Forget Me Not

2: 10

[Saturday mornings for Madeleine from here on out. Enjoy!]

As the six were being escorted in a van, Bucky said in a shaky voice, "It was her. She looked right at me and Steve like she didn't even know us or the girls."

"How's that even possible?" Sam wondered. "It was like 70 years ago."

"Zola," Steve answered. "Bucky's whole unit was captured in '43, Zola experimented on them. Maddi was captured shortly after I got the serum. Whatever he did helped her survive the fall."

"How is Mama alive?" Rebecca asked.

"Science," Evelyn replied. "I think."

"None of that's your fault, Steve, Bucky," Natasha told them.

"Even when Bucky and I had nothing, we had Maddi," Steve said. "And then Evie and Becca when they came along."

Bucky's gaze turned to Natasha. Anything to get his mind off that his wife, who he'd almost killed, was alive and didn't remember her family or her best friend. "You okay?"

Sam noticed Natasha was bleeding from her shoulder and looked at the guards and said, "We need to get a doctor here. We don't put pressure on that wound she's gonna bleed out here in the truck." Suddenly, one of the guards pulled out an electric rod and neutralized the other guard and knocked him out. The guard was revealed to be Hill as she took off her helmet.

"Ah. That thing was squeezing my brain," Hill said. Sam looked at her in confusion. Hill said to Steve, "Who's this guy?"

Rumlow's crew stopped their vehicles and got out.

"Six holes. Start digging," Rumlow ordered. They went towards the van holding Steve, Sam, Bucky, Evelyn, Rebecca and Natasha and as they opened the door, they found it empty with one of the guards left unconscious and massive burnt hole on the car floor.

---

Hill had taken the six to a secret facility. A man ran towards them.

Hill, referring to Natasha's wound, said, "GSW. She's lost at least a pint."

"Maybe two," Sam added.

"Let me take her," the doctor said.

"She'll want to see him first," Hill replied, taking them to Fury who was alive and lying in bed. The six looked at him in shock.

"About damn time," Fury said.

"You're alive!" Evelyn cried. "So Mama didn't kill you!"

Fury chuckled. "No she didn't."

Later, as Natasha's wound was being treated, Fury continued. "Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver, one hell of a headache."

"Don't forget your collapsed lung," the doctor added.

"Oh, let's not forget that. Otherwise, I'm good."

"They cut you open, your heart stopped," Natasha said.

"Tetrodotoxin B. Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it."

"Why all the secrecy?" Steve asked. "Why not just tell us?"

"Any attempt on the director's life had to look successful," Hill replied.

"Can't kill you if you're already dead," Fury reasoned. "Besides, I wasn't sure who to trust."

---

Inside a bank vault, the HYDRA agents fixed Bucky's metal arm and as they did so, he had a brief flashback to his old life as he was recovered by Zola and the HYDRA agents.