Chapter Text
The Avengers break the doors down to the old Hydra compound only to find that it has not been completely abandoned. There were a few soldiers still around the area, so they split up, quickly dismantling the Hydra agents in the building.
Steve throws his shield down the hall at some of the agents and then turns around to say, “Go, Bucky, look for the files.”
Bucky splits from the group and goes from room to room, searching for a storage room. He kills a few stray Hydra agents along the way until he finally finds one. There’s some chattering in the comms, but he ignores it.
He enters the storage room to find it littered with dust and cobwebs, along with broken lights. He pulls a flashlight off of his belt and turns it on, reading the label on each box as he searches the room. The light lands on a box of files, and he can’t stop the sharp inhale from escaping his mouth.
“Bucky, is everything alright?” Steve asks over the comms.
“I found it.”
Stark interrupts to say, “Good, because I’m tired of raiding all these bases to find those files. Oh God, what is that smell?”
Bucky puts the flashlight away and pulls the box in question off of the shelf. He leaves the room as Steve asks, “Where are you, Tony?”
“I found a secret entrance down the hall. Shouldn’t be hard to miss, I had to blow the door open to get here. Shrapnel everywhere. There’s a ton of dead bodies in here.”
Natasha speaks out over the comms, “There’s some strange looking metal over here.”
Bucky does his best to locate the rest of the team without knowing the layout of the building, so it takes him a few minutes.
Steve finds Natasha and looks at the metal. “It kind of looks like – “ He pauses. “Bucky, can you come here?”
Bucky turns down a hall and sees them in the distance, facing the other way. He purposefully makes a little more noise than necessary to make sure Steve knows he is there. Steve and Natasha move apart, leaving a hole in between them for Bucky to fit. When he reaches them, he looks down at what they were looking at.
Steve and Natasha glance at Bucky, then back at the ground a few times. “It looks like an elbow,” Bucky says as his eyes grow wide.
“A metal elbow? What, did you lose another arm while you were here?” Clint calls through the comms since he’s keeping watch outside.
Bucky ignores him and says, “Stark, how were those bodies killed.”
He comes into the hallway they are in. “I had Jarvis run scans on a bunch of them. All shot right in the middle of the forehead, all dead for at least a decade, maybe two. Sounds like The Winter Soldier to me.”
Bucky shakes his head and whispers, “Basilisk.” Only Steve and Natasha hear him, the former not knowing what it means.
Bucky shoves the box into Steve’s hands and quickly enters the splintering hole in the wall. His nose curls at the smell, but he can bear it if he can find what he thinks is here. The others follow behind him, being careful not to tread on the dead bodies.
Bucky walks down hallway after hallway, passing body after body, all killed the same way. A single bullet to the head. There’s a path of them, and it stops abruptly in the middle of one of the hallways. He stops there to look around, and the others catch up to him.
“What are you looking for?” Steve asks, clearly concerned for his friend.
Bucky doesn’t answer, instead punching through the wall, breaking through the hidden door.
“A secret entrance inside of a secret entrance. This is getting insane.”
Bucky rips the wall open wide enough to fit a person and climbs inside the dark room. Everyone else climbs in and starts to look for a light switch so they can see. Natasha is the one that finds it, and when she flips it on, everyone starts looking around the room to see what’s there. All except for Bucky. He already found what he was looking for.
A dead body lays in front of a cylindrical tank with a window on the top. Bucky makes his way over to it and whispers, “B?”
He looks in the tank and can see her, frozen in place.
“Alright, who wants to explain what’s going on?”
Natasha answers. “The Winter Soldier wasn’t the only assassin Hydra made. There were the others you three found when you went after Zemo, yes, but that wasn’t all of them. There were rumors of another assassin, codename Basilisk. It was said if you were close enough to look her in the eyes, you were dead. Hydra used her for the – less discrete killings. She killed hoards of people, all at the same time. Multiple massacres, all enemies of Hydra. She was feared as much as The Winter Soldier, if not more, because she wasn’t a ghost story.”
Bucky puts his hand on the tank. “They were punishing her.” Everyone watches as Bucky stares at the tank, as if looking at a long lost friend. “She was just trying to help.”
Steve speaks up. “What do you want us to do, Buck?”
He turns his head and looks at Steve. “We need to help her.” He pauses and then adds, “Please?”
“We can talk more about this later. For now, let’s get out of here.” Tony presses a button on the display panel in front of the tank, and it starts to open. It reveals a woman with bright red hair in blood-stained clothes, with a metal right shoulder and the rest of that arm missing. Bucky carefully picks her up out of the tank and carries her out of the base with them.
Everyone is quiet on the quinjet on the way back, hoping they can get back to the tower before this new person wakes up, since they don’t know what kind of mental state she’s in. Bucky won’t stop staring at her.
After a few minutes, he locks eyes with Tony and says, “Do you – Could you make her a new arm?”
Tony nods. “Hold her other arm out for me, let me scan it.”
Bucky does as he is told, so Tony comes over and pulls a small device out of his pocket, and a red light travels back and forth across her arm before disappearing.
“Jarvis?”
“I can have it made in four hours, sir.”
Everyone looks questioningly at Tony, so he explains, “I already designed one for Robocop in case his current one decides to fail. So Jarvis can just edit the design to match her arm and then make it. Go ahead Jarvis.”
It’s silent for a few more seconds before Bucky speaks up again, as if remembering something. “You have to make sure it’s electricity proof and extreme temperature resistant.”
“I designed yours that way, don’t worry. She’ll be fine. Though, it will probably hurt trying to replace it.”
Bucky nods as Tony goes to sit back down. Steve watches his friend to make sure he is okay, since he is acting a little unusual.
“Я думал, это просто слухи,” says Natasha.
Bucky shakes his head. “Это реально.”
“Sir, Dr. Banner is moving a medical bed into your lab for you to set her on. It will be ready to use when you arrive.”
“Thanks, Jarvis. Tell him to stick around, we might need him.”
The rest of the ride is quiet, and they manage to make it into Tony’s lab before anything happens.
Bucky, Steve, and Tony sit around in the lab with the woman on the bed. Everyone else goes to the common room, except for Dr. Banner, who went to take a quick nap so he could help Tony with attaching her arm once she wakes up.
Bucky sits by the side of the bed and looks through the box they pulled from the base as Steve watches him from the other side of the room. Tony stands at one of his lab tables, working on something. Tony picks up his phone and quickly types something. Steve’s phone vibrates, so he pulls it out.
So, what’s up with robocop here?
Steve looks up at Tony and makes eye contact, and then shrugs. Then he types, Never seen him this way. She must be important. He didn’t seem to care that the others were murdered by Zemo, but even those files he was after, I think they were about her.
Well, I guess we’ll find out soon.
“Jarvis, how long do you think it will be before she wakes?”
“If my calculations are correct, around fifteen minutes, sir. And the arm should be finished in twenty.”
“Will you wake Banner when she wakes up then?”
“Of course, sir.”
Bucky continues to read through the files, trying to learn everything he can before she wakes up.
Her arousal is very sudden as she jolts up to a sitting position on the bed. Her bright blue eyes roam the room frantically, trying to scan her surroundings.
Bucky leaps out of his chair next to her and moves into her line of sight, holding his hands in front of him as he says, “Hey there, my name is Bucky. No one here is going to hurt you. We’re here to help you, okay? Your name is Brooklyn. Brooklyn Lowell. Hydra has used you as a weapon. They will no longer. I promise.”
Brooklyn’s eyes focus on his arm and watch as he moves it to talk. He seems familiar to her, but she can’t place it. Bucky realizes she hadn’t focused on him talking, so he repeats his words again, keeping an even, calm tone.
She nods slowly, and Bucky seems to be content. She then rests her head back against the partially raised bed and her eyes move around the room more slowly, trying to take it all in. Bucky moves his chair so that she can see him when he sits down.
“Do you remember anything?”
She stops looking around to think, her brows furrowed in concentration, and then in a gravely, clearly unused voice, says, “I remember – was out of Cryo for too long. Shooting. Killing.”
Bucky’s eyes soften in understanding. “You won’t have to kill anymore. Everyone in this building is here to help.”
It’s quiet for a few minutes as Brooklyn struggles against her protocols. She isn’t supposed to speak unless asked to. She has a ton of questions but doesn’t want to get hurt by her new handler, Bucky. Something about him seems – different, though. Any other handler she’s had, and she’d get hit for speaking out of turn. But, maybe, with this one, she can get away with asking something.
“Water?” She croaks, and Steve stands up on the other side of the room. Brooklyn’s heart starts to race, thinking she made a mistake and is going to get hurt. Steve disappears for a few seconds and then comes back with a cup of water in his hands. He hands it to her, and she takes it with a grateful look in her eyes.
Steve and Bucky exchange a glance, speaking without words. Then Tony moves on over to look at her.
“Well, nice to see you’re awake now. I’m Tony. While you were busy sleeping beauty, we made a new arm for you. It might hurt, seeing as it has to connect to your nerves. But it’ll be over in a flash, okay?” He starts to lower the bed to make it flat.
Brooklyn nods, and, figuring she wasn’t hurt for the last question, risks it and says, “Is this for fighting?”
Bucky immediately shakes his head. “No, B, it’s just so you can have an arm again. No one is going to make you do anything you don’t want to.”
Bruce pulls in a cart with the new arm resting on it as Tony starts to pull what’s left of her old one off. Brooklyn winces a little, and Bucky’s hand darts to her real arm, holding it to anchor her. Bruce helps Tony by holding the arm in place on the bed as Tony starts to attach it. Brooklyn’s face wrinkles in concentration, trying not to move from the pain, but since it is connecting to her nerves, she can’t help it and spasms a little. Bucky stands and puts his hands on her shoulders, gently holding her down, and keeping her still.
She focuses on breathing, and before she can do anything else, everyone is moving away. She can feel the arm again and she looks down at it, slowly moving it.
“Can you make a fist for me?” Tony asks, and she does a few times, clenching and unclenching it. “Good. That should do the trick. One last thing and then you can get out of here. See this chair?” He points to it.
She nods.
“We need you to sit in it. Just need to do a scan, nothing’s going to hurt you.”
Brooklyn looks to Bucky and he nods, so she stands and walks over to the chair. She sits down and Tony presses a button. The machine starts to move and encircles her head to get a brain scan. It puts a small amount of pressure on her head, and she gets worried. Everything seemed to be going okay, why would they wipe her? Bucky sees this and puts his hand on her arm, gently squeezing it to give her something to focus on. Soon, the machine is done, and Bucky pulls her out of the chair.
Tony speaks to Bucky in a hushed voice. “It’ll take some time for these to be looked over. I’ll let you or Steve know if anything’s problematic.”
Bucky nods and then turns to Brooklyn as Steve walks over. “This is Steve. We’re going to get you a shower, okay?” Her eyes grow wide and she gets defensive, the gears in her arm whirring. Bucky immediately goes, “No, no, not the hoses. We’ll make it a nice, warm shower, and you can get cleaned up. And then we will get you some food.”
Bucky leads her to the elevator, and Steve follows. It opens up to their floor, where Steve beelines for the kitchen to start cooking. Bucky leads Brooklyn to the bathroom and starts to point out different things, knowing Hydra would have erased any concept of personal care from his own experience.
“This is body wash, use it to wash off your body. This is shampoo, it goes in your hair. This one also goes in your hair, after you use the shampoo. There’s a towel here so you can dry off when you get out, I’ll find some clothes.” He turns the shower on and sets it at a warm temperature and then leaves the room.
Brooklyn steps in and takes her time in the shower, watching the grime and blood wash down the drain.
In the bedroom connected to the bathroom, Bucky looks through the drawers to find something for her to wear.
“Excuse me, Sergeant Barnes, but Ms. Romanoff has ordered some clothes for Ms. Lowell that should be in tomorrow. In the meantime, if you provide her with a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, they should work.”
“Thanks, Jarvis.” He pulls out the recommended clothes and goes to join Steve in the kitchen.
Steve is busy making a pot of soup big enough for three supersized diets. He turns to look at Bucky as he sits. “Was it safe to assume they pumped her full of some super–soldier steroids too?”
Bucky nods. “She was one of the last test subjects when they were trying to make it. Last one before me, if I remember those files correctly, so it was probably pretty much perfected by then.”
“Anything else I should know?”
Bucky nods but doesn’t say anything.
“You want to wait for her to say it.”
Bucky nods again.
“Okay, I understand.” He pauses. “Is it something she would remember?”
Bucky doesn’t answer for so long that Steve turns back to the soup and almost doesn’t hear him say, “One of them,” really quietly.
Steve decides to change the subject and says, “So, hoses?”
Bucky nods slowly. “Really cold. High pressure. Used when we first get out of Cryo to wake us up. Only form of personal hygiene we had.”
Steve nods, noticing how Bucky is slipping back into short sentences. He decides not to push any further, so they sit in silence.
The soup is almost done when Jarvis says, “Excuse me, but it seems that Ms. Lowell is finished getting dressed and doesn’t know what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“She dressed herself about ten minutes ago and still hasn’t moved.”
“Shit.” Bucky stands and goes back to the bedroom as Steve pulls out three bowls and sets them around the table.
Brooklyn’s not stupid, like some of her first handlers would say. She listens more carefully now. She doesn’t like to get hurt. Bucky specifically told her to shower and get dressed. Now that she’s finished, she stays there waiting for more instructions, or she risks getting hurt.
The door opens and Bucky comes in, his expression half sad and half mad. Brooklyn turns to face him, hair dripping on the carpet, hoping this doesn’t mean she did something wrong.
“Hey, B. If you want, there’s some food to eat out here. You should eat. You probably haven’t eaten actual food in years.”
She follows him out of the bedroom and he sits her at the table, with a bowl of food already in front of her. Normally when the handlers do this, they are testing her. They don’t want her to eat the food, they are just tempting her. But Bucky thinks she should…
She risks it again and hesitantly picks the spoon up, and nothing bad has happened so far. She sticks it in the soup and swirls it around a few times before taking a spoonful out. Slowly, she brings it to her mouth. Once she eats it, nothing happens. She quickly eats the rest of the bowl after knowing she isn’t doing anything wrong and even gets rewarded with another bowl.
When she is done eating, she sets the spoon next to the bowl and stays seated, awaiting further instructions. Steve and Bucky move around the kitchen, cleaning up and putting leftovers away.
Bucky finally turns to her. “You must be tired, huh? I think you should get some sleep.”
Brooklyn gets up and follows him back to the bedroom, where he leaves her. Sleep is not something she’s been allowed for a while, other than the cryo tank, so she is unsure what to do. She sits on the edge of it and spreads out on top, hoping she’s doing it right.
Bucky heads back to the kitchen and sighs. Steve is still there, pulling ingredients out to make breakfast in the morning.
“Did you get her to sleep?”
Bucky shrugs. “I told her to sleep, so hopefully.” He runs his hand down his face. “Wish I could do the same for myself.”
“Don’t think you’re getting much sleep tonight?”
“Not at all. I –” he cuts off, not sure what he wants to say. “I’m just glad we found her, safe.”
Steve nods and decides this is the time to ask. “Those files we were looking for… Were they on her?”
Bucky nods. “I wanted to find them to see if she was alive or not. And if she was, maybe where we could find her. I didn’t expect to find both her and the files in the same building.”
Steve pushes further. “Why did you want to save her? You didn’t seem upset over the ones Zemo killed, but she seems … important.”
“I owe her.”
Steve decides he’s done pushing and sighs. “Well, if you’re staying up, I am too. And don’t you fucking protest, I know you’re just going to read those files over and no one should be alone when they have to read them. Take it from someone who has been in the same position. You sit on one side of the couch and read them, I’ll stay on the other end and draw. Keep you company.”
Bucky rolls his eyes but knows there’s no stopping Steve from doing – anything, really. So he pulls the box into the living room and settles into the couch, ready to read about all the horrors Hydra forced her to do so he will hopefully be able to help when she has nightmares.