Bragg
The sound hit first—an echo, not of the real world, but buried deep within his psyche. A shriek, not entirely human, pierced the veil of his sleep, and then the image: two red eyes blinking into existence like burning embers in the dark. Bucky jolted upright, chest heaving, heart pounding like a war drum in his ears. The scream fractured into silence as reality caught up, but the memory—or hallucination, or whatever the fuck it was—clung like frost to the edges of his mind, slow to melt and far more chilling.
He blinked rapidly in the pale morning light spilling across the room, his vision adjusting to the now-familiar walls of Yelena’s guest bedroom, the warm-toned wood and soft curtains doing little to ease the tightness lodged beneath his ribs. Disoriented for a moment, he reached instinctively toward the other side of the bed—toward the shape he expected to find there—but his fingers met only rumpled sheets and a cold, empty hollow. The spot was long since abandoned, and that chilled him more than the phantom in his dreams.
Slowly, cautiously, Bucky slid his legs off the bed and rolled his neck with a satisfying crack, followed by the slower, more deliberate stretch of his left arm. The old pain was still there, dull and persistent in his shoulder like a brewing storm—barometric pressure pressing in behind his bones in a way he’d come to understand only after decades of aching silence.
He sighed and muttered under his breath, “Perfect. Another fucking storm’s coming.”
The rest of his body, thankfully, was beginning to feel like his own again. The heaviness from the fever had burned off, and his strength was returning with every step he took. Still, the absence beside him lingered, a void pressing into the shape of his thoughts like a warning.
He padded barefoot out of the room, sweatpants slung low on his hips and bare chest chilled by the morning breeze that drifted through the slightly cracked window at the end of the hall. Downstairs, the farmhouse was quiet, but not entirely still. The scent of freshly brewed coffee guided him toward the kitchen, warm and bitter, grounding him in something tangible.
Yelena sat at the table, one leg propped on the other, a ratty sweatshirt stretched across her frame and her platinum hair scraped into a messy bun. She didn’t look up as he entered—just raised a hand in a lazy wave and nudged a steaming mug across the table toward him.
“Morning, shirtless wonder,” she said dryly, the corner of her mouth twitching upward. “Still out here assaulting my senses, I see.”
Bucky grunted, walking to the counter and accepting the mug without comment. He took a long, grateful sip—black, just how he liked it—and leaned against the kitchen island, the ceramic warm in his hands. Yelena glanced up briefly and snorted.
“At least pretend to be grateful, Barnes. That’s top-shelf instant.”
He raised an eyebrow but didn’t rise to the bait, eyes scanning the room with subtle urgency. He shifted, turning slightly, glancing toward the back door, the hallway—any sign of him.
“Where’s Sam?” His voice was low, careful.
Yelena’s expression sobered slightly, the humor bleeding from her features as she set her mug down with a quiet clink.
“He took the truck into town earlier,” she said, shrugging one shoulder. “Didn’t say where, just that he needed some air.”
Bucky hummed thoughtfully, the sound neutral but not without weight. Sam had always been one to wander, especially in unfamiliar places, especially when something was gnawing at the back of his mind. Still, the chill at Bucky’s spine remained.
“Didn’t wake me,” he murmured, more to himself than to her.
Yelena shrugged again, but her eyes flicked to him with something like sympathy buried under practiced detachment. “Probably didn’t want to. You probably needed the sleep, all things considered.”
Before he could reply, the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs made them both turn. Torres appeared in the doorway, disheveled and squinting like a man facing the sun for the first time in years. His hair stuck up in about five different directions, and he was wearing one of Yelena’s oversized sweatshirts, the sleeves nearly covering his hands.
“Jesus,” he croaked. “What time is it?”
“Good morning, sunshine,” Yelena drawled, taking another sip of coffee. “Come to brighten our day?”
“Ugh,” Torres groaned, stumbling toward the counter. He caught sight of Bucky’s mug and made a grab for it, only to have Bucky slap his hand away with a warning glare.
“Get your own before I stab you with my spoon, kid.”
“I was poisoned,” Torres argued weakly.
“You were hungover, like, over forty-eight hours ago.”
“Same thing.”
Yelena snorted into her cup as Bucky rolled his eyes and reached into the cupboard, retrieving another mug and setting it in front of Torres with more force than necessary. Torres looked at it like it owed him rent, then slumped into a chair.
For a moment, it almost felt normal. The clinking of mugs, the warmth of coffee in tired hands, the quiet shuffle of morning beginning. But beneath the veneer, Bucky couldn’t shake the silence where Sam should be. He didn’t like how long it had been. Didn’t like the feeling in his chest—that low, scraping ache of something he couldn’t see coming.
“Relax,” Yelena said suddenly, not looking at him. “He probably just needed a break from all the melodrama.”
Bucky looked up, startled. “Didn’t say anything.”
“Didn’t have to,” she replied, eyes flicking up to meet his. “You’ve got that look. Like you’re already planning which knife to throw first.”
Bucky’s jaw tensed as he took a slow sip of his own coffee, trying—and failing—not to glare at her over the rim of the mug. “I’m not planning on throwing anything,” he muttered, his tone taut with irritation.
Yelena raised one impeccably sculpted brow and made a quiet noise of disbelief, murmuring under her breath, “Somebody needs a Xanax.”
“He probably went back to Bragg this morning,” Torres grumbled, walking straight for the fridge like a man on a mission. “We were talking yesterday about some more evidence we’d requested—redacted files and top-secret helmet cam footage from Austin’s old unit. I think he wanted to review it alone before bringing it back here.”
Bucky froze.
It wasn’t the words themselves. It was the shift in the air.
Yelena, who had been leaning lazily against the counter, suddenly went rigid. Her eyes, which moments ago had been sharp with casual teasing, narrowed ever so slightly. Not alarm, not yet—but something had clicked into place behind them. She masked it quickly, far too quickly, her expression smoothing over with an almost imperceptible effort.
“What kind of footage?” she asked, too casually. Her voice didn’t match the look in her eyes.
Torres, oblivious, emerged from the fridge with eggs and a pack of tortillas, humming. “Dunno. Sam mentioned it might’ve been from a night op? Something they’d filed under restricted access until just recently. I don’t think he ever got to review it fully back then. He seemed excited to check it out now though—maybe a lead.”
Yelena was silent.
Bucky watched her like a hawk, the cold dread unspooling slowly in his stomach, thick and heavy and clinging. Something was wrong—more wrong than before. He knew Yelena better than most. She didn’t panic. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t freeze.
But right now, she was doing all three in microdoses, so subtle that anyone who didn’t know her would’ve missed it completely. Her fingers twitched against her coffee cup. Her posture was too still. Her breathing, slow and quiet, had shortened just a hair.
After a beat too long, she took a sip of coffee, then turned with what might have passed for ease. “I’m gonna go check on my strawberries,” she said over her shoulder, grabbing her phone from the table with a fluid movement.
Strawberries.
She didn’t grow strawberries.
Bucky blinked once, trying to remember if maybe she had mentioned it in passing. But he knew—he KNEW—she didn’t grow strawberries. Apples, tomatoes, a few stubborn plums. But not strawberries.
And now, something cold and electric was running down his spine. He kept his expression neutral, but his mind was already spiraling.
Helmet footage. Bragg. Yelena acting odd. Sam gone.
Torres was still in the kitchen, now cracking eggs into a skillet with a loud sizzle, cheerfully oblivious. “You want a breakfast burrito, man?”
Bucky forced his voice not to shake. “Yeah. Sure.”
He moved toward the table and sat down slowly, the chair creaking under him as he folded his arms across the surface, letting the warmth of the coffee between his palms anchor him. But he couldn’t stop staring at the back door where Yelena had disappeared. Something had just shifted. He felt it in his bones—felt it in the aching throb in his shoulder that told him a storm was still lingering somewhere in the distance, just waiting to roll in.
Torres turned around, spatula in hand, talking too fast as he tried to keep up with multitasking. “I mean, it’s kinda nice, y’know? Being back here. Sam and I talked a bit on the drive, and he said after all this is over, maybe we’ll have a real break. A good one. The four of us, hanging out here, Yelena making weird jams, you brooding in the barn, me definitely not doing any manual labor... It’s kinda peaceful.”
Bucky nodded absently, barely hearing him. He tried to focus on the mundane. The eggs sizzling. Torres humming to himself as he scraped up the edges of the tortilla. The smell of onions and sausage. But none of it could pull him away from the growing, gnawing pit in his stomach.
He looked out the window, catching a glimpse of the distant treeline, the way the morning haze still clung low to the earth like ghost breath.
He sipped his coffee, burned his tongue slightly, didn’t care.
What the hell was on that helmet footage? And why, for the first time in days, did Yelena—Yelena of all people—look like she was afraid?
That thought clung to the corners of Bucky’s mind like wet fabric, suffocating and insistent. It needled behind his ribs as he sat back down at the kitchen island, Torres humming to himself, far too content for someone who had maybe just detonated a landmine in the room. The scent of spiced sausage and peppers filled the air as the skillet crackled on the stove, and Torres moved with practiced ease, flipping scrambled eggs into flour tortillas as if he hadn’t just unknowingly dropped a match into a powder keg.
Bucky forced a breath through his nose, trying not to clench his jaw too tight as he stirred the coffee in his hand. He kept his posture casual, forearms braced on the counter, but his mind was anything but settled. That flicker of panic in Yelena’s eyes—the way she bolted out the door, phone already halfway to her ear, muttering something flimsy about strawberries—had uncoiled something dangerous and familiar inside him.
Yelena didn’t get scared. She didn’t flee. She didn’t HIDE.
And yet—she had.
“You want cheese in yours, old man?” Torres asked brightly, reaching into the fridge for a container of shredded cheddar.
Bucky blinked. “Sure.”
“You sure? You’re making a face like I offered you poison.”
Bucky grunted, managing the thinnest of smiles. “I always make that face.”
Torres laughed, loud and genuine, and Bucky hated how much it actually calmed him for a second. The kid had that effect—joy like sunlight on water, flickering too fast to grab but impossible not to notice. He moved with ease, setting out plates, scraping hot filling into tortillas with all the cheer of someone who hadn’t lived through the worst the world had to offer.
It made Bucky feel ancient.
Still, Torres kept talking, filling the space with a ramble about how long the drive back to Bragg had been the day before, how Sam had insisted on listening to a playlist that was 70% Marvin Gaye and 30% obscure funk, and how weird it was going through all those files like they were hunting for ghosts.
“Sam’s gut said there might be something in the helmet logs. Maybe just weird audio anomalies or stuff redacted in the transcripts. You know how he is—if something doesn’t line up, he won’t let it go.”
Bucky tried to nod, to seem engaged, but his stomach was curling tighter with every word. Helmet logs. Transcripts. Something Sam thought didn’t line up.
And Yelena—the look in her eye had said ‘don’t let him find it.’
He stared down at his hands, one of them still curled loosely around the warm mug, the other resting palm-up near the plate Torres had slid toward him. Fanny nudged her snout under his wrist, licking once, slow and deliberate, over the faded scar in the center of his right palm.
He swallowed hard.
“Be right back,” he said.
Torres blinked. “Uh, want me to wait on the burritos?”
“Nah. Start without me.”
He kept his voice level, but inside, it was all ash and wildfire. He walked out the front door with a tension he didn’t even bother hiding, the sun barely overhead, clouds beginning to gather thick and bruised along the horizon. The air had that static feel to it again—something heavy crawling low to the ground, curling up his spine like a warning.
Bucky stepped off the porch slowly, the screen door groaning behind him, barely registering the sound as it creaked back into place. The sky was a dull, muted gray, the kind that threatened rain but hadn’t yet decided to commit. And the wind—just strong enough to lift the ends of his hair, just cold enough to make the scar on his palm itch again—made his skin crawl.
He followed the instinct like a bloodhound, that creeping dread twisting deeper with every step. It wasn’t conscious at first—he didn’t intend to search, not exactly—but something primal in him had snapped awake, dragging him forward toward the barn and the pit in his gut.
He spotted her just before the corner. Yelena stood near the edge of the barn, half in shadow, her frame tight with tension. One arm was crossed across her chest, the other clutched her phone like it was the last lifeline she had. She was speaking Russian—fast, frantic, hushed in the way that meant the fear wasn’t for herself but for something far worse. Or someone.
“No, listen to me,” she hissed into the line. “Он начинает вспоминать. Я чувствую это. И Сам что-то нашёл. Если он увидит… всё кончено.” He’s starting to remember. I can feel it. And Sam found something. If he sees it… it’s over.
Bucky stopped cold. He didn’t mean to eavesdrop—didn’t mean to hear the rising panic in her voice—but the words sank into him like a slow-growing bruise. He stayed hidden behind the corner of the barn, breath shallow, chest tightening.
On the other end, the voice, Alexei's it seemed, was barely audible, but Bucky caught the low rumble of it. Calm. Soothing. Yelena shook her head like he could see her. “Я знаю, я знаю. Но что, если он вспомнит всё? Что, если он увидит то, что мы не хотим, чтобы он увидел? Что, если всё это развалится?” I know, I know. But what if he remembers everything? What if he sees what we don’t want him to see? What if it all falls apart?
There was a pause. Then, almost too quietly to make out, she added, “Я не хочу его терять. И я не хочу потерять семью, которую мы построили.” I don’t want to lose him. And I don’t want to lose the family we’ve built.
Bucky’s stomach lurched.
She sounded terrified—not of him, no—but of something tied to him. Something buried so deep he hadn’t even begun to dig it out. And it wasn't just her fear that unsettled him; it was how unfamiliar it felt to hear her vulnerable, uncertain. Yelena didn’t get scared. She got even. She made plans. She weaponized her fear and aimed it outward.
But now—now she was clutching her phone like it was the last tether she had to control, speaking to a man she once called the Red Guardian, the man who’d raised her in a house of lies and combat and survival. And she called him папа. Dad.
That chilled him more than anything else.
When she finally looked up, eyes bleary and wild, it took her a heartbeat to see him—really see him—and the phone dropped from her ear as if it had burned her.
“Oh,” she said, blinking hard. “Hey-”
Bucky didn’t speak for a long moment, his posture tense, arms rigid at his sides, like the wrong movement might shatter the fragile illusion of normalcy still lingering in the humid morning air.
“Who were you talking to?” he asked quietly, his voice too soft to be casual.
Yelena hesitated. “Alexei,” she said quickly, tucking the phone into the waistband of her jeans. “He’s... nosy.”
“Sounded more like you were scared,” Bucky replied, voice flat now, hollow.
Yelena forced a laugh, waving him off as she stepped out of the shadow of the barn. “Scared? Please. I was just venting. He gets weird when I don’t check in, thinks I’ve been kidnapped or joined a cult.”
Bucky didn’t move.
“Funny,” he muttered, “you didn’t mention strawberries the first time we walked the grounds.”
She froze.
“What?”
He tilted his head. “You said you were coming out here to check the strawberries. But you don’t grow strawberries, Yelena.”
For a split second, her expression faltered—something passed across her face like the flicker of headlights in fog, there and gone too quickly to name. Then her mask settled back into place.
“I meant raspberries,” she said smoothly. “Don’t get all Sherlock on me, Barnes.”
But Bucky didn’t smile. He looked at her like he was trying to solve a riddle written in a language he used to know. A language that had been beaten out of him, rewritten by a thousand trigger words and a century of silence.
He stepped forward, slowly, deliberately. “If whatever this is had something to do with Sam,” he said, not meeting her eyes, “you’d tell me, right?”
Yelena’s shoulders straightened. Her face, usually a canvas of sarcastic bravado, shifted—softened in a way that made something in Bucky twist. She hesitated. Just a beat too long.
Then she nodded. “Of course.”
And that hesitation was all it took for doubt to worm its way deep beneath his skin.
They walked back in silence, his bare feet brushing the dewed grass, her steps careful, her gaze flicking to him every few paces when she thought he wasn’t looking. He saw it all. Heard the storm building behind her eyes, felt the pressure of something unsaid pressing down on his chest like a weighted blanket.
Inside, the kitchen was warm—sunlight filtering through the curtain above the sink, steam curling from the coffee pot. The air smelled like cinnamon and cumin and fresh tortillas, the skillet sizzling softly as Torres turned over the breakfast burritos he’d promised.
“Hey!” Torres called brightly from behind the stove, his tone cheery but laced with exhaustion. “Bout time. Hope you two like ‘em spicy. Come sit, they’re hot.”
Yelena smirked, nudging Bucky’s side with her elbow as she walked past him. “If he adds any more jalapeños, I’m declaring war,” she muttered.
Bucky didn’t reply.
He sat stiffly at the table, coffee in hand, the warm light doing nothing to settle the chill that had taken root in his spine. Yelena laughed with Torres. The pan sizzled. The coffee tasted good. But everything inside him felt wrong. Empty.
And Sam—Sam was still gone.
That absence wasn’t just a missing presence. It was a weight. A warning. A whisper at the base of Bucky’s skull that something was coming. Something was already here.
He sipped his coffee, staring into the surface like it might show him the answer he didn’t know how to ask for.
He’d trusted her.
And now, she was lying.
Just like everyone else used to.
And somewhere, out on the road, Sam was driving toward something none of them understood.
And whatever it was—it had already started.
------------------------
The sun had shifted by the time Sam called, its light turning soft and amber as it filtered through the high pine canopy outside Yelena’s kitchen window. The air was thick with that familiar Southern heat, not sweltering yet, but heavy in a way that promised a storm might eventually roll in if given half the chance. Bucky answered the call after only one ring, pressing the phone to his ear with a quiet murmur of Sam’s name, and immediately Sam’s voice rushed in like fresh air, warm and light and completely grounding.
“You’re not gonna believe how ugly this building is,” Sam said, without even offering a hello. “I swear it’s held together by duct tape and probably some kid’s spit from 2007. The Air Force would never allow this kind of bullshit.”
Bucky chuckled, the sound low and genuine. “Maybe if you complain enough, they’ll upgrade you to a command trailer with an espresso machine and one of those chairs that massage your ass.”
Sam laughed, the kind of full-bellied laugh that made Bucky’s chest tighten in the best way. “Now you’re just talkin’ dirty.”
There was a pause, and then Sam softened. “I was callin’ to ask if you, Torres, and Yelena could come give me a hand with some of the boxes and documents they’ve pulled from storage. I’d ask the base guys but I don’t wanna listen to another story about someone’s divorce while I’m sweating my ass off.”
Bucky shifted his weight, eyes drifting toward the porch as he leaned against the countertop. “Of course. Anything for you.”
That softened something further in Sam’s voice. “You’re sweet when you’re not being a royal pain in my ass.”
“You like it when I’m a pain in your ass,” Bucky muttered cheekily, unable to help the small grin forming on his lips.
Sam sighed, a content sound that made something in Bucky ache. “On the way here I passed this fruit stand just outside of town—whole baskets of plums and peaches out front. I was thinkin’... after we finish up, you and me could sneak off, ditch Yelena and Torres, and just... I don’t know, wander around for a while. Find somewhere quiet. Buy stupid overpriced honey and some jam, maybe. Just... something normal.”
The sincerity caught Bucky off guard, and he swallowed hard before answering. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that.”
“Bring me a sweet tea and one of those Bo-Berry biscuits on your way here, and I’ll pretend to work hard.”
Bucky huffed a soft laugh. “Demanding.”
“Starving,” Sam corrected. “And incredibly underappreciated. I love you, by the way.”
It hit like it always did—steady and warm, but always new. “I love you too.”
They hung up, and for a moment Bucky just stood there, holding the phone loosely in his hand, watching the trees sway in the distance like the earth was holding its breath.
By the time they were packed into Yelena’s dented truck—Bucky behind the wheel, Yelena riding shotgun with her feet up on the dash, and Torres already peeling the label off a bottle of orange Gatorade—Bucky’s heart had settled into a strange rhythm. Not bad, not good. Just... anticipatory.
The drive through Southern Pines began in a lull of cicada hum and dust-blown stillness. The narrow road slithered between dense woods and farmland, occasionally opening up to sun-drenched fields where horses grazed and laundry flapped lazily on lines strung between worn wooden posts. The sky above was wide and cloudless, the kind of blue that made the greens of the trees look deeper, the shadows more pronounced.
Torres chattered on about something Yelena had said to him earlier—something about an electric fence and personal liability insurance—but Bucky was only half-listening, his mind growing quieter as the scenery changed. The thick trees began to thin out the closer they got to the base, replaced with flatter, more open terrain—scrub brush and dried grass, chain-link fences and sagging utility poles. The road widened, and the air felt drier, the presence of Fort Bragg growing like a weight just off the edge of the horizon.
“You okay?” Yelena asked suddenly, not looking at him as she reached down to adjust the air conditioning vent.
Bucky nodded once. “Fine.”
“You’ve got that ‘I might throw myself out of the truck’ look again,” she said mildly, sipping from a bottle of water. “Should I be worried?”
“I’m not gonna throw myself out of the truck,” he grunted.
Torres leaned forward between the seats, grinning. “You always say that when you’re about to do something dramatic.”
Bucky ignored them both, hands tightening slightly on the steering wheel as a green sign flicked past: FORT LIBERTY – 10 MILES.
The closer they got, the more the edges of his vision seemed to blur, not from pain or exhaustion, but from something else—some internal pressure building behind his eyes, like his brain was wading through heavy mud in search of a memory it wasn’t quite ready to find. There was a feeling in his chest, one he hadn’t had in a long time. It reminded him of the old days—Hydra days—when he’d wake in the cold and not know who he was, or worse, who they wanted him to be.
The highway shoulder grew littered with signs and equipment, and the distant glint of fencing became visible against the stretch of pale sky. Military vehicles passed them going the other direction—dust-caked Humvees and white unmarked vans that sent a cold shiver down Bucky’s spine.
“Ugh,” Torres groaned, twisting in his seat to get a better look as the base perimeter came into view. “God, this place is even uglier in the daylight. Why does everything on a military base look like it was designed by someone with a grudge against architecture?”
Yelena snorted. “Government contracts. It’s all about function over form.”
Bucky didn’t laugh. His stomach had dropped somewhere near the soles of his boots. He could see it now—Fort Bragg rising like a squat gray blotch on the horizon, its boxy buildings and endless fences casting long shadows across the road.
The closer they got, the harder it became to breathe.
He wasn’t sure what he was expecting—he’d been on countless bases over the years, seen every shade of military bureaucracy and utilitarian bleakness imaginable—but something about this one scraped against the inside of his ribs. The unease wasn’t coming from the sight of the base itself. It was coming from something else entirely. Something just under the surface.
It prickled at the nape of Bucky’s neck as Yelena’s truck rolled off the main road and onto the heavily worn access road leading to the first security checkpoint of Fort Bragg. The old pine trees thinned and scattered as they neared the tall, beige-painted concrete barriers that flanked the guarded entry gate, their surface marred by years of sun-fade and exhaust soot. Overhead, clouds gathered slowly, veining out like smoke across the sky, as if something in the atmosphere itself was preparing to rupture.
Bucky’s hand tightened around the steering wheel, his vibranium fingers pressing small divots into the faux leather wrap. Torres stopped humming behind him, reaching forward to dig into the center console where their credentials had been stacked. Yelena was already lowering her window and flicking hers out with the casual, unbothered ease of someone who had infiltrated places far worse than Fort Bragg.
But Bucky… Bucky hesitated, his fingers ghosting over the worn edge of his ID before finally handing it over to the young private standing sentinel at the booth.
The guard—barely out of his teens, maybe nineteen—took one look at Bucky’s photo and immediately went still. His eyes flicked up to the real man behind the wheel. His hand did not move to pass the ID scanner. Instead, he reached for his shoulder mic and depressed the call button.
“Hold one,” the private murmured, turning slightly and speaking into the radio in clipped tones, his words muffled and indistinct. He said nothing else to them. No explanation. Just kept them in limbo.
Yelena’s lips pressed into a thin line, her eyes narrowing.
Bucky’s voice, when it came, was quiet but sharp. “Is there a problem?”
The private didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at Bucky. He kept his hand on the mic, waiting, listening.
“I asked if there was a problem,” Bucky repeated, more forcefully this time, the edge in his tone coiled so tight it nearly cut.
From the back seat, Torres leaned forward, and when he spoke, his voice was different—sharper, formal in a way he rarely let himself be around them. “Captain Joaquín Torres,” he announced coolly, the change in demeanor making Bucky blink. “I’m currently assigned under Special Operations Command. Is there a reason we’re being delayed?”
The private froze.
Torres leaned farther forward, resting his elbow on the back of Yelena’s seat. “Because if there is, you might want to let your CO know that you’re holding up the current Captain America’s team. And I swear to God, if Sam Wilson has to fly his ass out of the evidence room and storm this guard tower over a twenty-second clearance check, you won’t like the kind of disciplinary paperwork that follows.”
The private blanched, the mic still pressed to his mouth.
Torres smiled. It wasn’t a friendly smile, all bare teeth and flat of any of his normal cheer.
A few agonizing seconds passed. Then the private stiffened and cleared his throat. “You’re clear to enter. Sorry for the delay, ma’am. Sirs.”
The gate lifted.
Bucky didn’t speak. His knuckles had gone pale.
Yelena raised an eyebrow, muttered something in Russian that translated roughly to ‘amateur hour’, and turned to Torres. “Nice power play.”
“Not my first rodeo,” Torres said, and his grin returned, easy and lopsided, before he glanced at Bucky. “You good, man?”
“No,” Bucky muttered under his breath, the truck now rolling forward through the open gate, a leaden weight settling in his chest. “But when am I ever?”
The base unfolded around them, familiar yet impersonal—acres of flat concrete and hard lines, modular buildings stacked like oversized LEGO bricks, old barracks stained with rust, their facades peppered with half-fallen signage and peeling paint. Faded murals of American flags and airborne divisions blurred past the windows. The closer they drew to the heart of Fort Bragg, the more the landscape lost its charm, becoming colder, more sterile.
“I have a bad feeling about this place,” Yelena said aloud, her tone light but not unserious. She rested one arm on the window, her fingers drumming against the door panel. “There’s something about the air. Like it’s trying to hide something.”
“You say that everywhere,” Torres replied from the back seat, his mouth full of the protein bar he’d scavenged earlier.
“No,” she said more quietly this time. “Not like this.”
Bucky didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His throat had gone dry and his stomach twisted into something cold and tight. Something pulled at him, like a fraying thread caught on a hook deep inside his ribs. The further they drove, the more the tension bloomed, unfurling like smoke in his lungs.
And then—without warning—he saw it.
An old, partially boarded-up building, nearly swallowed by creeping vines and neglect. The glass in its front-facing windows had long since spidered into webs of cracks, and the roof had buckled in places, revealing rusted joists beneath. There was no sign out front. No markers. But Bucky knew, in the marrow of his bones, that he had been here before.
His vision narrowed. His chest compressed. And before he even realized what was happening, he was yanking the truck off to the side of the road.
“Bucky?” Yelena said sharply.
He barely heard her over the roaring in his ears. The second the truck stopped, he stumbled out, boots hitting gravel unevenly, and then he was bent over the hood, retching violently into the dust.
Torres was out in seconds, one hand on Bucky’s back, the other gripping his arm to steady him.
“Hey, hey—it’s okay, man—breathe, just breathe—”
But Bucky wasn’t listening. He couldn’t.
Because behind his eyes, something had cracked open. There were flashes—too bright, too fast. A chamber. White light. Cold air biting into skin as he was lowered into something metal, voices distant and speaking Russian—no, German—and a scream, high-pitched and cut off too soon. The desert. The cliff. A missile in his hands.
“Jesus Christ,” Yelena murmured, stepping around the front of the truck, her voice low and serious now. “What was that?”
Bucky staggered back from the grill of the truck, wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his wrist, pale and unsteady.
He pointed, hand trembling, toward the crumbling building. “That. That place. I—I don’t know what it is, but I saw it and—”
Torres caught him under the arm just as his knees buckled again.
“We’re switching,” Yelena said briskly, already moving toward the driver’s seat. “Torres, get in the back with him. We need to find Sam. Now.”
Bucky didn’t protest. Couldn’t. He slumped into the backseat, sweat beading at his temples despite the cool air that had followed the cloud cover. He leaned his head against the cool glass, trying not to pass out.
Yelena started the truck again and didn’t look back. “What did you see, Bucky?”
For a long moment, the only sound in the cab was the low hum of the engine and the rush of wind through the half-cracked windows. Bucky remained slouched against the passenger side door, forehead nearly pressed to the cool glass, his breath fogging it in short, uneven bursts. The nausea had started to pass, but it left in its wake a cold, hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach—like something had been scooped out and replaced with ice water.
He gently brushed Torres’s concerned hands from his shoulder with a quiet, “I’m okay,” his voice hoarse from vomiting, and forced himself to sit upright. The world wobbled slightly as he did, and he blinked hard against the grey haze threatening to pull him under again. One hand came up to press against his temple, fingers digging into the aching spot just behind his right eye where a headache had begun to bloom like something venomous.
“I saw... flashes,” he finally said, the words tasting like copper. “It was like a camera flash going off in my brain. Bright lights. A chamber. Like... cryo, I think.”
Torres leaned forward between the seats, voice laced with concern and curiosity. “Were you ever stationed here? At Bragg?”
Bucky shook his head slowly, then stopped when the motion made his stomach pitch again. “Only once. Back in ’43. Just for a few weeks. I did my airborne training here before we shipped out to Europe. I haven’t stepped foot on this base since.”
Yelena glanced at him in the mirror, her eyes sharp despite the tension bracketing her mouth. “That’s not how you said it, Barnes. You said you don’t think you’ve been back since. That sounds like something just shifted.”
Bucky’s brows drew together, and he rubbed the heel of his hand against his eye, as if pressure could somehow push the fragments back together. “It’s like there’s a crack in my brain, and something’s leaking out, but I can’t tell what it is. Just... noise. Screaming. Lights. That building, when I saw it, it was like—it was like something in me knew it before I did.”
The truck jostled over a pothole, and Bucky’s hand clenched around the door handle instinctively. His voice dropped lower, rougher. “I think they brought me back here. I don’t know when. After they pulled me out of the ice. Before SHIELD fell. That building... I think I was kept in that building.”
Torres sat back slowly, processing. “But wouldn’t you remember something like that? I mean, they had you all over the world, right?”
“I thought I would,” Bucky said hollowly. “I thought I knew all of it. Every terrible thing. Every name. Every face. I’ve lived with that. Carried it like a fucking second skin. But this—” He stopped, breathing through his nose like it might help anchor him. “This feels different.”
He turned slightly in his seat to look at Torres, who was watching him with furrowed brows, not unkind, but unsettled. “I’m starting to think there are things I don’t know. Things I was made to forget.”
Yelena didn’t say anything at first. Her grip on the steering wheel had tightened so much her knuckles had gone pale. She took the next turn faster than necessary, gravel kicking up in the wake of her tires.
“Why didn’t I remember it?”
The question lingered in the air like a heavy fog, thick and suffocating, as if even the truck itself had braced against the sudden weight of Bucky’s voice. He hadn’t meant to speak it aloud, not really—but it had slipped out in a hoarse whisper, cracking under the strain of something festering just behind his eyes.
His pulse thudded violently in his throat, and though his vision wasn’t swimming anymore, everything still felt tilted—just slightly off-kilter, like the earth had shifted half an inch beneath his feet and refused to set itself right again.
“Why didn’t I remember it?” he repeated, this time barely above a whisper. His fingers dug into his scalp as if he could claw the truth out from underneath his skull, force it forward by sheer will alone.
Yelena’s voice floated toward him from the front seat, softer than usual, laced with a rare hesitance. “With everything you’ve been through… it’s not exactly shocking, Barnes. You’ve had your mind shattered and stitched back together more times than anyone has a right to survive. Some memories just—don’t want to come up.”
“Yeah,” Torres chimed in gently, twisting around in the front seat to face him. He held out a half-empty bottle of water, the condensation glistening like sweat. “Your brain’s probably doing you a favor, man. Sometimes forgetting is survival.”
But Bucky couldn’t take the water. His hands were too busy trying to hold his skull together, too caught up in the pressure building at the base of his neck, just where the metal met flesh. It was a slow, creeping heat that threatened to blind him, worse than any migraine he’d had in years. He felt it clawing its way through the soft, frayed edges of his memory—something bigger than just a single moment. Something buried so deep, even Hydra hadn’t thought he’d ever dig it up again.
“No,” he muttered, rocking slightly. “No, it’s not that. I remember EVERYTHING. Everything they did. Every face. Every order. Every scream. Every goddamn thing they made me do. And I DON’T forget. I DON’T.”
His voice cracked, and it startled him. It sounded like someone else’s voice—broken and brittle and so very small.
Yelena’s eyes caught his in the rearview mirror, narrowed and sharp. But behind them… worry. Not irritation. Not sarcasm. Worry.
“You need to stop,” she said flatly, her tone an attempt at grounding him, a verbal anchor. “Seriously, Bucky. You’re pushing too hard. You’re gonna bleed out of your ears or have a stroke, and I don’t do roadside brain surgery.”
But Bucky couldn’t stop. The memory was there. Just out of reach. Like a matchhead, about to spark.
He squeezed his eyes shut—and suddenly, he wasn’t in the truck anymore.
He was in a darkened corridor, all concrete and flickering overhead lights, the air heavy with frost and antiseptic. The hum of electricity buzzed behind his teeth, the static of his own heartbeat crashing in his ears. There were voices, muffled by distance, and the whine of metal restraints pulling tight.
Then: the hiss of a cryo chamber unsealing. His own breath ragged and steaming in the freezing air as he staggered forward on unsteady feet, dragged by two guards in black tactical gear. The hallway veered left—and there it was. A room. The one from the outside of the building. The one that made him sick.
Inside: A desk. A file folder. A clipboard. Blurred names typed in black ink.
He leaned closer.
There were two names. Target One. Target Two.
They were smudged—intentionally, perhaps. The ink bled in a way that made no sense, like someone had tried to burn it and failed.
He strained to read them anyway, the pressure in his skull becoming unbearable, the names at the edge of his mind like screams beneath ice.
“Stop, stop—” he heard Yelena say distantly.
But he couldn’t.
He HAD to know.
And then—
A cold splash of water hit him like a freight train, tearing him back to the present.
“JESUS FUCK—” Bucky gasped, sputtering as he jerked away, water dripping down his face, the sharp sting of it shocking him out of the memory like a defibrillator.
Torres blinked at him from the front seat, holding the now-empty water bottle with an apologetic shrug. “I panicked,” he said. “You looked like you were gonna pass out or—go full Exorcist.”
Bucky, panting, swiped his hand over his soaked face, water mingling with sweat. His whole body trembled, still wired with the adrenaline of something that felt like being pulled back from drowning.
He reached across the seat and smacked Torres upside the head.
“Ow,” Torres whined, rubbing the spot.
Yelena didn’t say anything. She just looked at Bucky again in the mirror.
He met her eyes this time.
“Target One,” he whispered. “I almost saw it.”
“Who?” she asked softly.
Bucky shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The words barely left his mouth before the scream echoed again — thin, high, stretched to the point of tearing — like a wire being pulled too tight in the dark. It vibrated through his skull, through the bones in his jaw, ricocheting between his temples like a ghost that had nowhere else to go. There was something maddening about it — not just the sound, but the feeling beneath it, the horrible familiarity. It wasn’t just someone screaming. It was someone he knew. Someone he'd heard cry out before. And he couldn’t name them. He couldn’t place them. The knowledge of it itched like a splinter under his skin, too deep to dig out.
“Okay,” Yelena said, voice sharp and too casual, like she’d been trying to lighten the mood for the last five minutes and had finally run out of patience. “You can spiral into your bottomless trauma pit later. Right now we’re here to help Sam, remember?”
Bucky blinked hard, sweat clinging to his temple despite the truck’s steady A/C, and nodded slowly. He could feel his pulse everywhere — in his fingers, in his throat, in the ache behind his eyes. His anxiety wasn’t the usual crackling hum in his chest. This was different. Deeper. Like he was standing on a cliff he didn’t remember climbing, and the edge was crumbling underneath his feet.
He watched out the window as Yelena guided the truck around the back lot of one of the older base buildings — the kind that looked more like it had been forgotten than decommissioned. Sam’s truck was parked out front, slightly crooked, like he’d pulled in fast. That should have comforted him — proof that Sam was here, that he was close. But it didn’t. Not this time.
The closer they got, the more the air felt heavy in Bucky’s chest, humid with that gathering storm and something else—something thick and electric and cold. Dread, maybe. He could feel it in his palms, clammy against his jeans, and in the way his shoulder blades pressed tight to the seat like his body wanted to vanish into it.
Torres was already hopping out, boots landing with a solid thud, and started toward the building. “I’ll find him,” he said over his shoulder. “He’s probably knee-deep in paperwork hell.”
Bucky didn’t answer. He didn’t move. He just sat there for a beat longer, letting the silence settle back in. Yelena was already turning halfway toward him, legs still braced in the passenger seat, one hand on the headrest. Watching him again — always watching, like she expected him to crack open and spill everything without her needing to ask.
“We need to check out the building,” Bucky said, his voice low and rough from the nausea and whatever the hell else was unraveling in him. “The one we passed. The one that made me sick.”
Yelena’s mouth tightened almost imperceptibly — but he saw it. She didn’t speak right away, and that alone set off every warning bell in his head.
“Bucky…” she started, and it was too soft, too placating, like she was trying to soothe a wild animal. “We don’t even know what’s in there. It could be just another storage facility. This place is full of half-abandoned bunkers and old housing blocks. You got hit with a memory fragment — that’s good. Let it simmer. Don’t go chasing it when you’re not ready.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t need your permission.”
“That’s not what I said.” Her expression didn’t waver, but he could see the tension in her jaw, the way her fingers tightened around the door handle. “I’m saying it might not be safe for you to push it. Mentally. Physically.”
“And I’m saying I don’t care,” he bit out, his voice sharp. “I need to know. Something in that building — I’ve been there. I know it. And it wasn’t during the war. It wasn’t the Winter Soldier days, not the ones I remember.”
“You’re just guessing that,” she said, quieter now, like maybe she was trying not to draw attention to them. “That’s not a timeline you know for sure.”
“That’s the point,” Bucky snapped. “I don’t know it. But you—”
He stopped himself, teeth grinding together.
But you do.
That’s what he wanted to say. The words caught behind his teeth like shrapnel, because he didn’t want to say them, not really — not to her. Not to the person who’d risked everything to fight alongside him. Not to the woman who had dragged his barely-conscious body into a bathtub full of ice and held him together with her bare hands.
But she was hiding something. He could feel it like a bruise blooming under the skin. And the look on her face — that mix of sympathy and calculation — it only made it worse.
Yelena exhaled, glancing away for a second before locking eyes with him again. “Fine. You want to go check it out? We’ll check it out. But Sam stays out of it.”
Bucky blinked. “What?”
“He’s here to look at intel. That’s all. He doesn’t go into that building.”
“Why?” he asked flatly, suspicion creeping into every syllable.
“Because if you’re right,” she said, still calm, too calm, “and something in there messes you up even worse than the last time—”
“I can handle it.”
“—you’ll need him,” she finished, ignoring the interruption. “Not in the room. Out here. Thinking clearly.”
He didn’t answer at first. Something about the way she said it — like she was already trying to brace for damage she couldn’t stop — made him feel even sicker than he had before. Like her calm was a shield, one she only raised when she was afraid of what came next.
“I’m not leaving him in the dark,” Bucky said finally, voice low. “Whatever this is... I need him in it with me.”
Yelena didn’t say anything, not right away. She just looked at him, something unreadable flickering behind her eyes, like she was weighing every possible version of the next hour and not liking any of them.
Then, finally, she nodded. “Alright. But I’m going in first.”
Before he could argue, Torres shouted from the other side of the parking lot. “Y’all coming? We’ve got boxes of gear to haul.”
Yelena stood and tossed a look over her shoulder at Bucky. “Let’s move, grandpa.”
It was light — joking — but he felt none of it. Not really.
He stepped out of the truck, boots hitting the cracked pavement, and tilted his head toward the base’s skyline. The building — the one he’d seen earlier, the one he knew was still waiting like an open wound — was somewhere just beyond those trees. Just out of reach. For now.
And somewhere inside that crumbling, sun-bleached structure, something waited.
Something that remembered him. Even if he didn’t remember it.