I feel really bad! I swear I didn't mean to make you guys wait this long. This chapter was rough, and if anyone has any tips on writing a Bucky-centric chapter I am all ears. But, on the plus side, the semester is almost over, so hopefully I'll be able to pick up the pace a bit. Speaking of pacing, I think this is more of a transition chapter, so hopefully next chapter is when we start seeing how Bucky and Skye's relationship impact the episodes.

I also wanted to tell you guys that Skye and Bucky met shortly after "Making Friends and Influencing People" which is episode 3 of season 2. This story is going to be a bit of a monster, as I want to incorporate bits and pieces from the rest of the season and Age of Ultron.

Chapter 2

The quinjet touched down about two hours later, during which the small woman who was apparently his soulmate managed to fall asleep on his shoulder. It was an odd feeling, at first. He wasn't used to people feeling comfortable enough to touch him, let alone snuggle up to his side like a cat, but there she was. This entire situation was something that he honestly never allowed himself to so much as dream about at night. Now, as he felt the aircraft slowly descend, he allowed himself a moment of weakness and gently pressed his mouth onto the top of Skye's head. It wasn't a kiss, he had seen plenty of oblivious couples indulge in that display of affection to know what it was, and he wasn't sure that the Soldier in him remembered how to perform the act. But the other part, the Bucky part that had been fighting his way to the surface since D.C., craved the contact that seemed so common all those lifetimes ago. The disconnect between the two personalities was disconcerting at best, but he was learning to adapt and identify which behaviors belonged to either Bucky or the Soldier.

Skye grumbled in her sleep, the space between her eyebrows wrinkled together and she started twitching as if she were trying to get away from something. James wasn't sure if it was Bucky or the Soldier that made him reach up and cup the side of her face with his human hand. He traced one of her dark eyebrows with his thumb, wanting to smooth away the physical evidence of her nightmare. The jet gave a jolt as it touched down in the landing pad. James let his hand fall to the side as Skye began to stir and the two others in the front powered down the aircraft.

"Hey," Skye said with a sleep heavy voice. "Are we back already?"

James watched her as she reluctantly lifted her head from his shoulder and nodded his head when she looked at him. Skye gave him a small smile, squeezed the metal hand still in her grasp before she got up and pulled the switches required to open the back hatch. James waited for the other two agents to join her before standing behind Skye. He wasn't sure what to expect with this 'new' SHIELD that he had heard about in vague rumors, and that set the Soldier on edge. Not knowing information got people killed, and all aspects of him agreed that no one would be able to so much as think about harming his soulmate without fear of the consequences.

There was a tall, bald man standing at the end of the lowering ramp, he was talking with another man that was almost comically shorter than he was. James almost immediately placed the shorter man at the bottom of his list of potential threats. He was standing with a hunch, and his movements suggested that the younger man was uncomfortable in his own skin. The way he avoided direct prolonged eye contact with the people around him spoke of a lack of confidence. He wasn't going to be a problem for now.

The other man, on the other hand, made something in the Soldier pay attention. He was relaxed in his stance, feet shoulder-width apart and his hands busy wiping off what appeared to be oil with a dirty rag. At first glance he seemed at ease and comfortable, but James hadn't survived as long as he had by going off of first glances. The man's eyes were constantly looking up and taking in his surroundings, as if either he didn't trust the people around him or he had something to hide. James cautiously placed him at the top of his list, and made a note to keep a close eye on the man in the future.

Both men stopped talking as the ramp settled; their mouths open in nearly identical expressions of disbelief. It took James a minute of wondering what the problem was to realize that they were staring at him. Suddenly the analytical Soldier faded to the back of his mind and James forgot that he was a feared assassin.

The Asian woman that was with Skye (May his mind supplied) scoffed in amusement and shook her head as she made her way down the ramp and past the gawking strangers. She continued through the door, probably to go find the Director that Skye had managed to tell him about before she fell asleep. Tripp followed behind her with his smooth walk.

"You might want to close your mouth," he said to both men. There was a lightness to his voice that belied his urge to laugh. "I think you might scare him away if you stare any harder."

The taller man recovered first. "Is that?"

Tripp nodded, his smile turning smug. "Mmhmm."

The smaller man quickly turned to the other two. James noticed that his words were choppy and full of heavy pauses, but the other two men seemed to take it into stride and wait patiently for the man to finish his thought. He was brought out of his observations by Skye placing her hand on his arm.

"Are you okay?" She asked. James took a moment to really look around the hangar before bringing his attention back to her.

"Yeah." Skye smiled at him, relieved. He hesitated for a moment before taking her small hand gently with his metal one. She wrapped her fingers around it securely, and he followed obediently as she let him through the hangar. A part of him couldn't help but feel like this was going to be the course of whatever relationship that they had; him hopeless to do anything but follow in the wake of this tiny woman that captivated all aspects of who he was. The mere thought of the closeness that each of them seemed to crave left him more than a little weary. He had never met another soulmate pair as far as he could remember; he had no idea if this need for constant touch was common, or if it was because he had been deprived of non-violent physical interaction for so long.

Skye led him through the concrete hallways that made up the SHIELD base known as the Playground, pointing out different rooms and growing more and more relaxed the further they ventured. He compulsively categorized all of the people and exits, even though outwardly he was calm and collected. The new environment unsettled him to a certain extent. This feeling only increased as he watched Skye falter in both her steps and speech as they walked past a door stamped with VAULT-D across the top. James watched as she lowered her head and pulled him to walk faster, and a deep-seated need to know everything about his surroundings demanded that he ask about the contents behind the door.

"Tell me more about this Director that we're going to meet," came out instead. He wasn't sure what made him ask that until he took note of the way Skye relaxed and slowed down to walk beside him again.

"His name is Phil Coulson," she started. James leaned his head down closer to hers. "He's really not what you would expect as a leader of a spy organization, but I think that's a good thing."

"You respect him," James noted quietly. Skye nodded and gave him a quick smile.

"He…he saw the potential in me when everyone else kind of just wrote me off. I think that's why it's so easy to follow him. He tries to see the best in people even when everyone else would rather not try." She said it as if there were something more to the idea, like something from her past that still weighed on her even now. James wanted to know what it was. He wanted to learn everything about Skye.

Movement at the end of the hall caught his attention from the corner of his eye. James lifted his head slowly and made eye contact with the man standing next to May. His hands were clasped together in front of him and the expression on his face was hard to distinguish from where James stood. He noted that the man stood like a soldier, but at the same time exuded a confidence that was typically found in leaders.

Skye urged James forward. "This is Coulson," she said as she pulled him in front of the man. "A.C., this is James." Blue eyes met in a silent battle of wills as both men sized each other up. James wasn't sure what to think of the smaller, unassuming man in front of him. On one hand, it seemed like he was doing everything in his power to appear non-threatening, but that only served to draw the Soldier's attention more.

"Sergeant Barnes. Agent May has filled me in on your situation with Skye." James could only blink at the abrupt disruption to the quiet that had fallen over them. "Please," Coulson motioned to the open door next to them. "Let's talk somewhere more comfortable."

James followed through the glass door and took in the office of the Director for SHIELD. The large window on the opposite wall was the most obvious concern, and the Soldier made sure that James positioned himself between Skye and the potential safety risk. Coulson casually leaned back against the front of his desk while May stood closer to the door. For the next hour, James stood in the room being debriefed by a man that he had just met. While the entire situation was new and slightly unnerving, he drew comfort from the fact that Skye stood next to him the entire time he explained where he had been and what he had been doing for the last few months in a smooth, unaffected voice.

"Let me make sure I got this right," Coulson started after James stopped speaking. He unbuttoned the jacket of his gray suit as he walked around his desk to stand behind the chair waiting there. Coulson settled his fingers over a folder that had 'confidential' printed across the top. "You've been steadily making your way across the globe and single-handedly dismantling any known HYDRA base you could find?"

James only continued to stare at him.

Coulson hummed after a moment. "Well I don't see a problem with that. If anything, you've saved me not only time and resources, but now I don't have to suffer through a migraine sorting through all these intelligence files. So, thanks for that." Coulson moved again with the file in his hands, and stood in front of James. "I would like to know your next plan of action, Sergeant, because while I understand that there are some things that you are working through, you have suddenly become someone of importance to one of my agents." The folder was held out to James, who took it after a moment of hesitation. He saw the name 'James Buchanan Barnes' printed across the top. "Read this, think about what's in it, and come to me once you've made a decision. There's not much, but hopefully it will help fill in some blanks you may have. In the meantime, I'll call Rogers and let him know that you have been found and are in safe hands."

"Actually," Skye spoke up for the first time. "James told me that he wanted to keep his being here on the inside. I don't think that he wants to get in touch with Captain Rogers right now."

Coulson paused and looked between Skye and James. "That right?"

James nodded his head once and maintained eye contact through the silence that weighed heavily in the room until Coulson shrugged.

"What the hell, I think I've met my honesty quota with the Avengers for the year." With that and a parting look, Coulson left the room with May following behind him and shaking her head. Skye snorted and took Coulson's place in front of the desk after shutting the door. James raised a pointed eyebrow at her.

"Ah, you don't know," she started. James shuffled closer to her, still between Skye and the window. "Okay, so the short version. Back when the Avengers were first brought together, they thought that Coulson had died trying to help them, and he did, but he didn't stay dead. So, after Fury, the last Director of SHIELD, brought Coulson back he said that Coulson couldn't tell people without the proper clearance that he was alive. I think he lasted about two years before he had to tell the Avengers. It was a little after we found out that HYDRA was still around."

James noticed that she paused, her eyes focused on the far wall as if she were lost in her memories. He hesitantly brought his human hand over to the one closest to him on the desk. Skye gave him a small smile, held onto his offered hand with both of hers, and rubbed a soothing line with her thumb. "There were some bad guys, HYDRA, who were really close to us, made us trust them, and when it all went down they nearly killed the people closest to me, the people who are important to Coulson. He panicked, I think. And all of the noise caught the attention of Stark. The rest is history; the Avengers found out, were reasonably pissed, and have been on this passive-aggressive warpath ever since. Stark refuses to help with funding, Romanov and Barton want nothing to do with any of the ops, no matter how important they are, and Rogers wants no hand in helping to build SHIELD back up into something better." Skye shrugged, still holding onto James. "I mean, I get it. Coulson lied. But at the same time, don't you think that they would want to help people? That they could put aside their own feelings if it meant saving an innocent person's life?"

She looked so hopeful, as if she wanted to only believe the best of the people that were a symbol of hope in her eyes. James had seen far too much of the worst of people to hope for himself, but he thought that he would like to keep that light alive for as long as possible, if he knew it would make her happy. But if there was anything that he learned from his time as the Soldier, it was that allowing someone to believe something contrary to the facts could pose a greater risk than nearly anything else.

James made sure that her eyes were locked onto his before he started speaking. "I don't know a lot about what's going on in the world. As far as I know, the last seventy years of my life were one assassination after another. I had no memories of who I was, I never made friends, I never had hopes, it was always the mission. I'm not saying this to make you feel sorry for me. I don't need that. What I do need is for you to be safe, because I'm going to hold you to that promise. When I had nothing you gave me a reason to fight back. What I'm trying to say is, don't let your ideas of who someone is supposed to be cloud your judgement of who they really are."

"Look at what's in this folder, for example. I'll be the first to admit that I broke into the SHIELD files during all of the chaos. I was so curious, and I thought that maybe they had more about my life than an exhibit at a museum. All I really found was most of the same thing. My name is James Barnes, I was born in Brooklyn and I was best friends with a guy that calls himself Captain America, of all things." Skye snorted with laughter and hid her face in his shoulder to try to hide her mirth. James smiled at the top of her head, happy to have lifted the heavy mood somewhat. "But for him, I'm this guy that he has years and years of memories of. And he remembers and feels every emotion and thought that is associated with those memories. To me, he was the target, nothing more and nothing less. But to him? I'm the Bucky that had his back no matter what, and that could have easily gotten him killed. I don't want that for you. I don't want you to die."

Skye nodded and squeezed his hand, still leaning onto his shoulder. The two sat in a comfortable silence for a while before Skye spoke up again.

"You know, for a guy that's supposed to be all mysterious and deadly, you sure know how to say something without actually saying it." James let out a surprised laugh and tried not to think about how long it had been since he did that. "But I know what you're saying… I think."

"No one likes a smartass, ptichka," he grumbled as she continued to snicker. "Just promise me that no matter how much you want to believe the best in someone, you'll always stay alert."

"I'll promise if you do," she sang back.

"Deal."

"Deal." James swore he could have stared into her brown eyes for the rest of eternity if she would allow it. He then blinked at the thought that was seemed so characteristic of Bucky that it was startling in its clarity. Skye's voice brought him out of his thoughts. "So, what's the plan Sergeant? Think you're going to stick around for a while?"

James looked back down at the file that was still sitting in his hand. On one side, he could take the file as another stepping stone on the path to figuring out who he was, continue to dismantle HYDRA, and struggle between the two pasts that were clashing together in his mind. Or, he could put aside his mission for vengeance and learn to become someone that could spend the rest of his days trying to make a difference for the right reasons with his soulmate hopefully by his side.

He dropped the file back onto the desk behind them.

"Looks like you're stuck with me, ptichka. I don't plan on going anywhere any time soon."

Skye's face twisted up in an expression that he was sorely tempted to call adorable. "You keep calling me that. What does it mean?"

"What? Ptichka?"

"Yeah."

James paused for effect. He felt unusually playful, and he was starting to like it. "I don't know. I think I want to keep you in the dark a little bit longer."

"You know I can just look it up on the internet, right?"

He hummed. "But you won't."

Skye leaned closer to his face, and he felt that urge to press his lips to hers again.

"And how do you know that?"

"Because that would be cheating, and I don't see you as the cheating type. Also, I'll just keep calling you different things to keep you guessing." Skye's face scrunched up again before she paused and gave him a wicked smile that did odd things to his stomach. "What?"

"Nothing," Skye said. She started to pull him closer to the door with the hand she still had in her grip.

"I feel like it's something."

"Well, since you're going to be staying with us, I figured you're going to need your own lanyard. Don't worry, I'll stay with you."

James wasn't sure what the big deal was about getting some lanyard, but he was almost positive that if she kept looking at him like that, he would follow Skye to the end of the world.

I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Feel free to drop a comment, you lovely readers make my day. The next chapter is already in progress, so I don't think the wait will be as long as it was for this one. See you guys next time!