a/n: italics are flashbacks!
also, I forgot to put the disclaimer in the first few chapters so here it is now marvel pls don't kill me: If I owned the rights to Marvel, it would be a lot easier to pay rent on my shitty apartment. I own Nineteen though...
ONE MONTH LATER
It was funny, she thought as she paced the perimeter of her cell anxiously, how plans so carefully crafted, plans that seemed so immaculate and infallible to the last detail, still had the undeniable potential to fail.
During her musings, she eventually figured out that thought would have been obvious to most people.
The Soldier had spilled his plan to her only a short week ago. At least, she figured it was a week. After he had revealed the intent for his suicide mission, she'd suffered through seven anxiety ridden and sleepless nights. For reasons still somewhat unfathomable to her, she'd agreed to help him. Maybe death wishes were contagious. Maybe she didn't know better. Throughout the time she had spent biding her time as HYDRA's personal lab rat, she had learned that she was not the most complacent and tractable of creatures by nature, so perhaps the thought of senseless, utterly mad, and idealistic rebellion excited her.
They always trained alone, as it had become the norm.
The one and only time The Soldier had attempted to introduce Nineteen into training with the other men had ended in nothing short of disaster. The lascivious and depraved commentary that the other HYDRA agents had mercilessly thrown her way had visibly shaken and upset the young woman to the point where her already inconsistent fighting skills had worsened, and she undeniably suffered during their sparring session, remaining uncharacteristically rooted to the spot, shaking and red faced from a combination of anger and embarrassment. If he had been any other HYDRA agent, he would have followed Pierce's direct instructions to not go easy on her, and forced her to remain in the room, subject to their sneers and venomous taunts.
But he couldn't remember the last time he had completely followed one of Pierce's orders.
He had cultivated a specific skill, dedicated to finding loopholes in even the most benign of situations.
So they'd returned back to Training Room 1, where neither of them spoke of the incident, but the relentless attacks Nineteen threw at him not only surprised The Soldier, but sent him a clear message of resentment.
Her picture certainly didn't appear in the dictionary next to the word, "spitfire," but she also wasn't by any means a weakling.
She was driven by her emotions. Her best moments in combat were shown when she was either frightened or furious, and due to that simple fact, she would never and could never be the asset HYDRA desired.
The Soldier refused to let them break her. Not out of any particular care for her, but due to the fact that she was simply too valuable to him to let go of.
He wouldn't turn her into a weapon. He'd turn her into a partner.
Ironically, he typically preferred to work alone.
During one of their later training sessions, they were sparring as per usual, and he'd had her pinned on the ground when she'd suddenly reversed the pin, flipping the two of them over with a grunt of effort, resulting in her straddling his torso, pinning his arms down by his head with her knees, and wrapping her hands around his throat. Quickly. Almost impressing him. He'd allowed the ghost of a smirk to etch its way onto his face before bucking his hips and sending her flying over his head with sheer brute force. It had taken The Soldier less than a second to remove her from on top of him, but the point was there. Nineteen had successfully managed to get him into a hold that on a normal opponent, would otherwise be lethal.
She had learned quickly in the past month, picking up skills in not only hand-to-hand combat, but weapons as well, firing a gun and throwing a knife for the first time with surprising skill. Just as he had.
They'd gotten to their feet, and she'd daringly shot him a disgruntled look before he was over by her side, quick as a whip.
She all but withered under The Soldier's cold, scrutinizing stare, choosing instead to fidget about restlessly as she avoided any long periods of eye contact. The man in front of her was tall, well built, and undoubtedly handsome, but he radiated nothing but lethal power, and the constant absence of warmth in his features served as a consistent reminder to Nineteen that he was not one to agitate.
He was always civil, with a cynical and warped sense of humor, yet, a good instructor, strangely patient, and always willing to help Nineteen better herself, but never anything that could have been mistaken as friendly.
"Why are you here?"
His question had surprised her. A confused frown had flickered across her features, and she steeled her nerves, looking him in the eye before responding.
"Training."
Nineteen hadn't meant to sound like a smart-ass, but realized that she did a nanosecond too late.
The Soldier gave her a peevish look before rephrasing his question.
"I meant here," he gestured wildly around the room with his metal arm. "As in this entire facility. As in with HYDRA."
She stared blankly at him. Whether it was out of confusion or disbelief, she wasn't exactly sure. Had he not been listening when Alexander Pierce was giving his never ending speech to all of his men that very first day in the other training room? The speech that had ended in Pierce addressing The Soldier directly, and informing him that she was his new responsibility, whether he liked it or not?
"I can't exactly walk out of the front doors and leave…?" Her statement was phrased as if it were a question, sending a flicker of irritation throughout The Soldier's mind.
He began to pace around her in a circle, never taking his shrewd gaze off of her. She suddenly felt an odd sense of kinship with prey animals, such as lambs, flies, and antelope.
"But if you could, would you?"
It was a loaded question. If she told the truth, he would probably report her answer directly to Alexander Pierce, who would in turn, have her killed, or worse, have the scientists run more tests on her as a form of torture. If she lied, she had the funny feeling that her life would consist of more than just spending her days in an empty training room. A vision of brutal field missions, murder, assassination plots, and forced integration with other agents crossed her mind, and there was no stopping the fear that coursed through her veins afterwards.
So she remained silent.
The Soldier cursed in a language that she somehow recognized as Russian, before addressing her again.
"Do I need to repeat myself?"
He stopped pacing and walked closer to her, his blue eyes boring down into her hazel ones mercilessly. Her heart was overworking itself into a frantic crescendo, and he leaned forward slightly, putting himself at her eye level.
His voice was quiet, barely a whisper, but the volume had nothing to do with the severity of his tone.
"I want these fuckers to burn. And I know you do too."
He stepped away from her but didn't fail to notice the shock and fear in her eyes be replaced with an odd glint that he recognized as determination.
The Soldier's words were being uttered at a normal decibel now.
"I know you do," he had repeated himself. "I saw that hatred in your eyes the day I met you. You can't hide it. It's impossible for you. And yet, you spend your lucid hours doing absolutely nothing. When you're not here with me, you're sitting pretty in that cell doing nothing but wasting your own time. Hating something that you think you can't change."
Nineteen was about to open her mouth and offer him some creative feedback, but her retort was cut short.
"I bet you haven't even thought about getting yourself out of here. No escape plan. No nothing. But that's why I'm here."
He was pacing again.
"What are you saying?" She growled. He could still be on HYDRA's side, after all. Better to feign ignorance than to immediately believe the words spewing out of his mouth, regardless of how true they might've been.
"These people are idiots when it comes to security. Every bit of information on this organization- every file, and every piece of data, every plan they have in the works, no matter how miniscule- is backed up onto one computer in this building. We put that information onto a drive, we get it to a government somewhere, anywhere, and this entire organization that's terrorized the world for the past century goes down in flames."
The shock was back on her face.
"You are insane," she decided, backing away from him slowly. "They'll kill us before we get within twenty feet of it."
"No." he stated simply. "They'll kill us if they catch us."
Nineteen nodded slowly, deciding it was better to play along with his game. He was clearly deranged beyond repair, HYDRA must've messed around with his brain too long.
"Okay. Let's say that somehow this suicide mission works. How are we supposed to get any sort of government to believe us? They'll think we're crazy. I think you're crazy!"
"Believe me, if we show up anywhere at all with information on HYDRA, they'll have no choice but to take us seriously. It's a matter of international security. Trust me, I've thought about this long and hard."
Nineteen stared at The Soldier incredulously, unable to believe what she was hearing. The man that was supposed to be HYDRA's Number One soldier, a brutal killing machine, was standing in front of her ranting like a madman, hell-bent on destroying the one organization that had created him. She wondered what one had to go through in order to become this rancorous and malignant, but upon thinking twice about the potential answers to her questions, decided she didn't really want to know after all.
"Correct me if I'm wrong," she said, attempting to paraphrase his words to save her own sanity, and speak up on her end before he managed to turn their conversation even further south than she was imagining, "You want me... and you... you want us to somehow gather up a century's worth of information on HYDRA, escape from this facility with our lives, and get it into the hands of the people running an entire country of our choice? Alive? When I don't even know your name, nor what to call you? Also, did you miss the part where we fucking die? Because it sounds to me like you did!"
"We won't die. And I don't even know my name. If I don't know it, neither do you."
She had ignored the last part of his sentence.
"How do you know?"
She was all but yelling at this point, eyes darting around wildly. He noticed that she had begun pacing as well, in tight circles, anxiety ruling her body language.
"Is this even safe to talk about here? How do you know they're not listening? We'll be murdered in our beds!"
"You need to calm down. Your screeching will get us killed before anything else."
"Calm down? Calm down?" she jabbed her finger towards his face. "Don't you dare tell me to calm down! I'm completely calm! You're insane!"
The Soldier sighed, schooling his features into a practiced blank expression before walking over to her and gripping the tops of her arms firmly, holding her in place.
"Look, are you with me or not?" he asked.
It took her a while to respond, and the words coming from Nineteen's mouth were not even close to what he had expected.
"I'm always cold and I can't stop moving."
Her voice was blase, almost hollow, and she had a strange look in her hazel eyes. This time, it was not something The Soldier recognized.
He felt something along the lines of confusion after her odd statement, and whatever it was must've written itself on his face.
She clarified.
"After what they did to me here. After they gave me that serum… I'm always cold now... and I can't stop moving. It hurts, I fucking hate it, and I want them to pay for it."
She pulled herself out of his grip.
"So I guess I'm with you."
Nineteen didn't know she was capable of such noble decisions. Frankly, before The Soldier had come along and planted the seeds of rebellion into her brain, she thought she would've spent the rest of her life in her cell, a slave to HYDRA, studied and overworked until her scientifically modified DNA unraveled itself. But now, she was on a mission for the greater good of humanity. Maybe. In actuality, The Soldier's plan seemed entirely based on revenge. She was okay with that.
The Soldier had provided her with a breakdown of his plan, and the steps seemed simple in theory. He would come retrieve her from her cell late at night the next day under the guise of training her on the utilization of infrared weapons. Such weapons obviously could only be used at night, making it a perfect alibi for their true intentions. HYDRA surprisingly gave him more free reign than she was ever allowed, but that wasn't saying much. Whilst on their ways to their alleged training spot, they would undoubtedly pass a guard or an orderly in one of the corridors. Using her enhanced speed, Nineteen would somehow manage to swipe their badge, which would grant them access to every room in the building.
From then on began their mission to reach the building's central computer was in action, based purely on the assumption that they weren't executed due to suspicion of conspiracy the next morning.
A part of her thought the two of them could possibly pull it off after all.
Death wishes certainly did seem to be contagious.
a/n: so yay, there's chapter four. I'm gonna take this opportunity to clear some stuff up regarding this story (in case anyone was curious) one, it IS an AU of sorts, meaning things will (obviously) be different than canon, and characters will undoubtedly be a bit ooc. please don't kill me. two, I know there's a lot of she/her and he/him, regarding how I address the characters in this story, but I promise you there's a reason for this, and yes, there will be name usage in the future. three, if anyone's confused about Nineteen's character, I'm trying to make it to where the reader discovers who Nineteen is while she herself is doing so like personality wise and stuff... idk I thought it was clever or something...but idk if it's working out or not lmao. also, the beginning of this story was the hardest to write, but once Bucky and Nineteen are out of HYDRA, it'll pick up. I promise! I've got big plans for this fic hahahhahahaha. as always, please please please don't hesitate to drop me a review! they're literally like my crack and encourage me to update quickly. also I love feedback. shouts out to gamerchic for being the first reviewer! I hope this story still interests you after this chapter, lmao.