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Maybe a friend who didn’t survive childhood—doesn’t everyone have one of those? The first time you learned that people really die, and the thing to fear is not the loss but the losing.
“There will be plenty of time for fighting. You’ll be fighting the rest of your life.”
Ouch
“I’m not scared,” Bucky said. “We’ll fix that.”
He hasn’t done undercover work like this before, and his existence as a creature of the darkness feels written all over him. The way he stands. Breathes. Walks. It’s all community theater. What is he supposed to do with his hands? Should he put them in his pockets? Should he look people in the eye? Don’t they all smell it on him, the blood of the men he’s killed?
This man recognized him. He had looked V in the face and he knew him. Not as the whisper of a faceless legend or a classified project. He hadn’t recognized the Winter Soldier. The man had known him. No one has ever looked at him that way before.
Stop it.
He wants to tell her. He wants to say, He knew me. He knew my name. I had a name. I have a name. I was someone before I was this.
STOP IT.
What loophole in his conditioning had he unknowingly darted through?
Bucky?” she repeated, wrinkling her nose. “Really? Are you married to that?” “What’s wrong with it?” he asked hotly. She shrugged. “Might want to workshop it a bit, that’s all.
But did you know”—she leaned forward and tapped him on the back of the hand—“there is a type of frog in the Arctic tundra that freezes solid in winter and then thaws out in the spring and goes on living?”
I'm gonna throw up
“The first rule,” she said seriously, “is you never give it a name. As soon as you name something, you get attached to it.” “Am I the frog in this story?” Bucky asked. “There are no frogs,” she said. “And you’re not the frog—you’re the one who will get attached.”
It feels like it’s been forever since he saw the sky.
:(
She jerks her thumb over her shoulder at V in the back seat. “Who’s this?” “My asset,” Rostova replies. “And what do I call you?” Oksana calls to him, but Rostova answers. “You don’t call him anything. You talk to me.”
UGH
“When was the last time someone called you by your name?” she asks. “Your real name?” He doesn’t remember if he had a name before this.
“It can be hard,” she says quietly, “to know what’s a memory and what’s a ghost.”
“But if you tell them you’re part of the Winter Soldier Project, they might bite.”
The sigh I just let out...
V jams the needle into the medic’s eye.
HIS EYEEEEEEE??? My god
“Put the gun down, Bucky,” she says quietly, and she reaches out, two fingers on the barrel. “We’re not going to hurt each other.” “Who the hell,” he says, “is Bucky?”
Im gonna be sick
“Who the hell is Bucky?” he repeats. “You are,” the woman replies. “Or you were. There’s less and less of you every time we meet.”
You're kidding.
“I’m Russian,” he says. “You’re not, though. I think you know it, too. It always comes back eventually, like sunlight through the shutters. You can never black out the windows entirely.”
once asking if the captain had a girlfriend, and if not, would you introduce me. You didn’t think that was as funny as I did. You were always a bit possessive of him. Or maybe of me. I never could tell.”
Stucky mention at what cost
“It’s never taken you this long to remember me before, and I’ll be honest, you’re breaking my heart. But I know you’re still there.
“I’m glad it’s you.
God shut up omg
She slots her finger around his on the trigger. “Do you remember the one about the nightingale? Something about a kiss and a good-bye. I can’t recall it anymore.” She leans into him, keeping the barrel of the gun pressed to her own forehead as she rests her head on his shoulder. When he closes his eyes, he remembers—he remembers!—just for a moment—the taste of her lips. The heat of her kiss. Ginny with a hint of lime. “But when the band starts playing, I’ll know it’s from you.”
I'm full blown sobbing.
Someone else’s life is flashing through his mind like scenery outside the window of a fast-moving car.
End up one more body among thousands, no one to remember his name. But then again, did a hero’s death really matter if you died just the same? The only difference between a foxhole and a grave was the name you gave it in your own head.
“I left you a note in the front,” he said. “You can read it later. It’s real sentimental and garbage.”
“Does it end with Heil Hitler?” she asked. “Then we’ll know if he’s working with the Nazis.” He tapped his finger against the scrawled sign-off. “No…it says ‘Hail Hydra.’”
Fuck off
“Ask it again,” she said. “I won’t laugh this time.”
“Meet each other under different circumstances.” “What’s wrong with our current circumstances?” “Call me old-fashioned. I’d prefer less government involvement.”
I’ll ask the bandleader to play our song—” “Do we have a song?” “Sure do. The one about the nightingale.”
Oh fuck you
Gimlet— It would seem I got attached. Write me at Camp Lehigh. xx Bucky
Im going to be SICK
Some pain, he knows, simply has to be survived.
noticing for the first time a network of tiny pinprick scars clustered at the crease. He stares at them. The realization that he doesn’t remember where they came from is sinking in like blood into soft earth.
Were there mirrors in their bunker? He can’t remember ever consciously looking in one. When was the last time he saw his own face?
“This is a Thunderbolt, isn’t it?”
hello? thunderbolts??
“Hey!” Bucky called, and the soldier stopped. “I didn’t get your name.” “It’s Rogers.” That smile again. “Steve Rogers.
It’s like there’s a record playing in the next room—sometimes he picks out a lyric or a melody line, and he knows he’s heard it all before—once he could have sung along—but now he can’t remember what the song is called.
“To unmake a person, you must erase their memories. Those are the things that make us who we are. And a soldier should be nothing but a weapon.
He’s begged for death. He’s held the knife to his own wrist. But this time—maybe for the first time—he wants more than the death he has evaded again and again. He wants to pick the locks. He wants to see the sky.
he remembers suddenly the sound of his spine cracking when he hit the ice. He can feel every point where his bones had snapped, like a course plotted on a map. He remembers the fall. He remembers losing his grip, the cold moment when he realized there was nothing he could do, and fight turned to fear.
From here forward, no one decides his fate but him.
He remembers a voice—Steve—it has to be—who is Steve?—but it’s Steve’s voice, Bucky, let go! You have to let go—
How many other missions has he been sent out on that he can’t remember? How many people has he killed?
Some other life of his had ended this way. This one won’t.
James Barnes, he thinks. I’m James Barnes. My friends called me Bucky…. Stevie called me Buck…. Ginny called me…Ginny called me…
He came down with pneumonia in the Dolomites. Steve wrapped them both in a coat and held him until his fever broke….
Oh fuck you
She has known more versions of him—has more memories of him—than he has.
No matter how many times, they never wiped that stupid hero complex out of you.”
“You took my life and my past and my family and my country and my mind. Look me in the eyes and tell me you’re proud of yourself.”
“Kill me,” he says, his voice breaking. “Don’t make me do it again. Kill me before you give me back to him.”
Jesus christ
