Captain America Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Steve Rogers Fan Fic - The Constant

Chapter Ninety-Six: Bucky Barnes - Isolation

Bucky looks up. There is a night stand next to the bed. On it is a digital clock stating that it is 3.22am, a lamp, several bottles of water and two white tablets. One of those yellow sticky notes that Freya had thought were incredible, sits next to the tablets. It says: Painkillers, for your head. It seems surreal.

He picks up one of the bottles and opens it, looking around the room, and then looks back at the water. He hesitates. What if it's drugged? "That's the least of my worries," he replies. He drinks from the bottle; the water is cool, refreshing and he keeps drinking. It makes him feel slightly nauseous but he needs the fluid. When he has nearly finished he stops and picks up the tablets, looks at them as if they could tell a story.

What if...?

"Shut the fuck up, will you!" He holds the bottle to his forehead for a moment as he feels it pulsing with pain, then without stopping to think anymore, he swallows the tablets down and finishes the bottle.

He groans out loud as the water hits his stomach and he swings around to lay on the bed again. Just a few minutes and then I'll...but he is asleep again before he can finish the sentence. The water is not drugged, the tablets are just painkillers, but his body needs to close down again so it does.

When he wakes the next time the clock says 8.27am, he has been asleep for five hours. This time he remembers almost straight away where he is - as if I knew where that is exactly! he thinks as he sits up. He sees the empty bottle of water, and the sticky note now curling at the edges.

He sits on the edge of the bed for a moment looking at the floor, which is covered in a a blue industrial carpeting. He then looks around the room. It is one of the strangest he has seen but it reminds him of something, something related to Hydra.

The walls are made of a blue-grey metal. The corners are not sharp, but instead are curved. Some thought has been put into the making of the room. The ceiling is made of the same metal and there seems to be no break as it just curves downwards into the walls. There are the recesses in two of the walls where the light is coming from. The back and front walls have no recess. The room is square and is about twenty-five foot both across and wide.

Metal walls, that's what I remember he thinks – the cryo rooms had metal walls. But this room does not seem to be for cryo-freezing or anything similar.

The double bed is butted up against one wall with night stands on either sides. The rooms back wall is plain, but a desk and chair stand up against it. Next to it is what looks like a white cabinet. The next wall has an open doorway and looks as though it leads to a bathroom. Finally the last wall has a table and a chair against it plus an easy chair. At first he thinks that all of the walls are bare but then he notices a large, rectangular grey panel next to the bathroom doorway. In all honestly it looks very much like a television screen on a huge scale. He looks behind him and sees this wall is also adorned. Above the bed is a picture. He squints to look at it although it is quite large, his head is beginning to throb again. The picture is in actual fact a mural, and his heart thuds when he realises what he is looking at. It is part of a painting that he saw in the museum exhibit at The Smithsonian.

Authors Note: For image see http://i.imgur.com/pgfhp8N.jpg

It has been altered from the original to show just him and Steve. At the bottom of the mural is the wording Lest you forget.

He looks away. His mind cannot come to terms with it at the moment. It cannot cope with thoughts of Steve. Cannot cope with whatever games Hydra are now playing.

He stands up and, for a moment has trouble keeping his balance. He puts a hand out to steady himself and then realises something. His left arm is powered up. He is dressed in jeans and black teeshirt. He looks at the metal plates of the arm, lifts his fist and curls the fingers. The adjustment panel is no longer welded shut. The arm will need slight calibration, but it is back up and running.