Infatuation | Bucky Barnes

Chapter Seven

"Do you understand the importance of today?" Karpov asked her as guards began to climb into the humvee.

"I do." She murmured.

"Good. Now get in the back." He told her.

The ride to the Black Widow training facility was quiet. The rides always were. No one spoke to each other. No one barely looked at one another. Occasionally a voice would come over the radio but that was it. The training facility was similar to the Hydra base except bigger and there were a lot more girls. Catherine always wondered what it would have been like to grow up with girls her age instead of middle aged men.

Out of the side view mirror she could see the leader of the program making his way over to their convoy. She always found Dreykov to look sleazy. A grown man training young girls had to be sleazy. She climbed out of the car just as Karpov and him embraced one another.

"I see you've brought me a present." Dreykov joked as his eyes landed on Catherine. "She's turning into quite the young woman."

Her body tensed. He was talking about her as if she was an object, not a human. Her head turned ever so slightly to look at James, but she couldn't see his eyes unfortunately. He was there for her though. She knew it in her heart.

"A present?" Karpov chuckled. "No, I've brought you an example of what your Widows could be under Hydra."

A spine chilling smile spread across Dreykov's face. "Come Екатерина (Yekaterina-Catherine). Let's show my girls how someone really fights."

She felt his hand touch her shoulder and she wanted to grab it and break it, but she couldn't. She had to remain the composed assassin she had been raised to be. Her test today would be relatively simple. She would have to translate several paragraphs that were written in different languages to English. Next would be computer hacking where she would have to hack a government agency of their choosing.

Her least favorite part would be the flight simulator. She had to admit, she wasn't the best pilot. After that would she would head to the gun range and shoot a number of weapons to test her accuracy. Last would be hand to hand combat. The combat would usually be the most grueling. They would usually have to fight multiple people, not just one person.

Everywhere she went James followed. He wouldn't speak to her. He would just linger in the back and watch her carefully. She flew through the translating, computer hacking and the flight simulator with ease. She had a slight hiccup in the simulator but she was able to recover. In the gun range laid a table filled with six guns. All different types. All different sizes. They came from different countries, manufacturers, etc.

She picked the handgun up and inserted the clip before starting to fire. She went down the line of guns laying out, but stopped at the M249E2 SAW rifle. It was an American produced gun, but that wasn't what drew her attention to it. It was the manufacturing label. She ran her fingers over the white letters that read Stark Industries. Stark. It sounded familiar. Maybe she had seen it before in her weapons training.

James noted her hesitation as she examined one gun. She never hesitated when it came to weapons. He took a step forward wanting to see what sparked her attention. Then he saw the white letters. Memories flashed through his eyes of a younger version of himself talking to her father inside a lab while-oh what was his name? It started an 'S.' He shook his head. He shouldn't be focusing on memories. He should be focusing on Catherine.