Has everyone already done their own version of this already? Yes. Am I going to jump on the bandwagon anyway even though I'm really late and I'm not doing anything innovative with it? Yes. Why am I doing this? I have no idea. I lost control of my life a long time ago. I have yet to find it. Help.

His name is James Buchanan Barnes. (He has a name at all.) His thoughts skitter awkwardly over the syllables, sure of how to pronounce them but not sure how they fit together.

"Bucky" doesn't feel right either, but the man-on-the-bridge—Steve, he corrects himself, Steve, the name on the papers while they were debriefing him, the name spattered on every paragraph in the exhibit—had called him that, and it fits in the Soldier's mouth a little better.

He had gone to the Smithsonian to see who Steve was. If Steve wasn't lying (something recoiled at the thought, not in pain but in... but in... what?), there would be intel on him, too—Bucky, whoever the Soldier was before... well, before—but it hadn't struck him as something to look for, or look into. He'd be a footnote in Captain America's shadow.

(He practically had his own section. Photos, grainy fragments of video, Steve and a man who looked like the Soldier, talking and laughing softly. Interviews with the Howling Commandos, mentioning how close they were, known each other since they were kids, never without the other one if they could help it—)

The exhibit didn't tell him anything about Steve that his mission details had not. It didn't tell him much about James Buchanan Barnes, but it said more than he feels comfortable with, the knowledge slithering beneath his skin and curling into every part of him, whispering.

He knows his birthday. The thought won't connect in his head, just circling round and round with his name.

He needs to go somewhere. He knows that much. The Soldier is not used to maintaining his own body, but he understands how people die, and by the same token he understands how they don't, so he can make do with that well enough.

But. He wasn't built for infiltration. It took time, and far too many people seeing his face, and they never wanted him out of storage for very long—

(Were they afraid of this? That the programming wouldn't hold, that he would remember?)

—he was an assassin, but more in the way of a sniper rifle than a poison. Stealing, and not getting caught (SHIELD was gone but the remnants were there, Hydra was always there, and if either one of them saw him...), was a poison skill.

He's sure it's easy to learn. He isn't willing to take the risk without someone there to disable the cameras.

The Soldier isn't used to not being... observed? Taken care of? Protected? As long as he can remember—hah—there has always been something there, watching him. Not exactly benevolent, definitely not loving, but with his survival in mind. He has always had eyes in the sky that would pull him out if they needed to.

(He doesn't think what they would do if they spotted him now. He doesn't. His left arm flinches, pain in what's left of the bone. He doesn't.)

He can't be seen. He can't risk being seen.

(Has anyone else ever managed to piss off two immensely secretive, mostly underground, semi-worldwide organisations full of dedicated killers at the same time? It seems like something noteworthy.)

He can't, because whoever saw him might recognise him, and whoever recognised him would—

...Not whoever. Not quite. Not everyone.

–

The apartment is... normal. There is no sign of the violence that took place—the floors are bloodless, the walls unmarked, the broken glass swept away. It's not immaculate, but it wasn't meant to be. The Soldier cannot remember how Steve stored his belongings, whether he was neat or messy or somewhere in between, but SHIELD—Hydra—whoever had been responsible for the cleanup would surely have put everything back exactly the same, so he assumes Steve is somewhere in the middle, mostly because of a penchant for leaving sketchbooks lying around.

There is also a single, worn, blue sock lying crumpled in the corner. The Soldier doubts it has any significance.

Notably absent from the apartment, however, is its occupant. The Soldier wavers, weight shifting onto his back foot as his gloved fingers still on one of the sketchbook covers. He hadn't planned for this.

Logic, trickling—Steve will come home eventually, or he would have packed his things. Steve will come home soon , or he would have taken his sketchbooks. He wouldn't leave for very long without—

The Soldier swallows, convulsively, because he doesn't know where that thought came from, he doesn't know how he knows that, if he knows that, is this how it's going to be now, broken fragments surfacing only when he isn't looking, cutting him raw to settle in the spaces they used to be, bleeding—

There is the small noise of someone flicking a handgun's safety off. "He's not here," says a voice—female; young, but firm, used to being obeyed when guns are involved. The Soldier turns to look at her. Has he seen her before? He thinks he has, maybe. She's blonde, soft around the edges if you don't know where to look.

"Where is he?" His voice is coarse. He can imagine rust flaking off of his throat, settling in his lungs.

"Away." The woman's voice is steady. "We thought Hydra'd come after him. Guess we were right."

The Soldier takes a step away from the table. " I'm not," he tries. "That isn't why," he tries again.

Her jaw tightens. "Right. Get out."

He tilts his head at her, curious. He knows a thousand ways to kill her before she could even graze anything vital. He knows some ways before she could even react enough to pull the trigger.

She knows, too. Her hands are shaking, but she keeps aiming the gun at his head. Her eyes are frightened, but she doesn't let it show in her expression.

Resolute. He could kill her. He's killed more dangerous people than her. She knows it, and she isn't backing down.

There's a tickle, at first, in the back of his brain, and then that feeling again, of something clawing back into place, and he feels sick, and he can't kill her. She saw him, she was with SHIELD, she knows where he is right now, the state he's in, can't be trusted, but he can't... kill her... when she's doing that, when she's acting like—

(a sack of skin stretched over a frail skeleton, that same look in the eye that isn't swollen shut already)

He can't. He can't.

The Winter Soldier is out the window before Agent 13 can adjust her aim.

–

He goes to the library. He broke into a house, far enough out of the city that there are actual houses instead of apartment buildings (cameras in the halls), took a shower. He doubts the family will notice the slight lightness in their shampoo bottle, he left no other evidence, shut the window again, locked the back door behind him.

He feels cleaner now, looks a little less unkempt, but he still gets disapproving looks from the library patrons when he sits at one of the computers. They're clunky, ancient things, he thinks—unless he's just far too used to Hydra tech?—but they work well enough.

Steve is a priority target. (Something rebels at the thought of Steve hiding, running away, but it makes sense. It's a good idea. And maybe they're not giving him a choice.) Wilson is secondary at most, a slightly dangerous sidekick Steve picked up from somewhere.

(There's more to him than that, the Soldier thinks. Hydra probably doesn't agree yet. Probably.)

Wilson may still be about his normal business, whatever that normal business may be, and if any of that normal business is public enough for Bucky to find without Hydra's help, he might be able to find him.

What the Soldier will do if he does is not something he wants to think about. He has the awful feeling it will end with another gun pointed at his head, though.

As his dubious luck would have it, Wilson hosts group therapy meetings for veterans. As his dubious luck would have it, its Facebook page cheerfully announces that the next meeting will happen as usual.

Bucky notes the address and gets up, ducking his head and slipping out of the library, silent as a breath.

–

He thinks Wilson might recognise him, but the Falcon gives him the same kind smile he gives to everyone else. If there's recognition in his eyes, he hides it well.

"Sam," he says, and his voice comes easily, smoothly. Calming, the Soldier thinks.

It puts him on edge worse than anything else. People were never calming unless they wanted something.

He tries to clear his throat anyway. "James," he offers.

Sam smiles again, like the Soldier has done something brave and magnificent by introducing himself. "Hey, James," he says. "Good to have you here. Don't feel like you have to say anything if you don't want to, all right?" A friendly clap on the shoulder—the flesh one, thankfully—and he turns to greet a hard-eyed woman in a shiny, new wheelchair.

James stays for the meeting. He doesn't say anything. Many of the stories are of flashbacks. Most of the flashbacks, the Soldier provided himself.

He feels... uncomfortable knowing that. Too many footprints, too many echoes. His codename will be spoken again, not in hushed whispers.

That's why there is a lump in his stomach as he hears about strangers' nightmares. Right?

–

First unheard message.

"Steve, it's Sam. Look, you've... you've gotta come home, man, Bucky's here. Came to one of the meetings. Didn't try to so much as trip anybody, even if he looked like he was gonna bolt out the window if anyone looked at him too long. ...I still don't exactly trust anyone who rips my damn wings off like that, but god, he looks like hell, and if you think he's... Well, anyway. Don't know where he's gone, but I made sure he ate something before he got out. Talk to you later, Cap."

End of messages.

–

He watches Steve's building. He watches Steve's building until the agent leaves, and then he hops from another roof to that one, slinks down the fire escape as quietly as it lets him.

Steve keeps his windows unlocked. The Soldier noticed the first time he entered, was puzzled by it, but it serves him well now as he shimmies it open and crawls inside.

There are no bugs here anymore. (He wonders how he knows, but absently—it's a routine thought, now that bits of him are coming back with no introduction or context, and it no longer bothers him much.) He lets his shoulders relax a little.

He is in the kitchen. Steve is not. The milk is getting sour, the smell turning the Soldier's stomach when he experimentally opens the jug; Steve hasn't been here at all.

Bucky falters. But, but, it is still safe here, a blind spot, shelter and clothing and food (not all of which is inedible yet). If he is quiet, the agent won't know he's here.

It's better than his other options. (He has no other options.)

He stays.

–

The Soldier comes back when the Captain does.

Rogers wants to go home, it's clear in every line of him, but unfortunately there is a group of people clad in suspiciously alien-looking armour that don't want him to go home again. The Soldier raided an old Hydra safehouse the moment he saw Rogers with the shield—couldn't help it, the Mission pounding within his skull like a migraine, lessening only when his fingers curled around the cold metal of a sniper rifle—and now he waits, watching the Captain fight through the crosshairs.

He fires between breaths. He misses, and one of Rogers's assailants goes down in a flush of red. Fights back the confusion (he doesn't miss, he doesn't miss harder shots than that), readjusts, doesn't breathe at all this time, watches—

He misses again. He misses ten times, until the Captain is alone, surrounded by the corpses of his attackers.

Steve breathes deep, turns towards the roof where the Soldier perches. He salutes.

Bucky drops the rifle like it burns. His lungs are too tight, his headache screaming. His stomach lurches and he retches onto the too-hot concrete, curling into himself and wondering why he hurts so much if he wasn't the one being shot.

–

He doesn't show his face in Steve's apartment.

He still stays, because he has nowhere and nothing else, but he won't let himself be seen. He could, he knows—nowhere is safe, not really, but Steve is... he... he...—but he never quite goes through with it, ducking around corners, behind furniture.

(He sleeps for three hours curled under Steve's bed, and it's the least frightened he can remember feeling since before he was broken.)

Steve knows he's there. Bucky is eating, moving things around, using his towels. Steve would have to be an idiot not to know, and Bucky knows, Bucky remembers that he isn't. Even if he did let the Soldier live, even if he did just lie there when—

Steve definitely knows, because he keeps making two plates of whatever he's eating, putting one of them on the kitchen table and leaving to eat the other.

Bucky can't thank him, can't bring himself to be visible.

He does the dishes, instead. It might be enough.

–

Steve doesn't push. It makes the Soldier—Bucky—

(Are they the same? Have they always been the same? What am I now? one or both or neither thinks, and no one has an answer.)

—hesitate. Steve, he thinks—recollection and reconnaissance together—Steve pushes. Steve doesn't stay still. Doesn't back down. Never hesitates.

(Even when he should, a ripple of fondness, baffling.)

It feels so much like a long con, integrating into the target's life by deliberately being as harmless as possible, that the Soldier almost leaves. Bucky doesn't, Bucky can't, and the Soldier backs down again, and the Soldier never backs down either, and it hurts, it hurts that he doesn't understand any of this—

Steve doesn't push. Bucky does.

He attends the VA meetings. Falcon—Wilson—Sam is in regular contact with Steve, and Steve sometimes shows up to the meetings himself. (Shoulders tucked in, he always behaves like he's small when he isn't being the Captain, and a lot of the vets recognise him and nobody makes a big deal of it, if Captain fucking America needs therapy sometimes then there's no shame in it, no stigma, and how does he do it how does he help people like that how does he help people by needing help himself how—) Neutral territory, or no man's land, or maybe just a tiny bit of the world that hasn't turned into a warzone yet. Yet.

Either way, it has no one's markings, no allegiances, no flags in the dirt. Not crowded, not empty. Steve talks to everyone. Talking to Bucky won't be remarked on. Bucky won't be remarked on, either. (He's not the only one with a fancy prosthetic; he doesn't even bother with gloves anymore. He's not the only homeless vet in the room, either. He never is. He should be, he thinks, and he's startled by that anger, startled that it isn't directed at himself.) It's the best position, the safest he has now.

They couldn't program the sniper out of him. He hates close combat, hates being less than fifty feet away from the threat. But he knows how to deal, when he has to.

(He has to now.)

Steve doesn't show the first time, and Bucky has no idea if he's relieved or not. He is still figuring it out in the second meeting when a chair near his shifts and Steve sits down.

Bucky tries not to freeze. His head turns, slowly, towards his—his—partnermissionfriendtarget, but none of his other muscles will respond. Steve isn't looking at him, but he's paying attention, his eyes directed towards the front of the room but not focussed on it, his back tense even as he slowly leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees.

Slowly. Steve is doing everything slowly. He's good, he makes it look like it isn't deliberate, but Bucky knows better, there's an empty chair between them that Steve could have sat on and didn't, and he hates it, he hates the idea that Steve pities him and he hates the idea that Steve fears him and he can't decide which he hates more and the conflict is getting louder louder and he can't hear his own voice, has to feel the rasp in his throat to realise he speaks at all.

"I'm not him," his voice says. "I'm not your—" partnermissionfriendtarget— "Bucky."

Steve doesn't look at him, but the tension eases out of his spine, just a little (like blood from a corpse when you turn it over and he hates—he hates—he can't—), and his fingers relax, no longer holding the empty air. His lips part for a breath, his Adam's apple shifts up as he prepares to reply, but it's a long second before the reply comes. "I'm not your Steve."

No. Bucky's eyebrows furrow. There are so many things that don't make sense. None of them felt like an insult before this. "You're a hero," he says, an objection. His voice cracks. When did he last speak?

The corner of Steve's mouth twitches. It isn't a smile. "I've killed more people than you have, Bucky."

Bucky chokes out a noise. It isn't a laugh.

Finally, finally, Steve looks at him. It's a tiny thing, he doesn't even turn his head, his eyes are the only things that move, but he looks at Bucky and for just a second Bucky is real. "You under Hydra's control doesn't count. That wasn't you."

"Wasn't it?" The words are bitter, gravel ground into him until the stench-taste is in his bones.

Steve sighs, leans back in his chair. "'I was just following orders' isn't an excuse I accept lightly," he says. "But—I saw what they did to you, Bucky. There wasn't a you left to disobey."

"You don't know that," Bucky hisses. His vision blurs.

"The intel we got—afterwards was clear. They weren't just wiping your memories, Bucky, they were—" Steve's breath hitched sharply. He brought a hand up to rub at his face, not quickly enough to hide the tremble in his lips before it passed. "That machine was—was reprogramming you. Tasha doesn't even know how you've come back from that."

Bucky tastes blood, unwelds his teeth from the inside of his cheek. "Maybe I didn't."

Steve looks at him again, long and steady, and Bucky doesn't know if he's being measured or memorised.

He fidgets and is silent, staring back even though it makes him want to claw out of his skin, because the only thing worse would be turning his back on—on—he's not my enemy, a child's plaintiveness, tugging at the sleeve of a human-shaped weapon.

"You could have taken the shot," Steve says. "Killed me. But you took out more of my attackers than I did."

Bucky doesn't want to listen. He realises, now, with a creeping horror, that Steve could have gotten to cover at any point. Steve knew that Bucky was dropping those agents, he knew which direction the shots came from, he knew. He knew, and he didn't move to cover. Left himself open, to an unknown wearing his best friend's face, and Bucky's stomach turns again because how, how hadn't he seen, hadn't he figured out that if he'd tried to put a bullet in that (beautiful) stupid brain, Steve would have let him.

If Steve sees Bucky's face change, he doesn't show it. "Only one person apart from Sam who's ever had my six like that, Bucky, and it sure as hell wasn't Hydra's Soldier."

He can't. He can't think about that. He can't let himself be back, because being back means that he has to—he has to— "I remember," he says, and he can barely even hear himself. "The memories are coming back, but they're not just from... before." His throat closes. He won't cry. He won't.

Steve is silent. After a long moment—is it seconds? Minutes?—he reaches out, leaves his hand resting on the empty chair between them. Palm up. Fingers open.

Bucky twitches. (The knowledge, heavy and sudden, that no one has touched him without the intent to harm him, not knowing what he was.) He wants to bolt, every muscle in his body locked tight, a tinnitus-whine kind of tension.

He could run, and Steve wouldn't stop him.

(He doesn't want to run anymore.)

It's Steve's right hand on the chair. Bucky moves, shaky but sure. The metal hand is cold when he hasn't been using it (a splintering cheekbone under his knuckles, mechanisms hotter than the blood staining their shell), but when it touches Steve's palm, he curls his fingers around it. Like it's real. Like it doesn't bother him. (Like he doesn't bother him.)

"We'll get you through it," Steve says. "Promise."

Bucky snorts. "End of the line?" He tries for sarcasm. He gets a plea.

Steve squeezes his hand. "Yeah," he says. Bucky doesn't answer.

(He can breathe. He can breathe. Oh, God. He can breathe.)