It's your love I'm lost in

Disclaimer: the characters in the Marvel universe unfortunately don't belong to me.
Trigger warning: mention of drinking, nightmares, PTSD, torture, psychological conditioning, depression, mourning, loss of a loved one, loss of a limb, more or less graphic description of homicide, injuries, violence, fighting, death.
Attention! I haven't been able to see The Falcon and The Winter Soldier yet, so some of the facts described in this story may not be canon.

•••

It's not hard to play the victim
When these scars belong to you
I'm a walking contradiction
To practice what I preach
Would be a heavy load to bare

Steve quickly gets back from the ground, but still stops for a second to observe enchanted the muzzle of the Winter Soldier, pushed away from his own fingers, fall to the ground into a dull clink. He looks up, returning to himself, and what he sees unsettles him.
It cannot be.
«Bucky?»
It's impossible, he's dead. He died because I couldn't save him.
Bucky's hard expression shifts immediately into an incredulous one, and for a moment he's himself again, he's again only Buck, the boy from Brooklyn.
Who are you? And why did you call me Bucky? I am the Winter Soldier, and you are my mission.
«Who the hell is Bucky?»
The time seems to stop around them while everything else disappears, the explosions, the noises, the battle as the seconds melt one inside the other creating one very long moment in which Steve, currently out of breath, clings onto the confusion that he can still read on Bucky's face, and he's about to answer you're Bucky, my greatest love when he suddenly sees his expression return to that hard, serial killer-y frown, and everything comes vivid, urgent: the explosions, the noises, the battle, and Sam coming behind him, and Bucky who aims a gun in his direction, and Steve sees, or rather he wants to be able to see, or better still he really sees, the ghost of fear in those cold, glacial eyes, then something explodes. He's just got to look away for a second for Bucky to disappear, for him to dissolve into the confusion around them, for Steve to realize he's lost him again.

The buzz of some tools that the scientists are using to repair his arm induces him to a sort of trance, and Bucky remembers.
It's cold. He's lying in the snow, where he crashed, and the pain in the arm that he lost in the fall makes him go in and out of consciousness. He fell from the train. He's gonna die alone, bleed out into the snow between atrocious suffering. Zola's face appears suddenly in his field of vision scrutinizing him, moving his lips and forever condemning him.
«Sergeant Barnes»
«I'm done.»
The man from the bridge was on that train with him... but who is he? He must've been somewhat important to him, because seeing that man had a strange effect on him.
«Mission report»
Who the hell is Bucky? He is the Winter Soldier. He's a creature of the Hydra. But that man, and that name... is it possible that he has got... a past?
«Mission report!»
The face of the man from the bridge and the train, his incredulous expression.
«Bucky?»
Uncontrolled images follow themselves in his mind, confusing him: why, he wonders desperately, why have I never felt anything so far and now I'm feeling everything?!
«He's unresponsive... call Mr. Secretary.»
Pierce will hurt him for this. He disobeyed his orders, failed his mission. But he couldn't carry it out, he couldn't, he couldn't! Not after seeing the disbelief, or rather the relief, on the face of that man when his muzzle had fallen.
But why?
Pierce takes a seat before him who, undaunted, asks just one question: «the man on the bridge... who was he?»
There are many words coming out of the mouth belonging to the man seated before him, empty, useless words that he stops listening to almost immediately because none of them tells him what interests him the most and, while «but I knew him» he answers slowly in a grimace and a shrug of his shoulders that mean that he couldn't complete that mission, he just waits for the pain that, punctually, arrives a moment later: a slap, and someone forces something to bite into his mouth.
«Restart him.»
His arms are already tied, and this time he has no strength left to oppose: with these memories to blur him in the mind to complete his tasks becomes too complicated, he understands their reasons, he understands that these memories are parasites that make him an walking contradiction that's just too dangerous, impossible to manage. Electric shocks take away every will from him, and he screams, bites the object between his teeth and then, finally, the darkness swallows him whole.