I AM PREPARED to die here, my subconscious reminded me of my previous vow to Bucky.

But as he stood there, across from me with unseeing eyes and a blank face, I wasn't sure if I was truly...well, if I was really ready for that kind of commitment.

There was something in his gaze that frightened me. It wasn't the blankness in his stare that got to me, it was the emptiness that cut a hole in my chest. The Bucky I'd known and fallen in love with had a vibrance to his every word and movement, something that this man lacked as he stood in front of me.

His words echoed in my head. He'd addressed someone. Or...something. 53. What did it mean? Was it a person? And...it sounded like they were in his head. How was that even possible? I knew Hydra was smart, but I didn't expect Cerberus to be even more clever with their torture devices.

I wanted to ask, but I had no chance of receiving an answer. I half expected him to kill me as carrying out the order, but I was only slightly surprised when he didn't even look at me again, marching straight for the door.

"The door's not open," I managed to warn him(for what purpose, I wasn't sure). "You're gonna walk right into the door, Buck."

But he wasn't listening. Not to me, anyway. He was listening to the voice in his head, whoever—or whatever, I shuddered—that was.

As if on cue, the heavy door swung open, right in time for Bucky to slip through the widening crack and into the corridor. The guard that opened it seemed surprised that he was so prepared, but with barely a glance at me, the door was slammed shut again.

There was nothing else for me to do but wait. I had nobody to contact, and no way of knowing what the fuck was going on up on the surface of this goddamn compound. I was a sitting duck. Again.

As the hours went by, I could only think of Cara. And my brother, and Sam, and Steve, and the others. I felt like I should shed a tear or two for them, their fate unknown to me. But I was either empty of all emotion or I believed them to be dead already, proving my tears useless.

They were dead. My gut told me. It was just me, the sole survivor to save Bucky from this lifetime of hell on Earth.

I could have just as easily been killed, though, forced to join my friends in the ground in an unmarked grave. But instead, I was subjected to this torture of being in the presence of a shell of the man I loved, a constant reminder of what I would never get back.

Not never, my subconscious scolded me. Never say never.

"God, I sound like Justin Bieber and Jaden Smith up there," I groaned softly in the silence. My voice had shrunken over the many, many days I'd been there, unable to speak to the one other person in here.

I suppose that's the whole point of my being here, though, I thought, for torture. Mine and Bucky's.

It was probably a few more hours until he returned to the room, his clothes not quite as bloody as they had been before. Even so, the cuffs of his shirt were spotted with crimson, sending a chill hurtling down my spine. With heavy steps, he trudged to the off-shooting half of our cell, retreating behind the wall.

To me, it seemed like he was going to just hide out there, like a hibernating animal. But then he came back out, his hands clasped tightly in front of him. I'd seen him pace a few times before, but he was furiously walking back and forth along the length of the room. His knuckles were white from the tight grip he held, the circulation cutting off in his hands.

All the other times he'd done things like this, like a minor freak out(or whatever a one hundred-year-old super soldier could count as one), I'd been able to read his facial expression, whether it was filled with confusion, emptiness, or a morbid kind of satisfaction.

But now, he refused to look at me. His head hung to his chest, his chin nearly connected with his sternum. The locks of hair that I'd always loved to run my fingers through were hanging as a curtain across his face, obscuring his veneer from me. He wasn't being aggressive, not the Soldier, but he wasn't being Bucky, the man I knew.

I could only hope that this confusion meant he was waking up.

It went on like that for weeks. I'd long lost any hope of being rescued by Steve and my friends, believing that I was my only chance of getting out of here. But each week, Bucky left for a day or two, presumably out on a mission. I spent every day and night when he was away just imagining the horrors he was committing.

By now, I wasn't sure Australia had any government officials left.

He always came back, though, that same confused expression on his face. I was only able to catch it for a second or two before he caught me staring and ducked his head. It was like he felt his vulnerability, and he didn't want me to see it; for that reason I always made a point to come off as a friendly guest in his cell.

Either way, he didn't want anything to do with me. Until the end of the week, when he received his injection.

The same bubbling orange liquid filled the syringe, each time giving me the creeps as it reminded me of the first time I watched the needle sink into his arm, taking him from me. The doctor administering it always sneered at me, as if knowing how painful it was for me to watch my love get erased again and again.

It was at the end of each week. I knew that much, as I'd begun counting the days between the injections. Other than that, I had no sense of time. The lights still remained on during all hours of the day, and with all the lost time that I spent down here, I very well could have been down here for a whole year by now.

My stomach dropped whenever I thought of that. An entire year out of my life spent down in a godforsaken compound. But there was nothing I could do about the past now. I just had to make sure I wouldn't spend any more time down here than I already had.

So, each week, I sat and lived in quiet, tense peace with Bucky. We didn't talk, my voice going unused except for when he was gone. During those times, I resorted to...praying, maybe? I wasn't really praying to anyone, as I didn't happen to catch on to the whole idea of religion like my parents would have wanted me to, but I had a certain faith that lived inside me. It was the only thing that I had, the only thing I could survive on. Other than the meager plates of food that we were served each day, of course.

And each night, Bucky took his special green pills—which, I'd figured out, had a similar effect to cryofreeze, a method Sam and Steve had told me all about. I kept my distance now, learning my lesson the last time. But I never slept, not until I could do nothing but let my eyelids fall shut. I did my best to watch him, to talk to him, do anything I could to reach the gap in his armor that Cerberus had built around him.

Every day was the same. But there always comes a day, a morning, that is so ordinary and so regular that all of a sudden it's nothing like how it used to be, and everything's gone to shit before you can even take a breath.

I'd fallen asleep on the cold, hard floor. My body ached as I jerked awake, a habit that I'd become accustomed to in the presence of a mentally-unstable super soldier. I rubbed away the pain in my shoulders, though it remained like a sticky booger.

He was looking at me. That was the first thing I noticed.

My heart jumped into my throat and I swallowed roughly. I was frozen in my place, unable to move, in fear of him lashing out like he so often did. The bruises on my neck were deep, but they were finally starting to lighten, the pain not as harsh as it used to be.

The next thing I noticed was his lips. They were moving.

I stood up carefully, his eyes lifting to keep with mine. Slowly making my way closer to him, I began to hear his whisper. "What?" I asked gently.

He swallowed. "S..." He trailed off. "S-St-Steve." Then, with more gumption, "Steve."

I was at war with myself. The elation at hearing him say a friend's name was thick in the battle with the slight embarrassment that I'd wanted him to say my name first.

"Really?" I chuckled breathlessly. "Saying Steve's name is like screaming someone else's name during sex."

But of course, he wasn't nearly ready to joke. He looked at me hard, trying to sound out my name. "Don't worry," I reassured him softly. "I don't mind. Steve is good. He's our friend."

Was that a light nod I spotted? The swell in my chest made me want to dance, to absolutely throw caution to the wind and start fucking singing with glee, but the realistic part of my brain spoke up. I knew that Cerberus was watching us, always listening and always monitoring our every move. It was a miracle no one had barged in on this revelation already, sinking another needle into his arm.

Three quick gunshots echoed outside in the hall, causing me to jump up in alarm. Both of our heads whirled to the heavy metal door to the entrance of our cell, curious. Our entire time here, or at least, the entire time I'd been here, the corridor had been silent. But now, the sound of gunshots was something new.

That was the third thing that turned our ordinary morning into an extraordinary one.

I crept toward the door, keeping my footsteps silent in case someone charge into the room. My mind was racing, trying to figure out what was going on. None of my thoughts were coherent, though, so there was really no point in that. Bucky stayed sitting on his cot, staring at his hands as if they were a completely new discovery that he'd never seen before.

My cheek pressed to the door, I listened hard to the happenings in the hallway. More gunshots. A woman's cry—no, it wasn't a cry, it was a roar. A warcry.

And then the rumblings came closer. Pounding footsteps of what was probably fifty people came thundering down the corridor, their voices meshing together in a cacophony of noise. I struggled to understand what they sad, but then I could hear it loud and clear. It was a sentence that sent my heart beating furiously, and my hands shook.

"It's him. Captain fuckin' America, bro. He's here. And he's got his friends, too."

My mouth dropped open, my hands covering my face in shock, fear, joy, any emotion that had graced the human mind. I was afraid I would combust.

"Steve?" Bucky asked, his voice light, like that of a child.

I nodded, unable to keep the wide, albeit shaking, smile off my face. This time, I welcomed the happy tears that pooled in my eyes. "Steve."

||

THEY'RE HERE!!!! fight scenes coming in the next chapter!! omg you guys i'm sorry i didn't get this up on saturday, but i'm actually liking where i took this chapter rather than what i probably would have done on saturday.

hey, so like...vote, comment, follow? ah ha ha do your thing ;)

love, laura

october 15, 2019