Saviour - Avengers Fanfiction

Chapter Three

Bucky's POV

Pain.

That's all I could feel. Just pain. Something I'd gotten used to during my... stay with HYDRA, but it was still there.

The bullet wound in my shoulder and the stab wounds across my body were proof of that. The scars across my mind, the lost memories, the life stripped away. But I dragged my feet. 

Right. Then left. Then right again.

I had to get to cover. I was too exposed. I made my way to the forest excruciatingly slowly. I was a few trees in when I tripped over some roots, crashing into the hard earth. Then came the pain I was all too familiar with. It was like someone was sticking a white-hot wire through my ear, into my brain. With the pain came an onslaught of memories.

Saving a scrawny blonde kid from being beaten up in an alleyway. Dancing with women I didn't recognize. Falling off the train, the skinny blonde kid was there. No, wait. He wasn't skinny anymore. He was bigger than me. Screaming a name. Bucky. Was that my name? I couldn't be sure. Then more memories, less pleasant. The torture, the memory wiping. The beatings if I failed on a mission. The people I took the lives of on those missions. A man in a dirty blue uniform and helmet, crouching over me. Calling my name. Or, what I thought was my name. Wait. This wasn't a memory. 

I raised my head to get a better view, and shrank away, afraid. No more. Please, god no more. No more torture. I couldn't go back. The man raised his hands to show he was unarmed.

 But, this made no sense. He wasn't attacking me? Or was this a trick? Through the pain in my head I could hear him talking to me, but it sounded distant. Like it was spoken through a pipe.

"Buck? Bucky? It's me, it's Steve." Steve. Steve. The kid. That was his name. Was this the same person? I couldn't tell. My vision was going blurry. I started fading in and out of consciousness, feeling him hoist me up so my arm was around his shoulder. 

My metal arm. The one that had caused so much death. So many people had died because of me. I was barely aware of the man - Steve, dragging me beside him, but not roughly, as the HYDRA officials would. He was supporting me.

Eventually we stopped and I pried my eyes open to see what was going on. All I could tell was Steve was talking to a man and a woman inside a house. A house in the middle of the woods. Then he moved me again. after a minute he laid me down on the ground, and that was the last thing I remember before losing consciousness.

I woke up to find I had been patched up, that much I could tell. I also wasn't wearing my uniform, and my mask had been removed.

 I could hear voices, voices I didn't recognize. Then the face of an unfamiliar man filled my view, and I jumped up. I saw a door close in my peripheral vision, but I was more concerned with the two men in front of me. 

I recognized Steve from last night, and even though I didn't completely understand who he was, I knew, somewhere inside, he could be trusted. But it was going to take a little more than that to fully trust him. He stepped forward and I tensed up, but he was stupid enough to take another. 

Something clicked inside me and I saw this as a threat, so I took an extra step in and flipped him to the ground. The other man pulled out a small handgun and aimed it at me, but Steve jumped up from the ground and stood in front of me, moving towards the man, telling him to put it down. He hesitated, then did as instructed. Steve turned back around to face me, but was smart enough to keep his distance this time.

"Bucky? Do you know where you are?" I shook my head. Nothing around here looked remotely familiar. "These people are friends of mine, and they're kind enough to let us stay here. You're safe." My stance didn't change. "Here, Buck why don't you sit down?" He motioned to the couch. 

That's when the pain started to come back, though if I had to guess, I was medicated to take the edge off. Not taking my eyes off him, I stepped back and sat down. When he made no further move towards me, I took the opportunity to look around. 

He backed up and entered the same door I'd seen shut earlier. The apparent friend of Steve's stayed against the wall opposite me, watching me. I slumped over, still scared and confused as to what was going on. 

He came back out with a woman I didn't know and they stood there talking for a moment, before he went back in the room, the woman joining the other man against the wall. He came in and out a couple more times, and I got lost in my thoughts. I was snapped out of it when Steve called my name. 

My eyes snapped up to meet his, before noticing a little girl standing beside him. Her brown hair framed her face as she held my gaze in her little green eyes. My programming had taken over and I was looking for any sign of a threat, but that wasn't what this little girl was. Was she? How could she harm me? 

I could hear Steve saying something about her but I wasn't listening. I was focused on the girl. The only emotion in her face was curiosity; her eyes were filled with it. But why wasn't she afraid of me? In my peripherals I noticed the strangers leave the room and Steve came back up to the girl. I looked away from the girl for the first time and met Steve's eyes.

"Do you mind if we sit down?" He asked. This was new. No one ever asked me what I wanted, if I minded. I hesitated a moment before nodding. 

Steve motioned at the second couch beside me, and the little girl sat as close to me as possible. I sat bolt upright, tense and ready to defend my self by instinct, then reminded myself she was no threat. 

Steve made a quick move forward, probably to defend the child from me if he had to, but seeing me stop, he straightened up again. He sat down slowly on her other side, but I was looking at her. 

She confused and frightened me. Why wasn't she afraid? Everyone feared me. But not her. Maybe she wasn't afraid, but I was. Afraid of being re-captured. Afraid of being imprisoned. Afraid of going back to HYDRA. But this girl wasn't HYDRA, she couldn't be.

All of this was whirring around in my mind as we watched each other, green eyes staring wondrously into my icy blue ones.