I woke up in a dank, rundown factory with chipping sheet rock walls, exposed electrical circuits, and oil stained cement floors. The place smelt of must, and chemicals, and I could hear rats scurrying within the air ducts, their little feet scratching along the silver pipes.
The windows were bolted shut with pieces of plywood, allowing a scant amount of natural light to flood in, and the hanging florescent lamps above me blazed down like fire, heat radiating off the bulbs.
Cracking open my eyes, my vision was clouded like mist engulfing a meadow, eclipsing my sight.
I was tied to a chair, my wrists clasped behind me, the braided rope rubbing at my sensitive flesh, making my skin raw.
I felt like my head had been split in half, and like my brain was being squeezed by someone's hands. Everything around me was disorientated like I was looking through fun-house mirrors, and the glaring white lights didn't help. Their lucid brightness only adding an extra "pang" to my dizziness.
"Good, you're up. I was beginning to get impatient." I heard Alexander chime in.
"That sleeping drug infused within the needle that I had shot in your neck was measured for someone with a bigger stature than a woman like yourself, so I was concerned the anesthetic intake was too much for your body to handle." He assessed, his leather oxford shoes clicking against the grey concrete floor as he paced around.
"You're an easy one to detain since nothing about you is enhanced in anyway, and you don't have any hidden powers, do you?"
I blinked a couple of times, clarifying the pollution that was cloaked within my head, my sight purifying, and focusing again.
"Your cover has already been blown, so why capture me? One way, or another all of S.H.I.E.L.D. knows the truth."
"Right, I never told you which option I'd pick, did I?" Pierce recalled, dipping down so that he was close to me. "I'll enlighten you, I'd pick option three. You see you're also very useful to me... Mrs. Rebecca Barnes."
My eyes grew wide at his words, that name, my full name not being uttered to me in seventy years. And, even though it was being said by an enemy, it still felt good to hear again. I wasn't ready to hear it yet, but even coming from his lips, that name was a comfort surprisingly, a fleck of the past. Of better days...
He only smirked, a shrewd, astute smirk, one which held crafty secrets.
"How was it reuniting with your husband again after all this time? Seeing him, recognizing him even all while he had no clue who you were?"
"He did." I snarled back, remembering how he came to my apartment that night, desperately wanting answers. How he looked so alone, and afraid, a fear that I didn't know the meaning behind until now.
He was afraid of remembering only because he knew the second he'd remember something, or regain his senses that he'd just have his memories erased again. He wanted to remember me, and Steve so much, but he was fighting it because he didn't want to be forced to forget. The pain contorted across his face, the tear he shed, the terror that was coursing through him that night...
If I would of known all of the details that I do now I would of fought harder then. I would of tackled him to the ground, and punched him senseless, forcing him with all of my might to stay so that he could be safe in my hands rather than intertwined within HYDRA's claws.
"Yes, I am aware he did." Pierce stated, shoving his hands into his navy slacks.
"You're quite the woman if you can somehow make a human machine remember you after seventy years of being nothing more then a slave. In fact, I wiped his memory a few days ago, and as a test said your name again afterwards only to still get a reaction out of him. Somewhere in him still had a recollection of you, making you rather bothersome."
He turned me around so that I was facing the opposite direction, the chairs legs squeaking against the cement.
Immediately I noticed a containment cell built to withstand grenades, lasers, bullets, and attacks from almost anything. The stainless steel jail, the clear acrylic windows on each side like a house, and confined inside a familiar brunette with his cybernetic arm fixed down tightly, impeding him from moving.
He looked as though he had been imprisoned within there for days, and had been through hell, and back, but then again his whole life had been nothing, but hell for so long anyway.
Sweat trickled down his face, his knotted longer strands of hair framed around his jaw, and his jaded gaze bore into me with repentance. His expression that of someone weathered by shame, and regret, but I still didn't pay any attention to what he had done.
Instead I still saw that handsome Sergeant who flirted with me constantly even after we were married, and who never failed to make me feel loved. I did not see a human weapon, an assassin, or a beast. I saw James, my husband. Nothing more, nothing less.
"I need to get rid of you, Mrs. Barnes, in order to have the Winter Soldier back to his rightful machine like position. But, killing you myself, or anyone else killing you wouldn't make a difference. If anything, It'd backfire, and ignite such an anger in him that he'd start a killing spree on all of HYDRA because of his loss of you. So, it has to be done by him himself, so that even if he does remember everything, the guilt of killing you, his wife, will be too much for him. He'll never betray HYDRA then if he's so guilt ridden over you." Alexander demonstrated.
His persona filled with the cunning mastery of a magician with far too many tricks up his sleeve.
"You bastard." I projected, receiving an all too smug glower from him, and I watched as he popped open a briefcase.
He retrieved a little crimson notebook that looked like it had seen better days, the red spine fraying, and I noticed a star on it, resembling the one Bucky had on his prosthetic.
"Let's get on with this, shall we?" Pierce announced, taping my mouth shut to keep me quiet, and I still didn't know what the significance of that notebook was, but when I looked over at Bucky he was as pale as a ghost.
Alexander cleared his throat, and strolled around Bucky's containment cell.
"Zhelaniye. Rzhavyy. Semnadtsat." Alexander began, and I was forced to watch the scene unfold.
"Stop." Bucky begged, his jaw clenched, those trigger words like a spell to him, an incantation that Pierce was all too enthusiastic about continuing.
"Rassvet. Pech'. Devyat. Dobroserdechnyy..."
"Please, stop." Bucky continued to yell, his words pleading, and vulnerable. His metal arm twisting, shaking, and moving, almost against his own will, breaking free of the cuffs that were strapped around him.
His teeth grit together, and he looked like he was fighting the demons within him, a feeble battle he knew he couldn't win.
"Don't... Don't make me hurt her." He kept on begging much to Pierce's sick amusement.
"Vozvrashcheniye. Na Rodinu. Odin. Gruzovoy Vagon."
Bucky slammed his metal fist against the acrylic panes, his blows becoming much more powerful, and ruthless. His violent screams echoing throughout the whole abandoned factory.
He kept on punching the glass, creating a deeper crater each time until the windows burst entirely into shards of transparent pieces.
Busting out of the containment cell, smashing the stainless steel door right off to the ground I could hear the inner-workings of his bionic arm churning, awakening as if from a sleep.
I pulled out a small laser from the inside of my sleeve, and began to cinder the rope off, it's twine like edges blackening from being burnt.
"Soldat."
"Ya Gotov Otvechat." Bucky answered, his mind officially eaten by those toxic Russian words, eroding him entirely as a person, as a human being, possessing him. Rendering him a pawn, a murderous robot who follows orders, and nothing else.
The lively twinkle within his pale blue eyes extinguished, like a blown out candle with not even the slight ember at the end of the wick aglow.
"Kill her." Pierce commanded, closing the crimson notebook, and I allowed for the burnt ropes to fall, and then I ripped the tape off my mouth.
I didn't want to, but it seems I had to. I had to fight him, my husband.