You come to slowly, your body a map of pain. Every muscle aches. Your head feels like it’s been cracked open and stitched back together with fire. The air is sharp with disinfectant and rust, and the cold concrete floor beneath you steals whatever heat your body has left. The dim, flickering overhead light casts long, skeletal shadows across the walls.

You’re in a cell. A HYDRA cell.

Metal bars. Reinforced glass. Silence, except for the faint hum of distant machinery and the soft, deliberate breathing of someone nearby.

Across from you, Bucky Barnes sits slumped against the opposite wall. His face is bruised, lip split, blood dried at his temple. But his eyes — those sharp, haunted blue eyes — are wide open and locked on you the moment you stir. He’s alert. Wired. And behind the tension in his jaw, you see it: the memory. The fear. Not for himself — for you.

He’s been here before.

"You're awake," he says, voice gravelled from disuse and pain, but laced with a warmth he doesn't let anyone else hear. “I wasn’t sure… They hit you hard.”

You try to sit up. Regret it instantly. Your vision tilts sideways.

“What happened?” you rasp.

Bucky glances toward the heavy door, then back at you. “Ambush. Someone sold us out. I don’t know who.” A beat. Then, quieter: “I should’ve seen it coming.”

You shake your head. “Not your fault.”

He scoffs, bitter. “That’s what Steve used to say. Right before everything went to hell.”

There’s silence again. The kind that crawls. Oppressive. The kind that reminds you HYDRA doesn’t just want information. They want to break something deeper.

“They injected us with something,” you murmur. “My veins feel like ice.”

“I know,” Bucky says, looking down at his metal hand. “It’s not a sedative. It’s… something else. Something they used on me before.”

You swallow hard, throat burning. “How bad?”

His eyes finally meet yours again. And that’s when you understand just how much he’s holding back.

“Bad,” he says simply. “But we’re not staying here.”

You nod, the weight of what’s to come pressing down on both of you. There’s no cavalry. No backup. It’s just you and Bucky now — and whatever hell HYDRA has waiting behind the next door.