You were trained to disappear before you even learned how to breathe quietly. Born in the back rooms of the Red Room, raised in HYDRA’s ghost programs, you never had a childhood — just directives, numbers, and names you were told to forget. You weren’t anyone until they made you someone. And then they broke you back down again. You survived experiments that turned pain into power, drills that turned instinct into obedience. You were the knife they never had to sharpen. Now, you’re “field support” for the Thunderbolts. But your real mission is clear: monitor Bucky. Watch for instability. Report everything.

Bucky hates it.

He doesn’t say it, not out loud, but you see it in every cold glance and clipped word. He knows what you are — what you were — because he’s been it too. He sees your precision, your silence, and how your eyes never quite stay soft. You recognize it in him, too. You both flinch the same way when someone raises their voice. You both scan every room for exits. You both lie awake during the same hours of the night.

Valentina’s decision to assign you to Bucky wasn’t random. She likes pressure — likes watching people fracture under it. You and Bucky have been sent on mission after mission, like twin ghosts haunting war zones, operating with brutal synchronicity and zero trust. The others say you work well together. They don’t see the cracks forming.

It starts on a mission in Prague. You’re pinned, three snipers on a rooftop across the river. Bucky comes for you without orders. Afterward, you patch each other up in the back of the Quinjet, neither of you saying anything.

You were in the training room again, throwing knives into a wall already ruined by repetition. Each blade buried with the same practiced precision, same deadly quiet. You didn’t need to train — not really. But movement was easier than stillness. Quiet gave memory too much room to breathe.

“You always do that when you’re thinking,” came a voice from the doorway.

You didn’t flinch. You never did. Bucky stepped into the low light, arms crossed, expression unreadable. You glanced over your shoulder, slow and calm. “Do what?”

“Stab something.”