Author's Note: Okay, done with part one, so I'm going to post a little more frequently. I have no words for The Winter Soldier. I went to see it again yesterday. I could just watch it on repeat for like a month straight. (Or just forever.) I LOVE it. It made a lot more sense this time since I'd seen the first one. I actually felt the emotions when he is talking to Peggy and when he realizes it's Bucky. (So many emotions!) Before I was just like, who the hell is Bucky? Yeah, so much more I understood. I wrote with my best friend after that and the ideas were flowing! I was thinking about the possiblity of writing Steve's conversation with Peggy from his point of view. I think I would cry. Okay, I'll quit rambling on about the movie. (Which needs to be on dvd like now.)

I quote Robert Frost for a line or two, so I will cite that as "Ghost House." My favorite Robert Frost poem of all time. You need to go read it if you haven't before.

Thank you as always for everything! Feel free to leave a review on the way out. Enjoy!

3 – Portland – May 11, 2012

When the plane finally landed at the Portland International Airport, Aspen was both exhausted and jittery. She practically jumped out of her seat when the plane stopped. Steve caught her as she tripped out of the aisle on numb legs and feet. "Sorry, my feet fell asleep," she said as he righted her. She was hyperaware of his hands on her waist and back, but he removed them almost at once. Always the gentleman. They retrieved their bags and shuffled their way off the plane. They took a left and followed the other passengers toward the front doors of the airport. It was raining lightly when they alighted on the sidewalk outside. Aspen hailed a taxi and they stowed their duffle bags in the trunk before getting into the back. Aspen gave him the address of the Sunflower House, and he pulled away from the curb. She was feeling more and more nervous by the minute. It must have shown because Steve took her hand, entwining her fingers with his. She threw him a grateful smile and didn't let go of his hand as the taxi took them into the city. He eventually turned west, taking them into an older residential neighborhood. Aspen started craning her neck, wondering if she'd know the house on sight. It had been so long. She knew it would look nothing like the picture Steve had drawn her – not anymore. It was currently uninhabitable which could mean any number of things – collapsed roof, rickety foundation, gas leak.

After a time, Aspen noticed that there were quite a few abandoned looking houses. Several had foreclosure signs posted in the overgrown front yards. When they came to the end of the block, Aspen let out a low gasp.

There it was sitting alone like a solemn sentinel, guarding unspoken mysteries and long lost memories. The yellow paint was peeling and rain-washed, but some of its former charm could still be seen in the wilting porch and faded lattice. The aspen tree still stood, a little taller than Aspen remembered, a little more ragged like a solider that had seen too many wars. But it still stood, white bark grey with age.

The driver pulled over at the curb, and Aspen's hand went to the door handle before the car had even stopped. She asked the driver to wait and headed out into the rain. It had slowed to a drizzle, but she could feel her hair dampening under the fine mist. She pulled up the collar to her jacket. Steve pulled his baseball cap onto his head, and Aspen wished she had her usual black cap. It was in her duffle bag though.

They walked silently up to the front door. The porch groaned under their weight but held. Aspen had the key and used it now. The door wouldn't give at first, the lock rusty and stiff. Finally she managed to unlock it and opened the front door with a low, prolonged groan. The interior looked as if Aspen's family had just up and left. Which they probably had, she realized. They stepped into the dusty living room, looking around in the dimness of the dreary daylight. Aspen felt memories rushing into her head with such speed that she couldn't grasp one before another replaced it. She stood in the middle of the living room, finding herself quite speechless. Steve went over to the mantle and pulled down a dusty photo. He rubbed his palm over it, smearing some of the dust away. Aspen walked over, looking around his arm. It was a picture of Aspen with her parents and her aunt. They looked happy, each of them smiling. Aspen couldn't have been more than two years old at the time. She reached out a hand and touched the dusty glass.

"It's all sitting here like its stuck in time," she said softly. "But time has moved on without it."

"I know the feeling," Steve said, carefully replacing the frame. Aspen blinked, her eyes suddenly moist. She turned away, looking around the room. The window on the west side of the house was broken and a cold draft of air came in. The floor was warped and wet where the rainwater hit it. Aspen wanted to block the elements from entering her house, but she realized it was no longer her house. Nature was starting to take it back like something out of a Robert Frost poem. How did it go? I dwell with a strangely aching heart/In that vanished abode there far apart… She tore her eyes away from the broken window and ventured into the kitchen. She could tell at once that the backdoor had been forced open some time ago probably by vagrants or squatters. It felt like a violation to her, but no one had lived here for a very long time. Eighteen years, she realized. She turned twenty-two on the eve of summer.

The carpet on the stairs leading up to the second story was soggy and threadbare. Aspen tread gently as she made her way up, running her hand along the worn banister. She saw ghost hands of her child self running her palms down the banister as she raced up and down the stairs. She took the bend and finished the last few stairs coming to a short hallway that led off to two bedrooms and a bathroom. She stood on the landing for a long while until she heard Steve come up behind her. He didn't say anything, but his presence gave her the confidence she needed to walk on. She opened the door to her parents' bedroom first. The closet doors were open and clothing hung limply from dusty hangers. The bed was unmade as if they had left in great haste. Several dusty bottles of perfume were still on the vanity against one wall. Aspen lifted one up to smell it, shutting her eyes as she was reminded of her mother. Tears stung her eyes, but she wiped them away, setting the bottle down. She wordlessly left the room and headed to the last door. It was open a crack, and she pushed it forward, entering her childhood room.

It was just as she remembered it with a layer of dust and grime coating everything that had once been so clean and white. Most of her toys were still there, some sitting on the dusty bed covers, others lined up on her dresser. She picked up a doll she remembered playing with day after day, inviting her mother and father to have tea parties with her and the doll. By then her parents had already started working for SHIELD, had already met Joseph Danners. Had they ever really had a normal life? The thought that she'd never had a normal life was what finally cracked her. She stood, tears running silently down her cheeks until she felt arms wrapping themselves around her. She turned and pressed herself against Steve, burying her face in his shirt.

"It's surreal," she said finally. "It's like they're going to walk through the door at any moment, smiling and greeting me like nothing ever changed. Now I realize that life was a dream – it wasn't real. None of it was real because they had already set their fates. They had already started working on the Superhero Serum. There was nothing anyone could do to stop this from happening."

"We'll find them," Steve told her. Aspen smiled up at him realizing that if she had a normal life, she never would have met him. There was nothing normal about him and yet being around him was the most normal thing she had right now.

"I think I'd like to check into a hotel now," Aspen said. "We'll come back later to search for clues."

They walked back to the taxi together, and Aspen instructed the driver to take them to the nearest nice hotel. She frowned as she glanced out the back window to take a last glance at the Sunflower House. A black car that had been parked on the curb was pulling away slowly. She didn't remember the car being there when they entered the house. She tried to shake her discomfort, but after a few blocks, the car was still following them.

The taxi pulled over at a Best Western, and Aspen paid him for his service while Steve got their bags out of the trunk. He shouldered both and followed her into the hotel. Aspen looked discreetly behind them. The black car drove slowly past. "What's wrong?" Steve asked, noticing her worry.

"We're being followed," she said. She headed toward a back door to the hotel, bypassing the main desk.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"To another hotel," she told him, pushing the doors open and leading out into the rain again. They walked several blocks before Aspen hailed a taxi and directed the driver to take them to another hotel at least a mile away. He stopped at a Hilton, and they got out. Aspen was satisfied they hadn't been followed this time. She and Steve walked up to the front desk, and she booked them a single room with two queen-sized beds. She wasn't taking any chances with them being separated. It was nearly five, but Aspen was exhausted. She was also starving. As soon as she unlocked the door to their room, she picked up the phone and ordered room service.

"I'm going to take a hot shower while we're waiting for dinner to come," she told Steve. She grabbed her PJs and headed into the bathroom. The hot water washed away the grime from the Sunflower house and the tear streaks on her cheeks. She felt like all she'd done lately was cry. What was wrong with her? She'd spent her whole life being tough and now that her past was coming back to her, she was suddenly a mess. Maybe she was making up for lost time. Or maybe she was beginning to chip away at the shell she'd built around herself blocking off all those emotions and memories.

She pulled on her pajamas – a camisole top and plaid flannel shorts. Steve was sitting on the end of one of the beds, flipping through channels on the TV. He looked up when she reentered the room, eyes widening when he saw her. She realized a moment later that no woman in the 1940s – no respectable woman – would be caught dead in so little clothing. She blushed at once even though there was nothing indecent about her PJs in the 21st century. "Umm," she didn't know where to go from there. "I hope you don't think– I mean…" Steve tore his eyes away, his cheeks reddening. Aspen sat down across from him on the other bed. "You might have noticed that girls' hemlines have gotten higher and shirts much lower… I didn't think that it might come across as immodest," she said, taking another stab at an explanation. Really she was just embarrassing both of them further.

He looked over at her, carefully keeping his eyes on her face. "I know you'd never be immodest," he said. He looked a little nervous, and Aspen realized that sharing a room with a girl was probably another thing men from his time didn't do. Respectable men like him anyway. She was just getting everything wrong that night. She got up and pulled her brush out of her bag, running it through her wet hair.

"Your back…" Steve sounded alarmed. She realized that the camisole she was wearing showed another scar she'd received in her time at ARTIFACT. She'd almost blocked that memory, almost. She felt rather than heard Steve get up. "It's just a token from my past," she assured him, not meeting his eyes. "I was escaping with something I'd stolen from smugglers and I had to go under a fence. I didn't realize that there was a loose bit of wire. It made a pretty deep cut. I thought I was going to bleed out before I managed to get back to headquarters. That was a long time ago. We all have our scars," she said. "Some we can see, some we can't." She was beginning to wish she'd put on an oversized T-shirt. She hadn't meant to make a spectacle of herself. She turned around to face him. He was hovering close as if he didn't quite know what to do with himself. His blue eyes were bright.

"It's not fair that you've suffered through so much," he told her. "You're so young and yet you've been through so much."

"You went to war," she reminded him. "You know much more pain and suffering than me."

"I wish I could promise that we'd never see suffering again, never feel pain, but somehow I don't think that's possible," he said. "But I will do everything I can to protect you, to make sure you don't get hurt like that again."

Aspen was taken aback. No one had ever spoken to her like that, sworn to protect her. She'd never thought she needed protecting before and maybe she still didn't, but knowing that someone cared about her enough to do so was a revelation to her. She found that her heart was beating far more quickly than usual. She couldn't read the look in Steve's eyes, couldn't tell what he was thinking. He took a step closer to her, and she caught her breath.

Then there was a knock on the door. They sprang apart as if someone had fired a shot at them. Aspen blushed furiously, refusing to look at Steve. She practically sprinted to the door, opening it to find their dinner waiting. She took the tray, setting it down on the table before digging in her bag for a tip. When the door was shut and they were alone again, Aspen felt awkward, not knowing what to say or what had almost happened. She forced herself to look at Steve. He appeared to be feeling the same because he wouldn't meet her eyes.

They ate dinner quietly, Steve looking at a pamphlet of Portland that was sitting on the table and Aspen idly watching the news on the TV. As they were getting ready for bed, Aspen thought back to her childhood bedroom. Under all the dust was the place of comfort she had gone to every night for the first three years of her life. Where her mother had tucked her into bed and her father had read to her. It was hard to believe that such simple things made her so happy, so safe and comfortable. Then again… She looked over at Steve who had changed into a set of pajamas and was sitting against the pillow on his bed, looking down at the pamphlet on Portland again. She couldn't help but notice the muscles in his arms. Usually he was wearing a long-sleeved button up shirt or his leather jacket. She'd only seen him in a T-shirt several times. She wasn't sure why she was noticing this now. She pulled the covers back and climbed into the bed, curling up and letting her exhaustion overwhelm her. It was only seven-thirty, but she was already feeling sleepy. Steve finally set aside the pamphlet and pushed down the covers, lying down on his back with his hands folded across his stomach.

"I keep having nightmares every night," Aspen said.

Steve turned his head to look at her. "About New York? Or about Loki?" he asked softly.

"New York. I haven't dreamed of Loki since I spoke with him. How long am I going to keep dreaming about it?" she asked in a whisper.

"It might take awhile, but eventually the worst of it will fade. If you ever need to talk – sometimes keeping it all inside just leaves it to fester and grow. I know."

"You said you still dream about the war?"

"Sometimes, yeah. Sometimes I dream that I'm in Schimdt's lab and that he's experimenting on me. Or that I'm on the Valkyrie and I can't change its course. The bombs drop and head straight toward New York and Chicago… Or sometimes I dream about that mission on the train when Bucky fell, when I couldn't get to him in time… Every once in awhile he'll still be alive, I'll reach out and grab his hand and pull him back into the train. I'm so relieved that he's safe." His eyes were distant as he spoke. "But then I wake up and realize that it was only a dream. The disappointment I feel, the sadness…"

"That must be crushing."

"It is when I realize he's still dead." His blue eyes rose to meet hers. "Sometimes remembering that I'm still alive can be difficult…having to live each day remembering those I lost."

"Every day is a gift. I've learned that ever since Clint saved my life. I could have made a career out of working for ARTIFACT and lived every day doing Danners's dirty work. I could have been murdered or killed on a mission. I'm still here though, despite it all. Living the life I've had makes me realize that it's a feat just staying alive and staying sane."

Steve didn't speak, but she could see his thoughts flitting behind his eyes. There was a sadness there that went deeper than she had realized. She had taken him away from everything familiar to him. Now she was all he had. He had given up the life he'd made for himself in the last three weeks to follow her into the unknown. That meant more to her than she could say. Before she could decide whether or not to tell him, her eyes had drifted shut, and she was sleeping peacefully.