hiiii!!!! i have a request you might’ve done something similar to before? but reader was around during the forties and was kinda like a rebel (didn’t abide by social norms) and bucky and her had some hatred for no reason, but because reader was like that she got into fights and somehow hydra saw who she could be and took her, while they were in hydra together she protected him as best as she could but when they both get out yearsss later he doesn’t remember until he infiltrated a base and found the footage and immediately regrets the fact that he has treated her poorly (insane angst if possible amd fluff possibly?) anyways feel free to just ignore this if it doesn’t make sense tyty!!
You’d never been what Brooklyn wanted you to be.
In the 1940s, girls were supposed to smile pretty, keep their skirts modest, marry young, and wait by the window for letters that might never come. You wore your hems too short, your lipstick too dark, and your opinions too loud. You cut your hair when you felt like it. You swore when men deserved it. You punched when they didn’t back off.
And Bucky Barnes?
He couldn’t stand you.
Or at least, that’s what it looked like.
He’d lean against brick walls with that infuriating smirk, hat tipped just so, calling you “trouble” like it was an accusation. You’d snap back that he was a walking propaganda poster with too much hair grease and not enough depth. He’d roll his eyes. You’d shove his shoulder when he got too close. He’d grin like he’d won something.
There was no reason for the friction. You just clashed. Fire against fire.
The last time you saw him before the war swallowed everything, you’d been bleeding from your lip after a dockside fight. He’d grabbed your wrist too hard, hissing, “You’re gonna get yourself killed one day.”
You’d yanked free. “Don’t pretend you care.”
You both walked away angry.
Hydra took you three months later.
You’d been running errands for a resistance contact—nothing official, just information, quiet defiance—when the black car pulled up. They’d watched you before. They liked rebels. Liked the ones who didn’t break easy.
They were right about that.
By the time they brought Bucky in, you barely recognized him.
Metal where skin should’ve been. Eyes hollowed out. Obedience carved into bone.
You weren’t supposed to remember him either—not after the conditioning they tried on you—but something in you refused to let go. They never managed to break you the way they wanted. You learned quickly instead. You survived by becoming useful.
You watched them wipe him.
Again.
And again.
And again.
You became his shadow in that hell.
You took punishments when you could redirect blame. You stepped into beatings meant for him when he failed to meet impossible standards. You whispered tiny truths when you were alone in containment.
“Your name is James.”
“You’re from Brooklyn.”
“You hate liver and onions.”
Most of the time, his eyes were empty.
Sometimes—just sometimes—they flickered.
The last time you saw him in Hydra, you were dragged down a separate corridor. They’d decided you were too difficult to fully control. Too defiant. You fought like an animal, screaming his name.
He didn’t react.
They wiped him again that night.
You got out years later when a facility collapsed under outside attack. You crawled from rubble half-dead and vanished into the world with nothing but scars and ghosts.
And when you saw him again?
It was on the news.
The Winter Soldier.
You told yourself it wasn’t him.
But it was.
When he finally broke free—when the world shifted and Hydra began falling piece by piece—you ended up in the same place by accident. A shared mission. A shared objective. A shared room.
He didn’t remember you.
And God, that hurt worse than Hydra ever had.
He was colder now. Quieter. Guarded in ways he’d never been in Brooklyn. But there were glimpses of the old sharpness in him, the stubborn pride.
You tried to keep your distance.
He didn’t.
For someone who had once rolled his eyes at you like you were an inconvenience, he seemed to find you irritating in a familiar way.
“You don’t have to do everything alone,” he snapped once when you shoved past him during recon.
You barked a laugh. “Funny. That sounds familiar.”
He frowned.
The tension between you now wasn’t playful. It was brittle. Unresolved. He’d mutter that you were reckless. You’d accuse him of being controlling. He’d look at you like you were something he couldn’t quite place.
Like a word on the tip of his tongue.
It took months before the truth hit him.
He’d infiltrated a Hydra remnant base alone—couldn’t sleep, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop needing answers. He accessed an old archive vault buried behind layers of encrypted data.
He wasn’t expecting to see you.
Grainy footage. A younger version of you, face bruised, eyes blazing even in chains.
And then—
Another clip.
You stepping between him and a handler.
You taking the shock baton when he faltered.
You whispering to him in a dim cell, cupping his face with trembling hands.
His name.
James.
Over and over again.
His breath stuttered.
He watched hours of it.
You shielding him from blows.
You cradling his head after a wipe, tears slipping down your cheeks as you whispered truths into someone who couldn’t answer.
You screaming when they dragged you away.
The date stamp.
The final wipe after that.
He staggered back from the monitor like he’d been shot.
“Oh God.”
He’d hated you for nothing.
You’d loved him in hell.
He didn’t even remember.
When he found you later, you were in the training room, knuckles split open from pounding a bag too long.
He stood there, silent.
You felt him before you saw him. “What.”
His voice wasn’t steady. “You were there.”
You went still.
“Hydra. You were there with me.”
Your jaw clenched. “You don’t wanna dig into that.”
“I saw it.”
That made you look at him.
His eyes were wrecked. Red-rimmed. Furious—but not at you.
“At myself.”
You swallowed. “You weren’t yourself.”
“That doesn’t fix it.” His voice cracked. “I treated you like you were nothing. Like you were—God, I used to pick fights with you just because you didn’t fit into my neat little picture of what you were supposed to be.”
You laughed, but it broke halfway through. “We were idiots.”
“No.” He stepped closer. “You protected me.”
Your breath hitched.
He reached out slowly, metal fingers hesitating before touching your cheek like he wasn’t sure he deserved to.
“I don’t remember it,” he said, voice raw. “But I know what I saw. And I know how it feels when I’m near you now. Like something’s been missing my whole life.”
Your eyes burned.
“You don’t owe me anything,” you whispered.
His hand tightened gently.
“I owe you everything.”
The silence between you wasn’t brittle anymore.
It was heavy. Healing.
“You were never trouble,” he murmured. “You were the bravest person in the room. I was just too blind to see it.”
You let out a shaky breath. “You were infuriating.”
He huffed something that almost sounded like a laugh.
“Still am.”
You leaned into his touch without thinking.
This time, when he stepped closer, you didn’t shove him away.
When his forehead rested against yours, it didn’t feel like friction.
I need to feel something, tell me your Barnes family headcanons. I’m talking literally anything, I want really devastating ones to random ass ones that don’t make sense.
Because I like angst (yes ik it’s not canon but we know jack shit about her so F off), I like to think of Bucky and Rebecca being twins. That just makes Buckys death from her perspective way more sad. I also like to think that Hydra made Bucky kill his family without his mask because I wouldn’t put it past them to do that, considering Howard and Steve. :)
i feel like this image of bucky as this like, kinda rough blue collar 30s new york dock worker is so ingrained in this fandom and it is aesthetically really cool i agree but honestly for mcu bucky i. dont think it makes any sense? like most of the info from catfa and catws points towards him being generally middle class and its said that he excelled in school ntm he could afford to be fashionable and popular? idk i guess he always felt more like, polished prep than rough dock boy to me
tbh I think Bucky can be both of those things simultaneously!
personally I hc that Bucky's family were quite well-off until prohibition ended (the Barnes' may or may not have been selling illicit substances to the highest bidder), and they still have their middle-class pride as a family despite falling on hard times
(like, Winnifred is very house proud and likes serving good food and pretending it's fancier/more expensive than it is, and George has drilled the importance of looking neat and presentable into Bucky from a young age - probably where Bucky got his penchant for self-grooming and excessive hair care products - and they refuse to give up their expensive home and car even though it would help them enormously to sell them)
so Bucky is sort of used to nice things, but he had to learn to adapt very quickly in his early teens when he started to realize they weren't as well off anymore as they pretend they were, and that he might have to start helping his Pa as breadwinner a little more and start going to school a little less.
and Bucky doesn't like asking his parents for money as an adult because he knows no matter how much they're struggling with their own finances they will lend him as much as he needs because they still have that middle class mentality.
but yeah, that's just my take, I like a pre-war Bucky who's a bit of both worlds, someone who finds it easy to fit in with any crowd he might find himself in, I feel like that suits him best. nothing wrong with head-canoning Bucky as fully blue collar or fully middle class, though.
this isnt exactly about your previous fics but i was wondering what would it be like to look through old pictures of 40s bucky?
Going through old pictures of Bucky is both entertaining, but also extremely sad.
Y/N just sees this person that she’ll never actually get to meet. But in theory it is Bucky. It just reminds her of all the shit he’s been through.
Y/N would try to ask him the stories behind certain photos. And he would get disheartened when he couldn’t remember all of them. He couldn’t even remember some the names of people in the photos with him.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Words: 2433
Fandom: Captain America (Movies)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers
Characters: Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Pre-War, '40s, Slice of Life, Domestic Fluff, Shaving, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Intimacy, Bucky takes care of Steve, and steve lets him which is still a miracle, cw: blood, (blood warning because steve accidentally cuts himself), Straight Razors
Summary:
Bucky couldn’t hide the fond smile that overtook his face as he lightly punched his best friend’s - his best guy’s - his lover’s shoulder. “Fuck off and be grateful. I just offered to teach you how to shave.”
“I can shave,” Steve protested, crossing his arms in front of him and pouting again.
“Shave properly,” Bucky corrected, “which you don’t know how, apparently.”
****
Hey all, this is a fic written for @bisexualgendryas because they donated to one of the Australian helper organizations. They requested a pre-war Stucky, slice of life, domestic fluff story. I hope this is something like you had in mind! :)
If you want to get a fic from me, you can commission me by donating to Australian helper organizations. For more information, see this post.
