Again, I apologize for the wait! Still in Europe, in Scotland at the moment!

After this chapter, it's going to get a bit fast paced so, get ready darlings!

Please let me know what we are thinking!

Listen to Many Mothers by Tom Holkenborg.

-g

As Tala worked silently, sitting on the floor of her bedroom with nothing but her skin on, Bucky's foot began to heal.

She used a pair of tweezers as she gently pulled slivers of plexiglass from the man's skin, holding his calf in her arms, as each piece she pulled out his body began to repair the damage right away.

Tala's fingertips as she had worked, had turned black as if she had dipped them in tar and with each touch she gave to his bare skin, Tala felt as if her new power was communicating with the very traumatized tissue and was giving it its marching orders.

She had absolutely no grasp on the extent of her control now, and so simply took the thought with a grain of salt, and fixed the man in front of her.

Bucky felt each and every drop of Tala's power that entered his system as if it were water to a parched earth. It made his body feel as if it was an old machine that had been given new oil, and as she tenderly pulled the glass from him, he lay practically comatose on the bed as bare as she.

Hell if he knew what'd just happened, his only concern had been that he not hurt this woman, and everything went to shit as he'd expected it to.

She'd screamed as if her very soul was being ripped from her heart, and it had triggered him, and he had reacted badly.

He could hardly care now that he had nearly squeezed the life from her, allowing himself to be pulled back into the horror of Hydra, no.

All James cared for now was the way Tala's hands smoothed against his ankle as she cooed and lamented over him like some poor little puppy, caring for him.

Laying back against the silk of her bed, Bucky grinned to himself as visions of Tala bathing him, and feeding him lingered within his mind.

Tala murmured softly as she worked, her power sending Bucky into the perfect man's dream of full service from a lovely woman, finishing up quickly and gently releasing his calf and foot back to dangle from the side of her bed where he lay, high out of his mind on her influence.

It was the least she should do for him at the moment, and when he came back down, she'd explain to him just what took place.

Tala stood up, moving to sit on the bed next to Bucky's head, her legs tucked behind her as she rested on her side, one hand keeping her body up, the other she used to smooth Bucky's hair back from his forehead.

Poor James Barnes, ever caught in the crossfire.

Tala looked at him, seeing past just his calm face, because in the moment that her deity had given her its power, she'd seen his past.

Every face, from a mothers and fathers, to childhood friends, a little girl with pigtails and a broken front tooth who he kissed when he was only four. Strangers passing who'd stuck with him for some reason. Steve Rogers, the most prominent face. Women, smiling and interchangeable. Strung out army faces, full of coke and terror. Big mustaches, and dirt covered men with helmets and guns. Then masked faces, ones of torture. Faces of victims, tortured. Each of the victims shrouded in such hate and misunderstanding it was hard to make any sense of the memories without a headache.

Coming back to herself again, Tala found her face covered in tears as her eyes silently overfilled.

He had been a killer, for many reasons. Hell, even his good ones hadn't been that great, but he'd tried to do what was right in a time when things weren't. Then when the time came when everything seemed right when wrong, Tala felt her hate for men and their wars come alive.

Confused and angry, brainwashed, her James had become an assassin. He'd been to Hydra, what she'd been to her people but bred from fear and hate.

Tala could remember as if it were yesterday the battles she'd fought hand in hand with her father, attacking her enemy in red, ignoring the lives they lead.

It had taken her many years to heal from all the killing she'd done, and even now she hadn't fully.

It was the hardest thing she'd ever done, and it was going to rip Bucky apart as he came to grips with all the choices he'd made and making amends for it.

She'd be there to help sew him back up, Tala knew her purpose now more than ever.

He was going to be important in the coming of whatever new world that was on the horizon, and she was once again the harbinger of change.

Bucky slowly began to come to from his waking dreams of calm and leisure, to find one more vision. Tala smoothed his hair against his forehead, sitting above him, still blissfully naked, her facial expression calm and some emotion he couldn't make out.

Sense set in a little slower, as the previous events dawned on him, setting a rock in the pit of his stomach full of self-loathing and pain reaching its tendrils into him once more.

He'd hurt her, jesus he'd nearly killed her.

Bucky's face hardened, his jaw set, his eyes widening as his thoughts and emotions flooded into them like a self-deprecating flood.

With his return to cognizance, Tala smiled at her soldier and leaned down to peck his dry lips softly.

"Welcome back from vacation, Sunshine."

Bucky couldn't even think to sit up, as she beamed down at him.

"Are you okay?"

The words were whispered by the gruff man, who reached up with an arm to hesitantly touch her cheek above him. Leaning into his hand, Tala shrugged and made a silly little face at him having a small internal fight against the very opinionated new power which begged to influence him once more.

"Got a bit of blue balls, but that's something to take care of later."

Her joke brought no smile to Bucky, in fact it sunk his emotions deeper as he chastised himself mentally for having pushed her to try and sleep with him.

"Tala, I didn't me-"

"Stop right there Martyr! Don't even head down that road. I like sex like all women of the world, you didn't force anyone. Let's be real there, you think you could force me to do anything I didn't like? And no, you didn't bring on my seizure type occurrence. Me and you, darling, we have some talkin' we got to do about who I am now."

Bucky didn't say anything in response as he moved his hands to sit up on his elbows, accepting he was still naked, and continued to sit up on the large bed making sure to continue to face her.

He turned his body, indecision for only a moment before crossing his legs in front of him, his hands going in his lap to give him a small covering over his lap.

He had absolutely no idea what had happened, and no idea anything about her powers other than her own self admission earlier where she'd said she'd volunteered for them from a god.

A deity of some sort.

Buck didn't know if he believed in any of that, but after what had just happened, he could take the time to listen.

"Comfortable there?" Tala spoke with laughter dripping from her words because no one had never looked more uncomfortable with a beautiful naked women in the same bed as them, as James did in that moment.

He nodded solemnly and when she continued to smile in merriment, he reached over and grabbed a pillow to shove into his own lap, his eyes shifting hungrily and yet embarrassed over her own nakedness.

Tala reached over and gathered his chin in her hand making him look at her, her fingertips turning black almost instantly as she snatched them back quickly before she influenced him in anyway.

His anger was simmering underneath his skin, angry he'd let this happen and get out of control. He should already be moving, he shouldn't stay here. Be damned his memories.

Tala physically shook to get his emotions out of her head as she locked eyes with him once more and took the chance to begin as she now ran her hands along the fine linen of her bed to keep her grounded as well.

"When I was twenty four, my tribe, the Seneca lost thirty-seven women and children to an inhumane and disgusting attack by British forces. Although they had been our ally before, a young officer raped one of our young women and when caught by her son and his playmates, he and his party killed any who remained in the village while the many had gone to hunt."

Bucky listened and then stopped. Village, twenty four? British? None of it made any sense at all.

"Twenty four? You don't look older than that now."

Tala smiled sadly and nodded.

"I'm not much older now, two hundred and seventy five never looked better I can promise you."

Buck stilled. He looked, really looked at Tala, and finally stared. She was insane, she had to be. Who else would claim they'd been around for the damn war of independence?!

"You can look at me like that all you want grandpa, but I'm not busting out with an old chant no matter how much you beg. Let's pretend for a moment that you're not a hundred years old shall we?"

Her quip was solid, and made him feel sheepish but he continued to stare in bewilderment and so with no more attention paid to him, she started her story up again.

"Our hunting party returned to find only one child alive, hidden beneath his mother who'd been slain while hiding him. He accused the accented white men, crying that the gods were angry at our choice of whom to follow in this war that had raged around us, for land that was our own. My father, the chief of our tribe, called for all the Seneca chiefs to join him to decide our next course in the fate of the land."

"Why were you not in the village?"

Bucky was following her story, but his emotions ran amuck as raw awe and fear at her words reigned high.

Tala chuckled and stopped leaning on her elbow, to lay her body down on her bed, still on her side as she tugged a pillow to herself as well but only to rest her head on. She was more than comfortable being bare now, especially as she spoke of her own life before the one she lived now.

"I was one of the best hunters of our village."

Bucky held his hands up in an offended manor, which helped the calm to return as the static between them had nearly become tangible, as she smiled at his small joke.

"They came, all with their own horror stories. For a week, the leaders, not just men, fought and argued. Some wanted to attack nearby settlements and camps, to take life where life had been taken. Some wished to leave, move farther into the woods north, get lost in Mother Nature. Some wanted to turn to the mercy of the white men. Some, like my father, wanted to turn to the gods. '

Tala could see herself once more during the final decision.

She'd stood back with the medicine woman of her tribe behind her father's seat at the circle, as the leaders had squabbled once more for hours although a decision had already been made. They'd bring a sacrifice to the gods, one of them, and ask for forgiveness and help through the coming storm.

She'd been so angry, so vengeful after the deaths of her family and friends. Her cousins lay slaughtered like animals as the white men who did it laughed in forts made from the goods of her forests.

She had voted for vengeance, she'd cried out for blood, and had been just as quickly silenced by both her father and their shaman.

"You must first think, then act." The wise woman had whispered in her ear and so she listened, and thought. She'd found her father's plan to call for the beings they worshipped a sound action, rather than leading an attack into a fray with no knowledge.

When they'd decided it needed to be a woman, for many believed that in losing so much of herself through the actions of white men, nature might need a helping woman, or a paramour to some, Tala had spoken up nearly instantaneously.

"They decided to offer a woman's life, her soul to the gods in an effort to understand and have a guide indebted to them for the future. I understand how it may sound now, with all the western pom-"

"You don't have to explain your culture to me. I've seen the worst of men, and.." Bucky tilted his head towards her and a sheepish looked crossed his eyes as he reached up to grasp on of her hands in his metal one. "… the best. Go on."

The comforting gesture was a rare one, and she found herself humbled for a moment. As advancements in society had grown, as the human race as a whole became more intelligent, better resourced, and grasping for knowledge, it had never made her believe any less in the gods she held near. In fact, it only made her believe more. Not in a supreme being, westerners labelled God and Jesus which seemed to her more like pawns for the masses to use as they saw fit.

No she continued to believe in the everyday small workings, like a barren woman finding out her adoption had gone through, or a man putting a quarter in someone's meter who'd run out. Even with her own circumstance, she'd learned very quickly that the gods weren't in the event, they were in the results.

"I volunteered. I refused to be sent before our gods like some fluffed up heron either, I was rubbed down with dark clay from our earth, and was accompanied by a party of warriors to a ridge that had been used time and time again by our people to communicate and be with our makers. I was there for two days, tired, and alone, until the form of a shadowed wolf came. It came from within the dark night skys, fading in and out and when it had spoke, I had felt it to my very bones, as if they rattled within my skin. It told me 'Proven an instrument. Our people's fate, lies in your hands now namesake. With darkness.'"

Tala sighed, as Bucky pulled his hand back to himself, his unease returning as she spoke of talking wolves. For someone who had taken her powers in quite easily, the story of receiving them was giving him quite a bit if trouble.

Sliding off the bed, to stand up, Tala couldn't help but raise her voice just a little as she paced back and forth, her own feelings a little hurt at his new reaction.

"Either way, it came back just now, for the first time since I'd received my powers. I understand why, and it was just bad timing on our part really. My powers were depleted, I mean zapped. My last rendezvous inside your head, was uncontrolled and hard because I was working on my last bit of power. I've been working constantly for weeks before this with families to repair some mental damage done by others, and I just dried up. I guess that was the only time it could impart more power, when some wasn't there to combat it already because not all power can be pooled."

"I can't be sure but, it felt like it gave me everything it had. As if it's very own soul was transferred in, and it brought me back to our first encounter but this time it spoke differently."

Catching himself, Bucky took a deep breath as a slight tinge of anger in her words slowly fell away with her last revelation, and it turned to him to understand her short life's story.

It had almost felt simple when he'd run from the destruction of Hydra and his battle with Steve Rogers, a decision made by a tired soldier who didn't understand what or who he was.

The way Tala spoke, she spoke as if everything was a choice of fate. Of monumental things, and he found as she spoke more of how she became an immortal, he believed it.

"What did it say this time?"

"it said we have a battle coming, and here's the kicker: you're going to be quite the big guest."

That didn't surprise him, not in the least, especially now.

"And what about you?"

Tala stopped her pacing, to deliver a wicked smile as she held out the palms of her hands, prodding at her new power center for a thread of power, until a large rope disentangled itself from the mass and pooled into her palms. As heat spread throughout her body, her hands itched and burned almost unbearably until the black began to form at her fingertips and continued until her wrists were streaked with the growing.

"I'm just your manager champ, I go where the big money goes."

Her flippant attitude did nothing to quell Bucky as he suddenly stood and grabbed onto her hands, covering the dark skin with his own as he shook his head to Tala. He didn't know her, or her power, but this new development didn't keep him in awe like her power before. This power felt dark, and as he had watched the black coloring replace her tan skin, it had only made him feel uneasy.

"Don't."

Tala looked up to Bucky and smiled, feeling his fear towards the power within her now. She was afraid to, but for different reasons than his own.

She knew with her help he was going to triumph over his demons, she had played that part in battles for centuries, but what troubled her now was the reason that a deity would essentially drain themselves of power just to hand it off to a mere human.

Whatever was coming, was going to be an absolute nightmare and Tala knew she would find her end where ever it began.

"We've got to go somewhere darling, somewhere you might not like."