63.
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Bucky wakes up slowly, blinking and forcing his eyes to open. Immediately, he's hit with a rush of immense pain that seems to spark every nerve in his body. His whole body is on fire, burning, burning, and he's lying in snow and it's not putting it out, it's just making his skin burn more.
He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out, his throat clogged and his brain at a stand-still because all he can think of is the pain.
He looks down, and his left arm is missing. It isn't anywhere around him. There's no arm at all, only a scorched end where it had once been. He doesn't remember where it went, only remembers a flash of blue light, blue eyes wide and terrified above him, and then falling. Bucky!
He looks down again, forces himself to focus as his eyes desperately want to close. He's covered in a thick blanket of snow, covering his ripped and torn and damaged blue coat. The front of it is ripped open, and he remembers that, remembers snagging himself on the edge of the train. There's blood everywhere, all over him and soaking into the snow, turning it red rather than stark white. He can feel it soaking under his jacket, warm and thick. His head aches terribly, warm with blood that filters sickeningly through his hair through what feels like a crack down the back of his skull. And his insides, they feel thick and full, as though he were full of a liquid that isn't normally there. His abdomen is tense and rigid, filling with internalised blood.
Bucky lets his head thunk back into the snow, exhausted. He stares up at the greying sky above him, wondering why he's even alive. He can see up the cliff of the ravine he fell down, and he should've died. He should've died on impact. Why, God? Why me? Why am I alive? Why are you doing this to me? It must be punishment for something he's done. He doesn't know what, but it must be. This whole experience – Hydra, fighting in the war, being experimented on, living with an unknown serum in his veins – it must be a punishment.
Bucky's thoughts are interrupted by a sound. He can vaguely hear it, and it takes his entire concentration to listen to it and attempt to make it out. After a painfully long time he realises it's of men talking. He can't make out the words, only the sounds and the low murmur of their deep voices.
Bucky tries to talk to them, but he can't make his voice work. He opens his mouth and tries to talk, cry, scream, do anything, but hardly any noise comes out, only a whisper.
"Help me! Please!" Bucky pleads in a rasp, but his voice doesn't carry.
The wind turns and blows another way, carrying the voices with it, and suddenly Bucky can hear it more clearly. He can hear two men talking, and the voices are familiar. Bucky strains, frowning, but he can barely hear them over the wind and the river.
"He deserved better," Bucky can just make out, and his voice catches when he realises, he recognises that voice. "He deserved to go home." Bucky knows that voice, would know it anywhere.
Steve.
He's come for Bucky. Little Steve Rogers is wading in to pull Bucky out of the fight, pull Bucky out of his misery, to patch up his wounds and send him on his way again. Bucky feels his eyes pricking with more tears, faster, steadily trailing down his cheek and mixing with the blood all over him. Tears of relief and desperation.
"Steve!" Bucky rasps out, forcing, but his voice is almost silent, only a raspy breath that can't be heard over the howl of the wind. "Steve!" He tries again. "I'm here. Steve, help me!"
There's no response, no footsteps coming closer, no response. Bucky keeps calling out, practically screaming, but still there's no sound. Bucky's crying now, bawling silently, because Steve isn't coming. Steve can't hear him. Steve's only a few yards away, hidden behind the rock face, and he doesn't know Bucky's right there, pleading with him. Walk this way, Stevie. Just take one step and you'll see me. I'm lying here waiting for you. Your pal, Bucky, right here. Please, hear me. Oh God, let him hear me.
Bucky eventually stops crying long enough to realise that the voices he'd heard, Steve's voice, have died away, plunging him into the sounds of only nature once again, only the howling of the wind and the rustling of the leaves and the flow of the river nearby.
Bucky squeezes his eyes shut against the pain and against the terrible fear, the most scared and terrified he's ever felt in his life. A single tear, one that escapes after all the others, rolls down his cheek, freezing on his skin. He's lost. He's dying. He's going to die here all alone, alone in enemy territory at the bottom of some damn ravine, and his burial site is only going to be under a layer of snow. No coffin. No headstone. No marker. No way for anyone to know he was ever here.
Bucky lets his eyes close. He doesn't want to see himself anymore, doesn't want to feel the blood and the pain. He lets himself float away, lets the black wash over him, and desperately hopes that the black will turn into a ray of white light that he can walk toward. He hopes for a better life and waits.
Bucky is cold.
That's the first thing he notices when he opens his eyes again, blinking away the black to reveal a world of white around him. There's a blizzard going on around him, the snow falling heavily from the sky, the air freezing. Bucky's breath makes a puff of white smoke as he breathes.
Every inch of his body is cold, frozen. He can't feel anything, can't feel his arms or his legs or his face or his torso. Arm, he reminds himself helpfully.
There's still blood everywhere, that hasn't stopped. So much blood. Until his body went numb, he could feel it all flooding him, leaking from his mangled shoulder, filling his insides. He still feels oddly full in places you aren't supposed to feel full. He knows he's filling with blood. He coughs and a splutter of blood comes out his mouth, splashing onto his face. He blinks against it, frowning. He hasn't got a way to wipe it away.
He's glad his body's numb because he can't feel any pain. He's only just clinging to consciousness, the darkness threatening to take over again, but he thinks if he were in pain, he'd be unconscious. He isn't entirely sure why he isn't, or why he isn't dead. He knows it has to do with the serum. What he's grown to accept as a helpful addition to his body has now become his greatest curse. It's going to keep him alive here for God knows how long, alone in a blizzard to be buried alive beneath the snow forever.
That fall – it had felt like he'd fallen forever, screaming and screaming. And then he'd hit the ground, hard, and he doesn't remember anything else until he woke up in the snow and heard Steve's voice.
He hasn't heard any more voices. It's been silent except for his very shallow breathing and the howl of the wind and rush of the river. He doesn't know how long he's been here, or how long he's been unconscious for. It could've been seconds, could've been days.
He should be dead, he knows this. But he isn't. He's alive, albeit just, and he doesn't know how much longer he'll be alive for. He tries to make his final moments of life worthwhile. He wants to remember the good things, the happy parts of his life. Hopefully it will make this just a bit more bearable.
He thinks of Steve, small and blonde and fiery with a heart of gold and a fierce loyalty anyone would be jealous of had they not experienced in themselves. And then he thinks of Steve as he is now, big and strong and healthy, free from illness, with a body to match the life he's got ahead of him – big and full of potential. But then his minds wander toward the last time he'd seen Steve, that flash of horror over his face as Bucky fell away from him. He sees Steve searching desperately for him after he'd lost him. He knows Steve will be blaming himself, he does that.
He thinks of Isabel. Her radiant smile, bouncing brown curls. He sees her running around as they always had when they were children, a bow in her hair, trying and failing to catch the baseball Bucky gently pitches to her. He sees her as she had been on her graduation day, watching with pride as she walked up the stairs to receive her high school diploma, and Bucky had clapped the loudest that day. He sees her as a nurse and then as their medic, sewing together the cut on his hand, her hands covered in blood as she sews together Steve's cuts and burns on the ground. He watches her dance with Steve across the room at Christmas, sees her as he dances with her himself, spinning her around the room. Then he sees her as he imagines she'd be now, how heartbroken she must be crying in her room or onto Steve's shoulder.
He stops that thought immediately as his eyes begin to well and his chest feels tight. Instead, he thinks of Peggy, his beautiful doll, left alone once again. God, he loves her, and now he'll never see her again. Her elegance, her cherry red lips, her corkscrew curls, her beautiful brown eyes. The feeling of her lips against his, her skin under his hands. He misses her already, so much that his heart aches in his chest.
Then, he thinks of home. Of the streets of Brooklyn, of the cars and the buildings and the odd patches of greenery that had been his playground as a child. He sees Coney Island, feels the plunge of his stomach as they go down the drop on the Cyclone. He goes to the docks and looks around his place of employment one last time. He goes to the cinema and eats some popcorn. He goes to the dance hall and dances to the music, this time with Peggy rather than some lieu of other women.
Then, at the end of the day, he returns to his parents' apartment. His mother kisses his cheek and then pinches it, the way she's always done since he was a child. George Barnes pats him on the back and tells him he's proud of him. Becca runs in for a hug, knocking Bucky's army hat from his head and onto the floor, just as she had at the docks when he'd left. Robbie follows behind her, a smile plastered on his features. They look the same as they did when Bucky left, though he knows that isn't possible, it's been nearly three years. Becca passes him a drawing, the one of the butterfly she'd drawn for him while he was at basic, and Robbie shows him the drawing of himself in one of the Captain America comics.
They all sit down to dinner, and Bucky notes it's a bigger table than usual with more chairs and table places set up. Suddenly, Peggy appears at his right, praising Winifred's cooking. Winifred smiles dopily at the both of them and tells her how happy she is for both of them, and when Bucky looks down, Peggy's got a beautiful diamond ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. Peggy looks up at him with a smile on her red lips, and Bucky brings her hand up to kiss it, right on top of the ring.
He looks across the table, where Robbie and Becca are sitting and chatting happily with their parents and with Peggy, the newest interest for them. Bucky smiles at Becca when they make eye contact and he winks at her, making her giggle.
Isabel is sitting in her usual seat opposite Bucky, and Steve is sitting beside her, big and healthy and happy. He's an artist again, Bucky can tell by the paint splattered up his hands and the little bit of pink on his forehead by his hairline. They're holding hands under the table, eating with only one hand, but their food goes unnoticed in favour of smiling at each other with lovesick eyes and the biggest, most genuine smiles he's ever seen. Steve's got that dopey look on his face he always gets that makes Bucky melt a little sometimes, and he's so glad that they've found happiness together. Even when Bucky's gone, Steve will keep his promise and look after her. It puts Bucky's mind at rest.
The life he could've had, but never will now. It's bittersweet.
He relives his whole life one more time and then the life that he's missed out on, and that thought puts him at ease enough to fall back into the black with a content smile on his lips.
He's rudely awakened only a minute later by the sound of voices.
Bucky's eyes flutter open with difficulty. He'd been so ready to go, ready for that to be the moment the good Lord took him away from this hell hole. He was ready to be taken to whatever world was to come.
He starts when there's a face above his. The face is hard, glaring down at him. They stare at each other a moment, and the other man is silent. Bucky's eyes flick down. The man's wearing the German uniform. He's wearing a thick coat and he's covered in snow, and for some reason the men are walking through a blizzard, but they're definitely German. Bucky would recognise them anywhere. Bucky's heart pounds in his chest, but he can't talk, can't move. He can only watch on helplessly as the men assess him, and then apparently recognises him.
"Es ist der amerikanische Sergeant. Derjenige, der Captain America folgt, (It's the American sergeant. The one who follows Captain America)," the man tells the others, who Bucky hadn't known was there until he concentrated and heard footsteps, a cough.
"Was machen wir mit ihm? (What do we do with him?)" A voice asks from somewhere above Bucky's head.
The man above Bucky looks for a while longer, eyeing him carefully. He stands up straighter, addressing his men.
"Herr Schmidt hat eine Nachricht von allen Soldaten erhalten, daß wir, wenn einer der Männer des Hauptmanns gefunden werden sollte, sie Hydra überreichen sollten, (There has been a notice put out by Herr Schmidt telling all soldiers that, should any of the Captain's men be found, we are to turn them in to Hydra)," the man says thoughtfully. Bucky doesn't understand all that much of it, but he understands the names, and his breath hitches at Hydra.
"Aber wir folgen nicht Hydra? (But we don't follow Hydra?)"
"Nein, aber wären Sie bereit, das Preisgeld aufzugeben? Besonders für Sergeant Barnes. Das Kopfgeld für ihn ist nur der Zweite des Captains, (No, but would you be willing to give up the prize money. Particularly for Sergeant Barnes. The bounty for him is only second to the Captain himself)," the leader says, eyeing the men with a raised eyebrow. Bucky hears his name and a few other words, and the word money. He gulps and tries his hardest to stay awake as the darkness tries to take hold again.
That seems to get the men's attention. They dutifully dust the thick snow off of Bucky's body, and he squeezes his eyes shut, wishing and praying that this is just some terrible nightmare and he'll wake up in a minute in his bed in the hotel with Peggy in his arms, warm under the blankets.
"Es gibt ein britisches Lager nur ein paar hundert Meter so. Wir müssen ihn rausholen, ohne ihre Aufmerksamkeit zu bekommen. Wir werden ihn zum Camp mitnehmen, (There's a British camp only a few hundred metres that way. We need to get him out without getting their attention. We'll take him with us to camp)," the man in charge orders.
They get Bucky uncovered, and there isn't that much snow, so he can't have been there long, even though there's a blizzard. Steve can't have left that long ago. He must be nearby. Maybe if Bucky can scream loud enough, Steve will hear him and come save him. Bucky tries to scream, but just as before, nothing comes out, only a hissing breath.
The men gasp a bit at Bucky's injuries, and someone searches around for a while for his severed arm, but they come back empty handed. Someone else picks Bucky up from underneath his armpits and they begin to drag him through the snow, past the trees and the rocks and along the river. They head away from where Bucky had heard Steve. Bucky tries to cry out, both in pain and in utter fear, but still no words come out.
The dragging had been painful, but bearable. But when the men pick Bucky's limp body up and throw him into the back of their truck, it sends an unbearable pain through his entire body, and it's enough to bring on the black again.
Bucky's last thought is that he'd rather be dead.