A Winter Soldier and A Lost Cause

Chapter 34 - The Other Side

READER WARNING - DEPICTIONS OF BLOOD, INJURY AND FIGHTING

STEVE POV
We had tried to avoid the news the past week since Violet took Bucky under her control but our efforts proved futile. On every channel there were stories about a male and a female terrorist who were dressed in black and causing destruction and death everywhere they went. Most of the stories came from witness statements of the attackers because they were careful not to be caught by the media. They were caught assassinating a group of businessmen on CCTV but their faces were covered. Nothing happened if they didn't want it to so no doubt they'd wanted to world to see their brutality. The news stations may not have known their identities but there was no question about them for us.

"All Avengers please report to Tony Stark's lab immediately" F.R.I.D.A.Y called out.

Tony and Bruce had been working tirelessly on figuring out how to bring back y/n but they hadn't had a breakthrough yet. Maybe they finally had one and that's why we had been summoned. With everything I had, I hoped it was.

"You rang for us Stark?" Clint said as we all walked into the lab.

Tony was grinning like a cheshire cat.

"We know how to bring back y/n" he announced.

"Don't joke about that Stark" Wanda said nervously.

"He's not joking." Bruce said with the biggest smile I'd ever seen on him. "We know how to save her"

"How?!" Nat asked eagerly.

"We've been looking through everything we know on the cuff but yesterday Tony suggested maybe we should work backwards and look at everything we know about y/n instead." Bruce explained.

"Which is surprisingly little if you really look into it." Tony said somewhat guiltily. "BUT! Then we found this haunting picture again." Tony dragged a picture across the interactive screen on the table we were stood around.

"This was when her and Bucky were kidnapped a few months ago." I noted as I looked at the picture of y/n hanging on a round board with knives embedded around and in her.

Tony nodded and wagged a finger at me, "Exactly!" He said triumphantly. "So if Hydra and her organisation had already kidnapped her, why didn't they bring out Violet there and then? Why wait?"

"Because they were stalling for something" Nat said, following Tony's thought process. It still amazed me to this day how intelligent she was. She was much humbler than Tony but if I had to bet I'd say she was just as smart as him.

"Stalling for what? They already had Bucky too so they couldn't have been waiting to kidnap him?" Sam said.

"When y/n was captured, it was in the thick of her being unable to control her mind. Her brain kept tricking her into seeing what wasn't there." Bruce explained.

"They were stalling until her neurons were unblocked." Wanda said and Bruce nodded.

"One of them unblocked while she was captured. Do you think they knew how to unblock them and were waiting for her to do it or were they stalling until they figured out how to do it?" Clint asked.

"We think the latter. Y/n unblocking a neuron seems merely a conincidence. Hydra and her Organisation are advanced but they don't have anything on Wakanda's resources and intelligence." Bruce expressed.

"So how does this help us help y/n?" I asked.

"I'm so glad you asked Rogers" Tony said gleefully. "If they need her neurons unblocked to bring out Violet, that means the cuff wouldn't have worked if her neurons are blocked. So to bring y/n back-"