Monster [Book One]

Chapter 15

So close to being done!

Chapter Quote:
“Then finish it. 'Cause I'm with you 'til the end of the line.”
~Steve Rogers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier
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Chapter 15

Annabeth 

I felt lightheaded seeing Bucky in the courtroom, standing up for the whole world to see him.  When the judge asked him who he was, he smiled and simply said, “I’m the weapon.”

“Excuse me?” The judge asked, looking dubious. 

“I’m the weapon,” Bucky repeated.  At that point my stomach was on the ground, but while fear for him racked my body, I was also extremely angry.  He started walking up to the gate that led into the actual court area with Steve, Sam, and Natasha following him.  I stood up to meet him.  My lawyers attempted to pull me back down in my chair but I yanked my arms out of their grasp.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I whispered frantically.

“I couldn’t leave my best girl,” he said, giving me a smile. “You’re not doing this alone.”

“I told you not to come!” My eyes narrowed in on Steve.  Glaring, I pointed at him and added, “You and I have some talking to do.”

“I didn’t let him convince me into coming here,” Steve defended.

“So who did?”

“Me.  Listen, you helped me.  Now it’s my turn to help you.”

“You’re our mission,” Bucky said gently.

“We’re with you ‘til the end of the line,” Steve added.

“You can help me by getting him out of here!” I exclaimed quietly.  The whispering of the crowd drowned out our hushed voices so no one could really hear us.

The judge banged the gavel, switching our attention over to her.  She gave Bucky a hard stare and asked, “What do you mean you’re the weapon?”

“May I?” My friend motioned at the floor in front of the podium.  Hesitantly, the judge allowed him to.  Steve, Sam, and Natasha came to stand next to me with Steve gently grabbing onto my arm.  The message from him was clear: Let him do this.

“My name is Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, affectionately called Bucky by my friends.  I was born in 1917 and was Steve Rogers’ best friend until I was captured by Hydra forces near the end of World War II when one of Hydra’s weapons knocked me off a moving train into a ravine where I was found by Hydra forces and taken to a secret base.  There, a scientist by the name of Arnim Zola tested on me and turned me into something I wasn’t.  I lost my arm in the fall, and therefore, he gave me this.” Bucky shrugged off his jacket, revealing his metal arm.  He held it up so the court room could see.  “This is the weapon.  For seventy years, I was Hydra’s top weapon.  They brainwashed me so I wouldn’t remember who I was or who I knew so I would have no strings to my former life.  I had no strings on me as the Winter Soldier.  That was until a couple months ago when Steve took down SHIELD, which had been severely infiltrated by Hydra.  I started gaining memories back when I saw him.  Deep down, I knew that I knew him.  And even with my shaggy hair at the time, he recognized me, and he tried to get me to realize that.  I nearly killed him in the process, but he reached out to me.  I’m no longer a weapon.  But to Hydra, that’s all I was.  I was an asset, a thing, a weapon.  So when Annabeth tells you that she fell in love with a weapon, she’s not lying.  She’s protecting me, like she always has.  She’s willing to let herself go to prison, when she knows she could have a strong case to prove her innocence, because she’s protecting me.  She’s been doing so for a decade.  I’m the reason she stayed on with Hydra.  She wanted to take care of me.  And she did.  The only mistake she made was that she treated me like a human instead of a weapon, and Alexander Pierce didn’t like that.  He ordered her killed while she was taking care of me.  Even after I almost got her killed, she still yelled out to me that she wanted to help.  That if I ever wanted to know who I was, to come to her.  Annabeth is one of the most selfless people I have ever met.  And she does not deserve to go to jail for trying to help a man who couldn’t help himself.”