pov bucky~

I looked back at him like he was making it up. I'm serious. It sounded fake, legitimately. I mean, If he wasn't willing to explain every aspect of the story, then I don't see how he expects me to believe him.

"You're not liking what you're hearing, I presume," he said to me, reading my face clear as day.

"Look, Steve, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I can't make myself remember and I'm sorry I'm not the man I'm supposed to be and that I did all those terrible things everyone is telling me I've done but, at this point, it is what it is. I can't change it. All I can do is accept it," I blurted out. "Do you have any idea what I've been through? It's not like I've forgotten everything on purpose. Do you think I don't want to remember? Is that what this is? Are you mad at me for not remembering? At least I'm here. At least there's potential for me to get better. At least I'm telling you to help me because I lost myself again and this time, I don't even remember you."

"No, no, no, Bucky calm down. That's not it at all. I'm here for you, don't you see that? We're only trying to help you," he interjected.

"Well, I don't know who to trust anymore. There's just too much- it's all just too much for me right now. I've spent the last fifty some odd years trying to find a way out and now that I finally have, it's like there's nowhere to go. I feel more lost now than I ever did before," I explained. "This last time, the most recent time they wiped my brain, it felt different. It was so much more painful but I don't know why. The only thing about it that I really do remember is that I cried, Steve. I cried more than I feel like I ever have in the almost one hundred-something years I've been alive. It felt like- like someone was pulling at my oldest memories and ripping them to shreds right before my eyes."

His eye grew sympathetic as he saw me wipe a tear from my eyes.

"Do you wanna know what they did to me?" I paused.

He waited.

"Do you?" I asked again. "Fine, I'll tell you anyway. I don't exactly remember how it all began because that was so, so long ago. But there was this one time that you may have actually heard of; that you might recognize..."

It was late November 1963.

I was sitting in this metal torture chair and I had just endured the worst pain I've ever felt in my life... again. It felt like thousands of volts of electricity pushing through my body - enough to kill five men - but it would never kill me, no matter how much I had wished it would. I don't know how many times they've done this to me by now, but it's certainly been a lot more than I would like.

There was a man crouching before me. He was handsome, actually. At least this is what I had originally thought of him. Blonde-ish neatly styled hair, blue eyes, physically fit and in some sort of a uniform that matched the other men in the room.

"Did you hear me, солдаты?" he said plainly. When I looked at him blankly, he slapped me straight across the face. "Answer me when I address you. I'll say it once more. Did you hear me, солдаты (soldier)?"

"Yessir."

He nodded. "Now then, we're bringing you to Dallas. You only have one job, and a simple one at that. It shouldn't be a proble-" he stopped and stood as another man gave him a folder. It had a name on it.

CLASSIFIED:
Lee Harvey Oswald

"What is this, Rumlow?"

"It's information regarding the plans for today, sir. We'll be at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas and soldier 3255-77038 will be stationed nearby," the other man, Rumlow, said while looking over at me. "We'll have some HYDRA agents to cover for him... one of us will be with a black umbrella and will be stationed down the street as a distraction, I'll stay with the United States military disguised as a secret serviceman with a machine gun just in case and the folder is for the last, he's the 'ordinary citizen' type, and he'll be the most important alibi for us."

"And why is that? Who is he?"

"His name is Lee Harvey Oswald, Mr. Pierce, sir. He'll be the one taking most of the blame when it comes to news and reports on this in the future. We have another, also. He is detailed in this folder," Rumlow handed him another folder. It also had a name on it.

CLASSIFIED:
Jacob Leon Rubenstein

"A local nightclub owner who goes by the name Jack Ruby. He's been put in place to take care of Oswald after he's been arrested. He'll then take one of these," the man held up a small red pill, "to kill himself in the hospital a few days after. We'll call it a pulmonary embolism... it's all set up and ready to go, sir."

"And the police?" Pierce asked.

"We've had a bit of a chat, if you will, with the police department of Dallas, sir."

"What about the medical examiner and pathologist?"

"They've all been talked to as well," Rumlow confirmed.

"Good. Be off then, I'll see you there. I'll be transporting soldier 3255-77038 with the other agents," Pierce specified as the other man made his own way out. He then walked back over to me. "Are you ready to listen well, солдаты (soldier)?"

I nodded.

"Your mission for today is very simple," He began. "John Fitzgerald Kennedy. You know him, he's the president of the United States. He was even born the same year as you, look at that," He chuckled, then stopped suddenly. "Assassinate him, that's all I ask."

And that's just what I did.

"Buck, do you mean to tell me that you're the one that killed JFK?"

"Yea, Steve, I guess I- I do," I clarified.

His face displayed complete and utter shock. "I don't even know what to say to that. Anything - or anyone - else?"

I paused. "Well..."

"Bucky. Please. I need the truth."

"In 1968 there was Robert Francis Kennedy in Los Angeles and Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, if that's what you mean," I mumbled.

"You mean you assassinated them too?" I nodded. "Are you out of your goddamn mind?" He asked.

"You could say that, yea. It was more of a lack of having a mind of my own, if that makes any sense," I began. "It was like they took my brain apart, pulled a few memory strings out that would have served as distractions, and put it back together. All I was left with was a bunch of holes and I know you won't understand what that's like but-"

"Then tell me," he interrupted.

"Are you-"

"Yes. Tell me. So I can help you remember. I want to know what it's like to-"

"To lose? To lose everything?" I asked. "I know what it's like to lose. To feel so desperately that you're in control, that you have the ability to get out of this torturous Hell... but you don't get it. I'm here. I still exist, even if that means being here without any memory of the life I so incredibly wish I could recall. I tried, Steve. I tried so hard, so relentlessly- and yet I failed, all the same. There was never any hope for me, despite what I made myself believe. Every time is was the same, every time it was....."

Fire.

It was like flames climbing through my veins, knives cutting up my arms and legs. It was torture. I was screaming from the inside, out, unable to escape.

The man I had seen so many times before - Pierce, as they called him - passed through my mind. The man who's voice I heard starting to speak to me.

"желание (longing)," he shouted at me. It rang it my ears, I felt my eyes shoot open despite my internal instinct to look away.

"ржавый (rusted)," he said, getting closer to me, sending shivers down my spine.

"Семнадцать (seventeen)," I couldn't take my eyes off of him, it was like he wouldn't let me.

"Рассвет (daybreak)," he said clearly, blurring out of my conceivable vision, but I knew he was still there.

"Печь (furnace)," his voice seemed to change, but only in my own head. It was unrecognizable, yet it felt familiar.

"Девять (nine)," suddenly he sounded sad, yet it felt like a figment of my imagination. His face began to come into focus, yet it was no longer that man I normally saw.

"добросердечный (benign)," my eyes prickled with tears as I felt the pad on my jaw and forehead burn my skin. I bit down on my mouth piece.

"возвращение на родину (homecoming)," it was him. The other man, the man who's name I couldn't remember. He looked like... like somebody that I used to know.

"Один (one)," He was... I felt weird. Like the pain melted away for a minute. Like he was... wow, he was gorgeous.

"грузовой вагон (freight car)," I felt like I was falling. Like everything went cold. The man, he slipped away and Pierce came back into view. I felt it again. The electricity amped up for a moment and then stopped, but I still felt it.

I searched my mind for something, but stopped when I realized I couldn't remember what I was looking for.

"солдаты (soldier)?" He murmured to me.

I felt something, like an impulse, pulling words from my chest. My skin hurt, my muscles ached and my throat burned as the words fell from my mouth, "Я готова отвечать (ready to comply)," I replied.

He smiled at me and, good God, did he look wicked.