PLAYER

NAME: Waffle
AGE: 31
PREFERRED CONTACT: [Bad username or site: ”withsyrup” @ ”plurk.com”]
OTHER CHARACTERS: n/a

CHARACTER

NAME: James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier
AGE: 98 (approximately)
CANON & CANON POINT: Marvel Cinematic Universe, from just after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier
RESERVATION LINK: HERE.
HISTORY: The Winter Soldier. Movies: Captain America: The First Avenger and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

PERSONALITY: Before World War 2, Bucky Barnes was everything a young man could want to be. He was healthy, he was strong, he was friendly and happy and handsome and charming, and an absolute hit with the ladies. He was devoted to his best friend, Steve Rogers, and would do just about anything for him. Bucky’s relationship with Steve was a central part of his life from childhood, and it defined most of his life. He was extraordinarily loyal to his best friend, concerned for his welfare and wellbeing, always watching his back. He unflinchingly walked into Steve’s fight in the beginning of The First Avenger, without care or regard for the reason for the fight, knowing only that Steve was in trouble and needed help. That was enough. Despite having a very pretty young woman on his arm at the Expo and lavishing her with flirtatious attention, Bucky never failed to look back and make sure Steve was having a good time too. In The Winter Soldier, there’s a flashback to after Steve’s mother’s funeral, and Bucky pleaded with Steve to let him help, offering him a place to live so he wouldn’t have to struggle on his own. When Steve had trouble finding his apartment key, Bucky plucked the spare from its hiding place, this small act demonstrating how close they were, that Bucky knew where the key was and working to fix the problem as soon as he saw Steve struggling. Their pre-war relationship was built from a lot of this: Bucky concerned for and caring for Steve, who pushed forward, bull-headed and stubborn.

Then Bucky went to war, and he saw death and destruction first hand, and participated in it. The horrors of war changed him, made him harder, more cynical. It’s possible that on Zola’s lab table he was starting to give up hope, after painful experimentation that seemed endless. But Steve rescued him, and Bucky found a reason to get up and fight again. He’d follow that “skinny kid from Brooklyn who never backed down from a fight” to hell and back. And he did. In most of the clips in the montage of the Howling Commandos in The First Avenger and the Smithsonian clips in The Winter Soldier, Bucky was at Steve’s right hand, backing him up and following him wherever he went. He was still always watching his back, firing a shot right over Steve’s shoulder to hit an enemy that Steve didn’t see. Bucky didn’t care much about Captain America, and he’d probably lost most of his patriotism in the face of the reality of war. But he knew evil when he saw it, and he knew that skinny kid from Brooklyn was probably the best one to lead them in a fight against overwhelming odds.

That’s who Bucky was, until HYDRA got a hold of him and remade him.

When HYDRA needed a weapon to shape the century the way they needed it to be to achieve their goals, they created the Winter Soldier from Bucky Barnes. Whoever Bucky Barnes was before, they reached in and scrambled him up, pulverized him and recreated the Winter Soldier out of the pieces that were left. They broke him. What they needed was an assassin who would follow their every order, complete their missions, and do it ruthlessly and without question. And that’s what they created.

When we first see the Winter Soldier, he’s a terrifying killer, calmly stalking his way over to Nick Fury’s vehicle and ripping off the door of his armored car to get at the man inside. Amidst the chaos of the attack on Fury, he’s silent and calm. He doesn’t panic or even react visibly when he discovers Fury’s escaped, instead choosing to track him to Steve’s apartment and snipe him from the next building over. He has laser-like focus in battle, and fights with a cold ruthless detachment. He doesn’t care who these people are, but he’s been told they need to die, and so he’ll kill them. That’s all that matters. What he thinks and feels about the matter is irrelevant. There’s only the mission. When the mission is complete, he’s quiet and calm. He sits in Pierce’s living room and waits silently for his next orders.

But then he fights Steve for the first time. At first everything goes as it should, with the Winter Soldier and his unit attacking Steve and Nat and Sam, and despite how well they retaliate, the Winter Soldier remains calm throughout. He doesn’t even speak except to give a calm order in Russian to his unit. It’s not until he fights Steve one-on-one and Steve realizes who he is that his focus is interrupted: Steve calls him Bucky and there, in that moment, the Winter Soldier’s battle focus is disturbed. The assassin who had said nothing to his targets suddenly responds with a look of confusion. “Who the hell is Bucky?” It unnerves him, and we can see it in the way he pauses before resuming the attack. He starts to remember.

We see how much he remembers when he’s being attended to by the scientists and other Hydra personnel. It’s only fragments, but he remembers something. “That man on the bridge, I knew him.” He knew him somehow, and somehow he was important. But what Hydra has done to him is deep and powerful, and he can’t piece his memories together again that easily. During that scene we see something else: we see just how broken and obedient he is. The look on his face is clear: he yearns to remember, he wants to know, and it’s hurting him so badly that he can’t figure out what’s going on, but Pierce walks in, and even though the Winter Soldier could likely kill everyone in the room, Pierce backhands him and he submits. He needs to obey. Pierce consoles him, reminds him that his work is important, but to the Winter Soldier that matters little. It’s icing and he knows it and he doesn’t care. He wants to remember but he knows he won’t be allowed to, and accepts his fate just as he always has for the past seventy-odd years.

That moment when Steve calls him Bucky was the moment when everything starts to change for him. He’s stuck on the half-formed, broken memories replaying in his head when Hydra has him at the bank, and it takes a full wipe to get him back to performing the way Hydra wants him to. But this crack proves that Hydra’s conditioning isn’t perfect, and Pierce’s cool reaction to it suggests it’s happened before.

And then he comes face-to-face with Steve again, and things have changed. Instead of immediately attacking Steve, the Winter Soldier waits, and Steve is forced to attack first. There’s a war going on inside of him, the need to complete the mission battling with his desire to remember what is so important about Steve that the faint memory of him persists even after the wipe. Bucky still exists, he’s just in pieces, and the Winter Soldier is fighting himself to figure out whether he should try to put them back together or not. “I’m your friend,” Steve shouts, and the Winter Soldier cries back “you’re my mission!” His mission is to stop Captain America, but the assassin with incredible marksmanship can’t shoot to kill him, and he can’t deliver the final blows when Steve utters that phrase that brings more memories back.

“I’m with you to the end of the line.”

Because if there was one constant in Bucky’s life, it was Steve. It wasn’t Captain America Bucky would fight for, it was Steve. And friendly, happy, flirtatious Bucky was only ever truly loyal to one person, and that was Steve. So when Steve looked up at him and said those words, the Winter Soldier started to remember.

But it’s a long road. Hydra did its work well, and without that guiding hand, the Winter Soldier finds himself at a loss. Suddenly back in control of his own life and making his own decisions, no longer subservient to anyone, the Soldier is confused, trying in vain to remember the things that were once so important to him. Without a clear mission, he has to make his own, and the weight of his past is starting to ache. Without a clear direction, he’s lost. Does he find Steve and look for answers? But how do you look for answers if you’re not even sure of what the questions are? He is confused and searching for himself, and he doesn’t know where to look.


ABILITIES/SKILLS: In their experiments on Bucky, Hydra was able to closely replicate the serum used on Steve Rogers, and genetically engineered Bucky to be at the peak of human ability. As such, he has:
-Enhanced “super” strength
-Enhanced speed and endurance
-Enhanced durability and healing
-Enhanced reflexes and agility
Other abilities:
-Bionic arm: Bucky’s left arm was damaged in his fall from the train in The First Avenger, and Hydra replaced it with a metal bionic one, which is extremely strong, even stronger than the strength the serum gave him. It is very durable, being bullet-proof, and having recovered quickly from Natasha’s miniature EMP. Bucky has used it to rip doors off of cars and punch through a car’s windshield to pull out the steering wheel. He also grabs Sam Wilson out of the air and rip off one of his Falcon wings. Since it’s technological in nature, his arm won’t work as well for the first couple of weeks in Fellden.
-Combat skills: Bucky can use just about any weapon handed to him and is fast and ruthless with knives and hand-to-hand combat.
-Master marksman: Even before becoming the Winter Soldier, Bucky was the Howling Commando’s sniper, able to gun down threats from a great distance with laser focus. As the Winter Soldier, his focus is even greater, hunting down his targets and eliminating them in whatever method is necessary, whether from a great distance with a sniper rifle or in closer range.

INVENTORY/COMPANIONS:
-Four combat knives, in holsters
-Two semi-automatic pistols, in holsters, with limited additional ammo
-His one-sleeved tactical jacket, which is bullet-proof

FACTION CHOICE: Moon Temple.

REASON: While Bucky before the war might have been considered something of a dreamer, the war and what happened to him after changed him. As a sniper, Bucky would analyze the situation and choose targets based on the needs of his teammates and the mission at hand. As the Winter Soldier, he was conditioned to be Hydra’s perfect weapon, with no thoughts or dreams of his own. He approaches all situations analytically, considering all options almost automatically, whether he wants to or not.

TATTOO: A midnight blue circle, symbolic of the new moon, directly between his shoulder blades.

SAMPLES

NETWORK:
[He ordinarily wouldn’t make such a public post, but he’s not currently on a mission.

That’s kind of the problem. But he wants to be as effective as possible, and to do that he needs to know exactly what he has at his disposal, and there’s some things you just can’t ask the locals. At the very least, he can use text, so that no one sees his face and he can think more carefully about what to say.]

Guns. I know they’re not used here. But is there a way I can get ammunition for mine?nI would be willing to do work in exchange. I kill people, mostly. But I’m also strong, and fast. So if you need something carried. Or moved. Or killed. I can help.

But not for free.

[It’s not like Hydra if he’s doing it in exchange for something, right? And since he’s apparently talking to everyone now...]

Also, if anyone knows if there’s a Steve Rogers here, I’d appreciate the information. I have unfinished business with him.

[Wait, does that sound bad? It kind of sounds bad.]

I’m not going to hurt him. I just have questions.

LOG: Sample here.

NOTES, QUESTIONS, COMMENTS: Hey just FYI I found myself pretty confused over the descriptions for the samples, mostly the use of the first person vs. third person terminology. Personally, I usually consider all RP to be third person, since even network posts usually have asides for thoughts or action, and in my experience that’s always in third person. It might be nitpicky on my part, and it's totally fine if you decide to keep it as is, but I just wanted to let you know.