Author's Note: This chapter title comes from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Please keep in mind that all translations are done using Google Translate, and so I'm well aware they aren't 100% accurate.
Chapter Twenty-One - There are only the pursued (and the tired)
Danielle adjusted the green beanie and glanced in the mirror. "There. All dressed up and ready to head off to Montpellier."
"Hold on," Bucky murmured, digging in his pocket for a second. Then he leaned forward and messed with the edge of her beanie. She felt warm metal rest against her forehead. When she looked in the mirror again, she found the pearl hair clip fastened to it.
She smiled. "Thanks." She pushed past him and stooped to retrieve her backpack. "Ready to go scam someone out of a car?"
"You sure you can do this?" he asked curiously, slinging his duffle bag across his shoulders.
"Absolutely. There's a shady place seven blocks over. I promise you that we'll have a car in no time, no problem. Rumlow mighta been a bitch, but he taught me some useful things. Cash?"
He pulled out a stack of euros. "Two thousand is the most you can drop on this thing, got it?"
"Crystal." She frowned, wrinkling her nose. "Wait, no, that didn't quite— Got it. Yep."
He stared at her for a long moment and then his lips curled into a fond smile. "I'll go check us out at the front desk. Use a few of those bills to grab us breakfast. I'll meet you at the car lot."
"Got it!" She ducked out through the door and headed off for the convenience store. After getting enough food to feed an army, or just two super soldiers—fruit cups, coffee, oatmeal, almonds, hummus, pretzels, and plenty of hot dogs—she headed off for the car dealership. She took a sip of coffee and let out a happy whine. "Oh, black as my soul caffeine, how I've missed you."
Danielle grinned at Bucky as she approached where he was lingering just outside the lot. "Breakfast and coffee," she announced happily. "Eat up, Isaac."
"Thanks," he murmured, taking the bag she proffered. "You gonna do this?"
"Hmm? Of course. Follow my lead." She moved forward and smiled widely to accentuate the pink painting her lips. "Salut! Monsieur Bouchard?" [Hello! Mister Bouchard?]
The man looked up from the clipboard he was studying. The moment he saw them, a grin split his face. "Salut! Que puis-je faire pour vous?" [Hello! What can I do for you?]
"Je m'appelle Emily et voici mon frère Isaac. Nous avons besoin d'une voiture." [My name is Emily and this is my brother Isaac. We need a car.] Danielle smiled and put a hand on Bucky's shoulder as she spoke. She flicked her gaze across him, seeing what she could learn about him that her online investigation hadn't already revealed. "Quelque chose de fiable. Neuf ou légèrement utilisé, de préférence." [Something reliable. New or lightly used, preferably.]
"J'aimerais aider. Quel prix regardez-vous?" [I'd love to help. What price tag are you looking at?] The man smiled, though there was something a bit off about it, and he lowered his clipboard.
She dragged her gaze across his dirty wedding bang and back up to his face. "Mille deux cent." [Twelve hundred.]
He laughed a little. "Pour obtenir quelque chose de réel, il faudra dépenser un peu plus que cela, ma chérie." [To get something of real quality you'll have to spend a bit more than that, my dear.]
Danielle raised an eyebrow. "Onze cents et je ne dis pas à Aline que tu couches avec ta voisine." [Eleven hundred and I don't tell Aline you've been sleeping with your neighbor.]
And just like that, his face lost all of its color. "Je, je ne sais pas de quoi tu parles." [I, I don't know what you're talking about.] As he spoke, he stumbled a step back.
Danielle smiled comfortingly and put a cold edge into it. "Dix cents. Je ne parlerai pas à Aline de toi et tu ne diras rien à personne de nous. Si vous le faites, je le saurai. Et vous ne voulez pas qu'elle connaisse aussi la secrétaire, n'est-ce pas?" [Ten hundred. I won't tell Aline about you and you don't tell anyone about us. If you do, I'll know. And you don't want her knowing about the secretary too, do you?] She kept her voice even and quiet as she spoke, smile still intact.
Bouchard held out a shaky hand. "Camry. Seulement quatre ans. Bon état, promis." [Camry. Only four years old. Good condition, I promise.]
She counted out the money and handed it over. "Clés." [Keys]
He shook his head. "Dans mon bureau! Je-" [In my office! I—]
"Quelle voiture?" [Which car?]
He pointed at the blue Camry a few rows over. Danielle nodded to Bucky. "Go with him and get the keys. I'll take care of the car."
He gave an impressed whistle. "Yes, ma'am. And to think I doubted you."
She smiled proudly, though quickly snatched the look away when she glanced back at Bouchard. "Donne la clé à Isaac et ensuite, oublie nous. Compris?" [Give Isaac the key and then forget about us. Understood?]
He nodded fervently, pale and sweaty. "Oui, oui, oui!"
"Good news," Danielle said the moment she closed the door to the hotel room. "The store had lots of sweet and sugary foods to fulfill my freedom of choice cravings and I bought all of them. Bad news, I'm probably going to get a cavity." She dropped the bags at the foot of his bed, selected a bag of powdered donuts, and sat down next to him. "What have you been up to?"
"Deleting all of Hydra's information on you from where it was leaked on the internet. I know the codewords you were filed under, so hopefully I'm the only, or one of the few, to find these files. Soon, the only place they'll hopefully exist is on our USB."
"Once it's on the internet, nothing can ever truly disappear," Danielle mused thoughtfully. "Donut?"
"No."
She frowned at the steel in his voice and leaned into him to get a look at what he was reading: Strucker's notes on her revival times. "You know that I'm okay, right?"
"Are you, though?"
"As okay as I can be." She shifted and managed to tuck herself under his arm. His metal hand came down to rest on her head and he took off her beanie, tossing it away. Then he spread his cold fingers over her scalp. "I am. I promise."
"I made you into a killer," he whispered.
"Winter," she breathed, twisting so she could look up at him. She smiled sadly and lowered the bag of donuts. Then she reached up and ran her hand through his hair. She trailed her fingers down his jaw and then supported his chin so he couldn't look away. "You didn't make me into anything I wasn't asking to be." She hesitated and her hand dropped to curl in his shirt. "Do you . . . ." She cleared her throat roughly. "When you look at me, do you see a monster?" she asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.
Bucky froze and she took that moment to listen to the steady ba-dum ba-dum of his heart. Then he closed the computer and shoved it off his lap before turning to curl protectively around her. "No," he whispered. "I don't. I really don't."
"I've done bad things. And they didn't even take my memories."
"You're not a monster, Nell. People can make bad choices, but monsters can't make good ones."
He locked the door tightly and peered through the peephole to make sure no one had followed him. "I found the base. It's about five and a half miles outside the city." He turned. "We'll need to do more recon before—" Bucky faltered and frowned. "What is it?"
Danielle didn't look up from where she was curled up on her bed, clutching on of her pillows to her chest. "Magazine," she mumbled.
He paused by the table and studied the crumpled magazine there. It was open to a page titled An exclusive look into Iron Man's daily routine! Bucky picked the magazine up and flicked to the next page. He frowned. "I . . . thought you dad was dead. That's your dad, right? Tony Stark?"
"Yeah," she rasped. "They told me he was dead. They, they convinced me. I believed them like some sort of stupid, naive idiot."
"Shush. You're not an idiot." He dropped the magazine back on the table. Bucky moved to her bed and sat down next to her. "Look at me." When she didn't obey and instead just offered up a pitiful whine, he sighed and poked her. "Look at me."
Finally, she rolled over and looked up at him. Her eyes were red rimmed and puffy and her cheeks were wet.
"Do you want to go home to him?"
"I . . . ." Danielle sniffled and rubbed her eyes. She shuffled forward and slid her arms around him, burying her face in his middle. "Would I be a bad person if I said no?"
"Shh, no, of course not." He spread his fingers across the nape of her neck and gently worked at the tight muscles there. "Just tell me why."
"I don't . . . I don't want him to see me like this. I— I know you said I'm not a monster, but that doesn't mean I'm not different than what he remembers. That doesn't mean that I want him to see what Hydra did to me."
"He's your father. He won't care. You said he loves you, right?"
"Right," she rasped. "But . . . I love him too. And that's why I don't want to make him see me like this."
Bucky frowned at her sadly. "I think he'd want to see you. But," he said, holding up a hand as she opened her mouth to protest. "I'll go with your decision. I said I wouldn't leave you and I won't."
She shifted so her head was resting on his thigh and she reached up to curl her fingers around his hand. "Thanks."
Danielle frowned and rubbed the Cheeto dust off on her jeans before turning the page. "Huh."
Bucky looked up from the folder he was studying. "What?"
"Just some stuff about the twins I told you about. At least, I'm assuming that's who this is referencing. It's documenting moving the scepter to Strucker."
"Scepter?"
When he reached for the paper, she handed it to him. "Scepter that Loki had in New York. Used it to mind control people. But from this stuff . . . . It's looking more similar to the Tesseract than brainwashing. I doubt they've made the connection themselves, but these energy patterns? The nervous system dampening effect? These are all things I found when Selvig was running tests on me."
"Didn't they run tests on you, though?"
"Not those types of tests. As soon as they found that removing the Tesseract would kill me and possibly implode the cube, they stopping caring so much about what it was and instead cared more about what they could do with it." She took the paper back and uncapped her highlighter. "You know we can't carry all of this information around with us all the time, right?"
"Of course. What's your plan?"
Danielle hesitated, chewing on her lip. "I think . . . I think I know some people who could really benefit from having these files in their hands."