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Then silence....

Except for the wind whipping by the car. The hum from the engine filling the air inside.

A shaky breath escaped me. My ribs were of no help. I could almost feel the constraint on my lungs, by something sharp instead of the cast and its needles. Broken ribs. My palms rubbed at my ears, trying to focus on the air zipping by the car and not the screams echoing in my head.

The fight or flight response flooded my system with adrenaline at the mere memory a lavender scent and the laundry bag of soap bars that came with it. My shoulders rolled, trying to feel the cushioned seat. Not the concrete floors I had been pinned against, kicking and screaming. Anything to get away from the boots and fists. When I could fight no more, the ball I curled into as an attempt to at least protect something.

"Valeriy." Deep and strong. His voice dragged me right out of it.

Two blinks later, I saw the ball I was curled up in, tight as it was before. My bones did not agree with this.

"You're safe. I'm with you."

My nervous laugh grated against my ears. I forced my hands to move away from my ears and leaned away from my pulled up legs.

"You're not there anymore. You got out."

"I got out. I.... There were moments where I thought I might not...? But I had to try. I couldn't trust anyone else to keep upgrading the security before anything happened to Gramps or my brother.... Managed to get my shit together enough to literally drag my ass out of that bloody house."

"How the hell did you escape?" he asked, sounding quite baffled at the notion.

I shrugged. "Bit into one of their wrists when I got the chance? Bought enough time alone while they fixed their friend. I climbed out the basement window by stacking furniture.... Sparks... she found me dragging myself across the street before the kidnappers found out I escaped.... Brought me back to the parents."

'A full bloody circle....'

I could never escape being Valeriy Ayers....

"...Wh-what happened... after?" He sounded so hesitant to speak the words.

"...Made a deal? Sign stuff in their stead. Do business stuff. Do whatever they wanted of me. Be their ideal daughter.... I need their protection."

And when nothing else was asked, I stopped picking at the frayed threads on my shirt and stare at the trees zipping by. My forehead rested against the cool glass. It helped with the pounding headache.

Didn't know how I felt about sharing this. The fear and relief overwhelming each other. The fear of the consequences. The relief in getting it out of me.

With an irritated huff, I shifted up the seat enough to pull out a blanket or two. Wrapping myself tightly in their still warm embrace, I tried to find comfort in softness. Something to distract me from the annoyance bubbling from within my chest. Annoyance that I always felt whenever these memories drifted to mind.

How they got their claws into Amber by faking her death.

How Eve and I... how we no longer....

How everything changed.

If only we didn't –

"You know what the dumbest part of all this was? That fucking company, Cybertek or some shit, the one we were getting in bed with. They were shady as fuck!" I snapped, catching my tone when Bucky gave the wheel another crack. "They had some shady ass fucker running things as some shadow head.... Everything had started normal... like any other company we were buying.... But then things didn't quite add up in their books.... It got fun. Felt like some detective mystery game... and I dragged Amber in. Needed help with the medical mumbo jumbo....

"All was fine until... until I went over the parents' heads when I spotted this little weird amputated octopus pin thing on this guy's jacket. It was similar to something I saw in Gramps old notebooks, so I asked him about it when I hit a dead end in research. He took one look and vetoed the whole deal. Told me to never look into this again. Then everything went to shi – Hey, Bucky? What's wrong?"

"The pin," Bucky barely got through his clenched teeth.

Suddenly, the car veered off onto the shoulder and stopped with an almost violent jerk. None of it good for my fractured bones.

"...Y-yeah?" I tried to choke out throw the pain as casually as I could. "What about it?"

He breathed onto the window next to him. A shaking hand guided a finger across the condensation on the glass, drawing a circle. After a moment, he leaned away. Completely stiff.

"Did it...? Did it look... like this?"

It was rough, but the general shape of a fucked up six tentacled skull octopus was there.

"Yup –"

'Shit. This has to be bad.'

Bucky shook like a leaf in the wind. Fists held so tight that pops sounded from his hands. One due to knuckles and the other due to electrical sparks.

"H-hydra...."

"Huh? Isn't Hydra's logo is an eight headed drag – ...Shit."

Pushing through the whirlwind of thoughts, I reached across Bucky and wiped the symbol off the glass. Best not have that seen by anyone who glances towards a stopped car on the highway.

"They're in your corporation," he whispered.

"Pretty sure they're not...?"

"You don't underst – They have to be. If they want to get in, they already are."

"Yeah, I don't understand. But Eve and Gramps do. Or at least Gramps does. He'd never let us get in bed with them."

"Neither did SHIELD," he snapped. "St-Ste... his girl...."

"Auntie Peggy?"

His head dipped in a nod. "SHIELD, they were overrun with Hydra. She'd never let it happen. But it did.... They infiltrated SHIELD."

"She retired...? And anyone in a contract with us ends up willingly handing over their personal lives to Eve on their own anyway. They don't have much in terms of privacy from her. If Hydra's the group I now think they are... so long as they come to us, Eve has free reign on them.... That group and anyone who tries to run off with dangerous stuff end up dead... eventually."

"She... she's killed people?" His hand waving to the ether.

"Yeah.... Not a lot of people know about that but... yeah.... It's safer to kill a person trying to run off with some highly aggressive pathogen before they even leave the room, than risk anything getting out? We lost an entire sector of people before I had this implemented.... Everything gets swept under the rug, and we trade things until nobody says anything about it.... Usually money? Sometimes medical treatments and other stuff."

"...."

"You don't have to worry about it.... So long as you don't try to take one of the deadly pathogens or other dangerous shit we have?"

Bucky heaved a sigh at the words, his head bouncing off the headrest from how hard he threw his body back. "...Have you seen the pin anywhere else?"

Searching my memory, I carefully nodded. "A... few... times...?"

"Involved with Ayers?"

"Usually see them at the gatherings for important people? Balls, galas, summits.... Courthouse twice...? And once at the London Headquarters...."

"They're inside."

"I guess part of the London guy might still be there? He kind of... blew up in a 'gas leak?' I have no clue what a Politician was doing in a lab scheduled to be cleaned for a new project. A tad difficult to accidentally end up in a restricted area from a tour. But now I'm thinking Eve might have had something to do –?"

Suddenly, Bucky's spine went rigid, going completely straight. His eyes widened like he saw a ghost.

I couldn't see anything. There was nothing in our surroundings. No people walking. No ghosts floating. Only cars passing by with nosy eyes.

"Your grandfather knew Hydra's still alive..." he whispered. "He knew for eight years and told no one!?!"

Instinctively, I leaned against the door, facing him with my hand on the handle. The anger rolling off of him made me want to claw out of my own skin. Took far more out of me to hold my ground under that heated gaze than to find something to say in response that didn't involve throwing more fuel into the fire.

"Who could he have told, Bucky? They're everywhere."

My mind was piecing together bits and pieces weaving a picture I didn't want to see. One where Gramps knew of Hydra's survival decades before. They had to be the ones behind the death of his thirteen year old daughter, Father's twin.... Gramps kept looking at her photo when he saw the pin. I didn't understand it back then....

Forty years....

She died forty years ago....

That had to be why he avoided them and neutered Eve into only cleaning our house of Hydra. They killed his parents. They killed his daughter to which his wife followed after, and his son blamed him for all of it.

He didn't want to lose anymore by provoking them.

Bucky released a shaky breath. His body curling in on itself. "Eight years.... He knew for eight years."

Words so different from what his voice so desperately wanted to scream.

If Gramps told anybody and something was done, there was a chance that Bucky could have been found and freed years earlier....

And it wasn't only on Gramp's shoulders.

I had enough information to have started something. If I only I kept digging. If only I wasn't a coward. If only I told somebody else.

But then... I didn't know of him eight years ago. Not personally. He was the man who saved Gramp's life. One of the heroes in our childhood stories. Almost a fairy tale. He wasn't supposed to be alive.

"I'm sorry, Bucky," I managed to mumble through the guilt drowning me.

He merely grunted, throwing the car into drive and pulling off of the shoulder.

'...I should not let him drive angry....'

I dropped my curled up legs to sit on the seat properly. Last thing I need was spinal problems from having my legs crushed to my chest if the airbags went off. Amber couldn't fix that. Not yet.

'We are so going way too fast....'

Anger blinded people. Didn't matter if they were enhanced in a way that reflexes weren't average. Bound to miss something in the rage.

I pulled at the seatbelt, even if it was useless. It wasn't the thing making it difficult to breathe. The simmering emotions pouring out of Bucky were suffocating. Yet all of it so controlled.

Threw me off how hard it suddenly was to read him. He had been horrid at schooling his thoughts from showing on his face. His body language gave away just as much. Usually took less than a second to know where his head and emotions were at.

And now he wasn't even chewing a hole through his lip anymore. This wasn't the blankness of whenever I forced an order on him, either. He looked completely normal except for the fact that alarm bells were screaming in my head to run for the hills.

I wasn't sure which I would've preferred. The boiling emotions behind the control or an outright enraged enhanced.

"I don't know what happened, but you're moving too fast. There's no one of worry around you. I suggest sticking around the speed limit. Most go above by ten. The goal is to blend in, not get a speeding ticket."

With a deep breath, Bucky eased into a slower speed and stopped weaving between cars. Controlled and still pissed as all hell.

The only reason I hadn't tipped myself out the door and roll away was the fact that it was Bucky. He doesn't want to hurt people and there wasn't somebody to save. This suffocating atmosphere would be a better deterrent to misbehave than when I was being stomped on for trying to escape.

'He... needs space from me. Us. Yup. Space.'

On my phone, I pulled up a map of the town ahead of us, Marathon, Ontario, searching for a secluded spot by where Eve wanted us to stop for the night. Somewhere that didn't have prying eyes and enough cover from satellite imaging for Bucky to run about. And there's one on the way. That we were fast approaching.

I tapped the spot a few times, hoping that Eve got what I was trying to communicate before it showed up on the car's G.P.S. A glance at the screen and the navigation route turned off to a small road.

I'll let you know of approaching cars. Eve texted.

"...There's nothing here," Bucky stated, practically crawling to a stop at the end of the navigation line and taking a moment to search the surrounding trees. "Do I keep going down this road?"

"Nope. Just stop here."

With an almost wary air about him, he parked the car, after shuffling it to the side of the empty road. He would not stop scanning our surroundings, probably waiting for one of Eve's Puppets to pop up from thin air.

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Author's Note:

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