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A Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Fic - The Constant	By : TheConstant1944 Category: Marvel Verse Comics > Captain America Views: 2391 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own any Marvel characters. They are solely owned by Marvel and MCU. No money is made from this story.

Chapter List
- 47
- 48
- 49
Chapter Forty-Eight
The Constant & The Winter Soldier - The File

You should be grateful. At least they find you something to do, something to keep your mind occupied.
You were woken three days ago and the Winter Soldier was woken twenty-four hours later. Since then, you have hardly seen him during the day time. The mission itself was a brief one but Jackson Caldwell wants to take the opportunity to upgrade the Winter Soldier's weapons training whilst he is out of cryo. The training is intense; he comes back each night shattered, but at least this time he remembers more about you than he has done before. He allows you to talk with him, share meal times, showers, and his bed. He even suggests getting rid of the single bed in the corner but you shake your head. He doesn’t remember that there are times when he completely forgets who you are and then that is the only place you have to sleep.
Out of the many jobs they have listed down for you to do at some time you have chosen the least interesting one. You just want to get it out of the way. You look around the room. It is unsuitably large for its purpose: the Records Room. The up-to-date records are pristine, filed beautifully; but there, in the corner, almost forgotten, are five old filing cabinets that were transferred here from the old base. Forgotten...for how many years? You don’t want to know. You don’t even really know what year it is now. Why should you? It is of no interest to you. If you do think about it, you find panic tightening your chest.
You really don't want to know.
There is talk that they are going to be adding a computer system to the room, and Caldwell is keen for you to learn about using one. You aren't. But it is something for the future - for now you will settle for plain old fashioned paperwork.
Several tables and chairs are placed at points around the room. Someone has conveniently moved a set to the corner where you will be working. Your back will be to the door but by a window so at least you can look out and see the daylight. You are still feeling fatigued from being in cryo, the tiredness seems to last longer these days and sometimes you never really shake it off before you are put back in your metal coffin. You wonder if the Winter Soldier ever feels the same. You know that the headaches he experiences are far worse than the ones you get...but then again, you do not have your mind constantly wiped and reprogrammed.
The cabinets you need to go through and sort out are old, grey, filthy, and of course locked tight with no keys available. It takes two hours to find someone who can drill the locks out for you, and you don’t start looking in the drawers until late morning. You start at the top, meaning to work your way down, but one look at the folders and you know it is not going to be that easy.
These drawers hold all the paperwork from the old base. Everything from security reports to invoices for supplies. Doctors do not make good paper-pushers and they left a lot of that work to the nurses who were recruited from the Gulags. They didn't give a shit about their patient so what made them think they cared about the paperwork? The drawers are a mass of paper, torn, damp and even mouldy in places, doctors files are spilling out and mixing with receipts for ammunition rounds.
You gather the first lot of paper in your arms and drop it down on the table top, then taking a seat you start to divide it into groups. At the end of that first pile you are dusty, your hands filthy, and your back hurts. It's days like this you wish you had access to a bath as well as a shower.
It is 3pm. You don’t know where the time has gone and you need to eat something. A quick visit back to your rooms, a wash up and a sandwich then, bringing a coffee back with you, you spend the rest of the day working through the rest of the drawer. At the end you have several stacks of paper and two bags of rubbish that will need burning. Nothing is ever just thrown away here. Everything not wanted is burnt, destroyed completely.
Or so you believe.
That evening the Winter Soldier gets back late again and you can see he is tired despite the serum coursing around his body. You both go to bed early and you fall asleep with him spooning you.
*
In the morning it all starts again and you find yourself back in the Records Room for another day of sorting. You are starting to get some sort of order in your mind of what to do and you begin to shuffle the paper into new folders which you then add to a new set of filing cabinets specially bought for the purpose.
You are onto the fourth drawer of the first cabinet when you run into a problem. This drawer is literally so stuffed full of paper and cardboard and it takes you a while to even open it. You grab handfuls of paper and files and drop them next to you on the floor and finally the drawer starts to open all the way.
You peer to the back and there is one final file caught up. After a lot of pulling and swearing, it comes lose and you pull it out. You put it with all the others and then pick up the top part of your pile and put it on the table sitting down ready to sort. The pile is unsteady, the paperwork and files begin to slide off, falling to the floor.
“Goddamn it!” You crouch down to pick the top file up and a small photo falls out that takes your breath away.
It is of James Barnes.
(Authors note: For photo please use: http://i.imgur.com/mtvN6m7.png )
You pick the file up and the loose photo and sit up, pushing paperwork out of the way to give you a clear space. The file is thick and split around the edges, the pages rucked up where it had got caught in the drawer. You smooth it out but you can't stop looking at the photograph of James. He is in his American service uniform and the picture was taken when he first joined the service. You know this because you have seen the shot once before. Years ago when they were determined to break James Barnes mind they showed him a newsreel from home. On that news reel was a series of photographs of him. And now one of them is the one in your hand.
You don’t want to stop looking at it but the file is in front of you. It was put together before you were forcibly recruited to the project. Putting the photo down so that you can still see it, you open the file.
There are two more copies of the photograph paper clipped into the front of the file. The rest of the file consists of written and typed reports and a packet of photographs.
It starts in 1942 when Zola gets his hands on an American serviceman captured by the Nazis, and for the next month explains in detail the experimentation done on him. His name is James Buchanan Barnes of the 107. The serum was being tested on him with pleasing results; he was kept sedated but, unfortunately for Zola, he was rescued before the experimentation could be continued. There is another photograph also of James clipped into the file at this point. He is lying on a table and you can see how heavy the sedation is. His eyes are half-closed and someone is injecting something into his arm.
The rest of the pages of this particular report are nothing but torn shreds. Odd words here and there that seem to have no relevance. You turn to the last of these torn pages. It has the word cancelled stamped on it.
The next set of pages are in better condition. They begin in 1944, when a memo to the KGB states that an American Serviceman named James Barnes is being held in an interrogation camp. He is refusing to give any information as to how he was found in a Russian hospital field camp. The report states he is seriously injured but somehow alive despite his injuries.
His name has been heavily underlined by someone.
There is then a communication between the KGB and Zola's team, a request for further information, a description of the American, and finally a memo saying two of the doctors from Zola's team will go out to the interrogation camp with a KGB officer.
Your eyes keep glancing at his photograph. You miss him terribly. You had forgotten how young he had looked. The packet of photographs sits staring at you, you want to open it but first you need to read more to see what happened. Stefan had told you that he had heard that James had come in from an interrogation camp with terrible injuries, but it was before his time and that was all he knew.
A confidential memo was then sent to Zola's team and the head of KGB. They believed the man to be Zola's former test subject and he was being brought back to the experimentation facility - but they were not sure he would survive. The injuries sustained at the camp were so bad they are not sure if the amount of Zola's serum in his blood is enough to repair the damage done. The serum at that time was still highly experimental and prone to failure.
The last paragraph recommends that the interrogation camp be disbanded with extreme prejudice, followed by anyone at the field hospital who may have seen the American. And that included the initial Russian patrol that found him.
You turn the page and the next one is handwritten. You recognise the handwriting; it is Doctor Jakobs. He was one of the doctors who visited the camp. He identified James and brought him back. It describes the conditions that he found James Barnes being held in and as you read his words your hand goes to your mouth and you feel nauseous.
He listed the injuries. They are sickening.
Included in the list are those injuries that he had sustained when he was first found, but the others are from his time in the interrogation camp.
For a minute you have to stop reading and you look up and out of the window. How can the world out there still be turning when such atrocities are committed? How can anyone believe in anything when things like that are allowed to happen?
You start to read again. Jakobs says that at first he did not even know if it was James Barnes as the man was so badly beaten; it was only the unnatural heat emanating from his body that made him think it might be.
He had been starved and was badly dehydrated. When they had found him he was naked and shivering on a concrete floor in a disgustingly dirty cell. His head had been shaved and the skin sliced right through to the bone. Someone had driven iron nails into the stump of what was left of his arm. Here the report states the arm was lost prior to his arrival at the camp. His right arm was broken in three places, and so were all of his fingers.
His right foot had been placed in a torture device; a wooden box they had placed over the foot. Turning a handle caused metal plates inside the box to begin to squeeze the foot until all the bones were broken and toes crushed. The other foot looked like it has been skinned and the nails are missing. His face was badly swollen, one eye completely shut and the other bloodshot, infected and they don’t know if they can save it.
There were cigarette burns over his body even on his genitals, which were swollen. It is more than obvious he had been raped many times. Bruising covered most of his body where he had been kicked and beaten and when they x-rayed him they found his ribcage was out of alignment, one broken rib is so close to his heart that it caused them to panic about moving him any more in case it pushed it into the delicate muscle. There were small knife marks down each side of his chest where a knife has been pushed in and used to separate ribs which explained his difficulty in breathing. He was also listed as having fluid in his lungs. Your hand moves to the side of your rib cage and you feel for a moment, the pain of having a knife driven in between the ribs.
When they took him from you at the field camp you prayed he would not suffer any more; you had asked God to help him. You know what he has suffered at the hands of the project doctors but you didn't know until now what had happened to him at the interrogation camp. You feel so sick, tears threaten and you don’t want to read any more.
You don’t want to but you pick up the envelope of photographs and empty them onto the table. They are black and white but it does not lessen the horror shown in them.
This is how James Barnes looked when he was found and brought here by Dr Jakobs and you let them do it to him, you were the one who caused this. You did not protect him. He was your patient and you let them take him. The photographs show the different injuries, some close up, some full body shots and you think you are going to be sick. One shows the stump of his left arm with the nails driven into it, one nail splitting the marrow, pus and blood weeping out of it. You sit there, not taking anything else in, your mind closing down, this can't be true, he couldn't of had all this done to him and you whisper his name.
And that is when you realise you are not alone.
That is when someone reaches past you. A metal hand. It picks up the small photograph of James.
He is trained to be so quiet, so very quiet.
You spin around and the Winter Soldier is standing behind you, close. Close enough to see everything in front of you. He looks at the photograph in his hand and then back to you. He is pale, his eyes wide, you can see the shock deep in them.
You don’t know how long he has been standing there.
“Oh God!” Your reaction is to stand up and try and reach out to him but he steps away from you. His eyes are on the material on the table. You look back and try to move the photographs but his metal hand takes yours, the hold tightens and you think he is going to break the bones.
He looks down at the images. He reads the words. She had no idea he was standing there. He stops her when she goes to move them, when she goes to hide them. He knows it is him in the photographs. He even feel twinges of pain around his body, the metal arm that was once just a stub. How did this happen? Where are these from?
“This is me?” his voice is rough.
Although it is a question you can see he already knows the answer. He looks back at you, confusion and then fury showing in those eyes.
“This is me?” You don’t know it but his head is beginning to ache, the photographs stirring something and flashbacks are lining up ready to show themselves to him.
“I'm so sorry, you shouldn't have seen these. I didn't know they existed...I'm so sorry...”
He doesn’t let you finish. He picks up the file and holds it up to you.
“This is me? This is my name? This is who I am...” his eyes search yours. “Why am I in an American uniform? Why...” he can't speak and instead throws the folder at you. You try to catch it as the papers fly out and around you.
He watches her, misreads the panic in her eyes. Believes it is panic for herself, for Hydra: that he has seen the truth. He throws the folder at her, the papers spilling out and she tries to catch them but misses and they float to the floor until they are standing in a sea of paper and images.
His voice is quiet now. “You didn't tell me. You never told me!”
Told him what? That this had been done to him? That it was Hydra who had taken this soldier and beaten him, tortured him. Taken his memories. Made him their toy?
“I couldn't...please understand. I couldn't.” She is crying. Again, he misunderstands. He thinks she couldn't tell him because she is loyal to Hydra, because she helped them do this.
He bends and sweeps everything off the table and then upends it. You step backwards but he grabs your hand again and this time pulls you close to him.
“I trusted you. You are the one person I always think...” he can't finish and instead his metal hand moves up around your throat and he pushes you backwards until you hit the wall.
You can't talk, you can't breathe, the floor around you is surrounded by photographs of him. Tortured.
Your free hand tries to pull his away but you know it is impossible. You think he is going to kill you but instead he suddenly pulls you to the floor to your knees and picking up individual photographs, pushing them in your face.
“Were you watching when they did this to me? Did you enjoy the show?”
He picks up another one, shoves it in her face, keeps the pressure still on her throat. “Did you help them?”
Then he sees one that makes his eyes glaze over.
It is a full length one and showcases the damage done when he was raped. He can see the cigarette burns, remember someone holding him down, the smell of the dirty mattress, the way things echoed in the cell, the look in the guards eyes as they waited their turn. A flashback hits him and he lets go of her and staggers up and backward.
“No...” the photograph is still in his clenched hand and it is bending and tearing with the pressure.
You should run but you can't, you can't leave him like this. You stand up and step forward with your hands out. You want to help him but you don’t know how.
“Please, I'm so sorry...this wasn't done here, this wasn't...” your words focus his attention back on you and this time when he hits you he means to kill you. Your body flies back into the wall, smashing the back of your head and knocking you unconscious. The wall is cracked from the impact and your skull is fractured, your left arm broken.
He walks up to her prone body.
“You bitch,” he whispers and lifts his foot to smash her skull. He is a killer. He has killed many people but he can't bring himself to end her life even though he wants to so badly. He had trusted her. He had trusted HYDRA. The implications are registering in his brain but his programming has taken this into account and triggers the headache, making it so bad he is nearly brought to his knees.
He throws the picture down next to her but picks up the small one of him in his American uniform and staggers away.
The unfortunate thing is that no one sees him leave the records room. No one knows what has happened.
*
The first thing that alerts anyone to something being wrong is when an alarm goes off on the perimeter fence. Guards and dogs discover where the alarm has been tripped. More soldiers swarm out of the barracks, but when they get to the fence they cannot find a breach. The dogs, however, are at the bottom of the nearby tower barking furiously. The first soldiers on site use their walkie talkies to talk to the guards up in the tower but there is no response. Nothing.
Marinov and Zolnerowich arrive in one of the Jeeps and take in the situation. Marinov is already climbing the ladder before his brief has even been finished, Zolnerowich and several guards following.
What they find up there is sheer slaughter. Both guards killed, their windpipes smashed. Marinov looks over the side, towards the forest. He can see where the grass is flattened. Only one person could make that climb down half way and then survive the jump.
The Winter Soldier.
He relays the information to Jackson Caldwell.
The Winter Soldier is not in his quarters. A report is just being made that he has not turned up for training, and they cannot find the Constant either. The conclusion is that they have escaped and a search goes into immediate effect. Teams are drawn up, more dogs brought in, and different rifles handed out. They do not want to harm him but these have enough tranquilliser in them to bring down a bear.
They know the camp is in the middle of a forested area. The only roads are the ones in and out of the camp with a small road at the back; otherwise there are no civilians, no houses, nothing for seventy miles.
The guards are joined by soldiers, but most importantly they are joined by the Winter Soldier's own team.
They will take the lead.
They have been trained for this, for emergencies. The Winter Soldier will be hunted and found. He will be brought back and so will his Constant. She will be dealt with extreme prejudice if needed. This will not be allowed to happen again. When they are training for such an occurrence the scent they use with the dogs is always the Winter Soldier's, and so when they are given his scent they are baying immediately.
They do not know it yet but when he got out of the camp his ability to think, to plan, was too highly compromised. He doesn’t even know where he is going. He is just running.
He has a tracking monitor in his arm but there is too much interference for it to show his exact whereabouts and it is three hours before they find him. They only manage to because he has been brought down by a migraine so bad that he feels his head is splitting open.
He is already on his knees when they circle him but nobody takes any chances. He is a mess, he is bleeding from both his nose and his ears, his eyes are bloodshot, and there is a crazy fury showing in them. He will kill anyone that comes anywhere near him.
He can hear them approach but his head is splitting. He has been sick, his limbs are weak, trembling. Caldwell would be pleased that the programming was controlling him so well.
He does not know who he is, he does not know where he is, but he knows he wants to go home and when he thinks that a terrible tiredness comes over him. He can see images in his mind, people, places but he does not know who they are, where they are. All he wants is to run, to get away, to go home, wherever home is.
He sees them approach and his training kicks in vying for his attention with the migraine that is disabling him. Such an anger surges up through him and he staggers up to face them.
He lurches up and they do not even try to talk him down. They know what he is capable of and as he comes up they fire the first darts straight into him. The shots knock him backwards but he just manages to stay on his feet.
He stumbles forwards again. Blood splatters the forest floor. He wipes his arm over his nose, tries to clear his eyesight. The dogs go crazy. They can smell the blood, they can smell him, they are straining to be let off their leashes. They are trained not to kill him but they will bring him down.
“Stay back!” Adam Morton, the leader of the team, shouts to the soldiers. They all have their rifles aimed at this one man who could easily kill them all.
They think he is going to rush at them but he doesn’t. Instead he turns and tries to stagger away. Each member of the team look at one another. Adam raises his rifle and shoots the Winter Soldier in the back. He is wearing only a tee-shirt and combat trousers so the dart goes through the material with no problem.
Adam reloads and shoots him again and the Winter Soldier stumbles and goes down onto his knees again.
“Don't get up, you stupid son of a bitch,” Adam says under his breath.
They walk closer to him but he is struggling to rise again. Viktor shoots and another dart is fired into his back; the momentum of it pushes him down. Adam and Viktor rush in and kneel on the Winter Soldier's back pulling his arms back and handcuffing them whilst Rodion works quickly on deactivating his metal arm.
They turn him over. His eyes are wide, staring. The look in them makes Adam feel sick.
“You stupid fool. Where the hell were you going?” Adam asks him but he does not expect a reply.
He is barely conscious, lying there, blood dripping down his face, into his hair, onto the earth below. His eyes look so lost that Adam cannot help but feel so terribly sorry for him. He realises there are tear marks tracked through the blood, the Winter Soldier is crying.
“Home,” is the word Adam hears him utter.
The Winter Soldier cannot keep his eyes open any longer and finally they close. As he falls into unconsciousness his right hand opens and they see he is clutching a piece of paper. No, not paper, a photograph. Adam picks it up as it falls onto the forest floor.
He looks at it. “Fuck.”
“What is it?”
He shows Rodion and Viktor
They are quiet. They have never seen it before but they recognise the man in it even though he is dressed in an American service uniform.
“Get rid of the guards. Tell them we'll bring him back in.” Adam looks up and around.
“Where the hell is the Constant? What the hell happened?”
*
Back at the camp Caldwell and Adam are watching Doctor Jakobs and Taffeteer checking on the Winter Soldier. Stefan is also there, helping where he can. They are keeping the Soldier completely sedated, they do not want him waking until they are ready for him. The doctors are sure there is no permanent damage and they can feel the serum working on him already.
They will hard wipe him whilst he is down. It is not something they like to do but once he regains consciousness they will not be able to control him enough to get him into the chair.
“You searched the woods?” Caldwell asks.
“Yeah, for another hour, but none of the dogs even picked up any trace of her scent. You know Freya, she wouldn't have left him. You didn't see him. God he was a mess.”
Caldwell looks at the screwed up photograph that Adam handed to him. “Where did he get this from?”
“Search me.” He watches whilst they move The Winter Soldier to the gurney. They are going to take him through to the main room to begin the wipe. He knows he will have to be there but he hates watching this part.
“Search the base again, and bring the dogs inside. I want every room checked again, every single one of them.”
Adam nods and leaves to give the order.
*
Serge Zolnerowich is leading the group that find Freya. It is dark by now.
The room was not searched before as there were no lights on and people are used to the door being locked. Nobody had thought to check it. One of the dogs leads them straight to it and whines until the door is pushed open and then it barks.
Serge reaches in and turns the light on. It is like a whirlpool has erupted in one corner of the room. There is paper strewn all over the floor, a table and chair upended and lying close to the back wall is Freya. He tells one of the guards to radio for a doctor and to let Caldwell know they have found her.
Walking over to her he sees the impact mark on the wall and hesitates to turn her over. Around her head is a pool of blood. He crouches down and reaches over and takes her wrist searching for a pulse; if there is one it is too faint for him to find but there is an unnatural heat coming from her. He snaps at the soldier to radio again and hurry up the doctors.
He looks down at her. There is nothing he can do, he dare not move her, he can see that one of her arms is at an unnatural angle. How many times is this that the Winter Soldier has broken her?
He is in no doubt that it is the Winter Soldier who has done this damage.
“I'm getting to old for this,” he mutters to himself. He is only in his mid-thirties but he feels older.
Freya is laying in a pile of photographs and what looks like a report. He picks up one of the photographs and recoils. He looks around at the others scooping them up before anyone else can see them. He moves over to one of the corners and radios in to Marinov to call off the search.
Jackson Caldwell arrives with Jakobs, who swears when he sees the blood. He can see immediately why Serge has not moved her.
Caldwell looks around at the mess and then turns to the guards standing by. “Post two men on the door and the rest of you go back to quarters,” he orders.
Then he turns back to the Serge. “What do you think happened here?” And Serge hands him the photographs and reports he has scooped up.
Caldwell looks at them, looks through them. “Jesus. I guess this would be enough to set him off. Combine it with the fact he has been out of cryo for so long and it must have been an explosion waiting to happen.”
These must have affected the Winter Soldier's mind, Caldwell is not surprised. The photographs are horrific. They would shock anyone yet alone if you realised you were the person in them. The shock of them must have broken something in him, thank God for his programming.
This is something he needs to think about long and hard.
He has felt for a while that they are not getting the programming right. It seemed to be breaking down at times. The worst time was when the assassination of Kennedy went wrong; he has read the reports and spoken to the programmers but is he being told everything? Is it a case of over time the programming becomes less effective because somehow the brain gets accustomed to the assault on it? He will schedule in a meeting with Zola and Fennhoff to see what they think. It cannot go on like this. They have heard conversations in the Winter Soldier's quarters, times when they are aware of the clock ticking down too fast. The whole thing needs looking at.
Zolnerowich moves to pick up the table and the rest of the files scattered around. Caldwell adds the ones he is holding to the pile and picks up the notes seeing the date on them.
“She's been sorting the old cabinets from Lehmann's days and he must have found her looking at them.”
Doctor Jakobs, who is crouched next to Freya, turns. “She's alive and the serum is doing its work but whether or not she'll survive I don’t know. And if she does...” He hesitates, not wanting to speak the words “...I can't say if she will be brain-damaged. He's fractured her skull and her arm is broken.”
Caldwell nods and then watches as carefully they lift her on to a gurney and take her away, Jakobs following.
He turns to Marinov who has joined them. “Pick two men that you trust and I mean really trust, and then burn all of this, every last piece of paper, every last photograph. I don't want any of it to survive. Do you understand?”
Marinov nods. “Serge and I will do it,” he says.
Later they are seen carrying paper and photographs to the furnace and shovelling them in - but they are not the papers Caldwell thinks they are. They are not the records pertaining to Lehmann's time on Project Winter Soldier.
Instead Marinov, with Serge's help, makes sure that these records are kept. The information will be hidden within Hydra, right under their noses, until the world is ready to see it.
Caldwell returns to his office, and then half an hour later calls two of the technicians in with him. He is unhappy with the poor tracking data the tracker in the Winter Soldier's arm gave them. He does not want this happening again, he wants to know he can always track both the Winter Soldier and the Constant and he orders tracking devices to be implanted. One of the doctors suggests the implementation within the bone of the hip and Caldwell agrees.
Freya lives. It takes a long time for her to get over the skull fracture but with the help of the small amount of Zola's serum there is no permanent damage. She does not question the scar low down on her hip, assumes that it is part of her injuries. She is used to them by now. Used to the scars.
*
By the time the Winter Soldier and the Constant re-enter cryo freeze there is a permanent tracking device that neither one of them knows about. They can always be tracked now, they can always be found.
Hydra will never lose sight of either one of them again.
- 47
- 48
- 49
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A Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Fic - The Constant