Chapter 23
At Clint's nod, Bucky released Frankie and she quickly stepped away from him, turning so she could see both men while trying to refasten her shirt. Unfortunately, enough buttons had broken off that she had to awkwardly hold it in place with one hand. Both men watched her with amusement. Bucky was younger than his companion, with dark, messy hair and a somber expression. A glint of silvery metal shown in the gap between his sleeve and his black gloves, answering her question of his identity. She stored that knowledge away for later and turned her glare to Clint.
"What the hell is it with you? Are you some kind of creepy stalker? Don't you have some innocent civilians to kill?" she snarled.
That earned her a flinch from her victim as her barbs found their mark.
"Come on, let's get out of here before we draw too much attention," he told Bucky, ignoring her.
Frankie backed farther away from the pair. "Oh, no. I'm not going anywhere with you two. I'll just wait right here for the police."
Bucky grabbed her by the arm, "no, you're not," and pulled her across the yard to the fence along the road.
She allowed him to lift her over the fence before he vaulted over it and landed silently beside her. The parking lot for the bar was just a few yards to her left, if she could get someone's attention, then the two men wouldn't be able to abduct her without someone seeing. She drew in as big a breath as she could with her ribs protesting.
A warm hand clamped over her mouth as Bucky pulled her close to his side, "bad idea."
It was worth a try, she thought. But the idea of giving in willingly just grated on her. Still, she got into the big, black SUV that pulled up without too much protest and sulked as Bucky climbed in beside her and Clint did so from the other side. She sat in silence for the drive away to the outskirts of the city to a small airfield where a Quinn jet sat in preparation for takeoff.
She must have made a noise because Clint looked down at her, "hopefully, your friends in Hydra won't shoot this one down."
"They're not my friends," she snapped. "And if you'd stop kidnapping me, you wouldn't have to worry about it."
"We're apprehending you," Bucky said from her other side.
"Again," Clint added.
"I hate you," she hissed.
"You're not my favorite person either, if it makes you feel better."
It didn't take long to hustle her onto the jet. Bucky went forward to pilot the craft while Clint stayed in the back with her. Instead of strapping her into one of the jump seats mounted along the side, he had her sit on a bench in the middle.
"Let me look at your wounds," he said, pulling a medical kit out of a bin.
Frankie slapped away his hands as he tried to brush aside her hair, which had come out of its messy bun long ago, to get a better look.
"Don't touch me," she snapped.
"Come on, you're bleeding," he sighed as he tried again.
This time she shoved him away, making him take a step back to maintain his balance.
"This is childish, Frankie."
"Fuck you."
Giving up, Clint sat in one of the jump seats, keeping an eye on her as the jet lifted off the ground and surged forward. Frankie had to let go of her torn shirt to hold on to the bench and maintain her balance, gritting her teeth as every move pulled both the cut and the gunshot as well as jarred her ribs. Clint just sat there, expressionless as she struggled.
After what seemed like an eternity, the jet leveled off and the flight smoothed out, allowing Frankie to release her death-grip on the bench.
Both looked up as Bucky came to the back from the pilot's seat.
"You want to take over up front?" he asked Clint.
Shaking his head with frustration, Clint snorted, "why not."
Standing, he moved to the front of the jet. As he passed Bucky he muttered, "good luck."
Once he was out of sight, Bucky moved around to squat in front of Frankie.
"Would you really rather bleed than accept help?"
"From him? Yeah."
He frowned, "you must really hate him."
Looking him straight in the eyes, she replied, "he killed my best friend, so yeah, I do."
Another frown, "he's killed a lot of people. So have I. It's what you do when you're fighting for the fate of the world."
Frankie surged forward on the bench, bringing her face within inches of his, "Rory wasn't fighting for the fate of the world!" she spat vehemently. "He was just a kid with his whole life ahead of him, trying to find a better life in the chaos after half the world disappeared. And Hawkeye," she wasn't going to call him by his name, "wasn't fighting for the fate of the world. He was dealing out vigilante justice without giving a damn who got hurt in the process."
She collapsed back on the bench, and said in a quavering voice, "Rory saved me in a way. He made me a better person."
Bucky stayed quiet while she got herself back under control, his eyes serious. When she squared her shoulders and winced, he asked, "will you let me take a look?"
Giving him a sad smile, she nodded, "yeah."
He moved around behind her to look at the seeping wound on her shoulder. She stayed still as he lifted her hair out of the way and twisted it back into a semblance of a bun, using the remaining bobby pins to hold it. He was surprisingly gentle.
"This must have been pretty bad," he said as he applied alcohol to a gauze and started cleaning it. "How'd you get it?"
Frankie let out a breath with a hiss, "some Hydra bitch shanked me in prison with a shard of glass." She decided to stick to the story she told the guards.
"It's going to be a nasty scar. Whoever stitched you up didn't do you any favors."
"Well, it's kinda hard to apply staples to your own back."
"Staples?"
"Yeah, sometimes it's quicker and easier to use staples if you don't care about the scaring, or if you don't have access to sutures."
"You stapled this yourself?"
Frankie wasn't going to give Melissa's involvement away, so she nodded. "I didn't have a choice."
Bucky was quiet for a moment while he worked.
"You need stitches where it opened back up," he said, laying the bloody gauze down on the bench. "I'm going to put some butterflies on them until a doctor can take care of it."
She breathed a sigh of relief, remembering how much the staples had hurt, and waited patiently while he applied them and a bandage. Then he moved back in front of her. She had let go of her shirt again while he was working on her shoulder and it was gapped open again. Reflexively, she started to pull it together to hide her bra but realized that he would have to move it aside to get to the gunshot wound. Shrugging gingerly out of it, she let it fall to the bench.
"Do you have any shirts I can borrow when you're done?"
"I'll look," he nodded, his eyes riveted on her torso, his eyebrows drawn down carving a deep vertical groove between them.
Frankie almost snapped at him for staring at her boobs before she realized he wasn't focused on them. Without her shirt, the scars from the Quinn jet crash were on display. Flushing at his scrutiny, she fought not to cover up the scars with her hands.
"From my last ride in one of these," she explained. "Killed my career as a stripper. But," she added, "if I keep collecting scars at this rate, maybe I'll have a shot as a freak show performer."
Bucky raised his eyes to meet hers but didn't respond. Inwardly cringing, she remembered too late about his silver arm. Luckily, he turned his attention to her shoulder. It too was seeping blood, but not as badly. It didn't take much for him to clean and dress it. As the silence drug on, Frankie's curiosity got the better of her.
"So," she said slowly, "you're the Winter Soldier."
He glanced from her shoulder to her face briefly, not pausing, though the muscles in his jaw bulged as he gritted his teeth. Maybe she should just shut up? But there was something she needed to know.
"Do you remember everything?" she asked softly, looking down at her hands.
This time he paused, his hand hovering just centimeters from her flesh. "What do you mean?"
She chewed the inside of her cheek, thinking how to put her question into words. "Do you remember what they did to you?"
Bucky sighed and went back to cleaning the hole in her shoulder. "Some of it. Just bits and pieces though."
"Like a nightmare?"
"Yeah, like a nightmare."
She sat pensively while Bucky finished working on her. From time to time he would glance at her, but she kept her eyes focused on her hands in her lap. When he was through, he dug around in a few cabinets looking for a shirt or something for her to wear. When he couldn't find anything, he pulled off his long-sleeved shirt, leaving just a dark tank, and held it out to her.
"This is the best I can do, sorry."
Happy to have anything to cover up her scars, she took it from him with a smile, "thanks."
Pulling it over her head, she had to stand to pull it down around her hips. It hung to about mid-thigh, covering more than the skirt under it. Smoothing it down, she was caught off guard when the jet jerked under her, causing her to lose her footing and stumble. One of her flailing hands caught Bucky's arm as he grabbed her to keep her from falling, the metal cool and almost slick under her skin. They stood with her clinging to him until the jet settled back down, then she pulled away.
"I'm sure he's trying to kill me," she told him, not looking up. "I think I'll just buckle in for the rest of the flight."
"We're almost there."
"They say the most dangerous part of flying is the landing," she shot over her shoulder as she walked over to the row of jump seats.
"Do they?"
She fumbled with the straps, "I'm pretty sure that's what they say."
The strap that went over her shoulders was obviously stuck because, no matter how much she jerked on it, it refused to feed out more than a couple of inches. Frustrated, she yanked on it harder.
"Let go," Bucky said in her ear as he grabbed the strap.
"There's something wrong…,"
"No, there isn't," he told her calmly.
When she let go with a huff, he gave the strap some slack, then pulled it smoothly out. Pulling it over her head he clipped it into the strap that reached across her lap. Then he pulled on each shoulder strap.
"Comfortable?"
"Yeah."
"It isn't too tight on this shoulder?"
"No, it's fine."
He squatted in front of her again, forcing her to look at him, "they can help you if you let them."
Her eyes burned as she drew a faltering breath, "I'm not sure if they can."
