Till the End of the Line

"What you have to understand first is that even I am not entirely sure about some of the details. My memory still hasn't fully recovered, or maybe it'll simply never be restored completely. Some things I discovered only recently, because I've been doing research on myself on your laptop, other things just suddenly… came back. I remember almost everything that happened before I fell, and I've already told you a lot about that time. I'll probably repeat a few things you already know, but as I'm going to tell you everything I'm going to have to do it like this." Bucky got to his feet and started pacing back and forth in front of the bed, where Sarah sat watching him.

"During the war I was Bucky Barnes: one of the Howling Commandos. It was, as you of course know, our job to take down Hydra, and one day we tried to capture one of Hydra's top scientists while he was travelling through the mountains by train. When we were trying to overpower the guards on board, I fell off the train, lost the lower part of my left arm and landed in the snow, somehow still alive. I was found by someone who delivered me to what I now realise was a Hydra base. I have shreds of memory, or maybe they're just nightmares, of the moment I arrived there. That's when I became nobody. That's when they attached my metal arm, and I simply existed as a shadow of a human being. I was trained by Hydra, kept alive by them, and deployed by them whenever they needed me. I don't know whether it was because of the way in which they stored me whenever they had no use for me, or because they addled my brains on purpose, but my memories of all those years I spent as Hydra's hatchet man are very… hazy.

"Some of the things I did for them I can't remember, and some I wish I didn't remember. Much of what I know about that time I found online. Apparently I was known as the Winter Soldier. I've come across a lot of crazy conspiracy theories about me on the internet, but sometimes, beneath all the crazy, there were stories or fragments that were corroborated by more reliable sources. I'd rather not go into detail about the things I did for them, but I will tell you about the last mission I was sent on… Please remember that during that time I was still no one: I had no name, no will, no self. The only things I ever had control over were my missions. A couple of days before I went on the run, I was sent out to kill two assigned targets. I only remember a few things from that day: one of the targets spoke to me, looked at me as if he knew everything about me. He called me Bucky... I know I didn't complete my mission that day. Everything else is a blur. I know now that Steve was my target, that he recognised me. I had no idea who he was or why he looked at me in that way or called me by that name. I remember that my encounter with him seemed to have… stirred something in my mind, something I couldn't put my finger on. A day or two after that, I don't know exactly because I seem to have lost what happened in the time between, I was sent out again with the same target: Steve. And even though I had no memory of our first meeting only a few days before, he looked strangely familiar to me. He tried to talk to me again, pleaded with me while we were fighting, called me Bucky again and told me he had known me his whole life; that I was his friend. And something definitely broke down in my mind that time. He confused me. I was the weapon, he was the mission, that was the way things worked. There was no Bucky, I was nobody, and I was certainly not anyone's friend. He kept talking, I kept fighting, and the last thing he said to me was: "I'm with you till the end of the line". And, impossible though it seemed to me, I suddenly recalled a conversation from what seemed like the very depths of my timeless, nameless existence: but instead of Steve saying it to me, I had uttered those words to him. It scared me more than anything. Everything I had been trained to believe in, the very no-one I embodied, was crumbling around me. I panicked, and in a frenzied attempt to regain control, to complete my mission, I…" He swallowed, and tried to steady his voice, which shook with a sudden surge of emotion.

"I… almost killed Steve. I almost killed him and left him for dead... That's when I decided I needed to find out why I was suddenly remembering things that didn't seem to belong to me, but which I somehow knew had happened to me. I deserted Hydra, ran away before they could repossess me…" Pausing a moment, he cleared his throat before continuing: "When I... came to you," his eyes briefly lingered on Sarah's before turning to the floor again, "I already discovered a little bit about my past thanks to that Captain America exhibit, where we first met, sort of. And then you let me stay with you, and more and more things came back to me when I read your grandfather's letters and the newspapers, and saw the pictures. But it wasn't just the things I had experienced as Bucky Barnes that returned: I started to remember the things I had done as the Winter Soldier, too… Most of my nightmares consist of memories from that time. And the more I read and remembered about my life after I fell from that train, the more I understood that the man I used to be is dead, and will stay dead, and I will live forever as his ghost... But being a ghost who can act and think and feel of his own accord is better than being Hydra's ghost. I knew they were still searching for me, even though almost everyone thought Hydra had been eliminated. People should take their motto more seriously: "Cut off one head, two more shall take its place". That's exactly what they do, they always find a way to continue their existence, even when the whole world believes that they're gone. Hydra still has a legion of followers and a considerable amount of power and influence, and they want me back so I can do their dirty work for them again. And if they can't get me back as their ghost, they'll want to dispose of me to make sure their secrets stay secret.

"Hydra's people were already trying to find me before I came to stay with you. I told you about the risk, but I didn't tell you who was after me. I suppose I didn't want you to worry even more than you already did. Aside from that I was pretty confident that, as long as I didn't go outside, they would have a very hard time finding me. Apparently they did, because they brought in a few of their more skilled trackers from Ukraine. I saw them on the news when they arrived with those Ukrainian delegates who visited D.C. two weeks ago. So far, though, staying indoors seemed like the only precaution we had to follow to stay off the radar. I did want to keep an eye on them, as you know, by watching the news, searching the web, anything to find hints of where they were and what they were up to, just to be sure. When I saw those trackers on the news, though, I suddenly felt the urge to do more than merely follow their movements. I suppose it was the shock of seeing their faces, because I recognised some of them, that made me so angry. Those people, the same people who turned me into their asset, their personal cutthroat, were still walking free and nobody was doing anything about it. It almost felt like my responsibility to take action; to take down as many Hydra followers as I could, to make up for the things I did for them and their demented cause..." he balled up his fists almost unconsciously while he said this.

"So I started to keep an even closer watch on them, and when the opportunity came I went out to find one of them, to get information. But that interview ended rather abruptly... he... killed himself before I could get anything out of him. Then I found another chance to get to one of them and I snuck out again. I found the man I was looking for, but he wasn't alone. When I finally managed to overpower him and his comrades, he let something slip about the pizza you ordered, which was how I knew they'd bugged us. And I knew they were going for the apartment, so I came back as soon as I could. Of course, you know how this story ends...

"So, yes: you're right about me. I am a killer, I don't have anything good or decent to tell you about my life after I fell and I am like a machine. But I didn't choose any of it. I never wanted to be like this. And yes, I have been selfish: I should never have stayed with you. I should've left and spared you all the danger and hurt and loss you suffered because of me. There's one thing, however, you didn't get right. You said I don't have feelings, but you're wrong about that, although I almost wish it were true. I sometimes wish I didn't feel anything. Sometimes I wish I really had died when I fell off that train. And I'm sorry I didn't tell you any of this before, I know it's been difficult for you. But it's been hard for me too. I'm still trying to figure out how I'm supposed to deal with all of this. I'm living among the scattered memories of someone I used to be, knowing that I will never be able to go back to who I was. I am a machine --not pretending-- but trying to be human again.
And now you know, although you guessed most of it already. This is all of it, the whole story, everything you wanted to know," he sighed and stopped pacing, his eyes fixed on the carpet.

Sarah stared at him, utterly speechless. Aside from the fact that she had never heard Bucky talk this much she was completely perplexed by the immense amount of information her brain was now trying to process. She gaped at him, but he still wouldn't look at her. He simply stood at the foot of the bed with his head bowed and his shoulders hanging.
For a moment it looked as if he was going to speak again: he opened and closed his lips a few times, took a deep breath, then ran one hand absent-mindedly through his hair. After a while he turned his head and glanced at Sarah.
"So, I've told you everything," he stated, shifting his gaze around the room as he spoke. "And now I think I... I'll...-," he stammered as he took a few steps towards the door. He fell silent when he grasped the door-handle, apparently deliberating for a moment. Then, nodding slowly to himself, he opened the door and left the room.