Savage

by awalkerlifeforme

She was everything people feared. She wanted to defend the world but also wanted revenge on those who wrecked hers. The ones who forced her to leave Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes. Now she's back and while Steve attempts to get back the woman he's always considered his sister, Bucky hopes to thaw the ice that has formed around her heart. A heart that he had always believed was his.

21. Chapter 21

It turned out that Steve and I weren't able to go very far. We had spent so long chasing down Kruger and speaking to him that it was already the middle of the night by the time that we were ready to start speaking about what happened now. Most people were sent home. The majority of the nurses and visitors. It left the scientists, nurses, and a few government officials. It left Chester dealing with the press, and everyone else trying to take care of the dead and frightened.

A few hours ago the Army men had begun ordering everyone to go to bed and come back in the morning. Things had been too tense over the past few hours. So most people had gone off and gone to bed. It didn't really mean going to bed. It mostly just meant for everyone to get out of the crowded experiment area so that people could start figuring everything out. Currently they were trying to bring in Kruger's submarine that had been left in the marina. It was extremely heavy and that meant that cranes had to come and bring it in. That also meant that no one was going to be able to keep this out of the papers.

Some people were actually asleep, but for the most part everyone was still awake and trying to figure things out. The medical rooms were being utilized as places for some of the people to sleep. I sighed and dropped back onto the wall. I knew that I should have gone to my own medical room - or at least the one that Kruger had been in to help clean up the blood - but I couldn't bring myself to move. I couldn't bring myself to do anything. I really wanted to go on a run, just to try and get things off of my mind, but currently no one else was allowed out of the area as questioning had begun.

My thoughts were encompassed with Abraham. He was one of my closest friends. He was one of the few people that knew so much about me. He had known what I was and had never once flinched at the sight of me. I could have stopped it. I could have stopped Kruger. There were so many things that I could have done. I could have read his mind and stopped him. I could have known what he was going to do. Or I could have just used my damn powers. Why the hell had I listened to Howard? Sure, I might have ruined my own life. But at least Abraham would have been alive. I slumped against the stone wall and closed my eyes.

It was the room that had been assigned to Peggy and me for the night. She was nowhere to be found. Abraham had been her friend so I knew that she was having a hard time with this, too. She had been close to tears earlier. I had a feeling that she was off, crying somewhere, hoping that no one would see her. I'd only come into the room to get some peace and quiet for a little while. I really didn't want to have to continue explaining that Kruger had known nothing of importance and that I was fine after killing him. They didn't seem to understand that Kruger was not the first person that I had killed, and he was certainly not the bloodiest death that I'd ever seen.

As expected, I wasn't left in peace for very long. Steve knocked on the door frame and I looked up at him. I motioned him into the room, onto the table across from me. "Go on. Sit," I said softly.

"Thanks," Steve told me, walking into the room. He sat on the table across from me. I could see that he was holding something in his hands. It was a breakfast bar. But it wasn't for him. "Here. It's not a lot, but you should eat something," Steve said, trying to hand it over to me.

Shaking my head at him, I pulled my knees up against my chest. "No, thanks, I'm not hungry," I said honestly.

"When's the last time you ate?" Steve asked me.

Raising my brows at myself, I shrugged my shoulders. I really didn't know when the last time was that I had eaten. Probably around thirty-six hours ago. "I don't know," I finally said.

Steve smiled and shifted so that he was now sitting on the same table that I was propped up on. I laid my head gently on his shoulder as he wound his arm over my shoulders. "Then I think that it's time for you to eat," he said, holding the bar up once more.

"I've gone longer," I answered.

Steve's shoulder gently rolled. I backed away and looked up at him. I could hear his thoughts, thinking that I had done it to myself just so that I could stay thin. "Vic, that's not -"

"Healthy?" I asked. Steve looked surprised that I had already known what he was going to say. "I know. It wasn't by choice," I muttered.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

That was when it finally occurred to me. This wasn't something that I could keep a secret anymore. I didn't want it to be a secret anymore. As terrified as I was to tell him the truth, I knew that Steve had to know about me. And maybe it was better this way. Maybe this was something that I wanted to tell Steve first. He was always the more level-headed of the two of them. As much as Bucky could calm down and ask questions, he was always the one that acted first. If I could explain all of this to Steve first and see how he reacted, I could go from there with Bucky. This was so important to me, and it was something that I had to do now, before I backed out.

Deciding to act, I hopped up from the table and gave Steve my hand. "Come on a walk with me," I told him.

Steve looked a little bit confused but nodded anyways. "Okay," he said, wrapping an arm over my shoulders.

He was very clearly upset about everything that had happened. But I could feel the emotions drain out of him as the concern seeped into his brain. I could hear him thinking about me. We headed out of the small medical room and I tried to calm myself down. I didn't want to tell him. I didn't want him to be terrified of me. It was one of the few things that I was afraid of in the world. But he needed to know. He needed to know the truth before something happened where I was forced to show him just how strange I was. My hands were shaking, the electrical currents shooting through my arms.

My nerves were fraying. This was not something that I had ever been looking forward to. We walked over to Chester and I nodded at him. "We're heading out for just a few minutes," I told Chester. He merely stared at me with a cruel snarl. I knew that he didn't want me to leave. "It's the middle of the night. No one will see him," I argued.

Chester shook his head at me. "Absolutely not. You stay here," he snapped.

For a moment I was about to open my mouth and concede. But this was important. "No. We're leaving. We'll be back. I have to tell him something. It's extremely important and I won't be saying it in here," I told Chester, leaving no room for argument.

A hint of emotion flashed through his eyes as he stared at me. "Think long and hard before you say that," Chester warned.

It was something that I'd been thinking about since I had met them. And the time had come for me to tell the truth. "I have," I told Chester. "This is something that Abraham wanted me to do. I'm going to tell him now. Not everything. He doesn't need to know everything and I'm not ready to say it. But he deserves to know something."

And it was the truth. Abraham had always believed that telling them the truth was for the best. So this would be my way of giving him a dying request. "You're sure that you want to do this?" Chester asked.

"Yes."

Chester nodded at me. I could tell that he didn't think that this was the right thing to do. "Things might change between the two of you," he told me.

It was a known fact that things would change once Steve knew the truth about me. Maybe he would finally realize that I didn't have to be protected. "I know that they will. But he's already suspicious. I might as well tell him something," I told Chester.

The two of us stared at each other before Chester nodded. "Take this," he said.

Curiously, I watched as he dug into his belt and pulled out the gun that he always wore, handing it to me. I shook my head at him. "I don't need that," I said. He nodded at me for a moment and tucked it back into his belt. That was when I realized that he did have a pocketknife in his belt. "Actually, give me the knife."

Chester reached down to his belt and pulled the knife off, hanging it over to me. "Here," he said.

I grabbed it from him and tucked it into my pocket. "Thank you. We'll be back as soon as possible," I promised.

But I had a feeling that if we were going to talk about this it would take all night. Before I could walk off, Chester called out to me. "If anyone is out there, don't speak to them. Newspapers are already crawling around this place," he said.

We didn't need this to be in the papers any more than it already would be. "We'll take the back door," I told him before turning back to Steve. He was watching curiously. "Come on. We're going out the back doors. There are news reporters all around the front of the building."

"Okay."

Together we moved through towards the back of the building. I had a feeling that a few people wanted to ask what we were doing or try to stop us, but with Steve the size that he was now, no one bothered to try. I was grateful for it. We moved out of the back door and into the alleyway. I could see reporters standing on the other side of the building and I rolled my eyes. What were they expecting to catch a photograph of? It didn't matter. The newspapers had gotten the pictures that they wanted. They would be everywhere in the morning.

There was nothing that we could do to stop them from printing the story in the papers in the morning. The only thing that we could do was move forward and try everything in our power to stop Hydra. I couldn't think of a way to get away from the building so I did the one thing that I could think to do. I motioned Steve over towards the staircase on the side of the building and motioned upwards. He nodded at me and followed me up to the top of the roof. It was the first time that I had ever seen Steve climb a staircase without getting winded. We walked towards the middle of the roof before I took a spot in the gravel.

Steve took a seat beside me a moment later. I was staring out at the slowly rising sun. It was still down on the horizon, barely letting some light shine over the city. "Why are we up here?" Steve asked me.

The wind was very gently blowing through my hair, whipping it in front of my eyes. I was almost glad. I wasn't sure that I wanted Steve to be able to see my face. "A few different reasons. I couldn't be in there anymore. It was driving me insane. Can't go for a walk right now. All of those men down there? They want pictures of you. So... this was the next best thing," I said.

We sat in silence for a while, facing each other, each of us with our knees pulled up to our chests. "What did you mean before?" Steve asked me. I raised a brow. "When you were saying that you've gone longer than just a day without eating?"

Taking a deep breath, I prepared to tell him the entire truth. "I've gone two weeks without eating before," I said.

Steve stared at me curiously. Our feet were pressed against each other's. "Why would you do that?" he asked.

"It wasn't by choice," I told him quickly. We sat in silence for a few seconds, Steve giving me a very scrutinizing stare, as I prepared to tell him the thing that scared me the most. "You and Bucky wondered where I went for all of those years. Right?" I asked weakly.

That definitely caught his attention. He glanced up at me and met my eyes. He very hesitantly nodded. "Of course," he said slowly. "Vic, if you don't want to tell me yet, don't," he added.

Why did Steve and Bucky have to be such good people? It only made me feel worse about myself. They would always be everything that I wished that I could be. "Abraham would have wanted me to tell you," I told him honestly. Abraham had always encouraged me to tell them, believing that they wouldn't care. "You just have to give it all a chance, alright? It's not easy to explain."

Steve nodded immediately. "Okay."

Take it slow, Victoria. Explain it all piece by piece. "There's a reason that Abraham wanted me on this project. It's a version of mutation, what we've done to you," I told him. He nodded at me. That was simple enough to understood. It only got worse and worse from here. "And that just so happens to be my specialty. Mutation."

It still didn't seem to have affected Steve. "You were always good with that kind of stuff," he said.

Once more I nodded at him. He must have been remembering all of those classes that I had taken back when we were kids. "Yes. Because I understand it better than anyone else. Because I've seen it up close," I said softly, unsure of how to just spit it out.

"Mutation?" he asked, unsure of what this had to do with anything.

Just spit it out, you idiot. "Yes. Mutation. Throughout all of history, it's been the key to our evolution. It's enabled human being to evolve into the dominant species on the planet. The process normally takes thousands and thousands of years. Our spines straightening out to allow us to become bipedal," I explained. I stopped for a moment, making sure that Steve knew what that meant. Once he nodded at me, I continued speaking. "The loss of the use of wisdom teeth, considering that we no longer need them to grind down bone. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward."

Now I knew that I had lost him. His eyebrows knitted at me. Here we go. Maybe I'd hint at it first before actually telling him what I was. Just in case he didn't take it well. "What do you mean?" Steve asked.

Taking another deep breath, I motioned towards Steve's eyes. "Your eyes. Bucky's eyes," I added softly. He simply stared at me. "They're both blue. Originally everyone on the planet had brown eyes. But a mutation in the genetic code caused the blue eye mutation. Now everyone on the planet with blue eyes stems from that single ancestor," I continued to explain.

A small smile fell over Steve's face. He obviously didn't understand how this connected to me not eating, but he did seem fascinated with the idea of the blue eye theory. "That's cool," Steve said.

I nodded at him. "My yellow eyes are another," I continued softly.

Steve smiled and reached over, grabbing my hand. I smiled weakly at him. "Maybe one day lots of people will have them," he told me hopefully.

It was painful, how much faith he had in everyone. "Doubtful," I told him. I let go of his hand and motioned back to my eyes. "This is what I meant about mutation taking huge leaps. There are theories that certain people are born with special... powers," I muttered.

As expected, he lapsed into a tense silence. He was clearly trying to figure out what I was talking about. I smiled weakly. It would have been so much easier to just spit out what I meant. I just wanted to tell him everything that was different about me. But if I was going to tell him about mutation and mutants, I would have to explain everything. I had to tell him everything about me and everything that I had gone through. He deserved to know. After all, it was because of mutation that we had even been able to create him in the first place. It would have taken Abraham much longer without the Vita-Rays.

It was a long silence before Steve managed to gather his thoughts. "Excuse me?" he finally asked.

Laughing softly, I shook my head at him. "There are theories that people are born with all of these oddities about themselves. From things as simple to running faster than a train all the way to being able to manipulate metal or control minds," I explained.

Once more, Steve slipped into a dead silence. His mind was whirring at a thousand miles a minute. His thoughts couldn't lock onto something coherent for that long before it changed pace again. I could hear his thoughts and I smiled, knowing that he was very stunned at what I had just said. He didn't want to believe that all of this was real. But it was. It was real, and he was just about to find out. He didn't seem scared. He just seemed to be very confused.

Finally he began laughing at me. He stopped laughing when he saw just how serious I was. "Come on, Vic. That's science fiction. There's no way that all of that could be real," he told me, still smiling.

"Why not?" I asked him quickly.

The little smile that had still been on his face almost immediately dropped. He was staring at me like I had lost my mind. He didn't understand how it could be real. I understood where he was coming from. It sounded like something that came straight out of an H.G. Wells novel. It didn't sound like something that could ever happen in real life. Steve seemed to know that I was baiting him into saying something. But I had caught him off-guard. He didn't know what to say.

"B - Because -" he stuttered awkwardly.

"You don't understand it?" I asked.

Steve immediately shook his head. "Well... no. I don't," he said. He seemed very confused. But he didn't seem afraid. Not yet, at least. "Do you?" he finally asked me.

"Yes. They're called mutants," I said.

Now that I really thought about it, I couldn't believe that I'd never known that we were called mutants. It should have been so obvious. "Are - Are they real?" Steve asked, interrupting my thoughts.

"Yes."

"Where are they?" Steve asked.

It was easy to hear it in his voice. This unnerved him. He was nervous. Now or never, Victoria. Say it. "One is sitting about two feet away from the world's first super soldier," I told him with a guilty smile.

Steve's face fell. There was no fear. Just confusion. "V - Vic?" he asked.

Smiling awkwardly, I went to back away from Steve. I didn't want to scare him. But he grabbed at my foot, forcing me to stay where I was. "The yellow eyes aren't just a weird thing that happened to me at birth. They're not even really yellow. I just force them to appear yellow," I admitted.

"Huh?" Steve asked dumbly.

Once more I smiled. He looked like a little kid that was being explained the birds and the bees. "Don't scream, alright?" I asked him.

Steve was very pale as he nodded at me. I blinked and opened them, staring right at Steve. They faded into their pitch black appearance. Steve gasped and backed off slightly, but remained otherwise unaffected. I let them linger that way for a few moments before blinking, allowing them to return to their normal yellow. He was still staring at me like I'd lost my mind. Confusion... A little apprehension... But still no fear... And it wasn't because of the super-solider serum. It was just because that was the way that he was. It was the way that he always would be. He would never fear me unless I gave him a real reason to.

Taking a deep breath, I risked a glance in Steve's eyes. He was trying to give me a reassuring smile. It came out more as a nervous grimace. "I promised you that I would tell you where I went all of those years. So let me tell you. Just don't interrupt until I'm done. And give me a chance to explain," I told him.

"Okay," Steve said, his voice barely above a whisper.

And so I dove into the entire story. As much as I cared to say for now, anyways. "That day - the last day that I was with you and Bucky - Johnathan met me down a back alley after school when I'd stormed off. He was furious that I'd made him look like a fool. He got three of his friends to try and attack me." Steve tensed. I could see the muscles bulging in his arm and his jaw set. "It would have worked had I been anyone else. But it didn't. It never would have. I was so sick of people talking about me like I was less than human. You heard all of the nicknames that they gave me. Everything terrible that they said. And it wasn't even the fact that it was just kids being cruel. It was that they were saying things that really did affect me. Because they didn't know.

"They didn't know that what they were saying was just the beginning. I was sick of them treating me the way that they did. I decided that there was going to be no more. So I fought back. I don't know what happened to those boys, but I assume that it was nothing good. It was the first time that I'd ever really attacked someone. I wanted to kill them, and that was when I realized what I had done. I knew that they were close to dead. I could see it in their faces. They were terrified. They were going to do anything in their power to get me into trouble with the law. And, at that point, I couldn't afford that. So I panicked and ran.

"Right into the man that would change my life. Colonel William Stryker." Steve raised his brows, unsure of who he was. I wished that I didn't even know who he was. "I should have known. But he told me that he knew what I was... He told me that he knew what I'd done. I was terrified of what I'd done, Steve. I'd assaulted someone. Nearly killed them. I was stupid for what I'd done. And to this day I still think that I was stupid for what I did. Stryker seemed to know about me. I wanted so much to know why I was the way that I was. He told me that they would hunt me down and kill me." Steve's heart rate was picking up slightly. "He told me that they would use you and Bucky against me." His heart was pounding now. "He begged me to trust him. So I did.

"To this day it was the biggest mistake that I've ever made. I went with him to his laboratory in Alberta, Canada. I didn't want to trust him, but I had to. He was the only person that had ever given me an indication that he knew what I was. He kept his promise for a while. He told me what I was. A mutant." Steve's eyebrows knitted. He was shaking his head, trying to process everything that I was telling him. It was a lot to take it at one time. But we'd increased his brain power. He would managed to understand this. "He told me all about them. I was scared of him, but I trusted him. We finally got the place that he had promised me.

"At first it was everything that I could have wanted. He introduced me to people just like me. Other mutants. They had all sorts of powers. But they were so friendly, telling me that I was no different than anyone else. I thought that I might finally have found my place. But that was when I learned that there were two parts of Stryker. He had the Chi Protocol, where he would train and use mutants to eliminate threats all around the world. Sort of like a special operations division that worked under the law. It was incredible. I thought that I would really get the chance to change the world and show them that I wasn't a monster. I had everything.

"Then Stryker showed me his true colors. It wasn't just the Chi Protocol that he had. He also had the Weapon X Program. He would torture the mutants there until he could kill them." Steve gasped and stared at me with sad eyes. I tried to force a smile, but I couldn't. Not while I was remembering Stryker. "He utilized their powers, combining them, making a mutant more dangerous than any other. He lied to me the entire time. He hated mutants. He lied to them, made them trust him, just so that he could draw them in. A mutant had killed his family. So he took out his anger on every other one that he could find. This was where he put me.

"Seven years, Steve... Seven years that I spent there," I told him, my voice breaking. Steve moved forward and grabbed my hand. "Stryker would work as hard as he possibly could to kill the mutants. He tried with me, too. But it never worked." My voice cracked again. It was hard to remember just how much I'd wanted to die. For a while it had been the only thing that I'd wanted. Even more than freedom. "You saw how careless I was when I went after Kruger. There was a reason. I can't die." Steve started to shake his head. "Trust me, Stryker tried everything that he possibly could to kill me. He tried to starve me, beat me, anything that he possibly could." Steve cringed. "But it never worked.

"So he went for another option. To train me. It would end up being a mistake on their part. He wasn't nice and he never trained me himself. It was the other guards. And they would use any means necessary. They would train me to use all of my powers. They would see if I was starving would make any difference." Once more, Steve cringed. "Every single day I would wake up and train, all day long. No food, no water, and no sleep. I wasn't allowed to bathe. The food that I did get was barely once a week and dogs would deny it. The water was out of the sewer drainage. They wouldn't give me any clothes when I slept. I'd sleep completely bare on the stone floor. Ice cold water would be thrown on me to wake me up in the morning.

"I wanted to die. I tried to get them to kill me." His heart was thumping loudly in his chest as his eyes became misty. "It was torture. And you know the worst thing about torture? When you're human and you get caught or captured, there's the hope that you can at least die. If you die... it all ends. But that didn't happen with me. When I was there I couldn't die. It's part of what makes me, me. He could do the worst things imaginable, things that made me less than human, but I never had the hope that maybe I could die and it would end.

"It wasn't like I just stayed there because I was too afraid to leave." The first tear fell and Steve moved towards me, pulling me into a hug. "I tried to escape, too. It never worked. I'd try to do anything in my power to get away, but eventually I had to stop. I used to be able to feel pain. And God... It hurt. Everything that they did hurt. But that wasn't the worst. I could deal with the physical. I had before. No... It was the fact that they used to hold you and Bucky over my head, threatening to kill you if I didn't comply. So I did what they wanted. And every single day I hated myself more and more. I hated myself for leaving you both and I hated myself for putting either one of you in that position. You never knew how much danger you were in.

"I'm sorry." Steve sighed and shook his head, brushing my hair back over my head. "The day came that I was finally ready to leave. It all happened because when I was training, another mutant was brought in. Purple skin. Red eyes. Cold-blooded. He couldn't blend in like so many of us can. They ordered me to drown him and I refused. I couldn't kill someone that was just like me. He was a kid. Sixteen, maybe. They kept ordering me to do it and I kept refusing. They shot me, beat me, and threatened you both. But I couldn't just kill him. No matter what they said. He didn't deserve what they were doing to him. He was terrified. He looked so grateful that I wasn't going to hurt him.

"Turned out that it didn't matter that I was willing to save him. They shot him instead. And they shot me for disobeying." Steve's hands clenched in fury. "Stryker laughed at me later that day. He told me that he just wanted to see if I could learn to take orders. He claimed that the minute that I agreed, they would have let him go. But it was a lie and I knew it. Still, I was so angry that I walked away. Without the guards. Something that they never let me do. They always followed me to make sure that I was never doing something that I shouldn't have been doing. Even at night, they would leave guards outside my room. But they let me walk that day. Right into a room that wasn't mine.

"It was a man that was standing in there. Logan. That was his name. He asked me what had happened to me. It was the first time that I'd seen myself in seven years. I didn't even look human anymore. I begged him to leave, before they could do to him what they'd done to me. But he didn't. Not without me." There was a heavy weight on Steve's chest. "I told him that I would try and give him a chance to escape. So the next day we were brought to a hydro-chamber as test subjects. There they implanted both Logan and I with an Adamantium skeleton. Strongest metal on the planet, comparable with only Vibranium," I explained when I saw that he was confused. "It's toxic. It should kill us. But it doesn't. An advanced healing factor keeps us alive.

"That was the day that we escaped together. Stryker found out that we could survive the experiment. He was going to keep me to torture but he was going to erase Logan's memory to extract the mutant DNA in him and creature a stronger mutant. Unbeatable. I tried to stop him, and Logan overheard the conversation. Together we were able to attack the others in the room. We escaped. Through their mistake of training me, they'd ensured that I wouldn't lose the fight. So we got away. We killed almost everyone in the building. With Logan's help, we got away from the building, where he swore that he would leave a trail so that Stryker would follow him.

"We couldn't go together. He had his brother to kill. His brother had murdered his wife. Just because she was a human." Steve cringed at the thought. "Some of us are cruel because of the things that humanity have done to us. Anyways, I had you and Bucky to find. So we separated, with the promise that we would see each other again one day. You need to know..." I continued, my voice breaking again. He had to know that I had tried to find them. "I came for you both.

"Four days after I left Stryker's lab, I made my way back to New York. I went to the old apartments, but you and Bucky were gone. I was heartbroken. It felt like I really had lost everything. And there was no one that I could blame but myself." Steve's face was heartbreaking. "So I left, to try and find you both. That was when I crossed into Chester's land. He held up a shotgun to me, warning me to get off of his land. But when I turned back to him, he knew. He knew who I was automatically. There were wanted posters of me when I had disappeared at a child. He took me in and gave me a real chance at a life. He became my father." Steve's face settled slightly. "When we went to Camp Lehigh a few months ago, that was when I met up with Bucky again. You know the rest."

And so, my story ended. I wiped a tear away as we sat in silence. As much as I wanted to know what Steve was feeling right about now, I knew that it was the wrong time to rush him. So I merely sat and waited as he processed everything. It took a long time. My story itself had taken a quarter of an hour. And we must have sat for at least twenty minutes as he processed everything. I was desperate to know what he was thinking about me and everything that I had told him, but I had enough respect to not read his mind. So I sat, twiddling my fingers, waiting with shaking hands. I couldn't lose him. Not after just getting him back.

It was approaching the half an hour mark before Steve finally spoke. "Does Bucky know?" he asked me. His voice was weak and shaky. I could hear that he was horrified. Not at me. But at everything that had happened to me.

"No."

A strange look crossed over Steve's face. "Does Phillips?" he asked.

"Yes."

Steve took a deep breath and moved his hand over his face. Maybe this was the wrong time to spring all of this on him. "How long have you known... about being a mutant?" he asked me.

I nodded at him. "Always," I answered, knowing that this was going to lead to a single question. "I didn't have a name for what I was until I met Stryker. He told me what I was."

"So you knew about all of this when you met Bucky and me?" Steve asked.

And there was the question that I had been waiting for. "Yes," I answered bashfully.

Steve shifted uncomfortably. We both knew the question that was coming, but no one wanted to be the first one to say it. "Why didn't you tell us?" he finally asked me.

A harsh desperation for him to understand that I had done it because I was terrified fell over me. "Because I was too afraid. Steve, mutants are hunted down and killed because of what we are. People are terrified of us. The few that know who we are. You and Bucky were the first people that I ever really cared about. You were the first people to ever care about me," I told him. There was a defeated look in Steve's eyes, knowing that I had always been as terrified of something as mundane as losing a friend. "I couldn't handle losing you. I couldn't handle you being afraid of me."

Steve smiled at me. "We've always been afraid of you, Vic," he said.

We couldn't help it. Despite the tense air with everything that I had explained, we both laughed. But he had every right to honestly be afraid of me. "You'd be terrified if you knew what I could do," I said softly.

Steve shook his head determinedly. "No I wouldn't. I love you, Vic. Bucky loves you," he said. I smiled weakly at him. I loved them, too. I always would. "Why didn't you tell him?"

That was a question that I'd been hoping to avoid. I wanted him to know. Now more than ever. I'd have to tell him when he came back home. First thing I did. "I wanted to tell him. I really did. But I couldn't do it right before he deployed. So I made him the promise that when he came back home, I'd tell him everything. I meant to tell you both together," I told him.

Steve's chest rose and fell rapidly. I knew that he was trying to figure out what to say to me. I knew that he was trying to figure out how to explain that it would be okay to tell Bucky. "Look, Vic, maybe you're a little odd -"

"I'm not human, Steve," I snapped, harsher than I'd meant to. "Not really," I added, mumbling lowly.

Steve shook his head at me and grabbed my hand. I gently pulled it away. He could touch me when he knew everything about me. "I've never seen you do anything that makes me think that you're dangerous," he said.

"Because I've hidden it," I told him.

It was easy to tell that he couldn't believe that there was anything different about him. "What can you do? You said that there were... powers... What does that mean?" he asked me.

Suddenly I found myself afraid to answer. I found myself afraid to tell him just how strange I was. "It's a long story," I muttered bashfully.

Steve smiled at me encouragingly. "We have time," he goaded gently.

"Telepathy," I spit out, before I could stop myself.

Steve's brows furrowed. "What is that?" he asked.

Smiling bashfully, I tucked my hair back behind my ears. "I can - uh - read your mind," I said softly. His thoughts automatically started to wonder whether or not I could really hear what he was thinking. "Yes. I really can hear your thoughts. And I can control your mind."

Steve didn't look terrified. He only gave a disbelieving laugh. He hadn't heard nearly everything that I could do yet, but he didn't look afraid of me yet. "That's how you got Kruger to spit out the cyanide pill," he said softly.

"Yes."

"You can read my mind?"

There was a little hint of a disturbed feeling seeping into him. "I don't. I don't read friend's minds out of respect for them," I corrected him quickly. I didn't want to make him think that I knew everything about him. That meant that we couldn't even try to be equal. I switched into speaking to his mind. But I can speak to you without anyone else hearing.

It did not go over very well with Steve. Not that I had been expecting it to. It made people feel like they were actually losing their minds. "How did you do that?" Steve asked breathlessly.

I still didn't speak out loud. It's the mutation, Steve. Telepathy. I can hear your thoughts and speak to you like this. And if I ever felt the need, I could control your mind. You'd never even know.

Steve laughed once more, pushing his hair off of his forehead. "That's incredible," he told me.

"It's horrible," I immediately snapped. He stared at me confusedly. Obviously he didn't understand just how terrible this mutation was. "I could force you to shoot yourself and you'd be powerless to stop it."

Steve's eyebrows knitted. He moved towards me and gently grabbed my hand. I smiled weakly at him. "But you wouldn't," he told me.

That was true. I would never do that to Steve. But there was a good chance that it would do that to someone else. I had done it to someone else. "Not to you," I said, accentuating the fact that I would do it to someone else. I reached into my pocket and slipped out the knife. I could hear Steve's thoughts, thinking that there was no way that I would stab him. "Relax, I'm not going to stab you," I reassured him.

"I didn't -"

"Yes you did."

Steve gave me a scrutinizing stare. I already knew what he was thinking, but it wasn't because I was reading his mind. "I thought that you wouldn't read my mind," he told me.

His voice was holding a teasing lilt to it. He wasn't angry with me. He thought that it was very. "I don't. But sometimes your thoughts are so loud that I can't help but to hear them. It can be very hard to tune out thoughts sometimes," I told him. "When I was a kid I didn't know how to stop the voices. They were so loud that I would cry. Even when the others were asleep, I could still hear their voices."

My hands were shaking slightly. It had been so long since I'd thought about that. My parents had already refused to take me out in public because of how different I was. But it didn't matter. I could still hear the other voices. It had used to drive me insane. I would cry all night long and try to place my hands over my ears to get it to stop. But it was in my brain. It had taken me years to figure out how to stop the voices. Trying to get those thoughts away from me, I opened the knife and placed it on the back of my hand. Steve was watching me with wide eyes, looking about ready to stop me. I started the slice on my hand, and that was when Steve jumped forward.

Steve launched himself forward to grab my hand. "Vic, stop!" Steve shouted at me.

I waved him off of me. "It doesn't hurt. I don't have pain receptors," I told him blankly.

Gently slicing down the middle of my hand, I pulled back the skin. Steve's hand was still on my arm as I gently pulled the skin back, showing him the silver bone underneath. It glinted in the light. "Is your bone silver?" Steve asked me.

At least he was smart enough to know that a normal bone was off-white. "They're plated with Adamantium," I told him, gently pressing against the bone. Steve cringed as the bone made a small tinging noise. "It makes them nearly indestructible. They won't break."

Not wanting to continue grossing Steve out, I let go of the skin. It immediately began to seal itself, leaving no scar or indicating that anything had ever happened. "What - What's happening?" Steve asked me.

The two of us were staring at my hand. I gave it to him to let him run his finger over where the wound had just been. "The skin is sealing itself. It's a regenerative healing factor. You've been given it, too," I told Steve. But I knew that I should explain a little bit more about that. I didn't trust him not to walk straight into the line of fire. "Not nearly to the point that I have it. So I wouldn't recommend running around and getting shot at. Won't work out well for you."

Steve smiled softly, letting my hand drop back into my lap. "Wow..." Steve muttered. He still wasn't afraid. Just trying to process everything. "So you can heal from injuries?"

I nodded at him. "Anything. I've had my hand cut off before," I told him. Steve gasped and glanced down at my hand. I realized too late that I probably shouldn't have told him that. "It takes longer to regrow limbs, but it works."

"What happened to your hand?" Steve asked weakly.

"I was training with a gun and I missed the center of the target by a millimeter. I got my hand cut off for it," I explained. Steve cringed and moved towards me. I ripped my hand away. Pity was seeping off of him. But I didn't deserve the pity. Not for something that had been my own fault. "Don't pity me, it was my own mistake that landed me there."

We sat in silence for a long while. I knew that Steve was trying to figure out what to say without making it seem like he was pitying him. "Was your blood green?" Steve finally asked me.

A small smile fell over my face. "Of the many mutations that I have, that's the one that no one understands. What you just saw is the million dollar question. There isn't a drop of blood in me," I explained. Steve was staring at me blankly. I wished that I could explain more to him, but I really couldn't. There was only so much that I knew about it. "It's all an element called Chronicle. There's almost none of it on Earth. The largest known source is in me. Unpolluted. Nothing to disturb its natural process. Makes me a very desirable target." Steve's brow raised. "It's one of the most expensive things that someone can buy, because it's so rare. And with it just sitting here...

"There's a reason that it's so special. You see, Chronicle isn't found on Earth. It's extra-terrestrial. It's found in the far reaches of the solar system, nearly impossible to cultivate. No one knows how it got in me, and no one knows why. Chronicle has healing powers. It's what gives me my healing factor. It is immune to all poisons and toxins, as I am. But the problem is that Chronicle is so strong that it's too much to bear for living organisms. The purity and regeneration is too fast. It kills them. People have been trying for years to figure out how to dilute it enough to make it tolerable to the human immune system. Six seconds. That's all it takes to kill something," I explained.

It was a long time that Steve was silent. "So why doesn't it kill you?" he finally asked.

I smiled weakly at him. "There aren't many things that I don't know, but that's one of them. I don't know. Stryker didn't know. No one knows. That's just some of the reasons that I'm so strong. Chronicle essentially protects itself, forming a protective barrier around me. The Chronicle powers all of my internal systems, making them operate at top performance," I said.

"So... You're basically the healthiest person on the planet?" Steve asked.

As far as disease went, that was true. But not others. "Not necessarily. Chronicle allows me to perform past typically peak performances. Think of it putting all of the systems into overdrive, without the negative drawbacks. The brain, for example. The 'fact' that we only use ten percent of our brain is, in fact, a myth. We use very close to one hundred percent of our brain power. However, to compensate, the brain doesn't use all of its potential at one time. It may only use ten percent at one time. Hence where that myth stemmed from."

"Isn't that a fact in medical journals?" Steve asked me.

I shrugged my shoulders. "Sure. But it's not right," I told him.

He laughed at me. "Always were the smartest person that I knew," Steve told me.

"In the average person, some areas of the brain work harder than others. It's always been that way. At certain times, certain portions of the brain work harder than others. You can use up to thirty-five percent of the brain at one time while performing a complicated task. That doesn't happen to me. I use one hundred percent at any given time. It allows me to process everything. I don't miss anything. But, at some points, things become overwhelming and I can't focus," I said, my voice dropping off at the end.

Steve knew automatically what I was getting at. "What happened to Abraham was not your fault. You shouldn't have had to stop him. Abraham loved you. He wasn't upset with you in the end," Steve told me.

"I know. I heard his thoughts," I told Steve, making him smile.

"Bucky and I always wondered how you never missed anything. You were like Sherlock Holmes. You could make these grand assumptions out of nothing. You always knew everything," he told me.

They were right about that. I could catch a change in the air and know that a car was speeding around the corner, and know that it would hit us if we didn't move. "There are drawbacks. To be so analytical and so observant... sometimes I forget to be human. It makes emotion less effective," I told Steve softly.

The two of us stared at each other. "I don't think that's so true. So maybe you don't care for a lot of people. But I know that you care for some of us. You love Peggy and Colonel Phillips. I've seen you all together. She's like your sister, and he's become like your father. Howard Stark, obviously the two of you are close, too. And there's me... I know that you care about me. Can't forget about Bucky, either. I don't think that I've ever seen you care about someone more than him," Steve said.

"You always did believe the best in everyone," I said.

"I've always believed the best in you. I still do. I always will." I smiled at him and reached over, grabbing his hand tightly. My heart was still thumping in my chest nervously. "Was there anything else?" he asked after a beat.

Let's hope that he doesn't get freaked out with everything else. "There are the simpler mutations. My brain performs perfectly. Like I said. It's like a searching system. I can find anything that I don't know and learn it within seconds. I can speak every language on Earth. For reference, there are over six thousand," I said. Steve laughed loudly. "I can run faster than anyone else, I can hold up a collapsing building, my hearing is supersonic, and my vision is well beyond perfect."

Steve just stared at me. "Those are common?" he asked blandly.

Smiling softly, I nodded at him. "Yes. And you have them now, too," I said. He raised a brow, looking rather impressed with himself. But I wanted to correct him before he did something stupid. "Although I'd recommend you bench press a train before trying a building."

Steve laughed at me. "I'll keep that in mind," he said.

I assumed that this was my indication to keep telling him about the other mutations. "I'm practically indestructible," I continued.

"So you can't die?" Steve asked me.

Obviously he meant to ask me if I couldn't die from unnatural causes. A gunshot wound or fall. Taking a deep breath, I admitted the one mutation that bothered me the most. "I'll never die," I said softly.

"Never?" Steve asked, not understanding what I meant.

Nodding at him weakly, I began to let the force field glow around my fingers. Steve wasn't paying attention so he didn't see it. "One of the things that happened to me during my trip into the hydro-chamber. It fried my pain receptors. I don't feel pain anymore." Steve gave a quick look down to my hand and I nodded. I hadn't even felt it. "And it mixed with the Chronicle and Adamantium. It halted my aging process. I'll be twenty-one forever."

My voice gave a little crack. Steve obviously knew why. He moved towards me and grabbed my hand. I let the force field drop to squeeze his hand gently. "Can you reverse it?" Steve asked.

"I don't know. You see why I," my voice cracked, "why I can't be with Bucky?" Steve pulled me in a little closer to him, the two of us attached at the hip. "I love him, Steve. I love you both. But you're going to have families. You deserve to grow up and grow old. Both of you. You don't get that with me," I said softly.

It wasn't that I didn't love them. I loved them both. But they would never get to have a real life with me. I wasn't built for a normal life. "He won't care. I don't care," Steve told me sharply.

"You should. I would have lived longer than the average person anyways. Two, maybe three, hundred years. Now you will, too," I told him. He seemed a little uncomfortable with the thought, but he nodded at me anyways. There wasn't a way to reverse it. What we had done, was done. "But one day you'll be gone, too, and I'll be alone again."

Steve shook his head at me, brushing his hand over my shoulders. "You're never going to be alone, Vic. Never," he told me.

"I know when you're lying to me," I told Steve.

We sat in silence for a long while after that. Because we both knew that it was true. Maybe Steve would be around for a long time, but the day would come that he, too, would die. Everyone would leave me. Maybe I would make new friends in the future. But that didn't even matter. Because I would always meet someone and make friends with them, and then they would die. It would be a constant process. And it wasn't something that I wanted to deal with. I didn't want to have to pretend that I was okay with constantly losing the people that I cared about.

Finally Steve spoke again, calling me out of my thoughts. "Is that everything that you can do?" he asked.

Obviously he was trying to get my mind off of the impending truth. "Not even close," I said with a small smile. Putting my hands out in front of me, I allowed the purple light to spread over my torso. Steve was staring at it, fascinated. "This is called a force field. You throw something at it, it will rebound," I told him.

"Can I touch it?" Steve asked.

"Sure. It won't hurt."

Gently, Steve raised his hands towards it. I nodded at him, letting him know that I wasn't going to do anything to him. His hand gently pressed against the force field. He glanced up at me and laughed. I smiled weakly at him. He pulled back his hand and pressed against it a little harder. I could feel him trying to increase the force, but my shield held strong.

Finally I let the force field drop. "That's useful," he told me.

Both of us laughed. I brought the force field back up and manipulated it into a small circle. "Lately I've learned how to manipulate it. I can encircle and object and force it to move somewhere," I told him.

Steve gave me a blank stare. "What?" he asked dumbly.

Smiling softly, I allowed the force field to drop once more. "Remember those cars that nearly hit you?" I asked him. He nodded at me. "Who do you think slammed down on the brakes?"

His face slowly turned upwards. "You did it..." he breathed out.

I nodded at him. "I did. I wasn't about to let you get hit by the car," I said.

"Thanks for that."

Laughing softly, I nodded. This was going better than I had thought that it would. "You're welcome," I said. I could hear his thoughts, wondering if there was anything else that I could do. "Other than that, I have advanced combat and weaponry skills. Partially from being naturally inclined to fighting, and partially because when I was in Stryker's lab, I would fight someone. Every single day. A win would earn me maybe a nod. A loss would earn me a bullet to the back of the head." Steve's face fell into a thin line, his hands shaking with fury. "It ensured that I didn't lose.

"You wondered how I could beat those recruits. I can read a person's stance and tell you what they're going to do before they even know. It's easy. It's why I never lose fights," I told him. He nodded at me as I gave him a close look. "Even now..." He smiled at me, realizing that I was looking over him. "If you were to run you'd go with your left foot first. You're imbalanced. A swipe underneath the knee would take you down. Your stance - it's the way that someone untrained would stand. You're top-heavy now. A hit to the head would take you down," I explained.

Even as I spoke, I could see the little changes in Steve's stance. His eyes were wide. He hadn't even had to make a move. I already knew how to beat him. "Remind me not to get into a fight with you," he told me, laughing softly.

"Super soldier or not, I'd still win," I told him.

Steve smiled at me. "I believe you." The two of us glanced at each other before letting out a small laugh. "So you didn't hit me as hard as you could before?" he asked after a beat.

"If I hit you as hard as I could, we'd be looking for another super-soldier," I said.

"Thanks for not hitting me as hard as you can."

"You're welcome." Once more, we both laughed. We had always known that I was stronger than Steve. But now that he was a super-soldier it was almost funny that I was still stronger than him. "I also possess Atmoskinesis," I said after a few beats of silence.

Steve stared at me without a trace of emotion on his face. There might as well have been a question mark floating over his head. "That sounds incredibly impressive," he finally said.

"It is. It's control of the elements," I told him. He still didn't understand. "Earth."

Curling my fingers together, Steve and I watched as some of the gravel and rocks on the rooftop began to linger in the air. Steve was watching with wide eyes. As I twirled my fingers, the rocks began to spin in the air. Steve laughed as I pulled up some dirt from the road below and waved my hand, making the dirt spell his name. After a few moments, I let the rocks drop back to the ground.

"Water."

Whipping my hands around me, I watched with Steve as some water from the drainage pipes below began to rise in a steady current. Steve was staring at it with wide eyes as I formed the little bit of water that I could find into a ball. I let it float in the air for a while, manipulating it slowly, before finally letting the water drop to the ground, splashing us slightly.

"Air."

Deciding that there was only one way to show him, I took a deep breath and stood. I wouldn't be able to go up into the air too high with all of the reporters down on the main level, but I would be careful. Bringing the air whipping around me, Steve's eyes widened. His hair was mussed within seconds as the wind columns spun up around me. It didn't take long before I began to hover. If I thought that Steve had looked surprised before, he definitely looked surprised now. I flew from one end of the rooftop to another before letting the wind columns drop. I tucked into a roll as I sprawled back into a sitting position in front of Steve.

Despite the rather impressive landing, it looked like the only thing that Steve could understand right now was the fact that I could fly. "You can fly..." Steve muttered.

Smiling softly at him, I shook my head. "Technically. I can manipulate air columns. When I was in Stryker's lab, he taught me how to manipulate the columns so that I could pick myself up. With time I learned how to carry myself. So, yes, technically I can fly. There are people that can actually fly though," I explained.

"Wow..."

"And fire, of course," I added.

That definitely caught Steve off guard. "Fire?" he asked, a hint of fear seeping into his voice.

I nodded at him. It was too dark though. The sun wasn't up yet and I didn't want to startle anyone down on the ground. One day I would get around to showing him, but today was the wrong day. "Best to leave that one to the imagination," I told him with a small smile. I'd freaked him out enough already. With time I'd show him everything else. "Lightning, too."

"Lightning?" Steve asked breathlessly.

Nodding at him once more, I spoke reasonably softly. "Electrokinesis. It's not light enough to show you. People would see. Trust me when I say that it's very close to blinding. Another day, maybe," I told him.

He seemed like he wanted to ask me to show him, but he stayed silent. I assumed that he didn't want to push me. "So... All things considered, are you a powerful mutant?" Steve asked me.

"I'll explain it to you the way that Stryker once explained it to me. Mutants are classified into ranks. There's Zeta Level. That's the lowest level. They're sort of like latent mutants; humans whose children or grandchildren might end up being mutants but do not themselves classify as such. They carry the X-Gene. It's the gene that makes me a mutant. They don't have technical 'mutant powers' although they may have some powers. Smarter than the average person, faster, or even stronger. Things like that."

"Would your parents have been Zeta Level?" Steve asked.

It really wasn't something that had occurred to me before. "Either one or both of them were likely Zeta Level. They were both scientists. Very smart. That could have been it," I told him. "Epsilon Level is next. These are... the most unlucky of us. They possess very little to no special abilities and a mutation that extremely negatively effects their day-to-day life. Some mutants of this level are killed by their mutations. They often cannot function in society without aid, and can even end up hunted down as monsters because of their appearances. Approximately twenty percent of all mutants fall into Epsilon Level," I told Steve.

His face was sad, thinking about what I had told him. "That's terrible," he told me.

"See why I never told you? We're monsters, Steve. That's what they think, anyways. We have to be so careful. Anyways, Delta Level is next. Originally Stryker thought that might be what I was. While their mutations bear no detrimental qualities, they also aren't all that powerful, but Delta Level mutants appear, for the large part, to be ordinary humans. That's where they get lucky. Individuals with highly specific powers are placed there, along with passive abilities. Those are powers that look more like traits than abilities. Think like good luck or - like me - an ability to speak all languages. They're the most common. They make up about fifty percent of us. The problem is that they can't really hold their own against more powerful mutants. They do have the widest range of potential powers," I explained.

"But that's not what you are?" Steve asked.

Slowly I shook my head. "It took seven years to find out what I was. Gamma Level is next. They possess a harmful mutation coupled with superhuman abilities that are above average. Often these mutants are unable to pass as human, making it difficult for them to lead ordinary lives. They can appear as humans, but their mutations are either dangerous to themselves or others," I said.

"What do you mean by dangerous?" Steve asked.

"Touching someone and killing them," I answered.

Steve's face paled. "That can happen?" he asked.

"Anything that you can think of, Steve, it can happen. Beta Level are next. They are pretty powerful beings, but they are hampered slightly by an aspect of their mutation in a fairly minor fashion. These drawbacks can be anything from slightly abnormal physical features to the inability to turn their powers on or off at will," I told him.

Just as I had been expecting, Steve's eyes flashed to mine. I knew what he was thinking. The same thing that I was. My eyes and my hair. "Is that what you are?" Steve asked me.

"For a long time, we did think so. But, no, I'm not. Alpha Level is next. They're some of the most powerful mutants in the world. They make up only about ten percent of us. Their mutation features no significant drawbacks. Think Beta Level without the drawbacks," I said.

"Is that what you are?" Steve asked.

"Omega Level is the top ranking. They're the most powerful and are extremely rare. There was only one in recorded history before me. I'm only the second." Steve stared at me with wide eyes. "Many are telepaths but there's one thing that they have to be able to do to classify themselves into the Omega category. They must be able to completely transform themselves into another physical state. And I can. I can embody high levels of radiation. Abraham managed to harness them. They're now called Vita-Rays. They can only be controlled in that Chamber. If it happens out in public... it resembles a nuclear blast."

The two of us sat in silence for a little while. "Has it ever happened in public before?" Steve asked me softly.

Taking a deep breath, I shook my head. "No. Never in public. When we made the escape from Stryker's lab we were cornered. I was terrified that we wouldn't be able to escape. But my skin started to glow. I didn't know what was happening. And then the blast came. Internal organs rupture and explode, skin melts off in droves, and all life dies... Do you not see the danger there?" I asked him.

His jaw set. "It's not like those men are innocent," he snarled.

It was the angriest that I'd ever seen him. I laid a hand on his arm before immediately retracting it. Steve glanced up at me with a strange look on his face. "Do you see how dangerous I am?" I asked Steve.

He shook his head at me. "You're not dangerous. We lived with you for years, Vic. Nothing ever happened to us. I trust you. Bucky trusts you. We love you. So you're different. We've always loved you. I still love you. I always will. You're not chasing me off that easily," he told me.

"Thank you, Steve," I told him.

We leaned against each other and my head tucked into his shoulder. His arm fell over my shoulders. His heart was pounding in his chest. I knew that he was nervous about all of this. "This... all of this... it makes you the perfect soldier," Steve said.

I nodded at him. "Yes it does. But I'm a woman," I said irritably.

"You're the strongest person I've ever met," he said.

Grinning up at him, I nodded. We sat in silence for a little while before I glanced back at up him. Might as well get everything out in the open. "My eyes do change colors with extreme fluctuations of emotions," I added.

That clearly registered something with him. He glanced down at me quickly and nodded. "Johnathan and his friends swore that your eyes went red before you vanished," he said slowly.

Rolling my eyes at myself, I nodded. Steve seemed to be mildly amused at my exasperation. "They do. When I'm angry," I said, referring to the red in them. "Other colors are there, too. It's one of the mutations that I'm less fond of."

"Who knows about all of this?" Steve asked me.

"Howard, Chester, Peggy, Abraham..." I said slowly. He nodded at me, looking unsurprised that they were the ones that knew. "Now you. My parents knew, too," I added.

Steve was looking at me for a long while. I nodded at him, knowing what he wanted to ask me. He might as well ask me. "Can I ask what happened to your parents?" he asked me. My stomach tightened. I didn't want to admit everything that had happened. But he deserved to know. "Vic, I don't care what you've done. I don't. I just want to know."

Taking a deep breath, I prepared to tell him what had happened. "My parents were terrified of me from the moment that my mother gave birth to me. They were going to have another child. But they didn't... Not after they realized what I was. They didn't even know what I was. They just thought that I was a monster and they weren't willing to bring in another thing like me. They were terrible to me as I grew up. They called me 'it', kept me out of school, told me that no one would ever love me, experimented on me, never spoke to me other than to scream at me, and made me feel like I was less than human. All of the time.

"When I was eight my parents had scientists come to the house. They had come before. They would come in the dead of night to work on me. My parents would tell them to make it fast so that my screaming didn't alert anyone that something was wrong." Steve cringed as he stared at me sadly. "That day, they woke me up in the middle of the night and brought me downstairs. They had their laboratory in the basement. They strapped me to a table and started speaking with the scientist. I was watching them, terrified of what was going to happen to me. He offered them money to take my body away to study me.

"So I reacted. I thought that maybe they were lying to me. I thought that maybe they had no other choice. The only thing that I knew was that I didn't want to die. I wasn't ready to die. I was only eight years old and I'd had no chance at a real life at that point. So I panicked. I ripped off the restraints and burned him. Everything started to burn. I couldn't control it. I got off of the table to run. I tried to bring my parents with me, I couldn't believe that they didn't love me, but my mother shot at me.

"I didn't mean for it to happen but I burned them. I held up my hands in front of my face and that was when it happened. I lit them on fire. The entire house was on fire. They were dead. I watched them die. I'd done it. So I panicked and ran. I broke through the house and ran for my life. I heard the engines coming. They were coming to arrest me. And I knew that if they ever got their hands on me, they would never let me go. I ran as far and as fast as I could. I was terrified of what would happen. My plans were just to head to someone's home, take some food, rest, and then leave. But plans change," I said, giving him a small smile.

Steve grabbed my hand. "You ran right into us," he said, his voice soft.

"I did."

"So that was where you had come from?"

"Yes."

This was the most that I had ever told someone at one moment. It was so hard to tell him, but it felt like a weight had been lifted off of my chest. "You smelled like smoke and looked terrified. That explains why you were in pajamas and all of those green stains that were all over the clothes that you were wearing," Steve told me.

"Yes. I knew that when I got to your house, I had to pretend to be someone else. So I fed you all a lie and disguised myself. You see, they give the mutants nicknames to protect identities. My friend Logan called himself Wolverine. It was the name that his late wife gave him. He called me Savage," I admitted.

Steve gave me a fond smile. "Fitting," he said.

We sat in silence for a long while. I wanted to know what he thought about me, and I didn't want to have to go into his mind to find out. "So?" I asked him weakly.

Steve shook his head at me and reached over. His hands caught mine and he pulled me into him. We both stared at each other sadly. "I'm not afraid of you, if that's what you're asking," he told me.

Gently I pulled my hands away from him. As much as I loved him, I was terrified of hurting him. He had to understand just how terrible this could be. "This is so dangerous, Steve. I'm dangerous. To you and to Bucky. You're strong but you're just a man. So is he. I couldn't bear hurting either one of you," I said, sniffing softly.

"You lived with us for six years, Vic. We were never once hurt by you," Steve told me.

"It could be an accident -"

"Stop," Steve snapped loudly at me. I jumped back, surprised at him. He never spoke to me like that. He took a deep breath and looked at me. "I've known you for years. So has Bucky. It was always a joke that we were afraid of you, but no matter what you are - human or mutant - I don't care. He wouldn't either. You are my best friend. Bucky loves you. I wondered how you'd become so hard over the years. It's because of everything that happened to you," he said sadly.

My lack of emotional response wasn't something that I could help. "I couldn't care. If I cared, if I showed any hint of weakness, I'd be shot. Stabbed. Starved. Beaten," I said. Each time, Steve twitched a little more. "Something that would make me wish that I could die. Caring isn't in my nature."

Steve shook his head. "You care about us," he told me.

"Yes," I said blankly. "I would do anything to keep you both safe." And I meant that. I would do anything to anyone to keep them safe. "I wish that I could have gone with Bucky. I could keep him safe."

"You have to tell him when he comes back," Steve told me.

Taking a deep breath, I nodded at him. "I will," I promised.

The minute that he came back, I would have to tell them everything. And I meant everything. I was still keeping a few things from Steve. And that wasn't something that he deserved. "He'll love this," Steve laughed.

"No he won't."

"I do," Steve told me.

"Why?" I asked curiously.

Steve smiled like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Because I've always known that there was something special about you," he told me. I opened my mouth to tell him that it wasn't special, but he spoke over me. "Shut up! This is special, Vic. I'm not afraid of you. Bucky won't be afraid of you. He'll be terrified to ever say something that will make you mad." Despite the tense moment, both Steve and I laughed softly. "You're my best friend. I don't care what you are. You are Sergeant Victoria Phillips. You're the smartest person that I've ever met. You've got a damn good taste in friends."

Smiling at him, I looked into his eyes. The sun was starting to rise slowly. It was shining light into them, making them appear lighter than they really were. "This really doesn't bother you?" I asked.

"You tell me," he teased.

He had reacted much in the same way that Peggy had. Maybe it was just because they both knew me. "Thank you, Steve. One day I'll show you everything," I told him truthfully.

"Show me?" Steve asked curiously.

Nodding at him, I glanced down at my hands. "If I touch you, I can link our minds. I can show you memories." Steve nodded at me, looking very interested. "I'd like to show both you and Bucky. It will work a lot better than just trying to explain it. But I'm not ready to show you when I was at my lowest... Not yet," I corrected.

Steve nodded at me. "When you're ready, Vic. Not before," he said.

"So you're okay with all of this?" I asked, motioning around myself.

There was a happy look on Steve's face. He was clearly very pleased that I had admitted everything that had happened to me. "Of course. I wish that I could do half of what you can," Steve said.

An irrational anger fell over me. "No you don't," I snapped at him. Steve straightened up to look at me. "I have to hide all of this, Steve. I need you to swear to me that you will never repeat this. To anyone." He nodded at me. "Peggy, Chester, and Howard. They're the only ones that know. Abraham knew, too. One day Bucky will know, too. When he comes back."

"This doesn't go past us, Vic," Steve promised.

"Thank you." I could hear his thoughts getting ready to tell me that he was sorry. "Don't say you're sorry for what happened to me," I said. Steve narrowed his eyes at me. I knew that he was letting me know that he knew that I had read his mind. "Sorry. Like I said, sometimes it's hard not to hear your thoughts."

Steve smiled at shook his head. "That's alright. Thank you for telling me," he said.

"Thanks for not screaming," I teased.

He laughed at me. The two of us smiled for a few moments, curling ourselves together. "You're the coolest person that I've ever met. I'll never scream because of you," he said.

That was when a little grin spread over my face. I didn't have to hide anything anymore. Now it didn't matter what I told him. I didn't have to pretend to be weak and thoughtless anymore. Not that I'd ever been very good at those kind of things. "Well... Now that you know that I can hear your thoughts... Peggy's pretty cute, right?" I teased.

Steve shoved me off to the side. "Stop it," he told me.

There was a little red tinge falling over his face. I smiled brightly. "Oh no! They all harassed me for the months that Bucky was in training with me, so now I'm going to harass her. She's cute, and look at you!" I said, giving him a gentle punch to the chest. It was weird feeling all of the muscle there. "Ask her on a date."

"No!"

"I could force you to do it."

Steve glanced at me and narrowed his eyes. "I'll write to Bucky and tell him what you are," he warned me.

Shrugging my shoulders, I leaned back slightly. There was nothing that he could do to stop me from doing anything that I wanted. "I'd force you to stop before you could. Go on, anything that you can say or do to me, I'll have a retort to it," I told him. He narrowed his eyes at me but smiled anyways. "See? If nothing else, I don't have to pretend to be weak anymore."

Steve laughed at me. "I never thought that you were weak, to be fair," he said.

We smiled and sat together as the sun peaked over the horizon. I smiled, leaning onto Steve's shoulder. The sun was beginning to heat the city but it was nice. Despite the fact that Hydra was more wide-spread than we'd ever thought before, and despite the fact that Abraham was dead, things felt right for the first time in a long time. Steve wasn't afraid of me and Bucky wouldn't be afraid of me either. I had faith that we were all going to be okay. The three of us had been friends for so long. Would something like this really change things between us? Maybe a little bit, but Bucky loved me. He swore that he would never leave me.

Perhaps it was high time that I believed him. Letting the wind columns whip around me to lift me back to my feet, I noticed Steve smile. I gave him my hand. "Come on. Sun's coming up and they're going to want to figure out what we should do with you," I told him.

Before I could turn back to the staircase, Steve moved towards me. His arms wrapped around me and pulled me into a tight hug. I smiled and leaned into his strong body. "I love you, Vic," he said softly.

"I love you, too, Steve," I told him, my face pressed into his chest.

It was a long time that the two of us stood together. Once we pulled apart, Steve placed a small kiss on my cheek. It would take me a long time to get used to him like this. Or maybe it wouldn't. In some ways it felt like he was always supposed to be like this. The two of us walked back down the staircase in the back of the building. We slipped into the alleyway and I shoved Steve back into the building before anyone could stop us or try to take a picture. People were spread out everywhere. Nurses were speaking with Peggy, who looked very exasperated. Chester was speaking with a thousand different people in the meantime.

Steve and I exchanged a look. I sighed softly and motioned towards the nurses. "Go on with them. They're going to take some blood, okay?" I told him.

"Where are you going?" Steve asked me.

"I'll be back. You don't have to worry about me. Go on," I teased him. Steve smiled at me and went over towards the nurses. I whistled for Peggy to come and join me. "Hey, Peggy, come here."

She glanced back at me and nodded. The two of us made our way towards the corner of the building. "Where were you?" Peggy asked worriedly.

"Took Steve up to the roof. I told him everything, Peggy," I told her.

Even through the makeup on her face, she paled. She probably hadn't been expecting me to tell him everything. Or, at least, she hadn't been expecting me to do it right now. "You did?" she asked.

"I did."

Peggy smiled at me. It was the first time that I had seen her smile since Abraham had died. "Oh, Vicky... I'm proud of you. He looks just fine. He took it well?" she asked me.

Tilting my head to the side slightly, I nodded at her. "He took it alright. I think that he's a little surprised, but he thought that it was cool. He'll get used to it with time," I told her confidently.

He already seemed to think of it more as a joke than anything else. "So that just leaves Barnes," she said.

"I'm going to tell him when he comes back."

"And he'll take it just fine, too."

"I hope so."

"He will."

The two of us both glanced back at the medical bay where Steve was. He looked very distracted as a nurse took blood. She was taking a lot of blood. "Keep Steve company, alright? I'm going to go write Bucky a letter," I told her.

"Okay."

At my request, Peggy went to go keep Steve company. In the meantime, I headed into one of the spare medical bays that no one was using. There were a few Army men, but with the wave of a hand, they cleared out. I walked over to the small desk in the corner of the room and sighed. I grabbed a piece of paper that was from an empty file and a pen. My hand sat at the top of the paper for a long time as I tried to figure out what to write. I wished that he was here. I would have rather just been speaking to him. It took me a long time before I finally managed to put together something that I wanted to say.

Dear Bucky,

Well... Today wasn't a good day.

Here in New York we just tested out the project. It happened yesterday. Project Rebirth, it's called. You know Doctor Abraham Erskine. He was the head of the project. There were people everywhere. The ones that were working on the project and the ones that had just come to watch. On one hand, it was successful. It's a huge deal. You'll hear about it soon enough, I'm sure. We meant for it to be kept a secret, but it got out.

The biggest problem was that there was a Hydra agent in disguise. I really shouldn't be telling you this. You're going to be panicked. But things are okay. I'm fine. Abraham - he's not. The man that was sent to the project was there to steal the serum that we've been working on. He grabbed the last remaining one and murdered Abraham. There was nothing that we could do. The man that shot him was caught and killed. If nothing else, at least we got repentance for it.

I spoke to him. I tried to figure out why he had done it. It was under the order of Johann Schmidt. But there was nothing more that happened that was useful to me. So... We're not sure what happens now. We'll figure it out. My Harvard degree is currently on hold. One of the men from Harvard was here during the murder. He told me that Harvard appreciates men of science, not women of dreams. Oh, and to make things even better, he told me to think smaller and maybe I'd get somewhere.

Here's hoping that you're having a better day than I am.

I think that we're going to be leaving soon. New York isn't where we need to be anymore. The problem is Hydra. There so much more widespread than we thought. We need to go overseas. But my job right now is what Abraham's was. Protect our project. So I'm not sure where I'll be. I suppose that I'll let you know what's been happening.

How are things overseas? How is everyone in your unit? How are you?

God I miss you. It's like I said before. Not a day goes by that there isn't something that I wish that I could tell you. There's so much that I wish that I could tell you. Be safe out there, alright?

I love you.

Take care of yourself,
Victoria.

Folding up the letter, I sealed it in an envelope and walked back outside of the office. I spotted one of the men and handed him the letter. "Take this to the post office. Have it delivered immediately, understood?" I asked him.

The man saluted me. "Yes, Sergeant," he told me.

He walked off in one direction and I went in the other. Steve was seated on a table as a nurse continued to take blood from him. They must have taken quite a bit already. "You alright?" I asked him, coming to stand at his side.

Steve nodded at me. "Fine. Needles don't hurt as much anymore," he told me.

I nodded at him. I could tell that now that he was back inside he was back onto thinking about Abraham. It was consuming his thoughts. "Nothing will hurt as much anymore. The muscles are stronger," I said.

As we stood together, Peggy walked up. "Think you got enough?" he asked her.

She was carrying some files in her arms, watching him. She let out a soft sigh. "Any hope of reproducing the program is locked in your genetic code. But without Erskine it would take years," she said.

Steve glanced over at me as the nurse cleaned up the small wound and turned away, leaving only Steve, Peggy, and I. "I knew bits and pieces, but even I didn't know everything. And in his dying moments, I didn't think to go into his mind and check what was in the serum," I said, wishing that I had.

"It's not your fault," Peggy told me.

Rolling my eyes, I shook my head. No, I wasn't the one that had killed him, but I should have known that someone was planning on attacking him. I should have been able to hear the thoughts. "I should have known who Kruger was. I didn't even bother to read his thoughts. I could have heard. I could have stopped it," I said.

That time it wasn't Peggy that came to defend me. It was Steve. His large hand wrapped around my bicep. "It's not on you, Vic. Abraham deserved more than this," he told Peggy.

"If it could work only once. He'd be proud of you," she told him.

And she was right about that. Steve had always been Abraham's only choice. "You were always his only choice," I said. I glanced backwards and realized that there was now someone coming to speak with Chester. I rolled my eyes at them. Here they were, trying to harass each other. "Oh, for Christ's sake. Hang on," I snapped, leaving the other two.

"Colonel Phillips, my committee is demanding answers," Brandt said.

Rumor had already spread over what had just happened. It was everywhere in the newspapers, something that we had tried so hard to avoid. "Great, why don't we start with how a German spy got a ride to my secret installation in your car?" Chester said, turning back to the senator.

A grin fell over my face when I realized that his comment had stunned the man into silence. Chester motioned for me to follow him and I did so, walking over to where Howard was. They had managed to capture the submarine that Heinz Kruger had been trying to escape in. It looked like Howard was trying to figure out how the submarine worked. I walked towards him, allowing Howard to give me a hand up to platform that he was standing on. He was wearing gloves as he searched the front of the submarine, the area that the engine had been in once before. But it wasn't an engine. I wasn't sure what it was, actually.

The two of us glanced at each other. Chester was standing down on the floor, watching us. Brandt was standing and watching as well. "What do we got here?" Chester called up.

Howard turned back to him. "Speaking modestly I'm the best mechanical engineer in this country. But I don't know what's inside this thing. Or how it works. We're not even close to this technology," Howard called back to him.

I glanced down towards a blue light that was emanating from the corner of what I assumed was the engine. "This is the other worldly power that Kruger was talking about," I muttered.

"Did he know what it was?" Howard asked m.

I shook my head at him. "No. He was a grunt. Just took orders," I said.

"Then who is?" Chester asked, referring to the comment about us not being close to this kind of technology.

To my surprise, it was Brandt that had answered. "Hydra. I'm sure you've been reading our briefings. I'm on a number of committees, Colonel. Hydra is a Nazi Deep Science Division. It's led by Johann Schmidt. But he has much bigger ambitions. Hydra's practically a cult, they worship Schmidt, they think he's invincible. So what are you going to do about it?" Brandt asked Chester.

As they spoke, I was in between watching Howard work and listening to them speak. "I spoke to the President this morning. As of today, the S.S.R. is being re-tasked," Chester said.

That time I whipped back around to him. So did Howard. "For?" I asked.

"Colonel?" Brandt called.

Everyone had turned to look at Chester. Most of us here worked for the S.S.R. And that meant that if it was being re-tasked, it meant that we would all be going wherever they needed us to go. "We are taking the fight to Hydra," Chester said. "Pack your bags, Agent Carter. You too, sir." Howard nodded his confirmation. "Victoria - that means you, too. We're flying to London tonight."

The only way that I was going to leave was if Steve was going too. Abraham wanted him to be protected. And that meant that I wanted to be there for him. That had been my promise to him. "Sir. If you're going after Schmidt, I want in," Steve said, running over to us.

Chester turned back to him with a nastier look on his face than I had seen in a long time. "You're an experiment, you're going to Alamogordo," he sneered.

There was no way that he was going to New Mexico. "Absolutely not," I snapped.

"The serum worked," Steve argued.

Chester had been about to say something to me, but he never got the chance. "I asked for an army, and all I got was you. You. You're not enough," he told Steve. My heart twisted. There was no way that they could do that. We couldn't just leave him here. "Victoria! Come on," Chester called me after him.

I turned back to a very defeated Steve. "Stay," I told him.

"I'm not a dog," he pointed out.

"Stay here," I groaned at him. He nodded at me, looking very upset about the whole thing. But it would be okay. We would manage. I would manage. "I'll be right back."

Not giving Chester a chance to get away from me, I dashed after him. We stood near the doors to the building. Chester waved off the others, leaving only Howard, Peggy, and Steve close enough to hear what we were saying. "Why do I get the feeling that this is about to turn into an argument?" Chester asked me.

"Because it will turn into an argument if you don't listen to me," I told him. This was everything that Steve had wanted. This was what he had signed up for. "You have to bring him."

"He's an experiment," Chester argued.

The others were watching closely as Chester and I snapped back and forth. "Abraham had faith in him," I hissed.

"Faith is not enough."

He was so hard-headed. Why couldn't he just listen to reason? "He's a super-soldier, Chester. He can work. We just need to give him time. The serum, it works. He'll have advanced combat knowledge. He's smarter, faster, and stronger than an average soldier," I argued.

"It's not enough. He's not enough."

"Yes he is. And this is what he wants."

"I don't care what he wants. I care about this Army," Chester told me.

It wasn't like I didn't care about the Army. I did care. But the only problem was that I also cared about Steve. It was impossible for me to be impartial at the moment. "Then bring in the one person that can lead it," I begged him.

Chester shook his head at me. The two of us had both picked our sides and it was nearly impossible for either one of us to change sides. "He's not trained," Chester told me.

And that was the truth. But there was a chance that I could fix that. He already had all of the skills. We just had to give him the knowledge on how to use them. "Then let me train him," I begged Chester, trying to make this work. "I told him the truth. He knows what's happening. If there's anyone that can train him, it's me."

But it was obvious that even my begging wasn't going to do anything. "He's not going to be running around my battlefield, untrained." Well, if there was ever a good reason to keep Steve at home, that was it. "He's staying here," Chester said, leaving no room for argument.

As stubborn as ever, I said, "Then so am I."

"Victoria -"

"No. You took me in and I will be grateful for that for the rest of my life. You are my father," I told him, giving Chester a small smile. "But my place is where Abraham Erskine wanted me to be. With the super-soldier. Training him to use everything that's been given to him."

Chester sighed, knowing that there would be no winning this fight. For either one of us. I wanted to stay and he wanted to go. We weren't going to budge either way. "There's no talking you into coming with us?" Chester asked me.

Smiling slightly, I shook my head. I could see the defeated looks on Peggy and Howard's faces. Even Steve looked upset at the turn of events. "I'll meet you out there when the time is right. In the meantime, I'll stay with Steve, training him. When the time is right, we'll come out there and join the war efforts," I promised him.

It was a promise. The moment that I was confident enough that Steve would be unbeatable, I would bring him to the war front. "I guess this is what a parent feels when they have to let the kids go," Chester told me.

These were the moments that I was sure that Chester was really my father. "I'm not leaving forever. I'll be right here," I said.

Chester nodded at me. We stood together for a moment. "I'll call when I can. Keep you informed of everything that's been happening," Chester promised me.

"And I'll let you know how he's coming along," I said.

"Don't stay away too long, alright?" Chester asked me.

"I'll be out there as soon as I feel that Steve is ready."

To my pleasure, Steve, Peggy, and Howard all turned away. They knew that this was a private moment. Chester was not my father, but he was the closest thing to a father that I had ever had before. He grabbed me in a small hug and I grinned, pressing my head into his shoulder. We would see each other again. We both knew that. This was not the last time that we were ever going to be together. I knew that. But we both had things that we needed to be doing, and we couldn't do those things together.

As Chester pulled away from me, he pressed a small kiss into my hair. Grabbing his hand, I took a deep breath. It wasn't goodbye. Just a see you soon. "I'll see you soon, old man," I said.

"Take care of yourself, kid," Chester said.

Our hands stayed linked together for a few moments before he turned and walked away, drawing the other Sergeants and Colonels with him. I watched him walk off before letting out a breath. Peggy and Howard stood by, waiting to say goodbye, seeing as they were both going. "So this is goodbye?" Peggy asked me.

Glancing over at her, I shook my head. "We'll see each other again. I know that," I told her. She smiled at me and nodded. We were sisters. We would be back together again. "Be safe out there, alright?"

"Of course. Watch out for Steve, okay?" she told me.

"Always."

"And yourself," Peggy added.

Once more, I nodded at her. Even though we wouldn't be around each other, I would call her as much as I possibly could. "I'll call you whenever I get the chance," I promised her.

We both knew that I didn't even need to use the phone. I could just slip into her mind and speak to her that way. Although, the phone would probably be easier. "I'll see you soon," Peggy said. She pressed a kiss to the side of my cheeks, and I did the same, smiling at her as she walked off. Once she had gone after Chester, Howard walked up to me.

The two of us smiled at each other. He needed to be out on the war front. He was the one person that could use all of the technology and observe Hydra's. "Watch out for Stark Industries, alright?" Howard asked me.

I nodded at him. "Of course. Watch out for yourself," I told him.

That position at Stark Industries would have to wait for a little while. But it would be okay. In a few years, when this was all over, we would pick up where we had left off. "Of course. I'll call you whenever I get the chance," he said.

I nodded at him. "Thanks. We'll talk soon, alright? Keep a close eye on Peggy and Chester. Keep them safe," I said.

Howard gave me a small smile. It was the most serious that I had ever seen him. "I will. Watch out for Rogers. Love you, Victoria," Howard said.

We hadn't known each other for very long. We had barely known each other for four months, but he had become a very important part of my life. "Love you too, Howard. Stay safe," I said, kissing his cheeks.

"You, too."

Howard pressed a kiss to my cheek before turning off to follow Peggy and Chester. A moment later, Steve walked up to my side. I turned back to him and saw that he was wearing a very guilty look. "You didn't have to do that. You should be out there, Vic. You can make a real difference," he said, watching their retreating figures.

"My place is with you. I put you in this position. I'll see it through," I told Steve.

Before he could say anything else, Senator Brandt walked back up to us. I glanced over at him. "With all due respect to the Colonel, I think we may be missing the point. I've seen you in action, Steve. More importantly. The country's seen it. Paper," he said. He handed us the morning paper with a large photograph of Steve holding up the taxi door, blocking us from the bullets.

Nazi's in New York: Mystery Man Saves Child and Woman

My eyebrows knitted together. He hadn't saved me. Had I wanted to, Kruger would have been dead before he'd even walked out of underground lab. "The hell? He didn't save me," I snapped.

Brandt looked at me like I was just a little fly buzzing around his head. "That's what the people saw. The enlistment lines have been around the block since your picture hit the newsstands. You don't take a soldier, a symbol like that, and hide him in a lab. Son. You want to serve your country on the most important battlefield of the war?" Brandt asked.

My brows furrowed. He wasn't intended on making Steve a Soldier. I knew that he wasn't. He was planning on making him a showgirl. "Don't you work for the United Service Organization?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Sir, that's all I want," Steve said.

"Then, congratulations. You just got promoted."

Even though Steve didn't see it, I did. I knew that whatever Brandt wanted him doing, it wasn't what Steve wanted to be doing. "What are you going to have him doing?" I asked.

Now it seemed that I had caught Brandt's attention. "What are you? His manager?" he asked me with a haughty laugh.

"Something like that," I snarled.

Steve grabbed me and gently pushed me back, letting me know that this was the wrong time to start a fight. "Helping us sell War Bonds. Plane comes out tonight. We'll start training you immediately. We can organize a show. We start here in New York where everyone already knows you. Come along. We'll talk on the way," he said.

I knew it. They didn't want Steve to be a Soldier. They wanted to make some money. And they were going to make him a toy. As we walked after Senator Brandt, Steve leaned over to me. "It's better than doing nothing, Vic," he argued.

"We'll see."

"You don't have to stay with me. They need you out there," Steve told me.

Giving him a small smile, I shook my head. They had so many competent people out there. There was no need for me to be out there. "No one needs me," I told Steve softly.

"I do," Steve said.

Smiling up at him, I nodded. "Then I'm coming with you," I told him. The two of us merely smiled at each other as Steve wrapped his arm around me. Maybe this wasn't what we had wanted, but this was what was going to happen. And we would make the best of it.

Bucky's P.O.V.
Two Weeks Later...

It had been almost a month that Bucky had been out of the front lines. Things were monotonous during the days. There was always something to be done, but that didn't mean that he didn't get bored. He was frequently bored. He had Dum Dum Dugan and Gabe Jones to keep him company - and he did like having the two men around - but he missed Steve and Vika. They were his family. But they were who he was doing this for. He was currently leaned over a map, working on a plan to enact a strike on a known Nazi base. They'd been tasked to hunt down the Nazi Science Division, Hydra, and detain the leader, Johann Schmidt.

Bucky was trying to figure out the best place to enter the facility when Dugan came up to his side. He turned back to the man to see what he needed. "Barnes, man, you've got a letter," he said.

He nodded and took the letter, knowing that it was from Vika. He could tell by the handwriting. "I'll be right back," Bucky told Jones, who was looking over the map as well.

Jones grinned at him. "Go for it. Go see what your girl has to say," he said.

Bucky smiled and walked over to a segregated section of the camp. There was no one there and he figured that it would be the best place to read the letter so that no one would interrupt him. He scanned over her letter, only finding himself feeling worse and worse. As he finished the letter, he placed it off to the side and ran his hands through his hair. How had so many terrible things happened to her in such a short period of time? He was horrified that Abraham Erskine was killed. He knew that she had loved him. The only good thing was that at least she had walked away, just fine.

But she'd watched someone die. Was she really okay with that? It was terrible. Bucky knew well enough just how hard it was to watch someone die for the first time. He found his fingers digging into his palms. He was furious with Harvard. She had been working so hard towards getting that degree. It had meant everything to her. But, here she had been, so close to getting what she wanted, just to have her life ripped out from under her. He wished that he could be there to tell her that everything would be alright.

There were so many questions that he had for her. He wanted to know everything that she meant. He wanted to know what the project was that she had been working on. He wanted to know what she meant about how she would be traveling back and forth. Did that mean that she would be on the road? What would she be on the road for? He knew that she would be safe on the road. He just wished that he knew everything that was happening with her. Not for the first time, he wished that he hadn't come over here. He should have been there to tell her that things would manage to work themselves out.

It was easy enough to hear it in the letter. He couldn't hear her voice, but he had known her long enough to know when she was upset about something. And he knew that she was upset about everything right now. It was still a man's world, and she was trying so hard to break into it. It wasn't fair for her. She deserved to be part of the war effort. But, in his own way, he was glad that she wasn't. He didn't want her to be in danger. He wanted her to be as safe as she could possibly be. Bucky folded up the letter and put it in the pocket of his uniform. He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.

A few minutes passed before Dugan and Jones came to stand at his side. "Man, oh, man. You don't look too good, Barnes. You girl find someone else?" Dugan teased, coming to sit at his side.

"She's... having a tough time," Bucky said.

Even though Bucky was looking at the ground, he could see that Jones and Dugan were exchanging a worried look. No one wanted to see anything happen to a woman. They were supposed to be protected. Not in danger of any form. Bucky just wished that he could be there to tell her that things were going to be okay. He wanted to be there to protect her from everything. Not that she needed to be protected. That was half of the reason that he loved her in the first place.

"What happened?" Jones finally asked.

He wasn't really sure if he should say something, but he knew that he had to say it. It wouldn't make a difference. They were overseas. There was nothing that they could do for those back home. "She's a part of this project. Don't know what it is. Secret. But apparently it worked. Although it sounded like a Hydra agent broke into the lab where they tested it out. The leader of the project was killed," Bucky explained.

Both Dugan and Jones looked horrified at that revelation. "My God," Dugan muttered.

Murders were rare during the days of the war. Crime could happen out on the battlefield. This sounded like a well-planned out strike. Hydra had known Abraham Erskine. He knew that they did. "She's fine, but things took a big step backwards. She was going to get an honorary degree from Harvard. They backed out of the deal," he continued.

His heart broke for her. Everything that she had worked so hard for had been snatched out from underneath her. "Back to square one, then," Jones said, obviously feeling bad for her as well.

"Sounds like it," Bucky muttered.

She wasn't in danger, but things were spinning out of control for her. "We can handle the planning, Barnes. Why don't you go and write to your girl? Let her know that things are going to be alright," Jones offered.

"Thanks," Bucky said, standing to leave the two men.

Bucky knew that he needed to go to the tent and write something to her. They had exchanged reasonably short letters for the past few weeks. But he hadn't really told her that much about what had happened. He knew what they had been doing. Trying to reassure each other that everything was alright. But Bucky knew that he shouldn't have been that surprised. Neither one wanted the other to worry. So he sat down on his cot, brought out a few sheets of papers, and prepared to tell her all of the reasons that she shouldn't worry.

A/N: Good for Victoria! She finally told Steve the truth. It was really weighing on her. So, she's going to be traveling around with Steve on the USO Tour. Now I intend to have the tour take place over about four chapters, until they head overseas to Italy. Each chapter will probably cover a few months, with time jumps in them. There is about a nineteen month gap in between when Steve becomes Captain America and when he travels overseas. So lots of time to cover in just a few chapters! Thanks so much for the follows and favorites! Please review! Until next time -A

rebelforcauses: August is awful! And you're right, Victoria is better than everyone!

kuppcake: Lots of feels in the last chapter! That's okay, there are slightly happier feels in this one! I know, you find a character that you hate and then everyone with that name is automatically an awful person lol. Thank you!

.2017: Hope you liked this one!