#brooklynrooted

I take a bit of a mishmash approach to B’s time as the Winter Soldier, putting her in Department X’s hands from 1944-1991 and then directly in the hands of the US branch of HYDRA from December of 1991 onward. I have a lot of headcanons regarding the differences between the two organizations, but the most relevant one here is how they each used the memory wipes.

For Dept. X, memory wipes were very precise. The Soviets removed (and implanted) specific things, but left enough intact that she could pass for a normal person on missions. But it wasn’t 100% perfect, and it ultimately led to the 616-canon incident in ‘73 where the Winter Soldier went AWOL in Dallas and Chicago and NYC for a few weeks. After that, Dept. X stopped sending the Winter Soldier on missions in the USA.

When HYDRA got direct control in 1991, that was going to be a big problem. So they began to use the memory wipes in a much more blunt, less nuanced way. They wiped out significantly more than the Soviets ever did, because they needed greater control if they were going to use her on US soil.

But the thing about super-soldiers is that they heal more quickly and to a greater degree than normal squishy humans. While it’s true that her brain tends to zag where a normal person’s would zig, the longer she’s left out of cryo the more it starts to repair itself and more she starts to remember.

The museum definitely gave things a jump. She remembers falling and Zola and, obviously, Steve. Particularly skinny!Steve, who she knew for 20-odd years; beefy!Steve was only around for a bit over a year. Physically, he’s not connected to nearly as many potential memories as his skinny self is.

The fact that she remembers skinny!Steve, however vaguely, is a huge deal. It’s solid proof that Pierce was lying to her, and she needs that. She doesn’t know who she is. She’s frightened and confused and isn’t certain who to trust, but she can trust actual evidence.

If Steve is correct and she really was Becky Barnes — she’s taking the museum’s claim that Becky Barnes is dead at face value* — then something was done to her. Someone took Becky and turned her into the Winter Soldier. She knows who did it, but she wants to know how and why. That thought is what stirs up the memory from ‘43; Becky Barnes did not know what Zola did to her and she found that absolutely terrifying.

She also wants revenge. She does not, at this point, have any real concept of morality or right vs. wrong, so it’s a very primal feeling: They hurt her, and she will hurt them back. And if that means tracking down each remaining HYDRA agent individually across the globe, then that is what she will do.