[There are only so many ways you can control someone who is too strong, too fast, too resilient to be restrained. If they had treated him kindly in between the long stretches of isolation and despair, they wouldn't have even needed the chair. He would have stayed loyal enough well beyond his reset timer to finish his mission and come home to roost, to get pets and treats and lavished with praise. But they only knew to twist the knife where it had hurt him the most, so they lost him.
And now he bounces like a hot potato, from a new handler capable of kindness to another. First Steve, then Wakanda, then Sam. And he waits to be fetched, to be reclaimed, to be reset. She knows what the cycle starting over again looks like. She knows how to steel herself against it. He doesn't. It catches him offguard every time. He doesn't know if she's really touching his hand. It's not like he can feel it. He doesn't know what year it is, or where he is. He relies on her or whoever else happens to be in the room to tell him. He doesn't know if he really got out. Or if he'll wake up from a deep cryo-induced slumber at the touch of a button and realise that some or all of this was just noise in what's left of his brain trying to protect him from HYDRA.
Bucky is a happy memory that Steve carries - carried - from before the war when they were still just boys in Brooklyn believing they knew anything about what was right and wrong with the world. Bucky is a perspex stand in a museum depicting a dead soldier and the feats he did in an impossible time of hardship and suffering fighting another man's war. Bucky isn't real, hasn't been real since they left him to die in a ravine in 1945.
So, no. He doesn't feel safe from anything. Or anyone. He's borrowing somebody else's name, wearing somebody else's face that he doesn't recognise in the mirror. Tilting his head watching the reflection copy him, taunt him, remind him that he's an inferior copy of somebody else's memory of who and what Bucky is supposed to be. Touching his cheek with cold metal fingers and thinking - finding out, in almost slow motion - oh my god. That's me. He's not even safe from himself. With himself. If he can't understand such a simple concept as what reality is, he's not sure he'll ever be remotely in the same headspace she's currently at.
But. She doesn't have to worry. He's become very good at wearing Bucky's skin. Even when he's shutting down a conversation, he knows how to keep his head down and toe the line and keep the concerned faces at bay.]
no subject
And now he bounces like a hot potato, from a new handler capable of kindness to another. First Steve, then Wakanda, then Sam. And he waits to be fetched, to be reclaimed, to be reset. She knows what the cycle starting over again looks like. She knows how to steel herself against it. He doesn't. It catches him offguard every time. He doesn't know if she's really touching his hand. It's not like he can feel it. He doesn't know what year it is, or where he is. He relies on her or whoever else happens to be in the room to tell him. He doesn't know if he really got out. Or if he'll wake up from a deep cryo-induced slumber at the touch of a button and realise that some or all of this was just noise in what's left of his brain trying to protect him from HYDRA.
Bucky is a happy memory that Steve carries - carried - from before the war when they were still just boys in Brooklyn believing they knew anything about what was right and wrong with the world. Bucky is a perspex stand in a museum depicting a dead soldier and the feats he did in an impossible time of hardship and suffering fighting another man's war. Bucky isn't real, hasn't been real since they left him to die in a ravine in 1945.
So, no. He doesn't feel safe from anything. Or anyone. He's borrowing somebody else's name, wearing somebody else's face that he doesn't recognise in the mirror. Tilting his head watching the reflection copy him, taunt him, remind him that he's an inferior copy of somebody else's memory of who and what Bucky is supposed to be. Touching his cheek with cold metal fingers and thinking - finding out, in almost slow motion - oh my god. That's me. He's not even safe from himself. With himself. If he can't understand such a simple concept as what reality is, he's not sure he'll ever be remotely in the same headspace she's currently at.
But. She doesn't have to worry. He's become very good at wearing Bucky's skin. Even when he's shutting down a conversation, he knows how to keep his head down and toe the line and keep the concerned faces at bay.]
I don't think HYDRA will ever be completely gone.