Flesh and Bone ◇ Bucky Barnes ◇

XXIII: No Strings

Joana

"Joana?"
"What?" 
"Pierce wants to see you."
"That's good for him." 
"Give me that. Pierce demands to see you, now."
"I refuse to be in a room alone with that Devil." 
"You won't be alone. I'll be there."
"What does he need me for?"
Natalia paused, pressed her lips into a thin line. She turned Joana's handmade shiv in her hands. 
"He wants you to be there for Doctor Salazar's execution." Natalia expected Joana to shut down, to look away from her, to restate that she didn't want to go. Instead, she perked up like a dog that just caught the scent of a wounded fox. 
"Well then, what are we waiting for?" Joana stood, but Natalia grabbed her wrist and pulled her back to her bed. 
"Can't you think about this for a second, Joana? Doctor Salazar was your friend-"
"No, he wasn't, Natalia. A friend would never do what he did."
"You have to understand, Joana, he did what he had to do to survive. Not everyone can survive just because the head of HYDRA has taking a liking to them. Salazar had to do what Pierce told him to, otherwise he would have died. You understand that, don't you?" Natalia was hoping to force some kind of emotion on Joana. Joana spent the last two weeks in this cell, alone. Natalia was her only visitor. For the past two weeks, Joana had shown little in the way of emotion. 
"I would never do what he did. I would never knowingly destroy a friend's life for my own," Joana told her, jaw tight. Natalia sighed, a gentle smile on her face. 
"Not everyone is as selfless as you. Some of us have to do nasty things to survive, even to ones we love," Natalia told her. Joana scoffed. 
"As if I haven't shed my amount of blood, Natalia. You and I, we have killed people, sure. Some of them didn't deserve it, but would you ever, ever betray Barnes. Or me?"
"No." 
"No, you wouldn't. Exactly. I don't care that we weren't friends when he did it. I don't care that Pierce would have killed him. I. Don't. Care. I want to see him dead." Natalia knew, from the determination in Joana's voice, that there was no way she could sway her from going.
"Alright. Follow me."
Natalia lead Joana out of her cell. Joana squinted against the bright lights as she left. Walking down the halls, Joana got every kind of look; admiration, hatred, disgust, fear. She paid no mind to any of the other people as she passed them, no matter how they were looking at her. Natalia opened the door to the torture room, which apparently doubled as an execution chamber. As she entered, painful memories of her beating flashed across her mind. She cringed and marched forwards.
Pierce stood in the middle of the room, Bucky and Karpov by his side. Doctor Salazar was on his knees in front of Pierce. Tears made streaks down his face. He looked worse than he had when Joana last saw him in the training room, the day he told her all the damage he had ensued. He was thinner now, stripped of his lab coat and most of his clothes for that matter. He was bleeding from more places than Joana could count. She couldn't possibly imagine what he had told them.
When he saw her, his eyes lit up.
"Oh, Joana. Please, please, tell him not to kill me. Please." Spit mixed with tears and blood and snot as he begged for his life. Joana clenched her jaw. She thought seeing him like this would give her some kind of emotional response, but all she felt was revulsion. She took her gaze away from his, and directed her attention to Pierce.
"Why did you call me here?" She asked, deadpan. He held out a gun. 
"I thought you would like to do the honors," he said, an almost apologetic half smile on his face. If Joana thought him capable of any kind of apologetic feelings, or any feelings at all, she might have seen the gesture for what it was, a peace offering. However, she only saw it as an opportunity. She took little to no time to stride across the room and take the gun from his hand. She pointed the gun against Salazar's head. He blubbered something incoherent, tears running down his face. It was nice to see someone else crying for once. 
"Joana, please, think about this!" Natalia said from across the room. Concern was written all over her face. "Revenge won't change anything."
"True. But it sure as hell will feel good." She cocked the gun. 
"P...please...Jo...Joana," Salazar begged. She grabbed his hair and pulled his head back so he was looking up at her. She was going to say something, but nothing came to mind. She had spent a majority of the past decades crying, but right now, with the tip of a gun pointed at the head of someone she thought was her friend, she found that she had no tears to shed. 
"Joana." Natalia's voice was soft, but shaking. Joana didn't dare look up at her. "Please, listen to me. If you do this, you will regret it forever."
Joana looked at Salazar's pitiful, sobbing face for a few more seconds. 
"I don't care." 
Natalia gasped as the gun went off, the sound ricocheting off of the walls. Salazar's body jerked to the side, his blood and brains exploding out of his head. Blood splattered against the floor. No one was looking, but had they been, they would have seen Bucky flinch, his eyes closing for just barely longer than a blink as he turned his face away. His hands were clamped tightly together behind him. Karpov had a cruel smile on his face. Pierce wiped a few speckles of blood off of his grey suit jacket. 
"Well done, Joana," he said softly beside her. 
Joana was stone faced. She lowered the smoking gun to her side. She let the blood on her face burn her skin. Her chest tightened. Natalia was right, it didn't change anything. She still didn't care. She pressed the gun into Pierce's chest, her smoldering eyes meeting his. 
"Don't think for a second that this changes anything," she seethed. She stepped away from him, over Salazar's body. She didn't even stop to notice that she had stepped in his blood and every step she took left a crimson footprint behind. Natalia followed her as she left the room. 
On her way back to her cell, the looks people gave her were now all the same; complete terror. She stared straight ahead, her eyes as dead as the man she had just executed. They saw the blood on her face and on her shoes and on her clothes. They smelled the gunpowder. They had all heard the gunshot. They knew what she had done. 
No one stood in her way as she walked.