Lacuna [1] {Completed}

Chapter Eleven

"Mamihlapinatapai (n.) A look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something they both desire but which neither wants to begin."

The Winter Soldier. Bucky Barnes. They were the same person.

Erin sat in a lecture hall at Oxford University in London starring at the photograph her grandfather had given her all those years ago. She couldn't believe it. Bucky Barnes, her grandfather's friend was alive. Not only that, but he was the most infamous assassin in the last 50 years.

Details of the attack on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Triskelion had just been released. Her mother had sent her an e-mail that morning. Class hadn't been particularly interesting that day, so she read it during one of her lectures.

Erin and her mother hadn't talked in a few weeks. If she was being honest, she hadn't been happy with her mother all summer. Whatever "contacts" her mother had talked about dealing with, they always took precedent over Erin. She was busy with her internship at the STARK lab in London, but a check in once a week instead of once a month would have been appreciated. It would have made her feel less alone. Whenever they did get to talk, her mother always seemed far away, like she was on a completely different planet.

Erin read the e-mail. Then reread it, trying to make sense of it all. HYDRA had been secretly infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D. all along under everyone's noses. Alexander Pierce, head of S.H.I.E.L.D. was actually a member of HYDRA as well as several other colleagues Erin's family had come to know and trust for years. Some of those people dated back to the beginning of the organization with her grandfather. Erin felt sick to her stomach. She had met Mr. Pierce. He was her best friend Jill's uncle. Her father respected him.

She closed her eyes, trying to ease the nausea away. The next paragraph of the e-mail contained details about how Pierce used an assassin to kill Nick Fury.

Nick Fury is alive. Her mother wrote in between paragraphs. He's in hiding.

But it wasn't just any assassin that had tried to kill him. It was the Winter Soldier. Credited with more than 50 kills he was easily the deadliest assassin of the 20th century. Some didn't believe he was real, but his ghost story fascinated Erin. She had even done enough research to do a paper about him in high school.

Now, Erin knew he was very real. He was the man she admired in the picture all these years. Little did she know when she looked at him, a smile plaster on his face, and his arm around Captain America, she was looking at the Winter Soldier.

At the bottom of the e-mail her mom wrote:

I've found them. All of them. And this time they'll answer for what they did.

I love you.

Erin felt like everything she knew had been turned upside down. She sat back in her lecture seat as breathing became harder and harder to accomplish.

"Ms. McCall?" Her professor called. Erin tore her eyes from the screen to look at him, "Are you alright?" He asked.

Erin didn't answer. Instead, she slammed her laptop shut, shoved it into her backpack, and ran out of the room. Just as she closed the door behind her, her phone started to ring. It was her mom.

"Mom?" Erin answered it urgently.

"Erin?" A voice said over the phone. It was Cara. "Are you there?"

"I'm here," Erin said, "What's going on?"

"Erin... I'm sorry." Cara said. Erin could hear her voice break.