“The procedure has already begun.”
Serum. He remembered a serum, he remembered needles and yelling. But the memory was painful, he was in pain, he stopped thinking about it. How long ago were the needles and the yelling. He didn’t know.
He faded in and out of consciousness, panicked, confused and horrified. The needles stopped mattering. The pain, searing, blinding, in his left side, left him hoarse and breathless from screams. They let him scream until he blacked out and scream again when he woke. He could feel his flesh burning, there was metal, he could smell his own burned skin and his stomach heaved, but there was nothing for him to throw up and he ended up choking and gasping. There were hands on his chest and his right shoulder again, someone put a hand on his forehead and held his head down. His vision left him and came back again. His left arm and shoulder, what he could feel of what was left of it, was all white-hot pain.
When he came back and the murmurs in a language he didn’t understand grew louder, his left shoulder was numb. He felt ill. He felt weak. He glanced down over at his left side, moving his head as far as he could because he had been strapped down tightly, painfully tightly, with leather straps across his chest and forehead. He saw through the blurs his vision had become, silver and gleaming metal. He stared, trying to make sense of it. It didn’t make sense. He felt weak. He felt ill.
He felt a certain, different kind of fear that he wasn’t able to pinpoint or articulate at the time. It was a deep fear, down in his heart, settling in the depths of the way his stomach turned. He didn’t know what to call it. He feared for himself. There was a face he wanted to remember, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t, there was a wall, like a burning, like everything he wanted to see was burned away at the edges and all that was left was black. The fear in his heart screamed at the black for the face that had been burned away from him.
He can’t save me this time. I can’t save him.
Then a hand grabbed his left shoulder, roughly, shook it, and he screamed shrilly and everything, everything went black and he slumped down, still again.
YOU ARE READING
Run (A Bucky Barnes Recovery Story)
FanfictionA Bucky Barnes recovery story. Completed. First book in the three part 'Run' series. Sequels are 'Ready Set Breathe' and 'To Go Unseen'. Also found on FF.net and AO3 PG-13 for some violence.
