"A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent."

William Blake

She found herself not in her own mind, but somewhere she had never seen before. The landscape before her was liquid, the entirely of it was like being in a lake with the sun setting in the distance, casting a burnt orange glow over the whole area. But there were no edge to this lake, there was no end to it, no place where sky met land. There was no sun to actually make that orange glow, and Ophelia knew as she stood in the ankle-deep waters that this was no real place.

This was the Soul Stone.

Its voice echoed over the area, "It is so good to have you back, Ophelia Ivanova."

She knew better than to look around for where the voice came from. It was in her head, it was everywhere, it was on the planet Vormir, it was in the past and the present. There was nothing she could fight physically, there was only one option. To barter, to debate, to fight for her life with words. In the past, words often went a long way, but she found herself speechless.

Somehow, learning of her last name angered her. It meant nothing, whether she knew of her surname or not, it meant nothing to her. Who her parents were meant nothing to her. All they did was create her, then tossed her aside because she meant nothing to them. Her existence mattered not to them, but it mattered to other people. It mattered to her. She was not fighting for people who did not care, she was fighting this for herself.

Finding her tongue, she replied, "I'm here to take back that which is mine."

"Yours?" The stone laughed. It echoed over the waters, making the liquid ripple as though someone dropped a pebble in it. All it took was one tiny pebble to create a ripple throughout the entire lake. Just like life, how one decision could change history. Like how Bucky entering Ophelia's life changed everything.

"I understand I am not supposed to be living," Ophelia said. "And yet, there are so many dead who should be alive. Every day you take people, so do not pretend as though my individual life matters."

"Oh, but it does. Do you know how many people you delivered to me? How many souls I collected because of you?"

The words hung around her, and she opened her mouth to speak but found nothing but a whimper of regret tumbled out. She had killed so many in her time as HYDRA, even those she had not personally put a gun to their head, she was still to blame for giving HYDRA their coordinates. She had delivered people to the Soul Stone, what right did she have to ask for her life when she could not give back the ones she had killed.

"Why this price?" she asked, changing the topic. She had blood on her hands, but in this world, who didn't? She was hardly innocent, but she was far from the worst there was.

"I knew you could not stop yourself, you would continue to use your powers because you have no restraint, no self control. I knew you would use it until you killed yourself. You're addicted to the feeling of losing yourself in someone else's pain. You choose to ignore your own intuition to feel what someone else has, you love to suffer, Ophelia. I've watched you since you were a child; all you have known is suffering, and so you seek it out. You chose James Buchanan Barnes because he has years of suffering that you get to sort through, that you can pretend to understand. You chose him because you need someone who has suffered more than you to better yourself, to make yourself believe you're helping them.

"How do you think he will feel, when he finds you dead?"

She dug her nails into her palms. The stone was wrong. All it knew as trickery, it was an evil thing in existence, and it was trying to trick her. She knew that she never chose Bucky because he suffered, she did not embrace his pain and use it to her advantage. All she ever wanted was to help him, to help herself, so that they would no longer have to suffer.

"You're wrong."

"Am I? You got too close to Anthony Edward Stark, you knew that were nothing compared to them. Getting in the middle of the fight was always going to be the death of you. You wanted James to suffer for your death, you wanted him to feel agony when you died. Now is no different, Ophelia." The stone laughed again. "You knew confronting me, getting into your own mind, could be the death of you and you did not tell him. You want him to grovel and beg for your life again, you want him to be in agony forever. When he had just recovered, when he finally overcame your life being gone, you came back and made him suffer all over again."

Ophelia wiped tears from her eyes. This was never her plan, she would never make Bucky suffer intentionally.

"No? What about when he told you to run, and you got yourself captured?" The Stone was referring to Bucharest, when Bucky got caught after being framed for the murder to King T'Chaka. She was supposed to hide, yet she exposed herself to figure out what was going on. That was the first step to her death, only days later.

"Now you are starting to see."

"If you're so concerned about his suffering, you'd give me back my life."

"I already did!" the Stone yelled. "And you threw it away. You knew immediately you would suffer if you used your powers, and yet you continued to use them again and again. I gave you an opportunity, and you threw it away."

"Give me another price. Fix what you've done, I know you can, and give me another price."

"You're spoiled."

She bared her teeth as though it would help, resisting the urge to shout, to beg. Perhaps, though, that was what the stone wanted. "Do you wish for me to get down on my knees and beg? I am not above it, because what I do isn't for me. It is for everyone else. And I'm not ashamed to beg for someone else's well being."

"You are not the only reason he lives," the Stone told her. "You act like he exists for you. He is fine without you, Ophelia Ivanova. You are nothing in this world, a grain of dirt. And yet he, he is a gift to mankind."

"STOP!" Ophelia shouted, her whole body shaking. "Do not bring him into this. This is between you and me. Tell me what you want."

"I want you back. And you're doing my job for me. You have days now. You had years before you started to tamper with the gift I gave you. I was willing, I was generous, and you took advantage of it, Ophelia, because you are spoiled."

Days.

"So that's it?" Ophelia wished she had something to see, something to be face to face with. "You have the opportunity to do one good thing, and you will throw it away?"

"Goodness is relative, Ophelia Ivanova. What is good to me may not be what is good for you. Accept that the world, the universe, does not revolve around you. You are a grain of sand, nothing more. Your existence is a blip in time, while time does nothing to me. You've created a timeline for yourself, humans always have, and you've long extended your welcome. Your time is up."

"I refuse to accept that."

"When you wake, you will have hours now. You're slowly killing yourself, and you knew this would happen, do not pretend as though you did not predict this. I am in your head, I see every thought, I know everything about you. What you have done will break him, leave him bleeding for the rest of his life. You should never have come back."

"I didn't ask to come back," Ophelia tried one more angle, feeling so desperate.

"Steven Grant Rogers said you'd pay the price, whatever it was."

"The price for my life should never have been a painful death," she argued. "How is that fair? How is it fair that you brought me back only to suffer? I felt the pain of my death every second since my return, you cannot fool me into thinking you have been gracious."

"Death is a part of life, that is the only way life is fair. Everybody dies."

"I do not accept," Ophelia decided. It was her life, it was her fate. She was going to choose it, not the Soul Stone. There was no sense in wasting her time here any longer, there was no debating with this monster. She had so many people trying to keep her alive, the Stone was one side, pulling her in half. But on the other side she had Wanda, Shuri, Bucky, T'Challa, Sam, all of them pulling her that way.

"Days. You cannot escape me, Ophelia."