Chapter Text
(Five Months Earlier)
The Winter Soldier hits the ground with a crack, and when she rolls back to her feet the mask stays on the concrete. She turns slowly, and the bottom plummets out of Clarke's stomach.
There may be warpaint smudged across her cheeks, her eyes may be empty, dead, but Clarke could never forget that face.
In her shock, she barely registers that the fingers of the metal arm are cool on her throat, that the pressure is light, too light. "You don't have to do this. I know you're not choosing this, Lexa."
"Who the hell is Lexa?"
--
The ringing in Clarke's ears doesn't abate, even when she's shoved face down into the ground with the barrel of a rifle pressed between her shoulder blades, even when they're cuffed in the back of an armoured SHIELD van.
"She looked right at me like she didn't even know me."
Monty shakes his head. "How is that even possible?"
"Tsing. Lexa's whole unit was captured, and Tsing experimented on her. Whatever she did helped Lexa survive the fall. They must have found her-"
"None of that's your fault, Clarke," Anya interjects, but when Clarke looks over the spy won't meet her eyes.
"I should have looked for her. She would have, we always had each other's backs. Even when I had nothing, I had Lexa."
--
She imagines she can feel the mechanic working away on her arm as she leans back in the exam chair, and she lets her eyes drift closed in a failed attempt to avoid the sensation. There's a jolt of pain in the side of her head, where ground had met helmet and knocked her mask free of her face, and she winces, squeezes her eyes tighter shut, sends off pressure bursts behind her eyelids.
The soldier's face drifts through her head, hazy, focused only on blonde and shock and fear, "Lexa!", and then she's falling, sky and cold and white, blinding white, pain, frozen, hands on her jacket, blood on the snow, ice crystals down her back and foreign words in her ears
"The procedure is already started." Bright and deafening, drill, saw, cut, scar, hurt
Glistening metal, fingers clutching tight around a fragile throat, Tsing
Ice, cold, frost, empty eyes staring back from the reflection of an unfamiliar face
Rage, confusion, flailing, bones crushed beneath her fists, clickclickclickstaringdownthebarrelsofathousandguns
She shakes herself upright, out of the flashes, just in time to catch a faint "-unstable, erratic-" from across the room before Cage Wallace strides in, motions for the guards to lower their weapons.
"Mission report."
She stares forward, the tendrils of memories drifting around behind the man, navy armour and pale skin.
"Mission report, now."
Cage moves forward, and she's too distracted by the remnants of blonde shifting around his head, doesn't see the strike coming until she's flung to the side, cheek stinging, spots drifting across her vision. She turns back to him in confusion, lips moving silently for a moment before she can find the words.
"The woman on the bridge," she says slowly, the blonde coming clear in her mind's eye, if just for a moment, the dirt-streaked face and piercing gaze, "who was she?"
"You met her earlier this week on another assignment."
Her eyes dart from side to side, trying to pull up anything, because there's something haunting in those blue eyes, something barely there but still strong enough that she knows instinctively that she's not getting the whole truth. "I knew her," slips from her lips, quiet but resolute, and Cage narrows his eyes at her before taking a seat in front of her.
"Your work has been a gift to mankind," he states, but she can recognize the attempt to divert her attention for what it is, can barely focus on it, "Lexa!" too loud in her head. "You shaped the century, and I need you to do it one more time. Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos, and tomorrow morning we're going to give it a push. But, if you don't do your part, I can't do mine," she swallows roughly, her shoulders falling, "and Hydra can't give the world the freedom it deserves."
"But I knew her," she repeats, pursing her lips in frustration.
Cage sighs and stands. "Prep her."
"She's been out of cryo too long," one of his aides replies, as she watches, face falling when she digs through her head only to come up empty. There has to be something, she knows her.
"Then wipe her and start over," and the room is swimming, fading until she can barely feel the hands pushing her back down into the chair. She opens her mouth for the gumshield, her chest heaving, those words mean pain, and the binds are tight around her arm and the buzzing, the helmet coming down, and the last thing she remembers is her teeth clamping down hard in the rubber to bite back her screams.
--
She's curled up on the sofa in the safehouse, knees tucked up into her chest and arms wrapped tight around them, when Anya emerges from the washroom, damp hair pulled back over one shoulder.
"You knew her."
Anya takes a seat on a stool by the counter. "Not by that name."
"The Black Widow and the Winter Soldier." Clarke fiddles absently with the hem of her shirt. "You worked together, killed together."
"We did."
"How am I supposed to trust you to have my back when you kept something like this from me?"
"I didn't know Alexandra Callaghan and the Winter Soldier were one and the same until today."
Clarke bites her bottom lip, worries it between her teeth as she nods slowly.
"She's going to be there tomorrow," Anya states, standing and leaning her back against the edge of the counter. "You need to know that she's not the same person as whoever it was she used to be, Clarke. And the Winter Soldier? She's not the kind you can save. She's the kind you stop."
"I don't know if I can do that."
"She might not give you a choice. She doesn't know you."
"She will," she says firmly, as if stating it will make the words come true.
--
It doesn't.