BRAINWASHED ─ marvel

The Rest of the Story

Hi guys, long time no see. It's been such a long time since I updated this rewrite, and for that I sincerely apologize. The truth is, writing fanfiction doesn't fulfill me the way it used to. I've started writing an original story and I'm in the process of trying to get it published. That's where my priorities are. That's not to say that I'll never write fanfiction again—never say never—but for now I am on an indefinite hiatus.

Below is a SparkNotes summary of what happens in the rest of the story so you guys can know how it ends and continue on to the other books in the series if you wish. They're all completed and you won't be left on a cliff hanger. All my books will stay up so you can enjoy them for years to come.

I just want to say that writing this book and this series meant the world to me. Soroya, Alex, Bucky and all my other characters will always have a special place in my heart. I hope they are in yours too. Thank you for supporting and loving my work.

Without further ado, here is how the rest of Brainwashed goes:

- There's a base in Zima that they go to the next morning and don't find her family, but they run into Vasily Karpov, who Bucky remembers. They fight and it ends with Bucky getting stabbed. They find a motel and Soroya tells the full story of their past together while she tends to his wounds. The story is that while Soroya was being trained by Bucky in Siberia, Julian Remington tried to help her escape from HYDRA.
But they got caught just before they made it to the exit and Bucky snapped Julian's neck right in front of her. The only person she could trust and felt safe around during HYDRA was killed by him.

- They find Emma Becker's base and discover that Soroya is was apart of PROJECT SHIFTER, which was HYDRA's secret project that aimed at turning people into shapeshifters (the human kind) but every test subject failed except Soroya, who can for some reason change into animals instead of other humans:
In the files it lists a couple of Emma Becker's assistants, and Agent Christianson was listed as being the man who picked her for the project and took her. So she pays him a visit in his last listed address which is a city over from Zima. There she gets info about Becker having moved to England once PROJECT SHIFTER was terminated. But instead of going there right away, Soroya and Bucky decide to hold off for a little while and visit a couple more bases to find stuff on Bucky.

- They go to the Moscow base and then to Siberia, where they encounter a group of HYDRA agents raiding the place and they're forced to hightail out of there. They hide out in a house several miles away that happens to be owned by a really nice family. They are able to get some rest, and Bucky tells her about his nickname because he got the memory back of how he got it. Steve gave it to him when they were kids. Soroya says she wants a nickname from her own middle name (which is Magdalena) and Bucky decides to call her Lena.

- After they rest a few days they get on a plane and go to Becker's house in England. Under a secret door under the basement staircase they find her secret hideout. It's clear Becker had continued the project despite it having been terminated, and there's signs that she had been experimenting on subjects in this house. The two find the location of Alex and proof her parents were the subjects that had been held captive there. There's also a note saying they were taken to America. Becker is nowhere to be seen, and considering that all her research is still here, they think she died.

- As a celebration for finding Alex's location, they get a nice hotel and she sings the song Moon River to Bucky after a few drinks. It was the song her mother sang to her every night as a kid, and during her training in HYDRA she would sing it to herself at night to comfort her. Julian sometimes did too.

- After a few days travel, they make it to the secret base where Alex is, and they discover he's a
shapeshifter too and can transform into animals. But unlike Soroya, he received no training. HYDRA used him as an executioner of sorts. HYDRA would bring him prisoners and force him to shift, so then the animal would torture whatever poor soul was locked in with him: Bucky dropped off a few prisoners to that base as the Winter Soldier, though he didn't remember that. Naturally Alex hates him. Soroya explains Bucky's whole backstory, but Alex is too traumatized and angry to really care.

- Bucky knows of a HYDRA facility in New York and assumes they'll find some info there about Alex and Soroya's parents, so the next day they hop onto a plane to go there: At the airport in NYC, Soroya goes to a shop and finds a book about Steve and learns about his family, particularly his siblings. While she's in there, the news is on TV and it discusses how all files from HYDRA have been leaked onto the internet by Black Widow.

- From the airport they go to a mall and search on a computer to discover Emma Becker was captured and held in a SHIELD/HYDRA jail for three years. But she tried to escape about a year before and was shot and killed. Her parents are in that same prison, in Pennsylvnia.

- That night Soroya starts teaching Alex how to control his shifting. Alex by nature is immature, sarcastic, and a real asshole, but being captured and tortured really made him prickly.

- They all drive to Pennsylvania together. During a stop, Alex and Bucky talk while Soroya is in the bathroom, and he does the whole "you love her but you're not good enough for her" talk, and Bucky cannot deny his feelings for her or that Alex is right and that he'll never be good enough.

- They make it to the prison her parents are being held at, and despite taking measures to be cautious, SHIELD/HYDRA agents swarm them and they become vastly outnumbered. While running up a stairwell, Bucky takes a bullet to save Soroya's mother, but the bullet goes through him and into her. She dies from this wound. Their dad is shot as well when they're only feet away from the exit, and he makes Bucky promise to protect his children before taking a grenade from Bucky and sacrificing himself to buy the three time to escape.

- Bucky is bleeding out from his wound, so Soroya and Alex steal from a hospital and fix him up. He's passed out for a few days, but when he wakes up, he finds out they're back in New York and hiding in an abandoned building. Alex thanks Bucky for nearly dying to save his mom and he finally sees that Bucky is not the Winter Soldier. As a thank you, Alex discovered with the help of Soroya that one of Bucky's siblings is still alive and lives in New York.

- Bucky goes and visits his sister, Olivia, and she shows him pictures and items that bring back a lot of memories of his family and Steve. Apparently Steve has come to visit Olivia several times since he came out of the ice. Bucky confesses to his sister that he feels he doesn't deserve a second chance at life and blames himself for his mistakes, but Olivia makes him promise her to find peace and happiness. And when Bucky goes back to Soroya and Alex, he thinks that being with them will bring him just that.

- In the epilogue that takes place two years later, Soroya, Bucky, and Alex are still on the run, but once Bucky discovers he's wanted for bombing the UN, he decides he needs to leave to protect Soroya and Alex. He writes a note to both of them, telling them not to come after him and to try and find happiness. He also confesses his love for Soroya. Fast forward a few days: Zemo is captured and T'Challa has offered to take Bucky to Wakanda. Bucky tells Steve and T'Challa about Soroya and Alex, and the latter extends the invitation to them as well. So Steve goes out and tracks down Soroya and Alex, and he takes them to Wakanda for some much needed safety and to await Bucky's return from cryosleep.