maybe some angst pleeeaaase🥹 like the boys all get brought back and some of them are extremely injured, and you realize the one being carried on a cot, completely stained with blood is barnes….🧍♀️🫶
𝓚𝘯𝘰𝘤𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘯 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘯'𝘴 𝘥𝘰𝘰𝘳
⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯ ୨ A Barnes x reader fic ୧ ⎯⎯⎯⎯
» a/n: i love me some angst. thank you for all the requests! I'm very grateful for all the interactions, i promise i'll get around to them all sometime <3
Soldiers poured into basecamp, hopping off transport helicopters and unloading the most unfortunate of them on stretchers. The medic tent was suddenly filled with the rush of bodies and the smell of blood. Groans, cries and thousand yard stares riddled your senses in there. That was the first stage; the comedown after adrenaline, before pain medication was issued.
The general order of these things was that the higher-ups arrived first, gave a number of beds needed, who the most critical patients were, such general information. Red appeared in your line of sight, the rush of soldiers a couple feet behind him. As he read out the list of needs, soldiers passed by you two to enter the medic tent. As he read out from memory what was counted as crucial, he noted one singular critical patient. In that very moment, that one patient was carried in past you on a stretcher. Barnes.
There was a chemistry no one could deny between you and the stiff upper-lipped Sergeant. Something kept in the shadows and whispered about in the absence of either of you. A number of privates had guessed you'd work yourself into some awful sobbing mess and be unable to perform your tasks once you heard or saw the news. That news being Barnes. He had been so lucky as to still be breathing, but unlucky enough so as to be close to a hand grenade as he was.
You entered the medic tent, seeing a chaos of soldiers being lain out on camping-style beds, standing around, waiting for a moment of medical attention from the busied staff. You saw the two soldiers carrying Barnes on a stretcher awkwardly blend through the crowd, making their way towards the back wall of the tent near the inventory room, as were all critically injured. The ground was a tarp, dust-dirt covered. As soon as Barnes had been lowered to a bed, you were the first responder. His eyes were closed, likely due to the pouring of blood from several gashes across his face. It was difficult to make out what was blood on the skin and what was an open wound. He was knocking on Heaven's door.
The bustle of soldiers in the background, the whining for pain medication, the rustling of the tent walls being brushed against, everything was overstimulating.
"He ain't been so responsive." One of the soldier's comments darkly, in some hard to place typical American accent. You placed a hand on top of Barnes', looking for any sort of response from his body language. The room was full of soldiers hissing and writhing in pain, like snakes that had been stepped on. Barnes was an exception. Laying blinded, in indescribable pain. The only indication he was alive at all was the rapid rise and fall of his chest, and the tension in his muscles.
After prescribing a strong pain medicine you began cleaning off the surface of his skin. Mixes of ash, dust and blood had plastered onto his skin. New brighter blood ran from zig-zag cuts running from the left side of his chest and shoulder to his face. Ever so carefully, the new anatomy of his facial structure was revealed. Like steep cutting rivers curving and cascading in the colour crimson through the once smooth plains of his face. At this stage his face had been cleaned up enough he could open his eyes. Bright, virile blue eyes contrasted with the darkened tanned skin and muddy red on his face.
Looking down at your sweetheart, bludgeoned by war, gentle tears fell from your eyes. You spoke in a pained whisper. "What have they done to you?" It wasn't the Vietcong, it wasn't even the individual responsible for throwing a grenade so close to him either who did this. It was the politicians thousands of miles away in their warm homes who couldn't identify a hand grenade if it was three feet in front of them who did this. He was a pawn on a chessboard, and had been treated as such.
Barnes could see you looking down at him, grieving. He could feel the lines on his face torn open through the numbing of the medication. They were bright red and angry, pulsing a heartbeat of their own. The grey yellow ceiling of the tent painted a backdrop for his line of view, a lantern hanging on a tent pole behind your head illuminated a halo around your skull. It was the last thing in his view, in his memory, before he succumbed to a surrendering sleep. Maybe Heaven had let him in.
It was early morning when he woke up. Stiffened back, aching limbs. Everything was tingling in remembrance of a pain that had burned like a wildfire only hours ago. Especially his face. A pull curtain shielded him from the rest of the ward, if you could call it that. A radio noise buzzed from somewhere beyond his vision, the murmuring of voices, the occasional grunt of someone tossing uncomfortably on the creaking beds. The world around him smelled musty and medicinal. He could see the outline of his body under a thin white sheet, the iv fluid connected to him at the inner elbow, the tarp on the ground below. Barnes' hand drew itself out from under the sheet, he felt the skin on his face. Rugged, fresh with the texture of stitches lining it from above his left eyebrow to across his cheek then down his chin, finally dotting along his mouth in exaggerated dash esque lines. These lines were traced by calloused, unfeeling fingertips. He pulled his clothes away from his skin, revealing dangerously large gashes on his chest and shoulder, enough to of killed him.
A murky recollection of recent events jigsawed themselves together. He could remember a battle in the jungle, a loud explosion, being dragged into a stretcher and the agonising, painful trip back to base while falling in and out of consciousness, unsure if anything was real.
The drag of the curtain along the rail holding it up whistled for his attention. Immediately he sat up, to attention. You meekly hesitated at the foot of his bed, seeing a new face on a familiar person. You weren't scared, you were mournful.
Barnes didn't see that, though. "Get me a mirror." He orders in a rough bark, feeling the stitches nearest to his lip pull on the skin they were sewn into.
You approach the side of his bed, eyes never leaving his face. You were relearning it, how one brow drooped ever so slightly after the destruction of a facial muscle above it had been sliced, the crookedness of his mouth, the several random other marks along his face. He felt like Frankenstein waking up. Like someone who cheated death, but at what cost? You didn't heed his order, still creeping closer along the bed to his right. Beneath his cool unshowing eyes he was brimming with frustration, alienation, and he hadn't even seen himself yet. "Oh, Bobby." You breathed, reaching to hold his shoulder. Barnes got there before you, a tight grasp on your wrist. "A mirror." Something inside him broke. He was not ordering you, he was not spitting with rage. You could almost believe he was pleading with you.
Your eyes danced across his face and what expressions were painted on it. As he slowly let go of your wrist, you exited the room. You said nothing. He watched you leave silently, only wishing he hadn't let you go. What were you going to of said to him? He'd never know, because you'd never come back. You were going to leave him there, in that hospital bed, riddled with horrid features, ones to match his actions. He knew it, or so he believed.
A minute later you came back. It was easy to find a mirror, but not to decide what to say to Barnes. You stood by the foot of the bed again, Barnes watching eyes evaluating you. "Please, don't be hard on yourself." You reassured him. His eyes sunk deep into his brows, mottled with some complexion of sadness and distrust. Then, you walked to his side, handing him the mirror.
Silence held heavy in the air of the room. You again reached for his right, uninjured shoulder, drawing circles gently on his skin. Barnes refused his reflection, staring at it for a long space of time. Every extra detail he saw was something else to loathe. Now, he guessed, you'd leave him for some half-wit soldier with a pretty face. He'd be left behind by you, a living memory of the past. You placed a kiss on the side of his face, wincing in sympathy.
"You should have let me die." He lowers the mirror, staring ahead.
"Bobby, I love you."
It fell on deaf ears.
