Title: Fall Like a Thunderbolt

Summary: Being the Big Bad Wolf had never been in her ten-year-plan. Maybe she just hadn't been paying attention to the cards in her hand. Either way, in the end, she was the Big Bad Wolf, and she was here to blow some houses down. Possible future Bucky/OC.

A/N: Hi, all. I haven't written fanfiction for an audience in a few years, but this is an idea that I've been tossing around in my head for awhile, so I thought I might as well, right? I will try to update on a regular schedule, but I am a student, so, yanno, there's that. I was debating putting this under CA or the Avengers, and I'm going with CA because, at least for the first leg of this journey, it's going to be centered on CA:TWS. I'm juggling the possibility for Bucky/OC in this story, but at the current moment, it's on the backburner (and if it's there, it'll be a slow burning thing... ba-dum-tss).

Just a note: I'll be using Roman numerals as a numbering system (with the exception of this chapter, the prologue, which uses 'n' for the Latin "nulla". It means "none" and was used by computists and some ancient Romans in lieu of zero, as it did not exist within the Roman numeral system. At least, according to Wiki, anyway. If it's true, fun fact of the day; if it's not, well, it's a technicality, right?)

And another note: I'm starting this off as 'T' but may end up raising the rating to 'M' later on. If I do so, I'll give a little notice. I'm just projecting, with the track of future chapters, that I may need to do that.

And without further ado, I present: Fall Like a Thunderbolt.


. N .

. CHOICES .

"LET YOUR PLANS BE DARK AND IMPENETRABLE AS NIGHT, AND WHEN YOU MOVE, FALL LIKE A THUNDERBOLT." - SUN TZU


"Can I help you?"

The woman froze and looked to her right, seeing a middle-aged man behind a desk, eyebrows raised at her appearance. His eyebrows nearly disappeared when he noticed the bruises that covered her face and neck. "I'm looking for someone," she told him, and when he just stared at her blankly, she forced her bottom lip to quiver and tears to spring to her eyes. "Please," she croaked, making her voice shake. "He's the only one who can help me."

His eyes softened, and he directed her to the back.

The woman walked toward it, glad that it was nightfall and the gym was mostly empty. It would make everything so much easier, in the end. It would have been better if she could have managed to catch him alone, but she supposed that the only place that was possible was his apartment, which was much more dangerous than anywhere she could have approached him in public.

She came to the back room, paused in front of the door, and cocked her head. This could all go very, very wrong.

It won't, she promised herself. I won't let it. If Plan A didn't work, well, then, she'd just go through with Plan B. Plan B was what she'd been told to do, anyway.

Both plans would keep them safe.

The woman nudged open the cracked door, shutting it softly behind her, and surveyed the room. The man she'd been looking for was shirtless, soaked in sweat, and beating the shit out of a heavy bag.

She took a minute to admire him. His muscles had muscles, and they were gleaming with sweat. She doubted he had any body fat at all, and it would be in the low fifth percentile if he did at all. Work, she reminded herself, and smirked as she took a few steps forward.

"Steven Grant Rogers," she said loudly. The man in question froze immediately, his fist suspended in air a few mere centimeters from the bag. "You are a hard man to find, my friend."

The blond turned around and eyed her, somewhat skeptically. "I'd appreciate it if you told Fury I don't need another handler, ma'am," Steve informed her politely before turning around and starting up his strikes again. She smiled at how naive he was. Endearing, really.

"I don't doubt that, Steve," the woman said with a smirk. "But I'm not your handler."

He was slowing his punches, and she continued, "In fact, I'm not even an agent within S.H.I.E.L.D."

Every muscle in his back, neck, and shoulders tensed, and his fist stopped mere centimeters before the bag. Steve turned around to face her again, face wary and set. Better, she thought. She couldn't work with a blindly trusting puppet, and there were so many layers to this problem. So many culprits, so many sources of blame, she wondered if there wasn't anyone in their world without blood on their hands.

"Then who are you?"

"My name is Outis," she replied. "Outis I am called by mother, father, and by all my comrades." Steve's face scrunched up in confusion, and the woman sighed. "Not a friend of the classics, are you?"

His face scrunched up again, and as he realized what she meant, he scowled. "Nobody?"

With a demure smile, the woman told him, "When I became useful to my handlers, they erased anything and everything that proved I'd ever existed except for a birth certificate and produced a fake death certificate for me. So, according to the US government, I'm not anyone at all."

"Who are you, according to you?"

She forced amusement onto her face as she deflected, "That's not the question you should really be asking, is it?"

His eyebrows furrowed and his shoulders tensed. He didn't know the answer, he couldn't even begin to fathom it, but he knew what was coming was bad. Pretty quick for a naive little soldier born in the twentieth century, the woman thought as he opened his mouth. "Who are your… handlers?"

"An enemy you've all thought was long gone. But, you know, when you chop off one of its heads, in its place will grow two more-"

Steve's face lost all color and horror overtook his face. "No. No, that's not possible."

"Look around you, Steve," the monster said, raising her arms by her side. "Everything around you-the technology, the scientific innovations, the societal standards-all of it was impossible. Until it wasn't." The blond shook his head and narrowed his eyes, and the woman continued, "H.Y.D.R.A. is alive, Rogers. And it's thriving."

He launched himself at her with a yell, raising his arm to punch her. She ducked under that one, wove under the cross-body that followed, but was hit by the hook he aimed at her chin.

The woman shook her head and back-pedaled quickly, weaving through and redirecting his attacks. "Do you want to kill me, Rogers?"

"You're going to tell me everything!" Steve yelled, looking very much like he did, in fact, want to kill her.

"Maybe I will, maybe I won't," she sang lightly right before her fist connected with his cheek. Muted pain glossed over her knuckles, but the dazed look on Steve's face as his head snapped to the side was worth it-it said he hadn't expected her punch to actually affect him much. It was replaced by anger again after a few seconds, and she was avoiding another one of his hits. She grabbed his wrist and spun so she was behind him. The woman's elbow connected hard with the back of his neck, and he went down.

But Steve took her with him. As they grappled, the woman explained, "I want H.Y.D.R.A. dead as much, if not more, than you. But if you want any information on them over the past seventy years, you're going to help me do something first."

He got her on the floor, a forearm held firmly against her throat-not crushing, but it was certainly a possibility. She could have flipped them, could have suffocated him, could have done a million things. But she recognized the move as an ceasefire. "Why would you join them if you want them dead?"

"Have you heard of the saying 'entre la espada y la pared?" she asked. He shook his head, eyes narrowed into slits. "It's a Spanish phrase meaning 'between the sword and the wall'. Has a little more urgency than its English counterpart, I think."

Steve interrupted, irate. "What's your point?"

Her lips curled back as she said, "I was between the sword and the wall, Rogers. I could get speared by it and die, or I could wield it and wait until I could put them between the sword and the wall."

She flipped them then and ground his face into the floor as she ground her teeth. She lowered her mouth to his ear and said, "Now, are you going to help me or not?"