Leave Me Broken [Winter Soldier] II

Gives Me Hope [Chapter 22]

"You know, hope is a mistake. If you can't fix what's broken, you'll go insane." 

Mad Max in "Mad Max: Fury Road" 

           The clouds grew thicker every minute, an ominous dark grey where as not long ago they had been flying through clear skies. Every second that ticked on, they were so much closer to the one place Ophelia never wanted to find herself back inside. Of course there were no HYDRA members still running the place, she was sure of it, but there was something far worse inside. Each time it crossed her mind, she squirmed a little bit in her seat, until it got so bad that Bucky noticed. He noticed all the little things she did, but his own mind was thoroughly distracted, and it took him quite some time to realize Ophelia's current state.

          "A lot of good people were left behind today, people we needed with us," he said in a dark tone, his voice quiet. Steve's head turned ever so slightly in the pilot seat, listening to what Bucky had to say. Ophelia had her eyes focused on her hands, which were tightly tucked between her knees now. "We're short-handed, and we need all the help we can get. I want you by my side, but not in this fight."

          She turned her big green eyes in his direction, realizing that he didn't know what she was capable of, and it was time to tell him. Her hands moved to the buckles that crossed over her chest in an X shape, and clutched onto the metal at the center of it, just over her chest. "I know I'm not as strong as you, as fast as you, as smart as you. I can never catch up to you, there are things that I know I'm not capable of."

         "O..." He didn't like hearing her put herself down like this.

         "I'm not done," she informed him, and took a deep breath. "Before you came into my life, I knew that I was going to die in the very base we're heading to right now. I didn't think I'd live to twenty-five years old with everything they put inside of me and everything they did to me. You taught me something I didn't even know existed; hope that I would make it, and I think that was one of the things that kept me alive all those years. Even when we forgot who one another was, we still looked out for each other, like you did with the Death Squad. If these last two years have taught me anything, it's that I'm not only what HYDRA made me. Part of me will always be what they've done to me, part of me will be what you've shown me, and what you -Steve- have shown me. Everyone I've ever met outside of HYDRA has shown me that I can be something different, something better."

           "I thought I saw something different in the way you moved, today at the airport." Bucky had a smile on his lips, a real one.

          Ophelia smiled, loosening her grip on her buckles and placing her hands in her lap. She played with her fingers, the jitter refusing to leave her. "The perfect example. I know there are parts of me still buried, and today just proved it. There are going to be things about me that I don't want to know, and might never know, but I am hoping that after all this, given that we are still alive, I need to know who I am. It was Wanda who opened my mind up to new reaches; I discovered something about myself that HYDRA did a very good job of hiding."

          Bucky's eyebrows were narrowed, pulled in at the center, his smile gone as he tried to figure out what Ophelia was getting at. He had believed, up until now, that her speech was about discovering goodness inside of her, not new powers. And yet, this did not upset him, he was eager to learn exactly what she was capable of. Ophelia was like a flower in the dead of winter; something so rarely seen, and yet it was such a stunning sight that it made anyone stop dead in their tracks. To Bucky, Ophelia was a woman who stood out in so many ways, but had not grasped that about herself yet. Too many things in her life had shoved her back into the shadows, and finally the light was shining down on her, allowing her to bloom at last.