The next week was one of the strangest weeks Bucky had ever had. It was odd; one would think that being controlled by HYDRA, going out on various deadly missions around the world, or even figuring out who he truly was would be the strangest times of his life. And they were—some of the strangest times of his life. But this week definitely took one of the top spots, in his mind.

He'd been both right and wrong. In some ways, having Ari live in his apartment felt completely normal and natural. He hadn't realized how awful silence was until he became used to the sound of her moving around; it felt so right, somehow. And they got along so well that it didn't feel strange at all, eating meals with someone else sitting at the table. However, there were other things that were definitely foreign. He'd gotten used to seeing his sparse and boring apartment, so walking into his bathroom and seeing a dainty glass perfume bottle with a pink satin bow—or walking into his living room and smelling the remnants of a floral candle she'd probably lit earlier—it hit him again and again that living with a female was sort of scary. He had to be aware of how much noise he made, how often he washed his dishes, and he couldn't leave dirty socks laying around all over the place anymore. He also couldn't let himself sink onto the sofa or his bed and stare dully into space for a few hours. He privately called it going to his empty place and while he sometimes couldn't help it, he had a feeling it would terrify anyone who saw him do it. There was nothing normal about seeing a grown man sitting eerily still, staring vacantly into space for a couple of hours.

To be fair to Ari, he knew that she probably wouldn't have minded most of his usual behaviors. She was a very easy-going person. She probably wouldn't have cared if he'd left his socks laying all over the place. But he couldn't bring himself to do it; it felt rude and kind of gross. Girls weren't used to living like he did—or at least, Ari wasn't, judging by the neat state of her apartment.

Still, he knew there were things about his apartment that bothered her.

Like the fact that she kept banging her head on the shower curtain rod.

"OW!" he heard her shout from the bathroom. The first time it had happened, her yell had been accompanied by a loud crash, the sound of something shattering, and something hard hitting the ground with a thud. Yes, it was exactly as it seemed: she'd banged her head, tripped out of the tub, hit the sink, knocked one of her perfume bottles off, and then hit the ground. He'd almost broken the door down when she didn't respond for a moment but then she'd shouted that she was fine. Luckily, she hadn't been cut by any shards of glass.

Now it was a common occurrence.

He waited and sure enough, fifteen minutes later, she stomped out of the bathroom, that mysterious towel hat that all girls seemed to know how to make perched on her head, a furious expression on her face. She stomped over to him and shoved her face close to his, jabbing a finger towards her forehead. "Look at this!"

He looked. It was a bright red welt, already starting to swell a little, on top of the purple remnants of the previous bruises near her temple.

"I'm going to look like I got the world's worst spider bite," she complained.

"I have a solution," he announced.

"What?"

"You could stop banging your head."

She glared at him and he grinned. She paused for a moment, cocking her head slightly, and then said, "You know…I never exactly knew what they meant when they said a 'shit-eating grin' in books—but now I do."

"I have a shit-eating grin on my face?" he asked, grinning even more.

"Yes. Wipe it off. Smug idiot. I'm surprised you don't bang into the rod every day."

"My reflexes are a little better than yours, Ari," he lied smoothly. The truth was, the infernal rod really was placed way too low and he was embarrassed to admit that he'd slammed his neck into it one too many times before getting used to it. He used to have a permanent red welt across his neck for a few weeks after he moved into the apartment. Thank god no one had ever noticed it.

He heard her muttering something about a "stupid, dumb super-soldier with stupid, dumb, fast reflexes" as she let her hair down and began to towel dry it. Trying to distract her, he said, "Let's go out and do something."

"Like what?" she asked.

He was momentarily thrown. He'd expected her to come up with the idea, since she was usually so enthusiastic to get out there and do things. "Uh…I have no idea," he said, "but it's nice out and it's Saturday. So we should do something."

"Steve?" came her muffled voice from behind a curtain of hair and towel.

"Busy," he said, trying to curb the small flare of irritation he'd felt upon hearing her mention Steve. Was she asking just to be nice? Or did she really want Steve to come along? Did she not want to go out alone with him?

Was he just being a paranoid idiot?

"And Sam, Natasha, Barton—they're all busy," he added quickly, before she could ask about them. Perhaps she was just being diplomatic; she liked including people in plans and she'd never really hinted to why, but he suspected it had something to do with her being so isolated and alone in college. No one had been her friend after Dani died. By all accounts, she was a well-adjusted, normal person, but he did wonder from time-to-time what memories haunted her routinely. She was a sunshine-y person with a not-so-sunshine-y past.

"What do you want to do?" he asked.

"What I want to do is go shopping," she said. Bucky tried very hard to fight the expression of horror that immediately wanted to cross his face. She looked at him carefully. He waited a second before giving her a casual, relaxed smile. She sighed. "See? I knew you wouldn't want to."

"How—" he spluttered.

"You're easy to read," she said.

Something mechanical inside him shifted in something close to panic; a primal, wild, Winter Soldier part of him responded to her words by automatically assessing every aspect of his face and body. Was his breathing not regulated enough? Did he have some sort of tell? He hadn't been easy to read in decades. Was he losing his touch? That wasn't safe for missions.

"Soldier, you can relax," Ari said, watching him.

"You did it again," he said.

"Yeah. But you don't need to worry," she said. "Your face is still a mask when you want it to be. But you're not the Winter Soldier when you're with me, remember? You have facial expressions. Your eyes tell a different story—as cheesy as that sounds." She chuckled. "Sometimes I feel like you forget you're human."

Sometimes I really do.

"Okay, then you clearly know there's nothing I'd like to do less than go shopping," he said calmly. So Ari could read him even when he tried to be emotionless—what was the big deal? It rankled at him, wounded his ego slightly, his pride in being the best of the best killers and warriors—but she was right: she was different. She was smarter, more intuitive, more…connected. It shouldn't even surprise him that she could read him well—and read him better and better all the time. It was the same thing with Steve, really; he could never seem to really lie to Steve. It seemed like he got away with some of his lies but then Steve's eyes would glint strangely and Bucky wondered if Steve knew more—a lot more—than his stoic expressions let on.

Steve and Ari. Sometimes Bucky thought of them as one being: two sides to one shiny, gleaming coin. Whichever way the coin fell, there would always be one of them to watch his back, keep an eye on him, reign him in, trip him up, surprise him, love him…

They were also the same because Bucky didn't think he could live if either of them got hurt or died.

"Shopping is fun," Ari said. "What's nicer than bringing home shiny new bags and boxes of unopened goodies, fresh and new and all yours?"

"Anything that doesn't involve lipstick and large crowds of people," he said honestly.

"I'm just kidding," she said. "I mean, shopping really is fun—but I know you hate crowds." Another thing she'd picked up without asking him about it. What else did she know about him?

Did she know he'd been kicking all his dirty socks under his bed, too lazy to wash them all yet?

"Let's go to a park," she said suddenly. His heart sank a little, thinking she meant a local park—sure to be crowded on a sunny, summery day like this. But then she added, "Like a forest preserve or something."

He stared at her suspiciously. Ari wasn't a huge fan of nature. She always said she enjoyed admiring it from a distance. "You don't like hiking," he pointed out, "or dirt or nature."

"Yes I do!"

"Bugs," he said slyly.

She blanched slightly and then smiled, looking a little more nervous. "They're more scared of me than I am of them…" Her voice trailed off hesitantly. He could practically hear the "Right? Right?" that she longed to tack on.

She was up to something. Well, he didn't mind nature—in fact, nature was a great place to hide—so who was he to put a damper on her dearest wish today? He shrugged and nodded and said, "Okay. We'll go to a forest preserve…or something."

"Great!" She leaped to her feet. "Let me go change! You check out where we can go." She hurried away before he could question why she needed to change when she'd just put on new clothes.

He opened up her laptop and Googled "forest preserves or something" as a joke. It was only a few seconds after staring at the screen did it occur to him that he was joking around with a computer. Shaking his head, he typed in "forest preserve Washington D.C." and jotted down a few addressed on the back of a magazine laying nearby. Then, putting that down, he sat there for a few minutes, twiddling his thumbs and waiting patiently for Ari. It was then that the icon caught his eye: a folder on her desktop labeled "Old Pics/Trash." He would normally never have opened a folder on her laptop without asking her permission, but his curiosity was roused by the fact that she had labeled the folder "trash" as well as "old pics." Why would she consider old pictures trash? What was in there? He glanced up at the hallway and shifted slightly so that she couldn't see the screen.

It only took one click and he was in.

It took him a moment to understand what he was staring at. The pictures weren't good quality—not like the neat, sharply-focused, filtered, pretty photos Ari posted on her Instagram. Those looked like professional photos to him (Ari always told him he was way too flattering when he told her that). But these photos…they were slightly blurry, some of them out of focus, and all of them had a cheap quality to them. He could tell they'd been taken ages ago. There were hundreds and hundreds of them: most of them of Ari and…

Dani.

His stomach dropped. In the time he'd known Ari—over a year at this point, bordering on two years soon—he'd never seen a photo of Dani. There hadn't been any photos of her in her old house and none here in her apartment. She hadn't ever really described her at length; she barely liked mentioning Dani, why would she have described her?

And here she was.

She was the sun to Ari's moon in looks. She had gleaming wavy blonde hair, sun-kissed skin, bright white teeth, and hazel eyes. She was just as petite as Ari but she seemed to have a gold dusting all over her person, whereas Ari was pale and silvery with her long dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. But then the personalities seemed flipped: Dani seemed to be the moon to Ari's sun. Ari was beaming and laughing in almost every photo, her grin dazzling, her eyes sparkling, her pixie-ish face mischievous. Dani, on the other hand, had a more subdued smile and slightly narrowed eyes; her expressions seemed reserved and almost sultry. Both of them made a striking pair. They wore short shorts and tight high school t-shirts, silver and gold braided belts looped through their shorts loops, flip-flops and hot pink nail polish on their toes. They looked like typical teenage girls: high on life and their prettiness and vitality, sure they would live for forever and be best friends till the end of time, glittering forever. The further back he scrolled, the older the photos got and the younger both girls got. Now they had a chunk of bright color dyed into a strip of their unflattering, thick side bangs and thick black eyeliner around their eyes, pouting and holding up peace signs. Further back and they had braces and loose pony tails, baggy t-shirts and capris with running shoes and millions of colorful armbands on their wrists. Photos of them doing everything: sleepovers, standing in line outside movie theaters, going pumpkin picking, posing in front of pools, bathroom mirror poses… Many of the photos had other girls in them two but no matter what, Dani and Ari were always together. He scrolled through the photos, mesmerized by how carefree and young Ari looked. Then he looked at Dani, wondering at the blonde girl. She'd clearly been everything to Ari and Ari had been everything to her—how could she have betrayed her lifelong best friend for her abusive brother?

"Did you find a good place?"

He jumped so violently that he almost dropped her laptop. He'd been so lost in the photos that he'd totally let his guard down. He hurriedly clicked out of the photos and slammed the laptop shot, placing it on the coffee table as far away from him as possible, as if he could erase the guilt through distance. "Wh-What?" he croaked, feeling distracted, his heart pounding from the shock and guilt.

She gave him a strange look. "Did you find a good forest preserve?"

"Oh—oh, yeah, I did." He scrambled for his piece of paper, waving it in the air, trying to calm himself down and act casual. "I found a few, actually." She was still looking at him strangely so he asked, "What took you so long?" to try and deflect the attention back onto her.

"Oh. Well." She colored slightly pink in the face and bounced on her toes, drawing his attention to her shoes: they were neon pink running shoes with fluorescent blue laces and a pure white border running around the base. They almost seemed to glow. Then he noticed her whole outfit: black tights with a fluorescent pink, purple, blue, and green tie-dyed stripe that went down the outside of each thigh and a neon pink tank top. "I was trying on options," she admitted sheepishly. "That's why I took forever. Sorry."

"You only want to go to a forest preserve so you can wear nice workout clothes!" he accused her.

She flushed and grinned. "Okay—you got me. Guilty. There was a sale at PINK and I sort of…went a little crazy with their workout clothes. And then I decided, I have so much workout gear now, why not get expensive running shoes, right?"

"But Ari, you don't even work out."

"Go hard or go home, Soldier," she said, winking. "And now I have motivation to work out, to show off my cute clothes. Come on, I want to go."

One of the fun things about going out with Ari was that the day always ended up being exciting somehow. He knew he probably wasn't the most interesting person in the world—he could be quiet and grumpy and surly and awkward—but her eternal peacefulness and cheerful disposition always somehow kept him from becoming a total bore. Being with her wasn't boring. As quiet as he could be, he'd met some people since returning to the normal world that were so insufferably boring that he almost wished a HYDRA agent would show up and put him out of his misery. That wasn't the case with her; something always inevitably went wrong and they would squabble and shoot barbs at each other and laugh at stupid jokes and everything always ended out alright. When he saw the glass half empty—or all empty—she somehow saw it the other way. Her outlook on life and determination to stay strong was infectious. So by the end of the day, after they'd gotten lost three times, after he had accidentally stepped right into a pile of deer poop, after a weird guy had trailed after them for fifteen minutes trying to chat Ari up while she glared at Bucky and Bucky tried to hold back laughter…

Everything was okay. Everything was alright. As the famous quote went: All's well that ends well. No point being angry about anything that happened during the day because it, too, had passed.

And now they were sitting in a diner back in town as the sky turned a deep blue, sweaty and disheveled, Ari's new shoes and running tights ruined (she'd tripped and fallen right into a creek while he'd had a laughing fit—after fishing her out, of course), and she was berating him heavily about not saving her from her stalker.

"You had it handled," he snickered, dipping a fry in the ketchup. "The silent treatment and all that."

"That never works on creepy guys," she said in exasperation. "You should know that!"

"Why?" he demanded, feeling insulted. "I'm not a creepy guy!"

"I know some HYDRA agents who'd beg to differ," she said wryly, "but what I meant is that you're a guy, so you know how persistent some guys can be—to the point of insanity. And you wanna know what kills me?"

"When people don't care about obesity in America," he said lazily.

"That—well, that too," she added thoughtfully, "but…the fact that he kept trying to come onto me even after I'd fallen into the creek! I mean, how dense can you be? No offense, but what girl is going to be like, Oh yeah, that's my hero, the guy who keeps jabbering at me while I've just fallen into a large body of water?"

"Large body of water," he snorted. "It was two feet deep."

She glared at him. "You get my point!"

"He was pretty weird," he said, grinning. "But hey, who could blame him? You looked—" He broke off suddenly. He'd been about to say hot but had a sudden feeling that would make things weird. "You looked cool in those workout clothes," he amended feebly.

"Cool," she repeated, staring at him.

"Yes," he said, looking down at his fries with laser-focus intensity, hoping his face didn't look as hot as it felt right now.

"But wasn't he harmless?" he asked suddenly, trying to divert her attention from his slip-up. If the guy had been dangerous, Bucky would never have allowed him to follow Ari like that.

"It was still annoying," Ari said in a frustrated voice.

Her frustrations surprised Bucky. "Why? He didn't seem so bad."

Ari sighed. "I admit—as far as weird guys go…he was definitely one of the milder ones. He didn't say anything so bad—he was just oblivious and persistent. But it still gets tiring, you know?"

"What does?"

"Unwanted attention from guys."

Bucky frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Just that girls get this all the time," she explained. "Guys yelling at us from cars, guys yelling at us in the streets, about our bodies, the things they'd like to do to us, calling us names… It's degrading and scary and annoying. It's like, no thanks. No girl wants to have some random guy approach her and just start chatting her up, you know? Not really the time or place. So even when the less-weird guys do it—it's just…frustrating. Cause you always feel like…you're an object. Or like they don't even really care about you, they just want some woman to give them attention. Because if they cared about you as a person, why wouldn't they introduce themselves, give you their number, and walk away so you could have some peace and quiet? A lot of guys just feel totally entitled to our time and space and it's annoying." Her voice sounded forceful now. "That's why that guy was creepy and annoying. Because he didn't even care that I didn't want his attention. He just shoved it on me anyway. And then I fell into a creek," she lamented.

"I didn't realize this was…a thing," he said, feeling taken aback by her words. Not that he said anything at all to women now—he barely spoke to people in public at all—but he had clear memories of doing it to women back in the old days. He'd had no problem calling out to women walking by. He'd never said anything lewd—only simple things like "Look at the smile on you, doll!"—but the way Ari spoke, women felt uncomfortable even with men saying normal (or what he saw as normal) things. He didn't really understand it…but then again, he'd never really experienced anything like it, he realized. When had women ever really done that to him? It had been so normal back in the day, for guys to do it to pretty women, that he'd never once thought about it. But now…he considered how he'd feel if women approached him randomly whenever they felt like it and tried to force their conversation and company onto him. He shuddered inwardly; nothing would be more horrifying and obnoxious.

Had he really acted like that?

Had he really never noticed men doing that? He knew, of course, about the rude and derogatory men who shouted lewd things at women, but he'd never considered the men who said more innocent things…could be just as tiresome.

Suddenly, something hit him. "You said this happens all the time?" he demanded. "Guys yelling gross things?"

"Yeah."

"So what do you do?" he demanded.

"Um, ignore them?"

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to die," Ari explained kindly, seeing that he was a little lost. "You know that some of these guys can get violent if a girl says something back to them, right?"

"Yeah, but…" He leaned back in his chair, stunned again. Another thing he'd never really realized: he'd always assumed that women should definitely say something if a man said something wrong to them…but he'd also always known that some men got violent if challenged. He'd just never really put the two together and considered the predicament this put women in. "So you just have to take it?" he asked. Ari shrugged and he frowned to himself.

Perhaps she sensed his rising anger because she smoothly switched the subject, her voice naturally dipping an octave lower as her eyes surreptitiously swept the room; he watched approvingly, noting how far she had come in little over a year. "Have Natasha and Clint contacted you or Steve yet?"

"Why would you assume they would contact one of us?" he asked, distracted. "They could contact you."

"I hate when you try to bother me with semantics," Ari griped.

"Okay, okay, sorry," he said hastily. "And…no. They're still dark." He'd been feeling antsy ever since they said they'd do some poking around and hadn't responded quickly—but he knew he couldn't contact them. None of them could. They could be in deep cover. It was still far too early to get worried and contact them. Still—what was the holdup? All of the people were dead. It wasn't as if they had anyone to hunt down or interrogate…

"I guess I'll be going back home to my place in the next day or so," she said absentmindedly, twirling a fry between her fingers.

He glanced up at her, startled. "What? Why?"

"Well…because no one has broken into my apartment—right?"

For one nanosecond he was tempted to lie and tell her that yes, he was suspicious someone might have broken in—but no, that would never pan out. She would immediately wonder he hadn't told her sooner or why he hadn't acted more worried. "No," he admitted. "I checked twice—the traps are all good."

"A week's gone by," she said. "I guess I'm safe."

"Right," he said.

"So tomorrow…I'll pack up and go," she said.

"Sure," he said uncertainly, and then wondering why he sounded so uncertain. Was it the fact that she sounded sort of uncertain? What on earth would she be feeling uncertain over? What was going on?

They stared at each other silently for a drawn-out moment, something heavy hovering in the air between them, and then they both flinched slightly when someone near them loudly said, "No freaking way! Oh my god! Ari?"

They both looked up to see a tall, lanky girl with a short wavy bob, thick-framed glasses, and bright red lipstick. She wore what looked like a black pantsuit except instead of black trousers she wore black silk shorts. Thick bright white sandals adorned her feet and she held an iced coffee in her hand. Bucky glanced at Ari but judging by Ari's perplexed expression, she didn't know who this girl was any more than Bucky did. His senses went on high alert and his hand drifted casually to the pocket on his thigh, where his favorite dagger was hidden. He could have it pinned in her throat before she could make even one threatening move.

"Oh, come on!" the girl said. "Don't tell me you don't recognize me!"

"Ah…" Ari said, staring blankly at the girl, clearly frantically searching for a diplomatic way to let the girl down. "I'm sorry, I don't…"

"I'm Lexi Goldberg!" the girl said. "I was in your AP Lit class junior year. We both had Mr. Lippincott. He used to act out Shakespeare in weird accents and you and I were in a group when we performed—"

"Othello," Ari said, realization dawning on her face. "Oh my god. You were Othello and I was Iago."

"She was the most unconvincing Iago ever," Lexi confided in Bucky. "She was such a nice girl—no one could buy her as a bad guy."

"I can believe it," he said dryly.

"Wow," Ari said, sounding amazed. "Lexi Goldberg. I can't believe it."

"I know, I used to be a huge dork," Lexi said self-deprecatingly. "I wouldn't recognize me now either."

"No, that's not what I meant!" Ari said. "Just that…wow, so strange running into you here of all places." The diner was one of those run-down neighborhood joints that only the locals knew about. "Do you live in D.C.?"

"No, I'm here for a summer internship at a PR house," Lexi said. "Trying to get my foot in the fashion door. As it turns out, a degree from Parsons really doesn't do you much good unless you have connections. You don't happen to know anyone famous, do you?" she suddenly asked, a hopeful expression on her face. "A…fashion designer or a stylist? Even Lauren Conrad will work."

"Sorry, no famous…fashion designers," Ari said carefully, hiding a smile that Bucky could easily see tugging at her lips.

"So what did you do after high school?" Lexi asked.

"Went to NC State and majored in nursing."

"That's brave, I hear nursing's really tough," Lexi said. "So you're a nurse here now?"

"In a manner of speaking, yeah."

"And this is…?" Lexi nodded at Bucky and grinned.

"This is my friend, Sol—I mean Bu—I mean…Ben," Ari said, stumbling over her words. Lexi looked bemused but Ari rushed on, probably hoping to distract her from the fact that she apparently didn't even know her own friend's name. "So…you come here a lot?"

Lexi rolled her eyes. "No. My boss likes their sandwiches so he sent me down here. In fact, I should get going—I've already been gone too long. He's probably gonna fire me."

"Sorry to keep you," Ari said.

"No way, it's been cool," Lexi said. "Catching up and all that. Oh hey, before I forget! Where's—god, what's her name… Oh yeah, where's Dani?!"

And there she is again, Bucky thought to himself. Dani. She was back, after he'd tried so hard to put the photos he'd seen earlier out of his mind. Unbelievable.

"Where's—" Ari's face blanked over for a frightening moment, her eyes dead, as if she had vanished inside herself—but the next second the alarming moment had passed without anyone but Bucky noticing and she had composed herself. "Dani…" She hesitated.

"Yeah, you two were always totally joined at the hip in high school," Lexi said. "Is she around too? Where did she go to college?"

"She went to NC State too," Ari said. "But…the thing is…she's gone now."

"She's gone where?" Lexi asked, puzzled. Bucky could have murdered the girl.

"She…she passed away," Ari said hesitantly, her voice quiet.

Lexi's eyes grew wide and she stared at Ari with that expression people get when they're shocked and taken off guard and a little uncomfortable because they're dealing with death now, oh no, a topic they didn't ask for—and they should probably feel a little sad, but the most they can feel is a little discomfort and possibly some morbid curiosity, and is that wrong?

"I'm sorry," she said finally. "How did she…?"

"A car cash," Ari said tightly, smiling a thin-lipped smile. She leaped to her feet and Bucky followed suit. "I'm sorry—I've got to dash."

"Of course," Lexi said, still looking a bit shocked and disturbed.

"Nice seeing you again," Ari trilled falsely. Then she grabbed Bucky's hand and led him outside. He expected her to drop it once they got outside but she held on. He felt her sway towards him slightly as they walked down the quiet street and he got the feeling that she was holding onto him for support—to anchor herself in place and stay upright. So he squeezed back tightly, silently reminding her that he was here.

It was a warm evening, the sky a thick dark blue with nary a hint of clouds in sight. Streetlamps cast an orange glow on the ground and buildings around them as they walked, illuminating the graffiti on the walls beside them. The area was a slightly more unsafe one (at night at least) but Bucky knew Ari was safe with him. Still, he subtly switched her so that she was walking on the inside of the sidewalk.

Suddenly she cleared her throat and said, "So…my new clothes and shoes are ruined."

"Serves you right for only buying them to show off," he said severely.

She sighed. "They were so beautiful."

"You can still wash them."

"Yeah, but nothing will ever make them new again, you know? I like to keep things brand new for as long as possible because they have that new feeling."

"You're crazy, you know that, right?"

She laughed her light tinkly laugh, all silver bells. "Don't knock it till you've tried it, Mr. Hobo. I'm convinced that the more money you save up, the less you spend. Where do you get all these shapeless black sweatshirts from anyway?"

"Goodwill," he said seriously.

"I hope you wash them before wearing them."

"I'm not a wild animal, Ari."

"Hey, just checking. You think I don't know about the pile of socks under your bed?"

He turned to look at her and her eyes twinkled at him in the dark. Before he could say anything, they crossed a side street and a group of men across the street began cat-calling Ari. In retrospect, Bucky realized they must have been extremely drunk to cat-call a woman with a guy as tough-looking as him walking right next to her. But that was in retrospect. In the moment, all he could do was hear their disgusting words ringing in his ears while his temper rose with every second. He tried to force himself to keep walking but the men—the stupid, foolish, moronic men—stood up and began walking down the street as well, keeping an even pace with them.

Ari must have seen the fury on his face because she clutched his hand even tighter and sighed. "Don't. I told you, it's normal. I mean—this isn't normal, I don't usually walk around alone at night, so this is a little freakier than normal—but this is nothing new."

"It isn't right," he hissed. "You shouldn't have to take it."

"I know, but what can you do, change the whole world?" she asked lightly, trying to make a joke of it. She tugged at his hand, all while his thoughts swam with images of all the times Ari must have had to stay silent and walk faster to avoid some leech calling out at her. She was so desensitized to it that it was normal to her. Hell, he had been so desensitized that he'd never even really thought about it before, never really thought about how awful it must feel for the victim.

"Soldier, come on," she said anxiously, pulling him along. "It's okay. Let's go home, I'm tired. My legs hurt."

"Want me to carry you?" he asked automatically.

She laughed. "No, I'm good, thanks. Not in the mood to make a fool of myself right now."

She was trying to distract him and it almost worked—almost. Until one of the men shouted something so disgusting that Bucky snapped. Later, he blamed a variety of factors. His temper had been mounting ever since he realized what an issue this was for Ari. His mind had been spinning with all sorts of imagined scenarios of her, desperate and helpless (though in reality he figured that had probably never happened to her). And he'd had the bloodlust feeling in his mouth, in his throat, for a while now—an urge to make something want to hurt.

So he snapped.

He launched himself across the street before Ari could cry out and quickly went to work. He didn't kill the men, oh no—he was smart enough not to do that. But he came close. He grabbed one guy by the collar—the alcohol was radiating off of him in almost-tangible waves—and hurled him into the nearest wall so hard he thought he heard a crack. Good. Then he spun and punched the next guy right in the face, sending him down hard. The men tried to fight, but sloppy-drunk and human-weak that they were, they stood no chance next to a furious Bucky. He heard Ari yelling but her words didn't seem to reach him in his red-tinged craze. He grabbed one man by the head and slammed it against a streetlamp. The man screamed, a flood of red pouring down his forehead. For one moment, Bucky paused—and then he shrugged and spun, kicking the last one in the gut and knocking him down and out completely. He turned back to the man he'd punched, who lay stirring feebly on the ground, and raised his foot over the man's head, ready to bring it down with deadly force—

"STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Ari screamed so loudly in his ears that he was startled out of his rage and stood there for a moment, foot raised, blinking and disoriented. Then he spun, trying to see if she was hurt. Why was she screaming? Was she afraid? Had she gotten hurt? What—

It took him a few moments to blink the shimmery red haze out of his eyes and realize that Ari was not shaking with fear but shaking with anger. "What. Were. You. DOING?" she yelled.

"I was—I was—" He felt oddly like a child who was being scolded for being bad.

"Have you lost your—" She broke off mid-shout and inhaled deeply, pressing her fingers to her temples. "Soldier. I understand you—I understand you have problems. Temper problems, impulse control problems, and I know you want to protect me, but—"

For some reason, her rationalizing and trying to be calm and soothing sparked his temper more than her shouting had—perhaps because shouting and anger had been a normal reaction but once again Ari was being abnormal and displaying an alarming tendency to remain unprovoked even in the most deserving situations. "Did you hear what they were shouting?" he demanded angrily.

"Yes, but—"

"You were the one who told me that it's frustrating and creepy!"

"Yeah, but—"

"So what? So did I do a bad thing? Those were not good guys, Ari. I know you're determined to see the good in every damn person in the world—"

"That's not how you deal with situations, Soldier!" Ari shouted. "You—you can't do things like this anymore! You're not a mercenary anymore! I'm not saying you have to be perfect—cause god knows none of us are, and we're all messed up in our own ways—but you can't just keep killing and hurting people because it's going to hurt you! It's going to kill you in the end! I can't—I can't let you keep doing this. It's not right, it's not normal—it's not good for you—"

"And I suppose you always know what's good for me, Ari?" he asked with awful sarcasm, knowing he was being terribly cruel and hating himself for it but unable to stop. "You just love fixing me up, right? That's what I am to you, a broken toy to fix?"

Ari's face had gone startlingly white and she stared at him. Already the waves of guilt were crashing over him and the words to apologize were bubbling up at his lips—Just say them, you idiot, just SAY THEM! Say you're sorry!—but his ego wouldn't let him back down. So he stared back. Finally, she said in an eerily-calm voice, "I think we'd better go back before someone finds these bodies and calls the police. I have to get some rest and pack my stuff up tomorrow."

"Fine," he said, his own voice strangely calm and empty. "Let's go."

They resumed walking down the street in the direction of their house but this time, Ari didn't hold his hand. She walked with a foot between them—but it felt like a divide as wide as the sea to Bucky, and Ari felt oceans away from him.

And he didn't know if he'd be able to come up for air any time soon.

A/N: Reviews would be awesome! Sometimes I feel like it's hard to write this story because I wonder if anyone is even reading it. I'm going to finish it, of course, because I love my characters—but it is disheartening, I won't lie. On another note, this story has also been hard to write because I was VERY torn on where to take the plot for a very long time. But I sat down this weekend and drafted out the whole story, so hopefully it should be faster going now (even though, gah, COLLEGE).