Chapter Text
Steve and Sam made it fifteen minutes in Gustav Santiago’s company before coming to the understanding that maybe Peter Parker did not know Ximena as well as he thought he did. That, or they had just been had.
“They called us, yeah,” Gustav said, his face twisting in distaste. “El pinche cabezón. I told Marco he didn’t need to be taking them up there, but did he listen to me?”
Steve bit his tongue. He understood not wanting to relive the memory of learning his young niece had been made an orphan in a state halfway across the country, that his brother and sister-in-law had been killed, but Gustav’s tone wasn’t one of grief. It was annoyance.
Sam shifted his weight, but kept his face carefully neutral when Steve checked in on him. When Sam caught him looking, he quirked a brow, and Steve understood his own expression needed work.
They had touched down in Flagstaff only an hour ago at seven am. Tony had been so kind as to provide the jet, but declined the invitation to come along. He didn’t do deserts anymore, he claimed, and Steve knew better than to give him shit about it. They managed to contact Gustav, who begrudgingly agreed to meet with them, but only if they met him at the local steelworks warehouse he managed.
He didn’t want them bothering his family, he said, and Steve had hoped that maybe that meant he already had Ximena with him, and didn’t want her involved with anything related to super soldiers and assassins anymore. His hopes were very quickly snuffed out.
“Xiomara got into his head about it,” Gustav went on, scowling. “Got them both killed, maldita bruja.”
The insult shocked Steve, and even Sam drew back in surprise. Gustav noticed their reactions and clicked his teeth.
“Don’t give me that shit. She was bad for him, we all knew it.”
Steve tried to recall anything from the files about Xiomara Villaloba that might have brought on this reaction. She had a clean record, was spoken highly of by her friends and coworkers, and, at least on the surface, seemed devoted to her little family. Marco Santiago as well, seemed as well rounded as the best of them. That his family thought so little of their pairing didn’t sit well with Steve.
But surely that wasn’t why they hadn’t claimed Ximena.
“You weren’t able to take on Ximena after they died.” Steve made sure to keep the simmering accusation out of his voice. “Did your family have any contact with her in New York since?”
For what it was worth, Gustav had the decency to look uneasy. “No. We… lost track of her.”
Steve narrowed his eyes, only just, at how Gustav looked away as he said that. A lie.
“She never tried to call home?” Sam asked, and Gustav swallowed.
“No.”
Another lie. Steve imagined that traumatized little girl from the photo, trying to contact her family so far away. Waiting for them to bring her home from that horrible nightmare that took her parents from her. And they had abandoned her.
A cold fury rose in Steve’s chest.
There had been a time, during the war and between missions, that he and Bucky would spend hours in a rec tent, a pack of cards and cigarettes between them. They’d trade stories of what they believed their respective families would look like when they went home. What kind of girl Buck would settle down with, whether or not Steve had a chance at wooing Peggy the way he wished to.
“I dunno, Rogers, you think you could handle a gaggle of kids following after you talking like a bunch of tiny kings and queens?” Bucky had teased one night, and Steve didn’t say as much out loud, but he wanted nothing more in the world than that. If not with Peggy, then with a woman he loved, and who loved him in return.
He didn’t think he’d ever get a chance at that gaggle of kids in this life. After the things he’d done for Hydra under the guise of SHIELD, he didn’t think he deserved to fulfill that particular dream.
The fact that this man had the opportunity to give a young girl, his niece, a safe home and threw it away out of disdain for her mother…
Steve’s phone rang, saving Gustav from his wrath. He and Sam excused themselves, glad to be free of his presence.
“Rogers,” Steve answered as he and Sam returned to their borrowed car.
“Wheels up in thirty minutes, Cap,” Tony said in lieu of a greeting. “There’s a mess in New Mexico you have to see. Tuscon, too, but I’ll just send you that footage.”
Steve glanced at Sam.
“What kind of mess?”
“The kind a really pissed off Hydra super assassin makes when he’s on a warpath.”
Steve closed his eyes. Shit.
They landed in New Mexico less than two hours later, and Sam refused to speak to Steve for the past forty-five minutes.
It started with the surveillance videos Tony sent them.
It showed Bucky and Ximena stepping out of a shop in Roswell, closely followed by a dark haired young man. He recognized the young man from the first video they had seen from the motel in Tucson. That Bucky had not killed him when he so clearly thought him a threat to Ximena had surprised Steve, but not nearly as much as how the man’s face had changed. At first he believed it might have been the same tech Nat used back in DC when confronting Pierce, but a mask can’t change a body the way that man had.
In the Roswell video, Ximena separated from the men, disappearing into a restroom at the end of the strip mall. While she was in there, a trio of men entered the outdoor hallway from the opposite entrance.
When she stepped out, they grabbed her.
She punched one of them and the man flew out of the hallway. Which, while her form was commendable, was not something a little girl should have been able to do. Steve had his suspicions that Ximena Santiago was no ordinary little girl from the moment he stepped in that warehouse in DC. He hoped, despite knowing otherwise, that this strength of hers would have been enough, that she’d get away, that Bucky would get to her.
But Steve watched on in horror as one of the men managed to snap something silver around her neck. She went rigid, only for a split second, and began to thrash and fight as she was carried away. Bucky tore through the hallway not two seconds later, but still two seconds too late.
He returned to the hallway alone, without the girl, and Steve understood that he was not looking at Bucky Barnes, his oldest and best friend. It wasn’t even the Crow Man mentioned in Ximena’s journal. No, the man that entered that hallway was the Winter Soldier, the same beast of a man that had nearly murdered Fury, that nearly murdered him.
He retrieved Ximena’s bag, replacing her items that had spilled out, and then pulled something else out of it. The thing the men had shoved in there before making off with the girl. A phone, Steve realized, when he answered it. The conversation was short, and ended with him driving his left fist into the brick wall of the hallway, shattering it as he punched clean through.
A mess in New Mexico, Tony had said.
Hydra had just taken the one thing, one person, the Winter Soldier had attached himself to since regaining his freedom. That, based on his actions in all the videos they had seen of the two, based on Ximena’s journal, he cared for.
If they could not get their hands on him, they would make him come to them.
A pissed off Hydra assassin on a warpath.
“We should have killed him,” Sam bit out, standing to pace. Steve snapped his head up to look at him.
“Sam—”
“That is a baby.” He whirled on Steve. “That little girl has been abandoned by her entire family, has been tossed from home to home for the last two years because no one bothered to help her with her trauma. A baby, Steve, she isn’t even thirteen yet!”
Steve narrowed his eyes; he knew these things.
“Look, I’m not hap—”
“Stop talking,” Sam snapped. “Because I don’t think you understand what we just saw. You think I didn’t notice how she hit that guy? You’re gonna say that’s something a normal kid can do? Man, I can’t even do something like that!” He took a breath, scrubbing his hands over his head. His jaw ticked when he looked back at Steve. “Do you realize what she is? Do you realize what people do to kids like that, what an organization like Hydra will do to her? If Barnes hasn’t gotten her back yet, which, I pray to God he has, that little girl is dead.”
Steve closed his hands into fists, looking at the stopped video. Bucky was frozen on the screen, his fist still in the brick wall. As though he also heard what Sam said. He, of all people, knew what Hydra was capable of, knew the danger the girl was in.
“You can’t know that.”
“She’s a mutant. The two years you’ve been back is more than enough time for you to learn what that means.” Steve shot Sam a look. Of course he knew what that meant; mutants weren’t a new invention. He had fought side by side with more than a couple during the war, and faced even more in his work with SHIELD.
He thought of the warning in Ximena’s journal. Of how the boy in the apartments, Peter, had claimed that “Ximena is the toughest person I know.” He was well aware of what Ximena was, and what that meant. The video was just the confirmation.
“You think Hydra, the same Hydra that experimented on and tortured and brainwashed your best friend, who was just a normal guy, isn’t going to do some heinous shit to someone they already know is enhanced?”
Steve swallowed, looking away. In a perfect world, a kid like Ximena would be spared that treatment. But he knew this was far from a perfect world.
“You better hope your man got her back, Steve,” Sam said, and moved to sit across the jet.
Tony sent them to, of all the places, a defunct amusement park called Space Acres. Steve looked it up before they arrived, learning that it had gone under some three years ago, and had been left abandoned by its parent company. There were a few reports of teenage parties being broken up there, or urban explorers trespassing on the property, but nothing like what Steve suspected he and Sam would find.
“Why the hell would Hydra set up here?” Sam asked. Steve knew he wasn’t asking him, per se, but he answered all the same.
“It’s out of the way, secluded because of the property fences,” he said, gesturing to the tall wooden fence that encircled the park. “Probably a control center with security monitors they could boot back up to see when Bucky showed up. Locals would think it’s just kids messing around if they heard anything too,” Steve added. He pulled their borrowed truck a little ways away from the multitude of law enforcement vehicles ranging from the local sheriff’s department, state police, and various crime scene investigation vans. Two NMSP coroner vans were being loaded with body bags, and another pulled in to replace a van that had just pulled away.
“Maybe you should bring your shield,” Sam said as they got out of their truck. “For ID purposes.”
Steve quirked a brow at him. “Tony said he looped Sharon in on this. She should have cleared the way for us.”
SHIELD might not exist in the way it had before, but the Carter name still carried weight. He didn’t know what exactly Sharon might have told the locals, but assumed they’d know it was related to the recent Hydra exposure. No doubt they’d question just what the hell Hydra was doing in their state, but Steve figured the state’s history with high strangeness and military secrets was explanation enough.
“Do they know what they’re looking at?”
Steve didn’t get to answer. Two men in different uniforms stood just on the other side of the caution tape, and the one in the dusty beige Chaves County Sheriff’s Department spotted them. Even at the distance they were from him, Steve noticed the deep scowl appear on his face.
“Hey, you can’t be here!”
The other man, who wore the black and gray uniform of the New Mexico State Police, turned as they approached.
“Oh, shit, that’s Captain America,” he said, grabbing at the deputy. The officer looked to be of the same age as he and Sam, and had long black hair tied back in a low braid. As he approached, Steve saw how the badge on his chest named him officer Graham.
“Damn, you actually showed up.” The deputy — no, Sheriff, Steve saw now on his uniform — removed his hat in greeting. He held his hand out. “Sheriff Seth Cassidy, Chaves County”
The Sheriff was an older man, with white streaks in his dark hair. He was slightly more heavy set than the younger officer Graham, but Steve could tell the man was anything but out of shape.
“Steve Rogers,” he greeted, taking the hand. “This is Sam Wilson,” he went on to introduce.
“Nat Graham, state police,” Graham introduced. “Didn’t expect y’all to get in so quick.”
Sam glanced at Steve, who answered. “We were just in Arizona following a lead on a job we’re on. This might prove more insightful though.”
Cassidy frowned. “So SHIELD is responsible for this mess?” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, and another train of stretchers carrying body bags was pushed out. “Or we looking at the other group? It’s all the same now, isn’t it?”
A quiet flurry of shame and anger rose in Steve’s chest, but he pushed it down. It wouldn’t serve him here, not when they needed to find out if Bucky had managed to get Ximena back, when he needed to find out what damage the Winter Soldier had done the night before.
“This is decidedly all Hydra,” Sam said. His eyes followed the parade of stretchers. “You didn’t… Christ, you didn’t find a little girl here, did you?”
Both officers drew back in shock.
“What?”
Sam dug his phone out of his pocket, and Steve watched in surprise as he pulled up the recent school photo of Ximena from her file. He turned his phone to the officers.
“Her name is Ximena Santiago. She’s been traveling with a man we’re looking for. She was abducted yesterday in the city, and we think this is him trying to get her back.”
Welp, there went any plan to keep their cards close to their chest.
Cassidy and Graham looked at the picture, then up at Sam and Steve.
“There were a few weird reports yesterday, but nothing about a kid getting snatched.” He narrowed his eyes at them. “How do you have this information?”
Steve bit back his irritation; this was exactly why he didn’t want to give all the information up front. “Someone like Tony Stark doesn’t really pay attention to jurisdiction when it comes to research and data collection.”
“It was at a strip mall,” Sam added.
“The Mariposa,” Cassidy said, nodding. “We got a call about a disturbance, but the damn new kid must not have checked the cameras.” He turned away, grabbing at the radio on his shoulder. “Gibson, your guys find a little girl in this mess?”
The radio cracked back a “The fuck? No. Dogs picked out all the bodies, just men. Are we looking for a kid now too?”
“Maybe. Keep an eye out for anything weird.”
“This entire thing is weird, Cass. We’re gonna have a bunch of stupid true crime and paranormal youtubers catching wind and saying this is bad medicine.”
Graham clicked his teeth in warning, understanding something about that phrase that Steve did not. Cassidy raised a placating hand up to him.
“Keep that shit to yourself. Let me know if you find anything.” He turned back to the group. “Anything else we need to know before giving the tour?”
When they had nothing to add, Cassidy nodded.
“I have to deal with this new information, see what I can get from the Mariposa. Graham.”
He said his goodbyes, and left them with the other man, who gestured for them to follow him into the park.
“You guys allowed to tell me why these guys took that little girl?” He eyed a passing stretcher with distaste, and Steve didn’t blame him for it after what he just learned. Sam looked to Steve, letting him take back the lead.
“The man she’s with,” Steve said slowly. “He’s… running from them.”
Graham cast a sidelong glance at him. “Sounds like he’s running from you too, if you’re looking for him.” He pursed his lips, and chose not to acknowledge the comment. “Well, whoever that guy is, all they did was piss him the hell off. I haven’t seen the whole park yet, but there’s the security center towards the back that saw some action too, and a burned to hell fun house.”
As he spoke, they passed a number of dilapidated game and food booths, their paint jobs chipped and fading after years of abandonment. They followed the cobblestone path toward a bend, and the smell hit them first. The heavy stench of blood, burnt gunpowder and flesh. The stench of war.
They turned the bend and stopped.
Steve had seen war, knew Sam had seen it as well. What lay before him was not that.
Bullet casings lay scattered in piles on the ground. Clouds of flies hovered over the dark pools of blood and gore splattered on the cobblestone and smeared on the walls of the booths and signs of the rides. Bullet holes riddled through the structures around them, and one of the wooden fence posts, as thick as Steve’s arm, was broken into a jagged end and tilted to the side. Blood and viscera coated it, and a large pool of blood lay beneath it. Steve closed his eyes against it, trying not to visualize how such a thing could have happened.
Teams of forensic investigators stepped carefully around the carnage, taking photos and speaking into recorders. A line of bodies had been gathered and left covered to the side.
“We ran out of coroner vans,” Graham said as they passed them. “We have three counties helping with the cleanup, and they still have to make multiple trips.”
“Christ,” Sam hissed, pressing the back of his hand to his nose. One man was partially uncovered; he wore black military gear, the type the STRIKE team would on a mission. A bone jutted out of his arm. He still wore the military grade helmet, and the right side of it was crushed in.
“We found that one up there.” Graham gestured to a small ride — Comet’s Tail, it was called — and a portion of its track some ten feet above was painted black with blood. “Don’t know how the hell that happened.”
“How — How many are there?” Steve asked, not wanting but needing the answer.
“We got thirteen in this portion of the park. Most are fatal gunshots, good shots too, one and done, but some of them, like that guy…” He shook his head.
Steve felt the phantom pain of Bucky’s left arm smashing into his middle, the repeated punches to his face. He came to the horrifying realization that even then, when he was actively trying to kill him, was fighting against the memories of their shared past, that the Winter Soldier had been holding back.
“Wait, this portion?” Sam asked, and Graham gave a grim laugh.
“We got a whole park left, Wilson. Your man that did all this, do we have to worry about him doing something like this here again?”
Steve swallowed thickly. “I think he did it like this so he wouldn’t have to do something like this again.” He had read over the files on the Winter Soldier Natasha had shared with him. His past hits. He was efficient, used one weapon until that weapon didn’t serve him and moved to the next, but his shots were clean. His kills were clean.
This was… not. This was a message, and Steve received it loud and clear.
If they still planned on getting Ximena Santiago away from Bucky, then they had to proceed very, very carefully.
As they continued on their macabre tour, the body count continued to rise. The Winter Soldier left signs of himself as he moved deeper into the park; torn signs, dented metal tracks, destroyed wooden structures. Guns lay discarded, marked with small numbered tents.
As much as Steve didn’t want Ximena to be at the hands of Hydra, he didn’t like the idea of her being with someone who left such a display of violence either.
Graham’s phone buzzed, and he hissed as he read the message.
“They found a girl’s shoe in the security center. No kid though.”
When they got to the building in question, another man, a red head wearing a backwards cap and a forensics uniform was waiting for them outside.
“You were asking about a kid being here?” the man said in lieu of greeting. Graham scowled.
“This is Gibson, he runs the forensics here. Bit of an asshole, but good at his job.”
“The best at my job, actually.” Gibson looked between Sam and Steve, and there was a flicker of recognition, but he didn’t ask. “Your kid was kept in here, and someone definitely tried to get her out.” He pushed the door open and didn’t wait to see if they would follow him in. “It was not the same guy that did all that damage out there though.”
The air was hot and still in the buildings, and they were once again hit with that stench of blood and death. The building was a long corridor with offshoots of rooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms.
“What? How do you know?” Sam asked.
Gibson pointed down to the bloody boot prints that came out of the last room of the hall, and faded into the locker room with a broken door.
“Different boots. Different kills, too. We found the shoe in there, by the way,” he said, gesturing to the locker room. “Probably lost it climbing through the window.” Steve looked in, and tried not to imagine a terrified Ximena clambering up the sinks and out the window.
“Boots carried her in,” Gibson went on. “Got her out of this room here.”
They followed the boot prints to that last room, a security office, and Steve had to take a moment to gather himself as he took in the scene. Blood painted the screens and controls of the monitors, one spray going so wide as to hit the ceiling above.
“Watch your step,” Gibson warned. “We already got what we needed from here, but you don’t want to track this mess home with you.” He picked his way through the spots on the floor clear of the pool of blood that spread nearly halfway across the room. “We pulled three out of this room. Throats fully torn out of all of them.”
“Torn,” Sam repeated, and Steve was also struck by that word choice.
“Torn,” Gibson confirmed. “Not cut, not sliced. Like a cougar attack.”
What the actual hell is going on here?
“They had her there,” Graham guessed, and Gibson hummed in confirmation.
A chair sat at the far end of the room, not a drop of blood near it or the wall around it. Steve swallowed thickly at the ripped coil of rope, the snapped zip tie cuffs, the ball of discarded tape left on the floor around it.
A baby, Sam had said. They did this to a baby.
But Bucky had her back. He must have had her back. He and whoever that dark haired stranger they traveled with now. She might not be safe, not completely if she was still with Bucky, but she was out of Hydra’s hands at least. He took some comfort in that.
“There’s not much left past this building,” Graham said as they tracked back out the door.
“Yeah, there’s the one body a little further back, single bullet wound to the head,” Gibson confirmed. “The burnt fun house too. Fire Marshall is gonna have a look at it, but the firefighters didn’t find anything on their initial sweep.” Then his face lit up and he snapped his fingers. “The thing!”
“What thing?” Graham frowned, clearly unhappy with not knowing what the other man was talking about.
“We found this thing by the fun house.” Gibson whistled at a passing investigator with the same uniform as him. “Cody! You still got that thing?”
The investigator in question held up a clear plastic bag, metal pieces of something inside.
“Bring it here!”
Cody trotted up, and did a double take at the sight of Steve. “Are you—”
“Yeah, yeah, get,” Gibson said, snatching the bag from him. He mimed kicking at the man and sent him scurrying away. “Sorry, he’s a huge fanboy. Would have yapped your ear off.”
Steve gave a thin smile. Gibson held out the bag, and Steve took it hesitantly. It took him a moment to process what he was looking at.
It was two broken pieces of curved metal, a full circle if it were still in one piece. Ripped wires poked out from within the jagged ends of the pieces, a small cracked cover over an indicator light on the front portion. Steve turned it over in his hands, disgust and shame raising in his throat as he noted the electroshock trigger on the inside of the back portion. The metal around it was warped, dented in a clear imprint of a hand gripping it.
Bucky must have torn it off the girl, protecting her from the shock with his left hand.
“You have any idea what this is?” Graham asked.
Steve handed the bag back.
“No, sorry.”
Steve stared down at the tablet in his hands, eyes on the screen but unable to focus on the information displayed. Sam sat across the jet’s walkway from him, swiping through his own tablet. Graham had sent them the information from the massacre at the park, photos, and promised to send concluding reports once they were completed. Both he and Cassidy seemed to understand that this was not a case they would be able to officially close anytime soon.
“So, we know for sure he got her back?” he asked, scrolling through the photos. He grimaced as he swiped past a photo of the bloody fence post.
“He has her,” Steve answered, and froze when the next photo in the roll was that of the broken metal collar laying on the cobblestone path. It was the back portion which had the electroshock trigger, the dented hand print around it. Steve’s stomach rolled, and he squeezed his eyes shut against it.
They had put that on Ximena.
He had done the same, nearly a year ago, though his victim — because that’s what she was, he knew that now — had been roughly twelve years older.
“Hey, man, you good?”
Steve took a breath, and turned his screen so Sam could see it. “Do you know what that is?” he asked.
Sam’s brow furrowed, and he looked between the picture and Steve. “No. You said you didn’t either.” There was a hint of accusation in his voice, and Steve accepted it. Deserved it.
“It’s an inhibitor collar,” he said, his own voice sounding far away to his ears. He could see her, in his mind’s eyes, the young woman with the wild dark green eyes. How feral she had seemed to him then, teeth bared and claws extended as she stood in front of the young teenager that shared her face. Daring STRIKE to take the girl from her.
“I’m not a hundred percent sure on how it works — I never asked, and I should have — but it suppresses a mutant’s natural powers.”
He replayed the video from the strip mall in his mind. How Ximena had punched the man clear out of the hallway, and how she had frozen, as though she glitched when the men snapped the damn thing around her neck. It didn’t matter how strong the kid was, it only took the collar to strip her of that strength.
“Why do you know what this is?” he demanded. “Why do you know if it’s Hydra’s, and they weren’t out until a month ago.”
“Because it’s not just Hydra’s tech,” Steve said, his mouth tasting like ash. “It’s SHIELD’s too.” He leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees and scrubbing at his face as though he could clean himself of the overwhelming disgust he felt. “It’s tech I’ve used, Sam.”
It didn’t matter that Steve didn’t know he had been the unwilling puppet to Hydra’s orders, he had carried those orders out. They only captured the older mutant, the teenager ordered to run by her elder, and she had. How lucky she had been to have listened.
Steve could still hear the young woman’s bone chilling feral screech when he had gotten that collar on her. Like she was being gutted from the inside out.
“SHIELD sent you to arrest mutants?”
“Those they considered a threat to the public. Those too dangerous for local law enforcement to arrest for their crimes.”
Sam set aside his own tablet. “What happened to them?”
“They were sent to facilities that could hold them. Due process, I would have said a couple months ago, but now…” He swallowed thickly. “I don’t know.”
An uncomfortable, stilted silence fell between them. Sam shifted in his seat, and then heaved a great sigh.
“Steve, there’s no changing what you’ve done in the past. What you can do moving forward is work on making it right.”
“How do I make it right if I brought test subjects directly to Hydra over the last two years?”
Sam looked at him like he just asked the stupidest question in the entire history of stupid questions. “Dude. You’re Captain America. Stop wallowing in your guilt. Go find where Hydra has them and bust them out. Isn’t that how you got started with this whole super hero bullshit?”
Steve blinked. When he said it that way… He shook his head.
“I can’t, not with Bucky still out—”
“Shut the hell up, man,” Sam snapped, but without any real heat. He snatched the tablet off the table and shoved it into Steve’s face. The picture was that of the bloody post, and Steve grimaced. “He just ghosted nearly thirty armed and armored men less than twenty-four hours ago. Hydra’s not getting their hands on him anytime soon.”
“But we still need to find him. And Ximena. Letting her stay with him is no longer an option, not if Hydra thinks they can use her against him.”
Sam held up a hand. “I can look for him while you’re off doing your Avenger stuff.”
Steve felt a rush of appreciation for the man. Despite having only known each other for no more than three months now, he proved to be a trust-worthy and good friend and partner.
“As for separating Ximena from him…” he trailed off, his face pulling in a wince. “That’s gonna be a whole other bridge to burn when we get there.”
Steve looked at the tablet again, the gore covered post making his stomach twist. He had a feeling that after this, Hell itself couldn’t pry Ximena Santiago away from the Winter Soldier.