#syw

As slowly as possible, you edged your way out of the team’s line of sight. You kept your movements small and slow until you were around the back of the jet, then you broke into a sprint.The door to the compound was open from where the team had entered before, so it was quick and easy to slip in. At the elevator shaft you stopped.

“HERMES, what floor is the lift on?” you asked quietly.

“It seems to be on the bottom of the shaft mistress.”

“Cut the power to it.”

“Done”

Using both your arms and your legs, you were able to pry the doors apart just enough to edge your body through. You released your wings and just as your feet stepped into the open shaft, spread them as wide as you could to hold a hover at the platform, making sure the doors shut behind you, keeping anyone from sneaking up behind.

Slowly and carefully, you lowered yourself through the shaft, counting the floors as they passed, until you were at the correct level. There was a tiny ledge between the doors and where the elevator would have stopped, but it wasn’t wide enough to do more than rest your toes on. You kept pumping your wings as you pried the doors apart again, they were much harder to open from this side, and holding a hover while doing so had sweat pouring down your back, but you managed. As you slipped between the open doors and into the hallway beyond, the doors closed themselves faster than you were anticipating and caught your wings.

The fine bones in your wings were stronger than birds wings, but you could feel the sharp pains signaling near breaks, and hairline fractures. You drew them in as quickly as you could, berating yourself for not being more careful.

As you stepped fully into the hallway, you froze. This… this was the floor you’d lived on. 19 steps away exactly was the door to your testing cell. Through the door at the back of that room, and 10 steps further down another hallway was the door to the room in which you’d spent the majority of your life, trapped. So many memories of your time with HYDRA had taken place within the confines of this floor. How many times had you been dragged, half-conscious, down this hallway? You shivered.

“HERMES, scan for thermal signatures,” you thought to the AI, no longer daring to speak out loud.

“None on this floor mistress. There are, however, several in a room to the left and above you,” he replied.

“Air vents,” you began searching for the access vent. Of course, the nearest access you could find was just above your head. Typical. Digging into the pockets of your tactical pants, you pulled out the swiss army knife you’d tucked there. Air vents, even in evil lairs, were attached with screws. And a screwdriver was always useful even if there were no screws; they made perfectly serviceable stabbing tools.

You jumped and grabbed the grate covering the vent. Holding yourself that way for a moment before releasing your wings again. You used them to provide the occasional boost as you released the vent cover, letting the vent grate drop to the floor as you levered your body up into the space that was just a bit too small for comfort. A person would fit there, barely, but a person with wings? Not so much. It took a moment to get yourself into a stable position while hiding your wings again and sliding fully into the vent. 

“Movies make this look a lot easier than it is,” you thought as you army-crawled along the very small tunnel. It was almost funny how you had to twist and contort your body into the vertical shaft. It would have been hilarious to watch and you would have laughed in any other situation. Finally standing, you pressed your forearms and lower legs into the walls of the shaft and slowly inched your way up. It would have been a breeze if you could have used your wings, but the space was far too tight, so inchworm it was.

“Y/N, where the hell are you?”

“HERMES, please inform Captain America that I am currently crawling through an air vent and cannot speak at the moment,” even your thoughts sounded snippy. Oh well. 

You reached a junction and crawled into the horizontal shaft, following the amalgamated map you had asked HERMES to project for you of your memories, and his heat reading.

“Son of a bitch! We need a plan first Y/N!”

“Bit busy at the moment, whine at me later.” Apparently HERMES took it upon himself to convey your thought because laughter and more curses followed.

“Where am I in relation to the heat signatures now?” HERMES informed you that you were now just above them. You slid along the shaft until you hit the next vent. “How many heat signatures are in the room below me right now?”

“One Mistress.”

You attempted to be quiet while removing the grate, but with no access to the screw heads, your best bet was to slip your fingers through the venting and hold on to it while you hit it sharply from the inside. You managed to keep the grate from hitting the floor, and when no shouts followed your pounding, you maneuvered the grate up into the shaft with you and cautiously peaked your head out of the hole you’d made.

HERMES was right, there was only one person in the room. And that person wasn’t going to be stopping you cause they were strapped into the weirdest looking chair you’d ever seen. 

You were not incredibly graceful clambering out of the vent, but since the person in the chair had a bag over their head and seemed to be unconscious, there was no need to worry about appearances. You looked around the room and found the door. You had nothing to block it with, so you had to hope no one would attempt to come in, or that they at least didn’t bring too many friends along with them.

There was nothing in the room aside from the chair. No two way mirror, no torture devices, nothing. Just the person, a man, strapped into the freaky chair. Finally looking back at the person in the chair, you peeked under the bag and swore. Bucky. 

“Tell the others I’ve found him, and transmit images,” you thought as you looked for some way to release the straps.

“Careful, Y/N. If they’ve done what I think they have, he may not wake up the same person he was,” Steve’s voice was restrained, but you knew this was probably killing him.

“Mistress, two heat signatures are approaching the door” HERMES’ calm voice announced.

“Shit.” There was nowhere to hide in the room so you slid quickly to the wall with the door and positioned yourself so the door would swing in front of you, blocking you from view for a moment. 

The two people approaching were clearly unafraid of Bucky, restrained as he was, but only one of them came into the room. The other remained outside, guarding the door. Good news for you, if you could keep the struggle quiet and quick you would only have to take one at a time.

The man who entered the room didn't swing the door all the way open, but it came within an inch of the toes of your boots before it began to swing closed again. It looked like the man was wearing a lab coat; so he was either an observer or a tester, neither was a good option. Fortunately he wouldn't be a problem much longer.

Not pausing to draw a knife, you pushed off the wall and launched yourself at the man standing in front of Bucky. Upon reaching him, you immediately put as much of your weight as you could into pressing down on the top of his head, compressing his spine before you grabbed his chin and violently jerked his chin to the side. The dry popping sound seemed insanely loud in the room, but you managed to catch the body before it hit the ground, and the guard at the door made no move to enter.

Now, the question was, should you try to remove Bucky from the torture chair now, or wait until the other guard came in?

"We aren't killers, Y/N.” You'd forgotten the others were watching. and Steve's gruff chiding was unwelcome.

You didn't go out of your way to kill, but right then you had few weapons, no restraints available, and any noise could have drawn the guard’s notice. If Steve wanted to judge your actions, so be it; he wasn't there with you.

"You can bitch me out later," you thought, knowing HERMES would translate, "but I am here, and I'm gonna get Bucky out. Help, or shut up!" 

“There's only one guard outside, right?" Natasha spoke up. You gave her the affirmative. "You can handle them if necessary, but I'd suggest moving Barnes while you can"

"Easier said than done," you thought ruefully.

As quietly as possible, you moved the body so that it blocked the door. No, It wouldn't stop anyone determined to get in, but it would slow them down. 

Bucky hadn't made a sound, and his head was tilted slightly, making him appear asleep, but you approached cautiously. You pulled the cover off his head and inhaled sharply. Cuts & bruises covered his face, clearly HYDRA wasn't concerned about the condition of their Soldier, so long as he was back under their care.

A litany of curses, in multiple languages, ran through your mind as you quickly scanned the chair Bucky was strapped to. It was mechanical, but you couldn't see an obvious power source, or a way to release the chair's occupant.

"HERMES, override?"

"Searching, Mistress."

You circled the chair seeing very few exposed wires, you could pull them, but since you were unsure what sort of reaction that would cause, you left that as a last resort.

"Ideas?" you asked the group.

"Working on it," Natasha replied.

"I've never seen the thing myself, Buck's told me about it, but he was never lucid enough when they used it to tell me much about how it works." Steve sounded calm, but you could imagine the frustration this must be causing him.

On your second pass. you found what looked like a control panel, but of course, none of the damn switches were labeled.

"Override located.”

"Thank Fuck." There was no way you were going to test any of those switches.

Following HERMES' instructions, you had the restraints popping open in moments, but Bucky was still unconscious. You looked up at the ventilation shaft you'd climbed through to get in. That was the safest route out, but how in the fuck would you get an unconscious super soldier wth a metal arm up there? The chair could boost you a bit, but not enough. 

Taking a deep breath, you released your wings again, wincing at the no longer negligible you felt from the still healing wounds, and the new possible fractures from the elevator. You pushed yourself into a hover just above the floor. "This is gonna suck." Beating your tender wings had pain rippling over your back and tears pricking your eyes, but you did it. 

Gripping Bucky at the waist, you pushed past the pain, and forced your body to rise until your head brushed the ceiling. Slowly & clumsily you maneuvered Bucky's lower body into the vent shaft, orienting his body in the direction opposite your destination so you could drag him along instead of trying to push him ahead of you. 

His shoulders had just passed into the vent, finally allowing you to grab hold of the opening and let your wings to drop, when the guard knocked on the door and called inside. 

Forcing your wings to recede had you biting back a scream. Your arms shook violently as you pulled your body into the shaft as quickly as possible. Tears were pouring down your face and a scream was rapped in your throat, but there was no time for you to even catch your breath.

"We're out of time," you alerted the team as you contorted your body to grab ahold of Bucky's outstretched arms. You'd shifted Bucky's body beyond the opening by the time you heard the guard force open the door. He was not quiet in his discovery of his downed colleague, immediately calling a lockdown. He apparently did not notice, or bother wondering exactly how their prize prisoner had managed to escape, but it didn't matter, the whole complex would be shut down.

When you'd been kept in the compound before, you had only attempted to use the vents once; you’d chosen the wrong route on that attempt and had been caught quickly. There was no telling whether or not HYDRA had bothered to put any protections in their vent system since then, but you had no choice but to continue to pull Bucky along the shaft with you. 

A map showing the route you had taken to find Bucky appeared over your field of vision. 

You were sweating and shaking by the time you closed in on your exit; it had taken way longer to leave than it had to break in. Not only were you dragging a very heavy supersoldier along with you, but you kept having to freeze in place whenever you heard activity around you, unsure if the guards would be able to hear you. You'd had HERMES project the location of your exit from the vents to the rest of the team during your inchworm journey out, and you let them know you were approaching the drop. 

In order to get out of the shaft, you would have to move your body past the opening, drop your legs down, and then drop into the vertical shaft, pulling Bucky down with you. The shaft was too narrow to try a controlled slide with two people, and the sharp metal lips where the vent sections joined together would slice your back to ribbons. And it was too tall for anyone to be able to reach up and grab Bucky from below. If you hadn't had Bucky with you. you would have climbed down, but it was way too tight to manage a climb carrying someone, let alone an unconscious someone. 

You slid yourself into position, legs dangling in the opening, and waited for your signal. You could hear shouts and weapons firing below you, so you knew a fight was raging, but you had no way to help without leaving Bucky unprotected. Adrenaline made it hard to regulate your breathing, but you made an effort.

"Now!" 

Several, if not most, of the sharp joins caught you as you fell, ripping into your clothing and skin. When your feet hit the floor, a jarring wave of pain shot up your legs, but it wasn't nearly as bad as when all of Bucky's considerable weight crashed down on top of you moments later. The others provided cover fire as you rolled slightly and shifted Bucky off of you. 

Tears still coursing down your cheeks, you braced one hand and one knee on the ground as you pushed through the now agonizing pain and released your wings. Something was definitely broken now, but you forced them wide. Looking down the hall, you spotted the avengers slowly pulling back to your position. As they slid back, Sam kicked one of the fallen enemy’s guns to you, you snapped it up and aimed at the shadowy figures ducking in and out of doorways.

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