Shadows of the Past

Part 26

(Y/N POV)
"Why didn't you come to me when Marc first approached you? Sarah, we were friends. I would have tried to help you... we could have done something," you say after a few minutes of silence.

Sarah just shakes her head slowly, "I could never have told you this."

"Why not? You know my father worked for SHIELD, maybe he could have-" she cuts you off before you can finish what you wanted to say.

"You were my first mission, Y/N," Sarah says looking up at you.

You can feel your body tense up.  “Wait... What?” you ask quietly, trying to process what you just heard.

“You were my first mission, right after I was recruited,” Sarah says.  She laughs a little to herself, “They wanted to recruit you, I was just their backup plan.”

“Why would they want either of us?” you ask shaking your head.

“Like I said, they didn’t want me,” Sarah’s attitude changes.  She almost sounds annoyed that she was the second choice.  You look at her, still unsure why they would be so interested in you.

“You're a freaking SHIELD legacy, your father was one of the top agents before he left and your grandmother actually worked with Peggy Carter during the first war.  She was one of the first agents after Peggy helped form SHIELD.  I mean... when we first met I couldn't believe your grandmother had met Steve Rogers before he was Captain America," she points over your shoulder at Steve as she says that. 

People at school and the training programs always thought that was cool.  Steve remembered working with your grandmother and when he first met you, he told you how much you looked like her.  After that, Steve always watched over you a bit more than he did with everyone else and you quickly fell into the habit of jokingly calling him mom.

"Marc said they had been watching your progress our first year and when you were ranked top 10% in our class at the end of the year, that sealed it for them.  They knew you would advance quickly at SHIELD and they wanted to use you as a double agent,” she told you. 

“In the beginning, Marc just wanted me to stay close to you but then he started asking me to do things.  Little things at first... clone your phone, put a tracker on your car, tell him who you met with,” she said as if they were so minor they didn’t even matter.

“You said ‘in the beginning’... what else did you do?” you ask her.

Sarah pulls on the chains a bit and looks at them.  “Hydra gets people to join one of two ways.... you either join willingly or not,” she pauses.

You try to think back to your time at school but nothing jumps out at you. 

“Marc wanted to put you into a situation where you would do one little favor for someone in exchange for getting you out of trouble.  Something small, you barely would have thought twice about.  Once you did that, the next favor would be a bit bigger, since now the first favor could be used as blackmail.  They would have continued to get larger until you didn’t have a way out,” she explains and it suddenly hits you.

“Our second semester, sophomore year...” you say, still thinking.  “You had dragged me out to a bar the night before my Chemistry final.  I overslept and almost missed the exam, I was so hungover I screwed the whole thing up.  The exam was almost a third of our grade,” you talk slowly as you remember. 

She nods, “And you failed it pretty spectacularly if I remember right.  Then I offered you a way out of that, so you wouldn’t lose your ranking at school or disappoint your parents.  We both knew how obsessed they were with your grades.  I told you Marc had a friend who could change your final exam grade.  You just needed to do one little thing.”