Alright, before we get on with this my lovely story, there are some things I need to clarify. First, I do not own anything outside the plot and characters not mentioned in the Captain America movies. Second, there are major differences between what happens in my story as compared to the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Now that we have that settled, read on and enjoy!
Jasper James sighed and rubbed at the spot between her eyebrows. As much as she loved her family, they could be such pains in the ass and more often than not caused her serious headaches. Like today, Melanie had thought it would be funny to hide the Captain's shield and then speak with a heavy German accent anytime someone asked where she'd put it. Jasper had found it three hours later hanging from the rafters in the training room and had returned it almost bashfully to an irate Steve.
"Sorry, Cap. She's just bored. She's not used to being in one place so long." Jasper tried for a grin but Steve didn't quite seem ready to laugh about the whole thing so she'd walked off and thought seriously about investing in a leash for Melanie.
"Lighten up, Gloom and Doom." A familiar voice roused Jasper from her inner debate on a leash versus a strait jacket as she walked into the mess hall.
"Frowning makes you ugly." Marcus explained with a simple grin and a mischievous twinkle in his green eyes.
Jasper rolled her eyes and sat beside him, looking over the spaghetti and salad he was eating and debating if she wanted any.
"So, did you hear?" Marcus mock whispered with a wiggle of his perfectly manicured eyebrows.
"You gossip worse than any woman I've ever known." Jasper noted, plucking his roll off his plate and tearing a piece off. He wouldn't eat it anyways, too many carbs.
"What can I say? The gays do it right." Jasper laughed tossing back her head and flinging her brown curls everywhere.
"Anyways, apparently the infamous Winter Soldier is finally coming out of the nut house and joining the rest of the human population." Marcus looked at Jasper with wide eyes waiting giddily for her reaction.
"It's not like he's Boo Radley and no one has ever seen him. He's just been spending a lot of time with Steve or a therapist or alone to help him remember who he is." Jasper said between bites of bread.
"You're no fun. Quite being so sensible, it's boring." Marcus pouted into his spaghetti.
"I thought you liked my sensibleness because you don't have to constantly feel my raging emotions, Mr. Empath." Jasper giggled.
A tray slid across the table to Jasper and she looked up to see Jackson sit down with his own. He looked deliberately at the food and back to her, his eyes saying either she ate or he force fed her.
"Jackson, tell your sister she needs to let loose once in a while. It's not healthy to be so in control." Marcus whined but his whining was only met with one raised brow and silence.
Jasper laughed again, tossing a piece of roll at Marcus who swatted it away with a glare and then taking a bite of spaghetti. Jasper sensed more than heard someone walking carefully up behind her and turned at the last second to gaze up coolly at Melanie.
"Damn it, how do you always know?" Melanie cursed before slumping onto the bench beside Jasper.
"Melanie, honey, she controls energy for a living. Your body gives off energy which means she can feel you coming, literally." Marcus answered patronizingly to which Melanie stuck out her tongue.
Her pout only lasted a few seconds as her round blue eyes narrowed in on something across the room. She turned quickly to face the other direction and grinned.
"Two ninety-five year old popsicles at 12 o'clock." She muttered, rising to her feet.
Marcus whirled to join her and with a quiet sigh, Jackson stood as well. Jasper could hear introductions being made over the pounding in her ears as she turned to rise, brown hair swishing over her shoulder. In the milliseconds that followed, her trained body registered the threat before it happened and as the metal hand came rushing toward her throat with a steak knife he'd grabbed from god knows where, Jasper deflected and slid up and over the table, effectively placing it between them.
The Winter Soldier glared through his curtain of dark hair at her, his stormy blue eyes narrowed and ice cold.
"You." The word was a hiss that curled his lips back over his teeth in a snarl.
"Me." Jasper grinned, unable to stop herself from antagonizing him.
"Buck," Steve reached forward to place a hand on his friend and calm him, "she's a friend. She's on our side."
"She was there, with Hydra. I remember." Bucky argued, not relaxing his aggressive stance or taking his eyes off of her. "I remember fighting her. She can get in people's heads, just like they could. She can make people do things. She's one of them."
"You remember fighting me? Does that mean you also remember losing or have you conveniently forgotten that bit?" Jasper mouthed off.
With a growl, Bucky launched himself over the table at her. He was quick, but Jasper was quicker and she slipped easily out of his reach. He growled again and came at her full force, and with the super soldier serum on his side, Jasper was quickly detained in a headlock. She could feel his chest heaving against her back and the tension in his muscles. It reminded her of the first time they'd fought and an idea flitted through her mind.
Don't, I'm fine. She told her friends in the silent way of hers as they all lay crouched ready to protect her. She saw the incredulous look on Melanie's face and the simple raised brow from both Marcus and Jackson, but they all obliged, rising from their defensive stances. Steve merely stood, hands raised in surrender. Jasper knew he didn't want anyone hurt and was humbled to see the sincerity in his blue eyes.
"You're my enemy." Bucky growled into her ear, tightening his metal arm around her throat and slowly cutting off her air flow.
"Ha! I think kicking your ass twenty-six times makes you my bitch, not my enemy." She countered, wincing as again the arm tightened.
"You got in my head to win." Bucky argued and Jasper knew that was what this was all about. He believed she'd used her abilities to get inside his head and use him, just like Hydra. Made sense, they'd wiped him clean of his memories of her so there was no way he could remember her promise to him.
"Actually, we never got that far. I always won before that was necessary." Jasper gasped pulling futilely at his arm. She could feel her mind reaching out toward his to take down the threat but she reeled it in. She'd never used her powers on him and she wasn't about to start now.
"Liar!" Bucky roared, cutting off her airway completely and coming precariously close to crushing her windpipe.
Jasper fought for a moment, twisting against his arm and sending silent orders for her friends to back down. She pulled and pulled, kicking and fighting to be free, but she knew it wouldn't work. She was no match for his physical strength. With a small gasp, Jasper forced what little air was left in her lungs out and relaxed back into Bucky's arms. He immediately crouched to hold her weight and she took the opportunity as she had so many times before.
Rising up on her toes, she licked a small stripe up Bucky's neck and along the corner of his jaw, feeling the coarse stubble there. Bucky immediately recoiled, releasing Jasper, who fell to her knees, and stepping quickly out of her reach. Jasper rubbed at her neck, coughing a few times before regaining her breath and standing to face Bucky.
He'd wiped the saliva off of his face and was staring at his hand like it was an odd creature he'd never seen before. Jasper used the sleeve of her shirt to wipe her mouth and watched Bucky silently as they both caught their breath.
After several moments of tense silence, Bucky looked up and locked eyes with Jasper. His eyebrows creased in the middle with confusion and he spoke quietly.
"You licked me." Bucky stated, several emotions playing across his face at once.
"Not the first time that trick has saved me from suffocating on your behalf." Jasper replied simply, the tension leaving her muscles as she watched Bucky relax into a more open stance.
"You've done that to him before?" Steve asked.
Jasper turned to face their little audience and on seeing their expressions ranging from scandalized (Steve) to smugness (Marcus), sighed heavily.
"Ya, I have. When you're no match for your opponent's physical strength, you come up with inventive ways to win." She shrugged, hoping to let the subject drop but Bucky was still staring at his hand like it might do a trick of its own free will and she knew that was too much to ask for.
"We've fought many times before?" Bucky's voice sounded broken at the idea of more things he couldn't remember.
"Yes, we have. I was one of their strongest weapons, best suited to match you in a physical fight, so they paired us up to try and make us better." Jasper gave an extremely condensed and edited version of their story. She still remembered how hard it was to hear bits of her life story from someone else's mouth and have no recollection of any of it.
"Weapon?" It was a simple word but the look behind his eyes said so much more than he did.
"Yes, I was one of their weapons. Like you, they wiped Me, the real Jasper, away and used my body and my abilities to further their ventures." Jasper forced a tight smile on her face.
She could see the gears moving in his head and remembered wishing there had been someone there for her to understand what she'd been through, but she'd been the first to come back from being a Hydra weapon so she'd done it essentially on her own. A part of her wanted to reach out to Bucky and tell him that he didn't have to find himself alone like she had. She wanted to tell him that she would help him in any way she could to remember who he was.
And yet part of her hoped he never remembered what had happened. Hoped that somehow he could just remember who he'd been before Hydra, when he'd been Steve's Bucky, but Jasper knew that was asking too much. Before and after Hydra were two sides of the same coin, and he would remember both eventually. How long would it take him to remember their last encounter? And how long would it be before he remembered to hate her.
J? Jasper felt Jackson's consciousness reaching out to hers and looked up from her thoughts to see the lot of them staring at her expectantly.
"I'm sorry, what?" Jasper asked the group as a whole, not one hundred percent sure who'd spoken in the first place.
Marcus chuckled and Jackson gave her an annoyed older brother look, before tossing his eyes over her shoulder pointedly. Jasper turned to find Dr. Martin standing there with his hands folded before him and his usual patient expression on his bearded face.
"I asked, Miss James, if you and Mr. Barnes here had much interaction during your time with Hydra?" Dr. Martin's crisp british voice stopped just a few steps shy of insinuation but Jasper could feel his mind working out the complex problem that was her part in Bucky's memories.
"We fought a lot, if that's what you mean. Why?" Jasper asked. She'd learned the hard way that talking to anyone from S.H.I.E.L.D was like a game of poker, you never showed your hand too soon and she knew without a doubt she had the trump card in her hand.
"I found an interesting connection that I'd like you to come take a look at, if you please." Dr. Martin gestured to the tablet resting in the crook of his arm.
Wearily, Jasper moved to stand beside him, anxiety taking root at the base of her skull. He tapped a few buttons, unlocking the device and accessing the correct file before turning it's screen to show Jasper a series of pictures taken from Hydra surveillance: her and Bucky fighting, her and Bucky kissing, Bucky lying on the floor, his blood on her hands, and finally Bucky standing over her, poised and ready for the kill shot.
Jasper felt the blood drain from her face as she stared at the images, searing them into her brain.
"Jasper?" Marcus called out at the spear of panic that drilled through Jasper's heart.
"Where did you get these?" Jasper whispered.
"We gathered quite a bit of intel after Pierce's fall. This was sent to me a few days ago. There are quite a few others if you'd like to,"
"No." Jasper cried, pushing the tablet away.
"Miss James, it is my belief that you could be very beneficial to Mr. Barnes regaining his memories and I'd like to ask for your help in doing so." Dr. Martin said simply.
"How could she possibly help you? So they fought a few times, what does that have to do with anything?" Marcus demanded, stepping toward Jasper and glaring at the doctor.
"Mr. Debre, please do not involve yourself. This is of no concern of yours."
"No concern of mine? You're joking right? She's," Jasper didn't hear the rest as she glanced up to find Bucky staring at her intently.
"Can you help me remember?" She could see it in his face that he was trying so hard to smother the hope that was blossoming in his chest.
Jasper felt sick knowing that remembering would only hurt him more. She knew what he would find if he went down that path, pain and betrayal.
"Please, don't ask me to do this. Please don't ask me to hurt you like that." She whispered.
Bucky watched her carefully for a moment and Jasper thought maybe she had been saved but then Bucky dropped his eyes and mumbled,
"I have to remember."
Jasper felt her knees give way and she sank to the floor amid the shouts of her friends as they argued with the doctor and the worried voice of Steve as he dropped to her side. Bucky's eyes shot up to meet hers when she hit the floor and she saw regret and determination waring across his face. She was the feelings he had no name or reason for and the anger, always the anger, when he came up short again.
Jasper let Steve help her to her feet, taking a few moments to gather her thoughts and draw back her emotions. This wasn't her decision, it was Bucky's and he had a right to take back his memories. She could deal with her own emotions later, but for the time being he'd asked for her help in the only way he knew how and she'd be damned if she would ever turn her back on him again.
"Enough." She called over the argument, effectively cutting off Melanie's string of curses.
"It's alright guys. I'm alright. Dr. Martin is right, I can help and I will to the best of my ability." She nodded at Bucky who managed to look both relieved and devastated.
"Wonderful!" Dr. Martin clapped his hands together, making Bucky flinch almost imperceptibly and Jasper wish she could punch him right in his crooked nose. "I suggest we three meet at my office tomorrow morning to see,"
"A meeting in your office and some meditative thoughts won't bring back his memories, Doc. You should've realized that by now." The offended harrumph she received curbed Jasper's urge to punch the doctor. "We'll meet on the training mat."
"And what, pray tell, do you intend to accomplish on the training mat?" Dr. Martin asked condescendingly.
"He remembers best when he's fighting and angry, both of which I can achieve on the mat, not in your office. I know from experience."
"You can't honestly expect me to allow two of my patients to fist fight as a form of therapy? It's ludicrous." Dr. Martin scoffed.
"Look, you want to waste both my time and his by playing shrink, then fine, we'll meet in your office. But if you want results, real results, you'll be on that mat in the morning. Being wiped from your own mind hurts like hell and it's not pretty or done in a cushy little office. Neither is remembering." Jasper growled, glaring at the small man in the white coat. There were times when she almost couldn't tell the difference between him and the Hydra scientists.
"Very well, Miss James. Let's do it your way." The doctor ground out between his teeth before traipsing off.
"Prick." Jasper muttered under her breath with one last glare at the doctors back before turning back to Bucky.
"This is going to suck like hell and that's about all I can guarantee so I'd be sure this is what you wanna do before you meet me on that mat tomorrow, Barnes." She stated simply, placing her hands on her hips and trying to ignore the ache in her heart and the way he bit his lips while he thought.
"You don't scare me, James." His response was automatic and Jasper saw his eyes widen minutely.
"Look at that, you're already starting to remember. We'll have you back to your pain in the ass self in no time." Jasper grinned up at him in what she hoped was a reassuring manner.
He simply nodded once before looking uncomfortable under everyone's scrutiny and walking off silently. Steve went to follow, stopping at Jasper's side and placing his hand on her shoulder. He smiled at her warmly, thanks evident in his expressive eyes.
"Don't thank me yet, Cap. You think you've been to hell and back before? You ain't seen nothing yet." Jasper muttered.
"Do you mind if I join you all tomorrow?" Steve asked quietly.
"I'd actually prefer if you were there. I want a guarantee that if he gets pissed there's going to be someone who can pry him off me."
"He's not The Winter Soldier anymore." Steve paused to give her his pursed lip disapproving look before adding, "And besides, if it goes really bad, you could always get out of there and you know it."
"He doesn't have to be the Winter Soldier to want me dead, and no, no I couldn't. I made a promise and I don't ever intend to break it." Jasper muttered but Steve was already jogging off in the direction Bucky had gone.
"I hope you know what you're doing." Marcus said as he placed his arm around her waist. Jackson grunted his consent, taking her other side and Melanie came to wrap them all in a hug.
"Me too." Jasper whispered, feeling like the bottom of her world would drop out from underneath her at any second.
