028.

____________________

But it also made him feel like maybe, just maybe, he wasn't completely alone.

____________________

It had been months. The Tower, with its sleek, metallic walls and the hum of technology always in the background, had started to feel more like a prison than a home.

Bucky still hadn't gotten used to it.

It was as if the walls knew his name—knew the ghost of the man he used to be—and they whispered it to him every time he walked past a mirror or caught a fleeting reflection.

His eyes were still haunted. The weight of his past, the Hydra experiments, the blood on his hands, and most of all—the emptiness of his forgotten life—still loomed over him like a dark cloud that never quite went away.

The first few weeks had been the worst.

The nightmares hadn't stopped. Every time he closed his eyes, he was back in the cold, sterile room, locked away with the screams of his victims and the unrelenting voice of his handlers in his ears.

Every morning, Steve was there, standing at his door, that ever-present look of concern etched into his features, though Bucky never let it show that it felt like drowning.

He kept to himself.

Stayed in his room.

Even when Sam started showing up, sitting on the other side of his door, talking about everything and nothing, Bucky remained as distant as ever.

At first, the idea of socializing felt impossible. Talking to anyone—trusting anyone—felt like it would crack him wide open and expose him for what he truly was: a monster in a man's skin.

Sam would knock and call out to him, offering to talk or just sit in silence. But Bucky kept the door shut, only opening it for the food left on a tray on the floor.

Steve tried, too—gently pushing for Bucky to get out of his room, to join him for meals, but Bucky couldn't.

No one had told him why he was there.

What he was supposed to do now?

Everyone in the Tower had their own identity, their own history, their own story.

But Bucky didn't.

His life began and ended with the cold, metallic hum of the Winter Soldier program. All he remembered was Hydra—the mission to kill, the blood, and the training.

Experiment 751.

He knew her number.

The only thing that made sense to him was her—that girl, the one he'd known in the chaos of the lab, the one whose voice and presence seemed so familiar despite the years.

He didn't remember her as a person.

He only remembered her as an anchor, a tether to a reality that felt less like a nightmare.

And so, he stayed locked away.

His room had become a tomb for his fractured memories, a place where nothing made sense. He didn't even know who he was. He didn't remember the man he had been before Hydra. He only remembered the Soldier, the experiment, the pain.

Then Sam came along, one week after another. Bucky didn't know exactly when it had started, but Sam had been there, slowly breaking through his isolation, bringing food, making small talk, making himself a constant presence in Bucky's life.

And eventually, Bucky found himself nodding—accepting the presence of someone who wasn't Hydra, wasn't The Soldier.

The barrier between Bucky and the world was still thick, still nearly impenetrable, but Sam's unyielding patience cracked small pieces off every time he sat outside his closed door.

It wasn't that Bucky was getting better.

No, that would imply some grand shift or healing process had begun. The truth was far messier, slower.

Every session with Sam, every meal he half-heartedly joined, every time he stood up and walked down the hallway, was another small victory—and yet, the distance between him and the man he used to be was still miles away.

Bucky started eating with Steve and Sam regularly, though the process was far from easy.

The first time he had joined them, his heart had been pounding. He sat in the corner, his back to the wall, eyes constantly scanning the room for danger, as if expecting Hydra to come barging in at any moment.

Steve hadn't said anything, just offered him food and sat beside him, quiet but steady, like a rock amidst the chaos in Bucky's mind.

Weeks passed.

His feet started leaving the confines of his room more often—first for food, then for boredom, slowly he found himself walking through the Tower with his head held a fraction higher.

He wasn't ready to belong here, but the familiar weight of Sam's voice or Steve's easy grin helped keep him tethered to the present.

It was Sam, eventually, who started to coax him into training. He had pushed and prodded, encouraging Bucky to move, to stretch, to fight in ways that didn't feel like his body was remembering violence but was simply... moving.

It was a long, slow process.

Training for Bucky wasn't about strength anymore. It wasn't about being the Soldier—it was about taking back control, even if just for a moment.

But those moments felt small.

Fragile.

And every time he sparred with Steve, every time they touched, it brought something else to the surface.

Something raw.

He didn't remember Steve's face from before Hydra, but there was something in his eyes now, something familiar—a bond that felt like it should belong to a different life.

And then there was the notebook.

Sam had given it to him months ago, after one particularly brutal therapy session where Bucky had not spoken. He didn't know why Sam thought it would help, but Sam never asked questions.

Just handed him the small, black notebook and told him to write.

Anything.

One word.

One sentence.

Write about the nightmares.

Write about the quiet.

Write about whatever kept him up at night.

Bucky hadn't written anything for weeks.

But every time he held the pen, he thought about her.

Experiment 751.

Her face never came, but the name—751—echoed in his mind. And sometimes, in the fleeting moments between waking and sleeping, he could see her again.

He could hear the sound of her voice—soft and low, like she was speaking in a dream.

The notebook remained unopened most days.

He wasn't ready for it.

And the nightmares didn't stop. The same ones every night. Cold metal floors, the flash of gold eyes, the sound of his own scream as he relived each kill. The sharp sting of the metal arm, the fire of Hydra's experiments burning through his brain.

And her. She was always there, in the background, part of the chaos, part of the horror. The face, the voice, the touch—nothing—just the number.

The most haunting part of those dreams was that she had never been his enemy. She had always been there—always seemed to understand him, in a way the rest of the world didn't.

It terrified him.

But it also made him feel like maybe, just maybe, he wasn't completely alone.

He wasn't sure why it made him so afraid. The absence of her name? Her face? The fear of seeing her again? He couldn't answer it. It felt like a piece of the puzzle was always missing, and the more he tried to fit the pieces together, the more everything slipped through his fingers.

Bucky hadn't come to terms with who he was yet. Not entirely. The Soldier still lived inside him, waiting for an order to kill, waiting for the rage to spill over.

But Sam's steady encouragement and Steve's quiet presence had started to chip away at the shell he had wrapped around himself.

Slowly, so slowly, he started to feel more like a person than a weapon. A person who could eat with the others, a person who could sit in the same room without feeling like he might break into pieces. A person who might one day, just maybe, start to remember more than the pain.

But every day, every moment, was still a battle.

A battle for peace.

For identity.

And the only thing he clung to in that storm of uncertainty was the faint memory of Experiment 751.

Whatever she had been to him, whatever bond they had shared in the dark corners of Hydra's labs, it was the only thing that made sense.

Even if he couldn't remember.

_____