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everett ross' facility in berlin, 2016
- - -
"I don't know Sharon. Are you sure I'm really the right person for this? I'm not, like, an Avengers level tech. Are you sure they don't want a genius or someone like Stark to do it?"
"Well, Stark is pretty busy right now, and honestly, no one knows psych like you. Not who I've met anyway."
"That is so not true. I'm willing to bet there's tons of other people you guys got somewhere who are ten times what I am."
"Agent, in case you missed it, SHIELD isn't what it used to be. Sure we have old agents who aren't formally 'SHIELD agents,' anymore, but we don't have the expendability we used to. You're our best bet at the moment."
"Damn. I'm your best bet. I'm sorry," she almost chuckled, but then she thought for a brief moment. "Are you sure this is completely necessary? I mean, I saw the photo on the news. The quality's poor at best, and..."
She leaned in, discretely, and whispered.
"...not to seem like a conspiracy theorist commie or anything, but it kinda seems like people are jumping to conclusions here. Are we even sure it was Barnes who set off the bomb?"
Sharon looked around them, cautiously. No one seemed to be listening, but she scanned the room like her life as she knew it was hanging in the balance. She weighed her words in her head, making sure she picked the right ones, then formulated a response appropriate.
"Regardless of if it was him or not, Barnes still escaped. and before that, Ste-we'd been looking for him for almost two years. This analysis is necessary," Sharon brought her voice down even lower. "At least that's what I keep being told. Of course I'd like there to be more solid proof, but I'm not in charge here. He's gone, and they want to be able to find him and 'sort things out.'"
"'Sort things out,'" Y/N repeated, questioning the genuineness of whomever told Sharon that. "Unless they have hard evidence that it was him who set off the bomb in Vienna, shouldn't they leave that to uh...Captain America?"
She wondered how Barnes was able to escape in the first place. She saw the containment module he was in; there's no way he could've gotten out without a fight. ...But maybe it wasn't a fight. Perhaps it was a trigger word induced rage. She understood a basic layout of the "Winter Soldier." SHIELD would've kept any information they had classified. However, after the fiasco in Washington, d.c. with Hydra and the whole releasing of all files predicament, she was able, with Sharon's help, to put together a simple outline. With that being said, he couldn't have broken out without going Winter Soldier mode. But doesn't someone need the trigger words for that?
"That's what a reasonable person would think, but once again, I'm not in charge," Sharon shrugged. "Things would probably be going a lot smoother if I was, but you can't have everything."
Y/N cracked a smile. Sharon was a friend, and a good one too. They'd known each other since before SHIELD was shattered in 2014. In fact, Sharon helped train her.
The only thing was: Sharon was a higher ranking agent and often withheld certain information from her friend. It frustrated her. This was where their personal boundaries got in the way of their professional ones.
She could tell there was something Sharon wasn't telling her, but she wasn't about to compromise either of their positions by pushing for information she wasn't supposed to know. Hell, maybe even Sharon knows something she isn't supposed to. Or maybe she knows something that Everett Ross wouldn't like. What if she was keeping something from him? Defying him? What if she was working with Steve Rogers? Now that would be interesting.
Y/N was used to secrets around her all the time. She knew Sharon had her fair share, and trying to figure them out wouldn't really get her anywhere.
"Right. Okay. Well, I'll get on this then. Thanks, Agent Carter," she teased in late response to Sharon's 'Agent.'
Sharon offered a quick smile before walking off to attend to other business.
- - -
Pain. That was all it was. In every sense of the word. As she strenously made her way through the densely packed file of one James Buchanan Barnes, pain was all she could see. All she could read. It leaked out of the page and seeped into her skin like poison.
It was horrific what they did to him. She knew he had his memory wiped, had someone pull him out and stick someone else in. But it was more than just that. They took his past, his memories, his thoughts; and they ripped them from his mind, leaving an empty space to mold into their own. It was after this when Hydra, in every way they could, dehumanized him, made him less than. He was striped of his freedom, his control, his choice, his humanity, of everything that made him him. They beat and bruised and broke it out this empty human shell until he was nothing but a shadow of faded morality and consciousness.
But hell, she couldn't look away. She was glued to the aftershock of this horrible wreckage. All the years of studying Psychology and Neuroscience couldn't have possibly prepared her for the absolute horror that was his past, his abuse, his torture. It was heinous. Frankly, she questioned how he was still alive. How he still had the will and the drive to be alive. How do you live after that?
"Fuck," she breathed after eons of silence.
She seemed to lose her sense of time whilst she was immersed in the harrowing nightmare of Hydra's cruelty. 'Cruelty' doesn't even come close to doing it justice. When she came to, her desk looked like a bomb went off. Papers were bursting out of manilla folders, littering the linoleum surface with classified files and secret information. She leaned back in her chair, and gave herself a minute to debrief.
She almost felt guilty, like she things she looked at were so vile, so violating that she didn't have the right to see them. Sure, she had read and analyzed all sorts of trauma and psychological profiles. But he was different. Something about James Barnes was different. It tangled her mind the fact that a person could endure all that. She could only imagine the effect that would have on the human brain. The possibilities are endless. Suddenly bombing the UN didn't seem so far fetched.
- - -
"Jesus Christ," she murmured, staring at her office floor as Sharon finished explaining to her what happened at the Leipzig Halle Airport.
She sat mostly in silence as she pondered over the information just fed to her. Apparently Tony Stark gathered a 'team' to try and intercept Captain America - sorry - Steve Rogers and his (supposed) fugitive friend. It was chaos.
"What is this? Fuckin' Avengers Fight Night?" she wondered aloud. "How many people did you say were there?"
"Twelve total," Sharon clarified. "Five with Stark and five with Steve."
The psychologist shook her head, dumbfounded. "How did it end?"
"Steve and Barnes got out, but everyone else with them were captured and sent to the Raft."
"The Raft?!" she exclaimed. "That's for, like, super humans! Not people like Sam Wilson or Clint Barton!"
"You're telling me."
Sharon seemed in agreement with everything she was saying. However, there was something she couldn't quite place. Like she was holding back. But holding back what?
"So what of Rogers and Barnes?" Y/N pushed.
Sharon got up and closed the office door before returning to her seat, leaning in, and lowering her voice. This secretive woman, god damn it.
"Well... That's what I came to talk to you about."
Oh boy. She didn't have a semblance of a single idea of what to expect. Apparently Sharon noticed.
"We're the only ones that know this. They're fine..." the agent trailed off, "They're in Wakanda, but they need a little help."
"Are you leaving?!" she all but yelled before quickly slapping a hand over her mouth and uncovering it only to whisper, "Do you and Rogers have a thing or something? Cause' I don't know how else you would know all of this when I'm sure that no one else does considering he's now an enemy of several governments!"
"My relations with Steve Rogers are not the focus here." She could've sworn Sharon flushed. "But we have been in contact; I'm one of the few people he can trust right now, and I don't plan on letting him down anytime soon."
They totally have a thing.
"Noted," said Y/N with a nod, "but why are you telling me this? Does he want the profile analysis or something? I don't see how he would need it if he's known Barnes for however long."
"Not exactly..." Sharon fidgeted with her hands. "We need you to go to Wakanda."
- - -
* = the airport where tony's team and cap's team brawled it out
** = the prison that the rest of cap's team was sent to after the airport battle
well there you have it: the first chapter! i hope it didn't bore you, i know the exposition isn't always super interesting but i promise it'll get better!