"WE FAKED MY death, to put it bluntly," Cade sighed into his story. His hands were hidden by the tabletop in front of us as we all crowded at the dinner table, but I knew that he was probably fiddling with the hem of his shirt, a childhood habit that seemed to follow him, no matter how old he got.

My stomach dropped quickly, the weight of his admission sinking in. Despite the shock that my body had succumbed to at the sight of my brother, I hadn't taken the time to think about how he'd managed to stay out of sight for so long, evading the government and his family. For years. I shuddered. "What do you mean, 'we?'"

Wretton opened his mouth to reply, but my brother waved him away. "I'll speak for myself," he said in a chilled tone, but not one that held much hostility, "it's time I tell the story I've been creating for years." He looked down at the worn spot on his shirt from his hands furiously working, and then looked up at me. "I suppose it's important that you know everything."

Beside me, I saw Cara nod. "Spill the beans, dude. We've got places to be."

"Uh, who are you?" He cocked an eyebrow.

Cara nudged me with her elbow. "Cara Jansen, a repeat rejected CIA candidate, and your sister's best friend." She gave me a sidelong glance for clarification and when I nodded heartily, she flashed a satisfied smile. "Yeah. We're best friends."

Cade gave a look of, alright, I'll go with it, before inclining his head at Sam, who sat anxiously on my other side. "I wanted to say thank you, before I get lost in the details, for taking care of my little sister."

My childhood friend shifted uncomfortably while Cara jutted in, "Yeah, actually—"

"He's been a lot of help," I rushed, nearly stumbling over the words as I jabbed my foot into Cara's underneath the table. I didn't have time to rehash that mess, and I really wasn't in the mood to distract the group from the original goal. "You were saying?" I prompted.

"Right, anyway," Cade shook his head, clearing it. "I've been in the Agency, working as a special agent for ten years, eleven if you count the application and initiation process." He stared at me under his eyelashes, a certain redness appearing around his irises that made me feel like a little girl again. "Eleven years," he repeated softly with an air of surprise, as if he'd forgotten how long he'd been away from home.

To be honest, I'd forgotten how long it had been. For eleven years, I suffered through my parents' shitty rules, and I made my life the way it is today. With a painful jolt, I realized that there was so much we didn't know about each other anymore. We were practically strangers. Strangers that held memories of each other, memories that meant close to nothing now that they met each other for the second time.

"I'm going to be honest, I'm a little fuzzy when it comes to the first several years, but none of those missions or trips are as important as my last one." Cade took a deep breath and continued, "I've been infiltrating a rogue organization for the last six years, three of which have been for a rather commonly known group by the name of Hydra." He lifted his eyes and looked at Steve, who stood up abruptly from the table and muttered a curse. My brother sighed. "I spent years being a mere follower before I was chosen to be promoted to leadership positions within their ranks." He dropped his gaze before looking at Wretton with wide, sad eyes, "I've said things. Horrible things. And...and I've done horrible things. Things I never want to think about ever again."

Wretton reached out a gentle hand, patting my brother lightly on the shoulder that surprised me, to see my previously rigid bodyguard become a sympathetic listener. "You've done bad things, yes," he said with a grim nod, 'but you've done them for the good of the country. You are not a bad person, Agent—" he cleared his throat. "I suppose should call you Cade."

It pained me to see Cade nodding with such strong guilt swimming in his eyes, but I could do nothing but wait for him to continue. We didn't have time for side stories, as much as I wanted to hear them and relieve my brother of his sins.

"Hydra has kept their experiments going, most of them involving chemically and genetically advanced super soldiers."

"Like Bucky." Steve said it hard, the words dropping onto the table.

Cade winced. "Yes," he said quietly. "Just like him. I was ordered to keep an eye on Hydra's shenanigans from the inside, reporting out if or when something happened that was of the CIA's concern."

So, people were getting experimented on for years by those sick bastards and it wasn't worth their time? I thought, furious. I nearly stood up like Steve, horrified and sickened by what I was hearing.

"But then I received word from my superiors at the Agency that a woman, a woman that I knew, mind you, came to headquarters to give a tip. A tip about the existence of a revolution in the midst of my infiltration of Hydra's security."

"Emile Boucher," I said.

He nodded. "Yes. She was high up in the ranks, only a few positions higher than me. We became friends, or as close of friends as we could be, considering our role in a Nazi organization. Nevertheless," he swallowed, "she became my closest confidant, and I her's. This, however, was something that I hadn't heard about from her. The revolution, I mean.

"It'd taken a long time to get to a place in Hydra's ranks, so when I tried to fulfill my orders and follow the rebellion into this new group of Hydra rogue operatives, Madame Boucher nearly stopped me from doing it. She was too apprehensive about my coming along, considering my leadership in our branch of Hydra."

Cara held up a hand, "Wait, did she go with this new group?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"But she's up there in leadership too, right? Even further than you?" When he nodded again, Cara argued, "So why did she get to go, but you were her closest confidant and you were forced to stay behind?"

Steve muttered, "It's Hydra, Cara. We shouldn't want Elda's brother to be roped into their shit anymore than he already was."

"Yeah, I know," Cara rolled her eyes, "but it doesn't make any sense."

"If you'd let me finish," Cade interrupted, "then you would have heard me explain that it took me awhile, yes, but I convinced her to let me come with. Going from praising Hydra day and day out to being firmly against every single move they made was a difficult transition to perfect, much less explain, but I succeeded. Boucher trusted me to be by her side as we rebelled against Hydra. This new group, we—I mean, they called themselves Cerberus."

"So where did you go?" I asked dryly, only focusing on Bucky. I wanted anything, any little crumb of information that would give us a clue to where he was being kept.

But before Cade could answer my question, Steve called out, "Uh, guys? Listen to this." He grabbed the remote for the flashing television and rewinded the news station just a tad. "Okay, watch," he said, standing back.

We watched. And my jaw slackened when I heard the news.

"We're receiving some breaking news from down in Australia, as it seems three of the most prominent government officials have been assassinated, all within the span of a few days. The most recent victim of this unexpected murder spree is Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. He was flown by helicopter to the nearest hospital, but was unable to be saved despite the staff's best efforts."

I felt my eyes widen at the news. This must be what it felt like for other countries to hear that JFK had been assassinated, I thought randomly.

"Although Australian authorities have not released a list of suspects for these atrocious crimes, there has been much speculation about the involvement of America's own terrorist, James Buchanan Barnes. Also known as The Winter Soldier."

Sam and Cara had to hold Steve nd I back from punchin the television right then and there.

"Who the fuck do they think they are?" I shouted.

"A terrorist? A fucking terrorist?" Steve roared, whirling on Wretton and jabbing a finger in his direction. "This is your fault, you know. You guys are the ones that made him run for his life. If you'd only listened to us, you'd have realized that—you know what?" He chuckled humorlessly. "It's not even fuckin' worth it. You won't listen anyway."

My blood ran cold as an old picture of Bucky appeared on the screen, and the reporter launched into thir usual spiel about Bucky and his 'terrorist' antics that he got into within the last eighty years. I muted the TV and turned to face my brother, who was sstaring at me, his face pale from the blood running out of it.

"Where did she go?" I asked lowly. "Where did Cerberus take root?"

Cade swallowed roughly. "Australia."

Fuck. "That's it," I said, clapping my hands together, "we're going. We're ging now. If we wait any longer, it's gonna be too late and he's gonna—he's gonna—"

"Just hold on, Elda," Cade stood and came to steady my shaking hands. "Just hold on. We can't go in there, guns blazing. We don't even have guns to blaze. We need to think about this."

"You're kidding, right?" I stared around the room at Cade, Wretton, and Cara with my arms crossed in front of me. "We just got our biggest lead and now you just expect me to sit here like a good girl and wait for you guys to come up with a plan?" I glared at Steve, who dropped his gaze to the floor soon after meeting my eyes, my fury temporarily hurting him. "What about you, Steve? You told me yourself that you'd do anything for Bucky. This is our chance. We know where he is, we know that Cerberus, or whoever the fuck—"

"We don't know that it's him, Elda," Cara interrupted, trying to talk some sense into me.

I rolled my eyes with a scoff. "Three prominent Australian government officials, including the goddamn Prime Minister have been assassinated in the last week. You really want to blame that on someone else?" I shivered at the thought of it, but based on everything I'd seen and heard before getting wrapped up in all of this, I knew that it was him. It had to be. "Come on, you guys. I can't be the only one who just wants to get on a plane and fly there."

"You're not," Steve argued, "but we don't have any means of traveling to Australia. We're not free yet. We can't just waltz into an airport without getting stopped and arrested."

Cara raised a hand in question, like one would do at school. "I thought we were off on...I don't know, probation? Isn't that what Ross told us?"

Sam shook his head. "Not yet, we're not. But," he cocked an eyebrow and looked pointedly at Steve, "we might have a way of getting there."

I couldn't even describe how badly I wanted to be in Australia, rescuing Bucky from whatever hell he'd been dragged into this time. I knew that Steve and I would go to the ends of the earth for that beautiful boy, and now we just needed to have the means to get there.

"You still have her number?" Steve asked softly.

Sam nodded. "We'll be on our way in no time."

||

We'd spent the night in my house, though I didn't sleep much. If I wasn't talking to Cade, I was thinking about Bucky. And if I wasn't doing that, I was raiding the fridge.

"You certainly haven't changed," Cade grinned fondly. "Still eating Lucky Charms, I presume?"

I shrugged. "Only when I can. I've been out of the house for a while now, it's kind of hard to find Lucky Charms when I'm on the run." He nodded, and I leaned back on the kitchen counter. "So."

"So."

It was at that moment that I felt completely and utterly hopeless. I'd never run out of things to talk about with my big brother, the one person that had my best interests in mind. He was the most important person in my life at one point. But he was new, different. He may as well have been a complete stranger.

"Still reading a lot?" He asked, to which I nodded.

"Still refusing to cut that mop of hair?" I jerked my chin to his curls with a smirk. He cracked a smile before laughing, inviting me to join in. And just like that, we'd gotten a piece of our relationship back. It felt normal. It felt good.

Later that night, when I couldn't help but drop my eyelids, I trudged up the stairs to my bedroom. I nearly collapsed on the bed, but I saw a piece of paper laying on the floor that caught my eye and made my throat close up.

The messy handwriting on the paper, my name at the end written so strongly that I could almost hear him whisper it to me like he used to, it was all how I remembered it. And even better.

It was the letter Bucky had left me, the letter that I read that same day that he was taken from me. The tear stains that I'd shed had dried, but they left the paper crinkled and stretched, scarring the paper forever.

Picking it up gingerly, I hugged it to my chest, swallowing the tears that rose to my eyes. I wouldn't cry. Not anymore. Crying didn't help anything. It didn't bring Bucky back any faster.

I just had to wait.

The morning came slower than I wanted, but that was to be expected, as I stayed up practically the entire night, reminiscing on the nights that I'd spent with Bucky by my side, clutching me to him as we fell asleep in my bed.

I was roused from my daydreams with a loud rumbling noise from outside, much louder than any type of vehicle that could drive up to the house. With wide eyes, I moved to peer out my window at the huge, levitating mode of transportation that hovered over the open space in my yard.

Sam called up the stairs, "El! Our ride's here!" It had been awhile since I'd heard him sound so excited, or relieved, or something.

Racing downstairs and out the door, I was there just in time to see a woman step down the opening ramp from the jet. Her hair was blond, but there was a flaming red that poked out from the roots. "Hey, fellas," she said suavely, "we've got a job to do, huh?" She dipped her head towards me in greeting. "You must be Elda. I've heard loads about you."

I was confused, furrowing my eyebrows as we stepped closer to her. "Really? When?"

She waved a hand. "I'm kidding. I have no idea who you are besides your name. Should make for a rather eye-opening ride to Australia, don't you think?" Pointing at Sam, she gave him a smile. "You know, you should have asked for help sooner. T'Challa was pleased to send me, but you should have called before a certain Princess Shuri decided she wanted to come along."

"Is she here?" Steve asked. "On the jet?"

"No, of course not. King T'Challa wants to protect his baby sister, of course. What would you expect from a Wakandan king, though?"

Princess Shuri. King T'Challa. Wakanda. All words that rolled around in unfamiliarity in my head.

Cara stepped up to wave jovially, a wide smile on her face that made her look like an excited teenager. Which, I suppose, she was when she first met this mysterious woman. "Hey, Nat."

"Look who got off their ass!" Nat cheered jubilantly, pulling the brunette into a hug. "It's been so long!"

I cocked an eyebrow. "She...hated you? Her?"

Nat rolled her eyes, gesturing for the rest of our crew to follow her on board. "Things change, kid. People change."

"Too mushy," Cara made a face. "Let's get back to the part where we're gonna kick ass and spill guts."

Nat smirked. "My kind of girl," she said fondly with a light high five. "Hurry up, you guys," she urged, "we've got to get on the road—or, in the air."

||

soooo wakanda's to the rescue! what did you think about this chapter, fellas?

please please please ask any questions if you're confused about anything, i really don't know if it makes any sense or not!

so now this is the end of part two, and we've got about thirty chapters in total for this book, so like, thirteen chapters left? lots of stuff is gonna go down, though, so don't worry—this will still be filled with action and fun stuff.

anyway, see you next week for chapter 17!

september 5, 2019