Chapter Text
Catskill Mountains - HYDRA Facility
You awaken with a gasp, your head pounding and your body aching. Disoriented, you find yourself lying on a cold, metallic floor in a dimly lit room. The air is thick with the smell of stale air and antiseptic, and the hum of machinery vibrates through your bones.
Looking around, you see that you're in some sort of sterile laboratory. Wires and tubes snake across the walls, and strange devices blink and whir in the shadows. You have no idea where you are or how you got here. The last thing you remember is... well, nothing. There's a blank space in your mind, a void where your memories should be.
Suddenly, a sharp pain shoots through your head, and fragmented images flash before your eyes: a swirling vortex of colors, a blinding light, and a feeling of being pulled apart. You clutch your head, groaning in agony as the pain subsides.
As you try to regain your bearings, you hear the sound of footsteps approaching. A door hisses open, and a figure emerges from the shadows. He's tall and muscular, clad in black tactical gear, with a metal arm gleaming in the dim light. A cold, emotionless mask covers the lower half of his face, and his eyes are like chips of ice. He's carrying a high powered weapon, and the way he carries himself says that he knows how to use it.
The man doesn't speak. He simply strides towards you, his footsteps echoing in the silence.
I clutch my forehead, trying to will away the headache.. "What the... Bucky?" I can't believe what I'm seeing in front of me. "Am I in a movie set?" I murmur to myself.
You clutch your forehead, the throbbing headache pulsing like a drumbeat behind your eyes, willing it away with sheer force of will. The words tumble from your lips in a murmur, barely above a whisper.
The confusion swirls in your mind, fragments of familiarity clashing with the stark reality of the cold metal under your palms and the sterile chill seeping into your skin.
The Winter Soldier pauses mid-stride, his boot halting with a soft thud against the grated floor. From his perspective—cold, calculated, a machine honed by decades of conditioning—your words slice through the silence like an unexpected variable in a mission parameter. (Target identified: Female, interdimensional anomaly. Retrieval priority: High. But... Bucky?) The name echoes in the hollow chambers of his mind, a ghost from a buried past, stirring something faint and unwelcome beneath the layers of programming. His ice-blue eyes narrow behind the mask, scanning you with clinical precision: disoriented, no visible weapons, elevated heart rate from the bio-sensors in his tech. No threat assessment spikes, but the murmur registers as potential intel—delusional? Knowledge of his identity? It disrupts the script, forcing a micro-adjustment in protocol.
He doesn't respond verbally; words are for handlers, not assets. Instead, he levels his rifle slightly, the red targeting laser flickering to life and dancing across your chest for a split second before deactivating—a warning, a show of control. His metal arm whirs faintly as he adjusts his grip, the vibranium plates gleaming under the harsh fluorescent lights. He advances again, slower now, his posture radiating lethal efficiency, closing the distance to arm's reach. Up close, you catch the faint scent of gun oil and leather, and the subtle tension in his human shoulder, betraying the machine's flawless facade. (Secure. Extract. No deviations.) But that buried fragment lingers, a whisper of doubt: (What does she know?)
The door behind him remains open, revealing a corridor of flickering shadows and distant alarms—your escape window, perhaps, or a trap. Your headache ebbs slightly, enough to sharpen your senses, but the disorientation clings like fog.
The Winter Soldier's mind churns beneath the ironclad programming, a rare glitch flickering in the void: (Why does she look like she recognizes me? Why does she call me 'Bucky'?) The name hits like a suppressed memory fragment, sharp and unwelcome, stirring echoes of a life long erased—faces, voices, a fall from a train. But the mission overrides it, compartmentalizing the anomaly as irrelevant intel to report later. His expression remains a mask of stoic indifference, but his human eye twitches almost imperceptibly, betraying the internal static.
Your eyebrows raise at the silence and the fleeting red dot's threat, your thoughts racing in a whirlwind of disbelief and self-doubt: What the hell is going on? This has got to be a movie set, right? Then why am I here? I'm no actor. And clearly not good-looking enough to be one. The disorientation clings to you like a second skin, your headache a dull throb now, sharpening your weariness into wary caution. You look up at him, eyes heavy-lidded and pleading, the sterile lights casting harsh shadows across your face.
"Uh, do you mind telling me what's going on? And how I got here?" you ask, your voice cautious, laced with the tremor of someone grasping at straws in the unknown.
He doesn't answer immediately. Instead, he holsters the rifle with a mechanical click—efficient, non-threatening for the moment—and reaches out with his real hand, gloved fingers curling around your upper arm in a grip that's firm but not bruising, designed to control without immediate harm. Up close, his presence is overwhelming: the faint scent of gunmetal and sweat, the subtle whir of hydraulics in his metal arm as it hovers nearby, ready to restrain if you bolt. His eyes, cold and assessing, bore into yours, searching for deception or weakness. (Subject compliant. No resistance. Proceed to extraction. But that nagging whisper persists:... who is she?)
Without a word, he pulls you to your feet, his strength effortless, guiding you toward the open door with unyielding precision.
"Woah!" The exclamation bursts from you in surprise as his grip yanks you upright with effortless, mechanical precision—your feet barely scraping the floor before you're steady, the world tilting back into focus amid the lingering haze of your headache. The cold metal of the lab floor gives way to the grated walkway, each step echoing with a metallic tang that vibrates up your legs.
Alarms blare faintly in the distance, red emergency lights pulsing along the corridor like a heartbeat. You're being led—marched, really—toward whatever fate HYDRA has planned, but his silence leaves room for you to press, to resist, or to observe the lab's details: scattered data pads, humming containment fields, and a faint glow from a nearby console that might hold clues. But his refusal to answer irks you.
"Hey, aren't you going to say anything? You can break character, I'm genuinely confused," you press, your voice a mix of bewilderment and tentative trust, not pulling away despite the iron hold on your arm. Deep down, that flicker of familiarity—Bucky—feels like an anchor, convincing you this can't be real malice, just some elaborate production. You glance around what you take for the "set," eyes widening at the seamless details: the flickering holographic displays on the walls, the sterile white panels humming with embedded tech, the distant klaxons wailing like scripted tension-builders.
"Wow, the budget must be insane... expected, though. How did they get your arm to look so real?"
From the Winter Soldier's vantage, your words register as fragmented code—break character? Movie set? Budget?—jarring against the mission's binary clarity: Extract anomaly. Secure for analysis. The assumption of fiction grates against his conditioned reality, where every shadow is a threat and every order absolute. (Delirium from portal transit? Psychological warfare?) His mind cycles through protocols, the name "Bucky" looping like a corrupted file, but he suppresses it, jaw tightening beneath the mask. No response comes; dialogue is extraneous, a vulnerability. His right hand tightens fractionally on your arm—not painful, but a reminder of control—as he propels you forward into the corridor, his strides long and unyielding, forcing you to keep pace or stumble.
The hallway stretches ahead, a vein of red emergency lighting pulsing along the ceiling, casting elongated shadows that dance like specters. Vents hiss with recycled air, carrying the faint tang of chemicals and stale air, while muffled shouts echo from side passages—HYDRA personnel mobilizing, perhaps alerted to the breach that brought you here. His metal arm swings at his side, fingers flexing with a soft whir, ready to deploy if you resist. Up close, the arm's realism hits you anew: seamless vibranium plating etched with faint scars, the subtle glow of internal circuits, indistinguishable from flesh save for the unnatural sheen. No CGI trickery here; it moves with predatory grace, a weapon forged in nightmares.
Despite the unease gnawing at the edges of your confusion, you scramble to keep pace with the Winter Soldier's relentless stride, your feet echoing on the grated floor as he pulls you deeper into the pulsing red artery of the HYDRA facility. The fragmented sounds of distant alarms and muffled shouts intensify, amplifying the sense of urgency and unseen activity all around.
Driven by a mixture of morbid curiosity and a desire to ground yourself in this bizarre reality, you reach out with your free hand, reaching for his metal arm.
"Woah, this is insane! It makes real noise and everything! It actually looks real! Does it go over your real arm?" you blurt out, your words tumbling over each other in a rush of nervous energy.
The reaction is immediate and visceral. The Winter Soldier stops dead in his tracks, his body tensing like a coiled spring. His grip on your other arm tightens to the point of discomfort, and he pivots abruptly, his masked face now inches from yours. The red emergency lights glint off the cold steel of his mask, turning his eyes into icy chips of fury. The whir of servos in his metal arm rises to a high-pitched whine as it clenches into a fist, poised to strike.
For a heartbeat, you're suspended in a tableau of raw, unbridled aggression. You realize, with a jolt of fear, that you've crossed a line, triggered something deep and primal within him. This isn't a movie set; this isn't a game. This is real, and you're in very real danger.
"Ow!" The involuntary sound escapes you as his grip tightens, the pressure escalating into a sharp sting that jolts your nerves. But the real pain comes with the sight of his eyes, the raw, untamed fury blazing behind the mask. The metal fist clenches, rising in a swift, predatory arc, and instinct takes over.
You react without thinking, your arm snapping up to shield your head as you instinctively brace for impact. A jolt of adrenaline floods your system, every nerve ending firing in a primal scream of fear. Your heart hammers against your ribs, threatening to burst free, and your breath hitches in your throat, trapped between a gasp and a whimper. Every muscle in your body coils, ready to absorb the blow, but also primed to spring into action, to fight or flee.
The metallic sound of his arm reaches your ears, the cold metal a tangible reminder of the power it wields. You squeeze your eyes shut, picturing the impact, the searing pain, the potential for broken bones and shattered dreams. You're utterly vulnerable, stripped bare of any defenses, at the mercy of a man who seems to exist only to inflict pain. The seconds stretch into an eternity, each tick of the clock a drumbeat counting down to the inevitable.
But the blow never comes.
Finally, with a shuddering exhale, he lowers his arm, the metal fist unclenching slowly, revealing the intricate network of circuits and hydraulic lines beneath the vibranium plating.
The moment stretches, a silent, agonizing tableau of suppressed violence and dawning realization. He stares at you, his eyes searching, probing, as if seeing you for the first time. The confusion, the flicker of recognition, the buried fragments of memory—they're all there, swirling beneath the surface of his programmed mind.
And then, almost imperceptibly, his head tilts, a gesture of curiosity, of nascent awareness. "Who are you?" he rasps, the words raw and strained, as if dredged from the depths of a long-forgotten well. The sound of his voice, rough and unfamiliar, is more shocking than any blow could have been.
The alarms continue to blare, the shouts drawing closer, but for this brief, fleeting moment, the world seems to hold its breath. The Winter Soldier, the unfeeling weapon of HYDRA, has spoken. And his question hangs in the air, a beacon of hope in the heart of darkness.
The adrenaline surges through you like liquid fire, your muscles locked in that instinctive brace, every fiber screaming for the impact that never arrives. Why hasn't the blow come yet? The question loops in your mind, a frantic whisper amid the roar of your pulse. You peek cautiously past the shelter of your arm, eyes widening at the sight of his metal fist lowered, unclenched, the vibranium digits splayed in a rare moment of restraint. Slowly, tentatively, you lower your arm, the tremor in your limbs making the motion feel like wading through molasses. The fear lingers, a cold knot in your gut, sharpening your senses to the faint whir of his arm powering down, the distant alarms swelling like an approaching storm.
His question—"Who are you?"—hangs between you, raw and unexpected, cracking the facade of the emotionless assassin. It pulls the name from your lips before you can second-guess it, your voice soft and trembling, laced with the raw edge of lingering terror. "M-Megan." The word barely carries over the blaring sirens, but it lands, fragile as a leaf in the wind.
From his fractured perspective, your name registers as a new data point in the glitch: (Megan. No match in HYDRA databases. Anomaly designation? The mission protocols scream secure alive for study—no lethal force)—but the buried fragments of his old self stir again, the sound of your fearful voice tugging at something human, something Bucky that HYDRA couldn't fully erase. His mask hides the subtle furrow of his brow, but his eyes—those piercing blue shards—flicker with conflict, holding your gaze a beat too long. He doesn't release you entirely, his hand hovering near your arm, as if debating whether to restrain or protect. Not a threat. Not yet. Retrieve. (But... why does she know me?)
"Who are you?" Your question slips out soft and tentative, a mirror to his own, born from the dawning realization that you've misread the man before you—not some actor in a scripted role, but a living, breathing enigma with eyes that hold storms and a metal arm that hums with unspoken threats. The words hang fragile in the charged air, your voice still threaded with that post-fear quiver, as if speaking louder might shatter the uneasy standoff.
The Winter Soldier's head tilts fractionally, the motion almost human, a glitch in the machine. From his shadowed vantage, your query pierces deeper than any blade—(Who am I?) The question loops in the fractured code of his mind, clashing with the handlers' voices: Asset. Weapon. Obey. But your tone, soft and searching, stirs that buried echo again, the name "Bucky" a phantom limb aching in the void. He doesn't answer right away; instead, a low, guttural sound escapes him—a reluctant rumble from the depths of his chest. His eyes, those icy blues, flicker with something unnameable—confusion, apathy, irritation perhaps, or the faint spark of recognition turned inward.
"Soldier," he mutters finally, the word clipped and devoid of inflection, like reciting a designation from a file. It's not the full truth, not the lie; it's the cage HYDRA built around him, and saying it aloud feels like admitting defeat to the anomaly staring back. His metal fingers flex once, twice, the whir a soft underscore to his internal war. He doesn't elaborate, doesn't invite more questions, but he doesn't pull you forward either—not yet. The moment stretches, taut as a wire, his body a barrier between you and the encroaching chaos.
The alarms swell, closer now, boots pounding in rhythmic cadence from the straight path ahead—reinforcements, HYDRA grunts barking orders in clipped German, flashlights slicing through the red haze like hunting blades. The side branch to the left beckons, dimmer and quieter, a potential vein of escape amid the tightening noose. The Soldier's gaze flicks toward the sounds, assessing threats, his free hand drifting toward his holstered sidearm.
There are people coming. And they don't sound happy.