Nowhere to Stand and Now Nowhere to Hide

Wanda thought that she knew what she and her brother were getting themselves into. That was what she kept on telling herself anyway. She and Pietro wanted to drive out the war that had taken up residence in Sokovia. They wanted their home back. Additionally, just to add more fuel to the fire, it was foreign forces just like those ones that had tragically taken their parents away from them at a young age. The riots they involved themselves in seemed to be doing very little to drive the foreigners out. That was why it seemed like a no-brainer, at least to Pietro, when Doctor List approached them not long after one of the riots had been broken up. He was offering them the very power that they both sought, the power to drive out the war and foreign forces from Sokovia. It was the exact solution to their problems that they’d been searching for, and that was the argument that Pietro had made to Wanda when she’d hesitated in taking List’s offer. "It will be alright." He'd told her. "We need to do this for them. It is what they would have wanted us to do." That was the only convincing that she’d needed, and she hadn’t turned her back since.

Truthfully, she didn’t really know what she and Pietro had agreed to. It seemed plausible, but there were just so many unanswered questions. She didn’t ask any of them though. There was just this feeling in the pit of her stomach that stopped her from doing so. All she really knew was that she’d be damned if she let her brother agree to something like this on his own. If he was going to do this, then so was she. And his reason for wanting to do this made perfect sense to her anyway. If it wasn’t for war, if it wasn’t for the foreigners, if it wasn’t for the Avengers, their parents would still be alive. And that truly was enough reason for her right there.

The tests began almost immediately. She and Pietro, along with the other volunteers, were brought to a facility deep within the Sokovian forest, and it was there that she truly knew that the questions she sought answers for were ones that she would never actually pose. Her brother seemed much less perceptive about it all, so she didn’t even bother mentioning that she still felt somewhat skeptical about this whole ordeal. When they learned that the other volunteers hadn’t survived the tests, that was what List and the other scientists called them but she knew that they were experiments and that she and Pietro had quickly become lab rats, she realized that they were in way over their heads.

Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. Furnace. Nine. Benign. Homecoming. One. Freight Car.

Soldat.

Ready to comply.

Sokovia was classified, need to know. The Winter Soldier needed to know. The mission was a new one; Take the package to List. Kill anyone else who tries to take it. Once the stone was in the soldier's possession, Hydra tested him. A lab assistant tried to take it from him, and soon had a hand clamped down around his throat as he was lifted off his feet. They were satisfied enough to send the soldier out with a team. They weren't his equals, and they all knew it. They were simply there as a backup. None of them would interfere unless it was necessary. Instead, they all sat in the back of the truck, guns at the ready as they transported the container across countries. No one spoke. The soldier's mask remained firmly over the lower half of his face the entire time.

It took a few days and several different trucks for them to reach Sokovia. Hydra wasn't willing to take any chances with this delivery. Everything had been planned down to the second, and they were relying on the soldier to execute the plan meticulously. Even if he had to kill his team along the way, the package needed to be delivered to the Sokovia base.

He was the only one to enter the research facility. No one else was high enough clearance to be permitted access. Even if they were, they were given strict orders not to stick around. The soldier took the armored container as he left the truck, and he was soon alone. The other's had a long journey back to Siberia without him. He made the climb to the research center with his metal hand wrapped around the containers handle, and a knife in his other hand.

There was very little resistance to him once he reached the base. A few Hydra guards looked uncertain, having heard stories of him, but they let him through. There was no need to check who he was, or why he was there. No one escorted him into the makeshift research labs. He knew where he was going, and who he was looking for.

The lab was dimly lit, typical for Hydra. But as the soldier set the armoured box down on the table in front of Doctor List, his eyes drifted to something else. There were two cells, both fronted by thick panels of glass. Each one contained an individual. The soldier knew the looks on their faces well enough. They were Hydra experiments. He had seen it with the other soldiers in Siberia, and he didn't expect Sokovia to be any different. Even he didn't know how many experiments Hydra was creating across the globe.

"Soldat," List spoke, setting his hands on the container. It was only then that the soldier took his own hand away. "Danke."

Even as List spoke, the soldier's eyes remained fixed on the cells in front of him. A boy and a girl. It was nothing unusual. Hydra took whoever they could without caring about much else.

Wanda didn’t know how long she and Pietro had been there. There were no clocks on any of the walls and no windows for her to use the amount of sunlight, or lack there of, as a guide. She was separated from her brother not long after the tests began. That alone made her a bit uneasy.

Pietro was the only family she had left. She took care of him and he of her. How was she going to take care of him when she was hardly ever around him anymore? Why had they been separated in the first place? What plans did they have for them? Those were not the only unanswered questions that she had, there were numerous others that she kept to herself in fear of two things: the answers she might receive and the reactions to said questions.

Some days were worse than others. The tests began as ones of physicality and ability. The way Wanda saw it, they were trying to weed out the weaker individuals. It wasn’t until the injections and experiments began that the weak links were really disposed of though. Wanda had thought that the loss of her parents had been painful, but nothing could have prepared her for the amount of pain she endured once the real tests began.

It all made sense now. This was why the facility was so far off the beaten path. No one could discover what was being done there, and it seemed as though no one would. Only those who were to know the location of the facility knew it. He was one of them.

He held a container in his hands. A few of the scientists seemed to stare at him in awe, others in fear, and some a combination of the two. List was the only one to approach him. As the scientist did so, he finally glanced in her direction and Wanda was finally able to get a good look at him. A mask covered the bottom half of his face. His hair was dark and a bit on the longer side. What really caught her attention wasn’t the metal arm, but his eyes.

They were a piercing shade of blue that she could make out even from where she was. They were cold and harsh, but there appeared to be a flicker of something behind them when he looked towards the cells she and her brother were being kept in. She couldn’t quite make out what it was, but it was definitely the flicker of some sort of an emotion.