𝔹𝕒𝕔𝕜 𝕋𝕠 𝔹𝕣𝕠𝕠𝕜𝕝𝕪𝕟 | Bucky Barnes (ON HOLD)

23 | Cold as Ice

She woke up with a start, choking and shivering as the ice-cold water was poured from the bucket over her head, soaking her hair and stinging her eyes. For a moment, she thought she was drowning; the water was so cold, it felt like tint pins of ice were stabbing into every inch of her skin. It was almost impossible to take a breath, her lungs burning as she gasped in and out through her dry mouth, her throat wheezing with a cough.

Her limbs still felt weak. Trying to move her arms, her muscles were tingling and numb, meeting resistance around her wrists. The feeling was sharp, a cold metal digging into her skin, her bones on the brink of snapping under the pressure. She couldn't see as she looked down, feeling something wrapped around her head, covering her eyes. The knot of the blindfold was pulling her hair, soaked with the icy water in.

She tried to conjure her powers, to flex her hands and build her strength to break free, but her attempts were in vain. The moment she felt a small jolt of power, water was poured over her head again. It didn't feel as cold as before, though she was still shivering from the first attack, and her body felt numb to the ice.

Footsteps approached her slowly, and from the echo of the heels tapping the ground, she could tell the floor was stone. Taking small and shallow breaths through her nose, her head stayed ducked down, her soaked hair feeling heavy on her shoulders.

"You are probably trying to tell yourself that this cannot be happening," a deep voice chuckled. "But I assure you, Sergeant Madison... it is."

The blindfold was ripped from her head, and strands of her hair were yanked from her scalp with it. Biting back a wince of pain, she harshly blinked her eyes, where congealed water stuck to her eyelashes, blurring her sight. Everything around her was black, shrouded in shadow. It took her right back to those days. That first moment of waking up after being taken from her home in Brooklyn. The fear, the unknown, the cold.

The person standing in front of her towered way above her head. Slumped in the cold metal chair, she tried, but failed, to lift her head enough to see the man's face. Dressed in all black, his hands were clasped behind his back, his long coat reaching the tops of his knees. Ella lifted her chin a little more, wincing at the sharp twinge in her neck as she took more of her captor in. The chest pocket of his coat was the only part of him to have any colour – a bright red logo that haunted her nightmares for years. A red skull in a circle, its black eyes piercing down at her like daggers.

"You do not know me," the man uttered deeply. "But I know you, Elenora Madison. We've been keeping an eye on you. All this time, you thought you had buried HYDRA for good. You were wrong. I am-"

"Shut... Up."

Ella's voice was dry and scratchy, underused and painful with each slow word. Her blurry mind was aching, a pounding in her head that matched the slow thumps of her heartbeat, which echoed in her ears like footsteps. Everything felt underwater, the air heavily weighing down on her slumped, shivering form. Though misty, she could see dots of red close to her hands, where the metal cuffs of the chair had begun digging into her skin. The man's voice only added to the pain. Not just his tone, but his words. If HYDRA had built themselves up again, from the inside of the organisation she made to stop them, she didn't want to hear it.

The man squinted his eyes, a look of curiosity washing over his dark gaze. "Excuse me?"

"I don't wanna hear... whatever speech you're about to give," Ella rasped achingly slowly, each word causing her throat to scratch. Taking a deep breath, she whispered, "I didn't get you all. Got it. Just kill me if that's what you're gonna do."

Her hooded eyes watched the man as his face grew stern for a second, then curled into a menacing grin. "You have a bark, Sergeant. You're not as scared of us as you used to be," he chuckled deeply. "That makes a change from your last visit. Though, I suppose, an awful lot more has changed these passed years for you, hm?"