[ The last thing Bucky remembers before the cradle hissed shut was Steve peering through the glass, an unreadable expression on his face. Cryo hits fast – you have a grand total of one second, two tops, before it’s lights out and it’s so quick you don’t even have time to feel the chill biting through muscle and bone. Waking up? Much, much slower. Always had been with HYDRA’s equipment and the Wakandan kind isn’t too different despite the updated bells and whistles. As the cradle warms his core temperature slowly, checks his vitals, he’s greeted with the usual wake-up call: what feels like the mother of all hangovers, his head spinning, stomach lurching, and his thoughts so sluggish that he’s as useless as he was when HYDRA used to thaw him out.
There was a reason they didn’t have him immediately running missions after cryo.
He wakes up still strapped to the cradle, disoriented enough that he doesn’t think to just bully his way out of it by brute force. His head lolls, hair still dusted with frost as he sucks in his first breath and gets the tang of blood. Not his (he thinks). Someone else. It takes him a few seconds delay to register Natasha’s voice. Bucky lifts his head then, trying to will his vision to snap back into focus, getting a blur that looks like a woman with familiar red hair ]
...Romanoff. [ Bucky’s voice comes out a dull croak. He wets his lips ] What’s going on? Where’s Steve?
[ Vision’s still a crapshoot but from what he can tell, this doesn’t look much like Wakanda: not enough jungle and modern white steel, too much old-cabin-in-the-woods vibe, right down to flannel over the fire place and he bets there’s a mounted deer somewhere around here too. If he’s being thawed out, either they somehow fixed HYDRA’s programming while he was out or – and that’s the part he doesn’t want, the “or” - or they haven’t and he's still a walking time bomb. Could be Romanoff’s here with an agenda of her own.
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There was a reason they didn’t have him immediately running missions after cryo.
He wakes up still strapped to the cradle, disoriented enough that he doesn’t think to just bully his way out of it by brute force. His head lolls, hair still dusted with frost as he sucks in his first breath and gets the tang of blood. Not his (he thinks). Someone else. It takes him a few seconds delay to register Natasha’s voice. Bucky lifts his head then, trying to will his vision to snap back into focus, getting a blur that looks like a woman with familiar red hair ]
...Romanoff. [ Bucky’s voice comes out a dull croak. He wets his lips ] What’s going on? Where’s Steve?
[ Vision’s still a crapshoot but from what he can tell, this doesn’t look much like Wakanda: not enough jungle and modern white steel, too much old-cabin-in-the-woods vibe, right down to flannel over the fire place and he bets there’s a mounted deer somewhere around here too. If he’s being thawed out, either they somehow fixed HYDRA’s programming while he was out or – and that’s the part he doesn’t want, the “or” - or they haven’t and he's still a walking time bomb. Could be Romanoff’s here with an agenda of her own.
Given her MO, he can't say he's too surprised. ]