Never be the same (Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier)

Chapter 5

"And who would have thought that the bright eyed girl with her head in the clouds, could end up with colourless eyes and her head in a pillow, waiting for the pain to end."

The room was warm, really warm compared to the room I had just been in. The kind of warm that was actually quite shocking to be completely honest, but I might have just imagined it, because I had just been in such a cold room.

Suddenly a light switched on and I was left to lay down and stare around myself. I looked around the room as best as I could and I noticed it was a fairly good contrast to the last room I had been in. I mean this room was black, but it didn't seem like it was painted black. Like it was faded from place to place and it just looked weird, I wanted to take a better look at it, but my body was still a bit numb from what it had just gone through.

My skin was starting to tingle from the high temperature, my body was starting to feel more and more alive and it was starting to hurt from the sudden temperature change.

I was finally able to feel my arms again. I looked at them and noticed the colour slowly returning to my skin, I mean it's not like I'm usually really tan or anything, I'm actually kinda pale in general but my complexion in that other room was just sick, it didn't even look human to me anymore.

After a few more minutes of just laying there, I finally managed to sit up. I mean yes my legs were still kinda numb, but it was getting better, my body was getting back to normal and I honestly wasn't sure whether I was happy about it or not. I mean I was expecting to just go then and there and now I was sitting in this awfully stifling room and I didn't know what to think.

I managed to heave myself up on my legs and walk up to my closest wall to finally make out what it was that was covering it. For my surprise it was covered with soot, which turned out to be the reason why it looked faded in some places.

"Adriana, you didn't really think we would let you go that easily, did you?" the same voice echoed throughout the room.

"I was hoping you would," I mumbled under my breath.

"Well, the rules are the same as before," the voice paused for a moment, "let us know when you are willing to cooperate."

I just shook my head and sat down in the middle of the dark room. It was getting harder and harder to breathe all of a sudden and I started desperately looking around for what was causing my breathing problems. There was nothing in the room though. I felt the temperature rising and I felt my body getting sweaty under the heat, it was becoming really humid and I kept trying to control my breathing. It hurt, breathing in hurt. I wanted so desperately to take my clothes off, but I knew they were watching me and I was not gonna give them the pleasure to see me like that.

By now my whole body was covered with sweat and I felt extremely gross. I got up and started banging at the door, because I started feeling more and more lightheaded by the second. I tried to breathe in, but the heat was too much and I just started coughing from the burning sensation in my nostrils and throat.

It felt like every piece of oxygen had been sucked out of the room and I was just left there to breath in the burning fumes. I didn't even dare to think what the temperature in the room might be. It was definitely worse than every sauna I had ever been in my life. I tried banging at the door once again, hoping it would open up. It didn't.

"Just say the word, little fighter," the voice came back, "just say the word and you will be out of there in a second."

I kept shaking my head at that. I didn't want to open my mouth, because my throat was already in enough pain from the extreme heat. My throat was starting to hurt more and more, and I didn't seem to be able to stop the coughing anymore. My head felt like it was going to explode, the heat made me want to tear my hair out.

I started banging at the door more heavily. I don't think it was even 10 seconds until the door flew open and I fell forwards. I was immediately met by a cold stone floor and it honestly felt like heaven to me, since my whole body was burning up.

I didn't get to lay there long though, because just as suddenly as I had met the floor, I met a pair of arms that pulled me up from the ground and shoved me forwards. I didn't need to guess twice about who was doing that, obviously it would be him.

I was embracing the cool air though, though it didn't seem to make my lungs any better because I still kept coughing like crazy.

All of a sudden I got stopped by a hand on my shoulder, and the next thing I know is that I'm being shoved into a room.

Oh no. Not again. I was back in the cold room. The freezing air hit me as soon as I got pushed in, and let me tell you, my sweat covered body and this kind of cold temperature didn't go together that well.

Now my lungs were killing me, I kept coughing harder and harder and it didn't seem to end anytime soon. I was freezing once again, my whole body kept shaking.

Was that their plan? Make me switch between the two rooms every now and then, until I finally gave in.

The temperature changes couldn't have been good to my body and I got proof to that as soon as my next huge coughing fit begun. Blood. There was blood on my hands as soon as I pulled them away from my mouth. I kept staring at them and shaking more than ever. I couldn't stop the coughing though. I fell down to my hands and knees and coughed and coughed. I kept coughing up blood, that was it. That had to be it. That had to be the end of this sick nightmare.

There was blood on the floor in front of me now. I've always thought that blood was something pure, the only pure thing I knew perhaps. But the blood in front of me didn't look pure to me. It looked like a reminder of how my life is going to end. Of how I desperately wanted it to end.

But then again, I found myself not being in charge of how I wanted things to be or go. Instead I found myself being pulled back up on my feet, though that seemed to inflict another fit of coughing, which resulted in more blood.

I felt weak. Lightheaded and weak. I hated it, I didn't want to seem weak in front of them, but I couldn't help it.

I felt myself being dragged out of the room, into the corridor. Then along the corridor, which seemed to last for ages. And then we finally stopped. Another door. Another room of torture, was all I could think.

He opened it with his metal arm and pulled me in. And there we stood. Him with his broad shoulders and cold eyes, and me with my weak body and dizzy mind. I tried to look at him, but it only made me feel more dizzy, which he seemed to take a notice of, because he pushed me to sit down on some stone block. I coughed again, and then again with him just staring at me, and with my hands growing more and more covered by blood.

"Please," I paused as another coughing fit begun, "please, let me die." His eyes never left my shaking frame, he just kept staring at me with his emotionless eyes.

I never got any answer for my plead that night. I just got left alone, a room made of stone and a stone block to sleep on.