i. DIE.
i. DIE
They find him in Berlin, drinking kaffee at a table outside a little bakery. He likes Berlin, but not as much as he had liked Paris.They drove him from Paris (underground métro station at midnight, shedding his two dogged pursuers, always at his heels, always baying) and he should resent them for that. One half of the pair is blonde and in charge. The other is dark and mouthy. He had showed his resentment by shooting the mouthy friend in the shoulder. The blond man (name: blank) had yelled.
He thinks he should know him. Doesn’t.
Blank. Blank. Blank.
How can you miss something that is not there?
Today, he’s curious about the pair, and he’s stayed in his visible spot to allow them to observe him as much as he observes them. He doesn’t even try to kill them. He calls that nice. A common courtesy. He is relearning how to be nice, now. But they do not approach, like they did in Paris. Perhaps they have learned to keep their distance. Perhaps they have learned how dangerous he can be.
And he is dangerous. A weapon, a tool. Something to be put in the hands of greater men than him and made to be used. He knows this instinctively about himself, might almost take pride in it, if not for the nausea that wells up when a voice whispers, no, that’s wrong, that’s not us, that’s not you. The sick feeling has been coming more and more often, after he dragged the blonde man to the banks of the river. After he stared at the man with his face in the museum display, the man whose cocky smile said he knew exactly who he was. A friend. A war hero. An identity that had never been fractured (yet).
He tries out the man’s name on his tongue. He loops the words over a napkin, pressing so hard with the ball point pen that he rips the name into the wood of the table. James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky.
“Who am I?” he says to the blank walls of his hotel room. It sounds plaintive, it sounds weak and he cringes at how lost his own voice sounds. Weapons are not vulnerable.
He knows what his rightful title is. He is the heir of chaos and blood.
“I am the Winter Solider,” he says, forcing strength into his voice. But that does not sound right.
He leaves Berlin in the night. Hops the train south to Munich, then to Zurich. Listens to the rhythmic sound of the wheels across the track. It reminds him of something bad.He sits with his head against the window, watching the dark water under the bridge intently. Bridges spell danger. The yawning emptiness just increases the feeling. Cannot rid himself of it. A prophetic instinct. He wants to scream.
He is moving only to move, to satisfy that base mammalian instinct of flight and fright. He is frightened, yes. A good operative turns the fright into anger, into an emotion that he can control, but he is done being a good operative. He has been done since a man with a blue spangled shield thought to make him remember. The man who was once the mission. He has forgotten what the mission was, only that there was one.
He is frightened of the men he knows are chasing him, of the men who could be chasing him. The Winter Solider still has handlers, even if he has renounced his throne and his title. He does not know what They want, only that They always want him.
So he pretends that he is not frightened. When he sits, he folds his body into itself, a sparse and economical position. He walks and takes comfort in the robotics of motion. Movement breeds purpose. He ignores that his mind is dark and empty, that a man who has no memories or past is a man disconnected from the present.
In Zurich, he buys a ticket to Geneva at 2:00 AM at a train kiosk. The platform is empty and dead silent. A cold wind blows train vouchers across the floor. He likes places best when there are no people around. Crowds present risk. Crowds present opportunities for kills. He stands on the edge of the platform, tucking his metal left hand into his jacket pocket to conceal it. He does not remember how to make it flesh and blood again. He does not remember a lot of things.
A train screeches at the opposite side of the tracks and he glances back on instinct, draws a pistol with his right hand.
Disembarking are the blonde man and his friend, his arm in a sling. Both are carrying guns.
“Shit,” the friend mutters.
He wants to shoot. His trigger finger aches for it.
Blank holds up his hands. “Hey, Bucky. I just want to talk.”
Bucky might be his name. He still doesn’t reply. His pistol sweeps between Blank and the friend as he steps backwards. A train crows in the distance.
“Stay where you are,” he snaps.
The blonde man’s voice is calm but firm. “Bucky, we’re not gonna hurt you…”
“Speak for yourself,” the friend says. “I owe him for the shoulder.”
“Sam,” the blonde man says sharply.
“It coulda been the head,” he says, voice soft. He is telling the truth. It had been the head for hundreds of targets. He was being nice.
“See, Steve? It could have been my head,” Sam says, sarcastic. “You still want to bring him in?”
“He’s my friend,” says Steve. He says it with the kind of fervor and affection that existed on Bucky Barnes’ face in all those museum reels. Like being a friend means something.
So...Blank has a name and it is Steve. But it rings no bells for him.
“I don’t have friends,” he says.
Steve’s face crumples a little at the edges. “I know you think that right now…”
“I don’t have friends!” he repeats, raising his voice in a shout. His voice echoes off the high vaulted ceilings.
The train comes closer. He glances backward at the tracks.
“I don’t know who you are,” he shouts. “I don’t know who I am. Stop chasing me. I don’t know anything. ”
He screams this last part to Sam, who is looking more and more taken aback.
“Hey, man. It’s okay,” Sam says. But his hands are still wrapped around his gun.
“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. But you like being called Bucky,” says Steve.
“That’s what the museum said,” he says.
“What museum?” Steve says, confused.
“The one in Washington, D.C. But it lied. I’m not him. I’m not your friend.” The words come tumbling out, desperate for them to be true. “Put your gun down.”
Steve puts his hands up in surrender. “I’ll put mine down if you do.”
“I’m giving the orders,” he snaps.
“Okay, Buck.” Steve leans down slowly, and places his gun on the ground.
“Don’t call me that!” he snarls.
“Cap, I think it’s time for you to stop talking now,” Sam says, stepping forward. “Hey man, we’d like it if you came with us. Might help you find out who you are.”
He sounds friendly, but a friendly voice can camouflage a whole host of ill intentions.
“I’m done with experiments,” he snarls. “They messed around with my brain. I’m not gonna let you do that too. I’m done being a lab rat. Done, you hear?”
He inches backwards, feels the rough edge catch under his heels. He does not heed the warning of the yellow painted line.
The train is coming into the station. He glances back and knows which option he would rather choose. He will not let them take him by force.
“No one’s going to hurt you, Bucky,” says Steve. The sincerity is almost overdone. “We’re trying to help you.”
“Yeah, now why don’t you step away from that edge, huh?” Sam chuckles, a little nervous. “You’re making the good captain nervous.”
He leans into dead air.
“Sam, now.”
He feels a quick sting in his arm. The sharp, but recognizable impact of a hypodermic needle. He glances down to find a little dart embedded in the wool jacket. Sways forwards on his knees, away from the train tracks. The body’s instinct to live.
The dark grasp of sedation is impossible to escape.