Bucky smiled at Steve as he walked back in to medical. The punk was feeling pretty proud of himself. There was little Steve hated more than a man who laid hands on a woman or a kid. Spotting Bucky on a bench outside Helen Cho's office, Steve headed straight for him.

"So?" Bucky waited for him to take a seat. "How did it go?"

Steve scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Which part?"

"The guy?"

His friend's expression turned dark. "A coward. They always are. I sent him off scared. For now."

"How is she?" Bucky hadn't missed the fact that the damsel in distress, despite her obvious injuries and fear, was small as his Marley and very pretty.

"Marley's looking after her," Steve explained. "Nice girl. Why do they fall for guys like that?"

Bucky fought to keep a grin off his face. Nice girl. It was Steve-speak for she's really pretty, has good manners, has a brain, and might be a possibility. Granted she'd been scared and relying on the goodwill of his best friend and his girl and people didn't tend to show their true colors in situations like that. But no harm in seeing how it went. The girl wouldn't be in a hurry to jump into another relationship anyway given what she'd been through.

"Maybe she hasn't met a good guy, yet," Bucky pointed out.

Steve shot him a sideways glance, nodded.

Oh, he's on the hook. Though Steve would never admit as much, he lived for being needed. Maybe it went back to the days where he'd been small, saw himself as weak, and he wanted so badly to be the one to take care of others, to protect. It drove everything he did.

Now here was a girl who looked like a modern-day Snow White with her white skin and nearly black hair. She was tiny with big green eyes – and Steve was a sucker for a green-eyed girl.

"How are Nat and Clint?" Steve asked.

"Nat's going to be okay," Bucky was happy to tell him. "Clint's hanging in there."

"Good news about Nat." Steve leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "She seemed so upset when she came to, when we first got here."

"Bruce is up," Bucky told Steve. "He was in with her."

"And now I'm here."

They both looked up to see Bruce standing before them. He looked like he'd been drug behind the back of a truck for a mile, but he was there and that's what mattered.

"You two have a minute?" Bruce asked, jerking his head in the direction of the hallway.

Steve was on his feet, holding out a hand to Bucky. "Sure."

They followed Bruce down the hall to what looked like a doctor's office and Tony waited inside for them. He gestured to Bruce to shut the door once they were all in.

"Let's talk about a couple of things," Tony started. "Who is pizza girl and why is she in the restricted area of the compound?"

Steve's gaze on Tony was steady. "She's just gotten out of an abusive relationship, Tony. If we'd sent her back to her apartment tonight, he would have been waiting for her."

"Then send her to a hotel," Tony said bluntly. "She's not vetted. She could be anyone. That was a dumb move, Cap."

"She works in your compound," Bucky threw in, "but she's not vetted?"

Tony rolled his eyes. "She vetted for pizza girl duty but not for our restricted area."

"By now you've probably combed through every record on the last three generations of her family, Tony, and – "

"Four," Tony corrected him.

"Surely you would have found something if you were going to," Steve snapped.

Tony stopped for only a beat. "Not the point. The point is we can't just bring civies, even cute ones, to live with us like homeless kittens, okay?"

"How about all the girls you've brought back here while you were on the outs with Pepper?" Bruce brought up. "If she's only here for the night to keep her safe, how is that different?"

Tony opened his mouth to speak but then stopped. "Not helping, big guy. Pepper and I are working things out." He turned his attention back to Steve. "She needs to be gone by morning. She can still work here but that's it."

Steve huffed out an exhale.

"Look," Tony said. "I'm no fan of douchebags who beat up their girlfriends either, but we have to be careful with our security. Our lives are on the line here."

"I understand that, Tony," Steve grumbled. "But certain situations surely warrant an exception."

When Tony didn't have a snappy comeback ready, Bucky knew Steve had him. At least for the moment. And Tony knew almost as well as he did that when Steve's mothering instinct kicked in, there was no swaying him. Bucky almost felt sorry for Stark.

Tony blew out an exhale. "There's something else."

Bucky didn't like the way Tony's attention was now on him. "It's about Marley."

He motioned to Bruce who moved away from the door and walked around them to stand next to Tony.

"I went to see Nat when I woke up," Bruce said carefully. "She was disoriented from her ordeal, from blood loss. She was rambling on and on about some intel she'd gotten from the base."

"Go on," Bucky prompted him, sounding much calmer than he felt.

"Apparently, there'd been some information she'd gotten on the mission in Beirut a few weeks ago?"

Bucky nodded. "She had some information on the program that Marley came from. There was nothing on how they'd made her that way, just notes from when she was a baby until she disappeared in 1994. There wasn't much there."

"Tony's people are going through what she recovered now, but… Marley came from a breeding program," Bruce explained. "One of the other girls who came from the same experiment as Marley, showed signs of having the same… gifts… as Marley. The abilities showed up earlier in her. The information Natasha was able to retrieve wasn't actually about Marley, but about this girl. Her name was Anya."

Steve placed a steady hand on his shoulder and he was grateful for the support as he listened.

"Anya was the reason they weren't too worried about Marley disappearing. They had a viable weapon, a successful result to their experiment. Scientists from higher up wrote her off as having mild telepathy and separated her from the others. According to the intel, while Anya had developed pyrokinesis, her abilities were such that she could use them against someone else one on one but nothing substantial."

"Meaning she couldn't do what Marley can?" Bucky wanted to know.

"Correct. But they'd produced a child with pyrokinesis from random, normal parents, so they decided to put her in another breeding program to see if they could breed a stronger child. Anya suffered ten miscarriages and had two live births. They continue to study the kids. They have them hidden somewhere. It's possible there are two other girls out there with abilities similar to Marley's. It's entirely possible that they could be as strong or stronger than Marley."

"What about Anya?" Steve asked.

"Suicide," Bruce said somberly. "She was nineteen at the time."

"Wait." Bucky thought it through. "So, the girls are at least eleven years old?"

Bruce nodded.

"What did you take away from this that has to do with Marley?" Bucky asked, just knowing he didn't want to hear the answer.

"Ten miscarriages," Bruce pointed out. "The reason Anya lost those pregnancies is because their unique physiology doesn't provide a suitable habitat for the fetus. Looking at the numbers, Anya didn't have a fraction of the power Marley does. Anya was a grenade. Marley is an atomic bomb. There's very little chance Marley will ever be able to have children."

His poor girl. They'd never talked about children and whether she wanted them or not. At the moment, he was just trying to get her to live with him. Bucky didn't try to sit and wonder why she was even with him. She could come to her senses any time. Until then, she could have whatever she wanted from him. Bucky was hers.

He had no idea what her reaction would be to this news. But there was no escaping the fact that it was yet another thing HYDRA took away from her, from them.

"But they will still try to take her," Steve reasoned out loud. "Anya was able to have children. They'll try."

Bruce nodded, his expression sympathetic as he met Bucky's gaze.

"It's not just Marley. We have to find those girls," Tony's tone was serious. "If they're like Marley, we can't let HYDRA keep them."

"If they're not like Marley," Steve threw in, "they'll try to… breed… them too."

"Did it hurt when you said that?" Tony's snark was back.

"Cool it, Stark," Steve scowled at him. "Not right now."

"Remember when they attacked the compound here a few weeks ago?" Bucky asked.

"Yeah, Buck," Steve was already using his tiptoe-around-Bucky tone. "Go on."

"They didn't make a move for her after that." Bucky went back over the last few weeks. "We took out one of their sleeper cells. They trapped us. We got out. Neither time did Marley seem to factor into any of it. They weren't specifically aiming for her."

Bruce tilted his head in question. "No, I guess they weren't."

"Son-of-a-bitch." Tony's eyes were wide on Bucky. "They left her here for us to handle her breeding program."

Bucky nodded grimly.

Steve looked lost but realization lit up Bruce's eyes. "You didn't, ah, use… protection?"

"She takes the pill," Bucky explained.

"But her physiology would burn right through it," Bruce continued.

Bucky had guessed that already. "Fuck."

Steve looked at each one, seemed to catch on, then scowled. "She's not… pregnant… is she?"

"We need to get her down here for a test." Tony pulled out his phone.

"No," Bucky reached out as if to stop Tony with his metal hand. Tony jumped back. "You're not doing that to her. What? You're going to drag her down here to take a pregnancy test while you explain that if she did happen to be pregnant, she'll never have the baby? No."

Tony's exhale huffed out his nose.

"He's right, Tony." Steve stared both Tony and Bruce down. "That's not the way to handle something like this."

"You are planning to tell her, right?" Tony asked Bucky.

"Of course." Did Stark think he was stupid? "She needs to know because we're going to need to figure out something for protection."

"We can do that," Bruce told him.

"Right now, our team's down," Steve told them. "We need to make sure we're going to pull Clint through and then we'll deal with this. We'll be here for whatever you need, Buck. You and Marley."

Bruce nodded. Tony's expression was surprisingly somber.

"I'm… I'm really sorry," Tony told Bucky. "I mean that. Marley is… she's special. You're good together."

Unexpected from Tony, the kind words had tears stinging the backs of Bucky's eyes.

"You guys ever get really serious and want to adopt, and there are a lot of good kids out there, I'll take care of it. Whatever she wants. Okay?"

"Thank you," Bucky barely got the words out, realizing Stark Jr. meant it.

Steve pulled Tony in for a hug on that note, knowing Bucky wouldn't. His eyes were suspiciously shiny.

They headed back out into the hallway, Tony and Bruce heading up the hall. Steve studied him as they slowly head back in the direction of Nat and Clint's rooms.

"You okay?" Steve asked gently.

Bucky nodded. Did he ever really have a choice?

"I have no idea how this going to go," he admitted to his best friend. "I'm just trying to convince her to move into my apartment. That's as far as things have gone and…"

"We'll get through this," Steve told him. "I can't do all the things that Tony can but I'll do whatever you need me to. You know that."

Bucky did know that.

"Hey."

He'd been so buried in his thoughts, he'd never noticed Marley heading in their direction. She was a sweet, warm press to his side as she walked up to wrap her arms around him.

Then her big blue eyes darkened. "What? Is everything okay? Nat? Clint? Oh, my God…"

"Are okay," Steve cut her off, smiling. "Nat for sure is. Clint, well, it's looking better. We're not giving up on him yet."

Marley nodded, not looking convinced. Steve excused himself quickly.

Bucky stood there trying like hell to lock down his mind.

"Bucky?"

Focusing on how she looked when she slept, and he loved to watch her when he couldn't sleep himself, Bucky relaxed. She normally didn't try to pick through his head unless he was really upset.

"M'fine, doll. Just tired," he said, smiling and pulling her into his arms.

When she relaxed against him, he knew he'd bought himself some time.

"How is Emily?" Bucky asked.

"Oh Bucky, she just…" Marley pulled back to look up at him. "She's so scared and she's covered with bruises and marks and…"

"Like you were?"

"Yeah. I was. I didn't realize until tonight with Emily just how far I've come, Bucky. I'm not Natasha or Maria by any stretch but I'm stronger than I was."

"Stronger?" Bucky chuckled. "You were a little tiger going after him, doll. For a minute I thought Steve and I would have to pull you off him."

He loved when she blushed, her little face coloring prettily.

"Steve came to rescue, didn't he?" Marley grinned. "I know it seems weird to think about it right now, but he…"

"Likes her? Oh, yeah."

"I knew it."

"Did he give her those big, dopey puppy eyes up there?"

Marley nodded, laughing.

"Jesus. This ought to be good."

"Do you think Tony will let her stay in my place for a while?"

Bucky wasn't sure about that. "Told us he wanted her gone by morning. I don't see Steve allowing that to happen, doll. Don't worry yourself. You need to rest."

She stretched at that. "I am tired."

"Let's go to bed, baby," Bucky told her. "C'mon."

Bucky steered her in the direction of the elevator. They had just passed Nat's room when a nurse came rushing by them, blood bags in hand. While they'd had no casualties, there were a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who sustained serious injuries.

A loud splat sounded behind them followed by a distressed "shit!"

They turned to see that the nurse had dropped one of the bags, blood pooled all over the clean white floor. Bucky didn't envy the woman cleaning up the mess.

Next to him, the color drained from Marley's face and her hand flew to her mouth. She gagged, turning and sprinting into Nat's room, into her bathroom.

Bucky's heart sank as he followed her into Nat's room, Nat staring wide-eyed at the bathroom while the sound of Marley throwing up violently filled the room.

Maybe she had a problem seeing other people's blood. He'd seen that before. Just maybe it was just one of those things.

He could hope.

His gaze met Nat's. She knew. And in that moment, she shared his fear.