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Steve motions for them to split up as they sneak through the building. They’re looking for hostages, trying to do so without attracting any unwanted attention.
Bucky walks down the hall to their right as Steve takes the left. It’s dark in the building. Only a few lights seem to be working. He can see signs of struggle in the rooms he passes. Chairs turned over, broken tables, marks in walls and on the floor. There’s even blood splatter on the walls of the hall he’s walking down.
It all gives him chills. The place reminds him of a typical hydra base. Cold, dark, and creepy. All the rooms are empty, filled with an eerie silence.
He stops in his tracks as he hears a noise from the next room. Taking out his knives, ready for anything, he quietly walks into the room. He quickly scours the room. It’s empty. No chairs, or broken tables, the walls spotless. There is a small red light blinking on the other side of the room. Could be a clock, could be an android ready to attack.
Bucky doesn’t have any time to figure it out before he’s sprayed with smoke. Must’ve been a motion detector, he thinks as the room fills with thick white smoke. He stars coughing as his eyes and throat burn from the smoke.
“Barnes?” Steve’s voice is in his ear. If Bucky wasn’t so busy thinking about what the hell to do, he would comment on Steve’s insistence to be formal even though it’s only the two of them on this mission.
Bucky can only cough in reply as he tries to find his way back out of the smoke. It’s making him dizzy and disoriented, so he uses his right arm to feel along the wall until he finds an open door, praying it’s the one he came through.
He stumbles back down the hall with one hand along the wall, not caring about the blood splatter sticking to his fingers.
“Barnes?” Steve calls to him again as Bucky keeps coughing, trying to get whatever substance entered his body out.
“Bucky?” This time Steve sounds concerned. Bucky is too dizzy, and his vision too blurry to make out much of anything, so he tries to use his memory to get outside. He is less than half coherent, but he knows he does not want to be on enemy territory if he collapses.
The fresh air does nothing to ease the burning as he makes in out into the night. He can’t remember the area being this dark, but he brushes it off. Too busy focusing on breathing through the burn.
He collapses, hitting his knees hard on the ground before landing on his back. As he stares up at the night sky it’s so dark, he wonders if his eyes are even open.
Stay awake, don’t close your eyes. He hears in his head, unsure if it’s Steve’s voice in his ear or his own thoughts.
The energy it takes to keep himself awake drains out of him and his eyes finally slip closed as he fades into unconsciousness.
---
Bucky can feel himself resurfacing. His limbs are so heavy they don’t even feel like they’re attached to his body anymore. A groan escapes as he wishes he could fall unconscious again.
“Bucky?” He groans again, contemplating whether opening his eyes is worth the energy or not. “Are you okay? I heard you coughing and came out find you laying here. What happened?” Steve sounds stressed, talking fast, barely stopping for breath.
“Smoke.” He chokes out, throat sore. He can hear Steve talking. He’s staring into the pitch-black night. It’s dark out, but he’s fairly certain he should be able to at least make out the shape of Steve beside him. His pulse raises; he can’t make out what Steve is saying. As he blinks to clear his vision, there’s still only darkness. He reaches a hand up to feel his eyes are open.
Bucky sits up, ignoring the ringing in his ears. As he looks around, searching for a light source, or the beginning of sunrise, or anything other than darkness, his heart sinks deeper and deeper into his stomach.
Steve must pick op on Bucky’s anxiety as he stops rambling.
“What time is it?”
“Just after five thirty.” Steve says with confusion. The sun should definitely be rising by now. Bucky can’t see it. Bucky can’t see anything.
“I can’t-” He chokes on his own words. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.
“You can’t what?” Steve says after a while.
“It’s dark.” His pulse is hammering in his chest.
“You don’t remember?” Steve asks, oblivious to the situation. “It’s okay if you don’t-”
“No. I can’t fucking see.” There’s a sharp intake of breath beside him.
“Oh.” Steve goes quiet, and then; “They hit you in your blindside, huh?”
“Not funny.” Bucky is panicking too much for joking about the situation. He doesn’t even know what the situation is. His patience for Steve’s humoristic coping mechanism to stress is non-existent.
“Right, sorry. What happened in there?”
Bucky tells him as much as possible in as few words as possible. Sadly, putting words together is not his strong suit at the moment, so it takes a while for Steve to put together what happened.
“So, smoke, burning, passing out, darkness?” Steve repeats as he gets ready to call someone. He avoids the word blind as if it’s the plague.
Steve is only on the phone for five minutes, but Bucky can’t feel him at his side anymore, and his voice sounds distant. He can’t see how far away Steve is, the distance between them feeling further than it probably is. Five minutes is more than enough time for him to work himself up into a full-blown panic attack.
He’s breathing too fast; heart beating too fast; cold sweat soaking through his uniform. The only though in his head is what if this doesn’t pass?
He jumps out of his skin as hands are suddenly on him again.
“Hey, it’s just me. Breathe.” Bucky tries to breathe, but breathing is impossible when you’re blinded by some mysterious smoke. “Simmons says it’s most likely a drug attacking your visual cortex, she thinks it will pass, but she needs a blood sample. We’ll figure this out, Buck.”
His words do nothing to calm him down. Drug, visual cortex, blood sample. It makes the whole situation more real. He feels helpless as the hyperventilating intensifies. He can hear Steve telling him to slow down his breathing, but he has no control over his body.
Suddenly Steve’s lips are on Bucky’s, making him hold his breath. When Steve pulls back, Bucky’s panic glides over to tears. There goes his promise to himself not to cry.
“I’m gonna hug you, okay?” Steve warns him to avoid scaring him again. The second Steve’s arms are around him; Bucky feels safer. He takes deep breaths and squeezes his eyes shut, not that it matters, as he can only see black anyway.
When Bucky is as calm as he’ll get, Steve helps him stand up and guides him over to the Quinjet that will take them to Simmons.
Once they’ve made it on board and sat down in one of the more comfortable areas, Bucky rests his head on Steve’s shoulders. He had a hard time walking in a straight line, and staying upright as they walked over, his new blindness disorienting him. He even had to attempt three times before finding Steve’s shoulder. Being blind is exhausting.
“Steve?” Bucky asks drowsily. He is dead tired.
“Hmm?”
“If anyone asks…” He trails of, too tired.
“If anyone asks, you handled the situation well. You absolutely did not have a panic attack and break down crying. Now go to sleep.” Bucky falls asleep with a smile. He knows Steve won’t stop until he has his vision back, one way or another.
---
When Steve wakes Bucky up, Bucky feels better. Seems that you need a few hours of shut eye to reverse some of the effects of a sleepless night and some mysterious drug. Not completely though, as he’s still blind.
“We’re almost there.” Steve informs him. Bucky’s neck is stiff from leaning on Steve while sleeping. He moves his head around, desperate to see anything, but it’s still completely dark. The anxiety is coming back with a vengeance. Why is he still just as blind?
“Steve, what if…” I stay like this? He can’t make himself say it out loud.
“I know, Buck, I know.” Steve is starting to sound unsure too. Bucky needs Steve to believe, he needs the hope he can’t find in himself.
“No, you can’t…”
“You will be fine. I’ll make sure of it.” Steve says with a little more confidence in his voice.
“I just can’t…” He can’t think about a future like this. He can’t get his hopes up that this will pass. Or that his vision will be back to normal again. He has never heard of a way to temporarily blind someone safely.
“I’ve got you. We will figure this out, I promise.” Steve reassures him. “Now, will you complete any of your sentences?”
Bucky tries to hit Steve’s shoulder, thinking not funny, but he misses. They both go still for a moment before they start laughing. The whole situation is so absurd. After Bucky has been shot, stabbed, beaten, broken, frozen, pushed, and brainwashed so many times, this is what takes him down? He has to laugh. The alternative would be to face how dire the situation is.
---
They make it to the infirmary where Jemma is waiting for them. Bucky is exhausted again from stumbling all the way from the Quinjet outside. He never appreciated how much the world was made for non-blind people until now. Finding his way from point A to point B is exhausting even with Steve at his side.
Jemma Simmons handles Bucky perfectly. She lets him know every time she’ll touch him, makes sure he knows what’s going on and keeps him calm. Bucky is starting to wonder if Steve told her about how anxious and jumpy he is. She makes him feel as included as possible, as it’s hard to feel included when you can’t see what’s going on. It feels like he’s in another room, listening in on their conversation.
Simmons takes his blood and does a few tests on his eyes to see how they react to light and air pressure. The air pressure makes him jump. He can’t see it coming, no matter how well Simmons prepares him he jumps every time the air hits his eyes. She does it three times on each eye. If anything, he jumps more at the end. She has him move his eyes around the room to see if his eyes react to anything.
Finally, after a while of waiting for her to do her thing, she has an idea of what’s going on.
“I think the drug from the smoke entered your bloodstream through your lungs and attacked your visual cortex. Your blood looks like it has a paralyzing agent in it, meaning the visual cortex is most likely temporarily paralyzed.”
Okay, Bucky thinks, can you repeat that in English?
“What does that mean?” Steve seems to be thinking the same as Bucky, as he speaks before him.
“In short, your eyes can still see, but the center in your brain that processes it doesn’t work because of the drug. But the drug should wear of within a couple days.”
Bucky tries to look in the direction her voice came from. “Will I be okay?” He hates how vulnerable he sounds, but he needs to know.
“The drug behaves pretty much the same way as anesthesia. Meaning there are some risks, but most of the time patients have a full recovery.”
Her voice is suddenly the most beautiful voice he’s ever heard. Full recovery. The relief floods through him, making him dizzy.
Simmons gives him eye drops to hopefully help clear his eyes sooner. She says they’ve never seen anything like this before, so she has no clue if it will actually help, but it’s worth a shot. The drops hitting his eyes is no less scary than the air pressure. At lest she only does it once on each eye.
Bucky’s eyes feel abused from all the attention, but he smiles long after Jemma leaves the room.
“That’s what I said.” He mumbles in Steve’s general direction.
“Sure Buck.” Comes from the other side of the room. There’s still a twinge of anxiety in his stomach. The loss of one of his senses is completely throwing him off and reminding him of Hydra. But this time the anxiety is accompanied by hope.
He hears footsteps coming closer before Steve hugs him. They stay in each-other’s arms for a moment, appreciating the calm air that settles over them.
“Can we go now?” Bucky asks when his arms get tired from holding onto Steve.
“Sure. You wanna stop for food on the way?” Bucky can hear the smile in Steve’s voice. Now that Bucky’s anxiety has subsided a bit, he feels how hungry he is. He can’t remember the last time they ate. Probably dinner last night, as they had to leave for the mission in a hurry. The mission.
“What about the mission?” How could he forget? They were looking for hostages. Innocent people held against their will. And he left them.
“Hey, don’t worry. They sent in Nat and Clint after we left. They got everyone out.” Bucky breathes out in relief. He’ll need to sleep for a week after this roller coaster of emotions. “Now, are you hungry or not?”
“God, yes.” He practically jumps down from the examining table, followed by losing his balance. Steve grabs onto him before he falls. Maybe calm down a bit, before you hurt yourself, he tells himself.
Steve holds onto him again as he leads Bucky out the building and into the car. He only stumbles over one doorstep and takes that as a win. He doesn’t get as tired from walking this time either. His anxiety being lower and trust that Steve won’t let him fall or walk into a wall being higher helping to preserve his energy.
Once in the car, he lets himself completely relax. The tiredness hits him again, feeling like he could fall asleep in a moment. His shoulders and neck are so stiff the pain reaches into his jaw and face. He must have been much more tense than he realized. He turns his head side to side, up and down, trying to loosen up.
He stops when he sees a faint light in front of him. It looks like a very weak, small, blurry light source in the distance. When he moves his head, the light moves.
“Is the sun out?” He asks, tying not to get his hopes up.
“Yeah, it’s almost twelve.” Bucky squeezes his eyes shut and opens them repeatedly, expecting the light to disappear, but it stays. For the first time since this whole ordeal started, he believes he will be okay. He smiles wide as he looks from the sun to Steve.
“I think I can see the light.”