Since he'd rescued the man - his mission, his failed mission - from the crushing debris of SHIELD's helicarriers burning hot into the river, he'd been thrown off kilter. The man - blond, large and strong, righteous and merciful; ever since the final fight, before he fell, the Soldier had thoughts... thoughts that weren't his own... Or perhaps they were, but they felt like someone else's. It was all too confusing. The more he thought about it the more his head ached with searing pain ( a pain he'd've likened to the chair treatment, if he could remember it). He would distract himself with menial tasks, focus on his next move, plan of action, since he had nowhere to go, no one to report to. HYDRA within SHIELD was revealed to the entire world, HYDRA agents were being detained and tried, and SHIELD was terminated; he was a dangerous assassin, probably the most deadly of all the world's assassins, no one would offer him salvation... Hell, he wasn't even sure if he wanted salvation.
If he was honest, more than anything he just wanted to make sense of everything. To understand. Because he knew the man - his mission - the one he'd pulled onto the river bank - but he didn't know how or when he knew him. Something told him to pull him from the depths of the river and save him. And as he waited to see the man's chest rise and fall with breath, water spilling from his lips, he wondered how he could have ever had such a friend, someone who would've let himself be killed because he didn't want to hurt him, adamantly insisting their friendship, someone like this man in blue. Fuzzy snap shots played in his brain, like a slide show of photos changing too fast from him to clearly see and maybe recognize...? No. It was... impossible. It couldn't - could it?
It was these types of hanging questions racing tirelessly through his mind, coupled with the images of his recent memory and the memories of his apparent distant past that distracted him, kept him from moving on, and managing on his own, surviving, since he had no one in the world... No one, it seemed, until he was distracted yet again and accosted.
The image of a scruffy man, eyes glazed over, staring mouth agape at a soda machine in the darkened alley between shitty motel buildings. To an outside observer he looked like he was seriously deliberating between Pepsi or Mountain Dew, but the one who had snuck up on him (not nearly an amazing feat as one might praise it as, since he was stupidly entranced, seemingly blind, deaf, and dumb) gave the impression of knowing exactly how his mind was currently occupied.
"You know," the voice began, first shaking him from his reverie through sound, no longer deaf, but dumb and blind seemed to still be in effect, "Any self preservation conscious fugitive would've been four states away by now, might've even fled the country," the voice wagered and he could practically hear the shrug that went with it, "But you stayed. Just what is it that's keeping you here, mate?"
Mind and body fully back online, his left arm reached out behind him, not coming into contact with anything immediately until his body followed the motion. The figure was hooded, but he vaguely registered the tone as one he's heard before. Regardless of familiarities - excluding the Man in Blue from the helicarrier - anyone he presently recognized meant affiliation with HYDRA. The hooded figure had taken a stance far from him, and started at the first sign of movement from him, but didn't make any motion to flee, or struggle when his metal hand enclosed around their throat.
He pushed them both deeper into the shadows, nearer to the dumpsters, and pressed the HYDRA slime into the wall. He shoved at the hood with his flesh and blood hand, presenting the face that went with the voice. It took a few moments before his mind could produce a name as well. One of the doctors. The gentle one, the quiet one... well, much gentler than anyone else had treated him since his last defrosting from cryostasis wakened him to a new team of people... Handlers. He could differentiate this doctor not only because she was one of the few (broadly speaking) women in HYDRA's midst, but, he remembered, she seemed the most reluctant to be among them; though her reluctance aside she was usually the physician he was sent to after missions, the healing hands that would retend to the wounds - if he attained any - he haphazardly patched himself, that the Red Room imitation serum couldn't heal. He had associated words with most of the HYDRA agents he regularly came in contact with, a great number of them were not the kindest of words or could translate well into English, but a word - доверие - intoned in his mind upon revealing her face. Trust. He could trust her. He suspected that something that had encouraged him to save the Man in Blue was at it again.
Beyond the detraction of battling memories, his confusion on where to go, what to do since the collapse of HYDRA/SHIELD, he faintly recalled his initial decision to find someone. He couldn't remember why, or who he'd wanted to find, since his mind would run away from him, but... доверие. Could it have been her? He couldn't yield a guess. But доверие. Trust was her association word... Either way, she had sounded so smug and sure of herself when she approached him seconds ago, and now he had to appear like he wasn't at all under duress, constantly teetering on the edge between two lives, on the brink of hysteria, of tears. He had the control here, she needed reminding of that; he figured he could trust her enough to get answers out of her before he killed her, at the very least.
"I've been looking for you," he growled, though his mind kept repeating: доверие, доверие, trust, trust - as if in warning. The statement didn't feel untrue, even if he'd said it only to demonstrate he wasn't to be trifled with.
She had the mind to futilely grab at his wrist and fingers curling infinitesimally around her neck, but that didn't stop the sarcasm from dripping through her choked words, "Ah, really? Well, I've been following you. For the past week," she rasped frantically, trying gasp in enough breath to get the rest of her speech out. "Didn't really seem like you were looking for me once those helicarriers dropped in a fiery blaze into the river. You've barely taken a glance behind you since rescuing Captain Rogers from what would've been a tragic death and watery grave."
Trust, his thoughts were practically screaming, though he'd never even had a full conversation with this HYDRA doctor, couldn't even remember her first name; in a world where he couldn't trust anyone, why had his bedraggled mind told him to rescue the Man in Blue (Captain Rogers, apparently), why was it now telling him to trust her?
His eyes shifted away and he didn't hear the whirring in his shoulder, the metal shifting, his fingers tightening minutely and her breath wheezing in smaller increments. Though his mind rallied for her help, his body, particularly left his arm, was in obvious opposition.
"I've been distracted... A lot on my mind," he muttered, as if it were an admission to himself more than an excuse for his negligence toward guarding his own life. His eyes hardened as they raised from the bricks behind her shoulder and settled on hers again, and he said, in that strict affirming tone, "I can trust you."
"Oh, that's nice," she gasped, hardly louder than a whisper, her clawing at his hand lessening as she lost her strength and consciousness, "Seems like a mixed message, though, what with the way you're crushing my windpipe."
His inner voice was snapping the word now, in a scolding tone. He recoiled sharply, shifting a few steps backward. Her feet touched back to the ground, and he hadn't even known he had lifted her, hadn't even know the pressure on her throat had increased to keep her pinned. He damned his arm, damned the Russians, damned the Germans, damned himself for ever joining the army... or - Another memory, distant and hazy and grey, had he enlisted or was he drafted into the army? He shook his head, like the motion would shift the jumbled contents and the puzzle pieces would lock into place to recreate the broken picture within. Finally. Illumination. What he craved.
She was coughing, hunched over as she gulped in lungfuls of breath, in and out until she was no longer sputtering, but still rubbing against the place where his hand would undoubtedly leave bruising marks. "You've been remembering, or trying or not trying to, and you've got questions," she finally said, a hoarse tinge to her voice, with less sass in it than how it had begun only less than half a minute ago.
He nodded curtly, his mind assuring him with that same word again; trust; if ever there was someone to be honest with, it was his doctor.
She swallowed, wincing with the act, but stood upright again, feigning uninjured, "Well, I know a place we can start that'll shed some light."
The Soldier's eyes widened at the way she was so actively prepared to aid him, even immediately after he'd nearly choked her to death in the back alley of some lousy motel near the trash dumpsters. He could hear that voice finally waning from the mantra of 'trust' to muttering something he couldn't quite get, something snarky, something like 'told ya'.
"But for now there's only so much that knock-off Red Room super soldier serum can do," she murmured, her eyes assessing what damage she could gather in the scant light. She reached forward - her brave face having never really shifted until unconsciousness with death to follow seemed imminent - and pushed back the hood concealing his bruised and battered face, keeping his greasy hair contained. He flinched, though he should have been accustomed to her abrupt, no nonsense approach; her hand taking his scruffy jaw, turning it left then right, she released his face and emitted a sigh of something contemplative and disheartened before deciding aloud, "That arm could probably do with a tune up, or at the very least repair and activate the holographic function." She started down the alley, toward the parking lot and rooms, muttering under her breath, "Damned thing is like a shining beacon just waiting for the right light to glimmer our location to someone HYDRA."
"Where're you going?" the Soldier called after her, his former doctor, or his still current doctor, as it were.
"Your room!" she called back without even turning back to him, but he could see her raising a hand to her throat, rubbing at the distress from raising her voice, resorting to grumbling, "I already put my bloody bag in there." She turned left at the mouth of the alley, toward the second building of rooms, calling out with that bit of sarcasm back in her tone, "In your own time!"
The Soldier gazed toward the soda machine, his hand dipping into his trouser pocket to fish for the coins within, but after a short moment of thought, he decided not to waste the small amount of change and made to follow the doctor, figuring he of all people could survive the rusty tap water from the sink in his room.
.
The Soldier knew the protocol - take off his shirt, sit down, and keep quiet. But they weren't in the underground gulag where HYDRA hid so near to the heart of the United States government, plotting its next SHIELD misguidings, and hiding its best asset. That's what they called him: The Asset. A single item of ownership having exchange value. A resourceful item to be used whenever it suited them. But the wind-up toy soldier wasn't in his prison anymore, there weren't armed guards surrounding him while his doctor fixed him up, she said more than soft commands now, offering to expand his mind, show him what HYDRA worked so hard to make him forget.
He perched himself on the left corner of the bed, assuming it would simpler for her to get to his arm, but found himself being herded toward the right edge, and the doctor took the place where he previously was, criss crossing her legs beneath her and quietly clearing her throat as she pulled out a small plastic case from her hoodie pocket. He hadn't taken into consideration that the people with guns in the small physician's office weren't there solely to keep him in line; liberation from HYDRA seemed to make her more comfortable, but nonetheless still professional. Her fingers moved along the side, working the locking mechanism and opening the case - a to-go tool box, of sorts. A red, interchangeable bit screwdriver handle and a number precision bits were inside. She took out the handle and fished around for the correct bit. It was clear some bits weren't from the original kit - HYDRA or SHIELD modified - she fitted the magnetized end of the electrically charged welding bit into the handle and quietly cleared her throat again before warily leaning forward.
The Soldier could be temperamental at times, but that was only when pieces of his old memories mixed with recent memories, in and out of cryo, so much confusion caused him to lash out in sudden anger, but he was always subdued and expected to simple comply.
"Remember my name?" Her voice pulled him out of anger fueled recollections, and likely just in time before his arm would've struck out, probably why her brave face had finally fallen - she'd likely been witness to many a HYDRA agent turned victim of his metal arm.
He nodded, looking down to the little spark that knitted back the damaged metal of his arm, inch by little inch until they fit together correctly again, or become less warped and prone to elemental damage. "Dr. Allston."
She nodded along in agreement, "That's right. Though I suppose we can do away with the formal title," she pulled back and dug through the little box again for a different bit, "Could you show me your inner forearm, please," she murmured as she searched, huffing in annoyance until she produced the piece she was looking for with a pleased sound of, 'aha!'
He did as she asked, and he'd never actually watched any of the doctors work on his arm, in fact, she'd never worked on his arm before, she'd usually tended to his flesh and bones, he had no idea she knew of his cybernetic appendage's mechanics until she opened up a very well hidden panel and started poking at the inner metal workings, flashing lights and buttons within. It was fascinating, but all together horrifying, knowing this piece of metal, this machinery, was attached to his body, the significant and identifying part that ultimately made him the weapon he was, the thing could very well survive on its own if it chose to.
"There!" she quietly exclaimed, replacing the panel and sitting back to watch the holographic image take over. They both waited, Bucky with mild interest (as he'd never known of this function) and Dr. Allston with bated breath. A flesh colored image flickered a few moments, seemingly booting up to function at full steam, until it stopped, and the shiny silver arm dawning a red star remained. "Well," her shoulders hunched as she deflated with clear disappointment, "Shit, or I mean-! Shoot... Um... Doesn't matter, I can find components to fix it later. Now let me see about that cut on your face," she dropped the screwdriver into the little box and set it aside from her lap and reached forward - too quickly, she'd belatedly realize.
The Soldier recoiled sharply, heart hammering with fear, before an automatic cold resignation took over, withdrawing into himself so as to not register the pain to come. "Hey." He ignored the call, it sounded so distant now anyway. So far away he didn't feel the anxiety of anticipation, he just waited for the end, waited to resurface again. "Hey," a lock of his hair was tugged gently, and he was startled, both by the feeling and the childish act against him. Resurfaced too early, he looked to the doctor who bared her open, empty palms to him in a display of peace, "When have I ever intentionally hurt you before? Hm?" she asked, and slowly reached to the right side of his face to the small cut on his cheekbone and the fading bruise nearer his left temple, "Dr. Allston's the one you went to get healed up, remember?"
With her so close and intent on his minor wounds, he had a chance to study her face, for genuinely the first time, it seemed. Dr. Allston had skin tone that seemed to balance indecisively between Caucasian and something of a darker African origin - naturally muted tan without a hint of a freckle or mole in sight. A cobalt hue, or was it more of sea green to her eyes, full lipped mouth that looked chapped and dry, bottom lip regularly abused when she chewed on it in concentration, as she had when she was working on the cybernetic arm. Her hair was a voluminous wild mess of waves and curls, though beginning to frizz at the roots, the curls were large and soft, chemically lightened in some areas nearer toward the ends. Generally she was a nice looking person, no one would have suspected her former involvement with HYDRA.
"No signs of infection, you'll live," she mumbled and released his face. And that was the second time, he realized, anyone had touched his face without malicious or hurtful intent. She stood from the small bed and gathered her little tool box, taking out the bit and flicking it back into the unsorted pile, then the screwdriver handle after it, and closed and locked the box as she walked toward a small duffel near the bathroom door.
Five foot seven inches, he assumed her height before she dropped to a crouch beside her bag and rummaged around. "Shoulder," she said as she stood up back, a tube of ointment and a piece of terrycloth in one hand. "Your shoulder. How is it?"
The Soldier shrugged, half testing it out and half in response, "Sort of hurts."
"Mhm," she hummed, "Rotate it for me?" she asked as she approached his right side. And this felt familiar again; tentatively murmured questions, careful touches. She obviously could tell he was different from... whenever it was that he'd had to visit her last, without handlers, on his own, hurt and confused. He wasn't sure if he should feel offended or grateful as she took more care with him.
The Soldier moved his arm in every direction he could, wincing with the slightest amount of pain. Dr. Allston reached out, but then halted, "I'm, er, gonna put my hands on you, alright? It might hurt, depending on that state of your shoulder joint."
He gave a nod, eyes forward, focused on the wall as she prodded along his shoulder blade and collar bone. "Captain Rogers got you in a chokehold? Popped your shoulder from its socket?" she questioned. He nodded again, and heard her sigh. "Okay, it was a good attempt, but I don't think you got it back in right, not at the right angle," she rolled up the piece of terry cloth and brought it near his mouth, "Sorry. This'll likely hurt like hell, but I've got to be sure it's in correctly. You'll be better for it, I swear."
His glance didn't waver from the blank wall as he opened his mouth - yet another automatic reaction - and accepted the cloth, clenching his teeth into the fabric. His eyes fluttered closed, watering slightly as the renewed pain bloomed from his shoulder with a couple sickening cracks, but it was finished in a matter of seconds. It still pulsed with pain, but he vaguely heard her comment that there was less deformity and he'd be perfectly fine now. She moved around him like he was just a doll for her to repair, smeared a bit of that ointment on his cheekbone before taking the cloth from his teeth, then helping him to ease his arms through his shirt sleeves one at a time, pulling the shirt carefully over his head. "I'll get you a bag of ice before we leave, pain killers won't do anything for you, I don't have anything stronger than acetaminophen. Err," she mumbled, retrieving and slinging the duffel strap onto her shoulder, tapping her fingers against her mouth as she surveyed the room, "Right. So," she pointed to you, "You check out. And I'll," she crossed the room swiftly to rest her hand on the door knob, "I'll be in the car... Assuming you didn't come into obtaining your own vehicle..." The Soldier's eyes finally drifted away from the wall to give the doctor a flat stare, "Yeah, didn't think so. C'mon then, check out's anytime. The Smithsonian opens at 10, we've got a three hour drive to D.C. ahead of us."
She claimed to have the answers he sought, that's all he wanted, and if that meant having to deal with her for a while, he supposed he could suffer through it... Maybe.
.
.
Note: I really shouldn't be doing this, I have way too much on my plate as it is, but I am doing this... I really should, but I am.
With that said bear in mind that updates will be slow, because I'm an idiot who writes 5 to 10 multi-chapter stories at once. But I couldn't stand it! I create OCs to save the characters that need saving. Though even more tragedy and drama tends to happen along the way.
The fact remains, Bucky needs some saving - preliminary saving before Steve can save him completely. Right? I hope so.
I think I'm going to keep this as a teen rating for the entirety of the story - however long that should be. Mostly cursing, mentions of Bucky's past trauma and abuse (physical - torture, and mental - brainwashing), sexual humor... and... not sure what else, but I'll be sure to notate possible triggery stuff at the top of the chapters.
Thanks for reading!