Plot Interlude #3

"Just have a seat there and remove your shirt please."

Bucky quietly does as he's told, though his skin crawls whenever a gloved hand touches his skin. Someone takes the shirt from his hands and he's vaguely aware that it's been neatly folded on a table by the door. He's too distracted to pay much attention.
He has to keep reminding himself that this isn't the isolation ward. He doesn't need to break and run as soon as they turn their backs on him. There will be no liquid fire, no electricity. No beatings, no hallucinations. He doesn't need to escape. They're not planning to hurt him.
It's like a mantra, running over and over in his head.

The doctors here are mercifully not wearing lab-coats, at least. He couldn't stomach that. He still shudders whenever he sees the damned things. The light is warm and bright overhead, but gentle and diffuse. No blinding spotlights, no eerie green glow.
It's nothing like Zola's lab… but being examined still sets his teeth on edge.
The bench he's sitting on is padded, and there are no straps anywhere in sight. They're not making any move to restrain him -thank god, and everyone is being careful to make noise so he'll know where they are.

He won't lie, it helps, but it does little to keep the steel out of his spine or cold sweat from forming on the back of his neck. They're trying to help him relax, and he's trying to oblige, but it's so much harder than it should be.

...Bucky would even swear there's some kind of perfume in the air. Something floral … Lavender maybe? He'd lay money that it's supposed to be calming. Instead, all it does is make him think of Steve, fragile and pale, in a hospital room with a chipped old vase of the little purple flowers left on his bedside table from some kind nurse. It was the first time Steve got so bad that his ma (and by extension, Bucky) had had no choice but to scrape up whatever money could be spared, begged, or borrowed to send him there… It'd been there or the morgue.
Between them, they'd managed to scratch together just enough to get Steve through the worst of the fit before the money ran out and Steve had been gently evicted to weather out the rest in his own bed.
Bucky's family had had to eat a little leaner than usual that week. Their soup was thinner, the ingredients stretched. Everyone was a little hungrier than usual. None of them had complained though. They all liked Steve, and Mrs. Barnes considered him one of her own noisy brood.
Steve's ma had had nothing but a little watered down broth for close to two weeks, but she had very firmly refused to accept a mouthful of anything Bucky had tried to sneak over from his parents' house. She was very firm that unless it went into Steve's belly he was to take it all back with him, even when she was swaying on her feet.
Stubborn to a fault, the whole Rogers line.

Steve had just barely survived that winter, and thinking about it is anything but calming.
Still... the scent is at least sort of grounding ...and compared to some of the other shit he could be focusing on instead, it's downright pleasant. He chooses to ignore the smell for now. If he complains, they might bring in something worse. He'll take what he knows he can handle, thanks.

The doctors move slowly, announcing procedures a lot more clearly than they ever did when Steve was a patient, and he can tell they're doing their best not to panic him. He appreciates the effort, clumsy as it may be. Appreciates someone at least trying, even if he still hates getting fussed over as much as he ever has.
It really is nice to have someone who isn't Steve treat him gently for a change. To tell him what the fuck they're doing before just laying hands on him. To have people just ask him things without trying to scare the everloving shit out of him to get what they want. (Fucking Phillips…)
They even made one of the orderlies -a slight, kind of paunchy guy with glasses- leave the room, when Bucky balked at coming near him. He'd have sworn the guy was speaking German for a split second, and he'd breathed easier when the man was gone.
Apparently somebody at least got to read the fuckin' notes about him, because he certainly still hasn't.
Still, if it keeps this whole shitty experience that much more manageable…
Thank god for small favors…

A cold stethoscope presses against his bare back, tapping upward between his shoulder-blades and listening every now and then.
"Deep breath in."
He obliges.
"Out."
There's a momentary pause.
"Interesting."

He tips his head over one shoulder, trying to see what could be so fascinating back there. "One of these days, you folks're gonna have to tell me what it means when you say shit like that."
Fortunately, the tone comes out joking and light. He'd been half afraid it'd sound like a growl instead. The last thing he needs is to piss off the people who are hovering over him with needles and vials. He'd rather give them every reason to keep handling him nicely instead of smacking him around. He's under no illusions that they couldn't if they really wanted to.

The man with the stethoscope seems to be feeling indulgent as he steps back into view. "Sergeant, you are a smoker are you not?" he asks, pulling the buds out of his ears and coiling the whole thing around his neck.

Bucky nods, skeptical.
"Yeah. So?"

"So there'd be no way to tell, listening to your lungs. Nor any lingering signs of that pneumonia of yours. You have the lung capacity of an olympic athlete right now, son."

Bucky stares at him, then blinks and whistles through his teeth. He can feel the corners of his lips tug up just a hair in spite of himself.
"... Ok, yeah… that counts as interestin'..."

The doctor smiles faintly at him.
"For all the trauma you've experienced, soldier, I'd say you came away with one hell of a consolation prize."

They take endless x-rays and measurements and ask him countless rounds of questions. He plays along.
When they get out a needle to draw blood, he looks away and lets them, trying not to think about the thin hard metal breaking his skin. He can't shudder, or they'll miss the vein.
At least these doctors are being gentle about the whole process. If he was still capable of forming scars, he's sure he'd have little puckered circles all up and down his arms from the rough and careless stabs he'd gotten in the isolation ward.

…The unwelcome memory that stirs very nearly does make him shudder, so he focuses on trying to find the source of the floral smell instead. Anything to keep his mind occupied.
He never does figure out just where it's coming from, but the needle is out and they're wrapping gauze around his elbow before he has a chance to really think much more about it, and the ordeal passes without much fuss.

When it's all over, they don't tell him anything he doesn't already know. Just that he's healthier than he has any right to be, and that there are no signs of any lingering damage. They don't say anything about his nightmares and he pointedly doesn't mention that they haven't gone away. He doesn't know if they're all just avoiding the subject too, given what Carter told him, but he honestly doesn't care.
He won't risk being discharged as mentally unfit. Steve needs him here. He'll get through it… somehow or other. He's just got to stop jumping at his own shadow.
… Can't be that hard right?