The more I think about the timeline for Bucky’s torture given Agent Carter canon, the more I want to cry. That flashback scene in CATWS got impossibly worse.
Presumably Bucky got taken after his fall by Russians- HYDRA or affiliated with them- having suffered the traumatic amputation of part of his arm. His survival alone would have made him a subject for medical experimentation, and when they realized who their captive was, his value as a prisoner would have skyrocketed. He was Zola’s only success.
At this point he was Bucky, coping with a second round of captivity and medical experimentation. Steve was gone. But still, they couldn’t contain him without cryostasis, an incredibly dangerous procedure they must have tested on him. They risked him dying in order to preserve him for Zola. And no, he wasn’t “naturally frozen” in the snow where he fell, because Bucky was conscious enough to remember being found bleeding. He was conscious when he was captured, and when they shoved him into that tube.
Zola came years later, back from American prison to oversee his project. Bucky woke to the operating theater, where he was conscious when a fucking bone saw cut through what was left of his left arm, and the metal one was attached (the series of surgeries required to reinforce his skeleton must have been a never-ending nightmare reel of physical torture). It was still Bucky, Sergeant Barnes, waking up at this point to his worst nightmare standing over him.
Then Agent Carter tells me that Zola had either Johann Fenhoff or his knowledge to fucking hypnotize Bucky into doing whatever they wanted from here on. Before electroshock became their go-to method, they distorted Bucky’s grasp on reality. Zola who had years in America to weasel information to use against Bucky when he had him at his mercy. He could have made him believe anything, forced him to unknowingly cooperate while he was still Bucky.
And even then, after enough trauma to drive anyone mad, Bucky still must have fought them. He must have broken through Fenhoff’s methods, enough that they weren’t viable in the long-term, that they had to experiment and invest in electroshock and risk (inflict?) brain damage on their prize in order to secure their captive and control him.
The process to get their asset was a testament to how strong Bucky Barnes is, how much of a hero at his core. It took years of calculated, brutal abuse, and still, they had to erase him to force him to comply.
Meanwhile I’m here crying about how IF ONLY Peggy or the Commandos had found him at this point in time, had they just known, they could have spared him everything. They’d have gotten back their Sergeant Barnes, minus part of his arm, still strong and able and whole, but no one even thought to look.
the1timetraveller 