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It begins with an itch.
An incessant thrumming underneath his skin, warm and foreign and annoying. It wakes him up from his uneasy slumber as it spreads over his shoulder and down onto the arm (The wrong one. The one that should not feel). Half-consciously he scratches at it with blunt, dirty fingernails, hoping it's just roaches or bedbugs or whatever filth is staining the mattress he dragged into the apartment from a back alley dumpster. The sensation does not relent but it's too early to be waking up (He sleeps a lot these days, unsure if reality is that much better than nightmares), and so he lies there picking and poking like a stray dog troubled by fleas.
Sunlight filters lazily through the newspapers covering dirty windows and beads of sweat gather on his skin. Even though the frostbite of cryogenic sleep still lingers in between his insides, his skin responds to the heat of Romanian summer in an appropriate manner.
His fingers begin to slip where he is trying to make the persistent sensation go away, making the temporary respite elude him. Fully awake now, he redoubles his efforts. Yanks away long hair that has been getting in the way, stabs the brittle remains of his fingernails into the skin of his shoulder, and drags down. Observes as white welts rise and fall, leaving behind angry red streaks. Repeats the motion until he realizes that the more he scratches, the more he feels like his skin is burning on the inside. Still, he doesn’t know what else to do. No one ever taught him how to be gentle with himself. How to respond to signals which his body might be sending his way. All he knows is how to inflict pain.
Without any viable solution to the issue, he continues. Up, down, up, down. Across. Repeat. Until tiny droplets of blood surface to the skin and mean red lines criss-cross the mass of raised scars, adding to the violent tapestry of pure hurt.
It is not enough. A voice in the back of his head tells him that he's always been a stubborn bastard.
He repeats the motion until he has scratched the welts wide open and flecks of gore gather around the jagged tears. Until the skin of his shoulder is stained with detached bits of scar tissue. Until his fingers break through to the slick red meat of muscle.
Kind of like when he gets nervous or frustrated or lost and needs to find an outlet for his anger in the sensation of knives on flesh. But this is different. This is so much more.
This is not his mind hurting with the damage of electrocution and conditioning and too much noiselightsmovementoutsideinside all at once.
It's his body trying to tell him something.
A brief flash of memory. Strong, calloused hands cradling frail ones. Hands like ships. Hands like dandelions. Hands like houses. Hands like bird bones. Skin on skin on clean sheets on woollen fabric on charcoal on beach sand on skin. No metal in sight.
Suddenly, he understands what his body is trying to say.
What it’s screaming for him to understand.
The past cannot be altered, but the present is negotiable. For so long he has been denied any rule over his own flesh.
That's it. He knows what he has to do.
He sits up amongst dirty bedsheets and scattered journals. Braces himself on the wrong arm and jams his fingers between metal and skin, trying to pry the titanium from scar tissue. The itch is still there and shows no signs of relenting but now he finally understands what it stands for. He has decoded the signals his body is sending.
Fix what was altered without your consent. Let out the dirtyfilthybadbadbad crawling inside you like spiders. Like vermin over a corpse. Like careless fingers over a prone body in deep sleep.
Remove the disfigured mismatched disgusting wrong parts of you. Alter the present to match the past. Destroy rebuild undo mend. Let the man who has become your shadow catch up on the trail you've been leaving for him and let him see the way you're remembering.
The arm needs to go right now.
He claws like a rabid animal, nails jagging and breaking, getting caught between metal plates. With vicious determination he reopens scars that time ought to have healed a long time ago. A thin piece of metal ends up stuck underneath a nail, detaching it and flinging the paper thin sliver off of his hand. The pain brings back memories. The pain doesn’t matter. He ignores the exposed soft tissue, winces slightly and clenches his teeth tighter, searching for a way into flesh. The tangled mass of scars is red with friction and lacerations, and it feels warm to the touch.
This will not do.
There's a pile of dirty dishes next to the mattress (The lone chair present in the apartment when he first moved in had been swiftly disposed of). From days when even getting up proved too much of an exertion. He picks up a fork, wipes off crusted remains of his last meal on the already dirty pillow, and stabs the prongs into the hardened scar outlining the titanium where it meets skin. Four droplets of blood well up from the wound, but the arm doesn't budge. He takes a deep breath and stabs and stabs and stabs again, ending up with nothing but rows upon rows of ugly, uneven polka dots to add to the messy pattern underneath.
Then it dawns on him. He has not misinterpreted the task. It’s just that the motion is incorrect.
He wedges the fork into resisting flesh as horizontally as the angle will allow. Pushing it through layers of old, weathered tissue is far from an easy task but nevertheless, he persists. With the prongs fully secured beneath skin and not-skin, he pushes up.
The handle of the fork breaks off and remains in his hand.
Fuck.
He throws it against the opposite wall, where it stabs into the plaster and sticks out between patches of peeling wallpaper.
There's a moment of revelation. The motion is now correct. The approach is right. It's just that his tools are entirely wrong.
He tries to remember what HYDRA technicians would use to maintain his arm. Funny how vivid pictures of his past torment him whenever he would kill to have them gone, but the one time they could prove useful his mind is blank of any memories. An unnerving emptiness overran with unprecedented urgency.
It's difficult to locate appropriate tools when every single one of his drawers is a junk drawer but there it is. A small, rusty screwdriver with a yellow handle. A pair of pliers.
This might be it.
This might be absolution.
He frantically scrambles back to the mattress. Pulls the broken remains of the fork from the meat of his arm and with all the strength left in him stabs the screwdriver in its place. A faint spray of blood hits his face and this. This brings back memories too. So many memories. Surprisingly, they’re not the bad ones.
Memories of feeling strong and powerful and deadly. Undefeated. Memories of success and praise and no. This is not how it went. The memories are lies, and the ultimate proof of their falsity is still attached to his flesh.
He jams the screwdriver further into the skin, as far as it will go until it meets the definite resistance of metal, and pushes up. He continues applying force until scar tissue break with an unexpected pop and a thin metal plate pulls itself free of surrounding skin. Bits of dermis hang off the shard like torn up newspaper, leaving a jagged line in their wake. It's not much, but finally a pang of elation cuts through the overwhelming panic.
It can be done.
The primal desperation he's running on stops the pain from registering. Adrenaline acts as a natural anaesthetic (Not that anyone who ever operated on him would have bothered). Leaving the screwdriver firmly in place, he picks up the pliers. Pinches where the titanium has lifted enough to create access to flesh and pulls.
The muscle underneath is a shiny reddish pink. Pulsating. Bleeding. Alive.
With the piece of metal bent as far away from his skin as possible, he plunges the screwdriver out of the wound. Blood pours clean and quick, alivealivealive, as he wriggles a finger into the gap and touches exposed tissue.
His flesh is slippery and warm, blood oozing out of it in steady waves. It dips when he presses down, and produces more blood that engulfs the digit probing it. It responds to the touch with such primal, visceral hurt. It's beautiful.
He stares at it with fascination until blood begins to cascade freely down his chest.
He needs to continue, now that he knows for certain that not all of him is rotten. That the offending part has not infected his entire body with decay. That he is salvageable. That one day those yellow sunlight Sunday morning hands (They are not like that anymore. They are still the same to him) might touch him and not recoil with disgust.
He picks up the screwdriver again. Its flat head is too narrow to detach large enough patches of metal in order for him to be ready in time. He knows that he had left enough of a trail for the man with bird bone hands (His friend. His lover. His best guarded secret) to find him. He wants to be found.
Beneath the pillow, there’s a knife.
A sharp, deadly blade with a heavy black handle that fits perfectly in his hand. In the morning sunlight it glints with a promise of something brutal something beautiful and he knows that this is it.
The first cut is perfect. The edge of the blade catches skin at just the right angle, moving underneath meat and metal, dividing it from the rest of him in one smooth motion. He grabs a handful of tissue and titanium and wrestles it away from his shoulder until wires and screws start to show.
A sudden light headedness interrupts his resolve and he notices how much blood is pooling from the wound. Red like a Soviet star that he attempted to scratch off until he was left with no fingernails. The fact that they did not regrow as quickly as usual made him giddy.
A downpour of blood is flowing freely down his chest and onto his thighs where he is sitting cross legged, seeping into the mattress to join a myriad of other stains. It smells like iron. It smells like a hunt. It smells like the rekindling of a love affair.
The Winter Soldier didn't know what love was. James Barnes does.
He attempts the second slice next to the first one, trying to peel the metal casing off of his shoulder by cutting away the layer of skin which rests directly underneath it. The cut is aimed precisely, and the motion swift, but the now slippery surface causes the knife to lose purchase and skid down his chest, leaving a deep red gash in its wake.
The wound doesn't deter him. It makes him feel alive.
He grabs the threadbare bedsheet and wipes down as much blood as he can, and cuts. Cuts and cuts and cuts, slices and whittles down until skin and metal are pulled up around the arm like rose petals.
It hurts. It doesn't hurt. It bleeds profusely, but it doesn't matter.
With the outer casing removed, the machinery inside is the only thing still connecting the arm to his living flesh. Without hesitation he aims the knife at the wires.
An electric shock goes directly into his spine, making him drop the knife and tumble backwards, hitting his head on the wall. There’s a dull thud and for a split second his vision goes black. But this time around, he refuses to forget.
They will not take this from him. This newfound freedom. The rule he has over his own flesh. He will bite and scratch and scream until his skin is his and his only.
He picks up the knife from amongst bloodied bedsheets and takes another swipe at the wires.
Again, an electric current hits from neck to tailbone, but this time it doesn't take him by surprise. He grits his teeth and doesn't pay attention to the warm wetness flowing freely between his thighs. This is all a secondary concern.
Just once more, and it will be done. His hands are shaking so he tightens his grip on the knife. Places it against jagged wires. Presses on despite the electricity coursing through his body, making his muscle sing with pain.
He cuts until the wires give and the arm falls limply to the floor.
It is done.
This is absolution.
He drops to the mattress and darkness overtakes him.
This must be it, Steve thinks as he approaches the last door in the hallway with feather light steps. The abandoned building is full of creaks and draughts, but for a man his size he can be surprisingly quiet.
It is not his intention to startle Bucky, to make him bolt like a spooked back alley cat. He knows that no matter the illusion of stealth he tries to maintain, Buck will hear him come. And maybe this time he will stay. It's just the vague sense of dread deep in his stomach accompanying a complete lack of knowledge as to what he might find in the apartment that makes him veer on the side of too careful.
He is surprised to make it as far as the door without his presence being detected. He pushes lightly and finds it unlocked. Maybe it's an invitation. Maybe it’s a trap. Maybe, either way, he should be scared. With grim determination, he enters.
The apartment reeks of mildew and urine. And blood. So much blood. Bucky lies motionless on a mattress, his entire left side a gory mess. The skin of his shoulder has been sliced up like goddamn deli cuts, and bits of metal peek from between the folds of mangled flesh. There is so much blood that it has managed to seep through the mattress and form a puddle underneath it, spilling all over the floor along the makeshift bed.
The metal arm lies discarded in the midst of it, interconnected plates reflecting a sea of red. This makes Steve wonder. Surely if someone had gone through the trouble of detaching the arm so violently, they would want to take their trophy with them. Or maybe it was simply brutal, senseless revenge, its perpetrator not in need of such strange piece of technology.
To his surprise, Bucky chokes out a rasping breath. Immediately, Steve gets on his knees and pulls him upright to ease the airflow into the lungs. Bucky gasps shallowly, and Steve can tell that he is struggling. That despite whatever hell he has been put through, he still wants to live. His ruined shoulder smears blood on Steve's armour, shrapnel-like metal snagging on fabric.
Bucky makes a noise like he is desperately trying to say something. Careful not to cause further damage by moving him around too much, Steve leans him against his chest, holding the blood stained bedsheets to the ruined shoulder to stop the river of blood. He needs to get Bucky out of here and take him somewhere he can get stitches and a transfusion without doctors asking too many questions. He radios Sam to let him know that he is on his way back, to get the engine on the stolen jet started and ready for take-off, navigation set for another one of Natasha's countless hideouts.
With Bucky unconscious but now breathing steadily and the blood flow slowing down where Steve has tied the sheet into a makeshift tourniquet, he looks around the apartment for anything Bucky would like to keep. There's a black backpack that looks like it might have been prepared for an emergency like this one. A mess of blood-soaked notebooks with newspaper clippings sticking out of them strewn over the mattress. A tactical knife covered in drying bits of tissue from the top of the handle to the very tip.
He puts the journals and knife in the backpack and slings it over one shoulder. Then, trying not to dig his fingers into the raw flesh of his left side, he picks up Bucky, morbidly observing how much lighter he is without the metal attached to his flesh.
He walks out of the apartment with sure steps, careful not to jostle Bucky any more than necessary.
The arm is left behind.