Frondeur

Prologue

The girl sat on her windowsill, staring out at the silent city beneath her. Or...maybe 'girl' isn't the right word.

An eighteen-year-old, with blood red locks messily chopped to resemble a decent haircut that someone with actual money could get at the salon two stories below. Her clothes, stolen from donation bins, harbored holes from her rough style of travel, and her shoulders bruised under the constant weight of her backpack, which she never dared to take off. If someone stole it, they'd be in for a nasty surprise.

Her Autumn Soldier suit was packed neatly over her large assortment of weapons, and, disguising the suit, a few discarded pairs of clothing she'd found around the blocks she'd stayed at in the past month.

Of course, she was armed to the teeth herself. An array of knives hidden in the waistband of her jeans, a small pistol in her bra, the usual. You couldn't be too careful in the backstreets she stayed in. Honestly, you couldn't be too careful anywhere, or, at least, that was her logic.

Nameless, she wondered over the idea of life. A leather-bound notebook slapped against her palm in thought, and a pen was clenched between her fingers. Her life before she woke up, nameless, lifeless and abandoned, was all a blur. A black-and-white blur, with only one face that she remembered hazily. Strong jaw, messy blond hair. A gentleman, and she felt a connection. A strange, familial connection. But she was certain that he was nobody. Why else would all of her memories of him be fogged?

Another face. More important, she assumed, because she could clearly remember the olive skin, the curly, oily hair. Two people; a mother and a son. Carlos, that was the little one's name. But the woman? She...couldn't remember. But she clearly remembered the feeling of home. Happiness. The same feelings she associated with the blond, but...different. More fluttery.

More faces. A blond with glasses and a dorky face. A blonde with a small, gentle face- a murderer?  Two chocolate-skinned lovers- one tall, with longer hair, and other shorter, with curly hair. A red headed woman- the girl remembered seeing her on the news recently- and...a mysterious man, with dark, shoulder-length hair.

Winter Soldier, her mind automatically registered. As if it was taught to. Your partner. Trainer. Associate.

But...he seemed to have a different name in her mind. She just couldn't remember it.

Clearing her head with a shake, she stood. No use mulling over the past, even though that's where she was stuck. No, keep moving forward. Keep running. The past can't catch up if you keep running. Or, at least, that's what she told herself.

As she stood, she winced. The recent bullet wounds she received while skittering around a flying city- yes, a flying city- throbbed in protest. She winced, flashbacks assaulting her mind.

...
Flying city. Sokovia. The first place she felt at home in for a while. The community accepted her, the old woman at the soup shop gave her a home. Мати Ілва never asked why she never spoke, or why she flinched at every move.

But then everything came down in smoke. Literally.

Мати Ілва was crushed under the rubble of the house they lived in. The girl ran, like the coward she was, as she always did.  She ran, but the past caught up.

There were so many...metal humans. Robots. They kept trying to kill her. She didn't understand. What did they want?

So she destroyed them. Just like the...the people...the Avengers did. They killed them, too. But they also destroyed her city.

There was a boy. Her age, probably older. She saw him, running so fast, he was a blur. He was helping them, along with his sister. His sister saw her when she was sneaking past an old church. The girl lifted her up in a burst of red, but then dropped her, looking shocked. Of course, she ran away, away from the glowing girl. And towards the glowing boy.

Glowing, moving at a speed only she could see. And another thing she could see were the bullets he was about to take for the man and the child.

She couldn't let that happen. He had a sister. She had nothing. So, she shoved him away, and took them herself.

She couldn't remember what happened next. She remembered pain, blinding pain, an explosion, and so, so much blood. And then...she was on the run, again.

...
The girl sighed, and hopped inside her apartment, flipping through the notebook. Faces, glimpses of the past, hurriedly- and sloppily- written memories filling page after page. A few pages- the first three ones, to be exact- stood out. Pages from the days she remembered nothing but her title and the smoldering rubble of her prison.

The pages held nothing except her name, written over and over in chunky, ugly script. She'd hardly known how to write then; she had to learn it all over again. Thankfully, a squatter in the apartment she broke into knew how to, and she picked it up quickly, muscle memory guiding her pen.

The girl ran her fingers over the blocky letters. Over and over...

'Subject 04'

...
Once again, I'm back, here's the third book! If you've been waiting a long while for it...well, why on earth would you do that? There's plenty of other books out there! But, thank you, so much.

And if you just finished the second book and you're confused about the above part...well...I just hope you're enjoying the series. Let me know who you ship Levi with in the comments!