The Archangel (Avengers Fanfic)

Chapter Five

*Figured I'd do a POV from Bucky now that we're far enough into the story*

He remembered her, the Archangel that is, from back when he was the Winter Soldier. The first time he saw her, he knew there was something special about her and not just because of the wings that graced her back, white and fluffy looking. No, it was something in her eyes, a defiance that intrigued him. Despite being chained to a wall and being tortured, she had continued to throw insults and profanity at her captors.

The first words he ever heard out of her mouth were, "go fuck yourself, you sick motherfu—" she had been cut off as a scream of pain ripped through her throat. "Bastards!" By the end of the week, they had tortured her body but hadn't so much as dented her spirit, he had found himself admiring that about her.

After every round of torture, they would bring her back to the lab and run experiments on her wings, but no matter what they did, she never gave in. That was, until the day they wiped her memory. They had forced her into the chair even as she struggled, he still remembered her words, "No, no! I won't let you break me!" But by the time the machine had powered off, she was silent, eyes closed as if she were dreaming.

They had just taken her to the lab and started the experiment when an alarm rang throughout the entire facility. A missile or projectile of some sort was in bound, in all the commotion of evacuation, no one saw her as she opened her eyes and lunged inside one of the scientists machines, maybe she thought it was a weapon or shield of some sort, no one knows but her. Somehow, whatever she touched, whatever had caused it, made her flesh into metal. But no one knew that until after the base had been evacuated and destroyed by the projectile and they had found her body in the wreckage, unconscious but otherwise intact, skin softly gleaming gold in the dim light of the moon.

That had been the first and only time he had seen her metal form in her true colors, but watching her flying through the window, the gold gleaming bright enough to blind in the sunshine, he knew that this was how she was meant to be. Not necessarily gold as she was originally, the color of her metal form mattered little, but free.

He was not concerned as Stark tracked her plummet, seeing as he was the only one who knew what she was capable of in her metal form. She had never so much as flinched at bullets, barely bothering to give them a second thought except maybe to track their ricochet trajectory when she worked with others who weren't as bulletproof as she was. She knew her limits and knew them well, falling from such a height wouldn't hinder her at all, especially if her wings were in working order, which they should be. Though they were made out of metal, her body still worked the same way, blood still rushed in her veins, her muscles still got cramped and tired, and she could still be injured even if she never got a dent externally, she wasn't quite invincible.

Bucky watched as Archangel slowed her descent with a loop and touched gracefully down on the tarmac followed quickly by those who had went up after her. That had been the second time he had seen her in her true form, helmet and all, and she was beautiful, the strange patterns that followed the line of her muscles glinting sharply as she moved, making her metal skin look almost like liquid gold.

She kept her wings in close as she came back into the compound, they could be quite destructive so that was probably a good idea. He wondered if she had even noticed the damage she had caused to the Avengers when they were taking that device off her spine. He had broken his nose, had some pretty painful bruises and Stark had had to fix his arm afterward as two of his metal fingers wouldn't move. The suit Stark had been wearing was destroyed completely and he had a couple bruises too. Steve had lucked out the most out of all of them, only ending up with a shallow scratch on his cheek, a black eye, and a busted lip. Vision and Wanda had not participated and therefore were unharmed.

Archangel shifted to flesh once she sat down on one of the barstools, which said a lot about how she viewed them all, either she considered them to be no threat or she trusted them, the latter unlikely as she hadn't even met a few of them. Bucky took this opportunity to further study her flesh form, he had been a little distracted earlier with her throwing a butter knife at him and all.

Her skin was pale, almost deathly so with how little sun she got, her hair, which had been a fiery auburn before, had been leached of color, so much so that it was nearly white. But her eyes, a blazing amber that burned hotter than the sun, hadn't lost that defiant spark in them even after spending the better part of a century stuck under the control of someone else. Studying her, only one word came to mind that seemed to suit her; remarkable. She was simply remarkable.

"What do you think you're looking at?" her voice broke him out of his reverie, her tone accusing and maybe a bit hostile though her actual voice was soft and angelic.

His eyebrows creased in confusion, and instead of answering, he asked, "why do you hate me so much?"

"What makes you think you're important enough that I'd waste energy on hating you?" That one stung a little bit.

"Answer the question."

"Answer mine."

He scowled, "did you forget that you tried to kill me not fifteen minutes ago?"

"Oh god, you're hung up on that?" She rolled her eyes, "Let's get one thing clear, a butter knife ain't gonna be the cause of the Winter Soldier's death and we both know that. If I wanted you dead, you would be, Winter Soldier or not."

"Then why'd you throw a knife at me?"

She smirked in delight, "couldn't help myself."

Steve abruptly cut in, "alright you two, if you can't be civil, then you'll be training together until you can be."

Archangel's eyebrow raised in challenge. "And why would you think that I'd take orders from the likes of you people?"

Steve crossed his arms over his chest, "you're not a prisoner here, if you'd like to leave, you may, but the government will likely come after you as a potential security threat. We can protect you from them."

"No one can stop me, except maybe the green guy, I'll admit I had a hard time with that one. But why do think I need your protection?"

Steve sighed, his arms falling to his side, "not in the physical sense. If they see you as a threat, they'll put you under containment using any means necessary. They know about the device we took off of you that seemed to control your movements, they will use it if they find justification."

Archangel took a step back, her mouth dropping open in disbelief, "you've gotta be kidding me, seriously!?"

"Dead serious. If you stay here, we can say that your a potential recruit for the Avengers so that they'll leave you alone, but that means you have to follow basic rules, and one of the big ones is not trying to kill each other." He looked pointedly toward Bucky as he said that, "you two need to learn how to get along, if that means spending all hours of the day training, then so be it."