-Broadcast-
The Quinjet cut through the clouds at maximum speed, its engines roaring as it headed toward the frozen wastelands of Siberia. Inside the cockpit, the atmosphere was heavy with unspoken tension and the weight of recent events.
Bucky Barnes sat in the co-pilot's seat, his head bowed, his metal arm resting on his knee. His voice was quiet, almost hesitant. "What's gonna happen to your friends?"
Steve Rogers kept his eyes on the controls, his jaw tight. He let out a slow breath before responding. "Whatever it is, I'll deal with it."
Bucky's expression was pained, guilt written across every line of his face. "I don't know if I'm worth all this, Steve."
Steve's hands tightened on the controls for just a moment. He turned his head slightly, meeting Bucky's eyes. "What you did all those years... it wasn't you. You didn't have a choice."
"I know," Bucky said softly, his gaze drifting to the window, watching the clouds rush past. Then he looked back at Steve, and his voice dropped even lower. "But I did it."
The words hung in the air between them—an acknowledgment of the weight Bucky would carry for the rest of his life, regardless of who was truly responsible.
Meanwhile, back in the United States, the aftermath of the battle was playing out in a very different way.
The private medical facility was state-of-the-art, all white walls and gleaming equipment. Through the large window, Vision stood motionless, watching as medical personnel moved around Colonel James Rhodes's bed. The room was filled with scanning equipment, monitors displaying vital signs and injury assessments.
Tony Stark approached from behind, his left hand wrapped in a pristine white bandage. His footsteps were quiet, but Vision heard them nonetheless.
"How did this happen?" Tony asked, his voice tight with controlled emotion.
Vision's head tilted slightly, his gaze never leaving Rhodes. "I became distracted."
Tony walked around to face Vision directly, his expression a mixture of disbelief and frustration. "I didn't think that was possible."
Vision finally turned to look at him, and there was something almost vulnerable in the synthetic being's eyes. "Neither did I."
Tony studied Vision's face for a long moment, then let out a breath. There was no point in assigning blame. He'd given the order to stop Steve and Bucky. What happened afterward—Rhodes falling from the sky, Vision's precision failing for the first time—was just the consequence of decisions already made.
The door behind them opened, and Natasha Romanoff entered. Her eyes found Tony immediately.
Without a word, Tony and Natasha moved into the corridor outside, leaving Vision to his vigil.
The hallway was quiet, sterile, impersonal. Tony leaned against the wall, looking drained in a way that had nothing to do with physical exhaustion.
"The doctors say he shattered L4 through S1," Tony said, his voice flat. "Extreme laceration in the spinal cord. Probably looking at some form of paralysis."
Natasha crossed her arms, her expression carefully neutral. "Steve's not gonna stop. If you don't either, Rhodey's gonna be the best-case scenario."
Tony's head snapped toward her. "You let them go, Nat."
"We played this wrong," she said simply.
"'We'?" Tony's laugh was harsh and bitter. He pushed off from the wall, taking a step toward her. "Boy, it must be hard to shake the whole double agent thing, huh? It sticks in the DNA."
Natasha's expression flickered—just for a moment—with something that might have been hurt.
"Are you incapable of letting go of your ego for one goddamn second?" she asked quietly.
Tony turned away, looking out at the manicured lawn beyond the window. His voice was calm now, almost gentle, which somehow made the words worse. "T'Challa told Ross what you did. So... they're coming for you."
Natasha had known this would happen the moment she helped Steve and Bucky escape. Her face showed no surprise, no fear. She simply nodded once.
"I'm not the one who needs to watch their back," she said, her voice soft but firm.
She turned and walked away, her footsteps echoing in the empty corridor. Tony stood there, watching her go, lost in thought.
His watch suddenly lit up with a notification. He tapped it absently, and a holographic display appeared—a photo of a dead man slumped in what looked like a hotel bathroom.
Tony's brow furrowed. "What am I looking at, Friday?"
"Priority upload from the Berlin police," his AI assistant responded.
Something clicked in Tony's mind, pieces falling into place. "Fire up the chopper."
Minutes later, Tony sat in his personal helicopter as it cut across the ocean, heading toward a location that had become infamous in recent hours.
"The Task Force called for a psychiatrist as soon as Barnes was captured," Friday explained, data streaming across the display in front of Tony. "The UN dispatched Dr. Theo Broussard from Geneva within the hour. He flew to Berlin. And he was found dead in his hotel room this morning."
"Facial recognition?" Tony asked tersely.
"Yeah, I got a match," Friday replied, and there was something almost smug in the AI's tone.
Tony's lips twitched despite everything. "My database is now your database. Okay?"
A new image appeared—a man with sharp features and cold eyes.
"The fake doctor is actually Colonel Helmut Zemo," Friday continued. "Sokovian Intelligence. Prior to Sokovia's collapse, Zemo ran EKO Scorpion, a Sokovian covert kill squad."
Tony leaned forward, enlarging the image, studying every detail of Zemo's face. His mind was already racing through the implications.
"So our bomber is a black ops soldier," Tony muttered.
"He's got the skills," Friday confirmed. "But the target practice? An all-too-convenient set-up. The police have footage of the fake doctor, alias James Buchanan Barnes, bombing the UN."
"And your boy found footage of the real James Buchanan Barnes escaping," Tony said, understanding dawning. "Jesus."
"Yeah. The police also found a wig and facial prosthesis in the Doctor's hotel room. Used to impersonate the distinctive features of James Buchanan Barnes."
Tony sat back in his seat, his jaw clenched. "Son of a bitch. F.R.I.D.A.Y., what'd he use to blow up the UN?"
"The bomb was similar to a C4 plastic explosive. But more intense. The detonation point was below the UN chamber floor."
"Send that to Ross," Tony ordered.
In Siberia, far from the investigations and recriminations, Helmut Zemo stood before a massive door embedded in the mountainside. Snow fell around him, collecting on his coat and hat. His breath misted in the frigid air.
He pulled out a pickaxe and began chipping away at the ice that had formed over the control panel beside the door. Each strike sent chips of ice flying, gradually revealing the metal beneath.
Once cleared, Zemo pulled a small, worn notebook from his pocket—its pages yellowed with age, filled with handwritten Cyrillic text. He flipped to a specific page and began entering a long numeric code into the panel.
With a grinding sound of metal on metal, the door began to open. A rush of even colder air emerged from within, carrying with it the stale scent of a place long abandoned.
Zemo stepped inside.
The HYDRA base was a monument to Cold War paranoia and cruelty. Concrete walls stretched into darkness. Emergency lighting flickered to life as Zemo walked deeper into the facility, triggered by motion sensors that had been waiting decades for someone to return.
He found what he was looking for in an archive room—rows of videotapes, each labeled with dates and numbers. Zemo's gloved finger traced along them until he found one marked "16 December 1991."
He pulled it from the shelf, holding it like the treasure it was.
Further into the base, he discovered the Winter Soldier chamber. Cryogenic pods lined the walls, each containing a figure frozen in suspended animation—other Winter Soldiers, the most elite killers HYDRA had ever created. Their faces were peaceful in their frozen sleep, unaware that their organization had fallen, that the world had moved on without them.
And in the center of the room stood the chair—the terrible machine where Bucky Barnes had been wiped and reprogrammed countless times, his mind shredded and rebuilt to serve HYDRA's purposes.
Zemo looked at it all with cold satisfaction.
Back over the Atlantic, Tony's helicopter approached a structure that rose from the ocean like a steel fortress. The Raft—an underwater maximum-security prison designed to hold enhanced individuals who posed too great a threat for conventional facilities.
"This is Raft Prison Control," a voice crackled over the radio. "You're clear to land, Mr. Stark."
The helicopter descended toward the landing pad at the top of the structure. As it touched down, massive metal doors closed overhead, sealing them inside.
Tony climbed out, already pulling up holographic displays from his watch. "Ross. I got heat signatures. Satellites detect faces. Let's pull the files. Tracking evidence—a Facial Recognition System will find Zemo in a second."
Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross stood waiting, his expression thunderous. "You really think you can just call the shots here, Stark? You're lucky you're not in one of these cells yourself after that stunt in Leipzig."
Tony's jaw tightened, but he followed Ross deeper into the facility, flanked by armed guards. They entered the control center—a room filled with monitors showing every cell, every corridor, every prisoner.
Tony's eyes scanned the screens, and his heart sank.
There, on the monitors, he could see them. His teammates. His friends.
Wanda Maximoff sat in a cell with reinforced walls, a heavy restraint collar around her neck that would suppress her powers. Clint Barton leaned against the wall of his cell, arms crossed. Sam Wilson stood at the small window of his, looking out at nothing. Scott Lang sat on his narrow bunk, head in his hands.
All of them imprisoned. All because they'd followed Steve. All because Tony had let things get this far.
He stared at the screens, his expression unreadable.
-Real World-
"Oh! My God! Wanda!" Pietro frowned and looked at Wanda squatting in the cell.
"It looks like my situation is not good!" Wanda narrowed her eyes. She had never been fond of politicians.
"I guess you're not the only one! Except for the captain, I guess we're all locked up in that underwater prison where there's no sunlight, right?" Hawkeye Barton said, glancing at Nick Fury.
As the former director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the current director of S.W.O.R.D., Nick Fury naturally knew about this underwater prison. This was a place specially used to detain serious criminals!
But he never thought that one day, this place would be used to imprison the Avengers! It was truly unexpected!
"Helmut Zemo?" Tony narrowed his eyes. Although the Sky had not mentioned what happened before, he could still roughly connect the dots. It was likely that Zemo was using Bucky to cause trouble and put the blame on him!
"Let's find out what's going on with this guy!" Captain America was also in a bad mood. Bucky was framed. Although no one knew what he did, it was very likely related to the death of T'Challa's father!
At this time, Colonel Zemo, who was far away in Europe, changed his expression. He didn't know what his motive was for framing Bucky on the screen, but it was obvious that he was in trouble now!
He subconsciously wanted to escape, but he saw his wife and children looking at him in panic, and his elderly father also walked out of the room.
Zemo sighed, realizing that even if he could escape, how could his family escape? He simply gave up running away. He wanted to see what his purpose was