0036 HOURS | NOVEMBER 09, 2014 | BELASICA MOUNTAIN RANGE, BULGARIA-GREECE BORDER

"Attention, Captain Rogers and the Avengers. This is callsign Prowler 1-1. We are a friendly fireteam on mission within this AO. I repeat, we are friendlies. Please confirm."

When the Avengers, based on reliable intelligence, had begun their siege on the HYDRA facility in the mountains they couldn't have even begun to guess that something like this would end up happening. They had expected the usual. Scaling the walls. Breaching the gate. Fighting all of the bad guys and destroying all of their stuff. Capturing the person in charge, turning him or her over to NATO and then flying back to the Tower for a well-deserved celebratory meal and low-key debriefing.

They'd taken five HYDRA installations down in just that manner, but to hear such a message in the midst of their assault on the base was entirely unanticipated.

By all of them.

"Say what now?" Stark barked out over the radio, overly loud in his incredulity over the broadcast, as he flew in wide loops around the perimeter in the forty-third iteration of his Iron Man suit.

"Friendlies in a HYDRA base?" Clint Barton, more formerly known as Hawkeye, asked in equal amounts of disbelief. The archer had taken up a suitable roost in the southern tower and was shooting his arrows, tipped with homing and explosive heads, at large groupings of attackers. "Yeah… Like we're going to trust that. And how'd they even tap into our comms, anyways?"

"Is this some of new sort of ploy by our enemies?" Thor, the hammer and lightning wielding Asgardian prince, demanded as one particularly unlucky HYDRA soldier got his ribs shattered by Mjölnir.

"Got suspicious written all over it, Cap," Natasha chimed in, having flushed out any HYDRA from the western tower and was making her exit to regroup with the ground force.

"I'm with Widow on this one, Steve," Sam Wilson, under the newly minted callsign of the Falcon, added in finality as he swooped down from the skies to strafe an approaching cluster of goons with his guns. "Hard to believe that any foreign military would be able or willing to take a crack at HYDRA."

The only one silent in the conversation was Dr. Bruce Banner, who due to the base's smaller size and meager complement of troops, had remained behind with the quinjet to monitor their situation from afar. The Hulk would only be called into action if the situation took a turn for the worst, which would hopefully not be necessary as they still did not have a clear-cut method to un-Hulk the good Doctor.

But Steve, using his shield to bludgeon those enemies that were attempting to surround him and block their gunfire, had a feeling. A gut instinct, if you will, that this wasn't some hoax or trick of HYDRA's.

It was actually beginning to make a bit more sense now.

Their info had claimed that there would be two-man guard patrols on each of the towers and yet, when they had rolled up on the facility, the gate-facing towers had been clear on top. A fact which had made it a hell of a lot easier for the internationally famous spies to scale the walls and get on the inside.

But now, here was this strange woman. Her voice was lightly accented and she was accompanied by a team of who knows how many others, who was broadcasting without any sort of difficulty over their heavily encrypted radio channel. Steve had to figure out how to address this, but he was feeling almost out of his depth. Something like this had never happened before. The Avengers, who were only a couple of months into their period of HYDRA hunting activity, had not yet worked alongside any other sort of organization. Not foreign militaries and most certainly not independent contractors.

He stepped back from the fight and switched positions with Thor, who charged forward and unleashed a chain of lightning into the crowd to give them a bit of breathing room. Room enough for him to answer their mysterious, possible ally without fear of being overwhelmed by his enemies.

"This is Captain Rogers," he called out over the line. "I read you, Prowler. What's your affiliation?"

"Classified, Captain. Sorry about that," she replied, sounding honest, but it was hard to tell when only listening to a voice. "But we aren't HYDRA trying to pull one over on you, I can promise you that much."

"Hard to put trust in a face I can't see," Steve replied, looking around to see if there was a pocket of fighting somewhere else on the base, but he couldn't see or hear anything definitive. The fighting, for the time being, was too thick to distinguish any non-Avenger related combat. "What's your mission?"

"Well, that I most certainly can tell you. The boys and I are here to kick HYDRA's teeth in and burn this fucking place to the ground."

"Mmm," Romanoff hummed in appreciation. "I think I'm starting to like her. She's fiery."

"You would say that, wouldn't you?" Barton asked.

Steve ignored their banter, having grown used to it while working alongside them both for the past two years with a great degree of frequency. The pair were thick as thieves and incredibly chatty when on a mission that no longer required an element of stealth.

But he could agree with Natasha's assessment of their mystery caller.

This dame, whoever she was, had moxie and gumption to spare.

"How many on your team?"

"Three," she answered quickly. "Two of us this side and our third on the other."

"A pretty small team for something this big. Don't you think, mystery lady?" Tony chimed in with the usual amount of sarcasm coloring his tone. The billionaire clearly wasn't buying her story.

"We've done well enough so far, Mister Stark."

Steve could just hear Stark thinking up a witty retort, but in the middle of combat was not the place to be taking their eye off the ball. The HYDRA forces, those who had swarmed for their initial assault looked to be pulling back towards the mountain. While Steve would've liked to press the advantage, push them while they were in retreat, the current situation needed to be handled first.

"What's your location, Prowler?" he asked.

"East building," she reported and his head snapped over to look at the structure in question. The lights were still on, but there wasn't any visible movement on the inside. Had she already cleared it? "Be advised, those tangos running away are heading into the vehicle garage. Good chance they're planning to roll out with some armor and big guns."

And it seemed that no sooner had she said it, her prediction came true.

Steve heard the roar of engines and the harsh screech of tires peeling out, before suddenly the night was alit with heavy weapons fire. A trio of Non-Standard Tactical Vehicles, which were otherwise known as NSTVs or Technicals – civilian pick-up trucks mounted with what looked like .50 caliber heavy machine guns – came racing out of the garage in a staggered formation. And at the rear end of their high-speed convoy was an APC, an armored personnel carrier, armed with a belt-fed automatic grenade launcher which began bombarding their position with explosions. Alongside the vehicles there were a spread of regrouped HYDRA agents, several dozen strong, that were advancing under the safety provided by their wheeled escort.

"Contact front!" he yelled, bringing up his shield to block the incoming bullets and strafing to avoid the falling grenades. Steve fell back towards Natasha's position as she began to take shots at the troops advancing on foot while using his body as her cover. "Barton, stay on overwatch. Target the ground forces. Tony, take the APC. Thor, take the first and second vehicles. Sam, you get the third. Gunners before drivers."

His team moved to execute, but the radio crackled to life before they could reach their targets.

"On approach, Captain. It's time to put my money where my mouth is. Coming up on your six, so check your fire and watch your heads."

Over the clamor of gunfire and grenades, it was impossible to hear any difference of sound, but over the radio he heard the simultaneous exclamations of stunned shock and surprise from Barton, Stark and Wilson. Those three members of his team that had the best view of the field from either the tower where the archer was perched or flying through the air without any normal obstructions.

"Whoa!"

"Holy…"

"Damn!"

It seemed that Prowler 1-1 had chosen to join the fight.

From overhead he could suddenly hear the ever so faint whoosh of thrusters, sounding very much like the Iron Man suit's foot-mounted repulsor jets. Then, in the blink of an eye, a humanoid figure was racing over his head. In that split second of time, Steve took his eyes off of the fight in front of him – while keeping his shield braced and at the ready – and glanced up to take in their newest arrival.

They swung around the south-west end of the building with a waist-mounted jetpack propelling them – or rather her – along at incredibly high speed, tethered like a pendulum to the corner of the structure by a thin, metal cable. The cable detached and retracted as she landed on the exterior wall of the second building without so much as losing a single ounce of her inconceivable forward momentum. She ran along the wall of the shorter building – kept up in the air by a sustained level of thrust from the jetpack – for a fraction of a second before pushing off powerfully with her legs. At the apex of her forceful jump the jetpack fired again with a quick burst of blue flame, pushing her across the rest of the divide, before she continued her run on the wall of the larger building.

And all of that had taken place over the course of less than three seconds. It was only due to the effects of the super-soldier serum that Steve had been able to see every one of her moves in startling clarity. She was closing in on the convoy, which had only just spotted her and were beginning to direct some of their gunfire in her direction.

But it was too late, because she was on them.

Steve then came to the realization – far too late – that this woman was no normal soldier.

She was Enhanced.

To what degree, he couldn't accurately tell, but no normal human could move like that.

An inch-thick disk, approximately six inches in diameter, was from tossed from her hands to land just in front of the first Technical. A curved wall of orange light appeared, about three meters wide and two meters tall, where the disk landed and the first vehicle crashed into at full speed. The hood crunched like an accordion on impact and the sudden stop had the truck flipping up and over itself, flinging the gunner from the bed and brutalizing the passengers stuck within the cab.

She jumped from the wall and dropped down towards the second vehicle. Two flashes of silver flew out from her hands to land amidst the ground troops on either side as she flew. One them exploded into a pool of hissing, spitting fire, which Steve soon recognized as thermite, and the HYDRA goons caught in the splash zone were set ablaze. They ran and screamed in a panic, some dropping dead in an instant and others rolling about on the asphalt trying to extinguish themselves.

But thermite didn't work that way.

The second projectile bloomed into a glowing blue vortex of energy that snagged up any poor bastard within a set radius and sent them tumbling head over heels. From behind his back, the Black Widow took the opportunity to pick off those caught in the apparent gravitational anomaly with her handguns. But Steve could still hear the screaming and shouts as Prowler 1-1 continued her assault on HYDRA.

Driven by his own curiosity and the necessity of combat, Steve advanced in her wake with Natasha hot on his heels. He felt compelled to bear witness the rest of what this woman was bringing to the party. The violence she was about to inflict upon his enemies. And in addition, the level of distraction and destruction she was causing was providing ample opportunity for them to strike at the ground forces without too much resistance.

Thor followed his example, advancing into the fray as well, while Tony and Sam – seemingly just as curious as Steve was – only did minimal damage to the HYDRA grunts and left the rest of the convoy untouched for Prowler 1-1.

Landing feet first on the second NSTV, she swung out with one of her firearms and blasted through the windshield with what appeared to be some sort of energy shotgun. But she never stopped moving forward and maintained her incredible speed against the gun's recoil. Two shots into the cab – boom, boom – and she was onto the gunner. A quick jerk of her arms had her bludgeoning the guy across the face with the barrel of her gun with enough force to send him flying backwards.

A line of cable then shot out from one of her arms and a grappling hook-like attachment latched onto the third Technical's hood. The jetpack fired once more to send her flying up and over the vehicle as it drove beneath her. She tossed out another projectile – a throwing star by the looks of it – onto the vehicle's hood which erupted into another fountain of searing thermite. The driver swerved in a panic as the high-temperature chemical reaction burnt through the sheet metal and they careened out of control, on course to crash into one of the buildings. But just at the last moment the grapple detached and Prowler 1-1 continued flying onwards on a direct course for the armored personnel carrier.

The grenadier of the APC was ready, however. But as soon as they opened fire, her figure vanished in a muted flash of white light and the grenades sailed straight through her former position.

Was this some sort of invisibility tech?

No. If she was just invisible the rounds would have hit her, right?

It would've taken a great deal of skill for her to have avoided the grenades in mid-air.

One… Two… Three seconds passed and then she reappeared in another flash of the same light, but in the air just behind the APC. The grapple came out once more and latched onto the hull, pulling her down onto the roof. As her boot's touched down, she shot the grenadier in the head with one of her sidearms, pulling his body up and out of the gunner's seat without any semblance of difficulty.

She then jumped down and vanished into the interior of the vehicle.

No sooner had she gotten inside when the APC screeched to a sudden stop and began rocking violently on its six wheels. Over the din of the fighting on the ground, the muffled sounds of gunshots and the bang of metal on metal could be heard from within.

"Cap, I'm coming down from the tower. You don't need me up here any longer, because it looks to me like the new girl did most of the work for us," Clint announced over the radio, just as the three Avengers on the ground – Thor, Natasha and Steve – rushed forward into the fray to clean up the remnants of the second wave of HYDRA agents.

Mjölnir was flying left and right, with the Asgardian levels of strength behind the hammer sending handfuls of men flying with nearly each swing. Natasha's handguns were firing in sequence, without a single shot missing its target, as she closed range with the nearest group of soldiers. The short red-head leapt into the air, wrapping her legs around the neck of her first victim, and transitioning into hand-to-hand. Steve charged in as well, bashing the first man with his shield in the chest, before tearing into the others with his fists and feet.

Stark and Wilson also swooped down into the action. Bullets from the Falcon's guns mowing down those caught on the outskirts and Iron Man's repulsors targeting those few carrying heavier weaponry such as light machine guns, grenade launchers and rocket launchers. And while the Black Widow and Asgardian Prince were just clearing out the agents, Steve had a specific goal in mind as he cut a swath through the clearly outmatched HYDRA goons.

He was heading straight towards the APC with the sole intention of meeting Prowler 1-1 face-to-face.

The driver-side door on the carrier was suddenly kicked off of its hinges with a deafening bang and the heavy plate of contoured metal smashed fatally into a nearby agent. A body came tumbling out of the vehicle and fell limply onto the ground with its head twisted at an unnatural angle. Their mystery woman, in her strange and foreign looking assortment of clearly high-tech tactical equipment, flung herself out third and landed with an unnatural grace.

Her gear looked a bit like something Stark could've thought up in his spare time.

Steve was still some distance away and there was a dozen or so HYDRA agents between the two of them. But for some unknowable reason, that he could not have possibly understood at that time, the majority of them seemed to consider her to be the greater threat.

Eight broke away to challenge her.

The other four converged on him and Steve brought up his shield to bash the first in line at center mass, while snapping out one of his legs to break the knee of a second. He could hear the whoosh of her jetpack's thrusters firing in close proximity, accompanied by the whistle of a knife blade through the air and the near deafening bang of a high caliber firearm. The third man who rushed him was knocked out with a straight jab to the face, with the sensation of a nose shattering beneath his knuckles, and the fourth he caught in the neck with the swinging edge of the shield.

He looked up just in time to find her putting down her last opponent by burying the thick, serrated blade of a combat knife deep into his jugular. She withdrew the knife quickly, flicking the point towards the ground with nearly audible splatter of blood, before twirling it in her gloved hand and shoving it back into a holster on her right thigh.

Upon inspection, the woman, with her head hidden underneath a full-face helmet, was quite literally bristling with weaponry.

Four knives that he could see sheathed on both of her legs, across her chest and perched on her right shoulder. Two holsters for sidearms on each of her thighs, one holding a suppressed handgun and the second of which was most likely the home for the bulky revolver in her other hand. And then there were the two longer guns that were somehow attached to her back without straps. The first of the firearms was the shotgun from before and the second was a compact looking gun painted with vibrant orange, white and black.

"Prowler 1-1?" Steve asked as he watched her warily, keeping a healthy portion of his attention on the gun that was still in her hand.

"That'd be me," she said, her voice now coming out over external speakers that must've been built into her helmet, instead of over the radio. In that moment of calm, with the sounds of combat fading by the second, she holstered the revolver after seeming to decide that she was no longer in need of it. Out of the corner of his eyes, Steve could see the others finishing up their fights and beginning to walk over to where he stood.

Clint was the first to arrive on scene with Natasha and Thor walking up soon afterwards and lastly, with a heavy clunk and muted thud, Sam and Tony came down from the sky. Together they formed a semi-circle around the woman, a precaution should she prove herself to be hostile, but she seemed far from perturbed and completely at ease surrounded by the world's greatest team of superheroes.

"So, you got a name?" Barton asked, appearing to volunteer himself to lead the interrogation.

Before she could muster a reply, Stark stepped forward with one of his gauntleted hands partially raised, accompanied by the faint whine of a repulsor powering up, and his voice sounding almost enraged. "No. No. You know what, I don't even care what your name is. What I really wanna know is where the hell you got all of this tech? I've never seen or even heard of half the shit you just flung around. There's no military in the world that's fielding that level of gear."

She took one step backwards, one of her hands twitching over the heavy revolver once more, and the other coming up as if to fend the irate billionaire off physically. "Whoa there, tin can. Tap the brakes," she said. "My tech isn't any of your business."

"No, no, no, no. You're going to tell me…"

"Stand down, Tony," Steve chided as he stepped slightly forward so as to place himself between the two. "She just took out a hostile convoy at great personal risk to help us. That should allow her a bit leeway in regards to her gear."

A moment of heavy silence.

"Thank you, Captain," she said, tilting her helmet slightly in his direction. "The name's Lastimosa."

"Many thanks for your assistance, good lady!" Thor cheered loudly, proffering Mjölnir in the air as a sign of victory and celebration.

"No problem. Glad I could help out. Good guys gotta stick together, yeah?" she asked rhetorically, before her head swiveled around to look over her shoulder. "And I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the third wave of these HYDRA fuckers is coming up the elevators right now."

"How can you tell that?" Romanoff asked, her eyes narrowed with a heavy dose of suspicion. Wilson appeared equally skeptical, but Steve wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Intel was intel and any preemptive warning of an attack was appreciated.

"I'm currently hacked into their network and power grid. Got an alert as soon as the elevators started ascending. Looks like two IFVs and a large platoon in full kit. Forty something guys or so," Lastimosa reported succinctly. "So, you might want to start getting ready for another fight."

"You plannin' to stick around and help again?" Sam asked and she shrugged her shoulders.

"Where and when I can," she replied. "Gotta regroup with my other guy this side – Prowler 1-2 – and continue with our mission objectives."

A wailing siren and the flash of strobing red lights interrupted their conversation, signaling the arrival of the elevators, and sending the Avengers back into combat mode. In that brief moment of time where the sudden lights and sounds drew their attention away from her, Lastimosa had seemingly vanished into thin air.

There had been no flash of peculiar white light this time. They would've noticed that. She was just gone and Steve didn't have the luxury to order a search for her. He would just have to trust that she was really on their side.

Stark and Sam launched back into the air, where they had the tactical advantage, while Steve led the ground team head-first into the next conflict. The two infantry fighting vehicles, a new model that he knew had been designed entirely by HYDRA, rolled out of the now open blast doors. They were outfitted with potent and dangerous weaponry far beyond the capabilities of any modern armament. The blue bolts of energy, just like the HYDRA weapons back in the 1940s, lanced out from the main gun, while machine gun fire came from the secondary weapon emplacements.

The next few minutes were a blur of heated violence.

Stark targeted the first IFV and Thor charged the second, while Wilson strafed the soldiers streaming out of the elevators into the open area outside. In the meantime, Steve, Clint and Natasha moved into the heart of the fray to do as much damage as they could. Arrows and bullets flying from the pair of spies, as they fought back-to-back. Steve's shield bashing any who came close to him and being tossed with near physic-defying accuracy and enough power to knock down anyone it struck. His fists and feet lashed out, snapping bone upon impact, and causing grievous injury to those he hit.

But what the Steve, the Avengers and HYDRA had not been expecting was for a sudden influx of gunfire to come from the far side of the conflict.

"Friendlies on your two, Captain."

Lastimosa had seemingly returned with the second member of her fireteam in tow.

The two laid into the far side of the HYDRA force with a sustained hail of bullets, advancing step-by-step and back-to-back. Gracefully stepping in and out of the forward position when one of them needed to swap magazines and using the other's body as mobile cover. They performed this sequence twice, reloading their guns in a perfectly smooth and coordinated rhythm, with an SMG in Lastimosa's hands and a light machine gun of in the other's.

The second member of the Prowlers appeared to be male – well above average in height and broad at the shoulders – with what was clearly a great deal of military experience. All of their shots were unerringly accurate, transitioning their aim smoothly from one target to the next as they both fired in short, controlled bursts. And then, as they came within range of HYDRA's staggered and scattered front line, the two holstered their main weapons, and flung a quartet of throwing stars and grenades into the crowd. The ordinance provided a distraction – thermite, gravity, electricity and shrapnel disturbing the ranks – as the pair switched over to weapons more suitable for close-quarters and dove into the fray without an ounce of hesitation.

With the Avengers tearing through the left-hand side and the two other attackers decimating the right, HYDRA was very quickly finding themselves to be hilariously outmatched by their opponents.

Thor had taken out the first of the IFVs with only some degree of difficulty. With his Asgardian strength, the God of Thunder had bent the main gun in two, ripped open the side paneling, tossing the occupants of the vehicle left and right and frying all of the internal systems with a burst of crackling lightning. Shortly afterwards, with a little help from an explosive arrowhead sent in through a gap in the armoring, Stark sliced through the firing mechanism of the second IFV with his wrist-mounted lasers and targeted all of those inside with micro-missiles.

Hawkeye lingered at the back offering strategic fire-support with his specialty arrows as the newest Avenger, the Falcon, swooped down from the sky to take up a post on the archer's flank. In practiced tandem, the Black Widow and Captain America used their superior skills in close-quarters combat to dive deep into the crowd. The patented Widow Bites were shocking all those they touched into unconsciousness and the circular shield of incredibly rare Vibranium blocked bullets and broke bones in equal measure with every swing and throw.

But even in the midst of the action, Natasha Romanoff kept a fraction of her attention on the mysterious Lastimosa and her equally unknown partner. After the destruction of the convoy at the woman's hands, all over and done with in less than two minutes, the ex-Russian spy was too well trained not to realize how dangerous this woman was. An assessment that was proved in spades by witnessing how Lastimosa punched, kicked, sliced and shot her way through anyone dumb enough to get in her way. Compounded with however much augmentation and enhancement the woman had received…

It made her nearly on par with Rogers' level at a quick estimate.

As such she was an incredibly, dangerous foe.

Or a potentially advantageous asset to have on their side.

But only time would tell if Lastimosa would end up as their ally or their enemy.

However, it was when catching sight of the woman's partner – designated as Prowler 1-2 – that Romanoff felt a brief chill run down her spine. His fighting style was unsettlingly familiar, but Natasha couldn't quite place it in that moment in time. But the unnatural strength put behind his punches, particularly those made with his left arm, that sent men flying backwards when they were struck. The smooth way he transitioned from opponent to opponent without breaking his stride, a semi-automatic handgun in one hand while the other flipped and twirled and tossed a combat knife to and fro.

Her eyes widened ever so slightly – even as she moved forward to engage with another set of HYDRA soldiers – as an improbable hunch took root within the confines of her mind. A hunch that in any other sort of circumstance would be so far out of the realm of reality that she would have immediately tossed it out as pure insanity. But given their current location, it was all the more likely that she was actually correct. And if her hunch proved itself to be true… Then this could get very bad, very quickly.

Especially for Steve.

The fight was nearly at an end, but one particular HYDRA goon in his last act of defiance took aim at the vulnerably open back of Lastimosa, who was embroiled in another fight across the way. He pulled the trigger of his gun and hoped to at least take one of his enemies down before his inevitable death.

BANG!

Ping.

The bullet ricocheted away in a small flash of sparks as a blur of dark colored tactical gear, in a distinctly different style than those worn by the HYDRA forces, put itself between the shooter and the intended target. A deafening bang from a handgun, held in the opposite hand of Lastimosa's last minute savior, put a round through the attempted murderer's skull. But the damage had been done and the end of the fighting fell quickly into an awkwardly tense and weighted silence.

A gaping tear had torn through the bullet-resistant cloth covering Prowler 1-2's left arm. In the bright floodlights that illuminated the interior of the HYDRA base the shine of silver metal underneath the hole was all but obvious to the Avengers that looked on.

Natasha's hunch had been proved correct and Steve felt himself go cold, like all of his blood had turned to liquid nitrogen in his veins. His eyes were latched with panicked accuracy onto that limb of metal.

He knew that arm.

Steve's eyes flickered upwards to look straight into the masked face, entirely covered by a hat, a pair of goggles and patterned scarf. A face that was looking straight at him as well, even as the body it was attached to shifted back on its heels, withdrawing to stand beside Lastimosa. The other Avengers closed it, forming another loose semi-circle, while Wilson and Romanoff took up places on either side of their Captain. Together the three formed a united gathering of those who knew and had identified Prowler 1-2 for who he actually was.

"Bucky?" Steve asked waveringly, torn between his burgeoning hope and mind-numbing shock, his feet shifting to take an instinctual step closer. But Lastimosa was equally quick with her own reaction, sliding in front of her partner and posting up in a protective stance, gloved hands still gripping one of her knives and that heavy revolver of hers.

"Stay right where you are, Rogers," she warned and Steve felt a spark of anger bloom in his chest. Who the hell did she think she was to get between him and the man he'd known with an intimate familiarity since the late 1920s? His best and closest friend. A man he had once regarded as nearly a brother, who had transitioned over the long years into being the greatest love of his life.

"You know who that is at your back?" Wilson asked incredulously, believing that the strange woman just had to be ignorant of Barnes' historical background. "That's the Winter Soldier, Lastimosa. One of the greatest weapons in HYDRA's entire arsenal. A super-soldier and an assassin without equal."

"I'm aware," the helmeted woman growled out, yet her focus never deviated from Steve. "But he's off their leash. Free of them. And right now, the entire reason we're even at this base, is to make sure that there is one less way for them take advantage of him and put him back under their control."

A brief moment of quiet passed before…

"Wait, wait, wait!" Stark interrupted with blatant confusion coloring his tone. "You mean to say that that guy right there is James "Bucky" Barnes? Cap's bestest buddy in the whole wide world?"

"Yes. That's him," Romanoff said with a nod of her head.

"Then surely this is a joyous occasion!" Thor boomed with a wide grin on his face, seemingly unaware of the distinct tension that permeated the entire situation.

"Yeah… Not so much," Barton grumbled under his breath. "More of a cluster-fuck, actually."

But Steve wasn't paying attention. All of his focus had narrowed down to Bucky and the woman who was standing in his way. "Stand down, Lastimosa, and get out of my way. This doesn't concern you."

"Oh, it very much does concern me," she hissed out and Steve was more than certain that there was a particularly nasty expression on her face beneath that helmet of hers. "You want to talk? Fine. But that's his decision to make and you're going to wait until after we've completed our mission."

"No! You…" Steve began to say, standing tall in an unintentional attempt to intimidate the woman with his greater size, but a heavy huff of breath stopped him in his tracks. Motion from behind Lastimosa drew his eyes as the scarf and goggles were pulled down around his neck and an all too familiar face was revealed under the lights. The very same pale skin, bright blue-gray eyes, that strong jaw and cleft chin that Steve knew with an aching familiarity. Though a heavy shadow of stubble covered his jaw and chin, quite a bit longer and scruffier than it had even been back in Washington D.C.

"You always were impatient, weren't you?" Bucky asked with a quiet and resigned tone of voice. "Never did know when to give up…"

Bright hope flared in Steve's chest, like a fire given oxygen.

He remembered!

He knew him!

"Buck…"

"You've gotta wait until we're done here, Captain," Lastimosa urged. "We've got a schedule to adhere to tonight or all our efforts will have been in vain."

"Let us go," Bucky nearly pleaded. "Steve, you've gotta let us go."

But Steve didn't want to.

He wanted Bucky back then and there. Wanted to hold him tight and never let go. To never let anybody else take him away from him again. To kiss him and love him and help him to overcome the traumas of his past in any way possible.

As if sensing Steve's reluctance to let them go without a fight – to even let them go out of his sight – Lastimosa and Bucky seemed to have chosen a plan of action for themselves. Simultaneously, they tossed canister grenades from their belts, which quickly twirled and spun uncontrollably, spewing a thick cloud of pale gray smoke into the air. It grew and expanded into enormous proportions in only a few moments and then suddenly thin arcs of blue colored electricity sparked within the smoke and it began to hum with discharging energy.

Like the hum of high-tension power lines.

The Avengers charged in unison at the cloud, trying to break through and apprehend the escaping pair, but were rebuffed. Alarms within the Iron Man suit blared as it began to spark and fizzled as it was overloaded by the current that was specifically designed to short out mechanical and digital systems. Steve, Sam, Clint and Natasha had barely touched the smoke before they were leaping backwards as well, hissing and swearing from the electrical burns that they had so sudden accrued. Even Thor, mighty as he was, jumped back from the smoke with his armor singed and smoking slightly, patting down his own arms which bore burns as well.

The others took a brief second to look at the God of Thunder in blatant confusion.

As if sensing their unasked questions, the Asgardian shrugged his great shoulders. "While I command lightning with great ease, I am not entirely immune to its effects and this cloud is quite potent."

"Yeah, I wouldn't touch it, if I were you," Lastimosa's voice called out from the other side of the smoke. "Electric Smoke can kill you if you're in it for too long. You'll just have to wait until it dissipates." And then she fell silent and Steve could hear – even over the faint hissing of the smoke and crackle of arcing electricity – the sound of two pairs of boots running away from them.

Right in the direction of the elevators.

A handful of seconds passed by and the Avengers were unable to do anything, standing around with their thumbs up their proverbial asses, but finally the smoke began to clear and the electrical current died. Steve plunged into the cloud as soon as it he deemed it safe enough to traverse, charging forward as quickly as he could and hoping that he would make it on time.

But he hadn't.

The blast doors were nearly closed with less than a foot of space left and he could hear the ding of an elevator door – opening or closing, he couldn't determine – from just beyond. But he wasn't giving up so soon. He couldn't. Bucky was right there! Steve sprinted onwards, quickly approaching his top speed, but he still didn't make it in time. The doors had closed with a clang of metal and he heard the locking mechanisms clunk into place with a sense of foreboding finality.

Rage and renewed grief surged from within and his right hand clenched into an impossibly tight fist, his knuckles turning white with blood loss beneath his fingerless gloves. The fist came up and…

BANG!

He punched at the closed doors with all of his strength, relishing the pain that surged through his hand.

"Fuck…" he whispered, leaning forward to rest his forehead against the cold steel.