When they defrost the Soldier he's trembling and limp, all boneless dead weight as they pull him free of the cryostasis pod and bodily drag him by the armpits toward...somewhere. He doesn't know. He never knows. As his guards' boots thud against the concrete floor, his head lolls and his vision blurs in and out; sometimes there's a flash of the concrete floor; sometimes he can manage to glance up a little, fighting off leaden eyelids, and it hurts when the overhead bulbs sear through his lashes with a throbbing intensity. Pain blooms across his face from the light -
Or maybe it's the guard slapping him awake. Again.
This time the Soldier rouses from where he'd been half-tossed, half-shoved to his bare knees inside a small room with grates and a drain. The air stinks of antiseptics and mildew and old sweat and other fluids it can't quite mask. Muscle memory tells him this is the shower even while his mind struggles sluggishly to catch up, his breath hitching as he quivers where he's hunched over, his blood icy sludge through his veins when he has to force himself to crawl on numb hands and knees toward the center of the shower, trusting that same muscle memory from before to tell him what to do. Where to go.
He's docile as they clip a collar around his neck and then feed a thick chain from the collar's metal loop to a similar one embedded into the floor. When the sanitation hose sprays on - high pressure, so cold his breath catches in his chest and throat and he makes a strangled sound - the Soldier can't escape. The chain clangs taut as he makes it a grand total of a foot in any direction before the collar stops him.
By the time Alexander Pierce saunters in, he'll find the Winter Soldier still chained to the shower's floor, his throat raw and weeping where the collar cut into his skin. His head hangs down, hair still dangling in damp tangles around his face. The Soldier reeks of the harsh antiseptic they sprayed him down with as he sits there ass-naked on the rusting grate with his mismatching arms looped around his knees, rocking in place, the chrome fingers of his left hand curling and uncurling into a fist.
"Sir." One of the guards posted by the door steps aside at Pierce's approach, surprise and alarm on her face at his unexpected visit. "We haven't finished prepping, the code words - "
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Or maybe it's the guard slapping him awake. Again.
This time the Soldier rouses from where he'd been half-tossed, half-shoved to his bare knees inside a small room with grates and a drain. The air stinks of antiseptics and mildew and old sweat and other fluids it can't quite mask. Muscle memory tells him this is the shower even while his mind struggles sluggishly to catch up, his breath hitching as he quivers where he's hunched over, his blood icy sludge through his veins when he has to force himself to crawl on numb hands and knees toward the center of the shower, trusting that same muscle memory from before to tell him what to do. Where to go.
He's docile as they clip a collar around his neck and then feed a thick chain from the collar's metal loop to a similar one embedded into the floor. When the sanitation hose sprays on - high pressure, so cold his breath catches in his chest and throat and he makes a strangled sound - the Soldier can't escape. The chain clangs taut as he makes it a grand total of a foot in any direction before the collar stops him.
By the time Alexander Pierce saunters in, he'll find the Winter Soldier still chained to the shower's floor, his throat raw and weeping where the collar cut into his skin. His head hangs down, hair still dangling in damp tangles around his face. The Soldier reeks of the harsh antiseptic they sprayed him down with as he sits there ass-naked on the rusting grate with his mismatching arms looped around his knees, rocking in place, the chrome fingers of his left hand curling and uncurling into a fist.
"Sir." One of the guards posted by the door steps aside at Pierce's approach, surprise and alarm on her face at his unexpected visit. "We haven't finished prepping, the code words - "