Interlude
1945
The sounds of battle in the distance instantly grabbed Angie Martinelli's attention. Taking a few steps away from the radio set up where the new kid, Jonathan 'Junior' Juniper, monitored the chatter, Angie turned towards those distant sounds and stared off into the woods as if she could force herself to see what was happening. Zola was an important capture, but what made him an important capture also made him a dangerous one, and Angie worried because the people she cared about most were out there doing the capturing. She and Peggy had gotten up hours before the rest of the Howling Commandos and slipped away from camp for some time alone, and Peggy did her best to sooth Angie's concerns and fears with gentle reassurances and tender touches. It had worked for a little while, but then Angie had watched Peggy, Steve, Bucky, and the Howlies disappear into the dark woods, and all of her worries had come flooding back. She tried to reason with herself, Peggy was a super soldier, she had these amazing superhuman abilities, but Peggy invulnerability didn't mean she was invincible.
"Danvers reports that Cap's in the compound." Junior calls out to those who have been left in the camp as backup.
Angie closes her eyes and begins to pray. "Please watch over them. Please keep her safe."
"Barnes says to keep an eye out for runners." Comes Junior's next report.
Taking a deep breath Angie steels herself the way she'd seen Peggy do so many times since their first meeting at Camp Lehigh in New Jersey where Angie had been introduced to Miss. America a.k.a Betty Carver, as one of her backup girls. It's only been a few years, but to Angie it feels like it's been a lifetime since she'd discovered the truth about Peggy Carter and her little spy cell of S.O.E. gals masquerading as showgirls. Walking back over to the radio set up, Angie picks up her Lee–Enfield No 5 Mk I rifle and checks it over while calling out, "You heard the boy, fellas, let's get ready to bat cleanup."
"Always ready to pull a Johnson, Martinelli. You up for it?" Came a chuckled reply that got a few laughs.
"Don't come at me with your Boston bullshit, O'Malley." Angie shouts back. "The Dodgers are making a run for the playoffs, meanwhile your Sox are at the bottom of wash heap with dirty drawers."
O'Malley flips her off as he calls out, "Leave the real baseball to the men, Martinelli. You gals got your very own little girls only league now, don't you?"
"Yeah, we do." Angie huffs. "And the Peaches could kick Boston's ass too."
"My money is on the Tigers." Junior throws in.
Angie and O'Malley both laugh at the boy expense. "Tell you what, Junior." Angie responds. "If Detroit wins the World Series, I'll give you ten bucks and a kiss."
"You're on Broadway!" Junior replies, excited by the idea of even a peck on the cheek from the gorgeous girl.
They're winding each other up for what's headed their way. Brooklyn, Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Chicago, in that moment, where they were from or which baseball team they rooted for didn't really matter. What mattered was that they were all a bunch of kids in their twenties who were about to go into a fight that would be, kill or be killed. When the first Hydra soldiers reached their position, Angie fought the urge to throw up. She and Junior were to remain posted by the radio set waiting for the command to send in Fraiser to pick up Zola and transport him back to England. Once that was done, they would break down their set up and wait for rendezvous orders. The rest of their unit fought in the woods around them. Angie's heart raced as she adjusted and readjusted her grip on her rifle.
"Junior," Angie orders on instinct. "Grab your gear, we gotta move."
The young man doesn't argue or bristle over taking orders for a girl, he just does what he's told and breaks down his radio setup so he can carry it on his back as they move. They pull back several hundred yards before they have to stop so Junior can relay Branes' order to send in Fraiser and the air support. Several Hydra soldiers, the ones with full helmets that encased their whole heads, emerged from the tree line just as the order is sent. Junior drops his radio, and he reaches for his rifle. Tears begin to burn Angie's eyes when O'Malley goes down, Smythe is next, Williams, then Becker. The bucketheads fall as well, and as soon as the last one hits the ground, Angie turns to Junior and that's when she sees he's been hit. She helps him over to a tree where she can prop him up while doing her best to field triage his wound.
"You seem to be very far from your cabarets," A heavily accented male voice calls out. "Signorina Russo." There's a soft click of a gun's hammer being pulled back. "Are you the little songbird singing in the good Captain's ear?"
Giovanna Russo was one of Angie's covers, the name she used to sing for German and Hydra soldiers in the dance halls and cabarets of occupied territories. She knew the man's voice. She had listened to many of his conversions for the tiniest bits of information. It's how Peggy knew to go to Wakanda. It's how they knew Zola would be here. Angie had put her rife down to tend to Junior, but she still had her Webley on her hip. Angie began to stand and turn slowly, concealing her movements as she drew the pistol. She shot first, then replied, "What can I say, Baron Zemo, she appreciates a pretty little tune."
She shot him in the shoulder, causing Zemo to drop his gun. She smiled smugly, which only made his angry face bypass red and go straight to purple. Zemo lunged for her, but Angie was quick, and well trained thanks to Peggy. Angie drew Zemo away from Junior, while doing her best to keep out of his reach as he charged towards her like an angry rhino. She fired on him again as she ran, grazing his thigh this time, but he managed to catch up to her and knock the pistol from her hand. He had a foot and about seventy pounds on her, so if he managed to grab her it would be a struggle and half to free herself. She could manage, Peggy had taught her how to fight an attacker who was bigger and stronger than she was, but knife wounds that barely miss vital organs tend to throw a girl off of her defense. Zemo grabs her by the throat, his pinkie slipping under the chain of her dog tags and forces her backwards by pushing on the knife he'd shoved into her body. At first Angie is too surprised by what's happening to feel the pain, especially when the heels of her boots detect the edge of the cliff.
"I'll be sure to give Captain Britain your regards." Zemo says as he pushes her over.
Angie screams.
Zemo drops his knife and shakes his hand free of the chain entangled around his pinkie as he stands there waiting. He smiles when he hears the splash below and then turns, hand pressed to his own wound, and walks away.
The water is so cold, and on instinct Angie gasps, filling her airways with the icy water as she flails about. She's being swept away by the fast-moving flow of water as it makes its way down from the mountain and through the woods. Angie tries like hell not to drown as she tries to regain control of her body and movement. But just as she thinks she has a handle on things, her head gets slammed hard against a rock. In the moment before she blacks out, Angie's mind drifts from survival to Peggy…
"Come back to me, English, safe and sound."
"Always my darling. Safe and sound, I promise."
"I love you, Peggy Carter."
"I love you too, Angie, always and forever."
Later, after the Western Allies have left, Russian voices fill the silence of the forest as men in black uniforms with red stars on their black furred ear flap hats pick their way through the fallen bodies of soldiers. Most of them call out, "Etot mertv." This one is dead. But one man, sent to search the ravine below, had wandered far enough downstream to come across one that was, "Zhivoy!" Alive. "Etot yeshche zhiv!" This one is still alive!
She is wearing an allied uniform but does not have the identifying tags most soldiers wear. That makes no difference to them. If she survives her injuries, they will find a use for her, none of which require knowledge of who she is. Her comrades were long gone, she'd been left for dead, those who would miss her were already likely mourning for her. So, the Russians loaded her onto a truck and drove off.
When Russia allied with the West, Vasily Karpov had been sent to work with the Strategic Scientific Reserve as their liaison. He had seen firsthand the power and abilities not only in the Western allies' Captain Britain, but also the Nazis' Red Skull, and it both awed and terrified him. He argued heatedly and often with Chester Phillips, "You do not understand, you cannot. You and the Germans, you have your Super-Soldiers, your secret weapons. But we Russians, we have nothing but the winter." But the West refused time and again to share the secrets of Project Rebirth with them, so Karpov had no choice. He took what information he could find for himself. Replicating the singular success of Erskine and Stark proved difficult, even with Russia's best scientific minds at his disposal.
"Perhaps," Karpov mused after yet another failed attempt. "The mistake is not ours but theirs."
"General?" One of the scientists inquired.
"We have been testing the process on men." Karpov clarifies. "The Americans and the British, their super soldier, she is a woman."
"The Red Skull…" Another scientist spoke up to argue.
"Was a chort, a demon." Karpov shakes his head. "Power mad and disloyal. No, our guardian must be a symbol just as Captain Britain is to the West." Looking around the room Karpov takes in the wounded men they had captured, the men given to him for his experiments, until his gaze lands on one particular soldier. "The woman you found, the one on the banks of the ravine below Zola's compound, she continues to recover?"
The first scientist who'd spoken up gives a sharp single nod. "Yes General. She is still recovering, but she grows stronger every day."
"Good." Karpov smiles. "Begin the psychological protocols on her now, and when she is at full health, we begin the experiment again."
A small piece of her mind refuses to give in to the torture and manipulations. It clings to the truth of who she is, 'I am Angie Martinelli from Brooklyn New York.' It finds sanctuary in her memories, the smell of her Ma's sauce on Sundays, baseball games with her Dad, fighting with her brothers, the soft, callused, warmth of Peggy's hands on her skin, the way her name sounded when Peggy said it with that accent that made her knees weak. But they are relentless, and Angie is forced to hide her most precious memories so deeply, that when she finally breaks, not even she can find them.
When she does finally break, it's not because of what they've done to her, but from what she hears while it's being done. She is strapped into a cold metal chair, in a cold room, it's walls made of dark gray cinder block. The fluorescent lights are too bright, too harsh, her eyes burn in a way that not even blinking can relieve. She had been denied sleep, denied food, forced to suck water from a sponge between electro shocks. She tries to recall her name as she catches her breath, Angie, her name is Angie. She finds comfort in her memory of Peggy Carter's smile.
"Captain Britain is dead." Someone says solemnly.
'What?" Karpov demands.
The first voice explains that the Red Skull had a plane with bombs set for every major city in the world, including Moscow and St. Petersburg. "Captain Britain defeated him, then sacrificed herself to keep the bombs from launching. She saved us." The man said, his voice awed and full of sorrow. "She saved us all."
Captain Britain is dead. Captain Britain is Peggy Carter. Peggy Carter is the love of Angie Martinelli's life. Peggy is dead. Peggy is dead! Angie gives in and goes away, lost in a cold, dark forest of grief and pain so far inside her own mind, she might as well be dead too.
1948
"Winter."
Her head lolls back and forth on her shoulders as she fights to regain awareness. She moans softly in response.
"How do you feel, Winter?" Karpov asks her while a doctor and a nurse supervise his pet's vitals as she's revived from her time in the cryogenic chamber. Stark destroyed all knowledge regarding the machine used to create Captain Britain, and their attempts at forcing Stark to aide them, went up in smoke thanks for a personal vendetta against the man. So, they had to find their own way to trigger their version of the serum.
"Cold." She replies when she is able. Her whole body shakes and trembles and tingles. She moaned in pain. "It burns!"
"I know." Karpov responds gently. "Soon there will be balance, and you will feel warm and strong. I promise."
As soon as she has recovered, she is tested. Her strength, agility, and stamina increase with each treatment, while other test subjects remain the same or die from the process. With the war coming to an end there were no more test subjects to be found, so she became Karpov's sole focus. She would be his Winter.
"Feed her and let her rest." Karpov orders after watching Winter train and fight for awhile. "Then fetch the Englishman. If she can best him, then I want her prepared for her first mission."
Most of the men around him nod and fall into step to fulfill his orders, but one man speaks out as they take their leave. "Are you sure about sending her after Belova?"
"Fennhoff cost us Stark as an asset." Karpov replies. "He will not cost us another. He will be terminated, but Madam B wants her spiderling returned to the Red Room. If Winter can accomplish this, then Madam B has agreed to allow her to train in the Red Room."
The second man shakes his head, "You put all of this time, effort, and expense into the American only to send her off to face the kind of crazy that would scare even Baba Yaga."
Karpov only smiles. "My Winter will prove her worth, you shall see old friend."
Winter returned from her mission badly injured, but with a bound and unconscious Irina Belova, known to the Americans as Dottie Underwood. She also returns with proof that Fennhoff is dead, as is his cellmate, a man named Zola. She is praised, well fed, allowed to heal, and then once again injected with serum and placed in the cryo-chamber for what Karpov called, "A long winter's nap." It was a trigger phrase, a part of the psychological protocols, that would allow him to shut down her mind, putting her into a coma like sleep.
1962
Her mission was the Englishman. He had betrayed them, taken something important and fled, most likely to the West. The Englishman was to be terminated. The Wolf Spider was to be brought back to the General and the Program. The Englishman was good, their most experienced operative. The fact that he had been in service to the Program for two decades proved how good he was. But she was better, she was Mother Russia's Winter Soldier. She tracked her target to a midwestern American city, Cleveland. He was staying in a rent by the week motel that was on a main street in a busy area of one the city's neighboring suburbs. His choice of locations would not give him the advantages he thought it would. She watched him leave with the Wolf Spider from the restaurant across the street. After throwing cash on the table, she went out to the car she'd bought from a sale's ad in the paper and drove down the block to a convenience store. She bought several bags of ice, a case of beer, and cigarettes. They were having a barbeque for her husband's birthday, she commented causally as she paid the man behind the counter. Then she drove back to the motel, used the master key she'd already stolen to let herself into the Englishman's room, and set to work. She filled the tub with the ice for the body once she'd completed her mission. It would give her time to drive across town to the Amtrak station with the Wolf Spider, and catch the next train to the closest city with an airport.
After making sure there is nothing to alert or alarm the Englishmen when he returns, she hides, lying in wait for her pray and the safest moment to complete her mission. The Englishman is to be terminated, but the Wolf Spider is not to be harmed. When she does finally reveal herself he doesn't seem surprised, in fact he seems calm, almost accepting of what is about to happen. But then he speaks, and everything goes wrong.
"Please." The Englishman says. "You don't have to do this. My name is Michael, and this," He indicates the sleeping infant tucked between pillows to keep him from rolling off the bed. "This is my son." He pauses a moment and continues. "You have a name too, a proper name, not what they call you. You're no more Winter than I am the Englishman, they're just codenames." Another pause, and then he repeats. "My name is Michael. Michael Carter."
Carter. The name hits her brain funny, like hitting the corner of your elbow on the edge of a surface. Her eyes twitch. Carter. Michael Carter. There's a whisper of a voice from a deep, dark corner of her mind, accented, sad, a woman's voice. "My brother, Michael, he was my best friend." There's a sudden sharp pain in her head, which causes her to press her non-dominate hand to her temple while tightening her hold on the gun with the silencer screwed on in the other.
"You're remembering something." Michael tells her as he watches her reaction. "Something from before, before they found you, before they turned you into Winter. What is it? What do you remember?"
She shakes her head, fighting the pain, unsure of whether she should push away the voice or embrace it. Her jaw is clenched tight, making the single word come out in a cold hiss. "Sister."
"Sister? Did you have a sister, Winter?" Michael asks her. "I did. I had a little sister, she was brilliant and brave, funny, and warm, caring, and annoying. I adored her. Her name was Margaret."
Margaret. Carter. Margaret Carter. Peggy. The pain hits her so hard she sinks to her knees. She keeps her gun trained on Michael, but he still bravely steps closer to her.
"Don't let them know you've had memories of before, Winter. They'll take them away; they'll punish you for them." He catches her eyes and switches to speaking in Russian. "It's time for a long winter's nap."
She blacks out. At least the pain has stopped. When she comes to, she's on a medical gurney surrounded by the comfort of cinder block walls and the silent sentinel of her cryo-chamber. She hears someone pick up a phone, a soft female voice says that she's awake, and then the soft click of a phone behind put down. Just as she's sitting up, swinging her legs over the side of the gurney, the General walks in. He asks how she feels, and she admits to being confused. He asks her what happened, she tells him she had the Englishman, eyes on the Wolf Spider, but then the Englishman said something.
"What did he say, Winter?" Karpov asks.
"Time for a long winter's nap." She tells him. She does not tell him about anything else the Englishman had said. She pushed that down deep, locking it away in whatever deep depths the pain had come from. "I failed my mission."
Karpov was angry, but his anger wasn't directed towards her, it was aimed at one of the doctors who'd over seeing her medical needs over the years. "Mistakes were made but not by you Winter. The Englishman had a weapon against you that he should not have had."
"I will not fail my mission again." She insists.
"The Englishman has been terminated." Karpov tells her. "But the child is out of our reach. The Americans have him now."
She drops her head. "I am sorry. I have failed you."
He tilts her head up, shaking his own gently. "No, my Winter, I am the one who is sorry." He pats her cheek. "Eat well, train hard, and then rest, my Winter." On his way out Karpov growls at the doctor. "Reprogram her triggers. I don't want this happening again."
"Yes, General."
1968
Her mission was to retrieve newly discovered Hydra technology left behind as the rats fled in vain attempts to keep from being arrested by S.S.R agents. SHIELD had gotten to the technology first but that wasn't an issue. The agents would have to pass through East Germany, and that was practically her backyard. Once she knew how the SHIELD agents planned on moving through the territory, all she had to do was strategically place some explosives on the train tracks. As soon as she had confirmation of which car the agents were on, a simple press of a remote detonator made her job easy. There would be casualties, perhaps some fatalities, when the train derails and crashes, but she made sure that the collateral damage would be as minimal as possible. The car hit hardest, the one thrown far from the rest of the train in the explosion, was the one with the SHIELD agents.
Making her way through the snow to the train car wreckage, Winter pinpoints the case with the tech in it and snatches it up as she keeps her silenced weapon trained on the bodies scattered in the snow. The case is close to a man who seems to have lost a good portion of his left arm in the crash. Winter glances at his face as she picks up the case and as she turns to leave she has the strangest thought about him having a nice smile. She pauses, and then without knowing why, she walks back over to his body and checks for a pulse. He's alive, barely. Setting the case down beside her feet she proceeds to remove the dark-haired man's belt, which she then uses as a tourniquet on what's left of his arm, before reaching into one of the poches on her own belt. She pulls out a small plain packet, rips it open, and pours the powder inside over the end of the man's stump. Then she picks up the case and walks off. The other SHIELD agents she came across as she walked away from the crash did not get the same mercy she'd just shown Bucky Barnes, she shot each of them between the eyes without a second thought.
1985
The Americans have been playing god again. Howard Stark, in his Western arrogance, was trying to once again replicate the serum that had created the Allies' greatest wartime weapon, a human super soldier. While Stark's serum was nothing like Erskine's, it was an improvement over the serum used on Winter. Karpov wanted the serum badly. Stark's serum would negate the need to cryo-freeze Winter in order to maintain her abilities. Stark's serum would cement the changes to her DNA permanently. Her mission was to obtain the serum and kill Stark.
Stark is drunk. He's the kind of drunk that keeps him from seeing past the short black wig and heavy, dark, make-up and realizing she isn't the woman he normally meets up with when he's in London. He's the kind of drunk that makes it easier to be haunted by the past. He tells her she reminds him of an old friend from the war and asks her to sing as he clings to her, his head pressed against her stomach like a child clinging to its mother. "Ca'mon Broadway, sing me a song, I'm sure Cap won't mind."
She sings, and it brings tears to his eyes. When she asks about the serum, he tells her everything, and she trusts it because he thinks he's telling an old friend. Stark has a son; she isn't sure why this makes a difference to her, but it does. She injects him with two drugs, one a sedative that will keep him asleep, the other will give him a heart attack. He doesn't suffer. She returns to Karpov with a case full of the only serum samples in existence and Stark's notes on it.
2006
She has trained many over the years. Young ones who showed true promise, and real natural talent, those deemed worthy of training with her. Melina had been her first, and the one who began calling her Baba Yaga because none of the little ones ever knew who she truly was. Alexei was her only boy, he was strong and proud, and had a soft spot for Melina and a longing for family. Yelena had been the last, brash, head strong, and a bit of a brat. But none, no matter how good they were, would be Natalia. Natalia had been special. She had been the youngest, a girl of eight when Winter was told to train her, and not to allow the girl's tender age to hold her back. Natalia worked hard, driven much like Winter herself, to prove herself to the man who'd found her and brought her into the Program as a tiny girl of five. Winter trained the girl hard, but she was also the one who told Natalia stories of lore and fairy tales. She allowed the girl to keep a kitten in secret. And she also taught the girl lessons not a part of the Program, or her programming.
"Trust no one, little spider." Winter had once told the girl.
"Do you trust no one is all the world, Baba?" Natalia had asked in return. "Not even before?"
She had wanted to tell the girl she trusted Karpov, to reinforce that Natalia should trust Madam B and Ivan, but what she told the girl instead was, "Before," Even at a young age the girl knew the difference between life now, and life before the Program. "Before, Carter, I think, perhaps that name might have meaning. Maybe. From before."
When Natalia is old enough, she is placed in a division with others Winter has trained, the best of the best. Winter had allowed, unknowingly, each of them to keep a small part of themselves, a small piece of their humanity, in one way or another. When Natalia proved herself to be the perfect operative, when she'd finally earned the name Black Widow, she was set one final task as a test. Kill her adoptive family. Natalia came after her while she was on a mission, but the young woman couldn't do it, she couldn't kill her mentor, her friend. Instead of punishing the girl for her weakness, Winter told her to run. "Defect to the West, little spider. Go, never return to Russia. There is nothing for you here but pain and death. Go, little spider. Go!"
Now Winter was faced with a choice. The Black Widow worked for SHIELD now, and they had been sent after the same target. If it had been anyone else, Winter would have killed both of them, but she didn't. She killed her target, completing her mission, but Natalia's wound was purposefully non-lethal. The scar on her abdomen would be pretty nasty though.
2011
Following the use of Stark's serum Winter no longer needed to be put on ice for physical reasons, but cryo-sleep was still a huge part of her psychological protocols. It was a key part of her programming, her brainwashing. Karpov had ordered the protocols for control maintenance, so Winter had been placed in her cryo-chamber following the torturous procedures that kept her under his influence. It wasn't meant to be for long, a few months or so, but while she was asleep, Karpov was killed.
"Sir," Jasper Sitwell says to Alexandra Pierce. "We may have a problem."
"What kind of problem?" Pierce demands.
Sitwell is nervous as he reports, "Captain Britain was found in the arctic, and Sir, she's alive."
Pierce tenses but keeps his cool. "That could be a problem. Good thing there's a solution to that problem out there. Karpov's little pet project. We need to get our hands on the Winter Soldier, Mr. Sitwell."
"I'll get Rumlow on it right away, Sir." Sitwell replies.
2014
She's sitting in a cold metal chair, her wrists and ankles are strapped down, and she stares blankly ahead. There is nothing in her head but the mission.
"Do you understand your mission, Winter?" Pierce asks the woman.
She nods. "Kill Captain Britain and the Black Widow."
Pierce nods. "And anyone else who might be a threat to my plan."
She suffers for her failure at Lehigh. The pain is unlike anything she can remember, it pushes her to the brink of her tolerance, nearly causing her to black out before it stops. She'd kill Rumlow with her bare hands if she could. She succeeded in her mission to kill Sitwell, but again failed to take out the Captain. Before Pierce can order her punished, she reveals a SHIELD agent uniform and id badge and explains, "While SHIELD is committing it's treasonous act of terrorism, the world's beloved hero, Captain Britain was assassinated in cold blood by a SHIELD agent under the direct orders of Nick Fury."
Pierce smirks. "I like the way you think, Winter."
She doesn't relax at his approval. She can't let him know about the tiny crack in her programming, put there by her target. Angie. Who was Angie? Why did the Captain's voice cause her breath to hitch? Why did she think Winter was this Angie? What was that look that had been in the Captain's dark eyes?
"Do not fail me again, Winter." Pierce warns just before shoving the electro prod into stomach. It was on full power and the volts made her knees wobble. When he stopped, she was panting but still standing. "I won't, Sir. I will complete the mission."
"Good girl." Pierce smirks as he slaps her on the ass.