4.5 Month Later

The air nipped at my exposed face and I attempted to burrow inside of my scarf and hood just a bit more. There was a cafe up ahead and I scoped it out. It had some outdoor seating where multiple people were, there were giant open windows that opened into the cafe building itself that allowed me to see a giant shelving unit filled with coffee bags, mugs, and reusable cups.

I took a closer look at the people sitting outside. There was a woman with a laptop bag who looked to be alone and preoccupied. With a quick nod of my head, I tore a shelf out from inside the cafe, causing a giant avalanche of coffee and ceramic mugs. The noise was loud enough to draw everyone's attention towards it. I passed the woman and grabbed her laptop bag with my left hand and slung it over my right shoulder without slowing down at all. With a small squeeze to the top of the bag I felt the laptop inside and smiled.

It hurt to see that this was how my life turned out, but I couldn't complain much. This was what I chose and this was what I was going to stick with.

King T'Challa and his sister Princess Shuri were extremely kind people and were also dealing with a lot of grief over their murdered father. I didn't want to get stuck in the middle of that family drama so I left. The only people who 100% know about my decision are Barnes (who caught me sneaking out), Wanda (I could never just leave her without warning), and Shuri (I made sure she knew not to set up the cryogenic tube). The others may have their suspicions about what I've done, but they don't know.

After I was about two blocks away from the cafe and the victim of my petty crime, I finally felt comfortable enough to slow my pace down just a bit more. There was still a good crowd around me so I took advantage of that crowd to pickpocket a few unsuspecting people. They were easy targets, either having open pockets/bags, being on the phone distracted, or they were just slow. I didn't try to go for any 'harder' pickpocketing because I wasn't going to use my powers or risk getting caught by police.

With a quick glance at the street sign on the corner, I turned to the right and made my way down to 'my' apartment. It wasn't technically mine, but rather an abandoned place that was crumbling a bit that I decided to claim. Most people stayed away when they saw there was someone currently in the crumbling room, but every now and then I had someone try to take my territory. It was mostly easy to get them gone without any sort of altercation but there were an occasional few that I had to use some of Nat's combat training on.

I almost never used my powers at this point in my new life. If I even tried to use my powers, I would totally get caught by someone. The point of me running off and being on my own was so I could figure this out on my own and not get caught by authorities. An exception to this is if I need to cause a distraction large enough to draw peoples' attention, i.e. what I did at the cafe.

The door to the building was a sad little piece of wood that you didn't even need to open to enter. I stepped over the little bit that was sticking up and entered the building. The staircase in the very front was absolutely demolished, and you could only tell it was a staircase by the remaining framing left on the floor. There was a second emergency staircase in the very back, down a sad little hallway with about seven apartments, that were all occupied, that everybody used. I had yet to run into any neighbors, and was hoping it would stay that way.

The door to the staircase was slightly open as if someone had opened it not too long ago. I figured it was most likely a neighbor of mine, so I didn't worry. Of course I was still ready to attack if needed, but wasn't on high alert.

Up the stairs, all 23 steps, and I made it to my floor. That door was completely shut. I opened it, and kept my head down as I walked down to 'my' apartment. There were some random druggies in the hallway and we only acknowledged each other with small, downward nods; that was the extent of my relationship with my neighbors.

I got to the door and took the rusted key out of my pocket. Now, the key didn't actually go with the door, but getting it out and pretending to unlock the door seemed like a better idea than leaving the door unlocked. With the slightest twitch of my eye the door unlocked and I entered the sad little apartment. I swung the door shut and with another twitch it locked itself back up.

So maybe I did use my powers more often that I'd like to admit, but it wasn't in an exposed, public place.

I sighed. "Home sweet home," I mumbled under my breath and walked over to a small desk and sat down. The laptop inside the bag was light and the only thing in the bag. Looks like the lady still had her other important things with her, so my the guilt on my shoulders lightened just a bit.

The laptop itself was in very good condition, which was surprising once I realized it was an older model. I placed it on the desk and opened it up. Lucky for me, she didn't have a password on her computer. It whirred to life quickly and it turned on with a small noise.

I wasn't too used to technology in general, so I messed around with it for a few minutes, not having much of an end goal in mind. There were some things I remembered seeing in movies and TV shows, plus what Wanda had sort of taught me all that time ago.

She had tried to show me how to work a phone first, since that was more common, and I did okay with it. When she tried to show me how to work a laptop, however, I was so lost. For some reason the concept of it was weird and I just didn't like how much more complicated it was compared to the phone she showed me.

When I realized I was going down a deep hole of memories, I shook my head and cleared it all out. This was not the time for me to go down memory lane, it was the time for me to figure some shit out.

After figuring out how to search stuff up, I started looking up different names.

Wanda Maximoff

The latest news on her was just someone digging deeper into the accident in Laos and where she might be now.

Natasha Romanoff

There was even less on her. Most of the stuff I could find was about her stunt in Washington DC about three years ago. There were a couple other articles mentioning how she hadn't been seen lately, and wondering where she could've been.

Sam Wilson

Pretty much nothing showed up about my Sam Wilson with that search seeing as how he's not as public as some of the others. Not even a social media page of his was found.

I knew there was only one name left that I could search and have any luck with. I bit my bottom lip as I contemplated- on one hand, I could gather some more information, but on the other hand I could just go down a bad memory lane. The former won, and my fingers flew across the keys.

James Buchanan Barnes

There was a lot that popped up with that search, including a lot of posts about possible sightings from platforms like Instagram and Twitter. I looked at the pictures I could, noticing that none of them were actually him. There were a couple that looked eerily similar, but he didn't have the metal arm Barnes did.

Going through this, I was forced to remember the last time I had seen him.

~~

The door didn't squeak when I opened it up, so I let out a sigh of relief. With some running shoes in hand and my feet bare on the floor, I tip-toed out of my bedroom. I didn't even bother to shut it. In my focused mindset of getting out of there, I missed the person sitting in a chair across from me.

"What are you doing," a deep voice whispered. I whipped around quickly and got into a defensive stance. In the dark, it was hard to see who it was. Then the moon reflected off his arm and I put it together- I didn't drop the defensive stance though.

Barnes was sitting in a chair near his room, a glass of what looked like water beside him on a small table. On that same table, his metal arm rested; Princess Shuri had gotten him a temporary arm for him to use until he was all ready to go under.

Looking at him closer, I noticed he was pretty relaxed. I relaxed my own stance and took a couple steps towards him.

"What are you doing awake?" I asked him.

He chuckled lightly and shook his head. "No, no, no, I asked the first question. You give the first answer."

Something about how... normal he was made me buffer. "I'm... i-it doesn't really matter to you, does it?" I asked, crossing my arms and cocking out a hip. "What does my life have to do with yours?"

I watched him shrug and take a sip from his glass. "I guess you're right- your life and my life don't have anything to do with each other. However," he held up a finger and stood up. My instinct was to step back, but I waited. "If the others notice you're gone, I'm going to be the main suspect."

Barnes grabbed his glass, and I realized it was empty. He passed me and went towards the door of the room to a table, and that's where he stopped to put the glass down. Then he turned around and leaned against the door with his arms crossed. "Why should I let you leave?" he asked.

This man... he was very annoying. I sighed and took a few steps towards him at the door, but then faltered slightly. In this kind of light, shadows fell across his face and made him look much more menacing- much more like the Winter Soldier I knew.  His long hair fell in front of his face, and his arms looked much larger than they looked a second ago.

Barnes must have noticed my breathing pick up, because his stance changed. His arms moved to his sides and he looked small all of a sudden. "Sorry, I didn't realize..." he trailed off and we were quiet. Nothing could prepare me for how awkward I felt at this moment.

"I'm sorry for everything, really... it took me a while before I remembered some stuff from Hydra and one of those things was you..." he whispered. My first instinct was to just get out of there and escape the awkward situation, but I wanted to leave through the door he was standing in front of. What I ended up doing was taking another step forward.

We were both surprised at my movement. "Look, Barnes... neither of us today are the same person from back then," I started. He looked up from the ground and met my eyes. "Being honest, I don't know if I can forgive you so easily... but I understand."

The silence was deafening. We were standing there, staring at each other. I couldn't tell what thoughts were zooming through Barnes' head. There was definitely something going on in there, though, because I could just see the gears turning and his eyes flicking between mine every now and then.

I cleared my throat lightly and stepped forward again, this time without any defensiveness. "I'm leaving so I can have my own life, like what you were trying to do in Romania... hopefully I can find some answers as well," I said. Barnes nodded as I spoke, taking it in. When I had mentioned Romania, he seemed to shift slightly. "I've already told Princess Shuri not to get anything prepared for me. I'm going to tell Wanda. Nobody will suspect you had anything to do with it- I'm making sure of that."

We were silent again. Awkwardly, I slipped on the tennis shoes and took a couple more steps towards the door. "Please," I whispered, gesturing for him to move.

Barnes smiled and stepped out of the way. "Good luck," he said as his goodbye. I smiled back at him and left without another word.

~~

I shook my head and blinked a few times to get myself off memory lane. There was no need to continue this search, so I deleted Barnes' name from the search bar and watched the cursor blink as I thought what to search now.

I had many goals, if I'm being honest. One of them was to get rid of my abilities. They were more of a plague than a gift, and because of them I've had a target painted on the back of my head. These abilities were my biggest tie to Hydra, and getting rid of them would start my long journey of finally shedding Hydra and becoming human again. My only problem with achieving this is finding someone who is skilled enough to remove it.

But I had another thing I needed to do in the mean time. I started to type in the search bar again, determined to really get started on my search to find out who I was.

Reyna-Rose Silva

The first thing to pop up was my wanted poster. I cringed at the picture they took of me when I had first gotten to the Rift. Apparently, even though it was a high-security prison for powerful beings, they operated pretty close to any normal prison.

On the little sign they made you hold when taking those mugshots, it said my name and my abilities. I was a little thrown at how it didn't have my birthdate or anything, but they might not even know it.

My mind tried to wander away and think about the little birthday celebrations Wanda threw for me because she wanted me to celebrate my birthday. She insisted because she thought celebrating one's birthday was the most normal thing a person could do.

Rather than continuing down that path, I just studied the rest of the picture. My hair was short- stopping at my shoulders- and it was a soft shade of blonde. I couldn't help but run a hand through my hair that was much longer and dyed a plum color. This was something I picked up from Nat since she decided to cut her hair and bleached it blonde.

At this point, my accent was also pretty much gone. Nat had talked to Wanda and I, saying that accents are a very easy identifier and to get rid of them as quick as possible. Wanda was working on that when I left, and I finally managed to squash out my French. Lately, it was weird to even think I had an accent.

Through my whole journey, leading up to this moment where I was looking for my past before Hydra, I had gotten rid of pretty much everything I used to be. Even my skin had become a bit paler from hiding out and staying out of the open. But it was weird to see myself right now, searching my name on a computer, and not looking even remotely close to how I did so long ago. I was staring at a ghost.

I finally concluded that I had no idea what I was doing after a few more minutes of just looking at the search results. I let out a frustrated groan and forcefully closed the laptop.

My past was the biggest enigma in my life. The furthest back I could remember was Hydra and being beaten and starved nearly to death. I do remember, however, that day when Stark found my files and was able to share some stuff about my life.

"I'd like to take a look at your file Miss Reyna-Rose Silva," Tony Stark said, and he had information and pictures spread out on screens. As soon as he said that name, I remembered it. I started to remember more things, too. He continued on. "Born May 8, 1950, kept in cyro for about 20 years, then started training as the soldier, then went into cyro for about 7 more years. There is some more words on here that FRIDAY is struggling to translate because it's been scribbled out, but then it says cyro for 10 more years. When the Winter Soldier," the Captain's eyes widened slightly, and I could tell he was listening more intently now. Mr. Stark continued on, "came out of cyro period, Hydra waited a bit before taking her out and and started training the two to work together. They were partners for a long time, before she got moved to the station in Canada. But it says back to Canada, so I assume that's where you started."

"May 8, 1950," I whispered to myself. That's all I had that was non-Hydra related. Everything else in the file was about my history at Hydra- something I didn't care to remember right now (or ever, really).

A random thought crossed my mind as I sat and repeated the date to myself. "What if I forget?" My eyes started glancing around the desk area I was at for anything to write on. When I found nothing, I searched inside the woman's bag and found some neon squares and a pen. The neon squares were weird, since they were a paper like material but they were also put together like a book.

I pulled on the first one and it peeled off the stack very easily. Touching the part of the square paper that was attached the other stack, I was surprised to find it sticky. I looked from it to the wall in front of me.

"Do you stick to other things?" I whispered as I went ahead and tried. It did stick, so I smiled and used the pen to write my birthday down on it. The neon really stuck out, but I like it. I decided that was how I was going to remember things: write the bits of info on the sticky squares and then post them on the wall in front of my dingy little desk.

For now, at least. I did like writing in that little journal I had back with the Avengers. Once I get enough money and I know where to buy one, I'm getting myself a journal to record everything. But the problem was, would I even have enough information to fill the journal?

Barnes got lucky- he was best friends with the Captain America during World War 2 and was killed in action, so of course he could find information about himself in a museum or on the internet way easier than I could. I was probably just a simply nobody who found themselves in the hands on Hydra. Who would put that in museum, especially since the Hydra part is a bit more secret?

My emotions battled each other in my head as I got up from the desk and went to my little corner where I slept on a sleeping bag with a sad pillow. I needed to stop for today and sleep, even though I didn't want to.

Nightmares haven't gotten any easier to deal with since I abandoned the only people who cared about me.