Chapter Text
Comply. Comply. Comply.
One word rang in your mind, even now, as you were probably seconds away from your inevitable end. The world had become a blur and a vivid crystalline view all at once as the breaths became fewer and fewer as a deep dark hole threatened to pull you down. Another wave of pain crashed down on your spine, but you had stopped screaming a long time ago. Your throat was too bloody and your voice too hollow. Sounds echoed down the hall of voices shouting at one another. The floor beneath was practically ice, promising nothing but a faster end.
Death wasn’t some peaceful sleep you drifted off to and found yourself in a dream. No, it was a nightmare. A claw curled around you, tearing at your heart and dragging you down. You would fight it. Fight like you always have. Not after everything you had been through would you die in a chair in some abandoned warehouse in a pool of your own blood on the cold, concrete floor. A small part of you felt like you deserved more- deserved a better chance at life. You tried to hold onto that small piece in a death grip, even as the claw tried to hold down your throat. Not like someone like you deserved to live a nice life, that is, not after all the blood on your hands. None of it was your choosing, you weren’t someone who would kill the innocent. At least, you didn’t think you were. The old you, whoever that girl had been before you became a weapon.
“Please…please,” you internally begged, “I know I did bad things, but I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t help it. If I die, don’t put me in a bad place. I don’t want to be in a bad place anymore.”
Why would dying be so scary? Death had been your shadow for the past few years. All of the times you had nearly died…all the times you had killed against your will. Every soul you had handed over to death’s hand. By now, you and the Reaper were practically best friends.
Fighter.
It was what your handler had called you every time you had tried to block out the code words, every time you had bit, every time you had refused an order over and over until they had to shock you with the same collar that was around your neck now. That’s what you had always been, your whole life. From the moment you were born, you had fought, at least when the doctors found something wrong with your heart. Premature- that was all the explanation they had, even when there were no answers for what was wrong with it. Fighting was all you knew, second to breathing…and you would fight now against the air fighting to leave your lungs.
Nope. Dying wasn’t an option.
Why did you think it would end any other way? Idiot. That’s exactly what you were. From the day you took that deal without question out of pure desperation, never even considering you had landed yourself in the middle of a H.Y.D.R.A. experiment. Your last escape attempt had ended…well, the scars on your back were indicators enough of how that great idea had ended. No matter whatever twisted way they had turned your body into whatever it was now, it was a stupid thought to believe you could have survived in Syberia on your own. Although most days it felt like you were a machine, you were still human and had your limits.
Weak.
Another word came to mind. One you’d heard through hushed whispers behind the glass from the chamber they had kept you in for those first few weeks, draining the strange blue liquid into you while taking memories out as your body tried to fight it off. Fight to stay alive. For some reason your body hadn’t been able to handle the experiments well enough. A checkmark on either the word “success” or “failed” on a clipboard had been the line between living or being terminated. Here, simply being human was lesser.
Blue spilled now from your blood. Somehow, the uncanniness of the neon color mixed with the crimson liquid never went away. Long ago, your blood had begun spilling the same thing in the vials they had pumped you full of.
Blue. You hated the color. Despised it, actually.
One of the voices came closer from the hall, nearing you. No, no, no! They must be coming back for you. You couldn’t go back, not again. Not again.
Footsteps turned the corner and came closer.
One, two, three…
Silent and steady, each one more controlled than the last. Whoever was coming near you had been taught stealth as you had been, their steps like your own. Odd.
Panic spreads into your bones as you use every remaining spark of the fire left in you to try and get away.
“Who are you?” It wasn’t more than a whisper. They probably didn’t hear it.
Don’t be the handler. Don’t be the handler. Don’t be the handler.
A soft, calm voice broke through the deafening silence, “The name’s Bucky.”