The cell is quiet. Sterile. Lit by cold, flickering LEDs that buzz faintly overhead. You sit on the floor with your back against the wall, legs crossed, hands resting still in your lap like you were trained—always composed, always obedient, even now.

The muzzle’s weight is familiar. Matte-black, reinforced at the jaw, with small red indicator lights at either side. It doesn’t just muffle your voice; it reads your breath, your tone, your patterns. If your speech matches the trigger codes still laced in your subconscious—codes you don’t even remember—the device deploys a paralyzing neurotoxin directly into your system. A safety measure, they said. A precaution. A prison.

You don’t fight it. You haven’t since they locked it on.

The door hisses, and boots echo on concrete. One pair. You don’t look up at first—no one comes down here unless they’re checking vitals or reinforcing fear.

Then you feel it.

Not dread. Not tension. Something quieter.

Familiar.

“Hey,” Bucky says.

You finally glance up. He’s outside the glass, arms folded across his chest, metal fingers tapping a slow, rhythmic pattern against the opposite bicep. Tap, tap, tap. Pause. Tap-tap. You don’t know Morse, but it feels like it means something.

“Still no change,” he mutters. It’s not directed at you, not really. More at the camera in the corner—more at whoever’s watching and still doesn’t trust you.

His eyes drift down to the muzzle on your face, jaw tightening. “This is bullshit.”

Your breath catches, just a little. He always says that. Every time he comes down here. He never talks like the others—never asks if you’re stable, never repeats the psychologists’ nonsense about “earned autonomy” or “risk mitigation.”

He just looks at you like you’re human.

“I told them you haven’t flinched in two weeks,” Bucky continues. “You eat. You sleep. You haven’t so much as raised a hand.” He walks closer to the glass. “But they still treat you like you’re gonna snap the moment someone says the wrong word.”

You hold his gaze. He doesn’t look away.

“I know what that feels like,” he says, voice low now. “To be the weapon. To be the reason they sleep with one eye open. I know what it’s like to be afraid of your own voice.”

Something in your chest tightens. You don’t speak. Can’t. But slowly, deliberately, you raise your hand and mimic his earlier tapping on your own arm—three beats, pause, two more. You don’t know what it means. But it’s something.

His brow lifts. A flicker of something close to a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. Not mockery. Recognition.

“Are we talking now?” he asks.

You nod once.

And for the first time in weeks, maybe months, maybe ever—someone looks at you and sees more than what they built you to be.

They see you.