The Viper || BUCKY BARNES [2]

09 ― After All This Time

TWO YEARS LATER
2016 ― Lagos, Nigeria
[IT'S VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU READ THE BEGINNING OF THIS. This is an overview of Age of Ultron, but it also has CRUCIAL details involving Holland that set her up for Civil War, and I know a lot of people ignore the details because I get asked questions where the answers are literally in the text]

The last two years for Holland Stark had been anything but easy. Ever since the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D., her days had been divided between missions, tracking intel, and chasing after the one person she refused to give up on—James Buchanan Barnes.

She, Steve, and Sam had poured themselves into the search for Bucky, but with each promising lead came another dead end. Files were scrubbed, aliases burned, trail after trail going cold just before they could catch up. It was frustrating, exhausting—but not surprising. Holland knew something about ghosts. Because she'd been one herself.

And if a ghost didn't want to be found, they wouldn't be.

Still, she held onto hope with a grip that never loosened. Bucky had pulled her from the wreckage, saved her life when he could've let her die. Somewhere beneath all of HYDRA's conditioning, the man she loved was still in there. And Holland wasn't going to stop until she brought him home.

But time wasn't something they had an abundance of. About a year into their search, the team was pulled into a new mission that demanded their full attention. HYDRA had resurfaced—again. Intelligence pointed to a hidden base in Sokovia, and the Avengers were reassembled to neutralize the threat. Holland had volunteered immediately. A part of her was always itching to take down anything stamped with the HYDRA insignia.

Before she and Steve left, Sam promised he'd keep searching. He knew what Bucky meant to them both, and he wasn't about to let the trail die just because they were needed elsewhere. Sokovia brought more than just HYDRA soldiers.

It brought twins.

Wanda and Pietro Maximoff—enhanced, dangerous, and unpredictable. Holland hadn't expected much beyond standard opposition, but Wanda had proven to be more than a match. She got inside Tony's head, twisted his fears into a waking nightmare. What he saw shook him to the core: the Avengers, all of them, dead. Steve's shield split down the middle, Holland's body lifeless. Everyone gone. Except for him. And that was what haunted Tony most of all—that he was the one left behind.

His response was swift and secretive. Driven by fear and guilt, Tony proposed building what he called "a suit of armor around the world." Something that would protect humanity without relying on them to constantly put their lives on the line. He and Banner began developing it in secret.

Ultron.

It was meant to be the best parts of them all—Tony's vision, Bruce's mind, JARVIS's stability. But it went wrong. Horribly wrong. Ultron didn't wait for orders. He introduced himself during what was supposed to be a celebration—a quiet moment of laughter, recovery, and reunion after Sokovia. Holland had finally exhaled, smiling with a drink in her hand and her feet kicked up on one of Tony's couches.

Then the lights flickered. The party fell silent.

And Ultron spoke.

After the Avengers managed to fight off Ultron and force his retreat, the room fell into a heavy silence. Everyone turned to Tony and Bruce, demanding answers—demanding accountability. They had just faced a threat not from outside their circle, but from within it. A threat that was meant to be a solution. Now it was a problem that had the potential to end the world.

Holland didn't say much during the initial fallout. Her thoughts were loud enough already.

She thought this new mission might help. That maybe—just maybe—chasing down a rogue AI and trying to stop him from destroying the world would give her a new purpose. Something to throw herself into while the search for Bucky continued to come up empty. She was starting to wonder if she'd ever find him again. And even if she did, what version of him would be waiting for her?