Well. Here we are, finally! The sequel to "Into Yellow". For new readers - This fic can absolutely be read on its own! You DO NOT have to read "Into Yellow" to enjoy this story. The prologue is here to catch you up on what you need to know! To my old readers, welcome back! It's so good to be writing for you again!
This story would have never happened without users Lara Barnes and HogwartsBestAvenger. To the bottom of my heart, thank you! You are both the real MVPs and the next several chapters are dedicated to you.
Forgive the poor editing, I'm very lazy. Also, as a disclaimer, I don't own Marvel.
/The Red Mistress Book 2/
Prologue
Avengers Complex, Upstate New York, 2016.
It was like looking at a ghost, Steve Rogers decided as he peered into the observation room window with hunched over shoulders and an unwavering gaze.
He could feel his heart pounding in his chest as he stared, and the longer he did he felt as though he would scream. Blood rushed through his head, allowing a dull ache to form behind his eyes as a migraine quickly overcame him.
He didn't want anyone to see the way his hands shook, so he gripped them together so tightly that his nails dug into his skin. His mouth was dry like he had just swallowed cotton and he found himself wondering when the last time he was so nervous. It had clearly been a while, given the unfamiliar uneasiness that settled in his stomach.
"You good?" Sam Wilson asked in a low timbre beside him. His arms were crossed over his chest, and he had a weariness about him which made Steve think he was also uneasy with the whole situation.
Steve let out a deep breath and he nearly laughed. No, he certainly wasn't all good.
Not while the person sitting chained to a desk in the room before him looked at him with such an unfaltering stare. Despite the fact the observation room window was one-sided, it was almost like it didn't matter. She knew he was there, and the intensity of her hazel eyes never wavered. It made his stomach flip once more, as he recalled the memory of the last time he had seen her.
The fact she was there alive and not even looking as though she had aged a day, despite it being almost seventy years, was surprising enough on its own. But Steve should have learned by now to stop being surprised when people from his past kept popping up. It seemed like it was a common occurrence these days.
Still, it didn't make it any easier.
Sam saw right through Steve and noticed how the stress radiated off of him. He knew that to Natasha, who was off to the side, it was even more apparent. The woman could read people like a book after her extensive Red Room training. That place had equipped her with unparalleled skills unlike any other. But regardless, it didn't take a super spy to notice the fear racing through his head and the way his thoughts seemed to run a million miles per minute.
She said nothing, though. Instead, Natasha only stared at his back, waiting for him to make a move from where she was casually leaning against the wall. She didn't push him, but rather gently nudged him in a friendly way as if to encourage him onward.
"You know, you don't have to be the one to do this," She warned, as she made her way to his side slowly, showing she was there for support. Steve was thankful he had such good friends that would go to bat for him. It certainly made this whole ordeal easier for him.
"Either Wilson or I can take this one." Steve's eyes flashed to Natasha's grey orbs, the look of concern apparent behind them. Nat rarely looked at people like that, and the fact she is now staring at Steve with such an expression put his teeth on edge. He swallowed harshly at the thought and quickly shook his head.
"No, I need to be the one to do this." He insisted and crossed his arms over his broad chest, "Just need a minute." He promised them.
Natasha nodded, a small smirk on the corner of her lips, "Good idea. The last time I saw her she kicked my ass and I'm still a little bitter about losing."
"Black Widow losing a fight? Seems fake, but okay. She a superhuman or something?" Sam chuckled lowly as he tried to tease Natasha, who didn't seem at all amused. The Russian spy hardly reacted, missing a few beats and then cocking her head to the side to reply to Sam.
"Well, she managed to stab me in the kidney on my first solo mission and left me for good as dead. I tried to track her down a couple years later." Natasha explained lowly, keeping her voice even before her eyes flashed back to Steve, "Just another ghost story." Steve's shocked gaze met Nat's again as she spoke. She noticed the small twitch above his brow and how his breath had caught at her words. He couldn't forget the first time she told him something similar, prior to the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D
The cherub smile on Sam's face dropped and suddenly he was paling, "Jesus, I am so sorry,"
Nat shrugged, she looked on at the woman in the room who was picking at the lint on her shirt sleeve, not paying too much attention to the three people she knew were watching her behind the interrogation room window. "Just business, no hard feelings."
"She stabbed you in the kidneys and you have no hard feelings?" He asked in horror.
Nat shrugged again, "Gotta do what you gotta do. I'm mad about losing, not that she stabbed me. "
"You are way too cavalier about this, and I'm not okay with it. It's unhealthy." Sam emphasized as he rubbed his face, looking stressed out by Natasha's story, "I mean is it a Russian thing, or what? Cause' if she stabbed my kidney I would not be so calm. I would be the opposite of calm. "
Steve let out a frustrated sigh, wishing he didn't have Sam's irritated voice ringing in his ears and the image of Natasha bleeding out somewhere.
Nat suddenly nudged Sam, signalling for him to shut up and that he wasn't making this much easier for Steve to go into the room.
Noticing his hesitation, Natasha gently spoke his name to bring him back to reality, "Steve," Her hand resting on his upper back comfortingly. He felt a little better knowing his friends were there for him, "You got this. You can do it."
"I know," He assured her, feeling as her hand slipped from his back as he stood up straight to rest at her by her side. "It's just the last time I saw her it was 1945, and I had to tell her that her husband was dead somewhere at the bottom of a ravine."
Steve thought about that too often. About how she had looked as he walked into her work tent on base, and how her eyes had lit up at the sight of him; knowing that it meant the Howling Commandos were back.
She had gotten up so quickly that the multiple books papers on her desk had somehow been knocked to the ground. Her smile stretched up to her eyes as she happily exclaimed with youthful optimism, unaware her world was about to shatter, 'You're back!' Steve could tell she had been looking behind him, waiting for her beloved to follow in after him. He never came, though.
Steve hadn't even changed out of his uniform after he had arrived back to base. He had blood smeared on his boots, and he found himself wondering whose it was as he had walked to her operations tent. He focused on that instead of the words he would say to her, and when he was finally there he froze in time.
Steve didn't know how he could crush her like that. He also worried that him speaking the words out loud would make it true, and his closest friend was really gone for good.
It still haunted Steve's dreams to see the way her eyes filled up so the tears and how she collapsed to the ground in broken sobs after he delivered the deviating words.
She spoke the truth after that; it was his fault. He had failed to keep his promise, and she was left without a husband and her soon-to-be child without a father.
He had gotten the news that she had been involved in a fiery car accident a few months later. Neither she nor the baby within her womb survived.
But now she was sitting in front of them, looking almost the same as she did the last time he had seen her. Only, nothing was the same anymore.
As Steve gathered himself and readied to go out and talk to her, she finally called out to anyone listening.
"Hey! I'm getting bored, can someone please come interrogate me? Y'know, maybe a little good-cop bad-cop routine to pass the time or something?" She called out, putting her head on the table out of boredom and stifling a yawn.
Steve mustered up all his courage as he pulled the door open and entered. He didn't want to look at her dead in the eye but ended up doing that exactly.
There was an effortless beauty about her still, regardless of the fact the years hadn't been kind to her. She still looked in her early thirties, but the light curls that felt in her face and the small freckles that speckled her cheeks made her look the same as when Steve first knew her. Only the red lipstick and victory curls were traded in for something more modern, it was eerie to see the similarities within her face of the woman she once was.
A slow grin spread on her face as she peaked up from where she had been resting her chin on her hands, "My, my, sending in Captain America himself to interrogate little ole me? I must have done something very naughty. Did I stab someone in the kidney again?" She tsked, and her eyes flashed to the window again where Natasha was. The red-headed spy must have been fuming at that comment.
Steve's breath hitched as she spoke, the light teasing in her tone once again showing pieces of her old personality. He walked over slowly to the chair on the other side of the table. It made a loud noise as it was dragged across the harsh flooring, ringing in his ears after he sat back down, "You remember me?" Was all he asked skeptically.
She didn't answer, and instead only clicked her jaw, "Y'know, back in our day, they used to offer a pack of cigarettes to perps being interrogated." Her voice quipped as she raised an eyebrow, the corner of her lips upturned in a smug smirk.
"Back in our day, they also used to put cocaine in our sodas." Steve quipped back and then sighed, "But cigarettes can be arranged if you'd like." He didn't like the idea of her smoking, his protective nature flaring back up out of the blue. But she was an adult and a different person than he once knew. Plus, of all the dangerous things she had done in her lifetime, he doubted a lousy cigarette would be the thing to kill her.
Steve turned around to nod at the window of the interrogation room, signalling to Sam, who he knew as listening, to go get some cigarettes.
When Steve faced her again he saw her smiling a little. Not like how she used to, as though the world was full of opportunities she had never even dreamed of, or when she used to speak of her favourite art piece. No, rather there was a coyness about her expression and a troublesome glimmer in her eye.
"I like the longer hair," She said gently, her eyes flickering to his different appearance, "Have you ever considered a beard? I think you could pull it off. Unless you're sold on the whole 'Boy Scout' look."
Steve chuckled and his hand along his jaw. He shook his head at her in disbelief and then asked again, "So, you do remember me then?"
She shrugged, tilting her head to the side and leaning back a little, "In pieces. It comes and goes, and everything gets a little fuzzy when I come back out of the ice. Especially since this one seemed like it lasted longer, which I'm told it did." For a woman who had spent over twenty years in cyro, she seemed shockingly calm. Steve then realized she was used to it, and it somehow made him even sadder than before.
She seemed to notice how his eyes dropped and how he didn't meet her gaze. When the door opened, Sam peaked his head in and signalled he had the cigarettes. He tossed them to Steve, who muttered a thanks after he caught it. Placing it in front of the lighter, her eyes fell on it.
"Oh, no thanks. I don't smoke." She passed the pack of Marlboro's back across, clearly just having been testing them to see how willing they would be to do something for her. "Anyway, why don't we skip the foreplay and get right to the deed, huh? Why am I here? Am I under arrest? I assume not, due to these things." She gestured to the weak handcuffs that were only placed on her as a precaution. If she were really under arrest, there would be a much larger fuss to keep her contained in something she couldn't break out of, "I also know you're not dumb, Rogers. I'm sure you're aware that Peggy and I cut a deal that gave me immunity. So that can't be it. You want something from me, don't you?"
Steve let out a snort and ran a hand through his hair and crossed his arms over his chest again. He tried to ignore the way his heart lurched when she mentioned Peggy. He figured she did it on purpose, just to get a reaction from him. "You always did like cutting to the chase."
"Why bother dancing around something when you can get straight to it?" She had always been blunt and not one for formalities, but the years had seemed to make her even bolder.
Steve didn't break eye contact, staring her down and hoping she would fold. He should have known better though. After all, she wasn't some regular perp. And if her training was anything like Natasha's, there was no way he could sugarcoat anything. So as she requested, he cut straight to the case.
"We need your help, Lucy."
She winced at the name, as though it had physically hurt her. Closing her eyes and shaking her head slowly she breathed out a pained exhale, "Don't call me that. I'm not her anymore."
Steve once again quieted down, his frown settling deep on his brow as he realized that his friend that he had once known truly was gone, "What would you rather be called then?"
She shrugged, not caring, "Doesn't matter." She answered harshly.
Steve gave her a gentle look, and urged her, "Please?" He wanted to humanize her, to make her feel as though she were anything but just something other than just a being whose sole purpose was to kill people.
She let out a breath of frustration and looked at the pack of cigarettes. Letting out a brief snort in defeat, she reached for them. Grabbing one and slotting it in between her teeth, she gestured at the lighter with her eyes as silently asking Steve for help, "Thought you didn't smoke?"
"Only on special occasions." She muttered.
Without a word, he held the lighter to the tip of the cigarette as she breathed in deeply. Flames caught to the end, and she pulled it back once she was satisfied with it burning.
Taking it out of her mouth and she had inhaled as much as she could, she uttered only one word, "Anya," She released the smoke from her mouth as she spoke, blowing it into the air as the stale smell of it filled his nostrils, "That's what they called me during my time there."
"And you prefer it over Lucy?" He frowned more, wondering why she would want to keep that part of her life intact but forget the life she had actually lives.
"Dr. Lucy Heinrich is dead. She died over seventy years ago." She replied, taking another drag. "Anyway, if I recall correctly, you were asking for my help?" She absent-mindedly gestured at him to continue on.
"Right," Steve answered with a curt nod, "We need your help finding someone." Her attention was piqued and she raised an amused eyebrow, letting out a small chuckle. "Finding him." Steve continued, watching as her amused expression dropped.
Lucy — Anya, he now supposed, tried to remain composed. Her eye twitched, showing Steve how caught off guard she really was. She was surprised even more so when Steve pulled the manila folder from his lap and opened it to a black and white photograph from Vienna.
"Why should I help you find him?" She swallowed thickly. Her fingertips brushed the picture gently, as though she were placing a caress on a cheek. "He clearly doesn't want to be found if he's hiding so well that not even the Avengers can track him down."
"Because I know you want to find him just as badly and I do. And because I know that if we didn't get to him first, HYDRA or S.H.I.E.L.D will." Steve tried to reason with her. He knew the same woman who listened to logic and common sense was still in there. And clearly, the woman who once loved the man in the picture was too, even though she now went by a different name.
She smiled down at the picture a little, taking it in her grip gently. She had a sad kind of smile on her face, and tears in her eyes, "I can barely make him out in the picture, but I can tell he's still as handsome as the last time I saw him." She chuckled fondly and shook her head. Her fingers again brushed across the picture delicately.
Steve was quiet for a moment, until he finally murmured, "I have a feeling that you two have seen each other more recently than that last day you spent together in 1945." Guilt was stabbing Steve deep within once more as he remembered the look of devastation she had after he told her about the failed mission.
"You always had solid intuition, Cap." She pursed her lips together and nodded sadly. A tear fell down her face, trailing down her cheek. She would have wiped it away out of embarrassment if her hands hadn't been chained to the table.
He wanted to ask her more, about how they had found each other and what happened, but he knew better than to pry. He had a feeling that as she gazed longer at the picture, she would eventually cave. At least, she would if she was still the same Lucy Heinrich he once knew.
"He's in trouble?" She asked with worry behind her gaze. She gathered as much from the obvious security camera footage.
"Yes, and we can help him."
She frowned, "Why should I believe you? I don't know you anymore. You don't know me. This could be a trap." Her brow creased together heavily as she rambled, trying to talk herself out of giving Steve the information. She was closing herself off again, and Steve was beginning to get desperate.
Nevertheless, he pushed past his panic and paused, hurt by her accusations. "You honestly think I would willingly hurt either one of you?" It was like a bullet to the heart to hear such a thing. He supposed he couldn't blame her, though. After all, he had broken almost every promise he had ever made to her.
"What about his crimes? What about this?" She gestured from the picture, knowing it was being circulated around for any information on him after he had done something bad, "I won't give him up just so you can arrest him."
"Lucy…" She refused to look up at him as he called her by her old name. Instead, her eyes were set on the picture. "Anya," Her eyes flashed back to him as he spoke the new, unfamiliar name that would take some time getting used to, "Please. I need your help."
"We had a place..." She spoke quietly, chewing on her bottom lip. The cigarette had long been forgotten about and was mostly ashen as the flame continued to burn through it. Her hazel eyes flashed back to Steve's hard-set and unwavering as his tone became heavier, "That we agreed to stay and wait for one another if ever got free. That way, we would find each other again."
"Tell me." Steve begged, "He's in a lot of trouble. If they get to him before I do, I won't be able to protect him…"
She looked hesitant once more, knowing that if she told Steve there would be no coming back after this. Closing her eyes tightly and cussing to herself, she gave up with a defeated breath.
"Bucharest." She answered, the pain coming over her once again as another tear fell down her cheek, "We agreed on Bucharest."