Chapter 16
Salem cruzzed down the highway, sunglasses on as she drove a dark red Camaro convertible with the roof down. Duke was living his best life wrapped around her throat like a loose scarf as he bathed in the bright sunlight of the day. They had a couple of miles left before they were near DC, trailing a long way after the yellow bus.
On the smart screen of the car, a little map showed Peter's location along with the location of the artefact jewel and the bad guys in separate locations.
"Are you sure about this?" Bucky said, his voice coming from the call they were on. "I'm at the compound if you need me. Romanoff went off somewhere, something about her sister."
"She has a sister?" She slurped up an amount of coffee through the straw of her iced drink.
"I didn't know either," He laughed. "She always acted like an only child."
"Only children act differently from siblings," She said, adjusting the rearview mirror once again as she relaxed. "How's being an official Avenger working out for you? I heard your signing of the Avenger Creed has been approved. Officially allowed to work as a fully-fledged Avenger, nice."
The Avenger Creed was different from the Sokovia Accords, letting the Avengers create their own bylaws that had to be submitted to the United Nations. There was still a silent branch of SHIELD that they all knew was still working underground, though people like Natasha and Steve kept contact with them just in case.
"It's weird," Bucky said. "No longer needing to have supervision on missions of any kind. Even being allowed to refuse missions if I want to. I… like the control I have now. I don't have orders but rather guidelines I have to live with. No more commands."
"Did you finish the paperwork?"
"The Creed proxy paperwork? Yeah, I have. Sent it off already. Look, kid, you gotta be careful. This will be your first sort of mission under the Avengers. While HYDRA was ruthless and cruel, you can't be like that as a representative of the Avengers."
She smiled. "Did Stevie Wonder Pants give you that speech?"
"You know it,"
"I'll be careful, Duke's with me and I'll have LILITH send you the feed if anything starts to happen,"
"Good. Sergeant out,"
"Delinquent out," She ended the call and resumed the loud music as she drove.
For people like Spider-Man who were smaller superheroes, they didn't have to sign the Creed if they had someone from the Creed to vouch for them. Tony vouched for Spider-Man, and Bucky was going to vouch for Salem.
Because Tony was only a consultant, he wasn't going to be informed about Salem's Creed proxy business. She was lucky in that respect, not having to deal with him on her ass.
He could be all tight up to about Peter being unsafe because while he was a superhero, Salem had the proper training of a soldier under her belt.
For once, HYDRA's training will come in useful.
)()()(
The large set of doors of The Damage Control Deep Storage Vault opened, making Peter scramble up from the web hammock he made.
"How'd you—" He started, watching as Salem stood before him in a completely Black skin-tight suit with another person next to her.
Peter paused as he cringed at the glare Salem had on her face. She was serious as she stood there, arms crossed with her hair completely white and slicked back to maintain professionality.
"You're an idiot," She said, turning to the person next to her. "Thanks for this."
The man nodded. "No problem. Colonel Rhodes called in a favour. Let's get you both back to the surface."
Peter kept his mask on as they were escorted out of the place, getting into Salem's car before she started to drive for the hotel again.
"What? We can't go back to the hotel!" Peter said, ripping his mask off since the roof was up and the windows were tinted on the car. "How'd you find me anyway?"
She smiled, lips tight. "I asked LILITH for your last known location before you went off-grid. Karen sent them to me. Do you really think that little tracker is the only one you have? Ned won't be able to get rid of the programming since it's ingrained into Karen."
"You know about Karen?"
"Yeah," She said. "LILITH was the basis for her, you just named the version in your suit. Which you won't be messing with if you were smart. You're lucky you have that suit."
"This suit isn't what makes me good, and yet Mr Stark has put limitations on it so I can't do the best I could," Peter said. "How's that fair when you get all of this technology that you can use and you don't do anything with it, Salem!"
Since the road was clear, Salem slammed her foot on the brake. It made the car jolt to a finish and threw both of them forward a little.
"Just because you have these abilities, doesn't mean you have to use them!" Salem said, hands almost crushing the steering wheel but she reframed. "The world doesn't need more superheroes. You aren't one so stop acting like it. You are a child and you've got a childhood to cherish before you realise it is bad in the world."
"Bad? I know there is bad in the world, I'm trying to stop it!"
"But you don't have to! You don't get it. You have a choice in living a normal life and yet you go out of your way to cause trouble. Why? Why would you cause yourself pain just to do good?"
"Because I'm doing good! I'm helping people. I'm keeping people safe while you, who can do all this amazing shit, is sitting on her ass and not doing shit. You didn't stand up to Captain America when your father would have wanted you on his team. You didn't help," Peter spat.
Salem chewed on her cheek for a second, hands clenching the steering wheel and completely bending it inwards in her grip. She spoke through gritted teeth. "He didn't ask me. He put me in the compound with Wanda and Vision. Do you want to have blood on your hands, Peter? Because you will if you go on this route of being a hero. Good or bad, whoever you kill is still dead."
"What would you know about blood on your hands? You didn't even do anything in the last couple of months," He said. "Never saw you in the media doing this or that. Helping out or anything. What could you know about helping and harming people if you never did any of it?"
"I've done more than you. LILITH, take him back to his hotel," Salem said, taking her seatbelt off and getting out of the car.
It locked behind her, making Peter scrambled for the door handle just to find it locked tight. He tried to command the car to open but it didn't work as Salem walked away from the road.
"What use is a girl with a conscience?" Niver complained, activating the gloves and sending pain through her. Salem only flinched, still holding the gun at the boy's head as he whimpered and pleaded. "Kill him."
Salem didn't want to, more because he told her to than her actual remorse for the action. He had to command her several more times, eventually taking a sharp, curved knife and slicing the boy's throat.
"Shoot him now or let him suffer," He said.
She kept her eyes on the boy's beautiful jade green eyes as she pulled the trigger without so much as a flinch for the recoil. She didn't react as Niver took the gun from her and praised her, her face remaining emotionless as it was expected of her.
A hand clenched on her shoulder, taking her out of her mind as she turned her head.
Bucky smiled sadly, lopsided. He wore his usual getup of one-sleeved jacket and messy hair.
"You're drenched," He said, nodding back to the motorbike that was on the road. "Come on. Let's go."
Salem raised a hand, looking at her bare palms and the water that collected in the middle.
It had started to rain and Salem hadn't even realised.
"Oh," She said softly. "I didn't… It's raining still. How long have I been here?"
"It's almost three AM," He said, taking hold of her elbow to slowly encourage her to go nearer the bike.
)()()(
He got them back to her motel within the hour.
It was a seedy little motel straight off the highway, looking more like something out of a bad horror movie than an actual place to stay. He found her room and got the semi-catatonic Salem into the room.
She was like a puppet, doing as asked but nothing else.
"Go take a shower and relax," He said. "I'll go get some food before you go to sleep. Any preferences?"
"Cheeseburgers," She muttered.
He nodded and left, leaving her to do whatever.
There was a diner not too far from the motel so he went there.
He walked up to the counter, getting the attention of the waitress quickly. "Hey, can I get two cheeseburgers, a set of fries and a brownie?"
"Of course, dine in or to go?" The waitress asked, ready to jot it down.
"To go," He said.
She nodded, putting the order into the kitchen. "You here alone?"
"Ah, no," He smiled. "I'm here with… with my sister. She sent me out for food."
"This late?"
"Yeah, well, we had a long day of travelling,"
The waitress grinned. "How long do you plan to stay in town?"
"Not long, just travelling through," He said casually with a shrug. There was a tug of something at his gut, telling him something was going horribly wrong and he needed to be cautious. "I just need these burgers."
As the feeling continued, he sat at the counter with an impatient frown as the kitchen took a couple of minutes to cook everything and get it ready. When they finished, he paid quickly and walked out.
The sight that greeted him was one of the nightmares.
Salem sat on the couch, face blank as she stared at the bloody mess of her forearms. She watched as blood pooled on the skin, healing quickly after before scratching at the skin until the red surfaced again. She just kept doing it, letting more and more blood and pain surface and drip.
Bucky dropped the food bag onto the bed, kneeling before Salem within a split second. He took her wrists into his hands, letting her powers heal her skin as he sighed when he saw the healed skin under the blood.
"What's wrong?" He asked, wiping the blood off of her forearms with a towel. "What flashback did you have to cause this reaction?"
She tilted her head, eyes a touch too dark to be anything but the conditioning and power in her.
"Niver used to call me the Darkling, comparing me to the Winter Soldier all the time," She mumbled, indifference in her voice. "I was in pain a lot. Niver made sure of that. Pain seemed to dull my morals and senses since I was put into the memory machine. Pain helped me regulate myself, keeping me from letting them take my mind. I hate that machine."
He didn't have anything to say to that, something inside of him roared in anger in his head. It was like his own instincts told him that he needed to protect her, the one instinct that told him who to kill and how.
"He called you the Darkling?"
"Yes." She didn't look at him. "He never referred to me by my name, only that title. It was used as my code name."
"HYDRA called me the Winter Soldier because I was part of the program called Winter Soldier," Bucky said, dumping the blood-stained drags before taking a seat next to her on the couch. "Shuri has a habit of naming people. Called me a broken white boy a couple of times too many."
"She calls me snake girl because of Duke,"
Bucky was relieved to see the smile on her lips twerk up.
"When she was fixing my mind, she found that my mind broke, becoming Bucky and Soldier, before and after HYDRA," He said. "I'm both, and yet I'm neither. Whenever I had an episode that caused me to become catatonic or overly cautious, she would say winter is coming, which I think is a Game of Thrones reference?"
Salem nodded, fidgeting with the arm of the couch.
"Right, so what I'm getting at is that your trauma, whatever HYDRA did to you, made you do, does not define you. When someone asks how many people the Winter Soldier killed, I say I killed hundreds. The part of me that HYDRA conditioned and used is still me." He said. "You don't have to pretend to be okay, don't have to pretend that you don't have this little voice in the back of your mind that tells you exactly how you could take a pen and get in the jugular within a split second. Salem and the Darkling are two in one body, I can tell. You both are the same person but you refuse to believe it."
"I'm trying to compartmentalise it," She said softly. "And it's not working. I've got Sabrina telling me to be nice, to be the daughter Tony wants. Darkling tells me to be myself, do what I want, when I want, how I want, regardless of how it affects others. Salem tells me that I don't have to listen to anyone, even to myself. I don't know what to do and these memories of my childhood and the trauma of HYDRA aren't helping."
He used his metal arm to tug her gently over, hooking her under and getting her close as he gave her a half hug in comfort. "You don't have to do it now. I'm nowhere near dealing with what happened to me but I've accepted that the person who I am now is not the person I was before. I'm not the same person Steve was best friends with before the war, and you're not the same daughter Tony remembers."
She blinked tears away. "I wish he remembered his daughter at all, sometimes. He's been through so much shit and he hasn't allowed himself the privilege of coming to par with it. He doesn't realise how much he hurts me when he doesn't… He doesn't act like my dad but I know he's not the same man from when I was a kid."
"We're all fucked up and traumatised," Bucky said, only laughing when Salem snorted and sniffled. "Come on, you need sleep. You need to replenish the energy you lost over your healing."
She nodded, going into the bathroom to change into pyjama shorts and a tank top before going under the covers of the bed. Duke slithered in too, getting close to her as he fell asleep around her.
Bucky made himself comfortable on the couch, the Soldier refused to let him leave.
He had blood in his ledger, so red and thick that it didn't even drip anymore. Perhaps he could atone for his sins against Howard and Maria Stark by looking after their only granddaughter. Regardless, he didn't want to leave her when she was in such a vulnerable state.
Neither got much sleep.