Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Bucky swallowed, his dry throat clicking as he strained weakly against the restraints, waiting, always waiting for those bastards to come back and inject him with something else. “Dvorak,” he croaked. “Dvorak, you still there?”

There was silence from the other gurney. Bucky squeezed his eyes shut. “C’mon, man. You gotta hang on in there, okay? We’ll make it through this.”

He must have slipped into sleep, because he woke himself with a bout of coughing, straining to lean over to the side, curl up, relieve the pressure on his lungs. It was then the doors creaked open. He struggled to get himself back under control again.

“Clear this mess out,” said Zola. Bucky closed his eyes in a silent prayer for Dvorak, no more than trash to these bastards.

“Do not concern yourself, Sergeant Barnes,” said Zola, and Bucky forced himself not to flinch at the voice so close to his ear. “I will not leave you all alone.”

There was a grunt as some other poor soul was strapped into the gurney. Then a slap echoed in the room, and a gasp.

“Oh good, you are awake,” Zola oozed in the direction of the other man, and Bucky tried to twist his head, catch the other man’s eye, give him what little comfort he could in their own little circle of hell.

“Now, this will hurt quite a bit,” said Zola, and Bucky could hear his smile as he bent over the gurney, injecting that foul serum into his veins. All Bucky could see of the other man was short black hair.

And then Loki tipped his head back, stretching his neck, tendons standing out in all his effort not to scream, and Bucky felt like all the air had been punched from his lungs. When the pain overwhelmed Loki’s will at last, and he cried out, Bucky shook against his restraints, every cell in his body begging to go to him, bring him comfort.

Not him. He should have been safe. There was no war in the church on the hill, and that’s where Bucky had left him, bathed in October sunlight, his lip curled in a smile. Not him.

“It should have been easy,” said Loki, much later, after his throat was raw with the screams, after Zola had turned to Bucky, played them both like his own horrifying orchestra, then left them limp and burning. “It was easy the first few times. Then they sent him.”

“You’re a spy,” Bucky breathed, too worn to do more. It was always an illusion. Loki had never been safe.

“I was,” Loki whispered. “I still would be if he hadn’t… if he hadn’t recognised me.”

“Who?”

“Schmidt,” Loki said, the word slow through his mouth as he spat it. “Why is he no longer in Norway? Why?”

“Fuck,” Bucky breathed. He only understood half the words, but the sentiment… “Bastard gets around.”

“I killed some of them, at least,” Loki added after a moment, his voice slurred with pain and exhaustion. “Would have been more, but he’s not… not normal.”

Bucky shuddered. He’d only had glimpses of the red skull, and that was enough. “I’m sorry you’re here,” he said. Loki didn’t reply, unconscious or asleep. Not worse. He never let himself consider that possibility, not with any of the men they brought in to join him. But Bucky let himself whimper. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d be safe.”

It wasn’t his fault. None of it was, he knew that. But he wept anyway with what few tears were left in his dehydrated, broken body. Wept for himself and Loki and everything that should never have been touched by war.

“Unstrap them,” said Zola, and Bucky braced himself. Had it been three days already? He should have warned Loki already.

He was able to see him properly for the first time since he’d been dragged in, and it made his heart hurt. Loki’s hair, so neatly slicked back when he’d first met him, was a tangled mess around his face. A deep bruise bloomed across one temple, another over his cheekbone, and his white shirt was covered in more blood than Bucky had been expecting. He’d said he’d killed some of them.

Loki smirked at his gaze. “Don’t worry, most of it’s not mine,” he said, and there was the vicious darkness Bucky had only glimpsed on the hill in Azzano. God. He really didn’t know this man.

The soldiers, followed by that bug bastard Zola, marched them out to the courtyard. Bucky closed his eyes and wished there was any way to brace himself for what was to come.

“Sergeant Barnes first, I think,” said Zola, holding a clipboard. Bucky hated him, hated him. “Last time you managed a meagre seventy laps.” He tutted. “So much for the training of the allied forces. Do try to do better this time.”

Bucky didn’t waste breath arguing. He simply ran. The first few laps would be almost pleasant, he told himself. At least he wasn’t trapped, unmoving, in the leather bonds. At least he was breathing fresh mountain air into his sore, diseased lungs, his muscles unwinding and burning in the good way.

He had hoped the pleasant part would last just a little longer. Maybe he’d be able to get into that mindset he’d developed in training, timing the thump of his feet with the harsh breaths into his lungs. But after the pneumonia, his lungs seemed to be screaming at him for walking up a flight of stairs, and after the last two exhaustion days, he didn’t think his legs would ever recover.

His knees started to grind by the third lap. He must have been taking almost five minutes to run the full two hundred or so yards of the courtyard.

Zola sighed and shook his head as he approached for the tenth. Bucky was in that state of too much awareness, where everything hurt, but he knew there was so much more to come, and the anticipation of it was more terrifying than anything else. “I’m sure you, as they say, get the picture, Mr Borson,” he said to Loki. “You run and you do not stop until your body stops you.” He smiled. Bucky couldn’t see it, having just turned the corner past the little cluster of men. “You would be surprised at how much further your body can take you than your mind believes.”

How would he know? Bucky wanted to scream at him. How could he possibly know for himself?

He focused on Loki, now joining this torture with him. Torture! How any of the boys would pity him if they heard him calling this torture. There were no implements, no knives, no whips. Just the courtyard and pounding feet. Hadn’t they all been through this in training? How weak they’d think he was, to call this torture. There was no blood. Just a steady wearing away of energy. Then of sensation. Then of the mind. By the end, he knew after only two previous repeats of this hell, he would have no memories.

Loki started to limp by Bucky’s thirtieth lap. He thought - he was starting to lose count. Bucky watched him just to take his attention off the screaming of his body, the piercing nerves firing with every step. He felt like his bones might splinter. It was close to the first fall, and Bucky knew that meant the first beating.

He imagined calling out to Loki, having the air and the muscle and the energy to cheer him on. Loki was not the gentle man he’d met in the ruins, but a spy was no soldier, and Bucky knew his leg had taken permanent nerve damage from the fire. But it was still a cold shock when Loki was first to collapse.

He held himself up on trembling arms as Zola called, lazily, “up, Mr Borson, up.” Loki struggled up before the guard could get to him. Bucky felt a jab of satisfaction at that. He knew they got bored watching this. The bastards looked forward to incentivising them to get up, of course they did.

But this was the opening of the flood gates. Loki fell again a few minutes later, and Bucky cried out wordlessly, almost silently to see it, just a voiced gasp. He was closer this time, close enough to duck down and pull at Loki’s arm, drag him a little.

“Sergeant Barnes, leave him alone.”

Let the little bug-eyed bastard stamp his feet. Bucky pulled Loki up.

The baton to the back of his shoulders was almost a surprise. He didn’t usually feel it when he was actually on his feet. Loki hissed furiously and rounded on the guard, and received his own strike to the shoulder. Bucky pulled him away, one two one two, his mind beginning to shut down. He knew the signs. He knew Loki would get to this point too, the acceptance. Might as well save the beatings for when your senses started to shut down.

He fell next, a lap or two later. Then lost count.

He started to lose awareness next. That was always the worst, when you were just alive enough to notice that you’d run past the other guy lying on the floor and hadn’t stopped to pick him up. When the world started to dim before your eyes. You could hear the thumps of batons on flesh, but the information didn’t reach your mind.

He didn’t know how long he lasted. He didn’t know if Loki got back up this time, the next time, or the next. He was no longer a person. He was no longer alive. He was no longer a thing, he no longer existed.

He lost everything to the pounding of his feet on the dirt. He knew at some point he would fall unconscious and no beating would raise him, but there was nothing left in him to care. Not about himself. Not even about Loki. There was no more Bucky. There was only the next step.

Every time he woke from one of the exhaustion days, he wondered if there would be a day he wouldn’t get all of himself back. He’d only survived three of them. Stockwell, the Brit who’d been in when Bucky was first strapped to the table, had managed five, then got shot in an escape attempt on the sixth. Bucky didn’t think he was hoping for anything other than that.

He strained his neck to turn, every muscle and joint in his body protesting any movement. He had to see that Loki had got through it. His eyes met exhausted green ones. “Are you well?”

“Peachy,” Bucky croaked back.

“How often does that happen?”

“Every three days, far as I can tell.”

Loki sighed. “What do they even hope to achieve?”

“Greatness, Mr Borson,” said Zola. Dramatic bastard was probably waiting for an opening like that. How long had he been hovering there, just out of sight? “You have no idea how lucky you are to receive this opportunity. The final serum, once I perfect it, will optimise every aspect of your physiology.”

“Sounds like snake oil to me,” said Bucky.

Loki hummed. “Have you any biochemical basis for the working of your grand idea? Or are you simply a child mixing concoctions in his mother’s pantry?”

Zola chuckled and patted his arm. “It matters not what you believe. Either your death will eliminate a chemical dead end, or it will, indeed, work. A shame we shall have to put you down before administering it to more deserving recipients.”

Bucky had heard it all before. Zola was one to gloat, a fanatic so sure of his methods and ends that he couldn’t think straight. Even Bucky, who knew nothing about science, let alone whatever bio-thingy Loki had mentioned, could see that he was just wasting bodies. It was just a matter of time.

He shivered in the aftermath of the most recent serum. He could hear Loki trembling too, the slight clicking of the buckles that bound them down vibrating. At least he could breathe, the rattling terror of the pneumonia finally seemed to have subsided. He’d forgotten what it felt like to take a clear breath.

Every cell seemed to hurt. Tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, drawing damp lines that seemed to pierce him with ice. “Loki,” he whispered into the darkness.

“Bucky.”

“Remember the old church ruins.”

“I can never forget,” he promised.

“I remember that little tree, growing right out of the walls. How’d it manage it?” He closed his eyes and smiled.

There was silence a moment. “I remember the light on your hair,” Loki replied, barely above a whisper.

“You took that picture of me.”

“Where you were laughing, yes.” Loki sighed. “I had to burn it, but I’ll never forget.”

“Makes sense.” He was starting to feel sleepy at last, calm for the first time in a whole day of screaming pain, another batch of chemicals tearing through him. “I remember you laughing. After… when we were sitting on the wall, just before sundown.”

Loki sighed, like it hurt. And it did, all those precious memories.

“You got a lovely smile, doll,” he said, replaying the moments behind his eyes, wishing.

Loki laughed like a sob. “Damn these straps,” he whispered, his voice breaking. “You’re so close…”

Bucky squirmed too, imagining stretching out across the chasm between them, linking their fingers together. His muscles sagged, burning. “I’m sorry you’re here.”

“I’m sorry you’re here,” he replied.