Who Am I? » [Stucky]

1. The Smithsonian

They met at the Smithsonian on anonymous terms, suited up in a disguise right to the teeth. Hats, coats with collars upturned, hair strewn across faces and sunglasses.

They were stood still in the Captain America Exhibition with the masses of people mooching about in awe surrounding them. They were like an island, two people frozen still whilst the waters of people flowed around them like a steady unruly current, rapidly moving in arbitrary directions.

The brainwashed soldier stared intently at the monolithic memorial with his face plastered to it, confused by the sight.

Steve stood reassuringly at his side, like a nurse to an Alzheimer's patient. That's what he felt like to him; mere fragments of his existence remained in his mind, like splinters in a plank of wood, the rest was non-existent. It was like mist had settled on his mind, clouding over anything of clarification and fogging anything far behind in his past.

He was looking at an image of himself, yet he could barely recognise the man.

Steve proudly looked at the memorial, lovingly gazing at the very picture of his best friend. Then he looked at the living shell of the spectre next to him.

"So that's..." Bucky struggled to spit out the words. "Me?" He looked at the blue eyed man next to him.

"Yep," Steve agreed with a curt nod, pride in his posture. "You were a hero." He looked over at The Soldier. "You are a hero. You saved my life yet again."

Bucky looked at the man. When he looked at Steve images were revived in his mind; small snippets like magazine clippings. He saw friendship, he saw trust, he saw... As soon as his being became tangible it would slip away through his fingers again like sand and an odd ice-cream headache seemed to ring out in his temples.

He was surrounded by a shrine to Steve; surrounded by memories; supposed memories of his past - but it was like looking through a window into someone else's life.

"James Buchanan Barnes? That's my name?" He asked bluntly, his face clean of expression completely. He really was like a blank slate; washed of personality.

"Yeah. The one and the best," Steve chuckled rather melancholically. "D'you not have a name now?" Steve asked out of growing curiosity.

The Winter Soldier shook his head slowly as if it was normal not to have a name. "They didn't give me a name. Just The Winter Soldier."

"Oh..." Steve sighed, his eyes sweeping the ground awkwardly.

"I like 'Bucky'. Not James so much, but I like Bucky," the mind wiped man said.

Those words stung at Steve's heart like a wasp trapped in his aorta, making it clench and stutter. His eyes got moist with a thin layer of tears that he drove back valiantly.

"If Bucky's good enough for you, it's good enough for me," Steve chirped rather merrily, laughing breathlessly to cover up his tearfully staggered words.

The usually expressionless man smiled warmly, though debatably forcibly, up at the display of him.

"I want to remember who I am," Bucky said.

The Winter Soldier, the man who had been trained to defy emotion was scared. The world was so wrong. He was wrong; and he knew it.

"I want you to remember too," Steve acknowledged his dreams. "I just don't know how to help you."

The Winter Soldier swallowed his Hydra instilled sense of pride and responsibility and spoke out with a grimace. "Will you help me?"

Steve looked down at the confused figure of his friend, the empty shell wanting to recover himself, he was like a wiped computer: though the casing and components still remained, the contents didn't.