Memory. It's a strange thing. It is the most important part of a person—it's what makes them who they are. Without memory, all that is left is a hallow shell of a person.
Man depends on his memories. They are what tell him how to act, feel, talk, walk, and do practically everything a normal functioning human would do. Without memories, all that is left are skills, characteristics, personality traits. A blank canvas.
We trust our memories with our lives. We swear by our own memory. Yet, our memory often fails us. It fades over time and can become muddled with bias and experiences. We often get tunnel vision. When we discover something that doesn't make sense, our brain will sometimes make up a moment or scenario to try and make sense of things. It comes up with a solution to fill in the gap between dissociating and sometimes conflicting information.
Nothing is ever forgotten, however, only repressed. Covered up, pushed away. Nothing is ever completely erased. Just stored in the depths of our long-term memory. Muscle memory is an example. You may learn a skill but then start to drift away from it and become rusty without practice. But those pathways between the nerves in the human brain that allow you to do that skill are still there. They become faded with lack of use. But once you use them again, it is like you never stopped. Your brain and body pick up on what was once instinct—reflex. You remember.
Now, one could say that the memory of James Buchanan Barnes was erased through a series of electroshock therapies and mind programming. But that's exactly what it was—programming. You're not overwriting or erasing what was already there. You're repressing it and covering it—locking it away. You're creating a separate bank of new memories, albeit terrifying and tortuous ones. They—Hydra—created a second set of memories—a new life, if you will—in the mind of James Barnes. And they created a series of trigger words that would turn off his actual set of memories and bring about the new ones for their own use. It was quite genius, actually. It was almost as if they made him into a dissociative identity disorder patient. Well, that's exactly what they did. There were two minds inside of Bucky Barnes: the loyal, charismatic sergeant who would do anything for his best friend, and the silent, obedient assassin who never asked questions. Who never failed.
But man is not perfect. Hydra was not an exception. There was a flaw in the Winter Soldier's programming. And that flaw ultimately set him free.
But his memories were tampered with. So much so that when he was finally set free, he could not tell the difference between fact and fiction. Hydra learned how to steal memories—change them, even. This was different than what was done to the Winter Soldier. No, they learned these things after they had made him. They learned this from somewhere else—someone, else really. Someone with the heart for ballet.
~
Her mother was semi-gifted. She had the genes, just not the manifestation. She knew that her daughter would receive the gene as well, and she knew that she needed to be protected. So she and her husband worked their whole lives to stay under the radar; to steer clear of anyone who would want to exploit her gift. They did this successfully, but only for a while, until the girl's mother was killed in a car accident.
The Colonel knew of Hydra. He knew what would happen to his daughter should Hydra ever learn of her potential gifts. That is what actually pushed him to join the organization—they became wolves in sheep's clothing.
But the girl's secret was not kept forever. Her father prayed that she would take after her mother and never manifest. But as luck—or unluck, really—would have it, she did. And that's when everything changed. That's when Hydra did what they do best: exploit.
