Powerless | b. barnes

17 - hurt

" H Y D R A ? " Bucky asked, surely he had heard her wrong.

"Yeah... Hydra gave me these powers," Ivy began to play with the purple magic between her fingers.

"Did they kidnap you?"

"Not exactly." Ivy shifted uncomfortably, "My siblings and I sort of volunteered."

"What?" Bucky's tone turned angry, "you worked for those terrorists?"

"Bucky we were brainwashed too in a way! We had just become orphans, our country was in ruins, we wanted to help somehow," Ivy tried to explain, her accent poking through more as her voice raised. "Hydra took advantage of how young and naïve we were and that's how I ended up being one of their puppets for years."

"How could you volunteer for that Ivy? They took so many lives, including my own," Bucky felt so betrayed. How could she not have told him this before? How could no one tell him this before?

"Bucky," Ivy's voice turned serious, "my parents just died, I was eleven years old. I only had my siblings and Hydra offered us a roof and food. Yes, it ended up being the worst mistake of my life because we were imprisoned and abused and separated, but at the time it seemed like the only way we would be able to survive. Plus, we thought we would be helping our country, at least that's what they told us in the beginning. They told us we would be heroes."

"But you volunteered for a Nazi organization, you chose to work with terrorists. Tell me, did you kill for them too?" Bucky asked, his outside demeanour was calm but there was a fury bubbling within.

"No! Bucky, I swear I never went on a mission for them. They experimented on us but we escaped before they could use us. And we didn't know anything about them before we joined."

"I... um," Bucky looked at the wall in front of him, he couldn't face her right now, "I need you... to leave."

Ivy felt his words like a hard punch in the gut. She bit her lip to hold back her tears and looked at the floor, "O-okay."

Ivy ran back to her room, she slammed the door, turned her back on it and slid down to the floor finally letting the tears that had been pricking the back of her eyes go.

For the first time she opened up to someone she thought would understand and instead of finding solace, she found anguish.

She put her head in hands, elbows resting on her knees and let herself cry. She felt her walls building back up, never wanting to make the mistake of letting them down again.

She cried for nearly fifteen minutes before wiping her tears and snapping out of it. She didn't need Bucky to understand, she realized, she didn't need him period. She had other things to focus on, like her unknown powers and new missions and oh! maybe finally getting over the death of her brother, that would be good too. All of which she could do without Bucky.

Ivy plopped down at her vanity, her puffy eyes raked over her tear stained face in the mirror. She was void of emotion as she began to take off what was left of her makeup.

Before long Ivy was curled up in her cozy bed—a bed that felt much too big for one person. As exhaustion washed over her, Ivy wished she could control her own mind so she wouldn't dream of Bucky.

Just across the hall was a broken man sitting on his freezing cold floor and trying with all his might to understand how he managed to sabotage every possibility of anything good in his life.

Although Ivy volunteering for Hydra bothered him, the logical side of him knew she had been young, naïve and out of options at the time. He could understand how Hydra could make themselves look appealing to an eleven year old who dreamed of being a hero.