Steve passes the girl onto Natasha when they enter and quickly helps escort Bucky onto the med bay. The whole sequence is a bit rushed, but Steve knows Natasha knows more about what to do with the woman than he does. He passes on the little information he knows to her quickly and they part ways. The remaining pair retreats to the elevators, and once they're inside, Bucky practically collapses.
Steve manages to fit an arm under Bucky's left to sustain some of the weight, but a wave of concern rolls over him as he looks back to the wounds and sees the shirt practically drenched in blood. Even super-soldiers need a certain amount of blood to function, and Bucky is slipping closer and closer to the edge of not having enough. Stay with me, stay with me, you just have to stay awake...
The elevator ride feels like an eternity, especially with Bucky clutching at his injuries like he's going to pass out at any moment, but finally the doors slide open and the pair stumbles out into the hallway. "To the right," Steve says, voice tight with the exertion of having to support Bucky's heavier metal arm. He guides them to a set of automatic frosted doors that open upon their approach without Steve having to enter a passcode. He'll have to thank J.A.R.V.I.S. for that later.
Steve does his best to maneuver Bucky onto one of the pristine cots without hurting him any more than he already is. Bucky groans in pain and quickly, Steve gets to work hunting and prepping materials like he used to do when he was younger, all while murmuring under his breath; ice pack, saline, peroxide, scissors, needle driver... goddamnit, where's the fucking saline?
"Mister Barnes, I would not advise attempting that."
Steve spins around to find Bucky half-sitting up in the cot, stapler in one hand and a gun pointed at the ceiling in the other.
"You weren't gonna staple it closed, were you?" Steve says, rushing over and taking the stapler from his hand. "I can get you fixed up, just gimme a sec."
"Who was that?" Bucky asks, finger twitching on the gun.
"J.A.R.V.I.S. He's a system that... the previous owner of this tower installed to keep an eye on things. He handles all major mechanical functions around here, and apparently also helps me make sure you don't staple your wounds shut without antiseptic, stitches or bandages being applied first."
"At your service, Mister Barnes."
Bucky screws his face up in discomfort but finally decides to set the gun down. J.A.R.V.I.S. clearly makes him nervous, but Steve appreciates the help.
Cautiously, Steve has Bucky strip free of the bloodied shirt so he can see the injuries better. The bullet wound looks like a clean through-and-through, but the knife wound on his right shoulder still looks pretty bad. Steve applies a few small bandages to the minor injuries and gets to work on the large ones. His hands are shaking as he picks up the needle and threads the stitches through. He doesn't want to hurt Bucky, but it's been... well, decades, technically, since he's stitched up anyone. He's sure the generic practices in the '40s aren't the standard procedures now but he tries his best to even his breathing and do what seems the most natural. Every time the needle digs into his skin, Bucky flinches and coils his hands into tight fists, but he's strong. Steve remembered him like that, just... not this stoic.
"You doing okay?" Steve asks when he's almost halfway done.
"It's bringing back a few memories, but yeah."
Steve glances up and tries to analyze Bucky's face, but it's as expressionless as the rest of him. "Memories of what?"
At this, Bucky furrows his eyebrows. "I'm not sure. Mostly my years as an assassin, I think. Stitching up my own wounds. Being put in cryo freeze so my wounds would heal. Breaking bones and not doing anything about it, and the bones healing wrong. And... stitching someone else up. A little kid, I think." He shrugs. "I don't know. I don't think I can tell the difference between what I'm remembering and what I'm hallucinating."
Steve hums and looks back down at the needle, reluctant to add another stitch. Bucky has been through a lot. No wonder he's not reacting much to the stitches now; compared to what he's been through, it's probably little more than a tickle. Briefly, Steve wonders who the little kid was. Bucky stitched him up once, when Steve fell out of a tree playing hide-and-seek and sliced open his leg on a rock. It was stupid, but Steve was just proud he had gotten up there in the first place for as skinny as he was at the time; it was an exertion, but the neighborhood kids hadn't found him until the very end, when one of them jumped up to grab Steve by the ankle, making him lose his balance and tumble down to the ground. Bucky had been by his side in an instant, spitting insults at the boy who had done it and cupping Steve's head in his hand. The stitches were painful, but Bucky was good at them and bandaged them up quickly. "My momma told me it was essential to learn in case I ever snagged myself with a fishing hook or somethin'. I'm gonna have to thank her when I get home. She's gonna be worried sick when she hears about you. Get ready for about thirty-seven stress-baked loaves of banana bread." And then he'd ruffle Steve's hair, check the bandages, adamantly tell Steve that banana bread was critical for getting better once Steve protested the sweets like he always did, and the pair would talk about the Brooklyn Dodgers' odds of winning the World Series until they were both laughing, not thinking about the injury.
"Let me guess. Blond, so skinny he looked like a light breeze could blow him away, stubborn as sin?"
Bucky gave him a sidelong glance, looking him up and down. "You weren't always like this."
Steve winks. "Yup, that was me you're remembering. I was a troublemaker, that's for sure."
He ties off the sutures close to the skin, dabbing away the droplets of blood that leak through and wrapping some gauze all the way around Bucky's torso. He lifts up Bucky's right arm with a pinky finger and tries not to admire the chiseled muscles that make up his forearm.
Finally, he sits back, stretching out his stiff fingers and cracking his neck. Bucky picks at the gauze, but it's less critical and more admiring of the craftsmanship. Steve's time in the war led him to learn how to do all of this himself, even if it was just watching the nurses sew up the other soldiers while they chugged alcohol like it was the end of the world.
Steve works up the courage to ask while he's taking a short break. "What do you remember?"
Bucky takes a moment to respond, suddenly encapsulated with the thin fibers of the cot. "Falling off the train. Losing my arm. A little bit of when we were younger. That's just emotions and fewer events, for the most part. I prefer those the most."
"We had some good times together, you and I."
"Tell me about them."
Steve looks up at Bucky and they lock eyes. Slowly, carefully, Steve picks one of the best ones he can remember.
"There was a Dodgers game. You loved baseball, Buck. Kept sayin' the Dodgers would win it all, and every year was going to be the year they won the World Series as far as you were concerned. But this one Dodgers game was special because... actually, I can't remember why. I was sad about something and you got all bull-headed and confident like you do, sayin' that we were gonna go no matter what. We couldn't afford it then 'cause my Ma was sick and everything was closing down, but you knew a way in that someone had told you about. So we snuck around there and slipped in through the fence and before we knew it we were in some outdoor storage thing, but inside the stadium. We got through there, bought some hot dogs, put way too much ketchup on them because we couldn't afford it at home, and then we waited until the game started and picked some seats that were empty. I never liked baseball much, but you did, so I tagged along. It was a great game. The Dodgers won and you left whoopin' and hollerin' like you had won the lottery or something. We grabbed two pretzels for the road and ate them on our walk back home. It was one of the best games of my life and we were both so happy by the end of it that I had forgotten anything was wrong with my life at all."
Bucky sits on this for a while. Steve cracks his knuckles again and reaches for the messy bandage on his shoulder, tearing it off carefully and applying some saline to the injury before clumping some cotton around it and wrapping the whole thing with more gauze. When that's finished, he grabs a few ice packs and rubber bands, placing some on the various bruises peppering Bucky's body. He's nervous about how his friend will react to the story; he clearly doesn't remember it all that well, and telling him things that he doesn't know happened to him might just make him sadder.
"So I liked baseball. And sneaking into places. And we really couldn't afford much."
"Yeah. That was right after the stock market crash in '29. Your family had it good, for the most part; you could afford a lot of things, but in between trying to pay for medication and food, we didn't have a lot left over to spend on baseball games. I think you felt bad. I never wanted you to spend your money on me, and of course you did, but sometimes you'd just go along with the dangerous, rebellious, stupid stuff I did just so I wouldn't feel guilty about you having to pay to do it legally. You liked science conventions. God, what a bore, but you always brought me along. Baseball, of course. You were never any good at playing it. You really loved your radio shows, even though you called 'em sappy and dumb. Sometimes when you were gone, I'd wonder if we were listening to the same one. I'd tune to one of your new favorite stations and listen in, wondering if you were doing the same thing miles away. 'Course, you weren't gone much, especially once we got closer; you took me under your wing and made me listen to those radio shows when I was sick without ever leaving me side. I used to tell you that you didn't need to be there, that I was going to be fine, but you would just make me another cup of tea and tell me to shut up because you were staying regardless of what I was gonna say." Steve sighs. "And then the world turned over, so there's no going back to that. I've got what I've got."
"That sounds amazing."
"Yeah, life sure had its ups and downs."
Bucky's lips quirk up when he looks at Steve in what closely resembles a smile. "Tell me more."
"Are you remembering?"
"No, not really. But the way you talk about how we used to be... I don't know. It's a nice distraction. I want to know everything about myself."
Steve grins and hops up on the cot next to Bucky, a million stories already coming to mind. "Sure. Sure. I'll tell you everything you want to know."