— info —

hydra au akkeri. she's the one who falls off the train during the zola mission and gets captured by hydra. steve and bucky continue on to fight schmidt at hydra's remaining stronghold, but steve still crashes and gets iced, leaving bucky the only survivor of their trio.

she resurfaces as the winter soldier during the korean war. bucky, well aware of her powers and otherworldly origins, is quick to piece the rumors together and goes after her. he subdues her but doesn't bring her in, knowing the government will only cut her open and conduct further experiments to figure out how to harness and replicate her powers. he hides her away and tries to deprogram her, but he only manages so much. frustrated and angry at what she'd been put through, he goes after hydra; partly to find a way to fix her, but mostly for revenge.

he traces the winter soldier project back to zola, who has been recruited into shield and has been using shield's resources for his experiments. he threatens to expose zola if zola doesn't undo hel's programming, but she kills zola during their encounter, having determined that zola had no intent of deprogramming her at all and was going to double cross bucky.

he brings her in but directly to stark and carter, who are easily convinced to help deprogram her in exchange for them joining shield. she never truly recovers, however, so he continues to search for a cure, eventually pursuing directorship so he has more control — and so he can look into zola's projects and what else the secret hydra cell has been up to.

and while her mind is broken, her loyalty to him is not.