Adult-FanFiction.org : Marvel 'Verse

A Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Fic - The Constant	By : TheConstant1944 Category: Marvel Verse Comics > Captain America Views: 2391 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own any Marvel characters. They are solely owned by Marvel and MCU. No money is made from this story.

Chapter List
- 56
- 57
- 58
Chapter Fifty-Seven
The Winter Soldier - Double bluff

In a quiet, undisturbed part of Spain stands a huge villa. It is over two hundred years old and immense where it has been added to over the centuries. It stands in its own grounds, surrounded by a huge high wall and has its own compliment of guards with dogs on patrol. This is just one of many properties owned by Reuben Kendrick, a Scottish millionaire several times over.
He believes money can buy him everything – even a way out of the wheelchair he is confined to.
He is eating a quiet leisurely breakfast at one of his estates in Scotland when a report of an intruder at the Villa is given to him. He tells his men to interrogate the man, to discover what it is he is after. It is unfortunate they have not given him all the details; it will be another four hours before he learns who it is his men have captured. And another hour and a half before his helicopter can get him there.
By then, it is almost too late.
*
The Winter Soldier is running through the Villa garden. It is huge and circles the property. He has tripped the Villa's defences. Up ahead he can see guards running towards him, can hear the dogs barking. They are shouting at him, weapons drawn, yelling at him to stop, to cease and desist, to surrender.
He looks behind him. Just as many guards are coming up to him from that direction and from the side. He is totally outnumbered. Even so this would not normally stop him but it does this time and he comes to a halt. He stands waiting for them to get closer and sensing a trap they do so cautiously.
Two of the men use their rifle butts to hit the back of his legs so that he goes down on to his knees. They yell at him to put his hands up and he does. They remove his gun, it is the only one he has, that and a knife in his belt which they also take.
He has completed the first part of his mission. He has allowed them to capture him.
*
“You cannot fight back. You will do nothing to defend yourself.”
That command is utmost in the Winter Soldier's mind as the man once again punches him across the jaw, sending blood splattering the floor in a fine spray. They have him tied to a chair. They do not realise yet what they have. The man striking him is trying to find out why this man invaded the grounds, why he had a gun, what has he come here for?
The interrogator is out of his depths. He is not even trained; he is just one of many mercenary's hired to protect the property, he is only interested in money. Mean, cruel. He likes to interrogate and has no finesse about him. He has made up his own mind that this is a simple burglary and he will make the would-be thief pay. They are underneath the Villa, in part of what was once an underground wine cellar but is beginning to become so much more.
“Strip him,” he tells the other two. They undo the ropes tying the man and pull him to his feet. Blood dribbles from his broken nose. He also has a fractured eye socket. The men first strip the gloves from his hands and then roughly take off his jacket, and that is when they see it.
One of the intruder's arms is metal, emblazoned on the bicep with a red star. They have never seen anything like it before.
“Well, what have we here?” The man in charge of the interrogation does not know, does not realise how valuable a prize they have captured. He has never been told about the 'famous' soldier with the metal arm. He has no idea that his employer would want him to stop right now.
They remove his tee-shirt and push him backwards onto the chair again. He has not said a word, not once looked at them. Once again they tie his arms to the back of the chair. His face and stomach are bruised from the previous battering, and now the man in charge is feeling around at the top of the metal arm, at the plates.
“Lets see if we can't make you talk,” he says, taking up a large bladed knife and slowly but firmly wriggling the blade under one of the metal plates which is attached to the skin at the top of the intruder's arm.
Blood begins to dribble from the broken skin and he slips the blade all the way under the plate and then starts to lever the metal away. His colleagues watch in fascination as the plate comes loose and tumbles to the floor, showing the bare flesh and muscle under it. There is now a light sheen of sweat on the Winter Soldier's face. The interrogator grins at him. It must have hurt like hell but he is impressed that his prisoner has not uttered a word.
“You're going to have to talk to us sooner or later...” he says. “...Or else, we are going to take you apart, bit by bit...” He levers off another small plate and watches as blood trickles down the man's chest from the wounds he is inflicting.
He begins on the next one and follows with two more and the top of the soldier's left shoulder is laid bare. By now he is sweating heavily as the pain starts to burn, but the men are growing more fascinated by what they find. They can see a small sliver of what looks like circuitry and cable. The soldier shifts in his seat.
“Do not fight back. No matter what they do.” But it is doubtful that Jackson Caldwell knew what the men were going to do this to his prize asset.
The man has told the others to hold the Soldier steady, even though he is still tied. He dries the blade once more and then inserts the very tip into the small hole he can see. Then slowly he pushes it down; as it hits something he wiggles the blade until it can find another path, until the whole blade is almost hilt deep in the top of the soldier's arm. They can see the pain they are inflicting by the tenseness in the soldier's muscles, by the way he grits his teeth and closes his eyes, but still he has not uttered one word.
Not until the man uses the blade to try and lever the metal arm away from the shoulder, not until they hear the muscles tearing. The man using the blade grunts as he uses his strength to move the arm away and even then he only makes the hole an inch wider before the blade snaps. The soldier is now breathing heavily through his broken nose and cannot help but groan through gritted teeth as he feels his arm being prised apart.
The interrogator now moves around to the front, blood from the soldier's wounds has splattered the concrete floor and he can see the intruder is in a great deal of pain, but this will not stop him. He will enjoy breaking this man.
“I think we need to move this up a pace. Lets see if we can't make you more comfortable,” he says, grinning and nodding to his cohorts who untie the Winter Soldier and pull him up.
“You cannot fight back. You must put up no defence,” the commands echo in his mind.
They lead him over to a different part of the cellar. He watches as they push against a rack of wine, revealing a secret door. He is taken down a corridor to another smaller room. This one has seen other interrogations; he can see by the dried blood, by the dirty implements scattered on a bench along the back wall.
They push him over to a long medical table with straps, and for a split second his programming nearly breaks. A deja vu feeling interrupts his thoughts, making him draw back slightly. He could still save himself but he closes his eyes for a brief second, grits his teeth, and instead allows them to strap him down.
The man heads over to the implements. The “tools of the trade”, he calls them and laughs. And they are tools: chisels, screwdrivers, a soldering iron, drills and other such tools, all ideal for making people talk if used in the wrong way. The Winter Soldier hears rather than sees the man start up a power drill, but the man soon shows him what he is holding.
“Now lets see exactly what we have shall we?” he says.
“Don't take my arm!” the words echo through the Winter Soldier's mind and he wants to scream them out, wants to stop the man from what he is doing, but his programming is rooted too deep. He must not fight back. He is not allowed to.
He can feel the damage being done to his arm; the circuity will no longer work properly, the plates will not close when he flexes his arm, but even now, when he could still cut each man down he does not fight. Oil from the arm is leaking out, running down to mix with his blood.
Instead he lets them continue. He obeys his orders, his programming. It is costing him dearly.
An hour later, they have to finally resort to using a crow bar to prise more plates and open up the arm to see the circuitry. The leads and wires are now in part beginning to trail away from the soldier's body. They have also used the tools on other parts of his body, but still they have been unable to get him to say why he is there. Why he has broken into the Villa. They have checked the rest of his body to see if there are any more metal parts but they are disappointed to discover that the arm is the major part. There is steel plating in his left knee from what appears to be an old accident, but that is all it appears to be.
Blood runs from the surface of the table onto the floor and there are bloody footprints around the table where some of the other guards have come in to see what they have just heard rumours about.
Only one of the guards realises the importance. That guard leaves and goes upstairs to report what he has just seen and immediately the report goes out to Reuben Kendrick, who is in hiding at one of his properties in Scotland.
The soldier lies there, and they can see such pain etched into his face. His right arm and legs are tied to the table but his left arm is a mess. His shoulder is laid bare; muscle soaking in the blood, skin torn and flaps of skin left to dry out. The arm is still attached to the main bone, but only barely. They have created a gap of four inches between the metal circuitry and the flesh that housed it and still they are probing it; still pulling at wires, at veins. They have forgotten why they are there, why he is there. They have damaged part of the bone by drilling holes into it. This interrogator likes his electric power tools: he has used them to great effect in the past, he has always got his man (and, on one occasion, his woman) to talk.
The arm is dead.
When they first began the exploration it fascinated them that they could see the metal rings move up and down but now nothing moves at all. There is no power. The only movement comes from the shuddering of the soldier's body. They are pushing a screwdriver blade deep into the socket when the door is slammed open and Reuben Kendrick is wheeled in.
He cannot believe what he is seeing. He cannot believe what the guard had reported.
His men, his mercenaries have the Winter Soldier. They have the technology he has been after for so long, and they have pulled both apart like excited school children with a new toy. In their defence, these men did not know; he should have told him what it was he had been searching for in all this time - if he had they would have contacted him the minute they saw the arm but he did not.
“Get them out of here!” he shouts at the men coming in behind him, and they swarm in around the mercenaries, forcing them away from the broken soldier, pushing them out of the door. Two of the new guards stand in the doorway, rifles held across their chests but as they look at the poor sod on the table, they genuinely believe that he can cause them no problems. He is barely conscious.
It is their biggest mistake.
The man in the wheelchair also believes the soldier on the table is ruined. The technology is dead, so he cannot fight back.
“Untie him, for God's sake, I want to see what they've done! The stupid fools!” Reuben is angry. The other two guards in the room begin to release the straps, their own hands becoming slick with blood.
The second part of the Winter Soldier's mission comes to the front of his mind. He recognises the man who has come into the room, the man who is even now rolling towards him in the wheelchair.
His whole body is on fire, his left arm completely dead and his strength depleted but as he sees the man he knows this is his mission.
This is the man he needs to kill.
“Help me please,” he says weakly.
The man is next to him, looking at the arm, turning the blood slick metal. He is talking to the man next to him. “I'm surrounded by idiots! What the bloody hell did they think they were doing? Do you know how many years of engineering went into this?”
His attention is then pulled away as he searches through the bits of metal “Where's the power source?” He is fractious. He is turning the metal around, looking for the telltale blue light but Caldwell is not that stupid and before the Winter Soldier was sent out the blue power source was removed and replaced by a much weaker source that was just able to keep the arm mobile.
“Help me, please...” The Winter Soldier groans again. His face is pale, and he is sweating, black shadows under his eyes which are full of pain. His face is swollen from the beatings, ribs broken, fingers dislocated. He needs the man to come just a bit closer.
“Put him out of his misery!” Kendrick snaps.
One of the guards takes out a hand gun and steps up to place it next to the temple of the injured soldier. They will shoot him and take the arm.
They do not know how it happens. They do not understand how this broken soldier can come back from his injuries but he does.
Using his right hand, he grabs the gun, turns it on the guard and fires. He comes up from the table, his left arm hanging from his body but the rest of him fully able to protect himself. Within seconds, there is only him and the man in the wheelchair left.
The Winter Soldier's left arm is causing him too many problems, making him lean to the side. He has no option but to reach over and pull hard, detaching the few remaining wires and veins so that the arm falls away. The Winter Soldier walks forward as the man backs up.
He does not have much strength left but his mission is to kill this man and he will. Kendrick tries to reason with him, tries to bargain, offers him money but it does not stop the soldier from reaching out with his right hand and squeezing the man's throat until he is dead.
The Winter Soldier turns. His eye sight is blurred, his ears are humming; he feels nauseous, the pain in his left side unbelievable and he is bleeding out. He can hear gunfire from outside but he cannot get to the door and slowly he goes down onto his knees and then falls onto his side unconscious.
He has fulfilled his mission and he can now sleep. That is how Adam finds him.
The room is like a a torture chamber. They did not think this would happen. The idea was to get the Winter Soldier captured and for Kendrick to send for him once he heard of the metal arm. They did not even consider that someone would try to remove it, that someone would torture him by slowly taking him apart.
*
One Week Earlier
Jackson Caldwell cannot believe what he is hearing. He argues with fellow Hydra members seated around the table.
“Do you know how valuable he is?” Jackson is saying, but he knows they are not listening. They have already made up their minds.
“If he is as good as you say, then it will be no problem for him!” they insist.
“Yes, but to make him...bait? With no back up? If we lose the Winter Soldier then we lose his expertise. He is an assassin...”
“...Of the highest calibre. Yes, we know, and we are sending him in to assassinate!”
“Yes, but...” Jackson cannot get them to understand and knows he has lost the battle before it even started. It is just one he cannot win; these people are the most powerful people in Hydra, one of them is his own father. These are the men who run Hydra. They are in the positions that he one day hopes to inherit. He needs to keep them on his side, and so reluctantly he gives in.
Hydra have finally uncovered the identity of the man who is running the organisation that has been a pain in Hydra's side for the last five years. His name is Reuben Kendrick, a millionaire Scotsman who ten years ago, due to his own stupidity, was paralysed in a racing accident. According to their sources, Kendrick believes the way out of his wheelchair is technology. Specifically, Hydra technology.
The man is surrounded by soldiers, ruthless mercenaries. But his empire is mismatched, and that is where the difference lies between his organisation and Hydra. Hydra personnel believe in what Hydra is doing; most of them are there by choice. But Kendrick's organisation have hired their people, they are there for the money. They are thugs, ex-cons, mercenaries; their only allegiance to Reuben Kendrick is his money.
Hydra is sending the Winter Soldier in to take him down. At the same time they will move in on his companies, organisations, and property. They will topple them, they will destroy everything the man owns one way or another.
The plan is simple. They cannot get close to Kendrick. They can never track exactly where he is. But they have found out what he wants - the technology and power source in the Winter Soldier's arm.
They will have the Winter Soldier infiltrate one of Kendrick's properties and allow himself to be captured. They will use him as bait to draw Kendrick out. When Kendrick hears the Winter Soldier has been captured, then they believe he will have the Winter Soldier taken to wherever it is that Kendrick is based. Adam Morton and his team will follow. The Winter Soldier will be programmed to kill Kendrick and escape.
What could possibly go wrong?
*
The Mission
Everything.
Everything that could possibly go wrong with the mission had done so. By the time the team locate the Winter Soldier, he is badly wounded and Adam cannot stomach what has been done to him. But the Winter Soldier still completed his mission; he killed Reuben Kendrick. The man lay dead on the floor next to his wheelchair. The Hydra clean up squad will do the rest. Their rival organisation is finished, having failed to achieve their goal.
Hydra can now return to its main mission. They have ruled out the opposition, and they can now rule the world.
But what about their Soldier? What of him?
*
You are sat by the Winter Soldier's bedside. He is in a chemically-induced coma. He lies there, pale, his skin grey, his face stubbled and bruised. His nose and left eye socket are broken. Part of his skull has been shaved so that the surgeon could reduce the swelling around his brain. He is naked, and his body is covered with bruises, cuts, injuries you do not want to think about. But the worst...the worst is his left arm, the bone covered with bandages until they can reattach the arm.
The one that was prised off. The one they took away from him, piece by piece.
When a helicopter had taken off from the Villa, Adam's team had believed the Winter Soldier was on board and was being taken to wherever Kendrick was hiding. They had followed only to find that wasn't the case. There had been confusion and they had gone back to the villa only to discover that a second helicopter had arrived, carrying Kendrick. He had gone to the Winter Soldier, not the other way around.
You were with them when they found him. Adam had insisted. The mission had gone so far south that he wanted someone with medical knowledge on hand, and that duty fell to you. You can still see the room you found him in. It was tucked away in an old set of tunnels under a Spanish Villa that led to God knows where, you don't care. It was obviously the room they interrogated their prisoners in.
The room was cold, with stone walls and dirty lighting. Reuben Kendrick lay dead and next to him the Winter Soldier also lay, unconscious. There were four other bodies: guards and mercenaries that the Winter Soldier had taken out. They had interrogated the Winter Soldier. They wanted to know why he was there. His instructions, his programming, had prevented him from fighting back until the main reason for his mission had joined the fray.
But before that had happened the men had taken the soldier apart – literally. They had destroyed his metal arm, which now lay detached and in pieces. He had been beaten, burned and it reminded you of the photographs you had found of James Barnes when he had been interrogated at a Russian interrogation centre.
You try to dismiss the pictures in your mind and get up to check the drips. They will be operating again later today; they are going to reattach the newly-repaired arm. But there is a problem. Half of the bone they use for anchoring the metal was destroyed and had to be removed; the anchor point will now be shorter. They believe they have found a way around it, but only time will tell.
You think of how many times he has been damaged, how many times someone has hurt him. It is a wonder his mind takes it. You wonder about the long term damage mentally and physically.
You sit back down, and pray.
*
Three Weeks Later
You watch as the Winter Soldier comes back into the room. Something is not right with him, and you notice that once again he is rubbing his left arm.
“Are you all right?” you ask.
He doesn't know you well enough yet, and you don’t think at first he is going to answer but then he does.
“I don’t know...” he says, looking at you. “Am I?”
You do not know what to say, and he does not wait for your reply anyway.
When they had returned him to you four days ago, they had told him you and he are to return to cryo within five days.
They had successfully reattached the arm. Had it working normally. When they woke him, they told him that his mission had been completed. He has no idea that he has lost seven days. He cannot remember the details of his mission, but he is used to this after mission report. He believed them when they said he had been on mission, that everything went well. He has no idea about what happened with his arm. He has no idea he has been wiped already.
You know the truth but you are worried. At first he had seemed normal; tired and pale but getting better. But now? Now, though, there is something wrong with the Winter Soldier.
In the last two days he has become fractious, and you are sure he is in pain and not sleeping but he will not tell you what is wrong. You see his agitation and the way he favours his left arm. You know how amputees feel phantom pain in missing limbs, and he has had that happen before but this is more, so much more.
You speak to the doctors, but they genuinely believe you're worrying over nothing. The tests they had run showed no problems. They do not even think to report your worries to Caldwell.
He has lost weight due to all that has happened, and he is still not eating properly. In fact, in the last twenty four hours he has eaten nothing. There are black bags under his eyes, his skin pale, sweaty. His hair lank and greasy.
You try and get him to tell you what is wrong but he says nothing, keeps you at arms length, but you can see a new look in his eyes. You think you see fear.
You know he has been up most of the night again; he did not want you in his bed so you slept alone but you still heard him move around and you heard him groan. You had gone over to him, tried to talk to him, but he had become aggravated, pushed you away, even threatened you. He doesn’t want you near him.
And this morning, he looks terrible. Worse than yesterday. You can feel heat coming from his body. Appearances are deceiving: he appears to have gotten up and dressed himself, but you know they are the same tee shirt and combat trousers he wore yesterday. He did not change last night, you can smell his clothes need washing, his body reeks of body odour and something else, something unpleasant, rotting meat.
He is sat at the table in the kitchen and you offer him a drink but it is as if he hasn't heard you so you place your hand on his right shoulder and he is startled. He nearly ends up hitting you across the room; fortunately, you moved away just in time.
He looks at you and you see he is sweating heavily. His eyes are bloodshot. As you approach him again, you feel the increased heat rolling off him. You also notice his arm, his metal arm - he is holding it in such a way that you can see it is not functioning properly.
You move to the chair next to him and sit down, keeping your movements slow and non-threatening. He looks at you, and then away. This close and you can smell him, as if something has gone off, gone rotten, and your heart begins to beat faster. There is definitely something wrong here.
“What is it that's wrong? You need to let me help you,” you speak but don’t touch him.
He doesn’t reply.
“Talk to me...” you plead. “I'm a nurse. Is it your arm?”
“No!” he almost shouts the word at you, anger burning in his eyes now. “No,” he says more quietly.
“Then what? Please tell me.”
As you try to reason with him his whole body seems too tense; a grimace of pain shows in his face and his breathing hitches. He cannot help but clutch at his arm, and he groans. He goes to stand up, to get away from you but the chair falls over backwards and he collapses to his knees still clutching his arm.
That is enough for you. You jump to your feet and hit the panic button, summoning immediate help.
“No, don’t!” he cries out, but the klaxon is already sounding. You move to touch him and he is burning up. You encourage him to lie down and he does but then a new bolt of pain hits him and he curls up on his side, keeping his left arm against his stomach.
“No, you shouldn't have …” Another bolt of pain hits him and you try to calm him down, try to get him to tell you what is wrong, but then you see something. Where his metal arm is held against his stomach, the material of his tee shirt is smouldering.
“Don't let them! They'll take it! Please, don’t let them...they'll take my arm...” his voice is weak but frantic and the pain is making him breathless. You can see the hysteria growing within him. He reaches up and grabs the front of your jumper in his right hand using it to pull himself up and also pulling you close. His eyes are desperate. He isn't trying to harm you: he is clinging onto you, as if to stop himself from drowning. “Don't let them take my arm, please don’t let them take...” But then the pain hits again and he collapses forward and you catch him. You can feel an intense burning heat coming from his arm. It is so hot, that is what is making the material of his tee shirt smoulder.
“Oh God,” you whisper. You can't stop them from doing anything. You can't promise him anything. He is in such pain. You look around for something you can wrap around the arm to try and prevent it from burning him.
The door bursts open and two doctors and a guard come flying in. They see the Winter Soldier on the floor – but worse, he sees them. You don’t know how he does it but he pushes you away and staggers to his feet still holding his arm. He backs up, holding out his right hand. He now allows his left arm to hang by his side. A trickle of blood runs from the star; its as if the sigil is bleeding. The blood bubbles and boils on the metallic surface.
“Come near me and I'll kill you,” he snarls. You don’t know how he is staying upright; his legs are barely holding him. The smell coming from him is making you feel sick and you see a look of nausea on the doctor's faces. But his words stop the doctors in their tracks. This soldier is far stronger than anyone they know, there is no way they can tackle him and they look to you for guidance. You step forward and try to reason with him, but one look at his eyes and you know it will not work. He is delirious, and in this state he is dangerous.
The doctors turn to the guard and tell him to fetch reinforcements. They are going to have to take him down the hard way - meaning taser charge and not hypodermic.
“No, please don't!” you say but they are not listening to you now. You now know they will taser him and you don’t want that; it will cause more pain, the voltage needed will burn through his clothes and through his skin.
You try to talk to him but he is not listening; the look on his face is frightening, and you know that he will kill anyone who goes near him. You feel yourself being pulled back and held whilst the guards come in to take him down.
“No please don’t, please, we need to find another way! You'll harm him! Please don't!” you cry, fighting to get away from the guards.
The decision of how to take him down is taken away from all of you as a tremendous pain makes his whole body spasm and then buckle. By the time he hits the floor hard he is unconscious.
They rush him to the operating room. Whatever the problem is, it emanates from his left arm. Caldwell is called.
Although unconscious they do not want him waking unexpectedly. They inject him with something that will keep him out for hours whilst they do their preliminaries and find out what is wrong. You don’t even stop to think. You change into your nurse's uniform and meet them there; they do not even think of stopping you, you are a highly trained nurse and know your way around the medical facility. Around the Winter Soldier.
More blood is bubbling to the surface of the metal arm. They do not understand it. It must be coming from somewhere within his body: the metal arm has no blood, his veins leading up into his shoulder and arm were cauterised by heat in the previous operation. They need to get his temperature down and ice packs specially formulated from the cryo freeze room are used. There is always a supply for emergencies. Zola's serum works at such a rate that it burns his body up and they have had to use it before but never in this way.
On a quick examination they can find no injury to any other part of his body, with the exception of burns on his stomach from where he had held his arm close to his body. All the problems seem to be in in his metal arm. The decision to take it apart is hindered by the fact that the metal is so hot they can barely touch it, yet alone use the finesse they will need.
Whilst they get the medical room ready you speak to Caldwell. He cannot understand why you keep badgering him about the importance of keeping the Winter Soldier fully sedated until you can get to the root of the problem. He would not dream of having it any other way.
“Have you never read Lehmann's files on when they were broke James Barnes mind?” you ask.
“There was no need to. Whilst I applaud the Winter Soldier programme, I never saw the need to revisit how it was put together. I realise it was one of the most important parts and of course...I've learnt more about it as time has gone on.”
“When the time came to attach the mechanical arm, James still had most of his bicep left. Lehmann wanted to be rid of it, just leaving part of the bone and the shoulder. He...he thought it was clever of him to kill two birds with one stone. That's the phrase he used. When they came to remove what they didn't want, they deliberately kept James conscious for the procedure. They used a drug that kept him awake, he couldn't fall into unconsciousness. It also paralysed him so he couldn't move, not even to speak but he could still feel everything they did. Lehmann said he had got a specialist in to do the operation. They peeled his skin off....” At this you think Caldwell is going to stop you, but you refuse to spare him. “...then they scraped the flesh away using flesh strippers....all the while James was trying to scream, trying to beg them not to take his arm...” now you have to stop as you see the memories in your mind.
You cannot tell Caldwell what the Winter Soldier said to you about not letting them take his arm. If he thought there was any sign of James he would order a full and complete wipe. If there is a chance something of James lies dormant in the soldier you don’t want it stripped out.
“I saw the moment his mind gave up. His eyes...the light in them died and when they were sawing the bone away there was nothing there. Nothing.” You look at him. “For his sake please, please keep him unconscious until we can guarantee we don’t have to take the arm. Don't make him go through that again.”
“I'm not Lehmann,” Caldwell looks at you.
No, you think, but you are Hydra.
“We'll keep him out of it.”
“Thank you.” You turn to leave, but he touches your arm and you look back at him.
Caldwell's expression belies his interest. “You said Lehmann got an expert in. Does he still work for us?”
You shake your head. “No. He turned out to be a butcher from the local abattoir. Lehmann thought that was funny. He thought it made a good joke.”
You turn and walk away.
*
It takes hours to cool the area and they can start to unplate the arm. What they begin to find disturbs them. It does more than that. It sickens them - and they are scientists. Doctors.
Although he is unconscious, he is obviously in a great deal of pain and they inject him with pain killers. They need to keep him as still as possible but that is not enough. The decision is then made to render him totally unconscious, and an anaesthetist is bought in. This will need to be a proper full on operation and everyone in the room is scrubbed and covered. Caldwell and the others watch through the glass plated window.
The rings now run wet with blood, and they also stick together with congealed gore and are difficult to grip. As the doctor unbuckles each one more blood is running between the gaps and when he removes the first set of plates you are as stunned as he is.
There is flesh in there.
The smell as he removes the plates is overbearing: burning skin, cooked meat and something gone rotten. As more layers are removed you can see what has happened. Zola's serum has taken a wrong turn. It is trying to repair the missing limb, trying to grow back his flesh, veins, muscles onto the original bone that was left as the harnessing point. That bone was recently broken and has re-awoken the serum there. The tissue has grown into the electronics. The Soldier would have been in agony and it is doubtful if he had realised what was happening.
Another doctor joins the operation and they remove all they can for the time being and are left with a mess of veins to cauterise; partly grown muscle twisted onto metal; wires running through new tissue. They don’t know what to do next, and then they get word that Zola is to be consulted but it may take time to get a reply.
They move the Winter Soldier back to the old-style hospital bed and you place him on a drip containing morphine and barbiturates to keep him asleep. He is flushed as the serum is still trying to repair the damage, his arm is packed in more ice bags and they also pack these alongside his body. As soon as an ice pack loses the cold, it is replaced by another and put back into the cryo room to refreeze. His arm continues to bleed, sending the sheets red on that side. The doctors come in and out trying to keep up with sealing the new veins until it finds somewhere else to dribble out of. He is kept in another induced coma and once again you do not leave his side.
*
Caldwell reads the report in front of him then looks back at the doctor.
“So he's dying?” he asks, and the doctor nods.
“I'm not even sure that we can save him. There is so much we still don't know about the serum, it is as if it has...mutated.”
The serum is doing more damage than good. It is growing the arm back in a hideous, malformed shape. It is also starting to back up into his body, into his shoulder, and they have to make the decision whether or not to remove a greater part of him. Take the amputation right back into the left shoulder and part of his left rib cage. They will have to remove the bone entirely. There will be no anchor point left. The metal arm will need to invade more of his body.
Caldwell has to make the decision. Does he stop the project here, allow the soldier to die? Or does he take it to the next level?
“All right. Leave it with me,” he sighs and throws the report on the table.
“Sir we need a decision pretty quickly,” the doctor says as he gets up to leave. “We haven't got a lot of time.”
Caldwell nods. “I understand.”
*
The Winter Soldier is kept asleep through it all and finally one of the doctors persuades you to go and sleep. You do not want to, but even you have to admit you are tired, more tired than you feel you should be. The doctor tells you it is stress. He convinces you finally by saying you will be of no good to the soldier when he is finally allowed to come around if you don't rest.
If of course he is ever allowed to.
You look down at him lying there, left side swaddled in bandages and ice packs but still the smell is seeping out. You can see angry streaks of red radiating out from the mess that still remains of his left shoulder. The infection is starting to invade other parts of his body. You are not allowed to attend any of the meetings and are being told very little of what is happening. But you can see - you know he is dying.
When you get back to your room you set your alarm clock for five hours, the most time you will allow yourself away from him, and then you fall into bed and try to shut the world out. It is not difficult - you are so very tired.
*
You awaken feeling sick, and you sit up but immediately have to lie down again. The room spins. You must have been more tired than you thought. Sounds are strange, and the light in the room doesn't make sense. It should be moving into evening and yet it is bright sunlight.
You sit up again and reach for the glass of water you see beside you on the bedside table. Strange that you cannot remember placing it there when you went to bed. Your mouth is dry, claggy, with a bitter metallic taste. You give yourself a few minutes and then swing off the bed and make your way to the bathroom to use the shower and put on fresh clothes. You look at the alarm clock. It never went off - in fact, it is not even ticking. You pick it up and realise there is a small layer of dust on it. Strange. You look around your quarters. Now that you stop to think about it it seems dusty, old, not quite as it was when you went to sleep.
It is not until now you realise you cannot hear any noises from outside in the corridor. You open the door and step out but cannot see anyone and deep down inside you a fear starts to grow. Where is everyone?
“Hello?” you shout, but there is no reply and you turn and walk down the corridor to the lift and then down to the Main Room. You see one guard on the way but he just nods and keeps walking. You open the door of the Main Room but there is no-one inside – unusual, but not unheard of. You turn to leave but then realise what you saw and you turn back. The master chair is missing, along with some of the equipment. You walk over to where it normally stands but there is just a layer of dust.
Your heart is beginning to thump and you have a dread growing within you. You leave the room and back out into the corridor. You try calling out again but no-one replies. You pause for a moment and then head for the medical room where the Winter Soldier is.
You can hear your footsteps ring on the concrete floor. Your ears are still humming and you still feel strange, as if you are sleep walking. Or as if I have just come around from cryo.
Your pace increases, panic rising in your chest, a sick feeling in your stomach.
You still see no one. No other guards or even doctors, you thought there might be at least one in the corridor on the way to, or coming from, visiting the patient. The door to the medical room is closed. You put your hand on the handle and press down but you hesitate for a moment. You listen, holding your breath. You cannot hear anything but silence.
“You're being stupid,” you chide yourself, but you don't sound convinced.
You push the door open and step in.
The room is empty except for the frame of the medical bed, and even that has been stripped. Nothing remains.
The Winter Soldier has gone.
“No, no...”
You walk into the middle of the room, utter disbelief on your face. You turn around full circle as if something could be hiding in the corners.
The room is empty.
“No, no, no...” your voice is growing louder, hysteria leaking into it as you stare at the blank spaces. All the medical equipment has gone. There is nothing left.
“No, no, no!” and now you are screaming and crying.
He has gone.
You are alone and slowly you sink to your knees sobbing. You have lost him. They have taken him away from you again and you are totally and utterly alone.
- 56
- 57
- 58
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

A Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Fic - The Constant