The Black Winter

Chapter 32

Joans pov
  I jolt up with a gasp. Immediately, I grab my ribs which are throbbing with pain.

  "You need to lay back down."

  I look over to see Rose. And the moment I make eye contact with her the voices come back.

  "Kill her. Think about everything that she's done. She took your place," it sings.

  "No," I reply to it.

  Rose places her hands on my shoulders and forces me to lay back down.

  "See, not that bad. What happened Joan?" She asks.

  I look over to the corner of the room and see Anastasia. Immediately I smile at her. I watch as she walks up to me and hops onto the cot with me. She lays down and rests her head on my chest. I wrap my arms around her and let out a long breath.

  "I missed you," she says in her sweet Russian voice.

  "I missed you too kid," I respond in Russian. When ever I was with her, we always spoke Russian or German, sometimes we would go back and forth.

  "I would just like to remind you all that I can't speak Russian that well," Rose chimes in.

  "Right," I sigh. My entire body felt like it was ready to be ripped apart. And If I'm being honest, Anastasia wasn't helping with the pain, but I didn't care. She's always helped me feel less like a monster.

  "You didn't answer my question Joan. What happened?" Rose asks.

  "It doesn't matter. What you said earlier, what did you mean?" I ask.

  "What?"

  "You said that I didn't know what they were going to do to me. What do you know?" I ask.

  "Oh, we'll talk about it later. Sorry, you should rest," she says.

  Something inside her has changed. She seems less moody, and more realistic now. I look down to Ana who is playing with a hair tie. I can't help but smile to myself. I turn my gaze back up to the ceiling and close my eyes. I can hear Rose move to the other side of the room. I look up to see her sitting on the floor with her legs pulled into her chest.

  "What's wrong?" I ask with a sigh.

  "Nothing," she says.

  I go to sit up, gently pushing Ana off of me. She sits up with her feet dangling from the bed. I get up and walk over to Rose.

  "What's wrong?" I ask, towering over her.

  "Nothing."

  "You can't do that stuff here. So, what's wrong?"

  "You, you said that you were going to kill them," she says in a shaky voice.

  "Kill who?" I ask in a confused tone.

  "Steve, Tony, all of them. You, you said how you wanted to kill me," she squeaks.

  I take a deep breath and think about how to word this. "I'm sorry. I'm not going to kill them, and I'm not going to kill you, ok? I promise. I wasn't myself, but I'm fine now," I reassure her with a smile. She is young, I can't expect so much from her.

  "Are you though?" She asks.

  "I will be," I sigh. I walk over to the wall and sit down next to her. "They didn't happen to bring any food yet did they?" I ask.

  "No," Rose responds.

  "That's sucks. I'm starved," I say closing my eyes and resting my head on the concrete wall. I open my eyes and look to the corner to see a camera. My face contorts to a confused look, my eyebrows almost touching each other in confusion.

  I stand up with a grunt and walk over to it.

  "What are you doing?" Rose asks.

  I walk over to the bed and slide it over to the camera.

  "What are you doing?" Anastasia asks this time.

  I hop into the cot and start trying to tear it from the wall. Eventually, I get it and fly off the cot, hitting the floor. I force myself up and start to inspect the camera.

  "Why did you do that?" Anastasia asks, walking over to me.

  "Where is Popov?" I quickly ask.

  "Who?" Rose asks.

  "He's the guard who's assigned to me. I need to talk to him."

  "Why?" Ana asks.

  "Because he's going to get us out of this hell hole," I state.

  "How do we know we can trust him? What if he turns on us? Joan, their going to freeze you again! Their not going to just wipe you like before, their going to change your memories, make the Avengers look like the bad guys," Rose argues.

  "Their not going to do that if we can get out," I say through my teeth, I don't know why but I could feel myself starting to become angry. 

  "If we fail their going to-''

  "I know what their going to do!" I yell.

  "Joan," Anastasia says softly.

  I turn around to face her. "What?" I snap. Immediately she backs away and flinches at my voice. Shit. I let out a deep breath and place my head in my hand.

  "I'm sorry," I say quietly. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped. I know what's going to happen, but the Avengers aren't coming, they won't get here for at least another month and by then it will be too late," I explain more calmly. We all just stay there in silence, not daring to say anything.

Bucky's pov
  It's been about a month, two week, and three days now since our girls were taken from us and there's no sign of them. We've raided ten Hydra bases. The one in Austria came up empty, it was a dead end.

  We were all in a meeting, discussing the situation with Rose and Joan. I could tell that Steve is starting to get concerned, we all are. Who knew what Hydra was doing to our girls right now?

  "Ok, so we're here to discuss how to get Rose and Joan back," Tony starts. "After some well thought out planning, we have the plane ready, we just need to find out where hey are," Tony adds.

  Out of no where, a call pops up on the tv screen. We all turn around confused, it was an unknown number from Germany and it looked like to be a face time. Tony pushes a button on the remote control and on the screen pops up Joans face. We all gasp at this. She was tired and worn out. She seemed hurt.

  "I don't have much time. We need to get home. I am in Flossenbürg Germany by the Russian border. We only have about two days, please, oh fu-'' and then, the phone call gets cut off.

  We all just look at each other confused.

  "Call the number back," I command.

  "I'm trying, but I can't," Tony says, typing frantically.

  "Wait, where did she say?" Natasha asks.

  "Flossenbürg?" Clint says unsure.

  "It's in Germany. Is there anyway that we can track her?" I ask.

  "No, because she kept it short. If it was only two seconds longer we would've bee able to track her," Tony explains.

  "Well, I guess we know where we're going," Steve says, standing up from his chair. "Flossenbürg Germany."