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(My Masterlist on Tumblr just in case you're curious for more of other reader or OC fics)
You sat up straight in your chair staring at your reflection in the mirror. Your hair and makeup was finished and all that needed to be done was to put on your dress, shoes, and veil. This was a day you thought about as a teenager, but you imagined a smile on your face instead of a frown. You imagined the room to be alive with friends and music and your mom. You remember even bringing it up to your mother, asking her about when she got married. As you got older, you realized she probably hid her own lack of happiness on that day to protect you. She didn’t love your father anymore than you loved your future husband.
You didn’t know anything about the long history of your family within Hydra until you were older. You were practically royalty within the terrifying organization. It was the day that Brock Rumlow met you at one of your father’s parties that your life changed for the worse.
You had already fallen in love with James by then. After you turned 18, your father had moved you into Hydra’s main compound. He gave you a room there and made sure you began to learn more about his role within. You hated it. The more you learned, the more worried you got.
Soon you met James. That had been the final straw of the horrors you learned about Hydra. You knew who he was. You had heard stories and seen footage of Steve and Bucky, best friends in the 1940s. Captain America and the Howling Commandos, you knew a decent amount of it all. It was the first time you had the courage to confront your father with what he was doing.
Hydra turned who you assumed used to be a kind man into a killing machine for their own personal gain. Your father quickly put you back in your place and made you swear to not let him find out the truth. From then, you constantly pushed the boundary of trying to get to know James. You eventually secretly told him his real first name, but that didn’t bring any of his memories back. As much as you hated letting him stay in the dark, you knew it would be too risky to tell him all about Steve and his old life.
He slowly became more comfortable around you as you had an easy way of talking to others. You made him feel like a person and not just a weapon. He liked you and he trusted you. Soon that turned into love between you both. You told him some of the pain you had in your own life. From losing your mother to practically being trapped in the Hydra compound once you were an adult, he had a wonderful way of taking your pain and making you feel understood.
You were never scared of him like so many others were, and he found that to be like a million weights off his shoulders. Eventually he began to tell you about his own distorted and terrifying nightmares. His memories were so warped that they haunted him at night; he tried his best not to sleep often. You would sneak into his room and let him sleep with his head resting on you. It was the only time he said he didn’t become plagued with horrible and confusing dreams.
He was scared to let you see all of his metal arm at first. He thought you would be disgusted by the scars and never want to see him again. If you saw the entire arm, the attachment to his body, you’d understand the entirety of what he’s done with that arm. You’d understand that it was what made him the horror that he was. But that’s not what happened. You never failed to reassure him that none of that was his fault. He was an innocent through all the destruction Hydra forced him into. He endured his own torture from them. He could release his pain to you and you would make him feel truly loved.
Your love for each other was what kept the two of you alive. It made your life on the compound bearable.
It was that day you met Rumlow that ruined it all. He immediately became obsessed with you. He thought you were beautiful and he wanted you to be his. You found this out from your father, and Rumlow was important enough to get exactly what he wanted. You were soon set to be married, Rumlow gave you an engagement ring not a week after meeting you. You spent that evening crying as James held you.
“He wants me to marry him,” you told you through your tears. “But I’ll never love him. He wants me but I’m yours, I’m all yours James, and I never want it to be any other way.”
As you thought about that day, you looked down at your hands in anger. You cursed the world at how Rumlow set his eyes on you. However, you knew that it probably would have eventually been some other man if not him. Your father wasn’t going to let his only daughter live her life without marrying someone important within Hydra. You knew that anyone who was a willing participant in such an evil group would not have been a good person to spend your life with, but Rumlow had to have been the worst of them all.
As you were forced to spend more time with the man you were going to marry, you quickly learned just how possessive and scary he was. Everything had to be his way or he turned into a monster. He was good at faking his way into charming you for only a few moments, and then his entire demeanor would change. His eyes would go dark and he would become physically violent.
There were many times you snuck into James’ room with bruises on your arms or a cut across your lip. It angered James like nothing else had before. What hurt him the most was that he couldn’t do anything about it. He wanted to rip that man apart and make him suffer, but you had to remind him that they’d never see each other again if he did anything. He often spent his nights feeling guilty that he didn’t do anything to stop him anyway. He could kill him and you’d be safe, but he was selfish. He couldn’t imagine a life without you in it anymore, and so he listened to you and did nothing.
He would treat you gently and help clean any blood that sometimes ended up on your skin. He would hold you and let you cry if you needed to. He would whisper softly about how much he loved you and how wonderful you were. His words were beyond helpful in making you feel better. In addition to the physical pain Rumlow caused, he was incredibly cruel with his words.
One minute he would act like you were the best thing in the world, like a shiny diamond that he got to keep all to himself. The next he would degrade you and pick apart every flaw. He would call you stupid and ugly and say that nobody would ever want you. He would say you were lucky to have him, lucky that he chose you.
You tried your best to keep your own self esteem from being destroyed during those times. You found a small joy in the inaccuracies you were sure of within his statements. You weren’t lucky to have him. James wanted you, and so you knew his other statements must be false as well.
However, even when you tried to use this reasoning, it was hard to believe it sometimes. Without James’ constant reassurance when it was just the two of you, it would be much easier to believe Rumlow when he called you horrible names.
You sighed to yourself as you sat in all your thoughts, knowing that you would have no choice but to put your wedding dress on soon. You couldn’t sit there and put off the ceremony any longer. You would have to marry the man who hurt you everyday and never see the man you loved ever again. Rumlow didn’t live on the compound, so soon you wouldn’t anymore either. You looked back up into the mirror and saw James standing in the door behind you. You let in a surprised breath as you stood up and faced him.
“What are you doing here?” you asked in a hushed tone, nervous to see him standing in your door. He stepped in and shut it behind him.
“Your father wanted me to escort you to the church,” he bowed his head to hide his own pain. You pressed your lips together in anger. It was cruel for him to do that, after he had found out about you and James, this was his way of mocking your pain.
Back when he found out, he was furious. He caught James when he was about to kiss you in your room. He walked in without warning and the two of you were frozen at the sight of him.
“Dad, please!” You begged him as he commanded The Winter Soldier to follow him. James had no choice but to listen, fearing for your own safety if he did not comply.
“I had my suspicion of you two for a while now, and I will not tolerate this behavior! You have become too friendly with him and I thought it was just your inability to see what the world needed to be. I know now that this won’t stop until I do something about it,” he yelled as he directed you down the halls of the facility. He caught the attention of other people, but they knew better than to get involved.
Soon the three of you were in the medical room. “I love him!” you took a chance to finally say the truth. “I can’t marry Rumlow, please I can’t.” Pierce froze and he turned to you with a deadly serious look on his face.
“You will not ruin this for me, for our family, for everything Hydra has worked for. He is nothing but a weapon, a means of our will! He should not be capable of love and you are a fool who is only deluding yourself!” he shouted at you.
“He is more than that. What you’ve done to him is torture and evil. He loves me and treats me with more kindness than Rumlow ever will!” You stepped next to James and grabbed his metal hand gently. You looked at him and he gave you a worried but comforting expression. To others it probably didn’t look like his face changed much, but you saw the emotion he was emitting in his eyes.
“If that’s the case, then I’m right to wipe him. Get him in the chair,” he directed the other soldiers in the room.
“No!” you cried out. “No you can’t, please!”
“Y/N,” James whispered and you turned back to him. His eyes were pleading. Begging for you to stop. He didn’t want you to get yourself more into trouble. He knew there was no way out of this one anymore. “It’s okay,” he tried.
You shook your head with tears filling your eyes. “No,” you said. “No it’s not.”
Someone grabbed your arms, pulling you back away from the love of your life. You tried to shake them off you, but another agent also held you back. Your hand soon pulled out of James’ and you were taken out of the room as you screamed for them to let you go. You were locked out of the room, unable to see anything inside, but you heard the moment his mind was wiped. He screamed in pain and you slid to the floor against the door. His screams caused pain to radiate in your own body and all you could do was cry.
“You are not to remind him of your history together. He is a soldier to serve us and nothing more,” your father told you with malice in his voice. You didn’t respond, only continued to cry until somebody eventually pulled you up and took you back to your room.
It was an entire month of misery, rarely seeing James but it hurt more when you saw him then when you were alone. His eyes were empty of any expression, and you knew everything you had together had been cleared from his mind. You were glad word of your relationship with James never got back to Rumlow, you had a feeling your father didn’t want people to find out and made it very clear to those who knew must keep it secret. You’re body tensed in fear at the idea of Rumlow finding out. He would have James killed, and who knows what he would have done with you.
It wasn’t until one day you were in the hall with Rumlow, he had been angry with your behavior at the latest important event he dragged you to. Any bit of happiness left in you was drained, and you couldn’t even pretend to enjoy yourself anymore. He yelled at you for being an embarrassment and you made a snarky comment that caused him to slap you.
James had been walking through the hall to his next assignment when he saw the slap. He quickly grabbed Rumlow’s arm and pulled him away from you, his face fill with anger. When you realized what happened, you put your own hands on James and got him to back up. You wordlessly told him you were okay, that he couldn’t react that way.
“What the hell?” Rumlow shouted at James.
“It’s my job to protect Director Pierce’s daughter,” James explained.
“It is your job to follow orders and mind your own business,” Rumlow told him. “Get back to whatever you were supposed to be doing.”
James’ words and actions confused you. There was no way your father told him it was his job to protect you. That night you snuck out and found his room. You had to know if he was telling the truth or if it was a cover.
“Do you remember?” you said immediately as he stood up quickly at your entrance. He hesitated in answering, but you saw the battle in his eyes just like you always could. “You remember,” you stated with full confidence this time.
“I had to pretend,” he reasoned. “To keep you safe.”
“I was miserable without you!” You told him.
“I’m sorry, Y/N.”
“I’d rather risk my safety to be with you then live another day thinking you didn’t remember.”
“Your wedding’s in a week,” he reminded me and I furiously wiped my tears from my face.
“Just give me the time we have now, please.” You knew once you were married, you would no longer live on the compound. You wouldn’t get to see James anymore and you’d have to live the rest of your life with that wretched person. You didn’t want to think about it, you just wanted to have what you could with James. He must have agreed since he pulled you into a kiss. It felt like it had been a hundred years since you got to feel his touch, and it was more beautiful than you remembered.
Now with him standing in your room just hours before you were supposed to get married, you wished you were back to that day again spending your limited time in his bed.
“You’re not dressed yet,” he commented.
“I just couldn’t, I don’t know, it will feel too real, I guess, I just…” You were having a hard time forming a coherent thought. The long year engagement was finally coming to an end, and it was everything you dreaded it would be. He took two quick steps towards you and soon you were wrapped in his arms. You started crying, but the waterproof makeup stayed perfectly on your face.
“Tell me to run,” you whispered as his hand caressed your face. “Please, just do it and I’ll go anywhere with you. We can make it together, just tell me to run.”
“You know I can’t,” he said as he put his forehead against yours. “No matter where we go, your father will find us.” You let out a sob at his words.
“I can’t do it, James. I can’t marry him,” you cried as you buried your face into his neck and he wrapped his arms around you, holding your head close. His body was tense, he felt just as broken and distraught as you were. He didn’t want to see you marry that monster, but he didn’t know how he could get you away without putting your life in danger. And on top of that, he secretly worried he was too much of a monster to be worthy of you anyway.
But he wanted to prove himself wrong. He thought about the possibility of taking her far away instead of to the church. He would keep you safe wherever you went. You would never have to hear another insult from Rumlow, never have to endure his hands on you again.
“Okay,” he finally decided and you looked up at him in surprise.
“What?” you breathed in response.
“Okay, let’s run,” he elaborated and you let out a short laugh as a smile grew on your face.
“Really?” you asked.
“Yes really, They’re all at the church. We can run in the other direction and never look back. I can’t give you a home or a steady life. I don’t think I could ever give you peace, but I promise I can give you all my love until the last second of my life. I’ll protect you with everything I can.” Your tears of sorrow turned to those of happiness.
“Okay,” you said while nodding your head and placing your hands on his face. “James, any life with you will be the best life I could ever hope for.” He kissed you quickly, knowing you two had to act fast if you wanted to give yourself enough time to find a place to hide out. “I love you,” you told him as you two pulled away. “I love you so much.”
“I love you,” he replied. You quickly changed into other clothes and took his hand in yours as he guided you out, away from Hydra’s compound, away from all the pain and torture you both hand endured there and towards your future together.