2013 | Russia

Ada

The scriptures had taught me that hell is hot, that I'd burn in eternal agony for the sins I'd committed, but they were wrong.

Hell is cold.

The ice has seeped into my very bones, leaving me in an eternally motionless state.

I can't scream, can't even move.

Warmth is a distant memory. The warmth of the man I love's embrace. The scent of my best friend's perfume. The feeling of my baby sister's hands tugging at my hair.

All long forgotten.

Until my mind begins to awaken and slowly warmth seeps into the body that's been imprisoned in this hell for so many years.

Yet the sound of Russian voices only indicates that I've returned to a different hell.

Blinding lights break through the darkness as I'm rolled through the halls of what can only be a hospital, my fingers still numb as I reach for something, anything.

All that I know is that I need to be fighting.

Not here. Not like this. Not so weak.

It must be hours before I can feel the unfamiliar fabric beneath my fingers, my lips able to mouth silent words, yet my mind still struggles to comprehend the implications of the Russian voices surrounding me.

"We thought she was dead when we found her, that's until we began thawing her out and saw the blood. Then we were sure she was dead until we picked up a heartbeat."

"Someone's tried to kill her. She's presenting with all the signs of severe blunt force trauma to the head, not to mention the rest of her. She should be dead from those wounds alone, let alone the ice."

"It's like someone slammed a steel pipe into her skull."

A hand brushes my head and I refuse to wince despite the pain, but they must detect some reaction.

"She's awake?"

"Miss, what is your name?"

Half consciously I murmur it, hearing an American accent leaving my mouth. "Ada."

"Your full name, Miss."

Each word is a battle in my current state, and my accent slips back into a more familiar cadence, one similar to theirs. "Adelina Viktorovna V..." I can't finish, several different surnames sitting on my tongue, each more painful than the last.

"Alright, Miss, we don't know what happened to you, but you're safe now."

I shake my head, releasing a deep whine of pain as my mind finally comprehends what their accents mean. "No- no."

I can't be here. I shouldn't be here.

And in my chest is a fear only a mother can cause.

"You're eleven now, Adelina," Mama said, her Russian accent thick with a cigarette hanging from her lips. "Do you understand why your education has been so different to other girls your age?"

"Because of the Nazis and the Americans," I answered, an oversimplification of events, but I knew Hitler was becoming powerful, a threat to the Soviet Union, and tensions with the United States were ever-increasing.

"Yes," she said, extending a cigarette to me that I knew better than to refuse. "The education you have received in the Red Room is one not possible in America. Your father allowed me to bring you back home to Russia on the agreement that you would keep your American citizenship and spend the summers with him. Do you know why I agreed?"

"Because Stalin needs spies," I answered, and she nodded, but narrowed her eyes in discontent at the edge to my voice.

"The Red Room teaches our girls how to be the ideal Soviet soldier as well as play the part of the American sweetheart, but you're our prized student because you are one by law, and your foolish father, despite all his medals, doesn't know any better," she said, and it was a battle to keep my expression neutral. "You are in a unique position to serve the Soviet Union, which is why I allow you to spend your summers there so you can sift through his paperwork and listen in on his meetings before you return home to resume your education. You will travel there this summer before returning in the Spring, but it is my intention that in these coming years you'll be spending some time in Germany."

My stomach sank, and I sucked in a breath through the cigarette before daring to ask, "Why?"

Usually I would've received a swift scolding for daring to ask that simple question, but she had drunk enough that she obliged me.

"Hydra has expressed a willingness to cooperate with our own scientific division in the name of evolution. Our scientists at Leviathan, in conjunction with Hydra, are developing medications that they would like our agents to trial," she said, making it clear that it was not optional. "You are the best of them, and they need resilient girls like you to test this serum on."

I looked at her with apprehension. "But I'm not ill."

"No, you aren't," she said, and I refused to flinch as she leaned forward and put her own cigarette out on my knee. My eyes watered, but I did not flinch. "This medication will ensure you never will be weak again if it works how they believe it will, and if it does... you will be the harbinger of a new age of warfare."

A pull around my neck brings me back to the surgical lights above and the sounds of panicked voices. "Wait, is she wearing dog tags?"

"American tags, second world war," a man's voice says. "Two different sets. They must be her father's, or even grandfather's, she could only be in her mid-twenties."

"Sir," a quiet voice says. "One of the tags reads Adelina A Aristova, they're... they're hers?"

There's silence until a trembling voice speaks up. "Miss, what is your date of birth?"

My head spins, struggling to recall such simple information, only able to muster the year. "1922."

"What year were you born, Miss Morgan?" the recruiter for the Army Nurse Corps asked me, the date on the calendar behind her reading June 1941.

"1922," I answered with a smile. "Now I know that the women you take are typically at least twenty but I can't understand how it could ever be too soon to serve one's country."

"Are you married?"

"I wish, but no, I haven't been fortunate enough," I said, bracing myself for her next question.

"Do you have children?"

"Certainly not," I said with a laugh to get through the sharp pain where my uterus had once been. "Although I do have a little sister who I absolutely adore, she's only just turned five."

"You seem quite maternal," she noted. "Used to taking care of others?"

The irony didn't escape me. "Yes, yes I am."

"Are you squeamish?" she inquired.

"Oh, what lady isn't used to a little blood?" I dismissed.

"Many ladies who apply don't realise how nasty some injuries can be," she said, and I struggled to feign alarm at the thought of such a thing. "At present it's only training accidents, but if we're dragged into this business in Europe... well, you'll see far more than a little blood."

"I can assure you, Ma'am, such things don't faze me easily."

"Let's forget about what she's said and just get her treatment," a Russian man says. "She's a woman who's clearly survived an attempted murder. With the force she was hit with I doubt she'll be remembering much of anything clearly."

"Sir, the dog tags are mismatched?" another voice says. "There are two sets, but each set has two different names. Hers and someone else's."

"What's the second name?"

A drip's stuck unceremoniously into my arm, but it's the words that follow that pierce. "James B Barnes, does that name mean anything to anyone?"

Something in my chest shatters, and his name rests on my lips as I fight against the unconsciousness that tries to overcome me. "James..."

"James Buchanan Barnes," I lectured with a laugh. "You're going to get us into so much shit with the Colonel."

"It's only a jeep," he grinned a little too proudly. "And technically I'm not stealing it, I'm borrowing it."

"And technically, we're both going to get blamed for it," I pointed out as he set me up on the bonnet. "You might be the one who gets away with everything, but I actually have a reputation to maintain."

"Sweetheart, we both know damn well that reputation was shot to hell a long time ago," he teased, grinning at the playful smack to his shoulder. "And what Phillips doesn't know won't hurt him. Besides, don't you want to have a night on the town?"

My fingers tugged at his collar. "Or... we could make better use of having a jeep for the night."

He smirked as I pulled him in between my legs, and he asked, "Aren't we meant to meet Steve and Carter in twenty?"

"Buck, they're at a fancy restaurant in the middle of the city. I doubt they'll be missing us," I said, and he couldn't argue with my assessment as his hands moved along the underside of my thighs. "And besides, we could use a little privacy."

"So, what I'm hearing is 'steal the jeep?'"

"Uh huh," I permitted as his lips met mine, more focused on the feeling of his hands on my body than anything else, especially the one that slipped beneath my skirt. "Buck-"

"Want me to stop?"

"Don't you dare."

His lips found my neck at the same moment we heard Howard calling out, "Barnes, Dugan bet me a drink that you-" Bucky quickly pulled my skirt back down as Howard caught us and shook his head in mock disapproval. "You two could have at least asked if I wanted to join."

"Howard," I lectured, and he held his hands up in his defence.

"Hey, there's enough room in that jeep for three."

"Five actually, we're picking up Steve and Agent Carter," Bucky decided as he set me back down on the ground. "Hop in, we're taking this thing for a joyride."

"As long as we kick them all out by the end of the night," I murmured, and he bent down to press another kiss to my jaw, always that tad more possessive whenever Howard was around, not that I minded much.

"Trust me, I'm not spending tonight any other way," he promised, and his hands were firm on my waist as he helped me up into the passenger seat of the jeep. "But first I'm going to take you dancing."

"Always a gentleman," I teased as he squeezed my thigh, and the mischief in his smile matched mine.

"Always."

"I can't find any records that match the name on her tags, but I was able to find one mention that matches the name she gave," a woman says from across the room. "Adelina Viktorovna Vetrova is listed as an NKVD agent during the Second World War, a recipient of the Order of Lenin among other awards, but her records are sealed."

"Hold on, I just found the records of the guy from the other set of tags," another voice interrupts, an American one this time. "Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes: born March 1917, declared missing in action January 1945. There's also a marriage certificate which states that he married Adelina Aleksandrovna Aristova in Brooklyn, New York, December 1944."

"Alright, so the marriage certificate matches her tags, but for the two seconds she was awake she said her name was Adelina Viktorovna, which would match the Soviet records but not the marriage certificate or the tags. Not to mention the fact they're American tags and she's got an American husband despite being Russian," the woman says. "This isn't adding up."

"Are we forgetting the part where she's like ninety years old and looks twenty five at the oldest? None of this makes sense"

Panic pounds in my chest but still the most I can do is stress my fingers as my eyelides struggle to open.

"You guys need to look at who witnessed the marriage certificate. Margaret Elizabeth Carter and Steven Grant Rogers."

My hand reached to open the door to the room Peggy and I shared, although it stilled over the doorknob when I heard Steve's voice from inside.

"You can't tell her."

"Steve, I'm an agent, I can assure you I'm quite adept at keeping secrets," she said and my skin crawled as I leaned in to listen. "Which is why I'll also remind you that she's been trained in espionage since she was a child, so if Barnes wants to hide this from her then I suggest the two of you utilise a bit more subtlety."

My eyebrow rose and I pursed my mouth, prepared to walk in there and demand answers until I heard Steve say, "Which is why he sent me to ask for her ring size instead of trying to get it himself."

My hand came up to cover my mouth as my heart stopped, unable to even believe it until Peggy's next words confirmed I wasn't utterly delusional.

"How about you and Howard keep her busy and I'll take Sergeant Barnes into the city myself to help him choose something for her," Peggy offered and I gave an approving nod even though she couldn't see it. "I'll admit, as pleased as I am I'm a little surprised. He never struck me as the type to settle down, not so fast at least."

"I'm as surprised as you are," Steve admitted and I blinked in mild offence before he continued "Bucky... he's always loved girls and the girls have loved him, but something changed when Ada found him in that prison. He's changed. He won't tell me what they did in there but Ada knew the moment she saw him, that much I'm sure of. She understands in a way that I can't. Since the moment he saw her he's only ever had eyes for her."

"Yes," Peggy said, her voice hoarse since she knew the specific details of my own experimentation. "I do believe that their experiences under Zola are what brought them together."

"Then he fell in love with her, almost instantly," Steve said and my hand settled over my heart. "I've known Bucky just about all my life, but I've never seen him like this. He isn't just head over heels, he adores her. It's like he woke up in that prison and thought she was some sort of angel. He was delirious enough that he probably did. He's found the woman he wants to spend his life with, and I couldn't be happier for him."

"I'm glad," Peggy said and her words were nothing but genuine. "She's had a hellish life and she deserves to have that kind of love after all the suffering she's endured, and god knows she loves him... I only worry what it would cost her if Phillips were to find out. Agents are held to a different standard than the other women who serve, not to mention the conditions of her employment. They forget that she isn't just an asset, she's a woman with a heart far larger than they give her credit for."

"I know," Steve said and I listened anxiously only to find reassurance. "But don't worry, we've got her back. She's a Howling Commando, I'd like to see Phillips try to get rid of her."

"Wait, Steven Rogers, as in the Steve Rogers?"

"She had Captain fucking America at her wedding?"

"James Buchanan Barnes was his right-hand man," a new voice says, an American woman. "And he was married to... holy shit. You found her. You found Adeline Morgan."

"But her tags-"

"Forget the tags, look at her face!" she exclaims. "Do you seriously not know who she is?"

"A pin-up girl?"

"Yes, but she was more than that," the woman stresses, and her voice wavers as my already blurred vision blackens. "God, none of you know a damn thing do you? Adeline Morgan was Captain America's counterpart, the most photographed woman in America until Marilyn Monroe came along, but she was still a Howling Commando. A super soldier-"

"The only super soldier was Captain America, and why the hell don't her tags-"

"Because she was a damn double agent that went by about five different names in her life, and no, she was the first," the woman argues as another drip is inserted into my arm, the world around me ever-fading. "She was a Soviet spy who defected to the SSR and got paraded around with Captain America until they were sent to the front lines. But before that she was the only one who survived the initial prototype of the serum years before they stuck it into Steve Rogers, back in the 30s when Nazi and Soviet scientists still worked together."

"It isn't fucking working!" I screamed at my mother who stood behind a wall of glass alongside Soviet and Nazi scientists, watching on with disinterest.

My body convulsed with the electricity that tore through my nervous system, my veins already burning with something else, and all I knew was that I should be dead.

"Agent Vetrova, even if Erskine's enhancements work we will need to implement some form of mind control," Arnim Zola said. "If the current methods continue to fail-"

"I have her under control," she defensively scolded. "You wanted test subjects more durable than those you've poached from around the Reich and you have one."

"I do not agree with this," Erskine argued despite already being in handcuffs, speaking with disgust towards my mother. "She is a child."

"She's fourteen, hardly a child," she dismissed, but Erskine did not relent.

"She is your child-"

"Precisely," she said coldly. "I did not birth her and dedicate years to her training for her to fail."

"Electrocution won't make the serum work any better, if it works at all," he argued, and he turned to Zola. "You have not given me enough time and this will not speed-"

"The shocks are not to enhance the serums, but for a different experiment," Zola said. "To break her mind so it can be remade."

Erskine still tried to protect me. "If we keep administering the shocks she will die."

"Her body is strong, but her mind is not," my mother said as cold tears fell down my cheeks. "Break it."

This time when I wake my wrists are shackled and my mind's alert. Remembering what little I can I brace myself and keep my eyes closed as I begin subtly testing the shackles only to immediately find that they aren't Hydra's or the Red Room's — they aren't strong enough.

A male American voice breaks the silence and I open my eyes just enough to see an African-American man with an eye patch speaking to a red-headed woman by the door.

"Before we call him I thought I'd better bring you in considering you have a unique insight into her background and the threat she poses," the man says, speaking with authority. "As well as the fact that things aren't adding up here."

"No kidding," she murmurs, also American, but with the slightest faults that expose her as not being a native speaker. "She was one of the Red Rooms' first graduates, code-named Red Widow. She's a living myth that I thought died a long time ago, she should have died a long time ago, but it seems they weren't kidding about those enhancements."

"She's not Steve Rogers, but she didn't need to be," the man says. "Every major power during the Second World War‌ had their eye on her at one point or another, in part due to her chemical enhancements from the Red Room and Hydra's short lived collaboration, but it was her skillset in conjunction with it that made her a unique asset."

"I thought the Red Room and Hydra never worked together?"

"From what I know they worked together as long as Germany and Russia had a non-aggression pact, but after Hitler attacked that all changed," the man recalls. "As far as we know she was the first Widow stationed in the United States, a double agent through and through from what I've been told."

"In my time deserters were known as Red Widows because of her," the woman says. "I can't speak to what their training was like back then, but I know that she took out the rest of her class when she escaped to America, or at least that's what she did the first time. Slit their throats in the night to keep them from coming after her. But the second..." she trails off. "She was a legend in the Red Room, and not the good kind."

The memories have me clenching my fists, memories I can't make sense of, but the pain that accompanies them is blinding.

"Our S.H.I.E.L.D files on her are extensive, but carefully censored," he says. "I dare say she had some friends high up who took careful measures to cover up what she was doing in the war. Howard Stark for one."

"Stark?" she repeats with surprised interest.

"She's an old girlfriend of his by all accounts," he says, and the offence that comes with those words alone nearly makes me expose myself. "We know that they became acquainted when she was brought to America by the SSR, and then suddenly she'd gone from being a prisoner to a showgirl within just a few months."

"So I've heard," she says. "Though my memories of her aren't as pretty. Whatever had been done to her after she went missing fried her brain." Confusion and alarm echoes through my mind the longer she speaks. "I never understood why they kept her alive outside of trying to replicate the serum. Then one day she just disappeared. It seems we finally know where she ended up."

It's a struggle to keep my face even as I feign unconsciousness, being spoken of as a specimen isn't anything new to me by this point, but it's never a joy. Although her assessment of my cognitive function is something I can work to my advantage.

When I hear footsteps from the outside hallway and the voice of a doctor I turn my head, taking in my surroundings now that they're distracted to find a standard hospital room, except far more secure.

Escape never works in my favour, not when I haven't the slightest idea where the hell I am and the woman outside is a Widow. She's unfamiliar to me, but in this state I can scarcely recall how I got here. My mind can't make sense of why a Widow would be working with an American, unless she's recruited him as a Soviet spy, and so I don't make any assumption that I'm safe.

Until I see Peggy, or hell even Colonel Phillips, I can't assume anything of the sort.

"This should be the correct dosage," the doctor says to them, and my eyes fall shut as footsteps grow louder and another drip is stuck into my arm. While my body's resistant it's malnourished, struggling to fight whatever sedative starts to take hold.

"It's been nearly two years and here we are again. Another one. Agent Adeline Morgan, or rather Adelina Vetrova, Aristova, then finally Barnes. Stalin's favourite agent turned Miss America," the man says, each name bringing greater pain than the last. "And then something else."

"We need to tell him," she says. "Before he finds out from the news and not us."

"We need to ease her into it, better than we did with him," he decides, and my mind can only assume it must be Howard they're talking about. "We have countless records documenting everything that was done to break her, torture, electrocution, assault, imprisonment, but by all accounts it was the death of Rogers's best friend that finally broke her."

"From what I've been told she married him not long before he was killed in action capturing the Nazi scientist who'd tortured both of them," the woman says. "She was put in an asylum not long later for what she did in the aftermath, but Stark got her out considering she went missing a few months later trying to find Barnes's body. Judging by the two sets of tags I say she found him."

"And that's where things stop adding up," the man says. "No one knows what happened to her after September 1945. Howard Stark apparently spent decades looking for her and never found a thing, so how the hell did she wind up frozen in Siberia after going missing in the Austrian Alps?"

Decades?

"I think I might know," the woman says quietly, my consciousness again fading as the sedative finally takes hold properly. "Enough talking here, she could be listening."

After two days of searching the area Howard had pinpointed as the most likely location for his remains, finally the metal detector indicated something below. Zola may have simply been trying to drive me mad or to appeal for some mercy by telling me he was still alive, or perhaps I'd simply fried his brain to the point he couldn't remember that day. That's what Peggy and Howard believed, that I was delusional, but I knew if Steve were still with us then he'd be right there beside me.

I had to know the truth.

Desperately I dug through the snow with numb hands until I found something hard, something frozen, and I felt his fingers. Tears froze on my cheeks as I pushed the snow aside and looked down at the frozen hand I held, and beside it half half-buried in the snow were his dog tags.

One with his name, and one with mine.

I choked out a sob as whatever faith I'd held was shattered, and yet relief quickly followed when I knew he was safe from Hydra and what they would have done to him. That he died believing Steve would see the other side of this war, believing we would all be safe.

Or so I thought as I swallowed my tears. "I'm bringing you home, James."

And soon I'd be buried beside him.

I felt the flaregun on my hip, knowing that when I gave Howard the signal he'd send whatever resources needed to bring his body back to the States, yet as I went to uncover the rest of the body there was nothing more to find.

A silent scream of horror caught in my throat as I pull his severed arm free from the snow. Even after all the carnage I'd seen in my life I could have collapsed at the sight.

At what was left of the love of my life.

And so I searched for the rest of him. I searched for my husband in vain until I knew there was only one place I would find my answer, and so I fired the flare. Just as I'd counted on, soldiers found me before Howard did. Although I hadn't expected them to be wearing Soviet uniforms.

I didn't fight as they surrounded me, if anything I smiled as I walked into the most dangerous mission of my life.

I had nothing left to lose and everything to gain.

Or at least that was what I thought.

When I wake to the sound of the Andrews Sisters playing from the radio I'm no longer restrained. There's no longer sedatives or whatever else being pumped into me. By all accounts I'm free, but I know better than to believe that.

I lay in a plain hospital room in a white nightgown, my dog tags still hanging around my neck. Slowly I stretch my limbs for the first time in so long and manage to sit up in bed, foggy-headed and craving a cigarette, unable to recall how I got here.

There's a vague recollection of American and Russian voices, but little else, and I'm distracted by a familiar tune.

"Take her out when it's over, she's a peach when she's dressed

But she stops! And always just in time

Queenie, Queen of them all

Queenie, someday you'll fall

Someday the church bells will chime, the ol' church bells will chime!"

My hand reaches out to slap the radio off with a huff, an almost guttural reaction, and my heart pounds in my chest at the eerie silence no hospital ever has.

"Hello?" I call out, and a red-headed nurse enters. "Where am I?"

"You're in a recovery room in New York," she tells me with an American accent, but I freeze upon hearing the giveaways in her voice, the slightest fault. "Is there anything you need, Agent?" Upon my silence she asks, "Or would you prefer to be addressed as Mrs Barnes?"

My blood runs cold at the information she possesses. No Widow should know a damn thing about that. Any Widow her age should be dead.

No, she's not a Widow. She can't be. She has to be from another branch of the NKVD. Another type of Soviet operative or sleeper cell spy. But I recognise the way she moves. The way she speaks. The simply way she assesses me. She's Red-Room trained.

It shouldn't be possible, and yet here she is.

I don't answer her question, and instead say, "I want Agent Carter to brief me on how I ended up here."

She nods politely, but still I see the silent panic behind her eyes. "She's on her way. Would you like something to eat?"

"I would like to take a walk outside with a cigarette," I counter, and she tries to play off the request.

"I'll bring you a cigarette, but you would be much more comfortable in bed," she says, and upon realising that she has no intention of letting me leave this room I quickly reassess my options. "You have been through quite the ordeal."

I nod wordlessly, still struggling to remember anything. The Soviet Union wouldn't put on a performance like this which means that I must indeed be in America, likely in the custody of the SSR. It wouldn't be the first time it's been infiltrated by a Widow, or perhaps they've finally gone mad enough to recruit one. Still, women like us are deployed for only a few specific purposes, and I need more information before determining how quickly I can kill her.

"I'm sorry, I- I'm struggling to recall what's happened," I say, speaking with an American accent I don't usually use if only to show her how it's done. "What's your name?"

"Natalie."

"Natalie, would I be able to make a telephone call?" I ask and watch the micro-expressions that betray her, subtle but visible to a trained eye, just as a slight rise in heartbeat is detectable to the right equipment. "My husband must be in such a panic. He always panics terribly when he doesn't know where I am."

Bucky. I don't know where Bucky is and he likely doesn't have a clue in hell where I am either.

If he were able to be with me I would've woken to him by my side. Which means I'm likely in some type of detention area, although this would certainly be the first time they've tried fooling me in such a way. Likely to keep me calm considering my record of attempted escapes and the blood that's been spilt during them. If they have me fooled into thinking I'm in a standard hospital rather than an asylum it gives them time, but that time's run out.

"Where's my husband?" I ask, and my heart stops as her lips part in what I could almost call pity. "If you don't give me an answer in the next five seconds-"

"Captain Rogers is on his way with him, along with Agent Carter," she assures me, but I know it's a lie. "I've been instructed to make sure you're comfortable until their arrival then they'll debrief with you."

I nod slowly and reach for the dog tags around my neck, but my stomach sinks when I feel two sets and slowly, very slowly, it begins coming back to me, and all I know is that I need to get out. Now.

And I need a gun.

"Tell me Natalia, how long have you lived in America to get such mastery of the accent?" I ask, and her eyes widen just slightly. "It truly is impeccable, different to the dialect we're taught from the American movies. Proper American with the correct fluctuations rather than the transatlantic rubbish that's drilled into us."

Still she plays her role, feigning confusion. "Pardon?"

"No matter how good you become at playing a role, those with a trained eye can always see through the bullshit," I say, dropping my own American accent. Willing to bet that whatever armed guards are outside don't speak Russian I switch to the language. "So before you call for help, Natalia, tell me exactly where I am and who you work for."

There's a familiar gleam in her eye, a preparedness for a fight as she replies in Russian. "You are in New York, and I work for the United States Government."

"Then why was I brought here in restraints and held under surveillance?" I ask, picking up the just audible frequency of the bug hidden within the radio. "You know who I am, so you can make this as difficult as you want it to be."

And finally, her panic begins to reveal itself.

"You are not being held-"

"Is that so?" I ask as I stand, finding that my knees buckle slightly, but it's nothing that deters me from my current course of action as I walk over to the fake window, putting my finger against the glass knowing I'm being watched through it. "I trusted the men I fought beside with my life, but this government... I was always their property. Passed around between the powers while I was just trying to keep the people I loved alive."

Violent bitterness rises in me as it flashes before my eyes, and I begin to remember what I did. Why I wasn't there when Steve was killed. How hard Howard had to fight for my release and the blurred months that followed. The vendetta that's brought me here. That the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi, and that every dead Widow is one less that they can send after me later.

"I know you can't understand that," I continue, knowing the mechanics of how her mind was broken and rebuilt. "What loving someone and then watching them die in front of you does to the human brain. We kill our own with our bare hands to desensitise the part of the mind that feels that pain, that connection, from such a young age. So I know that you can't understand the blinding rage that comes with being told that the person responsible for the death of the man you love just gets to live when they don't." My voice cracks and I laugh, wondering just who's sent her after me. "It's almost suicidal, the lengths you'll go to for even a chance at making that right."

"Agent-"

In a split second I've grabbed the radio and hurled it at Natalia's head.

As expected she reacts with expert agility in avoiding it, but my reflexes are faster. The small table it was sat on immediately follows as I take a proper swing at her, breaking over her head and leaving me with a splintered wooden leg. She stumbles back, and I could almost take my time taunting her with the way her eyes widen at the weapon in my hand.

"No," she says, like it's an order, despite the blood leaking from the blow to her temple as she holds a hand out between us. "Put it down." I just laugh, but she still tries to mediate as she orders in Russian, "Red Widow, stand down."

I just tilt my head, almost condescendingly. "Now Natalia, you do understand that you aren't walking away from this don't you?"

She only sets her jaw, and asks, "You do realise that you can spend the rest of your life hunting down every threat to you and you still won't kill them all?"

Only then does she impress me in the slightest, and I whistle, "You like mind games then?"

"Like is a strong word," she replies, bit by bit exposing her true personality, and I hum in contemplation.

"You're stalling," I state, and she doesn't react. "But for what?"

"Why don't you tell me since you're meant to be the best of us?" she counters, and a smile twitches at my lips.

"I could go back and forth with you," I say, my hand tightening around the jagged wooden leg in my hand. "But I don't have the patience for that."

With a smirk I swing at her with the sharp end of the wood, and while she dodges it I succeed in drawing in a team of armed guards. Electrified wires shoot out of some type of gun, sending shocks through my body upon impact, but it's hardly anything I'm not accustomed to. With gritted teeth I tear it off and the first one who reaches for me I have on the ground with his gun in my hands within seconds.

A gun which is then pressed to the soft skin under Natalia's jaw, who I have by the hair of her scalp with her legs kicked out from under her. She's decided not to put up much of a fight, but that works for me.

"Tell me where I am. Now!" I order, and when they hesitate I bring my foot down hard into the back of Natalia's ankle, tearing a cry of pain from her throat. "Three, two-"

But just as my finger reaches for the trigger a man bursts into the room with his hands held high.

"Ada, put the gun down!"

His voice leaves me in a state of pure shock and I stare into his eyes. The eyes of a man I never thought I'd see again.

"Steve?"

And he seems equally shocked to see me.

"Ada," he says slowly. "Natasha is my friend, she isn't your enemy. None of these people are your enemy. Put the gun down and I will explain everything."

I only pull her hair taut, pressing the muzzle deeper into her jaw as I shake my head. "You're dead- you're supposed to be dead!"

"So are you," he replies, and I remove the gun from Natasha's throat to aim it at him. "Ada, put the gun down and I will explain everything. I promise."

I look at him, searching for any hints of a mask like the Red Skull would wear, but that still wouldn't account for his voice and I know better to believe in ghosts. There's no limit to the experiments that could be conducted with his blood alone, and I know that both Howard and the government kept countless vials of it, along with my own. Blood that Zola could have acquired access to.

At a loss, I order, "Tell me something only Steve Rogers would know."

"You and Bucky eloped at the end of 1944 while we were on leave in Brooklyn," he tells me and I swallow hard at the sound of his name. "mYou called Howard and made him get Peggy and I to round up the Howling Commandos to drag the to the closest court house you could find. Bucky being Bucky was that excited he forgot all about the rings so you exchanged one of your dog tags instead. Peggy said that it defeated the purpose of wearing them but neither of you cared, because you thought that you'd go down together if the day ever came so it wouldn't matter."

Still I can't lower the gun despite how my hand shakes and tears well in my eyes. "All of the Howling Commandos were there as well as Howard and the judge, so anyone could know that story by now."

He steps closer until the gun's pressed to his chest, and he goes back further.

"You first met Bucky at Stark Expo in 1943," he says, and my finger stills over the trigger. "You'd seen us fighting over enlistment and tried to talk Erskine out of recruiting me, because just like Bucky you thought that I'd get myself killed the first second I stepped foot in the field."

"It was June," I remember, blurred images in my mind. "I- I'd been singing."

He nods, and he doesn't need to keep going, but he does. He does it in order to break me down enough to gain some control of the situation, to leave me pliable. A tactic he'd learned from me.

"You were, and later that night you met Bucky. You let him talk you into a dance when he'd lost the girls he'd brought with him and Howard had run off with a showgirl. He told you he was getting shipped out and you felt sorry enough for him that you kissed him goodbye and promised to save him a dance if he made it back." My lip quivers, and he says the words that finally sway me. "In all the months we spent doing USO shows together, you never told me about that night. Not until we went to break him out of that prison and you mentioned the five failed enlistment attempts that Bucky had told you about."

Slowly I lower the gun, staring at Steve in utter disbelief, but still I refuse to let the woman go even as she struggles against my grip, tapping my hand for release as we would when training in the Red Room.

"How the hell are you alive?"

"Captain, would you like us to bring in restraints?" a guard asks him, and immediately I raise the gun. Steve promptly steps between us, physically moving my arm to let Natasha go and taking the gun from my hand.

"No, no restraints," he says firmly, but they might yet need them.

"Why did they send one of her kind in here?" I ask and he quickly ushers Natasha out with an intimacy that seems strange, quiet words being exchanged before she pulls out an unfamiliar device and begins speaking into it on her way out. "Peggy wouldn't approve of this. Where the hell is she?"

"Everyone out," he orders roughly, and from the looks the guards wear I know there's something I'm not aware of. "You'll want to sit down for this."

Yet I remain standing as the guards file out of the room, and I demand to know, "Where's Peggy?" There's pain etched across his face and immediately I fear the worst. "Steve, where is she?"

"I-" he begins and puts his hands on my shoulders. "Please, sit down."

"I want to see her and Howard," I insist, growing more desperate by the second. "If you're here then they'd be here. You- you crashed into the ocean!" I exclaim hoarsely, my memories still utterly scrambled, but that much is fresh in my mind. "How are you alive?'

"I'll explain everything I swear," he says, and I've never seen him more devastated. "But, Ada I promise you are safe here. We are in New York, you aren't in Russia anymore. These guards are with the government, not Hydra, and definitely not Stalin, and you need to stay calm."

"They put a Red Room spy in here with me, the hell am I meant to think?" I ask through gritted teeth. "Who is she and why am I here? The government pardoned me for what I did, Howard made sure of that. So why am I being kept here and where are they? That spy told me that Peggy and Howard were on their way so you better tell me what the hell is going on Steve!"

Something in his face changes and he swallows hard as he sits me down on the edge of the bed. "Ada, I know this is going to be hard to hear-"

"Just tell me where Peggy is!" I grit out, and he doesn't answer. "Was there an attack, why-"

I trail off as he shakes his head and pulls a seat over, sitting back in it with a heavy expression, and there's a pit in my stomach as he asks, "What's the last thing you remember?"

And only then do I try to remember, only then I'm able to try, but it's all so blurred. "You were dead, you and-" I trail off and can't breathe as I touch the second set of dog tags around my neck. Remembering just how I found them, his arm... "Oh my god, James-"

Steve nods with a hand on my shoulder, tears in his own eyes. "He died not long before I crashed into the ocean. You were being held in solitary confinement for what you did to Zola when I went down."

"No," I say, suddenly standing and racking my brain for answers. "No, I went - I went looking for him. I found him." I touch the dog tags around my neck, his dog tags, and begin hyperventilating. "I found his body. Steve. I found his arm—it was severed."

He gently grabs me and tries to calm me down. "Whatever you found he's gone. He's at peace now, that's what matters. You mourned him. You spent more than half a year mourning him before you went searching for him. You just can't remember it right now."

Yet the memories keep rushing back to me. "The rest of his body was missing. All that was left was his arm." I turn away from Steve, a shaking mess. "Then I... oh god."

After weeks of confinement the guards stood dead at my feet, except for one.

"I swear, I don't know anything!"

I held his own gun to his head, feeling no remorse. "Where is Sergeant James Barnes?"

"I don't-"

I slammed the butt of the gun against his nose and felt the crack. "Where is he!"

"He's dead. You'll only find the Winter Soldier." Before I could react he shoved a cyanide pill down his throat with two last words. "Hail Hydra."

As he collapsed muffled screams filled the air from down the hall, and I heard the Russian words that I could never forget.

"Longing, rusted, seventeen."

With my gun raised I carefully stepped through the bodies left in my wake, treading towards the once heavily guarded cell at the end of the hallway I'd drawn the guards from.

"Daybreak, furnace, nine, benign."

More screams followed and I peered through the glass of the heavy door to see a shirtless man strapped down. His head was clamped in a device all too familiar and he was screaming as though his lungs could give away at any moment, but they wouldn't because he was built to withstand their torture.

And in my deepest horror my worst fears came true as I recognised the chest I had kissed so fondly, the chest I had slept upon for so many nights.

As I recognised the man I love.

James.

"Homecoming, one, freight car."

My darkest instincts kicked in as I reached into the vest of one of the fallen guards and pulled free a grenade with one purpose.

"To hell and back," I whispered as I stepped away from the door and let the grenade roll.

The blast failed to knock me back as it blew the door clean off its hinges, and with cold precision I walked in and gunned down every last man in that room without mercy, without remorse.

Only when the last bullet case hit the ground did I dare to breathe as I ran to my husband and clutched his face between my hands.

"James," I rasped as I removed the device clamped to his head, caressing his face as I had so long ago in that prison, until I saw the metal arm where his own should have been. I couldn't hide the horrified gasp that escaped my lungs, averting my eyes as if it were the figment of a terrible nightmare. "Oh James."

He continued staring numbly, as he had when I'd found him back in '43, but I was no stranger to the symptoms of shock. If we had the time I'd ease him out of it, to get a response from him before moving forward, but I set my jaw and kept moving, leaving no time to waste as I reached for the restraints. "We're going home, Buck."

I released the restraints only to feel a metal hand wrap around my throat and I didn't have a moment to react before I was lifted up and slammed onto the table he was strapped to only a moment ago. I choked at both the impact and his tightening fist, reaching for his wrists only to find his grip iron. I wasn't a stranger to the strength he harboured, but it was the first time I'd ever truly felt it without restraint.

"James?" I gasped, and I looked into his eyes only to find a stranger staring back at me. "James!"

Instinctively I pulled free the knife from the tactical belt I'd taken, only for him to catch my wrist. Despite my own enhancements, despite my training, I struggling against his inhumane strength as he pried it from my fingers and without hesitation drove it straight into my gut.

There was no time to process the shock that froze me, not as his metal fist only tightened around my throat and he twisted the knife, and so I choked out the words.

"Longing, rusted, seventeen." He slammed my head against the hard metal so hard I swore I heard a crack. "Daybreak, furnace, nine, benign." The pressure on my windpipe was unbearable, and with seconds until he crushed it, with no choice but death, I pulled the knife from my gut and buried it in his back. He collapsed on top of me just long enough I could whisper the final words. "Homecoming, one, freight car. Let go-"

Using the last strength I could muster I brought my feet up hard and kicked him back. Without him holding me up I hit the floor, gasping for air with one hand clutching my throat and the other my gut.

At the sight of me he staggered forward, falling to his knees with horror in his eyes unlike any I'd ever seen.

"Ada," he breathed in pure shock at the blood spilling from me as I gasped for breath. "Lina-"

"That wasn't you," I wheezed hoarsely, remembering the scientist's words, remembering what they had tried to do to us, and I looked at the metal arm he wielded as a weapon. "That was the Winter Soldier."

The name was familiar to me, for years I was the subject of the torture they'd employed in their attempts to create it, but in my worst nightmares I never could have imagined that they'd succeed with him.

He pulled me into his lap, shaking as his hand replaced mine in covering the wound, and I reached for the knife in his back to check how much blood he was losing, only to come to the immediate consensus that I was in far greater peril.

In all the time I knew him, in all the battles we fought together, I had never seen him so terrified, so horrified as he quaked, "The bleeding, it's not stopping."

"It will," I croaked dismissively, and gave him one single order as I pressed a gun into his hand, just like the first time. "On your feet, soldier. It's time to go home."

"He's alive!" I gasp out, shaking Steve as my voice raises. "I need to go back-"

"Ada," he panics. "I need you to listen to me."

"No Cap, you listen to me!" I yell in his face, knowing there's no time. "They're torturing him, they're-"

"Ada," he yells, desperate to calm me down. "He's dead!"

"No, no he's not!" I cry out, knowing that he thinks I'm insane, but what else is new? "Steve, we need to save him, please-"

Tears fill his eyes and no words come out of his mouth, and it dawns on me that something truly incomprehensible has happened.

"Steve?"

"Fuck," Bucky panicked as he half carried-half dragged me through the base, running through the cold halls, but there were guards at every corner. "Lina, I need you to stay with me."

I looked at the love of my life and touched the wound in my abdomen in a state of disbelief at just how lethal the attack was, feeling the hot blood running from it. I knew I'd recover from it, I'd survived worse after all, but the blow to my head was far more detrimental considering I felt the bone crack.

Under different circumstances I would have been proud of his fatal precision, and I would have attacked him with a smaller knife. "It's okay, I'm okay."

"Bullshit," he said as I stumbled and he adjusted his hold to lift me firmly into his arms bridal style. "We need to get the hell out of here."

Guards appeared from around the corner and immediately began running with weapons raised. Bucky ducked into the closest room and slammed the door shut behind us, putting me down so he could barricade it.

"Where's Steve?" he asked, and my heart shattered as I watched him, knife still in his back and, moving with such desperation. "They told me he's dead but I don't buy it. How far away is he?"

"James," I quaked, and he looked back at me as tears slipped down my face. "He's not coming."

He shook his head in denial despite knowing the truth, and devastion washed over us both, although his was quickly overshadowed with a familiar frustration. "You came alone?"

"Not much of a rescue, I know, but yes," I said, and even then he shook his head in disbelief. "I knew anyone else I brought would be killed on sight, so yes I came alone."

"God, you're suicidal," he murmured under his breath, and I couldn't exactly argue with his assessment. "Why-"

"Because I wanted to bury you, and then I learned there was still a chance..." I trail off, looking at the arm that's been welded to his body. "I couldn't leave you. Dead or alive."

"Lina..." he sighed in defeat, considering he's been just as reckless, if not more so, in the name of saving me. "Alright, the Howling Commandos. How far away are they? When was the last time-"

"I've been held here for weeks at least," I whispered, and somehow his face fell even more grave. "I thought Howard and Peggy might have-" I cut myself off, not letting myself hope for a last minute rescue. "No one knows where we are. We're on our own."

"Fuck," he muttered again as he looked around, pushing tables in an attempt to better barricade the door, but I learned myself that they aren't blast-proof.

"Buck," I breathed as I forced myself to accept our fate. After all, how many times could we cheat death? "I don't think we're making it out of here alive."

"One of us is, and it has to be you," he said, searching for any sort of medical equipment but finding nothing but broken test tubes. "Are you-"

"The bleeding's stopped and my head will be better soon," I said, not knowing if it was the truth. "I've survived far worse, and you know it."

But those words did nothing to ease his mind. "I- I couldn't stop myself."

"I know," I said sadly, only then taking in the true extent of what's been done to him as we heard helicopters overheard and knew that we wouldn't be escaping here on foot.

"There'll be snipers, bloodhounds..." he began, coming to the same terrible conclusion as I had because we'd been here before. "Are you sure we're on our own?"

I nodded remorsefully, knowing that Steve wasn't saving us this time.

"We should have stayed in Brooklyn," I whispered, and he turned to me with a sad laugh, brushing the hair out of my face.

"We should've," he agreed, trembling with tears upon touching the length of the hair that I haven't cut since the last time we'd been together, and he realised just how much time had passed since we last saw one another. "You shouldn't have come here."

"I had nothing left to lose," I said, smiling sadly. "And let's just say I'm pretty sure the government was finding something to put me back in prison for when I got on the plane to come here."

"Back in prison?" he questioned, and I pressed my lips together. "Jesus, Ada. Again?"

"I tortured Zola," I said, realising that it had fallen quiet out in the hallway, which meant nothing good. "They got to me before I could kill him, but I put him in one of those contraptions so he knew how it felt to have his mind torn apart."

His brows drew together in concern, for the state I must've been in, but he held no objection to my actions. "I hate to tell you this, but whatever you did wasn't enough. He-"

He cut himself off, looking down at his metal arm, and I reached out to grasp the hand of it without hesitation, even as he tried to withdraw it in disgust.

"You always told me to make it back in one piece," he remembers, and tears well in my eyes as he breaks down. "I should be dead, and you shouldn't be here-"

Gently I hushed him, even as I heard the preparing for something outside. We were barricaded in with no way out, and I wasn't going to spend my last moments with him trying to escape in vain.

"We always said to hell and back, didn't we?"

Still, he refused to lose faith.

"Ada, listen to me," he said, grasping my face with a bloody hand. "You're gonna get out of here and go home to Brooklyn okay? You're gonna marry a good guy and adopt kids and have a life where you can finally be free of all this alright?" Tears of guilt slipped down my face, and I couldn't bring myself to lie to him for his peace of mind, not even as he quaked, "You hear me?"

"You listen to me, my life didn't start until I met you, James," I cried, with no doubt in my mind that I'd rather die with him than live a life without him. "And it will end with you."

They slammed something akin to a battering ram into the door, trying to break through, and he looked at me, at the blood staining his hands as he swore, "I'm not going to let them make me a monster."

"James-"

"I'm not going to forget my name," he said, taking us both back to the state I'd found him in once before. "They're not going to take that from me. They can take my life, but not that."

He'd never sounded so defiant, so brave, and in that moment we both knew there was only one way out. To die as we were, rather than what they would make us.

He pressed the gun into my hands and I kissed him hard, tasting tears.

We were finally going to be free.

"To hell and back," I whispered, clutching the pistol between my shaking hands.

"To hell and back," he repeated as he guided the barrel of the gun to his head, and my hand covered his own.

We looked into each other's eyes, mourning the promises we'd made and the life we'd planned. He pressed his forehead against mine and I shut my eyes as my fingers found the trigger.

Yet there was only a click.

Our eyes met as we realised we were out of bullets, and devastation washed over us both. It was then we heard the words over the speakers. Those damn words.

"Longing, rusted, seventeen."

He looked to the door and back to me in panic, as afraid as I'd ever seen him.

"James," I quaked, watching in a state of shock as he pulled the knife from his back and tossed it at my feet, backing away from me.

"I'm not going to let them make me a monster," he repeated. "I'm not going to kill you."

"James, please," I whispered, knowing how strong he was. Truly believing I could somehow prevent the inevitable. "Just look at me. You can fight this-"

"Daybreak, furnace."

"Take the knife," he said, putting himself as far from me as he could and groaning in pain as he fought, as he begged, "Please, don't let me kill you."

I was crying. We were both crying.

"Nine, benign."

"I know you can do it," he said, the only person in this world who truly knew what I was capable of and who loved me still. "Please."

I saw the man I loved begging for me to save him and so I grasped the knife in my hand. Unable to move I beckoned him towards me and he fell to his knees, shaking with violent fear of what he was becoming as he took the and holding the blade and physically pulled it over his heart.

"I love you," he swore to me one last time, pressing the tip of the knife down until it drew blood.

"I love you too," I choked out, and I kissed him hard.

Then the final words rang through the air.

"Homecoming, one, freight car."

And I thrust the knife into his chest, only to at the last moment I divert my aim downwards.

Away from his heart.

My lips broke from his and no more tears fell as I pulled away and looked the Winter Soldier in the eye.

And the voice over the speakers gave one command.

"Kill the Red Widow."

I knew someday that some part of him would remember this, that I failed him when it mattered most, because I wasn't the monster they trained me to be, and so I whispered, "I'm sorry."

As he lifted me up by the throat the door blew off its hinges, throwing him off balance, and I was slammed into a glass cylinder. His grip around my throat never faltered as my head cracked against the glass, and I looked into his cold blue eyes as my vision finally started to go black and bullets ricocheted.

The last thing I felt was him being torn from me and the door of the cylinder was slammed shut with me inside. What could have only been a hallucination took hold as I looked into my mother's eyes, and she had only two words for me as ice filled the inside of the chamber and the world as I knew it came to a standstill.

"You failed."

Steve catches me as my knees buckle, a sob catching in my throat as he helps me down to the floor. "He- I found him," I whisper in vain, clutching the dog tags. "He was right there..."

He sits beside me as cold tears wet my face. "Ada, he's been gone for a long time." I look at him in confusion, and he finally tells me the truth. "He's been gone for almost seventy years."

I open my mouth but no words come out, and I don't argue as he waves his hand and the redhead comes in with a cigarette and a lighter.

"You know that I hate smoking, but you'll need it," he says as I take the cigarette between my shaking fingers. "This will be a very long story."

Author's Note: Just a disclaimer to say that this story will be acknowledging and criticising the racial and ideological prejudices of the 1940s. I'm preparing to graduate with a degree in history, during which I've studied in excruciating detail the horrific realities of Nazi and Soviet ideology and the war crimes they both committed in Eastern Europe, along with the Jim Crow laws in the United States. I began this fic a number of years ago but after undertaking my degree I've decided to rewrite in order for everything included to be as historically accurate as possible and sensitive to the current conflicts in Eastern Europe. I strongly condemn anti-semitism and racism in all its forms, along with Hitler and Stalin's respective regimes, and this will be reflected within the story.

The oc is of Russian descent and an unwilling agent of the Soviet Union's NKVD after being brought up in the Red Room by an abusive mother. The second chapter explores her background prior to 1943, and as such some aspects of this history may be uncomfortable to read as there is discussion surrounding the events of the Holocaust and Holodomor, as well as American racial segregation and anti-semitism. It is important for me to state considering the content of this story that I stand firmly with Ukraine and condemn the current regime in Russia along with the Soviet Union.

This fic will also reference war crimes, human/sex trafficking and the other dark themes surrounding both the oc's time in the Red Room and Bucky's time with Hydra, and these topics will be dealt with sensitively with no romanticisation. While there will be threatened and insinuated sexual assault, along with uncomfortable scenes that will be marked with content warnings, but there will be no graphic portrayals of sexual assault as I personally do not believe graphic depictions are necessary. I will also put a disclaimer for discussions around domestic violence due to the events that will occur while Bucky is the Winter Soldier.

As such this is a story with mature content and will be rated as mature for audiences above eighteen.