Bucky

I.

He's been sat in a large chair at least four times now, and each time leaves him feeling more and more disoriented, like it's ripping pieces of him away under the duress of electrical shocks that make every single nerve in his body alight in fire. Between each visit to the chair, there's either the mustached man who tries to teach him Russian (He tells him his name is Karpov as a reward for when he manages a halted sentence in the language), or a small Swiss man who introduces himself as Zola.

Zola likes to speak German to him, and he knows the language, though he doesn't know why, and tells him they knew each other, before the Americans left him to die. Tells him he tried to heal him once before, and then the Americans dragged him away from Zola and that's why he lost his arm.

There is no reason not to believe him.

He's beaten if he speaks English, or if he asks too many direct questions, though it's never by Karpov anymore and never by Zola. It's always by men in black uniforms with sharp laughs and sharper fists.

If he's not with Karpov or Zola, he's in a small concrete cell with no windows and a locked door and if he raises his voice too much, the men in black come in and kick him to the ground of the cell. The floor is smattered with blood stains, and he takes to tracing the patterns with a wild eye when he's not sleeping or trying to remember who he is.

They drag him out of the dank cell one morning and he goes willingly, pliantly, because they still have him on the drugs. He hasn't eaten in five days and he's fairly certain one of his ribs (maybe more) are broken. The men in uniforms are with weapons and he tries to concentrate on them, but he can't. He can't concentrate on anything other than putting one foot in front of the other, and sometimes he can't even do that and they have to drag him.

It's strange that he is led with weapons when he only has one arm. An arm whose bandage is fetid and clogged with blood and grime from five days of no care.

He's led to another room like the one he first woke up in and sat in a chair. The mind is a strange thing and continues to fade in and out like the tide, awareness sometimes flooding in with startling clarity and other times being as though he were just a ghost in this science fiction room.

Needles are stuck into his flesh and more drugs are pumped into his system (They curl deliciously around his spine and make it harder for the bursts of clarity to filter through the fog). His bandages are checked and replaced, and they try to speak to him in that language he does not know, and he wonders if he should.

None of them look familiar, but none of them spark any ill feelings, either, so he does not protest. He doesn't know if he can, anymore. The only time he is punished is when his mind clears and he sees another one of their needles coming down to his skin and he tries to shimmy away, shouting, "No! Please… No!"

He receives three slaps, four bruises and a kick for his efforts, and more drugs are pumped into his system. The hand that he still has is chained down to the cot, but he isn't planning on moving, not anymore. Not when his eye is swelling up and his brain and body feels sluggish, disconnected. Is this his body? He doesn't think he's ever felt so much pain.

(Falling from a train and crashing onto the ground, arm wrenching out of his socket.)

They pat his head and whisper croons in Russian that he doesn't know, and when he doesn't seem to understand, they whisper them in German. Still, when one of the lab-coated men asks haltingly, voice hesitant and accented, "Du warst sehr brav für uns." he nods, slowly, to show he comprehends.

He knows German, but it brings a shudder to his spine, even as they say the magical words of, "Willst du etwas essen?"

"Ja, ja. Bitte, meine Herren, danke." His voice is raw and scratched and painful, but they seem pleased and don't seem to want to slap him again, so he supposed it's alright. He just doesn't know. He stopped being embarrassed and pride-torn about begging and pleading after they made him strip one morning and he learned a new meaning to the word pain (боль), and wouldn't give him new clothes for four days, leaving him shivering against the cold concrete to tend his wounds. He'd had to plead in Russian for a coat, for a blanket, anything, anything.

He's uncuffed from the bed and prodded into a standing position. Balance is still a bit wonky for him, and that makes him think that maybe the arm being gone is new. His legs and arm are shaky from lack of nutrients, but they push him along the hallway anyways. Really, he should be looking to memorize this place, memorize and catalogue to figure out how to get out, but he doesn't know… He doesn't know where he would go, doesn't know if he's supposed to be here or not.

The men behind him are laughing amicably in Russian and he wishes for a moment that he knew what they were talking about. He pauses, looking back at them, and their conversation stops, one of them growling roughly in cyrillic and prodding him with the butt of his gun. The soldier- that is what the mustached man called him, so he supposed it must be true- stumbles and continues forward, panic swelling in his breast.

He decides he doesn't like people near him. There's just not enough memory, enough lucid thought in his head to be able to differentiate between good and bad men and so to keep safe, he should just try not to let anyone near him.

The room he's led to is a large mess hall filled with more uniformed men, and he tries not to suck in a breath, tries not to still his motions (He can recognize some of them by their hands more than their faces). He's told to sit at one of the tables and shoved a plate of faintly suspicious food and lukewarm milk, and he should say his thanks, but he's too enraptured by a meal, food that he hasn't so much as seen in nearly a week.

(Aw, Buck, where'd you get the dough for all this? We'll be eating like kings for a week!)

(Buck?)

It's tasteless and bland and the milk is sour, but he doesn't care- it could be shit scooped on a plate for all he cares and he'd still eat it with vigor. He shudders slightly at the murmur of that voice in his ear, so familiar yet not. The soldiers guarding him don't say anything to him but talk amongst themselves, seemingly content to leave him to his own devices, so long as he stays with them.

He finishes before any of the other men do, and he's content to just sit there. Even though there's a low-level thrum of discontent and fear, as there always is, it's better than having to stare at his own dried blood until his vision unfocuses. It's better to listen to the soldiers' hearty laughs and playful banter than their cold eyes and hard fists. If he concentrates, he can pick out words and phrases as they talk among themselves.

After he eats, he's led back down the hallway to his cell, presumably. One of the uniformed men kicks him down to the floor on the way back, because he looked back at the taller man and cocked his head curiously. He wants to retaliate, and there's instincts in him to swing around and sock the guy one (though he's never heard terminology like that, not with the Russians), but he is careful not to, careful not to make a ruckus for his bullies.

I don't like bullies, a voice whispers in his ear, blood rushing around his brain as the image of a small boy with blood-splattered hands, a split lip. Considering the state he looks now, the blond kid is practically healthy. Except for how frail he is.

The soldiers yell at him to get up, to keep moving, but he can't, not when he remembered something, not when a piece of his broken mind had fallen into place, trying to complete the puzzle.

He's manhandled upwards and turned right around, towards the technical room with the big chair that he hates. His head is still pumping with blood, heavy and thick as he tries to remember, to relive it, even as he's pushed down roughly- enough to bruise- into the chair.

The scientists ask him several questions in Russian and German and English alike, but the latter is a trick and any time he responds to it in that language he's slapped.

"What is your name?"

"I don't know."

"How did you get here?"

"I was saved by Karpov."

"How did you lose your arm?"

"The Americans-" But no, that's not right, because now the blond head is taller and he's not so frail and he's falling, falling from a train onto snow and-

And-

He's hyperventilating and the scientists are clucking their tongues disapprovingly, and that just makes his breath come out shallower because he's going to be punished, and-

"Soldier? Soldier, calm down. Soldier, stop."

But he doesn't, and they fear that he's remembered something, so electrical currents run through his brain and for the first time since he woke up with no arm, he feels grateful, because anything's better than remembering a man he doesn't know, the blankness and emptiness of his head is better than going against what the scientists and the men in uniform and Karpov and Zola want.

He usually struggles when they let him out, feral and wild and uncivilized like an animal as the effects of the chair mess with his mind, but this time, he lets them lead him back on shaky legs to his cell, and when they hit him with the butt of their gun, he just carries on as soon as they ask him to. He doesn't want them to harm him anymore, and he's too blank to put up a fuss. They take his shirt and shoes from him and look to see if he'll protest, but he doesn't have the energy. The men try to goad him about how cold the cell will be, because there's a large storm that's coming, and he realizes numbly that he'd forgotten about any bit of weather. Anything outside of this cell.

When he'd thrown in his cell, he forgets to try to remember, and just traces patterns in the old blood and the new that's currently leaking sluggishly from his body. No thoughts of blond or blue float through his head, and no phantom voices that whisper to him.

Even if he doesn't remember, doesn't want to remember, the concrete beneath his feet will always remember, will always carry the imprint of his beaten and broken body, and he clings to that, clings to the fact that he isn't just a dead man with red blood.

II.

"You okay, Buck?" Steve's head pops into the opening of the tent, blond hair pressed wetly to his head from the pouring rain outside. He smiles wide and bright, but Bucky knows how to read him like a label, can see the lines of stress and strain around the corners of his lips, the tension in the lines of his eyes. His hand curls around the thick green material of the door flap, obviously wanting to step in but not wanting to encroach on Bucky's territory.

It's been like this ever since Steve saved him, this cautious dance around him as though he's not sure what to do with him.

Bucky wants to punch him for it, wants to bury himself into Steve for it.

"I'm fine." He calls out anyways, lifting his head from the bed roll and blinking at Steve's figure, waiting a beat before gesturing for him to come in. Like hell he's going to let Steve catch a cold, super serum or no. "Just tired."

He's always tired, these days.

"You've been in here all day, man." Steve says as he walks into the tent, dripping like a wet dog all over the canvas floor. He's unshaven and dirty, and Bucky realizes he hasn't seen him in several days. That he's been lying around, sleeping or staring at the ceiling or trying not to panic for a full three days, ever since they pitched up camp here. There had been talk of flash-floods and various movements by the Nazis and HYDRA; the Howling Commandos decided to stay put for a few days and catch their breath.

There's a crack of lightning outside and Bucky jumps slightly. It was close enough that that the thunder, when it comes, very nearly shakes his little temporary hut. He sits up and peers at Steve for a moment before his gaze slides away. The captain seats himself heavily on a wooden stool, fiddling with his boots as he does.

"Shave your damn face." He tells the floor, trying for normalcy. Banter, that's what they do, and Bucky needs it, he does. His hands clench around one another under Steve's gaze, and damn, but he really actually likes the ginger scruff that's growing on his companion's face.

"Bucky…"

"No. Just stop. This ain't turning into no sapfest." Bucky clicks his head up and frowns at the look of absolute, brutal concern on Steve's face, can't help but running a hand through his hair self-consciously. It's getting longer; he'll have to cut it soon. He fucking hates long hair.

Steve sighs and stands, scratching at his collarbone. He's wearing his BDU's, but the shirt is a threadbare brown sweater that really makes him look quite ridiculous. Bucky has no idea where he got it, considering it's huge and baggy even on Steve, who can't even fit into Bucky's shirts anymore. "Just… Can you try to come eat with the rest of the men tonight? They managed to find a guitar and some more liquor. Just… C'mon. Socialize."

Bucky is silent for a moment. Maybe a moment too long because Steve sighs again and moves to the entrance of the tent, running his hands through his still-wet hair. Bucky realizes that he should have found a towel for him or something, but he feels so out of it. "Maybe. Okay." He says, and Steve nods, no expectation in his face. Okay is neutral. Maybe is neutral. He doesn't want to be pigeon-held in any decision.

Steve leaves, and Bucky lays back down. He isn't sleeping, hasn't slept for a while, really, but he does stare at the ceiling and tries not to think. Tries to be carefully blank to the near-point of sleeping. But he doesn't want to dream.

After a while, he hears the sound of the men getting a fire going outside- the rain must have stopped- and the sound of a guitar being strummed and folky tunes being sung. Half of him wants to go out there, do as Steve asked, but. But it's just too hard.

He lays awake the whole night, and when the rest of the men go to sleep, he goes outside and stokes the fire, sitting outside alone to his thoughts and the flame. He notices his thumb is bleeding from him chewing the nail too close, and he watches a few droplets leak slowly and fall into the dirt below his feet, washing away with the moisture from the rain earlier. As if the German forests haven't taken enough blood from him already.

Du warst sehr brav für uns.: You've been very good/obedient for us.

Willst du something Essen: Want to eat something?

Ja, ja, bitte, meine Herren, danke: Yes, yes, please, sirs, thank you.