Chasing Shadows ;; Steve Rogers

thirteen.

PLEASE READ: Hey guys, I went back and edited the last two chapters because I needed to extend the time Ana was with Leviathan. I realized I had made it only a day and that does not work for the story. It's just slightly edited so you don't technically have to reread the last 2 chapters but you do need to know the extended timeline for this one.
Thanks for reading!

Ana had entered into a routine. In the morning, she would be taken to the room again where a doctor would inject her with the serum. The guards were supposed to take her back to her cell then, but somehow, Boris always intercepted them. She wondered if it was as planned as it seemed. She knew the guards were angry that she had beaten them. Leviathan had no mercy for weakness, and her attack on them would have been seen as a weakness. She knew they had been punished from the way they pushed her to the room.

Boris landed another punch to her stomach. She grunted in pain, but made no other sound. She knew he wanted her to scream. Dimitri had wanted the same. But she would not give him the satisfaction. She didn't have the fight in her to fight back when he beat her, but she had enough to not show him the emotion he wanted.

"You're going to have to hit me harder than that if you want me to feel what Dimitri did when I set him on fire," she said. She'd been trying for days to bait him into killing her, and she thought she was successful every time she say his eyes flash at her words. He hit her harder each time but he was careful not to kill her.

"The Madame say we do not kill you," he said in broken English. "But I will make you pay for what you did to my brother, bitch."

She winched as he kicked her in the stomach. She breathed out roughly. She was sure he had broken another rib. He punched her again and again, but still she kept her silence. Instead, she imagined what it would be like if she wasn't alone.

She imagined Steve bursting in through the door and throwing his shield at Boris. She imagined Yelena and Natasha running in and taking her away from this place. If she were being honest, she had imagined it so many times already. But she knew they wouldn't come. She was alone. No one was coming for her. Still, the thought of it helped her through the pain. And for now, that was enough. It was the last thought she had before she blacked out.

• • •

It didn't take long for their plan to launch into action. Irina noticed her cuffs hadn't been put on shortly after Natasha and Yelena left the cell. And as skilled as she was, it didn't take long for her to break out of the cell. Not that they had made it very hard for her.

The others were ready to go the moment she left the tower. Yelena had skillfully placed a tracker on Irina during the fight. In Irina's arrogance, she hadn't even noticed. And now, she would lead them straight to Ana.

"What do you think they're doing to her?" He asked Natasha as she sat next to him on the Quinjet.

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Natasha asked him. Because she knew. She knew it wouldn't just be unpleasant.

"No. When we saw that video," Steve shook his head, trying to clear the memory from his mind. "I can only imagine what she's going through, and it scares me."

"She's strong, remember?" Natasha put her hand on his shoulder. "She'll make it through. We'll help her."

"If we're not already too late," Steve said.

"Hey, where's the Steve that said she's been through a lot and she'll make it through?" Natasha nudged him. "I'm not giving up hope yet, and neither should you."

"I'm not," Steve said. "But we know what they did to her before, and that was before she burned down their facility and killed most of their leadership. I don't think they're gonna just let that go." He sighed and shook his head. "I should have known she wasn't in her room. I should have checked when she didn't open the door. How could I not notice she wasn't there?"