Chapter Text
“I repeat, Barnes, where are you?” Yelena's voice is broken and barely audible through the blood rushing through his veins, drowning out the barely functioning communicator. “Barnes?!” The woman's voice breaks.
Bucky lies on the cold, dirty asphalt in one of Bucharest's alleys, his metal arm twitching slightly, not from his efforts, but from the continuous current running through it. The man turns his head to the side, closes his eyes, trying not to look at his own blood, because there is too much of it. A pool of blood—he used to leave such pools in his wake, taking out his targets in the same way that had just been done to him. It should be incredibly scary to feel life rapidly leaving the body, but for some reason it feels more like a long-awaited dream he has been desperately longing for. An incredible and pleasant lightness envelops his entire body from within, forcing him to slowly exhale all the air from his lungs, to breathe a sigh of relief, as if someone were gently removing a lifetime of pain from his shoulders with warm hands. Perhaps Bucky has the physical strength to fight, to listen to the orders of John, who is already sitting over him and pressing his strong hands against the wound, while Alexei speaks loudly above his head, pointing to other wounds on Barnes' body. But morally? No, there is no strength to fight, for life, for others, for oneself. At this moment, all the good memories slip away from his clouded mind: there are only painful images from Hydra, from the war, the bloody bodies of young men on the battlefield, and this only incites the desire to remain in this position, with his eyes closed. The last thing he wants to think about is something that would make him at least moan, signaling to others that he is still here, albeit barely.
“Barnes, bitch. I won't be at your funeral, understand?!” Yelena's voice sounds as if it's coming through thick water as she tries to cut his clothes with her collectible knife to see his wounds.
The Thunderbolts are a group of people who have been broken, and no one has tried to fix them, which is why they were able to become a team so quickly. That's why Bucky had no chance of dying in Bucharest, even though he wanted to, he didn't try, but he didn't prevent it either. It was supposed to be a simple mission, ordinary terrorists they had been hunting for several months. But no one knew that a separate hunt was going on at the same time, only for Barnes, or the “Winter Soldier,” as those who were looking for him called him. Hydra or avengers came for his soul for those he killed when he was under Nazi control. At that moment, this was not known, until the broken adults, now called the new Avengers, stood over Barnes' bloody body, while he was smiling sincerely for the first time in a long time. John looks confused when Yelena finally manages to reach the wounds inflicted by the sniper rifle.
“How many?” Ava asks, already counting ten bullet wounds.
***
The private intensive care room at the Bucharest hospital looks almost ridiculous. Alexei sits on a small plastic chair that he brought from the cafeteria, despite the nurse's protests, fidgeting restlessly on the old, cheap seat. Yelena glances at him from under her brow as she sits on the floor next to Bucky's bed, listening to the loud beeping of medical equipment, which sometimes falls out of rhythm. John sits by the window, staring intently at his phone with a grim face, not looking up. It is clear to everyone that he simply does not want anyone to see the genuine fear in his eyes. Bob is almost impossible to see from the other side of Bucky's bed, one hand clutching the bedding tightly, mindful of the prohibition against disturbing Barnes' injured body. Ava is nowhere to be seen, as she was the only one who could calmly communicate with the doctors without raising her voice while they waited for news from the operating room. The atmosphere resembles a death row cell after a death sentence has been handed down, everyone present knows perfectly well that if Bucky had wanted to, he could have avoided being hit by so many bullets. Among broken people, he always held up the best, constantly reminding himself of the power of psychotherapy and constantly making unfunny sarcastic jokes about his past. In his own somewhat rough and awkward way, he always tried to support the members of the new team, and no one ever thought that it was all just a facade.
“We have to transfer him to another hospital, where all operations of this kind are performed.” The doctor speaks broken English, addressing John for the most part. The doctor tries not to pay attention to the overcrowded ward, which according to the rules should be empty. “We need a signature from his relatives or a trusted person. Do you have the phone number of someone who could do that?''
They exchange glances, Yelena just shakes her head and glances briefly at the pale Bucky with dozens of tubes in his body. John nodded silently and scratched his forehead, exhaling through his nose, he has all the necessary medical documents for each member of the New Avengers in their quindjet. As soon as he stood up to bring them, Ava opened the door to the ward, already holding several pieces of paper in her hands. She handed them to the doctor.
“His emergency contacts are listed there, but I don't know how current they are.” She shrugs, looking at the surprised doctor, who takes the papers with slightly trembling hands and leaves the room to call the numbers.
“This is ridiculous! Why can't we just sign the papers?” Yelena exclaims impatiently, her accent becoming harsher from stress and eliciting an untimely smile from Bob.
“Those are the laws of this country, we can't just take him to another hospital, Lena.” Alexei says this with a serious face and an unexpectedly calm and reasonable tone.
A few minutes later, a nurse enters the room, holding all the emergency contact numbers with a confused look on her face.
“I'm sorry, it seems that some of them are invalid.” She hands the papers to Yelena with an awkward smile. “Maybe it's just a problem with the hospital phone? We rarely make international calls, could you try?”
Yelena just nods quickly, takes her own phone out of her pocket, and dials the first number without looking at the owner. “The number you have dialed is no longer in service.” She looks at the piece of paper again and quietly curses under her breath when she sees the simple “Steve Rogers” next to the phone number. The next one doesn't look any better, the phone number isn't American, and the name “T'Challa” only makes Elena press her lips together and huff in irritation. It seems that Barnes updated the list even before Thanos, and if he were conscious now, she would certainly express her dissatisfaction with his carelessness. The last phone number makes her breathe a sigh of relief, and she quickly dials the number.
“Hello?” Sam's voice sounds sleepy and confused; it seems that it was nighttime in the US and she interrupted his sleep, but that didn't cause any embarrassment.
“Send a photo of the consent form so that Barnes can be transferred to another hospital for surgery.”
“I-Barnes... what?” His voice sounds more awake now, and she can hear the rustling of things.
“He got hit... That idiot got himself into trouble, he lost a lot of blood and many internal organs are damaged, we are in Bucharest, in the central hospital.” Yelena says irritably, given the lack of time and her own unwillingness to have anything to do with Sam, who keeps trying to file a lawsuit against their team.
“Okay, that's... God. I'll send it right now. Wait a minute.” He says quickly, ignoring the tone Yelena uses when addressing him.
***
“Wow! Look who's here.” John whistles, looking at Sam, who looks like a complete mess, wearing pajamas under his Captain America suit.
They have been sitting for several hours outside the operating room at another hospital, hungry, still in dirty rags, and anxious. Sam flew in quickly, clearly using all the privileges that come with being Captain America. He doesn't say hello or ask how Bucky is doing, seeing from their faces that he definitely won't like the answer. Yelena glances at him from time to time, huffing under her breath, waiting for him to speak first. Everyone on the team knew about Barnes' relationship with Sam before this team was accidentally formed, although he never verbally confirmed their guesses. They all saw how hard the argument with Wilson hit him, everyone noticed him at least once on the carpet by the sofa in the middle of the night with the TV on, showing reruns of Captain America news. No one dared to tell him that everyone could see how he was clearly suffering after another call from Sam's team. And it annoyed Yelena the most, because she knew, she knew perfectly well that Bucky was the last person who wanted to be on this team, she saw how hard he tried to distance himself from the life of a superhero, but his attempts were always in vain. Several times she noticed how sincerely and passionately he hated himself in the mirror after training, how he occasionally took off his metal arm just to hide it from his own gaze. She knew how much he hated that others wanted him to call this team the Avengers, how he looked at Steve's photo and promised that he was trying.
“Ты идиот” She almost hissed at Sam, who flinched and looked at her, knowing exactly what it meant in Russian, most likely from Natasha. “He almost died... you know what? If he dies there, I'll blame you for it!” John looks at her in surprise and gets up from his seat, holding her by the shoulder and turning her away from Sam.
Sam looks as if a puppy has just been killed in front of him, no less. He stares blankly at the closed operating room door and sits down on the floor, hugging his knees to his chest. Yelena doesn't stop talking, only this time she's just pouring out everything she thinks about the situation to John, who just nods from time to time, understanding that she's just feeling genuine fear. Losing another person in her life. She and Bucky had become close quite quickly, mostly because her dog was constantly trying to play with Alpine, who was scared and hid in Barnes' jacket pocket. And it's no wonder that now she was on the verge of hysterics.
***
Sam is the first to enter the room, mostly because he pressured the hospital staff by saying he was his emergency contact. The man sits on the edge of the bed and squeezes Bucky's cold hand tightly, trying to warm it, as he has done hundreds of times before in other circumstances.
“John said you're lucky. He has your blood type, can you believe it?” He whispers to the unconscious body as if waiting for an answer. “Without him, you would have died. For the first time, I'm glad that idiot has serum in his blood.” His voice breaks dangerously in the middle of the sentence as he raises Bucky's hand to his lips. “I'm very unhappy, you know? I saw... the cameras, there were cameras, and you just stood there, you just stood there like you were being executed.”
Sam doesn't try to hide his tears. Right now, all the insults seem so meaningless and shallow that he feels like a fool for how they almost ruined everything because of the Avengers. How many times did he promise himself he wouldn't repeat the mistakes Steve and Tony made, and how many times has he already repeated them without even noticing? He brushes the hair from Bucky's pale face and exhales with relief when he slowly opens his eyes. The tube in his mouth prevents him from speaking, but that doesn't stop the surprised sound that leaves his mouth.
“Shh, we'll figure it out. Rest." Sam whispers and leans down, leaving a kiss on his forehead, causing Bucky to melt and close his eyes again.