You wake up in a cold sweat, and unconsciously reach for Bucky before you remember where you are. Throwing your legs over the side of the motel bed you grab the half filled glass of water sitting on your night stand and down it in one gulp, trying to ignore your shaking hands.
Part of you, though if you were being honest, most of you, just wanted to pack up and head home now. Tell Steve what you knew, and tell him you couldn't be involved. Justine had welcomed you back with open arms, her trust and sincerity shining through as she told you all about what she had been doing in the past few years, how she had come to create COBRA, and so much information about the organization that it almost made you sick.
But...something was holding you back. In all that Justine had told you, there was no mention of any of the violence reported on the news. She hadn't said anything about the attacks on government employees, nothing about inciting anti-mutant rallies, nothing about killing humans. And now, especially now that you knew Justine was the ringleader of the organization you needed to be 100% sure before you went back.
With that thought in mind you throw on your beaten clothes, thinking longingly of your wardrobe back home, and head towards the base. Inside the homeless mutants are already awake, and eating their scant breakfasts. You approach a young girl, who looks about nine with bright blue skin and glowing green eyes. She eyes you warily, and you give her a tentative smile.
"Hi there," You say quietly, kneeling down in front of her. From within your jacket you pull out a chocolate bar and hold it out to her, "What's your name?"
"Cynthia," The girl says in a high pitched voice, her eyes hover on the candy bar greedily but she makes no move to reach for it.
"Hi Cynthia, my name is (Y/n). I thought you might like this." You nod towards the candy bar.
"Why?" The girl demands, immediately on edge, "Who are you?"
"Don't worry, I'm like you," You tell her, and as you speak you hold up your free hand, letting the flames engulf it. "How long have you been here?"
"Couple months," Cynthia mumbles, hesitantly taking the candy, "Ms. Justine found me in the streets and brought me here. It's better. Ms. Justine and the others who look normal bring what food they can back for the rest of us. They protect us." You bite your lip, another wave of guilt flowing through you. Why were you here? These people were just surviving.
The rest of the mutants you spoke to over the following weeks said the same things. You had assisted in supply runs, helped find mutants on the run, and besides the nagging guilt that was quickly building up in the pit of your stomach it was like you and Justine had never been apart. Her pure joy at the two of you finding one another again made you feel like you were going to vomit every time her face lit up at you walking in the room, and every day you felt like the mission you were on was more and more pointless. In fact, more and more you were wondering if the Avengers were wrong, and COBRA had just become a scapegoat for the government to boister the public's fear of mutants.
But, there was only one way to know for sure. There was only one locked door in COBRA's base, only one room you had never been inside of. And you knew you couldn't go home until you saw what was inside. Unfortunately you had very little time on base that Justine wasn't by your side or there weren't various other tattooed mutants mulling around. It wasn't until a month had passed that an opportunity presented itself.
"(Y/n)!" Justine came rushing out of her office, dressed in what looked like kevlar, "You got my message then. We've got a rescue mission."
"Right, where are we going?"
"I need you to stay here," Justine said, glancing at her watch, "I need my team, but I can't leave everyone undefended."
"I can do that," You say immediately, "Is everything okay?"
"No time to explain," She slid a black backpack over her shoulders and started towards the door, "I'll be back soon."
Heart beating in your chest you sit in Justine's office, waiting what feels like hours but is only ten minutes to make sure they're gone. You check her desk for a key, but come up empty handed. You glance at the clock again, they had already been gone twenty minutes-but surely they'd be gone an hour at the least.
You pull the lock pick you'd taken to keeping in your boot-should this exact situation arise-and head over to the door.
Despite your somewhat shady past, you had never really learned to pick locks besides Nat's crash course before you had left-in your current line of work you were more likely to shoot a lock than try and pick it, but in this situation you imagined that would be a dead giveaway. After several tense minutes the lock slid over and you pushed the door open.
The room looked like a smaller version of the Avenger's conference rooms, however there were no chair surrounding the tables. On the walls were several maps with pins stuck in various locations. One section directly behind the table had pictures of several older men, some with x's over their faces. Your heart sank as you realized they had to be the government officials that had been attacked. You crossed the room and picked up a red notebook off the table. Despite the time apart you recognized Justine's handwriting at once, but the words read like the journal of an insane person. From sections outlining a world where humans were slaves to the enhanced to lists of people she was planning on eliminating, with an alarming amount of names already crossed out. As you flipped through it towards the back your name caught your eye, and you stopped to read:
"(Y/n) has come back to me, as I always knew in my heart she would. For now she must be kept in the dark regarding the more militant aspects of our organization, she is different from what I remember, but she is still soft. Her compassion has always been her weakness, but in time I know she will come to see things my way. She will see the necessity of what we do. And together we will usher in a new age as it was always meant to be. For now we must use the momentum we've gathered through our attacks to work on expanding outside of this base, especially now that there are so many mutants gathered here. After today's assassination I'm going to request that (Y/n) start a training program for the mutants, the more we can get fighting the better."
You close your eyes for a moment, fighting the tears that threaten to fall as you return the notebook to its original place. You're locking the room back up when you hear the van pull up outside and you quickly grab a book from Justine's shelf at random and fall into her seat just as the door opens.
"Hey, how'd everything go?" You hope your voice sounds casual enough, but Justine just sighs, falling into the chair across from you.
"No luck," She frowns, "But we'll keep trying. In the meantime I wanted to talk to you about something."
"Sure, what's up?"
"I was hoping that you could start up a little training group, you know, maybe teach some of the people around here some self defence tips or something. It's getting dangerous out there, and I worry what will happen if any of them get cornered."
"I'd be glad to help out," You respond, forcing a smile and rising to your feet, "We can start first thing in the morning."
"Are you leaving already?" Justine asks, "I was hoping maybe we could do dinner."
"I'm pretty beat," You admit, not together dishonestly, "But how about lunch tomorrow?"
"Sounds good," Justine smiles, "I'll see you in the morning then."
The minute you're back in the motel room you start throwing your things into the duffle, your mind seemed to be hyper focused on just getting the hell out of town until something Justine said flits through your brain causing your hands to still.
Crazy as she apparently was, Justine was right about something; the majority of the mutants in the base were completely innocent and helpless under attack, you would have to act very carefully to minimize the risk of unnecessary casualties.
The compound is silent when you arrive in the dead of night and you're relieved you won't have to deal with anything until the morning. You slip upstairs but your feet take you to Bucky's room instead of your own. You see him stir when you gently close the door behind you and you quickly shed your clothes; he lifts the blanket as you approach and you slide behind the sheets. Wordlessly he pulls you to him and your bury your face into his neck, breathing in his familiar and comforting scent.
"I missed you," Bucky murmurs quietly into your skin, "Did you-" You cut him off, pressing your lips to his.
"In the morning," You tell him softly, brushing your fingertips along his jaw, "We can talk about it in the morning."
It's late morning when you finally roll out of bed; you know the rest of the team knew the moment you arrived and you feel a rush of affection at them all that they hadn't bombarded you immediately upon arrival.
As much as you wanted to delay the inevitable, you knew you needed to make a move as soon as possible. Would Justine think you had been captured when you disappeared? Or would she work out the truth-that you weren't to be trusted. You didn't know for sure, and that made time of the essence in this situation.
"You okay doll?" Bucky's voice interrupts your thoughts and you realized you had stopped halfway through pulling on your t-shirt. You quickly slip your other arm through the hole and nod.
"Sorry, lost in thought," You admit, "Come on, I'm sure everyone's waiting for me."
Sure enough everyone's in the conference room when you arrive, and Wanda shoves a cup of tea in your hands the moment you walk in which you take gratefully.
"We weren't expecting you back so early," Steve says as you sit down, "Did something happen?"
You shake your head, "It just took less time than I thought to get the intel we needed."
"But you did get it?" Rhodie asks, ignoring the dirty look Bucky sends him.
"Yeah. They're in a warehouse in the city, there's about thirty members of the operation, they all have a cobra tattooed on their wrist. They're planning on overthrowing the government and putting mutants in power. They are behind the assassinations that have been happening."
"Thirty, that's better than we thought," Natasha muses, "But all enhanced?"
You nod, "But...there's around two hundred other mutants living in the warehouse. People with physical mutations that can't just hide in plain sight like the rest of us. They're not fighters, and they don't know about the rest of it. COBRA has been feeding and sheltering them. Some of them are kids." You direct this last part at Steve, who sighs running his hand through his hair.
"So we won't be able to just bust in there, guns blazing."
"These people have nowhere else to go," You tell him, "If we destroy this organization…"
"We might as well be throwing the mutants straight into a government prison."
"We'll have to go about this carefully then," Wanda says gently.
"Do you think it'll raise alarms that you've disappeared?" Steve asks. You think for a second, before you slowly shake your head.
"How on earth did you get them to trust you so fast?" Natasha asks, "You were only there a few weeks."
"I-I knew the leader."
"What? How?" Steve asks and you make a split second decision.
"We met a few times, we lived in the same city for awhile. Years ago." Bucky stiffens beside you for some reason, but you shake it off.
"Will it be a problem when we make our move?"
"Not at all."
"Can I ask you something?" Bucky asks as the two of you sit side by side, your dinner plates balanced on your laps as your legs dangle off the edge of the roof.
"What's up?"
"Why did you lie earlier when you told Steve you weren't close with the leader of COBRA?"
You almost choke on your food, "Why do you think I was lying?" The look Bucky gives you makes you sigh, "Because I don't want to be left behind when we make our move. If he knew the truth there's no way he would let me come."
"You were close then?"
"We were just kids when we met, but we were together for awhile. She showed me how to survive on my own," You take a deep breath, "We joined up with this group of mutants in Boston when the government started rallying behind the Mutant Registration Act, Justine took to it like a moth to a flame. I worried that they were too militant and they were becoming exactly what the public was afraid of when it came to mutants. They decided they were going to march on DC, a last hurrah, Justine wanted me to come. She wanted a lot of things I couldn't give her… Anyways, we fought about it, she went to DC, I followed her and tried to stop her, but she was just so determined. Then a SWAT team open fired into the crowd."
"I remember that-that rally was the final breaking point that pushed the act to pass."
You nod, frowning, "I saw Justine go down and I bolted, took a train to Chicago and I was there until Stark found me."
"But she survived?"
"It was like seeing a ghost," You chuckle without humor, "And it was like nothing ever happened between us. She welcomed me with open arms."
"Were you and her…?"
You shake your head, "She...I never…" You trail off and sigh, "And now…" You stop, unable to form a sentence that accurately portrayed your feelings.
"You feel like you owe her something," Bucky replies with quiet understanding.
"I need to be the one that finishes this. And I need to give her a chance."