Re: log: steve rogers, tony stark, winter soldier
Maybe it was one thing and maybe it was another. Maybe he had been upright and wavering too long, the names on the papers in front of him, Cyrillic and English, were beginning to swim. He was enhanced, yes, but only so far. The bullet in his leg was close enough to his femoral artery to be a real problem, and he knew that as he'd walked on it, risking rupture and a fatal injury. In the heat of battle he could have waded through half a dozen bullet wounds, but the adrenaline was fading, and his body could make up for the blood loss only so quickly.
In the end, that was what made escape hopeless - not the pain from the wounds themselves, which he didn't seem to even feel, but blood loss, plain and simple. He dropped from his heels to his knees.
One hand was still inside the file cabinet, the other falling slowly and arcing briefly back up as he tried to stay steady. His frustration with his own physical limitations was bright and fierce. How could he be so stupid?
"Not SHIELD," he said, hoarsely, as he looked slowly up at the Captain. They would try to take him somewhere, no doubt, or call someone for help. Rogers was trusting enough for that, and if it was SHIELD - if it was -
He bit his tongue. He couldn't feel the bullet wounds, but he knew what would happen if they took him to SHIELD, which was the same as Hydra, what would happen then, what would be done. He didn't fear death, but it was harder to say what he felt for SHIELD.
For the brief moment when he met Steve's eye, he felt something, which was strange enough by itself that the feeling hardly mattered. Trust, maybe, inexplicable. Steve wouldn't take him to the almost-remembered dark place with the taste of rubber, an empty hole in his memory. He believed it like a child, and all the scornful doubt in the world couldn't change it, older than pain.