6. Reward
'I'm sorry. They made me forget.' He shifted up on the bed. Not everything. 'Steve.'
There were no windows in the room, but the light falling on the other man was the washed-out grey of a winter morning. A New York morning, maybe. Sometimes he remembered the city, real memories, not just knowing that it was big, that it existed, that it was in America. Pigeons scattered by traffic. The corner of a building. A bridge over a muddy river. The flashes would float up, then sink back down into the silt, as deep as it got.
He did not mind that so much. That he had allowed so many of the Steve-memories slip away, that was unforgivable.
'It's all right,' Steve said. He looked, Bucky was almost sure, the same as the last time (one of the last times) Bucky had seen him, but it was hard to believe either of them had ever been that young. Without mirrors, with only the half-remembered films, Bucky didn't know how much he had changed since… Outside, maybe that was the best word. He knew he was ancient, though, like one of those Egyptian mummies. Open him up and dust and curses would spill out.
Steve spoke again. 'You didn't mean to, Bucky. I know they do things to you. They make you do things.'
I let them, Bucky almost said. The way Steve looked at him stopped him. He had forgotten almost everything, but not that. Not the way Steve looked at you like you really mattered.
'I hate them,' Bucky said instead. 'I hate him.'
The words felt misshapen on his tongue, but they were out now. He should have been shaking with terror: the doctor knew everything, saw everything. He could reach inside Bucky's head and pull out all the thoughts, the wrong ones, the bad ones, the dirty ones, the ones Bucky didn't even know about. He could teach him things without Bucky ever noticing. He could punish. He could choose not to, even when Bucky deserved it.
Bucky hated him.
He hadn't dared think it before. Might as well be a fish, and hate the ocean.
Steve shook his head. 'This isn't you. It's all on them. I know you. You're smart. You're brave. You're good.' So why are you still here? Why did you give up? Bucky waited for the words, but they never came.
He had forgotten about that look on Steve's eyes, the cast of his mouth. That Steve didn't think he was anything special, that he thought everybody was just like him, deep down, and most people just needed a little nudge.
You ended up trying to live up to what he thought you were, even without you realising it. A skinny little punk—Bucky remembered now; how could he ever have forgotten?—who threw spitballs during the Pledge of Allegiance and told bullies twice his size I'm gonna give you a chance to put things right and could lay you out without throwing a punch.
'You're better than them. I'd never have made it without you,' Steve added, and Bucky believed it. He felt tears sting his eyes. He didn't remember when he'd last cried. He wasn't sure if he could. 'You'll remember what they've forgotten.'
'I don't understand.'
Steve rose from his chair. Whatever clothes he had been wearing, they were gone, replaced by a suit of stars. 'Are you home?' Bucky asked. 'Can I—'
'Not yet.' He reached out for Bucky's hand, the real one, the one that hadn't been turned into some metal monstrosity. The weak one.
'It's cold,' Bucky said, and this time he spoke out loud.
He hadn't been speaking before, not really. It had just been another of his waking-dreams, he knew that, had probably known it from the start. There was no chair, no wintry sunlight, only the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights.
No Steve.
He was clutching his left hand with his right one. He thought—that was all he had now, thoughts; people said (he was almost sure) "I remember it as though it was yesterday", but if something had been yesterday he'd already have forgotten—that he did things like that now. Maybe the doctor had shown it to him in one of the films, or in the chair where they put pictures in his head. Images of himself running his fingers through his hair, over and over, until clumps of it started coming loose. Or him sitting on the bed or the floor, head on his knees, one hand moving up and down his calf until he rubbed the skin raw. Another of his abnormalities. There was probably a name for it.
Pathetic.
He heard the metal clang of the door being unlocked and opened. A woman and a man stepped in, rifles (SKS-45s) slung on their backs, handguns holstered at their waists. It was time for his pills. He wondered dully if either of them had been in his room before. Even without the holes in his head it would be hard to tell with the surgical masks.
The pills. They forgot the pills.
The thought was as startling and vivid as the shot from a starter's pistol. For one wonderful moment his mind raced instead of oozing.
It was true.
They hadn't forgotten the pills themselves, of course. They sat, one oblong, one round, in a paper cup in the woman's hand. She rattled them, as one might do for a baby, and waited for him to open his mouth and stick his tongue out.
They'd forgotten that, by some miracle, he might be too clear-headed to take them.
Steve.
No, he mustn't think of Steve. They might catch the memory on Bucky's face. He made himself look as blank and slack as ever, which was easy to do, because the fog had been blown away only for a moment and was creeping in at the edges, waiting to come back. When the woman gave him the pills he slid them under his tongue. They no longer checked to see if he swallowed them. If this one guard did, he would dry-swallow, open his mouth for her and pray she didn't notice the shapes under his tongue.
If the doctor finds out. He nearly gave himself away with a twitch of his body. His kidneys felt icy and hot at the same time. If the doctor found out there would be a punishment, and Bucky couldn't even imagine what it would be. But the woman didn't read any fiery letters on his face, didn't see a cloud of guilt hanging over him. She just said something to the man in a language they hadn't put in his head yet, and the pair exited the room. There was a loud clap of metal as the lock slid back into place.
Bucky remained sitting at the foot of the bed for a long time. The pills—one oblong, one round—weren't the kind that dissolved straight away, but even so he could taste their bitterness. A little of what was inside must be getting to him, spreading through his blood like ink through water. If he took too long to get rid of them, soon thinking would be even harder than before.
He couldn't rush it, though. They would notice.
He lay back on the bed, then rolled onto his side, trying to look like he was just resting. There were sensors in the metal arm. Cameras in the ceiling. If he looked at the lights he would see a shoal of eyes. His right hand slid casually to the edge of the mattress and started searching for a weak spot in the fabric. His fingertip brushed a hole.
They would pick up on the thing curdling inside his chest.
Had he made the hole? He couldn't remember. His mouth had filled up with saliva by the time he finished worrying the hole into the right size. He rolled onto his back again, slid his hand over his mouth like someone covering up a yawn, and spat one of the pills into his palm. The pill was so warm and wet he was sure it was going to melt inside his fist, leave tell-tale streaks on his skin, his clothes, everywhere. It didn't, of course, and it didn't slip out of his hand as he, curled up on his side and trying to shield his actions with his body the best he could, worked it into the hole in the mattress.
He did the same with the second pill. His hand was a little shakier this time around, but still he managed it.
The pills were going to slip out of the hole. Plink on the floor where the doctor could hear them.
They made an enormous lump in the mattress. All of them would notice it.
He was going to be found out.
It was a start.
:=:=:=:
The later after that was full of signs.
He didn't do bad things. Not enough for the doctor to punish him, at any rate. They still put him in the machine when he was blacked out, the one that cut all those holes inside his head, but he was sure they did it less often, more gently. The tearing when he woke up and realised something else had been ripped from him was less bad. They were using smaller scissors, leaving enough scraps of him behind.
He didn't write on the walls anymore. He was being good. When things worked well, there were rewards. The doctor didn't put him on the table too often, and Bucky lay quietly, neither helping nor hindering, when the electrodes were placed on him. He didn't give too many wrong answers, either, or at least the pain afterwards didn't last too long. Maybe because he could think better.
The pictures they put inside his head still made him vomit most of the time, but he didn't think that could be helped.
He shot at targets. He assembled and disassembled rifles, blindfolded, until he was no longer made to hurry up. He learned their parts until the knowledge was embedded in his fingertips. He learned to use the metal arm, handled pins and dice and glass beads with his right hand and arm paralysed, was made to run across moving inclines and shaking beams until he'd grown accustomed to the weight and balance.
He was being good.
He ran an obstacle course inside a maze, over and over. He was shot at, half-drowned in electrified mud, dodged darts and blades in the dark, crawled two miles through a hole that was barely big enough for him and which was full of a gas that made his airways swell almost shut.
He learned to make fewer mistakes. Afterwards, the doctor never had to point out too many, and when the syringe and the needle came out, Bucky still felt his mouth go dry and his body freeze, but it was almost always the thing that made him feel better. Almost always.
(There was only one bad time, when he had to jump down a narrow, darkened shaft that must be at least three storeys high. When he looked at it his head swayed and he thought he heard—
snow
—a whistle. They had to use an electric prod to make him jump, and then he landed badly and heard his leg snap, and the doctor left him there for a while to think about what he'd just done.)
He liked the training. He liked it because everything became sharper, and because he could hurt himself, just a little, not enough to deserve punishment. Enough for there to be welts, or cuts, or bruises. It was all his idea and it caused a bit of pain, and those two things helped him remember. He didn't need the wall when he could write on his flesh, when he could feel the sting of a wound, tugging on his mind like an anchor. Steve. Remember. You come from somewhere. Not here. Someone cared about you. There are things Outside. Things to go back to. Maybe even people.
He hated that he healed so quickly and so cleanly. It made it harder to hold on.
Everything seemed more real, too. He didn't think the things around him were changing as much as usual, or maybe it was just the fact that the fog was not as thick since he'd stopped taking the pills.
The stash inside the mattress kept getting bigger. He knew he couldn't count the days by it, so instead he just counted the number of pills. His calendar went from two to four to six to eight. When he reached ten he knew he was going to have to come up with a plan soon. He wake-dreamt that the doctor slit the mattress open and a waterfall of pills poured out. He wake-dreamt that the mattress bulged with its secret cargo and ripped open underneath him. The pills inside had turned into things with legs and mouths full of pincers.
Think, Buck. Think.
Thinking was easier when he told himself his name, over and over, even if he didn't remember all of it.
He couldn't just make a run for it. He knew there were eyes watching him all the time, never sleeping. He would be stopped in seconds. He could see things more vividly, too, without the pills: the metal arm pumping jolts of electricity into him, over and over until he could smell smoke and singed skin; holding the same position in the dark room until the pain and exhaustion spilled out into tooth-ringed bursts of light and the feel of hundreds of insects digging around in his flesh; going awake into the chair that dug holes inside his head, its wires burrowing into his eyes and his skull.
He wasn't sure if those were real memories. They didn't like hurting him. They punished him when he hurt himself. But if the doctor caught him trying to escape, if he caught Bucky's thoughts about it, then he would make all those memories real. Worse. Worse things. He would root inside Bucky's head until he'd dragged up the worst thing and then he would make it happen.
He wondered if the pills made you sleep, but there wasn't any way for him to slip them to the guards.
(He didn't dare think about slipping them to the doctor, see him drop to the ground like a felled tree still in his bow tie and white coat. He didn't dare think. He didn't.)
Another sign, the most important, came when he was fighting his way through the corridor full of mechanical obstacles that struck at random. The only light was the flash from the guns' muzzles. He had to guide himself by sound (through the blaring noises), smell (through the smoke), the feel of things lunging towards him. A blade sliced through the air. He ducked under it, felt it double back, and spin-kicked upwards to smash the mechanism. He misstepped only slightly: one of the edges cut halfway through his padded vest and he had to parry with the metal arm. There was a screech of metal on metal and the sound of something breaking.
Clunk, clunk, clink. Even with the sirens filling the corridor, Bucky heard the noises of metal pieces hitting the floor, two large, one small. Before he could think, he dropped down. Shots rang out above him. A bullet almost grazed his head. Where is it? Where is it? He groped around, eyes closed against the smoke, in the spot where he thought he'd heard the softest clink. If he didn't get up and find a way past the next obstacle he was going to—
His finger brushed a metal edge. He grabbed the blade fragment, less than half the length of his thumb, and slipped it into his boot as he straightened up and broke into a run again. It burned like a scarlet brand between the leather and his ankle. They'll see it they'll see it they'll see it.
They didn't. Once the run was over, before the twilight sleep happened again, he reached down, pretended to adjust his boot—oh god don't let it have slipped out, he thought, even though he could feel the blade still digging painfully into his skin—fished out the piece of metal, and put it under his tongue.
He knew he wouldn't be awake, but he wouldn't be fully asleep, either, so he sank his teeth into his tongue, just a little, to keep it and the shard in place. When he came to fully he was sitting in the fixing chair, his metal arm splayed open, and white coats were rummaging around inside with blowtorches as they chattered in Russian about engines. Motors. He wasn't sure.
The doctor was standing above him. 'A decent performance,' he said. 'Not terrible. But hardly excellent.'
Bucky stared at him. Blood pooled inside his mouth. The chunk of metal felt enormous all of a sudden. He was sure half of it must be poking out through his jaw. The doctor would know everything just from looking at his eyes, but Bucky couldn't even blink.
'Make sure you do not damage the arm next time,' the doctor said, and that was that. He neither punished nor rewarded, he didn't make Bucky open his mouth and spit out his crime.
When Bucky was in his room again, the sleep turning to tatters, he sneaked the bit of metal out of his mouth and hid it in the mattress like he did with the pills. Being sharp, the little chunk of blade sank into the mattress's innards almost immediately. He wondered if he was going to have trouble fishing it out.
Fishing it out for what?
That was the thing. He still didn't have a plan. He was going to have one—what else could finding the piece of metal and having the doctor do nothing to him mean?—but it wasn't here yet.
Come on. Think.
He stared at the ceiling, at the familiar rectangles of frosted glass encasing the fluorescent lights. What was the point of not taking the pills to keep his mind sharp when it was still so dull? Cut that out. Just think.
But he didn't, not really. Whatever thoughts he was having swirled somewhere in some basement while he did nothing but stare at the lights until they were shot through with green splotches. Once in a while a half-formed idea floated up, invariably terrible. Cutting himself: stupid, he knew what happened when he damaged his body, even by accident. Cutting wires in the room: no. Using the blade as a weapon: he was no longer even trying.
You need to find a way up.
Yeah, he did. He didn't know where he was, but his body picked up some kind of tiny difference between where he was now and the doctor's rooms, like an old woman's knees telling her rain was coming. His room, the training rooms, were in some maze deep underground. The rooms with the chairs and the table and the machine that put pictures in his head and the one that took them out were all far above. He had a few slivers of memory, times when he was supposed to still be in the aftermath of his ice-sleep or deep in a drugged mist but felt the rumble of a lift going up, saw sun streaming through skylights. Maybe none of it was real.
Another sliver of memory: a picture of a man with a bull head, sitting in the middle of a maze. Bones were scattered here and there, drawn with charcoal. Bucky didn't know who had made the picture or where he'd seen it. He didn't know if that memory was real, either, but the bull-man and the maze were as real as it got. That much he knew. He was here.
What if you were sick?
That was a stupid idea too. He never got sick.
But if you were sick? What would happen?
The idea was too bright, too forceful for him. It must be Steve again, the Steve he'd assembled in his head from splinters and shavings of memory. He might not remember much, but he knew Steve was smarter than him; he burned too much like a star for things to be otherwise.
If he was sick, he supposed they would fix him. They would take him up, yes. But they would make him black out as usual.
But if you were really, really sick. Dying sick.
He thought of words he didn't remember learning. Pneumonia. Whooping cough. Paralysis. Maybe if he was really, really sick, they wouldn't knock him out, just rush him to one of the rooms where they could try to fix him.
Maybe, if he was dying sick, they would have to rush him… out (where?) entirely.
Makes no difference, pal. His thoughts sank like a deflating balloon. If he were really, really sick, dying sick, they wouldn't need to knock him out. He'd be too sick to fight his way out anyway.
Steve insisted again. But if they just thought you were really that sick.
Yeah, what if you pretended to be sick?
That last one was all him. Who else could have such a boneheaded idea? Of course they would check that he was really sick before they took him up. If they caught him pretending…
It doesn't have to be all pretend. You could make yourself sick for real, and then pretend it's much worse than it really is.
Whose idea was that? He didn't know. It was neither brilliant nor stupid. It was just something that might work.
If he really had a fever, he could pretend to be in pain, act like his appendix had just burst. Roll around in agony, he had lots of experience with that.
He nearly laughed out loud. He couldn't remember the last time he'd done that.
You can't fake well enough to fool doctors and nurses.
Maybe not. He'd only have to fake for long enough to be taken up, a wall away from the outside.
Maybe they'll just make you black out before they come pick you up to be fixed.
(The doctor knew everything, after all.)
Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they'd be too scared that knocking him out might kill him. Damage him. Break him.
Yeah? How are you going to make yourself sick in the first place, genius?
The blade.
That's what it was for.
He wasn't going to use it to cut himself too bad. Just enough to give himself an infection. He didn't know where he'd learned it, but he knew it was bad to leave wounds open, or dirty. They would—
gangrene trench foot
—fester, get infected. Maybe even give you blood poisoning. If he used the blade to make a wound, some place out of sight, and keep it open. Maybe add some spit to it to make things go faster. If only he could find some glass or dirt to stick into it too…
What if you really can't get sick?
Maybe that was true. He healed so fast. Maybe he would never sneeze, never cough again, never have a fever.
They are going to make you black out and whatever you do, when you wake up, it'll be healed.
Yes, that was probably true.
It didn't matter.
He had a plan, at least.
That was something.
TBC…
Author's notes: Just to clarify, it's certainly possible to get sepsis from a smaller wound that the one Bucky plans on giving himself, so even though any plan in this situation is going to be "pushing a boulder up the Everest with your nose", that part isn't one of those things that's impossible even in theory or anything like that.