Prompt Post 1

[capkinkmod]

Remember to title your comments, use appropriate warnings (or "choose not to warn"), and be civil. Embeds are not allowed.

At least one of the characters in your prompt must have been in Captain America: The First Avenger or Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

As of May 3, 2014, the spoiler policy is no longer in effect.

Update, April 22, 2014:
For fills, please use the following format:
Fill: Title
Including the pairing, warnings/CNTW, and any other information after the fill and title in the subject line or in the first line of the comment.

Links:
Page A Mod
Fills
Discussion
Delicious Archive

Comments

Fill: And I Am Always with You, Part 16

[lauralot]

The world is vast now, open and unaffiliated. The Soldier's view has always been trisected into three categories: HYDRA (obey), mission (eliminate), and other (ignore unless otherwise ordered). Being no longer HYDRA's tears away his system for ordering data. HYDRA provided the classifications, told the Soldier whom to shot and whom to leave be. And now he lacks that.

He lacks as well the doctors who kept him functioning, the ice that let his body rest. The more the Soldier thinks the more things he realizes he is losing, and his chest feels as if he's pinned beneath the beam again. It would be simplest, safest, to return to HYDRA, beg for their forgiveness, and submit to whatever punishment

[Я заслуживаю]

they would inflict. They may not kill him. Their helicarriers failed. The need for a weapon may outweigh the damage of his transgressions.

But then he thinks of the chair and makes his second choice: not to return.

He feels sick when he makes this choice, even sicker than he did the last time, and so tries to recalibrate until the sensation stops. A mission. He does not function without a mission, so he must assign one. The mission is to find James Buchanan Barnes. He has no idea how to find the man or what he will do once he does, but it is a mission and it allows him to breathe again.

The first step of a mission is always the intel. HYDRA gathers it and briefs him on the target, the time table, any potential complications, and so on. But HYDRA is not here to provide the information—they would take what little he knows now out of his mind if he were to seek them out—so he must gather it on his own.

As soon as he nears the populated areas of DC, the Soldier revises his plan so that the first step is concealment. His head aches a bit when he does so—a mission out of order is almost as disconcerting as no mission at all—but it is necessary. He must be either inconspicuous or operate only in the dark, and the more time he spends in one place waiting for nightfall, the greater the odds that someone will find him.

HYDRA will come looking for him, either to retire their broken machinery or to reprogram him. That is a given. But there will be others. Enemies of HYDRA, agencies that may want a Winter Soldier for their own purposes. Possibly the American government. He is, after all, in the capitol of the country and the HYDRA helicarriers did just crash into the Potomac. It is likely the government will retaliate somehow.

They will be looking for an asset in tactical gear with a metal arm, with dark hair the length of the Soldier's. So the first objective is different clothing, concealment. He finds himself stalking through trees along a suburb, and some of the homes have clothing on lines in their yards. No one sees when he approaches. He doubts anyone is watching their yards; they are all focused on the televisions displaying the destruction at the Potomac. He sees one such television through a window before he slips into the residence's tool shed to change.

He is able to undo the straps on his vest and holsters, but when he moves to pull the turtleneck over his head, the dislocated arm does not respond.

The Solider stares at it, considers the methods to put it back into place. He clears a space on the floor and sits with his knees to his chest. The hands go in front of his knees, human fingers laced with cold metal, and he leans backward slowly, driving his knees forward at the same time. Pain flares, but the arm slides back into the socket. The limb is tender, the joint swollen, but his body will heal it quickly enough. He heals faster than people do.

He replaces the vest and holsters once the turtleneck is off. They can be concealed under the new clothing, and the vest will provide some protection should he be attacked. The only remaining weapon is a knife from the back of his belt. He slides it to the front before pulling a black shirt, short-sleeved, over everything. It is loose enough to conceal the leather and strapping beneath. It does not conceal the arm, so he takes another shirt, blue, long sleeved, with buttons down the front, and layers that over top. His arm is covered save for the fingers, but it fits close to the skin and to the metal of his limbs, makes the differences in the shape of either arm too pronounced. There are jackets hanging in the tool shed so he takes one of those over the other garments. If his hand stays in a pocket, he will perfectly concealed.

The pants are replaced with blue denim that is only slightly loose. There is a workbench with a familiar sort of hat

[baseball cap]

resting on it, and he takes that as well. His hair can go beneath it and the brim will block his face from any surveillance equipment he may encounter.

The layers of fabric and leather make things warmer, but the Soldier has been trained not to respond to temperature. His body is functioning and disguised, and what matters now is the second step of the mission: intelligence. Where he is going to find information about James Buchanan Barnes is yet to be determined. He remembers, if he strains, buildings that have books in them. He remembers that Steve Rogers is a war hero. There must be things written about him. Some of those things may mention Barnes.

So he leaves the residential area and walks the streets of other districts, reading the words on each building, glancing in windows and trying to recall what the places with books are called. He is so intently focused that he nearly misses the glimmer of red, white, and blue out of the corner of his eye. When the Soldier turns, there is a bus pulling into a stop, an advertisement on its side. The shield that Steve dropped into the Potomac

[rarest metal on Earth and you sent it out to sea, you punk]

is displayed, accompanied by text. The Smithsonian. It's not, he thinks, the building with the books, but it is the most promising lead he has.

*

"A symbol to the nation," a voice announces from nowhere as the Soldier enters the exhibit. His hands clench and it is only the nonchalance of the people around him milling in that keeps him from pulling the knife. "A hero to the world. The story of Captain America is one of honor, bravery, and sacrifice."

The voice from nowhere continues and the Soldier had intended to move with purpose, find the information relevant to Barnes, collect it and go before anyone can get a good look at him. But his eyes fall on a photograph imposed upon the wall just inside of the entryway and he finds himself immobile. It's Steve, but small, impossibly small compared to the man he just pulled from the water, but impossibly familiar as well.

Pre-Serum, the text over the photograph reads. Weight: 95 lbs, Height: 5'4". There is another photograph on the wall, with a Steve who looks like the one the Soldier pulled from the water. Post-Serum: Weight: 240 lbs, Height: 6'2". His mind converts the numbers to metric automatically, but even before it does he recognizes how absurd a transformation it is.

[Did it hurt?]

It must be a lie. Propaganda using Steve as its symbol. The Soldier doesn't know what serum the wall refers to, but it is either fictitious or greatly exaggerated. But looking at Steve, small and fragile, he feels a truth more than he remembers it.

[Never even occurred to me to stand up to those bums until I saw a shrimp like you do it.]

The exhibit explains the serum, details how its creator was killed before the formula could be reproduced. He thinks it sounds convenient, false. He thinks lies are the American way. But then he thinks Steve is also the American way and if that is true, then the Soldier will have to revise his views on America. The country must be important to Steve if he bears its name. Maybe it was important to Barnes as well.

He moves slowly through the rooms. The Soldier has been trained to note and memorize every detail, but he lingers at each display after he has done so, as if proximity to the objects and photographs will bring memories. Sometimes there are flashes: He looks at a black and white photograph and knows the colors everyone is wearing. He smells gun powder, remembers the itch of Barnes's jacket on display. But for the most part the experience is just as blank and unconnected as staring at a mission's dossier.

While on tour in Azzano, Italy, the Soldier reads, Rogers saved 163 lives – including his best friend Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes. But if Steve had rescued him, why has he been HYDRA's all this time? The displays say that Steve was frozen in ice as well; had Barnes been with him? Why would HYDRA take a sniper rather than a super soldier if the pair were unearthed? Perhaps they were separated.

Then he finds himself before the display of James Buchanan Barnes.

"Best friends since childhood," the voice says, "Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield. Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country." There is video accompanying the photographs and text about Barnes, black and white, of a smiling, laughing person in a

[green]

sweater and dog tags. He looks so alive. The exhibit states that he died in 1944, at the age of 28. He fell from a train

[Steve I can't feel my arm]

and just days after, Steve drove the Valkyrie into the ice, where he remained for decades.

No. The Soldier is too confused by the timeline to have a reaction to the lack of memories provoked by Barnes's display. In what little of the fall he remembers, he remembers Steve over the broken body. This information is wrong. Compromised. Something must be hidden, because Steve recovered Barnes. They were taken together. This is a cover story and he will find the truth.

The Soldier follows behind a man into what he takes for another display until he is through the door and finds a room full of stalls and a sink. There is a mirror over the sink and he stares into it, unsure if he's ever seen his reflection before. The lines of the face, under the scrapes and the hair growing, match Barnes's appearance. But Barnes looked alive in a way the Soldier cannot begin to try and emulate.

There is a sound of rushing water behind one door and a young man, perhaps sixteen, emerges with a phone in his hand. He sets the phone down, washes his hands, and when he exits he does not retrieve the phone, leaving it lay on the countertop.

HYDRA let the asset use a phone in the past. He can't remember the missions, but he recalls transmitting information, files or research or something his handlers required. Phones can access the Internet, he knows, and the Internet holds information. The phone disappears into his pocket and he walks until he reaches the far side of the exhibit, away from where the phone's owner will look upon realizing its absence.

The Soldier knows what it means to be an asset. He knows what it means to be a winter soldier, to be one who does not shrink from service in a crisis. But he does not know what it means to be James Buchanan Barnes, and the information here is not providing him with a definition he can grasp. He is already a soldier, a sniper, but he is not Barnes. He can't be a friend as he doesn't know what it means to be one.

Barnes name definition, the Soldier searches, and the first result reads "Derived from Old English beorn (warrior). By another etymology, one who works in a barn, or a person who lives near a barn."

Warrior. Soldier. He can be a soldier, but James Buchanan Barnes was more than that. Buchanan name definition.

"From Buchanan, house of the canon, beech wood." But James Buchanan Barnes is from Brooklyn. James name definition.

"Biblical meaning," the first result reads. "That supplants, undermines, the heel. Hebrew meaning: He grasps the heel."

Supplants. James Buchanan Barnes has the name of an usurper. Why would the champion of a country choose a supplanter for a friend? It's a fitting name, he supposes, for one used as a weapon against what is meant to be his best friend, but it provides no clue as to what Barnes was before the undermining.

The definition the phone provides for "Bucky" is "diminutive of Buck. A male deer." The Soldier cannot decide if it is preferable to James. Nor does he understand how "Bucky" was derived from "Buchanan" when the two don't even share the same vowel sound.

He begins to think that human names do not signify purpose in the same way that an asset's designation does, but "Steven" means "wreath, crown, victorious," while "Rogers" means "fame and spear," and to see Steve's meaning so clearly displayed in his name makes the title of "heel" ache in the Soldier's chest.

Whatever understanding of James Buchanan Barnes he hopes to unearth, the name cannot supply it.