This is not the Endgame

She kept silent as he'd asked, allowing him to deal with those painful memories, getting up to bring a roll of toilet paper and a small trashcan over. She sat, waiting patiently, until his eyes were dry and he was ready to continue.

"If I thought that Zola was bad, what happened after was worse. I was taken to the Hydra installation in Siberia; it was the largest independent Hydra facility in the world, although it worked with the Soviets, agents sleeping in the KGB too. And while Hydra was one organization that crept all over the world, there were branch rivalries; they shared the overarching ideals but not much below that canopy. Everybody wanted power or to drive the power in their part of the world, be the main head of Hydra when they took over the world power structure eventually. The Soviets gave me to Hydra; they gave me a titanium cybernetic arm and extensive brainwashing. More drug therapies. I was told that while this was going on, Steve was crashing around Europe, taking out Hydra facilities with the Howlers. Then he got onto the Valkyrie somehow just before it started its bombing run. The general perception was that the bombs--they were called Parasits-- were atomic bombs, but the Nazis (and Hydra) didn't have the technology. They were made using the this thing called the Tesseract for their power, and given that, I don't think that they would have worked like conventional or even atomic bombs. Steve said that after he was recovered, he found that SHIELD had been researching the weapons, said that opening the Tesseract sort of dissolved Schmidt; it sent him into a different reality, I think, because a gatekeeper on another planet. Or so Barton said. So these bombs were really weird, he didn't know anything about them, other than they were loaded onto small, individual planes that carried a single payload destined for a specific city. Spoke to a high degree of certainty in their power. He fought Schmidt in the cockpit area of the bomber during which the autopilot was damaged, Schmidt died--it was thought--and Steve put the Valkyrie into the ice to avoid the destruction of American cities.

"Meanwhile, I was trained. I learned Russian, German, Romanian, Persian, Arabic, Spanish, and French, Systema and other hand to hand combat systems, knife fighting, additional proficiency with firearms, acrobatics. How to fly virtually any aircraft on the planet. Pursuit tactics and how to handle a variety of vehicles. The drug therapies gave me an eidetic memory, enhanced strength, durability, speed, stamina, reflexes, agility, longevity, and a healing factor. But the serum I was given and the supplemental therapies weren't the same ones that Steve had. He was given the perfected version, no boosters or anything. I learned that the reason they were initially interested in me was because I was Cap's friend; they planned to use me as a propaganda tool--here's this American soldier, but the antithesis of Captain America, he works for us against the US. The public impact would have been considerable, they believed, but Cap disappeared before this plan could be put into action and Hydra publicly went tits up after the war. Then with both of the scientists who came up with successful versions of the serum beyond their grasp, they thriftily decided to use me anonymously and I became an assassin for them, put on the most difficult and highest priority targets. To preserve my longevity and skills, they kept me in cryostasis until they had another use for me. Well, mostly. I was tasked for a time to train the girls in the Black Widow program. I met Natasha Romanov there." He frowned. "We were lovers, until they found out. They put me back in cryo when they did."

"I was hard to control; I kept trying to break out, and initially they came up with a bunch of words in Russian, a specific sequence of ten terms that put me into a receptive state where I would receive orders and carry them off. They were words that they'd found out under torture meant something to me. As long as the conditioning held, I was under their control completely, I couldn't resist or refuse at all. And they never activated me until the plans were in place and ready to be executed so that I couldn't break that conditioning before I did the job. The longer the mission, the more opportunity I had to break the conditioning. I worked on American soil only a few times. One of those was to kill Howard Stark and his wife and procure what was believed to be the first successful version of the supersoldier serum in decades. That wasn't a difficult mission, anyone could have done it, but because Howard and I had met during the war, they specifically wanted it to be me to kill him. A show of their power and reach, for me, for him, for anybody who might find out. And they had me crash their car at a specific point, right by some cameras, so they wanted to send a message, for people to know that it wasn't an accident. I recovered five doses, and they gave the serum to five volunteers. It was, like Steve's version, better than mine. Still incredibly painful, but at least they were willing volunteers. I had to train them; there was an incident at the end where they were out of control, there was some psychosis risk. They were subdued and put on ice until they could be stabilized; they were all better than me, and I was the best assassin in the world at that time. They had additional useful skills and knowledge that made them the biggest threat to freedom in the world, and do not believe that I am exaggerating. My time as a useful asset was ending, and they were thinking of getting rid of me, when the new weapons were ready. The Siberia facility was abandoned when the Soviet Union fell. My handler was a man named Karpov; after the fall of the Soviet Union, he escaped to the West somewhere with my trigger words and they had to control me another way. They came up with a machine that wiped my memories. It was... exceptionally painful to endure.

"My last Hydra mission was in the US. Washington. Hydra had agreed to let Alexander Pierce, their top man in SHIELD, use me to kill Nick Fury, who was getting too close to the truth about Project Insight and began to be suspicious of Hydra personnel in SHIELD. I thought I'd managed to complete the assignment, then instead of going back to cryo, I was given new targets--Steve and Natasha Romanov, because they were figuring out the dimensions of Project Insight. It was a system of spy satellites and three helicarriers that were meant to track and eliminate threats to America after the Citauri invasion; Tony Stark worked on it. It was subverted by Hydra to track and eliminate threats to itself, including SHIELD personnel like Steve. The helicarriers were destroyed by Cap. I don't know what happened to the satellites, if they're still in orbit and functional. Steve had recognized me in a fight where he tore off the mask that obscured my identity and I was wiped again. We fought again on the helicarriers. I didn't know him then; I knew that he recognized me and was surprised that I didn't know him, all the memories were gone. But he was familiar. I was beating him to death as the helicarrier we were on was falling--he wouldn't fight back after his mission was accomplished--and he said "Cause I'm with you to the end of the line," which was something we used to say to assure the other that we'd always have each other's back. And it reached something within me although I still didn't know why he mattered. When he fell from the helicarrier, I jumped into the river with him and pulled him out, taking the opportunity to escape.

"I figured out later that Hydra didn't intend for me to survive the mission. They didn't need me anymore; they thought that they could finally control the five remaining supersoldiers, and it didn't matter if I was revealed. It would still serve their purpose if the original propaganda worked--Cap's best friend turned against him and the US. My missions would have been revealed publicly. My memories started to return, a lot of them. I remember what happened after I started getting clear of Hydra's torture and medication, but there are still spotty memories. Funny, I remember every detail of my missions. I remember killing each target, how I did it, who helped me. Not why, I never knew at the time. Sometimes after. They were trying to suppress my memories before Zola, not the memories that could help me in other missions. I lived anonymously for a couple of years, figuring out the modern world, learning how to make my own decisions again, when I was framed for blowing up the UN. Steve saved me there too, took me to Wakanda. The doctors there were able to remove my response to the trigger words, fix most of the brain damage the machine had done. Gave me a new arm. So I'm safe in the fact that I can't be triggered and controlled anymore. But I still have habits, especially when I'm startled, and I worry about unconsciously reverting to my training. I think that I'm ok, but I don't know that I am.

"So that's me," he said wearily. "Take your time. Ask your questions." Ava's mouth was hanging open.

"Why did you need a new Wakandan arm?" Of all the questions he'd anticipated, this one wasn't it.

"There was this guy Zemo, a Sokovian, who'd lost his family when Ultron lifted the city and it fell again. The people on the levitating land had been saved, but not those on the ground below. He had Hydra ties, knew about me and Steve. Most importantly, he knew that I'd killed Howard Stark and his wife, Tony Stark's parents. And he devised a plan to take advantage of the public rift in the Avengers--part signed the Accords, some didn't--and drew us to the abandoned Hydra facility where the other supersoldiers were. I went because I thought he was going to activate them. But it was a ruse for Stark to find out that I'd killed his parents. He figured that this revelation would destroy the Avengers. He was right. Stark came after us in his suit, Steve and I fought him. Stark cut off my arm, incapacitating me. Steve put me above Stark, dropped his shield, and that was that. King T'challa had also followed us, kept Zemo alive so that the record could be put straight, and offered me sanctuary. His sister is quantitatively the most brilliant person on the planet and they have several of the smartest people in the world living there. They fixed my brain, made a new arm out of vibranium for me."

"You said that losing it incapacitated you. Can you feel with it?"

"Not as well as my right arm, but I can feel pressure and pain. It's stronger but less flexible. Losing it again hurt. A lot."

"Can I see it?" Bucky hesitated a moment, then first took off his glove, holding his hand out to her.

"You can touch it if you want." She did, carefully taking it in both of her hands. It was warmish if not body temperature, and he let her gently move his fingers, flex his hand to see how the metal worked. Then he took off his shirt. Her eyes got big as she took in his torso first, then she bit her lip as she saw the metal collar on his shoulder, the scarring massed around it, his sleek dark vibranium arm.

"It looks like the mirror image of your right side," she said. He nodded.

"They didn't need to in order to make a functional arm, but the symmetry was important visually, to let me blend in. And it makes me feel less like a freak. As long as I'm wearing clothes."

"What happens if you stop working out and your right side gets smaller?" There was a small smile on her face momentarily. He returned it.

"I'll have to keep that from happening; it took Shuri a long time to make the left arm."

"It's sculptural," she said. "So if you have enhanced healing, how come you have scars?"

"Because the healing still takes time. It's not instantaneous, like you see in a movie. It's just faster, a matter of days versus weeks or months. It has limitations, it doesn't regrow limbs. And it was juiced up after the arm was finally installed. But the scars were already there. They're ugly, but I deserve it."

"They're not ugly," she said gently. "They're just the physical result of trauma. They're ugly to you because of what you went through. I don't think they're ugly." Bucky looked away, then stretched his neck to the right and rotated the shoulder.

"It's heavy, even if it's lighter than the titanium one," he muttered. "Sometimes it hurts. Shuri and her team reinforced my spine, collar bone, shoulder bone, ribs with vibranium, it helps to support the arm, but it's weightier than muscle and bone."

"If you slept with Natasha Romanov, why are you worried about what you might do to me?"

"She was trained, a superb fighter with outstanding combat skills and threat assessment. You're not. And it's been decades since, a lot of bad years, evil actions. Here." he handed her the files he'd brought back, then put his henley and glove back on as she scanned. It took awhile.

"I didn't watch the news much in college. Never really got back in the habit, it always seems like it's one disaster after another that I can't do anything about. I watched again after the Snap and the Unsnappening, to find out what happened. I'm sorry, I don't remember this court-martial." He shrugged. These were his service files; thick and dense, but well organized and easy to follow.

"Says that they determined that the brainwashing was remarkably successful and completely eradicated by the Wakandan scientists' 'unique and sophisticated methods'," she murmured, reading the formal adjudication on the first page of the first file. "And that the methods for achieving this level of control appear to be lost with the fall of Hydra. That's good news. They accepted that you had no control over your actions and granted you an honorable discharge, clearing you of all charges." He nodded.

"They gave me a bunch of medals, promotion to the highest rank of sergeant available at the end of WWII, full access to veteran's benefits. Some peace of mind, because they also agreed, for public safety reasons, to make the court-martial public, so that anyone can apply to the Army, read the full transcript, see all the exhibits and their official translations. Everybody can see that I'm not a threat anymore. But these days, everybody seems to have other concerns. The Asset is barely remembered. I like it that way." She nodded thoughtfully.

"It's a lot to take in," she said.

"Yeah. Read the files, I'll get them back from you later. Give you some time to think about questions. I'd rather not revisit this too much."

"I understand."

"I'm going to go take a nap," he said, regretfully leaving the warm nest. "Hey, how are the quilts doing as insulation?" She looked surprised.

"About a degree and a half warmer, but that's without winds hitting the building, and I haven't put the plastic film on the windows because it's been pretty nice out. Do you want to take a nap here?"

"Thanks, but--"

"I get it," she said, and walked him down to his apartment. She patted his shoulder, the left one, lightly. "I wondered what the deal was, you used the arm and hand like your right when we went apple picking."

"You're observant," he said, then touched her cheek and went inside. He could hear her walking away, back to her apartment.

***

Two days later, his anxiety had increased. He wanted her to take her time, but not too much. What if she read more and thought he was a monster? He was--he had been, he corrected himself. To ease his symptoms, he took an Atarax, got an emergency appointment with his therapist, had an intensive workout, and gave himself a task. By Tuesday, his initial shock and anxiety had worn down, and he called Sam again.

"Why's he back? Is he just visiting?"

"Says he's back for good. I don't understand how that could happen and me still have the shield because he gave it to me as an old man and he looks just a little older than when he left. Bruce doesn't really know either, but now that the shield is in the past, it's fixed in this timeline? Have I mentioned how much I hate time travel?" Bucky grunted.

"All right. Can you do lunch Saturday?" It was agreed that Sam would bring Steve to a late lunch.

That night, he leaped up at the tapping on his door, opening it to see Ava. She handed him the files and smiled. He nearly melted with relief. "Can I come in?" she asked, and he scuttled to the side to facilitate her entry.

He dropped the files as her arms went around him and she pressed herself against him. His arms moved around her, and they stood like that for a moment, her head just nestling under his chin. Warm.

"I'm sorry I didn't come over here earlier, but Monday, I got a call for an interview. The application was old, I'd given up hearing from them," she said, her voice slightly muffled by his sweater.

"I told you to take your time. Congratulations--is it for a good job?" he asked, feeling more secure now. She wouldn't be hugging him like this if she was afraid of him or repelled.

"My salary would go up by about 50%, which would put me in a better tax bracket," she said. "And the benefits are much better. Much better medical, they have dental and vision, plus supplemental and life insurance. A retirement plan, not very generous, but it's there. I had to jump on it, update my knowledge of the company. I had the interview today at lunch. But I was thinking about those files, too."

"How'd the interview go?"

"It's so hard to tell. I thought it went well, but I'll just have to wait now." She kept her arms around him but eased back a bit to look at him. "And how are you? This is still a big thing to deal with." He nodded.

"I'm going to lunch Saturday with Sam and Steve. Talk about it."

"I'm glad you waited on this. Let yourself get through that first smack of emotion." He nodded.

"So you probably have questions."

"I do."

"So have a seat. Ask, and if I can, I'll answer." She sat on the sofa; he perched on it just out of reach of her.

"You don't look comfortable, J--Bucky. Tell you what. Why don't I sit in the corner here, and you stretch out, put your head on my lap? You look kind of done in."

He was wearing socks, so he didn't have to remove his shoes as he brought them up, and gingerly put his head on her thigh. Absently, she put one hand on his shoulder--the metal one--and the other stroked his hair. It felt soothing. Accepting.

"I had an anxiety attack," he muttered. "Of all the stupid things--"

"I imagine that this has brought up a lot of things you'd prefer to forget or leave buried." He nodded. "Ok, I don't actually have any questions about your Army career or your time at Hydra. I feel like the files were overly informative about that." He felt her shudder. Her fingers detoured from his hair to gently stroke his cheek. He watched her sort of upside down, amazed, but still apprehensive; the files had gone into detail about the abuses he'd suffered in the Hydra facility, other things he'd been forced to do. If he bathed in bleach, he still felt he'd never be clean. "What I read would have been disgusting in a movie, for example. Knowing it happened to a real person makes me feel really sick. But people can be depraved fuckers." Bucky twitched. "What's wrong?"

"I just don't like to hear swearing in mixed company," he said uncomfortably, then saw a small smile on her face.

"So that's why you don't swear around me," she said. "I'll try to be good." He returned her smile.

"So... what's next? I don't understand why this Steve left, where he went, why he's back--although maybe you don't know that either--what you plan to do now? How do you feel, not just about Steve, but Sam? And yourself?"

"These are excellent questions," he said, and shivered with reaction. Whenever he got stressed, he got cold. Ava felt the shiver and looked around, gently displacing Bucky to bring over the blanket from his bed. She draped the blanket over him so that he wouldn't feel confined, and he sat up to let her sit down again, snuggling under the blanket. Her fingers sifted through his hair again. "How I feel about Steve... I don't actually know. I spent most of my life up to the time I was drafted enjoying his company, keeping him as safe and healthy as I could. It hurt when his obsession with proving himself meant that he blew off our last night together. It could have been the last time we saw each other. Then he rescued me, so that kind of evened the scales there. You know what was done to me, but you can't know what it was like for me to finally break free, have to adapt to life on my own terms that was so different from what I'd left behind. I was... shattered. It took years to even start putting myself together again. Initially, I slept rough, looting Hydra caches for money when I could, so I'd have something to start with. It's not like I could get a real job." He made a sound that wasn't at all like a laugh. "Then I was framed for the UN bombing, there was a kill order out for me. It was different, because as The Asset, I had anonymity. Nobody knew who I was or where I was, but now my name and past was front page news. So I was still damaged mentally, and now I had these new stresses from trying to evade a manhunt. Steve saved me again, then we went to Siberia to stop what we thought was Zemo activating the other five soldiers, but was a ploy to break up the Avengers. Mission accomplished, and T'Challa, when he found out what was really going on, let me come to Wakanda, got rid of the conditioning and trigger words, live a life of peace. His sister made me an arm, but I didn't need it, I was raising goats and ... quieting the screaming in my head.

"All that ended one day when T'Challa showed up with the arm and the expectation that I'd fight. So I let them put the arm on, I fought, then I turned to dust. I came back, but there was no sign of the battle, no Steve where I last saw him, we got a brief update from somebody calling himself a sorcerer, then he and his buddies opened portals onto yet another battlefield and we charged into another fight. This one we won, objectively. In the following few days, I barely saw Steve. It turned out that he was going to return the Infinity stones to the times when they'd gotten them, and he told me that he wasn't coming back. He was going to stay in a past that he never knew with Peggy, a woman who was a pretty face over a whole lot of ambition and cunning, rather than staying with the people who knew and loved him. So I feel like he tossed me aside again. It's not even that I was destabilized, needed the help and support of my best friend, my brother, just that our history, our brotherhood meant nothing." He drew a shaky breath. "He disappointed me, which is something I never felt for him before. He's never been close to perfect, who is? He's always been stubborn, devoted to the greater good, what's right, at great cost sometimes. And I realize that the time after the Snap messed him up to, but leaving like that was just... stupid. There wouldn't have been therapy or therapy groups for him to join like there are here. Nobody who would have understood what he went through. The opportunity to lean on people who did understand and be leaned on in turn. To be part of a community, which is something he always wanted." Ava drew the blanket higher, stroked his hair.

"So you know, basically, the facts leading up to the Snap." He sighed. "It's true, as far as it goes. Guy was named Thanos, he thought he could relieve overcrowding and suffering by wiping out half the life in the universe. I know," he said in response to her eyeroll. "Didn't think that through."

"I lost a big chunk of my gut bacteria around that time, or so my doctor said. Was that part of it?"

"Yeah, half of all life. He had these six gemlike things called Infinity stones. We were told that they each had a separate, distinct power. Time, soul, mind, space..." he counted on his fingers. "I always mess up. Power and reality. They're supposed to be so powerful that one person by themself will be destroyed if they hold just one unprotected. But Thanos was exceptionally powerful. He got hold of all six--two here on earth--and put into an armored gauntlet that let him harness their power. He snapped his fingers, and... that was it. The rest of it is what I heard, until the Unsnappening." He exhaled. "We tried so hard to stop it. We had one of those stones in Wakanda, which is where I was staying after getting my head fixed, and that was where he came. Lot of people died in the fighting, then there was the Snap." He shuddered, and she absently drew the blanket higher. "I felt weird, right after the Snap. Then I looked down, my body was turning to ash. And that's the last I knew until the Unsnappening."