In The Void~
This is my story, it's also on Wattpad. So if you see it there, it's not stolen.
Bob Reynolds x Adeline Rumlow
Summary: Both Adeline and Bob grew up fighting their own battles. Adeline was molded into a weapon-trained, used, and sent out into the world with blood on her hands before she was old enough to vote. Bob's story went the other direction: he drifted into drugs, trying to fill a hole inside him he'd never found the words for. Bob had no one. Adeline, at least, had people who tried to pull her back, but the emptiness never left either of them. It was like living with a black hole in your chest. Then came the mission that changed everything. That's where Adeline and Bob finally crossed paths.
Warning ⚠️ : trauma, abuse, torture, drugs, alcohol, suicide thoughts
The Past
Adeline Rumlow was just a young girl, she had a normal life before her world got turned upside down.
She was the sort of kid who blended in easily—brown hair always in a messy ponytail, sneakers scuffed from kicking rocks down the sidewalk, notebooks crammed with doodles she’d never show anyone. Her house was two stories, white siding, the kind of place that always smelled like clean laundry and cinnamon. Mom worked too much, Dad traveled for his job, but Adeline didn’t mind. She liked the quiet, the way the sun came through her window in the evening and painted stripes on her bedroom floor.
School was a blur of lockers and cafeteria chatter, and Adeline was fine with hovering just outside the center of things. She had friends—real ones, the kind you could share secrets with—but she always felt like she was watching her own life from a distance, waiting for something to happen. She didn’t know what, exactly. Just… something.
She didn’t know that something had already found her. That the name Rumlow meant more to some people than she could ever guess. She didn’t know about the shadow that followed her father across continents, or the reason he sometimes came home with bruises hidden under his shirt sleeves.
At least, not yet.
Her father used to team up with the one and only famous Captain America. There were old photos tucked in the bottom of a drawer—her dad, younger and smiling, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve Rogers himself. Adeline remembered the stories, told in pieces over late-night cocoa: fighting the good fight, standing up for what was right, saving the world one mission at a time.
But those stories stopped. One day, her dad just stopped talking about Captain America altogether. He got quieter, jumpier, like he was always listening for footsteps behind him. Adeline didn’t understand why, not then.
It was years before she learned the truth. That her father had betrayed Captain America—had betrayed everything he once believed in—by joining Hydra. Hydra, the secret organization everyone whispered about, the people who pulled strings from the shadows and made good men do terrible things. Her father had worked for them. He’d become one of the most dangerous people.
It changed the way Adeline saw everything. Her family. Her name. Herself.
Because even though she was just a kid, the world had a way of reminding her that you could never really escape your family’s shadow.
After her mother’s death—sudden, senseless, the kind of loss that leaves you asking questions nobody wants to answer—Adeline’s world shrank fast. One day she was at home, trying to memorize spelling words for a quiz, and the next she was packed up and moved out, no warning, no goodbye to her old life.
Brock took her in. Her father, Brock Rumlow—the man who used to be a hero, and then wasn’t—brought her to the Hydra base. It was nothing like home. Fluorescent lights, endless concrete, the constant echo of boots in the hallways. People didn’t smile here. They watched her like she was a puzzle they meant to solve.
At first, Adeline thought maybe her father would protect her. But she learned quickly that wasn’t how things worked. Brock was Hydra now, through and through. He let them test her, train her, push her past the point of breaking. If he cared, he never showed it. He was okay with her being used as a weapon—okay with the pain, the experiments, the way they tried to hollow her out and fill her with something sharp.
Adeline stopped waiting for rescue. She learned to keep her head down, to hide her fear, to pretend the things they did to her didn’t matter. Because if there was one thing Hydra taught her, it was that you could survive almost anything—if you let go of who you used to be.
While she was training—if you could even call it that, when training meant bruises and commands barked in Russian—Adeline met the Winter Soldier. He moved like a shadow, silent and lethal, people parting for him in the hallways as if he carried a storm inside him. They called him “the Asset,” never a name, but Adeline knew who he was. Everyone did.
For some reason, he never seemed bothered by the girl who was forced to be there just like him. He didn’t look right through her, the way the others did. Sometimes, in the quiet between drills or late at night when sleep wouldn’t come, she’d catch him watching her. Not cruel, not cold—just… watching. It was the first time she’d felt a thread of connection in that place, the sense that maybe someone understood.
But then the Winter Soldier disappeared—sent off on another mission, maybe, or lost to whatever Hydra did to people who stopped being useful. The emptiness he left behind was sharp. After that, Adeline was the new asset. It didn’t matter that she was still just a kid. The years blurred together in a parade of targets, missions, and code words. Assassination became routine. Survival was instinct. That was all she knew.
She held on to hope the way you hold your breath under water—tight and desperate, always threatening to slip away. But one day, when she’d almost forgotten what hope felt like, her prayers were finally answered.
Bucky Barnes—the man beneath the Winter Soldier mask—and Captain America stormed the base to rescue her. The world crashed in around her: alarms blaring, walls shaking, the promise of something better just out of reach. Adeline didn’t know how to trust it, didn’t know if she even could. But as Bucky reached for her, and Captain America called her by name, she let herself believe, just for a moment, that maybe she was finally free.
After her rescue, Adeline spent months with the men who’d saved her. They kept to the shadows, always moving, always looking over their shoulders. The world outside Hydra was louder, brighter, but not any less dangerous. Steve Rogers tried to make things feel normal—cooking breakfast, telling stories, making sure she was safe. But normal was a word that didn’t fit anymore.
She missed Bucky, more than she’d ever admit. He was the only person who understood what it meant to be broken and remade, to have pieces of yourself taken and twisted. There were nights she’d sat awake, listening for footsteps that never came, wishing for the quiet reassurance of his presence. For a while, they were a sort of makeshift family—her, Steve, and Bucky along with a few others, hiding out from the world.
Then everything changed again. The fight between the Avengers tore the world apart, and Bucky—her anchor in the storm—chose to be frozen, to save himself from the ghosts that still haunted him. One morning, he was just gone but he was still alive, wanting to get better not only for himself, for everyone including Adeline.
Adeline felt lost in a way she couldn’t explain. She’d fought so hard to survive, to find her way back to herself, but Bucky being gone a second time left a hole nothing could fill. She wandered through empty rooms, haunted by memories and questions. Was she ever really free, or just waiting for the next battle to claim her?
The world kept spinning, but Adeline drifted—untethered, hoping that maybe, someday, she’d find her place again.
After the battle against Thanos and his army, everything changed. They lost. Half the planet turned to dust—friends, strangers, people she’d never even met. Bucky Barnes, the man who’d been more of a father to her than her own ever was, vanished with them. One moment he was there, steady as always, and then he was gone. Just like that.
For Adeline, it was the final straw. The last bit of hope she’d been clutching slipped right through her fingers. The anger that had lived inside her for years, the frustration and grief, everything she’d buried to survive—it all came boiling to the surface. She was done being patient, done waiting for someone else to fix things.
So she turned her rage on the people who’d made her what she was. The ones who’d broken her, twisted her into a weapon, stolen her childhood and carved Hydra’s mark into her soul. She hunted them down, one by one, with a fury that scared even her. She didn’t care about mercy. She didn’t care about forgiveness. All she wanted was to make them pay.
For the first time, Adeline wasn’t running from her past. She was facing it head-on, burning it down, piece by piece. Maybe it wouldn’t bring Bucky back. Maybe it wouldn’t fix what she’d lost. But it was something. And in a world that had fallen apart, sometimes vengeance was all you had left.
After years fueled by vengeance, Steve finally found her. He told Adeline they had a plan—a real shot at bringing everyone back. She was done running, ready to face whatever came next. The plan was complicated, full of moving parts and new faces—recruiters who barely had time to introduce themselves before being swept up in the whirlwind.
Everyone threw themselves into the mission. Against all odds, it worked. People returned. The world felt a little less broken.
But it came with a price. Losing Tony Stark hit everyone hard. For those who knew him, the loss was a wound that wouldn’t heal. Adeline hadn’t known Tony well, but she’d seen enough to understand what he meant to them. He was a good man, the kind you remember even if you only crossed paths for a moment.
After the final battle, when the dust settled and the universe got a second chance, Steve Rogers volunteered to return the Infinity Stones to their rightful places in time. He knew it was the last thing he owed to the world. But deep down, Steve wanted something for himself too—something he’d spent a lifetime fighting for, but never really had. This time, he let himself have it. He stayed in the past, finally living the quiet life with Peggy Carter he’d always dreamed about. No more battles, no more orders. Just love, music, and mornings that didn’t start with a mission.
Steve knew his time as Captain America was over. He’d earned his peace, and he wanted someone new to carry the shield. He chose Sam Wilson, a friend who understood service and sacrifice, and trusted him to be the next symbol of hope. For Steve, it was the right call—time to let go, time to give the future to someone else.
But the world rarely waits. The shield ended up with the government, locked away and waiting for another hero. Eventually, they handed it to John Walker—a soldier, a decorated veteran, and, on paper, the next Captain America. For a while, it looked like the legacy would continue. But John wasn’t Steve. When the pressure hit, he broke in a way Steve never would. One terrible mistake, broadcast for the world to see, and suddenly the shield was stained— The world saw what happens when you try to replace a symbol with a soldier, forgetting what made Steve Rogers special in the first place.
After everything that happened with the shield and Walker, the air felt thick with tension. The Avengers were gone. Heroes were a memory. People put their trust in the government now—maybe because they had no one else left, maybe because they had to.
Bucky tried to do what he thought was right. He joined up with the government, let the Congressmen parade him around as proof that even a haunted man could change. He wanted to put his past behind him, to build something better through laws and handshakes instead of fists. It wasn’t easy, but it felt like progress.
Adeline, though—she couldn’t walk that path. The world wanted order, and the government craved control, but Adeline only knew how to fight from the shadows. She reached out to Valentina, the woman with a thousand secrets and a job for every broken soul. Adeline didn’t trust her, but she didn’t need to. She just needed work, a purpose, something that felt real in a world where nothing made sense anymore.
While Bucky tried to change the world from inside the system, Adeline chose the only way she knew. She became a ghost in the margins, working for Valentina, doing the jobs that kept the world spinning—even if no one ever saw her do it.
