August felt like she was in a trance.
She looked up at Sharon.
"When I signal, get on the ground."
Sharon frowned at her, but the glint in her eyes told August that she understood.
"I'm sorry? I'm really just here for your eval."
August stood up, holding her breath in her chest. She turned to face the door, breathing in and out deeply. Crouching down, she came eye-level with the code panel.
"Ms. Haze, you're not supposed to be at the door." Sharon's voice was completely flat and monotone, as if she was reading off of a script.
Awkwardly, August pressed her nose into the 0 key, followed twice by the 1, and finally by the 3. She stood up quickly, taking a deep breath and holding it in her lungs.
The door slid open. The guard began to turn.
Like a dragon from a fantasy novel, August blew a stream of white-hot fire directly in his face. The force of it knocked him backwards, slamming him into the far wall and knocking him out cold.
She waddled towards him as quickly as she could on her metal stubs, falling to her knees. She used her teeth to pull the key from his belt and began undoing her metal handcuffs. She heard footsteps coming her way, and knew that guards were coming for her.
"Hey! Get back-"
August freed her hands. She drew them from the metal cuffs, sending a whirlwind of air towards the new guards. It swept them up, slamming them up into the ceiling.
Ocean water began to gush in from the hole that she created.
She flicked her wrist, creating a solid barrier of fire in the doorways between her hall and two exits. She got to work on her legs, working as quickly as she could to undo each lock while guards hollered at each other from either side. The alarms started blaring as the room began to fill with water.
She finished undoing her cuffs and rose to her feet, wading through the water. She held her hands out like she was holding a basketball, a ball of air forming between them.
August situated it on her head. She looked over to the interview room, where Sharon was peeking out. August winked at her.
Jumping into the water, she strained against the pressure of the pounding liquid. She pushed off on her feet, reversing the direction of the water as she was blasted upwards into the open ocean, pulling up the concrete to fix the roof as she did so.
For a moment, pure terror gripped her. She realized that she had maybe, just maybe, rushed into this without really thinking about it. If not for the lights of the raft, she would be surrounded in complete darkness with no way of knowing which direction was upwards.
Her oxygen bubble shrank as she took a panicked breath. Her dark eyes went wide with horror.
Move. Move. Move. Do it. Move. Now.
She flexed her hands. The water began to pull her upwards at an alarming speed, and she felt algae and tiny rocks ripping at her skin as she went. Eventually, the raft was no longer in sight- it was just her and this terrible, awful darkness.
The water began to lighten. Her air bubble was getting dangerously small, becoming a tiny sheen on her face.
C'mon, she thought, trying not to panic. Just a little further.
August took a deep breath, filling her lungs as full as she could.
The air bubble popped.
The water slammed into her face, flooding her nose and stinging at her eyes. She flexed her wrists as hard as she could, squeezing her eyes shut as she rocketed towards the surface. She stretched her hands out, parting the sea as she went to allow her to move faster.
Her lungs burned. She started seeing stars, her entire face scrunched in pain.
She finally broke the surface.
August gasped loudly. She pushed her soaking wet curls out of her face, peeling her eyes open. The sun warmed her skin for the first time in months.
"God," She whispered, tilting her head back to welcome the morning rays. "Thank you."
She took a moment to bask in it.
Below her, the water began to rumble. August paled, knowing that she did not have long before the Raft surfaced and swarms of helicopters were sent out to look for her.
She looked around. Nothing but open ocean.
"Okay," She started talking to herself. "Okay, Berlin. I'm in the Atlantic, which makes New York west so Baltic would be north-east...."
The water began to quake around her.
"Straight up through the Skagerrak pass. They took me up around two, so the sun rose over....over there. So that's east." She raised her eyebrows. "Cool. Hit it."
The water did not need to be told twice. There was something about the ocean water that felt more pure than what she worked with on land- more natural, more responsive. Like it almost liked being bossed around.
She was torn through the water like a fish on a hook, her wet curls slapping her in the face as they flew through the open sea. About an hour in, as she grew increasingly uncomfortable, August realized that holy shit, I can control the elements. There's a better way to do this.
She pulled her arms out of the water, forming a tiny boat for her to sit in. Concentrating, her hands quivered with exhaustion as she slowly turned the boat to ice. She nodded, and the water began zipping her along again.
By the time that August reached the land, the sun was sinking on the far horizon. She pulled herself onto the beach, taking a moment to lay in the dirty sand.
A shadow passed over her. She looked up.
A fat little boy in swim trunks, holding a dripping ice cream cone, was staring down at her with a confused look on his face. She stared back.
"Uh," August coughed. "Sie da. Wissen sie, wo wir sind?"
He took a long lick of his ice cream cone, a drip of it smacking August in the face. She scrunched her nose, disgusted.
"Lichtenhagen. Bist du vom Meer gekommen?" He asked.
August contemplated that. She pursed her lips.
"Nein."
She hopped up, striding straight past him and towards the end of the beach, ignoring the squelch of the water in her underwear. She tried not to think about the impending UTI.
They were somewhere in Lichtenhagen, the child had said. She kicked herself for not paying better attention in her geography studies.
August stumbled out into the beach parking lot, her hair hanging in knotted dreads around her face. She turned, spotting a car sitting in an isolated corner of the lot.
"That's why you always park in the middle of the lot. Dumb-ass Germans." She murmured, quickly walking over to the car. She slipped a sliver of air into the key-hole, unlocking the car.
She quickly slid in and repeated the technique to get the engine running. Turning the heat on full blast, she pulled the car out of the lot and onto the main road towards the highway.
The highway signs led her to her destination in under an hour, meaning that the sun had finally set by the time she pulled into Rostock. August had not visited Germany since the late 80's, and although it was her first time in Rostock, she noticed that many road signs had been removed under the assumption that everyone would be using GPS, being that it was 2016 and all. It took twenty minutes and many looks from confused Germans before August was able to finally get her hands on a paper map.
By the time that August pulled onto Bremen road, the sun had set completely, meaning her car lights were the only thing lighting her way to the abandoned compound. She stepped out into the open air, gently closing the door behind her.
When she heard the click of the gun, her hands snapped to attention.
"Turn around. Slowly."
She complied, coming face to face with the dark-skinned man currently holding a gun in her face.
"Hey man," She shook her head warily. "This really isn't going to turn out well for you."
"Who sent you?"
"Put down the gun and we can talk. If not, you're gonna find it pretty hard to breathe in a few seconds."
That was a bluff, but she prayed he would buy it. She was completely overexerted from her little trip over international waters. She was not even sure she could summon a light summer breeze right now.
"Sam, Sam!" Came a familiar voice. August peered over the mans shoulder, relaxing.
"Hey, Steve," She called tiredly. "You wanna get your pal here to stand down?"
The man- Sam, she presumed- looked between her and Steve.
"Friend of yours?" He asked as Steve came to a stop next to him, lowering his gun. Steve nodded, clamping a hand on Sam's shoulder. He looked to August.
"Yes, actually. She's a friend." He gave her a confused look. "What the hell are you doing here? How'd you get out of the Raft?"
"Your girl stopped by." She gave him a cheeky smile. "Said you might need some help."
"My girl- Sharon?" Steve's eyes practically bugged out of his head. "She broke you out of prison?"
"I broke me out of prison." August furrowed her brow. "Now, why don't you find me something that isn't prison slop to eat and then fill me in on this mess you've made."
The two of them began to walk off, leaving Sam to stare after them with bugged-out eyes.
"Prison?" He whispered, completely dumbfounded. After a moment of staring, he jogged after them. "I'm sorry, did she just say prison?!"
August looked over her shoulder as Sam caught up with them, the trio making their way inside.
"Yeah, I got twenty-five years at the Raft." Her voice was bummed, but so nonchalant that Sam could not help but just blink at her.
They entered a side room where a fire was burning. Steve stepped in, holding his hand out.
August stared.
The man across from her had lived in her nightmares even before she was put into a coma. She remembered him so clearly- the angry stare, the stormy eyes, the choppy hair.
She had found him in Belarus, the first time. He had nearly taken her life that day, one perfectly aimed bullet and he would have. Her eyes drifted to his metal arm- her chest throbbed just looking at it. She had taken many hits, but that had been the one to nearly kill her the first time. He had hit her so hard, he had collapsed her lung. She still had a scar over her heart to prove it. And then there had been Paris- the chase, the terrible fight. She had almost won over him then, but he slipped out at the last second. Their final meeting had been the night of the fire that stole her life. She remembered him there- his reflection in the window just before the explosion broke out. She knew that SHIELD had put her in the coma, but she always wondered if he had been the one to start that fire. Regardless, he was sitting in front of her now, mask off, completely vulnerable.
"Bucky, this is my friend August. She's here to help. August, meet Bucky."
Everything sounded like it was under water to August. Bucky stared at her, his stormy eyes brimming with emotion, his face almost...pained.
"Yeah," He whispered. "We already know each other."