The loft was sparsely furnished but meticulously organised. A worn leather couch faced a bank of state-of-the-art computer monitors. In one corner, a makeshift gym boasted a punching bag and free weights. The far wall was covered in maps, newspaper clippings, and handwritten notes… a physical manifestation of Bucky's ongoing quest to fully piece together his fragmented past.
The soft glow of sporadically placed work lights lit the sparse furnishings as Bucky worked on the exposed wiring of an ancient fuse box. "Come on, you stubborn son of a..." he muttered, carefully stripping a wire.
Behind him, the flimsy door to the loft inched open, the slight creak of its hinges masked by Bucky's tinkering. Detective Chandler eased in, her right hand hovering near her holstered weapon as her eyes scanned the darkened space, ready to draw at a moment's notice.
At first, Cat saw only shadows and vague outlines of furniture. The loft seemed still, almost abandoned, save for the quiet sounds of metal on metal coming from somewhere to her right. She took another step forward, her boots silent on the worn floorboards.
"Bucky?" she called out. "That your bike outside? The black Ducati?"
The tinkering continued, punctuated by occasional soft curses. Cat's eyes narrowed as she tried to pinpoint the source of the noise. She moved slowly, carefully navigating around a battered couch and cluttered workspace.
Her hand instinctively brushed her holster. "NYPD! This building's condemned… So whoever’s in here… you're trespassing." She paused, letting the warning sink in. "I'm counting to three, then my weapon's coming out."
As she rounded the corner of what looked like a makeshift kitchenette, a silhouette came into view. A man crouched by the wall, his back to her, completely absorbed in whatever he was doing.
Cat's voice softened, uncertainty creeping in. "Bucky? That you?"
"Yeah, sorry," came the distracted reply. "Give me a sec."
For a few tense seconds, the only sound was the scrape of tools against metal. Then, with a sudden buzz, light flooded the loft.
Bucky turned, a lopsided grin on his face. "There we go. Damn old buildings… Wiring's always on the fritz."
The sudden flood of light revealed the true state of the loft, illuminating a space that was equal parts organised chaos and mechanical wonderland. Workbenches lined the walls, covered in an assortment of tools, spare parts, and half-finished projects. Blueprints and schematics were tacked haphazardly to every available surface.
Cat's eyes widened as she took in the scene. Her gaze darted from a partially dismantled engine block to a wall of computer monitors, each displaying confidential S.H.I.E.L.D. mission reports. She turned back to Bucky, disbelief etched across her features.
"What is this place?" she thought aloud. Then, at the sight of a king-size bed in the corner, a horrified realisation dawned on her. "Please don't tell me you actually live here!"
Bucky's lips curled into a self-satisfied smirk, his eyes twinkling.
Cat's posture stiffened. "Don't you dare give me that look, Barnes. Tell me this isn't your home."
Bucky raised his hands in mock surrender, but the smirk never left his face. "Relax, relax… I don't live here," he drawled, pausing for dramatic effect, clearly enjoying Cat's growing exasperation. "This is just... my lair."
Bucky's playful demeanour shifted as his eyes caught sight of the angry red gash on Cat's knee, partially visible through a tear in her jeans.
"You're hurt," he said, all traces of teasing gone. Before Cat could protest, Bucky crossed the room in two long strides. He placed a hand on her elbow, guiding her towards the bed in the corner of the loft. "C'mon, let's get that cleaned up."
Cat opened her mouth to object, but the determination in Bucky's eyes made her think better of it. She allowed him to lead her to the bed, sinking down onto the surprisingly soft mattress as Bucky turned to rummage through a nearby cabinet for first aid supplies.
"You really don't have to do this," she finally protested, albeit weakly.
Bucky looked up, his eyes meeting hers. "Believe me, Catie... I want to."
The nickname brought a smile to her face. Other than going by ‘Cat’, she wasn’t one to answer to nicknames. Somehow, coming from him, ‘Catie’ warmed her cautious heart. Then, as Bucky began cleaning the wound, she found it racing. Needing the distraction, she broke the silence.
"You know what I still can't seem to figure out? How you always seem to find me. What is that? Is that like a… a super soldier thing?"
Bucky paused. "More like a I–have–access–to–your–car's–GPS kinda thing,” he admitted sheepishly.
“I'm sorry, you've been... tracking me?"
"I read an old article about you in the paper. I knew I'd recognised you from somewhere..." Bucky nodded towards the nightstand, where the article in question still lay. He sighed, avoiding her gaze. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have invaded your privacy like that. I just thought that maybe..." He trailed off, leaving the thought unfinished.
"That's okay. I’m not… I’m not afraid of you, if that’s what you’re getting at."
Bucky stood to his feet, gathering the used cotton pads. "Yeah, maybe you should be. Most people are."
Unable to resist, Cat followed. Her eyes trailed over his broad shoulders as he made his way to the kitchenette, rummaging in the small refrigerator.
Her gaze then wandered over his workspace. Amidst the chaos of tools and machine parts, something caught her eye. An incongruously sleek laptop sat surrounded by stacks of papers—more confidential S.H.I.E.L.D. case files. Two of which sparked her interest: Project Muirfield and Agent John McCleary. The former, she knew, held confidential information way above her pay grade. But the latter… the latter was a personal betrayal. One she had yet to fully uncover.
Bucky turned, two bottles of beer cradled in his hands. As his eyes found Cat's, a myriad of emotions reflected in their depths, he extended one toward her. When Cat accepted, their fingers grazed, igniting a spark between them… electric, thrilling, and utterly impossible to ignore.
She took a steadying breath, looking him square in the eye. "We all have our demons. Some... more literal than others. I've seen first-hand what happens when good people are twisted into something they never wanted to be.”
Bucky swallowed hard, the lump in his throat refusing to budge. He forced himself to meet Cat's gaze, her eyes searching his face with an intensity that both thrilled and terrified him.
"God knows I've faced my fair share of monsters," she continued. "Real ones. The kind that don't lose sleep over the things they've done..."
Unable to bear the weight of her stare, Bucky turned away, shame and self-loathing damn near overwhelming him. But Cat wasn't finished. Her voice softened, filled with a compassion that made his heart swell.
"And you... you're nothing like them. Quite the opposite, actually."
Bucky's head snapped back, disbelief etched on his face. "How can you say that? How can you be so sure? We've known each other for, what, a couple of–"
"Because I see the way you're fighting," Cat interjected, her hand moving from his arm to rest on his chest, just above his heart. "Against your past, against what they made you. A real monster wouldn't care enough to do that."
The warmth of her touch seeped through his t-shirt, inflaming something long dormant within him. Something he couldn’t quite place; something he hadn’t even experienced with Sarah, as much as he had loved her. Bucky found himself craving the connection and the incomprehensible understanding she offered.
Her understanding! God, her insane level of understanding was unlike anything he’d ever felt. It was a Steve-Rogers-meets-Natasha-Romanoff level of understanding. Sympathetic. Judgement-free. Kindred spirits… soul recognising soul. This… this was what Isaiah had been yammering about. The freaking lighthouse in the storm. Turns out the old man wasn't just spouting poetic nonsense after all!
Cat's eyes never left his face, and Bucky saw something there he hadn't dared hope for in years… acceptance. Not of the weapon HYDRA had created, but of the man still struggling to reclaim his humanity. What Doctor Raynor had been trying to do for years, Cat had managed within minutes. Bucky felt his heart palpitate. This was too soon, right? Catching feelings? It’d be breaking some kind of "respectful mourning" rule.
"My ex..." Cat began, snapping Bucky back to reality. "He was a soldier, like you. Brave, kind... everything I thought I wanted. Then he volunteered for what he thought was an advanced medical programme. Cutting-edge treatments to enhance soldiers' abilities. Honestly, I assumed they’d be immune boosters or something. Nothing too outlandish.”
“What… kind of enhancements?” Bucky asked hesitantly, already hating where this was going. Soldiers? Cutting-edge treatments? Yeah, he’d seen this movie before. And it didn’t come with a happy ending.
Cat's eyes clouded with painful memories as she continued her story. “At first, it seemed miraculous. His strength increased, his senses sharpened. He could hear a heartbeat from across a room, sense danger before it happened. But then... it started changing him. Physically. His features became animalistic. Fangs, claws...”
Bucky’s eyes widened. “F-fangs?”
"Fangs," Cat confirmed with a grimace. "Honest to God fangs. The worst part was watching him lose himself. He'd have these episodes where he'd become something else entirely. A beast. Primal, violent, terrified.”
Cat hesitated, her cheeks flushing slightly. “And more often than not, they'd usually happen when he got... excited."
Understanding her implication, Bucky's eyes instantly scanned her face and neck, searching for any hint of scars or old injuries.
“What, uhm… what happened to him?” he asked.
The pain in Cat's eyes was answer enough, but Bucky found himself holding his breath, waiting for her to continue.
“He tried to fight it. Locked himself away, desperate to protect others from what he was becoming. But each time the beast took over, it got harder for him to come back… The last time I saw him, there was nothing human left in his eyes.”
A moment of silence stretched between Bucky and Cat, each with their own thoughts. “To this day,” she added, “we don’t know what happened, what went wrong… All I know is that I lost him.”
Horrified, yet not completely surprised, Bucky could only stare at her, alarmed by the retelling of the transformation. How terrifying it must have been for her to witness… How excruciating, perhaps painful, the conversion must have been for him. The thought made his stomach churn. It explained a lot about the tough-as-nails cop who'd somehow wormed her way past his defences.
“I used to tell him that he wasn't the monster. That the people who did this to him… they were the monsters. He was just a victim. But near the end, those words meant nothing.” She looked up at Bucky, her eyes welled with unshed tears. “So believe me when I say I know a thing or two about monsters.”
Before Bucky could process it all, Cat closed the distance between them, her voice matching her gentle disposition. “And if you ever want to open up about your… experience… you’ll get zero judgement from me.”
Bucky's breath caught in his throat. Here was someone who'd seen the darkness, who'd lost someone to it, and yet still found the strength to offer understanding. To offer him understanding. It was almost too much.
He found himself wanting to tell her everything… about the fall, the decades of brainwashing, the blood on his hands. A lighthouse in the storm, indeed. He covered her hand with his own, metal fingers cool against her skin.
Bucky's voice was low, almost a whisper, as he began to unravel the threads of his past. Cat listened intently, her hand still on his arm, offering silent support.
"It was just supposed to be a mission to capture Zola from a HYDRA train. I remember the cold, the biting wind… And then, I was falling…"
His eyes glazed over, lost in the memory. Cat could almost see the scene playing out before him… Steve's outstretched hand, Bucky's name echoing across the snowy chasm.
"I should have died when I hit the ground. Sometimes, I wish I had." The raw honesty in his voice made Cat's heart constrict. "But they found me… Dragged what was left of me to their Siberian facility."
Bucky's jaw clenched, his metal arm whirring softly as he flexed his fingers. "My left arm was gone, but that was just the beginning of what they'd take from me."
Cat watched as different emotions flitted across his face… pain, anger, terror.
"Pain. That's what I remember most. Unimaginable pain. Surgeries without anaesthesia, experimental drugs... Zola and his fucked up experiments. But the physical agony? That was nothing compared to what came next."
It was Cat’s turn to feel a chill run down her spine. "Bucky, you don't have to–"
But now that he'd started, it seemed Bucky couldn't stop. The dam had broken, and decades of suppressed trauma came flooding out. This was so much easier than opening up to Raynor. A state-mandated therapist who, while a former US Army officer, could never fully understand what he’d been through.
"They gave me this," Bucky gestured to his left arm, his voice laced with bitterness. "A weapon attached to a weapon… But the real transformation… God, I can still hear them powering up that chair."
"The chair? That was all true?"
Bucky nodded, his eyes fixed on the floor as if ashamed of what had happened to him. "They'd strap me in, and this machine... it didn't just wipe my memories. It stripped away everything. My values, my personality, my free will. All gone. Replaced by... emptiness. Only for that void to then be filled with missions. Targets. A single-minded purpose."
Cat felt sick. Of course, she'd heard whispers, rumours about the Winter Soldier programme, but nothing like this. So inconceivable. So inhumane.
"From 1951 to 2016… Sixty-five years," Bucky continued. "They'd keep me frozen, thawing me out when they needed their weapon. Funny thing is, while I still struggle with parts of my memory, I remember all of them. Every... assassination."
Cat's hand moved from his arm to his cheek, gently turning him to look at her. "But you broke free," she whispered.
"Eventually. I was granted asylum in Wakanda. And there was this woman, Ayo. She helped rehabilitate me. Worked to remove all the programming HYDRA had left in my head."
Bucky's voice cracked then, fighting back unshed tears. "I remember the day she finished. She looked at me, really looked at me, and said, 'You're free.'" His eyes welled up at the memory, a soft smile playing on his lips. "It was like taking my first real breath in 65 years. Like waking up from the longest, most terrifying nightmare."
A single tear escaped, sliding down his cheek. Cat's heart ached for him, for the decades of pain and loss etched into every line of his face.
"But sometimes I wonder… Am I really free? Or am I just waiting for someone to say a new set of trigger words and turn me back into that thing?"
Cat's hand cradled his face, making sure he looked directly at her as she spoke. "Listen to me, Bucky. That thing? That wasn't you. The fact that you're here, that you remember, that it haunts you? That's what makes you human. That's what makes you Bucky Barnes, not the Winter Soldier."
The silence that followed was laden with shared pain, and a deep, unexpected understanding. Cat's thumb brushed his cheek, wiping away the tear he hadn't even realised had fallen.
Then, almost imperceptibly, Bucky allowed himself to finally lean into her touch. His eyes closed, tension melting from his shoulders as if her simple gesture had lifted a weight he'd been carrying for decades. Which, in truth, was exactly the case.
In that moment, something shifted between them. The connection that had been building since the subway incident… perhaps even before, back in Raynor’s office… crystallised into something tangible, something neither of them had expected but both desperately needed.
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