Something is Wrong with Bucky Barnes
It’s quiet. He doesn’t know much other than quiet. His body moves, he smiles and talks, but the words are only movements in his mind. He is vaguely aware of people around him, a person he should know, a friend, a thread to somewhere far back, somewhere older than him, older that the cold that came before. He should know the name. He knows he should. But not much gets through the quiet, let alone his own thoughts, memories.
Sometimes there are flashes of something though. Of pain, slaps to his body, on his back, searing through his left shoulder. Of something, too fast for him to tell if it’s knowledge or memory, always laced with fear and horror. They come up with words he can’t quite make out, movements he doesn’t make himself. It’s awful. He prefers the silence. The nothing he is otherwise.
He lives in a quiet haze of red, alone, nothing, empty. The flashes of something else come by and he pulls further back, out and away.
And then, there are The Minutes. He doesn’t know when they happen or why. But then he is in his body, fully. He feels the pain, the hunger, the thirst, all at once, overwhelming him, drowning him. He can’t move then, he doesn’t know how. It’s like the first seconds of thawing from cryo - what is cryo, he doesn’t remember, but he knows - he is helpless in his shape, muscles and bones and pain lacerating around him. He blinks and looks around, he doesn’t know where he is, when he is. He never knows how long he is. The Minutes come and go without mercy, and he is downed back into the red fog, the nothing, and not sure if he relieved or in mourning at the loss of his body and a place and time to be in.
This time it’s different. This time there is another person. Another man - he is a man - talking to him. Calling him Barnes. That’s his name, Barnes, Sergeant Barnes. A flash of something old and painful tears through him at the name, some part of the name, the feeling of metal in his hands, air in his lungs, the taste of explosions and snow. It hurts, and the man before him seems to be entirely oblivious to anything happening in Barnes’ mind.
The man pushes against him, and Barnes can feel it, he can feel the heat of the palm through his shirt, the pressure of finger pushing into his muscle. It’s real, it’s so so so real, and it happens again, twice Barnes feels another person touch him, he’s a person, a person alive a person a live person alive
He’s nothing. He’s nothing again, blanketed by red haze. And this time there is no confusion, the thing in his heart is clear, clear as the other man’s face. Terror and mourning and anger. Loss. He is alone, he is a person, alive, a live person, and he is alone.
Barnes does not want to be alone. He begins to push.