Saving Bucky (Bucky Barnes x Reader)

Chapter 19 - On Three

The pain in your arm had made falling asleep damn near impossible. But waking up sure is a hell of a lot simpler.

As soon as light dreams give way to a general sense of awareness, an impossible ache radiates through the entire left side of your body. You let out a muffled cry as you push yourself upright, desperate to get all weight off the deformed joint. Curiously, it seems the protruding bone itself is...numb. Surrounding by a halo of tingling, spasming muscle.

Dear God, you need to get your arm back in place. And you need pain meds. As quickly as possible.

Shaking off the towel you had tried to turn into a makeshift splint the night before, the limp ice pack falls with a warm, wet plop to the wooden floor as you slide quietly from your bed. You reach for your pill bottle, but quickly put it back down. You had taken the max dosage the night before and find that, pleasantly, your headache is still gone. And the uncomfortable buzzing noise has disappeared. Everything is back to normal. Even your anxiety at facing Barnes has seemingly disappeared. Or at least lessened significantly. Although you aren't eager for a replay of the night before. You only have one good arm left.

In stealth, you hold your limp left arm close to your side as you step from your room, staying on the balls of your feet. But as you near the hall that will lead you to the main foyer you hear voices. Quiet voices. Several of them. They're too low to make out what they're saying, and you don't recognize them.

A small burst of adrenaline has you wishing you had a weapon, but nonetheless you stay light on your feet as you approach. As you round the corner, you let out a small sigh of relief upon finding it's only the television, left on in a dark and empty living room.

"Stupid super soldier," you grumble, straightening up and ambling over to the couch, searching the cushions for the remote. "Five fucking o'clock in the morning. Turn the damn TV off, James. Were you raised in a barn?"

You search the couch, the chair, and even the side table but can't seem to find anything to turn it off. And Stark's fancy high-tech TV doesn't seem to have normal buttons. So you roll your eyes and give up, moving to the kitchen and rummaging through drawers - your original target. Surely there are pain meds somewhere.

"Come on aspirin," you grumble. "I know you're here somewhere."

Utensils, smoothie machines, toasters, knife sharpeners - Tony Stark has it all. Except pain meds. Frustrated, you resign yourself to going back to your room to try the towel again, pausing at the edge of the messy island.

All the papers still lay askew in seemingly random piles across the massive surface. At first glance, it looks like one giant mess, but something about it catches your eye. You stop, pausing at the edge and glancing back. After staring at it for a moment, the faint features of a pattern start to emerge.

Curiosity piqued, you walk over to the small desk lamp Barnes has carried in from the study at the other end of the house and twist the knob. Its dull light barely illuminates the entire space, but it's enough to get a better look at the hundreds of papers before you. At least thirty stacks. Each stack a ream or two tall. This is way more information than just the Operation Daybreak folder you had been given. Gabe must have hidden quite a bit on his personal server. And Barnes must have spent every day since you arrived printing these documents in the study and carrying them here to the kitchen. Trip after trip, armful after armful.

Taking a quick glance over your shoulder, you start skimming through the piles, getting a general sense to the type of information in each one. Thankfully your training over the years has taught you how to synthesize information at a rate much faster than most others.

Most of these files are incident or event reports. Personnel files detailing dates and circumstances people were hired, fired, or promoted. Global disasters and the Company's responses to such events. The attachments that were sent as responses. There are even intel files from other organizations. You see intel files with cover stamps from the CIA, HYDRA, The Freemasons, The Knights Templar, SHIELD, INTERPOL. On some of these reports you even see your own handwriting.