She was gone.

The spot where she once stood was now air and crumbling concrete. There was dust in his eyes. He almost coughed but swallowed it back. His hand stuck out, grasping at nothing. He'd reached for her, but she was already gone. He couldn't hear her scream anymore. The wind had picked up. She might have already hit the bottom.

His handlers had been clear. No one was to interfere with Project Insight. He had already allowed two men to escape. They were circling overhead, ready to fire again. Their sights were on him.

"Negative impact," one of them said. They didn't think he could hear them. He wished he couldn't. "Lock on target."

"Wait a minute, do you want to take the whole building down?"

The building was already coming down. The soldier knew that. He'd heard his handlers say so. He wasn't supposed to, but he did. Not that it mattered. That wasn't his part of the mission. He had his targets. Anyone who got in his way was to be eliminated, civilian or otherwise.

That meant it was good that the woman was gone. She was in his way. She'd tried to stop him from completing the mission. She'd allowed two pilots into the air. He should've shot her the second she attacked him. That was a deliberate act against HYDRA, and that made her the enemy. If she fell from the building, it should've been because he threw her. He should've-

The soldier lurched forward. He almost hit the ground. He thought he'd been hit, but he wasn't bleeding. Nothing had interrupted the steady buzz of the helicopter blades. The aching in his chest had no apparent cause.

"Jane," he said again. He didn't know why.

The wind was harsh enough to knock him over. Bits of concrete flew in his face. They hadn't masked him this time, almost like they didn't care if he was identified. Or if another bullet got a little too close.

There weren't a lot of places to hide up there. The soldier took refuge behind a downed helicopter. The men he killed were entering rigor mortis. The soldier's eyes repelled him. He couldn't look anywhere near the body. This had never happened to him before. His stomach ached like he'd been punched. He took inventory of his injuries. Nothing. Nothing had happened. There was no reason for him to be in pain.

There was no reason to keep looking over the ledge. No reason to touch his warm, tingling lips. He reached out a hand and didn't know what he was doing. He was exposed. They'd spot him. He had to move.

The soldier fired over his head. It might have hit the helicopters or it might have just distracted them. He didn't care. Actually, he did care. He hoped it hit them. He hoped they were burning alive, slowly and painfully, falling to the ground just like she did.

He slipped into the shadows, a ghost in human form. The helicarriers would launch. His target would be there to try and stop it. The soldier had to stop him. That was the mission.

Nothing mattered except the mission.

The soldier wiped away the wetness the wind had brought to his eyes and moved.

Jane clung to the ledge that had become her entire world. She had fallen a good fifty feet, unable to scream for the shock and the velocity. Once upon a time, she'd been a daredevil ready to drive into tornadoes, travel through an interdimensional portal, or jump off any high surface necessary for science.

Now… well, if this was the end, she couldn't say she regretted the tornado. Just look where it got her.

The building was stable for now. She had a sick feeling it wouldn't be for long. Another shot went off over her head. She looked up, but there was nothing to see except metal and sky. She thought she smelled something burning, but she couldn't see any fire. At least not yet. If the ledge got too hot, her grip was done. It was already starting to fail her and her right arm really shouldn't bend like that.

Summoning what little upper body strength she had left, Jane pulled herself over the ledge. She had to stop the first time as her injured arm shook. The second time, a piece of broken concrete bounced off her head and nearly shocked her into letting go. She let herself hang, pressing her feet against an unfortunately still intact window.

"You can do this," she told herself, adjusting her grip. Bits of rock poked her palms and she wouldn't be surprised if she left bloody handprints behind. "One… two…"

She threw herself onto the ledge, adrenaline spilling into her bloodstream, granting her not just the power but the confidence that she wouldn't fall. The building remained steady long enough for her to slide her behind out of the air and set herself down firmly on the ledge. She pulled up her legs and curled into a ball, backing into the wall out of the way of any more falling debris.

With this temporary modicum of safety assured, Jane allowed the emotion in her chest to erupt. She screamed. Somehow, she could still hear it over the roaring wind and the endless crack of bullets. Jane screamed until her throat ached and she thought she might spit up blood.

Once she was done screaming, she punched the ledge. It didn't hurt as much as it should've, but two of her knuckles were now skinned and bleeding. She buried them in her jacket, wiping her eyes on her shoulder. As she calmed herself down, she went over a list of her options. It wasn't long.

Option one: Try to climb down. Yeah right, she was at least three hundred feet off the ground.

Option two: Wait to get rescued. She might have to finally acknowledge that that was all she was good for. Maybe she never should've come.

But no. No, that wasn't true.

Which left her with option three: break the window.

God, she did not want to do this. Knowing SHIELD, the glass was probably bulletproof, fireproof, nuke proof, and most especially Janeproof.

Given her other options, though, it might be the most feasible. At the very least, she had to try before she fell to her death. As she pushed her sleeves to her shoulder and prepared to possibly lose her arm, she glanced through the window to see where she was.

Alexander Pierce was inside.

Fuck.

It was a larger room, probably for meetings or just some VIP's office. Pierce's back was to her. He was in a much nicer suit than Jane remembered. Like he'd been preparing to address the country with words instead of bullets. He had a gun trained on a woman in a crisp business suit. It might've been some kind of politician, but that flaming red hair could only belong to Agent Romanov. There was one other person in the room who Jane couldn't see as well, but it was clear they were all in a stand-off. Pierce looked way too smirky for comfort. This might not end up going their way.

Dammit, if only she could hear them.

It didn't matter, because a minute later, she couldn't hear anything at all. Gunshots deafened her. They roared like a hundred wild beasts and Jane screamed as she buried her head in her arms. Bullets flew by the dozen but she felt no pain. Nothing had hit her. When she finally dared lift her head, the helicarriers weren't firing on the earth, but at each other.

"Was that the plan?" she wondered.

The helicarriers were still in the air, but they wouldn't be for much longer as they continued cannibalizing each other. They were over the water. That should minimize casualties. At least as long as no one was in there.

She told the cold, sinking feeling spreading through her gut that no one was in those helicarriers. Absolutely no one.

She turned back to the scene through the window. It was the best thing to focus on. Pierce still had Romanov. She looked remarkably calm for a hostage, though Jane imagined that for Romanov, this was Tuesday. He started to leave with her. Jane gritted her teeth. If only she still had that gun. She'd left it in the control room like an idiot. He'd get away if someone didn't do something.

Before they'd made it two steps, Agent Romanov fell to the ground, convulsing as electricity shot through her. Pierce stared down at her, just as confused as Jane. Did she do that to herself?

Pierce didn't have much time to worry about it. A bullet ripped through his chest, sending him flying through a glass wall. It shattered like tissue paper, cutting into his face and hands and hopefully a few good spots lower. While the man who had shot him tended to Romanov, Pierce's head lolled to the side. All traces of smugness were gone along with the power he'd once held. Jane didn't know for sure, but she thought his eyes met hers for a moment. Thought she saw some recognition.

She smiled and flipped him off.

His lips moved sluggishly and she had an idea of what he was saying. The bastard couldn't have died fast enough.

With that hurdle cleared, Jane glanced at the man with Agent Romanov, only to find him staring at her with a dumbfounded expression. "Foster?"

Jane's face matched his. "Director Fury?"

The building lurched a good six feet. The force was enough to slam Jane into the glass, which was much thicker and stronger outside than in. Her body ricocheted off the ledge. Fingers snatched for the ledge and made it. Now she was right back where she started.

One of the helicarriers had crashed. It hit the side of the building and now it was finishing what those missiles started. The building sagged. Support beams twenty floors down were already starting to melt. Another helicarrier was sinking to the ground. Debris fell like rain into the water below and one piece, in particular, looked a bit too human for comfort.

Jane looked away, clinging to this final lifeline and thinking of all the ways she'd almost died in the last few years. First the Destroyer, then the Aether, and now this. It would be easy to get cocky and think nothing could hurt her so long as some kind of last-minute deus ex machina swooped in to save her. Maybe that wasn't Steve she just saw plummeting from the helicarrier. Maybe a metal hand would appear over her head and not out there falling after him.

Or maybe, as the harsh world of mundane truths would imply, her luck had finally run out.

'At least I got to hold him one last time,' she thought in those delirious seconds as the building fell and her fingers began to slip.

The buzzing in her ear, which she'd attributed to the explosions, turned into a voice. "Hey… anybody there? …hello!"

It sounded male, but Jane didn't recognize it. The voice couldn't have been coming from her head. She still had that earpiece.

"Hello," she shouted. "Hello, I'm here."

More static. "This is Sam Wilson. I take it you're Dr. Foster."

"Yes," Jane said, searching her memory banks for that name. "You've been helping Steve, right?"

The voice chuckled. "Doing what I can. You need some help over there?"

Jane scrunched her brow. She tried to look around, but the cloud of dust rising from the crumbling building and the general lack of balance pulling her vision sideways made it impossible to see anything. "Uh… yeah. That would be good."

"All right. I'm on my way to you now. Think you can hold on?"

"Wait a minute, what do you mean you're on your way? Do you know where I am?"

"Yup. I have visual."

"You can see me through all this-"

The ledge cracked, ripping the words out of Jane's throat. It took her ability to scream with it, so she stared in gaping silence as the cracks deepened and the siding began to loosen. A whoosh of air from below her let her know another explosion was on the horizon. At least, that was what Jane thought until a pair of hands yanked her off the wall.

Jane's voice came back. She yelped, not out of conscious fear but more like an instinctive reaction to flying thousands of feet in the air with no support except the man holding her. Robotic wings stretched around her. Hadn't she seen those before? It was hard to tell when she was only halfway coherent. She clutched his arms, hyperaware of every tiny shift in his grip.

As he put distance between them and the Triskelion, Jane dared a glance back at the shattered building. The entire bottom half was lost to the dirt and the top half was descending faster by the second. Jane wasn't sure which ledge had been hers anymore. Most of them were long gone along with anyone who hadn't gotten out in time. She tried not to think about that. Maybe they got lucky and only the HYDRA plants were left behind. Maybe it was awful for her to even think that. Maybe she should just stop thinking at all.

"To be honest," Sam said, sounding much clearer now despite the wind, "that thing was a massive eyesore anyway."

Jane smiled. "Yeah, it was."

They flew as far from the wreckage as they could, well outside of the danger zone. That brought them to a small beach at the edge of the lake. A line of trucks and ambulances was approaching from the opposite direction just in time. Jane followed their progress with her eyes until something caught her attention.

"You see that?" she asked.

Sam had. He was already banking toward the sand. Jane's heart, which had been humming along for the last few hours, somehow beat faster as she took in Steve's prone, waterlogged form. Unmoving and speckled with blood. They landed and Jane immediately raced for him.

"Steve!" She slipped on the sand and landed beside him. Turning his face up, she pressed an ear into his chest and almost cried when she heard a beat. "Come on, Steve. Stay with me."

She began chest compressions. Sam performed mouth-to-mouth without waiting for her to ask. Their combined efforts didn't take much time. Steve jerked to his side and spat up a gallon of water. He twisted around and coughed out another few drops, then whatever burst of strength had gotten him moving failed and he sunk back into unconsciousness.

"He's still breathing," she said, wiping his face.

Sam nodded. "He'll be all right."

There was nothing left they could do except wait. Paramedics would notice them soon if they hadn't already. Sirens were everywhere, crying out like mourners at the Triskelion's funeral procession. It was all gone now. Jane couldn't even see the entrance anymore. Just a heap of chalky concrete blocks and broken promises.

It was hard to look away, but Jane managed it. She focused on Steve, squeezing his hand so he'd know he wasn't alone. Sam was on the phone. She didn't know who he was talking to and she didn't ask. Whoever it was, he was giving them coordinates. He walked around in a circle like he expected another HYDRA bug to scuttle out and bite. When Jane looked, she saw a shadow on the trees at the edge of the forest, hovering like a ghost before vanishing.

Her heart seized. Jane forced her way through vertigo to get up and run. Sam was still on the phone and didn't notice her. Steve was fine for now. She knew he'd be lapping her right now if he could.

Jane stumbled through the brush, pushing past bushes and low-hanging branches. She had a general idea of which way he had gone. Probably west, or maybe northwest. She'd only had a minute to see. A lot of it could've been her mind playing tricks on her.

Seeing him at all could've been just her mind, but she choose not to think about that.

"Bucky!" she tripped over a root but kept going. Something ripped through her pants and scratched her leg. She kicked it aside. "Bucky! Bucky, please-"

She saw another shadow and ran for it. Then another. One was right next to her. Like he was watching her and waiting for the right time. Nothing was ever there when she looked. Jane passed a tree with a scar on the bark shaped like an X. She ran and kept running until she passed that same tree. Alone in the center of her circle, she fell to her knees, the adrenaline that had kept her going this long finally dropping. She sat there, pain and sobs wracking her body, as she whispered his name again and again, and no one ever answered.

The doctors had told Jane to stop picking at the bandages. As far as injuries go, she'd gotten lucky. Only a broken wrist and a few cuts and bruises that would probably heal on their own, at least as long as she kept her hands to herself.

Jane didn't know what she was doing. She'd never been a bandage picker before. Not even when she was a little kid and scraped her knee. Those bandaids had stayed firmly in place for weeks until they finally rotted off. Somehow, adult Jane was more perceptive to pain instead of less. It felt wrong in some ways, but she wouldn't change it for anything.

She rubbed the bandage around her wrist, careful not to touch it in the wrong spot and pass out again. It was a nice hospital at least with a kind and professional staff, even if they insisted on hourly check-ups like she was going to reinjure herself while they weren't looking. She was out in the hallway getting some air. Sam was inside at Steve's bedside. Marvin Gaye music flowed out of the room and Jane bobbed her head to the beat.

There was a TV in the room across from Steve's. Natasha Romanov was addressing the Senate, expressing no regrets in anything they did to save the world and daring anyone who had a problem with it to find and arrest her. She walked out the door to a cacophony of unanswered questions from the hysterical press. Jane smiled. She hadn't had a moment with Agent Romanov since they rescued Steve, but she had a feeling they were going to be good friends.

Jane closed her eyes, succumbing to the fatigue clouding her thoughts. It didn't mean she slept. After yesterday, she probably wouldn't sleep until next week. Though she'd been officially discharged this morning, it came after a fitful night of tossing and turning in an uncomfortable hospital bed unable to tell if the snow and trees she saw every few minutes were dreams or hallucinations.

Movement inside the room had her sitting upright. Her senses remained heightened from the stress of nearly dying again. The appearance of Sam was the only thing that stopped her from bolting.

"How're you feeling?" he asked.

Jane relaxed in her plastic chair, rubbing her damaged wrist. "Been better, been worse. Is he awake?"

"Nah, not since this morning," Sam said. "He needs his rest."

"He's probably going to sleep for a month," Jane chuckled. "I wish I could."

"Yeah, if only."

They almost laughed together at the distant dream of a good night's rest until it stopped being funny.

"So uh…" Jane licked her lips. She'd been waiting for the right moment to bridge this gap and it probably wouldn't come.

"Yeah?" Sam asked.

Jane licked them again. How were they this dry? If only HYDRA hadn't stolen her chapstick. "Did Steve… tell you anything?"

Out of the corner of her eye, his expression didn't change. "What about?"

"You know…" Jane motioned at herself. "About me."

"Well, he said you're a brilliant scientist, tough as nails, constantly throwing yourself into danger. Can't say he was lying. If anything, he downplayed you."

"Sam," Jane said.

Still no change, just a hint of gloom blooming in his eyes. "Yeah, he told me."

Jane sighed. "Cool. Better start making a list of people who know. It just keeps growing."

"I won't tell anyone."

"I'm not worried about that." Jane ran her hands over her face. She didn't know why, but she felt like laughing again. "Do you think I'm crazy?"

"I don't use that word," Sam said.

"But it is, isn't it? To think there was anything I could've done to…"

Words failed her, and not just because she was still rubbing her wrist and just hit a bad spot. As she rode through the waves of agonizing pain, she could almost forget Sam studying her like he was trying to decide if it was time to put on his therapist cap. Jane hoped he wouldn't.

"Love is a complicated thing," he said. "Sometimes, it makes us do things that don't make any sense, but that doesn't make it wrong."

"I couldn't stop him," Jane whispered. "I thought if I could just get through to him, maybe…"

She felt a warm hand on her shoulder. "Well, Steve didn't pull himself out of the water, so maybe you did."

"Then why did he leave?"

"I don't know," Sam said. "It could be that he doesn't feel safe here or he just needs time to let everything come back to him. I'm sorry I can't be more encouraging."

"It's okay," Jane said, taking a deep breath. She looked up and met his eyes. "Thanks for trying. I wouldn't have thought you'd care about Bucky after all this."

Sam shrugged. "I won't lie. I didn't think he was the kind you could save, but who knows? Maybe I'm wrong."

Jane nodded. There was nothing else for either of them to say, so they went back into Steve's room and waited for him to wake up.

For all that SHIELD had fallen apart, its remaining dregs still had good taste in hotels. Jane had been given a suite downtown to convalesce following Steve's discharge. She'd be here until the government decided whether or not she had more information worth squeezing out of her. Jane didn't know why. She'd already told them everything she and Steve agreed that she knew.

Oh well, at least this place had a jacuzzi.

Most of her stuff was still in evidence. It had been promised back to her in a few days, 'once they had an idea of what had happened'. Jane understood. Her socks could be very important to unraveling all this political intrigue.

Dropping onto the bed, Jane tried not to get too comfortable. If she liked this room too much, it was kind of like letting the bureaucrats win. She twisted onto her side and flipped on the TV. Then she turned it back off because she didn't want any noise and didn't know why she'd turned it on to begin with.

She thought about taking a shower, ordering some food, or going out for a walk. Strange how in one of the biggest cities in the country, she couldn't think of anything to do. Steve had left her a voicemail this morning. He'd gone to Fury's 'gravesite' with Sam to meet up with the 'dead' man himself. Natasha was there and she'd given him a file on the Winter Soldier program some of her friends dug up. If she wanted, he could send her the scans.

There was nothing Jane wanted less in this whole world than to see pictures of Bucky on an operating table. It would tear the pieces of her heart to shreds. She told him to send them anyway.

He had yet to reply, so Jane stared at the ceiling. She did that for so long, she didn't know how fast time was passing. A minute could have been a year, but when she looked up, it was getting dark out.

No one had called her or knocked on her door. She checked her new phone and it was as blank as ever. She rolled her ring around her finger, watching the diamonds sparkle in the light of the desk lamp. It was as beautiful as it had ever been. Not even a building collapsing around it could mar its shine. In fact, there wasn't a scratch on it. She'd gone to a jeweler and they confirmed it. This ring was as fresh and new as if it had just come out of the box.

That didn't make any sense. Even with the last few days, it had been months since she last got it cleaned. It was almost like a miracle.

The thought made Jane laugh until she cried. She pressed her damaged and undamaged hands together as best as she could and it didn't even hurt this time. The pillow swallowed her face and the case was soon soaked through.

Jane could've laid like that all night and woken up the next morning with a crick in the neck and more things to be miserable about. Instead, she sat up, stretching every bone in her body until her muscles were putty. Then she went to the window and looked out at the city hustling by on another normal night. Cars, people, dogs, trees. The smoke on that distant pier had already cleared and the world kept turning. Jane pushed the window open a crack to let in some air. It was way too hot in here.

She backed up until her legs hit the bed. Exhaustion crept up behind her eyes and she pulled herself under the covers. She propped her wrist up on a pillow, just as the doctor said. As she turned out the light, she kept her eyes on the window. A breeze sent the slightest shiver through the curtains, which remained drawn so she could watch the world around her go dark.

After shooting all the trees they could, they lay together in the snow watching the clouds and waiting for night. Jane was tucked under Bucky's arm, tapping her fingers to the beat of his heart. It was slow but steady. A sign of life. She hoped her heart would beat in time with his. That way, it would be like they'd never part.

'What will you do when the war is over?' she asked.

They'd talked about this before. Never seriously. Always with such hope, whether they felt it or not.

'I don't know,' he said. 'What will you do?'

Jane closed her eyes. 'I don't know either.'

'Then we can not know together,' he said.

'What if we can't?'

Bucky sat up to look at her. She wished he wouldn't. If he got too far away he might sink into the snow and disappear. 'Why not?'

'I might have to leave,' Jane said, the weight of a million words in that simple, unassuming sentence.

'I could go with you,' he said.

'I don't think you can.'

'Sure I can.'

Tears formed. 'I wish you could.'

He held her tighter, protecting her from the elements. Their hands were joined and as cold as it was, there was comfort in the feel of metal on her fingers. 'I can, Jane. I will.'

'I want it,' she told him, running fingers through his shaggy hair. 'I want that more than anything.'

'Then I'll do it,' he said, kissing her forehead. He was so big, bigger than she remembered. Stronger, too, but no less warm and gentle. 'I'll follow you wherever you go. Whatever it takes. I'll find you.'

'Please find me,' she whispered, breath hitching, holding him tight while he was still solid. 'Please… please…'

"Bucky."

Jane sat up in bed, her heart moving at its regular pace. Fear wasn't in her, nor was excitement. She looked around her hotel room from the clock reading four a.m. to the wide open window letting in gusts of wind.

All the way to the man sitting at the foot of her bed with his head bowed. "I couldn't do it…"