A/N: No flashbacks in this chapter, just some good ol' Summer and Winter bonding which I hope y'all enjoy. I've so far seen Winter Soldier 5 times and I've tried to perfect the Winter Soldiers behaviour as well as include the part of Bucky inside of him which can partly recognise Summer, I'm not sure how it worked out though so I'd love your opinions on that matter.

To a fan, thank you so much for your criticism and I went back through the last chapter and corrected everything, I'm also trying to learn the lingo as much as I can but I can't really find any good articles of it which is probably why it's so terrible. My deepest apologies for that.

Thank you to Lauren, a fan, KrazyForYourLuv, Guest, Guest, Dreamer Darkness and other Guest for your comments. You're the reason I manage to update so quickly.

Oh, also, I'm on a two week holiday now so (instead of revising like I really should be) I'll probably be writing more chapters so that should keep us all pretty happy!

CHAPTER THREE

"In each of us, two natures are at war – the good and the evil. All our lives the fight goes on between them, and one of them must conquer. But in our own hands lies the power to choose – what we want most to be we are."

― Robert Louis Stevenson

Summer began to shuffle uncomfortably, finding herself in an upright sitting position with both of her hands chained down to the iron table. She finally opened her eyes, wincing slightly at the light that hit her sight hard; she fluttered her eyes open and closed consistently until her surroundings became less blurry. She found that she was in a perfectly stainless steel room, everything was bright and reflective and annoying.

She tried to remain calm, she even did ten long breaths hoping it would stop her racing heart. She looked around, trying to find a way out but the entire room was empty excluding the chair, table, handcuffs and of course her. There wasn't even a visible doorway, she guessed that there was one somewhere but it wasn't visible so the entrapped person would find it harder to get out.

It was moments like these, with her hands clasped in titanium handcuffs, that she wished she'd added a strength attribute to the serum instead of concentrating mostly on lasting the longest she could and becoming more intelligent.

The door to the room finally opened, the doorway ended up being to her left in the corner of the room. She practically froze when she caught sight of the familiar grey slicked back hair and wrinkled face of Alexander Pierce. "You've got to be kidding me…" She gaped loudly, "please tell me there's a reasonable explanation on why I was crashed into, attacked on the streets, suffocated until I passed out and now, awoken to being handcuffed to a table in some sort of prison/interview room/torture dungeon."

"Well," Alexander sighed while placing himself into the seat placed on the opposite side of the table with Summer was handcuffed too, "I suppose I should start at the beginning." Alexander clasped his hands in front of him, not making any move to unlock the handcuffs on her wrists.

"Which is?" She signalled for him to continue with a twirl of her hands, becoming extremely cautious as Alexander wasn't his usual self currently, he was trying to be mysterious and his kind behaviour meant he wanted something from her.

He bent his head from side to side, Alexander was trying to find the right words to use as he knew her intelligence meant she'd be able to find his dirty laundry easily, and if the secret of just exactly which organisation he'd been working with came out then there was no way she would give him what he needed. "There are going to be some changes in S.H.I.E.L.D." He said with a shrug, being obviously vague for a reason.

This didn't comfort Summer at all, "What kind of changes exactly?" She pushed.

His first plan had failed, but like any good spy would know, you should always have a back up plan. His second plan was to make her weak, break down all those walls of hers for a second and hopefully make her slip on some of the valuable information they wanted, "Well for one thing, Nick Fury is gone." His voice held a lot of sincerity and his shoulders slumped down as though a weight was burdening itself on his body.

A moment of silence passed as she took in his words, but they were too vague for an intellect like her - no, she needed the simple fact, she needed Pierce to say to her 'oh he just popped off to Italy for a week to get down and dirty with some chicks' or something along those lines."Forgive me for asking so many questions but, what exactly do you mean by 'gone'?"

"He' dead, Summer." Alexander dead panned, looking at the door and realising he wouldn't have enough time and that he'd have to resort to his last tactic which was brutal force.

What you all need to realise is this should have been Summer Scotts' speciality, her friends and lovers dying. It all started with Bucky, then Steve, then Howard Stark (albeit, now she is great friends with Stark), soon Peggy would be gone too and now Nick Fury was gone and she still wasn't use to this feeling of helplessness, this feeling of disbelief, of guilt. "W-What, how?"

Just as she asked the door opened once again and in walked two agents dressed in black with guns in their hands, behind them the metal-armed soldier from before appeared still clad in black and wearing his mask. "it's kind of a long story." Pierce said, bringing her attention back to him.

Her eyes squinted in suspicion, her mind whirring with different ideas. "Why am I here, Pierce?" She spat, now completely distrustful of the man.

"We have reason to believe that you're keeping secrets from the organisation," Pierce said straight to the point, "and we're going to get it out of you no matter what."

She didn't care about the torturing, knowing she could heal quickly made her pain tolerance almost non-existent, it was the fact that she'd caught on to what had happened to Nick. "You got him killed didn't you, and here I thought you were friends."

"We were frie-"

"No," Summer cackled, those damn tears once again appearing in her eye, "me and Fury were friends, I would have laid my life on the line for him and I knew for a fact he'd do the same to me, heck he has done! You are no friend, you are a monster." She hissed manically, trying to exert as much anger as she could considering she had both arms tied down to the table and three men were stood in the room with guns aimed at her.

Silence filled the room, the only sound were Summer's heavy breathes as she tried to calm herself down. "I'm sorry for your loss," The masked male spoke up, everyones heads turning to look at him in surprise that he'd chosen to spoke a word. He was surprised, but there was something about this girl - when he looked at her on the verge of tears his heart that was usually caged away to most emotions genuinely felt hurt, he couldn't help the natural impulse that burdened him with the need to comfort the girl.

She snorted, "what do they call you then?" She asked, her tone seemingly bored which was the complete opposite to how she felt on the outside.

"They call me the Winter Soldier I guess." He shrugged nonchalant, feeling way too comfortable around this girl.

Her eyes widened, the file labelled 'Winter Soldier' appeared in her head and she mentally opened it, flooding her mind with different facts. "I should have known, I've read your file quite a lot. It's always interested me." She spoke back, excitement once again rushing through her veins at the idea she was meeting a legend in the spying community. She hoped none of the four people in the room noticed the goose bumps that began to speckle her skin, she hoped none of them noticed the smile that had formed on her lips for only a single second before it was replaced by a bored expression. "I'm just going to call you Wendy for short." Summer finally, knowing full well it might annoy the metal-armed soldier.

Alexander looked between the two, examining Summer more than he did the Winter Soldier. He stood up from the chair and made his way over to the door, "Wendy," he mocked, "would you mind coming with me?"

The two moved outside and Alexander put on his most trusting smile, the kind of smile that you'd usually see on some trophy husband. The Winter Soldier stood perfectly straight, his muscles being accentuated by the tight fitting bulletproof armour he wore. "I have another mission for you," Alexander clapped him on the real arm, "I want you to infiltrate that girls mind."

Wendy had been looking straight forward at first but at his new orders, the mans blue eyes snapped towards his official with an extremely confused gaze, "excuse me sir?"

"You have a metal arm, she is practically drooling over it." Pierce laughed, as though it was the most obvious of things, "she's one of the top scientists and known for being unable to resist discovering enigmas, such as yourself. Therefore, I think you should earn her trust, share with her and in return get her to share back."

He shook his head, "don't you think this job would be better suited for someone else? Someone with a bit more experience?"

Alexander shook his head, "don't you want to spend at least a little more time outside of that cryogenic sleep?" He answered with another question that stopped the Winter Soldier for a second as he thought of what to follow up with.

He was certainly curious about the girl, he held no understanding at all about those feelings which he'd experienced for the first time because of her only seconds ago. Not only was he confused though, he was terrified, did he really want to experience those emotions again? He finally chose his reply, "my duty is to help the nation in any way I can."

"Then help the nation by getting the needed information out of that woman." Alexander ordered, beginning to walk away to make sure that the Winter Soldier knew his decision was final.

That didn't mean Wendy was going to let him off later for sticking him with this job, he sighed and underneath the mask he was wearing, he wore a deep frown. He entered in to the room and ordered the soldiers in Russian, "verlassen(leave)," he pointed to the door with his thumb and continued to wait by the door as the two soldiers began to leave. He pushed out his arm and grabbed a hold of the last soldier to leave the room, "(bring the girl something to eat)," the two nodded in agreement with each other and separated.

Summer put on a bitter-sweet smile while looking up at him, "hey there Wendy," her greeting earned no reply and he just walked to her side of the table and pulled on each of the handcuffs, breaking each one instantaneously. She scoffed, "are you sure that's a good idea?"

"You can try and escape if you want too," he quipped while moving back around the table; he grabbed a hold of the chair which Alexander had previously been sat on and turned it around before sitting on it, the front of his body leaning against the back of the chair. "I'm not going to stop you, but the hundreds of guards which will most likely spot you may stop you in a very unpleasant way."

She nodded her head in understanding, wringing each wrist uncomfortably as though she could still feel the handcuffs on them. "What did you mean earlier?" She asked curiously, her voice quiet as though she was scared to ask the question, "when you said you were sorry for my loss? You're the Winter Soldier, as far as I know, your whole life is killing, so I can't wrap my head around why you'd feel sorry for me?" Her explanation was terrible and she'd managed to fall down further into her seat, shyness taking over her usual bubbly-ness.

He looked to the ground and then back up at her, analysing her with his eyes. She was clad in black skinny jeans and a mucky grey vest that was baggy thanks to her sickly thin figure - obviously she had a problem when it came to eat. Freckles dotted her whole body and for a single second he imagined what it would be like to play dot to dot on her skin, to run his fingers across it in a gentle manner, then maybe he would run her fingers through the loose curls of her shiny auburn locks.

"Like you said, my whole life is killing," he began, "every time I'm awake I kill and I also see the consequences, I've seen what losing a friend can do to people - so I know that you must be hurt."

She nodded her head and pursed her lips, allowing the uncomfortable silence to set in. She could feel him staring at her, his eyes were practically burning a hole in to her body, and she didn't know how to feel about that. The soldier from before entered the room a couple of minutes later with a tray that had mash, gravy, beef and a glass of milk on it. He settled it in front of Summer and marched back out of the room.

"I know what you're trying to do." Summer rolled her eyes in exasperation at their attempt of getting on her good side, "you think if you treat me nicely that I'll just hand away the information - I bet they didn't even tell you what the information they need is, did they?" She ranted, puffs of angry air flaring out of her nostrils. "The only reason I even stayed with S.H.I.E.L.D was because of Nick, now he's gone though I have no reason to stay. I'll probably go get a villa somewhere, that sounds like a much better plan than staying in this shit hole."

She was twitchy, that was something Wendy easily noticed. Her hands were clasping and unclasping and she'd even stop to play with her fingers, cracking her knuckles as many times as she could. She needed to be in a laboratory, she needed to dissect and create and destroy, it was all she was good for. He didn't know how, but he managed to figure this out from all her twitchy movements, "do you want to look at my arm?" He'd decided to offer his arm up for sacrifice in order to calm the woman down, he remembered what Alexander had said earlier about her 'drooling' over it.

"What?" She said, her bodies twitches freezing and her face scrunched up in obvious confusion at his request.

He smirked, "you were practically drooling over my arm earlier, I thought you might want to look at it."

She nodded her head eagerly, Wendy placed his arm across the table and as soon as Summer put her hand on the bionic arm she let out a low whistle, "that's vibranium-alloy right there, it's certainly beautiful." She thought out loud, getting completely lost in the mechanics of his metal arm, she would constantly turn it over without asking his permission, it was like at that moment he didn't exist.

Not that he minded, he once again found himself watching the girl in front of him with as much curiosity as Summer had for his arm. Her eyes sparkled in a happiness he hadn't seen before, a smile was permanently frozen on her face and she would constantly make weird facial expressions that he knew she wasn't aware of doing. She looked beautiful.

Suddenly her head snapped up, a thought occurring in her mind, the Winter Soldier was an assassin - and Nick Fury had just been killed? How had she not realised it earlier. "You killed him didn't you?"

He was torn, his mission was to earn her trust and he didn't know what the better option was: He could tell her the truth and have him hate her but also know that he wasn't going to lie to her, or he could lie, but she seemed like she wasn't the type of person to be easily conned. "I'm sorry." He whispered, eyes practically brimming up with pain as he saw her silently walk away from his arm - even though it pained her more to have to leave such a beautiful invention alone after only half expecting it - and sit down in the corner of the room, trying to meld with the walls so she could be far away from this man.