Chapter Text
It was raining, and yet fire burned up Bucky’s side, fierce and demanding.
The factory was on fire. It was a beautiful and fearsome sight.
“Is everything out?”
Bucky heard the yelling, but barely processed it. He held his position guarding the men as they daisy chained boxes of crackers and canned meat into a truck.
In the last hour the shots had slowed, but not given up. Most of Hydra’s men had left or been decimated the first moment the prisoners had gotten their hands on rifles. More were gone when Morita found the bombs.
It was eerie around the brick building now, like a city at the end of the world. Smokey gravel and thick tree lines were lit by the flames, sending terrifying shadows flickering in every direction. Bucky felt weak and on edge. Shouts echoed around walls and off the broken metal shells of abandoned bomb casings. The prisoners called instructions from atop tanks and armored trucks. Men pulled the wounded into their canvas covered beds. Still more rescued boxes of rations and ammunition, stuffing them haphazardly into truck beds. After months of captivity, working hard on a factory floor, the men were adept at repetitive motion, and of carrying large boxes in uncomfortable situations. They were good at working with their life under threat. The fire burned.
Bucky’s leg hurt, his head pounded. He stayed upright.
Barely stayed upright.
He leaned hard against a pile of crates. He reminded his tired arms to hold his rifle in proper position, tucked up into his shoulder and ready to fire. He needed to be ready. The flickering fire-light was bad, and his dizziness wasn’t helping. Images flashed in his perifial vision. Things that were never really there.
He inhaled wet air.
There was grunting and whooping as the men behind him loaded the truck. He just had to fight a little longer.
Bucky squinted. He could just pick out a crisp Hydra uniform on the far end of the gravel patch. He picked them off without thinking. The recoil of the gun hurt, but any pain right now was helpful. Bucky was running off adrenalin. He worried that the second it was gone, he would be too.
He pushed up from the crate where he leaned, stumbled and looked over his shoulder.
“How are we looking?”
The noise from the gun was still ringing in his ears. They needed to wrap up their packing before Bucky lost what little energy he had left.
“Almost there!” A young private he recognized from the factory floor was kicking a stack of boxes to get them fit in the back of the truck. There was no time for military precision, but the kid had done well enough under pressure.
“What’s your name Private?” Bucky lungs wheezed as he yelled. He tried to ignore it. The smoke wafting in from the building wasn’t helping the remnants of his cold. The heat was getting stronger, the flames brighter. They were running out of time.
“Walsh.”
The kid was hanging half out of the truck as man with arms the size of a tree trunks handed him two more boxes. Something moved in the smoke. Bucky stepped to his right, and snapped the rifle back into position on his shoulder. Was it Hyrda or another sick illusion playing with him.
Smoke obscured his view and when he moved his head it pulsed aggressively. If he was remembering correctly he hadn’t had water since the night before. His mouth was cotton dry. His vision swam as he took another careful step to his right. A factory window exploded shelling the gravel parkway in hot glass. Bucky flinched, readjusted. Didn’t see anyone. Maybe the villain he saw in the night really was just a trick of the light.
He breathed. Things seemed quiet.
But that just made him worry that he was falling into a false sense of security. No. The prisoners were taking over. They were stealing what they needed, and they were packing trucks and they were getting out of there. Tonight.
Bucky looked into the smoke and darkness, and felt nauseous with worry. It was dark and wet and a tingling along his back told him not to trust the night.
“Almost there, Sarge,” Walsh yelled. Bucky nodded, regretting it instantly. His brain shook in his skull. He heard footsteps crunch on the gravel and knew Walsh had finally jumped from the truck to give that last bit of room over to food stores.
He pinched his eyes shut for a moment then opened them slowly. They watered as he locked on to motion on the far side of the lot. It wasn’t a hallucination. He kicked back into a fighting stance, readying a shot, waiting for a blue stripe on a uniform to confirm his suspicion that it was Hydra. The figure turned, its profile flickering grey and elongated in the smoky air. Whoever it was had a pistol in their fist. Bucky brought the gun up, waited just a breath. He saw blue and took the shot.
It wasn’t the only gun that went off.
Bucky heard the second shot just as his finger released his trigger. Walsh screamed. Bucky whipped around. There was a second hydra agent cloister in the trees, behind a veil of mist. Bucky hadn’t seen him. That wasn’t like him. Especially not when he was on guard. He tried to swallow back his own horror at his mistake but his mouth was too dry. His throat was thick with shame and fear. He held his rifle high. He knew where he heard the sound, but he couldn’t see anything. A whisper of a branch. He shot again, but didn’t hear a body fall. He missed
Walsh was on the ground. Groaning. Bucky couldn’t see their assailant. There was a scuffle from the treeline. Bucky followed the sound, waited, prepared another shot, but before he could find a figure to aim at he heard a yell, and the crunching leaves of something heavy landing on on the forest floor. Seconds later he saw a pair of hands rise right into the air. There was a figure in the smoke slowly solidifying. His blue was a uniform peaking out from under a dark leather jacket. He was the only one in the company still wearing a helmet. A few steps behind Captain America was Dum Dum in his stupid Dugan’s bowler hat. Bucky nerves released leaving him shaking and sick.
Walsh.
Bucky turned, stumbling to the ground and bashing his knee into the sharp gravel before crashing and crawling his way to Walsh.
“Watch our back.” Bucky pushed his gun into the chest of the first man he saw. His hands were shaking too much for a weapon. It was exhaustion or terror, he wasn’t sure. What he knew was he couldn’t be trusted to watch the men if one of the Hydra guards had gotten the drop on him so easily. He knew the man who was now holding his gun, Terrance Fisher from Pennsylvania. A bad shot, but 20/20 vision and a vengeful sort of attitude. He was already up against the truck, an eye on the treeline. They’d be safe with him on guard.
“Walsh you with me?” The kid was panting. Panicking. He was drawing attention from a few men who had stopped loading the truck to gawk.
Bucky knew from his own experience that half the pain of being shot was just trying to remember how to breathe again. Fear knocked the wind out of you. Bucky snacked the kid’s face lightly.
“‘M here.” Walsh shuddered a half sentence and closed his eyes. Tears squeezed out between his lashes and Bucky hoped the new arrival who had wandered over from the back of the truck would have the sense not to say anything.
“You got medical training or any medical equipment on you?” he asked the new arrival.
The man shook his head. Bucky made to get up to go looking for something himself when the world shifted under his feet and suddenly the idea of standing seemed more cumbersome than it was worth.
“Find me clean cloth and-“ his tongue felt heavy and stiff. He snapped instead. They would know what he meant. He needed clean cloth and alcohol.
The man didn’t turn to leave. Bucky growled pushed himself up onto his knees. It was easier to breathe than it had been with pneumonia on a cold prison floor, but the air still felt wet and dense in his lungs.
“Alcohol!” he managed to wheeze. The word sat heavy in his mouth. He put a hand into the ground and tried to rally the strength he had left. “Cloth and alcohol!” he demanded for the second time. That got the man’s attention. He blinked away from Walsh hurried off. If he didn’t come back with something good, Bucky was gonna reem him. He didn’t have time for rubbernecking.
“Sarge?”
Bucky turned his attention back to Walsh. The world slithered dangerously, and Bucky found himself blinking hard to bring the kid back into focus. There was a soldier bleeding out in front of him, there was no time for black spots to be popping in his vision. There was no time for gravity to be increasing to the point where it was hard to hold himself up, even on all fours. When did he end up back on all fours?
Bucky tried desperately to find a clean section of eyesight with which to get a good look at Walsh’s wound.
“Got a good one, Walsh.” Bucky tried for humor, but his words were thick and sluggish. Bucky adjusted his weight onto three limbs instead of fours so he could pull Walsh’s shirt back. There was a gash across his ribcage, leaving behind loose skin and a pool of blood. It probably hurt like hell, but Bucky guessed Walsh would live. As long as they could staunch the bleeding and keep it clean.
Bucky grabbed a fistful of the private’s ratty shirt, promised himself not to think about infections and pressed it into his side. Walsh screamed again and curled away from him. Bucky couldn’t blame him, but also didn’t have the strength to stop him. He didn’t have the strength for anything. His hand slipped away from Walshe’s side and Bucky landed hard on his elbows. His brain rattled in his skull. If felt like the weight of the blood in his body was pressing against his eyes. His arms shook and his stomach churned.
“Bucky?“
A hand rested on his shoulder. Fear prickled down his spine. He came up swinging. There was a table and icy hands moving him this way and that and he then couldn’t move at all. He kicked wildly until there was an arm around his stomach and Dugan’s voice in his ear.
“Jimmy you’re alright.” Dugan growled, “You’re safe. Hold still.”
Dugan’s arms pulled him away from Walsh before he could kick the kid and add bruising to his sliced up side.
“You’re safe.”
Bucky didn’t feel safe. He felt like someone had put him in a trash can and kicked him down a hill. He was shaking. His stomach turned over and before he knew it acid was forcing it’s way up his throat. The first wave spilled down his arm in a uncontrolled cough. His stomach didn’t relent, and whoever was at his back, turned him so when he heaved again, the bile landed off to the side. There was nothing in his stomach save for a few sips of water someone had thrust at him before handing him a rifle and telling him to protect Walsh’s team.
He didn’t protect Walsh.
“Wal-?” Bucky tried to ask. He searched for the soldier in his swimming vision.
“The Captain’s got him,” Dugan said.
Bucky held tight to Dugan’s strong-man arms as another wave of nausea hit him like a storm.
He wretched onto wet gravel and came up gasping and shaking. Rain sputtered against his lips as he tilted his head toward the sky looking for clean air. A cold tremor worked it’s way up his arms. He was wet and muddy and yet he knew this shiver wasn’t from any of that. His body wanted out if his skin. It prickled and clawed. He let out a pathetic sob. He felt like he did when he was strapped to that table.
That cursed table.
“Hold on Jimmy.” Dugan ran a warm hand up and down his arm. Bucky coughed when the rain hit his throat. Dugan shouted something back toward the building that Bucky couldn’t parse. The rain was picking up, blasting his hearing with tiny stabs of noise and making words hard to understand. Or maybe it wasn’t hard to understand, he just couldn’t put the words together into a straightforward sentence.
Someone tapped his side. With a jolt he realized that he had shut his eyes.
“Sarge?”
Dugan man-handled him back up into the sitting position, then kept an arm around his chest to keep him from falling forward. Bucky blinked his eyes open.
“We’ll get you up into a truck,” Dugan was saying. “we’re gonna try to get some miles behind us before the troop’s adrenalin wears off.”
Adrenaline.
Bucky kicked his feet in a futile effort to stand. His brain had started up at the word adrenaline. He needed to keep moving because if his adrenalin wore out he would stop moving. He needed to be moving. Yeah. It was important to keep moving. Just keep moving.
The ground came back to hit him in the side before he was halfway up. Dugan scooped him back into a sitting position and waited.
Bucky tried again.
“Hold still, kid.” Dugan grumbled after Bucky’s third attempt end with him on hands and knees. “You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
Bucky rolled his shoulder trying to figure out why his legs weren’t working. It was frustrating to say the least.
“Let me help.” Bucky looked up. Steve was kneeling right in front of him, arm out, ready to help him to his feet. “Can’t let you use up all the stupid this early into the march.”
Storming a Hyrda facility alone already deplete our reserves. Bucky thought, but when he tried to make it come out of his mouth, it was just a series of slurring vowels and tired consonants. Steve looked over his shoulder to give Dugan a look.
“W’r m’ving.” Bucky said. He grabbed at Steve’s arm. He needed to be walking. He needed to get the troops together, and get a head count. He needed to lead.
He bent his leg up, willed his body to let him just stand. If he could stand he could walk and if he could walk he could get away from this factory. Hell, if he could walk, he could get back to allied territory and safety. That was it. Getting up was the first step. Always had been. After his Ma died he put one foot in front of the other. When he went to basic training he put one foot in front of the other. Every crappy front, and every crappy march through crappy territory it was just one foot in front of the other.
Bucky put his foot under him, pushed, and got nowhere. He let out an undignified sort of choking noise. This wasn’t acceptable! Even holding onto Steve he couldn’t get up. It wasn’t fair! His body couldn’t fail him, it was all he had. His leg shook as he tried to get it under him again, and again until a warm hand rested on his hip, another on his chest, pressing him until he was back to sitting, leaning against Dugan’s chest. It had to be Dugan, he could smell his dirty clothes, and feel the brush of his mustache against his neck.
“Breathe Sarge.”
Bucky stared at Steve’s hand that had moved to his knee. Water dripped down the webbing between his fingers.
“In Jimmy.” Dugan said hitting Bucky on the Chest. Bucky couldn’t help but inhale. “And out.”
Bucky couldn’t get up if Captain America was weighing him down. He couldn’t walk with Dugan hand around him.
“Can’t walk, Steve,” Bucky voice shivered. “I can’t walk?”
“You can walk,” Dugan soothed. “You’re just exhausted.”
“Not exhausted!” Bucky growled. “I wanna walk.” He tried to brush away Dugan’s hand, but even that didn’t work.
“You’re alright Buck.” The strange new Steve looked concerned the same way the old one had when Bucky would take a hard hit. Steve’s thumb pressed soothing circles into the side of Bucky’s knee. That was new.
With one final desperate attempt to get his body back in line, Bucky kicked out, dislodging Steve and doing nothing toward his mission to get up.
“Need to walk,” Bucky said. His words trailed off as he lost air. He wanted to close his eyes, but moving was important. Getting fucking far away from Hydra and their god forsaken lab was important. He blinked down at the rain and mud covering his pants. His hands shook in his lap. They were almost translucently pale and wrinkled from rain. A bruise spider-webbed out from a deep gouge in his left hand. Needles. Puncture marks spreading out from black wire. Electric running though his fingers.
There was a table. A dark room with brick walls and a whirring machinery. There would be a prick and a burn and things would always go hazy.
“Bucky!”
Bucky snapped his head up.
“What’s going on?” he gasped. A new face faded into his line of sight. (Line of sight, who was watching their backs right now?!) Bucky blinked around looking for the person he sent out with his gun. He thought he sent someone out? He was sure he sent someone out.
“Sargent Barnes?”
Bucky needed to make sure someone was watching their backs. He let Walsh get shot, couldn’t let that happen again.
“Sargent, can you look at me?” A cold hand tucked itself gently under his chin, turned his head a little. Bucky’s eyes slid reluctantly to the new person’s face. He came slowly into focus; Tan skin and a thin mustache on a round face.
“Thought you and Denier were playing with bombs,” Bucky said, hoping the words came out a clear. Knowing they hadn’t.
“Heard you were trying to die again,” Morita replied dryly.
Bucky made his best attempt at an annoyed snort and shoved Dugan’s hand down from his chest.
“Wash?” Bucky said. Something was wrong about the name, but he couldn’t fix it. He needed to know how the kid was, and Morita had medical training. A lot of it. He would know.
“He means Walsh.” Dugan explained, when Morita’s overly expressive eyebrows betrayed his confusion.
Bucky glowered. Of course he was talking about Walsh. Bucky wrapped his arms up against his chest. He was getting cold. Always so cold in the cells. If he was cold, then Walsh, who was lying on the ground bleeding out because of him, must be even colder.
“Wals,” Bucky insisted.
“He’s up and walking, getting sorted with the rest of the troops,” Morita said.
Bucky sniffed then looked toward the spot where Walsh had been lying moments before. Or maybe not moments, because the blood that Walsh had spilled was mostly washed away. Different men were milling about the truck, ready to turn over the engine and get going. All the stolen goods and equipment were strapped in tight.
“Hmmmm?” Bucky said.
“Is he okay?” Steve’s asked.
“Exhausted,” Morita said simply.
“Not.” Bucky argued.
“Barnes focus on Morita.” Dugan nudged his head away from the truck and back toward the medic. It took effort for Bucky’s eyes to adjust. Moving any part of his body at this point was taking effort. Listening took effort.
Morita was repeating something. It didn’t matter.
“Walsh okay?” It was a half sentence, and a broken one at that, but Bucky hoped Morita understood.
“He’s scratched and dazed,” Morita said. His voice was slow and measured, like he was repeating himself. Maybe he was. “Looks a damn bit better than you, I have to say,” Morita tacked on.
Bucky nodded, not because he thought Morita should be saying he looked bad, but because he was glad to hear that Walsh looked alright.
“In fact,” Morita said. “he was asking me to check up on you before I wandered back to the line.”
“M’fine” Bucky tried to wave him off, but the best he could do was lift a finger. He did feel maybe a little better since he’d puked. He thought he remembered puking. He hadn’t moved in a bit (not exactly sure how long that bit had been, but that didn’t really matter) and he felt like he could at least hold himself up while sitting. Maybe that meant he could go ahead and stand up. If he could sit up, he could stand up, if he could stand up he could walk.
“We gotta get moving,“ Bucky started.
There was a chorus of refusals, but Bucky was already turning to reach for Dugan’s shoulder. He found it by sheer luck. His hand was clumsy and listless. He waited leaning into Dugan for his energy to come back. The small twist had taken it out of him. Someone was trying to explain why he shouldn’t move, but only every other word was getting to him. He had other things to worry about. He pulled his legs up under him. Waited and then tried to stand. To his surprise neither Dugan nor Steve stopped him. Instead, Dugan instantly wrapped a hand around his waist from the left, and Steve slipped in from the right with a shrug meant for Morita.
Bucky felt like a wet puppet held between two ventriloquists, but eventually he was standing. His stomach turned and his vision swam, but he was breathing alright. No more puking and if he could stand, he could walk. He just had to put some actual weight his feet first. Any second now his vision would clear and his legs would stop just hanging around and he would be able to stand.
Dugan readjusted his hold and still Bucky’s legs didn’t wake up. Steve took a tentative step forward. Bucky tried to lock his gaze on some goal just a few steps ahead. It had worked before. One step in front of the other, but it was at that moment that Bucky started to lose the thread. His legs were numb. Someone called his name. He tightened his hold around Steve’s neck, but his arm was too tired. Then his arm was too far away. Disconnected.
Morita taped his cheek, called his name. Bucky would answer as soon as he could pull the right words together. Everything greyed around the edges. His tongue felt like lead. A cold hand stayed on his cheek. His wet hair fell in chunks onto his face. He shivered and then Morita was there, in starts and fits. He was supposed to be holding himself up, but he felt more like he was floating. He was supposed to say something to Morita. He was supposed to hold himself up.
“Barnes!”
Bucky floated. Held tight to Steve, but dammit his arms were tired. He started to wonder if he couldn’t stand. If for the first time he couldn’t put one foot in front of the other. He couldn’t stand.
Couldn’t stand
Couldn’t feel his legs.
Couldn’t stand