The first thing I felt was a pounding in my head. I wondered if I was back in Vegas, if I'd overdone it the night before, the bright lights searing through my eyelids. Groaning, I remembered I couldn't get hungover.
I shifted, trying to prop myself up on my elbows without opening my eyes to the horrific fluorescents above me. Like a knife in my gut, memories rushed back to me.
Him. Rage. Darkness. Nothing.
Shit.
I knew this was a possibility, but I'd hoped against hope that it was just a fearful thought. It had been decades since I'd seen him, and those weren't exactly stress-free circumstances. I'd thought that after so much time, after being away from HYDRA…but I was wrong. Everything they did to me was still very much present. The instincts they'd drilled into me took precedent even over my own thoughts and desires.
The second thing I felt was a shocking amount of mobility around my arms. My eyes flew open. I was in a hospital bed, still in my workout clothes. My shoes had been tossed to the side of the room. The walls were light gray, sleek. Slightly less sterile-feeling than the average hospital, but still made my skin crawl. I was alone in the room, but I could hear the murmur of voices just outside the door. My heart was pounding in my ears and reflected by the erratic beeping of the monitor to my left. I looked down to see a few wires protruding from the collar of my shirt.
With a whoosh, the door slid open to reveal a small crowd. I recognized Natasha and Steve, someone I recognized as Tony Stark standing a few feet behind them with another dark haired man.
Nat stepped into the room, a smile on her face but her whole body tense. "How you feeling, hot stuff?"
"Where are the restraints?" I set my jaw, staring at my hands.
"What do you mean?"
"I just proved I can't be trusted, can't control myself," My voice was low. "I attacked one of you. I should be restrained."
Steve looked at the ground, eyes clouded. Tony looked up from the tablet he was holding, observing the room. It was the man next to him who spoke first.
"I know a thing or two about not being able to control yourself, trust yourself." He was a little skittish, but seemed genuine. "You're in more captivity in your head than you are here. We aren't in the business of keeping prisoners. You won't be restrained as long as you're fighting something that you didn't ask to have done to you."
I lifted my eyes to look at him, giving him a slight nod of thanks.
"Touchy-feely stuff aside - I'm Tony, by the way - I do think we should work out where this is coming from." He stepped forward and plopped down on the edge of my bed, surprising me with his casual attitude. "I assume you don't exactly have the warm fuzzies towards labs or doctors, but I promise that Dr. Banner and I aren't here to do anything but help." Tony gestured to the man I didn't know, who nodded.
I looked at Natasha for reassurance before responding. "What do you mean…help?"
"Well, to be frank, there's clearly something different about you." Tony laid the tablet on his lap and looked straight at me. "We just don't know the specifics. Without that, we can't do much except throw you into a chokehold when you get a little murderous on us."
"Tony," Natasha warned.
"What he's saying is that we can…investigate. We can work with you to figure out what was done to cause that episode you had, and hopefully prevent it from happening in the future." The man, Dr. Banner, explained.
"Is that even possible?"
This time, it was Steve who answered me. "It was with Bucky." I snapped my eyes to him. "He had a similar…he struggled at first too. For him, it was trigger words. They were programmed into him, anytime he heard them he would lose himself until we could-"
"Until we could knock him out." Natasha cut him off, speaking matter-of-factly. I appreciated the lack of sugar coating.
"But…you were able to fix him? Stop the words from having an effect?" I tried to stop the hope snaking its way into my heart, anything to push back against the fear of my own lack of control.
"Yes." Steve smiled. "He hasn't had an episode in years. Any anger he feels now is totally under his own volition."
I nodded slowly, thinking through my options. I couldn't exactly say no, keep living here for free, and run the risk of attacking another one of their friends.
"When can we start?" I grit my teeth and looked at Tony and Dr. Banner, who glanced at each other.
"We can, if you're up for it, we can start today?" Dr. Banner shrugged.
"As soon as possible. Please."
"Call me Bruce, seriously." He smiled, handing me a cup of water that I graciously chugged.
We'd been working for the past twelve hours, according to the last time I saw the clock. The day had come and gone, judging by the sun beam peaking around the window shade in my room that had slowly given way to night. It wasn't like I had anywhere else to be, and I could tell that Tony and Dr. Ban-Bruce weren't the type to put a project down when they hadn't had a breakthrough yet.
First, we did the standard labs. Blood work, blood pressure, retinal scans. Then a few more in-depth tests, an MRI and a CAT scan to give them a better look at what was happening inside me.
Right now, I was hooked up to a machine that mapped out my brain in a three-dimensional, floating model in front of us. I sat on the edge of the bed, legs dangling. Electrodes were stuck to my head, neck, and chest, wires going every which way. Natasha had lent me a hair tie to secure my hair in a loose bun on top of my head, making it easier to decorate me with the sensors. After a few hours, Natasha and Steve had left to go eat. It was slow work, admittedly. A few empty coffee cups were strewn across the side table in my room, one having toppled on the floor as a result of Bruce not-so-gently setting it down.
"How about this one?" Tony clicked a button and brought up a hologram of James Barnes, three dimensional in front of me. He was in full armor and mask, holding a hefty gun and looking around for someone. His eyes were cold, distant. His hair was longer then than it was when I saw him out by the lake. Now, it was long enough to tuck behind his ears but not nearly down to his shoulders like this rendering showed.
"Nope. Nothing." The model of my brain showed nothing beyond the standard yellow flecks of electricity as I spoke, watching the hologram stalk around the room.
"Well, kid, I think there's only one thing left for us to try." He sighed, clicking the hologram off. "Clearly, the reaction you're having isn't strictly visual. It has to do with Barnes, but we can rule out the trigger being anything electronic. We've tried photos, videos, audio recordings, and now holograms, nothing. It's not causing you to go all haywire."
"What's the next step?" I asked cautiously.
"The next step would be live-stimulus monitoring…we'd-"
Tony cut Bruce off. "We'd bring Barnes in here and see how you react."
"I don't-"
"Before you say no," Bruce interrupted, holding his hand out. "We would take precautions. We can restrain you if you prefer, but we don't have to. We can give you an IV with a fast-acting sedative at the ready. We'll be prepared if you have an…adverse reaction."
I swallowed, my heart already speeding up. "If you say so." I was shocked at how calm I'd been able to stay this whole time. The kindness of the team combined with my paralyzing fear of having another episode allowed me to shove my anxiety down, at least for the time being. My desire to be free of these mental shackles overpowered my deep-seated fear of being experimented on, prodded and poked.
After we'd discussed what precautions I was comfortable with (and the answer was all of them, please) they left me alone in the room with a soft-spoken female lab tech. I'd stripped off my jacket so she could start my IV, forcing myself to think of anything else to avoid the wave of anxiety that came from needles and nurses and everything in between. When it was done and taped down to my arm, she smiled and slid the doors back open. Bruce explained to me what they were looking for in my brain waves and how it would help them figure out what the issue was, but he sounded a million miles away. I was already getting hot, nervous. No one expects being brainwashed and conditioned to kill to be so embarassing. The shame from my earlier episode still sat heavily in my gut, I wasn't sure if I was ready for two more people to witness my lack of control.
"Ms. Rossi? Are you ready?" The tech spoke gently, positioned by my wrist with heavy-duty restraints sitting open. I nodded and allowed her to set my arm inside and fasten the straps tightly. Once my left arm was all but immobile, strapped to my side, she scurried over to the right side.
When my arms were pinned to the bed, flat at my sides, the tech was poised in the corner with her hand over the button to release the sedative into my veins, I took a shaky, deep breath.
"I'm ready."
Bruce nodded and tapped his tablet. I heard footsteps coming from down the hall, a few sets. I matched the cadence in my head, determining one set to be Steve's and one Tony's. That left the third as the other half to our little experiment. Two sets of footsteps trailed off, hovering a few feet away, out of view. The third set, slow and methodical, approached the opening to my room.
"Come on in, Sergeant Barnes." Bruce called, eyes flicking from me to the doorway to the model of my brain.
In two heavy steps, he turned the corner and came into view. James, Sergeant Barnes, whatever he went by - stood right in front of me. His lip was split, eye already beginning to yellow around the outside as a result of his accelerated healing. His dark hair was tucked behind his ears. Regarding me warily, he took another step in the room.
I sucked in a breath, trying to resist the inevitable but knowing it was necessary for the research. A white hot pain seared through my head, making me cry out. When I opened my eyes, I saw James wincing.
He must remember this.
For a moment, that sobering thought helped keep the rage from overtaking me. I spoke through clenched teeth, keenly aware of the adrenaline coursing through me.
"I'm…so…sorry," I forced myself to meet his eyes, resisting the blackout so hard that I felt a blood vessel burst in my right eye. The last thing I saw before I succumbed to the darkness was a pair of sad blue eyes on mine.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
"I'm…so…sorry," Charlotte ground out, eyes locked on Bucky. A few strands of her dark hair were stuck to her forehead, coated with sweat as she fought the brainwashing. When she couldn't stand it any longer, her eyes hardened. The straining on her face relaxed as she somehow shifted to something inhuman, something predatory.
A low growl rose in her throat as she attempted to lunge at Bucky, thrashing at the restraints. Her back arched and the force of her effort rocked the entire bed.
"Administer the sedative," Bruce commanded. "Now!"
The lab tech nodded, pressing her thumb down on the button, releasing the drip into Charlotte's IV. In the forty seconds that had elapsed between when Bucky stepped into the room and when the sedative sent her into a slump against the bed, Charlotte had already yanked so hard on her restraints that she'd made her wrists raw. There was a brief moment of silence after she went limp, all of them taking a moment to collect themselves.
"You okay?" Steve stepped around the corner, putting a hand on Bucky's shoulder.
"Fine." His jaw was clenched, less out of fear for the attempted attack but because he so vividly remembered the inability to trust his own mind, to act out of his own control. "That help?"
"I'd say so." Tony looked incredulous as he raised a hand and turned the hologram in the air. What was formerly a mild, golden glow had shifted to a bright, intense red woven throughout the model.
"This is…insane." Bruce was slightly open-mouthed, observing as Tony moved the rendering.
"What does this mean? Is this what you expected?" Steve frowned.
"What it looks like, I mean, initially…there's some kind of conditioning at play here. Whether it's optical or olfactory…something about Bucky's physical presence invokes this extreme, visceral reaction. It literally changes her brain chemistry, rewrites her neural passages. You can see that all the areas that fire when she's functioning normally, when she's thinking or feeling something physical, or experiencing an emotion…all those are dormant."
Steve and Bucky exchanged a glance, both of their brows furrowed. Crossing his arms across his chest, Steve opened his mouth to speak before Tony cut him off.
"Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm no neuroscience expert, unless you count the fifteen minutes of internet research I did roughly six hours ago," He ran a hand along his jawline. "But it sounds like you're saying they conditioned, programmed her to override all sense of self, consequence, and pain in order to stick to their…objective."
Bruce nodded grimly. "It's similar to what different countries did to soldiers in wars throughout history…give them drugs that suppress their decision making skills, inhibit their ability to feel pain. It allowed them to fight longer and often, fight through otherwise debilitating injuries or fatigue. That, combined with the right propaganda or indoctrination, can make an individual follow orders almost blindly…and definitely to their own detriment. Whatever HYDRA did to her, they took that concept and put it on a 10x multiplier. Plus, it's not dependent on her continually receiving some drug. They literally programmed this into her."
Bucky let out a deep breath, stepping out of the room and looking up at the ceiling. Watching his friend, Steve couldn't decide what to ask first. Luckily, Natasha chose that moment to make her re-entrance.
"So what do we do now?" she crossed her arms and leaned against the wall.
"Nice of you to join us, Romanoff. Conveniently after any and all risk has subsided." Tony raised his eyebrows.
"I figured surely two super soldiers, Iron Man and the Hulk had it covered. Plus, if that failed, you have Maddie." She winked at the lab tech, still standing nervously in the corner.
"To answer your question," Bruce interrupted, making rapid notes on his laptop. "I think we can fix it, relatively painlessly. Well…easily. Basically, we need to narrow down if the trigger is happening due to something visual or olfactory, her sense of smell. My guess, based on the fact that there was no effect from video footage or even holograms, is that it's olfactory."
"And if that's the case?" Steve was still frowning, watching as Bucky slowly made his way back to the group.
"We would need to sever the olfactory nerve." Bruce grimaced. "That's why I wouldn't say it's entirely…painless. But it should be quick and effective."
A groan from the bed interrupted them. All heads snapped to see Charlotte beginning to stir for the second time that day. Instinctively, Steve grabbed the sleeve of Bucky's jacket and yanked him towards the door. They'd made it to the end of the hall before she'd even taken her second breath.
"D'work?" She slurred, eyelids heavy but fighting to open.
"It did." Nat sat down on the edge of the bed, putting a hand on Charlotte's leg. "You did great."
"How do you feel?" Bruce gestured to the lab tech to remove the restraints and they both set to work freeing her wrists. A band of raw skin circled her arms where she'd fought so violently. As soon as the restraints were set to the side, Maddie scurried out to get a bottle of ointment and q-tips to medicate the wounds.
"Never better," She raised a hand to rub her temples, stopping when she felt all the wires still attached. Bruce nodded at Natasha and they both began gently tugging the electrodes from her face and chest.
"I think we got what we need. It's been a long day, why don't we stop for today and pick up in the morning. You should get some rest." He smiled gently.
"Good call, Banner." Tony stood, turning to Charlotte. "If you want, just this once, I'll let you raid my personal snack stash. That's where all the really good stuff is kept."
She chuckled, leaning back. "Mmm, take a rain check. I feel like I got hit by a truck."
"We used a pretty heavy dose on the sedative…even with your heightened metabolism, it'll take a bit for it to completely leave your system." Bruce's eyes were apologetic.
"Better safe than…" She waved her hand, a yawn cutting her off.
"Alright boys, beat it." Natasha stood. "Char, I'll be back first thing in the morning with a breakfast spread like you wouldn't believe. Sleep it off, it's late anyways."
Charlotte smiled lazily as her lids began to droop again. "S'a plan."
"Sweet dreams, kiddo." Tony's voice was the last thing she heard before drifting back off to sleep.
