It turns out that Shara is right: the Winter Soldier finds Jyn before she can find him. The one thing he can't be counting on is how ready she is, how much she needs this.

She practically vibrates with energy the second he comes into her vision, a dark blur on the road in front of them. An almost ugly grin cuts across Jyn's face as she presses her foot down on the gas pedal, accelerating the SUV to a dangerous speed. Next to her, Shara sucks in a breath and presses herself back into the seat, her eyes glued on the figure ahead of them.

"Jyn," she says warningly, "you're mad."

Maybe she is, just a little, but she also hasn't felt this alive since she first crossed paths with him. This is someone on her level, someone that she won't have to hold back to fight, and she can't wait to feel that strength again. Jyn honestly felt like she was living just to live, little to no sense of purpose guiding her through her time working in S.H.I. ., but this means something to her. This is only something she can deal with. This was meant for her; he was meant for her to find.

It was easier to lure him out than expected. A ghost even in the spy world, Jyn knew that she would not be able to play at his game and find him. She wasn't a spy. That was always where Cassian stepped in. He taught her what he could during the small amount of time that they shared together, but it wasn't enough to find and capture a man even Shara couldn't compete with.

And so Jyn used what she had available: the woman that the Winter tried and failed to kill. It was the only time he ever failed to follow through a kill. She knew it would burn through him, just as it would her. Even with the warning bells going off in his head, he wouldn't be able to resist himself. He had to kill her - he would kill her - and Jyn would be there to meet him.

"I can't believe you're using Senator Organa as bait for the most accomplished assassin in history," Shara proclaimed after the debriefing, shaking her head the whole time. Likely she couldn't believe that Organa agreed to it after only debating it for a few minutes.

"It's our only choice to lure him out in the open," was what Jyn said.

It's what Cassian would do, was what she thought.

Now that she's in a car barreling towards a man that is lifting a rifle in her direction, Jyn is doing things her way. Cassian would've berated her for such reckless behavior, but it's what made her who she is. She's good at coming up with plans, but most of those plans consist of her attacking this head on. For as long as she can remember, she has been a scrapper and ready to throw herself into a fight. Not even the super soldier serum could change that, no matter how much it changed her body.

The first bullet pierces the bullet proof windshield, but doesn't break it. If it had, the bullet would've gone straight through her head. She didn't even move, only gripped the wheel tighter. The second bullet hits a few inches to the left of the first, still not shattering it, but she knows that it's close to giving up.

Shara slams her hands down on the dashboard. "Jyn!"

The third bullet shatters the windshield, but she dodges out of the way at the last second. Her headrest now has a hole in it. She hasn't felt this alive since coming out of the ice. Before he can take another shot or Shara bolts, Jyn jerks on the emergency brake and slams the brake pedal, spinning the wheel hard to the right at the same time. It's a miracle the vehicle doesn't flip, only because she jerks the wheel back at the last second, so that they slide around the Winter Soldier instead of colliding with him.

For a brief moment - one that feels like a century, a lifetime, the single most important moment in her life - Jyn and the Winter Soldier are side-by-side, him standing coolly in the middle of the highway, her sitting in the SUV, watching him out of the driver side window. His eyes are cold and hard above the mask covering half his face, not a hint emotion, but she can't help but smile breathlessly. There's only a foot in between them. She could reach out and touch his face with her fingertips.

Instead, she points a gun at him, something Captain America isn't known for doing.

He doesn't dodge the gun, like she thought he would, but actually leaps forward and grasps hold of the vehicle, one hand gripping the edge of the window and the otherdigging into the metal of the door, like he's attaching himself to its side. Shara pulls a gun, but he actually reaches into the car, across from her, and snatches it out of her hand. Jyn grabs his arm and slams it into the wheel, attempting to dislodge the weapon, but he holds onto it with an iron grip. Bullets lodge into the glove box and the passenger side window, shattering the glass, but none manage to graze Shara.

"Get out!" Jyn yells at her teammate, never once looking away from the Winter Soldier's fiercely intent face.

Shara grips the handle of her door tightly. "Jyn-"

"GO!"

She doesn't need telling twice. Taking one last glance at the power struggle and then whatever lies ahead of them on the street, Shara kicks the door open and rolls out, tumbling rough into the street. She'll be fine though. She's bailed out of faster cars. Once Shara is free, Jyn takes hold of the wheel again and jerks. This time, she doesn't move to correct it. The vehicle spins and then flips sideways into a barrel roll, taking the Winter Soldier down with it.

Her eyes never leave his.

They look familiar, is Jyn's last thought before the vehicle slams into the ground and she braces herself as it flips round and round uncontrollably.

Metal screams, sparks fly, glass breaks. This SUV was built specifically by S.H.I.E.L.D. to sustain serious damage and it does just that, but people weren't meant to be tossed around in a flipping vehicle like a towel in a dryer. Luckily, Jyn was also built to sustain serious damage. Even before the super soldier serum was injected into her frail body, she bent and she broke and she cracked, but she always came back for more, ready to fight even while she was bleeding. It's what makes her a good soldier now. It's not that she knows how to break; it's that she knows how to fix herself.

Once the vehicle finally comes to a stop, resting upside down and leaking smoke, Jyn dislodges herself. She kicks the door until it flies open and then crawls out, spotting the Winter Soldier pulling himself to his feet not far from her. He looks battered, a piece of glass sticking out of his arm, but doesn't even flinch when he pulls the glass out and throws it at her like a dagger, forcing her to duck. She spins out of the way right as he rushes towards her, slamming a knee into the side of the SUV where she once stood, denting the metal.

When she steps away from the vehicle, gathering herself into a fighting position, he turns around to face her. For a brief moment, neither of them move as they size one another up. Time stands still. Warning sirens and screams fade into nothing around them. Even the smoke seems to come to a stop. When he starts to move again, he steps around her like a lion circling its prey and her eyes follow his every step. She watches the way he breathes, his chest rising and falling steadily under his body armor, how his eyes latch onto her doggedly, wanting, needing, almost feral and desperate.

To be honest, she's somewhat taken aback to find that in his gaze. Maybe it wasn't so much of the Senator that dragged him out of the dark as it was Jyn herself.

She sees herself in him, but the reflection is twisted and awful. He's what she could've become if she was created in the wrong hands, guided by the wrong people. Cassian said she had a good heart - it was why she was selected over people more physically capable, less damaged - but in a different world, she could've become the Winter Soldier. That fight is in her blood.

Some people might try to talk him down. Jyn knows that it's pointless. Could anyone talk her out of fighting?

"Hesitant, are you?" Jyn taunts, unable to help herself. "Scared?"

She's never met someone that is at her level and she knows instinctively, judging from the way that he hounds her more carefully than what she read in old reports of his attacks, that he's never met his match either. Something flickers in his dark brown eyes, something she thinks she recognizes, if only for a moment, before it's gone, replaced by that cold anger again that she's come to associate with him. Excitement sings in her bones. Maybe she is mad.

He pulls a sharp, coal-like dagger out of a sheath at his side, gripping the handle like he might try to dig into her with it, and then he attacks. He's more graceful than most would've expected, but he's harsher than her. He bears down on her like an enraged animal, never letting up, forcing her back and to hop out of the way instead of countering. The knife becomes an extension of him; even when it leaves his grip to switch to his other hand, floating in the air for less than a second, it never seems to part from him. His movements are fluid and precise yet unpredictable as well.

Suddenly, he kicks her, full on in the chest, and she goes flying back into a car, damaging it just as bad as a car collision. She doesn't have time to think about it or feel guilty though, not when he's moving to stab her in the chest, so she rips the now flimsy car door off its hinges and uses it has a shield. The knife digs into the metal, but it doesn't pierce it completely. He goes to rip the make-shift shield away from her at the same time that she lunges for the knife.

Instead of pulling on his wrist though, she moves to wrap herself around his arm, jerking him down hard to the ground. Using her body weight and momentum, she rolls and slams him down, his arm trapped in between her legs, and pulls hard until he lets go out of the knife more out of reaction than pain. It only lasts for a second though before he reaches to grab at her, but she lets go and grabs his other wrist before it gets to her. The resistance of the metal that makes up this arm shocks her, but she uses her position and strength to her advantage, slamming it back against the concrete and scrambling over top of him.

She should kill him right now. Knock him unconscious. Strangle him. Anything to put him out of commission.

But she looks down at his face and she looks into his eyes and the need to know crowds out any other thought. It's a stupid one, the kind of thought that gets a person killed in action, but she doesn't care. This man, the Winter Soldier, is a ghost, and he's been haunting her dreams, awake and asleep, for weeks. Putting a face to him and maybe even a name will quiet her mind.

(There's also the thought that killing her mirror, her match, that makes her feel terribly alone and even scared. She doesn't want to be the only one again. She doesn't want to be unparalleled. She wants to be known .)

So she does something else instead: Jyn rips off the Winter Soldier's mask.

The face staring up at her nearly makes her scream, but she clamps it down in her chest, letting her horror seep into her blood, burying her fear and grief, until she feels nothing. She swears she feels nothing. Longing doesn't stir in her gut; desperation doesn't claw at her mind; need doesn't overwhelm her mind. But the sense of loss that she thought she was getting over comes roaring back like a siren in her ears until it feels like she can't hear or see anything but the man pinned underneath her.

"Cassian?" Jyn breathes, almost a whimper, almost a cry. She buries it, like she did everything else - her past, her life, her world, her love.

He has the same angular face, the same shadow on his jaw and cheeks that burned her skin, the same nose, the same lips that she remembers all too well. Now that she sees all of him, she doesn't know why she didn't see it before. His hair is a little longer, hanging limply on his head, but it's the same hair she marveled at when her fingers glided through it. Something more painful than a knife dug its way out of her chest and just as she felt when she found out he died before the war ended she feels like she's being torn apart from the inside out.

Dark eyes that she should've known on the spot gaze up at her. Instead of the coldness she thought made him up, confusion swarms in them. It's like he's heard the name before, but he doesn't know where. It's him. It's Cassian. How can he not know his own name when she goes to sleep with it on the tip of her tongue almost every night? She wants to scream, take him by the shoulders, shake him as hard as she can until he remembers.

It's you, I thought I lost you, I thought you were dead, you're alive, I'm alive, come back, come back-

Without warning, he breaks free of her grip and clutches her throat with his cold, metal hand. He rolls them so that he's the one towering over her, dark and terrible, and she wiggles under him, devastation and fear and anger boiling inside of her. His hard stare pins her down almost as much as his weight, his thighs pressing into her sides painfully, and she might've laughed if she could breathe. How many times had she wanted him like this during the war? Hovering over her, touching her, wanting her.

And he does want her now, just not in the way she pictured then. He wants her like a predator wants its kill; he wants her like a man wants to rid himself of a nightmare, like she wanted to rid herself of the pain of losing him. It never went away. He never went away, even after he was long dead and gone, and it's just so ridiculous that he's here now, squeezing the life out of her, when she mourned him, when she gave her life to save his.

"Cassian," she gasps again, his name burning her. She paws at him, struggling for a grip, struggling to reach him, struggling to breathe. He flinches away from her when her fingertips touch his face without the intent to hurt him and his grip on her loosens for a second, just long enough to knock his hand away from her and toss him off. She rolls the side, scrambling to get to her feet, and he stays crouching, staring at her like he's only ever seen her in a dream, like he's not sure if she's real.

His voice is rough from disuse when he asks, "Who the hell is Cassian?"

Hearing his voice sends a violent shock through her, one that she could never anticipated. It's like being shot. If she were any weaker, she would've staggered to her knees. She wants to reach out to him tentatively, as if he's a wild animal that could bite her for trying to help him, but she stays very still, the pain of his question rolling over her in waves.

You are! her mind protests. You're Cassian! You helped me, you saved me, you might have loved me!

But if he doesn't even know who he is, then how the hell is going to know who she is?

She doesn't feel known anymore; she feels adrift, lost in the dark abyss of the icy ocean that became her tomb for decades, and she's lost.

Bullets ricochet around them, disrupting whatever magical spell they were both under. He actually uses his metal arm to shield himself. When Jyn glances up, she spots Shara rushing towards them, a machine gun in her hands, peppering away at him. Cassian growls like a feral animal, ready to pounce on her, but Jyn throws herself in between them and both of them stop.

"No!" Jyn screams, but she doesn't know if she's yelling at Shara or Cassian.

He's standing in front of her. Cassian is standing in front of her, alive and… What is he? Who is he? He doesn't even know. Does she still know him? Is there any part of the man she loved left in him?

Taking one last glance at her - and it's brimming with the sort of pained confusion that is filling up her soul - Cassian turns on his heels and runs away. Within seconds, he's out of sight and out of Shara's range. Once he's gone, something breaks in Jyn, like it was the only thing holding her together, and she falters against a truck.

Shara is on her in a flash, gun dropped to the ground, hands keeping her up. "Jyn, what the hell were you thinking? You just let him-"

"It was him," Jyn whispers hoarsely, eyes staring into nothing. Even with them open, all she can see is him. She closes her eyes, willing the image away, but it won't go away. If anything, he haunts her even more. His voice - she knew that voice, loved that voice, but it hurt her. He tried to kill her. He would have had Shara not intervened; Jyn isn't sure she could've stopped him right now. "It was him."

"What are you talking about? You're not making any sense."

Jyn's eyes snap open and she shoves Shara away. "It was him - it was Cassian ." This time, when laughter bubbles up, she lets it come out, cold and mirthless, filled with rage. What did they do to him? Who did it to him? Her fists clench at her side and she almost turns to slam it into the truck, but barely holds herself back. She wants to break something, but the only thing she can think to break is herself.

Realization dawns on Shara as a horrified look crosses her face. "That can't be possible. He's dead."

Jyn rubs her face, hiding it from the world. "No, he's alive. He's the Winter Soldier."

And he tried to kill her. Wanted to kill her. She buries another scream in her hands.