Finite Consistency - Bucky Barnes

Chapter 1: Soldat

Consistency. It was all James Bucanan Barnes had ever known for as long as he could remember. It was all he'd ever had in his life. Wake up from cryo, sit in that chair, listen to those words, receive instructions to his next mission, have his gear fitted, complete said mission, return to Hydra, receive maintenance, back in cryo. That was his life. As far as the soldier was concerned, that was the only life he'd ever had. The only life he, or anyone, was able to live.

Despite watching civilians chat over lunch and kids play in the park, he could never imagine them to actually be living their own life. Because that life was a fantasy as James had never known anything like it. He was in his own little world and it was dark and cold and painful. And the door to the outside was always locked. The only view he had was watching from a distance, at those happy people. Those people that couldn't be real because the way they lived their lives was so alien to James. He'd never experienced anything like it. Hydra is the only world there is. Anyone outside of that can't be anymore than a ghost. Not in a way he can comprehend. It would never be something he could understand. A family or a friend or an alley. People like that weren't in his program. Nor was the comfort of a home or finding joy in something or someone. It just wasn't an experience to be had.

All there was in that small world was pain. His pain. He was the centre of his own world as he was the only one who knew him, if even that. Sometimes he didn't even know himself. In fact, that was most of the time. Just as he wasn't even sure if he was a living being. Majority of the present he just felt like another consciousness looking in on a soldier's work. But again, if even that. If he even was conscious at all.

However, the soldier was still who he knew most. That's what counts. Him. him and his commands and his pain are all this world has to offer so he takes it with grateful, sometimes pleading, hands. Even though it hurts. And sometimes, for just a moment, when the drugs are wearing off from a long mission and he's waiting for his next victim on a deserted rooftop, he wonders if there is more. More than just those missions and his pain. It feels like there should be more to life than this. More than just shooting when asked to. Those figures with names that he was asked to proceed with until they fell limp, who were they? What was their purpose? To be hunted by the Winter Soldier? James's handlers never told him.

They had never told him what to do about those overpowering thoughts either. The ones that came in strong and short flashes. Memories, his main handler had once called them. His commander had simply written them off as defects in the soldiers' programming. Blamed it on loose wires.

Most of the time, before the thoughts ever got too heavy or his mind cleared enough to ask these questions to even himself, James was heading back to Hydra. Pumped with drugs and electrocuted until there was nothing left to remember. Nothing to work off, or to give him purpose. And then his handlers gave him purpose and he'd follow through because again,

It was all he had and all he knew.

And James hated that it was all he had, even if it was what life was supposed to consist of. But he'd tell himself he was grateful. Sometimes he was. He hated it when he knew anymore than Hydra. Simply because it wasn't consistent. A thought that was anything other than pain, a mission or more pain, wasn't something he was often exposed to. It was unfamiliar and no handler had ever told him what to do with it. He needed someone to tell him what to do with it. He needed orders because that's how you get by. You are given a task and you comply and that's all there is to it. Take that away and he's just a soldier standing. No thoughts. No instructions. He'd stand and wait an hour or a decade until someone gave him a command. That is how he, the only living thing that could possibly exist in this world, continues.

Sometimes he thought about running. Sometimes it felt like anything, even the void of the unknown, was better than this existence. But he couldn't risk security. The world outside of those four, dark, bloodstained walls may be worse.