Chapter Text
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Pain searing through his damaged collarbone and right arm, body listing to the left in a dangerous stagger as he swung for a punch, metal gleaming in the firelight. Pain, pain, pain… His arm. His arm hurt…
"You know me."
“No I don’t!”
“Stop… stop. Please stop. Don’t touch it…”
“Sergeant Barnes.”
“Please… please, no…”
“Bucky… you’ve known me your whole life….” Glint of metal… the shield, protective in front of the blond’s body. “Your name… is James Buchanan Barnes.” Body aching, heart pounding, blood roaring in his ears. James Buchanan Barnes.
“Sergeant James Barnes, 107th, 32557038… S-Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes…” Couldn't forget... He couldn't forget who he was... They'd try to make him forget.
“Shut up!” He was screaming, staggering forward again, swinging…
“Make it stop. Please, God, make it stop…”
“I’m not gonna fight you… you’re my friend.” A clatter… the red-white-and-blue shield winking out of sight, spinning away into the river below… He staggered. Pain… so much pain.
“Please… please stop…”
He lunged again, took the man down, collapsing to the metal supports along with the body of his Mark, and his fist swung once, twice, three times.
“You’re my mission.” It was over. The mission would be over. The pain would be over… All around him, it burned. Fire. Heat. Metal creaking, breaking… He heard the sickening thump of metal against flesh. Why…. Why won’t you fight back?
“Then finish it…” Blood… blood on the silver plates of the arm… and that voice… that voice he knew… Why… why did he know it…?
“Don’t touch me!”
“Stand down, soldier! Hold him down… restrain him…”
The soldier with his shield was gone. In his place cold, hard voices, a stiff, leather chair, the crackle and whine of electronics… or was it fire and smoke in his nostrils…?
“Sergeant… it’s alright. You’re safe. We’re administering painkillers—”
“Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me!” The words were ripped from him, as if each one physically scraped across his throat as he spoke. He huddled, cradling his right arm in against his chest. Not that one too… please. He’d failed. He’d failed at his Mission. He couldn’t do it.
“Sergeant.”
“Don’t.”
“We’re here to help you.” That’s what they always say. He moved in a split second, fingers grasping at the white-coat’s lapel, tugging the body down, going for the throat. Voices rose sharp and urgent around him. “Sedate him… put him under.” The pinch of cold metal under his skin chilled him to the bone. His breathing slowed, his vision blurred and faded away to velvety black.
************
The white coats came and went. They spoke mostly French, and very few words that he knew. He didn’t answer them and rarely looked at them. He drifted in and out of consciousness, aware of footsteps, rustling sheets, the clink of metal—syringes on the silver trays, glaring lights shone in his eyes. He hurt in nearly every part of his body. Most things he was fed came back up, burning all the way up his throat, but even the pain faded away when they fed the drugs into his body through the IV. Noises became less sharp, the smells around him less nauseating, the visitors less jarring. His memory started to settle into hours.
A book was left on his bedside table… an old, weathered book of comics, and along with it came a face not familiar yet soothing: the first American voice he heard in an eternity. “You’re going home, Sergeant.” Home. What home was there left for him after what he’d done? The moments of lucidity came with that voice and face. He could sit up.. ask questions—Where was he? France. How long had he been there? Three weeks. What happened to his arm? It’d been too damaged. It had to be amputated. How soon was he leaving…? Soon... as soon as he was well enough.
The questions flickered away in the dim, dull ship’s hull, and he was sick again: cold, shivering, keeping little food down. Home was gone. The years had wound on, he had changed, and there was no one left. He couldn’t trust them… Some days… some days he wanted to trust them, when he huddled in a chair and ate whatever thin, flavorless food he could stomach. Others he lunged out of his bed, going for the throat, and was strapped down, haunted and mute. You’re going home, Sergeant…. Home was gone…
************
“Bucky.” Bucky? … Who the hell is Bucky? Cold leather straps pressed down across his body—chest, arms, hips. The sounds in the room had changed. No crisp rustle of staff uniforms, no poking or prodding, no cold metal under his skin, filling his veins with god knew what. His eyes opened a little, then closed again and his face scrunched up against the sharp light.
“Ma’am, he’s not always aware of his surroundings.” He squinted cautiously up as his vision adjusted to the lighting, and the face of his visitor came into focus. He could make out her profile. She had a fine, straight noise, soft cheekbone, a dimpled chin; there was something undeniably familiar about her, from the dark brown hair pulled back in a neat bun to the voice he was so absolutely certain he'd heard before, more times than he could even count. It ached deep in his chest. He seemed to catch the soft smell of oak-wood. A crowded room flickered through his memory--table, stove, wash-basin, a creaky box-spring mattress on the janky bed frame, straw-stuffed dolls, old books with worn yellow pages, and the bright laughter of her voice as she stretched her fingers up to reach the stuffed toy he was holding just out of reach. “James Buchanan!” He knew her. His abdomen tensed, and he twisted, but the attempt to move met with a jolt, and his skin burned where the leather chafed at it, still raw and red. He parted his dry lips, peeling his tongue off the roof of his mouth, and managed a raspy noise nothing like the name on the tip of his tongue.
“Please can’t you take the restraints off?”
“I’m sorry, ma’am… He’s been unstable—erratic.”
“Becca.” The word was rasped from a painfully dry throat. He could've cried from relief, just managing the single word. His bleary eyes blinked up at her as she turned, and a cool hand rested on his cheek.
“He’s my brother. He’ll be better with me. I’m taking him home.” The shaky tone evened into stern resolve. Never the one to back down. “Scared me to death, you idiot.” She bit her lip. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. He coughed.
“Sorry…?” His voice was faint. She laughed weakly, and his breath caught at a soft click and tug, and the pressure across his chest was relieved.
“It doesn’t matter.” Her voice quavered just a little as she undid the second strap and freed his hand. He rolled his wrist carefully and turned his head against her palm, and he registered the ache of his chest as he took his first full, deep breath in an eternity. The fingers of his right hand scrubbed over his face and brushed the fringe of hair at the crown of his head. His hair was short, soft, and fuzzy--not at all thick and long as he'd thought. When had it been shaved off...? His fingers carded shakily through it, maybe an inch long at best?
“We’re going home… I’m taking you home.” Becca touched his hand, which tensed under the contact and dropped to the bed. She looked so strained, and a little tear track was making a path down her cheek. “You… you remember who you are, don’t you?”
“Sergeant James Barnes, 107th, 32557038.” The answer came mechanically. Another tear followed the first, and she nodded, stroking her thumb over his knuckles.
“You always preferred Bucky,” she told him. Bucky… The same name from the voice he'd heard just before the hospital--the voice pleading with him: Your name is James Buchanan Barnes... He turned his hand over, and his weak fingers curled around hers as she leaned forward and buried her face against his shoulder. As he felt her clinging to him, felt the warmth creeping back into his tired limbs, he wasn’t sure if it was him or her, whether the words were aloud or in his head, but a soft phrase repeated over and over, like a whispered litany: You’re alive… you’re alive, you’re alive.