Ghosts upon Ghosts upon Ghosts

Part 1 - The Search

Three horses
Winter's heavy snow
Does this seem familiar?
A place
A person you might know

- "Three Horses" from Onegin by Amiel Gladstone and Veda Hille

They were in Europe, looking for Bucky, and sometimes they would pass places that Steve recognized. When this happened Steve would point out the place to Sam, saying "We stayed in this village" or "We came under enemy fire here". Other times he didn't recognize the place but he knew it must have been the same place because it was the same coordinates, even if everything else about it had changed.

"The buildings were in ruins, last time I was here," he said, marveling at the donair place they were eating lunch at, "They've rebuilt."

Overall he seemed pleased about the changes. Sam thought about Afghanistan - the valleys littered with the wreckage of burnt out tanks. He would be pleased too.

Steve continued to talk about how the village had changed, pointing out which of the buildings he recognized, and which were new, and what it had been like in the village when he had been there last, then stopped suddenly.

"I'm sorry if I'm boring you," he said.

"Hey," said Sam, "You know how many movies there are about 'Captain America's Great Wartime Adventures'? People would pay good money to hear this. And here I am, listening to the real story, for free. I should be thanking you."

"Come on," said Steve, "I know the movies make it out to be all - " He waved his hands, " - but it wasn't all that. As a matter of fact, we spent three days walking to this village and by the time we got here everyone was so dog-tired we fell asleep immediately. Then we left the next day. Not much more to tell than that. Some adventure."

Sam laughed. "Hold up, hold up. You telling me war ain't like the movies?"

"Sorry to be the one to break it to you," said Steve, smiling.

Sam told Steve about how he had spent half his first tour in Afghanistan sitting in the break room watching movies.

"I thought I was gonna be some kind of action hero you know? Swooping in and saving the day, 24/7. And sure, we saw some action but the rest of the time we just sat around twiddling our thumbs waiting for shit to hit the fan."

"Probably not a bad problem to have."

"No kidding. We'd complain about being bored, then feel guilty about it, you know? Because if we were called in, then it meant things were going FUBAR."

They had about nine movies on the base. They watched them over and over. One was a Captain America movie - 'The Great March'. It was about the journey back to regimental HQ after Captain America rescued the captives at Krausburg.

"Arguably, one of the most successful pararescue missions in history," said Sam. It was a bit of cult classic amidst PJs, probably due to the fact it started with Captain America jumping out of plane.

"I don't know if you could really call it that," said Steve, "I didn't even have my jump wings at the time."

"You get how that's more impressive, right?"

"I did what I had to do," he said with a shrug. It was something that Steve often did, Sam had noticed: trying to downplay his accomplishments.

"I'm just saying," said Sam, "That a lot of us were inspired by that movie."

Wasn't that, in the end, one of the reasons he had wanted to join the Pararescue? To serve and protect. To save the day, like Captain America, swooping in to liberate the prisoners and bring them home to safety.

"Did I ever tell you," Steve said, when Sam told him this, "That my father died in the first world war?"

"I don't think so."

He had known this, of course, from the history books. But Sam had never heard Steve talk about his father before.

Steve explained how Joseph Rogers had fought in WW1 and died in a mustard gas attack.

Everyone had said his father was a hero.

"That's why I wanted to join the 107th," said Steve, "Because that was his regiment. I wanted to be just like him."

---

They went to the place where Bucky had died. The Austrian Alps soared above them, tall and craggy and magnificent. Mountains, sharp and steep, like the Hindu Kush, where Riley had died.

"You're sure you're not just doing this to torture yourself?" Sam asked. But he could see Steve's reasoning. Start at the beginning and work backwards. If they understood what had happened to Bucky, if they could put it all into a timeline, then it might provide them with some leads.

They stood there at the bottom of the valley looking up at the cliff face. The train tracks could not be seen from the bottom. A river wound through the bottom of the valley, the clear water rushing over a rocky bottom. Crumbled rock hugged the bottom of the cliff, verdant with moss. It was like a scene straight out of National Geographic, Sam thought. Beautiful. A mountain-top experience, you could say, even if they were at the bottom. But rather than awe-struck, Steve's face was drawn and pale. 

"Just say it," said Sam.

Steve ducked his head in acknowledgment.

"I should have...I should have looked for him."

"When should you have looked for him?"

"I - I don't know, I should have insisted - I should have -"

"Anyone would have died from that height."

"Not me. Not with the serum. I should have realized - " Steve said again, and looked up at the mountain, then down at the ground. He took a deep breath and walked forward. Sometimes, Sam thought, that's all that you can do - walk forward.

They walked for some time along the base of the ravine.

Sam flew the prototype drone Stark had made for him up the mountain. They watched themselves grow smaller and smaller in the video feed. The train tracks and the tunnel soon appeared. "There it is," said Steve.

Sam could feel Steve as he loomed over his shoulder, the very heat of his body palpable as they watched the video stream together. From the perspective of the drone the two of them were no longer visible. Sam followed the train track with the drone for a while, then tipped it back over the edge. He watched with a sick feeling in his stomach as they plummeted down and down and down.

---

What had happened, afterwards? They scoured the area for HYDRA bases, but found none. Perhaps he had been brought to a temporary POW camp, the traces of which time has now obliterated. Perhaps... Well, who could say? They went to the nearest village and tried to find someone who might remember. Nobody seemed especially eager to talk to them, especially not about the war. They were referred several times to the town's local historian, a middle-aged female librarian who spoke excellent English. She was very happy to discuss the history of the village - only, what she mainly wanted to tell them was that in the Middle Ages there had been an important monastery near the village which played an influential role in the village's history. It's scriptorium had produced many extraordinary works of art, but the whole thing been destroyed in the 16th century during a peasant's revolt. The revolt had been a watershed moment for the villagers and -

They told her they were interested in WW2 history.

She sighed heavily, and told them what she knew. Yes, well of course they had all been swept up in the times, Hitler and Anchluss and all that. She pointed on a map to the building where the secret police had been headquartered. There had been concentration camp a few miles away from here. Several local men had fought in the war - some even died. The village had been captured by the Soviets in the Vienna Offensive in 1945, and remained under Soviet control for over a year. It was a chaotic time, she said, and that's an understatement. But she was clearly of the opinion that the monastery was much more interesting, and that they were wasting their time with this WW2 business.

---

Natasha was able to find a lead for them in Russia. They took the train eastward. They passed a series of small hills which turned out to be the Ural Mountains, and then suddenly they were in Siberia. Contrary to expectations, the region was hot and swampy and full of mosquitoes. It was summer. After traveling a few days they met Natasha at a train station with a clunky old van. They drove north. They passed over dizzying bridges of hand-hewn lumber that was slowly decaying. The road and the bridges had been carved out by convicts during the Soviet era. The Trans-Siberian too, had been built by prisoners. As they headed further north they occasionally passed abandoned facilities which Natasha told them had once been gulags. Over the decades, thousands of people had been forcefully relocated to Siberia - people from Latvia and Poland, Russians who had told a joke to the wrong person, political agitators, and also Bucky, it seemed.

When night fell, they camped out at the side of the road, underneath netting to keep out the bugs. The bugs were relentless. As they crept further north and the air got cooler, the bugs alleviated only slightly. The prison camp they eventually arrived at looked similar to the others, eerily empty and undisturbed.

But inside: the HYDRA logo displayed on a wall. Laboratories with strange equipment, reminiscent of those in Krausberg. Operating tables with heavy straps. Cages and cells with rough dirty floors.

And in an old trunk in a corner of a closet - a dog tag belonging to a certain James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant, 32557038.

---

Bucky had not been the only person kept there. He had not even been the only American, although it seemed there had been people of other nationalities as well. This was soon obvious. There were other dog tags in the box, along with an eclectic array of other items that had presumably once been those unfortunate soul's entire earthly possessions. How many had Hydra experimented on? In the trunk they found a few crumpled pieces of paper - a few letters, a few faded photographs, including one of a dark-haired beauty, a picture of a dog, a picture of Bucky's family, three pocket watches, one of which Steve identified as belonging to Bucky, some old, moth-eaten uniforms, ripped and covered in blood, a pocket Bible, two rosaries, a pair of glasses. Etcetera. There were other boxes too.

They continued searching the building. There were several documents in Russian that Natasha said might prove useful. "Though you might not like what they say," she said. Together with the boxes, they lugged it all back to the van.

On the way back, Sam sorted through the dog tags and carefully noted down the names and serial numbers in a notebook. He would try and notify any remaining family members, once he got back.

"Dead souls," said Natasha.

"Hm?" said Sam.

"Oh, it's a Russian novel," she said. "It just reminded me of that. The main character goes around buying all these serfs who have died. But their names are still included in the census. Soon he's the proud owner of a hundred souls. Of course, they're all dead, but who needs to know that? Their names are all written down in this notebook and one day he goes through it and he starts imagining what the people would have been like."

Sam looked at the names he had written in his notebook. Letters on a page. But they were people. Had they been tall people, or short people? Funny or serious? All that remained were the strokes of a pen. A dog-tag, a letter, a photo - the remnants of someone who had once been a man. It was like the outline of a dead body on a crime scene - something that hinted that someone once had been there, that someone had once occupied that space. It proved, in a way, that they had really once existed. Yet it did not change the fact that the body itself was gone. Sam was left with nothing but an empty space. Who was Bucky, really? Other than the hero of a long story that Steve liked to tell and some letters from a book he once had read long ago and the cold steel dog tag in the palm of his hand.

"Before that point," said Natasha, "they had just been a means to an end. A get-rich-quick scheme. But when he reads those names, he suddenly realizes that once they had been real people."

"Everyone's a real person," said Steve, "I don't know why it's so easy to forget that." His voice was tight with anger and frustration.

---

Before they went back to America, they stopped in France. A cemetery. This was where Steve's father had been buried. He had not had a chance to go visit before.

"Sometimes we passed the cemeteries from the previous war," he told them, "And there would be new graves on the side of the road, from the new one. It was a strange feeling."

The grass of the cemetery was astonishingly green. The rows of white crosses stretched out farther than the eye could see. Every so often a bird would sing and it reminded Sam of that poem with the poppies and the lark still bravely singing, scarce heard amid the guns below. The rows of crosses were white and uniform and identical and each belonged to a person that they had never known. Rows upon rows of dead souls.

Their trip had been fruitless. Well, they had uncovered more information on Hydra and what it had done to Bucky and to others - but as for Bucky himself the man was still in the wind. They had absolutely no idea where he was. He was indeed what HYDRA had made him: a ghost.

Sam and Steve and Natasha looked out over the rows of crosses. Rows upon rows upon rows, ghosts upon ghosts upon ghosts.