Monster

Chapter 9: He's a Wolf in Disguise.

The next morning had your mind going over every possible bad outcome the mission could have. The mission was easy: extract information from their system while Steve incapacitated anyone trying to get to you, Sam and Vision would control anything in the air, and Bucky and Wanda were backup. You prayed you were not to need them, that Steve could handle what you hoped was a small amount of HYDRA agents. But that was not the only thing that had your mind occupied. You hadn't been able to sleep right nor look at Bucky in the eye.

Flashback

"We need to talk."

"About what?" you noticed at how bothered he looked, "are you okay?"

He took a long breath and pointed toward the elevator as he walked in silence. You just frowned but followed him. Neither of you spoke a word until he had finally taken a seat on one of the lounge chairs by the outdoor pool.

"So, what did you want to talk about?" you said breaking the silence of the night. You turned your attention from the calm water of the pool to see Bucky looking at you with no real expression on his face.

"Do you remember anything from when you were a kid? The lab?" he asked. It didn't go unnoticed how he held back from cringing at the last question.

You tilted your head to the side as the question struck you as weird, of course, you did. He knew the nightmares you had involving him.

"You know I do. It was awful what they did to you and I still regret that I was never able to keep you safe by the time I understood what they were doing to you," you said as you turned your body toward his and took his metallic hand in yours.

Bucky looked down to see your hands wrap around his metal one, and he shook his head before looking up to see your soft eyes on him.

"That's not what I meant." The soft stroking you had been doing stopped. Bucky saw how your eyes seemed to roam all around, but he knew you were thinking too fast. And somehow he knew you knew what he was asking. His warm hand now joined yours atop his metal one.

"I had one of those weird flashbacks when you and Steve were investigating earlier. That's why I was dazed. I remembered what they did to you, and how I couldn't do anything. The years the torture went on, the stuff they did and put in you. But then it stopped when you were thirteen, it just vanished leaving no trace for them to find."

Your eyes were unfocused as he only looked at you, his hands now wrapped around your trembling ones.

As he spoke your mind brought images of the horrors he'd seen but you saw it from the other perspective—the one where you felt it all. The shivers that overcame your body at the screams of pain, the fear you felt when it was announced that they were going to be doing more tests, more prep, more digging around. It all had soon ended one day without explanation but that had been the best thing in your life as it had stopped them from experimenting the minute they noticed that nothing was happening. You had taken the harsher and more dangerous trainings like a gift because as much as you knew they had done it in hopes those powers were going to come back, you'd rather die during those trainings than go through the doors of that lab one more time.

End flashback

It had taken only twenty minutes to arrive at the building after having checked out and get things in the quinjet.

"Alright, the goal is to go in and come out within the hour. Y/n, can you work with that?" Steve asked as he clipped on his mask.

"Depends how much initial coding I have to do. Shouldn't take more than ten if they've managed to have an upper hand from their last system that Romanoff hacked. From there is all downloading. We'll get out with time to spare," you said as you adjusted your hair.