He treaded softly as he neared her. They hadn't bothered to give him any weapons this time, convinced that he could get the job done on pure strength alone. He knew what he was capable of, he knew that he didn't need a gun or a knife for this mission. This one was simple. Be discreet, leave no survivors.

He reached the edge of the bed and paused to look down at his target. She was splayed out, one hand resting on her collarbone while the other was stretched above her head. Her face was turned into her arm, mouth slightly open as she took soft, even breaths. She was small for her age but her face looked weathered and weary, even in sleep. In the moonlight he could see a thin scar on the side of her neck, just below her hairline. His metal hand reached for her throat.

The room seemed to grow even quieter and Chandler could feel all the eyes in the room on her. She only cared about Barnes.

"You remember." She whispered, feeling her breath shake as the words left her. His memories were flooding her mind and she could see clearly that he did.

"Chandler," he sat up in the chair, opening his mouth to continue speaking. She felt the regret coming off of him in waves now. Her throat closed and her breaths came in short, uneven pan

"You remember everything." She could feel the tears welling in her eyes, despite her efforts to hold them back. She could feel her rage start to overwhelm the sadness. "You remember absolutely everything."

"Cha-"

"You remember trying to kill me." Ice ran through her veins, but the words were fire.

He didn't bother lying, he didn't bother trying to skate around the subject. He blinked once and took a deep breath, then quickly nodded twice. She couldn't speak, she could barely breathe. His memories were still flooding her mind, taking over every last piece of rational thought she had. Seconds passed as she absorbed years worth of his memories, of missions long passed and people he had killed. Her chest was impossibly tight, she couldn't make herself breathe and she saw spots of darkness appearing at the edges of her vision. She felt herself sway backwards and two hands gripped her elbows, steadying her. Wanda.

"Okay," Steve stepped forward, his face a mix of anger and confusion "get her out of here."

Wanda steered her from the room, T'Challa opening the door for them on the way out with a satisfied smirk that went entirely over Chandler's head. They started walking down the hall, Chandler making every effort to regain control of her senses, but his memories were still flooding her and she pulled away from Wanda, walking faster and faster until she was running down the hall, flying past doors and T'Challa's shocked looking staff. She could hear her panting and focused on it, counting the breaths, counting her steps. She rounded a corner and skidded to halt, pressing two shaky fingers to her neck. She leaned her forehead against a wall and closed her eyes, focusing on her lungs. She tried to feel the air filling them, she tried to control her diaphragm. She heard Wanda's footsteps slowing behind her.

"Chan-" Wanda started, but she interrupted her by holding up her free hand. She was counting. Her breathing slowed and the images faded. She dropped her hands and straightened, still breathing heavily, but steadily. She turned around. Wanda's eyes searched hers and she nodded once. Chandler shook her head slightly and pressed her back to the wall, tilting her head back as she felt her pulse drop back to normal. She made every effort to ignore his demons, but they were screaming.

She heard his footsteps before she saw him, and felt his hand grip her upper arm. He pulled her into what looked like a conference room and pushed her into a chair in a way that was uncharacteristically rough for him. He was absolutely seething with rage and Chandler withdrew into herself, curling her limbs toward her chest as she tried not to slip back into the place she had just escaped from. He paced a few steps as she drew more shaky breaths, feeling the tears come to her eyes again. Wanda slipped through the door quietly, standing behind her with a look of concern. Natasha followed soon after, taking a seat at the head of the long table.

"Steve," Chandler blinked and bit her lip "I'll explain."

"This was a mistake." He pressed his clenched fists on the table, staring down. He refused to look at her. "This was a mistake."

"Let me exp-"

"NO!" He punched the table with both fists as he yelled and she heard the wood splinter. He took a deep breath, still avoiding eye contact. "You had all the time you needed to explain, and you didn't."

"Steve," Chandler closed her eyes "you didn't ask. You've never once asked me anything about myself. You haven't even asked the full extent of my abilities. All you know is that I'm some angry teenager who can alter people's memories and emotions. You don't know anything about me because you never bothered to learn. Everything was about him, it didn't matter who did the fixing as long as it happened. You don't care about me, you never asked about me. You have no right to be mad. I didn't lie." He raised his eyes to look at her, sensing the pain in her voice. He was softening.

"Okay," he sat across from her with a resigned sigh "you're right. I never asked. So, explain. And it better be one hell of a story." She chuckled breathily.

"It's long, and complicated, and gory, and sad." Her jaw clenched, but he just looked at her unflinchingly.

"I told you he trained recruits in the red room." She sensed Natasha's confusion and panic without looking at her, but she needed to get the story out. "My mother was a naturally enhanced individual in the program. She was...persuasive. The doctors wanted to see if her abilities were genetic, so they inseminated her to see what the outcome would be for the child."

"So they took his..." Steve trailed off uncomfortably, breaking eye contact.

"No," Chandler searched for the right words but they were hard to come by "they did it with sperm from one of the doctors. My mother took a liking to James. I didn't get a chance to see the full extent of his memory of her but she used her abilities to get him to fall in love with her. I think she thought if he was on her side he could help her escape eventually. The doctors were ecstatic when they found she was pregnant, but they didn't bother to look into the actual conception, they thought their insemination had gone off without a hitch."

"So the baby was his?" Chandler hesitated again, then nodded quickly.

"When I was born, they put me into testing immediately. They tried all sorts of methods to explore my abilities, but nothing worked. For a while they thought I was just a child, but they wouldn't give up the possibility that they could actually breed enhanced individuals, so they kept me and my mother around. My mom and James knew, but with all their testing the doctors never bothered with paternity. They didn't know that there was a difference. When I got old enough to talk, they realized my ability."

"How?" Steve folded his arms over his chest, but he was listening intently.

"I told stories. Except they weren't actual stories, they were memories. The doctors memories. I read James' at one point too, I asked him why he had made the nice couple stop breathing. It still didn't make sense to them, but all they cared about was that the abilities were genetic."

"So how did you get out?"

"My mom and James knew who my father was, but with all their testing the doctors never bothered with paternity. They didn't know there was a threat. But as I got older, one of the doctors realized that I didn't look anything like the doctor who had supposedly fathered me. He was blonde and blue-eyed and I'm," she gestured to her dark features "my face looks like my moms, but I have his coloring. They were absolutely furious. So we made plans to escape. My mom was right. We couldn't have done it without him. He broke the both of us out."

"What happened to your mom?" Steve asked quietly. Chandler had a feeling he already knew the answer, but she had to tell him anyway.

"When they first realized what my mother had done, they brainwashed him again and made her look like the enemy. We got far enough away that it took two years for them to find us, but once they did they sent him." She swallowed heavily and shook her head. "The fight leveled a town in western Kentucky, but it was covered up. They made us out to be villains to justify what they were doing. He killed my mom."

Steve opened his mouth to defend Bucky, but Chandler interrupted him, making no attempt to hide the tears welling up in her eyes.

"I know it wasn't actually him. I know it wasn't actually his fault. But he did kill her, right in front of me. Then he turned on me, but the building collapsed. They assumed I died in the collapse, but I survived. Then I ran." Chandler looked down at her hands and sniffled. There was a moment's pause.

"I didn't know any of that." Steve shook his head and sighed.

"No one knows any of that," Chandler clenched her jaw again "and I wanted to keep it that way. That's why I got myself wiped from government databases. That's why I spent so much time tracking down HYDRA agents. They were all working towards the same relative goal, and I couldn't risk having them after me. I didn't know he knew who I was. I didn't know he remembered anything at all from that time, I assumed they would have taken it from him."

The room fell silent as Steve absorbed what she had said. She hadn't told anyone the truth before, and she waited for him to say that he didn't believe her. It was a pretty far fetched story, she understood that, but every bit of it was true. Maybe not the whole truth, but she hadn't lied to him at all. She had told him what he needed to know.

She was entitled to a few secrets after all.

"I'm sorry." Steve's eyes were large and sympathetic. He would make a great father, if he ever wanted to. He had faith in her again, and his hope was not gone.

"That's," Natasha sighed heavily, and Chandler turned to her for the first time "one hell of a story."

"We should have asked more about your past before we brought you here." Steve shook his head and stood again to gaze out the window at the rainforest. His hands were clasped behind his back.

"Steve," Chandler remained seated, but unfolded her limbs to rest her feet on the floor "there's something else."

Steve's shoulders fell as his gaze dropped to the floor. She knew that he could feel the hesitation in her voice. His silence urged her to continue, but it was not her biography that needed further discussion.

"Privately."

With pointed glances to one another and to the back of Captain America, Wanda and Natasha slowly walked out of the room, Wanda shutting the door behind them. Chandler could tell that they were hesitant to go far, but they were going to give them a few moments of privacy before making an excuse to come back to the room.

"My abilities," she took a deep breath and leaned forward to press her elbows to the table "might not be as extensive as you imagine. Think of me as a... a painter. A bad one. So when you think of... when you think of Peggy," he turned at the mention of her name with shock in his eyes, but she shook her head and continued spurting out the words "when you think of Peggy your memories are like... Van Gogh's 'Starry Night.'"

She was met with a blank stare.

"The blue and yellow one, with the black tower thing on the left?" He was still confused. She thought of the Museum of Modern Art, of standing in front of the painting, and projected the memory to him. He jumped at the intrusion, staring incredulously at her, then nodded.

"I've seen it before."

"That's what your memory of Peggy looks like. The dark blues and the blacks, they're the pain and hopelessness and regret you feel when you think of her. But the white, and the yellow, and the light blue, that's happiness and love and joy." Steve looked pained, but she could tell he understood her analogy. "Now I'm a bad painter, because I can change the amount of those colors, and I can make there be more yellow than there was before, but I can't put a new color on the canvas. I can't make you hate Peggy because you don't hate her, and you never hated her. Do you understand?"

"You can't create memory?"

"No, I can't. All I can do is change what's already there." She took a deep breath and wet her lips, thinking back on what she had seen inside James's mind. "Steve, his memory is just... it's black. I can't invent yellow, I can't augment it to look better because there is nothing good there for me to magnify. Usually I can focus on one good, or even neutral thing, but there was absolutely nothing that wasn't terrifying and horrible about that time for him. Not until my mother, and he had a good forty five years before that happened."

Steve turned back to the window and several long moments passed as he contemplated what she had said. She tried her hardest not pry into his emotions, but she knew without doing it that he felt more hopeless than he had before he knew her. Finally, he sighed and turned around to face her.

"So you can't fix him?"

"I might be able to help, but I don't know that I can completely fix him. And I don't know how, I would have to try some different things before I can figure anything out."

"Why couldn't you tell Natasha and Wanda?" He turned to fully face her, his face tinged slightly pink. His eyes were wet.

"Because," she sighed heavily "there's a chance that I can completely remove his memory from that time period. But memory isn't expendable, I can't just throw it out with the trash. If I'm going to remove a memory from someone, it has to go to someone else."

"What are you saying?" She hesitated for a long moment, knowing that once she revealed her idea, the descent down the rabbit hole was just beginning.

"I might be wrong. He was with those people for almost seventy years, but he was in cryostasis for long amounts of time to preserve his youth. From the glance I got earlier, he probably only has around six years of actual memory."

Steve paused to consider this and to do the math on James's physical age. Chandler almost smiled, but sobered quickly as she continued.

"I have to remove those memories completely."

"You have to take them?" Steve looked concerned at the thought, and Chandler started regretting her panicked outburst earlier.

"I can't take all of them, I would turn into him and nothing would be solved except for the fact that no one would have a problem eliminating me." Steve opened his mouth to interject but she held up a hand. "No one knows me, I'm expendable, don't try to say I'm not."

"But I can't just take those memories or else he'll have lost almost seventy years of his life for no explainable reason. Leaving him that gap is like leaving him a map, eventually he'll start digging around to figure out what's missing, even if we tell him not to. He'll go mad again. I have to fill the gap with happy memories. Six years of happy memories. I can provide most of them since I've lived in isolation for so long, but I can't give everything."

"But if you can read his memories, aren't you already taking them?" Steve took an almost defensive pose, uncrossing his arms and turning slightly to the side. He was on edge.

"No," she smiled slightly, "there's a difference between seeing a memory through the eyes of a bystander and seeing a memory from the perspective of the person who created it. Like... like the foul ball you caught at that game in 1941. It caught you off guard, I can see that. But when I take it, I can feel the sting of the ball landing in your glove. I can feel your excitement. I can hear the crowd go crazy because the scrawny little kid with the moppy haircut caught a foul ball."

"I-" Steve paused "I don't remember that. I remember talking about it, but I can't remember the actual day."

"Because I had to take it from you to feel it that way. I can put it back, if you'd like." She did so, and he shut his eyes as the foggy memory returned to him.

"Your description was more vivid than I remember that day being."

"Memory is faulty, in most cases we don't remember things exactly as they happened. I think with my ability, I essentially relive the moment in question in order to make it my own memory. It makes them a lot clearer, and a lot fresher." Steve frowned.

"That concerns me, if you're going to be taking anything from Bucky."

"That's why I couldn't tell the others." She recalled their minds on the plane, their nightmares and their personal demons. "Wanda is more broken up about her brother than anyone wants to talk about, and she was the subject of human experimentation. It would push her over the edge to see any of it. Same with Natasha, except she was with the same instructors . It would be even worse for her because she would recognize their faces. They can't take any part of his memory."

"So if we do this, it's just you and me." Steve's jaw hardened as he said the words. She knew he didn't like it, but they had no other option.

"Steve, this is a big decision." They locked eyes, and she could tell he understood her sincerity as well as her fear. "It's not going to be easy, it's not going to be pretty. His memories are horrible, and dark, and painful. We would be taking happy moments out of our pasts to replace them with something horrifying. We're not making this choice yet. You have to think about whether or not you really want to go through with this."

Steve fell silent, but nodded. There was a quiet knock at the door and Wanda poked her head in.

"Uh," she surveyed the tension in the room and gestured weakly out the door "he wants to show us where we'll be sleeping."

"Of course," Steve stood, but paused in the doorway and looked back at Chandler pointedly "it was a long flight. And we all have some thinking to do."

With a sigh, Chandler pushed herself out of the chair and followed.