SAM

“I can’t believe she finally told you,” I chuckled, popping a french fry into my mouth.

Bucky, across the circular patio table from me, nodded in agreement. There was a suspicious lack of glaring going on today. There were almost no frown lines showing on his forehead. “To be fair, I did kind of… force it out of her.”

“You were on a surgical table minutes out of operation. I don’t think you forced her to do anything,” I said, shaking my head as he shoved the last of his burger into his mouth. “She told you because she wanted to. Even if you don’t want that to be true.”

I watched the familiar pattern in his eyes; hope sprang to life and, in the time it took him to register what he was feeling, it was extinguished. I tried not to kick him under the table.

“No, I think she felt guilty, Sam. She blamed herself for me getting hurt.”

I stared him blankly in the eye. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“You actually sound like you believe what you’re saying.”

He opened his mouth — probably to say something I’d give in and kick him for — and was cut off by our waitress.

“Do you boys need anything else?” She looked between both of us, but the question was pretty obviously directed at Bucky. Her slim eyebrows hitched slightly higher when she looked at him, her smile practically inviting him to ask what else she might be offering.

I swiveled my gaze back to him curiously. He was already scanning the table like he was taking inventory.

“No, just the check, I think. Thanks.” He glanced up at her quickly, giving her a tight-lipped smile that didn’t reach his eyes — the same smile he gave everyone who wasn’t Indy.

“Oh.” The poor girl did a commendable job covering the disappointment in her voice, but it was there. She left the check laying on the table, turning away with a hasty, “Have a nice day!”

Oof.

“You know, you super soldiers are amazingly oblivious.”

He lifted his eyes from the check and frowned at me. “Can we stop talking about Indy?”

I smirked and jerked my head in the direction of our flighty waitress. “I had.”

He gave me a flat glare, cheeks barely pink. “Let’s just go, already.”

I laughed to cover my frustration with him and we left the burger place we’d been at for the last hour, rehashing everything Bucky had heard and done and been blown up with on this most recent trip. We’d only been back in New York for about four days, but that was plenty long enough to notice a few subtle changes.

Indy and Bucky had always been close. But they moved differently around each other, suddenly. Stood closer together, almost touching. She turned to him first. Always. During the two official meetings we’d had since returning, she’d swept her eyes over everyone, but always started with Bucky. When she needed to gauge the team’s feelings, it was his eyes she looked for first. Innocent enough, and maybe just a coincidence. I don't think she even realized she was doing it.

But she couldn’t fake the dilating of her pupils when she saw him. I was watching for it. I was probably a little too invested in this, but proving Bucky wrong had become a pretty fun hobby of mine. Besides… it hurt a little, watching him tear himself up inside when she wasn’t looking.

When we reached the compound, we saw her almost immediately. I’d been expecting to see her upstairs in her office, but she had mentioned meeting with her task force, back from somewhere in the eastern US. She stood near a group of tac-suited forms — six in all.

Popular number around here.

Bucky and I waited nearby, watching as she spoke to the young-looking guy heading up the team. He had a smile on him I didn’t like. He was probably nice enough, but his face as he spoke to Indy was — in my completely unbiased opinion — unprofessional. Bucky seemed to feel the same. His jaw stood out in relief as he glared up from beneath his lashes the way he did when he was in Termination Mode.

It seemed like we didn’t really have anything to worry about, though; Indy was as clueless with this guy as with the rigid soldier beside me. She glanced from face to face in the task force, even leaning around him to speak personally to some, never lingering overly long on anyone. She maintained a neutral but friendly face, giving them all a warm smile as she dismissed them.

The guy in front stayed rooted to the spot long enough to give her a quick wink and say something we were too far away to hear.

I could hardly blame these guys for finding Indy so alluring; someone that sweet and genuine who still managed to establish a skillful hold on her professional life was rare in our line of work. I, myself, couldn’t sympathize; even if she didn’t remember it, we had run into each other a couple times when she was younger. We’d just never been officially introduced. I kind of felt… brotherly toward her. I knew, with an ache that flared every now and then, that I was no replacement for Tony. But I tried where I could.

She turned and caught sight of us, smiled a little more sincerely, a slightly wry twist to her mouth.

I turned to watch what I knew would happen, as it always did: the ice that froze Bucky’s features melted, muscles I’d thought he’d forgotten how to use lifting as she approached.

“Hey, guys,” she said easily, her eyes moving from Bucky to me more slowly than they used to. “Heading up?”

We nodded, and the three of us boarded the elevator together.

For as stubborn as Bucky was about the weird game of keep away he was playing with his heart and Indy, he sure did fumble it a lot. I watched out of the corner of my eye as he lifted a hand almost without thinking and brushed his knuckles gently over the bandage covering the deep cut she’d gotten in Romania during the explosion that had shish-kebab-ed him. He frowned lightly.

“How is it?”

She turned her face toward him, so I couldn’t see the way she looked at him then, but I heard the undisguised affection in her voice as she said, “I’m fine. Stop worrying.”

He gave her the kind of soft, obliging expression you give someone that you’d do anything for. And then his eyes snapped up to mine, and I looked away with a smirk.

“So, Indy, how’s the task force?” I asked, without much hope of too many details; Indy tended to keep the different teams generally in the dark on the others’ operations. Kept the likelihood of moles down, and Indy was nothing if not thorough when it came to security. Made sense Bucky’d end up so drawn to her.

Indy grabbed a water bottle from the fridge and turned to us as we took seats at the stools across the island counter from her. “Actually, they’ve been pulling in a lot of really useful intel. I have a lot to sort through tonight. But hopefully, by the end of it, we’ll know something a little more solid about their end goal with Project Revival.”

The three of us shared loaded looks.

“Anyway,” she said, trying for a lighter tone of voice. “What have you guys been up to?”

“Oh, just lunch,” I responded before Bucky could. “Bucky accidentally broke the waitress’s heart.”

She laughed and shook her head at him, warm eyes glittering. “Oh no. What happened?”

Bucky grimaced, but I continued on. “Nothing too bad. He just completely missed every signal she was sending him. Not unlike someone else I’ve noticed.”

Predictably, the two of them cocked their heads to the side like a couple of curious dogs.

“That guy heading up your task force. What’s his name?”

“Um,” she stammered, blinking in confusion. “Grant. Ben Grant.”

“Well, Ben Grant has a thing for you, if you didn’t already notice.”

“What? No, he doesn’t,” she insisted.

Bucky had gone still next to me, his blue eyes trained hard on her face, like he was hoping for — dreading — whatever he would find there. She looked up at him for a split second, a move that seemed like instinct. Then she turned away, apparently done with that conversation.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than play matchmaker, Sam?” she asked exasperatedly, reaching up to the top shelf of the pantry for a package of graham crackers.

Her loose blouse lifted only about an inch, barely enough to expose a sliver of pale skin above her skinny jeans. That was enough for Bucky. His eyes lost focus, jaw loosening. I don’t think he realized he had leaned forward on his elbows. He looked ready to take a bite out of her.

And then she turned around, and it was gone like magic. Him being so obviously head over heels for her and refusing to do a damn thing about it would never stop confusing me.

I shook my head and stared down at the counter top. “Yeah, doesn’t seem like I’m much good at it.”

BUCKY

Flashes of white and red blinded him. He ducked his head and pushed through the debris, through the smoke and dust clouding the area. The mask over his face kept him from breathing in the irritants, but it still stung his eyes.

He glowered irritably and reached down to lift the thick, broken slab of concrete that had fallen from the building he’d blown up. Beneath it, trembling in fear, was a man with one leg broken at a sharp angle, his arms around his sobbing, scratch covered wife. Both were miraculously alive.

The tall, dark-haired figure remedied that with two quick shots to their foreheads. Afterward, he stared down at them with a blank expression that belied the confusion and pain that stirred inside him. He didn’t know where it came from. But he knew it was a nuisance. Just another obstacle to overcome. Something to struggle with since he was given no leave to do so with his superiors.

He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the shattered storefront of a darkened florists’ shop. There was a light that shined out of the eyes of the man reflected there. But one small shift of weight nullified it, the cracks over the window fracturing even that small glimmer of something the Winter Soldier had no name for. He looked down and saw blood smeared across the metallic surface of his palm.

Suddenly, breathing was harder. He gasped and scrambled with numb fingers for the back of his mask, ripping it free and shuddering as he drew in a breath of necrotic air. He collapsed to his knees and stayed there, shaking uncontrollably for a while, an acidic taste building in the back of his throat. Uncertainty ruled in his mind. For a long time, he kneeled there, trying to maintain his grasp on who he was. What he was doing here.

Who’s blood is this? Not mine…

Just when panic began clawing at his throat, a too-familiar sensation that made his eyes feel wet and pressured, everything was… clear.

He lifted his head, all turmoil gone. All doubts gone. All identity gone. He marched on ahead… to the next death.

O o 0 o O

“Помоги мне!” The plea was torn from my throat as I vaulted forward, breathing hard. Sweat made the sheets that tangled around me stick to my skin. I stared ahead into the darkness as my heart rate returned to normal.

It’s over. It’s not going to happen again. It won’t.

It was the same thing I told myself every time I woke up this way. As time went on, I grew both more confident in it and… more uneasy. No matter how optimistic I tried to be, some part of me felt like a return to that existence was inevitable. Maybe it was part of what they did to me; programming me with no hope of hope. A beaten down prisoner is, after all, a more easily manipulated prisoner. Or maybe, I was just… weak.

Once I was able to release the tension in my muscles, able to slow my breathing, I sat up a little more, leaned over with my arms on my knees. I doubted these nightmares would ever really be gone. But I was thankful that the spaces between them seemed to be getting longer, if almost indiscernibly.

Hydra was an ever-present, looming threat to me. Even if the others could focus single-mindedly on other enemies, I never could. Even if they weren’t around right now, I would always compare any other enemies to them, would probably always base my tactics on what I’d learned of and from them.

But Project Safeguard gave me something to focus on. Something to keep me from staying idle and growing reckless again.

Indy would strangle me, I thought, leaning back against the foot of my bed with a tired smile. Not that she has much room to judge. Little Miss I-casually-hacked-into-sensitive-national-secrets-before-I-could-legally-drink.

I let loose one more shaky sigh and pushed up from the floor, pulling on loose sweatpants and a T-shirt. My alarm clock read 2:27. Everyone else was probably still asleep. I was headed to the kitchen, but stopped when I exited the hall.

Indy’s office door was open. Staccato clicks echoed across the living room toward me. I shifted to the side on one foot, just enough to see Indy’s face, illuminated in the dark room only by the glow of her computer screen. A glare reflected off the surface of her reading glasses, forehead crinkled in concentration. She’d let her hair down, its slightly ruffled waves indicating that she was frustrated tonight.

Sure enough, a half second after I’d thought it, she blew out a breath, pulled her hands from her keyboard and shoved them both backwards through her hair. I couldn’t have fought a smile if I’d tried.

I probably shouldn’t have walked over to the door, though. Shouldn’t have lifted my hand and rapped my knuckles softly against the already open door. Definitely should not have allowed myself to feel the way I did when she looked up in shock and then relaxed, like I was who she’d been waiting for in the first place.

“Still up, huh?” I asked quietly, taking a few steps closer to her desk.

She leaned back from her desk and removed her glasses, setting them beside her keyboard. “Yeah, still going through the data from the task force. Our southbound squad suspected they had a tail and sent their findings in encrypted.” She squeezed her eyes closed and used two fingers to rub either side of the bridge of her nose.

I rounded the side of her desk, coming up on her left side and leaned down, peering at her computer screen. I had no idea what I was looking at. I cleared my throat and turned away from it, leaning back against the edge of the desk and looking down at her.

“You really should try to get some sleep, you know.”

She rolled her eyes, spinning slightly in her desk chair. “I will. But… I should really finish this. I’m pretty close.”

I frowned at her and wished I could tell from looking at the gibberish on screen behind me whether she was telling the truth or not. “Why do you push yourself like this?”

“Like what?”

“It’s 2:30 in the morning, Indy. You have circles beneath your eyes bigger than mine,” I couldn’t help chuckling when she did, but sobered up quickly. “You’re starting to worry me.”

Once, she might have given me a roguish smile and said something like “Let me worry about me.” But things had changed since Teregova. Things were always changing between us and I wasn’t sure if that was a comfort or a cause for concern. This time, she just met my eye, head tilted up so that I had to grip the edges of her desk a little more firmly.

“Alright,” she said after a moment. “I’ll go to bed.”

“Thank you.”

She started shutting her computer system off, putting stuff away in desk drawers, and suddenly the room was completely dark.

“I probably should have thought about that before I turned the computer off,” she sighed, sounding more tired than before.

The sound of her voice, soft in the dark, close and still not close enough… I swallowed hard and stood straight, ignoring the fact that I was coming dangerously close to breaking the rules I’d carefully laid out for myself.

“Here,” I found myself saying, reaching a hand out and sliding my fingers onto her wrist. “I’ve got you. This way.”

“Thanks.”

She spoke just the way she always did. The same tone of voice as usual, just at a lower volume. So why did it feel so intimate? Just the lack of light? Was that all it took? Then her hand flipped over, her palm settling against mine a little more comfortably.

My legs froze, just a few steps away from her office door, blocking what little light spilled in from the south wall behind the dining table.

“Bucky?”

“Sorry, I just-” Don’t want this to end. Don’t want to go back into the light and remember why I have to let this chance pass me by.

Before I could do the smart thing and keep walking, I let myself be turned around by her hand on my shoulder. My shadow obscured her, but somehow she must have been able to see something in my face.

“Nightmares again?”

“How can you always tell that?” Even if it wasn’t why I was acting strangely, it was the reason I was awake and here to begin with.

I felt more than saw her shrug her shoulders. “You’re just easy to read, I guess.”

No one who knew me would have called me ‘easy to read’. No one besides Steve and maybe Sam. And now there was her.

“I was him,” I said without meaning to, in a low voice I almost didn’t recognize. “Somewhere overseas. Moscow, I think. There were two targets. Two victims. I started to break out. Started to break down. And then… I didn’t have a choice again.”

She didn’t hesitate, just slipped her arms around my midsection like I was any normal man. Like I hadn’t done the world more harm than good.

“It’s not going to happen again,” she said firmly, squeezing me with her small arms. “I’ll make sure it doesn’t.”

This is fine. I can do this much, I thought, allowing my arms to wind around her, pulling her tighter against my chest. But the darkness made me bold.

“Is that why you’re stretching yourself so thin? For my sake?”

She lifted her head from my chest and looked up at me, our faces suddenly much closer together. “Of course it is.”

I didn’t know why it hurt the way it did. Maybe because she was running herself into the ground to keep me safe from the thing that terrified me. Maybe because she didn’t see an alternative, didn’t entertain the idea of doing anything less. Maybe because I knew it wasn’t for the reasons I didn’t let myself wish for.

“You shouldn’t.” My voice was hoarse and wavered a little.

She reached up and I know she saw me flinch, but she didn’t say anything. Just waited until I stilled again and settled her hand softly against my face. I released an unsteady breath, eyelids slipping closed.

This is dangerous. Walk away. Now.

But her hand was cool against my overly warm skin. And it had been a long time since I’d felt this way.

“I know my limits,” she mumbled. There was something thoughtful in her voice, like she was distracted by some other thought. “And I’m not letting them hurt you again.”

My chest felt like it was caving in, but it felt… like freedom. Like that first taste of being selfish again after decades of being subservient. I didn’t realize I had lifted my left hand until she shivered lightly from the cool touch of metal on her arm.

Turn around. Leave before you do something you can’t come back from.

But I stayed where I was, opening my eyes slowly to find that my head had dipped lower. When had my hand found her waist? She was staring at me like she had never seen me before. Like she didn’t know how to look away. Her eyes drifted to my mouth.

Don’t let it happen. You know you can’t do this.

Please, God, let her kiss me. Let me have this.

“Please,” I breathed, my nose brushing against hers. “Don’t.”

I felt her slowly go rigid beneath my hands, realization making her eyes widen, jaw dropped. I wanted to draw her back, to correct whatever the hell had just come out of my mouth. But she was pulling her hands back to cover her own mouth, eyes wide with horror.

“I’m so sorry,” she said in a tense whisper, shaking her head.

I tried to speak, tried to tell her it was fine. That it was my own fault. I wanted her to stay. To move back in close and touch me like I deserved it again. I tried to tell her why she should run screaming in the other direction. But my reasons were unwieldy things even I staggered beneath. There was too much to say.

So I let her rush past me, out of her office door. I listened to her footsteps, feeling like I did when I’d been snapped away. Like I was drifting apart in pieces, some of them dancing along in the slipstream of her flight away from me. Parts of me were tugging in her direction, urging me to go after her.

Why do I need her like this? Why couldn’t this be simple? A nice, uncomplicated crush. Why does the space beside me feel empty when she’s not the one who fills it?

I stood in the darkness of her office, with my back to the light, for a while. It felt safer to let a few tears slip out there. Because things were about to get so much worse.

INDY

What the fuck did I just almost do?

I paced frantically back and forth just inside my closed bedroom door, panting and waving my face with both hands for no reason that I could rationalize.

Why the hell had I leaned into Bucky like that? I’d hugged him before, sure. But I had never focused quite so hard on the delicate curve of his upper lip, the only soft thing aside from his eyes in that strong-jawed face. And once I’d noticed, it was like I was magnetized to it.

I’d become consumed with the idea of closing the negligible distance between us and kissing him.

And then he’d stopped me. My face burned as I remembered the strange note in his voice that I’d never heard there before. Fear.

“Please. Don’t.”

Jesus, what had I been doing, pushing myself on him like that? He was trying to talk to me about his nightmares, something I’ve been trying to get him to do for what seems like forever now. He finally tells me about it and I try to kiss him?

“What the hell is the matter with me?” I groaned in mortification, kneeling on the edge of my bed and stuffing my face into the pillows.

And yet… For a minute, I was sure he was leaning in, too. I could barely see him, only the barest bit of light coming in over his shoulders. But I thought I could see something in his eyes, some light that came from inside. A hope so fierce it blinded.

Maybe that was why I’d done what I did. Maybe I’d been inspired by whatever he’d always inspired in me. But with his mismatched hands on me, his lips just barely out of reach…

No, I’d done what I did because I wanted him. I didn’t know when it had happened. But it made sense, didn’t it? We spent a lot of time together. He was the only person who knew every bit of my past. And instead of showing me pity, he’d squeezed my hand and sat with me while I tried not to let it wreck me. He’d taken worse than bullets for me, and I was only just realizing how much these little things meant to me.

It made me want to do something stupid like try to kiss him again. He’d been pretty clear about his stance on that, though.

I have no right feeling hurt over that. I’m the one who put us in this situation.

“He’s never going to want to talk to me again.” I curled up on my side, clutching my pillow to my chest and trying not to think about the deep ache in my stomach.