The Seventh Avenger: Memories Never Die// Bucky Barnes

PREVIEW

Voices. Pain.

Those were the two things that I could sense around me despite the fact that my eyes were closed tightly. I had been conscious for a few moments now but at the sound of the unfamiliar voices that floated above me, quietly and grimly in a foreign language that I didn't know, I had kept them firmly shut. To open them would be to alert whoever these voices belonged to that I was awake, and judging from the tone that they were speaking in, I could gather that the results wouldn't necessarily be good.

Pain. I felt it everywhere, throbbing through my veins, bones and limbs. It made me feel heavy and weak, the worst of it being at the back of my head where I could feel something warm and sticky coating my waves that flowed from my scalp, making me believe that the substance was blood. Though it takes me a moment to realize why it was that I was bleeding.

Greece had always been a country that had fascinated me, even though I had never traveled there. There was just something so different and interesting about the many aspects of the rich culture that flowed throughout the county. From the monuments honoring the Greek Gods and the beautiful music and art that drifted from the creators imagination, to the friendly people, the vast and gorgeous landscapes and the mouthwatering food-it was always a country that I had wanted to visit. So of course when Alexander Pierce, a member of the World Security Council, requested that I personally complete a mission for S.H.I.E.L.D in Greece, I had instantly informed him that I would be happy to do so.

As a S.H.I.E.L.D agent, you were always warned and heard stories about missions that had gone wrong resulting in many people not returning from the mission. It was procedure of course: they had to let you know what it was that you were getting yourself into. After all, if someone wasn't able to risk their life for the protection of others, than S.H.I.E.L.D didn't really want you part of their organization. The S.H.I.E.L.D motto was they come first: and if you couldn't follow the motto, then you were essentially out. But some, like myself, had accepted this and taken the motto in stride, always trying our hardest to act out on this in every mission that we took a part of.

Of course, I never had really expected for something bad to happen to me. Getting killed, getting captured or much worse- they happened to other agents, not me. I was always careful in my missions, never rushing into anything head first but instead always approaching everything with caution. And for the past year, that's worked for me. I completed my missions with ease and the more that I completed, the less and less that I believed that something horrible would happen to me.

So of course, something horrible was bound to happen. And it did.

My mission was simple: find the target whom had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D and taken some of their files, take the files back and arrest the target before then calling for S.H.I.E.L.D to come and collect the target for further questioning. Simple. Easy. Quick. And it had been all three of these things, with my former S.O Phil Coulson, congratulating for yet another successful mission when he came for the target along with a few other S.H.I.E.L.D agents. I had never really been sure of how to accept praise throughout my life so I had simply blushed in response, informed Phil that it had been no problem, before then informing him that I would meet him at the extraction point as soon as I had collected my bags form the hotel room that I had been staying in.

So I had left and made it to the fancy hotel that I had been staying in with the white fluffy towels and the giant king sized bed where I had promptly packed my belongings and checked out of the hotel, before then walking outside towards the rental car which was parked a block away from the hotel. I never made it to the car though.

They were big with broad shoulders and equipped with combat gear and there had been eight of them, leaving me severely outnumbered and without my S.H.I.E.L.D gear or weapons to protect myself. I had heard them sneaking up on me however so I had some advantage in the fact that they lost the element of surprise, and I hadn't gone down without a fight. Though my memories of the scuffle were quite hazy, I could vaguely remember managing to knock one out cold with a swift kick to the face and sending the other to the ground writhing in pain after having broken their nose by digging my sharp elbow into it. But it hadn't been enough. One of them had managed to sneak up behind me while I had been fighting another, where they had then promptly knocked something hard against the back of my head, which had instantly sent me crashing to the ground and losing consciousness soon after.