The Viper: Chapter One
What happens when an agent of the Red Room falls into the hands of Hydra? What happens when Hydra puts out a hit on their favorite assassin? Who is the mysterious woman with a twisted history and an even more twisted mind?
The team wants to know. They want to know what you know. Nat and Bucky want to know if there’s any light left in you.
They want to know you.
Bucky x Female Reader
The Viper Master List | My Writing Master List
The sounds of car horns are loud around you. The blaring, beeping and bustle of pedestrians creating layers and layers of sound. You’re trained well enough to sift through the sounds, listening to pieces of conversation and various sounds of your environment to orient yourself.
You can feel the smallest shift of every person who’s moving in the space around you. Your senses are so focused you can practically hear the blood rushing through the people closest to you. Your prey is about a block up, completely oblivious to where you followed.
The streets around you were loud and the sounds were strong, but nothing could keep your focus off your mission.
Underneath your hood and the rim of your baseball hat, your face was hidden in shadow. If anyone would have seen or marked it, they would have seen the wicked gleam of a grin.
“What’s got you all in a tizzy, Tony?” Nat asks from Bucky’s right. The whole team was gathered around a conference table in Avengers tower looking kinda bored. Tony had called everyone here this morning, much to everyone’s chagrin because he had promised a week off and then apparently changed his mind a mere three days later.
Bucky sighed and rolled his shoulders, leaning back in the office chair he currently sat in, lifting the two front feet off the floor. All he really wanted was to go back downstairs and into the city with Nat and finish looking for a birthday gift for Steve. That’s what they were doing this morning before they were quickly called back to the tower. He’d procrastinated too long and really had zero idea of what to get the man.
“I’m confused about something and I don’t like being confused.” Tony retorted.
“Oooo” Sam piped up from across the table. “The great Tony Stark admits to not knowing something. I’m surprised there isn’t steam coming out of those ears.”
Bucky smirks at his friend. God he loved Sam and his remarks. He would say something similar, but his relationship with Tony still wasn’t perfect and he didn’t want to push his luck at the moment.
“What is so confusing, Iron Man? Don’t know what to get Pepper for your anniversary? Or did you say something stupid again and your giant brain can’t figure out exactly which asshole statement pushed her over the edge this time?” Nat chimed in with a mocking smirk.
Tony pointed a single finger at Nat. “I have had our anniversary present for two months already and I’m actually getting better at figuring out which one of my snarky comments goes too far, just so you know.” He sighs and presses a few buttons on the large screen under the glass conference table, whipping up a bundle of information to appear on the screen behind him. “What I’m confused about is why Hydra put out a public hit on one of their top agents.”
At that, Bucky’s chair drops back to all four legs abruptly. The confusing piece of information startled him into finally giving his full attention to the conversation. His heart rate picked up a bit.
“They did what ?” Steve asks from the end of the conference table opposite Tony, voicing the question on all their minds.
“This morning Hydra posted a bounty on a known dark web forum. It’s not unheard of for them to post some of their lower enemies on this anonymously for unaffiliated assassins and bounty hunters to take down. What’s different this time is they made it very clear that Hydra was posting.” He whipped up what looked eerily similar to a reddit post up on the screen. “And what makes even less sense is I know for a fact that the person they called a hit on has been their little secret weapon for over ten years.”
Bucky scanned the post up on the screen. Sure enough, it said that Hydra had a hit out on a well known assassin and was offering 50 million along with diplomatic immunity in a country of their choosing for the head of the operative.
“Who’s the target?” Nat murmured.
“So, this is the fun part. Especially for you two.” Tony continued, pointing at Nat and Bucky.
“What?” Bucky grumbled. Fun for him? What the hell? What could possibly be in Tony’s twisted brain to think anything to do with Hydra would be fun for him?
“Here’s the mark.” Tony pulled up a blurry photo of a figure wrapped in muted colors clearly captured on some sort of security camera somewhere on a bustling street. If Bucky was tracking the cobblestones and architecture of the buildings correctly he’d guess it was taken somewhere in Cairo.
“Is that the best fucking picture you can get us, Stark? You can barely see their face.” Sam quipped, leaning forward in his seat to squint at the screen.
“This is the clearest photo of her face, yes.”
“Her?” Nat snapped, popping her eyes to Tony.
“Yes. Her. The Viper .” He smirked back at Nat. Bucky heard a quick intake of breath from his right. Nat.
“No…” She whispered, and trailed off.
“Oh yes, Natasha. Oh yes.” Tony flicked his fingers across the table again and all the known stats on the Viper pulled up on the screen. “This is where the fun begins for us. This is what we know about the Viper. She was “found” at a young age somewhere in middle America. It’s a little unclear where, but from where I tracked it must have been somewhere in the Midwest.”
“They stole a kid from Wisconsin? Why would Hydra bother when they had their fingers in so many other countries?” This was from Steve.
“It wasn’t Hydra…” Nat murmured.
“ What? ” Bucky piped up again. He felt like his brain was spinning. A top Hydra assassin? Did he know her? He would have to spiral into his memory to find out if he ever met this Viper…
“It was the Red Room.” Nat whispered then. Her eyes staring directly at the table.
“Yes indeed!” Tony quipped. “Remind me Nat, were you still there when they dragged in the little girl kicking and screaming or not?”
“Tony!” Steve seethed from his end of the table.
“I wasn’t living there anymore, no. I had just graduated. She was a couple years younger than me. They said she caused quite a nuisance during the assassination of a target. Instead of killing her they decided to bring her back. I saw her maybe twice. They had always referred to her as the snake. She was less refined than the other girls, she started her training a little too old, but she was… desperate to make up the difference.” Nat shuddered a bit then and Bucky felt compelled to reach out and place a hand on her shoulder. “She reminded me of… me.”
There was a small moment of pause before Tony started again. “So our little snake graduated from The Red Room and spent a few years as an agent for them before falling in with our buddies at Hydra.” Tony looked at Bucky then, “Where she was trained and conditioned to fill a missing position in their ranks after they unfortunately lost control of a very important asset. ”
“You’re a prick Tony.” Steve muttered, his eyes falling on Bucky. Bucky waved him off. He was fine, really. He’d started making peace with his history when he was on Wakanda and though he still had a long way to go, he wasn’t going to fall to pieces at the mere mention of the Winter Soldier.
“You’re telling me that they…” He trailed off, his mind spinning in circles. This poor woman he didn’t even know subjected to what he went through, simply because he had left. He knew it wasn’t his fault, but he still felt responsible that someone else had to fill a hole he had created.
“Yes they trained this little spitfire to be their top assassin and she has been in their top ranks since about 2010, only stepping into the role of top assassin after the events in 2016 finally severed you completely from the organization. She’s been racking up kills ever since. Much like you my dear metal armed friend, she’s nearly impossible to catch on camera, let alone see with your own eyes.”
From the corner of the room, where he sat in a chair separate from the table, Bruce finally spoke. “I always thought The Viper was a myth.”
“Yeah and you thought the Winter Soldier was a myth. Hell I always thought Thor and Loki were just some folklore.” Sam remarked. “I believe almost everything nowadays.”
“Wait so, this woman was a trained Red Room assassin, then a top Hydra operative and now they’re asking the internet to kill her? Why didn’t they just take care of her themselves? Surely they had her locked up or brainwashed somehow.” Bruce said.
“You guys are seriously just assholes sometimes.” Steve murmurs.
“I’m fine, Steve.” Bucky says. “It’s a valid question. Even when they wanted me eliminated, they only worked with people inside.”
“Exactly.” Tony said. “My theory is, they want us to know that they want her dead. In fact, my more specific theory is that this is bait in order to get us to hunt and eliminate her. I want to know why.”
“She must have slipped away from them.” Nat said then. “Even if no average internet bounty hunter could ever touch her, surely they’d at least keep her a little busy. Busy enough that we might be able to get a jump on her. She must know something.”
“Exactly. What does she know? And why don’t they want her to utilize whatever information she knows?”
“So we’re going to find her then.” Steve said. “What if this is a trap? Specifically set up to intrigue us into bringing their very own top operative into our facilities.”
“It could be.” Nat responded. “But it seems a little weird to send a bunch of people they don’t control after her unless they genuinely didn’t care about what happened to her. It seems unlikely she’s still an asset to them if they’re willing to risk her actually being caught off guard, no matter how unlikely that is.”
“See, this is what I meant by being confused.” Tony quips then, heading for the door. “I’ve sent everything I know about the woman to each of you. Study it. See what conclusions you come to on your own. We’ll reconvene here tonight to discuss an action plan.”
You sat in a corner booth at a tiny cafe, facing the door. There was a swinging door into the kitchen to your left, which led to three back exits. Directly in front of you was the only door facing a main street. The whole front of the coffee shop was glass, giving you a clear view of the two targets you’d been tracking all morning, who had stopped to grab breakfast at a restaurant across the street.
You were twirling a long since lukewarm cup of coffee in your hands, your eyes flicking back and forth between your marks and the swinging kitchen door at your shoulder.
You watched as your marks both stretched and stood up. The woman hailed a cab. They seemed disgruntled.
While the woman tried to snag the attention of a cabbie, you threw a few crumpled bills on the counter of your table and slipped through the swinging kitchen door. There were a few shouts of alarm as a stranger wandered into the bustling diner kitchen, but you quickly weaved through the crowded kitchen and out a back door. You jumped on the sleek black Kawasaki bike you’d stashed behind a dumpster in an alley.
You pushed the bike out and around the corner before turning it on, waiting to confirm that they had both piled into a cab. You revved the engine and punched the accelerator, weaving quickly between the piled up traffic, causing lots of horn honking and a few near rear-end accidents.
Your heart was hammering in your chest, the adrenaline coursing through your veins as you tore after that cab.
The grin still plastered on your face.
Bucky’s head was reeling as he read through the intel, albeit a small amount, that Tony had managed to dig up.
There were a total of 3 videos captured on a security camera of the Viper on a job. He watched them all multiple times.
The Viper was ruthless and unnervingly calm. It reminded him of himself, what he saw in the footage of the Winter Soldier. It made the bile in his stomach churn. He knew that feeling of uncontrollable calm very well and it made him break out in a cold sweat.
The first video showed her walking calmly up to a high security warehouse, putting bullets between the brows of every operative in sight, barely even looking in their direction before pulling the trigger. She walked directly with purpose toward the door that was clearly her mission. Once every operative in view of the camera had fallen she reached for the door handle. Before she slipped inside, she lifted her pistol without looking and fired one round into the camera, cutting the feed. With the hood on her jacket, there was no clear footage of her face. Bucky wondered how they were even sure it was her. Her murderous calm must have been enough evidence.
The second was a terribly grainy video taken in some basement somewhere. There was someone strapped to a chair and he watched as the Vipers fists slammed into the man repeatedly. A choppy, distorted, and heavily accented voice spoke about 40 seconds in. “Good, Viper. You may play now. Make sure there’s something left of him to interview tomorrow.” Bucky flinched as he saw the woman stride toward a table, likely filled with instruments of torture. The man strapped to the chair began to scream, pleading in Russian that he’d say anything they wanted him to. He heard a low woman’s voice come through the video, murmuring “Too late.”
The third was a more recent video according to the time stamp. It was less than six months ago off a security cam in Maracaibo. It was about a 9 second video, just watching the woman cross a bustling street in Venezuela. Bucky remembered that some hot shot Hydra agent had been found dead in Venezuela this year. Could it have been the Viper taking down one of their own? Is that why they were mad?
There were about 5 other attachments of images. The only photographs that Friday could find of this enigma apparently. 4 were blurry security camera footage from various places. The one Tony had shown this morning was truly the only one that even sort of showed the woman’s face. Well, except the 5th.
The 5th made Bucky even more sick than the footage of brutal violence. It was a Polaroid image of what appeared to be a 16 or 17 year old girl in ballet clothes, standing in the middle of what he assumed was a dance studio. It would have been normal, a young woman after a dance class, if it wasn’t for the red blood splattered up her pink tights, dripping off her knuckles and smeared on her jaw. The subject wasn’t looking at the camera, but rather seemed to be standing at attention with her focus to the right of the photographer. Written in sloppy Russian at the bottom corner of the Polaroid was “Option 4.”
What does that mean? Bucky thought to himself. Option for what?
It made him sick staring at that photo. If the blood wasn’t there, it would just look like a young woman preparing for a ballet class, or perhaps being photographed so a costume designer could see her figure while they created dazzling outfits for a production. It was so wrong for someone so young, whose face was filled with innocence, to be covered in blood. He felt so protective over her, this young woman he didn’t even know. This young woman who he knew grew up to be a murderer with a kill list almost as long as his.
He knew, looking at that photo, that this woman had never wanted this. He didn’t know how he got such a gut reaction to the image, but he saw himself in it. A young person who was given the worst hand of cards to ever be dealt, and was simply trying to stay alive. He stared at her thin frame, the hollow look in her eyes and nearly wept.
He needed to find her. He needed it more than he’d needed anything in a long time. He needed to find out how far she had fallen from this image, and if he could pull her back.
He needed to do it, because he’d always be grateful that someone did it for him.
Your marks had gone into the tall skyscraper a few hours ago. You were too antsy to sit around and wait to see if they’d venture back out into the city.
You prowled the sidewalk like a caged animal. Tracing patterns through the busiest blocks. Keeping track of nearby cameras.
Everything smelled like garbage and piss. You hated it. You loved it. It was such an easy city to get lost in.
An even easier city to be found in.
When Bucky finally dragged himself back to the conference room that evening, he felt like a wreck. He had worked himself up considerably throughout the afternoon. He was antsy and apprehensive.
He really didn’t know what was wrong with him. It was just some random assassin, why was he so worked up?
Steve noticed his touchy mood as soon as he walked in and raised an eyebrow at him.
“I’m fine.” Bucky grumbled. “Just want to figure this out. It’s bothering me for some reason.”
“Maybe because it’s a little too personal, Buck.” Steve said quietly.
“Yeah maybe.” Bucky coughed out. His chest felt tight with someone who knew him so well staring at him like this.
Before Steve could rib Bucky more, Tony sauntered into the room with Nat behind him. “So what’s everyone’s thoughts on our little snake in the grass?”
“I think the woman is damn fucking scary.” Sam piped up from the same chair he’d been in this morning. “And really good at her job. Reminds me of robocop over there a little too much if you know what I mean.”
“That’s what I find so interesting.” Steve says. “Because obviously we know that Bucky wanted out, and was not the person that the camera showed. I wanna know what’s really going on in her brain.”
“Banner, question for you, if we managed to set a little trap for our snake and actually got her in here, would you be able to scan her brain and see how much of it was under her actual control?” Tony said as he dropped into a chair at the head of the table.
Banner responded from where he sat in his normal chair in the corner. “I could compare a brain scan to early scans of Barnes’s brain. See how similar they look. Then compare to his post-Wakanda scans. In a sense, yes. But the brain is complicated as you know.”
“Can’t we just talk to her?” Bucky pipes up. “I mean, if it makes you feel more comfortable to hook her up to a lie detector whatever, but I just… I know what they do to people there and let me tell you there’s no way she’s in control.”
“What makes you so sure?” Tony questions. “I mean, I was wrong about you. I’ll admit that. I’m a bigger man now. But not everyone is Cap’s former BFF brought back from the dead with a heart of gold trapped in a twisted hydra web. She could have gone willingly. In fact, I have a hard time believing that a Red Room agent was accidentally captured by Hydra. What if she went to them willingly?”
“But then why did she leave?” Natasha counters. “Who’s to say that she ended up in all this willingly. I don’t know the whole story of how the Red Room got her, but it’s rare that people join without coercion. There’s more to this story, I can feel it.”
“Me too.” Bucky whispered. There had to be so much more to that 17 year old girl than a brutal murderer.
“Nat, can you explain this image to me?” Tony says, pulling up the very polaroid that was going to haunt Bucky for weeks. “This looks like a pretty willing agent to me.”
Bucky cringed at Tony’s short sighted assessment. Sure, the subject looked relaxed but that didn’t mean willing. Nat sneered.
“Well Tony, when every week your instructors challenge two students to spar and the loser is killed however the classmate prefers, you too would willingly fight back, to the death if necessary.”
Steve flinched, and looked at Nat with eyes full of grief. “They made you kill each other?”
“Kept us from attaching to each other.” Nat said simply.
Steve just shook his head, placing his face in his palms. This was one of the reasons Bucky and Nat had gotten along pretty quickly. They’d come to terms with their trauma, and the others sometimes had a hard time brushing past the torture that the two of them had simply moved on from.
“Touche.” Tony shrugged. “So why does this image say option 4?”
“That I don’t know.” Nat sighs. “No photos were ever allowed to be taken of us, but the fact that this was clearly taken by an instructor confuses me.”
“So we have no answers.” Sam quips. “Do I need to go stand on the street with a sign that says “Viper take a crack at me” so we can maybe get a glimpse of her? I’m only doing it if I can wear the suit Tony.”
“That’s the thing, there have been no sightings of the woman for years, and the one tiny glimpse in that surveillance shot from Venezuela 6 months ago was a blip. There was no record of anyone matching that description entering or leaving that country or any near it. We have no idea where she is.” Tony muttered. “I have Friday combing every single camera we can get access to, and hacking into those we don’t. The tip line on that forum is blank. No one seems to have seen her.”
There was silence for a moment, as everyone sunk into their own minds. Letting the gears turn.
“Mr. Stark.” Friday’s voice came lilting out of the ceiling. “I have a hit.”
Everyone jumped a bit, leaning forward in their seats.
“Put it on the screen.” Tony snapped. Suddenly the whole blank wall of the room was filled with various camera angles showing crowds of people wandering on the sidewalk. In the middle of a cluster of pedestrians was a figure draped in black, a baseball hat on their head and a hood pulled up over it. As the person moves, the different security camera’s flip past on the screen, keeping up with their movement.
Instantly, Bucky’s blood ran cold.
“Where is this?” Sam whispers.
“Queens.” Bucky, Steve and Tony answer in unison.
“Very close to Parker’s apartment…” Tony whispers.
“It’s empty.” Steve mentions. “Happy and May are on vacation and Peter is staying with his friend. That Ned kid.”
“I know.” Tony says. “Doesn’t mean I like her being around the corner from his place regardless.”
The room goes quiet for a few moments as they all watch the Vipers progress through the streets of Queens. She never picks up her head, seeming to be watching the sidewalk in front of her. She slips easily between groups of people, never bumping into anyone even though she doesn’t seem to be looking at anyone.
“What are we doing?” Sam says then. “We know exactly where she is. She’s so close. Let’s go suit up.”
“There’s no way she’s here by accident.” Nat says quietly. “It’s like she wants us to find her…”
“Another layer of intrigue.” Tony snarks.
“She wouldn’t be stupid enough to show up in this city unless she actually wants us to find her.” Nat continues. “Either they sent her here as a trap and finally had her look into a security camera long enough for us to track her, or she’s doing this on her own. Either way, I don’t understand the motive.”
There’s another moment of silence as they all watch the cameras track the target.
Abruptly, the Viper stops in the middle of the sidewalk. The pedestrians continue to flow around her, many seem to be grumbling and some throw rude gestures in her direction.
There’s now only a single security camera in the area able to capture her image, she stands right in the center of the frame.
“What is she doing?” Steve whispers.
Through the grainy camera footage, the whole team watches as it looks almost like her shoulders shake slightly. She seems to be looking at her feet.
No one breathes as the woman in the center of the video lifts her head slowly. Her eyes land directly on the lens, as if she’s peering straight through the shitty security camera and into Avengers tower.
There’s a huge grin on her face.
Then, from the pocket of her hoodie, she pulls a pistol and calmly points the barrel at the camera.
The last thing the camera sees in her head dropping back as she begins to cackle. Then she pulls the trigger, ending the feed.
“Holy shit.” Sam whispers.
Bucky is speechless. His heart is pounding in his chest. He felt like her eyes seared through the camera and right into his chest. He can barely breathe.
“Friday, show us the other cameras in the area.” Tony barks.
Friday pulls up tons of camera angles of the street the Viper was just standing on. The crowds are screaming, attempting to run away from the spot that the Viper had clearly just been standing. However, there are no further gun shots and no one looks injured.
“What the hell? ” Bucky says under his breath. She just shot out a camera in the middle of a busy street in Queens? For what?
“Are there any figures matching her description on any of these feeds?” Tony snaps again.
“No sir.” Friday replies. “I’ve scanned every camera in the borough and I can’t see her on any of them.”
Everyone sits in shocked silence as the security footage continues to roll. The NYPD show up, helping to calm the pedestrians. They watch quietly as they start to tape off the area. Everyone knows however that if no one was hurt, it’s unlikely that the cops will pursue the incident further. They have much bigger fish to fry in this town.
“Well goddamn.” Sam finally breaks the silence. “That was quite a little performance.”
“She really wants us to find her then.” Nat mutters.
Around the room everyone mutters their agreement.
Bucky finds his voice finally.
There’s unending adrenaline in you now. It was reckless you knew that. It was also so obvious what game you were playing with them at this point, but you didn’t care.
They clearly weren’t going to make a move, so you had to play your hand first.
For better or worse, it was their move now.
