A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE
Prologue: Winter is Coming"Get into the HYDRA base, they said. It'll be easy, they said…" a girl with dark hair growled as she trudged through the snow. "Easy mission, my ass." She snapped at nothing as she stopped walking to kick the snow at her feet with a frustrated huff.
Charlene Barnes was a respected agent of SHEILD, respected as in do not ever send her on a kiddy-mission. A mission oh-so like the one she was currently on. She was going to have words with Fury when she got home, many, many words…
Speaking of which…
"Barnes! Come in! Charlie I know you can hear me, pick up!" her rather annoying uncle barked through her communication watch. Charlene had half a mind to just cut the thing off and let Hawkeye talk to nothing for hours, but then she'd get a lecture from him later how it's 'impolite' to hang up on your uncles.
She pressed the answer button on her watch and snapped, "What?"
"No need for attitude little lady! Just checkin' up on my favorite niece is all, how's your first solo goin' Charlie?" Charlene glared at the screen of her watch, where Hawkeye's smug smirking face was displayed on the small screen. He knew full well she hated the nickname Charlie, which only made it more amusing to him.
"It's going fine Uncle Clint, but it would be going better if you didn't blow my cover five-minutes in." she replied, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Well I'll leave you to it Charlie, I'll tell your mom you said hi. Good luck kiddo!" And with that Hawkeye disconnected and Charlene rolled her eyes at him. The fact he felt the need to check on her was a gut-punch in itself.
"Kiddo? I'm sixteen." She grumbled to herself. Everyone at SHEILD and the Avengers saw her as their little baby. But she wasn't a kid anymore, she wanted to be treated like just another agent. Better yet, the Best agent. Just like her mom was, or would use to be once Charlene filled that role.
As the daughter of Agent Natasha Romanoff, and former fugitive Bucky Barnes, she had somewhat of a big shadow to get out of. And she planned on doing that by being virtually perfect at everything she did, it was a pain in the ass but at least in the long run she'd be thought of as an equal to her mother and her team.
And to make matters worse she got partnered with her idiot of a brother who just happened to hate her guts with a burning passion. Did she hate him back? Of course not! Did she wish he didn't hate her? Also yes! But people in Hell want Ice-Water so she learned to deal with it.
Charlene stopped her inner rant once she spotted her target; a large white cluster of buildings made to look like an army base sat behind the bunch of bushes she currently hid behind. Taking a pair of tundra-camouflaged binoculars from her white parka, Charlene scanned the perimeter looking for her target. She suddenly spotted him; a big burly sack of a man with a scar across his face and a gratuitous amount of facial tattoos. She even spotted one that looked like a snake.
He was identified as White Fang; that was original. It was probably a suicide mission to bring this guy in alone, but she was willing to do whatever it took. As much as she strove for perfection, it was never good enough for the Avengers or her parents, so she took her first solo mission as soon as the opportunity came. She was ready, no matter what the Avengers thought.
Alright, time to catch a criminal.
Charlene's hand drifted to the pistol at her belt, screwing on the suppressor and carefully aiming it up towards Fang… only to find him no longer there. "Damn… where are you?" she mumbled to herself. Charlene undid her tightly woven braid, letting her dark hair fall down her back before braiding it again and moving from her hiding spot to pursue her target.
Getting past guards was easy, since the base was long abandoned until Fang found his way here to hide like a coward with at least a dozen body-guards. Speaking of which…
Three bullets shot from her gun, downing an equal amount of HYDRA soldiers. Charlene smirked as she blew the smoke away from the barrel before running ahead, shooting down two more bodyguards in her wake.
By the time she'd located a map of the building, she felt like shooting that too. The thing was near impossible to understand, not to mention it was all in Norwegian or something, the only language she didn't know.
This was stupid, how was she supposed to find White Fang without knowing where he was? Or even where she was!
A small shadow figure darted to the side just out of the corner of her eye, catching Charlene's attention. Her head immediately shot up at the possible attacker, grabbing her pistol and aiming it at where she saw the shadow pass. When she saw nothing she still did not lower her weapon, instead Charlene took a tentative few steps forward, having a growing suspicion that White Fang could've been the figure she saw.
She'd followed her instincts until they lead her down to the subbasement floors, many of them being used for storage but rumors among other SHEILD trainees stated they were sometimes used for human mutation experiments and horrible torture.
Charlene held her pistol with an even tighter grip as she descended into the shadows of the basement, going solely on the gut-wrenching dread that began to gather in her stomach. She felt like she shouldn't have been there, like she was trespassing.
Before she could turn back and forget about her stupid suspicion, a small sound reached her ears.
It sounded like a child crying, weeping silently in the dark with no one there. Charlene tried to shrug it off as her imagination but then she heard it again. A little kid crying in the pitch blackness, clear as day.
"Hello?" she stupidly called out against her better judgment. Most of her brain was screaming at her to turn back and keep focusing on the mission, but a small part of her wanted to investigate the weeping child. Maybe they were a prisoner, or worse a test subject. Perhaps those rumors of human experimentations were true, and this child was just a helpless victim.
Morals winning over logic, Charlene reached into her parka and pulled out one of her survival flares and lit it, the dark basement suddenly flooded with bright red light.
Her dark eyes spotted the source of the tiny cries; a little girl with black hair spread out across her shoulders in all manner of directions, her hands had her legs pulled up to her chest, she had her face buried in her knees as she cried. Charlene then realized why; the little girl had blood gathered in a pool at her feet, a horrible gash on her arm most likely the source of it.
The girl didn't seem to have noticed her presence yet, she was too busy bleeding out and crying about it. Charlene set the flare down next to the girl and knelt down to her eye-level with her. She gently shook her shoulder, "Shh, it's alright." She soothed, getting the girl's attention. Her head shot up revealing her tear-stained and bruised face along with her dark eyes wide with fear.
She immediately scooted away from Charlene, a look of terror on her little face; she had to be no older than four, maybe five. Charlene took some gauze and water from her parka and reached out to the girl, only for her to flinch and hold her arms up as if afraid the SHEILD agent would strike her.
"It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you," she spoke softly, setting the medical supplies down and grabbing something else from her pack. She held it out for the girl to take; a shiny red apple she'd been saving for when the mission was over or if she simply had the munchies.
The little girl opened her eyes and stared at the fruit, looking from it then to Charlene and back again, like she was testing to see if this was real and not a trick in which her punishment would be another beating.
Charlene just smiled gently again, still holding out the apple. The little girl moved slowly at first, reaching out to take it, then within seconds she snatched it away and held it close just in case Charlene planned to steal it back. The kid took a big bite of the fruit and smiled when the flavor hit her tongue after weeks of malnourishment.
While she was focused on her apple, Charlene took up the gauze and water again, tearing a piece of the cloth and soaking it with water. She gently took the girl's injured arm and dabbed the gauze over the dried blood, making the girl wince again but not pull away. The SHEILD agent gave her another smile before continuing to clean the wound and wrap it in fresh gauze.
Once she finished the girl had reduced her apple to a fruitless core on the floor. "Can you walk?" Charlene asked. The little girl nodded and let the agent help her to her feet. She pressed the call button on Fury's contact number and waited for her watch to patch him through.
"Barnes! What are you doing? You're supposed to be in the middle of an important search-and-destroy mission, not calling…"
"I know Fury, I ran into a little obstacle," she explained as she tilted the screen down so Fury could see the little girl, who was currently burying her little face into her fur parka.
"What's a kid doing in White Fang's hideout?" Fury demanded.
"My best guess is prisoner, but I can't understand why."
"Well get her outside and back to the ship, we'll bring White Fang in another time, protecting that kid is your objective now." He replied. Charlene nodded, a look of determination written across her face as she disconnected and turned to the little girl.
"I'm going to get you out of here okay? Stay close to me." She told her, the girl nodding. Charlene scooped the child up in her arms and hoisting her up onto her back like she was giving the girl a piggyback.
Remembering the turns and corridors she walked through on her way in, Charlene retraced her steps until she was at least one more turn away from being outside again. But she was stopped once she heard voice up ahead.
She stopped walking and set the girl down next to her, "Stay here, don't make a sound. Be Ninja quiet." She instructed, the little girl nodding before crouching down on the ground, her dark hair and the darkness of the halls making her almost invisible to the naked eye.
Charlene took out her pistol once again, reloading and cocking it so it was fully loaded and at the ready. She quietly moved forward to peek around the corner at the men talking. She cursed under her breath when she noticed one of them was White Fang, the person he was speaking to was not visible from her standpoint, much to her misfortune.
"Are we ready to put our little Lexi to work?" the mystery man asked.
White Fang nodded with a smirk that gave Charlene a slight shiver up her spine, "Just about. And what of our other… special guest?" he asked. That dark feeling in the pit of her stomach was back, she got a bad feeling he was talking about her.
"Don't worry about her, by the time we've finished here Charlene be nothing but collateral damage." Charlene gave a slight gasp. "Trust me, she won't even remember her name when I'm done with her."
The SHEILD agent backed away from the wall back to the little girl, only to find her not there anymore. Another gasp left her lips and she frantically searched for the child but to no avail. She'd just… vanished. How does that happen?!
Charlene tried backing up only for her back to be met with a hard surface that was not the wall. She whipped around meeting the ugly sight of White Fang grinning from ear to ear like a madman.
"Hello pretty bird, looking for me?" he taunted.
Her hand flew to her pistol as she threw it up to shoot him in the head when he caught her wrist and snapped it in his grasp like a twig, making her cry out in pain as he then flung her against the wall. Charlene hit the floor, her vision blurring as she reached for her gun again, only for it to be kicked away by Fang.
She could barely make out the taser alive with electricity in his hand as he grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking her up with a cry from her lips.
"Don't cry little bird, it'll only be agonizing pain from here on out!" he cackled as he thrust his hand forward, the taser meeting the base of her neck and jolting her with electricity until she went limp. He dropped her body on the ground again with a smirk.
Charlene was still awake but clinging to consciousness as she was losing it fast. Suddenly a hand started petting her hair, clearly not Fang as this one was gentler and softer as it undid her braid and ran their fingers through her dark hair. She tried to lift her hand, kick, cry out, anything to get these freaks away from her, but she couldn't move.
"Shh… it'll be okay little wolf." A soothing voice whispered. "By the time we're done, we'll have made you all better." She let out a defeated breath as she started fading into unconsciousness.
"Just… sleep…"
And then everything went black.