Author's Note: This chapter title comes from IT by Stephen King.

Chapter Eleven - Be true (all the rest is darkness)

His name was Sunil Bakshi, he was nicer than Pierce, and she'd never hated anyone more in her entire life. He called her "my sweet girl" and threaded his fingers through her hair and pretended he loved her more than anything.

"You're a goddamn liar," she spat, shying away from the hand on her head. "I'm useful. That's the only reason you're doing this."

"No, no, no. It's not that you're useful. You're special. Incredible. Amazing. Gifted. Like Picasso or Beethoven." He took her hands in his, though didn't resist when she pulled away. "Try again. We're letting just a little bit through; just enough for you to learn your gift."

Danielle stared down at her hands, still singed and burned from her previous attempts. Angry and red and painted in welts. She wasn't sure she could try again. She said as much.

"Just one more time," Sunil promised. "Just one more. Then we'll be done for now, my sweet girl. Then we'll be done."

A shuddering breath scratched up her throat and she cupped her hands. "Alright." And though the collar around her neck still ached, she could feel the way they'd loosened its hold over the power bubbling beneath her skin. She twisted the raging energy up towards her hands and pulled it up through her skin. Blue pulsed up her veins. And then the energy left her body at the same time as a whimper did. The blue swirled into an angry, blinding light burning away at her palm and fingers. She reached out and touched the candle wick and the blue there turned yellow as it burned.

The power ripping through her skin dissipated and she winced, pulling back. "There. Done. Are you happy, now?"

"Yes, yes. You've made me ecstatic. You're amazing." He slid his fingers around her wrists and gently pulled her to her feet.

Danielle stumbled up and yanked her hands away. "I want to go back to my room."

He regarded her for a moment and then nodded. "Of course." He turned her with a hand on her back and, despite the fact that she was shying away from his touch, led her out into the hall. She eyed the guards following close, but the echo of the bullet she dug out of Bucky's leg kept her mouth closed. One guard moved forward and opened her door and Sunil smiled. "Sleep well," he murmured.

"Fuck off," she spat.

One of the guards shoved her inside and she stumbled as the door slammed behind her. Bucky dropped from his pushups and rolled into a sitting position so he could turn and eye her. With a sigh, she sank to the floor and settled into the silence between them.

Finally, she said, "Did you have fun without me?"

He frowned, as if her question confused him. "No." He said it simply and she knew better than to try to find the humor in it. He wasn't joking.

"Right. Ooh, dinner." She shuffled towards the two trays on the floor and slid one towards him before focusing on her own. "You don't have to wait for me, you know."

"I know."

"Oh." She squinted at him. "Oh. Thanks."

And there was that confused look again. He nodded once. "You're welcome."

Stark's death on the Roxxon oil rig will be commemorated in Central Park this coming Thursday in a ceremony organized by Stark Industries CEO Virginia Potts—

"Are you reading it again?"

She closed her hands quickly, crumbling the page between her palms. "No," she said a little too loudly, making a show of focusing on the book in front of her, open to a compare and contrast diagram of seven different types of disassembled pistols.

A metal hand entered her vision, palm up and waiting. Danielle kept her head down. "Go away," she mumbled.

"No. Give it here."

With a heavy sigh, she dropped the crumpled paper into his hand. Danielle looked up and watched as he opened it up and smoothed it out against the wall. He ran his gaze across it and then carefully folded it up. "I'll hold on to this," he said, slipping it in his pocket.

"But—" She licked her dry lips. "They'll take it away the next time you have a mission."

"Okay. Then you won't read it anymore."

She was ready to protest, ready to argue for the last scrap of information she had about her father, when the lights turned off. Her need to argue died with that. "Okay," she mumbled. She closed the book and leaned forward, dropping it haphazardly on the floor she couldn't see. "I'mma get some sleep."

He didn't answer, though she knew full well that he had heard her. Danielle felt around for her pillow and clutched it to her chest as she laid down, eyes closed. A moment later, her blanket found itself draped around her shoulders. Danielle opened her eyes and froze. "Winter?" she asked cautiously.

"Go to sleep," he ordered, and a cold hand straightened the blanket over her feet.

Danielle managed a tired smile and, even though the collar kept her from getting comfortable and the bed was always too hard, she fell asleep feeling warm.

Rumlow was her favorite because he didn't pretend to like her the way the others did. With him, there was no double meaning and no lies; he hated her plain and simple, and he made it no secret. And though she hated him too, she could appreciate that he didn't think her dumb enough to believe he cared.

"Again," he ordered, frowning down at her.

Danielle's body hated her for it, but she forced herself back up to her feet. She settled into her stance, vague memories of Natasha's directions echoing in her head. But the comfort of her training sessions with Natasha hardly resembled the bruise blooming across her body, the way her joints shook, or the blood pooling in her mouth. She curled her hands into fists. "Okay," she rasped, voice bubbling.

"Block," he reminded her. Then he surged forward.

She fumbled through blocking and deflecting his blows, only succeeding on a fraction of his hits. Danielle felt her ribs give a bit at a punch to her chest and her eye ached as it made contact with his knuckles. Finally, he jerked her legs out from under her and she hit the ground hard enough to lose all the air in her lungs.

Her vision spun and all she could see was Rumlow leaning over her sneering. "Pitiful. On your feet."

She wanted to resist. She wanted to spit at him and tell him to order someone else around. But she could see Bucky out of the corner of her eye where a guard was standing next to him, gun in hand, and the decision had long since been made for her.

Rumlow repeated the sequence and she struggled through her blocks. Even though her mind knew what was coming, her body just couldn't keep up. Before long, she found herself on the ground again and him standing over her with disappointment coloring his face. He shook his head and turned away, already unwrapping his knuckles. "That's all for today." He turned to address one of the guards. "She runs six miles before you take her back to her room." And then he left as if he hadn't just spent the last three hours beating her to a pulp.

Danielle dragged herself up again and obediently trudged over to the treadmill. She wrinkled her nose at the feeling of her bare feet on the tread. The soles of her feet were sore and worn but growing more and more callused with every day without shoes. One of the guards set the treadmill and she scowled at the speed as she struggled for a moment to settle into the pace of twenty miles an hour.

Of course, at that speed it didn't take her too long to finish her run and stumble off the treadmill, legs shaky from overworking them ever since Sunil dragged her out of her room early that morning. She let herself be prodded down the hallway at gunpoint and shoved into her room. Without protest, she fell onto her bed and buried herself into the scratchy blanket in search of some sense of relief. The door slammed and locked loudly and she winced at how loud the sound was against her ears.

"Danielle."

She groaned and shifted so she could peer at where Bucky stood just a foot away, watching her. With a heavy sigh, she pushed herself up. "I'm gonna shower," she muttered, limping to the stall.

She fumbled with getting a new set plain grey clothes from the cabinet before stripping down and stepping under the cold water. She scrubbed at her body until her skin was red and the water was draining grey with the sweat and grime from the day. When she moved to wash her face, the water ran pink and she tenderly felt her aching nose, though it had stopped bleeding a bit ago. She could have sworn Rumlow broke it earlier, but now it just was sore to the touch.

When the temperature on the shower went from cool to ice cold, she knew it was time to get out. She only half dried-off before fumbling her way into her clothes. Running a hand across her hair—still short and hardly long enough to even run her fingers through—she yawned and stepped back out into the main room. She was halfway to the bed when the lights clicked off.

"Right." She sighed and felt her way to the bed. "Goodnight, Winter."

She screamed and blue arched out from her and ripped open the plane. Fire roared around them as it broke through the fuel tank and it was in the midst of all that red that she saw her father. Falling, falling, falling. She tried to scream, but the collar around her throat was too tight and she couldn't breathe enough to even get out a whimper.

"Danielle!" her dad yelled, reaching for her even as he got farther and farther away. "Danielle!"

Except, that wasn't her father's voice and her name wasn't being yelled.

"Danielle," the voice said, biting her name out like a command. It sounded almost like the tone Steve would adopt when he fell back into his military days. "Wake up."

An order. She could work with that. She could obey. She pulled herself back from the nose-diving plane wreckage and into darkness. And when she opened her eyes, the darkness was still there.

"Danielle?"

"I'm . . . I'm awake," she rasped. "I think."

"Good."

There were heavy hands on her shoulders and she didn't want them to leave, so she laid still and murmured, "I'm not getting out of here. Ever. Am I?"

That was the first question she asked him that he didn't answer.