#like yeah one of them wants to be cryogenically frozen wtf is that

[fallingforfictionalmen]

no bc I feel like everyone is jumping past the part where we found out that they are basically each other’s next of kin? like they said that if one of them died the other would have to do x,y,z like what do you fucking mean rn

[firekyoshi]

i can't believe yall havent thought of a sambucky the handmaiden au LIKE GUYS LOOK AT THE POTENTIAL

okay if u haven't seen the handmaiden (2016) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE CHECK IT OUT OMG ITS ONE OF MY FAV MOVIES AND AS A BISEXUAL WOMAN ITS ONE OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES FEATURING SAPPHIC CHARACTERS

anyways here's a very self-indulgent sambucky the handmaiden! au that i wrote at midnight literally 7 hours before my exam

tw // mentions of suicide

- sam is sook-hee and bucky is hideko obvs

- sam is a criminal working for the power broker aka sharon while bucky or in this case, the winter soldier, was a test experiment for HYDRA / is now an assassin + bodyguard for their leader, alexander pierce

- sharon is conducting business w hydra to obtain some weapons and idk black market stuff which forces her to go to siberia, but obviously the ultimate weapon she wants to take home is the infamous winter soldier

- she asks sam to pretend to be her butler/bodyguard but is actually hiring him to get information on the winter soldier program and obtain the code words needed to control them

- they end up staying in pierce's mansion in like a really remote place in siberia

- sam gets acquainted w the other butlers and housekeepers, they tell him that the area is haunted because they would always hear a man screaming just before daybreak followed by complete silence. they also tell him that the forest is haunted by the spirit of a man who killed himself there

- just like the housekeepers said, sam wakes around 3-4 in the morning to the sound of a man screaming followed by complete silence

- anyways the next morning he accompanies sharon to her first meeting w hydra officials, and that's where he encounters bucky

- after the meeting, sharon is all like, "change of plans. we're going to steal the winter soldier." sam's like "and who's that?", "the person u were standing next to earlier,"

- afterwards, sam starts to spy on bucky. he doesn't talk much, sam notices, actually scratch that this man does not talk period

- they were standing by the door a few feet away from where their bosses were talking. "so uh, what do i call you?" sam asks one day, but bucky is like a statue, his response being a mere blink

- sharon and pierce always have their business meetings in the morning, but they also have spend time at night, usually supper or dinner, that's more casual. sam notices that pierce's bodyguard is less stiff and more human during the later hours of the day

- sam and bucky are again standing by the door. "what do i call you?" bucky asks quietly, almost like a whisper. "uh sam, you can call me sam. and you?"

- he freezes for a while before replying, "james barnes"

- another thing that sam notices is that bucky is NEVER alone. either he's with pierce or he's escorted by other bodyguards (who look like they couldn't even take him down altogether)

- one morning, after the usual distant screams, sam decides to figure out where the screams were actually coming from. he goes to the main house, pretending to bring tea for sharon (there's a small camera hidden in the tray)

- he sees the usual group of bodyguards escorting a half-naked and disheveled bucky from the stairs to the basement. when they see him, the group looks like a pack of deers in headlights, one of them reaches for their gun, "i'm bringing tea for ms. carter," he quickly says.

- "go ahead," the leader, rumlow, says, "but next time use the main hallway will you?"

- "right, she just said it was faster this way, and she's really peculiar about the temperature of her tea."

- he shows the video to sharon and she's like "i need u to find out wtf is going on in that basement."

- one night, sharon and pierce are having dinner tgt "since we're on the topic of legends and fairytales, i have to ask about something," sharon says,

- "go, on," pierce replies

- "the winter soldier program, does it really exist?"

- the hydra leader chuckles, "i was wondering when you would ask that," then points toward bucky, "my dear, you're looking at the winter soldier."

- sam listens in on the conversation. the winter soldier program was a program created by hydra in the 1940s with the first successful test subject being an american ww2 soldier named steve rogers. apparently he was given this serum that made him super strong and for 10 years, while the other test subjects were cryogenically frozen, hydra worked to find ways to control him but failed and they had to keep him restrained most of the time.

- one night, rogers broke out of the facility, stole all the remaining formulas, and threw them away before blowing his brains out in the nearby forest

- after rogers' suicide, hydra brought out its second test subject, bucky barnes, and used the remaining serum on him. afterwards hydra froze him again while they worked on something to keep his mind under control.

- around the 1960s they created the trigger words and since then they've been using bucky to do their dirty work for them. "this, my dear, is our greatest creation." pierce says as he approaches a stand displaying a red book. "his trigger words. say them and he will do anything you want. if you need some errands taken care of, i'd be happy to lend him to you. we can talk about the costs later."

- "i don't have anything i can't take care of myself at the moment, but i'll keep that offer in mind." sharon replies

- now sharon's like "okay we HAVE to steal him and the codes." she figured out that all of the mansion's surveillance turns off for an hour to reboot from 1 AM to 2, and tells sam to basically go to the basement and manipulate bucky when he's not under hydra's control. "make him trust you, that way we won't have much of a fuss taking him to madripoor."

- that night, after the clock strikes 1, sam sneaks into the basement and finds a cell with bucky inside. there's a bed, well, more like a mattress, but bucky's not sleeping on it. instead he's sitting in a corner, head against the wall, knees tucked in his chest, hyperventilating and,,,crying???

- "hey," sam whispers, "you okay?"

- the winter soldier stares at him with red rimmed eyes and a tear stricken face. "you're sam, you're her bodyguard."

- "yeah and you're the winter soldier, or do you prefer james?"

- "bucky. it's bucky"

- yeah basically sam visits bucky's cell every night for exactly 45 minutes before he has to sneak back out. he tries to gain bucky's trust and manipulate him but guess what they fall in love surprise surprise

- bucky tells sam his true story. how he and steve used to be ww2 soldiers that were experimented on by hydra. he remembers being frozen and the first thing he sees when they woke him up was steve's dead body. "they told me he shot his head in the forest." the first thing he felt was pain as they injected the serum into his veins then tried to erase his memories. he remembers going into cryo and being woken up over and over again to kill someone or destroy something.

- he also tells sam about the one night he broke out, ran as fast as he could, and jumped off a cliff, only for him to survive. he lost an arm, but hydra replaced it with another weapon. "i thought i would end there, but i just became more of a weapon"

- so sam starts to feel unsure about stealing the winter soldier bc goddamnit bucky's a person and he doesnt deserve any of this.

- also the more time he spends with bucky the more he realises that the actual james bucky barnes is a fucking piece of shit that still uses 40s slang and petnames and makes outdated jokes and is actually a big fucking flirt.

- and sam's heart breaks every time he looks at bucky's crestfallen face when he realises that their 45 minutes are over

- of all the people he could fall in love with, it just had to be a brainwashed assassin

- sharon tells him that in a few days, she and pierce will leave for a week to actually get the business transaction done. basically she tells sam that he should break bucky out of the mansion while they're away, take the trigger word book, and meet with torres so he can take them both to madripoor.

- while sharon and pierce leave, sam continues visiting bucky during the night. also he doesn't see bucky during the day bc they have no reason to bring him out of the cell, and he kinda misses him aw

- one night, he wakes up to noise, lots of it. everyone in the house is running. in the midst of all the chaos, sam hears, "find the soldier!"

- the first place sam goes to is the forest, and there he finds bucky kneeling by a frozen lake, with a gun in his hands. sam tackles him and throws the gun away

- "what the fuck were you thinking huh?!" sam shouts, tightly holding the front of bucky's shirt, and he can't help but cry at the thought of bucky's dead body. and all of a sudden he feels like shit. for manipulating bucky and taking advantage of his trauma for his own gain. so he gathers bucky in his arms and tells him everything. about what he and sharon were actually planning, what his true motivations were when he first went inside the basement, and how he actually grew to care for bucky

- bucky just laughs and says, "i know,” he reveals that sharon's plan all along was to take bucky and the trigger words for herself, and frame sam as the mastermind behind everything. she'll then fake bucky’s death and offer sam as another test subject for the winter soldier program as compensation for stealing (and “killing”) bucky

- "how do you know all this?"

- "she visited me the first night you arrived and we talked. she told me she'll take me away and all i had to do was manipulate you into breaking me out." bucky confesses, "i didn't realise you were a sweetheart, that made everything so complicated."

- anyways sam knocks bucky unconscious and basically helps hydra guards put him back in his cell. "just saying, maybe we shouldn't tell pierce abt this yknow" and the hydra guards r like yeah no totally cause if he knew we're all fucked

- anyways bucky and sam come up with a plan to escape together. sam contacts a friend known as baron helmut zemo, who's basically sharon's biggest enemy, but more importantly, owes sam a big ass debt and asks him to give the two of them safe passage to sokovia

- they plan to escape two nights before sharon and pierce return to siberia. on that night, sam wakes up at exactly 1 AM like he always does, and kills everyone in the house. he puts a bullet in every hydra guard, every housekeeper, everyone. he disables all the techs in the house, steals the trigger word book and breaks bucky out of his cell.

- "wait. there's something i have to show you." bucky says. he takes sam to the facility. the place where they tortured him and experimented on him. the place where every other test subjects were kept frozen.

- (if you've watched the handmaiden, yes this is a reference to the library scene) sam can't contain the anger he feels when he looks at the room. "is this where they tortured you? is this where the screams come from every night?"

- bucky nods. he points at a chair in the centre of the room, surrounded by machines and computers. "every morning they would drag me out of my cell, put me on that chair, and-" he swallows a choked sob, "and read the trigger words,"

- sam can't control it anymore. he grabs a metal rod and starts destroying the place. he breaks every machine, tearing them apart until they are nothing more than wires and buttons. he kills all the frozen test subjects, because they deserve better than this. he rips apart the pages of the winter soldier's mission reports, and gathers them into a pile.

- from afar, bucky watches as sam lights up the pile and everything in front of him starts to burn. when sam turns to look at him, he can't help but think about how magnificent he looks as the fire roars behind him. his hero. his guardian angel. his sam.

- sam approaches bucky and pulls him in for a hungry kiss. something he feels he should've done earlier. "no one will ever control you again." he says, and for once its a promise that bucky believes in.

- sam reaches in his bag and pulls out the red book. bucky starts to cry bc no one, not even before hydra, had ever loved him like this. "i mean it. no one." sam says. bucky throws the book in the fire and watches and both paper and leather melt into ash

- the end they escape using zemo's private jet and live happily ever after haha