"Okay, so let me get this straight," Bucky leaned forwards, grabbing a handful from the bowl on the coffee table in front of him and glancing to his right, where Steve sprawled in an armchair at the end of the couch Bucky was currently holding down. "If the bus goes slower than 50, it explodes?"
Steve quirked the corner of his mouth, eyes staying locked on the screen. "Yeah."
"That's ridiculous."
"It was the Nineties; it was almost as batshit as the Eighties."
Bucky turned back to the TV, popping a few bits of Pirate's Booty into his mouth and frowned, about to ask another question when a crisp female voice spoke. "Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes, Mr. Stark is calling an emergency meeting and has requested your immediate presence."
"Where at, FRIDAY?" Steve asked, chewing thoughtfully.
"In the main briefing room, Captain."
The men shared a fleeting look and Steve lifted the remote, stopping the movie. Almost as one they stood and walked silently to the door. Even though he was an infamous drama queen and attention whore, Stark didn't call 'emergency' meetings willy nilly.
Stark sat at the head of the table when they arrived, his eyes flicking briefly to them before turning again to the figure pacing restlessly between the table and the wall of windows currently shuttered closed. Clint and Wanda hustled in behind them and quickly sat, Clint staring with concern at Natasha, the one pacing madly.
"Alright, let's get this party started." Stark mumbled, sounding surprisingly subdued; that, more so than Natasha's frenetic pacing, made Bucky's skin goosebump with anxiety.
Stark watched Nat for a heartbeat. "Care to join us, Widow?"
Mumbling lowly in Russian, Nat whirled and flung herself into a chair opposite the rest of the team. When Stark didn't immediately start speaking she threw him an exasperated look. Raising his brows mildly, Stark began.
"We found Widow's sister."
Nearly identical frowns skittered across the team's faces before Steve voiced what they all were thinking. "We didn't know you had a sister, or that she needed to be found."
Nat sighed, looking down, curling her nails into the tabletop. "Neither did I, I thought she died fourteen years ago."
Clint chuckled weakly. "You're going to have to start at the beginning, sweetheart."
Nat drew in a deep breath, eyes focussed with laser intensity at the spot on the table currently being worried by her nails. "Dominika," she began, her voice taking on the Russian lilt, giving the name an ethereal sound. "Two years younger than me, and before you ask, yes. My full-blooded sister, we were both brought into the program at the same time. We were trained separately, divided by age into different classes, but Nika was good, I mean really good. The best in her class, hands down-"
"Better than you?" Steve asked warily.
Nat met his gaze evenly. "Yes." She paused before starting again. "I was being prepped for my first mission when I received the news that she had become sick and died-" the team shifted uncomfortably at Nat's flat voice. "She was eighteen and I demanded to see her, I couldn't believe she could just... leave like that. I would never have trusted their word, but I saw her, I touched her. She was cooling already, starting to stiffen and to make sure I took my knife and cut her throat."
"Jesus, Nat." Steve grumbled.
"Not fully," Nat looked up, a strange gleam in her eyes. "Just enough to see if her blood flowed, and it didn't. She was dead. Or so I thought... when you found Zemo and those executed Super Soldiers up in Siberia, Tony uncovered a huge cache of classified computer files. He downloaded them and brought them back."
"But, in the clusterfuck that came afterward, I forgot about them. Not too long ago I remembered and put FRIDAY on them. They're heavily encrypted and she still hasn't fully cracked them all, but we found this."
"A double agent faked Nika's death and took her underground into a secret secret project in HYDRA. For two years she was trained and experimented on. They injected her with the same serum as you," her eyes flicked briefly to Bucky, "and moulded her to become a female Winter Soldier, but with a twist." Nat broke off then, her voice wavering uncharacteristically and glanced at Stark, who cleared his throat and continued.
"She was supposed to be a Bounty Hunter. In other words, Frosty, if you or any of the other Super-friends went rogue out in the field, she would be dispatched to either apprehend or destroy you. But there was a 'catastrophic failure' with the experiment."
"Failure?" Bucky spat, fists clenched, muscles tense as a bow string, his emotions already a twisted mess; someone else was put through the same shit as him?
"Nika was dropped into cryofreeze after two years, when she was twenty. They didn't need her for a mission but after a while, they brought her back for tests; to see how the training was holding and discovered that the freeze had malfunctioned, they'd missed a crucial step... and she'd been conscious the entire time."
Bucky sucked in a sharp breath, eyes widening in horror. All eyes swivelled to him, brows raised in question. Hiding his trembling hands in his lap, Bucky spoke. "I was punished once, and purposefully left conscious for a time in cryofreeze. Nothing I've experienced before or since compares. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy."
"For how long?" Steve asked, heartbreak and rage warring in his eyes.
"Six days."
All eyes turned back to Nat, flicking between her and Stark.
"How long for your sister?"
Nat swallowed hard. "Four years, give or take a few weeks."
Stunned silence followed her answer. Bucky looked like he would be physically sick, while Steve wiped angrily at a sudden tear. "What then?" He demanded.
Stark answered, Nat had fallen silent, her hair a curtain in front of her face. "They didn't know what the hell to do, so they put her back on ice, properly this time and executed the dumb fucks that cocked-up the first time. They tried a few times to reverse the, as the report puts it, 'unexpected side-effects' but they always ending up freezing her again when nothing worked."
"Where is she?" Wanda spoke finally, her voice a whisper, her accent thick with emotion.
"That's the part FRIDAY's still working on, it shouldn't be too much longer before she cracks it."
"We're going to rescue her, right?" Steve stated.
Stark looked to Natasha, who lifted her head reluctantly. "Yes. I can't stand to think of her locked away alone anymore."
"But, can we help her?" Bucky asked hesitantly; he knew firsthand the struggle Nat's sister would be in for if they released her from cryofreeze; the nightmares and crawling sensations, the overwhelming darkness and pain.
Bucky and Tony were working to bury the hatchet, with Steve usually the mediator between them, and they were trying to coexist peacefully; Tony had allowed Bucky to move into the Tower, and join the Avengers, but occasionally Tony couldn't help but disturb the settling dirt. "Well, we got you to stop playing Grim Reaper."
A blush of mixed humiliation and rage coloured Bucky's cheeks and Steve reached over, resting a hand on his tensed forearm.
"How?" The Captain was here, questions crisp and professional.
"I've already called Banner, he should be here within the next few days. Once we learn where she is, we bring her back, keep her in that secure holding cell in the basement... maybe Frosty can talk to her, misery loves company."
It was on the tip of Bucky's tongue to tell Stark to fuck off, but Steve gave him another warning squeeze and he remained silent. He had no idea how to help this girl, there were days when he could hardly help himself, hardly drag his own ass out of bed.
"She'll need intensive therapy," Steve ploughed ahead. He turned to Bucky. "The same woman you see, and a safe place here, her own room."
"Not until we're sure she isn't going to go postal and murder us in our sleep." Stark quipped, his natural sarcasm tempered by the pain in his eyes. He cleared his throat, "I'll set it all up, just keep yourselves ready to ship out, I don't think Widow here's going to hold the ride for any stragglers." Grabbing his phone he started stabbing at it, attention immediately focussed elsewhere, effectively ending the conversation.
Bucky stood and moved to the door, skin crawling, suddenly desperate to get out of this suffocating room. He turned his head to see if Steve was following and paused. Steve had moved to Nat's side and was speaking lowly to her, her head nodding occasionally in response. Palm sweating he turned and left, deciding to pace the hallway instead. Clint and Wanda wandered out behind him, seemingly still speechless and drifted away, trading waning smiles with him. Stark marched out next, not even noticing Bucky, phone to his ear, yapping and disappeared around the corner. Finally Steve left, arm around Nat's shoulders. He murmured quietly to her once more, words Bucky focussed on not hearing out of respect for the redhead and watched as she wandered in the same direction as Stark.
The utter desolation on Nat's face worried Bucky, she was never like this, never so... beaten. Steve moved beside him, picking up instantly on Bucky's thoughts.
"I'm worried about her too," he murmured, then rolled his shoulders, clearing his throat. "I have to hit something, want to train?"
Bucky nodded absently, eyes still trained on the corner.
A number of things happened in rapid succession. Bucky's nightmares returned, full force, robbing him of even the semblance of restful sleep; Banner arrived, his usual self and sequestered himself in the medical labs, prepping for any scenario he could think of regarding the shape they were going to find Nat's sister in; and FRIDAY finally cracked the encryption of the remaining files.
Bucky was just breathing through a fresh rush of panic, shadowy memories screeching hellfire in his ears when the AI startled him out of his thoughts. Exhaling shakily he leaned back from where he'd been curled on the end of his bed and forced himself to listen to the voice.
"Sergeant Barnes, I detect an accelerated heartbeat and rapid respirations, are you alright?"
"Fine, FRIDAY."
The AI paused. "You don't sound fine-"
"I'll be fine. What's happening?"
"I have unlocked the location of Miss Romanoff, Mr. Stark requests everyone's immediate presence in the briefing room."
Bucky was too grateful for the distraction from his own tortured memories to acknowledge the fact that by agreeing to help extract Nat's sister, he would most likely be flinging himself from the frying pan to the fire, and diving headfirst into HYDRA and it's hellish business once again, but thoughts of what Nika had experienced weighed too heavily on him to push away. He couldn't even fathom what she had lived through, the utter misery that had become her whole existence. HYDRA was not concerned with healing, and no doubt all of their attempts to 'help' Nika had failed spectacularly, focussing on repairing the weapon instead of the person beneath. He still had no idea what he could possibly do to assuage her suffering, beyond listen and show her that, with time and help, you could eventually begin to claw through the blackness and discern light around you.
Nat was pacing just as manically as before, radiating tension and threw a dirty look at Bucky when he stumbled inside. He glanced around, blushing slightly to see that he was the last to arrive.
"Ah, Snowman's here; we can get down to the nut-cutting." Tony chirped, earning a glower from the pacing Russian assassin. Ignoring her Tony started talking, pointing at various bits of the holographic map he conjured on the table in front of everyone. "Widow's sister... little Widow, is here." A part of a broken down structure lit up. "There's nothing there, minimal staff, minimal guards, bare essentials."
"It's like they're just waiting for her to die," Bucky mumbled, not realizing he'd spoken out loud until Steve thumped him upside the head with a look.
Bucky blushed again. "Sorry, Nat."
"But it's true." Tony plunged ahead. Bucky's statement seemed to have taken the wind from Nat's sails and she finally collapsed in the empty chair beside Clint, curling her fingers gratefully around the hand he offered her. "It's been like this since their last attempt to reverse the damage, they can't or won't outright kill her, so they've just tucked her away, hoping she'll blink out on her own."
"Have they forgotten about her?" Steve wondered.
"HYDRA never forgets." Bucky growled.
Tony shook his head. "No, but she's about as far away from their attention as you can get. FRIDAY's running some scenarios now, it shouldn't take too long to have an extraction plan. Go get ready, do whatever it is you losers do before shipping out and meet us at the quinjets in 30."
Bucky needed a shower, his skin still slick from his earlier panic and he all but leapt from his chair, ignoring Steve as the man called his name.
The flight was quiet, an undercurrent of tension thick in the air. Bucky fiddled idly with his guns, fighting the mild hint of dread that threatened the seams at the corners of his mind. He was willingly marching into a HYDRA facility, willingly agreeing to help someone as broken, if not more so, than him. His metal arm whirred ceaselessly, his tension and nerves translating into muscle flexes and twitches, his left hand almost spastic in it's movement. He forced a deep breath, forced himself to calm down. Someone plunked down beside him.
"Doing alright?" Steve asked quietly.
Bucky glanced up, looked quickly away again. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but would go no further.
"You don't think you'll be able to help her." Steve read his brother like an open book.
Bucky held up his palms, one flesh, the other cold metal. "There's times I can't even help myself, Steve-"
Steve leaned close, his voice both soft Steve and dominant Captain. "You will help her, just by being there. You're the only other one here with even an inkling of what she's gone through. Haven't you just needed someone to understand?"
Bucky dropped his head, the jerk was right, as usual. Just the thought of someone nearby who comprehended, who shared the same terrors and shadowy flashes at the corners of their sanity would be a comfort; a reassurance that even though Fate had given you the ultimate Fuck You, the vengeful bitch had at least thrown you this meagre bone.
Steve stayed silent, seeing the answer in Bucky's stare, and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes.
Far too soon, they arrived.
It was too quiet. Stark's scanners picked up minimal activity. The building, broken down in places, was hidden in the Siberian tundra until you followed and zeroed in on the sullen traces of life, the sporadic pings of computers, the oh so faint glow of heat through the sophisticated infrared sensors. To all but the most skilled and prepared of trackers, the ones holding the most advanced technologies and armed with a general idea already of where to look, the base was invisible. There was no evidence of movement, of troops coming or going.
It was the end of the line.
The few soldiers abandoned here to guard the silent, frozen error that HYDRA seemed to want to bury and never dig up again put up a surprising fight, having reverted to a Lord of the Flies-like primitiveness; an almost animal instinct to protect their den. Only the computers and technology HYDRA left behind that were all but able to run themselves kept the base from dissolving into chaos; gone was the military order, the regimented watches and checks, left in it's place was the desperation of desertion. Bucky wondered if the staff here had been left as a sort of punishment, as forsaken by their masters as the girl they were supposed to guard.
It was almost a mercy to end their lives.
The room where Nat's sister was kept was dark and cold, the only illumination the faint light from the cryotank itself. The computers maintaining her slumber were outdated and rickety, obvious cast-offs from earlier times; the mistake they held not worth newer technology. The men left here, the men now dead in the corridors had not been in this room for months, if the level of grime and icy build-up where any indication.
That's what they were waiting for, Bucky thought morosely as he scanned the hauntingly familiar machines. He didn't voice his thoughts, out of respect for a stunned-looking Black Widow, who circled the cryo-tank with faint, uncharacteristic tears in her eyes, gazing in shock at the form inside. They were just waiting for the machines to fail, the computer to blink out, for the girl inside to drift away when there was nothing left to maintain her half-life. Maybe, years from now HYDRA would have returned, observed with callous detachment the men turned animals, now dead, starved and glacial cold after even their desperate diet of each other had dried up; the icy, lifeless body in the cryo-tank, frozen solid, left in eternal sleep. Maybe the fire and flames of their eradication charges as they destroyed any evidence of the horror left here would have finally gifted Nika with some warmth.
The computers balked at first, seemingly unwillingly to surrender the person inside, as if the machines had taken in the humanity the guards had shed and wanted to protect the girl when no one else would. But finally they relented and Nika was released, the team waiting, on the edge of a razor, to see what woke up.
She didn't.
Seated, heavily shackled, in case she regained consciousness swinging her super-serum enhanced fists, Nika remained silent, unresponsive, no reaction whatsoever to anything or anyone, not even Nat's voice or hesitant touch.
"Catatonic," Bruce muttered, sounding resigned. He turned away from her with a sigh. "I was worried about that, she's completely shut down."
"Will she wake up?" Nat whispered.
Bruce paused, turning back to regard the cadaverous form. Nika was rigid enough to remain seated, her head level; but her eyes were blank. They'd opened once she'd been fully revived from cryofreeze, but, save for the occasional slow blink, her eyelids curiously out of sync, she gave little additional indication that she was, in fact, conscious or alive. Her breathing was slow and maddeningly shallow, her skin was waxy and pale and even when Tony accidentally on purpose knocked over a locked black case against the wall of the chamber, inciting a cacophony of hollow thuds that made more than one Avenger jump and curse under their breath, she remained motionless, like she hadn't even heard the crash.
Bucky, standing behind the others, mostly successful at keeping his breathing level, at stopping the gentle ripples of panic from growing to huge, crashing waves through his brain, forced himself to focus on the girl, cataloguing her features in an attempt at distraction. Her hair was darker than Nat's, a rich auburn, almost mahogany shade. HYDRA could care less about aesthetics so, like Bucky's had been, hers was dishevelled and tangled, but hinted at gentle curls.
The dead expression notwithstanding, Bucky found himself transfixed by the vibrant violet shade of Nika's eyes. They matched the almost ethereal paleness of her skin, the almost sharp point of her chin, framed by impossibly long lashes that seemed to weigh her lids down slightly, keeping her eyes only half-open. A sharp pang went through his chest, startling him, as he focussed on her lips; pouty and chapped, and imagined capturing them with his own, feeling their softness and warmth. Shaking his head, anger building at his inappropriate thoughts, Bucky forced his concentration to return to more clinical aspects. Her body was toned and athletic; if she didn't seem to be spinning her mental gears in neutral, and instead decided to attack, she had the physique and strength to cause damage. She was taller than her sister, and if she'd been trained in the same techniques as Nat, then she would be a force to be reckoned with.
When his game of dominoes failed to illicit a response, Tony grunted irritably. "Let's go."
Bruce stepped closer to their silent companion. "Can you stand?"
Tony sighed uneasily when Nika remained inert. "It's like talking to a wall, just carry her."
The team fell into an uneasy formation around the doctor as he gingerly scooped Nika into his arms, bridal style. A ridiculous flash of heat shot through Bucky, one he belated recognized as possessiveness and he pushed it away with a sharp breath. What the fuck? Get it together, soldier.
Steve, as if he'd heard Bucky chastise himself, or felt the wave of heat itself, glanced over at his friend, brow raised in question. Cap had been silent so far, observing and analyzing the situation and looked resigned. As he saw it, at best Nika had a long road to recovery ahead of her; at worst, they'd just rescued a vegetable, and either way, his friend, his brother, was hooked.
Nat sat beside her sister, speaking quietly, earnestly in Russian to her. Bucky could understand every word, but tried not to listen, only the occasional word breaking through.
'-told you'd died-'
'-forgive me, sister, I-'
'-will help you any-'
'-please, just say something.'
Nat fell silent, studying Nika's face. The young woman gave no indication that she was even aware that she was no longer frozen, that she was currently rocketing through the sky in a jet, bound for the other side of the world. Bruce hovered by, monitoring her vitals, making notes and pawing through his supplies for want of distraction, seeming to become more distressed by the minute by his patient's continued unresponsiveness. He'd hooked her to a monitor and Bucky found his eyes drifted to the screen regularly.
Respiration, ten breaths a minute; heartbeat, thirty-seven; she was either hibernating or amazingly conditioned.
Bruce seemed worried about her low body temperature, and tucked another blanket around the young woman's shoulders, studying the readout critically. Bucky followed his gaze. Eighty-seven point two degrees, hypothermic, bordering on critical.
"How's she doing?" Steve called from the cockpit, co-piloting beside Tony.
"Same." Bruce called back, looking dejected.
Tony muttered something Bucky didn't catch, but Steve retorted sharply back, so it hadn't been good.
Clint stood from his seat and moved to stand in front of Nat. He held out his hand and she glanced reluctantly towards Nika before accepting it, allowing Clint to pull her to her feet and draw her back to his seat. Curling onto his lap she tucked her head under his chin with a ragged sigh and closed her eyes.
Bucky sensed the explosion a split second before it happened.
In the half-second before Nika detonated Bucky saw her jolt, awareness crashing into her eyes. He'd wondered briefly before if she was playing them, feigning insensibility, but he could see now that that simply wasn't the case. She'd gone from completely gone to completely here in the blink of an eye, her consciousness slamming home and a thousand different sensations assaulting her, overwhelming her. And she reacted the way she'd been trained to, silently and instantly.
In a blur of contortion, she smashed the cable binding her wrists against the one between her ankles and they gave with a ping, then she was on her feet, her movement too fast to follow. Bruce staggered away, blood blooming on his face, half-conscious. Natasha reacted almost as quickly as her sister, but flew backwards with a pained grunt, slamming into Clint and both landing on top of Wanda.
Then she turned to Bucky and he felt a thrill of almost-fear. Is this what his quarry had seen before he'd ended their lives? A cold machine, devoid of emotion; death incarnate? There was no doubt that Nika would tear the jet apart to escape, Nat was still tangled up with Clint and Wanda, all three knocked half-insensible and Bucky could hear Steve scrambling from the cockpit, his shield up, but it was too late. With a chilly lack of expression, Nika zeroed in on Bucky and attacked.
There was only way to stop her, had been the only way to stop the Winter Soldier a time or two, but this knowledge didn't help ease Bucky's guilt as he drove his metal elbow into Nika's temple, sacrificing his body for a rib-breaking punch that stole his breath, made him stagger on weakened feet as she fell bonelessly to the floor of the jet beside him. Her eyes remained half-opened, but the consciousness behind them was gone again, while thick blood began to pool beneath her face, streaming from her nostrils and temple.
Strong arms grabbed Bucky, almost pulling away at his hiss of pain before settling gently around him. He let them guide him to the nearest bench, where he collapsed with a groan, looking up into Steve's concerned face.
"Jesus," he managed.
"Jesus," Bucky agreed weakly.
With uncharacteristic clumsiness, Nat managed to untangle herself from Clint and Wanda and dropped to her knees beside her unconscious sister.
"I'm sorry, Nat." Bucky mumbled, wincing at the twinge in his ribs. Steve was cautiously poking at his side and frowning, narrowing down the damage, ignoring Bucky's muttered curses.
"You had to," Nat replied almost curtly. "She wasn't going to stop." She smoothed Nika's hair back from her pale forehead, glancing up as Bruce dropped beside her and began to prod carefully at her bleeding skull.
"Damn Buck, how hard did you hit her?" He grumbled as his poking revealed a three-inch gash in her scalp. "Clint, grab me that tray over there and a shit pile of gauze." Within moments he had Nika's head almost completely obscured with white bandages and, after feeling at her neck gingerly to check for any breaks, lifted her up onto a free bench.
"He okay?" He asked Steve, motioning with his chin towards Bucky.
"Think so; broken rib, maybe two?"
"Wrap it. And you," his eyes locked with Bucky's. "Don't move too much for awhile, you don't want a punctured lung. Wanda, come hold this light? I'm going to suture her scalp before she bleeds the hell out."
"Make sure she's restrained!" Tony bellowed from the cockpit. "Christ Almighty, don't let that shitstorm loose again!"
Grimly, Steve stood, retrieving a second set of cuffs as well as a thick chain. Within moments, Nika was again restrained, the cuffs now looped with the chain and secured to the quinjet's floor.
"I don't think she's waking up anytime soon," Bruce mumbled, almost inaudibly as he continued, pulling the thread methodically through Nika's bleeding scalp.
And Bruce was right.
Nika lay unconscious for three days, unresponsive, and Bruce was seriously worried, especially because Nika didn't react in anyway to standard painful-stimuli tests.
"What does that mean?" Steve asked, rubbing his jaw. Bruce had called the entire team down to the medical lab and they stood on the other side of a wall of security glass, looking in on the motionless girl, locked in her own secure treatment room. Nat held Clint's hand tightly, while Bucky stood in a far corner, arms wrapped around himself, guilt gnawing incessantly at him.
"Normally it means a loss of cerebral function, perhaps even brain death; but this isn't an average brain. HYDRA's meddling has created something I'm not sure how to approach, she spent four years conscious under cryofreeze, I know there's places in her mind she can go that all these sensors and equipment can't follow." He gestured vaguely to the science fiction novel assortment of machines and computers the lab was equipped with. More state of the art than the most advanced hospital, filled with technology mere mortals hadn't even dreamed of yet, Tony's lab was rivalled only by the most sinister HYDRA bases. "Just because I'm not picking anything up on any of these readouts, and she's not responding to the most basest animal reflex, pain, doesn't mean she's lost, but I'll be honest, I have no idea how to find her."
"She's been conditioned to ignore pain," Bucky murmured, drawing the group's attention. They waited for him to continue and he cleared his throat, cheeks warming. "She won't respond to pain because she's been trained not to... she's probably felt so much that it doesn't even mean anything anymore, it's just a miserable fact of existence."
Bucky didn't miss the muscle jump in Steve's jaw, but he looked away before the inevitable sympathy darkened everyone's eyes. He was stating facts, gained from hard lessons, not looking for pity. Bruce closed his eyes, lips compressed into a thin line, he'd hoped this wasn't the case, but Bucky, out of everyone, would know.
"So how do we reach her?" Nat asked softly.
How the hell Bucky had become the expert in all this, he didn't know. "You don't. You have to wait for her to come back." He broke off with a sigh, fighting the tremor in his voice as he continued. "I'll help her anyway I can once she's awake, but I don't know what I can really do."
The group fell silent, eyes dropping to their feet, the floor, anywhere but Bucky or the body behind them.
Bucky slumped against the wall, used his forearm to wipe the sweat streaming down his face and panted for breath; beside him Steve was in the same boat. They'd pushed hard today on their run, Bucky trying to quiet his mind and thoughts, Steve not willing to leave him alone.
"Nightmares?" Steve rasped, hands on his knees, head bowed.
"Since we first heard about her." Bucky grunted, not needing to say who 'her' was.
Steve nodded, dropping to a crouch and, after a few beats, raised his head, scanning the surroundings, the outside of the Avengers Tower, before looking again at his friend. "You need to step back? We'll understand if you can't be part of this."
Bucky shook his head. "The nightmares will come whether I'm involved or not... maybe, when... if she wakes up, helping her work through her shit will help with mine." He didn't sound convinced and Steve opened his mouth to reply but the shrill squawking of Bucky's cell stopped him. With a held breath, he pulled it from his shorts pocket and glanced at the screen then exhaled heavily as he looked away.
Steve was about to ask what it was when his own phone started to go apeshit as well and he scrambled to silence it, half-amused and half-exasperated; sometime this morning someone, probably Sam, had changed his notification tone to an uber-annoying farting sound, but even the ridiculousness of his phone couldn't penetrate the sombre bubble surrounding Bucky and, as he read the message flashing on his screen, Steve understood why. Two simple words.
She's awake.
Nika paced restlessly, like a caged animal, from one end of her secure cell to another. She was pure coiled energy, bursting at the seams, her eyes flicking all over, searching restlessly for an escape. Bruce looked up as Bucky and Steve entered, tapping at a tablet in his hands, while Tony, Clint, Wanda, Sam and Nat just watched the girl.
She was almost hypnotizing, the maximum movement for the minimum energy; she looked ready to explode into action, the second she found a chink she would exploit it, be suddenly halfway down the corridor before you even realized that she'd attacked whoever entered her cell, knocked them out and jetted past you like a blur. The two men joined the group, eyes following the pacing form.
Nat pressed the microphone. "Dominika?"
The girl froze instantly, eyes and ears tracking and locating the speaker in a heartbeat. Her gaze now locked on the glass wall, her eyes unnervingly seeming to lock on the group watching her. She remained silent.
"Dominika, it is me, Natasha." Nat spoke in Russian.
Darkness flickered over Nika's face but she didn't reply.
"Nika, please talk to me. It's your sister."
"I have no sister." Her voice was cold, raspy and unused.
