Chapter Text
It starts happening after his second time out of cryo.
Shuri and the Wakandan scientists have kicked off the rehabilitation process, staring with teasing Bucky slowly out of his hibernation state to check for vitals and to analyse his cognitive activities when he is actually awake. Though painless, the nausea that Bucky had experienced the first time was nothing short of horrible—his system was shaken up so badly that he spent the first five minutes of being gloriously awake puking into a sick bag, but Shuri had patiently waited until he stopped heaving into the bag, let him lie down, talked to him without expecting answers back and asked him questions that only required minimal thinking; which was wise. Bucky could barely open his eyes, let alone give coherent answers—thankfully, Shuri seemed to understand completely. He never felt more grateful to be put back under.
The second time he’s taken out it feels just like being nudged awake from an overdue nap—awfully groggy, but nothing worse. He says as much to Shuri when she asks him how he’s feeling, and she beams like bright Christmas lights.
“We adjusted the settings to wake you up. I was hesitant at first because it meant taking up more time than usual, which could have damaged your brain tissues severely—“ At Bucky’s wide eyes, she smiles even wider. “But it seems to be working, so no worries!”
“Well, I trust you,” he mumbles. He looks around the room, occupied only by one other person (Shuri’s favourite assistant, probably. Bucky’s never been introduced to her) and it looks like an exact carbon copy of the room he woke up in the first time—
Except. His eyes land on something on a roundtable next to his examination chair.
There’s a small pie placed on it, no larger than Bucky’s palm, in all its golden glory complete with a lattice upper crust that seems to have been delicately put together. It sits on top of a small, white box like a child’s birthday cake, or a modest divine offering. He shakes his head slightly, thinking he might be dreaming or having delusions. It’s not far-fetched for a recently cryogenically frozen man.
Shuri catches his line of sight and follows it, an eyebrow quirking. Once she realises what he’s been fixating on, she grins. “You must be starving. We’ve got time, we’re in no rush since you’re not feeling sick. Go on,” she points a thumb at the pie. “Eat up! It’s for you.”
Bucky hesitates. “You sure?”
“‘Course."
He pulls the pie closer, grabbing the spoon laid beside it. “You always serve your patients nice desserts after you fish them out of a freezer?”
Shuri lets out a snort as she scans Bucky’s shoulder slowly with a device wrapped around her finger. They’re not as intimidating anymore, her devices, as they seemed to be the first time Bucky woke up. The cold touch of sterile metal surfaces turned his limbs rigid at first, like it was an automatic response, but with Shuri’s patience and her team of brilliant scientists, they had managed to distract Bucky long enough for him to forget he was being closely scrutinised. It’s only the second time he’s conscious, and already the fear is long forgotten.
“As hospitable as we Wakandans are, someone beat us to getting you the apple pie.”
Bucky draws his eyebrows together. “Who’s it from, then?”
For some reason his confusion seems to be a source of amusement for Shuri, because she steps back with a knowing smile. “You’ve had several loyal visitors during your… time off, you know.” She cocks her head in the direction of the table. “You might want to check the box.”
He didn’t even think of moving the pie from its resting place on the box, which probably speaks volumes of his cognitive capabilities at the moment. He doesn’t dwell on this, however, and instead lifts the pie up to see a hastily-written note scrawled on a yellow post-it note stuck on the top of the box.
Buck,
Sorry I couldn’t be there the first time they took you out. Or this one. But I got Sam to sneak into Brooklyn’s best bakery for this pie. Had to convince T'challa it was worth the risk. Hope I wasn’t wrong.
Get better soon.
Your pal,
Steve
A pang of longing cuts across his chest even as he bends over laughing, tickled by the awkward ‘Your pal’ Steve tacked on at the end of the letter. It must not be the reaction Shuri was expecting, because she’s at his side immediately and hovering over him like a concerned mother bird.
“Are you okay? Does anything feel strange? Do you need help clarifying the note?” she asks in rapid successions, all to which Bucky shakes his head.
“No—no I’m good. It’s just—this.” He points at the bottom with his good hand. “He could’ve just written ‘Steve’. ‘Your pal’ sounds cheesy.”
Bucky expects Shuri to laugh along with him, but instead her eyes soften. She ducks her head as she takes his good arm and begins to wind some sort of cloth around it. “It sounds silly—but maybe he just wanted to remind you. You know,” she glances up at Bucky as she says, quieter, “Just in case you’ve forgotten.”
The pie is good—more than good. Bucky hasn’t eaten many pies in his life, but this one surely takes the cake (no pun intended). He may be biased, though. Steve could have left him a jar of dust and he’d still say it was the best thing he’d ever eaten.
Bucky misses Steve, and is reluctant to go back under. But little does he know it’s far from the last of Steve’s post-it notes he’ll be receiving.
This time he wakes up gasping, like he’s being starved of air. Bucky’s hand acts on its own accord—it’s scrabbling against the glass, like he’s a trapped animal begging to be let out. The cryo pod hisses as the air pressure dwindles and it becomes easier to breathe again. He stops struggling, and only when he blinks once or twice does Bucky realise he’s staring at nothing but an expanse of blue.
“Sorry, sorry, Sergeant!” winces Shuri as soon as the pod slides open. “We’re still trying to get the optimum settings for you—your body is in constant change.”
“No, it’s alright, it wasn’t the pod. I think I was just—unprepared,” he realises how silly this sounds. How does you prepare yourself mid-freeze, anyway? “And a little surprised. I couldn’t see the room when I woke up.”
At this, Shuri skips a little on the spot and clutches her tablet close to her chest. “Ah, yes! You may want to slide the window down—someone left a message for you while you were out,” she chuckles, swiping her screen with a smile on her face.
Bucky’s starting to think her little suggestions of ‘you may want to’ are less suggestions and more orders. He has a niggling suspicion of what’s waiting for him—he does, after all, retain memories prior to his unconscious state—but doesn’t let his hopes get too high. Pulling the window down, he finds two square pieces of post-its stuck on the glass; blue and yellow, messages written in black ink on both squares.
Okay. Maybe he can get his hopes up just a little bit.
Did you like the pie? I hope you did. It’s my favourite, back when I first got out of the ice. I was always craving for some comfort food and I’d always stop by that bakery on my way to the gym.
Then, on the next one, because even with Steve’s neat, blocky handwriting he manages to run out of space:
Shuri said the second time they let you out went okay. That’s awesome. You’ll get better real quick, don’t worry.
Your pal,
Steve
When Bucky flips the post-it, there’s a small doodle of a lattice-crusted pie with steam rising from it, and Bucky’s lips twist unconsciously into a smile. It takes him a bit of effort, stretching out of his restrains to put the post-its back on a table next to the pod, but even as Shuri and a nurse guide him to the examination bed the smile doesn’t leave Bucky's face.
Of course, Shuri isn’t a genius for nothing. “No pie this time, but you’re still grinning like this?” she shakes her head. “You’re an easy man to please, Searge.”
Bucky splutters, but comes up with no retort. Instead, he turns to her and asks, “Do you have a pen or pencil? And post-its?”
She raises an eyebrow. “We certainly do. But this isn’t the cryo that the Rus—this isn’t the kind of cryostasis you were previously exposed to. This entire process is meant to mentally and physically relax you, to put it simply, to the point where your body and mind will have to learn everything from scratch. Kind of like a rebooting a computer, but gentler.”
A few seconds pass as the information sinks in before Bucky blinks in response. “I’ve never rebooted a computer.”
Shuri places a hand on her forehead, but continues, “Anyway, it means you may not have the motor coordination required to write. Are you sure you don’t prefer typing out a message that I can show him instead?”
Bucky wants to ask how she knows what he intends to do with the post-its and pens, but realises he’s not exactly being subtle. “I appreciate the offer but I—it’s. It’s only right. To write back, I mean,” he mumbles, feeling slightly embarrassed but full of conviction nonetheless.
Shuri glances up from her tablet, taps on it a couple of times before stepping closer to him. “Are you sure? I don’t recommend physical over-exertion so early in this stage—we were only planning to exercise your hands and arms in a week or so—“
“I’m sure,” he says, voice firm, and Shuri laughs once again.
“Stubborn men,” she says as she walks over to her desk, most likely in search of Bucky’s wanted items. “That’s who I’m constantly surrounded by. Stubborn men.”
Bucky’s session out of cryo was supposed to only last a maximum of two hours, but after adequate nourishment Shuri lets Bucky settle into a reclining bed, propped him up on pillows and let him settle down with a pen and a sketchpad. Before long, Bucky realises that he should probably take Shuri’s warnings more seriously—the pen feels awkward in his right hand, and the sketchpad moves around too much without the help of his left. His grip is weak, the pen often rolls out of his hand without his permission and he can’t seem to connect the beginnings and ends of his Os, Ds, or any other letter, for that matter.
Bucky. James. James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant Barnes. Tuesday. Hello. Wakanda. Steve Rogers. Steve.
His wrist cramps up twice and both times Shuri chides him for overworking himself, but he tells her he’s feeling swell and continues until his handwriting can pass for legible. Bucky’s never been an artist, so he doesn’t even try practicing anything beyond the alphabets. Once he’s got the letters small enough to fit a post-it, he asks for a stack of it from Shuri, who gladly hands them over to Bucky.
“Finally, you are almost done,” she huffs, but there’s fondness in her voice that makes Bucky smile.
It takes him five tries, the discarded four crumpled up into balls he throws over the edge of his bed. The handwriting still resembles a scrawl more than anything, but Bucky thinks it’ll do. Shuri reads it with a grin.
“You’re quickly becoming one of my favourite people on this planet, Sergeant Barnes."
He asks the nurse to stick it on the window of his cryo pod, trying to subdue the blush creeping up his neck and face—and spectacularly failing. Of course, the nurse reads it as she sticks it on—her eyes light up and she gives Bucky a wink, tells him he’s making amazing progress. It makes Bucky feel a hundred times better.
He goes under with a smile, imagining Steve’s expression when he finds the note.
(Drop the ‘pal’. I know who you are, punk.
Thanks for the pie. We should eat it together sometime.)
The post-its exchange becomes a routine of sorts.
Bucky’s recovery regiment is starting to demand more time out of the ice, and while he’s curious about the need for such frequent checks—and, admittedly, a little disoriented by the drastic changes in his environment—Shuri seems to have a lot faith in her procedures, so Bucky doesn’t dare display even a hint of doubt on her behalf. After all, the girl possesses a bank of knowledge he probably would never be able to hone even if he lived his life three times over.
Moreover, Bucky prefers to focus on the upside of the whole arrangement—that is, waking up each time to two or three square pieces of paper stuck onto the glass of his pod, a grin finding its way onto his face before he can even take his first breath. As they check his vitals, Bucky will clutch the post-its in his palm, greedily reading the neat, blocky letters of Steve’s handwriting, devouring each word of his message. Once the medical devices are detached from his body, Bucky would reach out for the pen, now laid on the table adjacent to the examination bed out of habit, and scrawl out a reply of his own.
Good morning Bucky
It’s evening, but nice try punk. Thanks for dropping the ‘pal’
Wouldn’t want you giving me grief when we next meet each other. Your day’s been good?
The questions and replies most likely have several days’ gaps inbetween, but Bucky answers them like Steve has only left minutes ago.
It’s OK. Boring. Lots of check-ups. What kind of trouble you gettin up to?
We took T’challa’s Quinjet to a small island in the British Isles today—we dropped Vision and Wanda off at their request. Said they wanted to spend time together. Natasha really didn’t like the idea, but I thought we could give them a chance as long as they laid low
PS: I’m not supposed to tell anyone this, but it feels wrong to leave you in the dark
I love gossip. Get up to anythin cool while you were there?
The next reply comes with an illustration of a Quinjet landing in the middle of what looks like grassland with a few farm animals, each drawn delicately, hopping away frantically as if in alarm.
Chose a landing spot that seemed less populated than it really was. Ended up scaring away a herd of lambs and their shepherd dog away. Felt awful about it, but they eventually continued grazing near the Quinjet. One even tried to lick the plane
These long, descriptive messages are ones that make Bucky laugh most. He can see it so clearly; Steve spelling out coordinates in his most commanding voice, stature poised for any danger that they may come across, eyes alert, chanting stay sharp to the crew as they step off the plane—only to find his calves being nuzzled by goats and sheep.
(If Bucky had his way, he’d be right there by Steve's side, sharing the experience together—but a lot of things don’t go the way he wants them to. This, at least, is mild compared to the disappointments he’d suffered in the past.)
Then there are the playful messages, left like an afterthought after Steve’s winding recounts of his newest expeditions—but eventually their messages veer off in this direction. Easy banter, the kind that makes Bucky feel right at home.
Your hair’s getting long
Shuri isn’t exactly letting me go to the barbershop
Keep it, it looks good
If you like it so much you take care of it
I would if I could
Now, replies like that makes Bucky wince a little. He always tries to restore the light-heartedness in their conversations.
Just kiddin, wouldn’t trust you with my hair.
Jerk. And then, on a separate post-it, You look cute asleep
Creepy. Why don’t I ever see you, anyway?
I’m sorry. Schedule’s been tight.
Don’t worry. I get it.
Bucky doesn’t, really, but he doesn’t want Steve worrying any more than he already has.
You probably don’t, is the reply. (No lie can ever get past Steve, can there?) But thanks for saying that anyway.
Good luck, with whatever you’re doing.
No reply comes for a while after that, and Bucky goes through two cryo sleeps with no answer. On his third defrost, he wakes up to a single post-it note.
I miss you.
Bucky feels his chest tighten despite the smile finding its way onto his face unbidden.
With so much effort being put into writing, his motor coordination is improving faster than Shuri’s initial predicition—a fact she both marvels and grouses at.
“This is good for your recovery, Sergeant,” she sighs when she catches sight of Bucky’s grin once again. “But this long, arduous exchange is driving me insane. They invented texting for a reason, you know?”
“Texting?” Bucky makes a face. “What’s the reason?”
“Efficiency. Saves time, and very convenient. You could be getting replies in an instant.”
As appealing as this sounds, Bucky isn’t thoroughly sold. It’s difficult to put a finger on it, but there’s something comforting about seeing Steve’s handwriting on paper, imagining the time he carves out of his day to write the post it and stick it on his glass, the look of concentration on his face as he painstakingly fits details he loves to infuse into his drawings so much onto the tiny square plot of paper, wielding a pencil in his big hand with the delicateness of a seasoned artist. It’s more than just the message—having the words physically almost feels like having Steve there beside Bucky, and it’s something he’d have to give up were he to resort to electronic messages.
He doesn’t know how to explain all this without sounding old-fashioned or, worse, lovesick, even though Bucky can’t deny he is both in great measures.
Somehow, Shuri seems to understand anyway, and gives him a fond smile. “Well, as long as it’s making you practice your wrist strength, I should have no cause to complain. Just tell the Captain I’ve got a lot of delicate machinery here and he can’t sneak in the room past midnight to deliver his post-its anymore, no matter what he tells my brother!” she insists, but Bucky know from the tilt of her lips that she’s only being half serious.
If this is all he gets—if this is all he deserves to get, Bucky would have no complaints. He would be content to live this way forever, if only he gets to have a piece of Steve each time he wakes up.
Steve hasn’t felt this nervous in over 70 years.
Strutting into the examination rooms with a fabricated enlistment form, rebelling against the government and trespassing restricted areas to look for Bucky—he was never nervous then because he had known he was absolutely doing the right thing. But this time—this time, he can’t tell.
“You sure ’s a good idea for me to see him right now?” he tries not to make his voice sound so strained when he asks Shuri this, hands still wringing the cloth he’d used to wrap his wrist with during the flight. He asks mainly as a desperate attempt to brush away the nervousness rising up in him, now having second thoughts about turning Sam down on his offer to talk to Lang about their future plans. Maybe it was better to stay on the Quinjet after all.
Shuri must have sensed his wariness because glances back at him with a quick, but reassuring, smile. “We can never be fully sure, Captain, the mind is a highly versatile substance, so unstable the slightest changes could cause wildly unpredictable outcomes.”
That doesn’t make Steve feel any better, and he starts getting queasy. Maybe Shuri notices the tense taut of his shoulders, because she laughs. “Why do you look so worried? He’s been doing fine—no, he’s been doing great lately. Those post-its really keep him on his toes. Good practice, you know.”
Steve feels his neck getting hotter and he coughs to hide the nervous tremor in his voice. “Oh, that—I mean.” A tentative pause passes over them as they walk along the pristine, sleek hallway in silence. “Hey, uh, did—did you read any of them?”
From over her shoulder, Shuri gives him a strange look. “Post-its aren’t exactly private, Captain. It was difficult not to wake him up without reading—it was staring right at my face! And reading is a natural impulse to humans.”
Steve isn’t sure how true that last bit really is, but he ducks his head sheepishly. “I just wanted them to be the first things he wakes up to since I’m not around, you know.”
“I figured that much out,” she grins. “You can start imagining his pleasantly surprised face when he wakes up to see you now. Go on, I won’t judge."
Steve rolls his eyes good-humouredly at her, but Shuri’s too perceptive to be wrong. Steve is imagining Bucky’s bewildered face as Shuri prepares the cryo pod and toggles with the settings, fiddling with numbers and data Steve lets sail past his head. His arms are already itching to wrap around Bucky’s shoulders, rub away the stiffness that will surely plague them for some time, maybe joke about how awful his handwriting is in his replies while stroking the back of his palm—a reassurance without words.
His heart leaps to his throat when the cryo pod starts hissing and the fog on the glass begins to clear away. Steve has to look away when he starts seeing the blue on Bucky’s face through the glass, and only looks up when he hears the sharp intake of breath as the glass slides away from the pod. Thankfully, this time when he chances a glance Bucky’s adopted a much better pallor, pink speckling the tops of his cheeks like he’s just gone on a marathon run.
Pulse picking up pace, Steve shuffles away from the control board slowly, not wanting to draw attention to himself as Shuri waits for Bucky to calm down, taking note of his vitals while Bucky regains his normal breathing pace. There are no post-its on the pod this time, but Bucky doesn’t seem to be nonplussed by it.
“Sergeant Barnes,” Shuri tries to say it gently so as not to shock him into consciousness, but it’s obvious that she’s restraining herself. “There’s a special guest here to see you.”
That’s his cue. Steve might very well have been toeing the ground with his foot like a lovesick teenager for all the shuffling he’s doing as he emerges from the back of the room, smile wavering on his lips as he peers at Bucky’s face. His eyes are still closed, but his chest is no longer heaving and he’s inhaling at a steady breath. Steve draws in a breath of his own.
“Hey, Buck,” he says softly, meaning for a casual, quiet greeting—but it comes out much too desperate, much too pleading, infused with much too wanting for Steve to pass it off as casual. “How’ve ya been?”
Bucky’s eyes don’t open immediately. And when they do, Steve feels like someone’s punched him right in the ribs.
Bucky is seeing past him, just like that day on the bridge.
“Buck?” Steve tries again desperately, but there isn’t a single flicker of recognition in his face. Instead, his eyebrows furrow and he glances around with trepidation, like a prey waiting for a predator—and that throws Steve off. At least, when he was the Winter Soldier, Bucky had always been the predator.
“Sergeant Barnes?” Shuri tries.
Bucky blinks at her. “ Are you talking to me?”
It seems to take Shuri aback as well, because she’s immediately pulling up a holographic projection from the beam on her bracelet, hand swiping through displays Steve can’t make heads or tails of. Not that he’s even trying to, with his gaze fixed on every tiny movement of Bucky’s. Steve holds back the urge to rip apart the straps around Bucky and hold him close, squeeze his hand until the nightmare subsides and Bucky comes back to his senses—and then he’d be clutching at Steve, too, probably cursing him out for having waited so long to see him. But Steve knows it wouldn’t do to interrupt and make a scene—he’s going to have to be professional and suck it up. He draws in a deep breath and squares his shoulders.
“—don’t know. So no.”
Broken away from his trance, Steve inches towards Shuri to hear Bucky better. His voice is raspy from disuse, but he mostly just sounds tired. “I see. I’ll note that down. Anything at all you can remember, Sergeant? Anything at all?”
Steve thinks he hears a grumbled ‘don’t call me that’ under Bucky’s breath, but Bucky scans the room anyway, grazing each surface with a thorough inspection.
“Where am I?” His voice is hard, closed off, and Steve can see the proverbial defensive walls around Bucky be built up slowly—no, no, no, he thinks. I can’t lose you again—don’t shut me out again—
“You are in a lab in Wakanda, Sergeant,” replies Shuri. “Rest assured that you are safe, no harm will come to you and we are all at your aid.”
The reassurance is weak—a war veteran should have more suspicious and aggravated by the seemingly empty promises from a stranger they’ve never seen before. But Bucky seems to sag with relief, his guards lowered.
“Okay,” he says slowly. “But please stop calling me Sergeant. I’ve never served."
The indifference, apathy and sheer emptiness in his eyes eventually cause something in Steve to snap—suddenly he feels suffocated and he can’t bear to look a second longer.
“Cap,” Shuri’s voice is steady but Steve’s gotten better at reading people now—he can sense an anxious edge to her voice. It pulls him out of his scrambled thoughts long enough to look at her. “Can we step outside for a bit?”
As she pulls him out of the sliding glass door of the lab, Steve briefly marvels at how aside from her obviously superior intelligence, Shuri is also astoundingly mature for her age. Here she is, perceptive in times of crisis; composed and already working towards a solution to the problem while Steve feels like a helpless child who’s lost his mother in the streets.
“Shuri—I—“ Steve swallows. “Will he be okay? Is he…”
When Steve doesn’t continue, Shuri sighs and says, gently. “Back to his murderous, shadow-assassin self? No, most likely not. But he is clearly not the Sergeant Barnes that went inside that pod either. It’s… almost like he’s a blank canvas.”
It sounds even worse than a murderous shadow-assassin, but Steve swallows this opinion down and asks instead, “What do you mean an empty slate? Are all his memories gone for good?”
“No, nothing like that I believe. All the checks on his brain activity were showing positive results, and I made sure that the programme would detect any minor deviations from the norm—an activity as significant as major memory loss would have sent alarms loud enough to call me from the other side of Wakanda. No, it seems like he is simply unable to access his basic memories.”
Steve stares at her, helplessly. “But how—why is this happening?"
“It’s like rebooting a computer.” Steve’s eyebrows crease, so Shuri supplies more information. “You know, it takes a while to load?"
“Uh, I—I’ve never—“
“Rebooted one yourself, right, God I have to remember I’m speaking to living cavemen.” Steve opens his mouth to retort, but Shuri fixes him with a serious stare that shuts him up. “Basically, it means that his brain and synapses are taking their time to rewire themselves—we’re trying to take bits of his memory out, or at least tried to stabilise them. To make sure we do no permanent damage, we have to let it heal and—well, we’ve never done anything of this nature before, but our bodies are intelligent. We have to give it time to let it recover by itself.”
“Okay,” Steve takes a deep breath, exhaling in one loud gust of air. “Okay. That’s—okay."
“At least he’s stable. He isn’t being erratic, or aggressive.” At least he isn’t trying to kill you is the unspoken subtext.
For some reason, it doesn’t make Steve feel any better.
Shuri glances behind her past the glass windows of the lab to where Bucky is still sitting in the chair, eyes darting around the lab and seemingly fascinated by the paraphernalia around him.
“I am not sure how long this ‘rebooting’ phase will last, but I do believe—and please trust me when I say this with the best intentions—it would be best for you not to visit for now."
“Yeah, don’t worry, I got it. I’ll stay away. The last thing I want to do is to jeopardise his recovery.”
Shuri’s eyes grow soft. “I’m not doing it because I see you as a threat, Captain.” She tips her chin, eyes boring straight at him. “I want you to meet a friend who has fully recovered, not someone who looks more like a lab rat than a patient.”
“I don’t see it that way,” he insists, but backs down because he knows Shuri is right. Either he is awfully transparent, or Shuri has superhuman intuitions when it comes to human emotions.
“Your post-its are not discouraged,” she says with a jovial tone, gaze flickering upwards from where she’s typing on her tablet again. “I know it is a cathartic activity for you, but they can be very useful tools for preliminary check-ups and may help in jogging some of Sergeant Barnes' basic memories for the later stages of this ‘rebooting’ phase."
Steve shakes his head, chuckling to himself. “Oh my god. I’m supposed to be the super soldier, saving the world and all—but here you are saving mine.”
“Haven’t you heard? Strength is out of fashion, it’s all about intelligence nowadays,” grins Shuri. “Take care, Captain."
He nods. “Thank you. For everything.”
“No problem!” Shuri’s voice is back to its usual chipper. “Oh, and by the way, I think it’s cute how you called Sergeant Barnes ‘your world’.”
Shuri hightails out of the hallway with a cackle before Steve can even think up of a retort.