Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fuck Hydra. Seriously, fuck these snakes.

I cannot wait to suck the marrow from your bones, I thought as hard as I could at the guard holding the trigger to the electric collar around my neck. He stood at the entrance to the lab which had been set up for me to eat in. Singular kakugan activated, I maintained eye contact with the nervously sweating man, my kagune, hands, and teeth working in tandem to dissect my meal.

My meal being, of course, a failed human experiment. I wasn't sure whether it had been terminated or simply expired. A third milky eye had either grown or been implanted in the gash below the right eye and all the teeth had fallen out and been replaced by two bones which resembled walrus tusks, long enough for the points to cross at its chin. And those were only the externally visible mutations. Internally, some organs had fused together while others had replicated poorly, and bone had grown in several places between the ribs.

I carefully cut and peeled the skin back with my kagune. The organs I wasn't going to eat with a mind uncorrupted by ghoulish hunger were removed and tossed onto the floor. Hydra janitors could kiss my ass. There was no way I was eating any part of the digestive tract. So sue me, I was a picky ghoul. It was still shocking how quickly I'd adapted to eating human flesh so as to have preferences for body parts.

Had I not decided to shut away my human sensibilities in favour of the ghoul's as soon as I realized where I was and what I'd become, the youthful face and tender flesh would have had me violently retire everyone complicit in the cruel experimentation on young children, regardless of any punishment inflicted through the collar.

As it was, any compassion and empathy I had was locked away with the part of me that screamed cannibalism was inherently bad and wrong. Was it really cannibalism though if I wasn't technically human? How genetically similar were ghouls and humans anyway? Did they share a common ancestor? Was it a case of parallel or convergent evolution? Pointless questions, perhaps, considering the fictional origin of ghouls. But I had thought the MCU nothing but fictional too, yet here I was.

I did hope I was in the MCU. I'd never read the comics.

All that was left was the bones, teeth, and most of the digestive tract. After my bindings were replaced, I was prodded out out of the lab and into the clinically white hallways towards the shower room. With an actual cattle prod too, the asshole.

Every time someone 'Hail Hydra'd within earshot I held back the urge to yell 'Fuck Hydra!' back at them. Feign obedience, feign subservience; I couldn't rock the boat just yet.

Showertime was a humiliating affair, with no privacy or hot water. I was forced to strip and was then hosed down with an almost bruising jet of freezing water. What were they going to do if I got sick, huh? As a ghoul, I wouldn't get sick so easily, but it was the principle of the matter.

After I was dried off and dressed, I was tossed into my cell. The bulletproof glass partition slid shut after me. In one corner there was a cot; in the other, a toilet. No privacy, as par for the course.

But that would soon change. I had a plan. A certain person was showing the signs that would lead to a certain event, and as soon as I gleaned the information I needed from that event, I'd be outta here, with a plus one.

All I had to do was lie still, and listen.

A few days- a week- a month?- an unknown (to me, these scientist bastards recorded everything) length of time ago, I had been a content nobody, headed off to an anime convention in my low-budget Kaneki Ken cosplay. Black clothing and nails, the mask, and a white wig. For kagune, four scarves of different reds and materials tied onto a belt under my shirt. One of my friends managed to snap a decent picture of them in the air like actual kagune when I ran and jumped down a flight of stairs. I limped for a while after, but it was totally worth it.

The convention ended and I waved goodbye to my friends. I didn’t bother changing out of my costume and just took the mask off, wrapping the scarves around my waist. Up until this point, it had been a great day.

Then some psycho had to start stabbing people on the train.

I was on my phone when someone started screaming. I lifted my head, startled, and stared in shock at the woman sitting beside me clutching her stomach and the masked man standing in front of her clutching a bloody knife.

He raised it again. "Die, bitch!"

I must've been either braver than I thought, or stupider.

"No!"

I jumped and latched onto his arm. Bad move. We fell to the ground. He snarled and started trying to stab me instead.

He was an angry adult man; I was a scared teenage girl.

Guess who won.

…

Me, actually.

Looking back on it, I got really lucky. Somewhere in my flailing, I think I hit him in the temple hard enough to knock him out.

Adrenaline pumping through my veins with the excited staccato of my heart, I staggered to my feet. I pointed triumphantly at his unconscious form.

"Ha! Take that, you bastard!"

I turned to the other passengers, expecting them to celebrate the successful takedown of the attacker with me. Instead, I only got looks of horror.

"Love," an older man approached me, slowly, calmly, hands out as if approaching an injured wild animal, "I need you to not panic, alright, and just listen to me."

I stared at him uncomprehendingly. "Wha- panic? Why would I…"

Something trickled down my neck. Even before I raised my hand to swipe at it and saw the red, I knew what had happened.

I wasn't lucky enough to avoid injury.

"Oh, shit," was all I managed to saw before I fell over and passed out.

I expected to wake up in a hospital, or never wake up at all. Instead, I woke up when my back hit the cold hard ground.

The first thing I noticed was the people pointing guns at me. The second thing I noticed was a ravenous craving.

I don't remember what happened after that, lost to the thrall of ghoulish hunger as I was, but when I woke up I'd been divested of my costume and a collar had been placed around my neck. My neck which was free of injury. Further inspection revealed metal bindings wrapped around my waist under the thin grey shirt and shorts I had on. Titanium, I'd later been told.

I won't recount everything that happened afterwards. All you need to know is that while I still had no clue how I'd ended up here or why I'd taken on most of Kaneki Ken's physical attributes, I'd managed to piece together that I was in a Hydra base focused on the creation of more supersoldiers, and Bucky was here.

Yes, James Buchanen Barnes, the Winter Soldier, brainwashed best friend of Steve Rogers.

Which brings me back to my plan.

Back in my cell, I lay on my cot and concentrated on the noise of the base.

Scientists talking. Guards gossiping. The sniffles of child experiments.

(A pang of sympathy and guilt, quickly suppressed.)

The buzzing of The Chair.

I smiled. It was about time.

желание.
ржавый.
семнадцать.
рассвет.
печь.
девять.
добросердечный.
возвращение на родину.
один.
грузовой вагон.

I mouthed each phrase to myself, imploring my shoddy memory to, even if it could no longer retain anything else ever, remember these ten phrases .

Zhelaniye.
Rzhaviy.
Semnadtsat.
Rasvet.
Pech.
Devyat.
Dobroserdechniy.
Vozvrasheniye na rodinu.
Adin.
Gruzovoi vagon.

Longing.
Rusted.
Seventeen.
Daybreak.
Furnace.
Nine.
Kindhearted.
Homecoming.
One.
Freight car.

Tomorrow was the day.

Chapter Text

Pain tolerance and pain threshold are two very different things. Your pain threshold is the point beyond which the signals for 'this is bad, flip the pain switch' are sent to your brain. Your pain tolerance, on the other hand, is purely mental and refers to the maximum amount of pain you can handle.

I inherited Kaneki's pain threshold. His pain tolerance, on the other hand…

"Agh!"

The training mat was situated in the middle of a blank white room. One wall had a one way mirror. I smacked against a very solid wall that was definitely not that one and slid down to the floor, stunned. 

Holy shit, that didn’t break my no longer human spine, but it still hurt.

You know the pinching fingers emoji? Yeah, I was that close to going ‘fuck it’ and just ‘feral ghoul’-ing my way out of here. Sorry Steve, but your brainwashed best friend might get eaten by a pissed off teenage girl today. Tonight. Whatever, time is hard and also a man-made construct or something.

The PA in the corner of the room crackled to life. Stupid crackling speaker. What, did they spend all their money on kidnapping children instead of getting better facilities? Fucking Hydra.

"Again."

I shot a murderous look at the one-way mirror but got back in the ring in front of the Winter Soldier.

Combat testing. You'd think after watching me get smacked around by their most elite soldier, they'd get the hint; despite my superhuman abilities, I still couldn't fight for shit.

"Begin."

That was my cue. If I didn't, I'd get shocked by my collar.

I bared my teeth and ran at the soldier with my fist aiming for his stupid blank and brainwashed face.

I just wanted to get one hit in! One hit! Was that too much to ask for?!

He grabbed my arm and threw me over his hip. Being much smaller than him, I went down easily and all the air vacated my lungs in one big reverse gasp.

Apparently! It really was too much to ask for!

Without even waiting for the scientists to demand ‘Again’, I charged at the Soldier, screaming in frustration. I was unceremoniously flung out of the ring.

Anger fueled my immediate recovery and I charged at the Soldier again. This time, I ducked under the first attempt to grab me and tried to headbutt him. His knee came up, right into my throat. I gagged and fell out of the ring.

I think this fucker and his metal knee pads just crushed my larynx.

My healing factor kicked in and with an uncomfortable sound somewhere in between a crunch and a squish, my throat was whole again. As soon as it did, I used it to let out a long and furious scream. I refused to get up and just screamed.

Maybe the scientists finally found a shred of empathy in their cold, shrivelled, child-experiments-accepting hearts, or maybe they just got sick of listening to me screeching like I’d been cosplaying a banshee character instead of a ghoul, but the blessed words finally came:

"Combat testing is over. Asset, return the subject to its cell."

I finally shut up. Petulantly going limp, I let the Winter Soldier drag me out the door by the arm and toss me back into my cell.

It was only later, when a mutated cadaver was wheeled into my cell (but my restraints not released) that I realised what an idiot I’d been.

I’d been so close to the Winter Soldier, yet I’d completely forgotten about the ten phrases I’d spent so much brainpower memorising.

“Fuck!” I yelled, making the guard with the remote to my collar flinch and reflexively press the button. I secretly flipped him off when the spasms from the electric shock passed.

Tomorrow will be the day , I mocked my past self. 

So much for that. No, I just had to make my goal to punch the stupid brainwashed, greasy-haired assassin to the exclusion of all else. These scientists had apparently never heard of shampoo.

I angrily chewed on a finger, trying not to think too hard about what I was eating. These shampoo-deprived scientists wouldn’t even let me have the proper tools I needed to eat.

Yet another grievance to level against them once I escaped. Did Hydra have a HR department? I was going to complain to Hydra's hypothetical HR department.

And I would escape. Just as soon as I remembered to say the ten phrases to the Winter Soldier.

I did not remember to say the ten phrases to the Winter Soldier.

Look, I only have two brain cells to rub together, and evidently the only thing that produces is increasingly dumber strategies to punch the Winter Soldier in the face. Or in the nuts, I’m not picky.

Like the time I wrapped myself around his arm and attempted to bite it off so he could no longer stop me from reaching his face. I would’ve succeeded if his other arm had not been a thing.

And let’s not talk about the time I thought playing dead in an attempt to set up an ambush was a good idea. I just got shocked to hell and back. But unfortunately, it seemed my home dimension is not between those two places.

So now, I faced him again in the ring.

This time, I would punch him in the- wait, no.

It was only a matter of time until they forgot how the syringe broke when they tried to draw blood from me, and poked me until they found a place where I wasn’t so impenetrable. That or they laser-cut my arm off.

This time, I would stay on task and wrest control of the Winter Soldier from their hands. I could bide my time no longer and would escape from the facility.

I stared dead ahead at the motionless Soldier and hoped he wouldn’t notice the scratching sounds coming from my back.

“Begin.”

As always, I charged first. As always, I got my ass kicked.

Again and again and again.

As I got up for the nth time, I paused and hid a grin.

Finally.

I ran at the Winter Soldier like normal, but as soon as he was in range, my kagune burst free from the restraints.

Ever since I’d realised they’d no longer be taking off the restraints around my waist when I fed, I’d been discreetly scraping away at the metal.

Titanium vs. Kagune: Kagune wins.

“Freedom!” I pre-emptively cackled, breaking the collar off. Two more kagune tails smashed through the one-way mirror and one wrapped around the Winter Soldier.

Now I just had to say the word(s), and we could get out of here.

...What were the words again?

“I know them, I know I know them,” I muttered to myself as the people in the viewing room were pounded to paste. My free tail thumped the floor in agitation as I tried to remember.

The first word was ‘longing’. J, J- something.

Alarms started blaring. I absently acknowledged the security cameras in the room. The Winter Soldier did his best to wriggle out of my grip. Rinkaku kagune may be fragile compared to other types, but to a human, even one shot up with super soldier serum and bearing a bionic arm, it may as well be made of titanium. Well, considering I’d just broken out of titanium restraints, I’d need to find a more accurate comparison. Perhaps after I recalled the ten phrases. It really was too bad the scientists had opted to be boring and bestowed the arm with nothing more than strength. If they’d installed, say, lasers, he’d then have a non-zero chance of escaping from my clutches.

“Ah,” I realised. “The first word is Zhelaniye.”

The Winter Soldier jolted. I brought him closer to me and blocked the doors of both the training room and the viewing room with my remaining three tails. Teams of facility security were trying to break them down now, and I couldn’t have them interrupt this.

I brought my mouth close to the struggling Soldier’s ear and enunciated the remaining nine phrases.

He became still.

I grinned.

“Hey, Bucko. Ready to follow orders?”

Chapter Text

It was a quiet night in the snowy Siberian wilderness. Save for a single cleared road leading up to the building, all there was within a few kilometres of the Hydra compound was snow untouched by man and the frosted coniferous forest.

At least, that's how I imagine the scene was set before the base blew up. We likely weren't even in Siberia.

The Hydra compound blowing up wasn't directly my fault. It's not like I found some explosives and went "Oh goody let's have these blow the building apart while I'm still inside ."

Ghouls are unfortunately susceptible to fire. Also, it'd be a waste of effort if Bucky were to die here after all I went through to take him with me when I broke out of there.

The first warning I got that shit was about to blow up was the calm male voice saying something in russian over the speakers. The security teams the Winter Soldier and I were steadily making our way through changed tactics from 'stand and shoot' to 'run and gun'. The bullets left holes in my clothing but only temporary bruises on my skin, the latter fading in seconds.

The second warning was the Soldier becoming even more efficient in his deadly dispatch. The first command I'd given him was "Get us both the hell outta here alive". Had he not been brainwashed into an emotionless cyborg, I would've described his actions as 'panicked'.

Metal shutters rolled down to isolate the hallway. I impaled a guard as he dived under the shutter and it would've closed on his neck if the Soldier hadn't dived as well and stopped the shutter by sticking his metal arm under it. I dragged the guard towards me like a horror movie monster. The shutter mechanism let out an awful grinding sound as the Winter Soldier demonstrated the combined power of the super serum and bionic arm, forcing the shutter back up.

The screams of my unlucky next meal stopped when my kagune punched through his head. I crouched down to partake. The Soldier grabbed me before I could and ran.

"What? Can't you see I'm trying to eat here?" I complained, even as I cut an arm off the corpse to go.

There were barely any people left in the building when the alarms stopped their insistent blaring and the russian message stopped broadcasting. I had only a second to frown at the silence before-

Boom. Rumble. Boom .

"Oh no."

I was almost impressed by how calmly I said that.

I stopped dragging my feet. Another metal shutter loomed in front of us.

I twined all four kagune tails together in the shape of a cone and thrust the sharp point forward. The first hit didn't quite penetrate and I smacked face first into the dented shutter, slowly sliding down with quiet squeaks.

"Ow," I said from the ground. The Soldier also took a shot, deepening the dent with a bionic punch. The sound of explosions grew ever closer. I leapt to my feet and frantically tried again.

On the third hit, I punched through. I pulled the hole open and threw myself through it.

The Soldier leapt through the opening with significantly more grace and pulled me to my feet. He released the back of my shirt when I'd gotten my feet back under myself. 

We ran.

The physical superiority of a ghoul soon became apparent when I outpaced the Winter Soldier. If my memory serves me right, Kaneki Ken once ran up a vertical wall - which, by the way, was complete bullshit - so outrunning a super soldier was easy once I really got going.

It was exhilarating. Was this how Usain Bolt felt as he won every race?

Basking in the euphoria of speed, I almost didn't notice the corridor split in front of me. I only had time to bring my kagune up before I smashed into the wall with all the force of a stupidly distracted ghoul going at full speed.

"Ghrk!"

The Winter Soldier caught up. I could almost see the gears in his head turning as his eyes flicked from the partially destroyed wall to the two paths on either side of us. Any survivors had long evacuated and it was just us and the bombs.

Coming to a decision, he punched the wall. The plaster burst in a cloud of dust around his metal fist. I made sure to time my strikes in between his.

Between the two of us, the wall was quickly taken down. Hope soared within me as cold air rushed in. It had taken about three seconds. That was about a second too long.

I instinctively wrapped myself around the Winter Soldier just before the final explosives detonated.

I think I might have screamed when the fire hit me. I think the shrapnel might have pierced my spine. I know that I blacked out because when I blinked back to consciousness, I was slung over Winter Soldier's back as he trudged away from the self destructed base.

He didn't get very far. The Soldier collapsed just as we reached the treeline.

He fell face first into the snow. I rolled off his back. I took a deep breath of that cold, fresh air.

"...Holy shit," I said, staring at the night sky. "We did it. We're actually out."

I allowed myself three seconds to admire the stars. A full moon illuminated the night. I made an oath to start worshipping the beautiful night sky.

"Alright, that's enough of that," I told myself, sitting up. I winced as I pulled a particularly long piece of metal out of my side. It was a good thing the scientists had been feeding me well in the time I'd been there. I might have gone all starving ghoul otherwise. And with the only human around being the one I was actively trying not to kill…

The human in question had burns all over his body. My own were healing quickly and adrenaline masked any pain I might have felt. Soon the only evidence I'd been injured at all was the blood and my ragged garments. The entire back of my shirt was gone. It was a minor miracle my pants hadn't just fallen off.

He looked like he'd just rolled around in shrapnel, and most of his wounds were bleeding sluggishly. I crouched down next to him. The arm which I'd cut off the guard had somehow survived all the chaos and was lying in the snow a metre or so away. I retrieved it with my kagune.

I grabbed the arm and poked the Winter Soldier. He didn't react as the fingers of a dead man nudged his face.

I giggled. It started quietly, and I tried to muffle it with my hand, but no matter what, I just couldn't stop. I finally gave up and flopped back into the snow, cackling.

"Oh my fucking god," I gasped, "Th-there's nothing to laugh about, why am I- snrk, hahahaha! Oh my, oh my god, my stomach hurts."

I knew why; I just didn't want to admit that maybe I'd cracked a little under the stress of being thrust into such a prolonged high stakes situation after living nineteen years as an average, if a little sheltered, person.

I'd killed several people! I'd eaten several people! I'd cut off a man's arm so I could eat it later like take-out and I'd just used it to poke someone who I'd previously only known as a fictional character!

I resigned myself and just rode the laughter out. Finally, the giggles died and I sat up. The Winter Soldier was still unconscious.

I organised my kagune into a stretcher. It took a few tries, but I finally got a shape that didn't break apart as soon as I stopped focusing on it. I lifted Bucky onto it, placed the arm on top of him, and off we went into the snowy wilderness.

I broke a branch off a tree to brush away my footprints. It didn't do that great a job and I was no doubt leaving a dozen other marks that could be used to track us by, but this was the best I could do. With any luck, a blizzard would pass by and erase our trail completely. Hopefully after I found shelter.

I'd survived Hydra, and I'd survived bombs. Now I had to make sure I survived the cold.

Chapter Text

It was my civic duty as an Australian to complain about the cold any time the temperature dropped below 15°C. Considering the circumstances though…

"I-if I get through this a-alive," I vowed through chattering teeth, "I will never b-bitch about the c-c-cold again."

I’d been trudging barefoot through snow for what felt like days. Hydra hadn't bothered to provide footwear for a subject of study like me. My feet had crossed the line between pain and numbness a few thousand steps ago.

The kagune stretcher had long been abandoned in favour of just draping the unconscious Soldier over my bare back. It took a bit of manoeuvering to carry someone larger than I was, but I pretended he was just the world's biggest baby and made my kagune into the world's biggest baby backpack. His arms were draped over my shoulders and his legs were held up by my arms.

I rolled my left shoulder to alleviate the pressure from his stupid heavy bionic arm. How did he live with that thing? Wouldn't he get like, scoliosis from the uneven weight? The super soldier serum, cheat that it was, probably took care of that.

I had scoliosis. I wonder if I still did. My body had gone through more changes than just ghoul changes and I hadn't had time to note them all down yet.

The most obvious were my hands. My nails were black all the way through, and my fingers were no longer crooked. I'd always had the bad habit of nail-biting and picking at the skin around them. The stress of being a prisoner of Hydra had amped that up to 11, and it was only due to a ghoul’s regenerative abilities that my fingers weren't freely bleeding right now.

Presumably because Kaneki Ken was biologically male and I was biologically not, my chest was flatter and my hips narrower. Good thing I was gnc; no a-cup angst here.

Before this, I'd been your average asian with black hair and bad eyesight; now my hair was a streaky grey and my eyesight hadn't been this good since I was five. My right eye was still brown, but my left eye had been in the black and red of kakugan ever since I'd entered this world. The sensation was hard to put into words. I could only describe it as a kind of 'fullness' when compared to my other eye.

My new 20/20 vision allowed me to spot the small wooden cabin amidst the beginnings of a blizzard. It looked sturdy enough to block out the wind with the help of the conifers surrounding it.

I cheered silently and picked up the pace, slushing through the knee high snow. The tree branch had been abandoned a few kilometres back when I realised the snow was too deep for me to cover up any tracks. I could only rely on the budding blizzard.

No lights were on in the cabin. I knocked on the door just in case. Nobody answered so I kicked the door open. I entered and jumped when the wind slammed the door shut behind me.

In the far corner of the cabin was a wooden cot and an old stove was pushed up against the wall. I dumped the Winter Soldier on the thin mattress and went rummaging through the nightstand next to it.

"Aha," I murmured when I found a matchbox. There were only three matches left in it. The first one snapped in my fingers. I frowned down at my blunt black nails. Being a captive of Hydra hadn’t exactly given me many opportunities to learn to control my new ghoulish strength.

I pulled the halves apart and carefully pinched the half with the match head. A quick stroke down the side of the matchbox set it alight. I immediately flicked it into the stove. While I waited for something to happen, I blew on my fingers.

The tiny flame flickered out.

There was no firewood.

"Fuck," I said.

I jogged on the spot to get some heat going before I ran outside, slamming the door behind myself. There wasn't an axe around so I flattened two of my kagune tails into sharp edges. They slashed across the tree from opposite sides.

The tree tipped over towards the cabin. I swore and squeezed my eyes shut with my arms protecting my face. When the tree trunk hit my arms, I opened an eye when I wasn't squashed flat. I could feel the weight bearing down on my arms and in my back and legs, but it was… easy to hold it up.

Right. Ghoul strength.

I shoved it in a direction that was not the direction of the only shelter for hours around, marvelling again at how strong I’d become. I had no frame of reference for how much effort it should’ve taken to carry an adult man, especially one with a metal arm, but wood? I’d been a scout once, and while we hadn’t had to chop any trees down, just the act of transporting the prepared firewood to the fire pit was enough to leave my arms aching.

But now I could drag an entire tree across the snowy ground and lay it in front of the cabin door without breaking a sweat. My new splinter immunity was also very cool.

There was absolutely no way I was going to be out in the freezing wind for longer than I had to, so instead of properly chopping and splitting the wood, I smashed it to pieces.

HULK SMASH, I snickered as my fists crashed through the log. Between my fists and my kagune, the log was soon reduced to manageable sizes.

I opened the door and swept the whole lot in with my kagune. Some snow got brushed in too but better that than leave any wood outside to get wet or have the door open for longer than necessary.

When building a fire, you'll want to make a tepee out of kindling on a bed of tinder.

One of my scout leaders had said something like that. I shoved some bigger pieces of wood into the stove then followed her instructions.

I held my breath when I held a lit match to the tinder. It took.

Fire, get!

Now that was done…

I stood from my crouch and turned around to find the Winter Soldier way too close. I flinched back.

“Jesus fuck!” I yelped.

Yes, I had enhanced hearing. No, I did not notice him coming. Just because I was better at hearing things now didn’t mean I was any better at paying attention to my surroundings. Speaking of paying attention, my backside was uncomfortably hot.

“Fuck!” I repeated. My ass was on fire for the second time that night. I patted it out, but too late. The waistband broke, and my shorts dropped down. So now I was in nothing but a pair of burnt undies and half a shirt. Brilliant.

I looked down at my ex-shorts, then up at the Winter Soldier. I pointed at him accusingly. “This is your fault!”

He just looked at me. I deflated.

“Yeah, okay, it isn’t really.” I facepalmed and waved in the general direction of the bed. “Go sit on the bed or something. Don’t look at me.”

I waited for the telltale shift of cloth before I uncovered my eyes and found him sitting on the cot, staring at the opposite wall.

Bucky’s pants were also burnt, obviously not as bad as mine, but there was only so much I could cover when he was significantly taller than me and I’d been more occupied with protecting his head than his legs. His boots looked fine, at least. I thought of stealing them for myself before dismissing the thought. I wasn’t the one in danger of frostbite, and if I really couldn’t take having cold feet any longer, I could just order the Winter Soldier to carry me.

The cuts on his face had already scabbed over, but his burns still looked pretty bad. I hoped they didn’t get infected. Oh geez, what if his wounds got infected? There wasn’t any antiseptic or anything around.

I spotted a dented old pot next to the stove and grabbed it. I filled it up with snow from outside and plunked it on top of the stove. Once it boiled, I took it off and chucked the cloth that used to be my shorts into it.

I presented it to Bucky.

“Um. Here? Clean yourself up with this, or something. Not sure how much good it’ll actually be, but I figure this is better than having, like, ash and dirt in your burns and stuff, right? Right. Yeah.”

I watched awkwardly as he knelt beside the pot and reached into the water for the cloth. Whoa, what? I caught his wrist. He went stiff. I let go and backed off, hands in the air.

“Sorry, sorry. Just, the water’s hella hot. Just because I don’t want you getting frostbite doesn’t mean I want you getting scalded either. I don’t want you to get frostbite, by the way. So uh, I guess you should soak your feet in the pot after?”

The Winter Soldier didn’t say anything, just stared into the pot with the same dead eyed gaze he’d had since the first time I was shoved into a training room with him. Actually, I’d never heard him say anything. 

“Are you mute?” I asked.

“No,” he said. His voice was deep and gravelly.

“Oh, okay. That’s good. Uh, feel free to talk more. Like, express your thoughts. Ask questions.”

I doubted Hydra had let him talk much. Encouraging him to talk would hopefully bring more Bucky out of the Winter Soldier. Right now, he was 100% Winter Soldier.

Did he even know who Bucky was? A scene from the movie played in my head.

“Bucky?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?”

Oh my god, Bucky didn’t even know who he was.

“Do you know who you are?” I asked anyway.

“I am the Asset,” he replied, not looking up from the pot.

Ah, shit, that answer just made me sad. Fucking Hydra and their dehumanising bullshit.

“Well, not anymore!” I declared as cheerfully as possible. “You’re Bucky now. Alright? Repeat after me: I am Bucky.”

“I am Bucky,” he repeated dutifully. I pat him on the head. His hair was kinda greasy.

“Good job. Uh, you can look at me now,” I said, remembering I’d told him not to earlier. “Any questions?”

Bucky finally raised his head, but didn’t say anything for a long moment. Finally, he opened his mouth.

“Is ‘Bucky’ my cover?”

So he still didn’t get it. That was alright, I’d just keep telling him until he did.

“No, Bucky is you. It’s who you used to be. It’s who you will be, who you’ll be back to being, in the future.”

I frowned.

“Unless you don’t want to be Bucky anymore. That’s fine too!” I reassured him. “I just feel like you should remember who Bucky is—was—before you make that decision. Ya get me?”

His blank stare made it very clear he did not.

“Understood.”

I sighed. “We’ll get there.”

We fell into silence. I sat on the ground and stuck my hand into the water.

“It’s fine now, probably.”

Bucky shucked his shirt and I hastily spun around to face the stove. The man was very hot and if it were anyone else I would have been more than happy to sit there and admire them, but this was a brainwashed assassin whose privacy had not been respected in decades and ogling would just make me feel guilty.

Splashing sounds came from behind me and I stared into the fire, very determinedly not imagining water droplets trailing down chiseled abs.

When my face got too hot from the fire, I drew my legs up and rested my forehead on my knees. For the first time since my arrival in this world, I switched my kakugan off. I was warm. A blizzard had started outside, covering our tracks. We were safe here.

Hydra would never find us.

I jerked awake to the door of the cabin being kicked in and squinted uncomprehendingly at the fully armed man in the doorway. It took way too long to spot the skull and tentacles emblazoned on his shoulder.

“God fucking damnit.”

Hydra found us.

Chapter Text