Leave Me Bleeding [Winter Soldier] I

Sudden Death [Chapter 5]

"But hurry, let's entwine ourselves as one, our mouth broken, our soul bitten by love, so time discovers us safely destroyed."

― Federico Garcia Lorca

                Seering pain slithered up through her left leg where the bullet had penetrated; Ophelia was being dragged out of the operating room, but all she could hear was Bucky still shouting in protest. Whether it was in protest against what they were going to do to him or to her, she did not know. Part of her believed that he was begging for them to not touch her, at least part of her wanted to believe that. 

            After she had been shot, Ophelia had stopped fighting against the guards, because she knew what they would do to her. The more she fought, the worse she was treated. But it wasn't for her sake that she stopped fighting, no, it was for Bucky. HYDRA had a way with breaking people mentally more than physically; it was more fun to use mind games to drive someone insane than it was to use electricity or other more traditional forms of torture. But that did not mean they didn't like those methods either.

             To Ophelia's surprise, they brought her not to her cell, but to another operating room. The walls were bare and there was nothing but a single gurney and moveable table with tools placed upon it. Her first thought was that they were going to subject her to something far scarier than anything she'd endured before, but that was not the case. Yet. 

            A HYDRA official came in, his face shielded by a black mask. Using a light sedative, nothing too strong, he numbed her leg and began to remove the bullet that was lodged in her hamstring. She groaned in pain, but it was not the worst thing she had felt. She had never been shot before, it was a new pain. Gritting her teeth as to not give them the satisfaction of hearing her scream, she watched as they pulled out the bronze-coloured bullet. The stitches were not as bad as the removal, and she thought the worst was over. Why bother stitching her up unless they were going to keep using her.

              She almost had a moment of relief, until they finished and brought her to the dreaded electric chair. This time she was unable to hold back her screams; she never could when they brought her here no matter how many times she had been subjected to it. The pain never lessened. Her screams and shrieks could be heard through the entire base, but it did her no good. They simply shocked her until she could no longer utter a plea of despair. 

           When they removed her from the chair, she couldn't stand or even think. The only thing that was running through her mind was that she was hanging on to life. They didn't want her dead, at least not yet. She was still obedient, she would do what they said. She only had one slip up. She could not even convince herself of that, and unable to even part her lips to do anything but drool now; there was no arguing with HYDRA. 

                They threw her in her cell after that.

***

                For three days no one came near her other than to give her enough food to survive the day. For three days no one told her the current status of Bucky, and she dared not ask either. To show she cared, that was the biggest mistake she could make. She doubted that even if they knew how she felt that they would risk harming Bucky. 

                They kept him alive for a reason, because he too had the Super Soldier serum in his veins. He was valuable, more so than she was. However, they were keeping her alive too, and she had expected that bullet in her thigh to have been meant for her head, that was not the case. Though she was pleased to see that they were not leaving her to die of infection, she worried that letting her heal after they had risked shooting her meant that she was headed for something worse. She already survived electrocution, days of a growling stomach, and the mental abuse that came with being neglected and completely kept utterly unaware of anything; what more could they do to her? What else could they do to break her?