Chapter Text
Pain.
The first thing you remember is pain.
White, hot, electric pain coursing through your veins. Your mind is a blackboard, memories wiped over and over until you have nothing left.
You don’t know your name. You don’t know where you came from, or how you got here. All you know is what they’ve told you: you’re a nurse. You work for Hydra.
You obey orders like a mindless robot, doing whatever they say. Because if you don’t, they’ll just wipe your mind again.
And again.
And again.
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“Medsestra,” a man’s voice says as you wake from cryostasis. Nurse in russian.
Your eyes shoot open, the biting cold of the chamber slowly fading.
“Good,” the man says. “Follow me.”
And of course, you comply.
The man―your new boss, you assume―takes you to a room you know all too well.
The concrete floor has a trail of blood leading to the chair in the middle of the room.
There is a man slumped over there, unconscious, his left arm mangled and sticking out at an unnatural angle.
“This,” your boss says proudly, “is our new… project.”
You stare at the bloodied arm, unfazed. You’d seen worse. Your boss orders you to fix up the mysterious man’s arm.
You approach the chair cautiously, probing his arm.
“The only way to fix it is with an amputation,” you say at last. “And he’ll need a prosthetic.”
“Prepare the operating room,” your boss says curtly.
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They wheel the patient in for his operation on a stretcher. As they move him, his eyelids fly open, revealing bright blue eyes. He looks terrified.
He tries to make eye contact with you, but you stare straight ahead, eyes glazed over, unseeing. It’s how you were programmed to behave.
All Bucky can register is the burning sensation in his arm. It feels as though it’s being ripped to shreds, one nerve at a time. He can’t bear it. He passes out in the chair.
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When he wakes up again, he is being transported to an operation room. He tries to move, tries to talk, tries to fight, but he can’t.
He can’t move.
Instead, he opens his eyes and sees you.
You’re staring into the distance, at nothing in particular, looking lost. Your eyes are glazed over. You look brainwashed. That terrifies him.