Once Daken was certain there were no more dangers lurking about, the mutant lightly cupped Bucky’s face and turned the human’s unseeing eyes back so he could look into them. For the second time in so many days, the mutant found himself manipulating the other with the usage of pheromones and projected a sense of calm and soothing towards the injured soldier.
“Bucky? James? Look at me, I’m here, alright? I’m going to get you out of here.” Daken was surprised at the rage churning beneath the surface. The only time he ever really experienced anger was when dealing with his father or Romulus. He wasn’t even angry at Bucky. He was angry with the people who’d done this to the human.
When his eyes fell on the bloody letters carved into Bucky’s arm and stomach, he was shocked to hear the feral, almost bestial sound rumbling in his chest. Truthfully, he’d seen worse scenes of torture. Hell, he’d committed more heinous acts in his long years as Romulus’s lapdog. The monstrous mutant had made certain Daken had a well-rounded ‘education’ and his abilities to manipulate people with his pheromones along with his complete lack of moral qualms or a conscience had made the feral mutant out to be a perfect interrogator.
“I’m going to cut you lose and then I’m going to go get some bandages. Alright?” He’d seen that vacant look in someone’s eyes before and knew James wasn’t all there in the here and now. Honestly, he had some reservations about freeing the other when he was still lost in his own nightmares but didn’t want to see Bucky chained up like this any longer.
With quick and efficient swipes of his claws, the mutant cut away the bonds tying Bucky down to the chair and tense to see just how he’d react.
When Daken started turning Bucky’s face toward him, Bucky initially resisted. But then the man started projecting those calming pheromones, and Bucky allowed his face to be turned. When he opened his eyes, they were met with Daken’s.
That eye contact hurt. It hurt more than any of the physical pain he was experiencing right then. He’d been holding on to see the man again, but he didn’t want him to see him like this. And that level of intimacy while he was still raw like this, emotional channels and nerves all aflame was too much for him. He turned away again.
When Daken cut him free, Bucky made no efforts to move. He just continued to sit there, looking away from the man as if lost in his thoughts. “I didn’t think you would come for me,” he mumbled.
When he finally managed to direct Bucky’s gaze back to his own, Daken recognized the shame and hesitance in the man’s eyes and it did little to sooth the anger and need to hurt those who’d his lover. Possessiveness wasn’t something the psychopathic mutant was used to feeling and could barely even differentiate it from the other churning emotions seething in his mind.
“Focus, Bucky!” he snapped suddenly, hoping to drag the man from whatever demons were haunting him. Unfortunately, the whole comforting thing was so contrary to his normal nature that he had no idea how to really even go about doing it. He instead concentrated on cutting the soldier free of his bindings.
When Bucky finally broke the uneasy silence with those listless words, Daken was nearly swamped in his anger. He had to take a moment to calm himself before he could address the injured human in such a way that he didn’t come across like he was angry with him.
“You were wrong.” Daken stated flatly and hurried into the office the fetch a dusty, sad looking medical kit from inside. “I’m going to get you to a doctor, alright?”
He looked at the man again, this time with a weak smile. “For what it’s worth, I’ve never been so glad to be wrong.”
Daken’s mention of a doctor, however, snapped Bucky right out of his reverie. He was up on his feet in an instant, stumbling backward away from the man as he held his arm to his chest, hiding the markings. “No. No doctors.” It was bad enough that Daken had had to see what the man cut into Bucky; he didn’t want a complete stranger to see, too.
The mutant's eyes narrowed fractionally as the human stumbled backwards from him, the horror and self-disgust all but cloying in the air.
"Bucky. Calm down." Setting the med kit down on the table still containing the bloody implements of Bucky's torture, the mutant approached him like one might approach a skittish or spooked animal.
"I can't fix you are, James. And we need to check you out for any other injuries. It won't be an ER or anything, I'm going to call the Tinkerer. You've heard of him, right?"
Bucky closed his eyes, nodding. "If there has to be a doctor involved, will you do me a favor?" He opened his eyes, a resolution in them that wasn’t there before. He walked over to the table and picked up the Exacto knife with a trembling hand. “Will you go over the words with this knife? If we go with them as they are now, the doctor will be able to read them. But if you go over them so it looks like random carvings instead of words...” He closed his eyes again as he took a deep breath. “I’d do it myself, but I wouldn’t be able to get to the one on my arm when my other arm’s over there.” He nodded toward his metal arm, then thrust the knife at the other man. “It’s okay. I trust you.”
It occurred to him just how strange it had been for him to speak those words to this man. Wasn’t Daken always saying he wanted to kill Bucky-that he would kill Bucky someday? Going by that alone, it had been foolish of Bucky to offer the man something which he could use to kill Bucky. But that wasn’t all Bucky was going by. Daken had also saved him, twice now. Once when he was breaking down and now when he was physically broken. Startlingly, he found that he meant those words. He did trust Daken right then. He trusted him with his life.
Daken's face was absolutely unreadable as he studied the obviously disturbed human. The gleam in the man’s eyes had another strange emotion curling through him. Worry? He was unused to being concerned for others and therefore hadn’t experienced this feeling for anyone in….decades; maybe even never?
“Bucky, they’re just words,” the mutant tried to reassure him as he moved to attempt and take the Exacto knife away from his lover. “They might not even leave scars and if they do, you can get skin grafts or something. The Tinkerer won’t tell anyone about what he sees. No one will know,”
He wasn’t sure what surprised him more, the fact that Bucky thrust the knife out at him suddenly or the fact that he said he trusted him. Those were completely alien words to the mutant. Daken knew how untrustworthy he was. After all, he’d spent decades moving from one person after another screwing them over for personal gain to meet his mission and here this obviously insane man who knew what kind of predator he was just turns around and tells him he trusts him? Daken actually froze as the shocked surprise flickered across his public face.
He shook his head. "It's not the words; it's what they imply. That I'm less of a man- that I'm less human because I'm-" He cut himself off, unable to finish that sentence. "I lived through World War II. I know what the Nazis did to men like me." He met Daken's eyes and ammended his statement. "To men like us. And with these words cut into my skin, I might as well be wearing a pink triangle. Now, before we do anything else, get rid of them." He held out his arm, looking at the man plaintively. "Please."
"You're the one giving those words power, Bucky." Daken finally said with brutal honestly. He was surprised to find how reluctant he was to disfigure Bucky any further. And that just made him more angry.
"Lay back down," the anger was there, thick in his tone. Resentment and rage both at the bastards who'd hurt him and at Bucky for putting him in this position and asking such an unpleasant thing of him.
"Symbols have an immense amount of power." Bucky of all people would know. He remembered how Steve had stopped being Steve and become a national symbol. Captain America. And people still balked when they saw the Nazi symbol, more than fifty years after the war. "And what are words if not symbols? I don't want these symbols representin' me." Still, he did as Daken asked and lay back down, breathing deeply as he met eyes with the man again. Those eyes said, "I trust you" all over again.
"You're an idiot, an overreacting fool who could have this fixed in a matter of days or even weeks." Daken spat, gray eyes gleaming coldly. "But fine, if you want me to mark you up, so be it. You're not allowed to bitch about the end results."
He clung to the anger and nasty vitriol because it helped steady his hands. Daken eyed the Exacto knife distastefully before tossing it onto the table. The mutant's right hand pinned Bucky's arm down as the two primary claws on his right hand slid free. He honestly had more control and experience cutting things up with them than the knife. Not to mention the razor sharp claws wouldn't dull and drag as they cut through Bucky's skin. Still glaring at the human he moved to make the first series of cuts.
Bucky hissed when the mutant cut into him, but he tried his besy not to react too much outwardly. It was enough that he was asking the man to do this; he wasn't going to make it even more unpleasant for him. He could sense the toll his request was taking on the man, which was strange in and of itself. Wasn't it not so long ago that this man was dislocating Bucky's arm? But, he reminded himself, he had been the one to start that. Still, he bet that not so long ago, Daken would have gleefully hurt him (if it was possible for Daken to do anything "gleefully"), whether or not Bucky asked him to. So, what had changed? When had the change happened? Whatever this change was, whenever it happened, it had happened in Bucky, too.
No matter how distasteful the mutant found this, you couldn’t accuse him of hesitating now that he’d set his mind to the task. Daken neatly made the sweeping cuts that obscured the lines of that filthy word. By the time he was a quarter of the way down Bucky’s arm, there was a definite almost artistic design appearing out of that bleeding and cut skin. The feral mutant used his claws as delicately as a surgeon and only paused to wipe away the fresh flow of blood. It would take him close to five minutes to finish the tribal looking cuts but there would be no discernable trace of the word ‘faggot’ carved into Bucky’s arm.
He closed his eyes, gritting his teeth against any sounds he would have made at that painful carving. No matter how much this may have hurt, it didn't hurt half as much as the first marking had. This was an undoing of that humiliation. Those words had been cut into him by a complete stranger- someone who hated him without even knowing him, and who he hated without even knowing. They'd been cut into him when he was being tortured.
But as he watched the artistic patterns emerging out of that hateful word, this time carved by someone he knew and trusted and- no, he was not going to finish that thought..it felt almost like an undoing. Daken was undoing what had beewn done to him. Bucky felt tears of gratitude well in his eyes, and he looked up at the man. "Thank you."
The dark-haired mutant mistook the tears to be of pain and agony and his eyes widened fractionally before his face set back into an austere expression.
"Don't thank me, if you get a blood infection and die, I'm going to laugh my ass off at your graveside." He warned him with a narrowed-eyed look of irritation and concentrated on bandaging the wound.
Bucky couldn’t help but smile at that mental image, and he sat up to kiss Daken’s cheek. “Arigatou gozaimashita,” he thanked the man in Japanese, which somehow made it more intimate.
“Bucky? James? Look at me, I’m here, alright? I’m going to get you out of here.” Daken was surprised at the rage churning beneath the surface. The only time he ever really experienced anger was when dealing with his father or Romulus. He wasn’t even angry at Bucky. He was angry with the people who’d done this to the human.
When his eyes fell on the bloody letters carved into Bucky’s arm and stomach, he was shocked to hear the feral, almost bestial sound rumbling in his chest. Truthfully, he’d seen worse scenes of torture. Hell, he’d committed more heinous acts in his long years as Romulus’s lapdog. The monstrous mutant had made certain Daken had a well-rounded ‘education’ and his abilities to manipulate people with his pheromones along with his complete lack of moral qualms or a conscience had made the feral mutant out to be a perfect interrogator.
“I’m going to cut you lose and then I’m going to go get some bandages. Alright?” He’d seen that vacant look in someone’s eyes before and knew James wasn’t all there in the here and now. Honestly, he had some reservations about freeing the other when he was still lost in his own nightmares but didn’t want to see Bucky chained up like this any longer.
With quick and efficient swipes of his claws, the mutant cut away the bonds tying Bucky down to the chair and tense to see just how he’d react.
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That eye contact hurt. It hurt more than any of the physical pain he was experiencing right then. He’d been holding on to see the man again, but he didn’t want him to see him like this. And that level of intimacy while he was still raw like this, emotional channels and nerves all aflame was too much for him. He turned away again.
When Daken cut him free, Bucky made no efforts to move. He just continued to sit there, looking away from the man as if lost in his thoughts. “I didn’t think you would come for me,” he mumbled.
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“Focus, Bucky!” he snapped suddenly, hoping to drag the man from whatever demons were haunting him. Unfortunately, the whole comforting thing was so contrary to his normal nature that he had no idea how to really even go about doing it. He instead concentrated on cutting the soldier free of his bindings.
When Bucky finally broke the uneasy silence with those listless words, Daken was nearly swamped in his anger. He had to take a moment to calm himself before he could address the injured human in such a way that he didn’t come across like he was angry with him.
“You were wrong.” Daken stated flatly and hurried into the office the fetch a dusty, sad looking medical kit from inside. “I’m going to get you to a doctor, alright?”
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Daken’s mention of a doctor, however, snapped Bucky right out of his reverie. He was up on his feet in an instant, stumbling backward away from the man as he held his arm to his chest, hiding the markings. “No. No doctors.” It was bad enough that Daken had had to see what the man cut into Bucky; he didn’t want a complete stranger to see, too.
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"Bucky. Calm down." Setting the med kit down on the table still containing the bloody implements of Bucky's torture, the mutant approached him like one might approach a skittish or spooked animal.
"I can't fix you are, James. And we need to check you out for any other injuries. It won't be an ER or anything, I'm going to call the Tinkerer. You've heard of him, right?"
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It occurred to him just how strange it had been for him to speak those words to this man. Wasn’t Daken always saying he wanted to kill Bucky-that he would kill Bucky someday? Going by that alone, it had been foolish of Bucky to offer the man something which he could use to kill Bucky. But that wasn’t all Bucky was going by. Daken had also saved him, twice now. Once when he was breaking down and now when he was physically broken. Startlingly, he found that he meant those words. He did trust Daken right then. He trusted him with his life.
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“Bucky, they’re just words,” the mutant tried to reassure him as he moved to attempt and take the Exacto knife away from his lover. “They might not even leave scars and if they do, you can get skin grafts or something. The Tinkerer won’t tell anyone about what he sees. No one will know,”
He wasn’t sure what surprised him more, the fact that Bucky thrust the knife out at him suddenly or the fact that he said he trusted him. Those were completely alien words to the mutant. Daken knew how untrustworthy he was. After all, he’d spent decades moving from one person after another screwing them over for personal gain to meet his mission and here this obviously insane man who knew what kind of predator he was just turns around and tells him he trusts him? Daken actually froze as the shocked surprise flickered across his public face.
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"Lay back down," the anger was there, thick in his tone. Resentment and rage both at the bastards who'd hurt him and at Bucky for putting him in this position and asking such an unpleasant thing of him.
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He clung to the anger and nasty vitriol because it helped steady his hands. Daken eyed the Exacto knife distastefully before tossing it onto the table. The mutant's right hand pinned Bucky's arm down as the two primary claws on his right hand slid free. He honestly had more control and experience cutting things up with them than the knife. Not to mention the razor sharp claws wouldn't dull and drag as they cut through Bucky's skin. Still glaring at the human he moved to make the first series of cuts.
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But as he watched the artistic patterns emerging out of that hateful word, this time carved by someone he knew and trusted and- no, he was not going to finish that thought..it felt almost like an undoing. Daken was undoing what had beewn done to him. Bucky felt tears of gratitude well in his eyes, and he looked up at the man. "Thank you."
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"Don't thank me, if you get a blood infection and die, I'm going to laugh my ass off at your graveside." He warned him with a narrowed-eyed look of irritation and concentrated on bandaging the wound.
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