Don't shoot me!
Chapter 9
When Daisy awoke, she was first aware of the pain in her chest, and then the cold shackles around her wrists and head. She was propped up on some sort of thing facing a blank screen. Her attacker was nowhere in sight, but before her stood Pierce.
"Captain Rodgers is alright, if that's what you're wondering," he assured her, smiling as if somehow that could make everything better. "The Winter Soldier did not wish to hurt him, only to retrieve you. Hydra never wants to kill. We are not monsters. Yes, we will go to extremes to achieve our ends, but your father built a supersuit to escape a cave. Surely you know about extremes."
At the mention of her father, Daisy strained against her cuffs, only to feel pain shooting down her body from where she'd been shot. "Well at least my family has always fought the Nazis."
"Is that why you're so reluctant to help our just cause? Because you associate us too much with modern society's embodiment of evil, the Nazi Party? If that be the case let me assure you that Hydra existed long before Hitler, and survived long after."
Daisy had never heard of pre-Nazi Hydra, but she didn't doubt it. History was full of groups there sewing evil deeds. "I will never agree with you about killing thousands of people just to maintain power! Kill me now, because I will never comply."
Pierce sighed, and then pressed a remote. The screen in front of Daisy burst to life, with images of the Hydra S.H.I.E.L.D and dozens of other things. "I didn't want to do this Daisy, I really didn't, but we need you. The Avengers are the greatest threat to our order, and you are the only one who can stop them. So you will comply, and compliance will be rewarded."
It didn't even take Tony an hour to get to D.C., but by the time he arrived it was too late. Daisy was gone, taken by some masked man with a metal arm. And someone had let her get away.
They'd sparred many times in Avengers Training, but when Tony attacked Steve he didn't care the man was already injured. All his strength, all his power was directed right at his teammate. "You were there! You should have protected her!"
The worst bit, and the bit that made it so Tony just stopped attacking Steve, was that the supersoldier didn't even fight back. He just stared at the ground and faced the truth, "I know. I should have protected her and I didn't."
"Damn right you didn't!" Tony yelled, but in his heart he knew it wasn't true. Daisy's stupid boyfriend wasn't responsible for her safety, her father was. He was the one who'd let Daisy down. He was the one who should have been there for Daisy. She'd gotten hurt in S.H.I.E.L.D before, and he hadn't stopped her from continuing. He should never have let her get involved. He should never have let her have so much freedom at such a young age. It was all his fault. Whatever Daisy was enduring was his fault.
"Look Tony," Natasha snapped, standing between the two men who looked ready to kill each other outside a S.H.I.E.L.D facility. "I know you're worried, but Daisy is alive. The man who did this, they call him the Winter Soldier. He always shoots to kill when he means to kill. I have a scar to prove it. He wanted Daisy alive, which means she will remain alive. Whatever he wants, it is not her death."
Daisy tried to blink away the confusion, but her eyes had been propped open by some horrific wires. Everything she was being told made so much sense, and yet Daisy refused to believe it. I am Daisy Stark. My father is Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man. I am an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. I am not Hydra. I will not comply.
"Come on Daisy, you know it's so much easier just to give in. Your compliance will be rewarded. You can go home."
"When I get my metal hands on this Winter Soldier I'm going to crush the life out of him," Tony growled, not coming out of his suit to pace. Daisy was missing. Daisy had been taken. Daisy had been shot and kidnapped by a known assassin.
Natasha shook her head though, remaining calm despite being terrified for her little sister (because what else could Daisy be to her?) "You'll never find him. He's a ghost, a man of legend. He's been around for decades, never aging, never dying, never revealed. He's responsible for dozens of assassinations… he's responsible for your parent's deaths."
"My parents died in a car accident."
Perhaps it wasn't good to shatter any more of Tony at that moment, but Natasha wasn't about to keep his ignorance intact, not when the truth might help them find Daisy. "That's what S.H.I.E.L.D let the world, and consequently you, believe. But it was planned. Your father called Agent Carter, told her he'd learned a secret that made it so they needed to meet immediately. Howard and Maria never made it to the meeting to tell Carter the secret."
While Tony cursed, Clint, whom Nat had called as soon as Tony called her, asked his former partner. "When he shot you, you told me this Winter Soldier was an assassin,"
"But who does he work for then?" Natasha finished for him. "No idea."
Daisy rubbed her wrists. They were swollen and bloody from the days of struggling against her chains and she let out a little laugh. She'd struggled? Why would she have struggled? That was just silly.
"Do you know who you work for Daisy?"
"Of course," she replied simply, looking up at her superior and nodding. "I work for Hydra."
They'd moved inside, and Tony smashed his hand against the table. "But why Daisy? Why not Steve or one of us? Whoever this is what did they want with her? She'd just a kid."
"But she's your kid."
"The Avengers trust you," Daisy's superior reminded her, and Daisy nodded. Of course the Avengers trusted her. She was their family, and they hers. That was why she had to do what she had to do. When family misbehaves, you have to punish them.
"They will never suspect what I intend to do. They are blinded by love, as all monsters are," Daisy answered, fiddling with her hair as she'd always done while bored in school.
"So the real question is what now?" Steve asked of his fellow Avengers, avoiding Tony's steely eyes. "I mean how are we going to get her back?"
Tony looked at Steve, really looked at him, and pitied him. He was a man out of time, never quite sure of the world around him, always afraid it might change yet again. Still, there was one thing that couldn't possibly have changed since 1942- a father's devotion to his daughter. "I find the son of a bitch and kill him, and whoever he works for."
"And you know what to do now Daisy?" Her superior asked, pencil ready to check off the last box. It had been a long conversion, far longer than the superior's own, but in the end Daisy was ready.
"Yes I know what to do now. Now I will kill the Avengers."
