A wash of color splashed across the laboratory soon faded to white as, one by one, the projectors surrounding them turned off, the experiment coming to an end. Tony lifted the glasses from his face, setting them down at the table between him and Elysia, who watched the mockup of the scene from the projectors on a computer screen before her. Below the mockup lie a reading of Tony's brain waves as the glasses processed the incoming data, combining his memories of the event before them with how he instead wished they happened through his new technology, Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing.

"You really need to change that acronym," Elysia mused as Tony chuckled, taking a seat on the stool next to hers and studying the screen in front of her.

"That might be your next assignment," he quipped, giving her a brief smirk before his expression morphed into something more serious. "Have you given any more thought yet to your own little... 'therapeutic experiment?'" he asked, nodding towards the computer and the glasses as he brought his fingers up to punctuate the air quotations.

Elysia shrugged. "I'm not sure," she said simply, closing the laptop screen quickly before he could press the subject. "Sometimes I wonder if it would even be good for me, to relive it that way. It's like you said, it doesn't change the facts."

"No it doesn't," he agreed. "And there's been no trace of him since you found Rumlow in Lagos?"

"None," Elysia said, shaking her head. "And now we don't even have Rumlow to track down. Sure, we got him and his team off the grid, but at what cost? Wanda hasn't left the compound in weeks, and now the UN's pushing for us to sign the Accords."

"You are signing them, right?" Tony asked. "You were oddly quiet during the meeting the other day, it's not like you. I would think, out of anybody, you'd be the first one to want to sign your abilities away, keep them in check."

"A year ago, maybe." Elysia said with a shrug, causing Tony's eyebrows to furrow in concern in response. "I would've come out of my self-exile just to put my name on that paper, and they wouldn't have even known then that I existed. But then I think of all of the people you guys have saved over the years, even if the missions were unsanctioned. I think of my own unsanctioned missions this past year, and I can't help thinking that, if I sign, I'm giving up on him."

"You're not giving up on him." Tony assured her.

"Aren't I?" she asked, her voice cracking slightly as she looked back up at Tony with a hurt expression. "Tony, the United Nations aren't going to let an enhanced being go across sovereign borders and start kicking ass just because she can't find her boyfriend."

"Maybe not," Tony agreed. "But, if we go through the proper channels, an Avenger can travel and act accordingly to find a team member. You didn't lose him, Sparky. He hasn't been misplaced. HYDRA took him, and even when the Accords take place, we will figure out a solution, I promise you."

Elysia nodded after a moment. "Thanks, Tony," she said, reaching up to wipe her eyes.

"Come here," he sighed after a moment, holding his arms out as she stepped into them, giving her mentor a hug. "The tears, they kill me, Sparky. Now come on, why don't we call it a day, I think Wilson's on lunch duty."

"You go ahead, I'll be right up." Elysia offered. "I'm just going to clean up around here a bit first, print off the reports from testing today so they're all ready for our next session."

"If you insist," he said approvingly. "Thanks, Sparky."

Elysia forced a smile onto her face as she watched Tony leave, shutting the laboratory door behind him. As soon as he rounded the corner from view, the sound of his dress shoes against the stamped concrete flooring out of earshot, she turned back to the laptop in front of her, pulling the screen back open and switching windows, so Tony's mockup of his parents' living room no longer took up the screen, but instead one that hadn't required any props at all.

The first floor of the north wing of the Avengers Compound.

Elysia sighed, picking up the glasses from where they still rested on the table. "Here goes nothing," she murmured, putting them on and pressing a button on the side of the frame closest to her right eye.

A whirring sound filled the room as the projectors came to life, the blank white room no longer empty, but filled with the grays of the building's interior. In the middle of the scene stood a flash of bright pink color as Elysia took in her own form, complete with the same black cocktail dress and boots she'd been wearing that night, a horrific expression crossing her face that matched the figure that stood back to back with her as HYDRA agents filled the space, cornering them on all sides. Although it had only been a year since the scene before her, Elysia couldn't help but feel as if the woman in front of her was a complete stranger, so different than the woman standing there in the lab coat and glasses.

"Get behind me," the Bucky in front of her spoke up, his voice as clear as day as it had been the last time she'd heard him speak.

"Bucky..." Elysia whispered at the sight of him, still sound in his own mind, her own voice coming out barely at a whimper.

Sparks roared to life in the past Elysia's hands, trembling even as she fought to keep them still. "We're going to be okay," she assured him, though her voice was soon cut short by a voice shouting out in Russian, the code words hitting her then just as hard as they had that night.

She held onto the table to keep her legs from collapsing out from under her as Bucky began to scream, his voice so raw, so real, that it could have only come from deep within her memories as the B.A.R.F. glasses continued to work. Her expression matched that of her former self as Bucky crouched down, hands pressed tightly over his ears as if it would keep the words at bay, keep them out of his head forever.

Like the night of the party, she watched past Elysia whirl around to try and see the damage, watched Bucky slowly rise up to his feet, straight as an arrow as all of the oxygen seemed to have been sucked out of the room. Even the HYDRA soldiers were silent, the room so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

"We told you, Avengers," the same voice rang throughout the room, although Elysia still couldn't pinpoint which soldier it had come from. "You would pay for your capture of the Winter Soldier."

"Bucky, please," Elysia heard her own voice desperately pleading to the man in front of her. "Bucky it's me, it's Ellie. Please say you remember me."

However, unlike that night the year before, when Bucky turned back around to face her, gone was the blank stare and the rigidity she'd been met with when her gaze met his. No longer was the man facing her a stranger in his own mind, captive to the wave of soldiers surrounding them. Instead, the Bucky in front of her looked down at past Elysia with a look of adoration and awe, as the weight of the successful procedure began to sink in. To them, despite the danger on all sides, it was as if they were the only two people in the room.

"I love you," Bucky whispered back to her, a light illuminating in the younger woman's eyes that couldn't match that of the woman watching the scene, no matter how much that woman would have wanted to try.

So briefly, his metal hand caressed the side of her face, brushing away the stray strand of hair that had fallen in her eyes, and Elysia put her own hand up as she watched them, remembering the way he'd touched her as one final act between man and monster before the Winter Soldier had completely taken over, cutting off her air supply less than a moment later. Even though she waited, that moment never came as the two jumped into action, moving together as one as their weeks and weeks of training preparing them for that very moment, no longer fighting against each other, but instead for each other.

"Elysia?" a voice rang out from the doorway, and Elysia ripped the glasses from her face as she looked over to see Wanda, eyebrows furrowed in confusion as she looked across the room at her friend. "I was just coming down to get you for lunch, Stark said you were still down here. Are you okay?"

The scene quickly faded as the projectors once again faded to white, but even though she couldn't be sure how much Wanda had seen, Elysia knew she had seen enough. A teardrop fell on the collar of her white lab coat, and she chuckled humorlessly, wiping at the stream of tears that trickled down her face as she sank back onto the stool, her heart feeling as if it were being cleaved cleanly in two.

Wanda crossed the room, taking a seat next to her on the stool Tony had previously occupied. "Just a little experiment," Elysia said with a small shrug, setting the glasses down and glancing at the data on the screen one last time before closing the laptop again. "I wasn't going to, but Tony and I were working on it all morning, and we were talking about Bucky and I just couldn't help myself." she admitted.

"I don't blame you." Wanda assured her, gesturing down to the glasses. "That was the night of the HYDRA attack, wasn't it?"

"I don't remember much after I got shot," Elysia explained, grimacing at the feeling in her lower back at the memory of that night. "But in there, it didn't matter, because it never happened. That's the way things should have happened that night."

"The procedure worked." Wanda concluded. "So they never got him back that night."

"In another reality, maybe it really happened like that." Elysia sighed, her hand absentmindedly reaching for the pendant she wore around her neck. "I can watch that all day, but it won't change what really happened."

Wanda nodded, a look of understanding on her face. "You know, sometimes I think about a way I could have tried to save Pietro." she said. "Nothing will change what Ultron did to him, but there's a sense of peace, even if it's just temporary."

A look of understanding passed between the two, and Elysia finally nodded. "Thanks, Wanda."

"That's what friends are for." she assured her. "Now come on, before they send Vis down to look for us."

Elysia stood up, shrugging the lab coat off her shoulders and hanging it up on the hook closest to her table. "I actually think I'm going to skip lunch, I'm not very hungry. I'm going to head upstairs, but I'll catch up with you guys later."

"If you're sure," Wanda said. "I'll make sure to save you some leftovers if you're hungry later."

"I'm sure," she said. "Just please do me a favor and don't tell Tony about this."

"Your secret's safe with me," Wanda promised.

Elysia gave her friend a grateful smile as they left the laboratory, parting ways once they reached the living quarters. As Wanda made her way to the dining room to join the rest of the team, Elysia instead headed up to her apartment, closing the door behind her and turning on the television as background noise while she took a seat at her desk.

A file already lay open from the night before as she began to pore over its contents, the latest in her list of potential cases that offered a sliver of a chance of the Winter Soldier being involved. The attack in Lisbon from the week before had listed the assailant as being masked and dark-haired, sure, and a similar body type, but one key detail instantly jumped out at Elysia that had never been left in an attack from the Winter Soldier.

There were too many witnesses.

With a sigh, Elysia closed the file, placing it on top of the nearly overflowing pile to her right, complete with every case that had come close to giving her the answers she still desperately searched for, but inevitably had left her back at square one. As she moved the file away from the middle of the desk, the contract sitting below jumped back out at her, the fine print giving way to the blank line still awaiting her signature.

I, Elysia Alessandra Sparks, agree to the following terms and conditions ratified by the Sokovia Accords.

Elysia picked up her pen with a sigh. She was still wary about the Accords, there was no doubt about that, but she knew Tony had a point that, if they didn't sign now, they'd only be forced to sign later. Although she knew the risks that would come with her signature on the paper, and a new list of rules the Avengers would be expected to follow, she trusted Tony that they'd still find a way to look for Bucky, if only getting through the proper channels first. They needed to be kept in check, if not to look out for the people they'd always sworn to protect.

However, just before her pen hit the paper, the sounds of a news broadcast blared from the other side of the room, pulling her attention to where Breaking News covered the screen in bright lettering.

"We interrupt this regularly scheduled programming with breaking news." the anchor's voice spoke through the screen as Elysia watched intently. "We've just received reports of an attack at the United Nations meeting during the ratification of the Sokovia Accords. A bomb hidden in a news van ripped through the UN building in Vienna."

Elysia rose from her chair, crossing the room to stand closer to the television screen and nervously folding her arms across her chest, the contract and pen long forgotten at her desk. While she had elected not to go on the trip to Vienna, she knew Natasha had been present at the signing, and could only hope her friend had made it out of the building okay.

"More than seventy people have been injured. At least twelve are dead, including Wakanda's King T'Chaka. Officials have released a video of the suspect, who they have identified as James Buchanan Barnes, the Winter Soldier."

Elysia's blood turned to ice in her veins as a blurry picture of the van covered the television screen, along with the name and face of the man she'd spent the past year trying desperately to find. Before she could think for another moment, she'd reached for her cell phone, dialing the last number in her contacts and pressing her phone to her ear, before the call was answered on the second ring.

"It's me," she spoke into the phone. "I'm on my way."