Life is good and for a while I enjoy a relative peace in our new home. I keep up the shooting training, getting more comfortable handling the firearms and shooting better. To my surprise it does help with the anxiety but in a way I hadn't expected. When I find my mind drifting towards the danger zone, I close my eyes and picture the target, feel the weight of the gun in my hand, and walk myself through the breath pattern when I prepare for a shot. Breathe in, hold, and squeeze out and fire in my head. When I open my eyes I feel calmer, steadier, and I go on with whatever had been interrupted.
My injuries from our excursion to the hospital heal nicely, my cast comes off and I can finally work out the soreness in my wrist and James even volunteers to remove my stitches for me.
"I didn't expect this to be in your bag of tricks," I tease him. He smirks as his fingers deftly clip the stitches and pull them out.
"You shouldn't be surprised," he quips. "Sometimes I'd be left alone for weeks, and I had to be able to take care of myself if I got hurt."
We have these tiny moments where he reveals more details about his life between cryos, and we start a new map of these memories, a new web of cards that piece together different HYDRA missions and give accounts of what he did. I am less enthusiastic about this one, but he seems to think that it will help him. Steve tells me that this is something of the person James used to be, that that man would want to take responsibility for the things that he had done. There are days when I can't sit in the room as James agonizes his way through putting together the puzzle inside his head. The details that emerge turn my stomach and I can barely hide it from him.
Steve volunteers to sit with him instead, and after a hesitant start the two tread those dark paths together.
I put him through another MRI, hold his hand as he shakes but there is less of the panic that had gripped him initially and I stroke my thumb along his knuckles while the machine scans him. I'm starting to nod off when a tiny ripple of nausea rolls through me. I lean down and put my head between my knees, keeping my hand as still as possible to keep James from knowing something is happening with me, and take deep breaths to steady myself until the feeling that I'm going to hurl, passes.
The scans show that his brain is recovering, the parts that had been most damaged are bouncing back and I can see how it boosts his morale to see the physical proof that what he is doing is working.
"It will only get better," I tell him and he holds me close where I feel safest. I hug him harder when I feel sick again, steady myself against him, and this time he notices.
"What's wrong?" he says, his hands on my shoulders and assessing me for a moment.
"Might just be getting sick," I say quickly. "Nothing to worry about." But the way his brows crinkle together I can see the worry that knits them. I pat his sternum, trying to break his worry into tiny bits.
From our apartment high above the rest of the city I watch the fall slide quietly into winter, and when the snow begins to fall at the beginning of December it brings new hurdles.
I wake up one night and reach out for James but he isn't there. His side of the bed is cold and I sit up abruptly only to see him standing by the window looking out. His silhouette is accentuated by the ambient light from the city that never sleeps and it's amplification off the falling snow that cascades down outside. He's wearing only his sweat pants and his metal arm gleams in the glow from the the window. His arms are crossed in front his body and he seems transfixed by the falling snow, lost in it's steady pattern in front of his eyes.
I wrap a blanket around my shoulders, shielding my half-naked self from the cold of the room and I shiver a little when my barefeet hit the chilly floorboards. I creep up behind him, knowing that he probably hears me anyways, and approach to lay a hand on his right shoulder. He pulls away from my touch with a jerk and grabs at my wrist to hold it away from him. His eyes are clouded by a cold fury and I can feel the tension in his arm radiating to my bones.
"James," I say gently, trying to keep my voice calm. His breathing is so even and for a moment I feel his calm demeanor at odds with the potential violence in the tendons of his arm and how any second he could unleash that on me. We are at a stalemate for the moment and I hold my breath while his eyes scan me until something in his head must click and he releases my wrist. His eyes dart back and forth while he comes back to himself and where he is. I take a few steps away from him to put some distance between us in case he should be gripped by the same madness. His fingers clench into a fish and he stares at them like they're not a part of him, disconnected from his body but still a part of him that he can't explain.
"Are you okay?" I ask, but his face says that he doesn't know.
"The snow," he says eventually, "Just watching it come down it brings back the cold and the familiar feeling of being on the hunt for someone. It's like I want to crawl into that feeling because it's the strongest thing I can remember. Everything comes back to the fall from that snowy train and falling away from the world, and sometimes it takes over in my head."
I nod, not quite understanding but needing to reassure him all the same. I face the window and we stand side by side to watch the snow come down. Eventually he takes my hand, then I walk backwards to the bed and pull him along with me, he slips his hands inside my blanket and draws me to him. My heart races but this time from a curious mix of nervous energy, wondering what he will do to me.
The next morning I go to Steve and find him in the gym area, caught in the middle of his workout. I wait until he's at a stopping point, and we take a seat on a bench along the wall. He wraps a towel around his neck and leans against the wall.
"It was like he didn't even know me," I say. James' cold eyes come back to me and I shiver.
"Did you know this could happen?" Steve says.
"It's always a possibility," I admit. "That when someone tries to put things together that they get confused about what is current reality and what is memory. The lines can become fuzzy, which is why we do the maps. Keeps things in a physically separated place so it's easier to know what's the present and what is memory."
"Do you think that's what happened?"
"I don't know," The admission unsettles me but I conceal that from Steve. "But I wouldn't bring it up if I thought it wasn't a serious concern."
"What can we do?" Steve look so earnest, needing a plan of action to help his friend. It reminds me of that first day we met, when he first asked me to help and the pleading in his eyes.
"Keep working, focus on time frames, keeping things in context."
"Sometimes I'm not so sure myself," he says. "There's so much we both missed, it gets confusing even for me."
"But you know what he's going through to an extent. Use your own tools to give him a way to stay with us." Steve seems unsure his eyes trained on a point across the room to focus his energy on. I wish I could read his mind, crawl inside for a moment and see what's going on.
"There's something I need to ask you," he says, treading lightly like he's picking each word our carefully before he says it. "As his doctor, not as his friend or his…"
The last word hangs there between us and I give him a small smile at his difficulty in finding a word to describe that last part of me. "It's okay," I tell him.
"We've come into some information," he moves on, slightly relieved. "about a small HYDRA base that is supposedly abandoned, but we're going to go make sure. I want Bucky to come with us."
"And you want me to say whether I think he's ready, or not," I finish his thought for him. It worries me, but from a medical standpoint I know that there isn't anything keeping James from the task. It's the worry that he shows signs of slipping between where he is and where he was that concerns me.
"You want my opinion as his doctor," I say carefully. "And that opinion is that he is physically capable of handling whatever you throw at him. His head is better, structurally, but what I fear is that something will trigger a reaction that we can't anticipate. If he goes out there there's always the chance that he could come back more confused and uncertain than ever. He could come back in a violent state of mind. I can't predict that. But we can't keep him locked up in here, as much as we might want to, and he's never going to learn to trust himself if we can't show him we trust him."
I don't want to be convincing, but my advice is what tips the scales on Steve's decision to bring James along on the mission. It's how the two of us find ourselves holed up in our place a few hours before their departure time, me sitting on the bed with my legs drawn in close to my chest, my arms wrapped around them and my chin resting on a knee, while watching James check himself in the mirror for what seems like the fiftieth time. He finally sat for a haircut, letting go of his longer locks and now he's running his hands through the short tresses and checking up on them every chance he can get.
"Are you nervous?" I ask, trying to calm my own nerves about what he is embarking on.
"Maybe," he answers, leaning himself against the doorway to the bathroom and letting his eyes graze over me. "I don't feel it, but I think maybe I should be. It that makes sense."
"Yes," I say, giving him a weak smile. I have felt sick all week, not able to shake what I had thought was a simple stomach flu. I've been feeling like I was hit by a Mack truck and have taken every opportunity to get as much rest as possible.
"I don't want to leave you here like this," he says, his eyes filled with genuine concern. I haven't been as adept as hiding my illness from him, but then it's difficult to keep it from someone you live with you are throwing up regularly.
"I'll be fine," I reassure him. "If I can't keep any food down while you're away then I'll have Elsa set me up with fluids and medicine. I'll be fine."
They're supposed to be gone for three days. This is the only piece of information I asked for when it comes to this mission. I don't want to know anything about where they're going or what they'll be doing. It seems safest to keep me as much in the dark as they can. I only want to know how long James will be gone.
He crosses the room and kneels on the ground in front of me, one hand on either side of me on the duvet. I put my feet down on the floor and take his face in my hands, running my thumbs along his cheekbones, then running my fingers through his short hair and letting them settle on the back of his neck. We lean our foreheads together and brace ourselves against one another. It feels like a goodbye, I wonder if he's nervous about heading out into the fray again but I don't bring it up anymore. I just want the gentle quiet between us for this last night.
In the morning he is gone, disappeared after leaving me curled up with his pillow and wearing one of his t-shirts. The weak winter sun lights our room and I feel a dull pang of longing when I think of all the places he could be, wondering if he misses the weight of my body on a soft mattress as much as I miss his, even though it hasn't been a whole day yet.
"Are you sure about this?" Else says, pressing a small cotton ball to the pinpoint on my inner elbow. "Hold this here, pressure." The instruction is automatic and she smiles to herself knowing that I'm familiar with it.
"Yes," I say, leaning back in the chair behind a privacy screen in the medical wing. "Just run it, but don't tell anyone."
"Of course," she says, nodding at me.
Please be wrong, I think to myself. Please be wrong.