Be Happy For No Reason, Like A Child. If You Are Happy For A Reason, You’re In Trouble, Because That

Be happy for no reason, like a child. If you are happy for a reason, you’re in trouble, because that reason can be taken from you.

Deepak Chopra

Part 01 - Severance | Frostbite Series | The Winter Soldier

Pairing: The Winter Soldier x Original Female Character (1st Person)

Word count: 2,488

Summary: Elena is violently abducted from her hospital, blindfolded, and flown to a secret HYDRA base deep in the Carpathian Mountains. She quickly learns why she was taken—her expertise is needed to “repair” something they refuse to call human. When she finally sees the Winter Soldier, brutalized and broken beyond recognition, she is horrified. But worse than his wounds are the implications—HYDRA doesn’t just use him as a weapon. They use him for everything.

Disclaimer: This series is extremely dark, touching on graphic violence, psychological torment, and human suffering in all its forms. If you choose to read, proceed with caution.

Warnings: strictly 18+, Abduction & Forced Confinement, Physical & Psychological Torture, Implied SA & Exploitation, Violence & Threats, Strong Language

A/N: i am BEYOND excited to share the first chapter with you guys! even though this is dark stuff, i'm having fun with the writing process so far. i really hope you will enjoy it too :) happy reading!!

❄️ Frostbite Chapters: Part 01 - Severance - you are currently here Part 02 - Incision Part 03 - Containment Part 04 - Recognition Part 05 - Trigger Part 06 - Submission Part 07 - Disobedience

📍Masterlist

It was supposed to be a regular Wednesday. I was in the scrub room, hands sterile, mentally running through the procedure I was about to perform; delicate spinal reconstruction for a young man injured in a car crash. Standard case, nothing I haven’t done before.

Until the door slammed open.

Before I could turn, something yanked me back with a force so brutal it knocked the air out of my lungs. A hand clamped over my mouth, another locked around my waist, crushing me against an unyielding chest. Cold air rushed over my skin as I was dragged backward like prey.

The scalpel tray crashed, echoing back a sharp sting against the tiled floor. I thrashed as my instinct was taking over, but I was no match for the iron grip that was holding me in place.

"If you fight, we’ll make it worse."

My heart stopped in its movement. I jerked my head to the side, only to see masked men in black tactical gear, covered from head to toe, impossible to identify. The realization slammed through me like ice.

It wasn't a robbery. Not of an object, at least.

I'm being kidnapped.

My body surged with adrenaline, muscles tensing, legs kicking as I tried to scream, but the hand over my mouth clamped down harder, suffocating the sound before it even left my throat.

That is when something cold and sharp pressed against my neck.

"Quiet, Doctor."

A sting. Then, nothing.

Now, I wake up to complete darkness. They blindfolded me. My head is pounding, my mouth dry as sandpaper, and my wrists ache from the zip ties digging into my skin. I try to move, but my body is sluggish. They drugged me. There’s a sickly smell in the air, something like oil, metal, and rotting. The floor beneath me vibrates faintly while I spot the unmistakable, muffed sound of engines roaring.

A plane.

I’m on a goddamn plane.

The realization shocks the grogginess right out of me. There's no fucking way. I yank at my restraints, testing their hold, but it’s useless. I can barely lift my hands. My breath is coming in too fast, and I can feel a panic attack forming in my chest, but I take a deep breath.

Stay calm, Lena. Think. If they wanted to kill you, they would've by now. They need you for something.

Just as I manage to regulate myself, I hear footsteps approaching from the front of the aircraft. A chair then scrapes against the metal floor.

"You’re awake, Dr. Mirea."

The accent is thick, Russian or something close. He's calm, almost polite, which makes the situation comical to me. I can’t see him from the blindfold that is strapped tightly around my head, but I can hear the smirk in his voice.

"Where am I?" I ask, the sound coming out all raspy and dry.

"Does it matter?"

"Since I’m the one you kidnapped, I’d say it does." I force the fear out of my voice. I won’t let them hear me break.

I hear papers rustle in his hands before he sighs, like I’m his 10-year-old child throwing a tantrum.

"Professor Doctor Elena Cătălina Mirea. Thirty-two years old. Romanian immigrant, naturalized citizen of the United States. Harvard Medical School for M.D. and Ph.D. Double board-certified in trauma and neurosurgery. Specializing in combat injuries, reconstructive procedures, and neural damage. Published in at least seven international medical journals. Former consultant for the Pentagon’s advanced rehabilitation program. Shall I go on?"

My stomach twists to the size of a tennis ball. I always knew I had a reputation, but to hear it spoken back to me in a situation like this, in his voice, makes my blood run cold.

"Impressive credentials," he muses, flipping through the file. "The kind that would make a person very difficult to replace."

I scoff. "If you needed a surgeon, there are easier ways to book an appointment."

He laughs, and I swear he sounds amused. "Not for this project."

I lick my cracked lips, trying to swallow the fear clawing at my throat. "Why am I here?"

He doesn't answer for a couple of seconds. I can hear him shifting in his seat, the sound of saliva popping in his mouth as he grins. The motherfucker must be enjoying this.

"It’s no use pretending you don’t understand what’s happening. You were chosen for a reason."

I grind my teeth. "If this is about money—"

A sharp laugh cuts me off. "This isn’t about money, Professor. This is about purpose." He pauses, then continues in a tone laced with thinly veiled amusement. "You will be saving an asset of great value. An asset that has been damaged and requires repairs."

An asset? Repairs?

"You’re mistaken," I say, forcing steel into my voice. "I’m not an engineer."

"Oh, Professor." A gloved hand pats my knee in a deeply condescending way. "You’ll learn soon enough… There’s no difference."

I stiffen.

"You’re needed to repair it," he continues. "Our most valuable weapon. It sustained extensive damage during a recent mission. Tissue damage, internal injuries. And there are… complications."

I don’t know what horrifies me more—the way he speaks, or the fact that I still don’t understand what the hell he’s talking about.

"What exactly is ‘it’?" I bite out.

He pauses. Then, as if indulging a particularly stupid child, he clarifies.

"The Winter Soldier."

Excrutiating cold creeps down my spine.

I’ve heard that name before briefly, in fearful whispers among government officials and intelligence circles. A ghost story, an assassin that doesn’t exist. Well, at least that's what I've always thought.

"You’re talking about a person."

He clicks his tongue. "It was a person. It is now a machine—one that needs to be maintained, serviced, and controlled."

I shake my head, rage bubbling in my chest despite my fear. "I’m a doctor. I save lives. I don’t reprogram murderers."

"You don’t have to," he says, and though I can’t see him, I can hear the smirk in his voice. "You just have to make sure it doesn’t fall apart before we do."

The plane jolts slightly, and my stomach lurches. I didn't spend fifteen years of my life dedicated to practicing medicine to patch up cold-blooded assassins. I refused so many offers from high-ups asking for the same thing, just to be put on a plane at gunpoint to do the exact thing I swore I will never do. I press my lips together, forcing my mind to stay focused.

There has to be a way out of this.

The man beside me shifts, his voice dropping to something almost bored.

"Make no mistake, Professor. You will do what we ask. If you refuse… well." A deliberate pause, stretching just long enough for my skin to crawl. "We’re quite experienced in making people… cooperative."

A chill scrapes down my spine, but I don’t let it show. I know exactly what he means, of course I do. I've been around men like him before, so I force my breathing steady. I keep my face blank and I decide to stay silent.

For now, silence is survival, and if they think I’ll go down easy, they haven’t done their research properly.

The base I'm dragged into is nestled deep in the mountains, buried beneath ice and stone where no one dares to look. Cold doesn’t even begin to describe it; the air bites like sharp razor blades slicing through my skin; my hospital scrubs are practically useless against it.

My feet barely touch the ground before the air is sucked out of me. My body convulses, shaking so violently that my teeth clatter. Every inhale burns my throat like I’m breathing in the very ice from the surface. I begin to think I'm not even going to make it inside, when someone shoves a bundle of clothing into my arms; a thick, insulated jacket, thermal gloves, sturdy boots. I don’t hesitate—I tug everything on, my fingers already stiff with frost.

The guards nod at one another, exchanging looks of quiet acknowledgment. I’m not shackled, no one is grabbing me, forcing me to my feet. In their eyes, I am an asset, a necessary tool.

Good. I will try to use this to my advantage.

I feel my body reaching a somewhat healthy temperature as I am being taken more and more underground. The deeper we go, the more guards appear in the corners, next to the doors—they are everywhere. I can't even begin to comprehend what kind of horrors they must be guarding—at least until the door at the end of the corridor groans open, and the world tilts.

I have seen the worst of human suffering. Open chests, shattered skulls, intestines spilling onto the floor. I have peeled burned flesh from bone, held dying hands, seen life leave bodies in ways too violent to be poetic. I have witnessed agony, stitched it together, carved it out, buried it in the hollow spaces of my mind.

And yet.

When they drag him in, something inside me shatters.

At first, my eyes can’t process what I’m looking at. A figure barely standing, hunched, trembling, a mass of exposed flesh and metal swaying between two guards who have to hold him up by brute force. He stumbles, his boots scraping against the floor. He's barely conscious. His head lolls forward, making all his damp hair cling to his gaunt, bruised face.

He breathes—or tries to. A wet, ragged gasp leaves his mouth, as if each inhale is a battle he’s losing.

Fucking hell.

He’s dying on his feet.

Mortifying cold sinks into my gut, as sharp as the wind outside. I ignore how my own hands shake and my throat tightens, and before I know it, I’m already assessing and diagnosing.

His skin is pallid, almost gray, lips cracked and tinged with blue—hypothermia. The deep bruising across his ribs, the uneven hitch of his breath—at least one fractured rib, likely more. The way his left leg drags slightly—hip injury? Nerve damage? His metal arm twitches and jerks at his side—malfunction, misfiring signals, nerve trauma in the shoulder.

He lifts his head slightly, which is when I'm met with his eyes. They're unfocused, but not empty—no. They hold horrors so severe it makes my stomach turn.

"Oh, don’t look so shocked, Professor," one of the men drawls. "It’s not like it feels anything."

Laughter ripples through the room. It makes me want to throw up.

The soldier sways, and no one moves to help him. Hell, they laugh at him like he is some kind of spectacle in a circus. My hands twich at my sides as I'm starting to realize what I've got myself dragged into.

This isn’t just suffering. This is torture. Systematic, calculated destruction.

This is what happens when a body is kept alive not for the sake of living, but for the sake of being used and owned. When the person is carved out, reduced to something that breathes but does not live. I've seen it with assault survivors, people who's been trafficked, but what I'm looking at could never compare to that.

My breath comes in sharp, uneven gasps as my throat tightens, my vision flat out rejecting the inhumane torture I'm witnessing. I don’t even realize I’m moving until a rough hand grabs my upper arm, yanking me back.

I had stepped toward him.

God—I had stepped toward him.

I don’t remember deciding to do so, it is just some instinct that had taken over; something so deeply ingrained in me as a doctor, as a human, that for a moment, I forgot where I was. I forgot who I was dealing with.

He sways again, his whole body trembling with overexhaustion and agonizing pain. The weight of his own existence is too much for him to bear, and still, no one is helping him.

I swallow, blinking rapidly, forcing the burn behind my eyes to stay put.

Fucking hell, I will not cry. Not in front of them.

A sharp laugh suddenly cuts through the room, yanking me back to my unforgiving reality.

"Oh, look at that," one of them sneers. "Got yourself a little fan, Soldat."

Another chuckles. "Careful, Professor. It bites sometimes," he grins and leans closer to me. "But if you like it so much, it can also be trained to keep its mouth busy in… other ways."

I wrench my arm free from the guard’s grip, my jaw locking as they all burst out laughing. A sickening wave of horror crashes over me and I feel it like a punch to the gut. Good fucking God. My stomach churns so violently I have to swallow against the bile rising in my throat.

They’re still laughing like fucking idiots.

I glance at the soldier, like I need to prove to myself that this is some cruel joke, that this isn’t what it sounds like. But he doesn’t react, doesn’t flinch, doesn’t anything. He just barely exists, silent and still as a corpse, his head slightly bowed, his gaze locked somewhere far, far away.

A tremor runs through my hands as my heart beats so loud in my ears, I'm convinced my brain is trying to shut out the stress. My vision tunnels and not from fear, but from something sharper, and I know right away that it's rage. Not even rage—it's all-consuming fury.

I bite my tongue until it nearly bleeds, because what the absolute fuck am I supposed to do? Scream at them? Attack them? They’d drop me in an instant, put a bullet in my skull and find someone else; someone worse. Then he would just stay here trapped and used, in God fucking knows what sick ways.

I feel my breath shake as I force myself to move, to do something before they notice the way my hands tremble. I straighten my back, lock my jaw, and turn to the soldier once more. He's looking at me like I'm glowing.

"How much time do I have?"

The guard chuckles, shaking his head. "Efficient. I like that." He glances at the other men before looking back at me. "How long does it take to patch up the weapon, Professor?"

I clench my jaw, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of a reaction. My gaze flickers back to the soldier—his body locked in place, his face a mask of empty obedience, but his pain is evident.

"I need a full assessment," I say, my voice clipped. "But from what I can see?" I exhale sharply, shaking my head. "This isn’t a patch job. This is a rebuild."

The smirk falls from his face. "Be more specific."

I lift my chin. "Four weeks. Maybe more."

His expression darkens, clearly unimpressed. "You have three."

A muscle jumps in my jaw.

"Then you better pray he survives."

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chaieanne

3 months ago