|Second in the Timeline Series|
For everyone else it's been seventy years since Sergeant James Barnes of the 107th was killed in action, for Clara it's been 2 seconds. Somehow she manages to pick up the pieces of her broken heart, stick them all tog...
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"It's him." Steve mutter, finally breaking the silence the four of them had been in since they'd been taken capture. They'd been hauled into the back of a S.H.I.E.L.D detainment van. It was agent Rumlow who had rounded them up. Clara remembered him. Phil had recruited him. Fury thought he should have been put in a penitentiary but Phil made a different call. Maybe not everyone can be saved. Not Rumlow...not Bucky.
"Whoever that was, he's not the same man as the one you left behind." Sam said wisely. The knowledge in his tone was strangely comforting, Clara thought, but Steve had different ideas.
"It's still him." Steve murmed almost incoherently.
"It can't be him." Clara said, staring at her clasped hands in her lap. She wasn't sure if Steve had heard her. She wasn't sure if she wanted him to, he'd just argue with her for giving up. But what choice did they have?
"Zola's experiments must have meant he survived the fall." Steve continued, his eyes defocusing on the grimy floor of the van, "They must have found him..."
"There's nothing you could have done." Nat reassured, leaning back to rest her head on the wall of the van. There's nothing Steve could have done. Clara, on the other hand, had a time machine. She had all the time in the world.
Nat's hand flew to her shoulder as blood began to ooze out. The hasty stitches Clara had put it and snapped and the wound was reopening. Blood was now pouring out, the viscous vermillion trickling down her arm.
"Hey!" Sam shouted at the two S.H.I.E.L.D guards, donned in tactical gear from head to toe. "If we don't get a medic back here, she's going to bleed out."
The S.H.I.E.L.D agent closest to him pulled out a taser as a warning and Sam backed off, throwing both his hands up and raising his eyebrows in mock surrender. The agent lowered the taser and promptly stuck it to the other agent's side. He, or she, those helmets make it impossible to tell, writhed on the floor uncontrollably. Once they had stopped twitching, none other than Maria Hill pulled off the helmet to reveal herself.
"That thing was squeezing my brain."
Hill had helped them escape and packed them all into a car. They had arrived at a secret S.H.I.E.L.D base, a hospital, and she had marched them through a series of winding underground tunnels until they came to a hidden operating room. It looked hauntingly similar to the operating rooms the nurses had had to move to the basements during the air raids. It had the same tense and somber atmosphere, like someone had died or was just about to.
Hill lead them inside a viewing room and pushed aside a white curtain to reveal a window into a hospital room. The patient on the bed was wired up to at least a dozen bleeping machines. He looked exhausted after having fought for his life. Nick Fury was certainly a fighter. It seemed to Clara that years had passed since she had seen Fury's car get attacked by the Winter Soldier and his team. For her, it had been years, and for Fury it probably felt like an eternity, but in reality only a few days had passed. Nat staggered at the bloodloss she had faced and was swifty ushered into a medical bay after having seen that Fury was alive and on the mend. Hill lead Steve through to Fury's room and Sam followed him awkwardly. Clara followed behind them, in no rush. The shock of what had happened had now sunk in and she was ready for a lie down. There was no ignoring the facts, the hypotheses, the files and the photos. It was him. The Winter Soldier is her Bucky. And she had no idea how she would ever get him back. It was almost easier to believe he had died.
A smartly dressed figure in the corridor caught Clara's attention. She sauntered over to him instead of following the others into Fury's room.
"Clara." He said formally, arms crossed in his suit jacket.
"Phil. I was wondering when you'd turn up again." Clara teased affectionately but the humour in her voice had all but vanished. "What's new?"
"I need to talk to you, urgently."
"Is that why you came?" Clara asked, having no idea what Phil was trying to get at.
"When you're next free. I understand that what you're going through is...difficult, but just know I'm here for you...even though I'm technically dead."
"Thanks Phil..." She said, confused. If he was trying to make her feel better it hadn't worked. Yet, in a way, his hopeless attempt had made her smile a little. "I'll report back when this is all over." Clara propositioned and Phil nodded professionally in agreement. He turned as if to leave then hesitated.
"Do me a favour and don't tell the other's I'm alive. They've got enough to worry about without me."
Clara nodded and watched Phil walk away before returning to find Steve and Sam crouched around Fury's bedside to hear his confession.
S.H.I.E.L.D had fallen along time ago but was held up by the HYDRA parasites that had infiltrated from within. S.H.I.E.L.D and HYDRA had become indistinguishable; both needed to be eradicated and above all, Project Insight needed to be stopped. HYDRA would use Zola's algorithm to identify all HYDRA threats before they became a threat and kill them millions at a time. The plan: recode the helicarriers to take each other out, disable HYDRA and subsequently the Winter Soldier. If only it were that simple...
Hey everyone!
Maria Hill is an underated character- fact! Love her so much!
