As soon as he was out of the gym, I headed out to the locker room. I flicked my black locker open and changed into a pair of cream tactical trousers, a white shirt and jacket, and black combat boots. I slipped into the meeting room as Natasha was just sitting down. She slid a file over to me. I caught it, briefly flicking through it. Looks like it was a infiltration mission to recover some dangerous stolen weapons; a gun of some sort and a bomb. We briefly discussed our strategy; basically I would freeze time as we entered the facility and then Bucky would break off from Nat and I and would recover the weapons while we dealt with security. We left shortly after.

As the quinjet touched down in the safe zone hidden just inside Hydra’s territory, I fitted myself with an earpiece so we could hear each other if we got split up and got ready to leave. We had a short hike through a seemingly barren area, and to anyone else, it would be impossible to cross it without being caught. However, these two had me. From what they knew, I was born with the powers to stop and slow time in small bursts. S.H.I.E.L.D had taken me in a year ago, training my strength up before sending me off to join the Avengers. All they had really done was shelter me from HYDRA from getting interested in me and gave me a place to live, but they didn’t need to know that. Not yet at least.

A force tugged at my gut as I summoned my powers. Our surroundings shimmered as time froze around us and the quinjet left. To anybody who wasn’t under the effects of this power, it would seem that we were running extremely fast or we weren’t there at all. We journeyed at a reasonable pace, covering the distance pretty quickly. The sun beat down on us relentlessly and I was glad I wore light colours. Bucky on the other hand refused to wear anything light and so was dripping with sweat. I shaked my head and sighed. He was so stubborn. Natasha seemed indifferent to the heat and from the looks of it wasn’t even sweating.

The dark building loomed on the horizon as we got closer to the Hydra base, shimmering like a mirage. The sweat from the heat dripped off of me in buckets, though not as much as Bucky, giving me the effect of being worn out from using my powers for such a long period of time. I felt Nat pat my back and I turned my head to see her giving my an understanding smile. Hah, she didn’t know half of it.

I gulped as we entered the facility. It was deadly quiet, since you know, time was frozen and all.

“Don’t touch ANYTHING unless you really need to,” I warned, clicking my neck and flexing my fingers.

Bucky and Natasha nodded. They’d been over the rules of time freezing time and time again: Don’t touch anything unless you want people to know that you’ve been there, especially if there is high security or the people specialise in individuals with powers. Don’t freeze time on top of time freeze - it will cause the freeze to time out and break. You can’t time manipulate a person if they are not with you. Bucky took my hand and kissed it as we got ready to part ways. Nat rolled her eyes. Bucky and I were rather sappy. Yes, romantic relationships were dangerous and can be considered a weakness, but we went from banter to kissing within a month of meeting. Even Steve jokes that we were made for eachother.

As Bucky skirted down the corridor adjacent to us, I unfroze time briefly, freezing Bucky in mid jog. His hair was frozen flowing in the air. I sighed as we passed him, a blush rising on my cheeks. Nat just shook her head and chuckled.

The facility was air-conditioned, or at least it would be out of this time stop, and so I was quite relieved to find my sweat had evaporated, and the smell beginning to dissipate since we arrived. We navigated our way though a maze of corridors and stairways. I had no idea how Natasha managed to memorised the layout, but I had even less of an idea how the HYDRA agents knew where they were going. However, before I even knew it, we were at the control centre.

The control room was a small hall, lined with large screens and computers. Men and women alike sat at rows of computers, frozen mid sentence in typing. Some were partway through speaking to other agents through their headsets. On each of the large screens adorning the walls was a different camera angle. Three of the cameras displayed Bucky at different angles, although they wouldn’t have noticed that yet. Now it was time to get to work. Natasha and I had to carry and tie all these agents up and lock them in the cells on the next floor. I was glad I had built up my upper body strength.

It took about an hour to transfer all of the agents in that room into cells and get back to the control room. Natasha rechecked the room three times just to make sure we had got everyone out of there. When she gave me the clear, I released the time freeze. Bucky had three and a half minutes to get to the weapons and meet up with us before all the facility were going to be after us. My fingers danced across the keys as he raced down the halls, opening doors and shutting down security protocols for him.

“The weapons should be in the next lab to your left, but be careful, there aren’t any cameras there, so be careful Buck,” I warned Bucky through my earpiece.

I saw him nod, and I opened the door. He slipped in.

“What do you see?” I asked.

Silence.

“Bucky?”

Nothing. His connection had been cut off. They knew we were here. I strained my ears to hear quiet grunts of pain picked up by the weak camera microphone. Ugh, I knew this mission was going to go down hill! Suddenly a group of about six agents burst into the control room. They evidently had powers, and this was even more evident as with a wave of a hand, the man at the front had Natasha pinned with half melted computers. She cried out in pain and I had a feeling that we weren’t going to make it if I didn’t reveal my true potential. I tried summoning my time powers. Damn! I didn’t know why, but they weren’t working. This must’ve shown on my face, because one of them grinned at me. Of course, someone had a type of power cancelling abilities. Great, I would definitely have to bite the bullet here.

As computer man lifted a hand to have a swipe at me, I opened up a mini wormhole beneath them, dropping the majority of them into a cell. Unfortunately some of them jumped out of the way before they dropped down. Closing the wormhole, I threw a punch to block the power preventer from knocking me out with a computer. They staggered back, blood dripping from their jaw, before running at me again. I guess they could only prevent the power that they had prepared themselves for. I blocked their punch and countered with a sharp knee to the stomach. They tripped backwards away from me, and with one wormhole they were gone. I was quickly grabbed from the behind by the other. He began to heat his hands on my mouth and my hip. Gritting my teeth in mock pain to give him a false sense of security, I focused on manipulating the matter around him. A cry of pain and the release of his hands told me that I had managed to heat up the matter around his skin and burnt him badly. He promptly found himself in a cell.

I ran over to Nat who was still pinned on the wall with mangled computers. I manipulated the matter around her while I froze time and threw them off of her. She landed on the floor with a thud and led against the wall for support while she brushed off her clothes.

“Are you alright Nat??” I frowned, offering a hand. She took it and I helped her up.

“I’m fine,” she replied, brushing a few stray wires from her hair, “ But what’s going on with you? How the hell did you do that [Y/N]?!?”

“Well,” I chuckled, “I’ve been able to do that since I first got control of my powers when I was a kid.”

Natasha furrowed her eyebrows.

“But you were only picked up and trained a year ago…”

“Picked up: Yes, Trained: No. S.H.I.E.L.D got me up off the streets and stopped me from stealing, but what they didn’t know didn’t hurt them.”

“Does Bucky know?”

“No,” I sighed, “I haven’t revealed the true extent to my powers in years. I’m actually surprised that you guys haven’t figured out there was something more than time stopping to me.”

“There weren’t any records of other powers that you presented, so we just assumed…”

I nodded. It was understandable since I hadn’t exactly displayed my other powers before. Natasha’s comment brought Bucky back to mind. Crap, we had lost contact with him before those Hydra agents burst in. Nat read my face and gave a sharp nod towards the door. I shook my head in reply. I hand something different in mind. I envisioned the corridor where Bucky was last seen and opened up a wormhole on a wall. I jumped in and Nat followed wearily behind.

I took a sharp intake of breath. The sliding doors to the laboratory were shattered, blood lacing some of the shards. I could see Nat grimacing too. This was bad. I stepped over the glass and scanned the lab for Bucky. It didn’t take long to find him. He was in mid flight from getting thrown into a glass cabinet full of specimens. There were several lacerations on his face and non-metal arm and he was definitely in a lot of pain.

With some help from Nat, we brought him onto the ground and got ready to catch him when I unfroze him. When I did, he went flying into me, and I almost fell with him. At first he was confused, but when he realised what had happened his face lit up.

“Hey nerd,” I grinned, looking down on his face, kissing his forehead, “Lemme fix you up. You aren’t as tough as you think you are.”

He rolled his eyes and grinned, giving me a little peck back.

“Fine,” he laughed, wincing slightly at the pain.

With a wave of my hand, the glass crunching beneath us disappeared. Nat’s eyes widened slightly, obviously still not accustomed to the new powers that I had.

“Now, Buck….try not to freak out…”

“Wha-”

His voice cut off as I made his body levitate, lying in mid-air at hip level. It was simple molecule manipulation, but no one was ready for it. Bucky flailed painfully a little and his jaw dropped. Nat just rolled her eyes muttering under her breath how of course I could levitate people.

“I can do more than freeze time,” I anxiously chuckled. How badly was he going to take this? A relationship is based on trust and honesty, and I didn’t tell him something this important. I chewed on my lip a little.

“You don’t say,” he joked, closing his eyes, putting his arms behind his head and taking a large breath, “[Y/N], How long?”

“I’ve always been able to do this,” I cringed, “Don’t be mad…”

He rose an eyebrow and opened one eye.

“Who said I was upset about this?” He gave me a lopsided smile, “I knew you were hiding something from the start hun, but I respected your choice. And, hell, why would I be mad about more powers? Seriously, the others will FLIP when you tell them.”

He took a glance at face to gauge my reaction to his reaction.

“IF you tell them, though I doubt we’ll be able to keep it a secret for long.”

I waved my hand over his body, sealing his wounds. He would still hurt like hell but he wouldn’t be bleeding to death. Both Natasha and Bucky had taken that pretty well. I lowered Bucky back onto the floor, back onto his two feet.

“They need to know. We’ll get them to assemble as soon as we get back,” I replied, “Now, where’s those weapons? Can you two grab them while I prepare our… transport.”

Bucky had no clue what I was on about but shrugged and followed a slyly grinning Natasha to the weapons. I rubbed my hands together and created a wormhole home

“So why are we assembled?”

Tony was more preoccupied picking at a thread on his suit than concentrating on Bucky, Nat and I. We’d assembled Steve, Tony, The Vision, Wanda, Bruce and even Nicky Fury for this little announcement of ours. I was slightly uncomfortable with most of their gazes on us. I cleared by throat a little.

“As you know,” Bucky began, grinning with excitement, “[Y/N] has the powers of stopping time.”

“What we found on our latest mission,” Nat continued, with a kind of smug expression on her face, “She’s been holding back.”

I scratched the back of my neck.

“I can stop time, yes, but I can also create wormholes, manipulate matter…” I tried to elaborate "Basically I deal with space and time, and I’ve been doing this since I can remember. It’s hard to explain… maybe I should just show you.”

Bucky and Natasha’s eyes lit up.