Chapter Text
Bucky’s first day out of cryo is filled with whirling motion and a cheerful young woman’s voice telling him to stay still if he wants to keep the use of his tongue. His request to have soft hoops to grip onto with his toes and fingers instead of being strapped down had been accommodated, and he appreciated the lemon flavored chew stick in his mouth almost as much. It tasted nothing like the other mouthguard, felt nothing like it. The voice still terrifies him a little, and while part of him is tense, another part of him is relaxed despite it all. The lyrical accent and arching curves are nothing like HYDRA or the Red Room, nothing like anything but the fantastic books of his childhood. He expects Buck Rogers himself to come racing in at any moment.
His eyes stay open and staring up at the lights above him when the hologram of his own brain moves real time. It flashes and lights up, and each time it does, memories of being broken, of being unmade in dark cells and laboratory benches permeate the air in fresh bursts of distressed scent pouring from his body like so much bile. The crisp bright taste of lemon, chewy not hard plastic, and the soft lambs wool like give of his grips are the only thing that keep him from screaming. That and the way the air is warm, and a warm blanket is draped over his legs, different textures over his loose shorts.
All of that can’t stop him from whimpering however. Not when he is being unmade again. No matter how kindly or gently. Low sounds caught deep in his throat, not quite whimpers and not quite keens.
“You are just the most broken of all white boys, aren’t you?” The voice asks mostly rhetorically, a sad note in her voice when he whimpers again with a sudden ping of fear, he knows, he knows she isn’t doing anything but helping him be free, however nothing can stop the way each memory makes his nerves feel ghosts of their creation, makes his mind reel, tears and sweat mixing at the edge of his hairline as he blinks rapidly to clear his vision and deny the weakness if only to himself.
A soft hand, small and gentle, the palm the same color as his father’s skin under his shirts but soft like his baby sister’s before she started helping Ma with the cleaning, smoothed over his brow. “Hey, you sure you want to do this all at once? You may be a fierce white wolf, but you are not going to be seen as anything less for spacing this out.” Bucky knows not to look at a face during this process. He knows. He somehow doesn’t look at her, at the voice, the person unmaking him. He instead tugs the soft loops, tapping the metal tip of his shoulder to the touch plate. Two taps, NO.
The hand sweeps back his hair, and he stares up at his brain, at the thing far more broken than his body could be. Ever was. He whimpers again, and his palm opens, thumb caught on the hoop as he flaps it, grabby hand and come on get on with it all at once. She huffs “You are a puppy. A big dumb puppy of a wolf cub. How do you even manage that, you aren’t even looking at me and I can feel your puppy eyes.” He wants to smile or laugh, but instead he whines long and low, eyes watering again.
She doesn’t stop again. She doesn’t make him do this any longer than necessary, doesn’t make him space this out and he knows in his bones that if he let go or tapped out or spat out the bit it would all stop and no one would judge him. No one but himself. They wouldn’t blame him. They wouldn’t even blame him if because he delayed finishing he got triggered and activated and did something to harm someone. It was that last part that made him work his fingers into the plush soft feel of the strap, toes curling and fist tight, heels digging into soft padded cradles as he remembered the saw and the train and the rusted edges of the carriage as he is dragged away from the river and the train line above-
He lost sight of the hologram, he lost sight of anything but that moment. The moment he left being a human, being a beta, being a man behind. The moment he became a possession. The moment they sunk the straps into his flesh and bound him to the yoke forever. Except he healed. He always healed and fighting in the straps was impossible. Except he was broken and even the serum could not fix that, could not fix part of him being missing.
Bucky had been unmade into raw material for over a decade in a base in the basements of Mother Russia. He had been forged into a fist, a weapon, in the five decades that followed. In the course of less than a single day, all of the triggers and codes and unmaking and reforging was undone. He wasn’t untempered materials, but he wasn’t the Fist. He wasn’t Asset yet he wasn’t James Buchanan Barnes as he was before. His chest hurt and his entire body trembled as he became aware of it in slow breaths, a broad palm, large and hot, rested on his chest, another on his belly, coaxing him to breathe. There had been a roaring tumbling blur of sound and conversation, of voices but it all was a slurry of sensations he could not choke down and digest. Only the touch mattered as it dragged him into his body, anchored him in the now.
Bucky couldn’t muster the energy to panic, that wasn’t the girl doc, but his head was pounding and it felt like cotton in his mind. He didn’t look at the man, eyes staying closed. He was his own. He was his own. He was the only person to own him. He is sluring sounds and they might be his thoughts or just sounds.
“Of course, little puppy, we only own ourselves. You are the only one that will ever own you from now on.” The voice rumbles and is deep like a mountain could talk. Bucky wants to look at the man, with hands so large they span his waist and pectoral entirely, each a huge furnace warming his skin. It sounds like a vow or a promise. It sounds like an oath. It makes Bucky’s stomach flutter and fresh tears leak from his eyes.
There is a faint scuffling, but the small hand returns. “Sleep, little wolf, you are safe now.” He trusts that voice. He trusts her. And he is so very tired. “Nom’re-n’m’rehur’ing?” he manages, he has to be sure. He has to be sure he won’t hurt anyone.
The small hand is joined by another and another, hands so soft grounding him. “No, little brother. No more hurting. No more hurting others or being hurt, no more will others force you to be or do or say or think anything.”
Bucky can’t be sure if he sobs or just exhales, but he is floating after that. Cradled and safe and held so gently. He thinks it might be a memory, of when his father was alive so long ago. Of when he was small and safe and nothing could hurt him. He nuzzles into the comfort, leaning to that fierce warmth as he was carried in massive arms.