Work Text:
.
Bucky wakes slowly, breathing as quietly as possible, hoping beyond hope that Zola won’t notice he’s still alive.
..
An explosion knocks him out of a light sleep and in an instant he’s sprinted out of the tent, huddling behind a boulder with his rifle trained on the enemy. He lines up the shot, fires, watches as a man collapses, and prays for a night without an ambush.
…
He startles awake, taking in a breath that feels too loud even though it’s almost completely silent, and for a moment he’s puzzled by the fluorescent lights above his head.
The throng of doctors slowly fades into view, along with the titanium arm attached to his left side, bolted to the bed frame underneath him. Before he can gain his bearings, a doctor notices he’s conscious, states something in a language he doesn’t understand, and plunges a needle into his shoulder that makes him go limp.
….
He wakes, forces himself to his feet, pushes his hair out of his face, and races away from the man about to lunge at him a second time. Super soldier , that’s what this man is, and he’s stronger than the Soldier but not quite as fast, so he uses that to his advantage.
Once he’s put enough distance between himself and the mission, he scrambles up a wall covered in rusty scaffolding and fires five shots at him. Two of them land square in the mission’s left leg but he keeps running like nothing has happened, catching up to the Soldier, tearing the scaffolding off the wall, pinning him to the ground.
…..
He blinks awake, shaking, skin damp and cold, hair dripping in his eyes, and sits frozen in place as the restraints around his wrists and ankles lift away. He tries to take a step forward and collapses on the ground, gritting his teeth as two technicians grab him by the arms, drag him across the lab, and shove him into a metal chair surrounded by tubes and cables.
A third technician grabs a second chair, sits across from him, and recites a series of phrases and words to him that don’t make sense.
He’s reading from a book, a small red leather book with a star that matches the one on his arm.
The voice stops and he feels light-headed, mindlessly answering questions that the technician asks, but at least the cold has left his bones.
……
The soldier wakes up to someone screaming in the cell next to his, a blood-curdling yell that rattles off the walls and echoes through the hallway.
He expects the noise to stop quickly because most of the time it does, especially when it comes from prisoners. He expects to be let out of his cell quickly because he always is, he only ever stays locked up for a few minutes while his handler gathers the details for his next mission.
And as the seconds turn into minutes, as the screaming continues, he realizes that he doesn’t know why he’s here, doesn’t know if his handler is here with him, doesn’t know who the prisoner next to him is.
There are no windows here, no way to tell the time of day, and he wonders how far underground they’ve put him.
Words scrambled in an unrecognizable pattern bounce off the walls of the empty hallway, and the hair stands up on his right arm, but he can’t remember what’s put him so on edge.
…….
He doesn’t remember passing out but he must have, because the shadows of electricity still crackle in his head and his limbs won’t stop twitching but the machine is off. He’s wired, frantic to escape the manacles holding his arms at his sides, but the doctor filling a syringe with bright blue liquid hasn’t even noticed that he’s conscious. He could call to get his attention, but some force he can’t name keeps his mouth clamped shut.
“We can’t afford another failure, Gorokhov - if he remembers Capitan America, all of this planning will be rendered useless.”
He doesn’t recognize the title - Captain America - and he doesn’t recognize the American uttering the name, and he doesn’t recognize this room, and he doesn’t recognize the doctor administering injections he can’t ask about.
“The wipe was successful, sir - he should be stable enough for activation once the amobarbital is administered.”
“Perfect,” he responds, and looks at the asset, “One last piece of the puzzle, soldier, and your work will be done.”
……..
He yells so loudly he wakes himself up, and goes completely silent when it hits him that the apartment walls are so thin anyone could hear him. His dream rings vivid in his mind, blood-soaked and dismembered bodies littering the floor of an upscale hotel lobby.
It’s January 22nd, 2015 - he checks the date on a calendar covered with X’s tacked to his wall, because without the reminder, he still forgets what year it is.
Next, he walks through the apartment and makes sure every window is covered and bolted shut, the door locked from 3 different places. If HYDRA wants to find him they’ll have no problem slamming a battering ram through the plywood, but he should at least be able to buy himself enough time to run.
He sits himself back down on the bare mattress he threw on the floor a week ago and flips through a dog-eared, battered book about Captain America written in German he swiped from a bookstore in Turkey. It’s not new information, but it still sparks foggy memories if he focuses hard enough, so he skims the first chapter for the fourth time this week.
An hour later a soft knock sounds at his door, and he bolts to the source of the noise, only to see that the hallway outside is empty.
………
He wakes up and stares around a bright white room he doesn’t recognize. The doctor is unfamiliar, too, but that’s nothing new.
There are no restraints on the examination table.
He tries to lift himself up on his elbows, and that’s when he realizes that his metal arm is gone.
Everything comes back to him at once - fighting the other Avengers, the footage of the car crash, Tony trying to kill him, T’Challa taking him and Steve back to Wakanda, cryostasis.
He should be waking up with the worst headache of his life, soaking wet, brain stuffed full of rocks. That’s always how it happened before, and he’d be disoriented enough that he’d do whatever the scientists told him to, follow whatever orders they gave him.
Not this time.
This time, he feels light.
……….
Bucky wakes slowly, stretches both his arms out until his back pops, and sits up, smacking his lips. It’s light out, which means he slept through the night, and there aren’t any nightmares creeping to the front of his memory this time.
He breathes.
The days have been slow lately, and it drove him up a wall for a while, but now that he takes the mornings as an opportunity to relax, it isn’t so bad.
He polishes his arm, a habit he never picked up with the silver one because just looking at the thing was enough to set him off.
The TV drones on in the background as he goes about his day, cooking breakfast, airing out his apartment, planning out the week ahead.
Out of the blue, Sam texts him, “Hey, how are you?”
He waits, considering whether to leave it or not.
He replies.
“Good, you?”