Lithium wasn’t sure if it was a shift in the air, the wind, or her own instincts that pulled her out of her thoughts and her grief. Somehow, the barely noticeable, albeit threatening, shift, yanked her out of the shades of gray that were occupying her vision, forcing splotches of color back into her world. 

         Because when Lithium looked up, her gaze following down the line of the road, she saw two figures on the horizon. Their appearance caused Lithium to halt in her tracks. The twins had always had a certain presence about them.

        That much hadn’t changed.

        For a second, Lithium caught the gaze of the Scarlet Witch.

        Lithium turned and ran, immediately grateful for the training she’d received. Maybe they hadn’t made her a supersoldier like they’d promised they would. Lithium would never be on Steve’s level. But she was above the levels of any standard human, and she was more than prepared to run back into town until she found her allies. Whatever happened, she and her teammates were leaving, even if she had to drag them out of this town, kicking and screaming.

        They were all trained. They had been bonding. But they had not practiced strategy for this occasion. They had not trained enough as a team. They hadn’t coordinated these things. Lithium, Lithium still had so much to learn. And she would be damned if her inexperience was the reason they lost their freedom and their lives.

        Her foot caught on a crack and Lithium stumbled, but she was quick to regain her balance. She kept sprinting. What if they were all still out on their morning runs? How in bloody hell would she find them if they were scattered across town? The twins would have an edge over her if that were the case. Biting her lip, Lithium tried to force herself to think optimistically, but it was hard when she was gulping for air, unsure of how close the twins were. Had they recognized her? Who would they go after first?

        Lithium yelped as her left foot hit the curb, ricocheting, and the right caught on the pavement. She couldn’t regain herself this time. No, Lithium went crashing, hitting the ground hard. The metal shifted instinctively under her skin, the familiar ache pulsing through her. It helped with the actual damage, but the spots where she’d hit the ground were raw and colored pink from the top layers of dead skin that existed above the metal. The shimmering silver was more obvious underneath the pink colored flesh.

        Quickly, already starting to ache, Lithium forced herself off the ground and began running again, the motion taking more effort than it had before. It hurt. It was hard. Her only motivation to keep going was to think about her comrades, her teammates. They were clueless. Lithium refused to leave them unprepared in an ambush. She would expend all her energy, force herself to run across the country if absolutely necessary.

        They were her team.

        They had saved her from Hydra and the abuses that had occurred there.

        Iris would've push on. And so would Celeste.

        Rounding a corner, not two blocks from the hotel, Lithium ran straight into a form larger than her own, knocking the both of them to the ground with the momentum she carried. Groaning, Lithium held her head a moment before realizing exactly who she’d tackled to the bricks below.

        “Bucky!” She exclaimed. “Good God, Bucky! I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to see you!” In this moment, it was tempting to kiss him. Lithium knew she was attracted to him, but her desire to kiss him was more of the familiarity and safety of his presence than the fact that she thought he was a handsome man.

        Despite the fact that his head had bounced off the pavement, Bucky managed a weak half smile at Lithium. Had her heart not been pounding with the thought of impending doom, it would’ve made Lithium’s heart flutter to see that small bit happiness exude from such a normally dour man. “Why would that be, Lith . . . ?”

        She hated to rob him of that expression, so she savored it a split second more before blurting out, “The twins are in town! We have to go!”

        In that instance, Bucky was all business. Gripping Lithium’s arms, he stood up, pulling her up with him. “Where did you see them?” He asked, utterly serious as his eyes searched hers. Military training. Assess the threat and create a solution.

        “On the perimeter of town,” Lithium answered, still struggling to steady her breathing, but managing to force out the words as necessary. “But that was at least three or four minutes ago. I don’t know where they are now. We have to get out! We aren’t prepared to fight them yet!”

        “We’ll hold our own,” Bucky told her firmly. “We’re soldiers.”

        “No!” Lithium shouted, anger overtaking her for the first time in years. It was the first time Bucky had seen it in her at all. “We have to go! We can’t fight them! Not yet! If we stay we’ll be slaughtered and this town could take who knows how much damage! We’re not ready! I'm not ready, Bucky! We can’t stay! It’ll be a disaster! I’m not losing anyone today, damn it! Don’t you fucking fight me on this, okay? I’m putting my foot down! We have to leave! I trained with them more than you did and we are not staying!”

        Bucky paused. The transformation that had overtaken Lithium was actually frightening. As much as she’d wanted to be confident and firm and commanding, tears had still welled up in her eyes at the thought of losing any of her comrades. They weren’t just her teammates anymore. They were like family. She couldn’t give up on them. She couldn’t lose them. Not now.

        Lithium’s teeth were ground together as she looked at Bucky, and he nodded to her slowly. “All right, Lith,” he relented. “We’ll go.” Pulling her into a tight embrace, Bucky kissed once into her hair, the warm metal of his artificial arm somehow comforting in the dire situation that was closing in on them. “We’ll go,” he repeated. “We’ll get the team and take for cover until we’re better prepared.”

        Lithium nodded and relaxed against him for that split moment before they pulled apart and they went into the building. Inside, they found Natasha and Clint in their apartment, watching some old movie in black and white. They’d apparently decided to take the day off, and while they were packing their sparse belongings that were absolutely necessary, Natasha muttered something about “Can’t ever get a vacation around here.”

        “Where’s Steve?” Lithium demanded as she opened the door to the weight room. Sam was the only one inside, and the captain’s absence sent Lithium’s mind into a frenzy. Hydra would love to get their hands on Steve, wouldn’t they?

        “Whoa, girl!” Sam put his hands up from where he sat on the weight bench. “I’m sure you can kiss him later, I think he’s still out running. Do you really want him when he’s sweaty, anyway?”

        “There’s two Hydra operatives on our tail, Sam! This isn’t a joke!”

        “Shit,” Falcon muttered. “You should’ve just said so, Lith.”

        “Get whatever you absolutely need and let’s go. Take whatever the Cap needs, too. I don’t know if we’ll be able to come back.” The thought of leaving and not being able to return stabbed at Lithium’s heart a bit, but it was the reality they lived in, and one they now had to embrace. They couldn’t expect to continue to live here safely with the twins were here, hunting for them. The pair certainly wasn’t here to sell cookies.

        Within minutes, everything that was necessary, which wasn’t much, was packed into a few small bags. Small enough to be carry-ons. That was a bonus, because once they got to an airport, they wouldn’t have the time to deal with anything else. Lithium took with her two of the Hydra-standard outfits, two sets of her workout clothes, and a few other small things. It all fit into her backpack. The same one she’d taken with when she’d faked her death.

        But they’d seen her. The twins knew.

        “Let’s find Steve,” Lithium spoke, keeping her eyes averted from the rest of the group.

        “I left him a voicemail telling him to meet up on the North side of town,” Natasha said plainly. “We’ll leave from there and make for the airport. Assuming her remembers how to operate the phone we got him a few months ago before he started this whole thing, we should be good to go. He isn’t one to ignore orders in a serious situation. He’s a good little military man that way.”

        Lithium nodded slowly. “All right . . .”

        “We should have time, Kid, quit worrying. Odds are we’ll find him on our way out of town, anyway. That’s usually the neighborhood he runs in, isn’t it?”

        The brunette woman attempted to recall the cardinal directions and what routes she normally took with Steve in the morning. North sounded right . . . “We have to look for him. I don’t even trust that he took the phone with him. I don’t know that he ever has,” Lithium insisted, her worry for Steve growing. He was a trained soldier, super soldier, at that, but the twins were something else entirely, and she didn’t want him to face them alone.

        “If you say so,” Natasha answered with a shrug.

        Lithium nodded. “Someone will take the bags to the car and keep it running. The rest of us will fan out and look for him.”

        “And who gets the boring bit?” Natasha asked skeptically, crossing her arms.

        “Sam,” Lithium answered, nearly wincing at choosing him. “I trust him to be focused and alert for it.”

        “On it,” Sam confirmed. Their things were passed off to Sam and the others took off. Lithium lingered a moment longer watching Sam.

        “Thank you so much for this. I trust you entirely. I would’ve chosen Bucky, but I . . . It’s a long story. After this morning, I just . . . I can’t . . .” Lithium stumbled over the words, struggling to find a way to explain it.

        “It’s fine, Lith. Just go find Cap before those freaks do.”

        Lithium nodded and took off. Rather than take the streets, she went to the roof, using her months of training, both from running and lifting, to jump rooftop to rooftop. From what she could tell, the others had done the same and were now fanning out around the town. Lithium’s heart was pounding in her chest. Where would the twins have gotten to by now? Where was Steve at? She had a good vantage point from here, yes, but she couldn’t see any of the three figures she wished to pinpoint, and it was driving her mad.

        Desperation hit, and damning the consequences, Lithium shouted out, “Cap!” The word echoed a bit, but no answer came to her. That silence was torturous, and Lithium forced herself to sprint across the rooftops, both even and slanted as she made her way through town, scanning the ground constantly. Where could he have gone? Where could they have gone? Lithium damned the universe as she sprinted and leapt, threatening the inanimate matter of the galaxy to return Steve to them safely lest it suffer her wrath.

        It was difficult not to call out for Steve again. It was difficult to focus on where she was jumping and landing. Where was he? Where could he have gone? Lithium nearly fell off the flat rooftop landing of a bar when she noticed it.

        When she noticed them.

        Three of them.

        Steve was on the ground. The twins were standing over him.

        Lithium’s heart caught in her throat and she halted from screaming out for him. Having come to a skidding stop, Lithium picked herself back up, heart pounding from far more than physical exertion. Steve.

        Steve.

        Steve. Her teammate was in danger.

        Swallowing down the impulses to yell at the twins, to yell for Steve, Lithium leapt from the rooftop aiming her body straight for the Scarlet Witch as she fell. And as she fell, Lithium’s skin shifted from near-harmless to a cast-iron weight, crashing into telekinetic woman, the stone beneath them cracking at the impact of their combined weight. Scarlet Witch was unconscious within the second and QuickSilver was immediate to take up the fight with the new intruder.

        Lithium stayed in her shimmering metal shell, refusing to change back. This was her only defense against the swift and agile attacks of Silver.

        Unfortunately, the male twin was quick to find a way around her defenses. While his strikes did nothing but harm himself, he could easily throw her against other things.

        So he did. Picking up Lithium he tossed her, carrying his own momentum into the throw as he chucked her into the brick walls of the industrial-grade buildings. Her skin flickered at the impact. That first throw was his clue. And as soon as Lithium fell back to the ground, she was being thrown back against stone. Each impact jarred her, wearing down on her will to stay in this state. While the metal in her skin protected her from the outside, her organs were still being shaken.

        The metal in her skin did not protect her brain from being whipped around in her skull every time she was thrown and every time she crashed. Still curled up in a ball, Lithium prepared for being thrown again. She couldn’t fight against his speed. But Steve. Steve was okay. The others would be here before any serious damage was done to Steve.

        That was Lithium’s last, comforting thought before she crashed into a brick wall for the tenth time, the hardened clay cracking from the impact.

        Lithium lost consciousness at the jolting hit. She swore she could hear her name being called, but she didn’t know by who. All she knew was that the metal shifted again inside her skin, back to its naturally passive state.

        Lithium was grateful she lost the world to blackness before she hit the ground without the protection of her metal to ease the pain.