The Asset: The Beginning and End of the Winter Soldier

Chapter Six

Bucky could feel the awakening: deep cold surrounding him as consciousness returned. Voices offering a detailed analysis of his physical state, the white glare of energy arcing through his brain, returning him to full awareness as the Winter Soldier even as ten words echoed around him locking him in full obedience to Hydra. He endured many such awakenings again and again, some within months, some as long as a year or more. He thought of the awakening from cryogenic stasis because he had not slept at all, using the remembered awakenings from the past to try to clear his mind, to move on from the Kennedy assassination.

He had never been stored for long; his talents were always needed. Some missions were a few days, others a few weeks, rarer were the one that lasted months or more, and then he would be stored, for weeks or months, up to a year. In the mid 1960's he had varied missions, to include infiltration, intelligence gathering, operating in Vietnam as the war intensified and spread to include greater numbers of troops from the United States and the Soviet Union and as always, murder. His increasing ability to calculate the potential actions of people in various states of stress, mental instability, or just people trying to live their lives as quietly as possible was very valuable to Hydra. The responses and subsequent actions of just about anyone could be predicted, guided, or manipulated with the same detached, unemotional skill as everything he did as the Winter Soldier. Bucky could only feel a deep sense of pain and anger at just how good he had been at everything Hydra wanted him to do.

He forced himself to explain some of the assassination of President Kennedy to Ayo, who brought him back to the small clearing to have him sit and regain his focus after the long night he had spent immersed in the nightmare he had created as the Winter Soldier. He had no desire to explain it in detail to her, and she did not ask as many questions of him, perhaps realizing his stamina for that particular memory was nearly gone.

Bucky clenched his teeth as he relived the moment in Dallas yet again. "The day was warm for November, the crowds enthusiastic as the President's motorcade moved through the city," he told Ayo with a determined focus. "The Winter Soldier carefully prepared to take the shot after he was sure Oswald was in position. The Winter Soldier had ordered all others involved in the plot, both Hydra and others, away from the immediate area leaving only him and Oswald. No one else could witness, thus no one else would ever be absolutely sure what had happened, other than those who would be able to access the full report within Hydra. The motorcade came closer, Oswald below, the with me on the roof. Oswald couldn't have made that shot, but I could with my decades of experience and enhanced biology."

Bucky tightened his hands to fists as rage and grief threatened to drown him yet again. Perfectly executed, no trace of his involvement left for anyone to find and study outside of the upper echelons of Hydra. He explained that to Ayo, suddenly desperate to have someone else know of it, who also knew him, to find out if she would turn away from him, unwilling to go any further with him down the path of his memories as the Winter Soldier.

"That was the worst thing," he admitted to her, quietly, with despair.

"That you weren't just following orders blindly," she replied, nodding. "You, as the Winter Soldier had agency. You planned, you set up and executed the operations yourself."

"Yes, I did. And all of them ended in death. I did it." His misery choked him, but he rasped out: "How can I be sure it really wasn't me the entire time?"

"Because, James, you would never assassinate a president in service to Hydra." Her certainty calmed him more quickly than he had expected. He was surprised at how much comfort he took in not only her words but her presence. She did not know every single detail of the assassination, but she knew what he had done, and she continued to offer support. He took a deep breath and stopped struggling with himself, trying a new tactic. He reached for more comforting memories: a childhood in Brooklyn, fighting alongside Steve in the war, serving the very country he would be forced more than once to betray later. Those images allowed him to settle, though he still ached with the horror of killing Kennedy. He found he was ready and able to continue to examine more of the memories of the Winter Soldier. Ayo, however, seemed unsure how to proceed, whether she should ask more questions, draw more details about the Kennedy assassination or not. She finally nodded to herself, as if she knew he had already fought that battle in his mind and that he had at last been able to achieve a certain detachment, if not actual peace with it.