Chapter 39

Dresden, Germany

Spring 2016

She knew Steve was right. She really did.

But that didn't stop her apprehension from threatening to get the better of her once again.

It certainly didn't help that her embarrassment from losing her composure and blurting out her irrational fears to Steve still lingered. Bewilderingly, she was almost glad on some level that it had been Steve she'd unburdened on—she really had come to trust him more than almost anyone, she marvelled with a flood of undeniable affection—but that didn't quite overshadow how mortifying it had been to admit just how unbalanced the very prospect of talking to Barnes had left her.

Still, there had been a certain cathartic benefit to her admission. She had to admit to that.

Just as she had to admit he'd somehow managed to say precisely the right thing to help her get her irrational outburst of emotion back under control, playing into her reliance on preparation, reminding her she knew what she was up against even if it didn't wholly feel that way. Not to mention the unexpected amount of comfort she'd gotten from the way he'd let her lean against him, somehow knowing that anything more would only bring her discomfort in that moment despite the way a small part of her had craved being pulled into his embrace.

And from the way his fingers had threaded, warm and steady, through hers.

It was then that it hit her. More than trust, she felt safe around Steve. Safe enough to admit—aloud—that she was…afraid. Something she'd never truly done before.

Not even with her sister.

What was more, he had proven worthy of that trust. He hadn't pitied or coddled her over it. He hadn't looked down on her, or dismissed it. Instead, he had helped push her past it. It was…nice, being able to rely on him, on his support. Part of her insisted it was a sign of weakness…but…but it really didn't feel that way just as it didn't feel that way when she leaned on Natasha. It was a baffling and almost unsettling realization and flew in the face of everything she'd ever been taught.

Yet, at the same time it felt so…natural…

No, he was helping her to feel…whole in a way she'd never known before. In a way her relationship with her sister and friendship with the Bartons had been starting to feel…but, somehow…more.

She couldn't entirely explain it.

But then, she didn't entirely understand the feeling enough to properly try.

He made her feel like she was capable of being far more than just what the Red Room and her troubled past had moulded her into.

Like she was more.

As if she hadn't fallen for him enough already…

Oh God, what was she going to do…she shouldn't be even thinking of entertaining the idea that there could be more between them…and yet…

Steve stepped away then and, with the corner of his mouth quirking in a final, encouraging grin, he excused himself. She fought the way her breath tried to hitch, forcing her heart rate to remain steady. She didn't entirely succeed.

"I'll take watch," he said with a glance to Barnes and Nadine, a subtle air of duty settling around him. Not that it was wholly for duty's sake of course.

Nadine breathed in a long, steadying breath.

Steve was right. She needed to talk to Barnes. To get her ghosts out in the open and off her back. Because her normal methods of coping with the shadows of her past—pushing them aside and compartmentalizing them away—weren't working anymore. Not with Barnes here, viscerally reminding her of what she had done to him and the secrets she still kept from him with his presence alone. And with what they were set to face? It was a distraction none of them could afford. What had happened in Bucharest and in the JCTC had made that abundantly clear. She had faltered. She had let her personal feelings cloud her judgement and dull her instincts. All because she had let him, and more critically the history between them, get to her.

She had to lance the wound her history with Barnes had caused.

Or she'd be nothing but a liability.

Nadine loosened her grip on her rifle, and made to step around the counter.

Only to hesitate as her eye fell on her dark brown leather jacket where it lay—innocuous save for the notable bulge over the interior pocket—next to her duffle. Pushing back another swell of unease, she slipped the Red Book free.

And inhaling deeply yet again to bolster her nerve and strengthen her composure, the words that she was considering tumbling through her mind as she debated how best to say what she needed to, she circled the counter. And despite the nerves still fluttering helplessly in her gut, Nadine was finally able to let her focus settle on the dark-haired man sitting on the couch, looking just as tense and uneasy as she felt as he stared unseeing at the coffee table.

Her stomach lurched.

She was really about to face him and the memories of him that had haunted her for over eighteen years, wasn't she…

It felt bewilderingly surreal as she sat down across from him, hands clutching painfully tight to the Red Book in her lap as she studied him unashamedly. More surreal than the moment she'd met his eye either in Bucharest or even back during their fight at the JCTC. More surreal than hearing him speak—truly speak—for the first time under the overpass or when he'd asked so innocently how she'd gotten tangled up with Steve and the Avengers, not knowing that his daughter's kidnapping had been the catalyst. She'd nearly panicked when the question had fallen from his lips, his expression guileless and curious all at once, totally oblivious to the weight of his query until Nadine's inability to properly mask her apprehension and alarm tipped him off that there was far more to the story than she'd offered in her vague answer. God, she felt so bloody guilty about that curt, almost inane answer: I got caught up in a mission where, once it became clear was too big for a single operative, I needed to find allies I could trust, and since I trust Natasha and she trusted the Avengers—and because my mission aligned with one of theirs—we all agreed to work together.

But now was her chance to remedy that. To come clean about everything to the man sitting across from her.

Her heart hammered in her chest, feeling almost like it was struggling against the immense weight of her apprehension pressing down on it. And whatever she might have wanted to say caught in her throat.

For years she'd been debating what she would say to him when she finally saw Barnes again. Ever since she had resolved she would find him and help him the way he had helped her—since the very day her precious, innocent, newborn baby girl had been laid in her arms. And when she'd been confronted with the reality that it was actually going to happen? That she was finally going to get her chance to thank him? To beg his forgiveness for what had happened?

To tell him about his daughter?

She'd nearly faltered, only for the desire to finally have that chance to rise up and nearly overwhelm her.

She wanted to get it off her chest. She needed the closure even if absolution was beyond her reach. Beyond what she deserved. The hope and even expectation of forgiveness might be implicit in the act of apologizing, deserved or not, earned or not, but Nadine held no illusions that she had either earned or deserved it, so she certainly didn't hold to that hope. She'd made peace with that long ago.

All she cared about now was finally, properly facing her ghosts…and could perhaps even put them to rest…

She'd been carrying the burden of what had happened all those years ago buried deep within her for so long, that the very idea of letting it out, of finally being free of that weight whether he truly granted her forgiveness or not, left her nearly lightheaded with nervous anticipation.

But that very desire, to finally get the chance to resolve their shared history, had run hot and cold in the time since. For every different reason she could imagine.

Out of fear of his revulsion over what she'd done; the need to find a measure of closure over what had happened; the pain and horror of reliving that time; to finally give Nina the chance to know her father; the jealous desire to keep Nina to herself; the fierce determination to protect her daughter from being hurt; the fear of being hurt herself…

The fear of further hurting him…

And that was what was at the heart of her reluctance in that moment as she looked to Barnes. He sat, across from her, shoulders bowed ever so slightly, gaze fixed almost intently on his fisted hands as it had been since Steve slipped from the room, his jaw working anxiously. He was just as apprehensive about this as she was.

She really couldn't blame him for that.

Nadine hadn't been able to help but pick up on how shaken he seemed after whatever it was he and Steve had talked about. Oh, he was hiding it well, but he wasn't quite able to hide it from her practiced eye. She caught glimpses in the distant way he'd frown, traces of confusion flickering in his eyes as he almost seemed to be lost. Or the tense set to his mouth as his gaze would dart, almost panicked to Steve, as though desperate for reassurance that his friend was real.

Whatever he and Steve had discussed—and she had a sneaking suspicion she knew exactly what they'd been talking about, given the way both of them had kept sneaking covert, thoughtful looks at her once she'd returned with dinner—it had been stressful enough that it had shaken the hold Barnes had on his mind.

And that realization left her genuinely worried that, if she were to try and talk to him, to at least try to clear the air between them, that she'd shatter what was left of the tentative hold he had managed to rebuild in his time in the run.

She couldn't bear the thought of doing that to him. Not after everything else she'd done.

It was one of many things that had been racing through her mind as she'd worked on her guns; contemplating what to say. How much she could say without pushing him too far.

What she needed to say.

There was so much.

But yet, there also wasn't.

Before anything else, she needed to apologize.

Yet she still had no idea how to say it in a way that wouldn't be horribly inadequate.

It was a mess.

But mess or not, it still had to be done. And whether or not now was the best time was a moot point. She looked down to her own lap, where she held the Red Book in a white-knuckled grip. The bizarre temptation to laugh caught in her throat. Of all the items to serve as a manner of peace offering. She could only imagine how she'd feel in his place, being offered something that had probably featured, directly or indirectly, in just about every one of his worst memories. But at the same time…maybe it was perfect. To be able to hold it in his own hands? It would be the perfect symbol that his mind—his life, even—was effectively once more his own.

Perhaps it was the best sort of offering she could make.

Taking her nerves and her courage firmly in hand, she stood again, circling the coffee table—unopened deck of cards still placed perfectly in the centre—to settle next to Barnes, careful not to touch him. He was like her in so many ways…she couldn't imagine he'd appreciate any unasked for contact after so many years of what he'd endured any more than she still did nearly two decades later.

Especially not from her.

Silently, she forced her fingers to loosen from the book, and laid it on the table in front of him.

He went still. Painfully still. Instantly feeling the shock suddenly pouring off him, she wondered if she had made a mistake. If with that single, seemingly simple gesture, she'd pushed his fractured mind too far…

But she didn't move, didn't react. Years of training masked as instinct—and perhaps some genuine instinct as well—told her just let him process.

"Where did you find this," he rasped out after a long, fraught minute. His metal arm whined with how tense he'd grown, while the muscles of his flesh arm wrenched taut, bulging with the strain.

"Sharon Carter found it," she offered softly, not realizing she'd automatically pitched her voice as she'd used to when soothing Nina when she was tiny and frightened, "after I realized what your…incident in Berlin meant about the doctor." He swallowed thickly beside her, his head bobbing in a sharp, jerking nod. After another long, uncomfortably silent moment, he reached out. Picking the horrible book up almost gingerly, he stared down at it in his hands, his forearms returning to rest on his knees.

"Thank you," he choked out, features unreadable save for the well of conflicting emotion in his expressive eyes. "I—just…thank you." She could feel tears rising thick and cloying, to the back of her throat.

"It seemed the least I could do," she said softly, her own voice laden with too much emotion for comfort. Emotion and brutal honesty. "I owe you."

He froze again, his head turning slowly toward her. But he wasn't quite able to lift his eyes to her face. Gaze dropping back, unseeing to the Red Book, he didn't speak for a long moment, his head shaking slowly.

"You don't owe me anything," he objected. She nearly couldn't breathe at how bewildered he sounded. Nadine shook her head, fighting back the tears suddenly trying to spring from where she'd stalled them back in her throat to her eyes. Did he really not realize…

"I owe you more than you know. I'm alive because of you, Barnes, and not just because you let me go," she insisted gravely, sounding far more collected than she felt despite the faint tremor that had begun threading her voice. "Hell," she added bitterly, "had I not run when I did? Had I transitioned to a fully qualified operative? When they eventually realized they wouldn't be able to control me the way they wanted, they might even have considered—considered doing to me what they did to you rather than simply striking me off; I was valuable to them thanks to what they did to me; my training, the Treatments. They might very well have turned me into another Winter Soldier." He jerked, his gaze finally snapping to her. She fixed him with an intense look. "You saved me from that." He just stared back, his expression sad and thoughtful and disbelieving all at once. Inhaling deeply, unable to stand the look in his eyes—the undeserved sympathy—her gaze dropped to her own twisting hands.

"I made it out because of you," she continued, acutely aware of how uneven his breathing had become, "and…and you gave me…" only to falter, Nina's name catching on her lips as her courage failed and a small flash of circumspection emerged; she couldn't just spring it on him. He was too agitated, too stressed. She needed to ease into the confession. She sighed heavily. "You gave me everything, Barnes. Everything I never thought I could have…I have a…a life because of what you did for me, because of what you must've…endured because of it." Her voice threatened to break, an ache pulsing in her chest, especially when his brow furrowed deeper at her reference to the price of his letting her go. "It only felt right to try and return the favour," she said softly instead, only to find herself unable to help the small grin that pulled at the corner of her mouth. "Though, you seemed to manage all on your own." A shaky huff escaped his throat as he spared her a veiled glance.

"I suppose I did, didn't I," he finally said, voice noticeably tight as he tried to hide how almost painfully unsure he was. The realization tore at her in a way that left her chest aching. He was trying so hard to sound normal…like he wasn't on the verge of losing what little hold over himself he'd regained since all his progress at rebuilding himself had been threatened in Berlin. A sinking, horrible feeling began to resurface in the back of her mind that she'd been sure she'd fought back since it first presented itself on the way to Dresden.

She wanted to be wrong…but…she was afraid she wouldn't be able to ignore it. Or what it would mean she had to do…

…or rather, not do.

Her stomach twisted uneasily, pressing uncomfortably against her diaphragm.

"Who else knows?" he asked softly then, derailing her thoughts and what she'd planned to ease into next. His voice was faintly hoarse, further proving the emotional strain he was under despite the way his features had grown carefully impassive in a way she recognized intimately. Nadine nearly started, caught off guard by the sudden question. He spared her a glance out of the corner of his eye at the flinch she hadn't quite been able to hide before looking up properly, gaze shrewd but surprisingly gentle despite the reluctance written plainly across his features and in the tension in his body. "About…what happened between us. Other than Steve."

"For sure? Other than…than Steve?" Nadine inhaled deeply to steady herself. Again, he picked up on it, his steel-blue eyes sharply perceptive. She shifted uncomfortably, not quite liking the feeling that he was seeing far more than she wanted him to.

It still felt odd, seeing him like this, with his mind more or less his own. He was a whole different person, not that she expected any less, but it was still a shock. Mentally shaking her thoughts back on track, she continued: "Natasha—she put the pieces together back then, already, to some extent. And…and one of our Teammates; Barton…Hawkeye," she clarified. His gaze intensified at how perfectly casual her tone was. At his pointedly quizzical look she sighed, knowing there was no getting around it. "It didn't come out in the—well, in the best way." Abruptly she was stumbling over her words, her guilt over what had happened both on the Quinjet and years before surfacing again from the place where she'd hoped to finally leave it behind.

"There's footage…of us…together. Steve, umm—it was sent to us, to the Avengers, to distract us during a mission. Steve and Nat saw it; Barton didn't, but he was there, so he heard. But it…it worked. Steve…" she faltered, remembered dread rising like a jagged lump of glass in her throat. Only to stiffen, her jaw clenching in self-reproach as a hot, damp trail suddenly rolled down her cheek. She angrily swiped the traitorous moisture away. "Well…it made it perfectly clear to him that I'd done awful things. Horrific things." Next to her Barnes sighed, setting the Red Book back down on the table with an incongruously eager reluctance.

"I think we all have," he murmured, voice painfully haunted, cracks beginning to appear in his own impassive mask. Nadine's shoulders slumped, the tension draining out of her as instead a bone-deep weariness rose to take hold.

"You may or may not remember, Barnes, but I took advantage of you—seduced you—when you didn't even have control of your own mind. That's in another realm of Bad." There was very little inflection to her voice, that fact revealing in and of itself.

But to Nadine's abject shock, Bucky just shrugged.

"That's not exactly how I remember it." Nadine's jaw actually dropped even as he shot her a brittle smile. "I'm pretty sure I remember you refusing to do it to your handler's face, and hesitating when you found yourself in just that situation," he hesitated, shifting uncomfortably much as she had earlier. He looked to her once again from the corner of his eye, unable to do so directly, inhaling a ragged, unsteady breath before continuing. "I—I remember you asking me if I knew what was happening, what you'd been all but ordered to do before starting to back away. It wasn't until I—well, I'd be more likely to call it me taking advantage of you."

"What?" Nadine breathed, feeling utterly bewildered and bordering on panic. "How can you not hate me for what I did to you? Or—or for what they did to you because you let me go?" Barnes shrugged again, staring sightlessly at the deck of cards sitting in the precise centre of the table.

"Probably because you had about as much choice as I did," he said simply after a moment, looking to her. "And…and it was worth it. Letting you go."

Before she could stop it, Nadine was gasping around a sob trying to rip out of her chest, her hands clamping over her mouth in a desperate effort to hold it back. Disbelief, relief, grief, remorse; it all swamped her, making each breath a battle as those emotions and more surged through her, constricting her airway.

And then his arms were around her as she started to shake and she was holding him tightly back as tremors began to wrack though him too.

It felt like an eternity before she felt calm enough to pull away from the bewildering comfort of Barnes' embrace. But she felt strangely…lighter as she did. Embarrassed, yes, but not so overwhelmingly so as she might have expected to feel.

It was then that it hit her how close she suddenly felt to him. How…connected. It wasn't at all like how she felt around Steve, yet neither was it how she felt around her sister. If anything, it felt a little like the kinship she felt with Clint; familiar, comforting.

But yet still totally different.

Familiar but not.

Connected—bonded, even—by everything they'd experienced together and the incidental…solace they'd each somehow managed to find in it. In each other. There was a kinship between them that only the other would ever be able to understand. Bizarrely, it felt even…platonic, for all that their past should've implied it be otherwise.

It felt astonishingly…precious.

Inhaling a deep, shaking breath as she straightened, she reached out, taking his hands in hers. He squeezed her fingers tentatively back.

"I never meant to hurt you," he said softly, looking up to meet her eye. Nadine's breath caught, her chest feeling tight even as her eyes begin to prickle traitorously once more at the—undeserved, a tiny, cruel corner of her mind still hissed—sincerity she saw in his steel-blue gaze.

"I know," she said quietly back, "and I never meant to hurt you." The corner of his lip tugged.

"I know."

His gaze fell to their hands then, only to be drawn slowly back to the Red Book where it sat on the table next to their knees. His features growing almost awed, he sighed heavily, pulling his metal hand free from hers to almost cautiously pick it up.

"After all this time…" he murmured, trailing off as though not quite believing it was real. His gleaming thumb brushed over the embossed black star. The corner of her lip curled in a small smile.

"The key to your mind's in there," she said softly. He spared her a glance, his expression at once painfully doubtful and hopeful all at once.

"Maybe," he finally ceded in the face of the conviction that was no doubt clear on her features; her masks had been soundly shattered by what had passed between them, that was certain. "And if it is…" A swell of hope on his behalf rose up in her chest at the longing suddenly written across his face. Nadine nearly smirked. It wasn't at all hard to decipher what that look meant.

Not knowing what she did now about his stay in DC.

"If it is, you'll go back to her?" For all that it was asked, it wasn't exactly a question, either. She had a feeling she already knew what he wanted; his reaction made his feelings perfectly clear. He started, looking up sharply at the fondly teasing tone she hadn't quite been able to restrain, a painful mix of anxiety and surprise in his eyes. She raised a brow in challenge. His mouth parted slightly, silent words struggling to form before he finally managed to find his voice.

"How…" he attempted with a frown. Nadine's lip quirked indulgently, mirroring the way her brow rose.

She hadn't wanted to admit it, before—still didn't, not entirely—but she'd been almost…relieved when the pieces clicked and she'd realized Barnes had fallen for the landlady he'd boarded with after DC. A small, nervous fear had surfaced as Nina had grown and started asking after her father or even just the story of how her parents had met that, perhaps, beneath his programming, Barnes had developed feelings for her. Feelings she'd long known she didn't reciprocate. For a short time years before, she'd wondered if the tenderness she felt for him—the connection— had been some form of love.

She supposed it was, in a way, but she hadn't fallen in love with Barnes. And sitting here, beside him now? That simple, reassuring fact was all the more clear.

When she looked at him? What she felt was not love. Fondness, perhaps. Compassion. Sympathy. A sense of kinship. Affection? To a degree. But not love.

Not that kind of love, at least.

And it was abundantly clear the feeling was mutual. Something that gave her no small sense of relief, bizarre as it might seem.

Nadine's hand twitched in an unconscious dismissive gesture.

"I am the best," she brushed off with a nearly smug grin. "I just didn't realize until Sam let me in on her feelings toward you precisely why you'd stayed so long." He just blinked at her before huffing out a chuckle, his head shaking in disbelief. And Nadine breathed an internal sigh of relief as, one by one, the physiological and behavioural indicators that his mind was trying to slip his grasp diminished with each passing moment.

"So," he said then with a casual affectation so poorly feigned it seemed almost on purpose, "you and Steve?" She scoffed as he glanced almost impishly up at her, the ghost of a charming smile on his face. Nadine pointedly ignored the way her cheeks suddenly felt warm or how her breath had tried to hitch in her throat. And she suddenly had the distinct feeling Barnes was well aware he'd caught her off-guard.

The unsettlingly familiar way the corner of his mouth tugged made that clear.

Even more disconcerting, he seemed nearly smug about it.

"You're trying to imply there's something going on?" she deflected dryly. The corner of his lip quirked further.

"You like him," Barnes declared knowingly. She refused to look directly at him. Barnes' face was considering as the shadows there seemed to fade, though a hint of a sly smirk played about his lips as he eyed her…so odd.

"That's neither here nor there," she answered back firmly, fixing him with a look intended to come across as indulgently unconcerned. It didn't seem to work.

Of course it didn't…just her luck.

It seemed Barnes was another wannabe matchmaker trying to meddle…

"He likes you too, you know," he said definitively, leaning back into the couch with a glimmer of amused satisfaction playing about the edges of his considering look. "I've known him since we were kids in Brooklyn; he hasn't changed so much, really. I can still tell when he likes a dame." She raised a brow at him. He chuckled again. "Deny it all you like. Even after the last seventy years of HYDRA messing around inside my head, I still know when he's got it bad. And you're not far behind if my guess is on." She hummed irritably. Or, as irritably as she could manage given the ridiculous fluttering that was starting to press her stomach up against her lungs.

"Please," she dismissed with a scoff, "even if that were the case—"

"Which it is," Barnes interjected. It was so automatic, so instinctual to shoot him a chiding glare that she nearly laughed finding herself leveling one at him. And she might very well have, if he hadn't simply grinned in response. Though, the faint but persistent amused glint in his eye did soften her ire.

Yes, despite his insistence at meddling just as everyone else seemed intent on doing, she could definitely say she was growing to like this man.

Despite everything, he was still so…so open. So friendly and charming despite his reserve. It was plain to see why he was as easy to like as Steve had always described.

And she could certainly see how it would've been easy to fall in love with a man like him, she mused absently.

"Even if it were," she continued as though he hadn't interrupted, "it's not really a good time, Barnes, what with The Accords, Siberia, Peggy—" only to pause in her patient admonishment when Bucky suddenly frowned, giving Nadine a searching look.

"What? Peggy…I mean, Agent Peggy Carter? From the during the War, that Peggy?"

"Yes, Barnes, that Peggy," she confirmed with poorly concealed exasperation, her instinct to carefully hide her emotions away beginning to wake once more. Barnes shot her a faintly doubtful look before humming in astonishment.

"I thought she'd be long gone by now," he murmured thoughtfully.

"She is now," she murmured wearily before she could help herself. Bucky fixed her with a shrewd look.

"Since you've…known Steve?" he asked probatively, though not without a degree of care, evidently sensing it was a tender subject. Not that it was hard to figure out what he really meant instead of 'known.' Regardless, Nadine nodded mutely, pointedly ignoring the new but already familiar ache in her chest that still managed to surface whenever the SSR Agent's name came up. Bucky made a sound that had Nadine looking to him with a deep frown. "That sounds like an excuse to me…" he said, steel-blue gaze sharp but somehow disconcertingly gentle at the same time beneath the shadows she suspected would never truly go away, "and I think you know it. He does. He's moved on."

"She only passed away a week or so ago, Barnes," she pointed out; she'd already had this conversation, hadn't she? "Her funeral was the same day as the bombing in Vienna." He levelled her with another searching look, whatever surprise he might have felt at the news mingling with a brief flash of sadness that quickly fell away as he grew thoughtful. It wasn't often that she felt exposed, but even with her emotions once more carefully hidden behind her well-practiced mask, she felt like he could see right through her in that moment.

"And he's grieving for her, I'm sure," he admitted, "but anything he had for her was another lifetime ago, wasn't it. He's a different person, now, for all that he's still the Steve I know. I imagine he still loves her, sure, but as…as the last link to his old life."

"Then what are you?" she asked weakly. He shrugged before grinning impishly at her. She nearly laughed. It was nice, seeing him acting, well, like a regular person. Like the person he'd been before; the 'Bucky' Steve always spoke so fondly of.

"I'm in a category all my own," he waved off. She couldn't help the soft exasperated groan that escaped, shaking her head.

"You know, Steve was right about you," she said. He shot her a questioning look.

"Oh?"

"He said you had a habit of being entirely too charming for your own good," she quipped back with a fond smile. "I see that hasn't changed." He barked out a rough laugh.

"And he has a habit of falling for dames that don't fall for my charm," he teased back. Before she could help it, her cheeks were growing warm again, echoing the warmth that bloomed to life in her chest alongside a dull ache; why did everyone have to keep reminding her…it was hard enough trying to convince herself—

"You love him." Her gaze snapped to Barnes in alarm at his murmured revelation. Because it was a revelation, and not just for him… He was watching her with a look that bordered on wonder, a soft smile growing on his shadowed features. "You actually love him," he repeated, voice stronger and more assured before leaning forward again, nodding as though mulling the thought over. "That's good. He'd be good for you, and you for him, I think. He needs someone like you."

Nadine fought against the urge to swallow thickly. "Someone like me?" she repeated weakly, suddenly feeling…dazed, almost. Like her world was on pause until Barnes clarified. He shrugged, a curious glint in his steel-blue eyes as he considered how to explain.

"Someone who can stand up with him. Who can fight by his side," he finally said with utter, gentle certainty. And Nadine couldn't breathe.

She…she wanted that…more than almost anything she'd ever wanted before…

And despite knowing she shouldn't even dare to think it, that she shouldn't be feeling it at all, she knew then what that soul-deep desire meant.

Nadine abruptly knew, deep in her gut, that it was the same realization she'd been on the verge of recognizing back under the overpass. She tried desperately to push it aside.

She couldn't actually be in love with Steve. It had to be a product of her overwrought nerves combined with the fact that he was one of the few people she'd come to trust implicitly…helped on by her physical attraction to him, of course. It couldn't actually be Love.

It just couldn't. It couldn't!

But if it was…

Nadine scoffed, shifting uneasily despite herself before standing and circling to the couch across from Barnes, an anxious energy threatening beneath her skin compelling her to move.

"God, not you too…" she muttered with half-hearted aggravation as she settled herself with carefully curated indifference on the couch. Nadine fixed him with a stern look then, resigned to bear the forlorn hope that still lingered despite knowing better. "People like me don't fall in love, Barnes," she stated definitively. Or, so she hoped, at least. "Not with a history like mine."

As anticipated, he didn't seem to buy it for a second. His nearly indulgent, skeptical expression said that clearly enough. At least, until he sobered. He fixed her with a level look, the haunted shadows that lingered behind his eyes surfacing once more.

"Or mine…yet, still it can happen," he said softly, his despairing yet hopeful tone leaving her heart aching once again. But the words to deny it, to contradict him and insist that while he did deserve to find love, the differences in their situations made it painfully clear that she didn't, caught like barbs in her throat. Nadine swallowed thickly, knowing her eyes were probably far too bright, but unable to do anything about it.

The tears were once again prickling traitorously behind her eyes as it hit her why. Her eyes dropped, unable to hold his earnest gaze anymore.

Oh, how she desperately wanted to believe him.

And what was worse?

Part of her did believe him. The wistful, hopeful part of her that didn't want to fight it anymore.

Yet she knew she had to.

It was all she knew how to do.

But she forcibly snapped herself out of her conflicted thoughts as steps sounded on the stairs behind her, signalling their time alone was at an end. In a way it was a relief; cathartic as it had been, Nadine was quite ready to be done with emotional confrontations for the time being.

She'd said what she'd needed to, and she'd found her closure.

And, astonishingly, she'd even found some measure of absolution.

"So," Steve, said as he came to a stop next to the couch Nadine occupied, a reserved grin on his face as he looked over at Barnes before looking between him and Nadine. "What have you told her about me?" The light tone brought a crooked grin to Barnes' face. With a light chuckle, the former HYDRA agent quipped back: "Only the good stuff." Steve smiled widely. And bewilderingly, the anxious, despairing tension that had been swelling Nadine's chest began to deflate.

Shaking his head fondly at what Nadine suddenly suspected was an old joke, Steve inhaled deeply, a tick Nadine had come to recognize as him pulling his thoughts back on track. At once Nadine straightened, glancing to Barnes as Steve's features grew sedate; she knew even before he started talking that their reprieve was at an end.

"Barton's made contact. They're heading out from Frankfurt to rendezvous in Leipzig." He looked between Nadine and Barnes. "We should get moving soon too."

But Nadine nearly didn't hear him. At Steve's news, a familiar determined glint had lit in Barnes' eyes that she was certain she'd never seen on his face before.

As Barnes stood, exchanging brief clap on the shoulder with Steve before slipping off down the stairs, Nadine suddenly felt cold, dismay flooding through her as she realized the one, glaring thing she hadn't done.

She hadn't told him about Nina.

A/N: *hides* Don't hate me?

Thanks for reading!

I hope all you lovely Signed-In Reviewers last week loved your Sneak Peek! I just wish I could've sent them to all of you last week, but sadly not everyone was signed in…

Anyway, I really do mean it when I say I am grateful beyond words for all my amazing reviewers. Your encouragement and support really is what keeps me going!

So keep those wonderful Reviews coming! There's still lots more to come!

See you all next time!

Guest Reviews:

Guest: I hope it didn't disappoint! …beyond the obvious, of course… ;) But there is method to my madness, I swear! Thanks for reviewing!

Jag: And I totally endorse you doing that! I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't… ;D Satisfied? When it's this important, I try very hard not to do that. And this chapter was certainly that important. Lol! Thanks for reviewing!

Jo: Yay! That's fantastic to hear. I was afraid it would come across as a little filler-y for some people even though it definitely wasn't. Yes, the fights are certainly going to be tense, that's for sure. Thanks for reviewing!

Guest: It was indeed! I hope you enjoyed it! It was certainly a huge relief to FINALLY be able to share it! C: Thanks for reviewing!