Mosaic (Bucky Barnes X OC / Winter Soldier x OC)

Chapter 10: Bucky Barnes - Reflections in the Windows (Part II)

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"What's in the arm?" I questioned warily, taking a peek at the screen to find it filled with what looked to be chemical formulas.

She stayed silent. Only the smallest involuntary wince managed to seep through a rather blank mask.

"Valeriy?"

"Apparently me and Hydra think the same? We have the same fucking fail secure plan. Ayers Corp.... We use explosives too."

"...There's a bomb in the arm...."

"Sorry."

I shook my head. "You weren't the one who put it there."

"If I were, it'd be totally simple to remove. I'd know all the traps and triggers," she joked, switching back to the first device and twirling a marker between her fingers. "Mind if I draw on your arm? It'll come off. I'm going to just pinpoint where the things are. Better than digging around mostly blind?"

I merely rolled the shoulder in response for her to go on. For every beep of the silver box in her hand, a little symbol was drawn onto a plate. Meticulously working her way up the arm.

"There's a bomb in the monitors," I pieced together after nine minutes.

Having to move the bracelet away from the arm. What she said. There had to be explosives in them.

Valeriy winced, peering up at me, and that confirmed it. "Oh hey, they're not for you. Got nothing to do with you. They're for me. All these bracelets are made for me."

"Why would you need a bomb?"

"For the most part, it's a fail secure plan? If something of ours ends up where it shouldn't be, we can just dispose of it. Lessen the chances of someone getting my personal info through these bracelets. We can set off the small one, and I'll probably get away less burned than trying to bake? Half of these tools are rigged up too. Even the detector I'm using has stuff that goes kaboom."

"The small one," I repeated, picking up on her word choice, and glanced at the thing wrapped around my wrist. "There's more than one...."

"There's a much louder and destructive one? It has its uses. In need of a distraction, it's loud as fuck. Get stuck in a room or something, blow my way out. Probably makes escaping easier?"

"You're going to get yourself killed."

She laughed, shrugging. "Gramps made it so it never goes off unless we want it to. It's why we can use the small one to dispose of the bigger one harmlessly. If you're feeling wary of the explosives, I can remove the ones in the bracelet while I'm at this."

"No... Better keep it," I muttered. "If I lose control, it would be a simple way to deal with me."

Valeriy looked up from the arm, staring almost blankly at me. "...Bucky, we're not going to blow you up. Not even as a last resort."

I had no response to that, looking away from her when she reached up for my face. Her hand hovered in the air between us. I refused to look away from the television, where two men were trying to escape an old frontier jail with a horse of all things. Wasn't working in their favor.

A couple of tense seconds later, I felt the marker tip gliding across the plates of the shoulder. Silently, she pulled me away from the headboard to draw on the back. She didn't settle behind me, merely rose onto her knees. Probably so I could tell she wasn't doing more than just drawing on the arm from the way her body moved.