Bucky's face is not one I expected, although it's the only one I would have hoped for. My arm twitches reflexively, as if to reach up and grip his shoulder, but the handcuff bites into the thick leather of my gloves and my hands stay pinned between my back and the concrete.

"Buck...y...the crowd..." Speaking is immensely difficult. There are orders in my head that Bucky probably already knows but will need to hear, to let me go and do what needs doing. The same as I would, were our positions reversed. But between my brain and my mouth, filtered through the haze of pain and a feeling of slipping away toward sleep, they don't come out right.

"No m're inn'cents," I murmur. I can feel the blood as it slips in a slow stream out of the corner of my mouth. It seems more immediate than the sensation in my shoulder, somehow, which is actually starting to fade.

"No more."