Rani Barnes, the daughter of Bucky Barnes, was raised in the shadows of Hydra-trained to hunt, obey, and survive. Now 19 and rescued from that life, she's thrown into a quiet existence she doesn't understand, living with a father still grieving the...
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PRESENT DAY.
James Buchanan Barnes could hardly remember the last time he’d shared a quiet, decent meal with his daughter. Not because he didn’t want to—God knew how many nights he lay awake wishing for it—but because time and blood had made such things rare, if not impossible.
Rani Barnes. The Shadow, they called her.
She had been born under Hydra’s ceiling, her cries swallowed by cold steel and indifferent walls. She took her first steps on tile floors stained with memory—training rooms where pain was praised and obedience was sacred. By the time most children learned their alphabet, Rani could dismantle a weapon in under thirty seconds and break a man’s finger without blinking.
She had not known lullabies, only drills. No bedtime stories—just the crack of a command and the sting of failure. She hadn’t learned to trust. She’d learned to watch. To wait. To strike. In the darkness of Hydra’s world, she became what they needed: a shadow forged in brutality, taught to hunt without hesitation, to torture without remorse, to kill without leaving a trace. A child built into a weapon.
And James—Bucky—hadn’t been there to stop it.
He stared at her across the table now, the silence between them thick with the weight of unspoken things. The soft clink of cutlery was the only sound. He watched the way she held her fork—grip too tight, posture too straight, always scanning the exits. A soldier’s meal, not a daughter’s.
He wondered, not for the first time, what kind of father he could’ve been if fate hadn’t carved both their lives into war.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Bucky asked gently, voice low like he was trying not to scare a wounded animal.
Across the table, Rani shook her head, her movements small, mechanical. She didn’t look up from the untouched food in front of her—chicken, potatoes, something warm. Something normal. He’d cooked it himself, trying to remember the way his mother used to do it. She always said food was a kind of love. Bucky wasn’t sure Rani believed in either.
He cleared his throat. “What about the new home?” he tried again. “You don’t like it?”
Still no answer. So he turned slightly, gesturing toward the wide-open windows behind them where dusk spilled in, casting long shadows across the polished wood floor. Outside stood the house—their house—given to them by the government, wrapped in red tape and guilt. A reward for survival. A burden dressed as a blessing.
