Bucky assumed that when he went under the ice, the first thing he would see would be Steve. He assumed he would recognize the feeling of the slow thaw and the pain of awakening nerve endings before he had any other sort of mental understanding of the outside world again.
Of course, this was also the first time he had gone under willingly, so it made sense that the ice wasn’t like the times he remembered.
Still, the last thing Bucky expected was to feel like he was waking up from a dream only to look around and see his childhood synagogue with Wanda sitting a few seats over.
“I wanted to put you somewhere familiar,” she said after a moment. “I apologize for coming into your mind without your direct consent, but the Wakandan doctors were conflicted. They didn’t want to wake you up until they were sure the programming was gone but they couldn’t do that by themselves without waking you up and using the trigger, which nobody wanted to put you through - they’re very good, but this is something they’ve never done before. Nobody has,” she said with a shrug. “But since you had given them blanket permission, Steve agreed that this was the best option.”
Bucky nodded and continued to look around in awe as he listened. He hadn’t known Wanda for very long, but she had helped him and Steve out, had been willing to be imprisoned for his own freedom. He felt a kinship with her, even if it was only because she was in his head.
He had heard of her using her powers to show fear, but this was… nice. He hadn’t though about this place in decades. Bucky thought that part of him had been lost a long time ago. Only a few years had passed since he had been on his own, but he still felt conflicted every once and a while knowing that he was missing his parents’ yartzeits, probably his sister’s too. But seeing that he still had the memory of this place so clear, the place he remembered going with his parents after his sister was born and she got her name - a voice in the back of his head told him it was Rivkah- and where he read Torah for his Bar Mitzvah, though the words he had chanted escaped him. He knew how the stairs near the back led to the classrooms where he studied for years.
A sense of warmth and belonging flooded him. It had been so long since he had been a part of this. Most of his adolescence had been overshadowed by fear of what was happening in Europe. He remembered his parents whispering in Yiddish when they though he was out of earshot. And then there was the war, choosing to have a “C” on his dog-tag instead of an “H” because if he was going to hide who he was then he wanted something to remind him of home and that was always Steve for him.
The warmth started to seep away as he remembered the war and everything he lost because of it. He didn’t deserve to be here anymore. He looked down, only to realize Wanda had stopped talking, and he looked up at her sheepishly.
“Sorry,” he murmured.
She shook her head.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Bucky. I know this is a lot to take in. I can take us somewhere else, if you like?” she offered.
Bucky shook his head and Wanda smiled.
“Like I was saying, the Wakandans are very good, and they’ve managed to get rid of the programming. My understanding is that it was easier to erase than Hydra erasing your own memories because they were foreign anyway. And because they were foreign, there isn’t the same risk of it coming back,” she explained.
Tears welled in Bucky’s eyes. He wanted to blame it on being in this place and reverting to childhood, but he was just grateful to be free again.
“Thank you,” he said, his frown deepening when it came out in a hoarse whisper.
Wanda looked over at him and hesitated before moving to sit next to him.
“If you want me to stop and leave and tell them you’re ready to wake up I can, but I saw a lot while I was looking for traces of the programming,” she explained quietly. “And I want to help where I can. In this aspect, I may be uniquely qualified in a way that nobody else in this country is.”
He looked over at her, his eyes mostly dry again but his brows drawn in confusion.
“I don’t understand,” he admitted.
“I’m Jewish too,” she explained.
If anything, Bucky was more confused.
“But you volunteered for them…” he said, trailing off. Bucky tried not to remember his own torture at the hands of Hydra but was mostly failing.
Wanda’s smile was gone.
“They lied to us. Told us that they were a part of the government. It was only when the Avengers attacked that they showed their true colors, and by then we were focused on our chance to make Stark suffer.” She paused, taking a deep breath before a small smile returned to her face. “Admittedly, not our brightest moments.”
“But how did you move past it?” he asked. He could tell he was being more desperate than he’d ever allow Steve to see, but Wanda had seen it all already.
“I went back to what I knew,” she admitted. “Of course, Sokovia was never a very nice place to be Jewish so my parents mostly kept tradition in the house. That made it a little bit easier to feel at home at the facility. Just had to buy some books and things to bring back a home again.”
Bucky sighed.
“I think it might take a little bit more for me to feel at home again. I don’t know if I even deserve it anymore,” he admitted. Not after so much blood was on his hands. He meant what he had told Steve. Just because it wasn’t him didn’t mean he didn’t do it.
Wanda hummed beside him, and Bucky steeled himself as he waited for her to figure out how to phrase her admission of his guilt in the nicest way possible.
Except the humming continued and turned into a melody. By the time Bucky recognized it he felt a little embarrassed that he didn’t recognize it sooner.
Ashamnu. The prayer was more familiar than the melody, which if he remembered correctly, was only sung a few times a year. An admission of guilt as part of teshuvah. Repentance.
Bucky hummed along until the end, staring at the woodwork on the front of the arc.
“One thing I found in my readings is the importance of names,” Wanda said after a moment. “It you change your name, you become a new person. Just like Abraham and Sarah when God changed their names, and just like when Jacob became Israel. You were Bucky for a long time before you were the Winter Soldier, The Asset. They changed your name and they changed you against your will and I’m truly sorry for that.
“But now you have the opportunity to give yourself a new name. You can be Bucky again or something new. But if you work hard for it I do think you can let go of some of that guilt at the very least. You deserve to be able to give yourself a clean slate.”
Bucky considered that for a moment.
“And what about the things I do wrong that I’m not sorry for?” he asked, his cheeks darkening.
Chuckling, Wanda gave him a knowing look.
“The Torah also says not to suffer a witch to live among you. I like to think that some verses are better understood with modern reform interpretations,” she pointed out.
“I’ll have a lot to learn,” he said, searching for excuses. He wasn’t ready to feel… good about himself yet.
Wanda’s eyes stayed on him.
“You know, I haven’t had a chavruta since my brother died,” she with a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes. An olive branch of shared pain and vulnerability. It was coming a little late, but Bucky had already known it. He had seen it in her when they met at the airport.
Bucky offered a mirroring smile. There was no question in his mind on how Steve had come to trust her and become a kind of mentor to her. He still had a long way to go in his recovery, but at least he knew he would be waking up surrounded by people ready to help him.
“Can I ask one more thing of you before you leave and they wake me up?”
Wanda’s smile widened and she nodded.
“I know there’s been a lot of shitty stuff that’s put us is Wakanda and in cryo, but I’m still lucky to have survived the fall. I’m lucky that I’ve still got Steve and that we’ve got people like you and Sam and T’Challa helping us out. This is the first time I’ve had any real control over my mind in seventy years,” he said, hoping Wanda understood what he was asking for.
They sang it quietly together.
“Baruch atah Adonai Elohenu melekh ha'olam shehecheyanu vekiymanu vehigi'anu lazman hazeh.”