Six

It didn’t take long to get to Paris, since we were already in northern France. We landed in a practically deserted air field. Wade had called someone, Dan most likely, on the way there, and there was a nondescript tan hatchback waiting for us when we arrived.

I eyed Deadpool. I was nothing if not cautious and suspicious. “How do I know we can trust you?”

He picked up his swords and climbed out of the jet. “Honey, you shot me in the head. If anyone should have a lack of trust here, it should be me.”

“How did you survive that? I know I didn’t miss. You were dead. I checked.” I followed him out.

“I have really convenient super-healing powers.” He jumped the last three rungs of the ladder to the ground. “How were you able to keep up with me?”

“Super-serum.” I shrugged. “The other two got dosed with it too.”

“Awesome. Are there any downsides?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ve been in and out of Cryo for 36 years and don’t remember much.” I admitted, watching Steve and Bucky’s jet lower to the ground. “Ask me again in a few years.” I approached the plane, and the two men climbed down. I hadn’t had a chance to ask Steve about his strange wardrobe choice. It looked like he was wearing armor identical to Bucky’s, which I knew wasn’t normal for him. I supposed he didn’t want anyone to know he was Captain America; that would give away where I was hiding pretty fast. It didn’t explain the purple shield with the lightning bolt, though. That was just strange, and kind of an eyesore.

Steve approached, Bucky following behind, looking at the car and driver with a careful eye.

“We sure we can trust this guy?” Bucky asked.

I shrugged. “We don’t really have a choice.” I replied. I looked at the car. The driver was a small, kind of round older man in a wrinkled grey suit. “He doesn’t look like much of a threat. There are three of us.”

“Four of us.” Wade piped up.

“If the driver is a threat, that means you are too.” I pointed out.

“Yeah, that’s true.” He eyed the driver. “I’ve never met him before, though. He could be wily.”

I saw Bucky roll his eyes and Steve frown. I was sure all of Deadpools banter would be funny, if today wasn’t proving to be as stressful as it had been. If we hadn’t just been attacked by a robot-man with a flamethrower. If I hadn’t just found out I was a mother and grandmother, had a former husband who didn’t know he wasn’t a widower, and had been abducted nearly four decades ago. It wasn’t Wade’s fault his wit was falling on unappreciative ears right now.

Steve was holding something in his hands. It was a black Kevlar vest, and a gun holster. “Maria sent it for you. It’s one of hers. We figured you’re close to her size.” He looked me up and down. “Close enough.” I took it from him and velcroed myself into the vest, and hooked the holster around my waist and leg. I pulled the guns out of my waistband and stuck them into it, one on each leg, and slid the knife I’d gotten from Bucky beside it.

“You look like a chick version of Rambo. Especially with the scar above your lip.” Deadpool quipped. He glanced around to see if anyone knew what he was talking about.

Steve’s eyes lit up. “I got that reference.”

“Fucking finally.” Wade led the way to the car. We made polite introductions to the driver, and got it. Wade sat in front, and Steve, Bucky, and myself crammed into the back. None of us were small, so three super-soldiers in the back of a Honda was a tight fit.

“Where are we going?” Steve asked as the car pulled away from the airfield.

“Mr. Lagherty is renting a penthouse in the city. We’re going there.” Wade replied. “It’s not far.”

“We aren’t going to DGSE office?” I asked. I was hoping not; I had a feeling Hydra had infiltrated most of the world’s intelligence agencies, and I wanted to stay far away.

Deadpool shook his head. “Hell no.” He turned in his seat. “You think I was hired by the DGSE? No way. Lagherty hired me, privately. We’re the only people who know where the assets are.” He turned back around. We rode in silence the rest of the way. Bucky and Steve were both on high alert. Steve looked uncomfortable in the unfamiliar armor, though I couldn’t help thinking he sure looked good in black.

We pulled up to the back entrance of a very upscale hotel in downtown Paris. We got out, and Deadpool led us through an alley door, across a kitchen, and to a service elevator. This was getting more sketchy by the second. My hand was resting on my gun. I saw that Steve’s shoulders were tense and his shield was at the ready, and Bucky had a death grip on the handle of his knife. We got into the elevator and Wade hit the button for the top floor. He glanced at us. “You guys really need to chill-ax. If we wanted you dead we’d have done it before we got to the city. We’re not morons.”

“Comforting.” Steve shot Deadpool a look. The elevator dinged at our floor, and we exited. Deadpool knocked at a hotel room door, and it was opened. By the man I’d seen on the iPhone earlier. He wordlessly held the door for us, and closed it behind him.

The penthouse was done in whites and pale gray, and it would have been luxurious and beautiful if it weren’t strewn with various computer printouts, equipment, weapons, and electronics. It had been turned into an office.

“Please, have a seat. I didn’t expect so many people. These are your… associates? Y/N?” Dan Lagherty motioned towards the only couch that wasn’t covered in computer hardware.

“It’s Six.” I replied, sitting down opposite Dan’s chair. Steve sat beside me. Bucky and Wade remained standing, sizing each other up. “And yes. They’re my associates. Steve and… James.” I had to reach back in my memory to acquire Bucky’s real name. Steve was a common enough first name.

Dan nodded. He was gazing at me. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. “I’m sorry, Y/N, I mean Six. It’s just, it’s been a dreadfully long time, and as you can see, I’ve become an old man. And you… you haven’t.”

I looked at the ground. “No, I haven’t.” I pulled myself together and looked Dan right in the eye. “Where are Marina and Luc?”

“They’re in hiding. At my summer house in Brussels. As of right now, the only people who know where they are are in this room.” Dan explained.

I eyed him skeptically. “How did you know to hide them? Did the DGSE have anything to do with it?”

“Heavens no. I’m fairly sure there are at least a few Hydra agents in their ranks. No one believes me. They think I’m a senile old man. Unfortunately for them I’m a senile old Senior Agent.” He stood, pouring himself a glass of scotch. He motioned to the bottle, as if asking if we wanted any. None of us took the offer. It was basically pointless to give a bunch of super-soldier liquor. He sat back down. “An inquiry came in last week from the United States’ CIA, requesting information on a deceased DGSE agent from 1979. It landed on my desk. It was your file, Six. I was quite surprised to see it. They declared you legally dead in 1981, you know.”

I nodded. I already knew this.

“I’d been getting nuggets of information from my informants, that Hydra was searching for a missing assassin. Call me crazy, but I connected the two.” Dan took a sip of scotch.

“How exactly did you connect the two?” Steve leaned forward, mad dogging the older gentleman.

“Another reason they think I’m crazy.” Dan looked from Steve, to me. “Because I’ve never believed you were dead.” He picked up a stack of papers from the coffee table, and handed them to me. “I’ve been tracking mysterious sightings of a female Hydra agent since 1982. Very few people have seen her and lived. She shows up, someone, or a lot of someones, die, and she disappears.” He nodded at the pile of paper. “The earliest known photograph is in there. And I always thought it looked a lot like you.”

I looked down at the file in my hands. The top paper was a grainy xerox copy of a Polaroid photograph. A woman was holding a large knife, looking down at a body on the ground in front of her. The woman was me. I closed my eyes as my blood ran cold. I was instantly back on a rooftop in Berlin. The man I’d just dispatched had been… I realized I didn’t know who he’d been. He’d been my target, that was all I’d known. It was all I’d needed. He’d been my first mission. I’d succeeded. I hadn’t known a photo was being taken. I’d wiped the blood off of the knife, stuck it back in it’s sheath, and rappelled down the building, getting into a waiting van.

I opened my eyes. I looked at Dan. “You’ve known for years.”

“I had my suspicions, but nobody would take me seriously. There were a lot of theories. Especially as the years passed and the few stories remained the same, every time. The assassin was always a young woman in a mask, dark hair, never getting any older. People thought the assassins just all fit a similar profile. Not a lot of people believed you existed, anyway.” He explained this as I flipped through the file. There were four photos total, and I looked the same in every single one, even though the picture quality improved through the years. The fifth page was a list. It contained 37 names. I froze. Dan paused. “Ah. Yes. Your kill list.” I handed it back to him quickly. “Seeing the list bothers you that much?”

I glared at him. “Yes.”

He furrowed his brow at me.

“Mr. Lagherty. She doesn’t remember who’s on that list.” Steve stated, plain as day.

Dan looked at me. “You don’t know? But you carried out each execution.”

The word execution hit me like a knife. I steadied myself. “No. I was memory wiped countless times and in cryo for most of the last few decades. I’m just beginning to remember things. And… I didn’t realize there were 37 of them.” I felt sick. Thirty seven people had died by my hand. Murder.

“In all fairness, only about a third of them were even remotely close to innocent. The more I looked into the killings, the more it became clear that they were mostly war criminals, arms dealers, and black market tradesmen.”

“Who were the others?”

“People high up enough in various governments to retain power, yet not high enough to cause a scandal when killed. They had just enough rank to sway a decision one way or the other. Same with the others. They were all powerful people but not necessarily good people.” Dan spoke with an air of knowledge, but a lack of judgment. For this I was thankful, because I felt bad enough for the terrible things I’d done.

“You never wondered why I’d do this?” I asked. “Was I the kind of person where this would seem normal to you?”

“No, you weren’t.” Dan shook his head. “You were never hesitant to make the tough decisions, but you were never a relentless killer. It took a few years to figure out Hydra was involved. It was a chance story of a man known as the Winter Soldier that caused me to connect the two. I was in a bar in Tokyo with some other intelligence officers in the late eighties, and one was speaking of this Hydra Assassin. Supposedly a legend. With a metal arm. And I remembered the man who had pulled you from the van, and had shot me.”

Bucky stiffened, and I tried my hardest not to look at him. “You were shot?” I asked.

Dan nodded. “I tried to stop the man, and he shot me. I flat-lined three times at the hospital.” Dan looked oddly at me, and then back to Bucky. “Why do you keep looking at James?”

Bucky grunted. “Because I’m the Winter Soldier.” He whispered, shooting an angry glare at no one in particular.

Dan seemed to think about this for a minute, then accepted it as truth. “If you were both still with Hydra, there is no logical reason they would send you after your own family nearly forty years after kidnapping you. Thus I have to come to the conclusion that you really did leave.”

“Yes. We did.” I suddenly had become very tired. “Dan, from what I remember, you were always a good man.” He shook his head in agreement. “My family is safe?”

“For now, yes.” Dan replied, finishing his drink.

“No one at the DGSE knows I’m the Hydra agent?”

“Not that I know of. Or rather, they might, but they don’t know you’ve figured it out yet. The file landed on my desk. I hid your family, and then sent your information directly to Jim Rhodes. Who, as I recall, is not CIA but US Army?”

Steve affirmed this. “Yes, he works closely with our… associate.”

“Good. The fewer people who know about this, the better.” Dan stood up. “Do you want to see your family? I can arrange for that.”

I hesitated. “I… No.”

Everyone looked at me, surprised.

“No?” Wade questioned.

“No. They’ve… they’ve lived all this time without me. I don’t need to mess up their lives right now.” I shook my head. “I’ll figure out what to do so that they can be safe. Just give me some time.”

Everyone sat in silence.

“Do you need a place to stay?” Dan asked me. I was staring off into space, so he repeated the question to Steve.

“No, thank you, sir. We have a safe house nearby.” Steve stood, nudging my elbow. I stood with him. “We’ll be in touch.”

“Yes, please do. A plan needs to be put in place, either to secure the safety of the Marceau’s, or to put them in permanent hiding.” Dan walked us to the door. “You may take the car you came in. I’ll let Alfred know.”

I turned back to the elderly man. “Thank you Dan. For everything. And you too, Wade. Um, sorry about the bullet between your eyes.”

Wade nodded at me.

Dan smiled sadly. “I’m just sorry I never figured out how to find you, my friend.”

* * *

After checking the car for any trackers and finding none, Steve climbed behind the wheel. I sat in front, and Bucky rode in back. Steve drove to a suburb of Paris, taking a roundabout way to avoid a tail. He pulled up in front of a two story house that appeared to be relatively old, and stopped the car. There was a keypad next to the front door. He keyed in the code he had gotten from Tony, and we entered a small foyer. A hallway ran through to the back of the house, with doors on either side, and a staircase ran up to the second floor. Steve  whistled. “Tony sure does know how to choose a classy safe-house,” he remarked, setting his shield down.

I climbed the stairs, exhausted. “I’m going to take a shower and sleep.” I turned to my companions. Steve gazed up at me calmly. Bucky was less happy to be here, but nonetheless, he was here. “Thank you both for… helping me. I’ll explain the rest when I wake up, if that’s all right.”

Bucky nodded and prowled down the hallway and out of sight. Steve kept looking up at me, a small grin on his face. “I’ve got your back.” He told me.

I smiled at him, unsurely. Smiling and being friendly was still odd, but it seemed to come very naturally with Steve. “I… I know.” I ducked my head and continued up the stairs. It was getting dark by now. I’d been up for nearly two days. I took a quick shower, found some extra clothes in one of the bedrooms, and climbed into bed. I tossed and turned for what seemed like forever, until I finally acknowledged that sleep alluded me.

* * *

Bucky stared forlornly into the refrigerator. There wasn’t much to eat in this safe house, which he guessed made sense. Probably no one had been here in a while. He found a box of graham crackers in the pantry and sat at the chopping block, tearing into them hungrily. He heard Steve come into the room from behind him, not even bothering to turn around. He’d recognize the quiet, stealth movements of his best friend anywhere.

“Don’t bother with the icebox. All I found were graham crackers.” He stated before Steve could open the door of the refrigerator and be just as disappointed as Bucky was.

Steve turned to him, grinning. “No one calls it an icebox anymore, Buck. You’re showing your age, pal.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Rules, rules. Everyone still knows what I mean by ‘icebox’, punk.” He downed another cracker. “Do we have a plan for tomorrow yet?”

“Not yet.” Steve sat down. “Six went to sleep. I’ll talk to her in the morning and figure out what she wants to do.” He took a graham cracker, looked at it with moderate disgust, and took a bite. “I can’t see any way that her family will be safe so long as Hydra know she’s still alive. There’s no good way out of this.”

Bucky yawned. He’d gotten about two hours of sleep on the flight to France from New York, but he was running on empty. He stood up. “All right. Wake me up then. Do you want the other room upstairs, or you want the couch down here?”

“Go ahead and take the other guest room. I’m going to be up for a while yet.” Steve motioned for Bucky to go upstairs. Bucky nodded and retreated. Steve sat in the kitchen for a while, eating stale graham crackers in the dim light. He’d taken the leather and Kevlar armor off, and his boots, leaving a tight black tee shirt, cargo pants, and some white crew socks. He peered into the box of crackers- they were gone now. Frowning, he searched the rest of the kitchen, finding nothing but a can of decaf coffee. He guessed it was as good a time as any to call it a night. He headed into the downstairs bathroom to shower, found some lounge pants in a closet, and settled down on the sofa in the living room to sleep. The safe house was equipped with a state of the art alarm system- if anything even approached, the windows and doors would barricade themselves with drop-down metal panels. He could sleep easy knowing they were secure.

He was just dozing off when he heard noises coming from the kitchen. Figuring Bucky was back up and searching for food once again, he dragged himself up off of the couch and down the hall, rounding the corner. He was expecting Bucky; he found Six instead. She stood in the corner, making coffee. He figured the last woman to be in this safe house had to have been Natasha, because Six was wearing black satin sleep shorts, a black tank top, and a long black satin robe that he was pretty sure belonged to the Black Widow. She leaned against the counter, one of her long legs folded up in front of her, her foot against the cabinet door. She looked up and her dark eyes caught his as he entered the room.

* * *

I’d been trying to be quiet, but I’d woken Steve up. I’d just started the coffee when a shadow fell across the room. Looking up, I saw his large muscular frame fill the doorway. I quickly averted my eyes; he was basically half naked, and it was hard not to stare.

“Oh, hey Six. I… sorry. I thought Bucky was in here again looking for more food.” Steve’s eyes traveled over me, but quickly settled back on my face.

“I couldn’t sleep.” I replied, pretending to be very interested in the can of coffee I held in my hands. The coffee pot was making hissing and sputtering noises, which filled the silent kitchen.

“You’re making coffee? At 11 at night?” Steve smiled and walked in closer.

I held up the can. “Decaf.” I shrugged. “It’s all I could find.”

He leaned against the counter beside me. “Yeah, not a lot here.”

The coffee was done. I poured each of us a cup and gave one to Steve. Then I sat on the island in the middle of the kitchen, facing him. I let my legs swing in front of me. He glanced down at them. More specifically, at my feet. Wanda had visited me last week, trying to help me get up to date on 2015. Mostly we’d looked up things called “Vines” on the internet, and she’d given me a pedicure.

“I like your toes.” He stated. “I mean… they’re red… Okay this just sounds stupid.” He sighed. “They’re nice. I like them.”

I smiled at him tripping all over himself. He seemed to think he was a lot more awkward than he really was. In reality, he was a self assured, tall blonde man who commanded the attention in a room without even realizing he was doing so.

“I like them too.” I replied. I looked down at the crimson polish, wiggling my toes a little. “I used to paint them red a lot. Back… before everything. I remember I liked red.”

“It suits you.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes. “I’m not Y/N anymore.” I finally admitted, more to myself than to Steve. But if felt necessary to say it in front of someone other than myself. He just nodded. He knew there was really no response to a statement like that. I continued. “But I’m not Six either. I refuse to be her. I’m not sure who I am now. Maybe a bit of both.”

“You’re figuring it out.” Steve took a sip of coffee. “Honestly, I like who I’m seeing so far.”

I smiled shyly. This was weird. I was never shy.

“Which name do you prefer?” He finally asked.

“Six.”

He nodded. “Why that one? Out of curiosity.”

“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just used to it.” I finished my coffee. “I haven’t been Y/N in a really long time. It sounds strange to my ears.”

“That makes sense.” Steve approached me to take my cup. As he reached out to retrieve it, his fingers grazed my fingers and his hand covered mine. Our eyes connected, and instead of taking the coffee mug, he set his own down. His hands traveled up my arms, his fingers lightly trailing over my skin; down my back, and rested on my hips. He was now standing in front of me, my knees on either side of him. He stopped himself abruptly from being lost in the moment for too long. It was obvious that neither Steve, nor myself, were people who were used to letting ourselves go. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.” He moved to step back, but I stopped him, catching his strong arms with my fingers.

“Don’t leave.” I looked up at him from below my eyelashes.

“What about Luc?” He asked. I’d been dreading the question, not because he didn’t deserve to know. I was dreading it because I knew the answer, and had known since the moment I remembered Luc, and realized my memories were all nearly forty years in the past.

I looked down. I would have been looking at the floor, but Steve was so close, I was looking at his chest instead. “Luc was the love of my life. But he’s lost to me now. There’s nothing for me there.” I glanced up into Steve’s face, my eyes meeting his and holding his gaze. My heart was incredibly heavy. “Like Peggy?” It wasn’t really a question. I knew it was exactly like Peggy.

Steve nodded. “Yes. Just like Peggy.” He pulled me against him, hugging me to his bare chest. “We have a lot of history, a lot of extra pieces, between the two of us.”

“Do you think that matters?” I questioned, my arms wrapping tightly around him.

“I don’t know.” He replied truthfully. “It’s probably not the best idea. But… at least we can relate to each other about it. That would be a hard concept for someone to grasp, if it hadn’t happened to them.”

I thought about that, finally nodding. “I think you’re right.” I couldn’t imagine explaining to someone who was actually in their thirties, that my heart had belonged to someone back in an era they themselves had never lived in.

Steve leaned back, looking in my eyes once more. “This isn’t typical for me, but… this situation isn’t normal. Nothing about you or me is normal.” He looked around, then back to me. “I don’t want to be alone tonight. I’m alone more often than I’d like to admit… I’m tired of it.” He took a deep breathe. “Please don’t think I’m pressuring you. I’m not. I don’t care what we do. We can talk, or sleep, or just… I don’t know. Whatever you want. God I’m bad at this.”

I smiled. “You’re just out of practice.” I said helpfully. “So am I.”

He grinned back. “Maybe. I’ll go with that. That’s why I’m awkward. Lack of practice.” He quickly stopped being cautious, though. He ran a hand back through my hair, and leaned down, kissing me, and pulling me close against his chest. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, parting my lips and letting his tongue slip through. His arms embraced me, and before I knew what was happening, my legs were around his waist, and we were lost in each other. When we came up for air a few minutes later, I had a serious thought that popped into my head. I couldn’t let it go.

“You aren’t afraid I’m using you?” I finally asked.

Instead of the poor response I thought that may elicit, Steve just gave me a tender look, a small half smile, and shook his head. “Strangely, no.” He had braced himself against the counter top, one palm on either side of me. I twisted slightly sideways to look at him. “Listen, Six. I decided early on, I was going to help you; I’d be there for you. And then I realized what that really meant. I’m going to stick by you, and if that means I’m with you for a night, or I’m still with you next year, or in a decade… It is what it is. I’m not changing my mind. You’re calling the shots.”

“I’m calling the shots.” I repeated that.

He smirked. “You’ve been calling your own shots since you left Hydra. Don’t seem so surprised.”

“I guess I have.” I leaned my forehead against his shoulder. “Tonight isn’t a promise of anything. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. If I’ll get killed, what I’ll remember, what awful thing I’ll find out I’ve done and you’ll want nothing to do with me. If I’ll have to leave.” I leaned back and looked deep into his eyes. “I want to be able to guarantee something, but I can’t.”

“You want to be here, right now?”

I nodded. “Yes. And for longer, I think, if that’s ever possible.”

“Then that’s good enough for me.” Steve kissed my forehead. “I’ve lived long enough to know it isn’t how long it lasts that’s always the most important thing. It’s whether you had the courage to try and start something at all.” His eyes got stormy, and I knew what he meant. If I could go back in time, I’d still have met, loved, and married Luc. Steve would still have fallen in love with Peggy. Even if we’d known then how awful things would turn out and how we’d eventually lose both of them.  We were servants to the master of time, and we’d lost our lifelines somewhere along the way. But that didn’t mean what I felt for Steve, or what he felt for me, wasn’t just as real.

I laced my fingers with his, hopped lightly off of the island, and gave him very meaningful look. He blushed deep red, and then he took charge and led me up the staircase. We practically fell into my room; pulling off each others clothes and losing them into the darkness. There was a box of condoms in the medicine chest in the bathroom, which was convenient. Steve chuckled when he found them. “Leave it to Tony to stock his safe house with prophylactics and not food.” He flipped out the light and came back into the room, lowering himself into the bed beside me.

“You sure you want to do this?” I asked. “I’m not a real good bet right now for a partner.”

“Yes.” Steve smiled into my neck in the dark. “If it’s the last thing I do, yes.”

I found his lips in the blackness and kissed them, my hands running over his taut back muscles as he rolled on top of me. It was an odd sensation, but an incredibly nice one, to be making love to someone who wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with him. No mind games, no missions, no subterfuge. Just two people lost in the moment. Steve wove his fingers through my hair, and ran his other hand down the length of my body. I wrapped myself around him, drinking him in, pulling him closer. I’d found someone I couldn’t get enough of, when I least expected to, and it seemed, so had he. He pulled lightly on my hair, smiling down at me playfully and kissing me hard on the mouth. Looking up into his eyes, I knew I was smitten.

* * *

Steve opened his eyes early the next morning. He vaguely remembered Six waking up before he had, climbing over the top of him and brushing a hesitant kiss across his lips, and telling him to keep sleeping. He rolled and looked at the bedside clock. 7am. The shades were closed, and the room was still dim. He stretched, smiling to himself. The night before had been good. Very good. He knew things were still complicated, but they’d made a decision to put one foot forward, even with as reckless as that probably was. Hell, their whole lives were filled with danger and uncertainty. His mind traveled back a few hours, and he began blushing. He had to give himself a pat on the back. For being out of practice, he’d sure remembered quite a few tricks. He hadn’t realized he had it in him. He sat up, found his pants on the floor, pulled them on, and headed downstairs to make some coffee with a spring in his step.

Passing the living room, he stopped, seeing a familiar hulking form asleep on the sofa. “Bucky, why are you sleeping downstairs? Why aren’t you in the other bedroom?” Steve asked from the doorway, waking his friend. Bucky stretched and sat up, and cast a slight scowl at Steve.

“Are you serious?” He asked, raising his eyebrows at Captain America.

Steve nodded. “You have a perfectly good room upstairs…”

Bucky rolled his eyes, standing up. “Yeah, I did. Until I couldn’t sleep due to… how can I put it? What sounded like a whole lot of intimacy going on in the next room between my best friend and the woman who currently gives me a villain complex.” Bucky gave Steve a “gotcha” look, and passed him, going into the kitchen to start coffee.

“Oh God.” Steve looked horrified. For as free thinking as he was, the man was still from 1945, and there were certain things you just didn’t do in polite company. “We were that loud?” It was beyond pointless for Steve to try to deny anything had happened for the sake of being PC, and he knew it.

“I could quote you a couple of things you said to her, if you want.” Bucky smirked, measuring out water for the coffee pot.

“That won’t be necessary.” Steve gulped, still red. Bucky was amused, though still kind of irked that he’d been woken up and forced to sleep on the couch. “Where is Six, anyway?”

“Isn’t she still upstairs asleep?” Bucky asked.

Steve shook his head. “No. She got up before I did.” The two men looked at each other, then wordlessly split up and looked around the house. They met back in the kitchen three minutes later. “She’s not upstairs.” Steve stated.

“She’s not downstairs, either. And the car is gone.” Bucky began looking for his phone. “I think she took off again.”

* * *

Continued in Six pt 8