A series of one shot chapters about Bucky Barnes mostly told in the first person by different people. Stories will reflect different times in the life of James Buchanan Barnes. This is PG rated and any sexual content will be kept to a minimum.
Mar...
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When that blond man said that name to him in the street in Washington it shook him. The man knew him by a name other than Soldat, Soldier, or Asset. Even now as he sat in the HYDRA facility under the bank he went over the man's face in his mind. He knew him and if he could just remember a name to go with the face it would make sense. It had to. Later the older man, Pierce, struck him across the face and tried to sweet talk him, telling him what a gift to humanity he was. He was tired, tired of all of it, of the abuse, the killing, everything. Opening his mouth to take the mouth guard he laid back and prepared for the pain then the blankness that would come after.
"I'm with you to the end of the line," said the bloodied man who was struggling to look at me.
My hand was raised for the death blow but something, a memory of the same bloody face but younger and weaker, was pushing itself into my consciousness, screaming against the mission, the mission to kill this one man. The decision to kill was taken from me by the glass beneath the blond man breaking and I watched as he fell into the water below me. I was hanging there by my metal arm, my other arm broken by the blond man during our battle. A realization that the blond man would drown hit me so I dropped into the water, ignoring the pain from my broken arm as I grasped him by the collar then kicked up to the surface, holding his face above the water until I could drag him to the edge. As I looked at the unconscious man, I still couldn't clearly remember who he was and why he was important, I just knew that he was. Then I turned away and began walking to a nearby roadway, seeing an emergency phone box. Breaking open the door on the box I lifted the receiver and waited for someone to answer.
"There's a man, he needs help, beside the water."
The words came out of my mouth, then I dropped the receiver and walked away, knowing the authorities would be able to trace the phone and find the blond man, only a few hundred yards away.
My choices were limited. With my broken arm I needed medical treatment but that meant returning to the Ideal Federal Savings Bank, with the HYDRA facility below. If the older man, Pierce, and his snarling dog, Rumlow, were there I would be taken again. But I couldn't go to a hospital as then the authorities would be summoned and I would be captured by them, then possibly turned over to HYDRA anyway. Carefully I entered the building and went down the stairs. It was eerily quiet, as if everything had been suddenly abandoned. The sounds of a quiet conversation led me to two men in lab coats who were startled when they saw me. I remembered they were medical staff.
"Set my arm," I ordered them, a wonderful feeling that made me feel powerful.
They treated me, setting my broken arm by pulling the bones straight. It still hurt but it felt better than before and with the sling they tied around my neck and shoulder I knew within hours it would begin to heal. When one approached with a syringe presumably to knock me out, I crushed his hand, forcing him to drop the syringe, then shoved him against the wall, knocking him out. The other man looked terrified.
