The Price We Pay for Family - 38

 

Cont...

Sam had never felt so helpless than when he'd handed Bucky's much too light body to the doctors and had only been left to pray he'd be okay. He'd see Bucky had so pretty huge highs and some pretty deep lows, but Sam had never seen him that still, that dead. Even out of surgery and hooked up to all sorts of machines, he still looked dead. His skin was shallow, his breathing forced by a tube down his throat.

 The only way Sam could have told he was alive was the wheeze of the air machine and the steady slow beep of the heart monitor. The doctors had done four surgeries to repair the damage they could. They'd had to infuse most of his skeleton with vibranium to help it regrow. At least now, his arms and hands didn't look deformed. 

They'd told him they were keeping him under until they could get his breathing to go on its own. But Sam still stayed with him. 

He remembered Bucky had mentioned once a long time ago that he could faintly remember his time under in those dark years. Remember people talking around and about him like through a fog. Sam could only hope this applied here too.

 "Hey, man. It's been a while. I missed you." Sam found that words dried up when he went to speak. He got those words out but the flood of words he'd wished to say. The hundreds of things he'd always thought, 'if only I still could…' stopped in his throat.

 Sam reached out and rested his hand on Bucky's arm, feeling the thready pulse under his hands, "There's so much I want to say. But it seems like I have no words to say it." Sam said softly, tears threatening to close his throat again. 

"I just want you to be okay. I know you went through a lot. I just want you to know I'm here when you're ready to wake up." Sam readjusted the blanket, pausing at the pale lines on Bucky's chest from the surgery. 

Under them, barely peeking from under the blanket, was the blackened area on Bucky's abdomen. The doctors theorized it was a brand of some sort, but it was distorted and infected beyond recognition at this point. The way it curled indicated it was most likely a Hydra or a related symbol.

 Sam gagged at the thought of the symbol marking Bucky at all. He'd worked so hard to be free only to be branded as one of them. Sam had talked to the doctors about getting rid of it, but the pointed out that right now, they were more focused on healing him than fixing the outer marks. Which Sam understood, it was just a painful thing to think about. 

Thinking about it made it like he could still feel Bucky in his arms on the flight back. Could feel his lungs struggling to breathe under his hands. Feel all the ribs and how they were all fractured into multiple pieces. Feel how cold his skin was and how light his friend was.

 Sam didn't want to think about it because thinking about it acknowledged the fact that he'd abandoned his best friend in his second round of hell. Thinking about it meant it was real. That they'd left him at the mercy of those monsters. That he'd lived through his worst nightmare all over again, and none of them had done a thing. 

Sitting there next to Bucky's body clinging to the fact he was still alive, Sam didn't know if he should feel elated joy or crippling guilt. Despite what he'd told the boys. Despite what he'd tell Sarah, the guilt was squarely on his shoulders and suffocating. 

He'd given up. He'd left him there. He'd taken the surface answer. He hadn't pressed, hadn't looked, hadn't fought. 

The others, Sarah and the boys, they couldn't have done anything. The hope would have hurt them in the long run. But Sam, Sam had given up. And this was where it got him. Sitting next to his best friend, who might die any minute, all because Sam was so naive to take an answer at face value. Sarah was right. He hadn't been ready for the truth. 

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