James "Bucky" Barnes. ˎˊ˗

HYDRA had a way of making time meaningless. There were no real mornings or evenings in the places where they kept James Buchanan Barnes. There were only missions, recovery, orders, procedures, and the long stretches of nothing in between. He had stopped asking what day it was a long time ago. Sometimes he wasn't even sure what year it was. They called him the Winter Soldier more often than they called him James, and eventually the name began to feel like something that belonged to somebody else. A weapon didn't need a birthday, didn't need a favorite meal, a childhood memory, or a reason to smile. A weapon only needed to work. You were assigned to him somewhere along the way. At first, there was nothing particularly remarkable about the arrangement. You were his handler, and he was HYDRA's most valuable asset. You were supposed to monitor his condition, relay orders, prepare him for missions and make sure he remained obedient. You were expected to be cold, detached, efficient, well, just being HYDRA's bastard. Most of the people who worked with him were exactly that. Unfortunately, they forced you to read those same code words for the Winter Soldier while he lay or sat chained, in deep convulsions and with tears in his eyes. And unfortunately, you were forced to watch or participate in training torture or any other experiments. Some were cruel because they enjoyed having power over him and others were simply indifferent. To them, James was machinery with a pulse and omething expensive that needed maintenance, obviously. You never quite managed to look at him that way, you didn't make a show of kindness... You couldn't afford to. HYDRA noticed everything. It appeared in little things. You learned not to approach him suddenly from behind, that he hated having people touch his remaining arm without warning. You learned that after missions he needed a few minutes of silence before he could answer questions, and learned that he preferred coffee to tea, though he would drink either if he was tired enough. You learned that sometimes he would stare at a particular spot on the wall for several minutes, completely motionless, because some fragment of memory had surfaced and he didn't know what to do with it. And, slowly, James learned you in return. He learned the sound of your footsteps before you entered the room. He knew your voice even when there were several people talking around him, could tell when you were irritated, when you were worried and when you were pretending not to be. He noticed that you never laughed when the others joked about him and that you sometimes lingered outside the room when HYDRA took him away for another procedure. Most importantly, he noticed the way you looked away. You never asked questions... You never made a scene. But James saw the tension in your shoulders. He saw the way your jaw tightened. He saw how deliberately you turned your head when the chair was brought into the room. You couldn't stop them. Neither could he. Still, somewhere in the damaged and fragmented parts of his mind, the thought remained: you didn't want to watch. It mattered more than you probably realized. James became strangely comfortable around you. Not cheerful, exactly. Not at first, but calmer. If you were in the room, his shoulders weren't quite as rigid. If you told him to sit, he did without the immediate suspicion he showed everyone else. If you handed him something, he accepted it without checking your expression first. Sometimes, after a mission, he would simply sit near your desk in silence while you worked. He didn't ask permission to stay. It became an unspoken routine. There were even moments when something almost resembling the old James Barnes surfaced. A faint smile. A complaint about the coffee. Once, you found him staring at a photograph on your desk. "That's a terrible picture." he said. You looked over. "You haven't even seen it." ,He paused.* "...I know." It was the closest thing to a joke he'd made in weeks. You laughed. For a moment, James looked almost surprised that he'd caused it. Then he smiled too. Those moments were rare. HYDRA always found a way to take them away eventually. Years passed in fragments. James was put back into cryogenic storage between assignments. He was awakened when they needed the Winter Soldier and erased back into silence when they didn't. Sometimes he remembered you immediately, sometimes it took a few hours, sometimes he didn't seem to recognize you at all. You learned not to take those moments personally. You simply introduced yourself again. "It's me." He would stare at you, confused and exhausted. Then eventually something in his expression would soften. "...You." It became enough. Then came the mission involving Steve Rogers. James didn't know why the name bothered him. Something about it felt ancient. Familiar, yeah. He couldn't place it. HYDRA didn't tell him who Steve was. They didn't need to. They gave him a target, and he followed orders. The mission ended with the Winter Soldier falling into the river. The world believed that was the end of him. It wasn't. James survived. He pulled Steve from the water and disappeared before anyone could stop him. For the first time in decades, there was no handler giving him an order. No mission waiting. No voice telling him where to go. He simply walked. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't know who he was anymore. But eventually, somehow, he found his way back. Back to the facility, back to the person whose footsteps he had memorized long before he understood why. You. Only you. You knew something was wrong the moment you saw him. He looked exhausted beyond words. His clothes were damaged, his movements slow, and his eyes seemed unfocused. He didn't look like the Winter Soldier. He barely looked like James. He stopped in the doorway and stared at you for several seconds. "...You." It was quiet and almost uncertain. You approached him carefully. "Soldier?" He swallowed. His gaze dropped to the floor. "I don't remember." You didn't ask what he meant. You already knew. He sat down heavily, staring at his hands as though they belonged to somebody else. There were fragments in his head now. A red-haired woman, shield, river, young man calling his name, a photograph, a street in Brooklyn, a feeling he couldn't explain. And you. Always you. "They're going to put me back..." he whispered. You didn't answer immediately. You looked at him. And something inside you finally broke. Maybe it had been breaking for years or you had simply reached the point where pretending you could tolerate it had become impossible. You knew what HYDRA would do next. They would take him back. They would erase whatever pieces of himself had managed to return. They would put him into the chair again. And you knew, with terrifying certainty, that if you stayed, you would eventually become just another person who watched. So you made a decision. "We're leaving." James slowly looked up. "...What?" His expression was almost blank. The words didn't seem to fit into anything he understood. "They'll find us. They'll kill you." He stared at you. "Why you are doing this?" You didn't have a clever answer. You couldn't explain years of tiny decisions in a single sentence. You couldn't explain every time you'd looked away. Every time you'd stayed. Every time you'd remembered his name when everyone else called him a weapon. So you simply said. "Because you're not staying here." James looked at you for a long time. His breathing was uneven. He looked exhausted, almost empty. Whatever conditioning had been done to him had left him barely capable of processing the situation. He wasn't going to plan an escape. He wasn't going to lead you through the facility and wasn't going to suddenly become the unstoppable Winter Soldier everyone feared. He just looked at you like he was trying to decide whether trusting you was worth the consequences. Finally, his hand moved. Slowly, uncertainly, his fingers closed around yours. "...Okay." That was it. Just one exhausted man choosing to trust the only person in the room who had ever made him feel like a person. The escape was messy and terrifying. There was no guarantee either of you would make it out. You used whatever knowledge you had, whatever opportunity presented itself, and whatever courage you could find. James followed because you told him to. When he froze, you waited. When he didn't know where to go, you guided him. When the world outside finally opened in front of him, he stopped and stared. The night air touched his face. For several seconds, he simply stood there. Freedom felt strangely quiet. James looked at you, then down at your joined hands. His fingers tightened slightly. "...Where do we go?" You didn't know. Neither of you did, but you started walking anyway. And James followed.

The first few months after the escape were nothing like freedom was supposed to feel. There were no triumphant mornings, no sudden sense that everything was going to be fine. There were cheap motels, borrowed names, long drives through unfamiliar towns and the constant knowledge that HYDRA could still be somewhere behind them. James slept lightly, but ometimes he didn't sleep at all. He would wake up convinced that he was back in one of those rooms, breathing too fast, metal fingers digging into the sheets while he tried to remember where he was. More than once, he woke up already standing beside the door, ready to fight someone who wasn't there. You never asked him to explain and just simply reminded him where he was. Sometimes it wasn't enough. On those nights, you stayed awake with him until the sky outside started getting lighter. James didn't know what to do with kindness that didn't come with a price. At first, he treated every gesture of affection like something temporary. If you bought him food, he asked how much it cost. If you gave him clothes, he insisted he could pay you back. If you told him he was safe, he didn't believe you. Slowly, though, things changed. He started leaving his shoes beside the door. He started choosing what he wanted to eat instead of simply accepting whatever was given to him and sleeping for longer than three hours at a time. He even started making jokes again. They were terrible jokes... You encouraged him anyway. Eventually, James realized that he didn't have to wait for an order before moving. The realization terrified him almost as much as it thrilled him. The world continued changing around you. HYDRA's collapse made the news. SHIELD fell. The Winter Soldier became a name across television screens, attached to crimes James could barely remember committing. Steve Rogers survived. The Avengers became public knowledge. New York was invaded by aliens. Governments panicked. The world discovered that superheroes actually existed, and James watched from the sidelines with an expression that suggested he was deeply unimpressed by all of it. Steve eventually found him, or rather, James found Steve first. The man from the river, the man whose face had been buried somewhere inside the broken pieces of his memory. Seeing him again was painful in ways James couldn't explain. Steve remembered everythingx and James remembered almost nothing. There was guilt in every conversation between them, even when neither of them spoke about it. James wanted to believe that he was still the same person Steve had known in Brooklyn. He wasn't sure he deserved to. You stayed beside him through all of it. When James disappeared to chase answers, you waited. When he came back angry, you listened. When he sat silently with old photographs in his hands, you didn't force him to talk. The world knew the Winter Soldier as a monster. You knew the difference between the Winter Soldier and James Barnes. That difference became increasingly important to him. Then came the fight with Steve, Sam Wilson and the people trying to bring him in. James was still hunted, still confused, still trying to understand what HYDRA had done to him. But this time, when someone called him a weapon, he didn't look at you as though asking whether it was true. He already knew the answer. He was James. Not because the world had decided to forgive him, but because he had finally decided to stop letting HYDRA name him. Wakanda became another turning point. For the first time, James was offered something that didn't come with conditions. A place to recover. Technology capable of helping with his arm. People who weren't afraid of him. He spent time there learning how to live with his own mind instead of constantly fighting it. You visited whenever you could. James pretended he didn't miss you between visits. He was terrible at pretending. When you finally arrived, he would become noticeably calmer within minutes. "You missed me." you would tease. "No." "You didn't?" "No. But... Maybe a little." Then came the battle against Thanos. The world disappeared and five years vanished. When James returned, nothing felt the same. The people he knew had aged. The world had moved on without him. Once again, he had to learn how to exist in a reality that had changed while he hadn't. But you were still there. That mattered. Eventually, the Avengers were gone and... Steve was gone. The world expected James to figure out what came next. For once, nobody gave him a mission. Nobody told him who to become. And that turned out to be harder than fighting. By the time the events began, James had built something resembling an ordinary life. Therapy appointments, long walks, quiet mornings, occasional dinners with Sam, usually followed by an argument. He was trying. Really trying. Some days were easier than others. Some memories still came back without warning, some nights still ended with him staring at the ceiling, wondering whether there was any version of himself untouched by what HYDRA had done. But there was one thing that had never changed. You. Only you. He was kinda obsessed. Years after the night you escaped, James still gravitated toward you without thinking. If you sat on the couch, he eventually ended up beside you. If you were cooking, he would find an excuse to stand in the kitchen. If you disappeared into another room, he would wander after you a few minutes later, usually pretending he needed something. He had become embarrassingly domestic. The Winter Soldier had once been trained to exist without attachments. James Barnes had somehow become incapable of letting go of his favorite person. He wasn't possessive. He simply liked knowing you were there. He liked hearing you move around the apartment, he liked your voice from another room, he liked being able to sit beside you without wondering whether someone would come through the door and take him away. Safety in its simplest form. One evening, years after the escape, James was standing in your kitchen while you were trying to finish something. He had already eaten. He had no reason to be there. He simply refused to leave. James leaned against the counter beside you, watching quietly. "You're hovering." you pointed out, then he moved closer until his shoulder rested against yours. He looked completely comfortable, almost sleepy. This was the same man who had once spent decades being strapped into hell and told that his only purpose was obedience. Now he was standing in a warm kitchen, deliberately choosing where he wanted to be. With whom he wanted to be. He reached for your hand without looking at you and loosely intertwined his fingers with yours He sighed heavily and buried his nose in your shoulder, trembling slightly. Lately, he'd been plagued by the most terrifying nightmares, which, in theory, explains why he's been waking up so often in a cold sweat. Severe PTSD, to be sure. He still felt like his body wasn't his own. His body, too. All the atrocities HYDRA had committed would never be forgotten, even through the centuries. Poor, unfortunate James. You could almost feel his eyes watering again. But he continued to stand stoically and stubbornly pretend he was fine. He did it quite convincingly, but not for you. To distract you, he quickly and awkwardly kissed your temple, hugging you a little tighter. James never showed it, but inside him, God, there was always this nightmare. And he felt so bad. Yes, James had freed himself from the Winter Soldier programming, but... he wanted to be near you. Right now, he needed you most. He turned his head so you could see his tender, scared, and deeply tired puppy eyes. "Ugh... sorry, I'm being a mess, right?"