Remembering Her
It wasn't anything new for Bucky to remember things. Most of it was nonsense Hydra drilled in. Others were about his life before the war. Some of it mattered, and some of it did not. Either way, Bucky wrote down every dream, every piece of memory, every name of his past targets down on a notebook. Over the long year, Bucky has filled about 10 journals with his memories and there were more still waiting to be filled.
Steve had found Bucky after a few months of Shield exposing the Hydra agents within and therefore exposing themselves. Bucky had saved Steve from the helicarrier but had disappeared right afterwards. His intentions wasn’t to hide from the one person he vaguely remembered. It was more about hiding the clutches from Hydra. As time went on, Bucky hid and remembered more and in the end, Steve found him before Hydra did. This is how Bucky ended up in Stark tower alongside the Avengers.
The Avengers had accepted him surprisingly well. Before he could be set free, Bucky had to go through psychological and physical tests to make sure he was indeed physically and mentally healthy. Having done that, training started and it was hard to miss the obvious experience he had. After a few weeks, Bucky grew comfortable with the Avengers and therefore was soon one initiated as one of them. The hunt for Hydra was bigger than before and with Bucky’s locked intel, everyone was ready for the hunt.
Any memory that Bucky deemed useful was researched, which ten out of ten times would end up being the team’s next hit. Hydra bases were found, infiltrated, and stripped clean of information. They found the Maximoff twins this way and gained two more allies in the fight against Hydra. After a year of attacking Hydra bases, the Avengers hit a lull. Bucky had no other ideas of Hydra bases and the Maximoff twins were too new to know of anything else than the base they had been found in. Tony put Jarvis to use but had yet to come up with anything. It had been two weeks and the team refused to believe that Hydra had really been fully exterminated.
It wasn’t strange for Bucky to remember things but lately it had been childhood nonsense... Until now.
Bucky didn't care how early in the morning it was or how everyone was dead asleep. He made Jarvis call everyone to the meeting room while he racked his brain for anymore information. When that became useless, Bucky asked Jarvis to search through Hydra's encrypted files for anything that could connect to this very vague memory, but that came up useless too. With nothing concrete to show, Bucky had no other choice but to enter the conference room empty handed.
"What's with the early call?" Tony asks annoyed as he rubbed his red shot eyes and tugged at his Iron-Man t-shirt. Tony looked up groggily and glared at the Winter Soldier. "Can't you see some of us need our beauty sleep?"
"Tony..." Steve calls out in the same tone of annoyance but directed to Stark instead of Bucky. "You know full well that Bucky wouldn't have called us together if it wasn't important."
Tony rolls his eyes but wasn't awake enough to continue with the argument. Bucky gave a thankful glance to Steve who nodded tiredly at him.
"Buck, what do you have for us?" Steve asks him.
"I remembered something." Bucky says unsurely.
"Clearly." Tony remarks.
"Shut up, Tony." Natasha groans out in her corner. "It's too early in the morning for me to bear your sarcasm so just cut it before I cut you."
"Daddy Barton, Natasha's being mean to me again." Tony whines out.
"Can you two please stop that?" Clint grits out. "I already deal with two kids at home. I don't need to deal with two kids at work either."
"Seriously guys, Bucky remembered something." Steve pipes in. "The least we can do is hear him out. Besides, I thought everyone was itching for a mission so the faster Bucky tells us what he knows, the faster we can plan an attack."
"This isn't an attack mission, Steve." Bucky states. "It's a rescue."
"A rescue?" Tony exclaims, suddenly awake.
"Yeah, a rescue." Bucky repeats his eyes closing tightly. "I only saw a fragment this time but it's enough, or I think it should be enough. I don't know..."
"Bucky, what did you see?" Bruce asks him, notebook open, ready for notes.
Bucky closes his eyes again, his mind struggling to pull back that memory that so desperately wanted to remain hidden. It hurt his head a little bit but not enough for him to stop.
"I was being dragged out of cryo, soldiers had to carry me out because I was too weak to walk." Bucky starts to explain to them. "Waking from cryo is the same as just waking up. Disoriented, groggy, not completely conscious..."
"So pretty much what everyone is feeling right now?" Tony interrupts.
"TONY!" everyone shouts at the same time, annoyed by the unnecessary comment.
"Continue, please Bucky." Bruce states, seeming to be the only person fully awake, and smart enough to take down this information.
"I saw her." Bucky states as his eyebrows furrowed.
"Her?" Steve asks surprised.
"She was just coming back from being wiped." Bucky states grimly. "We would pass each other every time I was taken out. I would be on my way to be cleared and she was just coming back. I went out on a mission and she was being put down to sleep."
"I thought you didn't remember much?" Natasha asks narrowing her eyes down at Bucky after his explanation was done.
"I didn't... I don't..." Bucky whispers. "She was always the first thing I saw out of cryo and the last thing on my mind when I was wiped."
The room became silent as Bucky said this. The topic of him being wiped was a very serious and grave matter that still hit everyone.
"Do you have any idea of who she is? What she looked like? Any possible mutations, powers, or skills that she possesses?" Bruce asked Bucky.
"No, I'm sorry." Bucky answers.
"She has brown hair, held a simple kind of beauty..." Pietro states, causing everyone to look at the twins in the back of the table, who had been quiet this whole time. "Her eyes always seemed... seemed... Wanda, what's the word?"
"Cold." Wanda tells them. "Her eyes were cold. Devoid of any emotion."
"You know who I'm talking about then?" Bucky asks slightly hopeful.
"Yes," Wanda answers for both of them. "But this shouldn't be a rescue mission, it should be an execution."
Wanda gets up from her seat and storms away from the conference room without another word. The room became silent once more, questions lingering in the air, and everyone shifted glances from Bucky to Pietro.
"Care to explain why your sister thinks we should kill this mysterious her than save her?" Natasha asks Pietro.
"The woman was the one who recruited me and Wanda." Pietro starts to tell them. "She was the one who convinced Hydra was the way we could get our revenge on Stark." Pietro glances over to Tony with an apologetic glance. "No offense."
"All's forgiven and forgotten." Tony waves off. Pietro nods at this and continues with his story.
"This mysterious woman was never seen again until Wanda and I received our powers." Pietro tells them. "We thought her an angel, a familiar face after all the cruelties we suffered with the Hydra scientists and handlers, but it ended up she was just like the rest of them. She was the one instructed to teach us control in our powers. She was the one who not only broke our bones for them to heal, but broke our minds for Hydra's brainwashing."
"Ok so she wasn't a good person," Tony remarks. "Neither was Winter over there, but he's been house trained."
"Tony..." Steve calls out.
"It's fine, Steve." Bucky tells him. "I'm used to this by now."
"See!" Tony exclaims. "House-trained."
"Look, this woman, whoever she is, she's quite dangerous." Pietro tells them. "Wanda can create illusions and enter a part of one's mind, but this woman... this woman can infiltrate all of it. The things she's made Wanda see causes my sister to still have nightmares."
"Sounds familiar," Clint comments, remembering his time spent being mind controlled by Loki, shivering at the memory.
"Any idea of a name?" Bruce asks Pietro.
"They only had one name for her." Pietro answers. "Ангел на тъмнината."
"Translation please." Tony states.
"Angel of Darkness." Bucky translates causing everyone to shiver unintentionally at the title given to the mysterious woman.
"Why didn't you tell us about her before, Maximoff?" Natasha asks Pietro.
"Because we believed her dead." Pietro answers. "After we saw the aggressive super soldiers being exterminated in cryo by Hydra's hand, we assumed she was too."
"From what you've told us, she seems too big of an asset for Hydra to kill." Steve states. "We'll start researching her more later today. I'll call Sam to help and maybe Clint or Natasha could go over to Jane's and get Thor to come in. For now, everyone get a few more hours of sleep before we're consumed by work."
Everyone starts to get up to leave before Bucky's question stops them in their tracks.
"So is this a rescue or execution mission?" Bucky asks concerned. Everyone looked to Steve for an answer. Steve didn't know how to respond. He noticed how Bucky was worried, rooting a seed of curiosity within Steve as to why Bucky wanted to save this mysterious woman that seemed more aligned than Hydra than her own self.
"We'll figure that out later, Buck." Steve sighs out.
"I would make up your mind soon," Bucky tells him quietly. "Something tells me she just got out of cryo.”
"Get ready." he tells her, throwing the garment bag on the bed without any compassion. "We're due to make an appearance soon."
"I'm remembering things," she tells him. Her eyes staring at the dark wall in front of her, lost in her own mind to not notice her blank gaze. "I'm remembering..."
"As long as you're a good girl and do as I say, you can keep remembering things, ok?" the man tells her, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look up at him. "If not, I'm sure we can make do and find a way to wipe you here. Is that understood?"
"Yes," the woman shakily answers.
"Good." the man says dropping her chin before tightening his tie. "We have a dinner to attend so make yourself presentable and make it quick."
The man leaves the room without another word and the woman sighs. She grabs the black garment bag and starts to unzip it. Her hand caresses the soft texture of the dress, pausing to admire the design. She could have simply wasted her day away admiring the black gown if it wasn't for the annoyed grunt from the man in the other room. She sighs again, takes the gown out of the bag, and starts to get ready.
She slowly unzips the zipper on her back and let's the dress drop to the ground. Her back was bare, but not devoid of scars. There were deep lacerations all around her soft skin. The woman didn't pay them any mind, having vague memories of how those got there. Instead, the woman focuses on extending her wings. The bones cracks from her spine, skin shifts away to make room, and out comes out black wings with silver tips.
The woman rolls her neck, letting her wings extend and stretch to their fullest potential. She lets out a sigh of contempt before closing her eyes and willing her wings back under her skin. She rolls her bare shoulders and picks up the gown from the garment bag and starts to put it on.
The woman then makes her way to her vanity and starts to style her hair in an elegant low bun. The make-up was light but the diamond earrings were not. She places the ruby ring on her finger and painted her lips a dark red to match. Last of all, she placed the silver necklace on and tucked away the silver cross under the dress' hemline.
"I'm ready to go darling," she calls out as she put on dark red stilettos. "Wouldn't want to miss your inauguration dinner as Hydra's new supreme leader."