Bucky Barnes—or the man who had once been Bucky Barnes—crouched against the side of the abandoned Hydra base, hidden in the shadows, smoothing out the single piece of paper he carried in his flesh-and-blood hand. It was a warm spring evening, and yet the baseball cap stayed on his head, though his hair was soaked with sweat, and his jacket was zipped to his throat. If the heat bothered him, he gave no indication of it.

There was just enough light left in the sky to read the scribbled notes, and he could understand the German despite never having spoken a word of it before—at least that was what his scattered mind told him. Fragments of a life—lives?—were starting to come back to him, slowly but surely, like a dripping faucet. Often these fragments would come in the form of dreams, bloody and brutal, and always at the expense of later sleep. But it was the gut feelings that hit him the hardest—not the actual memories, but the emotions that came with them. A blond man, a petite brunette—

Bucky's breath hitched in his throat as he scanned the paper, his breathing becoming increasingly shallower as he continued to read. It wasn't until the page crumpled altogether in his metal fist, pieces slipping from between his fingers and fluttering onto the ground, that he finally looked up. His teeth were bared, his eyes red and wild. He resembled the cornered animal Alexander Pierce had once likened him to—now an animal without a leash, without restraints. The flash of mercy he had bestowed on the Hydra agents at the airport had vanished; the desire to save, to protect, as he had felt when he'd fished Steve Rogers out of the Potomac and caught Beatrice Hartley when she had fallen earlier that night had disappeared, to be replaced with an overwhelming, consuming rage. It wasn't the calm, calculated intent of the Winter Soldier, nor was it Bucky Barnes's desire for revenge. It was a hybrid of the two, a dangerous fury that had been born out of their fusion. Bucky Barnes had died the moment Zola clamped the first machine onto his head, and the Winter Soldier had died the moment Captain America said "I'm with you 'til the end of the line."

The creature—was he even really a man anymore?—left in the empty hollows of both clenched his hands into fists and strode forward, disappearing into the forest that led to Geneva.

From the window of a nearby building, the two agents who had let Sam win against them watched the asset leave with satisfaction. "I'll give him a head start," the first one muttered, his hand resting against his gun.

"Careful," his partner warned. "Strucker wants him in one piece."

A loud, undignified snort echoed around the room. "What is Strucker planning to do with him anyway? Hydra no longer has any use for the Winter Soldier—not when we have the scepter and the twins."

"It doesn't matter if he's useful or not—he's the property of Hydra. So is the girl." Dark eyes glittered as the taller man bore down on his shorter comrade, his mouth twisting into a sneer. "If we can get them both to Strucker tonight, he'll reward us."

A flicker of unease crossed the other agent's face. "And if we don't?"

"We will. Or at least I will. That's why he's sending me after the asset and you after the girl. She's an easy target." There was a loud click as the safety on his gun was disengaged. "And when have Strucker's plans ever failed?"

Manhattan

"Sir, I must inform you that it is nearly three o'clock A.M. and you have not slept in thirty-seven hours—"

Tony Stark didn't so much as glance up from the array of glowing monitors around him. "Mm-hm," he said idly, frowning at a seemingly random set of numbers that flashed across one of the screens. "JARVIS, run a scan on this data. I'm going to cross-reference the results with—"

"Of course, sir," the A.I. replied. "Miss Potts is also on her way upstairs."

Tony paused and raised his head as if he could somehow glare at the disembodied voice. "Funny," he said. "I could have sworn we had a talk where it was agreed that any matters concerning Pepper are to come first."

"I apologize, sir," JARVIS said smoothly. "But I believe she made the decision just now, when she saw you were not in bed."

Tony raised one eyebrow as he tapped a pencil against the computer screen before scribbling something down on a nearby sheet of paper. "That's an excellent deduction, JARVIS," he said lightly, holding the paper up to another computer and frowning at it. "I'm impressed. Can I ask how you came to that conclusion?"

There was an almost imperceptible beat of silence before JARVIS answered. "Miss Potts told me, sir."

"Thought so," Tony remarked, pushing the chair back from the desk and crumpling the page up into a ball. "She's giving me advance notice. That can't be good."

The discarded paper was sent flying across the room, landing squarely in the wastebasket just as the door to the laboratory opened. Tony's expression immediately turned from triumphant to sheepish as Pepper Potts walked in, still carrying her purse. She dropped it on a nearby table and crossed her arms, staring at Tony with pursed lips. There was no need for her to speak first.

He flashed her a disarming grin that was familiar to anyone who had opened a tabloid in the past decade; unfortunately, Pepper was immune to his charms. "Good morning, honey," he said cheerily. "How was the meeting?"

"You would know if you'd bothered to leave this place at all in the last ten hours." Pepper sighed as she regarded the coffee cups and food wrappers littering the furniture. "Come to bed, Tony," she urged. "You promised you were done with all of this."

The dark-haired man ignored her second comment to wink suggestively at her. "Tempting offer," he commented. "I think I can free up my schedule for ten minutes. I'll put on some music and everything." With a casual snap of his fingers, Barry White began to croon from the stereo.

Pepper didn't even blink. "JARVIS, could you please disable the sound system?"

"Certainly, Miss Potts," the A.I. replied, and the laboratory was silent once again.

"Traitor," Tony muttered. Another set of indecipherable numbers flashed across the screen closest to him and he glanced back at his work. A particularly colorful string of curses followed his assessment. "Is this all you have?"

"I'm afraid so, sir. There are simply too many variables to come to any reliable conclusion."

Tony betrayed his first sign of exhaustion that night, resting his elbows on the table and dragging his hands through his hair. Pepper quietly moved further into the room, coming to a stop behind his chair and gently massaging his shoulders. He leaned back, relaxing into her touch. "You have no idea how good that feels," he sighed.

"Tell me what's going on," Pepper said. It was both a question and a command.

Tony was staring at the newest data obtained from JARVIS, his eyes glazing over. "Rogers has me working overtime after he and Romanoff decided to take down S.H.I.E.L.D. I'll give them points for theatricality, but then they decided to disappear off the grid, leaving some other poor bastard to clean up the mess—aka yours truly."

Pepper quirked an eyebrow. "Only you?"

"Technically, no, but I'm the only one who can do it properly." He tucked the pencil behind his ear and twisted his head to look up at Pepper. "What I'm about to tell you—Fury will personally bury my dead body if he knows I'm not keeping my mouth shut. Probably in New Jersey."

"I'm not listening at all," she said dryly.

Tony grinned at her, his face relaxing for a brief moment. "That's my girl," he said approvingly. "The other day I got a call from Romanoff asking for permission to borrow one of the company jets for a few days."

"You mean I got the call and forwarded the message on to you," Pepper interjected.

He blinked. "Right, yeah, I guess I did. So you know about that part. Anyway, I tracked the flight from D.C. to Geneva and had a look at some of the airport security footage—"

"You mean you hacked the security footage."

"Semantics," Tony said dismissively, waving a hand. "It wasn't even a challenge. I was disappointed. But instead of Romanoff, it was Rogers who was on that plane, along with another guy I didn't recognize. Facial scanning revealed he's ex-military, works at the VA, and was one of the first test subjects in the canceled EXO-7 Falcon program. That part's not important right now," he added, seeing that Pepper was about to ask. "So Rogers is buddies with this Wilson guy and took him to Switzerland, where I'm assuming they met up with Romanoff. I thought, hey, maybe they have a thing going. I'll admit it's a strange pairing, but who am I to judge? Geneva's pretty romantic—I'll take you there sometime. How's tomorrow sound?"

"Tony…"

"I'm getting to the point, sweetheart. Look, I would have dismissed it right then and there if Fury hadn't also contacted me. Said that he wanted me to analyze a blood sample taken from a woman who was recently discovered at an old Hydra facility."

Pepper paused in her massage. "Fury sent it to you?"

"Yeah, I know," Tony said darkly. "He must want answers bad, and I'm more than willing to provide them. But it gets better. The sample was sent from Switzerland, and the woman was cryogenically frozen. Look, that's not even technology I have." He sounded more than a bit annoyed by the fact.

Pepper tilted her head. "Maybe Fury just wanted Steve's advice about Hydra. He knows more about them than anyone."

"Or advice on the defrosting process?" Tony smirked. "I doubt it, Pep. Why bring a friend, then? I studied her DNA, and then cross-referenced it with some mid-century historical records. Her name is Beatrice Hartley, born 1920 in Brooklyn. She went to the nursing school at Bellevue, joined the Army Nurse Corps, and was assigned to the 53rd Field Hospital. Records have her in Europe from June 1943 to December 1944. She got herself captured by Hydra and was imprisoned for a couple days at the same facility that also happened to be liberated by our friend Cap way back when. Oh, and her uncle also happened to work with my dad. Does any of this sound suspicious to you?"

"Tony, I think you might be reading too much into this," Pepper warned, but her advice had the opposite effect—if anything, he only seemed more energetic.

"Do you know what her uncle's name was? Romanov." Tony let the words sink in before continuing. "Something is rotten in the state of S.H.I.E.L.D., and I'll be damned if I don't get to the bottom of this. Rogers is sneaking around behind my back, and predictably, he's not very good at it."

Knowing that trying to argue with him was pointless, Pepper made her voice as soothing as possible. "What were the results of the sample?"

"Not a damn thing," Tony groaned, smacking his hand wearily on the table. "Fury told me that Hydra experimented on her, but I can't isolate the compounds in the blood at all. The cells are resisting somehow. Like it's…alive." He scoffed at the words, evidently frustrated. "It's similar to the sample of Cap's blood I tested against it, but there's still something more. It reminds me of the Tesseract."

Pepper hummed in consideration. "Too bad Thor brought it back to Asgard," she mused. "But you shouldn't beat yourself up over this. It's clearly a special case. Have you asked Bruce?"

"Not yet," Tony admitted. "But I'll get him to take a closer look at it." He paused. "Do you think he's awake?"

"No, I don't," Pepper said firmly. "And you shouldn't be, either." She stepped back and began to walk away, gathering her purse in preparation to leave the room. "Unless you want to be even more miserable tomorrow, I suggest getting some sleep. It's not going to magically solve itself in the next four hours."

Tony stared after her until the door clicked shut before looking back at the multitude of data spread across the computer screens. He remained still for a long moment, weighing his options, before finally giving in with a groan and getting up to follow her.