The first thing that assaults his senses is the smell of rust.
It is cloying and heavy in the air, and he forces his eyes open into strong industrial fluorescent lights that hum and buzz directly in the space between his thoughts and fills his head with static sound.
"Mr. Barnes," is the first thing he hears, the voice disinterested, bored, dryly clinical, and he forces his gaze over to his left to look at a man in a white coat, his face half-covered with a peppermint green surgical mask that Bucky immediately associates with hospitals and sick and sadness. The other half of his face sports a pair of large, wire-rimmed glasses, and Bucky wants to tell him to take them off, the fluorescent lights are reflecting off them in a sharp glare and are hurting his eyes, but his tongue is seemingly glued to the roof of his mouth and his words get all tangled in his chest, a garbled mess of syllables and consonants that make sense to nobody but himself.
"Subject 882 appears to be awake," the scientist says, turning and speaking to a tape recorder he's set on a steel instrument table by Bucky's head. "Consciousness remains to be determined."
The scientist approaches with a penlight held firmly in his hand, and Bucky stares at him, frozen, as the man pokes and prods at him, shining the light directly into his pupils and measuring their reaction, sending shattering light into his head and piercing pain through his mind.
"Pupils appear normal, responding to light, contracting as expected. Irises dark brown, flecks of green and gold speckling the exterior rim. However, pupils do not follow relative motion and cannot track moving objects. Subject appears to be unresponsive to new stimuli."
The scientist fiddles around on his instrument tray, making steel clash against steel and setting Bucky's teeth to gritting something fierce.
He disappears from view for a moment, and Bucky gets no warning, visual or verbal, before a sharp pain suddenly lances up his left arm. He screams, but all that comes out is a tiny whistle of air.
The scientist peers down at him. "Subject appears to be unreactive to pain," he states precisely, before lifting up what Bucky can only describe as an instrument of pure torture and bringing it down.
The first thing he sees is a video of a man, strong, tall, blonde and handsome, decked out in red, white, and blue regalia, a shield emblazoned with a star in its centre hanging at his side.
There is a name on the tip of his tongue, it starts with an S - Sam? Spencer? Sawyer? - that contains the meaning of the universe, but for the life of him he can't seem to get it to stick.
"This is the man you have to kill," the scientist's voice says, and Bucky's gaze drifts over to the left, where the surgeon is standing, dressed in a dark suit. He looks so much different from how Bucky imagined he would look: those blue-green eyes with crow's feet at the corners look like they could be kind, those hands nervously fiddling with each other in front of him look like they have probably held a child's, his mouth, nervous and thin, looks equally used to telling a desperate student that yes, he's got the job, and telling an unemployed single mother that no, the bank cannot give her a second mortgage, not even if it means she won't have money for her baby's formula.
Bucky shakes his head vehemently. He can't kill the man with the answers to the universe, he just can't, why can't the scientist understand that -
"I know it hurts," the man says, coming closer, his voice soothing and low, his posture cautious, as though he is approaching a rabid dog that might bite at any moment. "I know it hurts," he murmurs, "but you know how to make it stop hurting, don't you now?"
Bucky shakes his head, this time slightly reluctant. He can't do this. The blonde man on the video screen is looking straight at him now, and Bucky feels himself getting lost in the ocean of his eyes.
The scientist fills his frame of view, cradling his face in his hands like a lover.
"I know you can do this," he says, and because his arm is hurting something fierce and his chest hurts something fiercer, Bucky just hangs his head and whispers that he will.
The first thing that he tastes when he wakes up for the second time is the taste of his breath, fuzzy in his mouth, stale. He wrinkles his nose in distaste and rolls over to find himself face to face with that beautiful blonde man from the video staring right back at him.
"Hey, Bucks, sleep well?" he asks, a dimple appearing at the corner of his cheek as he leans over and kisses him full on the mouth, morning breath and all.
The second thing he tastes is mint, from Steve - oh that is his name -'s toothpaste, and he cannot help but smile back.
"What is it?" Steve asks, pulling back and tilting his head to look at him. "You've got that look in your eye, the one you get when you're thinking really hard about something. Penny for your thoughts?"
"I think mine are at least worth a quarter," he says, and the gruffness of his voice surprises himself. "You know. Inflation and all that."
Steve laughs, and Bucky thinks that perhaps the universe is aligning itself in his voice.
The last thing he remembers touching is Steve's face, tracing the contours of his lips and his cheekbones while he was fast asleep.
Steve.
He rolls the name around in his mouth and wonders how he ended up here again.
The surgeon comes back around, taking his chin in hand and raising his head to look at him. He tuts. "Perhaps I was not quite clear enough the first time," he says. "You need to kill that man. According to news reports, Captain America is still running around, cape and all, saving lives."
He doesn't have a cape, Bucky wants to say, but there is something that tastes of metal and correction fluid in his mouth and he cannot make any sounds past it.
When he doesn't respond - how is he supposed to respond? - the surgeon sighs again and goes back to rummaging through his instrument tray.
He whistles something to himself as he presses a few buttons and Bucky finds himself tilting backward, backward, backward, until he is facing the fluorescent lights again. He squints, trying to block out the bright white, but the surgeon's face fills his frame of view, and Bucky watches with horror as the man holds up a giant, jagged saw.
"It appears another lesson is in order, yes?" the surgeon asks, and Bucky struggles in his restraints but can't seem to pull free - "Perhaps you would like to watch this time? It's something of my own invention," and the surgeon's eyes crinkle at the corners, almost kindly, as he holds up a shiny brass lump of metal. "I've always wanted to do a transplant on someone, and who better than you? The serum will protect you; after all, you're practically invincible."
Then why does it hurt so much? Bucky wants to ask. The surgeon appears to read his thoughts, because he sets down the metal - cold cold cold - against Bucky's bare chest, and smiles kindly upside-down at him. "Well, I never said it wouldn't hurt," he says, as though he is explaining a punchline. "I just said it couldn't kill you."
And then he is screaming, it hurts it hurts it hurts and the tang of pennies is sharp in the air as the saw grinds and shrieks against the groaning of his ribs, and he whispers Steve's name, a sob a cry a prayer, forces the syllables past the bite of copper in his mouth, and waits to wake up again.
