Summary: the team has to come to terms with the new guest at the compound. Old wounds are brought to the surface for Bucky.
Warnings: language, depictions of violence, Tony Stark being himself, mentions of near death experience, mentions of wounds, probably incorrect medical jargon/procedures, Bucky’s negative thoughts
Word Count: 1,201
A/N: Today is my official one year anniversary of this account. Thanks to everyone who followed me and left comments. I appreciate you all more than words can say! I figured to celebrate by posting a continuation of my first ever fic I posted to Tumblr!
Series Masterlist | Part 2
The next morning, Stark is at the coffee machine as the rest of the team meander in. Bucky didn’t get any sleep, too preoccupied about the guest they picked up. Steve and Sam didn’t get much sleep either, haunted by the mutilated figure of that innocent woman. Bruce and Helen stayed up until the woman’s body was stable enough to move out of the cradle, and even then they took turns keeping watch over her.
“You guys, I had the weirdest dream last night. I don’t remember specifics, but there was a lady wrapped in our coats trying to give terminator over there a-”
“Stark.” Steve’s sharp voice cuts off his sentence.
Tony’s head whips around to see the haunted faces of his teammates. Frowning, he sets his mug on the counter.
“So… it was real?” He shrugs with a non-committal hum before plastering a smirk over his features. “I thought it was a weird dream anyway. Why would I want that image in my mind?”
“Knock it off, Stark. That girl almost died. This is no joking matter.”
Tony’s face pales. He didn’t think it was serious. How much did he have to drink last night? “What exactly happened?”
“We’re not sure. Her back was mangled and she was left in below freezing temperatures with nothing to protect her against the cold. If she had been administered to any normal hospital, she would have died.”
Tony’s hand scrubs over his scruffy facial hair. “There was no one around?”
“Nope, it seemed like whoever did that to her dropped her there to die.”
“Well, shit.”
Tony doesn’t like the sound of this. He is naturally an untrusting person. Hell, he doesn’t even let the Avengers—the team he has worked with for years—see the real him. Letting an unknown into his compound is a risky move. But how far would his enemies go to get to him—to the team? Surely they wouldn’t send him a nearly-dead woman to take him or his team out.
First of all, there are much more efficient ways to get rid of him, as evident with the whole Obie spectacle. Secondly, no one on the brink of death could take out his teammates. He’ll just have to keep an eye on her when she makes her recovery.
“Friday, my love, how is our newest guest settling into our wonderful compound?”
“Her vitals appear to be stable. She has not woken up yet, but she is recovering thanks to Doctor Cho and Banner,” Friday responds, diligent as ever.
“Great,” he claps his hands together before grabbing his coffee and disappearing to his lab.
Steve scoffs. “How can he be so cruel? It’s like he doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”
Bucky frowns, grabbing a mug for himself and Steve. The bitter liquid spurts into the cups, ready to give them fuel for the day—or at least for a few minutes.
On his part, Bucky isn’t completely convinced that Stark’s true nature is cruel. Bucky honestly suspects it has everything to do with him. Who would want to show their true face to the psycho who killed their parents? Not for the first time, he wonders if the team would be better off without him.
“Wow, I see how it is,” Sam grumbles, grumpily grabbing his own mug and making his own coffee.
“What? Don’t tell me princess Sam needs his overly sugary excuse for coffee made for him. Would you like me to cut up your breakfast into small pieces too?”
Sam rolls his eyes, saying something about jerk-faced super-soldiers getting on his nerves.
When Bruce steps into the kitchen, the atmosphere stills. Conversation halts and eyes dart towards his exhausted figure.
Bruce sighs. “She’s stable for now. We almost lost her a few times, but she’s a fighter. We’ve got her on a feeding tube and everything until she wakes up.”
“The marks on her back?” Sam questions.
“The cellular regeneration worked. From the brief look I got at the wounds, I suspect she was either whipped or someone took to carving into her with a knife.”
A shattering sound breaks the otherwise silent response. Heads turn to look at Bucky who is staring in shock at what’s left of the broken piece of pottery in his vibranium hand—almost as if he hasn’t registered that it was him who destroyed it.
Bucky doesn’t even feel the burning liquid seeping into his shirt and jeans.
Swallowing, he looks around the room, shame filling his body as he goes to clean up the mess he made. Steve tells him to go get cleaned up before Bucky can even start to pick up the shattered pieces.
Allowing Steve to do just this one thing for him, Bucky storms out of the room. On the way to his room he tries to think of a way to repay Steve for helping him, even if he has been told that he doesn’t owe Steve anything on numerous occasions.
Distraction, he realises.
He’s trying to distract himself from the fact that some poor woman had to endure some of the same kind of torture he went through. He grits his teeth, remembering the way those whips tore at his flesh. The way they burned their way through the outermost layers of skin and kept digging and digging and-
She had to go through that too
His gut churns, heart beating faster and faster. Disgust, hatred, and pure unadulterated rage claw their way through his body. He needs to punch something—he needs to punish those who punished her.
The door to his room slams open. If it were any normal door, it would have broken off its hinges. The only reprieve he receives from the force he used comes in the form of the hole where the doorknob met the wall. He slams his door back shut, knowing at this point he’s acting like a toddler with a tantrum but not having it in him to care.
Why is he so angry?
In all his time as the Winter Soldier, one would think that he had seen enough horrors to be numbed to anything and everything around him. So why does this irk him so much?
It doesn’t make sense, and he doesn’t like it. He shouldn’t feel this way over some poor woman he knows nothing about. For all he knows, she could have deserved it. She could be the scum of the earth finally broken down to her last resorts. She could be as bad as his captors in Hydra. Turning a blind eye to the corruption or playing a direct hand in an unwilling participant’s torture.
But the way she begged him. Please—no… no more… It appalled him that she reminded him so much of himself. Of his early days where he fought with everything he had, the days where he begged the doctors to stop, to let him die, to have mercy.
It hits too close to home, he decides. That is the reason he is so worked up about it. She has been broken down into a shell of herself just as he had been.
He deserved those lashings after all the blood that stained his hands. Did she?
Series Masterlist | Part 4
Bucky Taglist: @harleycao @hallecarey1 @loki
Comment if you’d like to be added to this story’s Taglist
I like just about anything. As you can probably tell if you look at my masterlist I love writing for Bucky, but I truly love each of the avengers. My favourite things to write are definitely hurt/comfort with heavy sprinkles of misunderstandings and trauma 😂
Right now I’m working on a couple of requests along with the June of Doom challenge. It also usually takes me a bit to get them completed because I want to produce quality work.
