltered disgust at them were as fresh as the wounds still healing.
Malen'kaya ptichka. Little bird, for the way Bucky had shuddered and quivered under the Soviets cruel hands as he learnt his new position. Under the torture that taught the Soldier to know nothing of kindness but only wish for the moment he didn’t have to be touched. Fear came with those, as brightly as the trigger words did. Still, now eighty years down the line and he could be reduced almost to that quaking mess they had broken him down to. Pathetic.
The cries of the younger Barnes grew louder in his ears and Bucky shook his head, shoving away from the glimmering facade of a scene that was long buried in the past and didn’t need to be recovered.
Yelena. Bob. The mission.
A glint of warm light reflected in the cold metal of the many machines that littered the Siberian bunker, a crack in the dark. That was where he needed to get to, that was where the fight was.
“Bob, stop this bullshit, let us help -”
“Soldat, learn your place. Kneel.” Lukin was in front of him again, all rough skin and crooked smile as he forced Bucky to his knees with a firm grip on his head like he was nothing more than a child. Pushed to the floor like one would put an unruly dog.
Bucky didn’t wait this time to throw a punch, all force going through his vibranium arm as he made contact with the General’s face, bone crunching under his hand like he’d always dreamed of. Hot blood spurted down into the man’s wiry facial hair, who reacted as if nothing had happened, a blood red grin promising what was to come.
“Stanovit'sya na koleni,” Coalescing with the hoarse screams from the chair, the thrumming of electricity sparking from the machinery Bucky roared, punching again through the man as he surged upwards. His flesh hand wrapped tightly around his handler’s neck and he pushed him forwards, striding and preparing to make another hit when, instead of slamming into the wall, Bucky stumbled through it, Lukin discorporating in his grip and the scene changed, disorientating him.
The supersoldier whirled around, but the chair and his torture were nowhere in sight, gone just like Zola and his lab had disappeared. Another memory, another step closer to the centre, he hoped. The old soldier let out a long breath, heavy with exhaustion while a warm hand ran itself down his face. He knew where he was without having to look this time, the small grunts and chitter of children clear amongst the heavier sounds of flesh hitting limbs. He wasn’t quite ready to see what moment Bob had decided to remind him of yet.
“Papa, ya sdelal eto!”
If it was possible, his blood chilled a little further. Ice spreading beneath his veins, cold and sharp and slicing into his shrivelled heart.
- It was one of the first memories that had managed to come back to him in that shitty Romanian apartment, one that he clawed at with guilt and never had been able to accept, even years later with moments that no doubt topped this.
He refused to turn around and walked straight to the back wall of the training room, just as grey and monochrome as Siberia had been, and he searched for that crack again. The wall was unrelenting, so was the door as he obstinately tried to force it open.
“Fuck this, Bob, let me out ,”
It was almost as if the little fucker had heard him and Bucky was back where he had originally entered, standing near the wall where the security guards littered, sharp eyes watching the Soldier’s every move. He was really starting to hate the kid, or whatever this was, whether he was controlling it or not. He never should’ve left his apartment, he should’ve turned up to that court session and read that fucking manual, he should not have gone rogue into the desert to kidnap people who deserved more help that he ever got.
Why hadn’t he listened?
“Papa, ya sdelal eto!”
The Winter Soldier stiffened where he’d been adjusting a young girl's position in order to throw more force into her attack. His mask was gone, having been justified to not terrify the children, and even the older Bucky could sense every emotion flicker through those cold dead eyes, and tightened jaw. Both their heads turned ever so slowly to look at the child who had called, so proud in her little ballerina outfit, fists scraped and bruised as a result of her win.
Lena had been so little there, he hadn’t realised how young, barely above his knee. Natalya was on a mission, not here to defend her sister this time, from a mistake so innocent and childish it hurt. It should have been him protecting all of them.
Yelena stood on her stained mat, lip cut with a wide grin that started to fade as the silence of the room grew louder, her sparring partner quietly scrambling up and backing away from what was, without a doubt, bound to happen. Everything had stopped, every fight, every murmur. Each girl’s gaze and guard’s glare was on the pair, fear, sympathy, rage and disgust alike.
“Ya - ya sdelal eto?” She wasn’t sure now, eyes flickering between the Soldier and the guards, but no one moved. No one but the brainwashed supersoldier who picked its way through the mass to kneel before the young girl.
Bucky knew exactly what was going through the Soldat’s head, as messed up as it was, as he stared up at the child he had dared to consider his own. It was over now, he knew it, they all did.
“Its okay, Lena,” His voice was quiet in the emptiness of the room, only his heightened ears picking up the slamming doors getting closer and closer, “You and Natalya, moi malen'kiye pauchk , I’ll come back for you,”
It was an empty promise, as much as the Soldier had intended for it to be a fulfilled one. Bucky tried to turn around, escape, get to the current Yelena and not be stuck by his everlasting mistakes, but the guards armed by his sides, only had had to grip his shoulders and he was stuck, unusually weak, forced to gaze upon another one of his failures. Bob was really getting on his fucking nerves.
“I don’t - I don’t understand, Papa,” The English was heavy on the girl’s accent, a language they only spoke together out from the gaze of those relentless figures, in the silence of the night as the Soldier patted their wounds dry and held them as they cried. He’d never come to understand why it was those two that attached themselves to him, the siblings so reminiscent of the sisters he lost perhaps, but with him they stuck, until his treachery was unveiled.
A small tear trailed down Yelena’s cheek, still round with youth. Papa had always warned them not to call him anything but his designation and she broke the rule, she ruined it in the brief joy at finally using the move she’d been spending months perfecting. She had ruined everything for nothing.
“Don’t cry, Lena. Protect Natashka, for me,” Natalia would always protect her, but that had never stopped the younger one from doing the same.
Uncharacteristically gentle he had wiped her tears free from her skin, removing any trace of weakness others may have exploited. The room was actually empty now, the other Widows in training having disappeared while the blonde child trembled behind the Soldier’s built form while his handler, still Karpov at the time, backhanded the Asset silently, neither weapon making a sound.
They had been handler and asset so long words no longer needed to be spoken between them. He knew what awaited him after the punishment had been decided. A long enough wipe to remove all memories of this room and back into the cold, it knew whatever it did now wouldn’t change the outcome but still it protected the child.
“Nakazat' yeye,” The order ran through his bones, biting, pricking, burning for each second he refused.
Punish her. A little girl, for a word.
“Nyet,” This time the blow drew blood and still it made no noise. A refusal demanded worse than what he was getting.
“Nakazat' yeye, Soldat,” Anger was growing behind General Karpov’s eyes. He had always been a more rational, fair Winter Soldier handler but that had never made the punishments Bucky earned any easier. Karpov never had stopped being Hydra.
“Why?” It slipped out in English and the Soldier earned another hit and the older Bucky shrugged off the grasp on his arms, now free to move, desperate to claw himself away from this hell he’d created.
“I know how this ends, Bob, I see it all the time,”
There was a glimmer in the dark, an oak framed attic, two figures crouched in the warmth. His break in the cycle. The supersoldier tore through it as Yelena’s gasping screams ripped through his mind, his own hand wielding the belt that struck her back.
He hadn’t wanted to do it. He’d told his handler no, the first time in decades he had spoken back, but still he had bent under the layers of programming that coated his shattered mind. Not even his little spider’s cries and pleads had been enough, each order and slap he received as he had slowed meant another strike Yelena had taken.
He hadn’t drawn blood but he had made her cry. It was no wonder either of his spiders wanted to come near him when he got out, he’d tortured them just as harshly as the Red Room had, and for what end? He didn’t deserve their love, he didn’t deserve anything for what he had done to those children, the ones he had hurt and the ones he had killed.
Steve’s voice in the back of his mind was easily squashed, fading away quicker each day he had been gone. Bucky might not have had a choice, but it would never change the fact he had done it, he was the face and hand his victims saw, it was him.
For a brief moment Bucky had managed to step into that attic, reaching for the pair still crouched side by side, to do what he didn’t know, before the void yanked him back, throwing him onto his side with a boot over neck. He never needed reminding of who it was that held that position over him, Rumlow always liked to hear himself speak, a narcissist in his own right.
“Don’t pretend you don’t like it, Soldier,” A strong hand in his greasy hair yanked the supersoldier from the floor, scrambling for purchase at the awkward angle he was forced into.
There was no other him here, only his current self in his Commander’s grasp, Pierce’s back fading away between the sliding doors. A situation that happened every time he had been defrosted for the Americans, one that happened far more often than it ever did with the Soviets and Germans. The Americans were lazy and somehow more ruthless than the Russian branch of Hydra had been after his initial training, taking pleasure at the noises they would wrangle out of the Asset as it struggled to understand the constantly changing protocol.
“We all know what you really are beneath all that ex-machina type bullshit. You know exactly where you belong at the bottom of my feet, waiting to take my-”
Whatever Rumlow had continued to say was lost in a haze as Bucky gripped the back of the agent’s neck, flipping him over his own body, sprawled on the floor in a mess of limbs, his head contorted in an angle that read he wasn’t getting up again. If only that had been what really happened. He wished he had been the one to snap Rumlow’s life from him, more so than Pierce, but Rumlow had taken that wish away from him himself, the coward.
He shook his head, more pressing matters urging him on. Turning back to the wall he seemed to have come through, Bucky didn’t wait before stepping through it, into that cursed house the exact moment the rest of those lost souls came back. Yelena and Bob pulling torn fabric from their neck and he carried on. The ache in his chest as he watched the grown-up, skilled spider fight for a boy no one had ever cared about, without even a second glance or murmur to him unless it was necessary.
It hurt but he would continue, they all would. To fight for something greater than themselves until it was all over, until they could rest.
Those memories were pushed further and further inside the deep recesses of Bucky’s mind, commingling with the hundreds of others Bob had decided not to show him. He was fucked up, but at least he wasn’t the only one. At least he could do some good with it for now.