Chapter 4

Everybody wants to rule the world

Keyla could taste her blood on her mouth she stared into Baron Strucker's cruel black eyes.

An evil smirk appeared in his mouth before another hard smack crashed into Keyla's face. She wanted to kill him in that second but she could do nothing but to bear with the pain.

"I thought you'd be a hard one to get" he mocked "But I see that our little gem has gained a weakness. Tell me ruby, is it love what you feel for our little American?"

Keyla looked up at him, hate coming out her every pore. She remained quiet, she knew better than to speak out, her eyes spoke for her.

"You will soon be send to your first mission, your job will be to keep him from remembering, I want him to be mindless, you will control him and you will do as you're told, for his sake as well as your own" he smiled and suddenly took out a small gun from his jacket.

Keyla noticed a little purple glimmer coming from it. Strucker's eyes told that it meant nothing good. They couldn't kill her, she was too important, but they could do much worse.

"Just to make sure that we also have a grip on you, I will implant you a small tracker that will release a poison if you do something wrong during your missions, it will slowly drive you mad" he said before shooting her. Then everything went black for Keyla.

She woke up in her cell to the calling of her name, feeling her head throb in a horrible rhythm. Blue worried eyes looked at her as a cold hand stroked her hair, she saw the bruises in soldier's face and knew that he also had an audience with Strucker.

Keyla couldn't believe what Strucker told her to do, kill the fire that remained in Soldier's eyes, kill her hope. She wouldn't do it. She had to keep Bucky safe, she had to keep him inside Soldier in the eyes of HYDRA, but someday, the fire and the brave man would come alive again.

Soldier remembered his audience, everything that he told him, he had to do everything HYDRA told him to do, or else Keyla would die. Her life was in his hands and it was his job to protect her, she was all he remembered and the only one he trusted.

Their lives were hanging on each other's hands, because they were each other's weaknesses.

"Soldier" Keyla muttered with a tired voice.

Soldier's eyes sparkled with relief. "It's okay, you're okay, take it easy" he said caressing her cheek. His face was tired and pained, he didn't liked to see her like that, sick and wounded. Her skin was pale as paper, except for the swollen wound in her neck.

"How are you feeling?" he asked

"My whole body hurts but I guess I'll be fine, I mean, they can't let us die in peace" she answered and gave him a fake smile

Soldier felt her concern and doubt settled in his expression.

"Don't look at me like that, you know it's true, besides, you've seen me bear with much worse" Keyla chuckled making soldier smile. In that moment they couldn't think of something worse.

"I'm concerned about you, that's all" he said. His face dropped and fear appeared in his eyes. "I hate seeing you like this, I need to protect you but I can't"

Keyla looked at him sweetly placing a hand on his right one, he instantly grabbed it. "You don't have to protect me of everything, I can take care of myself"

"I just don't want you to get hurt" he said sadly

"getting hurt in inevitable, but as long as you're with me its fine, because that's what you and I do, we look after each other" she whispered.

Soldier looked up and placed a small kiss to her lips. They shared the mattress that night, clinging to each other, promising to keep each other safe, because they both had the life of the other hanging in their hands.

With Strucker at the head of HYDRA everything got worse for the couple, the death threat settled in their training, if soldier did something wrong then Keyla paid the price and vice versa.

As time passed, soldier and Keyla learned to become one. They fought like two bodies of the same mind, always looking after each other's backs, always knowing what the other thought and even there were times where Keyla's abilities became soldier's.

Keyla was now capable of psychic navigation and creation and control of fire, while soldier's strength reached an inhuman level.

HYDRA decided that they were ready for their first mission in 46', it was meant to be a single and simple kill in soviet. The only problem they had was breaking into the victim's property and then getting back to HYDRA.

It was a long travel from America to Soviet, HYDRA had to be careful that they didn't got uncovered. They traveled for all of Europe, stopping a few times to continue with the experiments.

In the meantime Keyla and soldier had a lot of free time between the training and the experiments. The doctors gave them things to keep their minds occupied with so they didn't grow mad.

Soldier liked to draw, and Keyla loved to watch him, sometimes she saw a little spark in his eyes as his hand flew gracefully in the sheet, it was a glimpse of Bucky and Keyla loved each glimpse.

Sometimes Keyla took him to the beautiful forest she showed him when they first met, soldier loved to play with her illusions. He began to plaster the walls with his drawings, of her, of him or of the places she showed him in her visions.

(But he also did sketches of a man, sometimes a scrawny little man, sometimes a tall strong man with deep fire in his eyes, and Keyla realized that it was Steve Rogers, his best friend. She would always tuck those away from the nosy scientists, Keyla couldn't believe that, but she also kept him from doing it, he always fell asleep after drawing him and never asked about them when he woke up. Keyla was grateful for that but she also hated herself for keeping Bucky inside soldier.)

It was nice, an illusion of how life could be without HYDRA, of how life could be when they free themselves.