Leave Me Bleeding [Winter Soldier] I

Prisoners [Chapter 3]

"No one is free; even the birds are chained to the sky."

-Bob Dylan 

              Barnes pulled against the restraints; Ophelia could see his muscles flexing against the bandages that covered his stomach and his shoulder. The last time she had gotten a look at the shoulder, it had been meaty and to Ophelia it was carnage; even with the new arm that took the doctors two days to properly attach, the shoulder was still a gory scene. 

            Groans of pain filled the room, and Ophelia looked away for a second. The blood had soaked through the gauze, and she would need to change them soon. After the orderly had locked her in with the American soldier she knew that she would be doing all the cleaning up, the feeding, the brainwashing. In return she would be given her dose of Rapture; the drug would consume her eventually, kill her, but she didn't care. However much she needed it, though, she had a strange feeling inside of her that told her going through with this plan to brainwash Barnes was a bad idea. 

                Forcing herself to look at Barnes again, she wondered what to call him; certain words would possibly trigger his past, and as the file suggested he had suffered only mild amnesia, she could not use trigger words. He had not been awake or coherent for long enough to know the full extent of the damage in his head, Ophelia had to be careful. 

             The pull of her need for the drug was always in the back of her mind, but somehow she had been able to push it to the far corners while she focused on the man stirring beside her. She decided to use his given name, as he usually went by Bucky by his close friends which meant it was the most prominent name he would identify with. Any reminder of Steven Rogers was off limits, she had been informed. 

                Ophelia took a calming deep breath and realized that she had never spoken to man who was not a guard or a target. Her voice nearly shuddered, but she held her ground. Her accented English rang through the room. "Your name is James. You suffered a terrible accident, but we have saved you."

                "Accident?" He shut his eyes and loosened his pull against the restraints as he thought, probing the deepest recesses of his memory. He fidgeted for a minute, as if trying to figure out what had happened, where he could possibly be, why his body hurt in so many places. He looked disgruntled, tired and as if he had just stumbled out of the woods after being lost for a week. Sweat beaded upon his forehead as he strained a little harder. "I remember... a train."

                "Yes, a freight train exploded, and you were launched from one of the cars," she said to him. "You fell down the mountain and nearly died."

                "My arm... it hurts." There was confusion in his eyes. Those blue eyes looked so utterly lost.

                "Your arm was damaged badly in the fall, I'm afraid there was no possible way to reattach, and further amputation followed. We have tried a prosthetic, though, and you will have full use of a functional arm in time," Ophelia said it smoothly; she had read the script. But it still felt wrong on her tongue; the arm they had given him was no simple prosthetic, and she didn't want to know what strength it had. What damage it could do to those who got in his way once he was... obedient. 

                He gritted his teeth and groaned in pain. Ophelia rose from her seat beside him and added a few drops of morphine to his system. Within minutes the pain would ease and he would be able to speak and think again. But more importantly, he would be able to listen to Ophelia again and hopefully, if she did her task well, believe her words. And if she did not succeed in her duties, she would not enjoy the consequences that followed. She was torn between the fear of what would come her way if she failed, and the lure of her drug. She had a desire to tell him everything, even though she knew she would be ripped from this room and probably shot if she did that; it was too soon to plead with James to cooperate for her well-being, for her sake. He had to believe that HYDRA was not the enemy, but even Ophelia knew that it was, and she knew nothing other than HYDRA. Twenty-two years living in this environment should have made her obedient without question, and yet there was always question in her mind.