Notes:

I really had every intention of not posting this until I finished one of my current stories, but it kept insisting itself upon me, and wouldn't let up. So, despite the fact that I have plenty of other stories that require my attention, here is my muse's latest work.

Kitten

Chapter 1

Steve rushed into Bucky's room; his friend tossed and turned in bed, crying out for someone. Bucky had been sleeping better, remembering more and more of life before Hydra, but watching his friend shouting incomprehensible Russian in his sleep, Steve knew that they weren't out of the woods, yet. Steve sat gently on the edge of the bed and aught ahold of his friends flesh hand before carefully shaking the frantic soldier awake.

Bucky's eyes flew open and bore into Steve's, even in the semi dark of the room, he could read the distress on Bucky's face. "Kotehok," Bucky searched frantically around the room, but didn't find what he was looking for. His eyes went back to Steve's, a little too wide. "Steve, they still have her."

"Still have who, Buck?" Steve let go of his friends hand and watched as Bucky scrubbed his hands over his face and pushed up against the head board.

"Kotehok," he shook his head as if trying to dislodge half remembered pieces of memories. "Don't know her real name, she was a present." He spit the word out like it had personally offended him, and if Steve was reading his friends twisted features correctly, it probably had. "They sent me to Virginia on a mission." Bucky was clearly trying to choose his words carefully, a far off look in his eyes as he concentrated. "As they were cleaning up," he hesitated and then nodded, deciding not to go into any more detail than that. "As they cleaned up I noticed this girl, Steve you should have seen her. All curves with big brown curls spilling down her back. Someone must have seen me looking," Steve reached out to his friend, but Bucky turned away, not wanting any kind of comfort as he told his story. "Because the next thing I knew, they were shoving her into my cell." Bucky ran his fingers though his hair, pulling at the long locks, tucking his face into his knees. "It's all my fault." He took a deep breath and looked up into his old friends eyes. "They'd brought me girls before, skinny, emaciated things that I showed no interest in, after a while they'd take them away again, for god knows what. But this girl, she was different."

"Buck, you don't have to tell me," Steve lay a hand on his friends arm, and Bucky let it stay there.

"I do," he lay his head back against the head board and stared at the corner of the wall like it held the meaning of the universe. "I have to, because I need you to understand." He huffed out a breath and took the time to organize his thoughts again, before going on. "They told me she was my pet, for being such a good soldier, or helping change the world. This poor naked girl, shivering in the corner of my cell, her entire body shook but she didn't utter one sound, she didn't cry or beg, she just had this determined set of her jaw, and didn't move. When they left I pulled my shirt over my head and handed it to her, and she just rolled her eyes at me, and snatched it out of my hand. She was so full of fire and vigor, and I took care of her, made sure she ate; she fought me tooth and nail about everything. Eventually she relaxed and started to trust me; this crazy man she was locked in a cell with." Bucky shook his head when Steve reached out to him again. "God, Steve, they sent me out on a mission and she sat neglected. No one fed her or looked after her while I was gone." He looked down at his hands, flexing against the hem of his sleep pants, old ratty things that Steve had loaned him when he first came to the Avengers facility, washed to a dull grey, though they had once been blue plaid. "They pumped me full of all kinds of drugs when I was on a mission, kept me compliant, then they'd pump me full of more when I got back and threw me back into that cell, out of my mind on all kinds of hallucinogens."

"It's okay," Steve said uselessly, there was nothing okay about it. Steve pushed himself back into a chair by the bed and watched his friend struggle. He looked hollow and alone, looking up at the ceiling for answers that he'd never find there. "I can only imagine."

"The things I did to that poor girl," Bucky shook his head. "You can't imagine. I'd fuck her until I came down, and she'd hide from me for days, tucking herself in the corner, pulling at the stupid shirt I gave her the first day, even though it was filthy and ragged." His fingers locked into his hair, and servos of his metal arm whining and screaming and he strained against the images in his own head. "Then slowly she'd creep back out and start to trust me again, trust me not to hurt her or touch her. Then fucking Hydra would start all over again. After a year of forcing me on her, they introduced her to the chair."

"Strong girl," the Captain said, waiting for Bucky to continue. "Lasting a whole year." Steve went to get up; figuring that was the end of the story, but Bucky stopped him.

"She's amazing, Steve," his hollow gaze met his friends, and Steve could see fire ignite behind the dead eyes. "And I left her, I forgot her."

"How do you know they kept her once you got out?" he didn't want to sound harsh, but what would Hydra's use be for some girl they'd used to keep their Soldier compliant.

"They trained her," Bucky picked at his nails and sighed. "Just like me, conditioning, memory wipes, pumped her full of all kinds of chemicals, and then there was the chair." He shivered at the memory. "Until they started to send her out with me."

"She was your partner?"

"In every way," he ran his hands thought his hair again; trying not to think of all the ways Hydra used him to break his little Kotehok. "Eventually they didn't need to use drugs on us, it was ingrained that we'd come back from a mission, fuck, then take care of each other's wounds and start again. She was beauty and grace and deadly, and I forgot her in that hell hole."

"As you were recovering from brainwashing, Buck," Steve shifted in his seat. "How long?"

"Six years, give or take," the Soldier said. "When we were together, they didn't need the ice as much to keep me compliant; they only needed it when they separated us."

"Where was she when you were in DC?" there hadn't been a girl with him, Steve would have noticed that, Natasha would have definitely noticed.

"Another assignment," Bucky shook his head. "We gotta find her, Steve, gotta get her out."

"We will," Steve clapped his hand on his friends shoulder. "Get dressed; Tony should be in his lab."

"Things I did to her," Bucky licked his dry lips and pulled himself out of bed. "She's never going to want to be near me again."

"We'll figure that out once we get her out," the Captain strode out of the room. "I'll make coffee, I have a feeling we're going to need it."

Steve and Tony stood in the billionaire's lab, all kinds of data feed up on the holoscreens. "Widow dumped all of SHIELD onto the net, which means all of Hydra," Tony flicked through footage of the Winter Soldier they'd managed to track down. "Your girls gotta have a file in this mess somewhere."

"You called her something," Steve prompted his friend, whose eyes were glued to the videos playing in front of him.

"Kotehok," Bucky supplied. "Means Kitten."

"Oh, that's cute," Tony said, pulling up a keyboard and starting to type. "You had a little pet name for her."

"Yeah, very cute," Bucky wanted to roll his eyes, but didn't take his eyes off what Tony was pulling up. "I called the girl I spent the better part of six years raping and violating by a pet name," he mumbled.

"Doesn't look like she's protesting much," Tony pulled up a video, it was grainy, but clearly the Winder Soldier in full battle gear, save the mask, with a brunette, her hair tied into a braid down her back, her legs locked around his waist, lips firmly attached to his. "Looks pretty happy to me."

"We were brainwashed and programed, Stark," he threw a crumpled sheet of paper into a trashcan with a little more force then intended. "Who knows how much of that was real for her."

"And how much of it was real for you," Bucky just glared at Tony, who ignored him. "And here's her file." The picture of a pretty girl, long thick curls surrounding her face, full lips turned up in a wry smirk. "She looks familiar."

"Lady Darcy," Thor's voice boomed from the lab door.

"You found her," Jane clutched Thor's arm, tears springing up in the corners of her eyes.

"You know her?" Steve strode over to the door, looking down at Thor's girlfriend.

"She was my intern," Jane looked up at the Hydra file on the screen. "She disappeared from Culver about six years ago, I looked for a while, harassed the cops on campus, put in a missing person's report, but nothing ever turned up."

"Looks like we got a name for your girlfriend, Bucky Bear," Tony said, Darcy's Culver University ID badge went up on the screens along with her entire Hydra file. "Darcy Marie Lewis, of Manhattan Kansas, orphaned at age twelve." Video of the two soldiers popped up, both in full battle gear, back to back, gunning down anyone who came close. "Code name: Kotehok, continuation of Project Winter Soldier, looks like they were trying to duplicate what they did to you, minus the bionic arm."

"Well, she came into it with all four limbs still attached," Bucky said impassively. "She didn't start out as a Super Soldier Project, either."

"But we found her," Jane kept looking at the screens, the grainy video of Bucky with the girl played in one corner in a loop, while others of them fighting and training filled other screens. "What did they do to her, why Darcy?"

"They gave her to me," the Soldier looked down, shame written all over his face. "Because I showed an interest. They gave her to me for being a good soldier."

"She showed resistance," Tony flicked through the notes in her file. "So they kept her around. It says they could keep from using the ice on their Soldier, that she kept you from throwing off your programing as long as you were happy, and you were when the two of you were together. Increase dopamine and serotonin levels, in both subjects, it says. There were also increased levels of Oxytocin and Vasopressin, you both weren't just happy; whether it was from the chemicals they doped you with or from natural inclinations, you were in love."

"Everything that happened to that girl is my fault," the crack of Jane's had across his face wasn't a surprise, he deserved that much and more. "What was her last known location?"

"Outside Moscow," Tony said, eyeing the astrophysicist with caution. "But we're going to have to track her in real time; this intel is six months cold."

"Jarvis," Steve addressed Stark's AI. "I need you to pull up a map of all known Hydra facilities." A map came up across the screens, dotted in red. "We'll work this like any other mission. Call in Natasha and Clint, we need intel; Stark see what you can dig up, Jarvis, start running facial recognition. Everyone grab your go bags, we'll need boots on the ground the second we confirm sighting."

They moved their search up to the War Room scattering intel as it came up, Darcy's full Hydra profile on display, video running in loops, any information they could find on the girl was pulled and catalogued.

"Holy shit," Clint stepped off the elevator, his eyes locked on the brunette's photo. "That's Darcy," the whole room turned and looked at him. "I was in New Mexico, she was a cool kid, we went out for drinks while Jane obsessed over her machines, she went back to school," he shrugged. "Cops said her case was closed, only means one of two things, she was found, or her body was."

"Apparently not," Tony nodded toward the footage of her and The Winter Soldier fighting. "Hydra picked her up."

Natasha watched from the doorway, silently assessing the girl from behind her partner's frozen stance. "You trained her," she said to Bucky, who wouldn't meet the Widow's eyes. "I don't need confirmation, I can see it." Natasha flicked some files across the holotable and skimmed, glancing up at the facial recognition scans. "It's not going to be easy bringing her in; they're going to get her in and out for missions. They already lost one asset, they'll be more careful with this one." She watched Bucky sink into himself further. "I forgave you, Yasha. She will, too," Natasha told him quietly in Russian, her hand soft on his metal shoulder.

"You don't know what sins I've committed, Natalia, don't presume to absolve me," Bucky replied in clipped Russian, shrugging off her hand. "Just find her," he stood up and stalked over to the elevators, pushing the down button. After a pause, Steve followed.

Bucky stalked into the underground shooting range and flicked open his locker. He grabbed his SIG Saur and checked the magazine before tucking in into the back of his cargo pants and repeating the process with a pair of Glocks, each claiming a place in holsters built into the pants large side pockets. Bucky called up a program for his targets and set the lights strobing, pulling one gun at a time as he bad his way along the gallery, hitting each target with practiced precision, and then moving on. The weight of the guns in his hands and the task in front of him brought silence to his mind. He pushed thought of his Kitten from his brain as he put each pullet into a target; two in the chest and one in the head, insurance that your mark would not be getting back up. He couldn't remember if that was Hydra or Red Room, or even the good old US Army that had drilled that into his head, but it hardly mattered, it was efficient and affective, and it kept his mind silent.

Notes:

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