Author's Note: This chapter title comes from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Also, for the person that asked, Danielle is 16 at this point in the timeline, having had her birthday a couple of months before capture.

Chapter Twelve - I can't go back to yesterday (I was a different person then)

Her stomach was unsettled. It could have been from the fact that she hadn't slept properly in forever. How long had she been here? Weeks? Months? However long it had been, the sleep had just made it worse.

Of course, it could also be that Sunil had promised that the trials that day would be "bigger and better" than any of the ones before.

"You look upset."

She immediately dredged up one of the lessons that Rumlow had been literally beating into her, easily hiding her expression from Bucky. If she tried hard enough, maybe she could hide it from herself too. "Hmm?"

"Talk."

She wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out at him. "Fine. Whatever." She collected her thoughts. She didn't want to talk about her dad—a breakdown at this time would only make her day of training worse—and she certainly didn't want to talk about leaving Hydra—the consequences that could bring would be too severe. So she settled on something else she missed. "I miss Bacon."

Bucky stared at her for a long moment. Then he picked up the strip of bacon still on his tray and held it out to her, looking confused.

Danielle managed a halfhearted giggle. "No, that's— Thank you, but that's not what I meant. I, uh, I had a cat. His name was Bacon." She smiled weakly. "Keep your breakfast, Winter. You need it."

Four hours later, she was regretting not having him eat her food too as she threw up everything in her stomach and then some. Sunil's hand smoothed comfortingly over her back and she wanted nothing more than to bite it off. But all she could do right then was stay on her knees over the bucket and watch blearily as bile and blood pooled in it. Finally, her stomach stopped heaving and she collapsed back against the wall, too tired to protest as Sunil ran a wet cloth over her face to clean her skin.

"Are you ready to try again, my sweet girl?"

A whine built in the back of her throat, but she forced herself back up to her knees and glared at the steel weight still sitting in the middle of the room. "Yes," she ground out. The humming under her skin was louder than before and she was painfully aware of the remote Sunil was holding that controlled her collar's restraint on her power.

"Go ahead," he urged.

She thrust out her hands and pulled on the power. Almost immediately, she felt it bubbling and boiling in her palms and tearing at her skin. Blue sparked around her hand and then the color began to hum around the weight. She felt something trickling down her upper lip and felt the same feeling on her hands, but she didn't stop.

The weight shifted and shook. The blue around it burned brighter. The weight tilted a bit to the side, one corner lifting one inch. Then two. When it strained for three, Danielle's vision was shaking and tunneling and she was pretty sure that the taste of iron in the back of her throat was a sign of nothing good. But the other corners of the weight lifted and she forced herself to keep going, because if she mastered this then maybe she'd have a chance at fighting back. Someday.

Except she couldn't remember what exactly happened past the final corner of the weight lifting from the ground, because the next thing she knew she was pressed harshly against something cold with black dancing in her line of sight and a yelling match happening somewhere over her. And bizarrely enough, her neck hurt. A twinging, constant, aching pinch just a few centimeters above her collar on the right side. She tried to scratch at it—in her haze, it felt like an itch more than anything else—but she couldn't get her hands to move. In fact, she couldn't get anything to move.

"I'm glad we've come to an understanding," a familiar slick voice said. And the urge to bite off his hand returned. "Take them back to their room. Now."

She felt the dull, distant awareness that she was being lifted. Moved. She tried to say something. Tried to open her eyes to look at who was holding her. But her entire body felt like dead weight and, oh, god, she wasn't dead, was she? She couldn't be dead. She had to get out. She had to get back to her father. She had to—

Oh, right. Her father was dead too.

Danielle didn't have much of an issue giving into that weight.

She woke up to darkness and for a moment forgot that she needed to breathe because, oh right, she wasn't dead. She wasn't that lucky.

With something that managed to make itself half a groan and half a whimper, she rolled over. Only to have something tight clamp around her arm and a voice say, "Careful."

Danielle shrieked and scrambled away. Though her body didn't react quite right, so she ended up more inch-worming to the side and flailing. The voice kept talking, kept ordering her to calm down, and the only response she managed was fidgeting and blinking again and again in hopes of finally being able to see something.

"The lights are out."

Oh, she must have been talking out loud.

"You were. That's a dangerous habit and you need to not do it."

She knew that voice. Danielle managed a dry chuckle that only hurt her throat and she finally relaxed into the hold on her arm. "You sound worried," she mumbled.

"Sit up. You need water."

The hand on her arm shifted to her shoulder for support as she moved. She shuffled around on her bed before she finally found the wall. Danielle leaned against it with a sigh. She smiled fondly as she felt the water bottle he pressed into her hands and listened as he unscrewed the cap. She managed a sip, but it tasted almost acidic against her tongue.

"What happened?"

"You passed out," he said succinctly. "Drink."

Just to pacify him, she took another sip before asking her next question. "And then?"

He didn't answer.

"Winter? What happened after I passed out?"

"I yelled. You got threatened. And we returned to the room."

"You— I— Oh. Okay." And somehow, that answered her question enough to satisfy her curiosity.

"Good, because I'm not explaining anything else. Drink."

She obediently took another sip. "I was talking aloud again, wasn't I?"

"Yes. You need to stop."

"I'll try." In an attempt to head off another order, she sipped at her water again. "My hands feel weird."

"They're healing. And they're wrapped."

"Huh." She lifted her left hand and moved her fingers, feeling the cloth bound around her palm. "Why?"

"Because you needed it."

"Insightful. Thank you."

"Drink."

"Got it."

"You need more sleep. Finish the water and go back to sleep."

She wanted to salute but knew that he wouldn't be able to see it. So she settled instead for a playful, "Yes, sir!" and a yawn. She drained the bottle and found it taken away. A moment later, a hand was pressing on her shoulder until she shifted to lay down. Then the hand rested on her head and she could feel the cold of the metal fingers through her hair. She pressed into the touch and mumbled goodnight in what she thought might be Russian, but she wasn't sure.

Rumlow pressed a gun into her hands and ordered, "Shoot him."

Danielle stared down at the weapon and briefly considered turning it on him—or herself, she wasn't quite sure—but she knew now that she didn't want to leave Bucky alone. So she lifted her confused gaze to her instructor instead. "What?"

"Kill him."

She didn't want to, but she forced herself to look at the man bound to the chair in the middle of the room, the rope cutting into his bloody arms, his eyes red rimmed and wide, and his screams muffled by the duct tape over his mouth. She swallowed thickly and the gun in her hands was much heavier than it should be. "What did he do?"

"Doesn't matter," Rumlow said firmly. "Shoot him."

"I . . . I can't do that."

He studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded and held out his hand. She frowned as she gave the gun back. It couldn't just be that easy.

Rumlow took the gun and turned it. Danielle's wrapped hands slapped over her ears and she stumbled back at the unexpected gunshot. She didn't scream, but a rush of air did press from between her lips and she stared at the red painting the man's pale face. She was dangerously close to losing her stomach again.

"You didn't have to—"

Really, she should have seen the hit coming. She felt the pain spike in her lip and the world tilted and then her head slammed against the concrete. She heard Rumlow bark what could have been an order for Bucky to stand down, but with the ringing dominating her ears it could have just as easily been him ordering take-out.

Fingers pressed against the back of her neck and she felt a pinch around the collar. The collar jerked back and she felt her trachea close up. She scrambled desperately to her feet, following the dragging weight on her throat. He threw her back and she fell into the wall, gasping for air that no longer quite fit in her throat.

"Straighten up," Rumlow snapped out. He touched the radio on his hip. "Bring the other one in."

Danielle dragged a shaky hand across her nose and stared at the limp figure bound in the chair. Then Rumlow moved, kicking the man aside and she caught her breath as the dead body crashed into the floor. The door opened and two guards dragged in another chair, this time a woman bound to it.

Danielle felt almost distant from herself. It was almost like when she used to work on her projects at home, writing everything she observed down in a notebook. Right then, it was almost like that inside her mind, just passively watching as Rumlow reloaded the gun with one single round and held it out to her again. She watched herself take the gun more than she actually actively felt the action.

"Shoot her," Rumlow ordered.

She could say no. She could refuse again. But then there would be consequences and the woman would die anyway. She told herself that she was just trying to rationalize it; then she told herself that she didn't really have much of a choice.

Danielle lifted the gun and thought of the paper targets Rumlow had her shoot at the range. Just another paper target. She squeezed the trigger and controlled the recoil.

The scientist in her brain made notes: the strength of the kick, the way the woman's head dropped, the way there was less blood than she'd expected. She was dimly aware that she'd passed some sort of test, some sort of terrible rite of passage, but all she could do was note that down and let Rumlow take the gun back. He'd never looked at her like that before, as if he was actually seeing her for the first time and he was proud, but she hated it. She hated it and she wanted that expression to go away.

The scientist in her brain wrote that down.

Rumlow's pride turned to curiosity and then to satisfaction as he studied her, almost the same way she was studying herself. He smiled something coldly pleased. "The mind is the most important weapon and the most dangerous vulnerability in any exchange. If you can play with someone's mind, then that makes you the one in charge. Even if the physical situation is one where you most certainly not."

Her gaze shifted from the body to him. "What do you mean?"

"Torture," he said simply. "Information gathering. If you can turn someone's mind unstable in that situation, it doesn't matter if they're the ones holding pliers to your teeth; you're the one in control." He reached out and gripped her wrist until she could feel the bruises forming. "It's time for you to practice."