Chapter Text
INT. CELL OF AN UNDERGROUND HYDRA BUNKER – 1940 AT CASTLE KAUFMANN IN THE BAVARIAN ALPS
The hum never stops.
It isn’t loud—HYDRA never relied on noise when pressure worked better—but it’s constant, threaded through the bones of the concrete and the steel stitched into it. A vibration you feel in your teeth before you notice it in your ears. A reminder that something larger than you is awake and watching.
She sits perfectly still.
The chair is bolted to the floor. The cuffs are symbolic, a testament to her weaknesses; they are layered poison within metal, composite alloys forged after a long series of embarrassing failures at recreating her version of Kryptonite. Which can only be found back at her citadel at Yggdrasil. By the tower and lake where she drowned in her guilt as a method of control.
They encircle her wrists with clinical precision, tight enough to discourage hope, to remind her of her roots. The lives she reduced to ashes. The blood in her ledger. But lloose enough to prevent bruising that would complicate reports. Cold. Heavy. Patient.
The room is circular. No corners. No doors visible. Light bleeds from recessed panels overhead, white and sterile, calibrated to simulate day without warmth. One wall curves into reinforced observation glass, thick enough to distort shapes beyond it, tinted so the silhouettes on the other side never quite look human.
She knows every detail without turning her head.
Behind the glass, voices murmur—low, controlled, professional. Men and women who believe distance is insulation. Who think glass and titles will outlast consequences.
“She’s awake,” someone says.
“Vitals?”
“Stable.”
“She done anything?”
She lowers her gaze to the floor instead of answering out loud. The metal there bears the faint scoring of previous occupants—scars people leave when they believe restraint might care if they struggle.
“No,” another voice replies.
Relief ripples through the observation chamber, subtle but unmistakable. Someone shifts weight. Another exhales. The tension loosens its grip just enough.
Her gaze lingers for a fraction longer than it should—on the crooked angle of the camera, the way the image blooms and blurs under smoke interference, the faint static crawling along the screen’s edge.
That’s when she does it.
Not with a gesture. Not with a glow. Just a subtle shift—like pressure redistributing behind her ear. The air there tightens, almost imperceptibly, as if reality has been pinched between two fingers and coaxed into cooperation.
Something threads itself into place beneath skin and bone, cool and precise, conforming perfectly to anatomy that no longer bothers distinguishing between organic and constructed. No circuitry hums. No frequency spikes. To an external scanner, there is nothing—no implant, no foreign device, no energy signature worth flagging.
She’d made it earlier. Quietly. Out of habit. A contingency folded from intent and memory, not hardware.
The comm settles with a faint internal click—felt, not heard—locking into a band so narrow and personal it might as well be a thought. She doesn’t touch it. Doesn’t test it.
She already knows it works.
Behind the glass, the guards are too focused on her hands, her posture, the cuffs that haven’t melted yet. They watch restraint like it’s the only language power speaks.
They never look at her ear.
They always make that mistake.
Rule number 1: Never underestimate the person who taughr you everything you know.
Rule number 2, and this is key: Never bite the hand that fed you.
Her fingers flex once. The cuffs immediately respond—a soft loosening from her internal click, not fully off, but just enough to allow her to materialize something useful without giving herself away, a red indicator blooming to life on the inner rim. Warning. Not yet punishment. HYDRA loves escalation. It gives people the illusion of choice.
Her ear warms—not from heat, but from presence. The comm comes alive without sound, a pressure behind bone that resolves into clarity. When the informant speaks, it’s the tone of someone doing what they’ve done a thousand times before: precise, controlled, briefing‑room calm.
“Primary exit route is still viable,” the voice murmurs. “Service corridor C‑9 leads to the decommissioned freight lift. Thirty seconds of exposure, minimal patrol density. I’ve rerouted the cameras for a ninety‑second blind window.”
Em keeps her eyes on the blurred CCTV image, posture relaxed, breath measured. She listens.
“Secondary route is the waste filtration shaft. Messier, but safe. Your people are in place—Janus team at the east junction, two operatives topside in civilian cover. They’re ready to move on your signal.”
A pause. The sound of keys clacking. Systems updating.
“Redundant fallback is still the sublevel tunnel. Old HYDRA construction, pre‑modern schematics. No one uses it anymore. That was your directive.” A beat, faint admiration threading through the words. “You trained us well.”
Her mouth quirks almost imperceptibly.
Then the cadence changes.
There’s a thud in the background—dull, heavy, wrong. Not an alarm. A collision.
“—Wait,” the informant says.
Another sound cuts through: glass shattering. Not cracking. Exploding. Voices rise on the other end of the line. Not professional now. Sharp. Alarmed.
“No, no—that wasn’t scheduled,” the informant mutters, fingers moving faster, breath hitching just slightly. “Two Enhanced signatures just entered the lower level. I’m pulling visual—”
Static spikes.
Then, clearer, closer: shouting. German, clipped and furious. A familiar voice barking orders that no longer hold authority the way they once did.
Em’s focus sharpens.
Red Skull.
The informant’s breathing goes audible. “They’re—Christ—they’re super soldiers. Not on the roster. One of them just broke through the security door like it wasn’t reinforced.” A sharp inhale. “They’re fighting him.”
Something crashes. Metal screams as it buckles.
“Oh God,” the informant whispers. Panic bleeds through now, stripping the polish clean. “He’s grabbing the throat—no—no, that’s a mistake—”
A roar cuts across the comm, raw and inhuman, followed by the unmistakable sound of flesh meeting steel. A body hits something hard enough to dent it. Another crash follows, then—
Fire.
Not controlled ignition. Not systems failure.
Fire born from violence.
“Everything’s escalating,” the informant gasps. “Power conduits breached. Suppression’s not responding—there’s too much heat, too fast. They’re tearing through the corridor—”
A scream is cut short mid‑sound.
She stills her hands again.
The warning light fades. Minutes pass. Or half an hour. Or nothing measurable at all. Time behaves differently underground. Memory piles up in layers instead of lines.
She lets her awareness extend—not toward the people watching her, but sideways. Perpendicular to the cell, tucked just beyond the curve of the wall, is a security office. It is not meant to be seen from here. But the smoke—soot, not fire—has begun to seep through ventilation seams as systems elsewhere fail. Gray haze laceworks the air beyond the glass, smudging edges, blurring outlines.
Through that haze, a screen flickers.
It is old tech by HYDRA standards, a concession to redundancy rather than luxury. The image jitters, slightly swollen by heat and interference. Shapes crawl across it like figures glimpsed underwater.
Her gaze sharpens.
There—on the screen.
A ledge. High. Narrow. Too exposed.
A figure stands there, unsteady, backlit by industrial lighting blown partially dark. Even distorted, even blurred by smoke and distance, she recognizes the posture immediately. The squared shoulders held together by stubbornness more than balance. The way he leans forward slightly, as if gravity is something he negotiates with rather than accepts.
Steve.
Soot floods the feed as cameras fail one by one, the image dissolving into dancing gray and black. The informant coughs hard, breath ragged now. “The lower levels are going to burn. I can’t hold the blind window—”
Her breath catches before she can stop it.
The image judders as something detonates lower in the structure. The ledge shudders. Steve stumbles—one foot skidding dangerously close to nothing.
No.
She shifts without meaning to, power flaring in her palms in a reflex honed across epochs. The doors, separating Steve and who she hoped was Bucky on the other side, warm instantly in response, metal singing softly as it absorbs the first whisper of heat. Not yet. Not yet.
Her heart stutters once. Then again.
The feed in Em’s peripheral vision shows the ledge again. Steve unsteady, smoke curling around him.
And then, resolve hardens.
What’s another betrayal anyway? She already went rogue for him. Killed all HYDRA’s closest allies for him.
As if on impulse, no further instruction or addition of panicked will, her green tendrils reach the floor her comrade was on, wrapping around the structure separating them, collapse the door into itself, allowing...
Movement. Glass explodes outward on the screen. A wisp of brown hair erupts from the left, bursting through, stepping on remnants of a glass-metal door in a spray of shards that glitter briefly even through soot and interference.
The second body crashes fully into the frame, all momentum and muscle and unrestrained fury. The boyish face now painted with a pain contortion catches the light even through distortion, unmistakable.
Bucky Barnes.
Bigger. Faster. All panic and adrenaline. The camera catches only fragments—a hand slamming into view, colliding with Steve’s outstretched palm, holding onto it.
Then another hand. Catching. Anchoring. Pulling him up to him.
As he lifts his friend, he slams into Steve, not gently, not carefully—effectively—hauling him away from the edge as the structure gives another violent shudder. The ledge vanishes from view as the camera tilts, then flickers.
The sergeant who she once taught to be a good shot, or at least tried to, drags Steve back from the edge with brute, desperate force, glass crunching under boots as he throws his body between Steve and the void. The ledge disappears from view as the camera shakes, reframing on empty air where Steve almost was.
Alive.
Both of them.
Relief floods her so fast it almost makes her dizzy.
She closes her eyes for half a second and exhales, slow and steady, forcing control back down her spine. Steve is alive. Shaken, yes—but breathing. Standing. Being hauled bodily away from the edge by the man she trusted with him long before Steve ever knew her name.
Em exhales, slow and controlled, the tension she hadn’t acknowledged loosening across her shoulders.
A whisper curls in her ear. Not carried by speakers. Not picked up by the room’s sensors. Private.
“Asset secure,” the informant murmurs, voice threaded with static and awe. The last loyal strand still woven into HYDRA’s decaying web. “Barnes extracted him. Captain Rogers is alive.”
Em’s lips curve—not into a smile, but something close.
She answers without moving her mouth, the comm she materialized earlier vibrating invisibly against bone. Undetected. Untouchable.
Into the comm, she murmurs, calm cutting clean through the chaos, “That’s enough.”
There’s relief on the other end of the line—barely contained, shaking. “Captain Rogers is clear,” the informant says.
“I know,” Em replies softly. A beat.
“Barnes got him out. But the fire—it’s spreading fast. I don’t think anyone’s walking away from the lower levels.”
“Good,” she breathes. “Then we’re on schedule.”
Then, with finality, “Burn the routes. Pull our people back. Nothing ties to me. Nothing.”
“Yes—” the informant starts, then hesitates. “What do I tell them?”
Her gaze lifts from the dead CCTV feed to the breaking glass in front of her, the first tongues of flame visible now beyond the doorway.
“Tell them,” she says, voice perfectly even, “I'm sorry.”
She almost cuts the line.
A pause. “You’re about to—”
“I know.”
The informant swallows audibly. “Do you want his body retrieved?”
Her eyes open.
Through the glass, the observers have noticed the change. Someone leans closer, voice sharpening. “What’s she looking at?”
Em doesn’t grant them the courtesy of a glance. “No,” she murmurs into the comm. “Let history believe what it needs to.”
She cuts the channel.
The heat in her hands builds—not violently, not spectacularly, but with intent. Control before power. Precision over waste. The cuffs hum in protest as molecular bonds loosen, metal softening under her touch like candle wax yielding to flame. They do not shatter. They fail.
Molten alloy drips to the floor in slow, deliberate drops.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Behind the glass, someone shouts.
The security office CCTV flickers once more before going dark entirely—last image burned in her mind: Steve upright, breathing, pulled out of danger by the man he trusts with his life.
She rises smoothly as the cuffs collapse away, standing just as alarms escalate from murmur to scream.
Glass fractures. Fire does not rush in—smoke does first, thick and choking, carried on sudden pressure shifts as systems cascade. Footsteps pound. Orders overlap.
"Oh, and Edna?" She steps closer to the shattered observation window. "Do me a favor."
“Send him my regards,” she says calmly, voice slicing through the chaos with surgical clarity.
Then, quieter, threaded with unmistakable relief—
“And my gratitude.”
Then, softer—only for herself, and for the memory now safely seared into her mind—
“For finding him when I couldn’t.”
Flames answer anyway.
The door gives way not because she forces it, but because it stops existing as a concept the moment she decides to leave.
By the time the lower levels are breached, there will be nothing here but wreckage and conclusions drawn too quickly. No body. No proof. Just fire damage and reports written by people who don’t know how to read absence correctly.
They will say she died in the collapse.
That General Elise Montanegro perished while after Red Skull's kidnapping and HYDRA's hold.
They will believe it.
And somewhere above ground, a soldier will mourn a woman he thinks was lost to fire—unaware that she watched him survive through blurred glass and smoke, chose not to intervene, and stepped into the dark knowing she would see him again.
But not as simply as before.
EXT. PRAGUE - TRAIN STATION — DAY — August 12, 2012
Just a few short days after May 4, 2012, The Battle of New York.
The film immediately cuts to and opens with Em running alongside with Steve. They are on assignment in Prague. A train station. The platform buckles. It isn’t an explosion, it's worse. Steel groans and folds inward as if the building itself has been picked up and wrung. Somewhere down the station, a commuter train shrieks as it derails halfway off the tracks, sparks shearing the air like thrown blades, people are screaming, and lights pop overhead.
Steve sees it in a heartbeat before everyone else does.
The Enhanced stands at the far end of the station, hands lifted, eyes glowing with unstable energy that warps everything around it, the air rippling, gravity stuttering like it can’t decide which way is down. Concrete peels upward in slabs as railings twist.
Steve doesn’t think. He grabs Em’s hand.
“What are you doing—?”
“MOVE!” he roars, already turning, already pulling.
They run. Full blown, run for your fucking life, full-throttle sprint through chaos as the station comes apart behind them. Steve barrels forward, shield up, dragging her along with him.
Em stumbles once, then finds the rhythm, boots striking sparks from fractured tile. “Could’ve been less rude about it!” she yells over the noise.
“Do you have no sense of urgency?” Steve shouts back without slowing.
“Oh, I do,” she snaps, keeping pace effortlessly now. “I just prefer context with my impending doom!”
A chunk of ceiling crashes where they were half a second ago.
Steve doesn’t look back. “You are SO INSUFFERABLE.”
She laughs, actually laughs, breathless but sharp. Then drops her sarcastic smile when she shoots him a pointed look, “Deal with it.”
Behind them, the Enhanced roars.
Steve pushes harder, muscles burning, lungs screaming with effort even super‑soldiers feel when limits are tested, and he screams in annoyance as Em laughs, running beside him.
She shouts, "Weak!"
The moment fades away to black as Em speaks up, "Oh, hi there! Most of you may be wondering who I am. And how I ended up here."
[THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE INTRO STARTS PLAYING AS STAN LEE'S COMICS FLASH INTO VIEW, WHILE "GYPSY—LIVE FROM THE DANCE" BY FLEETWOOD MAC RINGS OUT]
Impersonating a narrator, Em transitions into a playfully deep voice pretending to be a mysterious third party, "She was the demoted, non-active founder of criminal organization HYDRA and now just operated as the Handler of the Winter Soldier. Oh, and she is a fairly precarious witch with a knack for meddling into matters and making forevers last."
[CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER TITLE CARD APPEARS]
[RED, WHITE, AND BLUE FADES TO GREEN AS POISON IVY VINES WITH CHAMOMILE FLOWERS ENGULF STEVE ROGERS'S SHIELD ATTACHED TO THE TITLE CARD]