Saving Bucky-Rewrite

Bucky's POV:

Longing.
Rusted.
Furnace.
Daybreak.
Seventeen.
Benign.
Nine.
Homecoming.
One.
Freight car.

I will never forget that sequence. Words that ruled my life for seventy years, burned into my mind like a curse. Hydra captured me in 1945, turning me into more than just a prisoner. I was their weapon, their shadow, their monster. The Winter Soldier. A ghost they unleashed on the world.

A year ago, I escaped. After decades of control, I finally broke free. Free—at least on paper. Even now, I'm not sure I know what freedom means. S.H.I.E.L.D. is still hunting me, searching for the man who committed so many atrocities. They want justice, and they're right to.

The things I've done—the lives I've destroyed—they'll never stop haunting me. Hydra may have taken my mind, but it was my hands that killed. My strength that broke. My actions that left people screaming and bleeding in the dark. The memories didn't come back all at once. At first, there were just flashes: faces, voices, shadows. But now they're sharp, vivid, undeniable. The cries of the people I hurt echo in my head every night, pulling me from sleep in a cold sweat.

They made me into something I didn't recognize—a monster with no will of its own. And even though I'm free now, I can't escape the shadow of what they made me do.

So, I stay hidden.

I moved to a small town in Oregon, in Clatsop County. It's the kind of place no one pays attention to, a quiet stretch of countryside where strangers don't ask questions. The nearest neighbor is miles away, which is good. They don't need to hear my screams when the nightmares come.

I take random handyman jobs around town. Fixing fences, repairing roofs, replacing broken pipes. It's honest work, something to keep my hands busy. People don't ask about my past, and I don't offer. The work helps, though. There's something grounding about taking things that are broken and making them whole again. It's ironic, I guess. I can fix a stranger's porch, but I'll never fix myself.

Mornings are for work—chopping wood, mending what's broken, doing the odd jobs people need. But when the afternoons stretch on and the guilt starts pressing down like a weight on my chest, I take my motorcycle out.

The bike is the only thing that makes me feel close to peace. I found it in bad shape when I first got here, rusted and forgotten in a neighbor's shed. Fixing it gave me something to focus on, something tangible to rebuild. Now, I take it out on the open road every chance I get.

There's a stretch of backroad near the edge of town, nothing but hills and trees for miles. I ride it for hours sometimes, the roar of the engine drowning out the noise in my head. The wind on my face, the endless stretch of asphalt—it's not freedom, not really, but it's the closest I'll ever get.

I keep my head down in town. The clerk at the hardware store tries to make small talk every now and then, but I don't encourage it. The less I interact with people, the less chance I have of hurting them.

Isolation is safer—for them, for me. But there's a part of me, buried deep, that misses connection. That misses feeling like a person instead of a ghost. After decades of being controlled, I've finally reclaimed my freedom, but I don't know how to live with it. How to live with myself.

So, I work. I ride. I keep moving.

The work doesn't erase the past, but it gives me something to focus on. The roads don't offer answers, but they give me space to breathe. And maybe that's all I can ask for.

This is my penance. To fix what I can, even if it's just broken fences and squeaky doors. To keep riding, searching for something I'll never find. To atone for the man Hydra made me—the man I can never be again.

This is all I deserve. Miles of empty road, the hum of a motorcycle, and a life spent in the shadows.