A/N: This update was initially supposed to be one chapter, but I felt like it was too long. I split it into two parts and gave you both to make up for my delay on posting them. I hope you like them. Please enjoy. On a side note, I once again will say that I'm trying to keep this close to the MCU movies (2008-2016), but there are a few minor things that are different such as Natasha's age. My fic will likely not include any spoilers and material post Civil War.

I updated the warnings. Feel free to read through them back on Chapter 1.

Thank you, readers and reviewers. Please enjoy Chapters 19 and 20! Let me know what you think.


Chapter 19: One Time in Kabul

Iranian Desert,

Two hours north of Zabol

Behzad's puff of cigarette smoke disappears in the desert wind. He takes another drag then flicks the fag to the ground and stomping it out. There's a shift in the air. They've finally come. Three cloaked figures drop from the sky, landing elegantly on the dusty earth. One of them is a woman, and Behzad removes the sneer from his face when seeing her face. His breath catches at her beauty. She's the first to shuffle towards him, a boldness in her step, greeting him with a dip of her chin and covering all but her eyes with a makeshift hijab made from black lace.

At least she's respectful.

"Show me the bodies," she demands in Persian, her accent of Eastern Europe, and Behzad internally questions how she got wind of the case. He could ask, but she is an Unspeakable, he knows she won't answer truthfully if at all when he's just a lowly Auror calling in favors.

He gestures for her to follow and they walk several feet until they reach the shallow grave belonging to four unidentified men. And that's what they are. Just men. Magicless men.

"The Avada was not used," she surmises, pulling out her wand from her cloak, "on any of them. Extraordinary. You still stand by your assumption in cause of death."

"I was unable to determine any single spell," Behzad reveals. "The closest I could trace it was to a Cruciatus and oddly enough, Legilimency This is crude magic but far from elementary. The scale of power is unlike anything I've ever encountered. So large, it could not help but be brought to my ministry's attention." He drops his voice. "I'm not even sure a wand was used."

"Legilimens," the woman whispers, dark eyes transfixed on the bodies.

"I've been in contact with other ministries. There were similar episodes, such as these men here, a few years ago. Afghanistan and Pakistan, mostly. A case in Kuwait, as well." Behzad pulls out the broken trinket he found in the shallow grave with the men. "Another thing. I found this. I doubt it'll give us much more information. I can't tell if it's a calling card or was mistakenly left behind by the murderer."

The woman takes the bracelet from, bringing the broke clasp closer to her gaze. Her thumbs and fingers skim over the metal.

"The alloy is surprisingly substantial. To the untrained eye, it seems to be a cheap trinket." With all the strength in her fingers, she snaps the band and reveals thin, shoddy wiring. Her fingernails pick at one of the strings.

"What is it?" he asks.

"Apologies. My knowledge of nonmagical technology is dated." She looks over her shoulder at the two men who she came with and says, "Poleski, what can you tell me about this?" though he doesn't understand.

Behzad casts a Translation Charm, watching the man take the bracelet, bringing it close to his bespectacled eyes.

"Interesting."

"What?" asks the woman

"Fine craftsmanship. Details are incredibly precise. For what, remains to be seen. I'd have to take it back to the lab to find out more, but…" He arches his brows. "I'm fairly certain this is government tech. Intelligence grade." He frowns. "If this belongs to our murderer, why would he have it?"

"She."

"Pardon?"

"She," repeats the woman, eye glittering in the glow of her wand as she crouches down and waves at the tire tracks of a vehicle. She flicks her wand and the gusty trail glides over the tracks, disappearing into the east. "Woman's intuition."

"Not this nonsense again, Soo-jin," says the second man, coming up beside Poleski and removing his glasses, cleaning them with the material of his cloak. He gestures with his chin at the ignited pathway. "I wonder where it leads."

"To the murderer, I gather, Mikhail," quips Poleski.

"I meant," he slips on his glasses, "where does it end? If she hopped the border, we have to contact the Afghani ministry."

The woman disappears with a pop and then reappears several moments later. "The spell stretched far cross the border. She's likely hundreds of miles away by now." Her eyes narrow at the east. "Where is the suspect going?"

The four of them sense a shift in the air and turn to where the three landed. Two cloaked figures, a man and a woman, hit the ground. Behzad grimaces but is in higher spirits, nonetheless. He just wishes the Brits and French would've dropped in first instead of the Russians.

"Soo-jin," calls Unspeakable Nott from his land spot, "always a pleasure. Poleski. Jankiv. Behzad." He rushes past the three Russians to shake Behzad's hand. "Are there anymore coming?"

"I alerted my neighboring ministries and America. I got no response, but I'm hopeful. This is not the first time we've encountered a situation like this. For an eighteen-month streak, our intelligence community were beside themselves with frustration trying to track down the suspect. Our liaison played hot potato on who the case really belonged to because the bodies were victims of magic and nonmagical chaos.

"At first, we considered we were dealing with a psychologically unhinged Obscura. Given the delicate government systems here and aggressively conservative traditions in the nonmagical community, the Middle East produces quite a few. Obscuras are typically formed by—"

"Children," interjects Soo-jin. "And this is no child."

Nott arches his brows, smirking. "Are you in on something we ought to know about, Soo-jin?"

"I became an Unspeakable after these events here in the Middle East," reveals Soo-jin, "but I heard about them and call me intrigued. I started searching elsewhere for similar cases around the world. It hasn't just happened here. Between 1998 and 2001, multiple cases of magic-tainted bodies surfaced for no rhyme or reason. Almost all the cases have been brushed under the rug and dubbed hate-crimes, but most of these victims aren't your every-day nonmagicals. They're influential people. Powerful and political and important to their governments."

"You're implying…" Nott hesitates, his eyes wide.

"Nonmagical intelligence has gotten their hands on some of us for exploitation purposes."

"That's absurd," remarks the woman who came with Unspeakable Nott. Her accent is French and like Soo-jin, her face his half-covered with a makeshift hijab made of fine silk, though her eyes are a deep, mesmerizing blue. Those eyes look at the four dead men in pity. "But even if it's possible, why these men? They are nobody."

"They had something she needed. I'm guessing a vehicle," remarks Soo-jin.

"Why not just take it and leave them alive?" she counters.

Soo-jin opens her mouth and then hastily snaps it shut, and Nott catches her. He narrows his eyes and imagines she knows more than she's willing to tell. But isn't that how it's always been with Soo-jin? She'll give a good show by displaying her intelligence but only up to a point. Sometimes knowing too much can be incriminating.

Whether she was going to say anymore or not, Nott must chime in his own two knuts for why the suspect killed the men. "Dead men tell no tales."

"There are a dozen spells to keep someone from revealing anything," pitches Poleski. "The suspect goes for a mashed-up Unforgiveable that is not typically used to kill but to inflict an ungodly kind of pain. I see no reason why they had to be tortured."

"I don't believe they were," says Behzad. "They likely felt pain akin to a Crucio, but it was short-lived. The suspect penetrated their minds, or more accurately, the anatomy of their brain and burst the cells and capillaries. They experienced hundreds of mini strokes and aneurysms in the space of a minute but likely died by second three."

From the corner of his eye, Nott sees Soo-jin touch her forehead, her eyes haunted.


Afghanistan

The border is two hours behind them, and they haven't spoken a word to each other since. Hermione's got the driver's side window down, the cool air keeping her alert and dirty as hell. The road beneath the tires is unpaved and parched, and each dip sends up a bloom of dust.

It's not like she wants to be pretty for her arrival in and certainly not for the present company. But if Hermione had more time, she'd stop at the safehouse in Herat and clean up, but she's got eight hours left to reach the compound. It'll take about that long of straight driving to just get there. The stop in Herat will be brief.

One hand on the wheel, Hermione delves her hand into the backpack perched between them and pulls out a bag of beef jerky, tearing the plastic open with her teeth and shoving a few strips into her mouth.

The Soldier's rests his gaze on her.

Or rather the bag of jerky.

Mid-chew, Hermione glances over at him, contemplating the last time he ate. She eyes his pants with the flattened pouches and closed zippers and tries to picture his handlers stuffing them full of snacks and decides they don't. The man's clearly not a starving, rotted corpse, and she assumes he gets fed and fluids after completed missions pre cryo-freeze.

His mission is far from over, and he's got to be famished. His metabolism has got to be as fast if not faster than hers given his male biology.

"Here." She offers the bag to him. "Eat."

He stares blankly at her face and then at the bag, his metal hand creeping towards the opening and then hastily snatching one and shoving it into his mouth. She snorts and puts the bag down close to him. The trigger-happy bastard is going to show modesty, is he?

"I can't have you passing out." She extracts the canteen from her pack and hears the water slosh against the empty spaces inside, so she goes for the spare water bottle and sets it beside his hip.

He plows into the jerky ravenously, and she dulls her hunger pangs with a chocolate covered granola bar. The Soldier sniffs.

"Is that…chocolate?"

She sighs and gets another one out and hands it to him. He tears open the wrapper and chomps down before whispering a baffled, "Oh, my God."

"Do they feed you? Your handlers."

He's quiet, and she looks over at him. He's staring at the window, his mouth working the cheap, sugar-infested snack.

"I don't know," he says finally.

On a logical level, she knows they do but not often, she guesses, and he's probably locked up in cryo-freeze long enough to not lose any muscle-mass or be clinically malnourished.

It's not right they don't take care of him in the way he deserves. He's served HYDRA well these past sixty years for Christ's sake.

She clenches her fingers around the steering wheel, hating how she feels bad for him enough to consider putting him out of his goddamned misery. If she didn't need his help, she'd pull the car over and shoot him point blank in his pretty face and be done with it.

She'd let him finish the bar first. She's not that barbaric.

He finishes the granola bar and the bag of jerky and then downs the bottle of water. In Hermione's peripheral, she studies the way he licks his wet lips afterwards and how they have a natural sort of pout about them. With each passing minute, the resolute hardness he's conditioned to project melts away. His blue eyes are even starting to glaze and pink. A full belly, no immediate threat in sight, and knowledge his target is far away takes its toll.

He's exhausted.

The Soldier fights his tiredness for the next hour and then his body and mind give away. His head drops, and he slumps against the door.

He's out for the count, even sleeping through the brief stop in Herat where she stocks up on food, water, gasoline cans, and clothing they may need. The time, quietness, and the lone dirt path ahead of her gives her the opportunity to hash out a plan for when she arrives at the compound, but the truth is, she has no fucking idea what she's walking into. For all she knows, the moment she steps a toe on Amdaal's property, a firing squad's there.

Seriously? Why wouldn't he kill her that soon? If he's smart, that's exactly what he'll do, and she needs to be prepared for that.

In a perfect world, it's possible Amdaal wants to make her suffer. If he so much as stalls for second in killing her, the more likely Natalia will make it out alive and Cruz-Gesenko won't.

When the Soldier wakes, it's dawn, and he violently twists about in his seatbelt, the Halo tech knife he stole from her in hand. He glowers at the nothingness that is the desert.

"Hey, now," she says to him. "It's okay. You're okay."

He stares in bewilderment, like he has no idea who she is, where they are, and how he got in the Humvee. She eases up on the gas. "Solider, tell me your mission."

He blinks at her. "You," he says, brow furrowed.

"Tell me your mission," she repeats.

"You're KGB."

"No." She hits the steering wheel. "I'm HYDRA, you incompetent monkey."

The corner of his mouth twitches and then he says, "I know."

Hermione lets up on the gas even more, gawking at him. Is he…playing with her?

"You ass." She shakes her head, flabbergasted. Stunned. He's been out of cryo-freeze for close to a week. The Winter Soldier doesn't jest or tease. He doesn't know how. James Buchanan Barnes probably does. She bites her lip. There's a way to fix this. To temporarily reset his conditioning. She saw it once after she invaded his mind several years ago. When she dove into his memories out of self-preservation and accidentally brought Barnes to the surface. He'd been dragged to The Chair and Ms. Bērziņš threw trigger words at him. What were they?

Hermione hadn't been paying much attention. She spoke to Baron for a while and then went for a smoke.

If only she could analyze her own memories the way she does to others.

Actually…she's never tried to.

"You need to use the bathroom?" she asks him.

A revelatory expression befalls his face. "Yes."

She pulls over, and he gets out of the Humvee and walks a few feet, turning to face her as he lowers his trousers and handles himself to urinate. He's not going to put his back to her like a gentleman, but Hermione pays him no mind. She's seen penises before. Even peeing ones. She rests her elbow on the steering wheel and pinches her temples using her middle finger and thumb. Filing through the memories around the time she left the Red Room, she focuses on when she officially met the Winter Soldier and fought with him. She fast-forwards to the second time they fought and to the events took place following.

Her breath catches because it's like she's there. Like really there, it seems like. There's a cold, damp draft coming from the vent above her, and she smells Baron's expensive cologne. She's standing over the railing— listening to his reprimand—of the facility in Sokovia. Ms. Bērziņš is down below with a number of guards on standby. The Solider screams in The Chair. With Baron's speaking, the shocks coming from The Chair, and the Soldier's screams; Hermione barely makes out the woman's words.

Желание.

Ржавый.

Семнадцать.

Рассвет.

Печь.

Девять.

Добросердечный.

Возвращение на родину.

Один.

рузовой вагон

The Winter Soldier bristles and then relaxes. "Ready to comply," he says, his voice gravely and strained.

The slamming of the passenger door jolts her back to the present, and the Soldier straps himself in with the seatbelt.

"Something wrong?" he asks.

"My head hurts. I'm fine." She takes a swig from her canteen and debating whether The Chair is necessary for the reset or if she just starts firing off the trigger words, he'll roll over and show his belly.

"I can drive."

A sharp, strangled laugh leaves her mouth as she fires up the car. "I don't think so."

"I'm a good driver."

"Oh, yeah? When's the last time you drove anything?" It was supposed to be a harmless jab, but from the stricken, faraway look on his face, he must be thinking too hard and too far back.

Several minutes go by, and she hopes he's moved on from the question, but he finally says, "It wasn't a car. I was on motorcycle. I usually don't drive. I don't need to. My target is never far from me."

She gears the car back on the dusty road. "Lucky you. Not all of us are so blessed."

He stares out the window, his face pensive and then he jerks his head in her direction. "He thought he knew me."

"Your...target?"

"He called me Sargent…" His lips mouth words, like he's testing what he thinks he remembers before he says anything.

"He meant soldier, I'm sure. Hey, are you hungry? There's Ritz and Oreos in the pack. Raided a safehouse—"

"Barnes," he interjects. "Sargent Barnes."

Hermione pointedly looks at the road, pursing her lips. "You know," she starts, nodding gently, "before we reach Kabul, I'm thinking we're going to change cars and ditch this one."

"That's smart," he alleges.

"I'd love to have another military vehicle, but it'll draw too much attention when we start hitting the towns."

"You being in the driver's side of anything will get you pulled over in this country. At some point, I will have to take over."

"At some point, we can't look like us," she counters. "I picked up a few garments at the safehouse in Herat."

"You stopped? We have a mission A timed one, according to you. We're already cutting pretty close."

He's right. Going eighty to ninety miles per hour has set them for arriving to Amdaal's property maybe thirty minutes before Hermione's forty-eight hours are up.

"There's no way we can reach Cruz-Gesenko and not get flagged by police in this car and looking the way we do. They'd never believe for a second we were U.S. military, either."

"But I am U.S. military—"

Hermione slams on the brakes, kills the engine, and leaps on him, wrapping her hands around his neck and putting her knee into the curved crevice of his ribcage.

She slams the back of his skull against the window, cracking it. "You are the Winter Soldier! You belong to HYDRA! You need to lock Sargent Barnes away because he will ruin your mission. He'll stop you from killing Cruz-Gesenko. You will fail if you indulge this side of you, and HYDRA doesn't keep around failures. Amdaal will kill Natalia, and I can't…" She lets out a shaky breath. "I can't let that happen. Because your mission isn't just killing Cruz-Gesenko. You have to save her, understand? I'm ninety percent certain I'm not getting out of this one. I was going to try and relieve you of all this afterwards, but I can't. There's no after for me."

He writhes and kicks and struggles beneath her, but every muscle in her body is clenched and pressing against him, trapping him.

"Желание," she begins in a whisper.

"Nnnnn," he tries.

"Ржавый. Семнадцать. Рассвет. Печь. Девять. Добросердечный. Возвращение на родину. Один. Pузовой вагон."

He fights and struggles and squirms until she finishes and like flipping over a card, his eyes are empty and his features sharp and alert. Hermione can't think of a time she's felt more disgusted with herself.

"Ready to comply," he says.


They arrive to Kabul in a late 90s, dented Corolla wearing burkas. Doing the reset has made the Solider quiet, and he doesn't speak unless spoken to. He wouldn't eat, either, belaying he couldn't "partake" until his target was eliminated. He did accept a small amount of water in the six hours but never enough to inconvenience himself and her for a bathroom break. He didn't even flinch when she chowed down her sandwich or show any interest when she tore open a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, making the car smell like salty, tangy salvation.

As far as last meals go, Hermione knows she could've done worse, and she's disappointed she'll never get to have that burger with Coulson. She lets out a bedraggled sigh and kills the engine two miles from Amdaal's compound, and the Soldier whips out his gun and points it at her face, flicking off the safety.

"Why did you stop?" he barks in Russian.

She opens her laptop to get an update on satellite imagery of Amdaal's property. There are more security guards than there had been ten hours ago when she checked at the safehouse but that's expected. Hermione zooms in further, hoping to catch something—anything—that could indicate Natalia or Cruz-Gesenko weren't already dead. Nothing.

"Because I'm ninety percent positive I'm going to die in the next twenty minutes, so I think I deserve one of those to gather my bearings and reflect on my life." She snaps the computer shut and glares out her windshield and hating she must die here. It's not even a now thing. She doesn't want to die here in Kabul. She hates it here. It's the worst place. She'd rather suffer a bullet, blind folded and crouched on a studio floor in the Red Room.

"Romanoff," begins the Soldier as he lowers his gun, tearing Hermione out of her thoughts. "She's your friend."

"Yes," she eventually replies.

"She's like a sister. You'd die for her."

"We've known each other since we very young." Barnes must be weaseling his way back to the surface. She looks at her watch.

How timely of him.

"You've fought alongside her," he assumes.

"Once upon a time, yes."

He blinks a few times, and he looks perplexed. "She's not HYDRA."

"No."

He's quiet for a moment and then says, "I think we've been together since Zabol, but I don't remember all of it. Did you ever tell me your name?"

She snorts, shaking her head no. "You never asked. You're not supposed to."

"Yes, agent." He snaps his attention to what's outside his window.

"Milas," Hermione relents. She's told him her name before. "My name is Milas."

The Soldier frowns. "It's not really that, is it?"

He doesn't wait for answer but pockets her knife and grabs his precious HK 416. He cranks open the door, slamming it shut and taking off in a sprint. Hermione stares at the empty passenger seat where he'd been a second ago and then whips her head around to try and find him. He's gone.