Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Recurring dreams, according to science (or, more accurately, a Quora thread populated by uneducated answers), are not a sign of mental deterioration. They do not indicate a hypersensitivity to stress or anxiety, nor are they an amalgamation of the physical pain and hardship that a body undergoes during a traumatic episode. They are, simply, dreams. 

Yelena didn’t believe this. 

It went like this, every time: Russian cold, the kind of cold that made her hair feel brittle, and a snow so dense it didn’t collapse under her weight. The cracking of a whip, somewhere behind the walls. And Yelena, maybe ten, maybe eleven, closing her eyes. 

Natasha was there. Her fingers were red from rope burn, but she was carding them through Yelena’s hair anyway, trying to coax away the ice. “It was just one night, Lena.”

“Then why did it feel like a thousand?”

Yelena heard Natasha tsk, but she refused to open her eyes. “Because you were in no state of mind to know. That is how they do this. You lose your footing, and they sweep you away. You can’t keep letting them win.” 

“I am not letting them do this,” Yelena argued, her fists curling despite the blue in her fingertips. “They did this to me.” 

Natasha shushed her. “They’ll hear.”

“Let them.”

Natasha yanked on her hair– tight– and Yelena yelped and finally opened her eyes. She knew what she’d see. Her sister’s pulled lips, her furrowed brow. Worry. A weakness. 

“You have to play their way,” Natasha whispered. “You must promise me that you will out-survive the others.”

They’d had this conversation thousands of times before, but that was before Yelena had realized what happened to girls who didn’t try hard enough. Yesterday, when she’d failed to shoot fast enough, they’d thrown her out into the dawn and hadn’t let her back in. Not when she’d pounded at the door with her fists until they burned, not when she’d wailed because she could no longer feel her feet, not when she’d gone quiet with pain in the early hours of the next morning. Natasha had found her curled up beside a tree, a quarter mile from the Red Room, half heartedly trying to get away. No one could escape, of course, but when you’re near-dead, anything feels possible. 

So now, Yelena stilled, blinking frost from her lashes. “I’m not good enough.”

Natasha frowned. “You will be after this.”

And she was right. Yelena became the best. And then she woke up. 

Her head pounded, and something was ringing in her ears. Beep, beep, beep– She thwacked the alarm next to her bed, groaning when it continued right on, unbothered by her bleariness. With newfound frustration, she slid out of bed and unplugged it, cursing. Valentina herself had hooked the team up with top of the art technology, which meant that some things were purposefully engineered to be just slightly irritating, such as alarms that did not turn off when the power button was pressed. It was the best jab she could get, now that Yelena had blackmail. 

That blackmail was in the kitchen, making breakfast. She knew because she could smell it burning. She drew in a deep breath and shook out her hands. They still felt cold from frostbite. She wondered, for a moment, if she’d open her bedroom door and see the Russian forest. 

But she was greeted by Bucky. 

“Report came in this morning.” He handed her a tablet, which she fumbled with and grimaced at. 

“It’s too early for reports.” 

He glared at her. “It’s one o’clock.”

Lunch, then, was what was burning. Yelena yawned and fell into pace with Bucky, scrolling through the data he’d given her. She hated the reports. Valentina curated them to be intentionally overwhelming so that John, Bob, and Alexei were fed up with reading them. That left Bucky, Yelena, and Ava to unpiece the obnoxious puzzles and decipher their next mission. 

“This is bullshit.” She scoffed at the tablet and shoved it at Bucky, who took it with a huff. “She’s making us run errands.”

“It’s recon. We did this in the war, it’s part of the job—”

“So you’re defending her?”

Bucky grit his teeth. “No, Yelena, but we don’t have a choice either way, do we? This is how being what we are is gonna work. We could take her mission, or we could do our own, but what would that be?” 

Yelena flattened her lips into a line. He was right, not that she liked it, but still. They weren’t fit for the big threats. Natasha had done it, somehow, fought the aliens and died to one. But Yelena wasn’t built for that– she’d been a gnat to Bob, and she’d never faced off against a super that wasn’t Taskmaster. She’d thought that being on a big name team would land her big name villains. But so far, Valentina had them chasing down convenience store robbers (often single fathers, stealing dessert for their kids) or traffic violators (usually frat brothers who ignored the litter fine signs). 

Bucky argued that this upped their street cred. Yelena wasn’t so sure that punishing New Yorkers for the little things made her anyone’s favorite person, let alone hero. They needed something colossal, like Bob, but not. She didn’t want to fight Bob again, not after the dreams she’d been having. 

“You want a real mission?” Bucky asked, his eyes flying to the kitchen. Bob was pouting over his burnt grilled cheese. John was laughing. “Goddamnit. Turn around.”

She blinked at him. “What?”

“Turn around and start walking the other way.” His brow was furrowed, and something in his face told her that she didn’t want to question him. She swerved around headed back towards her room. 

Bucky’s jaw was tight from grimacing. “ Sam called me yesterday–”

“I thought you were fighting with Sam.”

He cut her a glare. “He has a real job. He suggested us for it– you, specifically.”

Yelena halted. “You kept this from me? You know I’ve been asking for something real, Bucky, this sounds pretty fucking real if it’s coming from Sam Wilson–”

“It involves the Red Room.”

The burning smell was suddenly overwhelming. Yelena couldn’t help her eyes from widening. “What?”

Bucky glanced away. “Sam says a few of the women went Hydra. It goes deep, a government thing, one of the leads Steve was working on before. . . It doesn’t matter. We could drop it and let the Avengers take it.”

“ We’re the Avengers.”

He sighed. “The real Avengers. Sam’s people. Non-government.” 

Yelena’s tongue felt thicker than it should. “That would give them an upper hand.”

“You really care about that?” Bucky side-eyed her, still facing down the hall. She wasn’t surprised. The words Red Room and Hydra in the same sentence spelled bad news for them both. “We don’t have to chase this. Sam gets it, he said he’d do it alone–”

“It’s a real mission.” Yelena swallowed hard and set her shoulders backward, standing a little straighter. “And we’ve got no real successes under our belt other than Bob. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Bucky looked like he wanted to slap her. “Did you hear what I said about the Red Room?”

“Natasha and I eradicated it, we saved the girls, this must be bad intel.”

“Or a copycat.”

“Then they must be freed.” 

He closed his eyes and sighed again. “I’ll let Sam know. But the rest of the team–”

“Is coming.” Yelena had already made her mind up. The thought of the Red Room made her skin prickle with fear the way it would when a storm was coming or a gun was pulled. But if there were innocent girls there, trapped, forced to fight and forced to kill. . . Someone had to do something about it. 

She had them mission-ready in twenty-two minutes, which was almost record time. John usually took too long adjusting his beret. Ava liked to start arguments, and Alexei liked to argue back. Bucky was always already out the door. Bob, most of the time, stayed behind. 

“Yelena?”

He was holding his burned grilled cheese like it was a dead animal, gently, with a fondness that made Yelena’s lips quirk up. “Yes, Bob?”

“Um, so I know that I don’t usually come on missions because I might. . .”

She hummed thoughtfully. “Become evil again?”

He inhaled sharply. “Yeah, that. Well, this one’s real, right? I was hoping that maybe I could just ride in the copter, help with recon. . .”

Yelena pursed her lips, considering. “If you stay behind me. . .”

“I could bring a gun–”

“Oh, no, you won’t need that. You can just hide behind. It will be fine.”

He laughed nervously. “Okay, well, maybe I’ll borrow one of John’s– you know, just to be safe.” 

Yelena frowned. “I do not think John will give you his guns. But have at it.”

It took another ten minutes to get the team into the copter and on route to the mission. Bucky was unusually fidgety, and made several sharp turns once they were in the air. Alexei was copilot, a job he took incredibly seriously, which was to say that he forbade anyone but Bucky from touching the console or even leaning over to look out the windshield. 

“Lena, stop, you’re going to obscure the view!” He pushed Yelena back with a gloved hand, gesturing to the horizon in the distance. They were a few miles from New York City, approaching the Catskill Mountains with a worrisome speed. 

“I’m only trying to slow us down,” she retorted, shoving forward again. “We’re going to lose the element of surprise.” 

“Don’t need it,” Bucky said. “Sam’s already blown our cover.”

She frowned. “What? But we were going to pretend to be pizza delivery people.” 

Bucky side-eyed her. “When did we agree to that?”

“Well, it was an idea in my head, but it was going to happen–”

Alexei laughed. “We would all be part of the pizza delivery? All six of us? They would think we are crazy– it would make more sense to be Amazon drivers, yes?”

“How would that make more sense?” Yelena pointed to his uniform. “You’re dressed like the Red Guardian, not an Amazon employee.”

“I am not dressed like a pizza man either!”

From the back, they heard Ava groan and slap a hand on her face. John was busy explaining why Bob didn’t need a gun. 

Bucky looked close to rolling his eyes. “It doesn’t matter. Sam’s waiting for us.”

The copter landed with an unsteady force, and for a moment, Yelena swore they would tip over. But eventually, the shaking stopped and Bucky stood, turning and heading straight for the doors. 

John glanced at them. “What’s up with him?”

Yelena shrugged. “Sam Wilson is here.”

“So?”

She almost laughed. “Use your eyes, Walker.”

The mountains were a hiker’s wet dream. Rolling hillsides of autumn trees, coating the landscape in a brassy orange-yellow. A quiet river nestled in the middle with a rock here and there, jutting through the surface. Their copter had landed on a bare stretch of stone that was speckled with mica and quartz. It felt like something from an American book about the beauty in wilderness. A funny juxtaposition to the Russian ones, which were starkly, “Cold kills.” 

Sam Wilson was waiting for them beside a riverbank. Hand raised against the glare of a ready-to-set sun, he looked like he’d been expecting them for hours. 

“You’re late.” He raised an eyebrow and gave Bucky a onceover. “It’s my job to chew you out, now, I guess.”

Bucky shot him a sarcastic smile. “Nice to see you, too. This is the team.”

Sam’s eyes swiveled to take them in: Ava, her arms crossed in defiance, John, who gave Sam an embarrassed wave, Alexei, in his over-excited crimson, Bob, looking like he rolled out of bed, and Yelena, a hand on her hip like a fed up mother. The very picture of put-together.

Sam drew in a deep breath and glanced back at Bucky. “Really, man?”

Alexei stepped forward. “Our team is the best you will get in our country, you know. My Lena was trained as an assassin, and he leveled city–” Alexei pointed enthusiastically to Bob– “with his evil black void–”

“Don’t call it evil,” Yelena interjected. 

“And I didn’t level the city, I just kind of. . . erased it?” Bob clarified. 

“No matter.” Alexei sauntered up to Sam and slung an arm around his shoulder. “We have a good team. Best team, Mister Wilson, in country.”

Sam glanced at Alexei’s arm dubiously. “And which country is that?”

“The Motherland.”

“Right.” Sam shrugged him off and backed up to Bucky, where he raised a hand as if to push him. “Are you serious about this, Buck?”

Bucky stopped it with his metal arm. “They’re good people. They care. They can fight.”

“Don't make them Avengers.”

“And what makes you one?”

A stony silence settled over the riverside. Yelena stepped back– she didn’t know why, but she got a sinking sense that Bucky shouldn’t have said that. Sam’s face was tight with anger. Maybe they wouldn’t have a mission. She usually expected it to be John or Alexei’s fault when things went south– they were too trigger happy, too stubborn. Bucky, though. . . that was unexpected.

But Sam counted to five under his breath and turned to them, tucking his shield under his arm. “I’ll brief you on the way.”

Yelena blinked. “You’re going to work with us?”

Sam grinned. “I’ve worked with worse, trust me.”

He turned and led them towards the river, but not before tossing the shield at Bucky’s feet with a thunk . 

Yelena exchanged a look with Ava, and the latter huffed out, “This will be fun.” 

At that, Yelena laughed. “When is it not?” 

And she dutifully followed Sam into the river.

Chapter Text

Bucky held his breath, as was protocol. He thought exclusively in orders: infiltrate the base, eliminate the targets, disengage the fight. Snow whipped his hair, ice crawled in between the circuits of his arm. Hydra’s own Misawa, entombed in a few years by mountains of German snowfall. 

The orders spiraled through his head. Infiltrate the base, eliminate the targets, disengage the fight. He’d get similar ones in the army, though he wouldn’t remember this now. Steve would recite them sometimes, would want to memorize them front to back, boy scout that he was. It was endearing. But this Bucky– the Hydra puppet– didn’t remember the effect. 

The scene changed, swooping, dipping, transforming into something new. Steve sitting on a bed, all matter-of-fact, a twenty-first century connoisseur. “That isn’t true, Buck.”

Bucky was standing by the door, his fists balled up. “You weren’t in my head.”

“You’re right, I wasn’t. But I know the person you are now. The person you used to be.” 

The shouts of Hydra agents echoed against the hardwoods. It felt as though they were lurching over his shoulder, barking a foreign language in his ears. “They’re not the same, Steve.”

This was one of those conversations that felt like a waste of a hill to die on. Back and forth and up and down and back around again: Bucky wasn’t Bucky anymore. Steve couldn’t stand that. Short, sweet, and excruciating.

“Did you ever give up that religious shit?” Bucky pursed his lips and glanced at Steve, whose eyebrows raised. 

“What? It wasn’t ‘religious shit,’ that’s not fair to–”

Bucky sighed. “After the ice. Did you ever pick up a Bible again? Go to church?”

Steve glanced away. “. . .Not like I used to.”

“You don’t believe anymore.” When this was met with silence, Bucky continued, “That’s what it’s like. You’ll never be that person who talked to God every night and was sure he was actually listening. There’s a piece missing, right?”

A sigh escaped Steve’s lips. “Bucky. . .” 

“I’ve got pieces, Steve, hundreds, that are gone. You can raise hell until Stark kicks your ass again, but you’re not going to find them.” 

And again, the world flickers. Sparks fly and pop. Bucky, standing over a grave, Sam at his side. There are flowers– thousands, maybe, coating the cemetery. Red, white, blue. They honor the memory of Captain America. 

“You don’t have to say it out loud, you know.” Sam’s lips curled upwards. “But it’s not the 40s anymore.” 

Bucky’s stomach swam. “You really want to push this?”

“No.” Sam knelt and adjusted a slanting bouquet of poppies, saying, “But your life doesn’t have to end just ‘cause his did.” 

“What’s left, Sam?” The thought came unbidden, uncomfortably raw. Steve was the only person who knew it all: the fistfights, the war, the Soldier. Without him, what was Bucky but a deactivated Hydra program?

Sam laughed. “Are you serious, man? Have you ever been to the coast?”

Bucky glanced at him. “. . .No?”

“Sailboats. Loads of ‘em. Wind on your face, sunburns, beer. Or, like, ice skating. Have you tried? My dad got me a dog when I was a kid, maybe you should give that a go.” Sam placed his fingers to where Steve’s name was engraved on the tombstone. “There are a million things left, Sergeant Barnes. You’re just not looking in the right places.”

And the dream shattered. 

He could remember it all vividly, every part, because he’d been having it for a week now. He was knee deep in the river, holding Sam’s shield above the water with his prosthetic, thinking about his goddamn dreams. Not the mission, not the absurdity of the water winding past his legs, but distractions. 

Hydra’s answer to distraction was electric shocks. Captain America, they said, was a big distractor. But also the occasional soul– soft things, like rabbits, or children. And ale, and music, and laughter. 

Of course, that was over. Gone. He wondered though, distantly, if someone out there still had a switch. Could set him off, snap their fingers and make him go mad. That was something the therapy was intended to help with. And it did, mostly. But you could never fully erase something without something else dying first. 

John was splashing his way across next to Bucky, a wide grin spreading on his face. “Bad blood?”

“I hope you drown.”

He shrugged. “I know. I guess you and Sam can’t unite over how much you hate me anymore. Must be hard.”

Bucky resisted the urge to slap him. “Could you focus on the mission?”

Blessedly, Sam began to explain the plan from where he was leading them, almost at the other side of the river. “It’s a basic infiltration. I want one team going in guns blazing, the other sneaking behind and scouting the base.”

Ava raised her hand, and Sam turned and pointed at her. “Why are we in the river?”

“Precautionary measure,” Sam explained, gesturing at the current. “Rumors of a new biochemical that adheres to boots and shoes and dissolves them. We haven’t seen it used by Hydra yet, but that’s because we haven’t fought Hydra face to face since SHIELD turned.”

Hydra’s reemergence didn’t surprise Bucky, but nothing had since he’d fought a stone-laden alien who turned him to dust. It did, however, give him a headache. It was already weighing him down. Aspirin didn’t work on a supersoldier who couldn’t get sick, and headaches were their own breed. 

Bob raised his next. “And where’s the base?”

“That’s just it.” Sam climbed up onto the bank and squeezed the water out of his pants. “I need you all to find it.” 

Bucky grimaced. There was always a catch with Sam. 

He felt, these days, like he was living a double life. Steve never had that problem— and so Sam didn’t, either. The thing about it— about them , really— was that they were Captain America, on and off duty. An “in their blood and heart” sort of a situation. But Bucky hadn’t been the Soldier until the shocks and the serum. People who were destined to be Captain America didn’t struggle with the existentialism of the “who am I?” question. People who were collateral did. And Bucky knew, at least in regards to the Soldier, that he was some damn big collateral. 

It made sense that Sam thought he knew better. That this team was a liability to him. That Bucky was a liability. He wasn’t Cap material, and anyway, this shield was a nuisance. 

“We are not bloodhounds,” Alexei huffed, but Sam shrugged. 

“No, you’re heroes. Following orders is part of the gig.” 

Ava scoffed and slid her mask on, disappearing with a single finger shoved in Sam’s direction. Yelena followed her, Bob at her heels. 

The rest of them split off, muttering about the mundanity of the job. They’d probably expected something high paced and high energy, something Avengers level. They still had to learn the basics of a mission, which meant that there was validity to Sam’s qualms.  

Bucky turned to leave— he could scout the riverbank, see if there were any patches of loose gravel— when something tugged against the shield. 

“I know you didn’t mean it. But it doesn’t mean you should say it anyway.” 

Bucky fought the urge to shrug off Sam’s grip and trudge into the woods. “I’m sorry.”

Sam smirked. “I know you are. I don’t want this to put you off, Buck, but I don’t do government and I don’t do ineptitude. I’m not an Avenger ‘cause of Cap. I’m an Avenger ‘cause I can handle it.” 

“They’re not morons—”

“They’re sure as hell not geniuses.” 

Bucky let go of the shield, and Sam took it back. They stared at each other for a second before Bucky said, “You’re underestimating them. You’re underestimating me , Sam.” 

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “My worry for you has got nothing to do with disrespect. I know what you’re capable of. I also know what you’re scared of. I’m not trying to tell you to stop, I’m trying to tell you to rethink.” 

Bucky glanced away, his fists curling. His chest burned with indignation. Sam was reading him— he hated it. 

“You and the Russian—”

“Yelena.”

“You’re leaders. I never said you couldn’t do it. But I don’t want you to make the same mistakes Steve did. He would’ve fought the world for you— hell, he would’ve fought me if I’d been stupid enough to oppose him. We need to be on the same side. There can’t be any more civil wars or petty fights, not after something like Thanos proved how easy it is to wipe us.”

It was true, and it was smart, and it made Bucky flinch. A government agent, a senator, a Thunderbolt, what was he doing? Running around fighting misdemeanors, swinging and missing, joining a team of– what had Sam called them?– sure as hell not geniuses. He was throwing lives at the wall and hoping one would stick. He wasn’t a hero. He wasn’t a politician. He wasn’t even the Soldier anymore. 

He didn’t want to fight with Sam, but he couldn’t give this up. He didn’t know what he was, or why he was doing this. But this team gave him a place to work out his knots before he cut loose. He wasn’t a leader, he was just passing through. Until he found something better, or something inside him snapped the wrong way. And maybe Sam was right, maybe they weren’t Avengers-level yet. But they still deserved to be heroes, even if Bucky didn’t want to be one, too. 

“I’ll play it your way,” he said, still not meeting Sam’s eyes. 

Before Sam could answer, a shout echoed through the woods, and they both shot to attention. Yelena. 

Bucky ran and Sam flew, his wings extending with a mechanical whoosh. They cleared the trees to see Bob, his hands ink black, facing a row of soldiers. All of whom had their guns pointed at Yelena’s head.

Chapter Text

Yelena felt oddly maternal for chastising Bob, especially because he was trying (and failing) to protect her. But this shadow shame that he held, cooped up inside him somewhere that he didn’t remember, would do a lot more harm than good. And Yelena had had enough of what was inside his head. 

“Put your hands down,” she ordered again, her own raised in surrender. There were seventeen armed soldiers, four more than she could take out alone, and they’d had the element of surprise. Worse, they knew her somehow. Had seen her and pointed their guns. Ignored Bob completely. Until now. 

There was an uneasy murmur that rose as the black void crawled up Bob’s arms, the soldiers shifting their heads but not their guns. Bob glanced at Yelena but did not drop his stance. He looked angry. 

There was a click and a buzz, and Redwing appeared over the clearing. From the trees, Bucky and Sam emerged, shield and gun raised. 

A full blown standoff, which would’ve excited Yelena were it not for the creeping void. 

“Let’s settle this without a shootout, yeah?” Sam’s wings folded back behind him. “We can put our guns down.”

The soldiers did not, in fact, put down their guns. If anything, they inched closer. 

Yelena sighed. “You have not been in the cleanup business, have you, Sam?” 

“I prefer the upstanding jobs.”

She smirked. “Of course, you’re Captain America. But it makes you bad at things like this.” 

Sam’s eyes narrowed, but before he could say anything, one of the soldiers shouted, “Get down, on your knees!”

Yelena obeyed, frowning when her knees hit the ground and dirt stained her pants. She’d have to put stain remover on them, which was a nuisance, and took an extra ten minutes she didn’t have. 

Bob’s fists started to clench, still raised in the air threateningly. Yelena shot him a glance, allowing a smidge of fear to creep into her eyes. He needed to know she was serious. He needed to know that postponing her capture wasn’t worth losing himself. 

With what looked like almost painful reluctance, he dropped his arms and got to his knees. Bucky and Sam followed suit, acknowledging that they were severely outnumbered. 

“We should get acquainted,” Yelena decided, glancing at the nearest gun pointed toward her face. “I am Yelena. You are?”

“The less you talk, the easier this is.” Her voice was muffled by her mask, and the accent was distinct. 

“Who are you working for?” Bucky’s question pierced the air like a bullet. Yelena, of course, already knew.

These were Hydra agents.

At least Sam’s intel had been accurate. But that spelled danger– real danger, not the frivolous assignments that they’d been running since Valentina announced their team to the world. These were cutthroat murderers, genocidal maniacs, the kind of people Yelena had grown up despising and fearing. 

She was going to rock their shit. 

“Not everyone who survived the Room came out like you.” The soldier’s eyes were covered behind the mask, but Yelena could feel the hatred through it anyway. It made her skin crawl.

“What, an assassin?” The quip was out of her mouth before she could stop it, but the situation wasn’t exactly entitled to the respect the average stranger deserved. Once you put a gun in her face, all the niceties went out the window. 

The soldier cocked the gun and said, “A hero.”

And of course, this meant nothing to Yelena, because she was a lot of things, all of them ugly and short-tempered and violet, and none of them heroic. Sure, her face was plastered across New York City billboards and sprinkled throughout the news, but that only really made her a fraud. Heroes, as they were called in the museums and documentaries, were people like Steve Rogers or Tony Stark. Flashy idols, some humble, some proud, all do-gooders. Rescuers. Yelena had killed more people than she’d saved. What did that make her?

Alexei would disagree, as all fathers would. She was not just an assassin, but simply resourceful, stronger than everyone else. A leader, synonym with hero. Willing to make the sacrifice, willing to take the bullet, knowing that everyone else might take one too. A leader . What a dangerous word. Dreykov was a leader. Thanos was a leader. Valentina was a leader. Maybe Yelena was a leader, but what made her any better than them?

So she laughed. And a gunshot echoed through the clearing. 

She hadn’t realized that she’d closed her eyes until she opened them to see Bob’s stricken face, Bucky’s unmasked fear. And the bullet from the gun buried in the ground at her feet. 

“You’ll behave if you know what’s good for you,” said the soldier. The voice rang in Yelena’s head– she wouldn’t be surprised if the shot had ruptured an eardrum. “You’re lucky they need you alive.”

“I am flattered,” she tried to say, but it came out like a whisper. She could barely hear her own words. 

“You’re not taking her.” Bob’s arms were at his sides, but his determination had completely overwhelmed his face, and Yelena felt a spike of fear. What would happen if he lost control? Would he disappear these agents? Sam and Bucky? Herself? She had no intention of entering the shame rooms again, and no assurance that she’d get out a second time. 

The agents nearest to him cocked their guns, and Yelena glanced around and realized that she wasn’t getting out of this. Not if she wanted her team to survive. And so she forced her best smile and started to lie. 

“Let them take me, Bob.” She hoped her voice was loud enough. Noises were swimming inside her head like ripples in a pond. “They want me alive, they won’t hurt me.”

Bob’s eyes were frantic as she said it, and she couldn’t help but feel like she was disappointing him. She was a leader. People listened to her. For better, or worse. 

The soldier next to Yelena smacked the gun against her temple and ordered her to her feet. Her teammates watched as she stood, hoping she looked dignified, at least, and was pushed forward by a pair of soldiers behind her. She was a few steps away when she heard Sam’s shield collide with a gun, and she froze.

A soldier had grabbed Bucky by the arm and another was trying to press a gun to his temple, but the shield was blocking the impact. Sam’s eyes were wide with shock, and Yelena felt her chest tighten.

Red Room assassins would want her, and Hydra soldiers would want. . .

Bucky looked eerily calm. She reassessed quickly in her head. Four of them, seventeen soldiers. They’d win with Bob, but that wasn’t an option. One supersoldier, but still mortal– a gunshot to the head would put Bucky down instantly. And Captain America had the history to hold his own– a veteran, his years as Falcon, Steve Rogers replacement. But he was one man. Against assault weapons, no matter how fast they acted, there was too high a risk of casualty. 

Leaders made the tough decisions. Leaders were willing to make the sacrifice, willing to take the bullet, while knowing that everyone else might take one too.

“We’ll go willingly,” Yelena said, forcing down the edge to her voice. “Just don’t hurt anyone.”

Sam shook his head, but there was nothing he could do. Yelena stared at him until he slowly lowered his shield, eyes locked on Bucky the whole time, as if trying to read his mind. But Bucky just stared ahead, his gaze lost in the forest around them. 

Where were Alexi, Ava, and John? Where was her backup? An ambush would be perfect– the element of surprise would significantly decrease the chances of fatality. But no one emerged from the trees. No one sniped off the soldiers. No one set off a distraction in the distance. They were alone.

Bucky and Yelena were escorted away by two soldiers each, one on either side, and it would’ve made her feel like a very popular dinner guest if they were under different circumstances. She could feel Bob and Sam’s fear, even with her back to them, walking away. We’ll be okay , she wanted to assure them, but she knew that wasn’t true. Bucky was stock still, his movements robotic, stiffened. She tried to read him, but couldn’t grasp even an inkling about how he felt. Did he have a plan? Because she certainly didn’t. Not that she usually did. But this would’ve felt significantly better if she had something. 

She heard Sam saying something, arguing, but they were through the trees now, the soldiers at their sides jabbing guns against their backs. The mountains glowed around her, unfurling into an impressive landscape, unaware of her anxiety. It was a beautiful place to get abducted, all things considered. The honey-orange trees swayed slightly, and she almost laughed at how peculiar they all looked, suited up or armed or masked. 

And then it disappeared. 

Yelena flinched, her whole body yanking backwards, and the soldier behind her cursed and pushed her. There were no trees. No breeze, no sky, no faint birdsong. Instead, gray concrete stared back at her, imposing and claustrophobic. It took her a moment to rationalize it. Masking technology, surely, or some sensory manipulation. Teleportation, if she was willing to suspend disbelief. This wasn’t the Catskill Mountains. 

This was a Hydra base.