The warehouse op had gone smooth. Too smooth.

No booby traps, no kill switches. Just a bunch of washed-up Hydra cosplayers trying to peddle stolen biotech and delusions of grandeur. They hadn’t stood a chance. Not with her on the field.

He’d seen what she could do. Everyone had. Not just the phasing, or the way she could flicker through matter like she didn’t belong to any world, not even this one. It was the way she fought. Fast. Cold. Precise.

Like she’d been trained with a scalpel to her spine.

Bucky hadn’t said much during the mission. He’d learned it was better that way—let her work, let her breathe. But now the fight was over, and she was hovering above the debris, body barely solid, like her molecules didn’t know where to settle.

Sunlight filtered through broken rafters, catching on the staples in her neck. She hadn’t bothered to hide them today.

She didn’t bother to hide a lot anymore.

He tracked her gaze.

Across the street, a man and a girl sat on a cracked stone ledge, sharing a melting cone of ice cream. The dad laughed when the girl smeared chocolate on his shirt, mock-scolding her as she squealed and tried to run. He caught her easily and spun her in a slow, playful circle.

She watched them like she didn’t know what she was looking at. Head tilted, expression unreadable. Her arms were wrapped around herself, but not in a way that suggested cold.

She was holding her ribs together.

Bucky didn’t need her file to know why.

But he’d read it anyway. Every word.

Every procedure.

Every test.

Every time they’d cut into her nervous system and rewired her like a machine—just to see if they could. Her powers hadn’t come from a freak accident or a radioactive ghost. They came from scalpels and electricity and months strapped to metal tables in a black-site lab that didn't even have a name.

She wasn’t lucky.

She was a miracle born out of torture.

And no one should have to live with that.

He took a step toward her. Then another. When he was close enough, he murmured, “You seeing something out there, or just stuck?”

She didn’t flinch. She never did with him.

Her voice was toneless. “He wiped her mouth with his sleeve.”

Bucky frowned slightly. “Yeah?”

“No gloves,” she added. “Didn’t even hesitate.”

He followed her eyes again. The man was laughing, like nothing had ever hurt him.

Her voice was flatter now, dull at the edges. “I used to scream when they touched my mouth.”

That made something crawl up his spine. He didn’t ask why. He knew why.

“They said it helped with calibration. If you couldn’t scream, it meant the larynx was fusing wrong. They didn’t want another meltdown.”

Bucky’s jaw tightened. She didn’t say it to shock him. She didn’t say it like it was awful.

She said it like it was normal.

Like someone explaining how to make toast.

He didn’t know what to say—what could he say? She wasn't crying. She wasn’t trembling.

She just looked… hollowed out. Like the fight had carved something clean out of her, and she hadn’t noticed it was missing yet.

So he said the only thing he could think of.

“They were monsters.”

She blinked. Slowly. Like she was trying to decide if that statement was true.

“They were my parents,” she said, at last.

“They don’t get to be called that,” Bucky replied, firm. “Not after what they did to you.”

Another blink. The glow around her dimmed.

“I don’t know how to hate them,” she said.

He looked at her, and his voice gentled. “You don’t have to. Just don’t let them own anything else.”