A/N: I've been caught up in other projects, but I do have more chapters planned for this. This is a lead on from the last Origins and Whiteout. Preying Mantis meets and is about to meet the wrath of mom. Also, flashbacks are fun! Whiplash is not. (Now considered AU since the Civil War trailer. Awesome.)

It was warm and bright, and that seemed wrong to her. It was soft and comfortable and somehow, that seemed wrong to her too. Mantis hadn't yet opened her eyes, but already she was on high alert. Eventually she struggled against the tide of tiredness and the almost seductive want to continue sleeping enough to open them.

The room was mostly cream and lit up in shades of sunlight that filtered through the open curtains of the room in a way that screamed late afternoon. She was in a large bed, wearing some kind of t-shirt as a nightdress.

It was warm and bright and not at all like...

The plane was shaking, throwing boxes from one end to the other. Through the debris, the little red-headed girl dragged herself up towards the controls. She'd been sleeping at the back; it had been a long day of defying her elders, after all and had only been woken up when she was pitched into the row of seats in front.

'What's going on?!' She yelled at the pilot. Winter Soldier looked grim as he glanced at her barely holding onto the co-pilot's seat.

'HYDRA have noticed our leaving.' He replied dryly and flexed his metal arm on the steering column of the plane, fighting the turbulence. She wouldn't believe that that had been part of the plan and judging by his face he was not going to be losing them any time soon.

There was a steady pocpocpocpocpoc from behind and Mantis turned to watch as the fuselage of the plane was peppered with bullet holes.

From beside her, Winter Soldier cursed in another language. Warning alarms began to blare around them. A wind - let in by the various holes - whipped at her hair as she turned back and yelled above the noise 'This is a bad rescue!'

He snarled as he fought with the now sluggish plane. 'Strap in, now!'

'What? Why?!'

'Because they've managed to hit the hydraulics and fuel lines.'

She didn't need to be told that without hydraulics, it would be incredibly difficult to control the plane and without fuel - it was only a matter of time until they crashed.

And that was only if it wasn't ignited and the plane exploded in must have crashed, then.

with a curse she pulled herself around and began buckling up into the co-pilot's chair, dimly aware that the straps would never hold her - she was still physically six. These chairs were not designed to cage in anything but an adult.

This was not the Russian wilderness. This was somewhere much closer to the equator judging by the sunlight.

They must have crashed, then.

And everything hurt. There were large welts and scratches up and down her visible arms that she couldn't explain. From the impact of the plane she guessed. They were not fresh either; a few days old, perhaps.

How had she gone from the Ukraine to...here?

She couldn't stop her training from kicking in, even now. Her eyes looked over the room critically, searching for anything that would give her an edge, an answer, a weapon and that was funny because she was the weapon.

The room was obviously of a woman. The hairdryer, make-up and jewellery scattered across the vanity almost confirmed it. The whole room smelled like perfume. An expensive one, if Mantis were to judge. It also smelled very faintly of something else - guns. Guns had a distinctly unique metallic smell. The dust and smoke mixed with oil.

There had been absolutely no decoration done to this at all. It had been left generically white. Clothes littered the floor in one corner with an overflowing hamper. More than one article of clothing was suspiciously rust red. Blood?

She was brought out of her critical view of the stains by a pair of suddenly raised voices, speaking in a language that was not English.

'You disappear on me for months and then suddenly turn up again with a child you broke out of a HYDRA research facility? Are you insane, Bucky?'

'I couldn't leave her there!' He snarled. 'I know what it's like. I couldn't stand by and-'

'I know what it's like too, but you can't just go crashing in there because it's the right thing to do!'

'You weren't even going to tell me about her, were you? You knew Natalia! And you would have said nothing!'

Mantis listened with a half-cocked ear to the blazing row in...Russian, if she were correct. She recognised the sound of Winter Soldier's voice, but not the woman he was arguing with. For now it seemed to be a petty argument and nothing more phys- No, that was the sound of furniture breaking and the woman - Natalia - yelling.

'Every time you come here, you break my furniture!'

Curious. Judging by what Preying Mantis could understand, they had not been here long and neither Winter Soldier nor the woman he was arguing with knew that she was awake. She could be out of the window and gone before they ever did. That thought was almost like a safety net to her. She was safe. For now.

Which gave Mantis plenty of time to panic about what she'd just done. She'd disobeyed HYDRA. She'd ran away with a known enemy. She'd become worse than compromised - she'd become a traitor. Rogue - just like Winter Soldier.

And HYDRA would not suffer rogue agents.

As long as she breathed, she would be a target.

Winter Soldier had brought them here, and if Winter Soldier trusted, then that trust was hard earned and valuable. Even though this Natalia seemed entirely unhappy at him, she wasn't threatening to inform someone of their presence here. But that being said - Mantis barely trusted Winter Soldier.

It would probably take her a maximum of about twenty minutes to break into some family's home and steal a disguise if she made for the window right now. Another hour possibly to locate some kind of cover.

'Do you know what she is, James?' It was softer, more intimate.

'Of course I do,' Winter Soldier replied roughly. 'She's my- our - daughter.'

She was tired. Too tired to deal with what was inevitably coming. Another confrontation and conflict. Maybe not now, but soon. She wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep and forget that she'd just done the stupidest thing on Earth, forget that she'd survived a plane crash and frostbite and Winter Soldier's insanity - Especially Winter Soldier's insanity. She was sure that it was catching.

The argument had petered out into virtually nothing - the last words more than enough to stall whomever this Natalia was. Mantis hastily closed her eyes at the sound of light footsteps and slowed her breathing as the door creaked open.

The smell of the perfume increased and it was all she could do not to sneeze as it invaded her nose.

A warm hand gently touched her forehead and then her cheek, looking for something. If it were her temperature, she was sure that a thermometer would be a better judge than a hand. She could feel the ghost of breath across her face as the woman leaned down and whispered into her ear 'I know you're not asleep.'

Shit.

She rolled out of the bed and up onto her feet like an acrobat, aware dimly in the back of her head that the red-headed woman now standing with the bed between them hadn't reacted in the slightest to her sudden move.

Expert.

'Where am I?'

She smiled capriciously. 'You're safe.'

'Irrelevent.' Mantis replied in a more authoritative voice than a six year old should hold. 'Where am I?'

'New York City.'

New York? How had he gotten them across two continents that fast? How long had she been incapacitated? She didn't want to know. The red-head moved suddenly and Mantis reacted by grabbing the first thing within her reach - a pair of...eyelash curlers? 'Stay. There.' She warned.

Natalia held up her hands in surrender and asked 'You know what to do with those?'

Well, no. But she didn't need to know that. 'Just stay there.' She snapped. Just because Winter Soldier trusted her, that didn't mean Mantis had to. Mantis was conditioned to trust absolutely no-one.

'Do you know who I am? the red-head asked as Winter Soldier appeared at the door. To Mantis, there was a hint of hunger there that she didn't like. Like this woman was desperate for her to know who she was.

'Irrelevent.'

Soldier snorted and Natalia turned to give him a glare before turning back to Mantis and painting on a brittle smile. 'I'm your mother.'

'I don't care.'

If words were weapons, then Mantis had, perhaps, delivered a deep blow. The signs weren't there for very long, but they were there long enough for an educated amateur like her to notice before the red-head managed to school her face into a smooth blank. When she next spoke, something a little harder had entered her voice - clearly, she was done trying to be nice. 'I see.'