My contribution to Hydra Trash Anthology book 2016.
‘Memory’ chronicles decades of the Winter Soldier’s brainwashing. Reality and memory are blurred, twisted and snuffed out only to surface again when the Winter Soldier encounters the Man on the Bridge.
GUYZ I don’t usually reblog nsfw stuff here, but this comic is so amazing I just… wow. If you don’t like nsfw just sort of … let your eyes glaze over pg 3?
But like, check out all the fractured panel lines on the electroshock page. And Steve being slowly wiped out on pg 5. HEARTBREAKING. And just … all the echoes of Steve on every single page.
And the last panel! So hopeful! And omg Steve’s silhouette is still at the bottommmmmm!!!
When Bucky was missing in action, Steve thought he was dead. But it’s interesting to consider that Steve went missing, too, and Bucky didn’t know what had happened to him.
Steve signed up for a secret government experiment. I doubt they let him have contact with anyone he knew, or tell anyone where he was going. And when he became Captain America, his real identity was hidden. So Steve Rogers just disappeared. Letters from Steve must have abruptly stopped. Bucky would have thought something terrible had happened to Steve, like he was arrested for forging documents, or he picked a fight with the wrong person. Maybe Steve wrote Bucky once, to say he was accepted into the army, and then Bucky never received another letter. He would have assumed the worst.
In this moment, it looks like Bucky is realizing Steve is really alive.
Everyone writes Sam as the replacement Bucky but guys, Bucky is trying to go into hiding because there are now TWO Steves on the loose.
TWO of them.
The only thing that makes him seem relatively sane is the lack of super abilities but anyone who thinks it’s a reasonable idea to attach a LIVE JET ENGINE ten inches from his asshole is nOT SANE.
Bucky went into cryogenic sleep because there were two Steves on the loose. He spent an hour or two with Sam, saw where this was going, and was just like “I’m out.”
Those two are probably giving Clint an ulcer right now. And being a terrible influence on Scott and Wanda.
I wonder if anyone ever told Clint who T’Challa is. T’Challa seems like he actually would be a Responsible One, but he’s got his own country to deal with so he doesn’t usually get involved unless it’s potentially world ending.
They fix up Bucky within months of putting him under because Sam and Steve haven’t sat still for even like, ten??? minutes?
T’Challa raises him from the artic like uhm, you gonna need to go collect ya mans.
Bucky is like “Oh gOD what did Steve do????”
“No not that one, he’s been too Sad and Lost™ without you but the cute one has decided to try his hand at decentralizing the corrupt governance of Klaegia like, four hours plane ride south. Come on the jet’s already packed”
The Dora Milaje have to keep Bucky from smashing the refrost button to go back under he’s Done.
Sam Wilson met Steve THREE TIMES and was like, “oh you want to overthrow the American government great LET’S DO THIS.” Sam Wilson’s first act in that effort was to suggest that they steal his backpack jet, right from where he KNEW IT WAS GOING TO BE, almost as if he’d kept his eye on it the whole time and was maybe, y’know, planning to nab it himself at some point. Sam Wilson never met a superassassin or a king or a government agent that he didn’t want to sass and antagonize.
Sam Wilson is not the Sane One. You have been lied to.
“no not that one”
L M A O ACTUALLY I HAVE AN ENTIRE SOULMATE AU THEORY BASED ON THE FACT THAT SAM AND STEVE ARE BASICALLY TWINSIES AND BUCKY SPENDS HIS ENTIRE LIFE LIKE “WHAT IF THAT RILEY GUY HAD SURVIVED AND I HAD SOMEONE TO HELP ME RUN HERD ON THESE DUMB ASSES”
The only reason this exists is because I said “but what if Bucky painted his arm to be candy-cane striped?”
But anyway, Happy Christmas-kah, to those who celebrate.
And for everyone else (like me), I hope you are enjoying the cheap and bountiful candy canes and doing that thing where you lick it to a sharp point and stab people with it.
I like to imagine that the Winter Soldier would have been programmed with basically every language that he would need for missions, and, for the sake of versimillitude, his handlers would make sure that he had the appropriate accent/diction and backstory to flawlessly pass as a native of a decently sized city in the country he was working in. So he speaks French like he’s from Toulouse, German like he’s from Cologne etc., allowing him to seamlessly blend in with the locals when he’s out raining destruction across Europe.
Unfortunately, the Red Room – not being known for its commitment to multiculturalism – didn’t think this system through very carefully when it came time to send the Winter Soldier off to do his first ever long mission for their comrades in China. They just program him to speak Mandarin like a statistically unremarkable proletarian from Zhangjiakou and send him on his merry way.
So he arrives in China with his Soviet handler and the following circumstances align to make the entire mission, from the perspective of the Red Room, a disaster from start to finish.
1. It’s 1971, and China is not open to the outside world. Most of the men on the Soldier’s strike team have never met a foreigner in their lives.
2. Those who have met a foreigner have never met one who speaks completely fluent Mandarin with a paint-peeling Hebei accent.
3. This is ENORMOUSLY INTERESTING AND ENTERTAINING to everyone he encounters.
4. Instead of being unremarkable and blending in with the locals he gets mobbed by curious spectators everywhere he goes. His strike team, despite being a little scared of him at first, are so excited to talk to a foreigner who they can actually communicate with that they constantly come up with excuses to hang out and chat.
5. China’s relative lack of development in the early seventies means that there aren’t the facilities to wipe him or put him in the freezer, so the main weapons that Handler Dima has at his disposal to keep the Soldier in line are 1. it’ll be hard for him to run away because he tends to attract crowds, and 2. He sometimes looks very ashamed of himself if you give him a sternly worded talking-to.
6. The Soldier is having the time of his life. Look at me, look at all of my friends, I have so many friends, EVERYONE LIKES ME.
The Winter Soldier, doing shots of baijiu and toasting to the health of Chairman Mao. The Winter Soldier, chain smoking and eating millions of sunflower seeds while playing Fight the Landlord with his new pals on a cross-country sleeper train. The Winter Soldier, doing morning tai chi and calisthenics along with his team. The Winter Soldier, preening every time someone tells him that he looks like a movie star (his handler says “They’re just saying that because they only ever see Europeans in films,” to which the Soldier replies, “But Dima, why don’t they say that you look like a movie star?”). The Winter Soldier, showboating shamelessly for his strike team, who have started calling him Lao Da and looking to him for orders while ignoring Handler Dima, who can’t speak Chinese and definitely can’t shoot two people at the same time while doing a backflip. The Winter Soldier, making elaborate Chinese puns and teaching his guys useful English phrases that he can’t remember learning (Did you come here alone, doll?). The Winter Soldier, harassing his buddies until they show him pictures of their wives and kids and then sincerely complimenting them on their beautiful families. The Winter Soldier, suspecting that he has experienced this kind of camaraderie before but unable to remember when and how.
His next mission, in Vietnam, is the first time that they muzzle him.
How dare
THIS MADE ME SO HAPPY AND THEN SO UPSET
that was the swiftest and most unexpected knife in the heart tbh
Now I’m seriously contemplating writing the story in the tags, just Bucky tooling around Flushing with his grizzled 60-something 哥们儿 while Steve looks on in utter bafflement
Steel Phoenix Studios 