Once again seated around the large Avengers table but this time with a viable plan in place Bucky could feel his nerves settling. He always felt the stomach butterflies before an op but as his Winter Soldier personality took hold he lost all sense of his body. The only fear he had, that sat in the back of his mind, was falling too deep into the killer mindset. He didn't want to hurt anyone if necessary but that didn't include HYDRA agents. Any HYDRA men he killed he counted as a victory.
"Barnes, once we are inside we won't have much time before we need to get out. Probably less than 7 or 8 minutes," Natasha spoke, her calm voice making her description sound as if they were going to a bake shop not a hidden, dangerous underground testing facility. "We will split up once inside, Barnes and Cap will find the target, Stark and Falcon will keep our exit way clear, and I will find and save as much HYDRA information as possible. When we pull out, this base needs to be taken out, Tony that will be your cue. Once all team members are out, boom." Natasha said the last part with a devilish smirk on her face. Steve and Sam shared a look and shivered. She wasn't called the Black Widow for nothing. She enjoyed causing pain.
Bucky knew he needed to warn them about what he suspected was waiting for them in Russia. "Serafina might not be in control when we get there. If they suspect we are coming, she will be under memory wipe. Just like I was programmed to be the Winter Soldier, she will be programmed to be Eris. If she is programmed, let me handle it."
Bucky didn't want one of the Avengers getting injured by Eris or killed. He knew Stark hated him and likely held a grudge against Serafina for the trouble of rescuing her already but if she killed or maimed one of his team members, Iron Man's wrath would be hard to get around. Serafina might need his connections in the days to come if they got her out alive. He tried not to think about the alternative.
Steve frowned from across the table, "Buck, we can handle ourselves. You can't do this alone."
Shaking his shaggy head Bucky replied, "If anyone gets a hurt, it will be me. I left her there," he grimaced, his self-loathing plain to everyone at the table, "you pulled me out of it Steve. Maybe I can do the same for her."
Still clearly worried but not wanting to offend his still recovering best friend, Steve nodded before turning the conversation to other details of the plan. Next to Steve Sam was glaring at Bucky as if causing the Captain to worry personally offended his sidekick. Bucky stare blankly back. The two kept locked eyes for almost a minute before Sam turned his head with a scoff and joined the conversation Steve was having with Natasha about the number of possible enemies they would encounter. Bucky let the voices around the table fade out and focused on his plan to defeat the woman he had only defeated once in their entire testing and operational phases. The butterflies were back.
Bucky had been planning and re planning for this moment for weeks now. The entire team was assembled in the quinjet with a new face at the helm. Clint Barton aka Hawkeye had returned for this mission only. He had made that very clear. And only because Natasha had asked it of him. His only mission was to keep the quinjet ready for their escape once the asset had been recovered.
'The Asset'. Referring to a woman he knew so much and yet so little about made Bucky snarl to himself as the 'asset' made him feel somewhat dirty, as if he was betraying her somehow. He was already extremely overprotective of just the thought of her. He almost wasn't looking forward to actually having her alive and in danger around him. But those feelings of uncertainty were over ridden by the intense desire to see her. He hadn't realized how strong his attachment to her was until recently. Probably because he could never remember more than bits and pieces of his life before being free of HYDRA.
All members of the team were suited up. Captain America in his infamous red white and blue with his shield strapped to his back. Iron Man, covered in metal from head to toe, his suit shinning as the rays of light from the sun coming thought the pilots window stuck his red and yellow attire. Natasha and Clint, both ex-spies, dressed in all black and strapped with uncountable weapons. And finally Falcon, Bucky's least favorite member of the team. Falcon was strapped to his normal, though upgraded, wings with his googles ready around his neck. Then there was himself.
Bucky looked down at his arm with its red star and his usual uniform and for once wasn't disgusted by what he saw. His metal arm shined much like Tony Starks armor and looked intimidating in the light. His all black battle tested uniform had had little adjustments made to it since he had escaped HYDRA but the snugness and sense of protection it gave him remained exactly the same. He was ready for this fight.
A voice near his shoulder made him snap his head up from where his eyes had been glued to his uniform and the floor, lost in thought. He seemed to get lost in his own head often now.
"You ready?" Steve asked and placed a comforting hand on Bucky's shoulder. The former assassin turned part time Avenger tried not to flinch. Bucky nodded in response.
Steve continued, "You know there is a possibility of HYDRA trying to recapture you right? Or the possibility of us not finding Serafina alive?" Those words sent a jolt of electricity through Bucky's body. Both of those possibilities scared him more than he wanted to admit.
Bucky also knew that Steve was just trying to protect him, in his own way, but his goody two shoes demeanor and soft voice just succeeded in getting on Bucky's already frayed nerves. Bucky had noticed that he got angry a lot easier nowadays. He couldn't help the feelings but he tried his best to reign them in. So with a stiff nod, Bucky moved away from the legendary soldier and sat towards the back of the plane, well away from the rest of the team. He didn't trust himself to speak or even look at any of them.
He was almost disgusted by them. They treated Serafina like an object or a goal. Something to obtain and whether they succeeded or not was not going to affect their daily lives much. But whether or not they accomplished this mission was going to either revolutionize Bucky's life or completely destroy it.
Bucky sighed. He knew he had put too much of himself into this. He was basing a majority of his limited emotions on this mission going right and getting to see Serafina again. But what if?...
No. He wasn't going to let himself think about that possibility too much. This was a succeed or die mission which meant the mission was either going to succeed or he would die in that base, far underground with no more will to go on. His inner self glowed with how secure he was in that decision. His conscious and subconscious minds were at peace. He allowed himself to finally look up and lock eyes with Steve who was still staring at him. Bucky gave a half-hearted smile towards his childhood friend which Steve returned with a full watt smile. It was almost time to decide his fate.
As soon as the almost silent quinjet landed Bucky knew something was wrong. He had made sure to be the first one off the plane, just in case. He couldn't explain the sense of wrongness other than the air, when they stepped off the plane, felt tense and static like the sky just before a storm. He had learned to trust his instincts long ago and he wasn't about to dismiss them now.
Standing silently in the snow covered ground Bucky scanned the wooded area they had landed in to give them cover. Nothing moved in the woods, almost like the animals knew also that something wasn't right. Just as his eyes passed a point to the left of the quinjets nose an incoming whistling sound made him instinctually duck and shout, "Get down!" Everyone complied except for Iron Man.
A large ding sounded not a second later and Bucky saw Iron Mans suit slide a few feet backwards before looking towards where he had seen the flash of a barrel. It was her and she had just hit one of the Avengers with at least a .50 caliber to dent heavy metal like that. If she had hit living flesh, little would be left of the mangled human.
He could feel that it was her like he felt his own blood pump through his veins. But why would she go for Iron Man? She would have been given all the stats on the Avengers and must have known that almost nothing will penetrate Tony Stark's homemade weapons suit. It gave Bucky hope. She was Eris right now and she was deadly which meant that she could have easily killed one of the less protected Avengers just as easily. Serafina must be somewhere in there somewhere, fighting.
"Move!" The order was barked from the body to Bucky's left and without a thought he took off towards the area that the shot had come from. He could hear Steve shouting his name somewhere behind him and in the back of his mind he remembered that Steve was supposed to help him find Serafina and watch his back. But there was no turning back or slowing down now. He had to get to her.
A few yards behind the metal armed assassin, Steve was racing to catch up with the figure in front. He should have known Bucky was going to take off at the first sign of their target. The base was less than a mile away, if the female assassin got to the base before they could catch her it would make extraction a lot more difficult.
Pushing his legs harder, Steve pulled within a few steps behind Bucky and shouted, "Buck, we need to stop and form a plan!" He questioned whether the other man heard him over the howling wind but shouldn't have worried. Bucky has advanced senses and even if Steve had whispered that sentence he would have heard it clearly.
Clenching his fists, Bucky turned his head and glared at Steve. He still didn't get it. He was taking Eris lightly because she was a woman and in Steve's old fashioned eyes women would always be weaker than men. But Bucky knew different. If not caught, Eris would wreck this team and all their well made plans. The sooner the better was wise in this case.
The Captain seemed to get the message for as Bucky started to speed up, Steve kept pace instead of slowing down. Bucky was grateful for the first time in a while towards the other man. At least Steve was loyal if misguided sometimes.
Reaching the top of a small hill the two men raced over it and almost immediately lost their footing. The other side was quite a bit steeper than the side they had come up. The two large bodies tumbled, head over heels, for almost one hundred yards slamming to a stop on two ancient pine trees. The air in both their lungs were forcefully ejected and left the two men gasping and choking, trying to breathe. Looking up at each other from their positions on all fours, the two men, as one, looked towards the direction they were running in and froze.
Standing, not thirty feet from the two gasping men, was a figure wrapped in all black. In a suit similar to the Winter Soldier's except with two black sleeves instead of a metal arm, the figure was clearly female and had a large barreled weapon trained on them. 'Serafina' Bucky's mind whispered. He didn't realize that he had said the words out loud until Steve looked over at him, eyes wide, before turning back to HYDRAs living weapon.
Taking the chance, Bucky raised his hands in front of him, palms facing the woman, and stood slowly. Steve mirrored his actions. Once they were both standing, noticing not a muscle twitched in the half masked face of the woman before them, the three of them studied each other for a long minute.
Seeing her for the first time Steve's reactions were drastically different from Bucky's thoughts. To Steve, the woman in front of them was of average height, slim and lean with a body that most models would kill for. Steve grimaced thinking she probably had killed people for that body. Her face was half masked by a similar containment device that Bucky had first worn when they fought in Washington but he could tell by the general shape of her face and jawline that she was stunning.
Her blond hair was pulled sharply away from her face and held in a high ponytail, a few wisps escaping to frame her face. Her face itself was symmetric with two almond shaped eyes that sat under very sculptured eyebrows. But what startled Steve the most wasn't her beauty but her eyes themselves.
Her left eye was a light ice blue, and her right eye was warm amber brown. The shocking contrast made Steve wonder if they were natural or an experiment gone right.
While Steve was examining her, so was Bucky. He hadn't seen her in god knows how long but for the most part she still looked the same. Some things were different however. Her young appearance had morphed into a slightly more angular adult face, and her lovely whitish blonde hair was not longer in her loose braid behind her head but up in a sharp ponytail. He couldn't help the small smile that came to his face upon seeing her. But it dropped instantly when he saw her slight frown. She didn't remember him. Yet, he promised himself.
After the long minute of examining each other was over, Eris having never dropped her aggressive stance and raised weapon, Bucky took a step forward.
"остановить!" Her voice was cold as the winter wind that blew through the trees. Bucky froze. She was speaking Russian. The HYDRA scientists had trained her in Russian much like they had done for him. That was a connection he could use.
"Serafina, Вы помните меня?" Bucky's rough voice cut through the air and sent a visible chill through the female's body before him. Her frown got more pronounced. Pointing to his chest he said, "James."
"меня зовут Eris." Her voice was once again cold as ice. Her hand released one side of her weapon slowly and came up to grip the side of her head. Another connection between them. Remember always caused him extreme headaches. She was probably in the beginning stages of one. That meant that this was working. If he could just get her to question her memories enough to lower the weapon.
"правосудие, Мораль, действия, вечнозеленый, поток.." A loud male voice echoed over through the woods bouncing oddly off the trees and small hills. All three bodies jumped slightly.
It seemed that the HYDRA agents had placed loud speakers somewhere close by. Bucky's eyes widened at the words he was hearing. They were randomly assigned words that meant nothing unless strung together in a sequence. A sequence that had been brained washing into the woman in front of him. Looking towards Serafina he noticed that her arm had fallen from her head and come to cradle her weapon again. A weapon she was looking in the sight of. A weapon whose barrel was pointed directly at Steve.
Cursing in his head Bucky took the only chance he was going to get and ran straight for the other assassin. He was fast but not fast enough to cover the distance between them before she swung her weapon and fired at him. Thankfully she hadn't had time to properly aim and the bullet sliced an inch deep through the skin on his outer flesh arm. He quickly pushed the pain away almost as second nature.
Then he was upon her. She had flung her weapon away subconsciously knowing that this would be close quarter combat and a large bulky weapon would be of no use to her. As Bucky swung his metal arm overhead, his flesh arm hanging useless at his side, he knew he had already lost this fight. He had a slim chance of victory with both arms, with one the best he could hope for was to hold her off long enough for Steve to snap out of his shock and come to his aide.
His first swing was blocked, as was his second before he felt an iron force crunch one of his ribs and he rolled with the momentum of the kick that had gotten through on his bad side. Standing back up swiftly he was bombarded with left and right hooks, an assortment of flying kicks, and a knife that slide through his one armed defense and embedded itself in his shoulder.
Landing a solid kick to the other assassin abdomen gave Bucky a few seconds of break where he looked wildly around for Steve. Catching a glimpse of red and blue creeping up behind the female assassin Bucky took another wild swing at her hoping to distract her enough that she wouldn't notice what was happening behind her.
"This is not you," Bucky gasped as another brass knuckled punch forced partial air out of his lungs. He stood straight again to block a roundhouse kick that had been aimed at his face. "Your name is not Eris. Your name is Serafina. We trained together."
A brief pause in her swings allowed Steve the chance he had been waiting for. With all the strength he had, the Captain flung his heavy metal shield at the back of the female assassin neck, where it met her shoulders. A crack of breaking bones and a pained cry ended the fight as soon as it began.
Steve hurried to Bucky's side as the later gasped from the pain of fractured possibly broken ribs, a stab wound, and a useless arm that was dripping blood into the pristine snow.
"You weren't kidding. Any longer and I think she would have killed you," Steve said, throwing Bucky's metal arm over his broad shoulder and wrapping his other arm around Bucky's waist, trying not to press on his bad rips.
Two approaching figures, Sam and Natasha quickly joined the two. Looking at the fallen body in the snow Natasha commented, "Well that's unexpected." Her eyes shown with devilish mirth. "We all thought you were dead for sure Barnes."
Rolling his eyes at the spy Bucky allowed Steve to help him turn and start limping back to the quinjet. Steve addressed Natasha and the Falcon over his shoulder, "Pick her up, gently please and bring her along. Mission success."
Sam nodded and instantly went to the side of the prone woman before rolling her over. Some of her hair had fallen out of her ponytail and shrouded a good portion of her face. "She's not half as scary when she's unconscious," he commented before sticking a needle in her neck and pushing the fluid that was in the vial into her bloodstream. Natasha had provided a powerful sedative to keep the dangerous assassin quiet for the ride back to the Avengers tower.
After throwing the needle away, Sam hoisted the body up onto one shoulder and shared a smirk with Natasha before they followed in the footsteps on the two ninety year old men back to the quinjet. As all four of them reached the top of the last hill before the clearing opened up, a large explosion was heard and the ground shook beneath their feet. A mushroom cloud of dark dirt and dirty snow feel like raindrops on their heads.
Sam chuckled, bouncing the body of their target on his shoulder, "Tony can never do anything small can he?" It wasn't really a question. When Natasha had assigned Tony the job of blowing up the HYDRA base after they had all been cleared, she knew the dramatic flair it would have. Shaking his head up ahead Steve looked over at his injured friend and smiled when he saw the half lidded smile on Bucky's face.
The mission was a success, there were no causualities, and Bucky now had the chance to right his mistake of leaving Serafina behind. He might never forgive himself for it, but he could always try to make it up to her. He would make it up to her.
Russian conversation: "Stop!" "Do you remember me?" "My name is.."
Russian trigger words:
Justice morality action evergreen thread
