Author's Note: I realize it's been for-fracking-ever, but I'm back now, I swear. Barring illness or accident (knock on wood), I'm back to updating on a regular schedule. I'm sorry for the delay, and thank you guys for being so patient. Huggles for you all! Let me know what you think of the chapter.

Last Time on Once in the Winter's Tide:Bucky left Sally's place in the past-time story and was gone for 2 months, but then got noticed by HYDRA when he tried to contact Steve on a disposable cell phone, and he got shot. So he ended up going to hide out at Sally's because it was close and he had nowhere else to go, and she took care of him, but a guy from her past showed up and tried to shoot her and Bucky and Sally shot him. Now Bucky is trying to figure out when he's going to leave again because he can't stay at Sally's but he wants to stay at Sally's and he's slowly falling into a routine and feeling like he belongs there, but he's fighting the feeling because he's like, "I can't have a normal life." And in the present, Sally and Bucky are separately heading for Avengers Tower (Bucky actually just got there) to meet up with Steve, Rhodie, Pepper, Natasha, and Tony in order to team up and rescue Jamie, who's very sick and being held by HYDRA agents.

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Chapter Eleven

A Dream Deferred

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5 months earlier...

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And so things like fixing busted pipes and cupcake picnics on Sundays and dinner in the bakery most nights out of the week became routine. Somehow his life acquired a schedule, something he'd always sworn he would avoid. Something dangerous to have. It gave his enemies an easier time of targeting him. But somehow he couldn't stay away from the bakery come seven o'clock, when Sally would have dinner on the counter waiting for him. Or force himself to turn Sally away every time she and the kids showed up on his porch on Sunday afternoons, rain or shine.

He should have. He knew he should have. But he couldn't.

So now it was the first week of November and the assassin propped his vibranium arm on one updrawn knee and popped the last of the lasagna cupcake (who'd ever heard of a lasagna cupcake?) in his mouth. The kids were busy dancing around his living room to whatever tweenybopper music pumped out of the boom box speakers.

"Basically what we're gonna do is dance;
Basically what we're gonna do is dance;
Basically what we're gonna do is dance;
It will come easily when you hear the beat, oh!"

Sally had settled against the couch next to him, her feet tucked under her, head dropped back onto the cushion with her eyes closed in dreamy contentment. Even the cybernetic nerve endings in his metal arm picked up the warmth of her body.

"What is this stuff?" He asked.

"'Sneaker Night,'" she said. "Vanessa Hudgens. The kids like it, and I don't mind it. I prefer cute club music over the hardcore stuff nowadays." She opened her eyes. Glanced at him sidelong, still smiling. "Not your cup of tea, I take it." He shook his head with a smile. "You just need to loosen up a little bit, I think. Big Band music is not the only music that exists."

He shrugged. "You can't dance to this."

Her grin should've warned him, but he'd grown a bit complacent about Sally in the last couple months. So as the final line of the song—"Put your sneakers on...gonna dance all night long..."—faded away, the Cake Boss of Whistle-Stop called, "Hey, who wants to dance to some Taylor Swift?"

Jack had no idea who Taylor Swift was or what kind of music he made, but whatever it was, the kids started jumping up and down and screeching like howler monkeys. Sally nudged him before popping to her feet. She thrust her hand out at him. He eyed it as if it was an animal ready to snap at his fingers with saliva-dripping fangs.

"Oh, come on," she said. "Just get up. Lazy."

Lazy? Okay, he wasn't letting that stand. He got to his feet without taking her hand and eyed her, crossing his arms over his chest. Sally grinned as a steady beat drummed from the boom box's speakers.

"Dance with me."

"Yeah, Jack!" Jamie chimed in from over by the box. "Dance with Mommy!" Will and Lori babbled agreement. Becky smiled.

"To this?" Jack demanded, though he focused on Sally. "How do you dance to this?"

Sally rolled her eyes. "Give me your hand, you bum." He let her take his hand and she bounce-hopped up to him as the singer finally piped up. Apparently Taylor Swift was a girl. Sally sang along, punctuating the lyrics with instructions as she moved. "I stay out too late, and see, I'm right in, got nothin' in my brain, and I bounce out. If you'd match me instead of being a block of wood, we could be dancing right now. Will you trust me?"

Well...why not? He bit back a sigh. It would make the kids happy—and he'd stop feeling like he was kicking a puppy while a quartet of other puppies watched—so why not? And Bucky Barnes had liked to dance. He wasn't him, not anymore, but the ghost of the man he'd been before the war was still there. Why not let that ghost have some fun once in a while?

"All right," he mumbled. "Start the song over."

"Awesome," Sally said, beaming. Jamie pressed the button and the percussion began again. "All right, here we go. I stay out too late, bounce in close. Got nothin' in my brain, and jive out. At least that's what people say, mmmm, mmmm. Dance in place! Oh, for the love of pastries, move your hips. Bounce. Jive. Come on! Do what Jamie's doing."

That was not happening. The kid was bopping all over the place. Although he seemed to be having fun. And he was sort of moving to the beat. Jack narrowed his eyes, then listened to the rhythm of the song. He watched Jamie, who sort of nodded his head in time with the beat. The assassin mimicked him, ignoring Sally's delighted smile. The kid was doing this thing with his shoulders, too. Jack tried it. It actually felt pretty easy. Natural. In rhythm. Sally nodded.

"See, you're getting it. Okay, do that, but try moving side to side. You know, in rhythm. Like this. Yeah, yeah, like that! Awesome."

It was impossible to feel like an idiot when she was grinning at him like he'd just made her day. She took his hand again and said, "Okay, now keep doing this, but move how I say at the same time. Think you can do it?"

The Winter Soldier was a master assassin, highly proficient in various styles of martial arts. He'd run gauntlets requiring elite skills, where even the tiniest mistake meant torture or possibly—probably—death. He could drive, shoot, and calculate battle tactics all at the same time. This was easy.

"But I keep cruising, okay, spin me into you like it's the forties! Can't stop, won't stop grooving! And out, it's like I've got this music, in my mind, in! Saying it's going to be all right! And out! Freestyle! 'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play! And the haters gonnna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate! Lindy Hop!"

Jack's mouth nearly fell open. An odd warmth fizzed softly in the pit of his stomach. It felt almost like...happiness.

"How do you know the Lindy Hop?" How did she know he knew the Lindy Hop? Or rather, that Bucky Barnes had known it once upon a time. Muscle memory, long locked away beneath ice and blood and shadows, surged to the surface and flooded his body.

Sally grinned. "I'm a master of many talents! Heartbreakers gonna break, break, break, break, break! And the-"

"Bakerth gonna bake, bake, bake, bake, bake!" Will sang at the top of his lungs. Sally and Jack both winced, but neither could wipe the smiles off their faces. "Baby, jutht gonna eat cake, cake, cake, cake, cake! Tho thake it off, thake it off!"

"That doesn't even make sense!" Jamie protested.

"Can't hear you," Will replied, shaking his butt and flapping his arms like a chicken. "I'm being awethome!"

And for a moment Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier, forgot everything but the little boy doing a chicken dance and his mother, laughing so hard she had to hang onto him for support. And he smiled.

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The present...

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The Winter Soldier moved through an underground parking garage where he'd left an SUV. HYDRA would expect him to leave a getaway car and several survival packs in Virginia or maybe DC. No one would think to check the garages Stark Industries or the Avengers' Tower, with it's state-of-the-art security. But he'd taken a risk before setting out for the boreal wilderness, and it had paid off. Now he'd just come back from Canada, trying to break into that God-forsaken HYDRA base to get Jamie, and he'd finally made it to New York, and Steve Rogers, and his own last hope of getting any kind of help.

He shouldn't have forgotten, the assassin thought. How could he have been so stupid? There was a time-bomb just tick-tick-ticking away in his head. The right words from an undercover HYDRA agent could shatter his new world in seconds. Even without those words seething in his skull, waiting to trigger the merciless killing machine again, getting close to Sally had been a mistake. Maybe it was safe enough for her,—she could hold her own against him if she pushed herself beyond what was safe for her and her family and the rest of the world, if she refused to take the medication that allowed her to live her life—but not for those kids.

He had to get Jamie back.

The Winter Soldier paused just before turning the corner. His nostrils flared and the hair at the nape of his neck prickled with sudden static. This wasn't just HYDRA's experiments now. They'd only heightened what he'd developed in Germany during the war. That sense of predators waiting to make him prey. The sense of predators waiting to become his unwitting prey. Apparently someone had considered the possibility that he'd stash things at Avengers' Tower. Well, then...

Without a sound, he unsheathed the knife at his hip. He'd nearly gutted Steve Rogers with this knife once. Back in DC. That fight on the bridge. But Steve had been strong enough, fast enough to match HYDRA's top assassin. Their own super soldier.

These HYDRA agents waiting to ambush him wouldn't stand a chance.

He drew a breath. Ignored the little stabbing sensation in his chest when he didn't smell warm chocolate and sugar and baking things. After this...he couldn't go back to the bakery. Back to Whistle-Stop. Whoever had taken Jamie—Strucker? Bakshi? Rumlow?—had shown him that.

Closing his eyes once, for a split-second eternity, he remembered the last time he'd walked into a fight with something to lose. He'd been Bucky Barnes, then. Seventy years ago, almost. That morning on the train, hurtling through the mountains of the Kresy in Poland. The only thing he'd let himself think about was protecting Captain America. Protecting Steve Rogers. His oldest friend.

The Winter Soldier knew who he was protecting now. He just wished Sally was here to help. It would hurt him more if he was the one getting shot; in the state she was in, she'd probably just brush the bullets off and keep on trucking.

He let the breath go.

Vapor-lights flashed on steel as he lunged forward and slashed up with the knife. The flat side of the blade sliced toward the enemy. At the last minute, eyes zeroing in on the tentacled insignia of HYDRA, the Winter Soldier twisted and the blade cut a silver streak across his target's throat. Blood arced scarlet.

Black was very good for hiding bloodstains.

It took less than a breath to take out the first HYDRA agent. As his body fell, the others surged into violent motion. The Winter Soldier ignored the crackle of electromagnetic energy buzzing and popping in his vibranium arm as he blocked a hastily-fired gunshot and broke the shooter's wrist with a hollow snap! He ducked, kicked out. A man's kneecap shattered. Another target fell, screaming. The assassin cut his throat and the scream died in a red gurgle. Another agent collapsed when the Winter Soldier drove his knife into the enemy's chest, under the breastbone and into the pericardium; it took him seconds to bleed to death. In those agonizing seconds, the remaining pair of HYDRA agents went down.

Wiping his knife on his cargo pants, the assassin slid it back into the sheath. He'd have to clean it—thoroughly—when he met up with Sally in New York. Getting into the SUV they'd tried to put an EMP-lock on was almost easier than crossing out HYDRA agents to. Like that would keep him out. Sliding behind the wheel, he set a pistol on the passenger seat and covered it with the black backpack that had been hidden on the floor. Easy access.

For a second he considered trying to call Sally. Decided against it. By now she'd probably found the perfect driving position. He didn't want to screw with that. It would be hard enough for her to get in the parking garage anyway.

The assassin slid out of the car and headed for the elevator. He left the bodies where they'd fallen. Clean-up was for people like SHIELD or Iron Man. He didn't need to worry about his messes when the government was so considerate as to clean them up for him. He was a ghost.

A ghost bearing an invisible ball-and-chain in the shape of four kids and their mom. When he and Captain Rogers made it to the HYDRA base, when they got in, they'd have to make sure no one in HYDRA ever considered it worthwhile to come after the Gardners again. Otherwise they'd never be safe.

She'd been able to keep her family safe until he arrived, Jack thought as he calmly and carefully shot out the security cameras in the elevator. Glass tinkled against the toes of his combat boots. It was all right to be Jack now. No one followed him—yet—and the adrenaline in his blood had begun to ebb. So he could be Jack for a minute, and regret that he'd destroyed the safety Sally's family had enjoyed despite her secrets.

Of course they'd been safe. Sally had seen to that...

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6 months earlier...

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"I cannot believe it is this hot at the end of October," Jack growled as he hefted a plastic cooler the color of moldy mustard onto his shoulder. Becky shuffled beside him, eyes on the rocky sand and peeping hermit crabs. Little Will and Jamie ran ahead, whooping; insulted seagulls shrieked and flapped off as the boys raced toward the beach...followed by Dug, Somewhere, and Pupcake, their very rambunctious dogs. "It's got to be at least eighty degrees out here. Are you really going swimming?"

Sally shifted Lori in her arms. "Try ninety. Oof!" She jerked her head back before Lori could whack her in the face again with the plastic floaties on the toddler's arms. "Careful, Lolo. That hurts Mommy. Anyway, it's a birthday gift from one of my favorite teachers. I wanted to go swimming, so I needed a warm ocean."

He eyed her. "A birthday present from your favorite teacher."

Sometimes it was so easy to forget she was a mutant; hunches didn't really qualify as a superpower. Easier still, with how isolated she stayed in her bakery at the edges of her little town. But apparently giving her a summer day in the middle of winter in Virginia was no big deal at all.

"Does Becky swim?"

"Ask her," Sally said a little sharply. "She can talk."

He winced. He still didn't think to go out of his way to talk to the kids. Better for everyone if he didn't. But Jamie, Will, and Lori usually sought him out on their own. Becky never would. Walking next to him now, her mom on his other side and almost completely out of the little girl's sight, was the Becky-version of grabbing onto his legs and begging him to carry her around. Jack cleared his throat.

"You can swim, Becky?

She lifted her gaze from the ground to the horizon, chin tilted slight in his direction—her way of acknowledging him. She gave a half-shrug and a small smile played around her mouth. After a moment she nodded dreamily.

"You like swimming?"

Her smile got a little bigger and she nodded again.

At that point they'd reached the smoother, less rocky part of the beach. Empty of anyone enjoying the unseasonably warm weather, the beach swept out around them in a blanket of sand, scuttling hermit crabs, and crashing waves. Jack turned his attention to Sally as she set Lori down. The toddler immediately pounced on a hole where a hermit crab poked its tiny pinchers out. The crab, petrified of the toddler's shadow, dashed back to its hole. Lori giggled and pounced on another crab.

"How did you teach her how to swim?" He asked as Becky shuffled toward the water. The boys were already splashing like mad, yelling and laughing and trying to get the dogs to catch handfuls of ocean the kids flung at them. "Didn't she get upset?"

"At first," Sally replied, setting up the Disney blanket to protect them from the sand. She flopped onto it and kicked off her sandals. He tried to ignore the way the sunlight made the gold-glitter polish on her toes sparkle. "Jamie was a big help; a lot of the time, whatever he's doing, Becky wants to do, even if it's scary. And we had a great instructor come to visit for the summer from my old college. Professor Frost. She really helped Becky become more comfortable with being in the water."

Sally dropped back onto the blanket, folding her arms behind her head. She smiled at the sky. "I have it pretty easy, honestly. Not as easy as this one friend of mine—she's an empath and can read memories, so she's got this way of communicating with the baby she just had last year; cuts down on so much fussing—but I've got resources a lot of non-mutants don't have. We can't afford to be divided, the way so-called 'normal' people treat us."

Wondering what made him ask, knowing he skated too close to personal things, the Winter Soldier asked softly, "Do you miss it? Being a mutant?"

"I still am a mutant. My powers are just muted. They're still there. It's..." She closed her eyes against the wisps of cloud and the sun blazing against her skin. Let out a long, slow sigh. "I can feel the world pressing in on my mind, just like before I...got sick. Waiting to tell me things, show me things. It's just that now the medicine mutes it. Instead of a clear conversation, all I get is mumbling. Instead of a clear picture, I get snow and static. But sometimes I'll make out a handful of words or catch a glimpse of a fuzzy image and realize what I'm listening to and looking at. But yes," she added wistfully, "I miss being clairvoyant. Do you miss being whatever you used to be?"

Tension ratcheted through his body. Somehow he kept his gaze locked on the rolling waves, at Becky wading through the surf, the boys and the dogs splashing, Lori smacking a tide pool with one little hand.

"What I used to be?"

"Before the people you're running from hurt you."

"Is that another hunch?" He couldn't hide the bitterness twining beneath the words like thorns. Sally sat up. Jack felt her eyes on him, silent and heavy as a touch. She didn't speak, and the weight of her gaze made the back of his neck itch. He finally risked glancing at her. She sat with her arms draped around her knees. "What?"

He realized in that moment that he'd gone soft. He'd learned under HYDRA how to withstand torture. How to keep silent except under the most dire—usually near-fatal—circumstances. But all she had to do was stare at him with those eyes the color of honey. Maybe hunches weren't her only power. Maybe there was something else. Hypnosis? Mental manipulation? There was a girl working for HYDRA, one of the Enhanced, who could manipulate people's minds at a certain level.

But Sally wouldn't. HYDRA would. Pierce would have. That traitor had used mind control of sorts on the Winter Soldier to ensure his compliance. Bucky could still remember the crackle of electricity burning at his temples, agony flaring through his skull, the crushing grip of the electricity coursing through him until every muscle locked and tightened, threatening to snap...

Something touched his wrist, a brush of silky synthetic fabric. It sent a pulse of panicked adrenaline pumping through his veins. Copper blood flooded his mouth when his teeth snapped together and sank into his cheek. His hand spasmed toward the knife at his hip, but there was no knife. His skin tingled, desperate for the weight of guns that had mysteriously disappeared. He had no weapons except fists and feet and teeth and—

Fingertips alighted on his wrist. The contact burned like noon-forged steel. The assassin jerked his hand away, swinging with his other hand, lunging, shoving his full weight behind the blow. A half-strangled scream tried to beat its way free from behind his clenched teeth. Never again. They couldn't erase him again!

His metal fist connected with flesh. Someone grunted under the impact. The Winter Soldier bared his teeth when he realized a pair of raised fists had blocked his shot. He threw his weight forward, colliding with the HYDRA agent trying to take him. Before he could register the flash of flustered annoyance in honey-gold eyes, a pair of hands grabbed his wrists, a bare foot slammed into his chest—he felt the toes dig into his pectorals right above his sternum—and suddenly he was shot into the air, flipped over, and slammed into the sand.

Sand? Even as the question popped into his head, he twisted off his back onto toes, knees, and hands, crouched and ready to spring. But...there was no sand in Washington DC...There was no sand in any of the places he'd hidden out before coming to...

Whistle-Stop. Sally's Pastry Garden. The beach.

Sally.

The Winter Soldier blinked the haze of red fury from his eyes and focused on the woman watching him warily, concern warring with annoyance in her eyes. There was something strange about Sally's eyes now. They were less golden, more yellow. Almost sickly in color. Her breath came in harsh wheezes and her skin looked gray. Her mouth looked strange, though he didn't quite know why. He didn't remember hitting her anywhere except on the back of her fists, though...

He'd hit her. With his metal fist. Had he broken anything? Was she hurt?

"Sally—"

"Are you back?" Her voice was rock-steady. Not a quiver of nerves in it. He swallowed. Nodded. She relaxed and sat back on the slightly mussed Little Mermaid blanket. Rubbed the back of her hand. "You hit like a freight train. Cripes."

"I am so sorry—"

She waved that off. "I'm fine. If I had to, I could take you in a fight. You okay?"

No. No, he wasn't, and he wondered how she possibly could be. How could she just brush this off? Especially with what he knew about Luke Westenra, the guy Sally had been with before she'd met her husband, the guy who'd infected her with...whatever sickness she had now. He was pretty sure it was HIV, but she hadn't confirmed that and he hadn't brought it up. How could she be okay with him hitting her when she'd been abused by a man before?

"Yeah."

A lie. But his whole life was made up of lies, wasn't it? That was what had triggered the full brunt of the flashback—he'd thought of himself, for just a moment, as Bucky Barnes instead of the Winter Soldier. And then his own psyche had reminded him in no uncertain terms that Bucky Barnes was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Even though, more and more, it felt like whatever he'd become was slowly bleeding back into what he'd been. Even though being out here, in the sun and the bizarrely balmy breeze, seared away the cold always creeping through the Winter Soldier's veins, leaving warmth and the whispers of memory behind...

But how had Sally borne the brunt of a punch from his metal arm? Was it a side-effect of her medicine?

"Sally, how did you—"

"Magic," she said brightly. He gave her a look that spoke volumes. She sighed. "Drop it, please. I don't want to explain it to you, but I will if you push me. I'd rather not, though. Please? Let's go swimming."

He could push. She'd give if he pushed. The assassin and soldier in him demanded he ferret out the answers to how she'd blocked that shot without breaking anything. She'd taken a hit from him before and barely been fazed. How? But Jack, the man he'd slowly begun to morph into while staying in Whistle-Stop—the Winter Soldier's corpse haunted by the ghost of Bucky Barnes' memory—didn't want to see the shadows in Sally's eyes when she answered him. So he let it go.

But he wasn't going swimming. Not a chance. He didn't...do things like that.

"I didn't bring a suit."

Sally just stared at him. "Why the ever loving snick-snack-frick-frack did you not bring a bathing suit to the beach? Ugh. You make me so sad sometimes." She yanked out her scrunchie and ran her fingers through her auburn curls before slanting him a look. "Swim in your jeans."

He couldn't have heard her right. "What?"

"Ditch your shirt and swim in your jeans. No one's going to see you but us."

"Uh...no."

Sally raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"

Why not? There were a thousand reasons: he didn't want her to see where his vibranium arm attached to his shoulder; he didn't want her to see, with those too-sharp eyes of hers, the scars left by HYDRA's experiments and conditioning and the fall from the bridge in the Kresy; he hadn't gone anywhere without a weapon (and how was he supposed to keep his knife on him if he was swimming?) in over sixty years.

She was still watching him. He could practically see the wheels turning in her head. Was this one of her hunches? Would a boulder come crashing out of the sky and brain him if he stayed in this spot? Maybe abducted by aliens? No, aliens could grab him just as easily in the ocean as they could on the beach.

"Who swims in their jeans?" He demanded.

"Lots of guys. King does."

Jack glowered at her. Hannibal King. Sally's friend, the one who'd hit on him—and had also somehow known the Winter Soldier was armed after only a cursory glance. The one with the weird nocturnal habits, whatever he was doing; the assassin couldn't be sure, and he didn't want to push Sally for answers to questions she wanted to pretend he didn't notice enough to have in the first place.

There was something about that guy. Hannibal King...There was more to him than was readily apparent. Same with Sally. But the guy wasn't the type Jack expected to just jump into the sea wearing blue jeans. He was the kind of guy who carried a weapon anywhere. Sort of like the Winter Soldier.

"That joker?" Of course he did. Why not?

She smiled. "Yes. But if you don't want to, then fine. Stay up here. Be a stick in the mud. Grow old and bored and lonely if it makes you happy. I don't mind."

She hopped to her feet and peeled off the thin, cotton t-shirt she wore. Underneath, silver glitter sparkled across a blue and green one-piece. She wiggled out of her shorts and left them with her shirt and sandals in a heap, smoothing out the rumpled ocean-colored skirt trimming the bottom of her swimsuit. The sun made the long, smooth, brown expanse of her legs gleam.

Sally flexed her toes, scrunching them in the sand. "I'll just leave you here on the sand with your compatriots."

"My...compatriots?"

Her smile widened. "All the hermit crabs. Ta-ta!" And she took off at a jog, ponytail bouncing against her back as she waved to her kids and they waved back. Even Becky waved, absently, without really looking dead-on at her mother.

Overhead, gulls called to their mates and swooped low over rocky nests. The crashing ocean washed over the sand, sending crabs scattering away from the tide. Pupcake, Dug, and Somewhere barked and yipped and made it their mission to lick sea-sprayed, salty kids. Sally skidded to a halt next to Lori, kicking up a spray of sand when the water splashed over her legs. She squealed and stamped her feet while Lori squealed and fell on her butt, and Jack...the Winter Soldier...the ghost of Bucky Barnes smiled softly.

This was the kind of life Bucky had wanted after the war. Well, sort of. A little house with a yard, dogs—Bucky Barnes hadn't anticipated cats being a thing in his life but he hadn't been opposed to the idea—and kids playing, the beach...Although it had been Long Beach, not Whistle-Stop Cove. Coney Island instead of an abandoned stretch of sand. Still, the man he'd once been had wanted a life like this once. Home, loyal pets, happy kids. A beautiful wife. Hope. Safety. Happiness.

Zola had taken that dream from him. HYDRA had smashed it into a thousand pieces. His handlers had crushed those pieces underfoot, grinding them to dust.

But Zola was dead. HYDRA was vulnerable, laid bare and defenseless before the public eye thanks to the very deadly Black Widow. And his handlers couldn't find him. He'd been here months and no one had come looking.

Sally had said there was something protected about Whistle-Stop; she'd almost mentioned something about one of her cats, Custard, somehow keeping her place safe (though honestly, if any of her five cats had possessed magical powers of some kind, he would've thought it would be Starbright, with her strangely compelling galaxy eyes).

He felt protected here. Safe. Every killer instinct honed by HYDRA's tortures told him this was a lie, that safety was an illusion...but that was HYDRA thinking. Brainwashing. Just because his instincts said a thing didn't make it true.

The Winter Soldier was a ghost, but every ghost wanted to be laid to rest.

Bucky Barnes was dead, but every dead man wanted to live.

HYDRA had left him with almost-invisible scars, but they were there. Zola had left him with enhanced abilities and a cybernetic arm that had committed thousands of atrocities.

Sally had scars, too. He'd seen it in her eyes. Heard it in her voice. She knew what it was like, to be violated, to be turned into something you didn't want to be. Maybe it was even worse for her; she'd loved the man who'd destroyed what she used to be. Zola and HYDRA had never been anything but his enemies until he'd become the Winter Soldier. Then they were his puppet masters. But he was free of them now. He would be free of them. He would take back what he'd been. They would never steal from him again.

No more scars. No more self-loathing. No more deferring the dust-covered hope from his past life. Maybe he couldn't have all of the things he'd wanted—a wife, kids of his own, reuniting with Steve—but he could have some of them. Pieces of a dream. Life could start over, couldn't it? Any doubt was HYDRA thinking. Some kind of happiness wasn't impossible. Not anymore. Right?

He watched Sally scream with delight as the chill ocean sprayed over her knees and her two sons ran over to her and their baby sister, waving their arms and yelling like lunatics. Lori shrieked and waved her arms; sunlight flashed off her bright orange floaties.

Jack kicked off his shoes. Pulled off the single black glove he always wore on his vibranium hand. Shrugged off his jacket and undid his belt, letting it fall to the blanket. Stripped off his socks.

Brine pleasantly stinging his nose, seagulls and surf in his ears, he raced for the water.

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Author's Note: yay!