Another Winter Soilder fic
Feb. 28th, 2016 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xt1meI figured I better post this before Civil War comes out and Joss'es everything.
Bucky's memory was coming back slowly but surely. He had been told that Hydra hadn't managed to erase his memories completely, only block his accesses to them. His brain had always tried to heal this damage. It was why they had to keep wiping him.
But things weren't coming back in any particular order. Steve was a great help with sorting the memories before and during the war. But it wasn't just Buck's memories coming back, it was also the Winter Soldier's. He knew it made Steve uncomfortable that he had asked Natasha for his file but it helped to organise his memories rather then just letting them pop up and blind-side him. He couldn't really explain how these were memories stolen from him as well. That remembering all the people he killed, faces blurring together into a smeared mess, all the pain and isolation, was worth it to have what he had now.
He had context for things.
As the Winter Solider he had been used to his body just knowing things. The first time he remembered learning to use a gun, just how bad he had been when starting out, was first time he really felt human again. He hadn't always been a weapon.
And it wasn't as if his time as the Winter Soldier had been all misery. They could have hardly kept him as a functioning asset if all they did was torture him after all.
Bucky woke suddenly. The nightmare was already fading but his heart was still racing. Sighing he got out of bed. He knew from bitter experience he wasn't going to go back to sleep anytime soon.
Shuffling off the get something to drink he tried to recall the details of the dream. And it was definitely a dream and not a memory for once.
The terror of the nightmare had left rapidly. A feeling of utter incredulousness took it's place.
A chair had been trying to eat him.
It didn't take a genius to interpret that but it hadn't even been the chair they used to use to wipe him. It was some fancy gilded thing he vaguely recall being the last whole piece of furniture in a ruined building. He didn't know were that memory was from, though. The war, a mission from Hydra, a movie? It obviously wasn't important, just another random thing his brain had decided to toss up as it sorted though the mess.
He passed by the couch and noticed Steve watching something on the TV with the sound down low. He didn't need to ask why, it wasn't like he had a monopoly on nightmares.
Making sure he was making some noise Bucky wandered over.
"Re-living your chorus girl days, huh?" he said nodding at the screen which was showing a line of women dancing on a stage.
Steve looked up at him with a soft smile and said, "Well, at least I know I look good in tights."
Suddenly, Bucky's crazy brain decided to mess with him some more and threw up a random image.
"I wore tights!" he blurted out.
Steve stared but Bucky ignored him as he tried to chase down the memory. There was nothing concrete, just a few notes of a song, not enough to even hum along to, but he could remember wearing-
"There was a pair that was defiantly too small for me, they were really uncomfortable. And there was one pair that had a hole my toe kept going through." Bucky refocused on Steve letting the fractured memory go. It would come back or it wouldn't.
"Steve," Bucky said, flopping down (he had practised that) next to his friend on the couch, "Hydra made me wear tights."
Steve started to giggle helplessly. "Well, we always knew they were evil."
Bucky was doing better these days so he was spending more time getting to know Steve's friends. Hawkeye was just finishing up a story about losing his pants on a mission when a memory unlocked in his head.
"I had to do a mission naked once." He announced. Steve started to get a worried look on his face so he hurried to clarify.
"It was because of the uniform. At first they would just dress me in a variation of whatever uniform they had around but early on one of the handlers decided there should be some sort of Winter Solider uniform. I think the guy designed it himself. It's only function was to look intimidating. Which was dumb since people weren't supposed to get a good look at me. Besides, I'm going around covered in weapons and I have a metal arm. I'm going to look intimidating anyway.
But this guy, he had me in this leather monstrosity. It was all black and shiny and squeaked when I moved. Real stealthy. It was also so tight I could barely breath let alone manoeuvre.
But it's not like I was ever asked for an opinion, so they sent me off and I've barely started the job when suddenly every single seam on the thing rips apart. I'm really glad there no evidence of this because I had to finish the mission with bits of fabric hanging on by the straps holding my weapons.
Afterwards I just walked up to the handler and dumped the remains of the uniform in front of him. I'm really glad I can remember this now because the look on the guys face was something to treasure. He was so red he stared to go purple and he was just opening and closing his mouth like he was trying to yell but nothing was coming out."
Bucky smiled at the others.
"I went into cryo after that and he wasn't there the next time I was out. I like to think he keeled over from a heart attack."
Bucky noticed it when Steve came back from his run with Sam.
"Is that glitter?" he asked, pointing to his face.
Stave groaned rubbing his face in his hands and completely failing to dislodge the stubborn substance. "Is it still there?"
"Yeah, stay still." Bucky wiped the fleck off. "How'd you get glitter on you while runing?" he asked stepping back.
"It's from that press thing last night. I had a shower when I came home and one this morning and I'm still finding pieces on me."
"I see you one better. I was in a fight in a warehouse in the .. seventies? I think. And I punched though a box carrying the stuff." Buck waved his left hand slightly. "It went everywhere. I don't know if you've ever tried to be stealthy when shedding glitter everywhere but it's not easy. They hosed me down three time before putting me back in cryo but the Techs were finding it in my arm for the next decade."
Steve was making that face he made when he wasn't sure if wanted to find something funny of horrifying. Bucky sighed. Shoving him a little he said, "Go have another shower. Take advantage of the fact we never run out of hot water now. Maybe that will get rid of the rest of it."
Woodstock
Bucky wandered into the room were Steve's looking things up on the computer. It was part of the ongoing project to catch up on the last seventy years. Bucky was doing his own version but he sometimes got blind-sided by odd snippets of memories so he tended to be a lot more haphazard about it.
But the music coming from the speakers had seemed familiar so he decided to come over to see what Steve was looking up.
Looking over his shoulder to see the picture on the screen, Bucky realised something. "Hey, that's me," he pointed to one of the people in a crowd.
Steve looked up at him. "You were at Woodstock?"
Bucky thought about it the memory unfolding unexpectedly. "It was a music festival or something right?" he asked. Steve just nodded, obviously not wanting to interrupt while Bucky remembered something.
He sorted though the memory, "I was sent after a target who had slipped their bodyguards to attend. It was pretty easy for me to look the part of the other people there so I was sent off on my own. I'm pretty sure they didn't expect me to find the target so quickly in that crowd but it turned out they had overdosed on something before I even arrived. I was supposed to be picked up after it was over to avoid suspicion so I just spent three days listening to music and dancing. I'm pretty sure I came back smelling like every single recreational drug out there, but the target was dead so no one cared. It was like a holiday."
"Do you want to stay here and listen to music?" Steve asked.
"Yeah," Bucky smiled.
Bucky ran a hand though his hair and then pulled out a few strands to look at it. Steve noticed and asked, "Are you thinks about getting it cut?"
They were with some Steve's friends.
Bucky shrugged, "I don't know, maybe. I'm kind of used to it. Maybe I should do something crazy with it first like some of those kids on TV."
"Ok, I've gotta know," Sam looked a little sheepish but mostly curious, "Why did they never cut your hair? They obviously let you shave. Wouldn't they have want to keep you hair out of the way?"
"Monitoring." Buck said simply, "The technicians took care off all that. They shaved me because otherwise the mask wouldn't fit. But they kept the hair long so they could check on previous drugs used for my conditioning. If you put a strand of my hair under a microscope you can see all the times I was frozen and analyse what was put into me between those times. Apparently that was sometimes easier that trying to read a previous tech's notes. Doctors have terrible handwriting no matter what year you're in."
He noticed Sam was looking distinctly sorry he asked while Steve was looking angry.
"It really didn't get in they way that much." He assured them, he decided to try telling them a funny story he remembered, "There was one time I was in a tree waiting for a target. I was still enough that the local wildlife would ignore me. But that meant that the birds started to treat me as if I was just part of the tree.
It wasn't so bad but one of the them fell asleep on my head.
When I took the shot all the birds flew off but the one on my hair got stuck. I had to climb down the tree carrying my gear with a bundle of panicking feathers in my face. When I made it to the fallback point I had to take about a half an hour to try and detangle the poor thing. I managed to get it to calm down but it either decided it liked me or it had some very weird ideas about revenge because it decided to stick around.
I was late getting to the rendezvous point but no one said anything. Probably because my hair was sticking out in all directions and was covered in bird droppings and the bird that did it was flying around my head."
Sam had a funny look on his face as he obviously was trying to picture the scene. "I bet you still looked intimidating with a birds nest on your head."
Bucky smirked as Natasha burst out laughing.
Bucky's memory was coming back slowly but surely. He had been told that Hydra hadn't managed to erase his memories completely, only block his accesses to them. His brain had always tried to heal this damage. It was why they had to keep wiping him.
But things weren't coming back in any particular order. Steve was a great help with sorting the memories before and during the war. But it wasn't just Buck's memories coming back, it was also the Winter Soldier's. He knew it made Steve uncomfortable that he had asked Natasha for his file but it helped to organise his memories rather then just letting them pop up and blind-side him. He couldn't really explain how these were memories stolen from him as well. That remembering all the people he killed, faces blurring together into a smeared mess, all the pain and isolation, was worth it to have what he had now.
He had context for things.
As the Winter Solider he had been used to his body just knowing things. The first time he remembered learning to use a gun, just how bad he had been when starting out, was first time he really felt human again. He hadn't always been a weapon.
And it wasn't as if his time as the Winter Soldier had been all misery. They could have hardly kept him as a functioning asset if all they did was torture him after all.
Tights
Bucky woke suddenly. The nightmare was already fading but his heart was still racing. Sighing he got out of bed. He knew from bitter experience he wasn't going to go back to sleep anytime soon.
Shuffling off the get something to drink he tried to recall the details of the dream. And it was definitely a dream and not a memory for once.
The terror of the nightmare had left rapidly. A feeling of utter incredulousness took it's place.
A chair had been trying to eat him.
It didn't take a genius to interpret that but it hadn't even been the chair they used to use to wipe him. It was some fancy gilded thing he vaguely recall being the last whole piece of furniture in a ruined building. He didn't know were that memory was from, though. The war, a mission from Hydra, a movie? It obviously wasn't important, just another random thing his brain had decided to toss up as it sorted though the mess.
He passed by the couch and noticed Steve watching something on the TV with the sound down low. He didn't need to ask why, it wasn't like he had a monopoly on nightmares.
Making sure he was making some noise Bucky wandered over.
"Re-living your chorus girl days, huh?" he said nodding at the screen which was showing a line of women dancing on a stage.
Steve looked up at him with a soft smile and said, "Well, at least I know I look good in tights."
Suddenly, Bucky's crazy brain decided to mess with him some more and threw up a random image.
"I wore tights!" he blurted out.
Steve stared but Bucky ignored him as he tried to chase down the memory. There was nothing concrete, just a few notes of a song, not enough to even hum along to, but he could remember wearing-
"There was a pair that was defiantly too small for me, they were really uncomfortable. And there was one pair that had a hole my toe kept going through." Bucky refocused on Steve letting the fractured memory go. It would come back or it wouldn't.
"Steve," Bucky said, flopping down (he had practised that) next to his friend on the couch, "Hydra made me wear tights."
Steve started to giggle helplessly. "Well, we always knew they were evil."
Wardrobe Malfunction
Bucky was doing better these days so he was spending more time getting to know Steve's friends. Hawkeye was just finishing up a story about losing his pants on a mission when a memory unlocked in his head.
"I had to do a mission naked once." He announced. Steve started to get a worried look on his face so he hurried to clarify.
"It was because of the uniform. At first they would just dress me in a variation of whatever uniform they had around but early on one of the handlers decided there should be some sort of Winter Solider uniform. I think the guy designed it himself. It's only function was to look intimidating. Which was dumb since people weren't supposed to get a good look at me. Besides, I'm going around covered in weapons and I have a metal arm. I'm going to look intimidating anyway.
But this guy, he had me in this leather monstrosity. It was all black and shiny and squeaked when I moved. Real stealthy. It was also so tight I could barely breath let alone manoeuvre.
But it's not like I was ever asked for an opinion, so they sent me off and I've barely started the job when suddenly every single seam on the thing rips apart. I'm really glad there no evidence of this because I had to finish the mission with bits of fabric hanging on by the straps holding my weapons.
Afterwards I just walked up to the handler and dumped the remains of the uniform in front of him. I'm really glad I can remember this now because the look on the guys face was something to treasure. He was so red he stared to go purple and he was just opening and closing his mouth like he was trying to yell but nothing was coming out."
Bucky smiled at the others.
"I went into cryo after that and he wasn't there the next time I was out. I like to think he keeled over from a heart attack."
Glitter
Bucky noticed it when Steve came back from his run with Sam.
"Is that glitter?" he asked, pointing to his face.
Stave groaned rubbing his face in his hands and completely failing to dislodge the stubborn substance. "Is it still there?"
"Yeah, stay still." Bucky wiped the fleck off. "How'd you get glitter on you while runing?" he asked stepping back.
"It's from that press thing last night. I had a shower when I came home and one this morning and I'm still finding pieces on me."
"I see you one better. I was in a fight in a warehouse in the .. seventies? I think. And I punched though a box carrying the stuff." Buck waved his left hand slightly. "It went everywhere. I don't know if you've ever tried to be stealthy when shedding glitter everywhere but it's not easy. They hosed me down three time before putting me back in cryo but the Techs were finding it in my arm for the next decade."
Steve was making that face he made when he wasn't sure if wanted to find something funny of horrifying. Bucky sighed. Shoving him a little he said, "Go have another shower. Take advantage of the fact we never run out of hot water now. Maybe that will get rid of the rest of it."
Woodstock
Bucky wandered into the room were Steve's looking things up on the computer. It was part of the ongoing project to catch up on the last seventy years. Bucky was doing his own version but he sometimes got blind-sided by odd snippets of memories so he tended to be a lot more haphazard about it.
But the music coming from the speakers had seemed familiar so he decided to come over to see what Steve was looking up.
Looking over his shoulder to see the picture on the screen, Bucky realised something. "Hey, that's me," he pointed to one of the people in a crowd.
Steve looked up at him. "You were at Woodstock?"
Bucky thought about it the memory unfolding unexpectedly. "It was a music festival or something right?" he asked. Steve just nodded, obviously not wanting to interrupt while Bucky remembered something.
He sorted though the memory, "I was sent after a target who had slipped their bodyguards to attend. It was pretty easy for me to look the part of the other people there so I was sent off on my own. I'm pretty sure they didn't expect me to find the target so quickly in that crowd but it turned out they had overdosed on something before I even arrived. I was supposed to be picked up after it was over to avoid suspicion so I just spent three days listening to music and dancing. I'm pretty sure I came back smelling like every single recreational drug out there, but the target was dead so no one cared. It was like a holiday."
"Do you want to stay here and listen to music?" Steve asked.
"Yeah," Bucky smiled.
Snow White
Bucky ran a hand though his hair and then pulled out a few strands to look at it. Steve noticed and asked, "Are you thinks about getting it cut?"
They were with some Steve's friends.
Bucky shrugged, "I don't know, maybe. I'm kind of used to it. Maybe I should do something crazy with it first like some of those kids on TV."
"Ok, I've gotta know," Sam looked a little sheepish but mostly curious, "Why did they never cut your hair? They obviously let you shave. Wouldn't they have want to keep you hair out of the way?"
"Monitoring." Buck said simply, "The technicians took care off all that. They shaved me because otherwise the mask wouldn't fit. But they kept the hair long so they could check on previous drugs used for my conditioning. If you put a strand of my hair under a microscope you can see all the times I was frozen and analyse what was put into me between those times. Apparently that was sometimes easier that trying to read a previous tech's notes. Doctors have terrible handwriting no matter what year you're in."
He noticed Sam was looking distinctly sorry he asked while Steve was looking angry.
"It really didn't get in they way that much." He assured them, he decided to try telling them a funny story he remembered, "There was one time I was in a tree waiting for a target. I was still enough that the local wildlife would ignore me. But that meant that the birds started to treat me as if I was just part of the tree.
It wasn't so bad but one of the them fell asleep on my head.
When I took the shot all the birds flew off but the one on my hair got stuck. I had to climb down the tree carrying my gear with a bundle of panicking feathers in my face. When I made it to the fallback point I had to take about a half an hour to try and detangle the poor thing. I managed to get it to calm down but it either decided it liked me or it had some very weird ideas about revenge because it decided to stick around.
I was late getting to the rendezvous point but no one said anything. Probably because my hair was sticking out in all directions and was covered in bird droppings and the bird that did it was flying around my head."
Sam had a funny look on his face as he obviously was trying to picture the scene. "I bet you still looked intimidating with a birds nest on your head."
Bucky smirked as Natasha burst out laughing.
