CHAPTER VI

She sat in front of her bedroom mirror, painstakingly applying electric blue eyeliner. Barnes leant on the doorframe and watched her. His head was tilted so it rested against the wall, hair hanging forward over his face, and his still-lifeless eyes were fixated upon her like she was about to pull a gun out on him.

"Your behaviour," she said, "is just a little bit creepy, y'know that?"

"I wasn't made to respect boundaries," he replied, "but if you want me to stop-"

"No, I'm done anyways." She stood up, tied her hair back from her face with a red polka dot bandana, and realized something. "Heh. This is the first time you've seen me dressed. Not normally how acquaintances happen."

He shrugged one shoulder, as if to indicate he wouldn't know what was normal.

"Ugh. I hate shopping." She grabbed her bag and brushed past him. "You going out too?"

"I won't be in when you get back."

"Okay." She paused at her front door, tapping away at the screen to one side of it that connected to her security system. "It'll let you in, you don't need a key."

"I didn't need one last time. You shouldn't leave your windows open."

"I'm on the top floor, though," she pointed out, "of a sheer building."

"Didn't stop me."

"Funny enough," she said, "super soldiers breaking in isn't a situation I thought I'd need to prepare for."

She went to the top-end hardware store, was told they didn't have the kit she needed, flashed her wallet and had the stuff brought to her within seconds. Then she went down the road and bought some more men's clothes, since having him walking around in her ex's stuff was pretty weird. Coming out of the store, she could see the skeletal building that housed her penthouse dominating the horizon, and not for the first time gave silent thanks for the tinted windows.

It was not only SHIELD who had tried to recruit her before. HYDRA had come- or at least, people she knew to be HYDRA after a couple hours of extensive data mining. She had turned them down, of course, but unlike SHIELD they did not seem to get the message. Fortunately, she moved around a lot, which made her difficult to track- that, and she left a trail of false breadcrumbs which meant that the world and all its heroes and villains thought she was in Berlin.

Barnes was right; her apartment was empty when she got back. She welcomed the silence, dumping her purchases on a table and hopping towards her thought room, kicking off her shoes as she went.

Barnes hadn't asked about the plain white room, and she hadn't told him about it either. Upon her entrance, the tiny projectors in each corner lit up, and shimmered into life around her. Lines of binary quickly manifested themselves into a more easily readable form.

The idea of holograms that, although intangible, she could touch was something that she had shamelessly stolen from Tony Stark- or had he stolen it from her? Either way, Stark had used it to make the air in his home his touchscreen computer screen, which was where the two systems differed. In her thought room, Alvie was inside the computer- not quite one with it, not yet, but pretty damn close.

Once she had got her bearings, she switched back to pure coding- easier to manipulate that way, without the aesthetic distractions. Once she had booked a flight from Berlin to Seoul, she held her hand palm-downwards out in front of her and clenched her fist- the holograms reset.

Right, she thought, James Buchanan Barnes…

The two electrodes she had attached behind her ears earlier picked up the thought of the name and carried it out into the room, her programming transforming it from abstract neurons flaring- an idea she had first made tech in AIM- and into a language that the computer in the walls could understand. She didn't need the hand gestures in here, except for simple commands like refresh, quit and so on- her mind raced through the internet, dancing around firewalls until she found scans of the soldier's files and switched from code to images.

"Cocky looking bastard," she murmured. "Pretty, though." For proper work, for hacking and research and creating herself, the thought room was always preferable to her laptops and desktop computer. It was less restricted, easier for her to move in- what moved her from simply being gifted, to being second on HYDRA's list. If they knew how she did it, the tech she had created, she would have been first, and she was so proud it was a miracle they didn't already.

The lines of binary reasserted themselves into grainy war footage of two men- one instantly recognizable as Captain America, but it took her a while to link the other laughing guy to the man who had taken up residence in her apartment. He was so young- he looked about her age, hair short and swept back from his face. She checked the date- he had "died" less than six months after the footage had been taken.

Next- The Winter Soldier, she thought, clearing thoughts of Bucky from her head. It took her a conscious effort this time, in order to break down HYDRA's defences without being noticed. She found files on genetic enhancements, cryonic preservation, memory wipes, snipers, combative training… and then there were the lists of targets, page upon page, each name marked with a neat red line.

She had known he was an assassin, known the basics. But this… the devil was in the detail, as always. What kind of person could kill so many people, and see it just like working through a list?

She clapped, and the holograms faded to nothing. At first she thought she was scared of him, but then she realized that the finger on the trigger was that of HYDRA's. The people who had been cold-calling her for years, who she had brushed off like she did SHIELD.

For the first time, she became aware of how close to death she really was.

The slam of her front door jerked her out of her reverie, and she walked out to see a scowling Barnes pulling down the hood of his jacket.

"Any luck?" she asked him, nibbling on her nails.

"Yeah, I went to see the Avengers and they welcomed me back with open arms," he replied, his eyes settled about waist height behind her, which happened a lot- she suspected he had trouble focusing. Maybe, the small, isolated, calm part of her thought, maybe hasn't been in enough normal conversations to know where to look. I mean, he's looking at pockets, right? Where someone would hide their weapons.

"Speaking of arms - I can do some now, if you want. Take your sleeves off." She hadn't been planning on it, but she needed distracting. Barnes, or at least those who had made him, was the thing that had made her want to run, get the hell out of the US, but ironically it was him she had to stay for.

She grabbed her welding goggles and pulled them down over her eyes as Bucky removed his jacket and long-sleeved shirt, leaving him semi-naked again. Good. Another thing to keep her mind off it. She rolled up her own sleeves and plugged a tiny blowtorch into a nearby socket, then took another couple of lethal-looking instruments from her shopping bags. "I bought you more clothes," she said, opening up his arm.

There was an expectant pause. "Thanks," said Bucky, eventually.

"You are very welcome. Nice to see your manners developing." She glanced up from his arm at the bruises just beginning to blossom across his torso. "You get into a fight?" she asked.

"They got into one with me."

"Oh, good. There were more than one." She switched on the blowtorch. "Am I gonna get stabbed in my bed now?"

"No."

She opened her mouth to ask for more details, then decided that probably wasn't a very good idea. "But apart from that, did you have a nice day?"

He gave her a shadow of a smile, more like he was amused by the question than cheered up by her concern for his happiness. "I don't know."

She laid down her tools and chewed her lip. "Can I ask you something?" she asked.

"What?"

"Y'know HYDRA?"

"Stupid question."

"No, I- I told them to leave me alone, in no uncertain terms. They've been tracking me ever since, I thought I'd led them somewhere else but then you found me and-"

"It wasn't because of HYDRA's algorithm that I found you. I tracked you myself."

She relaxed a little, settling her tools to one side and closing his arm- her hands were shaking too much to continue. "That's better, but- what if they do find me?" she met his gaze. "Are they gonna kill me?"

"Undoubtedly," he said. "Unless they think they can coerce you."

"Coerce-"

"Bribery. Blackmail. Torture. Most likely that one, since they appear to have already tried the first and you don't have anyone they can use against you-"

She pushed back from his arm and staggered away, pressing a hand to her mouth. "Oh, hell. Oh my shit, I'm gonna die."

"Alvie," he said, standing up. "Calm down."

"I will not freaking calm down!" she wailed. "I've given myself a death sentence!"

He grabbed her arm and held her steady, fingers digging into her flesh. "Not while I'm around," he said firmly. "I need a tinker to fix my arm, and until that's done the only way they're getting to you is through me. Okay?"

"Bucky."

"What?"

"You're hurting me."

He released her arm and she rubbed it, wincing. "You mean it? You won't let them kill me?"

"Consider it payment," he said.

She thought of when his arm was fixed, and she would be isolated again. Perhaps if she only pretended to-

No. That's wrong.

But if it kept me alive-

He'd figure out after a while, anyways.

"Thank you," she said. He nodded in response. "But…"

"What?" she asked.

"You're scared of them. I get that. But why aren't you scared of me? I'm a killer."

"You've asked that before," she reminded him.

"And you didn't answer."

She scowled. "That you're a killer, it- it doesn't freak me out," she replied. "I mean… logically I should be a bit worried, at least. And I remember that, sometimes. But the fact you're up to your elbows in blood?" she shook her head. "Don't bother me."

"Why not?"

Because I would be hypocritical if it did. "None of your business, Bucky."

"Don't," he said, "don't call me… that."

"Well, James is boring," she said, "and I sure as hell ain't calling you Buchanan."

His working hand clenched into a fist and relaxed again a few times, and she sighed.

"It's just a name, sweetheart. Lotsa people in the world called Bucky, doesn't mean you have to throw a fit every time you hear it."

"It's not my name," he persisted, voice soft.

"Then I'm making it yours. Just Bucky, okay? No Barnes, no Winter Soldier. Just Bucky. If only to make my life easier."

Bucky said nothing, but merely broke eye contact and walked away.

So does that count as making progress?

A/N thank the lord for reviewers who point out embarassing typos.