oh captain! my captain! | barnes

approach

4:00 pm
Tower

They entered the Tower. Bucky had been transferred there so he wouldn't become a target.

"Hey Audrey," Natasha greeted.

"Hey," she almost tripped on her words. How could Natasha be so casual when Audrey killed Bucky? She was lucky he was brought back...

"He's over here," Steve guided her towards the elevator. They took it to a medical area, the same one she had been kept in.

Tony and Bruce stood outside in lab coats, discussing science or something.

"Audrey," Tony paused. "Welcome back."

"Thank you, it's nice to see you," but her attention was focused on a glass window that looked in on Bucky's room. He lay, peacefully asleep, on a plush hospital bed.

"Do you want to see him?" Bruce asked her. She nodded. He opened the door and took her in, the two were alone with Bucky.

"He's really looking a lot better. He's gaining back his health and is growing more and more independent."

"It sounds like your nursing a newborn back to health, not a grown man," she laughed dryly. He chuckled, probably to make her feel better. But she was grateful for the relief of pressure.

She moved towards his relatively still body. How many times had she kissed him? How many times had she been held in his arms? How many times had she loved him so richly and so deeply?

It was bitter to see him as her wreck. She'd done this. But she was here to make things right. She had to.

"Hey Buck," she tried very unnaturally. She sat on a swivel stool. "You look so much better than the last time I saw you. I'm sorry I left, I had to get out I guess."

Bruce looked down at her left hand, a crumpled and mangled mess. He waited.

"I love you," she smiled sadly, she choked back tears. "Now get better, so I can kiss your dumb face," she chuckled sadly, mostly to keep from falling apart.

She stood and wiped her eyes without shame.

Bruce smiled at her, "He'll be well before the end of the year. May I look at your hand?"

She looked down to where his gaze was. She held up her throbbing hand. It always throbbed, always pulsed with the memory of Bucky.

"I think it's shattered. Can we take an X-Ray?"

"I suppose. But I wouldn't be able to pay you back-"

"We're a team, here, Audrey. We don't have a scoreboard," he paused, "Well we do as far as matches we've won. I'm winning."

She chuckled at his joke.

He took her down the hall and took an X-Ray. As it developed, Bruce's face grew more and more contorted in worry.

"That bad?" she asked, trying to form a first but it hurt too much and she let it go. It began to tingle again.

She examined the awkward bumps and bruises that arose. He glanced from her to the X-Ray and back to her.

"Do you want to see?" she nodded. He placed it on the wall and stuck a tack in it. It looked more like a bird nest than a body part.

She watched as he pointed to countless break points and shatters of bone which caused inflammation.

"We can operate and hope for the best. The best outcome would probably be rehab, but so many parts are helpless and unfixable," he stated. "I don't even think we have the right resources here and if we took you to a hospital, they'd turn you to the government for lockup; since you're an undocumented anti-human."

"Any other option?"

Bruce thought for a moment. Something clicked and he ran out of the room and down the hall.

I hope he doesn't expect me to follow.

But within moments, he entered the room again with Tony. Tony adjusted his shirt, as it was wrinkled now by Bruce's grip.

"Take a look at her hand," Bruce said, nodding towards the print. Tony looked at it for a moment:

"Are you sure that's a hand?" he laughed dryly. "What'd you do to it?"

"Bucky stepped on it. But to be fair, I wasn't the best to him during the whole thing," she commented.

"Hm..." he thought as he watched the mess of a limb. "I don't think it's fixable. It looks like it cut a vessel too so there could be internal bleeding and you could die from a hemorrhage."

Never did she imagine an engineer and mechanic saying something was unfixable.

"English?"

Bruce and him made an exchange of glances, they knew the inevitable.

"Amputation," she stated allowed. Tony nodded.

"But on the bright side, you and your equal will both have metal limbs. It's magnetic love," he laughed at his joke.

"Oh God," she huffed at his terrible pun. "Let's just get this over with."

They left for some time to phone in parts, tell the others, and call the doctor.

The on-call doctor was a woman named Helen Cho, who'd worked on and co-created Vision. She was a brilliant woman who'd created life.

They entered the room again: Bruce, Vision, Tony, and this Helen woman.

Tony and Bruce were to create the prosthetic while Vision and Helen performed the amputation. She laid back on the table and was assured they knew what they were doing.

She trusted them, but the worry of dying under the knife and anesthetics never ceased. She shook, but knew it had to be done to prevent further injury.

"Ready?" the woman asked, holding the needle with the anesthetics.

"No, but go ahead anyway."