30 November 1928
Berlin, Germany
November fades away with the smell of snow lingering on its dying breath. The last bit of warmth evaporates, bleak darkness finally spilling over with a rush across the world.
She is five-years-old, full of childish giggles and sunny smiles.
She is eight-years-old, solemnly aware of the dangerous hand fate dealt.
She is twelve-years-old, filled with fear the night they come for her.
Black uniforms meld with the frosty shadows, terrifying wraiths haunting the moonless night. They stalk down the street with a singular purpose and every living thing cowers before the unrelenting procession of death.
In the top floor apartment of a rundown building, two people move in silence through their dark home, wiping away all evidence of her existence. A bleak task, but one they knew would eventually come due.
Wearing a threadbare sweater, her heavy wool skirt, and soft leather boots, her heart beats wildly when he sets a tattered bag at her feet. All her worldly possessions now live in this small piece of luggage, a once hopeful life reduced to whatever she can carry on her back. Her father kneels before her, helping her slip on a worn black coat and even in the icy darkness of their home, sweat drips down his face. He wipes it away with an impatient hand, his calloused skin catching the grey stubble lining his hollow cheeks and she thinks – he is not an old man.
This is what she's done. This is her fault.
Shaking fingers fumble with the final button and he glances up, meeting her terrified gaze. All her life, he's been her one source of comfort, a safe harbor in the wild storm of their lives. Through it all, he's held his fear at bay, but that time has ended. Tonight, she sees the hopelessness in his heart and horror claws up her throat. She knows what comes next.
His trembling fingers dig deep into her thin shoulders. They shake so much, it rattles her small frame and she grips his elbows to steady them both.
"We're out of time. Out of options. Please my love, you must."
"I can't! Don't make me," she begs frantically, "please, I don't want to, don't make me, please!"
This is the darkest day of his life.
Deep in his heart, he always knew this was how their journey together would end. From the moment he understood he's planned for it, and if there was another way, he would take it. But this is the cruel world in which they reside, and miracles belong to another time.
But the heart is a curious thing. It won't go down without a fight.
Before all is lost, he drags every memory to the surface, sears the images straight into his soul. Squeals of laughter as he chases her through a leafy green park; the feel of her small sweaty hand her first day of school; awe in her eyes when she saw the endless blue of the ocean. Memories flare white-hot and he drinks them down with agonizing pleasure. Gazing into his daughter's tear-stricken face, his heart beats with the one truth he will always remember.
Love like this, was worth the cost.
"I know you don't want to, I know it's hard, but you must. You must. Do it and hide, just like we practiced. Wait until it's quiet and then count to one thousand before you come out – take your bag and run. You remember the route?"
"Yes," she whispers, swallowing down her tears with a tiny hiccup. "I remember."
She always remembers. It is the others who won't.
"That's my brave girl," he praises hoarsely. "Now, I need you to listen very closely, I need to tell you something. Are you listening? No matter what happens, you need to remember one thing – I will always love you. Do you understand me? Always and forever. This kind of love, it never forgets. It never leaves."
Later, she'll come back to his words. Play them on an endless loop. But for now, she simply nods.
"I understand. It never leaves."
Releasing her shoulders, he takes her hands and brings them to his lips. Even now, when he sees her before him, spindly arms and knobby knees and wisdom beyond her years, he can still smell the soft scent of childhood on her skin. He sucks a deep breath, desperate to commit this final thing before the black abyss takes hold.
"Hurry," he whispers, and he places her hands firmly on his cheeks. He feels her small thumbs rub his skin comfortingly and he smiles as he closes his eyes. There is a moment of nothingness, the only sound her quick, shallow breaths, until heat floods her cold palms and a faint white light illuminates the darkness, growing brighter and brighter and –
He slumps, unconscious, chin tucked to his chest.
And she freezes at the sight. She longs to cry. To scream. To howl her rage into the heavens, furious with what she's done, but she has only a few moments until he wakes and if she doesn't hide, it will all be for nothing.
Turning away, her practiced feet run the familiar path to the small panel in their living room wall, next to the bedroom door. Peeling flowered wallpaper covers the wood and it slides back smoothly when she pushes. Climbing into the narrow space, she moves the wall back into place with a quiet click, right as the sound of angry fists hammer the front door.
There's a strangled gasp of air and she hears her father climb slowly to his feet. He calls out for the visitors to wait, confusion in his voice, but the request is ignored.
The sound is a small explosion when the front door is kicked open. Wood splinters under the force of their boots and a gang of men tramp into the room. Their heavy boots boom like canons and now a paper-thin wall is the only thing separating her from the nightmare beyond.
"Who are you, what do you – "
The sound of fists colliding with soft skin comes clearly through the wood and she squeezes her eyes shut.
"Shut up, you fool. Where's the girl?" The cold anger in the snarling voice makes her skin crawl.
"What? Who? There is no one here, no one but me!" her father wheezes, struggling for breath.
"Liar! Your daughter, you're hiding her, you've sent her away! Where is she?"
Blending invisible into the cracked and peeling wallpaper, is a tiny hole in the paneling and she presses her eye against it. The room is lit with lanterns held aloft by men in black and she sees her father on his knees. A tall man dressed in a black wool greatcoat and black breeches towers above him, snarling down. White blond hair shines white in the soft light, a brilliant contrast to the bright red band strapped around his arm, the black swastika vibrant against fresh white. Tacked to his jacket collar is a silver pin and from her vantage point below, she sees the skull shape clearly.
Schutzstaffel, she realizes, sickness in her belly. The SS. Rumors ran rampant through her neighborhood for months, and now here they are, devils in the flesh.
The man grips her father by his hair and jerks his head back, shoving a pistol to his forehead.
"Please, I beg you, I know nothing! There's no one here, there's never been anyone else here! I have no daughter!"
This moment. It will haunt her forever, a bullet through her heart. For the rest of life, she will remember his words and a part of her dies on this cold night.
Her father pleads wildly, his voice rising in panic. For so many others, forgetting was a blessing, but not for him. The last hours of his life will be full of blood and pain. She knows this, an incontrovertible fact.
The man in black barks instructions to the four men waiting by the door.
"Search it all," comes the sharp command and like feral dogs, they obey instantly. They tear through the apartment, smashing dresser drawers to the floor, flipping the flimsy mattress, slashing apart the shabby sofa with gleaming silver knives, searching, searching, searching, not realizing the one thing they seek watches it all, hidden in plain sight.
"There's no one here sir."
With a sneer, her father is wrenched to his feet and shoved at the waiting men.
"Arrest him. He'll talk eventually. They always do."
This dark November night is the last time she will ever see her father. It crushes her soul to see his careworn face filled with confusion, unable to fathom the reason he's to be tortured and eventually executed, but she commits his fear to memory. She owes him that much.
And so, they drag him away, his feeble protests fading into the still night. Their boots clatter down the stairs, but the man in black remains – nostrils flaring, he sniffs the air, searching for the scent of fear.
His voice is a low rasp, one that will haunt her dreams, in the years that follow.
"If you're here little girl," he whispers into the horrified silence of the tiny apartment, "Make no mistake, I will find you. This is my mission now, wait and see."
He stays a moment more. But the drab apartment walls refuse to expel their secret.
Swearing viciously, he slams a leather gloved fist through the frosted glass of her mother's antique china cabinet. Sharp fragments rain down, musical tinkles muffling the sound of his departure.
Silence blankets the room now, unending and unforgiving.
Shivers rolling through her body, she rests her forehead against her knees and in the stifling air of her hiding space, she begins to whisper.
"One...two...three..."
*****
Present day
French Alps
The small town was one of those locations demonstrating a depressing truth of the world – the passage of time, was rarely kind.
Lost along nearly inaccessible mountain trails, it straddled the dividing line of the France-Italy border, but unlike so many of the charming villages peppered through the region, it never benefited from the tourist hype and ski boom following the second world war. Instead, it folded inward, a self-imposed regression. The homes were run-down, the roof of the grocery store missing shingles, the windows of the local bar warped and discolored with age.
It was the kind of place one goes to disappear. To fall off the grid.
Bucky Barnes feels right at home.
Whirling funnels of snow follow him into the bar and he pauses in the doorway, blinking slowly while his eyes adjust. An eagle-eyed gaze picks apart the details of the room, identifying potential threats, establishing a boundary.
The few locals hunkered down day drinking remain silent, uninterested in anything other than finding the bottom of their glass. Bucky mentally catalogues the physical traits of all three, adding them to the bottomless file in his brain just in case. The old man dressed in a moth-eaten coat, blank pale eyes, smooth white hair gleaming. The lanky man with a ragged fur hood drawn around his face, one hand encased in a black wool glove, the other splayed bare on the table. Another old man, rosy cheeked and stocky, shuddering as he nurses a full glass of amber liquid.
Picking his way through the clutter of small tables, Bucky pulls off his gloves as he goes and each figure shies away, curling into themselves, as he passes.
He makes for an imposing figure, he knows that much.
Thick padding lines the long white coat, heavy white canvas pants tucked into white waterproof boots lined with soft synthetic fur. A white balaclava covers the bottom half of his face, the fur lined hood pulled up to hide his dark hair. The outfit is vaguely reminiscent of his past, from years spent in the snowy wilds of Siberia. White was the perfect camouflage and covered head to toe, the only pinpricks of color on the barren landscape were a pair of flat blue eyes.
Most who saw that blue up close rarely lived to tell the tale.
Steve had given a twitchy grimace when Bucky noted the similarities, but then again Steve Rogers always gets twitchy when Bucky talks about the past.
"It's not like I'm happily reminiscing, you mook," he patiently reminds, whenever Steve's face falls. "Just trying to fuckin' remember anything these days."
Pushing the hood back, he tugs the mask down as he moves toward the bar, licking the broken, flaking skin of his lips. He takes a deep lungful of the stale bar smell, appreciating the dank air over the stifling heat of the mask. Keeping the wall at his back and the front door directly in his line of sight, he slides onto a rickety bar stool. His voice croaks quietly when he utters the request.
"Whiskey. Please."
They're the first sounds he's made in two days and the familiar syllables feel rusty. The bartender nods, leaving Bucky to investigate the worn oak bar-top. White water rings and gouges that look suspiciously like knife marks litter the surface and he traces his fingers over the narrow scores, counting mindlessly while he waits.
Returning with a dusty bottle and chipped tumbler, the bartender sets them down with a click. Up close, Bucky sees swollen, arthritic fingers, skin stained a dull yellow from years of nicotine leaching from the ever-present clutch of a cigarette. He's surprisingly dexterous though, twisting the cap with a flick of his wrist and splashing out a shot. He pauses and Bucky feels perceptive eyes sizing him up.
He knows how he looks. Dark circles smudge the pale skin below his downcast eyes, exhaustion obvious in the slump of shoulders.
The bartender pushes the tumbler forward. Leaves the bottle.
Bucky gives a weary nod of thanks, for once grateful at his inability to hide his exhaustion. He thinks he's always been terrible at it, at least that's what Steve jokes sometimes. Although he still remembers nothing from before his fall, his years with Hydra come back in drips and drabs and he vividly recalls one piece of shit handler gripping his chin with cruel fingers and telling him to "buck up Soldier". The men around laughed at the words, a private joke the Soldier was not allowed to know.
Obviously, he gets it now. Fuckers.
He tosses down the shot and pours another.
One.
Tips it up again, swishes the alcohol in his mouth, lets it burn for a moment and swallows.
Two.
Repeats the move, unaware he's done it until its sliding down his throat.
Three times for luck.
Muscle memory. The one form of memory from his past that's remained perfectly intact.
Pouring a fourth, he sets aside the half empty bottle and curls his hand around the glass. He lets his mind drift, mulling over the last three days.
The reason for his arrival in this crumbling little village was simple.
Hydra. As always.
It all started a few years ago. After stumbling across an unknown Hydra base in Estonia, where Bucky found nothing but layers of dust, ancient technology, and a silently blinking red light in an abandoned control room, he got with an idea.
As a precautionary measure, every Hydra base was equipped with a distress signal, just like that red light. Set on a frequency unknown to anyone below a certain rank, they were only activated in extreme circumstances and yeah, it really pisses Bucky off to admit, but his stature in the organization afforded him the knowledge. After weeks of trial and error, he managed to dredge up the frequency from the hot mess inside his head.
So, Tony Stark set the dials on one of his super transponders and they waited, fingers crossed that some Hydra moron would unwittingly trip a distress trigger, and they could swoop in for a bit of murder-filled revenge.
Disappointingly, it stayed silent for two years.
But all that time, Bucky waited patiently, because there was a secondary task he had in mind.
Stepping into the dusty archives of his past poses a gruesome opportunity. Steve knows what he's after, although he usually pretends he doesn't, because Bucky and his barrage of therapists don't exactly see eye to eye here.
The honest truth is that his past is still a blank canvas. A paint by numbers sheet filled with a million tiny tiles, but he has no clue what colors he needs to get started. All he wants, is to find the right shades, the memories he needs, to start filling in the white spaces. He figures if he can find enough colors to paint his past, eventually all the small pieces will show him the shape of the bigger picture.
Maybe then, his broken ass brain will finally remember it all.
So, with grim determination, he follows seventy years of horror soaked breadcrumbs, in the hopes he can fill the emptiness in his head. And to be fair, it's worked.
Kind of.
The first time the transponder lit up, Steve and Natasha tagged along. They arrived in the rolling countryside south of Krakow, Poland, and when they walked inside the base, Bucky saw the chair.
Two days later, he woke up.
Natasha was perched in the hospital window and Steve was sitting at his bedside sporting a shadow beard and red-rimmed eyes. At Bucky's furious insistence, Steve haltingly told him, that the moment Bucky saw the chair, he went into a blind panic. Demolished it with his bare hands, before blacking out. It wasn't even his chair, the one they reserved exclusively for him. It was older, an original prototype perhaps, but it didn't matter. It was enough to trip the trigger.
He didn't remember a thing about his episode, which was infuriating for many reasons, but mainly because that was the exact fucking opposite of what he wanted.
He had to do plenty of sweet-talking so they'd let him try again.
When the transponder started flashing nine months later, much to Steve's dismay, Bucky came along. They arrived at the abandoned bunker in the foothills of the Ural Mountains, and the moment he stepped inside, it was instantaneous. Horrifying colors painted those white tiles fast and thick.
Razor sharp scalpels. Crackling bolts of electricity. Wide metal cuffs biting into his ankles, securing him to the floor. Bucky folded his hands on his head, closed his eyes, and sucked in ten slow breaths.
Then he opened his eyes, looked at Steve's tense expression and said, "Yeah. I remember. This place was a real fuckin' nightmare. Signal's in the control room. Go left, watch your step."
Eventually it got easier. It always sucked, but he figured out ways to keep the environment from overpowering his desire to remember. The bad episodes still flare now and then, but overall, life is better. There's a little more paint in his brain every day and sooner or later, he'll see the big picture he's so desperate to find.
He hopes, anyway. He really fucking hopes.
Over time, the distress signals dwindled, although there's one thing still unanswered. Every time the team arrives at a location, ready to break a few bones and kick a little ass, they find nothing and no one - the base is always empty, seemingly deserted for decades. There's no consistency in the emptiness, beyond one thin thread – every single base was abandoned by the early 1960s. After sleepless nights and increasingly irritated conjectures from Tony, he arrives at a fact based, scientific assessment.
Hydra tech is fucking trash and trash breaks.
Bucky nodded seriously at the conclusion and asked if he was included in the list of Hydra trash tech.
Steve pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed heavily.
Tony laughed until he was wheezing.
When the red light started flashing last Saturday night, it was the first time in six months. Bucky was bored, rattling around the tower alone, so he jumped at the chance to stretch his legs. Anticipating nothing but dust and silence, he texted Steve the coordinates, packed a bag and left.
Three days later, he's disabled the distress signal, and just like before, turns up nothing but echoing emptiness. Rusted doors and layers of dirt and grim reminders of a past better left forgotten.
And yes, perhaps his past is better left forgotten. But the truth is, Bucky never did know when to quit.
Finishing off the bottle, he pours one more shot. He runs his thumb along the edge of the glass, feeling the sticky film of liquor, thinking. He could leave tonight, head back to New York. There's nothing here, nothing to concern anyone. Nothing to worry about, no impending doom.
Except –
It's strange. Feels like there's something he's forgetting, something he needs to do before he goes. It makes no sense, but the prickle in his chest tells him to stay one more night, and since there's nothing to draw him home – he decides he will.
Throwing back the shot, he digs a handful of Euros from his pocket, tossing everything on the counter. Tugging the balaclava over his face, he flips up his hood, and slips on the white gloves, thinking of the depressing hotel room awaiting him. Consisting of a creaky single bed, a flea-ridden armchair, and a rickety shower that danced a fine line between ice cold and freezing cold, it's a complete shit-hole.
He grins to himself, briefly sorry he didn't persuade Sam to come along – watching him scratch and itch and moan about the fleas would've been a nice distraction from the cold.
Ah well. Next time.
Bracing himself, he steps into the snow. The couple hours he spent belly up to the bar did nothing to calm the storm. It rages louder and harder, the blinding white now a shrieking blizzard.
"Shit," he yells, but his words are whipped away, consumed by the wind. There's nothing to do but make a go for it.
He starts walking.
After trudging half a mile through billowing drifts, darkness begins to fall, the feeble afternoon sun finally throwing in the towel.
Bucky rubs the back of his hand over his eyes as he walks, blinking away the icy grit and the white glove comes away smeared with faint pinkish streaks. The angry bits of ice spinning through the air bite the delicate skin of his eyelids, slicing them open and god dammit, he hates the fucking snow. Beneath the heavy coat, he's sweating like hell and all he wants is the blissful oblivion of that creaky bed. Step by step, the thought of sleep propels him forward through the swirl of white.
There on the snow packed path, is when it happens.
The familiar sensation skates down his spine and he can't explain how he knows, whether it's a break in the howling wind, the shuffle of boots through snow, or his super hearing on overdrive, but there it is.
He's not alone.
Instinctively, he spins in the thick snow and there's a shrill ping when his metal arm blocks the bullet headed straight for his heart. He knocks it away with a swipe and stops the second bullet with the literal tips of his fingers. The third bounces from his palm, but he momentarily loses direction in the swirl of white and misses the fourth and fifth bullets. Both hit in rapid succession right below his heart, and like a knock-out punch, send him stumbling back.
Struggling for balance, he throws his arm up in defense, right as an iron bar crashes toward his face. A low gong sounds when bar meets metal, the heavy coat muffling the sound. The vibration is so strong, Bucky hears a man's breathless grunt of pain when the bar rattles loose.
When he swings his right fist forward, the man throws up both arms to block, but the sheer strength behind the punch is too much. As the guy trips back, Bucky snags his coat and yanks him upright, yanking away the scarf around his neck to reveal a naked column of pale skin. Metal fingers move of their own volition, closing around a windpipe and lifting the body effortlessly.
He has the upper hand, but it's brief. He feels the steady rush of blood pumping from his body. Waves of cold wash through him, and his brain starts chanting. Shit shit shit. Shaking his head, he tries to re-focus. Shit shit shit. He grits his teeth against the bursts of pain radiating his body.
"Who are –" he tries to yell, but he gags at the taste of copper filling his throat. He licks his lips and tries again. "Who – "
Before the word will appear, Bucky's vision goes dark. Fingers spasm, releasing the man. When the landscape swims back into view, his legs buckle, sending him to his knees. Coughing and spitting, the man crawls from the snowbank and scrambles to his feet, drawing his pistol as Bucky struggles to breathe.
"Soldat?" he shouts, shocked surprise in his voice.
Bucky snarls in response, glaring at the man. Curling an arm around his body, an unconscious attempt to hold his insides together, he stares down the barrel of the gun pointing straight between his eyes. He has no idea who this guy is, but he doesn't question that the man knows him. Everyone knew the Soldier.
The man is staring down at Bucky with suspicion.
"What the hell is this? Why the fuck would you trip the alarm?" he yells.
Nostrils flaring, Bucky refuses to answer, his mind whirling. He didn't set off the alarm. This asshole didn't set it off. Yet here they both are, answering a call from a ghost.
He sees the finger hovering over the trigger and he braces himself.
Above the screaming wind, the next gunshot is disturbingly quiet. Eyes bulging, the man jerks and lowers his gun, looking down to his chest in surprise. There's a moment of suspended disbelief, before a lethal red flower blossoms across his chest, seeping through the thick coat.
Tumbling backward, his arms and legs windmill as he hits the snow, a macabre salute to the snow angels Bucky remembers children making in Central Park. Choking up thick spatters of red, his body gives a final lurch and he goes still.
Panting quick shallow breaths, Bucky nearly falls over trying to turn in the snow, to face his savior. Ripping off his glove, he shoves a hand inside the coat, fingers instantly drenched when he presses them against the two small holes in his chest. With a final bit of strength, he draws his own gun just in case, squinting into the wall of white. His hand remains strangely steady despite the wet rush of life speeding from his body and he tries to speak, but his lungs refuse to help.
Who are you?
A blurry figure appears before him. Finger caressing the trigger, Bucky wills himself to hold until he understands what this is.
Who are you?
The figure draws closer, dressed in white and holding a rifle. Bucky tries to blink away the black spots now bubbling through his vision.
Who the hell are you?
The figure halts. A gloved hand reaches to pull back the hood of the white coat and a woman's face appears. Even through the howling wind, Bucky hears her question clearly and he doesn't understand why the two syllables feel like a knife ripping through skin and bone and thick sinew, straight to his heart.
"Soldier?"
She speaks hesitantly, her voice tinged with a peculiar hint of hope. Bucky wants to ruminate further, but his fingers are rubbing the slippery edges of his gunshot wounds and the snow around him is greedy, lusting for the hot blood he spills.
He wants to answer. He tries to answer, he really does.
Instead, he falls face first into the soft snow.
*****