Project Elemental

Chapter 6

One Tony Stark with a very messy bed-head, one very pissed off Natasha Romanoff, and two very tired super soldiers assembled in the medical room. Nurses and medical technicians were hurrying around, trying to stabilize the patient and put out the heart monitor, which had caught fire. That, and the rest of the room. The only thing that wasn't charred like a fireplace was the other patient. She was still comatose, but encased in a coffin-like glacier.

002 sat on the edge of her bed, sobbing.

Buck, despite everyone's reservations, moved closer to her. She moved back, eyes full of tears and fear. It broke Bucky's heart to see her like this. Someone of her strength and power, broken down to nothing.

She gestured to the girl in the ice next to her, voice tight in her throat. "Ich tat dies." I did this.

Bucky, who understood German perfectly, nodded. "Sprechen sie Englisch?" Do you speak English?

Her short nod was interrupted by a deep sob. "I did this." She gestured around the room, as her chest heaved with heavy breaths.

Déjà vu settled lightly over Steve as he saw the girl encased in ice. The fire that had nearly destroyed the room hadn't touched the other girl. The capsule of ice she had no doubt created around herself had sealed out the flames. Except, unlike him, she was alive beneath the ice. Trapped, unable to awaken.

Bucky discreetly examined the crying girl in front of him, and memories were floating back. Yes, this was her. The girl with fire and fear in her eyes. She looked older than he had remembered. Twenty, at least. But she was the same girl. The same embers blazed in her blazing stare.

"I thought you said they were German." Natasha noted. "Why are they speaking perfect English?"

Bucky took a breath. "They are German. But they were also Hydra super soldiers. Like me, they can speak many languages fluently with perfect accents. To an American, they are American, and to a German they are German, and to a Romanian, they are Romanian. And on and on."

"The perfect spies." Natasha confirmed.

"Trained from children." Steve added sadly.

Natasha glanced at the two women, feeling sympathy for them.

Nurses and doctors rushed around, fluttering all around the girl with the sun in her eyes both with reservation and determination. They busied themselves around her like moths to a lamp, but she seemed too weak to push them away. Her eyes never left Bucky, and his eyes never left her.

Everything else faded away. Natasha, Tony, even Steve seemed irrelevant as he held the gaze of the person he had searched for. All the clamor of the room seemed to blend together and fall into the background. Not a word was spoken, and yet Bucky could see the struggle glowing bright in her eyes. She knew him, and she was aware of that. But she didn't remember him. Bucky, still barefoot and in his sweatpants and t-shirt, had never felt more helpless in his entire life. He wanted to run, to embrace her, to tell her that he would never let anyone touch her ever again. But he couldn't. Beneath his feet, the cold tile floor was beginning to warm from his body heat. But he didn't notice. He didn't notice Tony whisper something to Steve about him, or even that Natasha had excused herself to return to bed. He was entranced, ensnared by the fire in her eyes that mesmerized him. She returned his blue-eyed stare with her continual struggle to simply remember. But perhaps it was better that she had forgotten. Maybe if she had forgotten him, she had also forgotten Hydra. Forgotten the pain and torture she had endured and he had subjugated her to.

It wasn't until the nurses sedated her and laid her back down on the cot that Buck slipped out of the trance.

Tony yawned. "C'mon Stonewall Jackson." He said. "Get some sleep. Lava Girl will be here in the morning."

With one last look at the resting girl, he nodded, conceding. And as he was on his way back to his bedroom, he became swiftly aware of how exhausted he was.

Sleep had never come easy to the Winter Soldier, but it did that night.