Fix Me: A Bucky Story
"Nina Kohl." Steve tasted the name unhappily.
Natasha sighed, "Steve, she's the best at what she does. And she's got a background I can trust."
"How can you trust her background?" He exclaimed, tossing a folder filled with documents on the desk in front of him.
"Because my past is very similar to hers." Natasha said softly.
Steve instantly regretted his words, "Sorry Nat, I didn't think of that." He sighed loudly, "I just don't think I'm ever going to find someone I trust with this job."
"That's why I chose her for you. I'm telling you she's right for the job so you're going to have to trust me." She knew throwing the 'trust' word out there would get him to cave.
"You're right." Steve held his head in his hands. "I'll call T'Challa and let him know we've found someone, hopefully she accepts."
"I don't think she'll be able to refuse." Natasha said with a frown.
Across an ocean, in Germany, a woman was smoothing her skirt and fixing her blonde ponytail before straightening her shoulders and heading into an intimidating concrete building.
"Miss. Kohl." A man greeted her from behind his small desk.
"Hello," Nina tried to sound cheerful as she looked around for a chair, finding no sort of waiting area she stood awkwardly until the only door other than the entrance opened.
"Come this way Miss." A second man, outfitted in a military officer's uniform, beckoned her. She followed the man through the set of doors and down a small hallway until they reached another set of double doors. The whole facility seemed rather dark and eerie, reminding Nina of a time she thought she had left behind.
When they entered the next set of doors a third man stood in the empty room, he was tall and had very sharp features, like he had been cut out of stone and the edges hadn't been rounded. Sharp black eyes surveyed her quietly, Nina got a bad feeling then, she was quite far in the building and the only exits were the ones she had came in through, there were no windows or side doors. She felt panic blossom in her chest as she realized if this went badly she would be essentially trapped by this frightening man. How had a simple job interview gotten so complicated and terrifying.
"Katharina Kohler." The man addressed her. She felt her heart sink at her full name, he had access to her old files in Russia, he knew everything.
"Yes," uncertainty weighed her down.
"I believe we will be able to use your service, I have your files from Russia and understand the project you had been a part of for the last 5 years."
Nina just stared at him, daring him to say it.
"I want to restart the project." His eyes were fierce when he looked at her. "With your expert skills we can take this further than the Russians. Of course we will need to locate the asset and then have it brought here, but that can all be arranged while we get your lab setup."
Stunned Nina began shaking her head, "No, I'm sorry I can't accept your offer." She could feel her panic rising, "I thought this was a regular office job interview. Please excuse me." As she began walking towards the door the officer who had shown her in stepped in front of her. However the sharp looking man waved him away, "Don't worry, she'll be back. No one will hire an ex-Hydra agent these days."
She all but ran out of the concrete facility. Anger replaced the panic, he was right. She had studied hard to get her degree in Linguistics, she was smart, yet her young and naive self had ruined her own future by accepting the first job offer to come her way post university.
Standing outside the ominous building she saw a shiny black car pull up and a women exit and begin walking towards her. She immediately recognized the women, red hair, smirk, black outfit, she was the Black Widow, the Avengers had been all over TV in the last few years. Nina stood stiffly as the agent addressed her, "Nina Kohl."
"Natasha Romanoff." Nina replied, liking that Natasha was smart enough to use her new name.
"What's a girl like you doing in a place like this?" Natasha cocked her head, red hair swinging to the side.
"Trying not to make the same mistakes twice, I'm leaving." Crossed arms she looked defiantly back at the formidable woman in front of her.
"Well I can put you on the right track if that's what you're looking for." The redhead grinned, "I know first hand what it's like to be in your position. It's going to take someone putting their faith in you for you to turn this situation around."
Nina scoffed, "And who would be willing to do that."
"Me." Natasha shrugged casually. "Turns out you are exactly what we need."
"I'm always 'exactly what someone needs' and honestly I just want to do something good. I'm tired of playing games and people lying to me." She sighed.
"I can definitely help you there."
Nina had absolutely no idea what had lead her to be boarding a plane and accepting Natasha's offer. It sounded a little too good to be true. She was first going to be stationed in the Avengers home base to be monitored by Captain America himself for him to deem her work worthy before moving on to her actual assignment. In fact it would be more like revisiting an old assignment for her, though she had never seen the Winter Soldier in person, on paper she knew more about him than Steve Rogers. Because the files Natasha had leaked over the internet a few years ago had been Hydra's electronic files, but what not many people knew was that many of Hydra's files were only hard files, paper files had been a thing of norm there. They were easy to hid and destroy if need be, a lot of the Winter Soldier's files had been paper only. Paper files that Nina had committed to memory.
She was greeted at the terminal by a man she recognized as part of the Avengers, the Falcon, Sam Wilson. He looked her over carefully, inspecting her for weapons probably.
"I am not armed, I just flew an international flight, there's no way I could hide anything. Besides I have no training whatsoever." She told him.
"You're from Germany?" He asked indicating he knew where her accent came from.
"Yes, I was born in Germany and only left when I received a job offer in Russia," She answered cryptically. "What about my luggage?"
"Don't worry about that, someone is already there and waiting to collect it." Sam glared at her, "Are you playing anything here?"
Nina's eyes widened, "No, of course not. Natasha's the one who wanted me to work on this."
"Okay, good, because this is very important to my friend Steve. If you have ulterior motives I'm going to find out." He pointed his finger at her.
She nodded, holding back a laugh. She got into the car he motioned to, it was a quiet drive. The silence was only broken when Sam asked her questions and she would give him a non detailed response.
Sam showed her to her work space, a small room with a bookshelf, a large table, a small desk and a chair. She thanked Sam and asked to be alone while she settled into the new space. She looked around and smiled, there were already boxes full of papers on the table and on the desk a small laptop was waiting to be opened and used. She also saw a few books on the shelf and saw the a few familiar titles pop out at her. Nina knew she could definitely get comfortable in her little office.
Nina got into the swing of things within the first week. Her research involved psycholinguistics specifically neurolinguistics, exactly what she had studied in university and gone on to work on with Hyrda. It was the study of how language impacted the brain and how the brain comprehended language. In regards to the asset, how language can trigger things in the brain and get the asset to behave accordingly.
One afternoon she was going through her old notes she had stolen from Hydra about the Winter Soldier and consequently didn't hear the light knock followed by her office door opening. Steve Rogers stood in the doorway watching her sort through notes that were now essentially useless and notes that could serve a purpose on her new project.
"What are those?" He asked.
Nina squealed and spun around, her hand over her racing heart. "You scared me. Uh, these are my old notes on the asset when it was with Hydra."
Steve frowned, "It has a name, it's Bucky."
"Right, sorry, old habits die hard I guess." She could have kicked herself for being so stupid, "When I worked there I specialized in working with him," Seeing Steve's confusion she clarified, "I never physically worked with him, I have never seen the Winter Soldier. But I know him very well on paper, I can tell you all about his brain scans and what happens when you say certain things to him. Hopefully I'll be able to either reverse the effects of the reset words or come up with a new combination to stop the effects of the reset words." Nina knew she was rambling, but the lies she was mixing in with the truth had a life of their own.
Steve was looking at her curiously now. "How much do you know about him?"
"Well like I said, I just know what they gave me, scans, notes on behavior, patterns they saw while he was in the field. I made up diagnostics based on what they gave me. I didn't know him personally." She hesitated, "And I'm very sorry for calling him 'the asset' that is all they allowed us to call him. They didn't want anyone getting close with him, he was kept under very strict quarters."
He just nodded at her, which she took as a sign of forgiveness. "How'd you end up there? Working for people like that? Why did you stay?"
Nina hesitated, "Well I was a young university graduate, I had graduated at the top of my class, professors called me 'a bright mind'. I learned later that Hydra had been keeping tabs on me based on some of the articles I had published. They were planning on attempting to recruit me at some point, it just so happened that their offer was the first I had recieved and I took it without doing any research on the corporation or what kind of work they did. All I cared about was they wanted me to continue my research using an unknown willing subject. I hadn't thought the contract would tie me up so badly or that I was going to be used so horribly." She shuddered and looked at Steve, "Hydra uses people in the worst way possible. The people who follow them blindly are all men and women who have no regard for humanity."
Steve frowned again, this was not news to him; but, he still didn't quite understand how she had fallen for something like a simple job offer, she had to have had some idea of what Hydra was, she must be hiding something.
Nina was glad when Steve dropped the subject and asked her if she had eaten lunch yet, to which she replied she hadn't. She hadn't gone near the communal cafeteria, instead favoring her empty office and a packed lunch from the kitchen ladies.
After that day Steve started making it a habit to come get her for lunch, the chatting between the two slowly became more relaxed the more they began to let down their guard.
"So when can I see him?" Nina asked a few weeks later while they were eating lunch.
"Bucky?" Steve asked, brows raised. Nina nodded, "Honestly, I don't know, he didn't want to be thawed unless we were sure we could control him."
"There's no way to test my theories until I see him and reset him." Nina shrugged, "It's going to be a trial and error type of experiment."
"She's right," A third party joined in, Natasha. "We can't just make her sit her and come up with hypothetical solutions. They need to be tested."
Steve sighed, "Fine, I'll get on it." Then he got up and walked away without finishing his lunch.
"Don't worry about him," Natasha said, "He's just sore about anything that involves Bucky."
"I'm just afraid I won't be able to help him." Nina furrowed her brow.
"I'm sure it will work out just fine."
Steve showed up at Nina's office one evening, "Hey, I have a plane ticket here for you."
"Oh, where am I going?" Nina asked, not looking up from some notes.
"To see Bucky, he's currently with T'Challa in Wakanda, Africa."
She stopped reading and looked up, giving the Captain her full attention. "Steve, I still don't know if these theories are fool proof."
"I know, but it's like Natasha said, they have to be tested." He sighed. "Get ready, you leave tomorrow."
Steve walked away and Nina was left with her thoughts, she was finally going to be able to test her new theories. These new language patterns she had put together might help, but they may do absolutely nothing. She was going to be able to actually test her research instead of just handing it in for someone else to try out. She was being given the chance to help someone, and that was what really excited her. Nina was going to be able to try to undo what she had helped do to the Winter Soldier.
It was warm and muggy in Wakanda, not necessarily bad, just different. Nina was a little nervous as she and Steve were escorted to meet T'Challa. The room they were left in was white and clean, she saw a chamber off to the left and saw Steve look at it longingly, she decided Bucky must be in that chamber. T'Challa entered the room and introduced himself to her, she told him her new name and they circled around the chamber.
"So, it is time to thaw your friend," T'Challa's hands hovered over the control panel.
"Hopefully we're able to figure this out." Steve smiled a little sadly.
Nina just stood there quietly.
T'Challa pressed a button and pulled a lever, slowly the chamber began to clear and it opened. Bucky Barnes was stood up and frozen. The color slowly returned to his skin and she saw him give a shuddering breath before opening his eyes. He blinked wildly taking in his surroundings. Nina's wide eyes managed to widen more when he grinned at Steve and spoke, "So, have you found a way to fix me?"