Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier One Shots

The Man on The Bridge

The drippings coming from the rusted pipes that lined the ceiling above you, hit the damp cement with a ping that echoed like a gunshot deep inside of a cavern. Falling slowly around you, like the drippings of icicles hitting the ground as they melted, one after another, collecting into small puddles of murky water. A chill ran up your spine the instant your feet crossed over the threshold leading into the small metallic room. The bars that encased it glinted as the dim light hit the matted metal, but it was the scent that hit your senses that made the true nature of the silver material in the room come to life. For it was the rich, nickel like smell that churned your stomach as it hit you in the face like a gust of harsh wind. And it was only made worse the further you ventured into the small prison cell, for the scent of stale and musty rainwater clouded the air around you. The dense stench of mildew burning your nose as you listened to the thundering boom of your softly padded shoes hitting the concrete. 

You could feel his eyes on you far before you even gave him the slightest glance. In fact, you had purposefully kept your eyes trained downward towards the stained cement as you entered the room, as an attempt to distance yourself from the man who was waiting inside. But now, as he sat mere feet away from you, his scrutiny felt like the sun burning your back raw. Your fingers shook as though the electricty, that they would soon be sending through the man behind you, had struck you right where you stood. The tools that your hands hesitatnly picked up off of the rusting metal tray in front of you, trembled in your grasp. Between the clamy nature of your palms and the way your fingers shook like a leaf in a rainstorm, it took everything to keep the metal pieces from crashing to the floor at your feet. 

You knew the reason behind the convulsing nature of your nervous hands. For you had long ago learned to cope with the reality of what you had gotten tangled and trapped in, with the men that kept you at their desposal, and you had learned to somehow keep yourself from disintegrating into insanity from the things you were forced to do. But when they put you in this tiny cell to prep this particular "subject", all of the compartmentalization, all of the deep breaths and clearing of your mind to simply get the job done, was suddenly impossible. For the very first time you laid eyes on the man they called The Winter Soldier, something inside of your heart overtook all of your efforts to keep your overwhelming emotions at bay. 

For when the man's blue eyes looked to you, as you stuck the electrodes to his chest for the very first time, your eyes fluttered upward to meet his gaze and saw a human being. A human being that laid beneath your hands, waiting for the endless years of torture to continue. He looked at you with eyes that spoke volumes, even when in reality you had never heard his voice, except for his screams that echoed in the metalic chamber. He knew what was to happen to him, what your part of it all was, and yet he gazed at you with an expression so deeply hidden beneath the blue of his irises that you wondered if you imagined it. But as you saw the same emotion time after time, you saw the man beneath the skin of a monster Hydra was creating him to be. 

You knew why your hands shook, as your feet slowly turned to face the man who's heady scrutiny hadn't lessened since you walked into the room. Your body trembled, your chest felt tight and your mind felt heavy with sin, because when you looked at the subject now in the low dim light of the swinging metal fixture, you simply saw a human being suffering... and your hands prepped him for it. 

Your footsteps that began to hesitantly lead you towards the man sitting upward on the chair, sounded like booms of thunder in the small and silent space. And although there were only a few steps needed between the first table and the one that sat beside his chair, the noise echoed off the walls around you and the distance seemed unending. As though you were walking through a dark tunnel, never once seeing a spot of light telling you that the end was soon in sight.