I come to and my head is resting against metal, slightly warm and emitting tiny clicks and whirs near my ear. A light smell of oil and moving parts fills my senses. I'm moving but my body is lying out and against something hard, another person, and their breathing comes fast. There's pressure on my forehead, a cloth that hangs over my eyes and when I finally open them a little all I see is fabric covered in blood. My head is throbbing at the point of the pressure and I think it might split wide open. I want to see where I am, but when I reach up to pull away the cloth I feel my wrist is immobilized on a makeshift splint. I don't know where I'm going, and whoever is holding me tries to pin my left arm against my side with their free hand, causing me to start writhing in a panic. My breath comes quick and shallow, hyperventilating and struggling even more despite the pain in my arm and my head. I just want to get away, I just want to know where I am, I just want to be safe again.

Muffled voices reach me, speaking in a language that is foreign to me but passed quickly between the man and the woman who exchange rushed words while I try to fight against being held. I'm starting to feel dizzy and then there's a voice beside me, thick and low and I go still while I lock on to what it's whispering.

"Be still," it says, gentle in my ear, "I have you."

A sharp sting in my upper arm makes way for a thick, warm sensation that begins in my arm and seeps down to my toes and slowly fills up my belly. My hands fumble with anything they get a potential grip on, but my fingers feel so thick and flimsy that all I do is push feebly at the unforgiving hulk I'm pressed against. But before the richly seeping warmth spreads all the way up my neck and into my head, my fingers find others, and I lace them together to create a tether that I will anchor myself with.

Quietly I give in to the seep and go limp in the arms of my assailant, my patient, my friend, and now my protector.

...

My eyelids feel heavy but I pull them apart and am met by soft light. I'm stretched out in a hospital bed, facing a window where morning sun is filtered through blinds and lands on my feet under light covers. My bed is surrounded by curtains that cordon off a small private area for me, and I orient myself by the little noises of the med wing that are familiar to me. Quiet footsteps on tile, a classical music station that Elsa listens to, and the scent of disinfectant and clean things. I think I'm alone, but someone beside my bed clears their throat and I turn to see Steve sitting somewhat rigidly beside my bed.

"Hi," I whisper. "We have to stop meeting like this." I try to turn my body towards him. It feels like it will take a great effort to move even a little bit, and I recognize the familiar numbness of high class painkillers.

"You had a bit of a rough night," Steve smiles. He leans in towards me and rests his head in his hands. "You've got a broken wrist and a pretty good knock on your head. You need to rest, make sure you don't have a concussion."

"Is it the same day?" I ask, and he nods in response. It starts to trickle back in, the feeling of not being able to breathe, the rush of fear and tears start to blur my vision.

"It's all right," he soothes. "You're safe."

"That man," I start, but finding the words to describe the certainty in my mind proves to be difficult. I take moment to steady myself.

"Was he going to kill me?" I say, my voice trembling. His smile fades and he doesn't have to nod or say anything for me to know the answer to the question.

"Did James kill him?"

He looks at the floor, his mouth pressing into a thin line and the space between his eyes wrinkles. He nods.

"HYDRA," the word tastes foreign in my mouth and I want to spit it out. "They won't stop, will they."

"No," he says, his voice resigned. "They won't."

He looks like he's preparing himself to give me bad news. A worry starts to crawl up my spine and I realize it should have struck me sooner that James wasn't here.

"Where is James?" I say evenly.

"You have an option," Steve says, again ignoring me and moving forward with the conversation. "If it's any consolation, we never meant for you to get hurt. We never meant for anyone to get killed. Enough people have died already and we don't need any more."

"I want to know where James is," I demand. "He's my patient and I want to know where he is."

Steve watches me, his brow furrowed, and I realize that he's measuring me against a picture of who he thought I was and who I am becoming. I feel changed, like my world has broadened to encompass new truths about who I am and I can't abandon my process now, which means not abandoning the man I am caring for. I must have seemed timid at first, maybe weak in their eyes, but I can feel another surprise coming and I have to stand up to the momentum of this life and take control.

"He's safe," Steve finally admits. "He'll start getting the medicine you want to give him, and we will keep monitoring his progress with his memories. But we can't keep putting you in harms way and right now wherever Bucky is is a dangerous place."

"So what are you saying," I try to sound annoyed but a slight crack in my voice betrays my suspicion of what he is going to say.

"We're going to move you," he says. His does it gently, breaking the news to me like he doesn't know if I will be relieved or furious. I suspect he hopes it will be relief, but that's not what I feel.

"No," I hiss.

"You'll be moved to a safe location and given a new identity, hidden from them and able to start again. It's the best option and it will keep you safe."

I keep shaking my head and stare at the ceiling, the window, my hands, everywhere but at him because I am going to cry at the sudden sensation at having failed someone that I care about. Because that's what makes me the most angry, thinking that I hadn't even scratched the surface of treating James Barnes before they're going to pull me and erase me from his life. It's just like what HYDRA did and I want to scream but somehow I keep my silence on that subject.

"How long do I have?" I manage to ask.

"Three days," Steve answers. He leans back in the chair and I go back to facing the window, not wanting to look at him anymore and instead decide to wallow in the unfairness of it. I don't know how long he stays with me, because honestly I stopped paying attention to him and just let myself drift on my waves of emotion. The light shifts over my blankets and I think at some point in the afternoon I doze off because in the late evening I'm awakened by a nurse who tells me I am free to return to my own apartment. She seems kind and seems to care for me but I decided earlier that they don't really care, that I'm expendable to them.

I wander back to my little corner and lay down on the bed to possibly sleep but instead I watch the sunset without moving. My left wrist, secured in a plaster cast, rests in front of me and every so often I glance at it and can feel the way the bones snapped on the desk. I have more meds for the pain, and would probably do best if I were to disappear into another drugged haze, but I can't bring myself to block this out.

The pink light from sunset shifts along the wall and I watch it make a path along the white, wishing I could curl into its warmth and forget what happened. But I've seen my face with its bruising on my forehead and line of even stitches that holds together where my scalp was split, and I've gently traced the line of small bruises on the side of my neck where the life was almost squeezed from me. These things will heal, I know they will, but how will I forget the way it felt to be held down and almost wiped out.

I work to bring things back, not to press them into oblivion. The humor at finding my self in this position is understandably lost at the moment and despite the pain that is returning to my broken bones, the majority of what I feel is a terrible sense of loss and disappointment at letting someone else down. It's this feeling that pushes me off the bed, reminds me to gather my things and guides me through the building to James' room.

I let myself in, his door is always unlocked for me but he never leaves unless he's with me, and I find him on his bed, listening to one of our conversations. I lean against the door and let myself slide to the floor, my bag crumpling beside me, and we lock eyes but don't speak. He's listening to a conversation we had about where we grew up, it's mostly me recounting stories from growing up in a farmhouse outside Davis, California and the sound of my happy voice drifting through the room pulls at the sadness that's settling into my chest.

"They're sending me away," I say into the void between us. And that's when I really start to cry. I collapse into myself in a little ball and cry for both the lives I am losing in this short amount of time. When the sobs begin to shake me, I feel those strong arms pulling me into them, the cool metal whirs and clicks, oil smell, and the comforting strength of the solid man that I will anchor myself to.