I swear the late posting isn't gonna become a habit, I'm so sorry
Props goes to DraejonSoul for the basics of this chapter, I hope you like it
It very quickly became part of his routine to visit Wanda at night. They would share stories of their days, or of their pasts on slower days, and Bucky would tuck her in, a phrase he only remembered when she asked him to the next night he visited her. It was helping to calm his nightmares as well, they were less intense, and less frequent.
He was surprised to see Natasha in Wanda's room a week or so after this had become part of his routine, standing near Wanda's cross legged form on the bed.
"Bucky, come in." Wanda smiled. He slowly walked in and sat on the end of the bed with her, small animal walking behind him and sitting on the floor patiently until Bucky picked it up and rubbed its head for a moment before handing it to Wanda.
"Have you been good to Bucky and kept him safe?" She asked the small animal as she held it up to her face, and laughed a little when it licked her nose.
Bucky kept his eyes on Natasha. She wasn't looking at him, but he could feel her watching him. He shifted a little and focused back on Wanda, as apparently did Natasha.
"You're back in training tomorrow morning." She informed Wanda.
Wanda looked to Bucky for a moment before looking back to Natasha. "Can Bucky train with us too?"
Both Bucky and Natasha looked up at her.
"What?" Bucky was not at his most eloquent.
"You train in the mornings, and you've been better lately. Maybe you could join us." She smiled gently.
Natasha and Bucky looked at each other. Natasha looked as uncertain as Bucky felt. He had only trained with Steve, he wasn't sure if he could keep control with someone else. Wanda was right though, he had been getting better. He was having fewer nightmares, and they were less vivid, and when he fought Steve the voice of Hydra inside of him was much quieter than it had been the first time they trained together. Maybe it was time for him to move forwards.
Still, Romanoff looked uneasy. "I leave the decision to Natasha." He offered, to put both her and himself at ease a little.
She was about to speak when the small animal barked. "What is it small dog?" Bucky took the small animal from Wanda's lap and rubbed its head, and it burrowed into his hand contentedly. It apparently hadn't been receiving enough attention to suit it.
Natasha started again. "You can train with us. Tomorrow morning, 0500 hours." Her voice was cautiously professional, and he made note to ask her what her quarrel with him was.
Wanda yawned, and Bucky set the small animal down and stood to tuck her in.
"Good night Bucky. Good night small animal." She closed her eyes as she laid down to rest.
"Good night Wanda." He pulled the blanket around her.
A stream of red mist floated to her light and both Natasha and Bucky walked out, with the small animal walking out behind them. Natasha shut the door gently and Bucky turned to go back to his room.
"Barnes." Natasha called his attention for a moment. "I want a word."
He watched her for a minute, then knelt down to the small animal. "Go on to my room. I'll be there in a moment." He nudged it along gently, and the small animal ran back down the hall to his room. He stood back up to face Natasha.
"I don't trust you." She said simply.
"I know." He replied. He could see it on her face whenever she looked at him.
"You know why?"
"You think I'm Hydra." He guessed. It seemed the most reasonable explanation, it was the reason he didn't trust himself.
"Not quite. I think you're Barnes, but I know brainwashing. You can't just shake it, and you're going to end up hurting someone if you aren't careful." She sounded harsh to his ears, but his brain knew what she was saying, and he understood her concern.
"I wait days before making new advancements in my life. I'm moving as slow as my surroundings allow. If you think I'm moving too quickly, talk to Steve." He informed her simply.
She watched him for a moment, and he stood still, letting her scan his body language almost imperceptibly.
"What was with your flirting a week ago?" She shifted, and her posture read as more casual now.
"I remembered flirting. I wanted to try it." He said calmly. He wasn't quite sure what she was asking him, and there was a small part of him repeating "just tell me what you want" over and over in his head.
"So nothing personal, just some target practice?" There it was. He shook his head, and she relaxed a little. "What about Wanda?"
He was lost again. Natasha didn't seem to ask him any of the questions she actually meant. "What about her?"
"You seem fond of her. Tucking her in at night, trusting her to hold your dog. What exactly do you see her as?" She seemed almost accusatory, and he was reminded of a few older men asking him "What are your intentions towards my daughter?".
He didn't quite know how to say it, to make her understand. He was still unsure, but he did his best. "I see her as Steve, before he got big. She's small, and she trusts me, just as Steve did. I want to take care of her. I think she feels the same, now that she has lost her brother. She takes care of me as well."
He sighed in relief when understanding appeared in her eyes. "Good. I'll see you at 0500."
They nodded to each other, and Bucky went back to his room.
He woke up at 4 the next morning, after a surprisingly peaceful night of sleep, and got up slowly without waking the small animal. He went to his table by the window and moved the portable computer aside to sit on it and look outside. He did this sometimes, when he didn't want to sit in his chair, or just wanted to see the outside. It was calming, quiet. He appreciated how simple it all looked.
A knock on the door woke the small animal, and it began barking.
"Relax small dog. It is most likely just Natasha and Wanda." He rubbed its head as he passed it on the way to the door, and it jumped down to follow him.
He was both right and wrong, Clint was also joining them.
"Morning Barnes." Natasha nodded to him.
"Good morning Natasha, Clint, Wanda." He nodded to them all, and Wanda smiled tiredly at him.
"Good morning Bucky. Good morning small dog." She knelt to rub the small animal's head, and it ran in circles happily under her hand.
She stood back up soon after and Clint led the way down to the gym.
"Did you have another nightmare last night?" Wanda and Bucky made up the tail of their small party, with the small animal padding along in front of them.
"No, my sleep was quiet." He shook his head.
She smiled a little. "Good. That hopefully means some progress."
Clint opened the door, and Bucky noticed that it looked just slightly altered from yesterday.
"We decided to set up an obstacle course. I'm shooting from up top, Natasha's the boss battle at the end. Run through it one at a time, when we're not running we're doing push-ups or sit-ups or whatever ups we please. The one of you to get the box at the end wins, but neither of you are getting it because we're amazing." Clint and Natasha high fived. "Anyone have any questions?" Clint said as he walked to the ladder to his rafters. Bucky looked over the course, which seemed more geared for Wanda's skill level.
He shook his head, and so did Wanda.
"Perfect. Playboy, you're up first." Natasha walked to the end of the course and picked up a timer, and Clint climbed up the rafters and loaded up his bow. Bucky assumed she meant him, and stood at the end of the course.
One eye on the arrows, one eye on his feet, his arms would work on their own.
"Three! Two!" Wanda quickly picked up the small animal in his periphery and moved back to an unoccupied corner. "One! Go!" Natasha started the timer and Bucky went.
Clint was a much faster shot than he had thought, and he quickly figured out that if he was going to dodge or block every arrow he needed to get through this as quickly as possible.
He managed to get to the end without any of them hitting him, but he was so focused on Clint that he barely noticed Natasha's foot in time to duck.
Her fighting style was much lighter than his, and she was doing everything to make sure he never got a hold on her. She was good at it too, and he considered the possibility that he might lose this fight.
Then he managed to catch her in the back of the leg and knock her down, and quickly got on top of her to keep his victory.
"Surrender?" He caught his breath a little.
"Never." She smirked a little bit, and before she did whatever it was she was going to do he quickly grabbed her hair.
"I just snapped your neck. You're dead." He let go and stood, and she rolled her eyes a bit at him.
He remembered winking at a few girls who had done that, so he tried it, and she sounded almost like she chuckled briefly.
He was approaching the box when he snagged an invisible tripwire and sent the box flying, straight up into Clint's waiting arms. A timer underneath it counted down from three seconds and he sighed as it hit zero.
"Boom! You're dead." Clint grinned. "Told you you couldn't get it."
"Give me a few tries and I'll nail it eventually. I'm calling a rematch in a week's time." Bucky called up to him in reply. He wasn't especially frustrated that he hadn't gotten it, but he liked the challenge of it and wouldn't mind doing this again sometime.
"Wanda, you're up!" Natasha called her, and she abandoned her place on the floor with the small animal to go to the beginning of the course.
"Wish me luck." She smiled at him.
"I'll wish you skill. You'll need that more to pass this test." He replied as he passed her, and he messed up her hair a bit. She laughed a little and fixed it before gearing herself up to start.
Bucky got down next to the small animal and let it hop on his back before he started doing push-ups, and he switched to using just the metal arm when Wanda's run began.
He could tell they were going easy on her now that he had seen what they did for him, but she was still doing extremely well. She stumbled a little halfway across, and Clint slowed his rate of fire to let her recover, but she pulled herself back together and managed to get to the end without getting shot.
She and Natasha had much more similar fighting styles, and Wanda actually managed to hold her own against a less powerful move set from Natasha. Still, Natasha got her to the point of surrendering fairly quickly.
They both brushed themselves off and Clint came down from his rafters. Bucky stopped his push-ups to let the small animal off before standing up. He came over to them and tossed Wanda a bottle of water.
"You did well."
"So did you. You got farther than me anyway." She shrugged and took a sip of water.
"You both did pretty well." Clint commented as he came over. "You weren't exercising though. You were playing with the puppy."
On cue, the small animal pawed at Wanda's leg, and she looked down at it with a smile before looking back up at Clint. "I was exercising control of my powers. See?" Her red mist appeared around her hand and the small animal jumped up to play with it.
"And if that exercise of your powers just happens to let you play with a dog?" Natasha was only slightly amused.
Wanda just shrugged. "If that is what I must do, I will make that sacrifice."
Bucky rolled his eyes and knelt down to rub the small animal's head. "Such a great sacrifice. It's so hard for you to bear."
They went to get breakfast after that, then parted ways, and Bucky went back to her room again that night.
She was already laying back, looking at the ceiling, and he sat next to her, helping the small animal up so it could lick her face and curl up in his lap.
"Did you do anything after training?" She asked him with a slight yawn, and he shook his head.
"I read again. I don't know how many times I need to thank Steve for finding me books to read, to help me catch up." He rubbed the small animal's head lazily. "Did you do anything?"
She shrugged. "Just more training. I'm trying to expand my range, so I can read minds farther away."
He nodded a little. He wasn't sure he understood how her telepathy worked, but he still had a few books to read before he was getting to the science textbooks.
"How is my mind? Better?" He asked hopefully. Things had been moving better, he had been growing slowly, but it still felt dark inside his head. He and Wanda had agreed she wouldn't look too deeply into his mind since the day they had met, but he knew she watched his head from afar to make sure he was at least stable.
"I don't know. It doesn't feel different to me. Maybe the change is just under the surface, out of view." Bucky knew she was just trying to comfort him and sighed softly.
Wanda yawned tiredly and he stood and pulled the blanket over her. The small animal nudged its nose into her face gently and she smiled a little.
"Good night Wanda."
"Good night Bucky. Good night small dog." She closed her eyes and the small animal barked good night to her as Bucky picked it up.
He went into his own room and laid down, closing his eyes as the small animal fell asleep near his hand. He slowly drifted unconscious.
And then the screams began.
Sorry about that
In case you couldn't tell from the mega cliffhanger, I've got a plan for the next chapter or two, but let me know if there's anything you would or wouldn't like to see and I'll make note of it
Thanks as always to everyone who leaves me reviews, I love hearing your take on all of this, keep em coming