BATTLE BORN ; Bucky Barnes

three ;

"And where exactly did Captain America learn how to steal a car?" Scout asked. She had called shotgun and when Nat objected she froze the doors shut, and not having much time on their hands, Nat had to let Scout sit in the font.
"Nazi Germany." Steve replied, looking at the road. Natasha sat in the middle seat of the back, and leant over to be part of the conversation, "and we're borrowing. Take your feet off the dash." Scout pouted, but did as she was told with a sigh. She crossed her arms and quietened down.
"Alright, I have a question for you, of which you do not have to answer. I feel like if you don't answer it though, you're kind of answering it, you know?" Nat said, and Scout snorted.
"What?" Steve asked.
"Was that your first kiss since 1945?" Scout turned an embarrassing shade of red, and stuck her head in her phone, pulling up Google Maps so she could direct Rogers.
"That bad, huh?" He asked.
"I didn't say that." Nat raised her eyebrows and Scout stifled a laugh.
"Well, it kind of sounds like that's what you're saying." Steve said, almost accusingly.
"No, I didn't. I just wondered how much practice you had." Nat added.
"I don't need practice." Steve said.
"Everybody needs practice." Nat raised her eyebrows.
"It was not my first kiss since 1945. I'm ninety-five, I'm not dead."
"Nobody special, though?" Nat asked and Steve chuckled.
"Believe it or not, it's kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience." He said and Scout nodded.
"Well, that's alright, you just make something up." Nat said.
"What, like you?" Steve asked. "Or Scout? You're both masters of lies and deception." He said.
"I wouldn't say lies, I only omit truths, technically, I am most of my aliases, at the time."
"The truth is a matter of circumstances, it's not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I."
"That's a tough way to live." Steve said.
"It's a good way not to die, though." Scout shrugged, putting her feet back up on the dash.
"You know, it's kind of hard to trust someone when you don't know who that someone really is." He said, looking at Scout, then Natasha.
"Yeah. Who do you want us to be?" Nat asked.
"How about a-" He hesitated, "friend?" Natasha laughed softly
"Well, there's a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers."

;

The abandoned military site looked sad in Scout's opinion. It was falling down, but she could see why it would have been so popular in its day. It was now deteriorating, grey and bleak and on a clouded New Jersey day it looked old and abandoned and sad. Scout had been around medical and military bases all her life, and she was used to the old abandoned ones, but this looked like it used to have so much life, then it was just left there, no purpose anymore. She took one last sweeping look, then followed Nat and Steve, who were walking ahead together. 
"The file came from these coordinates." Nat said, and Scout skipped to catch up with her.
"So did I." Steve said. "This camp is where I was trained."
"Changed much?" Scout asked, sarcastically. She could practically see it in all its glory, reflecting off Steve's nostalgic eyes.
"A little." Steve murmured.
"This is a dead end. Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off." Nat said, staring down at her reader with disgust written all over her face. That was when Steve noticed a building ahead of them.
"What is it?" Scout asked, looking at the building sideways, as nothing seemed off to her.
"Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards from the barracks. This building is in the wrong place." He said, walking over with the other two, then opening the door to reveal a dusty looking SHIELD office, there were desks just left abandoned with their paperwork still on the desk. Scout walked over, picking up a piece of paper, it was several files, the first was 72420, Thomas Windsor, followed by 72421, Yvette Roseland, 72422, Camille Utber, and so on, until 72431, each had a name on it, the bottom file with the first name Emmaline, the last name was redacted. A shiver went down her spine, Scout knew an Emmaline once, but there were quite a few running around, it could hardly be the same one she once knew. She shoved all of the 10 files into her backpack, and made a mental note to read them later.
"This is SHIELD." Natasha said, looking around.
"Maybe where it started." Steve added, and the three of them walked through into a room where they found old framed portraits of Howard Stark, Peggy Carter and Col. Chester Phillips. Scout dusted off one of the pictures, Stark.
"There's Stark's father." Nat said.
"Howard." Steve corrected, the look of nostalgia reappearing in his eyes.
"Who's the girl?" Natasha asked. Scout looked at her, Nat had to know who Peggy was, Scout has told her so many stories of growing up with the SHIELD legend. She was testing Steve, who'd ignored her and wandered over to a bookshelf.
"If you're already working in a secret office..." Steve started. He pushed the bookshelf and it slid open to reveal an elevator behind it. "Why do you need to hide the elevator?"
He was beginning to get more and more suspicious of this place, and Scout could feel it. The three of them descended the elevator, which took them to a room with ancient looking computers.
"This can't be the data-point, this technology is pre-historic." Scout said, looking around the room when suddenly Natasha noticed a small flash drive port, she held out an open palm to Scout, and Scout pulled the disk drive from her bra and handed it to Nat, who placed the flash drive in the port, which activated the ancient computer in the room. It whirred to life with a cough and splutter.
"Initiate system?" The computer asked, and Scout stepped forward past Nat, leaning over the keyboard and typing out 'yes'
"Y-E-S, spells yes." Scout muttered, smirking. She could work this piece of junk faster than you could spell matrix. "Shall we play a game?" Scout laughed.
"It's from a movie that..." Natasha started to explain it to Steve, but she was cut off.
"Yeah, I saw it." Steve said. Then, an accented voice interrupted their little film talk.
"Rogers, Steven Grant. Born, 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna. Born, 1984. Windsor, Georgiana Scarlett. Born, 1989." Scout looked up to see what was going on, she rarely went by Georgiana anymore, and she had legally changed her last name to Brighton.
"It's some kind of a recording." Nat said.
"I am not a recording, Fräulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am."  The computer screen showed an old photo of Dr. Arnim Zola, someone Scout had seen a few times when she read up on the history of the Captain.
"Do you know this thing?" Nat said, looking at the computer distastefully.
"Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He's been dead for years." Steve said.
"First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body, my mind, however, that was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain." He said, and Scout resisted the urge to jump into Nat or Steve's arms. The fact she was standing on data banks of someone's brain wigged her out.
"How did you get here?" Steve asked.
"Invited."
"It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic values." Nat explained, and Scout just nodded along, trying to figure out why there were so many files left here on their own, this place was old, but it seemed like everyone had left it in a hurry and never came back.
"They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own." Zola said.
"HYDRA died with the Red Skull." Steve said, stepping forward. Natasha caught his arm to prevent him from hitting the computer system with his shield.
"Cut off one head, two more shall take its place." Zola threatened.
"Prove it." Steve said, figuratively poking the bear.
"Accessing archive." Zola said, and the computer screen showed them old footage of the Red Skull, of the original SHIELD founders. "HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed." Zola monologued, giving Scout time to start up her burn phone, back checking his story for the facts.
"That's impossible, SHIELD would have stopped you." Natasha said. Blind faith, something Scout did not have.
"Accidents will happen." Zola said, and the computer screen showed them how HYDRA had killed Howard and Maria Stark making it look like a car accident along with the recent death of Fury. "HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your Life; a zero sum." Nat tried to calm him down, but in his anger, Steve suddenly smashed the computer screen with his fist. Nat grabbed his shoulder to pull him back, and Scout began looking around the place.
"Stop being so nosey Georgiana." Zola scolded her and she froze, he sounded just like her father from a million years ago. This place was giving her too many memories, the ones she'd pushed away were resurfacing and she didn't like it. Nat saw the face she was pulling, and made a mental note to make sure Steve didn't ask about her name being listed as Georgiana, Nat knew the girls past, and knew she didn't like talking about it, almost as much as Nat didn't like talking about hers. "As I was saying... What's on this drive? Project Insight requires insight. So I wrote an algorithm."
"What kind of algorithm? What does it do?" Nat asked, genuinely interested.
"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it." Zola said. The doors started to close, Scout sent ice flying at them, and Steve tried stop it by throwing his shield in between it but they were both too late. The ice just shattered as it hit the metal, and Steve's shield bounced off the wall. "Admit it, it's better this way. We're both of us...out of time." Zola said. Natasha noticed a small opening on the ground, she threw the metal door aside, and just as the bunker exploded she threw herself and Steve into the hole, as Scout dove across the room towards them. Natasha tried to protect them with Steve's shield, but it could only cover Steve and herself, as Scout was still several feet away. The bunker, exploded, shrapnel and fire flying everywhere. Once the fire died down, the STRIKE agents arrived to roam the area, looking for them. Scout was stood there in her singed civilian clothes, looking like a lost puppy. The blast had no impact on her, as she lit up in flames before the bomb hit, but she was looking a little dazed, she was almost sure that some form of shrapnel had embedded itself in her, but she'd survive.
"Who knew I could do that?" She asked herself, picking up her backpack, and chasing after Steve, who was carrying a wounded Natasha.

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EDITED: 3/9/21