Edited version of Chapter 12, Love Among the Ruins

[daphneblithe]

(This post just for people who have already read Chapter 1 to 11 of a fic of mine, Love Among the Ruins, and who want to have a version of chapter 12 without the darker sentences.  For those who want the entire thing, please go to AO3, here.)

Hello!

Good to see you! I really wanted to make it possible for people to engage with bits of chapter 12 even if they prefer the non-con skipped over, so here I offer the chapter with those short pieces removed.

There is very little non-con in the fic as a whole, just a handful of scenes in Chapter 11 and 12. After Chapter 12 there is none at all.   

There is no material here that is not already in AO3. This is just a shortened version of the chapter that omits the sentences with darker elements.



CHAPTER SUMMARY: The Soldier’s been walking a long time. It’s taken days to get here, even with the vehicles, and his legs are weak, keep giving way under him. The small team of soldiers and engineers with him is silent. He knows where they’re going. He knows the mission.

Something is strange, though. Something is wrong.
 

2004

The housekeeper smooths her hands over her skirt, and steels herself to open the door into the parlor.

It’s dark, as always. The mahogany décor and faded, thick red velvet curtains make it feel claustrophobic despite the high ceilings. Leander’s never expressed any interest in changing it, ever since his parents died two years ago and he took over ownership. He never wants to change anything, and that’s why she’s nervous now.

He’s draped over the chaise longue, one leg swinging idly over the edge, and staring, sulky, at the empty squares on the walls where paintings recently hung. He hasn’t turned on the light, and twilight is thick in this room of dust and shadows.

She swallows. “The auctioneers have taken the statues, and most of the pictures. They said they will come for the rest tomorrow.”

He doesn’t respond straight away. Then he murmurs, “All our family’s riches, all the art. Sold and forgotten.” His tone is oddly light, almost playful. “We dwindle, we once-great English families. Our glories fade.”

She bites her lip. He’s right. The modern world hasn’t been kind to minor aristocracy, and Leander’s seething resentment of that is not news to her. She knows enough of Leander not to trust his seeming lightness, and is glad to shut the door behind her.

2007

The British library clerk is frowning at the acquisitions database when someone approaches the desk. She’s new in the role, and a bit overawed.

“These journals, please.” The hand proffering the request slip is shaking, and she looks up at the man as she takes it. He looks… strange, almost manic. His gray eyes are shining, his hair’s in disarray – he seems to vibrate with a quality of tamped-down frenzy.

She accepts the slip warily, and scans his user card. It all looks in order – he’s a medical student at King’s. The only unusual thing about the request slip is that he wants … wow, really old journals, from the 1930s. Med students rarely want the older stuff, that’s usually the Humanities crowd.

She sneaks another glance at him. He’s ... definitely intense about this. It breaches protocol to ask, but she’s curious. She smiles at him as she pushes his card back across the table. “Medical history research?”

His half-smile is charming, making his intensity somehow less jarring. “Maybe not just history. Perhaps we can use it now.”

She casts an involuntary glance back down the request slip. There’s a lot of “1936” and “1945” in that list for it to be of contemporary relevance. “Really?”

His smile widens, and he leans across the desk. His voice has dropped, and she has to lean in slightly to hear it. “Did you know,” he says slowly, his eyes on hers, “English psychiatrists were in some ways pioneers of some sleep therapies in the thirties?”

“Er, they were?” The conversation has taken a bizarre turn but somehow she can’t quite look away. She suddenly has an image of her brother’s butterfly collection, iridescent insects pierced.

His smile widens, and his eyes don’t leave hers. “It was glorious, you know. Pioneers of care. English psychiatry was special. They used sleep to heal.”

“Sleep?” She’s feeling a bit disoriented, but can’t quite see how to extricate herself from this exchange.

“Maybe some of that cleverness should be resurrected, hmm?”

Slightly dazed, she murmurs something noncommittal, and he takes his card and leaves, with one last cryptic glance.

After he’s gone, she looks back down at the desk and sees that he left the additional request slips after all. She lifts one up, thinking she might process it anyway but… something makes her hesitate, and she puts it back down. He can wait. And she couldn’t say why, but for a moment she has an irresponsible urge to crumple them up and throw them out entirely. That would be a sackable offense, it’s a ridiculous idea – but when she does eventually key in the request codes, she feels cold.

2012

Harry’s drowsy. He’s never been good at night shifts, and even after qualifying as a nurse three months ago he finds them hard. The prospect of working on a psychiatric ward had unnerved him too, but really it’s a ward like any other. Actually, on this particular ward an unusual number of patients sleep pretty heavily, dosed up on Haldol and Ativan or even Propofol.

Harry at first expected night shift to be silent, but it’s far from quiet – it’s a murmuring sussuration of breaths – the organic, uncanny sound of collective sleep. His own eyelids are drooping.

Suddenly he jerks back into alertness, his heart hammering. Someone is standing in front of him.

That someone smiles, slowly, “Sorry to alarm you.”

Harry puts a hand to his chest. “Fu—sorry, Dr—“ he rummages for the name, “Askin-Worland.” The day shift had told him on handover. Askin-Worland will drop by for sure, he’s really conscientious about night shifts.

Harry’s aware the doctor is watching his flustered gestures, and he tries to pull himself together. “Sorry, I might have drowsed off.”

The doctor narrows his eyes. “Perhaps a walk will refresh you? I was going to take one myself.”

Harry hears the implied command and stumbles to his feet. He trails the doctor along the ward’s corridor, peering into each side-ward. Askin-Worland pauses at the second private room, ducks inside, and after a moment Harry follows.

There’s a woman, fast asleep. The doctor pauses by her bed, and Harry follows his gaze.

She’s pale, with long black hair, and deep in chemically induced oblivion. She’s breathing slow, her hands still on the coverlet. Her left arm is bandaged – she must have sustained injuries in whatever crisis brought her to the ward. The IV bag hangs over her head.

Harry glances at Askin-Worland. He doesn’t seem to be doing anything except watching. Harry’s not sure what the doctor is assessing for, and isn’t sure if he should be doing anything to help. He shuffles slightly, and it seems to break a spell.

“Sometimes,” says the doctor, musingly, “Sleep reminds me of drowning.”

“Uh?” manages Harry, intelligently.

“Well, think of it,” the doctor’s voice is light, maybe teasing? “You can almost imagine this young woman, under water, that dark hair swaying as she turns pale and cold.”

Wait… what? Harry blinks. That’s – that’s definitely not a normal comment, is it? “What?”

Leander’s watching him now, eyes sharp. “I’m saying the room’s too cold, nurse. You need to be more careful of the patients.”

“Uh… yes.” Harry stammers, glances at the window and… yeah, shit, it is pretty wide open, despite the barriers, and there’s a sharp breeze. He hastily moves to close it. He doesn’t earn any further reproofs during the rest of the round, but when Leander leaves Harry finds himself staring after him.

He can’t shake a strange thought. That doctor likes sleep too much.

2014

Jay swears, and flips his long dark hair away from his face in a gesture of pure exasperation. Leander’s late, as usual. He’s seriously inadequate as a boyfriend and hardly adequate as a friend-with-benefits. He’s damned if he’s going to wait up for him any longer.

Leander will be at the library or the lab, up to his ears in the research results or the new grant proposal about revisiting that weird old sleep crap he never shuts up about, often with a weird nationalist side line on English psychiatry’s past glories and how much better society was in the forties. He’s got even worse ever since he won the postdoctoral award and started getting his sleep research published.

Jay is fed up with him. Leander’s pretty and he’s clever, but he’s also a twit. When he sees him tomorrow he’ll make it clear they’re over. He goes to bed.

 

[.... a few sentences omitted. Leander returns, and takes advantage of Jay while asleep,]

 

As Leander retreats, Jay can’t hold back a sob of relief, and he’s shaking as he pulls a sheet up over himself. He always sleeps naked, but right now he desperately needs covering.

“What the hell were you doing?”

Leander still looks calm. “I thought you’d like it.”

Jay narrows his eyes. He’s still shaking, every sense on high alert. “No you didn’t.”

Leander actually has the gall to grin slightly, shrug. “Well to be absolutely honest, darling, I wouldn’t have minded if you stayed asleep.”

Every part of Jay is cold. He can’t compute this, but one thing is clear. “Get out.” His voice is low and ragged. “Get out, and stay away from me and my friends.”

Leander drops his smile, visibly schooling his expression to perform mild contrition. “I’m awfully sorry for the misunderstanding, darling.” He dresses quickly and leaves.

Jay spends a long time looking at the door, then he bolts it and puts on the chain.

He doesn’t go back to sleep.

2016

Caretaking the old hospital’s hardly a demanding job, but George prefers it when he doesn’t have to come out to show visitors around on a cold autumn evening. He unlocks the door, and the gentleman steps through. He’s smartly dressed in a peacoat, and looks out of place, delicate and fastidious in the shabby corridors.

George follows him in silence. It’s not the first time this man’s come down from London to see the old hospital. George has a vague idea that he writes about it.

“So beautiful.” The man is murmuring. “All those lives, held right at the edge of death, forced into sleep hourly, daily. I came to say goodbye, you know.”

George grunts. He’s not keen to encourage reverie, he wants to go home, but the visitor doesn’t seem discouraged.

“Oh, yes. I’m going to South Africa and Russia, of all places. I’ll be working to help make something like this, again, on a grand scale. They are visionaries, you see. They appreciate,” he visibly preens, “my work. I didn’t expect Russia to be part of how I’d do it, but it’s fine to start there, and I’ll have an excellent subject on whom to begin.” His expression turns greedy.

George is unnerved. He feels something is expected of him, but all he can manage is, “Right.”

Leander suddenly smiles at him, his gaze direct and sharp. “You don’t understand. Most people don’t.” He inhales a deep breath, throwing his shoulders back, expansive, smile widening. “But that’s fine. Things are going to change. There will be order, even if it comes through pain.”

George is too taken aback to reply.  He watches, wide eyed, as the gentleman walks back to his car. The autumn leaves rustle, and George shivers. Winter’s drawing in.

 

Waking hasn’t been pleasant for Bucky for a long time. Waking trapped to a metal surgical table is worse.

‘<Prepare.>” It’s Guseinova. She’s wearing surgical scrubs and addressing adjacent medical technicians. Bucky grits his teeth. Okay, this time it’ll be torture. More conventional torture, rather. He’s not sure what to prefer, that or the sing-song horror of Leander’s experimental narcosis — and terrific, he’s here too, smiling behind Guseinova.

“The pain will be worth it, darling.”

The scientist’s eyelids twitch at Leander’s endearment, but she doesn’t comment. Why have Hydra given him to Leander? What the fuck is going on here? But any effort to make sense of the inexplicable dynamics of this mysterious base stops when one of the medics approaches his shoulder.

 

 

 

[.... 3 sentences omitted. describing surgery but no details given....]

 

 

Then he’s coming around, panting, covered with sweat that’s starting to chill in the cool air. The room seems darker now, the blue shadows even more decayed. It feels like hours have passed.

He has a new arm, heavy and gleaming, even complete with the red star. It looks virtually identical, and the familiar weight pins him to the bed as much as the restraints. They’ve completed the cybernetic neural linkup, but the restraints are secure, and as usual he can’t get out of them.

Bucky’s flooded with horror, then relief, then sadness. He can’t sort out what he’s feeling at all. All he has is images: the revulsion the time he first examined his hand — the memory of slamming it into Steve’s shield — the delicacy of holding plums. He curls the fingers softly, filled with grief. They haven’t given him this hand for gentleness.

Guseinova, Leander and the surgical technicians are standing around him, and the technicians look shaken, but the scientist is staring coolly at Leander. She speaks in English. “You wanted to take over at this stage.”

“I do,” smiles Leander. “Thank you. You can go now.”

The way she pauses at that makes it very clear she doesn’t see him as someone in a position to be giving her orders. “I’ll give you an hour.”

Leander doesn’t acknowledge her as she leaves. Bucky’s still shaking from what’s been done to him, and his body feels limp, wracked, yet it's too early to be relieved that it's over. He watches Leander warily. Something is even more amiss than usual.

Leander approaches with another syringe, and this time he gently strokes the inside of Bucky’s wrist, brings the needle close. Bucky tenses, remembering the horrors of the burning thorns, but Leander strokes the veins with cool fingers and murmurs, “Softly now, James. This will feel … different.”

And oh God it does.

Bucky’s mental daze abruptly lifts at the same time that his body becomes completely heavy. His eyes close and he can't move his limbs, yet amid this near-paralysis, his senses are rapidly ratcheting up to near-intolerable levels. He feels properly awake for the first time in weeks. He’s suddenly newly aware of the rough texture of the sheets, the smell of mold, the sweetness of ruin and decay, and his own blood, metallic, hanging in the air.

As the drug takes hold his whole body loosens even further, absolutely lax, his breathing slow, his heart rhythmic and easy. Though his eyes are shut, his mind is hyper-aware, every sound, every pressure, every brush of air. Then he feels Leander’s hands, pushing back his gown. He’s still naked underneath, and the cold air on his newly sensitive skin makes his breathing hitch for a fraction. But he can’t even gasp. The drug forcibly soothes him into peace. It must even look as though he is … sleeping.

 

[.... some parags omitted describing nonconsensual sexual contact.]

 

The terrible strain is giving way to hallucination. A cloud of black butterflies covers him, briers grow over him, and the rough sheets are jagged. He’s been suffering these caresses for a hundred years. He’s surrounded by a century of stillness and decay. His mind is snagged on thorns. Yet he still can’t move or open his eyes, and his body’s entirely relaxed.

It’s not a kiss, but something stranger. Leander’s mouth and breath move across his skin in a cobweb caress.

Leander’s footsteps retreat. Bucky is limp in the restraints.

His breathing is sleep-soft slow.
 

When he wakes, he’s in the Chair.

He struggles against the restraints, desperate. If he could have ever escaped them he can’t now, so weak and changed.

“They used to combine them, you know.” It’s fucking Leander doing his nonchalant Cheshire cat impression, perched on the edge of a metal table. “Insulin shock with electroshock, a happy blend of ways to reset the human mind. The two together were effective.” He sniffs. “Those idiots in America saying you became ‘erratic’. Uninformed barbarians, no sense of history.” His smile is radiant.

As the technicians come between them and bring down the crown, Leander’s watching. Then there’s nothing but unbearable light.

 

The Soldier’s been walking a long time. It’s taken days to get here, even with the vehicles, and his legs are weak, keep giving way under him. The small team of soldiers and engineers with him is silent. He knows where they’re going. He knows the mission.

Something is strange, though. Something is wrong. It started the first night, when they slept on the fringes of trees at the edge of the taiga. He kept finding his eyes drawn by the ragged shape of the dark conifers against the sky.

He realized that he’s known such a forest before, and something golden, bright. Something a forest couldn’t smother. He tried to hang onto that, this shining-pure-fragment, but he couldn’t. All he could find in his mind were tendrils and shadows and a hungry waiting.

Another night and day of marching. The next night, the same memory of gold amidst tangled leaves, then hands moving across paper, drawing forests and faces. The Soldier didn’t know what it meant, but he held the memory close through the long hours of the dark.

Now, the small team has reached the heart of a great silence. As they approach the vast white structure, he feels weary relief. He’s been looking for it for a long time. He knows this place, and it knows him. It made him.

They’re in the center of the ruin, and it’s overgrown with brambles, thorns. Everyone else is in anti-radiation gear and silent, visibly tense. They’re waiting for him to move.

The Soldier’s dazed. He’s trying. He’s trying so hard. His mind holds traces of the corridors that riddle this compound, and he moves forward, still in a dream. He’s cold. Something is turning for him, some memory. It happened here. But it’s too hard to grip.

He’s weak and sick and scared, and there’s nothing golden, nothing bright, no way through these briars.

Golden.

Steve.

Steve isn’t here.

He stumbles. He’s Bucky, he’s kneeling in the ruins, shaking. He hasn’t completed the orders. He doesn’t know how. “<Sorry,>” he gasps.

The figures around him are still. Then Guseinova gestures, and the soldiers begin to withdraw. Leander grabs Bucky’s shoulder, his grip hard even through the gloves, and pushes him to the exit. The soldiers are moving quickly — everyone clearly wants to get out of there.

Back at the temporary base he’s pushed into the decon showers, and he submits, dazed. He’s Bucky again. He remembers what happened. The march through forests and fragments of memory — Steve, his golden hair, his drawings — then standing in the ruin, knowing he must search, but dazed. The conditioned dream slipping away, falling to his knees, and Leander’s blow. He feels sick and weak. The technicians dress him, their hands rough, and he’s bundled out to face Guseinova.

“Well.” She’s speaking English, so it’s for Leander’s benefit. “That was clearly a rousing success.”

There’s snickering among the soldiers. Leander looks at her, venomous. “This is far too subtle for menials to understand.”

“I think I can recognize failure pretty easily, actually.” She turns on her heel, indicating to the soldiers to follow. “The genetics project was always more viable than locating the data through old sleep games. The Soldier will be relocated tomorrow and Zhar-ptitsa will be accelerated.” She spares Leander one last contemptuous glance. “Don’t worry, little mind doctor. We still need you for the next phase of Rusalka, you’ll probably get it working eventually, all those little sleep-hospitals you like to dream about in Europe and Britain and America. But this effort Is a washout. I will have to report.”

She leaves, and most of the soldiers follow her rapidly, all but running to depart the toxic site.

Leander, however, stays. He comes to Bucky and yanks him to his feet, and his mouth is twisted, ugly. "You stupid [slur omitted]. You messed it up for me. You let me down, James.”

Bucky’s still disoriented, still terrified. He’s acutely aware of failure, but apart from that his mind is too tangled for thoughts. He is still in the grip of a strange compulsion to move through this space, to find a secret. It’s here. He doesn’t know what it is, but something’s calling him. There’s something waiting.

Then Bucky gasps, Leander’s slapped his face hard, and Bucky realizes he had been sliding back to his knees. Now the soldiers are pulling him away, and he’s looking back at the snow, at the ruin.

Bucky knows he will come back here. The thorns in this place never let go.
 

Bucky emerges into dim consciousness, clammy, muscles weak and trembling. He hears himself groan. Then a wet cloth covers his nose and mouth, reeking of ether [.......]. He’s struggling to breathe, choking.

The cloth’s removed and Bucky gasps, eyes streaming, and sees it’s Leander — but he looks different. His pupils are unnaturally dilated and his cheeks are flushed.

Bucky tries to register what’s happening, what’s been done to him. The room is dark, so it’s still night. There’s surely no pretense at medical treatment now. This will be punishment, for failing in the ruin.

His arms are locked in the usual way, but his knees are folded back and the unbreakable ankle restraints have him locked to some metal device. He can smell rust, corroded steel. It must be apparatus from the abandoned hospital. When he tries weakly to move his feet metal tears his skin, and blood’s already trickling down his calves. He can't break free.

 

 

 

[....3 sentences omitted... ]

 

 

“Is this more,” Bucky gasps, “fake psych stuff?”

 

Leander’s smile in the dark is vicious. “Oh the narcosis is real. I care about that more than anything. I will make it work.”

 

 

 

 

[.... some paragraphs of nonconsensual sexual contact omitted.  I should note that Bucky feels distress at feeling pleasure against his will, despite absolutely in no way desiring the contact.]

 

Bucky’s weeping in the dark. He started about an hour after Leander left. He’s still exposed, knees still bound back, legs still bleeding, and the very posture is humiliation incarnate.

What’s killing him is knowing he liked it.

There are shadows in his mind. He can see things that happened before out there in the icefields, in the white ruin. Memories have been returning ever since Leander started the hypnotic reading, and although Leander calls it mind sculpting, for Bucky, it’s more like summoning ghosts. The words and reading were less brainwashing then … incantations. Inviting haunting.

Well. The ghosts have heard, and they’re hungry.

As the long hours of the dreadful night wear on, Bucky feels the barrier get thinner. It’s ironic. Leander thought the sex was just for his own sake, no relevance to helping Bucky remember at all, but it turns out that being degraded, helpless and in terror of losing himself — that’s deeply familiar.

It echoes his unmaking.

And now he knows. He can feel it, a body memory that will unfurl if he returns to that ruin. He will be able to retrace the ways he moved, the places Zola took him, the things that happened. Now he’s in the dark, cold and crying. His thoughts are tangled as briers.

Hours lapse. Then a sound at the door, and the floor lamp snaps on. It’s the nurse with the usual night insulin dose, but there’s something different about it. She leaves him bound, doesn’t even loosen his legs or cover him up, and she doesn’t offer water. As a final strangeness, she’s not quite as impassive as usual. She inexplicably pauses at his upper arm with the insulin needle, and her eyes meet his.

There’s a flash of — apology? It’s so disorienting to see it, a glimmer of human feeling on a Hydra nurse under Sarah’s old cap. Then she murmurs, in English, “Goodbye, James,” and the needle slides home.

She withdraws the needle, hesitates, gathers her equipment. She walks to the door, and before she leaves she looks back at him. Her expression is cryptic but … yes, Bucky’s sure of it, she looks sad. Then she extinguishes the floor lamp and Bucky’s alone, still bound, in the dark.

At least an hour ticks by. Bucky feels sick, dizzy. Colder than usual, clammy. Then — it’s — this isn’t right — trembling, every single muscle shivering. Visceral unease is drowning any other thought. Something is deeply wrong.

Then snap, his head jerks back and he’s inside a storm. His body is filled with light and shaking and agony. It carves him out.

He’s translucent with pain. He is glass.

Then he breaks, and there is nothing any more.

 

 

Next Sunday: 

Time for the fucking cavalry.
STEVE IS HERE, AND HE'S NOT FUCKING AROUND.

From here on it is only upwards.  NO MORE BLACK ROSES.

( I hope that having a diluted chapter was helpful.

If you would like to leave a comment on the chapter, then please do leave one here!  it would be hugely helpful if you mention you read this version, so I can tell if this was a useful thing to offer?)