tw: torture and graphic discussion of scars—i tried not to write it in a way that would be triggering or excessively disturbing but please be careful! and as always, if you're concerned, feel free to comment or message me and i am happy to answer questions or send you an edited version of the chapter that would be easier for you to read. thank you everyone and take care 3
Chapter Seven: Saints and Martyrs
"All the people I could be are dangerous." -Fatimah Asghar
Somewhere in Russia - DATE UNKNOWN
When Audrey woke up, she had no idea how long it had been.
At first, she thought it was a hospital. An IV was in her arm. She'd been stripped and put into a powder blue gown. But the heavy metal plate across her chest that bound her to the chair she was in suggested otherwise.
Following the IV tube up to the bag it connected to, Audrey realized she wasn't receiving fluids—she was having her blood drawn.
"Look who's awake!"
Audrey attempted to crane her head to the side, but shooting pain ran up her back and blue spots swelled across her field of vision. A hand clamped onto her shoulder and she jumped.
"Don't be afraid, baby, it's all okay."
A doctor—she assumed—in a white coat circled around her chair. He slid his hand up to her cheek and leaned in so his face was mere inches from her. Gross. Audrey scowled and tried to move her face away from his.
"Don't call me baby."
"Fair," he laughed, standing up straight. "It's far from accurate. You have been quite a brat to capture, though."
"Brat?" Audrey recalled reading the same word in her file.
"The Soldier had to do a lot of work to bring you in. You and the little spider took out fifteen members of our security team."
The image of the guard she'd shot—his head flying back before he crumpled—rushed back to her mind. Thinking about it made her want to throw up—she had never killed before, not until the night at the warehouse, and she didn't even know how many lives she'd ended then. You had no choice, she told herself, but even as she tried to convince herself, she wasn't so sure.
"Your father must be so proud of you."
She held her tongue.
"Your father—the nuisance who will not stay dead. Your mother—always one step ahead. And you—their little killing machine."
When she tried to squeeze her eyes shut, the doctor backhanded her across the face. "What do you want from me?"
"I just want to talk. Check up on some things."
"Like the knife wound you put in my side?"
"Mmm...among others."
"Fine. Let's talk. Who's the man with the metal arm?"
He laughed. "Your sass is entertaining."
For the circumstances, Audrey thought she was handling the whole thing fairly well. She was terrified, yes, but it all felt so hopeless that she didn't know what she could possibly worry about. There was no plan she could hatch. There was nobody she could call for help. There was just her and this doctor.
"Зимний солдат."
"Where's he from?"
"That's a secret. I'd be happy to trade though, if you want to offer up one of your own."
Audrey pursed her lips, thinking about her training. When she'd first begun working with S.H.I.E.L.D., they had trained her on how to respond to torture—which is to say, Fury had a senior agent kidnap her and strap her to a table and punch her repeatedly. There hadn't been much he'd been able to get out of her with that alone; she was much stronger than him and while, yeah, it hurt like a bitch, his knuckles had been bruised longer than her face had been.
"Care to share?" the doctor prodded again.
Audrey remained silent.
"Very well," he said, selecting two items from his table and bringing it closer to Audrey. When he reached her, she realized he held a knife in one hand, and a blindfold in the other. "Let's begin."
Hours had passed, but they felt like weeks. Audrey had broken down crying more times than she could count. After an eternity, he'd removed the blindfold, but it wasn't as though the cinderblock walls of the room gave any indication to where she was or what time of day it was. Nobody was coming to rescue her.
It was pathetic, and she felt pathetic as she thought it, but Audrey wanted her mother. She wanted to say goodbye. Were they going to keep her here, hanging on the edge of death? Or would they kill her when they realized she wasn't going to give anything up? No funeral; no last words to the father she'd just gotten back.
They asked about Peggy first. Her early missions with S.H.I.E.L.D. If Audrey had ever heard of a friend named Dottie Underwood. Who Peggy had worked with during the Cold War. When Audrey's first mission had been. There were questions about little things, too—what did she remember about Howard and Maria Stark? Who had been her babysitter when she was younger?
When that hadn't worked, they asked her about Natasha. How had they known they could trust her? Whose idea was it to recruit her instead of killing her? Who had she killed for S.H.I.E.L.D.?
Tac Team Q had been on their list too, but the doctor had only begun asking about Caroline when there was a knock at the door. Audrey slumped back in her chair, exhausted, ears ringing from the pain.
He stepped away from her, removing his bloodied gloves and throwing them into the trash bin before he opened the door.
"Oh good, you're here."
"Happy to see you too, Zack," the woman replied. She was old—really old. In her eighties at least, but she carried herself as though she wasn't aware of the fact. Her silver hair was held back in a neat bun and she stood up straight.
Audrey wrinkled her nose. Zack? Her torturer was named Zack? It wasn't the worst thing she had encountered so far in this multi-day nightmare, but it perplexed her the most out of all the recent discoveries she'd made. Zack wasn't a torturer name—it was the name of the kids on one of those Disney shows.
"I go by Zekariah these days, Madame."
"Very well. Could I have a moment alone with the girl, please?"
"She's hardly a girl anymore."
The woman looked over at Audrey. "I can see that. My, how beautiful you've gotten with age."
There was something calming about her presence. Audrey knew logically it was just the mercy of the blade being stayed that made her feel that way, but as her breathing evened out for the first time in hours, she found herself caring less and less about why she felt safer now, and more about how relieving it was.
"I am the Madame, and I heard we've been having a little trouble getting to you."
The Madame insisted on a no-cruelty approach. Was this the same woman? She was certainly old enough. Would her no-cruelty approach still hold?
She took a towel and dampened it under the sink faucet. As she wiped Audrey's wounds clean, she looked her over, humming to herself as if pleased by what she was finding. "Sorry about Zekariah. Interns get so enthusiastic."
"Right," said Audrey. The word lodged itself in her throat; she hadn't realized how dry it was.
The woman pulled a water bottle from her bag and unscrewed it before pressing it gently to Audrey's mouth, angling it so enough water come out to relieve her parched throat. "A word? We're making progress now." Audrey winced. "Don't worry. I won't be forcing any answers out of you. I figured I would just ask nicely."
"I don't know how well that's gonna work for you."
She smiled knowingly. "We'll see."
After she had cleaned the blood from Audrey's skin, she took a step back.
"Let's begin."
She pulled a book from her bag. The covers dropped open easily in her hands to the page she wanted, and when she lifted the book between her thumb and her fingers, Audrey noticed that there was a crack in the spine from being opened so many times to that spot.
"Mама." Audrey raised an eyebrow. Mother? What did that mean? The Madame was unfazed. She continued, "Колыбельная. Aвария. Mахинации."
What was this woman doing? Casting a spell?
"Ранение. Скрытый. Сорок пять. Кинжал. Маргаритка. Yудо."
The Madame stared straight at her, expectant. Audrey blinked back, not knowing what it was that she wanted.
"Aктив? Готовы соблюдать?" she prompted.
"I'm sorry, I don't, um, speak that much Russian."
The look of expectation on the woman's face dropped and one of confusion replaced it. "Aктив?" she repeated.
Audrey shook her head. "Um, do you know French? We could talk in French."
"We programmed in a failsafe. Why isn't it activating?" She stood and hobbled over to Audrey, placing her thumb on Audrey's eyelid and dragging it up to inspect her eyes. "You were our most successful project." She paused and released Audrey's eye. "You don't understand anything that I'm saying?"
Audrey shook her head. "Am I supposed to?"
"You helped me choose them."
"Choose the words? What do they mean?"
"They were meant to...activate you." She sighed, opening up her notebook yet again. She began to recite the sequence again, but this time more flabbergasted than authoritative. "Mама. Колыбельная. Aвария. Mахинации. Ранение. Скрытый. Сорок пять. Кинжал. Маргаритка. Yудо."
Audrey shook her head again. "I don't-I don't know what those mean."
The woman cradled Audrey's chin and the top of her head in her hands. "You were our most successful project. Whatever happened to you?" She leaned in close. "Did they clear you?"
"I don't know."
"They did, didn't they?"
Audrey registered that the Madame's hands held her head in the way one did before snapping another's neck. If she was useless to them, they would kill her. If she was useful, they would keep her alive. Which was worse?
As she attempted to figure out the answer, the room shook from the hit of an explosion. Audrey looked up at the Madame.
"What was that?" she asked, watching as the Madame stared out at the wall.
"Oh, these goddamn American bastards—"
A second explosion rocked the room, and this time, the wall came flying towards Audrey in bits and pieces. The Madame shrieked, and jumped behind the chair. Audrey flinched, squeezing her eyes shut as rocks shot forward towards her and the dust from between the bricks sprayed through the air. For a moment, she would swear she was dying.
The ringing in her ears numbed the sounds of shouting. Two people emerged from the rubble.
"Audrey?"
"Oh, hell, Carter."
Audrey braced as the chest clamp was removed. The air that rushed into her lungs as she inhaled sharply was almost immediately sputtered back out. Strong arms lifted her from the chair; Audrey wanted to do a million things—cry, throw up, drop into the Arctic Ocean, rip out her hair, curl up into a ball, sleep for years. She felt frozen inside her own body; out of control; helpless. She didn't know what the Madame had meant. She didn't understand what was happening to her.
Vaguely, she registered that they had entered a dark room—or was it a quinjet? If she really wanted to know, Audrey was certain she could've focused her energy onto figuring it out, but she was too occupied trying to answer the impossible questions she was considering. She was their most successful project? Who the hell were they?
Who the hell was she, anyway? What had they made her into?
By the time she came to, Audrey was on a gurney in the back of a van. Her mouth was dry. Her hair felt sticky and matted. Her ribs hurt.
At her hip, Delphine diligently stitched up her stab wound. Audrey watched her for a moment, fascinated by the movements of her fingers with the needle. She should be feeling it, she knew, but her body was numb aside from a throbbing headache and a sore throat.
"Water," she rasped.
Delphine looked up wordlessly, reaching over for a bottle of water and uncapping it. She slid her hand behind Audrey's head and pressed the spout into her mouth. Audrey drank it greedily.
Relief washed over her in waves as she handed the bottle back to Delphine. It was as though a hand had held her heart in a fist for several days, and now it had finally let go. The thin mattress on the gurney felt like the softest thing Audrey had ever slept on, and seeing Delphine again made her feel safe in a way that, a week ago, would've been entirely unremarkable, but that now meant everything.
"You've been out for a while," Delphine remarked, smiling at her softly.
"How long?"
"About a day and a half."
"What day is it?" Audrey asked.
"September 10th," Delphine answered. "They had you for a while. Almost seventy-two hours."
"You should see the other guy." Audrey winced, holding her ribs as she moved. Delphine shuffled over and slid a hand under her back, lifting her up and adjusting the gurney so she could sit up. As she swung her legs over the side of the gurney, the tattered hospital gown rode up and she caught a glimpse of her wounds. Her relief evaporated. "Oh my god."
MOTHER, above her right knee. LULLABY, on the inside of her calf. Audrey stood up suddenly, almost falling over from the movement of the van. Haphazardly, she tugged on the string of her hospital gown and shoved it off, leaving her in nothing but her bra and underwear. Her stomach donned the words MIRACLE and ARCANE. On the left side of her ribcage, they'd scarred her with the number 45.
Frantically, Audrey twisted her neck, ignoring the shooting pain to investigate if there were more words. Something had been etched into the line of her spine. DAISY on her left forearm. DAGGER below her collarbone. WOUND on her ankle.
"No. No. They—they can't have done this."
"Audrey, I don't know if you should be moving this much—"
"Stop!" she snapped. "I need to know what they did. I need to know what they did to me." She was shaking and she didn't know why.
Delphine swallowed, before nodding soberly. "Okay. Do you—can you sit down? And I'll check for you?"
Reluctantly, Audrey sunk back down onto the gurney's mattress. Delphine knelt down next to her. "Is it okay if I touch you?" Audrey nodded. Delphine gingerly lifted each of her legs to check them. "Wound. Mother. Lullaby. Crash, on the back of your thigh." She rose from the ground, giving Audrey a critical once-over. "Miracle, arcane, 45, and dagger on your torso." Then, she lifted Audrey's arms. "Daisy, here, on your forearm." Gently, she twisted Audrey's shoulders so she could see her back. "Machinations." She released Audrey. "That's all of them."
Ten words. Ten words, Audrey realized. "They—there was a woman. She kept saying things to me in Russian. Ten things. She said they were meant to activate me."
"Do you remember what they were?"
Audrey searched her memory, but came up empty, except for one. "Ak-teev? I think?"
"Aktiv," Delphine clarified, her pronunciation sharp. "Asset." She tucked some of Audrey's hair behind her ear. "Do you—I mean, had you met these people before?"
"No." She thought about the file, but bit her tongue. "I don't remember ever meeting them in my life."
"Okay," Delphine said. She stared at Audrey for a moment, before reaching for a duffle bag. "Let's get you out of the hospital gown and into something that's not so cold, yeah?" She pulled out a pair of black jeans, long black socks, and a blue turtleneck. "Here. They're mine, so they won't fit perfectly, but it should be something. And we have extra boots for you."
As Audrey dressed, she tried to avoid looking at the scars. The chilly air in the van made her legs bumpy with gooseflesh and pinker than usual and they seemed to be shouting at her from her own body.
"Can I?" Delphine offered, pointing down to Audrey's unlaced boots.
"Oh. Um, sure."
She knelt down and pulled the laces tight, before securing them into a knot. Audrey liked the way Delphine was treating her—she didn't ask questions or interrogate her about what had happened, or what the words meant, or why they'd scarred them into her skin. She just offered her clothes and tied her shoes. She just took care of her.
Outside the van's back windows, there was nothing but miles of desolate fields and a dirt road. "Where are we?" Audrey asked. She shoved down the images of the scars, and the doctor, and the Madame, and the soldier. There was a mission to focus on.
"Bratsk," Clint called back from the driver's seat. They made quick eye contact through the rearview mirror. He knew. He wasn't saying anything. "Nice to see you're awake. You missed about thirty-five calls from your old man, by the way."
"I'm sure he'll love being called that," she replied. He picked up something from the center console and tossed it back at her. Her cell phone. When she unlocked it, Audrey found that Clint was hardly exaggerating in his estimation. Twenty-nine missed calls from Steve Rogers and a text from Tony that was just the link to an article. Curious, she opened the website.
Above a photo of her father with his arm wrapped around a woman in a bar, the headline demanded to know, WHO IS CAPTAIN AMERICA'S MYSTERY BRUNETTE?
"Jesus," she breathed out. "How much did I miss?" She narrowed her eyes and glanced out the window again. "Also, where's Bratsk?"
"Pfft," Clint huffed, but Audrey heard him mumble to Kate in the passenger seat, "Where's Bratsk again?" They convened for a moment before Clint replied, "About a thousand miles north of the Mongolian border."
"And what are we doing in the middle of Siberia?" Audrey asked.
"We're, uh, picking up Tasha."
"And what's she doing in the middle of Siberia? Also, why are we driving?"
"The area from Noyabr'sk to Tynda is a forbidden airspace for S.H.I.E.L.D.," Kate called back. "Also, Natasha's visiting her contact."
Audrey looked incredulously at Delphine. "In Siberia?" she mouthed.
Delphine shook her head. "Not somebody who usually resides there. I think they're both working on a mission together there."
"I thought Natasha was doing this mission."
"This is a...subsection of our mission."
"Got it."
Delphine nodded. "I'll brief her," she called to Clint, but her eyes stayed locked with Audrey's. "Natasha is reaching out to a former Red Room contact for information on the soldier you encountered."
"Did she tell you who he was?"
Audrey didn't know if she should mention the file to Delphine, yet. Thinking about people knowing—people wanting to find out from her body what they couldn't from the file—made her skin crawl. She didn't want things to change. She didn't want it to mean anything, even though she was certain that it did.
"The Winter Soldier," Delphine said quietly. "She called him a ghost."
"Ghost how?"
"He's been around for decades. An assassin who shaped the century. Nobody knows who he is or where he came from or even if he's been the same person the entire time. He used to belong to the Soviets."
Decades. The Soldier mentioned in the files could've been the man with the metal arm. When he spoke, he recognized Natasha, but not her, even though he'd known her. And she'd known him too, apparently.
"Romanoff's legs were both broken in the encounter and she's off of field duty for a month. S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors have taken care of her and replaced the damaged bones with regenerative tissue and she should fully recover soon." Audrey winced. While she had cowered in fear, Natasha had fought. Natasha had tried to sacrifice herself for Audrey, and all she got from it were two broken legs.
"What about the weapons?"
"We found them. Enough of them to arrest Bardot and launch an international investigation. Most likely scenario? They offer him a lighter sentence in exchange for the names of his buyers and the people he worked with. Knowing his type, he'll accept."
Audrey scoffed. "Sounds about right."
"Listen," Delphine said, grabbing Audrey's hand and holding it between her own palms.
"I'm really glad you're okay."
As if god was watching and personally out to get her, at that moment, the car slammed into something. At first, Audrey assumed it was a pothole, as she went flying into the air for a moment. When the van started flipping over itself—six, seven, eight times—she started considering other theories.
In the chaos of it all, she grabbed onto Delphine and pulled her against her body, shielding her from the debris and equipment flying around. Delphine screamed as the car finally settled, roof to the road, and began skidding towards a red sign welcoming them to Bratsk.
"Everyone alright?" Clint shouted.
By way of an answer, Kate replied, "What the fuck was that?"
Audrey tried to gain her bearings. Her back was on the ceiling and Delphine lay across her, secured tightly in her arms. The gurney, like just about everything else, had flipped over and was now pinning her legs to the ground. Through the shattered windshield. Audrey could see a masked figure approaching.
"Oh, who the fuck is this guy?" Clint asked. He threw himself into the back of the van and extended his hand for Kate after.
"Crossbow!" Kate called. Delphine dug through the bags of weapons. Audrey noticed her hands shaking at the same time Kate did. The archer grew frustrated, eventually taking the bag from Delphine and digging out the crossbow herself. She extended her arm, winked one eye shut, and fired. The arrow flew down the highway towards the man, but he lifted his arm and the arrow ricocheted off, scuttling to the ground.
Holy shit. The soldier again.
Audrey's stomach dropped. Like last time, she wanted to cry, curl up into a ball, and disappear all at once. She wanted this whole thing to be a nightmare she could wake up from. But she didn't have anyone to protect her this time but herself, and she had Delphine and Kate to look out for—two agents even less experienced with weird S.H.I.E.L.D. shit than she was.
The last few days had been the worst of Audrey's life, indisputably. Even New York had been a walk in the park compared to this. But Audrey had made it this far, and she wasn't going to go down again without swinging.
She slid out from under Delphine and began digging through the bag of weapons for what she knew would be there. Two electric batons and a holster. She switched them each on and they crackled with electricity at the ends. Satisfied, she switched them back off and placed them in their holsters, which she secured around her hips. Grabbing a gun for good measure, she took a deep breath.
Kicking the doors of the van open, Audrey took a deep breath of the frigid brask air and swung around the corner of van and aimed. The bullets flew from the barrel of her gun to the man's chest, but they weren't doing much damage. He had a vest on, or a metal chest, and at this point, Audrey was so far from normal that she honestly couldn't predict which was more likely.
The Soldier raised his own, much larger, much higher-caliber gun and fired at her. She threw herself behind the van again and peered inside. where Clint was laying across the front seat with his bow. She watched him take aim and fire an arrow at the soldier's gun.
"Genius move, Barton," Kate chided, watching as the soldier caught the arrow in his first.
"Give it a second, Bishop," he retorted. Audrey peered back around the van, only to find the soldier stalking towards them. Then, the arrow in his hand exploded.
In his panic, his gun went flying, skittering across the concrete. Audrey took this as an opportunity to run towards him, emptying her clip as she went. When her magazine emptied, she threw it to the field on the side of the road and broke into a sprint. She hurled herself at the soldier, elbow to chest, and then wrapped her arms and legs around him, clawing at him and bringing her fist down on his face, just as he'd done to her. There was a brief moment of satisfaction as he grunted at the contact between her fist and his teeth, but it was short lived. He grabbed the back of her shirt with his arm and yanked her off him, throwing her to the ground. Audrey shrieked and stuck out her arms to brace herself for landing.
When she righted herself, to her horror, he was no longer heading towards her, but the van. No, no, no. If he hurt Audrey, that was him finishing a job. She'd been the one to disobey Clint and get Natasha's legs broken. She'd been the one to throw off the entire operation. Nobody else in that van had screwed things up as badly as she had. The Soldier smashed the windshield with his fist and reached in, dragging Clint out and tossing him aside like a ragdoll.
"What the—" he cursed. Clint glanced down at his arrows and his bow, and then, with a pained look, ran towards the Soldier, looping his bow around the man's neck and pulling hard. "This was a really nice bow!" he grumbled, dragging the soldier back as he delivered a series of punches to the side of his head. "You fucking bastard."
Just as the Soldier stumbled back, Delphine kicked the van door open and made a run for the Soldier's discarded gun. As she hoisted it up in her arms, she shouted, "Hey!"
Clint and the Soldier both looked up at her. As if annoyed, the Soldier reached behind him and flipped Clint over his shoulders, slamming him down into the concrete and rendering him unconscious. He stepped over Clint and started towards Delphine, who opened fire. The Soldier guarded himself with his left arm and used his right to pull a knife from a holster. Through the sea of bullets, he managed to get a clear enough shot on Delphine to hit her in the shoulder.
"Shit!" she cursed, her grip on the gun loosening as she dropped to the floor. The Soldier had almost reached her when she flung the gun as hard as she could into the field on the side of the road.
The Soldier bent down and wrapped a fist around her neck, lifting her up. Delphine's body twitched as he squeezed, and Audrey shrieked. She jumped onto the Soldier's back, wrapped her legs around his torso, and pulled the goggles from his face, tossing him aside. In the chaos, he dropped Delphine and Audrey pushed her nails into his eyes.
He screamed, but she didn't relent. His arm whirred and he grabbed her, this time by her hair, and not only pulled her off of him but slammed her down into the concrete. She wheezed as she hit the ground.
The Soldier held onto a fistful of her hair and began yanking her around. Audrey let out a cry and gripped her batons in her hands, before remembering something she should've remembered all along—metal was a conductor for electricity. Which meant—
She yanked the batons from their holsters and switched them on. Twisting herself over, she tried to make out the outline of his arm through the sea of her hair. She swung, and based on the buzzing sound that followed, she'd aimed well enough.
The Soldier staggered back, cradling his metal arm with the other. He struggled to ball his hand into a fist, or to swing it around, or do anything with it at all.
"Run!" Audrey shouted. She grabbed Delphine by the shoulders and pushed her towards town. As she did, she knew that if they didn't neutralize this threat right the fuck now, he would start chasing them down and letting civilians get caught in the crossfire, and that was something she wasn't willing to let happen.
Hitting him with the batons had bought her some time, but it wasn't enough to stop him. That would take a bullet, or a kick to the head that even she wasn't strong enough to deliver, or—
An arrow flew from the van into his stomach, and this time, it buried itself in it. The Soldier collapsed.
Audrey's eyes flew over to the source of the shot—Kate. She had laid across the overturned car's belly and shielded herself behind one of the wheels. "Got him!" she announced, holding up her crossbow.
"How?" Audrey asked, perplexed. "Clint's arrows didn't work."
"I'll explain on the way," Kate called, hopping off of the roof of the car and kneeling at an unconscious Clint's side. She slapped him across the face, and he shot up. "We need to go, now."
For once, he didn't have any witty response. Instead, Clint hopped onto his feet, stumbling only a little, before they all took off towards the town of Bratsk in search of a car to steal for the rest of their journey, or a phone to call Natasha on, or a hospital, leaving the Winter Soldier to bleed out in the middle of the road, unmasked, and yet still unseen.
A/N: hi thank you for reading! i hope you enjoyed and please leave a review on the way out if you can. i would love to hear what y'all think of audrey and the winter soldier, or about delphine and audrey this chapter and audrey's backstory.