"Put the gun down, sweetheart."

The voice that sounded from the depths of the building was low and rough. Beatrice paused but didn't loosen her grip on the pistol. Her index finger was shaking on the trigger. Everything was in complete and utter darkness: even with the serum, her eyes couldn't penetrate the shadows.

A floorboard creaked loudly under her shoe as she took another cautious step forward, and Beatrice winced as the sound echoed like a shot. She reached out blindly and felt something like wallpaper peeling under her fingers. Hadn't Hill said this place was some sort of warehouse? Beatrice had the distinct sense she was somewhere very narrow. Where was Hill, anyway? A growing sense of unease whispered that she should have stayed in the car.

"I SAID DROP THE GUN!"

The roar came from right beside her, and the pistol was pried out of her hand with startling strength at the same moment bright light flooded her vision. Beatrice had just enough time to jump aside when she saw a fist flying at her and smash inches away from where her face had been right into the wall, plaster raining down over her. Beatrice instinctively ducked, but a foot shot out in front of her and she lost her balance, landing hard on the floor. She immediately lunged for her pistol, but a hand grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked backward as the cold metal of a knife dug into her throat. A thin trickle of blood ran down her collarbone as she stared at the twisted, gruesome face of a man almost entirely covered in bloodsoaked bandages, one peeling off to reveal a horrific red scar underneath. His clothes were stained with filth and his breath was rancid. A pair of eyes blacker than pitch bore into her own. She was pinned against the wall his fist had just slammed through.

Her eyes went wide as she stared up at him, struggling to free herself. She wasn't sure if she had gone weak with fear or the man looming over her was impossibly strong. Her wrists were trapped so tightly she could feel the circulation being cut off; she couldn't have used her powers even if she tried. A knee slammed into her chest, and she involuntarily gasped, feeling her eyes water. She couldn't even tell she had the serum now, what with the brute strength of the creature above her.

"I was hoping you'd show up," Brock Rumlow snarled, spittle flying out of his scarred mouth, and with a horrifying clarity Beatrice realized she hadn't come here of her own accord after all.

She had been lured.

The ceiling spun above her as she twisted her head to the side, trying to see where she was. A splintered wood floor, bare walls, a narrow opening barely wide enough for two people—was this some sort of front for the warehouse? Beatrice hadn't stood a chance of avoiding him. But then again, what residential buildings in Hell's Kitchen were wide enough to have been converted?

She tried to curl her fingers into a fist, to grab the shard of glass she'd taken from her champagne flute, but Rumlow grabbed her wrist and bent her fingers backward until Beatrice cried out in pain, salt stinging her eyes. She knew that the serum wouldn't last long against this man. She wasn't invulnerable. And he had already beaten Steve once.

"Try that again and it'll hurt even worse," Crossbones warned. His face filled her entire field of vision as he bent down close to her, smelling of blood. "But you're a nurse. You oughta know that," he hissed, rolling around the word on his tongue before hurling it at her as if it was an unimaginable insult. "I figured Rogers would want those letters back, but I didn't think you'd come to get them first. Ninety-four, huh? You look good for your age. Too bad your beloved Bucky won't have you."

It took all of Beatrice's self-control not to retort, to react instinctively and take the bait. She tensed, her teeth digging into her bottom lip with the effort of biting back her words, and Rumlow sneered, correctly guessing her struggle. "Talk all you want, sweetheart," he growled. "We're not going anywhere."

Still Beatrice refused to speak, knowing that would only give him what he wanted. She could feel the Tesseract's power winding around her insides, fueled by her fear and fury, but unable to find an outlet. She was too inexperienced, too unused to it. If she could only free her hands—

Rumlow swore loudly from above her and then, as if her prayers had been answered by God himself, loosened his grip on her wrists. Beatrice immediately kicked his legs out from under him and rolled out of his grasp, throwing out her arm towards her discarded pistol and willing it toward her. She didn't even need to envision it beforehand: an explosion of blue fire bursting from her fingers sent the pistol flying right into her hand, and she leapt to her feet as she felt the satisfying clink of cold metal against her palm. Rumlow knelt in the middle of the narrow hallway, trapped between Beatrice and Maria Hill, two guns pointed at his head.

"Sorry about the wait," Hill called over to her, as casually as if they were speaking over lunch. "I had to make sure he wasn't going to reveal anything else. You were never in any danger."

Beatrice stared blankly at the other woman, her mind struggling to comprehend the ridiculousness of the situation. "You knew I was here?" she asked, almost forgetting about the very real threat kneeling between them.

"If you're anything like Rogers, you didn't even bother to wait before rushing inside," Hill dryly remarked, and for the first time Beatrice could see why Fury held her in such high regard. She possessed the type of unflinching coolness that couldn't be taught. "Why do you think I gave you that gun?"

And Beatrice, still dazed, made her first mistake: she loosened her grip on it. Rumlow, seizing his chance, lunged at her with a speed that shouldn't have been possible given the extent of his injuries, and knocked it out of her grasp for the second time. The ear-splitting echo of a gunshot sent Beatrice reeling backward and Rumlow fell to the ground again with a howl of pain, clutching his bleeding leg. Hill had pulled the trigger so fast he hadn't even had time to touch Beatrice.

She snatched up her pistol again as Hill strode over to Rumlow and kicked him to the floor, her foot pressing down hard on his leg. He let out a stream of curses as blood streamed onto the floor, soaking Hill's boot. Beatrice felt faintly ill.

"We worked together, Brock," Hill said evenly. Her own gun was pointed at his forehead. "You know I'll do it."

"I know you will," Rumlow hissed. His face was twisted with loathing, fresh blood spilling onto his bandages. "But if I go, this whole place does too."

Hill didn't even flinch. Beatrice admired her fortitude. "What are you talking about?"

Rumlow's face twisted into what was supposed to be a feral grin, but he could barely manage a grimace—nevertheless the effect was unsettling. "You'll see," he rasped, and kicked out with his good leg as a small black rectangle tumbled out from his boot. A detonator.

Somehow, Beatrice knew what was going to happen before it did, and her instinct to help, to protect, took over her rage at Crossbones. She leapt at Hill, smashing both of them against the front door. It splintered under their combined weight, and they went tumbling down the front steps just as the building behind them exploded in a deafening burst of burning, agonizing fire.


It had all begun when she'd left for Europe.

No—before that, even. When George and Winifred Barnes were killed in their beloved Ford. When Heinz Kruger had shot Pryce and Beatrice knelt over his body, blood seeping out of his chest as he had died. Death. Always death, no matter how hard she tried to prevent it. Mrs. Banner being strangled in her apartment. Nancy's glassy stare as she crumpled to the floor. The boy Matthew being shot in the back of the head using a weapon built from the same power that now lay dormant within her. Her mother bloody and still in childbirth. Her father limp on the floor of their tenement. The unmarked graves of the children between her and Henry. The countless soldiers she had watched die, some of them resigned, others terrified, but all of it borne with the same finality.

She was dying too, now.

But not yet, a voice whispered inside her mind. Not yet.

She saw Steve's face, weary but determined. Natasha's steely glare and flame-red hair. Blue mist swirling around her fingertips. The roar of a motorcycle. The gleaming skyscrapers of New York. Henry's wizened features. The startling cold of cryofreeze. The blackness of unconsciousness. Zola's accented whisper. A train rocking under her. Lorraine's once-pretty face twisted with hatred. The damp hardness of a stone floor, soft sheets under her—Bucky kissing the breath out of her, making love to her, his hair in his face and his eyes half-closed, his heart slamming so hard even she could feel it, sweaty skin and tangled sheets, the heady intimacy—

No. Before.

Before him? Beatrice thought in confusion.

No. Before them.

She did, reluctantly—and suddenly she was sitting in the dental office taking dictation, missing her time at Bellevue. Sitting in high school, staring out the window and longing to be free. Sitting on the front step of the tenement and crying, her knees scraped, her dress ripped, knowing her parents were fighting.

And what had Beatrice done in the end? She had fallen in love with a soldier, too.


"If I may inform you, Captain Rogers, Miss Hartley's pulse is steadily increasing. She should be awakening shortly."

JARVIS's voice echoed weakly through Beatrice's ears, her mind sluggish and her thoughts muddled. She knew, somehow, that she was conscious, yet her brain protested against it. Something shuffled beside her, stirring up air, and a warm hand gently closed over her own, sensation slowly returning to her extremities.

She fought to open her eyes, struggling against the heaviness that weighed her down. She squeezed her fingers around the person holding her hand, hoping to anchor herself to consciousness. Light slowly trickled into her pupils as she forced open her eyelids.

The bare white ceiling of her bedroom at Avengers Tower greeted her, and Beatrice turned her head to the side with a wince as pain shot through her skull. She immediately jerked her hand back with a start when she saw Steve sitting on the edge of her bed, concern in his eyes. His brow was furrowed in worry, and Beatrice frowned right back at him, her mind still clouded.

"Steve?" she asked groggily, lifting her head from the mound of pillows to inspect him more closely. He wore a dark blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a pair of black jeans. The overall effect wasn't entirely unpleasant. "What are you doing here? You're supposed to be in Sokovia."

"Was," he corrected gently, taking his hand away from the space next to her own to rub the back of his neck. "We got back last night."

"Last night?" Beatrice repeated, glancing over at the clock hanging above the door. It was nearing either noon or midnight. "How—how long was I out?"

"Three days."

"Three days?" she echoed, staring at him in distress. "I don't understand. What happened?"

Steve raised his eyebrows in something that resembled disapproval. "You were hurt, Beatrice. The explosion in Hell's Kitchen nearly killed both you and Agent Hill. It would have killed Hill if you hadn't shielded her from most of the blast. JARVIS says the serum was the only thing that kept you alive. We wanted to let you wake up on your own."

Beatrice shifted uncomfortably, trying to hide a wince as her limbs protested against the movement. Her entire body felt sore and her head was pounding, but at least it was more bearable than emerging from cryofreeze. "Is she all right? Agent Hill?"

Steve nodded; a rueful grin crossed his face. "Yeah, she'll be fine. But we didn't know about you at first. We were still in Sokovia when JARVIS told us what happened. I was this close to leaving the rest of them and coming back to see you." He shook his head and regarded her with a look of affectionate exasperation. "I'm not used to being the one waiting at someone's bedside. I'm beginning to understand what it was like for Bucky when we were kids."

"Some people would call that payback," Beatrice remarked, earning herself a wry smirk from Steve. She felt gratified that his relief was so palpable. "Was the raid successful? Did you find Strucker?"

"As successful as it could have been. We got the scepter—Stark and Banner are studying it right now. Strucker was handed over to NATO. It looks like he was trying to experiment with it—reanimate the Chitauri. The aliens that attacked New York," he clarified at Beatrice's confused expression. "But as far as we know, they haven't completed anything. Thor will take the scepter to Asgard after Tony has a closer look at it."

Beatrice took a moment to digest his words, allowing relief to sink in. It all sounded simple—too simple. She had the distinct sense that Steve wasn't telling her something, that the crease in his brow when he'd mentioned Strucker was due to another problem entirely. But she had enough trust in him to know he would tell her if it involved her or Bucky. She would trust Steve with her life, and so she tried to push the thought to the back of her mind. "I'm sorry I didn't try to contact you," she began haltingly, awkwardly staring over his shoulder at the chaise longue in the corner, over which a pillow and blanket had been thrown. Had he slept here in case she woke up? "It all happened so fast, and I didn't want to bother you. I figured you would have come straight back to New York if you knew."

"You're right, I would have," Steve remarked. His eyes were very blue as he regarded her steadily. "The others could have done it without me. Listen…Beatrice…" He coughed awkwardly and glanced down at the duvet. "You never bother me, all right? I thought we established this in 1942." This brought a smile to Beatrice's face, and he looked pleased, sitting up straighter and meeting her eyes again. "I'm always here if you need me."

"I know," Beatrice said quietly. She glanced over at the phone on her nightstand, sitting under the floral lampshade she had once openly admired in the tower's reception area. That night, an identical one had been in her bedroom. She wondered who had been responsible for that. Drawing in a deep breath, she ventured, "I guess this is the part where I apologize."

"Apologize?" Steve asked; he seemed genuinely taken aback. "For what?"

"For going to find Crossbones myself. It was just—" Beatrice wrung her hands, searching for the right words. "He took my letters, Steve!" she finally burst out. "He can expose Bucky as the Winter Soldier, tell the public what happened to me."

Steve shook his head. There was something hard and bitter in his eyes. "It's not your fault, Beatrice. It's mine. Rumlow was after me. He wants revenge for what I did to him in Washington. Tony thinks he must have accessed Hydra databases and was able to disable JARVIS with their technology. He wanted whoever was in the tower to follow him. That building wasn't a warehouse at all—it's where Hydra stored some of their weaponry. He was going to kill you both to send a message to us."

Beatrice swallowed hard. "Is he dead?"

"No," Steve said tightly. "At least not that we know of. We couldn't find a body. He still has the letters, Beatrice. I'm sorry. But it's highly unlikely he'll come back anytime soon. He's still too injured."

"But if he has access to Hydra technology—"

"Not anymore." Steve stood up and looked seconds away from beginning to pace in frustration. Beatrice recognized this self-directed blame, but could think of no way to remedy it. "He no longer allies himself with them. He's just out for himself. He'll probably try to blackmail me again someday."

Beatrice leaned back against her pillows and pressed her hand to her forehead, wincing when it brushed against a bruise. "What about JARVIS?"

"I am quite unharmed, Miss Hartley. Mr. Stark is installing new security protocols to prevent this sort of incident from occurring again." The cool, robotic voice was quick to reply. "He wishes for you to join him in the laboratory when you are well enough."

Beatrice raised her eyebrows in mild surprise. What could Tony possibly want to talk to her about? "I'm well enough now," she said immediately.

"You don't have to hurry," Steve was quick to assure her. He sounded as if the last thing he wanted to do was go to the laboratory.

Beatrice glanced over at him with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. "I'm fine," she said, pushing aside the bedclothes and standing up. But she had barely taken a step forward when the world tilted around her and she swayed on her feet. Steve was immediately at her side, one hand on her back and the other tight on her arm in case she fell again. All Beatrice could see was blue.

"Look," she told him pointedly, hoping her sudden lapse in concentration was still a side-effect of her injuries. "Wouldn't you be like this too after not moving for days, serum or not? I'm a nurse, Steve."

"I think medical practices have changed a bit since the forties."

His expression was completely serious. Beatrice sighed, but didn't move to pull away—and neither did he.


"I gotta say, you did good, kid. Not many people would have the guts to do what you did. Or tried to do."

Tony's dark eyes glittered in amusement as he stared down at Beatrice, who shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Though the Avengers appeared tired from the mission, they all seemed to be in fairly good spirits after their trip to Sokovia—except for Clint, who had apparently been injured in the firefight and was recovering in the medbay. Bruce Banner hovered just behind Tony, wearing a white lab coat and fiddling with his glasses.

"Why is she a kid but I'm an old man?" Steve questioned from behind Beatrice. Tony smirked.

Howard used to call me that too, Beatrice thought with a touch of regret. She suspected it was due to her height more than anything else. Still, she was flattered that Stark had complimented her; she suspected genuine praise didn't come too often from him.

"He feels guilty, but he'll never tell you that."

Natasha crossed her arms as she came walking up to Beatrice wearing an unreadable expression. The arrow necklace glinted on her neck as it briefly caught in the light.

"Guilty for what?" Beatrice asked, trying to hide her discomfort. She had no idea how to act around her niece. Even the word filled her with a sense of dread.

"He blames himself for the security breach," the spy explained. "Deep down he's glad you're all right."

Beatrice gave a short laugh. "That's reassuring," she said wryly. "But I guess I'm guilty, too. Agent Hill told me you wanted her to keep an eye on me while you were in Sokovia."

Natasha's unflinching green gaze honed in on Beatrice, her lips pursed in contemplation. "In the end you probably saved her life. She's still out of it—she didn't recover as fast as you. But she'll be fine."

Of course, she hadn't answered the real question. Knowing she likely wouldn't at this point, Beatrice decided to move to a more favorable topic. "What about Jason Burke? The doorman Rumlow threatened."

Natasha shrugged one shoulder. "Stark's giving him six months of paid leave and a place to lay low for a while. I don't think he's going to complain about that."

"I guess not." But Beatrice's attention had suddenly focused on something else as quickly as if a switch had been turned on: a glowing blue stone encased at the top of a long gold staff lying on the table behind Bruce. The scepter, she thought with a peculiar sense of awe. Before Beatrice knew what she was doing, she was drifting toward it, a nagging pull deep in her chest—

Someone grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to a stop. "This is why I wanted to see you," Tony said, his hand tight on her upper arm. The eerie azure glow of the stone was reflected in his eyes as he gazed down at it. "Looks similar to the Tesseract, doesn't it?"

Beatrice nodded mechanically, but she barely heard his words. As if she wasn't acting entirely of her own will, she reached a hand out to it—she felt strangely giddy, like she wasn't inhabiting her own body anymore—and just before her fingers made contact with the stone, there was a burst of blinding yellow light and she was roughly pulled from her own mind.


Her cheek scratched against fabric; a warm, heavy weight was draped across her waist. Beatrice's eyes snapped open—she was lying on an unfamiliar bed, staring at a light pastel wallpaper she couldn't remember ever seeing before.

She looked down, alarmed, and saw an arm curled loosely around her, fingers splayed on her hip. Beatrice's eyes slowly moved up the arm, past an elbow and a shoulder, until finally landing on the person lying next to her, a soft snore echoing around the bedroom. She immediately scrambled backwards, but forgetting the bedclothes, ended up tumbling down hard onto the floor, still tangled in the sheets.

Bucky awoke with a start, raising his head and blinking sleepily at her. He was undeniably her Bucky, Bucky as she had met him, with short, closely-cropped hair and a clean-shaven face. He looked younger than he ever had during the war. It was something in his eyes—something lifted, lighter, as if all he had seen and done no longer weighed him down.

No, Beatrice thought, it was as if it had never weighed him down.

"Rosie?" he asked, his voice rough with sleep. "What's wrong?"

Beatrice gave a choked sob at hearing the name again, the simple word piercing through her like a spear. "B—Bucky," she gasped hoarsely. Her entire body felt numb. "How—?"

The look of confusion on his face quickly morphed into one of concern. "What is it, Rosie?" he asked again, soothingly, the endearment falling easily from his lips. He threw off his own bedclothes and hurried over to her; he wore nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, and the jagged scars Beatrice had once lovingly traced along his skin were absent. She could only watch wordlessly as he untangled her from the blankets before taking her arms and pulling her gently back onto the bed.

Beatrice didn't resist; her legs felt like jelly. "It's not you," she said dully, her head shaking robotically. Her eyes were beginning to burn from refusing to blink. "It can't be you. You're—you're—"

"It is me, doll," Bucky said solemnly. She recognized something like worry in his gray eyes. He reached out and took her hand in his, slowly bringing it up to his bare chest. His skin felt warm and solid and real. Beatrice could feel his heart pounding under his ribs. "Every inch, I promise."

She finally met his gaze as he raised her hand again, this time to his face. The beginnings of stubble were rough under Beatrice's fingers as she tentatively ran her hand over his jaw, her fingertips coming to rest on his lips. His mouth parted slightly and his breath ghosted across her skin. His other hand came up to rest over her own, holding her there. Beatrice could hardly breathe.

"God, I love you, Rosie," Bucky murmured. Heat rushed to Beatrice's face as she pushed away the part of her mind that was telling her this was too good to be true—he was saying exactly what she wanted, doing what she wanted—it was like a feverish dream, but since when were dreams so detailed that she could see flecks of brown in Bucky's eyes, could count each of his eyelashes? But she had to know—she had to ask him—

"Do you?" Beatrice stopped, stuttered, and swallowed hard, suddenly unable to get the words out. "What if—what if you forgot everything? Forgot about me?"

Bucky looked truly alarmed now, drawing back to stare at her. "What are you talking about? I could never forget you, Rosie. It would be like forgetting myself."

"No, what if someone…made you forget? Took your memories away?" Beatrice asked desperately. She took his face in both of her hands, silently pleading. "Would you still love me? Could you ever remember me again? Would you still—would you still want me?"

Bucky's head shook in disbelief, a tiny movement he didn't seem to be aware of. "Of course I'd still love you. Forever. If I didn't, it wouldn't be me at all." He peered closely at her. "Is that what you want me to say? Did you have a nightmare or something?"

"Something like that," Beatrice admitted, and he pulled her close to him again as she automatically relaxed in the warmth of his arms.

"Don't worry, sugar," he murmured into her hair. "We have the whole weekend to ourselves. We don't need to sleep at all. Becca'll spoil Elena and George, you know she will."

Beatrice stared at him, uncomprehending. "What? My mother and your father? But they're both dead…"

"Rosie," Bucky said, very seriously, "I'm talking about our children."

Her mind went completely, utterly blank. "C—children?" she stammered, her mouth falling open in awe. "Our children. I—I never imagined—God, but—" A horrifying thought suddenly struck her. "What about the war?"

"What about it?" Bucky asked. "It's been over for years."

"Years?" Beatrice echoed. "But we're so young—I mean, we were definitely older than this when we were in Europe."

Bucky frowned. "Rosie, doll, we were never in Europe," he said gently. "Germany surrendered the day before I was shipped out."

"We never…went?" Beatrice struggled to accept the ramifications of such a scenario. She had never become an army nurse, had never met Nancy, Helen, and Ruth. She and Bucky had never been captured by Hydra and experimented on with a prototype super soldier serum. Schmidt had never held her head underwater while she gasped for air. Zola had never touched her. She had never seen the Tesseract. She had never known the suffocating numbness of cryofreeze, the shock of the world she had awoken in, no Avengers or Strucker or Crossbones or mysterious powers. Bucky had never fallen from the train, never had his memories erased and forced to kill for Hydra. He had never been the Winter Soldier; never even been a soldier. They were married now. They had children. She could wake up with Bucky's arms around her every morning.

We were going to move to Indiana and live on a farm.

It suddenly dawned on her that the bedroom was far too quiet, far too large, for them to be in an apartment, or even the Brooklyn Heights brownstone. "We're not in New York, are we?" she asked slowly, and Bucky shook his head.

Beatrice exhaled slowly, trying to take it all in. It was too good to be true. Except—

"Where's Steve?"

His reaction was visceral; a shudder passed through his body and even his lips went pale. "Don't make me say it out loud, Rosie," he muttered. "Don't—"

"Bucky, please—"

He forced the words out as if they physically pained him, a deep crease appearing between his eyebrows. "Last year he—he got TB. Like his mom. He didn't make it."

The doctors say it'll be a miracle if I live past thirty.

Beatrice's breath came out in quick, ragged pants. "No," she said furiously. "He's not dead. He's still alive—he's not—" She pushed Bucky's arms away and staggered out of the bed. She felt dizzy, nauseous, and her surroundings suddenly tilted crazily. Bucky's face warped in and out of focus. "STEVE!" she screamed, so loudly her throat ached. "STEVE!"

"Beatrice!"

The voice that finally broke through her vision was Steve's himself, and Beatrice turned to it blindly, grabbing onto his arms tightly and refusing to let go. She had somehow ended up on the floor of the laboratory, and Steve was kneeling next to her, holding her up just as he had helped her when she had stumbled in her room earlier. "Oh, thank God," she muttered, and threw her arms around him. Though she knew the vision hadn't been real, her ensuing panic certainly had been. Bruce had thankfully taken the scepter away and was retreating into the shadows.

"What happened?" Steve asked into her hair. His hand was rubbing up and down her back, trying to soothe her. "What did you see?"

Beatrice drew in a shaky breath, concentrating on the solid realness of him. "I saw Bucky," she whispered, her voice cracking. "And you—he said you were dead."

Over Steve's shoulder, she saw Tony turn an unnatural shade of white.


I am so sorry for the wait, guys—December was a crazy month for me. But I'm finally done school now, and I'll try to write as often as I can. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a very happy New Year!