A/N: So… I borrowed some extra stuff from Marvel in this chapter reading the wikis when I was doing research and brainstorming at the beginning of deciding to write this fic. Just in case it isn't crystal clear to you though, this is ABSOLUTELY NOT canon compliant for the actual comics.

Chapter 6

I woke up and let out a heavy sigh.

So much for the magically remember things in my sleep plan. That was a big old zero in the dream memory column.

I stumbled from my bed into the bathroom that was attached to my bedroom and doused myself in the shower to try to clear the cobwebs. I may not have remembered anything, but I DID sleep well.

Maybe it was related to whatever sedatives I had been given, and I'd remember tonight when I went to bed.

Okay, Steph. You just woke up. You can't already be thinking of sleep.

I turned off the shower and stepped out, realizing that I smelled coffee in the kitchen. I figured it was Ranger trying to get back on my good side with coffee.

Much to my surprise when I walked out of my bedroom, I found Bucky sitting at the table. In front of him was a giant plate of eggs, bacon, and toast. To his left was an empty place setting with a more reasonable portion of the food, presumably for me.

I raised a brow at him but walked over and took a seat.

"What's the deal with all the food?" I asked around a mouthful of my own. Then, not wanting to be rude, I added, "and thanks for cooking."

"You said you read my file, right?" he asked.

"What was available," I told him.

"Back before the Howling Commandos, I was captured by HYDRA. Well, we all were, that's how we met, but I was experimented on. Then Steve came and rescued us all, and I didn't really realize anything was different. Near as I can tell from what I've been able to find out these last few months hunting down HYDRA, I was given some sort of serum. It was mostly a failure at that point, but it helped me survive the fall out of the train and off the cliff."

"The one that everyone thought killed you," I said slowly.

Bucky nodded, not looking nearly as upset as I thought I would if that had happened to me. "HYDRA found me, saved my life, but I lost my arm. Then they experimented on me more over the years. More serums. Memory wipes. Brainwashing. Anything they could think of. You name it."

"Do you have any superpowers?" I asked, fascinated. I hadn't seen any mentioned in the file, but he said "anything."

"No," there was a wry twist to his lips at that. "I know they've dabbled in that here or there, but I think they didn't have any solid leads on that until the last couple decades. They weren't willing to risk me on something that might kill me. And even if they weren't worried about killing me, I don't think they wanted to run the risk that I'd be able to over power them."

"Or maybe they were worried your memory would come back or something," I added.

Stupid Stephanie. Way to bring that up.

Bucky didn't seem offended though, just nodded.

"Was it HYDRA that brought you to Trenton?" I asked.

I didn't know how long he would stick around this time, and I had questions I needed answered.

"Yes and no," he said.

"That clears things up," I muttered.

"After D.C., I didn't know what to do. I spent time trying to figure out who I was, sort through memories, put them in order," he spoke quietly, but I could still clearly hear him. "When I remembered anything in particular about HYDRA like the location of labs or bases, I would check to see whether or not they had been taken care of."

"The Avengers have been cleaning up," I acknowledged. Details in the news were sketchy, but that much was clear to anyone who paid even minimal attention.

Bucky clearly agreed, so he continued, "some of them I went after. Others I left hints or arranged for tips to be sent in about them."

"Seems like they've mostly been over in Europe and Asia," I commented.

Bucky grinned at that. I was pretty sure he was enjoying sending the Avengers, or maybe specifically Captain America, on wild goose chases.

"I'm trying to fly under the radar," he confirmed. "I followed a lead into Trenton. Usually I don't stay more than a few hours, I just gather information and get out. I circle back if I need to after I review the information, but there was this little mom and pop shop. They were nice when I came in right at closing. Didn't rush me along or hassle me, just waited while I got whatever I needed. Anyway, I showed up a few minutes late the next day hoping they'd still be there and let me in real quick. There were these men-"

He stopped for a moment, so I prodded, "gang or mob?"

"Gang," he spat the word out.

"You cleared them out?" I asked. When he nodded, I added, "and then?"

"They mentioned a couple other shops that were having a similar problem."

"You ran off a gang. Alone. Without getting noticed by the police?"

He just shrugged, and I decided that wasn't really relevant at the moment.

"What about HYDRA?" I asked him.

Bucky thought for a moment and said, "I told you I was tracking a source of human test subjects- it was because I thought HYDRA was a customer of theirs. I still think that is true, but they had a larger setup here in Trenton. So I had to follow multiple clients to figure out which might be HYDRA and which were something more."

"What is the company?" Bucky hesitated, and I thought maybe he was worried about me. So I cut off that argument saying, "I'm already involved in this."

"They're called Sojourn Enterprises," he finally told me. "They'd been linked with various bad business through the years- Hammer Industries, Ten Rings, and more. They're international, and SHIELD thought that they were defunct after their founder died. But I found evidence that the HYDRA agents who had infiltrated SHIELD knew differently and were concealing it from SHIELD."

"Okay," I said. This was already feeling convoluted. "So Sojourn Enterprises is a company that does human trafficking, and they're based in Trenton but have an international network?"

Bucky laughed at that, "human trafficking, drugs, weapons development and dealing, corporate espionage, there isn't much that they don't have a way of getting for you. Think of them more as procurement specialists who will procure anything. And they aren't based in Trenton, but they do have A base here."

"And what does this have to do with me?" I finally asked after mulling that information over for a while.

"I'm not sure," Bucky said. When I gave him an unimpressed look, he protested. "No really, I don't know. I found some papers- names, phone numbers, that kind of thing- where you were being held. Some I recognized from Sojourn and others I don't. I'm looking into it. Just lay low for the time being."

"I'm not great at laying low," I told him honestly. "I can do it for like two hours, and then I get bored."

"Try harder," he told me before standing and moving as though to do dishes.

"You cooked, I'll clean," I told him, taking the dishes away from him. When it seemed like he wasn't going to give me any more information anytime soon, I said, "I was surprised to see you this morning. I thought I would never see you again."

"I hoped Ranger would think I was gone and not rat me out. Plus I wanted to look into a few things," Bucky said with a shrug. "See if anyone showed up looking for me."

"And?"

"I'll need to leave soon," he said.

"Why did you even come back?" I asked.

"YOU didn't call the cops," he told me. I already knew that, so I just looked at him a little harder and he added, "I wanted to make sure you weren't suffering any lasting side effects. The sedative I gave you can leave you a little extra tired for a couple days. You have crap security, and it's easy to break in here. I didn't want to leave you here if you were sleeping too hard to wake up if there was trouble."

"Does breaking up with my on/off boyfriend who I might have been engaged to be engaged to count as a lasting side effect? Or running off my sometimes lover?"

"I don't think that was the sedative," he told me. "And you can do better."

"How do you know?" I asked. "For all you know, I'm HYDRA."

"You live in a crap apartment with geriatric neighbors and a pet hamster for company. I can't think of any possible strategic value being here would have. From what I can tell, everyone in Trenton knows who you are, everything you do, and where you live. You're way too high profile. All that adds up to say that you ain't HYDRA."

"Hey!" I protested, pretty sure I should be offended by at least some of that. I mean, it was true that I wasn't HYDRA. But I could be if I wanted to be.

"Why would you want to be?" Bucky asked.

"Well, okay. You have a point," I could feel myself pouting as I added, "but I can do stuff. I'm an alright bounty hunter."

"You're actually better than alright," Bucky countered. "And that's the last thing. Your capture rate is just over 90%. If you were HYDRA, it would probably be lower because you'd be letting people who were HYDRA go."

"It's mostly luck," I told him. I did a mental facepalm because I'd just been trying to convince him I was competent. Pick a side, Stephanie.

Bucky looked like he was trying to hold back a laugh, but he just chose to diplomatically shrug instead.

"Why did you drug me?" I blurted out because I'd been wondering about that since I'd found him in my apartment.

"I didn't intend to actually make myself known to you," he told me. "And I was hoping it would keep you from remembering me or identifying me to the police. Buy me at least a couple more days before I had to get out of town."

I dried off my hands after finishing the dishes and didn't say anything more because I thought that was a good enough reason. I mean, I didn't really like being drugged, but he was on the run, so I figured I could forgive him the once.

Then I turned around again, and he was gone.

The man might be even better at that than Ranger was.

I sighed because I would probably never have those kinds of skills and looked around again. He really was gone. With a shrug, I went back to my bedroom.

I had tossed my hair haphazardly up into a ponytail when I smelled the coffee after my shower, but I hadn't done anything more. So I took it down and set about drying it.

Then I applied a layer of lipgloss and mascara. Growing up in the Burg, I'd discovered that lipgloss and mascara were my armor. I could do anything as long as I was wearing my lipgloss and mascara. And I wasn't sure what the day would hold.

On my way out of the bathroom, my eye caught on something on my nightstand. Tilted my head to the side, trying to remember if it had been there before.

No, it definitely had not.

I approached warily because usually mysterious things were left in my apartment by various stalkers and crazy, and they weren't actually good things.

It looked like some sort of notebook, and I was curious so I picked it up. I opened the first page and found one of my sticky notes inside. It said, "give this to him, and tell him I'm almost ready to come in. I just have to wrap up a couple things."

The note was unsigned, and it made no sense to me, so I turned through the pages, skimming as I went.

My Grandma Mazur had a friend who was a little cooky. Thought she could make love potions and the like. One time she got Grandma Mazur all into dream journals, and Grandma Mazur had, in turn, tried to convince me to do a dream journal.

I'd lasted less than a week, but the contents of this notebook reminded me of that dream journal. If my dreams had been horrific nightmares about me doing things I couldn't have previously imagined. Then a few pages in, the name STEVIE was written at the top of the page. There was a little rough sketch of a scrawny boy and a list below it of random things. "Mother: Sarah;" "Newspapers in shoes;" "asthma;" "enlistment physical - 4F;" "punk;" "movie theater alley."

It switched to more pages of nightmares, but slowly the pages of what had to be memories of Bucky's life before HYDRA came up more and more frequently. I made myself stop reading because Bucky hadn't left it for me. He'd left it for "him," and I had a sneaking suspicion I knew who that was, but I had no idea how he thought I was going to get this notebook to him.

Well, I would just stick it in my cookie jar with my gun for safe keeping until I could figure that out.

I walked out of my bedroom and stopped dead.

"Well, this is awkward," I said, knowing full well that my eyes were practically popping out of my head.

Captain America was towering in my living room, hands on his hips, making the space look way smaller.

"Stephanie Plum?" he asked, voice full of authority.

I hadn't even done anything wrong, but I raised my hands up and was pretty sure I'd have been shaking in my boots if I'd been wearing any.

"Yes?" I finally managed to respond, more question than anything. Then, just to make things worse, I added, "I didn't do it?"

Captain America quirked one eyebrow up and asked, "what didn't you do?"

"Whatever you think I did?" Damnit why did I sound so incredibly guilty? In a rush, I continued, "I actually just got out of the hospital yesterday. And I was kidnapped for like two weeks before that"

I heard a snicker, but Captain America's face was unchanged. That was when I realized he wasn't alone. I leaned over to peer around him and saw another man and a woman. I was pretty sure I recognized them both from the coverage of what had happened in D.C., which meant…

I looked down at my shirt and flushed before saying, "yep, awkward. Just shoot me now."

I must have been thinking of the conversation the night before when I got dressed that morning. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt… a Black Widow T-shirt.

It had a cartoon drawing of the black widow and said, "be a hero!" on it, and now the actual Black Widow was in my apartment while I was wearing it.

"Rats," I said with feeling. "I'm just going to go…" I trailed off.

"It's too late," the man whose name I didn't know told me. "She'll already be unbearable for all of us over this."

The woman in question prowled over to me, there was really no other way to describe it. It took everything in me to hold my ground as she approached, and I was proud of myself for not flinching when she whipped her hand out.

I was glad too because she was just offering me a handshake as she said, "hi."

"Hi," I replied uneasily. "I'm Steph."

"I'm Natasha," she told me needlessly. "You can call me Nat. This is Steve, and that one is Sam."

She gestured to each man as she introduced them, and I nodded then took each of their hands in turn when offered.

I was really hoping my palms weren't sweating too badly when I took Steve's hand.

The man was HOT, and I didn't really know what to do with him.

I mean, okay, a few things came to mind, but this didn't really seem like the time. Not to mention, I already had a complicated enough love life.

Plus there was the whole thing with his best friend who had been staying here. And now I had his journal.

And yeah. Best to keep it professional.

Wipe away the dirty thoughts, Steph. This isn't Steve. It's Captain Steve Rogers. Aka Captain America. He had a job to do. He was there for a reason.

"Hi," I said again, hand accidentally lingering in the Captain's.

Captain Rogers smiled at me, and that was not helping my problem. But when he released my hand, I let out the breath I didn't realize I was holding.

"You already said that," he told me, not unkindly. Then he added, "now what didn't you do?"

"I don't know! Whatever had you looking so…" I trailed off, unsure of how to describe his utterly formidable appearance when I'd first walked into the room.

So instead, I put my hands on my hips and tried to channel my inner Ranger as I put a scowl on my face. I figured I did an alright job because Sam busted up laughing, and Natasha's previously calculating expression seemed to genuinely relax for a moment.

"We got reports that The Winter Soldier was seen in Trenton," Captain Rogers said. "Then just as we were getting into town, we hear about a big to-do happening across the river in Pennsylvania. We decided to check that out first and found an abandoned aircraft factory blown all to hell."

"Huh," I said. "Pennsylvania?"

"Met anyone new interesting lately?" Sam asked.

"Funny you should say that," I said slowly.

Captain Rogers sucked in a breath expectantly, and I wasn't really sure what to say. So I held out the notebook.

Captain Rogers took it from me, and opened it, reading the sticky note first. He didn't pause to comment though, just started turning pages eagerly.

His face looked so conflicted, and I felt like a voyeur watching, so instead I turned to the other two hoping to give him something approaching privacy as he read.

"Do you need anything? Have you eaten? I think I have… ice cream and cookies? If Bucky didn't eat them all?"

I opened up my fridge, surprised to see that it was fully stocked not just with eggs, bacon, and bread, but with milk, premade meals, and things that looked suspiciously like vegetables.

"Huh," I said. "Are those carrots?"

Sam gave me a weird look, "do you not know what carrots look like?"

"Of course I know what they look like, I just don't really have them… ever. Unless I buy a small bag for Rex or something."

"Who is this Rex?" Natasha asked.

"Oh, he's my hamster. Friends are taking care of him right now because of the whole kidnapping thing, but I'll probably go pick him up today. Bring him home. He's great," I told her with a proud smile.

She looked uncertain, but wisely didn't say anything more on the subject. I didn't care if she was the Black Widow, I would stun gun her if she dissed Rex.

"What are you talking about?" I heard Captain Rogers's voice speak from behind me.

"I don't even know," I murmured. "But the grocery fairy apparently dropped off food while I was asleep, so help yourself."

"Is the grocery fairy Bucky?" Sam asked.

"I'm not actually sure," I told them.

Figuring that they must not want anything to eat or drink at the moment, I shut the fridge and turned to get a glass of water. By the time I was done, I felt a little calmer. So I turned back to the group studying me carefully, and said, "do you want to hear a crazy story?"