And here's another depressing one. Why are all my funny chapters so short, and my sad ones so long?
Chapters 11-13 are all still in-progress, but I'm really hoping to complete Ch 11 by the end of today, at least.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.
WORD COUNT: 1358
Bruises were a normal thing in Bucky's life.
As a young child, he'd been overly adventurous and curious, leading to a lot of minor injuries as he climbed trees and tumbled down hills. He learned quickly from his misadventures, just as he got old enough to help his parents deal with his little sisters getting into the exact same kind of trouble.
When he met Steve, it was when Billy was chasing Madison around the playground at school, pulling her pigtails and eventually stealing her hair ribbons, forcing her to chase him around instead. Billy nearly tripped over the tiny blonde waif of a boy who suddenly appeared in his path.
"Give those back."
Billy just laughed at the little shrimp who tried to tell him what to do, so Steve launched himself at the bully, trying to grab the ribbons out of his fist. Then Billy got mad. He threw the little guy right off of him and onto the ground, then started kicking him. Many of Billy's other friends joined in, too.
That was when Bucky decided he'd had enough. He charged in.
After the teachers finally decided to break it up, all the boys were sent home with bruises all over their faces and bodies (Billy and some of his friends were crying, but both Bucky and Steve took pride in the fact that they never shed a single tear).
As their friendship grew, it became completely normal for Bucky to find his best friend in the middle of a fight with one or more bullies – frequently Billy – and for Bucky to have to jump in and either beat the bastards down or drag Steve away if they were too badly outnumbered.
His mother was resistant to the idea, but he eventually wore her and his father down enough to convince them to allow him to sign up for boxing lessons. Ma was worried that it would just make him more inclined to get into more fights. Dad was of the mindset that it would give him a better chance of walking away from the inevitable fights with less injuries.
Dad was right. The number of brawls in the street and the schoolyard that he got involved in didn't drop, but he came home from those and the fights in the ring with less bruises each time, save for the ones on his knuckles as he learned to hit harder and faster. After finishing school, and moving in with Steve, he even got into fighting for extra money down at the Y. It helped him put that much more food on their table and helped keep the roof over their heads, so any bruises he got from that were worth it.
Boxing wasn't the only way he brought in money, though. Most places at the docks were always looking for labourers, so Bucky could usually get a job hauling and lifting boxes, loading and unloading cargo. Bruises and other minor injuries were common when moving large, heavy objects around, but he was lucky in that those were the worst that he got. He saw one guy break both legs when a crate came loose and landed on him. With the state the economy was in at the time, an injury like that was practically guaranteed to keep him from finding work and put him and his family on the streets.
When America joined the war overseas, and Bucky got drafted into the Army, he spent the first few weeks in basic feeling like one giant bruise. This was harder than anything he'd ever done, and even if he'd been the type to quit, it wasn't like that was even an option. So he kept his mouth shut, ignored the whining from the guys from the 'higher-class' families who weren't as used to the amount of physical labour that he was, and kept pushing. He must have made a good impression by doing that, because he soon saw himself getting promoted above those wimps.
On the front lines, bruises were more likely to come from throwing himself down to the ground to avoid gunfire instead of getting punched. Over there, Bucky's opponents weren't trying to strike him from up close, but shooting at him from afar.
When his division was captured by the Germans, he was certain that he would die there. He obviously wasn't certain where they were exactly, but he knew it was far enough behind enemy lines that there wouldn't be a rescue coming anytime soon. They were put to work, building some sort of outlandish weapons, along with what he thought might be a large airplane, but he couldn't be sure. The Nazis guarding the facility and overseeing their work were more than happy to smack a soldier with their batons for working too slowly, for speaking out of turn, or just for shits and giggles, really. And occasionally fistfights would break out during mealtimes as men fought each other for more food. Bucky once found himself being attacked for the small amount of bread he'd been given, although he'd fought the other man off easily.
That man collapsed from exhaustion two days later, and was dragged off to the labs upstairs, never to leave alive. He still had the black eye Bucky had given him.
After a new-and-improved Steve had rescued Bucky from that hellhole and convinced him to recruit and join his own merry band of misfit fighters, the bruises, oddly, occurred less frequently, and vanished at a faster rate than before. The one he'd gotten on his knuckles after punching the punk in the nose for voluntarily playing human guinea pig healed remarkably quickly – not nearly as quickly as the nose in question, but still more quickly than normal. As in, by the time he woke up the morning after returning to the American camp.
He really should have said something, but he'd heard about the choice Steve had been forced to make after the death of Abraham Erskine (lab rat or dancing monkey, as Peggy Carter had apparently put it), and though no one else seemed to realise it, Bucky found himself faced with a similar one. The doctors who'd examined him upon his rescue had been unable to figure out what the scientist, Dr. Arnim Zola, had done to him, and since they couldn't find any solid reason to keep him under observation, they'd cleared him to go back onto the battlefield. But if he told anyone about those changes, he would find himself back in a laboratory, which, after spending that short but hellish amount of time in Zola's, was the stuff of nightmares for him.
The first time he woke after falling to his apparent death in the Swiss Alps, he could see that his whole body was a mess of dark bruises, although the far more horrifying sight of the stump that was now his left arm soon distracted him from that.
The Asset barely even noticed bruises, on the rare occasion that it got them, whether in training or on an assignment. They did not pose the same risk as gunshot or stab wounds, and any pain they might generate was inconsequential.
After he escaped HYDRA, after he started remembering, and after he agreed to go back with Steve and move into Stark Tower (he once knew someone with that name, didn't he?), Bucky frequently took his rage and confusion and frustration and grief and… everything out on the special reinforced punching bags in the Tower's gym. He would spend hours down there, pummelling the bags until he was finally limp from exhaustion. Often, he would unwrap his right hand and see knuckles that were barely reddened from the impact. The sight made him feel like even more of a freak, and only served to fuel his anger even more.
Bruises were a normal thing in Bucky's life. Their sudden absence was just another reason why he would never be the same Bucky anymore.
I am absolutely convinced that, once Bucky got the full story of how Steve became Captain America, he punched him. In the nose. In front of all the other prisoners.
And I figured that, if Bucky got a dose of Super Serum that early, there may have been some signs that something was different about him. But not wanting to become a lab rat again (irony) would have been a good motive for him to keep his mouth shut about it.
Next: Hypothermia