http://archiveofourown.org/works/516956/chapters/912562

Site: A3O

Genre: Cartoons, Comics and Graphic Novels

Fandom: Avengers – The Ambiguous Fandom

Rating: Teen and Up Audiences

Word Count: 63086

Ship: Steve/Bucky

Warning: None Archived

“The man who used to be Bucky Barnes lined up his shot. His finger twitched, only once, very precisely.
Help me, the bullet sang.
Ninety-eight floors below him, the bullet glanced off a vibranium shield with a musical ping.
And Steve Rogers looked up.”

In my opinion, there are many different types of writers: there are those who create, those who expand, and those who expound. Fanfiction writers tend to be the expanding and expounding type. I consider the expanders to be world-builders, whereas the expounders are character-builders. Lyaka is an expounder.

This story is about what happens when what happens when you take a broken man and try to create the perfect soldier. Then realize that even the soldier is flawed, so you try to create a cold blooded killer. However, if you’re constantly erasing and remaking a man, that requires constant maintenance. So what happens when you can no longer maintain that which you have created?

I feel like I just created the prompt for a new Winter Soldier fanfiction. It’s funny though, so many fanfic writers (who write Winter Soldier fics) like to try and answer that question. And I feel like every one of them tries to do something new with the same old (but never tired) prompt. You can’t write a Captain America meets the Winter Soldier story without talking about how Bucky Barnes had to fight that Red Room conditioning in order to remember Steve Rogers.

What I love about Lyaka, is that they honestly talk about the psychological aspects of it. They wants to tell you about what it feels like to be a man out of time; what it feels like to be erased and remade into something you can’t even recognize. I love fanfic writers who honestly try to tell you about the struggle it takes for Bucky to be able to cope in the new millenium after a 70 year blackout. I love fanfic writers who remember to talk about what that was like for Steve. Lyaka did both, and for that reason this story is absolutely fantastic.

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