Bucky was rather uncomfortable, but really, he was resigned to that. He'd been through infinitely worse and suspected worse might still be in his future. He could live with discomfort. The restraints clamped around his forearms were almost comical they were so bulky, while the equally ridiculous harness-like restraints over his shoulders and across his chest held his torso a little too straight for comfort.

He knew, over the top as the restraints appeared, that they likely made the people outside the portable containment cell feel safer, more secure. He could almost have laughed at their naivety. But he didn't have the will. Part of him insisted that this was where he deserved to be. Another part admitted that, locked up like this, was the safest place for him to be.

As soon as that vendor in Bucharest had run at the sight of him he'd known it was time to go again. Then Steve had been in the tiny apartment safehouse he'd been staying in and he'd thought he was done.

But then Steve had tried to help him. At the time he'd barely thought further on it, having fallen back on years, decades really, of combat training and survival instinct with the sole desire to get away. He'd just wanted to run.

Now, sitting locked up in a glorified reinforced glass and metal box, he had lots of time to think. The pieces of his mind had, for the most part, slipped back into place, though there were still times when his mind seemed fluid, things not quite where they should be, leaving him confused and disoriented.

But he remembered what Steve had meant to him. And he remembered with a cruel, frigid ache in his gut what he had nearly done to Steve...what he had done to Steve. It was that moment the memory of actually shooting his best friend surged to the forefront of his mind, followed closely by the vivid memory of those last few seconds before the superstructure of the Helicarrier had given way, sending Steve plummeting into the river. His stomach roiled violently. There were few memories that made him hate himself more...he did his best not to think about the most recent addition to that already impossibly long list...

He also knew why his oldest friend had done what he did in Bucharest, likely sacrificing his own freedom in an attempt to do it. And he knew that, knowing the outcome, Steve would do the same again.

Only Bucky didn't deserve it.

He leaned his head back against the headrest, swallowing a resigned groan. The steel and polymer was cool and hard against the back of his head but it didn't bother him. Not really.

He was too tired. He was tired of fighting. He was tired of running. He was tired of jumping from safehouse to safehouse across Europe. He was tired of hiding. He was tired of waking up everyday and knowing that he was likely to have to do one or the other. He was tired of hunting down those who threatened everything he cared for most, no matter that his drive to do so hadn't dimmed. He was tired of searching for the missing pieces of his past. For a way to contain or even neutralize the Winter Soldier programming imbedded in his brain. He was tired of the faces and the voices and the images running through his head, never letting him rest. He hated what he remembered; what having those memories meant; what they meant he was. But he was resigned to bear it.

What other choice did he have?

A flicker of bitterness that they'd taken him alive surfaced at that thought.

Outside the cell a man was talking to him, or trying to at least. Bucky wasn't the least bit interested. His life—or what meager facsimile of a life he'd had these last few months—was all but over. What point was there? They were going to pin the bombing on him. It was ironic, when considering all that he'd done, all the blood dripping from his hands, that it was because something he didn't do that would result in him spending the foreseeable future in a glass cage.

Not likely to see the sun again, the sky. The stars. Just thinking on it brought forward memories too painful to dwell on. Memories of rooftop dinners and dark curls that tickled his neck. Of sunflower pendants. Of bright, empathetic hazel eyes with flecks of grey and gold in them. He could feel the tiny, flickering hope he'd somehow managed to keep alive for the past year faltering with each passing moment. He stared at the roof of the cell, where the glass joined with metal, reinforced and fortified to keep him in, struggling to make his mind go blank.

It didn't work. His head fell slowly toward his chest as the ache of longing only seemed to intensify. So, grudgingly, he turned his attention to the man—some sort of psychiatrist, he imagined—figuring on at least a temporary distraction to keep from dwelling on things he was never going to have.

Of what he'd lost by running.

Of who he was never going to see again.

"I'm not here to judge you. I just want to ask you a few questions." A bitter laugh caught in his chest, not making it far enough to produce a sound. Everyone judged. He'd done monstrous things, so it was inevitable. That he was here, now, proved that. No one had even considered that he might not have done it. No one had bothered to even talk to him about it. Not even this doctor. No one, save Steve. 

And there would likely never be just 'a few' questions.

Broken as his mind was, he wasn't so naïve as that.

"Do you know where you are, James?" The calm, measured voice was already becoming grating and irritation caused Bucky's jaw to clench as he fought back the urge to snap back. The doctor paused, as though waiting for Bucky to respond. Bucky wasn't about to indulge him, not if he could help it, especially not if he kept calling him that. Bucky could see the doctor watching him closely in his peripheral vision. "I can't help you if you don't talk to me, James." It took a firm act of willpower to keep from grinding his teeth, his frustration finally getting the better of him.

"My name is Bucky," he ground out, jaw clenching shut as soon as the words were out of his mouth, preventing anything else from slipping out. Only one person is allowed to call me James and you aren't her, he wanted to snap at the collected man before him. But Bucky wasn't about to put Iris at risk like that. Likely they'd assume he was referring to his mother or sister or other long lost person from his past, but he wasn't about to take that chance.

The doctor just continued to stare before glancing down to his notes, jotting something down. He looked—pleased? Bucky finally gave in and looked directly at the doctor, not bothering to temper his glare. He wasn't happy to be here. He wasn't happy being interrogated like this, because it was an interrogation. They could call it whatever they wanted—a psychological evaluation, whatever—but it was still an interrogation. Why did they care? They had already condemned him whether they admitted to it or not.

The doctor stared mildly back. "Tell me, Bucky," if anything, he suddenly found that more irritating than being called James, "You've seen a great deal, haven't you." Bucky forced in a deep breath, weighing whether or not to respond.

"I don't wanna talk about it," he finally answered, his voice low and hard. The mild look didn't change, but Bucky had the sense that the doctor was very much unperturbed by the response, even pleased. What sort of interrogation was this?

"You feel that if you open your mouth the horrors might never stop?" Bucky's jaw clenched again, his teeth beginning to ache with the pressure as the words dug painfully into him. He leaned his head back against the headrest, though he kept his eyes fixed surreptitiously on the Doctor. There was more truth there than the doctor knew.

"Don't worry," the doctor said, glancing over to his tablet. And then he was looking up to Bucky again, a harsh glimmer in his eyes. Bucky's gut churned. Something was wrong here. "We only have to talk about one." A wary dread blossomed in the back of Bucky's mind as the doctor's mild glance grew sharp.

And then the power died, the low, latent hum of the lights and ventilation systems falling eerily silent to leave Bucky and the doctor alone in the suddenly crushing darkness.

Of their own accord his eyes darted around, his senses suddenly on high alert. It had to be a trick, some method of interrogation. But the roiling dread in his belly, borne of instincts honed over decades where they'd been his best defense and the only part of himself he could trust, said otherwise. He tried to ignore it. Overhead the dim, flashing red emergency lighting kicked in, bathing the chamber and his glass cell in a bloody glow.

Instinct taking over yet again, he felt his body go loose within the restraints, ready for the other shoe to drop. This had to be part of the plan, a way to unsettle him.

It was working.

He looked back to the doctor, unable to stop the frown that formed on his face.

"What the hell is this?" In the low light the doctor's eyes flashed. The coil of dread wound tighter.

"Why don't we discuss your home." Bucky's frown deepened at the sharp edge to the still conversational tone, fighting back his confusion at the apparent shift in topic. The doctor's gaze bored into him. Agitation rippled through him, mingling with the dread. He knew his face had gone blank as his anxiety ratcheted higher; a remnant from his days as the Winter Soldier that he was suddenly almost grateful for.

"Not Romania. Certainly not Brooklyn, no." the doctor shifted as he spoke, casually reaching into his satchel. Bucky went cold, his whole body tensing as panic began to flood through him, freezing even his breath in his chest.

One thought and one thought alone exploded through his mind to the fierce exclusion of all else; the thing he feared most.

They'd found her. They'd found Iris.

And they were going to use her against him.

But then he saw the book the doctor slipped out of the satchel, holding it purposefully so Bucky could see it with agonizing clarity despite the dim light: red leather-bound with a single, black star imprinted on the cover. "I mean your real home." Horror seared through him.

No. This was far worse.

As the doctor removed his glasses and stood, shock settled around Bucky, making it hard to breath as he struggled to wrap his head around what was about to happen. For as the doctor pulled out a thin flashlight and flipped open the book, there was little doubt about what he planned to do.

"Zhelaniye."

The first Russian word fell from the doctor's lips, hanging and grating through the air. Despair and disbelief overtook shock. "No," he breathed, his head falling back against the headrest with a dull thud, the cloying, sour taste of bile clogging his throat.

"Rzhavyy."

"Stop." His voice wavered and broke, the fact that he was begging not lost on him. Anything to make it stop. The words hooked into his brain, lodging with agonizing tenacity. He squeezed his eyes shut, grimacing as flashes of fractured memory he'd tried so hard to bury were resurrected by the doctor's merciless voice.

"Semnadtsat."

His cybernetic fist clenched, the limb buzzing angrily as phantom pain speared through his temples, blinding him. "Stop!" There was no waver now, only a harsh, frantic demand. Cold, desperate rage surged up to shatter the terror freezing the very blood in his veins, his chest suddenly heaving as he sucked in breath after snarling breath as his body mindlessly strained against the restraints. His pulse roared in his ears, but it wasn't loud enough to drown out the words.

"Rassvet."

A desperate scream of rage tore out of his chest, the tendons and muscles in his neck straining as his entire frame wrenched taut, thrashing against the restraints. His bionic arm ripped through its thick cuff with a shearing screech like it was no more than paper. In less than a heartbeat his metal fingers had torn through the harness and freed his other arm, the restraints proving a pitiful attempt to hold him back in his manic frenzy to escape as he launched free of the chair.

"Pech."

With a muted thud his metal fist drove against the reinforced glass like a battering ram. Again. And again. Each breath burned through his lungs like chlorine gas, searing his insides as each hit vibrated through his body.

"Devyat."

He needed to get out. He needed to stop those words. The frame of the door groaned under the onslaught but the glass didn't want to crack under the relentless hammering of his metal fist, a growing patch of white dust the only mark he left.

"Dobrokachestvennyy."

He could feel the seal on the door beginning to give way while the small patch of glass began to grow opaque as microfractures were etched into it with every strike. Just a few more hits...

"Vozvrashcheniye domoy."

The fractures were growing but it was too slow. It wasn't enough.

As the words hooked deeper into his brain he could feel himself losing grip over his own mind no matter how hard he clawed and battled to keep hold. His voice grew hoarse as he bellowed furiously, his arm driving into the glass again and again. Even as he fought to break free of his prison—physical and internal—a bitter, hopeless part of his mind howled that it was useless, that he was already ensnared.

"Gruzovoy vagon."

It wasn't the glass, but the door itself that finally gave way. Bucky fell forward with the momentum of his last hammering blow, nimbly catching himself in a crouch before he could crash into the floor.

But as the glass door burst free from its frame with a grinding scream, the finality of the last word fell like a weight over him, dragging Bucky down below to drown in the frigid, fathomless sea that was HYDRA's programming.

The room was silent as the doctor came to a stop before Bucky. Slowly, Bucky stood, his eyes unseeing...blank...

Dead.

The doctor looked anxiously on, his eyes glittering with anticipation.

"Soldat?"

One last, coherent thought whispered through his mind before Bucky was wholly consumed by the Winter Soldier.

I'm sorry, Iris.

"Ya gotov otvechat."    

A/N: Thanks for reading!

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