Chapter Text
Sunglasses covered the worst of the bruising and even though it was still dark out she kept them in place as she ascended the stairs leading onto the street from the subway. A mustard-colored guitar case was strapped to her back and fit the SV-98 sniper riffle and all its attachments. This particular case provided her the ability to walk the streets with impunity as more than one vendor had nodded and offered, “Late night?” as way of greeting.
The duffle filled with less important items was hanging from her shoulder and she’d slipped a PSM pistol into the side compartment for easy retrieval. Several of her close-quarters weapons had been lost to her when she was captured. The rest were spread across her person; retractable batons strapped to the inside of her boots, blades tucked in, and a few other surprises.
She wore a bullet and claw resistant uniform beneath an oversized sweater that camouflaged severity of the outfit. Her shoulder length hair had been pinned back to keep it out of her face. The style provided an unobstructed view but forced her to apply makeup to the more obvious bruising and she’d used transparent butterfly bandages when warranted.
A pointed chin lifted, head falling back as she studied the building and the second-floor window covered by a garbage bag. She turned, taking in the buildings surrounding it before she chose the three story to her right and walked her way around it twice. The fire escape furthest from the road was selected and she hooked the duffle crossways before leaping up to drag the ladder down.
The clang was loud enough that she paused, listening intently to the few people on the street in the predawn hours. She looked upwards as well, pushing the sunglasses atop her head as she watched the dark windows for movement before she started the climb. It was unknown if the witches that had freed her were still at this location, but this was her only lead, and they were the only people she knew that could track her—she couldn’t tolerate that.
Scaling the last ladder to the roof she paused at the sight of a garden and the helpful cover it offered. She crushed the doorknob of the roof access before moving to the side of the building that faced the broken window. The duffle was dropped, but the guitar case she treated with care. She opened it, retrieving the SV-98 and attached the suppressor and bipod with efficient movements as the sun rose at her back. The scope was added next, and she closed the case before setting the rifle on top of it.
Retrieving a pair of binoculars from the duffle she tucked her legs under her and studied first the street before turning the focus to the building. The windows were mostly dark; the top floor presented her with a view of a woman at a laptop and the three floors below that someone was working out in the predawn light. The apartment that might house the witches held the soft glow of a lamp but no movement.
She should leave the city, grab passage on a cargo ship and work through everything churning in her head. But nothing in her training allowed her to leave an enemy combatant that could track her. She wasn’t certain if the witches were her enemy but that wasn’t enough of a reason to ignore the threat they posed. She checked the SV-98, making certain it was loaded even though she’d done so before leaving the safehouse.
A breeze moved the vines crawling along the roof’s edge near her and brought with it a floral note from somewhere deeper in the garden. It stirred the dead leaves and another light turned on in the second-floor apartment. She returned to her study of the windows and watched a child enter the line of fire. Her lips pursed, there hadn’t been a child present during the confrontation and children always brought a more stringent law enforcement response.
One of the witches, the pixie cut, came into the view and started conversing with the boy. She grasped the SV-98, but the clang of the ladder forced her to retrieve the PSM Pistol instead and turn to face the possible threat in a crouched position. The hair and horns looked brown in the dim light but the green skin of the demon that had her sing for him was unmistakable. She contemplated just firing, removing one obstacle but the shot would draw attention.
His head finally lifted, his eyes widening at the sight of her pointing a gun at him. He hesitated, body stiffening before he scrambled onto the roof clutching a small stuffed pig. She inclined her head at the oddity of the it before she aimed center mass and waited for him to start talking.
As weapons went a stuffed animal wasn’t particularly effective—perhaps he meant to suffocate her?
Lips rolling inward, she resisted the urge to smile at the thought as he flinched at the sight of her gun. It was brave or stupid of him to come alone but his welcome of, “Well good morning to you,” made her assume mostly stupid.
She rose, keeping the gun pointed at him as she moved forward with the intention to kill him quickly but quietly. He back peddled and then frowned behind him at the three-story drop. He clutched the stuffed animal tight to his chest as he spoke, with only a little waver in his voice, “Y-you don’t need to kill the ladies,” he thrust the pig at her, “this is how they tracked you.”
A brow arched at the stuffed animal, and he frowned at her, “Aren’t you going to ask how I knew you were here to kill our resident witches?”
She stared at this new complication. She should kill him. She should kill him, kill the witches and return to her mission. The mission was what mattered, not these loose ends that kept distracting her. The hand in front of her bobbed as his anxiety rose with her silence. Her eyes rolled before she switched the PSM to her left and snatched the bit of fluff with her right.
Her fingers clenched around the soft texture as she tumbled backwards—falling—not to the hard roof but a soft bed.
Wrapped tight in a blanket and the stuffed pig clutched in her small hands as a man’s voice spilled around her, “Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to end!” This was her favorite part. The falling. It always sounded so exciting to fall into another world like Alice.
She was small and warm and safe. Nothing could harm her. She had been so innocent. So soft.
Green eyes blinked and she was back on the roof, her skin twitching as the spell dissipated on the cool morning air. The dampness of her cheeks was ignored as she leveled the gun at him. “Explain yourself.”
The demon looked first to the gun then past it to her face before those impressive eyes fell on the pig still clenched in her right hand. His focus made her want to toss it away, but she found she didn’t want to let it go. Not yet.
“Mr. Gordo there belonged to Buffy Summers,” her brows dipped downward, but he pushed on, “Tara, the person you were just contemplating shooting, worked her magic so that little guy would trigger a memory.”
“Give me a memory,” the denial was instantaneous but lacked conviction to her own ears. Her grip on the PSM tightened, pointer finger moving from the barrel to the trigger.
“You haven’t killed me yet,” he admonished and moved closer, stepping away from the roof’s edge.
She tracked his progress as she clarified, “That is easily rectified.”
“Your name is Buffy Anne Summers,” he gave her a wide berth as he moved towards the garden, “Your father read Alice in Wonderland to you as a child. It was your favorite book,” his gaze dipped to the stuffed pig, “He gave you Mr. Gordo and your first pair of ice skates.”
Days prior, she’d forgone her mission when the urge to go ice skating had come upon her. Falling more than a few times before a sense of familiarity had taken hold as it had with the piano and ballet in her cage. A nagging unease dropped her gaze to the stuffed animal with the oddly fitting name. Her breath shuddered outward, and she returned her focus to the one causing her loss of self, taking aim for his head.
“We both know I can’t fight you,” he met her gaze, afraid but resolved, “It’s not in my nature and it’s too much in yours.”
“Why come then?” she shook her head, “why die for them?”
“Well personally I’m hoping no one dies,” his lips quirked, head inclining as he expanded his arms wide, “and I don’t think you want to kill me. I think if you wanted me dead. I would be.”
“What I want is irrelevant.”
“Why?” He glanced around the rooftop, “It’s just us up here. Tell Uncle Lorne what it is that you want.”
The words, “I want to be left alone,” tumbled past her lips without thought.
His mouth thinned, pulling down at the corners as he studied her and she lowered the gun to her side, finger going from trigger to barrel as she wondered at her weakness. He remained rooted in the shade of the garden and watched her a long moment before offering, “I wish it were that simple, kiddo.”
“I don’t trust this,” she lifted the stuffed pig and they both knew she meant the memory that had come to her unbidden when she touched it before her gaze rose to his, “I don’t trust you.”
“You can trust him,” his gaze searched her confused face before he clarified, “Your mission. Your Sergeant Barnes.”
“He’s not—”
“He is,” he nodded to the pig, “and deep down you know it.”
“I know nothing,” her jaw clenched, hand fisting around the stuffed animal.
“You will,” he assured her.
A sudden and violent urge to just shoot nearly overwhelmed her. She swallowed the scream building in her throat and cast her gaze past him to the building across the street with the broken window. She should kill him. She should kill them all and call in an extraction, but her next breath escaped with a sigh as her shoulders rolled backwards.
Her decision made.
“How do you know?”
“You sang for me,” he explained as if that told her anything.
Her gaze lifted, taking in the paling sky and the new day slowly starting around them. “Where do I go from here?”
He smiled then, a blinding thing that nearly made her mouth quirk in response to it. “There’s an exhibit at the Smithsonian in DC that I think you’ll need to see to believe.”
+
“Huh.”
Blue eyes narrowed on the code in front of him before Oz tilted his head and felt the two men, who’d been searching the apartment still, come up behind him. Something in his hindbrain, that sounded suspiciously like his wolf’s growl, brought the hairs along the back of his neck up as he fell into their shadow. While intellectually Oz knew it was unlikely Captain America would attack him, it didn’t stop the on edge feel they triggered—the lack of sleep may have also been a factor.
The chair closest to him scrapped against the floor as Steve claimed it as his own and Bucky moved around to the chair he’d sat at until he realized staring at Oz didn’t make him work any faster. The pair exchanged a glance, and Oz suppressed the smile it caused, before Steve inquired, “What did you find?”
A few more keystrokes and Oz brought up the main program on the computer rather than the controls he’d been working at until streetlights had turned off and day broke. “The user for this terminal is Shrike.”
He caught the thinning of Bucky’s mouth and his brow furrowed before he nodded his head. “That was,” his face cleared as he clarified, “is her handle.”
“Like you were the Winter Soldier,” Steve stated before frowning, “What’s a shrike?”
“A carnivorous bird that impales its prey on thorns,” Oz shrugged at the looks being cast in his direct, “I know things.”
“Striker’s little Shrike,” Bucky muttered to himself before shaking his head, “Were you able to break the—”
Oz cut him off by turning the computer around to him to show him the program was up and running. “Are you familiar with this software?”
He tucked away the tidbit that Bucky had once been referred to as the Winter Soldier because he was pretty sure some of the files SHIELD had released included references to him. It was a rabbit hole he’d fallen down a time or two when between projects and would be something he’d dig into once he got his computer back up and running. Bucky accepted the laptop and Oz found the efficiency of his keystrokes interesting.
Steve motioned to the laptop and sort of half sighed and laughed, “I feel like what you just did was impressive, but I don’t know enough about computers to be certain.”
“I’m good with them,” Oz admitted and then thought to add, “And none of what I just did was strictly legal.”
Bucky’s snort raised Steve’s brows and he spared his friend a frown before assuring Oz, “You’re secrets safe.”
“Both of them,” Bucky added and Oz glanced over to see Bucky staring at him above the top of the screen.
“Appreciated,” Oz glanced around the room, “I would’ve assumed this place with be filled with cameras to monitor her.”
Steve shook his head, “We didn’t find any.”
“Not once the programing’s complete,” Bucky countered and frowned at the computer before turning it back around to show them an ariel shot of a street and one of the buildings had an impressive rooftop garden. “Isn’t this your building?”
His stomach opened and Oz pulled out his cell phone before calling Kelden. Fear tightened stomach, the colors in the room desaturated and Oz knew his eyes had gone to wolf when the phone went straight to voicemail. He took a breath and tried Tara, she’d slept more than Willow and might wake up.
The phone rang 3 times before a he heard the happy laughter of his son and Tara’s amused voice, “Hey, Oz,” his stomach turned as he exhaled the fear that had been strangling him and Tara’s voice turned concerned, “Oz are you there?”
“I’m here,” he moved to put the phone on the table between the three of them and hit speaker, “How’s everyone there?”
“Good,” Tara assured him, “we’re all good here.”
“Dad!” Kelden had obviously taken the phone from Tara.
“Hey, boss,” Oz responded, the fading adrenaline rush left him with a knee bouncing beneath the table.
“You met Captain America?”
Tara obviously showed him the trading card Steve had signed and there was some accusation in his tone. Casting a glance at the person in question Oz saw the amusement and relief in Steve’s face. A hand fell on his shoulder, comforting and kind of hard but Oz smiled at the other man’s kind gesture to a relative stranger.
“It wasn’t something we’d planned,” Oz assured his son, and it was the truth. The plan had been to avoid the Avengers.
“Think you’ll meet with him again?”
The hope in his son’s voice and the nod from Steve made Oz’s shoulder slump in defeat before advising, “We might be able to arrange that.”
“Dad,” he managed to cram a whole conversation in it that one word—Kelden did not fall far from the tree.
“Can I talk to Aunt Tara?” Oz prompted after a moment of silence on his son’s end.
“Right,” there was another pause before, “Dad, you’re the best.”
“I thought that was Captain America,” Oz teased.
“No, it’s you,” Kelden laughed, “But Captain America is a close second.”
There was movement under the table and Oz was pretty sure one of the men had kicked the other’s shin, but the smirk Bucky was sending to his friend and the shaking of Steve’s head made it hard to determine who kicked who or why. They all heard the phone passing hands before Tara questioned, “Do you still have company?”
“Yeah,” Oz agreed glancing back and forth between the pair.
“You can never tell him you know who heard that,” Tara admonished with a laugh.
“He’d never believe I meet Voldemort,” Oz countered.
“Funny,” was her dry retort.
Oz shrugged though she couldn’t see it. “I’m a funny guy.”
She made a small noise that could’ve been a laugh or a sneeze, “Did you find her?”
“Base of operation,” Oz looked at the other two see if they had anything to add before he cautioned Tara, “She was looking up arial views of my building.”
“Lorne asked me to do a memory spell on Mr. Gordo,” he heard movement as Tara walked around his apartment, “Then he left to take care of some things.”
“Memory spell?”
“Mr. Gordo?”
Bucky and Steve asked the questions in unison and Oz tackled the question he knew with, “Mr. Gordo was a stuffed pig Buffy owned as a kid. That’s what Willow and Tara were using to track her.”
The two men exchanged glances before Tara added, “It was a spell to remind Buffy why the stuffed animal had significance to her,” there was a hesitation in her tone, “I tried to make it as gentle as possible. Lorne explained to me some of things done to her by Hydra to erase her memories and I didn’t want to trigger a trauma response.”
“You can mess with people’s memories.” Bucky question but Oz caught the undercurrent of rage that made it a statement.
“We can,” Tara’s tone became cautious, “but like with any power it’s the wielder who choses how it’s used and why.”
Tara’s power was the water that carved the rock, a steady stream that didn’t overpower unless warranted and Willow’s power was the hammer that crushed the rock. Both were witches, but their application of that magic was different, and since that analogy didn’t paint Willow in the most flattering of lights Oz wisely kept it to himself.
“Lorne’s back,” there were footsteps, “One second.”
“Gentlemen,” Lorne’s melodious voice took over the call, “How are you this fine morning?”
“Tired,” Oz answered for them.
“Well come on home, oh wise and wonderful Oz,” his lips quirked because that moniker was new and but before Oz could comment Lorne was pushing onward, “Your companions however still have a journey ahead.”
There was an exchanged of narrowed glances and Oz figured they just didn’t want to sing or whistle again. Taking pity on people not quiet used to their resident empath Oz asked, “So where are they headed?”
“A swamp,” Lorne deadpanned before laughing, “Our girl is ready to be a believer, but she needs that one last nudge.”
“Swamp?” Steve questioned for them.
“D.C., my star-spangled friend,” Lorne spoke over Bucky’s snort, “There’s a little exhibit that your friend there is featured in that I know is going to trigger a few more of those buried memories.”
Oz frowned at his cellphone and since Lorne couldn’t see it, he was forced to ask, “Why not just tell her to Google it?”
“She needs to stay on the move and so do your companions.” Lorne’s reasoning was sound if a little muddled on the message.
“You sent her to the Smithsonian exhibit?” Steve asked, likely for clarification but there was deep line between his brows.
“Cute and smart,” Lorne demurred, “Be still my heart.”
Something told him Lorne was patting his rear as he said that, and Oz took that as his sign to say goodbye and promise coffee and pastries as a way of apology for not being home when Kelden got there last night or woke up. He turned his focus towards his companions to find Bucky’s shoulders were shaking from suppressed laughter, but Steve looked more confused than anything.
The Scoobies and Team Angel tended to have that effect on people.
“Do we exchange numbers?” Oz inclined his head and wondered if that was too forward after Lorne’s teasing.
“Right,” Steve took Oz’s phone and added a number to it before passing it to Bucky and retrieving his own. He entered a code Oz couldn’t see and then handed it to him.
He recognized Stark Tech when he saw it, but the interface was surprisingly smooth as he entered his number. “I’ll be your point of contact for our,” he paused, head inclining before settling on, “team.”
“That works.” Steve rose and Bucky followed his lead while handing Oz back his phone.
Oz followed their lead and did his best not to feel short as the two men towered over him. He looked down at the laptop and questioned, “Should we take it or leave it?”
“Take it,” Bucky picked it up and tucked it under his left arm before stepping away from the table.
“I am also in need of a new computer,” Oz offered with a shrug. Didn’t hurt to remind them that they’d destroyed his.
“Sorry about that,” Steve tacked on, “We’ll get you a replacement.”
“Thanks,” Oz glanced back and forth between them before offering a heartfelt, “Good luck.”