Chapter 2: The Snow flakes
The fifth day brought witnesses.Bucky saw them circling overhead sometime near dawn. Dark shapes against swollen gray clouds.
Vultures.
Their wings cut lazy spirals through the sky while snow drifted steadily downward around him. Patient creatures. Calm creatures. They knew death when they smelled it. And apparently they smelled him. Bucky watched them silently with half-frozen eyes. “Huh,” he rasped weakly. The sound vanished into the wind.
He should’ve felt afraid.
Instead he mostly felt tired. So fucking tired.
The blizzard rolled in slowly after that. Not dramatic. Not violent. Just inevitable. Snow thickened by the hour until the entire mountain blurred white. Wind dragged freezing needles across Bucky’s exposed skin. Ice collected in his hair and lashes. The cold settled deeper and deeper into him until it no longer felt external.It lived inside him now. Like his veins carried winter instead of blood.
One of the vultures landed nearby atop a jagged shard of rock. Its claws scraped softly against stone. Watching. Waiting. Bucky stared back at it through heavy eyelids. “You’re early,” he mumbled. The bird tilted its head. Another shape landed above him. Then another. Black wings against white snow. The mountain had started preparing for his death before he had.His thoughts drifted strangely after that.
Reality loosened again.
Suddenly fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. Cold metal dug into his back. The lab. Hydra. Bucky blinked upward at the familiar ceiling while restraints bit into his wrists. The smell of antiseptic and machine oil filled the air. Somewhere nearby scientists murmured in German.
He remembered this.God. He remembered this. This was after Azzano. After the first capture. He’d lay there bloody and exhausted wondering if Steve knew where he was. Wondering if Steve would come.And Steve had. Of course he had.The memory wrapped around him warm as fever.Boots pounding down corridors. Gunfire. Steve shouting his name.Bucky almost smiled. Steve always came. Always. “With you till the end of the line.” The words echoed softly through his skull. But the hallucination kept going. That was the problem. Steve never arrived this time. The lab remained empty except for scientists moving around him like ghosts. No shield crashing through windows. No Steve. No rescue.Bucky frowned slightly.That wasn’t right. He waited. Nothing happened. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Cold spread beneath his spine.
The vultures outside shifted their wings. And very slowly… something inside Bucky began to crack.
Not dramatically. Not all at once.
Just a tiny fracture spreading through certainty.
Steve always comes.Doesn’t he?
The thought floated there weakly while snow piled slowly over Bucky’s legs. The blizzard darkened toward evening. The sky turned bruised blue-gray. Wind screamed harder through the mountains now, dragging snow in violent waves across the rocks.
The vultures remained.
Waiting.
Bucky couldn’t feel most of his body anymore.His arm had gone beyond pain entirely. The ruined limb simply existed somewhere beside him like abandoned meat. Night fell.Then came the wolves. Distant at first. Long mournful howls threading through the storm.
Bucky’s eyes opened wider.
Another howl answered closer this time.The sound slithered through the dark mountain valleys sharp as knives. Predators. Coming to investigate.
The realization hit slowly through the fog in his mind.
The vultures.
The wolves.
The waiting.
Oh.
“Oh…” The word barely escaped him.No one was coming. Not tomorrow. Not tonight. Not ever.Steve wasn’t delayed. Steve wasn’t searching another ridge. Steve wasn’t fighting through snowstorms to find him. Because if Steve could’ve come…he already would have.
Bucky stared upward into the storm with hollow eyes.For the first time in five days he let himself think about the forbidden thing completely. Steve isn’t coming.The sentence hurt more than the arm ever did. Not sharp pain. Not anger.
Just this terrible empty feeling opening inside his chest. Like something vital had quietly died. Snow settled over him inch by inch. The wolves howled again.
Closer.Bucky swallowed weakly. “Well,” he whispered into the storm. Blood cracked against his lips. “Huh.” His eyes drifted toward the circling shadows overhead. “The end of the line came sooner than expected.”
The first thing Bucky heard was footfalls.
Wolves? No. Softer. More. Dogs. Their breath made ghostly puffs in the air, and harnesses jingled with a faint, metallic music. A sharp sliding sound cut through the wind—a sled?—before everything went silent except for the soft panting of animals.
Bucky opened his eyes.
A woman’s silhouette leaned over him, blocking the sky. A moment passed, and a vulture flew overhead, its broad wings darkened against the clouds behind her. An angel? The thought was hazy, disconnected from the raw pain thrumming through his body.
She studied his tattered S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform and the mangled ruin of his left arm, her head tilting with clinical curiosity. She spoke first in a melodic stream of Ukrainian Russian, her voice sweet and improbably joyful. Then she switched to clean, accented English. “You are still breathing! This is fantastic.”
Her hands moved with efficient grace, binding his shattered arm with straps from her pack. Bucky cried out, a raw sound torn from his throat. “I know, I know, such pain,” she cooed, not pausing her work. “You are amazing to endure this. So strong. And so beautiful, even like this.”
The agony when she lifted him onto the sled was a white-hot universe that swallowed all thought. “I have found such a nice treasure in the snow,” she chatted happily, arranging his weight on the furs. “Unexpectedly! I am so very happy.”
She secured him, her touch firm and possessive. “It will be alright now,” she said, her pale eyes holding his fading gaze. “I am here. I will always be here now.”
She pulled his dog tags from his neck, the chain cold against his skin. “James Buchanan Barnes,” she read aloud, as if tasting the name. He choked, blood and ice on his lips, and managed a whisper. “Bucky.”
“Bucky,” she repeated, smiling as she tucked the tags back. “Good.”
Then came more footfalls, the shift of powerful bodies in the snow. The dogs stirred, and the sled began to move, carrying him away from the mountain, the vultures, and the empty line.
The dogs stirred, and the sled began to move, carrying him away from the mountain, the vultures, and the empty line. The world became a lurching, pain-soaked blur of pine branches and falling snow. He faded in and out, each bump a fresh explosion that made him see bright stars against his eyelids. Sometimes he heard her talking to the dogs in that same cheerful tone. Other times she was just humming.
Eventually the motion stopped. There was the sound of a heavy metal door groaning open on rusted hinges. Cold air was replaced by a different, damp chill that smelled of concrete, old fuel, and something faintly chemical. Arms lifted him again, not hers—men’s arms, impersonal and strong. He caught a glimpse of gray walls and pipes running along a low ceiling before a wave of blackness pulled him under.
He woke up partially delirious.
Warm.
That was the first coherent sensation. Not the screaming, dry cold of the mountain, but a deep, penetrating warmth that seemed to emanate from the blanket beneath him. It was confusing. Almost painful in its contrast.
Warm and… wet?
A damp cloth moved over his chest. Bucky’s eyes fluttered open. A single, dim bulb hung from a wire in a low ceiling, casting everything in a sickly yellow glow. Bunker. Definitely a bunker. Concrete walls, shelves with canned goods, a squat furnace humming in the corner.
He was naked on a thick wool blanket spread over a metal table. His left arm was still there. It lay beside him, a ruined thing. The skin was a horrifying patchwork of deep purple, angry red, and waxy white where the frost had bitten deepest. It was clearly broken in multiple places, the limb twisted at a slightly wrong angle from the shoulder down.
The woman moved into his line of sight. She’d removed her heavy coat. She wore a simple, gray tank top, her dark hair tied back. Her expression was one of focused contentment. She dipped a cloth into a pail of steaming water, wrung it out, and continued wiping the grime and dried blood from his torso.
“The American offensive in the Ardennes is a disaster, you know,” she said conversationally, as if they were sharing a coffee. “Such ego. Your generals think because the weather is poor, the Reich will not fight.” She rinsed the cloth, the water turning pink. “Hydra does not make such mistakes. We plan for the weather. We plan for everything.”
Bucky tried to speak, but only a ragged breath came out. His mind was syrupy, disconnected. The warmth of the water felt unnaturally good on his skin.
“You were with the 107th, yes? Infantry.” She didn’t look up, working her way down his side. “Good soldiers. Wasted by bad captains. Like cattle.” Her hand paused near a deep bruise along his ribs. “Not you, though. You are different. I could tell from the snow. A survivor.”
She moved to his face next, her touch unexpectedly gentle as she cleaned his jawline and forehead. Then she set the cloth aside and picked up a razor, a straight razor with a bone handle. She tested the edge against her thumb, a tiny, precise motion.
Bucky’s breath hitched. He didn’t know why that peaked his attention more than anything else. The clinical care. The mundanity of it amidst the surreal horror of his situation.
She lathered his face with a brush and soap that smelled faintly of pine tar. “Be very still, zolotse,” she murmured. “My hands are steady, but you must not jump.”
The first pass of the blade against his cheek was cool and smooth. She worked with methodical patience, rinsing the razor in the warm water after every stroke. She held his chin between her fingers, tilting his head to get the angle right under his jawline. She took extreme care not to cut him.
She doesn’t want to mar his beautiful face, the thought drifted through his feverish mind. It wasn’t his own thought. It felt placed there by her intense, approving gaze.
“There,” she said softly, wiping away the last of the soap. Her thumb stroked his now-smooth cheek. “Perfect.”
She didn’t stop there. She moved down his neck, then his chest. Bucky flinched internally. He’d always been lean, not particularly hairy. It had taken him years to grow that light, sparse covering on his chest, a fact that had quietly frustrated him in barracks full of hairier men.
The razor scraped it all away with efficient strokes. He felt a hot flush of embarrassment that had no place here, surrounded by concrete and pain. It was a stupid, human vanity, laid bare.
She shaved his legs carefully too, all the way down. The process was silent save for the scrape of metal and the drip of water. When she was finished, she rinsed him with a clean, warm cloth. He felt exposed in a new way, like a raw nerve or a blank page.
She hummed as she cleaned up, a tuneless, absent sound. Then it formed into words. A soft, melodic song. Her voice was clear and sweet, singing in Ukrainian. A lullaby.
Oi khodyt’ son, kolo vikon… The notes wrapped around the stale air of the bunker.
Bucky stared at the pipes on the ceiling. The warmth from the blanket seeped into his back. The ruined arm throbbed dully. The woman’s song wound through it all, a thread of misplaced tenderness tying him to this moment, to this table, to her.
He was so clean. So shaved. So utterly broken.
The lullaby spiraled on, and his eyes, heavy and full of a confused, aching surrender, began to close.
The lullaby spiraled on, and his eyes, heavy and full of a confused, aching surrender, began to close.
He drifted in a swamp of fever and unnatural warmth for what felt like days.
Consciousness returned in fragile, jagged pieces. The smell of the bunker—damp concrete, coal dust, that sharp chemical tang—was the first anchor. A rough wool blanket scratched his chin. His entire being was concentrated into a single, pulsing point of wrongness: his left arm. It wasn’t pain anymore. It was a presence, a hot, sickening mass of decay tied to his body.
Voices pulled him the rest of the way up.
Hers was low, tense, the cheerful melody gone. “It is not a question of resources. It is a question of time.”
A man’s voice answered, older, graveled with authority and impatience. “The schedule is compromised. This sentiment is unlike you, Doctor. He is a casualty. A interesting one, perhaps, but a drain.”
Bucky kept his eyes shut, breathing shallow. The effort of listening felt immense.
“Sentiment?” Her laugh was a short, sharp sound. “Do not be a fool. Look at his file. Look at what he survived. The fall alone should have killed him. Then the exposure. His constitution is exceptional. This is not sentiment. This is an opportunity you are too blind to see.”
A heavy silence followed. Bucky heard the scrape of a chair, the rustle of paper.
“The Armament Division requires the metallurgical components for the V-8 prototypes. You are asking to divert them for a single, unsanctioned project.”
“I am telling you I have found a superior application,” she shot back, her voice stepping closer to the table where he lay. “The prototypes are machines. This… this can become a weapon that thinks. That obeys. A living instrument. My instrument.”
“Your ambition is noted. The risk is not justified. The infection is systemic. He will be dead by morning. Then you have wasted both.”
“He will not die.” Her declaration was absolute, a door slamming shut. “I will not allow it. The components. And the surgical kit from the forward station. By tonight.”
Another pause, thicker. Bucky could feel the man’s gaze on him, a weightless, assessing pressure.
“This exceeds your authority, Volkov.”
“Then report me.” Her words were ice. “See what Moscow values more: your adherence to schedule, or the asset I pull from the grave.”
The standoff stretched, breath by breath. Finally, a sigh, the sound of surrender and simmering resentment. “The components will arrive. Do not fail.”
Footsteps receded. The metal door groaned open, then shut with a final, echoing clang.
Silence flooded back in, broken only by the wet, labored sound of Bucky’s own breathing. He felt her approach before her shadow fell over him. A cool hand settled on his forehead, then smoothed back his hair from his damp temple. Her touch was slow, almost trembling.
“Such noise,” she whispered, her voice ragged at the edges. “All that arguing. For you. It is done now. We are alone.”
He forced his eyes open. The single bulb haloed her head. Her expression was different—the cheerful precision was gone, replaced by something raw and fiercely protective. There was a sheen in her pale eyes. Remorse? Fatigue? He couldn’t tell.
“You heard, I think,” she said, her fingers still moving through his hair. A steady, rhythmic petting. “My foolish superior. He sees only cost. He does not see you.”
Bucky tried to swallow. His throat was a desert. “I feel…” he croaked, the words disintegrating.
“I know, zolotse. I know.” Her thumb stroked his cheekbone. “The illness is in your blood now. From the arm. It is poisoned. Rotting. It is killing you.”
A cold deeper than the mountain’s seeped into his core. He looked toward the horrific, discolored limb. It looked foreign. Like something that had already been buried.
“To save your life, I must take it off,” she said, her tone softening into a dreadful kind of gentleness. “There is no other path.”
A sound, weak and pathetic, escaped him. It wasn’t a sob. It was the mere ghost of protest.
“Shhh.” She leaned closer, her lips near his ear. Her scent was soap and snow. “Listen to me. I will not leave you less. I promise you. I will build you a new one. Strong. Perfect. Unbreakable. But to do that, I must put a base into your shoulder. I must connect it to your nerves, to your bones, before all this dead flesh dies and takes you with it.”
Her hand left his hair to grip his right hand, squeezing it. Her palm was hot. “You just have to hold on. A little bit longer. Be good for me. Be still. Endure this last thing.”
Black spots danced at the edges of his vision. The heat from the infected arm felt like a furnace now, consuming him from the inside out. He was so weak he could not have lifted his head if the bunker were on fire.
“If you are good,” she whispered, the promise weaving through the fever like a ribbon of cool silver. “If you let me save you… I will reward you.”
His gaze, clouded with sickness and despair, clung to her face. It was the only anchor in a dissolving world. He had nothing. No strength. No arm. No Steve.
Only her voice. Only her promise.
A tiny, imperceptible nod moved his head against the blanket. It was all he had left to give.
She smiled then, a real smile that reached her eyes, and it felt, treacherously, like salvation. “Good,” she said, straightening up, her remorse vanishing into purpose. “Now we begin.”
“Now we begin.”
Days later, Izolda prepared Bucky for surgery.
The fever had broken into a profound, chilling weakness that felt like his bones had been replaced with wet sand. She moved the metal table closer to the furnace, its heat radiating against his right side. The surgical kit, whetted steel gleaming in a worn leather roll, lay open on a stool beside her.
“I must apologize,” she said, her voice crisp as she swabbed the inside of his elbow with something cold and astringent. “Proper anesthesia… it is a luxury for another front. I cannot put you to sleep.”
She took his good hand, guiding his fingers to feel the IV needle’s port taped securely to his arm. “But this will help. It is a cocktail. It will separate your mind from the worst of the feeling. You will float.”
A sudden, chemical sweetness hit his veins, thick and fast. The world softened at the edges. The gnawing, fiery agony in his left shoulder receded, not disappearing, but becoming a distant, muffled thrumming, like hearing machinery through a thick wall. Colors bled. The hum of the furnace deepened into a drone.
He didn’t move. Didn’t even try. Too tired.
The exhaustion was a weight pinning him to the table, denser than gravity. He watched her blurry form through heavy eyelids as she arranged her tools in a precise line. She leaned over him, a dark silhouette against the bulb, and he felt the soft, dry press of her lips against the corner of his mouth. A chaste, possessive stamp.
“My good soldier,” she whispered.
Then she picked up the saw.
Even while high he was conscious. The drug unspooled his awareness, stretching it like taffy. He watched, detached, as her strong, capable hands braced his ruined limb against the table’s edge. The teeth of the blade were very fine. He heard the first metallic scrape as it bit through skin and muscle, a sound like tearing canvas layered over grinding stone.
He watched as his blood sprayed everywhere. It arced in a vivid crimson parabola, landing in warm splashes across her tank top, her neck, her determined face. She did not flinch. She worked with a steady, rhythmic pressure, her focus absolute. The saw’s growl vibrated up through the table into his spine.
He listened to her soft, humming rendition of a Ukrainian lullaby, the same one from before, the melody threading seamlessly through the horrific auditory tapestry of cutting and wet separation.
A final, grating crunch resonated deep within him, a feeling more than a sound. A profound, unsettling vacancy opened in his spatial awareness where his arm used to be. She lifted the severed limb away, dropping it with a wet, heavy thud into a galvanized pail. The sound was final.
She pressed some strange metal stump into his shoulder socket. It was cold, so cold it burned, a paradoxical sensation that cut through the chemical haze. He felt a deep, internal pressure, then a series of sharp, precise clicks as she engaged hidden mechanisms. It felt less like attachment and more like colonization.
Then she wrapped his shoulder carefully. The bandages were clean and tight, a stark white cocoon enveloping the new, foreign core of him. She praised him for being so straight and still, her voice a balm in the echoing silence left by the saw. “Excellent. Perfect. You are doing so beautifully.”
Those praises were addictive. They seeped into the hollow places the fever and the fall had carved out. Each word was a hook, settling under his skin. He was perfect. He was beautiful. For her.
She was saving his life. Giving him another chance… and Steve still wasn’t there. That old, agonizing truth surfaced through the chemical fog, blunt and undeniable. On the mountain, in the snow, waiting for a promise that broke. Here, on a metal table, being reassembled by a stranger who called him perfect.
A last delirious thought hit as he fell asleep to her soft humming, her hands now cleaning his blood from her own skin with a damp cloth.
Pain felt so… pleasurable with her there. Its sharp edges were sanded down by her approval. The void where his arm had been was filled with the warmth of her attention. It was a sick, holy calculus that his breaking mind accepted without question.
The dark, when it finally took him, was not cold. It was full of her song.