Leave Me Broken [Winter Soldier] II

Decent [Chapter 10]

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for."

Bob Marley

          There had been times in Ophelia's past where she knew that she was going to die, and she had accepted it. Each time that she accepted her death, it never came. Whether or not that was coincidence or not, she couldn't say. But dying at the literal hand of the man she loved, that was not something she was going to accept, although a long time ago she anticipated her demise would be at his hand. 

          In the basement of a CIA headquarters in Berlin, surrounded by a dozen other dead bodies, she would simply be a number on the casualty count at the end of the day. The number that would haunt Bucky when he came back, and she couldn't accept that. But fear shook her body as she writhed against the man and the wall, trying to free herself of the guillotine grip.

         "Soldier." The soft, Russian words were not soothing to Ophelia. "That's enough."

          Bucky dropped Ophelia immediately and she crumpled onto the ground, gasping for air through a bruised throat. She curled up, terrified, frozen with the fear of what was going to come next for her. Bucky turned away from them, and he walked out of the room with solid but silent footsteps. His body moved flawlessly, effortlessly, the way he moved only when he was the Winter Soldier. It looked as though he calculated everything he did before he acted, and yet there was no hesitation, no delay in his actions. Ophelia, still cowering in fear and pain, realized that she was alone with the man who had released the Winter Soldier, and she backed against the wall.

          "Ophelia." His voice was gentle, but there was nothing calming about him.

          She stared into his eyes with rage, but her body was wrapped in a cocoon of fear and she could not act. She winced when he brought his hand to her chin, studying the red marks upon her neck. He made a tsk noise that made Ophelia grimace; he reminded her too well of the man who had carved the HYDRA symbol into her stomach. Who was this man? What did he want from her?

          "You have a gift, you have never been brought to your true potential," he mused. "Soon."

           She tried to speak, but words could not make their way out of her swollen throat. The man stood up, looked over her once more, and then he walked over to the elevator shaft where Steve was still lying there. A groan of pain in the other room with the broken cell was made Ophelia whimper; inside she knew that there was no one else around to hurt her, but every little sound made her shudder. Sam's voice calling across the rooms brought her back to life, reminding her that there were good people, reminding her that Bucky could still be saved. He shuffled into the room where she was, spotted her, and glanced at the doctor who was walking away.

         "Are you alright?" he asked her, the goodness within him still concerned about her, despite the soldier in him wanting to pursue the doctor.

          "No." She shook her head, but knew there were more important things. "Go."

          "I will find you," he said, the words meaning more to Ophelia than he knew. 

           All the time spent with only Bucky, she thought that he was the only person she could rely on to be there for her. But now, while Bucky's mind was lost within the Winter Soldier, she had to lean on other people for support. She leaned her back against the wall now, catching her breath despite how badly it hurt to breathe, and then she placed her hand against the wall and pushed herself up to her feet. Shaking badly, she had to use the wall for support, and she shuffled her way along to the elevator where Steve had been tossed down.