The Asset: The Beginning and End of the Winter Soldier

Chapter Twelve

Ayo sat with Bucky, and they had an afternoon meal, food which he ate dutifully, without tasting it, his mind already on another memory that plagued him. It was one that had bothered him anyway but had gotten worse after what he had done had caused so many problems for Steve and the Avengers. Double the guilt, he thought unhappily.

Ayo, however, was still thinking about something else. "When you were in the Red Room, you would have had to wear a glove on your left hand constantly."

"Yeah," he replied, wondering why she asked.

"No one wondered why? You were supposed to be just a mercenary. Someone had to ask about it if you only wore one glove the entire time." She raised her eyebrows at him.

"I've said before that most people don't bother asking about a lot of things," he reminded her. "But yes, someone did ask, one of Dreykov's men, but only because the Red Room was cold in a lot of the areas, and they wondered why I only wore one glove rather than two."

"And?" She pressed him.

He gave a small smile, somewhat amused by her insistence. "I said it was just an affectation, a personal quirk. The Leonid Nikolaev persona would do it as a way to distinguish himself without being too over the top. They all accepted that explanation. Easier to say it was because of a weird personality trait than something physical like a scar that they may have wanted to see."

"So, a silly and dramatic way to be different rather than hiding something." She laughed, shaking her head at him. "I can see how that would be accepted, but it's still something that's funny considering who you really were."

He chuckled, mostly at her reaction, enjoying that she found something that was odd about his past that wasn't horrifying. "Honestly, the times I had to hide the metal arm could be the most difficult part of a mission or playing a role, constantly having to come up with reasons for long sleeves and gloves in warm weather, especially if I was supposed to be a regular person. Nikolaev was easier, if only because as a mercenary he was not supposed to be normal."

"A bright metal arm would be a little conspicuous," Ayo agreed. "Hydra should have given you an arm that could blend in more."

"I think they liked the idea of it standing out," Bucky said, his amusement turning sour. "They liked to have their favorite weapon be recognizable in many situations."

He fell into a brooding silence once again until Ayo asked what he was remembering. Bucky said with determined calm: "when I killed Howard and Maria Stark, all the problems it would later cause Steve and the Avengers."

"Tell me about them," Ayo said gently once they had finished eating.

He flinched. "I killed them." He repeated, almost snapping at her. "Then Stark tried to kill me when he found out. Seems fair."

"How can it be fair?"

"I killed his parents, made it seem like they'd died in a car wreck, an accident." Bucky forced himself to back off from snapping at Ayo when he was angry only with himself and Hydra. "When Zemo showed him the security tape, he tried to kill me. How isn't that at least a little bit fair? He wanted to kill the person who had murdered his parents."
"The Winter Soldier killed them. Hydra killed them," she pointed out.

"And it was me, as the Winter Soldier who did it," he said sharply, his guilt making him want to lash out.

"You say it was fair, as if some justice would have been served by him killing you. Yet you were a victim of Hydra long before that. Killing you would not have done anything for justice."