A tap at the office door drew Holly's attention away from the computer screen.

"Yeah, come in," she called, waiting as the door creaked open. Turning to face the caller, she took stock of the person before her. Anna, a girl of middling height and red hair (and a pierced nose, despite Carl's warnings of taking it out while on shift), stood in the frame. She was supposed to be working the register while Holly was typing up the last couple of weeks' reports. Holly had to surmise that something had happened with a customer, since normally she was well-equipped to handle it on her own. "Something wrong, Anna?"

"Nothing's wrong, but, um..." the girl trailed off, her faced tinged crimson. "There's a guy out front who wants to talk to you. Says he knows you."

Holly's eyebrows shot up. Visitors at work, while not entirely rare, did not happen very often. And usually, it was just Sarah popping in to pick her up for an after work drink. Not many guys turned up.

"A guy?" She had an strong idea who it was, but she wanted to be sure.

"Yes," Anna murmured, her gaze turning warm, "he's, he's..."

"Tall? Blue eyes? Built like a brick wall?" she supplied, noting with amusement how quickly Anna had nodded an affirmative.

"Really hot," mumbled the other girl under her breath, causing something to simultaneously twinge Holly's nerves and made her chuckle quietly. Glancing at the clock, Holly figured she could spare the fellow some of her time. It was her good fortune that had Carl out of the building for the afternoon, so he wouldn't be worrying over them in the office.

"Well, I've got a few things to wrap up here. Send him back."

Facing the computer again, she resumed typing as the younger girl dodged back to the front. Holly was clacking away at the last few lines of her report, listening with half an ear as Anna began chatting up the visitor.

"...A student at Washington and Lee. I'm off for the summer, working here part-time."

"Oh, that's good," a well-known voice responded, and Holly's tiny smile grew just a little wider. A second hard knock sounded off her door, and she just glanced over her shoulder this time. Her suppositions were correct: it was Steve Rogers, sans shield and regalia, but Steve nonetheless. The false horn-rim glasses were perched on his face again, this time a hood drawn up over his head as opposed to a ball cap. He shot her an almost apologetic smile, as if he were sorry to be interrupting her work.

"Here he is," Anna announced unnecessarily, standing against the door so that he would have to squeeze past her to get inside the office. Off that blatant and brazen move, Holly shot her a sharp glance and a frown. Steve, looking askance at Anna for a second, attempted to maneuver around her swiftly and with minimal contact.

"Thank you," he said, maintaining a polite demeanor as he sat down in the single visitor's chair.

"Yes, thanks, Anna," Holly concurred, softening her expression somewhat. No need to appear petty or harsh. "Please shut the door."

Anna, looking for all the world like she wished she could trade places with the upper management just for this moment, nodded to them both. She reserved the warm smile solely for Steve, though, as she did as she was told. When the door eventually clicked into place, Holly minimized her document before spinning her desk chair to face him fully.

Steve pushed the hood of his sweatshirt back, which she thought was a bold move for the end of May. How he wasn't sweating to death, she didn't know. As he removed the glasses and pocketed them, she could see the exhaustion on his face. His project had clearly kept him busy, and was wearing him out. Maybe not overly much (he could probably still run circles around her, even at his most sleep-deprived), but the faint smudges under his eyes were a testament to his overlong dedication.

"Hey there, stranger," she teased him, as she had not seen him in person for a couple weeks. "Don't you look all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed today."

The sardonic smirk he shot her did not go unnoticed. "Aren't you sweet."

"Sometimes," she returned, reaching out and tapping him on the shoulder playfully. "It's good to see you."

His smirk became a little more genuine, as he responded in kind. She shrugged it off, though secretly she was very pleased to have him there. "And how's your erstwhile roommate?"

The discussion of Sam (yes, he was doing alright, and yes, he was still seeing the girl from the front desk—he was actually out with her at the moment) eventually deviated to the events of the week prior. Much of her time was split between work and a little research for her book, and fielding phone calls from her family. He mother and father were beginning to implore her to move home, not for the first time, and she uttered frustration at that. Her companion, allowing her to work off the steam, interjected very little. Steve let her talk and type, as she needed to wrap up her report swiftly, and she could work and talk at the same time. Although he did express interest in her novel idea; it was the first he'd heard anything concrete about the subject. She, like other people he knew, could be vague about subjects close to her, when she wanted to be. (When he inquired after the character's special abilities, she gave him a wry grin and chuckled, saying that the girl was no super soldier, that was for sure.)

And when she expressed her parents' concerns about her welfare and their begging for her to relocate, she had her back turned to him, and therefore did not see the fleeting frown that flitted across his features. It disappeared, though, the moment she lifted her hands from the keyboard, clicking the save and print buttons and whirling around to face him again.

"Something," she started, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, "tells me that you're in my neck of the woods for something other than chitchat."

He raised an eyebrow, tilting his head to the right. "So quick to assume..."

Her own eyebrows raised minutely. "Am I wrong?"

"...Not entirely."

Holly held back on her triumphant smirk, instead turning to catch the papers coming out of the printer to her left. "That's what I thought. So what's up?"

He sighed,"Well, I needed a break from the office myself."

Just as she thought; he'd been buried under his personal project for quite awhile. She snorted, crossing her arms. "You're no desk jockey."

"Only when necessary," he commented, a tad bitterly. That drew her gaze back to him, the levity slipping away. Steve cast a long glance at her, inhaling deeply before starting again. "I do have a reason to see you, aside from conversation."

Holly did not reply, but sat perched on the edge of her seat and waited.

"Sam and I will be leaving intermittently over the next few months," he murmured, raking a hand through his hair. She blinked, the surprise on her face evident. "At least, that's the plan."

"...Oh." She wasn't sure how to respond to that, at least not verbally. The tiny twist in her chest and the confusion in her brain, however, were her private indication of how she felt about it. Not that she'd give them voice, no. Rather, she fixed her eyes into a curious squint and asked, "How soon will you be leaving?"

"In a couple days. The...project I've been working on, we've been able to decipher enough of it to get started," Steve said. "First trip is up to Brooklyn, but after...we'll be going much farther."

A breath of a laugh escaped her lips. "So that's where the pension will definitely come in handy. Pays for the transportation."

Steve nodded, shrugging his shoulders in brief good humor. To have the government continue his pay from his service to SHIELD, and from his past as a national icon, was a good thing. Yet another thing to thank Nick Fury for, he mused privately. "Helps that they owe me a few favors, too."

"And here my summer plans consisted of binge-watching movies and getting a tan," she quipped, her tone partly serious.

"Hardly something you need in the first place," he commented. Privately, he thought she looked good enough to go without.

"Because winter pallor is so pretty." Turning the joke aside, she ruminated for a moment. "And, where do I enter this equation exactly?"

Pausing again, he reconsidered his response. He did not want to go through with it, but he was already there. "We wanted to know if you'd be interested in periodically house-sitting."

Her eyebrows quirked so quickly together it was almost comical. That was it? That's what was so important that he had to come across the city to discuss with her? To get the mail, and water the plants, and anything else that needed to be taken care of while they were away?

Part of her felt a little offended, but she chided herself soon enough for hoping for...something more. But come on, what else could he have asked her to do? Uproot herself to come along for the ride? To play at being a sidekick to two very capable people? That smacked of poorly-written fiction, and she knew herself well enough to know that whatever Steve and Sam would be investigating, she would be of no benefit tagging along. A few self-defense courses and experiences in youth softball (and therefore with baseball bats) did not make one threatening, overall.

"Okay..." she said, drawing out the word.

'Why?' her brain whispered.

As if Steve could hear her thoughts, he told her, "We trust you to take care of things."

Thinking hard, Holly had to agree it made sense for them to ask. She was the best one situated to do so, being in permanent residence and a short driving distance away. After all, she knew both men, knew that they wouldn't want their privacy molested. And, she reasoned, they both really didn't have anyone else to ask for help; God knew where Natasha was, even if she was open to the suggestion of watching the place, and it wasn't likely they would be okay with some random service poking around. The fact that they (more specifically, Steve) expressed trust in her capacities was not something to sneeze at, either.

"That's all, then?" she prompted him, going off the thoughtful glance he shot her, "Or not?"

'There has to be a reason why he didn't just call me, there has to be.'

Slowly, carefully, Steve sat up and reached into his pocket. A folded piece of paper was in his hand, and after pondering it for a second, he handed it to her. A little perturbed, she turned the sheet over in her hand, opening it to reveal a copy of a photograph. It was of a grainy quality, in black and white, but the fellow qualities were barely muted by the medium. He had (she assumed) light-colored eyes, his dark hair hidden beneath a cap. The uniform he was wearing was cut off by the picture's border, but that hardly registered.

What she fixated on was his face. His very familiar face. She'd seen it before, in the museum. In memorium...

"Your friend," Holly breathed, trying to recall the name "James Something, right?"

"James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky," Steve confirmed. "You've seen him before."

It wasn't really a question, but she felt like she had to answer it. "Well, yeah, I mean, I did a little research-"

"No, I meant in person."

A denial sat on the tip of her tongue; he was supposed to be long dead, after all. But as she looked longer at the picture, she felt a spark, the thoughts connecting. A flash passed, her memory bringing forth a young man by the river, his arm encased in metal, and his matted long hair framing this same face. Those same eyes.

She gasped; she did know him.

He was the man, the man who pointed out Steve to her, the one who vanished out of her path as swiftly as he'd entered it. If she had had the will, she would've shot out of her chair, to pace and think. But...but...how?

"Holly...I'm looking for him. He's...he's had awful things done to him, things I could've..." Steve stopped himself, biting back the strong guilt. Holly just sat there, stunned. "He survived his fall, like me. But what was done to him made him dangerous. I want to find him and, I don't know, get him back to what he used to be."

Shaking her head once, as if to pull herself out of a trance, she wondered, "Why tell me this?"

"Because," Steve let out in a rush, "in the unlikely event he turns up on the doorstep, you deserve to know exactly who you're facing."

In the silence, Holly began to wrestle with her inner turmoil. This, this right here, was one of the issues of being close to a superhero: the likelihood of potential danger to anyone associated with them, no matter how insignificant they thought themselves. Granted, she had no idea the depth of Bucky's transformation, but the intimidation and fear he instilled in her just by crossing her path made her wary of coming in contact with him again. And she didn't like the odds, unspecified though they were; if he did show up on the doorstep, what was to stop him from harming her, just because she was helping Steve?

Well, shit.

'You put your trust in him to be honest with you about any danger, and he has been,' she grasped with sudden clarity. 'He's kept his promise, no matter if you were kidding at the time.'

It wouldn't do to lie; she wasn't the bravest, nor the smartest person in the world. She wasn't a tactician or a trained agent. But she knew exactly what she was, and what she could offer: her time, her word. Because she was a friend of a superhero. Because she did care about the man behind the shield, and she knew he would do what he could to keep her safe, even at a distance, because of that. Forewarned was forearmed, and she did have options to protect herself. And after the events two months ago, she'd kept 911 on speed dial.

Making up her mind, she cleared her throat. "I can do it. You said 'unlikely,' right?"

That startled a chuckle out of him, even as his face remained serious. "Yes, I did say that."

"Then...yeah, okay, I can house-sit for you guys when you need it."

Inclining his head, his lips curled into a grateful grin. "I appreciate it. I'll let you know before we leave."

On impulse, she scooted forward in the chair, pulling up closer to Steve. Throwing her arms around his neck, she held on tightly as he returned the hug, albeit a tad awkwardly. The fear she'd been pressing back seemed to surge into her arms, making her grip stronger. If he got himself deep in trouble, she couldn't imagine what she would do or think. Holly didn't want to even consider it.

"Be careful out there, Steve," she whispered. He gave her no verbal reassurance, knowing as well as she that he had no control over the outcome of events. Still, one of his hands reached up to cradle the back of her head, his fingers gently settling there to calm her. He would do what he could.

'Well then,' Holly mused wryly to herself, 'Guess I'll be picking up a new baseball bat after work. A strong, metal one.'

A/N: ...Did I overdo the drama on this one? Perhaps, but hey, it is what it is.

No, Holly is decidedly not going to tag along on the trip(s) that Steve and Sam will be taking. But (and I'm sure it's fairly obvious) this is not the end of Holly and Steve's relationship. And now there is the chance for Steve to begin his search and reach a better understanding of the world that he now inhabits.

Washington and Lee (not its full title) is an actual college out in Virginia, about three hours out of DC. Just putting it out there.

Anyway, a shorter chapter this time, but I hope you enjoyed it nonetheless. I'll see you guys next time; thanks for reading, and PLEASE REVIEW. Please? Reviews make the world go 'round...