𝗗𝗜𝗚𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗟 𝗦𝗜𝗟𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘

Love, Bucky/Noble Savage

Isabell hasn't fought alongside James – not properly and cooperatively – since she was seven and half out of her mind. HYDRA trained her rough and ragged, deprived her of anything that could bring her joy, until she was so desperate for even just a meal that she'd do whatever they asked.

If they'd sat her down and told her to take her own eyes out, she'd have done it.

However, a decade of freedom has taken that blind obedience. Isabell doesn't play nicely with others anymore. More than that, she's forgotten how.

Stripped of her team and then of James, fighting with someone rather than against them is an alien sort of concept. She was trained as a pack animal, then a shadow, before finally being rebuilt as something with all of that ripped out. HYDRA is Isabell's identity, a good portion of her soul, and she can't change that, no matter how bad she wants to.

Stood shaking in the cold streets of Manhattan, her brain is a jumbled mess of confusion.

She is too weak to fight for herself. She's years out of practice, her body is exhausted, and if she dies, when she dies, they all know she won't come back again. It's all fucking infuriating.

Isabell was made as a machine. She is a soldier, a fighter, and goddammit, she didn't survive the termination of her team just to be useless twelve years later. She didn't lose her childhood to the war to let other people win the new ones for her.

She doesn't know how retired veterans live with themselves; with bombs going off in their minds whilst the next generation keeps fighting.

It's not fair.

She wants to go home; crawl under the bed and lie there until things are quiet in her head. Until the weeping cesspool of grief inside of her runs dry, until James comes and makes it better.

Isabell doesn't want to fight.

However, something she wants even less is people fighting for her.

She closes her eyes.

It's cold outside tonight, bitterly so, and Isabell is freezing through her jacket. Natasha's jacket, really, but she doesn't have much use for it now.

No. Don't think about that. Think about something else. James. Home. Bed. Maria. Steve. No. Turn it off.

From beside her, James frowns a little.

"You OK?"

"I think so," Isabell mutters.

His eyebrow raises. "You can go home if you want."

"And why would I want that?"

"You're shaking, Iz."

Her heart jerks, heavy and hot against the ridged walls of her ribs. She can't breathe like this. Can't move, can't fight, can't fucking function. It's too cold and too much, and nothing is making it fade.

Isabell's jaw clenches.

"You said the war was over, James." She says softly. "What's this, then?"

James swallows. She feels it like she would in herself, as if part of her soul has detached and is simply drifting around the shell of his body. Maybe there's something of him left in her, too.

Either way, she feels more complete when he's there.

"This is something worth fighting for." James murmurs. The streets around them are emptying rapidly as people dart away from the scene they're heading towards, but it might as well be silent for all Isabell cares. She is fighting again. She is fighting, and she is incapable, and the only thing that has ever been special about her flooded out of her eight years ago.