"Jah—" is the closest to a name he can manage, a single, faltered syllable that he has to force out through a throat stripped raw. Why is it so hard to speak? Has he been screaming? What have they done to make him scream? What is this chair and why can't he remember how he got into it? "Jah—Jah…Jah—"
Lights shine in his face, stinging, blinding, and what little of a coherent thread of thought he's managed to spin unravels, skittering to the corners of his mind, unable to be gathered again. Someone is brushing hair from his eyes, asking what's wrong, asking his name.
The voice is laughing, he thinks, and he struggles but his body is heavy and numb and his head and throat feel scraped and raw and his attempts to free himself are weak as…weak as…whatever comparison his mind wants to make is gone and he's left reaching into another dark void, without even the flicker of light that appears when he searches for a name.
The voices continue, and the longer he goes without speaking—there are words in his head, both English and Russian and maybe other languages he's forgotten the names of, all jumbled together now, shaken up like a…cocktail? What is a cocktail?—the louder and more angry they become, but he doesn't care.
"Jah," he repeats and each time he says it the grinding pain in his throat is almost forgotten in the rush of desperate focus that accompanies the word. "Jah…Jah…" It must be hidden somewhere in him, it has to be, how can he lose his own name? No, these people, he can't remember what it is they want, but they're bad. He's locked the name away to protect it, all he has to do is dig deep enough and he can find it again.
All he has to do is focus.
There are rough hands on him, shaking, hitting, blasts of icy water, and he can't focus, but he can't acknowledge them either. Can't let himself be distracted. If he's still and quiet enough, if he withholds whatever it is they want, they'll stop. They have to. He must remember who he is, because if he can't, then what is he? Not a person. A person has an identity.
If he isn't a person, how can he fight back?
They drag him to a cell and the blood on the floor suggests he's been there before, but he can't remember. He stares at the blood, "jah jah jah jah" a constant refrain under his breath. Is it his blood? It doesn't seem to hold any answers.
He stands, staring down at the stains, until his legs give way beneath him and he finds himself on his knees. A pair of boots, scuffed, step into his vision, standing on his blood.
He raises his head and gives a small, shaky smile. "Steve."
Long after he forgets his own name, he remembers "Steve."
Steve's hands are worrying at the aches and cuts he can feel in his own skin, and while he can't feel Steve's hands, he doesn't care, relief washing over him. Steve. Steve is a name. He knows the name. He knows the man. And he doesn't feel fear upon seeing him, he can remember him, and that means that Steve knows him too, knows his name.
He waits to hear it, eyes tearing up with hope rather than pain, and the tears spill out when his name isn't spoken. Instead Steve taps a finger against his cracked, bloody lips, kneels down beside him, takes his hand. "C'mon, you can do this," Steve urges, and he wants to shout that he can't.
He can't remember, not through the haze of fatigue and confusion, he can't keep speaking or he'll lose his voice, he can't go on through the pain and the fear and the overwhelming need for sleep that he knows, without knowing how he knows, will be forcibly interrupted if he does manage to doze off.
But he can't say any of that, because he knows Steve, and he knows from the look on Steve's face that no excuse will matter. Steve is saying he believes in him, and when Steve believes, there is no room for debate.
"Jah," he mumbles, searching his mind, flexing and reaching for a name through the ache and the smog. "Jah…Jah…"
When he closes his eyes, colors swirl and pulse in his vision. The world with his eyes open is not much better. He remembers injections, and he can't tell if the colors and shadows and shaking walls are a poison sliding through his veins or sickness borne of exhaustion. Maybe both. He thinks of asking Steve, but Steve wants him to remember and so he forces himself to focus.
When his mind wanders, he bites at his lips, slaps at his own face. Steve's hand reaches up to stop him each time, but it never prevents him. "Jah…Jah…Jah…"
His voice is all but gone, a faint whisper, by the time something slides into place. "Jah…Jay…James. James."
The tears are back. Not that the tears ever stopped, but now they are not motivated by frustration or exhaustion. James. A name. He has a name. They couldn't take that from him, and so they can't break him. He isn't theirs. He's James. He can survive.
James raises his head, meets Steve's eyes. Steve is smiling back, and Steve's smile makes James feel as if he can fight lions. He doesn't know what lions are, not anymore, but he can fight them anyway.
When the men come back into the room, James meets their eyes. It takes a few tries for words to come out but after the initial, creaking rasp, he manages. "James." A last name, a rank, a serial number, all of that is still missing, but he has a name, and while he has that, he has autonomy. That's all that matters. "James. James."
They sedate James, drag him back to the chair. James can't scream or struggle, only watch, cry, beg incoherently through the bit in his mouth, as they shock him back into darkness.
When he awakens, his name is gone again. He tries to struggle and is told to be still, told the procedure has already begun, and watches, helpless, as a saw is taken to what remains of his left arm.