"He's been out of cryo for too long," you whispered to Alexander Pierce, the commander you had found yourself suddenly doubting as he turned his rage towards your Soldier. Your soldier. Pierce's eyes were still boring into him and his jaw was set as he spoke; the man was angry at the situation, angry at Steve Rogers for interfering at the worst possible time, but it was nothing in comparison to his reaction to the few words you had just spoken as if your voice should mean anything to him.

"Then wipe him, and start over."

Before you could argue, and before you could really decide if you even wanted to, Pierce turned on his heel and left you there with the Soldier, alone as his team left with him. No one ever seemed to dare to challenge the man, and you didn't understand why. You were certainly not afraid of him in the least, your own abilities and power far surpassing a man who was nothing but a human with only a commanding presence and limited intellect as his skill set. You could crush him with barely a thought, and you had dreamt of it before, but you never felt the true urge to act on the impulse until now; there wasn't a reason for it. You were a member of Hydra, and you had been cared for better than most, having a unique hold over their most valued asset; you held the key to the Soldier's mind and could keep him from breaking under the constant barrage of pain and torture they inflicted on him. Even now, as he was coming into his own memories, those of the hazy life of his old persona, he looked to you as his comfort and protector. He looked to you for answers that you couldn't give, and a plea to not make him lose the very few glimpses into himself that he had just found.

"I don't want to," he whispered, but he didn't try to pull away as you stepped closer. Even with everything that you had done to him, he didn't fear you. "Unless you tell me to, and then I will comply."

"I don't want to do this either," you answered back just as quietly. You knew that you were physically alone in the room, but that you were never truly alone, with eyes everywhere, all of the time. "Listen carefully, Soldier," you began, "I'm going to lock those memories away in a safe place in your mind, I won't take them. We can call it a compromise. The only way to get you out of here is to follow Pierce's orders, and that's what we're going to do, okay?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"That man on the bridge-"

"I knew him."

"Yes, you did, and he knows you. His name is Steve Rogers, and he's trying to find you, to help you see who you used to be, so you're going to give him the chance. When this is done, and the first opportunity that you see to make a run for it comes, you run, do you understand? You run, and don't look back."

"No," he replied firmly, following his instinct and grabbing your wrist with a pinching hold, "I won't leave. Not without you."

"Follow my orders, Soldier."

"No."

"Please, don't make me do something that I don't want to do. I want to leave you with enough of yourself to survive. I've wanted to help you before, but I didn't want you to be alone so I had to wait for the right time, and this is it. This is our last shot. I want him to find you, Sergeant Barnes."

His face twisted and contorted in his sudden confusion, as if the word hurt him to hear, and his mind wouldn't allow him to understand. Somewhere deep in his memory, it stabbed and echoed with pain that he both welcomed and feared, and you didn't know how to give him any reprieve other than to keep pushing him towards it. "Barnes? Is that...is that my name? I've never had a name. Have I?"

"Your name," you sighed, risking view by putting your free hand to his cheek, "is James Buchanan Barnes. I'm sorry that I have to do this again, but I promise you, it's the last time that I'll touch your mind. I'm going to set you free once and for all."

"You will come with me." It wasn't a question, but more of a command that you would have to agree to. He was scared, you could hear that in his tone, and you could feel the tremor beneath your hands as he looked back at you with eyes filled with a need to hear your agreement and nothing else. If you denied him now, he would push back, and you wouldn't be able to fulfill your promise of getting Hydra's claws out of him. You had been a part of his control for far too long, and maybe it was your close work together over the years that brought you to this, but you would do anything to give him his life back, even if it meant that yours would be taken.

"Yes, James," you answered hesitantly, hiding your lie, "I will come with you."

~~~

When the moment came for him to run, you certainly hadn't expected him to pitch himself off of the crashing helicarrier and into the Potomac River, that was for sure. You had done well in keeping track of him up to that point, while trying to keep yourself alive amongst the blazing hell that was Captain America's stand against Hydra. You had a promise to keep, to help the Soldier get away and to connect with Steve so that he might have a life again, and in your intense focus on that goal you nearly lost your own in the process. After you saw him dive into the water and pull Rogers to the riverbank, the sense of relief was quick-lived, finding yourself on the wrong side of burning fuselage and a mass of metal spiraling down and out of control.

You swore that you could feel his eyes on you, watching the carrier fall with nothing that he could do to stop it. "(Y/N)," he whispered to himself, deciding if he could sprint fast enough to save you from the impact, or if he was to stay and make sure that this Steve Rogers person was still alive, as you had ordered him to do. The Soldier was completely torn, in a sensation that was foreign to him, and in the exact second that Steve began to sputter with his first breath, he had completed your directive and turned to run towards the flames to find you.

But you had other ideas, knowing that you would survive, the powers of your mind able to work faster than his body could move; you had found a way out and had commandeered a vehicle to make your escape before he had a chance to find where you had been in the rubble. As much as you wanted to stay, to help him, you knew that you would be so much more of a threat to his safety than an ally to his recovery. If any part of Hydra had survived this, they would never stop looking for him, or for you, so the best chance to make it was separately.

As effective as you were at hiding, as much of a chameleon as you could be at any given moment, it would only take a year before he bested you and proved that you had trained him just a little too well. You would learn that you meant more to him than you could have known, and that he had never believed your lie that you would follow him that day.

~~~

It had been just another day of running when you had stumbled into a dark and weathered old bar on a random Bucharest street. You knew that your Soldier was persistent and unrelenting when he had a goal in mind, but you had hoped that your influence on his mind would at least give you some reprieve from it. After a year of this cat-and-mouse game that you were playing, you finally began to realize that it was your power over him that was making him so focused, and that you might never be free of this life.

Maybe it would just be easier to tell him where you were, and to clear you from his memories completely, even though you had promised him that you wouldn't. You would have to get close enough to him to do it, and you had no idea if he even trusted you anymore now that you had been so determined to run from him. Maybe it would be easier for you both if you just let him find you once and for all, so that you could push him away for good.

"Hey, pretty lady, what can I get you?"

"Just water," you mumbled, the bartender's voice jarring you from your thoughts. "I don't plan on staying long."

The man nodded and turned to take a barely clean glass from a rack above his head, almost carelessly swiping it through the ice bin before filling it with a clumsy hold under the tap. He pushed it out in front of you, sliding it into your hands, "you sure I can't offer you something with a bit more bite?"

"Just water," you repeated, readily drinking it down as if you hadn't felt the relief of it in years. There was something in your body that held a nervous energy, and it put you on edge so much that you fought the urge to run, but it was a losing battle. It felt as if the room around you was filled with prying eyes, studying your every move, and it was an all too familiar sensation; it was reminiscent of a life that you had been working so hard to escape. "Thank you," you said as you stood from the bar stool, tossing a single bill down for a tip, "have a good night."

"Oh, come on, leaving so soon?"

Turning back with a wary glance over your shoulder, you groaned at the sight of the man following, and the wave of regret before action took its hold. This wasn't going to end well. It never did, and you had your tortured past to thank for that.

"Let me just buy you one drink."

"No thanks," you said, waving him off dismissively. Even with each step closer, the door looked like it kept getting further away. "I said, good night."

But he still persisted, muttering some half-hearted urge to get you to stay, something almost incoherent about what he could make for you to drink, which you knew ran a very high risk of being spiked with incapacitating drugs or an inhumane mixture of alcohol. The rest of the patrons continued on with their own conversations, their voices muted beneath a heavy beat, their words slurred and messy under the influence of their inebriation. But your pursuer moved with a quickness unlike those around him, his focus on you very determined until he finally reached out to take a grip of your arm to halt you.

"Hey, fella, the lady said she was leaving."

You didn't need a savior, or a protector; you never had before and certainly didn't now, but that didn't make the new voice any less welcomed. It wasn't until you found the face that matched the sound, that you actually stopped moving to understand what was happening. This was about to go very bad, very, very fast if you didn't intervene. "No, it's okay," you argued, "I'm fine."

"Unhand the lady," your Soldier persisted, and when his hand gripped the bartender's and ripped it away from where it held you, the crunching of bone echoed amidst the voices that continued their own conversations around you.

Even in his pain, the bartender was a determined fool and his open hand reached for you again, only this time, you were the one to take it with a similar sound of decimation. You pulled the man closer, turning your body to take a stance behind him with your free arm wrapped tightly around his neck until the color washed from his face, only to be replaced with a growing, deepening red tinged with a hazy blue around his lips.

"Do not touch me again," you hissed into his ear. "I guarantee you that the panic you're feeling right now is nothing compared to what you'll feel if I let him get his hands on you."

"I...I can't..."

"Breathe? Yes, I know. That's the point, genius. Now, I wanted to make my way out without a scene, but that didn't seem to happen. So, here's what we're going to do," you paused, allowing yourself one stray glance at your newest partner, who was staring back and wide-eyed, "I'm going to let you go, and when I do, you're going to go back to your sorry little job behind that pitifully stocked bar, and you won't even so much as look my way again. Understood?"

You thought that you felt him nod along, but you mistook the motion; when your arm relaxed and you pulled it away, his body fell limp to the floor, with no signs of life left behind.

"Shit," you gasped under your breath, "shit, shit, shit...no, I didn't mean for that...oh, no..."

Your feet stumbled back and through the door from which you had tried to make your original escape, only this time, you actually made it. Terror pushed your body forward, kept your feet moving and somehow allowed you to stay upright, but only until you reached the safety of darkness in the alleyway next to the building, where you crumpled to the ground under the strain of your panic. You mind tried to protect you, your power trying to cloak you in invisibility within the darkness, but another hand on your arm stopped you.

"You're (Y/N)."

"No, I'm not," you lied, "you don't know me, and I don't know you, and you need to leave before you're dragged any farther into this. Please, run away. Please." You were trying to protect him, just as you always had, your original Hydra directive never wavering, even now. All it took was one moment that pushed your temper and triggered your instincts, and it was all that would be needed to end his chance at a life before he could even start one. All you could do now was pray that he would still follow your orders after all this time.

"You're (Y/N)," he repeated, insistent as he knelt in front of you now, blocking any escape that you might have hoped for, "and you do know me. My name is Bucky, and you're coming with me for real this time. Steve found me, like you said he would, and now we're both done running, (Y/N). It's time to start over."