Soldier Of Summer: The Equinox

Unnamed Herb

    Sup y'all?! I love this story and I'm so excited to share it with you guys. Evyr is everything that I want to be as a person and has the attitude that I want too. Of course she's got faults like anxiety and is a little too confident on the outside, but everyone's gotta have faults. Hope you like her!

    I always knew her as The Equinox. I mean her given name was the Spring Soldier, but she hated it, so she changed it. Of course she kept it relevant to her season.
    She always kinda freaked me out, but not necessarily in a bad way. She was super outgoing and pushy, and stubborn, so I never won any fights against her.
    HYDRA had always arranged fights between their soldiers, both for entertainment and study purposes.
    "Do you know anything about her?" Fury asked me.
    Of course I knew things about her. I knew her as just a fellow HYDRA monster, but she never talked to me about HYDRA. And she always seemed so comfortable.
    But this version of her curled up in a ball was not one that I was used to. She was the one that was always happy, no matter how much sleep, food, or torture she got.
    "Yeah, she's another test subject of a Super Soldier serum that didn't exactly work. The one they gave her contained some kind of magic essence that gave her a... special connection to nature."
    "Do you know what it was?"
    "No." I shook my head.
    "Well our Wakandan sources say that the abilities come from a cousin of the Heart Shaped Herb that gave King T'Challa his abilities."
    Steve spoke up. "T'Challa said this to you?"
    "Yes, the King told us himself that this is evidence of a mysterious unnamed herb."
    "Unnamed?" Peter asked. "Why is it unnamed?"
    "The herb is named, it's just that the King does not want to divulge that name, even though it would be infinitely more helpful if he did."
    It was obvious that Fury was frustrated with the King. I would be too, and SHIELD probably wouldn't be able to get into the Wakandan kingdom without them knowing, let alone without them finding out that they were trying to steal precious information.
    "Alright so do you need us to get her?" I asked.
    "Yes, but we need to do it carefully. We don't really know what she's capable of, or even who's side she's on. We've only decided to let you know that she exists because she's in a base nearby, and just transported there for an unknown reason. So HYDRA may be devising a plan that she could be a part of."
    That definitely wasn't the whole story, but all of us had been used to Fury's secrets by now. We'd learned to live with the fact that we're not gonna know the reason for everything. This had come especially hard for Peter, who was used to knowing everything, but he learned.
    "Wait how old is she?" Peter asked.
    "She's fifteen," I answered. "I think."
    I counted on my metal fingers the years it had been since I had seen her.
    "Yep, she'd be fifteen now."
    "So you knew her personally?" Steve asked me.
    "Personally is a strong word. They pitted us against each other every once in a while."
    "Did you win?"
    I winced. "No."
    This surprised almost everyone in the room.
    "You lost to a fifteen year old?" Peter was having too much fun. "Multiple times?"
    "She was 12 the last time we fought." I curled my metal fist.
    Peter laughed and laughed, some smirked, even Fury seemed amused at the thought of me losing to a twelve year old.
    "You all would lose to her too! She's crazy strong, and always has a trick up her sleeve!" I yelled, standing up.
    "Like what?" Stark asked. "A stick?"
    I remembered the one time she beat me with a damn stick.
    "Actually yes. She once turned a stick into a bo staff and stabbed me."
    Everyone stopped laughing, and I felt an odd poking in my head.
    "She's not lying," Wanda's gaze left my head. "I saw it. It wasn't pretty."
    "Oh."
    Fury regained command of the room.
    "What we need from you now is to get her here, but you have to do it cautiously. I know that the last time this happened, some bad things followed. But I need you to intentionally let HYDRA get you."
    "WHAT?" I said that louder than I meant to. "You want us to be taken and potentially tortured, brainwashed, or killed by HYDRA intentionally?"
    "Yes." He simply said  yes. Yes.
    "NO!" I stood up and slammed my flesh hand on the table. "I won't do it! I'm not going back there, I'm not going to risk them being taken back, you'll have to find someone else."
    "Ms. Barnes, sit down."
    Peter had to forcefully pull me back into my seat.
    "We have SHIELD members in HYDRA as we speak, and if anything goes wrong, they'll get you out. "But if we leave this girl-" Fury pointed to Evyr in the footage, still curled up in a ball, now rocking back and forth a bit. "To HYDRA, we'll have a catastrophe on our hands, and not even you, Ms. Barnes can handle it at your best."
    I shivered at the thought of Evyr being like the Winter Soldier. Even seeing her now in the camera was disturbing. I didn't know her that well, but she was the kind to taunt her enemies and brag when she won, and when she lost (which was rare), she accepted it and moved on.
    "Fine, who's going?"
    "If she's up for it, I would like Ms. Maximoff to come, as well as Rogers, Barnes, Parker, Romanoff, and Barton."
    "Who leads?" Steve asked.
    "You will be leading Mr. Rogers."
    Wanda shuddered, and I felt her poking around in my head again.
    "Get out!" I spat at her. She left my head.
    I got up, swiped the file away from Fury, and left to go back to the gym.
    I threw the folder to the floor, the papers flying everywhere, but I didn't care.
    I couldn't go back there, not to be intentionally tortured. Not even for someone I was related to.
    Oh shit.
    I was related to this person. I had a sister that needed my help and I threw a tantrum. Now I really felt bad. I'm a terrible person. I flat out refused to save my sister from the life I wouldn't wish on anyone.
    "You know, it's important to keep these pages in order, or else you have no idea what you're reading."
    I turned around to see Clint picking up my folder.
    "I'm a horrible person."
    "Yeah, I know," he chuckled as he playfully hit me over the head.
    "I have to do this."
    "Yeah I know. But hey, you have me this time. I'll protect you." He smiled and organized the papers on a small table next to the punching bag that I was standing in front of.
    "It's not me being able to defend myself that I'm worried about."
    Clint stopped organizing the papers. "Oh yeah? What is it then?"
    I sighed. "I don't know, I have a family now. You're like an uncle to me, and Peter's my best friend, Bucky's my dad, Nat's my mother. I can't lose them. Not now. I just got back to normal, I don't want things to change again."
    Clint chuckled again. "Well I got news for ya Little Soldier. Things change all the time around here. They'll keep changing forever. One bullet, and I'm probably gone, same for Natasha, same for Tony. One wrong step and we're all gone."
    He put his hand on my metal shoulder.
    "No person can change that."