touch
After a solid three days of pure suffering caused by your brilliant (and unsuccessful) idea to try and drink the memories away, you’re finally able to leave your bed without the pain behind your eyes and the vertigo dragging you right back into the warmth of your sheets.
You felt entirely numb once again, like a zombie. What the hell are you doing? Helping an organization with malicious intentions keep their murder machine up and running? Fixing him whenever he gets hurt while most likely killing people? Your job at SHIELD was to design equipment that would help protect innocent people from attacks on their freedom, not help keep a weapon in working order.
Long game.
Long game, you remind yourself.
Focus on what you need to do to win them over wholly.
Wait until the opportunity is just right to get the fuck out of here and never look back.
No baggage.
Just gone.
For two months, you start your days by getting dressed, checking your knives, walking the path to the kitchen, drinking your coffee while looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the hills surrounding the compound, making your way through the halls until you reach the cryogenic holding room. You have someone unlock the door so you can check the temperatures and vitals for all six soldiers from a panel at the bottom of the steps. You walk with whoever unlocked that door until you reach your lab, sometimes making small talk, sometimes not. They unlock your lab for you as well, and you lose track of time day after day just tinkering and working on whatever little project your mind offers you.
No matter how much you try to force the ideas from your thoughts, though, at the end of the day you always seem to be working on an idea for his arm. You can’t ever get it out of your head.
The thoughts vary, ranging from “How can I fasten the plates so the risk of them shifting is lessened” to “Would this be a good location to put a hidden failsafe measure? Would it be easily triggered when being grappled in a fight?”
Even in the middle of the night you’re waking up and dragging yourself over to the little desk in the corner of your room, jotting down ideas or sketches. They are always for the arm.
You’re pulled out of your routine around eleven a.m. when you hear the door to your lab click open, expecting it to just be someone bringing you papers or some new idea to look over. Instead, you’re greeted with two of Rumlow’s men helping the Soldier down the stairs, his head hung and hair stringy, wet with what you assume to be sweat, his body nearly limp, arms slung over the shoulders of the other men.
With your concern growing, you stand up from your table and drop the piece of metal and small soldering iron you’re holding. You quickly make it to the medical cabinet and grab a first aid kit so you can try to work on… wherever the blood is coming from first. You’re no nurse, but you’ll try your damn hardest to get him cleaned up before even considering working on the arm.
The men get him into the chair and he assumes his normal position; eyes straight ahead and body rigid. You place the first aid kit on the table and grab out some antiseptic wipes, ripping open the packages and rushing over to him- the men already disappearing up the stairs.
You bring your hand to his face, brushing the damp hair out of the way to assess the gash along his right cheekbone, gently bringing the wipe up to dab off the already-clotted blood crusting over the wound. He doesn’t react, just holds his forward gaze.
You manage to clean up the worst of them pretty decently; bandaging the evident stab wound in his right arm, sewing some makeshift stitches (can you even really call them that?) into the deep slash on his left thigh and placing adhesive gauze over the top, then covering the gash on his face with two small butterfly bandages.
Bringing your attention to the metal arm, you instantly gather that this is the worst you’ve seen it so far. Plates bent and shifted into unnatural places, wires exposed and frayed, cuts so deep in the metal that you’re going to have to make and replace entire pieces of the arm. You’re genuinely shocked- even though he is a super soldier and all- that he is still conscious.
You hover your hands slightly above the surface of the metal as you move closer to take a better look at the damage; afraid to put any pressure on the arm, afraid of causing him any more pain.
Once you get that closer look, you frantically run throughout the lab; gathering tools you think you might need and the soldering iron you had dropped when he was brought in, placing them all on a small rolling cart, stopping to grab a rolling chair and dragging it behind you as you push the cart over to the Asset.
You decide that you’re going to start at the wrist, where the damage is least prevalent; just a single plate shifted upwards and under the one located above it. You reach over to the cart and pick up a small tool that you had made when you first started working on the arm, one that allows you to easily grip onto each plate and pop or slide them out of their home with ease.
As you grip the tool in your right hand, you use your left to pick up and support the metal hand as gently as possible. You wince slightly as the mechanics within the arm whir in a way you hadn’t heard before, maybe less of a whir and more a high-pitched grinding sound.
You lightly close your eyes and shake your head, moving your right hand and the tool closer to the wrist.
But you’re stopped before the tool can make contact with the metal.
Stopped by a soft, warm touch around your own wrist.
The touch is so faint that you think you may just be psyching yourself out and imagining it- until you shift your gaze to see a large hand with dried blood speckled over it, lightly gripped around you.