Robotic
In the morning, when they come to get Peter, Bucky keeps his promise and doesn’t fight, but Peter does. He knows this is his last day of training which means he will have to go on missions soon. Although his thought is not completely logical, he thinks that maybe if he fights and acts out they will decide he needs more training, which will keep him from missions a little while longer, which will keep him from hurting people. So he fights. He kicks and screams as soon as he is freed from his chains. Hands haul him up and try to keep him still, but he gets a few good punches in, but then, as he is about to kick one of the guards, his spider sense goes off and less than a moment later he feels his veins light with fire. Distantly he hears Bucky cry out his name while he goes down spasming as the electrical rod follows him to the ground. A moment later is it gone, but Peter’s body is still contracting with the aftershocks.
As Peter is on the ground getting his breaths under control he hears voices around him, but it is hard to distinguish what they are saying. I moment later he is kicked in his side, his spider-sense didn’t warn him in time as he is still recovering from the electrocution, “Did you hear me?!” One of the guards shouted. Peter uses more energy than it should take to look up at the guard with tired confused eyes. The guard rolls his eyes, “I said, if you fight us again we take it out on the traitor.” That is the last thing Peter wants so he gives a slight nod right before the hands are back, hauling him up and half walking him half dragging him out of the room.
Bucky just sat in silence staring at the now-closed door, praying Peter didn’t get himself into too much trouble. Even though he was nervous, more than normal, since he was always nervous here, he knew he had to get some sleep. Like every other night, he had stayed awake while Peter slept. Now it was his turn. He laid down on the cold and dirty cement ground hoping Peter would be okay when he returned, well not ‘okay,’ but at least not worse of than any of the other nights. He closed his eyes ready for the sweet abyss of sleep to overtake him.
_______
One of the agents they took still had not said a word, he begged, but still didn’t give anything up. Apparently, Hydra’s wrath was still worse than Nat’s. The other agent had said something though. Only one sentence, but that one sentence had Tony’s blood boiling. After getting no answer about location Nat asked, why, the agent’s answer was, “You had something that belonged to us so we took it back.” In a calm collective tone, even with a split lip, bruised cheekbone, cracked ribs, and black eye.
Tony was on the other side of the double mirrored glass when this happened. After the words came out of the agent's mouth Tony screamed, “He doesn’t belong to you!! He’s just a kid!” Although the window was soundproof, the volume and agony of his scream seemed like it could be heard a mile away. He then threw a chair at the window since he couldn’t go in throw it at the agent. The window is bulletproof so the chair just bounced right off of it and clattered to the ground. After that, he was banned from listening or watching the interrogations.
After being banned, Tony felt numb, well felt is not the right word. Tony didn’t feel anything, and that was the problem. He kept working to try and find Peter, but his eyes were hollow. His hair was disheveled, his goatee was over grown a bit, and his t-shirt was wrinkled. Walking past him on the street you wouldn’t think he was a billionaire, you might even think he’s homeless.
“Tony you need to eat something,” Nat said as she came into the lab with a turkey sandwich.
What scared everyone the most was that he didn’t fight anymore. He simply took the sandwich and started to eat almost robotically. If it weren't for his unkempt appearance, one might believe he was a robot. And with all the tech Tony has made over the years, making a robot replica of himself was not out of the realm of reality. But Tony wasn’t a robot, he was a grieving father that has shut down.
Steve wasn’t fairing too much better, but the soldier in him wouldn’t let him give up. Not that Tony was giving up, but Steve forced himself to stay sharp and wait for any news. He too wanted to shut down but shutting down remind him too much of the Winter Soldier’s robotic personality. He needed to stay sharp if Bucky was going to stay sharp. He prays they haven’t turned Bucky back into the cold assassin they once forced him to be.
Thor was still hunting down Loki. He thought he had him once, but it was a Loki duplicate decoy. There were still no leads, it was like Peter and Bucky had fallen off the face of the earth. Hope felt further and further away each day.
________
Bucky awoke to a scream. Not Peter coming back into the room, but an agonizing scream. He felt his blood run cold, he knew that scream. He had made that scream countless times at Hydra. No no no no no no, he kept repeating over and over. ‘Please no.’ Memories resurfaced and he was frozen in fear and dread. He heard the echoes of words, words that would erase Bucky Barnes from existence and be replaced by the Winter Soldier. No no no no no no no- his repetitive thoughts and memories were only broken, god knows how long later when the door opened. He scrambled to his knees to see Peter.
In walked the two guards and Peter in the middle. He couldn’t get a good look at the kid with the guards in the way. Although he seemed to be walking just fine, so he din’t seem physically injured. But that’s not what Bucky was most worried about. Physical injuries, for the most part, heal. There are deeper ones, ones he himself is still recovering from, and may never recover fully from, that he is more worried about. It was only after they chained Peter back up that he saw the hollowness in Peter’s eyes. He prayed the kid was having a flashback and nothing else. How bad would things have to be for Bucky to be praying that Peter was having PTSD instead of what he dreaded more than anything else?
The guards left and the door shut. Bucky immediately made his way to Peter, his chains pulled taught as he tried to kneel in front of the boy, “Kid?” Nothing, “Kid speak to me, what happened?” Peter slowly, eerily, looked up at him. Bucky felt tears cloud his eyes ad he saw the blank expression on the boy’s face. “Peter?” He whispered.
Bucky’s world, and subsequently Peter’s and Tony’s came crashing down in one sentence. One monotonously toned sentence, “I am not Peter, I am Hydra’s Spider.”