Fighting Back
As they requested, Lucy found herself in the ring facing the well trained Black Widow. Bucky didn't really like the sight at all. He didn't agree that Lucy should face off with the most trained combat agent in SHIELD and in the Avengers itself. Though he argued against it, everyone else voted that this had to be done. Lucy herself also claimed she was ready to be evaluated this way.
Natasha and Lucy circled around the mat. Natasha read her body language, trying to catch her weak spots and her strengths. She seemed to favor her left but it was just a ruse to hide the strength of her right. Lucy seemed to press more on the top of her toes to silent her steps which seemed unnecessary with an open attack situation. Either way, Natasha read Lucy and Lucy did the same.
They circle each other one more time, watching for the other to make the first move, and time seems to go by so slowly.
"Someone make a move already," Clint calls out on the sidelines.
Hearing this, Natasha goes ahead and sends a kick. Lucy is quick to duck it, but slow to send an attack on her own. Natasha is quickly on her, cornering Lucy with sharp punches and kick spins. Lucy is just blocking them and isn't making a move on sending an attack on her own. Bucky wondered why she was taking all of this and it wasn't until he looked into her eyes that he realized she was waiting for something.
Natasha sends a high kick, ready to do her signature move of swinging her legs over her opponent's neck and inhibiting them, but is stopped as Lucy grabs her kick mid-air. Lucy then pulls Natasha's leg forward and plants her hand on Natasha's neck. Lucy's eyes turned ghostly white and Natasha gasps as Lucy intrudes her mind.
Everyone acts fast at the sight of this, Steve and Clint pull Natasha away from Lucy's strong hold while Bucky catches Lucy before she falls to the ground. Clint lightly slaps Natasha's face in order for her to snap out of whatever haze she was in. Bucky looks down at Lucy to find her eyes slowly turning back to their usual brown. They both gasp at the same time.
"What the hell was that?" Steve shouts at Lucy.
Lucy cowers away from his shout and Bucky immediately shields her away from Steve.
"She did nothing Steve," Natasha adds in as Clint helps her to her feet. "I'm fine."
Steve narrowed his eyes at Natasha and looked over at Lucy with suspicion.
"What did you do?"
"I looked into her mind," Lucy answers quietly. "I learned what she learned."
Natasha rubs the back of her neck nervously and looks up at Steve.
"She copied my combat memories and took them as her own," Natasha explains to him. "What I can do, she can do too."
Steve looks at Lucy with an unreadable expression before turning back to Natasha and Clint.
"Take her to Banner," Steve orders. "Make sure she's really alright."
Natasha rolls her eyes at his command knowing that nothing had been tampered with. Following Steve's order, Clint helps Natasha out of the gym and they both head to the upper levels where Bruce worked in.
Steve and Bucky turn to Lucy who was rubbing her hand anxiously at their stares.
"I thought it'll be ok..." she whispers to James.
"You said you could hold your own." Bucky replies as he looks down at her a bit disappointed.
"I can," Lucy tells him. "But I usually didn't have to for this long."
"What do you mean?" Steve asks her.
Lucy shifts nervously on her feet and her eyes flicker to James. She then turns to Steve with worry before opening her mouth to respond.
"When Hydra let me out the Soldier was always there with me," Lucy explains to them. "He was the one who kept me safe when trouble arose in a mission."
Bucky turns to her with surprise.
"You mean... we worked together?" Bucky asks her.
"For a few missions and then it all stopped." Lucy tells him her face turning into a scowl as she tried to remember more details. "The memories are all jumbled together. I can't remember the details clearly."
"How come this is the first time we're hearing about this?" Steve asks Lucy.
"I wrote it down on my notebook," Lucy explains as she goes over to sports bag and pulls out the journal. She holds it up to the both of them. "I have a meeting with Sam later today. I was going to talk about it then."
Steve was about to grab the journal from her hand and read over it himself when Bucky stopped him from doing so. He turns to Lucy, a bit frustrated from the withholding of this information that involved him.
"Lucy, you got to tell me when you remember stuff about me." Bucky tells her. "I need to know."
"And so do I," Steve adds in.
Lucy looked at both of them and nodded.
"I'm sorry," Lucy whispers. "I didn't know..."
Steve sighs at this while Bucky just offers her a smile.
"We're done for the day," Steve tells them. "We'll resume training tomorrow morning."
Steve grabs his bag and heads out of the gym. Bucky was following after him until Lucy called his name. She ran up to catch up to him.
"What you said earlier... about telling you my memories of you," Lucy tells him as she readjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. "I was wondering if you could do the same for me."
Bucky was surprised by the request but knew that it made sense.
"Yeah," Bucky answers. "You'll be the first to know if I remember something."
"Thanks," Lucy says.
Bucky looks down at her and was about to ask her to have lunch with him before he felt a sudden breeze pass by his side.
"Pietro!" Lucy exclaims gleefully as she sees the silver haired runner a few feet ahead of them. She laughs lightly as Pietro bowed down at her.
"I ordered lunch for us," Pietro tells her as he extends his arm for her to take. "Italian, just as you requested."
"Thank you," Lucy says with a smile as she takes his arm. They both start to make their way down to the commons and Bucky is left to watch them walk away. Lucy turns back to him as they round the corner and waves him goodbye before disappearing.
For some reason, one that he couldn't explain, Bucky felt disconnected.
She was laughing at him. The Soldier couldn't recall what he had said to make that beautiful sound escape her lips but she was laughing. She ran away from him every time he tried to reach for her, escaping his grasp by a mere second. She would laugh again and run further down the hall. Her dress was a midnight black, flapping around her as she ran further and further down the hall.
"You are so slow, soldier," her voice taunted him.
"If I catch you, then the game is over," the Soldier said smiling at her.
"Perhaps," she answered. "But if you catch me, you'll win a prize."
"And what will that prize be?"
"Whatever you want it to be," she giggles out, continuing to escape his grasp once more.
The Soldier looked around the deserted hallways. Their current station being an old one, all of the security cameras were inactive.
"We shouldn't be out here too long," the Soldier warned her. "They'll punish us for it."
The smile that once graced her face slowly fades away. He hated himself for being the voice of reason in the situation, but for the safety of them both, he had too.
"Just a few more minutes more, please?"she asked him quietly. "We never see each other anymore... not that I remember anyways."
The Soldier couldn't help but give in to her whims. She was right. They never paired them up anymore and if they did, it was wiped out of him.
She smiled at him, illuminating the room once more. He began to go after her and she continued to slip through his hold. They made it out onto the balcony in which the Soldier was finally able to corner her between the railing and himself.
"I got you, beautiful." the Soldier states as she just looked for a way to slip from his hold. "Now where's my prize?"
She looked up at him with such joy before looking behind her. There was a mischievous glint in her eyes before she pressed a kiss on his cheek and turned away from him.
"Would you like to know a secret?" she asked him.
The Soldier was confused at her question. What possible secret could she have that he already didn't know?
She turned back to face him with a very crazed smile. She let go of his arms and pulled herself over the railing. Before the Soldier could make sense of what she was doing, she flung herself back. The Soldier immediately ran to the ledge, his heart in his throat, waiting for her body to hit the floor.
Bucky searched for her through the whole building. She wasn't in her room and not in the commons like the others. Sam had said that their session was scheduled for later. Even Pietro hadn't seen her this morning. Bucky was walking through the hallway with possibilities of where she could be when he catches sight of her in the gym. He had never expected to find her there this late in the day and it wasn't until he came in that he realized why.
Bruce and Tony were watching from the second level with computers and screens surrounding. Lucy was downstairs out on the sparring mat with Steve and Natasha. There were electrodes on her forehead and chest which Bucky assumed was meant to measure her heart rate and brain activity.
Without warning, the sparring started with Lucy being the first to attack. Steve was doing well in blocking until Lucy kicked his open right side. As Steve kneeled over in pain, Lucy took advantage and swung both her legs over his neck and spinned down. In a matter of seconds, Steve's body slams into the ground and Natasha cheers at the sight of her spin move done perfectly.
"That's what I'm talking about," Natasha exclaims as she claps Lucy on.
Lucy lightly smiles as she looks down at Steve with an apologetic look.
"Sorry about that," she apologizes to him.
"You did what you had to do," Steve groans out as he gets off the floor. They both then look up at the second level were Tony and Bruce were typing rapidly into the monitors.
"Did you get what you needed?" Lucy calls out to them.
"Yup," Tony answers as he offers them a thumbs up.
"The neurons in your brain exploded with activity everywhere," Bruce shouts out to her in intellectual excitement. "Not only that, but it seems your power is able to reflect muscle memory that isn't even yours. This extends beyond just stealing memories, but stealing actions as well."
"We should call Clint down," Steve states. "See if this theory of yours is true."
While Tony instructs Jarvis to do as the Captain had said, Bucky makes his way into the gym and clears his throat at all of them. Lucy turns to him instantly and smiles at him. She runs up to meet him.
"Did you see what I just did?" she asks him excitedly. "I was able to take down Steve with what I learned from Natasha yesterday. I can't believe I just did that!"
Bucky nods at her and picks at the electrode that was sticking out of her forehead.
"I didn't know all of you were testing your powers out," Bucky says. "I'll liked to be warned."
Lucy's smile falters at his disapproving tone.
"Oh well... it kinda happened really fast." Lucy explains to him. "Once Bruce found out about what I did to Natasha, he and Tony started talking and they came up with this experiment. I didn't even know I was going to be doing this today."
Bucky crosses his arms and was about to tell her it was fine but is interrupted by Steve walking over to him.
"Hey Buck," Steve greets him as he walks past them and grabs a water bottle that was nearby. Bucky nods at him before turning to Lucy remembering the urgent thing he had to tell her.
"I remembered something in my dream last night," Bucky tells her. "I've dreamt about this memory before, but I never told you about it. I actually haven't told anybody about it..."
"What is it?" Lucy asks him interested.
"We were out on some balcony," Bucky tells her. "It must have been after some mission because we weren't back at headquarters and we were able to easily escape our rooms."
Bucky pauses as he recalled the game they played and the kiss Lucy placed on his cheek.
"I chased you out onto the balcony... you kissed me."
Lucy begins to blush at this and Bucky nervously scratches the back of his neck.
"It was on the cheek. It was nothing," Bucky brushes off. "The thing is, you told me you had a secret, and then you threw yourself off the balcony and I don't see your body hit the ground. The memory ends there."
Bucky looks down at Lucy who seems to have paled dramatically. She swallows nervously and looks away from Bucky.
"Hey Luce," Tony calls out from above. "You ok there, kiddo? Your heart is beating like crazy."
"I'm fine," Lucy responds before turning back to Bucky. She gives him a faint smile as she takes a step back from him.
"Something tells me you remember what I'm talking about," Bucky states.
"I don't remember the memory, but I do remember the secret." Lucy whispers. She looks up and meets Bucky's eyes. He sees that whatever the secret she's holding from him wasn't the one he had assumed before.
"Lucy..." Bucky calls out, but is interrupted as Clint makes his way in with a bow and arrow.
"I have to go," Lucy quietly says as she turns her back on him and makes her way to the other side of the gym. Bucky watches as they talk for a while before Lucy does as instructed. She takes a copy of Clint's memory before taking over the bow from his hands. In a matter of seconds, Lucy sends three arrows out onto the target that's fifteen feet away. Each one of them was a bullseye.