He knows how it happens. After all the study Shuri's put into it, he even knows why it happens the way it does. Each trigger word's linked to one or more memories, things that are rooted deep in his soul, so deep that to tear them out would be to tear him apart in the process. That's why they work. That's why he's never been able to resist them, no matter how hard or how many times he tried.

He hears the first word in Ayo's soft, clear tones, and waits in suspended agony for it to begin, bracing himself for the procedure to fail, for the wave to roll over him, starting the spiral that will drag him down into the darkness.

It doesn't happen. Not with the first word, nor the second.

"Seventeen," she says, and in that moment Bucky discovers that hope is far, far more painful and terrifying than fear.

"It's not going to work," he chokes out, and it's a desperate, disbelieving plea.