#fought back

He was shoved into fight after fight not to teach him but to probably test his durability with his serum, figure out what his limits were. And when he got fed up enough with it, when he was tired of hurting, he got up and he fought back. And it wouldn’t be some miraculous fight, not at first, he’d go down broken and bleeding after his first fights but the first time he got someone down and beat them to a pulp, it wasn’t pretty. It was horrific. Like watching a rabbit beat down a fox.

And that is probably when Zola decided that this fine specimen would no longer serve as a testing grounds for the supersoldier serum, but as the Fist of HYDRA itself.

And then the fights started to get easier, and shorter. He’d come out with less and less blood on his face and less broken bones, not because the serum was helping or doing its job but because he was. The bodies would look less and less battered, less like a wild stampeded and more calculated, more precise. He was getting better. He was turning into a masterpiece. Faster, stronger, smarter, better, better than he ever was before.

What HYDRA taught him was how to survive but James Barnes learned himself how to fight. How to analyze his opponents, how to find their weaknesses, how to be the perfect assassin, the Smithsonian didn’t put his school grades in there for nothing, he was intelligent. He probably has massive array of techniques that have no names or definitions because he came up with them himself. All of that was him. And when he was given weapons, he took them, because they made the job easier. It kept him from using his arm as a battering ram and that, he felt, if he could feel at all anymore, was mercy.

As much of the Winter Soldier is terrifying, he is more so because he adapted. He wasn’t taught anything, he has no rules to follow, no techniques one could learn, he’s unreadable because every single action he made up himself. And he adapts fast. He’d always be analyzing. Always watching. Learning. Copying. He was a killing machine, yes, but he built that up from the ground. HYDRA gave him the tools, but everything else he did, that was him. That was Bucky.

And keep in mind that probably also during this time, he was holding on for Steve. His memories are leaving him behind, but he’s holding on, desperately. He keeps going through the fights, he keeps fighting because he knows he has to stay alive for Steve, for Steve, for Steve.

He’s bloodying his fists with people he had to kill to survive and every day he falls deeper into the hole of what he’s becoming. Who he’s becoming. How many people he’s killed. And sometimes he sees Steve’s body lying there and not a strangers with that same red blood on his hands. And sometimes he’s terrified of the idea that when Steve finally does come for him, what will he see? Will he be too covered in blood to recognize him and shoot him down before he could speak? Would Steve even recognize him? Or would he be terrified of him? Horrified? Disgusted? Bucky isn’t sure which one is the lesser of two evils.

And then HYDRA thrusts that damn paper in his face giving up the search for Captain America and that’s his first fight when he rips his opponents head clean off. When he realizes just how lost he is. Just how alone he’s going to be. That death won’t even find him now.