December // A Winter Soldier Story

21

ｄｅｃｅｍｂｅｒ ２８ｔｈ， ２０１３

２１°

ℒℯ𝒶

Two days after Christmas, Lea finally hears from Steve again. He calls her out of the blue in a panic.

"Lea, they've found him," are the first words he breathes when she picks up the phone. She is immediately elated. She assumes this means Bucky has been located and is safe.

"Where is he? Who found him?" She asks eagerly, her dreary day suddenly beginning to look a little brighter. But his next words take all of the breath and hope out of her almost instantly.

"Hydra found him. The very organization that took him and made him into what he is. They located him this morning, but what's left of U.S. intelligence didn't get word until five minutes ago, and now it's probably too late. We're pretty positive Hydra has already captured him," Steve informs her, choking back a sob. "He's back where he started. We failed, Lea."

Lea never thought she'd be in a position where she would be comforting Captain America, but he sounded so broken. Her heart sinks in her chest.

"Steve, it'll be alright. You don't know for sure that Hydra captured him. There's a chance he could still be evading them," she rushes to say, trying to give him a little bit of hope. Bucky can't be lost, not after everything Lea has been through in the last few weeks and not after he was so close to safety.

She hears a deep breath being taken on the other end of the line. "Even if he hasn't been captured yet, he will be by the time we get to him. I'm in New York right now and you're in New Hampshire. We won't be able to get there fast enough."

Lea wracks her brain for solutions. She refuses to accept that nothing can be done. Suddenly, after a few seconds of thinking, an obvious solution hits her.

"Wait, Steve, where are you in New York?" She asks, biting her lip as her thoughts race. Steve answers right away.

"Avengers tower, why?"

"Is Iron Man there with you?"

"Tony? Yeah, he's here. Why?"

"Doesn't he have those super fast jets? The ones that can get to D.C. from New York in, like, 45 minutes?"

The line goes silent. Lea has evidently thought of something that had never occurred to Steve, because he lets out a low shit and she hears him rush away from the phone. She waits, listening to indiscernible voices coming from his side, before hearing shuffling as he picks up the phone again.

"Stark said he can get us to D.C. We can be in New Hampshire in 40 minutes. Are you ready to go?" He asks breathlessly, and Lea's heart rate picks up again with adrenaline.

"How long will we be gone?" She questions, already hurrying to her room and throwing open the door to her closet.

"I have no idea. Pack for a few days just in case things go wrong and we need to stay."

She nods as she wrestles with her suitcase, determined to pull it out from underneath a pile of clothes. After a moment, she realizes that Steve is on the phone, and definitely did not see her nod. "Ok. I'll be ready in 40 minutes. Where is the plane landing?"

More shuffling on Steve's end. "Not sure, I'll text it to you when I know. But knowing Stark, he'll land the damn thing in the middle of your street, especially since your house is on the end."

Lea frowns at this, but decides who is she to question a billionaire superhero, and drops it. If her neighbors sue, she'll send the bill to Stark. "Alright. See you in 40 minutes."

"See you then."

The call cuts off, and Lea wastes no time gathering her things. She packs her contacts case, her toothbrush, other important sanitary things, and a minimal amount of sweaters, jeans, and scarves to help her handle the frigid outdoors. At the last minute, she calls in sick to work for the next day, and tells them she's going to the doctor this afternoon and that it might be contagious and she might be out for a few days, she's not sure. Luckily, she rarely misses work, so her bosses shouldn't be too upset with her.

Exactly 40 minutes later, she hears a deafening noise coming from outside, and looks out the window to see a small, powerful jet touching down on her street like a helicopter. Stark's insane technology makes her freeze in awe for a moment before she remembers that she's in a hurry, and she heads outside, dragging her suitcase to the plane while simultaneously trying to hold her ears to protect them from the noise.

The side of the plane slides open and she catches a glimpse at Steve, who throws her a tight-lipped smile and hauls both her and her things aboard. A second later, the plane takes off.

She stands awkwardly by the door for a moment, overwhelmed by how quickly they'd taken off, and tries to process everything happening around her. Steve is holding onto an overhead handle, looking at her with concern. A man with dark hair, presumably Stark, is sitting at the cockpit, piloting the small jet. The plane moves so smoothly she can hardly tell how quickly she's hurtling through the air.

This is all she processes before the man with dark hair stands, she identifies him as Tony Stark, and he sticks his hand out in greeting.

"Good afternoon, Lea. It's nice to meet you," he says, a mischievous smile on his face telling her he is holding a thousand secrets in that head of his. She nods, giving him a smile in return.

"It's nice to meet you too."

"It was quite impressive how quickly you managed to pack and board the plane," he comments, giving her a once over that is solely out of curiosity. "You might have the makings of a secret agent."

Tony then turns to Steve before Lea can respond, cracking his knuckles absentmindedly. "So what, exactly, did the information from the government say?"

Steve swallows and reaches into a bag laying on the seat beside him, pulling out his phone. After a good minute or two, he holds it up to show them the screen.

Lea looks. His phone displays footage from a security camera. In the video, several men — dressed exactly how the men in the forest, all those days ago, were dressed — creep along the top of a building, barely in the bottom corner of the frame. The man in the front leans down at the edge of the building, gazing over the side. Lea glances to where he is pointing, and her breath catches in her throat as she watches a different man sprint by, his left hand glinting in the light. Bucky. The men, presumably Hydra agents, all leap into action, hurling themselves off of the building and onto the sidewalk below in an effort to catch up with the Winter Soldier.

Steve pulls the phone back, a grim look on his face, but Lea almost doesn't see it because the blurred image of Bucky's form is burned into her eyes. So close, yet so, so incredibly far.

"After that, the security cameras across the city go down. We don't know what happened next. Reports from D.C. suggest that there was some kind of fight, probably where Bucky tried to hold them off, but they all got away before anyone could see how it ended."

Lea bites her lip with anxiety. She doesn't want to think about the worst case scenario, but her mind flips through the horrific imagery anyway: glimpses of Bucky laying face down in the street outside of the Capitol Building, a bullet embedded in his spine. Of him being slowly overtaken and then beaten by the Hydra soldiers until he is within an inch of his life. Of him being brutally captured and forced to continue his empty life of being somebody else's weapon. Of him being taken from her forever.

Steve and Tony must be thinking about these things too, because they are silent for a while. After a minute, Tony breaks this silence.

"Well," he says, "we'd better get to D.C., then."