Hell Bound

The surface beneath me jolted with a metallic crunch and broke me out of the haze of memory. Someone lifted my head in their hands, sliding their fingers around the back of my skull. One of the hands felt smooth and hard. I pried my eyes open, but it was hard to focus on his face. He was hovering over me beneath a bright blue sky as he checked my head.

“I knew it,” I told him as he touched his thumb to the smear of blood my head had left on his fingers. “I knew you didn’t really want to hurt me.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked. But he shook it off before I could explain. “I need to get you out of here. Can you move?” I didn’t even try. I shut my eyes again. My head was swimming. I didn’t even know for sure where I was or how I’d gotten there. I was on top of a car. I knew that much. But I couldn’t remember falling. There wasn’t a single part of me that wasn’t screaming in agony.

“I can’t,” I told him. He took a deep breath and shifted as he crouched. The car moved beneath us, and the glass cracked under me. “Where’s the kid? Russell?”

“I don’t know. I lost sight of them when you went over.”

“I’ll be okay. Just watch out for them.” He moved my head toward him. I opened my eyes again. He looked back at me with concern.

“You’re bleeding,” he said. “Again.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I’m not leaving you here. I’ll come back for them when you’re safe.” He moved to lift me but just moving my shoulders off the cracking glass made pain shoot through my body. I cried out, and he immediately froze.

“Don’t move her!” someone shouted from above. Their faces were hazy and dark as they peered down at us from the balcony. All I could see were masks. “Or the kid goes down next!” I gripped my fingers into the front of his jacket. I was starting to make more sense of what was happening, and I was pretty sure something was broken. Either my spine or my hips or both my legs. I couldn’t tell. Just that the pain hurt so much, I could barely breathe, let alone move.

“Just go!” Graham yelled from above. I gripped Bucky tighter, and he moved his head, scratching his jaw along the side of my cheek.

“Just get him out of here before anyone else gets hurt,” I instructed. He shook his head.

“I can’t. You heard what he said. If I let you go, I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.”

“Russell will come with me. They want him too. He’ll keep me safe.”

“It’s not enough.”

“You know them better than anyone. You can find me. You can still get out of here. Just take the kid and run.”

I could hear them coming down the stairs on either side of the balcony, surrounding us again. The brief window we had to run was closing. I knew Bucky could get out of there on his own. He might be able to get Graham too. But there’s no way he’d be able to get all of us. Especially me.

“She’s going to bleed out before you can get her to Stark,” someone was telling him. It was the leader who’d shoved me over. I recognized his voice. Bucky lifted his head, but I pinched my eyes shut and tried to control my breathing. Just holding onto him was excruciating, and it was taking everything I had not to scream. “That’s only if her spine isn’t broken. Letting her come with us is the only way you can make sure she lives.”

“I’ll find a way,” Bucky growled.

“She’ll never forgive you if the kid dies because you wouldn’t let her go.” Bucky pulled me closer and slid his arm beneath my knees. He was preparing to lift me and bolt. No matter how much pain it caused or how much damage it did.

“I don’t care if you never forgive me,” he decided. I gripped him harder, and my sharp intake of breath forced him to pause.

“Bucky—please?” I begged.

His arm slid out from under my legs and pressed his hand to my face. It was still hard to focus, and my head felt even woozier. But I could make him out. He looked so worried. He wasn’t a monster, and he never had been. Even when they’d forced him to kill. He never wanted to, despite what he said about enjoying it. I’d seen what he looked like when he was out for too long and beginning to make sense of things. He’d made a choice for himself.

“I can’t,” he said. There was still concern, but there were other emotions on his face now too. Desperation. Pain. “They’re going to break you again.”

“Remember what we talked about? You gave me something to hold onto.”

“It’s not going to be enough.”

“It was for you.” He wrapped his arm around me again, almost as if he was refusing to let me go. But it took the strain off my shoulders, and I no longer had to fight to breathe.

“You,” the leader said from the other side of the car. “Go get her. He’ll give her to you.” Bucky’s head snapped in their direction. I could feel his heart begin to pound in his chest. He made no move to fight whoever approached. I heard footsteps on the gravel, and someone reached over me to grip his shoulder. They weren’t wearing black like the others. Russell.

“Listen to me,” he whispered. “Do everything I tell you, and we can make sure she gets out of this alive. I won’t let anything happen to her.”

“You think it’s going to be enough? You know what they want to do to her.”

“I think it’s the only chance she’s got. It’s the only chance any of us has. Do what she says. Stand back, get the kid, and run. I won’t let them break her. You have to trust me.” Bucky looked back down at me, but he still looked desperate and reluctant to trust him.

“They’re not going to let us walk out of here,” he said, but he wasn’t talking to me. Russell gripped him again in a friendly gesture of solidarity. I felt his other hand rest on the top of my head.

“No, but you have a much better chance of getting out of here with the kid than you do with her.”

“You expect me to just walk away?”

“They’ll kill you both if you don’t, and then she won’t have anything left to fight for.”

“I don’t care.” He looked back at Russell.

“She does. And she’s going to need that motivation. They’re taking her out of here one way or another. So let her keep the only hope she has left.” Bucky took another deep breath. “Trust me.” I didn’t think Bucky would, but he trusted me. His grip on me loosened, and he turned back to me.

“I’ll find you,” he told me.

“They’ll take us to Sokovia. I’m almost positive,” Russell whispered. Bucky moved to allow him to take me, but he didn’t let go completely. I kept my grip on his jacket to force him to listen.

“Your notebook,” I said. “I wrote something.”

“I know,” he told me, his expression softening just slightly. “I saw it. I was right.”

“Yeah, you were.”

“I meant what I said to him.”

“I know.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to my forehead. Then he let me go and reached across to grab the front of Russell’s sweater. The movement jerked me, and I winced.

“If she isn’t Jo the next time I see her, I’ll do what I should have done when I found you in the woods all those years ago.” Russell nodded once.

“I won’t fight you,” he agreed. Bucky looked back at me and ran his thumb over my cheek.

“Just—keep fighting,” he said. “Don’t let them get into your head.”

Then he leaped off the car. It jolted again, and Russell pulled me back into his arms as they swarmed us. I didn’t see where Bucky or Graham went. I didn’t hear any fighting or shouting. I just hoped they were getting away.

“Get her in the van,” the leader instructed, jabbing Russell in the back with the barrel of his rifle. Russell slid his arms under my knees.

“This is going to hurt,” he warned me.

“I know,” I told him.

He lifted me up, and my whole body exploded with pain. I held onto him and tried to bite my lip. I didn’t want to scream and draw Bucky back, but I wasn’t successful. Russell carried me away from the car, and each step jolted through my broken bones. After a moment, I managed to breathe again.

“You don’t have a plan, do you?” I whispered through clenched teeth. “You have no idea how to get me out of this.”

“I had to get him to let you go,” he said. “You said you needed something to hold onto, right? Wouldn’t have done you any good if they were both dead.”

“Do you think he’s going to get away?”

“No,” he whispered. I could hear the doors of a van slide open. “I also knew he wasn’t going to just walk. He’s going to get the kid to a safe distance, and then he’ll double back. I knew he’d fight, but this was the only way I could keep everyone alive.”

Someone helped him move me into the van. The process was painful, and it took a few minutes to get me down onto a mat on the floor. Russell knelt beside me and took off his sweater. Then he tucked it under my head and leaned over me to adjust it.

“Just do everything I tell you without question, and maybe you can get out of this with your mind in one piece,” he instructed. “You need to trust me.”

“I always have,” I told him.