VITALITY ↝ B. BARNES [1]

[7]

Elysia woke with a start at the feeling of a dull prodding against her shins, coaxing her from her slumber. When she opened her eyes, she squinted at the bright fluorescent lighting and a fuzzy figure standing over her, a slight groan escaping her at the feeling of the hard concrete floor beneath her.

Wherever she was, it definitely wasn't in her bedroom.

When her eyes finally adjusted to the light, she could finally see clearly, the fuzzy figure now coming into focus to reveal Tony studying where she still leaned back against the wall of the interrogation room, his arms crossed over his chest and one eyebrow raised in a disapproving glare. The dull prodding had come from the toe of his leather shoe, where it still rested near her. Behind him sat Bucky, whose eyes darted back and forth between the two of them, though he gave her a strained smile as their gazes met.

"Good morning," Tony said in a sickeningly sweet voice, pulling her attention back to him as he tilted his head to one side, studying her. "Sleep well?"

"What happened?" she asked, pulling herself up into a standing position before looking down to see her body still adorned in the same pair of pajamas as the night before, Tony's eyes flickering down to the cupcake pattern covering her pants.

"Looks like you and the Winter Soldier had a slumber party." Tony said, all traces of amusement gone from his voice as he jerked his head back in the direction of the doorway, where Bucky couldn't follow them. "Sparky, can I have a word? In private?"

With a final glance in Bucky's direction, Elysia nodded, following the man out of the interrogation room and back to the other side of the glass, all the way out into the hallway where they were finally alone. As soon as Tony stopped walking, he spun on his heel to look back at the pink haired woman, giving her an incredulous glare before gesturing wildly back towards the interrogation room.

"Are you out of your mind?" he whisper-yelled in a frustrated tone. "You know as well as anyone here that Barnes is dangerous. Why the hell did you even go in there?"

"I couldn't sleep," she explained, shrugging. "I had too much on my mind, so I tried going to the training center, going for a walk, none of it was working. I ended up stopping by the room on my walk, and he was awake. It's like you said before, he's weighed down, so I had no reason to fear he'd attack me. We talked, and at some point I must've fallen asleep. It's really not a big deal."

Elysia wracked her brain, trying to remember her conversation with Bucky before she'd inevitably fallen asleep on him on the floor of the interrogation room. She'd remembered him asking questions about Steve and the rest of the team, trying to jog his memory, but she didn't have much to go on, aside from the few days of training she'd had to try and get to know them. Although neither of them had been able to move much past square one, she knew that, with Steve's help, his old memory of the forties would come back in time. However, she couldn't remember much past that, knowing it must have been around the time she'd begun to fall asleep, most likely snoring and drooling onto the floor near where Bucky was trapped under the metal crusher.

"Well, you're lucky it held him." Tony said. "Do you have any idea how surprised I was when I went to deliver Tin Man over there his breakfast and I found you asleep? You shouldn't get anywhere near him until we can figure out how to crack the code in his brain. He's too dangerous for you to be taking risks around, and you know that. For all we know, he could end up re-brainwashed and try to kill all of us. And if you're not going to use your abilities, then you're just going to get yourself killed. This man's a highly trained assassin, he's not going to stop to show mercy to some kid."

"I'm not a kid anymore, Tony." Elysia reminded him. "You're the one who gave me access to that room. I'm going to have to see him eventually if we'll be experimenting with his head."