I Am

A bubble floated lazily past Bucky’s half-dead eyes. 

The fluid was repulsively viscous. He could feel it corrupting his mouth. It was poisoning his throat, tainting his nostrils, befouling his ear canals. 

On the other side of the glass, scientists went about some kind of research. Hazmat suits and lab coats danced a clinical procession across the room as they checked computers and scribbled on clipboards. They snatched glances at him occasionally, looking at him and then away, like curious children. Their faces were whirling vortices of shadow. 

Every inch of his body was burning. He tried to lift his arm, but it felt like lead. Even just flexing his fingers sent waves of agony through his hand. Lactic acid, some buried part of him muttered. They flooded you with it to keep you docile. 

Why didn’t they just knock me out? he asked himself.

Because they needed to see your responses to stimuli, it replied.

Someone tapped on the glass. Bucky’s eyes flicked over, and he felt his features twist with horror. An androgynous scientist in a lab coat was leaning forward, its posture one of curiosity and study. It was missing a face; instead, it had a smooth hole, descending into blackness. The twisted head tilted like a dog’s at the reaction. It scribbled a note and walked away, leaving Bucky with his fear and revulsion. 

He realised then that he wasn’t alone in the tank. 

They were tiny things; the barest suggestion of what they would grow to become. But the tentacles were there, emerging from his crippled shoulder. They wriggled like leeches. Their oily black skin glinted in the light. His neck muscles tensed, and even that sent sparks of pain through his torso. And deep in the recesses of his mind, he felt an intelligence waking from a deep slumber. He closed his eyes and tried to will it out, to no avail. He felt its reach spreading. Filling his brain like static and whispers and humming.

A curious pattern of knocks came through the glass. Bucky tuned it out, putting all of his focus into fighting - then lost that focus completely as he recognised the pattern as “Hooked on a Feeling”. He opened his eyes, and there was Clint, with that perfect idiot’s smile on his face. The discordant notes of that malefic intelligence faded. In the background, the scientists went about their business without a second glance. “Hey, Buckeroonie,” he grinned. “Funny how we always end up back here.” His confident voice carried perfectly, even through the vile soup that was clogging his ears, through the glass that kept him locked away from the outside world.

Bucky opened his mouth to speak, to ask him what the hell was going on - but no sound escaped. Clint frowned. “Say again, Buck?” he inquired. “Can’t hear you through this stuff.” He knocked on the glass again.

Bucky’s eyes flicked helplessly to his shoulder. The tentacles squirmed in a repulsive dance.

“Right. That.” Clint shrugged. “That’s just who you are, isn’t it? Outside matching the inside, and all that.” 

His words were casual. Offhand. But they broke Bucky’s heart all the same. His traitor face must have spoken of the hurt and confusion he felt, because Clint continued:

“You didn’t save me. After all the times I saved you. You were too busy having a catnap to save my life.”

It bit me, Bucky thought frantically. I didn’t know what was going to happen. And my head was–

Clint snorted, his face incredulous. “Right, your head,” he chuckled, as if he had heard his thoughts. “Sure. Blame whatever you want, Bucky. Point is-”

 He jabbed an accusing finger at the glass.

“-you didn’t save me.”

There was nothing Bucky could say to that.

“You let me die,” Clint finished. “What kind of friend does that? After everything I did for you.”

“You failed me.”

With those words, the foul sound began again. No, Bucky pleaded, but it rose, swamping his brain, melting his eardrums and blocking out all thought. He squeezed his eyes shut in torment. It reached an agonising crescendo, digging at the inside of his skull. His eyes flew open, and he saw that it was not Clint on the other side of the glass, but himself. A deep gash ran along his face, and the eye it grazed was weeping streaks of blood. 

The world shattered around him, and Bucky shattered with it.

In a thousand fractured pieces, Bucky flew upwards. The rolling snowdrifts of the South Pole fell away. The clouds parted like curtains as he burst through, the blue of the sky fading into an empty black - and beyond it, the moon. It grew as he rose, swelling like a tumour in the cold void of space, until he could see every crater that dotted its surface, until it encompassed his vision in rock and reflected light. 

The faintest speck appeared from its shine. It grew larger and larger as it came to meet him, and fear and dread stabbed at Bucky’s heart with its approach. 

Dracula drifted down to him, cloak flowing behind him, flapping in an impossible wind. He laid a single slender fingertip on Bucky’s head, and he felt himself merge into a single figure once more. Behind the vampire king, the moonlight shifted in tone, and suddenly Bucky was bathed in crimson light as the moon turned the colour of blood. Every bone in Bucky’s body cried out in revolt, yet he felt so tired, and the hunger was growing inside him, the evil hunger…

“Welcome to your new life, James,” Dracula murmured, with the faintest of smiles. 

A flash of golden light flickered in the corner of Bucky’s vision, and suddenly, there was an amulet next to his hand. It was ovoid, smooth, carved of gold, the front a complex network of lines forming a diamond. A green gemstone shone from behind them, calling to him. There was no time for hesitation. Bucky reached out with all the strength he had, and closed his fingers around it. Warmth spread through his body, golden fire, and Bucky felt it burning away the hunger.

Dracula’s eyebrows raised in surprise as he withdrew his finger. “You have help,” he remarked. His eyes scanned the space around them. “Do you hear me, sorcerer?” he demanded, throwing his arms wide. “New York is MINE! The epicentre of my empire! The first blot of ink on a map that will span the cosmos! You will not stop me!”

Five seconds passed. Ten. Twenty. There was no answer; not even the wind disturbed them in empty space. Finally, Dracula’s hands fell to his sides. “We will meet soon enough,” he promised his unseen enemy, before returning his attention to the task at hand. “And you,” he said to Bucky, “you reject my gift. Why? Would it not be easier to serve? To never again need to question your loyalties.” His smile returned, accompanied by condescension and disdain. “The Soviets. America. HYDRA. S.H.I.E.L.D. Are they all truly so different? They all send you to ‘silence’ people that irritate them. 

“And your ‘friends’. Castle, professional punisher of criminals. The mysterious “Sai”. Rogers, Captain America, the so-called hero. Where were they, while your skull was cracked and your shoulder was a ripped-up mess? Where were they when you were sprinting for your life through the stinking back alleys? Where were they when Clint missed? 

“All this allegiance, and none of it repaid. Would you not rather live a simpler life? One where you could beat your sword into a ploughshare, without fear that you need reforge it tomorrow?”

Bucky had never wanted anything more. But he put no stock in this creature’s promises. And the sheer simple arrogance, the pure vanity and hubris that he would dare to offer him anything after–

Knew you’d come back to me.

–after Clint, took his breath away.

“Not for you,” he uttered finally. “Never you.”

“Then die,” Dracula dismissed him. Gravity tugged at him. He began to fall.

The moon pulled away from his sight. Dracula stood, watching, his face a mask of detached boredom.

Down and down Bucky fell, faster and faster, the stars whizzing past like fireflies. The clouds broke as he fell, and trails of moisture followed him in streaks. 

Scenes he didn't understand rent his war-ravaged mind in twain. A raven carved of emerald sat on a god's corpse, its head cloaked by Death's hood. A lonely howl echoed across a city's skyline, and the midnight moon was split asunder at its echoes. An island screamed as a thousand cuts appeared on its body, and from them soared a thousand pink butterflies. A circus of freaks sat in a stone tent, their ringmaster bathed in blood. A grand red cloak encompassed the cosmos, and in its folds the stars were joined by golden lines. From all these scenes extended strings, and to his horror, Bucky found that the strings had replaced his own fingers.

He twisted in the air. The streets of New York extended across the earth below him, flying upwards at terrifying speed. A scream tore its way from his lips, a death-scream, as he plummeted towards the ground. His arm desperately came up to protect his face.

Bucky was still screaming as he jolted upright, mattress springs creaking beneath him. 

“Where…” He scanned the room, his chest heaving, sweat dappling his forehead. He was in some kind of huge gym supply cupboard, a mildewy blanket draped over his legs. The lights were off, shading the room in an uncomfortable gloom. A desk sat in one corner. Seven other mattresses lined the floor, each carrying a wounded civilian. One man had a bandaged chest. Another’s arm was in a sling. They barely glanced at him. The stale air smelled of old fabric and plastic. 

The world looked oddly flat. Squinting and blinking led him to the realisation that he was seeing out of one eye. His hand clawed at his face. His fingers found tape and fabric, and he tore the bandage off, through a sense of bubbling panic. He peeled his eye open through a crust of blood and tears, and let out a breath as his sight returned to normal. Don’t think I could handle losing an eye too, he reflected. 

He ran an internal diagnostic. His skull was on fire. He was bone-weary, and ravenous. His throat was raw. His shoulder–

Clint. 

The remembering hit him like a physical force. He braced his hand against the mattress as he felt the little strength he had leaving him, slipping away into the wind.

God, he–

You stay away from him! Don’t touch him!

His heart felt as if it had turned to stone. His head was heavy.

I got you, Buck.

His fingers tightened into a fist as the images blitzed past.

No. No, wai–

A whirlwind of pain and panic coursed through him. His legs scrabbled, and he was up on his feet. His hand grasped at the wall for purchase. His chest felt like it was seizing. A sob escaped him.

A beam of light struck his eyes, buoyed on by a distant chatter, and he staggered back, hand shading his face.

“Woah there,” came a deep, rough voice. “Easy, fella.”

A vast humanoid shape moved into the light. Tall, wide; this was a mountain of a man. And there was something about his outline that seemed unusual. 

He slowly, calmly, strode across the room. “Stay away,” Bucky mumbled. He swiped at his visitor, missing by a foot. 

“Hey, c’mon now,” the voice came in reply as the figure kicked the door shut. It was almost soothing. “No need for any of that, uh?” He gently, but firmly, pushed Bucky back down onto the mattress. His hands were rough. Rocky.

Bucky blinked through the haze of pain and memories, pulling himself out of his mind’s eye. He recognised his visitor instantly. “Ben Grimm,” he declared.

“Atcher service.” In stark contrast to his rocky skin, Ben’s smile was soft and warm. He squatted down next to the makeshift bed. “Wasn’t sure how mucha your brains there was left,” he commented. 

Bucky struggled to piece his mind together. “Where… where am I?” he finally stammered out.

“Ben Grimm’s Hospital for the Livin’,” Ben replied proudly. “Usedta be an old sports centre before it got ditched. Then ol’ Colgate covered New York in darkness, and now it’s somewhere to keep people safe.” A single rocky finger pressed Bucky’s chest. “That ‘ncludes you. At least ‘til the doc says you’re ready ta rock.”

“I’m fine,” Bucky lied.

“Uh huh.” His show of strength wasn’t impressing Grimm. “Then I’m sure you won’t mind if I, uh…” He tapped Bucky’s shoulder. Fire coursed through his chest and neck, and a hiss escaped through his clenched teeth.

“‘S what I thought.” Ben gestured at Bucky’s head. “Doc says you got a ‘diastatic fracture’.” The way he enunciated the words made it abundantly clear that Ben had no idea what that meant. “Accordin’ to him, it’ll heal in a couple months. But you gotta take it easy ‘til then.” 

“How long was I out?” Bucky demanded.

“Long. Week? Ten days? Difficult to keep track o’ time when the sun ain’t shinin’. We’ve been drip-feedin’ ya. Honey, energy drinks. Gotta help your body fight.” A strange look came over him. “Oh, and, uh… speakin’ of that. Don’t go anywhere, wouldja?” Ben crossed the room, and returned with a hand-mirror. He offered it to Bucky. “Somethin’s changed in ya body,” he remarked. “Not sure what, but…”

The gash across the left side of his face left Bucky more grateful than ever that he still had both eyes. It ran from his forehead all the way down to the bottom of his cheek, and it was deep. He could almost see the layers of skin, parted like curtains. His fingers brushed it, and the inflamed flesh struck an unpleasant contrast.

Days of bedrest had left his jaw-length hair looking something like an abandoned bird’s nest in hurricane season - but Bucky hadn’t realised hurricane season could come during winter, because while his hair had been a dark brown before, it was now a stark white. His mind flicked to the vampires he had fought, and he recalled that they had, to a man, bright white hair. 

But the third change was the most haunting. Bucky had never been particularly proud of his eyes - they were an icier tone than Steve’s baby blues - but he would have taken his old colour over the new in a heartbeat. A deep crimson had emblazoned itself on his irises, a scarlet fanfare proclaiming that he had been bitten. But they had yellow eyes, he told himself. It made for a cold comfort.

“Gotta say,” Ben announced as Bucky absorbed the changes, “I wasn’t gonna take ya. Doc runs a bite check, and anyone…” He chewed on his words. “...infected, don’t get in. But I owed ol’ Frankie a favour. And he was pretty, heh. Insistent.”

He tore his eyes from the mirror. “Frank Castle?” Bucky interrogated.

“That’s the one.” Ben scratched his back. “Cap came in with what looked like a side o’ roadkill. You were squirmin’ and mutterin’, gettin’ blood everywhere. I told ‘em they weren’t bringin’ you in here, and Frankie pulled out a pistol an’ asked who was plannin’ to stop ‘im.” He chuckled. “I coulda taken ‘im. But the Punisher and I got a good workin’ ree-lationship, and I ain’t out to clobber that. So we gave ya a shot. An’ here you are.”

He stood, brushing his knees. “Doc’ll bring ya grub. We got books, magazines… whatever floats ya boat. Just ask.”

He left Bucky alone with his thoughts. 

There you go, gorgeous. Give it a few, and you’ll be fine. Pinky swear.

On the first day, Bucky asked for a pen and paper, and spent his time writing everything he could remember about his dream. When I’m ready to fight again, it’ll be important, he decided. He started reading a sci-fi book, but he had never been one for big stretches of the imagination, and he put it down after a few chapters. His mind kept drifting, remembering the way the alleys whizzed past him. The doctor brought him chicken soup, and ibuprofen.

On the second day, Bucky tried another book. This one was a romance novel. One of the characters reminded him of Steve a little. Then another started to remind him of Clint. He put the book away. He asked for a deck of cards, and played solitaire. The doctor brought him ravioli. 

On the third day, Steve came to visit him.

Bucky lurched to his feet as he strode through the door. “Steve,” he breathed.

“Buck.” Steve’s smile had a faint undertone of sympathy. He clasped Bucky in a fierce embrace, carefully avoiding the battered shoulder. “How are you feeling?” he inquired when they broke apart.

“Been better.” His eyes widened in surprise. “Sai.” She had slid into the room while they were distracted. He nodded at her. She inclined her head in return.

“James,” she replied. “I trust you are recovering?”

“Bit by bit.” He turned back to Steve. “Steve, about Clint…”

A red-gloved hand raised to stop him. “I know.” Steve’s eyes were full of pity. “I’m so sorry, Buck. I know he was special to you.”

Special. Yeah. “What happened to you guys? When we got separated?” 

“I headed for the Baxter Building.” Clouds passed over Steve’s face. “I made it close enough that the automatic defences protected me. I didn’t see the building, but I heard the gunfire. Heard the bullets fly past me to clear them out. That wasn’t nice.”

“Sai?”

“Many of my powers are telepathic,” Sai explained. “I reached into their minds and removed myself from their perception. Like erasing a chalk stroke.”

“Wish you could’ve done that for the rest of us,” Bucky muttered, trying and failing to keep the barb out of his tone.

“It is… difficult. I could barely manage hiding myself from such a crowd. More would have been impossible.”

Bucky inclined his head in acceptance. “How’d you find me?” he continued. 

“Your kimoyo bead.” Steve dug into a hip pouch, and placed it in Bucky’s palm. “I headed back to the jet. It had an interface for tracking. Castle was there. We found you comatose, running a fever that should’ve killed you.” He paused for a moment. “We found Clint, too,” he added quietly.

Bucky ignored that. Clint was the last thing he wanted to think about right now. He gestured to his white hair instead. “You don’t seem surprised by… this.”

“I came to visit a few times. You were asleep. Your doctor said there was nothing we could do; that we just had to wait.”

Nothing we could do for me. 

“Rogers, Captain America, the so-called hero…”

They were running, Bucky told himself, just like I was. It’s not their fault. “And Frank?” he heard himself ask. “He okay?”

“Frank’s been protecting Yancy Street.” Steve smiled a little. “He says he’s ‘not cut out for civvie work’.”

For the first time since he woke, Bucky smiled. He could hear Frank spitting out those words like poison.

“He says that if we’re going to protect civilians, we need to ‘make Yancy Street a fortress’. That seems to mean setting up sandbags on every corner.” Steve gave a rueful smile. “Not even Ben’s been able to stop him.”

They talked for a while then. About Yancy Street; about New York, and the New York they remembered. About the drinks they had shared, the battles they had fought. Sai sat quietly behind the two old comrades, speaking only when spoken to, allowing them the peace of reminiscence. But between each conversation, the prolonged silences curdled smiles, murdered laughter. And it seemed to Bucky that the missing member of their gathering was speaking loudest of all.

After a couple of hours, Bucky couldn’t take it anymore. He asked Steve to leave, pleading tiredness, and not ten minutes later, he regretted it, as the loneliness sent its insidious tendrils to coil around his brain.

On the fourth day, he tried to recall the entire field manual from memory. There were gaps in his memory from where younger Bucky had skim-read it, but he welcomed the challenge. Anything to keep his mind distracted. To stop him from thinking about the sounds Clint made as he died. The doctor brought him cup noodles. 

On the fifth day, he tried to do some exercise. Sit-ups were easy; he busted out thirty and barely broke a sweat. Push-ups were a greater struggle, as he was forcefully reminded the moment he lowered his weight on his singular hand. He would collapse after each set, gasping for air, his arm cramping. Then he would remember the shortness of breath he felt as they ran, and he would shove those thoughts away, and start again. He set a goal for one hundred in the entire day. He reached it by (what he was calling) early afternoon. The doctor brought him beans in chilli sauce. The burn felt oddly appropriate.

Frank’s remark about not being cut out for civvie work was starting to make uncomfortable amounts of sense.

Bucky spent the sixth day thinking. Tossing and turning. His brain was a debate hall, and a thousand voices were clamouring to be heard. He tried to weigh them all, objectively, fairly - but some voices were louder than others. 

Where were they?

Running. Like me. Like us.

They weren’t there. You needed them.

They were fighting for their lives. Hiding, running, surviving. It’s not their fault.

It is. After all the people they’ve saved, they couldn’t save Clint.

They were unfair thoughts. Evil thoughts. So why were they demanding that he listen? Bucky buried his head in his pillow.

Steve came from Wakanda to Antarctica to help me fight HYDRA.

And small help he was there. He hung around at the airfield, letting you fight the horrors on your own.

He’s always done right by me. Even when I didn’t deserve it.

Then where was he?

Round and round the arguments circled. The doctor brought him tuna and vegetables. He picked at it as his brain battled its war.

Clint deserved better.

I didn’t save him either.

I was dying. Someone else should’ve been there. They failed him, too.

But they weren’t. Because they were running, too. The voice seemed to be fading. Quieter and quieter, its arguments weaker and weaker.

Then why were we running alone? Where were they?

There were hundreds of them.

Bit stronger than sake?

Where were they?

Knew you’d come back to me. 

Where were they?

On the seventh day, Bucky Barnes was gone.

The doctor was the first to notice. He told the story to Steve, trembling with every word. The blanket was draped over a vaguely humanoid lump, and he had looked straight past it as he came in to do his morning rounds, thinking the patient was fast asleep. An hour later, the lump hadn’t moved. Fearing something had happened, he pulled back the blanket - and found that the “patient” was a bundle of bedding. How long had Bucky been gone? He didn’t know. He was so sorry. He would be more careful in the future. 

They combed the hospital. They turned every room upside down, checked inside every supply cupboard. Steve asked everyone he could find, begging for some scrap of information. Had they seen him? Had they talked to him? Nothing. 

Benjamin Grimm organised a search party. Two dozen fearless volunteers swept Yancy Street, led by Steve. They knocked on doors. Investigated abandoned houses and shops. Checked bins and cars. Sai was a hunter as well as a ninja. She used her telepathic powers to search for a trail, a psychic spoor she could track. But he had been gone for too long. Nothing. 

After four days of searching, Ben told Steve gently that he was pulling his team back. “I’m real sorry about him, Cap,” he apologised in the security of his office, “but he’s gone. And I ain’t puttin’ more lives at risk tryna drag him back.”

“He’s injured,” Steve insisted, “and he’s grieving. We have to get him back before-”

“If you wanna find him, be my guest,” Ben agreed. “But I ain’t helpin’. I’m sorry, Cap, really. But I got folks to look after here.” He left.

The springs complained as Steve eased himself into the armchair. It was old, perhaps even older than he was, and smelled stale, but Steve hadn’t felt this tired in years. The serum coursing through his veins had kept him going as he worked himself to the bone. But even he had his limits. He felt himself sink into the cushions as his mind drifted to sleep.

Come back to me, he pleaded into the void. Please.

Where are you, Buck?

ACT 1 END