This idea's been rattling around for awhile (since the first time I saw Winter Soldier), and recent conversations about the darker sides of Steve and Bucky's characters only made me want to write it more. Add in incredibly painful righteous fury on behalf of Jack Benjamin (SebStan in 'Kings') and you get this fic. Enjoy!

"He looked right at me…and he didn't even know me."

Steve remembers the agony of that realization, that moment that changed everything. That moment he realized his other half was back from the dead and at the same time…not.

When he walks into the bank vault, Sam and Nat on his heels, he freezes half-way in. Eyes fixate on the lonely chair, on the metal bands at the arms and legs and the screens now blank; takes in the metal table, the silver of the needles and terrifying instruments gleaming at him as if in smug victory.

Sam's the one who finds the back room, a security booth from the looks of it. He's the one who finds the files but it's Nat who tries to block Steve's entrance ("Don't, Steve. Not unless you're planning to head down a whole different path.") when he hears Pierce's familiar voice say 'wipe him'. The muffled animalistic screams of his best friend have Steve lurching to the side and emptying the contents of his stomach onto the vault's tiled floor.

Then he's lurching up, shield already flying, and the metallic shriek of the chair brings Sam rushing out of the booth to see what's happened. And Steve doesn't care, doesn't see, doesn't scream; everything is destroy, destroy, destroy.

Only when he's panting heavily, knuckles scratched and bleeding, equipment scattered and sparking—only then does Steve turn and muscle his way into the booth. He immediately rewinds the file Sam was watching to the beginning, and it takes everything he has not to go on another rampage as the camera zooms in on Bucky's wounded helplessly confused expression.

[But I knew him.]

Four simple words that claw and wrench at Steve's insides until all that's left is pain and rage.

Because Bucky knew him. Seventy years of brainwashing and torture and one look at Steve had Bucky breaking through the programming. Bucky knew Steve and HYDRA wiped him.

Blood roaring and scorching his veins, heart beating a staccato rhythm in triple time—

Somewhere through the chaos, Sam is saying his name, maybe pleading with him to dial it back.

But he can't and he won't. Everything is just a blazing white nothing, overcome and swallowed up by the blistering incandescent fury that has taken hold of him.

HYDRA did this. They took Bucky. Took his best friend, the axis Steve's world has always spun on, and twisted-tortured-remade him into barely a shell of a man. Used him without pity or remorse only to violate him in the worst way, stealing everything that made him Bucky, and then boxing him up and putting him on ice until they had need of his skills again.

Steve is no saint. He's seen war and blood and death, has delivered it with his own two hands.

But he's only ever wanted to kill this badly once, in the weeks following Bucky's fall from the train.

Even that desire pales in comparison to the urge he's feeling now. This isn't just killing. This is a drive, a compulsion to find every base, every soldier, every last spec of HYDRA and annihilate them all. He will salt and burn the earth if he has to in retribution, to satisfy the need for vengeance that writhes beneath his skin.

It isn't pretty and it isn't the course of action most people would expect noble, sainted Steve Rogers to take. And that's fine, better than fine. Because somewhere along the line since he woke up out of time and out of place, Steve has tried to be the man history painted him to be, the hero that fell and rose again triumphant. He's sick and tired of hiding behind forced picture perfect smiles and "good ol' fashioned" ideals that frankly, he didn't even share when they were current fashion. He's wandered this time stumbling around aimlessly, trying to find some way to stabilize.

Once upon a time Bucky was his anchor, his north star, his everything. And then he fell and Steve has always known that a very important part of himself fell away with his best friend.

Now he finds out Bucky is alive, and a moment that should have Steve soaring on wings of joy is tainted by the suffering and near erasure of the man who completes him in every way and Steve will never forgive HYDRA for that.

So yeah. Murderous rampage may not be the method the public approves of for their golden captain, but Steve will make damn sure that HYDRA pays for every innocent life they took and every. single. second of harm and horror they inflicted on James Buchanan Barnes.

Steve is done trying to be what everyone wants. This is who he is, who he's always been. The man that survived every illness and fought every bully despite all the odds not being in his favor; the man who broke regulation and disobeyed a direct order to charge solo into enemy territory and rescue his friend. The man who took down HYDRA and Nazi's without hesitation, who went from only wanting to do what had to be done to save innocents, to wiping HYDRA off every map in retribution for Bucky's death.

Everything to Steve is really as simple as Bucky. If the world should hang in the balance and Bucky was the price to save it, Steve isn't sure he would choose the world.

HYDRA had best be prepared, Steve thinks as he follows Sam and Nat out of the vault.

He watches silently as the self-destruct program Nat triggered erases the damn base from existence.

Steve will find Bucky; will find him and bring him back and even if he never remembers, Steve will make sure that Bucky is safe and loved and cherished. And he plans to leave all of HYDRA a smoldering ruin in his wake.