Hope's Lingering Madness

by ShadowObsessor01

The first time he meets her, she's twenty-eight and he is thirty going on older than he looks, but certainly Mad because two lives in one head is no fun tea party. The first time she meets him, she's eight running from murderers while he has no idea how old he is. It got lost somewhere among the brainwashing and freezer storage. They shouldn't work, but they do. AU warnings inside

1. December 1991

Hope's Lingering Madness

Madness of Hope Series

Key

::Flashbacks::

=Buchanan/Winter talking/thought speech=

"Talking"

Thought speech

~MOH~ denotes scene change

"word" [English translation]

PROLOGUE:

EVEN ALONE, THERE IS STARLIGHT IN OUR HEARTS

Everyday must end

But the night's our friend

Angels always send a star

When you're alone

At night when I'm alone

I lie awake and wonder

Which of them belongs to me

Which one I wonder?

And any star I choose

Watches over me

So I know I'm not alone

When I'm here on my own

Isn't that a wonder?

When you're alone

You're not alone

Not really alone

WHEN YOU'RE ALONE – song by John Williams, performed by Amber Scott and Karliene

December 16, 1991

The rather large forest surrounding the road leading to the Stark Mansion in Manhattan was quiet as it should be at that time of night. Snowfall was light and settled on the ground with a sound reminiscent to tissue paper being softly crumpled in a giant's hands. If one listened closely enough and was silent, far off in the woods, icicles snapping as they thawed and refroze can be heard. In a word, the night was peaceful. But as everyone knows, peaceful does not always equate to happiness and safety. On this night, two families become intertwined with a single lonely star. A broken star whose light is being crushed beneath a tentacled black hole. Despair not though, for these families and that star, because hope is always found in suffering. One might simply need to look harder to find its light.

Going down the winding road is the first family. Howard and Maria Stark are driving to the airport, an important package in the trunk and an only child left behind in the mansion. A motorcyclist pulls up from the road behind and they think nothing of it, merely moving over slightly to give the rider more room.

Maria has only a split second to see the gun from the corner of her eye. It's not enough time.

The tire is blown and the car careens into the unwavering ancient trees around them. In a fight between metal and thick, tried and tested wood...the wood won. The engine block protected by the hood crumbles under the force of a speeding object colliding with an immovable object. Flames leap and dance and smoke, warming the frigid air that is pouring through the broken windows.

Howard is disoriented, blood dribbling from glass cuts on his head, a headache pounding against his temples. He doesn't see the hand but he sees the blurry image of his car door being ripped from the twisted connections. He feels the strength of the grip that hauls him from his seat beside his wife. Her name is barely croaked from his lips before his nose snaps under a powerful fist. The roots of his hair scream in protest as he is yanked up to face his attacker.

The winter chill cannot compare to the ice that seeps through his soul at the impossibly familiar face his attacker bears. It's a face almost as familiar to Howard as his own, one he has seen thousands of times as the dark to the most courageous light he has had the pleasure knowing. Under normal circumstances, such a reunion would be a happy occasion. A good man believed long dead is alive, a miracle Howard never imagined was a possibility. Howard, however, is not a genius for show. The dots have connected and the theories confirmed as Barnes raises a metal fist to end his life. Howard doesn't doubt someone took out a hit on him and now his wife is paying for it as well. Fear courses through his blood when he catches gazes with dead blue eyes, no recognition and no morals to stay the wicked hand, but fear is also a terribly effective motivator so Howard tries to reach the man he wished he had known better if only to help a grieving friend.

"Sergeant Barnes?" It's raspy, more questioning than the conviction he had wished to achieve and it does absolutely nothing to stop the fist flying at his face. Yet before the pain of having bone cartilage shoved through his skull and into his brain, Howard sees a brief flicker. Barnes' face remains impenetrable and dead, but the eyes...

Those blue eyes that Howard had been told by many army nurses just sucked you in and held you in a warm embrace, like a sun warmed ocean on a hot summer day, blinked and from the ice that had long since frozen over the ocean, a warm ember flared.

For the briefest of seconds, recognition, confusion, horror found their home in Barnes' eyes. Howard feels hope and sorrow; hope because there was proof that the good man who had walked beside Captain America into the gates of Hell time and again still lived in this frozen monster; sorrow because Howard is taking this knowledge with him to the grave. He is under no illusion that Maria would be allowed to live; it was the passenger side of the car that had the tire blown. Maria would surely have seen their attacker.

Pain flares and fires in his face -I'm sorry, I'm sorry!- images of Maria and Tony flashing through his mind and it hurts! He hears Maria calling for him, the distress and pain oh so clear in her voice, so he opens his mouth to answer, to say her name one last time and tell her everything is going to be o –

The body is dragged and placed back into the driver seat with little gentleness. Maria chokes on her scream, seeing her husband's bloody face and hearing the footsteps crunching in the snow. That sound had never been closer to a Death Knell in all her years of enjoying walks through fresh snow. Maybe it is petty that in her last moments Maria finds herself hating a sound that was once so loved, but she doesn't care. Her husband is dead beside her left, her son in the mansion unaware of what is transpiring lays behind her, and the Grim Reaper stands at her right. Howard always told her never believe the stereotype but seeing the uniform of black and the silver metal, Maria believes that someone must because the evidence is there. She never stops calling for Howard, for Tony, her precious boy, she's sorry, so incredibly sor –

~1~

The Asset continues its mission. It feels nothing about killing the woman, regrets nothing as it steals from a dead man, is not shamed when it shoots public property. It is a perfect unfeeling killing machine. HYDRA's Fist. The Winter Soldier. Tool.

That is what it presents on the outside, for the view of his Handlers. The picture of nothing wrong, of a successful mission.

Inside, something has broken loose. Inside, something is screaming rejection though whether the rejection is for killing the Target and Witness or rejection for what has become of it, the Asset does not know. But clearly it is malfunctioning. The Handlers must be alerted as is protocol, something that it knows has been done many times before even though it can't recall the specific details...

=So why does that cause it body to quake in a bone deep shudder?=

HUMAN! NOT A TOOL! NOT AN IT!

The Asset wants to clutch its-HIS! Head against the pain but showing weakness is forbidden, punishable with the Chair...

NO!NONONONONONO NOT THAT! NOT THAT!

So the Asset ignores the pain as it-he has always done, ignores the voice that screams and rages and fears, because the package must be brought to the Handlers and the malfunction in the Asset must be reported.

I-HE doesn't want to go back to the Chair. However, any discrepancies in the Asset's performance will be noticed and so the voice must be reported.

The Asset mustreport...he must.

The first family is left behind in smoldering ruins as the Asset, their killer, leaves as swiftly as he came, journeying further down the road into the woods. He must meet up with the Handlers and complete the mission.

=Those are the orders that he must obey.= ::

~MOH~

:: In the same moment the Stark family is being destroyed, on the other side of the woods another family is experiencing horror. The family consists of two children, a husband and wife. Both children are not biologically related to the couple, rather, they are foster children. Both girls are only a few years apart and as different as fire and water. The older is of Mexican descent, with hair as black as coal and eyes a normally bright hazel. At twelve she is growing into great beauty but even she acknowledges that her younger foster sister has a greater inner strength. The youngest is as fair as the elder is dark, with gold spun hair and eyes of emerald. At eight, the youngest has seen more hardship then the eldest can imagine. It darkness the bright emerald with every strike of flesh against flesh, of every harsh word spoken in imagined slight, in withheld meals and locked doors. But the youngest smiles still, small bird like smiles that flitter across her face in the presence of the only good in this newest bad, a sister whom has no reason to care yet does still.

The eldest has not been alone as long as the youngest, the horrors and hardships have not sunk their claws so deep yet that the kind heart her mother nourished has frozen and hardened. She nurses the youngest from the burns and cuts, kisses the scars and promises a better tomorrow. She lies and she knows the youngest realizes what she is doing but both take comfort in the fragile bloom called hope.

They have only been a "family" for three months and the hardships far outweigh the good, as the youngest has come to expect, but as long as the girl she is coming to accept as a sister is beside her, this home could be bearable.

It's a lightly snowing night and bitterly cold when the last of the youngest innocence is stripped in all but the most physically precious.

The couple fostering the girls insisted in being called Madam and Sir, and their commands were gospel. Disobedience was disciplined in however they saw fit. The youngest had been in a few homes like theirs, but even she had never seen the true depth of the darkness contained within humanity.

December 16, 1991 started as any other day in that household. The girls cooked and cleaned and took their punishments as silently as possible. However, unlike the day before and all the days since coming into this foster home, there was something different in the air. An extra hint of malice that strangled the air and froze the children's blood. Sir was watching them, as he always did, yet there was something in his eyes...

The eldest pulled the youngest close each time she could. Her mama had told her to be wary of the look in a man's eye that caused a pit seed to settle harsh and cold in her stomach. The attention of a man with that look was never for the good of those in his sight. She had never seen that look before but she knew it instinctively. If her smile was brighter than normal, if her eyes showed her fear, her beautiful, strong sister says nothing.

~MOH~

Night has fallen, winter is setting in its frigid claws, and a blonde child runs for her life through a frozen forest. She shouldn't make noise, but she screams anyway. She can't breathe, but she sprints as fast as her legs can carry her. Tears blur her vision, she can't see the trees and bushes she collides with, but she runs because stopping means being caught and that means dying.

Above her grief she registers Sir's angry curses and Madam's shrill shrieks. She acknowledges but all she hears is her sister's screams. Her shelter is gone. The sister she never realized she needed, the home she had searched for since birth, snuffed like one of Madam's candles.

IT'S NOT FAIR!Her heart is broken, her Home is lost, and all she can do is run, run like a coward, run until she is caught. Maybe then the nightmare would end and she can go Home.

She is jarred from her despair as her foot catches, twists, pitches her body forward onto the frigid blacktop of a mountain road. The points of contact on her body flame in pain with road burn. Those pains are miniscule however, when the cramps set in. She feels like her legs and sides are being pulled and pushed with white hot knives and she can't breathe. She knows there is a word for what she's feeling, the inability to draw breath, panic swelling in her small body. Lungs hitching, body and soul aching in tandem, she has never felt smaller. Like she is nothing but an ant waiting to be crushed under a giant's boot. Her limbs refuse to respond, spasms wriggling her muscles against her will. She knows she must keep running, she's not safe yet, but she can't.

It hurts.

She's DONE. Done being the strong one. Done putting on a brave face because crying gets punishment and no food and it's already been so long since she last ate. She wants to be safe.

Why can't I be saved for once?!

Tiny wisps of steam rise and curl in the cold winter air from her overheated body and feeling more like an orphan than ever before, Emma cries. Great breathless sobs that sound both wet and raspy as drool mixes with snot and her overexerted lungs struggle with the demands her emotions place on them. She can't. She's eight and too young and why isn't she enough? Why?

WHYWHYWHYWHYWHYWH-

The road under her vibrates and the rumbling purr of an engine grows in the quiet night. Emma knows she's in the middle of a road, should get out of the way or get run over, but she can't move.

She can't move and she doesn't care.

Not anymore.

Dead, shattered green eyes crack open against the crusted salt and stare at the approaching light.

No more...please...

~1~

The Asset sees the obstacle in the road, dead eyes tracking as the motorcycle swerves around, close enough that the heat and speed ruffles the dirty gold strands.

Unfeeling blue locks with broken green and the Voice. Shuts. Up.

The connection is lost in the instant it's made but the effect spreads. A twisting churning mix of warmth spreads through the ice, familiarity and betrayal and hope and sadness and confusion mix in angry flares. The Asset doesn't understand what is happening, can't comprehend what it was that passed between the child and it-no-himself but it is important.

Possibly more important than completing the Mission?

Hearing the Voice calmly question instead of screaming brought the Asset's attention back to the questions and feelings he has been experiencing since the confrontation with the Prime Target. He had been shocked, though due to his training his mission had not been compromised, that the Target knew him, had named him even, something the Asset had never realized he was missing until being presented with the knowledge of something BEFORE. There had also been a sense of familiarity, the type of which he experienced when around his handlers or on missions. He knew the Target like he knew the different spots on the body most reactive to pain. That shouldn't be possible as he would have been informed of any prior encounters. It was vital information that could sway the mission into success or failure. If the Target knew the Asset, then the probability of the Target knowing how the Asset worked increased. These sensations and facts lining up in his head are breaking apart everything he's known.

Now there was the tiny body in the road behind him and he couldn't understand why a child, a little blonde girl, hammered in the breaking core of his programming. He didn't know how or why the child struck him, and not even the Voice seemed to understand what was happening. They just knew it was important.

What are you going to do about it?

=Nichego. Missiya dolzhna byt' zavershena.= [Nothing. The Mission must be completed.]

SCREW THE MISSION! Whoever that little girl is, she's important and you. WILL. NOT. LEAVE HER. Turn your ass around now or you will always regret it.

=Vlastnaya.= [Bossy.]

If being bossy with myself means we turn this bike around, so be it.

The Asset paused for a long moment, the blurs speeding by slowly becoming recognizable as trees and bushes as the motorcycle slowed down then finally stops. All is quiet save for the calm breaths of the Asset, the clicking of the hot engine settling in the cold air, and the natural sounds of the forest around him. The program wars with the Voice, the first with fear while the second battles with a pleasant energized burning sensation. For long moments of time, the two waring forces are evenly matched, trading arguments seamlessly and at the speed of thought. Maybe it would have continued for hours, this back and forth struggle, until the Handlers came looking for their Tool. In some other universe, maybe he wouldn't feel conflicted because there wouldn't be a child on the road hammering at something he doesn't remember ever feeling before. This is not that universe. In this universe, the Asset is conflicted and neither decision seems the best course of action and so he waits, the idling engine vibrating almost soothingly beneath him.

The scales tip up and down in his head, just waiting for the balance to tip in favor of either side.

The scales crash down on one side.

The Asset had caught a sound on the very edge of his hearing, a shrill, soft sound unlike anything he had grown accustomed to as he waited. It was swiftly followed by another sound, almost overlapping the first. Either sound would have tipped the balance, but both together? His blood boiled as he had never remembered feeling before and the Voice was shrieking profanities. They knew those sounds. Were heartbreaking intimate with those sound.

Muffled screams of agony.

Metal striking against flesh.

Loose gravel and forest debris rocketed from underneath the tires as the motorcycle was gunned into a 180 turn from a complete standstill.

=NO! NOT THIS TIME!=

~MOH~

The brief warmth from the motorcycle was soothing against her chilled skin, loosening the goose-pimpled flesh from its tight frigid hold around her cuts. Emma stretched her neck a little bit, hoping to catch more of the cold's opposite, and opened her eyes, not really knowing when she had closed them to begin with, and saw blue. She had never seen a blue that particular shade except in the shadows snow hills cast, more grey than blue but intense in either case. Emma is also fairly certain she's seen more life in a dead fish's eyes than the rider had in his. It was like how she imagined space would be: a void so cold nothing survived. Then there was a spark, a flare that blazed like a supernova, before being sucked away once more into the void. Gone as soon as it lived. Emma is only eight but she knows something beautiful when she sees it and knows when something is broken because she is that and the man, the dead eyed rider, is both. A beautiful, broken man.

If she had tears left, Emma would cry for him because the spark spoke of a good, kind soul but the void smothered it with a darkness too deep to escape from. Her Home couldn't escape the void, now this rider has the void seemingly against his soul. As it was, all Emma could do was listen to the rapidly fading engine growl as the man drove away, miss the warmth of the engine and the spark that flared in his eyes, and shiver in cold fear at the approaching footsteps.

She wished the rider hadn't swerved around her. Death by speed collision sounded faster than whatever Sir and Madam planned for her now that she ran.

She's also glad he didn't because then she might not have gotten to see his eyes. They were very lovely eyes despite the death in them. Something devastatingly pretty to take with her instead of her sister's sheet white face, slack and frozen forever in horrified pain.

The engine is no longer discernible on the wind when Sir's large, rough hands grab her by the hair and jacket to drag her back into the woods. Emma struggles, every inch a fighter's soul, since she doesn't want to die even though she also does because then at least in death she is no longer hurt by the world. It's a token fight though. She's too cold, too weary, too much in pain to push enough against the hands of Sir to escape. That doesn't mean she rolls over. Sir is bleeding from multiple scratches on any patch of skin she could reach, his left eye swollen shut from where her nails came dangerously close to gauging his eye out. The bitter copper taste of blood lingers in her mouth from the chunks of flesh she had bitten off, hanging like a pitbull from wherever her teeth sank in. Her own blood mixes with the taste, several teeth loose from his fist and the split in her lip throbbing in time with her rabbit-fast heartbeat. It felt like every inch is one massive bruise but Emma won't scream, promises herself that she won't give them the satisfaction. They already heard her sister's screams, they won't get Emma's too.

Madam gags Emma with a familiar blood stained scarf and Emma wants to puke, her stomach twists in preparation but she can't because there is no where for the stomach acids to go once it's in her mouth except maybe through her nose. It's a force of will and Emma has always been exceedingly stubborn. The worn winter coat Emma had put on earlier that evening is ripped from her body, her shirt following shortly after with the sleeves being used for rope to bind her hands behind her back. The cold makes her skin drum-tight and does little to actually numb the pain of bruises and cuts. Her pants stay on.

Then she sees a flicker of silver as the moon catches on metal and there is no suppressing the full body flinch no matter how weak it makes her seem; Sir's belt buckle left scars.

Emma screams by the third lash.

~1~

The girl is gone from the road by the time the Asset makes it back to that point, however, the tracks are obvious and her screams are louder. If he had any true memory from BEFORE, he would most likely be thanking an invisible God for making the motorcycle one of those all-terrain types. Following the tracks through root infested woods was hard enough without really having to worry about crashing. In any case, it might not have mattered what type of bike it was, since the girl hadn't gone far. Or, as the scene indicated, dragged far.

The Asset has always been a creature of calculation and instinct, trained to react to all outside variables in the course of searching for the optimal path towards completing his mission. He cannot recall ever reacting based on emotions though the Voice is vehement that they have and that most times it was good. Whatever the case may have been once upon a forgotten time, the Asset lives in the now and his now is narrowed to the leather belt with a wet rust colored buckle swung high above an average man's head, pausing just long enough to give false hope to the child being beaten.

It's mostly over in seconds.

The gun is out in one smooth motion, a lifetime of training and practice give the action an air of mysticism as the weapon seemingly leaps from nothing into his hand. The belt hand is the first to go; the woman's dominate hand reaching for a gun at her waistband is the second. Each shot he sees the child flinch, but she has stopped screaming, replacing the muffled shrieks with whimpered groans. Now its the adults that are screaming, turning the air vile with the curses that spew from them. The bike lays on its side, melting the snow with its heat. He doesn't recall the leap from bike to ground nor the sound of the bike as it slid under its own momentum. It is an action he has done thousands of times before (the only explanation for why he registers the sounds and movements as familiar and therefore ignorable). The little girl is curled in a tight ball to his left and he knows how uncomfortable that position is on the arms, shoulders, and spine. Her blood runs sluggishly down the blue-white of the skin of her back, vermillion flowers slowly blooming in the snow under her.

She's cradled gently in his arms, wrapped in his outer armor before the Asset has a chance to think about the consequences of her blood being found on his body. The Voice is whispering now, comforting her against the broken sobs continually ripping through her body and tearing open closing wounds. Confusion is definitely the most prominent emotion pervading the Asset right now. Indignation and fear are there as well because he has no control over his body but somehow...rocking the fragile body is...good. He doesn't care at the moment, though he registers all the same, the man and woman making their escape. They won't get far. All that matters is the blonde girl quivering still but calmer in his arms, those infernal green eyes locked on his own grey ice.

"Pochemu net nikakogo strakha v vashikh glazakh?" [Why is there no fear in your eyes?] The harsh Russian clip to the words is softened by the almost silent volume he spoke them in and the fact that he muttered the question into the lanky, sweat and dirt crusted hair. It's a legitimate question, one the Asset would never have the courage to ask the Handlers, but that does not stop him in this moment from asking because the one he is addressing is a child, not trained in any way that could terminate him (though he had noticed the status of the whipper's face, arms, and chest, somehow it doesn't bother him but rather causes a sensation not unlike he feels when accomplishing a tricky shot to take out a Target. He has no name for the feeling and the Voice is too occupied to question). There is no fear in her eyes when she looks at him; only the lingering shadows from her fear of punishment. She should be terrified of him. Yet she is not. =Why?=

Obvious too, is the fact that she has no idea what he asked. Yet, that in itself is...okay. For so long all he has spoken has been Russian, as demanded by his handlers. Now the language slips as easily from his tongue as water over oil and what falls isn't a mission report. It's new and a question without fear of reprimand and all utterly his. Had there been a mirror and had he the knowledge to understand, the Asset would see the spark that had flared so briefly on the road behind him has grown, fanning and roaring into a forest fire. There is no going back, not to his Handlers and not to HYDRA, not when this tiny enigma of sunshine and jade is trusting a killer to comfort and protect her. It would be so easy to snap her neck and leave her body for the hungry winter scavengers because NO WITNESSES; his fingers twitch with the left hand plates hissing almost inaudibly with the motion. Then she breathes, a warm puff of air against his throat where her head rests as she dozes, trust screaming from every action and reaction and he. Just. Can't. Because there is a warmth expanding from the inside that has nothing to do with physical temperature and all to do with the girl child whom has managed with just a look to do something not even HYDRA completely managed to accomplish in all his years as their FIST: break him to her will.

So the Asset sits in the season of his namesake, unaffected by the cold and utterly at the disposal of a tiny civilian, and listens to her faltering story. When she speaks of her Sister-Home, summer blue and Irish red swims in his mind, fleeting like a Mayfly but solid and real. The pride and love is evident and he wants her to always sound like a smile. He can't remember the last time he wanted something. She speaks of Sir and Madam, of how they are not the first nor will they be the last, and he thinks of his Handlers, how similar the lifestyle is between the monster and the innocent. The fire explodes inside him, burning and consuming. He relishes in the heat, in the anger so different from the cool indifferent ice that is his reality. She talks as the living dead, no tone or inflection, as she describes the horrors she heard coming from her Sister-Home, the images burned forever of the body she had glimpsed in her escape. A broken, bloody doll stripped of her innocence and left discarded like yesterday's trash.

It happens too fast for even the Asset to register. One moment, he is listening and understanding, the next he is being swept under a nuclear explosion of RAGE and FURY. The Asset remembers nothing else except blackness rising, swallowing him whole and red-rimmed trusting green eyes.

~MOH~

Emma curls as tight as she can to the heater warmth of the dead eyed man, not caring that he had shot Sir and Madam without remorse, that the metal arm of his left hand could crush her like one of her old foster father's toothpicks. He's warm and he saved her and he's listening which is the greatest part in Emma's eyes. No one listens to her. At least, not the adults at the orphanage or her social worker or her teachers. Not truly listened. This man did. He gave every word tumbling from Emma's lips the utmost attention, like they meant something far more. For that alone, Emma could ignore the strange smell of him.

Really, he smelled both bad and good. The sour scent of sweat that oddly enough always smelled like Mexican rice to Emma; bitter nose-wrinkling scent of melted plastic and rubber; leather and copper and another acrid scent she can't really identify. But underneath all the bad, he smelled faintly like autumn leaves and warm sweaters which is really a scent! Warm and fuzzy and gentle. Emma unashamedly buries her cold nose further into the polyester undershirt, chasing the good scents under the bad scents. It's comforting in a way Emma doesn't recall ever experiencing before.

Then Emma tells him of Jolene, her Home that was taken from her, the story spewing from her like vomit does when she's sick and something in the dead eyed man shifts. Those large arms that had been holding her gently, protecting her, tightened to almost painful levels and his whole body starts to shudder around her. Emma saw a classmate seizure once, all flailing limbs and spittle and rolling eyes. Maybe that's what he would be doing if Emma wasn't curled against him. It feels like eternity before he stills and Emma is grateful because he was starting to scare her, but there is something different now. He doesn't feel the same. Before he gave off a feeling of death, of predatory stillness just waiting for the prey to cross his path. Now...Emma isn't sure how to describe it. It's like life entering the world in spring, something waking up that had been buried for months. A large calloused palm cards through her hair before she's being swept up and up and up as he unfurls from the sitting crouch he had taken.

Emma remains silent though her tongue burns with questions. His eyes hold her tongue.

He places her against the wheel of his motorcycle closest to the engine, letting the warmth of it wash over her. Emma stares. Before his eyes had been like black ice, clear and treacherous and cold, unfeeling silver. Now, Emma has never seen a kinder blue. It's blue cornflowers in spring and summer oceans on a bright day, blue bird feathers from the underbelly. There's a storm raging in the corners though, something he's keeping back from her.

"Stay here. I'll come back for ya." There's a faint accent she can't place but she's heard before. "No matter what ya hear, you gotta stay put." She reaches for his hand, fear suddenly coursing through her, he can't leave her!

"NO!"

He smiles, a small upward twitch like he hasn't smiled in a very long time and has forgotten how, and cards warm fingers through her hair again. Calming her.

"I'll be back, Ozhestochennyye malen'kiy lebed'."

Then, he's gone.

Emma had never really been scared of the woods before but this night? She huddles as close to the engine as she can, focusing on the clicking within as the components cool and settle, her nose buried in the armor jacket to chase the scent of autumn leaves and sweaters. She hums a lullaby song she had heard in a new movie that a friend's mother had taken her and Jolene to see, the words comforting and fitting. A security blanket against the screams echoing off the winter frozen trees.

And any star I choose

Watches over me

So I know I'm not alone

When I'm here on my own

Sleep takes her after the fifth loop, the armor jacket warm and heavy around her. She's safe and her star is coming back, her very own blue bird of happiness.

~MOH~

She doesn't wake up until much later, when he is walking up to the front porch of a house she's never seen before. It looks like one of those old Victorian era homes she had seen in magazines (and absolutely loves because it's a type of house that screams hidden passageways and secret rooms she can hide away in) with some kind of light colored paint and a red door. The same red as her blue bird's star and now she is even more in love with the place. There's a sign that she can't quite make out in the dark so she turns her head to ask and stops. Because while she can't read the sign, the porch light is enough to see the blood splattered on his face and clumped in his hair. He had made some effort to clean off the once red now flaky brown, but smears were still let behind.

This is where the nuns at the Catholic orphanage would tell her to run and get away because she would be the next body. Emma has never been normal though for all that she wishes she was since then maybe, she would be worthy of a forever family. So she says nothing though she knows her eyes tell him that she sees what is there. Instead she works a hand free and points, the cold already biting into her warm flesh.

"What does the sign say?"

His eyes flick to the side, hummingbird quick before returning to her.

"Saighdiúir tite Women's Sanctuary."

"What does that mean? It's really pretty! What language is it?" His eyes crinkle at the corners and that twitch smile is back and Emma realizes she's making him laugh. Her smile is bright with happiness because the spark is now a fire and that is so much better than dead fish.

"Irish Gaelic. Means fallen soldier." There is a rumble in his chest when he speaks, vibrating out against Emma's skin from the roughness. She really likes that. Like cuddling up to a purring cat.

"Why are we here?"

"Can't take you. Not safe."

….Okay...what? Emma froze for the moments it took to process, then she's moving, wriggling and twisting and almost causing him to drop her until she's at eye level at which point she settles. He's wide eyed, pupils pinpricks in ice and completely focused on Emma's own blazing green.

"NO! YOU CAN'T LEAVE!"

He can't leave her! She's lost Jolene and she's never been wanted before and he LISTENS! He can't...he..he...can't...there's a thumb, cold metal and impossible smooth, wiping beneath her eyes and collecting the tears she hadn't realized were there. That makes it all the worse because this move is always in the movies and Emma knows what it means, that he won't stay. He'll leave like everyone always does. She cries harder and it's ridiculous because she should have cried herself dry by this point but somehow there always seems to be more.

"Wh-Why?!"

"Must. Handlers..will find. Kill. Make Asset kill...you." Emma doesn't stop crying. She doesn't know what an asset is but it sounds like his name and that is no name she's ever heard. She doesn't like it. At all. It's cold and hard and unfeeling and everything he had been but now isn't.

The metal hand (which is awesome when she thinks about it) slides up to the back of her head and pulls her face into the crook of his neck. Soft murmurs in that kind of harsh sounding language he used earlier rolls in her ear and she can't understand what he says but she recognizes a phrase he's called her before. As her tears dry up and sleep pulls at her eyes, she accepts the inevitable. She can't keep him with her, but she does want something to have, to remember that this night happened.

"What is that phrase? Ouch-star-stalone my-slinky lee-bit...?" He snorts. Honest to heaven snorts like a bull pig and it draws a giggle from her, tired sure but she's laughing and that is rare for Emma in and of itself. He seems surprised himself, blinking wide in somewhat concealed shock. Emma wonders if its been even longer for him since he laughed.

"Ozhestochennyye malen'kiy lebed'?" She nods. It sounds better coming from him, rough and worn. "Fierce little swan." and that is what she'll take with her. The twitch smile and the crinkle corner eyes and a last name that will make her a person. She'll be Emma Swan, fierce and proud for her blue bird.

"How do you say blue jay in that language?" She can't make out his expression. Maybe he's startled or maybe he's mad. For several long moments he contemplates her, not saying a word which Emma isgetting the distinct impression is the norm.

"Siniy soyka." He walks her through the pronunciation – Sin-knee-yee soy-kah – and it is so much easier than what he's dubbed her! If he must leave, she's gonna send him off with a blessing. Emma takes his face in her hands, makes him focus on her (not that he's stopped), gets him to understand that she is being very serious and speaks.

"May God bless you and keep you, His grace shine all around you. His Angels before and behind, above and below you. Stay safe, my siniy soyka." It was a blessing the nuns gave her every time she went to a new home. Now she will give it to her star, to protect him where he goes, against the monsters in his eyes and the shadows snapping at his back.

Emma doesn't imagine the tear that falls down his scruffy cheek. If her arms squeeze around his neck in a fruitless attempt to fuse with him, he says nothing, merely circles her tighter with the tree trunks he calls arms.

He's gone as quickly as he had come and Emma watches, standing on the porch in a one armed jacket that hangs around her ankle, until she can't distinguish him from the shadows. She's not sure how long she stood there but eventually the cold chased her to the star red door which opens to a silver haired woman hastily tying a patchwork robe.

Later Emma will wonder how that night wasn't Christmas or Christmas Eve. So many miracles had occurred. The woman, Ms. Charlotte "Call me Charlie" Barnes, was one of the single most kind women Emma ever knew. If her age hadn't been against them, Ms. Charlie always assured Emma she would have adopted her. As it was, Emma had remained in Ms. Charlie's care for the best three months of her childhood, helping decorate for Christmas with the other women seeking sanctuary, and hearing stories of Christmas' past. Ms. Charlie's favorite stories were of her brothers and sisters, of the misadventures they had gotten into in 1930s and 40s Brooklyn. How her blood brother was her protector and her adopted brother was his driving wind. The two never separate from the other. Emma loved those stories the best, along with the other women, and Ms. Charlie never seemed to run out of fresh ones. But the one tale Emma never tired of, was the story Ms. Charlie told of her brothers, of how the one fought tooth and nail through enemy territory to rescue the other on the slightest chance he was alive and when the other was found and rescued, went back into the jaws of Hell to protect the brother reborn, losing his own life in the process. Emma could hear the pride and the sorrow, the overwhelming love and grief. Those stories become Emma's comfort throughout the years, repeating under her breath in unwelcoming houses the tales of bravery and mischief, love and sacrifice.

When the police come, Ms. Charlie and the women of the sanctuary stand guard over Emma. Protecting her like they wished they had been. Sir and Madam were discovered and Jolene un-earthed from the grave someone had dug for her. Emma says nothing to the police about the black polyester shirt covering her sister's modesty. Claims innocent ignorance to the identity of her latest foster parents killer. She only recounts her escape and running to the road, how she followed it until she reached the Sanctuary. The whip marks came before her escape. She never saw Sir and Madam after she ran. The police detectives cannot refute her story. Ms. Charlie is allowed custody until her social worker can be contacted and investigated on charges of accomplice to child abuse. The story is big in the news but Ms. Charlie is very sneaky about keeping her away. Emma doesn't really mind. She's not going back. Her star made sure of that.

(Emma discovers years later what her siniy soyka had done to Sir and Madam. How Sir had his hands, eyes, ears and tongue removed, the wounds cauterized to prevent massive amounts of bleeding. Cause of death was he chocked on his own organ, which had been cut off and shoved down his throat. Madam also had her hands, eyes, ears and tongue removed, but her feet were missing as well and her heart carved from her chest. That last one had been the cause of her death. The police never found her heart. Both had been hung by their entrails above Jolene's grave, penance and revenge all at once, for the twelve year old girl violated and killed too young. Emma thinks Jolene would have been happy with Sir's and Madam's punishment; would have liked Emma's Siniy Soyka.)

Then Neal breaks her love and her baby boy shatters her heart and all she has left are stories and an ugly yellow bug. She has no where to turn, no money to get her anywhere. But an old number to the kindest woman she knows gives her hope, and Ms. Charlie's connections get her a job. Best of all, the job is in Tallahassee, Florida.

Neal broke her love, but she still has hope that he will come back for her. Emma hates herself for that hope.

Doesn't stop her from going.

It was the best decision she could have made.

~1~

They catch him three months after and the punishment is as bad as he imagined. Not that he remembers those three months of freedom or the reason why it was free to begin with. The Asset has no feelings. The Asset does not need freedom. The Asset is HYDRA's weapon and weapons are unthinking tools.

It is put back into the tube, a mask sitting unnaturally over its mouth, and broken jade eyes watching it from the icy darkness.