Who Am I? » [Stucky]

183. Devil in Disguise

As they reached the summit of the swirling stairwell, Bucky paused and fell against a wall for support. His leg was giving him grief: oozing blood from the mangled burn, flesh skin stinging in the open air where the trouser had been singed clean off: but black specks of material were melded with the skin. He rasped through his nostrils as he sucked in the war-stenched air.

"Are you okay?" Steve pestered, framing Bucky's face with his charcoal-smeared gloved hands.

Bucky gave a tearful nod, fighting the urge to collapse and give in. "I think one of the bastards cracked my rib on the way up," Bucky wheezed, hands trembling with the pain in his chest. His lungs were being stabbed by the newly crushed bone. "Are you okay?" Bucky asked, mist blue eyes dragging up Steve's lopsided stance where he relied on his unsprained ankle.

"Fine," he replied courteously, smiling and stretching the knife wound drawn across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, forcing more blood bubbling to the surface.

As Bucky tried to push away from the wall, his legs decided to give out, the minor shock crippling him. He was barely remaining upright on all fours, grovelling like a domesticated animal.

There was the sound of approaching footsteps marching up the metal stairs and the clinking of guns as the bullets jingled inside them.

"Go!" Bucky ordered, flapping a hand. "I'll take care of them!" He grumbled, spitting out a blob of blood onto the floor and crawling back down the corridor.

"No way! Not without-"

"Steve, listen to me..." Bucky gasped, struggling to his feet and biting his lip. "This is your duty. Your right, to finish this," Bucky ordered, not a hint of lenience. He cocked his pistol with his human hand and gave a sour snarl. "Go in there, and do what you do best..." As one agent of Hydra emerged, Bucky took his shot and sent him tumbling back down like a boulder in a landslide; falling into the one behind him.

"But, Bucky-"

"Please! For me?" Bucky elatedly begged with his eyes. "Finish that bastard and make sure my name is the last thing he ever-" Bucky had a bullet tear into his bicep. With a roar of distilled pain, bursting through him in its purest form he repeatedly clicked the trigger and targeted the most painful places: knees, elbows and then wrists. "Hears..." Bucky finished in a gravelly voice; his eyes hazy with the capacious amounts of pain. "I've got your back. Do. It."

"I love you," Steve breathed fearfully, face wrinkled with dread and his heart brewing with despair.

"I love you too," Bucky nodded, tears dewing his eyes. But he contorted his face into distressed smile, his eyes hollow with harrowing horror, grinning miserably over his shoulder before continuing his reign of destruction.

Steve ran along the remaining stretch of corridor, Bucky's gunshots ringing out behind him and the splashes of light flickered across the tubular walls. He came head on with an ornate office door, untouched by the musk of the gunpowder or tainted by the stains of battle.

He took great pleasure in the demolition of the perfection, laying waste to the untouched saved door as his shield cracked it open; nearly knocking it off its hinges.

Steve went toppling into the room unceremoniously, shards of wood flittering across the floor. He clumsily fumbled for his gun and was punched to the ground by a left hook as he wasted time fiddling with it. The gun was slung from his frolic's grip and he was slammed into the floor, grabby fingers stretched out front clawing for the sliding weapon. The door was kicked shut by a doorman who had been standing by and a crowd of five men emerged, all with the nozzles of their silenced guns digging into Steve like a pin cushion. One man trampled on his fingers, nailing him in place, whilst another claimed his weapon. A final boot weighed down his back, doing him the final indignity of preventing him moving without snapping his spine.