Title: The Lion and the Mouse

Rating: T or M

Warnings: Violence

Categories: Angst, drama, hurt/comfort, action, feels

Author's Notes: Begins during the Agents of Shield episode "Turn, Turn, Turn". For any movie fans who don't watch the show just know that Fitz is a loyal Shield techie and Garrett is a bad guy who works for Hydra. For those who do watch the show, Ward isn't evil because I don't need that kind of complication.

Written because I wanted to whump Fitz and Bucky and this seemed like the best way to do it.

Garrett smiled to himself as he walked past Coulson and May after deeming them expendable enough to be sacrificed to the firing squad since they had refused his offer to join Hydra. He stopped in front of their final captive, an asset he was smart enough not to throw away as readily as the other two.

"As for you Agent Fitz, you'll hold a very high rank on our tech division if you volunteer. If not, you'll have no rank ... and a lot of pain. Of course, either way, your services will be required."

Fitz swallowed and looked up shakily at Garret. "I'll never work for you, for Hydra, you might as well just kill me too."

Garrett patted his cheek condescendingly.

"Oh kid, I thought I made it clear ..." Fitz tried to pull away from his touch and grunted when Garrett's fingers dug into the back of his neck to keep him still.

"Garrett," Coulson hissed, taking a half step to intervene before a cocked gun was shoved in his face, forcing him and May to watch helplessly.

Sneering, Garrett continued, practically whispering in Fitz's ear. "... death isn't an option for you, not with that genius brain of yours, I'm afraid you're too valuable an asset. But if that's how you feel we'll find you a nice cell and some electroshock therapy for you to think it over with."

Fitz was on the brink of hyperventilating. They were going to torture him. They were going to kill his teammates in front of him and then drag him away to be tortured for ... for who knew how long. For forever if he held his ground and refused to join them. Garrett was still in Fitz's personal space, his gun holstered at his hip. Fitz could grab it if he moved quickly. But he wasn't a field agent, he wouldn't have any chance.

Oh God, Simmons, he thought suddenly. Hydra would want her too. She was just as brilliant as him and just as loyal. She would never work for Hydra, they would torture her too. He couldn't let that happen. With no further thought he lunged for the gun, surprising no one more than himself when he got his fingers around the handle and even cleared it from the holster but Garrett had been trained by Fury himself, Fitz never stood a chance. Garrett reacted almost instantly wrapping his fingers around Fitz's wrist, twisting and pulling up. The gun fell from his grip as he cried out in pain and then found himself face first against the computer station behind him, his right arm wrenched painfully behind his back.

"Fitz!" Coulson shouted.

"That was a very dumb move Agent Fitz," Garrett tsked, showing his displeasure by applying more pressure on his arm. Fitz hissed and tried to shift away but Garrett's grip was like iron threatening to pull his joint out of the socket. "Although I gotta say, I'm impressed ya had the balls to even try it."

"Garrett, leave him alone," Coulson demanded.

"He's just a kid," added May, scowling at Garrett and the cuffs around her wrists.

"A kid with an IQ of over 200 and three PhD's. With the proper conditioning he'll be Hydra's very own Tony Stark," Garrett pointed out.

"I'm 26," Fitz protested. "I'm not a kid."

Garrett huffed a laugh that quickly became a put-upon sigh. "I like you son. Now, have you gotten this rebellious stage over with or can I expect you to come along quietly?"

"I'll never work for Hydra," Fitz repeated struggling against his grip, uncertain if he was making a promise to Garrett or himself.

"Hard way it is." That was the only warning Fitz received before his arm was wrenched back with a sickening crack that marked his shoulder popping out of its socket. His vision went black around the edges and he was pretty sure he screamed judging by how ragged his throat felt later but that was nothing compared to the agony that radiated through his body.

"Dammit John! You're gonna burn for this," Coulson cursed as he watched Garrett drop Fitz to the floor where he gasped violently in pain and clutched his shoulder.

"You know how Hydra works Phil, no weakness, no leniency. I think we'll get along much better now, won't we Agent Fitz. Here, let me help you with that," Garrett said as he reached out to take Fitz's slack right arm.

"No," Fitz mumbled, on his back and trying to scoot away but Garrett grabbed his wrist easily, pulling it up and towards him with another sickening pop. This time Fitz knew he screamed, curling into a shuddering ball on the floor when Garrett released his arm with a laugh.

"See, pops right back in, no harm no foul. Bet you won't even have any nerve damage."

"You bastard," May hissed, trying to draw his attention any way she could with four guns on her and handcuffed.

"He won't help you," Coulson affirmed, proud of Fitz for standing up to Hydra even if he was concerned for what it meant for his future.

Garrett shrugged. "We'll see. And believe it or not Phil I really do feel bad about this. You've been a good friend and you know what, I actually don't think I can watch you die. So ..." Garrett reached down and pulled Fitz to his feet who stood hunched over in his grasp, in too much agony to protest. "... I'm going to take this one somewhere secure. You four are free to shoot these two now, or wait until we hear about where we're disposing bodies. It'd be easier to shoot them there than drag their corpses around. Up to you though. Come on kid, bet you want to see this even less than I do."

Fitz looked up sharply, Garrett's words only now cutting through the agony he was in and took in the sight of Coulson and May standing in front of a firing squad while he was pulled off to the side.

"No, you can't," he muttered, trying to pull away but Garrett's grip just tightened.

"I think you'll find that I can. Phil, it's been an honor," Garrett said, tipping his head as he hauled Fitz towards the door with him, purposely jarring his shoulder to keep him in pain so he wouldn't fight back.

Coulson ignored Garrett and looked at Fitz, meeting the tech's eye as he was dragged away. "Fitz, just hold on. We'll find you. You hear me? We'll find you!"

"That's got to be the sweetest thing I ever heard," Garrett mumbled, unmoved as they left the room. But Fitz took the words to heart and nodded. They would survive. Coulson survived anything, even a god hadn't been able to kill him. They would find him so he just had to hold on and stay alive.

They were at the end of the next hallway when the lights suddenly went out.

"That doesn't bode well." Garrett's words were followed by the sound of gunshots coming from down the hall and the stomping of at least half a dozen booted feet.

"Coulson? May!" Fitz shouted, trying to go back, needing to know which direction the bullets they heard had been going in.

"Oh no you don't. I think the wind might have stopped blowing Hydra's way around here but you're still a hell of a keepsake. Get moving!"

Fitz's good arm was shoved up hard behind his back and the message was clear; if he fought back again he was going to have two dislocated shoulders. He went along, remembering Coulson's words. They would find him.

An impossible distance away May and Coulson were standing in front of a new set of armed SHIELD agents, these ones led by Victoria Hand.

"I'm not Hydra!" Coulson yelled, beyond frustrated and winded from killing two men.

"I know," Hand replied, "we heard everything."

Simmons broke through the guards, her gaze desperately sweeping the room. "Fitz?" She looked at the bodies then shakily up at Coulson. "Sir, where's Fitz?"

"Garrett took him."

"Oh my god."

"Start searching," Hand shouted to her men, wasting no time. "Garrett can't be far.'

"Oh god," Simmons said again, hands over her mouth, remembering what they had heard Garrett say before they had left to breach the room. "They're going to torture him."

"No, Simmons, he'll be fine. We're going to find him before that happens."

One of Hand's men approached holding out a tablet. "Ma'am, I just checked in on the hangar bay. A two-man jet took off thirty seconds ago."

Coulson's stomach dropped. Garrett was a pilot. "That's them. May, get the Bus ready. Track that jet."

"We can't," the man said, stopping May. "The jet was the new Whisper class."

Hand sighed. "Our latest in stealth technology."

"There's no way to track it."

Coulson looked at Simmons who half collapsed against the computer monitors and shook her head. She was a biochemist, this wasn't her field, she had no idea how to track a SHIELD engineered stealth jet. Fitz would know. Fitz would work it out in half a minute. But Fitz was gone.

"Fitz is gone," she muttered.

"We'll find him," Coulson promised.

She wanted to believe him, but she wasn't sure he believed it himself.

"Fitz is gone."

Fitz woke up alone in a cell with an excruciatingly sore shoulder. He was still wearing his own clothes but they had stripped away his kevlar vest, everything from his pockets and even taken his shoes.

His cell looked old, made of plain concrete with jail-like bars, with no bed or sink, just a toilet in the corner. He wished it was more high tech. He could short circuit a forcefield or hack an electronic lock, but this damn thing took a physical key and even his brilliant mind couldn't engineer a way to force open steel without any tools.

Looking through the bars he could see two other cells but he couldn't hear or see anyone else.

"Hello," Fitz called out. No reply, no sound of movement. He was indeed alone.

Eventually he slumped back into the corner he had woken up in, tucking his frozen toes underneath himself and resting his arm on his knees to keep it elevated and stop it throbbing. He started to think about torture. How long until they started? Hopefully longer than it took for the team to find him.

The thoughts made him panic but he was too exhausted to do so for long and eventually felt his eyes start to close. They snapped open when he heard a door slamming closed followed by smooth heavy footsteps. Fitz was wide awake instantly and pushed himself to standing, though he remained huddled in the corner.

There were no lights in his cell, just in the hallway, which made the man who appeared at his door to be just a silhouette at first. A key slid into the lock. The door opened and a tray was placed on the ground and slid across to him. Fitz eyed it warily; it looked like a bottle of water and a sandwich, maybe chicken.

"Eat," the man said and though it was clearly an order it lacked aggression.

"I'm not hungry, thanks." He didn't mean to say thanks, damn his ingrained politeness.

"It doesn't matter," the man said as though it should be obvious.

"I kind of think it does," Fitz argued looking up to study the guard more closely. No, he wasn't a guard. No one would ever describe him like that. His build was too solid and his stance was wrong. A soldier. That was the only way to describe him. He was a soldier.

"Assets are not to be damaged, that includes damage inflicted from a refusal to eat, so, eat."

Fitz flinched to hear himself referred to as an asset even though he knew that's all Hydra thought of him as. "And if I refuse?"

"I'm authorized to make you," the Soldier said. He shifted, letting the light strike the left side of his body, allowing Fitz to see his arm for the first time. He swallowed, it was made of metal. The man flexed his fingers and there was a whirring sound like hydraulics. Fitz didn't want to imagine what he could do with that, even as he tried to imagine the mechanics behind it. The Soldier tilted his head towards the tray. "Though I'd rather not."

Fitz sat down shakily. He was likely to have a lot of battles to fight in the coming days, he supposed refusing food was a waste of his energy in the long run. Still cradling his injured arm he pulled the tray closer to him and started to eat. The Soldier crossed his arms and shifted to stand half in the doorway.

"You're just going to stand there and watch me?" Fitz asked uncomfortably after the second bite but the Soldier seemed content to be silent now that Fitz was doing as instructed. "I hope this isn't some weird eating fetish thing on your part, that's the last thing I need."

The Soldier raised an eyebrow and Fitz was mildly proud that his mumbling made the man respond. "You're logged with a level 1 intelligence. You're not to be left alone with anything that could be used as a tool, so I stay until you're finished."

"I'm flattered that Hydra thinks I can break out of here with a bottle cap and a paper plate," he scoffed while silently cursing. He had been hoping to keep the plate. A piece of paper folded eight times could withstand enough pressure to easily jam his cell door open.

The Soldier was silent. Fitz took another bite. The sandwich wasn't very good. It was nothing like the ones Simmons made. He felt his chest tighten thinking of her. He hoped she was safe. The cells next to him were empty, he had to assume she was. If only he could say the same about himself. He looked at the Soldier and swallowed.

"Do you know what they're going to do to me?"

The man didn't look at him. He was looking down the hallway, focussed yet lost in thought. "No."

Fitz suddenly felt his anger growing stronger than his fear for the first time and he raised his voice.

"Why do you do it, huh? Work for Hydra to destroy a good organization that only ever wanted to protect people? You're terrorists and murderers, how can you live with yourself?"

The man looked at Fitz with his head tilted, as though confused by the question, almost like he didn't understand what it was to have an option to not work for Hydra.

Fitz suddenly became confused too because the light was striking the Soldier's face differently now that he was straddling the open doorway, and Fitz recognized him.

Gaze sweeping down Fitz considered the bionic arm and the Soldier's stoic responses, filled with none of the passion he heard when other Hydra agents spoke of their organization. His mind flashed to memories of Mike Peterson, a good man forged together with metal pieces, an unwilling weapon being forced to work for Hydra. Was that what this man was as well?

"What's your name?" he asked without thinking, his anger ebbing away as curiosity overtook him.

The man turned back to the hallway. "I don't have one."

"Did you have one before you were ... this?"

The Soldier's gaze narrowed. "Why?"

"You just look like someone I know. Well, I don't know him, I've just seen pictures. You look familiar, I suppose I should have said. But it's ... never mind, it's stupid, you couldn't be him, he died 70 years ago, fighting Hydra ... you couldn't be him."

The man's gaze was penetrating him now, pushing and warning him at the same time.

"He was a hero," Fitz added, raising his chin.

"What was his name?"

"First Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the Howling Commandos," Fitz said, the file memorized years ago when SHIELD found a red, white and blue relic in the ice. "His friends called him Bucky."

Fitz could have sworn the Soldier's breathing had sped up, yet he turned away, arms still crossed.

"Eat your food."

Fitz finished his sandwich. The Soldier took everything away, never meeting his eye again and disappeared silently, locking the door behind him.

It felt like another day passed before Fitz saw anyone again. He remembered Garrett saying that Hydra's timeline had been bumped up. He wondered if their organization was in too much chaos to deal with him right now. Had they forgotten about him? And where was the team? Were they alive? Looking for him?

His arm ached, he couldn't sleep on the concrete and he was always cold. Maybe they hadn't forgotten about him, he thought miserably, maybe they just started the torture slowly.

The door at the end of the hall opened and the Soldier appeared again. Fitz wasn't sure if he should start thinking of him as Bucky Barnes or not, it seemed too insane. The Soldier laid down the same meal as last time. Fitz had barely taken his first bite before he looked up to see the Soldier staring at him intently.

"What do you know about him?"

"Who? Bucky Barnes?"

One curt nod.

"Um ..." Fitz swallowed and thought back to the files he had scoured, his eidetic memory doing the rest. "He was from Brooklyn, born in 1920, conscripted in 1942. He and his unit were captured by Hydra in 1943. His rescue and the destruction of the Hydra base he was being held in was the very first mission of Captain America."

"Captain America." It wasn't a question. It was more like the Soldier was tasting the words, trying to see if they fit in his mouth.

"Yeah, Captain America, Steve Rogers, he was Bucky Barnes's best friend. He defied orders to rescue him, found him in a Hydra lab being experimented on."

"What did they do to him?"

Fitz swallowed, mouth suddenly dry though he didn't dare reach for his water under the Soldier's intense stare.

"No one really knows. They thought Armin Zola, the Hydra scientist had been in charge but the lab blew up with the rest of the base so there was no way to know. Zola was eventually captured but I don't think they ever asked him specifically what he'd done to him."

"Why not?"

"Well, Bucky Barnes was dead." The Soldier's head tilted in confusion once more. "He died capturing Zola and saving Captain America's life."

The Soldier's eyebrows creased. "He died."

"Well ..." The Soldier looked up. "He fell off of a train down a Russian mountainside in the dead of winter. He was presumed dead."

Confusion shifted to anger in an instant. "They never found his body. Presumed dead."

The Soldier's back straightened. His humanity melted away and he turned to look out into the hallway once more, impassive and cold like he'd been the day before. Fitz felt himself shiver and felt like he'd failed.

"What about you?" Fitz asked. "What do you know about Bucky Barnes?"

"I know I'm not him."

TBC

More Fitz and Bucky feels to come. Stick around!