I've returned from the depths of Dublin to write another Chapter (Fina ALLY) I'm sorry it's taken me so long, though. Now, are you all sitting comfortably? Then let's begin. Also I have recently written a short story called Incomplete for beauty and the beast's writing challenge and I'd really appreciate any votes/comments x
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Bucky's arms tightened slightly around Erin, who was now beginning to groggily wake up. Her hazy brown eyes flickered from Bucky's shocked face to the twisted smile of Pine, who had not yet lowered his gun, the barrel pointing directly between Bucky's eyes. There was only one thing she was thinking.
"Fuck." the word was muttered out of her mouth before she could stop it.
Pine smiled at her response. "I've missed your vocabulary, Jefferson."
"This is between you and me, Stephen. Leave her out of it." The voice came from Bucky, his chest vibrating with it. His face was as hard as a rock, his blue eyes icy. Pine shook his head.
"Not exactly true, Soldier,"
Pine gestured with his head to behind Bucky's left shoulder. He stiffened and whipped his head around as he saw four men emerge from the shadows, in the classic black padded uniform of a HYDRA soldier. His eyes flickered from side to side, wondering which assailant to deal with first. In any other situation, he would have already taken out the four men behind him and would be moving on to Pine now, but in this hypothetical situation, he didn't have a hundred and thirty pounds of chemist in his arms.
"Let me down," Erin's order would have been a lot more convincing if she hadn't ended it with a coughing fit that sounded like she was trying to expel her lungs from her torso.
"I don't think that's such a good idea, Erin," Bucky responded, hyper-aware of the fact that the men on each side of him were slowly walking forwards, guns drawn. His mind was working on overdrive, thinking and rethinking, analysing all possible ways to get out of his situation, and he was coming up blank. He could fight all these men off in a heartbeat, but not with Erin in his arms. He looked up at Pine, who still had his gun pointed at Bucky, and was still smiling. He'd been waiting for this moment, and now it had finally come, he was going to enjoy it.
"I can stand, Bucky. Just put me down and you can take care of them." Erin's voice was getting desperate now, and Bucky had to admit he was considering her offer. He looked down at her, saw those deep brown eyes, those eyes that he couldn't seem to forget. She nodded up at him. The amount of trust on her face broke his heart. He didn't deserve that. She had a point, though. If he put her down, he could make fast work of the four HYDRA agents surrounding him without Erin in his arms, and that would only leave Pine. This could work.
He nodded his head imperceptibly, but she understood. Get ready. Bucky's thumb rubbed up and down once on her upper thigh, something that was hopefully a reassuring gesture, and proceeded to place her, feet first down on the floor. It was a little faster than she expected, and she wobbled slightly before grabbing onto the wall next to her for support. Bucky, on the other hand, had spun around faster than Erin could compute. He elbowed one of the HYDRA agents directly in the face, sending him to the floor like a lead pipe. A bullet was fired and Bucky ducked out of the way with superhuman speed, letting it crash into the drywall behind him, dangerously close to Erin's head. She let out a high-pitched scream in surprise.
"Get down," Bucky yelled at her, as his metal fist sunk into the stomach of another of the men, who bent double with the pain, giving him the perfect opportunity to knee him in the face. Erin didn't need to be told twice, she slid down the side of the wall and curled up into the fetal position on the floor, her shoulder, the one that had been shot earlier, burning in pain at the unexpected movement. She felt slightly useless, crouched down in a corner whilst Bucky sent a roundhouse kick into a HYDRA assailant's sternum, sending him flying. This was Bucky's thing, this was what he did. It was the first time she had ever really seen him fight, and she had to admit, it terrified her a little bit. He was like a machine. Not just because of the metal arm, shining and powerful, almost with a mind of it's own as it sailed into the ribs of one of the men who had been foolish enough to get back up off the floor and try again. It was the way that he moved, like a dancer, each step perfectly executed with maximum efficiency. She understood now why he was so dangerous, so feared. He took out the last man with a firm kick to the chest, sending him flying backwards and crashing into a wall behind him.
He stood, legs shoulder width apart, four unconscious men by his feet. He wasn't even out of breath, the rise and fall of his chest even and rhythmic. He looked down at her.
"You okay?" he asked down at her. She nodded her head, and he bent down to help her up, but froze in his place as he heard a throat clearing.
"You seriously didn't think I was going to let you go that easily, Winter?" Pine took a step forwards, his gun held high. Bucky had crouched into a defensive position, covering Erin's body with his own. The corner of Pine's mouth twisted upwards in a grim mockery of a smile, the thick scar on one side of his face mutating with the effort.
"You have me," Bucky said, his voice even. Erin didn't fail to notice the way that his hand crept towards one of the unconscious men on the floor, searching for the gun that he knew would be in his waistband. "You don't need her."
Pine rolled his eyes and stopped in his tracks, his eyes glinted.
"But I don't have you, Solider. Not really."
Bucky's eyebrow quirked in confusion at his statement. His hand grasped the gun he was searching for and he tucked it discreetly into his back pocket before standing up, still in front of Erin.
"You can take me back. Just let her go. She's not done anything to you."
Pine shook his head and lowered the gun for a second.
"Oh, but she has," he said, his eyes flicking from Erin to Bucky, focusing, Erin noticed, on the way that he was stood almost directly in front of her, protecting hr with his body, "She's taken away my most valuable asset. She's changed you, Soldier. In a way I'm not sure I'll be able to reverse."
Pine shrugged and pulled the gun back up, quicker than Erin could register. Bucky reached into his waistband and pulled out his own, but it was slightly too late. He felt a stinging pain in the left-hand side of his neck and he crumpled to the floor, dropping the gun. Bucky's hand raised to his neck, shaking, and he pulled out a small dart. A paralytic? The oldest trick in the book, and he'd fallen for it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He felt useless, his limbs unmoveable.
"Bucky!" Erin screamed, as Pine began to walk forwards, towards the pair of them, lying on the floor. She shook his shoulders, but his entire body was limp, the drug already in his system.
"Erin..." he muttered, his voice coming out slurred. Bucky felt his eyes begin to close, his body weighing as much as a house, a plane, a skyscraper, pulling him downwards. The last thing he saw before his vision went black was a scarred face smiling in triumph.
"Might as well try, though," Pine said.
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Bucky woke up with a sore head and a dry throat. He let out a low cough, clearing his throat. The lights above him hurt his eyes, and he blinked twice, hard, trying to focus. There was a deep-seated sense of unease in his gut, nerves firing rapidly as he took in his surroundings. He was sat down, his head facing upwards towards the ceiling. The entire situation felt far too familiar for his liking. He tried to stand up but was stopped by something.
"Ah, you're awake."
The voice came from his left, and he turned his head around to see Stephen Pine, standing with his hands behind his back, looking down at him with medical curiosity. Bucky's heart skipped a beat as he began to recognise the room he was sat in the middle of. More specifically, the chair that he was now strapped to. His breathing quickened. Not now. Not again. Not after he had worked so so hard to finally discover who he was, finally begin living once more. He couldn't lose that. Couldn't lose-
Erin. The first thing he noticed was just how bad her shoulder looked in the light. The blood had soaked into her white tank-top, turning almost half of it a rusty brown colour. The second thing he noticed was the HYDRA agent stood behind her, holding her arms behind her back. Erin was small, even by ordinary standards. There was no way that she could escape the grasp of that man, no matter how much she was wriggling, trying to get out. The two made eye contact, and Bucky tried to smile, a half-arsed attempt at reassuring her. He didn't know how he was going to pretend that everything was fine when it so obviously wasn't.
He looked down at himself. There was blood on his fitted grey T-shirt, probably remnants of when he had been carrying Erin. That wasn't what he was worried about, though. He was worried about the thick leather straps that would around his arms, his torso, his legs. He strained against them, trying to stand up, but all in vain. He couldn't move.
"You see..." Pine began, walking very nonchalantly over to Erin and placing a single hand on her shoulder. Her hurt shoulder. She winced slightly, and Bucky flinched.
"Get your hands off her," the order came out as pure venom, but Pine gave him no heed.
"You'll never be the Soldier again, James."
It was surreal to hear someone call him by his actual name. He couldn't remember the last time he hadn't been referred to as either Bucky or Soldier. It jolted him, surprised him enough to shut him up for a second.
"Not whilst she's still here." Pine clapped Erin on the shoulder and she let out a hiss of pain. Bucky noticed a tear fall from her eye. He tried to lift his arms, grunting at the effort. The leather creaked with the tension but didn't snap.
"Then let her go,"
Pine laughed. Actually laughed. "It surprises me that you're such a martyr now, James. You used to be the kind of man to throw a fellow soldier in the path of a bullet just to get your job done. Where has all this sentimentality come from?"
"I'll kill you," Bucky's voice was as hard as iron. Pine smirked at him and walked closer towards him. He reached above Bucky's head and pulled down something that Bucky never thought he would see again. The thick black wire connected to the electrical headset reflected the too-bright lights of the room. Pine brought it down to rest either side of Bucky's head.
"No. No. No. No." Bucky was muttering now, a mantra filling his mind. Erin, who understood immediately what Pine was doing, began to shout.
"Get away from him. Stop!" The HYDRA agent behind her pulled her arms closer together behind her back, opening up the wound in her shoulder that had almost healed. She let out a scream and Bucky clenched his fist together so hard that his nails dug into his palm, breaking skin. He felt hot wet blood in his hand. All the work that she had put in, all the jokes that they had shared, the secret looks and stolen kisses. All of it would be gone. Pine switched on the machine beside Bucky's chair and it whirred into life.
Bucky felt sick, his heart was beating so fast it felt like it was going to come out of his chest. There was a strange noise in his ears, a high pitched whine that cut right through him. It took him a while to realise that he was screaming.
"Not so brave now?" Pine's face was directly above his, grey eyes on blue.
Pine smiled at Bucky. He was close enough for the shorter man to smell the coffee on his breath, see up close that grisly scar than ran down his face.
"You're not going to kill me when this is all over, James."
He flicked the switch on the side of the machine, and Bucky's word exploded in pain. His mind was on fire, all of the memories of the last six months, the best six moths of his life, flashing past him at lightning speed. Every muscle in his body was burning up, hot and cold and hot and cold all at once. He shouted, babble coming out of his mouth, a string of words that made no sense to him. He heard Erin's name in there more than once.
Then a voice in his ear, a single voice, a low voice, a voice he knew.
"You're going to kill her."