92.
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Every time Madame Hydra awakens Isabel from cryofreeze, she wakes Bucky at the same time. And every time, Isabel loses just a bit more touch on reality. She has no clue how long she's been asleep for. The chamber gives no estimate of how long it's kept her frozen, and the people that constantly work around them when they're awake seem to change every time, as well as the members of Bucky's strike team. Isabel presumes they quit or move on to different areas or get promotions in the time between them being unfrozen.
The only thing that gives her any idea of how much time has passed is Madame Hydra's appearance. Every time she welcomes Isabel back, she looks a little older, her hair a little greyer, her skin craggier and spotted from age. It frightens Isabel that so much time could be passing without her knowing and without her aging as well, and so she doesn't dwell on it too long.
It does make her wonder, though, every time she's awakened, what's come of the people she left behind. Her parents, surely, would be getting older by now; perhaps they're grandparents, perhaps Robbie and Becca had families and grew the Barnes household to a larger one? How have they all coped without Isabel and Bucky? Do they have any idea what's become of their two eldest children? And Peggy, she would be aging by now – did she find love and have a family? Is she running Shield? The Commandos; have they married and had children and moved on from the loss of so many of their newfound family members? Did they find a way to get closure?
There's so many questions Isabel wants answered but knows she'll probably never get. She cries at least once every time she's awakened for all she's lost and all she'll never get back. The loss, the pain, the misery, and missing, all of it makes her ache so badly she fears it may kill her.
And of course, there's Steve. Oh, how she misses him. Every second of the day, she finds a way to think of him. She can only hope and pray that his fate was infinitely better than her own. She prays he's somewhere nice, up in the stars with Sarah and Joseph waiting for her. She hopes he'll be there when she finally passes over. She truly can't wait for that day, but she knows it's a long time coming. Heaven is her only salvation now. It's the only fate she can see for herself. But, a part of her mind says, would she even end up there after all she's done? She hopes so, God, she hopes so.
When they're both awake, Isabel and Bucky (or what's left of him) follow much the same routine. They're awakened, they allow themselves to recover right there on the cold floor in a puddle of condensation, and then Isabel says the trigger words to release the monster that Hydra's put within Bucky. While the Soldier waits for his instruction, Isabel reads it to him. Name after name, innocent person after innocent person, Isabel gives him his missions. And then she watches him go, a scary, unstoppable assassin.
While Bucky is gone with his strike team, taking out whatever poor target Hydra wants gone, Isabel is taken for training. For hours, she's taught to fight, to strategize, tactics for fighting, to use all sorts of weaponry, and finally how to fly a plane. Over and over, she learns until the information is drilled into her head. She knows she'll never forget it.
She doesn't do it to better herself or Hydra. She does it to survive. Madame Hydra makes it especially clear that if she doesn't fight, she'll be hurt or killed. If she doesn't remember and utilise the tactics they give her, she'll pay for it. The pain inflicted by getting it wrong and the injuries she ends up with that take hours to heal burn the information into her. If she doesn't take down the ten men that attack her at once, she'll be killed by them. She learnt her lesson only once on her first attempt to fight three attackers at once when they'd beaten her nearly to death again, an astonishing feat considering she has the serum. It'd taken her days to recover in the infirmary before they put her back into cryostasis. She never, ever wants a repeat of that.
When Bucky and the strike team return, Isabel is taken back to their room. As always, Bucky is hysterical. As soon as the Soldier returns safely to base, the programming has run its course and cuts out, leaving him a broken, memory-less man once again.
The only thing he remembers is his own hands killing an innocent person, or people in some cases when he's to leave no witnesses. He remembers the involuntarily actions his own hands made or raising the gun to the person's head or snapping their neck with his metal hand, and the way he didn't want that, how his brain screamed at him to stop.
There's always a small voice in his head that talks to him. He gets stronger the longer that the Soldier is out on his missions. The voice tells him sometimes what his name is, that he isn't supposed to be there, and mostly, not to hurt the woman that they say is his handler. He listens to the voice that sounds like his own voice, but as soon as his memory is wiped, he forgets what the man said and that the voice had ever been there, and the next time he comes back, his voice is always a little quieter than the last.
He knows to never tell anyone that he hears this voice.
Isabel always comes in to comfort Bucky, telling him it will be okay and leading him to the chair. He screams while he's wiped around the mouthpiece, his eyes bulging with fear and pain, and then when it ends, he's left childlike with wide glassy eyes and a scared expression, but no memory of what he was forced to do.
Isabel's heart shatters that little bit more every time.
Isabel learns, whilst Bucky is away on a mission, that a massive team has had to be formed to follow the Winter Soldier and clean up any traces the Asset leaves behind. The Winter Soldier is supposedly a ghost, but it isn't Bucky's skill that's made him that way. It's the team that takes out witnesses, cleans up blood and hair and clothing and anything that could trace people to Bucky and Hydra. They pick up his goggles and weapons that he leaves behind, some of it still embedded in his victims.
No matter how much they train the Soldier or threaten him, he never seems to get any sneakier. Many times on missions he risks exposure, standing in plain sight to confront his victim, killing the victim in front of a mass of witnesses, completing the objective in front of a security camera. It gives Madame Hydra great grief, and eventually, the clean-up team expands into multiple groups for different operations.
When Isabel finds out, she can't help but smile. The Asset may just be a sloppy killer, but Isabel thinks it's more than that. There's clearly still a part of Bucky within him. That person who's devastated after a mission, who cries that he hadn't wanted to pull the trigger but couldn't stop himself – that is Bucky shining through. And so is this.
This is Bucky rebelling against Hydra and what he's being forced to do. He may not be able to stop himself from killing and may not be able to break the brainwashing totally, but maybe this is how he's keeping a sense of control in his life. Perhaps he's hoping to get caught and saved, or that Hydra themselves will be found out.
Whatever he's doing, whether intentional or not, Isabel hopes he doesn't stop.
When Madame Hydra rushes Isabel, her head ducked like a raging bull, Isabel finally moves fast enough to dodge her. Isabel flings herself to the side, landing on her palms, and then pushes off, smashing her feet sideways into Madame Hydra. Her feet make contact, one into the side of the woman's face and the other into her ribs, and the force sends the woman flying across the room into the far wall.
Isabel stands slowly, arms raised in caution, and watches as the Madame seems to take much longer to awaken than usual.
Madame Hydra is considerably older than she had been in nineteen-forty-five, and even older than when Isabel was first woken up. The streak of grey framing her face has spread to cover her entire head of hair, her strands sleek and silver in the fluorescent lights. The lines of her face are slightly deeper and more plentiful. And her body doesn't move as fluently or as quickly as it used to, neither does she recover as well from a hit.
It hits Isabel then, as Madame Hydra struggles to her feet with wobbly legs, that Madame Hydra has spent the majority of her life, seemingly, torturing Isabel and Bucky and working for Hydra. And Isabel can't seem to think of anything other than what a waste of life that is.
"How long has it been?" Isabel blurts before she can stop herself. She really should have learned by now that speaking out of turn is something Madame Hydra doesn't tolerate.
Madame Hydra turns a glare on the slim brunette before her, no older than she was the day they first met. "Since what? Since you landed your last hit?" She sneers, her snark still intact. "You're getting better and stronger. It happens much more often. Go ahead and gloat–"
"No, since you brought me here," Isabel corrects.
"You know I can't tell you," Ophelia says, for maybe the hundredth time.
"It's been so long," Isabel says, her voice quiet and almost sympathetic, somehow. "From what I see–"
"I didn't ask to hear what you thought, fraulein," Madame Hydra warns. "We are here to fight, not to talk."
"Just listen to me," Isabel snaps, her voice more forceful than it's ever been. Madame Hydra's eyebrows rise in surprise. "From what I can see, you've spent your entire life like this."
"And how would that be, Miss Barnes?"
"In this desolate maze of dark and damp tunnels torturing Bucky and me. What are you even fighting for anymore? What's left to fight for? This is all that's left of Hydra. Why are your loyalties so strong to something so wrong, something so depressing?" Isabel wonders aloud.
Something in Madame Hydra's resolve seems to dissipate, and she takes a deep breath, letting out almost like a sigh. It's the most defeated Isabel's maybe ever seen her, though Isabel wouldn't go so far as to describe the powerful woman as defeated.
I believe in Hydra and its values," Madame Hydra answers. "It's as simple as that."
"But it isn't," Isabel argues. "To do this. To be here. To do what you've been doing for so long. How could you? How could you find it within yourself to do this to us?"
Madame Hydra eyes Isabel, her eyes narrowing, her lips a thin line. "You and the Asset are nothing to me, nothing but pawns on my chess board. I don't care what happens to you, I only care that I can still use you to get what I want. I only care that the will of Hydra and of the Red Skull is done."
Isabel looks away from the woman in front of her, breaking their eye contact. The mood in the sparring room has dropped into one of desolation and despair, though not from Madame Hydra, wo stands strong and defiant in her ways.
Isabel sighs this time, loud and long-suffering. "You truly believe what you're doing is right," she says, but it isn't a question.
"I do. With my everything," Madame Hydra confirms.
"Then I have only pity for you," Isabel tells her, making eye contact again. "Once upon a time, I thought you were redeemable. I thought there was hope. But there isn't. You have no love in your heart, only hate. Unfathomable and undeniable hate."
Again, something in Madame Hydra seems to snap at Isabel's words. Isabel knows she's walking a fine line, but she's willing to take the chance to get some answers.
"I had love in my heart," Madame Hydra insists, her voice like ice. "But your Captain took that away from me."
Isabel is thrown for a loop. "Who?" She blurts. Madame Hydra raises her eyebrows again as though it were obvious. Isabel has to stop her face from contorting into an expression of distaste. "The Red Skull?" She asks disbelievingly. "But that day in the factory, you told me–"
"I know what I told you," Madame Hydra interrupts. "I told you that my work with Herr Schmidt was purely for my own gain and there was no emotion between us beyond colleagues. I was lying to you."
"Why?"
"Because love is a weakness, fraulein! And if you had known of my… condition, you would have used it to your advantage. That was my one and only weakness, why would I reveal it to you? You thought I was pure evil, and that was exactly what we needed you to believe. You should have learned by now that nothing good ever comes of love."
"Plenty of good comes of it," Isabel argues onto unhearing ears.
"No, you are wrong. You still live through your heart and not your mind, just as you did all those years ago. Even after all you have been through. It is unbelievable, how stubborn you Americans are."
Madame Hydra sounds almost amazed, shaking her head in disbelief. She steps forward and comes right up to Isabel, still taller than her despite how age has hunched her back slightly. Isabel stands tall, her eyes searching the woman before her in a way she never has before, seeing an entirely new side to the mysterious agent.
"Your pity for me is displaced, Miss Barnes, for what I said to you all those years ago was not true. I had love in my heart; a whole lot of it. I followed Herr Schmidt for I loved him, and I believed in him. And with him gone, I am adamant that I will continue his legacy."
Madame Hydra pauses.
Beneath all the harshness and the anger, Isabel can see another side to the woman, and it takes her a moment to realise that this is Ophelia. This is not Madame Hydra, the famed and powerful female agent of Hydra, but Ophelia Sarkissian. A woman, a person, someone who loves. It's almost incomprehensible. In Ophelia's eyes an air of pain she hadn't noticed before. The woman truly isn't lying. Isabel can't comprehend it, let alone answer the woman's questions.
"Is that not what you attempted to do, Miss Barnes? Did you not try to live your life according to the wishes of your love?" Isabel has no argument to that because Madame Hydra is completely and utterly correct. "We aren't so different, you and me. We both lost our love."
"I don't think Steve would much appreciate being likened to the Red Skull," Isabel snaps, not appreciating the disrespect of Ophelia's words herself. "You may think that was love, but I highly disagree. Schmidt didn't love anyone. Schmidt was a man of hate and injustice and evil–"
Ophelia surges forward then and slams her hands into Isabel's shoulders, pushing the brunette backward onto the hard floor. Gone is the vulnerability of Ophelia, replaced again by the stoic mask of Madame Hydra, savage and unforgiving.
"Don't even go there," Madame Hydra warns, looming over Isabel and pointing a finger down at the woman below her. Her eyes are almost black with pure anger, her mouth curled up into a growl that reveals her teeth like a wild animal. "How dare you disrespect Johann in that manner. You have no idea what you're messing with."
Isabel keeps her eye contact with the flaming woman, even as her heart thuds with fear in her chest and her hands shake uncontrollably. She props herself up on her elbows and then stands, ignoring the pain in her body and in her heart.
Isabel plasters a smile onto her face, large and teeth-baring and innocent and entirely fake. "Oh, but I do," she insists, her voice sickly sweet. "You said it yourself. We aren't so different, you and I."
Isabel sees the knock-out blow come, but she's not quick enough to stop it. The world goes black.