Vulnerabilities Edge

Steel-blue eyes desperately searched for green, moving from side to side and back and forth rapidly. Where was she? The young woman? He tried to remember her name through the fog of waking Cryosleep. Shaali! That was it! She wasn't behind him, leaning over to aid in blocking pain receptors like she had so many times before since Hydra had brought her in. He continued to search, head-turning, soon drawn by an all too familiar sound. There she was, to his immediate left, fighting against her handlers, pushing, shoving, doing all she could to stop them from forcing her back into the contraption they'd built especially to hold her in place while she helped power their machines.

"No!" she cried. "Not him!" she was begging by now, watching in horror as it dawned on her exactly what the punishment would be for daring to break in and read up on the prisoner files. "Bucky, I'm sorry," she said, her voice breaking. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay," he managed, his voice low and hoarse, a look of questioning coming over his face. She had never called him by that name before. Shaali had always used his codename. The prisoner number he had been assigned was too cold a way for someone like her to ever address another person.

"You will do as you are ordered, Restorer or one of the other patients will suffer a far worse fate than him!"

Restorer. Hydra's callsign for an asset whom they forced to do everything that was against the very core of her existence.

Bucky watched the handler grab her chin, turning her head to look at him. "This one is now going to be the cause of your torture instead of blocking that oh so excruciating pain," he informed him, then letting go of Shaali and covering the distance between them. "And that pain is going to be nothing like you've ever experienced here before," he then motioned for the process to begin, their Winter Soldier pushed back against the chair.

As the magnetic clamps slid over his wrists, a button was pressed on the device in the Russian agent's hand, turning off the power restraining collar around Shaali's neck. "Take control of it now, Restorer," he ordered. "Or the next death will be on you."

The headpiece halo lowered, the only friend he had in this place whispering a last "I'm sorry," before she opened up her ability, sending electrical energy through the connections. The pain hit him so hard it forced him to close his eyes before the scream echoed around the room…

Bucky sat bolt upright, the partly wrapped blanket on the floor of the bedroom in the sparsely furnished studio apartment sliding further off, cold sweat dripping from a body dressed only in black boxer briefs. After a few moments to regain his bearings, his eyes narrowed, fists clenching, the frustration clear. Not again! Yet another nightmare and more broken sleep. Gaze falling on the digital bedside clock, he inwardly groaned at the hour, 3:17 am. Now 3:18 even as he was looking at it. He needed to talk to someone; the other half of his memory. Make sure all of it was real.

Bucky climbed to his feet and picked up the smartphone under the dimly lit lamp on the bedside table, moving over to sit on the black leather chair looking out at the city beyond the window. Resting a metal elbow on its sill he unlocked the device and began to navigate through trying to find his contacts. Maybe, had he not already been on edge, he'd have taken the time to figure it out but all he wanted was to hear one of the two familiar voices who could help calm him down.

"How the hell am I supposed to use this thing?!" he snapped, tapping at the icon on the screen, somehow aware not to be too rough lest he break it again. He was already on his third phone and had a feeling that if he couldn't get it to work this one would soon be crushed into tiny pieces within a metal hand as well.

The thought did cross his mind at this hour she'd be fast asleep, Bucky almost hesitating in another attempt he was sure had the connection open now. Maybe he should just suck it up and talk to her later on? After the ringtone rang out and turned into Shaali's voice telling him to try ringing back a second time before leaving a message, he hung up, laying the side of his head down just near his elbow, his forearm still at an angle above it and holding his phone.