Warning: medical description of needles, etc. Not sure if that's considered graphic, but you've been warned.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN- December 2038

Imagine a paper cut slowly and methodically slicing into your flesh. The pain is not immediate, but you know you felt something breech the surface. Then you feel tweezers slip inside the paper cut and pry it open just a little further. You feel the exposure of air where it doesn't belong. You can't move unless you want it to get worse. After the tweezers spin around inside each tiny little cut, a needle is stuck shallowly, repeatedly inside. When this process is completed over the space of your entire limb in 3mm increments, that's thousands of times per limb, the still fresh paper cuts are doused in sanitizer. At least, Sam thought, that's what it feels like. Yet somehow not the most terrible birthday Sam had ever had. She was doing something good for science, and while that thought kept her going each day until she passed out under the cradle's mechanical arm, whisky kept her from thinking too much about it after a section was complete.

The feet were by far the worst. She'd never had the chance to get a tattoo, but Sam was sure she wouldn't bother now. And she wasn't even done; her left arm, chest, and head still remained.

Tomorrow. Not anymore today.

Sam was enjoying a very quiet night on the 'bone yard' hill top, sipping a bottle of Bain's Cape Mountain Whisky. Burning on the inside was a nice change from crawling on the outside, though the grafting of vibranium into her keratinocytes managed to ease some nerve discomfort after the first 48 hours. Sam took note that this could be because the metal protected the exposed nerves within her Extremis-altered epidermis, but that was only her best guess.

Sam was entirely lost in thought when Bucky appeared at the far end of the field and trudged over.

"Hey" was all he said when he got close enough. Sam nodded back. She hadn't seen him in a week or so, but they hadn't had a conversation since flying to Wakanda. That was a few months ago now.

"You look about as good as I feel," Bucky added as he reached out his right hand, twitching his eye towards the bottle. "I won't ask you why a seventeen-year-old is drinking straight from the bottle if you share."

Sam handed over the bottle. "Merry Christmas."

"Damnit," Bucky exclaimed, "that's next week, isn't it."

"Sure is…and I'm eighteen as of last Monday."

The bulky soldier let his shoulders slump. Perhaps he meant to say a congratulations but instead all that came out was "I'm sorry." He handed the bottle back after a very long swig, then sat down a few feet away.

"Yeah," Sam replied, continuing to medicate. "So what have you been up to?"

"Sam Wilson is having to retrain using the EXO-7, so I've remotely piloted a few battle sims for him. Then there's…" Bucky drifted off in thoughts of what Samantha should know. He finally landed on saying "always some asshole trying to stir things up here and there."

"So you get sent off the punch 'em?" Sam chuckled at the thought.

He maneuvered his hands in the air for a second. "Well, it requires some finesse, too, but sure, I've…passed the point of diplomacy a few times."

Sam noticed the physical difference in Captain Barnes since they'd left New York. He spoke with his hands freely, used and relaxed more muscles while interacting with others, told animated stories and calmly listened. He seemed free of some constraint in Wakanda. "You like it better here, don't you?"

Bucky was caught off guard by the errant thought. "Not—" he searched for the words, "not better, I guess, but—maybe? I'd never really thought about it." He put his metal arm out this time, wiggling the fingers for the bottle.

"You won't break it?"

Bucky's head snapped back in fain offense. Sam was eyeing his arm again, as she'd done in the quinjet during their flight.

He grabbed the whisky. "Go ahead, you can ask," he prompted, having heard all sorts of outrageous, mostly rude, comments and questions about the metal appendage. How much can you carry? Can you pull it off and on to sleep or clean? Can it spin around in all direction? Are there weapons inside of it? Can you crush a guy with only that thing? How much did it hurt when they put it on you? Do you have to charge it separately? These were the normal questions. Every once in a while, someone would ask if he missed being a whole human, and that one particularly hurt.

"Would you ever want a real arm back?" Sam said sheepishly.

The way Sam asked him, though, was unlike anyone else. She did not imply he was not a human, she asked what he wanted instead of what he could do, and most curiously she seemed to believe he could have a real arm again. Still, Bucky wouldn't be stitched together with a corpse's arm.

"I'm not Frankenstein's monster," Bucky replied, slow and deliberate, "that's how I ended up like this."

Sam took and drank from the bottle. "You know, the monster was the most genuine and kind person in that book." She looked down at the grass between her feet, very quietly adding, "forget I asked. I'm sorry."

"You're a smart-ass," he mumbled. Then it dawned on him. "You've called me that before," Bucky said absently. "When you were a kid, you looked right at me…and called me a monster. I don't think you meant I was genuine and kind."

It took a moment to see the comprehension roll across Sam's face. "Eh, shit. Children…" Sam shook her head, unable to find the correct way to apologize. "Children don't see the big picture."

Bucky returned his gaze to the sky. He didn't know what he wanted from her; an apology, an explanation, maybe recompense. It made no difference all this time later. Nothing could change why the word had hurt him so much. He would have believed it no matter who said it. Somewhere in his mind or heart, he believed himself a monster from the instant he fell from the train in '45.

"Bruce was my friend," Sam blurted, "and then I did something wrong. He got mad at me, but…all I knew was that he didn't touch me. Hulk didn't hurt me. And then you beat him up anyway. You beat my friend to a pulp right in front of me. You hurt someone I loved, so I called you names. That's what four-year-olds have to fight with, mean words that we barely understand."

They sat silently for a long while, passing the bottle back and forth. Bucky enjoyed the taste, the reminder of old times with friends and men in arms, but he noticed Sam's aim in handing off the bottle deteriorating, slowing in response. Her eyelids slumped. She didn't look up at the sky anymore; she looked straight forward with the same wonder as the stars.

Bucky took a moment to amuse himself. "So you're a genius and can give me an arm, huh?"

"Depends on your definition of real," Sam slurred a little. "You're not entirely human, so I'd need to replicate your DNA and tissue. Add in some vibranium for durability because why the hell not, we're in Wakanda. Of course, I'll need to do a scan of rotation capacity from your other arm so it can match, and then blend the infused tissue with your existing skeletal, muscle, and skin structure…" The last half of her thoughts were spoken with closed eyes. She got lost in solving the problem, repeatedly pushing her entangled fingers together in frustration.

"Sam?"

"Yeah?" Her eyes were blank.

"You want me to take you back to your room?"

"I—I can do it," she said, shoving herself up onto shaky legs. She turned to go inside, leaving the bottle with Bucky.

"Hey, Sam," he called after her. "Happy Birthday."

She didn't turn around, only paused. Then she made a weak salute on her way inside.