Marvel: Terror Stream

As consciousness slowly dragged itself back into the Winter Soldier’s brain, it brought along a highly unwelcome guest: absolute, excruciating agony.

His body felt as though it had been aggressively tenderized by a meat mallet. His face and back, in particular, hurt so intensely it felt like multiple bones had been ground down into fine powder.

But the worst pain wasn’t physical.

It was inside his head.

The Winter Soldier’s mind was supposed to be unfeeling and unquestioning. He was just supposed to obey. Yet, somehow, a tiny, highly irritating crack had formed in that mental wall.

When Hydra had thawed him out, they had given him a very clear set of assignments: hunt down and eliminate Nick Fury, Spider-Woman, and Steve Rogers.

And while not part of his primary mission parameters, a priority directive had been added - if the Jester appeared, terminate with extreme prejudice.

He had failed all of his tasks. Spectacularly.

The last thing Bucky could clearly remember before the Jester knocked him out was the face of Steve Rogers. The man had looked completely stunned. Heartbroken, even. The man had looked like he was fully prepared to fight to the bitter end for him.

Who was that man? Why did it feel like he knew him?

Suddenly, a foggy image flashed through his pounding head. A scrawny, blonde kid in a Brooklyn alleyway. Then, the vision shifted - a frightening glimpse of falling backward out of a speeding train, a hand of that man towards him.

And finally, a flash of scientists standing over him, operating on his mangled body under harsh, blinding surgical lights, muttering something about him being Hydra’s greatest weapon.

Bucky groaned again, his eyelids fluttering open. Everything was completely blurry.

Thankfully, the unfinished mall hideout was dimly lit, which spared his sensitive eyes from a blinding glare.

But that was exactly where the comfort ended. Below his neck, he felt painfully trapped. He couldn’t even twitch a finger. Even taking a breath hurt, as there was barely any space for his lungs to expand.

It felt like his entire body had been encased in a metallic mold made of heavy chains. Luke’s welded chain masterpiece held him absolutely paralyzed from the neck down.

Blinking hard, Bucky forced his eyes to focus. Slowly, the blurry shapes in front of him sharpened into a clear picture.

Sitting just a few feet away was the Jester. The masked menace in the crisp black suit was perched on a cheap, metallic folding chair, his legs casually crossed. He held a paperback book in one hand, calmly reading as if he were just relaxing in a coffee shop.

Rustle.

Luke casually flipped a page. Without even bothering to lift his head or look at his captive, he spoke.

"You’re up, Soldier?" Luke’s voice echoed through his white mask.

For several long, silent moments, Bucky just stared at his captor. This was the man who had beaten him black and blue. The man who had severed his metal arm like it was a bothersome tree branch. The man who had slammed a hammer into his face and back repeatedly while laughing.

Before he got beaten down and fell unconscious, the mission parameters were clear: kill the Jester.

But something was different now.

That glimpse of a scrawny kid. That flash of a train and a fall and a face that mattered. Something in him changed...

For the first time in seventy years, a question escaped the Winter Soldier’s lips.

Slowly, fighting through the agonizing pain in his head and back, the Winter Soldier opened his dry mouth. His voice was rough and raspy.

"Do you... know who I am?" he asked, his eyes heavily fixed on the masked man. "Or what happened to me?"

Veritas didn’t even look up. He calmly flipped another page of his paperback book.

"Don’t you know?" Veritas replied in a light, conversational tone. "You’re the Winter Soldier. A highly trained Hydra weapon."

Bucky furrowed his brows deeply. For some reason, he didn’t like that cold, clinical answer at all. It felt wrong. It didn’t match the fragmented puzzle pieces currently floating around in his scrambled brain.

"No," Bucky said, the word coming out more forceful than he intended. His chained body strained uselessly against the metal. "You said... on the street. You called me someone named Barnes. James... Buchanan... Barnes."

The name felt foreign on his tongue. But also not.

"And that man," Bucky continued, his voice dropping to something that might have been confusion, might have been longing.

"The one with the shield. The one who looked at me like..." He trailed off, unable to articulate what he’d seen in Steve Rogers’s eyes. "I know him. I don’t know how, but... I know him. Who was he?"

At that, Veritas finally stopped reading. He closed the book with a soft thud, resting it on his lap, and slowly raised his masked face to look at his captive.

"And when exactly did I say that?" Veritas asked with a creepy smile on his mask, tilting his head. "Can you describe the moment?"

Bucky felt it then, a tiny, almost microscopic flicker of something that wasn’t pain or mission parameters.

It was... irritation. A hint of embarrassment, maybe. Bucky didn’t know how to categorize the forgotten sprinkles of emotions... but for normal people it was the kind of feeling you get when someone asks you a question they already know the answer to, just to watch you squirm.

"Before I passed out," Bucky replied, his voice still tired and mostly emotionless, but with the faintest edge of frustration creeping in around the corners. "On that street. When you were holding me up toward that man. You said... I was his friend."

Behind his white mask, Luke smiled.

"Before I answer your questions," Veritas said, steepling his gloved hands together, "you need to answer a few of mine first.

Black ash flowed from him, swirling in the air before condensing into a simple, flat shape that hovered between them.

"What kind of shape do you see right now?"

Bucky furrowed his brows. The question seemed absurd.

"It’s a circle,"

The ash shifted and snapped into a completely new form. "And now?"

"A triangle," Bucky replied.

Veritas let the ash dissolve back into nothingness. "How many of your past missions do you currently remember?"

"None," Bucky answered, "Just this one."

Veritas let out a soft sigh. The Winter Soldier had completely failed the mental tests. The first shape Luke had created in the air was a perfectly straight vertical line. The second shape had been a standard rectangle.

’Just as I thought,’ Luke thought, tapping a finger on his knee. ’His mind is nowhere near ready.’

For the conversation Luke really wanted to have, Bucky needed to remember everything.

Right now, the nerves in Bucky’s brain were completely fried. Decades of brutal electrocution from Hydra’s memory-wiping machines had left his mind severely damaged.

And while the effects of super soldier serum would eventually heal his brain and make him remember everything on his own. It’d take too long... Luke didn’t want to wait that long. And for a faster recovery, Bucky needed specialized medication and some proper treatment.

Even so, while those might help Bucky remember his past soon, Luke knew that the Hydra programming would not simply disappear after that.

But the programming wasn’t his trouble to handle...

"Well, coming back to your question..." He leaned back in his chair, "Yes. As I had said before, you used to be James Buchanan ’Bucky’ Barnes. Long before you were turned into Hydra’s deadliest weapon, you were Steve Rogers’s absolute bestest friend in the whole wide world."

Veritas leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on his knees. "And you see, I had a very personal matter to settle with good old Steve. He hurt and killed so many of my friends... he even stole away my best friend. That’s the whole reason I hurt you and brought you here. An eye for an eye, a friend for a friend. Poetic, don’t you think? Ah, don’t take it personally."

Bucky raised his brows as Veritas paused, letting the bizarre explanation hang in the quiet room for a beat before nonchalantly waving his gloved hand.

"But you know what? It really isn’t important who you were."

Bucky tilted his head slowly.

"What you should focus on," Veritas continued, his tone turning surprisingly grounded, "is thinking about what you want to become from now on."

Bucky stared silently... the words were... unexpected.

"However," Veritas added, holding up a single finger, "before you can make that decision, we need to fix you up a little, buddy. To choose who you want to be, you need to know who you’ve been. You need to remember everything. All of it. The good, the bad, and the extremely ugly."

"And that’s where I come in. You need a good psychologist and a nice therapy. Now, I don’t have a degree yet, but I’m aspiring to be one. See? I’m reading."

He picked up the book from his lap and waved it at Bucky. Bucky’s eyes dropped to the book cover. The title was embossed in gold letters: "The Psychology of the Human Mind, Vol. 8" by Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Bucky had no way of knowing it, but in this world, this book series was actually one of the most highly rated resources on human psychology available.

"And you, Miss Silent-Forgetful-Damsel, are going to become my first patient," Veritas said, the painted smile on his jester mask seeming to widen a little bit in the dim light.

Bucky let out a long, weary sigh, his chest straining painfully against the heavy iron links.

The masked madman sitting in front of him, waving a psychology book while holding him paralyzed in welded chains, didn’t give off a helpful or reassuring vibe at all.

In fact, the guy seemed completely unhinged.

"I don’t... need... therapy..." Bucky rasped, each word took effort, "And regardless of who I am or was... Hydra will come after me and you... they won’t let me get away."

Veritas smiled, "Finally, a good sentence. I’m impressed. I was beginning to think your handlers stuck you with strict word count limit."

Then the Jester cracked his neck before he spoke his next word.

"As for Hydra... they’re only a problem for a very short time..."

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