A Birdie Lost in Time | Bucky Barnes

|7|

When she'd awoken, she had no idea she was in a new location. In truth, it'd taken her a few hours to realize she was in a new cell. This one had a cot, and the toilet was in a different corner.

She figured at first, it was just a different room in whatever base she'd been kept at before, but it was different. The floor, the walls, the sounds. Although she never saw the building she was in before, this one felt... low. Like a basement or a sublevel. She wasn't sure how she could tell, but she was almost certain she was underground.

That wasn't much help though, it didn't give her any information to go off of, like how far from Pym particles she was, or how she would possibly get back to that S.H.I.E.L.D. base.

Another terrifying thought.

One that she did her best from overtaking her, although the pit of helplessness grew.

And it grew for what felt was years without the help of a clock, light, or schedule to keep her temporally positioned.

The only time she came in 'contact' with anyone, was when the slat beneath the door slid open for food.

It was no longer hard tack, but some type of loaf that Marlow was pretty sure had meat in it, but she couldn't be sure. It was bland and dense and every once in a while, she'd get a hard chunk of fat that would make her gag.

She'd always hated the chewiness of fat.

So, she tried to let her worries be of the little things; the nasty chunks of fat in her loaf, the lumpiness of the mattress, the inability to scroll through Twitter.

If she focused on those things, the thoughts of being stranded in 1970 were pushed to the peripheral and she could continue being naïve.

Because she was getting out of there. She just hadn't figured out how yet.

⁂

She decided that it had only been a week since she'd arrived when the cell door finally opened.

A week because she could mentally deal with a week. She knew she'd been fed at least seven times, but no more than fifteen based on the paper cups she piled into triangle towers near the door. A week, because if she pretended that these people weren't complete monsters, she could say they fed her at least twice a day. Right?

Right.

A nagging at the back of her head reminded her that they were, in fact, monsters, and they most certainly hadn't fed her twice a day—let alone once a day—but she held her calculation.

The words barked outside her door though, were another issue entirely.

What Cold War era groups in the America would be speaking Russian?

Fanatics, she suggested to herself.

Fanatics who followed Hydra and who are camped out in America and awaiting orders. Because that made more sense than her being in Russia. That made the ball of anxiety in her stomach calm down a little.

"Good morning, ptichka," a dark haired man drawled as he walked into the cell, eyes landing on the spot where Marlow sat against the wall.

"Finally," she wheezed, voice rough from disuse, "I've been waiting to place my breakfast order for hours."

Interestingly, the man laughed, apparently amused by her antics. "I heard you were... boltlivyy, that you talk too much, but never say the right things. Lippy, I think the word is in English."