Seventeen
The darkness had been a dear friend now. Every time there was light, pain and discomfort came hand in hand. Everything was dull; I didn’t fight as much as I wanted to, I didn’t have much energy for it. I had been here for who knows how long, but about a few days ago, during one of my open door days, I heard screams.
Blood-curdling screams, but they soon ended, and I hoped for their sake they had died. But probably not, Hydra had gotten irritatingly good at keeping things alive that should be dead.
I had stopped wishing I was dead a while ago, instead, I had become numb. At the moment, I was laying down on the cold cement floor, my bruised left cheek pressed against it, slightly cooling the burning sensation that bloomed there. My stomach was on the ground, my ripped up shirt and pants allowing more of the cold to sneak into my warm body. My flight jacket was missing and I didn’t know where it had gone, and I didn’t care much. My arms were bare, besides the makeshift bandage I had around my right arm and my left shoulder. My stab wound from my first interaction with Landon here has festered quickly, I had kept scrubbing it painfully with the water they gave me in a bucket for the week in an attempt to keep it clean. It seemed to be working for now, but my upkeep on it had forced me to drink water less so than usual.
The scar and bruises had craved the cold chill in the cement flooring, along with my left shoulder. A while ago, during one of the visits, a man had dislocated my left shoulder in an attempt to hold me down better. Later, I had to throw myself into the wall to try and reduce it back, but the outside guard had to stop me once I passed out twice from pain. He had gotten a man in a white coat to come and reduce it for me. The next open door visit, I found him with a bullet in his head, sprawled out on top of the table which was covered in his and my blood alike.
I had realized something through those visits as well. The strainer looking thing had been a drain and the red-brown floors were painted to hide the blood when it dried, but the texture of the blood against my bare feet was still there.
A creek filled my room, but I didn’t move, I just waited. I stopped jumping, stopped cursing them out, and stopped hearing my thumping heart every time I saw them. If it were required, I would say a few words but that was it. I forced myself to listen to them and to pay attention, but sometimes I would zone out, which would cost me gravely. But, disappointingly, it did not kill me yet.
There were sounds of someone entering my room and the light from outside filled my room bouncing off the stained, but otherwise plain, walls. My bed, if you could call it that, was overturned on its side from my latest tantrum, the mattress beneath the wood rotten frame that was on its side.
The person had been silent, waiting for some sort of movement from me, but I just blinked to adjust my eyes to light. I faced away from them, not knowing nor caring who had walked in here.
“I sure hope you’re alive,” it was the young man that I had met before I’d been here, the one that saved me from Landon in the jewelry store.
I just blinked again and took a slightly deeper breath, letting him know I’m alive and listening.
He received the message, “Good. Now, Arabella, we have some news.”
I finally moved my body, cringing inwardly as I moved to sit up. I had never gotten any news during my stay here, I was interested, but not hopeful.
When I was fully sat up, facing him, I waited a few seconds for the room to stop spinning until I could bear to look at him fully. He wore black dress pants, like always, and a black button up. His black hair was freshly cut short and close to his head. His nose was pulled in disgust and he was frowning. I watched him carefully, but he showed no sign of frustration or any ulterior motive, just disgusted.
I wondered momentarily if he was disgusted by me, but that confused me, I hadn’t done anything that was provocative nor had I had any choices.
“But before I tell you,” he turned around and left the room, out into the table room, expecting me to follow him.
I slowly stood, wavering from dizziness and pain, then stumbled out of the room as fast as I could in fear he would get mad.
He was standing in one of the hallways that led to where the men and guard had come from, and narrowed his eyes at the guard behind me, “Go fetch Princeton, tell him he’s cleaning his room with Harvey and Orwell.”
The guard rushed out the door and closed it behind him, and the man turned his gaze back to me, “Sit.”
I moved uncomfortably to the chained chair, and sat down in the dried blood that sat on it. I kept my head down, analyzing the table as he sat across from me in the new clean chair. I had broken the old one and used it as a weapon against a man named McCarthel.
He watched me, “We got information today that a certain person has died, tragically.”
I didn’t move, why would I care that someone has died?
“Captain Rogers, died by crashing our plane, which had our weapon in it, into the pacific ocean,” anger was very clear in his voice. When I looked up, he was glowering at me, but his posture was relaxed.
I waited for him to continue but he just stared at me, waiting for a reaction. I tried to summon some kind of reaction, but none came. I felt distant from the conversation, the world. Steve Rogers, a man that was like a brother to me, was dead. How was I supposed to react?
You are supposed to cry, you are supposed to fall apart!
But all I could do was think about Bucky.
Bucky, who had clearly cared for Steve Rogers in a way that wasn’t friendship, but denied it every time I questioned him. Bucky was probably heart broken right now.
Or is he dead too?
That was a reasonable thought. Bucky would’ve never let Steve go alone.
“Ask.”
I swallowed hard in an attempt to wet my throat before speaking, “Was anyone else with him?”
His face morphed into more of a clear anger, “That is not the right question.”
I blinked, and thought about what that meant. I was told earlier I was bait; my only purpose was to get Captain America into Hydra’s clutches for them to successfully have a super soldier.
Without Rogers alive, what use did they have for me?
“Precisely,” he replied, apparently I had said the question out loud or he could read my mind, both made me uncomfortable.
“What are we going to do with you now?” He pretended to think about it, “we could let you go.”
My heart twisted and my eyes widened, he smiled at me.
“Oh, but we can’t have you going around running your mouth,” My sense of hope was crushed by his boot and spat on by myself, I despised that little sense of hope that I allowed to grow, “but you may be of good use here.”
I swallowed hard, and looked back down at the table. I stayed silent and prayed I didn’t start crying.
“You would be a fantastic asset to our goals, you’ve already proved you’re eager to fight.”
I was confused then. Fight? “I had fought for my life, I didn’t do it for fun,” I bared my teeth at him, spitting the words out like venom.
He cocked his head to the side, “but you did enjoy the pain you caused them.”
It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.
“Because they are evil, disgusting men and they deserve worse,” I should’ve stopped talking, I knew it then and I know it now.
He narrowed his eyes, “Mind who you talk to about their soldiers, Arabella. You won’t like what they can do when I loosen the leash.”
“That was a tight leash?” I asked, exasperated. I couldn’t shut up for the life of me right now, and I couldn’t tell why.
His expression twisted darkley, “You don’t understand how much I’m saving you right now. You should be thanking me.”
I bit my tongue so hard that it drew blood. I didn’t want to say anything else.
One of the metal doors that never opened had creaked open, and a collection of footsteps came from the hallway. I stood up and gripped the table, careful to not fall over. 2 guards walked in, followed by the man in a white coat that had helped my shoulder with the dead soldier. The doctor’s left wrist was gnarled, like a dull cleaver had sawed it off, and it probably had.
The soldiers stood there waiting for further instruction, and I looked back at the man about to start pleading when he said, “Don’t be scared, that will only make it more enjoyable.”
Then he nodded, the guards grappling with my hands, yanking me backwards causing my shoulder and forearm to protest at the strain.
I screamed at the man, yelling about how I would never join his cause no matter what. I could hear echoed laughter and I screamed again, pulling away from the soldiers but it didn’t work.
I was dragged into another room, passing a pristine white door with the number ‘17’ printed on it, and tied down to a metal operating chair. My wrists and ankles were being strapped in tightly and my head was pulled back by leather. I bucked and thrashed against the restraints but nothing worked, I screamed profanities at the men but they paid me no mind.
All of a sudden, I was sobbing. Desperately pleading to be let out and that I won’t say a word, I promise. Just let me see my pa again, please.
Flashing of pa came to mind, our birthdays, christmas, meeting Steve, our hot cocoa days.
Steve and Bucky were in mind too, us staying up too late and looking at the stars, pranking Steve and Bucky, playing dress up and doing their makeup, learning how to cook with them.
I just wanted to be home. I would do anything to be home again, to be bored again, and to be complaining about small things again.
They set metal plates on both sides of my head, and the soldiers walked away, outside the door to continue guarding.
The white coats went right to work. They filled syringes with a blue, gel looking liquid, positioned themselves around me, and nodded, sticking them into my biceps, shoulders, and thighs all at the same time. It only took a few seconds for the burning to set in; my limbs felt like they were being held over a blue-hot fire and my skin was heating up like it was running a 200° fever. Lava was spreading through my veins and arteries, forcing my heart to do double time.
They shoved a mouth bit into my mouth, forcing my mouth open to do so. I distinctly heard screaming somewhere near me, but then I realized it was me. I was the one screaming.
The white coats were talking next to me, positioning themselves near me and next to a table that was beginning to blur more and more. They were talking to each other, watching me and how I was reacting as if I was some lab rat.
I squeezed my eyes shut, letting darkness consume me and focusing on blocking out the pain and sensations. There was suddenly a violent buzzing next to me, then I was being burned alive. My whole body was spasming and my brain felt like it was trying to shut off. My head was burning and everything was aching, but eventually, my body lost its grip on reality and my friend, darkness, consumed me.
I woke up with a start. Screams were echoing down my hallway, bouncing off the walls and into my room. The screams weren’t of pain, but anger. I grimaced at the pain in my arm, well, more so my shoulder. There were bandages all around the shoulder, blood seeping through them from the scratches and claw marks. The missing limb was frustrating and a reminder of something I couldn’t remember.
I flinched harshly at the sounds of the screams as they erupted again. They were a girl's screams, that much I could tell, they were more high pitched and blood-curdling than any man I had ever heard during my time in the military.
There were a string of profanities screeched like a banshee towards whoever was causing her to scream.
It kind of sounds like Arabella.
Arabella?
I had flashes of a young girl cross my mind, she had dark brown hair and dark forest eyes. She had a golden tan and wore a flight jacket and pants in the memory; the memory in which she and I had put a blended raw egg in Steve’s drink and told him it was orange juice.
I blinked and my heart thrummed in my throat, “Arabella?!”
I screamed into the air, I couldn’t reach her. I threw myself against the door and felt around for any way out, any leverage.
“ARA!”
There wasn’t a way for me to get to her, to save her. We’ve been looking for her for a month and here she's been, being tortured and tormented right under their noses.
He sank to the floor and wrapped his head around his ears, trying unsuccessfully to block out the sounds of her screams that seemed to continue on for days.
Bucky?
The pain hadn’t gone away. I had gone through that same process a few times, I’m not really sure how many. There were many different colored vials, each at different times, and a lot of white coats.
A man with jet black hair walked into my room, dressed finely. He had always been here when I woke up, he was the only one that was familiar to me; him, the gnarled white coat man, and the room numbered seventeen on its pristine white door. To say I had grown attached was wrong, all they were to me was familiar.
“How do you feel today, Amara?” He moved to the side, letting the white coat walk in and watch me like a hawk.
I held eye contact with the man and nodded quickly. I was standing against the edge of my bed, all of my muscles protesting at the movement.
“I had talked to one of your friends today,” I blinked curiously and the white coat next to the man fidgeted anxiously, he was sweating profusely and his skin was flushed.
“James Barnes, he said he was a friend of yours?”
I scrunched up my face in focus but my brain wasn’t bringing up anything. A name or word was brought up, Bucky, but that wasn’t the same thing, that had no correlation.
I watched as the white coat relaxed slightly, letting out a breath of relief. I deflated, afraid I had disappointed the man, but he looked pleased as well.
“Well, I’ll just tell him he’s got the wrong person. Good work, Doctor, you may continue the process.”
The doctor nodded eagerly, and said something in another language I was unfamiliar with.
He turned towards me and nodded, “Follow,” I moved towards him, walking slowly at first as my muscles spasmed and tried to relax.
We were back in the chair again, but this time, and every time following, he said a series of words that I could never quite remember until he said them to me.