Cap and Corvin

[CaptainObvious]

It had been two months since the dazed, confused and beat-up assassin pulled Stephanie up to the lakeshore. He didn't know why ... he didn't quite know who she was ... but he knew he had to save her. She was his mission ... She was his target and he'd failed. He'd made a choice, something he hadn't done for quite some time, conditioned by HYDRA, all he could do was obey orders, silently and without any complications.

Now he was on the run. He'd disobeyed an order and once HYDRA found out that Captain America was still alive, he'd be in trouble. Worse still. He'd run.

They didn't like it when he ran. It had happened before a long time ago. He couldn't remember where or when or how, but whenever he failed, whenever he showed any sign of resistance ... it was met with brutal punishment.

Another two months passed. He began to remember things ... His name was Bucky ... her name was Stephanie. They were friends ...
He'd killed hundreds ... thousands even. Innocent civilians.

HYDRA were bad.

And then they got him.

The ambush had been carefully planned. Of course. Vasily Karpov wasn't fond of unnecessary risks. The Asset was sedated. Specially trained operatives. The safehouse he'd secreted himself away in was ... almost perfect. Windows covered in news paper so no one could see in. One door in, and a balcony. He could jump if someone came in through the door, and it was hard to surround him. It was in a secluded, badly lit part of town as well and Bucky moved most at night where he wouldn't be seen.

He was off the grid for four months before HYDRA found him and began carefully calculating a mission to secure him and transport him back to a holding facility. The attack was two pronged of course. Bucky had his escape routes planned. He was prepared for most conventional attacks. The door was barricaded, behind the barricade were armed HYDRA agents, and two specialists rappelled down the roof onto the balcony to block his escape through that exit. Armed with gas masks and tranqguns, they started with a stun grenade and smoke bombs, heat-seeking goggles tracked Bucky's heat signature, they fired through the smoke. Bucky managed to hurly one of the goons over the balcony, a fall that would have proved fatal, but for the rope line from the roof stilling his fall. Then he was dragged back ... locked underground and wiped clean, all his memory completely expunged. His safehouse was torched. By the time the fire services put out the blaze, none of his memory notebooks, the bits and pieces of things he'd scrapped together ... all were lost.



Ever since the Triskellion fall and Stephanie's recovery, Nate had been pulling on every string he could find. Using old KGB contacts to unearth what he could about Project Winter Soldier. For the most part ... there wasn't much, then, he got into deep cover channels ... there were rumours buzzing of "The Asset Missing". Stephanie had been hopeful ... instead of delivering a killing blow, she'd said the Winter Soldier had pulled her from the lake, had recognised her maybe? Ever since, it was a mission of theirs to find him again, to bring him back from HYDRA's clutches.

As usual, they were lolling about Avengers H.Q. Nate doing his usual spy stuff, surfing communications channels for data. He sought out Steph, who always waited on tender hooks for another update, even though they were all much the same.

"Still nothing ... He's still MIA. Musta gone real deep cover, HYDRA are pulling out all the stops to find him. I'm not having much luck either, but I'll keep searching"

 

[Corvinna]

Stephanie often found herself sitting and thinking about Bucky. They had spent so much time together before and then more time separated, probably thinking the other dead - no, she paused on the thought... On she would have thought he was dead - the brainwashing. She bounced between memories of them growing up and fighting when they were half a decade younger and then to just recently, when he brutally fought her, damn near killing her and her friends. She sighed and got up to wander about the HQ.

Boredom had wracked Stephanie's mind for some time now, while she was recovering there were things to do, but she was sat out for the missions. Now there was very little to do, they were laying low and treading carefully. She was frustrated that there was little she could do to help. She had no knowledge of computers really, definitely not anything near enough to help with something as sensitive and elusive as Bucky. Looking over some shoulders every once in a while, she'd try to keep herself updated but didn't comprehend most of the things Nate was doing with the tech. Huffing, she'd walk away and silent frustration and wait for the next word. She was getting tired of the same old answers, if you could even call them that.

She was in the gym, training. If she couldn't help on one side of the spectrum, she'd work on the other. She was sharpening her skills again after having been out of the game healing up. One could argue she still didn't really need it but as far as Stephanie was concerned, there wasn't really a such thing as too much training. She working a bag when Nate came in and noticing, she takes a bit of a pause and grabs a bottle of water, drinking some. Sweat dripping down her face neck and body and she almost smiled hopefully.

"'Still nothing'" She said in aggravated unison with Nate, laying a fresh punch into the bag sending it wildly swinging "I know, I know... There's never anything. If Hydra is looking as hard or harder than we are, which they are, we need to step up our game. We have to find him before they do." Stephanie looks up to Nate her eyes stressing the importance of her next words. "We have to get to him first, Nate"

 

[CaptainObvious]

"What if we're going about this all wrong?" Nate asked. It would be tough for Cap to hear it, but ... he had to say it. "What if HYDRA catching him first actually does us a favour ... we'll know where he is at least if they find him"
That wasn't the answer she wanted of course because if HYDRA found him again they'd brainwash him again, they'd break him again and he'd be forced to kill again. If he'd broken his programming, there was part of him left to save, but how many more brainwashings could he take before they lost whatever pieces of Bucky had been left? What if they lost those pieces forever.
"THey have a 50 year advantage over us. THey've used him for covert operations since you crashed into the Atlantic, they have decades of his movement patterns on file ... We barely know what we're looking for and if they found him all we'd have to do is lure him out an-"

Nate's phone bleeped, it was either an incoming mission, or he'd hit paydirt on Bucky's location.
"Oh no". It was exactly what Cap didn't want to hear.
"The message is vague and obviously heavily encoded ... but I think they got him" he shook his head. "I'm going to follow up this message and see what I can find, it could be a bogey to throw us off" Nate disappeared to the comm labs where huge dataprocessing computers pumped through trillions of megabits of data, he was running his own operation to sniff out certain encrypted channels and messages.

Twenty minutes later, Nate unravelled the code to an extent and tracked down the necessary leads. With a sorrowful sigh, he showed Cap the CCTV footage from across the street.
A rundown abandoned complex, HYDRA agents on the roof, surrounding, closing in. Bucky kept to the shadows but for a sliver of a second a streetlamp caught his profile, confirming his identity, Stephanie would know it was him for certain, he disappeared inside the building and HYDRA began to close the net on him.
There was a flash, a grenade going off inside the apartment, a HYDRA agent thrown back over the balcony, clearly a scuffle had taken place but Bucky had failed. His prone body was dragged into a black van on the street and it drove off, the building was ablaze seconds later.

"They got him ... " Nate confirmed, what more could he say.
"But ... now we can launch a new plan of attack. Theres no way we can take on HYDRA head on, its suicide to jump into whatever facility they're holding him in" he wouldn't put it past Steph to launch that kind of suicide mission to help Bucky, but they had to play it safe now, they had to make a good plan, a careful plan.
"We need to lure him out, disable him in the field and remove him before HYDRA can attempt to recover him again" Nate was in full planning mode already and didn't notice he sort of spoke about Bucky as if he was a secret package or bomb rather than a human, Steph's best friend, it was an honest mistake and he hadn't meant offence by it.



When Bucky came to, he was strapped into the brainwashing chair. He wasn't sure where abouts the chair was located, but he knew wherever it was, it was a seccure HYDRA facility. He didn't remember his escape, he didn't remember Stephanie. He had no desire to free himself, it was all stripped away.
"Soldat?" Karpov looked over at him.
"Ready to Comply"
"Good"


((sorry if this is a bit naff, Im on a bus))