Chapter 33: Death

Yori and I were the overhead team. I, being lighter than any of the men, was flown in Yori's arms to the roof of the HYDRA facility we were raiding. Yori dropped me down and swung into a brutal kick, snapping a man's neck. I forced bones from my palms and spun, driving them into the chest of two men on either side of me. I pulled free and gasped as bullets riddled my torso.

"Watch out!" Yori cautioned as she swooped past like a bat from hell and barraged one soldier with buffets from her wings. He raised his gun and found himself holding nothing but the stock as Yori's whip sheered the barrel off. She smirked and kicked him back over the edge of the building.

Steve and the men were handling the inside. We'd been told we had roughly ten minutes while they fought their way in, set the charges, and scrambled for cover. This was a small base, a stopover really, but all of HYDRA had to go, even the tiniest parts of it.

"It's! Too! Cold! Damn it!" Yori shrieked as she snapped her whip furiously, cutting a man to bits and pieces.

I laughed as I raised my hands and fired my finger bones like bullets in a wide spray around me. Three men dropped, clutching wounds. I leaped over an attempted tackle from one of the men and kicked him in the back, sending him flying over the edge of the roof with a scream.

"Well done!" Yori congratulated as she heaved one man into the air with her tail around his throat. There was a crunch as his throat was crushed and she dropped him back down to suffocate to death.

I swung into a kick, a bone protruding from my knee. It stabbed into the side of a soldier and punctured a lung. He wheezed and dropped his weapon. I snatched it from the air and sprayed bullets across the roof, balanced on one leg. I shook the man free and set down my foot as he fell to the ground.

Yori dove from the sky, hands outstretched in claws, shrieking as she displayed her teeth. She seized a man by the shoulders and shoved him over the railing to fall to the ground four stories below. Smirking, Yori alighted gently on the rooftop next to me and brushed her hands together.

"That was fun," she said brightly.

"That was melodramatic," I accused. Yori gave me a dark look.

"I'm your ride out of here, so you might want to be nice to me."

"Heil HYDRA!"

I shouted in surprise as a man lunged from behind an AC unit and tackled me. I felt the railing behind my knees and shrieked as I went over the edge, the mask of a HYDRA soldier looming in front of me. Furious, I stabbed a bone through his neck and shoved him off, bracing for the inevitable impact. This would hurt, I had no doubt.

But surprisingly, the moment my skull was crushed against the ground, I felt absolutely nothing.


"Let's go!" Steve shouted as Dernier set the last charge next to a supply of gunpowder. The pyromaniacal Frenchman cackled as he and the Howling Commandoes followed Steve's order. From different points of the building they sprinted towards Steve and the door, their charges set, their jobs done.

The blasts from Dugan's shotgun and spray of bullets from Jones's gun covered their exit as they made for the large truck waiting for them not far from the entrance.

"Fire in the hole!" Dugan cried and yanked the pin from one of his seemingly endless supplies of grenades with his teeth. He hurled it towards the store of gunpowder as the men threw themselves into the truck, Morita and Falsworth in the cab and the rest of them in the back.

"What about the girls?" Falsworth called back.

"They'll fly to us, let's go!" Dugan shouted back, urging him on as the remaining HYDRA soldiers poured from the building, guns raised. "Before we're all Swiss cheese!"

Falsworth slammed the truck into gear and they spun tires for a moment before peeling off towards the trees. Bullets drilled into the ground behind them in bursts of dirt but they escaped unscathed as the factory exploded into flames and debris behind them, the shockwave ripping at the tarp around the truck bed.

"I don't see them!" Bucky said, eyes wide with worry as he kept his eyes trained on the sky for the bat-like figure that would be Yori holding Josie. He felt like he couldn't breathe – if he'd just blown up a building with Josie on it… oh god…

Bucky felt sick as he desperately scanned the sky. It was only because he was so keyed up that he reacted in time as a winged figure burst from between the trees and flung itself into the cab, a limp body in its arms.

Yori groaned as she skidded past shoes along the truck bed and flipped inadvertently, landing with her rear and legs in the air and her back curved awkwardly against the back of the cab.

No one witnessed her moment of indignity because of the body that had fallen from her arms. Josie lay in the truck bed, eyes staring sightlessly. Her neck was bent at a sickeningly unnatural angle. Huge rosettes covered her entire torso. Worse, the back of her head was bashed in, blood and brains leaking onto the truck bed.

Bucky's heart was breaking, there were tears in his eyes, and he'd never felt grief like this in his life as he stared at Josie's body on the truck bed. He slid off the bench and dropped to his knees next to her.

"N-no…" he said weakly, reaching out to her with shaking hands. "Sh-She said… said she couldn't… be hurt."

"Well that's bullshit." Yori growled as she righted herself. She swatted at Bucky irritably. "Of course she can be hurt, the difference is that it doesn't stick."

"Yori!" Steve hissed at her in disbelief, his own throat choked with emotion. "Your friend is dead!"

"I know," Yori said shortly, glaring at him. "It's not like this is a new thing for her."

"Wha-?"

Yori rolled her eyes and reached out, gripping the sides of Josie's head and brutally yanking her neck back into place with a horrible grinding, clicking crunch. Josie's eyelids fell shut as she was turned to look at the roof of the truck.

"Come on," Yori said irritably, prodding at Josie's shoulder. "Don't make me hit you, woman. Don't make me wait… Fine, you asked for it!" And she slapped Josie across the face.

"Hey!" Dugan lunged forward and grabbed Yori by the shoulders, wrenching her away from Josie's body. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"She's being difficult!" Yori shrieked angrily. "Get off me, you big lunk!"

And then Josie shot up with a gasp.


I came back to myself and it was as jarring as always, coming back to my body after I died. I sat up sharply and peered around, adrenaline pounding through me as sweat struck stray strands of hair to my face. I could see Steve looking pale as milk. Bucky was sitting next to me with a horrified, grief-stricken look on his face and tears in his eyes. And Dugan…

"Why are you holding Yori like that?" I asked in confusion. "Let her go before she hurts you."

Dugan's arms dropped away weakly and Yori scrambled free, huffing as she righted her shirt.

"Thank you," she said primly as she sat down and crossed her legs. She looked at me pointedly. "You gave them quite a scare, Tora."

"I-I thought…" I whipped around, the sound so jarring because I'd never heard Bucky sound like that before. It was like his heart had been ripped out and smashed. He was staring at me, the grief on his face rapidly replaced by breath-taking relief. He lunged, dragging me into his arms desperately.

"I thought you were gone!" he said, clutching me to him fiercely. His fingers dug deeply into my hair, the grip so tight it pulled and almost hurt, but that was nothing compared to the usual wash of comfort and warmth being in his arms brought to me.

"Oh," I smiled faintly and reached up to cup the back of his head, wrapping my other arm around him in return. "No. Well I mean I was, but I came back." I pulled back and assured him. "I always do."

"Merde."

"You said it."

I looked around to see Jones and Dernier sitting there staring at me in disbelief. By their feet was a small puddle of blood with what looked like chunks of brain and bone in it. I wrinkled my nose.

"Is that mine?" I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and swiped it all up, tossing the blood-stained bundle out the back of the truck. "Ew."

Steve gave a shaky exhale and leaned back, looking exhausted. "You should have seen Bucky when Yori dropped you in here. Never seen him so broken up."

Bucky glared but there was no heat in it. "I thought she was dead, punk."

"Jerk."

"I thought Steve was going to kill Yori when she hit you," Jones admitted.

I turned to Yori, offended. "You hit me?"

She shrugged shamelessly. "You were taking too long."

I scowled. "Excuse me if I wasn't regrowing my brain fast enough for you."

"You see?" Yori gestured to me, glaring at Dugan and Steve. "Next time I try to wake her up, don't give me grief, alright?"

The mood in the truck quickly changed as the shock wore off and was replaced with humor. Jokes were made about who had the most horrified expression and Yori began to elucidate the multiple ways she'd seen me die – of which there were many, I'd gone through a phase where I somewhat unwisely began to test my limits – and Steve and Dugan apologized to Yori.

I observed all of this with only half of my attention. The other half was on Bucky, who'd pulled me into his lap and held me against him firmly, his grip never once slackening as he clutched me like a lifeline. Everyone in the truck kindly pretended not to notice as I carded my fingers through his hair and whispered to him.

"I'll come back. I'll always come back," I murmured against his hair, kissing his temple. Bucky twisted his face around to kiss my cheek, my nose, and my forehead in quick succession.

"Promise me, Belle," he said throatily.

"Only if you promise the same," I breathed, cupping his cheek. He nodded, burying his face in my neck, and I smiled, crossing my legs and holding his head against my shoulder contently.


The mood was somber as we surrounded our next target. This one had been named in the papers collected from the impromptu lab. It was a small clinic that had been established at a crossroad among several farming communities. The building was long and low, only two stories tall. The surrounding communities had been evacuated after the German's push into France, and that meant that the clinic had been abandoned too.

"This is the place," Steve said. The Howling Commandos were hunkered down in the long, overgrown grass, staring at the building. One HYDRA operative stood on top of the building. Two stood at the front door, two stood at the back, and another pair were circling the building constantly.

"It's pretty heavily guarded," Falsworth observed.

"If you were trying to contain someone like Josie or I, would you leave it to two slackers?" Yori challenged.

"Absolutement pas!" Dernier replied firmly. I chuckled.

"Fan out," Steve ordered. "We'll do this when the circling guards are at opposite ends of the building. Buck, you take the left side, Limey, the right. Yori, you'll handle the roof again? If anything goes wrong, you're our backup."

"Of course," Yori said, and flapped her wings, taking to the skies.

"Dugan, Dernier, and I will handle the ones in the rear and breach there. Once you've take your shot, Limey, join us. Josie, you, Jones, and Morita will handle the front. Bucky, you go with them. Any HYDRA you see, take them out. Any mutants you find, you keep them safe," Steve said firmly. "We'll meet at the stairs and cover the second floor together."

"Approach them carefully and with weapons either holstered or pointed at the ground," I added. "No guarantees where they're from or if they speak English. They may take you as a threat and attack. Trust me, you don't want that."

"And what's the signal?" Bucky asked. "You gonna send up a smoke signal?"

Steve smiled slightly. "You'll know it when you see it. Everyone ready?"

With that they split, everyone moving through the grass to circle the building, getting ready to take their shots. Morita, Jones and I crept to the front of the building and hunkered down beside the overgrown dirt road that led to the door of the clinic.

"Want to rock paper scissors for who takes the shot?" Morita offered. Jones grinned.

"Okay."

I smiled fondly and shook my head, keeping an eye on the sky. I knew what to look for, so I could faintly see the blur of black that was Yori wheeling high overhead, her shape occasionally blocking out the stars.

"Best two out of three?" Morita said the moment he lost.

"Sure. One… two… three…"

They were busy, so they didn't notice the silvery disc rising high into the air. It was the back of Steve's shield, hurled into the air to catch the moonlight on the reflective inner surface.

I raised my hands and pointed at each soldier by the door. "Shoot," I smiled at Morita and Jones. Phalanges fired from my fingers and downed both of the soldiers. At the same time, gunshots rang to the side of and behind the clinic. A dark shape dropped from the sky and, with a loud crack, snapped the neck of the soldier on top of the building.

We three stood up from the grass and shot towards the building. I saw Bucky running from the side to meet with us, his gun raised and ready. He formed up with us and Morita sprinted ahead. He aimed a dramatic kick at the door. They snapped open with no resistance, sending him sprawling into the building on the floor.

"Nicely done," Jones laughed as he offered Morita a hand up. Clattering footsteps coming down the hall made me whip around and fire a long spear of bone from my palm. It took the HYDRA agent in the chest and sent him to the ground without even the time to yell.

"Come on," Jones said, and we headed down the hall, kicking in doors as we went.

Most of the rooms we found were in shambles. Most of the medical equipment had been taken, either with the doctors when they pulled out or by whatever army was first into the area for their respective sides. Beds had been dragged randomly around the patient rooms, some scattered personal items proving that some soldiers had been sleeping on the first floor.

The offices had been torn apart already in search of valuables or personal objects. Medical records and invoices were tossed across the floor haphazardly and some filing cabinets had been turned over or the drawers pulled out and tossed across the room, again probably by whatever force had used the place before HYDRA came in.

Of course we did not go through this unaccosted. As we walked HYDRA soldiers would pop out of rooms, some of them clearly just waking up from a night's sleep. Morita covered us from the front, Jones from the back, as Bucky and I dove in and out of rooms, looking for signs of life or any records of what HYDRA had been doing.

We met Steve's group at the staircase.

"Anything?" Steve asked, and we all shook our heads.

"Everything down here looks like it's either been trashed or taken over by soldiers," Bucky explained.

Steve nodded. "Makes sense. It would be harder for prisoners to escape from upstairs." He nodded to the staircase and mounted it, the rest of us funneling up behind him. It was by no means the wisest or slickest method of getting to the second floor but it was our best option at that point.

Steve tried the door at the top of the stairs. It jiggled fruitlessly in the frame.

"They blocked it," he called back to us, and raised a foot as if to kick it down. Then the sound of screaming started an, moments later, the rattle of bullets.

"Gott in Himmel!"

"Was ist-?"

"Dämon!"

"Oh, I may not speak German but I know that word," Dugan said with a grin as the sound of a blade sliding through flesh echoed from behind the door. The screaming began to fade and the bullets stopped until finally, only one voice was left.

"Nein… Nein, nein! Nei-!"

"Hai," was the cold reply and then there was a sound of something bouncing across the floor. Footsteps calmly approached the door and there was a scraping sound and then a crash. The lock on the door clicked and Yori was revealed. She was looking incredibly rumpled and she seemed to have a couple of minor cuts on her, but she was smiling proudly, her foot resting on a decapitated head.

"Okaeri," she greeted coyly.

I laughed and replied, "Tadaima!"

She stepped aside and welcomed us to the second floor.

"I haven't been in most of the rooms," Yori cautioned, "but someone was nice enough to leave a window open so I took advantage of that."

"Heil HYDRA!"

On a suicide mission, the door down the hall suddenly burst open and five HYDRA agents burst out. Steve raised his shield to protect himself and those of us behind him. Yori dropped and lashed her whip in a snarl, severing one man's legs just above the ankles. Another lash cut him nearly in half. Bucky had picked off one man the next second, Dugan took out the third, Steve used his sidearm on the fourth, and I fired another spike from my palm, drilling through the last.

Silence hung in the air.

"Like I said," Yori grunted, picking herself up off the floor. "I haven't been in most of the rooms."

"Right," Steve said, looking down the hall suspiciously. "Yori, you and Josie go together. Everybody else, pair off and start searching rooms. Yell if you find anyone alive or…" He didn't need to finish.

"Come on," Yori said, gesturing for me to follow her. "I saw something back here."

"What is it?" I asked as I followed her down the hall as the others paired off and got to work. "And are you okay?" I added, looking pointedly at a cut on her upper arm that was slowly oozing blood.

"So maybe I kicked in that allegedly open window," Yori said with a careless shrug as she guided me around a corner. "Here."

She pointed at one door, and I could see why she considered it suspicious. In most of the rooms on the outside of the building the lights were out so that people wouldn't get curious about the clinic. The inside rooms were only dimly lit, just enough to see and work by. On the other hand, this room was ablaze with light that leaked from the corners of the door.

Yori kicked the door open and we both stared.

Lying on the floor, bathed in burning light from every angle, was a tall man with black hair and translucently pale skin. He looked even paler because of the white scrubs he'd been put in. He was skinny and had the build of a scholar, not a soldier. He was perhaps twenty. His hands were folded on his stomach and his eyes were closed. A pair of wire-framed glasses was folded on the ground next to him. Lights had even been rigged to shine across the floor. There was a single door on the opposite wall.

"What is this?" Yori breathed.

"Steve!" I yelled over my shoulder. "We've got someone!"

"We do too!" came Dugan's voice from farther down the hall.

"Dernier and I have as well," Jones said, although from the tone of his voice it was clear that the one he and the Frenchman had found was not still among us.

Footsteps echoed as our team converged on Yori and I. They pressed in around the door as Yori and I cautiously stepped into the room.

"Sir?" I asked uncertainly. The man shifted ever so slightly.

"Please go away," he said dryly in a faint German accent. "I haven't the patience for hallucinations at the moment."

"Sir, we're not hallucinations. We're American soldiers. We've raided this base and we'd like to get you out of here, if you don't mind," I explained to him slowly.

One eye cracked open. He reached over to grab his glasses and place them on his face. His eye lingered on Falsworth's hat, Morita, and Yori.

"American?" he said slowly. His eye drifted to Steve. "Painfully so, in some cases. Not so much in others. I'm sorry, but would you mind terribly switching off some of these lights? That's what the switches outside the door are for. It's been so long since I've been in some decent shade."

It was Jones that obliged, flipping a couple of the switches in the hall. Most of the lights went out, leaving the room at a much more normal level of brightness. When the lights had flicked off the man opened both eyes and stared at the ceiling.

"That's better." He sighed. "The one you found alive, was it a young woman? Blonde hair?"

"That's ours," Dugan said slowly. "I mean, I guess. It's so dark in there I couldn't tell anything except there was someone in there."

A relieved smile spread across the man's face. "Ah. Then she's still alive."

I raised a hand to stall him. "Someone's on the other side of that door," I whispered, glaring heatedly at the closed door on the opposite wall. "HYDRA, I assume. They're slowly opening several locks, it sounds like."

"They," the German man said, his eyes and voice hardening and becoming something more than simply bored for the first time, "are mine." Moving slowly but deliberately, he rolled over onto his knees and pushed himself to his feet, facing the door.

The door sprang open, the barrel of a rifle glinting.

"Heil HY-"

Before he could squeeze off the shot, the new shadows in the corners of the rooms seemed to bend and lunge, peeling themselves from the walls and wrapping around the gun. The shadows wrenched it from his hand and chucked it across the room. Yori caught it deftly and grinned.

"Impressive," she congratulated the man. His eyes had come completely and utterly black behind his glasses.

"Many thanks," he said casually as he raised a hand. At his direction, the HYDRA soldier's shadow peeled itself up from the floor, winding around his body. He screamed, but he was caught fast by the shadow. The silhouette of his own hands closed around his throat and began to squeeze. He shuddered and gasped his way into death as the shadow wrung the life from him.

"That was remarkably satisfying," he said finally as the body fell to the ground.

There was a sudden burst of light from down the hall.

"That's the room we were in," Dugan said, staring somewhat nervously at the open doorway. Yori and I poked our heads out to look as well.

The man in white smiled darkly. "She's coming."

The burning light from inside the room emerged and was revealed to be a woman about the same age as him. She was blonde and dressed in the same simple white scrubs. Her eyes were ablaze with white light and so was the rest of her body. She came walking down the hall, a furious scowl on her face.

"Matthäus!" she demanded with a strong French accent. "Where is Matthäus?"

"Here, Paulette!" called the German man in the room.

"Move," the Frenchwoman growled to us furiously, "or I set you ablaze. Allez!"

"I think we should let her through," Dugan said faintly, examining the glowing woman.

"Yes, probably," chimed in the German man, Matthäus.

"You are standing between myself and my fiancé," Paulette growled. "That is not a good place to be."

Understanding dawned. "Get back, all of you, and let them see each other," I said immediately, urging the Howling Commandoes back from the doorway. I grabbed Yori's arm and yanked her out into the hallway, making way for Paulette. She gave me a thankful look before sprinting through the door and flinging herself at Matthäus shamelessly, leaping onto him and wrapping her arms and legs around him tightly.

"Je vous ai manqué," she whispered as she hugged him tightly.

"Bist du in Ordnung?" Matthäus murmured back, hugging her tightly.

"Oui, oui. And you?"

"Ja."

I heard Yori laughed slightly beside me and turned to her.

"What's funny?" Steve asked her. She looked at me questioningly.

"You get it too, right?"

I smiled, and could barely restrain myself from a girlish squeal. "I do."

"Well I for one am lost!" Falsworth said crossly. "Why does Yori have that soppy look on her face?"

That 'soppy' look immediately turned into a glare. I put a hand on her shoulder soothingly.

"Because it's so romantic," I explained. "You said she was kept in the dark, and he was kept in the light, right?" I asked Dugan, who nodded.

"Because he controls shadows and darkness," Yori said, pointing to Matthäus, who had yet to let go of Paulette.

"And she controls light," I said, pointing at Paulette.

The men's eyes widened in understanding.

"That's… kind of sweet," Dugan admitted grudgingly.

"It's very sweet," I corrected him. I felt a hand slide into my palm and I smiled at Bucky fondly.

Steve cleared his throat. "Excuse me?" he called to the reunited couple in the middle of the room. "Do you need a ride out of here? We can take you-"

"No need," Matthäus cut him off. "I have alternative transport."

"Do you have someplace safe to go?" Yori confirmed.

"Oui." Paulette nodded. "I have an aunt in Paris who will take us in."

"Are you ready?" Matthäus asked her. Paulette nodded and held on even tighter, tucking her head under his chin. The pair of them looked at us. "Danke."

"Merci."

With that, Matthäus's shadow peeled up from the ground and enveloped both him and Paulette. It covered them completely and dragged them into the ground before gradually lightening. When it was gone, so were they.

"That's convenient," Yori said jealously.

Jones threw up a hand. "What just happened?"

I smiled at the ground where the two had vanished. "If I had to guess," I said slowly. "I'd say they're at Paulette's aunt's right about now."


Gott in Himmel – God in heaven

Was ist-? – What is-?

Dämon! – Demon!

Nein – No

Hai – Yes

Okaeri – Welcome home

Tadaima – I'm home!

Allez – Go ahead! Or something along those lines.

Je vous ai manqué – I missed you

Bist du in Ordnung? – Are you alright?

Oui - Yes

Ja – Yes

Danke – Thanks

Merci - Thanks