Chapter 7: Heavy In Your Arms

Summary: In which things continue to spiral in a downwards direction.

Notes: Whew! Well. That got away on me a bit. Guys, I'm sorry for the delay! I meant to post this about three attempts ago, but the holidays, as they're want to do, have made things a bit crazy. So here we are. I've posted my Sherlock Christmas fic, so if you're still poking about for holiday themed cuteness (starring a dog!) go check it out! I had lots of fun writing that! I knew I couldn't work that in here, so I took a slightly different route. Anyhoo, here we are. This one's only gonna include more flashbacks and angst. There's big angst in this one. Really looking forward to hearing what you guys think as we're going along. Let me know how you like. Chapter title taken from the Florence + The Machine song of the same name. It seemed like an appropriate theme, given that Darcy and Bucky are constantly worrying that they're dragging each other down. Also, as always, I DO NOT OWN MARVEL. As I sit here watching Top Gear, I sigh in longing. ;) Enjoy!

((()))

Bucky was wrenched roughly into consciousness by a sound, a noise, a vicious noise, and jerked upright in the sand, looking wildly around, his heart pounding.

But just like that, it was gone.

He drew his stiff legs up and slumped, his elbows on his knees, his swimming head in his hands.

His mind was swirling, teeming with all the new thoughts, new faces, new-old things he hadn't thought of in—literally—decades, pictures and colors and feelings he'd thought long gone, fractured into dust in his past.

His mother's face.

The front of the family's property, the wooden sign, painted in soft, sympathetic pastels, advertising one of Brooklyn's only undertakers.

Becca laughing at him as he mimicked a radio show she'd made him sit and listen to with her.

Meeting Stevie, coming around a dim corner after school, his books under his arm, to find three big, older kids from his class, known bullies, beating up on a small kid in a tiny coat.

Taking him home to his mother and walking him home after dinner.

Seeing Sarah's face, lit from within by the light over their kitchen sink, her warm, soft smile, so different from his own mother, as she handed him a piece of pie.

His first kiss—a redhead named Mary Beth, freckles on her face, and a little sister she walked home every day after school.

His first friend, Henry, from a giant family down the street, and the day he didn't come to school, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the teacher telling them all he'd been very sick and had died. Not understanding, fully, what that meant, but going to his funeral and staring at Henry's mother as she sobbed, spotting Steve across the pew.

They'd walked home together afterward, quiet, until Steve told him his father was dead, too, only photos left that he'd shown him not long after.

They'd been inseparable ever since.

He groaned, trying to swallow back the throbbing ache behind his eyes, but it was no use—they kept coming, rapidly, painfully, bright in his consciousness, forceful after so long crying out to be remembered, every single memory he'd thought lost, doomed to hazy half-remembering, eagerly supplied by Steve, sometimes in casual passing, sometimes in the hopes it would jog something loose.

Sarah, singing, her bell-like tones as she hummed along with the radio while she hung the laundry to dry on the line on the balcony of their tiny apartment.

His first whipping from his father, biting his lip until he tasted blood to keep from crying, but never giving in to the assertion that he work to separate himself from the people they dressed up every day in the parlor downstairs.

Swearing he could smell it every night when he couldn't sleep.

Death.

It clung to him, his clothes, he could swear.

His mother, face tight as she did nothing to stop it, any of it.

Hating her, then, and never really able to shake the feeling.

Running to Sarah afterward, crawling into her lap, unlike any other ten-year-old he'd ever met, curling against her legs while she murmured to him, running her fingers through his shorn hair.

Enduring the awful, quiet tension of helping his father, day after day, in the parlor, shutting himself off from the grief around them, and silently going about what was expected of him, no matter how unbearable.

Becca's smile.

Their car, the old Chevy Standard that had barely been able to tow a casket, absolutely horse-drawn compared with them now.

He'd swiped it one night for a date, and they'd laughingly had at it in the back seat, fumbling through a sloppy first time for them both, their breath fogging up the windows.

Annie. Her name was Annie. They'd gone steady for a few weeks, after, until the quarterback had asked her out. So he'd gone out with her friend Jill instead.

Coming to blows with his drunk father over Sarah's body.

Storming out, the clumsy bellow following him into the street that he ain't never to show his face under that roof again.

Finding Steve huddled in the corner of their apartment and quietly boxing up their few belongings and hiking him out to look for a place for the both of them.

Going steady with Rosie, the waitress at the diner down the street, until she moved away.

Spending a whole paycheck to buy Stevie's medicine, and then lying about it later so Steve wouldn't feel so guilty.

Stepping out for his shift at the garage and seeing the headlines on the front page, Hitler taking Poland.

Pearl Harbor.

Standing in line at the registry office with Stevie chattering excitedly beside him.

Teaching him to box like he did, earning them a little money on the side on Friday nights, and hoping with everything he had that it still wouldn't be enough for them to take his weak, fragile, frail best friend, so someone could stay and take care of Becca, so Steve could live.

The French trenches, his friends dying around him, the only one to survive and wondering if it wasn't that extra layer of wool sweater from Sarah on Christmas so long ago, a bright red jumper, battered and torn paper that he'd unwrapped to find a neat, stitched letter B on the front. Praying to her instead, that she'd somehow managed to save his life on those wintry nights.

Becoming a Sergeant. Laughing and drinking with his men.

Failure. Dread. Capture. Pain. Starvation.

And Stevie…not Stevie. But still Steve. In the dark, after so long being poked and prodded, a familiar face, come to get him.

Laughter and cigars, and good whiskey, and Peggy, her curled chestnut waves, and her bright, crimson painted lips.

And Steve's bright flush.

The icy wind in the train car, lancing through him, the tight fear that had barely wrapped its boney fingers around him before he fell. The wind rushing past his face.

The snow.

Bloody snow. And Russian. Garbled Russian and a round, bespectacled face, and a tiny voice shooting pins and needles up his back.

Darkness.

A cute, curvy brunette chattering as she threw herself onto the lab stool across from him, the color high in her cheeks as she assured him that things would be different now.

He flinched.

And the sound was back, a wrenching scream that had him on his feet in less than a second, staring up at Tony's beach house, the hollow, sharp pain that started in his chest and spread as he finally realized what was happening.

Darcy.

They had Darcy.

Someone had Darcy.

And oh, God, she was screaming like they were pulling her soul from her body, and he couldn't take that noise, that bloody murder, laced with fear. His reaction was immediate and visceral, so much more forceful than all those months ago, while she'd struggled, curled up in pain in their apartment, begging him to kill her.

He bit his lip against the clench in his throat and the sting in his eyes, clamped hard down on the raw panic in his gut, and steadied his feet, forcing himself to move.

So, his head still swimming with faces and colors, and sounds, echoing down the years, he struggled to put one foot in front of the other, and made for the nearest cover he could find.

((()))

Natasha watched it all from a dark corner, still and silent as a shadow as Killian and the blond doc watched Darcy struggling dispassionately, the woman jotting notes into her tablet every few seconds, unmoved by their subject's writhing and crying.

She kept asking for Bucky.

Jamie.

In her pain and delirium, she kept asking for her Jamie.

It was all she could do to stand there and watch and not rush forward and take care of business. She hated not taking care of business. This was her job, damn it to hell, and she could see the steps in her head, the exact set of pirouettes that would be required to take the both of them out.

A kick, a shove, a punch, a head but, an arm lock—maybe she'd grab his balls just to keep it interesting—and they'd both be down for the count.

But then she'd have to muddle her way through the support staff teeming around the property, and she couldn't do that alone. They'd almost be worse off if she did that.

So she stood there, watching her friend—her closest one after Steve—crying out in pain and agony as her body trembled and locked, seizing and writhing, her face pale as a sheet, hollow and taut.

They hadn't even let her get dressed.

She was tied to that damn kitchen chair in her short little nightgown and robe, the cinch loosening with every jab of the needle, and Natasha flushed with anger.

She and Steve had had a nice, peaceful honeymoon, away from everyone else, the entire team completely clueless that they'd even been sweet on each other, let alone dating, engaged, fooling around—or married.

They'd extended a mission without telling anyone—just totally ditched in secret—and stolen away to a little courthouse in Florida before getting on a boat and drifting past The Keys and onwards, finally ending up in a little cabin on stilts, complete with turquoise water and purple sunsets.

No one to bother them.

No one to question, or judge, no one to disapprove.

Not that anyone would've disapproved of Captain America.

No. Of course not, they wouldn't dream of it.

She gave Darcy a lot of credit. She'd had the balls to follow her heart and she went toe to toe with anyone who questioned her decisions, defending Bucky with her mouth and her teeth and her uncanny ability to viciously cut down anyone who dared to voice even the slightest uncertainty.

She and Steve had had a truly wonderful two weeks away from all of that potential and had only had to ignore the slack-jawed looks of everyone upon their return.

Her friend couldn't even have any of that.

Ironic, really, that most of the people that made up their team had come from painful backgrounds, coming up in life feeling somehow different or like outsiders. And the first thing they did was call Bucky into question, so like Steve in most respects, really. James was sharper in a lot of ways, definitely a little more on the morally ambiguous side, but that was only a front. He was honorable and kind. He was sweet. All Natasha had had to do was keep a close eye on him with Darcy for a few hours to know that.

"So. You and Buck, huh?" she said as she lifted her Miller Lite to her mouth for a swig. It was the week before Christmas, and they'd gotten together to shoot the breeze.

Darcy looked sharply up at her as she shut the fridge door, her tiny apartment shaking with the effort. "You gonna get judge-y too?"

But Natasha smirked as she raised her free hand in a gesture of disarm. "Me? Darce, I'm the least likely of anyone in that Tower to judge, remember?"

Darcy sighed—also with effort—and snapped the top of her Dos Equis open before returning the bottle opener to its magnetic home on the fridge door. "Right. Sorry."

She tucked herself into a corner of the small couch and slid off her boots. "Let me guess—Foster giving you trouble? Maybe…Maximoff?" She held up a hand. "Ah. Hill."

Darcy scowled and threw herself into the other end of the couch, snatching up the remote impatiently on her way. "It's like I went from intern to daughter in the space of a week, like I'm fucking sixteen. I'm almost thirty. I think that makes me a big girl. And Wanda keeps laughing and asking if I've got all my fingers." She gestured. "Would you believe—Hill actually implied that he could get in trouble for 'fraternizing with an agent of inferior rank'?!"

Natasha's eyebrows rose. "Fraternization? Seriously? SHIELD isn't military, as much as Hill would like it to be."

Darcy huffed, rolling her eyes and hitting a button on the remote, queuing up the Netflix and tabbing over to the fourth episode of Lucifer. "Seriously."

She cocked her head. "You're…not an agent. There is no fraternization to speak of."

"Consequently, how, exactly, did you and Steve get away with that, anyway?" she needled, eyeing the spy with a raised brow.

Natasha smirked. "Technically speaking, SHIELD has no rules on agents of the same clearance. Besides—"

"Technically, SHIELD is no more," Darcy finished for her, grinning.

Natasha tipped her head. "Lewis."

"And Tony?"

She shrugged. "Said congrats and offered to polish our rings on one of his freaky machines."

Darcy snorted a bit of laughter, shaking her head as she sipped her beer. "Yeah, everyone's afraid of you, so you get off easy."

Natasha shrugged, thinking. "Well, everyone's afraid of Bucky…"

Darcy sighed, letting her head flop back on the couch cushions. "Yeah, too afraid. And don't forget—he's unstable. He might snap and kill me in my sleep!"

She let the coy look curl her mouth. "And have you?"

Coloring in Darcy's cheeks gave her away, but she asked anyway. "Have I, what?"

The opening of the devilish show rocked into the room. "Slept with him?"

The color peaked. "Slept. Not…slept."

Natasha narrowed her eyes, reading her. "Soon, though, I'd wager."

Darcy sighed, softening and twisting around, folding her legs under her. "He's…he's…good. He's really good. He's sweet and he talks to me. I've never had a guy talk to me like he does. It's ironic, really. And he snuggles—the Winter Soldier! He's a phenomenal kisser—I mean, gimme a break." She laughed self-consciously.

"But…?" Natasha needled at her.

Darcy shrugged. "He…he doesn't want to hurt me."

Natasha shrugged, conceding. "Valid concern."

Darcy nodded. "Totally, yeah. And I mean…I'm okay with that. You know?"

More needling. "But…?"

She shrugged again, coloring. "He's…different. For me. He's different. He's not just some guy. And…and I've been trying to get a handle on that, but I'm having trouble, and everyone keeps asking me these stupid questions, like 'How many words did you get out of him tonight, Darcy?' and 'I thought I would check you for all your limbs,' and 'Make sure you remember: righty, tighty; lefty, loosey.' Like it's funny, what happened to him. And I…I can't…I can't deal with it, Tash. I can't deal with it. And to whine and say, 'it's so unfair' just makes me sound like a pouty toddler. You know?"

Sensing this as a moment where words were not yet needed, she only nodded.

"And I've never…I've never stayed the night, you know?" the brunette murmured, nervously brushing her hair behind her ear, unable to make eye contact. "I've never stayed the night before—and we haven't even slept together!" She bit her lip. "And sometimes he wakes up during the night and he remembers something, and his face, it…his face…" She frowned. "And I'm having a hard time dealing with this. I guess I wasn't expecting to deal with this by association, but I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't cry over him—not in front of him, anyway. And I almost punched Jane in the face yesterday when she called him 'soldier freak'."

Natasha snorted. "Yeah, sometimes Foster is something else."

"It's like she's territorial, she's worse than my father was before I booked it outta there, Tasha! I mean, I guess I was expecting a little trepidation from people, I wouldn't have blamed anyone for telling me to be careful, but I wasn't expecting this level of…hostility! I don't know what to do with all this!"

A thought occurred to her. "Has Stark said anything?"

Darcy sighed, hitting the 'pause' button and leaning back again with a poof of the cushions. "That's the thing: he keeps coming in and hanging around, like he's watching me. Three times this week, I could swear he's come in needing help with something he shouldn't have needed help with—he's fucking Tony Stark! It's like he's giving me excuses or helping me escape, like he feels bad about it. I had no idea he was paying that much attention, Tasha."

Natasha smirked. "Yeah. Tony can be a piece of work, but he looks after his own."

"His own what?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. But you're someone to him now. Maybe you'll luck out—maybe he'll offer you a job with him instead."

And now…here they were.

Natasha had thought—foolishly, now, obviously—that when she'd gone straight, she wouldn't have to endure watching anymore torture sessions.

She'd been wrong.

Darcy gritted her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut and ducking her head as far as her secures would allow, letting slip a damnable whimper of agony.

Natasha's stomach turned over.

Killian gestured. "She's just about broken, wouldn't you say?"

As if on cue, Darcy finally lost her battle, slipping into merciful unconsciousness and Natasha let out a silent sigh of relief, swallowing down her rise of nausea.

Watching her friend suffering was an exercise all in itself.

And she suddenly missed Steve so badly it made her itch. It was new, for her, tenderness and romantic physical contact. She'd been trained to use her body like a tool and nothing else. But with Steve, it was different. And now…now, here, with this brokenness in front of her, she desperately wanted him to appear and wrap her in his arms and hold her so closely to his body that she stopped shivering.

And it was seriously hard not to march herself outside and track Bucky down. She was concerned for him too, but she hadn't been given a directive to scope out the grounds yet.

The blond—she still hadn't been introduced and was laughably lacking in a name as of yet—kept mentioning a TMS. The only connection Natasha could make was worrisome. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation was often used in small doses to stimulate small regions of the brain with a field generator, or a coil, in a medical setting, minutely controlled. To hear her talk, she'd taken the idea and run with it, creating some sort of EMP-like force field around the property. Natasha wasn't sure if this would affect anyone with normal brain activity—because clearly what was done to Bucky over the years had somehow, qualitatively altered his overall brain chemistry—and she was worried that he was out there, brain squeezing to mush.

And that was on top of the EMP force field she'd fired up upon their arrival, which surely would've taken his cybernetic appendage out of service as well.

She let out another silent sigh, watching the doctor type out more notes with Killian looking over her shoulder. This was all supposed to be theoretical—or at least experimental—science. AIM had always been good at finding the best and brightest in the scientific and mathematical fields in Bad Guy 101, and there had clearly been a lot of time spent on this plan. They seemed to have spent a particularly large amount of time looking to create a way to get the two newlyweds separated.

Killian had spent the first few nights—on and off—skulking around the property while Natasha played bodyguard in the Jag, wringing her hands and resisting the awful, cloying urge to call Steve.

She missed him.

Hard.

Her hotel room bed was too big, and cold, and she was starting to itch for a lay so badly she'd nearly caved the night before and called him anyway, just to hear his soft voice on the other end of the line. He'd surprised her; she hadn't expected him to be anything short of a virginal boy scout, but he'd sure proved her wrong, and now in this uncertainty, the weight of him on her seemed the only sure thing in her mind.

"Might be adrenaline."

The woman's contemplative voice cut into Natasha's thoughts, and she locked her gaze on them, listening with all her watered down serum.

"The baseline?" Killian encouraged.

She nodded. "Yeah. It might be linked somehow to the release of epinephrine."

Aldrich shook his head. "No. No, that doesn't work. I watched her go through at least two bouts with no release at all. It woke her up a few times. What's going to encourage a rush of adrenaline in sleep?"

She shrugged. "A nightmare, perhaps? Besides, you're thinking too closely. If the serum has enhanced the sensitivity of her alpha and beta receptors, then there may be a simple chemical miscommunication going on, nothing more."

Killian narrowed his eyes at her. "Can you fix that?"

She smiled, tapping her tablet again. "Of course. You'll have your own little protégé in no time."

Natasha's stomach bottomed out.

Aldrich smiled, slow and wide, like a shark. "Good. Get to work."

((()))

Steve threw a fresh punch. "So you and Darce, huh?"

Bucky scowled and blocked him. "What about it, Rogers?"

Steve smirked, throwing another one, a bead of sweat trickling down the small of his back. "Don't be a jerk. It was just a question. I've been waiting to say something more about it since New Year's last week, but I didn't wanna be weird."

Bucky was silent, tossing in a punch of his own.

Steve feinted left to avoid it, taking a half step. "So…?"

Bucky sighed. "'So' what?"

Steve pulled another punch, landing it on his friend's left shoulder, and the report sang up his arm to his elbow, and he couldn't help wincing. "Is it good? I mean…it's…good? You guys are getting along okay?"

Bucky stepped back, eyeing Steve's hands. "Redo your tape, punk."

Steve smiled at the way the old banter had come rushing right back, and pretended not to notice his friend's deflection. He rewound the tape on his knuckles.

Bucky crossed the mat for his water bottle and took a swig.

"Okay. I won't ask. I know, I'm probably being pushy again. Was just curious. I'm not gonna be one of those guys that gets married and then tries to set up the wedding party." He grinned, chuckling.

Bucky was staring silently up, at the light coming in from the high, high windows, just barely street level, set into the top of the wall in the underground part of the Tower. "Was thinking of askin' her…actually," he finally said, his voice low, almost contemplative.

Steve couldn't help it; he stopped mid-wrap, his mouth opening, then closing, then opening again. "Wait—to marry you? Like, propose?"

Bucky turned and gave him his old sarcastic look he should've had patented back in '31. "No, asking her to go to Coney Island, Stevie."

Steve flinched, then blushed, smirking at himself. "No, right, yeah. Uh…wow. Okay." He rubbed the back of his neck, surprised, hearing Darcy's snark in his head about him having them getting married. "I guess I, uh…I didn't know it was…that it was so…" He tried again. "You guys are giving Nat and I a run for our money—what's it been? Six months?"

He'd come in out of the cold in spring—just weeks after The Triskelion had burned. Early April.

He and Nat had had that mission in Abu Dhabi that May, and had been sleeping together by the time summer arrived.

Tony and Pepper's wedding had been that summer, too, in June, the trees in bloom on the back deck, where Tony had mentioned seeing them talking, and—maybe—flirting.

Jane and Darcy's fight in July, Darcy running off and Bucky darting after her. Natasha had found him soon after, watching from the front windows of the Tower in the afternoon heat, the crashing of the city muted by the glass walls as he watched their progress up the street.

He and Nat had run off in August.

And New Year's, last week, when he'd been surprised that it was still a thing between them, convinced, like an idiot, that it was a friendly stupid…whatever.

So…that was six months, give or take, roughly speaking, since he didn't know when they'd really started going out. "Wow, Buck."

His friend didn't offer any details. "What?"

Steve shrugged, memories flying by in his mind's eye, assaulting him. "Guess I never…expected you to…" He shrugged. "You were never…"

Bucky shrugged too, taking another drink. "If I was or wasn't, doesn't matter, Stevie. Not that guy, anymore—remember?"

Steve flinched again. "Right. Yeah. It's just…" He winced as it slipped out.

Bucky turned, sighing. "Just what?"

He sighed, defeated. "It's just that…who you were, then, and who you are now, are…actually pretty similar."

Now Bucky flinched.

Steve sighed again. "I'm sorry. I just…I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything."

But Bucky was already moving on. "You're not gonna tell me it's a bad idea?"

"Were you expecting me to?"

He shrugged. Again.

Steve finished securing the wrapping on his left hand and moved on to the right. "No. I mean, you know what's good for you, and good for Darce, and…I guess I didn't realize it was so…serious, I dunno." He swallowed. They'd always been sort of lousy at talking about this sort of crap. 'With you 'til the end of the line, pal' was usually about as openly sentimental as they got with each other. "You love her?"

Bucky nodded, looking straight at him. "Wonders never cease."

Steve snorted, sure that was just the tip of the ice berg. That was usually how Bucky was—way more than you thought going on below the surface. The guy was gyres and gyres of feeling and thought and the Winter Soldier wasn't so good at conveying it all with words. "Well, if Bucky Barnes is in love, she must be the one."

He set his water bottle back down and adjusted the tie in his hair, twisting it back again into a tiny knot at the base of his skull.

"You said you were thinking about it. You're not sure?"

Bucky shrugged. "Guess I wasn't, but…she said something…on New Year's."

"What?"

He looked away, awkward. "That when I found…me…she'd…still be there…waiting, that she wasn't…going anywhere."

Steve smirked. "Sounds like an invitation to me."

Bucky nodded. "That was what I thought—"

"Steve. Steve-O. Hey, man—you here or you off somewhere in your head again?"

Steve jerked, turning to find Sam wrapping his hands by the sandbag. "Uh. Sorry. Yeah, I'm here."

Sam didn't look convinced. "You sure? You looked pretty lost in there, like you took a left where you should'a taken a right, man."

Steve smiled. "Yeah. Sorry.

Sam made a shrugging motion and shook his head. "Hey, it's okay. You wanna talk, go for it."

Steve approached the sandbag and held it steady for his friend. "It's nothing, really." He chewed his lip, considering.

Sam was trustworthy.

Sam was what Tony would jokingly call a 'good bro'.

But Natasha, Natasha was whispering in his head that that exact sort of tiny little innocent leak was what might cause a major, fatal capsizing later.

He snapped his trap shut. "Just worried about Tasha. That's all."

Sam frowned, leveling a punch and letting loose on the bag. "You said she's after some Red Room op from her nasty days?"

He nodded, feeling guilt prick at him.

"Well. You and I both know how good she is, man. She'll get her due and come slinking on back to you like she does, hair all perfect, smirking at you like a little minx."

The urge to defend her clawed its way up his throat before he looked up and saw the teasing smirk on his friend's face. "Yeah. You're right."

He let off another punch, and Steve readjusted his hold. "Weak, man. C'mon."

Sam scowled at him. "That's not all that's eatin' you, Cap. You 'c'mon' now."

Steve sighed, caught red-handed. "I'm just…I'm worried about Darce and Buck."

Sam cocked a brow and sank another shot. "Why? Those two are rock-solid."

So he saw it, too? Good. "What do you mean?"

Sam shrugged. "Well, it's not like those two are gonna get into a knockdown-drag out and ruin the whole trip, is it? Haven't seen those two fight once, man. It's a little obnoxious for us single folk."

Steve grinned. "Yeah. Sorry about that."

Another careless shrug. "Hey, it's okay. Better it happened when I wasn't too invested yet, you know? Just glad I saw the other side of her. There's always another side, and you gotta be prepared for it in case you don't like what you see. But that was a whole other level, Steve. I'm not dealing with crap like that. Don't need that kind of person in my life. That's nasty energy, you know?"

Steve sighed. "I knew Maria could be tough, but…" He shook his head. "I'm just glad I wasn't here for it. I don't know what I would've done. Darcy's like my kid sister, you know?"

Sam nodded. "So why are you worried about those two, anyway?"

The look on Tony's face the day before appeared in his mind again, and he frowned at it, wondering if they weren't on the same page even without really talking about it. "I dunno." He sighed. "Forget I said anything. Just being stupid."

Sam chuckled, shaking his head. "Yeah, you are. You gonna hold that thing still or you gonna make me work for it?"

((()))

After dark, Bucky ventured out on unsteady legs, still shaken, but not much worse for wear, the rush of the tide calming his roiling mind.

He was no fool. He knew perfectly well that he was up against failure, let alone making absolutely zero progress this first go-around. But he had to establish a base of intelligence, and that required cover of darkness.

He needed a total number of hostiles on the property before he did anything else. He also needed to establish the perimeter of the force field that he'd unfortunately tripped in his haste that afternoon. It had resembled an EMP, but to knock him out, it would have to have been something else entirely. An EMP was capable of putting his arm out of commission, but not his head.

He frowned. What the hell was it? And who the hell were they, for that matter, and what the fuck did they want with his girl?!

And how on earth was he going to get Darcy out of there when he could barely think straight?!
He paused, breathless and dizzy, sinking to his knees as he thought again of being no worse for wear. "God damn it," he muttered as he ducked out from under the rocky outcropping he'd hunkered down in for the afternoon, his head swimming.

Remembering everything in pieces had been—still was—hard enough; remembering it all at once was nauseating.

Not, of course, that he had the mental capacity or the wherewithal to even catalogue it all at once. But he could feel it there, prickling with bright newness, everything that had been his life before, and every moment after, especially clear and painful for his eidetic memory.

Split harshly into two camps by what they'd done to him.

Sometimes—usually, if he was being honest with himself—he felt like what they'd done to him defined his entire life, entire self, that who he'd been before no longer existed.

Steve had been right, though. He was still him.

With an extra shadow.

And what do we have here?

Hello, Sergeant Barnes.

He flinched, pushing it down and away.

The arm is wasted, Sir. He must have landed on it.

No worries. This one is strong. We will give him a new one.

You shall be the new fist of HYDRA!

Wipe him.

Start over.

Wincing, he gritted his teeth and pushed back onto his feet.

He hadn't come all this way to fall back into that shadow now.

He'd shot Pierce in the chest, shoved his body into a dark closet, locked it, tossed the key, then blown up the entire building.

He wasn't going back there.

It was done.

He took a step, a painful step, his head pounding mercilessly, then another, then another, until he was peering carefully over the embankment on the beach, letting his old instinct take over, the sniper in him.

One. Two. Three at the front of the property. Combat and close-impact gear.

One. Two at the back.

Small firearms, hard to tell at this distance, even for him.

Vests. Not Kevlar; something else, something better.

Two vehicles, expensive sedans, an M3, and…a Jaguar. New. F-Type.

He catalogued them, then ran them through his mental files, looking to intersect the possibilities for identification and discarded the ones he knew were beneath excess money, no matter how connected they appeared.

He was left with half a dozen potentials.

But at what outcome?

The house had long fallen silent, Darcy's tortured screams now nothing but chilled memories in his conscious mind.

What could they want with her?

The possibilities seemed endless, each one more terrifying than the last, not the least of which was that someone else aimed to repeat what they'd done to him, perhaps with more successful long-term results.

His stomach churning, he pushed those thoughts aside. He could go gooey and lovesick later. The Winter Soldier didn't get his missions done acting like a romantic idiot.

He took a deep breath, shutting his eyes and struggling to find his center, the dark shadow in the middle of it all where he could focus, slide his blinders on and react only.

Anger.

That was the key.

He'd realized, in his sessions with the doc, that though most of the time he hadn't been conscious enough to realize what he was doing, sometimes he was little more than a passenger in his own head. Only anger—anger and vengefulness—had seen him through those few times, until they put him back under.

Bruce had mentioned it more than once—finding a middle ground of low-simmering rage to keep everything else on an even keel.

Anger.

He could do anger.

He had plenty of anger. Some to spare, in fact.

They would see.

((()))

Darcy dreamed.

Or, rather, she thought it might be a dream.

She felt detached from herself, watching things from above, and it took her a long, long moment of swimming before she realized it wasn't a dream; it was a memory—and a particularly strong one, at that.

She observed herself charging into his apartment and throwing—literally—her Michael Kors bag down on the dark suede couch. "Fucking Hell!" she exclaimed.

Bucky came in behind her, calm and quiet, and set his keys on the table by the door.

"We can't even go to the lab?! We've gotta be hounded like two delinquent teenagers that hide out at food trucks?!" She threw herself onto the couch and stretched out, scowling, her arms crossed defiantly over her ample chest. At least the Thai fusion had been good…

He smoothed his white tee as he threw himself down on the couch beside her. "You want to get back to Game of Thrones?"

"No, I don't wanna get back to Game of Thrones!" Darcy snapped. Then she caught herself. "Sorry. That was…directed at Jane, not you."

He shrugged good-naturedly. "No problem, dollface."

She huffed a sigh and sat up to untie the laces on her Keds. "I'm just so tired of this. Like I'm some little kid that keeps getting sent to the corner."

He was silent.

"She's been on me for the past few weeks, all passive aggressive, and judge-y." She rolled her eyes. "Came out of fucking nowhere."

He shrugged again. "Evidently she didn't really think this was…a thing." He gestured awkwardly between them with his metal hand.

She scoffed. "She's a fucking astrophysicist but she can't see what's in front of her goddamn face. Forgets to eat half the time, subsists on coffee and poptarts. If her head weren't attached…" She gestured again. "But this she pays attention to."

He rubbed uncomfortably at the back of his neck. "It's not…really a big deal, Darce."

She growled at the knot in her laces, yanking at it and muttering frustrated things under her breath. "God damn it to Hell…"

"Here," he interrupted, sliding his arm into the melee. "Let me." He took her left foot gently in his right palm. "Face me."

Still scowling, she twisted to face him, legs stretching the short length of the loveseat, her successfully bare right foot tucking under his thigh. She knew he could get a good look up her skirt, but didn't care. In fact, she invited it.

With a gentle, anachronistic patience, he carefully loosed the knot and slid the sneaker off, setting the shoe down on the carpet.

"Stupid shoes," she muttered.

His brow rose at a jaunty angle. "Actually, I thought they were pretty cute. But they don't look real reliable." He pressed his slightly callused thumb into the center of the ball of her foot.

She let out a sinful moan before she could bite it back, and eyed him slyly. "Keep that up, Barnes. You're not stupid." Her head tilted back and she settled into the arm of the couch.

He laughed, easy and light. "Wasn't really trying for roguish, but I'll take it."

She snickered.

For a few moments, it was quiet.

"You okay?" he finally asked, voice low and hushed in the room.

She sighed. "No."

He started working his way up her foot, over her ankle, and began a slow crawl up her calf, palming the curve of muscle and kneading it in his hands.

She squirmed, mewling softly. "If you were aiming for a happy ending, you're definitely on the right track," she said, breathlessly.

He smirked. "C'mon. Talk to me, doll."

She scowled. "Don't wanna…"

He gave a soft, husky laugh in the dim dark of the room, the only light coming in from the setting sun through the open drapes on the high windows. "C'mon, Darce. You don't let me hide," he needled.

She huffed, opening her eyes. "You suck, Barnes."

He laughed openly, setting her left leg down and starting on her right.

She squirmed again. "Damn you. Fine." She huffed again. "I dunno what I'm supposed to do about this."

"Jane?"
"I mean, she was my boss. Which is weird, because she's not that much older than me. And it's not like she pays me or anything. Then suddenly it's like I'm her caretaker. We're friends. Best friends. I mean, I don't think I've had one of those in, like, a decade, at least."

He paused. "And?"

"And it's not like I can tell her to 'fuck off'. How is this my life? That's not an option. And neither is her—frankly offensive—suggestion that I stop acting like a mulish child and break up with my assassin boyfriend."

A long pause. "You sure?"

Blinking, she sat up to stare at him. "What?"

He refused to make eye contact. "Are you…sure that's not an option?"

She waved her hands around frantically. "Please tell me that wasn't a real question."

He sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his nose, settling uncomfortably in the suede couch cushion. "Not a question so much as an idea. Don't read anything into it—I just put it out there."

"Well, don't," she snapped, giving him an uncharacteristically sharp look. "Just fucking don't."

He sighed again, watching her waving hands with a scowl. "Darcy—" Pausing, he snatched both of her still-aloft hands and forced them to settle in his lap. "Darcy…I can hardly blame them for their hostility, can I?" His metal thumb ran soothing circles along the back of one of her hands. "And it's nothing I wasn't expecting."

She let her head slump back with a huff. "That's total bullshit, Barnes. What about compassion?" She snarled, raising her head again. "I didn't know that had become so rare."

He gave her a sad smile. "It always has been—trust me. The world wasn't sunshine and lemonade on the front veranda. That's just how 1935 is depicted in your movies."

She frowned. "Really?" She sounded a little heartbroken.

"Really. My father was a world class asshole. That's nothing new that's been invented since the last time I walked around Brooklyn."

"You haven't been back?"

He shrugged. "Not much. Why bother? Everything looks completely different. There's nothing familiar left."

She sighed. "See, that just hurts."

"I think it would bother me more if things were familiar, actually." Another sad smile as he looked down at her hands in his lap. "There are good things here, too."

She shifted closer to him, temporarily extracting a hand and reaching up to brush a soft strand of hair out of his face where it had fallen over his brow. "I just want them to understand."

He shook his head. "They can't. How can they? Darcy, what happened to me is science fiction. It's only scientific theory. How can they possibly accept it all at face value?"

"But that doesn't matter if you didn't know what you were doing!" she insisted.

"And how can I prove that, doll?"

She gave him another scowl. "Why would you possibly try to kill your best friend if you were in your right mind?"

Another shrug. "That doesn't matter to them."

"Well, it should! You didn't know what you were doing!"

"And that makes it worse, sweetheart."

The affectionate word gave her pause and she blinked at him, momentarily caught off guard. He'd not yet called her anything other than Darcy, Darce, or Doll. The appearance of a term of much more ardent endearment made it harder than usual to swallow the reply, the affirmation that she'd kept forcing down lately—the sharp suspicion in the back of her mind that she'd fallen hopelessly, boundlessly in love with him already.

Given his condition, she'd been hoping it was just early stage infatuation and that it might fade, or go away.

It hadn't.

It had only gotten stronger.

And she wondered, if she said it, would it chase him away?

He sighed again, shifting his hands to caress her wrist. "I almost killed Steve, Darcy. My best friend. I almost killed my best friend. Is not knowing what I was doing better or worse than knowing and still acting? Either way, I'm the enemy. At worst, I'm a HYDRA plant, at best I'm—what? An unstable factor in an already precarious structure—a group of rambunctious, suspicious, and tired people who go through their lives within wildly realized abilities. Here I am—a bipolar assassin with a metal arm and a handful of triggers that, to them, makes me bound to snap at any one moment."

She chewed on her lip, gently turning her wrists over for him to continue, digging his calloused thumbs in on the underside and massaging the sore points left from her typing. But she was silent.

"I can't ask them to forgive that. I can't ask them to accept it, and I can't ask them to just pretend it away, Darcy. I won't ask them to do that."

She nodded, swallowing and continuing to look down at their hands. "I know."

"Nothing can undo what I did. Nothing can mend that. I can't make it right and I can't take it back, no matter how brainwashed I was. Those people are still dead, Darcy."

She shrugged sadly. "I suppose I was hoping for some sort of…empathy, considering the fact that you have to live with that knowledge, now. That's all."

He gave her another sad smile. "Empathy, dollface, has gone the same direction as compassion. And I can't promise that I wouldn't react any differently, were I in their shoes."

She finally looked up at him, finding the melancholy in his deep blue eyes. "You would. You're a good man, Sergeant Barnes."

The ghost of a charming smirk. "I ain't a sergeant anymore, babe."

She gave a soft laugh. "Oh, I'm 'babe' now, huh?"

He shrugged. "Thought I'd try it out."

She raised an eyebrow. "And?"

He leaned in to kiss her, murmuring. "I like how it fits…"

"What do you think she's dreaming about?"

Slowly, the vision-slash-dream faded to gray, and she floated for an indeterminate amount of time, just barely conscious enough to pick out the voices around her.

"Probably him."

She frowned. That voice. That one was particularly familiar.

"Which him are we talking about?"

"The one that doesn't know he's been had."

There was a pause. "So, the Winter Soldier's had the wool pulled over his eyes at last, hm? Hard to believe."

"Are you saying you don't trust me, Killian?" the voice asked, her tone wry and coy.

"Oh, I don't trust you. Thought that was obvious."

"It was. Just as much as the reverse."

Aldrich laughed, open and light, carefree. "Is he still out on the beach?"

"He crawled off to lick his wounds a couple of hours ago."

"Make sure you keep an eye on him. If I can make this a package deal, all the better."

"There's something you should know, Aldrich."

"And what's that, Miss Romanoff?"

A warning bell distantly trilled somewhere in Darcy's mind, but she wasn't aware enough to wonder why.

"Drunken dalliance aside, she's painfully loyal to him. You won't get your hands on him through her. And, truth be told, he won't be so easy to catch as a butterfly in a net."

"No? I thought he was, uh, pretty much down for the count."

"Down for the count for James Barnes is still half what it would be for anyone else."

"So, what does that mean, then?"

"That means you've cornered a starving wolf. And a starving wolf lashes out—unpredictable and ten times as deadly."

"So, he was a domesticated puppy before?"

Natasha gave a dry, emotionless laugh. "No, Killian. He's stripped down. You wanted a killer? You got one."