Awakening.
I have no idea how long I've been out for. I take mental inventory before my eyes are open- the damage to my shoulder, what must be a lung recovering from collapse, fatigue- and when they are, it is a familiar room that greets me. Foreign, perhaps, but familiar. I don't recognize the hospital, and God knows I've been in enough of them, but the trappings are unmistakable. After a few moments my eyes have adjusted to the light and they open fully, and I can't help but frown- where am I? More importantly, how did I get here? Because-
Oh. Oh.
It takes more effort than I'd like to push myself up to sitting, and though I've always been a quick healer, it's apparent that the gunshot wound is nowhere near knitted up. Moving hurts, and beyond the obvious, superficial pain, there are the vestiges of a bone weariness I don't think I've felt since the war. My first war. The kind of tired that couldn't be shaken off because Bucky and I never stopped traveling from mission to mission, never paused to catch our breath. Given how fast we were moving and how forcefully we were plowing ahead, is it any wonder it took an exploding airplane to put so much as a hitch in our step? And am I really calling a fifty year sleep a hitch?
It's more than Bucky got.
I make to climb out of the hospital bed but the pulling in my chest, sharply painful through the last merciful grips of anesthesia, stops me, and I fall back against the pillow with a grimace. Not that I don't appreciate being lucid, and alive, but there are too many questions that need answering before I can take solace in either fact.
[Timed to late evening. First tag gets to explain, all others may find a bemused and bed-ridden Cap.]
Oh. Oh.
It takes more effort than I'd like to push myself up to sitting, and though I've always been a quick healer, it's apparent that the gunshot wound is nowhere near knitted up. Moving hurts, and beyond the obvious, superficial pain, there are the vestiges of a bone weariness I don't think I've felt since the war. My first war. The kind of tired that couldn't be shaken off because Bucky and I never stopped traveling from mission to mission, never paused to catch our breath. Given how fast we were moving and how forcefully we were plowing ahead, is it any wonder it took an exploding airplane to put so much as a hitch in our step? And am I really calling a fifty year sleep a hitch?
It's more than Bucky got.
I make to climb out of the hospital bed but the pulling in my chest, sharply painful through the last merciful grips of anesthesia, stops me, and I fall back against the pillow with a grimace. Not that I don't appreciate being lucid, and alive, but there are too many questions that need answering before I can take solace in either fact.
[Timed to late evening. First tag gets to explain, all others may find a bemused and bed-ridden Cap.]