87.
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Isabel eventually wakes up to the sounds of Bucky's sobbing a few metres away from her. The room is still as bright as ever, the overhead lights shining down on them.
Every inch of Isabel's body aches. She's never felt pain like it, not at any point in her life. Even breathing sends shooting pain through her chest. She can't breathe, her ribs protesting every movement. Her hand screams with pain. She can't move her fingers on that hand at all. Its reached out in front of her, across the cement. Even through the fog over her eyes, she can see that the hand is mangled, the finger protruding at all sorts of angles. She swallows down the bile that rises in her throat.
She's wet all over, and it takes her a moment to realise it's blood. She's lying in a puddle of red, her cheek pressed up against it on the cement, her hair floating in it around her. It's flooding across the floor lazily toward Bucky. And she's in so much pain, when she moves her arms or legs, she sees white.
She looks up, without moving, her eyes rolling toward Bucky.
Bucky looks at her through the bars, tears streaming down his cheeks. "I'm sorry, Belle. I'm so sorry."
"S'kay," Isabel whispers, barely able to get her words out from the dryness of her mouth and the blood and the pain. She scrunches her eyes shut, gritting her teeth, but even that sends a pain through the side of her head and jaw. "S'kay Buck."
"No, it's not. I can't let this happen."
Isabel's face falls even more, impossibly more. "Can't let them win. Can't–"
Isabel's cut off by a choking sound, and then she coughs violently, bringing up with it a mouthful of dark red blood. She coughs and splutters, and tries to sit up but she can't even move an inch. She prays she doesn't choke as she heaves. There's blood everywhere, running down her chin and over her teeth and all over the floor. She vomits again, another batch of blood.
She feels so warm and full inside. Her stomach feels full of something.
Blood, she realises.
She's bleeding internally, she knows it. Internal bleeding along with broken bones and maybe some brain damage from those few punches to the head.
It won't be long now, and it will all be over.
"It won't be long," she says, a strangled voice that sounds like she's underwater as she drowns in her own blood.
"Oh my god, Isabel," Bucky cries, shaking the bars again, trying to reach her. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have let this happen."
"Buck, no–"
"You've been so strong," Bucky tells her. "But I can't let this happen." Bucky turns to the roof then, looking up for the camera. "It's over! You won! You can have me. You can have me, I'm yours! Just don't hurt her! Please!"
No one replies.
There's only Isabel spitting out the blood from her mouth, her groans of pain, her sobs. She's just bringing up dark blood and trying desperately to breathe between the bouts.
Bucky collapses back against the bars, reaching across the gap and getting nowhere near touching her. He can only watch as, right there, she dies of her injuries.
Isabel can't move at all. Her eyes close and don't open again. If it weren't for the shallow rise and fall of her chest, Bucky would think she were a corpse, pale and transparent. There's blood everywhere, in a circle around her like a sick sort of halo. Her entire body is turning black with the bruising, her cheek purple. The light has disappeared from her.
Bucky can barely watch, but he can't look away either.
After a few painstaking, long minutes, Madame Hydra enters the cells.
She stops in front of Bucky, smiling down at him where he sits defeated on the floor. "I'm glad you changed your mind," Madame Hydra says sincerely. "We didn't want to kill her, but we would have. She'll be much more useful to use dead than alive. As will you."
"Please, just save her, then," Bucky cries. "She's dying."
Madame Hydra stares at Isabel, her head cocking to the side. She opens up Isabel's cell, and Isabel squints up at her from the ground and from beneath her swollen black eyes.
"She'll be fine," Madame Hydra promises.
She gets her hands under Isabel's arms and lifts her up, Isabel screaming out in pain. She gets a good grip on Isabel's wrists, both of them clasped together, and then she begins to drag Isabel out of the cell.
Bucky watches helplessly as Madame Hydra drags Isabel away to wherever he presumes they'll be healing her. Isabel doesn't move. She's limp, allowing herself to be dragged across the cold concrete. She doesn't cry anymore. Her face is contorted into a look of extreme pain.
Blood smears itself along their path, falling steadily from Isabel clothes and from the cuts and wounds all over her. It leaves a sickening mark all the way along the hallway.
The cell door slams shut behind them.