It's hard to make out faces, because the snow and wind are cutting into his eyes as much as they're slicing up the rest of him, and every time he's dragged along the ice there are new tears to further blur things, but from what he can hear muttered, Bucky doubts they've been found by the Howling Commandos. Not unless all their teammates have taken up speaking Russian as, what, a joke? He can't see the punch line. Can't see much of anything.
Except Steve.
He sees Steve clear as day, walking alongside him, still wearing that big dopey good old American boy grin that might be endearing if it weren't so inappropriate. Hell, it's still endearing. Bucky tries to shake his head, clear his thoughts. They've been captured, they have to be—who else but HYDRA would be wandering around this frozen wasteland?—and they need an out, not an admiration of Steve's pearly whites.
Damn, but they are white. Was that the serum too?
He succeeds in moving his head and then, immediately after, in letting out a shriek so loud Bucky braces himself for an avalanche to come crashing down around them. Tries to brace himself. His body isn't listening to his brain.
They stop moving, and someone's hands are on his face, tilting his head until he's staring up at the sky again, and the first scream took so much out of him that all he can manage is a hoarse little gasp the second time around. "Be still," the voice says, accented, and he wonders why he can feel these hands when he couldn't feel Steve's. Hardly seems fair. "We will help you."
They're moving again and Bucky blinks, clearing his eyes a little as the stranger stands up and Steve is over him again, kneeling down, not bothering to look where he's walking. "It's not gonna help us get out of this if you break your own neck," he admonishes, and Bucky thinks the same applies to Steve because tromping around on ice blindly is just begging for an injury, but his mind and his mouth keep drifting out of sync and so he doesn't say so. And he's not sure if Steve's capable of tripping now that he's become the embodiment of the American dream. Probably is, but knowing him, he'd make that look endearing too.
"You should go," Bucky slurs. Steve's not injured, not visibly—please please please don't let him be hurt, not from trying to save me, please—and he could take out all of these guys with a swing of the shield—wait. The shield. It's not strapped to Steve's back, and Bucky's confused, because wasn't it there before? Is all the blood pushing on his brain making him lose his damn mind? Where is it, then? Bucky strains his memory and faintly remembers picking up the shield, firing a gun…
This is his fault. He had the shield, something happened, and now here they are. Who else's fault could it be? And now look. They're here and Steve's not going to leave him, going to let himself be taken like a damn fool, and there's no one to blame for it but Bucky. His eyes are wet again. He's twice the burden Steve could ever have been before the war, hell, a hundred times. Steve was never a burden, never useless, dead weight.
Dead doesn't sound too bad right now. Probably wouldn't hurt. Probably wouldn't feel guilty. And then Steve would be free to go without this broken body holding him back.
"Oh, please." Steve is still all smiles, and that hurts the most. "And leave you to fend for yourself with these guys? Your Russian's atrocious, Bucky. And I know how much you hate borscht."
"Such an idiot," Bucky mutters. He isn't sure if he means Steve or himself.
He knows what will come next, though his memories of it are fragmented now, clouded through a film of blood. He remembers the straps of the table, the injections, the pain that flows through the veins, circulating, burning, until he's praying for his own death. He wonders if they'll bother to fix him up before they start this time. He bets they will. HYDRA's a special sort of sick; they only shows kindness when it's the cruelest thing they can do.
"James Barnes," he gasps. "Sergeant. 32557241. James Barnes. Sergeant. 32557241." His voice is stammering, faint, but he keeps it up like a rosary. He has to start now, has to brace himself for what's coming or he'll go to pieces, and he can't afford that. It isn't just his own life on the line this time.
And since this is his fault, the least he can do is take it without breaking.
"It's okay, Buck," he can hear Steve murmur over his own litanies. "It'll be okay."
Once they've arrived at whatever location will hold them, the only way Bucky can tell inside from outside is that the wind is quieter. It's freezing, wet, and just as hopeless, and with his eyes half-blinded by tears, his mind preoccupied with using all its strength to recite "James Barnes, sergeant, 32557241," he can hardly focus on any other differences that may exist.
His clothing is cut away, wounds dressed, bones set—they shove depressors wrapped in cotton gauze into his mouth to silence him, and over the ringing in his ears, he can just make out "You're going to be fine, Bucky, you'll be fine"—and something is injected that burns as it goes in, a new wave of pain amidst a thrashing sea and he can't focus enough to care if it's morphine or hallucinogens, and either way the world is swimming and he is finally, mercifully out.
Time passes in swaths of blackness and brief flashes of light. Sometimes he wakes to find them changing the dressing of his wounds and bites back screams, sometimes they are shoveling food down his throat, sometimes they stand over him and mutter in words he almost understands. The only constants are his refrain of name, rank, and serial number, and Steve, always watching, always comforting. He doesn't understand why Steve isn't bound up, unless Bucky is the leverage they're using to contain him. The thought makes him sick and he's grateful for the darkness, though he realizes the more time he spends there, the more of a burden he becomes.
One day, when he is healing and his waking moments aren't a ceaseless agony, two words cut him out of the blackness. Two words in a familiar voice. "Sergeant Barnes."
Bucky opens his eyes and for once does not find Steve, but rather Arnim Zola.
