It felt like weeks of searching one dead end after the other, before the team found even a decent lead. In reality, it had only been a few days, but they drug on, each as fruitless as the last. Today felt just like the others, as Barton busied himself with security footage from areas around the attacks, aided by Scott. Sam was busy working with Steve to try and track any functioning SHIELD bases and get word to them before they were next. With preparation, SHIELD would stand a better chance against a stealthy attack. Bucky sat at a table, choosing to look through old files rather than at a screen. This was something solid to him. It was what he knew. It's not that he wasn't tech savvy; he just knew this way better. For what was probably the tenth time that day, his mind ran away from him and drifted back to Siberia.
"What is that?" he remembered asking the eager girl.
When she was younger, she had good days and bad days. Today seemed like a good day. She happily held a small scrap of colored paper folded up on her fist.
"Nothing!" she replied, defensively.
"Katya. Show me."
Knowing that he would get his way sooner or later, she held out her fist to him and slowly uncurled her fingers. He took the paper from her hand and unfolded it. It was a travel ad that she had gotten from a newspaper somewhere. The ad showed the Empire State building, proudly protruding above the New York skyline.
"Why do you have this?" he asked, voice cold and devoid of real emotion.
"Because," she answered, snatching the paper back from him and looking at it longingly, "I am going to go there someday. I heard you can see the whole world from the top! I want to see for myself."
"You will go where you are told to go," he replied mechanically.
"I will go see New York! You'll see! One day!"
The determined look on her face was mingled with the innocence and hope that she still clung to at that age. It was gone now. It had been ripped from her.
"Steve!" Bucky called out when realization hit him.
Steve and Sam quickly made their way over to him.
"What is it? You find something?" Sam asked, looking at the files to see if there was something they missed that Bucky spotted.
"I have a hunch. No more than that," Bucky admitted.
"Right now, that hunch is all we have," Steve added, "It'll have to do. What is it?"
"I think she'll go to New York."
"Well...that doesn't really narrow it down much," Sam noted, "The state or…?"
"No. The city. It has to be New York City."
"That just means she'd be lost in one of the largest cities in the world," Steve sighed, "How can you be sure?"
"Because she's free," Bucky replied, "She swore she'd go there. Now that she doesn't have anything else, why not go?"
"That's grasping at straws, isn't it?" Sam wondered, "I mean, what if she doesn't. She's clearly got a plan. I don't think she'd stop and go sight seeing."
"The SHIELD attacks. They were in these cities, right?" Bucky checked, pointing to the list of locations included in the file.
"Yeah," Sam replied, "But we can't find a connection."
"She's never been to any of these cities before," Bucky noted, "She's going to all of the places HYDRA wouldn't let her; marking them off the list one at a time. The top of that list is New York City! Now, are there any bases running near there right now?"
"No. HYDRA hit all the major locations in New York and DC," Clint chimed in, walking over to join them, "But...I know of a couple storage units and safe houses that were low profile enough to maybe get overlooked. It's a thin lead, but it's something."
"Storage units?" Bucky looked up at him, interest evident on his face.
"You know, old warehouses to hide any extra tech, gear, or intel off the grid."
"We're gonna need to know where those are," Steve told him.
"I'll see what I can dig up," Clint nodded in reply, going to seek out the locations.
Bucky paused, staring blankly at the files in front of him for a long moment.
"Bucky?" Steve asked, leaning down to look at him.
"I have to go, Steve," he stated, still staring off, "I have to be there."
"You said it yourself, Buck. It's dangerous to go back into the field so soon."
"I can stop her. If it's really her, I can stop her from killing anyone."
Sam crossed his arms and turned to Steve.
"That's a risky move, Cap."
"I have to try!" Bucky insisted, standing suddenly, "Just let me talk to her!"
Steve took a deep breath and nodded.
"You help us find her and stop her and we'll let you go talk to her, alright?" he offered, "Just...make sure you can handle this."
"I know her, Steve. She'll listen to me."
"Then gear up. We get those locations and we move out," Steve decided, stepping out of the room to tell the others.
"We're counting on you, Frosty," Sam reminded Bucky, before following Steve.
Bucky stayed behind in silence. Memories seemed to flood back to him by the hour these past few days. It was a jumbled mess sometimes and perfectly clear others. He only knew one thing: he had to find her. No matter what.
"You really wanted to see the lights, huh?" he asked quietly, looking down at the blurry security photo.
"Alright," Steve prepped them on the jet, "We've got two major locations. We'll split into two teams: a ground team and air support in the jet. Buck, you and I are on the ground. Sam, stick close behind us. Lang, Barton, you two are our eyes in the sky. We check the main location first, then the one uptown. Good?"
"Roger that," Clint agreed from the pilot's seat, moving them into a flight path for the first location.
Steve placed a hand on Bucky's shoulder, which got the other soldier's attention.
"We're going in first. We'll be the first in and the first to stop her if she turns up, alright? You're gonna try and make this work, but I'll be tailing you for backup."
"I can do this," Bucky replied, more convincing himself than Steve.
"Let's hope so."
Bucky and Steve stalked quietly into the old storage facility. Each of them held a sidearm that they hoped they wouldn't need. After the event with the Accords, Steve hadn't really gotten his shield back. It felt odd doing ops without the uniform, but it's what the situation called for and the job needed to be done. The dark building seemed quiet, vacant of any people or even signs that people had been there recently.
"No one's home," Bucky noted quietly, looking around.
Steve simply nodded over to a bolted door on the far side of the room from the entrance. Bucky took his meaning and moved that way, as Steve watched his back on alert. When they reached the door, Bucky looked over his shoulder at Steve. When the signal was given, he drove a metal fist through the edge of the door and ripped the door out of the wall, making a loud bang as it hit the ground.
"That'll do it…" Steve muttered, looking at the destroyed door.
Bucky quickly made his way inside of the smaller room, still finding no sign of people.
"Clear," he sighed, dropping his defensive posturing a bit.
In the center of the room was a stack of metal crates with a tarp thrown over them so that only the corner of one of the lower crates was exposed. Bucky grabbed the tarp and pulled it off, letting it drop to the floor, exposing the large black SHIELD logos on the sides of the crates.
"Subtle," Steve sighed sarcastically at the symbols.
Bucky easily broke one of the crates open to look inside.
"Pretty heavy payload here," he noted, pulling a rifle out of the crate, "No one left to clean up, I guess."
He casually grabbed a few more items and began to strap the extra ammo packs to his tactical suit.
"C'mon, Buck," Steve sighed in disapproval as Bucky slung the rifle over his shoulder.
"Look, it's not like SHIELD's gonna use it," Bucky shrugged, "And we might need it."
Steve wasn't given time to reply as Bucky hurried back out of the room.
"Sam," Steve called over the comm, "This one's clear. Circle around and get us and we'll head to the next location."
"We're a bit late!" Barton contacted back over the comm, rather than Sam, "We just got a hit. The other facility was breached. You two better run, because we're running out of time!"
The two soldiers glances at each other and took off toward the rendezvous to get back on the quinjet.
"Same drill," Steve said shortly after, preparing to jump off the jet for the next location.
"Looks awful quiet in there, Cap," Barton noted, "We might be too late."
"We might not!" Steve added hopefully, jumping off the loading ramp.
Bucky shrugged and jumped down to the pavement after him. Rifle raises, he stalked toward the building with a practiced precision.
"Easy," Steve reminded him, "We want everyone walking away from this."
Bucky nodded and stepped inside the slightly ajar door. It had already been kicked in hard enough to leave a dent in the center of the metal and break the hinges, leaving the door hanging pathetically.
"We're not the first to get here," Bucky noted, pointing out the obvious forced entry.
Steve spotted an agent down and quietly hurried over to him, checking for signs that the man was still alive.
"He's still alive," Steve sighed with relief, "Just knocked out pretty badly. Barton, Lang, you read me?"
"You worry about the threat," Scott replied over the comm, "We'll worry about med evacs."
As they entered further into the building, they found more agents in the same condition: badly injured and out of the way but alive. Had many of them been left there longer, they wouldn't likely have survived. The building seemed to have a lot of rooms filled with similar crates to the last location. These facilities weren't heavily manned and even less so after SHIELD fell, so it was an easy target. Rounding a corner, they saw her. Bucky immediately pulled them back.
"Pull back and help with the agents," Bucky insisted, "Get them loaded up and out of here."
"I'm not leaving you here with-"
"Fall back and trust me."
Hesitantly, Steve stepped back, signalling that he'd be on his comm. Bucky continued to creep back around the corner. It was a matter of seconds before he was spotted. The attacker was who he feared it would be after all. Katya. She pinned an injured agent to the floor by his throat, holding a handgun to him in her other hand. Knowing that the agent didn't have the strength to escape, she risked turning more attention to Bucky.
"No…" Bucky could hear her gasp.
"Easy," he pleaded, lowing his rifle to his side, "You know me?"
"Winter…?" she gasped out, slight shock taking over her expression, "You're...here…"
He stepped forward slowly, but she simply put the gun closer to the agent's head.
"Don't come any closer! I don't know how you're still alive or what you want, but I'm walking out of here or he's not!"
She kicked the agent further onto the floor and pressed a boot to his throat aggressively.
"Katya!"