Flesh and Bone ◇ Bucky Barnes ◇

XXII: Bloodlust

Joana

It would have been kinder for the Doctor to hit Joana repeatedly in the chest with a baseball bat. Her breath got caught in her throat. Her nose burned, eyes stinging, jaw trembling. She go of his hand and leaned backwards.
"What?" The word came out just above a whisper. It sent shivers up the Doctor's spine. He could see something in her eyes, something he had never seen before.
"When you came to the Medical Ward after what happened with Pierce..." Salazar couldn't say the words. He was afraid to. Joana's body showed no signs of grief or sorrow. He could tell by the way her hands curled around the bench, the way her knuckles turned white, the way her entire body trembled, she was not sad. She was enraged. Far beyond that.
"What happened?" Her shout came out like Dragon fire; burning hot, terrifying, unquenchable. Doctor Salazar found himself cowering in front of this woman. He could feel the heat of her wrath. Her brown eyes, that had always held a calming feeling for him, were now alight with burning hatred.
"We tried to do everything we could to save the both of you, but, Joana, you died. There was nothing we could do." Salazar felt like he was pleading, for what, he didn't know. His life? Maybe. Her forgiveness? More likely. Joana looked away from him and back at the ground, her hands on the bench the only thing keeping her grounded and away from killing him.
"I asked Pierce if it was even possible. He told me everything. And contraceptives aren't always 100%. He knew the risk he was taking." The Doctor's voice was soft, yet timid. He was afraid. Joana was too blinded by her anger that she couldn't even register the hurt in his voice. "There's more."
She snapped her head up, startling him.
"What more could you have possibly done?" Her eyes were filled with tears and sparking flames.
Doctor Salazar looked at his shaking hands.
"Pierce, he didn't want to risk it happening again." He paused.
"What did you do?"
"While you were still recovering from being dead, we- I sterilized you."
The fire in Joana's eyes was doused by the only thing that could quench a fire so hot; the loss of something you could never get back. The red hot aura that enclosed her just seconds before turned to a freezing blue. She stopped seeing red. Her mouth hung up, her face slowly turning to the ground. She let go of the bench, tears growing in her eyes. Her lips quivered as if she was trying to form words, but no sound came from her mouth. She put her forehead in her hands, resting her elbows against her knees.
Joana started to sob. Breathy, utterly heart broken sounds came from her body. Salazar sat there, unsure what to do, tears of his own in his eyes. She pressed one of her shaking hands against her mouth, trying to stop the sobbing, but there was nothing she could do. Every time she opened her mouth it felt like she was going to vomit.
She felt so lost. Someone had a hold of her heart and was squeezing with all their might. Someone had a hold of her neck, not allowing her to breathe. She forgot the Doctor was there. She didn't know what to do with her hands. She couldn't stop them from shaking.
Doctor Salazar reached out to touch her trembling shoulders.
"Joana, I'm so-"
Before he even got close to her, Joana had grabbed his wrist and had thrown him to the ground. The flame had returned, and Salazar was going to burn.
"You let them do this to me!" She screamed at him, pressing him into the floor. "You did this to me!"
She started to beat his chest with her closed fists. She wanted to tear him to shreds, she wanted to pull out his eyes, she wanted to make him eat his own tongue. She wanted to break every single bone in his body. She wanted to make him feel the pain she was feeling, but there was no way he possibly could. She moved her strikes to his face, hitting him over and over, but her punches were weak. Her grief was stronger than her anger, and her attacks suffered from that.
"I trusted you!" That was quite possibly the thing that hurt the most. She had trusted him. She hadn't ever considered him a friend, per say, but she trusted him, nonetheless, and he betrayed her in a way that he could never make up for.
"Joana, I'm so sorry."
She stopped hitting him, and looked into his green eyes. They used to hold security for her. Being around him meant he was safe. He would protect her from Pierce like no one else could. He would make sure she was safe and unharmed. Now all she could see in his eyes was a traitor.
"I don't care," she seethed. She grabbed his shoulders and started slamming his head in the ground repeatedly, yelling with rage each time she did so.
The thought of accidentally killing him didn't even cross her mind until a metal arm wrapped around her waist and hoisted her off of him.
"Joana, stop," Bucky's gruff voice said in her ear as he pulled her away. "Joana, that's enough."
"No!" She screamed. Bucky pulled her far away from the Doctor. She turned herself around and started pounding her fists against Bucky's chest, trying to break free of his grip.
"Let me go! Let me go!" Tears rolled mercilessly down her face, like a river with a never ending supply of rain water.
"Enough, Joana! That's enough." He grabbed her hands with one of his own, keeping his metal arm around her waist so she couldn't hurt the Doctor anymore than she already had. "That's enough."
She looked in his eyes, sniffing and small sobs coming from her mouth. He let her wrists go and put his other arm around her, no longer trying to keep her away from the Doctor, but doing everything he could to keep her there with him. He held her close, her sobs shaking both his body as well as her own. He thought that if he hugged her tight enough, he could make the pain go away. He didn't understand why his heart hurt so much, hearing her cry in such a way. Knowing that Joana could never have kids made him think of a time when there was a girl he imagined having a family with one day, once the war was over. He remembered giving his sister a ring to keep hold of. But who was it for?
Joana let out a cry of anguish before she went suddenly rigid. The sobbing stopped, the shaking stopped, she was completely still.
"I'm going to kill him," she said, an unbreakable determination set in her voice. "I'm going to kill Alexander Pierce."