"When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall."

-Brian Doyle, "Joyas Volardores"

The Winter Soldier

The soldier stares down at him, grainy from being blown up beyond life-size. The exhibit hall is crowded—kids and their parents, couples with their arms thrown over one another's shoulders, one rowdy school group stringing themselves out all the way down to the exhibit's entrance—but the Winter Soldier doesn't register any of them. The only thing that matters is that photograph.

It's him.

It's him but it's not him. He doesn't remember taking the picture. He doesn't remember fighting in World War II, and he doesn't remember the man with blond hair whose face is plastered all over this exhibit, the man he had dragged out of the Potomac because it felt right in a way that he couldn't imagine rightness feeling. Because he knew him. But he doesn't remember him.

Someone jostles against his back. The Winter Soldier tenses, ready to fight, ready to kill—but it's only a little girl in a sweater and a pink-and-purple tutu. She stares up at him. He glares back. Her eyes widen in fear and she whirls around and runs off. The Winter Soldier turns back to the photograph. His blood is up, adrenaline coursing through his system. For half a second, he thought he'd been caught.

If they catch him, they'll punish him, send shocks of white heat up and down his spine. That is one thing he remembers. The pain of electricity.

He doesn't want to get caught.

The Winter Soldier takes a step back, eyes still on the photograph. The crowd surges around him. He thinks that if he stares at it long enough he'll remember something, even if it's just the scent of pine trees and cordite, the sound of men yelling, the flash of the camera bulb.

Nothing.

He turns, lets himself sink into the current of the crowd. It winds through the exhibit, past photographs and interactive displays and images, over and over, of that man with the blond hair. Captain America, the information cards read. Steve Rogers. He recognizes the names, but only because they were told to him by his handlers. Just names. Just a mission. The missions themselves always fill him with a prickle of anticipation, excitement—but the names are only ever names. Who he's killing, it doesn't matter.

The displays start to blur together. The exhibit hall's tall ceiling amplifies the voices of the crowd into a loud humming noise that reminds him of electricity. His stomach knots, but he pushes through, staring up at the images, hoping that in the blur of them he'll find some detail to latch on to. He weaves through the exhibit, deeper and deeper. This place is a labyrinth.

He passes a darkened room, recorded voices spilling out, talking about Captain America, and how he's the encapsulation of honor and glory and other abstractions the Winter Soldier knows are meaningless justifications from men who don't want to admit that they like killing, too.

The path veers sharply left. The Winter Soldier follows it because he has no real choice. The voices chatter around him. He hates all these people, wishes he could be here alone. Maybe then he could think. Maybe then he could remember.

The crowd is pressing around a display on the far wall. More photographs. The blond man at the center of a V made of soldiers. The Howling Commandos, says the sign hanging overhead. That soldier is there, the one that looks like him. That is him.

The Winter Soldier pushes through the crowd, trying to get a closer look. The display is not just photographs: there are clothes, too, uniforms. Captain America's uniform is missing, a sign politely informing the spectators that it's been taken down for repair, and the Winter Soldier has a flash of the Helicarrier, his fist pummeling into the blond man's face, blood splattering across a red-white-and-blue jumpsuit. His gaze floats left, to the neat little information card. James "Bucky" Barnes. It's just a uniform, brown and drab, like the ones he's seen in old war footage.

Dots of light flicker at the edge of his vision. He can feel his heart pounding against his ribcage. It's just a uniform. A buzzing starts at the back of his head, a low mean whine. Electricity. It's just a uniform. The buzzing grows louder and louder and the dots of light flicker faster and faster and the Winter Soldier can't move, he can only stare at the uniform as a heat of rage rises up through his body, and even though it's just a uniform from a war that ended seventy years ago, and even though he doesn't remember it, doesn't remember the way the fabric felt against his skin or the way the belt cinched against his waist, that uniform makes the Winter Soldier want to kill.