Author's Note: This chapter title comes from The Truth about Forever by Sarah Dessen.

Content Warning: Forced abortion/nonconsensual abortion.

Chapter Fifteen - Grief can be a burden (you get used to the weight)

She screamed and cried and fought back and listened as Bucky fought back as well; none of it made a difference. They dragged her to the medical bay and put her under for surgery and she woke up feeling empty and wrecked. They unstrapped her and shoved her down the hall before dumping her in her room and she collapsed in a mess of sobs before Bucky could even catch her. He gathered her up and she felt dwarfed in his arms as he cradled her and murmured apologies in Russian.

Finally, she distantly heard him say something about a shower as he picked her up and carried her to the stall. As he started undressing her, she absently thought that maybe she should stop him before she panicked. But his hands were comforting and familiar and she trusted them. So she blankly followed his orders to stand under the cold water as he washed and scrubbed her down, and then his subsequent orders as he helped her into some new clothing.

Danielle didn't move as he sat her down on the bed. Her hands weren't particularly interesting, but she couldn't bring herself to look at anything else because those were the hands that should have been holding her baby in five months.

"Hey." A metal hand dropped in hers and she habitually curled her fingers around her own handiwork. "Look at me."

Danielle dragged her gaze upward, tapping out a pattern on his wrist. She didn't say anything.

"I'm sorry." He whispered the words carefully, as if he was measuring out their weight. "I'm sorry."

An ugly sob wound up her throat and she slumped forward, tucking her face in his neck. His arms wrapped around her tightly, an anchor keeping her down. Her anchor.

"I'm sorry," he whispered again. "I'll take care of you."

"Happy birthday, my sweet girl," Sunil cooed.

Danielle narrowed her eyes at him. "You never bring breakfast."

"Well, today is a special day," he assured her. He set down the tray and the two of them watched warily as he stuck a candle in the cupcake and withdrew a lighter. He lit the candle. "Seventeen is a big number."

"Go the fuck away."

"Of course, sweetie." He smiled and backed from the room. The door locked loudly behind him.

Danielle shuffled off the bed and sat in front of the tray, eying it. "I've been here for eight months, then." She shook her head and rolled to her feet. "I'm taking a shower," she muttered. She knew she took too long, but part of her thought that maybe she could drown away the ache in her chest if she stood under the water just a second more, just a second more. But finally she stumbled out and pulled on a tee and shorts before sitting back down in front of the tray.

The candle had gone out. She reached out and tapped her finger against the singed wick and the flame sprang to life. She frowned and drew her hand back, pouring in more energy. The flame burned orange, then yellow, then blue, then white and she felt the heat radiating as it got bigger.

Then her control slipped and the fire exploded outward. Danielle bit back a shriek of surprise and yanked the Tesseract energy back into her body despite her creaking bones. She stared up at Bucky and his wide eyes. Then she dropped her gaze to the charred cupcake before looking down at the red, raw skin on her thighs. "Oh," she mumbled.

And then suddenly Bucky was in front of her, dragging her to her feet and back to the shower. "What were you thinking?" he growled, turning on the water. He braced her against his knee as he moved her so her legs were under the water. "That's gonna scar," he said, gently rubbing his fingers over the burn on her right leg.

"Oh," she said again. And then she absently said, "Okay. Well, I guess I needed something for my birthday, huh? Why not a new scar?"

His movement stuttered. Then he murmured, "I'm sorry that you're stuck here."

"I— It's not your fault. I just . . . . I miss my dad. Even if I leave, I'm never seeing him again. And, and every year he would get me something for my birthday and I miss that. Not, not because of the things, but because it meant he loved me and— I miss him."

He resumed gently washing the water over the burns. "I'm sorry."

It was her first time seeing the sun since they'd caught her, but she couldn't do a damn thing to appreciate it because all she could focus on was the terrible, awful thing they were telling her to do.

She stared down at the file in front of her. "What . . . what did they do?"

"Nothing." Pierce smiled thinly, like the edge of the knife. It was eerily similar to what she saw in the mirror nowadays. "The father works at a nonprofit for the homeless, the mother is a social workers. The kid is adopted. They have nothing to do with Hydra other than testing you."

Danielle swallowed and glanced over the information again, though she'd already memorized it. They were home that day, all three of them. Family dinner. All in one place, like fish in a barrel. "And . . . if I refuse?"

"I think you already know what would happen. They'll die anyway, after all, and you'll suffer the consequences."

They'll die anyway. They'll die anyway.

She kept repeating that as they put her in uniform. As they put a mask and goggles over her face reminiscent of what Bucky had worn when he first came for her. She kept repeating that as she took the weapons they gave her and as they loosened the hold her collar had over the Tesseract, though that was accompanied by a warning about stepping out of line.

She kept repeating it to herself as she snuck into the house and caught the father alone and forwent the weapons in exchange for snapping his neck. Pierce praised her in her earpiece and she hated herself just a little bit more. She snuck down the hallway to the kitchen and watched as the mother set the table, smiling and chatting with the little girl sitting there. Danielle closed her eyes.

They'll die anyway.

She shot the little girl through the head, quick and painless, and the mother screamed and dove forward as her daughter collapsed. Danielle drew back, still hidden and shuddering. The mother was holding her dead child and she could only think about how empty she felt.

Danielle shot the woman through the head too.

She woke up screaming and begging Bucky to just end it as he held her hands and tried to calm her. But no matter how much she asked him to put her out of her misery, he just held her still and kept telling her no as he smoothed back her hair. Eventually, he lulled her back to sleep.

And she woke up alone.

Bucky was gone on a mission for six days and she spent her time without it in complete silence, mechanically obeying every order given to her. When he returned, the dam on her voice broke and she spilled out everything about the mole they'd found in the ranks of Hydra and how they'd brought him to her so that she could learn how to get information that people weren't willing to give. Bucky let her cry on him until she tried to make a half-hearted joke about how it was good that she made his arm waterproof. At that point, he looked at her sadly and just worked away her tears with his metal knuckles.

"I brought you something." He looked a little anxious. "It's not much, and it's late, but I hope it works as a birthday present. Like you were talking about."

Danielle drew back. "You . . . brought me a gift?"

He nodded. "I swiped it off of one of the people they had me kill." He dug in his pocket and held it out.

She carefully took the hair clip. It had clearly been expensive and she wondered for a moment which of the rich people she knew about he could have killed. Pepper's face flashed through her mind and she decided that she really didn't want to know. Danielle skipped her fingers over the line of pearls. "Thank you." She held it back out to him and watched the confusion flitter over his face. "Put it in for me?"

He took the clip and shuffled around to sit behind her. He ran his fingers through her hair and clipped it back. Then he unclipped it and tried again. "I'm . . . not very good at that."

"It's alright," she said, feeling the clip and then the uneven bumps in her hair. Then she moved to press up against his side. "Thanks, Winter."