Soldiers

It's time to strap our boots onThis is a perfect day to dieWipe the blood out of our eyesIn this life there's no surrenderThere's nothing left for us to doFind the strength to see this through

We are the ones who will never be brokenWith our final breathWe'll fight to the deathWe are soldiers, we are soldiers- Otherwise

════ ★ ════

Siberian Facility; 12 July, 1989

In the two days that followed, The Winter Soldier shadowed his handler in everything she did. The routine felt deeply familiar and came easily to him. He questioned nothing; this was what he was meant for -- to follow her every step. They ate together, they trained together, they went to the range together, they discussed the mission together. They shared small moments of brief smiles, but it wasn't entirely the same as it had been before.

That didn't stop the bond from beginning to mend itself, whether either of them suspected it or not.

The night before they were to leave, The Winter Soldier finally saw his handler in her suit and it stirred something in his gut that was so foreign to him that there was a moment of hesitancy in which he drowned in the sight of her, though he remained resolute in his stance as he watched her. As he recalled in past, she was now the ghostly, physical representation of that terrible and captivating queen upon her throne, bathed in static and winter light. She wore the same mask that he had secured across the bottom of his face that made him feel that stronger kinship with her.

The training room had changed a small bit over the time that he slumbered, but it was mostly the same. The conex was still dented where he'd thrown her into it, but several high perches, hand holds and launching points had been added to the walls. They had also added sporadic low lights designed to trick the mind and create shadows and blind spots.

"Ready?" Her voice came muffled from her mask, changing it just enough to further enrapture the compliance of her Soldier.

He gave a single nod of his head. In what seemed to be a blink of the eye, she disappeared from before him, his head feeling like a small pop had sounded in some deep part of his brain that didn't need the mechanics of his ears in order to hear it.

Tesla had sent a single pulse of electricity to burst through the area of his brain that connected sight into his occipital lobe. She had basically reset his vision and slithered back into the shadows that she knew so well before he could blink and lightly shake his head.

In that moment, shadows shifted and impulse took control of The Winter Soldier's actions. He brought his weapon up as he buried himself in darkness and watched for movement. The rounds were live, and she had instructed him beforehand that anywhere her suit covered was fair game for his bullets.

Tessa trusted him that much, and she saw the acknowledgement of that crossing through his vision when she'd murmured the words. That had meant a great deal to him, though it didn't really make sense just yet.

Right now, though, Tesla was his quarry and he was hers. She reached out in search of the electrical currents of his brain, but only long enough to decipher where in the general area he was. Briefly, the Soldier saw the arc in her eyes and that was the only warning he had to dodge the multiple bolts of lightning she shot from her hands. The strobe of light was disorienting and gave her an idea of where he'd gone, but it had also given away her own position.

Tesla wanted to end this with as little of her elemental abilities as possible. She craved the need to be able to slink in the shadows and work in tandem with her metal-armed cohort. Lightning from nowhere tended to draw far too much attention. When she flew it was almost soundless, but getting anywhere close to the Soldier would give him the opportunity to feel the brush of movement on the air.

The Winter Soldier adjusted his position among the hiding places and barricades, always keeping to the shadows and turning when needed to shield his metal arm from the positioning of lights. As he rounded one freestanding wall, he was suddenly hyper-focused on the fact that Tessa was standing right there in front of him.

Tesla took the opportunity to push his rifle toward him and slither her body until the barrel was against her side. Her right arm shot up to knock the stock of the weapon up and out of his grasp. As the sling was secured around him, it did little more than give her momentary control of the weapon, but she used the time wisely. She got in one bash of metal into his chin, one where the slender upper rails of the extended stock knocked the side of his head and then he wrangled the weapon free of her hands with a kick to her stomach.

Immediately, he flared with anger and purpose, aimed and fired toward her chest with a sniper's skill. Pain burst through Tesla with a cry, but the suit kept the shot from being fatal. She was going to have one hell of a bruise, though. Another glanced off her shoulder as she squatted then shoved off of the ground to fly briskly upward and into the shadows spreading between webbing of faint, reflected light.

Several shots rang after her until the Soldier had lost sight of his prey. As the weapon fell silent, he disappeared in a hush of movement that was hidden by dark nooks and crannies. He could hear her breathing somewhere up above, her chest overworking as pain increased her respiration.

Suddenly, the sound neared him at an almost impossible speed. She barreled into him, burying them both into the wall with a grunt from her Soldier. He felt a bit of panic when his feet then left the ground, his free hand gripping the back of her neck as she sent them both tumbling through the air. She used that momentum to toss him into a stack of industrial fruit crates.

Wood shattered and skidded across the floor, partially masking the running boots of the woman who had flung him from high in the room. He was far too big for her to do that more than a couple of times, but it certainly fucking hurt when it happened, even for The Winter Soldier.

Running purely on instinct, The Winter Soldier picked up one of the pieces of wood nearby then spun and sent the item like a baseball bat into her stomach. She huffed every ounce of breath from her lungs -- yet again -- and was sent backward to stumble and slide on her back across the floor a short distance. Before she could even relearn how to breathe, he was standing astride her chest, her left arm pinned by his boot. The other arm was beneath her right hip and effectively useless right then.

Keeping his boot harshly on her arm, he brought the other up to tilt her head at an angle that would snap her neck at his whim. A sudden flare of heat in the core of her completely astounded Tessa for a moment as it set her body into an ache for which there were no words. Her eyes held his in silence, but there was something in her expression that ignited his own desire and wonderment.

Before anything could catch fire there, Tesla let a crooked smile fall over her lips. He mimicked the expression then stepped back to release her. Letting the rifle hang on its sling, he controlled its placement against his chest with his left arm while the right was extended down in offer to help her up from the floor.

Tessa accepted the help, but she didn't linger near enough to spark anything further.

"Well," she huffed out on still-strained breaths. "That fucking hurt."

She chuckled, but her hands came up to rest against the slope of the curves between her breasts. His round hadn't left a mark in the suit where it impacted in either spot, but she had no doubt it left its mark in her flesh. Just like his improvised Louisville Slugger would have left a band of bruising across her stomach.

To her surprise, her Soldier smiled at her words and readjusted to unwrap the sling from across him. As she situated herself and he stepped back to do the same, The Winter Soldier offered his rough, underutilized voice.

"You fight well," he said, the approval all over his face.

She gave him a bright smile, the kind of smile that only James had ever gotten from her. It stirred something inside of him again, only this was less primal and more... tender.

"Well," she said in frank reply. "I should. You're the one who trained me."

He didn't recall all of that; however, he did wish that he could shuffle all of those memories to the forefront of his mind on command. He would have liked to see how she had learned and the moments they had together. Instead of asking, he simply nodded, that signature smile lingering on his lips.

"We need to wash up and get some sleep," she concluded as they headed toward the door. "I packed the pallet earlier and we'll be ready to head out at 04:00." They would arrive in the early night, set down just South of Jasper, hike to where HYDRA had hidden an ATV for them then head toward the facility at a slow pace in hopes of drawing Victor Creed's attention.

That had been the best case scenario they hoped for, but it didn't end up going down exactly like that.

════ ★ ════

Jasper, Alberta, Canada; 13 July, 1989

They landed near Jasper and found the waiting cache. Within a short span of time, they were on the move, heading South for all of two minutes before the all terrain vehicle felt like it had been blindsided by a freight train.

Sabretooth was a wall of hard mass and was huge compared to Tesla. Thankfully, she was tossed away from the vehicle with the impact, but The Winter Soldier held fast with the grip of his hands and thighs and rolled with the hit until he caught the opportunity to let go.

He tumbled through an area of high grass and wildflowers until he was able to bury furrows into the fertile ground with his metal fingers to bring him to a stop. As he pushed from the ground, he launched into the already-lunging man-beast. Both metal and flesh pummeled into the giant of a man, pulling grunts from him here and there.

Creed took a claw-filled grasp around the smaller man and hurled him away only to feel the impact of the woman against his stomach that had the power of flight backing it. Gravity always came out on top, though, and they were both tumbling through the vegetation seconds later.

"CREED!" The Winter Soldier roared toward him with determination to keep his focus turned away from Tesla.

With a roar of sound, Sabretooth rose, his body hulking in place with claws ready to hack at will. "Who the fuck are you?" Every word sounded like it had the backing of a actual growl of a Smiledon wielding eight inch, dagger-like teeth.

"Tesla and The Winter Soldier," came the voice of the female on the other side of him.

He didn't like having them on opposite sides of his solid mass, but he favored his chances in the fight that could erupt at moment's notice. Breathing hard, Victor slanted a glance over his shoulder to the costumed woman in her mask and toward the matching mask of the metal-armed man in front of him.

"Never heard of ya," he huffed out, immediately put out by this entire interaction.

"But we've heard of you," the woman spoke again. Once more, he slanted his gaze toward her instead. "Formerly of the Weapon X Program? We'd like your help in destroying Stryker's facility."

Sabretooth straightened a bit, his fingers loosening their primal stance as he let his arms drop a fraction of the way downward. He glanced between the arcing eyes of the woman and the man who had his rifle trained steadily on him. Without a word, he gave a huff, a growl and nodded his head all at once, motioning South before he simply started down the hike that would take them through the valley and up to Stryker.

The Soldier swiveled his eyes toward Tesla and raised his brows, but he fell in soon after she started following Creed toward the mountain. It could not be this easy. Nothing ever went this smoothly; both Tesla and her Soldier could attest to that, and he had the memory of a fruit fly at the moment. For now, they simply followed into the ever deepening night, grateful for the hunter's eyes that found the path ahead of them.

Everything was going swimmingly until their pathfinder was suddenly missing from where he'd been walking ahead seconds before.

The Winter Soldier spun one way and Tesla pivoted the other way, the act bringing them back to back on the field to watch each other's blind sides. Very nearby there was a cacophony of sound, bodies hitting each other, growling that sounded like two rabid animals were at each others throats, a sudden flash of copper in the air as blood was drawn.

Raising her hands upward toward the sky, Tesla called together the static in the air and brewed up a cloud above them that sent chain lightning strobing through the clouds to provide them with some sense of what was going on in the dead of night.

With their backs still together, Tesla and her Soldier turned their heads toward the fight that was unfolding very near to where they stood. Victor in his hulking mass was getting his ass handed to him by a guy that was only around Tesla's height. Three metal protrusions were growing from between each of the knuckles of his fingers. He was small, solid muscle and fought like a temperamental little wolverine.

Tesla's light show continued even as both she and her Soldier relaxed and settled more side-by-side to watch what was happening. They were forced apart soon after as the ferocious runt was thrown toward them. Winter Soldier dove toward Tesla, his metal arm taking her to the ground, though he spun enough that his body bit the soil first and buffered her collapse. In the process, his mask was knocked askew then flung apart from him.

With his identity the least of his worries, he spun to pin his handler to the ground to protect her as Creed damn near plowed over them in search of a man he was truly hellbent on killing right then.

"What the fuck is going on?!" Tesla hissed up at to her Soldier.

"No clue," his right arm curled around the other side of her head as he bent in close to again shield her from the insanity of the brawl happening all around them, titanium arm raised to take the brunt of an attack that never materialized.

The next time they were jostled hard enough that the Soldier felt it was imperative to get his handler out of the immediate vicinity. Looping her through the solidity of his left arm, he rose and dragged her away from where the fighting currently was, ducking to bring them both against the opposite side of the large root ball on a felled tree.

Tesla breathed out in disbelieving shock as she struggled to keep up with what was happening and who was doing what to whom. She couldn't see anything before, and now she definitely had no idea what was happening. For now, the men were out of sight, but the clamor that they caused absolutely prevented them from being out of mind.

Icy blue eyes watched her Soldier's as he continued to shield her, his back exposed and his head tucked in near to her own, metal arm protecting both of them on her right hand side. Now and then the tree would give a great shutter toward them, but Winter Soldier took the jolt of every strike that might have harmed Tesla.

There was a great crash of another tree that peeled a growl-laden scream from the night as the storm overhead dissipated from lack of Tessa's tending. They heard Victor fall to his enemy, but he was still struggling beneath the huge fir when The Winter Soldier and Tesla finally noticed the stocky figure standing over them, gleaming claws still extended and now dripping with blood and meat.

"Better start talkin', bub," he huffed through fight-frenzied breaths.

Tesla brought up her hand, her fingers cupped toward one another to contain her own energy in a quickly strobing spark. It illuminated the thick hair and choppy sideburns of the clawed man, but it also brought light onto her masked face and the Soldier's black-smeared eyes and exposed lower face.

"Bucky?" the man said in awe seconds later.

"Who the hell is Bucky?" Winter Soldier asked.

Simultaneously, Tesla harmonized a question of her own. "How do you know Bucky?"

════ ★ ════

Posted: 30 July, 2021