Chapter Text
Soldat— The Asset— Bucky? whoever he was, pulled the target— Captain America— Steve? from the river, making sure that the other man was breathing before deciding to do one of the things he was designed to do: disappear. He took the risk of returning to the bank where they’d held him captive and killing the scientists there, breaking into their stores to find casual clothes and filling a backpack with cash. By the time night fell, he was on a bus headed north. Despite the inherent dangers of falling asleep in public, he was nevertheless lulled by the quiet bus and found himself drifting off.
—
Sam sighed as he looked again toward where Steve lay in his hospital bed. It had been a long few days. He had been through a lot in his past, but the past few days had been some of the weirdest and most exciting of his life.
Still, it was dangerous. He had thought he’d left the danger behind when he gave up the wings, carving out a simpler life for himself—a comfortable life, where he didn’t have to worry about danger around every corner, didn’t have to worry about someone he loved getting shot out of the sky.
And now here he was, coming down from the high of another conflict, sitting beside a friend as they lay injured in a hospital bed. He couldn’t help but wish that things had played out differently, that they could have exposed Hydra and stopped Insight some other way.
Steve hadn’t woken up yet, but Sam was sure he would. He felt himself drifting off into sleep as he waited for the other man to wake. The future was uncertain, but they would be able to get through it… together.
—
Bucky woke up to a nightmare. Or had Bucky been a dream? He was Soldat—who the hell was Bucky, anyway? The shocks made him forget, again.
The Asset was given a new mission: to kill Nick Fury. His sole objective. And yet the mission, as he carried it out, felt familiar… and not just in the sense that he had been on other missions like this before. It was this one mission, specifically. He put it out of his mind—he did not need to think, he needed to kill. Nevertheless, it all felt like going through the motions; and it was achingly familiar when he ripped off the door to a car and saw how the ground underneath had been cut open with a laser. Fury had found an escape route, and the Asset needed to figure out where he had gone from here.
The man whose apartment he tracked the director to was familiar, and strong, and fast as he chased the Asset, but the Asset was faster. The shield that had been thrown at him was familiar, but he ignored that. The man was not part of his objective. The mission had been completed, and now he needed to return to his handlers.
Many of his days were like this, or at least the Asset assumed so. He could not actually remember his past, and part of him did not want to. He did not need to. But a part of him… part of him was curious. He was not allowed to be curious. Was not allowed to think. He was a tool, one constantly wiped into a clean slate. He acted strategically as he pursued the fugitives; and while there was a flicker of recognition when the target addressed him, that was wiped away too.
He still saved the man, however. Captain America. Steve. He pulled the punk out of the water and to safety before striking out on his own.
Only to wake back up in his hell.
—
Sam woke up, comfortable, in his bed. It was a day like any other; and as he yawned awake, he shook his head at the crazy dream he’d had the previous night. Meeting Captain America on his run had provided some truly crazy fodder for his nightmares.
He got out of bed and stretched before throwing on his exercise clothes and heading out for a run. No Captain America today, but Sam just assumed he was busy. As he went about his morning, everything felt familiar; but he passed it off as him having a very regular routine. When things started to get weird was later in the morning, when he got to the VA. Everything was eerily similar, and it was with a sinking feeling in his chest that he realized he was somehow back in that strange, nightmare-like dream he had found himself in the night before.
It became clearest during the group therapy session, when people began to recount stories and experiences that he knew he’d never encountered before—except he had. He acted almost on autopilot with his responses. He did his best to stay engaged, to really listen… but he was having serious Déjà vu which was, quite frankly, distracting.
And then Steve was there, and Sam told him again the story of what happened to Riley, questioned Steve about his own experiences, trying to determine whether or not the things he half-remembered were true. And Steve shared things that Sam knew he never could have known—except that he did. Once Steve left, Sam went about the rest of his day, which was exactly like what he vaguely remembered of his dream; and when he fell asleep that night, it was an uneasy sort of rest.
He was fretful when he woke up the next day. And again, the day felt familiar, but this had been a normal day, hadn’t it? In the dream at least. Part of him still felt odd, but he didn’t get truly alarmed until the next morning when he woke up again to find Steve and Natasha on his doorstep.
From there it was a whirlwind, and he felt almost on autopilot again as things went down exactly how he remembered from his dream. It was eerie; and once he found himself again sitting by Steve’s bedside, he couldn’t help but wonder what the point of it all was. How had he known all of this would happen before it did? What was the point?
He drifted off into sleep in the hospital chair, waking up once again in his own comfortable bed as he had done three days prior.
—
When Sam woke up on the morning of April 16th for the fourth time, it was with exhaustion. He had given up on thinking it to be a dream. His dreams were never this detailed. These were memories, memories of living the same four days over and over again. And the worst part was that the first two? They were boring. That’s not where the action was, not where he could make a difference. But he needed them, because if he was going to make a substantial change—find some way out of this hell loop—he needed to understand the full history, needed to form a game plan.
The fourth go-around was dedicated to reconnaissance. He needed to figure out what happened on those two normal days. So he let it all play out as it normally did, sticking to the letter of things with the exception of extracting as much information as he could with intention. On the fifth loop, he put the plan into action.
It was a terrible plan, in retrospect. He knew too much, overplayed his hand; and with no bond of trust between them, no shared experience, he was left out of the loop. He could only watch in horror as news broke of the deaths of Black Widow and Captain America, as Helicarriers took to the sky, and as he himself was taken out in broad daylight.
As he choked on his last breath, Sam could only pray that this was just a nightmare.
—
The Asset observed the celebration being carried out by the scientists who controlled him. They had succeeded. Hydra had won. And yet, Soldat was not happy.
He was not sad either. At this point in his life, Soldat did not feel much. But he did feel… confused. There was a part of him that felt this was not how it was supposed to go. Felt that things had gone wrong somehow, for all that his handlers were celebrating.
For the first time in a while, he was starting to remember. And it felt… wrong.