1. Silence - Sophie
His eyes follow me as I move across the room and sit down on a stool in the corner. In all this time, two weeks, he'd said nothing. I couldn't help but hold my breath in front of him, anything that broke the silence felt strange. I pluck up the courage to speak, his nonchalance was beginning to get on my nerves.
"What do you want from me?"
No response.
"All the others told me that they wanted to help the people. That by using me, they would free them. But that's not how it works is it? You want to trap the people in fear. You criminals think you can take the freedom from people, to control them like puppets and make them conform to your dictatorship-like ideals-"
Before I could react, he had managed to stand up, cross the room and walk to me. We stood face to face, I take a step back. His eyes are startlingly bright, a shade of blue that seemed too kind to be part of a man like him. I stand my ground and try to hold my gaze. I almost hear words in the sigh that issues from him moments later. But he steps around me and disappears from the room.
There was something different about this kidnapper. He scared me, but he'd never laid a hand on me. I'd been hit for speaking up at all previously, those men thought they could beat the protests out of me until I was too spent to talk. Maybe I'd have died in that warehouse in Croatia if S.H.E.I.L.D hadn't managed to save me. But it wasn't like this man was any different either, he had taken me from everything and everyone I knew and intended to bring me to Hydra. The thought of what Hydra could do with the RgX chilled me to my core. I wanted Fury and the others to find me before that, if they didn't, millions of people would die.
And him. The Winter Soldier. What did he intend to do? If he was only a device of Hydra, there would be no trace of humanity on him. There was more to him and I could sense the uncertainty in him. Perhaps, he was fighting against more than Hydra's enemies. Or perhaps the silence had made me seek meaning in nothing.
Against every protest in my mind I follow his path out of the room. I hear ruffling in the room down the hall. Just as I reach out to push the door, the ruffling stops and I hear foot-steps to the door. He opens the door.
He's shirtless, the left side of his torso catches my eye first. Large scars ran across his chest, deepening at the junction where a bionic arm attached to his body. Without thinking my hand reached out to touch the strange and unimaginably large sutures. Before my hand made contact or I realised what I was doing, his metal hand caught mine and pulled it away. I winced at the sudden-ness of his movements and the strong grip of the steel. He immediately lets go and steps back. Even the adrenaline coursing through my veins couldn't make me move. It took a moment for me to realise the pain in my wrist. I look down to see bruises blossoming on the back of my hand and arm already. I finally manage to get my body to turn, I begin to walk away and am stopped by his other hand on my shoulder which was the complete opposite to the other, warmth and skin. He quickly reaches for my hand but I instinctively recoil. This time, slowly and delicately he reaches for and takes my bruised hand in his and inspects it closely. He disappears into the other room and returns with a compression bandage which he begins to wrap around my wrist.
My face stays expressionless as the man in front of me, someone who had forcibly taken me from my home and had kept me in solitude and away from all human contact for months, wraps my hand in a bandage after having bruised it. When he releases my hand I open my mouth as if I had something to say but he returns to his room and closes the door without looking at me.
Returning to my room, I contemplate what to do next. My hand throbbed a little as I ran my fingers over the bandage. The door was unlocked and wide open but I knew there was no point in running from someone who anticipates my move before I think to make it. If I stayed here, it could only be a week at most before we reached Hydra's base. Think dammit! Millions of lives were on the line.