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Chapter Text

Kara Danvers quietly peeks into the office of Cat Grant. It's only just Tuesday but she still sighs in relief as her shift ends. She shuffles her feet around for a moment before calling out, "Night Ms Grant. Um," she looks down. "...my day is over...?" Kara wants to slap herself at how her voice raises up at the end of her sentence but instead cringes. Ms Grant hates that!

She gulps twice, audibly.

As usual, her boss carries on as if she hasn't just spoken, allowing Kara to linger awkwardly for a little more. "Goodnight Keira, although I don't see what's particularly good about it." Sighs Ms Grant finally, as if speaking is a terrible sacrifice to make and Kara is an even more terrible burden to bear - so the usual, basically. "I'll just be here, signing some documents, like always." She looks up, peering expectantly, "Well, if you've got something to say, spit it out. I've got enough to deal with without your fumbling."

Kara instantly stands straighter, " I... Um, well... I could er, stay behind. I mean, only if you wanted me to... Of course."

Cat's eyes and Kara's eyes seem to be indirectly proportional. As Cat's eyes narrow, Kara's eyes widen. They both adjust their glasses.

"No." She finally sniffs. "You've done enough today and you probably won't function tomorrow without a full night's rest. I won't have some good for nothing assistant fetching me a latte with full fat milk." Ms Grant almost spits out the words (except she's too ladylike for that sort of thing). "No. It's probably best you go home. Night Keira." She turns back to her papers but seems to hesitate before saying, "Good work today."

"Thanks, Ms Grant." Kara smiles in relief. "Um...I'll, er, just leave now... Bye?"

"Bye Kara." says Cat as Kara turns out of the office. Gathering her stuff quickly (although not too quickly), Kara is almost squealing as she heads into the elevator and towards some much needed relaxation time. It is tough doing three jobs at once (even though Alex had said that her DEO agent status was essentially the same as Supergirl, but whatever), and of course, she has to try to keep them separate at all costs. So Cat Grant has some murderous ex-employees that Supergirl has had to catch from time to time, but at least she tries? Anyway, it's all so exhausting; more mentally than physically to be honest. She breathes a sigh, just because she has the time to.

It's dark and a little chilly when she steps out of the building at last - the perfect weather to walk home at a nice, slow, human pace. Kara quickly gets her phone out of her bag to text Alex.

-hey, my day's over. Wanna come over? I hav pizza& icecream. Plus Netflix. :) :)

It takes a moment before her phone buzzes in reply.

-Can't. Soz. Work stuff to do.

Kara is frowning now. Surely they would have called her, she's an agent too! She furiously adjusts her glasses and types.

-Do I need to come in???

-Nah. Don't bother. Just need to finish writing some reports. -.-

Kara sighs in relief.

-K. See u later.>_<. ;P

Kara smiles, sending off the last text just as she's reaching her apartment door, and relaxes. Finally. No crimes in National City tonight, no Non, no Fort Rozz aliens or androids or cyborgs or red kryptonite or -god forbid- anything to do with Cat Grant or Maxwell Lord. No. She doesn't have to be Supergirl or even Kara Danvers tonight. Tonight she can just be Kara Zor-El. Carefree and free of responsibility.

Quickly, Kara dresses in something comfy and dark, pulls open her window and slips out into the night, admiring the view of National City from above. She has always loved this city. Ever since she moved here. And she's come to love it even more, now that she's protecting it. The people she cares for so deeply and the bustling atmosphere that reminds of Krypton.

She shoots up into the sky and takes a deep breath. Earth's air is so much cleaner though.

Laughing with the excitement of a night off (finally!) she flies at her max speed, smashing through currents of air buffeting past her, the wind stampeding behind.

She suddenly remembers Barry Allen or the Flash, and smirks. Truth be told, in the air she is just as fast as Barry, since all she has to worry about is the air resistance whereas he also has to go against the friction his feet creates. On foot she doubts that she too can surpass the sound barrier, it takes a lot more energy running than it does flying, weirdly.

She'll just have to practice.

Landing softly on the balls of her feet, she glances around, finding herself in the middle of sand filled highways. Or basically the middle of nowhere. Perfect. Crouched low, she takes off, ignoring everything else except her feet picking up the sand. She keeps running, running, running. She knows she's so close but not quite there, she pushes herself to go faster and faster and faster. Hearing, not the thudding of her pounding heart but the rapid tapping of her heels swiping the sand.

After half an hour Kara stops and wipes her brow. Almost there, she can tell, but not quite. Huffing in frustration, Kara takes off into the air again. Unsurprisingly, she finds that her flying is a little easier (not that it wasn't already a piece of cake). Kara full out grins this time. If she can't beat Barry on foot then she can sure as hell beat him in the air.

This time Kara doesn't stop at her 'max speed'. Oh no. Instead she pushes herself to go faster again, sometimes flying up and then straight down using the momentum to gain speed.

In one final burst of energy Kara Zor-El plummets at almost the speed of light. A brilliant flash overwhelms her and swallows her whole.

There are no last minute thoughts as Kara Zor-El, Kara Danvers and certainly Supergirl vanishes from Earth. Or in fact, as she disappears from the entire Universe.

And there are none as she arrives at Earth either.

She almost recalls, however, a theory of multiverse and knows that this isn't her Earth.

....

Alex is so furious. Just over an hour ago her phone had pinged, saying it could no longer sense her sister anywhere in the world. And J'onn couldn't sense her mind at all. So, naturally, she had rushed back to Kara's apartment and surprise, surprise! The window was open which meant either someone had come into Kara's apartment, someone Super, or that Kara herself had left the apartment. Alex hopes for the latter.

On a more positive note, there seems to be no sign of struggle or anything like that. Things look pretty normal, to be honest.

The DEO has managed to track her activity signatures to coordinates just out side of the city, along with an unusual energy flare.

So Alex watches in fascinated horror as her sister runs at almost the speed of sound through the slow motion satellite footage, and then continues to fly at an immense speed (reaching light speed). Even with the slowed down recording, the image is still just a blur.

She almost misses it. She almost blinks and misses it. She almost misses her little sister be absorbed by a blinding light and then gone without even a poof. It's almost humorous.

When J'onn sees he sits her down and explains to her what the hell has happened. Alex's sister (Alex's sister!) has literally be sucked away to another universe. Just like Barry Allen had except who knows when she'll come back! Alex rubs at her temple. No. There's got to be a way or she'll make one. She has to.

Alex calls their mom first, of course she does. Eliza Danvers doesn't pick up, of course she doesn't. Still, Alex won't cry.

Her sister hasn't really gone, has she? Alex holds her breath as she dials Kal-El's number.

"Hello?"

....

It's way too cold (just because she has an amazing tolerance for extreme temperatures and can't get ill doesn't mean she won't feel it!). Dusting off the snow from her clothes, Kara surveys her surroundings. She definitely isn't anywhere near a National City. In fact she seems to be at the bottom of a very frosty mountain range. She tastes the biting air... Is she in... Europe? Probably. The poles are colder and the air is a little more salty in the west.

Somehow, she doubts there is a way back. Once again, a familiar feeling of dread overwhelms her as she takes in her predicament. Well crap. Honestly, a small, stupid part of her is thinking that she has beaten the Flash, matching her Earth's frequency with no help at all and no tachyon device thingy! Not that it makes it any worse.

"Or any better for that matter." Kara grumbles to herself, kicking up the snow miles into the air.

From a distance (maybe about three miles away?) she hears the faint sound of an engine. Fifteen minutes later, one of those old fashioned steam trains makes its way across on the steep slopes above her. Kara follows it with her eyes, careful to remain hidden.

Not six seconds later, a man is falling from the train.

Kara doesn't hesitate to be Supergirl.

She doesn't get halfway. And then they're both falling, both completely vulnerable. And she is literally powerless to stop any of it. Someone else is dying on her watch. She swears it'll be the last.

She can briefly hear shouting, gunfire and crashing from above.

Kara curses and everything falls dark.

Chapter Text

For a crazy two seconds, Steve thinks his best friend isn't about to die. For two seconds, Steve thinks he can make out the outline of a flying girl. Which is impossible. But he still hopes that somehow the impossible girl will catch the falling friend and that this will just be an incredible tale to tell Peggy and laugh about when they come back home, over some late night fondue. Of course that doesn't happen. The girl starts to fall too. Nobody catches anyone.

There's a look of peace on his Bucky's face as he falls. Like maybe he doesn't want Steve to see his face for the last time as a look of horror. One more second. Steve etches the picture of Bucky's face into his mind, memorising every detail for the last time. And then...

Gone.

Time catches up. The train tramples on, suddenly all Steve can see is white. He has left his pal, his Bucky behind. He had too. What end? There isn't an "end of the line" is there? Not anymore. That's it.

Maybe if he'd fallen instead.

....

She wakes up. Her neck itchy and her body sore. She gets the feeling that this is a somewhat new experience. Glancing around, she sees the skeletal frames of ghostly blue people and blinks. She blinks again. Where is she? The glow of the room is much too bright and overwhelming, and her ears! A high pitched whine reverberating through her eardrums and an incessant slur of chatter drones on in the background. Her arms twitch to clasp her ears but she finds herself bound to the cold metal bed. She frowns. Why is she bound? Warning alarms clang in her head and she instantly tugs at her restraints which breaks apart easily.

Immediately, everything stops. Someone is approaching. A little man with a bald head steps forward with a cautious smile on his face.

"Hallo, Frau! Ich bin ein Arzt. Bitte bleiben Sie still sitzen. Dies wird kein bisschen weh tun. Es wird sich für Sie lohnen dem zu folgen. Nun, wie heissen Sie?"

"What?" She responds, surprising herself. What is happening?!

The man raises an eyebrow and flashes her another, different smile. "Hello madam. I'm a doctor, I'm here to help... You fell from quite a height, I was told. Well, not as much as Mr Barnes but still. Yet you appear remarkably healthy... But anyway, we're here to help you adjust to this discovery... Tell me... Do you remember anything at all?" He looks as though he is about to start prodding her, which she doesn't like. Quickly she interrupts him.

"Where am I?" Who am I? She wants to ask too but she doesn't think he knows either.

"Well, you're at a secure facility to treat people such as yourself. We're here to help you." He says this so smoothly, even with his thick accent, that it has to be a lie.

She narrows her eyes and curls her fists before she tears through her restraints and slams him into the wall, though not as quickly as she would like. She feels weak still, even though she is so much stronger than this little man. He is able to cough and she grasps his throat harder. Something stops her from killing him, though.

"What did you do to me?" She says quietly. Why does she feel so weak? Why can't she remember? The only thing she can pull from the wreckage is 'Alex'. This doesn't really mean anything to her though so she deletes it from her mind. She has to focus. Meaningless things are a waste.

The itch on her neck suddenly grows intense and electrifying. Unconsciously, one hand goes to touch the back of her neck. She frowns. Something is wrong. Even in her hold, the doctor manages a pathetic smile. She drops him. Something is inside of her. She touches it again, something which isn't supposed to be there is there.

The doctor's face twists into a smirk, "I would not touch that if I were you." He gasps, his voice raspy. "If you try and pull it out, you will kill yourself unless we haven't killed you already. Touch it and we only need to press a button and you're dead. It is essentially a kill switch. I designed it myself." The metal device seems so much heavier suddenly.

"Take it out." She says evenly.

"No." he smiles again. "You are going to do exactly what we say... Comply and you will be rewarded."

There's another shock, this one more intense than before, and she's out cold.

....

By the time she's fully conscious they've already got her hooked up and they're sucking the life out of her. She wants to struggle and fight but she's so, so weak. So resigns herself to her fate. Just for the moment at least.

She meets each and every one of their wary eyes, just to tell them that it isn't over.

But there isn't anything she can do. Because, crap, she can't even remember her own name or what she looks like.

She glares at the doctor and wishes she could burn him to ashes with her eyes. But she can't. So instead she just stares as he gives her this infuriating little smile.

She manages to bare her teeth before everything fades again.

....

Apparently they have to "wipe" her before she gets "stored". Whatever that means. She might not have super hearing but she doesn't have to, to hear the hollow screeching and grunts from the pig next-door.

"Ah, yes. That was out friend Mr Barnes." Smiles the doctor(again). She wants to punch his crooked yellow teeth out. " He's almost finished!" He exclaims before he wheels her in.

She barely catches a glimpse of the bloodshot eyes of Mr Barnes and his metal arm. They just stare at nothing in particular. She can hear him quietly muttering numbers and words that make no sense to her over and over again.

Before she knows it, hard wax is shoved down her throat and several steel rods are being fitted to her head.

She thinks she knows what's about to happen. She's shaking but she can't appear weak. So she settles herself down and leans back, looking straight at the doctor. He smiles back.

The device whirs on. Apparently the doctor gets some sort of satisfaction from this. She's not surprised.

Electricity jolts through her body, crackling her ligaments, rattling her brain. All she can see is sharp white and she can't breath, her throat is rusty and the squealing and moaning she makes seems to vibrate through her skull, her body feels frozen and detached and dead. All she can focus on is that crunching, mind numbing pain. Everything else falls apart. She can feel her brain ripping in half and eating itself inside out.

Briefly she can hear the doctor saying, "Turn it up."

Her mind goes static and blank. Her body convulsing so much you can hear the small fractures in her bone. Her mouth curls as she lets out a long low whine, spittle flying. Her eyes are wide and dead like smooth, glassy pebbles.

Then everything stops. She collapses into a heap.

"Take a deep breath. Clear your mind. You know what's best, and what's best is that you comply. Comply. Comply and you will be rewarded."

....

She's forgotten everything by her tenth wipe. All she wants to do is comply. She needs to comply. Needs to serve.

Hail Hydra.

Comply.

Clear your mind.

Deep breath.

Longing…Rusted…Seventeen…Daybreak...Furnace…Nine…Benign…Homecoming…One…Freight-car.

Sputnik.

Target.

Kill.

Mission Report.

"Ready to comply."

She hums quietly to herself. She will serve. She must.

....

She has her first target. Blond hair, blue eyes, charming smile, symmetrical features. She glances over it, then to the doctor. She smiles at him. He smiles back.

"This man is Captain Rogers. Do you recognise him?"

She shakes her head, no.

"Your going to have to kill him. Can you do that?"

She hesitates slightly before slowly nodding.

The doctor narrows his eyes in disapproval. She shrinks back in shame.

"Well we'll just have to make you comply then, won't we?"

She just nods and follows him out the room eagerly.

....

It's all too easy. The plane is heading straight for the Pacific and all she has to do is push it in the right direction. She has control now.

She grips the tail and pushes, willing it towards the North Pole.

She didn't realise she could fly but the doctor said she could and she trusts him. She thinks she'll always trust him.

She can do a lot more than fly too. They spent the whole day discovering, experimenting. He tells her she must use her powers to do good, for HYDRA.

So she's strong... And she is for HYDRA.

Soon she's passing over clouds, over polar ice caps. Extreme temperatures don't bother her, but she can still feel the cold air sticking to her face. It doesn't hurt though. It feels... Nice.

Then she lets go, giving it a quick shove and straight into the ice. She watches him fall. Her first target. Her first kill.

This doesn't bother her except she feels slightly elated at the prospect of having completed her first mission.

She hovers over where the captain is now sinking, sinking ,sinking. She breaths. The water turns grey then white and she can her the crackling of the ice forming, the ocean turns into a brick and she has sealed his coffin.

Then she flies back.

....

"Well done my dear. You've contributed so much to HYDRA." He smiles.

She smiles back. This is how it's always been.

He guides her to the chair for her wipe and she relaxes in. She feels the electricity tingling already and welcomes it. The pleasant sounds of her hoarse throat. The screams ricocheting across the walls.

She slumps when they turn off the machine and leave to connect her to tubes and wires. She can hear what they call the "Joule Meter", ticking as they sap out her energy. She can feel the thrumming of her body subside and she sighs with relief.

The little device in her neck twitches and she invites the darkness that comes with it.

....

She wakes up just in time for the process to start. The little window of her containment unit is frosting over and she quickly flashes the doctor a smile. He grins back and then the window is a blank canvas.

She lets the cold frost overtake her. Feeling the paralysis in her toes and fingers, then arms, then calves, thighs, stomach and her heart. Lastly, her head.

Her lips a pulled up, she's frozen and beautiful.

....

"The intelligence community have only heard the whispers of her. She's a myth because she's so impossible." Says Natasha darkly.

Steve steps back. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," Natasha spits, "every target ever, eliminated and untracable. And... Abilities beyond any human, like Thor but maybe stronger."

Steve can't help but remember Bucky's death and the impossible girl. He gulps. "How does this relate to the Winter Soldier then?"

"They both started appearing within the same decade, just after the war was their first sighting. Both probably HYDRA. Both apparently don't age. There's the dots, you just have to connect them."

"I lost control of the plane that day."

"What?" Natasha furrows her brow.

"When... Before I went into the ice. I was headed to an area of the ocean where they could fish me out. And then suddenly I lost control over the plane, I mean the controls seemed to be fully operational but it was almost as if someone else was physically moving the plane."

"Like someone was pushing the plane with brute force?"

"Yes. I know it sounds crazy but..."

"After everything that's happened, it isn't really. Why haven't you told anyone this before?"

"I dunno. I just figured it wouldn't make a difference, just cause people to panic. I thought whoever it was would be dead by now."

"Well if it was her then you know first hand whet she can do. We have to be prepared."

"But you said she hasn't been seen in the last five years? She might be dead!" He counters.

Natasha rolls her eyes. "She's not. Remember our friend the Winter Soldier? Yeah well neither had he… until now. And you hadn't been seen in seventy seventy years before this. I'm just preparing you for Hydra's next little toy." She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. "I'm trying to help you. We're not enemies, Rogers."

Steve sighs. "I know. And I appreciate it. Really."

There's a knock at the door, they both tense.

"I'm sorry," squeaks a rather pink nurse, "Your not permitted to be in here. It's staff only."

Natasha says nothing but grabs Steve out the door. They stand there in silence.

He suddenly has an inkling about who the Winter Soldier is and the impossible girl. He hates it. But...

Even with exact coordinates... They never did find his body.

Chapter Text

The familiar feel of frost leaving her body greets her back to the world. Squeezing her eyes in anticipation, she wonders what they have in store for her... How much has changed. As she opens then, familiar icy blue ones stare back at her… which is different. The Asset has never been present for the defrosting process before.

She smiles pleasantly as he lifts open her container, allowing him to help her out of it with a hand. "Asset." She nods to him.

"Weapon."

Where are the guards, the other men? She gives him a once over. Why is he in civilian clothing? She asks him as much, demanding answers. He gives none.

She can tell he knows the answers, though, he looks conflicted. He should never be conflicted. He must never doubt HYDRA.

"I knew him." He says in English, with an accent from Brooklyn, America.

She gives him an odd look.

There's a rattle of footsteps and the Weapon seems to panic. Is HYDRA under attack!? Quickly, the Weapon gets into a defensive stance, fists raised.

Over the noise, the Asset asks the Weapon to get them out. He says extraction is waiting. She nods and grabs him, jetting through a convenient hole that seems to have been blasted externally through the wall.

They fly fifteen miles out on a bearing of 157 degrees before the Soldier tells her to land. The air is frosty but she is immune.

And. There is no extraction waiting. No men. Only a motorbike which is much slower than her anyway. What is this? When she asks, she does not get an answer.

Instead, the Asset plugs his ears with something and pulls out a small recording device.

"Sputnik." says the device, and suddenly she's a dead weight.

...

The winter soldier, or "Bucky" apparently, doesn't actually know her name. The same way he doesn't know his own. He only knows her, and himself for that matter, as the Weapon and he as the Asset respectively.

But there aren't many things this Winter Soldier knows, he muses as he rides across the snowy, snowy terrain. He knows how to ride the bike, drive a car, steer a plane or a boat. He knows how to shoot a gun, how to navigate anywhere, how to lie, how to speak any language in the world, how to disarm a man, how to kill. How to do HYDRA'S bidding. He also knows he knew that man that he saved but was supposed to kill.

He shakes his head. He'll think about it later, there's no time right now. Getting as far away as possible is the priority.

He lets the steady growl of the bike thunder, and silence the rest of his dysfunctional thoughts. It's easy since he isn't really used to thinking anyways.

They reach the outskirts of the village within three hours.

...

The Weapon feigns sleep when she wakes up. She's no clue as to whether she's in a hostile environment or not. And then she listens.

There is another person in the room - unsurprising if not expected- from the depth of breath, most likely male. She wonders if it's the Asset. Quickly, she flashes her eyes open for an unnoticeable millisecond and recognises him, but not the room. She opens her eyes again to look at him. He nods and she realises she's restrained.

What is the meaning of this? She wonders, and she asks him this as she pulls free of them. He merely shrugs and says that she needs to listen to him.

He has the recording device in his hands again.

"Do you remember who you were before you were one of the fists of HYDRA?"

She shakes her head. The answer is simple. She tells him that they were always HYDRA, there is no 'before HYDRA'. They were made for HYDRA.

"I do. I knew him... That guy on the bridge." He says, this time in English, there's a slight Brooklyn accent there. " I knew him."

She squints at him questioningly. He must be mistaken. All she's ever known is HYDRA. All he's ever known is HYDRA.

"Mission?" She asks instead, quirking her head a little.

He doesn't say anything, just shrugs. He doesn't know.

"Do you remember anything about your life before HYDRA?" He asks again.

She frowns at him. She's just curious now. "What do you mean. There was no life before HYDRA." HYDRA is everything to her. What does she have if she cannot serve HYDRA?

He shakes his head at her, as though she's just wrong, and without any explanation. "Who's Alex?"

Yeah. Who is Alex? "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?" She feels her face frown.

He shrugs, "You said her name earlier."

She ignores him but stores this information for a later date, "Where are we?"

...

It's been two months since the fall of SHIELD. Two months since Steve has seen Bucky. Or the Winter Soldier.

They're off following a new lead, and by "they" he means Sam, Natasha and he. Sharon's been a help too, but it's awkward between them. Steve tries to ignore the dread in his stomach as they fly towards St Petersburg.

It's just... They're always too late or just wrong.

It doesn't look too good though, all they know is that there was a man fitting his description traveling with a female. It sounds pretty bleak, he knows. It always does.

And he can't help but think, what if they miss him? What if he's dead? Or worse... What if HYDRA has him?!

He sighs. Only two months of this and already he's restless. Sam says he doesn't blame him, he hasn't really had time to accumulate himself to this new reality yet, let alone be searching through it. Deep down he knows that if Bucky doesn't want to be found then he won't be.

But he can't give up, won't give up.

The search is also out for some blonde girl that happens to fly. Steve isn't even sure if she's blond but he remembers pretty much every damn thing about the night that his best friends died. He ignores the part of his traitorous brain whispering "for good." But he'll be damned if he can't get him back.

Even if he dies trying.

From the pilot seat, Natasha calls that they'll be landing in ten. So, Steve dutifully stops pacing and buckles himself in, his nerves making his fingers tap an irregular rhythm on his knees. The tightening feeling in his chest isn't from the plane's rapid decline.

Apparently, it's snowing outside, which is rather apt.

...

The past few months have been a rough but steady turbulence of some really shite days and some not-good-but-not-bad days. And honestly, the Asset (or James now) is just glad that they been lucky enough to not have them on the same days. Who knows what kind of destruction they could cause? Slowly, he's been teaching her, the Weapon, about HYDRA or at least what he knows. Which is very little, to be honest. Sometimes they go to public libraries to educate themselves together.

Although he has to say, he imagines his bad days are nowhere near as hellish to deal with than hers. After all, she can fly, he can't. He's learnt by now to just play along and hope for the best. He does, however, find she has a lot more ease with communicating with the civilians than he does. He thinks it's because the little fragments of memories that are slowly returning to him, depict a world so much more different from this. The world he recognizes is in the history books.

But he won't actually know why, because as he's collecting memories through different triggers, she can't remember anything. He's still half convinced that that's why she has almost twice as many bad days as he does. Which, again, is fucking exhausting.

Speaking of returning memories, well this one isn't really a memory, but lately, he's been noticing a Brooklyn accent when he speaks, she says she's been noticing it too, and some slang in the dialogue he's been using. It's slightly comforting for some reason but also strange when he notices. He can tell it's slightly disheartening to his partner, though she hasn't said anything.

One other problem they've encountered is food. Well, not really. It's not so much of a lack of food (they can hunt) but the amount needed. And that's a lot. Turns out he has to consume almost three times the regular calorie count and her almost double his. Most of the time they just shoplift energy drinks and other high-calorie sources from shops. Bucky wonders if she feels bad. If she is feeling anything at all yet. He certainly is. Sometimes he'll catch her staring at the sky and wonders if she thinks they were better off staying brainwashed and frozen. God knows he hasn't done her any good yet.

It isn't until she finds some cash lying on the frosty ground, 1000 rubles, that she says she wants to actually buy something. They haven't yet for fear of leaving any sort of trail, but they're far enough into the town that they decide it's okay. Besides it's busy so he doesn't think anyone will remember them. They do get a few odd looks as they walk into the café since they've been sleeping rough for some time, but both of them can make themselves invisible.

There's a limited menu so Bucky just asks their server to recommend a few things. A pecan pie and hot chocolate for her and some small apple tartlets with some hot cider for himself. It smells luxurious. Too luxurious. Then a few things happen while sat at the very back corner of this toasty, dimly lit café.

She takes a bite, automatically chewing before she swallows. He can see the tears already forming in her eyes. Under the table, he kicks her.

"What is it?" He mutters lowly in English.

She shakes her head, "I- l... I think I might remember something." She smiles then laughs, brushing hair out if her face. To anyone else this would look completely normal. "I've tasted this before. Someone I used to know made this for me... I think. "

Carefully, she takes another bite before shaking her head.

"What is it?" He asks her gently, worry seeping into his tone. Instead of replying she just shrugs and nods, pushing the plate aside and finishing her hot chocolate as he finishes his meal. Which, by the way, is delightful and he almost wants more.

When they're done, he watches her delicately bundle up the pie in her napkin, as if some sort of treasure. Well to her it is.

"Let's go." she says standing up, stuffing her treasure into her pocket.

So he follows her outside. They still need to steal a car but the city is the best place for it since they're in abundance and car theft is a common occurrence anyways. If they pick a good enough, but also cheap enough car, they can get out the country without the cops caring about the stolen car of some poor man. It's a good plan.

Even if neither of them know where they're headed.

...

Steve decides it's best to dress as inconspicuously as possible and to let Natasha do the talking. With him, he just has his money and shield hidden in what looks like a rather large briefcase. Sam has disguised his wing-pack to look like a regular backpack and Natasha... Well, she is the weapon. He knows she feels uncomfortable. He practically dragged her back to her homeland after all.

"I know that look, Cap." She says evenly. "And just to let you know, you didn't drag me to do anything. I came cause I wanted to, you lil shit."

"But I-" his argument trails from his mouth when she throws him a dark look. "Let's wake Sam up and go." He stands abruptly.

Huffing, she laughs. "Yeah alright, Mr. Captain sir."

...

In the end, they decide on an old dirty silver Honda, with a full tank of gas- fairly common. They make a key of sorts out of wire and then they're in, counting their lucky stars that this is an old make which uses a proper metal key for the ignition.

They'll ditch it just before the border.

He's taking the wheel and she's taking the backseat. Out his rearview, he sees her take something out of her pocket, her treasure. Unwrapping it carefully, she tentatively dips her index into the smooth filling, fascinated by the texture and the scent. And licks it.

He doesn't say anything as he starts the car, aware that she's overwhelmed at the moment, he wonders if the memory is flooding back, or if it's something she has to force out of herself. Either way it's better than nothing, and he knows she has to savour it cause who knows when there will be something else to trigger her memories.

Overall it's been a good(better) day. They've made a little progress, even if they aren't sure what it's for.

In the back, the Weapon sleeps, keeping her senses about her. Ready for a fight. The Asset turns a corner and wonders where they're going.

Chapter Text

Perhaps, Steve thinks, soon this will be the least of his troubles. This being the fact that they're gallivanting around the planet looking for two individuals that might as well be invisible. There's a tense but silent rift between the Avengers; it reminds him of the inter-war period from back then. Except then he was just some stupid, punk ass kid who got into fights he couldn't get out of. Maybe it's worse, though, considering the nature of the group and the rest of the universe as a whole. Once again, everything is crumbling.

(Steve wonders if it ever stopped. He did. For over seventy years.)

And oh god. He just wants his best friend back.

They're too late though. Again. When they first started, right after the fall of SHIELD, he had told himself not to get his hopes up, not to expect anything. The irony now is that he genuinely doesn't expect a single thing.  But he can't give up. He's trapped in this monotonous cycle. Like Sisyphus, he has to keep rolling the boulder up the hill, even though he knows ( he knows) that it'll keep rolling back down. And yet he can't bring himself to just leave it at the bottom of the hill.

Peggy always says, on his rare visits which sometimes they both can't bear but still desperately need: "Don't give up. Don't give up." over and over. And he sticks by it. Of course he does.

She also says to come home. To know when the fight is over. She's right, he knows. After all she has years (decades… almost a century) of wisdom over him that he should have too. But he just can't listen to that part.

Don't give up. Don't give up.

Some days he thinks that's a curse.

....

Steve wishes, once again, that he could get drunk. They're in a Russian bar somewhere just out of St Petersburg and there's a tiny crowd gathering around him, cheering, because he's had around 35 shorts in the last half hour and he can't even feel so much as a buzz. Natasha's in the corner laughing, nursing a whiskey and Sam's off somewhere making small talk with someone. And whilst Sam isn't exactly a lightweight, he doesn't have the same tolerance as him or even Natasha, so he can't afford to get drunk on the job. Well he can. They did offer, but he refused. Sam's good like that.

"Where did you learn to drink like that Nathaniel?" His alias at the moment. And because apparently people still believe that you can build up an alcohol tolerance.

He shrugs.

"A natural, huh?" Says the man, Piotr his name is, apparently.

"I guess." Out of the corner of his eye he sees Natasha stand. She gives him a playful wink and tosses her hair back deliberately. And he has to hand it to her for selling the act. Her hand trails down his arm flirtatiously and she heads for the entrance. The door swings shut.

Steve plays his part, stammering to excuse himself and following after her like a love sick puppy. He coughs twice and hopes Sam will notice it through the wolf-whistles and the jeering.

Sam leaves his temporary companion about a minute later, a smile playing on his face as he approaches them a little ways down the road.  Good. He's glad.

"Have a nice time, Sammy? He was pretty cute, and I'm sure he thought you were cute too." Snickers Natasha. Steve wants to tell her to be a little more serious about this, but he can't bring himself to. They're on a mission but they always are, so he can't blame them for a bit of humour. God knows they need it.

"It was alright." He laughs back.

Steve frowns, confused. "I thought you were trying to flirt with his girl."

"Nah," he grins, clapping Steve on the back, "I'd be more likely to flirt with you than with that girl." He pauses, shifting his weight. "If you know what I mean."

"I thought you did." Natasha snorts.

"Shhh." Winks Sam, bringing his fingers to his lips.

It takes a while for Steve to put the pieces together and figure out just what they mean. Oh! "Oh!"

"Yes Stevie. I was actually trying to get into your pants when we first met."

"Really?"

Sam quirks a brow. "No. You're not my type. Sorry Steve. But I mean, I'm not the one that kissed you sooo."

"Shut up, Wilson." Natasha says punching lightly but also not-so-lightly because damn.

"Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable." He replies in a ridiculously high voice. He even bats his lashes a little. Honestly if he didn't die from this he could consider a career in acting. They laugh for a little before Natasha's phone buzzes again and they're reminded of why they're here. "Where to?"

"Just a few towns over. Facial recognition got him on a road camera. They're travelling by car so we've got time. But not that much."

Steve frowns at this. He doesn't like the idea of Bucky being exposed like that, even if it's just a speed camera. He knows that Bucky can take care of himself and that the woman can probably take care of him too, if they trust each other. But... He doesn't like it.

"Let's hurry then."

....

Alex is a lot less conspicuous than a man with a metal arm. Blondes are a dime a dozen here, so she's tasked with gathering groceries  from the gas station. Groceries in this case as chocolate, energy drinks and other high calorie food substances. Which is good because she looks like she's just on some sort of road trip... in the middle of nowhere, during the winter - okay never mind. The cashier gives her a knowing look and she grins back vapidly, playing her part even when she leaves the store.

"Thank you, Alex." Says the Asset- no Bucky- awkwardly. Gosh she really isn't used to that yet. Also... That isn't her name.

She's sure of it. It feels wrong. But it's the only thing she remembers about her apparent past life - according to her sleep talking according to Bucky - so it makes sense. And she understands where he's coming from, it wouldn't be right to refer to themselves as their code names, it would feel like they're still theirs. Like they're pets, just briefly let off their leashes.

(Or maybe not pets. She's sure most people treat their pets well. Maybe circus animals would be more apt. Or a toy.)

They don't risk finding other places to stay. Most of the time, they'll sleep in the car or camp out in the middle of nowhere(only when it's really busy though), and to survive that's fine. They've lived through a lot worse, she guesses.

"Alex" makes her way to the backseat of the car. The position is purely tactical of course, he can drive, and she can simply fly to escape if needed(she could probably lift the whole car and then fly away though) and she can look out the back more clearly than he can.

"Where are we going?" She asks. And to be fair, it's the first time she's asked, but she's sure he doesn't know. But he started this journey, this kind of half-freedom, so it's only fitting that he should be the one answering the question. They need to talk about it anyways. Before it was fine, they were getting as far away as possible-that was their mission objective- but now it's just aimless, and Alex doesn't like it.

"I'm not sure. Somewhere."

"But where? There's nowhere for us to go." Alex sighs. It's a quick sigh, not of exasperation but a release of air to calm herself down.

"Look." Bucky's frustrated now, she can tell from his heartbeat. "Let's just keep getting as far away as possible and then-"

"But we aren't. Hydra are everywhere and every time we get further away from one base we get closer to another."

This, perhaps is the longest and most non-emotionless conversation they've had, probably. Baby steps.

"Then what do you suppose we do? Go back for conditioning and wake up in another decade or so?" He doesn't snap it. He doesn't even sound angry which somehow makes it a lot worse. It's almost as though he might be actually considering it, guiltily, in the back of his mind.

And she hates this. She doesn't want to fight. That's the worst thing to do in this situation. So she counts to ten before she whispers, "No. We shouldn't."

Bucky just shrugs, keeping his eyes on the road. He looks more conflicted now. "Sorry." He replies back after a minute. "You are right though. I know we can't just keep wondering around."

It's getting darker now, which is good since Alex likes looking at the stars and in the dark people are less likely to see their faces. They're about two hours away from the next village. And their next meal. It's too hot inside the car; the AC is turned right off, the windows are closed and the heater is turned to the max. But none of them turn it off. They're both afraid, so, so, so afraid of being too cold even though they know best it won't kill them. Physically at least. Because cold means "sleep" and waking up disorientated after a decade or so for reconditioning. And a mission.

Bucky turns the radio on quietly and they listen to the hushed tones of boisterous hosts fill the silence which isn't silence for them because they can hear the turn of the speeding wheels on the ground and the conversations in other cars several metres away (and for Alex- miles) and each other's heartbeats and the blood rushing through their systems (though to Bucky it's a far away river and to her it's a flood) and it's so wrong. So wrong.

So the radio plays softly and they try not to think about why it sounds so loud.

"Why did this happen to us?" she asks. To be honest she hasn't really thought about this before, too busy running and hiding and seeking for a place to seek. But it's a valid question that she knows they might never be able to answer. He doesn't answer but for a moment his heart stutters. And she shrugs, beginning to hum a tune with lyrics in a language she understands somehow but can't remember if she's ever heard.

It's a mother's lullaby to her child. About a beautiful round red sun, a great civilisation and a noble House; of a mother promising her child the world to hold but only if she behaves. But Alex knows almost every language in the world but she can't remember the name of this one. Perhaps, she learnt it before this life, after all HYDRA has no use for songs. Maybe not. Maybe her tempered-with, unreliable, untrustworthy brain has conjured up something in desperation for some wisp of progress. She still remembers the taste of that Pecan Pie but not where from and not why.

It just feels familiar and like home.

Later when they arrive at the village, Bucky comes back from the public restroom and says, "I don't know." It takes her a while to remember what- there's a lot of things they don't know. "But maybe we could find out?" he offers. "You're right and I'm done running. We haven't even been running for that long." He runs his hands through locks of unwashed and un-kept hair and that Brooklyn accent comes out, from somewhere. "But we're strong. The strongest. All I know is that I knew that man on the bridge and he knew me... And- and that he was my mission." She supposes it's supposed to sound like conviction, these words, but they just come out so very afraid and confused.

"What man on the bridge?" She frowns. He seems frustrated now and she doesn't want to anger him but she's frustrated too. "You keep talking about the 'man on the bridge' and I don't know what you mean." She pauses for a second. "Explain."

He does. He tells her about the mission, SHIELD which he heard his handlers talk about and which fell with a mighty crash, the man with metal wings, the woman with firey red hair which he might have known too, and his target with the Brooklyn accent and said they were best friends (and looked like he meant brother) and said, bleeding pitifully without fighting back: "I'm with you 'til the end of the line." That his name is James Buchanan Barnes. And that instead of killing his mission, he saved him. Then he went back and found her and somehow his brain was functional enough to take her with him.

Alex doesn't say anything for a while. She just listens. She thinks someone might have told her she's good at listening before but she's not sure who.

"We should ask them why. They won't be expecting us. We can take them down one by one." His metal fist grips the steering wheel a little too hard (even though they aren't driving at the moment)and she thinks about this. Alex - no… the Weapon - is good at killing (perhaps the best), she is good at making her presence the very threat in which her victims would cower and give her the information she wants and she'd shoot them anyways, she's good at war and violence. But deep down something rotten stirs in her and she thinks that she hates it. Perhaps Alex hates violence. She doesn't like being Weapon. This emotion doesn't feel like a new one to her but she can't remember ever having it.

"Okay." she says though, regardless. But she doesn't want to fight or hurt, but she wants to know who the hell she is. "But not yet"

He lets go of the wheel and looks at her, not through the mirror this time. "Not yet?" and she shakes her head. "Okay then." he nods because they can't, not yet.

After, they gather up their rations in cheap, store bought schoolbags and discard yet another car.

….

Five days later, they sleep on their first real bed in decades (almost a century), checked into a cheap bed and breakfast at the side of the road. It's small and there's some mould growing on the ceiling and the radiator is broken, but it's fine. The bed they're sharing is a standard sized double and creaky and also a luxury. Alex can't help the feeling that they shouldn't be here. They should be on the road, on a mission or doing something and anything.

They get into a tedious cycle of going out to buy food. Never together though because they know HYDRA are looking for a pair. It's almost comical how these two brainwashed assassins work so well half-domestically (half because they really have no home). Buy (but mostly steal) food, come back to the room, eat, switch, sleep. They share the bed but not head to tail, or side to side; they share because they take shifts. They don't need that much sleep after all, they never used to sleep when they were HYDRA's, just used those little things in the back of their necks.

Winter in Russia is good for them. It means less tourists and less people and more excuses to cover up. Bucky wears gloves every time he goes out now and thick long sleeves. After a week of staying there Alex grabs a pair of scissors she stole from the kitchen downstairs and cuts his hair in a crude choppy fashion (and they have to throw them away because they break when  they try to cut hers). They dye Bucky's hair black and Alex steals a cropped brown wig from the barber shop two streets away. For some reason it makes her feel more like the name she's dubbed herself even though she's absolutely adamant by now that it isn't her name (she doesn't say this of course).

The couple who owns the B & B, despite their neglect of the actual rooms, are quite helpful. The woman especially. Bucky flashes his best smile and waits for her to blush, asking for maps, brochures, water and once even spare change.

As it turns out, it seems Bucky's memories are starting to slowly trickle back; sometimes in the form of sleep talking, sometimes they're just triggered like that. And each new one comes sooner than the last. They're about thrice a week now. They’re about swishing dresses, big band music, fighting in backstreets and pretty dames. At least the good ones are. He can always tell they're good, he says, because he has two arms and there's always a skinny and reckless boy (and a kind and brave boy who doesn't like bullies and put newspaper in his shoes) right there beside him. Rather selfishly, Alex wishes they'd stop… because every time it happens to him and not her it makes her think. What if they're different? What if there was never a 'her' before HYDRA? What if HYDRA had been telling her the truth? Maybe she really is their creation. Because all she remembers is the taste of something, a song spun from a language that doesn't exist and a name that surely isn't hers.

 Of course, sometimes Bucky's dreams aren't about "before". Sometimes they're other things. Things she's very familiar with too. And they don't need something to trigger those memories.

Though, they need something to keep them at bay.

Chapter Text

"-Alex." Bucky frowns gently, standing over the bed. "Alex." Alex is currently sleeping and as much as he doesn't want to have to wake her up (because the killer in "killer reflexes" is literal here) firstly, she needs to go buy food and secondly... He has a bad feeling about this. Alex said she'd be up at six and out the door at seven like always but today she isn't waking. It's nine right now.

It takes a while for Bucky to decide but in the end he takes the risk, bracing himself. Ever so slightly, he lightly shakes her shoulders. As he expects, a steel fist clamps around his arm like a vice and he's flipped under her in a second in spite of his superhuman reflexes. She doesn't let up however, instead the pressure on his throat becomes stronger. He can tell it's gonna be another bad day. Just how bad, he's not sure. As usual (despite the fact that it might not be the healthiest way of dealing with this in the long run) he plays along. It's his fault for losing the recording device anyways.

"Weapon." he says in the same detached Russian drone they're so used to. "Stand down."

Instantly, like a motor, she unlocks her position and stands up, back like a plank.

"Asset." she nods. When they were Winter Soldiers, there was always this slight power dynamic in that he, as the Asset, was always aware that the Weapon had more power than him, so he was always a little on edge. At the moment Bucky has to remember not to fall into that, he needs to be the one controlling the situation. "Where are we? We must report back immediately."

Unsure if what to do, he just nods. "Wait!" He calls, panicking. She's opening the door casually and slipping on the mask he hasn't seen her wear since the last one of her episodes. "There's… civilians. Let us leave unnoticed." He has to pick his words carefully now since he's trying to avoid as much bloodshed as possible. Unfortunately, this is probably the worst time for one of them to revert back. It's no longer a day's travel (on foot at least) to the nearest HYDRA base, like it has been the times before. In fact they're probably just a mere hour or two away. Which, yes, is careless but also… There's something about this base that he wants to keep an eye on. Alex however, didn't know.

She nods solemnly before opening the window instead. Handily, the window leads to a back alleyway which he's never actually seen anyone go through so it should be safe. "Let's go this way." She says, before grabbing her bag and slipping it on. Hesitantly, Bucky follows, holding her arm tightly as she silently floats them to the ground. He might never get used to that.

Bucky tries, okay. He tries to delay her. But honestly, it’s a lost cause from the start. Alex- no the Weapon- heads the shortest route to the base and he's forced to follow along. It's not like he really has much power to delay her after all.

The compound that their heading towards is an unsuccessful bank building in disguise, or it's under it. The entrance is both clever and cliché, if he remembers correctly (though in his memories he doesn't remember having an opinion on it). It's the permanently out of order toilet stall in the disabled bathroom.

They’re just a street away now and Bucky's really growing desperate. He doesn't think he can take going back there, not after everything. "Alex." he says urgently. Maybe he can just trigger something. Something. Please.

She just turns and looks at him questioningly. "Alex?"

Bucky quickly shakes his head and suppresses a groan of despair.

As soon as they walk in all eyes are trained on them. And then guns. Not that they'd have any effect but those guys are trying, he muses. Somewhere, in some other room, someone's probably watching this and calling every other HYDRA base. This is not good. Not good at all. Trembling sets of hands grab them and lead them to the real entrance, and as he walks through he feels the familiar anonymous darkness that came with the power they had over him. They seat them down on metal chairs in individual isolation rooms, locked and uselessly cuffed.

He could leave. He could get out now. All he'd have to do is rip off these silly metal shackles and tear down the door. It'd be easy. He could kill everyone in this compound and steal all the information. But. If Alex won't follow him he'd be alone again and he doesn't want that. He also doesn't want to leave her mind prisoner here.

Thirty minutes pass before someone he recognises steps into the room. He's not sure where or who, but he's definitely seen that face before.

"Soldier." He says, in English. He's American. What's he doing here? "How nice of you to come back."

As always, Bucky keeps his face blank, impassive, submissive and stares at the wall behind him.

"How was your little holiday?"

He doesn't reply, just waits for it to end.

It doesn't work, however, because all at once he feels the hard metal tip of this man's boot kick and dig into his chest. Once, twice. He clenches his fists. Do not react. Do not react. Do not react.

"I suppose you're not going to answer that, huh." grins the man, twisting his boot in a little bit further.

Because he knows if he does react then he'll lose his mind. They'll speak the words again and he won't know anything anymore. Just HYDRA. Just "complete the mission. Just "take the shot".

Bucky's been scared many times before but the dread of knowing they could claim your mind at any moment, that you won't belong to yourself anymore, is incomparable.

"You know," he begins, "we weren't too sure of which one of you came back willingly and relapsed back into the programming, and which one followed." The man removes his foot, standing properly and picking up a radio device of sorts. "But I've got a feeling you're the latter, Soldier."

He brings the device to his ear. "Yeah could you repeat the words again?" There's a moment's pause and Bucky knows what's about to happen. Did they do this to Alex too?

"Longing."

Bucky snaps the metal hand-cuffs. The man looks and grins further, speeding up a little.

"Rusted… Furnace…"

Stupid man. He's not gonna let them take his brain. He's not gonna let them violate him again like that.

"Daybreak… Seventeen… Benign…"

He has terrible pronunciation anyways.

"Nine…. Homecoming… One… Freight-" Bucky disarms him and shoots him twice in the stomach. He's not dead, but he will be if he doesn't get medical attention soon. Stupidly, the guy didn’t lock the door behind him but as soon as he steps out, there are about a dozen guards with their artillery trained on him. He doesn't have time for this. He needs to get to Alex.

Silently and as menacingly as he can, he gestures to the dying man in the room. The face of the Asset is enough to encourage compliance. Four go inside and he clicks the door locked. Idiots. It's not like he couldn't have handled twelve, this is just quicker. He grabs the two closest and smashes their heads in, using them as shields for the two bullets he would have had to dodge. Don't get him wrong, he still doesn't like killing, but HYDRA scum can go off themselves for all he cares. It doesn't take him long to cut through the corridor, half a minute max. The only thing is, he's not sure where Alex is. He needs to be quick though. They'll send others soon which will just be a nuisance.

Silently, he pads through the corridors, keeping to the walls and keeping track of the surveillance. Unfortunately, the walls and the hallways are white and brightly lit so there aren't many places to hide. There! This is the one he's sure of it. He knows because several months travelling together makes him aware of how her heart beats stronger than most others but she breathes less regularly. He readies his metal arm to smash down the door, and hesitates.

If they've already got to her, or if she's still the Weapon he doesn't think he could take her.

The door opens by itself. Alex or the Weapon walks out and Bucky positions himself for defence, just in case. But the way she looks at him, shaken, and the way she's shivering makes him pretty sure it's Alex that's walked out that door.

"Bucky?" she says, hesitantly. He nods, slowly walking towards her. There's blood on her hands and in her hair.

He breathes a sigh of relief. It's fine. They're alive. They're themselves. Or as much of themselves as they can be.

"Let's get out of here."

She shakes her head and he frowns. "No." she begins, "Let's take this place apart." It's the first time Bucky's heard Alex actually take the initiative for something by herself. Sure it's about destruction but it's something. He's gonna try and take it as a sign of improvement anyways. "They already know we're here anyways."

He nods.

The first thing that comes down are the people. They don't make it two doors before they're surrounded again by a hoard of oncoming men. But Alex takes a deep breath, and then literally blows them away.

"They're not dead… I don't wanna kill them. I'm sick of killing." she tells him, and her eyes meet his pleadingly. He gets the message. He'll do the dirty work, she can be the manpower. After all, even though he's already established killing just isn't quite for him, he doesn't have any qualms about killing these guys. A few of them are able to pick themselves up and before he's able to shoot them, Alex is behind them knocking them out.

He nods. She'll maim. He'll kill.

The next few corridors go similarly but Bucky grabs one by the scruff of his neck and glares down. "Where're your orders comin' from?"

He doesn't get an answer so he fires his gun. Ah well. They'll work their way up.

As soon as they leave that floor, Alex's eyes start to glow and she levels the place. The walls are either crumbled down in concrete heaps or on fire. She nods in approval.

When they finally leave the place the building is collapsing in on itself and the people inside are either dead, about to die or fleeing. Bucky takes a glance at Alex and thinks she might have given them a new mission.

….

Sometimes, they actually do get close. Sometimes Natasha's ever elusive sources do actually provide helpful information. They storm through HYDRA bases that already have shattered glass and metal littered on the ground. And guards that have been strangled to death with metal fists. The security camera don't tell lies when they see a man with a metal arm and a hovering woman beside him punch through walls (but not people for some reason. Never people. It's almost as though she's afraid of touching them).

"One week." He says again. "Just one fucking week too late." And he punches the walls too but none of them fall. Only dent.

They regroup back in New York, the Avengers. Tony's got word about an experimental base in Sokovia and wants to storm the place; arrest some bad guys, rescue any prisoners and be home in time for tea. Steve wants to find his brother. But the world is bigger than that, and everyone thinks Tony is the one with selfish wants and that Steve is so selfless. Sometimes that's true but at the moment it's the opposite.

And while being an Avenger is a 24 hour job, he only thinks about battle strategy in the daytime and at night he thinks of what to say to his best friend.

"Not a perfect soldier, but a good man." Dr Erskine had said and Steve thinks that perhaps at least a good friend might suffice but then remembers Sam's sleepless nights over a man he's only met once when he tried to kill him and his months away from family and the VA and Natasha's sharp frowns and the rest of this unwilling family (because it was not free choice that put them together but necessity) putting their lives on the line for one another, and hesitates.

For him, the War (the one he'd actually signed up for) had only been over a year or so ago, and he hadn't even seen it end. Except he supposes that maybe fighting aliens for a New York that is truly new to him, and another armada of HYDRA soldiers for Peggy and Howard's SHIELD should cover it. Of course it's not like he can just say "job done" and travel back in time to have his dance with Peggy and get married with that dream of two point five children and a white picket fence. (Or maybe he can- it's hard to tell nowadays.)

….

Getting past a country's borders is easy when you're someone who can literally fly. It's weather dependent though, and they have to travel at night, but it's pretty useful. Of course, Alex knows she could travel around the whole planet in less than five minutes, but she also has a feeling that Bucky's trying to take his time and might not be able to handle it.

She's not sure what kind of journey he's leading her on but he's asked her to follow as he says and she's got no reason not to so she does.

Besides, even though they aren't actively seeking HYDRA bases, they won't hesitate to burn one if it's not too out of the way and that's fine with her. And he's got no complaints about doing the killing for her either.

It almost feels like old times with missions again. They work together well like some sort of twisted duo. What they're doing isn't really so different either, just who they're doing it to and who for are different. She wonders if the fact their doing this willingly and freely makes them better or worse.

....

The DEO is still recruiting new powers every month, trying to fill the hole that Supergirl left after her one year of working with them here. It's not the same. Most of them are more trouble than they're worth and she's so tempted to just give up on them and maybe quit her job altogether. Kara wouldn't though, she'd give everyone a chance, so Alex keeps holding on.

Alex doesn't bother trying to fill the hole her sister's left in her heart though. She's smart. She knew from the beginning that'd never work. So instead Alex keeps working, keeps up with her sleepless nights in the labs, keeps her eyes on the notes Winn gave her about tachyon devices and speed force from fifteen years ago.

It's been fifteen years.

It's been fifteen years since Alex has seen her sister, fifteen years since she disappeared off the face of the Earth. She's still searching.

Fifteen years.

Kal-El flies and flies and flies. And it's useless. So useless. After all, they always knew Kara was faster. He doesn't stop, though, until one day he crashes into the ground and almost causes an earthquake.

If she's gonna be perfectly honest with herself (and she isn't often), she's already given up in her mind whenever she wakes up. It's probably been like that since the third year they didn't have Kara. But she isn't very honest with herself. That's why she can still function. Kind of

Mom's kind of collapsed in on herself. Every time Alex sees her she has to act like nothing's wrong, like she's fine. And it's exhausting. But if Alex's smile so much as falters, Eliza starts panicking again. Treating Alex like a baby that she has to feed and wash up for and care for. And she's getting old, her mom, which makes it even harder to care for her when she can't even look after herself.

Although Alex doesn't really give one fuck about herself. Her mind and body could deteriorate and burn in acid for all she cares, just as long as she gets to see Kara smile at her one last time.

J'onn disappeared to God knows where a year ago. It makes Alex kind of want to curse him. Because as much as she hates to admit it they need him, she needs him. Every so often they'll get random sightings of a green man reported flying or once, saving a cat.

Perhaps he's trying his own method of filling that gap.

It makes her jealous, sometimes, that Kara is so sunny she's probably become someone else's Kara. Because to her, Kara's her most important person and she really can't stand that Kara might have become someone else's friend, confidant. At this rate she's lived in a world without Kara longer than she's lived in one with her. And yet she's still desperately clinging.

Pathetic isn't it?

She wonders if Kara's looking for her too. If she's spent fifteen years trying to find a way home. Or maybe it hasn't phased her. After all, she's already lost one home, what's one more? Thirteen years on Krypton, twelve years on Earth, fifteen years on another. It's a horrible thing to think about but the reasoning dangles over her head like a deadline.

She wonders if she still misses National City, CatCo, the DEO, fighting aliens, making everyone worry, eating those sticky buns down the road from her apartment (someone else lives in that apartment now), awkward Thanksgivings, their sisters' nights.

Alex does.

Because home isn't home without her little sister.

Chapter Text

The Avengers are on the news a lot. Especially Bucky's old friend Steve - Captain America. It's just like him, he thinks, to be saving people, even now. Steve's always been the hero. It worries him though. Part of him, no matter how fucked up he is, will probably always see Steve as the skinny, underweight asthmatic kid with like every health issue in the book. Better that than a mission, he supposes.

In general, Bucky would say that most of his memories are back by now. Well, obviously he'll never know just how many memories he's lost, but it feels like he's got most of them. Less gaps. The annoying thing about it is that they hit at the most unexpected times. And inconvenient too. Like sometimes he'll be paralysed in the middle of a busy crowd and those around him will get annoyed. Or whilst he's driving, which isn’t dangerous for them but for those other civilians.

Even still, he's not sure if he can face Steve again. Not yet anyways. He can't stand to see the disappointment that'll be on his face, because Bucky knows that he's expecting the old Bucky, not this new half-formed shell of a friend. And Steve wouldn't give up. It would hurt him. And Bucky doesn't think he can live with that kind of responsibility just yet.

He's not stupid though. He knows Steve's looking for him. But, Bucky's gonna be selfish. Just little more.

As for Alex, he's not actually sure on her progress. On one hand she keeps having these vivid dreams and sometimes talks in her sleep, which has to mean something. On the other hand whenever she wakes up she seems no different, except sadder. She tells him she doesn’t remember her dreams or they just don’t make sense, which fits because the words she's mostly been mumbling are nonsensical or just random.

They aren't doing much at the moment. Just laying low in South America. They've got a laptop on them too, and use the McDonald's wifi which is just next to the room their sleeping in. Technically speaking, they aren't supposed to be there, but it's just sort of an abandoned property so why not make use of it? Speaking of technology actually, the use of 21st century things are the only things Alex seems to be completely at ease with. It's strange because if he remembers correctly (not that these are particularly comfortable memories) they were both 'recruited' at the same time. During the war. Long before anything like this "Google" or "Youtube" or the rest of the Internet and Laptops. To Alex they seem almost like second nature. Like she's done this before.

Which is impossible. Probably.

She's been getting quieter lately, and she was never too loud to begin with. The only time he ever sees her let herself loose is when they cross off another HYDRA base. And even then she doesn't say a word, just flies about with silent, furious destruction. She still doesn't kill though, and he doesn't question it.

Idly, Bucky wonders how old he is. It’s January so his birthday is in around two months (according to that Smithsonian exhibit at least). They used to celebrate his birthday with cake. Steve's mum would make him a slightly too dry carrot cake with so much icing it made him feel sick. It was marvellous. After Sarah passed, they tried to make it again but it wasn't the same.

It also reminds him he should be dead. Or at least dying. He should be in his nineties stuck in a home prattling on about war stories or how the younger generation are too something, or whatever else people that are his age do. Or he should be buried in a grave alongside the rest the Commandos, decaying in the ground. Hell, apparently Gabe left a grandson behind. He can't imagine that but there's a family picture on his 'Wikipedia' page and everything. It makes him want to laugh and cry all at once.

He doesn't though. Most of the time he doesn't do anything but just stare stoically. And eat. And sleep.

He feels guilty but he thinks about this a lot: sometimes he wishes they'd never escaped, because it's too hard. Too confusing. And he can't decide whether or not thinking is better than not being able too. Also, sometimes he wants to die.

But he doesn't. (A) He doesn’t think he could if he tried, though maybe Alex could do it. (B) He doesn't think he could leave Steve alone in this century just like that, though it isn't really making much of a difference at the moment.

He also probably shouldn't leave Alex to fare for herself. She doesn’t even have the option of dying.

She doesn't know how.

....

Sometimes, it's hard for him to feel remorse at the murders he's committed. Not because he doesn't know they were wrong or he because he forgets what side they were for (never that), but possibly because the memories themselves hold a sort of cold, empty impassiveness. And it's hard to change those memories. Or rather the emotions (or lack of) attached to them.

(Except other times when he does feel remorse. And then he wants to tear his brain out and burn it or rip his own throat out or shoot himself cleanly or anything. So really it's easier to just not feel.)

Sometimes he hears Kara singing. Well, it's more humming really but it's always the exact same tune and so rehearsed that to him it is singing. Perhaps he can't tell the difference anymore. Bucky doesn't like music. Now it all sounds like white noise and crashing tin cans to him, and the music that he's used to listening to just makes his chest hurt. Deep down.

Bucky used to like music, back in the 40's (at least he thinks so), and now he doesn't.

Huh.

….

Other than standing guard or getting food or the occasional wrecking of HYDRA bases, there's really not much to do except sleep.

And most of the time, it's dreamless. Devoid of anything. Just recharging.

But then sometimes it's not.

"Alex" mostly just ignores her dreams, to be honest. Or she at least tries to ignore them. Mainly this is because they don't make much sense. They seem to bounce back and forth between things and show her the ridiculous. She sees a red sun, a planet exploding behind her, people saying things in a language which does not exist, changing a baby's diaper, singing songs with other children, an intelligent robot as a servant, a symbol that looks like a weirdly shaped 'S' but she has a feeling that's not what it means.

She hates it all, because instead of helping her get better, all they do is confuse her. And the more they confuse her the angrier she gets. Or at least that's how she's putting it. Because sometimes when she "remembers" things she gets a certain feeling that comes with the memory, tugged along like a chain. Usually it's anger.

It's not even her red, hot, explosive anger she has whenever she tears through a HYDRA base.
Not devastating, or vengeful, or even sad.

It's just there. A baseline sensation. Seeping silently out of her skin, cold even. It makes her feel stone cold just thinking about it. And it's always there, just waiting to be tapped into, and with each new - but rare - memory it grows, curling beneath her blood.

It twists something a little deeper inside of her. But she's not sure what it is.

And there's a deep sadness that comes with some of them, each planting a tiny seed in the back of her skull. She's got the feeling they've got the potential to become bullets if she just leaves them there, though. Not that bullets have much of an effect on her.

New Mexico is nice.

Well, she can't quite grasp her mind around her own opinion of the word "nice" but perhaps if she could she'd apply it here… It is peaceful at least, she knows that much. Though that might only be around this part of town. (And really peace is also relative, so she's got nothing to compare it to.)

She wakes up in a cold sweat one night (the only time she does serm to break out a sweat) again, and she can't remember why. Never does, really. But this time she might have a feeling on where to go. Go? Why does she need to go? Go where?And though it isn't clear what it is that tells her to fly, for once she might not care.

At the very least, the wind will make it worth it.

Alex pens a short note onto a napkin and slips it discreetly into Bucky's metal hand. He doesn't even flinch, too tired from their last heist and Alex's last bad day. Then she slips open the window, and takes off into the night. She knows Bucky'll wake up in a second, from the sudden cool draft or the sound of the whistling wind, but she's already a block away. Then another. And now ten. And now she's out of the city.

Free.

(Well, almost.)

There isn't a direct route she remembers, nor does she even know the coordinates or even what the place she's looking for looks like. All she remembers is the bitter cold, the taste of the air, the sound of a train ten miles away, the crunch of snow beneath her feet.

She just keeps flying 'til it feels familiar, feels right. She passes over countries, oceans and seas, deserts... Soars high over them all several times, taking it in from above. It would be relaxing if her heart isn't the loudest thing she can hear and if it isn't beating double it's normal rate.

From above, she recognises a lot of it. But it's with that strange hollow feeling that comes with being the Weapon. Except it feels wrong for some reason. Like the artist has made a mistake, or a few.

She's pretty sure that doesn't make any sense.

After a while of just drifting, there's something tugging her again. Just feels it. Like a memory. And it orobably isnt even that important or reliable, but shes gonna follow it anyway. And there's this strange sense of desperation in her chest and that thing you get when you're so close to something but it's just out of your reach. Or like she's drowning but she can see the light at the surface if the water. Scrambling fruitlessly and exhausting yourself out more. It's like that. A slow sort of torture, much different and almost as effective as the one she's used to dreaming about.

Maybe she's being stupid, careless - wandering around on just a feeling. Or maybe she's not. After all, what would she know; she isn't used to being this... Impulsive, un-clinical. (Or maybe she did?) And she's not used to thinking unless it's in terms of mission strategy - and even then she's following orders.

It takes about an hour for her to find the place though it's a bit different from the last time she was here. That is, if she's been here a last time. The snowy canyon is a bit deeper than before and some of the rocks have eroded away; the train tracks, though clearly long unused from the rust, are visible still after seventy years; and it's a little warmer(probably due to the difference in seasons and the fact that global warming is a thing.) But she just knows it's here. Just knows. Well, she doesn't know what's here exactly, just that it's important.

Alex gracefully lands herself at the bottom of the canyon, about half a mile down from the railway, and just sits there on the soft snow for a moment. Why is she here? There's nothing here.

Tosses up powdery snow and follows the arc of it miles into the air and sprinkle back down again.

There's nothing here, but...

She lets herself fly freely up, not at her top speed but still at a high speed, until she's just a few metres below the ridge with the tracks.

And then she falls. Just drops herself 'til she hits the ground. Freefalling.

A compulsion. She flies up again because there's some strange sort of urge to do so. And plummets. And ascends again. She can't help it. There's something missing and she knows it and she has to figure out what because everything feels so familiar and wrong.

She does this again and again and again. Shooting up and suddenly dropping. Like her powers just switch off, always just before the tracks. A mental barrier of sorts. It fills her with a sense of failure and horror which she thinks is familiar and maybe slightly ingrained. After all, falling is an irrational fear to her.

It probably lasts an hour or two. Just repeating it and repeating it. It almost becomes addictive.

When she stops she curls herself into a ball and closes her eyes, actually unafraid of the dreams this time. Actually welcoming them.

The memory this time is clearer. It's still fractured but she thinks she can make sense of it

She's grumbling to herself, kicking up the snow miles into the air.

From a distance (maybe about three miles away?) she hears the faint sound of an engine. Fifteen minutes later, one of those old fashioned steam trains makes its way across on the steep slopes above her. She follows it with her eyes, careful to remain hidden.

Not six seconds later, a man is falling from the train.

And she doesn't hesitate.

She doesn't get halfway. And then they're both falling, both completely vulnerable. And she is literally powerless to stop any of it. Someone else is dying on her watch. She swears it'll be the last.

She can briefly hear shouting, gunfire and crashing from above.

She curses and everything falls dark.

….

Bucky wakes up as soon as he hears the slide of the window and feels the cool breeze on his skin. Alex isn’t here, he notes immediately. He sits up. The slightly crumpled note she's left him is clear and concise and he reads it a few times for lack of things to do.

"Gone out to find something.
Be back soon. Stay here.
-A (11:46)"

He frowns for a second, stands up to close the window. Walks over to the sink to fix himself water. Reads it again. It's both direct and vague at the same time. "Find something" is crossed our, and gives the purpose but only half of it. What is it she is looking for? What does she know that he doesn't? And to them, "soon" could be both ten minutes or two months or everything in between.

Bucky groans and finds himself flopping uncharacteristically back onto the unmade bed. He's pretty sure they were making progress as well! At least he knows what she expects him to do. Which isn't a lot.

As strange as it is, he's gotten used to her constant presence and being on the run alone would not be good for his paranoia at all, he reckons. So, for his sake at least, he hopes "soon" really is soon.

After ten minutes (she's still not back. He isn't worried, yet) he switches on the run down television set, casually flicking through late night stations of mostly the news, talk shows, random episodes of Russian dramas. He keeps the volume to a minimum though because it's all he really needs, plus the walls of the establishment are thin and he isn’t wanting any complaints.

About an hour later he cracks opens a bottle of one of those overly sweet energy drinks to wash down the large bag of chips he got from his last run to the shops. Sits back on the lumpy but springy mattress of their double bed and settles on a world news channel. It'll be good to keep up with global affairs outside of HYDRA, right. Not that there's much change since the last time. Even after several months, the planet's still needing to get acclimated with the downfall of SHIELD, now that civilians can see the world without a pair of rose tinted glasses.

By the time the sun's almost fully risen, Alex is still not back and he's resorted to pacing the length of the room like it's a cell and staring blankly at the walls. He's already re-organised all their (or maybe just his, now) supplies twice, taken a shower and eaten another few bags of chips (spicy this time). It's been six hours already and there's only so much entertainment that can be found from a dingy hotel room alone.

Well, he suposes sleeping is always an option; because one never really knows when the next opportunity to sleep will arrive. Except he won't do that because it'd leave his back open and he's not some idiot. Besides, he's not in the mood to chance his dreams, or who he'll be when he wakes again.

Bucky glances anxiously at the clock again. If she's not back in maybe another a day before he really starts getting worried.

He's just out of the shower when he hears it. To hide is his instinct because he's not sure if it's the Weapon or Alex which has arrived, but he steps out, purposeful like nothing is wrong, casually drying his hair with the towel in his hand. She doesn't look like Alex or the Weapon. And doesn't even look at him as he enters from the bathroom, just flops down onto the bed, barely acknowledging his presence. The suns almost set again.

Lightly, he sits down beside her and lets the silence linger.

From one of her larger, pouch sized pockets, her hand pulls out something flat and rectangular. It's a chocolate bar. And then other things; a hand warmer, a book on American history, a small flask of familiar smelling alcohol, a tiny colour printed copy of the man Bucky recognises from his flashbacks and the bridge. His mission. Captain America, Steve Rogers (his pal).

"Take them." She says, and it seems like she's struggling and her breathing is abnormally fast and she still doesn't even look at him, turning face down onto the bed. Weakness. Submission. Shame. A part of him whispers and Bucky feels like he should be able to figure out what's brought this on . He takes his apparent gifts and observes her slowly.

Very deliberately slowly, he tears the foil of the chocolate and breaks off a row and then a single square and pops it into his mouth.

He hears her hold her breath.

"Thank you, Alex." He says carefully. "It's very kind."

He doesn't ask where she's found them.

A flinch. The movement is minute but his sharp eyes catch it all the same.

"You should not thank me."

Bucky frowns. He might ask why but he knows it might close her off more--it would him. "Alex?" He says instead to at least voice his confusion.

Her body tenses and she takes a deep, shuddering breath. Heart heavy. "No..." And she sounds pained, "That... That's not my name. And I do not deserve your thanks."

He feels his brows furrow further as he recognises this.

Guilt.

Which isn't surprising considering what they are, but it's guilt to him.

But for what? It's too soon, though, to ask that question, he senses. "Do you remember it?" He asks instead.

She nods. Nothing slips from her lips though and for a minute he can't tell whether or not she's lying or waiting for him to ask.

He hears her gulp.

"Kara." She whispers finally, breathless. "Kara."

Chapter Text

The sun is high in the sky, all bright and yellow, and shines through the window and onto the files on his desk, where he signs his name for a couple more documents and articles and the like.

Clark doesn't go by Kal-El anymore. He hasn't since he was a baby - he doesn't even respond to the name very well. Because no-one calls him this anymore. Everyone who did is dead and well--Kara isn't exactly dead but really what difference does it make to them?

Sometimes, he'll help extinguish a fire or rescue a cat from a tree and an inquisitive civilian, perhaps a curious child, perhaps a friendly adult, will ask him, " So, Superman, huh. I won't tell but what's your real name? " And Clark will pretend to think seriously for a moment, even make them swear to the secrecy and reply, flashing a grin, " Kal-El ." Because that name means something here. It carries weight, he thinks, even if it sounds foreign and strange on his own tongue.

But "Clark Kent" means something to him, so he keeps it. And so do all his friends, even Jimmy, even Eliza Danvers whom he entrusted his kid cousin with and took her in like she was her own blood, still uses it.

Superman's services don't officially extend to National City. He had thought about it, of course he did, but he is still needed here in Metropolis; and National City has more than enough enhanced to help it out. Though, he still remembers the questions, the interviews - only a few months after Kara's disappearance and only a month after all the "Where's Supergirl" articles - of what now? What now, Superman?

Because they had all seen the blue and red and the laser eyes and had thought " Help us ."

So to those who see the symbol, the "S" for "super" (it's a coat of arms, he'll think bitterly but he's given up on correcting the reporters), and see hope; he uses the name Kal-El.

And Clark drops by the DEO more, nowadays. It's not under J'onn anymore, but Lois' sister, and for all his differences with the martian, he can't tell if he's sorry for it or not. But he's certainly more inclined to come in now, even if he actively avoids Lucy Lane save the brief greeting. Alex Danvers (Kara's sister, he thinks. More right to her family than he, even with their blood.), is who he usually talks to. That and Winn (Kara's friend).

Never about anything too important. Well, not anymore, just the simple greeting. Just trying to keep in contact even if what linked them before is missing. And he's not blind. He can see in her eyes they both still look at him and think Kal-El, and bitter that he calls himself Clark.

Believe it or not, fifteen years isn't such a long time for him. With the yellow sun, he ages slower so it's more like five years. And actually, yeah- it is a long time. But it's nice to pretend otherwise. It's nice to pretend that nothing's changed sometimes.

Because really, what has? He's spent so many years without Kara, being the Last One, and even some when she did exist here. They lived in different cities! He dropped her off at thirteen with his friends and saw her about once a year after (and that's not a rabbit hole of regret he wants to be going down anytime soon). So yeah, in the grand scheme of things, nothing has changed except maybe he doesn't use that online messaging app as much anymore.

It's like old times, he supposes, he's alone again. The last of his kind. He supposes he never really forgot that even when he hadn't been.

It's lunchtime now, and he's on his way to visit Eliza for lunch. He's been doing that a lot more lately, he gets an invite perhaps once a week and he brings with him some soup Lois helps him to make(because he always gets impatient enough to try his way of heating things up, and it always ends up a little charred).

"Clark!" Greets Eliza pleasantly, a bright smile on her face as she opens the door. "C'mon in."

He can smell the pie in the oven as he steps through the entrance, apple with cinnamon and walnuts,and breathes it in, even though he doesn't like cinnamon or walnuts. It's a normal, comforting smell; which for people like Clark is no small mercy.

"I brought soup." He says holding it up. Which is silly because she must know he has soup, he always does, but it's routine more than anything. "Its chicken noodle."

They settle into it like that nicely, setting the dishes out, pouring a jug of orange juice, making jokes about how it's a good thing it's not wine because he's flying home later. Clark has to try not do everything for her, treat her as an equal. But it's  hard to reconcile this greying woman with the girl he met so many decades ago. And anyway she's still strong.

They talk about many things, as they often do, and nothing. How's Lois or what crimes has he stopped today, and--

"I visited the DEO last Saturday. " he says at last, scrapes the rest of his soup into one area of the bowl and brings it too his lips. Raps his fingers compulsively on the dining table.

It's covered in a delicate, crocheted white cloth, and dotted with embroidered flowers. Scratchy. He doesn't like it. Reminds him too much of when they'd mocked the older generations as teenagers, and not enough of the coffee stained, other stained lab surfaces, with random potentially lethal chemicals brewing next to her lunch.

Eliza's lips twitch and she unconsciously hunches into herself. Her smile is still present, but it's held carefully. "Hmm."

Madness, he thinks to himself, and remembers again, that he doesn't belong here, even if this is the only life he's known.

Biology does not see him as Clark but Kal-El. Something other.

About half an hour later, he'll leave. He cannot forget his duty. Superman has work to do.

....

"Clark," murmurs Lois sleepily, when he arrives home later that night, "You're home."

Clark sighs and kisses softly, by what of greeting. "Yeah. I am." And he has to leave her again to wash himself up because he doesn't want her to sleep next to him filthy.

"Have you eaten yet? I think I might have left some--"

"Yeah." He replies, " the Chinese place down the street almost got robbed, do they gave me some chow mein. "

"Oh, good."

The water from the shower is hot on his skin and the pressure is just right. He doesn't allow himself to enjoy it though, just cleans himself as efficiently as he can. This used to be relaxing, he remembers, it used to be such a good way to wind down after a busy evening. But now there's no time. Or maybe there was never any  time, maybe they'd all thought there was all the time in the world and then--

"Kal--Clark..." Alex's voice sounds broken through the receiver. It makes his gut twist uncomfortably and he's not sure why. "It's Kara..." He hears her gasp sharply, it cuts into him across the connection. Hears her take a breath, slow and deliberately steady. When she speaks again it sounds flat, like she's making sounds not words, all numb and devoid of anything. He understands them all the same (And wishes he didn't.) "There's been an accident... Kara's gone."

--A splash of icy cold water hits his cheeks and Clark rubs at his face harshly. Splashes again for good measure, and dries it with a  towel.

Right. Time to sleep.

When he finally settles next to his love on the bed, curling himself around her, he can't help but sigh. He stares at the wallpaper opposite him listlessly--it's white with a subtle off-white floral pattern, Lois wants to change it but he actually quite likes it--and sighs again.

This isn't what he wanted. This isn't the life he wanted for them.

Not these blank, restless nights. Not Lois falling asleep alone in their room by herself. Not then eating dinner alone because she shouldn't have to wait up for her husband so she can actually eat. It's 3 AM for God's sake! She has a job tomorrow.

And yeah, in a lot if other ways they do have perfect lives. Steady incomes, working together, jobs they actually enjoy (and if he ignores the fact he barely has a day job anymore, it seems all right). It all seems so fucking perfect.

But he's so tired. She so tired. And he's so glad he loves her and that she loves him because he doesn't think he could manage otherwise. Apparently, codependency is unhealthy, but he'll take it. Anything is better than being alone.

Alone. He tries not to think about that one too much. Doesn't work, obviously. It's like a circle. A never ending loop of thoughts, sometimes getting distracted or rerouted, but always coming back to the same place. Because he truly is alone now.

Unless there just happens to be another Kryptonian pod floating around in the Phantom Zone just waiting to be spat out and brought to Earth. And you know what, who even fucking knows?

Who cares?

Lois mumbles something in her sleep and turns a little in his arms, before snuggling in a little closer. He grips onto her like an anchor, kisses her hair, because it feels like if he lets go there'll be nothing tying him down.

There's no atmosphere in space. Even he, with all his Super, cannot breathe there. But it's so very tempting to just float off. Switch off. Shut down.

It's so very tiring being alone.

Or perhaps it's not the being alone, but the knowing that you are.

Clark hears a scream somewhere off in the distance, and his whole body braces, itching for the fight. Someone needs his help. Again. He should go. In his arms, Lois sighs gently and seems to snuggle even deeper. He places kiss on her shoulder and makes to get out of bed.

There are other powered-people in Metropolis, and he's not the only one on duty.

He can't hesitate. He's not allowed to hesitate in this line of work. Still, his legs stop moving and he pauses to sit on the edge of the bed.

But what if they're all like him, hesitating. What if they all think someone else will do it?

Gives his wife another longing glance.

" Lois." He says, after a second.

She groans, and turns over to face him. "Mmm. What?"

"There's-- Someone..."

Stay. He wants her to say. Don't leave again. Someone else will get it. I need you.

Lois blinks slowly at him before the words finally register in her sleep addled mind. "Oh." She says. "Go on then. Be a hero. They need you."

I need you, he doesn't say.

So he goes. It's not great weather for flying, too windy, but it's fine. He's Superman, he's fine. His suit stinks, sweaty still from the rest of the day, but he ignores it.

Focuses on where the scream came from.

There's an alleyway, maybe about three miles south from home, and he follows it there frowning. This has to be about the third time this week here.

Another scream.

No, he can think about any sort of connections later. This is immediate.

By the time he gets there he can already see the flashing red and blue lights of police cars. There are two middle ages white guys, slurring  in handcuffs and no doubt trying to talk their ways out, and a woman who's maybe Mexican crying into a phone off at the side, wrapped in a standard issue shock blanket.

None of the others came. There are no other powered people on scene.

Something in Kal-El's gut twists and he think he might be sick. It never gets any easier, this. And it happens all to often.

And he never seems to fucking learn.

....

Eliza is late. It's not the first time these past few months either.

It's fine though, Clark has a spare key so he lets himself in.

It always seems too quiet whenever he's alone here, and he can't imagine what it's like living here permanently. Too big and too empty. His footsteps seem to rattle the entire house. Sometimes, it scares him how everyone he loves lives in places he could collapse with too strong a breath.  And unlike him, they may not have the strength to pick themselves back up.

Clark turns on the TV in the sitting room to fill the silence. Some nature documentary is on, and he lets it run, and wanders into the kitchen, placing the food he brought on the counter with a gentle thud. A well spiced and seasoned minestrone soup, and a fresh loaf or tiger bread. Maybe he should start bringing something more original than soup? Like, he should at least try to learn, right?

He treads back to the sitting room. It's his favourite room in the house, he thinks. Maybe because it's so familiar and it's the only room, downstairs at least, which has this lovely thick carpeted floor. It's nice and bouncy under his heels and it gives that feeling of some sort of security. Like he can't break anything even if he tried. He likes that.

By the time he hears Eliza's old car, with the noisy engine, pull into the driveway, he's already halfway through the two-hour long documentary. The soups probably already cold.

"Clark?" He hears her call out tentatively. "Are you there already?"

"Yeah, I'm here." He says, peeking his head out the living room. "Can I ask where you've been?"

She's in the process of pulling her boots off, but turns around to give him a fixed smile. "Oh it's nothing." She waves dismissively. "Did you see the pie I made? Blackberry and cherry. It's in the fridge."

He smiles. So just the usual Wednesday, then.


....


"I don't know, Clark. I really like the navy blue." Says Lois, holding up the wall-paper swatches again.

Clark frowns, but shrugs nonetheless. "Can we at least keep the pattern? I liked it. Compromise?"

She scrunched her nose, and he can hear her trying to imagine it in her head. "Sure, that sounds good, I guess."

....

"Hey, Clark." Says Eliza over the phone. "In really sorry, but I'm going to have to cancel for lunch on Wednesday. Can we do the Sunday after instead, maybe?"

"Sure," he replies easily, "And Lois is free then as well. So it's perfect."

"Great. See you both then!"

....

"Hey so, I had a conversation with a physicist, the other day." says Winn, just as Clark is walking in. "Oh, hey Clark."

"Hey."

Alex groans, and mutters something unintelligible under her breath, burying her face in his hands. "Is this gonna be like the time you talked to the biologist who said they were trying to put wings on pigs?"

Clark snorts.

"No! And that was interesting." He protests.

"That was boring." She sighs, "And useless."

It's only around ten in the morning, and Clark has three coffees in a tray in his hands; a flat white for him, a caramel latte for Winn, and six shots of chocolate flavoured espresso for Alex. Wordlessly, he slides them over.

"Anyways," Winn continues, huffing and rolling his eyes, "he was talking about how due to the different frequencies and speeds of other not-so-theoretical universes, and the fact that the speed of light stays constant, time dilates. So each universe travels at different speeds of time!" He finishes off with a flourish and takes a gulp of his coffee. "Isn't it interesting?"

It is, in fact, quite interesting. And perhaps if it were a different group of people there'd be more questions and discussion about it. It's not, though. Silence settles over the room like frost.

Eventually, Alex says, "Was there a point to this conversation or did you just like listening to the sound of your voice?" Downs the rest of her coffee in one go, and leaves.

He catches Winn's face crumple.

It's been fifteen years.

....

Eliza goes to church most Sundays, and though she says she doesn't actually believe in most of it, it's the principle of it. Apparently.

She invites them, that Sunday before lunch, to come with her, and of course they agree. How can they not? Anyway, she assures them they will like it.

It's a nice environment. Pleasant and kind and mostly quite welcoming, though they are all very eager to speak to them so it gets just a little overwhelming. But it's good. So many smiles, little children running around with each other, the smell of people passing around coffee and tea. The church is actually held in a gym hall rented from a local elementary school, and the walls have brightly coloured posters about keeping fit and healthy eating, and it makes Clark laugh. Yeah, it's not so bad.

Eliza leaves them to go sit with one of her friends, after introducing them, and Lois and him end up sitting next to an overly talkative mother, and a polite but otherwise sullen and withdrawn teen. To be honest, Clark isn't really listening to what the mother is speaking about and a look at the teen proves they aren't either. As ever though, Lois is engaging pretty well, though there is a tight smile on  her lips when the woman asks if they've been to any other churches before.

Clark finds himself squeezing her hand and says politely that it's been a long time.

The sermon today, is something about family, and commitment to the church and to God. And, because he might as well, Clark listens.

He's never been a particularly religious person. Mom and dad had attended church with him a few times a year for events when he's been a child, but neither of them ever paid any mind either. He remembers Kara had been religious. Apparently, practically the whole of Krypton had been. Something about Rao and the sun and the cycles of life. Once, Kara had taught him about it. She'd still been so young then, about fifteen maybe--and she'd been so excited to share it. He remembers it had been when he first told her about the Fortress of Solitude, and offered to take her.

She'd refused.

Clark hasn't understood then, and he's still not sure if he does now.

It's strange to think he ( they )came from a completely different culture, a whole society--or maybe even multiple, for Krypton was a planet, not a country--and now... It's been wiped clean. There is not even the memory of it left, save those A.I.s.

It's a little disorientating.

But maybe it shouldn't be. After all, Clark is not truly Kryptonian, save his blood and the crest he wears. And sure, he can parrot back the "It's a coat of arms, not an S" and the " El mayarah--stronger together ." But he doesn't know what it means. Not really.

Not to them.

"So, you have to remember, coming to church isn't just some club you can join, that you participate in but can step back if you want to. It's a family, a shared belief system, it's committing your life and soul, not just your time. We are all responsible for each other."

Lois doesn't go to church at all. She used to, he knows, with her family as a child, every Sunday for both the morning and evening congregations. He tightens his grip on her hand. She still kind of believes in the Father, Son and Holy spirit stuff, or at least, she's not sure what to believe.

It had been their second Christmas together, together together, and she'd taken him to the morning mass with her, quiet the whole time. He hadn't been sure what to make of it really, and tried to fill the silence, rambling about interior and the fancy clothes the priest wore, or their plans for Christmas dinner. And she'd nodded, laughed and agreed in all the right places, but her eyes kept flickering away to the cold stone tiles, the frescoes on the wall, the bible quote posters hung by the Sunday school, with childish scribbles and bright colours.

But afterwards... And then it had been afterwards that she told him what had happened. She'd been a teenager, just. Eighteen, almost nineteen, about to start college. Lucy had been sixteen.

Clark doesn't know much about Lucy Lane. The basics at most. He knows she doesn't like him. She liked Kara, though it took some time. She used to date Jimmy. Lead the DEO for a brief while, pretty well apparently. And he also knows that when she was sixteen, Lucy Lane came out to her family.

Unplanned , Lois had called it. Hysterical . Everyone had been hysterical. Lucy Lane had been drowning the whole time and nobody had noticed, not even her sister, not before she'd exploded.

A tantrum , their father had called it, apparently. A phase . A perverse version of some teenage rebellion.

Loki's sister had stuck her middle finger up, and screamed and cried her throat dry, had slammed doors, thrown books, plates and a fucking toaster.

And their mother had told her to talk to their church family .

And Lois did not see her sister for nine scary days after that.

Eliza stays for about ten minutes after the sermon to chat a little more and grab one of the biscuits laid out, and both he and Lois are too awkward to excuse themselves and leave ahead. They get into a brief discussion about heroes nowadays with an old woman.

"Not long now," she says, "the government are gonna start regulating them soon. Stuff with the UN and all that. That's what my son says anyways. He works there."

She points to a man, tall and thin, brown hair, dressed in a the type of clothes you'd call smart-casual if asked, standing near the sandwiches.

"I mean, there are just so many of them. All swarming about thinking they're all that when really they're just people."

"Hmm." Hums Lois beside him, in a pleasantly neutral tone.

The woman tuts, sipping delicately on her coffee whilst looking somewhat disgruntled. "They don't make them like Supergirl, anymore. S'a shame what happened to her."

Clark frowns, ignoring the shard of Kryptonite that twists every time she's mentioned. The public know next to nothing about Kara's disappearance. Just, after six months, a bunch of families which Kara must've helped somewhere along the line, set up a Go-fund-me page.

There's a memorial in National Square now.

A majestic bronze statue of Supergirl, about to jump off into the air, holding a globe in one hand. Clark hasn't been, personally, but Superman has. Had to, actually. Cut the ribbon and stood for the selfies and everything.

Alex hasn't been. Neither has Eliza. He hasn't asked them about it but he knows they haven't. Knows why, too.

It seems too much like giving up.

He takes a breath in, through his nose. "Why? What do you think happened?"

They receive a dumbfounded look, and a roll of the eyes. "It's obvious ain't It? They must've took her away, cut her up. Those secret government types, you know. And now they've got a factory making people super . Not like it was subtle either. I mean, Supergirl disappears mysteriously on a night with almost no crime, and a few months later supers are popping up over the world like flies." She shrugs and taps the side of her head perceptively.

"Does everyone think this?" Asks Lois, " Where did you hear it from?"

The woman snorts. "Common knowledge really, I'm surprised you're surprised. Anyways, heard it from the National Journal a few years back."

"Isn't that a gossip mag?"

She shrugs, then huffs. "It's mostly the same everywhere. You young people never read the news nowadays, huh? Besides, you forget there are people writing those gossip mags and most of them have brains. The government forgot that too, I think. "

They end up at a Wal-Mart after the service, getting some ingredients for a proper meal. A whole roasted chicken, salad, a fresh loaf of bloomers bread. After a thought, Eliza buys a box of chocolate marble cake mix and half a dozen eggs.

It's nice. There's a table and some chairs out in the back garden where Clark lays out the food and the others get plates and cutlery.

A butterfly flits about between the rosemary and dancing ladies. He watches it collecting nectar, going about it's business. It's one if those massive palm sized ones, with blue and black wings which look like they have eyes, flapping slowly and beating the air around them. He can hear it. The soft sound of buzzing and the gentle fsh fsh of the wings, thin and delicate and powdery.

Sometimes, Clark will do this; zone out of everything and focus on something else. Something natural and innocent and of little consequence. It stops everything from brimming over and being to much, like his own kind of meditation.  It makes him feel normal, and grounded. Connects him.

Eliza and Lois don't take to much time. Eliza carries a bowl for the salad and cutlery, Lois carries a bottle of wine-- white, he can smell it-- some cutlery and and and plates. Clark volunteers to go back and get the glasses.

They settle down. Lois pours the wine. Eliza empties the bag of salad into the bowl. Clark begins to carve at the chicken.

It's a little dry, but it's nice enough for a supermarket deli, plus it has a good flavour. Just the right ratio of salt to pepper, the natural sweetness of the chicken itself, and a hint of garlic. Eliza passes them both a thick slice of bread, and he piles it with salad and strips of chicken before stuffing it in his mouth. Lois raises an eyebrow at him and says she's going to fetch some butter for the table.

"I'll get it." He says, through his food.

"Thanks." She replies, turning her head to share a look with Eliza. "Such a perfect gentleman, isn't he?"

"Sure is."

The butter is on the third shelf on the fridge, not behind anything so easy enough to find. He finds himself staring at it for a second. He looks at the door of the fridge. And the shelves inside it. Looks at the space it occupies in the kitchen.

It's an old fridge, about ten years old. The cooker at the other side of the room is new, but the counters and most of the other things are the same. He imagines Kara, thirteen and scared and alone, unable to even speak the language of those living with her, in this kitchen. How she opened the fridge--a different fridge, not this one, she'll never see this one--to reach for some butter on her bread. Did they have butter on Krypton? Or bread?

He doesn't know. He never asked.

He thinks of Kara standing here, and looking outside. Even the sky is different. The air. Everything. Her whole world.

Their world , she had always said. But he'd always thought, not really.

He makes his arms move, his hands to open the fridge and his fingers clamp around the stick of butter. He closes it firmly. Forces his legs to move, walk back over to the door and through the doorway.

Outside, Eliza and Lois are leaning over the table to each other, laughing. He smiles at the scene. It lightens his heart a little.

"Oh," says Lois with a start, when her phone buzzes. She frowns, checking the notification, and groans. "I have to get to the office."

Both he and Eliza sigh loudly in turn.

"Well, pack some of this up with you, and we can get Clark to fly you there so it'll take no time at all. And then he can just fly back." She suggests, already cutting a few thick slices of bread off the loaf, and grabs the butter out from Clark's hands to spread them.

In about five minutes, they manage to fit one of the legs in, two pieces of chicken breast, four slices of bread, and a handful of the salad. It's too much, but Lois smiles accepts it, because Eliza's their friend. There's no such thing as too much.

So they say goodbye to Eliza, and Clark does a quick change and says he'll be back in fifteen minutes, max. Eliza just smiles and tells him not to make promises he might not be able to keep.

He's not quite sure what she means by that.

In their traditional style, which all their co-workers at the Planet are used to by now, Clark gathers Lois up into his arms bridal style and takes off into the sky.

As they ascend into the air, Lois presses a soft kiss into his cheek. "Superman." She says, smiling.

It doesn't take too long to get to the Daily Planet, Clark can get there in about three minutes but he makes it ten because Lois is only human, and to give her five minutes to fix her hair after. It's nice. It's been awhile since they've done this.

Just them, the air, the open skies.

Like when it was just them against the world.

Lois snuggles into his chest, and Clark can't help but laugh when her hair brushes against his neck, just a little ticklish (but not too much, he can't be with this job.)

It's so... peaceful.

When they land, some of those at the office roll their eyes. Kal catches the eye of Perry White and flashes that bright, sunny, white-toothed grin, and Mr White offers a salute back.

"She's a married woman, Superman." He says for the nth time, chuckling. "And her and Clark are two of our best. Can't afford to have things awkward."

"Oh, I know." He replies, sharing an amused glance with Lois.

"See that you do."

He doesn't make it back to Eliza's before the 'fifteen minutes, max.' Because he stops a car crash, a mugging, and a cat stuck in a tree on the way. Over all, it's been a good day. An average day.

Clark could grow old on these kinds of days. Relaxed and thoughtlessly.

Still, he makes it back to Eliza's in a pretty decent mood, making his way immediately over to the garden.

She's not there. The chicken, half carved is still sitting on the table along with the bread, salad and butter, but Eliza herself is not there. Clark frowns.

He stops.

Somewhere in the house is the sound of running water, and smaller than that is a muffled gasp, a choke. The scent of iron and salt, and Clark has quite a good idea of what that is.

He's through the door in a nanosecond, flying over the stairs and opening the door to the bathroom before his mind can catch up and tell him it's not the done thing.

Eliza Danvers image her head bent over the sink, fingers clutching the edges of the bowl, hair falling over her face. The tap is running, a fast steady stream of water flowing through. The smell of blood punches Clark's senses, filling his nostrils violently.

Her shoulders heave and she lets out a choked gag, like something thick is clotted in her throat. Another glob of blood escapes from her lips, splattering into the sink and washed away by the water. Some of it dribbles, escaping down her chin, but she whipped it quickly with her sleeve.

"Clark." She says carefully, not looking up from her position. "You're back."

Clark feels sick. Nauseous.

"Eliza..." He begins, numb and so confused because what? He wets his lips, gulps, tries again."Eliza, what is..."

She shakes her head, ignoring him for the moment. Cupping her hands under the tap, she puts a handful of water to her lips and takes it into her mouth, gurgling and swishing it for a few seconds before spitting it out.

The water is red.

So, so red.

She does it a few times more.

"Let's go back outside." Says Eliza after a moment, stepping past him through the door.

Outside is just as bright as before. Just as sunny. The grass is still green, and there is still a bee or two and the big butterfly from before has brought a friend. A cool breeze runs its way through his hair, and life goes on.

They sit. Idly, Eliza starts to butter another slice of bread, but she settles it on his plate instead of eating it herself.

"Don't worry," she snorts, not meeting his gaze, "It's not some alien parasite or something you can hear outta me. Just regular old human stuff, I promise."

And there are so many questions on his tongue, which that answers none of.

"Eliza--"

Eliza grins wryly, eyes tired and a touch bitter. Resigned. "You know, I always thought the universe had a way of balancing everything out. I had a family, a daughter and a husband, friends, you and Lois and so many others, and then I was blessed with a second daughter, Kara with that kind sunny smile." She pauses for a moment, breathing, picks at her fingernails which still have traces of dried blood on them. "And one by one I keep looking them. Jeremiah, then almost Alex to those stupid drugs, and then Kara," her voice cracks, and her whole frame is shuddering. She takes a breath, clears her throat, " and then Kara. Lung cancer isn't even too high up the list."

Oh. He thinks. Oh .

Lung cancer.

For the first time in a long time, Clark truly looks at her. Sees the way her hands quiver when she brings her glass to her lips, and how yellow and gaunt her skin looks, the whites in her eyes. They way her limbs look so thin and bony yet slightly swollen. The purple around her eyes, and how one of her lids droops a little further than the other. Just tiny, minute, little things.

He hears the shortness of her breath, quick and shallow, in tiny quiet puffs, and how when she exhales and inhales it rustles like she has paper bags in her chest, not lungs.

"It's not going away anytime soon. I mean maybe, in a few decades or so, but honestly I've come to terms with it." She speaks like she's said this before, but she waits for his reaction anxiously like she hasn't.

It's rehearsed, he thinks, and this is the opening act. He can imagine her, memorizing her lines, repeating it over and over in her head and out loud, making little amendments, like he remembers her doing for job interviews when they were younger.

"But what about," he starts, not even processing what he's saying, nothing sounds coherent now. They're just words, a flow of strange, distinct sounds. "There's... options. There's always options! Sure there must be something... if you need money for treatment or..."

She cuts him off with a laugh even though nothing is really funny, "Clark, I appreciate the offer but look at me." She spreads her arms, motioning towards the house. "I live in a four bedroom house in the suburbs with a spacious garden and a nice patio, there's even a swing on my porch and a fucking picket fence. I live here and it's empty , Clark. I think I can afford it."

He swallows, rubs his thumb over the tops of his knuckles a few times.

"And... how... how long...?"

"A few months." She shrugs, as though this is nothing. As though she hasn't just said a few months. "That's what they said last year too, though."

He brings the bread to his lips and tries to chew on it. And he can taste it, the softness of the bread, the richness of the butter, but that's all it is.

Eliza rolls her eyes, "Calm down, Clark. I can hear you thinking. I only told you this so you wouldn't go around thinking you had to get into more dumb fights with aliens and Luthors. It's just this: me, and my stupid lungs and some meds that really don't work."

She lets out a deep rattling cough which Clark has heard before but never really acknowledged.

"Besides," she continues, "I promise you, I'm not going to die yet. Not until I have both of my daughters at my damn death-bed and Kara's buying me flowers for all the Mother's days, and Christmases and birthdays she's missed. Not 'til then."

And it's a nice sentiment, waiting that is, very sweet. Poetic almost.

If it were true, if she could really promise that then perhaps she'd just never die.

There are other ways, he reminds himself, that people die. He would know. Hell, she could die tomorrow and not have it be cancer! Car accidents, fires, muggings that go so horribly wrong, plane crashes, drowning, drug overdose. Flying into a speed portal and disappearing off the face of the Earth.

And everybody dies in the end anyways, so why should the means matter?

It does somehow, still. Even with all the lives he has saved he cannot figure out why.

He almost laughs at that, later in bed next to Lois, his beautiful, lovely, clever, talented wife.  Yeah sure, maybe he's saving lives but, at the end of the day, isn't he just delaying the inevitable?

Clark closes his eyes and relaxes into the pillow, trying not to look at the new wallpaper, listening out in the streets for the tell-tale wail of sirens, or people.

( "I know it's maybe a bit unreasonable to ask you this but, promise you haven't given up, Clark.” she pleads to him, eyes dull and fierce and sad all at once. “Promise me you won't."

And how can he say no?

"I haven't," he lies, "I won't." )

Chapter Text

Alex still has the suit. It's folded up in a cardboard box under her bed, amongst the rest of Kara's stuff that she should probably get rid of but can't.

It's stupid, since she never looks at it. Never touches it. And the knowledge that it's there, cold, unused, under her bed, makes her whole room feel chilled.

Some nights, it's a comfort, a part of her little sister that she can actually keep, the chill is calming on her frantic thoughts, a balm. Kara always said she thought too much, too quickly, too furiously. And she'd been right, of course.  Other nights, it scares her, like a spirit is haunting her room. The chill settles into her stomach, clutching and squeezing her lungs, and she can't sleep there so she bundles herself up on the couch.

What would Kara think, if she could see her big sister, now?

She pours herself another glass of water.

Alex doesn't drink. Not anymore, she's not allowed herself to, but her fingers itch for a glass. It's really too bad her body has the habit of making and addict out of her, otherwise she'd be all over that stuff. She misses the veil of haziness that came with it, it was soothing, which might have been why she liked it so much. Still, she's been clean for years now and she's not about to break that streak now.

It's better here, though. Mom had offered for her to move in, after the third year, and Alex had scoffed. What did she think? That she'd say yes ? What part of Alex seriously looked as though she wanted to go back and live in her empty, fatherless, sisterless house, with her mother, of all things?!

It's not like she hates her mother, she amends guiltily, but she just can't stand any of it. The way Eliza looks: faint and flimsy like she is going to drift away and can't even be bothered to stop it, and why should she? The way Eliza looks at her: sad and mellow and looks at one daughter, but her eyes still shift to Alex's right to search for the other, after fifteen years.

She hates the way it makes her feel. Like she's not enough.

And nothing is enough anymore.

Eliza had always told her, groomed it into her, that she was the Big Sister. It was always "You're older." "You're responsible." "You have to look out for her." "You have to protect her."

Well she'd tried, hadn't she? At least she can say that.

It's hard to look at Eliza, her mother, after that.

(Because she'd had one fucking job.)

She turns the TV on, just for a little background noise. The first channel that comes on is the news. She flicks past it carelessly, aimlessly. God, when did she become so boring? Skips over the teleshopping, this period drama, more news, a late night talk show. In the end, she comes across an old looking cartoon, and settles herself down, tugging her blanket around tighter.

She has an early start tomorrow, she should get some sleep. Oh well. Alex yawns but her pupils stay transfixed on the screen, eyes unblinking and glazed, letting the bright colours, the noises, wash over her.

It sort of dulls her brain into one flat line of white noise. Lulling it, wearing it down.  Which is honestly better. Eventually her eyelids grow heavy and it works. Kind of.

And when she finally opens her eyes again, it's light.

Life at the DEO is normal, or at least as normal as a Department of Extranormal Operations can be. Busy and quiet at the same time. She likes her job, it's steady and exciting and you learn new things all the time, and she doesn't really have anything beyond it.

Is that unhealthy?

Kara would probably think so. Too bad Kara's not here at the moment, she thinks almost viciously, so she can eat her shit. Not here, not gotta say.

Winn is here early today, but then he always is. He probably sleeps here, or something, because she swears she's never seen him clock out, not that they can, really, in their line of work. It's almost comical the fact he used to be another underpaid technician in a media company, and now he's working in the headquarters of some obscure branch if the government with supers and aliens.

"Hey," he says as she enters, "I got the prototypes up for the new long-range artillery, wanna see?"

"Sure."

It's weird. Weird how ordinary life without her sister feels. She's so very used to it, sometimes she even forgets there is a gaping hole at her side.

Because life, for the most part, went on without Kara Danvers. It had to.

He leads her over to the trial training rooms, where a table of new weapons are laid out like a platter at a banquet. Alex takes the first one, assessing it slowly, weighing it in her hand. She readies her stance, takes aim.

"Go for it." Winn prompts.

It's some sort of energy blaster, very efficient, with a target lock on, it almost makes Alex feel lazy. She fires it a few times, satisfied.

"It's good." She replies, handing it back over.

"Yeah, so I've got some new shielding stuff too. I know you were requesting stuff like that." He continues, handing her what looks like a thick bracelet. "It's sort of like energy distribution, rebound tech. I don't know the specifics, obviously, just what the lab techs have been telling me."

He demonstrates it to her by pressing a button, and some sort of holographic shield expands from it, glowing vibrantly. Lightly, Alex touches it but pulls away quickly when she feels the static energy pulsing and pushing back.

"Huh." She says, awed.

Winn nods, "I know. So cool, right?"

"Yeah."

And it's not like Alex doesn't still feel the absence. Because she does. She still, occasionally, turns round to exchange a knowing look with her sister, or expects the super to save her to be Supergirl, and has to stop herself from ordering quadruple the amount of potstickers that she actually needs. But it's fine. It only happens like, maybe, twice a week now.

It's fine.

Kara's graduating and even though it's supposed to be a happy moment, Alex can't help but think she looks kind of sad. Her hands are shaking, even as they hold her diploma tightly--but not too tightly.

"Hey!" She says, sideling up to her sister, "What's up?" Why aren't you happy?

Kara turns around to face her, smile too wide and eyes too dull. "Nothing... I'm just..." She shakes her head. "It's nothing."

"If you say so."

Perhaps it's because she's finally finished school, she thinks. An end of an era, a new chapter in her life, people to say goodbye to, classmates and stuff. Kara's always been such a sentimental. Besides, she can still keep in touch.

Alex sees their mom hug her sister tight and Kara doesn't hug back. Not really. She frowns.

What's going on? Kara loves hugs. They're, like, one of her favourite things.

The weird mood continues all the way up to dinner. It's a big dinner, they've invited Clark and Lois as well, and they're friends from school have they're families joining them at the other tables. They live in a pretty small town, after all, so the restaurant options are kinda limited. Throughout it, Alex observes her sister.

Kara is usually a big eater, enhanced Kryptonian metabolism and all, she usually inhales her food before anyone else manages to see it. Honestly, it's scary. But today she doesn't. She still talks animatedly, responds when people ask her questions, comments on how delicious the food is, but her plate stays full and doesn't seem to get any clearer. In fact, Alex doesn't see her lift her fork her mouth once, and she's pretty sure it's not just because of Kara's superspeed.

So what is really up?

"So Kara," says Lois conversationally, across the table, "What are you planning on doing now that you've graduated? College? University? Or are you gonna jump straight in for a job?"

The carefully placed smile on her sister's face falls, and Alex only then realises how tightly she's been holding it.

It's replaced a few seconds later, however.

Sunny, sunny Kara Danvers.

"I'm not really sure yet." Kara shrugs, smiling and not meeting anyone's eyes, "I'll be by myself though, so I guess I'll have to decide soon. A job's more practical though, isn't it?"

It takes a while before the words sink in.

Alex has a routine now. Almost everyday, after work, she goes to this little coffee shop, just down the street from her apartment. She's heard it's not good for agents to get stuck in a predictable schedule, but it's fine. Nothing's happened yet, and she doesn't particularly care. Not really.

The shop is called Ambrosia, and everytime she goes, she gets a chocolate mocha. It's the simple pleasures in life that go a long way, even if everyone thinks she only drinks espresso shots or straight black. She even knows the baristas on schedule, and they remember he name too.

Monday's to Thursday's is Charlie, with his bubbly personality and who is somehow still nice and polite even when Alex is grumpy. Today's Friday, though, which means it's Linda, with her cool, funny attitude and exchanging smirking glances with her because the two awkward teenagers that are always in before her still haven't gotten together yet.

It's raining today, heavily, so Linda ushers her into the seat beside the radiator, even though she usually just takes her coffee to go. Still, she won't exactly complain. She shrugs off her dripping jacket onto the back of the chair and rubs her numb hands together by the radiator, feeling the warm pain thaw through her fingers.

Her phone buzzes on the table, but it's her personal phone, not her work phone, it's not urgent and for some reason she just can't will herself to pick it up. For a while, she just sort of stares at it, despondently.

A moment later, Linda returns with her chocolate mocha, good and warm and perfectly sweet smelling, and a double chocolate muffin on a plate, and plops herself down in the seat opposite.

"What's that?" Alex asks stupidly, staring blankly at the sweet.

"Muffin," replies Linda, pushing the plate towards her pointedly. "Whilst it's still hot, please."

Alex blinks at it for a couple seconds more, before reaching out to take it, "I can't," she says even as she unwraps the paper casing from the sides of the sponge, "You shouldn't have. How much is this?"

Linda rolls her eyes. "It's on the house, just don't tell Charlie." And then she gives her an assessing look up and down, "Besides, you looked like you needed it."

"Thanks, I guess," Alex replies, bringing the muffin up to her lips and taking a bite. It's amazing, of course it is. Delightfully sweet with little melted chocolate chips.

Her phone buzzes again, vibrating on the table and the her chocolate mocha with it.

"You gonna get that?" Linda asks, after a beat.

"Nah." She shakes her head, and instead starts on her coffee, cupping the mug in her hands.

Whatever it is, it can probably wait.

"Long day, huh?" guesses Linda, leaning back in her own seat and pulling out a packet of chips from her apron somewhere.

And, well, she's not wrong, exactly. But it's been no longer than yesterday or any other day before that, she just... She honestly just can't be bothered, really.

"Yeah," she replies anyway.

Her phone buzzes again. Seriously? Don't people know by now not to call her from her personal? Especially if it's not urgent? She sighs, and her thumb finds the lock button, turning it off deftly without bothering to look.

"What if it's an emergency?" Linda says, raising her a conspiratory eyebrow and munching on another chip.

She waves it away dismissively. "It won't be."

They talk for a little while. Alex is tired but this is just... nice. Perhaps she should do it more often, instead of just always trudging home to her empty apartment. It's probably a lot healthier as well, save all the chocolate. Mentally and stuff.

Anyways, apparently Charlie has gotten a new boyfriend, and Linda scoffs at it because it's his third one this month, and honestly it's like a revolving door. The good news, though, is that Damien, their boss, is going to give them a raise and, well, more money is almost always good.

It's quite a bit later when Alex finally stumbles back into her apartment, kicking off her boots amongst the cluttered pile of other haphazardly paired shoes.

She takes a hot shower and dries off quickly, before settling into the couch and turning on the TV, like last night. It's her routine, you see.

With a frown, she remembers her phone, and reluctantly goes to fish it out of her jacket pocket, fingers fumbling as she switches it on. She grabs herself a glass of water before she makes her way back to the couch, waiting for her phone to finish turning on. It always takes forever.

By the time she's sat back down, blanket  strewn over her and everything, she looks at the phone, bright glare of the screen making her squint just a little.

Huh.

Two missed calls from Mom, and seven from Clark. Well, okay then.

She calls Mom back first, listening to the dial tone listlessly as it rings on and on. Eliza doesn't pick up, not the first time or the second time. She sighs.

Typical.

She suppresses the quiet irritation building up in her chest and dials Clark's number instead.

He picks it up after two tones.

"Alex? Where the fuck have you been?" his voice comes out rushed and strained and harsh. Alex bristles immediately at it.

"What do you mean, where the fuck have I been? Jesus, I don't answer my phone one time and you all act like I've gone and offed myself. Calm the fuck down." Because honestly, maybe Linda was right. You know what? It has been a long day, and excuse her is she wants a little time to herself where she's not fucking being screamed at. She's a grown woman, damn it.

On the other end of the line, she hears Clark breathing raggedly, forcefully slowing down. "Right," he mumbles, after a moment. "Sorry about that. It's just--"

"What?" She demands impatiently. She's just so tired.

Clark swallows thickly, and then he coughs, clearing his throat. "It's just... can you come to the Midvale Infirmary? Eliza's in the emergency room."

It's later that night, when they're back in their shared room, Kara's hung up her graduation gown, her diploma is placed carefully on her desk, and Alex catches her sister gazing forlornly around the room, that she finally talks.

"What's up?" she asks again, sitting herself next to Kara on her bed. "I thought you'd be glad high school's done with."

"I know. It's nothing, really," Kara insists, turning an annoyed look on her sister, "Stop asking me, okay?"

And Alex would, really, and maybe she even probably should. It's not like she wants to deliberately annoy her sister-- well, at least not all the time-- but she knows her sister. And she's an abysmal liar. Like, seriously, it's terrible.

"Kara," she says, in her authoritative big-sister voice, "Come on. Just tell me."

It's a warm clear night tonight, cloudless, and the stars are glittering in full force. Alex thinks about all the times she's caught Kara staring out at it when she thinks nobody is looking, or that fateful night on the roof and them flying, and Kara had pointed out constellations and then where Krypton should have been, had been, once.

She hears Kara take a deep, shuddering breath then, resolve melting. She sighs. "I don't want to leave," she says, finally. "I'm sorry."

For a minute, Alex is confused. "What do you mean, you 'don't want to leave? As in, you don't want to leave school? What are you talking about?"

Kara laughs wetly, not facing her, and with a jolt, she realises that she's crying. "Yeah, no. It's not about that."

"Then what?" she frowns, but she wraps her arm around Kara's shoulder and pulls her into her side, and her sister gives into it easily.

She feels her shrug, and then, "I like it here, you know? I just do. I like Eliza, the house, the people that live here. Even you, even if you're annoying." And then it seems to just come running out of her, escaping from her brain to her lips. "I don't want to leave. I like it-- I love it here. It's like home. And next month, legally, I'll be considered an adult, and I just... I really like this family and I don't want to leave, and soon... And soon you won't have to take care of me anymore. Because I'll be an adult and I'll have to live by myself, and you won't have to take care of me anymore."

It takes a minute or so before Alex manages to unscramble the jumble of thoughts that have come tumbling out of her sister's mouth. And Kara is still crying, tears dampening her shirt.

How long has her sister been thinking about this?

Alex chokes out a weak laugh then, wiping her eyes roughly with the backs of her hands because, oh, she's crying too.  "Don't be stupid, Kara," she says roughly, forcefully, "Don't be an idiot. You'll always be part of our family, Kara. El Mayarah, and all that. You'll always be my sister, okay?"

"All right." Kara relaxes against her, sniffling a little. "Okay."

Kara brings her pillow from her bed and squishes in beside her that night, like when she was twelve and alone and mourning, and they were barely sister's. Alex pulls her arms around her sister tightly, allowing her to snuggle in close, and her mind thinks fiercely, that she has to protect this. Her family.

It kind of a trip to get from National City to Midvale, so it's almost 2AM by the time she arrives, even in her DEO issued car.

She spots Clark easily in the waiting room, with his big awkward frame, trying to appear as small as possible whilst pacing up and down and up. He meets her eyes, gaze intense but tired. They're all so fucking tired.

"Hi," she says, trying to stifle the strange stilted tension between them, "How... How is she?"

"I'm not sure," he replies, drawing in a breath, " I... she's been in there for a couple of hours now. Nobody's really told me anything."

"What happened?"

Clark looks at her, briefly, before shifting his gaze quickly, looking at everything else but her. "Did you... do you know..." and then he stops, turning to face her resolutely, "Alex, your mom has--"

"Cancer, I know," she replies, cutting him off.

"What? but--" Clark stammers, astounded for a second.

"But what? Mom said she didn't want to tell me, right? So how would I know?" She lets out a harsh laugh, and practically snarls, "Clark, she's my mother , I think I'd know if she has fucking lung cancer ."

Everything is falling apart. It has been for a long time.

(Fifteen years, right?)

The sit in terse silence then, in the hospital waiting room. It's too bright, too white, and the lumpy seats are this ugly dirty coral colour, which might look nice in any other context but here it just makes her want to throw up. She digs her nails into the smooth plastic-y surface of the chair, scratching scars into it almost erratically.

At around half-past, Eliza is still in the emergency room somehow, and Clark stands up abruptly. She stares at him blankly and he falters for half a second under it before he straightens quickly again.

"I gotta..." he trails off, looking anxiously at the door. "There's someone..."

Right. He's still Superman, after all. He has to go save the people.

"You gotta suit up," she finishes for him. "Okay. Good luck then, I guess."

"Thanks," he replies, before rushing away. Quickly, but not too quickly.

And something in her heart clenches.

(It's a little strange. Can you still be a big sister, if you don't even have a sister?)

Alex still has the suit. It's folded up in a cardboard box under her bed.

It shouldn't be under her bed. It should be under Kara's.

Only Kara doesn't have a bed anymore.

Chapter Text

He's still not sure what mysterious guilt she holds against herself — for him, apparently. Whatever it is, it keeps her at his beck and call and haunts her more often than not.

Kara (and the name still feels foreign to him, just as his own did when he learnt it, but it feels more right somehow, maybe because it feels right to her — fits better) does not scream whilst she dreams — not like Bucky does. Instead, she holds her breath and does not breathe. When the nightmares come, Kara does not breathe when she sleeps. Body tense and still and tight, and quivering only slightly.

And when she wakes up, in the morning, of her own accord, either from habit or the way the sunrise shifts the temperature or his own disruptive movement, she wakes up and clutches at the sheets as though she may fall. As though the Weapon is able to fall, even though it can fly. And then exhales.

She doesn't scream or cry at all, not even after. He wishes, almost, that she did.

He doesn't push, though, and he won’t. Besides, he's got the feeling he wouldn't understand even if he did.

It's been about two weeks like this. Which begs the question: how long will they last like this?

"I owe you the answer, okay? Bucky,  I know I do... But I don't think I'm ready to give it yet and for that I am sorry." She tells him one day, shivering from the memory and unshed tears making her eyes shine and her breath wobble.

He ignores the pull of curiosity tugging at him and forces compassion to win out. "Hey, it's okay, “ he replies. “You don't have to tell me a thing unless you want to-"

"I do want to! I do, I just... I can't."

He shakes his head. "Fine, you don't need to give me answers until you feel ready then, okay?"

She nods and sniffs.

Kara doesn’t like looking at him, winces everytime she does ever since she got her name back, but she still has to keep an eye, watch his back. She forces herself to look and tenses like she’s punishing himself. She’s not looking at him now though. She can’t, he thinks. It hurts for her, somehow — and not in the same way he flinches in the mirror, but almost.

At least they’re having a conversation, he thinks. Even if it's a conversation about a lack of one.

Somehow he doesn't really think he's helping so he just lets her be. Better for her to get it out of her system or something like that.

There are things to do now, in between destroying HYDRA bases and sometimes going after their familiar faces. They've taken to following them, the Avengers. Mostly because what else is there? Usually, it’s Steve and whoever else happens to be accompanying him — Sam Wilson and Romanov, most of the time. Kara doesn’t really comment on this and neither does he, and he isn't inclined to anytime soon, to be honest. They both know enough about reasons that they don't gotta talk about them.

All of it is just sorta useless, though, when they're following the Avengers. Not like they're helping or anything like that. Just watching. Silent witnesses.

Kara’s got no reason to engage, anyway, and Bucky — well — he's a bit of a coward. Too much of a coward to face his best friend.

It's hard for him to feel remorse at the murders he's committed. Not because he doesn't know they were wrong or he because he forgets what side they were for (never that), but possibly because the memories themselves hold a sort of cold, empty impassiveness. And it's hard to change those memories. Or rather the emotions (or lack of) attached to them.

Sometimes he hears Kara singing. Well, it's more humming really but it's always the exact same tune and so rehearsed that to him it is singing. Perhaps he can't tell the difference anymore. Bucky doesn't like music. Now it all sounds like white noise and crashing cans to him, and the music that he's used to listening to just makes his chest hurt. Deep down.

Bucky used to like music, back in the 40's, and now he doesn't. Huh.

Bucky is sure Steve doesn't notice, but equally, he can tell Steve at least feels their presence. Perhaps Steve, with his superior serum Erskine made for him, all those years ago, means that he can smell them. Who knows? Anything's possible nowadays (nowadays as in 2015 because that's a thing now, apparently.)

There's a base in Sokovia, and it's not the usual kind of HYDRA base. Bucky's fingers — glinting metal, whirring mechanics and he didn't want them -- curl into clenched fists and he looks at Kara and sees fury in her eyes, glowing hot and bright. They are both soldiers and now they want to make more? And they are both practically children.

Kara doesn't like killing, he knows, but he wonders if she will make an exception today. Just this once.

There's snow on the ground, and though neither of them really feel the cold they both shiver, and he spots Steve doing the same. They watch from the shadows this time.

Today is a slightly rare day. All their Avengers have decided to come out to play, even Thor (as though the future isn't through to handle already, now there are aliens ), even Banner, the Incredible Hulk.

Save perhaps the last member, to which in Bucky's mind is more of a liability — too unstable, it's rightly so that all of them are gathered here. There are HYDRA soldiers lying in wait and so many of them. An entire swarm or two infesting the forest terrain. And only six Avengers.

Bucky and Kara are up just above the trees, low enough that they can blend into the silhouettes of the branches but so they’re still able to see what's going on. It's a little funny: he's sitting on Kara's back, floating in the air ( piggy-back style , he remembers they called it), and one of the rifles they hauled the last base is balanced on her shoulder, aiming down, and on other strapped on his back. Flying is weird, Bucky thinks to himself, not for the first time, but oddly fun too, in spite of the situation. He can see why Kara likes it so much. It's... freeing.

As usual, he's not actually sure why they're there, but they are. Even if it's not like they'll actually do anything (they never do) and HYDRA's new fists will be better off with the Avengers than anyone else. It’s a familiar feeling by now, though, if he’s being honest (which he isn’t often, but hey, at least he’s trying .)

Stark — Iron Man — takes the lead, shooting up and out of the trees and the ranks of his fighting comrades, and darting towards the fortress of buildings in a majestic streak of shiny red. What a paint job, Bucky thinks idly; he’s Howard’s kid, all right. Except, Bucky and Kara, unlike the Avengers, apparently, have done their homework. A faded blue perimeter sparks briefly, rippling through the air, as the external shields are activated and that obnoxious iron suit bounces off it harmlessly like a tin can. He hears Kara muffle a snicker.

“I’m sure they’re trying their best,” she whispers, because they both get amused by the strangest of things now. And, well, it’s better than having nothing.

Bucky says nothing but allows himself a smile.

It’s chaos down there. Steve is on his stupid motorcycle and tossing both his shield and those HYDRA soldiers through the trees as though he doesn’t need hands to steer the damn thing. Thor — the damn alien and literal god of thunder — is literally just using a magic hammer and travelling through the forest via launch-pads in the form of the bodies of HYDRA soldiers. The green giant is bowling through anything and everything and he can’t quite tell if it’s more of a liability or a strength, but nothing’s gone drastically wrong, yet. The two assassins, Hawkeye and the Black Widow, cut through the ranks of enemy soldiers, and he tries not to wince. Another person he remembers, Natalia, and he wonders if she would have cut through him too, or maybe the other way around.

He glances at Kara and she doesn’t seem phased. Perhaps she does not know her, different skill sets and all. It’s strange, not that he thinks about it, that they are both really the same, and yet so very different all at once. How must it have felt, he muses as he looks down through the trees to below, to be free to fly anywhere in the world and yet chained down to a leash all at once? How could that happen?

Still, they’re free now. Just about.

Something in Kara physically shifts and he tenses.

“What?” he says, scanning their level of horizon now.

And Kara shakes her head stiffly, looking torn. “The city. They’re taking fire. I can hear them. Can’t you?”

Bucky pauses, strains himself just a little, and shakes his head. “No.” She’s always been more enhanced than he.

“You’re getting old,” she jokes but he sees her eyes darting to the direction of the city and knows where she wants to go. To save the people, of course. Kara was probably a good person before all of the HYDRA shit.

Maybe it’s selfish, but Bucky shakes his head and tells her to stay put. To stay watch. Even though they aren’t doing anything at the moment. Besides, it’s not their job. They aren’t heroes. They aren’t the Avengers. He isn’t Steve. And he knows Kara won’t force him or leave him in the woods alone to go it herself. So they stay.

It’s relatively all right, everything considering. A bunch of other Iron-Man automatons show up from nowhere and save the day, and Bucky tries to convince himself it’s not guilt he’s feeling when he looks at Kara.

It’s fine, though. The city is safe for the most part. And Bucky doesn’t have to be anything to do with any of it.

Except…

Except Strucker, the bastard, actually releases the twins and it all happens so fast. The boy is quick, quicker than him or Steve, maybe even quicker than Kara. And the girl is... well he's not actually sure, because what the fuck has HYDRA been playing with?! It's awful and amazing all at once, and it's enough for Bucky to feel scared. Even Kara, with her speed and strength and flight and all other things that made her the Weapon, tenses.

It’s a completely different game and yet the one they’ve been playing all along.

“We should go,” he whispers, and this time Kara shakes her head.

Fair enough, he thinks.

They could end this fight. Maybe. He thinks. Or at least the Weapon could, and suppose they might serve as a suitable distraction. Or perhaps HYDRA no longer wants their Winter Soldiers not that they have new toys to play with. But the Weapon could blast them all up into the sky without ever even setting a foot onto the ground, or pulling a trigger. The thought is somehow both terrifying and reassuring.

His eyes flit up as Stark shoots the power for the force-shielding around the base and it flickers away, and his eyes follow Steve as he follows Stark into the base.

“Follow?” asks Kara, looking as though she already knows the answer, cos she does.

After all, that’s his job. Following Captain America into the jaws of death and to the end of the line.

“Drop me near the building. I can follow on foot,” he says. “You can stay out here to watch, if you want.”

The watch, of course, is emphasised. It’s an unspoken sort of thing, neither of them will take action without the other. Something to do with it affecting them both.

Kara thins her lips, frowning, clearly not liking the idea of splitting up, at a HYDRA scientific base of all places. And he’d agree, except he knows she’s more comfortable in the air and he’s more comfortable if he follows Steve, even if all he can do is just watch him fuck things up. But she nods, and sighs, and weaves her way above the branches towards the inner area of the base.

He taps her twice on the elbow and she lets him drop.

Parties have always made Steve feel uncomfortable. He’d thought, originally, that he’d be better at them as the newly minted Captain America (though the “newly” is rather a generous word to use now), or at least that he'd learn to get better. And he’d been wrong, of course.

And besides, what are they really celebrating?

Sure, they have the sceptre now — and really it is great and he’s happy — but it still feels like something’s missing.

I don’t know, says his mind in what Bucky used to describe as his punk ass little shit voice, maybe it’s because there are another pair of enhanced ex-HYDRA soldiers running around, or precarious mental states, and you still have no clue as to where the fuck your best friend is.

Maybe it’s because the said second pair are practically just children and you have no way of bringing them in and ensuring their safety and perhaps it’s best to just let them roam free and perhaps it’s really, really not.

Shut up, Steve thinks, Shut up.

It’s probably not his fault he can’t have a good time at parties. After all, ignoring Thor’s special Asgardian liquor, he can’t even get drunk.

“Captain Rogers,” Steve hears JARVIS calling from… somewhere. “If I may garner your attention. I have something which might be of interest to you.”

Steve nods and focus his head, “What is it?”

“Perhaps if I showed you somewhere a little more private. Shall I show you to your room?”

“Sure.”

Honestly, he can't lie; it's a bit of a relief to get out of the stuffy party and focus on something — anything.

The nearest door to Steve slides opens automatically and Steve steps out into the corridor. He breathes. Outside of the party, the air seems cooler, and it wakes him up a little.

He hears the elevator ping and steps inside, Tony’s ironically picked “ Seventies Disco" music coming to life in the small space. It's a short ride down to his floor from the penthouse, even though it's several floors down, technology is quick these days.

“All right JARVIS,” Steve says, still unsure because it feels even more foolish to be talking to the air whilst he's alone. “What have you got for me?”

Directly in front of him, one of Tony’s blue-tinted holo-screens flicks on, out of nowhere, and Steve almost jumps. He frowns.

“This is satellite footage from the mission at the Sokovian HYDRA Base this week,” begins the AI, sounding strangely hesitant. It's always surprising how human he sounds — or maybe that's just his mind playing tricks.

The footage zooms in on a spot, close to the fight, only a little ways from where Steve is, and he feels his heart freeze.

“Is — JARVIS — is that…” he stumbles over his words, breathless.

“They match the descriptions, Captain.”

Steve zooms in all the way, plays the three seconds of footage over and over again, watching as they disappear into the branches of the forest.  

Two figures. Flying overhead. Dark masks and tactical gear. Crudely sheared dark brown — fading black almost — hair, and strands of long blond tangling in the wind.

He can't see their faces but he knows.

Steve swallows and fights the urge to punch the wall.

He swallows.

Bucky, his best friend, was right there, not even a kilometre away, and he didn't even notice a single fucking thing.

He blinks. Goes to replay the footage again.

“They must’ve been following us,” he mumbles, half to the AI and half to himself. “Did you see them at all after the mission? Where they went after?”

There's a pause and the screen flickers. Once. Twice.

“JARVIS?”

The room is still and silent, other than his thudding heartbeat and anxious breaths, almost pitch black save the flickering blue holo-screen.

Steve clears his throat, glances back at the screen and at Bucky and the Impossible Girl. “Hello?” he tries again slowly, “JARVIS, you there?”

And just like that the holo-screen blinks out.

Chapter Text

So the world is in chaos. Again. And, for once, it's not the fault of a Winter Soldier. To Kara’s surprise.

Which means it's back to this: hiding out and doing nothing, because it's too dangerous to go outside — what, with Stark’s ugly killer robot, and the twins, especially the girl. They're stuck in a tall multistorey building in Marseille, France, cramped with small rooms and cardboard thin walls, a damp smell constantly pervading the senses and a mattress in the corner. It's overstuffed with families and couples and people just by themselves, and nobody asks questions because who are they going to tell?

It's just they need, after all, and really Kara figures she has lower standards than most at this point.

Besides, there is running water (mostly) and outlets for electricity, so really they're rather spoiled. They've managed to salvage an old box TV from a roadside, which they've fixed up — which is risky, but less so than going outside and finding out news for themselves. She thinks it might be driving Bucky a little mad, though, and they haven't even been here for a week. At least she goes out at night to scavenge for food, but Bucky is much less conspicuous and it's always safer to assume someone is watching.

Stealing from shops isn't a great feeling for Kara, risky too because it forces people to go over their security, so Kara spends an hour or two stealing change or small notes from wallets and pockets, since most of the time humans tend to not notice or just disregard as their own error, before going to small one-euro stores.

Kara's going a little crazy too, if she's being honest. They watch the news everyday on their crappy connection, and Kara sees everything that's been happening, Johannesburg and the Avenger’s Hulk and everything else. And she can't do anything because it's too dangerous .

Even though, she just really, really wants to help.

But she's not a hero.

She closes her eyes, settling down on the mattress, trying to block everything out —  because if there's nothing else for it, sleep seems like as good an option as any other. From the other side of the room, just about two metres away, she hears the crackling noise of foil packaging opening, and then the sound of potato chips crunching, and the sort of wet sound of food going down the oesophagus and lips smacking together. Below and grounder her and above her, she hears the idle chatter of too many people a packed in together, permeating through the walls. And there's the sounds of flies buzzing around, the communal toilet flushing down the narrow hallway, a squeaky tap, birds chirping at random outside. Everything serves to irritate her, like some sort of miniscule but growing itch deep within her ear canals.

It's hard not to scream from it all. All the little things just scratching away at her.

There are noises all around her, in the building and around the entire city — all the everyday tragedies of life — and she can't do anything about it.

They haven't been staying in the same place for too long — they never did, anyway — the world isn't safe anymore. Except it never was, just for different reasons than now. Not that it makes a difference.

Perhaps she and Barnes are just unlucky. Stupid and unprepared and unlucky. Well, no one can dispute it, exactly.

They're in Busan, South Korea — which is nice and touristy so nobody really looks twice at the two of them — staying low, hiding out, as per. Ultron and Strucker’s twins also happen to be in South Korea.  Which is such a great coincidence, isn't it?

Just marvelous.

They only hear about it when the Avengers arrive with all their usual chaos and heroic calamity about them. A school bus full of children almost die; a research facility gets trashed and Dr Helen Cho — whose name they recognise from HYDRA’s many watchlists — gets kidnapped; and there's a car fight which looks pretty cinematic from the news channels discussing it.

Seoul is a pretty big place, too, and there are a lot of casualties.

Still, Kara can't help but admit relief when the fights over and it seems Ultron has been stopped, for now.

Apparently.

She's out — food needs, again — and because she quite literally has super senses, she can hear the twisting of mechanical parts and the discordant buzzing of electricity and it doesn't match that of the background. And she stops. Listens.

There's a sort of circulating whine coming from her 3 o’ clock, her 6 o’ clock, and her 9 o’ clock, almost like hissing, and there's a sort of dread welling up in her bones. Her gut is telling her to run .

She thinks she knows what it means.

How’d it even find her? Or them… Does this mean it’s found Bucky too? They were being so careful!

But, you know, Busan is nice and touristy. There are civilians all around her and she’s not sure how this will end in anything other than a fight and a thousand other casualties. And there’s not really many places to go but up.

There’s no time to think about it, really; she can’t risk it. The mechanical clicks get faster and less rhythmical which each passing second as her window of time to act gets smaller.

Perhaps if she flies fast enough, no one will see.

She turns a sharp corner, into a smaller, presumably empty, passageway, takes a breath, and then forces her feet to leave the ground, jumping off the air and the wind. Just an odd blur, hopefully.

It’s a good thing she takes to wearing grey now, since it matches the mottled tones of dreary shade in the sky. As soon as she’s high up enough, she looks down and starts scanning the cityscape. They aren’t that subtle, to be honest — unrefined, almost savage looking metal figures, lurking, prowling, looking like humanoid silver hunting dogs — but they blend in with the rest of the concrete and glass buildings and buzzing technology

Think. She has to think.

She needs to get to Bucky first, of course.

They haven’t been here long — just over twenty-four hours — so she finds Bucky where she left him, some deserted corner near the harbour, more or less deserted, least not now that it’s working hours.

She could just go and get him, snatch him up like some sort of eagle descending on prey. As long as she doesn’t go too fast, he’d be able to handle it, and she could tell him the situation.

Another glance...the pack are descending on him now. And his senses aren’t as well tuned as hers but his instincts make him perk up, and slouch even further inwards at the feeling of being watched.

Kara breathes, and focuses herself, aligns her path as though transforming into a bullet into the sky.

One…

Two…

Three—

She cuts through the air, down towards her target (but this time, a rescue mission rather than a killing) not even feeling the air as it tunnels behind her, the sound of adrenaline in her ears.

Her arms meet Bucky’s form and she closes her hold around him and does not stop. Bucky feels almost limp in her arms, though he is not might as well be, because her grip is like that of a steel trap, clamping its teeth around its prey.

They shoot up into the sky and it is only when they are above the first layer of ashy clouds that she allows herself to slow, just slightly.

“Ultron,” she says, by way of explanation, finally. “It found us, somehow. I think.”

Bucky takes a moment to reassemble himself into composure, his body both limp with shock and tense at once. He breathes.

“Um…” and he blinks. “What.”

“We’ve been traced. Stark’s creation found us, Ultron. I don’t know how.”

It’s easier, she thinks, to not think, or at least not as herself. At least not right now. It’s when it’s situations like this that she has to let the Weapon-programming to take over, because it’s more helpful, because she has to. Because it’s easy and comes naturally, and she hates it.

At the back of her neck, something itches. A metallic sort of scratch.

Her neck itchy and her body sore. Or not really… It feels like a phantom sort of ache.

She looks at Bucky.

The only safe place, says a voice wryly in the back of her mind, is up. Where there’s no atmosphere and nothing survives. Not even herself.

Maybe somewhere like the Poles, or Greenland might be safe. They could both survive there, probably, even without any sort of fortress of solitude.

She breathes.

The itch on her neck suddenly grows intense and electrifying. Unconsciously, one hand goes to touch the back of her neck. She frowns. Something is wrong.

“Kara…” says Bucky, something which might be fear leaking into his voice, and his frame grows tenser. “What…”

Even in her hold, the doctor manages a pathetic smile. She drops him. Something is inside of her. She touches it again, something which isn't supposed to be there is there.

There's another shock, this one more intense than before, and she's out cold.

Chapter Text

It is a metal box. Small, cramped, not tall enough to stand in. The metal feels corrugated and weak, cheaply made. She could probably punch her way out if she needed to.

(She probably does need to.)

But she can still hear the faint buzzing in her neck. The clockwork mechanical ticking of a device she'd forgotten was there, unused once replaced with a much more ingrained sort of programming, ticking away just as alive as before. She's conscious of it now, again. Of how it's so close to her skin she could almost definitely rip it out, but HYDRA scientists were smart and the neck is not such a good place to be ripping things out of, not by yourself. It's a reminder of the things they were running from. A reminder of how far they've come (run.)

And of course, that's not very far at all.

But anyway, the point is, she's pathetic and trapped. She can't escape. And besides, she doesn’t even know where Bucky is.

Briefly, she wonders if the Weapon was ever in any of these sorts of situations, if not on purpose. Wonders if HYDRA had ever sent her on a mission where she stumbled, and if she failed any of them. The thought brings a strange sense of smug amusement to her, for some reason.

She's probably just been trapped here for too long.

What's the thing going to do with them, anyway? She's not sure she completely understands the situation to start with, on the whole. How is Ultron willing itself to do anything against its creator, anyway? It doesn't make sense, at least not to Kara.

How come the robot has enough to want for anything, when even she can't?

But that's not the point.

The point is, Kara is trapped. Again.

At least she remembers her damn name this time (for now.)

She can't do anything. Not yet. It's moving her somewhere. She can feel the slight shifting of the rolling wheels beneath her, and the ruggedness of the road, and the drone of the engine.

She tries not to think about how high the fall was. They've walked away from worse, she's sure of it.

Tries not to think about how stupid they've been, kidding themselves to think they could hide out forever.

In their defence, HYDRA didn't condition them to think. Just follow orders.

She tries not to dwell on the fact they'll probably be given new orders soon. It's not unlikely the robot will have managed to get the codewords or something. Not if it's managed to find them.

(She would wonder what these next orders will be, but she’s got a pretty good hunch already — and here they were thinking they had all the time in the world to face the Avengers.)

Kara can spin circles round the Earth. And yet she's here. Trapped in a little box.

And when it stops, her neck itches.

The Avengers have been accommodating enough. They both have fresh, clean clothes now, fitted for practicality. They've been given a hot meal. They haven't been chained up.

(And really, that's all they can ask for.)

Here's the thing, though, just because they're on the same side now, doesn't mean Pietro has to like them. And he doesn't. He's pretty sure they don't like him, except maybe Captain Rogers.

But anyway, they're not here to make friends.

Wanda and he mostly keep to themselves on the flight over, aware of the wary glances shooting their way from the heroes. Wanda doesn't say much except when she meets his eyes he can tell she's scared. And angry.

Ultron is in Sokovia, their home.

He wonders what it's like now, if it's any different… if perhaps Strucker and his men actually did a damn thing and there was some truth to their lies and that all this time, he and Wanda haven't been suffering in cages for nothing. At the very least, he hopes it isn't worse.

Stark is nowhere near them, not even in the same room, and it's just the way he prefers it; but his creation… his Ultron Mark 2.0 is only three seats away from him, and two seats away from Wanda. It makes Pietro want to scream. And that stupid stone embedded in its head just glows there, orange, fiery, taunting.

Pietro may not have mysterious glowy powers like Wanda, but he can still feel it's power. Sheer, condensed power in its purest form.

That part makes Pietro kind of want to just roll over and die. It's too much. They should just destroy it and damn Stark and Strucker and Banner and all these fucking scientists who think that somehow they have the right to touch it.

The flight is too fast and yet not quick enough. In the sky, everything looks the same, so it's hard to tell how fast they're moving, but somehow, Pietro knows it would have been quicker, if it was him just on his own.

His knee vibrates up and down, thrilling with the need to keep moving, keep running, never slow down or stop, no matter how tired he is. His foot taps a quickstep beat on the floor, too fast to be audible except for a faint drone. When he glances beside him, Wanda is the same, hands clenched into tight fists, white-knuckled, and he remembers she saw what was in his mind. Ultron's gift to humanity.

The Black Widow alternates between sharpening her knives and reassembling her guns. Hawkeye sharpening his arrows. The God of Thunder is swinging his hammer about on its leather grip. Captain America is stands every so often, pacing, muttering little tactical things to himself. Bruce Banner is out of sight with Stark.

Vision does nothing. Sits, still, eyes open. An observer. It makes Pietro's skin prickle and for some reason he can't stand to look.

It's another hour before they land. Ultron better be ready.

The mission is very simple: be ready when the Avengers come and then kill them.

It’s simpler than they’ve encountered before because there’s no need to hide or be subtle, no need for covertness: this isn’t HYDRA.

This is very strange because the Weapon is meant to be for HYDRA, except it’s not. The Weapon is, well, a weapon, it does not take sides save for the one holding it.

Now the mission is even simpler because there aren’t multiple conflicting factors to take into account. There is only one set of orders coming from one commander, that is Ultron, and Ultron only has one task for himself.

The Weapon sits in the middle of the city, on an old brick building, slightly crumbling with age (and not yet what’s to come), watching as the civilian panic begins at the first sight of Ultron — all of him. Thousands of silver humanoid figures emerging out of the shadows, from every crevice. Ultron has done well, because there are children screaming and the police force are yelling, not ordered at all, and already there are masses beginning to form, people trampling over each other to nowhere, because Ultron has it planned that there will be no escapes. Total annihilation.

The ground rumbles and they can feel the starts of the of the land being pulled from the Earth, rising. The people can feel it too — not enough to know what is happening, but enough to fear it. The red eyes, the Weapon muses, are a good touch.

They can already hear the Avengers’ jet, loud and blundering and disruptive in the air, heading towards them, just west from here. They are close now, maybe half an hour away, but it will be too late.

For now, though, the Weapon is just content to watch chaos.

Not far from here, Ultron keeps the Asset in his cage, locked up and out of sight. A failsafe is what Ultron calls it. But the Weapon has been in enough missions to know that a better word for this would be hostage.

It's rather clever, really, a hostage on two fronts. One, in the unlikely events that the Weapon fails, Captain Rogers will do anything to keep his old friend from further harm. Two, the Weapon is not ignorant, they are aware that her mission relies on programming, relies on HYDRA commands, and in that case, if it fails, that is where the Asset finds its use. It should not come to that, though, because the Weapon never fails.

It’s destruction and noise and nothing looks the same as he remembers and yet it feels so familiar. The city they grew up in is falling before his eyes, even as it rises literally. There are masses of people running all over each other in their distress and disarray, and though Pietro doesn’t think he recognises any, he maybe thinks he could.

Beneath them, the ground is unstable. To his left, he hears a building, a small school, creak. Pietro moves fast.

It’s a small school, thankfully. One class — that he can see, at least — about thirty children. Two teachers. Pietro hope’s he’s fast enough.

They are under their desks, the children, some red-faced and crying, some just shaking in silent terror, all huddled together. One teacher is speaking furiously on the phone in rushed Sokovian, whilst the other teacher tries to calm the children, all utterly helpless.

The heli-carriers, which seems to have appeared from nowhere to rescue the civilians, are on the other side of the… land mass? Island? Though it shouldn’t take Pietro long to get there, he only has two hands and there are so many of them, and it’s much too dangerous out there for him to tell them to make their own way.

“ Hello ,” he says, Sokovian familiar on his tongue, with a faux sort of confidence he hopes is reassuring. A few children shriek at his sudden appearance, which is fair considering he’s a stranger, and all eyes turn to look at him. “ I’m here to help. ”

There’s not a lot of time — barely any at all, the building groans louder — so Pietro rushes through his explanation. “ There is safety at the otherside of the city, where everyone is going. I can take you there… ” And, just to prove his point, he speeds from where he stands at the doorway, to the other wall of the classroom. “ Two at a time. We must hurry. ”

The teachers look at each other for a few seconds, one is young, maybe five — six years older than he is, and shaking, fists gripping the fabric of her yellow shirt tightly. The other is older, greying hairs tucked behind an old headband, and looks at all the children under their desks, and nods.

It’s not like there are any better options.

He takes one child and the younger teacher first, who he assumes is to assure the childrens’ safety at both ends. Both scream as they start running, over the debris of buildings which have not been so lucky to still be standing, through all the smoke and explosions. Pietro does not slow, he must not slow.

They reach the rescue party in about two and a half minutes. That’s five minutes for the trip overall. He has to be faster.

He drops them off at the door, and stills his feet long enough for them to stand, and races back.

Faster , he thinks. Be faster!

Ultron has another enhanced on his side. A powerful woman who is just as fast as him, stronger than Captain America and maybe even on par with Thor and the Hulk. It makes things more complicated, because they weren’t prepared.

Still, there are more of them. They have a god on their side. And his sister. He doesn’t pay too much attention to the voices yelling through the earpieces the Avengers gave them. They all talk over each other anyway, and he has people to save, but he does hear, briefly, that Captain America and the Black Widow recognise her.

The class have already lined up in pairs near the entrance, ready and waiting for him, the other teacher near the back, the childrens’ desks pushed closer to the door haphazardly for quick shelter if need be. If Pietro isn’t fast enough.

And he has to be fast enough.

Pietro doesn’t hesitate.

The Weapon focuses on the strongest, the big Hulk, and Thor, occasionally Iron Man. HYDRA’s other experiment, the female who can manipulate the energies around her, is not part of the Avengers, from the data given to them, so the Weapon pays her no mind unless she interferes, which she does not, too busy with Ultron’s army and not yet confident enough with her powers. Stark’s other creation, the Vision, it does not recognise either, and Ultron has it occupied already, for now at least.

“ — She knows Bucky!” it hears Captain America yell, “We can’t kill her, Thor.”

And the Weapon almost smiles at that. None of them could if they tried.

“I highly doubt that’s the priority right now,” answers Widow, going in for another one of Ultron’s clones. “And I’m working on it.”

The Weapon leaves them down on the ground with the rest of Ultron, and dodges another crack of lightning, eyes growing hot.

It’s best saved until last, usually, for element of surprise, and it’s not usually very subtle. But here, the mission does not require subtle, so the Weapon has been using it almost anywhere possible. Asgardian armour is strong, though. A challenge.

But the Weapon never fails.

“ — Maybe it’s like with Loki,” says Hawkeye, and the Weapon bats away another arrow and aims a kick to Thor’s skull as it explodes in the air, “A blow to the head might do the trick. She’s got a hard head, though.”

“Don’t even think about trying that, idiots. And I’m working on it,” repeats the Black Widow.

One of Thor’s streaks of lightning aim true and hit, and the Weapon winces but keeps going, aiming now for the hand with the hammer — the source, it seems.

The Weapon aims another blast of heat vision towards Thor’s exposed wrist, and, as expected, he drops the hammer with a yelp. And the god, it seems, does not know how to fly on his own. The Weapon knows just what to do with him, and before he can call it back to himself, the Weapon sends him arcing across the air, and hopefully over the edge of this floating city.

The Weapon turns to look down at the rest of them.

Iron Man rises up to meet them, as though the next challenger, and fires a blast from his repulsors. This will be easy.

The Weapon dodges, running on pure instinct rather than any sort of strategy. It isn't needed here, anyway. Right now, all it can think about is the movement of the air around it, the sound of oncoming motion, cracking the armour of obnoxiously painted alloy. The Weapon snarls as its shoulder gets hit, not enough to cause any damage, but enough to sting.

“Anytime now, Rushman,” the Iron Man grits out, “whatever it is you're working on.”

“It's—” starts the Widow, from the ground, in between fighting the other bots. “I just need to remember…”

The Weapon ignores them, and goes in for another blow, this time, a chunk of metal flies off the suit, and Iron Man darts away.

They meet in the middle, heat vision to a beam of pure energy from Stark's suit, but of course, the Weapon is winning.

“—nik,” it hears the Widow muttering to herself, “I think it was sputnik .”

And just like that, the Weapon falls.

Pietro gets the last teacher and child, just as the building collapses, and takes a moment as his feet pick up again to breathe a sigh of relief.

His job isn’t over yet, he remembers. There might still be other civilians, perhaps trapped under rubble and their fallen homes, and the fight isn’t over yet, besides. There is a father and daughter trapped in their car, the father has blood dripping down his face, unconscious. There is an old woman, fallen and unable to walk, an old man who cannot remember where he is or where he is going — Pietro finds he understands, a little.

He rejoins his sister and the Avengers, just as the enhanced woman goes down and Thor is returning to the fight, hammer called back to his hand. There aren’t as many of Ultron anymore, and almost everyone has made it onto the rescue carriers, though there might still be some, and taking out the woman has certainly helped a lot.

Wanda is still stationed near the device keeping them afloat, the primary defence, and for a moment his chest seizes watching his sister — who’s still twelve minutes younger than him — fighting with such power, before one of Ultron’s bots try to fly at him and he only just dodges. Pietro runs that one through in retaliation.

“What’s up,” he yells to Wanda, across the battlefield.

“You are late,” she responds without so much as batting her eye. “Now are you going to help or are you just going to stand there?”

Pietro smirks and takes down another three in a blink, which is good because they’re really quite ugly things, and Wanda rolls her eyes at him and takes down five.

“You need to catch up,” is all she says, and Pietro laughs.

It’s strange, he finds, fighting side by side with the Avengers. But he finds himself falling into their sort of team rhythm, crashing and disorganised and messy. He keeps fighting, dancing around explosions and Thor’s lightning, and Stark’s repulsor blasts, and the Vision’s… whatever the other powers he has are… and Captain Roger’s shield, and bullets from the assassins, and Wanda’s magic, steers clear of the Hulk of course.  It doesn’t mean he likes them, he tells himself, because they still caused this, but they are doing their best, he can admit that.

He’s in the heat of it, running on adrenaline, unthinking, caught up in the chaos, when he hears it. On the ground, the woman screams, cutting something terrible in the air, and her eyes flash open, blazing.

For one held second, everyone seems to freeze.

And then twin beams of white-hot light hit Ultron dead-centre, and she lets out a roar of rage, and flies right at him, a force of raw power; and everyone falls back into the fray.

“Guess she’s with us now,” he hears Stark say, sounding mildly put out. The rest of them are still defending the device.

“Yeah,” Captain Rogers is saying, relief clear in his voice. “Guess she is.”

It takes Kara just a second to get her bearings and for her mind to catch up from the fog.

It's strange, coming back from it. Before it was more gradual, from Kara to HYDRA Weapon to something-else-maybe-Alex to Kara, but not the Kara from before. It's still her, she realises. It is still part of her, whatever she is now. It's like a switch. And maybe she's being irrational, but it still feels present in the back of her mind. Not even like something other, not quite a passenger, but just a part of her, ingrained — no, conditioned — tethered on at all times, and brought to the forefront with, what? A few spoken words?

The fight helps. Loud and easy to get lost in, pour out her energy and all her anger. Easy to let herself get overwhelmed in it; it always has been, she remembers that much, at least. There are civilians screaming still, and guilt tugs at her heart because she helped cause this, but Kara pushes it away. She will think about it later.

Right now, she needs to focus on her new mission.

She keeps an ear out, because the land — if it can be called that — is much to cluttered to use her X-ray vision — hoping to hear some sign of Bucky or even the Asset . Curses herself for being so stupid and curses the thing still in her neck that she has yet to rip out.

And Rao , Ultron, even though there's less of him, is still everywhere around her, and any moment now he could remember to activate the kill switch, or say the words again because curse her fucking super-hearing.

She dodges a shot from behind her and snags the bot closest to her and throws it hard enough that it catches three more ahead of it and they explode in mid-air. Uses her heat vision to get another row of them, slicing them clean through. Keeps an eye out for the Avengers on the ground, because some part of her feels the obligation to do so. Ignores Captain America everytime he tries to catch her eye.

Hawkeye is collecting a child, a little boy perhaps eight or nine, from beneath the rubble, when she hears the singing, in the low, murmuring, monotone which is Ultron.

“I have no strings, so I have fun; I'm not tied up to anyone…”

It's almost gentle, in a way, even as the rapid spittle of heavy gunfire starts, and Kara reacts before she thinks.

She drops through the air to her target in half a second and feels the hot bullets bouncing off her skin the next.

When she lets herself glance back, the Maximoff boy us there, ready to do the same, apparently, and perhaps a smidgen sooner. But he is not bulletproof, and Kara is. And when she pushes off the ground and into the air again, he starts to laugh.

“Well,” she hears the Hawkeye say wryly, still clutching the child to his chest, “I guess we both weren't expecting that.”

Chapter Text

The battle is over soon enough. There is none of Ultron left, she and those Avengers have made sure of that. It's a little strange how easily she falls into the role of saving; somehow, it makes her chest ache. There is a brief moment when the floating city begins to plunge back to the earth, but Kara is quick, and, she remembers having carried heavier things.

The city is lowered to the ground. The dust settles.

She slips away before Iron Man or the War Machine or the red droid, Vision, can follow her.

Bucky is being held a little ways out of the perimeter of the city, most of the ground around it has collapsed inwards from the ground having been torn out of it. It's a small metal crate, just like the one she was in before, and Kara draws herself up, schools her expression, ready for anything. Compared to a city, compared to a Myriad, opening the box is nothing in comparison. Like ripping wet paper. The metal bends to the will of her fists and she pulls the top of it off.

The man is curled up inside, eyes closed, unconscious. It makes things a lot less complicated, for once. Kara lifts him out and lays him in the ground and he doesn't stir.

She's not actually sure how long the command words stay in effect for, but she's got to get them someplace else fast. There's always the Avengers, and maybe they'd be safe enough there with Bucky's connection to that Captain America - but there are some decisions Kara doesn't think she should make on her own. And besides, nothing is a guarantee.

With the whole deal with Ultron and the Avengers and HYDRA still fresh in her mind, and the device in her neck feeling more invasive than ever, Kara flies them off, away from any town, city, any civilian area, anywhere they can be seen. Away from just about everywhere.

It is cold, literally freezing, when she stops. For anyone else, the environment may just as well be inhabitable, especially with only the few thin layers they have on. There is grey-white ice everywhere, almost blindingly so, and strong wind blowing veils of snow all around them, so that the horizon seems to blend the sky with the land as one. For anyone else, if they dared to venture, they would not know that somehow the ridges of the icy cliffs before the plunge are almost the same, and that the jagged canyons make a similar path to that on at least one other earth.

Kara follows a path sewn together by scraps of memory. She lands them in the heart of the Arctic. Like everything else these days, only half familiar. At the end of the path, there is no key made out of condensed dwarf star under any metaphorical doormat, or even a door. Because halfway is where the similarities, and familiarities end.

On another Earth, Kara might have landed at a place called the Fortress of Solitude — she remembers that, at least, now — a safe place, hidden, a stronghold with a handy AI named Kelex and a hologram of her first mother as some semblance of closure.

And whilst there is certainly solitude to be found here, where the windy snow-dense air blocks both satellite cameras and the sound of her own voice, the place is no fortress. Not for anybody.

Instead of a door — instead of a Fortress — there is, at the very least, a small cave. It's quite shallow, only about six meters deep and two meters wide, but it's enough that Kara can stand to her full height, or sit, and lay Bucky down on the ice, and shelter from the elements. Bucky — or, well, maybe the Asset — is still unconscious, of course, it hadn't taken long to get here. Kara sets him down on his side and elevates his head a little on her lap.

She gathers her thoughts.

Bucky shouldn't be out for more than another few hours, she thinks, so she's got plenty of time. The can't keep running and hiding and taking HYDRA bases on whims forever, she knows that, they both do. Sooner or later they're going to have to find a way to get those stupid devices Zola put in their necks out, now that they know they're still functional, somehow. At some point, their ghosts are going to catch up to them, just like today. Especially Bucky with his literally chasing after them. And, Kara's ghosts seem to be trickling back too, gradually.

None of it is real. None of it. She remembers a Fortress of Solitude, such a dramatic name, and the cousin who named it and the face of the friend who led her there. Such kind eyes. She remembers half the reason it was there — remembrance — but not what it was that was being remembered. She remembers fractured languages in a tongue which is — not foreign, not at all, at least not to her, but long left unused. She remembers, of course, the name "Alex," and the warmth which comes with it, some intrinsic sense of safety, though not what or who it was tethered to. She remembers the taste of pecan pie, the best desert in the entire universe, apparently. She remembers the salt of the cool air, snowy European landscapes, the sound of an old-time steam train coming in a few miles out, and someone falling and rising up and then falling too. Remembers meeting the eyes of a man watching his friend fall, and the terror in the eyes of the man falling. And she remembers her own name.

A half covered train track, in another continent to this one, is all the evidence that remains of Kara's supposed fragments. The evidence that, like Bucky first said, she had a life before HYDRA, and The Winter Soldiers, and mission reports, and the Weapon. One where she apparently already knew how to fly.

Bucky has pictures plastered all over museums, and pasted in history books, and an old friend. And Kara has a train track.

Everything else may as well just be make-believe.

Kara cracks a bit of ice off the slab of wall next to her and uses a carefully controlled beam of her heat vision to melt it down to drink out of her palms.

She's been 'free' for months, now, almost a year since Bucky tore her from that compound in Siberia. And whilst they'd wondered about public libraries, Bucky searching for his past through the internet and high school textbooks and childhood storybooks, Kara's fingers had danced over computer keyboards, with knowledge of technology Bucky did not have, either programmed into her head by them, or from some sort of before, hacking into mainframes and databases, and government indexes.

Kara is a common name, in most countries, and Alex even more so. But she's had months and library computers are not, truly, that bad. No face, as common as blue hair and blond eyes and names like Alex and Kara are, had matched. Beyond train tracks, and carefully untraceable assassinations, Kara is a ghost. There is no evidence she ever existed, before HYDRA.

Those lullabies of red suns and family ties in an old tongue, catch on her throat when she tries to voice them, and anyway, the howl of the wind is too loud.

Kara shuts her eyes, leaning back against the walls ice. It's hard to rest when she isn't sure of it's dreams she wishes for, when she's not sure what kind of memory will form, or the nothing.

When Bucky wakes up, it is so bitterly cold he damn near jumps, startling Kara up with him, a knife in his hand near her throat and her irises glowing dangerously.

Reflexes.

"Fuck," he says, taking in the air and the loud wind outside and the glistening monochrome tones. "Where the hell are we?"

Kara merely raises an eyebrow at him, as if to say, you can't tell, and rattles off some coordinate at him. The Arctic. For a moment he's so taken aback by this he has to sit down again. The ground is cold, though, obviously.

"What the hell? What are we doing here? What about Ultron?"

She shrugs. "No one can find us here, and if they do they probably won't come looking. Ultron is gone. The Avengers," she offers, by way of explanation.

Bucky nods, and stares outside the entrance of this little cave. There's a snowstorm going on, so hardly anything is visible other than the grainy white, like static. The Asset was always much less tolerant of extreme heats than the Weapon,so whilst Bucky isn't going to get hypothermia, probably, he still gets up to pace, shivering and wishing for more layers, whilst Kara sits back against the ice, wholly unbothered.

"We should talk," says Kara, after a little while. And she's right, they do.

He lets out a brief chuckle and rubs at his eyes with his flesh hand. "What about?"

Where to begin?

They've done a lot of talking these past few months, and a lot of not-talking. A lot of half finished conversations without conclusions.

When Kara doesn't answer, Bucky takes a breath and speaks instead. "Tell me about what you remembered, that you couldn't say, before."

He would say that maybe she doesn't have to, again, but, in all honesty, it's been weeks, and he's pretty sure it's helping nobody. Especially since she was apologising to him. And it's all she seems to have, anyway.

Kara lets out a wince, and then a grimace — probably the most expression he's seen on her for a while.

"Okay," she replies, and twists her hands together. "It's from before, I think. It's — I'm in Europe, somewhere in the Alps. It doesn't make sense — have my powers already."

Bucky nods along, listens patiently. He's pretty sure she needs it, if the frown etched onto her face is any indication. Again, it's been weeks, which means whatever this is, it's had plenty of time to brew in her mind.

"Anyway, I don't remember how I got there, but there's a train coming, a few miles away — maybe three? — and I'm very tired. And there is gunfire and yelling, and then suddenly there's a man falling from the train, so I fly up to save him and then… I don't know. I guess my powers cut out because then I'm falling — we both are. There's a man on the train, too, watching us fall." She looks up from her fidgeting hands and meets Bucky's eyes. The word us rings through his ears. "I'm pretty sure the man on the train was Steve Rogers, and that the man falling was — "

"Me," Bucky finishes.

Because he remembers that too. How could he have forgotten?

Schnellzug EB912. January 12th, 1945. His numb fingers gripping onto the side of that damn train, one hand clutching on, the other reaching for Steve and looking at the terror in his eyes. And the sound of the latch breaking off anyway.

If Kara had saved him, would he be back in 1945, one arm slung over a friend, laughing over dinner at the camp's mess hall? It's useless to think about, here in the middle of the damned Arctic in 2015, with only half of himself.

"Okay," he says.

"Okay? That's all?"

Bucky shrugs. "Sure. It's not your fault HYDRA found us."

"Isn't it?" And even though Bucky is the one who feels cold, Kara has her hands clenched into fists, shaking, as though she wants him to yell at her. And maybe she's right, in a way. Maybe it is her fault they got found. Maybe.

But if he thinks it through, it isn't Kara who signed him up for war, he enlisted himself and probably would have gotten conscripted anyway. It isn't her that got him captured that first time, as part of the 107th, for the first time Zola stuck a needle in him which probably is why he survived that fall in the first place. It isn't her, really, that made them both probably the longest held prisoners of war ever.

"It's not your fault that HYDRA exists at all, so no," he says firmly. "And besides, what difference would it make now?"

It's probably the most frank, they've ever been with each other.

"I guess so," Kara agrees finally. "What do you think we should do now?"

<< Novi Grad, Sokovia >>

There are still corpses when the dust settles. Even the Avengers could not prevent them, as powerful as they are. Ultron made sure of that — the Avengers made sure of that. Not everyone is saved, no matter how unceremoniously the woman who changed sides landed them. And the Avengers, well, they are already home for tea, he imagines.

He has to wear a mask over his face because there is too much ash and dust — because the dust will never truly settle — suspended in the air to breathe it.

"Sir," says a voice, an agent — from another foreign country, no doubt, playing hero — in a full hazcon suit, telling him what to do as if this isn't his country. His home. He flinches.

"What?" he spits, jerking away the hand resting on his shoulder. "I'm looking for my family."

Their suit means that, unlike his own mask, their full face is covered. Even the tinted glass where presumably their eyes are is tinted dark.

"Yes. We found them," continues the agent. Their Sokovian is terrible, has an annoying accent, rolling his 'r's too much, messing up the tenses. "I'm so sorry, Mr Zemo."