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BUCKY
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The idea of faces become a bizarre faraway concept when he can't see his own, or any other cellmates' or the guards real faces behind those dark goggles. He supposes that's the point - the only face he see's regularly is Zola's until it becomes the only one he actively recognizes.
He doesn't know how long he's been in the dark hole since Zola first threw him in here, a day, a week, a month - time is also a bizarre faraway concept. There's no point carving lines in the walls to mark the days when he can't see them or when he doesn't have someone else to tell him when he's missed a couple. Andrew once spent a whole hour, when time meant something to him, obsessing over the four extra lines Bucky had carved in, because he didn't remember them - and then he forgot that he forgot so Bucky managed to get some sleep that night after all. There are no days and nights here, only darkness and lab-time, which he spends more and more time in; sometimes three times in one cycle like a yo-yo. He knows this because Zola's wearing the same tie.
They bring him into the lab when one of the other prisoners is already in there, and his is the first face he's seen since Zola's in what feels like an age. He knows Harris and Campbell exist locked away in his old cell but he can't remember what they look like - doesn't think he'd recognize them if he saw them again. He thinks this might be one of them, who probably looks the same aside from the beard and the syphilis rash, if that's something you can ignore, but the entire time Bucky spends staring at him he seems like a different man.
He spends the next terror-stricken cycle of darkness trying to remember Becca's face, then Steve's face, then Colette's face - and when he has their vague face shapes and expressions held in his memory he draws them out in lucid hallucinations where they talk about eyeglasses. They start listing all the different kinds until the three of them are arguing about where half-moons should go in the pro's and con's table they've drawn up on the back of a cereal packet.
He's so hungry.
Of the three of them he doesn't know which is which - only knows which one's Becca by how much the hallucination swears.
Then they all put on the dark ugly goggles the guards wear and it startles Bucky so much he throws his wash bucket at them until he's sitting wet in sudsy water.
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. . .
He spends the next cycle surrounded by dogs of all different breeds, some with wings and some with beaks and scales and that's entertaining at least in that he has to guess which are real and which aren't.
The answer is: none of them are real, but he likes the mangy street mutt with a cat's bushy tail the best.
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. . .
Zola tells him he's stabil und lebensfähig and he's progressing nicely, and Bucky feels like he accomplished something.
Zola also tells him Harris is dead, which makes sense, seeing as he must be the faceless corpse he doesn't recognize on the table next to him. Zola seems confused, because he used the same voltage and dosage on him that worked on Bucky, but he never recovered from the sickness or the radiation.
"Guess that's what happens when you combine syphilis and Typhoid Fever and Chlorea," Bucky says, because that's exactly what Zola did. His blitzed out brain says, "Maybe you need to keep up the serums and the steroids for longer so the body gets used to it before you go for the big finale. Like you did with me."
"Don't be ridiculous," Zola scoffs, but later Bucky see's him doing exactly that with Subject #67 and having success.
"Told you," Bucky boasts from his table and Zola gives him a dirty look and a sedative for his intelligence - which is nice of him.
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. . .
He thinks Campbell's still alive, but at the same time he could also be the one on the trolley in the corridor ready for the furnace. That could also still be Harris if they haven't gotten round to him yet.
He doesn't know.
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. . .
His favourite dog has puppies; each tail bushier than the last and he names all of them - calls the ugliest one Becca so she'll throw a book at him so he can read it in the dark. He wishes he was blind, so he could read Great Expectations in Braille.
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. . .
He starts forgetting things.
It's small at first - no big revelation or panic like with the faces he doesn't recognize - just small things, like when did they replace the port in his elbow or his waste bucket and when did he throw up?
It takes a couple of days and more than a couple of sessions with short recovery times to realize it started when Zola first used Subject #64's machine on him - the one that closes around the left side of his face and makes his muscles twitch.
Zola's assistant asks, "What was the picture I showed you before?" in his Austrian accent. And then, "What kind of animal was it? What kind of gun was it?"
The questions get more and more specific and more and more helpful but Bucky still can't remember if it was a picture of a beaver or a bear or a cat or a elephant because he's never seen an elephant or a beaver or a bear in real life before. He starts laughing mid Sergeant in deja vu at the deja vu of it, knowing he's done it before. He wonders if the red-haired prisoner would have laughed at the familiarity of the familiarity if he could - if his story was the same story as Bucky's just two months earlier.
He saw the date on the assistant's clipboard earlier, the 9th of November, 1943. He's been in this factory for fifty-nine days, and in this lab for for fifty-one days but it feels like his whole life.
He longs for his pa taping his knuckles his up and his sisters' bitching. He longs for Steve's never ending rants about Norman Thomas, "I'm telling you Buck, if he makes it to office - the difference it'll make for the working classes and civil rights is just - you just don't understand!" and for his Great Aunt's piano and the smell of his ma's soap over his shoulder. He longs for what he and Subject #64 did in the dark; the night before they should have died together.
He presses his restrained wrist against his hip as much as he can until his fingers press against the mysterious 'R' through the fabric of his pocket's pocket.
The Richard, Robert, Ronald, Raymond, Rodger, Russel, Robin, Ross, Romeo, Rodney, Randall, Rubin, Rowan question quietens the hornets in his head - distracts from the ssswisnh energy powering up behind his skull. It doesn't distract him from his twitching cramping muscles after but Bucky's long ago stopped believing in miracles.
He can't remember the words of the Hail Mary, or what happened to the Israelites after they crossed the sea, or how many O Lord, Jesus Christ, Redeemer and Saviour's he needs to recite to atone for murdering a man. He thinks the point is that you can't atone for that kind of thing - not even with final confession. He does remember the hot voltaic energy he feels when the green serum slides home in his arm or drip drips from the bag above his head, and how it excites his body in all kinds of ways as much as it rejects it.
Sometimes, on the come-downs which are thirty to ninety percent worse than the iron lung depending on the day, he wishes for the second machine because while it's awful when it happens it means he'll either forget the day's work or he'll pass out so he doesn't have to feel it.
He understands why his friend ate the rat now.
"What was on the picture I showed you?"
"A donkey," he says even though this time he knows it was a tree. "Clark Gable," even though it was a tank. "Mrs Coulter's Peach Pie," even though it was a banana.
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. . .
The assistant takes him at his word but Zola knows him better than that and rips the results from the clipboard and puts one too many pinching staples in his body than he needs to on the next cycle.
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. . .
Sarah, his favourite companion, likes to sit next to him and lean into his ribs until she unbalances them both and he falls on his side. Her pup's are old enough to be weened, and they run around his feet and whine when their brothers and sisters win at play fights. It brings Bucky a small amount of joy to watch them, while Sarah; the best mother, watches him watch them with a keen eye as Bucky scratches behind her ear. He feels like her pup sometimes too, when he's so upset and so tired from the come-downs and the vomiting, and she pads over and licks his face until he starts smiling again.
The first time she speaks with her namesake's voice he just about has a fit, and she licks his scraggly cheek until he's calmed down and tells him he needs to wash the blood off his shirt and skivvies properly, or he'll get an infection.
"No I won't," he replies, defensive about the blood, "I'll heal before any infection starts;" and pulls out a new staple in his stomach to prove it.
She looks at him with an unimpressed expression, like she used to when he was thirteen and twitches her nose - when did she get whiskers? - says, "James Barnes, what young lady will want you when you smell and look like that?"
"Thought it was my foul mouth that was going to scare them off, not my face." He retorts and she turns her back on him and makes all the puppies go with her.
He's never felt more betrayed.
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. . .
They start taking him to a room filled with old pallets, cabinets, tables, chairs and cameras and he thinks he's supposed to break things. He feels like a bull in a china shop, for some reason, even though he's flesh and bone and not a two-thousand pound cow and the room is nearly as big as Zola's lab. They lock him behind thick bars, and order something in clipped German he doesn't bother to listen to.
There's bloodstains on the threshold of the door and around the bars, stained deep into the concrete so it won't come out no matter how much the Krauts scrub it. He wonders what happened, how many men died here, why the stains look like German blood and why he feels so vindicated when he looks at them.
He smashes three cabinets and six pallets, his head pounding and the hornets buzzing - he feels great - and does what the Krauts want him to do without even realizing it. There's a small clock on the wall and he throws it hard enough to crack the observation screen when he tries and fails to read the time.
It's a long cycle but he's still pumped; Zola gave him two doses today to track his endurance and how long the best - or worst - symptoms of the serum last. They shoot him with a dart, a new sedative and stronger than the last through the bars and he wakes up on the table again as he usually does. Zola switches on his big circular surgical light, shines it on his face until he flinches from the brightness. He's not used to light anymore.
"Turn it down, you motherfucker." He slurs, tongue still thick, while the insects buzz at the back of his throat. He keeps thinking if he opens his mouth the hoard will come out in a swarm, like the Egyptian plague and eat Zola instead of the crops until all that's left is his stupid little spectacles and white coat. He opens his mouth again to let them out - they're coming this time, he swears - and Zola pours water past his lips.
He's so grateful and thirsty he forgets about his plague and gulps it down until it stops. He keeps his mouth open, like a baby bird waiting for more, but Zola puts a familiar mouth guard between his teeth instead. He wheels the new machine over his head and plugs it in, checks the wires and ports - slides the restraints under his jaw and the blue light piece down over his left eye and forehead and ear. He whines; he doesn't like light anymore - especially when it's stabbing him in his retina and making his head fuzz out until he's trapped in his own fitting body.
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. . .
"Are you ready to combine the green stuff with the iron lung again yet?" Bucky asks him on an easy day, when all he has to look forward to is needles and measurements and he can't be bothered with Barnes, Sergeant 32557038.
Zola's sat at his desk, taking notes, and Bucky has to ask him louder a second time until he hears him. Zola hums from his desk; he knows 'the iron lung' is what Bucky calls his Vita-Kammer.
"Not yet." He answers, and Bucky hears his pen dip into the ink pot beside his notes before he goes back to them. "I am still encountering the same problem; I need at least two viable subjects so I don't waste one of them if it has the same effect."
"Shame," Bucky says casually, his arms itchy. "Would have been fun to watch one of those monsters rip themselves off the table to swash you like a grape. Swiisshh." He makes the sound effect for good measure.
Zola's pen stops and Bucky can feel his eyes on the bottom of his chin from where he's sat at his desk. His assistant drops something on the other side of the room.
The scribbling starts back up again, "You know Sergeant, most of my subjects don't talk as much as you."
"Most of your subjects keep dying," Bucky retorts, "But not me."
Zola harrumphs in agreement, "Yes, Sergeant, but not you."
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. . .
Campbell is still alive - he was right. The two of them pass each other in the corridor, clipped collars on them both as Bucky is dragged by the armpits, dart in his neck, on the way back from the room with the bloodstains. Campbell looks at him for a long time as they pass, pupils blown and straining against the guards as he goes for his turn.
He's a lot bigger than Bucky - and he doesn't think it's from better food. Bucky eats now; he throws up afterwards often enough - especially when he binges, but he hasn't put on muscle from just eating and he knows there's only so many push-ups you can do in his old cell. Huh, I guess Zola isn't failing with all of his subjects after-all, he thinks. Bucky's not the only success.
He wants to ask Zola why Campbell is getting physically bigger, more muscled, than him when they're on the same trial now and why it's happening quicker with him than it did with Subject #64. He doesn't in the end; doesn't need to - he remembers his thoughts about his hot and cold flushes - about both serums fighting each other in his one body.
He's stronger and faster and he dented a iron bar the other cycle so he knows Zola's green Stehvermögen trial is working, but he's not swelling up with muscle like Campbell is.
He thinks Zola's come to the same conclusion when he stops measuring him and instead starts taking vials and vials of Bucky's blood and spending hours looking at them under a microscope.
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. . .
Sarah's back and has forgiven if not forgotten, and she curls up by his feet and whines when he lies on his back and feels along his belly to start pulling out the new staples again. She bites his hand and tells him she and the pups will leave again if he pulls out another one so he stops. Little white Stevie the runt is curled up on his chest and he doesn't want Stevie's mama to wake him because of Bucky's bad behaviour. Sarah also plays dirty, because she knows his weaknesses and will use them against Bucky - which is a little malicious if you ask him.
"I'm firm but fair," she says to answer his thoughts, then snaps, "I said stop James!"
"I'm not James." He says.
"You've always been James, you foolish boy. To me, to your mama, to-"
"I'm not James."
Sarah sighs, "Bucky-"
"I'm not Bucky either." He contradicts dully, and taps Berceuse against the grimy floor again. Sarah says nothing. "I'm Barnes, Sergeant 325570-"
"You are not, Bucky Barnes!" Steve's voice snaps out loud, somewhere by his left ear. He jumps up, stumbling, swats at his ear and spins to find Steve but he can't see him in the dark.
"Steve?" he calls out hesitantly, then blinks, hand on his chest because where did Stevie go? He was sleeping right here. Bucky's sure of it, stroking the warm patch leftover from the sleeping pup over his beating heart.
"Stevie?" He calls for the pup, "Georgie? Winnie?" and then the others, even the ugliest, "Becks?"
He can feel the walls closing in, the darkness so encompassing that his eyes will never adjust. He tries to push back the hot tears burning behind his lids; fails and wraps his arms around himself. He whines, starting to weep again. "Stevie? Sarah I-"
"I'm right here James," Sarah says, her bushy tail brushing against his leg. Pure relief bursts out of him and he gasps out a sob, drops to his knees again as Sarah buts her head against his pinched stomach, rubs against his scarred itchy arms.
"Sarah. Sarah, please. Please don't go. Please don't go, I'll stop, just don't go."
She pushes him back with her paws and spins in a circle to get comfy, and he curls himself around her as tightly as he can. "You really need to wash, James." She says after a minute.
"I know," he murmurs back quietly, "but I don't want to lose that part of him."
He falls asleep until the next cycle curled around Sarah the mother mutt and her litter, her bushy tail tickling his nose. He dreams, he thinks, but can't remember what about.
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. . .
Sarah's gone.
He jolts at the sudden emptiness and the coldness that comes rushing in the circle of his bare arms, and looks up, squinting in the sudden brightness. A dark silhouette is stood in the doorway, back lit by the buzzing bulbs. The last couple of hornets buzz in response to the sound - is it time already?
Sarah's stood in front of him, hackles raised, growling at the guard in the doorway.
"What are you doing?!" He hisses at her in panic. She normally shoos her pups into the corner to avoid the danger like a good mother would.
What is she thinking?
"Auf die Fube!" ("On your feet!") The silhouette says, hand tightening on the handle of his baton - they don't carry guns anymore, not these ones anyway, so Bucky and Campbell don't try to shoot anyone else. Sarah bristles and bares her teeth like a mama bear, makes herself as big as she can - bushy tail ramrod straight and huge.
"Sarah get back!" He hisses at her, crawls onto his knees to follow the orders. "Your puppies Sarah!" He reminds her, "You've got to protect your pups!"
"Halt den mund! Ich sagte, auf die Beine kommen!" ("Shut up, I said get on your feet!")
She cants her head to look at him for less than a moment, and her eyes are the fiercest he's ever seen them; on both their faces. She says, growl building deep in her chest, "I am protecting my pup."
At the sound of the baton charge she grows three times her size and launches herself forward at the enemy.
"No!" Bucky screams, darting forward helplessly.
A kick. A backhand. A baton strike. Sarah and he yelp as one, and he hits the floor in the spotlight of the doorway, face pulsing while his muscles spasm.
Sarah slams into the cell wall with a deafening crack. She slides and slumps lifelessly to the ground and shrinks to her original size as she dies. He stares at her lifeless little body, ribcage caved in; stain of red on her sandy fur under her head.
They slam him into the ground, three of them, and he stares at Steve's dead mama. "No, no," he cries before they shock him into unconsciousness.
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. . .
When he wakes, he's in the bloodstained room and he knows he'll never see Sarah or her puppies ever again - knows he as good as killed her too.
"Hey." Someone croaks, "Barnes, isn't it?"
He turns his head and blinks at the muscled man in rotting clothes across from him.
"At least, that's what your tags said. I looked. Sergeant Barnes - didn't know you were a Sergeant when you were in the cell with us."
He doesn't recognize him.
"It's Campbell." The man says.
"Right."
"We were in-"
"No I know, I know we were." He replies, it starting to come back to him. "I just didn't recognize you," he then admits, because why not?
"Yeah I know," the guy grimaces, looking down on himself. "I don't exactly look like I used to - some would say it's an improvement but-" The guy looks away, fist tightening until his veins stand out, "-but nothing that sick bastard does is an improvement. God!" He shouts at the end and Bucky watches him warily, eyes glancing at the spot of red on the inside of his elbow, his slowly widening pupils. Why is he in here with him?
He checks his own elbows, but it's hard to tell with the port Zola put in to stop his veins collapsing. There's no residue as there usually is; Zola's green serum has grown consistently thicker.
"I think Harris is dead," Campbell growls, "he hasn't come back to the cell in ages."
Bucky glances up at him then keeps checking the rest of his usual injection sites. "He is."
"And how the fuck would you know?"
"I saw him." Bucky tries to pull the reactionary annoyance out of his voice as he checks the staples on his stomach. There's a buzzing near his left ear, annoying and persistent until he starts swatting at it. The side of his neck is burning. He touches it and like a flood opening up he starts to hear familiar insects.
"Surprised you're talking to me now," Campbell continues, standing and harshly shoving a rogue cabinet out of his way. There's not that many left now. "As far as you were concerned we could fuck off and go to hell before - what's changed now, huh?"
"Nothing!" Bucky snaps back, standing himself and spinning in a circle. He doesn't trust this quiet, or the hornets - did Sarah know something he didn't?
"Fuck off, you coward." Campbell snarls at him, his anger building like a wave, "You never cared about us!"
Why would I, Bucky bites back; hands starting to shake with the rising energy. He's never been alone with anyone when he's been hopped up like this before - not unless he's been tied down. "Gave you that chance to run, didn't I? It's not my fault you screwed it up."
"Screwed it up?!" Campbell scoffs furiously and throws a drawer from the cabinet at him in one swing. Bucky ducks, his blood starting buzz with narcotic energy. "You didn't do that to let us escape - you did it to get them to shoot you! I heard ya, you pathetic coward-what kind of solider are-"
"Soldiers! If you would!" Zola's voice comes over the tannoy above them. "My experiment does not require your egos or petty arguments - that is the only warning I'll give you. Now I am going to give you a series of tests under the same conditions to measure and compare your results-"
Bucky stops listening, who is this fucking guy? He snarls instead, picks up an oak side table and flings it against where he knows the reinforced observation deck is. Zola falters for a second over the tannoy as the wood splinters, then starts up confidently again, "I have given you both identical dosages-"
He doesn't hear what else the doctor says - Campbell lets out a scream of rage and tackles him clear across the room.
Zola's voice cuts off.
Campbell grabs at his leg, fingers clenched tight and flips him so he lands on his back, spittle flying everywhere. Bucky groans in pain, coughing, and darts his head at the last second.
"You never cared!" Campbell screams, his eyes wild; face ugly with anger. The concrete cracks into a crater under his fist by Bucky's ear. "You never cared!"
He aims a fist again at Bucky's head who kicks him, getting his knee up so Campbell's swing goes wide as he grunts. He snarls at Bucky, not unlike how Sarah did, and slams his head into the concrete before Bucky can stop him and goes for his throat. Hands close around his windpipe, a mountain sits on his chest.
His vision whites out like someone's hit a switch and sound is gone; it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist just like Sarah, Georgie, Winnine, Becca, Stevie, Lils and Jenna didn't. The only thing that exists is the pressure over his throat.
He's choking when he comes back to himself, Campbell pressing down on top of him until Bucky feels like his neck is about to fracture.
He's going to kill me. The guy's out of control.
He tries to kick him again, anywhere he can, but Campbell's moved up and trapped his legs - he can't breathe he can't breathe - he can't-
His left arm snaps up from Campbell's wrist around his throat and he punches him. It's the wrong angle and Campbell doesn't even grunt - so he takes a note from the guys own book and goes for the neck. Campbell cuts off whatever he's yelling when Bucky chops him with the side of his hand in the throat, bucking against him. He chokes for a moment, the mountain of a man, and his grip loosens a little so Bucky tries to slam one of his arms free to get traction.
You can't breathe, you can't breathe. He's gonna' kill you, he's gonna' kill you.
You want to die but not like this.
Not like this.
His other scrabbling hand catches on a table leg. He snaps it clean off and cracks it across the side of Campbell's head until it splinters. The growls cut off and the enemy cries out, his grip finally slackening and Bucky gasps in relief.
There's a wooden splinter pierced deep into the enemy's eyeball -he doesn't know pain like you do - show him.
Now that he has traction Bucky twists himself and punches the enemy in the ribcage until he hears something crack and he's free. He keeps moving, half climbing up the man's side until he's half on his shoulders. He get hold of either side of his head, goes to snap his neck clean in two.
He slams back into the ground on his side as Campbell manages to flip him off and throws him into a cabinet. He gasps, coughing; winded.
"You're dead! You're dead!" The enemy screams and charges him again - blind in one eye and blood running down his face. Still winded on the floor Bucky darts clumsily to one side. They're different sizes, the enemy's stronger and you're smaller but you can be just as fast, like Steve is - and kicks him in the side of the knee, like he feels he's done before. This time, the enemy's entire knee joint dislocates and he goes down screaming.
The tannoys on - Zola's shouting orders - guards are coming.
Bucky cracks another chair against the small of the enemy's back to keep him down and goes for his neck again. He can't even feel his own throat from where it has almost completely closed up, hand-prints bruised deep.
It's not as much of a fight as a struggle - both of them too close to one another, and too angry to throw the proper punches Bucky knows how to do. The hornets are so loud and his hearts pumping so hard he doesn't even feel it when the enemy cracks him in head so there's blood in his eye as he tries to dislodge him. He's grabbing and scrabbling at Bucky's arms so much Bucky can't get a firm grip on the guy's jaw, and then the enemy grabs him under the armpit to flip him again. Bucky kicks him backwards in the diaphragm to try and stop him. It doesn't work, so he lets his balance go and uses the momentum to send them both to the ground instead.
The enemy goes to gouge his eyes out and Bucky grabs a broken shard of wood the size of a baseball bat, remembers the feel of a sharpened bed-pole in his hand.
He does it before he thinks about hesitating and drives it deep into enemy's chest until it comes out the other side.
Campbell's good eye sparks then goes glassy. He chokes, and coughs; blood and spittle splatter across Bucky's face and chest like Andrew's brains did. He slumps backwards and hits the ground, still choking on the blood bubbling out of his mouth.
Bucky's angry high goes off like a switch.
Shit, shit.
He scrambles on top of Campbell and tries to plug the front hole but the wooden shaft is there and the damage is already done.
"Shit, shit, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Bucky rants, grabbing at him helplessly until the light goes completely out in the soldier's face.
He's so young, Bucky's mind screams as his mouth mumbles, looking down on the unshaven face, unblemished by anger, of an eighteen year old boy.
The guards shoot him with three darts on Zola's panicked order and he slumps sideways off the body of the child he just murdered.
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. . .
It turns out - they weren't supposed to kill each other. Zola's irate like he was the last time someone other than him killed one of his subjects - but he's only got himself to blame for putting two steroid enhanced soldiers with a predisposition for violence together when they're hopped up. It's his own fault, and Bucky's too; who he can't kill because now he really is the only remaining successful subject in both his trials.
The come-down lasts for an age when he wakes up on the table, and after, while he's still strapped down the guards shave his beard and catch him with the blade as often as they can.
It's the middle of the night, and its in the quiet darkness that they frog-march him, drugged and stumbling to the shower blocks and hose the blood off him. They strip him of his clothes and he grabs at his trousers until they rip.
"Wie zum Teufel hat dieser von den beiden uberlebt?" ("How the hell did this one survive out of the two of them?") One of them comments above him as he wrestles for this trousers back.
He'd like to know that himself.
They rip the remains of his trousers off him by punching him in the stomach. It's not that hard, even with him sliced down the middle but he goes down, curling up so he can slip green and red under his tongue. He lets the remaining fabric of his ripped pockets fall and lets them drag him naked back to his cell. Before they shove him into the black hole they drop him until he catches himself on the wall with one hand, and order:
"Sie setzen auf."
Bucky's head is too thick and fuzzy to understand.
"Put them on!" Another one orders in accented English and he see's another prisoner's green fatigues hanging off a trolley.
It's only after, once he spits out the identity tags without Sarah to lecture him; that he realizes that he doesn't have his blood stained skivvies anymore.
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. . .
They bring him to the room for the last time afterwards, once he's been under the second machine for a whole cycle to….do he doesn't know what.
The room's a ruin with smashed cabinets and tables and pallets, with bloodstains on the floor, both old and fresh.
Zola, standing behind four guards, points at the scarlet blood over the brown. "What happened here Sergeant?"
Bucky stares blankly at him, left eye red and watering. He tries to swat at his ear but the guard who has his arms locked behind him is firm. The guard with the collar pole shakes it until he focuses.
"What happened here Sergeant?" Zola repeats until Bucky looks back at the stain. "What happened here?"
Bucky mumbles.
"Speak up. I can't hear you Sergeant."
"Someone died." Bucky says louder, slurring a little.
"Someone died," Zola affirms, "Do you know who died here?"
Bucky shakes his head, no.
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. . .
More subjects and 'cellmates' must come and go, Bucky doesn't bother to learn their names. They'll just die and leave him alone again until the guards toss Zola another one like a prized fish, because that's the thing; he keeps on surviving them, over and over.
He knows it must be due to the resilience and healing trials at the beginning; when Zola turned his immune system into some kind of steamroller, but that seems so long ago - years ago - when he thinks back on it now.
Was his childhood all some fantastical dream with his strong father, swell best friend and bratty sisters, when really, he was born on this table the same way he planned on dying on it?
He keeps recovering and the others don't. They wallow and they cry and then they die.
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. . .
Zola tells him he's proud of him.
Whether he's proud of his biological successes or proud of Bucky for forgetting to scream, he doesn't know.
What does it matter?
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. . .
Zola's getting more impatient. Bucky can tell, because he keeps killing all the new subjects by accident and then having to cut them up in front of Bucky to see where he's gone wrong.
Currently his only true success, still Zola's favourite, Bucky rarely leaves the table any more - barely remembers the cell and the rat that kept trying to eat his extremities. That's how he knows Zola's been skipping some of the slower steps he meticulously mapped out and logged with Bucky's, Subject #64's and the others' first trials, trying to speed up the process - or even turn it into one procedure instead of two hundred. Recovery times are getting shorter and shorter too.
The others can't hack it like he can.
Zola is stressed and anxious, as though he's suddenly on a quick to close schedule, and Bucky overheard the guards talking - his German has improved tremendously - when he was pretending to be passed out. Something about a visit from the Obergruppenführer, which Bucky thinks is some kind of Lieutenant General, called Schmitt or something. Then the prisoner next to him had started coughing and Bucky couldn't hear and then he forgot he was supposed to be listening.
The results of this impending visit - or impending doom for Zola as far as Bucky can tell - seem to come to fruition when Bucky's still trembling and fuzzy from the shocks. His new trousers wet with piss after being under Subject #64's machine for an intermittent amount of time, he's reciting paragraphs from Aldous Huxley's Brave New World to himself when the new-ish prisoner on the other table cuts off mid-scream. Bucky manages to roll his head until it thuds back against the table in the right direction, still mumbling, to see the sandy-haired solider (he looks nothing like Steve - it's okay) dead, mouth hung open. Zola swears like Andrew used to swear and throws what can only be described as a honest-to-god temper tantrum until the guards at the door leave in awkward silence. He doesn't bother to cut that one up, allows the man that dignity, just orders the guards to toss him in the furnace with the others.
.
. . .
He fades in and out, wakes up frozen and stone-like in his body more times than he can count; doesn't even feel the angry energy he used to feel racing through his veins when Zola gives him the green serum anymore. He has vague memories of the guards shaving him and hacking off some of his greasy hair, but feels like he's three steps above them when they start and finish. Zola feeds him through a tube in his nose, a medical invention Bucky is amazed at as much as he's disgusted. He thinks they used to force a metal tube down his throat and funnel down soup and slosh until he swallowed it, but he kept throwing up on himself and smelling out the room more than he already had after so they stopped. His body remembers it even if his mind doesn't.
His hunger is never satisfied and neither is he, it's a shitty life and he's tired of it - wants it to end already. He's not scared of dying anymore, not like he was before - doesn't even care if Zola mutilates him after - just wants it to stop.
He can tell Zola's getting worried he's regressing back to the weak sickly 'unresilient' state he was in before he came here, that his precious serums aren't as permanent as he thought they were. The doctor takes several hours before he decides to go back to the beginning. He tells Bucky he needs to test if his rate of healing has remained or regressed and in a strange state of deja vou starts taking his shoes off.
He has no socks, can't remember if he even had them to begin with. Zola cuts his feet up - from the heels to the tip of his largest toes - in long deep strokes and smaller nicks, and contemplates whether to take a toenail as well. He decides on no, but has the guards put out cigarettes and cigar tips on his hip to track the healing rate of the burns instead. Bucky barely even feels him do any of it.
Strangely, after the rubbing alcohol and some half-hearted dressing they put his shoes back on, yanking on the laces until they're tight enough to throb from the pressure.
"We don't want to rats getting at them and contaminating the results." He thinks he hears Zola say - he knows about the rats?
"Of course I know about the rats Imbecill, half my subjects were turning up missing parts of their fingers - they're getting bolder - the disgusting vermin."
You're the disgusting vermin.
He gives Bucky another shot, the type that he kind of likes because it makes him see stars, followed by the usual steroids. In the last moment he realizes it's quiet in the darkening lab and that he can't remember the last time there was another test subject.
He's the last one.
"The Obergruppenführer is here Herr Doctor" someone says.
Zola sighs, "Ah yes, I better go see to him then."
.
. . .
When he comes back to himself he's mumbling again, and Steve. Steve-big-strong-tall-Steve is stood over him and shaking him.
He says, "It's me. It's Steve. I'm getting you out of here," like some kind of golden avenging angel.
Maybe there is a God afterall.
.
.
.
And welcome to Act 2 - The Rescue and Escape of Hyrdra. Steve is officially in the game; hope your looking forward to his chapter next week.
In this chapter you might have noticed the writing to have changed a little; I was trying to write in a style that reflects Bucky's fractured thoughts as he looses sense of time, lack of self and the general deterioration of his mental state as this is his POV and how he's perceiving things. Every now and again he comes back to himself a little whenever there is a break in the worst of the experimentation and has conversations with Zola; which if you haven't worked out is because his body starts recovering. Then Zola goes and ruins it for him, as usual.
My writing regarding Bucky's hallucinations of Sarah and the dogs, and the eyeglasses hallucination were taken as a reference to the 1951 Experiment on Solitary confinement based on a group of male graduates. The plan was to observe students for six weeks, but not one lasted more than seven days. Nearly every student lost the ability "to think clearly about anything for any length of time," while several others began to suffer hallucinations. "One man could see nothing but dogs," wrote one of the study's collaborators, "another nothing but eyeglasses of various types, and so on."
EFFECTS OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT: Visual and auditory hallucinations, Hypersensitivity to noise and touch, Insomnia and paranoia, Uncontrollable feelings of rage and fear, Distortions of time and perception, Increased risk of suicide & loss of ability to recognize faces (this has been recorded extensively in prisoners who have spent long periods of time in solitary confinement.)
TRANSLATIONS:
stabil und lebensfähig : Stable and viable
VITA-KAMMER: translates to Vita Chamber. This is the machine Zola uses on Bucky that he calls the 'iron lung.'
VITALITAT TRIAL: translates to Vitality Trial. This is the trial involving the yellow serum, which effects the immune systems and healing.
STEHVERMOGEN TRIAL: translates to Stamina/Endurance Trial . This is the trial involving the Green Serum, which effects the muscles and strength etc. Andrew was given this, and from this chapter Zola begins to start giving it to Bucky too.
OBERGRUPPENFUHRER: 'Lieutenant General' rank of the German army. This is Schmitt/Red Skulls rank.
IMBECILL: translates to Imbecile.
