DEMONS.
( chapter eight. )

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[ MEMORY FOUR. ]
( after memory one, two, and three. )

  IT WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE BUCKY'S departure and Andy decided that the best way to spend their last few hours together was by going out. They were currently at an event called the Stark Expo, hosted by no other than Howard Stark himself. Though, to tell the truth, Andrea couldn't say she cared much for the man. She was only there for the fireworks and her friends.

However, the Jones girl had to admit that she was enjoying his theatrics onstage, to some extent.

"You know, I still can't believe you didn't tell me about you enlisting and Steve's program," Bucky said as the three wove their way through the crowd.

  Andrea rolled her eyes, sensing that he was still worrying over the situation. It wouldn't be long before her and Steve were set to depart for their base.

"Listen, I was just working up the courage to tell you," she tried to reason.

The Barnes man gave a humoured scoff as Andy looped her arm through his, "No, the only reason you admitted to it was because I saw the enlistment form at the registration office." He looked down at the brunette with challenge.

Andrea shrugged, "Who knows, maybe I planted the form so you would see it."

Bucky chuckled, "I doubt that, but whatever makes you feel better." He pulled the brunette closer, kissing the side of her head. Andrea grinned at the affection. Glancing behind them, she laughed at the sight of Steve making puking gestures with his hands.

She waved him over, "What do you think you're doing, lingering behind?" Andrea's tone was scolding as she linked arms with the blond.

"Well some of us don't exactly enjoy being the third-wheel," Steve retorted with a grin.

Andy sighed, "Fine, I promise to keep the PDA to a minimum." Steve only hummed his response, though it sounded strangely like doubt to her. The Jones girl laughed before turning to watch as the fireworks began.

A smile adorned her lips as she looked up at the night sky, watching the blasts of colour with bliss. Andrea turned to Bucky with a smile, only to find that he was already staring down at her. His expression made her heart do a strange flip and the feeling was as exhilarating as ever. "What?" Andy asked, brow furrowed in confusion.

Bucky smiled softly, "Nothing, I just really love you."

Andy rose a brow at the sudden declaration. "Charming," she replied with a grin, though his words made her heart race.

"Always," Bucky said gently before leaning down to swiftly kiss her.

Andrea grinned, promise to Steve already broken as she pulled away to met his gaze. "I love you too, Bucky." She replied softly, leaning up to teasingly kiss the side of his mouth. Another day, and another moment to cherish when he was gone.

"Ugh, you guys are so adorable. It's disgusting," Steve complained, grinning when his two friends broke apart to laugh with him.

"You won't be saying that when you find yourself your own girl," Andy told him, scrunching her nose when Steve rolled eyes.

"Yeah, we'll see about that," his response said that it was doubtful. Andrea sighed and gave in before pulling her two best friends in for a photograph. In their last few weeks together, she'd taken as many photos as she could. Most of them were candids while another handful were of the group trying to be proper. But, it made Andy happy. She was capturing all of her favourite memories to keep them forever.

Andrea never wanted to forget how happy her two friends made her, nor did she want to forget how much she loved them. Even after they were long gone, if she were to still preside on this earth without them, she would never forget the trio's memories together. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes were her rocks.

Andy was absolutely devastated when she lost them.

[ MEMORY FIVE. ]
( after memory one, two, three, and four. )

It didn't seem real─ everything felt numb, numb, numb.

Every possible emotion seemed to fall away into an abyss that Andrea couldn't reach as her eyes left the sentences printed on the letter. There were no words for how she felt, because in that moment she seemed to feel everything at once. Her hands, which clutched the paper, began to shake and that was when the reality finally hit.

Emotion snapped back into Andy like a rubber band breaking free. But, the pain it caused wasn't just a sting, it was nearly unbearable. She could hardly breath, she could hardly see. Slowly, Andy felt her knees cease to support her until she was left a shaking heap on the ground. Everything inside of her seemed to break.

Sobs and piercing cries tore through the room and it took Andy a few moments before she realized that they were her own. The sound of her parents footsteps running towards her could be heard, but Andrea could do nothing as they begged her to say what was wrong. Their questions would fall silent either way, when they caught sight of the paper she'd dropped. There was no mistaking what it meant.

The two people she cherished the most were gone.

Andrea wanted to destroy something─ anything. How could the world be so cruel to her? How could it take the only people that had made her happy? She refused to believe it, how could she? Both Bucky and Steve had promised her they would come back. That, even when their hearts had stopped beating, they would return.

So, Andrea vowed to search for them.

It was foolish, she knew that. But, Andy needed proof. All she had to go by were assumptions. No one had even bothered to search for the bodies of her friends because everyone believed them to be gone. 'No one could have survived what they went through; that was what everyone had told her. But, they were wrong. They had to be.

Andrea first began her search with Bucky.

It took months to locate where he'd died. But, once she had, she found nothing. There were traces of blood, but no body. A dead man couldn't drag himself away from the site of his death and the fact only seemed to invoke more hope for Andrea. In turn, she continued her search until she found something out of what seemed like nothing.

There were a series of warehouses nearby whose exteriors appeared old and rusted from years of neglect and decay. Upon first glance, any logical person would have assumed that they were abandoned. Though, at that point, Andy knew better than to consider herself logical. It was the closest place to the site of Bucky's fall. If he were going to drag himself anywhere, traces of him had to be there.

Curiosity got the best of the female, leading her to explore one of the buildings and, at first, everything appeared as normal as it looked. There was nothing inside, save for a back door and a random stack of crates. But, that was all she could recall before pain exploded in the back of her head and everything went black.

In the moments afterwards, Andrea found herself falling in and out of consciousness. She could feel the grip of hands on her body as someone carried her off and she heard the voices of people speaking. But, her mind was too hazy to fully understand what they were saying.

That was when she shut her eyes, giving in to what seemed like a permanent darkness.

Upon coming to consciousness, Andrea found herself sat in a hard, metal chair. She was alone, left in complete and utter silence. The atmosphere was calm. Though, when Andy finally understood what had happened, she quickly began to panic. She tried to sit up in her seat, but found that she was bound to her chair with little to no chance of escape.

The defeat was ruinous, and so Andrea screamed. She screamed until her voice was raw and in the place of her emotional pain she could only feel the physical; the raw scrape of the rope against her wrists, the numb sting of the coldness in her toes, right down to the scathing swallow of the spit in her throat.

Andy screamed until she couldn't anymore─ and that was around the same time that the lights turned on. Andrea winced. She'd been kept in the dark for so long that she'd become sensitive to the sudden brightness. Her eyes watered before they adjusted, coming to discover that there was someone now standing before her.

The Jones woman pursed her lip as she took him in. Gaze narrowed; she kept her suspicion unconcealed as she met his eyes. "Hello, Ms. Jones." The stranger's greeting and the emphasis of her name left Andrea feeling anything but welcomed. She maintained her silence. Whoever he was, she could tell that he wasn't there to do any good.

She could see it in his eyes. She felt it in his words. His mere presence seemed to bring life to a part of Andrea that was cold and hollow. He evoked fear. But, Andy refused to shake─ and the man wasn't oblivious to her determination either. Among all of the females they'd experimented on, HYDRA had never met one so bold as to stare fear itself straight in the eyes.

But, he must have known that she would break─ that she was shakeable. They all were. "I'm sure you've been wondering why we brought you here-" Andy didn't give him the chance to finish as she let out a sharp laugh. 

"Well, do I look like I've been waiting for a knight in shining armour?" She snapped at him without hesitation. She knew she shouldn't have said it. But, what else did she have to lose? Feigning nonchalance was better than showing fear, especially when in the face of possible death.

The man laughed, "Well, you sure know how to scream like a damsel in distress." Andy tensed. They'd been listening the whole time. Andrea watched the man closely as he shot her a malicious grin. He began to circle her; as if he were a lion and she were mere prey. "You are quite humorous. But, humour isn't exactly what we are looking for," he told her. 

Andrea shifted uneasily, "And what exactly is it that you're looking for?" She tensed as the stranger stopped directly behind her. He let out a reverberating chuckle. Andy sat stiff in her seat. His cold fingers pushed back the hair from her neck and she couldn't help but shiver in disgust.

"A weapon," he seethed before Andrea felt something sharp pierce her neck. The brunette cried out as the serum tore through her body. The transformation was a slow and painful process. Every second felt like scorching flames were licking at her body, swallowing Andrea whole from inside and out. She was burning, burning, burning.

Andrea Jones died right then, leaving behind the ashes of whoever it was that she had once been. HYDRA took everything from her; stripping Andy of all her morals, thoughts, and most importantly, her innocence. The organization wiped her mind of all its memories, ensuring that HYDRA would be all that she knew. From then on, her mind was filled with a constant readiness to attack.

What they trained the female to become could hardly be considered human. Andrea Claire Jones became darkness and destruction in the purest of forms. HYDRA twisted, pulled, and shaped Andy past the point of being recognizable. She was nothing more than a puppet to them.

Forced to undergo numerous training exercises, both her physical and mental capabilities were tested. Each exercise pushed past the limits of her body until limits ceased to exist. The serum HYDRA had injected into Andrea's bloodstream had also gifted her numerous superhuman abilities in a time when it was unimaginable without the DNA of Steve Rogers.

Andrea was, as HYDRA would have liked to believe, beautifully indestructible; a perfect weapon─ a perfect machine.

But, all machine's have their evidential flaw. Andrea was haunted by the blood she spilled, all the lives she'd taken, and all the things she'd destroyed. It became too much for her brain to bear and no longer was she able to sustain the weight of her actions. The Jones girl's mental stability was fractured and with every passing mission came doubt.

Slowly, Andrea began to realize that HYDRA's beliefs and values weren't her own. The things they strived for weren't the things she wanted and, upon this realization, Andrea knew she needed to get out. To escape. But, most of all, she needed revenge, and revenge was exactly what she got.

Andrea destroyed the people who had carved a monster out of her very being. She ensured that every last scientist and soldier received what they'd had coming from the very moment they had begun experimentation. Andy left the last of HYDRA (or so she thought) in complete ruins.

Finally, she was free, completely unaware of the time change that had occurred during her time with the organization. After every mission, they would put the Jones woman into cyro-sleep until her abilities were needed once more. Days that turned into years would pass, but Andrea had remained loyal to the organization that had made her.

But, even despite the newfound freedom that came with her escape, nothing erased the fact that Andrea's mental state was unstable. All the emotional trauma Andy had endured would force her to shut out every single memory of her life prior to HYDRA and even with the organization.

Without her consent, Andrea forgot everything. It was an unconscious reaction to the haunting things she'd done. Though, even then, Andy couldn't shut out the nightmares. Around a year later she appeared on S.H.I.E.L.D's radar. She hadn't meant to hurt anyone. Andy vowed to never do that again.

But, how could Andrea simply stand by and watch as a man assaulted a woman. All she wanted to do was a little bit of mind control. But, it had gotten out of hand and within the next moment she had accidentally sent out a telekinetic energy blast. One that tore clean through brick.

Andrea thought it best to lay low after that. Though, S.H.I.E.L.D had ended up finding her anyways─ and no one could say that she had gone easily. Andy had never been one to go down without a fight. The shack she'd been staying in was left in ruins alongside about a dozen cars and a single house. Fortunately, there were no casualties during this battle.

Once they had gotten her back to headquarters and stabilized her, S.H.I.E.L.D began to fill her in. They informed Andrea of who they were, what their purpose as an organization was, and all things alike. Though, Andy found that she could only listen halfheartedly, wary of the group and eager for any chance to escape.

She didn't trust anyone and that was reasonable, especially after everything she'd been through.

But, as her time with S.H.I.E.L.D lengthened, the Jones girl found herself beginning to trust the organization. They'd been nothing but helpful towards her, even going so far as to help Andrea find her real name. She knew she couldn't continue to be uncooperative when all they had done thus far was support and care for her.

So, when questioned once more on her background, Andy confessed everything to the organization. Or, rather, she told them all that she knew. The Jones girl confided in S.H.I.E.L.D about the flashes of memories she received, the nightmares, and how everything in her past life was an incomprehensible blur.

In return for her truth, the organization helped the female through all struggles in her newfound life. Eventually, they created ties with her that were strong enough to convince the woman to join S.H.I.E.L.D as both an agent and a future Avenger. From there on out, life only seemed to get easier for Andrea.

Her memories, with the help of skilled doctors and friends, had begun to come to her more clearly and the nightmares became less and less consistent. Although, another big help with her recovery had to be Steve's reemergence from the ice. After meeting him, Andrea became more open than anyone had ever seen her.

Her personality grew progressively better and her social skills seemed to only improve as each day passed. The new life Andrea had found was amazing. But, that was before her past came back to haunt her, and this was the now; when her memories resurfaced in a merciless wave determined to only bring pain. Andy would never be free of what she'd done.

Monsters don't get happy endings.

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