You Must Remember This

Chapter 12 - Exposed

Wakanda, 2016

Beep... Beep... Beep...

Always the same tone. Insufferably annoying. What was it? Where the heck was it coming from? Bucky tried to open his eyes, but he just felt so tired. It was like the sandman emptied an entire desert on him.

Beep... Beep... Beep...

What was that damn noise? A machine? A monitor, maybe? Bucky became aware of his body. He was lying down. He was warm and kind of comfortable. But there were things attached to him. Tubes?

Oh God, no... No, no, no! I can't be back there! I can't be... How did they find me?!

Bucky managed to open his eyes to a sliver but had to shut them right away again. Why was the light so bright? Had HYDRA run out of dark and dingy rooms to torture him in? Where the hell had they brought him to?

I have to get out of here. I can't let them... Not again.

He forced his body to move. He forced his legs and arms to work. But it was like he was a puppet whose strings were cut. All he could do was lie there, helplessly waiting for the master puppeteer to appear and play with him.

"Barnes, you awake?"

That voice... He knew that voice.

"You've had enough beauty sleep, Barnes; the sun rose an hour ago. You're not gonna get any prettier. Well, maybe if you cut your hair a bit."

Blinking against the light, Bucky believed he saw a woman's face. A woman with blond hair. Evelyn? No... Her hair wasn't that short. Nor as light.
Bucky's head spun, and he tried to focus and make sense of his surroundings. It got better when the woman slapped him across his face. Not too hard, but still enough to wake him up.

"Barnes, snap out of it!"

"Ro-Romanoff?"

"There he is." Black Widow smirked at him. "Up you get, come on."

Natasha Romanoff was surprisingly strong for someone her size. She managed to prop him up against some pillows and patted his cheek again.

"Hey, focus, soldier."

Bucky tried to raise his hand, meaning to slap hers away, but he couldn't. When he looked down at his arm, he grunted again.

Other arm, Barnes.

It wasn't the first time he forgot about his left arm. That was largely due because of the prosthetic he had worn before. Since it had replaced what he had lost, he had found it easier to accept he was minus one limb. But since Iron Man destroyed that arm in Siberia, he was brutally reminded of the fact that he wasn't whole. Shuri was working on a new arm for him, but Bucky found he needed to be free of it for just a little while longer. It may not be HYDRA's handiwork this time, but it would still be something that wasn't his. He needed to rediscover and hold on to the real him. God knows that person had practically become a stranger to him.

"What happened?" Bucky asked Agent Romanoff.

"You tell me. You were screaming bloody murder one minute, and the next, you were knocked out cold. You remember anything?"

"No. Just... pain. A lot of it. It felt like someone cracked open my skull to pound onto my brain."

"Hmm... What were you doing just before you felt this pain?"

"I was reading Evelyn's journal. I noticed Steve was gone, so I decided to look for him. But then I... I heard Evelyn's voice in my head. She was... singing, I think?"