Bon Voyage
"Buc-Bucky, no no no-"
Sam couldn't hear the stampede of combat boots anymore, but knew he was running out of time.
"Bucky come on! Wake up man walk it off!"
Despite gently cradling his face, Sam went as far as slapping Bucky, hard. Any moment, despite his face smeared with unnatural amounts of blood even for a super soldier, Buck would scowl at Sam. Ouch , he would say. Bucky would threaten to slap Sam too, only to pull him into a brief hug as reassurance. He would. He had to.
He didn't even blink.
" Bucky , p-p-please, we aren't done…”
“ we're not done yet…"
"...Bucky…BUCK-"
"SAM!"
Bucky gasped his name.
Only three pants in catching his breath, he immediately quieted upon seeing he's in complete pitch black darkness, on what felt like a cold, grimy wet concrete floor.
Something is wrong. Something is very, very wrong.
It wasn’t just the suspicious circumstances of waking up in the exact opposite of a hospital. Not just the unsettling vacuum of light and sound aside from his own he currently finds himself in. And as he felt around his temple, not just the magically disappearing bullet wound. Not even the lack of a scar.
Those were certainly causes of concern, but something deeper than his environment threatened to swallow his mind into a panic attack. He himself, felt wrong. All the way down to his guts and bones.
You don't belong here.
He stopped his train of thought before it could chug on further. Whatever was cause for concern, Bucky knew he didn't have the luxury to give into his threatening delirium. First he needed to assess himself, then his surroundings.
Bucky started with his head. That bullet should have killed him, it was fatal. Once Sam and Bucky cleared the room of assailants, securing them with whatever they could find, the partners began planning their next move. Planning that turned into bantering, with a hint of that tension he hasn't yet figured out the rhyme or reason for. He noticed it sprinkled into their conversations more and more lately, bickering that threatened to spill over into flirting. He was sure that’s what it would lead to. Sam had looked at Bucky funny, something Bucky said, he couldn't remember what, which earned him a slight tilt of his head to the left and a growing smile. That's when he noticed it, a gun pointed straight at Sam's head, finger on the trigger.
He did what any man would do.
One arm pulled Sam's head down to his chest, and the other reached for Sam's pistol, turning them both as two guns went off.
He could swear he faintly heard Sam's voice afterward, otherwise, all his other senses were gone, much like the room he was in now. Okay, even though he was so sure he should have died, he was here now. He felt around his head more, noticing long strands of hair, matted and knotted. Okay, weirder.
It takes him an average of a month to grow out his hair again, he measured it's growth after the first time he cut it.
Moving on before more panic could grip his throat, he settled on feeling his face, no cuts or bruises, and none of the scruff he was carefully cultivating over the last few days before their mission. He was freshly shaven, and they hadn't bothered to wash his hair. Weird and annoying.
Bucky moved to pat his body down, realizing he was naked. He couldn't help but let out a small oh slip out. That explained how he could feel the floor.
The room reminded him of a distant memory. The gears of the past were turning in his head. He didn't want to admit it to himself.
Finally, he leaned his flesh hand over his torso tentatively, lightly brushing against his prosthetic arm. Immediately, he pulled his flesh hand back as if it were burned.
No.
He gulped bile down. Hesitantly touching the side of his arm, an arm he abhorred but understood inside and out, he knew exactly who his captors were.
Fucking Hydra.
Hydra must have been funding the terrorist cell they infiltrated. But that feeling of wrongness wouldn't stop nudging the folds of his mind, almost dissuading his reasoning. He wished he could scream and yell, his hands shaking at the thought he was back after so long. The Asset finally reclaimed after so long. He healed so much, made too much progress to become the machine they programmed again, he couldn't fathom it being a reality anymore.
It wouldn't do him any other good just sitting here, hyperventilating and shivering. Bucky repressed his feelings, a bad habit he could never quite get rid of, got up, and slowly moved toward one direction of the room hoping to find a wall. As his hand touched concrete three steps to the right, he sighed, relieved. This meant they weren't doing any tests on him at the moment; it wasn't the first time he woke up in darkness, stripped of everything, only to be thrust into navigating around obstacles and enemies.
He continued along the wall until four steps forward he came to a corner. Three steps left an iron frame and door, three more steps another corner. He traced the left wall until five steps in, he found the back wall, then confirmed eight steps for the room's width.
There were no provisions along the floor, the room was empty. Meaning Hydra would come back soon. He was in holding, while they either got more tests, missions or cryo ready for him.
Bucky didn't feel quite at full strength, but from what he remembered of his time in captivity it was the best he had ever felt. His mind felt clear, and his body was okay except for the dense weight of the old arm.
Bucky decided to attack the moment after the initial escort. Depending on what they had planned for him, a wipe, cryofreeze, a mission or test, he would have better luck with some more than others. He would typically fight them off in the beginning, but from previous attempts he knew they'd be prepared. If he was calmer from the get go, they'd dismiss most of the orderlies and opt out of injecting him with subjugating drugs.
Finding a corner, he curled into a ball and waited.
Bucky decided he would keep his eyes closed, since it was likely daytime. Surprisingly, Hydra scientists preferred to work a normal nine to five.
They probably have a pension and a 401k too.
Sam's voice supplemented, and Bucky let a small smile grace. Damn, he missed his partner badly. Bucky wondered what could have kept Sam from saving him within a month. He knew his bullet hit the mark, thus Sam is alive, if there weren't any other agents on the premises. There probably was, as Bucky couldn’t think of any other scenario where Sam would abandon him. A testament to how much his trust in Sam had strengthened.
Either Sam got overrun, leaving Bucky's body there, and was searching high and low for him now, or Sam also got captured, potentially killed.
He would rather rip off his metal arm now than entertain the latter, so he mentally flipped through a list of Hydra bases that were nearly impossible to find.
Only three were left from being burned down, all three decommissioned, but so well hidden even Sam would have difficulty finding Bucky. Siberia, Lagos and Mexico.
Suddenly, a thought, a very, very bad thought crossed his mind then. What if he had imagined Sam? Imagined escape all those years ago?
There was a point in time in the 80s, when the CIA was experimenting with psychedelics, Hydra picked it up on their radar knowing of a perfect test subject. He never told anyone, not even his therapist or Steve, what he would see on those acid trips. In the worst ones, he'd dream of a beautiful wife and two kids, with a cat that looked exactly like the one he later adopted with Sam. He even insisted on naming the cat the same, Alpine.
They were brief hallucinations, yet so vivid he retreated into the fantasy every chance he got until the next time they completely wiped his brain.
He shook his head with vigor, Sam is real, Steve is real, Thanos was real. Despite his daydreams and for all his brain being fractured by Hydra, it was impossible for him to have conjured up nearly ten years of his life. It was only crazier to think he could create talking raccoons and trees, living in Wakanda and fighting a giant purple alien with a multi dimensional wizard who predicted it all, than actually living it.
He neatly debunked that doubt and incinerated it in his head.
Bucky was going to escape. He was going to find Sam.