revivalproject | IT’S A CONDITION OF YOUR PARDON.

Entry tags:

IT’S A CONDITION OF YOUR PARDON.

WHO: Bucky Barnes, OTA
WHERE: Calibrations
WHAT: Calibrations
WHEN: Calibrations
WARNINGS: All of them, PTSD, Graphic violence, torture, amputation, brain washing, gaslighting

The wall opposite the one you walk in through is trees. Birch trees. Wallpaper, maybe a large painting…it doesn’t really matter. It’s peaceful. Through vertical blinds you can see glimpses of the city outside, warm light streaming through.

It’s an office room, cozied up a little with these touches, but still formal in the way all these spaces are. This is a room where secrets are spilled and notes are taken, until the hour ticks away and you’re released back into the world outside. Which makes it an appropriate enough space for this.

There’s a white couch against the wall, and Bucky sit’s there stiffly, gloved hands folded in his lap. In front of his is a black leather chair waiting empty, a notebook perched on the arm of it.

If you care to take a seat and flip through the book you’ll see a few notes to help prompt you.

Rule 1.
Rule 2.
Rule 3.

Of course, you could pose your own questions if there’s something else you’re interested in knowing. Or, if you’re not so interested in playing the roll of doctor as you are in investigating, you might find a different book, red with a star on it, hidden away in a filing cabinet. There are some strange words written inside.

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There's a half dozen decades or more that Steve doesn't know, and Bucky doubts he'll feel the same after he sees, but nods.

"...I'll show you anything you want to see," he agrees.

Steve has never felt so powerful and powerless at the same time. He doesn't want to force this out of Bucky but at the same time this is the best opportunity he'll have to show he isn't just hot air about what he said.

Steve inhales deep and holds it as he thinks. Finally, he gets out:

"Show me why you were being chased. The motorcycle... What was happening?"

Bucky sighs faintly, lips pressing together in a line and he wets them.

The image first flickers to life on news footage of the UN attack, Bucky's voice explaining the context, as the far war seems to envelop them back into the memory of that day in Bucharest.

There's Bucky. Long hair and a haunted look about him, but he manages to smile a little as he barters for fruit, speaking Romanian as easily as if it was his first language.

Once he's finished he frowns, and for a moment Steve might think it's because he's been spotted, but Buck walks right past him, up to the news stand where The Winter Soldier is front page news.

"I didn't do it," the other version of Bucky promises, as they follow him back to his apartment. "I've done a lot of things. Worse things. But I didn't do this."

Steve watches quietly. The attack is hard to see but more than that is the brutal way Bucky looks. Even now, so different from the one he knew, he is healthier and happier than the man alone on the street and watching his own back.

Steve looks at the Bucky beside him and feels his heart break.

"How long were you on your own? I don't know that I've ever seen you look so..." He doesn't have words for it and just shakes his head.

"Didn't you have anyone with you?"

"I'm not...sure," Bucky admits, "My memory wasn't...um...it was a work in progress," he explains. Of course Steve doesn't know the full extent.

He shakes his head though.

"No," he answers shortly, and the memory skips ahead around them.

Bucky silently enters the apartment. It's run down and sparsely furnished. One room, a mattress on the floor, windows covered in newspapers. Notebooks liter every space available, and Captain America is leafing through out of them. Bucky stares at his back until the man turns around.

"...Do you know me?" Cap asks.
There's a long stretch of silence before Bucky answers, "...you're Steve. I read about you in a museum."

Steve's breath catches in his throat. It's the first time he's able to see what the serum is going to do to him. He's tall and strong and dressed up in stars and stripes like a real superhero. It's overwhelming enough just that. But then he hears what the two are saying and he feels lightheaded.

"You..." His voice is cracked with emotion he can't hide. "You... Didn't know me?"

Steve turns to the Bucky outside of the memory, grieved. "God. What happened to you?"

It makes Bucky look guilty. He hates that there was ever a time his memories of Steve were locked away from him. Especially when those faces, all the people he's killed over the years, not one of them ever left him. How was that fair?

The memory glitches briefly, images of the Chair, and muffled screams pierce the air before they're back in that apartment, Bucky blinking at the floor.

"I wasn't in Vienna. I don't do that any more," the memory Bucky was saying, voice devoid of spirit.

"Well the people who think you did are coming here now. And they're not planning on taking you alive," Cap warns, looking anxious.

"That's smart. Good strategy." Bucky seems unsurprised. Like he's been waiting for this or something like this. Never really living. Footsteps echo overhead, and Bucky shifts like a caged animal, ready to fight.

That second of screams makes Steve's whole body go ice cold. He's never heard Bucky sound like that. He had no idea he even could experience the amount of pain necessary to elicit those cries. Steve steps toward Bucky, wanting to touch him. To do anything. But the memory plays on and Steve has to watch.

Part of him doesn't recognize the man talking to Bucky. How can he be so calm when all of this is going on? Bucky is a wolf pacing, contemplating fight or flight. Steve doesn't know how this is going to go but if Steve lets them take Bucky, he's pretty sure he'll be physically ill.

Nothing about this is right. Nothing. But he keeps watching, silent.

"This doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck," Cap says, but it's clear Bucky's all ready mentally preparing.

"...It always ends in a fight," he says wearily. He sounds tired of fighting. Bucky takes of his glove to prepare, the hand beneath a shining silver in contrast to the black Steve's familiar with.

"You pulled me from the river. Why?" Cap demands urgently.

Bucky twists a face.
"...I don't know," he lies.

"Yes you do."

Their stare down is interrupted as a smoke grenade is thrown through the window and Cap knocks it back the way it came with his shield.

Steve is sick watching this. He hates the way Bucky sounds. He hates the way he sounds. And most of all he hates that this is their future and also Bucky's past. Steve can feel the grief both of them had to have been feeling here. The useless anger and pain. How could things get to this point?

The fight goes on and Steve watches himself protect Bucky as best he can. It's not enough and both of them are fighting so naturally. It is breathtaking and haunting at the same time.

"Buck," his future self shouts, "stop! You're gonna kill someone!"

And the memory's Bucky pins him to the floor and punches through the boards by his head.

"I'm not gonna kill anyone."

Out comes the backpack and out goes Bucky. Steve can assume what follows and looks away.

"That's enough..."

The scene abruptly ends, returning them to the safety and calm of the therapist's office.

Bucky shifts on the couch, and glances back to the wall, now back to the forest of birch trees.

"I could show you happier things. We could just talk," he offers, seeing how this is affecting his friend when they've only scratch the surface of how dark things could get. They could just wait out the time. Steve didn't have to live through all this with him...

Steve shakes his head vehemently. He's never called uncle before and he won't now. Not when it's so important for him to know.

"No. No, I'm fine. It's just...it was just surprising to... To see you hurting like that."

He remembers the scream and goes paler while also bracing himself.

"The...that chair thing. What was that?"

Oh, Steve. You've hardly seen anything yet.

Bucky's cheek twitches at the mention of the chair, eyes squeezing shut as that scream breaks through the peaceful room, and he wets his lips, mouth feeling suddenly very dry.

"It's...where they wiped me clean."

The scene shifts and they're in what looks to be a bank, in some vault lined with boxes, and multiple layers of bars.

There's multiple screen monitoring vitals, and the chair itself, housing a shirtless Winter Soldier, staring blankly as techs work on his arm.

Abruptly he jerks and strikes the man with the back of his arm, sending him flying, while armed guards cock their weapons which have been trained on him this whole time.

Eyes wide and wild, the Asset breathes heavily, but makes no further move, slowly returning to that far stare.

Bucky avoid looking at him. Watching Steve instead as he hears the familiar footsteps of Pierce. Even now they make his posture straighten, and he hates how ingrained the connection to his former handler is.

"...The Winter Soldier was their tool," he explains, wanting to prepare Steve, "A weapon. Weapons don't get to choose who they point at. So they need to be cleaned."

Steve regrets asking. He can't breathe even though here there was no asthma to clog his lungs. The man in the chair isn't Bucky. It's a corpse being kept alive against its will. A weapon, yes. But one with no more control than a gun in Russian Roulette. Deadly. Vicious. Left to the whims of others to exercise that power and helpless to refuse.

It makes him want to punch his fists bloody against everyone here.

He looks at Bucky when the steps get closer. Just in time to see his posture change. Steve moves closer to the Bucky beside him and rests a hand on his arm for support. But after that he has to watch.

Has to see.

The touch remind Bucky to breathe. Not that he needs to really, but even in this dream world, it helps calm the mounting anxiety.

"Mission report," the man instructs.
The Asset stares blankly, as though he hasn't heard.
"...Mission report, now," the man repeats.

He steps closer and leans to look into the vacant eyes a moment before backhanding him.

Despite the Asset's clear advantage in strength he makes no move to retaliate. He blinks, and finally looks to Pierce in confusion.

"...the man on the bridge. Who was he?" In this moment there's more of Bucky visible in the man, and he's lost...desperately wanting to make sense of this scrap of memory that seems to be waking his emotions.

"...You met him earlier this week on another assignment," Pierce answers vaguely.

"...I knew him," the Asset continues softly, and Pierce frowns, taking a seat in front of him.

Steve starts at the strike, ready to defend Bucky as he'd always done for him. But this was just a memory. It was over and done. Steve couldn't change what already happened. All he could do was witness it.

The chair has a menacing look and Bucky in it is so hunted. Steve grips the other Bucky's arm tighter, knowing this can't be going anywhere good.

"The man on the bridge. That was me, wasn't it?"

Bucky nods as Pierce speaks to the Asset, gaze flitting down.

"You woke me up."
Hearing his name...for the first time in so long....it awoke that dorminat part of him that had been trapped for so long.

"But if you don't do your part, I can't do mine," Pierce was finishing, "And HYDRA can't give the world the freedom it deserves."

The Asset's face was conflicted, an internal debate clear just beneath the surface.

"...But I knew him," he repeats, a confused and almost pained look on his face.

Pierce sighs.

Standing, he turns his back on the Asset, no longer a person but back to being a tool.

"Prep him," he instructs coldly.
"...He's been out of cryo freeze too long," one the tech notes hesitantly.
"Then wipe him and start over."

This is worse than he expected it to be. Steve watches as past Bucky's face collapses in anticipation of what is to come. He opens his mouth obediently for the guard and is still as the chair hums to life. As it locks around him and this new part goes around his head. Steve can hear the electricity buzzing through before Bucky starts to scream.

After that he can't hear anything else.

Bucky's screams this time are not cut off. Steve hears the pain in it. He can see it on his face until his eyes blur over with tears and he can't see anything. Steve wants to ask Bucky to stop it but Bucky couldn't do that back then, so why should he be able to? Why could he end his pain when his best friend had no such luxury?

He waits for the memory to fade and needs a few seconds after that to get his emotions under control. There are so many things he wants to say. What comes out first is three words he doesn't actually want the answer to:

"How many times?"

The hum makes Bucky flinch, mind expecting the pain that always followed. And to some extent he feels it now, an echo of it that makes his brow crease as the screams wash over them.

He swallows thickly, lips parting to answer Steve before hesitating, "...I don't remember," he answers truthfully. Too many. At least one to go with every face that lives in his mind.

Steve's eyes shut and he can't help the tears that escape his eyes, rolling down his cheeks.

"Stop this," he finally says, not wanting to hear it but also not wanting to see how Bucky flinches hearing it himself. Steve turns into Bucky's space and pulls him into a tight hug. One he's not sure that he ever wants to let the man out of, again. He presses his face into Bucky's chest, not quite able to make his neck without the guy ducking. It'll do for right now.

"Jesus, Buck... Where was I? How did I let this happen to you?"

They're back in the safety and calm of the office, and Bucky stiffens for half a second before gladly returning the hug. He can let go of that need to constantly be on guard just this once. At least in here.

"Hey-" he tries to soothe, "I'm all right."

And then, "...you didn't know. No one knew. And then...you went down in the ice."

"And what about after that, huh? How long were you stuck with them? He...that guy. He said you shaped the century. Century!"

Steve pulls back only as far as he needs to look Bucky in the eyes. His own are red and leaking still, but he pays it no mind.

"Tell me they're all dead. I wanna know every one of them is gone for good."

God he doesn't want to answer that. He doesn't want to add to that hurt.

"...Sixty-nine years," he admits softly, and he shakes his head. "Some of them. It's not- nn-...you'd don't mean that," he says finally.

Steve's not supposed to say those things. He's supposed to be the one that believes and carries that hope against all odds.

Sixty-nine years.

"The Hell I don't," he almost growls out. The Steve Rogers who hated bullies and who fought for a chance to stop them in the war was the same one here baring his fangs at the monsters who kept Bucky prisoner for decades.

"They violated you. Used you! That man didn't even see you as human! I thought the Nazis were the worst humanity could come up with. But Jesus. There's a lot of shades of horrible, ain't there?"

"A whole hell of a lot," Bucky agrees. And it's not like he hasn't wished the same thing on them. Or worked to see some form of justice done to those who'd benefited from the work of the Winter Soldier, but still...Steve's better than him.

"You beat their Soldier with that damn smile, you know that? You wouldn't fight. No matter how hard I-..."

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