Captain America was not easy to get on the phone.

First, she tried looking up his contact information online, and found a number on one of SHIELD's leaked files. Knowing the chances of the number still being active was just about zero, she gave it a call and found it predictably disconnected. Next, she tried to Google-stalk him and see if his whereabouts were currently known by anyone, and they weren't - he'd apparently gone slightly off the grid after being released from the hospital a few weeks earlier.

This led her to attempt something that she had next to no hope of bearing any fruit. She started calling Stark Tower in New York, asking anyone who would answer if they could put her through to someone who could give Steve Rogers an urgent message. She called each available number for each available office listing - which was a lot - and each time, she got either laughed at or cursed at and was then hung up on.

Bucky left her alone while she did this, scribbling in his notebook in the living room, seeming anxious and uneasy about it all. But while he was nervous, Summer was getting pissed off.

"Look," she argued with the latest irritated receptionist, "I don't know who else to call - SHIELD is gone and it's not like the Avengers have a tip hotline that I can call. I have actual important information for Captain America and I can promise you that it's something he wants to know about."

"Yeah, I'm sure. Look, lady, you wouldn't believe how many calls we get from people saying the same thing, and you know what we do? Nothing, and you know why?"

"Because you're all idiots?" she guessed before hanging up, glaring at her phone and dropping it on the table. She sighed, knowing that this strategy was not going to work, because it wasn't actually a strategy. She was dealing with superhero stuff, suddenly, and maybe getting one on the phone didn't involve the honest approach.

She picked up the phone again, staring at it and trying to brainstorm. What could she say that would get somebody to actually pay attention to her? What could she do to actually talk to somebody important and not some hourly-paid receptionist with a bad attitude?

It took her a few moments, but she finally got an idea. She didn't think it would work, but it was worth a shot, and she had nothing to lose at this point. She picked up the phone, dialed the tower's number and an extension that supposedly led to the the main office of the CEO, though she doubted that, and put the phone to her ear, hoping her lying skills weren't too atrocious.

"Stark Industries, how may I direct your call," a bored-sounding female voice answered.

Putting on a business voice that sounded laughable to her own ears, she replied, "Yes, I have an eleven o'clock conference with Ms. Potts."

There was a brief pause on the other end and then the woman replied, "Ms. Potts doesn't have any appointments today until noon. May I ask your name?"

Summer crossed her fingers. "My name is Summer McAdams and I am a... assistant professor of engineering from the University of Virginia. I can assure you that I have an appointment with Ms. Potts and I can also tell you that the last receptionist who delayed my appointment was fired for her incompetence."

"One moment please."

Summer held her breath, ready to keel over in shock if this actually worked. She waited for the line to drop and instead heard a faint click, and then a new woman's voice.

"Pepper Potts."

Her jaw dropped. She was so shocked at her own success that she forgot to speak.

"Hello?"

"Hi," she half-exclaimed, then cleared her throat. "Hello."

"I don't have anything in my book about an appointment with... what was your name again?"

"Summer," she replied. "Summer McAdams. And I know you don't - just please don't hang up. I have some extremely important information that I need to get to Steve Rogers and I had no idea how else to try to get someone who knows him to listen to me."

"Who are you? Are you with SHIELD?"

"No," she almost laughed. "I'm a single mother and I live in the middle of the woods in Falls Church, Virginia."

"Not to be rude, but what information could you possibly have that's so urgent? And if that's true, why did you lie to get through?"

"Because I tried being honest and fifteen different people hung up on me," she explained. Then she held her breath again and decided to just blurt it out and see what happened. "I have the winter soldier living with me. He's been living here for almost a month and -"

"Wait," Pepper interrupted, "you're telling me that you have that... man... living with you? In your house?"

"I can send you a photo if you don't believe me."

"Why are you calling me and not the police?"

She rolled her eyes. "Because I don't trust anyone in a position of authority now, and I'm pretty sure you can guess why. He's not a threat. He's... hurt, and he needs help. I need Steve Rogers to know that he's here and he remembers things, and he wants his help."

The other woman paused. "Send me a picture."

"Okay," Summer replied, getting up and walking into the living room. Bucky looked up from his notebook when he heard her footsteps, and she quickly held out her phone and snapped a picture. He stared at her in confusion while she put the phone back to her ear and walked away. "I need a number to send it to."

Pepper rattled off a number, and Summer pulled the phone away and tapped some buttons, sending the picture. Then she placed the phone back to her ear. "It's sent."

"All right," Pepper replied. "Look, I'm not sure if you're trying to pull some prank, or for all I know, you're HYDRA and you're trying to lead Steve into a trap. I don't know. It's been a weird month. But I'll tell Tony and let him decide what to do."

Summer closed her eyes and exhaled. "Thank you. And for the record, I'm not HYDRA. I lost a grandfather in the Holocaust. I hate Nazis."

"Then why is one living with you?"

"He's not a Nazi," Summer replied. "He doesn't know what he is."

Another pause, and then Pepper said, "I'll give Tony a call."

"Thank you. Really, thank you."

"All right. Bye."

Summer hung up, sighing and in shock that she'd actually gotten as far as she had. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she looked up and to her right to find Bucky watching her, having drifted out of the living room, looking slightly concerned and still quite anxious.

"I managed to talk to Tony Stark's girlfriend, somehow," she reported cheerfully, motioning for him to sit down near her. As he did so, she went on. "She's going to tell him, and as long as he doesn't think I'm full of crap or trying to pull a prank, I guess he'll tell him."

Bucky stared at the table for a moment, then looked up at her and said quietly, "Stark?"

"Yeah, Tony Stark," she replied. "Iron Man. I figured getting in touch with one of the Avengers was the best way to do this, and he's the only one who really has an office that anyone can call."

"I know that name."

"Oh." She watched as Bucky seemed to really dig deep for that name, judging by the concentration on his face. Then it clicked. "Oh! Maybe you used to know Howard Stark. That's his dad."

For a split second, his face relaxed with recognition, and she knew that she had guessed right. But then he visibly paled, and his eyes darkened as they lost focus again.

That couldn't be a good sign. She reached a hand out to touch his own, as she had the day before when he'd started drifting away, but this time, he jerked his hand away at the first contact. He clenched it into a fist and then dropped it into his lap, and she looked up at him in concern. "You okay?"

His jaw clenched, he looked like he was about to break something or start cursing in Russian, but whatever he was going to do was interrupted by her phone ringing. They both froze, and she peered at the caller I.D, which announced an unknown caller.

Well, that was fast. She answered it quickly. "Hello?"

"Yeah, I'm looking for... something McAdams. Rachel McAdams? You were great in the Notebook, if that's who this is."

And just like that, in two sentences, everything she'd ever read about Tony Stark was confirmed as very true. "Summer McAdams. Hi."

"Oh, bummer. Hi. I hear you've got an extremely deadly old man in your house. Looked like him in the picture. Are you making this up?"

"No, sir," she replied.

"Good, because I'm only taking this halfway seriously because I promised a friend I'd keep an eye out for information about this guy. And if you're lying just to try to meet the Capsicle of your dreams, I will personally make you live to regret it."

He said it so causally, it was hard to tell if he was joking or serious.

"I mean it."

Serious, then. "I understand. I'm not lying."

"Although you did lie to get through to Pepper," he pointed out.

"Nobody took me serious the first fifteen times that I called and tried to be honest," she shrugged, glancing at Bucky as he watched her carefully.

"Right. So are you his hostage? Are you hiding in a cabinet to talk to me right now? Because you should have called the police instead."

"No. He hasn't tried to hurt me or my son once. He just needs help remembering and... getting better." Bucky looked away as she said the last few words.

"Mmhmm. Normally I'd say you're nuts, but I've seen some of the files about this guy, and it reminds me of something that happened to a guy I know."

"All I want is for you to pass the message along to Steve Rogers. That's all."

There was a pause, and then Tony said, "You know what he's done, right? The Winter Soldier?"

"I... yeah, some of it."

"I grew up my whole life thinking my mom and dad died in a car accident. Found out a week ago that they were assassinated, and you'll never guess by who."

Her stomach twisted, suddenly understanding why Bucky had looked so distressed at the sound of Howard Stark's name. He must have just remembered.

"Latest rumor is that he killed JFK too. So I'm more than a little skeptical that he's just been hanging out in your house with you, totally harmless, even if he was brainwashed."

She drew a breath, starting to feel a bit out of her depth again. She certainly never imagined ever being in a position like this, asking one of the world's richest and most famous men to help her help out his parents' assassin. How did things like this even happen? "I'm sorry, Mr. Stark. I don't know what else to say. I could spend all day telling you what I've seen and what I know about him, but you'd have no reason to believe me. For all you know I really am just a loser trying to get some attention, or I have Stockholm syndrome. But the truth is that he needs help. He saved my life and my little boy's life the other day when a couple of HYDRA agents found him at my house. He's... he just needs help. And he needs his friend."

She could feel Bucky's eyes back on her. She looked up and saw a slightly pained expression on his face, like her words were too undeserved and he didn't want to hear them.

"Hm. If you're making all this up, you should look into voice acting, because I almost think you're telling the truth."

"... So you'll tell him?"

"I'll shoot him a text."

Luck was on her side today, pure and simple. "Thank you."

"Uh huh. Last chance to admit that you're lying, and I'll let you off with five hundred pounds of eggs being dropped on your house. It would get the Guinness world record for most epic house egging in recorded history."

What a strange man. "I'm not lying."

"All right. Your fate is in your own hands. Catch you later, McDonald's."

She almost corrected him, but then thought better of it, not wanting to push her luck. "Thank you, Mr. Stark."

She hung up, placing the phone down, still a bit in disbelief that she'd just had a conversation with Tony Stark, and then she glanced at Bucky to find him staring off again, eyes a little wider than usual, brows furrowed tightly, jaw set. "Bucky?"

"This is a mistake."

"What is?"

"I can't trust him."

"Rogers?" she guessed.

He looked at her through a curtain of hair that had fallen in his face. "Anybody."

There was a wild sort of glint in his eyes, and she saw it for what it was - the spark of panic. "Bucky," she said slowly, "remember how we talked about this and you agreed. He's going to help you. He... he was your best friend."

Bucky shook his head, and she saw his shoulders and face tensing, knew that his hands were in fists in his lap without having to look.

She knew what she did when David would be on the verge of a meltdown, which was to distract him at all costs and maybe offer to let him do something that he normally didn't get to do if the usual distractions weren't working. But averting a meltdown in a grown man who had more issues than any of the case studies she'd ever read in her old psychology class was a bit different.

"Do you trust me?" she asked tentatively, drawing his eyes back to her. "I've given you no reason not to. I've helped you in every way that I can, and I only want the best for you. And I really think that this is what's best. Have I done anything to make you distrust me, or think that I'm not looking out for you?"

He looked down and blinked a few times, and she wasn't sure if anything she said could really help. It wouldn't stop her from trying, though. "Trust me on this, okay? And I think that deep down, somewhere, you know that he'll help you."

He gave her a fleeting glance, clearly no less tense than he was a moment ago, and she was wracking her brain trying to come up with a way to be at least somewhat helpful when little footsteps from the hall alerted her that David had woken up.

As Bucky continued to stare uneasily at nothing, Summer slowly got to her feet, then put a reassuring hand on his shoulder before turning to scoop David up into a hug.

She hoped that Captain America would call soon, before Bucky really did change his mind and disappear.

She kept her phone on her person all day, waiting for it to ring. Bucky kept his distance, never sitting still anywhere for very long, and the more she watched him come and go and go back and forth from one room to the next, the more she started to feel genuinely nervous for him.

When she took David outside later in the day to play for an hour or two, Bucky followed them out and then disappeared. He was still gone when the sun started to go down, and she started to fear that he wouldn't come back.

He did, however, offering no explanation for what he'd been doing, eating the dinner she made in silence and then retreating to her room. Meanwhile, she checked her phone obsessively, wondering if all of Bucky's anxiety would be for nothing due to the Avenger in question never even calling.

She watched the clock tick later and later, and she eventually gave up any hope of getting the call. That was why, as she was doing the dishes while David watched a movie in the living room, she almost let out a shriek at the sound of her phone ringing from her back pocket.

Hands dripping wet, she reached for the phone and then stopped, hastily half-drying her hands on a paper towel before grabbing the phone, almost dropping it, then looking at the screen. Another unknown caller.

She pressed it to her ear. "Hello?"

"Hi... Summer McAdams?" a slightly unsure-sounding male voice asked.

"Yeah," she confirmed.

"Steve Rogers. I got your message from Tony Stark." There was a pause, and then he asked, "Is it true?"

"Yeah," she said, glancing down the hallway, finding it still clear, and stepping out the front door a bit to get away from the sound of the TV. She couldn't believe that he had actually called, and that she was actually talking to Captain America on the phone. "He's been here for almost a month."

"How did he end up with you?"

He didn't seem to have the same problems believing her that Stark had. "I guess that he was trying to find a place to hide from HYDRA. He'd been shot a couple times, and I found him bleeding and knocked out in my front yard. Well, my son found him."

"Did he hurt you?"

"Not once," she replied. "I was scared to death of him at first and I tried to make him leave after a day or two. But... he really needed help."

There was a pause, and then he asked, "Has he... remembered anything?"

"Yeah," she replied. "He doesn't tell me any details, but I know he's remembered a lot. The first week, I pulled up some of his information online, and after he read it he... went into the forest outside my house and kind of broke a couple of trees."

"Stark said something about him saving your life."

"Yeah. A couple of agents found him here, and they had a gun to my son's head because I wouldn't tell them where he was. He killed them both and saved our lives." She shivered, unable to stop the sick feeling she got when she spoke of that night.

Another pause, and then he asked, "Does he know you're talking to me?"

"He asked me to call you," she replied.

"He did?"

The clear hope in his voice made her wince a little bit. To think she ever thought Steve Rogers might actually be a jerk under all that shiny patriotism and loyalty. "Yeah."

"Is... he okay? Physically? I know that his arm is broken..."

"He's fine," she replied. "The arm seems to be okay, though I don't know how. Bullets literally fell out of him, too. He couldn't eat at first, he threw up a lot. Now he eats enough for like four people. And he loves coffee. Drinks like two pots a day by himself." She heard a breathy sigh-like chuckle to that.

"The coffee part actually isn't surprising to me at all," he said. "All right. I can be there by morning. Is that okay?"

She tried not to gulp. David was going to be so starstruck that the universe might implode. And now she had to clean every inch of her house to prepare for a visit from Captain America. So much cleaning...

"Yeah, that's okay," she answered. "I can give you my address if you're ready."

"Stark kind of gave it to me already," he replied, sounding a bit chagrined. "He traced your location when you spoke earlier."

Fantastic. "Oh. It's just going to be you coming, right?"

"I have a friend with me, if that's all right. Have you seen the guy with the wings from the news footage?"

"Oh. Yeah, I have."

"He's with me. That's it."

"So... no cops or agents or anything?"

"Absolutely not," he said seriously. "I don't want him arrested or held by anybody. I just want to help him."

She breathed a sigh of relief. "Good."

There was a short silence, then Steve said, "Sounds like you care about him."

She chewed her lip slightly, trying not blush at a statement that should not have made her blush at all. "It's kind of impossible not to."

"I'm glad you do," Steve said. "I'm glad he found help. I'll be there in the morning."

"Okay," she nodded. "Thank you."

"I should be thanking you," he replied. "I've been looking for him and finding nothing until today."

"Well... I'm glad I could help," she said somewhat clumsily. It was all surreal, beyond surreal.

"All right. I look forward to meeting you tomorrow."

"Me too."

"Bye."

"Bye," she said, hanging up and staring at her phone for a minute, letting it all sink in. She'd talked to Iron Man and Captain America on the phone today. And Captain America had thanked her for helping out his troubled friend. And her son would be meeting his hero in the morning.

And she needed to start cleaning.

Stepping out of the doorway, she closed the door and then turned around, jumping a little when she saw Bucky standing there, in the middle of the kitchen, watching her with an unreadable expression.

"Um... that was him," she said, gesturing to the phone in her hand. "He said he'd be here in the morning."

Bucky stared at her for a moment, then looked towards the floor for a moment before turning back towards the hallway.

She frowned at his sudden departure, more so when she heard her bedroom door close. She didn't go after him, though, because she could only imagine the unease he had to feel now, knowing that Steve was officially coming the following morning. She would leave him be, but only for now; she would make sure to check on him before she turned in for the night.

"David," she said in a slightly sing-song tone, walking into the living room. "You'll never guess who you get to meet tomorrow."

Later that night, Summer was cleaning. David was sleeping. Bucky was in the throes of a nightmare a bit different from his usual fare.

Lack of substantial sleep for the last few nights had led him to falling asleep unexpectedly, putting an end to what had been a myriad of dark thoughts swirling in the silence of his solitude. They spilled over into his dreams.

He saw cold, cruel eyes set in an aging face, under gray-blonde hair, watching him expectantly as he sat vacant-eyed in the despicable, torturous chair.

There were words, blurring together and only half-reaching his ears, but he knew what they were, knew that they were demands for his mission report, and he knew he wouldn't give it.

He felt the backhanded slap before it came, knew what the rest of this scene had in store from the beginning. Face stinging, he turned back to the man he had grown to passionately hate, then felt his eyes widen and lips part when he found Steve Rogers staring back at him.

"Bucky?"

Steve was dressed as he had been on the bridge, staring at him with the same bewildered expression, and for a moment, Bucky had hope; maybe this would end differently, without the pain and shock of the chair, and instead end with Steve helping him escape.

But then Steve looked down, and his expression became one of horror as he took a step back. Bucky looked down, following the other man's eyes to his own hands, which he discovered to be covered in a thick layer of sticky, warm blood. His stomach turned and his face contorted when the blood seemed to self-replenish itself, falling from his hands in a cascade that had no clear source, splashing the floor and covering his boot-clad feet. He looked up, his eyes desperate as they fell again upon Steve, who was now holding the limp body of a blonde little girl in his arms. Her pale, lifeless face and pink birthday party hat on her head was splattered with the same blood drenching his hands, and as vomit rose in his throat, Steve looked at him with nothing but disgust and hatred in his eyes. It still didn't match the hatred he felt towards himself.

He looked down again, at hands that brought nothing but death, and when he looked up again, Steve and the girl was gone. In their place was Summer, sitting on the floor crying, clutching her boy in her arms, who was bleeding from a single gunshot wound to his right temple.

This wasn't right. He stood up, determined to put an end to this, but then hands shot out from the shadows and grabbed him, pushing him down and forcing him back into the chair. The restraints snapped into place and he couldn't move; he knew what came next.

He didn't wait for the bite guard or the electric sparks of the machine to start screaming, but it made no difference. He couldn't stop it, couldn't change his future anymore than his past, and this was what was always waiting at the end of the line - confusion, misery, death by his hand, and all that he knew, erased in a surge of excruciating pain. All that would remain, all that would ever come next, was pure, biting, brutal, cruel, inescapable cold...

He woke up to the sound of screaming, and this time it was his own voice piercing his ears. He was face-down on the pillows, both of his hands clenched into tight fists that gripped the skewed sheets beneath them. They'd torn a little bit thanks to his clawing, but it was far beyond his notice as his eyes opened fully and he pushed off the bed, sitting up and holding his head in his hands as his breath came in heavy gasps.

To say that he was sick of this was a gross understatement. Nightmares like that were why he only slept a few hours each night, and he didn't see them ever leaving. This one had been different, though, and remembering now that Steve would be coming in the morning made the aftermath feel even worse.

A soft knock at the door drew his attention. He let go of his head and looked up, unsure of what to do. Then the knob twisted and the door cracked open, revealing familiar blue eyes peering inside cautiously.

When their eyes met, she opened the door more fully and took a cautious step inside. "Sorry, I heard you and just... wanted to make sure that you were okay."

She held out a cup in her hands and showed it as she walked inside, keeping her eyes away mostly as he watched every step she took. She put the cup down on the table next to her bed, then turned to him and gave him a weak smile.

She'd never done this before, and he had woken up like this more times than he cared to count. His question must have showed in his eyes, because she said quietly, "You picked me up bleeding and crying from my bathroom floor. Least I can do is offer to talk if it helps you sleep better."

He knew she couldn't help, so he looked away, averting his eyes to face forward. But that only worked until he felt the bed depress to his left, only inches away from him, and he glanced there to find her sitting down on the edge. With her this close, he couldn't look away quite so easily.

"I'm going to tell you something I never would have thought I'd say when you first came here," she said with a small smile. "I'm gonna miss you."

She really was ridiculous. What was there to miss? In what way had he not burdened her and put her in danger since he first showed up here?

Her hand on his cheek drew him back when he started to drift off, staring at the air. His gaze met hers, and she asked softly, "What do you think about when you stare off like that?"

His brows furrowed a bit as he searched for words to answer her with. "Faces. Words. Flashes of things I can almost remember. Things I do remember."

"And wish you didn't?" she guessed. He nodded. "Do you dream of your memories? Is that why you always wake up like this?"

"Usually," he muttered. "Tonight was different."

"You can tell me," she gently reminded him.

He looked at her, his expression becoming pained, her words bringing back to the forefront the cause of the night's dream. "You would hate me as much as I do if I told you."

She shook her head, frowning deeply. "Those things weren't your choice. When you did have a choice and knew who you were, you were a hero."

He felt his chest tightening. That was who she saw, the former hero that he could barely remember, not the monster that hero had been warped into. But when the vast majority of his memories were of the monster, of blood and death and suffering inflicted by his own hand, how could he see anything but that? Surely Steve was the same way, and he was willing to help him now because of who he used to be, but once all of the truth came to light and they all saw the entirety of what the Winter Soldier had done, it would be too much. He knew it, because it was too much for him to bear himself, and he didn't even have close to the full picture yet himself.

He was too tired and too sick of it all to close himself off to her like he normally would have. Previously nonexistent human weakness led his lips to loosen. "He'll hate me. I know he will. I can't... be... what he remembers."

He was startled slightly when he felt her hand entwine with his - his left instead of his right. "I'm willing to bet that he knows that. And I also bet that he's different now, too. It's okay to be different. What matters now is what you do with your choices now that you have them back."

"I don't know what to do," he admitted. "All I know is how to kill."

"That's not true," she replied. "You know how to speak different languages. You've learned how to wash dishes. You're also pretty good at kissing considering you probably didn't get much practice after the 40's."

She blushed a little on that last part, then smiled at him. He just stared at her like he didn't understand her, because he didn't.

"That's part of why you should let him help you," she added. "He knows who you really are underneath everything they did to you. He can help you get that back."

"And what if he can't?" he challenged, a slight edge of desperation in his tone. "What if this is all I'll ever be?"

"You're more than you think you are," she said quietly. "I know you hate yourself, but I look at you and I see the man who saved my baby's life."

"He was in danger because of me," he pointed out.

"I know. But if you really were this monstrous thing... you wouldn't have saved him. And like I've said before... you wouldn't be hurting this badly."

He looked down at their hands, her warmth on his cold, unnatural, ugly and inescapable reminder of what he'd been made into, and he wondered what would have happened had he not accidentally fallen into this woman's life. As dark of a place as his mind was, it was not the barely-functional, often-glitching thing it had been when he had been running from D.C., when he was blacking out and throwing up and struggling just to stay online. To walk, talk, eat, and sleep (some) were all accomplishments on their own, and of course, he owed them to her. He owed her a lot of things.

"Why will you miss me?" he asked, looking up after studying their hands for awhile.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again, blushing faintly. "Well... I've been so used to being alone for so long. Once that first week was over, having someone around has been... nice. I let myself get used to having more company. Even though you didn't really talk for a long time. And David's really taken to you. I think it's been good for him to have a man around for once in his life. I haven't had one around, in gosh, I'm not sure how long, I think not since my dad when I was little..."

She was rambling, and he almost wanted to grin at the way she nervously spat out words when a question made her uncomfortable. Instead, he let his eyes flicker down to her lips, and he knew she saw him do it. He didn't care. Her lips were almost as nice to look at as they were to kiss. He'd miss doing that.

He looked back up to her eyes and found them lower than he expected. She was looking at his left shoulder, at the thick and violent scarring that marked where metal had been forcibly joined to flesh, and he suddenly wished that he'd worn a shirt to bed. If it was any other part of him, he wouldn't care about the exposure, but those scars and that arm made him angry and nauseous whenever he caught a glimpse. He didn't want her eyes trained on a part of himself that he so hated.

But she didn't just look. Soon her soft, brave fingertips reached out and closed the small distance between them, touching the damaged skin gently. He shivered a little, looking away and shifting backwards to escape her touch.

"I'm sorry," she half-whispered, letting the hand fall a few inches lower, to skin that he didn't mind her fingers on. He looked back to her, and she blinked a few times before drawing her hand back. "Um..."

She flustered so easily. He reached up with his right hand to her face, brushing aside some hair and placing it behind her ear, watching her tense and hold her breath at that small touch. He had no idea what she possibly saw in him to allow him to touch her and kiss her on occasion, but whatever it was, he wouldn't question it out loud for fear of jinxing it.

He barely realized that he had drawn closer to her until he felt her warm breath ghost across his lips. He looked down to her mouth and closed his eyes as he enjoyed the proximity, the warmth and the scent of her, the way that he didn't think when he was close to her like this. Giving in, he leaned forward, determined to kiss her once more while he still could.

But, this time, she jerked away at the last minute. He opened his eyes and looked at her with a confused expression that did nothing to hide the sudden woundedness behind it.

The way that he looked at her following her knee-jerk reaction made her heart drop. The inward beating up of herself began immediately; he'd just opened himself up to her in a way that was unprecedented, and this was not the right way to respond.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, feeling suddenly bereft as his hand withdrew from her and his eyes fell away. "It's just... you're leaving, and..."

His eyes met hers again, and she blinked at what she saw in those volatile blue depths. He looked like he'd just been slapped, and now bore the shame of it in his eyes. She swallowed down her horror at the idea of causing him that kind of distress for what now felt like a stupid reason.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. When he kept his gaze pointedly away and shifted away from her, she half-pleaded, "Please don't do that. I just... freaked out for a minute."

When he had no response and still refused to look at her, she knew she was going to end up doing either one of two things - rambling until she embarrassed them both, or pulling him into a hug to show him that her moment of self-preservation died with one look from him. Whatever that meant for her, she could deal with later, when she was alone and could kick herself to her heart's content.

She went with the hug option.

He was stiff at first, but he relaxed against her relatively quickly. His arms stayed limp, his hands in his lap, but his head inclined towards hers and she felt him nuzzle her hair as she held him in a tight embrace. She tried not to think about how close they were, how so very shirtless he was and how tempting the thought was to let her hands wander to non-hug-zones, but it was hard to ignore when his breath was tickling her ear and she was feeling far too fluttery for her own good.

She didn't expect him to speak, but he did, and the broken, low tone of his voice flowing directly into her ear as his lips grazed it was enough on it's own to make her heart flip.

"Kissing you helps me forget."

At those words, she stilled, forgetting how to breathe for a moment, then pulled away to look in his eyes. They were fixed on the wall behind her, still looking ashamed for some reason, and she thought she would start shedding tears soon if she had to look at it any longer.

She'd seen great flashes of humanity in his eyes during their two previous heated moments, a shadow of what he'd once been - a man and not a machine - springing to life while those moments lasted. It was why she didn't regret kissing him those times - he had so little of himself in his own possession, and he seemed to gain a piece of himself back when she reminded him of just how very human he still was.

And so, throwing out the window the little voice telling her to stop making his impending departure harder on herself, she brought both hands to his face and forced his eyes back to hers, deciding that for all that she owed him, helping him forget the horrors for a little while was the very least she could do and one of the very few things she had the power to do.

Her lips met his softly, slowly, and as he forgot, she wondered if he had any idea how he was searing himself into her memory.

A/N: two chapters left after this :) Well, technically, one chapter and an epilogue. Reading over this chapter, I am super meh about about how I wrote Pepper, but I blame that on having never written her before. Hopefully she wasn't too horribly off. Anyway, my usual big thank you to all of you wonderful readers & reviewers, thank you so much for sticking with this story :D as usual, see you all in a few days! :D