INDY

When the jet arrived at the compound Thursday afternoon, I was there to see the team back. Everything had gone off without a hitch, unless you counted the dead Hydra goon-apparent.

The jet landed on the tarmac above, then the tarmac lowered into the garage, where I stood waiting with the mostly-finished mission report tucked beneath my arm. The jet’s door opened and Kate poked her head out, waving at me with a grin. After Kate bounded down, Yelena came out, throwing me a quick nod and holding up the Metal Melter I’d lent her.

“This was very good. Thank you.”

“Anytime,” I grinned, catching the tube as she tossed it to me.

Sam was next, with Bucky not far behind.

“Miss us?” Sam asked with a smirk as the four of them gathered around.

“Well, it’s been just me and John palling around here,” I muttered. “So yes. Yes, I have.”

Sam chuckled, patting my shoulder sympathetically.

Bucky hadn’t looked up once, his eyes trained at some point equidistant to everyone. He looked… haunted. After what I’d overheard, I could imagine why. The others had no idea what had happened. Unless he had told Sam. Judging by the tension-free smile on Sam’s face and the troubled furrow of Bucky’s brows, I didn’t figure he had.

“Well, I’m sure you’re all dying to sleep in your own beds again,” I said, turning and leading the way toward the elevator.

The other three chuckled and nodded in agreement, but Bucky’s frown deepened. I looked away, pushing the button for the fourth floor.

As soon as the elevator doors opened on the residential floor, we were hit with the warm smell of food. I’d been slow-cooking a pot roast all day in preparation for the team’s return. I’d even had time to make homemade bread.

“Oh my god,” Sam practically moaned, all but falling out of the elevator.

Kate looked similarly cartoonish, almost floating out behind Sam, led by her nose.

Yelena followed with an interested expression.

I glanced up at Bucky tentatively, but he wasn’t looking at… anything, really. His eyes seemed to stare straight through time and space as he made his way stiffly through the kitchen.

“Indy, I don’t know if I’ve told you this,” Sam said, grabbing a plate and silverware and passing them around. “But I’m so glad you grew up in the south.”

I grinned, trying to ignore the fact that Bucky had slunk off to his room without a word to anyone. “No food like southern food.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Kate said through a full mouth, holding up the bottle of beer she’d grabbed from the fridge.

Yelena, too, seemed happy with the food, dipping her bread into the gravy and letting out an “mmm” or a thickly accented “very good, Indy.”

Well, at least these three approve, I thought, throwing another quick look down the hallway at Bucky’s closed bedroom door.

Sam nudged me with his elbow, speaking in a low voice as Yelena and Kate chattered across the table from us. “Don’t take it personally. He’s been grumpy since we left Delta.”

And funnily enough, this was the first time I actually didn’t take his sour mood personally. I was actually a little concerned.

I gave Sam what I hoped was a convincing smile and nodded. “Yeah. Of course.”

O o 0 o O

After Kate, Sam, Yelena, and I had finished dinner, the three of them headed off to shower and rest after the mission. I sat at the table for just a while longer, deliberating.

Then I stood and grabbed a clean plate, piling it up with pot roast, veggies, potatoes, and bread. I even grabbed a beer before making my way down the hallway.

Instead of stopping and entering the first door on my left like usual, I kept walking, all the way up to the third door on the right. I tapped the bottom of the beer bottle against the door quietly.

I listened out for some sign of motion, but had no warning when the door suddenly flew open. The guy moves silently as the grave.

“Indy,” he said in confusion. His speech was groggy, but he seemed tensed and alert. “Something happen?”

“Only dinner,” I responded dryly, holding up the plate and the beer as evidence.

I was going to ask if I could come in, but he seemed… intensely vulnerable and a little on-edge. His eyes weren’t quite meeting mine, and I was certain there was some discoloration beneath them. Whether bruise-like shadows or redness, I couldn’t tell. His shoulders were tense as always, but drew slightly more in on himself than normal.

A more neutral space might be better.

“Look, I think we should talk about what happ-”

“This is for me?” he asked suddenly, looking down at the food and beer in my hands.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, shaking off the sudden interruption. “I figured after all of that, you were probably hungry. If you want to come and-”

He grabbed the plate, the beer, then stepped backwards. “Thank you.”

The door closed in my face, my mouth still halfway open. I wasn’t sure what shocked me more: the abrupt shutting of the door on our conversation (both literal and metaphorical) or the genuine gratitude in his voice as he’d quietly thanked me.

BUCKY

A tear fell onto the rim of my all but licked-clean plate. The food had been good. Ridiculously good. It reminded me of what people meant when they said something tasted like home. In my case, it was a home I could barely remember, a place I’d maybe never belonged. The warmth of the food as it settled in my belly, the full feeling of being whole, was almost agonizingly pleasant.

Riley’s last moments were haunting me. All it took was two words to ruin every ounce of progress I’d made putting the past behind me.

I set the plate aside and felt another pang of guilt. One unrelated to my past and all the trauma it held.

She had made food. Brought me some. Offered to talk through the very thing I was sitting in here alone torturing myself with. And I’d shut the door in her face. If my pre-war self could see me, he’d kick my ass.

I tipped my head back, letting it rest against the foot of the bed as I stared up at the ceiling. Riley’s hate-filled face flashed before my eyes again. Not for the first time, the question popped into my head.

What am I going to do?

At this point, I’d asked myself that question so many times, the words felt almost empty; like their meaning had been all used up. My mind just kept repeating it, using the ghost of my own uncertainty to brutalize what remained of itself. A question with no answer. A question with no confidence of ever being answered.

I groaned quietly at myself, rolling my sore eyes. I sounded as melodramatic as Steve when we were teenagers. Was starting to wish I had taken Indy up on the obvious offer to talk that I’d never allowed her to actually get out; I was getting sick of myself and could use the buffer of other company.

But, odds were she had gone to bed already. Besides, she and I weren’t exactly close. We lived together, worked together, ate together. She would frequently attempt to draw me into her jokes like she did with the others, but… I never softened up like everyone else did. I’d found it annoying and treated her like a kid for it.

Suddenly, I was craving the kind of levity people like Indy brought to even the most dour situations. Regret and maybe a certain dose of shame filled me in an achingly familiar way. I sighed heavily. I owed her an apology. Not just for the abrupt dismissal after she’d shown me kindness. But for the casual dismissal I’d been throwing her way for our entire acquaintanceship.

“You’ve got to start opening up to people, man,” Sam had told me. On multiple occasions.

And I wanted to. Wasn’t every human being inclined to seek out the types of bonds that grew between friends, family, loved ones? Everyone wanted closeness. I was tired of pretending I was an exception.

Indy was a nice person. She’d consistently extended a verbal hand in friendship and I’d smacked it away time and again. She’d mostly let it roll off her back, usually only glaring at me or rolling her eyes in response. But people are creatures of habit and I was under the impression that Indy was friendly without thought, without effort.

She was also the only other person who knew about Riley’s real origins. And, whether she had filed that away in the mission report or not, I could grudgingly admit that she had earned a small measure of my trust when she hadn’t immediately spilled that to the rest of the team.

Tomorrow, she would say or do something juvenile and intended to get a laugh. And tomorrow, I might just give her one. I could use a friend.