A/N: If you don't like the plot or pairings, then don't read.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Captain America: The Winter Soldier only my character/s

WORD COUNT: 2, 858

Chapter 22

The Bank

"HYDRA and Hellfire have been working in conjunction with each other since the early fifties." Fury spoke from his place in the chairs next to Hill, "whatever they need with Persephone, it could be just bait, or either they're going to recruit her or kill her, since she did take out an entire squad of their assassins without batting an eyelash."

"So, basically, none of these options are even close to good? She came to help us and now she's going to die?" Nat asked, jaw clenched as she watched Steve's fists tighten, knuckles white. His love was taken by HYDRA and Fury was spouting out facts like a robot, as if Seph was a line in some graph, as if she were a statistic, nothing else.

"Brandt made a decision when she risked her neck to save your sorry asses, I'd be very grateful." Fury fired back.

Steve's fists clenched hard, his knuckles cracking from the sheer pressure he was applying. His Seph, his loving Seph was gone, in the arms of enemy and Fury was telling him to basically to forget about her. No. No way, not happening. Seph was the only person to really show him the potential that the world he had woken up into was worth it and that she would be there with him, by his side to experience it all with him.

No.

"I'm not leaving Seph to HYDRA or Hellfire! They came after her two years ago and I'm not letting them take her again!" Steve snarled.

"You have no choice, Captain. You want to save the world from HYDRA or throw it all away for your girlfriend who's probably going to die anyway?"

"So, you're just going to leave her to rot?" A disembodied young voice echoed through the tunnel, and everyone was on high alert, looking around but Steve's eyebrows creased. He knew that voice, "are you just going to bail on her, Uncle Steve?"

"Joey?!" Steve called, panicked, 'what is he doing here? He can't be here! Where is he?' His thoughts ran rampant before there was a bright flash of purple and Joey landed on his feet, wearing a pair of ripped jeans and a geometric patterned t-shirt with a thin cardigan laid over the top and he brushed the hood down as piercing sapphire eyes made contact with Steve's cobalt blue. "Joey!" Steve started forward, gripping the boy's shoulders as he slid to his knees, his emotions nearly running out of control at the sight of his adopted nephew right in front of him, Seph would always calm him, whether it was just her presence there beside him or using her mutation to calm him. "Are you alright?"

"Are you just going to leave her in the hands of the people that nearly killed us, two years ago?" Joey asked one more time, ignoring Steve's question, his hands balling into shaky fists, glaring at his uncle with fury evident in his sapphire eyes.

Nat stood unsteadily, waving away the doctor that had taken out the bullet lodged in her shoulder, "when did you develop powers? I thought you weren't a mutant." Her words slurred slightly.

Without looking toward her, Joey answered, "when a bunch of those guys came after us at Poppy's diner during lunch. Some person with a metal arm got the drop on Aunt Seph and she was losing the fight. He was about to hurt her really bad. I couldn't even think before I punched him into the lamppost." Steve's eyes widened at Joey's explanation of his powers surfacing at the sight of his aunt in danger, but what was eating up at him with guilt was the fact that he wasn't there at all and that he knew who their attacker was. Joey's eyebrows furrowed and the corners of his lips turned down as he stared at his hands, before clenching them tightly into fists again. "Forget about my mutation, that can wait, I came here to help you but I find out that the bad guys have Aunt Seph and you're just going to leave her there to die." Sapphire eyes slowly turning into an amethyst purple as Joey focused himself back on Steve, "I've lost enough family, I'm not losing the one person who's stood by me after all this time, too."

"You're a kid, you can't do anything here, you have nothing to offer us and much less likely help us to stop the helicarriers." Maria Hill bluntly responded, not caring for the boys feelings. It was absurd for him to think he could help at all, just a boy was of no use to their mission.

"Hill!" Steve snapped, turning his head from Joey to glare at the agent next to Fury.

"I don't think you heard me." Joey growled, moving his glowing violet gaze from Steve to Agent Hill, looking and acting so much like Persephone that the World War II veteran could hardly believe it, "I never said anything about helicarriers, I'm talking about my Aunt, she's more important to me than your screwups." Agent Hill bristled at Joey's words, looking at the boy who looked so much older than twelve, going on thirteen.

"Joseph," Steve started, bringing Joey's attention back to him, "I'm not leaving Seph with them, no matter what anyone says, she's not collateral damage and I refuse to leave her in their hands, especially with the information we have now. I promise you not as a captain, but as a part of your family as your uncle, that we will save your aunt no matter what happens. I won't let her or you down." Steve's words impacted Joey and the purple slowly faded as his eyes filled with fearful tears.

"I just want her to be okay." Joey choked, the tears never falling, but the emotion was there and it was raw.

Steve's jaw clenched, "and she will be."

(..)

Seph coughed, her eyes opening slowly, her body was still shaking violently from the cold settling inside her, the wheelie chair beneath her squeaked as she slowly straightened her back with great difficulty. She could feel her muscles creak in protest, as if the ice in her veins was literally paralyzing her movement and powers. She was trying to call forth her flames, but nothing was working.

"Ah, the mutant is awake." One of the lab coats spoke eagerly as one of them grabbed her by the hair, lifting her head up roughly. Grunting in pain, her blue lips, pale skin and blurry hazel eyes greeted their wide expressions, "it seems the blood of the cryokinetic has a severe negative impact, considering the pyrokinetic's blood is too hot to be contained or recorded." Their voices were lost in the void of Seph's deaf ears as they roughly pushed her head down, letting her hair go as they went back to their analysis.

Blinking rapidly, she tried to free her vision from its blurry container, only to zero in on the Winter Soldier through the messy strands of her own hair.

He blinked as if he too, were just waking up, but the dark circles under his eyes proved different as he stared at the red-head with wide eyes. "James?" Her voice was weak, shaky and tired. His eyes widened with recognition but he didn't speak. His eyes narrowed slightly, as if he was remembering something, "you're Sergeant James Barnes, aren't you?" Reaching out with her shaky hand, Seph hesitated when she watched his muscles of his arm flex dangerously, but he made no move to stop her.

"Should we interfere?" Another lab coat asked.

"Maybe it will be informative." Seph wasn't listening to them, her focus was entirely on the man who Steve considered his brother as her shaky hand gently brushed against the back of his and suddenly she was pulled into his memories, through his emotions, her eyes burning orange once again and her hair burst into fire-engine red.

Confusion.

Fear.

Anger.

Sorrow.

Loss.

All at once.

Zola's smug face as he operated on Bucky, his fall off the train and Steve's shocked and heartbroken face as he fell from the moving train. His missing arm, the metal saw that cut through bone, his new arm. 'You are to be the New Fist of Hydra, put him on ice.' The last thing either of them could see was a beautiful blonde-haired woman, with very familiar clear-blue eyes smiling at them with sunlight backdropping her beautiful form. Bucky's hand was ripped from hers and Seph was pushed back from him just as he lashed out at an assistant that was fixing his cybernetic limb.

"That's enough of that, mutant." A thick Russian accent filled her ears before a hand from behind Seph closed around her throat, squeezing until her airway was at the point of sealing shut as the surrounding enemy agents pointed their firearms at Bucky. Seph wanted to scream at them to stop, that he was just confused, but she couldn't. Her vision was blurring and her head started to pound from the lack of oxygen, grabbing at the agent's wrist, she slapped at it weakly but it did nothing to loosen their grip.

"Farkov, let her go." A voice spoke and the tight hold on Seph's throat was gone and the pyrokinetic mutant sucked in much needed oxygen, coughing violently as her vision slowly started to clear and the drumming in her head ceased.

Flopping against the chair, her entire body was exhausted as she slowly flicked her eyes up, searching for a face to match the voice. Fear lanced through her entire nervous system as she stared at the man, "Pierce!" Seph's hazel eyes watched the director of SHIELD look over at her with emotionless eyes before turning back to Bucky, who was staring blankly ahead.

"Gag her." With his command, a thick material was forced between her lips and tied around her head tightly and Seph heaved from the rough treatment as her tongue started to dry from the material sucking the moisture from her mouth. "Mission report," Pierce ordered, but there was no answer from the Soldier, "mission report now." Still no answer.

So Pierce struck him, bending as he watched Bucky calculatingly.

The brief flash of pain Bucky felt as his head snapped to the right, washed over Seph and she flinched in the chair, her movement unobserved by the people surrounding. They were preoccupied on their leader and the soldier they used. "The man on the bridge," Bucky's cracked voice rumbled in the abandoned vault, snapping out of his trance and Seph's eyes filled with tears at his words, her heart aching with the thought of Steve. Bucky's eyes flicked to her, before turning to Pierce, "who was he?"

"You met him earlier this week on another assignment." Seph wanted to scream and stamp her foot that he did know him. They were like brothers, best friends until the end of the line. But nothing could be uttered from her lips, she couldn't even lift a finger.

Bucky's handsome, yet disheveled features took on a faraway and pained expression, "I knew him." He murmured.

Pierce sighed, grabbing another chair and sat opposite Bucky, his features softening as if he were talking to a child, "your work has been a gift to mankind, you shaped the century and I need you to do it one more time." Pierce lured Bucky with his soft words, shaping them as if he were cleansing the world instead of breaking it, "society's at a tipping point between order and chaos and tomorrow morning we're going to give it a push. But, if you don't do your part, I can't do mine and HYDRA can't give the world the freedom it deserves." His words were calm, with the same level of hypnotic ability that a mother would have over her child to get them to adhere to her request.

Conflict between his confusing memories and Pierce's words was evident in his open blue eyes. "But I knew him." For one moment, his expression softened, eyebrow furrowing in worry, as if he hoped his handler could understand his predicament, that this man that was treating him rather kindly, he could trust with that information.

Sighing once more, Pierce stood once again, his back to Bucky as he looked to Seph, eyes pleading. "Prep him."

"He's been out of cryofreeze too long." One of the lab coats contested.

"Then wipe him and start over." With Pierce's command, Bucky's eyes widened a fraction before all emotion was wiped from his face.

Don't show fear. Fear makes you weak.

'Wipe him? What does that mean? What are they gonna do to him?' Seph questioned silently, wide and concerned orange eyes watched as they pushed him into the chair completely, his fear washed over her, his erratic heartbeat speeding her own and their quick breaths matched. They stuck a rubber mouth guard in his mouth before turning toward the computer and started pressing a few buttons to prompt the chair to respond.

Seph watched, horrified as the metal clamps trapped his arms in place and some contraption above his head slowly started to lower, turning into the correct position before she saw the electrical currents passing through the panels. Her eyes widened and they slowly darkened back into hazel as she realized what they were about to do to him.

Electroshock treatment, for his memories, that's what Pierce meant when he said to wipe him. He was going to be mentally wiped without any anesthesia and the device set to a high setting, where he could feel everything.

They were going to wipe Bucky of his memories, of every single memory he ever had or he was recovering and they would 'start over' with a clean slate. With a freshly warped mind to manipulate into doing their sick, twisted missions. Bucky's agonized scream jolted through Seph and the tears in her eyes slipped down her cheeks as she watched helplessly as they erased what little of Bucky was slowly returning, replacing him with a mindless soldier.

She hated HYDRA.

Pierce turned toward her, unfazed by the agonized and screaming man not even three feet away from him and he strode toward Seph, and grabbed her by her wet cheeks, pulling her forward. Her eyes burned with rage. "You will be a wonderful asset for us tomorrow. A lovely little sacrifice for the world to see. Hell Hound's death will mark HYDRA's new world order. Those that live in fear of you and your power, will congratulate us, will welcome our ways into the world with open arms. Better look your best, sweetheart. I'll let Farkov help with that." His voice was cold, calculating and yet his features never changed from the hard, stone expression they were set in before he walked away without another word, his lackey's flanking him.

Purposeful steps emerged from behind Seph and a built, menacing blonde woman towered over a shivering Seph. "I am going to enjoy this, mutant." Her thick accent was familiar from before as she untied the gag, "and I'm going to enjoy hearing you beg for me to stop. You single-handedly killed an entire squadron of my own students and for that, you will pay."

"I thought they were. . . fair game and all of them were cowards, they chewed on a nice. . . cyanide pill before we were able to interrogate them and the other tackled me out a window, they. . . weren't exactly stellar students now were they?" Seph spoke through labored breaths, a teasing, unremorseful grin graced Seph's dry lips. Farkov's mature features contorted into rage, Seph didn't even notice it coming, but the sudden powerful blow split the inside of her cheek with the force of Farkov's jab. With whoever's blood was in Seph's veins, her power wasn't going to help and her regenerative healing ability had definitely slowed to a stop, as it worked in conjunction with her pyrokinesis. Blood filled her mouth as she spat it out at Farkov's feet, the taste making her nauseous and she chuckled, raising her head to glare at the Russian Hellfire operative, "you can do whatever the hell you like, but you'll never make me beg to scum like you."

"Oh, we'll see about that, Hell Hound." Farkov grinned, cracking her knuckles.

"Give it your best shot, bitch." Seph snarled.