Endless Winter (Bucky Barnes)

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Two: Close your eyes, it'll all be over soon.

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"Nein! I said be careful with her, saumensch!"
Jacklyn began to regain consciousness when she felt hands on her, followed my a rough German voice calling out toward her. Callous skin gripped her arms and it took her too long to realize what was happening.

"No! Don't touch her!"  Called out another man, he sounded desperate and fading, his voice quiet and trying.

This voice wasn't German, it was familiar, comforting and intimate.... she wanted to grab onto his voice and hold onto it. The hands around her were not as comforting, when it became clear to her that whoever grabbed her was not her friend, she started fighting. Disoriented, injured, and weak, she wasn't very affective. She tried kicking her the leg that wasn't mangled and twisted, but her movements were slow and ineffective. Her stupor was almost laughable to the German men.

Bucky was a few feet away from her, laying in the cold snow barely able to move himself.  Pain was singing an unholy song in his blood, desperation clawing at him. He could see the blood stains in the snow from his arm, Jack's leg, and god knows what. He stared from the ground as a man with dirty blonde hair with a swastika emblem on his jacket, with a hydra symbol below it, grab Jacklyn by her armpits and haul her upright as her head lulled to the side with little life. she blinked tiredly, her silver eyes widening as she realized a few seconds late what was happening.

Hydra was taking them again. The very people she'd been traumatized by, thought she'd escaped, had cried with happiness just to walk away from them, were taking her again.

He wanted to cry, to scream, to kill these people. He promised to keep her away from them, to keep her safe. His head was too light from the blood loss but still he tried to stand, to stumble toward her, but his attempts were in vain and led to him falling back into the snow. What good would fighting do anyway? He thought as he could do nothing but watch as Jacklyn used her good leg to kick at the man who held her now more securely with his arms under her back and knees, but her efforts were almost comical it was too slow. She was clearly barely able to keep her head up, her skin was whiter than the snow around them, and frozen blood caked her skin. He could see that teardrops were frozen to her cheeks, and her she'd begun to turn blue. He could even try to look at her look, bent in crude and gruesome ways.

His heart hurt seeing her this way, she was dying. He was dying. He lost his entire damn arm.

This was not a fight they could win.

Other German men with matching swastikas and hydra emblems grabbed him, and he wanted to fight so badly, he did not want to succumb to this, but there was nothing he could do.

They hoisted him upright, grabbing onto him and pulling him to god knows where. He fought against he darkness, but his actions were in vain as unconsciousness defeated him.

-

Jack's eyes blinked tiredly, her vision adjusting slightly to the change in lighting. She was resting on a hospital cot of some sort, a white comforter and white bed sheets draped over her. The blankets stuck to Jacklyn's sweat-plastered skin, and despite the sweltering heat in that room and how sweaty she was, Jacklyn still shivered from the memory of the cold, though she couldn't even recall being cold. She couldn't recall anything after the train. She studied her surroundings as she had difficulty remembering exactly what happened.

She was in a comforting hospital room, the walls were a soft cream color and a closed door was opposite to her in the small room. There were tubes leading from her wrist to an IV stand beside the bed. Also on the bedside was a monitor that beeped quietly with her heart rate. Where was she? Back at the SSR? Jacklyn was planning on standing and leaving, though her leg hurt like hell, when she heard a woman's voice, tainted with a heavy english accent, from outside the door.