Time to go

The Caged Bucky Bear

Unlike Clint, Bucky was wide awake and breathing ragged when Natasha found him. But just like Clint, there were dried tear trails on his cheeks.

He was sitting with his back pressed against the splitters of his cot and his hands curled into tight fists, so tight that his knuckles had lost their colour.

All their colour save for some drying blood and bruises. In fact ever visible part of Bucky was a different colour, he was a palette of bruises. Sickly yellows, deep purples, ashy greys, muddy browns and vague pine greens. It made Natasha morbidly amazed and sickened. A tiny voice in the back of her head asked where these bruises had come from, but she brushed it off. Bucky had torn his cell apart and he probably hadn't been that careful, many of those bruises could be from that.

Looking down on the man curled into himself below her, Natasha felt the letter in her pocket grow heavier. Maybe some words from an old friend could brighten his spirits a little.

As she shifted her body slightly to reach for the letter she heard the vent creak and Natasha stopped dead, her heart began to pound unevenly.

Calm down.

Even if Bucky hears you, he isn't going to hurt you. He never tried to and it is illogical to think he could ever reach you in the vent. Bucky isn't a monster.

Yet the raised scar on her stomach said otherwise.

He can't see you through the vent, stop freaking out.

Natasha spared a glance down and realized she had never been so wrong.

Bucky's ragged breathing had stopped, his head raised and his eyes had zeroed in directly on her. Like when prey spotted a predator on their tail a little too late.

This wasn't a look she excepted to see on the face of the once soulless Winter Soldier, one that looked absolutely terrified of any other human. Natasha understood to a degree why Bucky looked so unsettled, but it wasn't like he was back in Hydra's clutches, nothing could be worse than what they had done- and then she saw his mouth.

Bucky's lips had been torn apart.

An angry cherry red was splattered from cheek to cheek and they were swollen so large it looked as if someone had been repeatedly hitting at them for hours. Yet it wasn't the worst, Natasha almost choked when she noticed the angry parallel lines slicing across them.

Burn marks.

Someone had out an branding iron to Bucky's lips. And not just once. Repeatedly.

Natasha was horrified, those marks hadn't been there when they had seen Bucky earlier. That meant he didn't acquire them before SHIELD had captured him. And those bruises, god, she should've saw it before, she knew it all too well from missions that had gone south and ended in torture. Natasha swallowed back bile, could SHIELD agents really be this cruel?

Could SHIELD agents stoop to the level of hydra torturers, the men branded as insane,twisted monsters?

And would they do it to Clint if she didn't get him out?

Natasha pushed those thoughts down. This wasn't a time to get sentimental or emotional, she had a job to do.

"Sergeant Barnes." Natasha said evenly.

Referring to Bucky by his rank was a tactic Natasha adopted from Coulson. It helped soldiers from losing their cool, reminding them who they were and how they should act. Clint had down it to her a couple times in Budapest.

Below her she saw Bucky frown then speak and as he did Natasha tried to ignore his blood stained teeth.

"I haven't been that in a very long time. Who are you and how did you know me?"