A/N: I know, I know! I should have been working on the one-shots for my 'Hero' series but I've been really busy and just haven't had much motivation for the series lately.

I did however, have this little idea demanding my attention for a while so I started writing. There are two complete chapters I'm going to throw up. Please let me know if you like it because I am just trying this one out at the moment.

This is a Bucky Barnes recovery fic, probably because I've been reading far too many of them recently instead of revising and I have decided I needed to take a crack at it. Of course, with various OCs because I can't help myself.

Please let me know if you would like to see more and I'll try my best.

Thanks, and enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel of its creations but I do own my original characters. Please ask for their consent before touching, thanks!

It happened at 5:30 in the evening on a Friday.

I almost always arrived home from school at 5:30 in the evening on a Friday. Any other school day I got home at 5 on the dot but Fridays Hannah and I always stopped for milkshakes at the diner five minutes away from the school. We would sit in the diner, drink our milkshakes and talk about anything we wanted until Hannah had to leave to catch her bus and I walked the rest of the way home.

Fridays were also the days that my mom did the weekly shopping. She always arrived home between 6:00pm and 6:30pm depending on whether traffic was a bitch or not on that particular Friday. It was our routine. Had been since I was old enough to make the walk home alone safely.

So from 5:30pm to 6/6:30pm on Fridays, I was home on my own.

Until I wasn't.

On this particular Friday I was listening to music like I usually did on the walk home so I was a little distracted by my favourite band of the week while I unlocked the front door and stepped inside, dropping my keys into the dish on the side table in the hallway, hanging my jacket in the closet under the stairs and kicking off my shoes in there too.

Mom and I live in a relatively secluded area. The walk up our driveway took three minutes and our closest neighbors are a five-minute walk away not including the driveway trek. The house had been left to my mom by my grandparents after they died. My grandad, Norman Reyes had been a successful businessman and my grandma, Margret had worked closely with him for many years.

They were rich.

Like really, really rich.

They had left their company to Uncle Damien who had been working his way towards CEO for many years before their death. Damien got the business and his little sister, my mom, got the fancy house and a substantial plot of land to go with it. Our backyard is more like a field that stretched for close to 200 yards and we owned a good 100 yards worth of land after that which was all trees that were fenced off from the rest of the forest so signify the territory.

And I lived there with just my mom.

Ah, such a simple life we lead.

Dad wasn't around anymore and we didn't often have a lot of people over for various reasons. So I was used to being alone in the house, I quite enjoyed it actually.

So it was quite a shock to find someone standing in the kitchen.

A very male someone.

A very tall, scruffy, kind-of-scary, male someone.

He was standing ramrod straight on the other side of the kitchen island where I had eaten breakfast that morning. A quick glance around the room showed that the back door was open and the lock seemed to be busted.

Any hope that my mom just hadn't told me she would be inviting over her caveman friend vanished at that point.

Then I noticed that the refrigerator was slightly open, - he better not have drunk my chocolate milk - casting a yellow glow over a small portion of the room but not quite touching the man stood in front of me. One glance at the man's face revealed absolutely nothing.

Now, I have always been a stupidly reckless person and the people in my life (read: my mom) seem to enjoy pointing that out to me on a regular basis (read: every time I do something stupid. So daily) but in that moment I was absolutely terrified to do the wrong thing. I coughed to clear my throat and took a deep breath in the hopes of sucking in a little courage.

"Hi?"

No response.

"Uh, who are you?"

No response.

"You really shouldn't be here. Did you break in?" Yeah, Zara, ask the scary guy if he committed a crime.

Still no response.

I quickly realized that he wasn't actually staring at me but at the backpack, I was holding in my hands, more accurately the way I was fiddling with the straps. Immediately and self-consciously I moved to put it on one of the barstools at the island. Immediately his eyes snapped up to mine and his right hand was suddenly occupied by a very sharp-looking knife.

The look in those eyes was promising death if I made another bad move but the man himself was giving off a fearful vibe. I felt my eyes widening in surprise and I raised my left hand in the air in the universal sign of surrender.

"I'm just putting it down, see?" I moved slowly, not moving my feet as I leaned forward, one hand still in the air as I very, very slowly placed the backpack on the stool. I could feel myself starting to sweat but ignored the urge to wipe my brow in favor of very slowly raising my right hand in the air along with the left. The guy relaxed a little.

"Could you, uh, could you maybe put the knife away now?"

He met my eyes again and raised the blade slightly in the air as if to ask 'this?'

I took the chance and nodded. "You're intimidating enough without it, trust me." Internally, I was screaming at myself that I shouldn't have said that. But all he did was put the weapon away somewhere I couldn't see since my view was kind of blocked once again by the island. I was getting the feeling it was for his protection as well as mine somehow.

We spent a couple of minutes in silence. I gradually lowered my hands when they got tired and the guy said nothing about it. I glanced at the clock. 5:46pm. He glanced at the clock too.

I glanced around the room and came to a quick decision. The silence was getting annoyingly awkward and so was the staring that he was doing so I fell back on my favorite principle: wing it.

"My mom will be home soon." The man's eyes bore into mine. "She'll probably call the cops when she gets here, you really want to still be here for that?"

The man narrowed his eyes and started moving around the island again.

"Woah, woah, woah. I'm not threatening you." He stopped, looked surprised, then just stood there. "Are you going to tell me why you're here? What you were looking for?" I glanced at the refrigerator again. Besides the door, it was the only thing that had been disturbed. "Were you hungry?"

It was just for a second, a single second, but the man looked down, radiating shame and a hint of regret. Then he met my eyes again.

I raised an eyebrow.

We stood in silence for a few more minutes.

I sighed and crossed my arms. 5:51pm.

"You're not going to hurt me, are you?"

He inclined his head quizzically. I dared to smile.

"If you were going to, something tells me you could have and would have the second I walked into the room." He straightened up again and avoided eye contact for a moment. "Do you live nearby?"

He didn't answer. I sighed and leaned back against the counter. He watched me but did nothing about it. "Listen, you quite obviously don't want the cops involved and if my mom comes home and you're still here but you won't explain yourself then they definitely will be. Just talk to me. You could have left. I'm a seventeen-year-old girl I doubt I could have stopped you. But you didn't. I'm a curious person so I want to know why. Will you talk to me?"

He gave a small, jerky nod.

"Do you live nearby?"

He shook his head.

"That isn't exactly talking but okay." I looked over at him now that I could see his entire body. He was tall, with long, greasy hair, a scruffy beard, and well-worn clothes. I raised an eyebrow at the glove on his left hand but said nothing. "Do you live anywhere?"

He hesitated before shaking his head.

"Why did you break in here?"

He hesitated again. "Hungry." The word sounded like it was made of glass shards that had clawed their way out of his throat. He coughed. "The house was empty." The words came out quiet and rough like he hadn't spoken in a while but his voice was a little smoother than before.

"Are you hurt?" I noticed he had begun favoring his left side during our little talk.

He nodded but broke off to stare in the direction of the front door. A few seconds later I heard mom turning the key and opening the door. How he had heard that was beyond me. The man took a step back so that he was out of sight and I looked back at him. "Stay here?" He didn't give a reply but I was already heading off to meet my mom at the door.

"Here I got those," I took the bags from my mom and set them just outside the kitchen door before taking her arm and dragging her into the living room.

My mom is just slightly taller than me at 5'8 with the same chocolate brown hair as me except where I had gotten mine dyed red at the bottom. We both have brown eyes and pale skin, both relatively skinny. All in all, we're quite similar.

"Zara," mom laughed. "Zara honey what is it?"

"Don't freak out mom."

"Why would I freak out."

"Someone broke in."

"What?" mom hissed, instantly in protective mother-bear mode. "Did you call the police?" I shook my head. "Why the hell not? Are you okay?" She started looking me over but a brushed her hands off.

"I'm fine mom. Listen, he's still here."

She froze.

"He's what?"

"In the kitchen." Mom's eyes widened and she spun around and started moving. "No!" I pushed past her and blocked the living room door.

"Zara!" mom whisper-yelled. "Move."

"No. Mom, he isn't going to hurt us. He was just hungry."

Mom stopped trying to get past me and raised an eyebrow.

"Hungry? Zara did that stray cat get in again; is that what you're talking about?"

I rolled my eyes. "Not a cat, a man. The only thing he touched was the fridge. Well, I think he broke the back door but that's it."

"He broke the back door and you don't think he'll hurt us," she deadpanned. I winced.

"When you put it like that I sound crazy. But mom, please, just talk to him. I think he might be hurt."

We stared at each other for a few moments, mom trying to make me back down and me silently pleading with her.

"Mom, we can help this guy. I'm sure of it. If we can help someone, we should. Isn't that what you taught me? Isn't that why you became a nurse?"

Mom sighed. "Who raised you to be so manipulative? It certainly wasn't me."

I grinned and hugged her.

When we carried the shopping bags into the kitchen the man was back on the other side of the kitchen island but I didn't get the feeling that he was hiding from us, more trying to keep himself away from us. Mom stopped for a moment in the doorway to observe the man and the room as a whole before sighing and placing the bags on the counter.

"Zara, unpack the groceries please."

I rolled my eyes but got to work on unpacking while also keeping an eye on my mom and the stranger. I watched as mom rounded the island but stayed just out of reach and the man watched her warily.

"My daughter didn't tell me your name."

He glanced at me and I caught the 'I didn't tell her' he was communicating with it. I hid my smile by putting the ice-cream in the freezer. There was silence behind me for a few moments and when I turned around he seemed to be struggling. He was confused. By his name. Mom and I shared a glance across the room.

"James. I think."

"You think?"

"He called me Bucky."

"Who did?"

"The man on the bridge."

"What man?"

"On the bridge."

The 'duh' slipped out under my breath and my mom glared at me fiercely for it.

"Zara."

"Right, groceries."

She rolled her eyes. "Okay, let's table the 'man on the bridge' thing. Are you hurt?" He nodded. "Where and how?" He didn't answer. "I'm a nurse, I can help you."

He glanced at me and I paused from where I was kneeling on the counter to hide the Oreos in my usual spot. It took a couple of seconds before I realized why he was looking. I grinned at him. "She's a really good nurse."

He turned back to my mom. "They were shooting at me."

I almost fell off of the counter when I spun around.

"Were you hit?" Mom's voice remained steady but the shift in her stance told me she was as alarmed as me by the possibility.

He nodded.

"I'll get the kit." A slapping sound was made when my feet hit the floor as I jumped down from my perch before scurrying off to grab the first aid kit from the bathroom. When I came back mom had apparently coaxed James into sitting down on one of the stools. He looked just mildly surprised and my mom looked slightly horrified. "Did I miss something?"

Mom gave me a not-at-all-convincing reassuring smile as she washed her hands and put on some medical gloves before holding her hands in front of her.

"I need you to take off your jacket and shirt."

James very much did not like that idea. He shifted in his seat and glanced from left to right as if preparing an escape route.

"She's just trying to help," I tried to reassure him. "Besides, whenever I let her go all nurse-mode on me I get ice-cream afterward. You want some?"

"James," mom spoke softly, in her 'patient-voice' as she waited for him to meet her eyes. "Please."

I finished putting the last few groceries away and stuffing the plastic bags into a drawer by the sink before hopping up to sit on the island while James was considering removing the clothes like he was told to.

"Zara."

I turned to my mom. "What?"

She just raised an eyebrow so without taking my eyes away from her I slowly pulled out a stool with my foot and slid off of the island onto it, resting my elbow on the counter and my chin in my hand. Mom nodded approvingly and we turned back to James. Both of us froze. He wouldn't meet either of our eyes but he had taken off his jacket, shirt and his glove. I can't speak for my mom but I know that my eyes instantly zeroed in on his left arm. His metal left arm.