2024

Bucky stared in disbelief. 

"I can still hardly use this hand," Isabella said, holding her left one up.

"You're left-handed."

She nodded. "Thank you for that."

"I was cutting out your trackers. I watched them inject them into you a few years before that. I didn't know why I was doing what I was doing... but I knew I had to get you out of that one way or another."

"What about your trackers?"

"They didn't need one on me. It was you they were more worried about."

"Me?"

Bucky nodded, "you kept wandering off on missions, even after they started wiping us. Eventually they had to put one in you. Listen, I shouldn't have left you. I- that has been haunting me every damn night. That decision. I should've taken you with me."

"Yeah, you should've."

"Where did you go afterwards?"

"The Red Room found me."

His eyes grew wide.

"I worked with the widows for several years after that. Chemical subjugation is what they called it. I was working on a deep cover mission in Siberia when a few former widows threw some red dust in my face and woke me up from whatever they did. The details are blurry there."

"When was that?"

"2018, they told me the room fell two years before that but finding the widows who were still operating around the world took some time. And then a month later I was dust. I've had my freedom for maybe two years."

"The widows that found you, did they know who you were?"

"Yes. They let me walk free, as well."

Bucky was silent for a moment, taking in the information he had been given. 

"You can have your freedom if you just go with Rhodey and talk to them. They pardoned me, they'd do the same for you."

"And then what?"

"You have a place to live."

She tilted her head, "how?"

"You'll know if you just comply. Please. You've got a shot at having some peace."

Isabella let out a small laugh, a laugh Bucky hadn't heard in 50 years. 

"Peace? You know we won't ever get that."

He couldn't disagree with that. His eyes landed on her forearm, the memory of cutting her open replaying in his head while he stared at her scar. The scar he shamefully gave her. 

"Please. It's either this or you go by force."

Isabella sighed, "you should've just left me alone in Scotland."

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a.n
short chapters i'm sorrryyyy