Chapter Text
Munich, Germany
Emergency lighting strobed against steel walls. Bodies lined the hallway like discarded puppets while the acrid stench of gunpowder and ozone made Bucky’s nose scrunch in unpleasant memories. He steadied his pistol as his boots echoed slowly through the chamber.
Bucky rounded the corner. His destination was just ahead of him. Except somebody had beat him to it. His muscles coiled tighter.
A figure stood motionless before the vault, its contents strewn around them, along with several more slumped bodies, red trickling from various wounds. The person tucked a manila folder under their arm, turning around. Her jacket shifted around her like a living shadow and Bucky caught a glint of metal under one sleeve. The woman’s eyes landed on him – sharp, emotionless, calculating, but not surprised.
“That file doesn’t belong to you,” Bucky called out around his gun.
The dossier belongs to Hydra. Or, at least, belonged to. Stolen by an ex-employee after the organization’s downfall, the traitor was trying to sell it out to a buyer. Bucky’s job was to take it off everyone’s hands on behalf of the U.S. government. Unfortunately, it seemed the plan was going to have more issues than ideal.
“It doesn’t belong to you either, Winter Soldier.” Her voice was smooth behind her mask, and it spoke of familiarity.
Bucky’s lips pressed into a thin line. He did not know her. He did not like not knowing. “Who are you?”
He took a step closer. She mirrored him, her chin held straight. “A better version of you.”
Bucky fired three rounds without warning. They clanged harmlessly off of the woman and she was on him.
She hit him like a missile, slamming them both into the wall as her knee drove into his ribs and the gun was knocked out of his hands. Bucky grunted, throwing her off with raw force, but she landed on her feet and launched herself back into the fight. Feinting a strike with one arm, she twisted the other way and locked Bucky’s organic arm behind his back. Something cold wrapped around his wrist.
Bucky growled and broke out of her grip. She was definitely fast.
The assailant took his follow up hit, spinning with it, and slammed her elbow into his jaw. The sound of metal hitting bone sounded through the chamber. Bucky staggered. His mind spun not just with the force of impact, but with the realization of what he was fighting.
A throat strike. A kick to his gut. A blade joined the fight.
Bucky was forced into full defense. She was relentless. Inhuman.
Just as he had once been.
“You’ve gotten weak.” She said flatly as they fought.
“I came back,” Bucky replied through gritted teeth.
The woman kicked him into the vault, metal shrieking beneath him as Bucky dug his hand into the floor to stop his momentum.
“You’re not back. You’re a failed experiment.” She picked up his gun.
“Whoever you work for.” Bucky pushed himself up. “You’re just a tool to them.”
A storm of bullets tore through the air, clanging against the walls and ricocheting off the vault’s reinforced steel. Bucky raised his vibranium arm, deflecting two, three rounds in rapid succession, sparks flying with each impact. He ducked into a roll, landing behind a toppled metal cabinet as more rounds shredded the air above him.
“You think I don’t know what I am?” her voice cut through the gunfire, sharp and bitter.
“I hope you know who you are.”
The weapon ran dry and Bucky surged up. He kicked the heavy metal cabinet straight at her.
She did not flinch. Her stance shifted to let the barreling projectile slam into her arm and ride off past her. A precision the Winter Soldier would not have bothered to think through.
They stared at each other for a moment, one panting a little harder than the other.
“Hope is inefficient,” she replied coldly.
And then she was gone, leaving Bucky to grapple with the fact that someone had made a new super soldier.
SHIELD safehouse; Berlin, Germany
Rain pattered up and down the roof. A battered coffee maker coughed out its third cup. Bucky sat at the edge of a kitchen counter, shirt off, bruises dark across his ribs and shoulder. His vibranium arm clinked softly as he picked up the drink. Its bitter taste washed away none of worries grinding at the edges of his thoughts.
Sam was leaning against the island, arms folded. He watched Bucky carefully. “She worked you. You don’t get tossed like that unless your head’s somewhere else.”
“My head was exactly where it needed to be,” his partner replied dryly. “From stopping her from caving mine in.”
“And yet here you are, sipping shitty coffee and bleeding internally."
Bucky does not respond right away. He stared at the stain in the bottom of the cup then set it down.
“She’s fast.”
Sam waited for him to continue.
“Strong too. Cleaner. Sharper than me.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “You saying she’s better than you?”
“She’s different.” Bucky gestured to the open laptop on the island. On it, pictures of maps and various warehouse-like buildings flickered. In the center of it all was a picture of the same woman from the vault: Aria Denev, the Huntress. A silver snake was embedded in her uniform along with every other image. “They’re different, this Viper group, these Hydra remnants. They changed the formula. And the programming.”
He walked over to Sam, pulling the computer to him. “She’s built off of override commands, not blind orders.
Bucky clicked through several more images of the Huntress. The satellite images were grainy at best, but her presence was unmistakable.
“How can you tell? You saw her for like not even ten minutes.”
“She called hope ‘inefficient,’ Sam.”
“And what does that say?”
“You don’t say that unless you’ve had it crushed out of you.”
“Wait, did you not see hope as useless when you were under too? How do you know it’s not just something a bad guy would say?”
Bucky shook his head. “With the memory wipes, hope wasn’t even a concept I knew.”
“So you’re saying she remembers,” Sam said, understanding dawning on him.
“At least more than I did, yeah.”
They sat in silence for a moment. The storm outside thickened against the windows.
Sam exhaled, rubbing a hand over his face. “All right. Well, it’s good to have more info on her. CIA isn’t too happy they lost the file, but with the Huntress’ involvement, they can’t really blame you.”
“Right,” Bucky scratched the back of his neck. “Thanks.”
“All good, but next time you tango with the Huntress, I’m backing you up. No solo brooding missions. We’re past that."
Bucky huffed. “Didn’t exactly invite you to Berlin.”
Same poured himself a coffee. “Didn’t need to. I show up when you’re being stupid.”
Viper Silversite; Location Unknown
“You’re early.” At the end of the room, a man in a charcoal-grey uniform waited. Thin. Cold. Dr. Aldrich Voss.
The Huntress stepped further into the briefing chamber, manila file in hand. Her jacket was scuffed and torn at the shoulder. A shallow cut traced her cheekbone, half-hidden beneath strands of black hair that fell across her face. Her breath was steady behind the mask, controlled and unreadable. She did not reply.
Dr. Voss waved a lazy hand toward the table and she set the case down, handing him its contents.
Her handler took the papers without looking at them. Instead, he stared at her, studying. “No structural damage. No evidence left behind. You’re cleaner than the Winter Soldier ever was. He made messes. You don’t.”
The Huntress stood silently at attention.
“But,” Dr. Voss’ voice dropped an octave. “You saw him.” What little warmth there was, be it pride in a tool that works well, disappeared.
He snapped forward, grabbing her roughly. “Did he say something to you? Look at me. Did he touch the programming?”
She does not answer. She can not answer.
“No.” Voss smoothed out the torn fabric on her jacket. “No, he couldn’t have. You’re different from him. Your arm, your eye, those’re our creations. He couldn’t have done anything.” He scoffed and turned around, sliding into the closest chair.
“You followed your orders. We didn’t anticipate the Winter Soldier showing up, so there was no protocol for it. You completed your mission and eliminated all associates to the package. That man was simply an outlier.”
The man stood up, pacing and mumbling more to himself than to her. “It’s okay. Nothing was compromised. You were bound to run into him eventually.”
He stopped in front of her. He looked at her. A slight furrow was forming between his brows. The Huntress looked straight ahead.
“Activate Protocol Reinforcement Gamma,” Dr. Voss commanded the room.
Needles dropped from the ceiling and the wall behind the Huntress revealed a restraint pad. Automatically, the Huntress stepped back into it, pressing herself against the worn cushion. Her jaw clenched, but the programming was too deep. Restraints sprung from behind hidden panels and clamped around her arm, legs, and torso. Her metal arm drops uselessly by her side in its deactivation.
A computerized voice calls through the room. “Seven.”
The syringes injected whatever they were filled with in her head and neck.
“Paradise. Earth.”
The words hit her brain like broken glass.
“Steampunk. Received. Twenty.”
Something cold rushed through her body and her legs gave out, but she was held fast to the wall.
“Carrion.”
Her scream was silent as her body convulsed under the searing electricity.
“You are the Huntress,” Dr. Voss said, sharp and cold, watching her muscles twitch beneath his torture. “You are a weapon. A tool. We built you to be the best and you are grateful for it.”
Another pulse, stronger, and her vision flashed white.
When she came to, the man in grey was gripping her chin with two fingers. “-don’t fail. You complete your assignments. And you will always have Protocol to remind you.”
Dr. Voss let her head fall out of his grip and turned towards the door. “Protocol Reinforcement Alpha in an hour,” he said over his shoulder.
The doors hissed shut and the cold hum of the room swallowed her silence, leaving the steady pulse of the electric current and the single drive to complete her next mission to be her company until the next round of Protocol.
Erbil, Northern Iraq
The desert city was quiet. Too quiet for one about to lose one of its loudest voices.
Clad in black and cloaked in an additional tan coverup, the Huntress overlooked a private airstrip. Her target was a Kurdish diplomat and anti-Viper reformist. He was one of the top bidders for the Berlin folder and Viper wanted him gone.
The Huntress’ bionic eye dilated, shifting through infrared, wind calibration, and trajectory alignment. It clicked softly as it adjusted, feeding directly into the targeting software of her rifle. She followed his moves as he stepped out of an armored SUV and was surrounded by his four bodyguards.
Erbil was not her first choice for the kill-site. She would have preferred to have eliminated him back in Baghdad where there was more civilian movement and more opportunity for his disappearance to be chalked up to something random. But Viper had ordered her to do it in Erbil specifically, so here she lay, atop a chalky rooftop, watching his crew make their way to a jet.
The first guard boarded. The second handed something off the third.
And a red blossom bloomed in the middle of the desert.
Bodyguards moved for their weapons too late. There was a man reaching for his comms and a woman bolting for cover.
Two more flowers unfurled their petals on the sandy runway.
This time, there were to be no witnesses. So, one by one, each of them became data points erased.
A cloud rolled over the dying sunlight, briefly causing the light settings in her eye-scope to alter. The Huntress recalibrated and took her final shot.
Another shadow crossed the horizon. Only shadows usually were not followed by the sharp whine of propulsion and could be hit with a bullet.
In a second, her gun was reloaded and raised at the intruder.
One shot.
Two shots.
Both were simply swept away by vibranium wings.
Sam Wilson – the new Captain America.
The Huntress frowned. He was not supposed to be here. Though given that he did not otherwise stop her from completing her assignment, she figured he was not originally supposed to be here in the first place. It seemed her presence was getting too big. Either that or the United States was keeping more tabs on her than usual. She would have to leave it up to Dr. Voss to know.
Sam’s wings swept back as he landed on the rooftop. Her rooftop.
She remained perfectly still, gun trained on the sweet spot between a person’s eyes that would keep them down instantly. That was if the bullet made it past metal wings able to withstand a Hulk’s punch, the Captain America shield, and a man that could operate and maneuver a wingsuit as if it were an extension of him, let alone what he could do on his own.
Smoke rose in the distance from the burning wreckage. Their eyes locked, unblinking, waiting for the other to move first.
This was Sam’s first encounter with the Huntress. Despite seeing the pictures, knowing who he would be facing, Sam still could not help the trickle of sweat that dripped down his back. It was like seeing the old Bucky: the mask, the arm, the murder in her eyes, and coil of muscle beneath her uniform that was not afraid to go for the kill.
“Why are you with Viper? You’ve seen what they turn people into.” Sam met her eyes.
He expected as much when the Huntress did not reply. She squeezed the trigger again, sending a third round hurtling toward Sam. He clenched his jaw, the hum of his flightpack ramping up as he propelled himself backward, lifting off the ground in a blur. But before he could gain full altitude a silver arm whirred to life, locking onto his boot like a clamp. “Shit,” Sam muttered under his breath as his pack strained against the force, trying desperately to resist the super soldier’s pull.
Sam hurled the shield toward her face, the impact sending a dull thud and a crack into the cooling air. Hope was about to flare, but her grip had not lessened. He swallowed thickly.
The Huntress slowly turned her head back toward him. It was covered in blood. Her cheek had split open from the blunt trauma, revealing torn layers of tissue beneath. Blood welled instantly, dark and thick, seeping down in uneven streaks. It was the kind of injury that screamed with pain, but her expression did not so much as flicker.
“Well, shit,” was all he managed before getting thrown into the roof’s lighting pole, which folded under him without much resistance.
Sam grunted with the effort to block her next strike, her metal arm sending a harsh vibration up from his wings through his forearm. She pressed in with a flurry of punches, but when that yielded no opening, she abruptly shifted tactics. Her next strike came low, angled toward the joints of his wings.
On instinct, Sam retracted his wings to avoid the danger. Unfortunately that opened a window of opportunity for the Huntress and of course she did not fail to take it. Sam barely got the shield up in time for bullets number four and five.
She was definitely faster, more calculated and almost surgical. She did not seem to be the type to throw around haymakers.
His point is proven when a grappling hook is snapped out of god-knows-where and wraps around him and the shield.
“They really did a number on you,” he huffed, having taken out the rest of the lighting pole when the Huntress used the grappling wire to launch herself at him feet first.
She flipped out of the way of a wing swipe and heel-kicked his jaw. “They made me better.”
Pain sparked down Sam’s neck, but he recovered fast, thrusting forward with his shield. He slammed it into her ribs with full force, launching her across the roof. Two short-ranged missiles followed the impact, whistling through the air after her.
The Huntress hit the ground hard, but she was already moving before the dust could settle. She snatched the first missile mid-spin and hurled it back at Sam. The second, she baited with a feint, then pivoted as it struck the ground behind her. The building rocked the building, sending a tremor through the clay beneath their feet.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Sam muttered, absorbing the shock of the first missile’s blast. He grit his teeth, smoke curling around his shoulders as he turned to see Bucky emerge through the haze, eyes locked on the Huntress.
“I thought we were trying to take her in alive,” Bucky said, rolling his shoulders. His own arm whirred to life.
Sam scoffed. “Well, clearly she’s still alive. And kicking.”
The Huntress loaded a new magazine, eyes scanning the rooftop’s gritty expanse. Shadows now danced in the flickering light of a nearby antenna tower, casting uneasy shapes across the concrete.
No witnesses – that was her order. But these witnesses were not ordinary bodyguards that would be stopped with a single bullet, let alone an entire chamber. The metal in her whined.
Bucky took a step forward. “You don’t have to do this, Aria.”
His words were surprisingly soft, mixed with something else that made her organic eye flicker.
Internal wiring suppressed whatever was about to rise to the surface before she even knew what to call it, and the programming told her to attack. “I already did,” she said coldly.
The clash was thunderous. Sparks flew as two metal arms slammed into each other.
Bucky dodged her elbow and swung at her ribs. She dropped to the floor, sweeping his legs out from under him and sending the super soldier crashing to the ground rather unceremoniously.
“They’ll never let you go.” Bucky jumped to his feet, pulling a knife out of its holster. “You’re just another weapon on their shelf.” He swung the blade at her, and she parried with one of her own.
Sam flew into the air, ready to fire what he could into their fray, but in a clash of super soldiers, every opening closed too fast.
They moved in tight circles, wasting no movement. The Huntress was faster, more precise, running her dagger along shoulder, landing a sharp jab into his side, but Bucky had the experience and weight behind every strike. For a moment, it was like sparring with his own shadow, each movement met with a mirrored counter. Their boots scraped across the rooftop, quickly painted in various strokes of red, each looking for an opening, neither willing to give ground.
Finally, Bucky caught her rhythm. He stepped inside her guard, grabbed her wrist, and twisted until her blade clattered to the ground. Muscles tightening as he held the lock in a stalemate.
“You know I’ve lived your life.”
Then Bucky shifted his weight and drove his boot into her stomach. The blow sent her sprawling, skidding across the gravel-strewn rooftop, arms flailing to catch balance. She rolled once, then snapped upright again.
“Then you know it made you stronger,” the Huntress snarled, already reaching for another weapon. “And soft.”
Sam found his opening. He dove forward like one of his bullets, shoulder-checking her with as much force as he could. The Huntress was sent hurtling over the edge of the roof, the world tilting wildly as she plummeted through the air, the last of her weapons falling with her.
“Alive, Sam!” Bucky hurried to the edge in exasperation.
Sam landed beside him with a soft thud. “Come on, you jumped out of a helicopter from who knows how high. She’ll survive four stories.”
“Six,” Bucky corrected without looking away.
They both leaned over the ledge. Below, the Huntress hauled herself up over a balcony railing, the metal visibly dented where her fingers clenched tight.
“Like I said,” Sam huffed. “She’ll survive.”
His smile faltered once the female super soldier jumped a floor to the next balcony, her eyes blazing over her mask with fierce determination. The gash on her cheek still trickled blood, but it only seemed to sharpen her focus.
With a growl, she surged forward, launching herself at Bucky first. Her metal arm gleamed under the rooftop lights as it swung in a powerful arc, aiming to crush his ribs. Bucky twisted just in time, the heavy blow missing him by inches, sending a gust of wind where he had stood.
Sam moved fast, pulling out a compact stun device, fingers deftly arming it with practiced urgency. The shot landed, its prongs anchoring itself onto the Huntress’ bionic arm with a sharp crackle and sending a jolt that made the limb seize and spasm. But the Huntress did not stop that easily.
She seized the broken-off lightning pole with her flesh arm and swung it in a wide arc with just her raw strength and momentum, catching Sam across the torso and slamming him to the ground with a bone-rattling thud.
Panting, she dropped the pole, tore the sparking device from her disabled arm with a hiss of pain, and slammed her shoulder into the wall to reset the mechanism. The servos inside groaned before whirring back to life, right in time for Bucky to grab and pin it under his own.
“You can be more,” he tried to reason, the effort causing sweat to bead at his temple.
The Huntress stilled. “You were weak enough to want that.” She threw her head back, and Bucky stumbled, blood dripping from his face. Before he could recover she was on him, throwing a savage combo across his body.
“Bucky!” Sam called out from somewhere to his right and a drone shot finally blasted her off of him.
Smoke curled in the air, thinning with the Huntress’ emergence. Her metal arm took the brunt of Sam’s attack, scorched and steaming but well-functional.
Slowly, she lowered her arms. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes were moving—darting, calculating. Then she paused. Her head tilted just slightly, like she was listening to something only she could hear.
Bucky froze mid-step, instincts prickling at the shift in her stance. His bruised fingers tightened around the hilt of his knife, waiting for a tell that did not come. Hovering nearby, Sam’s chest rose and fell with each labored breath, his gaze narrowing.
She straightened suddenly, startling them, and pivoted sharply, bolting toward the edge. In a single, graceful motion, she vaulted off the rooftop, her silhouette swallowed by the night before either of them could stop her.
For a breathless second, neither man moved. The space she’d occupied still vibrated with the aftermath of her presence, like a drawn wire, humming with the threat of another blow that never landed.
“Well, fuck,” Sam mused.
Viper Silversite; Location Unknown
Inside a room fitted with a reinforced blast door, its metal walls lined with biometric scanners and data cables that pulsed like veins.
A Viper employee carefully approached the man in the middle of the chamber. “Dr. Voss, we have the Huntress’ visual recordings.”
Since the Huntress’ tech was their own creation, its limits and upgrades were ever in works of progress. For one, the bionic eye’s live feedback was slightly delayed and lacked audio.
“Play it,” the ashen handler ordered.
“Yessir.”
Footage flickered onto the screen wall in front of them. The Huntress’ successful assasination, the elimination of all witnesses, then her fight with the new Captain America.
“Good,” Dr. Voss hummed, watching his weapon fire shot after shot at the American hero. “She’s able to interact with him without compromise.”
He kept watching. Wire was wrapped around Captain America, missiles were launched and deflected, the Winter Soldier made his entrance and said something.
And the video twitched.
So faint, the biometrics did not even register it. But Voss noticed.
“Replay that,” the handler commanded.
Quickly, the employee rewound the video and hit play.
The Winter Soldier said something. The video twitched.
“Again.”
The Winter Soldier said something and the video twitched.
“Again.”
Dr. Voss snatched the employee’s device and hurled it at the screen. Both shattered instantly, sending shards of glass raining down in a sparkling cascade onto the floor. It was going so well. Everything had been going perfectly. What went wrong? Why did she react? What had he said to her?
He turned on the other man in the room, who looked just about to run out of the room. “Get me the audio,” he growled.
“Yes, Sir,” the worker squeaked. “We are working on it right now.”
“Okay, good. Good.” Dr. Voss straightened his posture, brushing off the shavings of glass still clinging to his suit. “Let me know when you do.”
The worker hesitated, eyes flickering nervously. He opened his mouth, then closed it again.
What?” Dr. Voss snapped.
The man swallowed hard, barely able to meet Voss’s glare. “The— the recon team found Dr. Hartmann.”
A smile split across the handler’s face. “That is great news, thank you.” He tapped a few commands into his console, eyes gleaming with renewed purpose. “Report that the Huntress’ new operation is to kill Hartmann and all his patients.” Voss spit the last word like it was something rotten, Hydra’s old experiments, unfinished or broken super soldiers. Failures.
But Viper’s Huntress was not one of them. If she could complete this next mission, and she would, then today’s incident could be considered null, a mere glitch in the system. All she needed was some reinforcement.