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I know I’m guilty. But do I really deserve this? This isn’t right. They can’t hold me accountable for his actions, can they? Can they do this?
They lead him into a small, dimly lit concrete room, with a chair that looks like a torture device, probably because it is. They bring him directly to the Chair, hands on his arms, chains around his wrists. There are at least ten guards with guns pointed at him in this room, and likely many more outside. A man in a black suit and white collar, holding a thick book, looks at him solemnly, almost in pity. Another man in a black mask covering his face shows no emotion, standing by a large switch on a dark grey wall.
They strap him down, metal cuffs digging into his hands, chains heavy around his feet.
I thought I was done with this. No more being strapped to chairs. They told me it wouldn’t happen again. They told me—
This can’t be happening. It can’t.
Who made you God? Where did you get the authority to control someone’s life? Who gave you that right?
He wants to yell all that and more, but he can’t get his mouth to form the words. Why? he thinks, as his shoulders are slammed back into the cool, damp metal of the chair behind him. Why?
*
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*
He stood outside the theatre with Steve and Rebecca, waiting in line to get in, on a cold February day in 1938. The red and white sign above said in bold black print, Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. He remembered wanting to see this movie, full colour and with sound, ever since he read about it in the papers so many months earlier. “Come on, Bucky!” Becca shouted excitedly, tugging on his sleeve. “It’s opening!” Bucky allowed himself to be dragged forwards, laughing over his shoulder at Steve, who had to jog a bit to catch up to the much taller Barnes siblings. Becca glanced behind them once they entered the theatre. “Live a little, Steve!” Steve flushed bright red against his Irish-pale skin when he noticed several people staring at Becca’s outburst. “Come on, Stevie, listen to the girl. Live a little!”
*
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*
He had heard someone say it was 1989, but he had no way of telling how long ago that was. Days, months, even years? Someone grabbed him roughly and threw his back into the Chair. Another man held out a piece of rubber, and he leaned forward and allowed the bite guard to be shoved into his mouth. The metal cuffs were activated, strapping his arms, legs, chest, and neck to the Chair. He started to feel immense dread before thinking, No. The Asset does not feel. Moments later, that thought was proven wrong, as his thoughts were clouded by the screams filling the small underground cell.
*
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*
For the first time in almost fifty years, he allows himself to feel, to acknowledge his emotions instead of shutting them down. He tries not to think like a soldier or as a weapon, but rather, as a human. He feels his palms sweat, his heart race, his body shake, his breaths become faster and faster until they border on dangerous. No one’s coming to rescue him. Steve’s not coming to rescue him. Not this time.
He hears the priest begin his prayers and closes his eyes in preparation for the incoming pain.
He can hear, over the noise of the priest and the noise in his own head, the man in the mask move closer to the switch. The time is coming. It’s the beginning of the end. His sweat is cold on his body; he’s shaking from lack of heat, and anxiety, and panic. He tries to hold on to his last bit of his mind, the bit that survived his childhood, the War, Hydra, the Accords. His last piece of himself.
His fingers grip the armrests as his eyes snap open. He knows what’s coming. He can sense the tension in the room. What am I doing here? I shouldn’t be here! I can’t be here! I—
He knows any protest he makes is futile. The jury made up their minds when they pronounced him guilty of Hydra’s most vicious crimes. The judge sealed the deal when she sentenced him to death. Steve made it final by doing nothing.
*
*
*
“You’re serious? You’d stay here with me?” The newspaper laying in a nearby garbage basket said it was December 15, 1936. Bucky had just met up with Steve in an alley somewhere in Brooklyn, for once not to stop a fight, but to start a conversation.
“Of course, pal. I’m with you to the end of the line.” “
But—but…” Steve stuttered. “Why?”
Bucky shrugged. “Why is the sky blue? Why do birds sing? Why do flowers bloom? To make you happy, Stevie. You deserve this as much as anyone.”
“I don’t think they do all that just for me,” Steve muttered under his breath as he looked down at the way his newspaper-filled shoes sat on the grey cobblestone.
Bucky grabbed his chin and tilted his head up. “Pal, if you want to take art classes, go ahead. Who am I to rob you of your dream?” He laughed a moment. “Be a better artist than me. Be the next Van Gogh, or Da Vinci. Go create something that’ll last for hundreds of years, even after both of us have turned to dust. I believe in you.”
Steve smiled back at his best friend. “With you to the end of the line.”
Bucky clapped the shorter man’s shoulder and stepped back a few steps. “You’d better be.” They both parted ways with smiled on their faces and joy in their hearts.
*
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*
He heard his screams before his brain registered the pain. He clenched hard over the bite guard, his head feeling like it was going to explode. So this is what hell feels like.
The year was 1972, as of his last mission. His last time outside.
He’d gone through similar experiences to what was about to happen often over the past thirty years, but he could never remember it. They took care of that. He could only scream, until the fire in his head subsided, and the ice took over.
The ice was never the end, though, as much as he willed it to be. It led to the next mission, which led to more violence, and death, and destruction. And eventually, it led back to the Chair. A full circle. Almost poetic, in a way. It’s rare to have such a perfect routine, he thought. Maybe They aren’t so bad, after all.
*
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*
Help me. Help me! I can’t do this. Let me out!
All the people surrounding him show no sympathy towards his rapid breathing, his nervous glances around the room, his near hysteria. To them, he was just another murderer, like they see every day. They couldn’t feel his pain, or his past. They couldn’t feel the abandonment he was feeling, the betrayal, that his best friend wouldn’t be coming for him. That his friend did nothing to stop this. Encouraged it to happen, even. The skinny kid from Brooklyn, who never broke a promise—now a long-lost memory inside the mind of a dying man.
“I don’t want to die.”
The words slip out before he can stop them, like the tears pouring out of his eyes. He’s biting his lower lip, trying to mute both the words and the sobs, but it has no effect. His body slows down the intense shaking. He can’t fight, he can’t flee. He’ll just have to sit there and ride the lightning out.
Time seems to slow down as the executioner prepares to pull the switch. He’s suddenly aware of every breath the technicians take, every shuffle of the guards’ feet. He, for the first time, really feels the cold steel below him, through his thin, orange prison uniform. He feels his fingers, flesh and metal alike, clench and unclench as he contemplates breaking the restraints. But what good would that do? He’d just die by bullets instead of electricity. At least the electric chair is similar to what he’s used to. Quicker, too, because his body won’t try to heal around the injury.
The tear tracks down his face serve as a constant reminder that this is real. It’s final, this time. Isn’t that what I wanted for all those years? It’s different now. He has—had—a life, for a while. His neighbors in Bucharest didn’t know him well, but he always made sure to look out for them, and they did the same for him. If anything, he wants to stay alive for them. He wants to walk down to the market, buy some fresh fruit, maybe stop to talk with one of the vendors. He wants the life he knows he can’t have.
Is that the same person the United States is putting to death? It doesn’t seem like it. They’re focused on the Winter Soldier, not Bucky. They don’t see that they’re different people. Bucky would never kill anyone without a reason. The Winter Soldier would do it without question.
Maybe he’s imagining it, or maybe it actually happened; he’s not sure; but it felt like someone gave the Chair a little test-shock. To scare him or encourage him, he can't tell. Maybe it was the tech group. Maybe it was the executioner, pulling the switch halfway. He briefly wonders if the chair was calibrated to someone with his physical and mental strength.
The Priest closes his Bible and walks away, leaving him with only his thoughts and the execution crew for company. He sees, but doesn’t see, someone come up to put a bite guard in his mouth. He’s had it done so many times, it’s more like a memory than an experience. Never in this context, though. Never when he’s guaranteed to die.
The technicians move away from the Chair, and he knows his time is up. He almost wishes they would get it over with. He’s been waiting for what seems like hours, though the people surrounding him behave like it’s only been minutes.
I guess this is it.
*
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*
It’s 2015. He just got home from the open-air market in Bucharest. Well, if you can call it that. Home isn’t exactly the word he would use. He doesn’t even remember home, not really. Just flashes. A dark-haired older woman with a kind smile. A lighter haired younger woman with bright eyes and a joyful attitude. A small blond man with too much energy for his size. The same man, but bigger, stronger, with the same sense of honour and righteousness. He saw pictures of that man once, in a museum. They called him Captain America. “A symbol of the nation”. He carefully wrote down what he just remembered in his book. It’s a medium-sized, brownish-red thing, and he called it his Memory Book. His Книга памяти. Quite possibly the only thing keeping him sane back then.
He flipped through the first few pages, skimming over their information, when something made him stop. A small strip of paper, still attached to the spine, but not the full size of the other pages. He frowned at what must’ve been a missing page in his book. Did he do that? Or did someone else? He couldn’t recall letting anyone close to it before, but he also couldn’t remember ripping the page out. And it was definitely ripped, no question about it. He thought about it for a minute, then decided it wasn’t worth the effort just then. Groceries first, he thought.
By the time the few food items he had just purchased were away, the missing page was forgotten about, just another lapse in his faulty, at best, memory.
*
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*
He unclenches his hand for what he thinks might be the last time, when he feels something strange sticking out from in between the plates of his adamantine arm. He looks at it studiously (and hopefully, subtly), trying to figure out what it says. It only takes a glance at the bold, slanted Russian printing to realize it’s his. His writing from his Книга памяти. The missing page from the grocery run all those months ago. быть храбрым, it says. Be brave.
The switch is flicked in the other room, and there’s a split-second delay before he hears himself scream. Then comes the pain, like a light that’s shining too bright, right in front of his eyes. Be brave, he thinks. Be brave. The sound of his screams meld with the other assorted sounds his enhanced hearing can pick up in the surrounding rooms, and his ears feel like they’re about to burst with the intensity. His skin is on fire, and he can’t control his metal arm; it’s reaching out, breaking the restraints. All his senses are overwhelmed, and the last thing he sees before it all goes black is the scrap of paper from his his Книга памяти fluttering gently to the ground, like a leaf on a warm autumn day. Finally, he’s free from this nightmare.