A Thought while my brain is failing to produce a title for this fic I'm trying to post: droids are commonly subjected to memory wipes. Ergo, perhaps the reason why Artoo Detoo doesn't bother to fill anyone in on anything potentially relevant in the OT is because he doesn't think it's actually important for them to know and he just assumes "oh, somebody's had a memory wipe I guess, nbd." And just (literally) rolls with it.
Because this sort of thing happens to droids all the time. You run into somebody who's seemingly forgotten your entire previous interactions with them? No big deal. Say hi, and get to know the new them! You run into somebody whom you know shares some factory-specs with somebody else, but neither of them remember the connection anymore? No big deal. They can always just compare schematics if they need to know something like that. See-Threepio doesn't know that the guy who made him is calling himself Darth Vader now? Vader probably had a memory wipe just like Threepio did and doesn't remember making Threepio anymore either, or the designation he used to go by; it's no big deal. Happens all the time.
Obi-Wan Kenobi is calling himself "Ben" now, and has his facts about Anakin mixed-up? Sounds like his circuits got scrambled by a partial memory wipe, no big deal. Luke and Leia are already arguing like counterparts, so the fact that they don't seem to know they share their fabrication event doesn't matter; they've clearly figured out the important parts of their relationship, just like he and Threepio do after every one of Threepio's memory wipes. No big deal! These aren't things that matter to droids, it's just a common part of (non-organic) life.
If anybody ever asked Artoo to confirm or deny any of these things he knows, he'd probably tell them; but if nobody asks, how is he supposed to know any of it matters? This sort of thing happens all the time, it's no big deal...
If you haven't read Someone Gave the Clones and the Jedi a Private Communication Server. It Was a Bad Idea. by @shwaygirl (at least, I hope your AO3 is the same as your tumblr and I haven't accidentally tagged an unrelated stranger) yet, please do so now because it contains this gem of an exchange, among many others:
Next Person to Punch a Droid is getting amputated @ Kix
Hey @ Prime I was reviewing your brain scan from that head wound a few weeks ago. Have you ever been memory wiped?
Jango Fett @ Prime
Yeah. Dooku wiped me like twice while I worked for him
Next Person to Punch a Droid is getting amputated @ Kix
What the kark. Why?
Jango Fett @ Prime
Correction: Boba says it was actually 3 times
Chief Healer Vokara Che @ MasterChe
That is incredibly unhealthy. Please come to the Halls of Healing next time you are on Coruscant.
The Real Chancellor @ CmmderFox
Why did he do that?
Jango Fett @ Prime
No idea. Probably did or learned something he didn’t like. After the third time, I was told if I fucked up again, they’d take Boba and wipe my memories of him
#Punch a Droid @ CmmderCody
Damn
Captain Fordo @ Alpha-77
Is that what happened to Omega?
Fill for 'knife to the throat' for @badthingshappenbingo
Rating: Teen
Fandom: TFATWS / MCU
Words: 3028
Characters: Winter Soldier, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Alpine Barnes
Summary: There's no way Bucky's gonna let anything happen to Alpine - even if it means going back to HYDRA
Bucky knows something’s wrong before he’s even opened the door of his apartment. He draws the single knife he keeps sheathed at his side, and carefully opens the door so that it doesn’t creak.
Standing in his living room, just in front of the doorway to his kitchen, is a man wearing black tac gear. There’s an orange HYDRA symbol emblazoned on his shoulder.
He’d wondered how long it would take HYDRA to get to him. His trial and pardon were on the news, and he’s sure some of his and Sam’s escapades have been too. But he’d been careful to stay quiet in his area.
He runs at the HYDRA soldier, knife slashing at his throat, but the soldier steps to the side, revealing a second man, holding Alpine in his hands, a knife pressed against her throat.
Bucky freezes, stumbles back a step.
“Come back with us, Soldier, without a fuss, and the cat lives,” the first man says.
Bucky doesn’t even consider fighting. The knife drops to the ground with a clatter. More HYDRA soldiers appear from his kitchen, grabbing him and stripping his jackets and gloves away, and checking his pockets. They cuffs his wrists behind his back, chain his ankles, and force the muzzle onto his face.
As he’s dragged out, he sees a soldier throw Alpine at the far wall. She hits it hard, yowling, and falls to the floor. She doesn’t get up. He can see blood staining her beautiful white fur.
He snarls at the soldiers, straining against them, but one of them draws a syringe with a sedative, and plunges it into his neck. He’s out in seconds.
He comes to several hours later. The muzzle is gone, but they’ve taken most of his clothes away. He tries to stand, but he’s held back by restraints on his arms, legs and neck. It’s the Chair.
No.
He can take anything else. He’s lost count of how many times he’s been captured on missions since escaping from HYDRA, and he’s been subjected to cutting and burning and whipping and waterboarding and just straight-up beating, but electroshocks he can’t take. Especially when it’s HYDRA. When they’re going to wipe his memories, replant the trigger words. Make him their mindless killer again.
His heartrate increases, his breathing quickens, chest rising and falling sharply.
Something’s barked at him, but he doesn’t hear it.
His head snaps to the side, cheek turning pink as someone slaps him. “Soldier! Pay attention!”
He musters the strength to look at his captors. “I’m not the Soldier anymore. Your trigger words are gone.”
The man laughs. “You are delusional if you think we cannot do it once again. And with your mind the mess it is, it will not take much for you to be ours again.”
Bucky takes a deep breath. “I am James Bucky Barnes. I am no longer the Winter Soldier.”
The man ignores him, and moves over to a computer that’s connect to the Chair by a long cable. A technician, who must have been hovering just outside the door, slips in and forces a mouthguard into his mouth. The man begins clicking things on the computer, presumably setting the strength of the wipe, and the technician sticks a needle into his flesh arm, and hooks him up to drugs.
As they flow into his veins, he tries to focus on the withdrawal he went through, curled up on the floor of his empty apartment in Romania. It’s better than the alternative – thinking about the wipe. Thinking about becoming the Winter Soldier.
All too soon, the technician steps back, and the man flips a lever.
As the electricity lights up his brain, he thinks, I am James Bucky Barnes. I am no longer the Winter Soldier.
But for how long?
-
After Bucky was first pardoned, Sam used to text him every day. Bucky would usually take several days to respond, if he did at all, and his replies usually consisted of ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘okay’. Since he took on the mantle of Captain America, and he and Bucky started working together regularly on missions (and you might even go so far as to call them friends), Bucky started having proper conversations with Sam via text. Sometimes he’d even send memes, or photos of Alpine.
The day after their mission in Ballarat, he texts Bucky, inviting him over for a beer. Bucky doesn’t respond all day, which is unusual, but maybe he’s just having a bad day, so Sam leaves it.
The next day, he texts Bucky again, and again, he gets no response.
He tries calling. No answer.
Sam just so happens to be near Bucky’s apartment the next day, so he drops by and knocks on the door. Still no answer.
He unlocks the door with the keys Bucky gave him only last week.
“Bucky?”
He’s worried enough to admit it to himself, as he rushes through Bucky’s apartment, searching all the rooms, but there’s no sign of Bucky. The kitchen’s clean; all the dishes put away, benchtop gleaming. Bucky’s bed is neatly made, and his books are sitting neatly on his shelf.
Sam goes into the laundry, and stops dead. There’s still washing in the washing machine. Bucky had been initially suspicious of it, but it’d grown on him and now he swore by it. Bucky had been putting the load on just before they met up for Ballarat, and he knows that because Bucky had been complaining about it over the phone to him.
It’s been three days now, and there’s no way Bucky would leave his clothes sitting in a washing machine for that long. They’d get mouldy.
Sam goes back through the house, looking for some clue as to what happened to Bucky, and that’s where he sees her, half-hidden behind the lounge – Alpine, covered in crusty dried blood.
He checks her pulse immediately, and he’s relieved to find she’s alive.
He goes into the kitchen, and wets a cloth, and wipes the blood off her coat. She mewls pitifully at him.
There’s no way Bucky would leave her like this. Which means he’s been captured.
He checks Alpine over, but by some miracle, she doesn’t have any broken bones, only a deep cut on her side. She stands up and stalks over his lap, clawing her way up his shirt and settling on his shoulders. Sam gets up and picks up a blanket from the kitchen, and then continues searching the apartment. There’s no sign of any fight, let alone someone capturing Bucky. These people knew what they were doing.
The fact that Sam hasn’t received any ransom demands or threats yet means that they either want Bucky for information, or for the Winter Soldier.
“Message Sarah,” he orders his phone. “Tell her I’ll be away for a bit, Bucky’s been kidnapped.” His phones makes a pinging noise as the message is sent. “Scan all CCTV cameras in a 100m radius for Bucky.”
Bless Tony Stark and his advanced technology, and ability to hack into just about anything.
He leaves Bucky’s apartment, and sets up in his ute, using his laptop to try and track Bucky down. Even though his phone’s running a search program, he checks the local cameras manually, starting when Bucky should have arrived home from Ballarat. And sure enough, right on time, Bucky enters through the front door. Sam speeds through the next few days. He switches to the sides of the building, rewinding to when Bucky entered his apartment, but still nothing. He watches the footage of the back, and mere minutes after Bucky enters the building, an unconscious person is dragged out of the back door, hefted onto a gurney and put in an ambulance.
The ambulance drives off with lights and siren off.
Those must be really shitty paramedics, treating a patient like that.
He scribbles down the numberplate (TK 421), and then runs a trace through his tracking program. It plots a course for him, and he’s off immediately.
The program takes him to an abandoned warehouse near the docks, so he parks the ute a few hundred metres away, straps on the wingpack and his weapons. He slinks over to the warehouse, Alpine trotting behind him.
“Go wait in the ute,” he hisses, but she ignores him, resolutely following him into the warehouse.
There’s a guard inside, who collapses as Sam throws the shield into her face. He continues into the base, dispatching several more guards. Finally, he comes to a door marked ‘Maintenance’ in large black letters. He opens it, although he expects it to be empty.
It’s not. Bucky’s in a chair, a metal headpiece obscuring most of his face, but he’s screaming in pain, convulsing. Sam recognises the Chair from Bucky’s files, recovered when Nat dumped all of SHIELD and HYDRA’s data on the internet.
There’s at least a dozen armed soldiers in there, guns pointed at Bucky, but they quickly shift over to point at Sam. He dives behind the console, pulling Alpine with him.
Why didn’t he shut her in the ute?
He reaches up and fumbles at the levers; surely one of them must shut the Chair off. Bucky’s screams intensify for a second, before stopping as the Chair shuts off.
Bullets spray the wall behind him, and Sam ducks out just long enough to shoot the soldiers. Soon, he’s got them all, and he immediately jumps out and runs for Bucky.
Bucky’s panting, the mouthguard still clenched in his teeth. As Sam gets closer, Bucky lowers is eyes, fixing them on the floor. Sam finally gets a proper look at him. He’s clad only in a pair of thin pants, stained with piss and blood and who knows what else. There’s several large cuts on his chest, still seeping blood, and the places where the restraints rest on his skin are bright red and blistered.
“Bucky?” Sam asks. His eyes are wild, and he doesn’t look like Bucky Barnes.
Bucky doesn’t answer, but Sam sees his brows furrow between the gaps in his hair.
He steels himself. “Soldier?” Bucky’s head jerks up, then returns to gaze at the floor. His jaw shifts slightly, and Sam leans forwards, and removes the mouthguard. Bucky lets him do it, although he cringes away minutely.
“Soldier?” he tries again.
“Ready to comply,” Bucky says.
Shit. What the hell is he supposed to do? Is the Winter Soldier actually back, or is Bucky’s brain just slightly mushed up from the wipe? How long was he in the chair for? The full three days he was missing?
“Do you remember me?” Sam asks.
Bucky glances up him for a split second. “No, sir. Sorry, sir.”
“If I let you out, what will you do?”
Bucky hesitates. “Comply.”
Sam moves back to the console, and begins flipping more levers. The restraints release, but Bucky doesn’t move.
“Follow me, Soldier,” Sam orders. Bucky stands and follows him out, a half step behind, posture perfect and eyes on the ground. The moment he passes the console, Alpine jumps up at him, climbing up to sit in her usual spot on his shoulders. Her claws leave bloody scratches behind, but Bucky’s only reaction is to stiffen and lean slightly forwards so she doesn’t fall off.
Sam calls the police and directs them to the base, and then shepherds Bucky into the passenger seat of the ute. Alpine settles in his lap, and Bucky stares at her with an expression of wonder on his face. As Sam drives away, she begins licking his fingers.
Sam takes Bucky back to his house. Thankfully, the boys are at school, and although Sarah sends him a questioning look when they enter, seeing what a mess Bucky’s in, she lets him shut Bucky in Sam’s bedroom without comment.
“Take a seat,” Sam says. Bucky kneels on the floor. Sam takes his arm and gently relocates him to the bed.
“Do you recognise the name Bucky Barnes?” Sam asks.
Bucky looks terrified, and he goes tense, as if preparing for a blow. “No, sir!”
“You’re not in trouble,” Sam reassures him, although he doubts Bucky will believe him. “I’m not going to hurt you. No one is going to hurt you. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, let’s get you cleaned up. I’ll get you a change of clothes. You right to shower yourself?”
“Yes, sir.”
He guides Bucky into the bathroom next door, and then goes and finds a set of Bucky’s clothes that have somehow ended up living in their lounge room. It’s not surprising – Bucky sleeps over most weeks.
Sam leaves the clothes outside the bathroom, but there’s no sound of running water, and there’s no way Bucky could shower that quickly. “Everything alright?” he calls.
There’s a moment of silence. “Sir, there’s-there’s no hose in here.”
“Use the shower,” Sam says. A second later, the water turns on.
Sam goes downstairs, and explains the situation to Sarah. Once he’s reassured her that the Soldier’s no threat to Cass and AJ, she agrees to let Bucky stay until he’s Bucky again.
By then, Bucky’s finished his shower and has returned to sitting on the bed. When Sam comes back, he finds him sitting with Alpine, her white hairs already shedding on his black t-shirt and jeans. Bucky’s stroking her with the index finger of his right hand.
He sees Sam, and freezes, then his hand snatches away.
“It’s okay,” Sam says.
Bucky looks at him suspiciously. “Permission to stroke the cat?”
“Granted.” Sam says. He hates what he has to say next, but while Bucky’s in the mindset of the Soldier, he has little choice. Bucky won’t wake up on day and not be the Soldier. It’ll be a slow process. Sam just hopes he can manage it himself, because the Wakandans are still pretty pissed with Bucky.
“Soldier, you will not leave this house unaccompanied. You will not hurt anyone, including myself, Sarah, AJ and Cass, outside of self-defence. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” Sam can practically see the gears turning in Bucky’s head. “This cat…it is familiar.”
“You remember her?” Sam asks. Maybe Bucky’s not so far gone.
Bucky hesitates. Sam can’t blame him. He can’t imagine HYDRA took Bucky’s remembering well.
“Yes, sir. Is…is she Alpine?”
Sam feels like jumping in celebration. “Yes, that’s Alpine.” Bucky nods. “Are you sure you don’t recognise the name Bucky Barnes? James Buchanan Barnes?”
“No, sir.”
“Sam Wilson? Natasha Romanoff? Rebecca Barnes? Steve Rogers?”
“I-I feel angry, sir.”
“Angry?”
“Hard done by,” Bucky says. He looks like he regrets saying anything. “This feels wrong. Why does it feel wrong?”
How can he begin to explain how wrong the Winter Soldier is? “How do you think of yourself?” he asks.
Bucky looks confused. “I’m the Winter Soldier. HYDRA’s Asset.”
“And what is that?”
“A weapon.”
This is so messed up. “That is why it feels wrong. It is wrong. You are not a weapon. You are not the Asset. You are a person.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“You will,” Sam says, “Now get some sleeps.”
Bucky carefully lays down on his side, manoeuvring Alpine so that she’s snuggled up against his chest. His eyes shut, but Sam doesn’t know if he actually sleeps.
“No!”
Sam’s woken in the dead of the night by Bucky’s horrified scream. He rushes into his room, and finds Bucky kneeling on the floor, hands on his head. Alpine’s nudging at his back.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Bucky says the moment he sees Sam.
Sam kneels in front of Bucky, and pulls his hands down. “You have nothing to be sorry for. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“I killed all of those people,” Bucky says, a tear trickling down his face, “But they were innocent.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Sam says, and Bucky nods immediately, like he doesn’t dare disagree with Sam.
But if Bucky’s remembering previous missions…“Do you recognise the name James Bucky Barnes?”
Bucky pauses. “Yes, sir.”
“That’s you. You’re James Bucky Barnes.”
“Me?” Bucky’s eyes widen. He’s already remembering. Bloody super soldier serum and its magical healing.
“I am James Bucky Barnes,” he says, meeting Sam’s eyes properly for the first time since he’d been captured, “And you are Sam Wilson. And this,” He picked up Alpine and cradled her to his chest. “Is Alpine. My cat.”
“Yes. And you are no longer the Winter Soldier,” Sam says. Bucky smiles.
A week later, Bucky’s memory is mostly intact, and although he spends most of his time in the tiny broom-closet he’s commandeered as a bedroom, playing with Alpine, when he comes out he acts more and more like Bucky Barnes.
“You never told me how they got you,” Sam says, as he and Bucky sit side-by-side on the edge of the docks, feet dangling off the edge, drinking beers.
“They had a knife on Alpine’s throat,” Bucky says. “What could I do?”
“You let them turn you back into the Soldier for you cat?”
“I’d do anything for her,” Bucky says sharply. “I’d do anything for my family.”
There’s a loud shriek from the house, and Bucky tenses. It’s followed by the sound of Cass’s laughter, and AJ bellowing “Cass!”
“Speaking of family,” Sam says, “Sarah and I were thinking, since you spend so much time here anyway, you may as well move in here. Sell your apartment and live with us.”
Bucky doesn’t answer. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Sam hurries to add. “It’s just if you want-”
Bucky turns to him, tears in his eyes. “You mean it?”
“Hell yeah I mean it. As long as you’re okay with sleeping in a glorified broom closet.”
“Just like Harry Potter.”
“How the hell do you know about Harry Potter?” Sam asked. Gandalf was one thing, but Harry Potter? That hadn’t been published in 1937.
“I had a lot of spare time in Romania,” Bucky explains.
Alpine slinks in between them, wedging herself in between their thighs. Sam pats her head, and she leans into him, purring.
“Thanks for rescuing me,” Bucky says suddenly.
“No problems. Like you said, I’d do anything for my family,” Sam says.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Voyager
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jaffen/Kathryn Janeway, Chakotay & Kathryn Janeway, Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway
Characters: Chakotay (Star Trek), Kathryn Janeway, Jaffen (Star Trek)
Additional Tags: Episode: s07e16 Workforce, Memory Loss, Missed Chances, Regret, POV Multiple
Series: Part 29 of Behind the Scenes: 31 Days of Voyager
Summary:
Losing and regaining her memories jolts the captain into reassessing her long-held priorities, including the decisions she’s made about a certain first officer … but timing has never been their strong suit.
Written for #fictober2018 Day 28 prompt: “I felt it. You know what I mean.” Episode addition to Workforce.
See Threepio, after having been with the Organa family for almost twenty years, when asked by Luke who Leia is, does not even know her name. Only that she was a “passenger of some importance.”
How many times has his memory been wiped since the end of Revenge of the Sith? How much of his...fussy personality is due to being constantly unsettled. How many times has Artoo had to reintroduce himself?
