The young woman leaned against the doorframe of the small apartment, arms crossed, gaze trained on the man standing at the kitchen counter across the room.

"You look like shit, James." Her voice was bordering on joking but the concern in her hazel eyes was very real.

The man looked up at her, pouring them both a finger of scotch. "Oh, calling me James? You must really be serious."

She sighed and kicked off the wall, coming to stand opposite of him at the counter and picking up her drink. "You look like you haven't slept in weeks, your eye bags have bags."

James chuckled at her, downing his drink in one go. "You always say the nicest things to me, Sarah."

Sarah followed his lead, drinking hers quickly before setting it aside. "I'm serious, Buck. Are you doing okay?"

"I'm doing as okay as I can be, all things considered." His answer was sharp, obviously annoyed in her choice of conversation topic.

"I'm not trying to harp on you, I just care. I know this has been hard, on all of us, and I'm just making sure that you know I'm here if you need it."

James looked at her then, all sorts of emotions flooding his eyes. The Winter Soldier knew how to keep his poker face, act unbothered. James Barnes was still working on processing his emotions.

"I know, Sarah." He reached over and laid his hand on top of hers, gaze searching hers. "I appreciate you trying to help me, I always do."

He reached over to the alcohol, pouring them both another shot. "How's Wanda?" Deflection, nice.

Sarah had been MIA for about a month, trying to track down Wanda Maximoff. When she had, and found out that Wanda had unwittingly taken hostage of an entire town, she definitely had her work cut out for her. Luckily, Sarah was able to shut it down, help Wanda deal with the evil witch (she still couldn't believe this was what her life had come to), and relocated her to a place in the mountains. Hopefully far enough away from SWORD to stop any sort of retaliation.

"She's okay as she can be after realizing the past few months she spent with Vision and her children was an elaborate creation of her own mind." Sarah tried her best not to sound distraught, but my god that sounded like actual hell. She didn't know anyone who had been through as much as Wanda, except for the man before her.

James almost spit out his drink, removing his hand from hers and hitting his chest once or twice. "Children?"

Sarah sighed, settling down on the stool and resting her head on her hands. "Long story short, she was absolutely devastated after the battle with Thanos. Grief overcame her and her powers became somewhat sentient. She's safe now, for the most part."

James stared at me, jaw working itself. "My god."

Sarah nodded. "I know what you're thinking, because I thought it too. We should've made sure to stay in contact with her after Tony's funeral. We were just so caught up with… everything, that we didn't think of it. No reason to blame ourselves now."

Steve's name hung between them like an omen.

Sarah noticed that James' attention had been hooked onto the tv behind her, and she turned curiously in time to hear;

"Please welcome, your new Captain America!"

The woman whipped back to James, eyes wide.

"What the fuck."