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[endsinafight]

There were advantages to having been trained so well, however involuntarily it had been. It meant that when he decided to take down the evil organization who provided him with that training, they never saw him coming. He'd been nothing but a ghost story for a couple decades shy of a century: he knew how to get in and out, how to disable every type of alarm system and camera, every single piece of technology that was in HYDRA's possession, and he did it with the ease of someone who had absolutely no shits left to give. And he didn't.

He raided and annihilated the facilities one at a time, knowing that each mission could very well be his last and that knowledge didn't make him bat an eyelash.

It had been almost two years since his battle with Captain America -- no. Steve. His name was Steve. Captain America was just a title. Underneath that, he was a person, a hero. He wasn't like Bucky, who hadn't been a person since the day he'd fallen off a train in the Alps. He'd been turned into a weapon; a violent, bloody weapon who'd completed missions time after time like a robot under the designation of Winter Soldier, feeling nothing, not thinking twice about any of it until that day on the bridge, and later, on the hellicarrier.

It had taken nearly six months for him to regain what he thought were the majority of his memories. He remembered a lot of things, but not in any sort of discernible pattern or timeline that he could put together. It came back fractured into shards of a life that resembled a 2000 piece puzzle that he had little hope of ever completely understanding beyond this: the people who'd done this to him were going to pay, and they were going to pay dearly.

For the last year and a half, he'd infiltrated and taken out eleven of their larger bases of operation. Despite the fact that after the first destroyed complex the others had all upped their security, despite the fact that he'd been shot three times, stabbed twice, and been captured once -- managing to break free before they could drag him into a cryo tank for safe-keeping, he'd still bested them each time.

The job was endless. There were at least three dozen facilities that he knew about, some of which he had little chance of reaching without a lot of planning and a good amount of money. The latter hadn't been nearly as much trouble as the former. Before he'd blown the first facility to kingdom come, he'd managed to extract plenty of funds to a secure account, and from there, cash it all in under the name Brock Rumlow. By the time it was figured out, Bucky was on another continent, huddled down at an old gas station without electricity, planning his next move.

The attacks took time and patience, and that was okay. There was enough fiery hatred running through his veins to last the rest of his life, however long that might be. Thanks to the serum they'd infused into his body over seventy years ago, Bucky didn't require more than a few hours of sleep a day to stay strong and healthy. Food, on the other hand, was more of a necessity. He burned through calories the way fire burned through gasoline. He almost understood why HYDRA had kept him on a steady diet of protein shakes and vitamin shots -- preparing as much food as it took to keep him going would have been far too much trouble and it wasn't like they cared if the diet they kept him on was tasty or satisfying.

One of the first memories that had come back was cooking homemade chicken and noodle soup for Steve when he'd been sixteen. At the time he'd thought it odd that was what had come back, but with it came the ability to prepare meals that weren't fast food, food that nourished him and helped him build back up his strength. It also turned out to be the only other real enjoyment he had, and he had a knack for it. It was almost as if his brain had known which memory to return that would help him heal the quickest, at least physically.

In between cooking, planning missions and carrying them out, he laid low, doing his best to stay off the radar not just from what was left with HYDRA, but from all the other governments and agencies that were undoubtedly trying to find the escaped Winter Soldier. And, Steve.

He'd had a close call in Madrid, had barely made it out of the tiny apartment he'd been occupying for months before the other man had shown up there decked out in full Captain America regalia. He'd watched from the roof across the street, felt a surge of guilt at the crestfallen expression on the blonde's face, at the slump of his shoulders, but he'd ignored the guilt, forcing himself back into resignation of the knowledge that he couldn't ever go back. Not back to Brooklyn, not back to the United States, and certainly not back to Steve Rogers' side.

And, he couldn't go back to anywhere he was in close proximity to Natalia Romanova -- no. Natasha. Natasha Romanoff now, he reminded himself. He'd done more than enough damage to her to last two lifetimes.

And there was still far too much work to do.

Tonight was his twelfth attack, and it wasn't far from his own place -- only a couple hundred miles, nestled in plain sight in an old bank building in Rome, just far enough away from populated areas that he felt no guilt as he planted explosives after systematically executing each member of the Strike team and then each of the scientists, one of whom he recognized as being particularly cruel in his experiments and ideas about how to make Bucky stronger, how to improve the arm. One who'd gotten enjoyment out of his pained screams.

He hadn't made the man's death quick, instead restraining him on a cold metal table and tasing him repeatedly in various sensitive areas before shooting him in the nuts, feeling nothing as he'd howled with pain. He wasn't proud, necessarily, for the cruelty of his actions.

He also didn't feel guilty about them. Torturing the man was what delayed his plan to just blow the place sky high and be done, but not by much. Just long enough that, unbeknownst to him, he could be seen by two avenging types as he left, pushing the button on the remote detonator before climbing onto his bike and lighting the sky up and rocking the ground before driving away without so much as a backwards glance.