Shots follow Kate, but she's faster, jumping onto the light pole and hanging on, sliding down it like a fire pole. She's glad her father made her practice this as a kid after breaking her ankle that one time — and also glad that it actually worked.

The ground meets her feet, and she hides quickly, watching as the Winter Soldier lands on top of a car after simply jumping off the highway. Show off.

A bus is overturned in front of him, and cars are stopped completely, hopefully with no people inside. Other men attached to ropes soon follow the Winter Soldier to the ground. They start firing into the bus.

Steve busts out of one end, landing near his shield. He blocks the barrage of shots with it quickly. A man falls off the highway, then shots start coming from up top, hitting the Winter Soldier's minions. Sam. Kate turns her attention to looking for Nat, who's probably hidden, too. The Winter Soldier is ignoring Steve altogether, searching. Maybe for Nat. Maybe for Kate.

Well, if he wants to find her, she'll make it easy for him.

She walks out from under the highway, watching to make sure the minions are distracted, heading for the Winter Soldier. His back is to her as he heads past the bus. He has two guns — the rocket one in his hand, a smaller one on his back. People run for cover as he walks through. He rolls something under a few cars, likely an explosive. But no one's there. Kate gets closer, hears Nat's voice coming from her device.

"I make an LZ, twenty-three hundred block of Virginia Avenue. Rendezvous two minutes. Taking fire above and below expressway. Civilians threatened."

There's an explosion, and the Winter Soldier watches and aims, waiting.

Nat runs in from behind him, kicks the rocket gun out of his hand and gets on top of his shoulders. He throws her off, and she lands on top of a car, the windshield cracking beneath her. It's all Kate needs.

He starts to pick up the gun, but she runs towards him, getting to him before Nat can even get up. "Hey!" He turns to her.

"Kate!" Nat shouts, but she ignores her.

She uses the car next to the Winter Soldier as a boost, jumping up and kicking him in the face, fists clenched. She goes for a punch when she hits the ground, and he grabs her arm, then punches her in the stomach with his human hand. She grits her teeth as he twists her arm.

"I fought an alien with magic powers who killed someone I love — and I won," she spits. Then, she rolls, using her momentum to either take him to the ground or make him let go of her. He chooses the latter. She lands on one knee, facing him. "You killed someone I love, too. You're gonna regret it." She gets up and kicks him in the chest, moves out of the way of his retaliation. Her hands are heating up, and shots ring out somewhere behind her.

He lands a hit, saying something in Russian.

"I don't speak Russian!" she replies from the ground, wincing and going for his legs. "Scientist, not a spy!"

He stumbles back, saying in English, "Shut up," as he regains his footing.

"Oh, I'm so hurt," she mocks, kicking him once again as she stands up. "No."

He grabs the gun from his back, but she kicks it out of his hand quickly, then goes for another hit. But then he grabs her, slamming her back into a truck, his metal arm across her neck, his eyes boring into hers.

They're dead.

No light, nothing. Dull. He's an empty shell. So what's driving him? The only way she can tell he's angry is his eyebrows.

She's angry, too — angrier than him, she's willing to bet — so she finally lets herself go and lights up. His brows betray surprise, and she chokes out a satisfied laugh, grabbing onto his arm. "Shouldn't've killed my boss — or shot my friend. I could do this all day. Either you melt, or I stop breathing... Let's see what happens first."

He stands his ground for a few seconds, but she stomps on his foot, then brings her knee up, hitting him again. She twists out of his hold, her hands still on his arm, throwing as much heat into it as she can. She pushes him forward, slamming him into the truck. He turns back unhurt and hits her with his other arm, knocking her away, but she keeps her hands lit, the flames blazing.

"I bet it'd hurt your other arm," she manages through deep breaths, a smirk on her face. "Wanna find out?" He approaches her more cautiously, his metal arm blackened, the spaces between the plates starting to curl inwards. She scoffs. "Scared now? I'm not surprised. Most people are afraid of getting burned."

"You talk too much," he says.

"And you sound American," she points out. "Why'd you open with Russian? Think I was somebody else?"

He doesn't respond, instead running forward to attack her, but she blasts him in the chest at close range, knocking him back, then presses her hand where she hit, trying to melt the armor clean through to his chest. In retaliation, he grabs her wrist with his metal hand and slams hers onto her own face, holding it there.

She kicks the side of his knee, taking him down, and closes her other hand around his metal wrist, yanking his arm to the side and then sliding behind him, twisting it back. She laughs. "Yeah, that doesn't work on me." She reaches her other hand around, going for his face. "But you-"

He slams his head back and she's knocked to ground as the blow connects. Before she can do anything else, he rolls to the side, grabbing the gun she kicked away from him.

"Kate, go!" Nat screams from somewhere, and it gives him enough pause for Kate to reluctantly listen. She hates him, but she'd like to live to defeat him later, so she blasts him and gets up, running for cover. A shot rings out behind her. Then, another.

Burning rips through her shoulder. Not her own burning, not fire. Burning pain. She ducks behind a car, holds her shoulder, breathing heavily, trying to calm down. Should she cauterize this? Would that be better or worse? Can she cauterize her own wounds? Is the bullet still in her shoulder? Where's Nat? Steve? Sam?

A moment later, she hears fighting behind her, metal on metal. Steve. Definitely Steve.

Nat runs in front of her, crouches down. Her face is bleeding. "Why would you do that?!" She moves Kate's hand, looking at her shoulder. "Kate, why would you do that?!"

"He killed Fury. He shot you."

"He shot you!"

Steve and the Winter Soldier flip into a gaggle of cars, and Kate turns to the side as Nat examines her wound, catching glimpses of the fight. Steve is doing a lot better than she was, even though the Winter Soldier is fighting harder. He has a knife now. What changed? Frustration? How much can he even feel emotion?

Steve grabs his face, flipping him over his back. As he lands in a roll, the bottom part of his mask falls off.

Kate knows that face.

Steve stops. "Bucky?"

"Who's Bucky?" the Winter Soldier spits. Sam flies in, knocking him to the side.

Kate looks at Nat. "That was Bucky Barnes. The Winter Soldier- He's James Buchanan Barnes! I was right, he's alive! Am I dead? Am I unconscious?"

"You better not be," Nat replies. She looks over, notices something happening in the fight. "Put pressure on you shoulder." Then, she grabs her guns, shooting. Kate spots the rocket gun the Winter Soldier — Bucky Barnes? — had before. "Nat!"

Nat grabs it, fires, and when the dust settles, he's gone.

Sirens wail, SHIELD/HYDRA cars approaching. Agents jump out with guns, some run in on foot, others drive up on motorcycles. There's no way they're getting out of this, and Steve's not even trying. Of course he isn't.

That was Bucky Barnes.

"Drop the shield, Cap! Get on your knees!" Rumlow shouts. Guns are aimed at all of them.

Kate glares at the agent training a gun on her. She doesn't know his name, but he looks familiar. "I've already been shot, dummy. Get that out of my face."

"Hands up!" he shouts in response.

"I'm putting pressure on my wound!"

"Get down! Get on your knees! Down!" Rumlow's shouting. A helicopter flies overhead — the news. Kate wants to scream at it that SHIELD's a fraud. A front for HYDRA. How many can they trust now? Hill. Sharon. But if Bucky Barnes is HYDRA, then who isn't?

She's hauled to her feet, and they cover her hands and wrists in some sort of cloth, then cuff her hands in front. She looks down, realizes the cloth has been cut from one of her own lab coats. Definitely fireproof.

They put them all in the back of a truck, sitting on benches and guarded. Wrists locked.

"That was Bucky," Steve says. "That was... He looked right at me like he didn't even know me."

"I knew it," Kate mutters. All those years of searching and asking, never finding what she was looking for, being told she was crazy. "I knew it!" They never found his body. She knew something was up.

"How's that even possible? It was like seventy years ago," Sam points out.

"Seventy one," Kate corrects.

"Zola," Steve replies, ignoring her. "Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43. Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. They must have found him and..."

"None of that's your fault, Steve," Nat says.

Things are connecting in Kate's head — the fall off the train, HYRDA, Zola, the experiments, the metal arm, the American accent. "It makes so much sense! I knew it!"

Steve shakes his head. "Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky."

"I know," Kate says. "I knew it. I knew he was alive. It make sense, all of this. If only I had known where to look..."

"We need to get a doctor here," Sam warns. "We don't put pressure on that wound, she's gonna bleed out here in the truck." The guard threatens him with a weapon.

"Me?" Kate asks. Her vision swims a little bit, and the delight of being right and the shock of it all stop masking the pain — or just distracting her from noticing it. Maybe if she drifts off-

The other guard flips their weapon around, striking the first guard and shocking them, then kicking them in the face. They slump over. The other guard takes off their helmet.

"Ow, that thing was squeezing my brain," Hill says. She looks at Sam. "Who's this guy?"

Kate looks at him, too, blinking back sleep. "He's a friend."

"I won't be your friend if you don't stay awake," he replies.

She frowns. "Rude."

Hill gets them freed, then cuts a hole into the floor of the car with some device. She waits until the car stops before going through it, rolling. Nat goes next, then Steve and Sam help Kate out. The pain all the moving causes helps her to be more alert, though Sam has to keep asking her science questions once they get into the other car. They make her hold the cloth from her lab coat to the wound.

They end up at a secluded base, hidden in a forest. The front door is a gate, and inside there's a few agents.

"GSW! She's lost at least a pint!" Hill shouts.

Sam, helping Kate along, adds, "Maybe two!"

Someone is running up to them. "Let me take her!"

"She'll want to see him first," Hill replies.

"Him?" Kate asks, her tired mind trying to figure out who it could be.

When they reach the end of the hall, they enter a larger room, and Hill pulls back an opaque sheet. Fury's lying behind it in a hospital bed. "About time." They surround his bed, the doctor with them working on Kate's wound as Sam gently pushes her to sit down. "Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver, and one heck of a headache."

"Don't forget your collapsed lung," the doctor says.

"Let's not forget that. Otherwise, I'm good."

Kate lifts her good arm, the anger keeping her awake now. "You're about to add third degree burns to that list."

"They cut you open, your heart stopped," Nat says.

"Tetrodotoxin B. Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it."

Kate sighs, remembering it. Why didn't she think of that before? "Of course..."

"Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell us?" Steve asks.

"Any attempt on the director's life had to look successful," Hill replies.

"Can't kill you if you're already dead," Fury points out. "Besides, I wasn't sure who to trust."

Kate glares at him. "I thought you trusted me."

"I do. I was being cautious with something as big as this. You're not a great liar."

"That's true," Nat agrees. "But I am."

"And you would've kept the information from Kate?"

"Okay, that's fair."