Run (A Bucky Barnes Recovery Story)

47 Past

Before Bucky could open the folder, once he and Steve had gotten back into his apartment and sat down, Steve stopped him, placing a hand over the top. Bucky looked up, questioningly, and Steve looked at him with worry in his eyes.

“Are you sure you want to see this, Buck?” Steve said and Bucky nodded.

“Yeah,” he said, but Steve still didn’t move his hand.

“This could be painful,” he said.

“I know,” Bucky replied.

“There might be things you don’t want to remember,” Steve continued. “Or-”

“Steve, please,” Bucky said exasperatedly.

“I’m not done!” Steve cried. “The stuff in here…”

“You don’t know what it is,” Bucky argued.

“Neither do you!” Steve cried. “But we both know it’s not gonna be good. I just want to make sure you’re prepared.”

“I am,” Bucky said and Steve slowly removed his hand.

“Remember what I said about not cutting me out!” he added quickly as Bucky opened the folder. Bucky looked over at him.

“I promised you, Steve,” Bucky said. “Now will you shut up and let me read the folder?” Steve raised his hands defensively and Bucky looked back down and took out the first sheet. There were old, faded photos of him clipped to the top. He looked emaciated. A close-up shot of his face showed his cheeks hollow and a sheen of sweat on his brow. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be lying on some sort of hospital bed. Bucky held the picture up and studied it and saw Steve out of the corner of his eye scrub his face with both hands and take a deep breath, but Bucky didn’t say anything. There was a date in faded pen on the back along with his name. The next photo was of his whole body. His left side was splattered in dried, dark blood and his arm was a stump wrapped in gauze. When Bucky went to read the paper they were clipped to, however, he discovered that it was written entirely in Russian. He looked over at Steve, who was squinting at the scribbled lettering.

“Do you want to know what it says?” Bucky asked quietly.

“Would you mind?” Steve asked and Bucky shook his head and began translating aloud.

“James Buchanan Barnes. Project Winter Soldier. Scouts found the subject exactly one day after his fall,” Bucky read, his hand shaking and his voice not entirely steady either. “His left arm was lost just above the elbow and he was dying quickly, despite the-” Here Bucky stopped involuntarily, swallowed, and then went on. “Despite the serum, which had been administered during experiments some weeks earlier. Blood loss was great. He woke as we were lifting him away and tried to fight us, but he was too weak and, we suspect, the pain was too much. He fainted again soon after, which was lucky because we didn’t have the sedatives on hand to detain him.”

“Wow,” Steve muttered and Bucky wanted to scoff. This wasn’t even the bad part. Bucky had been expecting all of this, he half-remembered this. He was scared for Steve now when they got to worse portions of his past. Bucky continued reading.

“We have had Codename: Winter Soldier in our care for a week now. We are suspending his life while we make decisions regarding his future. We are currently putting maximum efforts into designing a new kind of arm to replace the one the subject lost. Grafting experiments have been performed, oh, oh no,” Bucky stopped, reading ahead, sickened, and looked away from the paper in his hand.

“What is it?” Steve asked and Bucky took a deep breath, looking back.

“G-Grafting experiments have been performed,” Bucky continued slowly. “On various prisoners taken from the enemy. Most have been fatal failures, but we believe a method will soon be found to efficiently fix the subject. Our current ideas involve a permanent metal socket to attach to a removable metal appendage.