Author's note: Reader Beware - this chapter is intense and contains some violence. Also contains copious feels.


Bucky is screaming. He doesn't hear it. Doesn't feel the hands trying to shake him awake. All he sees is the child, staring up at him.


The mission is complete. His prey never had a chance to scream, to run. The Target hadn't even realized he was being hunted. Infiltrating the house was pitifully easy for a professional ghost. This man should have hired better security. One bullet from behind, and down they went; a pool of red spreading beneath a punctured skull. It should have been an easy-in-easy-out assignment, but something has gone wrong.

The Soldier has been seen.

A little girl stares up at him from the doorway, and she has seen it all, he knows. He raises his weapon, prepared to silence her. Her eyes widen. They are blue for a moment, under a fringe of blonde, and the gun falters.
He blinks and they are brown again, mousy curls pulled tightly back into pigtails above her ears. The thin frightened face doesn't change, though, and his fingers don't respond when he orders them to pull the trigger. She takes a timid step back, shaking, hand over her mouth.
"Don't scream." He grates out. He never speaks on missions. Why is he speaking now? He steadies his aim.
He would put the shot right between her enormous frightened eyes if he could pull the trigger now, but for reasons he couldn't begin to explain, he simply can't. "Just leave."

She turns and runs blindly.
A sharp crack echoes from the hallway and she goes down in a spray of red. The wide brown eyes stare blindly as she falls.

A HYDRA handler steps around the corner and glares at him. There is crimson spattered on the man's hands and the Soldier can't help but stare at it.
This child's death should mean nothing. It was only a life. But he feels abruptly empty and wrong and he doesn't know what this means or where it comes from. The handler has crossed the room and strikes him hard across the face. He almost lashes out, but he is never to attack his handlers. He takes the blow in silence. He can feel the blood it leaves behind, smeared across his skin. Branding him.


"Why did you leave a witness?" The Leader is asking him. He does not respond. He doesn't know. "Why. Did. You. Leave. A. Witness?" The Leader hisses, jerking the Soldier's chin toward him, forcing the Soldier to look at him.

"I … was not ordered to eliminate the girl." He answers quietly, dropping his eyes. Weapons do not meet the eyes of their superiors.

"You never leave witnesses." The Leader says. It is half a statement and half an order. "So I will ask you again: Why did Agent Hanson have to put her down for you?" There is a dangerous snarl in that voice. Pain is coming, no matter what he answers. He knows this.

"I don't know."

He knows also that this is the wrong answer. It is not what the Leader wants, but it is true. He is not to lie to his superiors. The Leader roughly shoves his face away, disgusted with him.

"Wipe him. And make sure you get it all this time." He coldly orders the two agents who stand behind him, his eyes still fixed on the Soldier's downcast face. "I never want this thing to hesitate again, for any reason. Is that clear?"

"Yes sir."

He doesn't remember being wiped before, but he feels somehow certain that it is worse this time than it has ever been. His mind explodes into red and fire. Brown eyes turn blue, gazing up at him from a small thin face. These too dissolve into red, disintegrate and are torn away.

When he finally blacks out in a haze of pain, there is nothing left but the searing white-hot agony and the darkness. He is an empty shell again.


Bucky wakes up slowly, gradually. He feels hot tears staining his face, and almost expects to be crusted in half-melted ice and weak from the cryo-tube. It takes a moment to remember that he has been free of HYDRA for nearly 6 months. They will never freeze him again.

He shifts and abruptly realizes that his head is cradled in someone's lap. They are gently stroking his hair and speaking to him in Russian. It is Natasha's lap. He had not even registered the sound of her voice until now.

"Вы в безопасности. Вы с друзьями. Остановитесь. [You are safe. You are with friends. Be still.]"

They are alone in the common room of the Avengers Tower. He doesn't remember falling asleep, but he's certain she was not in the room when he did. She looks down at him -a staggering, understanding softness in her face- and he just can't meet her eyes. He stares blankly into the back of the couch instead, but the images in his mind play over and over there.

He closes his eyes, breath ragged and rushed, but he keeps seeing her fall - the little girl with the thin face and the big brown eyes. He understands now, as he couldn't then, why he hadn't been able to pull the trigger.

The little girl had been nothing but a target. A smaller version of the mission. But then he'd seen something in her face and everything had shifted.
For a brief moment, he'd remembered. He wasn't supposed to remember, and he'd been blindsided by the weight of it. He wasn't been allowed to have memories for a reason.

For a brief moment, a blank target was replaced with a human face. The seven-year-old face of Steven Grant Rogers of Brooklyn, New York, to be exact- and something long since lost had slotted back into place.

Instead of a target, he'd suddenly seen a scared little girl standing over her father's corpse, his own weapon prepared to kill her for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Something in him had rebelled; crawling, dirty and broken, out from under his programming. For just a moment, Bucky Barnes had stolen back control.
It hadn't been much. He was too beaten down then to fight back for long. It was only just enough.

She's just a kid…. Just a kid. What the hell am I doing?

He'd told her to run, knowing the others were in the house. He might as well have killed her himself for all the safety running would offer her. He'd taken the coward's way out.
He'd almost swear she was staring accusingly at him, lying there on the floor.
Why did you let this happen?
There is red burning into his skin where her blood touched him. He winces as Natasha's hand brushes the spot, pulling away from her.

"They killed her." He says, eyes drifting vacantly up to meet hers, not caring if the statement makes any sense. "They killed her and I did nothing."

Natasha doesn't ask. She knows better than to believe she needs the details to understand. She has plenty of ugly secrets of her own to keep her up at night.

"Вы не могли бы сделать ничего. [You couldn't have done anything.]" She says softly, still in Russian. Bucky flinches when he realizes he understands her perfectly. She notices.
"You were just a puppet to them, Barnes." She says, transitioning smoothly into English as if nothing has changed. "You had no way to fight back. Whatever happened, you couldn't have stopped it."

He squeezes his eyes shut again, with a pained intake of breath and without realizing he's done it, curls his human arm around her waist. She strokes her fingers through his hair, a surprisingly gentle touch, and he huddles into her, not certain if he's more skittish or comforted when her other arm comes down to cradle his broad back. For such a small woman, she projects a surprisingly powerful aura of safety. He clings to it desperately.

"I get it." She says softly. He knows she's telling the truth. Somehow he just knows. "You want me to call Rogers?" Her voice is gentle and easy, her fingers never falter as they card through his tangled hair. "He's on a mission, but they're probably just prepping right now." Natasha adds, encouragingly.

Bucky considers a moment, but shakes his head. He's bled on Steve more than enough times already.

"Wilson's probably home." She offers, though she suspects where this is headed. He shakes his head again.

"If… if it's ok with you, can I just stay here? With you?"

"Yeah." She says softly, watching his eyes drift closed again. "Of course you can. As long as you want."


Clint wanders in a few hours later to find Natasha lounging casually on the couch, Bucky Barnes curled like a child in her lap, as much as he can fit, and sound asleep. Her hands are gently sliding in and out of his hair.

She glances up at Barton, completely unconcerned by his open-mouthed staring.

"Are you-?" He gestures between her and the man on her lap. "Y'know…?"

"Is it any of your business either way?"

"It could be."

She raises an eyebrow and he drops the subject.

"Fine, fine. Point taken. What did I miss…?"

"Nothing." She says with a cat-like smile. "Just having some bonding time."

"... Uh… huh." Clint crosses his arms, leaning against the doorway. "How do I sign up for some 'bonding time'?"

"You're a pig, Barton." Natasha tells him, but with a smile.


Author's Note: Holy crap, I uploaded a chapter before 3 am?! Somebody call a newspaper!