Early morning calls
Bucky startled out of sleep. He had dreamt again. About Zola. About how they had tortured him to “make it more resilient”. They always referred to him as ‘it’.
‘It’ – the weapon.
‘It’ – the emotionally numb and forcefully modified assassin.
‘It’ – the best and most effective killing machine HYDRA had ever seen and was very proud to own.
‘It’ – the obedient thing they could do whatever they wanted to with, no matter if conscious or not.
Clint was and would always be the only one he had ever told about the rapes.
He had dreamt of how he fell from the train and had heard Steve’s yell. In the very moment, in which his left arm was practically ripped out of his shoulder he had woken up. He always woke up in this very moment and in the first months during recover he had always found a very worried looking Clint next to him, who told him that Bucky had screamed his lungs out with an intensity the whole Avengers Tower was horrified.
Sweat-soaked, Bucky leaned against the headboard of the bed and let out a long breath. His eyes fell on the bed stand. It was 04:30 a.m. He looked at Clint who peacefully slept like a baby. Apparently, he hadn’t screamed.
Had there ever been a night in which he hadn’t dreamt? Dreamt about this?
He could not remember.
But wait – in the night after he, Clint and Natasha had slept together for the first time he had been so exhausted afterwards that he had fallen into a dreamless sleep. That Clint had closed his hands around Bucky’s throat and squeezed the air out of him once or twice during the process (at his moaning request) seemed to have played its part, though.
His stomach hankered for something to eat but he had to fast before surgery. No food, no drinking and especially no cigarettes.
Bucky slipped out of bed naked and stepped out onto the balcony of the apartment, from where he could overview the whole city, which had not woken up yet. It was dawning.
He felt the sudden need to call Natasha. She had given him a phone number in the jet where she was constantly available, while he had felt Steve's worried look on him for the sixth time. He knew it was unclever. He might be putting her in otherwise avoidable trouble if he called her right now. He didn't even know where in the world she was or what time it was there.
He tried anyways.
There was a constant static in the phone line and Bucky was about to hang up as he heard that someone picked up. The only thing he could hear was her breathing at the end of the line.
It was his turn now. He started, voice quiet but warm and devoting.
“Wait for me and I'll come back!”
He heard her breathing a sigh of relief before she continued.
“Только очень жди,” [Wait with all your might!]
“Wait when dreary yellow rains
Tell you nothing's right;”
“Жди, когда снега метут,” [Wait when snow is falling fast]
“Wait when summer's hot…”
“Жди, когда других не ждут,
Позабыв вчера.” [When no one waits for other men And all the past's forgot!]
Bucky started to smile, and welcoming memories flushed his mind as they went on to recite “Wait for me!” by Konstantin Simonov[1] line by line. One in English, the next in Russian. Natasha and he had chosen this poem as a code back in the Red Room. They also agreed if one of them made only a single mistake while reciting it their connection was immediately cut. But by time Bucky could declaim it in Russian and English, back and forth and even in sleep.
“That was beautiful.” Natasha said.
“Yeah…”
He didn’t want to kill the mood and Nat must have felt it, so it was her to address the elephant in the room.
“How long till you go under the knife?” She asked.
“Four and a half hours.”
“How are you feeling?”
Bucky stared out into the fog that covered the city and slowly began to lift. He scratched his neck.
“I am scared, Nat. They said it’s quite likely that I go into coma afterwards. I’m so hella scared that it’ll feel like cryostasis.”
“Back then you always said you couldn’t feel anything while you were frozen” She stated.
“Yeah sure, but it’s the aftermath I am talking about, Natalia. The feeling when you're coming around. I’ve never felt so lost and desolate and hopeless like when they just pulled me out of the freezer. It felt like my heart was pumping liquid nitrogen through my veins. Don’t you remember how weird I always acted afterwards?”
He could hear Natasha’s sad smile through the phone.
“Don’t ever assume I lost any kinda memory from that time. Especially not from our time, my love. And you weren't weird, if I may interrupt your low self-esteem."
“Oh, shut up, as if yours has ever been any higher!” Bucky had to grin and he could hear Natasha laughing.
“Touché, but I know how to hide it well. What I was going to say was that you were always slightly disoriented and preoccupied but also more eager on your following mission. But when they defrosted you, I only ever got to see you after you were freshly wiped. So, this has definitely played its part. But since you are neither being frozen nor being wiped – at least in the way HYDRA did it, I don’t think it’ll feel like cryostasis.”
Bucky sighed. Judging by the amount of clouds piling up threateningly in the distance, he could wait forever for the sunrise he had hoped to watch.
“And what if I don’t wake up?”
“Then Clint and I will make a wonderful couple.”
“C’mon Natalia!”
“Didn’t we just talk about hiding low self-esteem and personal worries that you don’t even wanna imagine in your worst nightmares? For example with sarcasm?”
The bittersweet tone in her voice sounded a bit scrunchy.
“Where are you even? The line sounds awful!” He asked.
“Я дома, дорогуша.” [I’m at home, darling.]
Bucky’s eyes widened in surprise.
“В Сибире?” [In Siberia?]
“да.” [Yes.]
“If I was Loki, I’d now say something like ‘If I might express my utter confusion’...”
“I can’t tell you much.” Now Natasha was the one to sigh. “Fury put me on this. There have been some unusual activities around HYDRA’s Siberian Facility and-”
“Wait! I got questions!” Bucky interrupted her.
This was not good, he thought. Not at all. Did someone reactivate the others? Did they manage to escape?
“Firstly: How does Fury even know about this facility and its exact location? Even you Nat, have never been there. I was brought to the Red Room in Belarus to train you. Not the other way around.”
“Flash news to brighten your day: A SHIELD undercover agent found Vasily Karpov dead in his apartment this morning. Apparently, he was tortured and then drowned. She found him hanging upside down from the ceiling with his head in a filled sink. Behind a destroyed wall was a cavity in which she found old HYDRA files.“
Bucky heard an unpleasant rupture of metal and his eyes wandered to the place where his metal hand had just cracked a piece of the elegantly curved balcony rail. The scars around the metal plates on his left shoulder suddenly seem to be set on fire.
“What was that?”
“…I just expressed some of my hidden emotions” Bucky grunted between clenched teeth.
The book. They must have taken the book. Fuck.
"Natalia – This. Is. Not. Good. Does Fury know about the others? Does he know that there are more of my kind? More Winter Soldiers in this exact facility?”
The line went silent for a few seconds.
“Natalia!”
“Yes. I told him.”
“And what is he planning to do now? Make you put your head straight in the lion’s mouth? Damnit Nat, it should be me out there, not you!”
The first roll of thunder resounded above the city.
“That’s why I said I can’t tell you much. I didn’t want you to worry about these things. Not today.”
Bucky tilted his head back and let the first raindrops fall on his naked body. Or was it tears?
“God Natalia… what have you gotten yourself into…”
“Just what people with a fate like ours always get ourselves into.”
Bucky let out a shuddering breath and listened to the water that now trickled down his skin but didn’t manage to wash away his fears.
“Look. If I wake up-“
“After you’ve woken up!” It sounded simultaneously out of the phone and, to Bucky’s surprise, from the open balcony door. Clint, only dressed in his most beloved purple boxer-shorts and a zipper hoodie, leaned against the door frame. His eyebrows wrinkled in a sharp V-line.
“If I wake up-” Bucky went on ignoring the protest “I... I’ll be there. For both of you. More than ever. I love you both so much. And I don’t wanna continue being a weight on your shoulders but be able to catch you too when you need someone to lean on.”
“Hey…” Natasha interrupted him. “You’re already doing all of this for us, sweetheart!”
“But I wanna do better.” Bucky replied and took a few deep breaths trying to calm himself down.
“Jesus I’m scared. I don’t wanna die during this procedure or whatever. I wanna recognise you. I don’t care about the others but you and Steve – you are the ones I wanna know who you are and what I feel for you when I open my eyes. I- fuck...” Bucky’s voice started shaking.
“It’s okay, baby. We’re here” He heard Clint saying and felt his boyfriend’s arms wrapping around him from behind.
“Shit...” Bucky wiped his eyes, but the rain was so heavy now that it didn’t make a difference. “I bet the other’s already keep calling me ‘cry baby' behind my back...”
“Don't you dare to say that. They have no idea what you've been through!” Natasha said and Bucky could hear that there was something in her voice, that he and Clint were probably the only ones to ever hear it: It was true fear for someone she deeply loved.
Natasha cleared her throat.
“Clint?” She asked with a husky voice.
“Yes?”
“Give him a kiss from me. A good one, you hear me?”
Clint turned Bucky around in his arms and kissed him on the mouth. Long, deep and intimate.
Bucky whined as they eventually broke apart.
Natasha must have heard it because the phone rattled: “Deargod, I miss you guys!”
“We miss you too, воробей.”
“I’ve gotta hang up now. There are new reports coming in from the other agents.”
Bucky’s heart sank a little. “Take care baby!”
“Bu-ttt… y- you!” Natasha’s voice cracked and then the line was dead. She had never been a person who enjoyed goodbyes heavy with meaning.
Bucky opened his phone, cracked the SD-card with his metal fingers and shoved the two halves of his phone into Clint’s jacket pockets. He leaned into his lover’s hug and stared out over the city.
“I promise you, Clinton Francis Barton – when all of this is over, and I am still in a condition to recognise and communicate with you – I am gonna marry you.”
Clint’s heart skipped a beat.
“… say- say that again.”
Bucky turned to him, kissed him on the forehead and buried his nose in the blond mess of hair.
“No. You know that I mean it.”
He could feel Clint smile against the skin of the crook of his neck.
“Yes, I do.”