Chapter 4: Apart
*** Second to Last Chapter Folks! Hope you enjoy! ***
Her head hurt. A lot. Winnie tried to open her eyes, but the second they were cracked open even the slightest bit, it felt like the sun was burning through them, directly into her brain. She crushed them closed as tightly as possible. Think carefully, she warned herself, struggling to process something coherent through the fog in her mind and the brightness outside her eyes.
Breathing deeply, Winnie could feel the various aches and pains running up and down her body from the encounter on the plane, could feel the faint burn left over from the tranquilizer. The tranq, the plane. Bucky. Winnie's eyes popped open then, heedless of the sun, and she hissed in pain. She wasn't on the plane any longer. She was in some kind of office. It was hot in the office, muggy, and the sun was cutting through the thick shutters and she knew they'd definitely landed somewhere warm and balmy.
No one was in here with her. Winnie looked down at herself and saw that she was sitting in a thick metal chair, so large it was nearly a throne, and she was bound to it by thick metal clasps and bands, an eerie blue light glowing through the middle of each. She pulled on them, trying to yank her hands free, then her feet. Her physical ministrations didn't budge them.
Winnie looked up again, her eyes growing a little more panicked as a slow realization dawned on her; she couldn't hear anything. No one was in the room, and she didn't hear voices outside. She couldn't believe that Hydra would capture her, their lost asset, and then not be here to gloat when she awoke. Oh god, Bucky, what are they doing to him? She figured the only reason they'd be leaving her alone, all neatly trussed and secure as she was, was if they were too busy doing terrible things to Bucky.
She turned her head back down to the bindings on her hands, on her arms, on her legs, on her feet, and prodded at them experimentally with her ability. Again, they wouldn't budge. She reached her mind all around the room, just to test her ability, and tore a painting from the wall with ease, heaving it across the room like a meteor. Winnie watched in mild satisfaction as it buried itself into the wall with the force of her throw.
Ok, so I can't get free on my own, but I can smash people to bits until they let me free, she consoled herself, before a darker part of her mind rose up to whisper menacingly: but you don't know what they're doing right now, do you? I mean maybe they're hurting Bucky, maybe this is all a mental game – but either way you don't actually know, not really. They never do anything without a purpose. So why are you alone? And why can you do things with your mind but can't get out of this chair?
"Where are you?" She yelled then, realizing then that the horrible voice in her head was right; there really was no way that Hydra would just leave her free to use her power, without someone here, some ulterior motive. "Ward!" She screamed, "Where are you?" She was getting angry now, irritated, tired of the game afoot.
"Get in here!" She yelled, the floor rumbling around her as she grew more and more upset - and that was when she finally heard a door behind her open up, she just couldn't turn enough to see what was happening, the blue-lit bindings prevented that.
With a door open, she could feel a breeze coming in, muggy like the air, just slightly cooler. Carried in on the breeze like a virus, she could hear a distant, agonized, scream. Winnie felt her spine straighten in horror and lashed out spastically with her ability, lancing a huge crack through the wall directly ahead of her; it was Bucky screaming.
When the wall cracked, drifts of plaster raining down, Bucky screamed again. Winnie flinched and abruptly froze, her body and power halting together. Her head whipped around, desperate to see behind her, to see someone, to take this out on someone. "What are you doing to him? I'll kill you! I will kill you!" She shrieked in rage, her power flashing out spastically and breaking the windows in the room, a chunk of the ceiling caving in and collapsing to the floor in front of her; if they didn't come to her, then she would tear this place apart.
Bucky screamed again then, the loudest and most agonizing yet, and then she heard a voice finally speak behind her. It was a calm, American accent, but with strangely clipped words; some other accent hiding behind it.
"Each time you misbehave, he pays for your mistake, it's a simple arrangement," the voice told her. Winnie froze, absorbing the words, her insides tingling with misery as she understood their meaning. Buck up, kiddo – these people are like predators; they can smell fear.
"What if I just kill us all, instead? Bring the building down on us?" She shot back, letting her words drip with the angry threat. The voice chuckled and then footsteps approached her.
"You won't," the voice told her, before the person the voice belonged to stepped in front of her, standing several feet away, "I know you, and you won't." Winnie's eyes moved up to the man speaking to her and she felt a ripple of something hot, frantic, and painful move through her body. Her breathing stuck in her throat and her eyes refused to blink, even her heart seemed to forget its job.
It was Reinhardt. Civilized, in a modern suit, but otherwise looking exactly the same. Reinhardt. Staring at her with a mixture of clinical fascination and greedy joy. Reinhardt. The person she'd been forced to look at every day while he did terrible things to her. A face that knew no mercy, no empathy; only empty wanting and hardened curiosity.
"No, no, I won't be yours again," she muttered without thought, staring hard at him, her entire body vibrating with shock and fear, "You can't be here." He smirked at her and leaned back against the desk he'd been standing in front of. Reinhardt seemed to expect her disorientation, her fear, her numbly paralyzed reaction to seeing him. He inclined his head towards her.
"I suppose defying time is not as difficult as people are made to think," he told her, his eyes flickering around the office they were occupying, watching as the entire room shook slightly and involuntarily; Winnie had lost all ability to even try and control herself, she felt like she was being sucked into a dark vacuum, where breath was hard to catch, and where an enormous pressure on her chest left her unable to get her heart to do anything more than stutter. Her mind was stunned and stupidly confused, fluttering out and shaking things, as if looking for help.
"I won't be yours," she whispered, her eyes huge as she looked at him, her stomach roiling sickeningly, "Not again." He nodded at her, smiling easily.
"You will," he told her, "Because, even as we speak, Barnes is in an unenviable position, a precarious one; I'm not content to simply kill him for your misbehavior." Winnie clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering, to keep from vomiting on herself, watching in abject horror as he approached her.
Reinhardt leaned closer to her, his eyes moving back and forth between her own. "He will suffer," Reinhardt threatened simply, "He will be made to suffer more than any person has, so I know that you will comply to prevent such a thing." Winnie briefly gave thought to simply destroying the building, to destroying herself, but the sadistic glint in Reinhardt's eyes kept her frozen, her own old, buried fears, kept her still, trapped into uselessness by her own traumatic memories.
Please no.
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He hated himself. He would gladly lunge into a fire at this point. Playing along on the plane had been the only logical option, he knew that, both in the moment and afterwards, no matter what; he knew he had to make them believe he was the Soldier again, to save himself, to save her. Inaction though, especially when she was being threatened and mistreated, had burned at him, grated at him. He felt guilt, and he felt worthlessness, watching her watching him with such despondency and sorrow in her eyes.
Bucky had known what she was planning, of course, he could tell simply by the look on her face. She was willing to sacrifice his life to prevent her power from getting into Hydra's hands, Reinhardt's hands. He'd been so proud of her in that moment. He had absorbed her grit and determination with inner pride, even though it was clearly an agony for her to choose his death.
However, his death would mean her own, if she was planning on tearing the plane apart, and he wouldn't allow that. Luckily though, he didn't need to worry about it. He'd been watching the Hydra agents on the plane who were spread out behind her, the ones she was not paying close enough attention to. They'd been clearly scrambling to get the tranq ready, unseen and unnoticed by her.
He wasn't relieved, exactly. Bucky hated to see her stabbed with it. Her being knocked out meant that the Hydra team wouldn't grapple with her bodily anymore though and also, it meant that the two of them were still going to be brought to Hydra's base, where he knew that Reinhardt was waiting. Bucky wanted the base to burn, and now that the two of them were inside the facility, he knew they'd be able to inflict the right kind of damage to see the job done.
The building had rumbled several times, as they locked him up, in the metal box that they'd obviously designed for torturous electro-shocking of prisoners. Each time the ground and the walls shook, they would electrocute him. After the first three shocks, he realized it was in reaction to something happening elsewhere in the building; obviously Winnie. Punishment for her sins? The taller of the two men outside his cell would receive a message in his ear, then look over at Bucky expectantly as he pressed the lever on the wall. They guards would watch as he was shocked, and he obliged them by letting out pained screams.
Fools, he thought with disdain; he'd received so much worse in his lifetime - this was all a show. However, he wanted them to believe they had won. That they had won so thoroughly and so completely, that there was no way they could lose. He knew that was when any chance at his breaking free and escaping would be possible. They thought they had caged their Soldier again, Hydra thought he was theirs, and he knew they were going to be working on Winnie, to get her to comply, using him as leverage.
He had no intent of allowing that to go on very long; he sensed he was on the brink of being where he wanted to be with these guards; nearly off their radar, considered a broken toy and not a threat. Bucky intended to pay them back tenfold for the attack on the plane, his mind involuntarily flashing to the way they had grabbed at and manhandled Winnie again. He envisioned what they, what Reinhardt might be doing to her right now.
Bucky almost dropped his commitment to this, almost attacked right then and there. He knew she was tough though, and would make it through; he had to really focus past her, focus on the bigger prize: Reinhardt, Hydra – bringing the monster down, destroying this branch of Hydra; the only way to do that was to comply now, play pretend, earn their lazy trust, and then tear them apart.
Standing at attention, as blankly and robotically as he could muster, he let his eyes cut around the room, determining his best chances at escape, at destruction. He was certain he would be able to use his arm to destroy the metal cell he found himself in, and then he would dispatch these men as swiftly as possible - he would kill them all. Each and every one of them in his path, until he located her, located Reinhardt. Then he would squeeze the life out of the man with his metal hand.
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"You are putting a lot of faith on a guess," Coulson said sharply. Natasha turned to him, knowing her face had drawn down into an unfriendly glare. He continued regardless, "You don't know that he missed the three of you on purpose, you don't know that he's on our side."
She looked away from him, knowing that Coulson had a point, but still absolutely certain, in her gut, that she was correct. "He did," was all she said, "To buy us time. It was strategic, and it worked." Coulson eyed her speculatively, before turning and marching away, clearly not believing her.
They had landed on a fairly empty air strip, a team of Coulson's agents having arrived at the same time the Bus did. Natasha watched him giving orders, gesturing off towards the building where SHIELD had determined that Barnes and Winnie were being held; held along with their own agent. Sam approached then, his eyes moving over to the group of armed agents.
"I still think we should call in Steve, or Stark," he grumbled. Natasha looked over at him, but Sam steadfastly avoided her gaze. He hates me right now, she realized, a little taken aback that he thought so little of her so quickly. Her spine stiffened.
"We don't have time," she snapped, "Even as we speak, they've had Nomad for too long. The threat is too high." Sam finally looked over at her, his face disgusted. "She would move a mountain to extract any of us," he told her angrily, "She would drop a mountain on herself to help us."
"None of us are capable of moving a mountain, Wilson," Natasha informed him curtly, "None of us could use a mountain as a weapon. That's exactly the problem." She began to double check her gear, taking the opportunity to look away from the dislike on Sam's face. "Obviously extraction without loss is the goal, but I can't and won't ignore the threat she poses in the wrong hands," she continued, "Sam, I know she's your friend, but first in foremost in this situation: Nomad is a weapon."
Sam took a step back. "I think for today we might be on opposite teams," he muttered, turning away from her. She watched him jog towards the SHIELD agents. She knew that she had a duty as an Avenger, as an ex-SHIELD agent, as a protector, as a person - to make sure Hydra didn't gain control over a weapon that could destroy almost anything.
That was a line that she didn't think anyone wanted crossed. The problem is that this weapon is a person, so the line gets a little blurry, don't you think? She steadfastly ignored the pit of distaste growing in her own stomach. She wasn't sure if she had the capability to actually, properly, be someone's friend, at least with anyone other than Clint, but she was fairly certain that Steve and Winnie were pretty damn close to it. Duty, Romanoff, duty. It was a harsh reminder.
Coulson waved her over then and she started over to where he and everyone else stood. She knew Coulson's goal was his own agent's safety first, Hydra's fall and Reinhardt's capture second, and Winnie and Barnes' safe recovery third. Even he was hoping for safe extraction. He hadn't said a word about her plans to take Winnie out as a threat if it became apparent that she was compromised, even though she knew Hunter had gone to him about that almost immediately. Even a newcomer, a stranger, saw how grossly out of line your willingness to kill Winnie is, she chastised herself, coming to a stop in front of Coulson. Her internal war continued: it's the right move, absolutely. So, how come it has to feel so incredibly shitty?
"Are we ready?" She asked Coulson flatly, and he nodded, his eyes cutting over her face critically, narrowing as they did so.
"Are you?" He asked her shortly, and she resisted the urge to glare, instead nodding curtly.
They approached the building in vehicles, she didn't know how SHIELD had gotten them and didn't care. Once a few blocks out, they switched to approach on foot. When they rounded the final city streets, moving with precise stealth towards the dilapidated building, Natasha knew immediately that something was wrong.
The building was falling apart. Walls, windows, floors, ceiling, it was crumbling, shaking itself to pieces. The ground beneath their feet was shaking and you could feel the waves of power in the air; it made it hard to breathe, hard to think clearly. Buildings around the one at the centre of Winnie's maelstrom were slowly being damaged, the ground slowly cracking into the smallest of fractures all around them. She could level the entire city if we don't stop her; what if we're too late? What if Winnie's not driving anymore and it's someone else, Reinhardt, at the wheel?
"She's in there," Sam murmured, and Natasha nodded. Coulson was ordering his people around the building, to spread out, to find their agent, to get her out. To arrest Barnes, to arrest Ward, to capture Nomad. Reinhardt was to be grabbed and held.
"Tell them not to approach her," Natasha growled at Coulson, "Don't be stupid, Director, tell your people to stay back from her, she's unbalanced when under duress." Coulson eyed her but didn't do anything to comply with her advice. Natasha quietly cursed him in Russian, and he shot her a look filled with exasperation.
They got inside the building and she couldn't help but feel proud of the SHIELD agents sweeping in ahead of them; Coulson ran a tight ship, these people were good. Natasha could feel the dread building in her heart as they got closer and closer to Winnie. She could tell they were near to reaching her because they were all walking bent into the waves of power, pushing through it with effort, as if facing hurricane strength winds. The more difficult it became to walk, the closer to Winnie they got.
A wall just ahead came crashing down into the hallway they were making their way through and then they could all hear Winnie's voice, harsh and dangerous, coming from the room on the other side.
"Thank you for teaching me," Winnie spoke clearly, calmly, and a shiver ran down Natasha's spine, "Because now I can do this."
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"I have not been able to match my work with you, though others within Hydra, even as we speak, are trying," Reinhardt told her, his voice proud and conversational, "What we did with you, Zola and I, was nothing short of a miracle." Winnie strained against the bands holding her pinned to her seat, desperate to escape. Reinhardt watched her dispassionately for a moment before continuing with his sermon.
"Everyone was most eager to recreate the serum that changed your Captain, they tried, again and again," Reinhardt explained in a voice filled with fond reminiscence, "It wasn't until the Red Skull decided to use the Tesseract that we made any advancement." His blue eyes darted up to meet her, a smile pulling at his mouth.
"Sergeant Barnes was our first successful subject with the Tesseract-enhanced serum," he clarified for her, "And clearly that worked well for him; we weren't certain for the longest time." Reinhardt clasped his hands together behind his back and began to slowly pace back and forth.
"You though, that didn't start out as science," he informed her, tipping his head up to look up at the ceiling, as if seeking strength, "That was revenge to begin with; a simple human emotion, strange to see coming from the Red Skull." Reinhardt stopped and turned to her, raising an eyebrow. "He was hardly a human by that point, but he certainly felt hate for Captain Rogers." Reinhardt turned his back on her and walked towards one of the destroyed windows. His German accent became more and more pronounced as he remembered aloud their sordid past.
"Zola and I, we both thought it was a mistake," Reinhardt spoke thoughtfully, as he faced the outdoors, "For different reasons to be sure. I thought we would be better off simply destroying the Commandos, or capturing them, turning them into weapons, or killing them in the process of trying." He waved a hand back at her, without turning.
"Zola, though, he was soft at times, and he required convincing before he could strengthen his own resolve," Reinhardt explained, a laugh in his voice, "He did not want to hurt a woman!" Reinhardt laughed aloud and turned to her, smiling pleasantly.
"They took you, and they brought you in – oh the look on his face when he saw you that first time was quite priceless," Reinhardt seemed to find it confusing that she was not also amused by this and approached her, "There you were, this little, damaged thing." He stopped a few feet from her and took in her clenched jaw, her wide, angry eyes, the way she was shaking with fury.
"He pitied you!" Reinhardt clarified, smiling still as he reached a hand towards her, touching the side of her face lightly. Winnie jerked her head from the touch, glaring darkly at him.
"He got over it quickly though, especially once Herr Schmidt made it clear that if he did not, you would both die for it," Reinhardt stepped back, leaning against the desk again, "You truly were the perfect form of revenge, to get closest to the Captain, to hurt him, to break him, and then you could unleash your might upon him, to destroy him, to ruin him. It would have been perfect."
"You failed," she finally spoke, managing a tight smile, "You all failed." He raised an eyebrow at her.
"Did we? Red Skull was simply a leader, not a god, once he was removed, well, as we say, two more could take his place," Reinhardt smirked at her, "And we got you – it took a while, I agree, but here you are. I'm not a politician, I'm not Pierce, and I have no desire to run SHIELD or lead Hydra. I simply want power, and all the world at my feet." Winnie snorted and looked away, the arrogance of this man not really surprising her.
"You don't believe me?" He asked her, his voice slightly harder. Winnie looked back to him.
"I will never give you what you want, I will die before that happens," she promised him. Reinhardt laughed and rubbed his forehead for a moment.
"I created you, Nomad," he teased her, "I, who know you better than you know yourself, I will see to it that you do as you're told. We don't need Winnie Johnson to comply, we just need this silly superhero, this Nomad, to become a soldier. I can change your wants and desires, it's not hard – I can change your memories, your very personality. I can give you new ones, or simply take it all away and leave you as a blank slate."
Winnie swallowed hard at the bile rising in her throat; he was describing Bucky, describing what had been done to Bucky. He laughed and shook his head, waving a hand at her.
"You seem familiar with the process, surely your own Soldier has told you all about it? You are likely intimate and familiar with how it is done," he mocked her, before his voice hardened and his eyes narrowed, "You will comply. You don't have any choice in this."
She wanted to lash out and kill him, rip his head off, but she couldn't; she was still stupidly, distantly, hopeful that she could somehow find a way to at least free Bucky. Reinhardt approached her again, standing directly in front of her.
"I believe the very first thing I would like to do, is to send you and Barnes after Captain Rogers, make the two of you tear him apart in a public spectacle, while the world watches," he said this in a low, throaty voice, and Winnie fought to keep her face stiff and flat.
"You know I couldn't," she managed, "You, who apparently knows me so well? I can't move people, and you know it. There are limits to my abilities, limits to my power." She had hoped to give him pause, hoped to make him suddenly realize that she was not such a perfect weapon, that he had failed with her, and that she needed to be discarded.
Instead, Reinhardt burst out laughing. Huge, gusting chuckles rippled out of him, as he nearly folded in half with his mirth. He rested a hand on her shoulder and she could feel his arm shaking with his laughter.
"You stupid girl," he managed to wheeze in, "All these years and you never figured it out? Are you so afraid of yourself?" He laughed harder, before suddenly, and swiftly, standing up straight and moving to stand inches from her, bent so his face was right in front of hers, both hands gripping the sides of her head tightly.
"You are very nearly unstoppable, you have the potential to do anything, anything, and you let your own paltry human fear stand in the way," he murmured, looking intently into her widened, frightened eyes, "Your possibility is endless; have you no imagination?"
She stared at him, fighting the urge to cry, to scream, to lash out. "I don't want to be the thing you want me to be," she said quietly, "I will not lose control that way." He shook his head, closing his eyes for a moment as if she were too stupid to bear.
"When you hand yourself over, when you fully accept what you are, you will gain control. You will own yourself and all that stands before you," he told her darkly, "Once you abandon the barriers that you have created, once you decide to be what you truly are, then you will finally begin to live. Not this lie you live now, this falsehood, but the existence you were created to live."
They stared at each other for a long moment and then he stood up straight, shaking his head as he released his grip on her skull. "No matter," he spoke, turning back to the desk, "I don't need your mind intact to get you where I want you to be. And because you have been so unwillingly, I've decided that we certainly don't need Barnes. He can go back to rot in cold storage in Siberia."
Reinhardt turned and shot her a nasty smile, watching as she panted in growing upset at his words. "I hope you said your goodbyes to him, you won't be seeing him again. Perhaps we should just kill him, make it very final." His words were delivered flatly, and she did not for a moment doubt that he would do precisely as he said. A wave of frustration, rage, sadness, and longing for Bucky, mingled with a longing to escape this grinding, unending loop of capture and mistreatment, filled her to the brink. Pushed to her limit, Winnie crossed the barrier in her mind.
The world slowed down, seeming to halt all around her. Winnie watched Reinhardt move, reach for a little phone in his pocket. He was making the call now, she could tell. She thought of Bucky, what he had suffered already. All he had suffered already. Everything he had lost, from friends, to family, to his time, to her, to himself. Reinhardt's words spun dizzyingly through her shaken and disturbed mind and without any effort, she transferred her entire self over to the hungry darkness of her power, which she had always kept locked away so completely.
When you hand yourself over – Winnie's eyes rolled back into her head.
When you fully accept what you are – her mind slipped free of its bonds and she let it go without a fight.
You will gain control – she sought the dark place inside her, eagerly now, not in defeat.
You will own yourself – Winnie could feel the moment she connected with her ability, when she dropped all pretense of trying to hold it back. Her arms snapped out of their bindings, flying out to her sides, and she curled her fingers.
And all that stands before you – in an instant she had freed herself and let a wave of power break away, smashing up through the ceiling, down through the floor, and out through the walls.
She climbed to her feet, shattering the phone in Reinhardt's hands without a second thought. Winnie sensed the guards in the hall opening their mouths, making movements to report her actions and she hit them with energy hard enough to immediately knock them unconscious.
Her eyes moved briefly to Reinhardt, as he turned around, the shattered phone floating in pieces above his hand. He looked startled; he clearly never expected her to reach this state on her own, never thought she would fight back with Bucky's life on the line.
However, as shocked and frightened as he looked, she still saw a deep delight in his eyes. Winnie froze him in place, and closed her eyes, shrugging her shoulders slightly as she instinctively reached out through the building, locating Bucky, disintegrating his cell around him, heaving his guards against the wall so roughly she knew they were dead on impact. Her actions hardly made sense to her; it was as if her ability was simply fulfilling her desires through its own means, regardless of whether or not she understood how it was doing so.
Without even knowing she was able to, Winnie dipped into Bucky's mind without effort or planning, and told him to run. She felt him recoil in fear at the intrusion. Winnie couldn't waste time trying to convince him further, he was free now and that was all that mattered. The instant she entered his mind she became fully and completely aware of his earlier ruse on the planes. The relief she felt that he was not truly lost to Hydra's brainwashing, was nearly intoxicating. She admired his bravery, and cursed his stupidity for not checking it with her first.
With effort, Winnie let Bucky's deception go and ripped herself back to the room she stood in and watched Reinhardt's eyes, watched them follow her as she stepped away from the chair and towards him.
She sensed his fear of death, but his excitement at her display of power was stronger. Her senses assailed her, taking in almost too much information to process. She was inadvertently letting tidal waves of power demolish the buildings around them while she destroying the Hydra vehicles outside, preventing escape, ripping their weapons apart. The power was slipping her bonds and she didn't care, letting it streak out into the city. The earth around the building was cracking, the foundation of the ruined building breaking.
Winnie truly didn't consciously care. She knew SHIELD was here, knew that Skye was no longer in the building, and with barely a thought, she protected the SHIELD agents in the building from her destructive power as best as she could, turning the most violent of its waves away from them. She had Bucky wound so tightly in her power that she knew he must be finding it difficult to even walk; but he could be hit with an airplane right now and would survive, and that was all that mattered to her.
Winnie approached Reinhardt, raising him into the air before her slowly and gracefully; a stark contrast to the utter mayhem tearing about the building and the city around them.
""Thank you for teaching me," Winnie spoke clearly, "Because now I can do this." She heard people entering the room behind her and held a hand up towards them briefly – not telling them to stop, but simply stopping them herself.
She broke Reinhardt's legs as he hung frozen by her power, and Winnie felt a dark rushing of pleasure inside her. "In your arrogance, you taught me, without realizing it," she explained to him, breaking his hands and feet all at once. He screamed and she glowered at him. "And now, you get to pay."
Winnie broke his arm and he howled, before managing to turn wild eyes to her, a frantic gleam in his gaze. "This doesn't matter!" He screamed at her his German accent thick and strong, "You belong to Hydra! They will find you! They will always find you! They will always seek you! You belong to Hydra! You will never escape our reach!"
She broke his other arm then and heard Natasha yelling at her from behind, "Winnie! Nomad! Winnie! Stop! Stop! Please!" Winnie was lost though, Reinhardt owed her a debt and she wanted payment, now. She glared at him, her head tilting to the side.
"You can kill me, girl," Reinhardt vowed raggedly, "But two more will take my place, as they always do. You will never escape; they will find you. They will take what you love and destroy it, before they destroy you. They. Will. Find. You."
The room was completely silent for a moment before Winnie reached a clenched hand towards Reinhardt.
"Let them try," she murmured, before she flicked her closed fist open, violently tearing Reinhardt apart. The group behind her started yelling, yelling at her to stop, to put her hands on her head, to lay on the ground, to stop.
"Winnie!" She heard Sam yell and turned to find him standing next to Natasha, "Don't do this, stop now!" He yelled at her. He had his weapon half raised towards her. Everyone else, including Natasha, had their weapons trained on her.
A noise outside the door drew her attention, and she turned to see Bucky, struggling against the monumental wave of power pushing against him. Half the guns in the room shifted to him, and she felt a bubble of fury blossom in her chest.
"Winnie!" Bucky yelled, waving a hand at her, his eyes darting around the room, and landing on the remains of what was once Reinhardt. "Come with me! Come now!" He urged her, his gaze meeting hers.
She couldn't stop though, wouldn't, even though the building was still falling to pieces around her. Winnie felt a strange sense of peace from finally being connected so fully and so completely to her ability. It was a dark kind of satisfaction. I've hardly been myself all these years, this is who I am: a monster.
"I'm not safe," she told Bucky, her soft words rising over the destruction carrying on around them. Bucky's eyes widened at her words, and he shook his head.
"Neither am I!" He called back, trying to get closer to her. She was half-heartedly trying to hold him back, but he wouldn't stop pushing towards her.
"Barnes! Stay back!" Natasha yelled, "It's unsafe! Stay back!" Bucky didn't spare Natasha a glance and Winnie watched as he finally reached her, grabbing her shoulder and pulling her into his chest. She listened as his metal arm whirred when it embraced her, and she closed her eyes, letting the comfort of his touch wash over her.
"Winnie, you have to stop, you're hurting people," he whispered to her and she pushed away from him, looking up into his handsome face, his worried and pained eyes. He still loved her, she could see that on his face. A gun was fired into the air then, and she shoved Bucky away, to the ground, as quickly as she could. It was Coulson, and he had the gun trained on her.
"Nomad, stop this now," he warned her, "You're killing people out there." He waved a hand outside. "You have one chance to stop this immediately on your own, or I'll take you down." The threat to her person was something that her ability responded to, before her thinking mind could, and it lashed out at Coulson, heaving him across the room, his gun clattering to the ground as he slammed bodily into a wall.
Several things happened at once then, and Winnie was not fast enough to stop them. Natasha shot at her, and Winnie had just enough time to spin around towards the oncoming bullet, knowing without fear that she could stop it before it touched her.
Bucky didn't know that though, or at least he forgot what she was capable of doing in the heat of the moment, and he threw himself in the bullet's path. It slammed into his chest and Winnie screamed in horror, watching as he fell to the ground.
She didn't look at Natasha, just disintegrated the gun in her hands instead, before tossing the redhead into the wall as she had Coulson. Winnie rushed to Bucky's side, catching him as he slumped to the ground. He was bleeding, heavily, from the wound, but she could tell it had missed his heart; it looked to have torn through the meat of what was left of his shoulder on his left side.
He was sucking in air, obviously hurting, and struggling to get to his feet. "We have to go, we have to run," he coughed, wincing in pain, "We have to leave now, Win, we have to go."
She finally stared around at the destruction clearly, feeling her power wilt and begin to die down, dissipating and disappearing. Her eyes moved back to Bucky, to the bleeding wound, to his facial wounds from the fighting on the Bus, and the scorch marks on his hand and neck from the cell they'd been holding him in.
Winnie looked up and saw that Natasha was back on her feet and had another gun, and now she and Sam were both aiming weapons at her. Behind them, agents were helping a dazed Coulson to his feet, and Agent May was levelling a dark look at her.
"What have I done?" She whispered, looking back down at Bucky. In the distance she could hear people screaming, and sirens, and realized the scope of her damage was much wider ranging than this room.
"We can leave, we can still go, you and I," Bucky told her, struggling again to sit up. She put a hand on his chest, pushing him back down to the floor, noting in abject horror that her palm grew wet and red with his blood.
"They will always come for me," she whispered to him, repeating Reinhardt's final warning. She met his panicked gaze and saw him fighting to sit up, and used her ability to easily and gently hold him still as she continued, "It will always be me they come for, and it will always be you who pays the price." Bucky was the one thing an enemy could always hold over her head, she saw that so starkly and so clearly that it left her feeling empty and bereft; it was clear what she had to do.
Winnie leaned down and kissed Bucky, on the lips, on the cheek, on the forehead. She sat back up on her heels, moving to get away. He strained against her power. "Winnie! Please!" Bucky called her, "Don't do this!"
"I love you," she told him quietly, "Bucky, I always loved you." He swallowed hard, realizing what she meant to do, and his brow drew together in pain. "Winnie don't," he pleaded her.
"Say it," she demanded softly, smiling sadly at him, "Please say it." Bucky swallowed again, the veins standing out in his neck momentarily as he fought her power, attempting to get up and follow her, before he sagged in defeat, his eyes meeting hers.
"I love you, you know I do," he complied with her request, his voice a hollow shell. Winnie closed her eyes and looked away from him, feeling her chest beginning to ache. She flicked a hand at the agents who all moved towards her as she rose to her feet, freezing them in place.
"Don't come after me," she warned them. She turned on her heel and ran to the ragged opening in the wall which lead outside and launched herself out into the empty air, into daylight, escaping the sound of Bucky yelling for her.
