Dr. Chambers showed up to work an hour late the next day looking like he had been hit by a truck.
"How are you holding up this morning?" I asked him, not looking up from the broken drone I was working on.
"Fine," he grumbled.
The drone I was working on chirped and tried to lurch away from me, but I wrapped my legs around it to hold it still while it babbled to itself.
"What's the matter with it?" Dr. Chambers asked dully, although he could probably tell at a glance.
"Its navigation system and control system are both damaged, so it's doing whatever it wants to," I replied.
Dr. Chambers rubbed his temples with his fingertips. "Come and get me when it's done making such a racket."
Dr. Chambers left and I saw him stop dead in the hallway through the glass panels that lined the front of our lab. Winter was back, being escorted through the halls and Dr. Chambers stood still to let them pass before going on his way.
I had stopped paying attention to the bot for a bit too long because it jerked its arm up and smacked me right in the mouth, busting my lip open.
"DAMN!" I swore angrily, wrestling the android's arm down. "HOLD- STILL-!"
"Doctor, we are in need of your assistance immediately," an agent told me from the door.
"I'll be there in just a second," I managed over the bot's screaming.
I ended up having to shut it down, resetting all of the systems I had been trying to reboot, but I would just have to try again later.
Coppery blood leaked into my mouth and I hastily wiped my lips on my sleeve as I strode down the hallway to the same room that they had held Winter in before. I showed my clearance badge to the guards and they let me through the iron-barred door to where Winter was.
Winter was in fairly bad shape; several plates were gone from his bionic arm and his left eye was swollen shut and he was covered in cuts and big purple bruises.
"Frag went off when he was close to it," one of the other scientists, who I had learned was named Christopher, informed me. "He's riddled with shrapnel."
I tsked sympathetically and frowned.
His arm was no exception to the rest of him; bits of metal and glass were dug into the entire back facing portion of it. There was one large piece as big as my hand in his forearm.
"That must hurt?" I asked Winter. He regarded me out of the corner of his eye before looking straight ahead again.
It took a long time to dig out all of the shrapnel from deep inside of his arm and half an hour just to ease the biggest piece out without ruining the internal wiring. Christopher had, thankfully, given him painkillers, so he didn't feel anything we were doing to him. I talked to Winter sometimes, but he didn't reply, he would just study me for a few seconds before looking away.
"He's going to have to be kept out of cryo for a few days while his body recovers," I heard Christopher telling Pierce and I paused in my work.
What were they going to do with him for those days? Surely they weren't going to keep him locked up in here?
I worked longer than the medics did, they patched him up within an hour or so and left with most of the guards. One remained on the other side of the barred door and he told me to tell him if anything went wrong.
I felt a pang of unease; surely they knew that if he wanted to kill me he would before any of them could get in to stop him. I thought about what Dr. Chambers had said about his friend Keaton and the pang turned into a churning cauldron of alarm.
I kept working though, persuading all of the shrapnel from his arm. He must have thrown this metal arm up to protect himself from the blast, because it looked like it had taken the brunt of the damage.
I got up to get a set of pliers from the other side of the room and I threw my lab coat on the nearest table and scooped up a cold water bottle that Christopher had gotten for me and I took several big gulps of it.
I exhaled, thankful for the coolness on my scratchy throat, and I searched through the toolbox to find the right pliers that I needed.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Winter was watching me and I glanced at the water bottle next to me. He had to be thirsty, we had been sitting here for three hours…
I grabbed it and the pliers and walked back to Winter's side. I held out the water bottle to him and he eyed me suspiciously.
"Here," I implored him. "I can tell you're thirsty."
He didn't move, he just watched me, doubt etched into his face.
I glanced behind me outside of the bars. The guard wasn't paying attention.
"No one's watching," I told him, lowering my voice. "Or do you think I have cooties?"
He scowled at me and I grinned. Slowly, he reached out for the water bottle and I handed it to him.
I sat back down to peel the broken plating off the outside of the arm and he moved to unscrew the bottle. He downed it in three gulps and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
I gave him a half smile and he nodded slightly at me.
It took half an hour to replace all of the plating and I stood up to stretch and groaned a little, my sore back informing me that I had been craned over for far too long.
"I think I'm done fixing your arm," I told him, stretching on my toes. "I'll leave you be."
I went to go get my lab coat and head for the door when Winter said something, surprising me.
"Devushka," he said in a voice that was rough from lack of use.
I turned to look at him, eyebrows raised. "…Yes?"
He beckoned me back over to him with a jerk of his head and I felt worry gnaw my stomach.
I went back over to him though, curious. "Yes?"
"…That doctor isn't safe," he said gruffly, his eyes flickering from me to the door. "Be careful."
I blinked.
"Which one?" I asked.
"The one you came in with," he clipped.
My heart sped up. "What do you mean?"
He shook his head quickly. I pursed my lips in irritation.
"He said the same thing about you," I said in a low voice.
Winter scrutinized my face, seeming like something else was just on the tip of his tongue.
I watched him back for a minute, trying to read his face for what he meant, but I couldn't.
I bit at the skin of my thumb and nodded. "…Alright. I'll be careful."
He nodded solemnly and I turned to leave. "Do you need anything else before I go?" I asked in my normal volume.
Winter shook his head.
"…Okay. Goodnight, then."
I went about a month without seeing Winter again and I was content to work with the bots, as loud and raucous as they were, at least they didn't give me secretive advice that made me worry. I started working on a glider, intended for Winter to use. It would have an AI interface and a gun and shields for defense. Dr. Chambers approved of this, and he hovered over me while I worked on it, making suggestions.
I found myself heeding Winter's words and I was wary of Dr. Chambers. I didn't know what Winter had meant; he could have been thinking about someone else or maybe he was just paranoid, but I couldn't get his expression out of my head. Why had Chambers showed up at my house anyway?
I programmed Jaeger to have a security mode and I outfitted him with a high powered taser. This job was great, sure, but it was taking a toll on my nerves.
I chewed on my fingers a lot but didn't realize it until I looked down to see little smears of blood on whatever I was working on.
The next time I saw Winter he had just been woken up from Cryo to go on another mission. I did a ten minute check of his arm and then he was gone.
This mission only lasted for a few days and I was called in for damage repair. He was in a different room this time; one that wasn't as gloomy as the cage he was usually kept in.
Winter looked better off this time; minor scrapes and bruises, but he was coated in ash and he had broken the pinky finger on his bionic arm.
It was crushed and unsalvageable, and Dr. Chambers insisted that he would be the one to recreate the pinky, so I was left scrubbing his ash-caked metal arm.
They had him take a shower in the tiny bathroom that was attached to the room before they left, but that hardly seemed to cut through the grime on the metal.
"How'd this even happen?" I asked once everyone else had gone and he had dried off and gotten dressed. I figured the only way he was going to say anything to me was if no one else was around.
He watched me scrub for a minute. I didn't figure he'd answer, but I didn't mind much. I talked to the robots when I worked on them too and they weren't much for conversion either.
"You're bleeding," Winter said quietly.
I glanced down at my fingers where I had been biting at them again, noticing a spot of blood on the sleeve of my labcoat.
"It's nothing. I chew on my fingers when I'm thinking." I replied, shyly.
He frowned at me. "What do you think about that makes you so nervous, devushka?"
"I…" I stammered. You. Dr. Chambers. Pierce. "Well… work… mostly…"
Flustered under his hard stare, I got up to get a different wire brush from the table by the cracked-open door when something rolled into the room. It took me a millisecond to register what it was before I kicked it out of the room and into the hallway.
I stumbled away from the door and I didn't have time to shout 'grenade' before Winter yanked me to the supply closet and threw me in.
The bomb went off before he could get in and he was thrown into me and the blast knocked the entire reinforced closet over.
Something heavy landed on top of us, trapping us in the little box.
I closed my eyes, expecting to be crushed, but after a minute I realized that the only thing that had landed on me was Winter.
I opened my eyes but I couldn't see anything and I smelled smoke.
Panic gripped me and I moved my leg and I kneed Winter and I heard him groan.
"Watch your knees, devushka," he grunted.
"We're trapped," I hissed. "We need to get out of here, the fire –"
"I know," Winter cut me off.
Smoke was steadily seeping into the box and I pulled my shirt over my mouth.
Winter placed his fist on the side of the box with a dull thunk.
"When I open this, you have to get out and run," Winter told me.
"Run where?" I hissed, my heart pounding in my chest.
"Just run," he replied.
His metal fist went straight through the side of the box and smoke immediately poured in. He wretched a hole in the metal and squeezed through and I scrambled out after him.
I couldn't see anything; there was too much smoke and I felt like I had walked into a furnace. I was blind, I couldn't breathe, I was in hell. Something grabbed my hand and I recognized that it was Winter and he pulled me through the smoke. I ran after him blindly, praying that he knew where he was going, but even if he did we were underground…
I stepped on something weak and it crumbled underneath me and my leg went into a hole full of ashes and fire. I screamed, trying to pull myself out, but there was metal dug into my leg, trapping me.
I looked wildly around me but there was nothing, just fire and smoke.
"WINTER!" I screamed, not knowing what else to do. "WINTER PLEASE –!"
That's all I got out before I started to cough violently, the smoke and ash invading my lungs. The pain burning my leg was unbearable and lurching made it worse. I couldn't get a breath of air enough to cough as the fire raged around me. I heard metal grinding together somewhere in the smoke.
Something landed beside me and I felt a strong arm wrench the metal away from my leg and I was lifted out of the embers. I could just see Winter's face as he glanced at me to see if I was alright before he started running with me, carrying me, and I clung onto him with everything that I had. I felt like he was hauling me up a ladder of some kind, but my head was so foggy from the smoke and the pain that I didn't care. All I knew was that I wasn't going to die.
Clean air hit me like an icy river and I gasped and coughed.
Winter had climbed out of some emergency exit and we were on the edge of the man-made ponds that surrounded the buildings. Winter put me down on the concrete next to the water's perimeter and I collapsed over, trying to suck in as much fresh air as I could.
Winter touched my leg and I gasped in pain. Winter said something to me, but I couldn't hear him. I heard other voices too, but all I knew was that I wasn't dead and I just wanted to sleep.
Something was put over my face which gave me a rush of dizzyingly clean air and I gulped it in gratefully. I was lifted up and placed on something softer than the concrete. I slit one eye open and I saw Winter's face, hard and unreadable, before I was hauled off.
I recovered in the SHIELD hospital for several days; thankfully my lungs weren't damaged but my right calf suffered some bad burns, severe enough that I needed a skin graft. Luckily my actual foot had been spared, so I would still be able to walk. A metal bar had punctured my calf as well, but it had just barely pierced my leg and some stitches had fixed it. I was told that the bomb had been an attempt on Winter's life and that Winter survived it and that was about it.
I was discharged after about a week and I was told to stay off of my leg as much as possible. I was given a leave of absence for another week at home. I did a lot of watching crime shows on tv and nodding off into dizzy sleep without realizing it. I was glad that I had given Jaeger care taking abilities, because I had medicine-light bones and I couldn't remember to feed myself. I was going to have to keep a bandage on the skin graft for several months to keep it in place. Just one more thing to worry about.
I faintly thought about Winter a lot through my haze. He hadn't been obligated to help me; it was likely that he had very few rescue missions, if any at all, so it wasn't instinct. Why had he…?
After two and a half weeks I was back at SHIELD. Fifteen agents had been killed in the explosion, no one that I knew well, but it was still jarring. Further investigation uncovered that the explosion was just aimed at SHIELD, not at Winter or even HYDRA. Winter was still moved somewhere else for safety; still inside of SHIELD HQ, but the building itself was massive, especially the underground portion. The new location was a mile away from the old one, closer to the surface.
Dr. Chambers was pleased to have me back; I could tell by the way he didn't snap at me about anything for a whole day.
I was left to work on my bots and my glider again. I wasn't told anything about what had happened with the bomb, I didn't really care anyway. I was as happy as I could be to just tinker with my bots. Jaeger told me that I looked sad a lot.
One of my friends that didn't work with me noticed that I was off-color too. She was a museum curator at the Smithsonian named Isabel Blanca. Isabel was taller than me with dark brown skin, thick round glasses, and beautiful curly black hair. She made a point to take me out to lunch a few times and to text me often to see how I was. I adored her for it, it felt good to have someone that cared about me. I sorely wished that I could confide in her about Winter, but I knew I could never do that. I couldn't even babble to Jaeger about him because it could repeat what I told it.
A week after I got back into my routine I was called to go check on Winter. This was apparently a very important mission, because Winter was actually fed a good amount and Pierce told me to open up his arm and check absolutely everything to be sure that Winter was at the peak of his abilities.
I tweaked a few very minor things while other doctors fussed over him for a few hours and then Winter was gone again. I had noticed that he looked at me more often and his gaze lingered for longer which made my stomach feel fluttery. I tried to squash these feelings, not wanting to be seen as a love-sick teenager. Besides, I was at work.
I got off after Winter left and I went to go get coffee with Isabel at one of her favorite places downtown.
I was addicted to coffee and all of the sugar, cream, and ice that went into it so I was more than happy to gulp down a large, sugary, mocha frappe while Isabel told me about the exhibit she was working on. She had already made sure that I was comfortable and that my leg was propped up and she asked me several times if I was sure that the sun wasn't too hot. I inwardly enjoyed being worried over, it made me feel cared for.
Isabel was looking at me strangely, a knowing sort of smirk on her face.
"What?" I asked. "I'm listening."
"I don't think you are," Isabel laughed.
"Yes I was," I protested, smirking. "You were talking about the upcoming surrealist sculpture exhibit."
"Mmhm," Isabel giggled, sipping her latte. "So have you met anyone interesting at work lately?"
"No," I said, a little bit too quickly, and Isabel's grin widened.
"Miss Martin really?" Isabel cackled. "I haven't seen you look so lovesick since that time Captain Rogers accidentally elbowed you in the face."
I felt my ears burn and I took a large sip of my coffee and I sucked up a big chunk of ice and coughed on it.
Isabel just grinned at me while I regained my composure and I frowned in an attempt to stop giggling.
Isabel leaned slightly over the table and moved to put her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands.
"So what's he like?" she asked, her wide, all-knowing smile still plastered across her face.
Uh.
"...Quiet. Tall."
"What's his name?"
Uh.
"His name is Johnny," I said, blurting out the first name that came to me.
"What's he look like?"
"Well. He's taller than me by like half a foot. He has long messy brown hair that's always in his face. He doesn't talk a lot."
All very true.
"Huh. Is he a scientist or an agent?"
"He's not a scientist, he's -"
I stopped talking and Isabel and I both glanced at the road. Gunfire was heard distantly and a bullet ridden SUV came tearing down the street.
"Oh my goodness, what's –" Isabel started but I grabbed her arm and she fell silent.
There, right in front of our café in the middle of the street, sunlight glistening off of his bionic arm, was Winter. He had a mask covering his mouth and his nose and goggles on his eyes so it was impossible to see his face. He had a large bomb launcher in his hands and I realized that he was aiming it at the black SUV…
"ISABEL, GET DOWN!" I screamed, yanking her into the coffee shop and throwing her to the ground.
It sounded like a train hitting a car at full speed outside, metal screaming and crunching, and people in the shop cried out in fear.
I scrambled to my feet and looked out of the window. The SUV had flipped over and skidded a block away and it was throwing black smoke into the air. I craned my neck to see Winter stalk up to the car and wretch the entire car door off and throw it behind him. I expected to see him yank someone out and put a bullet through their head, but he knelt down to inspect the car and it seemed like his target was gone.
Winter glanced up and around at the people panicking and watching him curiously and he shot a few rounds into the air to make them scatter and he bolted into a nearby alley.
"What's happening?" Isabel hissed, hiding under the window.
"I – this guy blew up a car –" I stuttered, trying to sound appropriately shocked. "I – I don't think anyone died though. He shot into the air and now he's gone."
Isabel peered over the windowsill. The café patrons were gathering around the window to see what was going on. I heard sirens distantly.
"Let's go," I whispered and I pulled Isabel up.
We quickly left and I walked Isabel to her apartment that was close by.
"You should probably stay inside for tonight, Izz," I told her, watching a cop car blaze past.
"Do you wanna just stay here, or will you be okay getting home?" she worried.
"I'll be okay," I assured her.
She insisted that I text her to let her know that I got home safely, and I promised that I would.
I walked quickly down the street in the dying sunlight and hailed a cab.
I shut the curtains tightly when I got home, and I sighed. I hoped Winter was careful, whatever he was doing.