Death Where is Your Sting? - B. Barnes

Chapter 8

Bucky woke in a cold sweat, gasping for air. "Shit!" He kept his voice quiet so as not to wake Ray in the bedroom, but he was completely wrecked.

That damn chair. That damn thing still haunted his dreams. The straps. The mouth guard. The blinding pain as everything was ripped from his mind. He heard his own screams as they stole his very existence from him.

But tonight - oh God. Tonight the screams were different. They were hers.

He'd forgotten the memory, hadn't thought about it since he'd initially remembered the moment, it seemed so benign. He was walking down the hall flanked by guards. He'd just returned from a mission - success - and he needed to be wiped. He was getting antsy, violent with the guards, seeking ... release, freedom. His body knew it was captive even when his mind didn't. But they'd stopped him at the door to the room. "Occupied, Soldier. You'll have to wait your turn."

Her screams ripped through the walls. Sudden shouts as Alexander Pierce charged into the room.
"Shut it down! It's too much. She won't survive if we keep going."
"We need her. She has to cooperate. You saw the fight she put up. I won't lose her skills."
"You'll lose EVERYTHING if she dies!"
A pause, murmurs, and everything went quiet.

Moments later, a med team came down the hall with a stretcher and entered the room. The Soldier caught sight of dark curls pouring down the back of the chair but the body was too small to be seen. The Soldier didn't really care, but Bucky did as he watched the scene unfold in his dream.

Someone was lifted from the chair onto the stretcher and wheeled quickly out the door. As the stretcher passed, the Soldier barely glanced out of the corner of his eye to see what was happening. He didn't really care, and obvious interest could mean punishment.

The Soldier glimpsed the woman's twitching body as her feet rolled past first, followed by a mass of curls half covering her face. It was a passing glance, just a second, but Bucky's recognition jolted him awake.

Raven. Unmistakably Raven. Just how he remembered her.

And it all made sense. That's why they never put anyone who wasn't a super soldier in the chair. They'd tried - they'd so desperately wanted to control Raven that they'd tried to wipe her from the start. And they'd nearly killed her.

That's why she couldn't remember anything before Hydra.

That's why they used it after he'd shot her. They had managed to wipe her memories with their first try but they couldn't achieve compliance. With her dead, they couldn't kill her with the machine. They could finally achieve the full wipe they'd attempted in the first place.

And that time they succeeded. They'd gotten everything they wanted. It made him sick.

"Oh God..." Bucky ran to the sink and heaved up what little was still in his empty stomach. He pressed his forehead to the cool counter and tried to breathe.

"You're okay."

Her voice was soft and quiet, so different from the deafening screams he'd just heard. Bucky squeezed his eyes shut. He hadn't wanted to wake her. "Shit."

"You're not there anymore."

She was echoing his words after her nightmare. He felt her drawing closer, slowly, cautiously, but she kept her distance. He heard a cabinet open, then the scrape of glass across the counter.

"Sometimes water helps...for me, anyway..."

Bucky looked up at Ray. She looked so...small, lost, unsure. Fragile. Breakable. Oh God. And it made his gut twist more at what they'd done. He couldn't look at her anymore, afraid she'd somehow see what he'd seen. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you. I'm fine. Go back to bed."