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Language:
English
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Published:
2025-03-25
Updated:
2025-10-13
Words:
7,934
Chapters:
4/?
Comments:
8
Kudos:
50
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1,057

Noradrenaline

Summary:

In the immediate aftermath of the downfall of Project Insight--- and hopefully HYDRA--- the Winter Soldier disappears.

Not if Steve Rogers has anything to say about it.

Or: A slowburn reconciliation disguised as a chase.

Notes:

I debated for so long over my options for the title. My research did not disappoint.

A huge thanks to Sergeant Micky on fanfiction.net whose Bucky Barnes recovery stories not only drew me into a beautiful new world of stylistic storytelling that I had never seen before, but pulled me back in once more, after four years, to find untold nostalgia and catharsis and dormant obsession waiting for me. You can find their profile here at SergeantMicky. Those stories have made an incredibly stabilizing impact on my writing life. I cannot thank the author enough.

Another shout-out to AhsokaJackson. An amazing sequence from her unpublished work "Sick by Six" set a spark to gunpowder. I knew I wanted to tell a story here. I just didn't know where to start.

Chapter 1: Prologue

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

   It should not have been this difficult to hide a body.

 

   Especially since that body was still alive.

 

   He glanced over his shoulder, on edge. He should have been better than this. He should have been taught. (Or… maybe he had been. Maybe he just… couldn’t remember…)

 

   Shadows jeered at his heels as he sped up, walking faster. Past the camera, through the crowd, and away from the train. He had bought a ticket. What had he been thinking? Buying a ticket. He wasn’t even sure how he’d known where to find the money, the bugout bag packed with tear gas and extra mags and an EMP. It was all there. Granola bars and a water purifier and cash, a thumb drive he didn’t have the time to inspect, a mask he couldn’t bring himself to throw away, to unclench his fingers from the second he had lunged back to chuck it out of the worn safehouse window---

 

   They were coming. They had taken a critical hit, a massive loss, and he had gained a twelve-hour head start. Bought time with which to raid safehouses his footsteps knew the directions to, resources to steal while the perpetrators of the scene of the crime had been looking the other way. Now… Now they were coming. They would rally, consolidate their assets, and he was an asset, they had---

 

   Bring him in, he thought he heard; a sinister voice too friendly and quiet and calm for the way it bounced around beneath his hollow ribs. He flinched away from the surprised man behind the newspaper stand just trying to sell him something. He couldn’t breathe. He scooped his gloved fingers into his ears, making absolutely sure he wasn’t still wearing a commlink or headset, and trotted away from the words he couldn’t understand, the words that didn’t mean anything because they took up no space like the calm voice in his head.

 

   He wanted to strangle someone’s throat, crush the trachea until that voice stopped talking. The impulse scared him. Quickly, before he could think twice, he took a right, bore south, and lost himself in the depths of the city. He was on the east coast of America. He didn’t know exactly where, because it was new, the paved concrete and the flashing billboards and the scummy alleyways that smelled worse than the worn brick he remembered somewhere in the back of his mind on the tips of his fingers, gritty texture somewhere beyond the flashing electric shocks.

 

   It was different. He was different.

 

   It should not have been this difficult to hide a body.

Notes:

"The general function of norepinephrine (noradrenaline) is to mobilize the brain and body for action. Norepinephrine release is lowest during sleep, rises during wakefulness, and reaches much higher levels during situations of stress or danger, in the so-called fight-or-flight response. In the brain, norepinephrine increases alertness, promotes vigilance, enhances formation and retrieval of memory, and focuses attention; it also increases restlessness and anxiety.

Broadly speaking the effect of norepinephrine on each target organ is to modify its state in a way that makes it more conducive to active body movement, often at a cost of increased energy use and increased wear and tear.

Norepinephrine prevents REM sleep, and lack of REM sleep increases noradrenaline secretion. It causes neurodegeneration if its loss is sustained for several days."