The ghosts we hide (Winter Soldier x OC)

Sixty five

Nyx POV

Once when I was seven they made me clean a torture suite after a session. It wasn't a punishment, I was just too young to be useful for anything else. There was blood everywhere - great pools of it soaking the floor, red splatter decorating the otherwise endless expanse of grey metal. Walls, ceiling, door, everywhere.

The bleach made my hands burn after only a few minutes. No gloves were given, not in Hydra. It was hard to breathe through the fumes and the thick smell of death, the work having me sweating and panting almost immediately.

The blood got everywhere, coating my legs and arms, as well as my face and hair, finding every tiny crevice on my exposed skin and lodging itself there, refusing to become unstuck. By the end I found myself both cursing the man the crimson liquid had come from and wishing I were him. Nothing could be worse than spending hours cleaning perpetually dirty metal until it shined.

I think about that now as I watch my own blood soil the floor beneath my feet, stuck on the memory. I watch it drip, a continuous flow escaping from my nose, running over the contours of my lips like a mountain river before falling off the cliff of my chin. It pools like a lake under me, supplied by the man made waterfall of my broken nose.

The flow is disrupted momentarily as a fist makes contact with my stomach, sending me swaying backward on the chains that bind my hands above my head. Originally, if I stretched, my toes could touch the ground. Now they hang limply under me.

I cough, red droplets flying through the air but missing the man in front of me. It takes my lungs less time than I expect to figure out how to inhale again, but maybe they learn after being continuously knocked empty of oxygen. Practise makes perfect and all.

My mouth hangs open as I begin to settle on the chains, ignoring the metallic taste on my tongue in favour of gulping down oxygen. I don't realise my head is resting on my chest until a hand yanks it upwards by the hair, hot breath letting me know someone's face is inches from mine.

His face is a distant blur, as if I'm looking at him from deep underwater. My vision swims, threatening to fade to black with every distant beat of my heart.

I don't register that my chin has hit my chest again, hair released, until my growing red puddle comes back into view. I watch, mesmerised, as it ripples with each new offering of blood.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

I'm not expecting the next punch. The fist hits me lower than before, right in the softest part of my abdomen and I gag. The bile that I've been keeping tightly contained at the back of my throat finally overflows, burning liquid making my eyes water as it escapes my mouth. I retch a second time, purely from the taste.

There's a grunt of disgust but I'm too past it to care. Instead I spit out the remnants of what's just left my stomach, unbothered as it manages to stick to my chin, taking what feels like a year to finally head gravity's instructions and join the red pool beneath me.

The poor person who has to clean that up.

The ground suddenly seems like it's rushing up to meet me. I realise that it's because my hands are free of their chains, a pair of arms catching my slowly collapsing body in a rough embrace. More hands find my other shoulder, getting a firm grip before I'm dragged between two shining pairs of boots.