"The more people you love, the weaker you are."

-Cersei Lannister from "Game of Thrones"

She pulled her matte-black pistol from the holster on her thigh; she had one on each plus knives strapped inside her boots. She had been given a change of clothing, and her jacket had been discarded somewhere along the way. The black pants she had been given offered a lot of movement, but were also a thick fabric that could protect her from superficial wounds. But there would be no superficial wounds today.

The moment she was dropped off on the helicarrier, Ophelia knew that she would be recognized as a threat. No one would recognize her as the Huntress. She wasn't sure if this was an advantage or not. Ducking behind a small plane to avoid the bullets that were already being hailed upon her, she processed the situation. Biting her lip, she tried to find a safe passage to the inside of the carrier. She would need to get through the massive helicarrier and to the bottom; the giant semi-sphere was where she would swap the chips, according to Maria. It was a long ways from where she was, but she was not afraid of dying.

She was afraid of failing.

She shot at two guards firing in her path, and then dove behind a second plane, taking shelter behind the thick wheels. Bullets ricocheted off of the metal, startling her hearing, but not affecting her determination. She made sure to count her shots as she fired and then she ran across to the doors that would hopefully lead her inside of the helicarrier. From there, she would have less people shooting at her at once, with tight hallways, but also less chance of avoiding any shots fired at her. Once she was inside she would be safer, she presumed, than out on the deck. At least there would be no air support on HYDRA's end against her. There would be hallways and rooms she could duck into, she could certainly use them to her advantage, and even air shafts if she really needed to.

When she opened the door, firing two more shots behind her to at least startle the people firing against her, she came face to face with another man. She fired a shot at the guard, hitting him in the upper rib cage and bringing him to the ground, having to assume everyone was a threat on the helicarrier itself. Steve had announced the situation before they were lifted. She walked over the wounded man, firing a bullet into his head as she did. She muttered to herself, "That was for the tests."

She killed another the moment she saw him, a head shot this time, and as she walked passed his dead body she spoke a bit louder. "That was for the torture."

Each time she expended a guard, she would shout at them why she had done it. It wasn't as if she were suddenly unhinged, it was so much deeper than that. For decades she had wanted to run away, even as a little girl, but now she was running towards them with a loaded gun. They had created her, given her power, and now it was going to come back at them just as they deserved. She yanked open doors, one shot per man now that she was in the groove of things. Finding herself face to face with one more, and on the last bullet of the clip she had in her gun, she grimaced.

"This is for Bucky." She fired the shot.

After reloading her few weapons, Ophelia ducked through a door without thinking and found she was in the main control center. While this would have been great if she had the man power to back her up, she was severely outgunned and would have to back out. She fired a few shots as bullets came back her way, taking out two people, but she had to turn and run before she failed Steve and all that was good in this world.

If she failed, millions of people would be killed. She backed out and closed the door behind her, navigating down a hallway as quickly as she could until she found herself into a spot she knew was wrong. There were no people around, and she felt as though she were going the wrong way. Glancing back over her shoulder, she expected to turn around and double back, but it was Bucky Barnes she saw standing in her way.

No.

It was the Winter Soldier.

Ophelia hesitated to fire, she just couldn't seem to make herself pull that trigger. His mask wasn't on, she still had that back at the dam base. His face was fully exposed making it harder for Ophelia to look at him; his expression showed nothing but blank space.

Her shoulders twitched slightly as if they did not want to be holding her arms extended, at the end of her reach was her gun. It felt so heavy, and not because of the physical weight of it. She hardly even realized that the Winter Soldier was raising his gun to shoot her. As the gunfire sounded she realized, and launched herself against the wall to avoid the bullet. It grazed her right hip and she cried out in pain, a guttural groan that was drowned out by the echo of the gunfire. The bullet had gone through, scraping the bone ever so slightly, but not bad enough that would prevent her from completing her task.

"Bucky, please," Ophelia spoke through gritted teeth. Her hand moved to her hip and it was slick with blood in seconds.

Bucky said nothing, he simply fired again, but this time Ophelia was prepared for it. She spun down another hall and began to run as fast as she could. The bullet wound slowed her, giving her a limp as she favoured her hip. She could hear his heavy footsteps coming behind her, but he was not running. She knew what he was doing; his brisk walk gave the opponent the false hope that they could escape, but as he continued to be on your tail it occurred to the opponent that they could not. The torment of knowing that he was hardly putting effort into ending their life was a mental burden not many could take. Something HYDRA had put into that head of his, she was sure.

Ophelia pushed open a door which lead down a metal staircase, and she forced herself down the small shaft. She had to go down to get to the control panel, but with each step her bullet wound screamed in pain. She glanced down at it for a second though she could not tell how bad it was as the blood covered both her shirt and her hands. Sucking air through her gritted teeth, she carried on, jumping down the final three steps and turning with the stairs when they pivoted.

The Winter Soldier caught her eye again and she shook her head, as if he wasn't really there. This was just some nightmare and she would wake up soon; but if she woke, where did she really expect to be? In Kate's apartment? Back at the dam with Fury? Or in her cell at the HYDRA base deep in Siberia?

This was no nightmare, at least not one she would wake from. The Winter Soldier was there, and he fired another shot, grazing her left shoulder.

She cried out in pain, falling against the railing of the stairwell. She tightly gripped the metal bar under her arm, keeping her up. She pulled herself around, groaning, blood trailing behind her. It dropped through the grated stairwell, disappearing from her thoughts quickly. But the pain remained, throbbing and agonizing.

The Winter Soldier's footsteps grew louder behind her and she knew that she would have to jump to the bottom of the sphere. The fall itself might kill her, but she had a better chance of surviving that than facing The Winter Soldier.

She looked once over her shoulder at Bucky; his eyes were trained on her in a way that made her shudder. Deep in her bones she felt his desire to kill her, and nothing else. There was pain and anger. But Ophelia felt love in her own body, somehow, somewhere. Reminded of what Steve had said about the meaning of love, she would die to bring back Bucky if that was what it took. And it was that knowledge that got her to take the leap. She pulled herself over the railing and stood on the edge, her blood-soaked right hand gripping the bar to hold herself up as she watched Bucky near her.

"I loved you, Bucky." She said it in the past tense as she couldn't love The Winter Soldier, then she jumped off of the stairwell. Gunfire sounded, but she was falling too fast, the Winter Soldier couldn't aim fast enough to hit her.

The glass at the bottom of the semi-sphere came faster than she could have imagined. With just enough time, she wrapped her arms over her head and made it so that her good shoulder was taking the bulk of the landing. When she crashed down onto the glass it did not break. She didn't even cause a crack or scratch to the glass; just as she had always been insignificant in the world. She couldn't even do the one task that she was given and would be forgotten in no time at all.

Trying to push herself onto her hands and knees, she found that she simply couldn't do it. Her breath was gone from her lungs, but she remembered that so much was at stake, and despite her probable broken ribs and two gunshot wounds, she reached up to her ear piece. "Captain, I can't complete the mission."

Static.

Craning her neck to see if her pursuer was still after her, she spotted the man above her. His dark brown hair hung over his eyes, damp with sweat. His eyes bore into her, and then she simply flopped her head back and closed her eyes. If he was planning on coming down to kill her, she couldn't stop it at this point.

Then she could hear the Winter Soldier's footsteps receding as he disappeared. Where he was going, she could not say. Ophelia knew he couldn't be fooled into thinking she was dead that easily, but perhaps he knew that she could not complete her task now, and was moving to his next target.

"I'm on my way, hang in there, Ophelia," Steve's voice chimed.