The Hurt And The Healing: Bucky X OC

Chapter Seventy Nine: Control

Blame her Little Italy upbringing, but when Mara got scared, she got mean. Not sarcastic and sassy mean. Full blown, curse word laden, insult throwing, insecurity exploiting mean. So, when she awoke to find herself strapped down to a hard chair with a silent man in the shadows watching her, she made a plan to be as horrible and hubristic as possible. And then proceeded to execute it flawlessly.

"You are so fucked," she continued to taunt in a sing-song voice, straining to see the coward who had yet to show his face. She couldn't turn her head thanks to the straps holding it down. But she could still move her mouth. "Do you know who I am? Do you know who I live with?" She forced a laugh out despite the metal band across her chest and the fear in her throat. "When he realizes I'm gone he will hunt you down. And he will destroy you."

She didn't want Bucky to revert back into being the Winter Soldier. She didn't want him to allow that darkness to creep over him again like shadows during sunset. But she could imagine how he would react when he came to their home only to find the debris left over from the fight. He had always sworn to protect and defend her, and to come back to their apartment in shambles and her missing... She knew there was nothing in the world that would stop him from killing her attacker.

"The Winter Soldier is coming for you," she warned. "And when he does-"

"No, he's not," the man in the shadows said with a thick accent. It reminded her of Zemo, but more guttural. It was like Doctor Rabum back at Valeria. Or the man who had forced her into the car at gunpoint all those months ago.

A dull pain started to spread across her body, and Mara winced at the sensation. But the metal restraints kept her from shifting even a centimeter.

"The Winter Soldier is not coming for me," the man continued. In the glint of the fading moonlight Mara could make out a remote control in his gloved hand. His finger was on a button and with every word he tapped it, making the pain increase. "James Barnes is the one coming here, and I have nothing to fear about that. Do you know why, Doctor Anderson?" He held his finger over the button, keeping Mara barely from the edge of losing her mind to the pain. It was as if the muscles in her body were being pulled from the bone fiber by fiber, and she couldn't even remember the question when the man in the shadows prompted her, "do you?"

"No," she rasped, eyes locked on the few patches of his skin she could see.

"Because the Winter Soldier was never real. James Barnes was always beneath the surface, ready to take back control at first chance to protect the ones he loves. First Steve Rogers, and now you." The man sighed heavily, and between the ringing in her ears and the distance between them, the sound was both muffled and reverberated. "I thought it was a weakness. I thought if I killed you- bombed that Sokovian cockroach's manor with you in it- that it would be enough to break him. It was enough to break all the others." The man shook his head and waved the remote across her field of vision. "If I did to you what I did to him, you wouldn't be able to tell me his name in a week. But he kept you alive. His mind conjured you up in a desperate attempt to remain sane and it worked," he said incredulously. "After two months of everything I could throw at him, Barnes still remembered you. And that's when I realized something." The man chuckled darkly. "You are not his weakness. You are his strength. And so long as I control you-" He tapped the button once again, and a scream ripped itself from Mara's throat. "I control him."

If Mara had any of her wits or senses about her, she would have been terrified. She would have been freaking out and praying to anyone who cared to listen and desperately hoping Bucky was going to do the smart thing and call Sam for backup before charging into the viper's nest to save her and get himself bitten. But the moment the man's finger pressed down on the button, Mara lost all mental capacity. Sight, sound, touch- it was all gone and replaced by a blaring pain ripping through her mind and derailing any thought other than "I am going to die."