Joana

It would have been kinder for the Doctor to hit Joana repeatedly in the chest with a baseball bat. Her breath got caught in her throat. Her nose burned, eyes stinging, jaw trembling. She go of his hand and leaned backwards.
"What?" The word came out just above a whisper. It sent shivers up the Doctor's spine. He could see something in her eyes, something he had never seen before.
"When you came to the Medical Ward after what happened with Pierce..." Salazar couldn't say the words. He was afraid to. Joana's body showed no signs of grief or sorrow. He could tell by the way her hands curled around the bench, the way her knuckles turned white, the way her entire body trembled, she was not sad. She was enraged. Far beyond that.
"What happened?" Her shout came out like Dragon fire; burning hot, terrifying, unquenchable. Doctor Salazar found himself cowering in front of this woman. He could feel the heat of her wrath. Her brown eyes, that had always held a calming feeling for him, were now alight with burning hatred.
"We tried to do everything we could to save the both of you, but, Joana, you died. There was nothing we could do." Salazar felt like he was pleading, for what, he didn't know. His life? Maybe. Her forgiveness? More likely. Joana looked away from him and back at the ground, her hands on the bench the only thing keeping her grounded and away from killing him.
"I asked Pierce if it was even possible. He told me everything. And contraceptives aren't always 100%. He knew the risk he was taking." The Doctor's voice was soft, yet timid. He was afraid. Joana was too blinded by her anger that she couldn't even register the hurt in his voice. "There's more."
She snapped her head up, startling him.
"What more could you have possibly done?" Her eyes were filled with tears and sparking flames.
Doctor Salazar looked at his shaking hands.
"Pierce, he didn't want to risk it happening again." He paused.
"What did you do?"
"While you were still recovering from being dead, we- I sterilized you."
The fire in Joana's eyes was doused by the only thing that could quench a fire so hot; the loss of something you could never get back. The red hot aura that enclosed her just seconds before turned to a freezing blue. She stopped seeing red. Her mouth hung up, her face slowly turning to the ground. She let go of the bench, tears growing in her eyes. Her lips quivered as if she was trying to form words, but no sound came from her mouth. She put her forehead in her hands, resting her elbows against her knees.
Joana started to sob. Breathy, utterly heart broken sounds came from her body. Salazar sat there, unsure what to do, tears of his own in his eyes. She pressed one of her shaking hands against her mouth, trying to stop the sobbing, but there was nothing she could do. Every time she opened her mouth it felt like she was going to vomit.
She felt so lost. Someone had a hold of her heart and was squeezing with all their might. Someone had a hold of her neck, not allowing her to breathe. She forgot the Doctor was there. She didn't know what to do with her hands. She couldn't stop them from shaking.
Doctor Salazar reached out to touch her trembling shoulders.
"Joana, I'm so-"
Before he even got close to her, Joana had grabbed his wrist and had thrown him to the ground. The flame had returned, and Salazar was going to burn.
"You let them do this to me!" She screamed at him, pressing him into the floor. "You did this to me!"
She started to beat his chest with her closed fists. She wanted to tear him to shreds, she wanted to pull out his eyes, she wanted to make him eat his own tongue. She wanted to break every single bone in his body. She wanted to make him feel the pain she was feeling, but there was no way he possibly could. She moved her strikes to his face, hitting him over and over, but her punches were weak. Her grief was stronger than her anger, and her attacks suffered from that.
"I trusted you!" That was quite possibly the thing that hurt the most. She had trusted him. She hadn't ever considered him a friend, per say, but she trusted him, nonetheless, and he betrayed her in a way that he could never make up for.
"Joana, I'm so sorry."
She stopped hitting him, and looked into his green eyes. They used to hold security for her. Being around him meant he was safe. He would protect her from Pierce like no one else could. He would make sure she was safe and unharmed. Now all she could see in his eyes was a traitor.
"I don't care," she seethed. She grabbed his shoulders and started slamming his head in the ground repeatedly, yelling with rage each time she did so.
The thought of accidentally killing him didn't even cross her mind until a metal arm wrapped around her waist and hoisted her off of him.
"Joana, stop," Bucky's gruff voice said in her ear as he pulled her away. "Joana, that's enough."
"No!" She screamed. Bucky pulled her far away from the Doctor. She turned herself around and started pounding her fists against Bucky's chest, trying to break free of his grip.
"Let me go! Let me go!" Tears rolled mercilessly down her face, like a river with a never ending supply of rain water.
"Enough, Joana! That's enough." He grabbed her hands with one of his own, keeping his metal arm around her waist so she couldn't hurt the Doctor anymore than she already had. "That's enough."
She looked in his eyes, sniffing and small sobs coming from her mouth. He let her wrists go and put his other arm around her, no longer trying to keep her away from the Doctor, but doing everything he could to keep her there with him. He held her close, her sobs shaking both his body as well as her own. He thought that if he hugged her tight enough, he could make the pain go away. He didn't understand why his heart hurt so much, hearing her cry in such a way. Knowing that Joana could never have kids made him think of a time when there was a girl he imagined having a family with one day, once the war was over. He remembered giving his sister a ring to keep hold of. But who was it for?
Joana let out a cry of anguish before she went suddenly rigid. The sobbing stopped, the shaking stopped, she was completely still.
"I'm going to kill him," she said, an unbreakable determination set in her voice. "I'm going to kill Alexander Pierce."

Joana burst into Pierce's private chambers, two guns in her hands, pointing directly at where she knew his head would be, standing in front of his mirror, sipping from his glass of whatever alcohol he decided to that day. The door window shattered as it slammed against the wall. Pierce hardly flinched. He turned slowly, his hands raised in the air. There was a half smile on his face, but it wasn't cruel, it was a knowing smile.
"So, Salazar told you." He downed the rest of what was in the glass.
"He told me everything, Pierce." Her voice trembled, betraying the emotions she was so desperately trying to hide. "I'm not going to waste my breath asking how you could do something like this, because I already know the answer."
"Oh? Pray, tell."
"You're a psychopath!" Pierce could hear the hysteria in her voice. "You get a release out of other people's pain. You strung up a 14-year-old kid in my room when I didn't do what you said. You beat me to death when you thought I was withholding information that I didn't have. You killed my child."
"Our child."
"My child, Pierce. Not only that, but you made it impossible for me to have children ever again because you screwed up."
"It was a safeguard, Joana, you know that."
"Do I? You think that, just because I've been apart of HYDRA for, God knows how long, that everything you do is suddenly okay? That's not how the world works, Pierce. You are not God. You don't get to chose who lives and who dies."
Pierce could feel the anger radiating off of Joana from across the room. From the way her hands shook and the wildness in her eyes, he knew she was unstable. The guns in her hands weren't a bluff. She was fully prepared to kill him and suffer whatever consequences that would come.
"Joana, I know you're angry with me-"
"We are so passed angry, Pierce. There isn't a word in any dictionary for the feeling that I am feeling right now. Pierce swallowed.
"When you tortured me, that wasn't just to get whatever information you thought I had, was it?" Her voice cracked as she spoke. "You had to be sure that you killed my child as well, without me knowing."
Pierce slowly nodded. Fire crackled in her bones, boiling her blood. Her vision turned red. Her fingers on the triggers twitched. Her hands itched. Ever part of her body wanted to pull the triggers. Not just once, but she wanted to empty both clips into his chest. She wanted to mutilate his face beyond recognition, but something in her body stopped her. Something deep within her, some part of her that she lost long ago, a whisper from the girl she used to be told her that forgiveness is the worst thing you could do to your enemy. She wanted him to be sorry. She wanted him to beg for his life.
"Joana," Pierce whispered, hands still raised above his head. "Please."
She scrunched up her face, praying that the tears in her eyes would simply evaporate. She growled at herself.
"No!" She shouted, pointing one of the guns at him like an accusing finger. "You don't get to make the choices for me. I've let you control my life for to long." Pierce watched in horror as the anger seemed to dissipate from her body. She straightened, her expression turning to a blank canvas.
"Joana, what are you-"
"You no longer get to run my life, Pierce. I make my own decisions. And I should have made this one a long time ago." Joana turned one of guns towards herself, pressing it against her head.
"Joana, stop!" He yelled.
"No!" Behind her, Joana heard the desperate cry of her friend as someone tackled her to the ground from behind. Both guns skidded from her hands as she hit the ground.
"Stop!" She shrieked. "Let me go! Let me go!"
Had Joana been controlled less by her emotions and payed more attention to the situation at hand, she would have noticed that as soon as she burst into the room, Pierce had pressed the panic button on the side of his nightstand, calling not only a few HYDRA agents (including Bucky), but also the Red Room's top Widow, who just so happened to be Natalia Romanova.
The agent who had tackled Joana pulled her to her feet. He struggled to do anything with her between her screeching and wildly kicking feet. Pierce sat on his bed, head in his hands.
"Get her out of here," he ordered, not looking at the commotion just feet away from him.
"No!" Joana screamed. "No!"
Bucky pushed the other agent away from her and took hold of her himself. He wanted to tell her to calm down, to tell her that he was right there, but he knew better. Instead, he just dragged her, screamed bloody murder, from the room.
"I'm going to kill you, Pierce!" She vowed at the top of her lungs. "I am going to kill you!"

She lay on a cell bed that night, tears rolling down her cheeks. Curled into a fetal ball, she couldn't explain what she was thinking, because her mind was all over the place. Her thoughts wouldn't stay in one place long enough to focus on anything. She chewed on her thumb nail, her eyes darting back and forth as if looking for some invisible assailant. She squeezed her eyes shut, the tears flowing even harder. Eventually, sticking her fist in her mouth wasn't enough to keep her sobs quiet. Her entire body shook. She didn't understand how she had anymore tears left, yet, she cried on.
The door of her cell opened and in came the padding of hurried feet. Someone lay against her back, the cell door closing tight behind them. Two small, feminine arms wrapped around Joana's body, pulling her into their chest.
"Shh, shh," Natalia cooed in her ear. "It'll be alright."
Joana clung to her arm like it was the only thing keeping her grounded.
"You'll get used to it," Natalia whispered.
Natalia held her friend close to her all throughout the night until Joana had no more tears to cry, when she had physically exhausted herself so much that she fell asleep, with her consent or not. Natalia murmured words of comfort in her ear all night, every time Joana so much as flinched in her sleep.

"You'll be alright. I'm right here. I'm right here."

***

My lovely readers! We've reached the end of yet another chapter. I'm actually really impressed with myself because this almost the longest I've ever lasted on a story???? I have a really short attention span, but I really like Joana I guess. Anyway, thank you all for your contribution and support and love. I do really love to hear your opinions and your suggestions. I love to hear how you guys are liking the story (if you are) and where you think it's going. Some of you have a habit of knowing almost exactly where I'm going with this story (he he).I really like Joana, guys, i don't even know why.Anywhoooooooo, thank you for reading this story. If you like it, I would so much appreciate a vote or a comment? Just so I know if y'all are liking it, ya know.

I love you all.with greatest admiration, authorsbane