If she could use any word to sum up the past few days it would be: tentative. Everything was tentative. While some days made her feel like she was getting closer with Bucky, others made it seem like she wasn't. Sometimes she knew where she stood with him, other times she had no idea. Nothing good, nothing bad, just sort of there. Yet, able to tip at any moment in one or another direction. Unstable, but stable at the same time. Like a soft rollercoaster - one without any upside down loops.
Usually, they spent most days in his apartment because he didn't trust Dawson, which was understandable. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they didn't, sometimes she didn't even go to his apartment at all. For the first week, it was hard to think of any way to start any kind of conversation they ended up having. Which was ironic considering how she spent six months doing nothing but talking with Steve. She was rusty and she hated it; talking to people and getting them to open up was the one thing she had been good at. Even weeks later, there was a laundry list of things she still wanted to talk to him about, but didn't know how or where to start.
"Can you tell me about Hydra?" she asked carefully one day as they sat at the small table in his apartment. Two mugs were in between them; one filled with hot chocolate, the other filled with coffee. Since they had started seeing each other pretty frequently, he had stocked his kitchen with actual kitchenware and started buying actual groceries - not just the protein bars and refillable water jugs. And sometimes, if he was in a good headspace, he'd make them a full meal, which she appreciated.
Immediately, she could tell she made the wrong choice in asking him about Hydra; he tensed up at the mention of the organization - shoulders coming up and chin dropping down a bit. Clearly, he didn't want to talk about it. But Q did. They had a lot of things in common, but this was the most important one. She found someone who could actually relate to what she went through in the Hydra facility. Sure, she could talk to Steve about the super soldier-ness of it all, but this was different. And it was something she desperately needed. She still struggled daily with the mess inside her head, not having figured out how to calm herself down or stop from being suddenly overwhelmed or even what else beside they had "enhanced" in her.
"Please." she leaned forward a bit, "They did shit to me too, you know. And...I'm scared." she admitted. At that, his eyes flicked up to meet hers, an intense gaze holding her hostage. But the anger behind his eyes wasn't directed at her, no, it was directed at the organization who broke both of them only to rebuild them in their image. Except Q was never fully rebuilt.
"What did they do to you?" he asked lowly. The material of his gloved hand stretched across the metal knuckles as he made a fist. His eyes flicked around her face, pausing every so often on the same parts of her that he looked at when he rescued her in Moldova. He may have known where she was, but he had no idea what they did or why.
"They made me see things…" she started, brow furrowing as she thought back to the days spent trapped in the Hydra facility. Something she hadn't done yet, choosing to compartmentalize and ignore it for as long as she could. Only now, almost a year later, did she feel like she could finally start to process everything. Maybe it was because of who was sitting across from her, "Strapped me down to the chair." she rubbed her wrist at the memory of the straps that held her, lingering on the scars around each wrist from the hot wire. Almost at the same time, his wrist began to itch as a memory of the leather that was used in Zola's lab entered his mind, "Made it easier to torture me or inject me with things I guess. There was a woman...a girl really, who really fucked with me. The guy with the monocle had a different method every day...I don't know what else. I was sedated a lot of the time. Or hallucinating. But I can't...my brain feels different. And I can't tell if it's the P-T-S-D or something worse." she gave him a tight smile, wringing her hands together and feeling quite vulnerable after opening up to him. Something she hadn't yet done, but then again, neither had he. "I mean...have you ever been awake for twenty-four hours straight?"
"Many times." he responded, briefly remembering times where he had been forced to stay awake for Hydra missions or even after that when he pulled the man from the bridge - Steve - from the river.
"So you know that cloudy feeling where everything is shiny and moves too much?" she described it the best she could, waving her hand around a bit to make her point.
"...Sure." he agreed, understanding the words but not really the feeling she was describing. His was different than hers, not that it mattered.
"It's like that. Not to mention the nightmares."she added on, seeing him grimace in response.
"Yeah, those don't ever go away." he sighed heavily, going to trace the thread of his glove across his palm as he tried not to think about the last nightmare he had the previous night.
"Great." she sat back in her chair and folded her arms over her chest much like a child who had been told no. The corner of his mouth quirked up at her surly reaction. Sometimes she reminded him of Rebecca. His sister. Which was nice. He liked being reminded of the good things, having so many terrible memories in his head already.
"When I was trying to find out what happened to you, I found this journal that documented a good chunk of time that you were…" she trailed off, knowing both of them knew what she was talking about. He tried to keep a neutral face, "The words...how did they work?" he swallowed hard, not wanting to think about the words or what they did to him, who they let out.
"It was like a light switch. They flipped it and I...I suddenly wasn't in control anymore." he summarized, hoping she didn't ask what the exact words were. He didn't know what would happen if he said them.
"Do you know...how they chose the words?" he cursed inwardly; while it wasn't the question he was expecting, he still didn't like it.
"Some seem related to things from my past. Others, random. It wasn't a sentence or phrase. It was distinct words." he told her, trying to answer her question without snapping at her. It wasn't her fault. She was just trying to understand him more. No one had ever taken the time to do that.
"So that day on the riverbank was that...?"
"Me, I think." he looked off to the side as if remembering that day, his fist clenching a bit before continuing, "I don't know for sure but it wasn't Him. He would've killed you." his eyes flicked to Q's, face serious and she had no doubt that he was right. She reached out for her hot chocolate, taking a sip as he considered what they just discussed, "So you think something like that happened to you?"
"I'm not...sure." she said hesitantly. She hadn't really thought about it. Obviously, she knew they fucked with her head, but she felt in control still. She assumed it was just her inside her head. Unfortunately or not.
"I know sometimes I...it's not like I feel Him, or hear Him. But I'm afraid if I look over my shoulder that He'll still be there." he tried his best to explain it, hoping she understood what he meant.
"I get it. I kinda feel the same...like I'm just afraid that they're still watching me or waiting for the best time to grab me." she bit her lower lip a bit as he picked up his coffee mug, holding it in his hands while he thought for a moment.
"I can't tell you if you've got words in your head." his eyes shifted to hers, "But I can tell you that I'll never let anything like that happen to you again." serious, the look paired with his words made a pang of longing go through her heart. Though the sentiment was appreciated, it reminded her of Steve and his promises. Even with their almost bi weekly conversations, it wasn't the same as being in his actual presence.
"You don't have to do that." she shook her head, shifting on her chair a bit. She had already interrupted and disturbed Bucky's quiet life enough, she didn't need him feeling like he had to do anything he didn't want to. He didn't owe her anything.
"You're my family." he reminded her matter of factly and rather sharply. His brow furrowed a bit before he continued, "And I don't have much of that anymore." he paused and then took in a breath, "I'm not gonna risk losing it." he sat back in his seat a bit, giving her a look that told her she had to deal with it. Pausing for a moment, she couldn't help but feel a bit surprised; none of her family had ever been protective over her. Hell, they probably didn't even know where she currently was or what she was currently doing. It was a new, strange thing for her to discover and she couldn't help the small smile that broke out across her face.
"Thanks, Bucky." she ducked her head down to hide her reaction. They were quiet for a moment before he spoke again,
"Do you have any other questions?" he braced himself, hoping the answer was no, but having been around his grand-niece enough now to know what the answer was. She sighed heavily, eyebrows raising up a bit.
"Tons." Bucky swallowed and then nodded, readying himself for whatever other questions she had.
From there, it was a bit of back and forth. Q rattled off her questions and Bucky answered them to the best of his ability. It only took a few questions for her to realize that some of her questions were almost too painful for him to answer.
"You can always pass on a question." she told him with an understanding smile, thinking back on the question game she and Steve played when he was trying to get to know her better. The rule she made so she could pass on a question without explaining why. A safety precaution. She didn't want to force Bucky to answer or make him feel like he had to because of who he was sitting across from. At her comment, his eyebrows rose in slight surprise; he had never been able to pass on a question before. Hydra demanded answers and he had to give them or risk punishment. Still, he nodded.
So they continued with their game. If you could call something like their Q and A session a game. Mostly it was just questions on questions, some about things he's never thought of before which made him pause. In those moments, Q's immediate thought was that she had offended him, but then she realized he was just processing. She had thought there was a lot going on in her head, but there was a lot more going on in his.
In her line of questioning came a few observations: like how she noticed her abilities are different than his or Steve's, which surprised him. She was lacking the key soldier elements like enhanced strength and agility. Every aspect of him was elevated from his strength to his marksmanship, which made him wonder aloud if Hydra had a different purpose for her other than a soldier.
"What - what if you're right?" she asked, beginning to panic about what that meant, "What if I'm a sleeper agent? What if they can remotely activate me? What if there's a tracking device of some sort in me and I don't even know it?" she only ever thought that she didn't get the similar heightened abilities as Steve or Bucky because Hydra only gave her part of the serum or if only part of it took. But after what he said about her having a different purpose...her head was beginning to come up with all the possible outcomes and none of them were looking good.
"There's not." he answered her matter of factly, in a level tone so not to cause her more panic, "They place them in the back of your neck, armed with a kill chip, just in case you fell out of line." his hand moved to the back of his, rubbing his fingers over the scar on the nape of his neck. He had deactivated the kill chip after saving Captain America - Steve, and then removed it before his handlers noticed, "You wore your hair up the other day, there's no mark." he explained how he knew, comforting her a bit. She fell quiet for a moment and then asked another question,
"How much do you remember?"
"Too much. And somehow not enough." he summed up, and it felt like the best way to describe what it was like inside his head. At times, he could remember every single kill mission Hydra had sent him on - who he killed and how, and even their last words. Howard! But other times, it was like there was this black hole in the middle of his memory, sucking in everything within a certain radius.
"I remember all of it." she admitted, looking down at her hands and picking at her nail beds that had been long since destroyed.
"I'm sorry." he found himself apologizing. He needed to. It was his fault. It was always his fault. Her head flicked up and eyes met his,
"It's not your fault." she told him with a slight shake of her head.
"You wouldn't have been there if I hadn't...done those things." he let out a breath, referring to everything he had done after escaping from Hydra and going on a bit of a revenge mission even though that wasn't the right answer at all.
"I wouldn't have been there if those assholes hadn't taken me prisoner. This is not your fault. None of it is." his brow furrowed as he tried to work his way through it before he settled on a response,
"Some of it is." she gave him a sad, sympathetic smile.
"You can't blame yourself for what they made you do." he leveled her with a look, setting his now empty mug back on the table as she finished up the last of her hot chocolate.
"I gave up. That's on me."
"Well after twenty years, I think you can be forgiven." she raised her eyebrows at him, daring him to challenge her and the copious amount of research she had done.
"What?" he was sure she had the years wrong. It was more than twenty. Everything he read about Steve - Captain America, stated so. That and the dates he had seen in newspapers and the general advancements made since he had regained control of his mind and body again.
"The data we found showed that you resisted for twenty years." she told him, rendering him speechless and then an almost guilty, but also sad look came over his face.
"I...I just...I didn't know what to do anymore." he said quietly, admitting how he gave up when he should've tried harder to fight it.
"It's alright. You survived it." she gave him a tiny smile and he looked at her rather seriously, nodding once before agreeing.
"We both did." he pointed out, making her hesitate and then nod in her own form of agreement. "Speaking of not knowing what to do anymore…" she trailed off and then took in a breath, "I have no idea what to. I mean, I know I should work through, really work through what happened to me but, God…" she let out the breath she took in and then didn't finish her sentence.
"Start from the beginning." he advised, remembering how he slowly tried to put the pieces of his life back together, "With what you remember, and then go from there. Things will come back, things won't, but you'll be moving forward." he nodded once, seeing her wry smile.
"Very wise." she teased him slightly and he shrugged in response. "And after?" she asked, picking at the handle of her mug. He gave her a small smile,
"I'm still trying to figure that out for myself." he admitted. She nodded, understanding that it was probably a lifelong process. Not something she was looking forward to; the last time she had tried to better herself and work past her trauma, it had ended where she was presently - back at the start.
Still, she took his advice and spent the next several hours facing her trauma head on, rather than thinking about it every so often or just shoving it back into a dark corner of her mind. And the only way she knew how to was by doing research, making graphs and charts, comparing herself from then and now, and even a few pro/con lists. Just as she had done for SHIELD and then the Avengers. She was her own mark. Her own potential threat.
By the time Bucky returned back to his apartment from his shift, she had covered the floor in various papers that seemed to be some sort of organized chaos. With Q right in the middle of it. Both literally and figuratively.
"What the fuck is this?" he asked out rather quietly, almost amazed by what he was seeing, but also incredibly concerned by what he was seeing.
"I have a process, okay? Back off." she sassed and then waved at him with a paper filled hand, ignoring as he carefully stepped through the minefield. As he got a better look, he silently wondered if she had gone insane. If Hydra's goal was to break her down enough where she couldn't come back from it.
"Any chance you wanna walk me through it?" he asked carefully, settling down on the edge of the table he had that was uncovered by papers.
"It's complicated." she looked up at him with raised eyebrows, but he just shrugged. Nothing was really that complicated to him anymore. Confusing maybe, but there was always a solution.
"Go through it." he gestured to her, watching her pause for a moment, then faced the map of Hydra she had put together. She found the beginning of the string and started there, walking him through it. While it was a bit complicated, he managed to follow along - impressed just by the sheer amount of detail that went into it
"In conclusion, I'm fucked up." she ended her explanation, looking up at him with a sad, yet accepting smile.
"But you're alive." he reminded her, just as Dawson did when she finally got out of Hydra's grasp.
"But I'm alive." she agreed with a sigh and a look back at her work.
"I'm sorry, kid." he found himself apologizing again for what she had gone through. She fixed him with an annoyed look that made his breath catch; he had seen that exact look on Rebecca's face countless times before - mostly directed at him too. It'd be funny, if it didn't remind him of what he had lost.
"Stop apologizing. I'm alive, remember? That's more than most people who deal with them." she said mostly to herself, thinking of all the other people who hadn't escaped like she had.
"You're going to get through this." he told her, sounding confident. She raised an eyebrow, leaning back on her hands,
"And how do you know that?" she inquired, seeing him shrug as if the answer was so simple,
"Because you're related to me. Rebecca. It's in your blood." she scoffed and rolled her eyes, not liking his answer. It was too much of a cop-out, but still Bucky pushed his point further, "We're a stubborn bunch." he gave her a quick grin, something that rarely happened, but always made her perk up when it did; it meant he remembered something good, "Any time I tried to tell Becca that she couldn't do something, she'd immediately try and do it just to prove me wrong." Q grinned at that because it sounded like the grandmother she knew, "Ended up using it to my advantage once or twice." he smiled fondly at a memory he didn't elaborate on further. Still, it was nice to know not everything about her grandmother was a lie.
"It's nice hearing about her." she told him, the underlying encouragement that she would like to hear more about Rebecca was clear. She wondered silently if he remembered anything like that about Steve. He probably had a ton of stories buried throughout his memory, protected from the constant torture Hydra put him through. They hadn't really broached the topic of Steve yet - mostly because she wasn't sure how to bring it up.
But if the past few weeks spent together were any indication, the more he talked about certain things, the more he remembered. And the more she tugged at different threads, the more he talked about them. Talking was helping. She was helping. Or so she liked to believe; it gave her some sense of purpose and the feeling that all of her struggles and sacrifices hadn't been for naught.
"Do you remember anything about Steve?" she asked gingerly, looking up at him to gauge his reaction. A brief flash of sadness moved across his face, followed by a twitch of his eyebrows in confusion before he settled on his usual resting face.
"Sometimes." he nodded a bit, shifting against the table. His metal hand curled around the edge of the table as he sifted through the memories at the forefront of his memory. The pause was long enough to make Q ask another question,
"Do you ever think about finding him again?" his eyes flicked over to hers and he paused for a moment before shaking his head,
"I'm not the man he once knew." he explained why rather briefly, but it was heavy with meaning.
"I don't think he's the man you used to know either." she reasoned, knowing it was true. Still, Bucky held his position,
"Maybe. But I've done a lot of unforgivable things." she grimaced, knowing she had too. Not that it mattered though.
"To have you back in his life again, he's going to look past all that. And he's not going to blame you for the things you were made to do." she told him, feeling confident in her prediction as to what Steve would do and how he would react. Hell, he'd go to the ends of the Earth for Bucky. His brother. To both have him in his life again and to rid himself of some of the guilt he had been harboring around. She raised her shoulders up, "Moving forward right?" she called back to their earlier conversation.
"And what about you?" he asked. She took in a deep breath and surveyed her work, then glanced back at him,
"I spent almost two years trying to find you, and now that I have...I have to figure out what comes next." Dawson had been supporting both of them for the last two years, but that wasn't sustainable and he was already pissed about losing a little chunk of his nest. Something he never failed to remind her about. She had to get back into the world again. Be a contributing member to society again.
Sharon had reached out earlier in the month because she had been transferred to the CIA's Berlin office and there was an analyst position open. And apparently enough time had passed where the CIA wasn't so worried about the fall of SHIELD and who was involved as much as they were about the supposed unruliness of the Avengers. It was just something to consider, Sharon had said over the phone, clearly not sure what was going on in Q's life. Honestly, Q wasn't sure either.
"As much as I love sitting around with in your very shitty apartment," he gave her a look of warning that she ignored, "I think I have to try to figure out how to be normal again." she used air quotes around the word.
"Let me know when you figure it out." Bucky sighed heavily, and she cracked a smile at his response.
Turning back to her mess, she started to organize it into stacks and clear the floor. While Bucky started on dinner for the two of them, she took her time going through her pages to make sure everything was there. She hadn't done something like she did since she figured out her feelings for Steve. And even though it hadn't cleared everything up, it was almost calming in a way. Creating a path from point A to point B in that messed up head of hers. She knew what happened to her - now she just had to figure out who she had become because of it. And what she was going to do next.
A/N: A very conversation heavy chapter! But I'm excited about Q and Bucky ~bonding~ and there will be more of it happening! So I hope you like it! Please let me know your thoughts and what not. I really want to hear them!
Also: the 2 Year Anniversary is less than two weeks away and I still have NO CLUE what to do to celebrate! LMK what you think I should do! (A great prezzie would be to hit 1k reviews buuuuut)
Thank you for reading and reviewing! Love you all so much!