#ptsd after the incident occurs (and this is actually a real paper) and i was like wow i wished i knew

[miutonium]

Playing the NYT mini crozzword everyday because I love the satisfaction of hearing the jingle when I solve a puzzle and hhhh I think if Utonium ever have a smartphone he def plays NYT crossword just for the jingle too and he gets so excited over listening to it hhh

[cripplecharacters]

Hello! I need some advice on how to deal with something in my story. CW for mentions of violence. This takes place in a medieval high fantasy setting in a rural village, and it's going to be a comic.

I have a character who was injured during a sword fight. She developed PTSD from this (along with another unrelated, separate incident which isn't relevent here).

CW for brief mentions of violence, description of panic attacks.

I'm gonna try and condense this so it's not 20 paragraphs of nonsense:

She actually copes with her PTSD relatively well, and is only triggered in specific situations which are not common occurences.

She lives in a rural village with one healer who has advised her on healthy coping mechanisms, but does not have the time/experience to act as a therapist.

At one point in the story, she starts becoming closer to another character she needs to work with, and they spar with each other.

He swings a sword near her face, which triggers a PTSD flashback. (Her face was previously wounded in a sword fight). He does not know she has PTSD or would be triggered by this, it's a complete accident. All he knew is that she had a scar on her face from something.

There are other characters in the story with facial scars from things like slipping and falling or cleft lip repair surgeries so he just assumes hers is from something like that.

After realizing that something's wrong he immediately stops sparring with her. He doesn't have PTSD but he does have severe anxiety and panic attacks and he recognizes that she's freaking out.

I have anxiety so I know what a panic attack is like, but I don't have PTSD so I'm not sure what a flashback is like.

When I have a panic attack, I get severe tunnel vision and my ears ring to the point everything sounds muffled. I also sometimes shake/shiver violently and feel like I'm going to faint if I don't sit down immediately.

Questions:

Would the flashback look/feel similar to that?

How fast would she be able to recover or realize that she's not in any danger?

Would she be able to communicate to her friend what's happening and what he can do to help?

Would asking him to just sit with her and hold her be okay/make sense? She also has autism and she likes to be squished and hugged tightly, it makes her feel secure and safe.

I can recover from panic attacks pretty quickly and then maybe feel only a little bit off for the rest of the day, but I don't know if she would be able to do the same after a flashback.

Also, there's one last thing I'm debating on whether or not I want to happen:

The character is fighter and it's a HUGE danger for her to be having a flashback in the middle of a battle. She (or someone else) could die if she's unable to fight.

Since the village healer can't help much, would it make sense for her to sort of DIY exposure therapy?

Obviously in real life this would be risky, but the character really has no other choice in this scenario and, to be honest, it's entirely in character for her to say "Fuck you, I'm doing this my way."

I'm going to read a couple papers on it to see exactly how it works and what she might do, but my main concern is that it would end up being weird, I guess?

She asks her two friends to help, one of which is the man she was sparring with (and later falls in love with).

Obviously, he's not actually her therapist, but I'm worried people will read it and go "Omg unhealthy relationship! Power imbalance! Therapist is fucking the patient! Evil!" but Idk, maybe I've spent too much time around fandom discourse lmao.

A few more questions:

Do you have any other advice or things I should keep in mind about her PTSD, like (healthy) ways she might cope with it?

With enough time and therapy, will she be able to sort of feel "normal" and have so few symptoms that she no longer meets the diagnostic criteria, or is she just sort of stuck with everything?

Is there anything I've written about her PTSD that is inaccurate or that could be done differently?

I'm so, so sorry that this got so long. Hopefully breaking it up into bullet points helped. Please take all the time you need to respond <3

First of all love the use of bullet points. It was incredibly helpful and I appreciate it! Many of these questions don't have one straight forward easy answer. PTSD varies a lot from person to person and even day to day or moment to moment. There is no one answer to “How fast would she be able to recover or realize that she's not in any danger?” and “Would she be able to communicate to her friend what's happening and what he can do to help?” Recovering could take minutes to days. She might be able to speak fluently or not at all. That’s sort of up to you. 

There are different types of flashbacks and they will feel different to different people. These several links may be useful to you. Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4

So with the exposure therapy, you are right. It would be really risky. I don’t think it’s a matter of "Fuck you, I'm doing this my way." The risk here is that it’s entirely possible that it would make her PTSD worse rather than better. It’s not a fast process either, it takes time. Why can’t there be a therapist near her? 

The character asking him to just sit with her and hold her would be okay and definitely could make sense. 

My answer for “Do you have any other advice or things I should keep in mind about her PTSD, like (healthy) ways she might cope with it?” Honestly just do your research! Learn about how people with PTSD cope and experience the world. There are lots of personal records available on the internet. Maybe even look at the PTSD section of the DSM. 

“With enough time and therapy, will she be able to sort of feel "normal" and have so few symptoms that she no longer meets the diagnostic criteria, or is she just sort of stuck with everything?” The answer is likely something in between the two. It is unlikely she will ever be cured of PTSD. However, given time and help she can find ways to cope and have a happy life. Her happy life might never be able to involve sword fighting, maybe it doesn’t look “normal” but she can live a happy satisfying life without being cured. 

Now on your last point. I have some concerns when you say “The character is a fighter and it's a HUGE danger for her to be having a flashback in the middle of a battle. She (or someone else) could die if she's unable to fight.” First, this is a harmful trope of disability representation in media. It’s not great to treat disability as an active liability/threat. We also don’t need to moralize symptoms. To quote another mod “Flashbacks suck but they happen…having a character with significant PTSD never have flashbacks…is not super realistic especially if…she's retraumatizing herself by being in an environment similar to where the trauma happened”

If she knows she's being triggered by battles why does she keep fighting? I don’t understand why she would take the risk of retraumatizing herself in such a high-stakes situation. Especially because from the sound of things she’s coping well and knows about her symptoms. 

Thank you for your question. I hope this was helpful. 

-Mod Patch

[mst3kproject]

Voodoo Island

Leonard Maltin thought this movie was boring, which is, honestly, kind of terrifying.  Its ostensible star is Boris Karloff, who somehow managed to avoid ever being on MST3K, but it was produced by Howard Koch, the director of Untamed Youth, and was written by Richard Laundau, who did the same for Lost Continent (uhoh).  It’s also got Jean Engstrom from The Space Children, and if the voice of the radio operator sounds familiar that’s because it’s 🎶 Adam Weeeeeest.

A hotel company wants to build a resort on a tropical island, but the scouting party they sent never came back – except for one guy, Mitchell, who has been reduced to a catatonic state by whatever it was he saw there.  Worried, the hotelier sends renowned skeptic Mr. Knight to find out if it’s true that the island is under some kind of voodoo curse.  After much wasting of the audience’s time, Knight’s party reaches the island and finds it infested with man-eating plants, coconut crabs, and unfriendly natives.  I wish I could tell you more of the plot, but that’s basically all there is.

Voodoo Island is unusual as bad movies go, in that you don’t actually realize how bad it is until it’s over.  Things that seem to be the plot move merrily along, always feeling like it’s building up to something cool… and then at the last moment it just deflates like a gas station tube man with his fan turned off.  In hindsight, the audience realizes that very little of what they just saw had anything to do with what was supposedly going on. In many ways, you never do find out what was going on at all!

The middle section of this movie is not quite as obviously padded as Lost Continent with its endless rock climbing, but almost all of it is, retrospectively, pointless.  On the first leg of their journey to the island, the party’s plane is caught in a storm and forced to make an emergency landing – only to find that the weather has mysteriously cleared right up!  After repairing their radio they set off again, and nothing much comes of the incident.  They stop on another island where they have trouble hiring a boat, and where somebody puts a curse of some sort on them.  Nothing comes of this.  Later still, their boat stalls out and refuses to start again, even after they’ve cleared a blocked fuel line.  This has no real consequences, because the tide carries them in anyway, and the movie never deals with what happens when they try to leave the island again.

Along for the ride is Mitchell, the guy who was so terrified by what he saw on the island that he hasn’t moved or spoken since. He has a couple of medical emergencies that resolve themselves without long-term consequences, and then simply drops dead before they ever reach the island.  They don’t learn anything from him or his condition.  A similar fate later befalls another character, Finch, but this time the movie ends before he has a chance to either die or snap out of it. Mitchell is only in this movie to make it longer, and possibly so it could claim it had a zombie.

With the movie already half-over, we finally reach this mysterious island.  The group are greeted by a trail of clues that make Knight thing somebody is trying to lead them somewhere… perhaps to answers, perhaps to a trap.  Eventually they’re captured by the natives, but there’s no reason they had to be in a particular place for this to happen – the natives have been following them the whole time and could have intervened at any point.  None of this stuff reads as padding because it feels like it’s going to lead to something.  Again, it’s only when the credits unexpectedly start to roll that you realize almost the whole movie was irrelevant.

Padding is not Voodoo Island’s only problem – the dialogue is awkward at best.  Most of it is on a Revenge of the Sith level, where characters just say exactly what they’re thinking in a way that might have sounded poetic on paper but just doesn’t work out loud.  The boat captain, Gunn, gets a Gunslinger moment in which he narrates his traumatic backstory in a single talking head shot.  Knight is forever going on about Rational Explanations and then suddenly declares his change of heart when confronted with a voodoo doll.  There’s no meat to this arc at all, no sense of Knight questioning his worldview or coming to terms with anything – he just says I do believe! like he’s in a Santa Claus movie and then it’s over.

The worst of both the dialogue and the supposed character arcs occur in the love story.  There are girls in this movie, so of course there has to be a love story, and it’s terrible.  The lady half of this one is Knight’s assistant Miss Adams, who is very poised and professional and doesn’t smoke or drink, and spends the first half of the movie being tutted at by just about everybody.  The other woman in the group, Claire, tells her she could just be so pretty if she’d only change the way she did her hair.  Gunn calls her a ‘machine’ and asks if she even knows how to be a woman.  This raises some hackles in the modern viewer, who wants to see Adams appreciated for what she is rather than what she has the potential to be if she changes everything about herself.

But Voodoo Island was made in the fifties, when changing yourself to please a man was what women aspired to!  Miss Adams therefore swears off being a nerd and kisses Gunn, whose main personality trait is being a stunning asshole.  He’s drunk and bitter, and earlier in the movie he tried to hit on Claire, who had to tell him to fuck off about four times before he got the idea.  Later he insults and threatens Adams because her intelligence makes him feel like less of a man.  Apparently one kiss from her completely undoes his PTSD and he’s a better person now.

These two getting together also totally dismisses the healthy and supportive friendship Adams has with Knight, who is not only her boss but has some fatherly affection for her.  He praises her work ethic and tells her that she shouldn’t listen to people who think she’s boring.  I guess we’re supposed to think it’s good that she quits working for him so she can run off with a drunk who’s threatened to slap her, because Gunn will make her life more exciting.

At the supposed climax, the natives (an assortment of ethnic-looking extras who never speak) take the group prisoner, and they are brought before the chief (a white guy in dark makeup), who tells them why outsiders aren’t allowed on the island.  The prisoners are taken to a hut where they are tied up.  One of them is possibly murdered by voodoo, and then the chief… just lets the rest of them leave.  No conditions specified, although it’s implied that the islanders have more voodoo dolls and plenty of pins.  We don’t even find out if they actually made it back.  To get to their boat, the party will have to pass back through the carnivorous jungle without a guide, and once they reach the beach, they’ll have to fix their engine.  It really feels like there ought to have been more of a climax, never mind a denouement. As the credits begin, I was just going, “that’s it?”

The actors are mostly mediocre.  Boris Karloff tries really hard to rise above the material but never gets there, which is understandable when his lines are things like, “no, you fool, they’ll slaughter us to bits!”.  All this badness really is a terrible shame, too, because Voodoo Island’s setpiece monsters, the man-eating plants, are actually incredibly cool.  They never look real, but they’re much more creative than the standard giant Venus’ flytrap.  There’s a thing that wraps long bean-like leaves around a swimmer and drowns her, another than catches its victims with a sticky bulbous stem, and yet a third that folds ferny fronds around prey and digests it!  A movie that made proper use of these monsters would be a great time. I hope the prop people went on to the better things they deserved.

(At the other end of the effects scale are the coconut crabs I mentioned.  These are not actual coconut crabs, but dead specimens of some other, much more gracile species.  This, too, is unfortunate, because coconut crabs are living crustacean nightmares capable of killing and eating seagulls.  One theory about Amelia Earhart’s ultimate fate is that she was devoured by coconut crabs.)

As for Voodoo Island having anything to say… it has some kind of muddled point about not dismissing the supernatural out of hand, but its ‘magic’ is pretty lame, and Knight’s arc is handled so badly that it passes by without making much of an impression.  The story does seem to have another possible theme, though.  As usual I can’t tell if this is intentional or not, but Voodoo Island seems to have something to say about concepts of ownership.

The hotelier has taken an interest in the island because he did an inventory of his properties and discovered he owned it. How he came to do so, we have no idea… it must have been sold to him by somebody else who’d likewise never been there, since the tribal chief tells us that Mitchell and his companions were the first white men to ever go there.  What made that person think they owned it?  Does the concept of ownership even mean anything when you don’t know that you own something?  Does owning something entitle you to destroy it?

The natives own the island in the much less abstract sense that they live there.  The chief tells the party that his people went to this island on purpose, because they thought its nasty flora would keep white people from following them there. They want no part of modern civilization, and seem completely unaware that somebody outside their community is claiming he owns this land.  Whether the idea of ‘owning’ land is even a meaningful one to them, we can’t tell. When the Lenape allowed the Dutch to live on Manhattan Island, they probably had no idea the settlers would consider the land exclusively theirs.

These are some things that still need thinking about in the twenty-first century, and if you’re going to watch Voodoo Island do it for that and for the fun monsters.  Even then, you’re likely to be disappointed.

[scribeofmorpheus]

As Fate Would Have It (Part 16)

Paring: WinterSoldier!Bucky x Spy!Reader

Catch Up here | Masterlist

Words: 4.1k | Note: Reader’s alias is Elle/Helen

A/N: It is with great pleasure that I can finally, finally, say that this chapter was actually the first ever chapter I wrote for this series (before it was even a series tbh). All the previous chapters were meant to be simple, world-building prequels that spiralled out of control! lol. Writing just turns out like that sometimes.

Warnings: Violence, themes of PTSD, brainwashing, mentions of sex, terribly written action scenes and annngggst?

Note: I chose to call Bucky’s POV the 'Winter Soldier' because I firmly believe that at this point they are two separate people.

Songs: White Rabbit | The Winter Soldier | Siberian Overture

Feel free to ask to be tagged, leave a like, reblog or comment ♥

~Brooklyn~

You looked out the window overlooking a garden filled with yellow roses while a cup of tea cooled between your palms. Your reflection looking back at you with a blank expression, your hair still as white as snow. The steam reaching up to tickle your nose with the notes of chamomile and peppermint.

"How're the kids?" You asked the woman sat next to you. Her face framed by glasses that looked alien against her heart-shaped face. Grey hairs growing in number at a more frequent pace.

"Jack's finally got a job," she sounded thankful. "And Ellie just transfered to Brown."

You smiled warmly, "I told you he'd land on his feet."

"About god damn time, that kid nearly drove me up the wall."

You tutted, "Remember what the doctor said about minding that temper, it's not good for your blood pressure Sal."

"Keepin' my blood pressure in check is Hal's job," she said with a little sass as her thumb rubbed against her wedding ring. "You going somewhere?"

"Why'd you ask?"

"You only come over before you disappear for a while."

You chuckled, "Paris. Got a new job. Protective detail."

Sally looked out the window wistfully, her age showing clear as day, "Hal always promised we'd go to Paris for our honeymoon."

You turned to your old friend and nudged her with your elbow, "If you promise to keep your blood pressure in check, I'll take you someday."

"Someday for you isn't the same for me," Sally noted, looking at your reflection thoughtfully. "Hard to believe we were once the same age."

You stood from the chair and put on your bomber jacket, "We still are."

Sally took your cup to the sink, "Yes, you just discovered the secret to eternal youth. Good thing Annie isn't with us no more, or else she'd lock you in her basement till you told her your secret, god rest her soul."

You laughed half-heartedly. You placed a kiss on her temple before grabbing your motorcycle keys, "Try not to be too hard on Jack while I'm gone. Oh, and… uh, give Hal my best!"

"Will do, hun! Oh and Y/N!" She walked over to you and handed you a folded piece of photo paper. "I got Ellie to help me figure out how to use one of them copiers. It's a little darker than the original but..."

You looked down at the last photo you'd ever taken. Early 1942; you, Sally, Hal, Bucky, Steve and Annie stood under a going away banner that read:‘Good Luck At Your New Job!!’

"Two exclamation marks..." you mused lightly.

You left Sally's house and slid your helmet over your head.

***

The cryo-chamber unhooked with a metallic hiss, frost smoking out like fog as the cylindrical containment was lifted up. The hydraulics of the levers arm let out a groan of air. Yellow light bathing the room.

"Ghaaaaahh!" The Winter Soldier screamed in agony as the machine fastened over his right eye flashed blinding streaks of white light into his corneas.

"Zhelaniye," a man dressed in a decorated military uniform read out from a red leather-bound book -most likely a Major.

Longing

The screams persisted as a few more flashes of white light flickered.

"Rzhavyy."

Rusted

The screaming stopped.

"Semnadtsat’."

Seventeen

The machine gave off an electrical whizz as it dismantled away from the metal armed soldier's face. His breathing was raged, animalistic. His jaw still shut tight from the aftershocks of pain but it was his eyes that unsettled the most, seething with unbridled rage.

The Major continued reading out the words with no care for the soldier's disposition, "Rassvet. Pech’. Devyat. Dobroserdechnyy. Vozvrashcheniye na rodinu. Odin. Gruzovoy vagon."

Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight car.

The soldier in the chair had steadied his breathing now. Each breath calm, composed, sinister.

"Dobroye utro, Soldat." The Major said monotonously, slamming the red book shut.

Good morning, Soldier.

The soldier kept his eyes glued to something infinitesimal in front of him with almost inhuman stillness, "Ya gotov otvechat’." His voice was as rough as gravel.

Ready to comply

The Major walked over to a table and retrieved a file and opened it to the middle part. He placed the docket in front of the Winter Soldier, the file making a slapping noise with the table.

There were two photographs fastened to the docket with paper clips. The larger of the two photographs, and coincidentally of better quality, was of a rounding man with a thinning hairline and thick moustache. The smaller photo wasn't in colour or of a high resolution, the only features that could be made out were that it was an image of a woman wearing a trench coat almost as white as her hair, large glasses obscuring half her face.

"Your target is this man. He's a French politician."

The Winter Soldier stood, his metal finger tapping heavily on the photograph. "Understood."

"Soldat. Take extra precaution. He's hired extra security. Someone we've had trouble within the past. She has made quite a name for herself due to her illusive nature. No one knows where she came from, who trained her or her real name. The intelligence community has taken to calling her the White Rabbit."

The soldier flinched, his brain scrambling for a moment as a woman’s voice he didn't recognise spoke out as clear as day: "The little rabbit?"

Internally, a high pitched noise generated a distorted image of blood-stained lips opening into an unnerving smile. Dead eyes staring up at the sky.

His head jerked to the side in a ridged motion before it snapped back in place, strands of long raven hair sticking to the sweat on his face. The noise fizzled out of his brain as though it never existed. He looked up to his superior officer and shrugged off the incident that just occurred, "Understood."

~Paris, France~

You followed your client into the VIP lounge area of a prestigious club. As soon as you walked through the bead roped entranced, a ring of smoke diffused around your face, a trail of white smoke leading back to a patron sitting on a couch blowing out expertly crafted smoke rings from a hookah pipe. The smell of clover and something more primal, sexual, stuck to the walls of the secret member’s only club. Amidst all the fancy dressed men and women, you stood out with your all-black tactical gear.

Your client walked past several seedy rooms until he reached the final room at the end of the hallway. You stepped in front of him and opened the door. After canvassing the area you gave him the all-clear. Several minutes later his associates arrived and they all sat around in a circle of expensive tastes, finely tailored suits and beefy cigars that reminded you of Colonel Phillips.

It was strange how your memory of your encounter with him brought you comfort, but these days comfort was near impossible for you to find, so you took it where you found it.

You stood as still and balanced as a marble statue, your gloved hands held behind your back in a stiff posture. On occasion, you and other bodyguards would do a sweep of the room.

"Jesus, doesn't she freak you the fuck out?" One of the smartly dressed men asked in fluent French. A language you were well versed in. "She's like a fucking statue. I haven't seen her move once. Except for those dead eyes of hers."

Your employer glanced at you with a large cigar between his crooked teeth, "Sometimes, sure. But I've noticed how intimidating she makes me look when I'm in a room filled with assholes almost as lecherous as you!"

The men laughed- so did some of their protection detail.

"Besides, once you get passed the whole ghost look, she's actually not so bad to look at," your employer grumbled suggestively with a sick grin on his face.

Your eyes snapped to him and he choked on some of his spit, washing it down with a glass of port. You looked back to the windows as you canvassed the area again. A breeze blew the lace curtains softly, making you think of the lace curtains that had drawn patterns across Bucky’s face with the sunlight in his apartment.

You bit down, hard, as you forced yourself to focus on hand. A ray of red-light was reflected by a well-polished, silver, decor piece. The ray transformed into a dot and instinctively you reached across the room and pulled the back of your employer's chair to the ground.

The soft whistle of a silencer pierced through glass, grazing the side of your arm. You snarled at the contact.

The room was silent for a second and then a second bullet pierced through the glass window, this time forcing it to shatter.

"Get down!" You ordered as several security personnel moved to shield their employers and transport them away from the room.

You kicked the oak tabled to the side and took cover behind it. "Get them to the safe room downstairs!" You ordered the rest of the personnel.

"What about you?" One of the bodyguards asked.

"I'll lay down cover fire. Get them out of here." You said calmly as you upholstered your 9mm handgun and fired based off the trajectory of the bullets holes lodged in the wall.

Several of your bullets ricochet off something metallic from the sniper's nest on the adjacent roof. The impact forming sparks in the night air.

The room became a burial site for sniper slugs as they littered the walls and sofas and decorations. The metallic pinging sound reminding you to stay hunkered low until your enemies clip ran out.

You reloaded your gun and fired off cover shots as you moved away from the window. On the ground was a single casing. You recognised the make. Soviet slug, no rifling. The memory of the ambush in the mountains skittered across your synapses before you were brought back to the present by another shot tearing through the weak walls.

Suddenly, the shooting stopped. You rose from behind cover and tried to gain a visual of the target with a piece of broken mirror. From this angle, you saw the silhouette of what you assumed to be the rifleman run and then jump. The sound of glass shattering from the window a floor below alerting you to the fact he was now in the building.

A small object hit the floor in the room around the same time, you looked over and realised he had thrown a grenade into the room.

"Fuck..." you swore in a panic, holstering your gun before you lassoed the hooked end of your utility rope around a column and dove out the window. The explosion from the grenade sent off hundreds of pieces of shrapnel flying through the air. You managed to outrun the brunt of the impact, but some slugs embedded themselves in your back and thigh. You gasped from the pain.

Swinging in the air, you propelled your body towards the window the assailant had jumped through and unclipped the rope from your belt once you dove through the window.

You ran after the sounds of a heavy man’s boots sprinting down the series of open rooms. You were faster and more agile so you caught up to him faster than most would've been able too. As soon as you got close enough to the man, you sprinted closer and slid your legs under his in an effort to topple him.

He anticipated your moves with inhuman speed. As soon as your leg knocked his off-balance, he used his metal arm to balance his upheaved weight around and down so he was facing you as soon as his body stopped moving through the air. His fingers leaving a trail of claw-like scratches on the floor.

You quickly upholstered your weapon while your back was on the ground and fired off several shots. The assassin deflected them all with his opened metal palm.

You hissed in annoyance then backflipped twice to gain some distance between you and him before you fired more shots. This time he bobbed and weaved, avoiding most of your bullets save for the one that scrapped alongside his protective eyewear, grazing the skin above his eyebrow in an angled slant.

The assassin charged at you with all his strength. You pulled the trigger but the clip was empty. You tossed your gun and timed his charge so you could sling over and around him, wrapping your legs around his midrib as you furiously hammered the business end of your elbow into the concave of his shoulder blade.

One, two, three, you landed bone-crunching hits into his collar and shoulder blade but it didn't slow him down for a second. He reached over and around, grabbed the back of your tactical vest and flung you over and away from him.

Your body slumped into the wall with intense velocity, popping your shoulder out of its socket and leaving an indent in the drywall. You coughed out blood, then shook the ringing from your ears and stood to face him. Gripping your dislocated arm, you tugged on it hard, snapping it in place with a painful grunt.

"Okay, comrade. You want to play dirty, let’s play dirty!" You rotated your wrists clockwise, activating the current switch embedded inside you gloves. They thrummed with an electric current pulsating through them as you unclipped the metal batons from your back. Electric crackles of electricity sparking down the length of you metal fight sticks. "Let's see how well you handle current!"

The assassin stalked over in large strides, upholstering his knife from the side of his leg. He gripped it with the precision of an expert. Come to think of it, a lot of his tactics were similar to those you were taught in the Red Room.

He forward slashed and backslashed in quick succession of the other. You pirouetted away on your light feet and spun around him, bringing your electrified batons crashing down on his metal arm. The electricity conducted lethally from your gloves to his body, making him let out a shrill howl.

The sound of his cries sounded familiar. Darkened but familiar.

You faltered for a split second and that was all the time he needed to spin around and kick you against the wall.

You heard your rib crack as one baton fell to the ground. Relentlessly, he traded one blow after the other with his metal arm aimed at your head. You ducked and leaned away from each attack, but the wall now had four fist-sized punctures in them.

For his final move, he spin-kicked you in the stomach one more time and the wall integrity gave in. You fell through the crumbling wall and landed against a mound of white, dusty drywall.

The assassin hovered over you, knife in hand. Your mouth was filled with the taste of blood and your organs screamed in agony. You tried to crawl towards your batons a few inches in front of you.

You dragged your body at a snail’s pace, the assassin simply followed after you in languid steps. When your hand wrapped around the baton, his boot pressed down on your gloved hand, preventing you from lifting it and cracking the electric conductor that generated the current in your gloves.

He turned you over so your back was to the floor and your eyes stared at his black mask. He slipped his knife between your ribs and you let out a soft gasp for air.

"Hhhnngggg!" You bit down to keep from screaming, your mind beginning to fracture as you hallucinated pink petals raining down around you.

You gripped his hand and tried to push it away. A sliver of electricity passed through you both. Your eyes shot open from surprise. For a second, you thought you were back in your old apartment, hands laced together with Bucky while you sat on your couch. Then the bone serrating sound of the knife leaving your chest snapped you back to the present.

With what remnants of a stable mind you had left, you urged the muscles in your hand to work as you reached into a pouch pocket and pulled out a syringe of adrenaline. You took several controlled breaths and then plunged it into your heart, a scream rippling out of your lungs as you pushed down on the plunger.

***

The Winter Soldier stood, backing away from his defeated foe, wiping his knife on the sleeve of his shirt as he made his way towards his real objective. Then he heard her gasp raggedly and his mind instantly pictured her wearing a pink waitress uniform, notepad in hand, offering a handkerchief to a scrawny man seated across him.

He braced both sides of his head as this intrusive image seared like hot coals across his thoughts. The pain was so intense he was brought down to one knee in a loud thud. A scream filled the room and he willed the pain to stop as he turned to look at the woman he left dying on the floor, except she wasn't dying anymore.

In amazement and curiosity, he watched as she picked herself off the floor. Every scrape, cut and wound beginning to heal, as she came after him. She danced around him faster than before, the adrenaline making her a nimble opponent, too slippery for him to get his hands around. She punched, kicked and elbowed with combo after combo in a dizzying flurry.

The Winter Soldier was slowly backed towards a tall window. She kicked him three times square in the chest, face and shoulder, sending his back forcefully into the window glass, causing it to sound out a cracking sound the instant his face guard got knocked off.

When he thought she was about to finish her attacks and kick him out the eight-story building, she froze. Eyes opened wider than ever, eyeballs skittering across every inch of his face in search of something, her lips and fingers quivering subtly. It was then he saw her fists no longer clenched defensively.

"That's impossi--" Her words no louder than a pin-drop.

The Winter Soldier's metal arm reached out and grabbed onto her arm, using his tremendous strength to fling her into the adjacent wall. Their faces mere inches apart. Hers contorted by pain and confusion. She stared into his steel-blue eyes, causing a shiver to run down his spine. Her petite fingers wrapped around his hand -still connected to her throat- but she didn't fight him.

Anger filled his senses as he couldn't make sense of all the images and colours and flashes that were evoked by her touch. The skull-cracking headache placing unbearable pressure on his cranium. He tried to blink the pain away, and for all his agonising efforts, it only grew deeper. The Winter Soldier struggled to keep his grip fixed on her throat.

***

Bucky's metal fingers felt so cold against your skin, almost as cold as his eyes. It hurt you how devoid of emotion they were when he stared at you with menacing rage. Nevertheless, you kept searching for a glimpse of the man you once knew. The man you once loved. And if the swell of emotions tangling against your heart was any indication, you were certain you were still in love with him.

Your fingers slid along the length of his arm as he turned his gaze away from you as though you burned him. His brows close together and eyes crinkling in pain.

You were a half-inch away from touching a strand of his outgrown hair when his head snapped back to yours with a newfound determination, and then he began to squeeze his grip.

He effortlessly raised your body off the ground, feet dangling as blood rushed to your brain. Your fingers began to claw and dig against his iron-clad grip, fighting to open up your airways.

***

The woman struggled against his tightened grip, back of her feet kicking against the wall as she failed to gasp for breath. She made him feel uncertain. The touch of her skin, even against his metal arm, felt hauntingly familiar. Almost as though they had this before, be close to one another, touch one another. Another image attacked his thoughts, this time she was seated beside him high atop the world, watching an extravaganza of fireworks.

“What… Is she doing to me?” His thoughts screamed in disarray.

Whatever powers she had over him mattered not because no matter how many images shed conjure to bombard his senses, and no matter how conflicting his feelings became, she was keeping him from his target. And the Winter Soldier never fails.

"Bucky..." She whimpered.

His hand began to shake as another memory was awoken:

“Bucky,” she whispered before bridging the gap between the two them. Rumblings of a crowd begin to cheer and whistle. Her giggling into the kiss. Fireworks going off in the distance, bathing her skin in its artificial rainbow of colours.

The Winter Soldier shook his head furiously, blinking away the image. He looked back up at the woman locked within his death grip, her face turning red.

A single tear ran down her cheek and plopped onto his metal arm. She looked at him without fear or bitterness.

"Buck," she failed to let out the whole word through cracking vocals.

Another flash bombarded his senses:

“I’ve missed you, Buck,” she admitted. He placed one hand around her cheek, the other around the small of your back holding her gaze. His lips met hers in a passionate embrace, she leaned into his touch as a moan escaped her lips. He guided her body towards a wall, pinning her there while one hand moved achingly slowly from her waist to her thigh. His grip greedy and rough causing her to quiver.

The flash disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared.

The woman saw this as an opening as sucked in as much air as her constricted airways were allowed.

"Buchanan!" She shouted with all the strength she had left, eyes glaring at him with fire.

This time the flash was stronger:

"Buchanan!" She mewled as she climaxed atop him. Her swollen lips placing sloppy kisses on his. The muscles of her core contracting around him, edging him closer to his own release. He gripped her hips higher, she moaned pleasantly in response. He thrust deeper, trying to become one with her, and then he climaxed inside her, filling her completely. She fell against his chest like a rag doll, her fingers drawing circles where his heart should be. Then he uttered: "God… I never want to be apart from you."  

***

Bucky, or whatever it was he had become now, instantly released his fingers from your neck, leaving behind deep bruised marks. You sucked in air like some famished animal, your hand gripping at your shirt collar.

You scampered for purchase on the wall as your balance was still uneven. Slowly, you brought your eyes to meet Bucky's and this time you felt relief.

He was on his knees, a lost expression taking over as tears slid down his face. He was looking up at you, hands shaking furiously. The veins on his temple swollen and exposed. This wasn't the face of the stranger who just tried to kill you. This was the face of a man torn in two.

Hope flickered to life inside you. Your eyebrows drawing upwards in solace. A dark chuckle sputtering in your throat.

Of course, this was how fate decreed you meet again. Any other way would've been too easy.

Through the silence, you picked up the soft sound of the elevator nearby ding each time it went up a floor. There was you back up.

"H-Helen?" He finally found the strength to speak in a voice darker than the one you knew.

You hadn't expected him to call you by that name. You knew your focus should have been on the miracle Bucky was alive and seemingly hadn't aged, or the fact he remembered you, but instead, your thoughts returned to that damned day in the mountains. To the sound of bullets cutting through bodies, explosions scattering shrapnel into your body.

Your mind retreated further into itself, returning to that chair in the torture cell and all the times you'd been showered with shock after shock after shock.

You knelt down and picked up a piece of piping that had been loosened during the fight. Your eyes closing shut for a moment as you took shallow breaths.

The pain, starvation and hate you endured while being held prisoner at the expense of Yelena's betrayal turned into a whirlpool of rage, dragging you to the bottom of a dark pit inside you.

When you opened your eyes, white-hot fury burned through your irises. You snapped like steam building in a pressure cooker and before you could stop yourself, you swung the piece of piping at Bucky's head, knocking him onto the ground. He was out cold.

The elevator dinged again. They were getting closer.

"I always hated that name," you dropped the pipping and ran your hand through your damp hair. You tried to strategize how to get out of this new predicament. "Now, what the fuck am I going to do with you?"

~Part 17 Coming Soon

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