A/N: So this is the last full-length chapter of this story. And I've realised this series is gonna be LONG. I might go back over it in a while and join a few of the stories together just so it's a bit less disjointed. Anyways, I'll post the epilogue today as well, and probably the first chapter of the next story. Until then, enjoy!

Review Response(s):

Lara Barnes: I would say I'm sorry, but... I'm not. :)

14 - The End of the Line

The abandoned building was practically overrun with ivy, the walls cracked and crumbling, and the front door half covered by the plants. It looked every inch like it was completely empty, but James somehow knew that this building above all the rest was the one they were looking for. Agent Silva didn't seem inclined to argue either, simply following his lead without a word, guns at the ready.

The door was locked tight, but that posed no problem for James, who simply drew back his metal arm and slammed it into the door, blasting it off its hinges. He didn't care for being silent. The more noise he made, the more opponents he'd face. And he needed something to draw his mind. As he and Agent Silva entered the threshold, the first thing that became apparent was the quiet. There was no dripping water or creaking floorboards. There was nothing but the gentle whir of the wind that squeezed its way through the gaps in the windows. Before him was a corridor, the floor covered with small flecks of paint which had at some point fallen off the walls. Ahead was a staircase leading upwards.

At the top of the staircase was Zale Beritt, stood in a fairly relaxed position with his hands in his pockets.

"You took a while to arrive here, Soldier," he drawled, with the smallest hint of an accent in his voice.

James stared at the man for a long time, his mind suddenly clear of rage, and he slipped back into the analytical mindset he often favoured back when he was doing his missions for Hydra. He examined the slight clenching and unclenching of the man's jaw, how his hands were balled into fists in his pockets, how his eyes were tight and seemed... troubled. "But less time that you thought it would take me," he deduced confidently, his voice lower than normal. He could feel the other part of him, the one he preferred to ignore had ever existed, trying to edge forward. But killing Beritt would not help him, so he pushed that part of him back. He clenched his left hand into a fist, for once not completely despising the clicking of metal as his arm prepared itself for battle. "Where is she?"

"Come and see," the man drawled, before disappearing further along the corridor.

James paused, looked around him, then turned to Silva. "Check the rooms on this floor," he ordered in a quiet voice. "Meet me upstairs when you're done."

Silva's eyes tightened, before she nodded sharply. "Don't lower your guard," she warned, before turning and walking silently down the corridor beyond the stairs, eyes roaming her surroundings with practiced ease. James then turned his gaze to the top of the stairs, before he started to slowly ascend.

He wasn't surprised to see he was facing opposition at the top, but a few flicks of his trigger finger and the occasional movement of his metal arm to deflect bullets soon had the men dead or dying on the floor. Beritt was stood at the end of the corridor, looking irritated.

"Did you really think that would be enough to stop me?" James asked, reloading his gun. While he had barely used half of his old magazine, he would rather go into the unknown with as many bullets as possible. He was glad he brought eight spare magazines with him. Honestly, he'd been expecting more of an ambush than this.

"No, I did not," Beritt said coldly. "Those men were expendable."

"Aren't all men to you?" James spat, his muscles tense and coiled to strike. "Merely pawns on your chessboard?"

"Not all of them; only most." Beritt smiled sardonically, before walking calmly into the room next to him. James followed warily. When his eyes fell upon the room, he froze. It was a torture room. There were shackles and chains in the room, covered in dried blood, and there were sharp tools of too many varieties to count hanging from hooks on the walls or resting on top of a blood-smeared metal table. Part of him cracked at the sight. Did they put Daphne through all this? She could deal with pain, but even imagining her being tied down, having her skin broken and torn and cut and-

"Barnes!"

James jolted, his feet moving before his mind had the chance to catch up. He raced away from the room and down the stairs, towards the sound of Silva's voice. He marched along the corridor, not knowing which room she was in until she stepped out into the corridor and beckoned him towards her. His pace increased.

Seeing the torture room was one thing. Seeing Daphne tied to a wall, arms hung above her head, looking pale and sickly, was another entirely. Her skin was still in one piece, so he figured she hadn't been too badly cut up (if at all), but if anything the dark bruises under her eyes and the lifelessness to her form was worse. Much worse. It was proof that she'd been through some form of hell. Something probably far worse than knives and brands.

That sick bastard had also put her back into her old Hydra uniform. James wasn't even aware Hydra had spares, because her original armour was still in the Tower, but somehow she was back how she used to be. Her armour hugged her body tightly enough that he could see every tremble and every twitch.

Then his eyes fell on the chair stuffed in the corner, the metal plates smoking slightly - proof that it had been used recently.

"Oh my God," he breathed, rushing forward to cradle her head in his hands. She didn't even stir, her eyes open and glassy. They were staring through him rather than at him, like her mind was somewhere else entirely. "Oh, Daphne, what have they done to you?" he asked, the sorrow in his own voice rubbing him the wrong way. Daphne blinked once, slowly. Her eyes remained blurred. He gently tapped her cheek, trying to get her to focus, but that didn't work. Figuring he'd sort her out later, he started to undo her shackles, but to his surprise Daphne hissed, her foot automatically lashing out and hitting him full-force in the stomach. He coughed, the hit having winded him, and looked up to see her eyes had cleared. She blinked again a few times, her gaze shifting from angered to confused to terrified. "Daphne?"

"James, get out of here," she said, eyes darting around.

"Not a chance."

"James, he planned this. It's a trap."

"You think I don't know that?" he snarled, brows twitching into a frown. "I'm not leaving you again."

"You're putting us all in danger by being here. You have to get out."

But James had promised himself he wouldn't let her get away from him again. "I'm not leaving."

"Now isn't the time to be stubborn!" she cried in exasperation. As he stepped closer to him, she started shaking her head. "He's got a plan. He's going to find a way to lock you up. He wants us both, and he used me to get you here. You have to go, James. Please!"

Hearing her beg crushed him inside, but James was set. His mind would not be changed. "Agent Silva," he said in a firm voice. "Go back. Get the others. Tell them where we are."

"And what about you?"

"I'll live," he said simply. "Go."

Silva sighed heavily but shouldered her guns and nodded. As she left, James thought he heard her mutter, "You have no idea what you're doing, Barnes." James ignored her. It wasn't as if she knew any better.

Daphne shook her head again, eyes drooping, either with sadness or exhaustion, James didn't know. "You're so stupid," she mumbled quietly. That's when James realised there was more happening. He saw the tube leading from the wall, ending in the sharp point of a needle. A strange orange liquid was being fed into the tube and into Daphne's blood. With a slight snarl, he grabbed the needle and pulled it out, watching with satisfaction as the liquid started to drip onto the floor.

James glanced next to him at the chair. "Did they...?"

Daphne's head sluggishly turned to follow his gaze, before she nodded. "Yes, but..."

James cradled her face in his hands, dragging her eyes back up after her head slipped down. Her eyes fluttered slightly. "But what?" he asked. "Daphne?"

"It didn't work," she whispered, before groaning and convulsing slightly, her body clearly going through some kind of internal trauma and trying to fight it off. "James," she grumbled. "Gas."

James frowned. "What?"

He flinched when the door suddenly slammed shut behind him. He whirled around, but before he could move his mind began to become fuzzy. He looked around him and saw that a strange, white gas was being fed into the room. He tried to stumble his way to the door, so he could let the gas escape, but his limbs turned to lead and he couldn't think straight enough to remember how his body even worked. He slumped against the wall, breathing shallow and quick, and he turned his eyes towards Daphne, who was watching him with heavy, lidded eyes. She was the last thing he saw before his body gave up on keeping him awake.

When James woke up again, he was in the same room. Only this time, he was in an identical position to Daphne. There was a tube attached to his right arm, slowly feeding him that orange liquid. It kept him calm, kept his heartbeat slow. It made him feel like moving was a Herculean task.

"Welcome back, Soldier," Beritt said, and James shifted his head slightly to glare at the man who was sat comfortably in a reclining chair with his feet up on a table in front of him. "I have some interesting information for you," he said with a grin. "The idea for the liquid being fed to you now came from your dear one." James blinked, trying to squash the surprise and hurt he felt. "Not willingly, of course," Beritt added. "But pain does strange things to the mind. She didn't even realise she was being interrogated - she was too focused on the pain in her body. We have some clever scientists here, Soldier. Some of them better than others. They developed a serum that stimulates the receptors in the skin to feel pain. At all times. Makes them feel like they're being burned alive. No one is impervious to that. Not even your precious Silverthorn." He nodded his head to the wall to James' right, and, with a significant amount of effort, James turned his head. Daphne was still tied to the wall, but at least she looked a little healthier. She was giving Beritt the most vicious glare he'd ever seen. He would have been impressed, were it not for the fact that anger was coiling in his stomach.

"What do you want with us?" he found himself asking, his voice biting but weak.

Beritt chuckled. "Nothing," he said. "Not with both of you, anyway. You, however, can be useful to me. But Silverthorn here has exhausted her usefulness. She told me everything she knows about the future while under the influence of our serum. And she gave me you - you, who is stronger than her, and a better fighter, and who has less to live for. Which brings me to our next order of business." He took his feet off the table and picked up a peculiar looking gun from under the table. James felt fear strike him instantly. "You recognise it, don't you?" Beritt asked with a grin. "Pulled this from an old war base. It was one of the first guns ever designed by one Arnim Zola. The power of the Tesseract is still stored within it, too, though I don't know how long it will continue to work." He stood up, grasping the gun in both hands. "I considered making you do it for a while," he said, looking at James, who glared back, eyes promising murder. Beritt smiled. "But I realised I have no real way of making you do that. Your will for her survival is too strong. I expect not even your trigger words would be enough, and I don't think it is worth the risk to find out. So, in the end I just figured I'd do it, and make you watch."

"You're insane if you think killing her is going to make me comply to your wishes," James snarled, pulling against his restraints, hearing the left one creak, but with the liquid in his blood his strength was lessened, so he couldn't break himself free.

Beritt's smile widened, became fierce. "Perhaps not," he said, "but if we put you in the chair enough, you'll eventually have her completely wiped from your mind. And without her there as a prompt for you to remember, there's no chance of our work being reversed. Besides, she's a threat. Two birds, one stone. Well, one gun, really."

James let out a yell, pulling against his restraints again, red-hot fury boiling through him, but he couldn't get himself free. Not even his metal arm, which was making a tremendous amount of noise as it tried to break free, could get him out.

"James." He stopped fighting when he heard Daphne's voice. He looked back at her, and saw she looked perfectly calm. Confident even. Her eyes held determination as she stared at him. She gave him a weak smile. "I'm going to be okay, James," she said softly.

James scoffed. "Don't be naïve, Daph," he said. "Unless by some miracle the others burst through the door now, you're going to be turned to dust. I've seen how those guns work. There's no chance of survival. Once you're hit, you're gone."

"I'm going to be okay," she repeated, and this time her voice was firm, brokering no arguments. "And so will you. We'll both be fine."

James could only stare at her, until he heard Beritt powering up the gun and raising it to point at Daphne. He tried to wrestle his way free again, grunting and cursing when his restraints refused to give. His eyes widened with fear as Beritt's finger twitched toward the trigger. His eyes met Daphne's again, and she gave him one last smile before there was a flash of blue, and she vanished from his sight.

His body fell fast into a state of shock. He stared at the wall where she'd been held, his blank mind unable to comprehend what he'd just witnessed. He continued to stare even when the door burst open, spraying him with splinters of wood. Stared even when Beritt was slammed against the wall beside him, his head cracking against the bricks and knocking him out. He continued to stare even when he vaguely noticed Steve hovering near him, talking to him with a voice he couldn't hear. He continued to stare even as he was untied and led out of the room. Only when his eyes could no longer see that spot did the fact that Daphne was gone sink into his head. And then he lost all control of himself. Suddenly, all he wanted was blood. Revenge. He wanted them all to die. And he knew who to start with.

Pulling himself from Steve's grasp, he felt himself move to unstrap a pistol from his belt. No one fought him as he took Beritt from Iron Man's grasp. They simply stepped back and let him raise the gun and fire a single bullet into Beritt's head.

It was nowhere near enough, but it was a start.