Red, White & Blue | Bucky x Reader

Chapter Eighteen

Blue light swirls in the corners of my vision as I stand alone in the dark room. I scan my surroundings, trying to decipher where I am. To my left, Bucky's motionless body is strapped to a gurney, his eyes closed.

"Bucky?" I question, trying to move toward him, but I can't move.

Suddenly, I'm also strapped to a gurney, and Zola's face blinks in and out of view, syringe in hand. I plead as he injects me with the needle and the blue liquid enters my body once again. Zola disappears once more, returning with the Tesseract.

"Let's see what else the Tesseract can do," he muses, putting the glowing blue clue into the machine and flicking the switch.

"No..." I please, still unable to move. "No! Please, no! No!"

"Y/n! Y/n, wake up!" Georgia urges as she shakes me. "It's me! It's Georgia! You're safe!"

I jolt awake and sit up, my vision slowly coming into focus. "Georgia?"

Georgia sits on the edge of my cot, Marie and Evelyn at her side. Bucky bursts into the tent a second later, and Georgia moves for him to take her place. He pulls me into his chest, wrapping me protectively in his arms.

I hear a shout from outside my tent. "What the hell is going on in there?"

"We have everything under control," Steve's voice responds. "Please, everyone, just return to your bunks."

"I can't sleep with her screaming like that," someone protests.

My cheeks heat in embarrassment and shame. "Did I wake up the entire camp?"

"They'll get over it," Marie states.

"You're safe, sweetheart," Bucky assures me. "It was just a bad dream."

"No," I say, shaking my head as I start to sob. "It was real, Buck. It was real."

Bucky sits outside my tent for the rest of the night, but still shaken from my nightmare, I don't get back to sleep. In the morning, Steve joins us in the mess hall for breakfast.

"Y/n? Are you okay?" Steve asks, looking up from his plate. "You haven't touched your food."

"Will people stop asking me that fucking question?!" I snap. "No, I'm not fucking okay! I was tortured and experimented on for five fucking weeks! How the hell am I supposed to be okay?"

"Hey, hey," Bucky soothes, putting a hand on my back. "Darling, we're just worried about you."

I take a deep breath. "I know... Steve, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. I'm exhausted, I couldn't get back to sleep last night. Every time I close my eyes I see that man, that doctor, Zola. The nightmare last night, it was about the experiments... the torture they put us through."

Steve's face softens as Bucky wraps his arm around me. My bunkmates' eyes fill with worry and sadness, but they stay silent, not knowing what they could say that would help.

"There's something I haven't hold you yet," I confess, blinking away my tears as I turn to Bucky. "When I saw you on the gurney, you were so still... Too still. I couldn't find your pulse, Buck. I thought you were dead."

"Oh, God," Bucky breathes, his shoulders slumping. "Y/n..."

I continue, "Before I could do anything else, they strapped me onto the gurney for another experiment. Zola had this thing he called the Tesseract. He said it could be used to make weapons, but he... he wanted to see if it could change the human body."

"He used it on you," Bucky states, his expression hardening. Georgia covers her mouth with her hands as her eyes begin to water.

"Yeah..." I confirm, relieved that I didn't need to finish my explanation. "He said he planned on using it on you, but you were 'too weak.'"

Bucky's eyes soften as he pulls me closer to him, holding me protectively under his arm as he rests his head against mine.

"I'm so sorry you had to go through that," he murmurs into my hair. "It should've been me."

Steve reaches across the table to place his hand on top of mine, but I flinch away, hiding my hands in my lap, and he rests his on the table. He knows nothing he could say right now will make me feel better, but he still wants to comfort me all the same. Our table sits in silence, and I feel a bit of peace wash over me. It feels good to be able to get this fear out in the open, to share it with the people I trust most, and as the last of my nerves die away, I suddenly remember a crucial piece information.

"The map," I state, sitting up as the others turn to me. "In all the chaos I completely forgot. There was a map in Zola's office. It held the locations of other HYDRA bases... We need to tell Colonel Phillips."