the red widow and captain carter

Is This Goodbye?

Peggy was completely silent the entire quinjet ride. She sat on the hangar bench with her shield braced at her side and an automatic rifle in her hand, gaze trained on the floor. She feared if she looked at anyone and they tried anymore reassurance tactics, she might launch her shield at their head to silence them.

Cautiously, Natasha watched from afar while pulling on her tactical gear. She glanced out of the front windows to see if they were any closer to the bunker where Dottie was being held.

The Avengers had quickly pinpointed her location after one of the soldiers who burst through the windows was captured by Tony and questioned for an hour. It was pathetic, how quickly he'd given all the information needed once Natasha had shot through his kneecaps and was about to break his arm.

They loaded onto the quinjet and Clint drove them toward a bunker in rural Belarus, noted by SHIELD to be a possible hiding spot for HYDRA scum. This all but confirmed their suspicions.

Clint alerted everyone that they were nearly there and Iron Man saluted them from outside the jet, zooming ahead with Thor in tow. Natasha activated her wrist gauntlets and widow bites as Peggy finally stood up and waited outside the hangar door.

Natasha took her place beside Peggy and grabbed her hand, forcing her to look down at the widow.

"We're going to get her back. I promise you that."

Peggy forced a quick smile and squeezed her friend's hand before dropping it and loading her rifle.

The jet shook slightly as Clint landed it in a patch of grass and the hangar door hissed open onto the field. Peggy and Natasha immediately ran out to meet Tony and Thor, shortly followed by an armed Clint. The Captain surveyed their surroundings and everyone's attention was drawn to the bunker up ahead.

Its entrance rumbled open and a swarm of masked soldiers charged forward, brandished with Leviathan logos on their chests.

It was almost laughable to each Avenger to see that none of them were mutants of any kind. This would be a piece of cake.

Peggy was in the middle of tossing one soldier right into another when she noticed something was wrong. The army dispersed and headed towards all the other Avengers, seemingly leaving her alone. She finally turned toward the entrance again and finally noticed her.

She felt momentary relief as Dottie emerged from the darkness, in her tall and broad form. And then Peggy realised something was wrong. This wasn't her escaping captivity. It was something else.

The woman she'd fallen in love with was silent as she approached Peggy, and when she got close enough, completely lunged at her. She took her down by the waist and pinned Peggy into the ground as she unsheathed a blade from her boot. Her demeanor was devoid of emotion and lacked any sympathy as Peggy stared up at her.

"Dottie, it's me! Look at me, Dottie!" Peggy panted, hands gripping her forearms to stop her moving the knife. "Please, it's me. Don't do this."

"I am to kill Captain Carter and anybody who gets in my way." She deadpanned.

"Dottie, listen to me, they got in your head! You're Dorothy Underwood, an Avenger-"

"My name is Ekaterina Alkimovich." She yelled, pressing the blade against Peggy's throat with enough force to break skin but not muscle.

Peggy swallowed back the pain and stared up at her eyes in realisation. They were a deep black, the same as they had been when Anton Dreykov had control over her body. Dottie was under someone's control again, and she needed to figure out a way to stop it.

She dropped her hands from Dottie's forearms and moved to cup her face delicately. The woman above her flinched, moving her face away from those caring hands and pressed the blade even closer to her throat in anger.