Flickers | Bucky Barnes

Doll

Bucky stared vacantly at himself in the mirror in his new temporary living quarters. His eyes were dull and exhausted. His hair was greasy and the stubble on his chin was more prominent. At this point it wasn't even stubble; it was turning into the beginnings of a beard. He felt like the 99 year old man that he actually was and his appearance clearly reflected that. The artificial light surely wasn't helping at all.

The only reason he was in the bathroom, three days post his awakening back in the world, was due to the flakes of blood that looked that freckles on his skin.

He also smelled like something awful in the ill-fitting shirt that was handed to him on the first day. Steve, Wanda, and even Sam had urged him to go take care of his basic hygiene. He was reluctant considering all that had happened when he was abruptly woken up. The only reason he left his perch was due to Wanda promising him she would alert him if something happened.

As he securitized his appearance, his mind wondered back to the war. Back to his first initial capture by Hydra where he flirted on death's door just like Karina was doing now.

He didn't know particularly why he would think of that memory of all the ones he possessed. Maybe it was how his physical appearance mirrored, to a point, how he looked when he was rescued. Or maybe it was how he imagined how Steve felt seeing him strapped down to a table, thin, delirious, ratty, and on the brink of something that felt a lot like death.

Karina wasn't strapped down to a table or even delirious.

She wasn't anything but unconscious and close to death.

The monitors and the breathing tube were the only things that signified she was alive especially after she coded three times in a span of a few hours.

If he wasn't fully awake out of stasis then, he totally was at those moments.

Coming out of stasis usually was always disorientating. He could never walk afterwards. His legs were like jelly. After every awakening they always had to drag him out of the chamber into that goddamn chair. Even with his enhancements the cyro made him feel like an invalid. Just like an old rag doll.

Yet, when he awoke from his recent interment, he didn't feel the fatigue from his frozen bones and muscles. His mind was still a little foggy as his lungs remembered how to breathe and took in the situation around him.

Whatever he was possibly feeling never surfaced as he could smell the scent of blood and saw Karina staggering away from someone stalking towards her. His mind went straight to figuring out a strategy – to what was going on.

He felt he killed that operative too easily considering the bastard nicked her heart. On top of that when she fell back into the wall she made contact with a broken piece of debris from the wall that punctured her lung. He knew she wasn't aware of that injury. Waking up to that scene it was like his worst nightmare. He thought for sure he happened to be dreaming in stasis, but as he saw Karina's body rapidly become pale and her warm blood coating his body, he knew he wasn't dreaming.

But she was alive. She was going to wake up. When she did wake up, he could at least smell like fresh linen.

_____________________

Bucky listened to the steady rhythm of the heart monitor.

He thought on what Steve told him on why the base was attacked.

Steve had found a lead on one of Hydra's old bases. Everyone besides Karina and Wanda had left to check out the base for something to fix the programming that was still inside him. Steve had already tried to insist that what happen was on him. He didn't make sure they were secured in traveling back to their safe heaven. But Bucky clearly had his own conclusion. Those operatives, who they concluded were just independent contractors, followed them back to Wakanda for him. Steve had already told him to not go there with those thoughts, but it was the truth. Karina wouldn't be lying in a hospital bed with a breathing tube down her throat if she never met him. If he never existed, if he wasn't the Winter Soldier with a metal arm, she would be pursing her PhD. She would be helping people by providing new limbs for them. She would be happy with a man who could provide her a world free of pain and suffering.