HUMMINGBIRD 𓅪 - PART I
WinterSoldier!Bucky x Captured!Reader : 18+ content minors DNI, fem!reader, reader is a young repressed heiress, blood & injury, gunfight, melancholy, reader is wounded, trauma, angst, hurt/comfort, eventual smut, nudity, bathing/washing, power imbalance, touch-starved, kissing, inexperienced reader, brainwashed Bucky, age & maturity gap, Stockholm syndrome, mention of abusive parent, boundaries are thin, HYDRA & the Red Room subplot if you squint, implied death
“What was he? Not your savior. Not your enemy. Not fully man, not fully machine. Here, with you, he was something in between.”
You thought enrolling in a quiet Zurich boarding school would let you escape your father’s criminal empire. When his enemies attempt to abduct you, they are annihilated by a fearsome, blue-eyed, metal-armed soldier who takes you instead. Caught between ransom and rescue, he is your captor, your protector, and your only tenuous chance to survive.
Author's Note: I read the absolutely a-ma-zing "Lessons in Lovemaking" by @artficlly and, just like that, I'm back on my Bucky bullshit. No beta, English-isn't-my-first-language, sorry! Adulthood is messing with my smut schedule but, hey, have a WinterSoldier!Bucky. As a treat and a trick. <3
MASTERLIST || BACK TO INDEX
I. 𓅪
Snow fell soft over Lake Zurich, dusting the city in white.
From your dorm window, the streets glimmered in the winter light; clean, precise, orderly. Trams glided past in silence, looping over the windy roads.
It was beautiful.
It was a cage.
You traced the lines of rooftops in your notebook, drawing bridges, archways and open doors. New routes that could lead somewhere else.
Not that you could use them. Not yet. But it was something of yours; rebellion in graphite only.
You drew what you could not see. Built when you could not run; reordered what you could not fight.
A camera caught your reflection in the glass, and your pencil paused mid-line.
You resembled a mother you barely remembered, safe for the fact that you had found her beautiful beyond measure.
You had learned long ago that beauty could be both a trap and a tool, and you were glad she had given you both.
The surveillance feed blinked before the camera turned to other angles of your large room.
Control existed below and beneath the snow, with locked doors and black SUVs always watching.
You had planned for this.
Your memory flickered: evenings spent stealing minutes on the internet between music lessons and horse riding.
Podcasts downloaded over trafficked wires. A notebook tucked in a bible, listing all the universities most likely to be approved.
Months of careful, quiet preparation, each tiny act of defiance folded into the cracks of a wealthy household that prized obedience.
“Good evening, papa.”
He does not look up from his tablet.
“Good evening, daughter.”
You have five minutes before his right-hand returns with news. Two if he’s stressed enough by the crises that always brew in his empire of lies.
You smooth the hem of your dress, hiding the tremor in your fingers. Missteps would bring nothing but disapproval.
“I would like to consider studying abroad.”
A ripple in his grey eyes steals your breath. You misspoke. You should not have presumed that you could have any say in the matter. You should have…
“What brings this, sweet girl?”
The endearment is saccharine. He’d call you by your name if he were truly listening. And he very rarely does.
You throw out the entire rhetoric you’ve painstakingly crafted.
“I’d like to be useful to you. To the family trade.”
The words have the merit of prying him away from his screen.
Father takes a long, hard look at you from head to toe.
In his eyes, you read everything you are to him: the child of a woman who vanished into the wind, a wisp of a girl daring to stand in his office and make demands she is not entitled to.
Useful, perhaps? He considers it.
“And what do you believe you understand from my trade?”
You need to say something, but your tongue has turned to lead.
The gambit is too bold, even for you. You’d gotten by as the good little daughter he parades at dinners and parties.
Now you were challenging that order, and you could either put up or lose that right forever.
A soft sigh goes out from the oligarch.
“You may be right. You have grown.”
He stands, crossing the distance in two careful steps. He smiles at you, and in that smile you see no traps.
Just the placid look of a father who remembers his daughter, not the mercenaries and criminals he hosts daily.
He touches your cheek and invites you to meet his eyes.
“It is time for you to be prepared.” You school your features and allow yourself only to blink.
You do not ask for what.
He could have bought you anything. A scholarship anywhere, a prestigious internship. But he wanted you here, inside this gilded cage, polished, clever, quiet.
Unlikely to bother him or his operations until whatever placement, advantageous match could be found.
The pencil traced another line. A line that might lead out, or a line that might take you down.
A short knock at your door made you remove your headphones and slip the notebook aside.
You stood, straightened into the heiress posture, and found your voice: “Enter.” Two years in Zurich had polished your English accent.
The bulky man shadowing you tonight nodded in your direction. “Miss.”
He made the round of your space, checking under the bed, quickly riffling through your dressings.
You wondered if he was looking for threats or secret lovers. He would find none.
“The car’s waiting.”
You grabbed your coat, smoothing your shirt one last time before following.
You knew this guard had been one of your father's back home. You hadn’t seen him much, because your father had always kept family and business separate.
Truthfully, you’d seen him even less since arriving in Zurich.
Your movements required logistics worthy of a royal affair. He flew to Switzerland rarely. You returned home even less.
You tried so hard to snuff out the wild hope that your existence would fade from his mind entirely; that one day he might forget he even had a daughter.
Soon enough, you were on the school grounds, your entourage ready for transport.
You had found a small slip of power away from the motherland; without your father’s presence, you were just a rich girl, and over two years, you had tested the length of that newfound leeway.
Slow steps: attending cocktail parties, carefully choreographed shopping days. A concert here and there. Calculated freedom was still freedom, and if giving into the college life got you more, you were game. At least until you were completely out.
The cars rolled out from the school grounds in a neat line. Snow clung to the rooftops and streetlamps, glittering under the soft glow of evening lights.
For once, you let your shoulders relax a fraction. The city stretched out like a playground you hadn’t been allowed to explore yet.
You pressed your nose lightly against the glass of the car door, catching glimpses of cobblestones and narrow alleyways that promised shortcuts and secrets.
Traffic slowed, a jam of cars stretching ahead. A small thrill fluttered in your chest. You traced routes in your mind with a grin, imagining which way a brave girl could slip through if she wanted to.
Sergei sat beside you, impassive as ever. You knew better than to try and build rapport with a man whose pay check came from your father’s pockets.
You were thinking about pencils and shorter, flashier tops when the world snapped in two.
A black van slipped out from a side street. Two more vehicles cut the lane ahead and behind, sliding into position with surgical timing.
Men in matte helmets rolled out like a shutter: no shouting, no clumsy threats. Gloves, balaclavas, utility belts glinting like teeth.
You whipped your head to the sound of Sergei swinging his door handle open; other guards reached for weapons.
You didn’t think. You watched.
Cracks of gunfire split the streets. Voices. A guard pushed your head into your knees and you saw nothing, even as your world cracked with violence.
Your window trembled once before glass exploded all over your tangled hair. Someone shouted and you rose to watch the driver yanked out, a fist clamped at his throat. The radio bursted in static and went dead.
Your door was ripped open by a man close enough for you to see the wear on his gloves. “Out,” he barked.
You slid out, coat collar up, notebook clutched under your arm. You were so afraid you thought your bladder might let go. Be small, contained. Be nothing.
His gloved hand dragged your arm. Another moved toward you, patting over your coat, squeezing hard on your belly, your breasts, the small of your back before dragging you further onto their side.
Sergei reappeared, machine gun in hand, dropping one attacker, then another.
A pistol snapped to your temple before you could fully see it, stopping your guard dead in his tracks. A fist cracked against Sergei’s skull, sending him sprawling onto the asphalt.
Half a second to scream.
Another hand snapped at your wrist. The man steered you toward his black van. Up close, you saw a scar at the corner of his nose.
If you get into that van you die.
If you get into that van you die.
If you get into that van
White light detonated onto the sidewalk. Someone yelled over shots. The scarred man’s head snapped up behind you.
Time fractured, here, a secondary team moving, and for a beat the choreography of your assailants dissolved into chaos.
Fear unrooted your feet: you pivoted toward the narrow gap between two cars and slipped like water, small, quick and, you hoped, successful.
A glove bit back into your coat before you could cross. You twisted. Pain shot your leg, a white-hot blade grazing your calf when they tried to reel you in.
Two of them grabbed you by the arms and hauled you back toward the van. You stopped resisting, shocked into pliancy by the hot blood wetting your skin.
Instead you muffled your groans, listened, braced for when their hold might soften.
Somebody was still out there, throwing flashbangs at their vans, fighting to keep the piece of the game back to their side of the board: you.
A shadow stepped off the curb, then. Someone who moved with a wrongness you couldn’t place with your head almost upside down.
You felt your opening here, as the men paused, and you started buckling with enough surprise than you fell in front of the new threat.
Your eyes landed on a block of winter wrapped in black; the rifle he carried was a foreign architecture, hooked to one hand of cold metal.
One of your attackers fired, but not before his opponent slammed his arm onto the weapon.
The shot sprayed glass from a nearby café window. Your heart skittered; the ground so thin you might fall onto the depths of the earth.
He was on them before they understood the shape of the threat. Hands moved with brutal precision. Metal arm swung, catching a rifle across its stock.
A man went down, not loud, just folded. The lead hitman aimed to run; the soldier’s knife found him in the back of his head, hard and clean.
Panic took over and the cohort collapsed where the soldier fell them in violent staccato. They were trainer killers, and still they ran for their lives.
For a fraction of a second you saw his face; masked mouth, long hair, hard eyes. Everything tilted.
He landed back in front of you, suddenly too close for comfort, and dropped his hand under your elbow. He gripped you back on your legs, and when they wobbled he lifted you fully.
You didn’t question it. Clung to him the moment he pushed you up; his hand on your back was ice cold and hard. Real.
Somewhere a siren began to wail. Your notebook rested against your heart, graphite lines whispering exits that would not be used anymore.
Your leg throbbed where someone’s knife had broken flesh, and when you felt it drip your last clear thought was remorse for staining his arms.
𓅪
PART 2 PART 3 PART 4
