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There would have been signs, was the thing. They should have seen the look on Walker’s face when they kept teasing him about his ‘special missions’ for Valentina. They should have realized how worn-out he looked when he came back. They should have registered that he had grown less energetic, had started moving stiffly. And they should have noticed that Walker had taken to wearing long-sleeved shirts while training. There would have been signs; but they had not bothered to look.
They were sitting around the table, eating dinner and having a nice evening, when Walker returned from one of his special missions looking paler than they had ever seen him. Yelena teased, “Aww, did she make you watch a horror movie?” Bob and Ava snorted at her comment.
But then Walker whispered, “Help,” and his knees buckled, all 6’2’’ of him crashing to the ground.
Bucky was next to him in a second, but he couldn’t rouse him. Whether he yelled his name or patted his cheek, Walker remained unconscious. And when he heard someone say, “His pulse is too slow,” Bucky heaved Walker up into his arms and all but ran to the infirmary.
Almonds, Bucky had smelled almonds, and it did not take him long to understand that Walker had been poisoned with cyanide. So an oxygen mask and hell of a lot of B12 shots its was.
But that did not explain how Walker had ended up getting poisoned. So Bucky sent Yelena, Ava, Bob, and Alexei to go talk to Valentina – she just had to have something to do with it. Meanwhile, Bucky stayed behind to watch over Walker and to examine him; maybe there were clues on his body as to what could have happened.
Except, the more closely Bucky looked at Walker’s body, the more horrors he uncovered. The man’s arms and legs were covered in scars – some of them old, but most of them recent. He was missing two small toes, but they had not been removed surgically, they had been cut off crudely. Bucky found two ribs that had been broken but had already healed – but they had healed wrong, a bump in the bone confirming that suspicion. And one of Walker’s eardrums seemed to have been shattered.
Those were all marks of systematic violence. But that in itself was not what shook Bucky to his core; they had all gotten tortured at some point. It was the fact that in front of Bucky’s eyes, recorded on Walker’s body, was a clear chronological order. He had been tortured more than once. Walker had gone back knowing full well what was going to happen.
Yelena had sent Bucky a text saying, ‘Valentina called it an experiment, wanted to see how much Walker’s serum can heal’. So when Walker was beginning to wake up, Bucky walked over to the groggy man and stated, “We will not let her hurt you in the name of science anymore, John. As a matter of fact, we will not let her hurt you anymore, period.”
When Walker closed his eyes, Bucky thought that the man had fallen back asleep, but then he heard the whispered, “Why now?”
“Come again?”
Walker peeled his eyes back open and asked, “Why start caring now?”
“What are you talking about?” Bucky asked back.
Walker’s eyes had closed again, but his words were clear. “Valentina said you knew. Said that it had to be one of the super soldiers and that you and Alexei had volunteered me.”
Taken aback, all Bucky could say was, “And you believed her… Christ, John.” He grabbed Walker’s face with both hands and waited until those sky-blue eyes had found his before stating, “We didn’t know, John. Had we known, we would not have let her hurt you. I swear to you.”
“The thing is,” Walker said, “she wouldn’t have had to lie. Because if it meant that you two didn’t have to suffer, I would have volunteered anyway.”
Bucky sank his head and let it drop onto Walker’s shoulder for a second. “We would do the same for you, you absolute idiot! And, yes, we should have paid more attention. But, Christ, John, had you just opened your damn mouth, we could have put a stop to this before it even began!”
Bucky waited until Walker’s breath had evened out once more before he gently placed the oxygen mask back over his face and patted his shoulder. “You and your stupidity are going to be the death of me one day. But you’re loyal to a T, and you deserved better from us… We will be better, John. I promise you.”
THE END