Upstate New York, USA

Spring 2015

The conversation—confrontation? Nadine wasn't even entirely sure—with Rogers had both gone far better than she'd anticipated, but also hadn't gone quite so well as she'd hoped. Not that she'd honestly known what she'd even expected.

She certainly hadn't expected it to be quite so...personal for him. Well, she had but she also hadn't. But his reaction when he'd found out about her and Barnes—God, it still felt so strange to think she could actually refer to him by name now—certainly made far more sense in hindsight, that was for sure.

Not that knowing the whys exactly made her feel the least bit better. If anything, it just left her feeling worse. She couldn't help but think that she'd understand if he wanted nothing more to do with her.

Instead, he'd asked her to find him. She still couldn't quite wrap her head around that one either. Well, on one hand, she could—she was the best, after all—but she also couldn't. If their positions had been reversed? If it had been Natasha instead of Bucky? Best or not, she wasn't sure she'd want him anywhere near her sister ever again, even if he was her best chance of finding her. But of course, he was a far better person than she was...

No, she hadn't been exaggerating on the Helicarrier; had their positions been reversed, she would have killed him without hesitation.

Yet, for some baffling, inexplicable reason, he was willing to let her stick around. He was trusting her to find Barnes even if he wasn't quite up to trusting her; she very much doubted he genuinely trusted her. It was far more likely that it was just for Barnes and Nina's sake. She was certain that whatever trust had been growing between her and the Captain had been fractured irreparably after Seoul.

But that was beside the point. It really shouldn't matter. Even if, the more she thought about it, to harder it was to deny that part of her was still willing to learn to trust the man. Just as she had been coming to before what happened on the Quinjet. But his actions on the jet had stung, shaking her growing trust in Rogers. Yet she couldn't say definitively that it had felt like a betrayal, either. At the time, yes, but now? Now that she knew about Barnes? Now that she understood the whys? She could understand his obvious interpretation that she had been at fault. She couldn't fully blame him for his reaction. Not when she was at fault. So on her end, at least, no matter that part of her rebelled at the very thought, she could recognize that she hadn't been burned so badly as she imagined he had. And it left her the tentative trust in him from before Seoul weakened, but not shattered.

His trust in her, on the other hand...

She was fairly sure it was over, that his trust in her had been broken beyond repair. The hope of trust or friendship between them that she'd seen at the Barton farm seemed well beyond reach, now. A small part of her was—against her better judgement—hopeful that that wasn't the case. But she very much doubted it. So why get her hopes up.

So she wasn't even allowing herself to hope that things would revert to the way they'd been before Ultron had spilled the first of her secrets. Not in the slightest. And in that she had certainly been proven correct in her expectations. While things admittedly weren't as bad as she'd anticipated initially, they weren't exactly great either. Rogers was perceptibly distant with her now, even if it wasn't quite so obvious as during those first few days in the new Avengers Compound. He'd barely even looked to her as they'd all disembarked from the Helicarrier. And now? That was even more confusing. One minute he seemed to be keeping his distance, leaving the room when she entered, while in another he seemed to be trying to make up for it, being almost overly polite and civil. She could only guess that his treatment of her was fuelled by a lingering resentment on his friend's behalf and a distinct note of guilt over that resentment and what had happened because of it. Not that she really had a great deal of interaction to base her assessment on. She'd spent almost every waking moment near Nina since arriving at the Compound, only seeing the Captain when he stopped by to check on her and the Maximoff boy. He would just look in from outside the room, his face virtually unreadable save for concern and posture tense.

And hadn't those moments been odd.

That the Captain was noticeably disappointed in himself over his behaviour was becoming increasingly obvious. Though, she couldn't entirely be sure if it was just because he'd risked the mission and subsequently his team—more than enough reason, really—or if his behaviour toward her was factored into that as well. There was a particular moment the day before when, upon catching the way he'd been looking at her instead of Nina with a distinct air of regret and consideration the last time he'd visited the infirmary to. For a brief, conflicted moment she had started to wonder if, perhaps, he genuinely regretted the way he'd reacted toward her. But she couldn't be sure, and neither did she want to risk getting her hopes up by presuming that was the case. So she allowed that small, disparaging voice to convince her that his regret was limited to the near failure of the mission and the danger his friends had been put in because of his rash decision. It only made sense, after all.

Still, despite her doubts, she had to wonder if he was, in fact, trying. At first, she believed she was imagining it, attributing her observation the previous day to wishful thinking. On the handful of occasions when she'd ventured beyond the infirmary, she'd been conscious to keep her distance, certain that he would want little to do with her regardless of the tentative truce reached in the Helicarrier's infirmary. But as the Avengers had settled into their new facility, and Nadine temporarily into the infirmary, she was finding their minimal interactions in the ensuing days to have been almost...friendly.

It wasn't a huge shift, barely enough to be considered as much, but it had happened; he'd given her a small smile the day before as he left the infirmary. It was enough of a shift that, despite her better judgement, a little part of her was trying to hope that there just might be chance that the potential for a friendship they'd begun to build before Seoul might not be wholly lost. At the very least, a friendly professional relationship might not be out of the question. The fact that he'd actually smiled at her despite the shadow of what had happened made it seem possible, at least.

But if it ever happened, it was still a long way away, to be sure; it wasn't going to happen overnight. But it was baffling to her, to think that they could potentially move past what had happened on the Quinjet and the revelations Ultron had set in motion. That, perhaps, she wasn't going to get shut out.

Even more encouraging, even as it was baffling, was the revelation that Steve really hadn't shared what he'd learned about her past with the Winter Soldier or Nina's paternity with anyone who hadn't been on the Quinjet. He'd even assured her of as much, that he'd keep her secrets before he'd left the infirmary on the Helicarrier that awful day. She hadn't even asked him to. She suspected Fury knew—or had at least figured most of it out, given what he'd revealed he knew of her back at Barton's farm—and she similarly suspected that at the very least the Maximoff sister knew. Though, if it had been inadvertently learned or not, Nadine wasn't entirely certain. The girl was still learning to control her abilities and couldn't seem to help what she picked up sometimes.

But she did know that neither Thor nor Stark nor anyone else at the facility seemed to know. Natasha had assured her of that herself. None of them had begun looking at her any differently, save perhaps with a measure of acceptance; also a baffling development if she was being honest. She wasn't used to being accepted. Not once people knew what she was. It was somewhat uncomfortable, but it also left her with a strange feeling of warmth deep in her gut that wasn't entirely unpleasant.

Most important, though, was that Nina hadn't heard a word on the subject. And that was something Nadine was immensely grateful for. Telling her might have been something Nadine had been dreading since the moment she was born, but she most certainly didn't want anyone else telling her.

Not that she had any idea about how to go about telling Nina in the first place anyway.

Hell, it was hard enough now having just talked over what had happened to her, about the 'whys' of why she'd been taken by Strucker.

It was something she'd discussed with Natasha at great length beforehand, agonizing over what to tell Nina and what to hold back. It was an internal debate she'd been having for years, really, ever since she'd made the tentative decision that she would begin revealing the truth to Nina when she turned eighteen.

In theory...

She honestly didn't know if she would have been able to go through with it. Well, it was a moot point now.

The bulk of that conversation with her sister had happened once they'd reached the new Avenger's facility Stark had been setting up. Nina had been freshly settled in one of the private rooms in the Compound's infirmary right next to the one Pietro Maximoff had been assigned. The medic had insisted it was merely a precaution; her wound was healing well, but he'd explained to Nadine that Nina's system had been severely strained and her energy worryingly depleted, necessitating a bit more observation and rest to get her back to one hundred percent.

It had left Nadine at somewhat loose ends, though. She supposed she could've started on her task to track down Barnes, but she wanted to return to her Workshop first, to retrieve what work she'd already done before turning the whole of her focus to it. And she wasn't going to do that until Nina was back on her feet.

She certainly hadn't wanted to start thinking on her daughter's already strong relationship to the Twins, either. She wasn't just sure how she felt about that yet...so that was another thing she wouldn't allow herself to think on.

It meant that she'd had little else to occupy her thoughts beyond just what to tell her daughter about her past and how that past had impacted Nina. That was something she couldn't just refuse to think on for the time being. Which meant that it was those thoughts she'd bombarded Natasha with outside her daughter's room.

"I don't want her to know about what happened in that place," she'd said dejectedly to her little sister, her forehead pressing into the palm of her hand, "about the things I did. The things that were done to me. She's had enough of her innocence stolen from her already. I couldn't—" her voice had faltered then. Natasha's hand had landed sympathetically on her arm, but she hadn't said anything at first. She hadn't figured out yet just what to say. Nadine knew that feeling intimately. She'd sighed heavily, feeling the weight of what she knew had to come pressing down on her along with everything that had happened in the week previous. The days of keeping her daughter in safe and blissful ignorance were firmly in the past and she knew it. That definitely didn't make it any easier, though.

Finally Natasha had sighed too, shrugging helplessly while her features grew veiled with thought.

"You need to tell her the basics at least; about the Ghost, your past—growing up in the Red Room, training as a spy, an assassin...the Treatments...that you met her father there—" Panic and protective outrage had flared in Nadine's chest then, her mind automatically jumping to what came next.

"I will not tell my daughter that her father was a brainwashed super assassin," Nadine had interrupted sharply then, "forced to serve the whims of the men who kidnapped and experimented on—tortured—her! I won't put that burden on her shoulders. She's already been through enough." Natasha's eyes had flashed irritably.

"Did I say you had to tell her that part right now?" Nadine had flinched at the reproof, but she had stubbornly refused to back down. Natasha had let out an aggravated sound then, but her voice had nevertheless calmed when she'd resumed, satisfied that Nadine wasn't about to interrupt again.

"I'm not saying you should tell her everything right away," she'd soothed despite her waning patience with Nadine, "just the basics: you met her father in the place where we were trained, you got pregnant and that you got out—you ran—to keep her safe." She'd fixed Nadine with a firm look then, her expression once again sympathetic even if her eyes had become unreadable. "That's what Nina needs to hear most right now, I think. That she was always your priority. But she also needs to know that you're going to tell her everything one day. Because you know you're going to have to tell her all of it eventually," Natasha had pointed out gently. "You don't have a choice in that." Nadine had deflated, her blooming panic at her sister's word fading as she'd explained, unable to deny the truth in it.

"I know," she'd murmured in resignation, "But not today. She needs to heal, first. I won't risk breaking her with this." Natasha's arm had wrapped around her shoulder then, her fox-red head resting against Nadine's own pale blonde one. She'd welcomed the contact, leaning into the embrace for a moment as it helped ease the worry and sick anticipation growing in her gut. But then the anxiety in her chest had begun to build again until she couldn't quite manage to contain it. Not in her sister's company.

"God...how can I tell her?" she'd groaned, her head falling again to her hands. Natasha had looked sympathetically on, her hand falling to absently rub Nadine's back in a small attempt at comfort. It helped a little.

"I don't know, Nadya. I really don't know. That's something you're going to have to figure out yourself. But you do owe her something. She deserves to be told something. Some sort of 'why.' She needs it before she can start to recover from everything she went through."

"We never had a 'why,'" Nadine had responded softly, threads of bitterness in her voice. Natasha's gaze had dropped, her eyes bright with pain.

"I know." But then she'd looked up to Nadine again. "But there is for Nina. And you can give her that." Nadine had sighed heavily.

"I know you're right, lisichka. I know she needs it, that I can give her that much. Some...closure, of a sort. But I don't know how much it will help. She'll know I'm leaving things out. I'm almost more afraid of how she'll react to that than to what I do end up telling her. She's hurting enough already from knowing that I kept so much from her."

"You'll be able to tell her the rest, someday."

"That's what scares me the most."

Even now, having resolved to only tell Nina enough just now to help her start healing without crushing her beneath the weight of the whole truth, the anxiety of knowing that one day she'd have to share the rest trembled uncomfortably in Nadine's chest.

Nina sat silently, almost uncharacteristically so, her hands clasped so tightly between her knees that her knuckles stood out stark white against the dark material of her lounge pants. She'd listened in silence as Nadine had related her past almost exactly as Natasha had recommended, telling her daughter about her history without delving into to the more unpleasant details—like how the best were weeded out from the weak in the Red Room, or precisely what sorts of lessons she'd been taught in that place. From there she had begun outlining the 'whys' of why Nina had been targeted the way she had. She had explained what she'd known of the Treatments Nadine had been subjected to when she'd been Nina's age and that she had in turn passed on a small measure of that Enhancement to Nina. She'd been hard pressed not to wince at the way Nina had paled when Nadine had told her that the Treatments were why Strucker had been so interested in Nina in the first place. And her voice had gone hard when she'd told Nina that one of her old groupmates had been the one to sell them both out on an old grudge, and that that groupmate had been dealt with when Strucker's base had fallen to the Avengers.

For the most part, though, it was only more recent events that Nadine didn't hold back details on, like how she'd been truly making her living all these years, how she'd been lured away from Vienna, giving Nina's kidnappers the access they needed to take her to Strucker and how she'd thrown in with the Avengers to get her back—save what had happened on the way to Seoul...

Yet, for all that Nadine knew Nina better than anyone else alive, Nadine couldn't entirely make out how she was taking what she was hearing. Nina's face was blank and impassive, the emotions flickering in her eyes shifting and changing too quickly for even Nadine to read. When Nina had picked up on how to keep her face blank, she had no idea. Maybe she'd always been able to do it, but had just never had reason to show it. Or maybe she'd learned it during her ordeal. Either way, Nadine wasn't sure whether to feel sad about it, or proud. All Nadine could pick up on was shock. Shock and disbelief and hurt. She'd barely even reacted when Nadine had told her 'Nadine Ryker' wasn't even her real name.

One thing she could tell, though, was that Nina was chafing at how vague certain aspects of Nadine's story were. And Nadine could understand that. She could sympathize intimately. She had been conditioned to dig when she knew things were being kept from her, the natural impulse to question what she was told further heightened and encouraged through her training as a useful trait in a spy...until it had backfired, of course. That her daughter was the same way was made perfectly clear in the way Nina's frame tensed every time Nadine's story grew unmistakably vague.

Particularly when Nina's father entered the narrative. It was the only time she saw a truly genuine reaction from Nina; she'd jerked in her seat, her blue-grey eyes going wide as they snapped to Nadine from where they'd been fixed on her knees. Beyond telling her he was her father, Nadine had very pointedly withheld just who he was, only describing him to Nina as a combat specialist who had been brought in to train them; she hadn't shared his name and certainly not his designation. It was painfully obvious that Nadine had watered that down and she knew it; it had literally been all she'd said about him. She couldn't bring herself to say any more than that and neither could she manage to come up with any believable misdirection to assuage the painfully evident curiosity in her daughter's eyes; it felt too much like lying.

And she very much did not want to lie to Nina about this. It was bad enough that she couldn't muster the courage to tell her daughter everything she knew about Barnes. She couldn't have lied even if she'd wanted to.

But she should have anticipated that Nina wouldn't let her get away with being vague this time. Not on this. Not when Nadine had deflected every time Nina had asked about her father since Nina was small. Not when she could sense that the answers she'd always craved were almost within her reach. Nadine should have known better.

"Tell me about him. About—about my father." Just as there was no denying the plea in Nina's soft voice, there was no mistaking the steel. Nadine hesitated, her chest feeling tight. "Can you at least tell me his name?"

It would be so easy to tell her. Your father's name is James Buchanan Barnes. Just a name. She knew Nina deserved at least to know that.

But it wasn't that simple. Even just giving her his name wouldn't be simple. It was an answer that would only lead to more questions. Complicated questions.

Dangerous questions.

And her daughter was far too persistent to just sit on anything Nadine gave her. She would search and research and she would eventually figure it out. And Nina wasn't a spy. She didn't have the training to be discreet in her searching. To cover her tracks from the kinds of people after Barnes. Not yet.

It was too great of a risk.

To all of them.

Arguably, he was one of the most wanted men on the planet. Not only were Nadine and Rogers looking for him, but Barnes was also still being hunted by HYDRA. Not to mention the dozens of countries and myriad Intelligence agencies and mess of private organizations around the world almost as desperate to get their hands on him as they were. It was dangerous enough that Nina's father was who he was. But if she were to start digging? If she knew? If she knew her father was the Winter Soldier? Nadine nearly shuddered at the thought.

Sooner or later the Winter Soldier's identity was going to come out. It was inevitable. He'd made too big a splash in D.C. when he and Rogers had gone head to head on that overpass. Nadine could still remember the dread that had coiled painfully in her gut when she'd found Nina caught up in the breaking story back when it had happened, her expression at once enthralled, awed and horrified as she watched the footage of the Winter Soldier opening fire on a street of civilians before engaging in a jaw-dropping fight with Captain America.

Nina wasn't ready to know yet. Not when she'd just had her life completely torn apart. She needed to heal first.

And so did Barnes.

No. Nadine would find him first. She and Rogers would get him somewhere safe and protected from everyone else hunting him. They would make sure that he was really himself again, free from the programming HYDRA had inflicted on him.

Then she would tell Nina.

But until then she had to hold fast. She needed to keep her resolve...and she needed to prepare Nina as best she could. Her stomach clenched and roiled at the thought of doing anything else. But she still needed to tell her something.

"He is Enhanced too. You were—you were targeted because both of us are Enhanced." A pained look settled on her daughter's normally cheerful features before she looked up to Nadine, her eyes bright.

"Is that why you never told me about him? Why you won't talk about him?" Nina's voice was so small and sorrowful that Nadine physically ached. How could she tell her daughter even a fraction of the truth? She was already hurting so much with what little Nadine had already told her! And now that she was a part of the world of HYDRA and the Avengers? She was already in enough danger without knowing her connection by blood to the Winter Soldier.

"I know I've said it already," she finally said, choosing her words carefully, hoping they came out right, "but it was to protect you." Nina tensed, her face hardening. Nadine's breath hitched painfully and she couldn't stop herself. "But—" Nina froze, her eyes warily meeting Nadine's as the blonde assassin was suddenly struggling to put what she wanted to say, what she felt she needed to say, into words. After a long moment she sighed.

"But it was more than just that, solnyshko. It was to protect you, but... When I met him? When I met—" she hesitated, barely restraining his name where it had leapt forward to the tip of her tongue. But the impulse was too strong, the desire to assuage some of the plea in her daughter's eyes too powerful. "—when I met James?" A sharp breath gusted out of Nina's chest, her eyes growing bright as she latched onto the small, precious detail Nadine had given her. Nadine nearly smiled despite the different brand of guilt she felt that she had to withhold any of it in the first place. She set the feeling aside and pressed on.

"What happened between us...it...it was a dark time in my life, Nina, in a dark place where I was made into what I am. What happened between us was not a romance...it was not even a real relationship; I didn't even know his real name myself until, well, until very recently. It was...it was an escape." She faltered, but somehow managed to press on despite the growing shock and horror on her daughter's face; she needed her to hear it and to, maybe—hopefully—begin to understand. "The only good thing that came out of that place was you, solnyshko. I got out; I escaped from that place because of you. But he...he doesn't know about you. I—I couldn't risk it."

She winced as the horrified shock on Nina's face threatened to melt into an expression of betrayal. Nadine drew in a deep, steadying breath, forcing her own clenched fingers to loosen. This was more than she had planned to say, but she suddenly knew Nina needed to hear it. "He doesn't know, Nina, and I owe it to him to find him, to tell him. I owe him that much. He...Nina, he not only gave me you, but he gave me my life too. He let me go when he should have killed me the night I escaped that place. He deserves to be told. Until then, it's too dangerous for anyone to know...

"Even you." Oh, there was so much more to it than that, but she couldn't find the words to say it. Her throat closed up before she could say anymore. Before she could do more than allude that Nina's father had been an unwilling villain. Before she confirmed it.

But despite the overwhelming hurt and bewilderment in her daughter's eyes, Nadine could feel nothing but relief as a glimmer of consideration, however reluctant, began to surface as well.

Without another word, Nina stood, nearly fleeing the room. Leaving Nadine alone. With a heavy sigh, she let her head fall to her hands. As much as she longed to chase after her daughter, she knew Nina needed time. Time to think, to process. To cry and rage and work through every conflicted, angry emotion Nadine's confession had created. So, hard as it would be to give her space to come to terms with what she'd learned, Nadine was resolved to give her that.

She couldn't afford not to.

Otherwise she'd risk losing her daughter for real.

A/N: Thanks for Reading!

Don't forget to Vote and Comment