Sing Me the Alphabet
thesardine
Summary: There wasn’t anything left to salvage. That’s what Fury believed. It would have been a kindness to put him down.
When SHIELD finally releases Bucky from custody, he is not the man anyone expects him to be. Steve struggles to reconcile the stranger with the man who was once his best friend, but with Hydra regrouping after the events at Triskelion, Steve is dragged back into battle when Bucky needs him the most. Meanwhile, Hydra is itching to have its prize weapon back under their control, and a devastating betrayal pits Bucky against a terrible piece of ex-SHIELD tech that threatens to destroy everything he's struggled to rebuild. In order to survive, he must decide who he is going to be: the vulnerable Bucky Barnes or the indomitable Winter Soldier? It turns out there might not be as big a difference as everyone seems to think.