History Fanfic / OutOfTheDeadLand

* KnifeNut: Bucky's go-to choice of weapon is the knife, and Natasha [[ItWasAGift gives him one of hers]] as a gesture of understanding after seeing him go tense at not having a weapon at hand. [[spoiler:A brainwashed Steve also wields one against Bucky, although Bucky notes that he doesn't know how to hold it properly and it was probably thoughtlessly given to him by someone else.]]

-->''A cold detached voice in his mind pointed out that the Captain too had no use for the Winter Soldier. The Captain wanted Bucky, who had fallen from a bridge more than seventy years ago and never been seen again. He closed out the thought because he could not endure it. He called up instead the world of the Howling Commandos and their war, the world of Steve's stories.''

-->''If only you could remember, said that same cold voice, but he could not. He knew he could not. He had tried.''

-->A cold detached voice in his mind pointed out that the Captain too had no use for the Winter Soldier. The Captain wanted Bucky, who had fallen from a bridge more than seventy years ago and never been seen again. He closed out the thought because he could not endure it. He called up instead the world of the Howling Commandos and their war, the world of Steve's stories.

-->If only you could remember, said that same cold voice, but he could not. He knew he could not. He had tried.

[[BeneathTheMask Except that it's only an act.]] The Winter Soldier doesn't [[ThatManIsDead truly remember or think of himself as Bucky Barnes]]; he’s merely using his espionage programming to memorize information from history books and train himself to [[StepfordSmiler make the same vocal and facial mannerisms]] as the Bucky from Steve's stories about their past. He’s good enough at it to fool Steve. But not good enough to actually remember or be Bucky from mimicry alone.

* [[ImpersonatingTheEvilTwin Impersonating the Evil Robot Duplicate]]: [[spoiler:Natasha pulls this off at a crucial point, managing to fool a literal computer program long enough to save Bucky.]]

* SpotlightStealingSquad: In the original kink meme version of the fic, the author wound up writing a lot more scenes for Tony than she intended because of how enjoyable she found writing Tony's banter to be. This was rectified in the cleaned-up version for AO3, although Tony is still an eminently memorable side character even then.

* UndyingLoyalty: One of the main facts the Winter Soldier memorizes about James Buchanan Barnes early on is that he was "loyal until death" and "followed Captain America". Or more accurately, as he realizes later on, "still follows Steve Rogers".

* YouWereTryingTooHard: It's only when Bucky stops trying to consciously act like what he thinks he "should" be as Bucky Barnes and/or the Winter Soldier that he gradually begins to truly think and behave like himself again.

* TheVirus: Mnemosyne is a rare benevolent example, as [[spoiler:she systematically wipes Zola from existence entirely in the finale]].

* KissOfDistraction: Natasha gives Bucky one while [[spoiler:secretly planting a bug on the doorframe behind him to prove to Steve that he's only parroting his stories of Bucky back to him]].
* KnifeNut: Bucky's go-to choice of weapon is the knife, and Natasha gives him one of hers as a gesture of understanding after seeing him go tense at not having a weapon at hand. [[spoiler:A brainwashed Steve also wields one against Bucky, although Bucky notes that he doesn't know how to hold it properly and it was probably thoughtlessly given to him by someone else.]]

* OutOfCharacterAlert: In spite of Zola's claim that Steve wouldn't be able to tell Bucky apart from his robotic duplicate, Steve does in fact realize that he's been replaced by an impostor when "Bucky" goes back to telling him only what he wants to hear in spite of the real Bucky having dropped that act days ago.

* AllLovingHero: In Natasha's words, "when Steve loves, he loves hard." And he loves Bucky very, ''very'' hard indeed which, while not the sole factor of Bucky gradually coming back to himself or enough on its own to jumpstart it, is a vital supporting beam of it.

* BreakHisHeartToSaveHim: Bucky, after coming to the conclusion that Steve is an idiot for keeping a brain-damaged Hydra assassin around even when he's not trying to act like the old Bucky anymore, decides that he should leave for Steve's own good. It backfires spectacularly. As in, [[spoiler:"getting recaptured by Hydra and tortured by them anew"]] spectacularly.

* NowOrNeverKiss: Bucky kisses Steve just before he's about to be memory-wiped again by Hydra. [[spoiler:Turns out it isn't the real Steve, however.]]

* TongueTied: Bucky's conditioning makes him unable to speak in-depth about HYDRA's plans without experiencing intense pain.

* UncannyValley: The Soldier/Bucky's internal narration can come across like this at some points, especially in the earliest scenes:
-->Bucky Barnes was good-natured, easy-going, popular with his fellow soldiers—

-->Bucky, he tried the name on his tongue. Bucky. I'm Bucky. That's me. He decided Bucky probably preferred being himself to being the Winter Soldier, and started favoring his right arm, using his flesh and blood hand to touch things and pick them up instead of his metal one wherever possible.

-->Debriefing and reset. He was supposed to come in for—

* FaceRealization: Bucky spends most of the fic convinced that he's not a good person because of what he did under Hydra's brainwashing and says simply, "I'm still the Winter Soldier" when Steve insists that he already is someone good. It's only after [[spoiler:he defeats Zola and his robot army in spite of believing Steve -- his assumed MoralityChain -- to be dead]] that he admits to himself that he was never truly the Winter Soldier after he saved Steve from the Potomac.

Even as the Winter Soldier does his best to mimic a person, however, robot duplicates who are doing their best to mimic people for malevolent purposes [[TwoLinesNoWaiting begin emerging]] and causing trouble for the Avengers -- and the BigBad behind them happens to have a special interest in the Winter Soldier. Avenger action, deftly-explored identity crises, impersonations of more than one kind, love, and the Soldier/Bucky [[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre being a better person than he thinks he is]], all ensue.

* NotQuiteDead: Turns out Zola isn't quite as dead as the film made him out to be. Justified with the reasoning that he's a computer program that can easily be uploaded to/backed up in multiple sources.

''[[http://archiveofourown.org/works/1871955 Out of the Dead tr]]'' is a ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'' Steve/Bucky fanfic by [[http://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyenrose/pseuds/emilyenrose emilyenrose]] about people, machines, and a soldier who isn't certain if he's a person or machine or anything useful.

''[[http://archiveofourown.org/works/1871955 Out of the Dead Land]]'' is a ''Film/CaptainAmericaTheWinterSoldier'' Steve/Bucky fanfic by [[http://archiveofourown.org/users/emilyenrose/pseuds/emilyenrose emilyenrose]] about people, machines, and a soldier who isn't certain if he's a person or machine or anything useful.

* {{Transhuman}}: Bucky, in the eyes of Zola, is an example of how humanity can become superior through machinery along with Zola himself. Bucky, of course, begs to differ.

* FakeKillScare: [[spoiler:Zola orders a robotic duplicate of Steve that's capable of authentic-looking bleeding to be shot dead in front of Bucky's eyes in an attempt to break Bucky's spirit enough to persuade him to submit to HYDRA's brainwashing again.]]

* EarnYourHappyEnding: Bucky has to go through the anguish of not remembering anything about his past in spite of his best efforts to, being recaptured by HYDRA and tortured by them anew, having to storm a HYDRA base solo to save his friends, and [[spoiler:being tricked into believing that Steve's dead and then having to fight a brainwashed Steve trying to kill him]], but all of these experiences ultimately contribute to making him a stronger and more self-confident person by fic's end.
* FakeDefector: [[spoiler:Bucky appears to cross the DespairEventHorizon and give himself up to HYDRA after seeing them kill Steve, even going so far as to beat up Natasha and Sam when they try to stop him, but then he downloads Mnemosyne into HYDRA's computers to wipe out Zola for good. It's left up to interpretation, however, if he really ''did'' plan on taking down Zola from the get-go or was genuinely intending to let them wipe his memories again and had a last-minute change of heart.]]

* FirstNameBasis: Bucky starts out referring to himself and the other characters by their first names in his internal narrative only when he's trying to be the old Bucky, and referring to them by their codenames instead (e.g. the Captain, the Widow, etc.) when he's thinking more like the Winter Soldier instead. He gradually shifts to referring to them by their first names exclusively as part of his CharacterDevelopment.
* GoodThingYouCanHeal: This is Bucky's reasoning behind urging Steve to leave him to recuperate with broken ribs and a leg snapped hard enough to show bone so that he can save Sam as quickly as possible. He's even able to recite the exact number of hours it will take for each of his injuries to heal, which unnerves Steve.

* InsecureLoveInterest: Bucky is genuinely surprised when Steve's response to being kissed by him ''isn't'' a gentle rejection.

* KnifeNut: Bucky's go-to choice of weapon is the knife. [[spoiler:A brainwashed Steve also wields one against Bucky, although Bucky notes that he doesn't know how to hold it properly and it was probably thoughtlessly given to him by someone else.]]

* NowOrNeverKiss: Bucky kisses Steve just before he's about to be memory-wiped again by HYDRA. [[spoiler:Turns out it isn't the real Steve, however.]]

Even as the Winter Soldier does his best to mimic a person, however, robot duplicates who are doing their best to mimic people for malevolent purposes [[TwoLinesNoWaiting begin emerging]] and causing trouble for the Avengers -- and the BigBad behind them happens to have a special interest in the Winter Soldier. Avenger action, deftly-explored identity crises, impersonations of more than one kind, true love, and the Soldier/Bucky [[YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre being a far better person than he thinks he is]], all ensue.