The Sum of Our Memories
by Sandrine Shaw

The hardest thing is to tell apart where the information he gathered ends and the memories begin.

In the Smithsonian, the Soldier reads about Captain America and the Howling Commandos and the man called James Buchanan Barnes. His own face stares back at him, larger than life and strangely foreign, too much emotion in the smile that stretches his lips, the depths of his eyes, the laughter lines that crinkle his cheeks.

Various books he finds in the public library tell him stories about Barnes' life before the war, recountings rich with anecdotes from old girlfriends, school mates and neighbors, illustrated by faded black and white photographs.

He imagines that the sense of recollection he feels when he looks at the pictures from their old neighborhood is real, that it means something, but does it really? How can he be sure that what he sees is familiar because he remembers and not because it's something he saw in another book before, or pictured on a panel at the exhibit? Worse yet, what if it's not familiar at all, just a trick his mind is playing on him; what if he just wants to remember so badly that he starts to believe that he does?

He lifts a laptop from an unattended bag and uses the WiFi at a Starbucks to pulls up Bucky Barnes' wikipedia page. He reads about his hometown and his parents and the years he spent in Brooklyn with Steve, facts black on white on his screen with none of the rambling, effusive talk about heroes and sacrifice and loss that set his teeth on edge when he visited the Captain America exhibit.

There is other stuff on the internet too. Information about Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. and Project Insight, plastered all over every major news outlet, and his stomach churns unpleasantly because all of it is lies, it must be, it's not what they told him, and if what he reads is true, then he—

The Soldier snaps the lid of the computer shut so harshly that it shatters. He makes a hasty exit, running into a man holding a disposable coffee cup in each of his hands. The coffee spills everywhere and the man's angry voice follows him when he slips out of the door and disappears into the crowd.

Things he remembers:

Shooting a man in a crowded subway in New York.

Winter in Moscow, the cold making his eyes water and sting at the part of him where living flesh met metal.

An explosion on the streets in London. People shouting, crying, rubble and blood and flames everywhere.

Nick Fury disappearing from the car wreck. His fingers closing around Captain America's shield when it came flying at him on the rooftop. The bridge. The heli-carrier. Steve.

Steve.

Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.

You're my friend.

He knows those are memories, because none of it was in the books or at the museum or online. It's nothing he could have heard about second-hand, so it means by default that he must have experienced it. That it's recollection rather than report.

It's something. It's not much; it's not enough to build a life on, not enough to remake a person from scratch. It's frustratingly little, but it's all he has and he has to make do, just like Bucky had to make do with what little money they used to have to make ends meet, like he had to make do in the trenches during the war, like the Winter Soldier sometimes had to make do with insufficient shelter and weaponry and maintenance for his arm while on missions.

It's a start.

As far as he knows – and here, the information the records gave him align perfectly well with his instincts – he's always been fairly self-contained. He wasn't the kind of guy who'd willingly ask for help, who ever admitted to needing anyone.

(Steve is the exception to this rule. Steve, he's beginning to realize, is the exception to all his rules.)

So he doesn't seek out help, not on purpose. But sometimes, help stumbles into his path – one way or the other – and he knows he can't afford not to take what he can get. Inadvertently, he ends up talking to therapists and veterans, doctors and scientists.

When he dismantles a Hydra cell in Baltimore, an operative tells him there's nothing he can do, that the things they wiped out are forever gone. The man smiles as he delivers the news, proud as if he believes Hydra did a good job on the Winter Soldier.

He knows it's a lie because he remembers crouching over Steve, metal arm ready to strike and deliver the killing blow, and he couldn't because Steve's words took him back years and years and in an instant he remembered that Steve was something to him, that he was important beyond his mission – that, in fact, his mission didn't matter at all compared to the enormity of his ties to the man he was supposed to annihilate.

Even after he's read his file, he doesn't fully understand what they did to him, not the science behind it. But his encounters with Steve are proof that the wipe is nowhere near as total as Hydra likes to believe.

The operative dies screaming.

"You have to keep trying to reach into yourself and find who you are," is the advice a psychologist in Pittsburgh offers, sliding her card across the table during a dinner where he's trying to eat his apple pie in peace. She happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a rogue ex-Hydra agent turned mercenary came for him, and James pushed her out of the way before he opened fire. She's been repaying him saving her life with incessant questions until he regrets not having shot the merc through her instead.

James thinks what she's saying is a load of bull. He can reach into himself as much as he wants, but he comes back empty-handed every time, and who he is remains a question mark.

Then again, he thinks of himself as James now, so maybe she has a point. Still, he crumples the card and drops it in the bin on his way out.

In a little shithole in Kentucky, a guy who doesn't look old enough to have any war-time experience even though his eyes tell a different story buys him a beer and casually mentions a VA group meeting later that night.

His eyes don't linger on the arm, but he doesn't carefully avoid it like most other people do either, and that's the only reason why James accepts the drink and doesn't tell the other man in harsh words to mind his own fucking business.

Instead, he shrugs. "Doubt that's gonna help. I can't exactly relate to your average war experience."

His words earn him a raised eyebrow. "Let me guess. You fought in some war or the other, did some shitty things you're not sure you can live with. Came home and realized you got no clue what's the difference between the good guys and the bad guys anymore. Don't have a clue which one you are. The bad days, you don't even know who the fuck you are to begin with. You're scared to go to sleep because you're not sure if you're still yourself when you wake up. Scared that one day you'll just snap and kill everyone. Any of that sound familiar?"

He shrugs because as a matter of fact, it does. It doesn't cover the whole extent of it, doesn't touch on the years and years he was frozen on ice, the mind-wipes, the way he was remodeled into the perfect attack-dog, but it hits closer to home than he expected.

"Hate to break it to you, pal, but you're not that special. Maybe we went through different kinds of shit, but a war's a war is a fucking war."

James' lip curls. "Pretty sure that's not how that poem goes."

His new friend grins. "Never was a roses kind of guy," he quips, and orders them another round.

There's a bulky man in a bar in Alaska, the kind of guy who telegraphs violence and danger just as much as the Winter Soldier does, and James is almost relieved when the stranger throws the first punch in the building's seedy back alley.

Hand-to-hand combat is almost never a challenge for James. Even discounting the arm, people are no match for his enhanced strength and skills. The only time he can remember (not that that's saying much, given the state of his mind) when he fought against an evenly matched opponent was with Steve. But with Steve, he knows now, he was holding back. Threw punches to hold rather than to crush. Put bullets into Steve's gut even though he had a clear vantage for a shot to the head.

The man from the bar is stronger and more skilled than anyone James thinks he's fought before, save from Steve. He's mean and vicious and fights dirty, but so does the Winter Soldier – and James might not quite be him anymore but unlike his memories, his fighting skills were never erased, they come by instinct. He blocks every punch, tries to spot a weakness in the other man's defense, uses his arm when he feels something sharp cut his back that he swears feels like claws.

They're too evenly matched and the fight goes on for too long. James doesn't exactly know why they're fighting in the first place, except that it feels good to let go, to throw himself full-force against someone who can give back as well as he gets and not think for a while. Doesn't know why the other guy is fighting him, if he's trying to drown out a disturbed mind with violence too or if he's just the kind of person who gets off on making someone bleed. James doesn't care either way.

After a while, even a super soldier gets tired, though, and the stranger's movements become slower and less precise as well. James leans against a brick wall, catching a breath before the next attack that never comes. He watches his opponent take a step back, dusting off his coat, and just like that, the fight's over, both of them accepting the draw for what it is.

The man sends a feral grin his way. "Not bad, kid. Who are you, then?"

It's weird to be called kid when he knows he's been born before the 1920s, but something holds his tongue when he wants to object. There's something about the guy that looks familiar, in a too-sharp way to be an actual memory from before the wipes.

He laughs, the adrenaline high from the fight twisting his bitterness into gallows humor. "Fuck if I know."

Instead of calling it bullshit, like James expects, the man narrows his eyes at him and nods. His tone is conversational and without pity – thank fuck for that – but it's not malign. "Amnesia, huh? Tricky thing. Not much you can do, except hope someone who knew you before cares enough to try and get you back. Or maybe not. Might be kinder if they didn't."

"You don't strike me as the kind sort of guy."

The smile the man offers in return has teeth that are too sharp to be human. "I'm not."

They part without any further scrapping. James might almost consider the initial dispute sparring if he didn't know that he'd been aiming to hurt, if not actually kill, and that his opponent hadn't pulled his punches either.

It's only when he's halfway across the state that it comes back to him where he's seen the guy before, an old photograph in the leaked S.H.I.E.L.D. files he downloaded a while back, a black ops initiative in the 1950s. James double-checks to make sure, and sure enough there he is, staring grimly into the camera and baring his teeth like he wants to rip out the throat of whoever made him have his picture taken. Victor Creed, the file says, and the date of birth field is blank. He looks the same as he did the other day in the bar – exactly the same, in a way that should be impossible if James himself and Steve weren't living proof that it's not.

Steve and his friend from the heli-carrier, the one whose wing James tore off, are following him. James knows, because he's been watching them through the viewfinder of a sniper rifle.

He crouches on rooftops and watches them on the streets in Montreal, watches them through the window of their hotel room in Boston, watches them take apart a Hydra facility in rural Ohio.

It's obvious that they're looking for him and he thinks he understands why, remembering the desperation in Steve's eyes when they fought. I'm with you till the end of the line. Remembering the way Steve let go of his shield and gave up, willing to let the Winter Soldier kill him rather than defend himself.

He understands, in an abstract kind of way, but he doesn't understand.

James contemplates showing himself to his two pursuers as much as he contemplates pulling the trigger – ending this chase, one way or another.

He doesn't do either. He calmly disassembles his weapon and vanishes into the night.

Sometimes, he thinks he can feel Steve's gaze on his retreating back. He doesn't stop to turn around.

He's covered the entire continent twice before he allows himself to acknowledge that he doesn't know what he's looking for.

There is no mission, no orders to follow anymore, no one to obey. He hasn't been the Winter Soldier since he jumped after Captain America and saved him from drowning in the Potomac. He isn't really Bucky Barnes yet, not with his memories barely-there, mixed-up with second-hand accounts of who he used to be.

He could search every inch of the map and it wouldn't bring him any closer to figuring out who he is.

Naturally, it's when he thinks about stopping that shit hits the fan. He's self-aware enough to acknowledge the irony with a grim smile.

Out of all the empty patches in his mind, it seems most inconceivable to him how he could ever forget that Steve Rogers is a reckless idiot lacking all common self-preservation instincts.

It should have been obvious on the heli-carrier when, rather than saving himself, Steve lifted a metal beam off an armed, lethal assassin set on killing him. Hell, it should have been obvious even on the bridge, when all it took was one glimpse at the unmasked face of his assailant to stop fighting and let himself be taken.

When he watches Steve face down a group of no less than a dozen Hydra agents in an underground base just outside New York, he has the most vivid flashback to what has to be the old days – before the Winter Soldier, before Captain America, before the war – a smaller, but no less stubborn version of Steve Rogers standing up to a bunch of school yard bullies in back alleys and between classes. Steve is bigger and stronger now, less breakable, but his opponents are infinitely more vicious as well, and he's clearly outmatched all on his own.

Where the hell is the Falcon when Steve needs him? James thinks, watching Steve take down seven – eight – ten opponents and throwing his shield at an eleventh before taking a taser to the back of his neck and going down, conscious but obviously incapacitated, and James doesn't even want to think about what kind of voltage it took to do that to him.

He's jumped down from the air duct where he was hiding before he even makes the conscious decision to join the fight.

The Hydra operative – a woman with short blonde hair and a long white scar on her left cheek – never sees him coming until it's too late and he already has a knife five inches deep in her ribcage. She dies silently, collapsing in a heap next to the prone form of Captain America, her blood spilling all over the blue of his uniform, star and stripes sprinkled in crimson.

The way Steve is looking at him feels like a punch to the gut, so much emotion on his face that James wants to turn away and run as fast and as far as he can. Steve doesn't make a move to get up – either because he can't or, more likely, because he doesn't think he has to defend himself against the Winter Soldier. It might be true, but it's also so incredibly foolish that James feels a surge of anger that's nothing like the red-hot need to destroy he used to know. Instead it's annoyed and resigned and absurdly fond, and it confuses the hell out of him.

"Didn't I tell you not to do anything stupid until I was back?"

The words come automatically, much like his unconscious choice to jump the Hydra agent, an instinctive response rather than something he has to actively think about. He didn't remember the moment when he and Steve said goodbye at Coney Island, didn't remember his old parting words until the moment he opened his mouth and the words spilled over his lips, familiar like an old, comfortable blanket.

It turns out that banter with Steve comes as naturally to him as breathing, or as protecting Steve, apparently. It's something not even years of brainwashing and conditioning and wiping could erase.

In front of him, lying on his back on the floor next to the dead Hydra agent, Steve makes a choked-up sound that's probably supposed to be laughter, even if it misses by miles.

Bucky expects something along the lines of I had her on the ropes, picking up the wry bickering – funny enough not to cut them both wide open with the onslaught of nostalgia. That's not what Steve says, though.

"Dunno if you noticed, but that's a hell of a long time to refrain from doing stupid things, Buck."

There's not a lot Bucky can say to that. It's not like he had planned to take quite this long to come back - getting experimented on, falling from the train and then spending a couple decades short of a century having his mind wiped over and over again wasn't how he imagined things would go when he enlisted – and he knows that this isn't what Steve means, exactly, but it doesn't stop him from snarking back. "Pretty sure you started doing stupid shit about ten minutes after I left, so don't blame this on me, pal." He frowns down at Steve. "Can you get up?"

Steve nods and clasps the hand (cold, unforgivable steel, and Steve's touch feels almost uncomfortably hot against it) Bucky can't even remember holding out, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.

"Come home with me," Steve pleads, in much the same voice he used on the heli-carrier when he insisted that Bucky was his friend – stupidly stubborn and infinitely patient and pitifully desperate all at once.

Home is a vague, foreign concept that holds very little meaning to Bucky. He isn't sure which home Steve even means – the place where they used to grow up doesn't exist anymore (he knows because he checked), and Steve's apartment in D.C. doesn't exactly fit the bill for either of them. There is no place he can imagine to which the label applies.

"That's a bad idea," he says, but he knows it's not a no, and Steve knows it too.

Even with the better part of his memories missing, he's aware that there's precious little point in saying no to Steve. If he walks away now, no matter where he goes to hide, all Steve will do is track him down and follow him again and take stupid risks until Bucky caves. He doesn't need to remember everything to know that Steve, when he puts his mind to something, when he truly cares about something, might as well be an immovable object.

The only way of stopping Steve is to kill him, and Bucky clearly can't – not even when he's barely himself, as recent experiences have proved.

Steve's smile is sunshine-bright, blinding. "I probably had worse ideas."

Bucky knows to pick his battles.

He dreams of blood and pain and ice. Vague sensations rather than clear events, but they're enough to make him wake up drenched in cold sweat, panic settling in his chest like a heavy stone.

The floorboards creak and the door is pulled open. "You okay, Buck?"

Still in the throes of his dream, he's out of his bed and has the intruder pressed against the wall with metal fingers clamped around his throat, cutting off his air. It takes a moment too long until the familiarity of the voice registers.

Steve. Fuck. He lets go and takes a hurried step back, curses and apologies running together as he surveys the damage he's done. "Shit. Sorry, I– I didn't mean to– I didn't think–"

Around Steve's neck, dark finger-shaped bruises start blooming. The awful sight makes Bucky's hand clench into a fist, so tight that the metal makes a shrieking sound of protest, and he wishes he could use it against himself.

"Hey, it's okay." Steve's tone is calm and steady, a slight scratchiness of his voice the only evidence that less than a minute ago, he was being choked so hard that he almost passed out. "Don't worry about it. It was stupid of me to come barging in like that. I should have knocked first."

He steps towards Bucky, invading his personal space in slow, sure movements as if Bucky is nothing but a frightened little kitten hiding under the couch after it clawed up the cushions. Bucky startles when he feels warm skin against his bionic hand, Steve prying open his fist with gentle pressure before interlacing their fingers, fragile flesh and bone sliding against metal.

Bucky swallows, throat gone dry. He wants to pull his hand away, get as much space between himself and Steve as he can. At the same time, he can't stop watching the way their hands look, wrapped into one another.

"How much do you remember?" Steve asks him on the third day.

He doesn't know how to answer that. "I went to your exhibition. Read some books, too."

The frown on Steve's face is achingly familiar by now. "But do you actually remember any of it?" When he only receives a shrug in response, he offers, "I can tell you things if you want me to. How it used to be back in the day."

Bucky shrugs again. He trusts Steve. Unlike the dusty biographies in the libraries and the articles online, he could be sure that it had actually happened and wasn't just something someone fabricated to have an interesting tale to tell. But it would still only be someone else's story. Steve could share a million anecdotes from the good old days, and it would never be the same as remembering.

He lets his head drop back against the soft cushion of the couch where they're sitting and turns to Steve, watching him with tired eyes. He's looking at Bucky with a solemn, hopeful expression and Bucky knows that all Steve wants it to have his friend back and for things to return to how they were before, but he can't give him that. No amount of stories from their childhood will get them back to how they used to be, individually or together.

"I'd rather make new memories," he admits, steeling himself against Steve's disappointment.

Instead, a slow, gentle smile warms Steve's face. "I'd like that." His expression is so earnest and sweet that it feels like a fist clenching around Bucky's heart, too much and at the same time, inexplicably, not enough.

It's the first time he thinks about kissing Steve. (The first time he can remember, anyway, can't tell whether it's an old urge from before, or something new.)

They're sitting right next to each other, their thighs almost touching. Steve's presence beside him is a warm and physical thing, tangible, and the desire to lean in and close the last few inches of space between them crashes into Bucky like a tidal wave.

He wants, wants so much, more than he thinks he's wanted anything in a long time.

When Steve goes on a mission with his ragged team of superhero friends, Bucky finds himself on rooftops with his sniper rifle once again, watching Steve through the crosshairs and picking off one by one spidery alien creatures that get too close for comfort.

One of them explodes in spray of goo all over Steve. Startled, he turns around and squints up to where Bucky is hiding, rising his hand in a silent salute.

Technically, Bucky isn't supposed to be here. He's supposed to stay at Steve's (their) place and recover. He knows it's partially because Steve has the foolish idea of keeping him safe, partially because the others don't trust the Winter Soldier at their backs. He doesn't blame them – he wouldn't trust himself either, but he can't stay home sitting idly on the couch while Steve is off getting himself killed fighting monsters from outer space.

The back of his neck prickles, alerting him to a presence behind him. When he spins around, ready to eradicate another alien spider, he finds Iron Man instead, staring at him. The red and gold visor is down, making it impossible to gauge his expression.

Bucky doesn't lower the weapon. (Steve will be mad if he kills his friend, but that doesn't mean that he can't shoot Stark Jr. in the leg if he has to defend himself.)

"I thought Steve told you to stay home. Isn't the Winter Soldier supposed to be good at following orders?"

The insensitivity of the question seems deliberate, calculated to push buttons. Bucky refuses to give him the satisfaction. "No, that was just the brainwashing," he snarks back. "And if you guys were doing a better job protecting Steve, I wouldn't have to follow him around."

"Not sure if you noticed, Cyborg Boy, but Captain America doesn't really need protecting. Your little friend is all grown up now."

Bucky realigns his aim a fraction and blows up an alien creeping in behind Stark, satisfied when Stark flinches as he fires the shot, doing a quick double take over his shoulder where green goo is splattered on the ground. "Seriously? Have you met Steve? The guy hasn't met a suicide mission he didn't immediately latch onto. If anyone needs protecting, it's him. Semi-invincible super-soldier or not."

Stark's face is still hidden, but his voice, muffled by the metal faceplate, sounds amused. "So you're following Capsicle around, watching his six?"

"Damn right I do. Always have done, haven't I?" Of course, when he says 'always', he excludes the time he spent as Hydra's trained dog.

To his surprise, Stark doesn't call him on it. "Well then, by all means, carry on," he declares magnanimously, motioning down to where Steve is holding his own, more or less, against the enemy. Bucky knows this because he's kept assessing the situation out of the corner of his eye, ready to take action if need be.

He snorts. "So glad I have your approval. Means the world to me."

Stark turns around and shoots up into the sky, but not before he flips Bucky a finger as he takes off. Bucky sends a cocky salute his way, his lips twitching into a smile as he gets back into position.

By the time Steve comes home, clean and uninjured but so tired he looks like folding over, Bucky is back on the couch, his feet on the coffee table and last night's baseball game on TV. If Steve hadn't spotted him during the battle, he could probably convincingly pretend that he hadn't moved an inch since this morning, even if he spent almost an hour in the shower cleaning smelly alien goo out of the joints of his metal arm. He preferred it when they were fighting Nazis in Europe. At least they didn't explode when you shot them.

It's been a couple of hours since they won the fight and the last of the spider monsters was reduced to a puddle of green on the asphalt. Steve, he assumes, has spent the time between then and now holed up in debriefings every bit as tiresome as the actual fighting.

Steve drops down next to him on the couch, closing his eyes. The weariness radiates from his body in waves. There's a large, fading bruise on the right side of his neck, already so pale that Bucky probably wouldn't have noticed it if it wasn't directly in his line of view. He's certain that Steve didn't get it while he was watching, so it must have either happened before he arrived at the scene or later when Bucky thought it was over and he was on his way home.

"Thank you," Steve says, drawing Bucky's attention towards him. He smiles. "You helped a lot today. And it was nice knowing you were up there with your rifle, having my back. Even if I did tell you to stay home."

Bucky brushes off the gentle scolding. "I told you to stay home when I left for the war. Didn't stop you from letting some crazy scientist experiment on you and take on Hydra all by yourself in Italy. I figured turnabout's fair play."

"Jerk," Steve mutters under his breath. It sounds like an endearment.

The urge to kiss him is back, and it's too strong to resist, so Bucky doesn't. He turns his head a little more and closes the distance between them, capturing Steve's mouth with his. He keeps the kiss light, just the soft press of lips against lips, trying to read Steve's reaction and ready to move away if he gets the impression that he's crossing a line.

For a moment, Steve is perfectly still, as if frozen in place, and Bucky feels panic settle in his stomach like a stone. He's about to move back when Steve suddenly breaks from his stillness with a start, his hand coming up and clenching in Bucky's still too-long hair, pulling him closer. His grip is so tight it's almost painful, and he kisses back with so much ferocity and desperation that all Bucky can do is hold on, his metal hand fisting Steve's shirt, and let it consume him.

When they break apart, because even chemically enhanced super-humans need to breathe, apparently, Steve lets his forehead rest against Bucky's. The tranquility of the moment is nice, just comfortable silence and the knowledge that what's been building between them affects both of them in equal measure.

Steve closes his eyes and smiles a content little smile that makes Bucky's heart ache. "I've wanted to do that since we were fifteen," he says, a little breathlessly.

It's the sort of admission that brings an amount of expectations along that should make Bucky feel pressured, but it doesn't. He shrugs. "Honestly, I have no idea how long I wanted to do this. Don't really give a fuck. All I know is, I want it now, and unless someone comes along and brainwashes me again, that's probably not going to change."

Steve's face scrunches up as if he was in pain. "Don't make jokes about that." When Bucky rolls his eyes and wants to make a snappy comeback, he adds, "Please."

It sounds too serious and heartfelt for Bucky to be teasing him over it, so he just nods. He leans back in and kisses Steve again, chasing the ghosts of the past away.

The gossip papers catch wind of the fact that the rumors of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes' death have, in fact, been greatly exaggerated. One of them prints a weekly series of articles about his life.

Bucky reads them, and sometimes he feels a pang of recognition. More often, though, the memories elude him, and it's just words on paper, telling someone else's story. Steve tells him that not all of it is true – some of it is completely made up, some of it is embellished and exaggerated beyond recognition – but Bucky often can't tell the difference.

It bothers him, but only in a very general way. It's more the principle of it – that Hydra messed with his mind badly enough that they left holes he can't repair – rather than the missing memories themselves. He knows he's never going to recover everything, but he also knows it's not going to change who he is now. Identity, he's learned, is more than the sum of our memories.

Things he remembers:

Diving into the Potomac to save Steve.

Sticky green alien remains in his hair, gunfire residue on his fingers, and the adrenaline from a fight burning through his veins.

A nightmare about the memory wipes that had him thrashing in his sleep, waking up screaming with his throat raw and his eyes wet.

Stark fixing a malfunction on his arm, while bitching at him about failing to take proper care of a priceless piece of technology.

A lazy Sunday breakfast when the pancakes got burned because he was distracted by Steve walking in fresh from the shower, fluffy white towel riding low on his hips.

He makes new memories every second of every new day. This time, no one is ever going to take them from him.

End.