Bucky’s heart stops when he sees Zola, and although it must start again, because he’s still breathing, still perceiving, he never feels it pick back up. Not while Zola is droning on about something he can’t hear over the blood rushing in his ears, over his hyperventilation and intermittent gasps of name, rank, and serial number—he catches the words “whole” and “improved” and nothing else—not after Zola has left, and not when Steve kneels beside him, trying to comfort him. How long can a man live with no heartbeat? Maybe he’s dead already, and this is hell. Does he deserve hell?
HYDRA waits until he’s healed enough that the shock of the experiments won’t kill him before they begin, and then there’s no question as to whether this is hell. His only question is what he’s done to earn it.
They don’t give him the time to think of an answer.
The morphine is switched out for something else, something that makes the sky black no matter the hour, makes him shake and see figures at the corners of his vision that are always gone by the time he whips his head to get a better look. The world rushes and drops and tilts like the Cyclone at Coney Island, and whatever they shoot in his veins is spinning his head as well, mixing memories like spun sugar, and was it the Cyclone that made Steve puke when they rode it, or were they on the Thunderbolt? Hadn’t Bucky been the one who got sick? He’s sick now, sick all the time, even though there’s nothing to be sick, because they aren’t feeding him, so he’s left gagging on stomach acid and air.
He isn’t allowed to sleep. The only precious seconds of reprieve come when he blacks out, and then they turn hoses of freezing water on him to shock him back to consciousness. Each time he wakes, cold and drowning, he tries raising both hands to shield himself. Every time he forgets, and seeing the bandaged stump where the left arm should be leaves a new hole in the space where there was once a heart.
This time, there is a new dimension to the torture, a change to the rules that throws him even further off kilter. The last time Zola had him, all they cared about was the drugs. Blood pressure, pupil dilation, whether or not he tried to tear his skin off or went into seizures. Sometimes he’d be jerked back to a state of semi-lucidity, asked how he felt, but his answers were like a garnish, that sprig of parsley on a plate no one bothered to eat. Superfluous.
Now they want him to perform like a trained monkey. The questions and orders—always in Russian, never English, and while he understands some Russian the haze of whatever he’s dosed with isn’t helping with translation—are constant, nonsensical. What’s your name? Do you know where you are? Take this knife and hit the target. Stand up. Sit down. Jump. What are you? Load this weapon. There are guards lingering, slightly more substantial than the blackness at the edges of his eyes, whenever they make requests with the guns or blades. The orders come so fast and so frequent Bucky begins to feel like a dog, and like a dog they try and bribe him with treats. Food—oranges among them, where the hell did they get something as beautiful and fresh as oranges out here?—a warm bed, an end to the torment. He will only give the answer “James Barnes. Sergeant. 32557241,” and when their patience reaches an end they begin the beatings.
They leave him on the floor, blood meandering down the grout lines in the tile as he lays, unable to sit up, and Steve speaks.
“They won’t break you, Bucky. You’re stronger than they are.”
I don’t feel stronger, Bucky almost says, but HYDRA’s ears must be pressed against every wall. It never stops Steve talking, though, but they won’t hurt Steve for it. They don’t touch him. Why would they need to, when Bucky’s broken body is such a perfect knife to Captain America’s heart?
Time passes and he finds himself speaking as he hauls his battered body up to slump against the wall, surveillance be damned. “Steve? You remember my mom?”
“Of course.”
“You remember her face?” Bucky asks, deliberately casual, and he can tell from the way Steve’s brows knit together that his poker face has failed.
“Yeah, I do. Why?”
He shrugs, wincing. “’Cause I can’t.” Then he’s sniffling, crying, and Steve is across the room faster than should be possible, kneeling beside him. “I’m losing my mind.”
“You’re not,” Steve insists. One hand Bucky can’t feel is cradling his jaw while the other wipes at his tears. “Buck, you’re not. It’s their drugs. We can reverse it, once we get out of here everything’ll be—”
He shakes his head. “No. It’s—being here. Again. It’s like I never even got out the first time. Like you never came and saved me, and really, isn’t that what makes more sense? That they dosed me with some drug and I had this beautiful dream and now it’s over, and not that my scrawny friend from Brooklyn who was too puny to enlist became this…this god? What’s more likely, you saved me and we became war heroes, or I never left and it’s just some fairy tale?” He takes a shuddering breath, voice cracking. “Steve, please tell me you’re real, I can’t take it, I can’t—”
“I’m real, Bucky.” Steve leans in, presses their foreheads together, unblinking, and it almost makes up for the way Bucky can’t feel a thing.
“I’m real, and I’m not gonna leave you.”
“Get me outta here,” he mumbles, and the pain that had been muted from the drug begins to throb anew. They vary when they inject him with the doses, sometimes one right after the first fades, and sometimes hours later. Testing, he imagines, the withdrawal or his mental state upon regaining sobriety.
“I’m trying,” Steve tells him, but then Steve is gone, and it’s just Bucky, Bucky and the pain and the sudden, silent sobbing as he works out what’s real and what isn’t and it hits him—and hits him again and again and again—that Steve belongs on that second list. No. No. Oh God, please no.
The only thing that keeps him from collapsing wide-eyed and catatonic and never rising again is the grim determination that he has to remember this, even after they drug him again, has to find a way to teach himself that Steve isn’t real, he can’t talk to Steve or he risks giving HYDRA what they need and God only knows what he’s already told them. He’ll etch the warning into his own skin if he has to, but then the guards are back, holding him down as they come at him with another injection, and even through his thrashing they manage to place it, and the world is thrown back into confusion as they drag him down the hall.
They are about to strap him to a chair when Zola asks if he’s ever heard of electroshock therapy.
After that, Bucky won’t be still, won’t be held. He runs on panic, adrenaline, and a rush of anger and heartache he can no longer remember the source of, and they can’t contain him to get the straps into place, can’t get a sedative into his veins with all the struggling. He doesn’t know where this burst of energy comes from, but he isn’t going to question it, isn’t going to do anything fight his way free, kill them all, get the hell out—
Zola motions someone to come forward and Bucky freezes, too tense to be forced into the chair, as Steve looks down at him.
“Bucky,” he says, and there’s something needling in the back of Bucky’s mind, a question of why hadn’t he seen Steve while he was thrashing around, wasn’t there another doctor in the room a second ago, isn’t he supposed to remember something about Steve, but Steve is here and Steve is going to save him and that’s all that matters. “Bucky, you have to calm down. They’re trying to help you.”
He can feel his heart in his chest again, feel it grow heavy and sink.
“But—”
“Trust me, Bucky,” Steve pleads. “You have to trust me. Let them help you.”
His eyes are wet again as he lays back, hyperventilating. Every fiber of his being screams at him to break free and run, but Steve said he would be all right and Steve wouldn’t lie to him, and where is Steve, he can’t see Steve anymore, Steve’s stepped back into the shadows and now all he can make out in the dark, faintly, is the missing doctor, the blond one, and Bucky’s eyes widen as he moves to struggle, but then there’s something shoved into his mouth, electricity in his head and fireworks in his vision and everything is pain and darkness.
When he awakes, covered in cold sweat and still slumped back in the chair, someone asks him how he is feeling.
He opens his mouth to give the name, rank, and serial number, as always. His heart begins to pound when he realizes he can’t give his name. It’s gone.
Fill: And I Am Always with You, Part 3
HYDRA waits until he’s healed enough that the shock of the experiments won’t kill him before they begin, and then there’s no question as to whether this is hell. His only question is what he’s done to earn it.
They don’t give him the time to think of an answer.
The morphine is switched out for something else, something that makes the sky black no matter the hour, makes him shake and see figures at the corners of his vision that are always gone by the time he whips his head to get a better look. The world rushes and drops and tilts like the Cyclone at Coney Island, and whatever they shoot in his veins is spinning his head as well, mixing memories like spun sugar, and was it the Cyclone that made Steve puke when they rode it, or were they on the Thunderbolt? Hadn’t Bucky been the one who got sick? He’s sick now, sick all the time, even though there’s nothing to be sick, because they aren’t feeding him, so he’s left gagging on stomach acid and air.
He isn’t allowed to sleep. The only precious seconds of reprieve come when he blacks out, and then they turn hoses of freezing water on him to shock him back to consciousness. Each time he wakes, cold and drowning, he tries raising both hands to shield himself. Every time he forgets, and seeing the bandaged stump where the left arm should be leaves a new hole in the space where there was once a heart.
This time, there is a new dimension to the torture, a change to the rules that throws him even further off kilter. The last time Zola had him, all they cared about was the drugs. Blood pressure, pupil dilation, whether or not he tried to tear his skin off or went into seizures. Sometimes he’d be jerked back to a state of semi-lucidity, asked how he felt, but his answers were like a garnish, that sprig of parsley on a plate no one bothered to eat. Superfluous.
Now they want him to perform like a trained monkey. The questions and orders—always in Russian, never English, and while he understands some Russian the haze of whatever he’s dosed with isn’t helping with translation—are constant, nonsensical. What’s your name? Do you know where you are? Take this knife and hit the target. Stand up. Sit down. Jump. What are you? Load this weapon. There are guards lingering, slightly more substantial than the blackness at the edges of his eyes, whenever they make requests with the guns or blades. The orders come so fast and so frequent Bucky begins to feel like a dog, and like a dog they try and bribe him with treats. Food—oranges among them, where the hell did they get something as beautiful and fresh as oranges out here?—a warm bed, an end to the torment. He will only give the answer “James Barnes. Sergeant. 32557241,” and when their patience reaches an end they begin the beatings.
They leave him on the floor, blood meandering down the grout lines in the tile as he lays, unable to sit up, and Steve speaks.
“They won’t break you, Bucky. You’re stronger than they are.”
I don’t feel stronger, Bucky almost says, but HYDRA’s ears must be pressed against every wall. It never stops Steve talking, though, but they won’t hurt Steve for it. They don’t touch him. Why would they need to, when Bucky’s broken body is such a perfect knife to Captain America’s heart?
Time passes and he finds himself speaking as he hauls his battered body up to slump against the wall, surveillance be damned. “Steve? You remember my mom?”
“Of course.”
“You remember her face?” Bucky asks, deliberately casual, and he can tell from the way Steve’s brows knit together that his poker face has failed.
“Yeah, I do. Why?”
He shrugs, wincing. “’Cause I can’t.” Then he’s sniffling, crying, and Steve is across the room faster than should be possible, kneeling beside him. “I’m losing my mind.”
“You’re not,” Steve insists. One hand Bucky can’t feel is cradling his jaw while the other wipes at his tears. “Buck, you’re not. It’s their drugs. We can reverse it, once we get out of here everything’ll be—”
He shakes his head. “No. It’s—being here. Again. It’s like I never even got out the first time. Like you never came and saved me, and really, isn’t that what makes more sense? That they dosed me with some drug and I had this beautiful dream and now it’s over, and not that my scrawny friend from Brooklyn who was too puny to enlist became this…this god? What’s more likely, you saved me and we became war heroes, or I never left and it’s just some fairy tale?” He takes a shuddering breath, voice cracking. “Steve, please tell me you’re real, I can’t take it, I can’t—”
“I’m real, Bucky.” Steve leans in, presses their foreheads together, unblinking, and it almost makes up for the way Bucky can’t feel a thing.
“I’m real, and I’m not gonna leave you.”
“Get me outta here,” he mumbles, and the pain that had been muted from the drug begins to throb anew. They vary when they inject him with the doses, sometimes one right after the first fades, and sometimes hours later. Testing, he imagines, the withdrawal or his mental state upon regaining sobriety.
“I’m trying,” Steve tells him, but then Steve is gone, and it’s just Bucky, Bucky and the pain and the sudden, silent sobbing as he works out what’s real and what isn’t and it hits him—and hits him again and again and again—that Steve belongs on that second list. No. No. Oh God, please no.
The only thing that keeps him from collapsing wide-eyed and catatonic and never rising again is the grim determination that he has to remember this, even after they drug him again, has to find a way to teach himself that Steve isn’t real, he can’t talk to Steve or he risks giving HYDRA what they need and God only knows what he’s already told them. He’ll etch the warning into his own skin if he has to, but then the guards are back, holding him down as they come at him with another injection, and even through his thrashing they manage to place it, and the world is thrown back into confusion as they drag him down the hall.
They are about to strap him to a chair when Zola asks if he’s ever heard of electroshock therapy.
After that, Bucky won’t be still, won’t be held. He runs on panic, adrenaline, and a rush of anger and heartache he can no longer remember the source of, and they can’t contain him to get the straps into place, can’t get a sedative into his veins with all the struggling. He doesn’t know where this burst of energy comes from, but he isn’t going to question it, isn’t going to do anything fight his way free, kill them all, get the hell out—
Zola motions someone to come forward and Bucky freezes, too tense to be forced into the chair, as Steve looks down at him.
“Bucky,” he says, and there’s something needling in the back of Bucky’s mind, a question of why hadn’t he seen Steve while he was thrashing around, wasn’t there another doctor in the room a second ago, isn’t he supposed to remember something about Steve, but Steve is here and Steve is going to save him and that’s all that matters. “Bucky, you have to calm down. They’re trying to help you.”
He can feel his heart in his chest again, feel it grow heavy and sink.
“But—”
“Trust me, Bucky,” Steve pleads. “You have to trust me. Let them help you.”
His eyes are wet again as he lays back, hyperventilating. Every fiber of his being screams at him to break free and run, but Steve said he would be all right and Steve wouldn’t lie to him, and where is Steve, he can’t see Steve anymore, Steve’s stepped back into the shadows and now all he can make out in the dark, faintly, is the missing doctor, the blond one, and Bucky’s eyes widen as he moves to struggle, but then there’s something shoved into his mouth, electricity in his head and fireworks in his vision and everything is pain and darkness.
When he awakes, covered in cold sweat and still slumped back in the chair, someone asks him how he is feeling.
He opens his mouth to give the name, rank, and serial number, as always. His heart begins to pound when he realizes he can’t give his name. It’s gone.