[i]““However... I am going to give you a week to find him.  If by this time next week he is not back within our control.  I am going to have you killed ... I’d suggest starting quickly.”[/i]

Karpov didn't need to be told twice ... [i]no one[/i] messed with the Red Skull or failed him and got off with it lightly. Karpov was in deep shit now, but, he couldn't let the grunts see him looking weak, even in the face of Skull's threats. Red Skull might have seen the slight wavering in his eyes, the dilation of his pupils, but the guards at the door couldn't see that, to them, he looked like he was bravely staring down Red Skull, before he got up, straight posture, looking cool, calm, collected and powerful ... Red Skull would know he'd shaken him, but the goons who'd be doing his footwork wouldn't see that, and that was all Karpov had left right now. It wouldn't do to have them think he was weak, then they'd get sloppy or lazy and he needed them at their best if he had any hope of capturing the Winter Soldier again. He was their best agent and he was possibly disoriented, feral ... worst of all, there was a chance he might be remembering things and that would be devastating ... 

First they had to find him. He'd been programmed, certain landmarks, certain extraction points, certain protocols. The Winter Soldier was usually ruthlessly efficient and ... predictable. He hit his mark he got away, he returned to the handler. But now they were in uncertain territory. He'd vanished. Some missions had unusual hiccups, not entirely unlike the hit on Captain America, but he'd eventually wind up at an extraction point or he'd make contact ... A day had passed without a peep and thats when Karpov suspected he was in some trouble ... Then Red Skull threatened him and now the hunt was on big time.

[b]"If he's left the country it could be too late"[/b] Karpov frowned, he'd assembled an elite team to help him devise his plot to trap the Winter Soldier. With no clue what his "mission" or motive was ... it was hard to discern what exactly he would do. If he had the intention of returning to HYDRA, he'd come to them, so there was no need to patrol extraction points with extra agents, just monitor them regularly. Keeping an eye on Captain America was an option, Karpov assumed The Winter Soldier might return to his target to try and extract information or perhaps finish the job. But if he was evading HYDRA as Karpov was beginning to suspect, he wouldn't be dumb enough to fall into such an obvious trap ... He half cursed himself for that, the Winter Soldier was [i]too[/i] cunning sometimes. So what else could he do after dropping off the radar? He'd be gathering intel, but on what? and from where?

Two days passed with no change. The Winter Soldier didn't some to them and they had no sightings ... Stephanie Rogers retreated to her apartment where Agents reported they never saw anyone enter or leave. It was very unlike her actually ... 

The Winter Soldier was in deep cover, completely off the radar ... in a homeless shelter ... he sort of looked the part and no one paid attention to vagrants or homeless people. He was hiding in plain sight, and his bewilderment and odd questions didn't seem so odd when he looked like a crazy hobo. He knew better than to use a public library or internet cafe ... HYDRA would be watching public networks ... Instead he waited till the dead of night and snuck into a late-night business office. He usually covered HYDRA tech agents when they cracked into encrypted computers, but he watched, he learned ... He was more dangerous than HYDRA gave him credit for. He couldn't look up too much, even on the private computer he knew he could be traced, they could figure him out. He didn't search "Bucky", he searched "Captain America", after all, he'd seen her on the cover of newspapers a couple of days ago, for her rescue of Haines, he knew the odds of his particular search being flagged and tracked was less likely, but whatever Bucky was ... he couldn't be so sure he wouldn't be followed. 
 
A few hotspots came up ... [i]Brooklyn ... Camp Leigh ... Europe ... Italy, Austria, Germany, France ... Smithsonian-[/i]
The museum ... Perfect ... he could figure out who Captain America was and ... why she called him Bucky, why she was his target. 
A few other searches and he found her home address, heavily buried data ... but there it was. And so he went. He watched. He waited ... She just sat in her apartment. 2 more days of searching for answers passed. The Winter Soldier didn't understand anything more than he did 5 or 6 days ago ... He decided to his the Smithsonian. The security guard waved him through, but CCTV in the heavily guarded museum picked him out and HYDRA were tipped off.

[i]James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes was the only Howling Command to die in service of his country-[/i]

There it was in black and white ... there was even a picture of him, not that Bucky really recognised himself. he didn't spend much time primping himself in the mirror before missions after all. 
He reached out and touched the plaque, the photo ... [i]Bucky?[/i]
It ... it couldn't be him- ... But, if it was ... 
[i]Best friends since childhood ... [/i]
Why was she the target? 
It was, shocking, terrifying, he'd come so close to killing her and, although he couldn't remember, he suddenly [i]felt[/i] that she was important. At the very least, he couldn't kill her. He [i]knew[/i] her. 

It was then he decided he needed proper answers ... He needed to confront Stephanie herself. 




It had been 6 days and Steph hadn't left her apartment, deliveroo was a saviour, she'd have starved otherwise. But Nat wasn't going to put up with it anymore, as shocking as this revalation was, the world needed Captain America, especially with the terrorist attacks against mutants! 
Nat dug up what she could, calling in favours and contacting old KGB contacts to wring out any information she could find. Most of the data was destroyed or hidden in an underground bunker in the guts of an ice-cold Soviet tundra. She couldn't get [i]those[/i] files, but she could scrape together other things and that was better than nothing. 
She arrived at Cap's doorstep and knocked, nursing a file under her arm. 
[b]"Cap, I've got something you need to see ... it's not much, but ... well we have a few leads."[/b]

She wasn't sure how Stephanie wolud take it ... the files confirmed that Barnes was very much alive ... but what happened to him was nothing short or atrocious. 

Once inside, she sat down beside Stephanie and flipped open the file. [b]"The mission on the train, when you captured Zola ... Barnes fell but ... Zola's experiments on him in Austria, he was trying to replicate the serum they used on you, it must have kept him alive long enough to- ..."[/b] she trailed off, [b]"He was found by Russians, they thawed him out and repaired his body. He had no memory but incredible muscle memory, he fought the scientists and doctors with only his right arm before they put him back on ice."[/b] there was a photo, the Winter Soldier in cryo-stasis, it must have been quite some time later because his hair had grown longer, and pinned to its edge, a smaller photo, Bucky in his old US army uniform ... before the fall. 
[b]"He was transferred to Department-X, where they began Project Winter Soldier, the same Department behind the Black Widow Program some years later ... He even trained me. He was reprogrammed and fit with a metal arm, Vasily Karpov Sr was his first handler ... "[/b] a lot of the details were fuzzy ... his file was largely filled with "suspected hits" though no one could properly confirm it was the Winter Soldier, he was a ghost story. [b]"This mission here, Odessa, it was after I joined SHIELD ... I was covering a scientist ... he shot the scientist ... through me."[/b] Nat had the scars to prove it too ... 

[b]"I'm so sorry Stephanie ... It's- ... It's definitely Bucky but, the guy you knew isn't in there any more. We need to stop him, for good, before anyone else can get hurt. You're the only Super Soldier, the only one who can face up to this guy ... we need you."[/b]


HYDRA swept the museum, a smoke grenade blinded the Winter Soldier, nerve gas took him down, though it took a little longer than expected, he injured seven HYDRA agents ... two were critical. But Karpov had won ...

He returned to the Red Skull, the Winter Soldier cuffed and unconscious, dragged in by a pair of struggling HYDRA goons who lugged his dead weight in. 
[b]"The Winter Solider, Herr Skull."[/b] he presented, stretching out an arm, [i]tadaaa[/i]. [b]"I'll see to it that he is restrained, debriefed and wiped."[/b]