Disclaimer: I own nothing Captain America-related, not even Bucky Barnes…though I might consider asking Marvel to loan them and the rest of the Avengers to me for a while. Until then, only original characters and plots/ideas are mine.

AN: I am so sorry for not updating last week –it was Thanksgiving here in the States, so between food, family gatherings, and holiday shopping, things were insanely busy for me. Here is the next chapter, though, and it's got some fun and excitement, so hopefully that will make up for it being late. Please enjoy, and please don't forget to review. Thanks!

Chapter 16: Gone in an Instant:

Bucky didn't know how it had happened. One minute, Anna had been in his line of sight, and the next, she was gone.

'She was only away from my side for a minute!' his mind kept yelling.

It had only been a moment, but that had been all the time they had needed.

Bucky knew who 'they' were: HYDRA. Acting so boldly, during the day, and in an area that had SHIELD operatives drifting through was their style, especially when they judged that a mission needed to be carried out, fast.

His heart beating up into his throat, Bucky tried to force it down and remain calm as he ran for the house. If he was going to successfully get Anna back, he needed to keep his head on straight and his thoughts clear.

As he made for the house, he struggled with how he was going to report this to Director Coulson. How was he going to tell the man that Anna had been swiped while he had been distracted?

They had just finished a nice lunch out at a small bistro when Anna tugged on his arm. "I want to do some shopping."

Bucky had noticed that were several small shops around with quite a few items in their windows, all to tempt potential shoppers into them. He was reluctant to stop, but Anna insisted. She stated that since it was early afternoon, and they were in no rush to get back to the house, a few stops couldn't hurt.

Giving in, Bucky had agreed. Besides, the weather was sunny and beautiful, and it lifted his mood quite a bit, so he decided to let Anna have her way.

Leaving Bucky outside to enjoy the weather outside, Anna had just slipped inside a quaint store that sold gifts and knickknacks, when he spotted a few pieces of jewelry in the large display window. The sunlight caught on the bright gems and gleaming metals, catching and holding his attention.

When he stepped closer to the window, Bucky got the sudden urge to buy one of them for Anna. He wanted so badly to thank her for all that she had done so much for him, to show her how much he appreciated the freedoms she had given up in order to stay with him. Surely this store had something like that inside?

Making up his mind, Bucky slipped inside, his gaze trying to find Anna. He found her in a far corner, preoccupied with a clothing rack, her full attention on the items hanging there and their price tags. When her back was towards him, Bucky picked up one of the necklaces from the window and began making his way to the cashier, keeping an eye on Anna the whole time.

The woman standing behind the counter gave him an amused look before quietly commenting, "I don't think this color will suit her."

Bucky looked at the necklace carefully. It was a lovely piece made of shining purple stones, gold wire, and little violet pearls. He could truly see Anna wearing it. "Why not?" he asked, somewhat offended that she didn't agree with his choice.

The clerk gave him an amused smile. "As beautiful as it is, I have something that I think would suit her better."

His muscles stiffened as she reached under the counter, his senses heightened as he waited to see if this was a trick of some kind. But all she produced was a box, which held a solid gold rope chain with a snowflake pendant dangling from it.

The snowflake looked fragile, but Bucky knew good craftsmanship –he had handled some of the best weaponry in the world, after all, and it was easy to spot shoddy or lazy work on anything that clearly required finesse.

His sharp eyes told him that the pendant was of fine work, as was the necklace itself -even though it was gold, it would take a great deal of force for it to be bent out of shape or broken. The whole thing looked delicate and beautiful, but it was also strong and practical in all the best ways.

'Kind of like Anna,' he thought with a smile.

He particularly liked the clear white gemstones scattered throughout the pendant, making it shimmer like sunlight on fresh snow.

Looking at the smiling clerk, he said, "I'll take it."

The necklace was wrapped and safely in Bucky's pocket when Anna approached, a slightly disappointed look on her face. "They don't have what I want in my size," she said, pouting a little.

He laughed a little. "Maybe they will next time."

She sighed. "Maybe. Right now, though, I'd love some ice cream."

Bucky perked up. A sweet tooth was a weakness that both he and Anna shared. The two of them immediately headed for the nearest ice cream parlor, where Anna introduced him to something called 'gelato,' which he discovered that he liked very much.

The rest of their time in town had been spent shopping, with Anna looking inside many store windows, but never going inside the shops. Bucky tried to persuade her to go in, but she always shook her head and said that looking was almost as fun as buying.

"Plus, I don't have to lug around bags full of stuff that I bought, but don't need," she said as they passed by a store with a rainbow variety of glass vases in its windows. "Women mostly do impulse buying while guys have a strategy."

She grinned. "It's probably why I have more shoes in my closet than I'll ever wear for the next decade."

Bucky laughed, and was forced to give up his efforts on getting Anna to shop. Besides, he rather liked looking at things with her, and having her point out various items that might or might not look good at the house. It was like they were just a normal pair of people out shopping and enjoying the weather, eating ice cream as they walked.

Part of him felt a bit of darkness fade away at that last thought. He'd spent years wanting to be "normal," and here he was, living that wish. True, he was buried under layers of clothes and a hat to hide his identity, but he was not by far the oddest-dressed man on the street, so it wasn't as though he stood out much. He did get the occasional glance from people, but once he passed them, they seemed to forget that he existed.

Scooping up a spoonful of strawberry gelato and putting it into his mouth, Bucky realized that, here and now, he was actually happy.

The realization nearly froze him in his tracks, but not quite. He did pause as Anna halted to look at a clothing rack on the sidewalk, and that brief stop was enough for him to gather his thoughts together again.

Real joy was something Bucky hadn't expected to feel for quite some time. He had thought that it would be months, or years before he was able to feel this way, with a great deal of hard work and pain in between.

But now here he was, feeling that very emotion deep inside him. It was yet another debt that he owed Anna, one that he wished he knew how to repay. The pendant would do for now, but he wanted to do so much more for her in the future.

After a couple hours, Bucky realized that it would start getting dark soon, and he wanted Anna safely behind the walls of their house before that happened. His night vision was good, and he was capable of handling any sort of mugger, but he didn't want to risk Anna's safety when it wasn't necessary.

On the walk home, Anna had reached into her pocket and grimaced. "Gross. I'm going to toss these," she said, holding up a handful of napkins leftover from her long-finished ice cream. She had held onto them to deal with whatever might have smeared across her face or on her clothes, but now that it was clear that she was as clean as when they'd left the house, she clearly wanted to get rid of the bothersome burden.

He nodded and watched as she headed for a trashcan on the curb, his eyes turning away from her for only a second when he heard some men shouting threats at one another from a nearby street. When nothing came of the shouts, Bucky turned, expecting to see Anna beside him.

But she wasn't. Her familiar form was nowhere to be found on the street.

Anna was gone.

He had searched for her, of course. With the serum in his veins, he was fast, and so he had been able to race along the streets with ease, dodging people, dogs, strollers and any other obstacle in his way with little trouble. His physical training under HYDRA had been intense, and so his reflexes were superb.

After a run through the immediate neighborhood and a few surrounding streets, he knew that she was gone. There was no way that she could have simply gotten away from him, not when he was so much faster than her. Someone had to have taken her.

It wasn't long before Bucky gave up his search and began running for the house, his mind whirling with the numerous actions he could take. If he wanted, he could tear the neighborhood apart to look for Anna -but that wouldn't sit well with Director Coulson. He would have to play this the way SHIELD and its Director would.

As soon as he got to the house, Bucky ran for Anna's room, searching for her laptop computer. He was sure that SHIELD would have installed some sort of contact program on it, so it had to have a way of getting hold of someone at the agency.

As guilty as he felt for invading Anna's personal space, Bucky swallowed that down in favor of locating her computer. He found it easily enough, sitting on her desk near the window, the screensaver dancing across it as he reached for it.

It took only a few moments to get into the programs, as Anna hadn't activated any security options when she had last used it. Bucky then spent several minutes searching for anything with contact information that didn't belong to Anna's family.

Finally, in a (somewhat decently) hidden file folder, Bucky saw something that caught his eye. The file had the label H.E.L.P. on it, and he took it to mean exactly that: it was a folder for help.

He opened it, and knew he had guessed right. In it was a number for Coulson's desk, and Natasha Romanoff's. Bucky chose to go directly up the chain for the Director, rather than go through a middle man (or woman).

Before he could do anything, however, a knock sounded on the front door. Since he was not expecting anyone, and he rather doubted that SHIELD had sent agents over already, Bucky raced to the door, half hoping that it was Anna, come to tell him that she'd gotten lost and had found her way home again.

Flinging open the door, he was greeted with nothing but empty space. Could it have been a teenage prank, maybe?

The sound of fluttering paper attracted his attention to the mat that lay before the front door. It wasn't a flier or an advertisement –it was a large envelope addressed to 'The Winter Soldier.'

Picking it up, Bucky brought it inside, his fingers ripping the envelope open to look at its contents. It was a single sheet of paper, with a few printed lines on it.

We have the girl. If you want her to live, surrender to HYDRA. Instructions to follow. You have 24 hours to comply.

Below was the HYDRA insignia.

Growling under his breath, Bucky raced upstairs to Anna's room and her computer. He double-clicked the number for Coulson's line, and was rewarded with a ringtone. For several agonizing seconds, Bucky heard the line ring, his mind wondering what would happen if he ended up in Coulson's voicemail. Would he leave a message, or should he dial Agent Romanoff?

"Hello?" a voice suddenly said through the computer's speakers. "Miss Wallace, this had better be important. Is there something I can do for you?"

Bucky heaved a sigh of relief. "Sir, this is Bucky Barnes. We have a situation."

Coulson went quiet. "You'll have to be a bit more specific. What kind of situation?" It was clear that he expected something trivial, but Bucky went directly to the heart of the matter.

"Anna's been kidnapped."

The tense silence coming from the other end of the line, and inside Anna's room, could be cut with a knife –it was that thick.

Finally, Coulson spoke. "Go to the theater room. Brief us there."

The screen went black, and Bucky raced down to the first floor, his brain shifting into the calm HYDRA frame of mind that always came up whenever he was going out on a mission. This was going to be life or death, and for this kind of situation, Bucky needed to be the man that he had been trying to forget.

He needed to be the cool, focused Winter Soldier.

Inside the theater room of the house, Bucky tried to keep his temper in check, even as his patience began to wear thin.

On the large screen hanging from the wall, Phil Coulson looked down at him with a deep scowl on his face, his hands clasped on his large wooden desk. Beside him were Agent Romanoff and Agent Barton, both of whom also looked very unhappy.

"Tell us again what happened," Agent Romanoff ordered, her face impassive.

Bucky, however, knew how unhappy she was about this whole thing. He had a feeling that she was friends with Anna's cousin, Adena Rogers, and probably felt responsible for keeping her friend's family member safe. Now she probably felt like a failure, and he had no doubt that she was going to do everything possible to make this mess right.

'I get first rights on revenge, though,' Bucky thought to himself as he again told them what happened.

He thought it pointless to be repeating the same story again and again, but he knew that Coulson wanted to make sure of as many details as possible, so that nothing was missed. If they were going to mount a rescue mission to get Anna back, they needed to plan accordingly.

"I knew trips outside the house were a bad idea," Coulson stated, not for the first time.

Bucky was starting to agree with him, but didn't get the chance to say so, as Natasha beat him to the punch. "That's not fair, and you know it," she said, looking between her superior and Bucky. "You can't keep people inside for too long before they start disobeying you. At least we tried to make sure that Anna and Bucky had a relatively normal life, which is what everyone wanted in the first place."

Agent Barton nodded his agreement. "And you tried putting a protection detail in place. But since we're low on manpower, it wasn't much of one. That was on us –now we need to fix it."

"Agreed," Coulson said, leaning back in his chair. "The problem is, we're going up against HYDRA, and they have a young woman related to a person we all know and trust. They're going to hide her away somewhere, and they're probably going to do some very bad things before we manage to locate and rescue her."

"But what do they want her for?" Barton asked. "If they know she's related to Adena, they could ask for anything or anyone."

Bucky sighed. "They're after me. I was one of their best assassins –they won't easily let go of someone as valuable as me so easily."

Natasha looked skeptical. "Are you sure? They could ask for an Avenger, and probably get one without much difficulty. Do you really think they want you back this badly?"

"Yes," Bucky replied without hesitation. "They did leave a note, after all." He'd shown it to them, but it was clear that they still didn't think that HYDRA would go through all this trouble for a one man, even if he was a favorite killer of theirs.

He sighed at their skepticism. "You might think of me as just another enemy assassin, but HYDRA hates losing anything they think is theirs. I was captured, brainwashed, and trained to kill when ordered, without asking any questions. That makes me the perfect weapon, and what HYDRA considers perfect, they want to keep or retrieve, at any cost."

Agent Romanoff's already fair skin went the tiniest bit paler. "Do you think they'll actually hurt Anna?" She obviously did not relish the thought of telling Adena Rogers that.

Bucky considered the matter closely, his body going hot, then cold with anger, fear, and worry. "They might," he admitted. "They have a lot of ways of making people talk."

"Then we need to get started on this as soon as possible," Coulson declared. "Lieutenant Barnes, I need you to stay put for a little while. There are a few of calls that I need to make, and that will take time. Right now, you need to stay calm while we try to put together a rescue team and a plan."

That didn't sit well with him, but Bucky knew he didn't have a choice. If he rushed out to try and locate Anna, he would only make things worse, not only for her, but for SHIELD.

"Yes, sir," he muttered, his fists clenching as he spoke.

Coulson gave him a sympathetic look. "I know this will be hard, but it's for the best. You can't do this alone –if you do, you'll only put yourself in danger, and Anna will still be a prisoner. With a team, at least you'll have someone watching your back."

That was true enough. Bucky had often worked with teams in the past, and knew how valuable it was to have extra sets of eyes, as well as weapons, around him.

"Let us deal with the team and the plan," Natasha told him. "I know it's hard, but find something to keep your mind and hands busy for a while. We'll call back in a couple hours with news."

The screen went black, leaving Bucky alone in an empty house. He did not like it.

He wandered around the place, going from downstairs to upstairs, then back again. He headed into the kitchen, but wasn't hungry. Instead, he went to his workout room, the curtains shielding him from view of the neighbors.

In less than a minute, he pulled off his gloves, coat and shirt. His hands free, Bucky began attacking the punching bag, imagining it was the HYDRA operative that had taken Anna.

'I'll get her back,' he repeatedly vowed. 'I'll do everything possible to make sure of it.'

His mind began to picture the different kinds of torture he'd witnessed past prisoners put through, and his punches began to get more and more aggressive. The worse things he imagined, the harder his fists hit the bag, until, suddenly, several seems blew, spraying the packed material inside all along the floor.

Looking down at the mess, Bucky struggled to take a deep breath and stay calm. He felt his heartbeat slow a little as he continued to breathe deeply, which helped clear his head. When he felt composed enough, Bucky turned and retrieved his coat from the wall, and frowned when he heard something shift in the pocket.

Reaching in, he pulled out the gift box that held the pendant he'd intended to give Anna. His heartbeat sped up again, but he quickly tried to calm it.

"I'll give it to her when she's safely back here," he promised aloud.

Safely tucking the necklace away, he went to try and find another outlet for the storm of emotions boiling inside him.

AN: Familiar character appearances in the next chapter! Please don't forget to review!