INDY

Stop looking at him. Stop looking at him. Stop looking at him.

I tore my eyes away from Bucky and Sam, who were sparring in the training room. Bucky wore a form-fitting sleeveless shirt, leaving little to my overtaxed imagination. Every dip between his muscles was visible, every firm ridge. Abs, chest, arm…. Ugh.

Why is he so pretty? Why is it only hitting me now that I’ve made a complete fool of myself?

I shook my head and leaned in the glass double doors, cupping my hands around my mouth and calling so my voice echoed through the mostly empty training center. “Boys!”

They jerked to a stop, both looking up at me. I tried not to notice the way Bucky’s eyes changed when they landed on me. From ice to something a little more liquid.

“We’ve got work to do,” I called, inclining my head back out the door and turning away. They’d follow soon.

By the time I made it back to my office on the fourth floor, Kate and Yelena were already waiting. John made it just a few minutes before Sam and Bucky, having to commute from home to the compound. When all five team members were gathered in front of my desk, I slid my reading glasses on and started passing files around, pulling up a page of info on my computer.

“This is the next mission,” I started, scanning the five faces in front of me. “The task force has pulled in intel that leads me to believe our next Hydra cell will be around the spot marked on your maps.”

“Wisconsin?” Kate asked disbelievingly. She was probably picturing Hydra agents sitting by a frozen lakeside eating cheese.

“What leads you to believe they’ll be there?” John asked idly, eyes roving over the printout of a map of central Wisconsin.

That was a question I might have expected out of Bucky, in the Before Time. Of course, as loosely planned as I made this operation sound, I’d done thorough checks over all of our intel, corroborating with agents in the field to make certain I wasn’t sending my team in needlessly. I opened my mouth to answer, but Bucky beat me to it.

“Because she knows what she’s doing,” he mumbled, staring down at the figures on his docket with an unreadable expression.

I looked up at him, but he either didn’t feel the attention, or was avoiding looking at me. Fine. That’s fine.

“The plan, as it stands, is to fly you all into Wisconsin, split the team, and flank them. I should have visual confirmation of their location within the hour. Everyone pack up, look over the mission details, and get ready to fly in tomorrow morning.”

The team began slowly filing out of my office, files in hands, and I turned back to my computer, pulling up another bit of partially-coded programming and setting to typing.

I could sense a bulky form hovering in the doorway, and I chose to ignore him. I wasn’t sure if I still wanted to talk things through with him. I’d thought that was what I wanted that day when I’d tried to apologize, and he’d shut the conversation down like the reminder of that night was as welcome as memories of Hydra.

But now, after so much time and with all this pent-up frustration and resentment… I didn’t think I wanted to hear what he was really thinking. The simple truth is that I was scared. Scared to hear that he really didn’t see me as someone he could be with. Scared to hear that the only person I’d felt this close to in so long might have been scared away because I’d gone off on a limb and pushed things. I didn’t want to know that he thought of me as someone beneath him. Someone too young and naïve to consider romantically. I didn’t want to know that there was no chance…

“Indy.”

I curled my fingers into fists over the top of my keyboard, but didn’t look up. “Yeah?”

“Can we talk?”

“Yup.”

I heard the door click shut softly before he came to the front of my desk and took the chair Kate had just been filling. It was a knee-jerk reaction to look up and meet his eye as I set my reading glasses down. It felt like the first time in a while. Too long, maybe. Could he tell how hurt I was? How scared? Could he tell by looking at my face that this whole ordeal between us had left me feeling like I was dangling thousands of feet above vast emptiness? Did he feel even a fraction of what I felt?

“I- I need to talk to you about-” he faltered and for a moment, so did my heart. This was it. Time to talk about the thing we’d both been avoiding. “I need to talk to you about what happened that night.”

I glanced away from him, too sad and angry to blush. “What about it?”

“We almost kissed, Indy,” he said in his softest voice.

Now came the blush. Of course.

“Yeah,” I said through a heavy sigh, standing from my chair and stacking loose papers together, tapping their edges on the desktop. “It was… very late, and I was not thinking straight. I already told you I’m sorry-”

“I don’t want you to be sorry-”

“Then what the hell do you want, Bucky?” My volume shocked us both. I slammed the papers in my hands onto the desk. “You’re confusing the shit out of me! I try to kiss you, you ask me not to. I try to apologize, you stop me mid-apology. And ever since then, I can feel you watching me. I can’t tell if you wanted what happened to happen or if you wish I’d never touched you.”

He stared at me, blue eyes wide with shock.

God, I want to kiss that stupid look off his face.

He stood slowly, rounded the side of my desk, raised his hands and settled them against my face, his thumbs brushing away a couple of tears I hadn’t noticed had fallen. I cried so much more easily around him now… It was one thing to tear up watching movies; it was another to break down every time I had to think about my feelings.

Absolutely ridiculous.

I tried to turn my face away, but he held me fast.

His eyes were firm on mine, insistent.

“I’ve never, not once, wished that you hadn’t touched me. You’re the only person who can touch me and I don't secretly worry that they’ll try something to hurt me. Indy, you are…”

I tried to breathe around whatever was obstructing my throat, my vision blurry. He stared into my face so distractedly I wondered if he’d lost his train of thought, mapping a path between the freckles over my nose. His thumb traced the curve of my cheekbone one more time.

“Don’t second-guess this,” he whispered. I didn’t know what this was, but it certainly felt like something. “No matter what things seem like. Remember this.” His voice took on an almost pleading tone, and he lowered his forehead to mine.

I wanted to pull away, to continue being angry with him. But… I missed being close to him. His warmth, unnatural though it may have been, was something I had taken for granted for so long. Now I missed it in the night when I grew too cold. So I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around his waist.

How had he done this so quickly? He was trained as an assassin, specializing in fast-paced, in-and-out missions. I hadn’t realized that modus operandi would translate to his personal life as well. He’d snuck into my heart quietly over time, and now the depth of his roots there were tripping me, catching me off guard. It seemed unrealistic that I should experience such new feelings so deeply. But Tony always said I should have been a theater kid; too dramatic, he said.

I didn’t know what Bucky’s words were supposed to mean. Didn’t know how he really felt. But I thought I could feel something in this loose embrace. Comfort, maybe. Acceptance. Or safety. The kinds of things one finds in a proper home. There was need there, too. Probably my own.

And then he pulled his head back, gave me a sweet, heartbreaking smile, and walked past me again. He was out of the door before I had found the strength to turn and watch him leave, feeling like there was a hollow cavity in my chest.

BUCKY

It was stupid. I know it was. But I couldn’t walk out of that office without… I don’t know. Something about her was always calling to me. Sometimes that call was harder to ignore than others. We’d be leaving on another mission soon. I couldn’t leave without telling her at least some of what was on my mind. Without alleviating some of the tension she was still carrying from that almost-kiss.

She was still thinking about it. Even as my heart jolted excitedly around in my chest, I wished she wouldn’t. Her voice as she’d shouted across the desk from me had held so much more bitterness than I’d realized she was capable of. I’d really hurt her.

I didn’t know if all my cards were really on the table, but I’d told her what I could while still keeping myself in check. I only hoped that would be enough. I felt like all of the cliches at the moment: playing with fire, trying to have my cake and eat it too. One of these days, one way or the other, it was all going to blow up in my face. But for now… I couldn’t hurt her more. I’d take all the fallout if it meant I could keep that misery out of her eyes.

The morning of our departure, I slung my bag over my shoulder and started to leave my room, already set on giving Indy a completely normal, meaningless goodbye. I froze, numb with dread at the sight that waited for me in the living room.

Blood had sprayed across the white walls. Kate lay limply on her stomach on the island counter-top, eyes wide and staring unseeingly at me, blood dripping from her lifeless fingertips. My stomach crawled up into my throat as I took in the rest of the carnage.

Sam, a set of crumpled metal wings ripped from his back and shoved through his chest, lay in a pool of dark blood, eyes closed. John’s hand, hopefully connected to the rest of him, was visible around the corner, closer to the elevator. I scanned the room frantically.

Where were Yelena and Indy?

A liquid gurgle sounded from the cracked office door.

Fuck. Please. No.

I vaulted over Sam’s body and hit the ground running, flying through the door, hoping I wasn’t too late.

Indy stood with her back to me, Yelena falling heavily to the ground with garrote wire still wrapped around her bruised and bleeding neck.

“Indy,” I breathed, taking in the outlandish sight before me.

She wore black leather, her hair tied into a curling ponytail. She turned slowly, revealing a face mask so familiar it made my spine tense with memory. Her eyes over the top of the mask weren’t her own. They had the same beautiful dark green-brown color, but I had never seen Indy look at anyone with such coldness.

I was used to seeing her fingers work nimbly flying across keyboards and deftly patching up internal tech. I wasn’t used to seeing her casually flip a knife off her belt, dance it across her knuckles, and brandish it like an invitation at me.

She was smiling beneath the mask, cheeks lifting, though it didn’t touch her eyes. “Доброе утро, солдат.”

While I was busy reeling over her sudden Russian fluency, she attacked. I spun into a crouch, grabbing the keyboard off her desk as I moved, using it to catch the surprisingly forceful downward swing of her knife. The blade stuck three inches out of the bottom of the keyboard. I twisted it, yanking the knife from her grasp and throwing the keyboard across the room.

“Indy!”

I dodged a second knife, trying to grab her wrist, but she was much more agile than normal. In our few sparring sessions, she hadn’t been nearly this dexterous. Or this focused. Her eyes were trained furiously on me, quick swipes of her knife whistling through the air past me as she backed me out of the office and into the gore-spattered living room.

“Indy, stop!”

I stopped worrying over hurting her when her elbow flew back into my face and cracked my nose; she was clearly sturdy enough to take it. I used my fist to deflect her arms as she swung her knife. She didn’t even seem to notice, just ignored whatever pain I might have been causing her and changed course, getting a foot up on the arm of the couch and launching herself much higher than she should have been able to.

She landed just behind me, grabbing my arm with unnatural strength and twisting it behind my back. I pulled against her, struggling beneath the surprise. I ignored all instincts telling me I could kill her, and pulled with every bit of strength I had, managing to get my arm back at my side. Then I grabbed her with my metal hand, fingers clamping down hard on her shoulder, and I tossed her away from me.

She flew through the dining room, smashing into the back wall with barely an “oomph”. She landed on her feet. Her shoulders slumped, but when she raised her head, loose strands of hair falling from her ponytail, there was murder in her usually friendly eyes. Her chest heaved with aggression. The sight was so jarringly familiar — so horrifyingly foreign — I almost broke down on the spot.

She tossed the knife in her hand straight up into the air.

Before I could make sense of the move, she had kicked up off of one foot, twisting mid-air until the heel of one boot connected with the falling knife’s handle. She landed on both feet again, watching in satisfaction as her knife rocketed through the air toward me.

It hit me in the right shoulder, pinning me back against the wall. I grunted and tried to pull myself forward, but she was there again, just in front of me.

She only came up to my chest, but the strength in her arm as she shoved me back against the wall was nothing to underestimate. She used her other hand to pull the mask down. Her mouth was ratcheted up into a forceful, contrived smile that made my blood run cold.

“This is why you can’t have me, Bucky.”

I stared at her in terror, alarm, disbelief. But most forcefully, heartache.

This isn’t you, Indy.

She raised a hand, covered in blood. Probably from Yelena. She used her fingertip to draw a bloody star onto the bare, shiny vibranium of my upper arm.

As I watched, her features started blurring, melting into something else. The body before me grew until I was staring straight ahead into eyes the color of my own. The stubble over the jaw was gone, black paint smeared around the eyes. The arm over my chest became one of blood-smeared metal. Dark hair hung around his face as he leaned toward me.

“This is who we are.”

O o 0 o O

I was used to nightmares. But the one I’d had last night had shaken me possibly more than all the rest. The memory of Indy, strong as a super soldier and attacking me murderously, was sitting in the back of my mind, an uncomfortable alert to a fear I hadn’t consciously registered. I rubbed my jaw tiredly as I stared out of the plane window.

I was back to being unable to look at her. I’d avoided her eye all morning before we’d boarded our plane to Wisconsin. Instead of being upset about it, now she only seemed confused. I couldn’t blame her. My behavior was sort of erratic lately. Her concern was a good reminder that what I’d dreamed last night was just that: a dream. I only hoped it didn’t become a regular in the playlist of nightmares my self-flagellating brain brought out now and again.

A chime from my phone interrupted my thoughts. It was Indy, already reaching out. Surprising. But apparently she was as uncomfortable with the time we spent not talking to each other as I was. I opened the message with a sense of ambiguous anticipation. It was a picture of a badly sketched… lizard? It was vaguely serpentine, with red walleyes and weird spikes on the sides and back. I blinked at it slowly.

Me: What am I looking at here?

Indy: The Lake Winnebago Water Monster. If you happen to see it, you know what to do.

Me: You think I’d have time to take a picture of that thing while I was running away from it?

Indy: Aww, big tough Super Guy can’t handle a little lake monster?

I snorted in amusement and was still smiling distractedly at my phone screen when a second message came in from her.

Indy: Seriously though, Sarge, be careful. Alright?

Me: Yeah, yeah, I know. You’d die beneath mountains of paperwork. I know the drill.

Me: I’ll be careful. Promise.

Indy: Lmk when you’ve landed. Stay safe.

Something about that last bit hit my chest a little funny. Warmth spread through me, my fond smile trained down on those two words. Stay safe. She’d basically said the same thing in the last message. I’d promised I would be careful. It was the same thing, right? But maybe it wasn’t… maybe she was saying something else.

I didn’t let myself get too far with that train of thought, tamping down the tempting hope that had somehow soothed me instantly. But the plane ride passed somewhat easier after that.

INDY

I got the call from Bucky just as I was finishing lunch. I’d half expected a short, to-the-point text.

“This is Indy,” I picked up, scooting the deli wrapper from my sandwich away from my keyboard.

“You’ve got to pass the responsibility of naming our aliases off to someone else,” Bucky’s voice droned from the other end. “Making me check in under the name Mike Rotchburns is some kind of payback, isn’t it?”

I wanted to flush at the reminder of my attempt at kissing him and his turning me down, but the teasing tone in his voice was too comfortable to fall into. I grinned despite myself.

“It’s not payback. Consider it the tax I levy on those who call me their boss/friend.” I spread my arms out dramatically, even though he couldn’t see it.

He chuckled. “Well, Miss Dixie Rekt barely held it together, giving her name to the receptionist.”

I laughed in response, picturing Kate trying to reel in her bubbly laughter at the hotel’s front desk. “So, no incidents, I take it?”

“Not so far, no,” his voice dropped to a lower volume. “How long do we have until the task force is in place?”

“I heard from Grant just a bit ago. Shouldn’t be long now. With any luck, the task force will have created a decent perimeter to catch anyone who tries to weasel out once you and the team move in. We may actually haul in some pertinent sources of information.”

“Grant, huh? You trust him?”

“Yeah,” I said idly, shrugging. “He’s done good work for me so far.”

“Hm.”

“Why does it sound like you don’t believe me?”

“I do believe you. I’m just…” He huffed out a sigh.

“I know,” I murmured. Trust was hard for him. Especially when it came to the people he worked with — people who, at any shift in battle, could hold his life in their hands. It was understandable, even for someone who hadn’t been through what he had.

“You say he’s good, though?” he asked quietly after a moment of silence.

I paused and considered it. Grant had never given me any problems. He was cocky and a bit of a flirt, but he was professional enough not to let it detract from his work.

“Yeah. Grant is good. I wouldn’t put you or anyone else in the field with someone I was unsure about. You know that.”

“I know,” he said softly. “Thank you, Indy.”

I ignored the way my heart seized in my chest and gave him a simple, “Anytime, Buck.”