Recovery || Bucky Barnes

04 | Daybreak

Pассвет

"we make our monsters, then fear them for what they show us about ourselves." – Mike Carey

★★★

She kept her head down as she sat on the park bench, a light sweat building around her hairline as she drank her bottle of water. She took out her phone and scrolled through the news. There was an overwhelming amount of reports on Fury's death and, Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers' fugitive statuses. There was nothing about SHIELD's intel leak which she hadn't been surprised about considering that they weren't going to acknowledge that they had compromised staff alongside two high-classed fugitives.

It was dark out in the park, which only made her feel more uneasy at the thought of such an open space. She maintained a calm exterior as she put the cap back on her bottle, discreetly glancing at the tree that was lightly marked with chalk. Her dead drop was inside, files that would tell her whether the shared cooperation that funded her high-profiled employers were who she thought they were. And some that she had specifically requested as follow ups.

It had taken her several hours from the day before to even link her employer to a corporation which lead her to the city archives. She dug around relentlessly, searching for anything to tell her what was going on. She had called other archives, finding that each corporation had been transferring its assets to the next as years dated back. The last record she found in the historical branch dated nineteen forty-six. Almost every high-profile case she had linked the employers back to the original corporation, Wai-Go Industries. A front for something much dangerous.

She walked over to the tree, tying her sneakers against the trunk as she looked around. Not many people were around this late at night and she had made sure that any cameras that would catch a glimpse of her was on a ten-minute loop. There were so many precautions that she had to take, now that she was on their radar and now possibly on another organisation's radar too.

She grabbed the bag and slung it on her shoulder. Her head was itching from the dark brown wig she had on and her photostatic veil was getting on her nerves. The electric buzz of it was overwhelmingly loud in her ear which made her less able to rely on sound as she walked.

Once she got to the closest safehouse after circling back she sat down in the kitchen. It had been exhausting the past few days as sleep continued to evade her. Her dreams consisted of past memories and every waking moment she feared a new one would return. She gulped down a glass of bourbon before she took out the documents. Standing in front of the table as she flipped through, her teeth gnawing the inside of her cheek. She poured herself another glass so that the uneasy feeling at the bottom of her stomach would leave.

"No." Her voice was barely a whisper, filled with disdain. Her body rigid as she stood there, the documents in her hand string slip through her fingers. She tightened her grip and held them up so that she could scour them again, disbelief wracking her body.

HYDRA.

Hydra was meant to be dead. That's what she had read whilst researching Steve. They were an organization that the Red Skull had developed during World War Two and Steve had helped defeat them before he went under. She had skipped a few parts of his history, knowing that she would be working on his present status not his past. She took a breath. If they were in fact the organization that had raised her, wouldn't she have remembered them?

She closed her eyes, trying to think back. A part of her resisted, unwilling to see but the images still flashed in her head. Sounds of screaming and bones cracking as she walked through the place. They all spoke Russian, some of their words were accented which indicated they weren't all from here. She stopped in front of her room. Fear scratched its long claws against the inside of her skull in a feeble attempt to escape.