JANUARY 17, 1946

Peggy bust through the doors of the HYDRA fortress, 'Unzerbrechlich.' The Howling Commandos, flanked behind her, spread out to hunt through the abandoned headquarters, for evidence of the Red Skulls' plans. Sure, he had wanted to destroy the world—but that was so boring for a man as complex as Johann Schmidt. Peggy doubted a few missiles, an army, and a few blueprints could define a plan for world-domination. There had to be more. There had to be more. He had to have died for more. No, she froze, as she was looking through some old Nazi rubbish—she would not make this about Steven. And even as she thought that, she could feel a torrent of memories come and sack her in the gut. Blue eyes. An echo of a booming laugh. The way he said her name… She sighed heavily and closed her eyes. Count to five, Peggy.

One: 'Name's Steve Rogers.' A scrawny little man with a heart much too big for him.

Two: 'Then what are you looking for?' 'The right partner.' The back of a taxicab. New York City.

Three: 'You wanna dance?' Snow. Ash. London.

Four: 'I love you, Peggy.' A whisper in her ear, before a plane driven into ice.

Five: 'We'll have the band play something slow… I'll try not to—' Gone. In an instant, as if he had never been.

And those were the five seconds she allocated to Steve Rogers for the day. If she thought of him longer than that, she would lose herself within the monster of grief that damn boy had let loose the moment he died. And it wasn't that hard to escape the monster of grief, Peggy had found out, not when HYDRA strike agents made it easy to distract yourself with bashing their heads in with the side of an assault rifle.

Speaking of bashing heads in, she had a job to do. She blinked and looked up at the fortress surrounding her. At one time, it must have been a lovely cathedral as there were high ceilings, stained-glass windows depicting Jesus and the Saints performing miracles and acts of God and grace, but one could trust Schmidt to want something a bit more ostentatious than a Catholic Cathedral. He had wanted a bloody castle. The limestone had been cut into, forming layers that reached up to the tippity-top of the Cathedral, with a staircase leading further up into the roof.

Surrounding the outside of the Cathedral—a pain in the bloody arse, it was—were five explosive, but volatile rings of mine fields, TNT, and C4. While the Commandos had stood around scratching their asses with their rifles, Peggy and Jacques Dernier—the Commandos' explosive expert—went to work disabling every bomb in their path. No one, not even HYDRA, had gotten through to the fortress since Schmidt had died nearly a month ago. It hadn't been possible, until now. Perhaps that's why they called it 'unbreakable'—the English equivalent to unzerbrechlich.

"Hey, Agent Carter—" Dum Dum Dugan called to her from the top of the stairwell.

She raised her head to look up at him with a raise of her brow. "Dugan, we've been here for 5 minutes, don't you dare tell me you've already found something."

"I think it's a bit more than something, ma'am." He held up a small rectangular object, bound in leather, burnt at the edges, with the wax seal of HYDRA—the grimacing skull submerged beneath the tentacles of an octopus—stamped on the front. "It's about Cap."

"She found a book." Bucky started the long winding tale that would undo everything Steve had ever known about Peggy Carter.

"You want to specify a little, Buck?" He asked with a small smile, trying to ease his friend's spirits. Steve sat forward in his seat a little, adjusting Bucky's blanket around his shoulders so it wouldn't slip off. He knew he was being overprotective, but he knew he was pushing Bucky to do the impossible: remember the things that had never truly been his.

Bucky didn't seem to care if Steve had smiled or deadpanned, he stared into the steaming cup of tea Shuri had given him, with a broken gaze. And just like that, the good-natured guy from yesterday was gone. Resurrections, Steve had become aware of, weren't always as joyful as the Good Book led us to believe.

"Schmidt." Bucky blinked as if the thought of it hurt. Steve didn't want him to tell him, he didn't want him to stretch his brain past the limits that Shuri had given him, but he knew—for Steve's sake, for Peggy's sake—he would. "Schmidt had a book about you… Well, it was about him, but he figured… He figured that, if he had to guess, you two would pretty much be the same on all counts."

"On all counts of what?" Steve probed, perhaps a little bit too sharply.

"Everything, Steve. Jesus Christ…your muscle density, force, mass, cognization, heartrate—all that bullshit. For a lot of it, he had two scores: yours and his. He also had an entire chapter written out on cryogenics."

Cryogenics? I think, until we know what's goin' on, Stevie, it's best if I… This is the best option for me. I gotta put her in the water… I slept for 70 years, sir, I'd prefer to stay awake, if you wouldn't mind. He pulled himself out of his memories of the ice—cold, flat, and desolate. There was nothing besides the inky, nightmarish dreams that kept you from truly coming to full consciousness, but it was enough to make you understand, you weren't awake. In fact, you knew you probably wouldn't be for a very long time. He should have known Schmidt—the father of all nightmares—would have known a thing or two about cryo.

"He did experiments on himself…and he determined," Bucky swallowed and seemed to deliberately fight against something within himself from saying more: "that with the right dosage of the serum, someone of our caliber, could live through being frozen alive."

Cap heard Bucky's words, but little-by-little, he had been putting the story together, himself. Peggy was smart, she wouldn't have second-guessed herself with that big of a discovery. She would have told Howard, and Howard… If she had had any doubts, he would have reassured her entirely. "Peggy knew." Steve said softly. Jesus Christ. What did he lead her into?

"Of course she fucking knew." Bucky snapped, a violent wave of anger swept over his face as his eyes shot upwards, meeting Steve's. "She and Howard Stark were gonna take a plane up to Arctic Sea to find you—she had coordinates and everything."

No no no no no no. Steve's mind was a caustic cascade of denial. He led her to this. He led her to this bullshit because he tried to be a hero, he tried to do the right thing. "What happened?" His voice cracked over the 'happened' of his speech.

Bucky laughed and shook his head as, for the second time that day, fresh, hot, and angry tears came to his eyes. When he finished laughing, there was a look on his face that Steve had never seen before. In fact, he didn't even know what kind of emotion that was. It was a feeling that had seemed to crack Bucky open, revealing the lump of a man who had lost everything. "They sent me."

It was my first combat mission as the Winter Soldier. And they sent you to kill Peggy Carter? Yeah, jokes on them.

MAY 1947 – France

It had been almost two years since the end of the War, but yet, here they were in France—still negotiating another Peace Treaty. If any of them had wanted to ask Peggy, which they didn't, but still—if they had wanted to ask her—she would have told them: Why not just put all your adorable little knobs back in your pants for the rest of eternity? There. No more wars. She thought as she watched the middle-aged white men beneath her talk and scream at each other like exhausted toddlers. Perhaps we all just need a nap. She thought as she sat down, swinging her legs through the openings of the balcony's railing and leaning her forehead against it.

But exhaustion meant nothing to the face of peace, as Peggy and the SSR, under her direction, had been asked to supervise the negotiations of the peace pact. Except, there was nothing to observe besides men acting like children in five different languages. So, there was no getting out of this. She had to be there. But did she have to be here? She looked to the window behind her, where it seemed a narrow, iron staircase led up to the top of the building.

She swung her assault rifle around behind her back and pulled herself up, before she walked over to the window and pushed the French-framed glass gently open. Well, that certainly looks sturdy. Peggy sarcastically observed of the rickety staircase before her, however, it had survived a war… She knew of a super soldier, who hadn't fared as well as this staircase. On that note, she pulled down the stairs and made her way to roof.

Once she was at the top, she took in a breath of fresh air. All around her was the destruction of war. Far to the north of Paris, the Louvre's roof had caved, the Tuileries Gardens had burned to crispy ash—everything was a mess. And all these men could do, the ones beneath her feet, was fight over what color ink to sign their names on some document that they'd end up burning in 50 years. While poor, beautiful, and fiery France, the rebellious little sister of England, had taken all of Hitler's anger in not winning over that 'silver sceptre' of the sea. In fact, most of the Nazi troops had been taken from the French soil, scattered across Europe in cells to rot or hung in prisons or shot in the back of alleyways and some, and she was sure—more than they would have liked—decided it was best to end it themselves… After all, once America had come, the Nazis knew it was over.

How could they ever manage to put themselves back together, again? This city, this country, this world… How could they fill in the broken places? Fill in the gaps left by the holes of cannonballs or look at the places where everything had once been… How could it ever be done? How could they possibly find the strength to start over? Tears formed her eyes as her hand reached down to the small, leather bound book that hadn't left her belt since the day she found it. You could fix it all. She thought with a gasp as tears escaped her eyes at the thought of being reunited with him. One more month and her and Howard and Steve would all be reunited.

And that's when she heard it—a footstep. She had had the creeping suspicion someone had been watching her for 15 minutes now, but she had ignored it, figuring it was one of the Commandos offering her their respects by staying silent. But the menacing step forwards, that wasn't a Commando. She wiped away the tears that were on her cheeks and sniffed, her face going expressionless as she stared out at Paris' skyline. "If you're going to kill me, darling, you might as well be a man and allow me to see your face. After all," she turned to see the figure cloaked in the darkness before her, "any man who's willing to put a bullet through the brain of a lady, is a man I'll let get behind me." She smiled that victorious, fierce little grin as the darkness before her opened and a man stepped out of it.

Her smile peeled off of her face instantly. "Oh, my God… James?" She asked softly, her eyes filled with new and relieved tears at the sight of him.

Bucky froze when he saw her. This woman… She knew him. She knew him in a way that was different than anyone else. He took a step back. This was dangerous. She knew him. The angry, harsh voices within himself were screaming for him to get out of there, but he couldn't pull himself away from those eyes.

"Oh, my darling… What have they done to you?" She was there, before him. Unafraid. Snap her neck. Throw her off the side of the building. He scanned her for the target. The book. He saw it on her belt. Her hand was reaching out for his face. Break her fingers. Rip her hand off. Kill her. The voices—like an inglorious, satanic choir were screaming in full and disastrous union to slaughter her. But then…as her fingers, real and soft on his face, collided with the voices. Something within himself, something deep within himself seemed to move.

"Peg…" He whispered and a single, but weak image of this girl came to his mind. Her arm around his shoulder (was it his shoulder?) and her other slung around a blond man. She was looking at him, Bucky, as if he could have done anything. The world doesn't understand beauty, Sergeant Barnes…but if they did, they wouldn't keep you two from each other. Keep us from each other. Keep. From. Each. The words folded out in his mind like marks on a map like they were cities and countries that would lead to other places, as soon as he could pinpoint them on this map.

Keep. A smile—he had had the same smile since he was six years old.

From. Thank you, Buck, but I can get by on my own…

Each. The thing is, you don't have to. I'm with you til' the end of the line, pal.

Something. Something was there. Something. You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?

I thought you were taller.

Go on—get out of here! No, not without you.

A click sounded in his brain as he remembered the back outline of that scrawny little kid. He was running from him, laughing about something, before he had doubled over coughing for five minutes. He had needed to go to his Ma for the medicine… He couldn't stand up straight for the rest of the day. I can do this all day. His fists had been bleeding and broken, shaking and cut, but he would have done it for the rest of his life. e. Steven Grant Rogers. STEVE. "Steve." Bucky met her eyes with a horrible, gasping breath of realization.

Peggy took a sharp breath as she realized what he had remembered. She nodded and then she hugged him tightly against her. "Listen to me, James, I know you're not alone…and I'm willing to bet, your superiors weren't planning on you recognizing me. So, you're going to—Ow!" A little pin hung from her neck. Bucky recognized the sedative immediately, it was one of HYDRA's own chemical designs.

"What have you—" And then Peggy's eyes rolled up into her head and she nearly collapsed onto the ground, had Bucky not caught her. Her limp little body hung suspended in his arms. He pulled her up against his chest, watching her lovely face with a heartbreakingly confused expression on his face. Run. Get out of here. It was Steve's voice screaming in his head. Buck, get the hell out of there.

Sergeant Barnes, a voice was speaking to him. Sergeant Barnes, you failed. And we've been asked to put you back under. He didn't hear their words—just a pestilent buzzing in his brain. Buck, get Peggy and get the hell out of there. He looked up sharply at the two HYDRA strike agents standing in front of him, and before they could act, his metal fingers twisted around the throat of the first one and strangled him in five seconds. The other began to load his gun, but Bucky grabbed the middle of his rifle and broke it in half.

Sergeant Barnes, as your commanding officer, I command you to—"He's not going to respond to that." A particularly soft voice scraped into Bucky's mind. This was the voice of someone who had created him. The voice came over to him—a soft, beautiful woman, Emi (she had called herself)—she gently took the body, the one he had forgotten he was holding, from him.

"Pretty girl. I can see why you and the Captain liked her so much." She slung the curly-haired woman over her shoulder.

Bucky had known that girl. He frowned at Emi. The memories were slipping from him. It was as if they were leaving him, going out through a door in the back of his mind. He wanted to tell them to stop. Stop. STOP. But they left anyway. The voice of the man he had known was gone. He had quieted down. Everything had quieted down. His face was wet—had he been crying?

"Come on, Sergeant Barnes." Emi was saying, "It's time we got you fixed up." Bucky followed after her, having forgotten everything.

Peggy awoke in a strange, square room. She sharply jerked her head downwards to her bound and tied hands. Bound and tied. Mmm kinky. She gingerly wiggled her fingers and felt three of them—the other seven seemed to be too stiff to respond, at the moment. Plus, to her distaste, there was no sign of anything else that could aid her in an escape. It was an actual, literal nondescript room. Nondescript because there was nothing to describe about it, other than four gray walls, metal chains around her feet, a plain steel table, and a single rectangular shaped outline against the wall. She assumed on the other side, it was a door, but to her, it was simply the outline of something other than cinderblock walls. She was an idiot, she knew what kind of room this was: interrogation. This is where they would ask her what she knew, about what, when, where, and why… And if she passed, she may live, but she doubted that.

And then the true horrific moment dawned on her, she looked down to her belt. The book. It was gone. Well, she supposed she should have seen that bloody coming. She exhaled a shaky breath. Easy, Peggy, easy. Don't. Lose. It.

She looked up at the ceiling, and much to her chagrin, it was more of the same: plane white box tiling with a simple, yet blocky camera watching her. "Get on with it, love!" She called to the walls. "I'd much prefer you begin your 'diabolical debacle' monologue, now, rather than later." She sing-songed into the camera, but her eyes were tracing the walls for any other signs of an exit.

There was a firm bump against the door and it swung open to reveal a breathtakingly ravishing, young woman—Emi, Peggy would later find out—with a somber expression on her face. She was joined by two other guards, both of which were bearing that same cold and lifeless expressions on both of their faces. "Good evening, Miss Carter." The woman began with a soft, buttery voice. It was soothing, sweet, and tasteful. Too sweet. Something wasn't right about her.

"Agent Carter." Peggy said with a touch of a smile.

Emi didn't smile back. She adjusted her watch's strap, which besides appearing to be a nifty little thing, seemed to double as a highly technical gadget that seemed to tell her everything she could have ever wanted to know about anything. "Before we get started, Miss Carter, is there anything I can get you?" She finally raised her eyes to meet Peggy's. Like the rest of her, her irises were shockingly stunning. They were filled to the brim with color: bronze, silver, gold, purple, violet, a splattering of scarlet. She was mesmerizing, she realized—every part of her was meant to attract the eye and detract from everything else. This girl, a petite, lovely child who couldn't be over 18, seemed to suck all the colors—no, all the air—from the room.

Peggy raised a sharp brow with a hint of that exuberant smile still glowing across her lips. Could she get her anything? "Ah, yes, my lovely tormentor, do you have, by any chance, any idea what happened to the little leather book that I came round with?"

Emi didn't seem to acknowledge Peggy's smile, nor did she seem to understand her request. "Your personal effects have been collected, you can collect them when we're finished here."

"When I'm dead, that is?"

Emi didn't respond. A bland, limp smile coiled across her face. It didn't fit her features, Peggy noted. "Perhaps it depends on how you respond to my questions, Miss. Carter."

"Once again, it's Agent Carter, darling, and why would I answer anything you have to ask?"

Emi turned to the man on her left and spoke fluently in German. She must have been German, then. But Emi was good, if that was the case, because her accent—whatever it was…was strange. It almost seemed like the girl didn't have an accent, like she didn't come from somewhere.

The man left the room, only to return with Bucky. Now that they were under real lighting and not the ashy light of the moon, Peggy could finally see him. She tried not to react, but it was obvious, Bucky wasn't Bucky. For one, he had a metal arm with an aggressively silvery, glittery hue. And that was just the start, his hair hadn't been cut, his cheeks had thinned out, and for as huge as he seemed underneath all that muscle, he looked sick. He looked like his backbone, his vital and vibrant energy—the landmark traits of James—were ripped out of him. None of this compared, however, to his eyes.

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a creature with an unmoving eye? A beast that could have had an insect land there, on top of the silky liquid cornea, and not have cared. These were the frozen, unmoving, and corpse-like eyes James Barnes acknowledged her with. Inhuman. Unmade. Soulless.

"What have you done to him?" She snapped at Emi, while her eyes still savagely clung to Bucky's.

Emi was silent and looking as if she didn't feel the need to explain herself. And, as it turned out, she didn't because when she looked up at Bucky again, he was holding a silver pistol—one that matched his metallic arm—to her forehead.

"Ah, you're going to have my dear friend kill me." She burst out laughing. "You couldn't even have picked an original interrogation tactic?" She was still chuckling when one of the HYDRA agents behind Emi brought a gun to the back of Bucky's head.

Peggy stopped laughing as it died on her tongue. She didn't have a choice, now. Bucky's life wasn't an option, it was never an option. "Well, now that you've gotten my attention..." She looked up from Bucky's gaze to see Emi staring with a cold, hard, and bland expression on her face. She had done this before, Peggy realized—this was nothing new to her. This scenario. This tactic. This strategy. That's all their lives were to her: a strategy for shaking out the information she wanted. "What is it you want?"

"You have something that I want, Miss. Carter." Emi said softly, her eyes were deliberately downcast. She didn't have the bloody audacity to meet her eyes?

"I'm sure I do, love, everyone seems to want something from me now a days." Peggy fixed the girl with a "I know more than you" smirk. She could answer their questions, but that didn't mean she'd tell them the truth.

"In January of last year, can you confirm you came across evidence to imply that Captain Steve Rogers is alive?" Emi was looking down at the table still, her eyes frozen on the plain white surface as if the nondescript tabletop was more interesting than whatever Peggy had to say.

The hair on the back of Peggy's neck stood up at the mere mention of Steve. She could feel a powerful wave of protectiveness settle over her. If her body had been made of cities, countries, nations, worlds…they would have been wiped out at the sheer power that coursed through her veins, simply at the idea of any kind of threat to Captain Rogers. "Well, I broke into HYDRA's, apparently, most 'formidable' fortress and found Schmidt's sappy little diary, if that's what you're inquiring." The words flew off of her tongue in a fluent movement somewhere between sass and rage.

"What did you do with the book, Miss. Carter?" Emi asked a little louder, but her eyes still remained fixed on the table.

"My dear, I'm so sorry… You mean, you don't have it?" Peggy smirked smartly, raising a cocky brow.

Emi's eyes were suddenly staring right into the back of Peggy's sockets, drilling holes into her eyes with a fiery combination of red, orange, and yellow all spinning madly in epileptic, spasmodic movement. It was suddenly very hard to breathe. "You had a decoy attached to your belt, where's the original?"

Peggy could not breathe, Emi had done something or given her something, when she wasn't looking. She could feel darkness licking at the sides of her vision from a lack of oxygen. "It…was…mine…my journal…" She gasped out, but barely. "Burnt...yours…"

And then, as if the air was given back to her, she could feel the room's oxygen normalize and Emi's eyes were normal once more. "You burnt the book?" She didn't seem that upset. In fact, she seemed to believe her.

"I memorized everything that I needed to know, but everything else was fire feed." She coughed as the words that slipped out of her tongue seemed to take more air than she had intended them to. "I didn't want to take the risk of his life ever falling into the wrong hands. Turns out, as always, those grubby, dirty little monstrous hands were closer than I thought." Peggy remarked with a disdainful look on her face.

It was true, what Peggy said. The book she had kept with her from day-in-and-day-out, tucked away within her belt, was her diary. Perhaps she was overly sentimental for keeping one, but in ten years, down the line—if she lived that long—to look back at her wild adventures… That was appealing to her, to be able to hold onto the life that Steve and Bucky had both given their lives for her to live out. Now, that was something extraordinary. But Schmidt's book had not been the one she toted around, the minute she found it, she wanted to throw it into the flames of Unbreakable's forge… But she knew, for Steve, she had to, at least, know the details of what was at stake.

However, the other girl seemed to find what she said to be only mildly interesting. She sighed heavily and leaned across the table, meeting Peggy's eyes. "We know where Steve Rogers, Miss. Carter, in fact, we've always known. You see," she folded her hands and got closer to Peggy so that she could spot every beautiful line and crease of her face up close, "when Schmidt built any aircraft, he created a homing signal—in case, like this one, it ever went down—that we would be able to find him. Luckily, he activated the signal shortly before he died. So, I'll make this very simple for you: we want Captain Rogers to stay in the ice. It's good for HYDRA, makes it less messy to cover up his murder… That is, if he ever decided to return." She said it so matter-of-factly that she could have been stating that tea was hot or that shit stunk, but to Peggy, she made all the action around them stop. In fact, after she brought up Steve—Emi seemed to know, this was only about her and Peggy now.

Peggy, taking advantage of the other girl's closeness, leaned over so her lips touched Emi's heart-shaped ear. "Get his name out of your reptilian mouth, love, or I swear to all that is holy on heaven, earth, and Lucifer's bloody shite pile, that it will be the last thing you do." Peggy said ever-so-softly. She almost matched Emi's voice in buttery softness, except, where there was no sharpness to Emi's words, Peggy's wielded knives, swords, and lances. "Do you understand?"

"Like I said, it's up to you… But you're as well-aware as me, Miss. Carter, in knowing that a single bullet through the brain, can cause some damage, can't it?" Emi's expression hadn't moved, nothing on her face had changed. Except for her eyes, they were boring into Peggy's again. They were so stunning… Visually…stunning… Perhaps she should look closer—would she let her? She felt some kind of stiff sleepiness settle over her mind. Well, that did make sense, she hadn't slept in so long… A real, natural sleep. Her eyelids were drooping, her white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table loosened, and she could feel her head dropping lower into her chest. The world was growing dim, seductively and deliciously dark as she slipped under the covers.

I love you, Peggy… A broken staticky sound filled the control room. Tears slipped down her face. She had lost him… Lost… Him. Steve, darling, I'm so sorry… It's okay, Peg, you did the best you could…

No. That's the thing, my love, I didn't.

Her eyes snapped open and the air around them was buzzing with a dangerous, kinetic energy. She met Emi's dangerously powerful eyes. She was enhanced with some kind of hypnotic, manipulative energy whatever it was. But none of them—none of them, knew what was coming. "Don't say," she slowly rose from her seat—the chains on her feet suddenly gone and the bindings on her wrists dissolving into the air, "I didn't," her arms were rising with a threatening and terribly dark expression coming to her face, "WARN YOU!" Peggy screamed into the air as the bricks within the room violent ripped themselves from the walls, the ground beneath her quaked and broke open to reveal the pipe system of the building, water spewed from the ceiling as a drain pipe broke open, and the two agents that had accompanied Emi were stabbed through the chest with two large wooden legs from the chair. While Bucky was flung back into the wall, protectively sheathed by two iron poles that bent forwards to hide him from the flying cinder blocks

Simply, as soon as it started, it stopped. Peggy's nose was bleeding, her hair was wildly shifted around her shoulders, and her brown eyes were black with cold, depthless fury. She hated these people—these people who had dared to think, for a split second, that Peggy Carter wouldn't keep her promise.

She walked over to Emi, the girl stood in the center of the room, perfectly intact, besides the carnage around her. "As I told you, I will do everything within my power—" she gestured to the debris of the room around them, "to protect that man—do you understand?" She screamed violently into the other girl's face, but Emi simply blinked, seemingly unimpressed.

"Telekinetic." Emi observed of the young and powerful woman standing in front of her. "They told me to kill you when we were finished, but now, they'll have a use for you. Now, they'll never let you leave…not even, by way of ashes."

And then, there was simply nothing.

"She was enhanced?" Steve asked when Bucky finished speaking, for a moment. It was all he could do, all he could say. "She-She never told me…"

"She didn't tell anybody." Bucky said softly, his eyes didn't meet Steve's. They couldn't meet Steve's. If he looked into those eyes—the eyes that were just as confused, lost, and scared as he was, he probably would have lost it. If Steve Rogers, the man he had chosen to try and fix himself for, couldn't be stable now, then he had to be… And he couldn't, not with this, not when he thought about Peggy.

"Why not?" Why didn't she tell me? Steve felt a wave of guilt wash over him. Seventy-odd years ago, he had made a decision to sacrifice everything for the world. He dove a plane into the ice and was frozen there…like some kind of primordial relic of a lost age. Except, he had done it with the knowledge that: (1), Bucky was dead—therefore, there was no home to go back to… and (2), Peggy… That vivacious, iconic woman… Well, he knew she would be just fine without him. Had he known, what he knew now… Maybe, he would have tried to find a way off of that plane.

Bucky, meanwhile, had been plucking his brain for the words to answer Steve's question: "For the same reason HYDRA suddenly wanted her, Steve—she was powerful and now… Now, she had a purpose for them."

Peggy woke up, again—this time, in a narrow and dark cell—feeling wretched. She keeled over onto her hands and knees and vomited. There was a salty, chemical scent to it—cyanide. Poison. She weakly laughed and dragged herself up against the wall. She had a few minutes to figure out when they had given it to her and perhaps only a few more, after that, until it reached her heart.

She had to get it out—she had to make it back to Bucky, she had to get Steve out of the ice. She slunk her fingers down her throat and forced herself to wretch once more, feeling the last of the energy leave her body as her chest convulsively shook to rid itself of its contents. She sunk to the dirty stone floor, weak and cold and exhausted. A pair of combat boots entered her vision as she directed her gaze up to the impeccable and soft beauty of Emi Jones. She was gazing down at her, neither with contempt or pity.

"Just couldn't stay away, could you, love?" Peggy's chapped lips slyly slid into a smug little grin.

Emi sank down into a squat, going up on her toes with a terrible balance. "Your powers won't work here."

"Well, I figured as much… This is the part where you break me."

Emi sighed heavily. "You have a choice here, Carter," the use of her last name was the most genuine, Peggy had heard her sound: "either willingly comply with HYDRA's demands or they'll make you." She cocked her head and looked at Peggy with no sympathy, but with sheer and utter and irrevocable enervation. She had seen it happen before—this woman, she had seen it time and time again. She had stood on the cusp of someone's will, holding it in their hands, and then, knowing she did, broke it in half. She had broken Bucky, Peggy assumed. Her sweet Sergeant Barnes who would save her his 'once-a'week' chocolates and make her laugh so hard, she could cry. She could cry now.

But she wouldn't, not with this young and terrible woman standing before her. "You don't take any pride in this."

"Of course not, but that's the thing, Agent Carter, I don't get to decide if I do or don't. HYDRA took that choice away and now, choice means nothing to me, not anymore."

"You could destroy them." Peggy said softly, as she thought of Emi's powerful manipulative powers of their reality. She had made her think she was suffocating—with the mere thought of it.

Emi's eyes that, at once, could be filled with so many colors were suddenly split apart and were left with only one color: black. "I tried to, but like you, I was emotionally vulnerable. I loved someone, and as soon as HYDRA knew that, they held a gun up to her face for the rest of her life and one day… Well, to say in the least, she didn't have a face anymore." An image of the HYDRA agent holding a gun to Bucky's head, made her feel sick to her stomach once more, even though there was nothing left for her to purge.

Emi's eyes hadn't changed, even with the story of the girl she must have loved. "They don't play games, Carter, and they don't care who you love. They don't care period—they will turn everything you love to ash without even flinching. And while your entire life is burning, they'll wait until all the blood drains from your body, before they do it, all over again."