July, 1943. Northern Italy.

Crack. Thwip. Ping.

The men laughed as Reynolds missed the can again. He ground his teeth, adjusted his feet in the dry grass, and levelled his arm once more to point his pistol at the row of cans the men had lined up. With a frustrated huff, he pulled the trigger again only to miss the target once more.

"Aw, don't take it personally," one man called. "I'm sure the Nazis appreciate your aim."

Laughter erupted through the ranks and Reynolds angrily lifted his arm once more. He prepared to fire when the whole crowd suddenly fell silent.

The men parted to reveal a scene of nightmares. Bright red blood dripped down the woman's face, trailing down from her hair, against her cheeks, and along the smooth skin of her neck. She slowly stepped forward, her boots depositing droplets of russet iron along the dead grass. The woman walked right up to him and snatched the pistol out of his hand.

She smoothly reached into a pouch on her belt and added pullets to the gun before cocking it into place and leveling it with the cans. One after another, her shots perfectly popped a can off of the line until none remained. The woman pulled apart his pistol and tossed it onto the ground.

"Next time, don't bother wasting ammo," she spat.

"Agent Kennedy!" Colonel Phillips boomed. "Stop terrorizing them and get in here. Mission report."

Ada breezed past the American soldiers and headed for the tent, stripping off her blood soaked gloves as she walked. As she joined Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter, Ada felt her skin prickle with the familiar sensation of being watched. She turned her head just slightly and locked eyes with someone she never expected.

Bucky Barnes, her husband's best friend.

"Kennedy!" Phillips barked. She straightened her back and masked her face once more with an air of disinterest as she followed him into the tent.

He found her an hour later on the outskirts of camp next to a river. Ada yanked her head out from the icy depths of the river and immediately whirled on him, a knife in her hand that had been strapped inside her stockings. Her eyes flickered to his hands, his face, and then behind him before finally setting the blade back down in the grass. Her blouse was partly unbuttoned and stained with rivulets of bloody water, but she paid no mind to propriety.

"What do you want?" she asked sharply, the thin hints of an accent clinging to her words.

"What do I want?" he repeated incredulously. "I want an answer! What the hell are you doing here and why are you covered in blood? The last I checked, your nursing corps was in the UK!"

"England," she corrected. "There's a large difference there."

"I don't give two shits about England or the UK. I give a shit about why you're sitting here with a knife acting as if this is just a normal day for you!"

"Well, it is fairly nice out, so I'd say it's pretty normal," she replied dryly.

Bucky threw his hands in the air in exasperation. "Fine, if you're not going to give me any answers, I'll just go ask the Lieutenants as to why a woman is in camp."

"You can ask but they will not answer. They have no answer for you because they don't know." She wrung her hair out and ran her fingers through it, seemingly satisfied with the amount of blood she had removed from the usual blonde. "In fact, you are not supposed to know that I exist not to mention standing here in front of you."

"Will you stop giving me riddles and tell me why the hell you're here?"

Ada sighed and buttoned her top before sliding the knife back against her thigh under her skirt. She shook out her head to let her soaking hair have an opportunity to fall somewhat normally. Reaching down, she grabbed a rifle that had been hidden in the grass and slung it across her back.

Any sniper would know that rifle.

"That's Soviet," he pointed out.

"Good eye," she drawled out. "You should become a Pinkerton."

"Should I even bother asking you where you got a Soviet rifle or are you just going to give me a rendition of Romeo and Juliet in the form of a rhetorical question?"

"That was a question." He spun on his heel to follow her up the small hill back to camp. "And I got it in Soviet Russia."

"Going to need a little more information than that so I can write home to Steve and let him know what you've been up to."

Ada whirled around, her green eyes flaring with an icy fire that burned straight through any humor he had left. In all his time knowing Ada, he had never seen her look at anyone with such pure rage.

"If you speak a word of this to anyone, I will kill you. I will not want to do it, but I will be forced to kill you. That will certainly put a damper on our friendship, I'm afraid, but it is my orders to put down anyone who breathes a word of me." Each word was punctuated by a step forward until his back slammed against a tree. "Heed this warning, Barnes, because I really don't want to slit your throat."

"Something tells me you're not joking," he admitted weakly. Her eyebrow simply raised in response. Bucky swallowed past the fear creeping up in his throat and nodded at her. She finally relented in her pursuit and stepped back to give him room to breathe.

"You're all young and new to this. You don't know what you're about to see. You don't know what war is like," she scoffed. "You got a few months of training before you were shipped overseas and now you're here, thinking you can defeat Hitler yourselves."

"And you're not new to this?" he shot back.

She swung the rifle off her back and settled it in her hands, her eyes never leaving the polished wood under her fingers. Her lips curled back into a sneer and she shook her head, a harsh and grating chuckle ripping out of her lungs and strangling her throat.

"You remember when I left," Ada spat. "You were there when we said goodbye. I told you I was going to be a nurse in Britain. I'm not a nurse, not a soldier, not a spy. I am everything and nothing at the same time. I am a ghost, Bucky, and I will remain so when this war ends."

"You're not making any sense!"

"Agent Kennedy!" Agent Carter shouted in the distance. Ada stepped backwards just so and gestured with her head behind her.

"That's my call. The 107th is being dispatched to Azzano in the morning. If you make it out alive, I'll explain everything, but you have to promise me you won't write Steve. I swear to you that I will explain."

"I'm holding you to that," he said tightly. "Where are you going?"

"Berlin," she answered calmly. "I'll meet you all in Azzano."

"How long?"

"A week at most."

"One day over and I'm sending a letter in the first post."

"Deal."

And when the 107th was captured three days later, all that remained from Bucky Barnes was a half-written letter tucked under the pillow of his cot. It would never reach its intended recipient.