If the Wind Turns

Your eyes blink open for the first time in what feels like years, and you’re pretty sure you’re going to die.

Or maybe you’re already dead, your bones ground into a fine sparkling powder and your blood frozen in your veins.

But your eyes are open, so you can’t be all that dead. You lurch into open air as the ice coating your skin flakes off, refusing to succumb to the weakness that pulls at you as your body rouses itself from cryostasis. There’s a deep and insistent pain in every millimeter of your body, as though something had peeled back your skin until your nerves beneath were raw and exposed and set ablaze. It burns and burns until your blood feels some semblance of warmth, and you’re almost sure you’re breathing but not quite. There’s a ringing in your ears and bile in your throat. The room is spinning but not enough to leave you on your knees, and you straighten up as you try to gather your bearings.

And just when you feel a little more awake, your stomach immediately expels its contents on the pristine tile floor. Maybe not so pristine now that there’s bile all over it, but who’s counting?

You swipe the back of your hand against your mouth and stagger forwards until something cold grips your arms carefully—but not particularly gently—and you’re able to vaguely register the feeling of nitrile gloves against your skin. There’s a low, grating voice that reaches your ears, which strain to catch the sound in your current state.

"Welcome back." It says your name like it’s somehow less than a name, like it’s a designation and no more, like it isn’t the only part of you left inside the questionably human husk of feathers and bone and sinew. But your name had been taken long ago, and you never really felt like it was yours to keep when the sound of it hit your ears nowadays. The lack of it had left you poor—but not monetarily, given that you had no need or use for currency—and defeated. Maybe that’s why you never really fought much anymore. Not for the things that mattered.

Your blurry vision comes into focus as the shapes before you blend into a face. An older man with greying hair and an unfortunate hairline, a scientist, stands before you, and you’re not entirely sure whether it’s relief or dread that scratches at the base of your spine as he steps around you. That cold, gloved hand—gods, it’s freezing—presses against the small of your back as the scientist ushers you towards the bathroom, where you already know what awaits you.

The unremarkable, unscented soap. The hot water that’s just a little too close to scalding for you to be grateful. Scratchy clothes—especially the shirts that probably can’t even be called shirts with the way the panels in the back are cut open, a recent improvement that gave your wings room to breathe. It was those same wings that you stare at in the mirror as the scientist shuts the door to give you the illusion of modesty. Your feathers rustle uncomfortably in the cold. The umber spots and bars that crisscross your white underwings seem a little more pale than usual thanks to the lingering frost that clung to the feathers, and you shake them out as though it might warm you a little. It doesn’t.

The shower doesn’t warm you much either. Despite the water feeling like it might dissolve your skin with burning rivulets, there’s a permafrost seizing your vital organs and clutching them in a viselike grip. Cryostasis has a funny way of sinking its teeth into your system and shaking its hideous head until everything you were made of came crashing down in a messy torrent of ice and blood and bile. You already know that you won’t be rid of the chill for a long time.

There’s a look in your eyes that even you can’t seem to identify, one that you’ve never seen before. It’s as if something dark swirls within your irises, daring you to grab it and yank as hard as you can. It’s manic and feral like a caged animal that learned that violence is the only way to survive. You don’t recognize yourself in the mirror anymore. You aren’t entirely sure if you ever did. You’re still you, at least on the surface, but your hair has gotten longer and your gaze lacks the ferocious spark you once clutched on to like your life depended on it. And as you tear your eyes away from the dark circles underneath them, you wonder if maybe it did.

The same scientist is waiting as you emerge from the bathroom. He beckons you down the hallway, and you fall dutifully into step behind him despite the lingering unease from having seen your own reflection. He’s taking you to the lab, some part of you realizes, but you don’t know if you care enough to question it. After all, where else would he be going? You aren’t exactly getting a vacation any time soon, and it’s not like there’s much of a change of scenery to be had here.

You feel a little bad for not even remembering his name as you stare at the back of his lab coat…but you also feel bad about where he’s taking you, so, in your mind, it evens out. You know his routine by now. You no longer flinch at the flashlights that wave in front of your sensitive eyes, or the poking and prodding at your feathers, or the hand that reaches up to part your jaws and examine your pointed canines. You stare straight ahead with as impassive an expression you can manage, because you are a good little weapon, and good little weapons never complain.

You had tried to struggle once before, sinking your teeth into the man’s hand as he checked over them. The feedback from the ever-present collar around your neck had been both immediate and aversive, and the surge of white-hot electricity that had your muscles screaming in unison was the only reminder you needed that your compliance was not requested but demanded. Good little weapons always comply. They never bite the generous hand that graciously feeds them.

Even when it’s the same hand that mutilates them.

You’re drawn back to the present by the scuffing of standard issue boots on the shiny black tile. The footsteps are heavy and unmeasured. You would know the sound of them anywhere, the cadence burned into your mind at some point in the many years of your ‘service’. Maybe there would’ve been a pang of fear in your heart if the fist-sized mass in your chest was still beating. It couldn’t be beating, not when all that you were and all that you knew had been reduced to wings and talons and the righteous meeting of flesh and teeth. The fear hangs back for another day: a day when your heart would pump blood and you would finally feel human again, or at least alive, and the roar of it in your ears would drown the thoughts that snapped at sleep’s heels in the night.

When your eyes lift to take in the unforgiving, dark gaze of the man standing before you with a tablet nestled in the crook of his arm, you have the gall to feel something more volatile than fear. Good little weapons aren’t meant to feel anything. You wonder if maybe that makes you something worse than a weapon, or perhaps better, but does it really matter when you’ll end up bathed in gore by the end of the day regardless? You’ve long since given up hope that any gods will receive you at the end of your life. Does it matter what you're called while you live it?

It’s anger, you finally realize. It pulses within you, a subcutaneous venom that injects itself into every fiber of your being. It curls just below the surface, waiting, a snake poised to strike. You wonder if being compliant all this time had fed the viper, if you were the only one that could take the blame for the hateful thing that coiled where your heart should have been.

The man says nothing as he taps away on his tablet, a slight scowl creeping across his features as he eyes you as one might a petulant child. You’ve played this game before. He’ll tap away as though you aren’t there, you’ll wait for his orders—no matter how long it takes—and he’ll give you that sick look of satisfaction when you’re forced to bend to his will or break beneath its unyielding pressure.

But something is different today.

The anger builds to a sweltering crescendo and you’re moving, lunging before your rational thought can catch up to your instinct as your talons aim for your Handler’s throat.

His lips move to form syllables that you know all too well. The anger curbs a moment too late, and all it takes is a single word.

You don’t wake up from the trance he places you under.

Bucky’s life has been on the uptick ever since the whole Flag Smashers ordeal had been wrapped up. Sure, there’s still court-ordered therapy, and, sure, there’s no escaping the knowing eyes that follow him everywhere he goes, but at least he isn’t behind bars. He’s learning new things every day, doing his best to move on from the fucking awful cards he’d been dealt, and adapting to the brand new world that had all but left him behind. He’s trying brand new foods that never existed in his past life, even the ones that suck, just because he can. He’s still unable to sleep comfortably in a proper bed and spends most of his nights on the floor, but at least he can sleep at all. He’s finally getting a chance to do what he wants to do, even if that autonomy sometimes leaves him feeling slightly cornered and very confused and at least a little bit out of place wherever he ends up. He’s like a chameleon that can never quite get the color just right, but he’s trying his damnedest to make his scales match.

It hasn’t been easy. He won’t lie and say it isn’t shitty, but then again, things have never exactly been peachy for him in either of his previous lives. He’s just trading shit for something slightly easier to stomach. 

Slightly, because he still can’t choke down the fact that his days are long and listless. He knows he lacks purpose—Dr. Raynor had made that painstakingly clear when she’d chewed him out during his latest therapy session with her—but he’s been benched from fieldwork and left stranded without a life vest in the sea of the mundane. And it isn’t like he has anyone to blame, either. Not even himself, if Sam’s words are to be believed at all; a small part of Bucky desperately wants to believe them. He wants to finally wash the years of invisible, caked up blood off of his hands, to lift his shoulders a little higher, to smile at something as if he actually means it. He wants to feel as though he’s worthy of something, although maybe not love, because he’s broken and bruised and his heart beats a little bit differently than it ought to, pumping something that feels a lot like defeat through his veins. The Winter Soldier never knew defeat, but Bucky is very well acquainted with it, and it hangs around him like a lost puppy that he just can’t seem to shake off. 

The toaster pops beside him, and he whirls around on instinct as if he’s about to punch it. The two waffles he’d put in it seem to stare depressingly back at him, and he sags his shoulders. There’s a blanket of embarrassment that settles over him—What kind of person gets scared by a toaster?—and he uses his metal hand to grab the somewhat disturbingly crunchy breakfast items before tossing them on a plastic plate. 

Most things he owns are plastic.

The cutlery, the dishes, the chair, and the small table that sits in the otherwise bare corner of his apartment, near the kitchen. Even the small potted plant on his windowsill, the one that Sam insisted he place there because his apartment ‘felt more like a hospital room than a home’, is made of it. It isn’t that he doesn’t want nice things—there’s that word again, want, as if he deserves to have anything at all, much less ask for more—it’s that he always destroys them. It usually isn’t on purpose. After all, for the most part, Bucky is careful. He’s mindful of his surroundings, he tries to set things down gently, and he always reminds himself not to grip things too hard or hold on to them too loosely.

But he’s bad at keeping nice things intact.

He’s just about to dig into his overly processed breakfast of champions before his phone rings. And rings. And rings. He stares at it on the table as it vibrates, contemplating letting it ring until the caller gives up. But he doesn’t even need to check the name to know who that caller is, given that he can count on one hand the number of contacts in his phone. Bucky rolls his eyes as he picks it up—but not with his metal hand, because he had learned the hard way that metal doesn’t exactly play too nicely with unprotected phone screens—and swipes to answer the call, wondering who he’d be playing wingman to impress or what pop culture ‘masterpieces’ Sam decided Bucky needs to see this time. 

It had been a band called Black Pumas last time. Bucky hadn’t minded the music—he might’ve even enjoyed it a little bit—but there was no way in hell he would admit that to Sam, or else he’d never hear the end of it.

"Need a little bit of a favor from you, Buck."

The urgent tone in Sam’s voice wipes the tiny ghost of a smile from Bucky’s face, and he can’t help but fear the worst. It’s a bad habit, one that therapy was trying to help him break, but he can’t help it. He was built to always expect the worst, and that was a reaction drilled into his head far deeper than any conditioning or counterconditioning could reach.

"Told you not to call me that," he bites back, a curt edge in his words. 

"You tell me a lot of things. Can you do it or not?"

Bucky drags his metal hand down his face in something that he suspects is annoyance. He has nothing but free time, but even then, he doesn’t have time for this. Whatever this is. "Haven’t told me what you wanted."

"Well– Yeah–" Sam mutters simply, and Bucky’s sure he can practically hear the birdbrain roll his eyes. "That’s because I didn’t know if you’d say yes–"

"And I’m not saying yes to a favor I don’t know the details of. Spit it out."

There’s a pause on the other end of the line, one that lasts so long that Bucky is almost wondering whether or not he should question it out loud. He doesn’t.

"It’s related to Hydra," came Sam’s reply.

If Bucky’s blood could freeze over in an instant, he’s sure it would have. But it doesn’t freeze, and his heart doesn’t skip a beat, because he knows this day would have come eventually. Cut off one ugly head; two more will rear.

"Absolutely the fuck not," he says simply, because some things are better left in the flames of the personal hell you found them in, and it just so happens that a global terrorist organization falls under that category. He hangs up without another word.

Dr. Raynor would probably have some passive aggressive words to say about Bucky constantly hanging up on his best—and, really, only—friend, and that’s a can of worms that he can open later. At some point. Probably when he’s forced to, maybe at gunpoint.

But something with sharp teeth picks and gnaws at his chest like a scavenger as he gets up from his sad plastic chair to pour a mug of instant coffee from the shitty machine on his kitchen counter. He’s not even entirely sure when he made the pot of brown sludge, but it’s warm, and he’s too tired for this, and that’s about as much as he cares. He stares at his phone in its place on the table until it rings again. Wonders if he should just let it go to voicemail.

The thing with sharp teeth—Is it guilt? Some twisted sense of obligation?—grows more insistent in its shredding of Bucky’s insides until he finally pads back to the table and presses the answer button. 

"Not fair, man," Sam mutters, his tone indignant.

"Neither is asking me for a favor that you know I can’t complete."

"If I knew you couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t be asking, old man. I would do it myself if I was able to. But I can’t, and you’re the only one I can trust with this, so I’m gonna need you to say yes or—"

"Or you’ll use your magic fucking status to make me do it," Bucky finishes for him. There’s something like anger inside of him, or maybe like fear, something that doesn’t have sharp teeth when it bites, but maybe that’s somehow worse. "You know I don’t fuck with Hydra, man. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and the metal arm."

"Please, Bucky. I really don’t want to pull rank on you. Just…it’s important." Bucky wants to turn him down. Desperately. He had just finished fighting tooth and nail to free himself from Hydra’s grasp. He’s not particularly eager to march back into it. But there’s something in Sam’s voice that twists Bucky’s heart in a way he can’t quite name, and he finds himself loosing an exasperated sigh.

"Fine. But when you say important—"

"I mean important. There’s another Enhanced."

Bucky blinks. He blinks and blinks again and stares at his phone as if maybe he was hearing things incorrectly. But Sam doesn’t volunteer any extra information until Bucky finally gets his bearings. He doesn’t have that jokingly snarky undertone in his voice. He doesn’t laugh, and Bucky knows he’s damn near incapable of not laughing when he’s trying to tell a joke. 

So he isn’t joking at all.

"An Enhanced." Bucky repeats slowly. There’s a bitter feeling a little bit like acid on his tongue, sour and stinging and settling with a harsh aftertaste.

"Yeah," Sam confirms. "Yeah. I can’t physically get involved without explicit permission, which has been denied over and over. Which leaves you—"

"To do the dirty work for you, and hopefully not end up in jail when someone finds out. The Sokovia Accords were pretty clear, Sam."

"And you didn’t sign them anyway, so who cares? If all else fails, we’ll just get you another pardon." There’s a hint of Sam’s joking tone in that part, but it doesn’t bring Bucky any reassurance at all. How could it, when every part of what he’s being asked to do is waving giant red flags in his face? 

But Bucky is trying to be a better person. To clean up after the messes he made and right his past life’s horrific wrongs. To be there, to be reliable, to show up and get shit done. And whether he wants to admit it or not, he figures Hydra probably wouldn’t have needed to create another Enhanced if the Winter Soldier was still around…which makes this his mess, in a roundabout way.

So, against his better judgement, he agrees.