Buildings fell and the earth shuddered beneath her feet. Screams and wailing pierced through the heavy grey dust and jolted through Shay's skull. Burning acrid smoke. Move, now. Her feet were heavy and each step grew more excruciating as she waded on. Pushing through mangled steel and concrete, she followed the golden thread that promised a life hanging in the balance.

A young man in a denim jacket, dark skin made pale and unreal by the settling gypsum. He gasped as Shay's hand found his shoulder. Pain blossomed in her calf and she knew. It was too late.

"Sisi?" T'Kazu's voice rasped in the growing dark. Shay grasped for his form but before she could reach him in the rubble he'd vanished and she looked down at her feet to see a body. Facedown, his long dark hair pooling like blood over a steel plated arm. The scuffed red star stared back at her, threatening and forlorn. The dust thickened and Shay coughed, choking as the building melted around her.

Water. The dust in her mouth was water, mud and the green taste of algae, it stung in her throat. The seatbelt wouldn't budge, hard as she tried to tug, to push against the clasp that trapped her in the sinking, drowning truck.

Shay relaxed, waiting for the cold impenetrable darkness to take her away. For the pain to end.

Awake.

A deep breath, a slow release as reality filtered back into Shay's mind. What had seemed as real as anything a moment ago, now seemed strange in the way only dreams can be.

What was undeniably real was the cramp that seized her calf a half second later.

Shay bit back the scream as muscle fibers tore, pushing against every instinct to curl up, instead stretching her leg out as straight as she could and reaching to pull up on the resisting toes. She couldn't help the whimper that escaped as the cramp ceased. The muscles relaxed, but that didn't stop the deep burning pain.

Water. She needed water. The bottle next to her bed was empty and she groaned. Couldn't have gone back to sleep again anyway, she thought bitterly, easing herself off the bed and pulling on loose sweatpants.

An early morning breeze cooled the skin exposed by the sports bra she'd gone to sleep in. Shay laid out the thick mat on the back patio. Water bottle in one hand and kimoyo bead in the other, she sat cross-legged with her back to the wall and waited for the sun to rise.

Pippin paced the perimeter once before settling on the edge of the patio, one ear flicked back to keep tabs on Shay. His posture was alert but not alarmed and Shay focused on releasing the tension in her body.

Breathe in- flex the feet, breathe out- relax. She sipped from the water bottle and then focused on the next muscle group. Breathe in- flex, breathe out- relax. Lather, rinse and repeat until the blinking kimoyo bead slowed into an even rhythm.

Pippin's ears pricked up as the door opened, but his attention returned to the horizon.

"You're up early." Steve said as he settled himself at her side. "Couldn't sleep or nightmare?"

"Bit of both, well, that and a cramp." Shay answered, kneading the offending limb.

"Want to talk about it?"

Shay considered as she moved into a deeper stretch. "Not really anything to talk about, just bits of all the old nightmares."

Steve looked at her, unconvinced, knowing. "How did it end?"

Shay shrugged away from his inspection, then nodded. "Drowned."

"Shay."

"I'm not taking the sleeping pills." Shay couldn't help the rise in her voice as she countered his silent argument. "I won't."

"Fine." Steve's eyebrows lifted in an expression of resignation. "Just let us help you."

"I'm alrigh-"

Bucky stepped through the door at the same moment that Steve cut her off with a raised hand.

"You've had three nightmares this week, Shay."

Four, Bucky thought. He'd woken to the sound of her desperate gasping breath in the room across from his. The soft footsteps and the sound of the kettle naturally followed. He hadn't interrupted her wanderings, but kept his silent vigil until she returned safely to her bed.

"The trial is going to be difficult enough, you need sleep, let us help." Steve finished. Deposition had been grueling enough, and Shay had been there for every minute.

Bucky leaned on the pillar; his arms crossed. He tilted his head toward Steve in the universal sign for "you know he's right."

"Looks like I'm outnumbered." Shay huffed a little impatiently, even as affection for them warmed her. "Ok, fine. if-" she quirked her eyebrow at Steve - "if, you can beat me in a fight, I'll let you sleep with me."

Steve looked at the stoic face of Bucky, before turning and shaking Shay's offered hand. "If I'da known it was that easy." He grinned roguishly and winked at her.

"Not like that!" Shay laughed, punching Steve in the shoulder before pressing the back of her hand to her forehead in a cinematic fake faint. "How dreadfully scandalous, good gracious what would your Ma think?"

"I think she'd have liked you." Steve answered.

"Wait a minute," Bucky stepped towards them, a grin creeping up the corner of his mouth, "since when does Steven Grant Rogers doesn't-know-how-to-talk-to-women, know how to flirt?"

"I wasn't that bad!"

Shay and Bucky answered him in unison.

"Yeah, you were."

"Terrible, really."

"First to five?" Shay asked, bouncing on her toes at the edge of the square Bucky had drawn in the sand. Strips of neon blue and green strength tape wrapped her left leg from knee to ankle making odd geometric shapes over the freshly blooming bruise at the back of her calf.

Bucky nudged Steve, "I don't think this is a good idea."

"We had a deal Rogers." Shay insisted. Steve had been holding back in their sparring sessions ever since the battle, letting her win too easily. It was frustrating, but he denied doing it on purpose. If she had to concede that she wasn't sleeping well on her own, he had to at least try and beat her in training. "Unless you'd rather forfeit, Captain."

"Oh, its on Shay." Steve raised his fists in a boxing stance, "I'll even give you a handicap, one point to start."

"Alright, enough talking then, yeah?" Shay grinned and stepped into the ring.

A quick handshake and they were circling each other. Looking for openings, watching their opponents' feet. Bucky shook his head ruefully as the two most stubborn people he'd ever met lunged at each other.

No-contact fighting looked odd to the uninitiated. A tap from the finger tips counted as a hit, and the focus was on evasive maneuvers and trying to get behind your opponent, which was made yet more difficult by the boundaries of the ring. The result was a strange ballet of exchanges, lunging, reaching, dodging and rolling, always just out of reach. Shay wasn't pulling her punches though and Steve hit the mat, unable to move.

"Two-nil, you sure about that handicap now, Cap?" Shay tapped him again and he sat up running a hand through his hair and shaking off the paralysis. "Gloves are off."

"That's how it's going to be?" He raised his brows at her.

"Yup." Shay said, popping the p crisply. "Can't make it too easy for you, considering the prize."

Steve shook himself again as he rose and rolled his shoulders before gesturing for her to approach. "Bring it on."

Steve won the next exchange with hit to her thigh and the sound smack made Bucky flinch. Shay acknowledged the hit, and reset her stance, refusing to show weakness. Throwing herself back into motion as though her life depended on it.

Steve answered with the same determination, changing up his footwork to throw her off. Neither had attention for anything or anyone that existed outside of the lines, leaping in, rolling and diving as they struggled to win a hit.

By the time Steve landed the fifth, they were both coated in a fine layer of sand and Shay was breathing hard.

"So, my place or yours?"