It Was My Choice
The days pass, and finally, she is allowed to leave the hospital ward. She could have left, but even with the chip gone, she’s still struggling to not obey all the time as if she has to. Granted, it is nice to do what your doctor tells you normally, but the choice is hers, and that’s the point that she needs to keep in mind, even though with big decisions—like stepping in front of a bullet for someone who tortured her—are hers to make, and she remembers that for those.
It’s the little ones that get her, like choosing between popcorn or caramel corn when Peter offered her some the other day, or whether or not she wants to listen to the radio or not, or watch something on television.
She chose both for the first—she favors the caramel corn, and the other day she did listen to the classical music station, and she never really decided on that last one, but when the last one happened, Sam said that she doesn’t have to decide, but whatever she wants can happen.
She’s fighting to keep her choices being made by herself, not any agent, but her last big choice seemed to leave her in a spot that almost ended with her dead.
And after she started to wake up more, James stopped visiting, and the people who would tell her why mostly said that they could guess why, but the actual reason could be something else.
But now she is walking out of the elevator, headed for the gym where James is training.
She asked Jarvis where he was, and the AI told her promptly, letting her confront him.
She sees James pounding on a punching bag, one hand wrapped in tan strips to protect it, the other gleaming in the artificial light.
She doesn’t wait for him to stop.
“James.”
James stops his pounding, turning to give her his attention, even though he really was only halfway through.
“You’re up.”
It isn’t a question, of course. Only a fact.
“Are you all right?” She asks, because that’s the only question she has right now.
Bucky just stopped visiting, so, she assumed that he was working on something.
She had asked if he was on a mission, but when she did ask Natasha—who just put down her book at first, face blank—she got her answer.
“No.”
“Is he injured?”
“No, he’s fine. He’s been training.”
Still, she knew the files of the Winter Soldier, and even though James is different, he still went through the training, just like how Gretchen trained and is still a soldier, even with her newfound freedom.
James would train even if he was hurt, as long as he could. Gretchen hasn’t been able to, but now that she is, she is determined to.
James looks sort of confused by her question, so she continues.
“You stopped visiting, and no one would expand on what you were doing. Besides training.”
“I’m not hurt.”
“Understood.”
A pause.
“Are you okay?”
Bucky did have certain Avengers keep him updated, as well as Jarvis, as he was worried for her, but he was ready to spaz, and shouting at Gretchen during that time would not be a good idea, and though he is better, he still worries about losing it sometimes.
Granted, that’s usually after a nightmare, or, more often, a night terror.
“I am healing satisfactorily. Dr. Cho has permitted me to leave the ward, and I will be sent back to my quarters this evening, as I have been released.”
“How is your bullet wound?”
“It is healing well. Do you have information on Ajara Agni? I was not cleared to know such information before.”
“She’s in prison.”
“She has been punished?”
“She’s still being investigated. Stark wants everything she’s done up front so we won’t have any surprises.”
“But the laws have been enforced?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you, James.”
“She’ll be in prison for the rest of her life.”
“If that is the law, then, yes.”
“You could have died doing what you did.”
“I have been told that I almost did.”
“What was it for, a mission? Was it something they did to make you protect her? Because if they’re still controlling you, we can fix that. I mean, we can’t, but we know some people who can, since they helped me.”
“It was not a mission.”
“And no one’s controlling you?”
“No.”
“Then why did you protect her?” James asks, and it’s not the calmest he could be, but he’s not quite shouting yet.
“I saw the bullet’s course, and if I had not moved her instead of letting myself be shot, and if she was safe that way, someone else was going to die because of it. I chose my course of action.”
“You chose to almost die to protect someone who controlled you for years?!?”
Now he’s shouting.
“I chose to protect her, yes.”
“We have files on what she did to you, and all of those other girls! You weren’t the first, and you weren’t the last, but you were the only one to survive out of all of those girls, and there were little boys, too! They all died!”
An image of snarling dogs comes to mind, children in metal cages crying out as the dogs snap at any child who is too close to the edges of her cage.
But that was before Agni’s time to rule, and Gretchen’s handlers before were more focused on keeping the children out of their way when they needed to.
Agni isn’t her only handler now—no, she has no handler, since she’s free—as women are still not allowed to truly be in charge there, as there aren’t even any female doctors or top scientists in the Program, but Gretchen knows that when the Program failed—when she was captured—the only person who would know where the last handler would be would be Agni.
She remembers how she no longer had contact with her handler, when they tried to kill her, and she wanted to live.
She was the only Experiment left, and they could not remake what made her enhanced, as the only person who knew the foreign key ingredient in the serum just happened to be dead—Gretchen remembers how he programmed her to kill him, but she only remembers that because they never wiped that memory, wanting her to remember the death—the only death that she would be permitted to remember without something blocking important information, at least until the chip was removed, and now bits of memories are coming back.
That scientist stopped breathing far before she stopped trying to kill him, and she was still trying when the guards came.
The Program is a part of Hydra, but what is left of it is small.
After all, Gretchen doesn’t know it yet, but Bucky knows that—according to the files—the plan after cutting communication to Gretchen, and after she was dead, the scientists, guards, and cleanup crew—everyone but the handlers—were going to die, and they most certainly did.
It was bloody, but they did it, and pictures of the damage were included in the files that Agni had.
“Agni is a coward,” she finally says. “She will pay for her crimes.”
“Do you know about the other…”
Bucky does not want to say the word handler.
“My other handler. Erin Walker.”
“Every other member is dead besides Agni.”
“What about Walker? The main handler should have been-“
“Agni poisoned him, and they found him in the train luggage.”
The train. She was there to carry the body somewhere else.
“Walker is dead?” She tries to ask, but it comes out as a flat statement.
She does not feel relieved. She just wanted them to face the law, and she did not want them to die.
And now one of them is dead.
“Are you okay?” Bucky asks, and Gretchen nods.
“I will go to my chambers so that you can continue training.”
"Gretchen-"
"Do not ask again why I did it, James," she snaps, and then seems to wilt. "It was my choice."
She straightens.
"Agni has faced the law. That is what I wanted. The Program is gone."