Darkened Shadows

Chapter 4

Bucky POV

Steve and I quickly worked through our end of the building making our way to where the scream came from before it cut out. Soon enough we met up with Black Widow and the Scarlet Witch near the middle of the building. There was a set of doors nearby and there was a lot of movement coming from behind them. Wordlessly we all agreed on what was about to happen.

I stepped forward and kicked the doors open. Inside the room was around 12 Hydra soldiers, but that wasn't what caught my eye.

The first thing was the chair in the center of the room that I knew all too well. I'm gonna break that chair when this is all over, but that wasn't important.

What was more important was the second thing that caught my eye. Near the corner of the room, were two of the guards, but draped over the shoulder of the one furthest away, was what looked to be a young woman with wings. It was hard to tell, but she looked vaguely familiar.

Before I could dwell on that any longer, the other three ran from behind me and started fighting and dodging attacks from the Hydra men.

"Wanda! The girl!" Steve ordered. Without further prompting, Wanda used her red mist to snatch the girl away from the two men. As soon as she had been removed, Natasha landed a full-body kick at the one closest to her.

Wanda called out my name followed by, "catch her!"

Next thing I knew, I was catching the nearly unconscious woman before she could be intercepted. Now that I could see her up close, I realized that I did recognize her. She was one of Hydra's experiments. The last time I saw her, I was the Winter Soldier and had been tasked with teaching her knife techniques and hand-to-hand combat. It had been so long, she was maybe eight when that happened; it's been ten years now.

As I stared down at this very disoriented girl, my metal arm touching her bound wings, she looked up at me and tried to focus. A confused look crossed her face before she whispered, "Winter?"

Holy shit she remembered me?!

"Buck! Take her to the Quinjet! Nat, go find their database, Wanda, come with me, there's some sort of secret passage over here!"

I looked up at Steve and nodded. He and Wanda jumped down a hatch and Natasha and I left the room, but not before I demolished that damned chair.

I split from Nat as she went to go find a computer and I headed back to the Quinjet. I kept my guard up as I sped through the halls, expecting someone to jump out at any moment. I made it outside without any problems and started the trek to where we had landed. I spared a moment to look down at the girl who I could barely remember was only ever called Shadow. She was fully unconscious now. Her body was soaked in sweat and grime, scars and burn marks, the most noticeable being around her neck.

I sadly realized that she had grown up within Hydra. She had only ever seen the bad in the world and was probably going to be very wary of us when she awoke. Hopefully we reached her just in time to prevent any Hydra programming from being set in place.

I reached the jet and found Clint and Tony waiting in the bay for everyone to return. As soon as they heard me approach, they jumped up ready for a fight: repulsors fired up and an arrow drawn back.

"Relax, it's just me," I assured them. They lowered their weapons and looked down to the girl draped in my arms.

"Is that the one we heard scream earlier?" Clint approached me, seemingly very concerned for the girl.

"Yeah it is. Hydra was trying to do to her what they did to me for years."

Tony looked appalled. "Are you fucking serious? More mindless soldiers? And a fucking kid of all people?"

I sighed as I set her down on a bench. "You'd be surprised at what Hydra would do to get what they want. Nothing is beneath them, not even experimenting on children." The other two looked at me confused. "I'll elaborate more later, I don't want to say this a million times," and with that we all sat down and waited for the others to return.

---

It was about 15 minutes later when we were all together again. Nat came back first with a flash drive full of information. Wanda and Steve showed up a couple minutes later looking very irritated.

"There was an underground bunker that looked like it held a jet, but it was gone by the time we got down there, someone escaped." Steve was upset.

Natasha headed toward the cockpit, "Let's head on home," she said as she started up the aircraft. "We all need a shower and she," Nat turned to look at the unconscious addition to our flight, "she needs medical attention. Let's have Bruce look at her." She turned back and started to take us back to the Avengers compound.

We flew in silence. Even though the mission was technically a success, there was still two facts that we were left to deal with:

1) at least one person got away with God knows what

2) we were now in charge of this young woman and whatever damage Hydra has done to her

I can't believe that she remembered me. It was so long ago when Hydra had me train the young girl that they kept locked away. That was near the middle of my life as the Winter Soldier. A few years after I saw this girl, I was tasked with killing Fury and that led me to Steve and eventually, my freedom.

I'm jarred out of my thoughts by the feeling of us landing and Nat yelling back, "We're home!"

As soon as the ramp lowered, there was Bruce with a gurney. Someone must have contacted him and informed him of the situation while I was lost in my memories. I got up and walked over to where I had set her down. She was completely limp as I gingerly picked her up and set her back down on the gurney. "I'm going to treat all of her external injuries while she's unconscious. After she wakes up, I'll run some more tests to see exactly what happened to her." Bruce told us all.

"I could look inside her mind to find out who she is," Wanda offered.

"That might be the safest course of action here," Steve answered. "As much as I hate invading someone's privacy like that, we have no idea what she's capable of or what will happen when she wakes up."

We all turned to Wanda as she started to enter the girl's mind. I already knew that it wasn't going to be a pretty place. If this girl had endured anything similar to what I had, which was very probable, she had a trainload of trauma up in that noggin of hers.

We were all very focused on Wanda and what she would discover. She had a very concerned and slightly horrified look on her face. Her eyes were shut tight one moment, but then suddenly, they burst open. "Oh shit," was all she said before the battered girl's eyes shot open and we were all blasted away by a wave of darkness. She jumped off the gurney and assumed a defensive stance.

"Stay the fuck out of my mind."