Fifteen minutes after the first red dot appeared, JARVIS made a startled, alarmed noise, so human that everyone looked up at the ceiling and tensed.

"J?" Tony asked slowly.

"Sir," JARVIS responded immediately. "Sir, I do not know what to do. My protocols do not allow me to make a decision."

Tony arched an eyebrow. "We haven't had this problem in years, JARVIS, just what did you find?"

"JARVIS, belay that," Stevie said. "What are your choices, and why do your protocols not allow you to do either?"

"Sir told me to relay everything I deem of importance to him, but my protocols are to keep him from harm."

Tony inhaled once and groped for a chair to sink into. "My parents. Jarvis. Isn't it?"

There was an extremely long pause, and then, very apologetically, JARVIS said, "Yes, Sir."

"Fuck," Tony breathed. "You're right, J, don't show that to me."

"Tony?" Bruce asked.

"The Winter Soldier assassinated his parents," Natasha said flatly.

"And Jarvis by association," Tony said. "Cap, Stevie…he knew Howard pretty well. What if there's not enough of him to save?"

There was another long pause, and then Stevie stuttered out, "Th-then we p-put him down. Wi-with kindness, if possible."

Natasha clutched Stevie's hands in her own. "There's not going to be much at first, if there's any. Wait a week, until he's been out of cryostasis for a long enough time for the healing factor to kick in. You might see…more."

"He won't be the same," Clint said. "You know that, right? He'll never be the same after seventy years of brainwashing and torture, no matter the healing factor."

Stevie nodded silently. Then:

"Guys, how are we going to hold him?" Bruce asked.

Tony snorted a bit. "Hey, do you mind if we rent out your room?"

"Not at all."

It didn't actually take STITCH long to locate the Winter Soldier. Debating on how to get in was a bigger question. Getting through over a dozen security levels, both physical and digital, and only half of which legally existed was a challenge.

But not much of one, once they decided that coming in like a bull through the china shop wasn't going to make much of a difference, considering that they would be coming out like a bull through the china shop regardless of the method of entry.

"It makes it a difference of minutes between when HYDRA realizes that we've caught on," Clint eventually summed up. "I say we blow through the place, and anyone actively in our way is a bad guy. Anyone in the way but trying to get out of it is a confused and alarmed agent."

"Fair enough," Tony said. "Stevie and I at the front, Clint and Tasha wherever the hell they wanna be, and Bruce in the back as backup in case the Hulk is needed?"

"Who's going to be flying the Quinjet?" Clint asked. "Actually, I'm flying the Quinjet. I'm not much use in hallways. If necessary, I can provide a quick getaway with the Quinjet."

"Okay, suit up, let's go," Stevie said, clapping her hands.

They scattered.

What followed was the most terrifyingly efficient takedown of all of SHIELD's history, and possibly in all of HYDRA's history, too. Tony and Steve kept it brutally non-lethal, with Natasha electrocuting anyone who tried to clean up. Bruce wandered along a little ways behind them, smiling cheerily at bewildered and alarmed SHIELD agents and managing to alarm them even more.

When they got into the more restricted areas, they encountered more resistance. Kicking in doors arbitrarily, since there were no cameras or labels in this area for any of the AIs to direct them towards, Stevie evidently kicked open the wrong one.

Why?

Because all of a sudden, Stevie was on the floor with a shining metal hand wrapped around her throat and her thighs bracketed by calves clothed in reinforced black leather.

How the hell does he move in LEATHER? Stevie wondered errantly, before managing to tuck a leg under the man's chest and push him off of her through extensive use of brute force.

"Crap!" Tony yelped, jumping out of the way of flying bodies.

The man rolled into a crouched position, obviously sizing her up again, and Stevie got her first clear look at his face.

"Bucky," she said softly.

An eyebrow quirked. "Who the hell is Bucky?"

Then he launched himself back at her, and she gasped out her answer in between dodges and attempted punches: "He's been—" she ducked "—my best—" she lunged with a punch, failed epically "—goddamn—" she spun out of the way and ran into a wall "—friend—" she ducked again and his punch went through said wall "—since—" he clipped her with a knife that appeared out of nowhere, what the— "—nineteen, ouch, that hurt—"

"Sit still," the Winter Soldier muttered.

"Are you listening to me?!" Stevie demanded, planting a foot in his chest and shoving him away to get a bit of a breather. "Bucky's my best goddamn friend since nineteen twenty-seven! Also, how the hell are you moving that well in leather?"

There was some spluttered laughter by the door, where Bruce was watching.

The Winter Soldier whipped around at the sound, so incongruous with the rest of the scene, and then Natasha had two syringes stabbed into his neck: one for each side.

"Oh, Natalia, you—" something in Russian that probably amounted to the equivalent of "little shit". Then he turned back around and launched himself at her, blades flashing. Natasha's Widow Bites crackled with electricity and then they were a blur of silver and black and the red of Natasha's hair, something that even Stevie's enhanced eyes couldn't keep up with.

Then they broke apart, grinning ferally, and Stevie took advantage of the lull to scramble around the Soldier, grapple with him for a moment, and manage to perform her own rendition of Natasha's trademark of flipping people with her thighs. But the thing was: Stevie flipped him into the ceiling. He slammed into it hard enough to make two of the cheap plaster tiles fall out and half break on the floor and the Soldier, who'd had a second impact to look forward to.

Amazingly enough, the Soldier rolled over and shoved Tony through the one undamaged wall with a massive shove from his legs, and then proceeded to laugh.

To laugh. Like it was the best goddamn thing in the world to get bodily slammed into the ceiling and then summarily dropped onto the floor.

Even Natasha raised both eyebrows.

"Stevie," he said between guffaws, causing both women and Bruce to jump at least six inches, "how the fuck didja do that?"

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand there was the Brooklyn.

"Is this guy for real?" Bruce asked in disbelief.

That was when Iron Man blasted through the wall and tackled the Winter Soldier through the opposite wall.

Stevie covered her nose and mouth to protect it from the floating dust of displaced drywall. "Iron Man, please report," she yelled, muffled.

"He could be faking, but I think he's out," Tony said in the comm.

"It only took two elephant tranquilizers and massive amounts of blunt force trauma," Natasha said dryly.

Stevie sighed. "Pack 'im up, people, let's get out of here before reinforcements arrive."

While Tony was running rings around pissed off SHIELD authority, Stevie and Natasha were waiting for Bucky—or the Winter Soldier—to wake up.

"They did something to him, obviously. I don't really think that it was active torture," the redhead said quietly. "He never shied away from me when we went on our missions. He wasn't the most tactile creature on planet Earth, but he didn't flinch away if I came up behind him and touched him. He's a brilliant tactician. He makes his own moves, the Red Room allowed him to run his own missions…mostly because if he didn't agree with the plan, he'd go off and do whatever the hell he wanted without a word to whoever was running the mission."

"That's something, at least," Stevie sighed. "He was a brilliant tactician even when I first met him; the army utilized the hell out of it. He was one of the very rare snipers in the war because he could see the entire picture and save his original plan from up high. We didn't have the earpieces back then, so we tried to rely on plans more than flying by the seat of our pants."

"He was the one who drew up the plans?" Natasha asked.

Stevie made a wiggle motion with her flat hand. "Sort of. When we first started, the Howling Commandos sat down and hashed out several plans that we could use regularly. When it came time to actually use them, Bucky and I would toss ideas back and forth over a map until we had a modification of whatever plan we had hashed out before, and then I'd tell the rest."

Bucky's breathing hitched for a moment and then leveled out again.

Natasha sent Stevie a warning look. Stevie shrugged.

"We used to name the plans after the streets in Brooklyn. Ninety percent of the time, it was because the plan was vaguely reminiscent of whatever fight I had gotten into on that street," Stevie said, laughing a little. "The other ten percent of the time, the street had a store with penny candy."

Natasha gave Stevie an odd look.

"What?" Stevie asked. "We were hungry. It'd been lunchtime."

The assassin gave the blonde a half-laugh, half-sigh. "And now you and Clint will get together and start naming plans after types of pizza. Now I know what to look forward to."

Stevie burst into giggles. "Yes, of course, I can see that going down. 'Plan Pepperoni, guys!'"

Natasha snorted, then fell out laughing. "That sounds ridiculous."

"I felt ridiculous," Stevie said. "But now I have to use at least that one, so I can get all the villains to stop for a moment and ponder on the question of whether or not Captain America should be institutionalized."

"You should be institutionalized," Bucky—or the Winter Soldier—said. "You run around in bright colors in the middle of a fight. I do not have to wonder whether or not you should be."

"You're either my best friend—whom I dearly love, but don't really care about what he thinks that I should wear—or you're supposed to be my enemy—whom I'm not really sure about yet, but I still really don't care about your opinion of my fashion choices," Stevie said. "In other words, suck it up, jerk. I ain't goin' anywhere."

Natasha's eyebrows arched.

"You are no friend of mine," the Winter Soldier said calmly.

"That's okay," Stevie said. "I'll just win you over with my bad fashion choices and my inability to keep my nose out of other people's business, just like I did last time."

Both assassins looked at her. Both looked disbelieving.

Stevie grinned from ear to ear. Natasha blanched and the Soldier blinked twice.

"Get your scrawny ass out of here," Bucky said grumpily. "Go do something constructive. Or destructive."

Stevie stood up and gave him a sloppy salute. "Yes, sir, Sargent!"

End.

:)

-Ruby