I thought I'd let Bucky take a turn at being the one not getting tortured or suffering panic attacks.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any of the characters contained therein.
WORD COUNT: 1504
"I'm not going to ask you again, сука. How do I get into Avengers Tower? Tell me, and I'll let you live."
"Чушь собачья," Darcy spat, using one of the swear words Clint had taught her, "You'll kill me no matter what I say."
A tear ran down her face, because yeah, she was scared. She didn't want to die. But if she was going to go either way, she'd rather go out without giving HYDRA – they hadn't identified themselves as such, but it was obviously HYDRA – anything on the man she loved.
The interrogator smirked at her. "True. Then I shall revise my promise. Tell me, and I'll make your death a quick one."
Seventy years. Bucky had survived seventy years of torture at the hands of these people. It would be shameful of her to roll over and take the easy way out. So she gathered up whatever spit she could in her mouth (she hadn't been given anything to drink since she was brought in here, however long ago that was) and then spat it right in the dickwad's face.
Said dickwad barely even blinked. Slowly, calmly, he wiped the glob of spit off his cheek. Then he reached out and caressed her cheek, before firmly gripping her chin. "Such spirit," he commented, "I can see what our Asset saw in you." He turned to one of his minions. "Получить шланг." He grinned nastily at Darcy. "It's a shame; we could use good agents with your fierce loyalty, Miss Lewis."
Darcy's grasp of Russian was tenuous at best, but she knew that he'd ordered his mook to fetch something. And she was damn sure that she wasn't going to like whatever it was.
Mere minutes later, it was confirmed.
The 'something' that the henchman was ordered to fetch was a hose. An ordinary garden hose, the kind that could be bought at any home improvement store, trailing out the door and presumably connected to a water source. He also brought a dirty-looking square of cloth. A cold feeling of dread settled in the pit of Darcy's stomach.
She tried to control her breathing as they laid the cloth over her nose and mouth, but she couldn't stop the tears. As they lifted the hose over her head, she held her breath, shut her eyes, and pictured her lover's face in her mind to help her remember why she was hanging on.
The water was cold. Ice-cold. It ran down her face and plastered the rag to her skin. An automatic attempt to inhale through her nose only saw her nostrils being filled with the fluid.
Darcy held her breath for as long as she could, but her body could only handle her screaming lungs for so long before it forced her mouth open.
The freezing water rushed down her throat and into her lungs, swapping the burn for the cold. It hurt. She thrashed around, trying to dislodge the sodden rag on her face, to get out of the stream of water, to throw herself forward and cough up the water in her lungs. But her restraints held fast. There was no escape for her.
It was Wanda who found her in the basement. The HYDRA safehouse was little more than a simple two-story house in the middle of fucking suburbia. No matter what happened, this operation was going to attract a lot of attention. At least since Darcy had accepted a new position as the Avengers' PR manager, the higher-ups had approved of a rescue mission; the more cynical among the team were of the opinion that they wouldn't have gotten the same response for a mere lab intern.
It was the garden hose running in through the back door that caught Wanda's attention, and she followed it into a room where three bulky men were standing over a limp, prone figure in a chair, holding the end of the hose over its face. The HYDRA agents were flung into the basement walls with little disregard for their safety, but no one cared all that much. Wanda stepped over the still-running hose and ripped the wet cloth off of Darcy's face. "In here!"
It was the work of seconds to remove her restraints and get her lying on the floor. Then Wanda immediately began CPR. She hadn't been trained in the technique until she joined the Avengers, but it was a mandatory skill for every employee of the Initiative to learn. Her hands were shaking, but she immediately started chest compressions. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty. Two breaths. One, two, three… When she started tiring, Sam took over for her. Steve was in charge of keeping Bucky calm, although he wasn't having too much success, while the others secured the three agents.
Sam was in the middle of giving Darcy a set of two breaths when she started coughing, water spilling from her mouth. Sam rolled her over and let her cough up as much as she could. Bucky finally broke free of Steve's grip and dropped to his knees by his girlfriend's side.
"It's okay, Doll," he told her, his voice rough and shaking, "It's going to be okay. I'm right here, Darce. They're not going to hurt you anymore."
Darcy fell unconscious after coughing up the water. To be more accurate, she never really regained consciousness in the first place. Bucky damn near killed the HYDRA agents, who ultimately had to be brought into custody via other means, because there was no way he was going to be allowed on the Quinjet with them, and there was absolutely no way he was leaving Darcy's side.
She was barely breathing, so she was fitted with an oxygen mask. She was so, so still. It was unnatural, coming from someone who was always on the move, whether she was bouncing around the kitchen to her music or tapping her pencil on her desk or running her fingers through his hair…
He held her hand tightly, trying and not quite succeeding at keeping the tears from falling. "Please don't leave me, Doll," he whispered, not quite caring if the other Avengers heard him, "I don't think I can handle loosing anything else to those bastards. And I know I can't handle losing you. So please, Darcy, I need you to fight. Maybe it's selfish of me to ask, but I know you, Darcy Lewis. I know you're the only person on the face of this goddamn planet who can out-stubborn me and Steve, so I know you can fight this. That's one of the things I love most about you, Doll. You've always been ready to fight for me, now it's time to fight for your own life."
Ten Days Later…
Bucky burst into the bathroom when he heard the choked whimpers over the sound of the running water in the shower. Darcy was curled up in a ball against the wall opposite the shower. Water ran down her naked body, but Bucky's observant brain noted that her hair was barely even damp.
"Darcy?" He knelt down slowly after determining that there was no actual danger in the room. Absently, he wondered if this was what he looked like in the middle of a panic attack. "Doll, what is it?"
Darcy sobbed, rubbing at her face. "I- I can't," she gasped, "The water…"
Bucky looked between his girlfriend and the shower, and slowly his brain made the connection. She'd felt the spray of the shower water on her face and had a flashback to being water-boarded by HYDRA last week. He'd had more than a few incidents like that when he first came out of the cold, and he still had them from time to time.
First things first, he got back up and turned the shower off, in case the sound of the running water was at all bothering Darcy. Then he sat back down next to her, grabbing her towel on the way over and draping it around her. "Hey," he whispered, "It's alright. 'M right here. And those bastards are never going to see the light of day again." Carefully, he tugged her into his lap, ignoring the dampness he immediately felt on his clothes.
"Does it get any better?" Her voice was barely over a whisper. If he hadn't had enhanced hearing, there was a chance that he may not have heard it at all. "Am I ever going to stop being scared of them?"
Bucky opened his mouth, to tell her that yes, it would get better, that she'd be able to move on as if nothing had happened, but nothing came out.
Because he knew better than that. And he couldn't lie to her.
Сука (suka): bitch, slut
Чушь собачья (chush' sobach'ya): bullshit
Получить шланг. (Poluchit' shlang.): Get the hose.
Coming up next: Restraints