Hell Bound

We were still sitting on the kitchen floor when Graham walked in. Neither of us had spoken since Bucky verbalized his latest suspicion. Graham halted in the doorway and looked down at us with confusion.

“Why are you on the floor? Is this a thing we’re doing now?” he asked. He still had his book in his hands. Bucky shot him an irritated glare and stood up in one quick motion. He reached his arm down to help me to my feet, and I hobbled to his side.

“Just putting stuff away,” I explained, brushing off my jeans. Then I turned to the sink to find something else to clean.

“You know I have some shirts you could probably borrow. They might be kinda small, but—that’s probably better than being half-naked all the time. I would imagine anyway.” I spun back around.

“Do you not have extra clothes in your backpack?” I asked Bucky. He shook his head slowly.

“No,” he admitted.

“What do you carry in that thing then?” He didn’t answer, but he looked at me, and I guess he just didn’t want to say it in front of Graham. “I ripped apart your only shirt?” He nodded. “I still have the ones I bought you last time you were here.”

“You bought me shirts?”

“You had even less than you have now. You kept borrowing Steve’s stuff, which looked a bit ridiculous on you. I’ll go see if I can find them.” I headed toward the hallway and passed Graham.

“Is there any reason you didn’t tell me this before?” Bucky asked before I could leave. I spun back around and smiled. He asked it in a very casual but almost suspicious tone. He was standing in my kitchen, not wearing a shirt. Looking goddamn beautiful in the late afternoon sunlight. I took a deep breath as I drank him in. I thought it was pretty obvious why I didn’t tell him.

“Take one guess,” I said innocently. Then I turned back into the hall.

“Put me out of my misery,” Graham muttered.

“I can do that,” Bucky offered.

“For fuck’s sake. I was joking.”

“Damn.”

I headed up the stairs to my bedroom. When Bucky stayed with me before, I bought him a few changes of clothes so that he didn’t have to keep borrowing Steve’s. Mainly because Steve was going through a khakis phase, and they looked ridiculous on Bucky. But of course he’d left without them. When I got back from Malibu, I came across them while emptying out my storage unit. I’d stuffed them into the back of the closet to stay out of sight. I wasn’t even sure why I kept them around. Maybe I was hoping he’d be back.

I had to dig my way into the closet to find the backpack, which was why I hadn’t bothered to look for them before now. Or at least that’s what I was going to tell myself. Because I was still thinking of how Bucky looked in my kitchen before I’d come up. I managed to drag the entire backpack out onto the bedroom floor. It was heavy with more than just Bucky’s clothes, and I couldn’t remember what else I’d stuffed in there until I unzipped it. Aside from his clothes, there was a thick heavy roll of black leather.

I’d almost forgotten about them. I knew I still had them somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where I’d put them or why I’d even shoved them into the backpack with Bucky’s clothes.

I unrolled the pack and looked over the set of shiny black titanium throwing knives. I hadn’t taken them out since Russell gave them to me, but I could see they were just as sharp and deadly. I slid one out of its pocket. The edges were sharp and razor-thin.

There was a number etched into the metal. The black titanium made it almost unnoticeable. But when it caught the light just the right way, I could make out where it had been scraped into the blade with something sharp.

I had another pack of throwing knives when I worked with Russell. But they’d been standard steel and military grade. He taught me how to use them, but there was nothing fancy or extraordinary about them. I had to hand them in before I shipped home. Never even got to use them in the field. I just knew they definitely didn’t come with numbers etched into the blades.

These ones were a gift from Russell. He visited me in Ohio before I went to work for SHIELD and moved to DC. I was still recovering from my injury and suffering from severe depression. He found me sitting on the hood of my old car eating a hamburger in a baseball field parking lot. He didn’t know about the note I’d hastily written before stuffing it into my glove compartment. He didn’t know about my plans. Or the fact that I’d gotten the burger thinking it would be the last meal I ever ate. But he must have suspected something. I probably looked as awful as I felt.

He sat on the hood with me, and we talked for two hours. We were still sitting there after the sun went down. The field lit up for a high school game. We watched it from the hood of my car. I don’t remember what we talked about. But after he left, I ripped the note to shreds and got rid of it. I went back for a burger the next day and once again before moving to DC. I stopped at that place every time I went home. There was nothing special about their food at all, except that it didn’t end up being my last meal after all.

Before he left that night, he had me walk him back to his rental car. He rolled the knives out onto the hood to show me. I couldn’t see the numbers then because it was so dark. As he rolled them back up, he made me make him a promise.

“Don’t let them get dull,” he said.

I frantically slid the rest of the knives out one by one. Each knife had a different number. None of them were the same, and they didn’t appear to be in any particular order. There were five blades in total, and each number ranged from zero to nine. So I’d either been given an impartial set, or the numbers meant something. Considering the last gift he’d given me was a book full of codes, I decided they probably meant something. I wondered if they were connected, but Bucky might know. So I slid them back into place, rolled them back up, and grabbed one of his shirts.

He was back on the couch, writing in his notebook. I dropped the shirt onto his lap, sat down beside him, and unrolled the set on the coffee table.

“Holy shit,” Graham said from the chair. “Those are wicked.” I slid one knife out and flipped it over my shoulder for Bucky to take.

“Notice anything?” I asked. He examined it.

“Number,” he said.

“Russell gave them to me before I went to work for SHIELD.” He quickly began shuffling through the pages of his notebook.

“Set them out.” He handed the knife back over, and I laid them all out on the table. He looked at the blades, back to the book, and back to the knives again. He did this several times before turning his eyes to me. “Five is an unusual number for a set of throwing knives,” he decided.

“I never questioned it. I guess I thought there was one for each finger.” He shook his head slowly.

“No. You could only hold two in one hand at a time. At most. Which would leave one extra.” I nodded.

“I never carried more than one in each hand at a time.”

“Five is an odd number. This number set.” He reached out and tapped a finger against one of the knives. The metal against metal made a clinking sound every time they met. “It’s a pattern. It’s the only constant I’ve been able to pick out. Out of the first set of numbers, anyway. We couldn’t figure out the code because we didn’t have the numbers. He gave them to you separately so no one could understand the system without the knives.”

“What are they?” I asked.

“Flip them.” I did as he said, turning each blade over. There was nothing on the tips but right beneath the hilts. Letters. They barely glinted off the light from the window.

“They’re vowels,” I noted.

“The other numbers change and fluctuate. Likely at the start of a new sequence. Except for the vowels. He separated them.”

“Who separated the what from the what now?” Graham asked. He was clearly more interested in us than the book in his lap.

“Shush,” Bucky said.

“Do you think you can figure it out?” I asked as the three of us sat staring at the knives.

“I’m not sure, but it might help.” He returned to the notebook and turned to the page where he’d started the code. Then he reached out to touch a knife. “O,” he said, his finger clinking against titanium. “A.” He tapped another knife. “A.” He tapped it again. Then he went through the others. “E.” Tap. “I.” Tap. “A. U. U.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“There’s a set of numbers not included in this set,” he muttered, reaching for a pen to scribble again. “Number. O. Number. A. Number. Number. A.”

“What is that?”

“It looks like it might be spelling out—J.O.H.A.N.N.A.”

“Johanna.”

“So the next sequence is Number. E. I. Number. Number. E. Number. Number.”

“What do you think that one is?”

“It’s an entirely different set of numbers, save for the vowels. No repeats from the first word. So nothing I can work off of.”

“How many?”

“Eight.”

“So it’s not Hayes.”

“No.”

“Weisberg,” I whispered. He didn’t argue. He began writing it down.

“It fits,” he told me. I nodded. “The next sequence is three numbers. A and U. If you’re right about Weisberg, then it would make the last number a G. The rest don’t follow a pattern after that. So it might be a date.”

“What are they?”

“One, two, one, nine, eight, five.”

“Twelve, nineteen-eighty-five.” He went silent as I tried to work out what that meant. No doubt he’d already put it together. But at least he was letting me say the words. “Johanna Weisberg. August 12th, 1985.”

“The day she died,” he muttered. I shook my head. He knew damn well that’s not what it meant.

“No,” I replied. “My birth certificate said I was born on August 13th. I don’t think it’s meant to mark her death. It’s my birthday. My real birthday.”

“Wait a second,” Graham said as he pinched his eyes. “I thought your last name was Hayes.”

“It is,” I told him. Then we all sat there silently for a few minutes before I stood up. “I’ll go order those sandwiches,” I said.

“Johanna,” Bucky replied. I was starting to get used to that irritated tone.

“I’m not avoiding anything. I just need a minute alone, okay?” He probably didn’t believe me, but he let me go.

I leaned against the counter in the kitchen as I called in the order. I didn’t ask them what they wanted, but I didn’t want to go back. Bucky usually never cared anyway. He ate whatever I put in front of him and never gave me a straight answer when I asked what he wanted.

Once I was done, I set the phone down on the counter and leaned on my elbows. I didn’t hear him this time. He just appeared in my peripherals and leaned his back against the counter at my side. He crossed his arms over his chest, which was, unfortunately, clothed now.

“I understand if you don’t want to talk to me,” he said.

“Why do you say that?” He looked down at me.

“I was there the day she died. She jumped to get away from me.” I shook my head.

“You said so yourself. She made a choice. Now I’m starting to figure out why.”

“She was alone when I found her. Running toward the city. She was trying to throw me off. Russell wouldn’t have left her to defend herself without good reason.”

“Where did she die?”

“Cleveland.” I nodded slowly.

“She was leading you away from me.” Neither of us spoke as we let that sink in.

“I wanted to kill her,” he confessed.

“I know.” I took a deep breath and let it go. Then I looked back down at my hands and picked at the tile. “What did she look like? Do you remember?” He shook his head once.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember her features. Just her hair. It was lighter than yours. More gold than brown. But not blonde. She was….” He stopped.

“She was what, Bucky?”

“I didn’t have to question why Russell wasn’t with her. She was soaked in blood. I assumed it was his. I figured they got to him before I was sent in. But—she ran like she was in pain. I didn’t even have to chase her. I walked. She limped.”

“They took her body after she fell, didn’t they?” He nodded.

“Yes.”

“They would have done an autopsy. So they would know that she’d given birth recently.”

“Yes.”

“When you said they were looking for me, and they just didn’t know it was me.”

“They must have known she’d had a child. She and Russell both used different aliases. He was good at falsifying information, but you were likely born off the grid. So they wouldn’t know he had a sister.”

“How do you think they found out?”

“You were a low-level SHIELD agent. They had no reason to dig too far into your past. If they had you before, like we suspect, they must have just assumed you were a soldier with a memory they wanted to keep locked away. SHIELD hired you to cover Hydra’s trail. They only began to dig when you got involved with me. They must have had the missing pieces. Put things together.”

“That still doesn’t explain why they didn’t just kill me to prevent that secret from getting out. It would have been a lot easier to put a bullet in my head.”

“I don’t know why they let you go. But I bet Russell knows.”

“So whatever they want now—it couldn’t be because I have something she had. I was just a baby. The only thing I’d have is….”

“Her blood.”

“Exactly.”

“We don’t know very much about her. She could have been enhanced. Genetics was her—specialty. She could have done something to herself and passed it on to you. She could have experimented on you willingly for all we know.” I shook my head.

“I know what you’re getting at. There’s nothing special about me.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“I have no unique talents. No weird skills or powers. I’m just—an average person. Average Jo.” I attempted to laugh at my own stupid joke, but he either didn’t find it funny, or he didn’t get it.

“Just Jo,” he said as he looked around my humble kitchen. “Jo, who may have the blood of a special ops Captain and a genetic research biologist. Jo, who happens to be connected to Hydra’s biggest threats. Jo, who they may have had the ability to control before. What would they want with someone like that?”

“You think they want to use me to take out the Avengers?” He nodded.

“Among others.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I don’t think they’d give you a choice.” I moved to his side, and he lifted his arms so I could rest against his chest. The arm came around me, and I locked my hands around his waist. Then I melted into his warmth and shut my eyes.

“So what’s your hunch now, Detective?” I asked him.

“You’re useful to them regardless. Even if we’re wrong about your past, and you really are just average Jo. You’re close to Stark and Steve. Even Wilson. You know where they sleep, what makes them tick, what they fear, and who they love. You know how to tear them apart. You could destroy their greatest threat from the inside, and they’d never see you coming. You could destroy me too.”

“You think they’d make me hurt you too?”

“No,” he said. “I think they’re going to make you kill me.” I lifted my head and looked up at him.

“I’d never be able to live with myself.”

“I’m sure they’re counting on that.” He looked down at me.

“You could stop me.”

“But I wouldn’t. Not if it hurt you or put you in danger.” I shut my eyes again and held him closer.

“If my dreams are correct. I don’t care how you do it; just make sure I don’t hurt anyone.”

“Jo….”

“Promise me you won’t let me kill you.” He didn’t say anything for a moment, but then I felt him nod.

“I promise,” he said, but it didn’t sound genuine.