Never be the same (Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier)

Chapter 7

"Every person has a breaking point. With the right words, they'll break like glass."

Waking up was painful. I didn't want to wake up, because my nightmares had the tendency to become real when I woke up. This time didn't seem to be any different.

"She's awake," I heard someone say, obviously talking about me.

I wanted to extend my arms in front of me, since all of my muscles felt strained. Though as soon as I went to do that, I felt a sharp pain coming from my wrists and I couldn't help the gasp that escaped from my mouth with that. My eyes immediately flew open and I was met by eight pairs of eyes on me.

"Now now, little fighter, you don't want to hurt yourself any further, do you now?" the man, who had talked to me on my first day, stepped closer to me now.

"Like you care about what I want," I said back almost immediately.

"I do in fact," he said taking another step closer to me, so he was now right in front of me, "I do care about what you want, otherwise I wouldn't give you a chance to work with us willingly."

"Funny way of getting yourself employees." I thought out loud.

"Oh no, you see usually people work with us fairly easily. You though, you seem to be the exception," he paused and crouched down in front of me to get on my eye level, "what I would like to know is, why is that?"

"Maybe because you kidnapped me from my own home, beat me up and tortured me," I said back sarcastically, "or is that some casual thing, that I just haven't experienced before?"

"Sarcasm and talking back, is not something that gets you far in this industry," he answered back calmly. Too calmly for my liking. "What were you dreaming about by the way? You seemed to have a pretty vivid dream there."

I was not gonna tell him that all his videos had got to me. That his videos made me dream about my closest friends and my family being tortured like that. It hurt enough already, he didn't need to know what I felt and thought.

So instead of answering I pulled on my restraints harder than ever before. They didn't break obviously, the only thing that probably broke were my wounds that I tore open once again, it hurt like hell and I could definitely feel fresh blood flowing from my ankles and wrists. But I also got the satisfaction to see the man jump back a bit from me. I had obviously caught him off guard by doing that and that only made me smirk a bit to myself.

My smirk faded from my face as soon as I saw him coming towards me and smacking me straight across my jaw, which made my chair fall backwards, resulting on me hitting the back of my head at the ground, hard.

I yelped in pain. Not only my ankles and wrists were bleeding now, the back of my head was killing me and I wouldn't have been surprised if it was bleeding, but also I had received another blow to my jaw in the past two days and it hurt like a bitch.

"No asset, pick her back up now." I heard the man say with force, he didn't seem to like the way things were going so far.

The asset seemed to be quick to obey whatever he was being told. His metal arm reached towards the back of my chair and he pulled me up with it in one swift motion. I couldn't help but look at him with the most hateful stare that I could manage, which didn't seem to faze him even the slightest seeing as his eyes remained the same as the first time I had seen them.

"I'm sorry about him, but as you see it's not smart to threaten me." the old man stood before me once again with fake sincerity laced in his words.

I bit down on my lip to not let another snarky comment slip out. Frankly, my head wasn't feeling the best because of the fall, wait no scratch that, no part of my body was feeling good thanks to what it had been through.

"I'll untie you now, better not try anything stupid, yeah?" the man told me and started to untie my restraints.

I looked around the room while he was busy with my restraints. There were seven men inside the room, but they were all facing me. I knew that behind me was the door and no one seemed to be guarding that. It was my last chance to escape, I mean even if they caught me now, I bet they would be too mad at me to want me to work for them anymore, so they'll probably just kill me or something. It sounded like a fairly good plan in my head if I'm being honest. It's either I do it or I die trying.

So as soon as he got my left hand open I shot up and ran. Crap, I wasn't expecting my legs to be so weak, but I had to keep running. I had to.

All of a sudden I felt someone grab me by my throat and slam me against the wall.I didn't even need to look at the person, to know it was him. He's cold metal arm tightened his hold around my throat and then I couldn't feel the floor anymore. He had pushed me up from the floor and I felt his fingers press on my windpipe. I started kicking my legs frantically and grabbed his metal arm with my own hands, trying to pull him away from my throat. His blue eyes widened slightly at the sight of my hands above his, but I couldn't think about it for long. He stared me straight in the eyes and I returned his gaze as best as I could. I was starting to see black, my eyes welled up with tears and I pulled on his hand even harder.

"Please," was the only thing I could choke out, before the tears flowed freely down my face.

"That's enough!" I heard the man shout right before I hit the floor.

My hands flew straight up to my throat and I gasped for air, my lungs were burning from the sudden change of my breathing pattern. Tears were still flowing down my cheeks, I didn't really care much about them, I was just trying to catch my breath.

"I told you not to try anything stupid, didn't I?" the man came and crouched down in front of me, I just shot him the best death glare I could manage.

"Oh, why do you have to be so stubborn?" he asked looking at me, "Okay, I guess we'll have to persuade you in another way then." I noticed a small smirk make its way across his face.