A/N

TW: PTSD induced anxiety, anorexic behaviors, implied abuse, poor living conditions, depressive episodes.

Thanks to ohitshoneybee for the idea!

***

It was an otherwise normal and peaceful morning leading into the afternoon. Most of the Avengers were awake and doing whatever they pleased as it was a lazy Sunday. Tony was in the kitchen prepping for the pot roast to slow cook for most of the day in time for dinner that night.

"Hey, Manchurian Candidate? Have you seen Son of Car yet this morning?" Tony asked, referencing the nickname Thor gave Carson that just sort of... Caught on in the tower.

"Hey, movie night went pretty late last night, I'm pretty sure he's still sleeping." Bucky replied off-handedly.

"I'm just saying, the teens have been up for an hour and they're usually the last awake."

"What type of modern teenager has a healthy sleep schedule?" Clint said as he passed by.

"Fair point, but it still stands. Come to think of it... Hey, Rock of Ages, where's the princess?"

"If she heard you say that, that roast would absolutely get shoved down your throat." Loki replied, dodging the question.

"If a woman is to marry a prince, she's a princess."

"She's better than that, she's a Queen. And to answer your question, movie night meant she had to start her "night shift" late. Of course she's still asleep."

"Guys, it's almost noon. Could you at least check on them?" Tony asked. Bucky and Loki both gave short nods and traveled up the stairs to the rooms still with closed doors. Olivia's door was closer, so Loki poked his head in first.

Oddly, she was nowhere to be seen.

Down the hall, Bucky saw a similar scene, the sheets strewn about but no Carson. On the pillow, Bucky spotted a crumpled piece of paper. He picked it up and uncrumpled it.

"Sacrifices must be made, soldat. Winter Soldier for Winter Soldier."

There was no signature, but there was a crude drawing of the HYDRA octopus. Bucky immediately put two and two together and burst out the door. Loki clamored out of Olivia's room at the same time, a panic stricken expression on his face and a similar crumpled note in his own hand.

"She's gone. It was HYDRA. Those bastards took her. They kidnapped my Queen." Loki hissed, gripping the doorframe with white knuckles. He punched the wall with such a force that his hand went right through.

"Hey, hey, calm down, calm down." Bucky tried, though he was hiding a similar state of panic. Loki rushed over and grabbed Bucky by the shirt, pulling him towards him aggressively.

"'Calm down?' You expect me to calm down, Barnes?" Loki snarled.

"Hey, in case you haven't noticed, Carson's missing, too. My Carson, who was held captive for most of his life by those people. What's the worst Olivia's been through?" Bucky snapped.

"Thinking I was dead!"

"There we go again, me-me-me. It's always about you, Your Majesty. Why don't you get off your high horse and think of others for once other than your precious 'Queen.' Or, better yet, how 'bout you fuck one and get us a way to find them."

"That was one time, Barnes!"

"What in the hell is going on up here?" Natasha asked, coming up the stairs to see Loki still gripping Bucky's shirt next to a hole in the wall with two doors open and two pieces of wrinkled paper at their feet. Noticing Nat at the mouth of the hall, Loki let go of Bucky and turned to face her fully.

"Hydra." He replied.

"They took Carson and Olivia in the middle of the night." Bucky elaborated.

"They what??" Natasha asked.

"All that they left were these notes."

Bucky handed the two papers to Nat, who examined them closely.

"There isn't any sort of information as to where they are on here, and they could be in a hundred places; Hydra bases pop up like weeds. It could even be one we don't know about." She replied.

"You're the Red Room spy, surely you have some idea?" Loki asked. He meant for it to come out condescending, but he sounded more scared than anything. Nat shook her head.

"I'll get SHIELD on the line and get everyone searching. We'll find them, but it may take some time." She said.

"That's not good enough!" Bucky snapped.

"It's all we can do for now."

Nat turned and left the hallway in a rush, pulling out her phone to presumably get in contact with SHIELD. Sighing, Loki slid down the wall next to Olivia's door and rested his head in his hand. Bucky sat against the wall across from Loki and watched the oft thought mighty god have a breakdown in front of him.

"Look." Bucky started, breaking the silence as commotion from the team could be heard from downstairs. "I'm sorry for snapping at you. We're both scared for them. But we've got to hold it together for their sake. It's no use just breaking down and doing nothing."

Loki finally looked up and Bucky could see the tear tracks down his face with wet eyes. Loki didn't cry out of sadness very often, maybe just a handful of times, to Bucky's memory. For most of his negative emotions, Loki kept up a hard exterior in front of everyone else besides Olivia.

"So what can we do?" Loki asked.

"For now, I guess we just have to wait for further instructions from SHIELD. I don't like it any more than you do, but it's for the best." Bucky took a breath. "I'm scared. For both of them. I promised Carson that I'd keep him safe from HYDRA and all the bad memories. He's probably scared shitless."

***

"Why don't you come over here so I can smack that grin off of your face?" Olivia snarled, banging against the cell door. The HYDRA guard just watched her struggle from afar. Carson lay on the floor of the dingy cell they were being held inside in the fetal position. His knees were curled inside of the oversized shirt he used for pyjamas that belonged to Bucky. The noises Olivia were making against the metal door bothered Carson, but he was too scared to barely even move, let alone speak up about it.

He didn't remember much of the abduction. The HYDRA agents came in through the window and knocked him out with chloroform. A very standard execution of it.

Olivia gave one last forceful kick on the cell door before retreating to one of the metal slabs HYDRA had the audacity to call a bed. She sighed and sat down on it.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

"N-no." Carson stuttered out, clearly shaking. Olivia went over and sat next to Carson on the dirty floor. She pulled him out of the fetal position to sit against the wall with his knees to his chest.

"Are you cold?"

"A little."

"Here, I'll get a blanket." Olivia made a flicking motion with her hands, only to be met with a few flickering green sparks and a zap of pain. Yelping, Olivia grew confused. She tried again, only to be met with the same result. She rolled up the sleeves of Loki's nightshirt that served as her pyjama top. An almost invisible silver band was around each of her wrists, a small, blinking red light on either of them. "Fuck."

"What is it?" Carson asked.

"A magic inhibitor built into a shock bracelet. It blocks my abilities and shocks me for trying. These bastards really did their research." Olivia explained, rolling the sleeves back down.

"So you cannot just teleport us out of here?"

"Even without the bracelets, I couldn't. Look." Olivia ran her finger along the cracks between the bricks of the cell. It was made out of the same silver material her bracelets were. "They lined the cell with the same metal. At best, I'd crash us into the wall, very painfully at that."

"So... We are stuck here?" Carson asked, clear worry in his tone.

"Unfortunately. But, look, press your hand to the wall here."

Carson did what Olivia said and pressed a hand against the brick wall. It felt very cold to the touch.

"So what? HYDRA never installs insulation." Carson said.

"But it's ice cold. No insulation would just be slightly chilly until the heat of your hand would warm it up. Clearly it's colder outside than in. Which must mean we're in Siberia." Olivia assessed.

"You sound so sure. Why not Antarctica? Or Northern Canada?"

"Because you were here for a large part of your life. All your records are here. HYDRA also likes to get to you psychologically. Bringing you back here would already weaken your mental state."

"Can you explain why you sound so optimistic? Your words do not match your tone."

"Because it would be one of the first places the team would look. They would check all known bases, plus motives behind the different locations. HYDRA thinks one step ahead, but they don't consider the next step. Yes, your records are here, so that makes it easy for them right now. But the team knows this base and your connection to it. We'll be out of here before you know it."

"Are you sure?"

"I am. And, trust me. I'm sure Bucky is going mad knowing you're in danger. He won't stop until your safe back home. He would break down the walls for you."

As confident as Olivia sounded, she would never reveal how scared she actually was. Carson knowing she was scared would absolutely wreck him. He was already scared out of his mind; he hadn't stopped shaking since he had stirred awake earlier. But she knew Bucky would search to the ends of the Earth to find Carson.

And she knew Loki was out looking for her, too. It reminded her of a time when she was a little younger back on Asgard. She, Loki, Thor, Sif, and the Warriors Three were out on a camping trip in the forests for a few days. Olivia had wandered off in the middle of the night in hopes of finding some special magical gemstones to give to Loki. They commonly grew in caves, so she found a particularly large one and traveled inside. It went several meters down, and she was surrounded in almost complete darkness. Eventually, she did find a few of the stones that had a faint glow. In her excitement, she failed to notice a small dip in the cave. Olivia grabbed the handful of glowing rocks and lost her balance. She tumbled down a small cliff that was only about eight feet high. The impact led her to break her ankle past the point of her ability to heal. She called for help in horrible pain, but was only met with her reverberating echo.

She was trapped for a day and a half. Olivia conserved her rations and water to the best of her ability, but as she had believed it would only be a short trip, she ran out about 12 hours later. At 24 hours, she dragged herself to a corner and tried to sleep. The pain of her still throbbing ankle prevented that for the most part. At 35 hours, she began to lose hope that someone would find her. Though, two hours after that, Loki and two palace guards stormed inside the cave. He had magically tracked Olivia to her fallen location to her utter relief. Loki carefully pulled her off of the cave floor and carried her all the way back to the palace to have her ankle properly healed. He would later tell her that as soon as they had awoken the next day, he realized she was missing and went frantic looking for her. It only took so long because they had to gather a whole search party and check every crevice in the expansive forest. He was still new to tracking and could only do so for a small radius of space.

That day, Loki had promised her that he would always come for her. He would search a hundred realms to find her if he had to.

It was a sentiment Olivia held onto as she sat in that gross HYDRA cell, cold and miserable.

***

"Stealth is a better plan." Loki had insisted again. Six days later and all the HYDRA bases they had covered were either abandoned or not the one they were looking for. Tony and Bruce sent out the Iron Legion to a few coordinates with no success. Nat, Clint, and the Twins took a small group of SHIELD agents and were currently in Australia with yet to find anything. Everyone else was still at the Avengers Facility trying to find the next target to ambush.

Problem is, Bucky and Loki were both very opinionated and had vastly different ideas on how to execute the raid.

"For the last time, two groups going in guns blazing is a better tactic. I know HYDRA, in case you forgot." Bucky countered.

"Which is what they'll be expecting. Quietly in and out before burning the place to the ground will prove more effective." Loki argued.

"Never took you for an arson type." Bucky snorted.

"Is that so, Barnes?"

"It is so, Laufeyson."

"Ladies, you're both beautiful, now can we please move on?" Maya interjected.

"But his idea is stupid and might kill us." Both Bucky and Loki said at the same time, glaring at each other.

"Why not make the best of both worlds? One group goes in and causes a distraction while the other sneaks into the detention level?" Steve suggested. Bucky and Loki opened their mouths to retort, but shut them once they realized Steve had a point.

"That's why he's the Captain." Maya said.

"I didn't hear you give any ideas, Adams." Loki said.

"I'm seventeen, Papa Smurf, I'm not going out of the country to raid a HYDRA base."

Bucky snorted and tried to hide his laugh while Loki glared daggers into Maya.

"Wait, does that mean Olivia is with child?" Thor asked hopefully. Loki continued to stare at the coordinate screens while shoving a dagger into Thor's side. He growled in pain, yet Loki made no move to apologize.

"She's right. The teens need to stay here for their safety. I'll get SHIELD's Domino Squad briefed before we fly out." Steve said.

"Domino Squad?" Peter asked.

"Just the name for that cohort of agents." Steve replied, strapping his shield to his back and exiting the room.

***

Olivia hobbled back into the cell, fresh cuts on her face and she seemed to walk with a limp in her right leg. She barely step foot inside before collapsing to the ground. Carson weakly crawled over to check if she was alright, the Asgardian shaking aggressively.

"Face it, milady, His Highness hasn't come to save you yet and never will." The HYDRA guard sneered.

"How many days has it been?" Olivia asked weakly, pausing to let out a cough. A small glob of blood landed on the stone in front of her.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" The guard turned to Carson. "I'll see you in five minutes."

The guard turned and shut the cell door behind him. Olivia pushed herself into a sitting position, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

"13 days." Carson replied quietly, pointing to the tally marks on the wall he had carved in with a stone he found on the ground.

"I've lost my sense of time. Where could they be?" Olivia asked.

"I wish I knew."

Olivia crawled over and picked up the metal bowl in the corner. She stuck her finger into the cold borscht, penetrating the thin layer of fat that had set in on top. Next to it was an untouched bowl of the same substance.

"Carson, minn kæri vinur, you haven't touched your food." Olivia said. When she was especially wounded, she didn't maintain her All-Speak as well, so Olivia would sometimes slip into Old Norse.

"What if it is poisoned? Or tainted?" Carson replied.

"It's not, vinur. I've had enough that were it poisoned, I'd be near dead. Carson, you haven't eaten anything in four days, and before that it was barely two bites. You haven't eaten properly in ten days. In the nicest way possible, you look like a twig. I can see your ribs starting to show."

"Does it even matter? We have been here for nearly two weeks and no one has come for us. You said they would find us soon. You said we would be fine. You said--"

"I know what I said!" Olivia snapped. Her lower lip quivered a little, tears threatening to spill over. "My word isn't gospel. I can alter dreams, but I can't see into the future. I don't know what's holding them up. I don't know why we've been stuck here for so long. All we can do is keep hoping someone will find us. That's it."

Carson seemed like he was on the verge of tears when Olivia finished. She sighed and pulled him close into a tight embrace.

"I'm sorry. I'm just worried, that's all." She said. Carson barely had time to get a word out before the HYDRA guard came bursting inside, grabbing Carson by the arm and yanking him out. He protested and fought, albeit weakly. Olivia could only watch him go.

***

"I can't believe I'm on the stealth team with you." Bucky grumbled, following Loki through the dank halls of the HYDRA base.

"And I can't believe you didn't consider this location from the getgo. Siberia is the most logical place and yet we waited for over two weeks to narrow down to it." Loki hissed back.

"I didn't hear you give any better ideas."

"Guys, stop it. We're about to breach inside, you can't give us away." Steve's voice said in the coms. Bucky rolled his eyes and kept going. "In three... two... one."

An explosion shook the building, dust streaming down from the ceiling. Yells and swears could be heard around the corner as HYDRA agents ran to defend the base as SHIELD agents started to clamber in.

"Detention is this way." Bucky said, gesturing for Loki to follow him down a hallway. There were few guards down that way, most having gone outside to deal with Steve and Thor's team. The few guards they did encounter were taken care of quickly.

They heard a shriek of pain from their left at a split in the hall.

"It's Carson. The cells are that way, you go there. I'll get Carson." Bucky said, directing Loki to the right. The god nodded and broke for the cells, carefully scanning each one for any signs of Olivia.

In the last one on the left, Olivia sat curled up under one of the metal slabs. She was absolutely bruised and beaten, her left cheek swollen and blood oozing from a cut that fell into her eye, among other horrible wounds.. Overcome with a sudden rage and fear for her safety, Loki busted open the lock with his bare hands and threw the door open.

"Loki...?" Olivia asked weakly. Her eyes then fluttered shut as she lost consciousness. Realizing time was of the essence, Loki dragged Olivia out from under the bench and picked her up in a bridal carry.

"I'm here. I've got you. I'm getting you out of here." Loki assured her, rushing out of the detention block and out the secret way he and Bucky had come in. SHIELD medics swarmed them as the Quinjet came into view through the blustering snow.

***

Bucky kicked every armored door in, cocking his gun and looking into every single one. Carson's screams echoed out again, this time much closer. Bucky approached the door where he had heard them and kicked it in.

Strapped to a medical table was Carson, sharp metal tools with dried blood on the blades on a tray next to him. A HYDRA scientist backed away in fear as Bucky stormed in. He shot the scientist with no hesitation. No other guards were inside, so Bucky ran over and cut at the leather straps binding Carson to the table. Once he was free, Bucky opted to carry Carson out in a piggyback carry. He could feel Carson's blood dripping onto his neck and shoulders but paid no attention to it, or how unnaturally light Carson was.

Bucky met Steve outside, HYDRA agents littering the snowy ground.

"We've got them, we gotta go." Bucky said. Steve nodded and put a hand to his earpiece.

"We have them. Light the place up and fall back." Steve ordered the SHIELD agents. Bucky found the Quinjet and set Carson onto one of the medical tables inside. Olivia was already being seen to on the other one, an oxygen mask on her face and an IV already going. Three SHIELD medics tended to Carson, one of his eyes swollen shut and a clear break in his leg.

Steve and Thor climbed into the jet not long after, the rest of the agents clambering into the other Quinjet. Just as the back hatch closed, an explosion shook the jet, the smell of soot creeping inside. The jet took off, Bucky plopping down next to Carson's team across from Loki, who was watching the medics tending to Olivia like a hawk.

"She will be fine, brother. She's survived worse." Thor said, clapping Loki on the shoulder. Loki just nodded once, but didn't make a move to reply.

Steve went to comfort Bucky, the two old friends sitting next to each other in the seats.

"Are you okay?" Steve asked.

"I guess so." Bucky replied, sighing.

"You did good today, Buck. Both of you did. Rest assured HYDRA won't be messing with either of them again." Steve said, addressing both Bucky and Loki. Loki just nodded again, resting a blue hand on Olivia's forehead as he stroked her hair with the other. "Y'know, you both make a pretty good team. I don't think it would have gone as well without your plans."

Bucky snorted with a small smile before looking at Carson, the even breaths he was taking a small comfort after the chaos.

***

"Loki, our doctors would do just fine." Tony protested. Loki just glared at Tony and grabbed an overnight bag.

"The doctors on Asgard can heal her quicker. Besides, she's been through a lot and being back home might help her feel better. Thor's gonna be staying with you." Loki replied, brushing past Tony and out the back door to the Bifrost circle where Olivia was waiting with one of her bags. The rainbow bridge took the both of them away in an instant. Tony sighed and went to the kitchen. It was already dark out, so a lot of the team was getting ready to go to bed.

Bucky was in the fruit basket, grabbing an apple and three plums from inside. He took a paring knife and started to cut the fruits into slices, putting them onto one of the small blue plates.

"How is he?" Tony asked.

"Still shaken, but at least he's eating again, if just a little." Bucky replied, throwing the knife into the sink to be washed later.

"Good to hear. Anyways, I'm gonna crash. See you in the morning, Terminator."

Tony left the kitchen as Bucky walked down to Carson's room on the other side of the Compound. He knocked gently before coming inside. Carson lay burried in his blankets, only his face and a few lilac locks poking through.

"Apples and plums." Bucky said, laying the plate on the bedside table. Carson didn't look up as he stuck his arm out of the blankets to snag an apple slice. "You doing okay?"

Carson just shrugged as he ate the slice of apple, reaching for another one. Bucky smiled thinly as he brushed back some of Carson's hair with his hand.

"I'll leave you to it." He said.

"Do not go." Carson said quietly. "Can... can you sleep here tonight? With me?"

Bucky smiled a little wider. He went around the other side of the bed and climbed in. Carson scooted over to give him more room as Bucky slipped under the covers. He pulled Carson's body close, spooning him protectively.

"I'm right here. I'll always be right here."