The Fallen

“What are you doing to him?” Her voice cracks on every word.

There’s a simple reply. “Fixing him.” Hot breath hits her neck, chapped lips skim the shell of her ear. “And you’re next.”

A shiver runs up her spine. The man across from her stares at her with intensity in his eyes, with apology hidden in the depths of the blue.

The man is sitting in a leather chair, his hair dirty, his skin bruised and welted. “Go to him.” The other man is whispering in her ear. “Go. You’ll be here for a while.” There’s a pause before he hisses, “You’ll be seeing a lot of each other.”

Someone prods her forward with what feels like the barrel of a gun.

“Go.” He sneers one last time.

The young woman takes a few shaky steps forward until she comes to a stool. She hesitates for half a second before another person shoves her down into the seat. There’s a whirlwind of activity then as everyone leaves the room.

The man, she realizes, only has one arm. He’s skinny and broken, one eye almost swollen shut, scrapes, burns, and other marks mar his skin along with the bruises and welts. They extend over his face and chest and down his arm. She would wager that beneath his uniform pants the pattern continues. His bare chest and his forehead is covered in a thin sheen of sweat, looking fevered in her opinion. He looks like he’s been through hell and based on her short time here she would guess he has been.

Slowly, his eyes rove over her body and back to her eyes. “Hello,” he greets, voice cracking. Her eyes widen upon hearing the foreign language and she shakes her head.

“I do not speak English,” she whispers to him in her own tongue. “I’m sorry.”

Hopelessness fills his face and he huffs out an exhausted breath. He can’t understand her but he’s gotten the gist. Her eyes drift to the place his left arm should be, examining the tight stitching, as she wonders why they’ve been left together. “I fell off a train. There was snow. And I thought that they were coming to save me at first. I really thought I’d get to go home.” The young woman lets him speak, even if she doesn’t understand a word of it. His arm is strapped down against the arm of the chair, along with his ankles at the base.

Tentatively she reaches out and puts her hand over his, which is clenched into a fist. It’s shaking and he murmurs something else to her that she doesn’t understand. Something tells her its gratitude. She thinks he might have said thank you.

Her mouth quirks into a quick smile before it drops.

“You’re like me.” He's talking again. “You don’t want to be here. Did they hurt you?” The man asks even though he knows that they did and that she doesn’t understand him anyways. “They hurt me too. I’ve been fightin’ ‘em every day, and doll…lemme tell ya, I think they’re finally gettin’ tired of my shit. Which leads me to ask, why do they have you here?”

She wonders how long he’s been alone, been here. He's speaking as though there's someone to be spoken to. 

He’s quiet again and she feels like he might be waiting for her to say something, even if he can’t understand her. Maybe he longs to hear a voice that isn't shouting at him. 

Instead of something complicated she meets his eyes again and slowly points to herself with the hand not covering his. She nods at him, finger still pointing at herself, and whispers her name.

For a moment he doesn’t say anything, just looks at her eyes, at the color and depth. Then slowly, he murmurs his name back to her. “Bucky.”

She repeats it back, “Bucky.” The accent of her voice catches awkwardly on the foreign syllables. For a moment she drops her eyes and then she whispers, “Polska.” The woman points to herself again.

A frown pulls on his lips. “Polska…Poland?”

It sounds similar. She thinks it’s right. So, she nods. “America,” he says, nodding fervently. “USA?”

She nods and a small smile overcomes her. An American and a Pole, weren't they on the same side then? The hand that she’s been covering slowly uncurls, two silver tags dropping out from between his fingers. “Take it.” He shakes them at her. “Please.”

The plead in his voice makes her take them from him when he thrusts them at her as best he can. They’re on ball chain. They’re a soldier’s tags. She’d seen other American soldiers with them. She takes the necklace in her hands and nods. “What d’ya think they’re gonna do with us?” He frowns, “Where’d they get ya?” He swallows hard, "Please talk to me. Please?"

Her fingers trace over the letters embossed on the metal. James B. Barnes. Bucky is speaking again. “What do they want with ya? I know why I’m here…why they want me but…”

The young woman wishes she could understand what he’s saying. Bucky sounds desperate to her ears. She also wishes he’d stop talking so much. It’s making her want to cry. She can’t understand what’s happening and a familiar language would at least help.

A small sniffle leaves her before she whispers in Polish, “They came for my family. We ran. We went to Russia, it wasn't safe there either. The Germans came still and the Russians cared little for us. And now I’m here. I hear the war is ending. And I'm here.” She has an idea suddenly, hope brightening her eyes for just a moment, “Do you know Russian?” She switches languages, having been forced to learn it during her time in the country.

A little bit of fear slinks into his eyes. “What? You know Russian?”

“No, you don't,” she whispers into herself in Polish when he only expresses himself in English. He sounds afraid. “Nothing.”

Loneliness fills her, until his fingers graze along hers. She wonders what’s going to happen, why she was taken, chosen. Why she had been beaten and tortured and forced into this room with this man she didn’t know. She wonders what their fate might be.

She’s hungry and dirty and tired and she wants to go home. But he’s the first person, since they’d taken her from the road she was walking along, that’s been kind to her. He sounds kind at least. His eyes look kind and his fingers are still reassuringly against hers. She looks to the tags in her hand again and lifts them a little, raising her brows, indicating a question. What should I do with these?

For a moment he stays silent, thinking. “Keep,” he says. “Keep them. I…things aren’t clear. They make me forget. I’m afraid if they see they'll know that I'm…” Bucky trails off as she frowns and shakes her head, not understanding.

He makes his hand into a fist and then points at her. “Keep.” Bucky says her name gently. “Please.”

The pleading tone is back in his voice. Carefully she puts the chain around her neck and raises a brow. He sighs and nods as she tucks it into her shirt. She’s not sure why she’s doing it. If she’s caught with them they might punish her. Clearly he's been hiding the small silver things from them. But she’s also not sure why they’ve left them alone together.

“Why are we here?” She asks him.

He just looks at her helplessly with the unfamiliar language in his ears. The man had said before he left that they’d be together a lot.

She links her pinky with his.

A crash sounds outside the door but neither of them jump. Their pinkies tighten against each other just a little because they know what’s coming. The door is flung open and someone grabs her by her hair, yanking her backwards to the floor. Bucky's hand is ripped painfully away from her own. The small, kind, comforting contact taken away as easy as anything. 

Bucky is yelling. The men are shouting in broken English. Hit after hit is landed on her already abused body. She screams when something snaps.

A word cuts through the air and the violence suddenly stops. “Stop!”

Blood drips from her nose onto the clean tiled floor as the man who had hissed in her ear earlier does the same thing to Bucky now. The man’s hand closes around his throat as he forces the soldier to look him in the eyes. He isn’t allowing him air, she can tell by the way his eyes start to bug, his skin discoloring.

The dog tags resting against the skin of her chest burns and she screams out. Her yell is fierce, she shouts for the man to let him go. The man turns, releasing Bucky, and she knows she given them exactly what they want by the cruel smile on his face.

“Extraordinary,” he says to the others in Russian. “Only a few minutes together and they’re ready to go to the grave.” He shakes his head and reaches down to yank her up by her hair again. Tears prick at her eyes but she doesn’t let them fall. He smiles as he looks her in the eyes, “How kindness makes us weak,” he whispers before slamming her into a nearby wall. "Worked didn't it? How you all doubted me." He chuckles. 

A guard yanks her roughly back up by the arm as the yelling begins again. Someone is laughing. “Take more blood from him. I want to see a prototype of-,”

She doesn’t get to hear what they want a prototype of as she’s shoved out the door and down a corridor. Her name is echoing behind her on the young man’s lips, his voice a terrible, desperate, fearful scream.