Rustling the covers as she turned on her left side with a small huffing sound, Elysia closed her eyes tightly, willing her mind to shut off so she could try to manage at least a couple hours of sleep before everyone else was awake for the day. Instead, her brain continued to run thousands of miles each minute with the events of the night before, the image of the HYDRA soldier's gun pointed between her eyebrows flashing in her vision each time she closed her eyes. Coupled with the energy surge she'd received from the generator and the high alert she'd felt running into the compound to save her friends, and mixed in with the deal she'd made with the devil by agreeing to stay at the compound for the summer, she knew sleep wouldn't be coming anytime soon.
Whenever Elysia had envisioned what the summer would bring her, she'd seen it as the time to map out the days that lay ahead: finding an actual internship that would take her on while she worked on the last few credits of her graduate degree, rather than the one she'd made up in a quick text to her friends explaining why she was leaving town. Along with that might come bar hopping with a few friends after grueling weeks of work, and maybe finding a position in her dream career in the process. Whenever she'd thought about her plans, Tony breaking into her apartment and throwing that all out the window in the process had never once crossed her mind. On the contrary, part of her had begun to wonder if he even remembered she existed, every time the Avengers had made the opening story on the news and his picture flashed on her TV screen.
But now, there was a chance she might never be able to go back to the way things were before.
Sighing and sitting up in bed, Elysia pulled down the covers, swinging her legs over the end of the mattress as she rose to her feet. She quickly pulled on her shoes and grabbed a sweatshirt, pulling it over her head before tying her hair up into a ponytail and wandering out of the small apartment. Despite the lingering ache in her side and Dr. Cho's orders to take it easy, Elysia stepped into the elevator and pressed the button that would take her downstairs to the training floor, crossing her arms over her chest as she watched the descending numbers on the screen.
If she couldn't repress her abilities forever, she might as well put them to good use and figure out how to control them again.
Elysia stepped out into the empty training floor, the lights illuminating the room at her entrance. She wandered over to one of the practice dummies, the sparks igniting in her hands again, and tried to will herself to summon more than she'd sent at Steve that first day of training, or even the small shock she'd given Tony, but to her surprise, the electricity stayed within her fingertips, unwilling to cross the line of sending it all out at once.
"Come on," Elysia murmured, hands splayed out in front of her in the direction of the dummy, though a small spark simply fizzled out just before reaching the figure. "Come on, come on,"
Elysia continued her attempts, even throwing punches at the dummy in attempts to transfer the electric shock, her frustration growing more and more with each failed attempt. Back at the generator, the electricity had started to welcome her, as if they were one, but now she was out on her own without the faintest clue of how to use them, even as her own screams from that night years ago echoed in her head. She shut her eyes tightly, stepping away from the dummy with frustrated tears filling her eyes as she forced herself to take a deep breath, though it was as if an unconscious barrier had formed inside her, preventing the spark from truly coming forward.
Giving up, she left the dummy in the training center and entered the elevator once more. Although, rather than pressing the button that would take her back to the living quarters, she instead found herself pressing the one that would lead her back to the interrogation room, and before she knew it, she was back in the observation area made completely out of glass, the Winter Soldier staring back at her with a confused expression on his face as he studied her, watching her every move.
He lifted his human hand slowly after a moment, beckoning for her to come inside the interrogation room and join him. She hesitantly walked over to the door separating the two rooms, finally noticing the biometric lock on the sliding glass door, which left her to wonder if she even had access to get inside the room, after all.
"Alright, let's see how this goes." she murmured, raising a hand and pressing it against the cool glass of the scanner, hearing the slight metallic whirring as it read her handprint.
"Access granted," the automated voice read from the machine as the lock clicked out of place. "Welcome, Sparky."
"Dammit, Stark," she swore under her breath as the door slid open.
As she entered the room, it felt as if all of the air had been sucked out as she locked eyes with Barnes, looking much more alert than he had been when she'd been on the other side of the glass with Tony hours prior. His hair still fell over his face, but there was an unmistakable look of fear in his gaze as he watched her approach, mixed in with a hint of curiosity. Whatever she'd been expecting from the super soldier known as the Winter Soldier, the man sitting on the opposite side of the room from her wasn't it.
"Are you someone else I've forgotten?" he asked in a small voice. "I may not remember much from the forties, but I think I would've remembered you."
Where Elysia had been expecting a coldhearted killing machine after the days of training leading up to the mission, to her surprise, the man in front of her appeared much more human than monster. While he still sized her up as if anticipating whether or not she posed a threat, his eyes only left her to glance around the room, as if still growing used to his new surroundings. Although, his gaze continued to land on her face, as if he were attempting to recall her from his former life.
"Afraid not," she said, shaking her head. "I guess I'm the one responsible for getting that code out of your head."
"Well, I wish you the best of luck," he said, extending his free hand for her to shake. "For both of our sakes. Bucky Barnes."
"Elysia Sparks," she said with a kind smile, shaking it.
She also hadn't expected the killing machine feared by the superhero world to seem so kind. If they'd been in any other scenario, she might have even called him a gentleman, rather than a cyborg whose brain they needed to try to hijack in an attempt to save. From what little she'd heard from Steve about him in the forties, anyways, he'd been quite the ladies' man. For both of their sakes, she found herself really hoping they were right.
"Sparky, was it?" Bucky asked with a sly grin, gesturing back towards the biometric scanner. "That's what the door called you."
"Tony Stark thinks he's clever," Elysia huffed, rolling her eyes. "All his doing."
Bucky smiled back for a moment, though she could see as it slowly faded away from his eyes, and she could only begin to wonder at the horrors hidden behind them over the past seventy years. "Be honest," he said, his voice growing softer. "What's going to happen to me here?"
"We're going to get that code out of your head." she explained, taking a seat on the floor next to him. "Tony has a couple of his old contacts coming up from the city in the morning. We'll take some scans, figure out what exactly we're working with to get out whatever HYDRA put in your head. Once it's gone, I'm sure Tony will find a space for you somewhere on the team."
"And how long have you been on the team?" he asked.
"Oh, no," she said, shaking her head. "I'm not on the team. In another life, maybe. I'm just an old friend that Tony called in for a favor."
"Where's home, then?" he asked as she leaned back against the wall, finally feeling as if she were able to breathe.
Although she'd nearly lost her life trying to rescue him the night before, and she'd seen videos of news footage detailing what exactly he was capable of, she felt at ease with the man sitting opposite her, for the first time since she'd gotten on that Quinjet to head to Siberia. Someone who didn't ask about her abilities, or was focused on training her to be a part of the team, but instead someone who instead was curious about who she was, and the place she called home.
"Arizona," she said. "Finishing up grad school."
"It must be a pretty important mission for you to uproot yourself just to come and help me." he said, and she found herself nodding.
"You're important to Steve, and that's enough for Tony. If it's enough for Tony, then it's enough for me." she explained.
"You know Stark well, then?" he asked, something in his expression that she couldn't quite discern.
"He took me in at a time where I didn't have anybody." she said simply. "I'm just repaying that favor."