"Meraki (v.) to do something with soul, creativity, or love; to put yourself into your work."
"Guys," She pressed the com button on her ear piece, "I think I found him."
"Where are you?" Steve asked urgently.
"Third floor, seventh room on the right," She said as T'Challa walked into the room looking around.
"Be there in one minute," Steve said. "The rest of you, get out and wait to rendezvous outside."
Erin took her hand off her ear-piece and turned to T'Challa, "Find anything?" She asked.
He shook his head. "Nothing of interest," He replied, staring behind Erin at the sleeping chamber.
"This is him right?" She asked turning and looking at it.
T'Challa nodded his head, "It is Barnes."
Erin looked through the glass at the Winter Soldier's sleeping face. Her heart felt sad for a moment as she looked at him lying there like it was an open casket for a funeral. The only thing that reassured her he wasn't actually dead was the slight movement of his chest that went up and down.
Steve's footsteps pounded into the room pulling Erin from her thoughts. Wanda ran in close behind him.
"We need to get him out of here," Steve said to T'Challa, "They got him up, there must be some way to get him out. Erin can you-"
"On it," She interrupted. She closed her eyes and did a sweep of the floor, "I can't feel anything on this level... I think there's an elevator on the other side of the hall. I didn't feel it before but it's working now." She opened her eyes.
"Wanda?" Steve turned to her.
Wanda nodded her head and lifted her hands. She made lifting a 500 pound sleeping chamber look easy, but Erin knew Wanda had to be struggling. She was impressed. Wanda was making it look effortless to calm Steve's nerves. Steve was so busy worrying about everyone else that he didn't take the time to worry about himself. Erin felt a bloom of respected for Wanda knowing she was the one who had Cap's back at the end of the day.
"If you can, tap into some of my strength if you need it," Erin whispered to Wanda as they walked towards the door. Wanda gave her a grateful look.
Steve didn't seem to notice as he and T'Challa moved full steam ahead. They poked their heads out of the room to make sure the hall was clear.
"There's no one," Steve said.
"Isn't that usually a bad sign?" Erin asked.
"I've been asking myself that all night, I'm not sticking around to find out." Steve said.
They made it out of the building, amazingly, without incident. The soldiers they had taken out before were still unconscious on the ground. Erin didn't know if that should make her feel better or worse.
Wanda made it to the Rover, levitating the Winter Soldier into the back. The energy of the building faded as they put the sleeping chamber into the vehicile and drove into the night.
*****
Erin spent the next few days reading and researching. Steve managed to provide what Erin asked for, but she wasn't sure it was everything she needed. She met T'Challa's team of scientists who had been working on the Winter Soldier for the past few months. She looked over all of his psychological evaluations and what Wanda had managed to carve out of his brain by now. It wasn't much.
Erin refreshed herself on everything she knew about James Barnes and who he had been before the soldier, the person her grandfather had known.
She spent hours looking at the Winter Soldier's vibranium arm and put everything she knew about the metal to use. They decided to keep him in cryo sleep until Erin could put together his new arm. If she could.
T'Challa provided her with every material she needed to prepare it for reattachment. She couldn't believe the bottomless pit of resources he had to offer her. Even though she had only been an intern, she would bet money STARK Industries couldn't compete with a king.
Erin caught herself looking at the Winter Soldier more often than she should have. She couldn't help but notice how beautiful the peaceful look on his face was. Beyond his scruffy beard and long hair, he was free of the pain the world had to offer. A small part of her was envious. Some days Erin wished she could just lay down and forget. She would let the pain fold her over and over until she was so tiny, she could vanish. Maybe she should just let him keep sleeping.
*****
The 5th day after the rescue, Erin was ready.
T'Challa was there with his team and Steve was with her in the lab as she prepared what she needed.
"You ready?" Steve asked next to her.
Erin plastered on a fake confident smile. "Let's do it," She replied. She looked over at Sam and Clint who stood in the corner observing. Clint offered her an encouraging smile and Sam gave her two thumbs up.
"You can do this," Wanda encouraged on the other side of her.
"Thanks," She said giving her a grateful smile. I hope so. She silently prayed.
She turned to address T'Challa's team who had been more than kind about letting her take the lead in the Winter Soldier's reattachment procedure. She was younger than many of the scientists on the team and she felt out of place giving orders. She took a deep breath and began. "This is going to take several hours to complete." She tried to keep the shaky nerves out of her voice, "If I'm being honest, I don't know 100% what I'm doing," She swallowed, "I've only worked in on situations like this in learning scenarios and computer testing. I've learned what I can from my father, but all of your input is vital and will be important while we do this. Thank you for everything you've all done so far," She let out another breath, "Okuhle kodwa."
"Good luck," T'Challa repeated.
"Let's begin."
*****
Not much was accomplished in the first hour. Erin spent way too much time contemplating on which tools to use and babbling on like an idiot talking to herself. She walked at least a thousand steps back and forth to the tool tabling switching out electric tools and metal priers.
The next hour she spent staring at the Winter Soldier's arm socket and his metal arm sitting on the table. She extracted some old remains of the fluid in his shoulder, hopefully recreating the formula someday for future work.
Finally during the third hour, she and the team started to reassemble. Slowly, she carefully showed them how to fused each prosthetic nerve together. She had to back track a few times, but slowly they were getting there.
Sam and Clint left after the first hour and Wanda after three, but Steve stayed. He refused to leave the room while they all worked.
After five hours, they took a break to eat and catch their breath.
Steve sat next to her, munching on a plate of pasta, "How is it going to far?"
Erin let out a breath, "Slow, obviously, but I think we're getting somewhere. The tricky part will be when he wakes up and tries to move it. Robotic nerves are touchy. Even my dad struggled with it in all of his work. If I connect a wrong wire, one misstep and if he tries to move his fingers he could end up punching someone in the face."
"Wouldn't be the first time." Steve joked, looking up at Bucky's unconscious body. "He had the best right arm in our neighborhood," He looked up again. Erin knew that look, he was reminiscing the past.
"You have that far off look again," Erin noted, "Want to tell me which memory you're thinking of?"
Steve looked at her like he was surprised she could read him that easily.
"My grandpa used to get the same look sometimes." She explained.
Steve half smiled at her, "When we were fourteen, we were both on the same baseball team. Well he was I was the designated water boy. Bucky was the star pitcher. He could throw the baseball so fast the batter couldn't even see it before it hit the catcher's glove." He laughed at the thought.
Erin imagined young skinny Steve watching his best friend pitch from the dugout. It reminded her of James and all the baseball games he played in as a kid.
"Well anyways, we just won a big tournament, everybody lifted Bucky up on their shoulders when he threw the final pitch that struck the batter out. I was cleaning up the bench when the batter came over and started knocking over things, pushing me around, stuff like that. Well, Bucky saw what was happening and jumped off their shoulders. He came rushing over to tell the kid to leave me alone. The kid shoved me to the ground and before I knew it, the other kid was on the ground next to me. Bucky had punched him in the face." Steve chuckled.
Erin looked over at Bucky, still sleeping on the table. She tried to imagine him at fourteen, throwing a punch for his friend, not knowing what he would one day become.
"I can see why you're so protective of him," She said turning back to Steve, "I'll make sure, he'll only punch when he wants to," She nudged him playfully.
He gave her a grateful smile as she stood up to go back to work.
*****
Four hours later, it was getting late but they were close. Every wire was almost assembled and the welding was nearly complete.
"Okay, do a stimulant test on these two." Erin instructed, fiddling with the nerve wires in the opened metal compartment they had installed.
T'Challa's scientist by the name of Emrys used an electric fuse to stimulate the wired nerves. The pointer and middle finger of the Winter Soldier's left arm twitched at the touch.
Erin let out a relieved sigh, "That's it. Now all we have to do is wait for him to wake up." She smiled at the team and then Steve in the corner.
Half an hour later she said goodbye to the team and T'Challa.
"I can't thank you enough for everthing you've done for Bucky," Steve said to him.
T'Challa smiled, "We will always give help to friends who need it." T'Challa shook Steve's hand and then turned to Erin, "You're a brilliant woman Erin McCall. We would love for you to come by the research lab soon."
Erin's face felt suddenly hot, "It would be my honor to work with your brilliant team again and provide them with any useful knowledge I have." She smiled.
T'Challa nodded, "Let me know when he wakes, I would like to speak to him once he is ready."
Steve nodded and T'Challa left.
"Well," Steve said looking at sleeping Bucky, "You may not have a degree, but I really don't think you need it." He smiled at her.
Erin couldn't believe it. She had actually done it.
"We're not out of the woods yet," Erin warned, "I won't know if I did everything right until he wakes up." She paused, "Have you thought about what you're going to say to him?"
Steve scruntched his eyebrows together, "A little. I've just been so focused on helping him get back to normal..."
"Steve," Erin said cautiously, "If this works, and that's still a big if... You know he won't be the same right? You can remove the HYDRA control, but you can't... you can't erase the memories of it all. He may not have killed all those people mentally, but he did kill them physically. The fact that he had no choice in the matter is a deeply rooted wound that he's going to carry around for the rest of his life. There's no getting past it."
"Are you trying to tell me he's not worth saving?" Steve accused her.
"Of course not!" She said her temper rising, "I'm only saying, you need to prepare yourself to accept him for who he is now... and that he's never going to be the Bucky you knew from 1943... not ever again. And when the dust settles after all this, he's going to have a hard time. With nothing to prepare for and nothing to keep his mind off of the things he's done the last 70 years, he's going to need you. He won't be able to do it on his own-"
Something rattled on a table behind them. Erin turned to see Bucky start to convulse.
It only took Erin a moment to snap into action, "Steve hold him down!"
"What's happening?" Steve asked her frantically as he did what she asked.
Erin flipped open the compartment in the metal arm and quickly fiddled with the wires that connected the new vibranium to the old. She looked at Bucky's convulsing body confused, "His system, it's like it's rejecting the new vibranium."
"So what does that mean?" Erin looked at Steve, his face was angry.
"It means that what ever HYDRA used in Bucky's old arm," She ran to the other table and grabbed what she needed, "It was more than just vibranuim, wires, and chemical fluid, they added something extra to it." She clipped wires and snapped on plates of metal in place. She looked at Bucky still twitching on the table.
"But you can do something right?" Steve yelled still holding Bucky down.
"I have a theory," She said back. She clipped the last wire she needed to before Bucky's body went limp. She let out a sigh of relief.
"A theory isn't good enough!" Steve yelled walking around the table to face her, "This is his life we're talking about!"
Erin stood nose to nose with Captain America. "Look it's either this, or brain damage from the seizures. If I don't do this right, I could end up frying all of the nerves on the left side of his body," She looked at Steve sternly, "So I suggest you let me work."
Before he could answer, Erin hurried over to the table of liquid elements and began to work. She crushed solids into powder, mixing them in other liquids until her theory became a liquid reality. Bucky had stopped convulsing for two minutes before starting again. This fit was shorter but it still made Erin work faster.
"Hurry!" Steve said.
"You want me to poison him by accident because you rushed me?" She yelled, looking for the last ingredient. She searched through the drawers frantically. She also grabbed a bottle of Midazolam and two syringes. "Got it!" She yelled stirring the last of what she needed. She filled the first syringe with Midazolam. "Hold out his arm," she commanded.
"Metal or real?"
"Real."
Steve did as she asked and she injected him with the compound. He stopped convulsing immediately. Erin and Steve both let out sighs of relief.
Erin grabbed her homemade compound and injected it into the shoulder of his metal arm, praying her theory would come through for her.
"What now?" Steve asked.
"Now," Erin said, "We wait." She slumped into the nearest chair and tried to catch her breath.
A few minutes past. Steve kept his eye on his friend to make sure he was done with his fits. When ten minutes passed without another episode, Steve's body started to relax.
Erin could feel her own body release tension. She wasn't sure they were in the cleat yet, but this was a good sign.
"What was your theory?" Steve asked her, taking a seat beside her.
Erin thought for a moment, "HYDRA must have infused some kind of metallic liquid compound unique to their own design that would be compatible with the vibranium and nerve wiring. It's the only thing I can think of that would enable him to move it like that. If anyone were to somehow get their hands on the Winter Soldier AKA their most powerful and deadly weapon, they wouldn't be able to recreate the indestructible part of his body."
"So what did you do?"
"There was some of the substance left in the shoulder portion of his old arm. I was able to extract some of it and combat it with another solution which destroyed the traces of the old substance."
"How did you know what to use?"
Erin gave him a clever smirk, "The bio mechanic make up and Bucky's arm would have had to originate in the HYDRA technology in the 1940s. My grandfather told me all he knew about HYDRA and he also happened to know what he was injected with when he was experimented on. The combat compound for it was discovered almost 15 years later and it just so happens that I knew how to make it. I had to guess at how much, but I didn't have much of a choice."
Steve looked at her in awe, his mouth hanging open slightly. He looked away from her for a moment and rubbed the back of his neck, "Listen, Erin, I'm sorry I didn't trust you. It's just..." He trailed off.
Erin looked down too, "I get it," She said looking up. "He's all you have left of who you used to be."
He looked at her curiously.
"I'd give anything for a sliver of a reminder of who I used to be," She admitted quietly, "If I ever had it again, I wouldn't take any chances with it. And I told you before," She smirked at him, "I wouldn't trust me either."
Steve smirked, "You know, after all this you're going to need a codename," Steve half grinned at her, "I'm feeling something... electric and patriotic. Benjamin Franklin maybe?"
"Do I get a say in my own name? I'm really fond of Pikachu."
Steve looked confused, "Who's Pikachu?" He asked.
Erin rolled her eyes, "Oh come on!" She shoved him.
When their laughter died, Steve looked at her "What about Pulse? Because you can feel the life of electricity?"
Pulse.
Erin looked at him and smiled, "I like it."
"You're ripped at every edge
But you're a masterpiece"
-Halsey, Colors