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strongerthanyouknow.
01 • the winter soldier & sara; 1958.
02 • ta-er al-sahfer & bucky; 2010.
03 • bucky & sara; present-day.
02 • ta-er al-sahfer & bucky; 2010.
03 • bucky & sara; present-day.
for
strongerthanyouknow.
we've got a long way to home; barely weathered the storm.
Which means Ray and Kendra slowly settling into their new life as a professor and librarian, their existence aggressively and blandly normal: groceries, cooking, rent bills, and staying in one spot, all while their roommate increasingly climbs the walls. Savage hasn't found them, but then again, perhaps everything would be more exciting if he did.
And it would likely have continued on and on like this, until Sara finally snapped, until she grabbed her duffel and simply walked out — except, this one day interrupts the monotony.
There's a particular German scientist giving a talk at Ray's university. The man had defected from Germany, come to America to share his engineering expertise in exchange for asylum — likely related to Operation Paperclip, although not that any of the local academics knew it. Ray had been strongarmed into attending with the rest of his department, and so asked his friends to keep him company.
Unbeknownst to everyone, however, the scientist is former HYDRA — which doesn't take well to defectors.
The ploy, when it comes, isn't discreet. The iron fist of HYDRA is not subtle. It isn't a quiet infiltration, with the assassin pretending to be one of the students in the auditorium, listening politely.
It happens like this.
It comes after the lecture has concluded: the audience is milling in the university hallway, chatting, exchanging business cards. If they were outdoors, it would be a single sniper bullet between the eyes, a clean shot and an instant kill. But there's no clean long-distance angles in this cramped building, and so:
A masked and ridiculously out-of-place figure in combat leather strides down the hallway, with long lank hair and a haunted stare caught behind those blue eyes. He's focusing on his target, the entire world narrowing to that fixed focus as he shoves a senior aside ("Hey!", and a clattering of textbooks). He's not paying any attention to the students, nor the various podgy professors, nor the handsome darkhaired academic with them, and certainly not the blonde woman by his side, who looked terrifically bored through the whole lecture.
The stranger comes on like a freight train, and there's the glint of a knife in his right hand.
no subject
It's the only reason she does anything now. It's the only reason she eats meals, does dishes, plays games, takes part in conversations. She hasn't felt particularly connected to any of the things she knows she should be since she opened her eyes on the floor of The Bunker. Only in flickers that came and went did things begin to feel anything like she thought, but couldn't ever quite remember the feeling of, on Rip's ship. But those have been less and less the last two months. Sometimes she goes more than a week, a week and a half, without feeling one now.
She feels like a ghost, a wraith, walking around in 'her skin.'
Like when she came back to life, like she's not alive at all.
No matter how many times Laurel had hugged her in tears.
There aren't many words in the lecture Sara pays attention to. Defector turned departmental guest, with too many undercurrents of pay to play save face for the victors which rings nothing like true conviction to her ears. He's the kind who is wherever he needs to be, which is not the same as belonging where he happens to be.
Sara spends far too much time thinking about how easy it would be to slam his podium through nearly every part of him. The microphone cord easily turned garrot; the microphone turned shank if applied right. One of over a hundred ways, only the newest version of options, for this one set of five minutes, in his closing remarks.
Aware of how she's no better a monster than the man in front of them all. With the lack of guilt and the ease of skill. Just facts being checked down a list. His mask is that of a 'newly dutiful American' and hers of appearance. Small, slight, unassuming. A woman. Quiet. Mild. Under it, the truth, they are rivers of other people's blood poured inside skin.
Her only relief is in getting to stand up, knowing she can finally leave. Ray's request filled; another box checked. Waiting the minutes for people to shake hands and to trail Ray and Kendra out once those things are. It's only that she's scanning the room, electric blue eyes empty, tired of the sham-charade, and this task dragging, that she sees the man bulleting down the aisle. Knife a shard of reflected light from high above.
It happens faster than thought, that reaction. It is what it always is, since her eyes open, deeper than blood and breathing. It needs and takes neither. Her hand on the back of a seat, only one set of toes as the coil spring point at the front of the chair closest, and she throws herself at him, every single cell in her body is suddenly more alive than it's been in months.
no subject
But, now, she's off the leash. Finally: a chance to do what she's good at.
The Winter Soldier had been so focused on his target that he hadn't seen her coming, not expecting any kind of threat from this quarter, from someone who looks like she does. Sara leaps off and barrels into him, and there's nothing but a surprised grunt from the man as her momentum smashes into him and they both go flying backwards, crashing into spindly lecture chairs, the furniture scattering down the aisles of the auditorium while people yelp, scrambling away from the chaos.
He lands hard on the stairs, the blonde on top of him. Mental priorities shuffle themselves and rearrange. The target is still the thing that matters, but he'll need to take care of this problem first. The masked man takes a swipe at her, that knife still in his right hand, slashing blindly at her face.
no subject
But it's a whisper in the dark of months; in the shouts of dozens scattering;
in the roar slammed full throttle into savage, starved, hunger in her veins.
Sara has a broken chair leg in her hands, catching the knife in a block, even as her eyes aren't coming off of him even to searching for a matching piece. Her hands wanting her batons. A set of blades, matched or contrasted. But she doesn't need a weapon. She is the weapon. Even as she's blocking with one hand, with the chair leg and the rigid muscles of her arm, down her back, the pivot of still being on top, she's slamming a fist toward the center mass of his throat, ready for the use any block he might feint toward, even as she takes the chance.
no subject
Except his left arm whips into place to block her strike, and beneath the fabric of his jacket, her hand suddenly collides with bone-crushing metal. The arm is too hard and too rigid and there's a faint mechanical whine when it moves, the heavy weight (it's heavy, too heavy, all of his balance is held slightly askew in order to compensate for it) like a bludgeon as he takes another swing. This time it's his blunt fist pummeling like a piston, just going straight for her ribcage above him.
In the distance, there's still the sound of panic and people scrambling away (and Kendra looking surprisingly lost, her fingers not sharpening into claws— either because she's maintaining her cover or perhaps, unbeknownst to anyone, because she can't anymore). Over Sara's shoulder, the Winter Soldier's cold blue eyes catch a glimpse of the university staff starting to hustle the professor away.
No. The target—
He bucks under her again, like an out-of-control horse flinging Sara off and to the side, and already trying to get back to his feet and trying to go charging after the mark— until she stops him.
no subject
She doesn't have the time to ask why, or even how, or better yet who. She doesn't care about those things. Her eyes are locked on him, and her blood is only getting louder in her ears. Whispers in her skin, ants in her veins. All she cares about is putting him into the ground, which is, in itself, his biggest problem. He is her only focus, and he's decided she's just his distraction from what he is focused on—a division of attention where she has none.
Which is why as Sara comes rolling back to crouch, easy and fast, her hands reach for the nearest chair. Palms that have so few calluses compared to what they once had wrapped around the chair legs pointing up, and with soundless spring sprint, she's swinging it up and cracking it across the side of his head. Two birds, one stone.
As it goes cracking, Sara keeps her hands on the chair legs that break off amid it, getting herself extra makeshift weapons. From there it's breathing, to continue swinging, without pause. Both directions at once, one slamming into his neck and the other his lower back. There's no honor among thieves and assassins -- only the promise of the swiftest death possible.
no subject
He's reluctant. He never lets a target go.
But he's also never run into an obstruction like Sara Lance.
The haggard-looking man with the unkempt hair finally whirls around, giving up on his mark, in order to catch one of the chair legs mid-swing. He doesn't even bother yanking it out of her hand; with the squeeze of a fist, the wood splinters in his grip. So it's not just the arm which is special, either.
Those ice-blue eyes finally seem to notice her, pay attention to her, but it's as if his focus is coming from very, very far away. When he speaks, it's with a broad American accent, but his voice is cracked, rough, as if he hasn't used it in a very long time.
"Who are you?"
no subject
But none of them are her.
None of them were put in the Lazarus Pit so long after death.
None of them carrying those voices, that blood lust, and lack of sanity.
The ones that claim her deeper than any human life the waters gave her skin.
"Your nightmare." It's seethingly trite, all bright bitten promise, lightning blue eyes blazing wild, second hand and chair leg landing still square where she'd aimed it when he only went for one. It's easy to drop the first without carrying, and herself with it going for a sweep. "Why are you here for The Professor?"
Just for a moment — here and then gone, gone, gone in the happy, hungry, bloody roar — there's the face of a many with white wisps of hair and a disappointed expression.
no subject
Instead: “He’s my mission,” the man answers simply. And he tries to turn and keep on with his inexorable path out of the lecture hall, chasing after that target, but then she’s on him again and tripping up his boot with the chair leg so he hits the stairs — and now he has to accept, perhaps, that today is a wash. The handlers will be displeased with him, but they’re always brutal with him regardless of success or failure. It won’t matter.
So he gives in, and accepts that the others are getting away— the professor has gotten away— and so he has no further purpose here, and now he tries to shake her off like a dog shaking off water, but it still doesn’t work. The next time Sara sweeps at him, the Soldier backsteps and hops over the chair leg.
“You’re irrelevant," he says, and for the first time, a tiny semblance of emotion seems to flicker into his face: a sharp jab of irritation. That realisation of a job thwarted, rather than a job well-done.
This is truly not his day.