A/N from Mad Hatter: All right, so you all will have to go easy on me, this is my first fanfiction for a while. I ecstatic to write another story and I'm kind of surprised I completely wrapped my mind around the entirety of this story and was able to think of a beginning, middle and end. (I usually get lost somewhere in the middle.) Anyway, FOR MARVEL COMICS FANS I don't claim myself an expert Marvel Universe. I'm not completely savvy, but I do know a few things...
This particular story is about Sergeant Bucky Barnes. It takes place after he is located by the Russians after his 'death.' I'm basing it more off the movies, which is what I know more about, so I'm setting it a few years before Avengers takes place. I don't know anything about the comics really, but I know they found Bucky right afterwards and revived him and refreezed him over and over? That's how he is the same age when Winter Soldier takes place. Correct me if I'm wrong!
Anyway, I'm going to have that they found him and injected him with the serum and kept him in the same ice state for years until they had the technology to bring him back to life. Sort of confusing, so I'm going to change it up a bit. So fans, please bear with me and be gentle with feedback! Anyway, I hope you enjoy, I've loved working on this very much.
By the way, I will also post the songs I listened to while writing each chapter, just for fun :) I'll post them like so:
Inspiration Music (lots of dark feels and quiet undertones while writing this one):
-Main Title Theme Song (UNKLE Remix) by Bear McCreary from The Walking Dead OST
-Unidentified Main Titles by Trevor Rabin from the Race to Witch Mountain OST
-Once Upon a Dream by Lana Del Ray
Iron Heart
Chapter 1
"Dr. Turner?" a voice erupted from the entrance of a small, dank office.
A young woman with long, dark hair wrapped into a tight bun sat behind the desk, writing furiously on a stack of papers. After a moment she slowly looked up and saw a Soviet officer standing in her doorway.
"The subject is ready for inspection. We've injected the serum and his body has been primed for the prosthetic," the officer said.
The young woman sat back in her chair and nodded in response, "I'll be up in a moment. What room?"
"217," the officer answered, disappearing into the hallway.
Doctor Lacey Turner sighed in exhaustion and pushed her glasses off the bridge of her nose and rubbed her eyes wearily. She'd been staring at the desk for entirely too long and was going to enjoy a walk around the confidential hospital.
She stood to open a filing cabinet and flipped through the alphabetical folders and quickly came to the 'W' section and pulled a file the read 'WINTER SOLDIER.'
She tucked the folder under her arm and briskly walked out of the office. She took a couple of flights of stairs and went down a dark, empty hall. The air was moist and musty and Lacey instantly thought of how poor of an environment it was to keep a half-dead ex-soldier. He would catch pneumonia before he got on his feet again.
Lacey stopped at room 217 and showed her ID to the two guards who stood in front of the door. They inspected the card and then stepped away.
"I'll knock three times if I want to come out," she said as she stepped inside.
Inside, she found herself in a damp, poorly lit room as well. She grumbled under her breath in irritation as she walked up to the patient laying still on the bed.
Subject 332: Winter Soldier. Also previously known in the forties as Sergeant Bucky Barnes.
His eyes were closed in his drug-induced coma and had a plastic tube in his mouth, assisting him with his respiration. The quiet repetitive hissing nose of the respirator, accompanied with the beeping of his heart monitor were the only noises in the room.
Lacey stepped next to him and looked over the work that the serum did. She had seen him only once before and back then he had been skin and bones with a missing arm left arm. He had been in suspended animation for over 70 years and he was finally brought of it a month ago.
Now, after given the serum, his muscles were swollen to the size that a normal human male and more, as if he were a body builder. His cuts and bruises were gone, but his missing arm was still gone. Even the miracle of the test serum couldn't fix everything.
Lacey walked up to his functional arm and took a tape measure out from her pocket and started checking the dimensions of his limb.
She leaned in and picked up his limp arm to wrap the tape around his bicep. She let her eyes travel up his arm to rest on his face. The muscles in his face were so relaxed, he almost looked like a corpse. His cheeks, upper lip and chin had a cover of thick scruff from not having been shaved in a month. His dark, brown hair was long, almost falling to his shoulders. His sculpted lips were slightly agape with the tube pushed between them. His nose was perfectly straight and his lofty brow untarnished, free from wrinkles. For a fleeting moment, Lacey wondered what color his eyes were...probably brown. She resisted the urge to gently push one of his eyelids up to check but thought the better of it and went about her work again.
She stood up to put the measurements in a nearby computer. Lacey nearly dropped the tape measure in her hand when she heard a horrid raspy, gagging sound emanating from the subject. Lacey spun around and saw the soldier's eyes fluttering and he was gagging against the respirator tube.
"Dammit!" Lacey exclaimed and grabbed a syringe full of a heavy sedative and darted it into the IV tube attached to his arm.
Lacey watched for a moment as his eyes dashed about the dark room, searching blindly for something uncertain. Lacey's heart clenched slightly when she heard him gasp out a whimper past the respirator before his body started to relax again. His grey-blue eyes looked frantic when they landed on Lacey before they finally slide shut again.
"Guard!" Lacey yelled.
One of the guards instantly stepped inside.
"Ask the nurse attending Subject Barnes to report here immediately!" Lacey commanded and the guard nodded and scuttled off.
The soldier shouldn't have woken up prematurely if the nurse had been caring for him properly. It was almost like torturing him to pull him out of the coma like that, with his body in such a state.
A few minutes later, a very young nurse ran in, looking half-asleep and disheveled.
"Are you the nurse who is in charge of caring for Subject Barnes?" demanded Lacey.
"Yes, ma'am," answered the nurse with wide eyes.
"Do you mind telling me why he just came out of his induced coma several moments ago? If you were following the schedule strictly then he wouldn't be waking up at all!"
"I've followed the schedule, ma'am! He pushes through it each time about halfway before expectation! I'm so sorry! It's the serum, it's making him reject the sedatives," the nurse explained.
"Well, that's something you should have told a supervisor, don't you think? Instead of putting this poor man through the agony of being woken up then submerged into a coma over and over!"
"He doesn't feel anything..."
"The hell he doesn't! Imagine being in an uncomfortable sleep and being woken up every few minutes by a bucket of cold water. And when you come to, you haven't a clue where you are. In his case, he's in a body that will be unfamiliar to him. Also, with his extensive head injuries he most likely will be suffering from amnesia! Now, imagine your whole body burning as your senses awaken, then you find yourself gasping for air past a large tube shoved down into your lungs. You can't move, you can't speak, you can't think, you can't breathe. Then shoved back into sleep just to be awoken again to repeat the process!"
The nurse visibly gulped and she looked over at Barnes with a terrified expression.
"I'm letting you go, nurse, for being so uncaring. Get out of my sight," snarled Lacey.
The nurse burst into tears and ran out of the room, causing Lacey to roll her eyes.
She walked back over to the subject and glanced over him. The thought of his ghostly eyes opening into hers made her shiver slightly. Even in his delirium, his intense gaze rocked her to the core. His eyes demanded to know what on earth was going on, even when he was on the brink of unconsciousness. He was a fighter, a true soldier that they'd found so long ago in the snowy mountain.
Lacey walked over to the phone hooked on the wall and she dialed the number for the head supervisor if the initiative program.
"Dr. Schweitzer," a gruff voice answered the phone.
"Hello, sir, this is Dr. Turner. I'm in the room with Subject Barnes," Lacey told him.
"Oh, yes, Subject 332. Have you begun the work on his arm yet?"
"Yes, sir, but I respectfully ask for complete charge of Barnes' care," Lacey stated.
"Request granted, but I'm inclined to wonder why?" Schweitzer inquired.
"One of the nurses posted to watch over him wasn't giving him the correct dose of sedative and he's been waking up every four hours instead of the expected eight. I want to make sure he is properly primed before he is completely awakened. I...I have a good feeling about him..."
The administrator made a grumble of wariness before he said, "I hear you using the words 'him' and putting hope in one test subject. I don't want you to call the subject by its name or even recognize the subject's gender. You're personalizing a tool, the subject is only alive to serve our purpose,"
"I'm sorry, sir."
"It's all right, Dr. Turner. I assign you to Subject 332, only if you remember what I've just told you."
"I will, sir. Thank you," Lacey replied and hung up the phone.
Lacey turned and looked at Subject 332...Bucky Barnes. He breathed rhythmically through the oxygen tube, body still as a corpse again. Lacey wondered what he was like, back in 1943...was he the dashing and brave type, or the quiet and wise type? Was he like Han Solo, a ruffian? Or was he like Mr. Darcy, smooth and estranged. He was a person; he was living, thinking person years and years ago. He once possessed a personality, he had hopes and most likely a family...
Lacy pushed up her glasses and rubbed her eyes again. She knew it was wiser to think of him only as a vessel. It made seeing a human being in such a wretched state a horrid sight.
Lacey shook her head and went to the door and rapped three times.
A guard opened the door and Lacey asked, "Don't let anyone else in here but me without my permission, Director Schweitzer's orders."
"Yes, ma'am," the guard said.
"And would one of you please go to the armory and pick up the order of items I need for Subject 322's arm?" requested Lacey.
"I will be back with your request shortly, ma'am," the guard answered and disappeared while the other took his place in the front of the door.
Lacey stepped back and looked at Barnes, knowing it would be a long night of work ahead of her for his cybernetic arm.
Kind comments, compliments, and constructive criticism are always welcome! Please let me know what you think of the first chapter!
~Mad Hatter