salvation ; 𝐛. 𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐬 , 𝟐

024. the gap in the armor

I AM PREPARED to die here, my subconscious reminded me of my previous vow to Bucky.

But as he stood there, across from me with unseeing eyes and a blank face, I wasn't sure if I was truly...well, if I was really ready for that kind of commitment.

There was something in his gaze that frightened me. It wasn't the blankness in his stare that got to me, it was the emptiness that cut a hole in my chest. The Bucky I'd known and fallen in love with had a vibrance to his every word and movement, something that this man lacked as he stood in front of me.

His words echoed in my head. He'd addressed someone. Or...something. 53. What did it mean? Was it a person? And...it sounded like they were in his head. How was that even possible? I knew Hydra was smart, but I didn't expect Cerberus to be even more clever with their torture devices.

I wanted to ask, but I had no chance of receiving an answer. I half expected him to kill me as carrying out the order, but I was only slightly surprised when he didn't even look at me again, marching straight for the door.

"The door's not open," I managed to warn him(for what purpose, I wasn't sure). "You're gonna walk right into the door, Buck."

But he wasn't listening. Not to me, anyway. He was listening to the voice in his head, whoever—or whatever, I shuddered—that was.

As if on cue, the heavy door swung open, right in time for Bucky to slip through the widening crack and into the corridor. The guard that opened it seemed surprised that he was so prepared, but with barely a glance at me, the door was slammed shut again.

There was nothing else for me to do but wait. I had nobody to contact, and no way of knowing what the fuck was going on up on the surface of this goddamn compound. I was a sitting duck. Again.

As the hours went by, I could only think of Cara. And my brother, and Sam, and Steve, and the others. I felt like I should shed a tear or two for them, their fate unknown to me. But I was either empty of all emotion or I believed them to be dead already, proving my tears useless.

They were dead. My gut told me. It was just me, the sole survivor to save Bucky from this lifetime of hell on Earth.

I could have just as easily been killed, though, forced to join my friends in the ground in an unmarked grave. But instead, I was subjected to this torture of being in the presence of a shell of the man I loved, a constant reminder of what I would never get back.

Not never, my subconscious scolded me. Never say never.

"God, I sound like Justin Bieber and Jaden Smith up there," I groaned softly in the silence. My voice had shrunken over the many, many days I'd been there, unable to speak to the one other person in here.

I suppose that's the whole point of my being here, though, I thought, for torture. Mine and Bucky's.

It was probably a few more hours until he returned to the room, his clothes not quite as bloody as they had been before. Even so, the cuffs of his shirt were spotted with crimson, sending a chill hurtling down my spine. With heavy steps, he trudged to the off-shooting half of our cell, retreating behind the wall.

To me, it seemed like he was going to just hide out there, like a hibernating animal. But then he came back out, his hands clasped tightly in front of him. I'd seen him pace a few times before, but he was furiously walking back and forth along the length of the room. His knuckles were white from the tight grip he held, the circulation cutting off in his hands.

All the other times he'd done things like this, like a minor freak out(or whatever a one hundred-year-old super soldier could count as one), I'd been able to read his facial expression, whether it was filled with confusion, emptiness, or a morbid kind of satisfaction.