thearena | You can't sleep at night; you can't dream your dream

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You can't sleep at night; you can't dream your dream

Who| Bucky Barnes and...the other guy who once went by that name.
What| A fight that really shouldn't be happening, but it is.
Where| The amusement park
When| Later in the fifth week, just before and then during the start of the second full Hell-rena.
Warnings/Notes| Violence, lots of violence.

He was doing so well, too.

That's a lie. Bucky hasn't been doing well in the Arena since Natasha died. He's at loose ends without her to ground him, but at least, for a time, he had a man going by the name of Steve Rogers, who looked and acted quite a lot like the Steve he knew from home. With that almost-familiar face around, Bucky was going to do his damnedest to be a good man even here in the midst of an ongoing deathmatch. There's still, after all, that voice at the back of his brain begging him not to disappoint the shield.

Then Steve went down, too. And Bucky knows, he knows that both Steve and Natasha are safe (or as safe as safe can be, here) back in the Capitol. But that's there, and he's here in the fog and the chill and the perpetual threat that hell will open up again, surrounded by monsters and fellow killers. It's far too easy to start thinking that he might as well be one of them and always has been.

As the days drag on, he starts to lose track of time. Why bother keeping track? It's all a blur of killing monsters and avoiding people--and, more and more, gnawing hunger. He has the rations he took off Steve's body, but he can barely bring himself to have enough of them to survive. Steve was giving them to people who needed them, so Bucky thinks he should do the same, but he's too afraid now of what might happen should he find other people. What if he attacks them? What if, what if--

Night comes on, though he can't remember how many such nights it's been since Steve died, and he suspends his tent from what looks like the most stable machinery in the shadow of one of the roller coaster's loops in the amusement park. He tries to sleep, but increasingly vivid nightmares interrupt his attempts at rest. Finally, before dawn, he stumbles out of the tent, staggers against a pile of rotted wood fallen from the roller coaster, and retches violently. His stomach is empty, so it doesn't really matter. Too bad it doesn't make him feel any better--and on top of that, he knows bitterly, it alerts anyone nearby to his presence.

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Since he killed the man in the street there have been no others.

He's stalked through the expanse of the arena, circling its border, examining its locations, too restless to stay still and wait. Hunger is a dull ache of a companion since he consumed the last of what Steve gave him, the water he made last longer but even that is now gone. It bothers him to feel these things, to have been awake so long that they have started to become familiar.

Sleep. That is another neglected need for his body. Before abandoning his masters he had never slept except in the ice and since then sleeping like normal men slept had come in fits and bursts. Half-remembered dreams disturbed him into waking and soon he'd begun to avoid it altogether, that had only become worse in the arena where foes lurked on all sides.

Lesser men might have given to passing out by now, the Winter Soldier however -- even curbed by the powers of the Capitol -- was something else.

He keeps coming back near to where Steve likely died and now further, entering the eerie looming structure of the Amusement Park in search of something, anything to stop his mind from wandering and give him focus again. He needs it, craves it. He cannot find an escape, the only path to follow is the one they directed him to and maybe after that there will be more. The yawning emptiness that he becomes aware of within himself when he doesn't have direction disturbs him more by the day.

Then -- there, he hears something. Instantly his body lowers, snaking forward into a crouching walk through the fog towards the source of the sound. He has the electrical cord he found on the first day and the penknife Steve gave him, as yet unused except to put down a small pack of doglike animals that had tried to harry him the day before. There is the arm always as well, even with its limited functionality.

There is a figure, a man? Yes. He can't make out the face at this distance but the form is clear. Throwing up, possibly sick, a step closer to the goal if he takes him down. The penknife stays in his pocket still as he circles round as silently as he can to attempt an approach from behind.

Bucky's head is still as full of the fog as the night around him. By the time he manages to wrench his body back under control again, though, it's started to subside. He can't risk standing here in a stupor, and he knows it.

By that point, the sense that he's being watched is prickling along his spine. He can't say for sure, of course. He doesn't see any clear evidence of an approach--which just makes him worry more. It means that if someone is stalking him, they're good.

Bereft of any other options, he chooses the direct approach for now. He unhooks the axe from his belt with his right hand and holds his left up, palm out--anything unusual about it hidden behind sleeve and glove. "Hey." He pitches his voice to carry. "Whoever's out there? You don't want to attack me. I might look kind of pathetic right now, but I fight like hell."

An axe. That makes it more difficult but not too much. Deflect with the left arm, disarm with the right, go in for the kill after.

But... caution. Something is... off. More off than anything else has been yet. The man has noticed his approach, no one notices his approaches, it's a failure and failure digs claws into his mind, making him grit his teeth against it. He hasn't failed until he's dead.

It's more than being caught out though and he thinks if the fog wasn't so dense maybe he could understand why. This thing that's setting him on edge. No, stop thinking, focus, take down the target. It's what he's made for.

Stealth is not immediately abandoned as he contemplates his options for bare seconds, mind filtering through multiple scenarios and approaches before he settles on one. He takes up a brick from a small pile of rubble, hugging the wall of what was once a maintenance shed and closing as much distance as he possibly can before breaking cover.

The Soldier charges forwards, the brick thrown at close range, not expected to kill. He wants it to stun his opponent if it hits or throw him off balance as hes forced to dodge, opening an opportunity for the Soldier to come in and wrench the axe away from him.

He can't tell exactly where his attacker is coming from. Not consciously. But his instinctive mind is impossibly well-trained. Just like that of the man approaching him for the kill.

So when the Soldier does break cover, his target reacts instantly. Bucky sees the blur out of the corner of his eye, hears the soft footsteps, almost senses the disturbance in the air, and he instantly spins around. Good for him he does, because that brick's coming fast. He still has his left hand lifted, though, so he does what's natural to him: he catches the brick, grabs it out of the air with a strange dull crunch of stone slamming into metal.

Only afterwards does he realize who threw it. His stomach knots up again into a ball of anger and distress. His eyes widen, then narrow. "You--what the hell are you doing here?"

But he lifts the axe now with less restraint than before.

The Soldier's eyes jerk open wider at the unexpected counter to his initial attack while his ears ring with the sound of stone on metal.

It's enough to break the fluidity of the charge, a barely there stumble, as his mind works to factor in the new information but it's not right. The man has his face or he has the face of James Buchanan Barnes that was in the museum, Steve Rogers dead best friend. He'd memorised every detail of that photograph.

There are no words to answer with. He is here because he's always the puppet, put where others want him to get his hands dirty in their place, it seems too obvious to him to need stating.

In the brief seconds it takes for those thoughts to run through his mind the distance between them has closed. The Soldier's left arm braces defensively for an expected swing of the axe towards him and the right fist comes up for a hard hit at the not-copy's face.

But Bucky doesn't swing the axe. He still struggles with a lingering gut feeling: Steve wouldn't want this man harmed.

Hunger and fatigue should be slowing his thinking, but he's long since been trained (and trained himself) to push those things out of his mind when he needs to. So he's figured it out quickly enough. This isn't just his younger self--there are subtle enough differences to remind him of that. He's a few inches too tall, his features just a tiny bit off. This is the Bucky Barnes that the Steve Rogers he met here grew up with, and for Steve's sake, he should make the effort to reach out to him.

(Even if every nerve and bone in his body screams against it. There is no reasoning with the Winter Soldier. There is no fixing him without breaking and remolding reality itself. That's what experience teaches him. But some version of Steve would want him to try--)

He swiftly steps back from the punch and lifts his left arm to shield his face from another attempt, the axe still held at the ready with his right, just in case. "Listen to me. Your handlers aren't here. You have no mission. You have no mission."

It throws him off. There is no retaliation despite the target -- him, clearly demonstrating a speed and skill perhaps equal to his own.

The Soldier doesn't follow through, eyes narrowed now, suspecting a trap. It had to be a trap. His fists clench. "There is a mission."

Bucky has without realising it echoed the very words Steve had said to him during their brief encounter on his first day. No mission. He said it was a game and that he wasn't going to play but now Steve was dead. That was what not playing brought you. Punishment always swiftly followed failure.

"Who are you?" his voice is on the edge, barely audible but there to closely listening ears is the strain beneath the Soldier's mask, worsened by the time in the arena and now this moment.

"You don't know me." Bucky's voice is level but tense. There's strain here too, the strain of not just giving in and attacking like he wants to do. Not only would it be the more sensible thing to do, faced with the Winter Soldier, but after everything he's been through in the past few weeks, it would feel good to unleash all his capacity for violence on a man with a face so like his own. "Because you don't know yourself. But think. You haven't gotten new programming since you came here. There isn't any. You haven't gone under, into one of the stasis tanks. There aren't any. You have no real orders. You can stop."

He hesitates for a split second, then, because what he's about to say hurts. It digs too deep into things he doesn't want to say even to himself, his actual self, not just the almost-mirror standing in front of him. It feels like pulling his guts out of his belly for inspection. It would be easier to just fight. But then what would Steve say? "There's a part of you that wants to stop. Part of you that only wants to fight for a cause you choose and people you believe in. It's buried now but it's still there. Remember--" His voice wavers and shakes now like Steve's never did. "--who you are."

He doesn't want to be giving this speech. His eyes are terrified, not by the man in front of him, but by the things he's saying.

"How do you know?!" he bites back suddenly, inflection sharp in his voice, just like it was when it was Steve saying the same things to him. Steve dropping his shield, his mission accomplished and the Soldier's still unfinished as the helicarrier exploded around them. He remembers it sharply.

But this man is not Steve, it's not going to have the same effect. He's still holding a weapon, he's still a threat. It's a trap and so he won't drop his guard. The Soldier tests his opponents defence further, lunging forward with a series of concise striking blows using his fists that are intended to drive him back towards the rotted pile of wood he'd been throwing up on minutes ago.

At the end of the last strike he'll go for the axe, seeking to wrench it out of the man's hand and into his own possession.

"I know because I've been there!" The words tumble out of Bucky's mouth hot and defiant, not part of a calculated speech, only a frustrated response to having his attempt at reaching out rebuffed. And then, then he's trying to defend himself.

He put too much effort, too much metaphorical blood, into that attempt at reaching out, and he'll pay in real blood. He's just a tiny bit slower than he could be in dodging the fists now coming at him, and that little difference is enough for a few of them to land. One only hits his left arm, jarring him rather than actually injuring him, but another grazes his jaw and yet another glances off his right shoulder. He knows the force behind those blows, knows how bruised he'll be soon enough.

He knows how dangerous the man he's facing is. He knows what he has to do now that reconciliation has failed. And besides, he kind of wants to.

Something snaps behind his eyes, and suddenly the Soldier is no longer looking at a grief-stricken man struggling to hold onto his humanity, but at someone capable of nearly as much violence as he is.

Bucky staggers back a step at that last strike as if winded from the hits, slumped a little, giving the Soldier a very inviting opening for grabbing the axe. But when he actually goes for it, Bucky's grip on the weapon suddenly firms up and he strikes back, moving to cut right beneath the reaching arm and bury the axe in his opposite number's gut.

His only answer is in a snarl, the Soldier coming at him like a feral animal. He looks the part with his hair tangled and dirty, sporting an unkempt beard that only highlights when he bares his teeth.

In the space of a second the only chance that this meeting could have ended in anything but violence has evaporated into thin air.

There is satisfaction in each hit that finds its mark, driving on that single remarkable talent for violence that had been so carefully cultivated by so many hands. He almost misses the tell as the change comes over his opponent, the detail that now he is playing for serious and there will be no more attempts at reason.

The grab for the axe misses, a trap he realises, a cunning and well laid one improvised on the fly. Something he would have done himself and leaving the Soldier with a bare moment to twist into an evasive manoeuvre and save himself an ugly death then and there. With impressive dexterity he spins out of the way, demonstrating surprising grace for a man of his height and bulk.

Still, the axe comes close enough to catch on fabric, so close he feels it graze his flesh underneath. A second later and it would have been messy. The Soldier carries on his movement without pause, turning it into a flip that puts more distance between them.

His fingers grasp and find the penknife Steve gave him, flicking it open by the time he comes down on his feet again. There's no room to hold back now. Back on the offensive he comes in more cautiously this time, prowling round with a testing swipes at Bucky's defence, easily pulled back from.

Bucky takes the opportunity himself to back off a few steps, still holding tight to the axe. He has every intention of striking again, but he knows he needs the space to catch his breath. The man he's facing is close to his equal in combat skill, likely separated only by a few years of additional experience--and he's also not as worn out by the Arena yet as Bucky is. He's going to need to give this fight his all to take him down.

He can tell perfectly well as the Winter Soldier approaches that he's not striking for real this time, and so he takes the opportunity for a few seconds to conserve his energy, merely guarding. Then, suddenly, he swipes out with the axe again, a wild and powerful strike, easy to draw back from--because that's all he wants, a little bit more space. The moment he gets it--

His left hand darts for a pocket, pulls out a spool of wire, and lashes out with it. Not at his opponent, this time, but at the rusted loop of the roller coaster above. Once it catches, he swings hard and fast on the wire and launches himself up to the top of the roller coaster, flipping in midair to catch hold of the sagging metal at the last moment. He lands on it with an alarming creak, but he keeps his weight on the sturdiest parts of the metal and does not fall.

Now he has the high ground by quite a bit. Down below, before the fog closes in again, he can make out the form of his opponent. It's not as clear a visual as it could be, but it'll have to do. He has six makeshift knives, plus the axe; one of them will have to find its mark from up here. It would be better if he had a gun, of course. Everything about this fight would be better if he had a gun. But he'll make do with what he has, as always.

Bucky tosses the axe into his left hand and reaches into his pockets with his right, pulling out one knife of sharpened glass. Without giving the Soldier much time to prepare, he aims at his eyes and lets fly--

--and as he lets go, the sirens start to wail, and the heat begins to rise.

And he realizes: well, this changes things.

As predicted the Soldier dodges backwards out of the range of the axe and readies himself to throw forward once more. He comes in hard and fast but too late to stop his opponent from making his move and escaping upwards, high out of his reach unless he wants to throw the knife and he's not so foolish as to potentially lose his only blade.

He doesn't give Bucky time to hit, as soon as he's up the Soldier locks onto his location and begins to sprint just as the knife is thrown, aiming for a part of the rollercoaster low enough that he can jump up and catch the rail even diminished as he is. Dimly behind him he registers the thunk of something hitting the ground, a miss, as his metal hand closes around wood and heaves himself up onto the track.

The Soldier's about to start sprinting along the track when the shrill sound of a siren splits the air and he instinctively drops low at the noise, eyes wide as he casts about for the source and meaning. Unlike his counterpart he has no idea what's about to happen --

-- and he thinks he knows this sound, or knew it, once. Somewhere else and... he looks upwards, just for a moment as if expecting to see something before shaking his head to clear it. No, the danger is down on the ground, what is he thinking? He has to stay focused.

The fog is clearing, it's getting warmer and everything is... rotting. But as the Soldier begins to walk forwards along the rail he realises he's starting to feel better, stronger like he should be and he hears the tell-tale clicking of armoured plates beneath his sleeve as the arm recalibrates itself for full power. Whatever lockdown has been in place is lifted.

Ahead, the figure of his opponent becomes visible. The Soldier bolts forwards, his speed is beyond-human. There's a curve of the track to loop round but he doesn't follow it, instead leaping over the distance in a shortcut spanning a drop of a hundred feet. Wood crumbles where he lands, threatening to break but he doesn't stay to be there when it does, carrying on in a beeline for Bucky, ready to duck anymore projectiles that are sent at him before they slam together.

Slamming together is an apt description. The Winter Soldier is a brutal combatant, not given to anything less than full-on aggressive assault. He comes in with his arms up to ward off blows from Bucky as his right leg aims for a hard kick at the others stomach

Sweat is already starting to bead on the back of Bucky's neck and trickle down his back underneath his jacket. He doesn't care, he can't allow himself to be distracted by minor discomfort. He has to focus on--

--the mission, the target, the kill. For a moment, even as he readies himself to face his opponent, he loathes himself bitterly all over again for falling back into this mindset. But it needs to be done. The man he's facing needs to be taken out.

Anyway, this whole fight is a blurry mess of self-loathing and bad old memories. He accepts that.

He stays still at first as the Winter Soldier approaches, appearing to brace himself for the approach--but instead of striking back or trying to block the kick, he twists to the side and reaches out with his left arm, electricity suddenly arcing from it in the hopes of stunning his opponent.

And if the Soldier is slowed down enough, if the stunning blow of the electric charge dazes him enough, Bucky will grab him by the upper arm and slam him down hard into the rotting planks of the roller coaster, through them towards the ground.

It didn't occur to him that the reflection of James Barnes could have such a thing. It's a failing in a weapon unused to acting of its own accord. But then, what could even Hydra have done to prepare their assassin for this situation?

The electricity takes him completely by shock, prompting a yell of pain that echoes around their surroundings. In addition to his body his left arm seizes up in temporary paralysis just like when -- like when... whatever it was slips away too quickly. He feels the grip around his arm, the world lurches as the Soldier is slammed down and the wood splinters and breaks under him.

There's no halting gravity's work but furiously, murderously, he won't let himself go down alone. He reaches through the pain and seizes Bucky's jacket in an unrelenting grip.

Then there's falling, crashing into old beams the whole way down, ricochets of bruising impact as the whole structure of the rollercoaster groans in protest of the damage. He loses all sense of up and down until they hit the ground, yet his grip doesn't falter once, locking them together.

As soon as he's able -- a few seconds to recover from the jarring impact -- he's going to try and push himself up amidst the broken wood, ignoring the flares of damage across his body to get on top of Bucky and hit him with his metal fist.

If this were a normal fight, Bucky would have been able to jump back from that grip. He is both fast and strong, even worn out from hunger and stress.

But this isn't a normal fight. He's facing a man just as swift and powerful as he is, and without the restraint he keeps on his own killing power these days. He goes down with his other self, crashing through the loops of the roller coaster. In the seconds they have, he does his best to maneuver himself so that his opponent takes as much of the impacts as possible. Still, splinters of wood and shards of metal batter him dangerously, tearing into his clothes and flesh, and when they both hit the ground, he finds himself gasping for breath.

He knows he needs to get up as soon as possible. But he's slowed down by the weakness of the weeks he's spent in this Arena, and so the Winter Soldier has the advantage here. The enemy is atop him before he can get back to his feet, and while he tries to pull away from that fist, it still lands squarely on his chest.

Crunch. Pain radiates from his ribcage, and he knows there are breaks there; he's lucky a lung wasn't just punctured. He forces himself to use the sudden agony as a motivator. He lashes out with his left hand as well, chopping it sideways towards his opponent's throat, and while the Soldier is focused on dodging or deflecting that, Bucky also brings a knee up to try to drive it into his gut.

A mechanical whirr is audible as he bring his arm back for another blow, one intended this time for Bucky's face when the counter-attack comes.

The Soldier's half-blinded by blood pouring down his face from a gash on his forehead, he estimates at least two of his human fingers are broken and he's likely torn something in his left leg because the entire lower half feels like it's on fire. They trained him to fight through the pain though, pain was necessary, pain was a tool as much as anything else.

He deflects the blow at his throat that would have caused fatal injury if it hit, his human arm takes the brunt of the blow instead, the quickest way to block it. The Soldier thinks something cracks but there's no time to think on it as the air is knocked out of him by the hit to his gut and he topples over, momentarily winded.

This needs to end soon. He heaves a breath, fighting a brief wave of nausea when his battered body protests how he's pressing it and belatedly realises that he dropped his knife somewhere in the chaos of the fall, causing him to scramble for a broken rail instead. The Soldier uses his left arm, unsure if his right could grip strong enough and tries to stumble up, lurching into a still standing pillar for a moment before rounding and bracing himself for the attack that's surely coming in the time its taken him to accomplish getting back onto his feet.

Even slowed down by his injuries and fatigue, not to mention the climbing heat of hell all around them, Bucky recognizes that he needs to get to his feet the moment he gets the opportunity. He rolls over, forcing himself not to slow down at the pain from various gashes and his broken ribs, and jumps to his feet. Or he jumps halfway there, anyway, only to realize that one ankle is slightly twisted from the fall, and now unreliable, prone to giving out beneath him at any moment.

He reaches for the axe at his side, only to find it gone, lost somewhere in midair. His breathing rasps roughly in the heavy air as he reconsiders his options. He checks his pocket and finds that two of his makeshift daggers are still there: shards of sharpened glass bound to handles with wire. He grabs one in each hand and just lunges forward at the Winter Soldier, fast and powerful, one knife aimed at his eyes and the other at his throat, both intended to deliver brutal swipes.

It's not the most tactical of moves, but then, he always has tended to forget tactics when his heart takes over. That's one difference between him and the Soldier he once was made to be.

He's slowing down despite his best efforts. The Soldier tries to shake the blood out of his eye as he registers his opponents attack and moves to defend. His right hand snaps out, meaning to catch the wrist of the hand holding the blade meant for his eyes, ignoring the way his broken fingers scream pain.

The left arm, holding the piece of rail, blocks the knife going for his throat; the glass blade has no chance and snaps against the metal. Then he tries to swing forwards with that arm and bring the rail to bear against Bucky's side.

Except, except a spike of pain suddenly ripples up his left leg as he shifts his weight into the blow and the swing turns to him unintentionally falling-diving into Bucky, toppling them both to hit the dirt again.

Broken fingers close around metal, and it's not enough to completely stop the forward momentum, but it does keep the blade from getting anywhere near the Soldier's eyes. Instead, Bucky flicks it directly at his opponent's face, knowing it's unlikely to hit anything vital this way, but hoping to either score a shallow, inconvenient hit or at least make him flinch back.

He doesn't have time for anything more strategic, because the next thing he knows, the Winter Soldier is moving in for the attack. Too fast to completely block; he'd forgotten how brutal his speed was, back then, without compassion holding him back. He doesn't have time to muse on this, either. He's falling, the rail briefly jabbing into his side and gashing him open--how deeply, he's not sure just yet, but it can't be good.

Bucky hits the ground hard, his head cracking against it, his teeth jarring in his mouth. A concussion? He's not sure; his broken ribs are also jarred, and that hurts far more. He can't stop to think or let the pain slow him down, though. Sprawled on the ground beneath the enemy once more, he makes use of what's available to him--

--which is the other man's longer hair. He grabs it with the fingers of his left hand, not wanting to risk the weakness of a human grip, and tries to yank the Soldier away from him by the hair and slam his head viciously hard into the ground.

Frustrated and full of inexpressible rage, he can't help but waste a bit of breath: "Should've cut it soon as you got the chance."

Edited 2014-06-28 21:10 (UTC)

It scores a cut across his cheek, prompting a low hiss of pain which is likely lost as they tumble down together. The Soldier drops the rail, too long to be convenient in such close quarters, trying to get his hands around his opponents throat when a hand snags into his hair and with force yanks his head down and into the ground.

Thud. On top of everything else he's taken today and the weeks of sleep deprivation proceeding it the blow stuns him. He can't focus and his vision swims as his body crumples still half atop Bucky. There's words spoken and they sound like they're coming from far away.

Should've. He should have but he doesn't think like that. He doesn't think much when it comes to himself, other hands took care of such details for him and it had been that way for longer than he could remember. His body, after all, was a tool to be used by more knowledgeable hands.

So now here he is, for seconds vulnerable. It suddenly occurs to him he's going to die at the hands of this mirror image, the face of the man he can't remember being. Something twists inside his gut at the idea.

Everything hurts. He's bleeding from his legs, his right arm, his side. His left ankle doesn't reliably support his weight. His ribs are more than just cracked where the metal fist slammed into them. Everything hurts, but he's been there before, he's taken bad hits before, he's fought through injuries. This is no big deal.

Bucky shoves himself up to his knees, toppling his opponent back to the ground, and breathes through the pain. He tries to focus, though his vision is swimming. It's fine. All he has to do

is reach out

and wrap his hands around the Winter Soldier's throat.

His right hand won't cooperate. His grip is weak from exhaustion, slippery with sweat. He doesn't need it. He readjusts his grasp so that his left hand is positioned to casually crush the windpipe beneath it. And he leans forward, starts to apply the necessary pressure.

This is necessary. He'll keep killing if you don't put him down now. You know. You've been there. Right now, you're still there.

He closes his eyes for a fraction of a second to fight off a wave of dizziness and sees Steve's face there behind the lids. He can't tell whether it's the face of the Steve Rogers he knows from home, or the one he's met here.

Bucky pulls his hand back from his doppelganger's throat.

The Soldier looks up at him, blank as ever -- except, no, not quite. There's an inkling of animal fear in his eyes as that hand goes around his throat, familiar cold metal so similar to his own left hand. His throat moves in a thick swallow, tasting of blood and dust and he waits.

Waits.

But somehow he's still breathing and as his head slowly clears the pressure there was disappears from his neck as the copy takes his hand away. Confusion now ebbs into his face as he keeps looking up at -- at him.

Why isn't he dead?

Why has he stopped?

Suddenly he's back in the helicarrier, the heavy bar of metal is crushing him and he's afraid as Steve approaches, afraid he's going to be killed like he probably should be. But it hadn't happened, Steve hadn't and neither has this man. That's twice in his memory now his life has been bizarrely spared.

The Soldier shakily pushes himself up on his elbows, skirting painfully backwards away from Bucky, still wary that another attack will come if the other man changes his mind. He's thrown enough not to try and go back on the offensive himself.

It certainly looks like Bucky is reconsidering the decision to let go. He licks dry and bloodied lips as he stares down at the man who's almost his mirror image, eyes still scanning him automatically for additional weaknesses, places he could go in for the kill. Part of his mind still screams at him to do it.

Instead, he says, "I don't give a shit if you remember who you are. If you're lucky, you never will. But remember Steve Rogers. He's your partner. Remember the shield, and who you're supposed to take care of."

He pushes himself up to his feet and takes a few steps back, limping painfully on his twisted ankle. "Get out of my sight, Winter Soldier. Before I change my mind."

He doesn't understand, doesn't understand but the name Steve Rogers reverberates in his head, spins and batters and it shows on his face with widened blue eyes peering out under a mask of ragged hair and blood.

I knew him.

Amazingly, perhaps, he obeys. It goes against all that Hydra poured into him but he retreats. The Soldier rolls himself over, pushes himself up and staggers, one step, two. He has to go, he has to get out of here. He has to get away from him because everything's too close and stifling in a way that has nothing to do with the heat.

A few minutes and he's out of sight, trying to leave the park -- and whatever it is that's inside him -- behind.

And for the first time, Bucky notices something: the Winter Soldier's eyes are blue.

It snaps something in his head far more than his snapped ribs. This isn't his own face he's looking at. This is another man whose name and history overlaps with his.

Maybe things will be different for him. Maybe he'll make it back to himself under his own power.

The last of his urge to attack, to put down the killer before him, dissipates. He just stands there breathing hard and painfully as he watches the Winter Soldier leave, and he tries to remember what it is he's supposed to be protecting.

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You can't sleep at night; you can't dream your dream

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