"But hurry, let's entwine ourselves as one, our mouth broken, our soul bitten by love, so time discovers us safely destroyed."

― Federico Garcia Lorca

Seering pain slithered up through her left leg where the bullet had penetrated; Ophelia was being dragged out of the operating room, but all she could hear was Bucky still shouting in protest. Whether it was in protest against what they were going to do to him or to her, she did not know. Part of her believed that he was begging for them to not touch her, at least part of her wanted to believe that.

After she had been shot, Ophelia had stopped fighting against the guards, because she knew what they would do to her. The more she fought, the worse she was treated. But it wasn't for her sake that she stopped fighting, no, it was for Bucky. HYDRA had a way with breaking people mentally more than physically; it was more fun to use mind games to drive someone insane than it was to use electricity or other more traditional forms of torture. But that did not mean they didn't like those methods either.

To Ophelia's surprise, they brought her not to her cell, but to another operating room. The walls were bare and there was nothing but a single gurney and moveable table with tools placed upon it. Her first thought was that they were going to subject her to something far scarier than anything she'd endured before, but that was not the case. Yet.

A HYDRA official came in, his face shielded by a black mask. Using a light sedative, nothing too strong, he numbed her leg and began to remove the bullet that was lodged in her hamstring. She groaned in pain, but it was not the worst thing she had felt. She had never been shot before, it was a new pain. Gritting her teeth as to not give them the satisfaction of hearing her scream, she watched as they pulled out the bronze-coloured bullet. The stitches were not as bad as the removal, and she thought the worst was over. Why bother stitching her up unless they were going to keep using her.

She almost had a moment of relief, until they finished and brought her to the dreaded electric chair. This time she was unable to hold back her screams; she never could when they brought her here no matter how many times she had been subjected to it. The pain never lessened. Her screams and shrieks could be heard through the entire base, but it did her no good. They simply shocked her until she could no longer utter a plea of despair.

When they removed her from the chair, she couldn't stand or even think. The only thing that was running through her mind was that she was hanging on to life. They didn't want her dead, at least not yet. She was still obedient, she would do what they said. She only had one slip up. She could not even convince herself of that, and unable to even part her lips to do anything but drool now; there was no arguing with HYDRA.

They threw her in her cell after that.

***

For three days no one came near her other than to give her enough food to survive the day. For three days no one told her the current status of Bucky, and she dared not ask either. To show she cared, that was the biggest mistake she could make. She doubted that even if they knew how she felt that they would risk harming Bucky.

They kept him alive for a reason, because he too had the Super Soldier serum in his veins. He was valuable, more so than she was. However, they were keeping her alive too, and she had expected that bullet in her thigh to have been meant for her head, that was not the case. Though she was pleased to see that they were not leaving her to die of infection, she worried that letting her heal after they had risked shooting her meant that she was headed for something worse. She already survived electrocution, days of a growling stomach, and the mental abuse that came with being neglected and completely kept utterly unaware of anything; what more could they do to her? What else could they do to break her?

She dared not to ask that question, however, as she did not want to know the answer.

Time felt as though it were moving at a standstill, and Ophelia had burning questions within her mind. Sooner or later, she would find out what was going to happen to her, and at this point she really did believe that she was being given another chance. One slip up that had surely been corrected by now was not enough for HYDRA to clean their hands of her; she still had her usefulness.

Perhaps she was thinking too far ahead; she still had a gift that they could use until the day she dropped, which could be decades from now with the testing they had done on her. Her usefulness had not run dry, and she took a deep breath, telling herself that over and over again. Locked in her cell, as usual, she decided that the fact they had sealed her wound, given her the regular round of shocking, that she had suffered her punishment and would be back on track sooner or later. It was hard to tell, though, HYDRA was impossible to predict.

Another day crept by slowly, no sunlight to truly inform Ophelia of the time gone by, but she counted the meals. This time she was given a large meal, filled with carbs and proteins. Without even thinking about what it might mean, she dug in ravenously, filling her pained stomach to the brim before even taking a breath. The savoury meal made her groan with pleasure, and it all seemed to disappear as quickly as it arrived. Then, she waited for a sign of what would happen to her next, worry began to seep into her mind. She worried that the meal had been her last. Why had it been so much bigger than the previous ones she had been getting?

About an hour later, an officer unlocked her door and pulled her out. Her legs felt weak, especially the left leg that had suffered the gunshot wound. They had cleaned and stitched the wound, but it still pained her, especially since she had not been getting enough food to sustain herself, let alone heal. However, the small amount of the super soldier serum that she did have in her, or HYDRA's scrapped together version of it, she healed better than most people. The man pulled out a needle and injected her arm.

"Stop!" She protested; but it was too late. Her question should have been about her own fate, and yet she could only ask, "Where is Bucky?"

"You'll see soon enough."

Ophelia felt her body go limp.

***

It was the cold that woke her when the sedative wore off; bitter winds nipped at her skin where she was not covered. Even as she opened her eyes, she felt the lids to be heavy, as if frozen shut. Though she had goggles and a face mask on, she could not see right away. It was bright and the vast whiteness startled her, and it took her a few moments to gather herself.

Instantly she knew that she was in trouble; she had been given no mission, and had never been outside the base without a mission. Her last memory was being sedated, and her gut instinct told her she needed to get out of there as fast as she could. And yet, she was still lying on her side in the snow, teeth chattering. There was no pain in her body, but she knew it was because she was completely numb due to the cold.

Finally pulling herself out of the deep snow, she allowed her eyes to adjust to the surroundings better, seeing that she was on the mountain pass. It was a flurry, the snow whipping around playfully and painfully at her face. Siberian winters had been known to kill stronger people than her, but it was not the weather she needed to fear, and she knew it. They wouldn't toss her out in the cold like a disobedient dog, because she could find her way out of that, she would survive that. There was something far worse coming for her.

Ophelia walked along, wrapping her arms around her torso to lock in the warmth that she had left. When the trees came into view, and she noticed a piece of paper on the one directly in front of her. Curious and terrified all at once, she walked over to it. Constantly looking around at the whiteness around her, she felt as though this was some test to prove herself. Perhaps to find someone while she was in a wounded state. It was harder to make the mental link with her prey when she was hurt, it took out more energy than she liked to admit. There were so many possibilities that she didn't even get the time to consider by the time she grabbed the piece of paper on the tree.

As she read the note she realized that this was not redemption.

This was sudden death.

"Ophelia,

You have extended your welcome here.

Your mother didn't want you.

Your father allowed Zola to test on you from the day you arrived.

No one will ever want you.

We have no more use of you.

We have given you a fair head start.

The Winter Soldier will be coming for you.

He will find you.

Run."

It was a twisted torment, using her own tricks against her, but Ophelia felt stupid she hadn't guessed it. HYDRA loved to play with their food, so to speak. They were going to kill her after hunting her down, using her own methods. She wondered who or what the Winter Soldier was, but something in the back of her mind said that she already knew. It would have only been a matter of time that HYDRA was able to turn Bucky from the man he was into their perfect weapon, their weapon of mass destruction.

She knew they were working on something that was more than brainwashing. It was wiping the brain clean; a clean slate that would be vulnerable enough for them to fill the head of the person with lies, or more likely, commands. They had not bothered to try it with Ophelia, and she wondered if it had to do with her mutation. Perhaps with her ability to form a mental bridge with someone would prevent her mind from being completely wiped, as she was able to delve deep into their minds and memories. But, she certainly wasn't going to stick around and find out. When the Winter Soldier found her, he would probably end her life right there, leave her bleeding out in the snow.

The perfect soldier; the perfect weapon.

Half of her mind wanted to stay and fight, but she was given no weaponry and her boots were already beginning to freeze; snow had gotten in when she lay unconscious, and her body heat warmed it enough to melt it, now, it too began to freeze. Her hair was frozen in parts, her whole body felt stiff. She wouldn't last a day out here even if she wasn't running for her life, not with this terrible start. This had to be a test for the Winter Soldier, to see his worth and see what he was capable of at such rushed circumstances. But Ophelia was a fighter, and she had a few tricks up her sleeve; she learned a lot being a HYDRA affiliate, or slave. A prisoner, as Bucky had put it. She realized now that a prisoner was exactly what she had been, and she was far from free now. As she took a deep breath, the cold hurting her lungs as she did, she did what she knew best. Ophelia formed a mental bridge with Bucky, the man she assumed was this Winter Soldier.

At first there was nothing. Emptiness. She was in his mind, but there was nothing left of him. She dug into the depth of his mind, and was able to figure out where he was located. He was still at the base, but leaving shortly. Chances are he was headed right to her location, where HYDRA had dumped her unconscious in the snow. As she dug deeper into Bucky's blank mind, this time getting a move on through the mountain pass and covering her tracks behind her, she discovered the wretched truth behind the fear in her heart.

They had taken her mutated cells and injected them into him.

He was able to use her path finding abilities to find her.

And she had created the bridge between them, something she had spent years working on, something Bucky wouldn't have been able to do yet.

Now he knew exactly where she was.