Home. Amy was home. Slowly waking up in her own bed for the first time in forever. More or less in her own bed anyway. She was teetering precariously on the edge of her mattress, right arm already dangling outside the covers, her whole body just one roll away from landing on the floor.

How she'd ended up in her own bed- well, she wasn't entirely sure.

But the pieces weren't hard to put together.

She remembered the flight from Portland. Remembered emerging from the plane's cockpit, happy but exhausted, hardly able to keep her eyes open. Wishing for grace and elegance, and falling rather short, as she made her way back down the cabin.

Bucky had told her to sleep.

A frown pinched Amy's brow. She turned over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. She recalled thinking that there had been something not quite right. The atmosphere had felt heavy, oppressive, crushed under the weight of too much pressure. Hadn't it? She wasn't sure anymore. She thought she remembered meaning to ask what was wrong.

But she hadn't had the strength to disobey Bucky's order to sleep, so sleep she had- waking only to be dosed with the pain medication that always knocked her for a loop. She supposed it must have knocked her out for the rest of the journey back to Washington.

She lifted her head off the pillow in search of the time. 15:42. Great. She decided to blame the fact that she'd overslept on switching time zones. Still, her body ached, both with hunger and with pain, but there was nevertheless a small smile starting to blossom on Amy's lips. She wriggled up the mattress into a sitting position so that she could take a better look at her bedside table.

"I know how you wake up thirsty," she read aloud, touching a finger to the yellow post-it note that had been stuck to the side of a large glass of orange juice.

She took a sip, although it was hard to drink around the grin that she was now wearing. Thirst quenched, she reached for one of her many new boxes of pills. They had all been laid out on the bedside table. A bowl of fresh fruit had been left for her too. She washed down two tablets, and then peeled a banana. Took a bite. Chewed thoughtfully and looked around her bedroom.

So, she really was home. Home alone? Clearly someone had put her to bed. All right, clearly Bucky had put her to bed. He'd left her wearing the dress that the nurse had bought for her back in Portland instead of changing her into something more comfortable. A courtesy for which Amy was eternally grateful. She'd bare her soul to Bucky without hesitation, but the thought of baring her body still filled her with unease.

Undesirable.

That had been Dan's parting assessment.

It didn't help that Bucky was so much more than simply desirable in comparison. Amy squirmed restlessly. She'd never seen a man anywhere near as good looking as he was outside a movie screen. And yes, she had noticed the looks he'd drawn from her female doctors and nurses. They had ranged from admiring to downright voracious.

Did he know what he could do to a woman with one heavy glance? And was it shallow of her to melt whenever she remembered the power of his body? To turn to liquid fire when she recalled the taste of his mouth? Her father would deem it sinful, but then he'd always considered Amy a sinner.

Striving to push those thoughts aside, she finished eating her banana and struggled out from under her covers, grabbing the crutches that had been left next to her bed.

Once she persuaded her body that it wanted to move, Amy made a careful circuit of the house. Empty. Completely. Well, she hadn't checked the living room, because- just because- but the house definitely felt empty.

Amy hobbled back into the kitchen, deciding to take advantage of the almost forgotten luxury of privacy. She grabbed scissors, waterproof tape and a plastic bag from under the sink, and then headed for the bathroom. There was just one thought in her head. Shower. To have a shower in her own house with her own soap and her own shampoo. It would be heaven. She might finally be able to scrub the smell of antiseptic off her skin.

She sat on the edge of the bath and kitted herself out. Cast protected, Amy quickly stripped off her clothes and edged under the showerhead. Stood there for a couple of minutes, just letting the water cascade down her body. She waited until her muscles started to loosen, and then she began lathering her skin and shampooing her hair, enjoying the steamy sauna of citrus and bubbles until her fingertips started to wrinkle.

Feeling like a new person, Amy wrapped herself in a large fluffy towel and half walked, half hopped, back to her bedroom. She sank down onto the bed and patted her skin dry, lifting her eyes when she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror that sat on her dressing table.

She raised her head. Slowly, hesitantly, she looked at the woman in the mirror, forced herself to hold her gaze when her immediate reaction was to turn away.

For the first time in a long time, she tried to see herself with her own eyes. Not with Dan's eyes, or her parent's, not even Bucky's would do. She wanted to find Amy. The girl with bunches and braces and constantly skinned knees. The girl who wasn't afraid of anything.

So she was never going to be perfect.

So what?

Who was perfect? Demanded that precocious child from her past.

That was her face. Her body. Reflected in the glass. And if she couldn't love herself, how was she supposed to ask anyone else to love her?

The woman in the mirror offered a hesitant smile. Yes, her hair could do with a cut, and it was probably well past time that she headed back to the gym. She wasn't even going to examine her leg, and she had a nice new shiny scar on her shoulder. But every line on her face, every mark on her body, told the story of her life. And life hadn't beaten her yet. She was still putting up a pretty good fight.

Amy breathed out, let go, a little, and finished drying. She dug out some clothes. Found a pair of denim shorts that she hadn't seen for years, deliberated for an age, but finally pulled them on along with a white cotton shirt, and then tugged her hair into a ponytail. She grabbed an apple and went to see if there was anything more substantial to eat in the house.

Someone, okay, it was undoubtedly Bucky again, had cleared her fridge of all the mouldy, outdated food that had been left in it to rot while she'd been- well, away- and left a tureen of soup behind in its place.

She owned a soup tureen. Seriously? That was news to Amy.

She peeled another post-it note off its lid.

"Microwave, two minutes on full power, stir, return for one more minute."

Amy's smile turned into a wry smirk. He thought he needed to leave her instructions on how to reheat soup, did he?

But she did as she was told. Managed to sit at the table with her meal without incident. She blew on her spoon, and wondered where Bucky was- considered searching the house for further clues- but assumed he would appear sooner or later. Amy caught herself smiling when she realised how confident in that assumption she felt.

Still, it didn't help her now…

She finished eating, looked around. Bored. Caught sight of the doorway to the living room and shivered. She reached up and rubbed her shoulder. She was going to have to redecorate. Probably needed to call her old therapist too.

Amy was quick to decide what she needed right now though. Grabbed her crutches again and limped outside to the garage. She gave the Dodge an affectionate pat as she passed it, making for her workbench. Spared a smile for her 'happy memories' noticeboard, as christened by Bucky.

She propped her crutches against the wall, pulled herself up onto a high stool and flicked through her notebooks. When she found one with some empty pages, she laid it open on the bench in front of her. Picked up a pencil and held it between her fingers, tapping it against her thumbnail a few dozen times before she finally began sketching.

Amy always lost track of time when she was working on something that she cared about. Today was no different. The light outside was gradually fading, as she added layers and circuits and intricacies to the diagram, complex touches that were probably impossible to construct. Probably. But possibly not. She reached for her engineer's scale and knocked an eraser onto the floor.

Annoyed, she bent to try and reach it. No good. Struggling not to overbalance, she risked leaning a little further to the left, stretching her fingers to their limits. The legs of her stool gave a perilous wobble. Started to tip. That was the moment before a hand clamped itself around Amy's arm, a second caught her about the waist.

She lost her breath in a little puff of air, as she was simultaneously pulled back onto her seat and backwards into the solid heat of a man's chest. Amy swallowed. Centred her weight. Tried to temper the butterflies that were swarming in the pit of her stomach, as she twisted around so that she could look up into Bucky's face.

"Can you stop taking chances like that?"

He didn't look amused.

But he also didn't let go.

Amy looked simply doubtful.

"Um. Probably not?"

"I'm serious, Amy. You need to take better care of yourself."

She wrinkled her nose and shrugged her shoulders.

"That's what I've got you for, right?" she asked, smiling, and then had to worry that she had offended him when her smile wasn't returned. His hands slid slowly from her body. Left her feeling empty. She cleared her throat. "So have you been standing there long waiting for me to do something stupid?"

"No." Bucky's reply was a low growl. "It only took a couple of minutes."

Ouch.

Amy winced.

"What are you doing out here?" he asked, leaning over her shoulder.

Amy was pretty sure that she wasn't imagining the way he was breathing in the scent of her hair, but did he need to stand quite so close if he didn't intend to kiss her?

Something was bothering him. There was a sense of tension in the way that he held himself. His lips were pressed tight together. Hands buried in his pockets. Amy could only hope that it wasn't purely her ineptitude that was the problem. She was painfully aware that she could feel the warmth of his body surrounding her, smell the masculine scent of his skin, a combination of spice and musk and something else that was purely Bucky.

He had on the same clothes that he'd been wearing on the plane, jeans and a t-shirt, and a black leather jacket. The shadow that covered his jaw told her he hadn't shaved today. All of which hinted that he hadn't been back to Steve's apartment. Maybe something really was wrong.

"Amy?"

"Hrm?" She dragged her mind back into focus, looked back at what she was doing. "Oh. I was just doodling."

"Just doodling?"

"Mmhmm." Amy nodded. Bucky moved from her back to her side, resting his hip against her workbench. He folded his arms loosely across his chest and waited for her to continue. She tapped her pencil absentmindedly against her leg. "Working out an upgrade. Maybe," she said, looking at his arm.

He stared down at her, frowning. Why was she incapable of making him smile today?

She tried a different tack.

"Thanks for the soup by the way. Did you conquer the grocery store?"

Bucky's eyes narrowed a fraction.

"Sam bought you the basics. I just fixed it into something edible. He met us at the airport last night. You don't remember?"

Amy gave a little helpless shrug.

"Not really."

"You were pretty out of it. Steve wanted to take you to the emergency room."

"Thank you for stopping him."

Bucky looked up from the floor. He'd been scuffing the heel of his boot against the concrete, but now he appeared more interested in studying Amy's face.

"I wasn't sure if I'd done the right thing." He reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Better. That was much better. She relaxed and turned into his touch. "I needed to check that you could actually cope here alone."

Good of him not to mention the fact that he'd just saved her from falling flat on her face in that case- or the fact that he had clearly given her much more than a little helping hand in getting settled in…

"You stayed with me all night though?" she asked.

"I didn't know how you'd react if you woke up in the middle of the night and that was when it hit you that you were home."

Right. Because she wasn't known for being the brightest crayon in the box when she woke up in the middle of the night, and the last time she'd been at home she hadn't exactly been having the best time ever.

Someone walked over her grave.

Probably Kraus.

"I'm going to gut the living room," she said, by way of answer to his unvoiced concerns.

Bucky rubbed his temples.

"When?"

"Thought I might start next week."

"Can't you just take it easy, Amy?"

It was very nearly a plea.

"I have been taking it easy. Besides, you could always give me a hand?"

She looked at Bucky hopefully. Quite aside from how very helpful it would actually be to have him on board, she wasn't exactly averse to watching him perform a little light manual labour. Having him all hot and dirty when they weren't preoccupied fighting for their lives, well, a girl was hardly going to complain, was she?

"That might not be possible."

Amy's little fantasy disintegrated right in front of her eyes. She blinked at Bucky. Tried not to notice the way her stomach had just dropped. Told herself not to panic. It was just- it was the tone of his voice. So completely final. So she'd found a man she'd live and die for. So of course nothing was going to run smoothly thereafter.

Amy started to chew her lip.

"You want to expand on that a little?" she asked.

No.

He didn't.

But she was going to make him.

"Bucky."

"Can we go inside?" he asked, refusing to look her in the eye. He was staring at her noticeboard, at the photos and postcards that mapped out her life. Amy followed his gaze. Found her wise six year old self grinning back. Bucky brushed his fingers against her dog tags. "There's something I need to give you."