Amelia stood outside of the small little tavern that Helmut had dashed into, claiming that he just needed to use the restroom before they used the book to find the facility where the Winter Soldiers were. She paced up and down the sidewalk, looking at the prints her boots made in the snow. She didn't think she had ever seen snow as deep as that before, enjoying the way it crunched under foot.

The train journey had been decidedly awkward between the two of them after Amelia's outburst. Helmut had remained silent for quite some time, only then talking when they arrived at their destination and he told her that they had to put the next part of their plan into action. However, what Amelia hadn't realised was that he wasn't using the restroom in the tavern.

Instead, he was calling the hotel where Broussard's body was. He knew that it would be reported and then it would be traced back to him. Stark would find out. He would help Rogers and Barnes. They would all come to Siberia and then Helmut would show them the evidence. He would watch them destroy themselves before he left them alone and listened to the voicemail one final time. He could hear his wife's voice in his head, telling him how she loved him and missed him.

He would get rid of Amelia before they arrived. He knew what he had to do to get her to go, but he knew that it was going to hurt her terribly. That was why he'd left her a letter. He'd written it on the train as she slept again, stuffing it into the bottom of her bag for her to find when the time was right. It told her the truth. It told her everything that he should have told her the night before when she had poured her heart out to him.

Hanging up the phone, Helmut stepped out the tavern and knew that time was now ticking by for him. Amelia was still pacing, seemingly fascinated by watching the snow part under each step she took. His lips quirked, despite everything, at the amused expression on her face. She glanced up when she heard him approach and tilted her head to the side.

"Ready?" she questioned and he nodded.

He was more than ready.

…

"Let me give you a hand."

"I can manage it."

"It's a big drop, Amelia."

Helmut had climbed out of the tank he had commandeered to take them up to the mountain. They had been squished in the vehicle, Helmut taking charge and telling Amelia not to touch anything around them. She had done as he had asked, refraining from hitting buttons. Now, as she stood by the door and clung onto the handle next to it, she was doing her best not to slip down the steps. Helmut had already climbed down effortlessly, standing in the snow and watching her as she hesitantly placed one foot underneath the other. Drumming his fingers against his thigh, he let her get down on her own, prepared to lend her a hand should she need him.

But she came to the ground, jumping off the last step, without any help. She adjusted the blue hat on her head, pulling it further onto her forehead before walking alongside him towards the door. They had left their belongings in a small motel in the nearest town. Helmut had no intention of returning, but he had to ensure that Amelia did.

"So this is it?" Amelia asked from him.

"I believe so," he confirmed, trudging through the snow and staring at the metal door in front of them.

Amelia tucked her hands into the pocket of the large, black winter coat she wore that came down to her knees. She had jeans on underneath alongside thermal tops and walking boots. Her gloves were now slightly damp after holding onto the handle to climb from the tank, but she tried to dry them off inside of her pockets, rubbing them against the material there.

"Creepy, isn't it?" she muttered.

"Hmm," was all that he responded with an affirmation to her.

Looking at the wall at the side of the door, Helmut could see that there was a keypad there, but it was covered in ice. Amelia spotted it too and moved her hand towards it, but Helmut grabbed hold of her wrist before she could touch it.

"This has been frozen for what looks like years," he said to her. "Don't touch it carelessly."

"I wasn't going to touch it carelessly," she threw back at him. "I was going to try and get the ice of it."

"You can get three inches of ice off using just your hands?" Helmut asked her sceptically and she rolled her eyes at his tone. He shook his head and held his hands up. "Just stay here. I think there was an ice pick in the tank…and don't touch anything."

Amelia held her own hands up defensively, indicating that she wasn't going to touch anything. Sighing to herself, she turned on the spot and watched him move back to the tank, climbing into it and looking for the necessary tool. Amelia whirled back around and glanced at the large door in front of her, almost apprehensive about what they were going to find once they were in the facility.

It didn't take long before Helmut was back, holding onto an ice pick and telling her to step back. He went to work at freeing the control panel, Amelia wondering if it would work if it had been covered in ice for years. She soon got her answer when Helmut pulled the book out of the pocket of his own winter coat. Flipping it open to the page he had marked, he looked at the numbers written down and then to the keycode. Punching the numbers in, he heard the control pad creak under the movements. Amelia didn't think anything would happen, but after he pressed the final button, the doors creaked open slightly.

"Ominous," she commented and Helmut stepped forwards. He leant on the door and it opened even further, revealing nothing but a cold, concrete walkway.

Amelia grabbed hold of the torch he had given her from her pocket. Lighting up the space, Amelia remained behind Helmut, holding the torch over his shoulder and lighting up the way. She was steady as she followed him, looking around at the building. She couldn't imagine being forced to stay in it. It was too cold. It almost felt like a prison.

"This is creepy," Amelia commented and Helmut nodded his head, looking around and holding his own torch in his fingers.

The walls were painted white, pipes running along them and Russian words written on them too that Amelia couldn't decipher. She had to admit that she was slightly creeped out by the place. A chill ran down her spin as they took a right turn and she mentally tried to remember the way they had come.

"What is this?" Amelia whispered as they came to a large open room.

Helmut flashed his torch around, well aware that Amelia was hot on his heels. It was almost as though she was too worried to leave him, which he found ironic considering what they had been through. There would be nothing alive in here, but at the same time, it felt like somewhere that was haunted. Helmut knew how ridiculous that sounded considering he didn't believe in such things, but that was what he was feeling. He was feeling uneasy. He took a moment or two to comprehend what he was seeing before he was close to one of the cylinders in the room.

Amelia shrieked as soon as his torch fell onto it, her own dropping from her hands and clattering to the floor. She jumped back as Helmut turned to look to her, noting the horror in her face at what they were seeing.

"They're dead," he told her, but he knew that wasn't necessarily true. However, they would be dead soon enough and, for all he knew, there was nothing left of them anyway. "Amelia, they can't hurt you."

"What…are these them?" Amelia asked, managing to compose herself.

She crouched down and picked the torch up, aiming the light at the floor instead of the people who were frozen in a state of sleep. The cylinders were filled with liquid, the people in them hooked up to wires that came from the tops of the lid and fed into monitors next to them.

"I believe so," Helmut said, walking along the row on the left, observing the faces of the people in there. What life did they have before HYDRA? Did they even have a life?

Amelia walked along the right hand side, trying to keep her breathing steady. Helmut removed the hat from his head and stuffed it into his pocket, feeling the gun that was sat there and loaded with bullets. He removed his gloves as well, rubbing his hands together before noticing a control switch against the wall. He looked at it and ensured he was pulling the right lever. He discovered he was as light flooded the room and he turned his torch off, laying it on a table in the middle of the control panel. Amelia placed hers back into her pocket along with her own hat and gloves.

"So…what now?" she wondered.

"We find the evidence of the Mission Report," Helmut said. "There was a sign to an archive room down the hall."

"Well…I don't speak Russian," Amelia said.

"I know some. Let's go," Helmut said.

They left the main room and manoeuvred back down the hallways and towards the archive room. Helmut turned the light switch on and the large room contained nothing but high-rise shelves with papers and boxes on them. There was a step ladder in the corner of the room too. Helmut grabbed hold of it and wheeled it along the floor on his way along the shelves, looking at them.

"They're in date order," Helmut said.

Amelia stood on the other side of one of the shelves to him, her gloved finger trailing along the third shelf up. "They're dated all the way back to the 30s…what the hell is in here?"

"Things that, I imagine, are not good."

"You imagine?" Amelia questioned sceptically. "How many secrets does HYDRA have? What have they done?"

"It would be best not to think on it, Amelia," Helmut informed her, focused on finding one thing only. "We need to find what we need and that is it."

"Yeah, but all of this stuff-"

"-Is a distraction," Helmut interrupted her, looking at her between the gap in the shelves. She turned to look to him and saw that he was serious. He was ready to get going with what they had to do. "Just focus, Amelia."

Nodding once, she bit down on her tongue and continued looking at the shelves, but it was Helmut who found the box first. He climbed up the step ladders and reached for something that looked like a tape. Opening the box, his suspicions were confirmed. Amelia rounded the corner and moved down towards him, hands back in her pocket as she motioned to what he was holding with her chin jutting out.

"Is that it?" she asked.

"I think so," Helmut nodded. "Come on, we can check it in the control room. I saw a video monitor there."

They left the archive back to the large room, Amelia trying not to look at the faces in the chambers. Helmut placed the tape into the machine and pressed on buttons, grateful that he had at least brushed up on his Russian to understand the basics. He finally pressed play and the monitor to the side came to life. There were grey and black lines flickering over the screen and Amelia stepped closer to it, Helmut stood over her shoulder.

They were silent as they watched the scene unfold in front of them. There was a car crash, that much was apparent. The road looked deserted and quiet. And then he was there, climbing off from his motorbike. He grabbed hold of the man who had crawled out of the car, the woman still sat in her seat and calling for her husband. He punched him forcefully, his head banging back against the car and his body going limp. Amelia placed a hand to her mouth as the Winter Soldier arranged the body back against the wheel and then moved around the car. The woman was still in the passenger seat and her voice was croaky, calling out for her husband and longing to hear him answer her. Amelia's heart thumped loudly against her chest as the Winter Soldier strangled the woman, no emotion on his face at all. He left the woman to slump against her seat and then turned to the camera, shooting it and stopping the footage.

There was no denying that the Winter Soldier had killed the Starks.

"Wow," was all that Amelia could say as the tape finished playing and popped out of the machine, ready to be inserted again if they wanted to see it once more. But once was enough for Amelia. She had no desire to see it again.

"Yeah," Helmut simply agreed with her.

Amelia moved around the room and tugged at the bobble in her hair that was keeping it in a ponytail. She tightened it and then sunk down to crouch on the ground. "That was horrible," Amelia commented and Helmut wasn't going to disagree with her on that one. "I mean, I know it's the evidence we've been looking for and it's pretty conclusive…but it was still horrible to watch. I can't imagine how Stark's going to feel."

"I would imagine he is going to be enraged…upset…all of the things we felt when they destroyed Sokovia and killed our families," Helmut said to Amelia and she nodded her head.

Forcing herself to her feet once more, she gathered her breath and composed herself. This wasn't a case of feeling emotions. She had to be stronger than that. She had to realise that they were doing this for a reason. "So…they'll be on the way here, right?" Amelia checked with Helmut. "You've ensured that's going to happen?"

"Yes."

"Then we just leave the tape here for them to find," Amelia said to him with a nod of her head. "We need to get out of here because when they come then they'll…well…I would say that they would kill us, but I guess it's more likely they'd arrest us."

Helmut was silent. He stared at Amelia and she knew that something was wrong. She was well aware that he was hiding something from her. She walked forwards a few steps, arms folded over her chest as Helmut finally spoke, his voice low.

"This is where we say goodbye," Helmut said and her brows arched.

"What?" she questioned.

"You're going to leave here…take that tank and go back to the hotel," he informed her. "You're going to go back to Norfolk and you're going to live a normal life."

"Excuse me?" she asked again, voice a tone of disbelief.

"We're finished, Amelia," Helmut said to her with a shrug of his shoulders. "This is the end. I will stay here and wait for them to come. I will ensure that they see the video, but then I will go. I have arranged to leave here and travel to Madripoor where I will be able to avoid extradition for what I have done."

He was lying to her. He was saying what he had to say to get her to go. He had no intention of going to Madripoor. He had no intention of leaving this place at all. Amelia's brows furrowed. "What're you talking about?"

"I made a phone call in the tavern," Helmut said to her. "I called the hotel and gave myself away. No doubt the manager will have found the body of Doctor Broussard, the man who was supposed to interrogate the Winter Soldier, in the bathtub."

"What?" Amelia snapped loudly at him and he nodded his head.

"How else do you think I would have gotten close to the Winter Soldier?" he questioned from her. "I pretended to be the psychiatrist to evaluate him. By now word will have gotten out that he is dead and no doubt Stark will have heard and will start to question what has been happening…questioning the Winter Soldier's innocence…he'll come here and he'll see the tape."

Amelia took in what he was telling her. She felt lightheaded, her hands shaking as she began pacing and tried to make sense of what he was saying to her.

"But they'll…they'll know it was you and not Barnes…they'll know it was you who bombed the UN…" she said to Helmut.

"Something I had always anticipated happening," Helmut assured her. "Hence, why I will be leaving for Madripoor and you will be returning to England. This is the end of the road, Amelia. I suggest you go now before they come."

"Are you serious?" she demanded from him. "You think that this is the end? That I'm just going to walk out that door and leave?"

"I suspected you'd be too stubborn just to do that," he confessed and she scoffed. She was the stubborn one? "But that is what needs to happen, Amelia. You said it yourself, you were done with me when you found out what I had done at the UN. Would you prefer to see me rotting behind bars, is that it? You want your conscience to take over?"

Amelia shrugged. She didn't know what she wanted. "I don't know," she admitted to him. "I didn't know what we were going to do, but it wasn't this. It wasn't you casting me aside and running off."

Helmut shook his head and a dark chuckle escaped him. "What? You want to come with me to Madripoor? You want to live on the run with me? Really?"

She was silent then as she thought about what he was saying. Looking to him, she shook her head. "No," she said. She didn't want that. But did she? "I don't know. Shit, Helmut, I don't know what I want anymore…this is all we've been working for and we've finally got it. We've destroyed them and you…I hate you for everything you've done. You ruined everything in the space of a few days."

"What did I ruin?" Helmut asked from her, knowing that he was about to become mean. He didn't want to do it, but it would get her away from him. "I ruined the idea that we could have something? Amelia, are you being serious? Do you seriously think that I would want to be with you even after we had finished what we set out to do?"

Amelia's breath stuck in her throat, feeling her eyes widen. She swore she wouldn't cry in front of him. She wouldn't do that. But his words had hurt her.

"What are you talking about?" Amelia asked from him. "You told me that you cared for me."

"And I do," Helmut agreed. "But not in the way that you seem to care for me. Being with you helped cure the loneliness…and I'm not going to deny that you were a very pleasant distraction, but I told you that it would never be anything else. I don't love you, Amelia. I don't love you and now I don't want you."

Amelia shook her head, blinking back the tears that threatened to spill over. "You're lying," she said him, trying not to let his words linger in her ears, going around in her mind and making her feel sick. "I know that you're lying."

"I'm not," he responded.

"I know there's something in there," Amelia said, moving towards him. "I know that there is something else inside of you, not just vengeance…hate…you've let it consume you for so long and look at what you've done. You bombed the UN…but there is something else, Helmut. There is something in there that you just won't let out because you're either scared of opening up or you're in denial, but I know it. I know that you care about me. I know it."

Amelia was pushing at his chest almost desperately and Helmut wondered just how far gone she was with what she felt for him.

"There's nothing," Helmut assured her. "Any love that I had died with my wife and son."

"No, that's not true and I know it's not," Amelia told him.

"What does it matter?" Helmut questioned. "You told me that there was no coming back from what I've done so why are you still here begging me to give you a flicker of hope that we can have something?"

"I don't know," Amelia admitted to him. And she didn't know. She was so messed up and she knew that she was. "I don't know what I want, Helmut…or what to do…or how I even feel…all I know is that I don't want this to be it. This can't be it. We have to talk about things. We need to do that at least. So let's just go to Madripoor and do that. We can try and work things out there."

"You're not coming with me," Helmut told her.

"You don't mean that. You're just saying this to try and protect me from you, like you always do."

"Yes, I am," Helmut agreed with her on that, grabbing hold of her cheeks in his hands and bending down so that he was at the same eye level as she was. He could see that there were tears falling down her cheeks now. They were tinted red and he brushed them away with his thumb. "I am trying to protect you from me telling you that there is no hope. There never was."

"That's not true," she shook her head. "You stopped me from leaving in Cleveland. You told me that you wanted me."

"I told you what I had to tell you to have one last night with you," he said and his words were cold and callous. She recoiled from him and continued shaking her head. She refused to believe it. She had suspected it, of course, but she didn't want to believe it was true. She swallowed hard as Helmut continued talking. "They were just words, Amelia. They were just empty words."

"No," she said with a shake of her head.

Helmut flapped his arms by his side. "What more do I have to say to you to get you to understand that I don't love you?"

"Stop it," Amelia pleaded from him, but he kept on going. He kept on pushing her. He knew that she would crack eventually and once that had happened, she would go. She would go and she would be safe without him.

"What? You want me to stop telling you the truth?" Helmut asked from her as she wrapped her arms around her waist and turned away from him, hunched over and wondering if she was going to be sick. "The truth is that you cured my loneliness. The truth is that you were perfect for sharing a bed with…that I cared for you as a friend…but I don't love you. I never loved you and I never will. You knew what we were and you still got close. You knew and you hurt yourself."

"You're lying," was all she could say to him.

And he was. He was lying through his teeth. But it was what he needed to do. Moving forwards and towards her, he grabbed hold of her chin and looked her in the eye. He swore he saw the exact moment he broke her when she spoke in a low voice.

"I do not love you."

He punctuated each word and Amelia had had enough then. She couldn't take anymore. Pushing him from her, she turned on her heel and left the room. Helmut stood up straight slowly, hands clenched into fists by his side. He stopped himself from taking a step forwards to go after her. Reaching his hand out, he wanted to call for her to come back. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry. But he didn't. He simply lowered his hand and scrunched his eyes closed.

"I'm sorry, Amelia," he whispered and he knew that eventually she would be fine. She would be better than fine without him.

…

She knew she was an idiot. She knew she was such a fool. What did she expect? Did she truly think that Helmut would tell her that he did love her? That he wanted her to come to Madripoor? That was never going to happen. Why would it? He had been consistent all the way through in his feelings. But there had been a part of her that night in Cleveland when she thought that she saw something more. She saw him wanting more just like she did.

And then there was the fact that she knew what he had done. She knew he had bombed the UN. He had committed heinous crimes, but so had she. He was right, she wasn't innocent in any of this. But she had never wanted to kill innocent people. She had never disregarded their lives like he had. She knew that she would have struggled to understand why he had done what he did. That should have been enough to make her not care about him. It should have been enough to make her forget everything about him. But it wasn't. It wasn't enough to stop her from feeling despair.

As she moved through the facility, she tried to remember the way back out. She should have paid more attention to where she was going. She didn't exactly get far before she heard a door creaking open and she froze, knowing that it wasn't Helmut because he would be behind her following her. This noise had come from in front.

…

Looking around the hallway of the facility, Bucky was doing his best to comprehend what they would find. He was apprehensive about coming across the other Super Soldiers being awake, knowing that they were much worse than he was. He wasn't ready to have to deal with that. Anxiously, he looked to Steve as they moved further into the facility, but then he heard a noise. It sounded like a strangled sob.

"You hear that?" Bucky asked.

Steve turned his head over his shoulder and nodded once before a banging noise came from the other direction.

"I'll check out where that noise came from," Bucky whispered.

"You sure?"

"Yeah," Bucky said. "You go ahead."

Bucky kept his gun trained in front of him, ready to fire if he had to. He heard the sob again and pushed open a door in front of him. Stepping into a large room, he looked around, noticing that it was the old cells. They kept the soldiers in there when they were resting. He looked along the corridor. All of the rooms to the cells were firmly closed. He kept moving forwards before he sensed it. The door he just walked past into the old office creaked open. Before anyone could attack him, he was moving. Spinning on his heel, he turned around and saw a woman leaving the room.

She looked to him, clearly hoping to sneak back out. Lowering his gun, Bucky could see that she had been crying. She looked visibly distressed as her eye met his and she sniffed. She didn't look scared of him. In fact, she looked almost too comfortable compared to how people usually looked around him.

"Are you alright?" he asked, motioning to her face, clearly indicating that she had been crying.

"Fine," she retorted, not entirely in the mood for conversation.

"Are you hurt?" he continued to question her.

She wasn't one of the soldiers. She looked almost like Sam had described the woman who had been with the doctor had looked. Her complexion was pale, her eyes wide and wet. They were a deep green, her hair a chestnut brown colour that hung in curls down her back but was tied into a ponytail, a hat sticking out of her coat pocket.

"No," she said to him. "But you should get out of here before Stark gets here."

"Stark's coming?" Bucky questioned her.

"If his plan works then yeah, he's coming…and he'll find out what you did," she said, her chin jutting out as she glowered at him. "December 16, 1991."

Bucky froze at hearing her say that date. She knew. She had to be the woman the fake doctor had been working with.

"Why?" Bucky asked from her.

She let out a hollow laugh. She sounded so broken and devoid of compassion. "Because they need to be brought down," she snapped. "Because we lost everything and they just walked away like nothing happened. I had a future…a fiancé…a life…and they ruined it all. They took it from us and now we're going to take it from them. But if I were you then I wouldn't stick around to see it."

"That wasn't me," Bucky said to her with a shake of his head. "This place…what it did to me…"

"I know," she responded and she almost sounded sympathetic then. "And that's why I'm telling you to leave before Stark comes because I know what it's like for your parents to be killed. He'll want revenge."

Bucky's brows knitted together. "And this is what this is?" he asked from her. "Revenge?"

"It's always been about revenge," she retorted. "But I'm done letting it consume me now."

Bucky continued to watch her and he advanced towards her slowly. She didn't back away. She remained where she was and he searched her gaze. He saw pain. He could see anguish. She'd suffered. She knew loss. She knew what it was like to be alone. He saw it all because he saw it each day when he looked in the mirror.

"Who are you?" he wondered from her.

"No one," she retorted. "And I'm going."

"No," Bucky said quickly, grabbing hold of her by the wrist before she could leave. His grip was tight as he held her using his normal hand, stopping her from going and pulling her closer to him. He saw her move her other hand to try and push at him, but he spun her around, twisting her arm behind her back. "Tell me who you are," he urged from her, his metal hand moving to turn her face to look at him, twisting her neck behind her shoulder.

But she didn't say anything. She gave him nothing as he led her forwards, fully intending on leading her back into the main room and to Steve. But he didn't get that far as she somehow managed to turn herself around in his grip. She tried to plan how to get away from him. And so she looked him in the eye and spoke.

"He's already woken them up."

She knew that he would know what she was talking about. The lie did its trick, the Winter Soldier's grip on her slipping and she used that to her advantage. He hadn't been using much strength, almost too worried about injuring her. She gripped his shoulders and kneed him in the groin and, despite being a super soldier, that still hurt. He doubled over and she ran off. He gathered his composure, chasing her through the corridors and following her footsteps.

But then everything went silent. He looked up and down the crossway, wondering just who she was and if he would ever see her again.

...

A/N: Okay, so I don't know whether to continue or not after the event of the film. I want to, but not sure if anyone else is reading. If so, please do let me know and I have a couple of questions! 1. Do I make Bucky more of a central character? 2. What happens during the Blip to the characters too? Do let me know your thoughts - it would mean a lot to know people are still reading!