Chapter 3 – Old Foes
*** I apologize for how long this took to come out - extreme, extreme writer's block hit me hard on this chapter ***
Winnie put a hand on Bucky's knee as the plane began it's descent to their first stop, one that May had told them they were making, in Vancouver, Canada of all places, to pick up a target who had information on Hydra and on Reinhardt. She looked over at him and he turned his eyes to hers, the blue of them lively and snapping.
"Does anyone else feel really amped up right now, or is it just me?" Sam asked them all once the plane had landed and they were moving around the cabin, looking over the equipment and furnishings. They were snooping, if she had to be honest. Winnie laughed and even Bucky managed a brief chuckle. "No, it's been a long time coming, don't you think?" Winnie responded, "I can't tell you how long…" her voice trailed off as she met Bucky's eyes.
"Actually, I can tell you how long; since that night in 1944 when that man from Hydra threw me through the phone booth wall," Winnie said seriously. Bucky narrowed his eyes and looked away. He hated the reminder, especially since his memories of the time were nonexistent. After they had searched the main portion of the cabin, and after Winnie and Sam had managed to deter Natasha from hacking into the computers there ("It's not really our mission right now, Natasha," Winnie had griped. Natasha had simply rolled her eyes and gone back to her seat), they all sat around somewhat quietly.
It was a strange lull – things had seemed so go go go for the past couple of days: fighting, destruction, action, secrets, lies, followed by yet more secrets and lies. Having to sit and wait for someone to be captured by a team of people who weren't necessarily their team of people, and hoping this person would have some information they wanted, was boring, not to mention a little nerve-wracking.
"What's taking so long?" Winnie complained to Bucky, looking over at him with a pensive frown on her face. He had pressed his lips together in a line and shook his head; either indicating he didn't know, or that she needed to be quiet, she wasn't sure.
"You know forceful extraction missions aren't easy, Winnie," Natasha said casually, regarding her fingernails critically, "You've been on both sides of one; you'd think you would know how to be a little more patient." Winnie took a deep breath and shook her head, not wanting to think about the times she herself had been the target, nor about the times, back when she was going out on SHIELD missions, when she was the one assisting in the extracting.
"I just want this to be…" Winnie's voice trailed off as she thought about how to finish the sentiment.
"Over?" Sam offered.
"Successful?" Natasha submitted.
"Kill Reinhardt with your bare hands?" Bucky suggested. Winnie blinked and looked over at him in surprise, very mild amusement flitting through her gaze. "That doesn't match what I was saying," she said lamely, taking in his eager, hard-eyed visage. Bucky met her eyes and shrugged.
"Maybe that's just me then," he muttered. Winnie was about to reply when they heard a commotion at the door. Hunter returned then, with the other agent, the woman, Skye, Winnie thought her name was. Winnie hadn't had much time to interact with the young agent, and wasn't overly interested in doing so, though she had found it mildly amusing to see Skye's eyes nearly bug out being so close to a couple Avengers and the Winter Soldier. Now, Skye and Hunter were leading another smaller woman who managed to somehow look both irritated and trapped.
The captive woman looked up and saw the four of them seated calmly in their seats and blinked rapidly in surprise. "What?" She asked softly, in surprise, as she was tossed into a chair near them. Her eyes moved from Sam, to Natasha, looking deadly as always, to Winnie sitting up as tall as she could in her easily recognizable Nomad gear, and then landing on the Winter Soldier.
"What do you want with the obelisk?" The woman asked him in surprise, her gaze locked firmly onto Bucky. Winnie made a face, got out of her seat, and stepped forward.
"Obelisk?" She asked the small woman, "I don't know about an obelisk, and I don't care." The woman could not stop staring at Bucky, and it was unnerving Winnie, because it was not just plain fear she saw in those eyes, it was a familiar wariness.
"We only want to know where Reinhardt is, where the Hydra base he's operating is, that's it, that's all we want," Winnie said flatly, "Anything else going on here is between you and SHIELD." The woman dragged her eyes from Bucky to look up at Winnie. "We all want things," the woman said calmly, before looking back at Bucky and shaking her head slightly to herself.
Winnie felt her brow furrow and took an aggressive step forward, bringing her gloved hand up before herself and twisting it quickly into a fist. The woman was pulled back harshly into the chair and the chair itself shot across the room, several feet further from Bucky. Winnie lifted her chin slightly and tightened the grip her ability had on the woman, making sure their captive was aware that she was being grasped tightly, and had no control over it.
Winnie walked slowly across the room and was distantly pleased that no one seemed inclined to stop her, or slow this down. In fact, May had already begun the process of taking off; she could feel it in the small lurches and movements the plane was making. The small woman's eyes latched onto Winnie now.
"I want Reinhardt," Winnie said in a low voice, "Tell me where he is and you don't have to deal with us any longer."
"I know you," the woman said faintly, against the invisible hand clamped around her throat, "He wants you; they've always wanted you. Why do you want to bring yourself to him?" Winnie glared at her.
"You're Hydra?" She heard Bucky ask, as he strode forward to stand next to Winnie. Sam, Hunter, and Skye had all wisely buckled into their seats and were watching, warily, but making no move to involve themselves. A quick glance back at them also displayed Natasha sitting tense and at attention, her eyes locked like a laser onto their captive, as if assessing each and every thing that the woman said and did, sifting through it all for hidden meaning. That's exactly what she's doing, determining this woman's motives and letting Bucky and I be the muscle.
"Aren't you Hydra?" The woman mocked Bucky, "Or have you been reformed?"
Winnie growled and tilted the chair back slightly. "Let me make this really clear to you," Winnie said, stepping in front of Bucky and mentally pushing him back a couple steps, "Not a single person on this plane is capable of stopping me from doing what I want to do; not you, not him, not even her," Winnie gestured over her shoulder at Natasha, who was still boring holes into the woman with her hawk-like stare.
"You seem to know who I am, I would think that would make you a little more cooperative," Winnie felt her brow tighten further as she leaned closer, continuing on in a voice tightened with barely controlled threat, "Nothing you've heard is an exaggeration, so you'll need to start telling me what I want to hear, or else you're going to find that this is a very unpleasant ride for you."
There was a strange noise coming from outside the plane and Winnie heard the clicks of several seatbelts at once as machinery starting beeping and whirring at the large bank of sophisticated computers behind them and everyone got out of their seats quickly. Hunter and Sam rushed to the windows to see what the noise outside was, Skye and Natasha bee-lined for the computers. Bucky turned away from Winnie with a short growl when the roaring noise outside got louder. Winnie forced herself to stand her ground, glaring at the woman.
Ignoring the flurry of activity, the woman kept her eyes locked on Winnie for a long moment before deciding something. She smiled. "My name is Raina, and I could tell you what you need to know," the woman told her, "But I think you'll shortly learn firsthand. It's a shame because I'm not a fan of Reinhardt myself; I don't wish him on anyone."
There was a slight bump to the plane quite suddenly, and Winnie finally looked away, to see everyone move to the windows, except for Natasha, who spun on her heel and immediately began to run towards the front of the plane, making her way to the cockpit, to warn May, Winnie hoped.
"Oh my god," she heard Hunter murmur at the window, "They're everywhere." Winnie glowered at Raina, who only looked smug.
"Hydra is here," Raina told her, a smile growing on her face, "They're about to board the plane. They're coming for me, but won't they be pleased to find you here?" Winnie stood stock still for a moment, blinking stupidly as she tried to put together Raina's words and the flurry of noise and movement from the people in the rest of the room. How are we losing this so quickly? We haven't even had the chance to try yet! Bucky was at her side shortly, grabbing Winnie's arm and pulling her away.
"She's not lying," he urged her, "They must have followed us, after these people grabbed this woman; it looks like some kind of stealth technology on their own planes allowed them to get in close and land a plane on the loading dock on the top of this aircraft, above us, up those stairs," he gestured towards the small flight of stairs just past the center of the room, stairs that led upwards, "Agent May wouldn't have been able to detect it until it was too late."
Winnie stared up at him and then they both jerked their heads towards the noise emitting from above. Hunter and Skye swept back to Raina, obviously intending to keep the woman away from whatever was coming. Maybe we should have found out more about this Raina woman, this obelisk, about SHIELDs current mission, Winnie thought worriedly, cursing her impulsivity yet again, and feeling a growing irritation that neither Natasha nor Sam had thought that this was anything risky, either. Have we underestimated SHIELD, again?
Natasha came running back into the main cabin area and took up a defensive positon behind the stairs that led from the upper level of the plane, where it was obvious, through the sounds they were hearing, that someone was boarding their plane through an entrance hatch of some kind. Winnie looked around a little wildly and pressed at the communications toggle on her goggles. "May? May? Are you there? They're trying to board," Winnie said loudly. Agent May didn't respond and then there was a hard jerk to the cabin of the plane.
"They're coming in," Bucky hissed at her, his eyes locked to the staircase that led upwards, "Hide, and hide now." Winnie shrugged off his hand and glared at him, before moving closer to the stairs and reaching her hands up towards the door at the top. She put everything she had into securing the doorway and the walls around it.
"Natasha," Winnie ground out through teeth clenched with effort, "Can you find out if there's another way to get in from up there? Maybe you and Sam could… " Her voice trailed off when Natasha turned and darted away without another word, grabbing Hunter on her way past.
"Little help," Natasha snapped at the surprised man. Sam looked over at Winnie, strained against invisible pressure from the door above, and Bucky who was rapidly arming himself and positioned as closely to the bottom of the stairs as he could get, without being in Winnie's way.
"Are you good?" Sam asked her in an urgent voice. Winnie could hardly nod, the people on the other side of the door, the Hydra agents on the other side of the door, were working hard, trying to ram it open, testing the walls around it. The Hydra agents up there were encountering resistance that should not have been possible, and she knew it would only take them a matter of seconds to realize why that resistance was there and what that meant for them. Guess I've given myself away, she thought wryly, knowing that she'd been offered little other choice; she had to keep them from entering this section of the plane.
"Go," Bucky said shortly to Sam, hardly looking over at the man, "Sam, go now, help the Widow, take out anyone you can, keep them from this room."
Sam disappeared and Winnie grunted against the pressure at the door. Her brow tightened when she saw cracks beginning to form in the wall. "I can't," she groaned, "They're getting through, they're breaking it slowly." She couldn't word properly what her ability was allowing her to feel. The people trying to get in to the main section of the plane seemed to know how to get around her ability and were destroying the other side of the door in bits and pieces; instead of one big section to hold in place, Winnie found herself scrambling to hold together multiple pieces.
"What's happening?" Skye asked in a worried voice from her place standing next to where Raina was still in the chair, "Can't you hold them back? Isn't that your thing?" Winnie could hardly spare a glance at her.
"Shut up," Bucky told the young agent, "If that one is your target," he gestured at Raina, "Then I suggest you try and secure her, they're getting in."
Skye began to struggle with Raina, trying to drag her up from the chair and out of the room, and Winnie felt tempted to heave something at the smaller woman's head, maybe knocking her out. Raina was resisting because it seemed that she wanted to be caught at this point, not hidden away. Winnie couldn't assist Skye though, she couldn't spare the energy, and the first small pieces of door began to fall off, bouncing and clattering down the stairs.
"Bucky," Winnie growled, "It's coming down." He moved to her side and raised his gun as another piece of door broke off and shot down the stairs. They could hear the intruders now, see their legs through the holes in the door, the angle from where they stood at the bottom of the staircase only allowed them to see the people above from the knee down, since the ceiling got in the way.
"When they come," Bucky murmured to her, "Don't hesitate, they won't." She knew he meant she had to kill them, and quickly.
Another chunk of door broke and Winnie felt her resistance snap, losing her grip on the multitude of battered-in pieces of door and wall. The door caved in towards them, straining in several pieces in mid-air as she tried to fight it back, before she abandoned it and released her hold on the door, trying to move quickly to now start holding off the intruders by their clothing and armor.
"She's here!" Winnie heard someone yelling at the top of the stairs, "Tranq her! Tranq her!" Bucky growled and shot at the legs above them, not missing once. A man screamed as he was shot three times in the leg and collapsed, now fully in their line of sight as he writhed on the floor at the top of the staircase. Winnie grabbed hold of his pant legs and ripped him down the stairs, dropping him like a rock to the floor of the cabin. He let out a pained grunt and lay still.
Bullets were flying now, and she wasn't able to deflect them all. "Move!" She screamed at Bucky, trying to shove him out of the way, "Get out of my way!" He didn't move, just kept trying to hit the legs and feet of the people at the top of the stairs; people who were all trying to get down through the open doorway now, and were being met with resistance that Winnie was trying to keep pressed against them.
He reached his metal arm towards her and gave her a sudden shove and she stumbled back several paces, just in time to avoid being brained with some kind of metal cylinder that was thrown down the stairs and landed heavily right where she'd been standing.
"Bucky -!" Winnie screamed, at the same time that Skye yelled, "Flash bang!" The device went off before she could do anything and it felt like a massive concussion of air exploding in her head. Her ears rang as she fell backwards and lay stunned on the ground. She looked around herself, foggy and dizzy, and she could see Bucky on the other side of the cabin trying to force himself up from where he'd landed after the device went off.
Men were pouring down the stairs at this point and Winnie began to try and lash out, but she felt cross eyed and stupid; the flash bang had disoriented her hideously. She looked over to where Raina and Skye had been and saw Raina on the ground, looking winded but immensely pleased. Skye was being dragged up off the ground by two of the men and held at gunpoint and Winnie managed to throw a chair at one of them before she was punched in the head and truly lost her equilibrium.
"It's the asset!" She heard one of the agents call out, followed by the screams of people being wounded. She saw a flash of metal, Bucky's arm, whipping through the Hydra agents, and the person who punched her, hauled her to her feet, gripping her against their chest with a thick arm pressed into her throat. Winnie felt nauseated, dizzy to the point of pain, and her head ached sickeningly from the punch. She tried to swarm her ability nonetheless, watching as the room spun, and she was only able to hit things of little consequence.
"We are retrieval!" The man holding her screamed, above her head. His words tore through her mind, the volume achingly painful. "We are retrieval!" He hollered again. Winnie looked up and saw Bucky drop the man he was strangling, his face twisted in confusion. No, no, no! "Bucky," she managed to say, "Don't –"
The man holding her cuffed her across the head again and she sagged heavily in his grip, his hold on her neck growing tighter. She felt something cold pushing into her temple and realized it was a gun. Bucky's widened eyes locked onto the gun at her temple before his entire face flinched and he shook his head, looking as if he was trying to clear his thoughts by force.
"We. Are. Retrieval," the man said again, in clear-voiced fury, each word clipped and precise. Bucky's entire frame shuddered and he grabbed the sides of his head. Winnie lashed out with her ability one last time, trying to throw something at Bucky, to snap him out of it. Her focus was so utterly tight and determined as she fought against her swimming mind, that she felt a sharp, bright pain behind her eyes from its overuse, followed by a warm dribble of something leaking out of her nose.
Bucky's metal arm clicked and whirred as it snapped into the air with frightening speed and grabbed the chunk of debris she'd tried to throw. His hand crushed it, and dropped the debris, before he stood at attention, not even looking at Winnie.
Winnie felt horror flooding her veins when the man holding her chuckled and squeezed her neck tighter. "We are retrieval," he said once more, his voice amused and menacing, all at once. Winnie suddenly realized there was a method to the madness of those words. Bucky's features went stiff and hard, and it looked like a veil crossed his face. He looked like a machine. "No," she managed to gargle out.
She was dizzy, aching, bleeding, sick, and nearly unconscious, but nothing hurt as badly as watching Bucky disappear completely. The Soldier, the mindless one, returned, blankness spreading over his features in a cold wave as he finally answered their attackers.
"I am retrieved."
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"He killed them," Skye whispered next to her, her tone disbelieving. Winnie rolled her head and looked over at Skye, the movement causing a strong ache in her throat and neck. She felt numb, stupid, and hardly able to comprehend what was happening. They were on the Hydra plane now, and an endless loop was playing in her mind, displaying for her again and again, the events of the past hour, tormenting her.
Bucky's abrupt change, back to Hydra's asset, left her feeling like she couldn't breathe. The man holding her, who Skye had told her was the traitor, Ward, had shoved Winnie roughly to the ground and then ordered one of his men to stand next to Bucky, a gun trained on his head. Winnie had felt the immediate instinct to lash out, but Ward had shaken his head, a smile growing on his face as he tutted at her.
"I wouldn't," he told her, his tone more amiable than the situation called for, "One move out of you, for any reason, and we will terminate the asset immediately, got it?" Winnie had glared at him, feeling a twitch growing in her eye. She thought of a thousand things she would do to this man if she could, to all of these men, things that sickened her, and realized she was baring her teeth at him in a silent growl.
"You think I'm kidding? You really believe he can think for himself anymore?" Ward had bent closer to her and narrowed his eyes, "Do you honestly think that Hydra wouldn't have created fail-safes in their favorite toy? Back-up plans?" Winnie had been nearly panting as she tried to get to her feet, but Ward had only rolled his eyes and used a boot to press her back down to the floor.
"He won't fight his orders now, he's been retrieved, as far as that robot is concerned, his mission is done, he's primed and waiting for a new directive," Ward had told her conversationally, his eyes looking past Winnie, towards where Skye was standing at gun-point. His features had softened and Winnie felt her own eyes tighten as she realized that this man had a past with the SHIELD agents on this plane, and that he had been one of them, hence the traitor title. Remember that, use it, later, she had urged herself, her gaze darting over to where Bucky stood stiff and unmoving, his face blank, even as the gun pressed into the back of his head.
There had been a brief commotion, from the back of the plane, and Winnie had looked over when she heard gun shots from that direction and realized that it was Natasha returning with Hunter and Sam. The woman wasted no time, each of her four shots hitting their targets, and Hydra agents dropped dead.
What had happened next left Winnie with the sickened feeling that pervaded even over an hour later. Ward had turned to Bucky calmly. "Kill them," Ward ordered in a flat tone. Winnie opened her mouth and began to scream her protest, even as Bucky raised the gun still clutched in his flesh hand and shot at their three companions. None of them had time to react, as none of them expected Bucky to turn on them and take them out.
All of three of them had let out grunts as the bullets hit them and they all stumbled backwards and collapsed, falling to the ground, out of view. Satisfied, Ward had ordered his men to gather Raina, Skye, and Winnie, and get them back to the Hydra plane. Winnie had hardly been able breathe, opening and closing her mouth like she couldn't get air, and had felt like all the noise and sound around them was dulled to nothing, leaving her with a sharp ringing in her ears.
As she had been wrenched from the ground by an agent, she turned back and saw three figures laying at the far side of the big room in the centre of the plane, Natasha's boot slung over the arm of a chair that she must have tumbled backwards over. None of them were moving.
She had needed to be carried up the stairs as she sagged in the arms of her captor, unable to believe that as quickly as that, Natasha and Sam were dead. As she had been dragged through the hatch into the Hydra plane, Winnie's eyes had slid over Bucky, coming up the stairs behind her, his gaze vacant and not focused on hers. He had still had an agent behind him, with a gun tucked up against the back of his head; the implied threat was not being lifted. She and Skye had been taken to the rear of the Hydra plane, a plane far more utilitarian than SHIELD's 'bus', and she had stood unprotestingly as the man who dragged her there ripped off her goggles, her gloves, her belt, and her boots, shoving her around a lot more roughly than needed given her state.
Ward had begun talking to Skye, their tones cutting furiously back and forth, but Winnie had been too far gone to react or listen properly. All she could see in her mind's eye was Natasha's boot dangling limply over the chair and the three prone forms on the ground. When she had managed to focus her gaze for a moment, tearing herself from the grim mental image, she had seen, a mere 20 feet away, Bucky, sitting stiffly and robotically in a seat, still with a gun to his head.
"This thing is full of SHIELD shit," the man disarming her had grumbled, yanking at the neck of her blue jacket, drawing her attention back to him. Winnie blinked several times when she realized he meant to take the entire Nomad ensemble off of her and had batted at his hands, trying to keep him off as he wrestled to pull the blue jacket open.
"Hey! Leave her alone! What the hell is wrong with you, you pervert?" Skye had begun to yell at the man, trying to shove past Ward. Winnie tried to jerk away from the man in front of her, clawing at his hands as he fought to wrest the jacket from her, desperately wanting to use her ability to stop him, but terrified to test Ward's words about killing Bucky.
A hand had then closed over Winnie's and pulled her own away, and then the man grabbing at her jacket was shoved back, as Ward stepped in front of her, looking down at her solemnly. "Are you wearing anything beneath this get-up?" He had asked her seriously, his eyes firm, but at least glinting with something a little more humane than the other Hydra agent she'd been grappling with.
Winnie had felt a rush of anger and sorrow flush her neck and face as she stared back at him. Her eyes had grown teary and she had hated the show of weakness, but couldn't fight it off, at war within herself: one part wanting to fight, fight with everything she had, and the other wanting to curl up in a ball and sob over the fresh loss of her comrades. She was battling so much more than captivity right now; she was battling grief. Winnie clenched her teeth and nodded at Ward, answering his question without words.
"Then take off the uniform, don't be stupid, you know we can't let you stay in SHIELD tech," Ward told her in a firm voice. Winnie took in a deep shuddery breath and looked away, resentfully beginning to remove the jacket and the pants. She had understood well enough, through the fog of her pain, both physical and mental, that Ward, for whatever reason, was showing her a sort of kindness by allowing her to surrender her Nomad garments, rather than have them violently stripped from herself. And he had been right, the uniform was layered and peppered with SHIELD goodies; if she were in his place, a dim part of her mind was aware that she would have insisted the same.
She had been left in the white SHIELD tank top she always wore beneath the suit, and the black leggings that Natasha had once told her were called 'yoga pants', though she'd never worn them for anything other than a layer beneath the Nomad gear. Standing in her thick black socks, Winnie had glared at Ward until he nodded and grabbed her shoulder, steering her back to where Skye had been sitting on the floor of the plane, leaned up against the wall with her knees drawn to her chest. Winnie sat next to the agent and mirrored her position. Ward had walked a few steps away and then stopped, looking back at them.
"I'm sorry, Skye," he murmured to the young woman, and Winnie had looked over at the girl to see anger and betrayal clearly plastered across her face, her eyes pained from the loss of her own comrade, Hunter.
"Fuck you," Skye responded in a voice gravelly with loathing. Good girl, Winnie had thought briefly, admiring Skye's backbone, before she looked past Ward and locked her gaze on Bucky again. Her entire body had been aching for him to look at her, to assure her it was alright, that he was there, but he wasn't even looking in her direction, just staring blankly and steadily at the wall across from his seat.
"If you behave, he doesn't have to die," Ward had assured her, "But either way, I'm returning you to Hydra; it's up to you whether you both make it, or if you're going alone." Winnie had swallowed and looked away, her jaw clenching tightly again. Ward disappeared to the front of the plane and Winnie pressed her face into her legs, to give herself the illusion of privacy, and also the opportunity to think without anyone reading her thoughts all over her face.
She remained that way until her face grew hot from crying and from being so angry, and then she lifted her head up to lean it back against the wall of the plane. That was when Skye had whispered in disbelief about the death of their people. Winnie licked her lips and stared down at her lap. I should rip this place apart, tear the plane in half, she thought suddenly, vehemently, I've lost Bucky. Natasha and Sam are dead. Now Hydra's got me. She entertained a vision of suddenly unleashing a tidal wave of violent power, rending apart every living thing on the plane, cracking it open, all of them falling to their deaths.
Winnie looked over at Skye again and felt a ripple of guilt. She would be unfairly sentencing the young agent to an early death doing that. She had to pause and consider whether or not it was worth it; Hydra said they wanted to turn her into a weapon, likely for destruction on a huge scale, and as much as she hated them, she hardly doubted their ability to do so. Isn't it worth this one agent's life to prevent it? Winnie looked away from Skye when the young woman began to cry angrily and silently into her hands.
Her gaze travelled along the plane, skating in irritation over Raina, who was buckled firmly in to a seat near the midsection of the plane, looking smug. The woman's gaze was drawn repeatedly to Skye, and even though none of this exact scenario was explicitly Raina's fault, Winnie imagined, with a dark kind of glee born from the darkest place in her mind, of slicing the woman in half with her seatbelt. Raina's eyes moved to Winnie and she must have seen the dark, angry promise of violence on Winnie's face because she recoiled a little.
Winnie wanted to threaten the other woman, but felt weighed down with grief and frustration and instead looked away. Bucky was next in her line of vision and Winnie thought again about causing the plane to crash, just ending this all now. Even if I get out of this, somehow, I can't have him gone again, just a ghost, all over again. She knew the thought was pure weakness on her part, but the lancing pain in her heart told her that the sentiment was true nonetheless. Bucky was no longer staring straight ahead, his head hung slightly now, his hair covering and shadowing his face.
She trailed her eyes over him, wondering if she could stand to see his brains blown out. If she defied Ward, and they killed Bucky, then their ability to hold sway over her was gone and she could destroy them all, she could get out of Hydra's grasp and save countless lives by not allowing herself to become a weapon. The plane bumped slightly and Bucky's head bounced limply and she licked her lips at the quick glimpse of his face. I think I could, she thought mournfully, it might kill me, but I think I could, for this reason and this reason only.
"Bucky," she murmured, her sorrow so heavy in her voice that Ward looked over at her and Skye put a tentative hand on her arm. Winnie jerked from the girl's touch. "Bucky, please," Winnie said again, her voice quiet and pleading, "Don't make me do this." Ward got to his feet abruptly and marched towards her, gripping his weapon in his hands. Winnie glared up at him as he approached, his eyes showing only the faintest wary gleam.
"Don't do anything stupid," he ordered her, "You don't want to be the reason he dies."
"You should be afraid of me," Winnie said, climbing to her feet slowly, still aching everywhere, "You should be terrified." She glared at him and prepared to hand herself over to her ability, to throw herself into that dark and powerful abyss and not look back. The personal price she would have to pay would be steep, possibly too steep to live with afterwards, but she knew there was no other option: Hydra could not have her, at any cost.
Ward took a step back and she heard the sound of his men getting to their feet. She took another step away from the wall, her eyes flat and dead as they locked on Ward, her brows drawn down into a glare.
"I'm going to make you regret this," she promised him, hardly recognizing the tone of her voice. She glanced over at Bucky one last time and swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. He was staring blankly back at her, his attention drawn to where everyone else had gathered, but there was no life behind the gaze. The man holding the gun to Bucky's head seemed to also sense what was about to happen and pressed the gun to Bucky's skull even more tightly. She took a deep breath.
"Bucky I love you," she told him steadily, "And I'm sorry." She shot her gaze back to Ward and she felt the welcoming rush of the wild and reckless side of her ability taking over. The plane's walls began shaking slightly. "I hope you're afraid," she told Ward. He looked over her shoulder quickly and his face quickly settled into a far calmer one.
"No, I'm not," he said simply and Winnie felt the slam of something hit her neck painfully, and the burning heat of a Hydra sedative flowed into her. She cursed herself for not being more on guard for just this kind of thing, really the only thing that could stop her in her tracks and put her down. Winnie slumped to her knees and slammed sideways to the floor. Her face landed facing Skye, who was wide-eyed with fear and worry.
"I hate tranquilizers," Winnie managed to murmur to the girl, before she blacked out, "Every… single… time…"
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"Damn it! That hurts!" Hunter complained, as May roughly pressed a bandage to his side. She slapped her hand against the bandage once and turned a wry look over to Natasha.
"You should be more grateful that you're not dead," May commented, before moving towards Sam and pulling back the collar of his shirt. There was a neat divot through the uppermost section of the flesh between his neck and shoulder; it was bleeding heavily, but was clearly nothing more than a flesh wound.
Natasha barely spared any of this a thought. She'd dealt with her own mild wound quickly, briefly cursing Barnes for shooting her, again, leaving a graze wound across her side. May had informed her of the tracking device in Skye's necklace, and it hadn't taken Natasha long to get the tracking system up and running. They knew where they were going now, but she was worried about what they might find when they arrived.
It was clear to her that Barnes had willingly shot them, she'd heard the "Kill them" directive from Ward, but obviously the Soldier hadn't killed them. He'd intentionally shot them in a way that would bleed, quickly and heavily, knock them on their asses, but not cause much damage. A way that looked very bad to anyone casting a glance at their prone bodies. The second she'd felt the bullet rip across the surface of her skin, she'd stumbled backwards, taking Hunter and Sam down with her.
"Stay down," she'd hissed quietly, but urgently to them both, and thankfully they seemed to quickly catch her drift: play dead. It was immediately obvious to her that Barnes had aimed exactly and precisely; she didn't love the guy, but she knew damn well he was an astounding shot. As she flickered her fingers deftly across the keyboard now, zeroing in on the building in Puerto Rico where the Hydra plane had gone, she had to grudgingly admit that she was trusting Barnes without them having spoken a word to each other about his plan.
"So, they think they got him under some kind of spell, right?" Sam asked, grunting slightly when May began to stitch his wound. Natasha nodded, not looking over; she was trying to find a place where they could land without being spotted on the virtual map in front of her.
"But you think they don't," he stated flatly. Natasha nodded curtly.
"We'd be dead if he wanted us to be," she replied flatly, "They ordered him to kill us and he purposefully didn't."
"He wants them to think he's under control, so there's something more important at play, at least to him," May muttered, affixing a bandage over Sam's wound. Natasha finally spared a glance over at the other woman. "Reinhardt," Natasha said to May. The agent nodded.
"He's the one that turned Winnie into…" Sam began, his voice trailing off as he tried to find a term that wasn't offensive.
"Into Nomad," May finished for him, turning away from them and striding towards the cockpit. "I'm sending the coordinates up to the cockpit now," Natasha told May's retreating back, receiving only a grunt in acknowledgement.
"So, we go get them," Sam stated, not asking a question. "Yeah, we do," Natasha responded. She turned from the screen and leaned her back against the table she'd just been working at.
"Hydra can't have her," Natasha explained flatly, "Nobody can." She stared hard at Sam, hating what she was about to say, knowing that she'd lose Steve's trust forever with this.
"If we can't save her from Hydra, then we have to end the threat she represents," Natasha's voice was throaty, serious, but her eyes were the slightest bit pained. Sam just stared at her, nearly uncomprehending. It was Hunter who spoke first though.
"Hold on, hold on," Hunter interjected, "You're sayin' you'll just stroll in there and kill your friend? If you can't have her, nobody can? Are you bloody serious?" Natasha regarded him coolly, fighting to keep her emotions from her face as she answered him in her coldest voice, the Widow's voice:
"That's exactly what we'll do."