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twistedteatime · 3 days ago

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Howling Witch, Chapter 2: Bait

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Original Fem Character, 1940s!BuckyxOFC

POV: 3rd Person

Summary: To the intelligence community the Winter Soldier is a ghost, but to HYDRA the Howling Witch is a harbinger of doom that will stop at nothing to get at their prized asset. A phantom that leaves swathes of destruction in her wake. She is the biggest mistake they ever made.

Chapter Summary: The trap has been set, the bait is in play, the only question is will he go for it and how will the bait react to it all?

Word Count: 7.5K

Warnings: Language, Canon Typical Violence, Canon Divergence, Gun Violence, Shifting Character POVs, Frustrated and Aggravated Superheroes, HYDRA (HYDRA is a legitimate warning on its own), Light Angst, Self-Loathing, Flashbacks, Vampires (the bad kind. Steve is aware they are real as in the comics Cap fought vamps during the war), Wolf shifters (good though you wont see them shift for a while), if I missed something let me know.

A/N: Out later than I wanted it to be but as I've said a lot the past few days I have a lot going on right now offline. Anyway...this chapter we get to see a bit of the original story between the Howling Witch and Bucky from the 40s. We learn her name and get to see what she was before she was made into what she is and part of how she was made into what she is. It's also extra long because I didn't like where it originally left off so added more.

NOTE: The Female Main Character DOES have a name. It will be revealed this chapter.

I DO NOT CONSENT TO MY WORK BEING COPIED OR PUT INTO ANY FORM OF AI. (Also if there are typos it's likely my keyboard. I will fix as I find them, because no matter how many times I proofread there's always at least one).

Masterlists: Howling Witch🔹MASTER Masterlist

Previous Part: Chapter 1: The Hunt

Ao3 Link: Chapter 2: Bait (Registered users only)

Next Part: Chapter 3: Trap

She’d have loved to laugh when Natasha kicked Sitwell off the building. Seeing his face react to the laser through the scope had been amusing enough. Watching Sam swoop down and grab him had also been quite entertaining. Yet it was his face paling at the sight of her as she walked out of the shadows that really made her want to laugh.

She loved it when they recognized her and the fear of her permeated their scent.

It was different from the fear of falling to his doom. That was sudden, sharp, sourly sticky yet also swift and at the surface. This was far better.

Deep, slow, and tangy. It wasn’t fleeting. It lingered and oozed out of every pore on every inch of his skin as the recognition flashed over his eyes. Sour, yet sweet. Like it had been aged in a bourbon barrel.

It wasn’t the fear if imminent demise. It was the fear of recognition and the fear of coming face to face with something that you had heard stories of but didn’t think really existed. That you hoped didn’t…or at least that you’d never really see for yourself.

“Y-you…you’re…you’re real.” Sitwell whispered and she nodded silently.

She’d risk laughing if she spoke.

The wide eyes. The way their faces blanched. The way their bodies became rigid. The way their hair stood on end, not that he had any. Still, it never got old for her.

“That…that means he’s…coming. He’s…why didn’t they…they had to have kn-”

“Zola’s algorithm was never very good at calculating me. He could never quite quantify me. It’s gotten close once or twice, but it never could really get a good handle on me…and I’m not alone in this. It’s never been good at adapting to things it does not understand, of which there is plenty” She said as she approached him and he backed up into the brick, “Ooh…look at you…shaking. I’m not going to hurt you. That’s not why I’m here.”

“You can’t stop it. It’s already in motion. HYDRA will have control.” He said and she couldn’t hold it in anymore.

She laughed, short, brief, but enough, “Oh…trust me, my little jelly filled donut, HYDRA only thinks it will have control and that it wants it. HYDRA has no idea what it would really take to control what it wants to really control and then…even if it did succeed…it wouldn’t last because HYDRA lacks something very important for success.”

“What?” he asked, trembling and she just patted his cheek before walking away.

“Get going. I’ll cover you as best I can, but he’ll come out of nowhere. Likely when I’m not in position. He usually does.” She said and stopped before looking at them, thinking, and Steve could see something different, deeper, and more uncertain pass over her eyes, “Don’t hesitate. I won’t.”

She was here.

Ducking down behind the concrete that was what blared through his thoughts. He wasn’t sure who exactly she was, but he knew she was there. She always was.

He scowled.

She always interfered.

No. He would complete his mission. Whether she liked it or not.

She hadn’t been wrong.

The Soldier. He came out of nowhere and she didn’t hurt Sitwell. He did and Sitwell became much more similar to a jelly donut in the most macabre of ways.

She didn’t hesitate, either.

One precise shot. Bulletproof glasses. They had obviously planned for The Howling Witch, or was it that she knew that they planned for her? Sitting in the truck, her shoulder throbbing, Natasha played it over in her head again…and again…and again.

Did he shoot her or was it her?

“Essie. It has to be Essie.” Steve thought, his mind racing, stumbling, running, circling, and trying to make sense of it all, “If The Winter Soldier is Bucky, then she has to be Essie…how is she alive…how is he…”

“Who is Essie?” Sam asked and Natasha looked at Steve for an answer.

“She was part of the SSR. Translating, breaking HYDRA’s codes, and breaking every soldier’s heart that ever got the courage to face her wrath just to ask her to dance, that or their faces…until Bucky.”

“Go on. Go ask her.” Steve urged his friend, practically shoving him through the crowd towards the curly haired blue dress clad brunette standing next to Peggy, her bright red lips turned down in one of her usual scowls.

“You’re settin’ me up for more failure. Is this revenge for the fair? I only told her good things about you, I swear.”

“No. I bet Monty that if you asked Essie to dance she’d say yes and he bet no. I’m not losing to him.” Steve answered, enjoying the sight of his best friend flustered around a woman far too much.

“Because she says no to everyone.”

“No one is you. She tolerates you or she’d yell at you more an’ beat you with a rolled-up map more often. Just…be a man and ask the pretty lady to dance!”

“Funny coming from you. Why don’t you ask Carter?” Bucky asked him and Steve shook his head.

“That’s different. I don’t work with Peggy every single day for hours on end hunched over a map of Europe. I did that once. You two do that every single night.”

“Well, yeah. We can’t rely solely on your memory or just mine with where the bases and outposts are. You only got a quick look and I wasn’t exactly mentally present most of the time up there. She’s the best of the HYDRA Code crackers we’ve got and damn good at pinpointing stuff on the map. Better than that loon Philips had before we were all ambushed. If they actually listened to her we probly wouldn’ta been ambushed but no.”

“See? You don’t shut up about her and you haven’t even looked at any of the other girls here since the first time you saw her in the war room yellin’ at that guy. Ask her to dance. C’mon. Don’t make me lose my bet.”

“Of course I look at her. She’s gorgeous and she’s actually read The Hobbit. Unlike some people.”

“I couldn’t get into it.”

“You didn’t even try. It’s a good book and has a small guy as the hero. What wouldn’t you love about that?” Bucky retorted and Steve rolled his eyes.

“Stop stalling and ask the lady to dance. Don’t make me throw you over there. I will.”

“You’re a punk. Y’know that?” Bucky asked then scowled as he watched another soldier walk up to Essie and look her over top to bottom.

“How ‘bout I show you around the dance floor a few times, sugar?” he asked and Bucky’s eyes narrowed further, lips twitching in a frown while Steve’s curled up knowingly.

“I can see it just fine from here…and my name is not Sugar.” Essie said after glancing at the dance floor momentarily, dismissively, but then looked as Bucky plastered on a smile that could melt a hole through an iceberg while walking up.

“That is not how you ask a lady to dance, private.” He said and the soldier glared.

“And how would you do it, then you’re so smart?” he asked then stiffened as Bucky tilted his head questioningly, waiting, “Sargent.”

Bucky looked at Essie, the perfect picture of confidence and charm, “I would be absolutely honored if you would agree to this next dance with me. Please. I promise I won’t flatten your toes. I’m not Steve. He might be tall and Captain America, but he can’t dance.”

“Hey!” Steve protested as Essie’s red lips curved upwards slightly, then more.

“Well prove me wrong.” Bucky said to him with a shrug of his eyebrows before looking back at the woman before him in blue, hoping she didn’t see the sweat beading on his temple.

She likely did.

“Sure. You’re the only one around here with any manners.” She said with a smile and Steve couldn’t hold back his own at how Bucky’s blue eyes had lit up with the smile on his face.

Pure sunshine and then smug as he looked at the soldier while accepting her hand. Essie just shook her head at him, rolling her grey eyes slightly. Still she was smiling as they walked onto the floor and allowed him to take her waist and hand.

“You’re the first man here to even say the p-word to me all night. Tell me, Sargent Barnes, is it forbidden for the lot of you peacocks to say please?” she asked as they began to move, letting him lead her around the dance floor.

“I can’t answer that for them. Seems like it sometimes.”

“Is that what gets the girls back home? Strutting up, puffing up, saying any combination of words other than please?” she asked and he chuckled lightly.

“Maybe. Maybe they just haven’t adjusted to the higher standards over here.”

“Maybe they should. Gets better results when you wait for a handsome man with manners and good literary taste.” Essie replied with a small smile at him he returned.

“Was that a compliment?” Bucky asked smiling more as he laughed lightly, “From you?”

“Don’t let it go to your head and don’t spread it around. I’ll have to fight off more of your tittering fan club.”

“Fan club? You’re confusing me with Captain America over there.”

“Yes…that’s why all the other ladies and secretaries were practically fighting each other over who got to be your nurse when you walked into camp with him.” She replied smoothly and he looked at her, “Don’t pretend you don’t know women fight over men.”

“Well, between you and me, hasn’t felt like I’m the center of their attention since getting back.” He said and she laughed lightly.

“Sure, Steve Rogers is a tall, muscle bound, chisel jawed, strapping, strong, daring, brave man…and sure that gets plenty of the girls around here fanning themselves whenever he walks by…but there are plenty of others far more interested in his best friend. You know…the one that doesn’t risk flattening their feet, the one that Peggy doesn’t angrily shoot live bullets at, the one that…seems to have a bit more sense than a rabid badger in a golden retriever’s body…”

He laughed, deep, resonating in his stomach and chest, “Oh…you don’t even know half of how right you are about Steve.”

“I beg to differ, Sargent. You don’t know about the grenade incident.” She retorted and he looked at her then glared a few moments later at Steve across the dance floor as he smiled while talking with Peggy.

She watched that smile fade then looked over. All she saw was a smile on Essie’s face and a glare on Sargent Barnes as he charged over. That smile on Essie’s face was mischief. Pure mischief. The look on Steve’s was fear.

He started backing up towards the door, “I gotta go. Right now. Rain check.”

Then he was out the door and James Buchanan Barnes strode past her like a man on a mission. Essie walked up soon after, still smiling. Satisfied.

“What did you do? Couldn’t you just dance with the man?”

“I told him about how Steve jumped on a fake grenade back in New Jersey thinking it was live. He tried to tell me I don’t know how stupidly brave your boyfriend is. I proved him wrong.”

He returned eventually, face set with frustration, exasperation, struggle. No mask of charm. The mask was off. It stayed off even as she sat down next to him.

She didn’t say anything. She just sat there, silently, save for the occasional refusal of a dance. The music played on. Light, swaying, smooth, and high. Something meant to lift the spirits of the soldiers, take their minds off the battlefield, the horrors they had seen. Ones they had endured.

It worked for the most part. For some, it didn’t. It never would, but for most, it provided a well-deserved return to some semblance of normalcy. Something bright and clean to swallow them up in warmth and soothe away the grime of war, pain, and the unspeakable.

“I don’t…I don’t understand why he’s so…desperate to walk out there and…get himself…” Bucky eventually said as he stared off into nothing, blue eyes distant as he jerked his hands into the air, fingers gesturing explosively while Steve observed from around the corner.

“It’s the type of person he is. Big as his body is now…it’s still not big enough to hold in him. He’s a good man. Makes mistakes, but everyone does. He’s not stupid. Not really. He knows the risks, but to him they don’t outweigh the rewards. He’s not in it for glory. He just wants to do what’s right and protect people.” She said calmly and smiled at him softly, “I understand, though. He’s your brother. You’ve spent years protecting him and then he grew into a tall and shiny man and rescued you.”

“He’s not shiny.”

“You weren’t there when he came out of the chamber. He was very shiny. You should have seen Peggy’s face. Well…most women’s faces. Mine was even notable. Mostly confusion. I honestly didn’t expect it to work, and even if it did I didn’t expect what he was to come out as he is now.” She said and he nodded then licked his lips briefly, disbelief etched across his face, “What?”

“So you’re trying to tell me that you didn’t instantly fall for Captain America?” he asked and smiled while looking at him.

“I’m not a magpie. I require more than a man being shiny. I’d like one with manners, can dance, knows how to read, and knows I’m not just some dumb broad named Sugar.” She answered and Bucky smiled gently as he looked at her, studying her face, “We never finished our dance, by the way.”

“You distracted me.” He retorted, lips crooked up in a smile she shared and looked back at her once he glanced at the dancefloor; then he stood and offered her his hand, “Let’s finish what we started, though. Wouldn’t be right to leave you with only half a dance.”

So close. SO CLOSE.

He was gone again. Just like every time before. Steve hesitated. Just that extra moment. That was all it took for the programming to kick back in and he was gone again.

He’d be back though. They’d send him back out soon. She was going to make sure that they did.

This hunt wasn’t going to fail. It couldn’t. Hesitation or not it could not fail.

She sighed and took the victories she could out of what had just happened. It wasn’t all in vain. It proved she had chosen the right bait. Steve hesitated but it wasn’t over yet, and it wasn’t nothing.

It was something and Essie really couldn’t blame Steve for his hesitation. It was a shock. One she’d felt before herself. As desperate and frustrated as she was…she couldn’t blame him for hesitating. That’s what she had to tell herself. All of it.

Don’t get angry.

Focus.

It’s not over yet.

Focus.

Do what you have to do.

Let no one stand in your way.

Then burn it all to the ground.

“Where are they now?” She asked as she walked through the tunnel, pulling her cowl and hood down, goggles long since discarded now that she was back in the dark.

Where she belonged.

“They’re on their way, Alpha. Close. We tried, but the best we could do was the news helicopter. Delta flew there as fast as she could. Hill got loaded into the transport and let us know she has them. They’re on their way. So is Delta she had to put the copter back.” Tanis said as he walked with her, sharply pulling the tie free and off with a soft growl.

“I’m surprised she didn’t crash it.” She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose as they walked, Tanis a half step behind her, and he nodded.

“You and me both.” He agreed and held up a ringing phone, “Pierce is calling again.”

She took it and answered it, ignoring the angry scolding shouts coming through it, “I told you not to underestimate Rogers. I told you I didn’t want an extra team. I told you I work alone. You overplayed your hand, Pierce, and you interfered in my methods of doing things and you clearly didn’t brief the Asset on what he was hunting! Then you LET THEM GET IN MY WAY!”

Tanis flinched as she shouted into the phone. It was better for her to be shouting at the man she really hated instead of him, true, but it still hurt his sensitive ears. A lot. It did from the very beginning.

Gorgeous. That had been his first thought upon seeing her hauled into the then Alpha’s throne room. Then pity. He knew what the former Alpha did to anything pretty that he liked. He was the Lowest of the Low, he was just too strong to be put where he belonged…not on a throne with that smirk as she was led in on a chain with a collar around her neck.

She was broken. Shattered at the soul. Silver eyes that screamed of years of suffering only to suffer even more.

She was an offering. One the Alpha had taken pride in receiving from the dark-skinned stranger in return for their services. One he underestimated.

That they all did.

She was beautiful and shattered…but they were wrong to think she was broken beyond repair. Beyond resistance. Beyond guile, trickery, and Challenge.

Far from it.

The Alpha had laughed when she Challenged him for leadership there in the throne room. He praised the stranger for bringing him something entertaining. At least until the stranger spoke.

“She’s not joking…and she’s Hungry.” He said with a small smirk, his fangs evident as he looked over his sunglasses, “Feeding Day.”

Feeding Day.

Words they soon had ingrained into their very beings. Words they associated with the sticky metallic smell of blood and the shrieking sound of their former Alpha screaming.

Words to fear. Words to celebrate. Words that earned his respect followed by actions that cemented his loyalty.

So he dealt with the shouting. She had every reason to shout. Frustration, anger, disappointment, and the need to sell the narrative.

A narrative that saw her blaming Pierce for their actions.

He had to bite his tongue at that.

“Then…then…then you let a FUCKING NEWS COPTER IN THE AREA! You could have gotten rid of Rogers, Romanoff, that bird guy you didn’t tell me about, and the Asset you’re so clearly eager to sabotage and get rid of if you had just locked down the airspace! There’s reports of a vigilante maniac flying around the city in a pair of metal fucking wings and you don’t think to restrict the airspace or send in air support?! What the hell is he? You never told me about him! Instead…in-in-instead, you let a fucking news copter fly over and broadcast, LIVE might I add, your team of thugs about to execute the public’s favorite golden boy!” She shouted into the phone, shouting Pierce down into a silent, and no doubt fuming, submission, “Or is it that you were hoping I wouldn’t notice so you’d have someone else to blame? Crossing me is the worst mistake you could ever make, Pierce…and it will be your undoing. I promise you that.”

“Threaten me again and I’ll add you to his list.” Pierce growled, enraged, threatened, and she smiled.

“Go right ahead. He’d have to find me before I find you. I’d avoid windows from here on out, Pierce. Unless they’re the triple thick ones in the Triskelion where you are right now…pacing back and forth in front of your desk.” She said calmly and then hung up when he started to speak again, cutting him off; she pocketed the phone after texting into it, calm, collected, and focused, “Let’s hope he actually has big enough balls to do it.”

“He’ll wipe him again, first.” Tanis reminded her and she nodded with pained sigh.

“I know.” She said regretfully, “They’ll wipe him again if he mentions Steve anyway but they can’t put him on ice again. That will change the process.”

“Your reasons are your own for doing this way…but when the hunt is over…what then?” he asked and she looked at him.

“The hunt was only ever the beginning, Tanis. You weren’t there when Eric had to walk me through the years adjusting to what I am, hiding, accepting the reality of everything that happened and that I did. Getting him out from HYDRA…that was only ever the beginning. It was never the end. Even if by the end…we part ways again…at least he’ll be free. At least he recognized Bucky was a name, at least there was recognition when he looked at Steve. Fleeting, but something.” She said and he nodded, silent, something that did not fit well with her Gamma, “Say it. Your silences are just as loud as Ruun’s.”

“If, and I am not saying he will, if he decides to leave…to Reject you because of what you are now…will you survive it? You’ve been hunting him longer than you’ve been leading us. He’s your Mate, I don’t question why you’ve been hunting him so long and I’m not…questioning your ability to lead, just…will you be okay?” he asked as he looked at her, amber eyes concerned, not for his leader, but for his friend, “Should that come to pass?”

It took her a moment to answer as she looked at him, studying him as if she were committing his face to memory. It was something she did often. Not just to him but to everyone.

His sister described it as being like she was looking at you for the last time, every time, just in case. Tanis was never able to look at it any other way since then. She was right.

“I survived losing him once, Tanis. I’ll survive it again if I must. I know you’re not questioning me. Stop that. I’m Alpha, not a tyrant like the last one. Not like that. You should know that by now.” She said and he smirked slowly, shifting gears as he saw her silver eyes dimming down to steel.

“Well…Pierce might not agree with that statement…you were kind of a bitch.” He said and smiled more as he saw her eyes shift and glint and her lips twitched up briefly.

“Sometimes…you need to be a bitch to achieve your goals.”

“Does that include you shooting your Mate in the face?” Tanis asked and she looked at him.

“If I know the bullet won’t go through the glasses…yes. It was a lower caliber and it was never going to go through in the first place. Just enough to ding him and piss him off. He’d have been fine. I’ve done it before.” She said as they walked through the tunnels, voices up ahead she recognized.

“What about…” he started and gestured down the tunnel.

“What about what?

“You shot me.” Natasha said as Essie and Tanis walked in, “It couldn’t have been him. The Soldier. It had to be you from where I was.”

“It stopped you.” Essie said as she pulled up a chair and slid it towards Tanis before sitting herself on an old filing cabinet above him.

“You almost killed her.” Sam said as Steve just stared at her, his head still obviously swimming in shock and confusion.

“Almost, but not quite. The bullet he’d have fired into her skull would’ve.” She said as she sat back against the wall, “The Winter Soldier doesn’t miss. Neither do I.”

“Bucky.” Steve said as he looked at her, “Bucky doesn’t miss.”

“That’s not Bucky.” She said and he shook his head, “That is not Bucky, Steve.”

“Yes he is. That’s Bucky. I grew up with Bucky! I know who Bucky is!” he retorted, scowling, nostrils flared.

He was out of shock.

Essie knew what was next.

She’d gone through it herself.

“What the hell is going on?! How…I went into the ice…you…Bucky…you shot him! Bucky loves you, Essie, and you shot him! Do you even care what you could have done?! YOU SHOT-” Steve started while standing and then Tanis plugged his ears; Steve realized it a little too late.

“THAT IS NOT BUCKY!” Essie snarled and Steve recoiled, eyes wide as he paled and sat back down.

She knew why.

Her teeth. Canines. Top and bottom that sharpened and extended into something inhuman. Her eyes. Silver that caught the light unnaturally for a human at the best of times but when angered produced their own light and glowed with a rage that was barely contained at the worst. Her voice. Not just shouting but snarling, she felt it vibrating through her chest and throat as it came out.

Not human.

Other.

“I am not the Essie you remember. He is not the Bucky you remember, Steve. Not anymore.” She said taking a deep breath in, willing her teeth to recede, “Bucky…he’s still in there. I know he’s still in there. Today proved that. You hesitated. You let him think too long, but…you made him think. Bucky is still in there but right now…he is not Bucky. That man…is The Winter Soldier. That is not James ‘Bucky’ Barnes. Not your best friend. Not my man. That is the Winter Soldier. I am not the Essie…not the Esteria Stark you remember anymore. Peggy never told you what I did…after you told me what happened on the train…did she?”

Steve shook his head, yet Sam spoke.

“Maybe…maybe we can back the hell up a bit? What the hell even was that guy? He had a metal arm. A metal…fucking…arm.”

“Steve doesn’t like that kind of language.” Fury said and Essie looked at him, “Just saying. Surprised he isn’t yelling about cursing with ladies present.”

“You do understand that Steve was in the army…during a war where SNAFU was invented…right? He’s heard all of it. So did I. It just wasn’t as common as it is now, but it was still there. Not on official records, but there.” she said and Steve let out a short laugh.

“Good luck telling her to mind her mouth. Won’t work. I remember the shock on Dum Dum’s face the first time she and Bucky got into an argument in front of everyone over that girl that touched him. She let out every word in the book.”

Essie scowled.

“It wasn’t funny. She was a threat. A real threat. Not a threat to the relationship, just in general. You were a covert unit. She was such an open book she was a walking billboard with boobs.” Essie retorted and Tanis snickered quietly, shaking his head, and she looked at him, “You’d have been all over her so don’t you laugh about it, Tanis. Just your type. Pretty, blonde, green eyes, long legs, bouncy boobs, always up for a good time, and dumb.”

“You’ll never let me live that down, will you?”

“No.” she said and Natasha couldn’t take it anymore.

“What are you? What is The Howling Witch? How did you become The Howling Witch?” Natasha asked and Essie looked at her as did Fury, “How is he here…with you? I think we’re owed some answers. That Steve is owed some answers. Your name is Esteria Stark?”

“Not that Stark.” Nick said, “I made that mistake, too.”

“Everyone does. It became an inside joke with Howard at some point before things happened.” Essie said, checking her watch, and Steve glanced at her yet remained silent, “Stark is no more a unique last name than Rogers, Wilson, Barnes, Pierce, Roberts, Ross, or any other. Mine is Germanic in root. From what you now call Germany. I lost the accent a long time ago…just as you lost your accent of birth a long time ago. My accent now…it shifts depending on where I am and what I talk about.”

“You’re German?” Sam asked and Steve answered.

“People often forget that the first country Hitler invaded was Germany.” He said and she nodded quietly before speaking again a few moments later.

“Bucky asked me one day why I did it. Why I was there with the SSR. Not flirting. Not the stupid: ‘What’s a pretty girl like you doing in a place like this?’ nonsense. He just asked because he wanted to know…” Essie said softly, eyes shifting as the memory slipped its bars.

They had been going over the map. Again. For hours. Long past the time everyone else had left for the night.

It was late, her neck ached from the angle it had been bent at going over the European map and translated transmissions she had been working on all day. HYDRA’s code changed again.

They didn’t use the same code as the other German forces did. They had their own special homebrewed one steeped in mythology, numbers, and insanity. Took a while to crack through, but eventually she did and went to retrieve Bucky.

It was part of a routine. One they’d had since nearly the very beginning when he first came back from the base with Captain America and agreed to help. Peggy and Steve had brought him to her where the map was so she could pick his brain about what he had seen while under Arnim Zola’s “care”.

Peggy had warned her he was a flirt and might be a bit tanked since she found him in a bar. Steve just looked at her, a bit nervous about leaving his friend there with Essie after the outburst she’d had with someone else being less than useful. He didn’t deny what Peggy said about Bucky being a flirt or even possibly drunk.

He wasn’t, though. Far from it. Setting eyes on him it turned out he was quite alert. Alert and observant.

He’d seen quite a lot during his time as one of Zola’s subjects. His memory of it was spotty at times as he’d been delirious a lot of it, but it was still there. Once something was committed into his memory it was there…it just took some nudging.

Sometimes physical nudging if he got too distracted.

“Ow! What was that for?!” he asked, rubbing his head with a sharp look at her, “You’re damn violent, y’know?”

“Stop focusing on me and focus on the map. Staring at me isn’t going to help you remember anything.”

“You don’t know that. Starin’ at you might unlock the secrets of the universe for all you know.”

“James. Focus. Where on this map could they be sending the next shipment to? Where are the little cockroaches they are running to next?” she asked and he scowled a bit.

“Bucky.”

“James. Right now, you are James…or do you want me to demote you back to Sargent Barnes? Or better yet, soldier boy?” she asked as she glanced at him, tired, her accent slipping from fatigue, and he looked at her.

Really looked at her like he was trying to see who she really was. It was invasive, as if trying to see into her depths; to see what made her tick. It made her tense up as she waited for the question. She knew he heard the shift. It wasn’t the first time, but he had never looked at her like this before.

“Why are you here? Doin’ all this? Puttin’ up with…all of this? The…soldiers, the men, the other women that talk about you? I know you’re a German, Essie. I know you hide it. I’m pretty damn sure I know why, but why are you doing this?”

It wasn’t a new question. She was asked it often. She rarely ever gave anyone a full answer. Yet, as she stood there at the table with him, Essie found the answer coming past her lips before she knew it as she pointed at a spot on the map.

“I was born here. In a little village far away from the politics and the secret meetings of Berlin deep in what you call The Black Forest. We didn’t have much. No one did, but we managed. The village was remote. Off the beaten path despite everything that happened in it during the war.” She said and Bucky frowned as he listened, blue eyes locked on her face while she lightly traced the outline of the area. “People didn’t leave the village much, but they did occasionally. My aunt was one. She married an English businessman just before Hitler took over. I don’t know how they met. I was never told, but when it…he happened…I was with her. She invited me to visit. To see more of the world, so she said, so I was in England when it happened. We received a letter from my Papa. ‘Don’t come back. Stay there. Stay safe. We love you.’ That was the last time…we ever heard from them.”

“What happened?”

“We found out later that HYDRA…Schmidt…burnt it to the ground. The whole village and took everyone.” She said and his frowned deepened with the plummeting of his stomach, heart aching and breaking as she continued, “They took my mother, my father, my older brother…my little sister. The whole village. Every last one from the newest of babies to the oldest of the elders. Every…last…one. HYDRA took everything from me. They take one more thing from me…and I will go out there myself to hunt them down and gut them like the pigs they are. That is why I do this.”

Bucky tapped the map, pointing at one of the bases Steve had pointed out with his left hand while his right gently took hers from where it was still tracing circles against the surface. She looked at him while he squeezed softly. Then she looked at where he was pointing.

“The facility was big. They wouldn’t have risked sending anything that big out too far without proper cover. Not with our guys in the sky up there even after Schmidt blew it to hell on purpose. They’d go back to recover whatever they could from as close as they safely could. Here. They’d head here.” He said and looked at her when she squeezed his hand back, “Whaddaya think?”

Essie looked at translated code she had and nodded, “It’s…likely. HYDRA doesn’t like giving things up.”

The room was silent as she finished speaking. It was momentary. Tanis knew it was only momentary as she collected her thoughts, memories, and words. It was a story he knew well from his many years as her Gamma.

It never got easier to hear or to think about even if it explained so much to him and others about why she had come to them, fought for them. It even explained why she was so adamant about remaining hidden and keeping their passages hidden even when not in use.

“I wasn’t bluffing. They took yet another thing from me: Him. They took Bucky…and I had enough. I was done with sitting around in a tent or a bunker or a base hunched over a desk. They needed people…ones that knew the language, the customs, the terrain to go into the forest.”

Steve looked at her, frowning, “Essie, I…”

“The Black Forest is thick. Dense. Difficult to penetrate even when it isn’t made into a defensive wall. They’d already spent roughly six months fighting one battle that saw over 33, 000 allied casualties. They wanted to prevent more so when I offered they accepted. Especially since I knew how to work a rifle and was a ‘damn good shot’. Peggy knew, Dum Dum knew and Monty knew. They begged for me to not do it.” She continued and locked her eyes on Steve’s when he looked at her, “I told them not to tell you.”

“Why?” Steve asked, frowning, “I…”

“Because you’d only blame yourself even more than you were and like you are now.” She answered while looking at him, “Bucky wasn’t your fault. He still isn’t and I am not your fault. None of it, none of this, is your fault. No one knew. They kept everything hidden about why they took my village. We knew they were running experiments after the castle, but we didn’t know what for. Until I found out when my partner, a backstabbing cunt, betrayed the entire unit to her lover…an officer under Himmler himself.”

Steve grimaced, so did Fury, “He was almost as obsessed with the occult as Schmidt was…” “Mmh…yes, and they had found the research notes from Castle de Krake that we couldn’t find. She was so happy to hand me over. I was the last one from my village. She hit me pretty hard. Then she spent days taunting me about how superior and loyal her lover was compared to Bucky before we arrived. I had the last laugh in the end. She handed me over and he put her in the same cell as me as a ‘control sample’. Something to see if the process would work with anyone or if HYDRA was onto something and not just insane thinking I had to be someone specific. The war was all but over by then…not that it mattered to them.”

Pain. So much pain. Burning. Inside. Cold. Outside.

Her blood felt like it was boiling yet she was shivering as she lay strapped to the gurney. Tubes. So many tubes running in and out of her body. Red with blood that went in and that went out. So much blood.

Then another needle.

Track marks dotted up and down her arms in such a multitude they blurred together. She didn’t feel a sting. She barely felt the metal plunge into her skin, but she felt the injection.

She always did.

Liquid fire flooded into her system and a scream burst past her lips.

One of them protested, “But the Fuhrer-”

“Forget that. It doesn’t matter now. We’re almost there. We almost have it. What they failed to do. If we can wake up the dormant potential in her…imagine what we could do to others! Imagine what we could do with her if the mixture takes hold and integrates with her on a cellular level. She’s perfect. Everything, Hans, everything we put in she adapts to. It’s beautiful to watch.”

“They went through an entire village for you?” Natasha asked, her tone dry yet hoarse, and Essie’s lips turned upwards slightly as she shook her head.

“No, little spider, they went through my entire village…one…by…one…until I was the last one left. The only one left. Steve and the others found some of the reports in Castle de Krake.”

“Everything they did to them…they did to you?” Steve asked and she nodded.

“Yes. Everything. I just happened to be the one to survive ‘The Awakening’. They weren’t trying to recreate the super soldier serum Erskine made. What they concocted was to reawaken what we now know to be dormant genes in my genetic code. Ancient ones that tied the entire village to a race of hidden, deeply misunderstood, people.” She replied and took a deep breath in, “Most people confuse them with werewolves, but they’re not what you think of as werewolves. That is a more involuntary thing. A Wolf is born. Not made. Unless you’re me, but even then I’m not a full Wolf.”

“You’re enough of one.” Tanis said as he glanced up at her calmly, having been sitting silent until this moment, “It doesn’t matter what else they shot you up with. You are enough of a Wolf for us.”

“Be that as it may, Tanis…truth is that I am not a full Wolf. I don’t even really know what I am. Even after 70 years of being…this…I don’t know what I am. I’m mostly Wolf, but there are other things, too.”

“You could find out…” Fury said and she scowled.

“I am not submitting my blood into any of your databases for investigation. I had enough of that in Germany and enough of that after. No more.” She retorted and checked her watch again.

“You got a date, or something?” he asked and she looked at him flatly, “Just curious…”

“For a man with a collapsed lung and no accelerated healing factor…you’re very talkative.”

“Considering it was your boyfriend that fired several slugs into me…I think we still need some more answers.”

“Considering you’re annoying…I almost wish he aimed higher and that I didn’t offer you a place to hide.” Essie retorted seamlessly with a smile at him and several blinks of her silver eyes, “I don’t particularly like recounting the endless experiments that turned me into this or what I was when Eric found me.”

“Eric?” Steve asked, thinking.

“The vampires you fought back in the war screamed about him by the name of ‘Daywalker’.” She said and he nodded that it was familiar and Fury spoke.

“Blade. He doesn’t work well with others.”

“He can when he feels like it, which isn’t exactly often.” Essie said and went on, “He was part of the Secret Invaders that went after a U-Boat made with cursed metal and other things that got possessed earlier in the war. You’d think they’d have learned to stop messing with things they couldn’t control or understand at some point, but no. They never did. It’s like they just had a collective thought of: ‘Yes. We are puny humans but let us mess with the occult, supernatural, extraterrestrial, and everything in between! It’ll be fiiiineee.’ Ugh. Anyway, he’s not very sociable, but that is the price he pays. He’s the one that found and got me out. I’d love to tell you all about it, but I don’t personally remember much of it.”

It was Tanis that spoke next when it was clear they didn’t want to let it go just yet, “He told us about it early on. Said he was tipped off about a base where they did ‘some pretty fucked up shit’ to people. The tip off was right. She was the only subject there by then. The last one left…in a cell…with three of their largest soldiers trying to hold her down as she screamed. He was going to intervene when the tables turned and he said the next thing he knew was that they were screaming for him to help them. ‘I’ve seen a lot of fucked up things, but that was a new level’.”

“What are you?”

“Hungry.” She answered, blood dripping down from her hands as she licked at them, sucking them clean until feral silver locked on the plate set on the table in front of him.

Blood dripped as she reached through the bars at it.

Slop.

That’s all it was.

“Hungry!” she snarled, panting desperately as she strained towards it, her body pressing into the bars harder and harder, scraping the skin, tearing it as she reached, “Please. So hungry. So hungry.”

Vampires didn’t beg for food. Not when there were three still warm bodies to feed from. Teeth weren’t right either.

He picked up the plate. Then the keys.

A mistake.

He was fast, but so was she.

“I vaguely remember locking him the cell and interrogating him while eating what they called food. Somehow he convinced me to let him out. I honestly don’t remember how. I just remember it being a few days later when I asked what his name was while holding a skewered rabbit he had cooked over the fire and handed me. I remember him wincing a bit at the crunching because I ate the whole thing, bones and all.” Essie said and hopped down off her perch, “Delta should be getting back soon. I’m going to go debrief her.”

“I can do that.” Tanis said and she shook her head.

“No. You stay.” She answered, silver locked on amber for a second yet it was enough for Steve to see something pass between them, silent and understood as Tanis nodded.

“Yes, Alpha.” He said and waited for her to leave the room before speaking, “She’s not going to talk to you about everything. It took us…about…two years to get the whole story out of her and we didn’t enter her story until about 23 years ago.”

Natasha shifted in her seat as she looked at him, “Then maybe you can fill in the gaps. Why is she codenamed Howling Witch by HYDRA if she wasn’t made by them? I found a file on her once in a database, it was mostly redacted, then it was deleted. She won’t answer anything directly.”

“Would you? You’re Red Room. We know what that is. That you are one demanding clear answers and transparency…well…it’s a bit funny, honey.” Tanis replied as he sat in his seat, head cocked to the side as he blinked playfully yet also seriously, “The scientists responsible for her ‘Awakening’ were using HYDRA research and methods, but only scraps they’d picked up from the wreckage or smuggled out from other bases. There was a lot of fighting between divisions. They’re responsible for only half of what she is. Eric busted her out from the SS facility, spent a few months with her, getting her stabilized enough to take her around people, and took her back to England. To their pre-cursor to SHEILD. So he thought. Guess who they really were.”

Steve sighed and shook his head, “HYDRA.”

A/N: Long but needed. Next chapter will be up, hopefully, Thursday. I might have things to do on Friday. There's a lot of...uncertainty about this week with my schedule so just bear with me. The next chapter will be shorter, more like the first in length.

I appreciate every like, kudos, bookmark, and view, I sincerely do, but if you really want to let me know you want more of this: comment, reblog to share my work, send asks, tell me.

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