As Time Goes By

by BouncingKappa

Sequel to Songbirds and Bombshells! Sadie Reid disappeared in 1949, never to be seen again until she resurfaces in 2016 with no memory of how she got there and one clue: the dog tags of her supposedly dead fiance, Bucky Barnes. Bucky is in Wakanda hoping for a chance at the freshest start he can get. Love found them once in the unlikeliest place, can it bring them together again?

17. Leave it all Behind

A/N: Oh hi! Here I am, with another update! I promise this chapter doesn't disappoint. I hope you're doing well in your corner of the world, wherever that is! I don't have a ton in the way of exciting news except that I finished the first draft of my first novel and while I let the draft marinate before editing, I am hard at work on my next original project!

Thank you so much for all your wonderful reviews, favorites, and follows! I promise even when there are lengthy update gaps and when I am working on other projects, I have no intention to abandon this fic! Eztra thanks to Not Enough Answers for lending me her wonderful beta skills!

Usual warnings for language and adult content apply! Chapter is titled for the song by John Splithoff (one of my favorite artists!)

Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel!

Chapter 17 – Leave it all Behind

Flashing lights assaulted Emmanuel Greyson from every angle. Through the harsh glare, he could barely make heads or tails of the swarm of officials on the scene: firemen, EMTs, D.C. police, the FBI…he wouldn't be surprised if the CIA, Homeland Security, the Army, Air Force, and Navy were all on the scene, each vying for jurisdictional authority over what had to be the biggest disaster to hit the district since Captain America brought HYDRA and SHIELD to its knees. If he'd had even a second to breathe he might think the dramatics were a bit much. After all, the death count was barely a blip on the radar of similar events and certainly nobody was going to miss the handful of lobbyists and lawyers lying beneath the rubble.

At the moment, however, he had far more important matters to attend. It appeared that they'd traded one critical patient for another as Representative Greene's eyes opened and Sadie Reid's closed. She was as limp as a child's ragdoll in King T'Challa's grasp, head lolling back over his arm. Pale as a ghost and covered in a thin sheen of cold sweat, she looked even more like a cadaver than Greene had before she performed an act that was nothing short of a miracle of biblical proportions.

Shifting his attention from Greene slowly returning to consciousness much to the delight of his teary-eyed wife, Emmanuel eased to T'Challa's side. Without asking permission or waiting for anyone to ask, Greyson pressed his fingers to the inside of Sadie's wrist.

"Pulse is a little thready but consistent. Lift her head a little for me." He took a light from an EMT and lifted her eyelids, smearing eyeshadow on his thumbs. Shining the light in her eye, he frowned. The muscles controlling her pupils couldn't quite decide, contracting and relaxing in quick bursts. "Pupillary response is abnormal. Your Majesty, I think it would be wise to lay Miss Reid on her side."

"Why?" T'Challa asked even as he followed instructions. Emmanuel opened his mouth in response but Sadie answered the question for him. Her whole body went rigid, back arching so hard T'Challa sprang back in surprise. Emmanuel reached forward, doing his best to keep Sadie on her side as she convulsed and began to seize. He glanced at his watch, watching the seconds tick down until, a whopping one minute and thirty seconds later the tremors subsided and she slumped over onto her back, unconscious even as her muscles continued to twitch. "Is it finished?"

"I've no idea. It's rare for seizures to occur back-to-back but not out of the realm of possibility and in Miss Reid's case I can confidently say there are no guarantees. There is nobody on this earth quite like her."

The last words slipped out before he could stop them. Fortunately, King T'Challa remained so swept up in the heat of the moment that he missed the hint of adoration buried in between the lines of the truth. Now that he'd seen Sadie's extraordinary gift with his own eyes he could indeed confirm that she was a one in seven billion miracle. He'd exhausted so many options and avenues, looking for an answer to his problems and now here she was, a veritable sleeping beauty in a green dress.

"Your Majesty, should we prepare Miss Reid to go to the hospital?"

"No."

King T'Challa's response stopped Emmanuel dead in his tracks. Slack-jawed, he ripped his focus from Sadie's unconscious form to gape at him. "Forgive my bluntness, your Majesty, but Miss Reid needs to be evaluated."

"And she will be. By our doctors." His response left absolutely no room for debate and before Emmanuel could even formulate a response to try and talk him into sending Sadie to the hospital where he would stand a better chance of worming his way into the room, the young king had already gathered Sadie in his arms.

For not the first time in recent history, Emmanuel damned the secrecy of the Wakandans and the Accords Council making the mystifying decision to willingly allow Sadie to disappear behind their veil. Every scrap of information he could get his hands on was about as useful as the paper it was printed on. This had been his one opportunity to sink his hooks deeper into Sadie, to dig a little deeper into what made her an anomaly compared to every other experiment that Arnim Zola conducted using his variants of super soldier serum. And while he'd certainly learned plenty to keep him busy for the coming weeks, he was also left with far, far more questions than answers as he watched the Dora Milaje flank T'Challa, stalking away from the scene of the crime to cast the veil over Sadie once more.

At the request of Representative Greene's wife, he accompanied his original patient to the hospital where he found himself saddled with the onerous task of explaining the entire ordeal to the doctors. It was difficult to explain that, less than an hour earlier, Greene's unblemished abdomen was a grisly sight typically seen only in horror movies. Only the accounts of multiple eyewitnesses and Greene's low blood pressure and slightly elevated heart rate convinced them to perform an MRI and give him the much-needed blood transfusion.

The sun was just peeking over the city skyline when he trudged out of the hospital and took a taxi back to his hotel. Exhaustion weighed him down, like a boot stomping straight down on his spine, compressing his pain in his lower back. He wanted nothing more than to sink into his bed but found someone stretched across it when he let himself into his hotel room. A disgusted sigh said almost everything he needed to say.

"What? Cut me a break, I had a tough night."

"And that justifies spreading God-only-knows-what on my white bedspread?"

Rumlow wiggled his still-booted feet from where he leaned against Emmanuel's pillows, TV remote in one hand and minibar bottle in the other. He brought the little bottle to his lips and tipped the amber liquid down his throat. His crude armor sat in a heap on the floor near the bathroom but even without it he was absolutely filthy, spreading dust, dirt, debris and blood all over the bedspread.

"I hope you realize I'll be deducting the inevitable charges from your fee."

Rumlow just snorted and reached for the little pile of unopened bottles at his side. "Call it a reward for a job well done."

Emmanuel sorely wanted to point out that a job well done didn't require destroying half the Kennedy Center, but it was a useless endeavor. After all, he had asked for Rumlow to create a distraction. Be a red herring, he'd counseled, and if he happened to grievously injure Sadie Reid along the way, all the better. Emmanuel needed to see her powers in action, he needed to know what she and he were working with. Things hadn't exactly gone according to plan but in the long run, he supposed it was better to see what Sadie could do to other people rather than just herself. If she'd been injured, he suspected that the Dora Milaje would have swooped down on her so fast he wouldn't have seen a damned thing.

"Well, you certainly outdid yourself, I'll grant you that much."

Rumlow snorted and drained another bottle before casting it aside, spraying flecks of gold tequila on the bedspread. Emmanuel chose to ignore the transgression: the cover was already ruined, what difference did a few spots of tequila make? Resigned to Rumlow's distasteful company, he moved to his dresser where he slid his bowtie off and undid his cufflinks, making a neat row of accessories. He was midway through unbuttoning his shirt, fighting off the first signs of fresh tremors when Rumlow piped up from his perch.

"Barnes was there."

Now that got Emmanuel's attention. In the mirror's reflection, he caught the sudden hardness in Rumlow's mangled face. Little spots of scarring went white when he clenched his jaw. A darkness swirled into his eyes, giving him a downright menacing edge. Emmanuel couldn't claim to completely understand Rumlow's hatred for Bucky Barnes and he supposed it didn't matter.

"He was wearing a disguise but it was definitely him."

"If he was wearing a disguise, how can you be so sure?"

Rumlow jerked his chin towards his armor. Upon closer inspection, Emmanuel noticed several deep wells in the protective plates, each roughly the size and shape of a fist. Raising the edge of his shirt, Rumlow revealed several blossoming bruises that roughly aligned with the damage to the armor. "Not even Rogers could leave dents like that. I caught a punch and it sure as shit wasn't a flesh hand. I was gonna do what you wanted, beat up Reid for your little science experiment but he got in the way. Managed to send her over the balcony but the bastard caught her and the Dora Milaje got in my way before I could finish the job."

For weeks now they'd speculated that Sadie would reestablish contact with Steve Rogers or Bucky Barnes or both. But the news that he might be working in concert with the Wakandans was a surprise and more than a little concerning. Then again, placing them all in the same sentence made a good deal of sense the longer Emmanuel considered it. He'd had trouble rationalizing why Sadie would choose to disappear into Wakanda so soon after emerging from cryostasis but if they were harboring Bucky Barnes, she would have every reason in the world to go.

After all, she'd cried for him in the night more times than Emmanuel could count.

"So, the lovebirds reunited after all," he mused, stroking his chin in thought. "That certainly complicates things."

"Yeah. And you can bet your ass where Barnes goes, Rogers is bound to follow."

Yes, that was almost certain, too.

Emmanuel needed to think. He needed time to consider these wrinkles and to make sense of everything he'd learned. Formulating a next step was at once easy and monumentally difficult.

"I want to know more about Rogers and his team. Send some of your lackeys out and see what you can find. We'll reconvene in Munich."

Rumlow might have been a miserable, stubborn bastard but he knew a dismissal when he heard one. Groaning, he got to his feet. "You get what you needed from the girl?"

"In a manner of speaking," he said slowly, thoughts returning to Sadie. "The most important thing I learned is she has incredible potential but she hasn't even begun to tap into what she can really do."

"And how exactly are you going to fix that problem?"

"The same way she got her powers and has slowly developed them," Emmanuel said slowly, staring off into the distance. "Pain."

X X X

The Wakandan Embassy was in a rare state of disarray when Steve returned with Wanda and Sam in tow. Nakia almost bowled him over, phone pressed to her ear, speaking so fast he wasn't sure if she was speaking English or not. Aides whizzed back and forth, hauling away suitcases or loaded down with paperwork, each bearing a harried expression. There was no sign of T'Challa, Shuri, Sadie, or Bucky. Steve was on the verge of physically blocking an aide just to get a straight answer on literally anything when Sam clapped his shoulder and pointed to the double doors that separated the main embassy from the underground parking structure. Through the glass, Steve could make out Bucky tearing off his disguise and he was surprised that he didn't shatter the glass when he threw the doors open.

Steve had only seen Bucky's expression a couple of times in his life. The first happened when they were fourteen and Rebecca slipped on a patch of ice on the sidewalk and fell into the street right into the path of an oncoming taxi. The driver slammed on his brakes, giving Bucky just enough time to yank her back, looking as though he'd seen the grisly alternative outcome regardless. The second was in Belgium, staring at the bombed-out wreck of a house and not knowing whether Sadie made it to safety in the basement or if her body was trapped somewhere in the rubble. It was wide-eyed terror, a fear so palpable that his skin was ghostly pale and his mouth drawn in such a tight line, his lips all but disappeared. Bucky's jaw was tight enough to snap the tendons in his neck and he barely acknowledged Steve before stalking past him. Whipping around to follow his gaze, he discovered Bishara hovering near the grand staircase.

"Where is she?"

It wasn't a question. It wasn't even a polite command. It was a demand and God help anyone who tried to deny Bucky the answer.

"This way." Bishara jerked her head for Bucky to follow, catching Steve's eye in the process.

He glanced at Sam and Natasha who looked like they'd rather jump into the Potomac in January than deal with Bucky. "Go find Okoye and see if there's anything else we can do to help."

"Roger that," Nat said. Steve rolled his eyes but didn't dignify her sass with a response.

Instead he took off after Bucky's retreating back, catching up in a handful of long strides. Catching up, he decided the wisest course of action was to bypass Bucky entirely and go straight to the source.

"What happened?"

"I don't know," said Bishara. She side-eyed Bucky, wary of his thunderous mood. "King T'Challa asked me to find Sadie and bring her up to assist with healing an injured person. After that, Okoye sent us to follow up with local law enforcement. When I came back ten minutes later she was–I don't know–"

Steve's brows snapped together.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"T'Challa didn't say anything! He just carried her to one of the limos and then they were gone! Okoye sent me back with Ayo in the car behind them but nobody told us anything. All I know is that he refused to take her to the hospital and Princess Shuri was waiting for us with an entire team when we got here."

Steve swore he could hear Bucky grinding his teeth. The lack of information was maddening and he understood the impulse to be livid but over what, he wasn't certain. Something more than an answer hardened him. If it wasn't so on the nose, Steve was tempted to say that a coldness overtook Bucky, like shades of the Winter Soldier peering out from beneath the reconstructed version of himself. Steve thought back to the way Bucky so easily slipped back into that programming when interrogating Hunter Carrington. Somehow, the notion that he could willingly control that part of himself, using it in an effort to protect Sadie was even more terrifying than anyone else controlling Bucky. In the past, Bucky would have gone to the ends of the earth for her. How far would he be willing to go now?

"I want to see her."

"Yeah, if you'll give me like a fucking second, I will–"

A door at the end of the hall opened and a woman wearing white scrubs appeared. She took one look at the trio marching towards her and scurred across the hallway and through another door, a mouse terrified of the cat stalking its prey. A large window opened the wall up and through it an entire mass of activity drew Steve's eye. Multiple Wakandans surrounded a lone figure on a gurney. Through the knot of hands and limbs, Steve caught glimpses of Sadie's rich green dress and hand hanging limp off the table, so white she could have been made of marble. Most of the people in the room were dressed in white, save three. Okoye stood at one side of the bed with T'Challa, helping him hold Sadie down as her body convulsed. Shuri took sensors as quickly as an orderly offered them, gritting her teeth to get them placed in the right spots.

Bucky didn't wait for an invitation. A nurse shouted in surprise when he forced his way into the room and Steve, helpless to stop him, followed.

"Good." That was the last word Steve thought he'd hear from Okoye's gritted teeth. "Hold her down."

It was one of those rare situations where their enhanced strength was a blessing and a curse. Steve would do anything to help Sadie but he hated the idea of physically restraining her.

"This can't fucking wait?" Bucky snarled at Shuri as he nudged a handful of nurses out of the way, reaching over and bracing Sadie's shoulders on the gurney.

"I need to know what's going on internally so unless you have x-ray vision, shut up and hold her down."

Steve braced her legs but holding her still was harder work than he anticipated. Something more than raw strength was driving Sadie's body, lending a ferocity to her unconscious movements she wouldn't have had otherwise. At first he thought the strange lines of blue-green tint beneath her skin were her veins, pronounced by her unusual palor but he was wrong. Up close, there wasn't a blue tinge to the lines at all and they moved erratically, zipping just beneath her skin to disappear deeper into her tissue, attacking God-only-knew what problem.

"What happened?" Even Bucky was struggling against the force of Sadie's powers, the metal plates on his fingers and hand shifting to push down harder.

T'Challa barely glanced up from where he held Sadie's head between softer hands, doing his best while Shuri raised to place sensors on her forehead. "A Congressman was mortally wounded. I asked Sadie to use her abilities and thought she would do enough to stabilize him."

Steve internally mirrored Bucky's noise of disbelief. Anyone who knew Sadie longer than five minutes would surely know she didn't know the meaning of a half-assed job.

"She fainted and then seized."

"She probably tapped out her powers and overexerted herself," Shuri muttered.

"Oh, you think?" Bucky snapped, right on the verge of shouting. He was met with a glare from Shuri that would send a lesser man running for the hills. Out of the corner of his eye, he did not miss Okoye clenching her fist, preparing for a fight.

"Not helping!"

Steve started to wonder if it would be better to remove Bucky so Shuri could finish the job in peace but before the words could find the tip of his tongue, Sadie convulsed again. Green light pierced through her skin and arced over the surface of her dress before shooting back inwards, like a series of miniature lightning strikes. For a moment, nobody moved a muscle and nobody seemed to know what to do. Shuri abandoned the rest of her sensors and lunged for her tablet, activating the sensors swiping through data as fast as her fingers would allow. The way her face crumpled in confusion, her mouth drawing into a tight knot did not inspire any measure of confidence from Steve.

"What is it?" T'Challa asked.

"I think–I think she's having a series of mini-strokes."

"She's what?" Steve and Bucky asked at the same time.

"The energy signatures I've identified for her powers are growing rapidly–I've never seen it this high before–I think we should–"

Sadie's whole body went rigid, muscles contracted tight beneath Steve's grasp. Where he'd only seen flashes of green racing beneath her skin before, she was now all but glowing, growing in intensity, reminding Steve of Bruce right before he hulked out or Wanda before she let loose a burst of energy that could level an entire robot army.

"GET DOWN!"

The medical staff scattered and hit the deck. Bishara dove for Shuri and T'Challa knocked Okoye back. Steve just barely let go of Sadie before green light exploded from her body, releasing a shockwave that sent Steve and Bucky flying, slamming into the opposite wall. The window over their heads and the lights shattered, raining miniscule shards of glass on their heads, plinking off Steve's shoulders. The unused privacy curtain had been ripped from its rings and the gurney itself shuddered once before the stays gave and only Bucky's lightning fast movement saved Sadie when she rolled listless off the uneven bed, right into his waiting arms.

"Sadie?" He brushed the hair off her face, his tender touch out of sync with the terror that gripped his voice.

Her lips moved softly and her eyes fluttered, opening once before she blinked her heavy eyelids back closed. A soft sigh slipped out of her throat and she turned her head into his shoulder. As she drifted back into sleep, Steve swore he heard her say Bucky's name once.

Shuri gently shook Bishara off, moving to Sadie's side.

"Well," she began, far too cheerful given the situation. "You don't see that every day."

X X X

"It's about time you woke up."

Sadie winced. A magnificent headache held her temples in a vice grip, throbbing with surprising sharpness. It wasn't the pain itself that was shocking so much as the fact that it persisted. Lately, headaches and other minor aches and pains weren't really an issue for her. Slumping deeper into her pillow, she considered rolling over to shut out her company but then paused. Why on earth was anyone in her bedroom?

Her eyes flew open and she groaned, dragging a sluggish hand up to cover them from the cool light. Wherever she was, it wasn't her room at the Wakandan Embassy or the palace. The magnificent pain in her head made putting all of the pieces together impossible. Fragments of memory worked through the haze. She could hear the crescendo of instruments, an entire symphony playing in her ears and that led her to the Kennedy Center, the taste of champagne on her tongue and something else, something bitter and sharp. The music gave way to screaming and so much smoke she could barely breathe. The floor fell from beneath her feet and she swore she was going to fall but she never did. Tingles erupted over her skin, raising her hair and parting her lips in soft surprise. Above everything else, there had been Bucky, pinning her against the wall, hot mouth magnetized to hers and hands trying to be a dozen different places at once.

She struggled to remember anything that came after that. It was all hazy shades of rust and green that eventually spun away into absolutely nothing. Slowly, the harshness of the light lessened and she cautiously blinked into total awareness, drinking in a semi-familiar place. Although she wasn't in the main space, Sadie recognized the familiar architecture and interior design of Shuri's lab. The minimalist layout left plenty of space for her experiments, though this particular room was much smaller than the main area and lacked a view of the vibranium mine.

"Welcome back."

Shuri stood at her bedside, swiping across several screens of data. Sadie groaned and tried to push her elbows beneath her, propping herself up to get a better look at her surroundings. But the effort exacerbated her headache and she fell back with a pained sigh.

"How long have I been out?" Though she barely spoke above a whisper, she may as well have been shouting, the pronounced southern drawl ringing in her head like she'd struck a gong next to her ear.

"About three days."

Three days? Sadie groaned and started to roll onto her side to go back to sleep but found she couldn't. A tube extended from the back of her hand, held down with tape that scratched at the edges. When she tried to move the tube pulled and stung her hand. Several hard points dotted her body and she was generally so uncomfortable that she was better off not moving at all.

"Be careful, will you? Those sensors are all in very specific spots."

Sadie raised one of her arms. The hard places indeed were Shuri's favored medical sensors, quarter-sized silver circles with a white center, each with a tiny blinking blue light. "Shuri, what have you done to me?"

"I haven't done anything. You're the one who almost killed yourself at my idiot brother's behest."

Even raising her eyebrows hurt.

"What are you talking about?" Her voice sounded far away, words tripping one into the other. Overhead a bright blue light flashed and several beams of light fanned out, running from her feet down to the top of her head. Sadie squeezed her eyes shut and groaned, grappling for anything to cover her face. "What is that?"

"Stop being so dramatic, you're fine. I've been using the sensors to monitor your vitals among other things. How are you feeling?"

"Like I got hit by a tank."

Gentle fingers picked up one of her wrists and began to peel the sensors off. One by one, Shuri removed the sensors, moving her snow white hospital gown as needed. Sadie tried to keep count of the dots and then lost track from one arm, across her collar and upper chest, down the other arm. Slowly, Sadie pushed herself up to sit. While Shuri pulled sensors off her back, Sadie started on the dots on her legs. Her fingers shook, betraying the general weakness that left her movements uncoordinated and uncertain.

Now that she was fully awake and aware, she remembered the aftermath of the attack, Representative Greene's wounds, and her actions that landed her in this position. Funnily enough, she wasn't sure how long it took to heal the lacerations to his liver, forcing the shrapnel out and going so far as to heal the wound in its entirety. It belatedly occurred to Sadie that she likely could have done less, stabilizing the Representative so he could go for treatment at the hospital. But in the heat of the moment, Sadie was more concerned with saving his life than she was the degree to which she was actually needed. Perhaps there was also a part of her that wanted to do the whole thing, maybe to prove to herself that she could but also because there was a time when she would have passed him off as a goner. Twisting the corner of her white sheet between her fingers, Sadie dared to look at Shuri. She was tight-lipped and unusually stoic, reminding Sadie of her bad temper when Bucky refused to get a new prosthetic. Guilt gnawed at Sadie's tense stomach, though for what, she wasn't entirely sure. Shuri was so rarely in a foul mood that it took Sadie by surprise and left her feeling like a small child caught misbehaving.

"How is Representative Greene?"

"Perfectly fine. The doctors at the hospital in D.C. said it was like he never got hit. The only reason they agreed to admit him for observation was there were so many witnesses. He sent you so many flowers it looked like he bought out every shop in the city."

Sadie stared at her lap. She didn't imagine Shuri's irritation now.

"How bad was it?"

"You had a grand mal seizure that then led into two more seizures and a series of mini-strokes before you let loose a power burst that almost leveled a hospital room." Sadie twisted the blanket so tight between her fingers her knuckles went white. "The best I can figure is that using so much power overstimulated your body and basically tripped the whole system. After that your blood pressure and sugars were all over the place. It took an entire team a full day to stabilize you."

Guilt gnawed at her heart. Healing Representative Greene was the right thing to do and she didn't regret it, but at the same time she never meant to cause so many problems. It occurred to her far too late that, like Shuri, she didn't know the consequences of pushing her powers too far and she lacked the forethought to realize that however far she did push herself, her body was certain to follow. With no prior case studies or first-hand experience as to what could reasonably happen, Shuri and the doctors were working in the dark, fumbling for solutions to perhaps the world's least-traditional and predictable patient.

Sadie started to thread her fingers through her hair but stopped when she met resistance. The strands were greasy after a few days without washing and someone had twisted them into a braid. Shuri continued to pointedly avoid eye contact and Sadie fought a sigh.

"I'm sorry. I never intended to put you or anyone else through the headache of dealing with," she gestured lamely to herself. "All of this."

Shuri rolled her eyes.

"I'm not angry with you," she corrected Sadie. Setting her tablet aside, Shuri rose to the tips of her toes and eased herself to sit on the edge of Sadie's bed. She toyed with her kimoyo beads, rolling one between her fingertips. "What you did was nothing short of a miracle and it was the right thing to do, even if he is an asshat."

Sadie coughed on a laugh which reverberated out of her chest, rattling her already throbbing head. An emotion she didn't recognize flashed in Shuri's eyes, softening the sharpness in her cheeks and drawing her lips out of their usual smirk. Shuri's typical bravado trickled away, taking with it her playful humor and confidence. Without that veneer to protect her, she became the teenager belying her genius, sixteen and still searching for her place in an increasingly complex world. When she rested a hand on Sadie's knee, her fingers twitched before giving her a gentle squeeze.

"I was worried about you." Sadie blinked at her, surprised by Shuri's candid admission. "Look, I know I make a lot of jokes and it's easy for me to get carried away by my work, but I don't want you to think that I care more about your powers than you. Even though you're like a thousand years old, you're still my friend and I don't want researching your powers to come at your expense."

Sadie covered Shuri's hand with hers. She would never tell Shuri that she'd had those private worries, that Shuri was too invested in the potential gains that could be wrought from her enhancements. If Sadie had learned anything in D.C. it was that everyone had their angles and she was increasingly seen as more of a commodity than a woman. To hear that Shuri understood Sadie's uncomfortable position and that she recognized the person beneath all of the layers of mystery and green light raised an enormous weight off Sadie's shoulders. It further justified Sadie's decision to come to Wakanda and set her at ease.

"I'm going to let the thousand years part slide." Shuri's chest rose in a laugh. Sadie gave her the same encouraging smile she used to give Rebecca when counseling her on her bright future. "Okay, come on, I know you're dying to tell me. What did you learn from my death-defying antics?"

Shuri spun off into a detailed explanation. With the aid of several screens, she showed Sadie all manner of data she'd collected over the last three days, pointing out several highlights. Large pieces of her heavily technical discussion went over Sadie's head but she managed to piece together the gist of the lecture. It turned out that 'tripping the system' as Shuri described it, revealed a lot about the inherent physiological components of Sadie's powers and how they worked in concert with her body. Shuri pointed to several physiological markers that backed up her previously theoretical suppositions, mostly concerning the energy signature she'd been struggling to identify, the frequency on which her powers operated and the relative growth in her ability over time. Still, by the time Shuri summed everything up, Sadie's head was spinning.

"The bottom line is that your powers are growing," said Shuri, swiping away most of her charts. She touched her kimoyo beads, bringing to life a digital full-body scan of Sadie. One wave of her hand brought up a simulation of the too-familiar green light. "We know from charting each of your attempts that healing consumes significantly less of your energy as time goes on and it's becoming easier for you. Representative Greene's injuries were the most severe you've encountered, causing you to bleed yourself dry. Now I know that once you regain your strength, your powers will return greater than before. If you were to try and heal the exact wound again, you wouldn't suffer the same side-effects."

Sadie's brows furrowed. Green light swirled around and through her digital self, growing in brightness and miniature before the loop ended and began again. Shuri was merely confirming through data what they'd already suspected but now that the reality presented itself, a fresh concern sprang to life. "Surely there's a limit though? I can't imagine that this–" she flicked her fingers to expel a feeble wisp of green light– "can continue to grow unmitigated."

Shuri hesitated.

"That is the big question. There are no case-studies for someone like you. The closest benchmark I have is Wanda Maximoff but it's becoming increasingly clear that, while your powers are visually similar, they aren't the same, probably because they didn't originate from the same source since the Mind Stone wasn't on earth when you were in HYDRA custody." She slumped against the side of Sadie's hospital bed, crossing her arms over her chest. The uncertainty clouding Sadie's future returned to loom over the pair, each of them privately ruminating the possibilities both promising and bleak. "Right now, I can't say there is a limit to your powers except to the extent your body can handle it."

"Well, that sounds encouraging," Sadie said with an air of false brightness.

"I've been testing your blood down to the cellular level every step of the way and have yet to see any indication of degeneration or instability. There is no reason to think that will change. Though it couldn't hurt to start studying tissue samples and watching your organ function more closely."

That sounded fair. Sadie was willing to undergo more testing if it meant establishing more certainty of her trajectory or, the worst case scenario, catching a problem before it got out of hand.

"So, what's next?"

"I think we need to start testing what you can really do," Shuri admitted, rubbing the back of her neck. "I've been thinking about how to do it and I spoke with the hospital board and with my brother's council, searching for the most ethical paths forward."

"And?"

"The best first step is to begin testing what you can actually heal versus not. We know you can't fix already healed wounds or generate structures that weren't there to begin with." Sadie's stomach clenched, thinking of her missing tubes. "But we don't know your limits when it comes to other medical conditions like illnesses and degenerative diseases. We'll begin injecting live diseases into tissue samples and then branch out from there. We also want to test if your powers are limited to humans or if they extend to animals and plants–basically any living thing. My brother's council members have also extended permission for you to attempt to use your powers on livestock and the Dora Milaje have agreed that their soldiers can consent to letting you practice on them. And if Sergeant Barnes ever takes that giant stick out of his ass, maybe he'll let you practice on him too."

Sadie coughed to cover her shocked laugh. "Shuri!"

"What? Oh please, tell me I'm wrong."

Unfortunately, Sadie couldn't. Bucky's distaste of her powers was a well-known fact and, in light of this latest development, Sadie suspected that his reticence had only grown. Bucky now returned from the backburner to the forefront of her mind. While she'd been unconscious for the theatrics of the past days, he'd likely been up to his elbows in intelligence reports and briefings. Sadie hoped he'd been too busy to really even think of her in her vulnerable state but she knew better.

"On a scale of one to ten–"

"How angry is Sergeant Barnes?" Sadie nodded when Shuri finished her thought. She snorted and retreated to her data. "I'm not stupid enough to wade into that mess. He's your crocodile to deal with."

"So, an eleven."

"That's being charitable."

"Of course," she said more to herself. She couldn't really feign surprise. In the heyday of their romance and when it came to her relative safety, Bucky had zero poker face. He wore his heart on his sleeve, whether it was scaring off would-be rivals at the dance halls or struggling to say goodbye at the airfield before she left for missions without him. If that part of him survived, Sadie wouldn't be sad in the slightest, though she felt awful for putting him through this particular type of heartache. He'd made his distaste for her powers clear and she could only imagine how this latest event whipped him into fresh ire.

Shuri didn't quite share her anxiety. "I wouldn't worry about it. He's like every other man on the planet. Easily distracted."

There was little finesse in Shuri's insinuation, not buried between the lines so much as written in all capital letters.

"I'm going to strangle Bishara," Sadie muttered, knowing full-well where Shuri's intelligence originated. Shuri's delighted cackle only further confirmed it.

"Good luck with that."

Red-faced, Sadie gladly followed Shuri's directive to shower before one final vitals scan before she was released to her own devices.

X X X

In the days after, the front page of every newspaper and news site in the country showcased images from the Kennedy Center disaster. From what Bucky could tell, every article hit the same highlights: an anonymous terrorist attack, chaos reigned while Iron Man absconded the President and the First Lady to safety, then, in an act of true heroism, the Black Panther stayed behind to mount the defense. Along with the blow-for-blow descriptions of the scene, every article raised several salient questions though the answers depended largely on the political leaning of the news outlet. Some articles praised T'Challa's selfless heroism while lambasting the Secret Service for being so woefully underprepared while other columnists raised the red flag on the Accords. Had the Accords done nothing but embolden terrorists to act with little fear of immediate repercussion? One of Bucky's favorite headlines read "Where's Cap When You Need Him?" along with a rather choice picture of first responders helping usher an elderly woman from the wreckage. Every writer had an angle and a point to criticize and each article contained some grain of truth and if Bucky put them all together a muddled picture emerged.

For his part, he was relieved that certain details were omitted from print. In the wee hours of the morning, while Embassy staffers swept up glass from the embassy infirmary and doctors checked Sadie's vitals every five minutes, T'Challa forsook sleep in order to do damage control. He sent various members of the delegation to manage the fallout of the fight and extend sincere apologies for the abrupt departure. Among those errands, he saw to it that everyone who witnessed Sadie heal Representative Greene stayed quiet, including the man in question himself. Their efforts, which Bucky suspected involved some sort of compensation or political promises, did not go in vain. It was a relief to see Sadie stay out of the fracas–she'd been mortified enough to see pictures of herself after the State Dinner; being forced to read clumsy attempts to explain the hearsay about her powers would just add insult to injury.

Not that Sadie was conscious to process everything that had happened to her in such a short period. After she went nuclear and destroyed the small infirmary in the Embassy, Sadie fell into a coma and couldn't be roused for anything. She slept through the early morning flight to Wakanda, through the noisy transfer from the jet to Shuri's laboratory and for three days beyond that. All the while, Shuri commanded a small army of Wakanda's premier physicians, nurses, orderlies, and any expert she could track down to tackle the question of what the hell happened in Washington. They worked around the clock, deconstructing the data that rolled in from the dozens of sensors on Sadie's sleeping form, refreshing constantly to provide new information.

Bucky couldn't make heads or tails of it and he didn't particularly want to. The technical wizardry belonged firmly with Shuri. As it was, it took nearly all of his focus and patience to hold his temper in check. The series of events that led to Sadie's predicament were, in his biased opinion, wholly avoidable. After relaying what they'd learned from Hunter Carrington III, Bucky expected T'Challa to pack Sadie up and send her back to Wakanda with little room for argument. Though Sadie was indignant at the mere suggestion, Bucky didn't think anyone could deny the soundness of keeping her within the relative safety of Wakanda's borders while they sorted out this colossal mess. Even Steve's eyebrows rose when T'Challa politely declined the suggestion, stating that between the myriad of protective forces present in D.C., Steve and Bucky included, he was certain Sadie would remain perfectly safe.

The urge to tell T'Challa 'I told you so' was narrowly tempered by the fact that he was a king and Bucky was only permitted to remain in Wakanda on the basis of his kindness. Privately, Bucky thought there was plenty of blame to go around but T'Challa's decision to continue trotting Sadie out as the poster child for Wakanda's international cooperation, playing coy about her powers whilst simultaneously asking her to use them was beyond the pale. When it came to her job, or her perceived duty of care to patients, Sadie didn't know the meaning of half-assed and, no matter how Bucky dissected the situation, there was no way T'Challa didn't know that. Bucky carried a lot of anger over how the entire D.C. trip played out, a good deal of which was directed at T'Challa.

He'd tried voicing this thought to Shuri one time before she shut him down. "If you have a problem with my brother take it up with him. I've got more important things to do. Like stabilizing your girlfriend, thank you very much."

Bucky had to do a double-take upon hearing Shuri refer to Sadie as his girlfriend. One patronizing roll of her eyes confirmed that Ayo or Bishara let their observations from the storage room slip. He'd had half a mind to take Shuri to task, just as annoyed by her shooing him out of her lab but there simply wasn't time.

Steve was only staying in Wakanda for a few days, gathering as much intelligence as he could before reuniting with Sam and Natasha to begin the hunt for Rumlow in earnest. So even if Bucky wanted to hang around the lab, hovering over Sadie's bedside and reading Shuri the Riot Act, there simply wasn't time. From sun up to well past sun down, he spent those crucial first few days recounting every detail he could from the attack, from Hunter Carrington's interrogation, and every little minute in-between. Over and over he and Steve poured through the details with Wakandan intelligence agents and members of the Dora Milaje, sifting through their collective memories to isolate any one particular detail that might be helpful to tracking down Rumlow.

By the end of three days, they'd distilled the intelligence into a list of places that Rumlow once operated from and a handful of names drawn from Bucky and Natasha's extensive knowledge of HYDRA, SHIELD and the KGB. It wasn't much to go on but Steve had become increasingly certain of one particular detail.

"Rumlow has to be working with someone," he said to Bucky late one night over a glass of whiskey. "There's just no way he walked away scott free from that blast in Lagos. He would have needed medical care and a place to lay low while he recovered."

Bucky rotated his lowball between his hands. Chances were that Steve was entirely right. Rumlow wasn't a particularly complicated man to figure out, even if he was devilishly hard to track down and catch. After HYDRA fell, Rumlow allowed himself to fall prey to the darkest parts of himself, trading his allegiance to HYDRA for allegiance to the highest bidder. Certainly nobody would take a chance on someone like Rumlow unless they had need of him, he wasn't worth the risk otherwise and his cut would be well above the going rate for any idiot off the street. Buried in Steve's supposition was the implication that there was another way to find Rumlow: find whoever was pulling the puppet strings. Bucky sipped his drink, swishing the whiskey over his tongue, trying to pick up on the flavors hidden beneath the burn.

"There's a thousand reasons why someone would hire a merc like Rumlow. You'll never know the who until you know the why."

Steve shifted in his seat, drawing an ankle to his knee. He didn't look at Bucky, choosing instead to admire the darkening skyline. Bucky recognized this particular look and stance. Whenever Steve was about to say something upsetting he would do this, grow silent and stoic, chewing over every possible delivery of the news before settling on what he hoped was the least damaging. The shift in his behavior was, in and of itself, a damning omen for what was to come and Bucky was well ahead of Steve by the time he worked up the gumption to voice his opinion.

"Rumlow went for Sadie. Out of all the people at that symphony–the president, first lady, vice president, senators, diplomats–he singled her out."

"Yeah." Despite guessing the body of Steve's guess before he even said it, Bucky was still short in his response. "I know. I was there."

Steve raised his hands in mock defense, almost sloshing his drink over the side of his glass. "Hey, don't shoot the messenger. I know it's an unpleasant thought but you've gotta admit, it's hard not to go there."

Of course it wasn't. If Shuri's models in the wake of the incident were right, Sadie was far more powerful than anyone first anticipated. Though she didn't posses the same strength and invulnerability as Steve and he did, she was remarkable in her own right and, quite likely, infinitely more valuable than both of them put together. On top of that, she was sequestered in a notoriously shrouded nation and surrounded by some of the best armed guards and fighters on the planet. That didn't even account for the fact that anyone who wanted to get to Sadie would have to go through Bucky and there weren't many people who stood a chance at that. Yes, Steve was right. There was a very good, if not certain, chance that whoever Rumlow was working for had sent him after Sadie.

Now, more than ever, Bucky fell back to his current bone of contention.

"She should never have left Wakanda."

Steve wisely chose to sip his drink rather than immediately answer that question. Only after he'd bought himself a few seconds of precious time to formulate an answer did he speak.

"It's her decision."

"Is it?" The question escaped his lips before he could stop himself. Bucky swore he would keep his opinions to himself, perfectly aware they were unwanted by most people involved. And yet, there he was, exhibiting less impulse control than teenaged Steve facing down a schoolyard bully. When Steve didn't immediately reply, Bucky took his rare silence as a request for an explanation. "Look, everyone keeps saying that Sadie's free to do whatever she wants but I don't know that she is. She chose to come to Wakanda and ever since she got here she's been asked to go way above and beyond. And even if everything else so far has been above board T'Challa shouldn't have asked her to heal Greene. He knew she wouldn't refuse and look what happened–"

"Hey, you don't have to convince me. I think it was a bad call, too. But at the end of the day she still chose to do it."

"Yeah, because T'Challa knew she wouldn't say no. You know Sadie, you know she doesn't know the meaning of a half-assed job." Bucky pulled up short when Steve snorted into his glass. "What?"

"Nothing." His unrestrained chuckle strongly suggested otherwise. "For a second there I thought we'd gone back in time."

Bucky grimaced. "Don't start that," he warned though he found he was fighting a smile. For a moment it really did feel like old times, when Steve liked to needle Bucky about finally being soft over a girl and Bucky would rather die than divulge details.

"I'm not starting anything!" That was a load of bullshit and both of them knew it. "I'm happy things are getting better for you, that's all."

"Yeah, me too."

A long pause settled over them. Bucky stretched his legs out, crossing one booted ankle over the other. There was a strange peace in the silence now. During his two years on his own, he often resorted to playing loud music or turning on the TV just so the noise could fill the void, providing a detached companion so he didn't feel quite so alone. The noise helped him sort out his thoughts and kept him from focusing too much on any one particular memory. He would listen to the TV in the background, uncaring if he understood the language or not, while he jotted down thought after thought in his journals. Now, however, sitting with Steve, the silence felt natural, as though they could have an entire conversation without saying a single word.

After a while, when the sun had completely disappeared below the horizon, Steve set his empty lowball aside. Leaning forward, he braced his forearms on his knees, clasping his hands together.

"You've got to tell her, Buck."

Somehow, Bucky wasn't surprised. He'd known that Steve would eventually find a way to work back to this glaring problem. Nobody, not even Steve Rogers, needed to tell Bucky twice. Of course he needed to tell Sadie the truth. He owed her the truth from the moment he saw her and he'd known the magnitude of his mistake the second he decided to lie to her, but that hadn't stopped him.

"I know."

"The longer you wait–"

"I know that, too."

He wasn't an idiot. He knew perfectly well that Sadie would blow more than a fuse when she found out what he'd done. Though he would be lying if he said he wasn't dreading that eventual blow up, Bucky was dreading even more actually telling her. Every time he even tried to come up with the words, his mind blanked, producing nothing but white noise over a backdrop of every horrible memory from that cursed time. There was delivering bad news and then there was delivering this particular news, and despite wrestling with it for weeks, Bucky still had absolutely no idea how to even begin telling Sadie what he knew.

"I can't make you do anything but I–"

As if the woman herself sensed Steve was straying dangerously close to pissing Bucky off, the door across the common room opened. Both men sat up at once but Steve chose to remain seated when Bucky shot to his feet, leaving his drink and friend behind. Sadie tucked a curtain of loose curls behind her ear as she turned back to shut the door, looking remarkably well for a woman who'd just spent three days in a coma after having a stroke.

Bucky's heart leapt into his throat.

"Shuri was supposed to tell me when you woke up–I would have come down to help you get back."

When Sadie smiled at him, his stomach flip-flopped right over the edge of a cliff. "That's very sweet of you, Buck Sergeant, but I actually feel pretty good all things considered. Relieved Shuri took her hooks out of me so I could get out of the lab."

He crossed his arms over his chest, bodily fighting the urge to wrap her up in his arms. "What'd that cost you?"

"A couple blood samples and a lecture on not being stupid," she said with a playful wink over her shoulder. He followed her around the dining room table and into the kitchen area. "I'm glad to see you're not too upset."

"Oh, I'm upset." He sidled up to her. Feeling particularly brave, he reached down and took her hands in his, giving them a little squeeze. Sadie ducked her head but he could still see the faint flush swirl into her cheeks.

"I'm sorry if I gave you a scare."

"A scare?" He echoed. "Sade, I'm pretty sure you took a year off my life."

He wanted nothing more than to stoop down and kiss the little pout that her mouth formed. As easily as she put on her air of playfulness, she shed it in favor of concern. Her fingers filled the gaps between his and he sucked in a small breath when she stepped in a fraction closer, wafting the scent of wildflowers that clung to her skin, begging him to press his face into her neck.

"I hate upsetting you," she murmured, dipping her head and sending a wave of loose curls spilling over her shoulder. There were a lot of things about the modern era that suited Sadie but one of Bucky's favorites was how she wore her hair down all the time now, allowing him to thread his fingers into the silky strands, urging her to set aside her bashfulness to look up at him. Her silvery eyes were endless, swimming with curiosity and she just barely turned into his touch, eyelashes fluttering over her cheeks when he swept his thumb across her jawline. "Especially because things have been so–"

So good.

Bucky tipped her chin up and met her in a gentle kiss, parting from her so slowly he felt her lips clinging to his, savoring the most from the sweet gesture. "They still are," he promised her, savoring the way she came up slowly. "I'd just appreciate it if you toned down the death-defying antics."

His joke hit the mark, drawing a loving smile from Sadie. She drew her arms about his waist. "Yeah, right. You're one to talk."

A laugh burst from his lips before he could stop it. She had the good grace to at least cover her mouth, shocked by her own candid joke. Nobody had ever made a joke about his supposed death before and Bucky didn't think the subject could ever possibly be funny. But somehow, hearing her make a joke about the worst day of his life and hers made everything just a little bit lighter and a little easier. If Sadie could find even the tiniest sliver of humor in their bizarre circumstances then maybe they really would be okay.

"On that bleak note, can I get you anything?"

"Actually, now that you mention it, I am starving." She drifted away from him to wave through the window at Steve who was pointedly not watching their reunion. "I ate enough for two people in Shuri's lab before I left and I'm still hungry."

Steve gave her shoulder a brotherly squeeze as he filed past her to help Bucky unpack the maze of takeout boxes they'd accumulated over the past three days. Sadie busied herself with pouring a glass of wine, returning to the counter with the glass and the bottle. Absently, she sipped the red while she listened to Bucky list off the various half-eaten dishes along with the sparse ingredients, doing his best to come up with something worthwhile from the mess. Somewhere in-between a mish-mash of reheating leftovers, a couple of boxes of cold noodles and Steve regaling them with stories from his recent adventures on the run, Bucky had one of the best nights he'd had in decades.

The three of them sat at the counter until late into the night, laughing over the scraps that remained in the takeout boxes. It was the first time they'd all really spent any time together in the decades since the war, since everything happened, and for Bucky it was a balm he didn't realize he needed. When he was with Steve and Sadie he realized he could relax, easing off the urge to constantly look over his shoulder for the next disaster. Neither of them expected him to be anything more than himself, whoever that was. He certainly wasn't the Winter Soldier anymore, nor was he the sad shell of a man who wandered Europe alone for two years. At the same time he wasn't the Bucky who chased Steve from one scrap to the next in Brooklyn and somehow managed to stumble upon the love of his life in the middle of a warzone. He was an odd amalgamation of the drastically different lives he'd lived over almost a century, holding onto his second chance with every ounce of his being lest it slip through his fingers.

From her perch next to him at the counter, Sadie shared a private look with him over the rim of her wine. It was all he could do to keep himself from leaning across the short distance to kiss her. After decades of blood and solitude, Bucky couldn't believe he was sitting there, in the company of his two favorite people, that after all these years they still wanted to be close to him. As if she could read his mind, Sadie emptied the wine bottle into her glass and after she gently pushed the bottle away from her, she reached beneath the counter and rested her hand on his knee. A warmth spread through him when she gave his knee a gentle squeeze. He caught her hand just before she withdrew it, trapping her long fingers against his palm.

The way she loved him was unlike anything he could have hoped for and certainly more than he deserved. Sadie continued to hold his hand even as she pointed an accusatory finger at Steve, wine glass still in hand, a laugh lighting up her entire face.

"The exploding smoke bomb in Howard's lab had nothing to do with me and you know it, Steve Rogers!" She argued though she was grinning from ear to ear.

It was well after two in the morning before the trio went their separate ways to bed. Bucky collapsed in his bed, satisfied and at peace. Rolling onto his side, he stared at the empty pillow next to his. He considered padding quietly down the hall to Sadie's room but stopped himself. There was no sense in getting ahead of himself. This time was different, he reminded himself. This time they had time and he didn't want to ruin a perfect thing by rushing it.

Eventually he drifted off to sleep, all thoughts of the disastrous diplomatic trip and the potential consequences of his lies far in the distance.

X X X

"So are you going to tell me what we're doing? Or why you asked me to dress like this?"

Bucky glanced at the fitted pants and ankle boots that Sadie wore at his request.

"Now where's the fun in that?"

Sadie rolled her eyes but gave his shoulder a playful nudge. Even if she did find his request odd, she gamely complied, driven more by curiosity of what he had in mind than anything else. Bucky liked the way her ponytail swished behind her, ribbons of curls catching on the shoulders of her soft, pale blue button up shirt, the tails tied off at her waist. There was a slight bounce in her step to accompany her sunny mood.

Bucky thought she had every right to be cheerful. In the two weeks since they returned from Washington, they'd barely seen each other. Most of his time went to his day job, overseeing Steve's progress from the safety of a control room and sifting through the intelligence that he and Natasha relayed to him on a daily basis. When he wasn't supporting their endeavors, he was using the considerable resources given to him to track down leads on old HYDRA operatives and associates, looking for stolen vibranium, trafficked weapons, and hints of the burgeoning market for enhanced human material. The work was tedious, depressing and exhausting and more nights than not, Bucky walked out of the Intelligence building and right into Ayo who then dragged him to the Dora Milaje's training rooms where she and her associates would take their turns trying to best him, saying that learning how to beat a supersoldier was good training for them and prevented him from becoming rusty. Bucky wasn't sure he was capable of losing his particular skillset but by the time he dragged himself into the common area he was an exhausted, sweaty mess, desperate for a shower and dinner.

For her part, Sadie was constantly pulled in three directions. Her mornings began early with Bishara, continuing her training. Bucky was beginning to believe that Shuri and Nakia had a private bet going on to see which of them could eat up more of Sadie's time, with Shuri in the clear lead. Now that they'd come up with a solid game plan for testing Sadie's powers, she sequestered Sadie in the lab with stacks of samples of live diseases. Those days saw Sadie practically crawling back to their shared space and more often than not, Bucky found her half-asleep on the sofa, the remains of whatever was cold and easy from the fridge. If it wasn't Shuri draining her dry, it was Nakia calling her to her office at all hours, reviewing plans for expansion in Oakland, debating the pros and cons of new sites across the globe and sitting in on virtual meetings that took place halfway across the world. It was an exhausting, busy time for both of them and while Bucky was happy to finally be useful, he hated that they were back to seeing each other in passing.

It took some artful explanation and no small amount of twisting Shuri's arm to finagle a day off for both of them and when Bucky presented the idea to Sadie, she'd leapt on the opportunity, sealing the deal with a long kiss that left him both breathless and in need of an ice cold shower. Despite her constant questioning over the past three days, he'd been mum about the details, not wanting to spoil the surprise. He'd waited until last night to tell her that she should probably wear a pair of pants and close-toed shoes which, to his amusement, sent her eyebrows flying before her face scrunched in confusion and suspicion.

"It'll be worth it, I promise."

With little else to go on, she acquiesced. Although Bucky personally preferred her in skirts and dresses, he had to admit that her pants hugged her thighs and hips in the best way possible and every time she raised her arms, her shirt rode up, revealing a sliver of her stomach.

Mood light, her small hand in his and an entire day ahead of them with no interruptions, Bucky jogged down the stairs and out of a set of doors into the blazing sunshine.

"You're kidding me."

His face split into a broad grin.

"What?"

"Playing innocent doesn't suit you, Buck Sergeant." He laughed when she gave the side of his head a playful shove, staring at the motorcycle standing alone in the enormous semi-circular drive in front of the palace. "Where did this come from?"

"The intelligence fleet," he said simply. "It was in a back corner collecting dust. The head of the fleet said it was mine if I wanted it. Muttered something about it being almost as old as I am."

She laughed at that. Rubbing the back of her neck, she walked around the bike, looking at it the way a skittish child regarded a large dog. "You know you never did get me on one of these during the war."

Bucky laid a hand on the smooth leather seat. He'd spent the early hours that morning wiping the entire bike down and giving the machinery a once-over, ensuring it was in working order before loading up the small cargo box attached to the back of the seat. Even the short drive from the intelligence building to the palace was freeing. Having a vehicle of his own meant he no longer needed to rely on the whims of the transporters or even having to make the trek to various buildings in the city on foot. To Bucky, the bike meant so much more than a means of getting from point A to point B.

Still, Sadie was right on one count: he had never successfully talked her into getting on one with him. He'd come close once, when they met up on a 12-hour pass right before they shipped out to Normandy. Sadie was a half step from grasping his shoulders to clamber onto the bike when it came out that he'd unofficially borrowed it from the supply depot. Not willing to risk getting caught and enduring the embarrassment of a court martial, Sadie shook her head and told him she would rather walk to their destination. Beyond that, she'd been almost comically unwilling to climb onto the back of what she lovingly called two-wheeled death traps.

"Do you have any clue how horrible motorcycle accidents are?" she'd ask him even as he tried his hardest to cajole her into going on a ride with him. "You may as well get a spatula and start scraping the pavement. I have no desire to risk ruining this pretty face," she'd tease him, patting her cheeks before his. "Or yours for that matter."

He was too amused by her antics to be truly upset by her refusals and often gamely traded down for a jeep or settled for taking the subway through London. But things were different now. They were different people and something told him that in this brave new world, she was far less risk-averse.

"Come on, Sade," he took the helmet hanging from the handlebars. "We're both a lot more durable than we used to be. It'll be fun, I swear. And besides–" he plowed on before she could open her mouth to argue, pressing the helmet into her hands– "do you really think I'd let you fall?"

Her fingers overlapped his on the black helmet, tapping once then twice as she considered his words. Perhaps his question was unfairly loaded, but Bucky knew sometimes the only way to get what he wanted was to fight a little unfair. What he was really asking was whether or not Sadie still trusted him. His heart started to sink when she pressed the helmet back into his hands only to reach up and tug the elastic from her hair. Bucky almost shoved two knuckles into his mouth when she shook her hair out, feathering her long fingers through it before winding the tresses into a braid. She wiggled her fingers for the helmet.

"Fine." A playful grin tugged at her lips. "You win. Try not to drive too fast, will you?"

"I'll be on my best behavior. Scout's honor."

Sadie rolled her eyes but gamely tugged the helmet on and waited for him to swing a long leg over the bike before clambering on behind him. "Uh huh, I've heard that one too many times to fall for it."

Bucky barked out a laugh and she squeaked, grasping his waist when he kicked the bike to life. Assured that she was secure, he revved the motor once before shooting forward, leaving the palace and their hectic lives behind, even if just for an afternoon.

X X X

Despite being a brutal training partner and even more brutal teacher, Ayo found subtle ways to show her friendly affection for Bucky. Like all Wakandans she was proud of her heritage and the land she came from. When Bucky informed her he was taking a day off, she suggested he get out of the city and provided him one specific route to take. The road ran a parallel line to the river before branching off into the territory that Ayo's people called home. There the grass grew tall and the sparse trees stretched high towards the endless blue sky, opening into broad, flat canopies to soak up as much of the sun as possible. There was one place in particular Ayo recommended, a vista a little ways off the road that overlooked a large watering hole. Bucky pulled the bike off at the spot, parking it next to a tall bush.

With Sadie's help he dug a thin blanket out of the cargo box and spread it across the grass. Bucky thought she looked impossibly cool, her eyes hidden behind wayfarer sunglasses and sleeves of her loose shirt rolled over her forearms. Freeing her hair from the braid, raking her fingers through it once more, staring out over the slight drop from the vista to the watering hole where a few birds fluttered down to sip from the tranquil water. She caught him staring at her.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing." He shook his head. "I was just thinking that the twenty-first century looks good on you."

"I don't know about that," she sauntered back to him, pausing to take her boots off and set them to the side of the blanket. "But I have to admit I like the freedom. It's fun getting to decide what I want to wear without having to worry about raising eyebrows or leaving the house without putting a full face on. I guess time traveling isn't all bad. Though this date feels awfully familiar."

Bucky considered the modest spread he'd collected from the palace kitchens, the flask of whiskey and the undeniable memories associated with the setup. Replace Africa with the green English countryside and they'd definitely been on this date before.

"Hmm, not quite. There's not an abandoned church for miles."

She waggled her eyebrows and almost sent him to an early grave when she replied. "Shame."

Desperate to keep his train of thought from derailing, Bucky unpacked the remainder of the cargo box.

An hour later most of the food was gone and they were taking lazy turns passing the flask back and forth. They reclined beneath the shade of a large tree, watching the comings and goings of birds and the occasional animal to the watering hole. Bucky sat with his back against the tree, his right knee raised and supporting Sadie while she leaned against him. It was warm but not unbearable and even if it was, he wouldn't have cared.

She gently pried the flask from his left hand, screwing it shut and setting it aside. Curious fingers slipped over the metal appendage, following the lines between the plates, gently twisting his wrist over and bending each of his fingers in turn. The phantom of her touch tickled a dormant spot in his brain as he felt the difference in pressure even if no sensor was a suitable replacement for human nerve endings. Watching the sensitive tips of her fingers trail up his forearm awakened a longing in him that he couldn't quite explain except that he wished he could really feel her touch, the ghost of it would never be enough.

"Did it hurt?" Her voice was soft and Bucky wasn't entirely certain what she meant.

"Well, losing my arm didn't feel great," he admitted and paused when she frowned. He raised his left hand to catch hers before she withdrew it, folding his metal fingers around hers. "Honestly, I don't remember much of it. Most of that period is a big blank, whether it's from the brainwashing or my brain just doesn't want to remember, I dunno. It doesn't hurt much now, I can tell you that much."

She tilted her head to the side. Bucky worried she would offer to heal what lingering pains he did have but she seemed to know better.

"But you can't feel with it."

He pursed one corner of his mouth, trying to come up with the best way to word it. "I can and I can't. Shuri's model is better than my old one. Now I can feel basic differences in temperature, I can feel that fire is hot even if it doesn't hurt. I can tell that your skin is warm," he brushed his knuckle down her cheek, turning to graze his thumb along her jaw. "And I can tell the difference in pressure. I know that this," he let his fingers trail lower, nudging aside one side of her shirt to press against her collarbone, "is hard while this," a slight shiver rippled down her back when he swept his hand back up to touch her cheek, "is soft."

He eyes fluttered shut when he caught the corner of her jaw with his fingertips, guiding her forward to meet him. He tasted whiskey on her lips, so warm and welcoming. Sneaking his tongue out to meet hers, he deepened the kiss, dropping his hand past the already unbuttoned top two buttons on her shirt to undo the next three. Bucky smiled when her mouth faltered against his as he smoothed his metal hand over her shoulder.

"But I can't feel how soft your skin is," he murmured into the narrow gap between their lips. "Or tell the difference between your clothes and you."

He let his gaze drop. Every available drop of blood in his body rerouted itself, racing at break-neck speed below his belt. If he thought her modern jeans looked good it was nothing compared to the pale pink bra she wore, made of paper-thin material trimmed with delicate lace, the cups crested low across her breasts capped in the center with a little dark pink rosette he wanted to rip off with his teeth. Bucky desperately missed garters and stockings but this bra was better than anything she'd worn seventy years ago. She shifted her weight, caught off guard by his appreciative stare and gently dug her hip against his growing erection. He bit the inside of his cheek so hard he almost drew blood.

Sadie leaned forward, allowing the tip of her nose to brush the underside of his jaw. Her lips whispered against his neck when he slipped his hand inside her shirt and cupped her breast.

"I can touch you," he murmured in her ear, kneading his thumb into her soft flesh. "But it's like trying to reach you through a goddamned parka. I can't really feel you the way I want to. The way I used to."

When she tipped her head back he kissed her again, pulling his metal arm to her waist. Raising his left knee, he guided her around, freeing his right hand. He stroked her cheek, feeling the roughness of his thumb prickle the nerves beneath her skin. Long fingers twisted into his hair and gave it a little tug. He sank his teeth into her lower lip and a soft moan passed from her mouth into his.

Maybe he couldn't feel her properly with his left arm but it wasn't useless. Holding her in the crook of his elbow, he reclined her body close to his, sending her hair cascading towards the blanket. Her long legs contracted up, knees drawing together and he fought a wolfish smile. Tongue tangled with hers, he pushed one side of her shirt open and followed her thin bra strap, index finger moving deftly from it to the scalloped lace, rising up and down across her breast until he reached the center.

"I don't want a half-assed experience. I've waited too fucking long for you to waste it on my left hand."

Sadie pressed her chest into his touch, straying away from the edge to tease out her nipple through the fabric. He drew his index finger in a lazy circle around the bud. It sprang to life beneath the single, flimsy layer of barely opaque silk and she squirmed when he tripped his fingernail over the tight ridges.

"Well, I'd hate to deprive you of the full experience." Her voice was delightfully throaty, terminating in an even throatier moan as he tugged the offensive bra strap off her shoulder, peeling the cup off her aching breast.

Bucky kissed her once more, absorbing her pleasure that spilled off her. Catching her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, he rolled it back and forth until it was rock hard and she was pressing her knees together so tightly he wasn't certain he could pry them apart even if he tried. She cried out when he flicked the tip, building her up higher and higher until he was almost certain she would fall apart just from this simple stimulation. Well, he reasoned as he shifted her up, uncovering her other breast and sucking her unattended nipple into his mouth, it had been over seventy years. She was just as overdue as he was.

Sadie's fingers in his hair were so tight he swore she pulled a few strands free. She leveraged her hold on him to pull herself closer, bent back over his unyielding left arm while he circled his tongue over and over, switching to suck lightly on her before repeating the cycle. Bucky had never made her come this way before but he was determined to try now, pouring every ounce of his focus into her breasts until her chest heaved against him and his name spilled off her lips between heavy pants, growing closer and closer together until her head fell back and her hips rolled up. Sweat beaded at his temples, trailing down to drip onto her chest as she rode out her orgasm. Her lips drew into an 'o' so perfect, Bucky would have given literally anything in the world to feel them wrap around his aching length.

"Well," her voice was shaky when she finally regained her faculties. "That was–" he could have died a happy man just watching her swallow, almost too overstimulated to function– "wow."

And then he was kissing her, crushing her body to his until she was straddled in his lap. Deft fingers undid his belt buckle and his groan was so loud a handful of birds nearby startled as she unzipped his pants, giving him much-needed room to breathe. Bucky was so sensitive, he was half-certain all she had to do was touch him. And sure enough, the second she pushed his boxers aside and wrapped her hand around him, his whole body went rigid. Against his own volition, his hips bucked up, inadvertently stroking himself in her hand.

"A little eager?" She teased, teeth grazing his earlobe. Bucky clutched her hips tight enough to bruise.

"Just a litt–fuck, Sade."

She pumped her hand up and down, self-assured in her motions but it didn't matter. She could be doing it for the first time and it wouldn't have mattered, it had been so long and he was ungodly turned on by her mere presence that he was already teetering on the knife's edge of his pleasure. He hadn't been lying earlier, he had waited far too long for her, first searching for her in the garbled mess of memories, then coming to grips with their love which turned into reliving their past over and over, clinging to the light she brought to his life. Once he saw her again it was a matter of overcoming his own idiotic tendencies, choosing to push her away whilst admiring her from afar. What an idiot he'd been! Because she was impossible to ignore and resist, his perfect weakness from the top of her head to the tips of her expert fingers, squeezing over his tip with every stroke, urging him to give into the sensations.

He opened his mouth to say something, anything but no sound came out. Heart leaping into his throat, he couldn't even suck in a breath. Every muscle in his body coiled up tighter than a snake preparing to strike and then released with surprising force, making a mess of her hand and his boxers. Bucky slumped against the tree, chest heaving and eyes half-lidded. A delicate hand pressed against his chest, palm centered right over his hammering heart.

"That's you." His left hand slapped over hers, trapping it to his chest. "That's all you."

Sadie let the tip of her nose touch his and it took all his effort to return her featherlight kiss. "You gonna make it?"

Her full-bodied laughter mingled with his breathless chuckle. "Jury's out."

"It's been a long time," she murmured and he watched with growing regret as she rearranged her clothing and buttoned up her shirt before reaching for one of the cloth napkins that he would undoubtedly just throw in the trash at his next opportunity. By the time he cleaned up and dressed, he'd gotten himself under control.

"Too long," he agreed with her and sank down to lay on the blanket, accepting Sadie into his right side where she rested her head on his shoulder.

They lay together for a long time, passing in and out of sleep until a loud rumble stole their attention. Half-dazed he followed her lead and sat up, mouth dropping open in surprised to see an entire herd of zebra thunder out of the tall grass and up to the waters' edge.

"I'll be damned. That's the last thing I expected."

Together, they watched the zebra take turns at the water and when the herd eventually wandered off and the sun grew weak, they packed their things. Bucky paused at the bike and grinned at her. Sadie took one look at him and recognized his grin at once. She started to protest but Bucky didn't want to hear it.

"You didn't say anything about this date turning into a lesson!"

"It's a slow bike with a simple gear system. If you start to struggle I'll be right there to catch you, I promise. I want to teach you. It's not half as scary as you think it is."

It took another five minutes of convincing and one twenty-minute lesson later, they were crawling along the road, moving just fast enough to keep the bike upright. Bucky had to admit it was odd to be on the back, his large thighs pressed to Sadie's hips while she concentrated on not dropping the bike to either side. For a while he let his legs out wide, prepared to catch them but the fall never came. With his hands on her waist he felt her tension slowly let up the more comfortable she grew until they were finally cruising along.

Bucky couldn't have imagined a more perfect ending to a perfect day. The pristine countryside whizzed past them, the road taking them closer to the city and their daily grind. But for now, he was content to hold onto her and soak up the watercolor sky and the way Sadie felt in his arms.

Unfortunately for both of them, Nakia was waiting for Sadie when they pulled up, arms crossed over her chest and a pinched look on her face that said it was going to be a long night. Bucky reluctantly said a chaste goodbye and watched as Nakia pulled Sadie into whatever the daily drama happened to be. He took his time wandering back to his room and there he pressed his back to the door, dropping his head against it. Now that she was gone, the cold reality settled on him.

Steve's counsel returned to him, now more urgent than ever. They couldn't keep going like this. Not when Bucky was still lying to her. The magnitude of those lies, which once didn't seem quite so terrible, was growing with every minute they grew closer, resuming their romance and the deep intimacy they once shared. Guilt gnawed at Bucky because he knew Sadie would feel so differently about him if she knew the truth. But how on earth could he tell her now? Dropping his head in his hands, he fought a soul-crushing sigh.

How could Bucky Barnes possibly tell Sadie Reid, the love of his goddamned life, that if not for the miracle of her powers she would be dead? How was he supposed to tell her the hands that loved her so liberally earlier that day were the same hands of her destruction?

How was Bucky supposed to tell Sadie that in the dank darkness of Arnim Zola's labs he'd murdered her?

A/N: I had an inordinate amount of fun writing Sadie destroying the infirmary room! Next chapter features Sadie honing her powers, our lovebirds being lovey-dovey and some big choices.

Liked it? Loved it? Think Bucky needs to get his shit together and tell Sadie the truth? (LOL I DO). I'd love to know any and all thoughts! Much love – Kappa.