The Immortality War || The Avengers

Chapter Nineteen: Daylight

"Are you sure this is where we're supposed to meet the resistance?" I mumble, glancing over at Alexander Pierce from the corner of my eye.

He nods, reassuring me with, "Absolutely. They get people from the East to the West. The Polish resistance has a branch all the way in Germany. Using the underground tunnels, they can get you, and everyone you have in the back, over the Wall."

I nod, turning my gaze forward and out the window of the vehicle as we wait in silence. We've spent the past few hours trying to get in contact with Pierce's people in the resistance. After a prolonged wait, they finally reached back out via old radio transmissions. They told us to meet them at the Powązki Cemetery a few miles away. They said they would explain our route when we arrived.

While we were waiting for them to contact us, the POWs in the crates started to stir awake. Pierce and I pulled them out, one by one, and I explained in each of their languages that we were there to help, that they were safe, and that we were on our way to a safer place. Though some were pretty hysterical, most calmed down and agreed to remain in the back of the truck until we told them it was safe to come out. Most of them were children, under sixteen. Two were seventeen. They took initiative and comforted the younger children. We tore up the wooden crates and tossed then into the river, happily watching it float downstream.

One of the children pulled me aside and told me she remembered what I did seven years ago. She was small, the seventeen year old, but she told me that her best friend survived because of what I did. This girl was instrumental to making the others believe my words. 

So now we sit in the darkness, headlights turned off, waiting for someone to meet us. Lieutenant Pierce seems to be just as on edge as I am. I grip my bowstaff firmly in hand. Pierce keeps the glock I gave him close to his side. A light flashes from the corner of my eye, and I turn sharply and spot a woman with a lantern walking towards the truck.

"That's her," Pierce states, smiling.

"How do you know?"

"I've met with her before. Name's Antonina. Stay here." He opens the door of the truck, hopping out to greet the middle-aged Polish woman. They exchange words, and Pierce returns moments later with news. "All right. We need to ditch the truck. By now, the Soviet's are swarming the city looking for it. We're going to head on foot for fifteen miles, underground. Antonina has arranged for a guide to take us through the catacombs under the cemetery. When we get to the end, we'll come up out of Warsaw by a few miles. We'll be out of the blockages the Soviet's have put up around the city exits.

"Once outside the city, we'll be in a place called Brwinów. Then we'll get new clothes and a new vehicle to take us to Poznań. There, we'll change vehicles again to avoid being found."

I inhale sharply at the name of the second city. "Poznań. Are you sure she said Poznań?"

Pierce nods, a confused expression covering his face. "Yes, why? You know it?"

I nod slowly, thoughts moving back a quarter of a century to 1944. "Yes, indeed. I fought there during the War. It was the location of one of the HYDRA bases we took down."

It was also the place where I finally told Bucky that I was immortal and that our future together, the one we had planned, was never going to happen. "I haven't aged since the accident in '43," I recall telling my husband, shivering and shaking both from cold and fear. "My body hasn't changed, and it might never again. This also means that...that I probably won't be able to have children. I won't be able to conceive. The accident pretty much made me sterile."

I remember Bucky's warm, tight embrace, the one that helped me put myself together again. "Emma Jane, don't you know by now that you are the only family I will ever need?" He pulled back, cradling my cheeks in his hands, giving me the kindest look I've ever seen from him. "I love you. I married you. Anything else is irrelevant."