Pairing: Bucky x Reader (eventually!)

Summary: You work for Maria Hill at SHIELD Headquarters, and you are best friends with Captain America. What you didn’t expect when you became friends with Steve was to be hunted down by his supposedly dead friend, James Buchanan Barnes, AKA The Winter Soldier.

Word Count: 1137

A/N: I’M FINALLY POSTING THIS! i’ve been wanting to write a fic like this for so long now and it’s gonna be long and i’m excited (sorry this first chapter is p short though, it’s basically a prologue for the rest of the story)

Part Two / Part Three

Your name: submit What is this?

-

“Sergeant Barnes.”

“Bucky, no!”

The man on the train. He tried to save me.

“The procedure has already started. You are to be the new fist of HYDRA.”

“Put him on ice.”

He was snapped out of his thoughts by Pierce, who had been talking to him for the past minute or so. He couldn’t focus, though; he was picturing these scenarios like they were memories, but that was impossible. He didn’t know the man on the train. That couldn’t have been a memory of his.

“You’ve shaped century, and I’m gonna need you to do it one more time.”

The assassin didn’t respond. He simply accepted that he would have to kill again. He didn’t know why, but he was beginning to think that what he was doing was wrong. Something told him that he wasn’t like this before. Not that he remembered what he was like before he became the Winter Soldier. Part of him didn’t want to; he didn’t want to know what life he’d had, what life he’d been taken away from.

He frowned, recalling the man on the bridge. He looked like the man from the train. I knew him.

“But I knew him,” he mumbled, his eyes unable to focus on anything.

“Initially, we wanted you to go after that man,” Pierce began, ignoring his confusion. “However, after some thinking, we’ve decided it would be better to go for someone he cares about. Admittedly, he is difficult to get to, but we know one of his weaknesses is caring too much. We want you to go after a girl.”

The soldier looked up at the HYDRA leader.

“Her name is (Y/N) (Y/L/N).”

-

A few days earlier

You and Steve Rogers had practically been best friends ever since they recovered his frozen body. You were one of the first people Fury had introduced him to when he regained consciousness, and since that moment you’d been inseparable. He always said that you reminded him of Peggy, which is why he got along with you so well, though you knew you could never fill Agent Carter’s shoes.

You would go to Steve’s apartment at least twice a week to keep him company, and either you’d end up watching old movies with him that he hadn’t seen yet to get him caught up on the 70 years he missed, or he’d end up telling you stories from his old life. The stories had always fascinated you; they were often about the war, and his Howling Commandos. He told you all about them, and the tales of the many HYDRA bases they’d eliminated. He always spoke so fondly of them - especially James Barnes. He called him Bucky; said he was the only one of the Commandos to give his life in service of his country.

Though you had an apartment in the city, you spent most of your time at the Triskelion. You did work there, but honestly? You spent more nights there than you did in your own home. You worked under the command of Maria Hill, but when she wasn’t keeping you busy, Fury had you running errands for him. It wasn’t your ideal job - you would have preferred something a little more exciting - but you were grateful for it nonetheless. Additionally, working at the Triskelion meant that you were able to make Steve feel more at home there, which he was thankful for seeing as he hadn’t been there for all that long.

You were sat at your computer one evening, working on something for Hill, when your phone began buzzing. You frowned, taking it out of your pocket to see who it was. Steve. He rarely calls you this late; what could he want?

“(Y/N), it’s Fury. He was shot. He’s-he’s dead,” he spoke as soon as you picked up, panicked.

You brought your free hand to your mouth and began to feel like you couldn’t breathe. Fury couldn’t be dead. That’s impossible.

“Steve, wha- how? Who?” you replied shakily, in disbelief. Fury can’t be dead.

“Unidentified shooter. He’s fast. Strong. Had a metal arm,” he responded.

“I-I’ll search through the files, see if I can find anything,” you told him reassuringly. If someone kills the director of SHIELD - your friend - you’re going to find out who it is. “Does Hill know?”

“She knows,” he replied, sighing. You couldn’t have imagined how it felt for Maria. She’d worked closer with Nick than anyone, aside from Natasha maybe.

The phone call didn’t last much longer. Steve needed to go home, and you needed to be alone and let the information sink in. It still didn’t seem real.

You spent hours and hours searching through SHIELD’s files to see if you could find anything like what Steve had described to you, but you had no luck. You sighed heavily, throwing your head back in exhaustion before realising that it was now light outside. You checked your phone. 08:32. You hadn’t slept at all.

You spent a couple of minutes racking your brain for someone who might have information about the culprit when your mind came to one of your closest friends, Natasha. She’d had more experience with bad guys than you could comprehend. It was unlikely that she hadn’t, at some point, come across this guy. You rang her mobile and she picked up immediately. You arranged to meet up with her at a cafe, and you sat at one of the outdoor tables.

“So, Steve told you about Fury,” you said, awaiting confirmation. She nodded, sadness written all over her face, though you knew she wasn’t about to admit to her emotions. “Did he tell you about the shooter?”

“Metal arm, right?” she asked, and you nodded. “I know who he is. Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists. The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He’s credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last 50 years.”

“So he’s a ghost story?” you questioned, and she fixed her eyes on the table.

“Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out. But the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering the engineer so he shot him straight through me,” she said, lifting her shirt a little to reveal a prominent scar next to her hip. “Soviet slug, no rifling. Bye bye bikinis.”

You gave her a half smile. “Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now.”

She smirked, but it soon faded. “Going after him is a dead end. I know, I’ve tried. Like you said, he’s a ghost story.”

“Well,” you responded, placing your drink back on the table, “let’s find out what the ghost wants.”