Lara Barnes: I'm glad you're liking it! And yes, Bucky's finally showing signs of who he once was, and I hope it's as fun to read it as it is to write it! And I have a really quick holiday deal that I'll mention below if you'd like to get the new chapter sooner. Thanks for reviewing!

So as I mentioned to Lara Barnes, I have a holiday deal for you guys (even though it's not technically a holiday). I'm on Fall Break, and that's worth celebrating! So here's the deal:

Warning – You Should Know What This Means By Now – Don't Pass This

If by today, October 15th, (Sorry! I accidentally said the 10th, but it's actually the 15th. Sorry!) I have a total of 26 reviews (Only THREE More) I'll give you the next chapter as soon as I've got all three.

Because I missed posting two weeks ago, this is my way of saying sorry! And getting back on track with the chapters. So as soon as you read this chapter make sure to review, and you'll get the next chapter pretty quick.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything other than any OC's and my plot. (And I absolutely do not own anything of Angus Barn's, including them. Just consider it free advertising. It's a great place.)

Chapter 10

A New Job

(And Settling Down)

My first and foremost job in HYDRA was healing. On missions my primary job was making sure the whole team got back in one piece, at the price of myself. And I did it, because the punishment I faced for failing was often worse than the pain the others' pain caused me.

The experiments I was subject to for so long were awful, but they were all familiar. I knew what to expect; the injuries I was made to heal were carefully inflicted by the scientists around me, and so they could be healed in a relatively familiar fashion.

Out in the field, though, everything was unfamiliar and sporadic. I could only predict their injuries to the vaguest degree. In HYDRA, everything was a nightmare. But my job was so much worse.

…

In my nervousness I had accidentally arrived at the restaurant nearly twenty minutes early. It was better early than late, though (I read that online). So I took the extra time and used it to map out the area surrounding the large restaurant, which was actually a very large building that looked like a very fancy barn. The design of the building fit the name, though, being Angus Barn, and once I had finished scoping out the building I realized that the lies on my job application must've been really impressive if they were considering taking me up for the job.

Around the large barn was a lot of land, plenty of greenery, and lots of lights, and I knew without a doubt that the building was quite the view at night. Once I returned to the front I walked in, and the inside was even more amazing than the outside, if that was possible. It was already bustling with a decent amount of guests, even though I knew from my research that their busiest time was dinner, and the whole thing looked like something out of a magazine. There wasn't a speck of dust anywhere, the tables all set perfectly, and the lights adding a grand look to it all, and I wondered briefly if I was even worthy of working in such a beautiful place.

Steeling myself, I walked to the front desk and smiled at the woman behind it.

"I'm here for a job interview." After telling her what time I was scheduled for she called someone else to bring me to the manager's office.

"So you're the new girl," the girl started conversationally. I braced myself, running through all the false information – my history, name, all that stuff – and nodded, quickly reviewing myself on the rules of conversing.

"My name's Amber Jeanne Webb," I said, before scolding myself because when people introduce themselves they don't give the middle name. The girl's eyebrow quirked up quickly as we exited the loud room with people dressed in fancy clothes, getting to a quieter hallway where the jumbled voices were just an echo behind us.

"Amber-Jeanne?" She clarified, and I recognized that she though my middle name was a part of my first.

"Just Amber." Her eyebrow quirked even further as she realized the mistake I had made in introducing myself, and I scolded myself once again. Then, to my shock, she just shrugged.

"You're alright with me calling you AJ?" I blinked, then realized she had just given me a nickname.

"Sure." And with that she didn't even mention my mistake, and I realized that being unusually nice really was just a North Carolinian thing.

"Call me Mimi. It's short for Miriam, but I hate that name. So don't call me it." I nodded my consent, then we reached the door with the label 'Manager' and we stopped.

"Good luck, AJ," then she walked away, and suddenly my previous nervousness was back. I'd never done a job application before, and I was worried that I hadn't dressed fancy enough – especially looking at the people in the main room – or that there might be something stuck in my teeth. And suddenly, I just wanted to walk out. Stealing from people couldn't be that bad of an idea. I'm sure Bucky and I could pull it off.

Then I chided myself. No use in backing off now when I was so close. After a quick pep-talk, I took a deep breath and raised my hand, knocking before I could convince myself not to.

"Come in," came a voice from within, so I did.

The manager sat behind his expensive looking desk in an expensive looking suit and I once again felt underdressed, and I knew I was. Next to his suit, my jeans and Tshirt made me look like a peasant. He motioned toward one of the seats across from him, and I complied, quickly taking a seat.

"You must be Amber Webb," he started. I nodded, quickly evaluating him and the room for threats, but didn't find any. His graying hair and the faint wrinkles drawn on his face told me he was a happy man, and I immediately dismissed the idea of him being a threat. "I'm John Simmons, but please call me John." I nodded, not trusting my voice not to shake like my hands were.

Once he finished talking he pulled a paper from a stack on his desk, placing it in front of him.

"I read your application and your skill set and experiences are just the things I was looking for." I wasn't sure what to say to that, considering it was all a lie, so I just nodded again. He cracked a smile at me at that.

"I'm not going to bite." I recognized that phrase vaguely as a tension breaker, so I hesitantly smiled myself.

"Sorry," I apologized. "I just feel very out of place. Everything's very fancy and…yeah." I blushed at my lack of conversational skills, but his smile only grew wider.

"Don't worry, that can be taken care of. You'll be wearing a uniform every day, so as long as you have that you'll look just like the rest of the waiters." My eyes widened slightly at what he was implying.

"I get the job?" but we'd hardly talked at all. He seemed to sense my confusion.

"You're application told me everything I need to know, and I can already tell after these few minutes that you're going to fit in great here." I smiled at him then, unsure again on what I was supposed to say, but I thanked him anyway.

"Just ask someone to show you around, and observe other employees on what they're doing. At the end of the day we'll figure out your shifts. And here," he took a blank strip of paper and wrote something on it. "Go to this first location to get your suit. Just tell them you're employed here and they'll know what to get. And I advise going here to the second location to get your suit dry cleaned when needed." I took the strip of paper, nodding, and feeling excited, nervous, and almost a bit stressed at the same time. The mix of emotions was unpleasant.

"Alright Amber, I look forward to working with you."

"Yes, you too. Thank you." And then I was walking back down the hall to the large crowded room and spotted Mimi almost immediately, who grinned at me.

"You got the job?" She asked as soon as we were close enough to hear each other. I nodded, surprised she had guessed so quickly. "Yeah, he's like that. John is very good with people so he can pretty much tell if he's going to like people or not right away." Oh, okay. "So why don't I show you around?" It was phrased as a question, but it wasn't, so I went ahead and followed her as she began showing me the building.

Now that my sight wasn't clouded by nervous fears, I was able to process things a lot better. Whereas I had seen fancy people, I now realized that some of the people were dressed more casually, a few with children at their table. Mimi saw me looking and explained.

"Families usually come up until around dinner, when everything gets really fancy and lots of wine comes out. Maggie, the one at the front, she's been working here for years, and she says that things used to be a lot more strict – people had to dress up, no kids – but it's got a lot more casual since then." She then showed me the rest of the building – the kitchen, wine cellar, the such, then showed me around the outside as well, pointing out a fire pit where bonfires were lit and the pavilion where people had weddings and the such.

After that I watched her go about doing her job – taking calls, showing people where to go, taking their orders and cleaning after them, cleaning dishes, and pretty much a lot of everything. By the time the day had ended I felt slightly overwhelmed, but found it was a pleasant kind of overwhelmed. Excitement had begun growing in me, the same kind of excitement I had felt when creating my own email. It was the excitement I felt when I realized that I was no longer a No One; I was slowly becoming my own person again.

I signed my name on six of the days – three for the morning shift, three for the evening shift – causing Mimi's eyes to bug out at me.

"Every day?" she had asked – more like squeaked – and I shook my head.

"Not Sunday." It was a habit drilled into me by my days in the mill; Sundays were the only days I didn't have to work.

"But still," she said, grabbing her stuff from a locker in the employee's room. "That's a lot of time spent here. Most people like to continue their lives outside of work." I didn't really have a life outside of work. And besides, it would be good for Bucky to have some alone time each day to try and figure himself out. Company is good, but sometimes being alone is good, too.

Though in my case, I had to know that I wasn't going to be alone for too long, and it couldn't be in the dark, or in a small room, or without a decent lock on the door, or…you get the point.

When we made it outside we parted ways – me to walk, her to her car – and we waved each other off.

"Make sure to get really good shoes, or your feet will literally kill you." I nodded my understanding.

"Thanks," I called back to her, filing it away in my mind even though I didn't think it would be all that important to me; do serum-enhanced people get sore feet? If so, I was sure it would take a lot more than it would take a normal person.

I hurried to a nearby store and got a ton of food as well as two untraceable block-looking cell phones with two minute cards that were good for a month, then hurried back to the apartment worried HYDRA would pop up around any of the corners, and made a note to myself to buy pepper spray since I couldn't very well bring a gun to work every day, and was relieved when I finally made it up to the apartment safely. I knocked on the door, using the pattern Bucky and I had come up with to tell each other it was us, having to put down an armful of bags to free my hand.

The door unlocked and he opened it up for me as I squeezed through with all of the bags, then went through the process of putting them all away. Bucky joined me in the kitchen, helping – though the two of us hardly fit in the small space together while moving around. We finally established the routine of him handing me the food from the bags and me putting them where they belonged in the fridge.

"How was your day?" I asked as he handed me a few blocks of cheese.

"Fine." I held my hand out for the next items once I put the cheese in the cheese drawer, and he passed me a few packages of strawberries.

"Did you do anything?" I realized that was an odd question – of course he had done things – but wasn't quite sure how to phrase the question I wanted to ask. He understood, though, and ignored my slip. Which I was grateful for.

"I walked around. Read a bit. Stopped at that library you told me about." I nodded, not worried. His face hardly came up on the news anymore, and he always made sure to cover his arm and hide his face somewhat.

"How was work?" He asked, surprising me, but I answered nonetheless. It was a pleasant surprise, and I was more than happy to talk about my first day of work.

"It was great. I was hired after just a few minutes, and then I followed another employee around the rest of the day to see how things work. Her name's Mimi." We finished putting the groceries away, and I set to make dinner, even though it was rather late.

"Have you eaten?" I asked.

"Eggs," he grumbled, causing a side of my mouth to twitch up. Figuring he could use more food – as well as some diversity – I pulled out the ingredients to make enough spaghetti for two people with fast metabolism.

As I began the water boiling I turned to Bucky, who was back in the living room to make moving around in the kitchen easier for me.

"I need to borrow some money to buy a uniform," I told him. "I plan on getting it tomorrow morning." He nodded, then went into his room to grab some for me. He came back and handed me a decent wad, and I was grateful because I wasn't entirely sure how much it would cost.

"Thanks."

Once the water began boiling in the newly purchased large pan I stuck a ton of noodles in the water, then grabbed the two phones and the card with minutes on it (you guessed it: I looked up how to do this) and carried them over to Bucky. I handed them to him, letting him do the bit that actually involved messing with the phones (HYDRA had mostly just taught me to deal with computers, not cell phones) and once he had them up and running I had him put each other's contacts in the phones on quick-dial. Once that was done I stuck it in my pocket and went to strain the noodles.

Pretty soon I had two large bowls full of dinner set on the table, with the rest of the noodles in an even larger bowl in the middle of the table, since I had no doubt he would want seconds. And thirds. Perhaps even fourths.

Once finished – he always managed to finish eating before I was done, even with his large appetite – we cleaned up dinner.

As I scrubbed the dishes clean, handing them to him to towel dry them, I couldn't help but feel a sense of belonging. For the first time I was settled somewhere, and I was happy, in an odd sense. True, Bucky could still kill me without even trying, and there were no doubt a few organizations searching for me so they could cut me up, but I had a job, an email, a cell phone. I had a kitchen to make food in like I'd done with my mother so many years ago, and a sofa I could curl up in and read.

"I like it here," I told Bucky abruptly. I could feel him looking at me, but I continued to look at the dishes I was scrubbing. He didn't say anything, but I was fine with that. At least it meant he didn't completely dislike it here.

…

Another Disclaimer: In case I wasn't clear in the first disclaimer, I do not own Angus Barn or anything belonging to it. Just thought I'd be careful.

I'm fully aware that this chapter focused a lot on May, and had a lot of filler in it, but that's why you should review, because the next chapter is in Bucky's POV, and I must say it's pretty cute. I really like the next chapter. So you need to review! Because it's a very cute chapter and I'm very proud of it so I want you to read it!