1
The first time they beat him, Bucky forces himself not to cry. He’s had worse fighting. He had worse at Azzano. He cusses them out and sasses and gets a tooth knocked out for his trouble. It’s oddly satisfying, because he’ll have a war wound when Steve comes for him.
He’s had worse. That’s what he keeps telling himself. He’s had worse.
2
The second time they make him kill a man, Bucky starts to crack. He drops the gun and overbalances, not used to free movement without his arm. They catch him and then throw him to the ground anyway, but the boots in his ribs aren’t the worst. Steve hasn’t come yet.
The dead man is staring at him, empty-eyed. Bucky closes his eyes and bites into his cheeks so he doesn’t. Fucking. Cry.
3
The third time they rape him, Bucky can’t help himself. It hurts and it’s humiliating and the fat tears streak down his cheeks without his permission because he can’t. He wants to go home he wants his mother he wants Steve.
He can’t he can’t he can’t.
4
The fourth time they attach a prototype arm, Bucky stops resisting. He screams when they solder his nerves because he can’t help himself, but he doesn’t fight. He doesn’t cry. He takes the pain and thanks them on his knees when they give him a blanket in his cell.
Steve isn’t coming.
5
The fifth time they wipe him, the soldier comes out shiny and new. Damp with sweat and reborn through pain. Under control. In order.
“Ready to comply.”
Bucky and his backpack
Jellyfish – A thousand little stings.
((i feel like kehinki wrote some tags that inspired this so here’s credit))
–
His mother had never liked the shortening Alex for Alexander. She would always tell him, after all, that he had been named after Alexander the Great, and when he’d been conquering half the world on behalf of Rome, no one had dared to call him by anything less than his full title.
Fortunately for her, Alex never stuck. More out of Alexander’s lack of grade-school popularity than any delusions of grandeur on his part, but so.
The power in a name and all that.
“It wasn’t him. Hydra had control of his mind!”
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