gallifreyburning:

How often during Bucky’s Russian imprisonment do you suppose he passed through the hallways of that Siberian supersoldier training base, and glanced up at the silos that led to the top of the mountain.

How often did a glimmer of hope, the outline of an escape plan, flit through his broken mind.

How often did he imagine the impossible, acting of his own volition to activate the mechanism to open the blast door at the top of the silo, and climb out into the open air. 

Maybe it wasn’t often – he wasn’t himself for long, his will to do anything except obey orders was a fleeting thing, fragile and soft and easily trod under jackboot. But surely it happened once, or twice, or half a dozen times over the course of so many decades. Who knows, maybe every waking minute, the smallest fragment of what was left of Bucky Barnes thought about climbing up, climbing out, into fresh air and freedom, into the light.

I don’t know that I’m worth all this to you. 

And he’s been keeping a stranglehold on his panic since he and Steve climbed down together into this dark, dead Siberian base. He’s aggressively ignoring the familiar sound of his own footsteps echoing off frozen concrete and dusty, sterilized metal. He’s swallowing sour lumps of bile and frenzied nausea when they walk into the room with the conditioning chair, and his own empty cryogenic chamber. 

(After he’d been conditioned, it was so much easier to focus on the mission. Everything in his head was tidier, less prone to fits of memory and conscience. To sit a spell in that chair, and have all of his human mess chipped and scraped away like so many barnacles from a bleeding warship.)

I know … but I did it.

Then the videocasette ends in static, and Bucky’s eyes burn with unshed tears, and Steve shouts “Get out of here!” How many times did Bucky hear that same voice in his broken dreams, in that cryogenic tube, in his waking nightmares; that voice coming to his rescue, helping him to rescue himself. That single phrase from Steve brings all those dormant whispers from his past roaring to life – those fruitless, unrealized urges to climb toward the light, to earn his freedom.

I don’t know that I’m –

Bucky doesn’t make for the front door of the Siberian base; instead, instinct drives him to the silo. Light pours through the opening blast door, cold air washing over him like water from the Potomac. Except this time he isn’t hauling Steve’s body. This time he’s hounded by the sound of battle at his heels, the sleek roar of Tony’s suit and the shrill clang of metal as Steve guards his escape. 

Fettered with the weight of decades of imprisonment, buoyed by hope that never quite guttered to ashes, Bucky scrambles up the metal scaffolding toward the sky like a man saving himself from drowning. The harder he kicks, the further he jumps each time, maybe he can shake the shackles from his feet. 

He grasps the lip of the silo just as Tony’s missile reaches the gate mechanism, and the blast door slams shut. 

I remember all of them.