Eleanor had been sitting so deep in thought that she hadn't noticed the super soldier opposite her watching intently as she chewed her nails to shreds with a large frown on her face. "What you thinking about?", Steve leaned forward in his seat to show his genuine interest in her answer, but he accidentally ended up scaring her as she snapped back into reality and practically jumped out of her skin.

"Jesus Christ!". Steve winced at the accident and waited for her to finish looking around at her surroundings again, she had gotten pretty far into her head, and when she did eventually turn back to Steve she looked like a deer caught in headlights, which only caused a frown to appear on his own face as well. "She hates me", Eleanor rushed out and started to chew on her nails again, far more aggressively this time around. Steve shook his head and moved his flimsy chair next to Eleanor's, getting her attention again.

"She could never hate you", he spoke firmly. The young woman pursed her lips and felt like she was on the verge of bursting into tears, she promised that she would never leave Natasha and she had done it. She hated herself for it, so why wouldn't Natasha? "No, she will. She does. We promised to never leave each other and I have, and now I'm also on the wrong side of the fucking law, Steve! So even if on the off chance that she doesn't hate me, it's not like I can just go back to her now we are gonna be separated and then she will start to hate me for that-".

Steve clearly saw that Eleanor was spiralling, anyone would be able to see it. At first, he wanted to just let her get all of her feelings out, but she was just getting more and more worked up, and as for her breathing, she was on the verge of hyperventilating. So, he put a stop to it. "Hey, hey, El-", he spoke whilst she finished her sentence and placed a hand on her shoulder, "She could never hate you. She loves you too much to ever hate you". "But-".

"No. No buts", he interrupted, "You have been with her through thick and thin, through both of your highest highs and lowest lows. She could never start hating you over this, she had a similar view to you on the accords, she will understand, El. She will understand, especially when we can uncover what the hell that 'psychiatrist' was trying to do, okay? I promise you she will understand, and I promise that you will not have to go on the run when all of this is over. We will all be okay", he launched off into a mini-speech that ended up being very reassuring.

Eleanor nodded her head with newfound determination. They would be okay, they just needed to do the job. It was for the greater good. Surely Natasha would understand. There was still a little voice in her head feeding her with doubts, but Steve's voice was louder, and so she listened to Steve's voice. They would get the job done so that she could get home to her wife.

At seeing that she had calmed down, Steve wrapped an arm around her to give her a warm side hug, before standing to look through a gap in the wall. A helicopter had started flying nearby and so he wanted to see that it wasn't heading in their direction. Though he didn't get much of a look before Sam shouted through, "Hey, Cap!". Steve and Eleanor sent each other a knowing look before taking off at a jog through the warehouse and into the section to the side housing a demobilised Bucky.

He was shuffling around trying to find a comfortable position as he gripped onto his metal arm stuck in the contraption, "Steve", he managed to get out in a voice like sandpaper, his voice rough from just waking up.

Steve had seemingly gone from friendly older brother giving advice back to super soldier mode in a matter of seconds as he stared Bucky down, speaking in a very Captain America like voice. "Which Bucky am I talking to?". There was a brief and tense pause where Bucky was trying to think of what to say. Eleanor looked back and forth between the two soldiers with her arms crossed over her chest, trying to figure out if there were any signs that Bucky was showing that may trigger Steve to know that he isn't in his Winter Soldier state, but both seemed to be rather stoic in their expressions.

"Your mom's name was Sarah", the corner of Bucky's lips turned up ever so slightly as he recalled the fond memories, and Eleanor couldn't help but give a half-smile herself. "You used to wear newspapers in your shoes". Eleanor's eyebrows shot up in amusement along with a smirk at the new teasing material she had just received, but her expression quickly dropped when she caught herself turning slightly to look at Nat's reaction, and realising that she wasn't there. It had been a while since she had done a job without Natasha alongside her.

"Can't read that in a museum", Steve spoke with a small smile threatening to show. "Just like that we're supposed to be cool?", Sam interjected, and though he raised a good point, there was no time to waste in Eleanor's eyes. "Gotta go with the flow Sammy", she turned to face him before looking back at Bucky who gave her a curious look when properly facing her, as though he was remembering something, before shaking his head slightly. "What did I do?".

"Enough", Steve put simply. Seemed like the best way to show that he had done damage without freaking him out too much. Bucky sighed "Oh God", in pain with his actions, "I knew this would happen. Everything HYDRA put inside me is still there. All he had to do was say the goddamn words".

Eleanor frowned, sure the guy had tried to murder them previously in the day, but she felt for him. Brainwashing was awful, and the human underneath cannot be blamed especially with the likes of HYDRA at the wheel. "Who was he?".

"I don't know", Bucky replied to Steve. "People are dead. The bombing, the setup, the doctor did all that just to get ten minutes with you. I need you to do better than 'I don't know'". Bucky stared at Steve blankly for a few moments, contemplating his words but not sure how else to help, if he didn't know the brainwasher then he didn't know the brainwasher.

Eleanor ran her tongue over her top teeth as she stepped forward, her arms still folded over her chest, "Is there anything he said that you thought was out of the ordinary for a 'therapy session'?". Bucky looked to the side and began to wrack his brain, the other three in the room letting out a breath that they didn't know they were holding. Perhaps there would be some progress.

"He wanted to know about Siberia. Where I was kept. He wanted to know exactly where". Eleanor tilted her head, the guy was clearly interested in HYDRA work if he wanted the exact location of a base where they kept the Winter Soldier, clearly an important place if it was trusted with such precious 'cargo'. "Why would he need to know that?", Steve spoke everyone's thoughts out loud.

"Because I'm not the only Winter Soldier", Bucky spoke with a tight jaw, and if Eleanor was sipping on water, she would have spat it out. Her entire body and mind froze as she tried to take in this information. More Winter Soldiers? She listened intently whilst Bucky explained that more people were given a serum after him, and how he was involved in training and sparring. During his explanation, Steve freed Bucky's arm, then moved back to lean against a wall, and spoke from behind everyone else once Bucky was done talking, "Who were they?".

"Their most elite death squad. More kills in HYDRA history, and that was before the serum".

"They all turn out like you?", Sam spoke for the first time in a while, asking a very valid question. If the small group would have to go and see the army of Winter Soldiers then they needed to know if they could go up against them if they turned hostile. If they were anything like Bucky then there was no chance. "Worse". This did not ease any of their fears at all. They increased tenfold.

"The doctor", Steve piped up again in a louder tone than he had before, making Eleanor flinch slightly, "Could he control them?".

Bucky looked to the side again before looking down at his lap, "Enough". All of these one-word replies were really not helping Eleanor's anxieties. "Said he wanted to see an empire fall".

"It's textbook, they want to see regimes toppling, chaos ensuing so that they can rein it in with their own ideologies being used to do so", Eleanor shrugged half-heartedly, having met many of these types of people in her line of work. "With these guys, he could do it", Bucky nodded slightly, agreeing with Eleanor's statement, but knowing that this situation would be an outlier if the other Winter Soldiers were used. "They can speak thirty languages, can hide in plain sight, infiltrate, assassinate, destabilise. They can take a whole country down in one night, you'd never see them coming".

Eleanor gulped, "They sound lovely". Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Sam moving over to Steve, speaking in hushed tones, but she couldn't bring herself to move as she thought about all of the complications that were now popping up. This was turning into a much bigger job with a lot more stakes than she had signed up for.

Curiosity got the better of her after a few seconds, so she walked over to Sam and Steve, and the first thing she heard was "We're on our own", from the super soldier, which left her feeling like she had a pit in her stomach. "Maybe not", Sam gave them hope, "I know a guy. He has this contraption that he can use to shrink himself down whilst keeping a lot of strength. No one would see him coming".

"That sounds very handy", Eleanor nodded, "But we need more reinforcements than Antman", she laughed and received a small grimace from Sam, "What?", she frowned. "He actually goes by Antman", he explained, and Steve and Eleanor gave each other blank looks. "We need more reinforcements", she deadpanned and got a nod from Steve.

"We could bring Clint back into the game, we know he would be on our side with this, he could rescue Wanda on the way", Steve suggested and Eleanor shook her head. "He's retired with his family, and what do you mean rescue Wanda?".

Steve's eyes widened, "You don't know?". Eleanor gave him a look that screamed 'of course I fucking don't', which prompted him to continue. "Tony assigned Vision to not let Wanda leave the compound". At those words Eleanor started seeing red, she may not have been on the best of terms with Wanda due to the accords, but she would still do anything for the younger woman, so hearing that she was a prisoner in her own home was not acceptable to her. "Okay, call Clint and if he agrees then he can go and get Wanda. If he doesn't we figure out another way, do not pressure him, do you understand?".

The men in front of her nodded and Sam moved away to give Clint a call. "I'll call Sharon too, we need our stuff back", Steve mumbled and took his phone out of his pocket. With all the phones lying around Eleanor just hoped that they had turned off any tracking features, though judging by the lack of helicopters surrounding them she assumed that they had done something right.

Eleanor looked around awkwardly a few times as she didn't really have a job to do, but when her gaze landed on Bucky she moved forward with caution and sat on the floor next to him, leaning against the contraption that had held his arm and tucked her knees into her chest. There was silence for a few minutes before Bucky turned to face her and narrowed his eyes, putting the fear of God into her. "I did that, right?", he raised his arm slightly to gesture at her head.

It took her a second to twig what he was getting at, but her lips eventually made an O shape in realisation that he was talking about the scar from the Washington fight, "It's no biggie, it was the Winter Soldier, not you. And let's face it, it could have been a lot worse", she gave a dry chuckle, and Bucky's eyes flashed with what Eleanor thought was gratitude. "Thank you", he nodded before looking down again, letting a comfortable silence take over the two of them.

A/n- Did anyone watch the first ep of She-Hulk today? :D