Flesh and Bone ◇ Bucky Barnes ◇

Chapter XXXVI: Paper Wings

Joana

Alarms blared overhead. Lights flickered as the three sprinted down the halls towards Sub-level 5, east wing. That's where Sharon said Bucky would be, so that's where they were going. They arrive at the chamber where Bucky was being held. Soldiers lay on the ground, out cold. The cage in which they had been keeping Bucky was broken open from the inside. 

Joana's heart dropped to her stomach. 

"Oh, God, no." 

"Help me. Help," a man said form the floor. Steve walked over and picked him off the ground, pushing him against the wall. 

"Who are you? What do you want?" Steve asked as Sam and Joana wearily walked around the room

"To see an empire fall." 

Joana saw Bucky out of the corner of her eye, but she knew, as soon as she saw him, that it wasn't Bucky. He jumped towards Sam, who had his back turned. 

"Sam!" Joana yelled. Sam barely managed to duck out of the way of Bucky's metal arm before it hit him across the face. Sam crawled across the ground and away from Bucky as he pulled his arm from the wall. Joana rushed at Bucky, but he caught her by the throat and threw her across the room into the wall. Joana's head cracked against the back of the wall. 

"Joana!" 

Joana hit the ground with a thud, her head spinning, her eyes fuzzing and unseeing. She tried to shake away the numbness in her fingers and toes and bring her vision back, but, by the time she did, Sam and the man were both gone and Bucky had Steve backed against an elevator. Struggling to stand, Joana watched Bucky push Steve down the elevator shaft and turn to run away. 

Finally on her feet, Joana staggered over to the elevator shaft and looked down. She could barely see Steve at the bottom. 

"You good?" She asked him. 

"Yeah. You?" 

"Yeah." 

"You need to stop him. Don't let him leave." 

"Got it." 

Joana turned away from the elevator, shaking away the double vision. She made her way through the halls of the base, her head pounding and a buzzing in her ears, but she didn't let it stop her. Bucky needed her, now more than ever. She couldn't let him escape, not like this. 

Running towards all the commotion, she caught sight of Natasha and Sharon, getting ready to charge Bucky. She ran towards them. 

"Three against one," Sharon said, "We should be able to take him." 

Joana and Natasha both scoffed and the three of them charged. 

Sharon attacked first with a knee to Bucky's chest. She got one punch in before Bucky flipped her over and into a table. Joana grabbed his wrist as he raised it to punch the already groaning Sharon. He turned around, trying to back hand her, but Joana knew his moves all to well to allow that to happen. She grabbed his other wrist as he tried. 

"It's me, James," she said through grit teeth. "It's your Partner." 

Bucky glowered at her, but there was a flicker of almost something in his eyes. 

He tore his wrists from her and the two engaged in what seemed like synchronized fighting, as if they had practicing these same moves their entire lives. Neither could land a proper punch on the other. Natasha, seeing an opportunity as he was distracted. Then Bucky was dealing with both Joana and Natasha, though neither had true intent of hurting him, while his intent was to kill. He finally got a clear hit on Joana, right on the bullet scar on her stomach. She groaned in pain and he saw a weakness in her knee where Pierce had broken her leg with a crowbar all those many years ago. Joana fell to the ground with a cry just as Natasha stood, wiping blood from her mouth.