Weaponised

6

James Barnes

The first notion I have of her awakening is the pants of pained breathing, sounding out into the room. They're not mine so they must be hers. Then, to top it all off, there's a very British sounding "Bollocks," from her direction.

"Rik?" I break the already broken silence, turning over as much as I can to look at her. She swears again.

"Bucky? Is that you?" Rikki tries to push herself to face me, but it only results in a muted, groaning scream and more swearing. Man, I love Brits.

"Yeah, it's me. What... What did they do to you?"

"I... I have absolutely no idea. But it hurts, Bucky, it hurts so much, it still hurts..." she trails off. I feel my expression darken into anxiousness and anguish. "I think it's some kind of experiment, and we're... We're the lab rats." I find myself oddly unsurprised that the Nazi's- HYDRA's- version of experimentation is more like torture than science. At least science has willing volunteers.

"Bucky?" Rikki says after a few moments of tentative quiet.

"Yeah?"

"Tell me about yourself?" that I wasn't expecting to hear. "I'd like to know something about the man I've led into Hell."

I argue that she didn't; "I chose to become a soldier just as much as you did. This isn't your fault."

She sighs.

"'Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred',"

Rikki says in her what I've started to call 'quoting' voice. It's clearly part of a poem- the rhythm reflects that.

"I feel like I should know what that is," I admit awkwardly. Rikki quotes things kind of a lot, I've noticed, but I never have any idea what they are. I automatically assume Shakespeare, to be fair, with the Brits.

"The Charge of the Light Brigade, by Alfred Lord Tennyson," she wriggles and winces, trying to look over at me. Her eyes finally come my way, bloodshot and tearful. There's a trickle of too-red blood from the corner of her lips but her neck is swathed in the stains of the same ichor. "It's a poem."

"Yeah, I guessed as much," I smile lazily, trying to keep the mood as cheerful as I possibly can. They're going to take me soon, I know, but I refuse to show the most courageous woman I know my fear. Rikki asks me again to tell her, and I agree, starting up with the tale of a headstrong, caring playboy who looked out for a small, equally headstrong and caring asthmatic orphan.

I tell her the tale of a boy wanting to become a hero, a boy that gives up everything for adventure (although he didn't really think it'd end up here). Finally, I tell her the tale of a boy who would die to protect his friends.

I tell her... I tell her me.

*

Steve Rogers

Peggy is amazing. She managed to get me a plane. A plane! An actual plane to get to Austria- and it's piloted by none other than Howard Stark, so I am in the company of two of the greatest people in this century, on the way to rescue a lot of soldiers. What could go wrong?

"The HYDRA camp is in Krausberg, tucked between these two mountain ranges," Peggy tells me, illustrating it on a map. "It's a factory of some kind."

"We should be able to drop you right on the doorstep," Howard adds.