Joana

"I swear to you, Pierce, I didn't see them doing anything wrong," Joana whimpered, tears of pain rolling down her cheeks, stinging the open wounds on her cheeks and neck. 
"Don't lie to me, Joana!" Pierce yelled, slamming his hands on her metal chair. 
"I'm not! I'm not!" She screamed, shaking the chair. "I walked in and they were sparring! He had her pinned to the floor. That's all I saw before I left!" 
"Why would you leave then? That room is open to training. It's one of the few places we don't have cameras. Why would you leave unless you saw something you didn't want to?" Pierce's eyes were on fire with fury. Karpov was picking a new knife. The last one was too bloody already. 
"I already told you. I wanted to be alone. You can't be alone in a room occupied by someone who hates your guts and someone who doesn't remember that you love them."
"Where did you go afterwards?"
"Another training room without a camera."
"Why without a camera?"
"Because I wanted to be alone. I wanted to be away from everybody, including you."
"But we didn't see you on any of the cameras on the way to the other training room. Why are you lying to me?"
"I'm not! I've been here for over a year. I know where all the blind spots are on all the cameras. I know how to get around without you seeing me. Pierce, please, believe me. I just wanted to be left alone." Joana had always been a good liar. She had gotten even better over the years at HYDRA. Maybe it was enough to convince Pierce she was telling the truth, even if most of it was truth. Pierce glared at her. 
"I don't believe you."
He turned and grabbed the knife out of Karpov's hand and stabbed it straight through Joana's hand. 

*** 

 2 Weeks Prior...

Joana couldn't breathe. An invisible hand was wrapped around her throat, stopping the air from coming out, while another squeezed her heart. The pain in her chest was almost more than she could bare. Her knees went weak, her legs shaking. She dropped her bag on the floor and leaned against a wall, trying to calm her heart, stop the blood from pounding in her ears. Her vision was black for a moment.
Natalia and James. She should have seen it. She was too blind to it. She was an agent for crying out loud, it was her job to see these things! But there she was, blind to the love her two friends fostered for each other. There she was, trying to control her heart rate and her breathing as her childhood sweetheart pinned another woman to the ground, kissing her. Joana shut her eyes and shook her head, trying to clear the image away from her mind.
Breathing deeply, she pushed herself off the wall and bent down to pick up her bag. When she stood straight up again, Natalia and Bucky were sitting up, staring at her. She could see the fear in their eyes, because what they were doing was wrong. She could tell Pierce. She could tell anyone. They would be separated.  She could have Bucky again. They would be apart. 
They would be miserable. 
They could be dead.
Lower lip quivering, Joana stepped forward, into the training room. She put her bag on the floor. Bucky and Natalia stood, backing away from her. Bucky stepped in front of Natalia, as if to protect her. 
"Partner, ple-"
Joana held up a hand, looking away from them, eyes closed. 
"Don't say anything," she told them. She pushed back the tears that were in her eyes. 
After all this time, after everything she did for him? After everything she did and allowed to be done to her to keep her safe? Anger burned inside her.
After everything she had already done, she couldn't just give up now.
"You're both idiots," she seethed. "You're lucky it was me who walked through those doors. Anyone else, a Wolf Spider, a Black Widow, another agent, anyone else would have gone straight to Pierce."
Natalia couldn't look her in the eyes, only staring at the floor as Bucky's metal arm covered her. 
"Why don't you?" Bucky asked, his tone a little harsh. Joana softened, relaxing her shoulders. 
"My reasons are my own." Because I'm still in love with you. "But next time you two decide to do...anything together, you must be very very careful. If you want Pierce to think that you're still under his control, he cannot see you, under any circumstances, with a woman in this intimate of a way. That would be very bad for all of us." Joana crossed her arms. 
Bucky's arm dropped and he stopped glaring. He looked less like he was ready to fight, and more like he was ready to listen. Natalia still wouldn't raise her eyes from the ground. 
"What would you have us do?" He asked Joana, his voice soft. 
"Do you love her?" Joana asked him. Natalia lifted her gaze for a brief second to look in Bucky's eyes as he turned to look at her.
"Yes. Very much." A bullet went through Joana's heart. She should just turn around now. She should run to Pierce, get them killed. She should tear them apart and she should smile as they were executed. After everything she's done...
"And you, Natalia, do you love him?" Joana's tone was harsher than she meant it. Natalia raised her green eyes, which were brimmed with tears. She nodded once, but it was enough. Joana took a shaky breath, trying not to give away the fact the all she wanted to do now was cry.
"Then I'll help you. Anything you need. My room is always open. Natalia, you know how to get in without being seen?"
Another nod.
"Teach him. Just let me know when you two will meet so I can be out of the way." Without saying another word, Joana turned to leave.
"Thank you," Bucky said. Joana froze, turned her head partially, just enough to see that he was smiling. That was something she hadn't seen in years. That was payment enough.
"Don't mention it."
She picked up her bag and left. As she walked passed the window into the training room, she saw Bucky holding Natalia close to his chest. She had tears running down her face and her always red lips were curved into a joyous smile.
Joana's heart shattered, falling into her stomach. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. She wanted to kill someone. She wanted to kill everyone. She wanted Pierce gone. She wanted HYDRA dead. She wanted to go home.
Instead, she went to another training room. She punched things and kicked things and screamed and cried until she had nothing else left to give. Finally, she collapsed on the floor, wanting nothing more than to stop existing. 

But she did as she promised. Natalia or Bucky would tell her sometime during the day that they needed her room that night. Joana would leave her room, and go do something else. Most of the time, she just made her way into an empty broom closet and slept there. In the morning, she'd return to her room. The first time, Bucky and Natalia were still there, asleep. She told them that if they were going to make this work, they had to be out of her room before the sun rose, otherwise people will wonder why they were walking around with the same clothes they wore the day before. She never saw them together after that. 
By the second week of this arrangement, Joana spent most of of her nights somewhere else. Bucky and Natalia were constantly in her room, doing whatever it was that she did not want to know about. Some nights, she would sleep easily, other nights, she spent hours remembering the things she and Bucky did when they were younger. 
There was an ice cream shop not far from Grams' work that Bucky would take her to everyday after he came back from school. Joana never liked ice cream before she ate it with Bucky. He made her like it, without even meaning to. When she and Bucky went to the library with Steve and Winnie to study, he would always try to distract her, picking her knees with his feet or putting his large hands over the words on her books. Sometimes, it made her angry and she would have to go outside to fight him, other times, it made her laugh.
She remembered how, after Piper Johnson broke her heart, Bucky threatened to beat him up for weeks. She remembered how he made her laugh by telling the dumbest of jokes or by doing ridiculous accents. She remembered how much ice cream he bought her, and how terrified she was of getting fat.
"No one wants to date a black girl, Bucky. Especially not a fat one."
"I would date a fat, black girl."
"Would you?"
"Only if her name was Joana."
She didn't really realize at the time that he liked her, but thinking back on it now, she seemed so oblivious.
She remembered how Grams would put on fashion shows in her store with Winnie and Joana as the models. The costumers didn't usually watch, but Steve and Bucky were always there, clapping and smiling.
"You could be a model, Joana," Bucky told her after every show.
"I could not."
"Yes you could."
"Couldn't."
"Could."
Joana could hardly remember a time when Bucky wasn't her best friend, when he wasn't by her side. The 12 years she lived before Bucky and Steve wasn't living to her. She had Winnie in those years, and no one else. She was lonely and she was dumb and naive. It wasn't until she moved in with Grams and she met the Dynamic Duo of Brooklyn that Joana Kegley started living her life.
She didn't want to give up on Bucky, not after all this time. She loved him still, with every ounce of her being. Her heart and soul and mind all longed for him; for his touch, his affection, his smile.
But he wasn't hers, not anymore. He was Natalia's. He was someone else's. He was in love with Natalia Romanova, and the only thing Joana could do now was make sure that no one knew, not a single soul. The only thing she could do was keep their romance alive.
So, instead of hiding out in a broom closet, she watched the halls. She made sure that no one walked passed her room in case they heard something. If someone claimed to have seen something happen between  Natalia and the Winter Soldier, Joana was sure to tell Pierce that that person did something so terrible that he was executed the next day. Sure, it was extreme. Sure, it was risky. But it was the only thing Joana knew how to do to make sure that Bucky was happy.
And it worked, for all of two weeks. 

*** 

Joana screamed in agony as Pierce pulled the knife from her hand. 
"I don't know anything else, I swear!" Joana pleaded.
"I've had someone watch your room, Joana. Every night, you leave. Every night Barnes enters with a woman. What do you have to say about that?" 
"Barnes, and a woman?" She asked, trying to put every ounce of heart brokenness that raged through her every day into her words. "No. No! He wouldn't-"
Pierce slapped her across the face. 
"Don't tell me you didn't know, Joana! It's been weeks!"
"I didn't know! I've been having nightmares, again. I haven't been sleeping well, so I've been going out to train. Almost every night for the past two weeks, alright? It's not my fault if Barnes is taking advantage of that to sleep with other women." Joana's throat tightened as she finally thought of whatever it was that Bucky and Natalia did in her room while she was away.
"Joana, you cannot be that dumb. I know you're smarter than that! You really think you can convince me that you didn't know anything about this?" Pierce ran the knife across her skin again, causing a third wound from her jaw to the base of her neck, parallel to the other two. She groaned as he did so, trying not to move in case he cut too deep. Tears rolled from her eyes the entire time. 
"Sir," Karpov said. "If we do any more damage, she might not survive it." 
Pierce looked at Joana. She was mostly naked, only her undergarments to cover her body. The three, thick cuts on her face and neck were the worst. She had a black eye, a busted lip, and her cheek bone had a cut in it. Her chest had cuts of all kinds. Her right hand was broken, as was her left leg. The hole in her left hand was grossing him out. Her ribs were already turning blue. 
Joana hung her head, whimpering from all the pain. Pierce sighed angrily and threw the knife down with the others. He unstrapped her restraints and grabbed her hair. She howled as he grabbed her from the chair. He pulled her along the floor, blood from her wounds leaving gruesome stains on the floor. He pulled her behind him as he marched down the halls. She screeched and screamed and pulled against his hands, trying to release himself from his grip, but his anger was too strong. 
He stopped at a training room, the very same one that Joana had found Natalia and Bucky kissing in two weeks ago. Inside, Bucky was teaching the Black Widows. Pierce dragged her inside, effectively stopping the class. Bucky froze, reverting to his Soldier state, but when he saw Joana, he almost broke. She shook her head at him slowly. 
Pierce pulled Joana forward and threw her to the ground at Bucky's feet. Natalia rushed forward to help Joana, but one of her classmates grabbed her arms. 
"Tell me to do something about this, Barnes," Pierce seethed in his face. "Stop me." 
Joana looked up at the fury on Pierce's face. She shook her head as he looked back at her. 
"No," she begged, her eyes filling with tears. "No, please." 
She crawled backwards, trying to get away from him as he reached down to grab her. 
"Please!"

***

Hehe, sooooooo. That was a little rough, sorry. The next chapter doesn't get much better. It'll be from Bucky's perspective. I'm hoping I can get an entire chapter out of him, but I don't know. We'll see how it goes. 
I just want to add, basically everything everyone says from this point (and even mostly before) is all in Russian. When I put things in the phonetic version of russian, it's either a swear word, Bucky's trigger words, or something that I really like the sound of. Everyone just speaks russian to everyone. That's all. 
Thank you for your love and support. Comments and votes and reads are very much appreciated. And to you silent readers, you know I love you, but maybe drop a quick vote so I know you like it too?? You don't have to of course, but it would mean so very much to me. 
I love you all very very much and I wish you great joy in your life. 

Happy travels,
authorsbane