4. Sleep

At first, staying awake was the hardest part. They were dosing him, somehow, so that no matter what he did to try to stay conscious—talking out loud, pacing his cell, pinching himself until he bruised and bled—he would always black out sooner or later, then wake up from his death-sleep queasy and terrified, his limbs leaden.

First attempt: he tested the walls, first with his real hand, then with the metal one. He was strong, but the walls were stronger. Even slamming them with all his weight didn't put a dent on them, just on him.

He didn't dream. When he was a little kid he'd had to have his tonsils removed (still groggy from the ether, he had asked Dad when it was going to happen, only to be told that it was already over and he'd been very brave) and this was the same kind of sleep, where you blinked and a chunk of time was cut out without you noticing it. As a kid he had been annoyed at having a whole day of play taken away. Now he was half-furious, half-sick. Whenever he woke up he checked himself thoroughly, trying to see if there was anything else they'd stolen along with the missing hours.

Sometimes he found bruises, needle pricks, ligature marks. They were always very faint, but he knew he couldn't gauge time by them. He tried once, knowing he healed faster now. He hit his wrist on the edge of the cot, hard, until there was a reddening lump the size of a chicken egg, then did the same with his thigh, for comparison. He started counting away each minute, one to sixty, hoping to get a crude idea of how long it would take for the bruises to come and go. He might be able to tell time by the marks on him whenever he woke up, a chart in purples and yellows and faded greens.

Bucky Barnes, the human stopwatch. He laughed, jagged-edged, eyes fixed all the while on the places where he'd injured himself, unable to shake the feeling that looking away or even blinking too long would cause another blackout to happen.

He didn't look away. Maybe he didn't even blink. They made him black out anyway, and when he came to the bruises he'd given himself were gone.

He tried not to think about what other things they could do to him while he was unconscious, things whose marks would fade before he woke up, things that wouldn't leave any marks at all.

He thought about it anyway.

Second attempt: he tried the hair's breadth gaps around what had to be some kind of panel or door. There were no rivets, no screws. He tried to work his real fingers in, ended up ripping two of his fingernails in half. He tried the metal fingers next as he held his throbbing right hand to his chest. The metal hand kept slipping. When he managed to get a grip, it was like taking a sledgehammer to a mountain: a lot of noise for nothing.

He could keep track of how many times he'd been awake, at least. Twenty-three. As soon as he stopped shaking and the nausea receded enough for thought, he would reach for the last number and add one more, clasp it and roll it around in his mind like he had sometimes seen Mrs Rogers do with a rosary wound around her fingers. He might not know how long he spent unconscious, but he could count out the minutes and the hours he spent awake, repeat them to himself under his breath as he paced the cell. It added up to almost ten days. They never allowed him to be awake for very long.

(Not ten days.)

Ten weeks.

Ten months.

Ten years.

His body might not change on the outside, but he could feel the time inside, where they couldn't touch unless they sliced him apart. Bone-weary. Heartsick. He understood now.

Third attempt: the vent at the bottom of one of the walls. It was only slightly bigger than his hand (the real one), but there was only a metal grille covering it, and he could manage that just fine. It was a little tricky, getting the metal fingers in the right place, but once he did, he tore the cover off like a piece of tissue paper. The hole inside the vent was not much bigger than the opening itself, but, lying on his back, he managed to work the metal hand in, then slid it deeper inch by inch, so slow he could feel the beads of sweat forming on his forehead. Easy. Easy. After maybe half a foot, the hole twisted upwards. The metal arm didn't feel pain and it barely felt pressure, so he bent it as much as he could inside the cramped space and forced it up, tried to guide himself by the sound of metal on metal. He had only a few inches' leeway; close to the shoulder the arm got too big to fit in the opening.

He sensed the crackle of electricity before he heard it. There was a tenth of a second before the floor turned into a live wire and he tried to yank his arm out but it was stuck, it was stuck and all he could do was thrash on the floor, hear his body slam against the tiles and the wall, choke on the burning stench. He screamed for a while before they made him black out.

He left the vent alone after that. Mostly, he left it alone.

They had to be feeding him and watering him while he was out, because he didn't feel hunger, or thirst, or a full bladder. And they must be cleaning him up, shaving him, trimming his hair. He supposed they were doing it so he couldn't gauge time by things like his stubble, but the thought—the certainty—of them touching him made him sick. He tried to kick the thought away. It kept turning up like a bad penny.

His body changed on the inside. He lay on the cot and looked at the lighting strips on the ceiling, until his eyes burned and the thread of thoughts (twenty-four times, three hours, forty-five minutes, fifteen seconds, Brooklyn Steve War London Paris twenty-four times, three hours, forty-five minutes, thirty seconds) snapped, just for one moment. His head filled up with the places where the skin had melted, where the bones had settled into different shapes. Above him the lights turned blue, four parallel strips of sky, and in his new form he could crawl up the walls, squeeze through the gaps and fly away.

Sometimes the metal arm was there when he woke up.

Sometimes it wasn't.

The first time it wasn't, he peeled off the bandage on his shoulder. The gauze had been fixed with some kind of liquid; he ripped strips of skin away. The flesh on his shoulder still had metal embedded in it, edges buried deep, scraping bone and nerves when he tried to pull them out. There was a ring in the spot where the bone socket had been, like an open mouth full of steel fangs. Seams where his flesh had been sewn to the metal. He could smell disinfectant and cordite, a lingering trace of pus.

The times when the arm was there, he tried to figure it out. He tried, until his fingers were bruised and throbbing, to take it off. He tried, when that didn't work, to learn how to use it. Flex. Pull. Twist. Bend. The metal fingers were the hardest part. The rest of the arm was mostly smooth and entirely cold. The fingers were clunky, like something from an Amazing Stories cover. When he moved them they made little clicking noises, jerked out of his control.

One time he found himself scratching an itch on his wrist as he paced.

The left wrist, the one made of metal.

Just one time.

Three times. No more.

At least there was no pain, or at least not much. He could deal with it.

Just like he could deal with the itching, or the sensation that he'd been lying on his left arm a long time, and it was pin-and-needling back to life.

Fourth attempt: the walls again, but this time he was cleverer about it. He ripped the cot from its moorings on the floor, which was easy enough to do with the metal arm and a little effort, then dragged it as far back as he could before he rammed it full speed against the spot where the door (panel, opening, whatever) sat on the wall. Once, twice, three times, over and over until he lost count and his skin was slick with sweat, a vice of pain around the places in his left shoulder where the metal met flesh. One end of the cot was mangled, the metal frame twisted into an insect-like shape, the bare bones of some long-dead monster. The wall was covered with scuff marks, but that was all he'd achieved. Scuff marks. Not even a dent.

When he woke up again the marks on the wall were gone. The cot was intact again.

Everything he did was washed away.

Bad penny thoughts: his metal hand around Zola's throat, squeezing. Zola's feet dangling helplessly off the ground. Zola's eyes bulging out, his tongue flicking about, the skin on his face purpling. The colours were vivid enough to make him sick.

Bucky knew he wasn't supposed to enjoy it. He hadn't enjoyed any of his kills, all as quick and clean as he could make them. Maybe the sad bastards he'd killed hadn't deserved it, though given who and what they served, they probably had. Didn't matter either way. It had all boiled down to him or them, Steve or them, the Commandos or them. It was a war. He'd had something to do, no matter how hard. And no matter how hard, he'd done it. He wasn't supposed to enjoy it, but he was going to enjoy the look of surprise on Zola's face, the noises he'd make as his windpipe was crushed. Sometimes Bucky let the bad penny thought turn up again and again until his mouth was full of rust and copper.

Fifth attempt, sixth attempt.

He sat on the floor and cursed himself for being too dumb to figure this out.

But he kept trying. At least he kept trying. At least no one would say that when—Hydra? the Nazis? the General? just Zola, keeping strange trophies in a secret room?—stuck James Buchanan Barnes in the hole, he didn't do his damnedest to get the hell out. 'Give you a medal for that alone,' he told himself, and laughed.

He did laugh, sometimes. It never sounded good.

Hurting himself didn't work. He tried enough times to know they would just knock him out and fix him.

Three other attempts taught him that sometimes the ceiling was also electrified. Sometimes.

Next attempt: breaking open the lighting strips in the ceiling and using the wires to start a fire. He tore a scrap of fabric off his pants to use as a makeshift torch, and when that didn't take he tried pressing the thin mattress against the exposed wires. It didn't work, but he knew it wouldn't, he wasn't an idiot: he needed fuel and he didn't have any.

'Unless that metal arm of yours is full of motor oil,' his mouth said.

Wouldn't that be something.

You could pull those wires up there and put them in your mouth.

Yeah, he could do that. This was probably real current, not whatever they were using to bat him around like a cat working over a mouse. It might very well kill him before they had enough time to get to him. Or one could hope, at least.

It'd mean pulling out the wires. Having to touch them.

'You're scared.'

Am not.

'What are you, eight years old? You're backing away, you gotta be scared.'

'Fine. I'm scared. I'm a huge scaredy-cat. I don't wanna die. Are you happy now?' he yelled at the walls. 'Are you fucking happy?'

The walls didn't answer.

There was that sick-making hum of electricity starting up, but this time it wasn't coming from the floor or the ceiling, this time it was coming from his goddamn arm, and he tried screaming 'I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it!' but that didn't stop them.

He tried just staying awake.

There had to be some kind of gas they were using to knock him out, something he couldn't see or smell. It might be coming from the vent, but it couldn't just be coming from there, because one time, even though he didn't like going near the vent, he still covered it up with the mattress, and another time he took the white pyjama pants he always woke up with and wadded them up on the grille, and none of that made any difference.

Maybe the gas was coming in through tiny holes in the walls or the ceiling, too small for him to see. He knew there had to be holes because he tried covering up the dead eye lens on the wall so they couldn't see what he was doing inside his cell but they always knew anyway.

The fourth time he covered up the lens the electricity came back on. He stopped doing it after that.

Maybe the metal arm had something inside that made him sleep, and that was why he woke up wearing it more and more. It was easier for them to do it that way. It wasn't like he could pull the thing off. He'd tried.

He tried breathing only once every minute. He tried being so still and silent that maybe he could hear the hiss of the gas, smell the first whiff.

Didn't work.

Sometimes he woke with his head throbbing and his skin clammy. There was a smell that clung to him for a while, almost too faint to detect. He wasn't sure what it was. It was a little like the smell in a funeral home. The sweetness of overripe fruit. Sour milk. Whenever he smelled it after waking up he knew they had done something to him while he was out, something worse than usual.

Another attempt. He'd stopped counting them. He stood on the cot, smashed the glass cover on one of the lighting strips. Climbed down, riffled through the shards until he found, guiding himself by the cuts on his fingers, the sharpest one. Pressed it against his throat. Closed his eyes. Swallowed. Swallowed again, until his mouth was dry. Found enough guts somewhere. Pressed the shard a little deeper. Sliced.

If he'd been lucky enough not to die, he had planned—

too chickenshit to die

—to wake up in some kind of sick bay and take it from there. Instead he had woken up in the cell again. The lighting strips were intact. He couldn't feel a scar in his throat, no matter how slowly he ran his fingertips over the skin.

The cell kept changing around him. He could tell because sometimes it was twelve feet long and sometimes it was eleven and a half. Sometimes the lens on the wall was a little off-centre, or higher than before. Sometimes he would gouge out marks on the underside of the cot, where no one could see, and when he woke up again they'd be gone.

Sometimes they'd still be there, though, so maybe he just imagined all that. Maybe he'd imagined cutting himself, too, dreaming awake. After all, the last thing he remembered just before he passed out had been lying on the floor, blood pooling underneath him, but instead of a bright arterial red it'd been black and thick as motor oil.

You've been awake more than twenty-six times, haven't you, Bucky? A lot more.

'I'm sorry.' He knelt, eyes closed, forehead pressed against the edge of the cot. He wasn't sure what he was doing. Praying, maybe. 'I'm not sure what it is I did, but whatever it was, I'm sorry. Please. Please get me out of here, and I promise…'

What?

Don't worry, kiddo, I'll write to you every chance I get.

I'm with you till the end of the line, pal.

I'm sorry, Dad. I promise I won't get into so much trouble anymore.

Hadn't he always broken all his promises?

Once he sat on the cot, careful not to put his bare feet on the floor, and saw a shape dart under the skin of his ankle. He picked at the skin until it tore. The shape wriggled under the metal fingers. Something poked out of the flesh. He pulled at it. It was an insect wing, blood-stained.

He wasn't asleep, just dreaming awake.

He was dead. Maybe when you died you didn't go anywhere and you didn't just rot. Maybe instead you got stuck. You got stuck in a little room like this one, and you spoke to other dead people for a while until they too fell silent. None of this was real. He could see himself, pinned to a cork. Trapped under a pane of glass.

Maybe dying didn't end you, it just drove you mad.

:=:

'Sergeant.'

It took him a few seconds to realise the voice in the speaker was real. At first he thought it was only a burst of static, the metal groaning, his mind filling the silence.

'Sergeant.'

:=:

'I am very glad to see you have decided not to be so stubborn anymore.'

They hadn't made him black out. They had given him something that made him unable to move, but they hadn't made him black out. He'd floated above his motionless, unfeeling body as it was wheeled into a room, trying to retain enough presence of mind to memorise the place's layout. It was difficult: everything was both foggy and too bright, left and right swaying back and forth, swirls of fluorescent light. Much easier to just float, even if he tried his hardest not to.

The room he was in now was friendlier (than what?). It smelled of cigarette smoke, not disinfectant. There were only a few people, tables bearing strange instruments made of metal and glass. In the middle there was a dentist's chair, and they hauled his dead weight onto it. There were all kinds of screens and panels full of fiddly buttons around it. Maybe it was going to take flight.

'Fortunately you only delayed us a few days before deciding to cooperate, that's very good.' Zola, flipping switches as he talked. Zola, it was always Zola. Not a few days. Didn't. Not cooperating. Bucky couldn't flinch or pull away, not with his body turned to concrete and jelly—

But it was—

Another person's voice. Flesh and blood. Zola's. It was still… soothing. Something.

Not crazy. Not yet.

English. The people in the room were speaking in English, more or less. '—more minutes until we can start calibration—' '—titrate the suxamethonium—' Machines hummed away while things were done to Bucky's body, needles sunk into his skin, electrodes taped to his chest, his face. The man who did that didn't look at him. He was fastening the wires to something invisible. Threads of silver light glinted off his hair.

The chair's head-rest was pulled back and his gaze landed on a row of clocks just below the ceiling. A painted shape sat in the middle, maybe an eagle, maybe just an eddy of black stains and lines. The letters underneath stilled, swam, stilled; they wouldn't settle enough for him to read them. In the corner, almost out of sight—

An edge of fabric. Stars and stripes.

Stars and stripes!

A machine beeped faster. There was a swirl of words he didn't understand. Was he home? God, was he home? He remembered shipping out and Italy and Azzano and the things after Azzano and Austria and Germany but then there was a blank there was nothing no not nothing little flashes hurt like needles glass shards and God if only he could think…

Zola is evil. Zola is evil. Zola did this to you and he is evil. Don't trust Zola.

His fingers twitched. Sensation was trickling back. He tried to move his head, but it had been wedged in place. He hadn't felt the restraints being applied.

'Oh, Sergeant, please try to calm down.' Zola stepped in front of him and drew a cigarette from his pocket. He stood so close Bucky could see his colourless eyes behind the wire-frame glasses. 'You are breathing so fast you are going to do yourself an injury. Perhaps a little puff of smoke will make you feel a little better…' He paused, shook his head to himself and put the cigarette away. 'No, it is not too healthy for you. This—' He stepped out of sight. When he returned he held a syringe in his hand and grabbed a loop of tubing connected to Bucky's arm. '—is better.' In went the needle. 'Don't worry, in a few moments you will be feeling much better. Very relaxed.'

No. No no no no no.

'His metabolism is too fast for the scopolamine, Professor,' a voice said where Bucky couldn't see. 'Should we—'

'No, no, that won't be necessary for now,' Zola said, and turned back to him. 'You are going to behave, aren't you, Sergeant?'

He wanted to say screw you, but he could barely even think it. The familiar hum of electricity started up and he didn't need either fear or pain darting through him—by now his body clenched on its own, by instinct. Only his flesh was dead, numb except for the frantic twitch of his fingers. His eyes moved so fast the room turned into a blur.

'Oh no, please don't cry, it is very embarrassing.' Zola patted his knee awkwardly. Bucky's eyes stilled. He stared at Zola's face, unable to blink. He could feel the air struggling to enter his lungs, could hear each pained wheeze. His own flesh was choking him. 'Come, to look at you one would think we were some kind of, of evil-doers who kidnapped you from your bed. But in reality you have been treated very nicely, especially considering how badly you have behaved. You should have been resting in your bed so you'd be ready for all the things we have to do, instead of all the foolishness you've been—'

He was drowning. His vision tunnelled.

'Sergeant, calm yourself.'

A direct command, even in that voice. His breathing slowed a fraction.

There was a shrill whistle. Bucky recognised it as a telephone's ring with only some difficulty.

The room quietened. The loudest sounds were his gasps.

'Yes, he is here. Professor.'

'One minute,' Zola said, now busy doing something to Bucky's chest and head. He could no longer hear his breathing. Instead his head filled with rhythmic thumps as Zola walked away.

'Hello? Yes, this is him. … No, we have not begun yet, we are still doing all the preparation work.'

Thump. Thump. He stared at the clocks, stared at the button-covered panels in front of him, where he could almost see his own reflection.

'Yes, I think it is safe to assume— Oh, as far as the General is concerned, I imagine he thinks we are in Odessa. …'

Think. Thump. Thump. God, think. Thump. Thump. The room was full of Americans but Zola was talking about Odessa.

'Yes, I see. …. Ha, that would be very amusing. … No, Director Carter would have to authorise it, I believe it has been brought to her attention already. … No, no, Mr Stark's input would not be necessary for that. … Yes? … Oh no, most cooperative, I have administered his pre-op injection already and—'

Director Carter. Mr Stark.

Director Carter? Director Carter?

'—not until the animal tests, no. … Yes, I will believe it when I see it. … And very much the same to you, good-bye!'

Director Carter and Mr Stark?

"Pre-op"?

Had Zola said "pre-op"?

Thoughts fired inside his skull. Director Carter could be anyone! Lots of people named Carter! But he said Stark! Zola's face appeared in front of him again, filling up the world.

'Let us not waste time, Sergeant. We are all nice and ready.'

'Sta,' Bucky managed to dribble out, barely a sound. There must be drool spilling down his chin, but he couldn't feel it.

'Start, yes, we will start,' Zola said, then frowned before looking pleased again. 'Oh, you mean "Stark"! I had forgotten you know Miss Carter and Mr Stark. Yes, your friends are very pleased with the project.'

Thump. Thump. They couldn't know. It was all some big con. Thump. Thump. Only… how had he ended up here?

Zola turned around. 'You can start the film camera.' He stepped aside and lowered an articulated lever. In the gaps between the instruments Bucky could see another blind black eye, staring at him. Thump. Thump. Thump.

'Conditioning and calibration session zero-zero-two-alpha, beginning at sixteen hundred hours and—oh, twenty five minutes,' Zola said, not to him. 'Followed by modulation of amygdalic activity, followed by bilateral and bifrontal sinewave stimulation.'

There was a needle on the tip of the lever, pointed right at his face. Bucky tried to look away, but his eyes were slack now. Whatever Zola had given him had turned his body into dead meat again. Only his breath quickened, out of his control. The camera whirred and clicked away.

Zola turned around and guided the needle closer and closer to his face, until the silver tip was in front of his right eye. It looked as big as a razor blade. Bucky tried to blink, but it was too late for that. Another pair of hands—not Zola's—pushed two clamps against the edges of his eye; he could feel his eyelids being stretched.

'I am afraid I will have to inject the paralytic into your eyes. Do not worry, you will not feel a thing.'

Please, he tried to say. His tongue and throat betrayed him. Only half a word came out, garbled. Zola leaned down towards him. Bucky could smell the faint aroma of tobacco and soap clinging to his skin.

'"Please"? Don't be tiresome, Sergeant,' Zola said, then straightened up and nodded. Another pair of rubber-gloved hands pushed Bucky's lips open and slid a tube into his mouth, stilling his tongue. His throat filled with a sweet, chemical taste.

Thumpthumpthump. The needle moved towards his eye.

He was breathing so fast he should have blacked out for everything that happened after that, but he wasn't that lucky.

:=:

Fire.

Red.

The images stuck even as they dissolved into linoleum, bare walls. The things he saw couldn't be real, though, because booted feet stepped right through them, through spatters of brain matter and bloodied hair clumping in drain holes. Not real. Just pictures. Not real.

He was being carried. No. He was walking. Half-walking, half-dragging. Dark shapes of guns on the two men pulling him forward. He could do something to them if he wanted to. He was sure of it. Something. Couldn't remember what. Pain started to seep in, grinding, gnawing. That made it even harder to think. Harder, even if the blood—not real, not real, not real—on the walls was fading.

They put him in a room. He didn't remember the room, but when they let him go and he fell to his knees he knew straight away there was something wrong with the floor. It looked normal. He still had to get out of it. He crawled over to the bed. Hands off the—

GET OFF IT

—floor. He had to get his hands off the floor because when he looked at his skin he saw it blister and crack. Not real. That was also Not Real.

'Help him onto the bed.'

The men rolled him up (faces, he didn't want to look at their faces) and lifted him onto the bed. He didn't care about that. He cared about the voice. He knew the voice. He knew the accent (accent?). And then he didn't care about the voice anymore. He was going to throw up. Bile burned the back of his throat. When it happened he was going to puke a kidney, a chunk of liver.

A lung.

A heart.

He didn't vomit. He just spewed out a string of yellowish fluid. Snot-like, not snot. It dribbled down his chin, splattered on his neck. Burned his nose and made him cough. That was all. He knew he ought to move, even if he didn't know why. All his body managed to do was lie still and hurt. He patted his head. A bulky bandage sat around it.

Surgery. Hospital.

His left arm was made of metal. It had always been made of metal.

The men didn't look like hospital orderlies, they looked like guards. Guns holstered, but ready to spring out. Shoot. (Bite.)

'How are you feeling, Sergeant?'

Sergeant! Yes, a military hospital.

There had been uniforms in the pictures, weapons.

He recognised the doctor who stood over him.

He was called—

'Hurt me,' his mouth squeezed out.

The doctor smiled. 'I should hope that was a complaint and not a request, Sergeant!'

He was called—

'But rest assured that we have not hurt you,' the doctor went on. 'All the procedures were necessary and you will feel better from now on. And you will also no longer hurt yourself, or want to hurt yourself, or disobey direct orders. There are some things about you that make you different from everyone else, that is why you volunteered, why you are such a good candidate for the project. Unfortunately there were also some… abnormalities we needed to correct. Now that is all over. Isn't it wonderful?'

Wonderful, yes.

Zola! The doctor's name was Zola. He had done something to him. Something.

'I know you must feel very, ah—nauseous, and there might perhaps be some pain,' the doctor said, and leaned down. Tufts of dirt-blond hair, steel-blue eyes behind round glasses. Pudgy face, starting to get lined with age.

He could smell something but it wasn't coming from the doctor, it was coming from him. Vomit and bleach.

The pictures were back. Blood haloes. Skin tearing. Everything went away when he blinked. The doctor was still right. There was something wrong with him. He took the pills from the other man's palm. Said 'Thank you.'

Zola. Zolazolazola. Don't trust him.

?

'Oh, you are most welcome.' The doctor sounded happy. He knew he wanted the doctor to sound happy. It reassured him as much as the pills. They'd left a bitter taste in his mouth. He'd had to chew and swallow them without—

a glass remember a glass the glass

—water, but he could feel them working already, melting the pain away. He could think better now.

Bucky.

The word went up like a flare inside the blackness in his mind, where the bad things must have been. Bucky. That was—his name?

'We will leave you to rest, Sergeant.' The doctor had walked away to the door. Bucky—Bucky, Bucky, my name is Bucky yes—wanted to raise his head to see him leave. It was too heavy. 'You should have a nice long sleep.'

Sometime.

'You will not be making a nuisance of yourself after we went through all this trouble with you, will you?'

No. No no no. He would be good. He wanted to be good.

The doctor and the two (orderlies)(guards) men left. The door slammed shut behind them.

He closed his eyes. No, he couldn't sleep. He stared at the single lamp hanging from the ceiling. The pills took away the pain, and that made him—

That made him—

Bucky. Buck. Buchanan. James Buchanan something. Baines? Barnes.

He got up, but his body only half-obeyed him. He slammed knees-first on the floor instead. The pain was dulled, a slow burst of deep purple. White flickered behind his eyelids. He understood there was an emptiness. A space. A chasm, inside his head. They had reached in and cut things off until he could only feel the edges. They throbbed like bad teeth.

If he pulled the bandage away his head would break apart, spill onto the floor in a thousand pieces.

'God. Oh god.'

He saw himself, sitting on the floor and drawing quick little panicked breaths. It didn't bother him that much. It was like the pictures, barbed wire thorns sinking into eyeballs and tongues, loops of intestine spilling from open bellies. They were bad, the things inside, very bad, but they couldn't touch him. Couldn't.

He watched as the body staggered to its feet, swayed, and hobbled towards a wall. The metal arm hung limply at the body's side. It couldn't be moved. The body—he fell again, this time on his butt, said 'ow', and hiccuped.

The wall. The wall was blank. It was off-white and the whole inside of his head was black, as black as it got. He had to take the things out while he still could. Pin them to the wall so he would remember.

His fingers tightened on the metal arm. It might be useless, but there were edges. Sharp enough that if he pressed hard enough he could rip the skin of his palm open, gauge bloody furrows on the mound of flesh at the base of his thumb.

The first thing on the wall was a red palm print. He got the hang of it soon enough, making more slices in his hand and arm when he needed more ink. The letters were loopy, shaky, switched, upside down. It didn't matter. Names, dates, places. New York. James Buchanan Barnes. 22 December. His birthday? Gabe. Wendy. He wasn't sure who Gabe was, but Wendy was his mother, he remembered he had a mother. Brooklyn. War. Cyclone. Flying car. Brushes. George.

The doctor's name is Zola.

They do things to you.

Steve. Steven Grant Rogers.

Steve is coming for you.

He had filled almost a quarter of the wall by the time he heard the crying.

TBC…

Author's notes: In some of the comics Bucky's arm attaches directly to skin, but in the MCU it looks like a series of shoulder/chest/back muscles have been sliced right through, given the scarring we see in CA:TWS, so I have the arm attach to a metal socket embedded in Bucky's shoulder. I'm sure the Hydra scientists could improve on that, but since it would be purely for Bucky's benefit they don't exactly, you know, care. Electroshock/electroconvulsive therapy (note that, as per standard medical procedure IRL, Zola has administered it with Bucky under anaesthesia and with the aid of muscle relaxants… this time) does indeed frequently cause memory loss, but this tends to affect just the memories from the weeks/months preceding the treatment, and there is typically gradual improvement afterwards. However, Zola is using doses and techniques—like having simultaneous bilateral and bifrontal placing of the electrodes, not to mention doing a bunch of sf procedures at the same time—that would probably give Bucky massive brain damage if it weren't for the protective effects of I Can't Believe It's Not Super-Soldier Serum. Bucky's mother is called Winifred in the comics, so Wendy sounded like a reasonable family nickname, following the release of Peter Pan in 1904. Bucky's birthday, both in the MCU and the comics, is on the 10th of March, btw.