The fact she reaches for him at all comes as a surprise. And he lets her anyway. When her hand withdraws, he’s left wandering how real the touch even was, the feeling that lingered seeming only that of a ghost. No one reaches for him these days. Well, except Steve. But Steve is another matter entirely, one that unsettles him still, even as much as he has come to terms with his personal decision to pay mind to his own needs first here.
But he doesn’t feel rushed, even with what likely should have made him feel so, her discomfort from earlier and the barrage of questions. Though it could likely have something to do with the training Hydra had given him to ignore meaningless anxieties, he feels that this particular cause has more to do with the fact that it almost seems a legend now, something so old and untold that only he is aware of the full details anymore.
“I did too,” he starts after a lengthy pause, used to gather his words. “Thought I was a goner. Until I wasn’t.” His fingers fold together, laced as if natural, but the metal is always stiff against his flesh. “Steve made it so I didn’t have to say much. About what Zola did to me. And, well, I wasn’t really lying in the debrief. Saying I didn’t remember much.”
Bucky swallows now, reaching the point he knows would stir Steve’s anger if his best friend was listening to the tale. “He was trying to make the serum though. Erskine’s. Trying to remake it. Beat it. When Steve got put all over the papers and the radio, it only moved the plan forward. They started taking test subjects. Choosing the weak. The sick. Y'know, like Steve used to be.
“I caught pneumonia a couple weeks after capture. Shit conditions, shit sanitation. Of course we heard about the experiments and how people weren’t comin’ back from the medical wing, so I fought it off as much as I could, but with the munitions manufacturing they were making us do, my body couldn’t keep up, and... Well. Got several of those prototypes. I think. A lot of it’s a blur. But I do remember injections. And lying on that table for hours while a bunch of ’em were leaning over me. Just didn’t expect any of it to make me stronger until it actually did.”
He couldn’t have known it would have succeeded. All the other test subjects were dead, after all. He was Zola’s last guinea pig. And then later his Soldier.
no subject
But he doesn’t feel rushed, even with what likely should have made him feel so, her discomfort from earlier and the barrage of questions. Though it could likely have something to do with the training Hydra had given him to ignore meaningless anxieties, he feels that this particular cause has more to do with the fact that it almost seems a legend now, something so old and untold that only he is aware of the full details anymore.
“I did too,” he starts after a lengthy pause, used to gather his words. “Thought I was a goner. Until I wasn’t.” His fingers fold together, laced as if natural, but the metal is always stiff against his flesh. “Steve made it so I didn’t have to say much. About what Zola did to me. And, well, I wasn’t really lying in the debrief. Saying I didn’t remember much.”
Bucky swallows now, reaching the point he knows would stir Steve’s anger if his best friend was listening to the tale. “He was trying to make the serum though. Erskine’s. Trying to remake it. Beat it. When Steve got put all over the papers and the radio, it only moved the plan forward. They started taking test subjects. Choosing the weak. The sick. Y'know, like Steve used to be.
“I caught pneumonia a couple weeks after capture. Shit conditions, shit sanitation. Of course we heard about the experiments and how people weren’t comin’ back from the medical wing, so I fought it off as much as I could, but with the munitions manufacturing they were making us do, my body couldn’t keep up, and... Well. Got several of those prototypes. I think. A lot of it’s a blur. But I do remember injections. And lying on that table for hours while a bunch of ’em were leaning over me. Just didn’t expect any of it to make me stronger until it actually did.”
He couldn’t have known it would have succeeded. All the other test subjects were dead, after all. He was Zola’s last guinea pig. And then later his Soldier.