The House in the Field

“Hi you’ve reached the voicemail of Ava. I can’t come to the phone right now, so leave your message and I’ll try to pay attention to who you are.” The softness of her voice rang out.
“Ava it’s me. Again. Please answer your phone, I want to know you are both ok. I don’t want the last time I saw you to be the last conversation we had. I’m sorry that I shouted at you, I know you are just doing what you think is best, but, I’m scared. I need to know you are both ok. I need you to know that I love you both more than anything and protecting my girls is the reason I’m doing this. I love you Ava Barnes and I will come find you. Give my little lady a kiss for me.” Bucky spoke out into the device that Natasha had handed him for the 140th time. He’d been ringing her 10 times a day for the past two weeks they’d been gone. The mission had been planned and finely tuned so that any possibility was covered, or, so they thought. He wasn’t sure if Ava was purposely ignoring him or if she genuinely didn’t have her phone on her, but, he felt like he’d lost part of himself.
“You sure you want to go ahead with this?” Steve asked him as they boarded the jet that Clint was piloting.
“I need to. I need to prove he can’t control me anymore. He was the one who designed the serum that was injected into Ava. He’s hurt my family far too much for me to sit this one out.” He looked over at his best friend who just nodded. They were going after the person known only as the Colonel who had carried on with HYDRA when the original leaders had moved on. He was ruthless and wicked; he was the one who carried out the experiments on Bucky when he was only a teenager, he was the one who had instructed for Ava to be injected by the doctor when she was captured, he was the one who attempted to kill many of SHIELD’s highest ranking officers. The team buckled in ready for take-off to the location that they knew he was going to be in. They’d studied him and knew his routine inside out, he was a creature of habit. Bucky was terrified that this could be his last mission, he was terrified of the harm the other members of the team were walking into; but, he had a much bigger reason to fight then for his freedom, he needed his family back.

“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue.” Ava sang softly to a dozing Ida who was snuggled up to the soft penguin teddy that Bucky had bought her. Wherever Ida went so did the penguin and Ava smiled sadly over at the little girl. She hated what she had done to Bucky by tearing him away from Ida the way she did, but she couldn’t risk the innocent’s life. She knew first-hand what the Colonel was capable of. All those years ago when she was hunting for clues on Bucky she was taken in by him and forced to do tasks she wasn’t proud of. Tony always commented on how she was a whiz when it came to computer systems and thankfully never asked too many questions on how she developed them skills. It was down to the Colonel, he had her hack her way into the US security systems to discover their secrets, their weapons that Howard Stark was developing, and more importantly their weak spots. He often had her punished if she didn’t discover anything he considered of use. She shivered at the memories of the punishments and she could still feel the marks that littered her body for weeks on end when he was at his most brutalist. He forced her fears out of her and she knew that with a flick of a switch he could get Bucky to use them fears against her. Fears never fully disappear people can tell you that you can work past that, but, where one gets crossed off the list a new one is added and this case Ava’s fear was losing her family. She promised that she would protect Ida at any cost and the assumption was that she would be strong enough to stop Bucky if he ever flipped into the Winter Soldier mode, but, unbeknown to the rest of the team that wasn’t the case. Since she had given birth to Ida her strength had weakened dramatically. She couldn’t even unscrew the cap off a bottle. Her mind powers were no better; she managed to control Steve into dropping his pants, but, that was more manipulation. She had tried on Bucky but noticed he was unaffected; she saw Steve was preoccupied with trying to find a way to calm the tensions down so he wasn’t really in control of his mind thus allowing her to take control of an aspect of it. She knew she could get into Bucky’s head, but, not no more; and if she couldn’t get into her husband’s head then she had no chance of getting into a charging assassin’s head. So she ran away, to protect her baby. She’d gone to where Bucky’s childhood house once stood, it was knocked down in late 2010 and there stood a beautiful hotel in its place. Back when they were kids she always mentioned how one day she would get to go inside his house, she never did; he was deployed before she had the chance to even meet his family, but, now she finally got the closest she was ever going to be to it. She prayed Bucky would come out of this mission unscathed and remember the memory, so he could find her, there was no way she could tell him in fear that they’d find her. She also, knew there was a chance that Bucky would find out exactly why she was so against going after him, she could pretend it was because of what he’d done to her husband; but, you don’t get cut that deep and not feel scared or resentful.

She’d just settled down on the double bed, lay on her side watching Ida in her cot, she was calmed for a moment by the youngsters soft breathing, that was until there was a knock on the door. Jumping up she grabbed the gun Bucky had given to her all those years ago and walked over to the door, the gun resting in the middle of it ready to fire should things go south. She stood on her tip toes to look through the peephole and noticed the figure looking down hiding their face, she glanced over at the sleeping baby before asking who it was in Russian, her finger resting on the trigger. The response came in the form of ‘your friend’ in a familiar American accent as Ava slowly lowered the gun opening the door and seeing the blue of the visitor’s eyes. “Maria.” She smiled slowly, “how did you find me?” She asked opening the door wider and letting her in.
“Lucky guess. I’ve been sent to protect you.” She smiled over at the other female sympathetically. “By Steve.” She answered Ava’s next question without the words even leaving her mouth. “He doesn’t know where you are, he asked me to find you and look out for you. How about you go take a shower and I’ll keep my eye on this little one? No offence you look like shit.” She told her with a soft laugh. “Trust me, I’m here for you both not to try anything.” She looked at her and Ava knew she was telling the truth. She nodded slowly grabbing a change of clothes and heading to the bathroom, “are you not going to ask about the mission?” Maria’s voice rang out causing Ava to stop walking, she shook her head with her back still turned to Fury’s right hand woman, the tears already spilling. If Maria was here to protect them, then shit was about to go down.

Notes