Isabell is completely, utterly and unbearably dirty.
The feeling is destroying her.
From her scalp to her toes, she is encrusted in blood; some her own, some not. Half her face is an open wound, her ribs grind and flex below her skin, and the crack down her skull feels like all of her sanity is spilling out.
That is to say nothing of the general filth.
Grime wedges itself below her nails, deep into her pores, entwined in the crooks between her fingers. There are flakes of paint in her hair from where she has physically tried to climb the walls, and from boot to knee, she is drenched in river water.
It turns out, trying to pull an unconscious, water-logged body from a river tends to result in falling in. Halfway, anyway.
For now, she is sitting like her skin is an ill-fitting piece of clothing, hunched over and aching in the corner of some abandoned warehouse. Behind her, there are Sam and Steve, and in front of her, just James.
James. Jamie.
He's knocked out. From what Steve has said, they both fell from a helicopter into the river, and he's been like this ever since. Propped up on an empty crate, his vibranium arm jammed in a clamp. It's useless, really.
If James wakes up still being The Winter Soldier, nothing is going to stop him.
He'll kill her. He'll kill her, and she'll lose everything she has ever loved.
Isabell swallows.
Dirty. You're dirty and wrong and you should've let him kill you. You can't fix this. Dirty. There has to be a reason why this hurts so much. Karma, maybe? Dirty. James won't love you if he sees what you let him do to you. You should've stopped him. Dirty.
She doesn't feel like herself. No, there's something twitching in the back of her brain, something yearning to be bruised, to have her hair pulled when she cries and to then have those tears beaten out of her. She needs order.
She needs orders.
Isabell stares at James. Asleep. His foot jerks a little. Asleep, but not for much longer.
Some part of her seems to slip away. Or rather, something else takes over. Whatever It is, It forces her to her feet, stares at her filthy hands and turns to Steve and Sam.
"I'm leaving to watch the perimeter." It announces. Neither of them seems to know what to say.
Isabell slips out of the door without another word.
⋇⋆✦⋆⋇
The first thing James sees is Steve.
The first thing he thinks is Isabell.
In his dazed, blurred state, only one thing actually bursts through the barrier of understanding.
"Steve."
The way his head snaps up is so attentive, so utterly Steve, that James wants to cry. Another part of him, tired and fuzzy, wants to kiss him so badly that his whole body hurts.
Then again, that might just be from being thrown down a staircase.
He tilts his head back and gulps in sweet, sweet air as Steve rises to his feet. He leans against the wall, one eyebrow raised.
"Which Bucky am I talking to?"
Bucky. How funny to hear that again, to listen to it properly. Warm, tinged with white-hot memory. James hasn't been Bucky in a long time.
"Your mom's name was Sarah." He croaks. He isn't sure why that's the first thing that comes to mind, but it's firm and cemented in the back of his skull. Reliant. A sudden laugh snaps through him, morphing quickly into a cough as the remanence of river water in his lungs makes a reappearance. "You used to wear newspapers in your shoes."
From the corner of the room, a faint smile flickers across Steve's face. "Can't read that in a museum."
It's so good to hear his voice again. Like fires on warm days, food after he's starved for days. Decades. He's been hungry for over half his life.
Steve.
If James could just touch him right now, even just a brush of his fingertips, he'd be the happiest man alive. It doesn't matter if the world wants to kill him, it doesn't matter if he feels like he's been half-drowned.
Steve is here. He is safe.
James closes his eyes.
And then the illusion of perfection shatters once more.
"Just like that, we're supposed to be cool?"
The words from across the room are decidedly pointed, deeply dissatisfied and definitely a little peeved. Through the slits of his eyelids, James looks up to match the voice to the face. A tall man in the corner of the room. He glares at Steve like he's trying to shoot him with lasers from his eyes.
Oh. Company.
James looks away again, a sense of unsettlement seeping through his gut.
"What did I do?"
"Enough," Steve says quickly, but the memories are flooding James' brain like a waterfall. His stomach twists.
"Oh, God, I knew this would happen." He whispers, "Everything HYDRA put inside me is still there. All he had to do was say the goddamn words."
"Who was he?"
"I don't know."
Steve's eyes narrow slightly, which only makes James feel worse. Please don't be angry at me, he thinks, I can't handle that right now.
But Steve seems fairly insistent. He starts to pace, though his eyes never once leave James'. People are dead. The bombing, the setup. The doctor did all that just to get 10 minutes with you. I need you to do better than 'I don't know.'"
James pauses, desperately racking his weary brain. "He wanted to know about Siberia." He says slowly, "When he got bored of that, he gave me orders. He wanted me to kill someone."
And then something clicks.
Her.
Is-a-bell.
ISABELL.
His head snaps up so fast that he nearly gives himself whiplash, and from across the room, the angry man flinches.
James can't find it in himself to care.
He is too frantic, feeling too much, wincing and gasping in the low light as he looks around wildly.
"Isabell. Isabell. Where's Isabell? Is she here, is she OK, did she-"
No. The thought is too much to bear.
Luckily, the angry man intervenes.
"She's fine." He says shortly. "Went off to 'survey the perimeter', or something. Freaky fucking kid."
James glares daggers at him. "Bring her to me."
"Maybe give it a m-"
"Bring her to me." He insists. "I don't like her to be alone. She'll be upset, and I want to talk to her."
"Bucky," Steve begins gently, but he's met by a frustrated growl and James banging his one free hand against the ground. How was she not his first thought? Why is she not with him?
He can't breathe until she's with him.
"Fetch her, or I'll do it myself!" He snaps, "I don't care what it takes, Steve. Bring me Isabell or get the fuck out."
James knows he's being irrationally cruel, but there's no time for niceties. He needs Isabell, to hold her and reassure her so he can reassure himself. Isabell is the only thing tethering him to his mind, and if something has happened to her, if he's allowed something to happen to her, then he needs to know before he goes out of his mind with the waiting.
Steve and the other man exchange looks. Isabell and James being in the same room is like a permanent nuclear disaster, just waiting to happen, but keeping them apart is something even worse.
Finally, Steve nods.
"I'll fetch her."
"Be quick." James spits.
He closes his eyes and waits to feel whole again.
⋇⋆✦⋆⋇
There is something wrong with Isabell.
Well, on a technical basis, there has always been something wrong with Isabell. She was born with an inherent wrongness in her very DNA.
This, however, is a different sort of wrong.
The other sort never affected the way she looked at James.
No matter happy or sad, destroyed or content, she's always had a slightly desperate glittering in her eyes when she's around him. Like she can't quite believe he's still here. Like she can't comprehend surviving without him.
Codependence. She trusts him more than she trusts herself.
But the girl standing before James?
The trust is so insistent that it is frightening. So insistent that it looks like it is killing her. She is afraid. Terrified. The longing in her eyes reflects that. A silent plea, begging somebody to end her suffering. Like she cannot bear loving anyone this much.
James swallows back bile.
When Steve brings her in, Isabell doesn't run to him like she usually would. She just stands there, the restraint creasing worry lines in her face and blood staining every patch of available skin.
He reaches for her.
It's OK. I'll make it OK.
She takes four steps forward, carefully calculated, until they are practically nose to nose. Still, she makes no effort to curl into him. Hollowed out is the word that comes to mind.
James can't breathe. If he still only feels like half a person, does that make Isabell nothing?
Her next sentence seems to answer for her.
"Status for mission report?" She whispers.
Oh. Oh.
Isabell looks utterly shattered, like somebody has taken a sledgehammer to her heart. James can feel the exhaustion radiating from her in waves.
Terrified, tired and completely thrown out of loop, she has regressed to something close to her HYDRA state. An obedient little thing, made to receive orders and then execute them. Nothing more, nothing less.
She doesn't look like herself right now. James isn't entirely sure if she even looks human.
They are machines. They are machines, and something has happened to Isabell, something so bad that she's had a reset to her default coding.
His baby. His precious, precious girl, who he's spent the last 18 months winding bubble-wrap around, healing. What happened? Who hurt her?
James blinks. He just stares at her, the inky pools of black in her face, and tries to summon the right words. Enough to ease her out of her trance, maybe, but not too much. Too much will make her snap.
"Mission successful." He decides on, his voice barely more than a scratch. "You did good."
"Good." She repeats.
He smiles at her sadly. Her hair is falling over the left side of her face, completely obscuring it, and James reflexively reaches forward to push it away.
Isabell flinches.
She takes a hurried step backward, tilting her chin down and looking back at Steve. James frowns.
"Isabell?"
Silence.
"Isabell, what's wrong?"
Her lower lip wobbles. A flicker of humanity seems to strike her, but not enough to make her break.
She's angry. At herself, maybe?
Before James can decide on the answer, Isabell makes to move away again, but he clamps a sudden hand down around her wrist. She whimpers.
His heartbeat quickens.
"Iz, I know it's hard but I need you to look at me."
Nothing. It's like she doesn't even hear him.
Fear drips like quicksand into his brain, sending panic racing through his veins. Something is properly wrong. There is something going on that none of them want to tell him, but he needs to know. He'll do anything.
"27098," James whispers, his eyes fixed on Isabell. Everything inside of him is screaming to stop, to reach out and just hold her, but he's desperate for an answer.
It's a shame that it'll take this level of manipulation, of playing into her desperation to do it.
He swallows, trying his hardest not to break. "27098, show me your face. That's an order."
Something behind Isabell's eyes snaps.
The only way to force her into things, James has witnessed over the years, is to present it as an order from HYDRA. No matter how little she wants to do something, if it becomes a command, she seems to have no choice.
James using it against her is cruel, a complete abuse of the headspace she's trapped in, but she won't remember it properly when she comes around.
She'll forgive him. It's only what he has to do.
Breath held, he watches as Isabell's hand raises to her face. She twists her hair around her fingers, visibly reluctant, but pulls it back anyway.
When he sees her face, James swears he forgets how to breathe.
Isabell looks like hell.
Across the left side of her face, the skin has been grated off to reveal an oozing mess of pus, and there is a wide-looking gash splitting down the front of her skull. It looks like someone has tried to crack her head open and extract her brain.
Whatever food left in his stomach nearly comes right back up again.
"What the fuck." James is unsure whether he's saying these words aloud or not, but panic seems to be completely consuming him. Isabell's eyes brim with salt. "What the fuck. Isabell, Isabell, what the fuck?!"
"Fell." She shrugs. He stares at her, utterly incredulous.
"From where, a hundred-story building?! What the fuck, Isabell? Who hurt you?"
Nothing. She turns to look at Steve again. James is so scared that it's translating as anger. He doesn't even have the sensitivity to play into her HYDRA mental state, not when she looks like that.
"Isabell, look at me! Who hurt y-"
And then it hits.
And James
just
about
dies.
Because
no.
He couldn't have.
Could he?
And realisation guts him again.
Because no.
He couldn't have done this.
But The Winter Soldier could've.
Would've.
Did.
No.
NO.
James physically gags, wriggling as far away from Isabell as he can possibly get. He's panting, an overwhelming sense of disgust sliding down his spine, as the rest of the world blurs out of focus. He is horrific. He is the worst human imaginable, and somebody might as well just shoot him here and now, because he is never going to recover from this.
He is never going to forgive himself.
From in front of him, Isabell whines.
She's shaking so much that Steve looks concerned, and it remains even more worrying when she doesn't pull away from the hand he rests on her shoulder. She hates Steve. If she's willing to be comforted by Steve, she'll be comforted by anyone.
She is lost.
She is lost, and James can't think about anything other than how much he hates himself.
Teeth gritting, he yanks his arm out from under the clamp, ignoring strain it puts on his muscles. He needs out, needs air. He can't think like this, can't be around her if he hurt her.
His precious girl. His precious girl and her poor, poor face-
Isabell is crying now. She thinks she's done something wrong, that this is him deciding he hates her, but he cannot find the words to deny it. He can barely find anything at all.
This is all a horrible mess.
James stumbles, still gasping, towards the staircase. This is an abandoned warehouse. He does not have to stay on this floor. He does not have to stay here.
Steve can look after Isabell.
So, he leaves.
Nobody tries to stop him.
⋇⋆✦⋆⋇
James is alone for what feels like a long time.
He only registers something, however, once he's not.
Soft, sorry footsteps and the subtle smell of cologne, like the wearer is almost embarrassed to use it. James knows who it is before Steve is even in the room with him.
He'd know him anywhere. Blindfolded and deafened, forbidden from touching him, he'd still know him. He'd know him like he knows his own heartbeat.
In this moment, though, James almost wishes he didn't.
His muscles stiffen as Steve comes up behind him, stands beside him without a word. He is calm, always too calm, but the very aura of him seems to radiate into James' bloodstream.
Something relaxes in him again. It is all horribly confusing.
Instinctively, he bows his head, turns away. He does not deserve this level of peace. He considers starting a fight, hoping that maybe somebody will try to kill him, but he's hurt enough people today. Besides, he'd like to relish in Steve's face for a little longer.
His friend glances at him. "You should go back to Isabell."
"I can't." James shakes his head. "I hurt her. I made her cry."
"She's crying because you left her." Steve points out. "And we're not much good at comforting her. She's devastated because she thinks you're angry at her."
"I'm not angry at her," James sighs, glaring at his shoes. "Tell her that."
"Tell her yourself."
"I could've killed her, Steve, I can't just walk in and pretend like I didn't." He snaps. Steve glances at him, his eyes so soft that James wants to die.
"She's crying for you, Buck. She doesn't care about you hurting her. All she wants right now is for you to comfort her. What are you so afraid of?"
James throat seizes, tears threatening to spill. "I would've killed her. I would've killed her, and she would've let me. She trusts me too much. I–" He swallows back a sob. "I can't do this."
"Yes, you can." Steve puts a hand on his shoulder, sending electric shocks right through James' heart. "You've done it before, and you can do it again. Right? Isabell needs her dad. Go be that for her."
"You think I'm her dad?" James sniffs, stifling a reluctant laugh. Steve shrugs.
"Are you?"
"Not in the traditional sense. I didn't make her, if that's what you're asking"
"What about in the other senses?" Steve smiles a little, enough to light up the entire room. His hand hasn't left James' shoulder.
"Yeah, I guess." James mumbles. "Something like that."
"Go look after her, then."
"It's not that simple."
"Isn't it?"
James says nothing. He hates how Steve sees right through him, hates how he's always right. He waits for him to speak instead. He needs a break from his own voice.
By some miracle, he is granted it.
"You looked after me, Buck, from Brooklyn to the day I lost you. Help Isabell. Show me that there's still something left of that inside of you."
Steve is a little harsh, but James is not an undeserving receiver. He tucks his hands into his pockets, carefully avoiding his friend's eye.
"She hates me." He says, to nobody in particular.
Steve shakes his head.
"Nobody hates you, Bucky. Nobody but you."
⋇⋆✦⋆⋇
Isabell is curled up in the corner when James comes back in, her shoulders still shaking but her face dry. She's crusty with blood.
He only cares that he put some of it there.
This whole situation is triggering his fight or flight, although Steve's hand on his back holds him firmly in place.
Go, he seems to say, using no words at all, show me that you're still a good person.
James just wants to be loved.
He sits down in front of Isabell, slow and reluctant, watching the twitch of her nose, the flash of fear in her pretty eyes. She doesn't hate him. Quite the opposite. She loves him to the point where it endangers her.
He's not quite sure which is worse.
However, the truth is irrelevant. Instead, James reaches for her trembling hands and lays them flat against his knees. On the right one, he traces a word.
Hello.
For a moment, Isabell does nothing.
Then, she writes back.
Hi.
Dollface, He draws slowly, it'll be OK. I love you. I'm sor–
James is only halfway through the word when she breaks.
In the blink of an eye, shaky, blood-stained arms wind around his shoulders and she knocks into him so hard that he nearly tumbles backward. She is crying by the time her face meets his neck, howling when he kisses her hair, and he can barely make out the words she is saying to him.
"I-I'm so s-s-sorry."
"You have nothing to be sorry for," James promises. She shakes her head frantically.
"I tried." Isabell sobs. "I tried so hard, I swear, but you were so angry and I couldn't make you stop."
"Ssh, ssh-ssh." He rocks her gently, one hand on her back and the other soothing through her hair. "I'm not mad at you. It's not your fault, baby. Never your fault."
"I should've fixed it." She insists. "I was supposed to fix it. 'S my job. They made me to clean up your messes, 's the only thing I'm useful for."
"Don't you ever think that," James says quickly, gripping her tight. "You're so special, you hear me? HYDRA is worth nothing. If I was only what HYDRA made me, then I'd only be killing people. But you and me, we're made for more than that. We're worth saving. You're worth everything, Izzie. Tell me that you understand that."
Isabell shudders in his arms, warm and still soft, even through all the dirt. After a few long moments, she nods.
"I understand."
"My perfect girl." James pulls away a little, cupping Isabell's face in his hands and rubbing at the worst of the dried blood. The scraped side of her face is slowly beginning to heal itself, the jutting in her ribs slowly going down, and her entire body feels limp against him.
She must be so tired. Tired and hungry, one thing occurs to James.
This is not the first time she has been devastated, most certainly not the first time traumatised, but it is the first truly horrible moment that he has been allowed to comfort her through.
Possibly ever.
And so, whilst James hides tears of pure relief, Isabell curled up in his lap, Sam and Steve watch from the other end of the room.
A small smile plays across Steve's face as he glances at his teammate.
"You still think Bucky's all bad?"
"Shut up."