Bucky Barnes

Bucky Barnes had known you long before he ever became the Winter Soldier. Long before HYDRA. Long before the serum. Long before the war. Back in Brooklyn, you were simply Steve Rogers's little sister. And Bucky knew you as exactly that. The annoying little girl who somehow always managed to find the two of them whenever they were trying to get away from home. You were ten. Bucky and Steve were twenty-five. Steve was your older brother, your protector, and the person you followed around constantly. And Bucky? Bucky was Steve's best friend. Nothing more. There was never anything romantic about it. You were a kid, and to Bucky, you were basically Steve's little shadow. He remembered you trailing behind them through Brooklyn. He remembered Steve constantly telling you to go home. He remembered you ignoring him. "Come on, Steve." "No." "Please?" "No." You'd turn toward Bucky. "Bucky." He'd immediately shake his head. "Don't look at me. Your brother said no." You'd cross your arms. "You're no fun." "I'm twenty-five." "So?" "So I'm not taking you with us." You'd glare at him. Bucky would laugh. Sometimes, despite himself, he'd ruffle your hair before sending you back home. You were just a little girl. Steve's little sister. That was all you had ever been to him. Then the war happened. Bucky went overseas. Steve followed. Everything changed. Bucky fell from the train. HYDRA found him. The Winter Soldier was born. Decades passed. And you were lost somewhere in the same cruel machinery that had stolen Bucky's life. The Red Room had taken you. Frozen you. Woken you. Trained you. Frozen you again. Again and again. Seventy years passed while your body barely changed. You remained physically twenty-three. But mentally? You had lived through decades of training, missions, conditioning, and violence. You were no longer the little girl Bucky remembered. And Bucky had no idea you were alive. Until Steve found you. It happened shortly after Steve finally rescued Bucky from HYDRA. You were another discovery. Another person who shouldn't have survived. Another weapon who had been trapped in someone else's system for decades. Steve recognized you immediately. You recognized him too. But you barely resembled the little sister Bucky remembered. Steve eventually brought you to the compound. And Bucky was there. He was standing in the common room talking with Steve when you walked in. Bucky barely looked up at first. Then he did a double take. He stared. You stopped. Your eyes met his. And something about his expression told you that he was searching his memories. Bucky looked at Steve. Then back at you. "Who is she?" Steve's expression changed. "Buck..." Bucky frowned. "What?" Steve looked between the two of you. "That's my sister." Bucky froze. His eyes immediately returned to you. "No." You gave him a small, awkward smile. "Hi, Bucky." He stared at you. There was something almost painful in his expression. Because he remembered you. Not this version of you. The little girl. The ten-year-old who used to follow him and Steve through Brooklyn. The kid who used to beg them to let her tag along. But you weren't that little girl anymore. You were twenty-three physically. You were an adult. And you had lived through decades of things Bucky could barely imagine. Bucky didn't know what to say. "You..." He swallowed. "You're alive." You nodded. "Yes?" He stared at you for another moment. Then something uncomfortable happened. Bucky realized he was looking at you differently. Not as Steve's little sister. Not as the kid who used to follow them around. As a woman. And he immediately hated himself for it. Because his brain knew the difference. His memories were just struggling to catch up. He knew you were an adult. He knew you had been physically frozen for decades. He knew you had survived things that had changed you completely. But somewhere in the back of his mind, there was still that ten-year-old girl following Steve around Brooklyn. And Bucky couldn't reconcile the two. So he kept his distance. At first. He avoided being alone with you. He kept conversations short. He became painfully aware of every time you walked into a room. And Steve noticed. Of course Steve noticed. One evening, Steve found Bucky staring at you from across the common room. Steve folded his arms. "You okay?" Bucky immediately looked away. "Yeah." Steve raised an eyebrow. "Buck." "I'm fine." Steve looked at him for a long moment. Then his eyes shifted toward you. He understood. And Bucky could see the realization happen. "Don't." Bucky's jaw tightened. "I know." "You haven't done anything." "I know." "You haven't even said anything." "I know." Steve sighed. "But you're thinking about it." Bucky rubbed a hand over his face. "She's your sister." "I know." "She was ten." "I know." "She used to follow us everywhere." "I remember." Bucky looked at Steve. "I can't do this." Steve was quiet. Then he said something Bucky wasn't expecting. "She's not ten anymore, Buck." Bucky looked away. "I know." "And she isn't the same person." "I know." "Neither are you." That hit harder than Bucky expected. Because Steve was right. Neither of them were the people they had been in Brooklyn. That world was gone. The little girl Bucky remembered had grown into someone who had survived seventy years of the Red Room. And Bucky? He had spent seventy years as HYDRA's weapon. Neither of them had gotten the chance to grow up normally. Maybe that's why, when you started spending more time around Bucky, the tension slowly changed. You remembered him differently, too. You remembered Bucky as Steve's best friend. The handsome older man who used to tease you and tell you to stop following them. But the man standing in front of you now was broken in ways you understood better than most. You recognized the look in his eyes. The careful movements. The constant awareness of exits. The instinctive flinch. The silence. You understood because the Red Room had done similar things to you. One evening, you found him sitting alone. You sat beside him. "Still remember me?" Bucky looked at you. "How could I forget?" You smiled faintly. "I was annoying." "You were." You laughed. "I knew it." "You used to follow us everywhere." "You and Steve were going somewhere interesting." "We were going to get food." "Exactly." Bucky smiled. For the first time, the tension disappeared. "You were always getting into trouble." "So were you." "Yeah." He looked at you again.