Eyes of Fire | Bucky Barnes

26

Bucky got his arm back, eventually.

It wasn't as if it was being kept from him; Shuri sent him messages (in the form of this annoying beep from the Komoyo beads he'd received when he woke up) at least once a week to remind him that his metal limb was still taking up some very needed space on her shelves.

He just never went to get it — for good reason, in his opinion.

He'd take the inconvenience of it all; struggling to cut up his food, unable to complete his showering routine to the fullest, hell, even opening up doors for himself without ripping it right from the hinges; any day over the feeling that enveloped him when he reattached the arm.

He'd gone to the gym — the training zone they'd allowed him into, fitted to all of his needs, as was usual of this place — immediately.

He didn't know what else he was supposed to do.

Bucky's old therapist, the one assigned to him by the government in between deployments, had always recommended working out when he felt unmoored, as if she hadn't known that he regularly spent an hour or two lifting and sparring on a good day. She had called it a 'healthy coping mechanism," and it turned out she was right— he usually did feel better after spending a couple hours in the gym.

He wasn't entirely sure it was healthy, though, even now. Even with his enhanced healing, he was working through bandages at an alarming rate. It had become a regular occurrence for his knuckles to tear open, for the skin on his palm to blister and pop, and for his feet to bleed through his socks in his shoes.

With the gym windows covered by blackout curtains, it was easy to lose track of time, and Bucky hadn't taken a break until his legs shook so violently he had to wobble over to a bench and sit down.

And then, only after he was able to stand without teetering over, he got back up to continue.

Uxolo found him not too much later.

They'd planned to go out for lunch, today, she'd wanted to show him some ceremonial lake, or other. But he hadn't showed. And with Bucky, she knew there were only so many places he could be.

It was easy to spot the blood. If you couldn't see it filling the wraps around his wrist, you could see it in messy swipes along his neck and forehead, from him reaching up to wipe off the sweat and not realizing it was his blood dripping from him like that. And, if you couldn't see it there, you could see it in the puddles around him, steadily growing larger and larger the longer he spared with the mechanical partners.

Uxolo called out to him, immediately, but he didn't respond.

She called for the training session to end, the robots whirring to a stop, the next dodge of their's frozen in midair. Still, Bucky remained stood there, turned away from her, panting.

"James."

Finally, finally, he nodded, in recognition, and Uxolo reached to unwrap the cloth covering his flesh hand.

He crumpled into her arms the second she removed them, his limp weight requiring all her strength (and then some) to get him onto the bench, where she tried to set him down but he instantly pulled her along with him.

He pleaded in a whisper, she couldn't quite make the words out, his hand clenching as he grabbed at the back of her shirt; she was glad his eyes had fallen shut, so he wouldn't see hers water.

"James, I need to mend your wounds," Uxolo explained as she slipped away to the shelves, knowing exactly where to find the things she needed. She hurried to the bathroom so she could dampen one of the rags, the bottle of rubbing alcohol balanced in the crook of her elbow.

Gingerly, and with as much precision as she could muster, she tended to his cuts and wounds.

"Might sting a bit," She warned before she dabbed at him with the alcohol. He blinked but said nothing, letting her patch him up. She caught him looking at her while she did it, his eyes moving from her hands to her face and back.

In a moment where her curiosity overpowered her usual, strict respect for his privacy, she blurted out the question that had been burning in her mind since this all started: "Is this what you really wanted?"

He didn't seem to understand, or at least he was pretending not to.

"Did you really just want to be cared for, and the only way you knew how was to be hurt first?"

This time, he must have understood, because his jaw tightened and he looked further away.

"I'm so sorry, James, I had it all wrong."

She set the rag aside and rested her hand on his shoulders, pulling him into her.

Until the exact moment that his arm wrapped around her — he kept his vibranium arm tucked behind his back, as if that could keep her from noticing it — she thought she'd done something wrong. But he gave in and embraced her tightly, his body nearly enveloping hers.