Covered in sweat, drowned with confusion, and scared. You'd awoken with a jolt. You didn't know what that dream had been, but it terrified you how real it had felt. You had called that man, papa. You were confused as to why, because you had never seen that face before, nevertheless it seemed all the familiar. It was impossible for that man to be your father. Your parents had died in an accident when you were a baby, causing you to spend some of your childhood in an orphanage that took you in. When you were just five years old, your aunt and uncle had come from Italy to take you home to their home. There had been a legal issue to get you sooner, but at least they got you out of that place before your teens. It had been rough for you. You didn't go back to sleep that night; you couldn't do it even if you tried. That dream meant something, and you were going to find out what it meant.

Once you had calmed down, you remembered another impactful thing about the dream—you had witnessed the Winter Soldier being brainwashed at the hands of HYDRA. Your blood went cold when flashes of images crossed your mind, then you saw how even with his emotionless body in front of you, his eyes seemed to show so much pain. What made your heart hurt and tears sting the back of your eyes was his muffled screams, and your lack of emotion your young-self lacked to show.

Once morning had come around, you got ready for work with the speed of an old turtle. You hoped that these newfound dreams wouldn't bug you much, but as per usual, things didn't go your way. You were unable to concentrate at all, the dream now replaying on a constant, disturbing loop. Worst part of it all was that scenes you hadn't dreamt were now forming in your head, and they were too vivid to be just normal daydreams. There were ones where you could see yourself running away from something, or someone? There were other where it was you at a shooting range, and hestood there looking, analyzing you. You and himworking together—training, running, shooting, killing; and the rare ones where you would stare at hislight blue eyes while he looked at yours. You felt like you were losing your mind, they shouldn't feel as real as they did. What the hell did it all mean?

It was around five in the afternoon when your body couldn't take more of your sleepless mind. You didn't even make it to your room, landing on the sofa in the main living area. Sleep trying to catch up to you, you felt yourself drifting when someone came into the room.

"Y/n? You okay there?" said the soft voice of your best friend.

"Nope," you said, not bothering to open your eyes. You heard movement from above you, and the weight of a body sitting on the edge of the sofa.

"I'm guessing you're tiring yourself trying to make up for messing up, but you sure look like you haven't slept at all," said Natasha looking down at you.

You sat up and let out a sigh with a slight irritated tone, "I didn't."

She gave you a look as to ask, 'why.' You hesitated for a minute. Should you be telling her about your weird dreams? With an internal sigh, you decided to do so; after all, she was like a big sister to you. "I had this weird dream last night, and ever since this morning it's been playing on a loop in my head, but it gets worse. Now, new images come to me as if they were some sort of flashbacks."

You swore you saw her go pale at the mention of the word 'flashbacks,' but you didn't dwell much on it. "What are they about?" said Natasha with a calm voice, the hint of worry almost buried by the calmness she showed, but in your tired state, it went unnoticed.

Now it was your time to go pale. You were hoping she wouldn't ask for details, but it had been wishful thinking. You hesitated once more but gave in and told her everything that was pestering you. "…and that's what has me all frustrated and confused," you exclaimed, finishing your rant. Natasha had been silent through the whole thing, holding an intense stare at you the whole time. She tried to muster a smile as if to tell you 'don't worry.'

"Shit, Y/n. That's some pretty weird dreams." Natasha let out a long sigh alongside her words, the tiny smile making it the statement lose the wariness it could've hold.

"That's what I've been saying. I have no clue as to why my mind has decided to torment me with these 'flashbacks.' If I didn't know better, I would say I had a secret life," you said laughing a little. It all just seemed stupid to you now. It was probably from stress and from watching TV.

Natasha laughed lightly, and unbeknownst to you, a worried looked crossed her face so fast, the first sign of the crack of a long-held memory. She cleared her throat and said, "all this crazy talk made me hungry. How about we order some food and watch a movie?"

"Sure, that sounds great."

Two slow months had gone by since the first dream, and you still had nightmares alike the first one. You would always wake up in the middle of the night sweating and/or screaming. Sometimes they would feel too personal to even think of sharing them, and he seem to always be present. There were others where the man you kept on calling 'papa' would appear to be there telling important things, commanding people; he was important and so were you. Since the dreams/nightmares had started, you had changed. You knew it, and the rest of the team had noticed a difference in your behavior too. You were always tired, you never went out with them anymore, everything was just work—and the dreams. Natasha and Clint were always there for you, they reminded you—all the time—to eat you, train, and sleep. You were thankful because without them, you would have died from starvation and the lack of sleep long ago. They worried too much, though. Everyone else worried, but they seemed almost scared that you kept so much time in your mind these days, but you always told yourself they were just being great friends. That must be it.

When morning came once more, you decided to work some extra hours. Although, Nat tried to get you out of there, it didn't work. You were still tracking Barnes down, and it kept on looking like an impossible task. You were staring at the screen, with no coordinates that could locate him. Then, like some lightbulb being switch on, your mind went wild. You started typing fast, looking for something that was bound to help. How didn't it occur to you to look for his reports? You were going to see how he moved, his patterns from the very beginning, you thought it was genius—analyze the guy. You read his report with caution, trying to absorb everything. There were extensions from his report, and you saw a name that seemed familiar to you. You looked the name up: John Garrett. His report was top classified, even for your level. That made you all the more curious to know who he was, but you couldn't access to his report the normal way. There is only one way around this, you thought. You were going to hack S.H.I.E.L.D, again.

After five minutes of typing like a maniac, you were finally able to read all reports, even the ones higher than the one you were looking for. Once you opened it, you let out a loud gasp. A picture of a man covered most of your screen, papa. That was the man you had been calling papa in all your dreams. He was dead. He had been a double agent, working for both HYDRA and S.H.I.E.L.D—the latter not knowing about it before prior his death. He used to be one of S.H.I.E.L.D's best agents along with Agent Coulson. How come that after all the time you were working here, you had never crossed paths before, if they had just found out about him 2 years ago. There wasn't much information about him and his HYDRA work. He died before they could interrogate him.

You spent the rest of the night reading reports after reports, all involving HYDRA. Yours was under the filtered search, but you didn't look at it given that you had a couple shared reports that involved the group but only because of data coding and the mission with Natasha. It didn't make sense to you that the man you had been calling 'papa' in your dreams had been part of both groups, but what made you hammer away at your brain was his connection to you. You had never seen him before the dreams, and now the reports said he had worked with the same people you did. You went through every report that seemed relevant to what you were looking for, all under the filtered search.

You were approaching the end of the results, and you were a tad glad, drowsiness slowly overcoming you. Finally, there was only one more to read. Suddenly, your drowsiness vanished. The report was dated around a month before S.H.I.E.L.D had gone out of their way to recruit you. You didn't know what to expect, but for some reason, your heart was beating a little faster than usual. When you opened it, there were two names that caught your attention, Black Widow and Hawkeye. They had been given the whatever mission this report was soon to tell you. Your breath hitched at the words under the 'Objective' box. It clearly read, "Y/n L/n. Bring target in."

You read the report, absorbing every word written on it. Trying to process their meaning. It had been a previous mission that had end up in your 'finding,' and this mission was created to bring you in and question you. It didn't hold much information as to why you were there, or how you had ended there in the first place. Having no recollection of such happenings, besides newfound dreams, it was making you angsty. It didn't make any sense, no matter how many times you read the report. You were recruited a month after this supposed mission, and you couldn't shake the feeling that this meant bad things. You gave a frustrated noise; you were soon to fry your brain with how much thinking you were doing. You grabbed a folder and printed every report that seemed relevant to you, from profiles to mission reports. You had so many questions, so many theories, so many doubts, and you needed answers.

You logged out of the computer, and cautiously retreated to your quarters. You were going to find out what all of this meant, you needed clarifications, and you needed them soon.