AN: This was a challenge given to me by AwarenaTenshi. This challenge is about an OC Hydra Experiment.

Agony wrecked across his body as he slowly regained consciousness, most of it seemed to be coming from his right arm. He groaned deeply as the pain flared worse now he was awake.

"I did not think you would wake so quickly." A slightly husky feminine voice made him push through his pain and open his eyes.

A gritty white ceiling stared back at Bucky with a flickering single light bulb. He tried to push himself up with his arms only to cry out in pain when he attempted to move his right. He tilted his head to see what was wrong with his arm and stared in horror at what was there instead.

"What the fuck did you do to me?" Bucky spat out in horror to the voice of the woman he couldn't see.

"I've only wiped the blood from your handsome face." The woman attempted to reassure him in a sarcastic manner, he didn't believe her for a second.

"Then what's is this thing?" He asked heatedly as he tried to twist so he could see her.

Firm and slender hands helped him up despite him spitting curses at her and trying to twist away from her hands. Her hands were strong and unyielding as she helped prop him up against the wall, skipping out of his reach when he tried to swipe at her, and letting Bucky see her for the first time.

Tangled dark golden hair fell around her honey-toned face, framing her high cheek-bones, arched eyebrows, amber coloured eyes and full lips. She was tall, and dressed in a formless woolly grey dress.

She raised her slender hands in a peaceful motion.

"I am prisoner." She told him easily, full lips quirking up in dark amusement. "You cannot possible believe they would let me near tools to make something like that." She nodded to the gleaming silver arm that was where his right arm should be and attached firmly to his shoulder.

He glared at her in suspicion for a few more moments before relenting that she was most likely telling the truth.

"Where are we?" He asked as he looked around the room they were in.

Gritty white walls, a single metal door that was most likely bolted firmly, an open arch let one see into a small, gritty and basic bathroom, and two cots were placed at either side of the room with thick blankets and thin mattresses.

"Soviet." She answered as she dropped onto her own cot, swing bare feet under her. "I'm Dominika, what's your name Comrade?"

"Bucky." He answered before narrowing his eyes at her. "You don't sound Soviet."

It wasn't exactly true, but wasn't a lie either. She dropped parts of her sentences and her 'w' sounded more like 'v', but it didn't scream soviet. He had heard some German Hydra agents speak much like she did, it was the comrade that gave her away.

She gave a small pleased smile and nodded her head; "I try my best."

Bucky snorted in dulled amusement. At least his fellow prisoner was entraining.

"You Americans have strange names." Dominika commented when another pained grimace contorted his face. "Who names their son Bucky?"

"It's a nickname." He gritted out as his left hand gripped his new right arm.

His right arm was gone, and yet pain still burnt where it should be and where the new metal arm was.

"Nickname?" Confusion thickened her voice as she tilted her head.

"A name my friends call me." He explained as he rolled his left shoulder.

What the hell happened to him? How did he ended up in the Soviet?

"And you want me to call you that?" Dominika asked in slight shock, distracting him away from most of his pain again.

"Why not?" He asked with sardonic amused smirk. "It looks like we're going to be together for a long time."

"Then call me Nika." The newly dubbed Nika bid him.

They were silent for a small spell of time, Nika letting Bucky get used to the pain his body was in before he pierced her with his blue-green gaze.

"What happened to me?" Bucky asked confused and trepidation in his tone.

Nika gave him a slight bewildered but mostly concerned look.

"They say you fell off train." Nika told him almost cautiously as she regarded him with almost wary dark amber eyes, her soviet accent bleeding through. "That is how you lost arm."

The disorientated feeling of someone punching him in the head took over him as memories slammed into the front of his mind with force.

The train on the mountain. Steve. Hydra. Steve reaching out for his hand. Metal snapping. Steve's face twisting in pain and shock as he reached out uselessly. Falling through air, screaming like he had never screamed before, the sickening snap of his right arm hitting the mountain, breath leaving his lungs as he slammed onto the tightly packed snow, agony dulling his senses before blackness took over, voices calling in a foreign language, rough hands dragging him, people crowding around him, prodding and poking him and then finally a voice and damning words;

'Sergeant Barnes, you will be Hydra's new fist!'

"Hydra has us." He almost whisper as shock and fear began to numb his aching body.

Nika's face harden, her eyes shadowed though a glint of sympathy was hidden in their depth.

"Da." She agreed, soviet accent thickening with her emotions.

"They're going to use us as weapons." He stated as he stared at her numbly.

She didn't flinch at those damning words, just nodding her head in agreement.

"Why did they take you?" He asked her and she smiled grimly back at him.

She flickered, like a mirage, and became an exact copy as him—down to the silver arm and scar on the side of his head from his first time in the care of Hydra.

"They say I am miracle." Nika told him in his voice which freaked him out before his image melted back into her own, the look on her face told Bucky she didn't believe that for a moment and wished dearly that she wasn't a so-called miracle.

"How did you do that?" Bucky gaped.

"I make people see things that are not real." She told him almost haughtily as she tossed her tangled hair over her shoulder. "Served me well before."

"Illusions." He named the ability and she nodded in agreement. "How long have you been here?"

"Year or two maybe." Nika rolled her slender shoulders in a shrug in an almost careless manner.

But Bucky wasn't fooled, he could see the relief lightening her eyes as she looked at him. Relief that she wasn't alone any more, and truthfully he couldn't blame her. He would have gone mad if he had been in Hydra's tender care for a year or two alone, and would be happy for some type of companionship after being alone so long.

Nika had been a thief long before she had become a prisoner. Morals had meant little to her for a long time. She had been a thief trying to make her way through Europe long before Germany invaded in '41, she hadn't believed that the Nazis would keep their alliance when the Soviet joined them in '39 and wasn't surprised to hear about their invasion in '41.

She had been making her way through Europe, stealing to make money and to get food, and had been using her powers to do it. She had been good, her marks never seeing her true face or gender and sometimes nothing at all because of her illusion, and thought she could make it out of the war in one piece.

She had gotten arrogant, and it cost her freedom in '43 when a Hydra agent had witnessed her use her power to pickpocket.

Miracle, they called her when they had captured her—she didn't go down without a fight, she ended up placing one of the agents into a coma because of her illusions.

At first they wanted to understand her power, they tested her and how powerful her illusions were. They had taken the results at face-value, certain that no one would keep secrets under their care. Nika had been a thief though, she had to be cunning and secretive to have survived as long as she had, and knew the importance of keeping her true power under-wrap.

She didn't really know the full extent of her power, she had never explored it a lot. Just used it to trick peoples' eyes, and later their other senses. She was sure that wasn't the extent to her power, or at least she hoped so.

Then they tried to recreate her powers and that failed they wanted to control her and her powers, they failed and the experiments made her burn in pain.

Some of the scars she knew would never leave her skin.

She had quickly figured out a way to survive this madness, she offered her illusion services to the Hydra that watched over her and thus became the torturer of the other prisoners. They treated her better after that—warmer clothes that didn't scratch at her skin, warmer blankets, better and more food and even some hot water when she showered.

She never physically touched them, she just made them believe they were being tortured, but she knew that wasn't much better. But one of her mottos was 'better them then me', so she never truly felt bad for what she did.

She had never thought of herself as a good person, she was practical so she could and would survive.

But looking into the American's—Bucky's—eyes made her feel remorse for all the things she had done. Even if she had only done them to survive.

He had honest eyes, good eyes, and she knew Hydra would ruin him and those eyes. Poor soldier-boy. Poor soldat-mal'chik.

Sympathy was a stranger she wasn't used to meeting, but when it came to this man. This man brought out a side the twenty-four-year-old had thought she had long buried.