So this story hasn't been forgotten. I have several more chapters already written and the ending is done…I just gotta remember to post them…
Let me know what you think!
Chapter 25
Everything after that felt like days, months, when in honesty it had probably only been a few hours since he'd woken up. Steve knew he would take off the moment he was out of his sight, Bucky knew this, but still, the second they were back at the apartment he made straight for his room. Sam hung back in the living room, his phone in his hand.
"Buck," Steve sighed in the doorway as Bucky pulled an old tattered bag out from under the bed and pulled a blue cap down over his head.
"Don't," he ground out, standing up and pulling a few things out of the drawers of the dresser in the corner.
"Bucky, please, you know better than this."
Bucky froze and looked at Steve. "Better than what?"
"To run in with your emotions instead of your head," Steve finished gravely, crossing his arms. "Please, just give us time to—"
"To what?" Bucky demanded. "We've already waited too long!" He threw his clothes into the bag angrily. "I should have gone to get that damn book myself in the first place."
"Bucky."
"I was stupid, I messed up," Bucky muttered, pulling out his journals from the nightstand. He paused, his fingers hovering above Connie's old diaries, but on a second thought, he pulled away from them. He slipped his own journals beneath them, choosing instead to leave them behind.
"Please, just calm down for a second—"
Bucky shut his eyes, hands pausing their frantic movements.
"—we can figure this out, we'll find her."
"My whole life has never been about me," he told Steve gently. "My whole life, every decision has been made for me in the interest of someone else." He jerked the zipper shut on his bag and hoisted it over his shoulder. "For once, I want to do something for myself. Just this once."
"And I'm with you on that. But give me an hour to try and contact some people. We need to figure out who took her so we know where they're taking her."
"I know who has her and I can guess where they're taking her. They want to draw me out, draw me to them."
Steve crossed his arms in the doorway. "To where?"
"Siberia," he mumbled, looking around the room for anything else he might need. "Where I was kept."
"Alright," Steve nodded slowly. "Let me make a few calls—"
"We don't have time," Bucky groaned, pushing past Steve.
"How do you plan on getting there?" Steve challenged, following his friend down the hall to the kitchen. "If you give me some time, I can have Tony get the Quinjet prepped for us to use."
Bucky eyed Steve, slowly taking cans of peaches out of a cabinet and putting them in his bag. "An hour?"
"We'll be off the ground in less than two," Steve promised.
"Less than," Sam muttered, walking into the kitchen. "Stark's already getting the jet prepped." He glanced between the two and held up his phone. "I might not have a super soldier serum, but I'm not totally useless, you know."
Bucky shot him a quick smile. "Thanks." Sam only nodded once.
-x-
Clara woke up several times, and each time, they were in a different aircraft. She could feel the familiar jostling of a plane in the air, or hear the propellers of a helicopter. Each time, a intense wave of panic would take over her common sense and she'd find herself struggling helplessly against the bindings on her wrists and ankles, trying to scream around the gag.
And each time it ended with either a prick to her arm that sent her into a dark, cold, dreamless sleep, or—depending on the mood of her guard, it seemed—she'd meet the blunt end of a gun to her temple.
No one would find her, she feared. Each different aircraft and she felt another thousand miles from home. It was a different fear than she'd ever felt. When she was trapped in the crushed building of SHIELD, she feared she would die there, but at least she was home. When she was standing in the hospital, watching the news play the clip over and over, she feared what would change, where would she go, what would she do? Who would take someone they feared was a Hydra agent?
But at least she was home, surrounded by her friends and family to help her fall back on. Here, though, she was alone, lost in a huge world in the hands of people who had no use for her alive. She was dead, she knew. As soon as they got what they wanted, she was dead.
She only hoped that when that happened, it wouldn't be the first mission for the Winter Soldier after his return.
She was woken this time by the guard, shaking her roughly.
"Get up," he barked in accented English. "Get up."
She sat up on the hard metal floor where they'd thrown her and noticed the bindings on her ankles had been replaced with a thick chord. The guard grabbed her by the hair and jerked her upwards impatiently, eliciting a pained cry from her. She almost wished they would kill her and put her out of her misery, of the relentless fear.
It was cold, she noted as they shoved her down the ramp roughly. She struggled to keep her feet moving, one foot in front of the other, when all she wanted to do was collapse into a ball at her feet. She shivered in her thin jacket, wishing her wrists were free if only to hold herself together in the bitter cold that slammed into her as she stepped off the jet in front of a huge warehouse.
The snow falling was so thick, she couldn't see very far in any direction. For all she knew, this building was the only thing around for miles and miles. She tried so hard to focus on what she should be doing, what SHIELD had trained her for, but her fear kept making her panic, and she just wanted to scream.
Her teeth chattered audibly as she scurried behind the two guards as they approached the building. She dropped to her knees as soon as they stopped in front of a pair of huge doors. There was a pause as one guard input a security code in a panel to the side.
"Stand," the other commanded, jerking her by the arm back to her feet.
"It's bloody freezing," she snapped, pulling away from his grip with what little strength she had. "If you need me alive, keep me alive."
Neither guard answered her, they simply grabbed her by the arms and dragged her into the building and threw her into the back corner of an elevator. Clara stumbled, rolling over her ankle painfully and slammed into the metal wall before sliding to the floor.
"Ow," she moaned, pulling her knees to her chest. At least it was much warmer inside the building. Which ended as soon as the elevator had finished its three floor decent and opened up, letting in a fresh wave of arctic cold.
The guards dragged her into the room a short distance before a few other men stopped them. It was a small room compared to the size of the building she saw outside. There were seven large tanks lining three sides of the room, computer consoles taking up much of the remaining space. The ceiling was high, the room fairly dark and ominous. Clara didn't like it at all.
The men conversed in Russian quietly and Clara wished she knew enough to pick out words. She could find them written down thanks to staring at Bucky's files for so long, but spoken, she didn't have a clue.
"Freeze her," one finally said in English, sneering down at her.
A small, quiet, panicked what escaped Clara's lips before one of the guards wrapped his arm around her and hauled her across the room to the closest tank on their left. That's what these were, she realized in a single, horrified moment. These were the cryochambers they kept the soldiers in.
"No!" she shouted, using all the energy she had left in an attempt to flee. She managed to surprise the guard enough to slip out of his grasp, but the chord on her ankles didn't allow her to get far before the guard reached out and grabbed her by the back of her jacket. He jerked and swung her around, letting her fly easily through the air and slam painfully into the base of the tank hard enough to see stars.
"Please," she pleaded as the two guards not-so-gently picked her off the floor. "Please, no."
This wasn't like the movies. There was no evil villain that spoke English to explain to her why they wanted her and what their motives were. She was insignificant. She could guess they wanted to lure Bucky out. She could guess they were going to put her on ice to keep her manageable. But those were only guesses.
She began screaming and thrashing as they strapped her into the tank tightly. A guard snapped at her, striking her across the face.
"You will die here if not quiet," one snapped as the other finished pulling at a strap.
"Please," she begged quickly, "don't do this—I promise to cooperate. I—"
But it was useless. Both guards backed up quickly as a third stood at a monitor. A siren sounded once and a curved glass shield slid up in front of her. Clara squirmed in a panic, trying to find one last way out of this before the most intense, painful cold took over her in a single instant and then everything was black…