thearena | Bit by bit, torn apart [closed]

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Bit by bit, torn apart [closed]

Who| Tony Stark, Thor, Aang and a dying MCU!Bucky Barnes
What| Bucky's slowly kicking the Buck-et while hallucinating from the poisoned water, Thor provides a mercy kill
Where| Build-a-Buddy
When| Some hours after the fight with Shepard
Warnings/Notes| Death, feels

After the burst of adrenaline which enabled Bucky to make his escape from Shepard with Tony wore off the extent of the wound he'd sustained had quickly dawned on them both. Unable to face climbing up the escalators the two men had managed to make it into one of the ground floor stores, hopefully safe from another attack.

By the time Bucky slumps down in the corner of the store, back to a display piled high with teddy-bears the full agony of the stab-wound he's sustained is making itself know. It's not only that, he thinks in what is going to be one of his last moments of true clarity, there's something else wrong with him as his head starts to spin.

The fingers of his right hand move, fumbling over the hilt of the crystal she used to stab him, feeling the blood soaking into his shirt quickly coat his fingers as he covers it. "Don't... take it out." he manages to tell Tony, breathing hard. It'll make it worse.

Not that it matters, he realises, too well-versed in the weaknesses of the human body from his career as an assassin to mistake a death wound for anything else. He's not walking away from this, it's only a matter of time.

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He's still semi-lucid. Awake enough to know that Tony picked up the walkie talkie and had a rushed and frantic conversation with someone on the other end. He can't think who. Who's left out of all of them? The Widow is gone, the other Bucky is gone, Steve is gone and their alliance has grown dangerously small.

Thor he expects when he comes down, grim when he see's Bucky's wound and position. But not the other, the small boy, not quite so bald anymore after over a month in the arena. He tries to focus, tries to push himself up from where he's slumped down to get a better look at his visitor.

"Aang...?" he asks, wincing and hissing as he jostles the wound in his abdomen.

Why is he here?

Hours after the initial wound and things are only getting worse.

The colour has drained from Bucky's skin, his breathing is weaker and his eyes glazed over from pain and the poison from the water. Sweat has stuck his hair to his forehead, beading on his skin with the effort of staying alive. He's past the point of coherent thought in any measure, his mind playing tricks on him, blurring past and present -- bringing up all the memories he can never consciously reach. He can't seem to remember where he is, what happened to him and is mumbling barely understandable words and names under his breath.

"3... 2... 5..." right now he's mumbling a string of numbers, repeating them over and over except when a gasp or choked back groan of pain interrupts him. Bucky is only half-aware he's doing it, couldn't say why but they're important. He can't say anything else, only those, he can't give anything away. Not to them. "... 5... 7... 0..."

Tony's hand hovers over the crystal, while he licks his lips anxiously.

"We're in a toy store, I can take it out and at least try and pack it. That will stop the. Okay slow the bleeding, we can stitch it. I mean there's bound to be needle and thread here, load you up with some moldy pretzels and let that whole super-soldier thing about you take over."

He's tense, just like Bucky, Tony know's it's not going to be that easy. But coming back to the Capitol alive and well or not, he's seen way too many people die trying to protect him from something, and like hell he isn't going to at least try to help this one. He just can't.

Bucky grimaces further, teeth clenched as soon as Tony proposes the course of treatment.

Were the wound anywhere else he might have a chance of recovering. Hell, were he still the super-soldier Tony says he is in this place he could still do it. As it is nothing short of emergency surgery is going to save him now and neither of them have the expertise or equipment to manage that.

"Not here." he shakes his head first and then looks up, ignoring their brightly coloured surroundings to focus on Tony. "They took it away." it's why his rib is still cracked, why his leg still aches from an electrical blast sustained in the weeks before. The Capitol made them all too human in their games.

By this point, Tony's pacing. He knows this is going in the direction he didn't want. Every few minutes of pacing he stops to at least wipe away what sweat he can easily get to without having to jostle him with one of the softer plush animal skins. He knows what Bucky is repeating, it's hard not to when growing up around the military.

But right now he just can't voice any of his thoughts. He knows what really should be coming next, but entertaining the thought even this long was hard enough without having to voice it.

"Of course. Because they only give back the extra curricular abilities when it's more interesting." He sounds like he's grumbling to himself as he scrubs roughly at his face in frustration.

Because what little Bruce did instruct him to do, no way could he ever manage to actually do anything to fix up Bucky without those interesting little experiments Tony had heard about to help him survive it all.

"Well then, you're just going to have to tough it out. If you can live through the depression, what's a major stab wound?"

His eyes flicker, watching the emotion play across Tony's face, trying to keep his vision from blurring as he starts to feel faint from the pain.

Bucky did what he was supposed to do, he did what he had to do. He fought, he protected, it was only been a matter of time before something took him down. It was something he'd known and accepted -- he hadn't wanted to win the arena from the start -- but...

He's being told to live. He feels like he should make the effort, like he should try, futile as he realistically knows it is.

Maybe it's not just what Tony's telling him either, maybe it's that inside he's scared to die again, afraid that a third time will stick. "I... fine. Do it."

"Hey, don't move around."

Aang can, at the very least, read his own name on people's lips. He sits down next to Bucky, keeping a respectful amount of space between them while trying to surreptitiously look down at the wound. He knows Thor said it was supposed to be bad, but he needs to see himself.

"You might make it worse." He tucks his knees under his chin and hugs them, instinctively making himself smaller as he tries to give Bucky a smile. It's not a very bright smile. Aang is bad at faking things. "Hi, Bucky."

He can't hear, he belatedly realise. Aang can't hear him.

Bucky can't see anything to write with and sitting up makes his head hurt, makes his body hurt worse so much that he can't help but obey Aang's directive, even if he wished otherwise. He slumps with a sharp breath sucked in between his teeth, right arm moving to cover the wound from the boys sight, the thought rising that he shouldn't see it.

Tony had bandaged him up the best he could, hoping against hope that some of Bucky's enhanced biology might have lingered enough to save him. His deteriorating condition was proving that hope fruitless. It's mess, blood soaked through the bandages with a sickly scent rising from it.

"Hey, kid." he murmurs back. He's just going to have to hope the gist of what he's saying gets across.

Bucky is hiding the wound from him. It smells like sickness. He's dying, just like Zuko.

Aang blinks quickly and then bows his head and scrubs his eyes, trying to pass it off as itchy eyes (and failing miserably). Bucky doesn't need him crying everywhere. He cried so much on Zuko--he can keep it together this time.

He can't do this again. He doesn't want his last friend to die. Everyone's dying all around him and there's nothing he can do. He's supposed to be the Avatar. He's just as useless here as he is back home.

"People are supposed to wake up again after they lose the game, right? Go somewhere else with all the other tributes?"

He can't say 'after they die,' and he can't face the fact that it could all be a farce, that all these people are actually dying and he'll never see Zuko or Bucky or any of the other dead again. That he's going to die too, and his world will die with him. Yet he doesn't understand how this, the slow draining of life he witnessed in Zuko and now he's witnessing all over again in Bucky, could be anything but death. Permanent, hard, cold death.

It's strange, the moment Aang ducks his head and rubs his eyes a pang goes through him, hits in his chest in a way he only felt when they'd found Steve's body before.

Why? he wonders, he doesn't think himself worth being upset over. Not him, a killer, a murderer of men, women... even children. He knows, he can see the blood on his hands when he looks down at them.

"It's okay." Bucky tries when the boy is looking at him again, willing Aang to understand the words coming out of his mouth. Other people would reach out, comfort with touch but he isn't capable of that but he wants to try.

Closing his eyes for a moment as his vision blurs from a muscle spasm, he nods. "It..." he moves the left arm, two metal fingers held up, trying to communicate. This is my second time.

'Okay' is an easy word to see. Aang can understand it, even if it rings hollow in his head. Bucky's not okay. Saying 'it's okay' is what people do when they're not okay. Aang does it a lot, himself.

But the two fingers are vague. "It's your second... arena?" Close enough. He rests his chin on his knees, looking at the way the light dances on Bucky's arm. It's still pretty. Still perfectly wrought. "So you've come back before, right? And other people do, too?"

It's selfish, and he feels so much guilt for asking for reassurance. He's okay. He's deaf and still has a hole in his chest, but he's not the one dying. He should be trying to soothe Bucky, to make his passing easier.

But it hurts. It hurts so much in his heart. It hurts and the pain makes him angry. He's already lost so many people, seen so much death--why does Bucky have to die too? Why does this have to happen? Why can't the supposedly all-powerful Avatar keep just one last person alive?

Bucky opens his eyes and can't believe what he sees. Small shoulders, concave chest, blonde hair over blue eyes set in a narrow face, "... Stevie?" he says breathlessly for a moment, lost youth colouring his pronunciation. "Ste--" Then in a flash the vision is gone, he see's Aang again and cuts himself off quickly, grimacing at his own delusion.

Steve is not here, Steve is already dead and he hasn't had that appearance in a very long time. He curses himself for the sudden burst of selfish longing in his chest, Steve doesn't need to be here to see anymore than Aang does (and it escapes him for the moment that his friend could see this anyway, that everyone can see what's happening here on the Capitol screens).

He was asked a question,, he remembers, he should answer it.

"Yes." he says, willing away with effort the last flickers of that vision as he lowers his prosthetic hand back down. Bucky needs to be reassuring, he needs to do what he is supposed to do, that's all there is. All there ever is. "Everyone."

If he can just be the Asset, if he can be the Winter Soldier right now...

He doesn't need to hear to recognize the fevered look in his eyes. He takes a deep breath, instinctively reaching to touch Bucky's head, to give him a tether to the real world, but he hesitates as his fingers brush against Bucky's hair. He said not to touch him.

Aang pulls his hand back, instead putting it on the floor next to Bucky's flesh one. "Then I'll see you there. And you can show me around." He blinks fast. He struggles to keep his breathing even, using what meditative techniques he can remember when his heart hurts so much.

His hands twitch on the ground.

"Is it okay if I touch your hand?"

Tony swallows at how Bucky looks. It pulls at Tony, reminding him that not only is everyone in the arena so mind bogglingly screwed being here, having to die over and over again for the Capitol's pleasure.

But also how utterly useless he is when it counts here. Whatever had been going through his head when he wasn't letting himself be alert enough to see shepard come at him (that is if he could even have seen her coming if he had been paying attention.), had done this to Bucky. Tony knew that he was a target here, engineering genius didn't account for anything if you had almost nothing to work with.

"Good man. We just need to." Get him back? Even if the escalators weren't attempting to kill people Tony was in no shape to take Bucky anywhere past here. But then there was Thor. "Don't move, I'm going to make a call." He gets a determined look on his face as he stands up to move away to get Thor on the Walkie Talkie.

"Thor?" He says into the device, his voice clear if hesitant.

Edited 2014-09-29 00:53 (UTC)

Bucky thinks it worked, barely reacting to the soft brush of small fingers to his hair.

It's so hard to tell, everything about him is so stunted when it comes to social interaction. The Soldier knew how to ape human emotion and behaviour for missions, how to slip quietly through a crowd or into public buildings unnoticed. It had only been an ill-fitting mask though, never truly felt and any real emotion encountered was wiped away in ever fresh calibration lest he be corrupted.

He's corrupted now and has been for months. Emotions constantly rise up inside him and take him by surprise when he least expects it.

Like now, when despite his alienation to touch (too many hands on him, touching him dispassionately, moving him like a puppet, a thing without asking) he feels a desire to accept the careful offer. It's just a small touch, and asked for, not taken. Maybe he wants it too, a reassurance stronger than words.

Bucky nods as he speaks, wetting dry lips with his tongue, "Yes." it'll make Aang feel better, at least. He doesn't like the expression on the boys face, it doesn't fit him.

He doesn't want to be the cause of it.

Aang immediately laces his fingers into Bucky's, holding his hand tightly. It's anything but dispassionate or manipulative--it's warm and affectionate and desperate to try doing something to make this easier. It's not the cuddle that he had given Zuko, but he is trying to be respectful, trying to reconcile closeness with Bucky's aversion to touch.

He's always found it easier to remember, when seriously hurt, where and who he is when being touched. Like it can connect his spirit to the earth. He tries to do it himself, what so many other people have done for him, or at the very least make the passing easier.

That thought cracks his control. He quickly scrubs his eyes again with his free hand, trying to wipe away the tears before they get too far. "Sorry."

Sorry for crying. Sorry for needing reassurance. Sorry for not being able to do anything.

The strength of the grip surprises him and Bucky can't help but shift his gaze to their joined hands and--

-- and his are red, they're so red. He quickly looks away, his breathing picking up as he resolutely tells himself over and over that's it's not real, it's not real. His mind is playing tricks on him.

"Don't..." he says after a moment. Aang shouldn't apologise, not to him. He shouldn't cry either, not for a man like him. "It's not necessary."

But would he? He tries not to think about it -- which seems to mean he will think about it. Aversion to a topic only seems to set his mind on it more. After Bucky dies Aang will still be in the arena where only one can win, then there is a high chance Aang will die himself before long. Perhaps he stays with Tony and Thor his chances will improve but not for certain.

He hates this, how helpless he suddenly feels. Useless. He keeps failing.

Aang sees him speak, but doesn't hear it. He has no idea what Bucky is saying, but whatever it is, it's getting him agitated and distracted. Is it Aang's selfish tears that are upsetting him? His impending death? Something else? Aang doesn't know, but he takes a deep breath and tries to help anyway.

Carefully, hesitantly, he rubs circles into Bucky's palm with his thumb.

"Whatever you're thinking about, don't think about it. Just focus on me." That sounds like something Katara would say. Good. Katara would have a better idea of what to do here than he does. "I'm here right now, and so are you, and so are your friends. That's what matters."

Don't think about. He tries, he tries every day not to think about it. The things he's done and the true scope of what they mean. Having his mind throw up a visual representation against him is more troubling than he can take.

So many lives, so much blood. He can't ever wash his hands clean of it.

Bucky's so grateful to latch onto Aang because of that. That grounding touch and permissive words. Are they friends, all of them? He had stuck by them even when he could have gone his own way, had protected Tony when he could have let him die and save his own skin. Was that friendship or just allegiance?

He hisses at a fresh spasm of pain. "You shouldn't be" he tries to say what he didn't say before, to warn this boy away from him.

Thor had delayed in his arrival, not by his own doing, it seems bad things come in threes. Steve had died, Sif had died and now he has word that Bucky is injured. He'd been with Sif in her dying moments and couldn't bring himself to abandon her until she was well and truly gone. What she says weighs heavily on him, but he had no time to consider it when he'd set off to find his remaining allies.

He's been with them a while now, keeping watch of Bucky and wondering what he can possibly do for him. Water doesn't seem to be helping whatsoever, he's rapidly getting worse and seems to be in a more frantic state of pain. Moreover, it's getting difficult to watch both he AND Tony struggle through this and Thor wonders if he ought to do something a little drastic.

He crouches beside Bucky and presses a cold cloth to his forehead, as if somehow that will really alleviate the pain he's going through. "He will do no better here." He says finally with a glance up to Stark, unsure as to whether Bucky understands him.

Edited 2014-09-30 13:28 (UTC)

The cold cloth cuts off the string of numbers. His numbers, his, he can't forget them, he needs them. They're the only thing keeping him sane on the operating table.

His eyes flicker upwards, trying to focus on the one above him, a giant figure. Dum-Dum, he thinks, Dum-Dum was a huge son of a bitch. Always was, joked he swallowed a beanpole when he was a kid. "What's goin' on?" he slurs, eyes drifting over to the sound of footsteps, to the man pacing back and forth behind him. Brooklyn slipping through again.

It's only a matter of time but he might last hours yet.

"Don't move." Bucky repeats, raising his eyebrows before gasping when the pain hits him harder for a moment.

He's not moving.

It doesn't take him past seeing Tony pull out the walkie talkie to catch on to what he's doing, even if he can't hear the exact words said, calling Thor for assistance. They'd left the other man above on the upper floors with Sif when they came down here for food. He wonders if they'd started to grow suspicious at the delay in their return.

He wonders if they'll come now.

Tony gives Thor a sharp look when he states the obvious. Of course he knew that here wasn't where he should be, then he gives his head a little shake somewhere between apologizing for giving Thor the look, and to get out of his own thoughts.

"We can't move him. Getting him this far was bad enough."

He looks at Bucky as he speaks and comes a bit closer, he hadn't heard him from where he was and felt the need to actually come close in case.

Tony stops to look over his shoulder at Bucky as he tells him not to move as he gets before looking away again to tell Thor where they are and how bad things are for Bucky, before pocketing the Walkie Talkie and coming back over.

"Hey, you're the reason I'm still breathing. I'm not planning on moving too far from you right now."

He gives a grin to Bucky but he only manages to look tense instead.

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Bit by bit, torn apart [closed]

Aang

Tony and Thor

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