The room came to a standstill around Elysia as she whirled around, all of Bucky's screams cutting short as the words came to an end. She couldn't see Bucky's face, just watched with bated breath as he rose back up onto his feet from where he'd crouched on the ground, standing up as straight as an arrow as tension flooded his shoulders. Even the soldiers were quiet as they awaited the return of the Winter Soldier, though it was all Elysia could do to hope that she'd gotten it right, and that she'd cracked the code in his head just in time before they'd been found.

"We told you, Avengers." a heavily accented voice rang out through the air from one of the soldiers, though Elysia couldn't pinpoint which of them it had come from. "You would pay for your capture of the Winter Soldier."

"Bucky, please," Elysia whispered desperately, though he remained with his back to her. "Bucky, it's me, it's Ellie. Please say you remember me."

As the super soldier slowly turned to face her, Elysia's blood turned to ice in her veins as she took in the blank stare looking back at her, the eyes that had once watched her so lovingly now completely wiped clean and replaced with the eyes of a stranger. His expression was completely devoid of emotion as he muttered something in Russian that she couldn't understand, his gaze still fixed directly on her.

She knew in an instant the man she'd spent the past few weeks with, the one who'd woken up beside her in the morning and had kissed her goodnight before she'd gone to bed was gone, replaced by the machine they'd pulled out of the HYDRA facility at the beginning of the summer. Not a hint of recognition crossed Bucky's face as he continued to stare at her, but from the expressions on the faces of the soldiers she'd stolen glimpses from, she knew they were happy, satisfied that their mission was turning into a success.

All of the work she had done with Tony and the Valentes in the lab, all of their scans and countless hours spent before she'd gotten through the firewall separating them from the codewords. She'd watched the code crumble to pieces without its source, had watched as she'd cracked into the Winter Soldier's mind and freed him from his prison, but she never had a chance to put it to the test and know for sure if it was really gone.

And she'd failed.

"Bucky, listen to me." Elysia pleaded, backing up a step as he began to walk toward her. "I know you're still in there. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes. You're from Brooklyn. You know me."

Bucky stepped forward again, closing the gap between them as he reached up to brush a stray strand of hair from her face with his metal hand. She watched him with a horrified expression at the tender motion, his eyes still looking into hers, as if, somehow, her Bucky was still in there, fighting to get free amidst the blank stare and the mechanical movements. A motion so familiar, so at home, but so foreign all the same.

"Bucky," Elysia whispered, her eyes searching his for some recognition of the man beneath the Winter Soldier.

The hardened expression returned to the soldier's face as his metal hand suddenly moved from the side of her face, wrapping around her throat and cutting off her air supply. Her eyes widened as she gasped for breath, trapped in his grip, but her palms began to flicker in response as her electricity reacted to the threat, and she knew what she had to do to free herself, even if it made Bucky powerless in the process.

Forgive me, she thought, as she recalled their night sparring in the training center, when she became both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.

Her hands both found a place against the metal surface of his left arm, sending a shockwave of electricity through it. He yelled in response as his arm began to short circuit, his grip weakening just enough for the pink haired woman to slip free of his grasp, and his knees gave out from the force of the electric shock, sending him crashing down to the ground.

Elysia gasped for air as he let her go, and she watched, panicked as Bucky struggled on the ground, his metal arm continuing to malfunction as he fought to regain control. "Bucky, come on," Elysia pleaded, her voice strained from the pressure on her airway. "I know you're in there, say something! Remember who you are, James."

She was so focused on the man kneeling in front of her that she'd barely registered the sound of the gunshot from one of the soldiers behind her before a searing pain spread through her lower back, pitching her forward from the force of the bullet, but she managed to regain her balance for a moment. The seconds seemed to pass in an eternity as she looked down to the blood already beginning to pool at the bottom of her shirt, on her left side, and she looked back up at Bucky, who still kneeled on the ground as she fell next to him.

She could only watch helplessly as the rest of the soldiers swarmed over them, nearly trampling her in their wake as they yanked the Winter Soldier harshly back up onto his feet, though they regarded him as if he were an old friend all the same. They disregarded the young woman on the floor as the final traces of electricity left his metal arm, and he was once again mobile as they began to move him out of the facility, at the forefront of the group to get back to their planes.

"Bucky!" a voice rang out, accompanied by the shattering sound of glass as the window caved in against the wall, and as Sam flew after the soldiers, Steve climbed inside, leaping to the ground to see the carnage before him. However, as his eyes fell on the pink haired woman, he knelt next to her, inspecting her for any injuries before his eyes landed on her side. "Sparks... Sparks, can you hear me?"

"S-Steve," Elysia stammered, though her voice began to sound as if it were under water, the blood loss already making her feel dizzy as Steve's face began to swim in her vision. "Steve, they got Bucky."

"They're going after him," Steve assured her, though her gaze moved back to the door, where a number of soldiers were still making their escape, desperate to leave the facility before being found by the rest of the scattered Avengers.

Elysia yelped in pain as a feeling of pressure crossed her side, and she looked down to see Steve inspecting her wound. He quickly pulled off his jacket, pressing it tightly against her side in an attempt to staunch some of the bleeding as she gritted her teeth in response. Already, his hands were covered in her blood, leaving streaks behind as he continued to work. She looked back up at the scene above them, of the few remaining soldiers still fleeing the compound, the same men who had once again warped Bucky's mind beyond recognition, turning him back into the machine they'd rescued only a few weeks before, though to Elysia, it had felt like an entire lifetime ago.

"Watch out, Steve," Elysia grunted, and the man at her side watched as she lifted a shaky hand, raising her arm in the direction of the soldiers as the electricity once again began to thrum through her veins.

The electricity felt shaky, absorbing her energy as she summoned the sparks higher and higher, putting her all into it as she pushed the energy forward, to the soldiers in her line of sight. She yelled in response as it surged forward, the lights of the compound flickering briefly from the power overloading the system. There was a bright flash as lightning rained from around her, the currents moving for the soldiers and stopping them in their tracks.

Down they fell as the energy surged out of Elysia, the woman feeling weaker and weaker by the second as the electricity left her body, more than she'd summoned since that fateful day at the movie theater in the middle of Manhattan. Suddenly, a sizzling sound was all Elysia could hear as her arm fell, and she lay barely conscious on the ground, the energy to lift her head up having long vanished with the lightning strike.

Once again, Steve's hands were on her as he applied pressure to her side, but she didn't have it in her to react as the pain seared through her body, her eyelids beginning to grow heavier as the sparks faded away. She could hear shouting in the distance, the familiar voices of Tony and Clint growing closer and closer, but she let her eyes fall shut, shielding herself from the horrors waiting for her when they opened again.