i am just an animal, just a fucking chemical

[birdburning]

These are the statistics:

5'1", 12% body fat, 105 pounds (10 of which are adamantium), six minute mile, young adolescent female, mastery of seven different martial arts including Krav Maga, Shaolin Kung Fu, and Wing Chun, fluent in five languages, conversant in eight more, unknown kill count estimated to be over two hundred, valued at nearly half a billion dollars. Two adamantium laced claws in each hand, four inches long when deployed. One adamantium laced claw in each foot, four inches long when deployed. The most vigorous healing factor known on Earth. Designation in the Weapon X program: XXIII.

They call her X-23, as a general rule. The numerals are a mouthful. 23 is too vague. And it's important to keep her marked, keep her owned. They've lost twelve attempts between X and her, to death or individuality. Death seems unable to take her so far, and so a sense of self is what they have to keep from developing.

But she is almost exactly what they wanted, even if they would have preferred a male.

(Dr. Rice would prefer she more resembled her genetic father, down to her sex. But she'll do.)

*

When she is seven, after the radiation treatment that coaxed her claws from her hands and feet, forced her body to adapt and respond, to survive--her skin had burned and her lungs had closed, an ache that turned into a scream snarling inside her bones, but X-23 had not cried if only for the fact that she was fighting nausea instead--when she is seven. When she is seven, although she does not know she is seven, they give her a puppy.

X-23 is unsure of the purpose, but the puppy is soft and warm. It licks her face and she realizes that she can smell that it's male. He, then. He is a soft, warm, eager thing, and although Laura has seen pictures of dogs they aren't so immediate as this little thing. She holds him and licks his face back, experimentally, and then they chase each other around her room. It lasts almost between one dimming of the lights and the next.

They tell her to kill him.

She does.

It's better to be dead than in this room.

*

Dr. Rice hates her. She can smell his animosity and deduces reasonably quickly that it's directed at the source of one of her X chromosomes, the one who is not Dr. Kinney. The one who has made her what she is. It seems odd to her. But many things people do are strangely inefficient and misdirected. For example, Dr. Rice is sexually involved with his superior's mate. Instead of directly claiming her he uses deceit to hide it, but X-23 can smell it perfectly well. She has little reference for why this feels instinctively incorrect to her, but then again, as she is often reminded, she is not human.

A sharp reminder of this comes what may be a few years after the puppy. (X-23 has little grasp of time. She becomes older, larger. People age. She trains. But specifics of days and weeks and months fail to register.)

There is a smell she recognizes, and she has no time to prepare, only to know--

--when she is back in her body (which has done something she will only understand as betrayal in the years to come; X-23 at the moment has no idea what it means to feel betrayed, because her life is bluntly the thing it is, and there are no illusions of trust except for the thing she could not name which that her body would answer what she told it to do) there is blood everywhere. This is not unusual. There is blood sticky between her fingers, in her hair, in her mouth. She is looking at her sensei's body. He is clearly dead. She knows her own claw marks when she sees them.

She understands.

If she were human she would feel guilt first. Regret. Anything but to think immediately of Dr. Kinney, who is also kind to her, like her sensei is (was). Will she next have to kill her? X-23 somehow thinks that would not--it would not be--she ceases to think when Kimura appears to collect her. Break her. Kimura, like Dr. Rice, hates her.

X-23 does not understand why she is so readily hated. But then again, she is a freak. Perhaps this is the natural reaction, and Dr. Kinney's is the aberration born out of misplaced maternal instinct. Yes, she decides, as Kimura breaks her neck in the hallway. That must be it.

*

Yet X-23 has a--flaw, for Dr. Kinney. Dr. Kinney reads books to her she doesn't understand. She would honestly prefer The Art of War, which is uncomplicated and relevant to her future, but since Dr. Kinney seems to find telling her about a small wooden puppet pleasing X-23 doesn't voice this. She rarely speaks anyway. It's not encouraged and she sees no purpose. Who would she talk to? Why?

Dr. Kinney seems to want her to believe she will be a real girl. X-23 has never met a real girl. She doesn't understand what it means.

There is training in deception. She can occupy that role and numerous others easily. But they are roles. She can simulate, but not actually reproduce, what it means to be real.

Dr. Kinney says she is her mother. She gestated X-23. She was responsible for solving the genetic problems that allowed for X-23's creation. Dr. Kinney, then, is the puppet maker. X-23 is a puppet. In a strange way, this is--stabilizing. X-23 allows herself to think of herself as a puppet on missions. She is a puppet, but the strings on her do not feel like entrapment. If they were cut, what would she be? There is no blue fairy who has imbued her with independent motion.

*

Her first mission is entirely a success. She eludes capture by killing the staff of the ambulance a police officer carries her to, assuming she is a small survivor. Her leg braces are readily discarded, and she reaches the extraction point without incident.

A team of psychologists pronounce her unaffected. She is not affected. This has been the purpose of all of her training and conditioning.

Dr. Kinney cries, softly, when they have a moment to themselves. X-23 is concerned. She does not want to kill Dr. Kinney, and this level of emotional response is dangerous. But she doesn't have the proper tools to make it stop. So she tolerates it, uncomfortably, and is glad when Dr. Kinney goes.

That night, she slits her wrist with her claws, watches them heal shut. Does it again, and again, licking her blood away to leave no visible trace. She remembers when her claws were only bone, sharp at the tip and rough and waving elsewhere. Now they shine her face back in them. Dark hair, green eyes. A face she has no emotional attachment to. Humans, she has noticed, fuss over their appearance. They seem attached. X-23 marks this as another way she is set apart, and thinks nothing more about it.

*

She is a young pre-adolescent when XXIIII is delivered to the facility. He was formerly known only as the Winter Soldier, and from overhearing things as he is processed she understands he was highly expensive to procure. Perhaps she financed his acquisition with her assignments. She is the major source of funding for the facility now, making them almost entirely self-sufficient. Allowing them to expand.

It is not long before they are given an assignment together. They refer to it as a Nabokov Gambit, which she has explained to her in the form of a dossier. She suspects since they have named it they intend for it to be used at least semi-regularly. She does not understand the name.

It goes smoothly. She approaches and is acquired by the target, who is a heavily guarded arms dealer. Perhaps too heavily guarded to handle on her own. They have sexual intercourse, which is certainly not the most painful thing that has ever happened to her, and when he goes to sleep she gets out of bed. She explains to his guards she needs a glass of water and to use the restroom. She does need both of these things, so she does them, then disables the security system from the inside. The Winter Soldier immediately enters through the side door she expects him at. This is the first time they have met in person.

He looks at her and his jaw tightens in a way that would be imperceptible to anyone but her. She supposes he will hate her too, then. Hate is a very easy thing for her to recognize.

"Come on. Let's kill everyone."

She nods. They do.

He is efficient and talented. On par with her, and what he lacks in a healing factor he makes up by being untouchable and significantly stronger than her. X-23 usually doesn't bother to avoid bullets or blows, herself, unless the mission demands she conceal her abilities. They slide seamlessly into cooperation; much more readily than any other human she has ever worked with before. When it's over, they are both breathing only slightly harder than usual, and she can hear that his pulse is as steady as hers.

"Good work," he says, holstering his guns. She glances at him, somewhat startled and entirely unsure how to respond. She has never been praised for completing an objective before. Perhaps he is not aware of what she is--but he saw her heal. It is confusing.

He turns to her, blood gleaming on his metal arm, and quirks his eyebrows: "Usually people say 'thank you' when they get a compliment."

I am not a person, X-23 thinks, automatically. Then she says it. Better for him to be corrected before he makes any more mistakes.

There. Hate again. Much more familiar. But then--he pulls his sleeve over the hand of his human arm and reaches out to dab at the blood splatter on her face, and she blinks, still--she was expecting him to hit her, but she wasn't going to step aside. Let him. But this may be worse than being hit. Certainly stranger.

"Of course you aren't," he says. "Let's get to the extraction point."

*

He is very strange.

The Winter Soldier is cold, efficient, and ruthless. They do things X-23 is well aware are illegal and immoral, and he never flinches. But there is also an aspect of him that reminds her of Dr. Kinney, in brief moments. He will clean blood from her or tell her she did well. He will share coffee with her on stake-outs. He does not seem to actually hate her, but surprisingly to hate the people who do what she knows would be considered harmful to real girls. This includes Kimura. The staff.

She supposes she can understand why he would hate them. He is real, unlike her, and humans hate those who do them harm. But not hating her is the thing she doesn't understand. Everyone hates X-23. It's natural. So he is unnatural, and it's unsettling.

"Red room, white room," he murmurs, once, looking at her. "Colour doesn't matter, does it?"

"I do not understand the question."

"I know."

He begins to call her Lola, which makes Dr. Kinney flinch and then stare at him like she wishes to kill him when he does it in the facility before they part after a mission, and the Winter Soldier smiles at her. His smiles are all teeth and violence, and this makes Dr. Kinney retreat. X-23 observes this and considers which side she would choose in a fight. Likely Dr. Kinney's, because she is staff, and also woefully unprepared to protect herself. But X-23 has to think about it.

"I can't nickname my work partner, doctor?" He asks, and X-23 recognizes the bite of cruelty. Should she have some reaction?

"No," Dr. Kinney says, shortly, "It's not permitted to anthropomorphize X-23. If you don't want the room, you won't do that again. One warning, 24."

"That Kinney woman is irritating," the Winter Soldier observes, on their next partnered mission, and X-23 knows that what he means is if I could kill her I would.

X-23 considers what she ought to do. Dr. Kinney requires protection here X-23 can't provide physically, necessarily, and she knows that whatever 'the room' is it holds little terror for the Winter Soldier. It's poor reinforcement for his behaviour. He treats it as an annoyance, more than anything. (X-23 doesn't even consider that her disapproval would alter his behaviour.)

"She gestated me," she says, finally. "She is invested in the project."

"She's your mother," the Winter Soldier says, and she knows he is evaluating her profile, spotting resemblances and points of commonality, points of difference. No one associates them immediately without being told. They do look alike, in some ways, but they are so different in movement and expression that it's never spotted by those unfamiliar with the details.

"No," X-23 corrects, holding her face still, "She gestated me and provided genetic material."

She doesn't tell him about books, or Dr. Kinney holding her wrist, frightened by the violence X-23 does to herself. Not about that or soft touches or the reluctance to send X-23 out, not about Dr. Kinney's constant intervention on her behalf or her failed efforts to eliminate the Nabokov Gambit. These are things X-23 must not share, because she does not want to kill Dr. Kinney.

"I see," he says, and he must, because he never brings it up again.

He is strange, unnatural. Very much like her. X-23 thinks her list of people she would be reluctant to kill is already too long at one. Two seems impossible. But reluctance doesn't mean she wouldn't do it. Only that she would--not want to.

But this is a secret: X-23 never wants to kill anyone.

*

Dr. Rice wishes her to kill his superior and his family, then burn the house to dispose of the evidence. This is not a problem. The ride in the trunk of the car at least allows her time to nap, briefly, and she readily awakens refreshed when she feels the car come to a stop. It's surprising to see the Winter Soldier next to Dr. Rice. X-23 could have easily done this alone. He must want to be very sure.

"She couldn't ride in the car?" The Winter Soldier questions, softly, and she is also surprised constantly that he dares to question. But it's very hard to punish him.

"I wasn't going to let that thing up front," Dr. Rice snaps, and she sees the faint tightening of the Winter Soldier's jaw. She is occasionally unsure Dr. Rice understands how dangerous they are, and while X-23 may be a puppet unresisting of her strings--the Winter Soldier is barely checked, only held by programming that is imperfect. But the moment fades, and impassively the Winter Soldier assists her out of the trunk.

"Let's go kill everyone," he says, and she can hear Lola in the familiarity of his tone. Laura to Dr. Kinney. Lola to the Winter Soldier. She has an odd number of names for a puppet.

So they go. The program director and his partner are easily dispatched, but perhaps they make too much noise, because when they go to the child's bedroom he is absent. They split up to search for him, since his scent is hard to track in a house full of his movement. With effort she could, but the doors have not opened or closed in the house, so he must be inside. It will be simple enough.

Except she finds him in a closet, huddled and silent, and it is not so easy.

He smells like Dr. Rice. It is easy to perceive this is his offspring. That should make it easier, and yet--it does not. Because Dr. Rice must have been aware. The child resembles him, and the affair with his mother is a long one. He must have been aware. Yet he sent her and the Winter Soldier to kill his child.

It sits wrongly with her.

The child sees his mother's blood and is well-aware of his death. That's obvious. Children are very easy to kill. It would be over quickly.

She raises a finger to her mouth in a gesture she is well familiar with. Hush. He stays hushed. She pads back to his bedroom, unsure of what she is doing, hearing the Winter Soldier in the attic. She removes a family portrait from a picture frame and tucks it in her mouth. She collects a small Captain America action figure. Returns to the boy and gives him his doll.

The Winter Soldier is the only person she knows who can sneak up on her, surprisingly light on his feet. The noise upstairs was a distraction he somehow produced. Of course.

She should step aside. Instead she turns, and instinctively her unsheathes her claws, to the sharp intake of breath from the child behind her. It sits wrongly with her. It sits wrongly and she feels her strings, too taut, and it isn't as if she hasn't killed children before. It isn't as if she feels guilt. She doesn't think she is capable of guilt as humans understand it. But Dr. Rice sent her to kill his child, and this is a--violation, a flaw, a thing that goes against everything that should be, and the boy is not capable of harming Dr. Rice's career. And she does not want to kill the Winter Soldier. But she does not want him to kill this boy.

The Winter Soldier glances between her and the child, for a moment cold and efficient--already deciding how to decapitate her, she supposes. But something he sees draws out what is like Dr. Kinney in him.

"Calm down, Lola." He brushes by her and crouches in front of the boy, and X-23 trusts him. Has he not always been steady at her back? Has he not always been a reliable partner? He is the first thing she has ever trusted and called by that name, one he accidentally taught when he said partners trust one another, and besides. He is willing to turn his back on her, knowing she will react violently if the child is harmed. So his intentions cannot be that.

"We're going to burn this house down," he tells the boy. "You have to run. Run to the highway. There's a gas station nearby. You can't tell them who your parents are. Say your first name and not your last. Ask someone to call the police, and when they come, tell them that strangers killed your parents and want to kill you too. Say that your mother told you that you needed protective custody. Can you remember all of that?"

The boy nods, quickly.

"Go get your coat and your boots. Mittens, too. It's cold outside. Anything you want from your room you can fit into your backpack. You have to take the back door." The Winter Soldier reaches out and touches the boy under the chin. "Don't go into your parents' room. They're dead."

The boy is crying now, almost silently, but he scrambles to his feet and runs off. The Winter Soldier turns to her and shrugs. They go to retrieve the accelerator and coat the house in it, ignoring the boy running back and forth, dressing himself by the door, and finally disappearing. Except they don't ignore him at all. They ignore each other paying attention to him.

Then they burn the house down.

"Spit it out." The Winter Soldier holds his hand out, and X-23 considers bluffing, but he obviously knows. She spits the photograph into his hand, and he throws it on the fire too.

"They can't know about what happened here. Kinney can't know." He looks at her with--something. Kind, she supposes. "But I'll know."

X-23 puts that away with all the other things she doesn't understand.

*

XXV is acquired slightly afterwards. They are very excited about him. He was cheap, for one thing, costing only the effort of going out to pick him up. He's also someone who expresses the X gene, like her. The Winter Soldier is superb, better than human, but his abilities aren't as remarkable as her own. This new arrival apparently may rival even her in inherent lethal capabilities.

She meets him in a testing room. She is familiar with these. She has been in them many times. It is clean, white, and large. She stays on her feet and waits patiently for her next test. But this is not exactly a test for her. It is, slightly, but it is mostly for her sake.

The boy they drag in has brown eyes, curly brown hair, and numerous bruises on his face alone. She is unsure about the rest of her body, since he is sheathed from neck to toe in a black jumpsuit she can immediately smell is synthetic. He is escorted by Kimura and a minimal guard, and when he sees her he flinches back as if struck.

"No--no, no, please, I'll do another dog, anything you want, please--"

Then he is struck, harshly, by Kimura, who is wearing gloves of the same material as his jumpsuit. They are all entirely covered, even their heads, in this material. X-23 deduces his ability must have something to do with skin-to-skin contact, and it is interesting that even Kimura is so protected. He must be able to hurt her. X-23 does not allow herself to think of possibilities.

"If you don't, we'll torture her before we shoot her. Do you want that, pretty boy?" X-23 betrays nothing. But it is an empty threat, everyone but the boy must be aware. He is unable to notice that, and X-23 assumes that before his acquisition he must have been--real. He is not used to this, then.

The boy, bleeding from his mouth, is wide-eyed and silent. Kimura laughs and kicks him inside, blows X-23 a kiss: "We'll be back in an hour, whether or not you do it. Don't fuck up, pretty."

X-23 allows what she estimates as a few minutes for the boy to stay on his hands and knees while crying. Then she goes over to him, crouching down. Her arms and face are bare. It makes sense now.

"You should do as you are told," she says, quietly.

"I can't--" he hiccups with a sob "--I can't--they want me to kill you."

"What do you do?" X-23 asks, with interest, now. She doubts he'll actually be able to kill her. She is too valuable for them to kill yet. Or at least they assume he can't kill her. Still. It's an interesting idea.

"I--if I touch something alive, organic, it--dies. It disintegrates." He's coherent enough to gasp that out, and X-23 bends down closer to take hold of his covered wrist and begin to tug off his glove. He yanks away, since her grip wasn't tight, and falls back to sit, locking his arms around his chest. "No."

"I do not want to be tortured." That part of the threat was quite real, she's sure. They may even shoot her and show him footage of it. But that isn't her motivation. "Do you want that?"

"No," he says, so deeply miserable that she thinks if she did care for anything she might care for this. He cannot be much older than she is. If older at all.

"Then give me your hand." She holds her own out, expectantly.

"I can't," he says, desperately, and--well. X-23 is quite sure she is the superior hand-to-hand combatant here. She she lunges forward and pins him to the ground, to his great surprise, and digs her knee into his stomach as she uses both hands to pin his wrist and her teeth to remove his glove. He struggles fiercely, pleading, but X-23 pays no attention. She drags his hand to her shoulder by the wrist and holds his clench fist there.

It hurts. It hurts deeply and wrongly, but she isn't the one who screams and fights. She watches, fascinated, as decay spreads in an ugly ripple down the smooth skin of her arm, all the way down to her hand and splaying unseen across her chest and back, until her hand has no force to hold him still on that side. Then he kicks her off of him, past tears, breathing in shallow, horrified rips of air.

"Oh God, Oh God--" X-23 is careful not to land on the wrong side as he whispers, and she cradles her dead arm to herself. "I am so sorry--"

She holds her finger to her mouth. Hush. He hushes.

It takes longer than it usually does, but from her navel a wave of healing travels, until her arm is light and healthy again. She flexes her fingers, experimentally, and raises her head to meet his wide, wide eyes.

"I heal," she says by way of explanation, "I suspect they desire for you to learn to control your capability, if that is possible. I am an experimental vector." She pauses. "Practice dummy."

"Why didn't you just--why didn't you tell me?" He says, between a plea and accusation.

X-23 says nothing about that. She doesn't think he can possibly be ready for an honest answer, which is a question in return: do you want to survive here either? Perhaps he does want to survive. (Dogs. Puppies.) Instead, she says: "It did not hurt. You may continue to practice."

She is lying. It comes easily. What is she, if she can't hide pain? It will make him easier with what he must do. He must practice, or he will be punished. She can tell he already has been. It does her no harm to lie. Besides. What does the facility know about her ability to feel pain, anymore? When they ripped the claws from her twice over, once to coat them and again to remove the ones she regrew in order to graft the adamantium sheathed ones in, X-23 did not cry out once. She has not since she was very, very small. Let them think she feels nothing.

"I'm Kevin," he says, after a pause in which she cannot read his face, "Kevin Ford."

He has a name, then. That will be the first thing they'll take.

"My designation is X-23," she says, because she does not have a name, and is careful to avoid one. They know how to punish her without pain. She does not want Dr. Kinney or the Winter Soldier to suffer.

"That's," Kevin says, and bites his lip, then--laughs, impossibly. It's bitter and hurt, but still. Impossible. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Can I call you something else?"

"If you want to." It doesn't hurt her, after all, and he is so new he must not know the rules yet. He'll learn. She's not eager to teach him.

"Laurie?" He suggests, after a moment of thought, and for a moment X-23 tenses because--is this a test, then? A trap? Is she being toyed with? And something of that must slip past her cover, because hurriedly he says, "Or--not, if you don't like that--"

"Why Laurie?" She asks, guarding her expressions smoothly once more.

"You just--look like a Laurie. I don't know," he mumbles.

"How do I look like a name?"

"I don't...know?"

His confusion smells genuine. She decides that perhaps there is something in the sound of an L that her features evoke. She never knows, with humans. Or not humans, now. But he must have been raised as one. So perhaps her face resembles what an L means. Laura. Lola. Laurie. An L and a round vowel. These things are worn on her.

"All right," she says, and since they have only an hour, "We must practice."

By the end of it he has made no noticeable improvement, but this is the first session. She suspects it will be the first of many. He does become less hesitant to touch her, which is good. Wrestling him every time would be a waste of the hour they have. He even touches the back of her hand, lightly, when the door slides open. It leaves a trail of four dead patches of skin, and this one does barely hurt. It's entirely tolerable. Even--it's all right. Acceptable.

"Don't start getting a crush, pretty boy," Kimura sneers, "A born killer, that one. The little freak would slit your throat right here if I told her to."

X-23 would. (It would be so much better for him.)

Kevin looks at her, surprised again, and then he is gone. X-23 brings herself to her feet and escorts herself back to her room, closes the door behind her. She is very obedient.

Their sessions continue for a time. Kevin talks to her, too much. He tells her about his life before. About his father, his mother, his pet dog. He tells her about high school and the bands he listened to (Nine Inch Nails, Tool, Marilyn Manson; she does not know them), the art he made, his love of shop class. He pours words into her recklessly, desperately, and X-23 has nothing to give back. But he shows her all of his weak spots, the places he could break, and she does not understand why.

"He wants you," the Winter Soldier says, out of nothing, on a mission.

"What?" X-23 has no idea who he means. That isn't even pretending, to hide sentimentality. She just honestly doesn't know what he means.

"Kevin." The Winter Soldier aims the sights of his sniper rifle. "I'm his hand-to-hand combat trainer. He talks about you all the time."

"I do not understand how this is important."

"It isn't. He doesn't have anything you can use. It's not even like you can seduce him." The Winter Soldier takes the shot. X-23 stands up and goes to the ledge of the building, gauging swiftly the trajectory she must take when she jumps. Mexico City is humid today. She factors it into her calculations. "I just knew someone needed to tell you or you'd never figure it out."

All the way down to street level, X-23 is confused. Then most of the bones in her legs shatter, although in moments she can run again, and she has the clarity of a mission to focus on.

When they return, the sessions do not resume. X-23 does not count it as a loss. Two on her list is bad enough. (Three. Three, now, no matter what she does to think her way out of it.)

*

Her room has a vent. She has never heard noise through it until she hears someone crying, and she recognizes the tone of these tears. But she says nothing. Nothing, until she hears him pleading again, the crack of a bone breaking, the sound of a stranger's screaming, the demand Kimura makes, over and over--and the screaming peaks, sharply, and dies. She assumes so did the stranger. Kimura exits, and X-23 waits for a while. He does not start crying again.

"25," she says. He does not respond, so she repeats herself, louder.

"Laurie?" His voice is flat and quiet. He never learned to control what he does. But now he has killed someone. She suspects this is the first time, or at least the first intentional one. He left conspicuous things out about his father.

"Yes."

He starts to cry again, and does not stop for a long time.

"I don't want to--I don't want to do this, I don't--" No I can't. Only I don't want. So they have broken him, at least slightly, and placed him adjacent to her. She is not an idiot. She knows that this is meant to capitalize on the connection the facility has determined that he, at least, has to her. They did not make X-23 a sociopath. Sociopaths are notoriously difficult to control. She is capable of empathy, still, as a side effect. She is capable of being manipulated by attachment to others. With the facility, there is only one thing this can mean.

They believe he will be ready for missions soon, and they will pair them. A truly lethal combination. Her claws, his hands, and a mutual desire for one another to survive.

This sits wrongly with her.

"I know," she says. She does not know how to comfort him.

*

Dr. Rice, ironically, is who allows her to put some of this to rest.

Everyone is well aware of the Avengers. Very few people know of SHIELD, but the facility is among them. Dr. Rice decides, as facility head, that they should take a mission offered by a covert terrorist group against them, and chooses X-23 for the task. Dr. Kinney is deeply unhappy. But Dr. Kinney cannot override it. Dr. Rice assigns himself to personally overlook the operation.

X-23 does not know, precisely, what went wrong, but when she comes to kill Director Fury and is met by a mass of SHIELD agents at least a hundred strong she can speculate.

All right.

She unsheathes her claws, and any hesitation the agents showed at facing an apparently teenaged girl dissolves. They open fire in ready unison, and as she is torn apart by gunfire X-23 would almost stand still--but she is a puppet, and she must play her part. She sees the helicopter meant to extract her take off as she cuts through a woman's torso, and yes. She can speculate on what went wrong. She has never faced this many opponents before, with a partner or alone.

After, she curls up in a solid lake of blood and waits for her wounds to heal. There are many, and her healing factor has been pushed far past anything she has had to recover from before.

The facility is greedy. They have had such success with her and the Winter Soldier that now they are grasping for more, arrogantly. Dr. Rice is acting on his own interests and hate trying to kill her, but the majority of them expect the three weapons they have to profit them immensely. She alone has financed numerous raises and bonuses for every level of staff. They are greedy, and they expect to repeat their past success with Weapon XXV. But they are scientists, not assassins. They have ordered many deaths, yes, but they have no idea, in the end, what it takes to kill. They think because he is broken he will perform. They do not understand that it takes something entirely to kill and endure it. Kevin will never survive.

It sits wrongly with her.

When she sits up a few minutes later she is still alone. She is a puppet to her mission, and she knows that although it has failed there is still one objective that is always obligatory: she must return to base. She cannot refuse to obey. It is not in her.

But performing above and beyond--there is no objective in this mission that prevents that. There is no upper limits to her parameters at the moment.

She finds a SHIELD surveillance camera that remains operational, and mouths follow me.

*

"You killed her," the Winter Soldier points out for Dr. Rice, after debriefing--he is given a certain latitude to move in the base, since he hasn't offered any resistance and seems to cooperate just fine. It helps that Dr. Kinney let him out as soon as they heard back that X-23 was terminated.

"Weapon XXIIII--" Dr. Rice starts, and the Winter Soldier is nothing if not quick, darting forward before anyone can react, and honestly, are they surprised he made a shiv? They still have no idea what they're dealing with, these people.

He isn't emotionally invested in X-23, precisely. She reminds him of someone he used to know, that's all. There's barely anything to invest in. Barely anything human about her. Except that she handled the coffee they used to share with delicacy, and she never moved to react to a bullet that he ever saw unless it was aimed at him. And he doesn't really have anything to lose, does he? Let them kill him. He's been in and out of death for years anyway, frozen away and preserved for mission after mission. Death holds no fear for him, no mystery. He's died dozens of times over the last seventy years. Maybe this time he won't come back.

"Don't," the Winter Soldier says, almost sweetly, touching Dr. Rice's face with his metal hand--Dr. Kinney will be pleased, he's sure, "Don't, doctor. This isn't the time to lie. You're among friends, aren't you?"

Perhaps he would die, except at that moment someone keys open the doors to the main entrance to the facility.

Dr. Kinney can't contain a gasp.

X-23--Lola, a sick joke she doesn't get, tiny Lola--stands there, jumpsuit tattered and bloodstained. She looks at them all with the calmness he expects of her.

"Well, the bitch came back--" Kimura says, almost a purr, and begins to stalk towards X-23. But then the airships appear over the treeline.

The Winter Soldier can't help but laugh, still holding Dr. Rice at knifepoint. Clever, clever little girl.

Yes, she really does remind him of someone.

X-23 splits her knuckles and boots open with her claws and runs into the room, and she is the smallest herald of the apocalypse anyone has ever imagined. Behind her come a parade of ridiculously dressed people--the Avengers, he supposes--and behind them agents of SHIELD. It's X-23 he pays the most attention to at first, inordinately proud of her. Good girl. She could have done this years ago, but she needed a cavalry to wholly succeed, and it's obvious she found one. It's only when the man dressed in the American flag stops, horrified, and says a name that means nothing to him but--

He drops Rice from the wall, and ignores the man running away, barely noticing X-23 whipping past him in pursuit--let him go, it's her kill anyway.

"Bucky?"

The Winter Soldier wants to run too. Instead he steals the gun of a dead man and joins the fray, and he isn't--running, except he is, because that name means nothing to him. It means nothing. He has no name of his own, no real names of anything he cares for because he cares for nothing, but--it sounds like it should mean something. And it doesn't.

*

"You're an animal," Dr. Rice says, after he shoots her kneecaps, "An idiot, filthy animal--"

"Yes," X-23 agrees, and twists to tear out his hamstrings.

It is not quick.

*

There are few survivors, in the end. (One escape. They'll get her, though.) The girl they followed here returned to stand guard over a woman scientist hiding in a corner, everyone recognized Bucky was trying to help, and the boy they found in a cell is obviously innocent. Besides that--it's an almost pathetic handful. Steve guesses he should feel less comfortable with that. But this place reeks like where he rescued Bucky from in the first place, and he really just can't feel much about the people that are going into body bags. General regret, that they chose this, but otherwise--it's just anger.

The little girl hovers near the scientist and the boy, claws still out--she has claws--and the scientist and the boy obviously look to her for protection. Bucky stands slightly aloof, his arms (one metal, what did they do) crossed over his chest. Bucky looks at him and doesn't know him. But he's alive. He's here. Steve thinks this has to be fixable. It has to be, right?

"You're all going into custody," he says, and tries not to choke when Bucky looks at him with such skepticism and distrust.