Saving Bucky (Bucky Barnes x Reader)

Chapter 71 - Praying

You've never felt exhaustion like this. 

The drowsiness is so heavy it takes a moment to even feel the cold. Once you do, your lashes flutter open to find your breath unfurling in opaque, white clouds. You wake to find nothing but a cement ceiling above, lit by thin, yellow filaments. 

"Oh shit," you curse, knocking the cobwebs from your aching head and taking in your surroundings. 

You're in a cell. 

Fear clouds your thoughts, but it quickly dissipates as you realize that if you're in here, then Clint must have kept his promise.

He went for James. 

You sigh in relief and turn your attention to your own predicament. Throwing a hand out behind you, you push against the cement wall to move to the edge of your bed, but cringe as your hand pulls away wet. The wall is damp. Paired with the cold, you're likely underground. Deep underground.

"Ugh," you groan, wiping your hand on your pants as you squint into the room, trying to make out the details. It's too dark to really see anything - those little wires running across the ceiling provide barely enough light to make out anything other than a single metal table with two chairs that sit juxtapose each other in the middle of the room.

"Wait a damn minute," you mutter under your breath, brow furrowed as a small, blinking red light in the far upper corner of the room catches your attention. It's reflected in a long, thin mirror along the far wall that stretches from end to end.

And then there's you - laid to rest on a small, metal cot.

You know this layout. 

You're not in just any cell - you're in a Company interrogation cell. The same kind you had put James in once upon a time.

"Of course," you grumble to yourself, smacking your forehead with an open palm as a small grin accompanies a bitter chuckle. "Natasha would just love all this 'what comes around goes around' bullshit."

As you grumble to yourself, you let your eyes adjust to the dark, taking in every nook and cranny of the space. Although this room is meant to inspire fear, you almost feel...at home. And as each moment passes, you grow in your confidence. You know this routine. You know the game. You'll be okay - especially if they send in an interrogator. You just need time. Time to talk.

But as quiet minutes pass, your confidence turns to impatience, and impatience to anxiety. That bitter chuckle from earlier resurfaces, morphing into a manic giggle that grows, falling to the floor and bouncing across the concrete as it rolls towards the table. It swells and multiplies.

Until it snags on something. 

The sound dips, disappearing. Swallowed. And that easy feeling in your stomach evaporates when you spot where it has gone.

It's fallen down a drain in the middle of the room, beneath the metal table. A drain that's dark and stained around the slots.

Your smile vanishes. 

Drains like these aren't standard. 

This isn't an interrogation cell. This is an extraction cell. 

Cells like these are where the Company puts those they aren't planning to let go. You've used them before, on the rare occasion when you knew the asset was going to die regardless of the information they may or may not have. 

They save the cleaners some mess. 

Oh...fuck.

Your hands begin to shake. You reach instinctively for your pocket but find it empty. The bottle of pills you had slid into your jeans back at the park is gone.