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A Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Fic - The Constant	By : TheConstant1944 Category: Marvel Verse Comics > Captain America Views: 2391 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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Chapter List
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Chapter Ninety-Six
Bucky Barnes – Isolation

The three men look into the room that holds their prisoner. He is unconscious. Anyone with that amount of sedative shot into them would be out for days; and even Bucky Barnes should be out for at least twenty-four hours.
“So, it begins,” the first man turns and looks at the other two.
One nods, the other replies, “I guess it does.”
“Is everything ready?” The first man asks and the dark-haired man nods.
“A little finessing is required but then we are good to go.”
The man turns back, “No going back now...poor bastard.”
*
James Barnes tries to open his eyes but then immediately needs to close them again. He groans, not sure if it because his head hurts or because he has been in this position so many times before – opening his eyes to find himself in a strange room.
He reaches up and rubs his forehead, trying to remember what happened. He had been in the prison cell. The guard was in danger – no that's not right, the guard was the danger and then Bucky's eyes open again.
Hydra.
“No. Please,” his voice is a desperate whisper. He looks at the ceiling, trying to get his thoughts in order and notices the ceiling looks strange. He realises after a moment that it is because there is no light fitting; in fact there is nothing attached to the ceiling at all. He turns his head sideways to see where the light is coming from. At the top of each wall is a recessed panel and the light is coming from those. There are no windows in the room at all.
He takes a deep breath because he can feel a blind panic starting in his chest. Hydra have me back. Memories of the wiping force their way to the front and he can feel the pain as his mind is torn apart, he can even smell the leather of the chair. He feels hot, sick... but then the Solider is there, talking him down.
Breathe, take it easy. Let's take this one moment at a time. Scout, reconnaissance, think! And as much as he hates this aspect of himself, he appreciates the calming influence it is trying to dictate. That for once it is trying to helping him.
He sits up, turning as he does. His head feels as if it is full of loose gravel, and his neck grates as he tries to look up. He aches. His muscles have lain in the same position for more than a day, but he doesn't know that. He has been lying on top of a double bed. He sits on the side, head in his hands to try and stop the dizziness.
For a few seconds a memory triggers - he can hear a young, pre-serum Steve telling him that it's his own fault for drinking too much. He looks up now, but he is alone. It was just a memory that showed itself and then fled. He tries to recapture it. He had stayed over at the apartment with Steve after a heavy night of drinking. The next morning he had sat on the edge of the bed, groaning. “Drink this,” and Steve had shoved a drink of water into his hand, trying not to smirk. Bucky couldn't even face the water but Steve had made him drink it. For such a small individual Steve could make Bucky do anything – anything.
“Still can if I'm honest,” he murmurs.
“Oh for fuck's sake. Quit daydreaming,” the Soldier growls in his mind, but Bucky does not want to leave the memory, does not want to lose Steve.
“Leave me alone,” Bucky growls back, quietly. A stranger watching him would be confused to see him speaking when there is no one else present. But his friends would be able to tell them, Steve and Freya would be able to tell them.
Still, it isn't alcohol that has caused this; rather four tranquilliser darts shot into him at close range. He bets he still has the bruising to show for it.
Bucky looks up. There is a night stand next to the bed. On it is a digital clock stating that it is 3.22am, a lamp, several bottles of water and two white tablets. One of those yellow sticky notes that Freya had thought were incredible, sits next to the tablets. It says: Painkillers, for your head. It seems surreal.
He picks up one of the bottles and opens it, looking around the room, and then looks back at the water. He hesitates. What if it's drugged? "That's the least of my worries,” he replies. He drinks from the bottle; the water is cool, refreshing and he keeps drinking. It makes him feel slightly nauseous but he needs the fluid. When he has nearly finished he stops and picks up the tablets, looks at them as if they could tell a story.
What if...?
“Shut the fuck up, will you!” He holds the bottle to his forehead for a moment as he feels it pulsing with pain, then without stopping to think anymore, he swallows the tablets down and finishes the bottle.
He groans out loud as the water hits his stomach and he swings around to lay on the bed again. Just a few minutes and then I'll...but he is asleep again before he can finish the sentence. The water is not drugged, the tablets are just painkillers, but his body needs to close down again so it does.
When he wakes the next time the clock says 8.27am, he has been asleep for five hours. This time he remembers almost straight away where he is - as if I knew where that is exactly! he thinks as he sits up. He sees the empty bottle of water, and the sticky note now curling at the edges.
He sits on the edge of the bed for a moment looking at the floor, which is covered in a a blue industrial carpeting. He then looks around the room. It is one of the strangest he has seen but it reminds him of something, something related to Hydra.
The walls are made of a blue-grey metal. The corners are not sharp, but instead are curved. Some thought has been put into the making of the room. The ceiling is made of the same metal and there seems to be no break as it just curves downwards into the walls. There are the recesses in two of the walls where the light is coming from. The back and front walls have no recess. The room is square and is about twenty-five foot both across and wide.
Metal walls, that's what I remember he thinks – the cryo rooms had metal walls. But this room does not seem to be for cryo-freezing or anything similar.
The double bed is butted up against one wall with night stands on either sides. The rooms back wall is plain, but a desk and chair stand up against it. Next to it is what looks like a white cabinet. The next wall has an open doorway and looks as though it leads to a bathroom. Finally the last wall has a table and a chair against it plus an easy chair. At first he thinks that all of the walls are bare but then he notices a large, rectangular grey panel next to the bathroom doorway. In all honestly it looks very much like a television screen on a huge scale. He looks behind him and sees this wall is also adorned. Above the bed is a picture. He squints to look at it although it is quite large, his head is beginning to throb again. The picture is in actual fact a mural, and his heart thuds when he realises what he is looking at. It is part of a painting that he saw in the museum exhibit at The Smithsonian.
It has been altered from the original to show just him and Steve. At the bottom of the mural are the words: Lest you forget.
(Authors note: To see the image of the painting use: http://i.imgur.com/pgfhp8N.jpg )
He looks away. His mind cannot come to terms with it at the moment. It cannot cope with thoughts of Steve. Cannot cope with whatever games Hydra are now playing.
He stands up and, for a moment has trouble keeping his balance. He puts a hand out to steady himself and then realises something. His left arm is powered up. He is dressed in jeans and black teeshirt. He looks at the metal plates of the arm, lifts his fist and curls the fingers. The adjustment panel is no longer welded shut. The arm will need slight calibration, but it is back up and running.
He looks around the room as if looking for anything that might mean something. On one of the walls is a switch, with another yellow note above it. He walks over to it, and realises he is no longer wearing a tracking device. Light switch, the note says. He turns the small knob and the lights in the recess dip, turns it the other way and they brighten.
He turns around and looks around the room again. He can see a few more of the yellow post-it notes in places. He feels confused, cannot think clearly. If this is Hydra then they have changed the way they treat their prisoners. He walks over to the open doorway. As he thought it is a bathroom. He goes in and as he does, a light comes on recessed the same way as the others. There is a shower, toilet and basin. There are also essentials like a shaver (electric), soap, a mirror, etc.
“Jesus,” he says quietly, under his breath. He looks around but one thing he cannot see in either here nor the other room are cameras of any kind. That, of course, says nothing: cameras these days are so small that they could be put anywhere. His bladder reminds him it needs to use the facilities and he does so, having to lean one hand against the wall to steady himself as a bout of dizziness hits him.
Back in the main room he realises what it is that is bugging him about the setup. There is no other doorway except that for the one leading to the bathroom. If that is the case, then how did they get him in here? There has to be another exit. He studies each of the walls but he keeps having to blink as his eyesight is growing blurry. He pinches the skin in between his eyes. He needs to sleep, see if he can get rid of this infernal headache.
He prowls around for a short time longer. His captors have thought of everything. The room is more or less self contained. He finds the white cabinet is a small fridge and he opens it to find more bottled water, soda cans, fresh fruit. Above the fridge is a kettle and coffee. It tells him more than just the fact this has been thought out; if they trust him to have boiling water, then it must mean they have no worries about recourse from him. After all boiling water is a hell of a weapon. Next to the coffee are packs of biscuits. Without thinking he opens one and takes one out to eat. His stomach growls with hunger.
Over the other side of the room in a corner but not exactly tucked away is a running machine. What he notices about it is that it has been positioned in such a place that he can view the whole of his area whilst using it, he would not have his back to any part of it except the wall. No one could sneak up on him. Even that has been carefully thought out. But, it also means that he will not be leaving this vicinity any time soon.
The room is not too warm, more ambient. He sees a switch of some type flush within the wall next to where the bed is. He presses it and the wall opens to reveal a wardrobe of black tee-shirts and jeans. Even underwear, all neatly folded.
Although it does not bear relation to his quarters at the Hydra facilities it does include a lot of what they had in them and that worries him. It is obvious that he is there for the duration and by the looks of things he will be in total isolation.
There is something on the desk against the back wall and he walks over to it. It is a laptop. He lifts the lid and finds it is already powered up. On the screen are shortcuts. He knows his concentration is low at the moment, he is just about coping with scouting out the room so he leaves it for now. Also something else has caught his attention. It is a small box with what looks like a buzzer on it. Next to it is one of the yellow notes. When you are ready please press this.
He comes close to pressing it, but stops at the last moment. The note says when he is ready – and he is not ready at the moment. He knows he will need a higher level of concentration when he faces whomever it is that has taken him. Pressing that button will take him to the next level of whatever this is and he needs to be more awake, more with it.
He looks around the room once more and then pads over to the bed, carrying the box with the buzzer and places it on the bedside table. The clock now says 10.01am. He sits, on the edge, dry washes his face and then lies down on his side. He doesn't know what game this is, doesn't know who has him but he does know one thing – they can bloody well wait. His mind is crashing, his body aches, his stomach doesn't know if it wants to keep the biscuit he ate, and his ears hum. He closes his eyes and is asleep again in minutes.
*
He feels better the third time he awakens. He is usually a light sleeper, but whilst he slept someone must have come in as the empty bottle has been cleared away, and he sees a plate of sandwiches covered in cling film with two more painkillers on the bedside table. His stomach grumbles. He is starving and without thinking about it he drinks another bottle of water and eats the sandwiches. He does not need the pain killers at the moment. Who knows if that will change. He looks around the room again, if someone has been in whilst he was asleep then there must be a door but he still cannot see one. It is something he decides to worry about later.
He uses the toilet and then pads back into the room.
“Come on. Let's do this,” he says to himself and picks up the buzzer and presses it before he can change his mind.
For a moment there is no response then a male voice speaks.
“Mr Barnes, I hope you are feeling better. Please give me a moment and I will join you.” He cannot track where the speakers are as the voice fills the room but it is a quiet, pleasant tone, placid even.
Bucky looks around slowly still not able to see a doorway other than that of the bathroom. He looks at the grey panel in the wall but that remains dark. Then he feels a very slight vibration through his feet, he looks down and then forward and realises the front wall seems to be getting lighter. He is tempted to step back but he doesn't. His hands at his sides clench.
Within another five seconds the wall is totally transparent and he can see there is another smaller room half in shadow on the other side of it. He realises that it isn't a wall at all but a force field of some kind. He steps forward to touch it, expecting an electric shock. There is nothing but a mild, almost pleasant, tingling in his fingers and as he presses against the barrier he finds it is totally immovable.
He sees a man standing watching him, and stops. He is sure he can see a shadow towards the back of the other room, another person perhaps. He steps back a pace. The man in front comes forward carrying a chair which he puts down and then he sits.
“Please, Mr Barnes, we want you to be comfortable,” and he indicates the chairs at the table. This is the man he just heard. Bucky doesn't move for a second but then moves a chair over and sits down; to be honest he is glad to, he feels unsteady and doesn't want them to know.
“Where am I?” he asks, studying the man in front of him. Does he know him? His voice seems vaguely familiar but he doesn't think he has ever met the man before. He has an American accent, stands about six foot and is light skinned, clean shaven, pleasant looking, soft blue grey sympathetic eyes. His brown hair is receding back but cut cleanly, he is dressed in a dark suit and tie.
“You're safe,” the man says, but Bucky shakes his head.
“You can say that all you like, but do you honestly think I'll believe you? I asked and want to know, where am I?” Bucky's voice is steady, the look on his face a no-nonsense one but inside his stomach is beginning to churn, his head beginning to throb. He slows his breathing down to stop the ball of panic that is rising up.
The man looks down at the floor, and then back up and smiles.
“Mr Barnes - may I call you James? Or would you prefer Bucky?”
“Call me whatever you want,” he shrugs, but then smiles sarcastically: “And what should I call you?”
The man is silent, studies him. Bucky sits there looking back. He wants to fill the silence with words, wants to demand to know where he is, wants to...
“Calling you Bucky seems too personal at the moment, and I would prefer to wait until you give your permission. So, for now, I'll call you Sergeant Barnes. That is your rank, isn't it?”
“You tell me.”
“Well technically you are still in the army, still one of the Howling Commandos.”
“Actually, technically I'm dead,” Bucky says.
The man leans forward, still with a patient smile on his face. “I'm not the enemy, sergeant. I know that you can't see that yet, and I promise we will tell you everything.... but for now we want you to get used to...staying here, you'll be well looked after.”
And that makes Bucky laugh, not a joyous laugh but one of disbelief. “You shoot me full of god knows what, then kidnap me. I wake up here in a room with no door. I don't even know where here is!” The anger is beginning to come out in his voice.
At that point the second man, who had been standing in the shadows of the room steps forward. He has dark skin and is dressed in a modern suit with a black shirt and no tie. He has short dark brown hair, more serious than his colleague. Clean shaven. Hard brown eyes.
The man comes forward until he is just the other side of the shield and Bucky stands to face him. There is not a lot of difference in height between them. The man's eyes roam over Bucky's face. “I always wondered what you looked like up close,” he says softly, and those words create a warning inside of Bucky's mind.
“Come closer and I'll show you,” Bucky says squaring up. The man smiles as if in a promise.
“Hah! I am going to like you Mr Barnes, but be warned....” and now he is serious again: “You murdered my father and I have looked for you for many years.” Bucky looks down, closes his eyes and the man can see the toll those simple words have on him, and surprisingly he softens. “But as my colleague has said, you are safe here for now.”
“Who was he?” Bucky asks quietly, looking back up and straight into the eyes of the man in front of him.
“Someone you would have liked. I will tell you about him some day.”
“I'm sorry.” There is nothing else Bucky can say and he does not try to excuse what he has done.
The man nods. “We are all sorry for something.”
“You want to know where you are Mr Barnes...” the man is now smiling and the edge in his voice has gone completely. There is a remote control in his hand and he raises it and pushes down the centre. Bucky is expecting the force field to collapse, but instead a humming noise comes from the back wall of his room instead.
He turns and watches as a third of the wall detaches and slides downwards. By now the first man has stood up and come to stand next to his colleague.
Bucky walks over to where the wall has opened up to a huge window of glass.
“Welcome to paradise, Mr Barnes.”
Bucky looks out. He is high up, very high up, way above the canopy of the trees below. The sky is a clear blue with a few white clouds drifting by. In the distance he can see mountains, a vast jungle stretching for miles, two huge waterfalls side by side, cascading down creating mists of their own but then he sees it and for a moment his heart thuds in his chest. What must be a few miles away is a rock face but the rock has been carved into an immense, powerful creature. A panther, its mouth wide, fangs ready to protect or destroy. Whichever it is it needs to do.
He then knows where he is. He knows who it is he killed – who he murdered.
And that makes the man behind him T'Challa, son of T'Chaka.
“Welcome to Wakanda.”
He turns, cannot look into T'Challa's eyes for a moment - but then he does. “Is this what this is? Revenge?”
T'Challa looks at the other man and then back at Bucky. “Well. Yes I suppose you could call it that but not against you Mr Barnes. It is revenge against Hydra.”
“We discovered Hydra were intending to kill you, to silence you. But there is also a high level government plot to make you disappear and we could not let that happen so we had to get to you first. You see Sergeant Barnes we believe it is Hydra who should be held accountable for everything that has been done, not you,” the other man says.
They can see now the tiredness in Bucky's eyes, they know of his health problems, physical and mental. They know everything about him.
“So...” Bucky holds his hands out to T'Challa, “what happens now? I live here for the rest of my life in some kind of seclusion? You don't understand I need...I need to face what I have done. It is still me who did it, still me who killed your father. I needed that trial. I can't…I can't explain it.”
“I know, and believe it or not I understand. For many years I have hated you; it all but consumed me but all it turned out to be was a waste of my energy. I was focused on the wrong person. You were the weapon, not the enemy. I want to get the people who caused this, caused everything and I want to make sure Hydra is crushed never to rise again. No more heads to grow back....ever.”
The first man speaks again, and the look in his eyes is sympathetic. “I'm afraid, Sergeant Barnes you are not out of the frying pan yet. You will still face your trial...just not in the way you expected to. For now though you need to rest. Tomorrow when you are ready please use the buzzer and I'll come back, we can talk some more. Meanwhile, dinner will be delivered and I suggest a shower and an early night. You look as if you need it.”
“I'm not going to be getting out of here any time soon am I?” Bucky asks and the man shakes his head and they turn to leave. “And what happens when I'm found guilty?” Bucky calls after them, needing to know what his future holds. The man looks at T'Challa who nods and then looks back at Bucky.
“If they find you guilty then you will still face the death penalty.” The man is solemn. Bucky takes a deep breath and they see relief in his eyes. It is comforting for him to know to expect death.
“Will you...I don't want anyone to bring me back once I'm dead or to take my body for research or....” And he gestures at himself, but T'Challa knows exactly what he is asking and he replies with a slight bow.
“I will help you find peace. It would be an honour.”
Bucky nods and tries to smile. Then he looks at the other man, “I think that now you can call me Bucky.”
The man smiles. “Agent Coulson, but you can call me Phil.”
There is quiet tap on the door in the back of the room and Coulson and T'Challa turn, the door opens. Another person comes in carrying a tray of food.
“Ah dinner,” Coulson says “and someone you already know.”
The man carrying the food is Jeff Gordons, the prison guard whom Bucky thought had betrayed him.
“Could you step back a little?” Coulson asks, and comes forward taking a remote out of his pocket. Bucky does as he is asked.
By pointing the remote at the electric field a small opening above the table is created and Gordons is able to pass the tray through. Bucky sees he is carrying something else. He holds it up for Bucky to see.
“Sorry for the deception, son. Thought you might like to take up where we left off.” It is a chess set in his hands. “In the bedside cabinet is another one. When you're ready I thought we could set them up either side of the barrier,” he jerks a thumb at T'Challa and Coulson. “They won't let me in there with you.”
Bucky smiles, shakes his head, looks at the floor. He crosses his arms, hands in his armpits and looks up. “I'd like that,” he says and suddenly Bucky Barnes looks like the young vulnerable man he was before Zola took his life away from him.
“Good, good. Well, eat up and I'll be back later to beat the socks of you.”
And then Bucky finds he is alone again, but the wall remains transparent. He sits down at the table. There is so much to think about. He may have thought it was going to be total isolation but now he knows it is not, there will be people around him, he is not totally alone. Any other person would be totally lost, cut adrift but so much has happened to Bucky Barnes in his life that he thinks of this as just the next phase. What is most important to him is that he has their promise.
When - not if – when he is found guilty, there is no doubt in this mind what the verdict will be - he has their promise that he will die and that is all he wants. An end to all of this, and freedom for those whom he loves. Steve and Freya will be able to get on with their lives without him as a noose around their necks.
What more could he ask for?
*
The three men watch Bucky Barnes on the monitor. They watch as he wolfs down the food; he seems more relaxed now he has some of his questions answered.
Phil Coulson is glad he recruited Jeff Gordons to help, he seems to have grown genuinely fond of Barnes. They watch as Gordons comes back with a small table that he sets up on his side of the barrier and Barnes sets up his chess board on his side.
“All the years I believed I would not be able to stand within a foot of the Winter Soldier without crushing him, without tearing him apart, and what does he turn out to be? Human. Someone I actually like,” T'Challa shakes his head and Coulson pats his arm.
The man with them clears his throat. “Well, now we've all become friends I guess we should think about phase two.” This is the man who first asked T'Challa for his help, asked him to give sanctuary to the Winter Soldier. T'Challa remembers his first response was to laugh, his second to threaten to kill the man if he didn't leave his presence, instead he had held his ground.
“Let me show you something first,” he had said.
What he had shown T'Challa had changed his mind about everything.
Phil Coulson had been just as hard to convince. The man had shown him the same thing and Coulson had been quiet for a long time. “Well?” this man had asked, and Coulson had looked at him.
“You really need to ask after showing me that?” he had said.
“Do you want me to tell him what is going to happen?” Coulson asks now, and the man shakes his head.
“No, I should be back in plenty of time tomorrow and that's my duty, I'm the one who dropped the ball on this. But I'd better get going, we have a lot of work to do - don't we, Jarvis.”
“Yes sir, I believe we do.”
“Places to go, people to see...” he sees Coulson looking at him with raised eyebrows. “Well, not people as such but more like lots of governments to hack.”
“I don't want to know....” Coulson says alarmed, holding up his hand and making Tony grin. “I guess I'll have an early night then if my phone is going to start ringing off the hook and all hell is going to break loose. In fact I'm betting I'll know exactly when you make the shit hit the fan.”
“I think you will my friend, I think you will.”
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A Bucky Barnes Winter Soldier Fic - The Constant