2. Ganzfeld
Three days. He held out for three days. He would have that to take to his grave, at least.
:=:
At first he was sure the idiots had just done him a huge favour. He startled a little when Zola or whoever turned the light off—there could be anything in there with him—but he soon quietened. The room was as dark as it got, and that way they wouldn't be able to see him, or what he did.
He reached for the coils of chain lying on the cot beside him. Zola might be crazy, but he was right about Bucky being a changed man. Once he'd got away from the restraints and the stink of chloroform he had begun to notice things. The way he could see and hear things now, or even smell them sometimes, so that he heard a twig break under an enemy's boot or the distant rumble of an engine before any of the other Commandos did. The way he could slow down his heart, his breathing, sometimes—he'd swear—even time itself, so that he'd gone from a hell of a shot to someone who seemed to have the eye and luck of the devil. The way he became stronger at times, without real rhyme or reason, so once he'd almost bent a truck's steering wheel in half when he'd been wrestling a Hydra goon near the Danish border.
Now would be a good time for that.
His fingers slid up the chain's links to the eye bolt embedded in the wall. He felt the metal for a moment, guiding himself by touch. With the light gone he could think better too, his headache a little more bearable. His thoughts were sharper. Not glass-sharp, but sharper.
He closed his fist around the length of chain just below the bolt and gave it an experimental tug. The metal groaned a little, the squeak louder in the dark, but didn't budge. That was OK. He wasn't expecting it to, not yet.
Come on. He stood up, hand still on the chain, and braced his feet against the floor as he wrapped a few loops of the chain around his hand. Nice an' easy. He made sure to give the chain a little slack, focusing on the task as though it were an unfamiliar rifle he had to load in the dark. Once he was done, he gave the chain a tug, stopped, felt for the edge of the cot with one foot, then started pulling again. Come on. The metal let out a low-pitched whine as he yanked it and the edged of the bed dug into his foot through the thin mattress, but he kept pulling, until his tendons burned and his right arm felt like it was going to pop right out of of its socket. The chain links dug into the flesh and bones of his hand. He was sure the skin had already ripped. Come on. Fuck!
His left foot slipped. His knee struck the edge of the cot so hard a red starburst filled his sight and he almost went sprawling across the floor. For a few seconds everything swayed, even in the dark. Then the world settled back into place. He could think again.
On your feet, soldier.
Slowly, muscles burning, he straightened up and felt around for the chain. Most of it had slipped out of his hand.
The bolt was still buried in the wall. Hadn't even budged.
He had to stop himself from swearing out loud. They might not be able to see him, but he bet they were probably listening, and better not give the bastards anything if he could help it. He kneeled on the cot and groped at the wall and the bolt again, as though he might find that he was mistaken and he'd ripped it apart after all.
Seeing with your fingers was difficult, but he was sure the first link of the chain was bent, and that there were cracks in the concrete, around the rivets fixing the bolt to the wall. Faint, but he could feel them.
All right. Try again. Keep going, like he had for the past two years, barely needing sleep, and he wasn't sure that was down to the things after Azzano. Maybe it was just the war, running on fumes, marching all night, ambushing an armed convoy after a few hours' rest with icy mud seeping into everything. Maybe it was following Steve, because who wouldn't follow him, Brooklyn runt or star-spangled super soldier, to hell itself?
Maybe he was just a stubborn jerk. That was probably it.
He climbed out of the cot. His knee still throbbed, but at least it was a distraction from the headache. Leverage, that's what he needed. Maybe if he used one of the cot's legs? They were bolted to the floor, so he could use one as a kind of pulley. He just had to crawl under the bed…
Did he ever notice it, your Captain?
You could try the other arm.
He kicked the thoughts away. Christ, this was not the time to wonder about what Zola had or hadn't meant, as though he'd said it with flowers. He had to figure out—
But you could try the other arm.
'Yeah, fine.' The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. By now the dark swam with red and yellow splotches and he closed his eyes. Not like he was seeing much anyway.
He could try the other arm. The thought made him a little queasy—it wasn't just a cover, he knew that, he wasn't that stupid, these assholes wouldn't have encased his arm in steel or whatever it was because they'd run out of baby shoes to bronze. They must have done some kind of surgery—
blood snow
—on it, melded flesh and metal together like those science experiments Stark would sometimes go on about. He called it biological robotics, which had always struck Bucky as inadvertently funny, as though Stark had meant to sound fancy like a college professor and had instead landed on a pulp about Martians zapping farmers with ray guns.
He opened his eyes again and looked down at the spot where his left arm had to be. Some part of him expected the thing to start glowing red or make beeping noises, but he couldn't even see the faintest of outlines. Taking care of Mom and Steve he'd learned a few things, and dressing wounds the best he could in the field he'd learned a lot more, enough to know how to picture the stuff that was usually sealed under the skin. He imagined copper wire wrapped around blood vessels, metal clamps biting on sinew and white slivers of bone. In his mind the thing attached to his arm was vaguely spider-like, full of hair-thin legs.
So what?
He hadn't told anyone about the things after Azzano, not even Steve, because who wanted to relive the time when they'd been splayed out and prodded like a guinea pig, but if the results helped, they helped. He'd have time to moan about it later, over a drink or three, and before he could waste any more time thinking he sidled up against the wall and picked up the chain again with his right hand.
OK, let's see how this thing handles.
The arm-thing made a whirring noise as he flexed his left elbow and raised his hand. He tried to move it forward and it struck the wall with a loud thwack. Too far. When he pulled it back the motion inside his shoulder felt like he had ball bearings under the skin, which he probably did now. He moved the left hand towards the wall, hoping this time he'd manage to be more gentle. The arm didn't just feel numb, it felt like it had been encased in layers and layers of wool weighted down with metal; sensations were distant, tugs on a rope. Trying to get the metal fingers around the eyebolt (Jesus, had it always been that small?) was like trying to play cards while wearing baseball gloves. Doing it in the dark was like playing cards while wearing baseball gloves, blindfolded. After what felt like an eternity of fumbling and nudging the metal-covered hand with his real one, he had the left fist closed around the eye bolt and the first few links of the chain. The air smelled of metal and sweat stung his eyes. He blinked it away.
Well, here goes nothing. He flexed his right arm and hoped the left one followed. One, two—
A loud crack and he went flying backwards. Something struck his face a split second before he slammed against concrete. He scrambled onto his side with a spike of panic and groped around blindly, sent a length of the chain clattering when his hand bumped against it. He was, of course, on the floor. He'd just tumbled out of the bed and managed to hit himself with the chain at the same time like a champ. He flushed with embarrassment. He would have thought the dark would make that better, but it only made it worse.
Gingerly, he hauled himself to his feet. His whole left side throbbed as though he'd ripped something open, and he must have bit his own tongue because his mouth tasted like a handful of nickels. There were still loops of chain around his right arm. He shook them off.
He heard a clatter of concrete on concrete.
'Don't jerk me around,' he said, but when he finished reeling the chain towards him, there was a chunk of concrete hanging from the end. He touched it, not quite sure he believed it yet, and his fingers found the bolt embedded in the centre.
He'd ripped the whole thing right off the wall.
He didn't have time to think about it, or about whether he really believed it, or about what he could do now. It was like being inside a radio serial in which the hero got out of the cell and freed all the other POWs. His mind sat quietly as his body padded to what he hoped was the centre of the cell and tossed a loop of chain at the ceiling to try to find the grille.
Once there was a clang of metal on metal he stood back a little and looked up. A flash, just inside his temple, where it hurt: a blizzard, a hole in a stone wall. He squeezed his eyes shut, sending a ripple of pain across his cheek, where the chain had hit him. A tunnel? Whatever it was, it didn't matter. He looked up again, towards the grille he couldn't see, wound the chain around his arm, and before he could think about it, jumped.
His fingers closed on nothing and he landed back on his feet, hard enough to nearly send him sprawling. He straightened up, tried again. This time his fingers brushed the metal cover, slid past it uselessly and he landed on the floor, badly, with a sickening crack in his right ankle that sent a whip of pain up his calf. He hopped on one leg for a few seconds, then resigned himself to sitting down and feeling for a fracture.
For once, he been lucky: there was nothing broken, at least not that he could feel. Sprained, maybe, but sprained didn't really matter. Sprained wouldn't kill you. The problem was getting a handle on that grille. If only he had something to stand—
He sprang up and padded around in the dark, ignoring his limp, until he found the cot again. He did have something to stand on. The thing might be bolted to the floor, but maybe that wouldn't be a problem for his new… tool. He groped around the bed's legs until he found the screws holding it in place. This time it took him much less time to get a grip on them with the metal-covered fingers and rip them away, squeezing and pulling them as though they were nothing but wooden splinters.
He was getting good at using the thing on his left arm. Really good.
It took him a while to find the grille again and drag the bed under it, the metal frame scrapping on the floor so loudly all the while that he was sure every single Hydra bastard around would hear it and come rushing into the cell. Good. Can fight my way out, then. Nobody came, though. They were leaving him alone for now, which also suited him. Balancing on the bed, he slipped the metal fingers into the holes in the grille and pulled. It took longer than the screws, but after a while the cover began to bend with a shrill squeak. Wires of pain lit up inside his left shoulder and upper back. He kept going, until the grille finally came loose with a loud snap and he had to use his right hand to keep his balance.
He tossed the grille to the mattress, where it landed with a thump, and felt inside the hole with his good hand. His heart rose into his throat; he couldn't help it. There was the cold glass of the light bulb, concrete sides, concrete ceiling, jagged edges where he'd ripped the grille out, a small opening, no bigger than his fist, where he could feel a rush of cold air, and…
Nothing.
No vents big enough for him to crawl through. No wires he could try to short-circuit.
He felt inside the hole again, more frantic. It was still empty, its walls smooth as a tombstone.
:=:
For the next long while, he tried.
He tried yelling into the speaker, hoping someone would come down to shut him up, someone he could threaten, fight, take as a hostage. He tried saying 'You win, Zola. Let's do whatever it is you want to do.'
There was silence. Not even a whisper of static.
He tried hammering on the walls with the metal fist.
He tried using the chain to dig at the dimple left in the concrete when he'd ripped the bolt out the wall. He gave up once his right arm was itchy with dust, his fingers wracked by cramps, and he could no longer pretend that it wouldn't take him a hundred years to make a hole just big enough for his head.
He tried sticking his hand in the little vent in the ceiling, and achieved nothing except scraping the skin on his palm. Maybe it would get infected and we'd end up in a sick bay. Easier to break out of. He laughed at that, out loud. It sounded like broken glass.
He tried investigating the metal thing welded to his arm. His fingers slid over polished steel, a constellation of filed-down rivet heads. Touching the hand reminded him of those gross old pictures of dissected limbs he'd seen whenever Steve dragged him to the Brooklyn Museum, a jumble of veins and sinew and nerves cast in iron and wire. He dropped the hand and moved to the seam in his shoulder, pressed his knuckles against numb, puffy flesh, and tried to get his thumb under the metal edge. No use. The steel had teeth inside him, like a bear trap. All he managed to do was nearly rip out his nails and make blood well.
He tried breaking the light bulb and root around in the exposed wires. They were dead, as dead as it got. There wasn't even the sting of electricity. When he pulled his hand back, he managed to cut himself on a sharp edge, let out a little snort of pain, then noticed it: the silence, where before there had been the whisper of air. He felt for the vent again, his hand clammy. No, there was still air trickling in.
The flow was weaker than before, though. Much weaker.
In the end he lay on the cot and stared at the dark until his eyes were burning and he could see big hazy strips of green and yellow and purple, the colour of bile and bruises and sickness.
:=:
He wasn't sure how long he lay there, staring at nothing. Not long, he hoped. Long enough for the pain in his head to fade to a dull throb and the pain in his ankle to grow to an iron band around his bones.
Long enough for the hunger and thirst to start in earnest.
He'd managed not to think about it until now. It had been easy to ignore, just a faint rumble in his stomach, a dryness in his mouth. Stuff you couldn't afford to worry about when you were stuck in a windowless room in the middle of nowhere and had to figure a way out. But now the hunger pangs had grown until they were starting to mosey the pain out of the way. And the thirst, well, the thirst wasn't so bad, maybe they'd watered him before he'd been asleep, but he could tell it wouldn't take long for the thirst to give the hunger a run for its money.
And then there was the air. He might not have stopped it from coming into the cell while he was messing around with the vent like an idiot, but he'd done something, hadn't he? The room was growing hotter. Maybe not enough to bother him, not yet, maybe not enough for anyone else to notice. (Would Steve? He didn't complain about the cold, but he'd never really complained about anything. If Bucky hadn't been around he'd probably have died of an asthma attack at twelve while wheezing 'm all right.) But the temperature was increasing, little by little. In a few hours' time—
He rolled onto his stomach. The bed groaned underneath him and the mattress stank of his own sweat. In the last two years he'd learned to sleep anywhere, sitting up, on his feet, sometimes even when he was doing something, a part of his mind slumbering while his legs walked or his eyes scanned a tree line. Sleep was one of your best buddies, below clean water but well above hot water, razor blades, and bars of soap, and right now Bucky just wanted to close his eyes and catch up with his old pal for a few hours.
You have to sleep sometime.
'Screw you, Zola,' he muttered, and hoisted himself down to the floor. He pictured them all when this was finally over, him, Steve, the rest of the Commandos, Peggy, hell, even Stark. No, especially Stark; who else had the money to take them all on a yacht and serve them champagne in ice buckets and steak brought in from Oscar's Delmonico's? (Where else would they all be allowed to sit together, after the war, if not at sea?) In the cell, Bucky crawled around on all fours and felt the floor with his flesh hand, trying to find a gap, a hinge, a rivet. Jim Morita would get soused and start singing in a voice that could kill birds mid-flight, Dum Dum and Gabe, who could go through drink like a fish through water, would get started, calmly and methodically, on fleecing everyone at cards. And he, well, at some point he was going to realise that no one was actually listening to his funny story about escaping from the Hydra base, and would join Peggy and Jacques around the things rich people ate. Salmon drenched in butter. Strawberries, the kind he'd only really seen in pictures, huge and swollen with juice. Big spoonfuls of sweet cream.
He could tell the proper story later, when he and Steve went to Coney Island, no outfit, no uniforms, no fatigues, and had root beers so cold they frosted the glass and hot dogs that were probably mostly hoof and the occasional rat dropping but would taste better than life. They would ride the Cyclone—
paybacktrainhangon
—and this time he was pretty sure Steve wouldn't throw up.
His fingers hit something. He nearly cried out, in surprise and relief, until he realised it was only a wall. Still, he had to try those too. He felt the concrete, inch by inch. His fingers trembled. Sweat dripped into his eyes and down his face, thick as tears.
Maybe he would tell the story to Becca too. A pang of guilt hit him, almost stronger than the hunger and tiredness. How many times in the past two years had he had the chance to send a few words to his little sister and had instead grabbed some sleep in a real bed, or had a drink and a smoke, or played a record dusty with the debris of bombs? He would make it up to her once he was out of here. Make her those buttermilk pancakes they both loved so much, drowned in syrup, heaped with blueberries, the real thing even if he had to go to fucking Vermont and pick them off a field. Did she still like them? She was almost eighteen now.
He was going to tell her about getting out of this place. Just the less bad parts, just like everything he'd tell her about the war. He wasn't going to tell her about slitting someone's throat and feeling the life gush out, how easy it got, like something you put in a box and locked away. He wasn't going to tell her about the burnt-out villages, the old women crying over broken bodies, alive and dead, about how they'd come across one of the camps and saw soldiers push out empty baby strollers, half a dozen at a time, for over an hour.
He wasn't going to tell her about how, after he finally found a hair-thin crack in one of the walls, he hacked at the door (if it was a door) with the metal hand until the thing made a few clicking noises then locked into a useless claw, after he'd managed to do nothing more than gauge a few furrows in the concrete. He wasn't going to tell her about slamming his body against the door until he was sure he was cracking bones and spraying blood. He wasn't going to tell her about how he slid to the floor, panting and bruised, and wailed like a cow stuck in a bog.
He would tell her about how things got a bit hot. He wasn't going to tell her about how the air in the room was so thick he made a little panting noise every time he drew a breath, or how his body dripped sweat until he grew so thirsty that the sweat just stopped, and then there was only his cracked lips and his tongue sitting like a dried root inside his mouth. His skin was covered in hives; he was sure that every time he touched it, big strips of it peeled right off.
He wished he'd licked the sweat off himself when he still could. He wasn't going to tell her that either.
He definitely wasn't going to tell her how, after a thousand years of this (two days, maybe; god, he hoped it had been at least a day), he ended up drinking his own piss out of his cupped hand. Every last drop, even licked his palm after.
'Had worse beers,' his mouth said, then coughed out a wheeze of laughter. The words scratched his throat. It was like trying to speak through sand.
No, he wasn't going to tell her about this bit. Not her, not anyone, not even Steve. At least his face was already too hot to burn with shame. What an amazing stroke of luck.
He could tell her about not giving up, at least. Because he wasn't going to, was he? He crawled out of the spot where he'd been lying and inched across the floor, going nowhere. Looking for something. Maybe he should stay put, conserve his energy, but he couldn't. He had to try. He had to at least try.
He pressed his forehead against the metal in his arm. It had been cool at first, blessedly cool, but now even it was growing warm. Maybe it would turn hotter and hotter, until it burst into flame and turned him into a smear of ash.
Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.
He kept crawling, a worm stuck on a hook, writhing under an unforgiving blaze.
:=:
Tiredness. He'd forgotten about tiredness. He had spent two years thumbing his nose at it but now it was back, it was back in style, one night only, line of long-legged chorus girls, all-singing all-dancing. Hunger wasn't even in the running anymore. His kidneys were two hot spikes inside him, the skin under the handcuff was rubbed raw, his limbs would spasm once in a while, but pain had gone down by total KO. Pain was out and thirst was taking a pounding, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, tiredness, your undisputed cham—
He slapped himself. He couldn't stand up anymore but for now sitting up had kept him from sleeping. He'd slapped himself to stop his body from sliding to the floor, his sandbag-heavy eyelids from dropping shut.
You have to sleep sometime.
He wasn't sure where he was. In the dark. A million miles in every direction. A hole cut into nothing.
If only he could sleep. Five minutes. Yes lie down just lie down. Just five minutes. Wouldn't make a difference. Catnap. One eye open. Did it all the time. No one would notice.
He hit himself with the curled-up metal hand.
His ears rang. He was face-down on the floor, his mouth full of his own blood. When he swallowed it, the thirst came roaring back. He thought of finding the glass shards from the broken light, slicing a vein open, and sucking it dry.
At least he hadn't knocked himself out.
'Don't fall asleep.' Speaking was agony. He did it anyway. His head was throbbing again, but the pain was good, the pain kept him awake. He sat up, grabbed a handful of his hair, and yanked. 'Don't fall asleep.' Another slap, with the real hand, just hard enough to sting. 'Don't fall asleep.
Don't fall asleep.
Don't—
:=:
—fall asleep.'
The light was a thread of milk, falling from the heavens. When he lifted his hand towards it, it curled around his fingers in ripples of colour.
'It's time.'
Yes, that made sense. He got up. He was still on the floor, but he was also up.
He had expected Steve, but instead it was Peggy. The light made a green halo around her hair.
As long as it was someone.
OK, let's do as bees and buzz off. The words didn't come out of his mouth but they spilled into the air nonetheless, where they hovered in place, their edges a shimmery blue. Kick some Hydra butts on our way out.
Peggy drifted a little closer. 'I'm afraid not,' she said, but it sounded like frayed knot, which was actually pretty funny, everybody laugh, her lips were too red but the colours around her hair were shifting, bright yellow, orange, neon-blue…
'I'm sorry.' She shook her head. Red dripped from her mouth to the floor. 'But I think you understand by now. We lost. We died. And now it's your turn.'
He looked down at his hands, where the flesh began to melt, and underneath there was metal instead of bone.
:=:
Awake. He was awake. He gasped into his right hand. The skin was cold, but it was real. Nothing else was real. He was just seeing things.
He squeezed his eyes shut but he still saw the most terrible colours.
:=:
He was a coward who didn't just hold on until he died. He would have that to take to his grave, too.
:=:
The last crawl was the longest.
He dragged himself across the floor, the chain rattling behind him, the metal hand bumping on the concrete. He couldn't feel his body any longer, just the lead weight of the heat, the stink of ammonia and stale sweat in the air.
Hours. It must have taken hours. Days. His hand hit a wall, slid down to the floor. Don't stop. Don't stop.
'Zola.' It sounded like a puff of dust. Was he even next to the speaker? His body convulsed again, then he rolled onto his back. Sensation returned, just a little. His skin had sloughed off and he was crawling on deadened nerves.
Another word sandpapered its way out. 'Someone.'
They were going to leave him here. Punishment for not saying yes straight away.
Everybody was dead. A fortress full of corpses.
He coughed. It burned his mouth. 'Please.'
Light, wounding. He winced. Closing his eyes hurt. Hands touched him, but he didn't fight back. He didn't even feel shame.
Cold air. Rubber squeaked underneath him.
'Hello again, Sergeant.'
TBC…
Author's note: In our world, the word robotics was coined by Isaac Asimov in 1941 (I actually did my best to check all the slang and jargon in this fic to make sure it's period-appropriate, but bear in mind that my knowledge of linguistics could fit in a thimble, so I apologise in advance for any mistakes :)). In this fictional universe, it sounds like the sort of thing Howard Stark would come up with. Bucky's younger sister Rebecca is from the comics. She's not mentioned in the MCU (not really counting the Smithsonian poster as MCU canon, since it contradicts itself, like, three times) but neither is there anything in the films that contradicts her existence, so for my fics I've decided she also exists in the movie-verse. With regards to Bucky's family in general, I've lifted several elements from comics (616) canon, but altered it in several ways, both to fit with the MCU and to serve the purposes of this story. There will be more about Bucky's family and childhood in future chapters. Comics!Bucky also came across a Nazi concentration camp, incidentally, in Captain America and Bucky #623 (Dec 2011). He reacted in pretty much the way you'd expect: ic . pics . livejournaldotcom / overlithe / 15266763 / 257418 / 257418_original . png (the uniform was part of an infiltration ploy, in case you were wondering). Typically, a person can survive without water for about three days, less than that in hot temperatures, and death is usually preceded by organ failure and coma. However, I assumed Bucky would last longer (while conscious) due to the effects of I Can't Believe It's Not Super-Soldier Serum. Peggy showing up in Bucky's hallucinations is kind of a roundabout reference to the comics/cartoon AUs in which they end up together in some form or another, because Bucky/Steve, Bucky/Nat, and Bucky/Sam (and OT3 & OT4) are the ships of my heart, but I'm really fond of Bucky/Peggy too (to be honest, I don't have a Bucky ships fleet, I have a Bucky ships armada). Actually, now I feel really bad for bringing up my ships in such a terrible, terrible context. :(