Hello, hello! I hope you all enjoyed Bucky's re-emergence! This next chapter is a little shorter, but you'll get a nice long action-filled chapter next, don't worry! Anywho-as always, I have no rights to anything marvel, which includes characters and events you may find familiar! With that all said, I'll let you get to it! Enjoy! Xoxo-NickyLynn
When they got to the location Hill had brought them once they apprehended their own vehicle, Tessa found herself staring down at yet another face she thought she would never see again. There, sitting on a hospital cot under the old abandoned dam in the middle of nowhere, was Fury….very much alive. Tessa let out a breath as her eyes landed on him and she found herself swaying between wanting to hug him and wanting to kill him herself.
He lifted his head from the white pillow as they all walked closer to him, looking over at them with a lifted brow. "Well, it's about damn time." He said after a moment, sounding drained.
"You've got to be kidding me." Tessa scoffed out, staring down at him with crossed arms. "Today's just been chalk full of people rising from the dead, hasn't it?"
"Well sorry to disappoint you." Fury said, adjusting himself with a wince of pain.
"How?" Natasha breathed out as the doctor who had been caring for Fury guided her over to a chair so he could work on patching up her wound.
"You know you could have saved us a whole lot of trouble had you just told us you were alive from the beginning." Tessa snapped out at him.
"I may not be dead, but very nearly did die." Fury told her. "Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collar bone, perforated liver, and one hell of a headache." He listed off.
"Don't forget your collapsed lung." The doctor said as he worked on stitching Natasha back together.
"Let's not forget that." Fury echoed with a sigh. "Otherwise, I'm good."
"They cut you open. Your heart stopped." Natasha said, still finding it hard to believe, having saw him dead for herself.
"It was Tetrodotoxin B, wasn't it?" Tessa asked, having been told about the compound by Bruce during a late night talk about his peculiar ailment and the medical treatments he had tried to control it with.
"I'm honestly surprised I was able to fool you with it, Rogers." He told her.
Tessa noticed the confused looks of Natasha and Steve and let out a sigh. "It's a compound that Bruce developed to try to keep his heartrate down." she told them.
"Slows the heartrate down to one beat per minute. Didn't end up working for Banner so well, but we found a use for it." Fury added.
"Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell us?" Steve shot out at him.
"Any attempt on the Director's life had to look successful." Maria told them.
"Can't kill me if I'm already dead." Fury said. "Besides….I wasn't sure who to trust." He admitted.
"So, you let us just pick up the pieces and deal with all this shit on our own?" Tessa snapped at him. "We almost died Fury! A fucking hint or something would have been nice!" Tessa bit out, upset that they had been pulled into all this drama and left to fend on their own.
Fury looked over at her and found himself actually regretting not placing his trust in them all sooner. "Look, I owe you an apology. I can admit to that."
"An apology?" Tessa said with a bitter laugh. "Sorry doesn't make any of this better!" she told him. "You know what…if we make it out of this, consider this my resignation. I'm so done with all this trust issue bullshit." She said, turning and walking out of the room.
"Tessa-" Steve began, but she just ignored him and kept walking.
"I need some air." She called back over her shoulder, walking back down the hall towards the door they had come in through. Once she was back outside, she drew in a deep breath and let her eyes fall closed as she worked at trying to bring her emotions back down to a bearable level. Her life had pushed her to her limits over the past few months, and was surprised she was still clinging onto her sanity at this point. She was stressed. She was tired. Her body had gone through Hell. And she was still too busy reeling from Loki and Frigga's deaths to be able to fully handle Bucky's reappearance in her life, let alone deal with Fury's rise from the dead. She let out a breath as she drug her fingers through her hair.
She could feel the control on her powers stretched tight like a taunt rubber band, ready to snap at any moment, and losing control wasn't something she could afford right now. She focused on bringing her breathing in and out in a slow, steady rhythm as she fought to bring herself back down. A voice sounded behind her, startling her out of her quiet meditation.
"You okay?" she heard someone ask and she turned to find Sam standing behind her, looking over at her in worry.
"I'm fine." She bit out at him, her voice sounding harsh even to her own ears.
"You know," Sam began, stuffing his hands in his pockets as he studied her. "it's been my experience that when someone say's they're fine, that usually means they're not fine." Tessa didn't say anything to that. She just stayed quiet and focused on her breathing, hoping Sam would just go back inside. "It's okay not to be fine." He said after a minute of silence. "Finding out your friend is back from the dead and trying to kill you has got to be a tough thing to handle."
Tessa's eyes snapped open, and she spun around at that. "And what would you know?" she bit out at him, her eyes burning blue. "You have no idea what I'm going through! So, why don't you just go follow my brother around and leave me alone!" she snapped.
"You're right. I have no idea what you must be feeling right now, but I've seen a whole lot of people dealing with a lot of different shit, and sometimes it just helps to have someone else to help carry the shit." He responded, not letting her burst of anger affect him like she thought it would.
"What are you a fucking therapist?" she scoffed at him, not really feeling like having a heart-to-heart with anyone, let alone a stranger who knew nothing about her.
"A trauma counselor, actually." He responded.
Tessa looked back over at him with a lifted brow. "Well, aren't you just a box full of surprises." She commented.
"Look, if you don't want to talk, I get it, but I've seen a lot of trauma in my life, and I know what it looks like when someone is struggling with it." He told her, crossing his arms.
"So is the part where you hold me close as I spill my heart to you?" she asked him cynically.
"Nah." he said with a small laugh. "This is the part where I tell you to go fuck yourself." He told her with a smirk. Tessa's lip pulled up at that. "And where I tell you to come find me if you ever do need to talk. Even if it's just to have someone listen."
Tessa looked over at him and, surprisingly, she found that she felt a little better, or at least more in control. She shook her head at him and moved back towards the door. "Yeah, I'll have to take a raincheck on that." She told him as she brushed past and walked back into the building.
When they made it back inside, they found that Fury had managed to pull himself out of bed and was now sitting at a table with Maria and Natasha, a case of files spread out before them. Steve had been standing before them and looked over as he watched Tessa walk back into the room, followed by Sam. She came to a stop next to him, folding her arms together. Steve raised a questioning brow at her, and she just shook her head at him.
Fury was holding out a photograph of a younger Alexander Pierce, staring down at it in contemplation. "This man declined the Noble Peace Prize." He scoffed. "Said peace wasn't an achievement, it was a responsibility." He bit out, tossing the photograph down on the table. He looked up at Tessa, motioning down to the picture. "See, it's shit like this that gives me trust issues!"
"So, what's the plan? We can't let Hydra win." Tessa said, not wanting to be drawn into a discussion about trust right now, least of all with him.
"We have to stop the launch." Natasha said in agreement.
"I don't think the Council's accepting my calls anymore." Fury told them as he opened up a metal brief case that had been sitting next to him.
"What's that?" Sam asked, looking down at the three large microchip-like objects inside.
"Once the hellicariers reach three thousand feet, they'll triangulate with Insight's satellites, becoming fully weaponized." Hill said, turning around her laptop and showing a display of the integration system.
"We need to breach those carriers and replace their targeting blades with our own." Fury said then as the screen pulled up a blueprint of the hellicarrier and zoomed in on where the blades were housed.
"One or two won't cut it. We need to link all three carriers for this to work, because even if one of those ships remains operational, a whole lot of people are going to die." Hill finished.
"So, we get in and swap out these programming blades, and that's it?" Steve asked, looking around the room.
"That's it?" Fury scoffed. "We have to assume everyone on board those ships is Hydra. We have to get past them to insert these blades and then maybe, just maybe we can salvage-"
"We're not salvaging anything!" Tessa yelled out at him, causing him to stop and look up at her. "It's not just these carriers that need to be brought down, Nick. If Hydra has dug its tentacles into S.H.I.E.L.D. this far then it needs to be taken down, too!"
"S.H.I.E.L.D. had nothing to do with this!" Fury shot back at her, shaking his head.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. had everything to do with this!" she countered. "Look, I get it….you, Howard, Peggy…you all just wanted to protect the world from everything you thought it couldn't handle. But look around Fury! All this secrecy has done was make for the perfect breeding ground for Hydra to fester back into life!" She said, shaking her head at him.
"I'm with Rose on this one." Steve said. "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s compromised, you said it yourself. Hydra was able to grow right under your nose and nobody noticed."
"Why do you think we're meeting in this cave?" Fury shot back at him. "I noticed."
"And how many paid the price before you did?" Steve challenged.
Fury looked down at that. "I didn't know about Barnes." He told them honestly.
"Even if you did, would you have told us?" Tessa asked with a lifted brow, knowing the answer already. "That's the problem here Fury, you always think you know what's best for everyone around you. That you know what's best for the world. Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. both think their doing what's best for the world, without ever taking into consideration that sometimes even when you think you're doing the right thing, it ends up hurting more than helping. Hydra and S.H.I.E.L.D. are one and the same. We can't take down one without taking down the other."
"They're right." Hill said, pulling Fury's attention over to her in surprise. She nodded her head at him before he swung his head over to Natasha, who just leaned back in her chair, having no defense to give him. Fury's eyes finally landed on Sam, and he just shook his head.
"Hey man don't look at me. I do what he does….only slower." Sam said, nodding over at Steve.
Fury looked around the room, realizing he was outvoted by a landslide. "Well." He said before letting out a sigh and leaning back into his chair. "Looks like you're the one giving order now." Fury said, looking over to Tessa. "So, what's the plan, Boss?"
It took them no more than an hour to come up with a plan. Everyone put their heads together and they came up with what they all agreed had the best chance for success. After they worked through the details and made sure everyone knew what they had to do, they all split off to get ready. Tessa and Steve took the van and made a much needed stop at the Smithsonian before they could go off into battle. Once they made it to the parking lot, Tessa transported them inside the closed museum.
In truth, Tessa had never been to the Captain America exhibit since it had opened years ago. It was just too much of a reminder of what had been taken from her. Now that she had Steve back, however, she found it incredibly easier to roam through the halls filled with all the memorabilia. Tessa's eyes bounced around the various displays and items that had been erected in Steve's honor, finding it all so strange. When they made it to the display they had been searching for, Tessa's focus wasn't on the uniform Steve had come all this way for, instead, she found her eyes moving to the image of Bucky displayed on the wall behind it, standing amongst all of the Howling Commandos.
Her eyes were glued to the reproduction of his face as Steve stripped down the mannequin who had been dressed in his old uniform. Her mind drifted back to the face she had been staring down at on the street and she couldn't help but compare the two in her mind. There was just something so different in his face now. Something so hollow and cold. She had only spent a handful of months in Hydra's grasp, and those few months alone had left her with nightmares to last her a lifetime. If Bucky had been in their hold for this long….well, she couldn't even picture the horrors that he must have faced. Alone.
After Steve quickly slipped into his suit, he went to let Tessa know he was ready when he noticed what she was staring at. He stepped up beside her, looking up at the image of his friend with her. "He's going to be there." Tessa said quietly, pulling her eyes away to look at Steve.
"I know." Steve said with a sigh.
"Steve, I don't know if I can fight him." She said, finding it hard to look at Bucky's image any longer. "If it comes down to saving him or stopping him…I don't think I can do it." She told him. "All these years I thought he was dead….that I killed him….now that I know his blood's no longer on my hands….I can't…"
"I know, Rose." Steve said, placing his hand on her shoulder. "I don't think I can either." He told her. "Don't worry, we'll get him back."
Tessa shook her head at him, fighting off the tears that threatened to spill. "You didn't see the way he looked at me, Steve. If there's any part of Bucky left in there, it's buried under years of God only knows what. If anyone understands what it means to forget the people you care most about, it's me. I mean, everything I went through on Asgard and still I never reclaimed my memories. What if….what if he just can't remember us?" she asked, eyes glistening as she stared over at her brother, wishing she could turn back time.
"He will." Steve said, squeezing her shoulder in reassurance. "We'll bring him home. I promise."