The sparring session lasts just over two hours, Clint and Natasha refusing to let Sam and Bucky leave until they tire out enough to do something stupid that the more experienced Avengers can hold over their heads. But let's be honest, Bucky doesn't really tire out. And while some of his technique may be getting a bit rusty as his Hydra programming gets buried deeper down in his subconscious, he's not one to make mistakes in a fight.

So it's really poor Sam who gets pushed to his limit. "You guys do realize I'm just a… a human being, right?" he says, collapsing onto the mat in an prone heap of flesh and sweat.

"So are we," Clint tells him as he looms above, dropping a towel onto his chest.

Natasha takes a seat on the mat beside him, delicately folding her legs up beneath her. She doesn't sound out of breath at all when she declares, "If you want to go in the field with us, you've gotta be able to keep up with us."

"Leave him alone," Bucky mutters from behind. "He's doing fine."

All three of them turn to stare wide-eyed at the sweaty super soldier.

"Did you just defend him?" Clint asks with a smirk.

"I'm just saying, he can keep up. You two just won't admit defeat."

"Oh my God," Sam drawls out, rolling onto his stomach and pushing himself up off the mat. He lumbers over to Bucky and practically falls into him, wrapping his arms around him in a giant bear hug. "Did we just become best friends?"

Bucky stiffens and rolls his eyes before shaking him off and giving him enough of a shove to cause the man to stumble back into Natasha.

"I think Tessa being away is rotting your brain," she says. "This is an alarming development."

"Well, she should be back on Sunday, right?" Clint asks. Bucky nods. He turns to Sam. "Better get your hugs in while you can."

Sam throws his arms out wide and grins cheekily. "C'mon, big guy," he says to Bucky, waggling his fingers at him. "You know you want some of this chocolate thunder."

"Oh God," Natasha yelps, averting her eyes as she leaps to her feet. "Too far."

Bucky glares daggers at the Falcon. "Don't touch me again," he says simply.

Sam just laughs and reaches down to pick up his towel. "I gotta tell ya, man," he starts, the chuckles gradually dispersing. "I'm surprised you let her go. I mean… after what happened… I figured it'd be months before you let Tess leave your sight. Or years. Or, you know… forever."

Bucky lets out a long, deflating sigh. "I don't know what makes you think I have any control over her. I've never let Tessa do anything."

"Of course not," Natasha scoffs, dabbing at the sweat on her brow. "You don't get to control people." Bucky raises a single brow, giving her a really? look. "Mind control aside," she obliges. "You don't get to control the people you love."

"Oh, but if I could," Clint offers wistfully.

"If you ever wanted to have any control over your wife, you married the wrong woman," she tells him.

He throws out a quick psh. "Not Laura. If anything, she should have more say over what I do. But those kids… man I wish I had just a little more control over those emotional terrorists."

Sam laughs heartily. "Emotional terrorists? What'd they do?"

He shakes his head. "I'd been gone for three weeks… three weeks. I come home and the baby's either ignoring me or crying in my face, Lila says she'd rather spend the weekend at her friend's sleepover, and then the oldest boy beat me in a game of one on one. And laughed about it."

"Which is why we shall not speak his name," Nat interjects.

Clint just nods.

"Well," Sam starts, pleasant smile, but serious look on his face. "You can't really expect them to drop everything for you. I mean, when you're home, your life might revolve around them. But for them, you coming and going, that's just their everyday."

"Jesus," he intones. "You sound like my wife."

"Aw," Natasha says. "You finally found a work wife. Congratulations."

"Very funny."

Bucky turns to the group with a frown, looks directly at Clint when he says, "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"The wife, the kids, the… home? And this?" he asks, gesturing at the sprawling, high-tech Avengers gym around them.

"Planning for the future?" Sam asks with a chuckle.

Bucky rolls his eyes without sparing the man so much as a glance. "I'm just curious."

"Cap still harassing you about living in sin?" Clint asks, a playful lilt to his voice. "Telling you to lock that down?"

"You know, for being a 100-year-old man, he really is quite the busy body yenta," Natasha complains. Then, tossing a meaningful glance at Bucky, "But he also isn't wrong. You obviously want to marry her."

Sam's tone is serious, the same one he uses in group therapy sessions, when he offers, "Not that any of us really needed a reminder, but I think we all just got one about how short and fragile life can be."

Bucky slumps onto a bench. "I don't know," he says absently, scrubbing at his face with his palms. "I don't know how to do it."

Nat wrinkles her brow. "Propose? That's easy. Drop a ring in a beaker or a petri dish… the science nerd in her will love it."

He looks up at her with a confused sort of grimace. "No, not propose… live. Be married. Have a family. Be… normal." He drops his gaze down to his shoes. "Be happy."

"You think you might be overthinking things a bit?" she asks him with a coy wink.

He shakes his head absently. "It's just… I always thought it'd be easy. I'd find a nice girl, settle down, maybe buy a place outside the city. We'd have a couple kids. Eventually retire and die."

"Romantic," she mutters snidely.

"Then you went to war, got captured, got superpowers, and became Hydra's bitch… and all bets are off, right?" Clint asks.

Bucky nods. "Yeah, something like that." He lets his head fall back dramatically as he lets out another pained sigh. "I just don't know."

"Okay," Clint says, clapping his hands together and heading for the bench. He drops down beside Bucky and gives him a quick, sharp pat on the shoulder. "Real talk. Doesn't matter who you are or what you are. Doesn't matter what kind of weird, fucked up past you've had, or what kind of job you've got. None of that matters. When it comes to love and marriage and making a family…" he shakes his head slowly. "It's the same for everybody, Sarge. You don't get to know."

Bucky looks up at him and gives him an are you crazy? look. "Not helpful," he utters softly.

Clint just chuckles. "I didn't want a farm house in the middle of nowhere. I never thought I'd have kids, never thought I'd ever even want them. And honestly, when I first met Laura… no, no way in hell was I the kind of guy who was going to settle down and get married. Not me. Not ever."

"Ah," Sam offers with a smug smile. "Ain't no woman gonna tame that wild animal, huh? Let the hawk fly free!" Everyone in the room gives him a disappointed look, accented with either a sad head shake or a deep roll of the eyes.

Clint simply leans back and lets out a long sigh. "But," he goes on, "I knew I wanted her. That's what you get to know. I knew that I wanted to be with Laura forever. And if that meant putting on a monkey suit and saying I do in front of her crazy family… fine. If it meant having dual identities and becoming an amateur farmer on the weekends… fine. If it meant buying a house and a damn minivan…" He turns bodily to face Bucky. "Kids? Let me tell you something, Sarge. No one knows what they're getting themselves into with kids. No one knows how they're gonna manage that train wreck. But if you get lucky enough to ever hold your very own baby in your arms… that first time…" he shakes his head thoughtfully. "That feeling… that's knowing." He gets up with a slight groan. "'Course someday that kid'll kick your ass at basketball and call you old, and you'll go right back to not knowing a damn thing – how'd I end up here? Am I doing the right thing? Am I providing enough for them? Loving them enough? Are they happy? Am I happy? Am I missing out on something… on everything?" He takes in a deep breath, grabs his water bottle, and turns to head for the door. "Yeah. You don't get to know. You just gotta take your chances." He throws a little wink Bucky's way. "But I've never regretted the chance I took, I'll tell you that much."

"Well," Natasha says as the door shuts behind Barton. "That was enlightening." She looks over at Bucky, who's still sitting on the bench, his face screwed up in confusion. "You want to go shop for a ring, or you want me to help you pack a getaway bag?"

He pulls in a sharp breath and buries his head in his hands.

"What?" she asks.

He looks up at her, running his fingers dramatically down his face. "Hydra," he breathes out. "I've got this… monster in my closet…"

"And the monster is you," she drones.

Sam steps up, his face serious when he says, "No, no, no." They both give him a confused look, as though they'd forgotten he was still there. "You can't think that way, man," he tells Bucky, utter sincerity lacing his words.

"You don't get it. You don't understand what it's like to… to…"

"To have been a monster," Natasha finishes for him. Bucky simply widens his eyes and waves a hand in her direction as if to say, yes…that.

Sam lets out a soft sigh. "Would you stop with that word?"

"Monster?" she asks innocently. He gives her a chiding glare. "It's true, Sam. He was a ruthless assassin who mindlessly killed dozens of people."

"Hundreds," he corrects.

Sam scoffs. "Because he was manipulated into doing it. He was brainwashed!"

"Doesn't change the fact that he did it."

"Would you stop?" he almost pleads with her.

"I can say those things because I've been in the same spot… or close to it. I know what it's like to try and turn your life around, change all the bad to… less bad. I know what it's like to work so damn hard to be who you want to be, and to have this… weight of who you once were holding you down." She gives him a sad, knowing look. "And Barnes is right… you don't get that."

Sam exhales loudly and takes a seat on the bench next to Bucky. "I'm not saying you don't have a past… either of you," he says, glancing up at Natasha. "But I deal with vets all the time who have killed and –"

"And that was war," he interrupts. "I know war. That's not what this is."

Sam shakes his head. "Isn't it? Only difference I see is that you've been at war longer than most men have been alive."

"We're not exactly your typical soldier, Sam," Natasha tells him sharply.

He looks up at her and shrugs. "Everyone has different experiences. I've been at the VA long enough to know that much. Some soldiers like to kill. It's not just a shitty part of the job that they have to do. They enjoy it. They get a thrill out of it… a rush." He raises a single brow in her direction. "That's really the problem for you, right? You liked what you did a little too much?" She scowls and immediately looks away. "Then you get out of it for a bit and you see how messed up it all was." He rises and stands in front of her. "Thing is… it's not really as messed up as you think."

"You sure about that?" Bucky asks, one terribly skeptical eyebrow raised.

"I'm just saying… so many of us struggle with feeling like we're not right… not normal. We blame ourselves for enjoying things we think we shouldn't," he says, looking at Natasha. Then, turning back to Bucky, "Or we refuse to let go of guilt because we think if we do, we're saying that what we did was okay."

"Damn," Nat breathes out. "You are good."

He smiles and lets out a light chuckle. "Point is… there is no right. There is no normal. So don't get hung up on how you see yourself. You might not be a normal guy. But no one really is."

"Well," Natasha adds. "He's definitely not. But neither is Tessa." She turns to face Bucky. "You're 100 years old. Tessa's a mutant. You can run fast, heal fast, and, frankly, kill fast. And she can –"

"Deflect bullets," Sam finishes. "I've seen it. It was fucked up."

"And other things," Natasha continues with an irritated shake of the head.

"It's not just that," he counters, a hint of sadness to his voice. "Normal, not normal. Monster or not… No matter how I see myself, I'm always going to have Hydra in my head." He pulls in a deep breath. "And maybe in my life." His hands fly up in surrender. "They're still out there. And at some point, they will come back. For me."

"And at some point, this Lobe guy probably will come back for Tess," Sam says, causing Bucky's eyes to jerk up and toss him a vicious glare. He just shrugs. "It's true."

"We all have targets on our backs," Natasha adds. "Part of the job. The life we lead."

Sam chimes in again with, "I know that Bucky Barnes, the kid from Brooklyn who ended up on the western front, probably wanted nothing more than a nice, normal life. Right?" He doesn't respond, just stares ahead blankly. "Thing is… you're not that kid anymore. You can't live your life based on what he would've wanted. He's gone, man. You gotta ask yourself what you want."

"Damn it," Natasha ekes out. "He's like Confucius."

Bucky rises from the bench with a sigh. "I think I've had enough advice for one day," he says as he trudges out of the gym.

Once they're alone, Natasha turns to Sam thoughtfully. "That was good. It was." She smiles at him, sweet and sultry. "But if you ever try to psychoanalyze me again, I'll tear your arm out of the socket and make it look like it was your own fault."

He gives her a wide smile of his own. "I am feeling so much love in here tonight. So much love!"