Hiii! This is my first time requesting anything sk sorry if it's a bit awkward lol.
Anyways I was thinking like maybe it's set after Thunderbolts and on one of their missions (at an old hydra place or something, maybe another organization trying to replicate hydra) and they find reader (maybe like 20s so younger than the team) and they are a soldier that was put in cyro (failed experiment maybe after they tried to recreate the winter soldier) and they look through files and whatnot. Idk just something like that? Angst maybe a hopeful ending so not like fully fluff if that makes sense?? Anyways just want to ask!
Thunderbolts x Platonic!Reader
First time ever writing for the Thunderbolts and decided to add Alpine love the concept there's a lot I wanted to write but decided to cut it short so I could make multiple chapters incase you and other people liked it and wanted more <3
Tw: Hydra torture & Death
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It was hard finding interesting missions it felt like. The Avengers were not this superglued team of misfits. The Avengers were heroes who did real missions. Of course there we threats the New Avengers dealt with but small recon-themed missions? Never happened. Most big bad organization had already been taken care of. Hydra had been destroyed to where heads never grew back, the Avengers had taken down as many bases as they could and the Red Room was gone. All connections to Hydra were gone. Most Hydra bases that were found by the New Avengers had already been run through all the important information already gone and taken care of.
"Why are we here again?" John asked, roaming down a hallway covered in broken glass and knocked over medical supplies. Bucky was further down, said Hallway, his rifle in front of him, and he looked through the doors, looking through the scope.
"The case file for this base was never closed by any of the Avengers, so were just checking it out to make sure everything is fine," Yelena reminded John. Annoyed. Everyone but Bob had come. They couldn't risk him having an episode and a place like an old Hydra experiment base felt like a rather big trigger. Everyone agreed. Besides, they needed somebody to watch Alpine.
"Oh, so we're taking care of the Avengers garbage," John groaned, coming back to the main room Yelena was in as she connected a pager to a computer. She was in what looked like a central office for doctors or nurses. Computers and monitors in the desk filing cabinets that had been thrown open were near her papers and files that looked like they had been pulled out in a hurry, some lying on the floor.
"....it's not garbage just tying up lose ends," the blonde came back with.
"Garbage." John decided.
"If you're so bothered, just go wait in the Jet Walker," Ava suggested in a snarky tone, turning visible as she took her helmet off.
"I'm not going to go wait in the jet..." Walker moped.
"Then shut up," Yelena and Ava exclaimed together.
"We should be celebrating!" Alexi deamed. "Us! The new Avengerz!"
"Never agreed on that." Walker sighed. Yelena pinched the bridge of her nose. Alexi continued.
"We are finishing work that Captain America himself couldn't finish!"
"I mean I don't blame him this place is a bust...." Ava muttered as she kicked some folders on the floor.
"Agreed." Walker grumbled. Ava scoffed. Bucky down the hallway, opened a door, pushing the barrel of his gun through as he looked through the scope, then stopped at what he saw.
"....uh guys," he called from the hallway.
"Are you just agreeing with me to try and stop looking like a nagging bitch?" Ava teased.
"What no?" Walker broke eye contact with her.
"Guys." Bucky tried again. He was in fact ignored again.
"You totally are," Yelena chimed in this time.
"Am not!" Walker defended. Alexi gave a snicker.
"Guys." Bucky tried a third time.
"He is." Ava said as she looked at Yelena and both nodded.
"Guys!" Bucky yelled for a final time.
"What!?" Everyone turned and yelled back. Bucky gestured to the room he was checking out. The four looked at each other and decided to go down the hallway. The five entered the room.
".... Oh," was all Walker could say. The joke was over. The room had two rows of big tubs. Cryotherapy tubes. Located inside were people. Laying eerily still in skin-tight bodysuits. Frozen in time to be forgotten about.
"...how long do you think they've all been like this?" Ava asked, breaking the silence as she rubbed some frost off a tube to see one of the people inside. They were dead.
"No telling," Bucky said, doing the same thing to another tube. Another death.
"This one's chart says cryo date April 13, 1982," Yelena informed the team as she finished brushing off dust from the tube label.
"Same with this one,"Bucky copied her, brushing off the label for the one he was examining.
"So these guys have been stuck in cryo since the 80s?" Walker asked.
"Guess so," Ava mumbled. Alexei gave a loud cocky scoff. "Well, the 80s were pretty wild, you see. At that time, I had finally met my match the-"
"Captain America," The other four all exclaimed, annoyed, quickly cutting him off.
"So if these guys are from the 80s, how come a majority still look like they're still in their 20s?" John asked, taping on some glass of a dead experiment.
"Cryo preserves your body how it is when you go under, otherwise we'd have Bucky over here looking like he belongs in a nursing home," Yelena explained as the pager she had connected finally made a sound coming to life. She immediately started working on it. "Looks like a form of super solider experiments. Experiments ages ran from 17 to their 20s. All of them failed," she stated as she started gathering more information.
"Jesus kids involved in this?" Walker asked, looking back at Yelena.
"That's Hydra for you," Bucky sighed. Walking further down. John followed behind him.
"....are they all?" Ava asked quietly as she came to stand by Yelena, who nodded. "Most likely, at least, most of them seem to have gone in their sleep."
"Do you think they volunteered?" Ava looked at the Russian, who shook her head.
"No telling Hydra had a thing for taking volunteers or just taking who they wanted," Alexi, who was walking alone near some tubes, stopped to examine something.
".....do any of the others have the little light blinking?" he asked loudly.
"What?" Yelena asked, going over to her dad, Ava behind her.
"Shit this one monitor still works," she said louder than she would have liked, catching the attention of John and Bucky.
"What? No way this place is like a begillion years old," John said as Bucky and him quickly came to the others side. Ava raised an eyebrow at him.
"...did you just say begillion? What are you 5?"
"Am I wrong?" Bucky ignored the two's banter as he brushed off some ice off what looked like a label on the tube.
"<Reader> <Last Name>" He read allowed. He brushed off the frost of the tube to look at the person inside. Young was all he could think. They wore a skin-tight bodysuit like the rest. Covered in a small shine from the ice. Their skin was <Skin Color> but it was paler than what should be humanly normal. Their <Hair Color> hair was slicked back and oily from years of being damp and never washing it.
"Finally," Yelena sighed as she got the monitor working. "...they have a pulse...it's steady," she explained, showing everyone the small steady heartbeat on the monitor.
"There's no way," John feigned disbelief.
"Birth date March 10, 1961," Yelena spoke allowed reading their file on her pager.
"Same birthday, lucky you Barnes," John nudged Bucky, who didn't respond.
"Went into Cryotherapy on April 13th 1982 just like the rest of them."
"That means this person is in their 40s? 50s?" Ava tried doing the math in her head.
"Don't look it." John added. "So...what do we do with them?"
"We take them back to the tower. Get them out of cryo." Bucky said as he rubbed off some of the frost to see <Readers> face better.
"Yes! Another Super Soldier! Imagine the chaos!" Alexi yelled, happily patting John's back, earning an 'oof' from John. However, he shoved Alexi off him, getting serious.
"We have no idea if the experiment even worked and if it did, we have no idea if they'd even survive being out of cryo."
"Let's say they do-" Bucky started. John quickly cut him off.
"Let's say they do, and we learn they're a terrible person who should have stayed buried here. He'll, we have no idea what they were doing before they were put in a freaking ice tube. What if they were Winter Soldier level assassins?"
"Walker. We should give them a second chance. Isn't that what quite literally happened with all of us?" Yelena lectured.
"....fair" was all John could mumble.
"Are we all in agreement?" Yelena asked, raising an eyebrow at everyone who didn't say a thing. "Good."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"So they're like ancient like Bucky?" Bob asked as he stood next to Yelena holding Alpine scratching under her chin. They were currently the only two in the lab. <Reader> was officially out of Cryo, hooked up to monitors and covered in blankets galore. They lay motionless as they did in the tube.
"Barnes and our new friend here still have a solid 63-year age gap. They went into cryo around 21, which is what the file says." She told him as she put a chip into the computer so it could download the information. The sound of the sliding doors to the lab could be heard.
"Damn life ruined at the most fun age in your life," Walker joked while sitting in a nearby chair. Bucky followed in behind him, leaning against the wall, arms crossed.
"No immediate family....not even a cat," Yelena said, allowed reading off the file on the computer.
"Damn Barnes, you beat them by one point."
"Hilarious Walker." Bob had put Alpine down, who scurried over to Bucky rubbing against his legs.
"Damn kids, got nobody to return to?" Ava asked as she walked in.
"They'll fit right in with us then," Walker sighed. The silence after showed that everyone agreed. It was Yelena who broke it.
"All we can do now is wait to see if they come to."
