Leave Me Bleeding [Winter Soldier] I

Compassion [Chapter 17]

"I remember everything. It's a burden."

-Eleanor Webb from Byzantium 

                Though Ophelia was still having troubles with her flashbacks, she was able to convince Maria Hill that she intended to help. With her ability to link with people, Hill asked her who was to trust and who was HYDRA within SHIELD. They showed her people they suspected, had her connect with them and confirm. This way, she earned some trust from her. The only one she knew for certain without needing a prompt was Alexander Pierce. She knew him personally as he had given her the mission to kill Fury only a day earlier. 

              She had been allowed to rest, Agent Hill deciding that it was far better to have a rested hostage who may comply, as opposed to the state Ophelia had been brought in. At this point, though, Ophelia wasn't much of a hostage. In fact, she felt safer in the dam than she had in her entire life, and she was beginning to see the side of things that were considered good. People like Fury and Hill and Rogers, they were good people fighting to better the world, to protect it. HYDRA had many people convinced that their way of things was for the greater good, but Ophelia was starting to see that their view was indeed veiled and skewed. 

                By the people in the dam, Ophelia was being treated like a feral dog. They were careful around her, not wanting to say or do the wrong thing to agitate her. And yet they looked at her as though she was wounded, and needed assistance to get back on her feet. This was all true, and Ophelia accepted it with open arms now. The main memory that made her feel the need to change, to comply with Hill and the others, were the things Bucky had done for her. He willingly put himself back into HYDRA captivity so that she wouldn't be hurt as badly. When it was all laid out for her like this, it was easy to see what side she wanted to be on. 

             The next morning hey had un-cuffed Ophelia, but locked her in a room overnight as they could not trust her with the location of their base. Slowly, though, over small words and brief conversation, they were getting somewhere. A foundation was being laid. Of course they were aware that anything she told them could be leading them into a trap, but they had to take that chance. Things were askew, and they were grasping onto anything in order to figure out how to solve this problem that was unresolved and insidious. With Ophelia willing to help, it made things a  fraction easier for them.

             "Can you try to locate the Winter Soldier again?" Agent Hill asked

                "It's like he doesn't exist..." Ophelia explained. "I can't even find him, let alone enter his mind to even get a hint of where he might be."

                "Have you located Steve?" Maria Hill changed the topic at hand, it was more important to find Steve and Natasha, who had gone AWOL after he became a wanted criminal. 

                "He's far, I can sense him, but I cannot locate him."

                "And Natasha?"

                "It's harder to find people I have no connection with, but I think she is with him." Ophelia looked up at Maria not with want of a reward, but to see if she believed her. It was all the truth.

                "Do you know the general area?" Hill tried to get the ball rolling. 

                "Get me a map," she suggested. "Maybe that will help. I've been living in a cave in Siberia my entire life."

                After Ophelia had been able to locate where Steve, Natasha and Sam -a new person she had linked with- were headed, Agent Hill brought her in to talk to Fury for the first time. Though she had seen the man the day before, this time it was different because he would be awake. She was nervous, after all, she and The Winter Soldier had been the one to put him in this state. The punctured lung was the least of his worries, however, and he had survived long enough to be brought to a safe place with agents and doctors he trusted.