Part 4: Summer 2016
Liesl awoke suddenly.
Her hazy vision danced around her, refusing to focus on any one spot. She took a deep breath, filling with lungs with precious air, trying not to scream as it burned painfully.
Her view was blocked by thick, yellowed glass. Around her, the air was frigid and uncomfortable; she thought she felt herself thawing—water dripping off of her fingertips. She could see nothing else but this thin prison.
Liesl instinctively shrugged her shoulders and wiggled her toes. As the sensation of feeling flowed back into her body, she crumpled her hand into a fist and slammed it into the glass. Pain radiated against the impact, but she did it again, and again, intensely until the glass shattered like rain and the door holding her hostage opened.
She stumbled out of her makeshift prison, her eyes slowly adjusting to see a dark room with several other tubes holding bodies. She vaguely recognized some faces behind the smoky glass around her. As she approached the closest person, curious if they were awake as well, she heard a door crash open.
Liesl quickly ducked into a narrow hallway behind her and held her breath. She watched as a white man gripping a gun in his right hand sauntered into the room, his eyes darting for onlookers. When he failed to see Liesl, he pressed the gun against a glass tube and fired. One. After. Another.
Her heart pounded so heavily in her chest she thought she might pass out—or that the ringing in her ears would give her away. Did he intend to kill her as well? When the man approached her prison and noticed the shattered glass, his eyes narrowed. He quickly glanced around him once more, but saw no one. He clicked his tongue and turned his back, ready to leave, when Liesl pounced.
She felt like an animal—her moves were instinctual. She jumped onto his back and wrapped her arms so tightly around his neck that he flailed against her grip. He tried to kick out from beneath her, but she was stronger—how, she wasn't sure—so she tightened her arm against his neck.
"HYDRA… survives," he sputtered in German.
Liesl released the man and threw his body to the ground. As the man gasped for air, she towered over him. In any other situation, Liesl knew she should have been panicking and terrified, but she felt oddly in control.
"What did you say?" she snapped.
He clutched at his already bruising throat, still gasping hoarsely. Liesl's patience was thin; she grabbed him by the throat yet again and lifted him in the air above her.
"I will not repeat myself," she hissed.
"You are not… the only… one."
Liesl released him again, and he fell to the floor with a thud. She was going to walk away, leave him, when she heard the door slam open and several pairs of feet approach quickly.
"Please," the man said.
She wasn't certain what he was begging for, but her body was already moving towards his. Liesl picked him up by his limp arm. Her body seemed to know what to do—she forced him on his knees in front of her and grabbed both sides of his head. She was going to twist when she heard a familiar voice yell in English.
"Don't!"
She looked up and saw three men staring back at her. One in a red metal suit, one in an American banner, and the last, the one who spoke, in black. Her eyes drifted to his metal arm and the familiar red star on his bicep. Her heart leapt at the symbol, and a lump of anxiety hardened in her throat, but why, she couldn't say.
"Genug, Soldat," the man in black said.
"We need him alive," the American man clarified.
"Liesl," the man in black pleaded, "Bitte."
It was only then that she noticed her hands were shaking so violently that her prisoner yelped in pain. She released him, and he fell to the floor face first with a grunt.
The men quickly moved to apprehend the man and led him onto a small plane parked near the facility. She vaguely remembered it belonging to HYDRA, but the wheels in her brain were spinning so slowly she could barely think to speak. She followed the others into the plane, away from her prisoner, and sat in silence for the duration of the ride. The men introduced themselves as Tony, Steve, and Bucky, respectively. Liesl carefully watched Bucky, as he seemed to eagerly wait for any flicker of memory about him. But her mind was, essentially, empty.
When she didn't reply, the others took to speaking about her as if she couldn't understand.
"We were only authorized to bring back Zemo," Tony said bitterly, "I didn't think this was a rescue mission."
"We got lucky," Steve said confidently. "The others… not so much."
"Her mind may still be wired for HYDRA. I'm not sure bringing her back to the compound is the best move," Tony argued.
"Don't discuss anything classified," Steve countered.
Tony rolled his eyes. "Got that much, thanks."
Liesl wasn't sure what provoked her, but she said in heavily accented English, "He killed them."
The three men turned to her. "Come again?" Tony said.
"Sorry," she said, her cheeks red. Then, to Bucky, she said in German, "They were sleeping, and that man killed them."
Bucky smiled sympathetically at her. "I know," he replied in German. "He will be punished."
She nodded, but that didn't stop the worry from pulsing through her body. What would happen to her once they reached the "compound"? Was it a prison? Part of her wished she had never woke up.
"Are you worried?" Bucky asked.
Liesl chewed her lip while she considered her answer. "Not for him," she finally said.
After another hour of silence and low chatter, Liesl drifted to sleep. She woke briefly when the plane touched down and they transferred the prisoner to a black man with a thick Wakandan accent, but quickly fell back asleep. Each time she woke, she challenged herself to remember—the last moment, the last conversation… Everything but the HYDRA facility was blurry.
She stirred when the plane landed with a final thump. Panic set in.
"Where am I?" she asked in English.
"Safe," Steve said.
She looked to Bucky for confirmation.
"Sichen," he agreed.
When she looked to Tony, though, he was already walking away.
Liesl was quickly getting used to being spoken over and for.
"I thought you didn't have any room for extra passengers," a red-haired woman called Natasha commented once she took notice of Liesl, who Bucky left sitting on a couch in a massive common area. He promised to be right back, but she longed for his presence the second he left.
"Yeah, well, plans change," Tony said from the bar as he poured himself a drink. "We thought the Accords would work, and they didn't. We thought we were capturing a terrorist, and we found Barnes's booty call."
"Tony," Steve said sharply. "It's not like that."
Tony waved his hand in dismissal. "The first I heard of her existing was on the plane over to Siberia, and now she's real. Here. In my house. How'd he know she'd be there?"
"There were other soldiers," Steve explained, "Liesl is… was… one of them. She was with Bucky from the beginning."
"Super soldiers in love," Tony quipped.
"I owe her my life," Bucky said. He lumbered into the room and handed Liesl a blanket that she wrapped around her shoulders. The scent—his scent—was comforting and familiar.
"A HYDRA agent," Tony said skeptically.
"Former," Bucky corrected.
"If only she could talk, then she could tell us!" Tony said mockingly.
"She can't speak?" Natasha raised her eyebrow.
"My English isn't great," Liesl said. The room went so quiet she thought she might have lost her hearing. "I don't remember much."
"Aha," Natasha said with a small smile. "She does speak."
"Ich schätze den herablassenden Ton nicht."
Bucky snorted, which made Liesl smile.
"What did she say?" Tony asked.
"That she doesn't like your tone," a woman with a Russian accent as she entered the room.
"Oh good, Wanda, you're here," Tony snapped. "When did my house turn into a hotel?"
"Sometime between Ultron and the Accords," a man who appeared almost literally out of thin air said. His skin was dark red and he had a golden gem in his forehead.
"What's your problem, Tony?" Natasha asked.
"Since you asked," Tony approached the group with a drink in his hand. "I think Cap's been using up his favors a lot recently. First, we take in Manchurian Candidate over there. Someone tries to frame him for the murder of the King of Wakanda and a bunch of other important people, yadda, yadda, yadda… We find out Barnes can still lose his mind if someone says a few words to him. We risk life and law to make sure he's safe. And now we have her, this girl!" To Liesl, he said, "And don't take this the wrong way, I'm sure you're a really nice lady, but we're going out a long limb here trusting the two of you about her. We find her in a HYDRA facility, still dolled up in HYDRA clothes, and we're supposed to trust her just like that? How do we know she's still not a spy? Or completely brainwashed? If the UN finds out we have her…"
"We don't answer to them anymore," Steve said simply. "We're not talking about putting her out on missions."
"Because then what? She leads HYDRA right to us?" Tony asked.
"Or she leads us to HYDRA," Natasha countered.
"You're talking using her as an intelligence?" Wanda said.
"If she's loyal to us, we could use the information," Natasha shrugged. "Just a thought."
"How do we know if she's loyal? Girl can barely speak English," Tony said.
"Wanda could—" Natasha began, but Bucky cut her off.
"Or we let Liesl recover and decide what she wants to do with her life," he snapped. "That's a choice I wish I had… before Zemo dragged me back into all this."
"A life eating plums in small-town Germany would have certainly been worthwhile," Tony said bitingly.
"It was my happy place," Bucky said softly. "Froelich."
The room went quiet with awkwardness. Bucky's use of the word Froelich piqued her interest, though, causing Liesl to sit up straighter. The town was familiar… but why, and how? She stared at Bucky for answers, whose mouth was twisted with frustration.
"Fine," Tony relented. He downed the rest of his drink and said, "But put her in a safe room for tonight. I don't want her wandering the tower."
The rest of the day went by in a blur. Liesl spoke slow and careful English with the others, trying hard to get her bearings for what happened. After a filling meal, Vision led her to her room a few floors below. When Tony said safe room, Liesl clearly saw he meant prison cell—there were locks on all the doors, no sharp objects for escaping, and only books for company. She thumbed through the selection, pulling out a few on post-World War history with no intention of reading. She wasn't sure her mind would focus long enough for that luxury.
Liesl closed her eyes and tried desperately to dig into her memory. She saw flashes of the HYDRA facility—in different lighting, from a different time—but otherwise her brain felt like mush. She wished she knew what made her a natural enemy of the Avengers, and a hero to Bucky, who smiled at her like he loved her. Did he? Why? How?
Her mind ran rampant with questions as she mindlessly flipped through pages of a book on the 1950s—questions she was certain she wouldn't know the answers to for a while.