Chapter 35
-6 months later-
A man stood clad in his red, white and blue uniform scanning the deserted ground beside a newly decaying Lithuanian facility. The architecture a depressing mix of archaic and crude technical invasion. Bullet-riddled bodies lay on the gravel still dressed in their HYDRA uniform. His head fell as his hand presses the radio snuggled in his right ear.
"Thor, can you see any HYDRA?" Steve asked the Asgardian who currently surveyed from the sky for any of remaining cockroach-like organisation.
"No Captain. I cannot locate any residual HYDRA. They seem to have all fled," Thor reported.
"This is the fourth HYDRA based we've found abandoned. Someone else is hunting them," Steve observed pensively.
With a mighty thud Thor landed beside him; the force of his landing, disrupting the gravel beneath his feet in an ephemeral cloud. The thunderer stroked his chin curiously as he examined the body that lay near them. "Indeed Captain, but the fatalities of battle seem to be fresh."
"Are you saying that the people responsible could still be here?" Steve questioned, unsure whether to be relieved that they may have finally found the guilty party or cautious of the clearly dangerous group responsible.
"Do you need any help out there Cap?" Natasha called over the radio from the quinjet.
With repulser jets resonating above, Ironman stiffly eased himself down beside his teammates. "That won't be necessary Widow, I'll look after them. Make sure they don't get into any trouble."
"You're usually the one causing the trouble Tony," Natasha retorted.
"What'd you find Tony?" Steve inquired hastily.
Tony's mask retracted to reveal his neatly trimmed face. "Nothing but a bunch of tire tracks to the north. HYDRA's probably already crawled right back under their rock," Tony sneers, clearly disappointed that all the residents of their latest HYDRA witch hunt were once again dead or far, far away.
Steve glances at the towering, torn entrance to the now dormant HYDRA base. "Natasha, we're going to check out the base. We'll call for backup if things go sour."
"Copy that Rogers," Natasha responds evenly.
Steve followed by Thor and Tony approached the gigantic door as he warned, "Be on alert. We don't know if whoever is hunting HYDRA is still here or even on our side."
The rooms started out eerily large and shrunk down until the facility was tunnel after tunnel of cold brick with unsettling wires protruding out of it at random.
"Whoever their electrician is, needs to be fired," Tony commented with mild distaste as he moved a hanging wire out of the way.
"Captain, I hear the clang of metal," Thor exclaimed.
Steve paused for a moment, his enhanced hearing awaiting any echo. There it was. The distinct ricochet of metal against metal bouncing off the arched walls from multiple floors below. Whoever was here did not care who knew.
The small team of Avengers followed the continuous but irregular smashes of metal. As they grew closer the cry of aged door hinges became prominent and the trail of blood-soaked bodies ceased. By the two and coming on third impossibly thick metal doors, that were violently pried open, Steve guessed that they were entering the dungeon area of the facility.
The super soldier paused at the third of the doors observing the damage, "It looks like it was beaten down by hand but no normal person can crush metal with their fist." Steve squinted at the numerous clear knuckle shaped dents on the now horizontal door.
"A hearty Asgardian could complete such a feat," Thor commented.
Tony answered, "I doubt an Asgardian broke into HYDRA. I would think it was some sort of HYDRA experiment gone wrong but they're breaking in."
Steve didn't dabble in Tony's theory as he had a hunch that he wasn't sure he wanted to be true. But he had to know, so he continued on.
The three heroes came into a narrow, elongated room with primitive prison cells across either side. All the cells were shrouded in darkness with the sparse, centred lights unable to penetrate the heavy, steel walls. Each of the cells' dense metal doors were ripped wide open.
"Every single door is torn right off," Tony breathed, void of an explanation.
Another loud shriek of metal reverberated from a few hundred meters ahead of them. The sound followed by the crumbling of stone. Steve pulled out his shield as Thor readied molinjor and Tony slipped his mask down and raised his repulser beams.
Alert and armed, they neared the sound to find not a deadly team but one man. The man Steve had feared and hoped it would be.
"Bucky?"
He leaned with his head limp against the cold, grey stone that lined the walls between the cells. His cybernetic hand thrust into the rock in frustration and desperation. His breathing uneven and shaky. He was not the same HYDRA weapon Steve had fought months ago. He was no longer draped in black leather with overgrown hair. His hair was instead a much shorter tangle that painfully reminded Steve of the Bucky he knew. He wore a muted jacket over a slightly tattered deep red shirt. A packed black bag was strapped securely onto his back.
As Steve looked closer at the still man he had once called his best friend he noticed that the cold emptiness of the Winter Soldier was no longer present in the sorrowful, fraught man.
"She's not here," he whispered defeatedly, tightening his jaw even more.
Recovering from the shock of seeing the Winter Soldier he had been told of, Tony equipped the repulser beams built into the palms of the suit's gloves. Steve quickly raised his left hand in front of Tony lowly pleading, "Don't shoot Tony."
"Bucky? Do you remember me?" Steve attempted hopefully.
The man in question twisted his head toward the group of three but did not cast his sight on them. It remained entranced by the damp cobble floor. "I remember you… Your mum's name is Sarah. You used to wear newspaper in your shoes."
He remembered him! Steve baffled. He had been searching for him for nearly a year and now that he had found his best friend, he had no idea what to say. He had no idea where to start to rebuild this friendship.
"They took her…" Bucky murmured deadly.
Steve's brows furrowed, "Took who?"
"Annie."
BBB
Natasha tried the comm.s again, "Steve? Tony?"
She huffed as they went unanswered again. She was tried to deliberate whether to go in after them or wait here when the quinjet's door was opened from the outside.
Steve's walk was almost a run as he strode inside and started the quinjet's engine up with a word or a single expression. Thor closed the door and awaited the storm about to commence.
Nat rose from her chair, demanding, "What the hell hap-"
The ex-soviet froze as she noticed the man trudging behind Thor and Tony. Her gun was up in less than a second, trained directly as his brain, "What the hell are you doing bringing him here?!
Tony tried, "Calm down Na-"
"He's the Winter Soldier. He killed Annie and almost did the same to Fury," Natasha argued in a deadly tone, with the slightest tremor of her hand.
The ghost assassin didn't seem to care about the gun pointed at his head as he tightly gripped the straps of his bag that wrapped around his broad shoulders.
Now up in the air and set on course for Avengers tower Steve ordered, "Tony take the controls."
Tony followed the command, muttering, "Anything to get out of this mess."
Steve faced Natasha with the most severe expression she had seen on the already serious man, "He didn't kill Annie because Annie is alive."
"What?" Natasha breathed in disbelief, lowering her gun but still keeping a firm grip on it.
"Annie's alive and HYDRA has her," Steve announced gravely.
Nat's eyes lowered then hardened, an insignificant action to anyone who didn't know the woman as well as Steve. "How did this happen? I saw him shoot her," Nat probed Steve.
At Steve's silence and exhausted lowered head, Tony put Jarvis on autopilot and approached the tense group to explain, "We didn't really get any more information. Steve kind of went into shock before storming back to the quinjet."
"I couldn't kill her," a weak voice admitted. The incomplete group of Avengers turned to the previously silent Winter Soldier as he ran a weary hand roughly through his dark, twisted locks. "They told me to kill anyone who got in my way of completing my mission but when she smiled at me, I could leave her there to die."
Bucky tugged tighter on the straps of his backpack to the point that Steve was sure they'd snap. It was as if they were his sanity that he was desperately clinging to. His dark eyes held a peculiar softness as he continued, "I told her she couldn't stay with me. That it was dangerous but she wouldn't listen. She was convinced we were safer together so we ran from HYDRA and everyone. We finally found somewhere safe but they found us and they took her. She promised to go with them if they let me live. I've been looking for her for six months."
Steve slowly lowered onto the seat of the quinjet as his hands pressed against his face. This was too much for him to take in at once. "HYDRA's had Annie for 6 months," he breathed in horror.
"I still don't trust him," Natasha almost snarled.
Tony frowned as he added with a focused gaze, "It doesn't make sense though. Why would HYDRA want Annie instead of their ghost assassin? If she was leverage, they would have notified us…or him." Tony gestured to the uncomfortable Winter Soldier.
"I can answer that," a deep voice called out through the quinjet radio.
"Fury?" Tony asked with uncertainty laced in his tone.
"Hell yeah it's Fury," the older man stated impatiently from the other side of the radio.
"But you were, agh… how did I not see Hill was working for you the whole time?"
"How about you stop asking questions and get back to Avengers tower so I can give you some answers?"
Tony turned to the rest of the confused avengers, "Am I the only one not surprised that he know everything about this?"
"No" Natasha sighed as she moved to the controls to take the quinjet back to their headquarters to have a chat with Nick.
BB
After a perplexing flight that Steve had spent the entirety of trying to wrap his head around the fact that the last of his family was still alive and in the hands of his worst enemy. Steve was also vexing over if he should talk to Bucky. What would he say?
Only when Natasha notified them in a cold voice that they were nearing the tower did Steve begin the fret over what Fury had to tell them. When Fury abruptly arrived with news it was never good.
The quinjet set down on the helipad Tony had installed. Steve gave one last glance at Bucky who sat stiffly across from him. Steve mustered up is courage with a deep breath and approached his once best friend. Bucky rose from his seat and stiffly followed the other exiting Avengers, refusing to look at Steve as he left.
Steve sighed, disheartened and followed everyone else inside to hear the potentially troublesome news of Fury's. Steve entered the adapted conference room where the rest of the Avengers were already seated including Bruce and Clint. Bucky had taken an isolated seat right on the end of the room. Fury stood at the front of the room with Maria Hill loyally at his side, her clipboard in hand. Steve knew whatever Fury had to say, it was related to Annie and he wasn't sure how much more reveals he could take.
Fury carefully examined the members of the room before announcing, "Agent Hill had informed me that Annie Rogers is, despite our belief, alive and now in the hands of the remaining pockets of HYDRA."
"You've been monitoring our communications haven't you, Fury? Oh and don't get me started on the betrayal, Hill," Tony accused with an irritated crossing of his arms.
He was sent a dark glare by Fury before the eye-patched man continued, "We have more important things to discuss right now Stark. This is an extremely dangerous situation and we have no time protect your bruised ego. One of the most dangerous organisations in the world has one of the greatest threats to security on the planet."
Fury's warning was met with confused expressions from all of the Avengers and Bucky. All of them could not imagine the very un-tech savvy Annie hacking into security codes.
With the rooms full, undivided attention Fury elaborated, "Annie Rogers during her time in the ice was affected by the close proximity of the Tesseract over the extended period of 70 years. When we revived her from the ice we noticed subtle but strange power fluctuations radiating from her. We extracted some blood samples and found that the same gamma radiation released by the tesseract was present in her cells. The radiation from the tesseract had appeared to mutate and fuse with her genes."
Steve couldn't believe what he was hearing. This didn't make any sense. "Fury what the hell are you saying?" Steve questioned in an unsteady voice.
"I'm saying, Rogers. That your sister is now a dangerous weapon thanks to 70 years of exposure to an alien power source we know next to nothing about!" Fury breathed heavily through his nostrils before explaining once again, "From the blood sample we found that her cells were replicating on demand as well as admitting a very lower amount of gamma radiation."
Steve's forehead at this point had maintained a permanent crease as he bitterly realised, "I didn't save her at all from the crash did I?"
"You protected her from dying immediately on collision but the tesseract kept her alive. We don't know how but her mutated cells seem to have given her enhanced healing. We were able to find out very little about her condition or the extent to which the tesseract affected her. With so little information we had to hide her condition from everyone, we kept it off every record, and the knowledge known only to myself and a small group of biologists and doctors," Fury answered indifferently.
"Wait, they were both in that ice, why then wasn't Steve effected by the tesseract?" Bruce questioned half out of curiosity and half out of confusion.
"I don't know, it could have been the fact that Annie Rogers was closer or that the Captain was blocked by his shield or that Annie Rogers had the simpler genetics of the two. We believe that that the tesseract's power is infinite but we are unsure if it had the capacity to choose her."
"Why didn't you tell me. I could have kept her safe!" Steve argued as he jolted up from his seat. His guilt, frustration, and feeling of hopelessness merging into rage. "If I had known I could have –"
"You could have what?!" Fury cut off harshly. "You could have protected her better with that information or exposed her abilities making her an even bigger target? I didn't tell you because you didn't need to know. I hid this information because it was what was best for world security. I kept a close eye on her until you waved her right in front of HYDRA and their toy soldier."
All eyes fell on the silent Bucky. Steve knew the accusations would start flying at the man he really needed to trust right now. "Bucky didn't have anything to do with HYDRA taking Annie."
Thor, not one to sit in the background, added, "The Captain speaks truth. We found this man searching the dungeons for Annie Rogers. I do not believe he intentionally handed her over to HYDRA."
"This is not what matters right now," Fury regained focus. "What matters is that if our theories are correct, HYDRA has access to an individual who is capable of teleporting potentially without limit. A person who can replicate the events of New York as a warm up. We need to find Rogers before she figures out how to use these abilities or security becomes non-existent. HYDRA will have access to anywhere, anytime and that's not a world I particularly want to live in."
BB
Steve had spent most of the debriefing in shock, struggling to control his flurry of emotions. He wasn't sure what was harder to shallow, that Annie had been alive this whole time with Bucky or that she was now a powerful player in HYDRA's schemes. He noticed Tony hesitantly offer Steve's old best friend and ex-HYDRA brainwashee a room. He had given a slight nod of the head in an odd thank you before following the directions the billionaire had given him down the long hallway. Bucky's cold exterior another reminder of what HYDRA had taken of his best friend and what they could potentially do to his sister.
Steve set off after Bucky. He needed to talk to him and hopefully see some remanent of the Bucky he needed right now. Maybe Bucky needed their friendship right now too.
Steve approached the slightly ajar door to the room Bucky had been awkwardly given. The light had not been bothered to be switched one and the curtains hung open allowing the moon to meekly light the room. A silhouette with partially visible features hunched on the edge of the queen size bed with a thin book wrapped tightly in his hands. Steve politely laid a sequence of light knocks on the modern door, alerting the tense man to his presence. Though Steve doubted the Winter Soldier didn't know already. The act more out of chivalry. The noise was greeted with a slight twitch of Bucky's head but otherwise, Steve received no recognition from Bucky.
"How long could you hold the silent treatment with her for?" Steve wistfully joked knowing his sister's friendliness all too well. She had few close friends but most acquaintances received a warm hello from Annie. He knew this warm treatment would have been triple for his friend.
Steve though he saw a tug of his lips at the question. He did however, note Bucky's hardened grip on the book he held. "We'll find her Buck. Together," Steve reassured hopefully.
He then heard Bucky's voice for the first time since they had gotten to Avenger's tower, it was soft and broken, "And what if she isn't Annie anymore?"
"Then we remind her who she is, like she did for you." Steve dared to sit beside Bucky. He mimicked the drained posture. Bucky didn't seem convinced as his anxious expression was trained on the carpet floors. "I know that Annie will be in there somewhere. She's as stubborn as a mule, I've never seen anything that could change that fact."
From this angle, Steve could now see that the book in his hands was not reading but was a journal of sorts. He could only make out the top of the page. It seemed like the recording of a memory but it wasn't one from the old days. From the short section of text, it appeared to be about a dance in a cheap motel room.
From the line, 'for a moment I felt like I wasn't broken', Steve knew that the man sitting beside him intensely reading and re-reading the scribbled page was not the brain-washed HYDRA assassin. He was a man hurting just as much as Steve.
Steve was surprised when Bucky's cautious voice acknowledged, "Annie talked about you a lot. She missed you."
"Why didn't she come back?" Steve uttered, needing to know.
"She didn't want to hurt you more than she already had. To make you lose her more than once because she couldn't handle losing you twice."
Steve dragged a hand tensely through his messy hair. He was meant to be the one who protected her but it always ended up like this. Annie getting hurt because of him.
No. this wasn't who he was. He doesn't sulk. Steve is going to find Annie with his best friend at his side. he was going to bring her home.
Sorry for this chapter taking so long. I'm hoping all your minds are blown and excited fro how this is going to change things. I'm excited to write a more kick-butt Annie taking a more front seat approach. I would love to hear your thoughts or queries.
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