Chapter Text
140.
Washington, DC
October 31st, 2013
The room is dim and quiet except for the soft hum of the hospital’s air conditioning and the faint rustle of paper. The weight of exhaustion settles heavily on Steve’s shoulders, but he doesn’t move from where he sits against the cold hospital wall, arms crossed tightly over his chest. His eyes aren’t on the stack of Hydra files in his lap, but on the woman sitting across from him.
Isabel hasn’t said a word in almost an hour. The light from the laptop bathes her face in cold, bluish hues, making the deep circles under her eyes look even darker. Her fingers click the mouse in slow, deliberate movements, and her eyes scanning the screen with an intensity that makes Steve’s chest ache.
Sam sits on the edge of the bed a few feet away, flipping through a stack of printed reports Natasha had dumped onto the internet. The occasional rustle of paper is the only sound breaking the heavy silence.
Then Isabel freezes.
Her breath hitches — just once — and her eyes go wide.
“Here,” she whispers, her voice breaking. “This is it. The Winter Soldier Program. I found the files.”
Steve is on his feet in an instant, moving toward her as if drawn by an invisible force. He crouches beside her chair, his heart pounding in his chest as she clicks the file open.
“I’ve read some of this before,” Isabel says, scrolling quickly through some pages that explicitly only mention her. “We don’t need to rehash that.”
Steve wants to protest, but Isabel pushes on.
She scrolls down further to a new section. “This wasn’t on the tablet Nat gave me,” she says, frowning. “This is about Bucky, too.”
The screen filles with words — clinical, detached descriptions of horror. Neurological conditioning protocols. Chemical and psychological manipulation. The systematic destruction of a man’s identity and the cold, methodical construction of something else in its place.
They read through the report about Bucky, about what was done to him. It’s much, much worse and much more intense than what was done to Isabel. The impacts are stronger, the brainwashing more severe. No wonder Bucky is a shell of who he once was.
Isabel keeps reading after Steve and Sam walk away.
And quickly realises it isn’t just Bucky’s name in those reports.
It’s hers. Her name is still there, her training, the experimentation. Comparing the impacts of the serum on Bucky and Isabel, their genetics, their similarities. How she supported the process of brainwashing, executing missions, comforting the Soldier.
Her name is there as Bucky’s handler.
“Isabel Barnes,” she whispers, the words tasting foreign and wrong when paired with the cold finality of the documents in front of them. “Winter Soldier handler, 1951-1991.”
She frowns, staring at the words.
Her hands begin to shake. “No,” she whispers, her voice cracking. “No, that can’t be right–”
But the evidence is there in black and white. The dates. The procedures. The orders given.
She wasn’t just tortured. She wasn’t just brainwashed. She wasn’t just enhanced and frozen and used. She did this. She actively did this to her brother. She sent him into those missions. She calmed him down when he was frightened by their situation. She did this.
And then the memories come — sharp and sudden and overwhelming.
Isabel’s breath grows ragged as flashes of pain and cold steel fill her mind. Voices she doesn’t recognise bark commands, and her own voice responds in tones that felt distant and hollow. She remembers Bucky’s face — the confusion, the fear — and she remembers her own hands following orders she hadn’t chosen.
Steve re-enters the room, and is immediately at her side. He catches her when she starts to fall sideways on the chair, his arms wrapping tightly around her shoulders. She’s trembling violently against him, her breath coming in short, panicked bursts.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he whispers. “Don’t read anymore, Belle.”
“I-I can’t believe it,” she cries.
“It’s okay. What they did to you, it wasn’t your fault,” he says fiercely, his voice shaking with the effort to keep it steady. “It wasn’t you, Belle. You didn’t choose this.”
“I helped them,” she sobs into his chest. “I gave in.”
“No, you had to survive,” Steve promises.
I can’t tell him, Isabel thinks. He’ll hate me to know I was Bucky’s handler. That I did this to him. It was me.
Sam stands quietly across the room, giving them space, but when he finally speaks, his voice is calm and sure.
“Normally, people get to choose between good and evil,” he says softly. “Neither of you were given a choice. You didn’t have free will. You were made to be weapons, but you aren’t the villains here. You’re just as much victims as the people the Winter Soldier was forced to kill.”
Isabel’s breathing slows a little, but her hands still clutch at Steve’s shirt like a lifeline.
Sam steps closer, his voice gentle but firm. “The things you did before this — what you did back home in Brooklyn and on the battlefield — they speak a hell of a lot louder than anything else. That was you. That was what you chose. And you chose to be good.”
Steve feels Isabel’s fingers tighten their grip, but she doesn’t speak.
“He wouldn’t blame you, Belle, for whatever happened in those bases. I don’t know everything, and… I know you’ll probably never tell me. But…” Steve adds softly, caressing her cheek and wiping away her tears. “You did what you both had to do to survive. What you were forced to do. No one blames you.”
“I-I don’t want you to read anymore of the files,” Isabel whispers.
“Belle…”
“There’s stuff in there I don’t need people knowing, especially you. I don’t need you lookin’ at me different. I… we know what we need to know. Now we just need to get him back.”
“Belle, there could be more–”
“No, Steve,” Isabel’s voice is firm. I can’t have to seeing what I really did, what a monster I am. “Promise me you won’t read anymore.”
Steve hesitates, only for a moment. “I promise.”
She breathes the tiniest sigh of relief. But the question remains unspoken in Isabel’s mind — what if Bucky doesn’t see it that way?
The sun dips below the horizon in streaks of orange and pink, casting long shadows across the kitchen. Steve and Isabel are home, for the first night since the battle, in their apartment with bullet holes in the walls and blood on the floor.
The quiet feels heavier now, thick with the weight of unspoken things.
Steve sits beside Isabel on the edge of the bed, his hand wrapped around hers. She hasn’t let go since the files.
“We have to help him, Steve,” she whispers eventually, her voice hoarse from crying. “We have to.”
Steve doesn’t even hesitate. “We will,” he promises. “I couldn’t leave him. Not ever.”
Tears well in Isabel’s eyes again, but she blinks them away. “He’s my brother,” she says softly. “And yours, too.”
Steve squeezes her hand. “Even when we had nothing, we had Bucky, right?” he murmurs, his voice thick with memory,
Isabel nods quietly in agreement.
When sleep finally claims Steve that night, it doesn’t bring peace. It brings memories.
They're young again. The lights from the cinema screen flicker across their faces, and Steve can feel the worn fabric of the old theatre seat beneath him. They’d snuck in — the three of them — to the cinema in London, the way they used to when they didn’t have two dimes to rub together.
The newsreel plays first — all bravado and bright music, the Howling Commandos leading the charge across Europe like larger-than-life heroes. The audience cheers, but Steve doesn’t.
“Private Dooley,” Steve whispers, watching the face of the young soldier just behind Dugan. “Eighteen. From Idaho. Remember him?”
Beside him, Bucky’s jaw tightens. “Course I remember him,” he says quietly. “Crimey. I held that poor kid’s hand while he bled out on the field.”
But there’s no mention of Dooley’s sacrifice on the screen. Just cheers and applause for their supposed glory.
“You don’t see that on the newsreel, do you?” Steve mutters. “No one’s cheering for that poor kid from Idaho. It’s all about us. Not that we even deserve it — not really.”
Bucky huffs a soft laugh. “Cripes, Monty was right about you.”
Steve frowns. “What? What’d Falsworth say?”
“That you’re too serious,” Bucky teases. “We’ve got a week’s leave — no meetings, no filming, no fighting — and you’re still bringin’ the war with us. Thought we were comin’ to watch Dumbo or somethin’, not a propaganda flick. You gotta learn how to relax, pal.”
Despite himself, Steve smiles. “And Monty said all this, did he?”
“Ha! You’re a real cut-up, Steve.” Bucky grins. “Sometimes I think if you didn’t have me and Isabel, there wouldn’t be a single person in the world who really understood you.”
Bucky leans over then, looking at his sister, her hand intertwined with Steve’s. He smirks at her, and she frowns. “Aw, leave ‘im alone, Buck. He’s sentimental.”
“He’s stupid, is what he really is,” Bucky counters.
“Hey!”
“Anyways, this is Dumbo, genius,” Isabel tells her brother. “They just play the war stuff first to keep us hooked.”
“Well, we don’t have tickets so how was I to know?”
“If you just flirted with the ticket lady, we probably would’ve gotten in anyways,” Steve tells Bucky.
“Yeah, yeah. Reminds you of the good old days, huh? Great Depression Brooklyn, sneaking into the movies together for a laugh,” Bucky says with a smile, head back against the seat with his eyes closed.
“Only one thing’s the same about it, really,” Steve says. “We’re in a new cinema, in London, during a war, and I’m big. Only common thing is that the three of us are all together.”
“Guess that’s all we really need,” Isabel hums.
The alert comes three days later.
Steve’s phone vibrates against the table, and Natasha’s message is short and to the point — just a link to CCTV footage from the Smithsonian Museum.
The blood drains from his face the second the footage starts.
Bucky.
The man on the screen is hidden under layers — a black cap pulled low over his face, a worn jacket hiding his build — but Steve knows him. Knows him like breathing.
And then Bucky stops.
He stands in front of the glass display that honours the memory of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. His own face stares back at him from 1943.
Even through the grainy footage, Steve can see the way Bucky reaches out, his fingers brushing the glass like he isn’t sure what’s real.
“We’ll find him,” Isabel whispers, her voice fierce and steady. She watches the video too, over Steve’s shoulder, her face determined. The tears have long dried up, replaced with a fiery drive to find her brother. “He said he would find us, but he needs us. We have to look for him. We owe it to him.”
Steve nods in agreement. “’Til the end of the line.”
My head betrayed me last night
with a dream of you and me
I slipped the bullet
In the chamber
Right, that was true
And pulled so tightly
On the metal trigger
Right, that was you
From strangers to someone
I can’t stop thinking about
To someone I try not to
Think about again
Until I forget…
And now we are where
We started
Strangers again
How do you go back to being strangers with someone who has seen your soul?