Elysia wasted no time in hurrying from her apartment to get to the landing pad, pushing herself to run faster and faster once she was out of the compound and running for the nearest Quinjet. Her lungs began to burn as she sprinted through the field, moving through each row of aircrafts and trying her hardest not to be caught by any of the other team members having lunch inside.

While she knew Wanda would be sympathetic to her cause, she hadn't wanted to add anything else onto the young woman's plate with the Accords coming into play, with or without the news taking place during the signing in Vienna. As the others inside the compound had chosen to sign the Accords, she knew there was little they could do to help if they found her trying to flee, which left her with one option.

Hijacking a Quinjet wasn't her smartest plan, but this was her first concrete lead in a year, and she couldn't let him get away.

Elysia came to a quick halt as she heard two voices she didn't recognize from around the corner, and instantly slunk back against the nearest helicarrier, leaning up against the aircraft and peering tentatively around to try and catch a glimpse of anyone nearby. From around the corner, she could now make out two engineers from the compound in a discussion as they walked down the row next to hers, and she tried her best to keep out of sight.

"I'm just saying, it's a miracle the team let that guy bunk here for as long as they did." Elysia could hear the first man's gruff tone, her blood instantly beginning to boil as she registered his words. "All that work Stark and Sparks put into that guy, and where's it getting all of us?"

"I'll tell you what," the other man added, his voice growing fainter the further they moved from Elysia's hiding spot. "We don't get paid enough for working for the big guys, that's for sure."

She let out a sigh of relief as the coast was finally clear, daring a peek into the next row to ensure they were long gone. She watched as they disappeared around the corner towards the land machinery, and only when they were out of sight did she continue sneaking to the last row, where the Quinjets sat. After one last look around to make sure she was free of any prying eyes, she hurried to the nearest one, sending a shock of electricity at the door to make it open. As soon as it was lowered to the ground, she leapt onboard, taking a seat in the pilot's chair.

"Voice activation required." the metallic voice rang over the speakers.

"Elysia Sparks," she huffed, trying to catch her breath.

"Access denied." it said.

"Shit," she swore, before sighing in defeat. "Sparky,"

"Access granted," it said as the aircraft roared to life. "Welcome, Sparky."

Elysia wasted no time in pressing the correct buttons, the aircraft door closing behind her as she shifted the gear, the engine roaring to life as it lifted off of the ground. She took one last look back at the compound before looking back at the control panel, maneuvering it up and away from the facility as she began to travel east, far from the friends and the home she'd created over the past year.

Switching the Quinjet into stealth mode, she silently muttered an apology to Tony, hoping that bringing back Bucky in one piece would be enough to let her mentor see that everything was okay, even if she had elected to bypass the proper channels the Accords would require. That, in this case, going around the new Accords would prove best for the team, and they could solve the problem together by getting that code out of his head once and for all without the powers that be getting in between them. Pulling out her phone and setting it on the dashboard, she called Steve back, putting the device on speaker as she continued to fly.

"Sparks?" Steve's voice answered on the second ring.

"Hey," she said. "I'm on my way. Did you guys make it to Vienna yet?"

"Just landed." he said. "How'd you get Tony to let you borrow a jet?"

"Funny story about that," she said simply, punching in the coordinates for Vienna and leaning back in her seat.

"You didn't tell him," Steve surmised.

"No, I did not," she admitted. "But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. How are you doing? How's James?"

"We're okay," Steve assured her. "A little shaken up, James more so than me, but we're okay. He's with Sam now, getting us a ride to the UN building. It wasn't easy, him finding out that he's been after Bucky all these years, but he agreed to let us help him bring him in alive. He said he can't break that promise to Peggy, and I can't fault him for that."

"He sounds like a loyal kid," she said. "Reminds me of someone else I know."

"He's awesome," Steve said, and Elysia could almost hear the smile in her friend's tone. "I'm excited for you to meet him. Wish it could be under better circumstances, but..."

"All part of the job," she reminded him. "I'll see you soon."

"See you soon," he echoed. "Bye, Sparks."

The call disconnected with a click, and Elysia sighed, looking back at the sky in front of her. It seemed to stretch ahead endlessly, though Elysia knew that, with each moment, she was moving closer and closer to the one she'd been after for nearly a year. The one she now only saw in the brief whispers she encountered of countless leads she'd fruitlessly followed, or the one now gracing the headlines of every major news outlet in the world, which made Elysia wrack her brain as she pictured Bucky's face on the television screen.

The Winter Soldier had never left a witness, so why now? Why was this time any different?

The endless expanse of sky moved at what felt like an eternity as she passed over the Pacific, although the news broadcast she'd brought up on one of the screens did little to pass the time in the way of entertainment. She was almost off the Canadian coast when her phone began to ring, and she glanced down to read the caller ID, nerves forming in the pit of her stomach as Tony Stark flashed across the screen. Her finger hovered over the answer button, weighing it in her mind.

Although she trusted that Tony had her best interests at heart, she knew he'd do whatever it took to talk her out of her plan, to turn the Quinjet around and come home. With a heavy heart, she sent him to voicemail, hoping she knew her mentor enough to know that, although she'd hear an earful when she got home, he trusted her to do what was right in the end.

By the time she reached Vienna, she'd had seven missed calls from Tony, as well as three voicemails she couldn't bring herself to open. She'd reached an expanse of grassy field, matching the coordinates Steve had given her earlier that day, and as she maneuvered the Quinjet lower to the ground, she could finally make out three figures waiting for her. She touched the aircraft down on the grassy field, and quickly readjusted her baseball cap before rising to her feet and moving to open the back door.

In front of her now stood Steve and Sam, both watching her with expectant smiles, but what instantly drew her attention was the figure standing between them. Standing well over six feet, the teenage boy looked a near carbon copy of the older man standing to his right, down to the same pair of eyes looking back at her as she gave the younger boy a knowing smile.

"James Rogers," Elysia mused. "You look just like your father."

Steve stepped forward with a smile, pulling Elysia into a tight hug. "Thanks for coming to pick us up." He said. "Good to see you, Sparks."

"Good to see you too, Cap," she said.

"James, this is Elysia Sparks," Steve introduced, and the young boy stepped forward, instantly holding a hand out for her to shake. "Bucky's girlfriend. She's been looking for him for a long time, and is going to help us bring him in. El, this is my son, James."

"It's nice to finally meet you." Elysia said, shaking his hand. "Your father's told me a lot about you." She could see him visibly brighten at her words, and Elysia turned back to the other two men. "Where to?"

"It's all in here," Steve said, holding up a file as Elysia led them back onto the Quinjet, quickly shutting the door to get rid of any prying eyes. "We won't have much of a head start on him, so we better get moving. Inside, there's an address in Bucharest, an apartment he's been living in the past couple of months."

Bucharest.

The city echoed around inside her brain violently, the word feeling like a slap to the face as she took a seat back in the pilot's chair. She'd searched for him all around the world, from upstate New York to Lagos, Nigeria, and for months now, he'd been in Bucharest.

Steeling her face into nonchalance, she opened up the file, forcing herself to look away from the surveillance pictures of Bucky in the Romanian city as she looked down to the address circled at the bottom of a classified piece of paper. She entered the city's coordinates into the system on the Quinjet, and the engine roared back to life as they lifted off the ground, Vienna returning to the small speck in the distance that she'd seen navigating her way towards the city mere minutes before.

She knew they didn't have much of a headstart, so there was no time to waste.

"So you guys have been tracking him for the past year?" James asked from her left, with Steve sitting in between them. "The Winter Soldier?"

"We haven't had much to go on," Elysia explained grimly, "Really just small leads of any HYDRA agents who used to be on our side, or so we thought they were. This is the first big lead we've had." She glanced back over at him. "You've been looking for him too, right?"

"Fifty-five years," James nodded.

"Did you ever find him?" She asked.

"Once," James said. "Moscow, nineteen-eighty-three. I managed to track him down after a few corporate higher-ups had been found dead after a few seedy transactions of their own. Whatever intel they were at risk of divulging, he got to them before anything else could happen. I caught a glimpse of him, nothing more before he seemed to vanish into thin air. If there's one thing he's good at, it's disappearing. Hot trails would grow ice cold in a second, and then he'd pop up years later on the other side of the world. That's when I'd be woken up from the ice, until we'd lose the trail again. But I swear, I never knew it was Bucky. If I had, I'd-"

Elysia watched as James fell short, the young man seeming at odds with himself and whatever was happening inside his brain. "It's okay," Steve spoke up after a while. "We know."

"Mom used to tell me stories as a kid, all about Dad and Uncle Bucky," James mused, a sad smile crossing his face as he looked back in Steve's direction, looking less like the super soldier and more and more like the young kid who'd been pulled out of his time, forced to grow up along with the rest of the world. "If only she knew. If only any of us knew."

"It's not your fault, James," Steve insisted, and James nodded, silently, blinking back the tears that threatened to glass over his gaze.

"We let him go, too." Elysia said sternly, a sharp tingling shooting down her back at the memory of the bullet she'd taken that night. "HYDRA got one over on us, and now we're going to get him back. Sure, we're on our own, we each let him get away, but if we work together, we can bring him in. I refuse to believe that Bucky's just gone." She insisted. "The Bucky from the stories your mom told you, the one I met last year at the compound, he's in there somewhere. Steve, you got him out once. I know we can do it again."

"Hopefully whoever's on their way to take him down doesn't take us down in the process." Sam mused.

"Well, whoever they are, they're not far behind." Elysia said, beginning to type the landing coordinates into the screen as the radar alerted her they were approaching the city of Bucharest. She took a deep breath, looking out the window at the city and engaging the landing gear before turning back to the three men sitting near her.

"Bucharest," she announced. "Let's go get him. Let's go get Bucky."