Bucky Barnes Life Story

Fear Itself and return as Winter Soldier

During the storyline, Barnes takes up the Captain America identity again, but is in battle with (in her form). He survives after being injected with a dose of the Infinity Formula. With the world believing him dead he returned to his former identity of Winter Soldier to perform special jobs behind the scenes relating to his earlier days as the Winter Soldier. Only Rogers, Nick Fury, and Black Widow know the truth of his "death". Bucky and Natasha then pursue sleeper agents trained by Bucky during his Winter Soldier days, awakened recently by an unknown ex- agent, who turns out to be Ivan Kragoff, the and former prime minister of Latveria .

During the storyline, Bucky initially participates in the investigation into the death of the , travelling into deep space with and to follow up a lead. After the uses one of the Watcher's eyes to force the heroes in its vicinity to witness their deepest secrets, he returns to Earth after destroying the shuttle to strand his teammates, brutally attacking Nick Fury (actually a Life Model Decoy) as he proclaims that there will be "No more secrets". Following the revelation that Nick Fury has been secretly protecting Earth from various alien threats for years using more brutal methods than the heroes would have condoned, as well as the revelation that he killed the Watcher in self-defense and used the Watcher's eye to find the identity of his attacker when Uatu refused to break his oath and reveal that information himself, Fury now acts as the Watcher's replacement while Bucky takes over Fury's role as Earth's more ruthless guardian.

During the storyline, Bucky, upon being alerted of a catastrophic event, returns to Earth and traces the source of the event to a facility where he fights off the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents there. He leaves a trail for Steve Rogers, who finds a message on a napkin he used. At Bev's Diner, Steve Rogers meets with Winter Soldier where they learn that S.H.I.E.L.D. never discarded the Kobik project as they believed, which Whisperer (an alias of ) made it public. He then meets Sam Wilson, the current , who received a tip from the Whisperer about Pleasant Hill and Kobik. After rescuing S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Avril Kancaid from the at the Day Care Center, they are informed of a super weapon hidden in town that and the other villains are looking for. They later find Steve Rogers at the bowling alley restored to his prime, after Kobik used her powers to restore his youth when he was about to be killed by . They begin to search for Kobik again only to discover that Baron Zemo had invent a device that would help find Kobik as rallies the villains to help with their goals. Upon not being able to successfully locate Kobik, Steve decides to rally the heroes so they can take the fight to Baron Zemo. In the aftermath of the incident, Winter Soldier is approached by Kobik, who offers to help him do good. Winter Soldier agrees to the terms as Kobik suggests that she brings some "friends" she made in Pleasant Hill with them.

During the "Opening Salvo" part of the storyline, Baron Helmut Zemo uses Kobik to send Winter Soldier back in time to World War II. However, Zemo has other plans for Winter Soldier, deciding to tie him onto a rocket to be killed in its explosion, preventing him from stopping Hydra's true objective of conquering the United States. Before being launched, Winter Soldier is shocked to see the Steve he saw besides Zemo is not the man he once knew. However, Winter Soldier manages to escape and falls into the ocean, where he is rescued from drowining by the Atlantean army led by Namor, and is offered to disguise himself as the king's bodyguard to cover his tracks. Once Sam Wilson returns as Captain America and gives hope to his fellow heroes to find the Cosmic Cube fragments before Hydra does, Namor told Winter Soldier that the time has come to remove his disguise and help their fellow allies.

During the resistance's preparation for the final battle against Hydra to restore America to normal, Winter Soldier reveals that he knew whom Kobik was aside being a manifested sentient of Cosmic Cube, a misguided child whom Hydra manipulated into replacing the real Steve with a Hydra counterpart. Thus, Winter Soldier devices a distraction plan by needing Ant-Man/Scott Lang and Sam's help to get Kobik and their Steve back, while Hawkeye leads the rest of resistance on their final raids on the Hydra army at their main base, located in Washington, DC. During the heroes' final raid against Hydra, Winter Soldier rescues Black Panther, who was captured by Hydra and they apprehend Zemo together. When Zola equips Hydra Supreme Steve Rogers with a modified stolen Iron Man armor, infused with the 90% fragments of Cosmic Cube, and both altering the reality into Hydra's image and erasing the heroes from their existence, Winter Soldier, Ant-Man and Sam Wilson uses the last fragment to defend themselves, and initiate their plans, by pretending to surrender the last fragment to Hydra Steve, for Ant-Man and Winter Soldier to enter the cube inside. Once entering the cube thanks to Ant-Man, and Sam's distraction, Winter Soldier manages to save both Kobik and Steve Rogers, restoring the reality and restoring both Steve's physical appearance on the surface, as well as wearing his iconic Captain America costume, and his Super Soldier serum powers. Winter Soldier wanted to help his friend defeating his evil Hydra counterpart, but Sam told him to stand down and let Captain America do this alone.

After Captain America defeated his counterpart, and eventually Hydra, Winter Soldier went to Madripoor while still mourning over Black Widow's death, who was killed by Hydra Supreme Rogers, watching her funeral on TV as he is currently on the lead of an infamous general, who is the target of assassination. snipes the general and Winter Soldier suspects that it might be Black Widow. However, Bucky has doubt that the last Black Widow he saw is not Natasha, but an impostor. He is soon joined by Hawkeye in the search for Natasha's impostor who they discover to be , who temporarily replaced Natasha as the Black Widow ten years prior.