A/N: There may be a slight delay before the next update. I have a few kinks I'm still ironing out of the next few chapters, and I want to make sure I have everything moving smoothly toward the next plot destination. For now, enjoy some Bucky introspection.
Bucky sleeps like a dead man that night. If he dreams, he's not aware of it... But he wakes abruptly to find himself already sitting straight up in his cot, eyes wide, choking on a silent scream, and completely drenched with sweat. He's breathing hard, heaving long straggling breaths through his nose, and his heart is pounding.
He slumps back and scruffs a hand over his face, feeling his shoulders slowly come down from the painfully rigid line they've been forming - and tries his best not to let it bother him.
It's been a week… maybe less, since he was dragged off of that table and back into the world of the living. He's still getting used to waking up like this; disoriented and halfway into a panic. ...At least this time he doesn't remember the dream, so it can't haunt him all day. That's something.
He rolls out of bed and stumbles off to the latrine and wash-stand, grateful to find them temporarily deserted. He doesn't feel much like being social right now, and like hell he's gonna stand here and make nice after what he was put through yesterday.
The colonel is coming back today. Bucky might finally be getting out of this bizarre little prison cell they've constructed for him. It's just fabric curtains inside a canvas tent… but he might as well be chained to a brick wall for all the freedom that allows.
He's tired of being alone.
It's not that he wants to be submerged in a crowd… Loud noises still make him jump. Sudden contact gives him the shivers, and he startles too easy these days. But all of that's better than being left alone with his thoughts.
Anything is better than that.
He misses Steve.
His mind was quiet with Steve. It felt like being home, just for a short while. He'd been numb to homesickness before Steve's visit. Mercifully numb, he realizes belatedly. Now it gnaws at him like a hungry darkness, worrying at the frayed edges of his mind.
He misses his family too.
Misses his mama, misses his sisters... Surprisingly misses being dogpiled in his bed by three rowdy little girls at the first hint of sunrise, whenever he went home to visit. He hasn't seen Becca and Rachel or Catherine in months...
But they're far away from here. Safe. He knows he won't see them until this is over, and that's for the best.
Steve is here though, for better or worse. Steve is a precious link to home. He's a physical reminder that there's a world out there that isn't cold and dark and painful.
And right now he's locked out. Unallowed.
It's driving Bucky crazy.
He misses his biggest problems being Steve picking fights behind the corner store. Misses being able to step in and knock a few heads to make it stop.
He doesn't even know if he can wrap his head around the full extent of his problems now, and even if he could, he's pretty sure there's not a damned thing he could do about them.
He stares at himself in the cracked mirror someone propped up in here.
He looks like crap today.
He hauls himself away from the dark direction his thoughts are heading in, and tries to make himself focus, instead, on the mess that his appearance has become.
He'd always prided himself on dressing the best that his measly salary would allow -around medical bills and scraping together enough for rent and food, anyway. He'd somehow always managed to stretch that last dime for a tin of hair-cream and a cheap razor to keep himself neatly groomed.
He'd looked sharp back in Brooklyn. He'd made sure of it.
He studies himself now: gaunt and whiskery, hair a bird's-nest, dark circles under his eyes.
He really is a mess... But at least he's looking better fed and less like somebody took a baseball-bat to him these days...
He gets to work with a muffled sigh.
Bucky takes his time while he has it, trying to feel refreshed by the process. He doesn't.
He washes up slowly, dragging the wet rag over his tired face, and shaving off the scruff that's clinging to his chin. He nearly flinches at the thought of baring his throat to the blade, almost can't do it... but it's his own hand, he reminds himself. He's hardly going to attack himself. He pushes the fear out of his mind, and just gets it over with as quickly and gingerly as possible.
He's no less relieved, though, when he's finished and he can push the razor far, far away from him. Which he does. Immediately.
He tries not to be ashamed of that.
There isn't much hope for his hair at this point. He does his best to fix the tangled heap that it's turned into with his fingers. Nobody has thought to give him a comb, stupidly enough, and there aren't any sitting around on the washstand. Then again, he hasn't bothered to ask for one, so he supposes it's just as much his own fault as theirs.
His fingers aren't doing much to help.
He flattens the mess down with his hands as well as he can and lets it be. If he looks like shit, well… he does kind of look like shit, to be honest. If they expect any better after dragging him ass-first out of hell and dumping him in a glorified holding cell with no explanation, they can stuff it.
He's barely even been allowed to see his best friend since he got here - who is coincidentally also listed as his next of kin- and then only after Steve kicked and screamed about it for three days solid.
And even that only bought them one measly fucking hour.
If the whole mess isn't just a huge pile of bullshit, he doesn't know what is.
None of the others they came back with have even been allowed to peek their heads in or send him a goddamn note. He's so lonely it's starting to hurt as much as the bruises did.
The camp leadership have been treating him like he's got the plague. Like he's something contagious. Dangerous. Something they have to contain.
He gets that, to a point - he does- it's just that it's getting really really old and he'd like some fucking answers about just what the hell is going on around here.
He's sure if anybody knew about the gifts Steve smuggled in, there'd have been hell to pay. He just doesn't quite know why it's such a big damned deal, and nobody's been very forthcoming with an explanation.
He thinks of the flask that's still stashed under his pillow. Of the slightly squashed chocolate bar, or the gross, but oddly touching gift of Dernier's used 8-pagers. That's all the human contact he's had since Steve left and he got interrogated by Phillips.
Some return for a wounded soldier...
Bucky's plenty fed up with playing nice by now. He's firmly on his way to pissed.
He wanders back into his own space when he hears people beginning to stir, pulls on his uniform… and waits.
He's 20 pages into his novel when the curtain draws back and Colonel Phillips reappears.
"Morning, Barnes. I've got good news and bad news." he announces with no preamble.
Bucky's really not surprised.