BRAINWASHED ─ marvel

IX. Monsters

Chapter Nine
Bucky

With Soroya's former trainer dead, the scientists that had been with him acquiesced to showing us where files on Soroya were being held. They led us to the records room and handed us over a whole box filled with them. There weren't any on her family, nor were they held in the prison down below, which we had already guessed. We also checked for anything there on me, but there was nothing. No surprise there.

I carry the box of files as we exit the base, with Soroya trailing in a daze behind me. She's been off since the confrontation with Setherton, and I'm not surprised when she falls to her knees and vomits the second we make it outside.

I drop the box and kneel down beside her, pulling her hair back with my flesh hand and rubbing her back with my metal one.

"I shouldn't have done that," She says hoarsely, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "I shouldn't have killed him."

"He was an evil man. The world is better without him."

"I didn't kill Setherton because he was an evil man, I killed him because of what he did to me. I killed him because—because I wanted to," her back arches, and just when I think she's about to vomit again, she starts to sob. "I'm no better than him, or anyone in HYDRA."

"Hey, look at me," I place a finger under her chin and tilt her head up towards me. Her cheeks are wet with tears, her lips are quivering, and the devastation in her eyes is enough to make my heart ache. "You are nothing like Setherton. You went through all those years of physical and mental torture, and yet you didn't let that change you. You helped people instead of kill them, you still try to see the best in people, even if it's not there. After all Setherton did to you, you still tried to see good in him. Do you not realize how incredible that is? I've never met anyone like you."

She shakes her head, another tear trailing down her face. "I helped most of the people I was sent after. Most. I only saved the innocent ones and killed those I deemed to be dangerous. And that doesn't include the dozen people I killed during my training, who were all innocent. I'm still a killer," she wipes her cheeks and takes a stuttering breath. "You said you weren't sure whether it mattered if you had a choice or not in what HYDRA made you do...James, you were brainwashed, I wasn't. Yes my family's life was on the line, yes I was a child, but I still killed for them. What does that make me?"

I wipe away one of her tears with my thumb. "I don't know, just like I don't know what all my past deeds makes me. But what I do know is that no matter what you've done, you're a good person. You're good right down to your soul."

Soroya seems to lean into my touch as I stroke another tear away, but that may just be my imagination. "How can you think that after what I just did?"

"How can you think the same of me after all I've done?"

Soroya doesn't answer, she just stares at me for a long beat then nods, her tears beginning to subside. "We should probably get out of here, find someplace to look over my files."

I nod back, helping her off the ground before bending down to retrieve said box of files. Soroya casts a glance back at the base behind us, her expression warring between grief and anger, then she walks towards the car, muttering in German as she does so, "Möge dieser ort brennen."

May this place burn.

Couldn't agree more.