We sit for a long time on the floor, even after I have cried out everything I have and feel exhausted we stay wrapped together on the tile and lean against each other for support. I haven't cried like that in years. Long before James Barnes changed the momentum of my life, and back then there hadn't been anyone to comfort me with something as simple as an embrace. So now, when I didn't even ask for it, I find a balm in his arms. He hasn't asked anything of me while I've purged myself of the pent-up emotions. Just held me while I shook. .

"I should hate you," I say against his shirt where my cheek rests. I look up at him, at his dimpled chin that was resting on the top of my head and I have to push down the urge to run the tip of my finger along his jawline.

"There's still time," he says with a wry grin.

"I never wanted any of this," I mutter into the fabric. My eyes are starting to feel heavy but they burn a little from the tears so I keep them open.

"You brought me into this. You took me out of my life and dropped me into this world I never wanted to be in and I guess I should be angry at you and hate you. But that's the last thing that I feel. I don't know why and I wish I could explain it, but I don't hate you at all."

"That's good," he says with a slow laugh.

"You saved me at the hospital," I say. I feel him put his chin back down on my head and his arms tighten around me.

"I had to," he whispers against my hair. "I didn't always kill people. Sometimes I had to bring them back alive. I had to bring you back alive."

He pulls back slightly and looks down at the stitches on my forehead. His metal hand comes up and touches the row of tiny x's, gently palpating the healing wound. My heart is pounding but I focus on his eyes as they watch the actions of his fingers. It's strange to be touched like that, with such care, by such a powerful thing. He is capable of so much destruction on that account, but I hadn't allowed him the possibility to be so gentle.

I push away the thoughts that follow what he's told me about bringing people back to HYDRA. For questioning, probably. Torture, most definitely. I won't lie to myself that he probably had a hand in those activities. It would be foolish to think that they wouldn't make use of the skills they had given him.

"I'm sorry you got hurt," he says and moves his hand back around me. "I shouldn't have let you go off alone."

"I wasn't helping," I blush. "I shouldn't have deviated from the plan."

"Now you know better."

"Yeah," I say with a sigh. "Quite."

We're facing his wall of notecards and I study the extensive map that he's created with the fragments collected from his memory. What had began as a single card with his name on it has grown into a complex web of his life that he is trying to rebuild. I remind myself that it will take more time to sort it all out, that the process may never end for him, but the more he works at it the more things are coming to him. They don't come in trickles or flashes anymore, they seem to come in whole scenes that play behind his eyes. The cards are getting more and more cramped with his handwriting as he puts the scenes down. Sometimes he reads them to himself so he can listen to them later on the recorder. He's coming back to his life and mine is going to be erased.

"You know what I'm afraid of?" I ask him.

"What?"

"Being forgotten."

It's a few seconds of silence before he pushes himself up and walks over to the table where he scratches something on a card. I feel cold without his arms around me and I pull my legs close and try to keep out the chill. He moves over to the wall and stands in front of the center card, the one with his name, and when he moves away I see he's taped up a new card. I lean in and see my name written in clean lines on the card, neat and straight and permanent.

"There," he says and stands with his feet firmly planted, shoulders straight. "You're here. Never forgotten."

For most people, a promise of remembrance from someone who is recovering from amnesia wouldn't count for much. But for me, in this moment, it's enough to know that he's put me in a place where I can count on being remembered. I smile broadly at my card that is taped right next to his and he sinks his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels for a second, smirking.

It hits me like a ton of bricks, the yawn that breaks through my whole body and I try to hide my distorted face in my hands but it's no use. James comes over and pulls me to my feet and pushes me towards his bed, his warm fingers resting on the small of my back. I lay down in the sheets that smell like him and wrap myself in the thin flat sheet while he makes himself comfortable on the floor. The last thing I do before I fall asleep is rest the fingers of my left hand on his chest, letting the broken wrist hang down over the side of the bed.

I'm asleep in seconds.

It doesn't last very long. I'm in the middle of a dream, swimming in a lake towards the shore and can feel it is just out of my reach. I pull myself towards the shore, thinking that I am making progress, but my body loses strength and I sink below the surface. I reach upwards at the receding light but I keep sinking. My lungs are crying out for air, I want so badly to open my mouth and take a drink of air but I resist. It becomes unbearable, the pain and the darkness that closes in around me. Just as the darkness surrounds me and covers my eyes I open my mouth and the water floods in.

This is when I wake up. I gasp for breath, gripping the sheets and trying to pull as much air into my lungs as I can. My cheek hits a wet spot and I register that I'd been crying again in my sleep. I push myself back from the edge until my back hits the wall. My heart is racing and I struggle to calm it. Over the edge of the bed I hear James stir and he sits up, his head coming level with mine and he rubs the sleep from his eyes. He seems to know what's happening, probably because he's been through this enough times on his own, and he touches my elbow to bring me back to myself.

"Just breathe," he says through a poorly stifled yawn. "You're okay. You're safe."

We spend the night like this, I toss and turn but am too afraid to let myself fall completely asleep again, and James is there when I can't bear to close my eyes. He repeats my own words to me, that everything is okay and that he's right there, but I can't win against the fear. It's dawn and the room is filling slowly with light when I succumb to exhaustion and slip into a doze.

The morning comes on while I rest, gray and wet, and the soothing sound of rain hitting the window lulls my brain into a quiet state that lets me rest. I don't dream again, but I do register when James gets up off the floor and pulls the blanket I'd kicked off back over my curled body, and when he leaves the room I hear the click of the door opening and closing. It's the smell of coffee that finally brings me back, and I find James has snuck back in and is holding a cup of black coffee in one hand and a stack of toast in another, my usual breakfast. He sets them down on the table and I rise to meet him.

"So," I say as I pick up the coffee and then take a tentative pull, testing it's temperature before I commit to a generous swig. The drink hits my system and I can feel it begin to works it's magic, whether from placebo or not I don't care. I already feel a little better.

"So," he mimics me.

"I guess we keep working," I nibble at some toast, and settle myself at the table, keeping a hold of my coffee like it's my lifeblood. He smiles at me and settles himself across the table from me, just like at our first meeting but so much has shifted and changed between us that I'm not sure who is treating whom any more. I ask him to grab my bag, which sits within his arms reach and he stretches his long self out to grab it up. He grabs is by the strap but it's uneven and when he lifts it up the contents spill out on the floor. The notebooks end up in a heap and I scramble around the table to pick them up.

"I'm sorry," he says, flustered while he scoops up papers and pens and seems desperate to put them right.

"It happens," I tell him and grab the notebooks, but when I pick up one by it's spine, a couple sheets of paper that are folded in half and nestled in each other. They are different paper than what's inside the books, but when I pick it up I know instantly that they are just as old. I open them and the rest of the world melts away. It's a handwritten letter, I guess it's a first draft as some lines as crossed out and words replaced, written in broken english that makes my stomach fall and an icy feeling settle in its place.

James must sense the shift in me, because when I look at him his face shows nothing but concern.

"What's wrong," he says, not a question but recognition. My mouth just drops open slightly, and I don't know what to say.

I don't know how I can destroy what we've built.