a drag path etched in the surface . . .

❛ lover, hunter, friend and enemy ╱ you will always be every one of these . . . ❜

a bucky barnes x jill pérez (oc) slow-burn enemies to lovers story!

... in which the red string of fate connects the winter soldier & the cuerva in ways both never wanted, never anticipated and gradually can no longer escape, not matter the history between them.

THIS STORY INCLUDES... slow burn, enemies to lovers, major & minor character death(s), smut, yearning, hurt/comfort, fluff, angst, (not detailed) mention of sexual assault, original organization lore, two traumatized and broken people finding to each other.

TIMELINE... Captain America: The Winter Soldier — Avengers: Secret Wars

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fandom: marvel cinematic universe ( winter soldier ) ship: bucky barnes x jill pérez ( oc ) rating: explicit ( as the story progresses ) chapters uploaded: 3 word count: 8k+

Afanasy Sidorov would die tonight.

Karmic justice, philosophers might say, as his first kill, the one decision that had brought him down this path, had been that of lovers.

A couple, now long forgotten, with no graves, no names, nothing to remember them by, only known as traitors to their country.

But just as Berlin with its gray night sky and breath frozen in the air, he didn’t bother with romance, especially not tonight.

Only survival.

The frost hovering around the city lay thick on pieces of green in the capital, the sky too absent of stars to be beautiful, and the wind so cold it slipped into a person's marrow like a parasite, sucking the warmth out of you.

Jill had been in worse places for worse reasons, but tonight, she was almost grateful for the cold—it kept the security guards sluggish, their breath fogging, fogging the shadows in the moonlight and kept them exactly as careless as she needed them to be.

She dropped the last one without a sound, gloved hand cupping his mouth before he sensed the woman behind him, her blade putting a quick end to his life. The guard’s body folded into the grayish, hardened snowbank. Four more followed him between the treeline and the house. Three had gone the same quiet way as the one who now bled over the white tiles in the hotel’s backyard. The fourth had almost turned to her in time—almost—but in the end, it hadn’t mattered. He joined his colleagues anyway.

She respected the paranoia baked into every corner of the hotel. Motion sensors along the fence line and the roof, security cameras scattered like seeds in a field—too many and too much overlapping; curtains too heavy for a man who claimed he liked the view on the Spree, yet never opened them. He was the product of dealing with death and intelligence in equal measure. A man who'd survived the fall of the Red Room a month ago, and now, with his country, with his people no longer holding a protective hand over him, he survived by simply assuming that everyone he'd ever worked with wanted him dead.

He was correct.

The side door gave in without protest. Someone had oiled the hinges recently, but yet barely any hotel personnel were working this night, which told her more about Sidorov's paranoia than any of his cameras or the amount of guards. She let herself in and followed the low murmur of voices two rooms further, warm light spilling through the crack under a door.

"—the amount of cameras are not necessary, sir. My men hold the parameter," one of his men said, his voice a deep baritone and his German accent thick.

"You will thank me the day you understand why," came the reply.

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