Things We Carry
Summary: Two broken souls find each other.
Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Black Widow Soldier! Reader.
Contents: very short (about 1K words), description of being a Hydra assassin, description of violence (nothing too graphic), some sadness, some fluff, use of Y/N.
A/N: this is the VERY FIRST fanfic i'm publicly uploading on here! i've had this one in my drafts for a while (among several others lol), and now i've finally decided to upload this one. another note: English is not my first language so there might be some slight mistakes, but i think i got them all out.
enjoy! :)
Lying on an operation table, strapped down, unable to move. The faces of men in white coats and masks occasionally visible as they bend over to take a closer look at the functionality of the human brain. The taste of cold metal on tongues and the whiring of the mechanic chair were the last things to be noticed before everything was replaced by pain. Electric shocks surging through the human body, not enough to kill, though just enough to drive someone mad.
Punches thrown, guns firedguns fired, bodies collapsed on the cold floor, blood everywhere. Their rules where quite simple; don’t stop untill the mission is completed. Failure will not be tollerated. Although, there was no mission yet, this was just a training, a sparring session with fellow soldiers. They should have known better though, with Hydra, it was never just a sparring session. One could say that there was indeed a mission during these training sessions; that mission simply being surviving, taking out every last opponent untill you were the last one standing, and most importantly showing no remorse, no mercy, not a single emotion, as the trigger is pulled.
The missions in itself knew a few more specific ground rules; such as get to location unnoticed, retrieve whatever it it that Hydra wants, leave no traces and most importantly, leave no witnesses. Exterminate every last soul that gets in the way of the mission.
Sometimes, the missions weren’t really missions at all. Some higher-up person with status and a shitload of money would come to Hydra to have someone ‘taken care of’. A merciless killing, so the speak. Those merciless killings, however, were in fact the easy ones. To the average person, taking someones life isn’t something they would even dare to imagine. However for Hydra soldiers it has become second nature. They were being trained to kill. Brainwashed to become machines.
Tests, trainings, briefings, killings… This is what live was; day in, day out, for decades on end. In the beginning, there was resistence, oh yes. Unwillingness to co-operate. This is never what they wanted, never what should have become of their lives. But the pain became unbarable. Shocked within an inch of insanity, enough to break the soul. To become a merciless killing machine.
x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x /x / x / x / x / x / x /x / x / x /
This is what live was for Bucky and Y/N. Raised to be trained killers from a fairly young age. Being fully conscious, yet not knowing which part of you is actually you. Deep down, they might have know that what they were doing was wrong, what was being asked of them was wrong. But when their brains tell them to pull the trigger, that is what they did. That is all they’ve ever know.
Untill they were pulled out of it.
Years of living as an assassin and suddenly you’re expected to live life like everyone else. Mandatory therapy sessions with so-called ‘speciallists’ who didn’t in the slightest understand what they had to go through, what their everyday live was like. Both Y/N and Bucky might not have fully realised what they were doing in the years they worked for Hydra, but they sure remember all of it. Maybe being held captive is a better way of describing their years at Hydra, in stead of ‘work’. That’s what Y/N liked to call it anyway.
What also didn’t particularly help is that both Bucky and Y/N were somewhat in the public eye. Of course, citizens were not supposed to know of Hydra’s assassins. However; Bucky being Steve Rogers’ best friend and Y/N having worked together with Natasha Romanoff’s younger sister Yelena in the Red Room, who were ultimately the ones that got them out of Hydra’s grasp, gave them ties to The Avengers. Because of this, everybody knew what they had done, what they were. Trained killers. Assassins.
Monsters.
Oftentimes, Y/N wasn’t sure if live like this was supposed to be better. The menories of all the lives she took, together with the judgemental stares and scared faces of everyone around her weighing heavy on her shoulders. Bucky felt the same way. The both of them desperately wish they could just do something, anything to lighten that weight that they carry around everywhere they go.
And so, ultimately, they found each other.
Through The Avengers, or at least what was left of them, the two were introduced. Y/N had heard of him, of course she had, Dreykov didn’t call his little mind control games The Winter Soldier Project for nothing. He was the one she was supposed to look up to… what a sick and twisted world they lived in.
It may have taken a while, but the two ex-assassins warmed up to each other. Bucky found her presence refreshing; she provided him with a sense of normalcy as opposed to the constant looks of fear and sorrow of everyone around him. She knew, she’d seen it up close and lived it. Although she wasn’t a supersoldier, and he, being the literal blueprint of Hydra’s brainwashing system, had a lot more years on her as a Hydra captive, they understood each other. Sure, at first Bucky had Steve and Y/N had Yelena, two people that served as rocks for the both of them, as best friends. But Steve ultimately choose to stay in the past with the love of his live, and Yelena ran back into the field to look for any other Black Widow Soldiers that were still under Dreykov’s control. Neither of them blamed their friend for one second, claiming they wanted what was best for them. Still, it came paired with quite some loneliness.
Now, Y/N was laying on the couch with her head on Bucky’s chest, his arm slung around her body. A TV-show neither one of them were really paying attention to playing in the background while they enjoyed each others company in silence, softly breathing each other in. She loved moments like this; alone with him, nobody else around, no obligations at all. Just the two of them in their little bubble of calm and Y/N couln’t help but notice that the weight that they both have been carrying around for so many years, has finally begun to lift. She knew Bucky felt it too. He carressed her hair and placed a soft kiss on her forehead as he continued to look ahead at the TV screen.
In this moment, the both of them knew they were gonna be allright.
