Blue was a fragrant color. It was soft, wispy, light, like the tendrils of clouds that poisoned the sky with their white frothiness. Blue. He lipped the word. It was gentle, landing with a soft bump against his chapped, no-longer-soft lips. Blue. "B" for blue. "B" for Bucky. Blue Bucky. It rolled off his mind into his mouth, sounding so deceptively innocent.
He couldn't remember a time without blue. Before the water there had been the blueness of the test tubes and their strange liquids. Before the test tubes there had been the blue-chrome of the steel plated laboratory, and before that there was the painfully sharp blue of cryo. Before the cryo there had been the bitter blue of a cell and before the cell there had been the frosty blue of the snow, and even before the snow there was the grey-blue of the train.
And before all that, there had also been another kind of blue. The blue of a star-spangled uniform, from head to toe. The blue of a mask and a shield. But before that, and best of all, there had been the blue of his eyes.
Bucky leaned back, warily, cautiously, impassive in the naked white light in the cold, steel room. He unfocused his eyes, instead concentrating all his efforts into drowning out the tinny whispers all around him, like so many mosquitoes buzzing in and out, in and out. Mosquitoes dressed in white and glasses and bow ties, but also mosquitoes that bit, sharply, painfully, and unforgivingly.
Someone approached him, blurring to focus in his line of sight. And as he neared, Bucky allowed his eyes to whir, sharpen and focus in on the face.
His eyes were also blue. This stirred up an inexplicable twinge within him. But they were wrong, completely and horrifically so. They were the wrong shade of blue. And almost imperceptibly, his metallic hand curled up, fingertips gently resting against the chrome plating of his palm.