At first, it's questions she doesn't understand, a haze of confusion and pain. She forgets, as always, that her frail bones and wrinkled skin were not meant for this as she tries to stand only to fall back, a sting shooting up her sides.
Her already imperiled sight is rendered useless in the dimly lit, windowless, concrete box that reeks of urine. The blows come from ghosts lurking around the claustrophobic space, made more painful by the uncertainty of their origin. There is a longing for the strength to defend herself that grows in angry tears that gather behind her eyelids until they spill.
They shout their questions and her own failing mind becomes frightening. Someone asks for her name and panic builds on lack of answers, desperation grows when no words make it to her memory. She earns a slap for the silence that ricochets around her skull and tastes iron in the trail of blood that breaks off her lip.
Her captors mumble hushed words in a foreign language, frustration evident in their tone. A minute later someone's spit drips down her temple and she flinches before a kick cracks her ribs filling the room with the sound of breaking bones. She bites her lip to drown out the sobs, refusing to provide them with the satisfaction of her pain.
Someone pronounces a single curse with a mouthful of contempt as the door scrapes against the floor when it's opened. The hallway light makes silhouettes of a face in a final look of disgust before sealing her in shadow again with the click of a lock.
They return making the rusted hinges screech loudly. The sound pierces into her silence accustomed ears like screams of agony. She crawls to a corner heaving over still fractured ribs, trying desperately to shrink until she is too small to harm.
Someone grabs her by the collar trapping air mid-breath and she chokes. The violent pain brings her the urge to fight. She kicks a stomach and lands back on the tile floor.
More hands. Nails scrape her fragile skin, pull her members apart with no delicacy until she's looking up into the darkness. Her back is pushed flat over a cold hard surface, arms and legs spread. Entirely exposed.
Hatred builds to fuel failed attempts to break free. She's too weak to fight and too proud to surrender.
The light returns and her eyes are burnt momentarily by white clarity. They focus again in time to see someone's arm pull back with a syringe filled with thick, pale yellow liquid. It swings back in a stab into her thigh and when they push the plunger the pain is sharp. Darkness settles before her next heartbeat.
There is a price she pays in pain flaring through her veins, red paths of bloody tears that stain pale cheeks, in hunger, thirst, a permanently unsettled stomach and a mouth bruised by acid.
A price for gray strands that darken back to their chocolate shade while her skin smooths down - years of living erased - for breath that flows freely in and out and a spine that isn't bent.
There is both a sense of dread and gratefulness as her muscles regain strength. A mind that clears doesn't allow her to forget the disconcertingly unnatural character of the change.
They think this helps their cause. Foolish.
She isn't weak now.
Flashes of iron and hitting the ground. It's an hourly routine that has her sticking with sweat, breathless, body and pride wounded, but she insists on her own demise.
They come for her with more force and questions, and there's a particular dread developed over boots clad with steel at the edges, kicks that crack her bones and bloody spit.
They break her in violence as easily as they'd cured her of time and after each struggle her resolve needs to be rebuilt. It's none the wiser to defy, but there's no helping the anger trapped in her fists, tightly balled in white knuckles decorated with scars.
Her stomach folds on itself in waves of nausea and she feels her throat burn as acid climbs up to her mouth. Her vision blurs and her thoughts become as undefined as her sight. She resents the stray brand of serum that chastises her nerve endings demanding sustenance she cannot provide. Minutes drag under the influence of discomfort and she loses count of the days she has spent taken.
Starvation - their new strategy.
When they think her weak enough someone comes to question her in a soft voice with undertones of threat. They promise food and freedom with colorful descriptions that highlight her need and the thought of confessing becomes tempting in a way it wasn't while they ripped off fingernails.
Soon she has no strength to spare for her dignity and allows tears to cut clean trails through the dirt on her cheeks.
It's a sick sort of relief when they resume a routine of aggression. The rush of the struggle alleviates her hunger with doses of adrenaline. She'd like to have perspective but her only certainty are the angry purple marks on her back and smaller scars that are made and fade on the same day.
It lasts until they put her out, a kick to her cheek that bounces the back of her head against a wall. She wakes up alone in the dark, no news, but in so much pain she bends forward as soon as her eyes open to try and throw up on an empty stomach. She comes up dry, the room spins, and her conscience flickers off again.
She's back before her eyes open, choking and to the sound of someone trying to break out of hell, or maybe into it. She rips the tube out of her throat gagging and spits to the side once it's off. She's on a bed, the softness is disconcerting. So is the light, bright and everywhere, highlighting the dirtiness of the walls, the grimy sheet and the yellow of the serum dripping into her from a thin plastic tube. It parallels a needle on her other arm guiding in something similar but blue.
She rips them both off and barely feels the sting.
The floor is cold on her feet. The sound of battle outside is a crescendo, she turns to the door and discovers hope she thought she'd abandoned. The shots make a melody that's almost satisfying.
A chance to leave, or die trying.
She knows her odds with clarity but doesn't find hesitation in her steps as she walks into the swirl of blood and bullets.
War was a kind of home to her.
They find her broken and bloody, lungs rattling as they try to inflate and managing for half a weak heartbeat before even oxygen is deemed too demanding. His heart breaks whilst hers fails, but there is still life.
He picks her up on sore arms, worried his armor is too rough on her skin. She is choking and he already knows the ragged noises will haunt his rest. A new nightmare. Not eventful, not to him.
They leave amidst gruesome thundering battle sounds, a lullaby to both of them. She has spent seven decades fighting and war was just yesterday to him. But still, he thought they'd be past the possibility of this.
Past her broken body on his arms while death circles them in screams.
Two men in white come to take her from his arms and he cradles her closer, presses her kindly to his chest and worries again, about how slowly she breathes. He hears a repetitive ringing in his ears and thinks, maybe, he has gone insane. If he has, he's not sure if he'd like or not to be broken out of this illusion.
He feels a hand wrap around his bicep and turns, so slowly, finds Nat's eyes. They're asking him to let her go.
"She'll die, Steve. Let them help."
He looks down; she already seems like a corpse. He doesn't remember the last time he was scared like this, enough that tears start to prickle.
Nat's hand runs down his arm with a softness he hasn't seen on her before. "I'll take her" she whispers and he allows. She holds Peggy's body with an ease that should, but doesn't, surprise him.
"I took her to medical"
He punches a dent on the table and heads turn to watch them through glass walls. Natasha doesn't flinch.
"I trusted you," he hears himself sound unstable and forgets to care. Looks at her from red hair to combat boots and resents, profoundly, her, Fury, and spies.
"You'll make everything worse by punching your way through this," she sounds cold, he almost doesn't understand, she knows his reasons. He feels like he meets the black widow for the first time in her voice.
"Whatever gets her back."
She wakes up in a sterile room, assaulted by the smell of bleach and the walls reverberating under the weight of someone's anger outside the door. She knows the voice.
"Steve!"
There is stillness, indistinct chatter. She tries again.
"Steve!"
The door opens with a nearly imperceptible creak, yet the woman who steps through glances at the hinges disapprovingly before shifting her gaze to the bed. She owns a piercing and invasive scrutiny over black framed glasses. It has a sense of shame crawling involuntarily over Peggy's skin then dissolving in pride, bruises and hard learned lessons in between two breaths.
She has grown beyond shame.
"Where am I?"
She gets a sour smile and a raised eyebrow instead of an answer and the walls start trembling again under Steve's rage.
Soon they'll be broken down under hers.
"Where am I?"
Tangled, dull hair, purple veins under paper-like skin in color and frailness, barefoot and a nightgown as white as her complexion, dark circles under still bright brown eyes, a scowl and tear streaked cheeks.
Her breath is heaving, knuckles bruised.
Breaking out is hardly ever easy.
She leaves behind a trail of unconscious bodies and when he arrives, she is sitting in the middle of the hallway, knees pulled against her torso, arms wrapped around her shins, rocking back and forth slowly. Heartbreaking, but he knows better than to think harmless.
"Peggy?"
She looks up, registers him, smiles
"Home?"
He returns the smile, nods.
"Home."
They'd forgotten what that meant, it becomes clear now.
His hands roam tenderly over her bruised skin while breath still struggles to reach her lungs. He's grown used to the sound but not yet unbothered by it. The ragged rhythmic noise lulls his expedition over her pain. An appropriate soundtrack.
His fingers brush lightly over a palette of blue and green on her right side, half hidden beneath the bra strap, remnants of a blow that earned her cracked ribs. He leans in, kisses what he can reach and hears her sigh as he does.
"That is the last of them," she whispers.
He looks up at her profile reflecting the yellow glow of the late afternoon. Brown hair falls down her back at just the same length he remembers it had always been, twin bullet marks on her shoulder and a constellation of bruises.
He inhales "Tell me" it's a whisper and she shuts her eyes, ready to relive the last piece of her torture.
Her nails rake forcefully over his scalp, pulling at blond hair, short threads escaping her grasp when she tugs. It's all he has ever wanted, the softness of her thighs closing in around his cheeks, her taste, gasps filling the room, his name on her lips. She is close. He slides a finger in and pumps, once, twice, until her pleas loose coherence, back arching off the bed, he feels her clench and release, keeps rhythm until her high is through.
Months after, there's still a ghost of a doubt that lurks in the corners of his mind. He fears tangled sheets and waking up to the dread of being betrayed by a good dream. But in this newfound silence, when he rests his head over her chest, Peggy's frantic heartbeat solidifies his faith
Home.