Steve stood in front of the television a long time, one hand holding the DVD, the other hand hovering in front of the power button of the DVD player.

He stared at the DVD – all the footage that had been found of HYDRA's 'initiation' of Bucky into being the Winter Soldier, burned onto a disc that he could watch at SHIELD headquarters from the safe distance of decades later.

"You sure you should be watching that?" Barton asked when he gave the DVD to Steve. "Natasha asked me to deliver it to you, but she also asked me to talk you out of watching it."

"He'd do it for me."

"How do you think it would make him feel?"

How would it make Bucky feel to know Steve had watched the filmed footage of him being tortured into accepting his role as the Winter Soldier? How would he feel knowing that Steve knew more than he probably even remembered himself?

Probably he wouldn't like it, maybe he'd even be angry if he found out, but Steve needed to know. He turned the machine on and plugged in the DVD before he let himself think any more about it.

The image – gray and white and black and bleeding into sepia – fuzzed and shuddered into life on the TV screen, drenched in 'snow' and out of sync with the scratchy audio that accompanied it.

A voice, German or Russian it was hard to tell, was barking orders. The camera was focused on his uniformed back, until it wobbled and jumped and moved to the side.

And there was Bucky, kneeling on the floor of a large room that looked completely made of cement blocks. His shirt was torn and his hands seemed to be tied behind him, but through the torn sleeve, Steve could see that he'd already been fitted with his metal arm. He was covered with bruises and blood, his hair was longer and he needed a shave, but he kept his head up and glared at the guard who was standing over him, barking out orders to him.

The quality of the audio kept Steve from understanding what Bucky was being ordered to do, but Steve recognized the steel in Bucky's eyes as stared calmly at the guard and said nothing. Even when the guard barked again and raised a club, tapping it into his hand, Bucky only lifted his chin and smiled.

Because of the off-sync audio, Steve heard the crack before he saw it; the guard swung the club and hit Bucky on the side of the head, sending him sprawling onto the floor. Steve wanted to reach through the TV and rip that guard's head off his neck, but he could only watch as another crack preceded the guard clubbing Bucky's right shoulder as he struggled off the floor back to his knees.

"…find me…" Steve heard Bucky say, a few seconds before he mouthed it silently on the screen. Blood ran over the side of his face and dripped off onto his trousers. He was still smiling. "…be sorry when he finds me…"

Several heavy thuds preceded the beating this time and though Steve kept his eyes on the screen, he didn't see what was happening. He was hearing what Bucky had said.

'You'll be sorry when he finds me.'

Bucky had expected Steve to find him. He'd expected Steve to rescue him, just like he'd rescued him from Red Skull.

Steve thought he was going to be sick.

The picture jumped and the sound hiccupped and the scene changed. Bucky was still in the same cement block room, his hands were tied in front of himself and he was sitting against the wall. His face was bruised and his eyes were black, but he still glared defiantly at the two guards standing over him.

This time the sound was more in sync with the action. One of the guards said something, it sounded Russian to Steve, and he held a bowl out toward Bucky.

"Not interested," Bucky answered.

The other guard shouted something, grabbed the bowl and slammed it onto the floor next to Bucky's leg. It looked like soup. The guard shouted again, pointing to the bowl, obviously demanding something. Bucky picked the bowl up with his bound hands and flung it at the guards, splashing the soup across their boots.

Steve heard the bowl spinning to a stop on the cement floor and he heard the thud of the guard punching Bucky in the face and he heard the crack of Bucky's head slamming into the wall.

He heard Bucky laugh through the beating.

Bucky expected Steve to save him.

The scene abruptly changed again. Bucky was sitting in the middle of the floor. The guards were wearing coats and gloves but Bucky was barefoot and shirtless. He was covered in blood and bruises and raised welts. His hair was longer and fell into his eyes when he raised his head. His beard was heavier and his bones and joints were starkly visible through his skin that was clearly covered in goose bumps.

"…end of the line..." Bucky said. His voice was hoarse and his breath came out as frost. He was freezing. "To the end of the line."

The guards moved in, kicking and beating him, but this time he didn't laugh.

He was waiting for Steve to save him.

The next scene emerged through a jumble of melting film and bouncing audio. Bucky was face down on the floor, all skin and bones and horrible wounds. A dumped bowl of soup and a spilled cup of water lay near his right hand.

"He's not coming," an off screen voice said. A Russian voice speaking English.

"He'll find me," Bucky said, his voice cracking, muffled against the cement floor. "He found me once, he'll find me again. To the end of the line, that's what we always told each other: to the end of the line."

A man walked into the image. Not a guard, he was wearing a lab coat, not a uniform. He dragged Bucky up by the hair and shoved a newspaper at him.

"End of the line."

He let go of Bucky's hair and stepped back. Bucky's hands weren't tied and he pushed himself up and picked up the newspaper. Steve saw his own face on the front page and the words in large block print: 'missing and presumed dead'.

Bucky was finding out that Steve wasn't coming.

"No." Bucky's voice was raw. "No! This isn't real! This – this – isn't true. It isn't true!"

"End of the line," Lab-Coat Man sneered again. He pulled the paper away but Bucky grabbed at it with his metal hand.

"No! No – no – please. Please!"

A scrap of the paper ripped into his metal hand and Lab-Coat Man pried the hand open and pulled even that scrap away from Bucky. He marched away and Steve heard a heavy metal door open and close.

Bucky collapsed onto the floor, his metal hand outstretched, gulping sobs and swallows of air.

"Please…"

And Steve felt like he had a knife shoved down his esophagus.

The image whirred and rolled then, the audio sounded slow and distorted. The screen went black momentarily and then there was Bucky. He seemed to be in the same cement block room but now he was sitting on a small bed, like a cot from an infirmary, and there was a blue kerosene room heater on the floor near him. His hair and beard had been trimmed, and his face had been cleaned of all the blood. He was wearing thick socks, a heavy shirt and trousers, and he had a blanket around his shoulders.

A guard walked up to him and offered him a bowl and Bucky took it without a word or gesture and drank from it. He glanced up and seemed to only just realize there was a camera focused on him. He pulled his feet up onto the bed and turned his back to the camera and kept drinking from the bowl.

Steve grabbed the DVD player and threw it through the closest wall.

##

To be continued (because it's just too sad to leave it here.)