There were no more restaurants here. He'd been walking unsteadily, without purpose, for weeks.. or was it months? he'd stopped keeping track... and he had begun to feel weak and dizzy. It bothered him, this weakness, but he steadfastly refused to stop. Whenever he rested, the memories that weren't his would come back. The strange blonde man… who used to be smaller? kept reappearing. He was often hazy and his words indistinct, but the eyes always blazed through, clear and bright.
And the name. Bucky.
His Target…Steve... had called him that. Steve Rogers had called him Bucky. Had said it was his name.
"Your name is James Buchanan Barnes."
"You know me. You've known me your whole life."
It resonated deeply within him, though he couldn't quite say why. Something told him that this person did not lie. Could not lie. He had no idea why, but he trusted the truth of Steven Rogers and could not find it in himself to question that.
James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky. James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky.
It had a sort of rhythm to it. Without his noticing, it became the cadence that he marched to.
He stumbled and it forced him to rest a moment, breathing hard, with his back pressed against a tree. He was annoyed to find himself shaking and tried to will himself to stop. The trembling refused to subside.
When had he last eaten?
About a month ago, if he remembered right. A deer had made the fatal mistake of wandering too close, and that had fed him for a while. Unfortunately, the last of the meat had run out and he had yet to find any more game. Injured and exhausted, he couldn't catch enough small prey to be worth the trouble, and he'd seen nothing larger in days.
Stubbornly he had pressed on anyway, unwilling to backtrack. To go back would mean facing the ghosts and faces that drove him onward. He wasn't prepared for that. Not yet.
But now, here he stood, chest heaving as his ribs throbbed mutinously and his vision swam. He could no longer ignore the effects of walking for days at a time without food or sleep. Super-Soldier or not, surviving on plants and insects simply wasn't cutting it.
He pushed lank, dirty hair out of his eyes and allowed himself to tip his head back into the solidity of the tree for just a moment. Just one moment of weakness before he would rally himself for another mile...
It was a mistake. A wave of dizziness rolled over him and the world tilted abruptly on its axis. He stumbled as his knees buckled and his eyes rolled up in his head. The last thing he was aware of was hitting the ground with a hard thump, then darkness.
