Chapter 2
Bucky would be lying if he said he woke up feeling refreshed.
Aside from the last few times in the hospital, he couldn’t remember a time he’d woken up feeling this shitty. And that was saying something, given that he’d been in a war not long ago.
It took a second for the memories of the previous day to return for him. The first bleary look he took of the room confused him immensely, his brain expecting to see the grimy insides of a tent, or at worst the depths of a forest. Instead, of course, there was sunshine shining brightly down at him through open curtains, the softness of the light telling him that it was early in the morning.
Right. The future. That.
He couldn’t help the way his heart sank a little at that fact, his stomach clenching and making him feel a little sick.
No matter what he did, he wouldn’t be able to get back to anything familiar any time soon. Everything he could see right now just looked… wrong. It was like they hadn’t tried at all to get anything in that actually looked good.
As he went to sit up, he grimaced. His whole back was tense, and ached as he moved. Powering through it only got him so far – this was the kind of thing that wouldn’t go away until it wanted to.
The headache he could ignore too – he’d probably overslept, given how early he’d gone to sleep. (The irony of worrying about oversleeping didn’t escape him.)
He was still in the clothes he’d been wearing the day before – he’d never had a chance to take them off. Should he change? He felt like he should, but what would he change into? He couldn’t see anywhere obvious that clothes would be hidden away – although it seemed like an odd thing for the people who made this place to overlook.
Deciding to relieve himself and then worry about it, he stood up. His muscles were loosening up nicely, the pain much less than it had been only minutes prior.
He forgot all about that the moment he saw the bathroom. It was unbelievably shiny (how often was this place cleaned??), everything in white and chrome, with marbled countertops holding two sinks. It almost seemed a shame to use the toilet, like he was sullying it somehow.
The call of nature was too strong, however, and he quickly got rid of that problem.
But that didn’t get rid of his earlier problem. Wandering back into the main bedroom, he ran a hand over the bed to smooth out the wrinkles he’d left on the quilt by sleeping on top of it. Ordinarily this kind of morning routine would have included things like brushing his teeth and generally getting presentable – but it didn’t seem like those were things he could do here. Just because they said it was his place didn’t mean he felt comfortable here.
He only spent a few more minutes deliberating what to do before there was a knock at the door. It made him jump – he was in the living area now, and it was louder than he’d been expecting.
For a second his brain worked against him to make him unsure whether it really was a knock at his door – but then he figured he’d go check it out anyway.
It took a second to figure out how to undo the locks, but he managed it eventually.
“Hey there,” Natasha grinned at him from her position leaning against the doorframe. “Ready to get the day started?”
Bucky blinked. “Sure?”
“Let’s go get breakfast then!” Natasha seemed more energetic today than she had done before – she was being generous with her smiles, and appeared to be more open. It put Bucky on edge.
They began to walk back in the direction that they had come the day before, Natasha in the lead again. “So, uh… did you sleep well?” It would have felt weird to be walking together but saying nothing.
Natasha nodded. “I did, thanks. You?”
Bucky hesitated before answering. It was debatable whether he’d had a good night’s sleep – did having constant nightmares about feeling cold count as good sleep? As he took in the widened eyes Natasha was giving him, Bucky debated telling her the truth. “I did too.” Something about this didn’t feel right.
He spent the rest of the walk they were on asking about what he was supposed to do about clothes. “There’s plenty of people who will bring you things, don’t worry about it. We’ll get you some soon.”
(He also sort of wanted to ask about the whole cleaning-himself thing – but he also didn’t particularly want to talk to a lady about the fact that he wasn’t as clean as he wanted to be.)
It was sort of disappointing to discover that ‘breakfast’ was just mush. Part of him had been hoping for a big, hearty breakfast, something to satiate the hunger (and to take the opportunity to eat a lot now that he’d be able to). The whole time they were walking, Bucky had been imagining a feast, and yet all he got was this?
Staring despondently at the slop, he tried shovelling it in his mouth. It wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to, but it wasn’t exactly great, either.
Plus all the eyes on him as he ate were disconcerting. That didn’t help.
It might not be the most appetising thing he’d ever had, but at least it was filling. Now that was something he could get used to – a real luxury, not like all the other fripperies they’d placated him with.
By the time the bowl was gone, he was almost sorry to have finished it.
Natasha sat next to him the entire time, on her… phone? It didn’t quite look like the contraption that Fury had shown him yesterday, but she was tapping away at it. When he tried to lean over subtly to see what she was doing, her only reaction was to lean away with a smirk. Clearly he hadn’t been as subtle as he thought.
The others that had been in the room had left as quickly as they had appeared – some generally odd behaviour, as far as Bucky was concerned.
If Natasha’s activities couldn’t entertain him, then what could? He began to look around the room, looking for something, anything, that wasn’t just him being bored by himself. The room was just so bland though, almost like it was designed to torture him.
Bucky reassured himself with the fact that at some point someone would have to come take the empty bowl from him. They couldn’t leave it with him forever; someone would come, and when they did, Bucky would be able to try to get more information out of them.
Natasha coughed. Bucky jumped, even as he internally berated himself for it – his instincts should be under better control than that. Still, he turned to look at her as she stood up. “I’m going to leave for a minute. I’ll be back soon – don’t go anywhere.” She waggled a disapproving finger at him playfully, her customary smirk on her face. Bucky wanted so badly to believe it was friendly and nothing more – yet something about it seemed performative. No, he must just be imagining things, there was no way that there was anything weird going on here.
“Okay.” Bucky nodded, and Natasha made her way out of the room.
Everything was fine, for a while – it was very quiet in the room, and Bucky figured he may as well take a little nap. It didn’t seem like anything was going to happen any time soon, and there was nobody about to judge him.
Tipping his head back, he leaned against the wall behind him. Closing his eyes, he tried to relax, tried to let the fulness of his stomach speed his progress along.
For a moment it seemed to work – his body seemed to enjoy the slow slide into unconsciousness, greeting it like an old and welcome friend. A dream began to emerge – some half-baked thing about him and Steve and Natasha all in a swimming pool together, with a floating tree in the water with them? – and he could feel himself slipping under…
Hairs at the back of his neck began to prickle. Eyes snapping open, Bucky looked around the room, certain that there was someone here in the room.
It was empty, no signs of anyone else anywhere. Strange. Closing his eyes again, Bucky tried to settle back in, to get to that comfortable spot he’d been in before.
Perhaps it was just paranoia – but his sniper senses had never failed him before. He had to open his eyes again, the unwavering certainty that there was someone watching him pickling in the back of his mind. There was still no-one though, everything undisturbed. He couldn’t even hear anyone – not a single thing.
The feeling didn’t go away, even as he tried to reassure himself that there was nobody around. It made the whole thing begin to feel much more ominous, like there was something bigger going on here.
Now that he’d worked himself up into that state of mind, he couldn’t get the idea out of his head. His eyes stayed wide open for as much as he could stand to, despite the very real fact that he was sleepy now, his eyelids threatening to close constantly.
There was no conscious decision to sleep – especially since the longer Natasha was gone, the more Bucky was sure that there was some big Thing going on.
Still, Bucky was startled out of a sleep he didn’t realise he’d fallen into. “We need to go now.” Bucky jumped, Natasha’s voice coming from beside him, intense and dark.
He span around, still half asleep, his nerves twanging. “We do?” Was there something he’d forgotten that they were going to do? Was something wrong?
“Yeah, they want you back at the hospital wing. There’s just some more stuff they want you to do for them, I guess.” She sounded much less worried now than she had in the first sentence, and Bucky’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her innocent face. Her eyes were wide, and yet Bucky couldn’t help but suspect that there was something she was keeping from him.
Standing up on legs shaky from sleep, Bucky did his best to stir himself properly. He had to say, he wasn’t unhappy to leave this room – it had been terrible to be in here, and he found himself glaring back at the room just out of spite.
The fact that the paranoid feeling faded the further away he got from the room just went to show how awful it was in there. Natasha didn’t speak to him anymore, staying ahead of him the whole time, leading the way.
They didn’t walk very far, probably because they were already pretty close to the hospital wing. Not that Bucky was eager to get to whatever it was they were going to be doing in there, but right now that was the preferable option.
It didn’t escape Bucky that by this point he really had little idea of where he was. Every movement, every corner, every set of stairs, all made sure that his bearings were entirely gone.
Still – the room that they were led to was very like the one he’d woken up in, in the sense that it was clearly part of the hospital. It seemed to have more machinery in it this time, and no bed.
That didn’t mean that Bucky felt any more comfortable in it, but it was still some sort of familiarity.
Suddenly, in direct contrast to before, the room filled with people. Some of them were wearing the same weird pyjamas as the people yesterday, which Bucky could only assume was some sort of uniform for them.
In fact, as more and more of them poured in, he thought that he recognised some of them from yesterday.
Before Bucky knew it, he was surrounded by the strangers with no sign of Natasha. At what point she’d disappeared he couldn’t say, but all he knew was that she was no longer in this room, despite him following her here.
Feeling like a goddamn science experiment, Bucky found himself hooked up to various machines – some wrapping around his arms, some pinching his stomach. Frankly the only instrument he recognised was the stethoscope (and even then Bucky wasn’t sure the doctor poking him with it was going to get an accurate reading – his heart was going at a million miles an hour thanks to the anxiety this whole thing was giving him).
Perhaps the weirdest part was when the doctors asked him how he felt about the breakfast they’d given him. Squinting at them, trying to figure out if that meant they’d poisoned it in some way, he replied, “uuh… It was boring, but it was fine? What…?”
The doctor who had asked him looked at one of his colleagues and raised his eyebrows. The fact that he looked shocked didn’t make Bucky any more confident that his food hadn’t been tampered with in some way. Had that been the cause of the uneasy feeling?
These people were weird, Bucky concluded.
Sure, it was weird to have been poked and prodded about so much, but there didn’t seem to be any real issues with it
In fact, the main reason he put up with it (even as the light began to fade outside) was that the longer it went on, the fewer people there were around him – not for any particular reason he could see, but he wasn’t about to complain about it.
At one point, he noticed Natasha slipping back into the room. Her face didn’t betray a single thing about where she’d been – not that he had been expecting anything else, but it didn’t make it any less frustrating.
**
A few hours later found them sat in another room on uncomfortable chairs. They’d been brought here by one of the doctors and told that it wouldn’t be long. Frankly Bucky couldn’t imagine what they were doing that could possibly need to take this long, but he could only assume that there had to be something.
“When will it be done?” He stage whispered to Natasha. He didn’t really care whether any of the others heard him – it was them he was irritated with, after all.
Natasha looked at him pityingly. “I don’t know,” she replied. “Just be patient, okay?” A spike of irritation sped through him – he didn’t need to be treated like a child.
“I’m trying,” he said. He didn’t want to get annoyed with Natasha – it wasn’t her fault, after all – but he didn’t have to like the situation either.
When it didn’t seem like any results would be forthcoming any time soon, he settled against the wall again, hoping that maybe this time he’d be able to get comfortable.
Maybe he did actually manage to find a comfortable position, or maybe it was just his back going numb, but after a while he didn’t seem to feel the stabbing of the oddly-shaped chair in his back any more, nor did he feel that spike of plastic jabbing into his leg.
It was strange, how in some situations he’d perfected the art of patience – and yet in others he just couldn’t find the willpower to be patient at all. Natasha, on the other hand, seemed to have taken all the patience in the room and absorbed it – Bucky didn’t think he’d seen her move a muscle in about half an hour, and yet she was definitely awake.
Maybe that was adding to his own impatience. Or, then again, maybe it was the environment that was putting him on edge. It had been doing that the entire time he had been here, of course, but the longer he spent in it the more unsettled it made him.
Giving Bucky’s mind time to wander was never a good plan. With no one to talk to, he had to find his own way to entertain himself – and he couldn’t help but wonder about what was taking so long to do these tests. Hadn’t he had to wait long enough, the entire time he was being tested? What exactly were they doing in there?
A seed of worry was planted in his mind at that point. What if they were taking a while because it had turned out that there was something wrong with him? That he was sick in some way – that he’d need to be kept in here for testing. He’d seen enough of what that had done to Steve, to be kept in a hospital for so long, and he wasn’t eager to experience it for himself. Having the few days he’d been in here had been enough for him, thank you.
But what if they did? Images of big needles and more restraints crept into his mind, things which he really didn’t want to go through under any circumstances.
No, he would fight that with everything he had, if they even tried to.
But then, if he was sick, wouldn’t it make sense for him to let them make him better?
Oh, there were just too many variables here.
Fuck.
It took another half an hour or so for anything to happen, during which Bucky was bored out of his mind. Natasha didn’t seem bothered by it – sure, he could be patient and wait, but it was usually when he knew what to expect at the end of the wait. This sort of thing was a level up from that, and it really tested his limits.
Bucky jumped.
Noise was coming from the door to the room – was this it? His saviour, coming to take him away from this place? (Maybe that was a little dramatic, but the image of Steve, young and healthy, bursting in here in full Captain America gear popped into his head and he had to struggle to not laugh.)
Staring at the door in anticipation, Bucky wondered why they’d been locked in here so thoroughly. It sounded like whoever was on the other side was struggling to get the door open, and Bucky almost felt sorry for them.
Natasha didn’t look all that bothered by any of it – if she hadn’t been completely zoned out for the past hour he might have been more surprised by that, but the woman had the patience of a saint.
The rattling stopped abruptly, followed by the door opening with a flourish, banging against the wall. One of the men from earlier came into the room looking stressed – and understandable, given how long it had taken him to get into the room to begin with.
Or at least, that’s what Bucky assumed it was. The man’s eyes darted around the room, even with Bucky and Natasha watching him impatiently. He looked thoroughly uncomfortable, and honestly his demeanour was making Bucky uncomfortable himself. If he was this worried to tell them what was going on…. Well, Bucky didn’t think he had to be a genius to realise that there was probably something seriously wrong.
He felt a little sick to his stomach (was this a sign of whatever illness he probably had? Or was he just nervous?), and he swallowed, trying to keep his nerves on the inside, where they belonged.
“Is something the matter?” Natasha was the first to speak, sounding for all the world like she barely cared what the answer would be. Bucky could see the tension in her arms though, the way her eyes narrowed minutely. Bucky might not know her very well yet, but some part of her was invested in hearing about the results.
Coughing, the man straightened up. He was holding a folded piece of paper in his hands, and Bucky realised that it must hold the answers to whatever they’d been trying to find out. His skin prickled. The unwell feeling returned a little – there had to be something wrong with him, he just knew it, he was dying –
“So, uh… Everything’s normal, Mr Barnes.”
The words hit Bucky like a welcome slap to the face, like a refreshing splash of water over his head.
“I’m…. What?” Bucky’s shoulders felt about a ton lighter. The uneasiness he’d been feeling began to fade a little, but not completely – the idea had been to pervasive to get rid of just like that.
The knots in his stomach grew a little tighter as Natasha asked for clarification, and the man began to rattle off some jargon about the specifics of the results. Natasha seemed to understand it (she was nodding along, at least), but Bucky was pretty sure that at least half of the words coming out of his mouth were made up.
(Honestly if he hadn’t had the good news first, the use of so many weird technical words might have made him think that things were really wrong right now.)
His knee began to bounce. Nerves had to have an outlet somehow, and sometimes he just couldn’t help but show how nervous he was through habits like that.
What was he meant to think about all this?
“Hey, Bucky, I’m just going to have a chat with this guy in the corridor, alright?” Natasha smiled at him as she stood up to leave.
As she quickly walked out of the room, Bucky’s first thought was that it was nice of her to not force him to listen to their talking. She could probably tell that he had no idea what was going on, and wanted to spare him it.
Still – they ended up being gone for quite a while, and the longer it went on for, the more Bucky’s anxiety returned. What if they were talking about something they didn’t want him to hear? He’d already figured out that Natasha sort of did her own thing most of the time – it wasn’t beyond reason that she might not exactly be a loyal friend.
Or even – what if the man had been lying? What if he really was going to have to go back to the hospital again? (He’d spent so much of his childhood seeing how much Steve hated being stuck there for weeks on end – he didn’t know how he’d be able to do it without the support of his best friend.)
By the time Natasha returned, Bucky had pretty much convinced himself that he was dying. He looked up with fearful eyes as she walked towards him – what was she going to tell him?
“Want to go get dinner?”
Bucky’s stomach rumbled just at the mention of food. Well that wasn’t what he’d been expecting to hear. Natasha didn’t look worried at all. Was that a worrying thing or not? Should he assume that she was lying? Or should he take it as a sign that everything was just fine?
“Well… yes, but how did your talk with that man go?” Bucky asked, unable to let go of that just yet (even though having a more substantial meal did actually sound like a pretty good idea).
Natasha shrugged. “Just some more stuff about the tests they did. It’s all in here if you want to read about it.” She waved a sheaf of paper at him, which looked to be the same on the man had come in with.
“Yes, please,” Bucky replied – perhaps a little too fast.
Natasha smirked a little as she passed the paper to him. It seemed a little mocking, which Bucky didn’t appreciate… but as he looked the results of his testing over, he understood why. If he’d thought that what the man was saying had been incomprehensible, he really should have expected for this to be even worse. There were charts and graphs, as well as dense thickets of text, all combining to be the worst possible way to present information, as far as Bucky was concerned.
Sheepishly, he put the papers down on the seat next to him, trying not to look like he hadn’t understood a word of it. Natasha was watching him, scrutinising him, as she often seemed to be, but she wasn’t smirking any more. Feeling rather like this had been some sort of test, Bucky stood up, shaking himself a little. His knees were stiff, as they often were after so long sat down. It wasn’t necessarily something he couldn’t deal with, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable either.
“Shall we be off?” Bucky tried to move the conversation along, to get on to the part where he got to fill his stomach properly. That was what he had really been focused on ever since breakfast – if he was going to get a good meal at some point today, it would almost make everything worth it.
Natasha led him to a familiar room – the one from this morning. Well, that was an interesting twist, but not totally unexpected either. “So what are we having?” He asked, grinning, looking from Natasha to the other men in the room.
Natasha blinked. “Oh, I’m not eating here,” she said bluntly.
Now it was Bucky’s turn to be surprised. “Oh – right, okay. So… what’s happening?” This was weird, right? (He began to suspect that this was another of their weird tests.)
His suspicions began to be confirmed as he saw one of the people from earlier enter the room with a familiar looking bowl of slop on a tray. Placing the tray on one of the tables, she gave Bucky a weirdly nervous smile, before backing out of the room.
“Bon apetit?” Natasha sounded about as convinced as Bucky did that he should actually eat this.
Looking around, Bucky wondered if it would do him any good to throw a fit and refuse to eat it. Would they bring him something better?
Deciding that, on the whole, he didn’t like his chances, Bucky reluctantly sat down and picked up the spoon. Knowing what was about to befall him didn’t make it any more appealing – if anything it made him want to eat it less.
Still, he knew that despite how unappetising it was it would still fill him up. The faster he ate, the quicker he’d stop feeling so hungry, and that could only be a good thing.
Just like in the morning, it was strange to eat while being watched. Still, he knew that there was very little he could do about it, and so he simply had to keep going, keep eating.
By the time he was done with eating, he was just about done with this whole thing too. He just wanted to go back to his room, to go home, and to be alone.
His wish was granted – but not before they had explained something to him about how he needed the nutrition in the stupid food. Frankly it sounded like they were trying to come up with excuses to make him eat it, which was just unfair as far as he was concerned.
By the time he was done eating, he found himself feeling quite tired. He didn’t quite know why, since most of what he’d done that day had consisted of sitting around and having other people do stuff to him, but somehow it must have tired him out.
He was glad, then, when Natasha took him back to his room, saying that he could spend the evening doing whatever he wanted. Had he had more energy, he was sure he would have used that to his advantage in some way – but as it was, the moment he was left alone, he crawled into bed.
Bucky went to bed that night happily, but still unsure what was going to befall him the next day.
**
Bucky blinked awake. He was less confused this time – the room he’s gone to sleep in was the same one he’d woken up in yesterday. The room still didn’t really feel like his yet, but it at least didn’t make him completely uncomfortable any more.
This time there was no noise from outside, no sign of Natasha. Well, that was probably for the best – given that unlike yesterday he’d bothered to strip down to his underwear to sleep in, he didn’t want others to see him right now. Not that Natasha struck him as the sort that would be bothered by that, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.
At least last night he’d thought to close the curtains. He was gratified to know that the thickness of the curtains wasn’t just for show – they did a really good job of blocking out the light, and the room was shadowy, with only a little light slipping through the edges of the curtains. It truly was a luxury, to be able to choose when your room was dark or not – certainly not something he’d ever had experience with. The future truly was an amazing place.
Working through the part of him that was tempted to go back to sleep just for the experience of it, Bucky began to stretch. Even though he thought that it would be interesting to go back to sleep – something he hadn’t had the luxury of since he was a child – habit and years of conditioning told him that he needed to get up as soon as possible.
Feeling a little less like he was defiling the room, he threw back the covers and reluctantly got out of bed.
Deciding to take his time with things, he allowed himself the luxury of opening the curtains and looking at the view outside. It took his eyes a few moments to get used to the light (he'd noticed just how much cleaner the air seemed here, which tended to make the light everywhere that much brighter. It was one of the things he'd thought about asking someone about - but then, it hadn't seemed important enough, what with the testing and all that going on.).
Squinting, he could make out rather a lot of the cityscape. He wasn't really too far from all of it, really – and compared to the heights of some of the buildings he could see, he didn't even really feel like he was that high up at all. It was strange, but having been in airplanes several time by now made being in a measly building seem just that bit less impressive.
He almost thought that it was nice of them to give him such a nice room to be in. After all, it would probably have been easy for them to find another room, lower down, one which didn't have a good view, or nice furniture.
(It served as a good reminder that he probably shouldn't try to annoy these people. It could only backfire for him in the long run - who knew what they'd be capable of doing to him if things went sour.)
Opening one of the drawers in the cabinet gingerly, Bucky was surprised to find it stocked with clothes that were, almost certainly, in his size. It was quite unlike yesterday, when he'd simply had to make do with what he already had on.
Taking them with him into the large bathroom, he eyed up the complicated looking shower. It was an intimidating thing, made of shiny chrome and with multiple showerheads. He couldn't possibly imagine what they all were for, but he did need to be clean (he was beginning to feel grimy, a feeling he'd become intimately familiar with during the war).
Stripping off his pyjamas and dumping them on the floor next to the clean clothes, he pulled a switch which seemed to be the one to turn the water on (at least, he hoped it did that. What else it did he couldn't imagine, but it probably wouldn't be good).
Then it was time to face the various knobs and buttons which he could only assume were the controls for the shower itself. Complicated as they were, he was a sergeant, he could figure this out by himself, damnit -
Freezing cold water hit his back, making him yelp.
Stepping away from the spray, and twisting the knob he'd tried in the other direction, he glared at it in confusion. How cruel, to make him face the cold water first? (The fact that he was entirely used to cold water showers didn't mean that he appreciated having them with no warning.)
Leaning in closer, he saw that the other knob beside it had red and blue markings etched either side of it. The pointer on the knob was facing the blue side, so, purely experimentally, he pushed it to face the red side. That sort of made sense, right?
Trying the first knob again (much more gingerly, he had to admit), he was irritated the moment that the cold water splashed onto him again.
Seriously, was hot water too much to ask of the future? What kind of -
Oh, wait. The temperature began to change, slowly warming up degree by degree.
Not knowing how much longer this hot water was going to last, he quickly began to lather up with the bath things that were already in the shower. He had to say, the idea of liquid soap was an odd one (how were you meant to get a good lather going with a liquid? Surely it would all just run off?), but was pleasantly surprised to find that not only did it seem to work just as well as the bars he was more familiar with, but it smelled better too. Just as much of chemicals, sure, but still better than the harshness of the bar soap.
The shampoo and conditioner were just as nice too - although his own hubris led him to not taking the warnings on the labels about not getting any of it in your eyes. His eyes had stung for a good five minutes while he desperately tried to wash the suds out.
Ah, how nice to feel clean, finally.
Stepping out from the shower, dripping onto the floor from both his body and hair, he realised he hadn't thought to look at where the towels were.
Hoping there might be some in this room (the idea of wandering out into the main room with nothing to hide his modesty wouldn’t exactly be his first choice of action), he began to have a look in the cupboards dotted around the room.
Hurrah! There was a small basket, hidden in a corner, with two or three towels stacked inside. Revelling at their softness, at their water-absorbing abilities (it was a far cry from the rags they'd used to soak up the worst of the damp at home) Bucky began to towel himself dry. It was as pleasant an experience as the showering had been. In fact, if Bucky had had the choice, he'd have perhaps spent a while just wrapped up in a towel, fluffy and warm and comfortable.
Unfortunately, the moment he dropped the towel and picked up the boxers he'd chosen earlier, he heard the sound of the main door opening in the other room.
Realising that it likely wouldn't be long before Natasha came in here looking for him, he hurried to pull them on, and then his pants on top of that. The idea of a near-stranger being forced to look at him in such a state of undress...
Shit. He'd tried to pull his jumper over his head too fast, and the wool had stuck on his still-damp skin. Naturally, at the same moment, he heard the bathroom door open, no doubt letting Natasha see him with his arms in the air, half wedged in the sleeves of the jumper.
Faint giggling reached him through the jumper.
"Help?" He tried asking, flailing his arms slightly. They really were stuck – or at least, they were in the position they were in.
Footsteps sounded in his direction.
Then tugging – the jumper was thankfully pulled over his head, unsticking it from his back.
He took a deep breath in celebration. “Thanks."
Natasha looked mostly amused. "Don't mention it."
tugging on the bottom of the jumper and making sure everything was properly in place, Bucky did his best to pretend like that hadn't just happened. "So what are we doing today?"
Natasha motioned for him to follow her out of the bathroom. "Well, first breakfast," she began. "And then we were thinking you could do with a little more of a tour of this place, huh?"
Well, now that actually sounded interested. "No more hospital stuff?" He asked jokingly, trying to conceal the fact that he was pretty excited to see some more of here.
Natasha laughed, and shook her head. "No, not today," she said. "I can't guarantee that there won't be any more ever, but as far as I know there's nothing more they want from you for now. I think they're still working on things from yesterday."
Bucky nodded, trying to stay casual, like that wasn't the exact answer he'd been hoping for. “Right, right.”
They set off through the labyrinth that was this compound. Honestly Bucky didn’t know how Natasha was ever able to be this confident about knowing her way around this place, because even after a few days he still wasn’t able to recognise much except the few corridors directly outside of his room. Those he knew – but since every time he’d left or arrived at his room they seemed to take a different route (he didn’t even know how that was possible), he just hadn’t been able to really solidify any sort of map of the place in his head.
He didn’t know why, but somehow it surprised him when they arrived in a large dining hall. Despite the fact that Natasha had said that they were going to get food, he hadn’t entirely believed it, not with how she’d tricked him the day before.
Walking them over to the buffet counter, Natasha didn’t seem to be all that bothered by the sheer volume food on offer here. There seemed to be so many options – and this was for breakfast, the kind of time where you really didn’t need that many options.
"Eat whatever you'd like," Natasha said.
"Really?" Bucky frowned. After the stuff they had him eating yesterday, this was what they wanted him to do today? it seemed a little odd.
Natasha shrugged. "Yeah, why not?"
And so Bucky happily piled his plate high with all the foods that he'd have loved to have yesterday. There were burgers, and fries, and salad, dips, chips and more – and he probably took even more of it than he thought he needed. It didn't seem to matter though - Bucky realised when he was done loading up that it might be extortionately expensive, but when Natasha simply led them away from the buffet when they were done, he realised it must all just be a perk. nice.
"Where shall we sit?" Bucky asked, examining the hall. It was moderately busy – not too much so, but enough that it wasn't immediately clear which seats were empty.
"Follow me." Natasha sounded far too intense for just talking about where they were going to eat their breakfast, but Bucky dutifully followed anyway, just presuming that she'd seen something he hadn't.
Sure enough, they arrived at a clear table seconds later, and immediately Natasha sat down, beginning to chow down on her food. Bucky sat down a little slower, wondering how long she had to have been up for her to be this hungry already.
The tone of the meal began to change though, once he started eating. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he though that it seemed like Natasha was looking at his plate a weird amount.
"Do you want some?" He asked, assuming she was looking at his fries. To be fair, they were pretty delicious looking, and he wouldn't blame her if she wanted some (even if he did really want them all to himself - he could be a good friend).
Eyes widening, she shook her head. "No, no, I’m fine," she said laughing it off like there was nothing weird going on.
But... if she didn't want his food, why did she have to be looking at it?
Eating a little more, he tried to ignore the weirdness. She must have a reason for it, right? There had to be a logical reason behind it all.
As he began to get full of the food (perhaps he had been right when he’d wondered if he’d overestimated how much he could physically eat), his eating slowed down, and he knew that Natasha would be able to see his folly.
“I might have to leave some, huh,” he chuckled. It was sort of a way to pre-emptively make sure that Natasha wouldn’t try to make fun of him for it – whether she would he didn’t know, but it was worth mentioning.
“Are you really that full?” Natasha seemed casual, asking the question like a friend would, but… there was something in her eyes that suggested that she perhaps cared a little too much about the answer.
Bucky paused, trying to come up with the right words. He didn’t want his new friend to think that he was greedy, but neither did he want to sound wasteful (something his mother had drilled into his head at an early age to never be). “Um… yes?” Okay, so maybe that was a little less eloquent than he would have liked, but still.
“It looks like you really did eat a lot… are you sure you don’t feel sick from eating so much?” Natasha sounded genuinely concerned, like she thought that was some sort of regular occurrence for Bucky.
He frowned, looking at the plate. It was sort of hard to gauge exactly how much he’d eaten compared to how much he’d usually eat, but he thought it was probably about the same. He did usually try to fill up his plate with maybe a little more food than he would actually be able to eat – a leftover habit from knowing Steve ‘bottomless stomach’ Rogers.
“No, I’m good,” he said, knowing that he could deal with being full without feeling too unwell. Natasha looked almost surprised at this – what exactly was she driving at here? Did she want him to throw up or something?
There was little more said as they ate – and yet Bucky felt like he was still being scrutinised. He didn’t actually eat much more (he hadn’t been lying when he’d said that he was full) but Natasha cleared her plate. Seemed oddly hypocritical since she was convinced he should have been throwing up just from eating a normal meal, but he supposed there was no way of knowing where she was going with any of this.
So weird.
Once they were done, and their trays were dumped, Natasha took him out of the dining hall and to the reception area.
"So," she said, bringing him over to the desk, "we need to get you a key card. I know we didn't do it yesterday - we probably should have, but we were just so busy with all of the hospital stuff that we didn't have time. But if you're going to be in here for a while, then you need to at least have it for ID. I might not always be around."
Bucky wasn't entirely sure that he liked the implication that he was going to have to be here for a long time, but he nodded nonetheless. It did make logical sense that he would need to have some way of getting around if Natasha wasn't with him. Sure, in the time that he'd been in here nobody had asked to see any ID, but it made sense that in a place like this you might sometimes get asked for some.
"So what do I need to do?" The question was directed at Natasha, but it was answered by the woman behind the desk.
"Come stand in front of me," she said, her blonde curls bouncing as she moved to pick up a small round thing from her desk. It had a wire attached to it, and for a moment Bucky simply couldn't figure out what she was going to do with it.
Still, he moved to stand where she was, and kept his expression still upon her request. Then a flash bulb went off in his face - and he realised that it must be a very small camera.
He wanted to ask her how it worked, what the mechanics were - but no, he was reminded that they had a thing to do here. his interest in these things could wait. Natasha would be happy to answer his questions, right?
"Okay... Director Fury himself emailed over your papers earlier, so I have your details, here, Mr Barnes," the woman said.
She spent a while typing away at her keyboard (actually add that to the list of questions he needed to ask Natasha - he'd seen these computers a few times since he'd been here, but none of it made any real sense to him. Nor had he really seen one up close. He should really do something about that). Bucky could only wonder exactly what was going on here.
Tapping his foot on the floor, he was almost tempted to ask Natasha how long this was going to take - but then he thought better of it. Natasha seemed almost zoned out, like she was thinking really hard about something. Perhaps asking her right now wouldn't be the best of plans.
Thankfully, it was only a minute or two later that the receptionist rolled her chair over to another machine on the desk, which promptly spat out a little square card. Putting it inside a lanyard, she passed it over to Natasha (which Bucky thought was a little insulting). "Everything is accounted for," she said.
Natasha spent a few seconds examining it. If there were any mistakes, Natasha would surely notice them. Not that Bucky would have noticed if there were any mistakes in the first place, not when he didn't know what he would be looking for.
Then she nodded. "Here you go."
Bucky finally took hold of it, his very own ID card. It sort of felt like a symbolic moment, part of his acceptance as part of the company. It was wonderful, and -
'DOB: 10/03/1985'
That was, by no stretch of imagination, his date of birth. The day and month were right, but the year? It seemed too far into the future for him to believe that it was a reasonable date of birth for anyone who wasn’t like, five.
Still – he could take a cue well enough to know that if Natasha didn’t want to make a big deal out of not having his real date out there, it must be for a reason.
For some reason, it was this realisation that made Bucky realise that all of this really was business-like. Not that he hadn’t known this before, but… it suddenly dawned on him that this really was a lot more like the secretive things the Howling Commandos had been privy to during their time in the war. The idea of joining another organisation with this level of secrets and mystery was… daunting at best, and Bucky wasn’t entirely sure whether that was something he really wanted to be a part of. After all, he knew pretty much nothing about it, nothing about what they did. Even Natasha, who had been assigned to be his friend, hadn’t offered up much at all about her own life.
There was something thrilling about that fact though. Something about the knowledge that he was part of something big like that made him feel like he was important again – even if he didn’t know much about what he was involved in.
“Thank you.” He nodded at the receptionist like there was nothing wrong, and he and Natasha went to walk away. Slipping the card’s lanyard around his neck, he knew that it signified him really being a part of all of this – and he found that he quite liked it.
“Now that you have that, I supposed you’ll be able to go around without needing me all the time,” Natasha remarked.
Bucky nodded. “Yeah, I suppose so.” He didn’t mention the fact that right now the idea of getting around here without a guide made him want to throw up a little – he wasn’t ready to be set loose here yet.
Flashing him a grin, she said, “well I’ll give you a tour, and we can set about getting that sorted, yeah?”
He gulped, and nodded.
Somehow it surprised him that he still felt lost while Natasha was leading him around. He had thought that he would begin to make sense of some of this once he’d had Natasha lead him around in a logical manner, but it seemed to him that there was no more logic to it than any of the other trips they’d taken.
The first place they went was the corridor to the dining hall. To be fair, this was the one part that Bucky felt like he knew well. He’d been here pretty much every day, after all, and he still didn’t know much about it.
She took him though the place, through a bunch of offices which he attempted to remember the need of. Most of what he seemed to get out of it was that there were even more agents in this place than he could even have imagined.
There were big control rooms, with huge screens on the walls and big computers with important looking people doing things at them. For the most part he was only allowed to look at them through the glass doors – something to do with not being a high enough level – but it was interesting nonetheless.
He also got to have a peek at a big hangar in the bottom of the place that had some futuristic planes in there. At least, he thought they were planes – there was very little connecting them to what he knew as planes, but that was what Natasha had called them.
It didn’t escape Bucky that they were mostly on the upper levels. He still got a little lost – but he thought that he kept his bearings a little better this time.
But there was little part of him that felt like there was a lot being left out.
“…and that’s it!” Natasha put her arms out like she was presenting the room to him – and Bucky blinked in surprise.
“It is?” He tried not to sound too sceptical, but it was difficult.
Natasha shrugged. “Sure, that’s everywhere important. The rest tends to be on a need – to – know basis – you get sent there, and then you find out what’s there. It’s just sort of how it works here.”
It wasn’t a bad answer, but… somehow it still seemed a little lacking. Was that wise? To have it be that most people weren’t going to know their way around the whole place?
Natasha began to talk about the place they were in, but… Bucky couldn’t concentrate on it any more. The joy he’d found at finally getting to see more of the place he was living in had diminished somewhat, knowing that he wasn’t going to be shown any more of it than this. He wasn’t stupid, even though he felt a little like they liked to treat him like he was.
It was an odd thing, that he knew there was so much more to see but that he couldn’t go see it. Given that the other time he’d tried to do that he’d been stopped, he really didn’t have high hopes for trying it another time.
Eyeing up his friend, he could feel the diverging feelings that he had towards her – she had been nice to him, and tried to be his friend, but… the tone of everything else she’d put out made him doubt everything that she’d told him.
So he nodded, like he didn’t have a single qualm about what Natasha had said. It wouldn’t do to make her suspicious – he didn’t want to think too hard about what she might do if he pushed harder to get to explore.
(He could always do that by himself. They had to leave him alone at some point, right?)
**
Just like yesterday, Bucky woke up by himself. It was a nice but weird change, to have no set time to wake up, to be able to sleep for however long he needed.
He showered, got ready for the day, and wandered out into the living room to wait for Natasha to come and collect him.
Half an hour after she would normally have arrived, Bucky was still sat down there, waiting. His stomach rumbled – he had to admit, he sort of wanted to see if he could make it on his own out in the building – but then, what if Natasha was just running late?
He deliberated for a minute, shuffling his feet and wondering whether it would be worth it. His stomach was actually beginning to hurt with hunger, and it was beginning to get ridiculous.
“Screw this,” he muttered to himself. Standing up, he marched over to the door. He was far too hungry to wait any longer – he needed to go eat now. He was pretty sure he could find his way to the canteen – he’d caught a glimpse of it yesterday on the tour, and it had been large enough to be noticeable from a way away.
A few corridors down the line, and he felt a little less confident. He’d forgotten how each corridor looked like the next, and so on….
He looked around, eyes narrowed, trying to decide which way would be best to go. Having a choice of other corridors to go down was difficult – and, on a whim, he chose to go right. He’d find it eventually if he headed down to the first floor, where it was.
The closer he seemed to get, the more his stomach continued to protest, and the more embarrassed he got. Sometimes, when the timing was just wrong, Bucky was sure that some of the people passing him must have noticed how hungry he was just by the sounds emanating from him.
It was a relief the moment he spotted the large glass wall looking in on the canteen. Frankly he didn’t know how he’d managed to find it, since he’d had no idea where he was going most of the time. Perhaps it was a sign of his genius.
The place was definitely busier now that they were in a place that people liked to congregate. Mostly Bucky tried to stay as casual as possible – he had to at least try to pretend like he belonged here, like he knew what he was doing.
Pushing open the door, he realised just how noisy the room was. The sound must have been really muffled through the glass before – impressive in itself.
It was still sort of early in the morning – it impressed Bucky that it was that busy. Still, he’d got the impression that this was the sort of place that ran for 24 hours a day. It was hard to tell how many people might be eating dinner instead of breakfast.
This morning he had a little more time to explore the options properly, no Natasha there to think about. There was a certain familiarity to the rhythms of a served breakfast – it was like he’d never left the army. So maybe some of the foods were completely unfamiliar to him – what exactly was quinoa? – but he could see people all over eating it, so it must at least be edible.
He piled up a suspicious looking plate and settled down at an empty table to eat it.
As he did so, his eyes wandered over the room. There was little else to do, he could hardly be blamed for it… and yet something seemed off. He couldn’t put a finger on what exactly it was that was wrong, but there was definitely something.
The scene in front of him seemed pretty inoffensive – just people, like him, hunched over their breakfast, talking to each other quietly. There weren’t that many people here – he could only assume that the breakfast crowd was small.
Wait.
If there weren’t usually that many people here, then wouldn’t they all know each other?
Looking closer at some of the people sat near him, he realised exactly what it was.
Nobody was looking at him. Not that he’d been expecting to be greeted like a celebrity, but a stranger in their midst would surely be something to be stared at?
It was off-putting – and it felt forced. It wasn’t like yesterday, when he’d been surrounded by people just getting on with their day. Now he could see people intentionally avoiding eye contact with him – and it put a bad taste in his mouth.
Or maybe that was just whatever he was eating. Habit had taken over, and he’d begun eating on autopilot, the instinct to eat as quickly as possible still deeply ingrained in him.
Despite not being able to see anybody looking at him… he could feel it in the back of his head. They were definitely looking at him – he just couldn’t catch them at it.
The stares still plagued him, no matter what he did. He ate slowly, he ate quickly, he tried hiding what he was eating with his hands. No matter what he did, they stayed with him – and he could only conclude that it was him they were watching.
And, from that, he presumed that they knew exactly who he was. All these people, whom he had never met before, had probably been briefed on his situation. Wasn’t that a little… invasive?
A few times he tried glaring back at them, thinking that maybe they’d back off if they thought that he was some form of threat. But they must have been well trained – each of them only met his stare with disinterest.
But what was he meant to do now? Food eaten, he stood up. Picking up his tray, he tried to subtly scan the room. He could see the others in the room putting them on a smaller table that was near the exit, and so he made his way over there – after all, wouldn’t it make little sense to stick around here once he was done?
Eyeing the corridor that he could see through the door, he wondered if he should leave. Natasha hadn’t said that he should – but neither had she said that he couldn’t.
The pricking of eyes on him continued just like it had done earlier – and he placed his tray down with a little more force than necessary, making the cutlery rattle against the plastic square as he did.
Feeling a little like he was being chased out, he walked speedily from the room. The door was heavier than he’d been expecting, and he tried his best to make it look like he hadn’t been surprised by it – but he didn’t think he’d succeeded.
As the door swung shut behind him the sounds of the canteen faded, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Life was easier to live when people weren’t constantly watching you – he didn’t know how Steve had done it, ever.
It would be much easier to deal with if he was out of here, to be honest.
He paused in his walking through the corridors. He – he hadn’t actually been out of here since he’d been here, had he? Aside from that one time with Fury, he’d not been able to get out of here at all – which seemed odd, now that he thought about it.
Something about that thought planted a seed in his mind, and suddenly the part of him which had learned that he quite enjoyed being in wide open spaces during the war rose its head. Suddenly needing to get out of here, to go be somewhere that didn’t have four walls, he set off in the direction of the exit.
Or rather, where he thought the exit was. It was embarrassing that even after days in here, he still wasn’t sure where he was going in this place.
Several times he had to double back on himself – he kept finding himself higher up than he needed, looking out over the place he wanted to be down in.
It was the moment when he turned a corner and nearly bumped into Natasha that he realised he could have help in his quest if he wanted it. “Hey,” he said, his voice a little more breathy than he would have liked. “I was thinking about maybe going out into the city.” He leaned against the wall, trying to pretend like he hadn’t been trying to do just that for at least an hour.
Natasha’s expression didn’t change – but it seemed to Bucky like there was something in her eyes that seemed sorry for him, in a way she hadn’t since the first day. “Are you so sure that’s a good idea?” She asked, taking his arm. “I mean, it’s raining outside, it wouldn’t be any good. Wouldn’t you rather just stay in and do stuff here?”
Bucky blinked. “I’ve never really cared about the rain,” he said, surprised that that would have been Natasha’s main complaint. “I just want to…” he made to move around Natasha, to double back on himself (he was bound to find the exit eventually, right?) – but Natasha stepped to the side, blocking his path.
“Oh, but there’s so much stuff we need to do in here,” Natasha said, taking him by the arm with a large smile.
Before Bucky knew it, he’d been turned around and practically frog marched away. Subtly (or perhaps not), he tried to tug his arm out of her grip – only to find that it was held in an iron grip.
As it had before, Natasha’s wide smile began to feel a little insincere. “I think I’d rather stay inside, wouldn’t you?”
Bucky began to frown. “I –“
He cut himself off. Natasha’s expression didn’t change – but perhaps it was that which tipped him off. “Okay.”
It could stand to last for another day. Probably.
Giving up, he let Natasha lead him away. (He just had to ignore the way his own gaze stayed on the outside.) Maybe she was just really desperate to spend time with him – that would just have to be what he chose to believe. It was certainly the preferable option.
**
“Ready for more tests?” Natasha’s voice was as chirpy as ever, but for once it made him feel no better. How would it, when it felt as though he had done nothing else but let these people poke and prod him for the past week?
“Yep,” he said through gritted teeth.
What else could he do?
Slamming his door behind him made him feel a little better – it was good to get his frustration out – but it didn’t solve his problem in any way.
The feeling of annoyance stayed with him the entire time they were walking to the hospital wing. What exactly did these people want with him?
It was even worse when he realised that they were doing all the same tests that he’d done on his second day here – in exactly the same order, too, like they weren’t even trying to hide it. What was the need for that? Had they not got the information from then or something?
Frustratedly, he allowed them to go through these motions without complaining too much. It wouldn’t help, he knew, but it was so tempting to show the doctors how annoying this was for him.
Natasha stayed with him this time – and he had to admit, regardless of his feelings towards her, it was nice to have a familiar face around to make the rest of the tests feel a little less nerve-wracking.
This time he found himself much less worried about the results though. He already knew that he was fine – they’d made a massive point of telling him that, after all. But that was why he didn’t understand why they needed to do any of this in the first place.
These people were confusing.
Not once during the time he was experimented on was he actually given any kind of explanation. He wasn’t even entirely sure whether Natasha knew either – she seemed to mostly be there for him. Not a bad thing, but still unusual.
Maybe finally he would be free of this hell.
**
Eyeing up the reception hall, Bucky poked his head round the corner. It didn’t look like there was anyone in there that he recognised – but as he knew, that didn’t really mean much. He knew from experience that Natasha could be hiding around any corner here – although how he wasn’t sure.
Looking behind himself to double check that nobody was following him, he strolled out casually. Looking like he was supposed to be there was key, he knew, and he needed to make everyone there think that he knew exactly what he was doing.
Well, he did – it was just that he was trying to leave this place.
His strides were purposeful, his face said ‘don’t disturb me’, his…. Friend was right there.
Natasha was here.
How was Natasha here?
Something in her face was knowing – like she knew what he was doing here. There was no way that she could have known though? He hadn’t talked to her about any of that since the first time, and that had been a few days ago now.
He hadn’t even decided for sure that he was going to do this until an hour ago. What kind of magic did she have that allowed her to be here, across the hall by the door, like she was waiting for him?
(Was it magic? By this point Bucky wasn’t even sure that he would be surprised if that was the case. If the red skull could have magic, so could Natasha.)
Steps slowing down, he refused to stop completely. It would definitely look more suspicious if he stopped in his tracks the moment he saw her.
Not that that mattered too much – she would almost certainly know what was up here.
Now that they’d sighted one another, Natasha began to walk towards him. Her steps seemed light, casual, like there was nothing going on here – like she wasn’t purposefully interrupting his mission.
“Hey there,” she said once they were within hearing distance.
Bucky gulped. “Hey,” he said, trying to keep his demeanour calm. Maybe if he did, she wouldn’t –
“You don’t want to leave again, do you?” Her tone was teasing, but there was something a little more serious in there too. Like here was something more going on here.
Bucky shook his head. “Nope, just stretching his legs,” he said trying to stay breezy.
He almost expected Natasha to call him on his bluff. In fact, he could practically see the cogs turning in her head, like she was debating whether she should or not.
Please don’t, please don’t, please -
“Do you want to go see the trophy room?”
“The what now?” Bucky frowned. That hadn’t been at all where he thought Natasha would go with any of this.
Natasha shrugged. “Yeah, why not. I mean, if you’re staying here.”
Oh, she knew exactly what she was doing.
“Okay then.” Well, Bucky may as well call her on her bluff, right?
She didn’t look particularly called out. She smiled, and walked past him, motioning to him to follow her. “I know we didn’t have it in the main tour,” she said, turning her head to talk to him, “but I only just remembered about it.”
Bucky wasn’t even sure if he wanted to see any more places – his feet were beginning to hurt – but he shrugged. Maybe he’d get to see more of everything else on the way.
“Sure,” he said. This was turning out to be a lot less informative than he had anticipated.
**
Bucky sighed.
As they had done often this week, his thoughts turned to Steve. During the first few days he had been too distracted to worry about his best friend, not when he was concerned with his own health.
But now that he had enough time to think, to feel that he was alone without Steve by his side, constantly pestering him, it was like there was a gaping hole in his life.
To realize that Steve hadn’t been able to come to the future in the same way he had had been difficult. Staring up at the ceiling, his thoughts swirling in a way which made it impossible to think properly, Bucky tried to close his eyes, to get to sleep.
His eyes opened a few minutes later, his body reacting to the worked up state of his mind. All he could think about was the 70 years he had skipped - the years which he had abandoned his friend in.
During the quiet moments, the last coherent memory he had of Steve flashed before his eyes, taunting him at every turn.
Steve's agonized face as he watched Bucky fall.
The shock he had felt himself as he moved through the air.
Nothing beyond that - for which Bucky was grateful. But he couldn't help but feel guilty, for leaving Steve in such a way. For making that his last memory of him, for tarnishing their friendship.
Rolling over, he tried to ignore the other images in his mind, the ones he was imagining must be true.
Steve at his wedding to Peggy, with a different, faceless best man in sight.
Steve with his children.
Steve, an old man.
Maybe even Steve dead already.
It had been a long time, and Bucky knew there was plenty he had missed out on. Would Steve even miss him? Would Steve remember his old childhood friend as anything other than a vaguely fond memory?
Who could know.
Certainly not Bucky, that was for sure.
Part of him thought that he didn't want to know to begin with. If Steve had lived a full life without him.... Well, obviously logically Bucky didn't want Steve to have had a sad life, but part of him wanted to believe that Steve had missed him for his whole life.
"What are you thinking about?"
Bucky twitched - he was getting good at not showing how much it surprised him when Natasha spoke to him out of nowhere. He coughed, trying to hide it - but he was sure she'd noticed it.
It occurred to him now that if he wanted to, this would be a good time to ask her about it. There was nobody around - the library tended to be deserted for most of the day - and so people wouldn't be too weirded out at him asking after something he should have already known.
But he couldn't.
The words wouldn't come out of his mouth.
He didn't want to hear the words; they would make it too real.
There was another reason, lying buried beneath the surface of his normal mind. Something he had never wanted to look at too closely - and something he wasn't about to work through here, in plan view of his friend.
"Nothing."
And so he stayed quiet on the subject. So long as Steve had lived a good life, that was good enough for him.
**
"Fury wants to see you."
Bucky looked up in surprise from where he was sat in his favourite chair. (He hadn't meant to pick a favourite, but it was the biggest and squashiest in the whole of the rooms he'd been given.) "He does?" He didn't mean to sound so blasé about it, but in the week he'd been here, he'd only seen Fury that first time.
In fact, there had been barely anything else he’d done for the past week. Ever since he’d stopped with the medical testing, he’d done the same thing day in day out. It had become a full routine – and so this was sort of a welcome change, even if he didn’t want it to be happening right now.
Natasha nodded from where she was stood in the doorway. He’d called out for her to let herself in, but he’d expected her to come in a little more – it was actually sort of weird that she’d stayed where she was. “Yeah, there’s something important he needs to talk to you about.”
Ah, vague as ever.
Bucky put down his book reluctantly. Naturally this interruption had come just as he’d gotten to a good bit – was he ever going to get to get through the whole thing? He had no idea.
Well, either way he was going to go along with this (and come back to his book later).
Natasha led him to the office he’d met Fury in the first time. He was glad to realise that he actually sort of recognised the way this time – the corridors seemed a little more familiar, at least, and that had to count for something. Right?
It felt good to walk around this place with his badge on. Not that he hadn’t been doing it already, but every time there was a slight amount of excitement in there, the knowledge that he wasn’t going to be stopped at any point for not having one. He felt almost as important as Natasha, striding around the place like he had something important going on.
They reached the office door (this one Bucky definitely remembered), and instead of using her key card, she simply knocked. Bucky gave her a slightly weird look – but he let it slide, figuring there was some protocol thing that he just didn’t’ know about.
It was a minute or two before they heard anything from inside the room. It confused Bucky, that Fury would request to see him immediately, but then not be ready to see him when he arrived. Sure, big important people did stuff like that all the time, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.
Natasha didn’t seem as impatient as he did – she never did. How she managed to not get irritated with the pace things moved here, he didn’t know, but he envied it, to a degree.
Eventually though, there was sound from inside the office. Bucky tried to not feel too annoyed by the wait – it would do him no good in this situation, no matter how he felt about it.
The door opened. It wasn’t fury – it was another man, one that Bucky didn’t know. He had to admit that he didn’t like the look of him – he looked mean, like he wouldn’t hesitate to hurt him if Fury ordered. He’d had plenty of experience with men like that before, of course, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.
“Natasha. And stranger.” The man smirked at them.
For some reason it surprised him that Natasha knew who this was. There were so many people in this place that there could be no way to know them all – It must be a coincidence to run into anyone in here. Besides – it didn’t look like Natasha was particularly happy to see him.
“Rumlow.” She nodded towards him.
Rumlow didn’t stop smirking, even as he turned to leave. Natasha didn’t look like she had enjoyed seeing him, but she didn’t offer up any explanation of who he was or why she didn’t like him. Bucky was beginning to realise that this was becoming the norm with her.
But, regardless, the next thing Bucky knew Fury had come to the door, and he put the interaction out of his mind.
“Good afternoon, Sergeant Barnes,” Fury said, not acknowledging Natasha at all. “Come in.”
Both of them came in, and in a move reminiscent of his first meeting with Fury, Natasha went to stand at the back of the room while Bucky was taken to sit at Fury’s desk. Right, clearly this meeting was all about him. He couldn’t decide whether that made him more or less nervous about this.
Anxiously stroking the lanyard hanging around his neck, Bucky tried to stay calm. What he was nervous about he didn’t even know, but he couldn’t deny the fact that his heart rate had increased the moment he stepped foot in this room. It was just an uncomfortable situation.
“I see that you’ve been busy getting yourself settled, Sergeant Barnes,” Fury said. Realising that he was looking at his own fiddling, Bucky dropped his hand, trying not to squirm.
“Uh – yes.” Bucky nodded.
Fury nodded, leaning back in his chair. “Good. I’m glad that you’re getting comfortable here.” Bucky couldn’t tell whether that was sincere or not.
It seemed odd though, that Fury was perfectly okay with having him just freeloading in his building. They’d done nothing but feed and clothe him, as well as performing multiple medical exams on him. That had to be pretty expensive.
“I – I am,” he said. “But I was thinking – I mean, should I be doing something? I’ve enjoyed sitting around, but it feels like I… I should do something more.” The end of his sentence trailed off. Fury scrutinised him – like he was having to consider what Bucky had said.
There was no sound for a minute.
Fury sat forward again, still keeping his gaze firmly on Bucky. “If you feel that way, Sergeant Barnes… Well, maybe at some point we can do something about it. Our agents are usually required to pass a strict regime of tests in order to join the company, it’s not an easy thing to do.”
Bucky’s heart sank. Was this going to be much more difficult than he was expecting it to be? What was Fury –
“Maybe at some point you’d be able to join as a level one agent.”
Oh. Bucky tried to not smile – he didn’t want Fury to get the wrong idea about him, but it was a good prospect. “Thank you, sir,” he said, trying to seem professional about this.
Fury nodded. He leant back again, and Bucky got the feeling that that had been the part that was going to be most difficult for him. “I don’t mean to get your hopes up, Sergeant. It’s a very competitive role, and it requires intense determination to work your way up the levels,” he said. Perhaps he was trying to put him off slightly – but Bucky would refuse to, would keep being determined to do his best to get somewhere with this. There had to be more that he could do than just sitting around in his room, which was where he had been kept for the past while.
Maybe he would even finally be able to get on with having a proper life here. With having something to do.
Maybe it would even make Natasha tell him more about this place.
Oh boy.