0316 HOURS | SEPTEMBER 06, 2014 | THESSALONIKI, GREECE

The man who had once been known as James Buchanan Barnes, or rather Bucky to his closest friends and family, regained consciousness gradually. In increments his senses and awareness came back to him and he found himself somewhere warm, comfortable and entirely unfamiliar. Ignoring the sounds of a bustling metropolis beyond the confines of the room, he could hear the gentle sounds of music playing at a low volume and could smell the enticing scent of fresh food, which easily overpowered the faintest hints of old cigarette smoke.

His last memories, fragile and finicky as they had tended to be over the course of the past few months, had been of an ambush by a HYDRA Reclamation Team. He'd been an absolute moron and chosen to try and take a short nap in the shipping container. He should've left as soon as he'd been given the chance, but – between the rough voyage and the nightmares that constantly tormented him – sleep in any capacity had been hard, or rather all but impossible, to come by.

The team had been well trained and well outfitted for taking him down non-lethally. Stun rounds and tranq darts that had taken him by surprise and worked with a great deal more effectiveness than he remembered. But the ambush, just as it had turned in the aggressor's favor, had taken a sharp left turn when an unknown third party had joined the fray and killed three of those HYDRA bastards in an equal number of seconds.

She – because between her height and shape she was definitely a woman – had swept across the AO with speed and precision clad in just a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, with a combat knife in her left hand and a semi-automatic pistol in her right. Her offensive had been precise and brutal to an unnatural degree. Perhaps not quite to his level of ability, but definitely far beyond that of an average human. But the ease with which she engaged her opponents spoke of extensive combat experience.

She was absolutely lethal.

In those few seconds, barely even a minute after she had engaged, she had killed eleven men and hadn't even gotten a scratch on her. And then the fight had been over and he'd been tumbling over the edge into unconsciousness. Her voice, low and accented, had been ringing in his ears and he had unwillingly entrusting his wellbeing into the hands of a complete stranger.

His last thoughts had been a fervent hope – rather a nearly prayer-like plea – that she wasn't HYDRA.

He wouldn't have put it passed them to be having inter-faction squabbles now. Fighting amongst themselves over who got to be the next top dog with Alexander Pierce dead. Like carrion birds fighting over a fresh carcass, defeating one another for a chance to devour the choicest pieces of meat.

That's all he was to them, after all.

But it seemed like his prayer had been answered – at least for now – as he opened his eyes to the soft lighting of a lamp and the sight of an off-white plaster ceiling. Not to the sensation of a stainless-steel lab table, the confines of a containment cell or the burning hot-cold embrace of a cryostasis chamber.

He took a few moments to simply breathe. Drawing in the warm scent of food, which had his incredibly empty stomach growling in displeasure, and exhaling in a gust of pure relief at still being free. He didn't even feel that injured when taking into account how much electricity and drugs he'd mostly likely had coursing through his system. Such a low level of pain that it was easily ignored. It was no worse than the ache that his arm had made him feel him every day since it had been attached. And even if it was worse, the home of a stranger with unknown intentions was no place to show weakness.

"Oh, you're awake. You burned through those tranqs a lot faster than I'd thought you would."

He turned his head, strangely without the compulsion to surge to his feet and take action, and laid eyes on who could only have been the woman from the ambush. The one who had – he would only admit in the sanctity of his own mind – most likely saved him from being successfully recaptured by HYDRA. And in a bizarre and unfortunate turn of events, instead of performing an instant threat assessment – which is what he should've been doing – he could only think of how beautiful she was to him in that moment.

His mysterious savior.

A guardian angel.

Or so the muddled remnants of his drug-addled psyche foolishly called her.

She wasn't a traditional beauty by any means, all symmetrical features and glossy perfection like the actresses he'd watched avidly in the past, but she was lovely to him nonetheless. Tanned skin, lightly smattered with faint freckles across her cheekbones and the bridge of her slightly-too-large nose. The silvery-pink line, thin but quite visible, of an old scar that trailed from just below her left eye and across her cheek to vanish underneath her jawline. Her hair was a pale ashen blonde, thick and lustrous in the yellow-hued lamplight, and tied up in a messy knot atop her head. And her eyes, a soft shade of grayish-green, with a starburst of stormy blue around the pupils.

They were lovely.

She was lovely.

And then came the inevitable threat assessment as she had leant forward from her seated position on the couch. His eyes unintentionally trailing along the line of her arm – muscular and liberally inked in intricate designs from shoulder to wrist – to the items spread out on the surface of the coffee table. He sat up abruptly, flinching at a brief surge of pain from his undoubtedly bruised ribs and abdomen, but ignored it all in favor of preparing himself for a possible conflict.

There on the table was an open box of pizza, piled high with toppings that made his mouth water just to look at, along with four handguns and half a dozen knives of varying lengths and widths. The guns were all unloaded, a smart decision on her part, and had their corresponding magazines set off to the side and the knives were all arranged in a neat and orderly line. But what had him on edge was that three of the firearms and four of the knives he knew had come from on his person and inside his bag.

She had searched him and gone through his things.

He flicked his eyes back towards her, watching as she simply pulled another slice of pizza from the box. It was off-putting that she wasn't as on guard as he was. Didn't she know he was a threat? Someone of her experience shouldn't be this calm. He could kill her then and there. Snap her neck before she could even think to counter him. She seemed to have finally noticed his heated stare and stopped halfway through attempting to take a bite of her food. A moment passed by and somehow, she seemed to know exactly what it was that had drawn his ire and caused his tension.

"Yes, I patted you down and went through your bag. Don't look so offended," she said bluntly, seemingly unconcerned with the fact that there was a biologically enhanced super-assassin with a fragmented excuse for a memory sitting on the carpet in the middle of her living room. "I only took your weapons. Didn't mess with the rest of your things. Oh, and by the way, if you're planning on doing something stupid, like running away or trying to fight me, I'll have you know that this is a civilian apartment complex that houses at least six families with small children, a dozen or so very adorable and friendly house pets and it's only three o' clock in the morning."

She set the slice of pizza down and shifted around to face him. Her facial expression shifting from easy nonchalance, further perpetuated by her casual t-shirt and sweatpants, and into something far more serious. Her heartrate was calm to his ears and there were no microexpressions that would clue him in to any sort of attempt at dishonesty. Whatever she planned to say was going to be the honest truth.

Or she was a very, very talented liar.

"I understand that you're on the run from those fuckers who ambushed you on the pier, but I'm not them. Hell, I don't even know who they were. Didn't stop me from deciding to kill them all to keep your ass safe." He was confused, but she was far from done, and in a corner of his mind he noted that she was still speaking softly despite her fervor, not all that much louder than the music she had playing. It was simply a way to muffle their conversation from any unwanted ears. She had even pulled the blinds closed on what looked like a door to a balcony to hide them from view. "And don't ask me why I did it, because I don't even know myself. But I did and now you're here and you're safe. For now, at least. So, I've got a shower you can use, a bed or couch you can sleep on and this box of pizza that I definitely won't be able to finish on my own. Take it or leave it."

What?

This woman was crazy. That had to be it. She was insane. What sort of person just went and offered that to an absolute stranger? A stranger who she knew – who she had to at least realize – was incredibly dangerous and unpredictable. Someone who could, at any moment now, decide to kill her in one of a hundred increasingly creative ways if he felt so inclined.

Not that he would. At least intentionally.

But she had to be crazy. It was the only way any of this made any sort of rational sense.

And yet he found himself mulling over her idiotic, impossible offer. Any choice he could make in this situation was loaded with inherent and incalculable risks. Every logical instinct, driven into his mind from his training and conditioning, told him to grab his things and leave as quickly as possible. The Soldier would choose to run. To go and find some other place to hide before continuing on his seemingly never-ending race away from HYDRA. Away from everything in search of peace and quiet and safety.

He wouldn't go back to HYDRA. He couldn't. He'd kill himself before he'd let that happen.

So, he should go. He should leave right then and there.

But he was exhausted and wanted to sleep in a real bed, even a couch would do, and hope that for once the resurging memories and nightmares would let him have a few precious hours of rest.

He was covered in a layer of dirt, dried sweat and old blood and wanted to take a boiling hot shower and try to scrub away the sins that he knew would follow him for the rest of his life.

And he was desperately hungry and the open box of steaming hot pizza on the coffee table was a temptation that he was loath to surrender to his rampant paranoia and the desire to run.

"Where's my bag?" he asked, his voice rough and raspy from such a long period of disuse.

She seemed disheartened with a brief moment, before schooling her features into a bland neutrality, gesturing with her hand to the area behind him. Twisting around he saw it, black fabric and worn straps, nestled in the corner between the wall and the side of the couch just above where his head had been. He grabbed it with his flesh hand before rising unsteadily up onto his boot-clad feet.

"You're really just going to go then, huh? Not even a thank you for saving your life?"

He looked down at her for a moment at her outburst, eyes unintentionally flickering over towards his confiscated weaponry, before sliding back to meet her own. She looked angry and disappointed and had obviously had misunderstood his intentions. And he found himself wanting to rectify that – to allay her confusion – feeling unexpectedly and irrationally displeased with the frown her face had settled into.

"Shower," he grunted out in a clumsy attempt to calm her fears, a skill which had gotten quite rusty with nearly seven decades of disuse, before looking around the apartment for the door to the bathroom.

He'd stay.

At least for the next twenty-four hours to rest and refuel before moving on. She'd offered him her ill-advised hospitality and he had chosen to accept it. After all this was a vast improvement over his stowaway lifestyle onboard the cargo ship that he'd crossed the Atlantic on from Buenos Aires.

"Oh," she said, her expression smoothing back out into a far more pleasant appearance, complete with a small smile pulling at the edge of her lips. "Bathroom's through that door there and on your left, then."

"Thanks."

And so, she was left to stew on the couch with her thoughts while her mysterious house guest, whose name she still didn't even know, shut the bathroom door behind him.

The whole interaction had gone far better than she had thought it would. She'd expected a fight. It was the whole reason she'd taken his guns and knives away. Not that he was truly unarmed in the normal understanding of the word. That metal limb of his would hurt like a motherfucker if he landed a solid hit with it and she'd bet it was a hell of a lot stronger than his other arm.

She knew what it was like to be hit by a robotic limb quite well and it was not a feeling she was keen to experience any more than absolutely necessary.

Also, in her expectations of a scuffle, she had exaggerated the number of families with children that lived in the apartment complex. There were only three, not six. But he didn't know that and it had all been reliant on her being correct in the assumption that he had been forced into his life as a weapon. If somewhere deep down beneath all of his trauma he was actually a good person who had been turned into something monstrous. If that was as true then there was no way he would want to risk engaging her and running the risk of injuring a bystander. Especially if that bystander could turn out to be a child.

But he hadn't reacted with violence at all.

At first, he had been completely relaxed. Just lying there on her floor and looking at her, his blue-gray eyes soft and drowsy, and his face without an ounce of apparent worry. But when she'd drawn his eyes over towards the table, that was when he'd tensed up and gone on high alert. But he still hadn't attacked. Hadn't tried to recover his weapons. He'd just watched and listened to what she had to say.

Her head turned, instinctually drawn towards a new noise, as she heard the shower turn on, before looking back down at the coffee table and its motley array of items. She leant forward to pick up her abandoned slice of pizza and closed the lid to the keep the heat in before settling back against the cushions to eat, think and wait for her guest to emerge.

Obviously, some form of proper introduction would have to be the next step. At least on her part.

She wondered if he would feel comfortable enough to share his name.

Did he even know it? Did he remember whoever he must've been before his life as the Asset? Did he even have a past life before then? Or had he always been their prisoner?

The mere thought of him having been raised in that sort of lifestyle made her grind her teeth in rage.

Her anger, a banked fire that always sat at the center of her chest just waiting for an excuse to flare up into an inferno, ignited as she imagined what sort of horrors this poor man must've suffered at the hands of his captors. His jailers. Brainwashing, conditioning, torture, indoctrination and who knew what else and for how long. Just how long had he been suffering under their control?

It was because of that, the very thought of what might've been done to him, that made her vow to remain one hundred percent honest at all times with him. At least in regards to her intentions.

Lay out all the facts and his possible options and let him make a choice of his own free will.

If he was amenable, she might even ask some questions of her own. Particularly in regards to the men she had killed that night. It would be infinitely better to know who she might've just gone and pissed right the fuck off. Just incase they chose to kick in her door at some point in the future and try to put a bullet through her skull.

A soft ping came from the smart phone that mingled in and amongst the collection of handguns and combat knives on the table. Stuffing the last bit of pizza crust into her mouth, she grabbed the device and unlocked it to read the notification on the main screen. Grinning to herself and shaking her head in exasperation, she quickly opened the messaging application and typed a reply to her worried partner.

He'd been monitoring the situation from the very beginning and still was right to this very second. All the way from her confrontation at the Port until her guest had vanished into the bathroom. He was linked with every piece of technology she had at her disposal. It was in his programming to be – at all times – concerned for her well-being and frequently became a mother-hen when her condition slipped negatively. She assured him that all was well, not that he could do anything from his current location, and just told him to continue watching just incase things did take a turn for the worst.

But she hoped they wouldn't.

As she set the phone back down, she heard the shower shut off and wondered how much longer he would take in there. She wasn't in any true rush and was more than willing to allow him as long as he would like to get himself clean, but she was unexpectedly eager to talk to him again. Though, at some point in the near future, she would like to get a few hours of sleep. But she could hold out for a while longer. She'd gone longer periods of time without rest before and it would be interesting to see if she could draw him just the slightest bit more out of his shell.

Another five minutes passed, which she used to absentmindedly inspect his handguns again because their make and model were unfamiliar to her, until he emerged from the bathroom. The faintest cloud of cleanly scented steam followed in his wake and he walked out. As he entered the living room once more, she couldn't help but take him in, both from an analytical standpoint and for her own enjoyment.

Far be it from her to not take a moment to admire the scenery.

His hair, the dark brown turned nearly black from the water, was slicked back and away from his face with the tips just barely grazing his shoulders. The scruffy beard that had hidden most of the lower half of his face had been shaven down to stubble and revealed a strong and square jaw with just a hint of a cleft chin. His face had been cleaned of dirt and even his eyes somehow seemed brighter, clearer and less burdened. A clean body and clean pair of clothes seemed to have made all the difference.

And her assessment was not far off the mark because he did feel a whole heck of a lot better.

Physically, at least.

His mind could still be compared the contents of a blender, but there wasn't too much that he could do or knew how to do to remedy that. But perhaps that was to be his penance for all of the suffering he had caused? A jumbled mess of a mind in exchange – a duly deserved punishment – for all of the blood he'd spilled for HYDRA.

His rescuer was still sitting on the couch, reclined against the cushions and eyeing him up. Her other arm, just as intricately tattooed as the first, gestured to the empty chair that matched the couch.

"Take a seat. Have some pizza."

And he did just that after setting his backpack down against a nearby wall.

Grabbing the chair with his metal arm and dragged it around the table so that he sat across from her and had unobstructed sightlines to the both the balcony and the front door. There were three points of interest that he had to keep his eyes on at all times. Her and the two most easily accessible modes of ingress or egress in the apartment. Even as he settled himself down, sitting on the front half of the seat, he knew he was far too worked up to even think about letting his guard down for an instant.

She flipped the lid of the box open and he tentatively reached for a slice as she did, more than eager to collect on her offer of a free meal. They ate in silence, which he appreciated because he didn't really want to talk at all. Or rather, he didn't know what to say. But the pizza was delicious. Far surpassing the quality of the scraps he'd had to steal on the ship to keep himself fed by an immeasurable margin.

Out of the eleven remaining slices – she must've eaten one while he was in the shower – he ate nine and she had the other two. She had finished long before he did and retreated into the kitchen to fill two glasses with water. He had stopped eating when she stood, wary of what she might've been doing, and kept a close eye on her to make sure she didn't try to slip anything into his glass.

He might've been grateful to her and thought she was pretty, but he didn't trust her.

He didn't – and couldn't – trust anyone.

But she didn't add anything. It was just water and he downed the glass with as much fervor as he had devoured the food. She even got up two more times to get him refills. But the fifteen minutes it had taken him to eat and drink to his heart's content had passed and it was obvious to him that she wanted to talk.

"Feeling better now?" she asked, one of her eyebrows rising as he wiped his mouth clean against the sleeve of his shirt.

He nodded sharply, before he cleared his throat and said, "Yes. Thank you."

She smiled. "Good. And you're welcome. Least I could do. But now that that's out of the way, I suppose it would be the best time for introductions, yeah?"

He waited, sitting quietly and just watching her and occasionally glancing towards the balcony and the door, but she didn't seem to be put off from his staring or his need to check the entrances.

"My name's Rhiannon. Rhiannon Lastimosa," she introduces, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. "You can call me Rhia, if you'd like. And you are?"

An unexpected welling of panic took him without warning. He straightened, not even realizing that he had begun to slouch ever so slightly, before trying to keep himself from outwardly reacting anymore.

His name. She wanted to know his name. Objectively he knew who he was. The man he had been before HYDRA had gotten their hands on him. He'd gone to the Smithsonian and seen the exhibit. He'd read about it in books and on the internet when he'd had a spare moment to breathe during his escape.

James Buchanan Barnes. Born March 10th, 1917 in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City, New York. The eldest of four children born to George and Winnifred Barnes, with three younger sisters. A sergeant in the United States Army assigned to the 107th Infantry Regiment. Serial number 3255703856898. Former member of the Howling Commandos. Known as Bucky to his friends and family. Best friend of Captain America. Best friend of Steve…

No. That wasn't right.

But she wanted to know his name.

What did he say?

Did he have any right to say that he was actually James Barnes?

He looked up, unaware that his gaze had dropped down to his knees while he'd wallowed in the sudden rush of panic and fear and anxiety, and found her mouth moving but he couldn't hear her. It was like he was underwater with everything muffled. All he could hear was his rapid heartbeat, the rush and pulse of blood in his head. She was talking to him and her arms were twitching like she wanted to reach out.

And then he could hear again, focusing all of his attention on her instead of the chaos in his head.

"Hey. Come on, focus. Focus on me. Just breathe." She took an exaggerated inhale and he found himself mimicking her without thought. "In." She exhaled. "And out." Together they worked their way through a repetitive series of slow and measured breaths until he had recovered to some semblance of normalcy and she was no longer afraid of him hyperventilating himself unconsciousness. Or lashing out violently.

"Sorry," he mumbled lowly, looking away, ashamed and kicking himself for turning into such a mess in front of her. It was weakness. He'd shown weakness! What a fucking disappointment he was.

"No. I'm sorry. Should've expected you'd have a bad reaction. Those assholes kept calling you the Asset so I should've guessed that you'd have trouble giving me your name." She brought a hand up to her forehead, rubbing at her hairline, before pinching at the bridge of her nose and letting out a sigh. The sensation of a heavy weight settled itself in his gut at her reaction. "You don't have to tell me your name if you don't feel capable of it. Or if you don't remember it. I just…"

"James."

Her head snapped up in shock and surprise.

"What?"

"James," he says again, barking out the name and swallowing in an attempt to bury the nausea that still churned in his stomach. A remnant symptom of the panic attack he'd just suffered. "My name is James."

"Oh." A smile, larger than any of those before it, pulls her lips up and apart and gave him a brief flash of pearly white teeth. She shifts on the couch and he thinks just for a brief second that he likes the look of her smiling more than anything in the world. "Well in that case, it's very nice to meet you, James."

He bows his head in reciprocation. Almost all of his energy for conversation had fled him with the admission of the name. He might not ever be the man known as Bucky Barnes again, but he could try to at least be James Barnes. There wasn't as much weight and history attached to that name in his mind.

He watches as the warmth in her expression falls after a few more seconds and her eyes looking down for the moment before rising as she spoke, "So those people I saved you from. Who were they?"

"HYDRA," he admits gruffly and sees a flicker of recognition from her. But she doesn't ask any more questions than that, just nodding her head in understanding and seeming to move on from there. The existence of HYDRA within S.H.I.E.L.D. had been made public knowledge after the events in Washington D.C. It should come as no surprise that she would know who and what the organization was, at least in broad terms, as most of the world now knew at least the bare minimum.

"I'm assuming that you don't plan on staying for very long, right?"

He nods and she looks entirely unsurprised by his answer.

"I'd like you to rethink that plan," she says and – before he can outwardly protest – continues. "The leader of that team was receiving a ping that led them right to your location. Once I got you here, I did a scan of my own and found that there is a tracking device or some sort embedded inside your arm."

He freezes, looking over at his metal arm before starting to get up from the chair, twisting to get his bag and make a break for it. He had to leave then. Right now. They knew where he was. They were tracking him. He had to go. Had to run before they found him. Before they found her and hurt her for even being in his presence.

"Calm down and sit down," she barks out, like a superior officer might've in the military. He looks down at her, confused and on the verge of another attack, to find her completely unworried by the revelation. "The signal is being jammed. They don't know where you are right now. I wasn't lying to you earlier. You are safe here. I swear it."

Could he believe her?

Against his better judgement he sits back down, fighting against the urge to run.

"How?"

"I'm a dab hand when it comes to tech. Wasn't that hard," she says, confident and a bit smug, before going serious once more. "But if you want to be truly free, we're going to have to get that tracker out of your arm and I can do it, but not right now."

He looks at her, tilting his head to the side like a dog might, asking a silent question for her to elaborate.

"You'd have to stick around if you want me to help you. For the week." He grimaces at the thought of staying in one place for so long and she seems to understand his dislike of the idea. "I know you don't like the sound of that, but that's how it'll have to be. I have to be at work all of this coming week and if I miss even one day of work I'm fired and will have no source of income. But every other weekend I take a trip up north to visit a friend and he has all of the tools I would need to remove the tracker without hurting you or damaging your arm."

He didn't like it. But the chance to have the tracker, something that he should have been smart enough to at least expect HYDRA to have put in him, removed was an opportunity that would be downright foolish of him to refuse. He could try and force her, of course. But he had a feeling that that would just end up in a fight as she was clearly the sort who couldn't and wouldn't be cowed with a show of force.

No. It would just end up with one of them dead.

He didn't want to fight her and he definitely didn't want to kill her. He didn't want to kill anyone if he absolutely didn't have to, actually.

It was just a week.

The signal was being jammed by whatever it was that she had done and the capture team was dead by their own hands. He could survive being in close proximity to another person for that long, right? He'd keep his distance at all times, keep their interactions as brief and infrequent as he possibly could and do his best to try to not get attached to her.

That was the biggest threat. Growing fond of her. Getting attached. It was almost inevitable after spending nearly seventy years without any sort of proper human interaction.

He'd just been given orders. Go here. Kill. Come back. Good dog.

But was he willing to take a chance on believing in her promises?

Was he?

Apparently, he was.