Flickers | Bucky Barnes

Headlines

June 2014

Sam would have never imagined that him going on his daily runs would result in him meeting Captain America. Better yet seemingly making a good enough impression with the man that he felt he could trust him enough to seek refuge in his home with Natasha Romanoff – Black Widow – while Hydra set out the hit on them.

Furthermore, he didn't expect to actually join Captain America in the fight to finally take down Hydra.

But even with all that excitement, since that fight in the middle of DC, when Steve realized Bucky – his best friend – that was presumed dead wasn't dead, but was somehow working for the enemy, a change had happened within Steve that was noticeable to him. With Natasha's help, they knew Hydra had brainwashed Bucky into working for them.

Sam could admit he was wary of the assassin since he did shoot at him from the roof of his car and ripped out his steering and ripped one of his wings of his suit off like plastic.

But when he took a step back from the situation, this man was Captain America's best friend. He along with Steve worked to disable Hydra bases. The man probably hated Hydra more than Steve considering he was taken captive by Hydra once before. So without all the technicalities, someone would suspect something was fishy if Captain America's best friend didn't recognize him and tried to kill him.

But this man was Hydra's machine for a long time even if Steve somehow broke through Hydra's programming; the man was what they made him into longer than the man Steve knew. Sam didn't think that man wasn't there, from what he gathered the memory implantation they used on Sergeant Barnes didn't seem permanent. But they didn't know what memories he did recall and his memory was already impaired probably when he fell from that train. On top of that, this man was a prisoner of war and was no doubt suffering from a severe case of PTSD. Never mind, Bucky was probably beside himself that he was ordered and almost killed his best friend.

But Sam wouldn't feel right with himself in letting Steve look for his friend on his own. Even though he had come to see Steve had some blinders when it was coming to searching for Bucky, he could understand Steve.

If this was Riley, he would be doing the same thing as Steve.

That was why Sam would tag along with Steve so he wouldn't burn himself out and just to make sure the man was alright. In following the leads on Barnes they were finding some things that weren't exactly humane when it came to how they forced their will with Bucky.

It had been almost two weeks since he and Steve went to the Alps where Bucky fell. It wasn't exactly a bust as they did find the initial base they kept Bucky in and with some high tech things, provided by Stark, it revealed that someone was there recently. Steve had automatically assumed Bucky might have been there trying to find his past. Sam didn't agree or disagree. But whoever was there had a lot of rage considering the place was torn to shreds and Sam knew someone with a metal limb was more than capable of what they discovered at the base.

So as he drank some orange juice, he was startled when Steve dropped a newspaper on his countertop declaring they were going back to Brooklyn.

"You found a new lead?" Sam asked neutrally.

Steve pointed at an article detailing about a college student being missing since April – since everything happened at SHIELD.

Karina Orlov, who in his opinion was very beautiful, was a college student at George Washington University for Biomedical Engineering.

The article gave conflicting reports that she was with a Marcus Peterson, who was actually a sleeper agent for Hydra, people reported they were together at the time, but close sources said that Karina didn't seem happy with him and would frequently avoid any conversations about Marcus for a few months prior to her disappearance. The article further suggested that Karina was a Hydra agent herself after documenting timed absences with missions reportedly when they had activated The Winter Soldier.