𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐍𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖𝐍 , barnes

013

chapter thirteen . . . TO BE HUMAN
❝ don't forget me ❞

"IT WAS HIM."

Steve stares solemnly down at the large metal handcuffs binding his hands together in an uncomfortable way. His voice cracking and his mind playing the whole fight scene on a loop in his head. "He looked right at me like he didn't even know me."

Natasha blankly stares off into space, knowing the feeling all to well. She remembered that feeling she had when she watched James fire that bullet at her and he just stared at her, with no emotion in his face. After everything they'd been through together and he didn't even recognise her. It was the most gut - wrenching, sickening, heart breaking feeling Natasha had ever felt. 

"How is that even possible?" Sam speaks up, "It was, like, seventy years ago."

Her eyes shift up to Steve, she already knew the disgusting way that he was kept. James had told her the way they kept him young, it was barbaric. They'd kept  him in cryofreeze and he looked pretty much the same when Natasha had been pregnant except that his hair has grown a substantial amount and he's developed a short beard but he still looked the same. Even with the horrible pain in her shoulder, Natasha felt a strange feeling of satisfaction in her chest. She knew his name, his proper name. It wasn't just 'James' or 'Asset', He has a name. 

James Buchanan Barnes. 

Bucky.

Bucky Barnes. 

She liked that name, it suited him well. Even with all of those layers, he was still Bucky Barnes somewhere and Natasha liked that idea. She wanted to ask Steve about him, what he was like back then but she didn't want to bring back up bad memories. However, it meant that he was human once. Loyal. Headstrong. Brave. Patriotic. Devoted. She smirked a little. Natasha imagined what he might've been like, she desperately wanted to know. 

Steve thinks about his younger sister, Svetlana. She was his bestfriend, throughout their entire life together. She'd lived with their biological father on Long Island for a while but he was a junkie and was just a horrible man. She'd moved when she was seven and lived with him and their mother since. Svetlana had gone missing a couple of years after World War Two whilst Steve was in the ice. But now that he knew about HYDRA and that she'd been captured, he wondered if they'd came back for her. Was she with them for sixty years, possibly. Steve had no clue but she might've had the same experience as Bucky but no one could be sure. Ever since he got out, he's been going by the assumption that she died a while back but he also thought that his bestfriend had died a long time back. Sitwell had told Liana that she's alive so he could've been lying but Steve didn't know, he needed to see her in life to know.