Still Bucky POV peeps I’m sorry).

I followed my handler into the main room, waiting by a chair until the handler nods permission for me to sit down. He handed me a plate of a food that was triangles of soft, crispy bread with strange things on top, giving me permission to eat.

I finished two triangles, but can’t eat anymore. Looking around the room, there were other people eating the food. I don’t like being around people, but I don’t have permission to leave. My heart rate accelerated, my breathing became shallower – and suddenly the girl from before was by my side.

She handed me a tiny silver snowflake, identical to the one around her neck and clipped to my handler’s belt. I remembered a sudden, vivid memory of handing her a charm like this. I held it tightly in my hand, trying to block out all the people everywhere talking, the conversations melding into a blur of meaningless words and compressing me, trying to focus on nothing but the charm.

“Breathe with me. Breathe.”

The girl breathed slowly and I followed her, pacing my breathing. When I was calmer, the girl asked me to follow her. My handler nodded, so I went with her to the same room, still clutching the charm.

She handed me some comfortable clothes. “Get some sleep, Bucky.” I risked a question.

“Is that my name?”

She smiled. “I hope so.”

Third Person POV

Tony glared at Dragon. “Absolutely not. I will not permit you to sleep in his room. Even on the floor.”

She slammed her fist down on the steel table, denting it slightly. Her eyes glittered turquoise. “He needs me. I will do whatever it takes to protect my family. Whatever it takes.”

“I’m not having one rule for you and another for everyone else. Two people do not share a room, regardless of gender or anything else.”

“I’m asexual and aromantic, you prejudiced inbred, and my brother’s best friend needs me. He needs me.”

Steve stepped in. “Dragon, just drop it.” Her eyes flashed with anger.

“Fine.” She stormed out of the room.

Three hours later, when Tony was heading to his room, he saw Dragon, leaning against the wall opposite Bucky’s room. She looked at him. “I’m not sleeping until I get my way.”

He noticed that for the first time since he’d met her, she was wearing a sleeveless top. Twining around her bare arms, mostly on the inside of the left forearm, were intricate marks. “What are those?”

She glared at him. “They’re glyphs. I’ll explain tomorrow.”

Dragon stood sentinel, alone in the darkness. Steve lay awake in his room. Both of them knew all too well the devastating effect that HYDRA conditioning could have on emotions and mental wellbeing.

A scream ripped through the silence.  Dragon darted into Bucky’s room, shaking his shoulder. “Bucky, you have to wake up! It’s a nightmare.”

His eyes opened and he grabbed Dragon’s throat, flipping her onto the floor, his metal arm crushing her throat. She allowed him to assess her threat level, before he stepped back, releasing her. She gasped for air, pulling a biro out of her pocket and scrawling something onto her skin. Steve ran to her side, but she shook him off.

“Go check on Buck – he needs you.”

Steve ran to his friend’s side, and Dragon left the room, pulling off her favourite black leather jacket, but not before scrawling a glamour glyph onto her arm. Across her body, scars shimmered briefly and then disappeared.

The next morning, the entire team met up in the living room, aside from Steve and Bucky. Tony confronted Dragon. “We want to know the truth. Everything. Your life story, powers, how you met Steve, Bucky and that demigod – everything.”

Dragon sighed. “I owe you guys that much – just, please don’t hate me when you know. And don’t interrupt. If I stop, I won’t be able to finish.”

“My earliest memory was pain. I guess that explains a lot of things. I was – quite small – maybe five. The pain came from my left shoulder, where I later learnt the HYDRA technicians had branded a star into my shoulder. From that day, I was Midnight.

I don’t remember being given the serum, but I remember being conditioned. I obeyed the orders of my handlers or… bad things would happen.

I remember my first mission. I was seven years old. I refused to kill the target – I was punished. That never happened again. There are gaps in my memory from then onwards. I remember killing. There was a girl, the same age as me, I killed when I was eight because her father wouldn’t give the handlers the information they wanted. My kill total, I was told, was almost a thousand, but I remembered her.

She could have been me.

When I was nine, they wrote the first glyph on my skin. It burned like fire – still burns every time I write a glyph, but never again as bad as the first time. I mastered them quickly, and soon learned to invent them – well, not quite. They were already there; I just had to find them.

When I was thirteen, I escaped. My invisibility glyph had failed and I had been shot in the gut. I wandered for almost a month before I discovered the transportation glyph.

That one I try to never use. It is unreliable, incredibly painful, and drains me. I used it from somewhere in Europe and reappeared in Brooklyn, where I slept for almost a week. That first time, it was sheer luck I didn't end up in the ocean.

That was when I met Steve. I was lying in an alleyway, emaciated and bleeding from an unhealed bullet injury, and he almost tripped over me. I had used the last of my ink to move myself to where I was.

He was smaller back then, difficult for you to imagine, I know. He asked me who I was and where I was from, and I told him I was a murderer from nowhere. He asked me where my family was and I said I had none.

We talked, and I told him my whole story. He didn't blame me, which I found hard to believe. Over several weeks we grew close, perhaps almost as close as he and Bucky. He told me he had never had a sibling, and it was from that day we were brother and sister.

He had an ink pen with him, and once I had told him my story, I proved the truth of the matter by healing myself. It was he that gave me my name, Dragon. He said it was because I was a survivor, and I would always be judged for things I had done. He taught me how to move past that.

He came to visit me often, as I learnt quickly to survive, trading information amongst warring gangs. I knew from what he had told me of himself and his friend that they were struggling, living in a tiny rental apartment, so I gave much of the money I earned to Steve. I needed very little – enough only to buy pens, food and clothing. He refused to accept it at first, until I made him understand that I owed him more than I could ever repay- my life. More than that, my soul.

It must have been a year before I met Bucky. He suspected his friend was sneaking off to meet a girl, and unsurprisingly, he was right, but not for the reason he thought. I met with Steve that time in the tiny bakery that Bucky liked, Kowalski & Sons. Steve loved it because Bucky did, and I have to admit, the food was incredible. Anyway, Bucky must have followed his friend, and when we met up and I hugged him, he must have thought…

Anyway, Steve, luckily, noticed his friend watching us and called him in. We explained to him over a pastry the whole story, and that was the first time Steve introduced me to anyone as his sister.

A/N Double update today!