Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In upstate New York, the weather had just started to change. Fall was close to descending onto the small, sleepy town. Where green leaves held strong, shades of orange and yellow would start to find their place. After that, the foliage would soon settle into place all across the area, and then the snow would come to tuck them into their final resting place. 

If I remember correctly, it was early September. My eyes fluttered open to a dimly lit room. The light, a street lamp that rested peacefully on the street below, was being filtered through a thin set of curtains that were hung from the wall. It was half past five in the morning when the alarm clock on my bedside table turned on the local radio station. I pulled my comforter closer around my body. Trying to keep the warmth in, deciding if it was worth it to get up and listen to the morning host talk on the radio. Eventually, I mustered up the courage and started to get ready for the day. 

I had given my house a much-needed cleaning the day before, and on the way to having a spotless home, I locked up all of the valuables and breakables in a spare room off the library. I was by no means acclimated to having a patient in my house, let alone one that could be particularly combative. I shivered at the thought that my guest could put a hole in the plaster of an almost two-hundred-year-old house; I didn’t dare think about any other particular disaster that could happen. I was almost tempted to protect the stained-glass windows with plywood, and although I had considered it heavily, plywood was overkill. Hopefully. 

My day was spent gathering supplies (mainly making sure that the fridge and the pantry were at the fullest without going overboard), making up guest rooms, and ensuring that the house was the cleanest it had ever been. Then, when I was done, all I had to do was wait— and wait, I did. 

I opened up the French doors that led to the porch. Just past the banister was the thirty acres of land that the sprawling Victorian was nestled in. The heavily wooded area just beyond the driveway swayed in the wind, knocking leaves to the ground every now and then. The smell of sap and warm earth would come in on the breeze. I sat with a cup of tea that had started to go cold and a book, waiting for the pair to arrive.  

Soon to be taking up residence was the one and only Captain Rogers. This particular super soldier, however, was not the one that I was most concerned with. At least not this visit. The man who would be under my care for the foreseeable future would be none other than James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes. I mulled over what little information I knew about him as I stirred the sugar into my tea. He was truly going to be a challenge. Steve had called me just a week before they were to arrive, and my door was always open to be a safe house for him.

He recounted the whole ordeal with what happened to The Avengers during their… falling out (and if I ever got in the same room as Stark again, I think the fire department would have to be called). The story was all the light that I had received on Barnes’ tangled mess of yarn and glitter glue that Hydra dared to call a stable soldier.

The sun had just started to set when I first heard the car coming up the drive. An inconspicuous black Toyota of some sort rolled up to park just beside the house. I pulled at the white sleeves of my dress, knowing that I must have looked like a ghost standing against the dark green paint and red brick of the house. My shoulders rolled back, and I straightened up, drawing in a deep breath just as they stepped out onto the matching brick of the driveway. 

“Captain Rogers,” I walked closer and watched as he pulled two bags of luggage out of his trunk. 

I turned to face the other man who stepped out of the car, “Sergeant Barnes.” 

Bucky shot me a cold glare. I could feel the tension and distrust coming off him in waves. I wouldn’t let his natural animosity shake me, and he wasn’t my first intimidating patient. Not even close. Even still, the amount of unease he could drum up was commendable. 

Both of them had to be about a foot taller than I was, but there was something about Bucky that gave off another level of intimidation. He was an attractive combination of dark hair and fair skin. His almost grey eyes cast an imposing aura that Rogers just seemed to lack.

I kept a quaint smile on as they walked up the steps to meet me. Steve flashed me a quick smirk as he made his way up to the porch. 

“I would like to welcome you both to my home,” I said, walking to the open French doors and stopping just before going through. “My name, Sergeant, is Dr. Magnolia Amherst. Feel free to call me whatever you are most comfortable with.” 

He gave me a nod in understanding, and I allowed them into my home. 

“It’s nice to see you again, Doc,” Steve whispered to me as we walked into my living room from outside. He gave me a quick hug. I had gotten used to how his were just a tiny bit tighter than anyone else’s. I gave him a soft smile before I turned to close and lock the doors behind us.

The living room, which was usually quite cold with the overhead lights on, was now blanketed in a dim warmth. All of the dark leather sofas and chairs were in the same places, but now they had extras that weren’t there before. An amalgamation of quilts and blankets settled themselves on the leather cushions. I had even pulled the ladder out to take the cool bulbs out and replace them with a warmer alternative, not that they were on at that moment. 

“Please, take a seat.” I watched as the two men lowered themselves into the armchairs across from me. I took my seat as well and turned to Sergeant Barnes first, asking, “Has Steve explained to you what your treatment will look like?”

Without looking at me, he responded, “he hasn’t.”

His response couldn’t have been any colder. I noted the rasp in his voice, like he hadn’t spoken in a while. Quiet car ride, I guess.

“I apologize for the vagueness of all this; I asked Steve not to tell you anything. It’s better if I explain your treatment strategy myself.” I paused, readjusting my sitting position. “You and I will be partaking in what I like to call guided meditations.”

Bucky’s eyes narrowed, and Steve brought a hand up to his mouth to cover a smile. My lungs drew in a slow breath, and I crossed my legs. Steve was thoroughly amused, and Bucky watched my movements with an incredulous look. 

“Meditations? And what’s that going to look like? Light some candles and have me talk about my feelings?” He forced out half of a laugh in disbelief. “Doc, I’m pretty sure that I’m past the help of scented candles, no offense.”

Steve’s grin fell from his face, and I twitched at a smile. 

“I promise the candles won’t be scented.”

Barnes’ eyebrows knitted together closer than I thought possible. I’m sure that if his jaw weren’t clenched in annoyance, it would have dropped in sheer disbelief.

“I’m sorry, that was a bad joke on my part. I can tell you that’s not what your treatment will entail,” I stood up from my seat and walked into the kitchen, still smirking at the reaction I received. I had coffee brewed on the counter, and I poured both of them a mug full. I brought it and placed it on the low oak table that rested between us. Steve took a sip of the black coffee, and Barnes watched me set it down, but didn’t motion towards it. 

“Unfortunately, you won’t be able to see what it really is until Monday.”

“Monday?” Steve questioned, and I nodded and watched Bucky’s eyes drop quickly from mine down to the mug before returning again, still unmoving. His jaw remained tense. All that tension, I surmised, could not be good for his teeth. 

“It’s best that you both settle in and get used to the house before I start… poking and prodding if you will.”

He didn’t respond. Well, maybe a cold glance and a sigh if anything.

“I can show you to your room if you would like.”

He once again didn’t say anything in response, opting rather to just stand up and look down at Steve until he stood as well. We took a short trip back outside for Steve to grab a backpack he had forgotten in the car, and headed to the rooms.

Besides what I assumed was a laptop in Steve’s bag, all they brought with them fit into two large duffel bags each. They followed me up the stairs and down the hallway that led to their and my rooms. We walked to Steve’s first, and he placed his things on the bed. Around the three of us was a white room with an emerald ceiling. Although it was scarcely furnished, it was filled up nicely. A dark desk sat facing the window, an armoire in the same color held extra blankets and extra closet space, and the bed was fitted with dark sheets and a brass head and footboard. Beside the bed sat twin tables. On one of which sat a brightly colored Tiffany lamp. His desk still had some light clutter from the last time he had come to stay. As much as I wanted to organize everything, I refrained from touching anything he trusted me to keep here. 

Barnes and I left Steve to unpack and went to his room, which was between the two of us. There were several other rooms in the house, ones that were bigger or more interesting, but I thought it was better to have him sandwiched between the two of us in case of a particularly nasty night terror. We arrived at the door, and I paused. 

“James, I do apologize for the state of it.” I gave as much of an earnest smile as I could. My heart sank as I turned the cold marble doorknob in my hand.

I opened the door to a plain room. It was nearly empty, and I felt terrible for what it was. Around us was a modernly furnished bedroom. It had all of the same things that Steve’s had, but they had been swapped out for replaceable alternatives. The only thing I couldn’t remove was the small chandelier that hung from the ceiling, some eleven feet from the ground. 

I watched as Bucky walked in and placed his things on the bed just as Steve had, and my gut sank all the while. He turned to me, thoroughly confused by my words earlier. A wave of realization washed over him. His eyebrows were unknitted with a sigh, and he nodded slowly before continuing to take in the room. I waited a second before walking in and shutting the door behind me.

“James, now that it’s just you and me, would you mind if we had a chat?”

Bucky stopped mid-way through unzipping his first duffel bag and looked in my direction. It was more of a glare than a look if I were being more accurate. Most of his looks ended up being glares, and I was coming to the slow realization that he wasn’t too interested in becoming friendly (which, unfortunately, was going to make my job that much harder).

“My name is Bucky, Doctor Amherst,” he pushed the bags over and sat on the foot of the bed. 

I pulled the chair out from under the desk and turned it so that I could look at him while we spoke, “Well then, Bucky, I would like to apologize again for the room. You must understand my interest in protecting both you and the two-hundred-year-old furniture. I do have to run some ground rules past you before I truly take you in.”

He nodded and crossed his arms. I was surprised to see this, not only because of the stark difference between the man and the machine but also because I had read that he had lost their last fight. I decided not to press the issue, and rather would mark the anomaly in his file and ask Steve.  

“First, you are permitted everywhere in the house; however, you must be supervised in the library. Neither you nor Steve is allowed in my room unless otherwise stated. Next, the house is situated on a large chunk of land. Feel free to explore them or go for a run. You must be supervised by either Steve or me to exit the wall that marks the very end of the property. You should have seen it as you drove in. Finally, I make breakfast every morning, lunch, and dinner upon request. A notepad is next to the refrigerator; any request can be put down on that. Food on the weekend is fend for yourself; the kitchen is always open. For breakfast tomorrow, I'm making the usual American things. Any questions?”

“So I’m a prisoner?” 

That hung in the air for a moment as I thought over my words. 

I took a breath and let it out as a quick sigh, which came out as more disappointment than displeasure. “You’re not a prisoner, Bucky. And this is in no way a cell. I don’t want you to think of this place as a punishment or a cage. I wouldn’t want to make anyone go through that. You have free rein and the ability to leave at any time, so long as you ask. Not to mention, I think I cook better than the agents on The Raft.” I stood up from the chair and pushed it back under the desk. 

“If you have any questions, my room is to your left. Oh, and the bathroom is the door across from Steve’s.”

I started walking to the door and opened it again. His eyes were drilling holes into the back of my head. “Good night, Bucky.”

“Goodnight, Doctor Amherst.”

Chapter Text

I didn’t go to bed until late that night. Some time after I began putting notes together on my file for Bucky. Well, it was that, and I was expecting to hear screaming coming from my guest bedroom. Since we hadn't started our sessions, I didn’t have any actual notes, so I typed general information and included spaces for information I would have to ask Steve about later. 

I wasn't used to working in my room, let alone having a desk in it. I would usually do my work in the library; however, seeing that it was on the other side of the house, I wouldn’t be of much use if Bucky were to lash out. After reaching a large roadblock with the information I had to type in, I saved my document and shut my laptop. 

I leaned back in my chair for a moment before pushing away from my desk. The chair's wheels squeaked a little in quiet protest, and I made a mental note to oil them when I got the chance. 

The window closest to the desk had been open for a while as I worked, and the gauzy curtains flowed lightly with the breeze. The center of the opening was at the perfect position to climb out onto the roof. I pulled up the bottom sash to be high enough to pass through and stepped barefoot into the brisk September air. The roof was by no means freezing, but I was still in the same white long-sleeved dress from earlier, and the wind had a way of coming up to cut right through the thin fabric.

I was balanced at the apex of one of the rooflines with my arms crossed. I hadn’t come out there for some time, but I found it oddly refreshing to be outside. The moon’s full glow cast a cool white light on everything around the house, and the stars winked alongside. The rough of the shingles pressed into the bottoms of my feet, and somewhere far in the tree line, I could hear the woods teeming with all sorts of life as each of them called out to one another. 

I wasn’t out there long before I felt a chill run up my spine and settle at the nape of my neck. Although it was cold, I knew that wasn’t the reason. Eyes. I was being watched. I could assume one of three origins. The first was Steve, but I didn’t think that was plausible. It was just as likely an animal watching me from just past the driveway, which happened to be my second guess. My third and most logical conclusion was that Bucky was awake. 

I didn’t try to catch him, I didn’t even try to turn around. Typically, I would have looked in his direction, but I was almost compelled to stay still. I took a deep breath and uncrossed my arms to run a hand through my hair. I let the wind play with the fabric of my dress for a while longer before I slowly turned around and waltzed back to my window. I knew he was still watching, but I didn’t look towards his window. 

I stepped back through the opening and almost felt my body defrosting. The cast-iron space heater, a couple of feet away from the window, offered warmth to me as I moved closer. It was one of the trade-offs of owning a house this old: no central heating.

My eyes were beginning to get heavy, and I finally made my way into bed. I set my clock to wake me up at an unreasonable six o’clock before turning over and getting comfortable. 

I didn’t sleep well that night, mostly fading in and out with the fear that Bucky would start screaming in the other room. It didn’t happen, surprisingly, and when I got up at six the next morning, I paid extra attention to covering up the bags that had started forming under my eyes. I stood in the mirror, dabbing on foundation and concealer for quite some time to look like I had done nothing. I looked especially fair, most likely from the terrible sleep. I ran my brush through my hair and sighed as I continued to look myself over in the mirror. 

I broke away from the vanity and walked into the closet. I threw on an outfit that I would be able to cook in: a pair of black sweatpants and a random graphic T-shirt I had picked up in a thrift shop. When I decided the outfit was sufficient, I walked downstairs to make breakfast. 

I started the coffee and kettle for myself, humming what I’m pretty sure was the tune to a Grateful Dead song as I scrambled eggs and fried bacon. I know that in recent years, there has been a drive to leave the doting housewife aesthetic, but I enjoyed cooking for others. I had a purpose—I was a doctor, after all—but I liked seeing people enjoying what I had made. It would be the closest I would ever get to a gallery opening, I suppose. 

I popped open a container of biscuits with a satisfying bop on the side of the countertop and laid them out on a tray after the oven preheated. With a sigh, I leaned back against the island and watched them for a moment as I took a break. I pressed into the counter, trying to get my back to crack, and I stayed there for a moment, across from the window, soaking in the small amount of sun beginning to peak through the window.

“Do you need any help?” 

My eyes shot out and into the kitchen to see Bucky standing there, hands in the pockets of his sweatpants, in the dim light of the living room. I hadn’t heard a single floorboard creak since I had gotten up.

“I didn’t know you were up,” I said calmly, turning my attention back to the baking sheet of homestyle biscuits that were half laid out on the counter in front of me. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Bucky’s jaw clenched for a moment as he confirmed he was the one watching me on the rooftop.

I noted his understandable aversion to sleep. Although I didn’t advise it, I was guilty of the same thing, for different reasons, but still. I decided that hounding him on the subject less than twenty-four hours after his arrival would not be the way to gain his trust, especially when he was making an effort to talk to me of his own volition. I would make a note of it in his file when I got the chance.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Bucky.” I opened the oven and slid the biscuits in. “I didn’t hear you coming down.”

“Occupational hazard.” He mused, moving to lean against the door frame to the kitchen, right against where the pocket doors were tucked away. His arms crossed effortlessly across his chest, and I could see the silver of his arm glinting below the thin fabric of his shirt in the kitchen's light.

“Right, well, I don’t need any help in here. You could go and turn on the television in the living room if you would like. The Saturday morning cartoons should be starting soon.”

“Saturday morning cartoons?”

“Well, I’m not quite sure if they're called that anymore, but I can come and help you.” I walked out of the kitchen and past Bucky. I grabbed the remote control from the coffee table and turned on the television. It was one of the box televisions that were popular in the late 1990s— a CRT TV. I didn’t watch it much, so there was no reason to replace it. I flicked through the channels until I found the cartoons and put the remote down again. I left Bucky in the living room while I fixed him a plate of food as well as a cup of coffee. 

I set it down in front of him along with the silverware, and he gave me a quick thanks before returning his gaze to the television.

“The biscuits will be done in ten,” I commented. Before I sat down, I went to the bookshelf and grabbed my copy of Catcher in the Rye. It definitely wasn’t my favorite, but it would do for something I could put down. I took a quick break to get the biscuits out of the oven before returning to accompany Barnes in the living room.

“Captain America?” I had barely gotten through the second chapter when Bucky spoke up. 

I didn’t look up from the pages. I turned one of them, and gave him a glance. He went from intently staring at the television to glaring at me. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were there, but they were dark in the room's dim light. 

I broke eye contact and looked at the television where a little animated version of Captain America was on, “Steve had a TV show in the sixties, if I’m not mistaken. I’m surprised they're deciding to air the two of you for kids, you know, with the whole being enemies of the state thing. The world?”

“Steve and me?”

“Yes, you. I think you were some boy sidekick or something. I’m pretty sure that they blew you up after the first couple of issues.”

“That’s not how… that didn’t happen.” 

“You could write to the channel and express your displeasure,” I joked, and looked back down. “If you’re not inclined to see yourself on TV, I would say we could change it to the News. However, we might find that you and Steve may be even worse off in public opinion on CNN than you are on Boomerang.” I thought about it for a second more. “Actually, you two are probably out of the zeitgeist by now.”

Bucky slouched back onto the couch and ran a hand through his hair to push some stray strands back into place. I closed Catcher in the Rye, not bothering to mark my page, and I got up to take Bucky’s plate to the sink.

His eyes stalked me as I made my way back over to the kitchen. He left me alone for a moment before getting up to presumably watch me closer.

“How old are you, Doctor Amherst?”

“Twenty-seven.” I would ask you, but I have your file.

“You’re young for a doctor.”

“You’re old for a soldier,” I returned, smiling a bit as I shut off the faucet. 

He glared at me from across the kitchen island. His eyes were almost grey, I decided, a mix of blue and green. 

“Having quality Doctor-Patient time, are we?”

“Good morning, Steve. I made breakfast.” I kept my eyes locked with Bucky’s for a moment before switching to Steve. His hair was lightly disheveled, and he had on what looked like a faded Stark Industries shirt. 

“You didn’t have to, Doc.” Steve was already pulling a plate off my stack on the countertop.

“Coffee is by the stove,” I said, clasping my hands together with a smile. I had forgotten the joys of having company in the house.

I was confident I could leave Steve and Bucky alone while I went to my office in the library. The floorboards creaked under the weight of my feet as I approached the very back of the house, and it made me curious as to how Bucky successfully snuck up on me without so much as a single protest from the floors. 

My hand met the cold brass of an ornate doorknob, and I turned to release the latch. Two solid, dark oak doors that had to be as tall as the first floor alone marked the entrance to the house’s library. It was carpeted and quiet in there, and the familiar musk of books pushed out into the hallway as I walked in. 

The dark blue, almost black, carpet spanned the whole space in front of me and between each shelf. A path had started to wear itself into the fibers of it, not so much from perusing the volumes but from pacing between their shelves. I would have to get it professionally cleaned at some point in the future, I noted. All that work for the carpet I had installed a year ago.

Along the parameter was a balcony perched where the floor for the second story would have started in other sections of the house. The walls behind the balcony held more books, breaking only for large windows. The balcony, too, held the same carpet, albeit less worn in. I had never found myself looking through the fiction section in there. I’m ashamed to admit that they were used to fill up that shelving section. Maybe with the next lot of freedom.

The brass railing seemed to sparkle with the light coming in from the domed skylight at the very top of it all—a true marvel of Victorian styling and architecture. My desk sat at the far end of it all in what I can only compare to a conversation pit that some overzealous owner put in sometime in the 1970s. 

The house had remained widely unaltered except for some oddball things here and there, but I didn’t mind the conversation pit. Maybe 30 feet away from it was the spiral staircase that brought you up to the balcony. 

When I bought the house, I used the conversation pit to hide the room I used for meditations: The Study. Some sort of Stark Technology, far out of my grasp, was used to hide the entrance from people who didn’t need to know it was there. It was not that I needed a special space; it was just quiet—quieter than the library with its large glass windows. The Study was quiet like the dead. 

I sat behind my desk and opened Bucky’s file again. A blue beam of light surrounded me from a small projector drilled into the desk's oak. Pixels soon seated themselves so that I could read what I had typed up last night on the projector display. I picked up the red handset for the office phone that waited patiently on the corner of my desk to dial six on the rotary before waiting for Steve to pick up his phone.

<<Hey, Doc. You need something?>>

<<Yes. Can you please escort Bucky to the library when you are both done with breakfast?>>

<<Yeah. I can bring him over in a couple minutes.>>

<<Thank you, Steve.>>

I set the headset back on its base, then returned to my desktop.

My hand brushed over a silver button on the underside of my desk, and I pushed it in. 

“Session Zero,” I watched as a new Word document was generated, and my words started populating the page. 

“Patient: Barnes, J.

Patient to sign consent forms, discuss treatment plans, and other questions.”

Session Zero transcript is as follows:”

The open windows floated freely in the air before me, and I decided that the big blue projection would likely not be the best for my first session back. I waved the screens away, and the images faded just before the door to the library opened. It had been a long time since I had done any office work, let alone written up a file. Usually, there would be some trainee who would record my sessions and type them up, or someone who would type up my notes from the IBM Executary S.H.I.E.L.D. had at my desk. 

“You rang?” Steve closed the door behind Bucky and left us alone in the space. The door shut with a dull click that cut through our silence. 

“Please, come have a seat, Bucky.”

He hesitated for a moment, his eyes darting around the space. His feet carried him to the rightmost armchair in front of my desk, disregarding me completely as he glanced up at the balcony above me and then over to the stairs. 

I pulled a sheet from the top drawer and slid it over to him. Then, I uncapped my pen and held it out for him to grab. When he didn't reach for it, I set it down on the desk. 

I cleared my throat. 

“This document shows that Sergeant James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes acknowledges that treatment means participating in the ‘Guided Meditations’ with Dr. Magnolia Amherst, Ph.D. 

By continuing treatment, you consent to share memories with your licensed psychiatrist, unfiltered, intact, and to the best of your ability. During ‘Guided Meditation’ sessions, I, Dr. Magnolia Amherst, will not attempt to alter memories in any form or fashion unless for your safety and/or mental stability. 

‘Guided Meditations’ may sometimes be overwhelming, disorienting, and appear real to you. You may see, feel, and even smell as though you are reliving it. Remember: you are not. 

I am present in the meditations to observe and guide. You will not be alone. You do not need to speak if you do not feel the need to do so. 

You and I must maintain two points of physical contact for the duration of the ‘Guided Meditations.’ If that contact is broken in any way, the ‘Guided Meditation’ will terminate.

If at any point you desire to end the ‘Guided Meditation’, say “Break,” and I will terminate any further connection, thus ending the ‘Guided Meditation’. 

The findings of these ‘Guided Meditations’ are not to be shared with any other party, and are only for discussion between Dr. Magnolia Amherst and the patient. Confidentiality will be upheld unless written consent is given.

Do you understand and accept these terms as they have been read to you?”

“So not just scented candles?”

“No. No scented candles will be involved for the duration of any meditation unless they appear in the memory itself.”

Bucky sighed and reached to pick up the pen.

“You don’t have to sign it if it’s not what you wish to do.”

“It’s what I came here for, isn’t it?” He asked and pulled the contract closer to sign it. There was ink on the page before I could come up with a rebuttal. He really didn’t have another choice, at least not one that I was aware of. 

“Any other cryptic information you want me to sell my soul for?” He leaned back into the black leather of the armchair.

“Sugar helps the withdrawal periods.”

“Withdrawal periods? Seems like something you would put in a contract.”

“You’re right. However, I noticed it was a little different when Steve went through. His body seemed to take it better than an average human, so I took it out. But just in case, I have orange juice in the fridge.”

“Super.”

“Super indeed, Sergeant Barnes.”

Chapter Text

Sunday was quiet. Steve took some time away from his laptop to show Bucky around the house and the grounds outside. A section of the basement had been fitted with a home gym when Steve came to visit me here for the first time. He said putting one would save me from filling the basement with more books, and he was right. He knew he was. There was still a bookshelf down there, I couldn’t resist myself. I did, however, limit it to text on workouts and some dieting guides. 

The space could also have been used as a makeshift laboratory. Another monitor similar to the one on my office desk was stationed in a glass office at the very back. A hospital bed and treadmill had leads that could be hooked up to the house's information system to provide a readout, although I had never had to use it for anything important. Steve would occasionally hook himself up to monitor his oxygen levels, and my file would update accordingly, but other than that, the area remained unused. 

I sat on the porch with the same tea I had brewed myself at breakfast that morning. It had long been cold and became more bitter as I sipped it down. I had my nose in Catcher in the Rye again, although I hadn’t moved past the page I was on in almost twenty minutes. Every time I would start the page over, I would get pulled away in a thought or hear something in the woods just beyond the driveway.  Every thought, every slight noise, seemed more interesting than reading Holden project his views of the innocent and uncorrupted. 

Boisterous laughter came from the lawn, interlaced with huffing breaths as Steve and Bucky emerged from the tree line. Both of them heaved for a moment, unable to let themselves catch a breath. 

“You know he had it comin’.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure he did, though.”

Another round of laughter. I watched them out of the corner of my eye, pretending, once again, to read the page I had started now thirty minutes ago. 

“I’ll meet you inside, Buck,” Steve said, pulling a chair over to be closer to mine. Bucky hesitated for a moment, giving the two of us a narrowed glance before walking into the house. 

“You having fun?” I asked and folded the book closed. I went to take another sip of the tea, and was met with the now very strong, bitter taste. Steve watched as I finished off my mug with a grimace. 

“You know as much as I do that this isn’t about fun, Doc.”

I smiled at him, “I appreciate you helping acclimate him to the house. How’s the state of the union?”

“He said he doesn’t mind you as much as he thought he would.”

“That’s comforting.” I guess.

“Just give him some time.”

“He’s got all the time he needs,” I said, letting silence settle between us again.  “How was Africa?”

“Good.” Steve nodded. “Met a king. You’d like him. They helped Buck with his arm while we were there, did what they could to reattach what was left, but they couldn’t offer much else beyond that.”

“I was curious about the arm,” I admitted. “I remembered you telling me that he had lost it.”

“It’s not as secure as they would have liked it to be, but—” Steve trailed off, turning to look behind us and through the living room windows. Bucky was pulling one of the mugs down from the cabinet and pouring himself a mug of coffee from the pot on the stove. 

“He shouldn’t have to use it while he’s here.”

His attention turned back to me, “That’s what I’m hoping for.” Steve was quiet again for a moment before speaking, “How has the quiet life been treating you?”

“You know I don’t mind being alone,” I sighed, leaning back in my chair. 

“You can't be alone forever, Doc.” 

“But I’m so good at it,” I chuffed. I liked the calm that came from being alone. The reflective pool that was my world could remain unbothered. Still, it never scared me to look out at the vast ocean of it all and feel no storm coming in.

Steve was quiet for a moment, “That doesn’t mean it suits you, Doc.”

We stayed out there together for a moment, watching as the breeze came to knock leaves from the trees and tussle the ferns. Eventually, I grabbed my things and walked inside. Steve filed in soon after me, but was back typing away at his computer once he got in. He engaged with Bucky and me, but it was very clear that the world was pulling him back to it. 

He couldn’t help himself, I guess. A world without the Avengers was a world unprotected, at least from my point of view. Zemo, the Sokovian nobleman whom I had to thank for my current lodging situation, I knew wouldn’t agree with me there. The road to hell was paved with good intentions and all that, but I had seen evil, touched it with my own two hands. Pure and unbridled, and something would have come for us eventually, Avengers or not, something would have come for us. 

Monday morning came quickly. I watched the sun come up from the kitchen window over the sink. I took some time to water the ivy plant that clung to the sill and around the frame, as well as the other plants scattered throughout the living room. I hummed as I tended to each of them.

The first official day of treatment was already upon us, I thought. I had taken some time yesterday to give The Study a thorough once-over, not that I hadn’t walked through there a dozen times before they stepped foot onto the property. 

I set the kettle and the coffee pot on and started mulling over what my plan was for the guided meditation today. I had some inkling from conversations with Steve in the past about what I could be aiming for, but I had no idea what Bucky’s mind was actually like. I was just as likely to send us back to 1930s Brooklyn as I was to send us to a previous mission. 

I shuddered at the thought. Today had to be more about building trust than actual healing. Maybe it wasn’t so much about me guiding it, but rather him showing me what he wanted to— what he was comfortable with. A completely different approach than what S.H.I.E.L.D. called me in for, but then again, they were never too concerned with the mental well-being of the patient if I was being called in. I took a deep breath and held it there until it started to burn, and let it all out with a huff. I would also have to check if I still had any of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s prescription left.

“Good morning, Dr. Amherst.” I looked up to see Bucky leaning against the threshold again. He had been there yesterday morning as well, maintaining the same posture, his arms crossed, eyes boring into mine. The dark under his eyes had continued to develop over the past couple of days, and although I was glad he hadn’t woken up screaming, if not sleeping at all was the alternative… 

“Good morning, Bucky.” I pulled two mugs down from the cabinet. One I used to fill with coffee, and the other I used to start steeping my tea— an Earl Grey I had pulled from a stash at the back of the shelf. Bucky walked over to the island and slid the mug of coffee closer to himself, and I put the sugar in the space between us. I pulled a silver teaspoon out of the drawer next to the sink and handed it to him, and it looked oddly foreign in his hand. Long, thin, and ornate, it stuck out, and yet, somehow, he had a way of making it look like a weapon. He gave the coffee one scoop of sugar before handing the spoon back to me, handle first, as though he had been handing me back a knife or a pair of scissors.

“Want anything specific for breakfast?”

“Not that I can think of.” 

I nodded, but he kept his eyes down. I took a sip from my mug and turned to grab the honey off the windowsill. I used the same teaspoon Bucky had handed back to me to drip honey into the hot tea before stirring. 

“Are eggs alright?”

“Sure.”

I reached for a pan from the rack above the stove, and Bucky watched as I prepared breakfast. I cracked two eggs in. I had gotten them from a farmers market that the town ran together on Saturdays, well, at least the people who had profitable domestic skills helped to run it. I moved to put bread in the toaster as I waited for the eggs to cook under the lid of the pan. I grabbed a plate from the cabinet next to the mugs. The bright white of the porcelain shone bright in the dim light of the kitchen. The dainty silver rim flashed brighter, picking up the light coming from the stove top. They must have been someone’s wedding set, but I had picked up the lot of them at an antique store when I still lived in New York City. 

Bucky had pulled out one of the bar stools that sat under the far side of the island, and continued to nurse his coffee. The ceramic clinked now and then as he reached for it with his left hand, choosing to support his head with his right. 

When everything was done, I set the plate and grabbed a fork from the same drawer where I had pulled the teaspoon out. The flatware I knew had been a wedding set. It had been a wedding present to my parents from a friend of my mom whom I had never met. Their initials had been engraved at the top of each piece in a looping script. 

He thanked me, and I nodded in response, turning my attention back to my tea. We sat in silence for a while, disturbed only by the sound of Bucky’s fork hitting the plate. He was trying to make the contact as gentle as he could.

“I’m sorry I’m not great at small talk,” he spoke up, poking the yolk of the egg with part of his toast. 

“It’s alright,” I took a sip of tea. “Neither am I.”

Something pulled at the corners of his mouth, almost a smirk but not quite. A grin tugged at my lips as I went for another sip of tea. A small détente, I suppose. 

“I was thinking we could talk about your first meditation after breakfast,” I said, setting my now-empty mug down on the counter.

He nodded slowly, “Alright.”

“We also don’t have to start today if you feel like you’re not ready. You don’t have to rush into it.”

“You think I’m nervous?”

“Aren't you?”

He let out a breath, not quite a laugh, but close, “I guess.”

“Then we progress slowly.” 

His eyes shot up from his plate and up to lock with mine, darting across my features for a moment. Slowly. I repeated to myself. We can do it slowly. I can let him lead the meditations, for his own sake. 

Bucky stayed like that for a moment, eyes glaring into mine as they often did, “Why do you do it?”

I hesitated for a moment, “to help people.” That was a lie. The only person I had helped, truly, was Steve. I hadn’t had someone I needed to save. To recover from themselves. 

“No. Why do you sit with them?”

“Because I know what it’s like to be stuck with something you didn’t ask for,” I said, debating on whether or not I should continue. I took a breath, regaining my composure, and held the air still in my lungs until it started to burn before exhaling. “And sometimes you just need someone to be there to hold the flashlight while you dig.”

Bucky’s bright blue eyes stared into mine as he took the last bit of toast into his mouth. They narrowed for a moment before he stood and took his plate to the sink, brushing past me to wash everything thoroughly, setting it all in the drying tray. 

He turned, leaning against the counter to face me, “After breakfast, you said?”

“After breakfast.”

Chapter Text

Bucky followed behind me as we walked towards the library. The dense carpet concealed our footfall as we approached my desk. I slipped behind it, and Bucky sat in the same chair he had in his first visit to the library. His eyes followed me as I pulled a notebook out from the bottom drawer to hand it over to him. 

“This is for you,” I said, and he leaned forward to take the book out of my hand. “You don’t have to write anything now, but as your treatment progresses, things will start to surface. Pieces of fragments of things, but it helps if you write them down.”

He turned the book over in his hand and then placed it on the desk close to him as I walked out from behind the desk to the chair next to his. I had Steve bring the LC3 lounge chairs in when I had bought them, and I remembered why as I pulled on the bent steel frame to get the armchair to face Bucky. 

Bucky stood for a moment, repositioned it for me, and then pivoted his own. 

“Thank you.”

He nodded.

“I want to be clear about what this is, or rather what it isn’t going to be. I won’t go digging for memories, I won’t provoke, I’m here to observe, and if we observe something sensitive—“

“You don’t have to protect me.”

“I’m not,” I stated, a little harsher than I meant to. “I’m not protecting you, I’m respecting you. There’s a difference.”

Bucky leaned back into the black leather of the armchair, eyes searching mine for a moment. His chest rose as though he were about to say something, but nothing came out. 

“You’ll likely feel disoriented. Most do. And like I said on the consent form, if you encounter something you aren’t comfortable with, say ‘break’ and I’ll bring us out immediately. Understood?”

“Understood.”

“We should start with something surface-level, at least while you’re getting you’re bearings. Something simple, palatable. It’s far easier to ease yourself into the pool than to cannonball into something traumatic.”

His face contorted for a moment, something in between a grimace and a smirk, “Is that what they taught you at S.H.I.E.L.D?”

“No.” I was blunt, maybe too cold again for a second. “No. They far preferred cannonballs.”

Bucky’s eyes held mine for a moment, eyebrows knitting together with a question that never came.

“What is it?”

“Did you,” He paused, running a hand through his hair, tucking some of it behind his ear before it fell out of place again. “Have you ever gone into someone else’s head and not come out okay?”

He didn’t look at me after that, opting rather to look out the window behind me. Flashes of my last 'patient’s' mind bubbled up to the surface. The void I reached into. The void I never came back out of, not really. 

“Yes,” it came out almost like a whisper. Bucky’s eyes shot back to mine again, eyebrows knitting together again, this time not with a question. No, this time they held concern. I took a breath, using the steel frame of the chair to straighten myself in my seat. “I’ve learned a great deal of control since then. I can ground us both while we're in there.”

“What happens to our bodies?”

I thought back to the recorded sessions and written reports from the lab. “We’re sort of frozen, at least out here we are. Usually, slowed heart rates, breathing, and brain activity.”

“Usually?”

“It depends on the memory. The door will lock behind us for each of the sessions. You may wake up sore, like you haven't moved in hours.”

“Is it like dreaming?”

I thought a moment before responding,” A little, I guess. But not really.”I shook my head. “Memories tend to be different from dreams. They can sometimes try to speak or rewrite themselves. It depends on how much it’s been… touched.”

“And you can stop it? The memory if it tries to change itself?”

“I can. If you let me in.”

He looked at me for a moment before closing his eyes tight, “Doesn’t hurt to try, right?”

“Usually, no.” I stood from my chair and smirked down at him. 

He chuffed and then sighed, looking up at me from his chair, “Alright. I’m still in.”

“Wonderful.” I moved to open the staircase down to The Study. “You are going to have to help me move the chairs back at some point,” I commented as a panel of my desk slid to the side to reveal a handprint reader.

“For all of the guests you get out here?”

“Yes, for all the guests.” I placed my hand on the reader and waited for it to scan. 

“Voice authentication required.”

“Magnolia Exie Amherst.”

“Welcome, Dr. Amherst.”

The section of the floor that concealed the stairs slid aside, and I turned to Bucky, who was watching with his arms crossed. “After you.”

We descended the brick steps for a moment until the floor opened up. The plaster walls around us arched up to the ceiling, not that you could tell with the dim lighting running along the floor. As my eyes started to adjust, I started lighting candles. The warm light from the candles began giving the room substance, and as I lit more, I watched Bucky take in the room. Arms still crossed, splitting his attention between me and the low, pillowed platform at the center of the room. The almost wine-colored tufting made it look like the bricks morphed into a large, square pillow. 

When the room was sufficiently lit, a sensor triggered the door above us to slide closed and then lock with a soft click. I walked to the center of the room and sat on one of the pillows there. Bucky followed, sitting crisscross opposite me. 

“It’s quiet,” he said. The light from the candles swayed lines off of his arm as he continued to look around. “Do you do this for everyone?”

I smirked, “No. I haven’t been asked to do any sessions while I’ve lived here.”

“I thought you did meditations for S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“They prefer labs, unfortunately.” I almost said something I shouldn’t have; it danced along my tongue. Why don’t you work for them, Magnolia? What could you have done that was so bad they sent you away? You know what happened the last time you went poking into a mind far to dangerous for your own good. 

Bucky nodded, looking down at his hands for a moment, “So, now what?”

“We try.” My hands reached slowly for his. He balanced his arms on his forearms, palms up, as I moved. I could hear the mechanical whirring from his arm as it came up to meet me. 

“Close your eyes.”

He hesitated for a moment before his eyes closed, and his dark lashes fluttered against his cheeks. 

“Is this okay?” I asked as I laid my hands in his. My pointer fingers came to rest on his wrists, and I could feel the warmth radiating off his palm— well, at least one of them. And I noticed it then, in the soft light of the candles. A thin, silvery scar ran the length of his wrist just under where my finger rested, just above where I could feel the beating of his heart. It had faded, faded for a long time, I surmised, but it had been angry once. A quick, deep, angry thing. Of that I was sure. My stomach churned in a way that I hadn’t experienced before with a patient.

“Yes,” his came out as more like a whisper than anything else— husky and dark. 

I closed my eyes for a moment, searching for the connection, and nothing surfaced. 

“Hmm.”

“Is something wrong?” His eyes remained closed, yet his expression still conveyed confusion. 

“Your left hand isn’t giving me any current.”

His eyes opened again, pupils wide in the dim light, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize. It’s okay.” I pushed myself closer, our knees almost touching, and laid my left hand back in his right. He closed his eyes again with the same flutter as before. I leaned closer and laid my palm on his cheek, my thumb coming to press lightly at the rim of his eye socket, and my fingers laced into the hair at the back of his neck. I could feel him get tense against my touch, and the rhythm of his pulse quickened under the pressure of my fingers. His lungs pulled in a deep breath. 

“Is this okay?”

“I’m fine.”

I could feel the circuit running through my fingertips. “Keep your eyes closed, and remember you only have to show me what you want.”

“Okay,” He whispered, and I shut my eyes. 

The familiar rush came over me, something akin to static electricity. Like the air in a thunderstorm, a calm swelling of latent energy. A light ringing started in my ears before being filled with the sounds of a street, and I opened my eyes to face an apartment building.

“You can open your eyes now, Bucky.”

His shoulders raised with a deep breath before he opened them. I looked around, as did he. We were somewhere in New York, the early 1930s, if I had to guess. The sidewalk was worn and uneven underfoot. The edges of the memory were hazy as I looked down the street and at the buildings around us. Children ran behind us, following a boy in the front with a bright silver model airplane, all bolted into the fog. Their laughter still rang clear even though I couldn’t see them anymore. 

Bucky hadn’t paid them any mind; instead, his attention was focused on the dark-haired boy on the fire escape up above us. He couldn’t have been older than nine or ten. His legs hung over the edge, swaying back and forth. His knee was freshly scraped.

“Hey, Steve! Up here!”

A young boy jogged out of the fog and into frame. Well, he half jogged, half tripped over himself if I were being more accurate. Impossibly small and wheezing, he took a break to catch his breath and look up at the steps of the fire escape. Without complaining, he climbed up the steps and plopped down next to who I assumed was Bucky. 

“Did they really knock one of your teeth out?” Steve winced, looking over at Bucky. 

Bucky grinned in response, flashing not only teeth that were too big for his mouth but a gap where his incisor had been. “Yeah, but my mom said it was supposed to come out soon anyway.”

“Was she mad?”

“A little,” He paused, “I don’t think she minds if I’m protecting people.” His hands wrapped around the railing, and I noticed the red scuffs on his knuckles. I smiled up at the two of them for a moment before turning my attention back to Bucky as the memory looped on itself. 

“ I-I didn’t think I remembered this.”

“You’ve remembered it a lot by the look of it,” I said, gesturing to the fuzzy edges of the memory. “Normally, the ones you don't revisit are crisper. It’s like playing a movie too many times. Eventually, the film wears out.”

“This doesn’t feel real,” he said, turning to face me.

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t.”

He took a deep breath, closing his eyes tightly, “Can you tell anything else?”

“Not a whole lot. I can feel that this is being used like a wall of sorts, to keep other things at bay.” I could feel the pain and anxiety churning just past the fog as I looked out into it. 

“I know that not a whole lot else is going to be this nice.”

“And we don’t have to go there. At least not yet.”

I caught his gaze and held it for a moment before he looked out past me at the fog. 

“And you’re sure you’re not a time traveler?” His eyes reconnected with mine. 

“Time travel is a bit above my pay grade,” I smiled. Bucky smirked a bit and then turned his attention back to Steve and himself on the fire escape.

“Thank you for taking me here.”

He didn’t respond, but I could feel the smallest amount of tension lift. I watched him closely as he peered up at the two boys. A certain longing had washed over his features, eyebrows close, lips parted ever so slightly as he stared up at the boys above us. Maybe that’s why this particular memory had been played time after time, it was a desire to have things return to the way they were, up on the fire escape.

I made a note of the colors and the vibrancy of everything around us—the birds chirping in the trees, and people talking in the distance that came through like radio static. Bucky’s mind wanted healing above all else, even if it didn’t know how to start. It held onto everything it could. 

“You ready to go?” I asked gently, taking one quick look back at the boys now frozen mid-laugh, the sun coming to kiss the world around them. 

He nodded, and slowly, I pulled us out of the memory and back into The Study. 

I hadn’t spoken to Bucky yet, not since we had left The Study. He watched me quietly from the couch in the living room. He was propped up on the arm, a maroon blanket draped lazily over his body. He was trying to split his attention between me and the television set in what seemed to me like an attempt not to stare. 

I walked around the kitchen, working to put the kettle on, pulling two mugs down from the cabinet, as I had done that morning. From the back, out of the stash of good tea I kept hidden from myself, I grabbed a bag of loose tea leaves and then two steepers. It was a custom blend, something my mother had sworn by—an earthy mix of passionflower, chamomile, oatstraw, and lemon balm. I had taken to adding dried apple into the mix to help sweeten it a bit, but it had otherwise remained unchanged. 

I added honey to it before walking the mug over to Bucky. He sat up as I approached and grabbed the tea from me when I offered.

“Are you okay?” I sank into my chair, pushing my hands out to feel the yellow velvet under my fingertips as I reached out with a stretch. 

He brought the mug up to his lips and thought for a moment. “Yeah.” He swallowed. “I think so.”

I didn’t press him further, choosing instead to cross my legs and sort of lean closer to him. CNN, although muted on television, was airing a story on Pope Francis canonizing Mother Teresa. I read the subtitles as they came up, glancing at Barnes as he peered into his mug. 

“You touched my cheek,” he paused. “Instead of my hand.”

I nodded, keeping my attention turned to the news as the story ended, “There was no… current through the metal. It has less to do with the mechanics of it and more with the resonance.”

“Is that a scientific term?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s a Magnolia term,” I replied, a bit of a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “Means it’s harder to connect with something when it doesn’t hum back. Do you have any feeling in it?”

“Some. Not a whole lot. Pressure. Hot and cold.”

It was peculiar that I couldn’t complete my loop with his arm. I thought for a moment what the complex structures under his skin looked like. How they tied into his nervous system, the titanium must have extended further than I initially believed.

We stayed like that for a moment, letting a comfortable quiet fall upon the living room. He and I had both finished the tea, and I could feel the body aches starting to set in. I hadn’t felt them in almost three years, but the familiar soreness pulled along my spine.

Bucky raised his hands to run both through his hair before getting up and grabbing his mug off the coffee table, and then mine before walking into the kitchen. I watched him as I leaned my head against the wing of the chair. He washed both of them and set them in the rack, and then took the dry dishes from this morning and put them back in the cabinet where they belonged. 

“Goodnight, Dr. Amherst.”

“Goodnight, Bucky.”

Chapter Text

New York, 2012

The floorboards of my apartment were creaking under my feet in protest at the summer heat. I could hear my upstairs neighbor's similar upheaval as I brushed my teeth. If it weren’t for the window units scattered about the space, I’m sure the whole eight-story walkup would be sweating buckets onto the streets of New York. It had rained the night before, but it didn’t bring any cold front with it. Instead, the air outside was still heavy with water, and the streets had begun to steam in the beginning light of the sun. It was almost pretty, if not caustic, as the rays lapped out to pierce the steam. 

Steve had been called away on some mission I wasn’t privy to, and the apartment had been unnaturally quiet all morning. Usually, he would turn on the radio in the kitchen while he got ready for a run or to go to the gym, but it was just quiet. I thought I would have loved the sound of silence, but it itched at the back of my mind uneasily. 

I was lucky enough to have a car parked outside, waiting on the curb for me. I say ‘lucky’ enough, but the drivers were working my security detail. My baby sitters, a rotation of three stocky S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, were assigned to take me from my apartment to headquarters— or whatever excursion the higher-ups had planned for me that day. I poured what was left of the orange juice in my fridge, mostly pulp by that point, into a coffee tumbler as I got ready to go. 

“Good morning, Agent Klein.” I buzzed in on the lock’s interface and worked on unlocking the deadbolt with my free hand. The lock functioned like a closed-loop intercom system, with the car waiting below. Once a vehicle was parked in range of the front door, it could be unlocked remotely. If Steve were with me, I was able to leave. I knew he thought it was barbaric, even if he didn’t say it out right, but we took a lot of walks around the neighborhood.

“Good morning, Dr. Amherst. Did you sleep well?” The electronic lock clicked, sliding back into the door. 

“As good as it gets,” I responded as I opened the door to the hallway. When the door shut, the lock slid back into place in the jam. I locked the regular deadbolt from the outside and started walking out to the car. 

Klein, my attendant on Mondays and Wednesdays, was waiting outside the car for me. He had to be about six-four, but he looked even more massive as he towered over the armored vehicle in his justified grey suit. He was clean-shaven, but a shadow had started to take form. His eyes were trained on me as I walked out of the lobby door. He opened the back door to the sedan for me to slip inside. 

I slung my messenger bag in and took my seat before the door closed behind me. I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror; more aptly, I noticed the dark pools that had started to develop under my eyes and the strands of white laced in with the auburn color of my hair. 

The doctors that they had assigned to my case had figured out a concoction of drugs that made my near-constant migraine go away, which, in the beginning, I was grateful for. I could finally do my work without any drawbacks—a true, well-oiled machine, that’s what my file said anyway. A brain fog had started to set in after a month of taking them, and I could do my work just fine, but it was probably for the best that I didn’t have to operate a motor vehicle. 

The drive was the same that we took every day, and there was minimal deviation from the course. If an alteration had to be made, the agent would have to call in and request a change in course. At this point, I was surprised that they hadn’t put a camera in my apartment— at least they hadn’t to my knowledge. 

By the time Klein had dropped me off at the front of our building, a strange buzz had developed in my fingertips, and I should have known that it was a bad sign. 

I made my way through the building and to my office door. Unlocking and opening it for the first time that day, cold, stale air billowed out into the hallway from an equally off-putting workspace. The tiny wooden desk was nearly swallowed by a month's worth of complete and incomplete work. 

I didn't bother with the light switch as I walked in. The large windows, although they did nothing in terms of allowing warmth into the room, filled the space with a lush coating of cool light. By tint or other means of privacy, who knows with government work, my office was perpetually washed in a blue hue. The only thing that stood out now was a yellow-tinted manila folder with the word 'confidential' plastered in red across the front cover. 

I could already feel the migraine forming behind my eyes as I pulled my office chair out. 

"Dr. Magnolia Amherst, assistance required- Inmate yada yada, whatever, and what have you," I mocked the first couple of lines. 

Super Power this and Mind Reader that, I sighed and slumped down in my chair. By this point in time, they should realize that all of this comes at a price, but mind reading is an expendable resource when you're the United States Government. 

My thoughts were interrupted as the door to the office opened and Scott walked in. He hadn't slept much either, and the very large coffee that was haphazardly balanced atop assuredly the very important documents stacked in his hands was a dead giveaway. His desk, opposite mine in the room, was just as cluttered, if not worse. 

"Good Morning," I said, still slumped down in my chair. 

"Mornin', Amherst.” His undeniably Texan accent was something that rang out in stark contrast to the rest of the people I heard on a day-to-day basis. I peered over my desk at him as he very delicately placed his things down on the other side of his computer screen. The coffee was an extra challenge. 

"They gave you another assignment, I see," he walked over to my desk, and motioned like he was going to open the file. My hand was over it almost immediately.

"You know you're not supposed to look."

“It’s not fair, you always get the fun stuff," he whined and leaned against my desk. 

“You know it’s not fun, Scott.”

"When are you going to do it to me? I wanna see all of my memories and stuff.” 

Scott Creak and I had studied together at university. At the time, we were both pursuing our doctoral degrees. My study focused more on experimental psychology, and he focused on psychopharmacology. He had been recruited to help work out the medication I took for the migraines. 

I had just turned 21 when I met him. He sat down with a huff in the seat next to me in a lecture hall that had been empty for most of the semester and just started talking, and never stopped. Making friends had never come easily, not just in the doctoral program, especially being so young, but Scott didn’t seem to care. 

He was more of a lanky mess of blond hair then, but he’s always had the brightest green eyes I've ever come across. Scott had filled in some, muscle-wise, but he always looked like a good ole' boy. The kind of guy you would want to take home to your parents, well-built and wildly intelligent. Scott had been a good friend to me, even if he was much too curious for his own good. 

"Scott, you know that's not how it works. And besides, they're working me like a dog. I think they would be pretty pissed if I were using my ability at 'unsanctioned times’." I scrunched my fingers into air quotes. 

He rolled his eyes playfully, but I could tell that he wasn’t going to stop asking anytime soon. 

"What time do they want you?" he asked, walking back over to his desk. He flipped on the lights as he passed the switch. A sudden pang originated from behind my eyes; I closed them as it dissipated. I opened my desk drawer and opened the prescription bottle that was a little less than half filled, and took one of the grey-blue pills with a swig of the unfortunately chunky orange juice. 

I opened the cover of the folder again and saw if it had a meeting time. I sighed as I realized I had to be in interrogation in about an hour, just barely enough time for the migraine concoction to start working. 

"Nine," I replied as I grabbed my bag and started haphazardly shoving some of my things into it.

As I was getting up, there was a call on the office phone that was hanging from the wall next to the door. I hurried over and took the receiver to my ear. 

<<Psychology department, office B23, Dr. Amherst speaking.>>

<<Magnolia, it’s Agent Coulson, we had a slight change to your assignment today. We have a bird on the way to pick you up if you wouldn't mind meeting it on the roof.>>

‘Who is it?’ Scott mouthed, leaning in, trying to overhear the conversation.

‘Coulson.’ I mouthed back.

<<Of course. On my way up now.>>

I hung the phone back up on the wall and continued packing. I ensured that my laptop and charger were present, and then I created some space for the assignment folder. I threw my pill bottle in there as well, just in case it was a long day. 

I walked to the door, and as I reached for the handle, Scott spoke, “Oh! Some of the guys in the lab and I adjusted your medication; it’s down there on my desk for you to pick up whenever you get back.”

“Thanks.”

"Have fun?"

"I won’t," I smirked and opened the door and headed out towards the roof. 

The house was quiet when I woke up, and I figured that Steve and Bucky were out soaking up the sun somewhere on the property. I was glad that they had let me sleep in, but I felt like I had started to waste the day away. 

I got up slowly, still feeling the soreness that had settled into my muscles, and went into the bathroom to start the shower. As I waited for the water to warm, I rifled through my medicine cabinet looking for any leftover S.H.I.E.L.D. prescription I could get my hands on. 

I set aside Advil, Excedrin, and various other migraine medications that could work temporarily if need be. And then I found it, well, what was left of it. In a nondescript bottle with a S.H.I.E.L.D. logo inked on the top was maybe a month and a half’s worth of pills, two if I got crafty.

I opened it and took one. An expired, experimental schedule one never hurt anyone, I grimaced. The heat from the shower had started to fog the glass, and I flipped on the vent before I got in. 

The warm water trailed its way across my body, helping some to soften the tension, and I got down to sit on the floor of the shower as the water drummed onto my skin. 

I’d have to call Scott, I thought. He’d get a kick out of it, at least he’d get a reason to step away from his classes for a while. When had he last come to the house? When I moved in, probably. Three years had gone by with such vigor that I had barely noticed the change. I ran my hand through my hair, allowing the water to flow through it. 

We had walked around the downtown area, and he got roped into a conversation with one of the locals that would later become a thorn in my side. A real go-getter who tried to get me to join the HOA every time she saw me, and with about a letter a month saying that they were interested in buying some of the property I had that butted up against their neighborhood. 

The plot of land I had bought with the house was the last bit that had never been split from the early farming days of the town. There was the historic district on Main that was about fifteen minutes from my driveway, and all of that had been divided up some time in the early 1800s, my victorian was not the only one in the area, just the one with the most land, and Joanna Sellers wanted to chop it up more than anything.

The Sellers, from what I had pieced together, had been some of the original settlers of this area, and Joanna took her seat on the town council just as seriously as she took the wrath of God. That was not out of character for the area, but it was the building block of her personality. And I liked the rest of her family members; her grandfather had become one of my favorite people in the whole town when I moved in, and she just had a way of getting under my skin.

I leaned my head back and opened my mouth, allowing it to fill up with water and then spitting it out like it could symbolically wash her name off my tongue. 

I’d have to give Scott a call and see if he would be able to get away sometime soon…or if he even had the means of making more. Now there was a problem. Could I get through sessions if I didn’t have their concoction? Probably not.

I filled my mouth up again. 

Chapter Text

Screaming and then a loud string of noises pulled me out of my sleep. I shot up in bed, much to the protest of my aching muscles, and I rushed to the other room, catching Steve in the hallway. He ran into Bucky’s room before me, and I followed. The lights were out, but there was enough filtering in through the muslin curtains on the far side of the room that I could sort of tell what was going on. 

The lamp that was supposed to be on the table was on the floor, its lightbulb shattered. On that same side of the bed, there was a fist-sized hole in the plaster. Bucky sat in the center of the bed, knees up, fingers laced through his hair. His breathing, although it came in regular intervals, was shaky. 

“Bucky?” I whispered. Steve shot me a glance; his whole body was tense, and he wasn’t in a fighting stance, but he was tense and ready to move if he had to. I could hear the pounding of my heart in my ears as Steve and I stood in the silence. 

‘It’s okay, I’ve got it.’ I mouthed over to him, and he eased his posture a bit. 

Bucky’s chest heaved with a deep breath, and he ran his fingers the rest of the way through his hair, and then his head turned to face me. His eyes, although distant, met mine for a moment, and then Steve’s. 

“I’m alright.” Bucky’s voice shook, and he pressed his lips into a tight line before turning his gaze to the street light filtering in through the window. 

“Steve, can you please go grab the broom in the pantry downstairs?” I asked, walking to sit on the edge of the bed. 

He hesitated and then nodded, leaving just the two of us in the room. 

It was quiet for a moment as we sat there. “I was back in Siberia,” Bucky said, his voice still shaking. 

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

He looked at me, his eyes searching over my features. 

“Did the lightbulb get you anywhere?”

He shook his head and turned to sit next to me on the side of the bed closest to the door. Bucky looked down at his hands, opening and closing them into fists a couple of times, almost like he was trying to make sure he was still real. 

“I’m sorry about the lamp,” he paused, “And the plaster.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me, Bucky,” I said, my voice just barely above a whisper. The lamp didn't bother me, but the plaster hurt. I held out my hand, and he hesitated for a moment, as though we were unsure of what I was asking for. He held out his hand, and I took it in mine and looked it over for glass. 

“Now you know why I protected the furniture.” I had said it lightheartedly, almost like a joke. My eyes flicked up to find his, but his eyes were fixed on his hand in mine, and through the curtain of his lashes, and with the pinch of his brow, I could see he wasn’t moving towards levity. 

“I can fix it,” he said it without looking at me, but when his eyes did find mine after a moment, he gave me what I think was meant to be a reassuring smirk, but the pain that still pooled behind his eyes made it look more like a grimace. Like an appeasement from an animal backed into a corner. 

“We can fix it whenever you’re ready.”

Steve had come back up from downstairs and was holding the broom and dustpan in one hand and a new lightbulb in the other. The two of us sent Bucky off to take a shower as Steve and I worked for a moment to make sure we got all of the glass shards out of the floorboards. Although they were beautiful, I had learned the hard way that dropping anything on them would lead to pieces of whatever slipping just far enough into the cracks to be a fun surprise later. 

Not wanting to hover in Bucky’s room for longer than I had to, I had Steve follow me down to the kitchen. Steve flipped on the television and stood to watch the news for a moment before coming to join me in the kitchen. I put the kettle on and started the coffee, and then walked to grab some green grapes from the fridge. I rinsed them off, grabbed a clean dish towel to place the bag on, and then set them in the space between us. 

“So, how long are you staying this time?”

Steve pulled a barstool out from under the counter to sit across from me. He rested his head on his hand with a huff before grabbing a grape from the bag. 

“That obvious, huh?”

I narrowed my eyes at him, shooting him the most incredulous look I could muster.

“Right.”

“Any more obvious and the elephant in the room would be pink, Steven.”

He chortled, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” I grabbed a grape. “I enjoy whatever time I can get. But really.”

“I’ll leave after your birthday.”

I groaned, running a hand through my hair, “Don’t remind me.”

“How old is it this year? Sixty-seven?”

I lobbed a grape at him from across the counter, he caught it, and then bit into it. 

“Okay, rude, for one,” He grinned. “And two, you know I’m non-participating.”

His eyes narrowed with a smile, “I know you don’t celebrate. When we were living together in the apartment, you locked yourself in the bathroom for half the day.”

“I was meditating.”

“You were sulking.”

“I was being introspective,” I said, crossing my arms and leaning against the counter across from the island.

Steve raised an eyebrow and reached for another grape. “While blasting Ella Fitzgerald?”

“She helps me think.”

“The neighbors left notes; they were so concerned.”

I chuckled, and Steve laughed alongside me for a moment. “Do you remember the one from Mrs.Sylvie?”

“I love Ella as much as the next girl, but Steven, darling, you need to take that one outside more.” He quoted her, chest still heaving with a light laughter. “She was great. Did you keep in touch with her?”

“I did,” I responded, taking in a deep breath. Mrs. Sylvie, a truly remarkable soul, had lived in the apartment above Steve and me before I moved out of New York City. She was about eighty-eight when she passed away last year. She and her husband, John, loved Steve. They would always wish us the best in our new house, which never failed to bring a smile to my face. How peculiar an idea, falling for a patient.

There was quiet around us before the kettle started hissing on the stove, and the coffee finished its program. The floor near the stairs creaked, and I looked up to see Bucky standing in the living room. His hair, although brushed back, was still damp and starting to fall towards his face. His warn grey t-shirt was dappled with dark spots from where his hair had dripped. 

“You alright?” Steve asked, spinning around in his chair. I pulled mugs out and filled them as Bucky walked to stand next to me at the counter. There was some quiet before his response.

“Better now,” he sighed, taking a sip of his coffee without putting any sugar in it. “Thanks.”

We sat quietly for a while, each of us continuing to pick off the grapes. The TV that Steve had left on in the other room made for some quiet background noise as we stood around. 

“So,” Steve reached for the last grape in the bag, “What’s on the docket for today?”

“I have to head to town to take care of a few things, but that shouldn't take long,” I shrugged, moving to refill their mugs. 

“Bucky?” Steve asked.

“Just trying not to punch any more walls.” Great plan. Best plan.

“Do you want something to busy your hands with?” I asked, sipping from my mug and watching him from over the rim. 

His eyes narrowed, unsure of how to answer, “Maybe?”

“We’ll need firewood soon if you and Steve want to go play lumberjacks for the day.”

“We’ll take a look out back.”

I turned to put more honey into my tea. The adrenaline rush that early in the morning took it out of me. Perhaps I would have been better off switching to coffee. “Well, if we’re all officially awake now, we may as well have something more substantial than grapes.”

“Didn’t you say something about baking last night?”

“You mean when I was half-asleep in my chair, being lured into making banana bread?” 

“I’m just saying, they looked ripe to me.” He put his hands up in mock surrender. 

I rolled my eyes and grabbed the bananas out of the basket by the sink, “Fine. But you two are on mashing duty.”

Bucky let out a low breath that might have been a laugh, and Steve grinned as he grabbed the bananas from my hand. I passed out bowls and spoons to the two of them. 

Steve took to mashing as if he were working through something. Elbow up, a pinch between his brows. Bucky approached his task with a much more analytical edge—if one could be analytical about mashing bananas, I guess. His movement always seemed calculated, thought out, and oddly precise. Watching him interact with flatware had a way of sending a shiver up my spine. 

“I used to cook a lot more,” I said offhandedly as I sifted the flour. “When I lived in New York proper.”

“You don’t miss the city?” Bucky asked, his voice low.

“Sometimes,” I admitted. “I miss the noise of New York sometimes. How close everything was. But the quiet here… I needed it. Eventually, the quiet started feeling more like company instead of punishment.”

That earned me a glance from both of them. I didn’t clarify. I didn’t have to.

“Sounds lonely,” Bucky murmured. He quietly slid over his bowl. 

“Not always,” I mused. “Being alone and being lonely aren’t the same thing.”

There was a brief pause as they both thought over what I said. 

Steve looked over at him. “The doctor has always liked her solitude. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that.” He glanced up at me briefly, as if we were both in on a joke.

“And yet here we are,” I said, tipping the batter into a blue glass bread dish. “Turning all of that quiet into a high-functioning mess.”

Steve raised his coffee mug in mock cheers, “To high-functioning messes.” I clinked with the corner of the bread loaf pan before opening the oven and sliding in the dish. 

A smirk pulled at the corner of Bucky’s mouth. “Could be worse.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” I started an egg-shaped kitchen timer, “Just wait until I rope Steve into yard work.”

Bucky smiled. It was small and fleeting, but genuine. 

The screen door creaked as Steve stepped out onto the back porch, fresh cup of coffee in hand. I followed close behind him, pulling the sleeves of my crewneck over my hands. It hadn’t started to get cold yet, but the air in the mornings had a certain crispness to it. It came to kiss the skin on my cheeks as we walked out onto the lawn. Bucky trailed behind us, quiet, eyes scanning the trees as they swayed ever so slightly past the garden wall. 

The light was still soft. The sun was barely starting to send golden rays to brush the tops of the maple trees, and dew still clung to the tips of the long grass that grew along the brick wall. 

“I always forget how good it smells out here,” Steve said, settling into a Ratan chair that sat close to the edge of the porch. He stretched his legs out with a sigh and then took a deep breath in through his nose. 

“It’s the jasmine,” I said, leaning against the railing and looking out past the wall and into the trees. “It opens early in the day this time of year. You probably got here just in time.”

Bucky didn’t chime in on our conversation. Instead, he stepped off the porch and walked a little ways into the yard towards the last of the summer tomatoes, which hung heavy and split at the edges. He crouched between two of the rows, brushing a thumb over the leaves of a rosemary bush that had started to get quite large. 

“He likes to pretend that he doesn’t care,” Steve muttered into his coffee cup, “but he’s already cataloging every single plant.”

“I can hear you,” Bucky said, not turning his attention away from the rosemary. 

Steve grinned, leaning forward to put his mug on the railing near where I was resting. I watched as Bucky stood again, brushing his hands against the fabric over his thighs. He wandered a bit further past the garden beds and under the canopy of a large black cherry tree that sat proudly at the edge of the wall. Behind it, the bricks had started to crumble, the roots had disrupted them enough that some particularly nasty weather last summer was all it took to knock a section to the dirt below. 

“He sleeps so lightly,” I said, almost in a whisper to Steve. Bucky was out of earshot, but I didn’t want to chance it. “Even before this morning, I’ll come down for breakfast and he’ll appear shortly after, looking like he had been up for hours.”

Steve nodded slowly, “When we were in Wakanda, in all that quiet, he kept an ear out. It takes a lot to get someone's brain to do that; it's not something you let go of easily. It’ll get better.”

“You sure?”

“I think it’s already starting to.”

I turned to look at him, eyes trained on his, wondering what he saw that I hadn’t noticed yet. 

He tilted his head towards Bucky. He stood out on the lawn under the cherry, looking up through the canopy, his shoulders were relaxed, and I watched as they rose in a deep breath. 

“He wouldn’t be out here if he didn’t want to be. Wouldn’t be touching the rosemary. Or standing under your tree.”

The smell of the banana bread started to waft out to us through the screen door, and the kettle’s whistle drew my attention away from the lawn. Steve got up to step inside, and I walked out onto the grass out past the garden beds, and Bucky turned slightly at the sound of my footfall. 

“I used to sit under this tree for hours when I first bought the place,” I said. “And just exist under it for a while.”

He gave a slight nod, “Feels solid. Quiet in a way I could see you being into.”

I grinned, and Bucky shot me a smirk before looking back up at the leaves. Bottles and wind chimes hung from some of the branches. The old owners had strung them up, and I had added a couple over the years. The light has a beautiful way of catching the light of the glass, and dancing like it had been caught in the empty bottle. They were shades of blue, clear, or even green.  We stood there for a moment, the distant sound of birdsong and cicadas as they started waking up. Eventually, Steve joined us, clutching what had to be his third cup of coffee like it was a vital organ. 

“Bread's done,” he grinned.

We gathered around the old table on the porch. The table had long since seen better days. Its thick coat of dark green paint had started to flake away, and at some point in the past, it had been a home for the carpenter bees. I had laid a tablecloth over the surface to prevent any paint chips from getting on the food. The wood above us had been painted a light blue at some point in the past, and it, too, had begun to show its age. 

I wrapped the warm loaf in a clean tea towel and carried it outside. Steve and Bucky followed behind me with their plates of eggs, sliced avocado, and butter. Steve, who had tried to pour yet another cup of coffee while we were inside the house, was sipping tea this time after I expressed some concern.

Bucky set my plate down for me at the table across from his before going back inside to grab his mug. He, too, had switched over to tea. 

He reached out, steady fingers coming with a knife in hand to cut the loaf. The crust gave way with a satisfying crunch, and as it fell over into the plate, steam from its middle billowed upwards. He handed me the first piece without saying a word.

“Thank you,” I said, meeting his eyes briefly before reaching for the butter. 

Steve had already tucked into his breakfast, almost ravaging it like he hadn't eaten in days. 

“You always make this the same way?” Bucky asked, half a piece of banana bread in his hand. He looked it over before catching my eye.

“Same basic recipe,” I said. “But I change it depending on what’s in the pantry. There’s a farmers or an open-air market every week, so I added the pecans I grabbed while I was there, and some extra vanilla.”

Bucky took a bite and nodded. “It’s good.”
He was quiet after that, and I knew I wasn’t going to get much more out of him in front of an audience. 

The birds had begun to get louder as the sun continued to rise. The world around us started to warm up, and I watched as the sun sent harsher rays to reflect off the dew, speckling little dots of yellow across the lawn. Bucky looked out at the tree, chewing slowly, weighing something in his head. 

“I get it,” He said, and I felt my eyebrows come together in confusion. He continued, clarifying himself, “Why you stayed.”

His voice was low, almost spoken absentmindedly. Steve’s eyes glanced back and forth between the two of us for a moment, but he didn’t press. 

Eventually, we started to pick everything up. Steve and Bucky helped to grab the big stuff, plates, and dishes as I brought the tablecloth into the laundry room to put it in the washing machine. The machine rumbled to life for a moment as it began to fill with water, and I stepped to the side to take clothes out of the dryer. Folding them, I laid them on top of the dryer. They filled the room with a comfortable, almost lavender-like scent I had grown accustomed to. 

I looked out of the small window in the laundry room. The waves in the glass obstructed the view a little, but I looked out at the lawn and the cherry tree before pulling in another deep breath, holding it until it started to burn. 

Chapter Text

New York, 2012

I made my way up to the roof after ending Coulson’s call. The plane that they had sent for me was already there waiting for me when I opened the door to the landing pad. An aircraft I had never seen this close up before sat with part of its wings folded down. Its propeller blades spun lazily in their housing, but it was still enough to kick sediment around on the roof. The pilot escorted me inside the hull before quickly preparing for some safety protocols. 

I was by no means accustomed to doing field work; in fact, I don’t know if they had ever pulled me out of the office like this. Being stationed primarily in a building from the 60s also didn’t help the whiplash that came with being surrounded by tech on all sides of me. 

Once I was inside and situated, the pilot started our ascent from the building. The pressure change was a lovely addition to the migraine I was nursing, and the sheer thought of our height sent my heartbeat to my ears. I clenched my teeth and waited for the ride to be over. 

“Alright, Dr. Amherst, we're descending to the Helicarrier.”

“Awesome.” I mustered out a smile as my stomach flipped. It had been twenty minutes since our takeoff, and I had gotten used to the feeling of flying, but I wouldn’t say the whole situation was fun. 

The plane jostled as we touched down, and I reached into my bag to pull out a pair of sunglasses. The thin, tortoiseshell frames pinched up into a cat-eye. I knew the sun would be a jarring contrast to the dark hull.

The door lowered itself shortly after we touched down, and the Helicarrier stretched out before us. A concrete structure bustling with activity as other planes landed and took off. People were rushing to prepare for something I was not yet aware of. I stepped out of the plane, and continued to look around, off in the distance I could see a group of civilians chatting and exchanging greetings. A redhead, a brunette, and Steven? 

“Dr.Amherst! I’m glad you could make it.” Coulson’s voice shouted over the hum of the plane's blades slowing down. 

“Make it to what exactly?”

“Why don't we walk and talk? It’s going to get pretty windy out here in a moment.”

“Oh, God.” I groaned. “Coulson, you know how I feel about heights.”

“Sorry, Doctor.” He pressed his lips together. “Why don’t you follow me inside?”

I sighed and scrunched my face for a moment before taking in a breath and following him. I steadied my expression, taking a moment to relax my brows as though the Helicarrier could smell fear. 

“So, Coulson, why am I here?” I asked. The elevator doors had closed around us, and Coulson seemed taken aback by my change in demeanor. My spine had straightened back out, and my stomach was still flipping, but I refused to let someone else see that it had bothered me in the first place. 

He hesitated for a moment, looking me over before looking back at the elevator doors in front of us. “You’re being tasked with observing Dr.Banner.”

“You could have gotten any regular S.H.I.E.L.D. shrink to do that. Why me?”

“Your Fury’s favorite, Doctor.”

“He tell you to say that? ‘Cause it’s not true. Why am I here? Really.”

“There was a security breach at one of our research facilities,” he said, his voice tightening slightly. “An event involving the Tesseract.”

“You mean the one Captain Rogers nearly died for?” I asked. It still felt strange calling him that. He lived in my apartment. Coulson knew that, but it would be best if I got used to pretending like I didn’t know him until I understood the nature of the assignment.

“Yes,” Coulson said. “Under experimental conditions, the Tesseract generated a stable wormhole. We have reason to believe it was manipulated remotely by an extraterrestrial entity of considerable power. A god.”

“A god?” I asked.

Coulson hesitated. “That’s one interpretation. Are you religious?”

I shot him a look.

“Loki,” he clarified. “A figure from Norse mythology. He came through the portal, compromised two of our operatives—Clint Barton, a highly-trained field agent, and Dr. Erik Selvig, our lead astrophysicist on the project. They’re now considered missing and hostile.”

“Compromised how?” I asked, turning toward Coulson just as the elevator doors opened in front of us. He stepped forward with me, his face unreadable, one I had seen him wear before. 

“Mentally influenced,” He said at last. “Possibly full neural override. Barton and Selvig were operating under Loki’s directives with no observable resistance. It’s unclear how much of their original cognition remains intact.”

I mulled that information over in my head as we approached the bridge. A monster of a room that hummed with people and the clacking of keyboards. Screens around us were feeding their agents information as we rose into the sky. I tried not to look out the massive wall of windows before us. 

Fury stood at the front of a platform. Glass panels of information on either side of him as he looked out beyond the windows. The three civilians I had seen on the landing strip were also present, although if Steve were part of that group, they were far from civilian. I recognized Natasha once I got closer to her. The Black Widow had cut her hair since I had seen her; it was still that fresh blood color, but now it came to rest around her jaw. 

That led me to believe that the last among them was Dr. Banner. I had never met him in person, but Fury had me work on his file a long time ago. Even then, he looked different now—older, maybe? He was on the other side of the room, wringing his hands together, trying to make himself look smaller. 

As I continued looking around, I noticed that, comparatively, I stuck out like a sore thumb. All of the agents had been dressed casually or in some tactical get-up. I pulled at the high, starched collar of my blouse. As I looked out at everyone else, it felt more like a dog collar than a piece of clothing. Had I known I would be out on an assessment, I would have dressed…for comfort? Flexibility? I wasn’t a noncombatant. Banner is a doctor, and he makes his suit look comfortable—

“Fancy seeing you here, Doctor.” Steve’s voice came out just loud enough for me to hear him. He had come up beside me, keeping some distance, but was still close enough that I could smell the leather of his jacket.

“I’m here on assignment.”

“Is that why you look so uptight?”

I shot him a look, keeping my eyes trained in front, “You’re making it quite obvious that we know each other.”

“You don’t trust them?”

“You do?” I shook my head. “We can talk about it later.”

I broke away from our conversation and turned to walk over to Coulson, who had been clutching a file closely to his chest as things started to get settled. 

“Would I be able to set up an office somewhere? I need to get some things ready before I’m ready to interact with Dr.Banner.”

“Yes, we have one waiting for you,” he started walking back towards the elevator that we had initially entered through. The sound of my heels echoed as I followed closely behind him. “We hooked up the computer to sync with your station back at the office.”

“Perfect, thank you.”

I set up the space they gave me to make it as comfortable as possible. I was glad it didn’t have any windows to the outside of the ship; instead, light came in from the lights in the hallway. The entire wall that faced the hallway, and the door too, for that matter, had been made out of a thick pane of glass. Now and then, people would walk by and give me a look through the door, but for the most part, I was undisturbed. 

Steve had been sent out on a retrieval mission in Germany, and I spent my time prepping a file on Dr.Banner and also reading through the rest of the individuals on assignment. I don’t bother with Steve’s file. I had his information on a drive at home and a notebook to write his observations down in. Although I had to report findings to S.H.I.E.L.D., they didn’t need to know everything I had learned about the captain. He had earned some privacy, and as his friend, I was in a position to offer it to him. It's best not to have everything you are picked apart by a government agency. Only the concerning things. 

I did brush up on my Norse mythology, not that I thought it would help too much. When I was made aware of the arrivals on the bridge, I made my way up. I watched the group closely, leaning against the railing next to Agent Hill. They had brought Loki in successfully, and I caught the tail end of his interview with Fury. A nasty piece of work, in my opinion. 

Stark swaggered his way in eventually and started chatting with Banner about something that far outreached my pay grade. In all fairness, I hadn’t tried to follow it all that closely. Steve’s eyes met mine every so often, and I tried my best not to shift my face as I continued to watch. 

I sat in silence, watching them. It wasn’t until Banner and Stark left that I relaxed my posture a bit. I drew a breath into my lungs and turned to look around the room, but was met with a pair of bright blue eyes staring a little too intensely into mine for my liking. 

“Mid-guardian,” Thor started, his eyes narrowing as they looked into mine. Steve shifted in his seat at the edge of my field of view. “I didn’t know there were seers on this planet.”

“I’m sorry, seers?” 

“I would not miss the eyes of Heimdall!”

“Umm, I still don’t quite understand what you're talking about.” I felt my face pinch together in tight confusion. 

“The yellow of your eyes,” He continued when my face didn’t change. “Although they aren't quite as bright. My mistake, Mid-guardian.”

“I’m Dr. Amherst, and it’s alright.” I stuck out my hand, and he took it to give it one hearty shake before letting his hand fall back to his side. Eyes still piercing into mine. 

“Dr. Amherst, I am Thor Odinson.”

“Pleasure to meet you. I’m going to go ahead and follow Dr.Banner, but it was a pleasure, truly.”

Walking towards the research lab where Banner was stationed, I replayed my previous interaction in my head. No wonder this guy's brother wanted to take over the world. What kind of crazy environment were they raised in? Passages of their mythos flashed in my head, and it almost started to make sense. 

I looked through the glass window of the door and saw Stark’s mess slowly being set up across the room. I typed in my code, and the door slid open with a satisfying hiss. A soft rock song I wasn’t paying close enough attention to was playing quietly when I walked in.

“Can I help you?” Dr.Banner looked at me through one of the glass screens before pushing it out of his view and giving me a sheepish smirk.

“I hope so. I’m Dr. Magnolia Amherst; I specialize in abnormal psychology. S.H.I.E.L.D. thought I might have some insights into our Asgardian guest.” And you. I pressed my lips into as pleasant a smile as I could muster as I looked past him through the windows. The Helicarrier has too many windows. 

He waved me in, “Sure. Sorry—wasn’t expecting company. Most people started steering clear of this end of the carrier.”

I walked further into the lab; my heels continued to strike hard against the floor. “I’m not most people.”

“Careful with that one, she walks like someone who’s already read your file.”

I didn’t turn to face Stark as he spoke, keeping my eyes trained on Dr. Banner for a moment, “I helped write your file.” I gave him a wink before turning to evaluate the rest of the space. The boxes of Stark tech were stacked across the room, and Tony was leaning into an access panel, hooking things into the wall. Loki’s weapon sat on a long desk, its stone glowing a devilish blue by the window. 

I could feel something coming off of it in waves. Energy akin to the ebb and flow of breathing resonated deep in my chest. 

“You look a little young for a doctor.” 

“Thank you.”

Stark shot me a glance, and then cocked his head to the side as he looked me over. 

“Amherst.” Banner paused. “You wrote that paper on emergent cognitive perception in post-traumatic states. You referenced my early neurobiological studies — the pre-Gamma ones.”

“Your work on gamma-influenced neural elasticity was… foundational, to be honest. I adapted some of your projections when modeling how subconscious constructs might manifest in heightened states. Fear. Rage. Sublimated guilt.” I took a breath. “Repressed memories.” 

Banner came around the desk and leaned against it with an amused look on his face. “And S.H.I.E.L.D brought you in to…to profile Loki?”

“That’s what Fury’s asking me to do. Unofficially, I think it's because I can normally see past people claiming to be gods.”

“And what do you see when you look at him?” Stark asked, and I turned to look his way. 

“A drowning man pretending he built the ocean.”

A low whistle came from his mouth as he tapped the screen before him. 

“If he’s got an army, then he must have a cause that resonates with enough individuals that it pulls numbers, and I don’t see ‘I really hate my brother’ cutting it. There has to be something with more leverage and more to gain out there.”

“You must be an only child,” Stark commented, and I turned my attention back to Banner. “Amherst.” Stark Paused. “Why does your last name sound so familiar?”

“Dr. Banner, you hinted at a theory in your earlier work. That the mind might exceed the brain’s physical limitations under stress, that telekinetic phenomena weren’t magic, but neurological feedback loops made manifest.”

“It was speculative. S.H.I.E.L.D. snuffed it out and buried it before it got far.”

“I’m not afraid of digging, Dr. Banner.”

His eyes narrowed a bit, and a smirk crept up to his lips,” You’re not just a shrink, are you?”

“No. No. I also play a mean game of golf.”

Banner chuckled, a quick press of air from his nose, and Stark chimed in from behind me, “Fury sure knows how to pick his secrets.”

The two of them watched as I walked behind the desk where the weapon was lounging. “Have you two gotten any readings on this thing, yet?”

“Some,” Banner started as he pulled one of the screens closer for me. “We’re still unpacking some more equipment.”

I bent down toward the stone in the center, keeping my hands clasped behind my back. “Have you noticed fluctuations in the biofeedback from the scepter? There's a… pressure. Not quite electromagnetic. But psychological. Subtle. Like it’s breathing.” 

“You can tell all that from a line graph?” Stark asked, pulling a segment of equipment out of a box.”

I straightened back up. “I can tell that from being in the room with it.”

Banner frowned. “You’re sensitive to it?”

“I’ve spent a great deal of time working with minds that didn’t want to be studied. I know the shape of something trying to hide.”

A silence befell the room, and I realized I may have said too much. 

“Looks like S.H.I.E.L.D. has been hiding their very own Casandra under our nose.”

“I can’t see the future, Mr. Stark, only what’s in front of me, but if I could, I would hope you heed my warning before the walls come down.” I straightened my blazer sleeve and looked over to Banner, whose expression had shifted to concern as I spoke. 

After a moment, Banner said, “Have you worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. long?”

“A while. They usually bring me in when the line between man and monster starts to run together. Not unlike your situation, Dr. Banner.” I had been quite upset when they hadn’t asked me to act on Banner’s case in any capacity beyond his file, but I understood them not wanting me to trigger anything that would leave me in a room with the Hulk. 

“And what do you do when Mr. Hyde wins?”

“I ask him what he remembers.” I shot Stark a cold look and walked out from behind the desk, leaving Loki’s weapon behind me. 

I turned to give Banner a softer look, “Thank you for your earlier work, Dr. Banner. It gave me language when mine failed.”

I walked towards the door. “Good luck, you two,” I called out before the door closed. Turning to walk back to my office, I saw a familiar blond head of hair approaching. Steve somehow made walking alone look like a march towards battle. I walked in his direction for a moment until we met in the middle. 

“Everything alright in there?” He let out a breath, leaning against the railing for a moment. It felt like an attempt to get closer to my eye level. 

“Depends on who you ask.”

“I’m asking you.” He was a little more curt than he usually was, but I decided not to press it. 

“I have a way of making people suspicious of me, but they seem to be getting along with each other, which is nice. You ever try explaining a sense of dread to people who think in ones and zeros?”

“More than you’d assume.”

A smile pulled at the corner of my lips for a moment before I continued, “There’s something off about that weapon.”

“The scepter?”

“Yeah, it’s like when you’re watching it…it’s watching back. Like a game of hide and seek with a panther in the dark. It doesn’t want to be found, nor understood. It feels like it’s breathing something toxic. It wants to pounce.”

Steve was quiet for a moment, letting some quiet come between us, and only moving as a couple of agents walked down the hallway between us. I could still feel the rhythmic pulse of energy the scepter sent up my spine.

“Are you okay?” He asked after a while, his eyes searching mine.

“I’m fine,” I said, and flashed a quick smirk that faded after a moment. “There’s just something off about all of it. I feel like there are all of these pieces, and I’m trying to put them together, but I’m missing something. And I hate heights, Steven. And they put me on an airplane and then on this hunk of metal in the sky, and I want to be helpful, but I feel overdressed for an intelligence agency.”

“Nobody said you had to solve the mystery, and if you want to help, no one is going to stop you.” He looked down both sides of the hallway before taking me into a quick hug. Steve’s hugs were always a little tighter than they needed to be. “First missions are always hard, Doc. Maybe let someone else hold a piece of it. Just for a while.”

“Just don’t tell Fury. He’d write me up for being too sentimental.”

“You are exceptionally sentimental. But don’t worry if he asks about it, I'll follow it up with how you shoved me into a wall and stole my wallet.” He joked, and his lips pulled into a lopsided smile. 

“To steal what?” I gave a breathy laugh, feeling some weight lift off my shoulders. “Your copy of my credit card?”

“You gave me that for emergencies— I do have cash.”

“I hate carrying cash,” I laughed.

“You would be a terrible criminal.” He smiled. 

I straightened myself out again, drawing a deep breath into my lungs. “Sorry, I’m not normally able to lose my cool in front of my patients.”

“Then it's a good thing we're friends, Doctor.”

I smiled at him as I turned towards my office.  “Just do me a favor, soldier, don’t touch that scepter.”

Steve gave me a salute, shoulders straight, real patriotic. Comforting. 

Bucky had walked into the library an hour before we spoke to each other. I updated a paper file, scribbling extra notes here and there as I worked through the information. I had received it from Scott, my former coworker and pharmacist. The patient seemed to be a man in his early 60s who had convinced many people in West Texas that he was the second coming of Christ. 

Had Bucky not been in the room, I could have edited the file electronically, but I would have to digitize my notes later for the confidentiality of all involved. I looked over each patient with the same precision as the last, ensuring I marked any references I could recall for Scott’s later perusal. 

“Can I check out a book?” Bucky snapped me out of my data-induced trance, and my eyes took a second to adjust as they looked over to where he stood just inside the dip of the conversation pit. 

He held up my copy of The Great Gatsby when his eyes caught mine and flashed me a smirk. 

“Of course,” I said, slowly starting to stack the file back together. “As long as you don't use it to keep yourself from sleeping.”

“What if it’s too good to put down?” He walked over to the lounge chairs that he had helped me move before our first session. Sitting down in one and stretching his legs to the other lounge chair before looking at me. 

I cocked my head to the side and felt a smirk pull at the corner of my mouth. “I’m sure it will be.” I finished stacking up the papers, ensuring they were all in order before stashing them away in the top drawer of my desk. “Are you ready for your session today?”

“Thought you’d never ask.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, standing up to open the door to the study. “I got asked to consult on a case out of Texas.”

Bucky stood to follow me, leaving his book on the lounge chair. “I didn’t know you still had an active practice.”

I smiled, “It's a favor.”

The two of us made our way down into The Study, once again surrounded by the dark and cold. Bucky was less apprehensive about walking over to the platform this time. He watched me as I went around lighting the candles around us. Not as many as last time, but enough to see each other. 

“Did you feel any symptoms after the last time?” I asked, waving my match to snuff it out. There was a glass full of other spent matches on one of the platforms next to a collection of unlit candles, and I added that one to the collection. I watched it smoke, making sure it wouldn’t catch the whole lot on fire before turning my attention back to Bucky. 

“Some soreness,” He sighed. “But that could also be from Steve and me sparring.”

“No headaches?” I asked, coming to sit down across from him. 

“Ones that are out of the usual?”

“What do you mean?”

“Electroshock does something to a guy.” His lips pressed together in a tight, forced line. He ran his fingers through his hair, looking down at the space between us. 

I took a deep breath. “I can get you a prescription for them if you would like.”

He started shaking his head before I could finish, “No.” His voice was firm, but not unkind. Maybe a little scared. “I’m tired of not feeling like myself.”

I nodded, reaching over to pull a blanket over my lap. 

‘Tired of not feeling like myself,’

I mulled it over a bit, thinking of my time in S.H.I.E.L.D., that liminal state of being I was in with my medication, nights spent in that murky, suspended feeling of chemical calm. Numb but never peace, balanced but not present.

That same state, I’d been prepared to re-enter for him.

I didn’t say anything in response, opting instead to hold out my hand. He took it, and again my fingers came to rest against the pulse in his wrist. His eyes fluttered closed. My right hand tucked against his cheekbone, and I waited a moment before the familiar hum brought us into a memory as it played back. 

“You can open your eyes now.”

A cool breeze brushed against my skin, and I opened my eyes and started to look around us. We were on a stone bridge over a lazy river. Autumn had come to claim the landscape as her own. Rusted leaves bent down to the water's edge. Oranges, fiery reds, and even some purple mixed along the horizon as the sun set around us. I turned, looking out onto a much shorter New York City skyline. The memory around us was crisp in temperature, but also in detail, something he hadn’t revisited often, if at all. 

“Gapstow Bridge?” I questioned, continuing to look out at the trees.

“Yeah.” He sucked his teeth with a soft click, “I had a date.” He paused, eyes narrowing, lips pressing into a line, nodding lightly. His hands were in his pockets as he turned to look at the trees. “She stood me up.”

“So why this one?” I leaned against the wall of the bridge. Below us, the steam looked like it had started to flow backwards as the memory played in reverse, and then eventually it played out from the top again. 

“I didn’t think I was ready for a bad one.”

“Ready for you to go through it?” I paused. “Or ready for me to see it?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Both.”

I nodded, watching as leaves fell into the water below. 

“I waited for her for a while,” Bucky shifted his weight, the leather of his jacket creaking lightly. His face twitched at a smile, “She had red hair, too.”

I straightened and pulled myself up to sit on the stone wall, letting my feet dangle over the edge. He did the same, sitting close to my side at the bridge's apex. 

“I kept thinking there was a late train, or a miscommunication, and some part of me always wanted to believe people meant well, but she never came. I stayed until it got dark; it felt too pretty to leave.”

“Do you still feel like people mean well?” I turned to look at him for a moment. 

“Some people. You, Steve.”

I let that hang in the air for a moment. “I’m sorry she stood you up, Bucky.”

He ran a hand through his hair, tucking some behind his ear. The sun sent warm rays to reflect off his face, and still, as he looked out towards it, his eyes remained cold.

“Do you want to stay longer?” I asked.

He thought about it. His mouth opened and then closed again. When he finally answered, it was with a shrug. “I’m not sure. Part of me wants to go back.”

“And the other part?”

He hesitated, “Wishes it had been different.”

“Then stay— as long as it takes to see it differently. To gain whatever knowledge is out there in the trees.”

A sigh came deep from within his lungs as he took his hands out of his pockets to place them on the stone of the bridge below us. I covered it with mine, a warmth passing between, subtle, fleeting, human. Nothing about it seemed clinical, professional, or part of the job, and I silenced the part of my head that was screaming that this was crossing some line because, of course, it was. But I could offer comfort. 

“You know,” he spoke after a moment. “When you do that, do this whole memory thing, it’s not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?” I turned to face him more directly, one of my legs tucked under the other. 

“I don’t know,” he said. “Something colder. More invasive. It feels like…sharing. We’re not just watching it again.” He hesitated. “Like I’m letting you carry part of it.”

I thought about my past patients. The ones I had while I was at S.H.I.E.L.D., would they have thought the same things? Felt like I was taking weight off their shoulders by walking around in their mind? Forcing myself into their thoughts, peering into who they were and what they had done? I was lifting weights for Bucky, which I could feel—giving him some of the calm I had to share. I hadn’t actually helped anyone in a long time, not the ones who actually needed it. 

“You are,” my voice came out like a whisper. “That’s the whole point.” The memory rewound itself again. The stream flowed backward, and leaves lifted themselves up off the ground in a quiet flutter to reattach to their limbs. In the distance, a family walked backwards together, their child ran just out in front of them. The sun’s rays passed over us in waves, warming the dark fabric of my shirt. 

Bucky’s gaze stayed transfixed on the scene as it played through again. Leaves fell back down from the trees, the child and his parents laughed, a dog barked somewhere in the distance, and I could smell the sweetness of the trees as they swayed and creaked quietly like the house. The muscles of his jaw unclenched, and his chest pulled in a deep breath as his eyes closed for a moment.

The memory paused. Leaves stuck suspended in the air, the quiet rush of the water softened until it was no longer present, and the glints of light were a frozen reflection in the surface. 

“I think I’m ready to go,” he said eventually, cutting through the silence around us. 

I gave his hand one last squeeze before releasing it. “Alright.”

The rush sound started in my ears, and I watched as the color dropped out of the scene and faded. The bridge, the trees, and the water all turned black and white before dropping out completely. 

The two of us were in the room again. Dim light, quiet hissing of the candles, and the old blanket was still pulled over my lap. I could feel a shift, even there. 

His eyes opened eventually, piercing as always, but a little clearer. “Thanks.”

“You never have to thank me, Bucky. Not for this.”

Chapter Text

Sunday, I got dressed sometime around noon and readied myself to leave the house. I had greatly underestimated the calories required to keep two super soldiers alive, and my pantry was looking worse for wear. They had whittled me down to the things that were last resorts: crackers made with odd ingredients, condiments, and the protein pasta I had been meaning to throw out anyway. 

I grabbed a purse out of the closet as I walked out, the low heels of my slides clacked against the floor in my room as I opened my bedside table to pull out a flip phone. I was never much for being contacted outside of my office, but I had a cellphone for emergencies. Steve had the number.

The stairs creaked under my weight as I made my way downstairs. Steve and Bucky were chatting as they finished up with the dishes, and they both looked my way as I walked into the kitchen. 

“Do you guys need anything specific while I’m out?” I asked, reaching into the glass bowl by the fridge and pulling my wallet out. I opened it up briefly and confirmed that my driver's license and credit card were still inside before filing it away in my purse. 

“Not that I can think of,” Steve said, putting one final plate in the rack before shutting off the water. 

“Bucky?” I asked, leaning against the counter as I waited for an answer. His eyes narrowed for a moment as he thought over what I presumed were food options he knew about.

“Can I go with you?” 

Not what I was expecting. 

I cocked my head to the side a little, feeling my jaw wanting to fall open. “Steve?” I asked, not looking for him to give me a definitive answer, but rather some counsel on the decision. 

Steve glanced over at Bucky and then back to me as he walked to lean against the island between the two of us with a sigh. I don’t think he was worried, at least from what I could tell; maybe he had analyzed the news enough that he knew he was no longer at risk of being recognized. 

He gave a slight nod. “I think it’d be good for him. If you’re okay with it.”

“Free to leave so long as I ask.” Bucky’s eyes didn’t leave mine, and his little quote from his first night here was most definitely a jab, but there was something soft in his look for a moment. Hope maybe. Trust. 

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly as I debated my options. " Go get dressed.”

A smirk pulled at his lips as he moved to walk out of the kitchen. 

“But you are in charge of bringing the bags in the house,” I called after him as he made his way upstairs. 

“Sure thing, Doc.”

I waited a moment to hear the door to his room close before I turned my attention back to Steve. “That was…strange.”

“Were you expecting me to say no?”

“I wasn’t expecting him to ask.” There was a strange weight to that fact. It wasn’t that Bucky didn’t speak (he did, when he wanted to), but initiative? That was new and incredibly foreign. 

“I think he’s been getting restless,” Steve said, reaching forward to grab the dishtowel Bucky had left behind when he went upstairs and slung it over his shoulder. Far too tiny a towel to do that with, maybe far too tiny a towel for him to do that with? I didn’t say anything about it. “It’s hard to go from constant work for decades to having the tools taken away, and your quiet may get a little loud for someone who hasn’t had free time in that same amount of time.”

“Sounds like someone else I know.” I glanced at the stairs momentarily before grabbing a set of keys off the hook by the back door. I flipped them over in my hand. “Restless, I can handle. I just—“ I paused, looking back over to Steve. “I just don’t want him to get overwhelmed. I'm not sure how he’ll react out there.”

Steve nodded, thoughtful. “I know. But he asked.”

I was quiet, letting that hang there in the air between us. 

I signed, rubbing the back of my neck. “He did.”

“I think he’s starting to trust you,” Steve said, his voice quieter, more deliberate. 

I looked his way. “Are you sure it’s not just proximity? I am the one who makes sure there’s food in the house.”

“He feels safe with you, Doc. You don’t push. You let him come to you, it’s very refreshing, actually.”

I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “Sure. My cold gaze is so inviting of comfort and trust.”

“You know, for someone so good at reading everyone else, you sure do have a hard time seeing yourself.”

I thumbed over the ring holding the keys together, dropping my gaze for a moment. Tracing the grout lines, not quite sure what to do with the lump forming in my throat. I knew it wasn’t pride, but it wasn’t pity either—something of a mix of the two. 

“I’m sorry, Doc,” Steve filled the silence again when I didn’t respond. 

I took a breath in and turned to look at him quickly before looking to the stairs. “I can’t protect him from everything,” I murmured. 

Steve shook his head, “You don’t have to.”

Outside, a bird chirped near the edge of the porch and pecked at a crack in the foundation. The light that was cast onto the kitchen tile seemed almost delicate. I waited by the door, keys in hand, continuing to play with the silver jump ring that was holding a car key, along with a house key, and the label of which car it belonged to. Bucky moved upstairs, and although I was sure he was trying his best to be stealthy, the floorboards betrayed him now and then with a protesting creak.

It didn’t take very long for him to come down the stairs again, pulling down the sleeve of his shirt over his arm, and putting on a dark blue baseball cap, which I assumed was to shield his face partially, and his hair tucked behind his ears. Steve did the same thing, but I never got it; I could identify both of them in a crowd. Dark leather gloves covered his hands, and they groaned lightly as he flexed them, getting used to the feeling, I suppose. For someone trying their hardest not to be noticed, he had a way of making himself look the opposite of casual. 

He didn’t say anything once he reached the bottom of the stairs, just gave me a short nod like we had run errands together every day of the week. I pulled a breath into my lungs and opened the back door for the two of us. I didn’t fuss with the lock after it closed behind us, thinking about the fool who would find Captain America in the living room of a house they were trying to break into. 

On second thought. I turned quickly to open the door back up, lock the handle from inside, and then close it again. If he fought someone in my living room, I would be livid. Steve had given me a small nod when I peeked my head back in, some reassurance that I wasn’t being reckless. 

The sky out past the trees was overcast but not threatening rain, at least not for a couple of hours. The air outside was heavy, and the clouds that had made their way over to the house covered the midday sun. 

Bucky stayed close, but not uncomfortably so, as we walked along the brick path from the back porch to the carriage house. A building bricked in a similar tone to the house, but had been added later. The structure’s exterior was crawling with ivy I hadn’t had the mind to tame in some time. We approached one of the garage doors, and as I started to ready myself to lift it, Bucky bent down to lift it by the silver handle. 

“Thanks.”

He nodded. The door filed itself away above us, and I stepped into the polished concrete interior. The smell of gasoline and engine oil wafted out to us, and I made a note to open the doors after the rain that day. I walked further in and flicked on a light switch. The bulbs hummed for a second before clicking on with a soft plink. 

“…You collect these?” Bucky asked, his voice low but not accusatory. More surprised than anything else. Out in front of us were six cars, well, five cars, and the soviet era monstrosity of a vehicle my father acquired in the 60s that I wasn’t even sure I could get to move again if I tried. The others were more domestic— sort of. 

“You could say that,” I said, leaning up against the hood of a black Audi Q5. Bucky continued to look into the windows of a green 1964 Jaguar E-Type Coupe. “I drive them, I rotate sometimes depending on the weather, the mood. The silver Gullwing back there was one of my dad's, and that one,” I pointed to a dusty, red 1984 Audi Quattro whose rally lights were peaking out from where its tarp had fallen away, “was my first car. She likes to leak oil when she’s offended.” 

He was quiet for a moment, glaring at everything around him, and then he motioned towards the last car, which was fully covered with its tarp. “And that one?”

“A Porsche 911 sharing a tarp with a 1936 Harley Knucklehead.” 

Bucky turned to face me again, eyes narrowed, lips parted in confusion. “And you live alone?”

I shrugged, “Some stray cats come around sometimes.” I thumbed over the unlock button on the Q5’s key fob. “I like the quiet, I like the control, and I like to go fast.”

A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. “You’re not subtle about that.”

“I’m not trying to be, Sergeant.”

I walked to the driver's side of the Q5 and opened my door, and Bucky followed suit, hesitating for a moment, doing a visual sweep of the deep tan leather interior. Not of danger this time, but of personality. I saw him eye the stack of books in the footwell as he got in, making sure not to kick them on the way in. 

“Developmental Trauma.” He read off one of the spines. “Light reading.”

“Comes with the job.” I opened the sunglasses compartment, pulled out a narrow pair of cat-eye sunglasses, and opened the center console to retrieve a spare pair of Ray-Bans for Bucky. He examined them briefly before putting them on. He peered at me over the black frames for a moment before pushing them further up the bridge of his nose. 

I pressed the engine start button, and the Q5 turned over. I pulled my belt on and glanced over to him as I clicked the buckle into place. He was sitting stiffly, left hand resting awkwardly on his thigh like he didn’t quite trust himself not to break something. His other hand was curled loosely near the door, thumb brushing over the window controls. 

“You can adjust the seat if you need to,” I offered, looking in the back to see if I had forgotten to take anything out the last time I drove. “I know Steve’s legs are a mile and a half long.”

That earned the ghost of a smile. “It’s fine.”

As I pulled out of the garage, Bucky spoke again, “I thought you said you liked to go fast.”

I shot him a puzzled look.

“I've been in a police chase with one of these things.” His hand gestured in a sort of dismissive way—a blasé 'shoo shoo’ motion towards the dash.

“And?”

“I’m faster.”

I raised an eyebrow, peering at him over the frame of my glasses. “They obviously didn’t have it in sport mode,” I said.

We pulled onto the brick driveway and started our drive into town. The trees of the estate passed for a while before Bucky leaned forward and grabbed the smallest of the books off the stack in the footwell. He turned it over in his hands for a moment. “You always had plans to be a shrink?”

I paused, the phrasing catching me off guard. “I’m a psychiatrist,” I corrected gently. “But, no. At one point, I wanted to be an artist, and before that, a pianist.”

There was a pause as he thought that over. “What changed?”

“Sometimes the universe tells you what you’re cut out to be.”

I slowed as we crossed the bridge marking the edge of my property. Houses started getting closer together, with fewer trees as buffers between them. Their construction had been similar to the estate, with the same dark red brick and slate roofs. Most were lighter colors, and some had add-ons that got them closer to their neighbors. I assumed those were put in some time before the mid-80s. The town hall took the historic preservation of their newly appointed antique town very seriously.

“You’re full of questions today,” I commented as we approached a red light. 

He shrugged, keeping his eyes on the road as I looked over, “You know everything about me. Thought it was fair I learned something about you.” 

I didn’t answer at first, returning my eyes to the light as it turned green. The road ahead curved slightly as we passed a cluster of homes, newer construction than the others, but still turn-of-the-century. Kids were out playing with sidewalk chalk under the shade of an oak tree, and an older man who had paused mowing his lawn to speak with his wife on his porch. 

“I don’t know everything about you, Bucky,” I said. “Your file doesn’t really tell me who you are. I let you show me.”

He considered that, biting the inside of his cheek before responding, ”It’s still one more file than what I’ve got to work with.”

I felt a pull at the corner of my mouth, and I glanced over at him to see that he didn’t look nearly as guarded as he did when we left the house. He looked…open? Wary, most definitely, but open.

“Well,” I said softly. “Maybe today we can even the score a bit.”

After a quiet moment, he piped up, “What’s your favorite color?”

“Is that how you profile people?”

“No.” He crossed his arms, and a little glint of silver glinted in the light from the new gap between his sleeve and the glove he was wearing. 

As I had hoped, the town's main strip was cleared out. Shops sat shoulder to shoulder with one another, and although some of them were open, they didn’t have many people in them, if at all. 

“It’s Red, by the way.” 

“What?”

“You asked me my favorite color,” I paused. “It's red.”

I turned off Main onto a connecting branch to pull into a parking lot behind a segment of the block of buildings we had just passed. I parked in one of the lined spots closest to the door. 

“It shouldn’t be crowded,” I said, killing the ignition. “I like to go when most of the town is at church: less noise, fewer people.”

He gave me a quick nod, hand moving for the door latch. “Good.” He paused, “Are you religious?” 

My eyes narrowed for a moment, “No.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie, but I was so incredibly confused as to why he asked that it came out like one. Too blunt. The inkling of ‘hey, there’s a story there, ’ and I knew that I would make an appearance next month after mass, but that was in no way a regular occurrence. I pulled my door open and hesitated for a moment as I stood beside the car. “If at any point you want to leave, just say the word and we'll drop the cart and go.”

He turned to me, taking his sunglasses off and placing them on the bill of his hat, his eyes coming to meet mine. “I’m not a kid, Dr. Amherst.”

My eyes met his, and I nodded. “I know.”

His jaw shifted slightly like he was fighting back some retort, but he didn’t say anything, instead choosing to turn his attention to the glass doors in front of the car. I started towards them, and Bucky reached forward to grab the door before I could open it myself. 

The grocery store had expanded over time, taking up more and more of the storefronts that had previously operated here. The front of the building still had all of the original doors and windows of the previous shops. Most of the larger windows still had their original hand-painted lettering done by some of the artisans in town, though the likes of Mr.Transistor and Mellow Music had long since closed down. Most doors didn’t open anymore, but they kept their hardware and brass door numbers on the outside. The city council had made an effort to preserve the historic strip but still provide a large modern selection of food for the people who loved being close to the town square.

Walking in, the main entrance from the strip was straight ahead of us, and the registers and the liquor section were to our right. Bucky pulled one of the carts free from its line and leaned his elbows on the handle. He pushed the child’s seat down, and I placed my bag down, and his hand, although it looked like he was letting his arms rest lazily, rested close enough to defend it if it were threatened. 

He pushed the cart next to me as we walked, his eyes surveying the aisle signage and the sparse number of people walking into and out of sections, calculating, categorizing. There was no visible panic, no tension in his shoulders, at least no extra tension than the constant vigilance he usually wore. I kept my pace steady, unhurried as we began to weave into the store.

He didn’t speak for the first few minutes; he just eyed me as I walked through the produce section and watched me pick up a bunch of bananas and turn them over in my hands.

“You eat a lot of fruit?” Bucky asked, tone even. 

You’ve been at my house for going on three weeks, and you’re questioning my fruit intake? I quirked a brow, moving to place the bananas in the top section of the basket, my hand nearly brushing his.

His shoulders picked up in a shrug, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Just observing.”

“Steve likes to put them in the back of the fridge, and I pretend like I forgot about them, and then we usually use them for banana bread,” I said, thinking back to last week and the times before that. 

I moved to the stacked oranges and grabbed a paper bag from the holder. Bucky grabbed one off the top and turned it over in his hands. “You pretend to forget?”

I held the open bag out to him, and he placed the orange inside. I turned my attention back to the stack. “He thinks he’s being mischievous, but I buy them for banana bread anyway.”

He didn’t say anything in response, but he did lend a hand in picking out more of the oranges and putting them in the bag. I folded the top and placed them next to the bananas in the basket. I paused momentarily, still very close to Bucky, to reach into my bag and pull out a folded list. I started towards the dry goods section as I looked over it, and Bucky followed close behind, leaning in closer to read over my shoulder. 

“Handwriting’s neat,” he chimed after a moment. 

“I had to learn to make it very legible,” I replied, scanning the rice selection. “The teachers at my school, and later my tutors, would take a yardstick to my knuckles if they couldn’t read my papers, and you really shouldn’t have illegible notes in a medical file.”

His eyes narrowed, and his eyes lingered on my hands for a moment too long. “You ever mess one up?” He asked. “A file?”

I caught his eyes, my head cocked lightly to the side. He wasn’t trying to interrogate or trap me in the question. No, this seemed like a genuine interest more than anything. 

“I’ve been wrong before. Not often, but it happens. The trick is to let go of your ego, admit fault, and correct course before someone gets hurt.”

He nodded slowly, drawing a breath into his lungs. “You ever get too close? To a patient?”

I paused, my hand hovering over the scoop to the basmati container. That wasn’t casual. He noticed my hesitation and turned his gaze, the jasmine suddenly becoming very interesting. 

“I’ve had patients become attached,” I said, continuing to scoop the rice into a bag. “Transference happens. It’s part of the job. I keep boundaries.” 

He hesitated for a long moment. A comment danced behind his eyes, and I couldn’t quite decipher it. His eyes seemed especially pointed with whatever thought he was holding back. “You’re good at not answering questions.”

“You noticed.” I give you that same liberty, Barnes.

A voice chimed from the other end of the aisle, shifting the tension to the tall blonde woman who approached us. “Magnolia!”

“Joanna Sellers.” I took a deep breath before turning around to face her fully. Bucky straightened up but kept his hand wrapped tightly around the basket’s handle, and I could feel the tension build past what he had cultivated with his question as he stood behind me. “Shouldn’t you be in mass?”

“Normally, yes!” She waved a hand at me in a posh, polished manner I had never seen her leave the house without. “Michael had a soccer game at 11, so we’re going at four.” She pushed a stray lock of hair behind her ear and shifted the loaf of organic bread that she was cradling in her arm like a baby. Her left hand was occupied with two avocados, and I don’t know that I had previously thought Joanna would have for breakfast, but Avocado toast seemed to fit the bill as I thought it over. Her eyes shifted past mine for a moment as she noticed Bucky standing behind me. Her eyes danced over him momentarily before a certain resolve washed over her face. 

“I don’t think we’ve met.” She side-stepped me and turned her full attention to Bucky, reaching her hand out, flashing a wide, bright smile. “I’m Joanna Sellers.”

“James Beckett,” Bucky spoke up from behind me. Funny choice. I held my poker face as well as I could as the alias came from his lips, and although it was strained, it was well-practiced. He didn’t lie often, I suspected. Not like this. Not with strangers who made politeness a quiet competition. The slightest amount of color rose onto Joanna’s porcelain complexion. 

“James Beckett.” She repeated back to him, a sort of smirk crept to her lips as she tried his ‘name’ out in her mouth for the first time, and I felt an uneasy feeling creep into my stomach as I realized what she was doing. Flirting with my patient in the supermarket? New low, even for her. “I don’t think I’ve heard that surname around here before. Are you visiting from out of town, James?”

I gave myself enough distance to be able to see both of them. Bucky’s eyes narrowed to something that looked like amusement as he sized her up. “Something like that.”

I watched for a moment as his stance shifted, now a little more calm-looking than before. It was subtle, but it had been a deliberate change. His body, I noticed as I turned, wasn’t tense like I thought it was before I could see him—not exactly, but it had been prepared. 

“I do love spotting new faces.” Joanna’s eyes flicked to mine briefly, something glinting behind them that I couldn’t quite nail down. “But it is nice to see Magnolia out and about.” She paused, eyes lingering on mine for a little longer than they should have and a little too narrowed for my liking. “She’s so rarely seen with company.” 

“She’s been kind enough to show me around,” Bucky said, his tone remaining present enough while being just enough of a curt answer to satisfy Joanna. The basket’s handle creaked lightly as he adjusted his grip. 

Joanna laughed, a delicate, almost musical sound that shot a chill up my spine. “Of course. Magnolia has always been very…civic-minded.”

“We were just picking up a few things for dinner.” I immediately turned my attention to the rice again before looking back at her. 

Joanna’s thin brows arched in what I think was meant to be a casual surprise, but she was very obviously intrigued. “How lovely.” She turned her attention back to Bucky. “Are you staying with Magnolia, then? Up at the estate?”

That did it. His eyes flicked to mine, just for a second. Not in panic, or even discomfort. Just confirmation. Letting me decide how much she got to know.

I stepped back into the conversation as naturally as possible. “He’s helping me with the grounds. A bit of restoration work before it gets too cold out. You know how temperamental old buildings get. There’s always something.” 

“Of course,” she said, though her expression faltered just slightly. Her lips pressed into a tighter line for a second before she smoothed them back out. “Well, if you need any recommendations for local spots, Magnolia knows the best ones.”

“Lucky me,” Bucky said, and this time his smile was genuine, low and amused, the kind that was at the tail end of mischief. 

Joanna tucked her hair behind her ear, not that any of it had fallen away. “Well, I won’t keep you any longer, Magnolia. We should catch up, though.”

My face pulled up in the most noncommittal smile I could muster. “Of course.”

She lingered for just a second too long as she gave Bucky one last once-over, something that came off as an evaluation, and then she turned with a swish of her coat. Her steps rang out like punctuation as she strode towards the register. Once she was out of view, I felt the tension in my shoulders and chest release, not fully, but I let myself take a deep breath. I could still smell the fruity scent of her perfume. Something that was entirely too sweet for something I’m sure she spent a pretty penny on. 

Bucky exhaled once through his nose as his hand adjusted his cap. “Friend of yours?” He had leaned his forearms back on the shopping cart handle and was staring through his lashes at me, his head cocked slightly to the side.

“Not even close.” I started towards the flower at the other end of the aisle, and I could hear the wheels of the cart squeak as Bucky followed behind me. A soft pop song was playing over the speakers, and I was suddenly aware of how it filled the silence that had crept around our conversation. At least it was keeping an awkward silence from forming. “She’s been trying to get me to sell the westernmost fifteen acres of the estate the entire time I’ve owned the house. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she pestered the old couple I bought it from before I got here.”

“What for?” One of Bucky’s eyebrows was quirked, and he was absentmindedly playing with the adjustment buckle of the shoulder strap on my bag. 

I straightened up and gave my best impression of the ‘one percenters' my father would invite to my childhood home. “To expand the community, James.” I cleared my throat, pretending to adjust a tie, and did a hand motion similar to the one he made in the car. “Town homes would improve the line of sight from the highway, don’t you agree, Old Sport?” 

A quick, stuttered laugh pulled its way out of his chest, and his mouth pulled into a lopsided grin. We continued to walk into the dairy section, and I pulled two cartons of milk off the shelf. The tension that had built up between us was starting to dissolve again. I wouldn’t have said to comfort, but the air seemed to be lighter, easier to navigate as he followed behind me. 

“She likes you,” I said without looking at him. My hands hovered near the canned tomatoes, looking over the labels for the low-sodium San Marzanos.

“Yeah?”

“She got that flush in her cheek. And she didn’t ask a single question about you, which means she filed you away in her head under interesting. She would probably have color-coded labels.”

He smiled faintly, watching the side of my face as I looked over the pasta options. “You always this suspicious?”

“You’re the super spy, and you’re not?” 

“Is that why you didn’t introduce me? Thought she would find me interesting?”

“You’re not a kid, remember?” I asked, recalling his quip from when we stepped out of the car. “You’re fully capable of introducing yourself, Mr. James Becket.”

That pulled another laugh out of him. “You noticed that, huh?” 

Noticed that? What kind of question is that? I know your name, Barnes. And what else was I supposed to be doing besides listening to your conversation? I’m not your handler, but I’m not going to pretend like the rice is the most interesting thing going on. “I noticed that you hesitated.” We had wandered into the bread aisle, and I saw the bright blue label of the bread Joanna had clutched in her arm. 

“An alias isn’t illegal, Doc.”

“No,” I said, pulling two loaves of bread from the stack and placing them under Bucky’s forearms in the top portion of the basket; the bananas peeked out from under them. He straightened up for a moment and let me put everything down before continuing to follow me without returning to his original position. “They’re usually reserved for one of two kinds of people: spies and men with outstanding warrants. And seeing as you're both…” My voice dropped low on that last part. 

His smirk faded just a touch, something thoughtful behind his eyes. “That bother you?”

“Not especially.” I turned to face him fully, clutching a package of pita bread. “Just means I’ve gotta’ keep the guest ledger in pencil.”

He nodded slowly. “Fair.”

I shot him a sideways look before turning my attention back to the shelves. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t charm my neighbors.”

A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth, and he leaned to put his forearms back on the bar of the shopping cart. “That get under your skin?” 

I froze, my eyes flicked over to his. My head turned slowly to face him better. Did that get under my skin? What had gotten into him? No. It hadn’t gotten under my skin, Barnes. What the hell kind of question is that? 

His hands shot up in mock surrender. “I’ll try to tone it down.” His smirk pulled tighter into that lopsided smile of his. 

My eyes pinched closed, and I could feel my eyebrows twitching with the tension of drawing them together so intensely. I all but had my hand up to pinch the bridge of my nose. “Sure,” I sighed.

Chapter Text

We made it through the self-checkout, but the girl at the register beside us caught my eye as I lifted the last bag from the carousel. She was maybe nineteen, with a septum ring and bright green eyes that peered in my direction through jet black bangs. Her name tag pinned through her shirt read Julia in a loopy black pen. There was a small heart over the I.

“Dr. Amherst!” She said brightly and moved to pull her earbud out. “My little brother keeps asking me about costumes for your Halloween party this year. Says he’s excited to scare a fireman.” A smile pulled at her lips, and she pushed part of her bangs behind her ear. I froze just long enough for her to notice. 

“Oh.” Her smile faltered. “I’m sorry. That was… It’s his favorite thing. He’s been talking about it since, like…July.” She was sheepish now, playing with the earbud that she had pulled out. I could barely hear the soft rock song that was being played through them. 

I could feel Bucky’s eyes boring holes into the side of my face as he leaned against the front of the basket. I forced a smile, but I could feel my stomach churning in on itself. “Tell him I’m still working on it. Just some logistics to figure out.”

“Sure! I mean— I know it’s gotta be a lot. My mom said the last people who lived there before used to throw it every year for, like, three decades or something? But yours are better. Way more creative. I don’t think I've ever seen that many jack-o-lanterns.”

“I’m glad you guys enjoy it,” I said, trying to keep my voice from tightening. “I’ll let you know.” I gave a wink. 

She gave us a cheery smile as we turned to leave, her eyes lingered on Bucky for a moment before she turned her attention back to her screen. He walked out in front of me and held the door open without a word. I stepped out into the heavy, grey light of the storm clouds that had miraculously held their rain up to this point. The bags rustled lightly with the wind that started picking up while we were in the store. 

“You’ve been throwing this party for how long?”

“Since my second year in the house, so…for two years now? But the couple before me? Since the Reagan Administration.” I could tell where this conversation was going, and I could feel that churning from earlier start again in my stomach. I rummaged around in my bag to press the button on the fob that lifted the back hatch. Bucky helped me load the bags into the back of the car. I could feel his next question bubbling under the surface. He brought the cart to the return, and I moved to get into the driver's seat. 

He tried to settle his jaw before he asked. “And you’re canceling it because of me?”

“I never said that.” I opened my door, and he looked over the hood at me. 

“But you were thinking it.” He opened the passenger door and leaned to look at me without getting in the car. I could feel a twinge of anger start to burn in my chest. 

My lips pressed into a tight line. Like a smile, but far from it. “Get in the car, Bucky.”

He hesitated, pursing his lips together. His lungs heaved in a deep breath before he conceded. He got in. The door closed a little more forcefully than he probably meant to.

I started the ignition and backed out of our spot. Bucky stayed quiet for the first few minutes as we passed the same houses we had seen on our way into town. The swell of purple had pulled everyone back inside. The first few drops of rain hit my windshield, and the wipers came on to brush them away. Bucky had been staring out the window, arms crossed, and I could tell that thoughts were swimming behind his eyes. 

“You shouldn’t cancel.” His voice was quiet, but not casual. He shifted in his seat, but he didn’t move to look towards me. 

I sighed, and my grip around the steering wheel tightened. “I didn’t say that I was.” 

“You didn’t have to.”

“I’m thinking about how to manage the situation,” I replied, trying desperately to keep my voice even. “I’m not canceling it out of pity. If I cancel it, it’s not out of pity. It’s not a pack of sixth graders coming to knock on the door for candy, it's involved—”

“You think I don’t know what I can handle?”

I pulled my eyes off the road and shot him a glare before returning them to look straight. We got stopped at the same light that caught us on the way in.

“I think it’s not fair to put you through an unnecessary trial. Not in a crowd. Not when there’s no real reason to push you like that.”

“Then don’t ask me to be a part of it. But don’t cancel it, either.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Sure it is. You’ve got a whole town full of people who show up to this thing every year. Kids are waiting for it. You’ve got… I dunno.” He gestured out the window, but still didn’t look at me. “A life. Something that’s yours. Don’t start giving pieces of it up just because I showed up.”

I stayed silent, navigating the winding curve past the old stone wall that marked the edge of the property. I could see the slate roof start to come into view from above the tree tops. The sky above it was dark, and I was surprised that the rain had only barely started to come down. I turned onto the bricks of the driveway and looked over to Bucky. He hadn’t really looked at me the whole ride, and now he was fully avoiding my gaze. 

Giving up pieces of my life? The thought swam around in my mind, and the ghost of a familiar sensation brushed across my knuckles and settled deep into my bones.

What a life to give up pieces of. I had come to terms with living an atypical existence since the second grade, and I had been ready to give up pieces of whatever was left the moment Fury walked into my office at UPenn. I had relinquished control. I gave up an easy, simple life when I agreed to monitor Steve when they brought him out of the ice. 

I backed the car into the garage, and Bucky did pull his eyes away from the windshield to watch me palm the car into place. I didn’t shut it off as soon as we parked, and he finally looked at me. Waiting on what I was about to say to him. 

“I don’t want to cancel. But it’s not about what I want, or what you want, or hell, even what the town wants. This isn’t an easy, cut-and-dry situation.”

“I can stay out of sight.”

‘I’m not,” I sighed. “I’m not trying to hide you, Bucky. I’m trying to protect you.”

He leaned his head back against the seat, his eyes closing briefly. The fluorescent lights of the garage hit his profile just enough to outline the shadows under his eyes and the cut of his cheekbone. Bucky’s eyes opened again after a moment, and they sort of rolled to side-eye me. 

When he didn’t respond, I pressed the stop for the ignition and opened my door to step out. I pulled up on the Button to release the hatch, and it popped open with a deep click followed by the hydraulic hiss of the arms. Bucky followed close behind me and scooped most of the bags up without a word. The things he left were lighter, and it made it easy to reach up and press the button to close the hatch. 

The back door groaned on its hinges as I pulled it open, leaving it wide so that Bucky could follow me through. The bags were dappled with rain from the short walk between the garage and the porch, and my hair had started to curl at the ends and around my face just from the short exposure. Once I walked in, I stepped to the side, waited for Bucky to walk past, and then closed it behind us with the heel of my boot. The kitchen lights had been flipped off, but the lamps in the living room had been flipped on, and helped shed some light on the countertop. 

Steve was on the couch, one arm over the backrest. The light of his computer screen illuminated his face with a cool glow that looked foreign against the warmth of the lamps. He looked up when we entered, an easy smile spreading across his face.

“Hey,” he said. “You two made it back before the storm hit.” He moved to close the screen of the laptop and started to get up to offer his aid. 

I gave a short nod and dropped off the lighter bags onto the counter, watching Bucky out of the corner of my eye as he started unpacking without a word. I didn’t bother taking off my coat, but I did move to cut the kitchen lights on. 

“We caught a little bit on our way out of town; it will be here in a few minutes,” I said, forcing a tone that sounded too civil. I started pulling produce out of the bags, refraining from doing anything too aggressively, but the apples thudded against the marble countertop anyway. 

Steve’s smile faltered as he glanced between the two of us. “Everything alright?”

Bucky didn’t answer, but I saw his jaw twitch. The silence stretched, and I could feel it coiling around my ribs. 

“She’s canceling the Halloween party,” Bucky said flatly, not bothering to look up as he unloaded a bag of coffee beans. “Because of me.”

I shot him a glare so sharp it could have cut through him. “Would you stop trying to put words in my mouth? I didn’t say it’s because of you.”

“What else would you cancel it for?” He straightened, still not giving himself the courage to meet my eyes. “You’re weighing the risk of having me around against whatever tradition this town clings to. Don’t act like I didn’t see it in your face.”

“You want to do this now?” I asked. The tone sent a shiver up my spine, and in that moment, I knew who I reminded myself of. My stomach churned, and I couldn’t take a breath calming enough to ease the tension. 

Steve was standing at the counter now, his hands went up as he sensed the tension shift into something sharper. “Hey, maybe we can—“

“I just don’t think it’s worth making a decision like that out of guilt,” Bucky cut him off, addressing me again. “You said it yourself, it’s not about what you want. So who is it about? Because if you’re worried about the town, then let them have their damn pumpkins.”

I slammed a container of yogurt down on the counter, and the lid popped open. The safety seal held strong, though. 

“You know what, fine. Maybe you’re right,” I snapped. “Maybe I should just throw the party. Dress you up like the goddam Manchurian Candidate and parade you right to the authorities. Christ! Having you arrested on my lawn would be a great show for the sea of seven-year-olds you’re so up in arms about.” 

The words came out like venom before I could think better of them. I heard my teeth hit against each other as my jaw snapped shut. 

Steve looked up sharply. “Magnolia—“

But it was too late. Bucky blinked, confusion flitting across his features, like the reference didn’t quite land. He stood there for a moment, one hand clutching a box of pasta and the other holding a can of soup. 

Annoyance mixed with confusion, and he didn’t say anything. Somehow, that made it worse. 

Steve kept his eyes on me. His gaze wasn’t angry, just disappointed. The kind of look that made my face feel hot with shame, and I could feel my heart drop into my stomach. 

I turned my back on the two of them, leaving the grocery bags I was working through half unpacked. My throat was tight. 

“I’ll sleep on it,” I muttered, keeping my jaw tight like it could keep anything else from coming out sideways. I didn’t wait for either of them to respond. I left the kitchen and headed up the stairs. 

Behind me, silence stretched again, and as I climbed the stairs, a throbbing started behind my eyes. I could hear the dull thud of my heartbeat in my ears, and the sharp pain that radiated up from the base of my skull. 

The air felt heavier upstairs, almost thick. It was harder to breathe, as if the walls were pressing in around me. The marble doorknob felt like ice in my hand as I reached to open the door. I didn’t bother turning on the lights; the little sunlight that filtered through the storm clouds and curtains was faint. I crossed my room and went to the bathroom to brace my hands on the countertop over the sink. I couldn’t bring myself to look up into the mirror, and I stared down into the basin of the sink, heaving in breaths as the pounding in my chest turned not a flutter of panic. 

The migraine that had started to sink its claws into my temples pulsed at the base of my skull. The S.H.I.E.L.D. logo stared up at me from the yellow medicine bottle. Lythrax. I remember Scott calling it when he handed it to me for the first time, and I was so keen to take it then. 

I grabbed the bottle and twisted it open. I shook it lightly enough that one pill fell onto the blue tile of the counter. I tried to calm myself, but the pounding of my heart sent fire through my head, and any little bit of movement sent it further along my spine. 

My hands were shaking as I reached for the porcelain soap dispenser. I had the mind to wash it and dry it off before continuing. I pressed the base of the bottle down firmly on the pill until it gave way under the pressure. In the drawer under the sink, I pulled my father's straight razor out. That too, I gave a rinse before using it to pull a line of the powder. 

It will work faster this way, a laugh pulled itself from my lungs. All of this over a stupid Halloween party I had been roped into when I bought the damn house. My eyes were shut tight, and I had been white knuckling the counter for what felt like an eternity before I bent over, pressed one nostril shut, and drew the line into my lungs. 

My head was still screaming. Any little moment sent waves of pain through my skull. The dryness of my sinuses pulled my attention away from the throbbing just barely. Lythrax didn’t have much of a taste if you took it fast enough with water, but a metallic taste settled in my throat like I had let a nosebleed run down my throat. 

The rain had started in earnest by the time I could feel any effect, and in that time, I hadn’t moved. My feet couldn’t seem to peel me away from the countertop. The tile and grout pressed patterns onto my palms, and the slight stinging sensation helped to make the migraine feel further out of my head. Or maybe it was the floating feeling of the drugs, I couldn’t really tell anymore. 

My breaths were coming in easier as the rain continued to tap against the glass and rattle the shutters. I almost didn’t hear the two light knocks at my door. 

I didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. “You didn’t have to follow me up here.”

Steve stood in the doorway, shoulder pressed firmly against the doorframe. His arms were crossed over the print of his pullover. I looked at him in the reflection in the mirror in front of me, and although part of him was blocked by the bed between us, I could tell his feet were crossed at the ankle, like he wasn’t about to scold me like a child. 

“I’ve seen you like this before.”

“Don’t start with me, Steven.” I sniffled, trying to calm the blood-like drip in my throat as it crept its way to my tongue again. 

Silence fell between the two of us, and when he didn’t say anything else, I let my head fall to pull my eyes off his reflection. My hair pooled around me like a curtain, still curled from the humidity earlier. 

“I didn’t mean it,” I straightened up again and pulled my hands off the counter. I rubbed my thumb across where the now tender lines had formed. “What I said back there, I didn’t mean it.”

I finally turned to face him, but I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the eye. He had stepped a little further into the room but was still leaning against the part of the doorframe furthest from me. He, too, wasn’t meeting my gaze. He seemed transfixed on the rain as it pattered against the warbled glass of the window. It’s a shame they never minted his likeness onto a coin. He seemed to have that brooding presidential scowl down pat. He and Bucky both. 

He took a deep breath, and still looking out the window, he spoke. “It’s not easy being on the receiving end of what people pay you to do, is it?”

My gut twisted into a knot, and I looked down at the floorboards. “That’s not fair. You know this is out of my wheelhouse.”

“Maybe,” he said, thinking for a moment, and finally caught my gaze. His voice wasn’t sharp, just steady. “But Bucky’s not the one you’re gonna break if you keep swinging like that.”

Steve’s words slipped under my ribs and squeezed tight around my heart. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t glare. He didn’t have to, and still, I could taste his disappointment as it mixed with the Lythrax.

I looked away first. “I’m just trying to keep him safe,” I said just above a whisper. It sounded like a lie when I said it, and at that moment, I wasn’t sure if it was close to the truth. Of course it was. That was my job. To give aid. 

“Safe doesn’t mean shutting him out.”

My jaw clenched, teeth grinding against the sour taste of powder still at the back of my throat. The haze made it easier not to cry, but it didn’t dull the shame clawing up my chest.

For a long stretch, neither of us spoke. The storm rattled against the window, the wind pulling at the frame. I thought maybe he would press further, force the words out of me, but he just watched, arms folded, the disappointment in his silence louder than anything else.

Steve left my room without a word, and I could feel the full numbness of the Lythrax in my chest by the time he did. A light, floaty feeling that still wasn’t enough to dull the ache in my chest that had started to get sore. 

Chapter Text

Bucky was already sitting in the chair near my desk when I came in, hunched forward with his hands clasped between his knees. He looked up, but I didn’t meet his eyes. I didn’t have it in me. Not that morning, not after the night before. 

I set the Texas file down on the table with a dull thud. 

“Rough start to the day?” He muttered. 

I didn’t respond. My attention turned to storing Scott’s file away in my desk and motioning for Bucky’s file to be pulled up across the top surface. He couldn’t read it from his seat, but he leaned in closer as I scrolled through it briefly. I waved it away again and finally looked up to catch his eyes. He had been leaning in like a kid trying to cheat on a test. 

“We’re shifting focus today,” I said. My voice was curt, and I wore the expression I usually did when S.H.I.E.L.D. brought me in for an interrogation. Not cold or spiteful, but indifferent. The same one I had worn during our conversation yesterday. At least the beginning of it.

He leaned back and adjusted himself under my gaze. “To what?”

I took a deep breath and let it out through my nose. “The harder stuff.”

His jaw set, and he swallowed hard. “Define harder.”

“Hydra.”

The word dropped between us like a stone in the library's quiet. I watched him brace for it, watched as his hands curled around themselves a little tighter. He looked down at them and then up again to catch my eyes.

“You think I’m ready?” He asked finally. 

“I think we’ll run out of time if we wait until you are.”

He blinked, taken aback. Confusion pulled his brows together. 

“I thought we were taking it as slow as I needed.”

“They can be slow, but they can’t all be walks through Central Park.” I drew in a slow breath. “I know you’re scared of what’s buried in there, but circling the drain doesn’t help either of us.”

Bucky’s eyes narrowed, looking into mine. “Is this about the party?”

“No.” I deadpanned. 

“Jesus, Buck! Would ‘ya watch yourself, kid?” A voice came through first, it was gruff and quite deep. I focused on the memory as it rang clear in Bucky’s head, turning my lens on the scene. “You’re gonna getcha self killed.”

I opened my eyes to a machine shop just as a loud bell started to ring. My chest was vibrating with the hum and movement of the equipment around us. The air was thick and heavy with cigarette smoke, and the heat coming off the engine next to me lapped against my skin. Men hurried by on either side of me, and that was when I noticed Bucky standing a little ways ahead. Not the Bucky in the memory, no, this one had the same loose white button-up that he had been wearing this morning. It was still pushed to his elbows, and I could see his arm glinting in the halogen bulbs around us. 

I walked up next to him, weaving past the people who seemed to flow like oncoming traffic. When I was next to him, I looked up, trying to catch his eye. He didn’t look at me. His eyes were transfixed on something that I couldn’t see. Maybe I should have worn heels or something, but I just seemed too short to see what was happening over everyone. 

“Sorry, Mr. John!” A voice called out over the conversations. And then I saw him, the him that we were here for anyway. “It won’t be that easy to get rid of me.” Bucky looked so young. His face was still holding onto a little bit of baby fat, cheeks fuller than the sharp planes I was used to seeing. He was definitely taller than the last time I had seen him in a memory. How old had he been then? Eight? He couldn’t have been older than seventeen here, and about 5’9 if I had to guess. His hair had grown out, and was plastered against his head— the heat coming off the machines I could feel against me, but my skin didn’t move to sweat. 

As people continued to file out, I could see what Bucky’s eyes had remained transfixed on. There was a hulking piece of equipment, maybe twenty-five yards from where we stood. An engine block was hoisted up on a rather low platform that made the men next to it look impossibly small by comparison. It had started winding down, and I realized that the bell must have been for the end of the work day. The sun peaking through the thin, dusty windows at the top of the shop were golden with the setting sun. Its rays were cast in stripes of dust and cigarette smoke. Pretty, if you didn’t think about it.

The engine was puttering now, whirring low with residual movement. Its belts and arms were still twitching as inertia kept it alive, at least for now. The few men who were still up there were starting to file away. One brought his shirt up to wipe his brow, and another cracked a joke. It seemed pretty mundane, and I wasn’t too sure as to why he had brought me into this memory to begin with. 

The younger of the two Barnes started walking closer, and when he was right in front of us, a metallic shudder and a scream erupted from atop the platform. It wasn’t the panicked sound that you would hear in movies, no, this was a sound I had gotten used to. A guttural howling that ripped itself free. It wasn’t sharp, yet somehow it tore through the tobacco-scented air to pierce my chest. I watched as Bucky, the Bucky of the memory, stopped dead in his tracks, eyes staring ahead at me. I knew he couldn’t see me, but watching the way his face froze in realization so close to mine sent a chill up my spine. 

The screaming continued, one I had only heard in the heads of others. Other patients whose minds I had been sent into. Minds that sought those screams for their own twisted ecstasy, and I could feel every sickening bit of that, too. It was easy to ignore the noises, the human suffering, if you were indifferent to the individual, or felt some disgust, as I often did, when I was called into sessions. It was easy to remember that this wasn’t real. It was easy not to care. 

Or maybe it was the Lythrax, their blissful haze I seemed to be wrapped in during my time at S.H.I.E.L.D. I could still feel last night’s dose of chemical calm, craving to lap at my body, their buzz at the back of my skull, trying their best to ease the pressure building. 

But this? This was different. I could feel the panic as the memory played out before me. The sinking, sick feeling that churned in Bucky’s stomach. The fluttering of his heart as the realization surfaced in his mind. His eyes seemed so young, and yet still they seemed to be hardened by life even then. His pupils danced like they were searching my features before he looked down at the concrete, his lips parted just slightly. His breaths came in like shallow gasps, his eyes kept to the floor as he spun like he was being made to turn against his will. 

I kept my face neutral, fighting back the sinking feeling in my stomach. My eyes glanced up at the Bucky I had come here with. His jaw was set hard; I could only imagine the strain on his molars in that moment. And he stood there like a sentinel, gazing out at the scene I had yet to bring myself to witness. 

I turned my attention to the engine block. Both Buckys stood by my side, the three of us glaring as the scene continued to play out. 

There was blood. So much blood. 

One of the men stood braced against the machine, and although it had stopped, it was too late. He had to be in his thirties, hair starting to grey. Blood was splattered across his nose like a dusting of freckles. His arm was bent at a horrific angle. Maybe he had stepped too close, or his clothing had gotten caught as he moved, but now his arm (at least bits of it) was chewed between the engine's teeth. The continued movement of the gears had dispersed the red liquid over each of the exposed gears. 

He held his body in a way that was probably keeping his arm from dislocating or ripping out of the socket completely. His screams soon turned into cries as his knees wanted to buckle from the pain. The bone in his arm kept him standing like a pin through the corner of a piece of paper. Blood streamed down his side, and although I couldn’t see it doing so, I could see the puddle starting to form at his feet. It flowed with a slow dribble down the short ledge of the platform to settle on the main floor, and then it slowly snaked towards a drain in the floor. 

The screams stopped for a moment. The man’s eyes stayed trained ahead of him, dissociating from the pain as other workers shouted. His chest continued to rise in ragged breaths. Panting like an animal backed into a corner. 

The ragged terror reminded me of the morning after Bucky’s first nightmare in the house. The same horror lurking just beyond his eyes, like an animal too afraid to look at the trap tightening around its leg. Unable to run or look, just frozen, waiting for the courage to do something. Anything.

Color started to fade from the man’s already pale skin.

My attention turned slowly to Bucky, the seventeen-year-old. His eyes were transfixed on the scene in front of him. He was close enough to me that I could see the peach fuzz on his cheeks. See the sweat as it started to bead on his skin and drip from the longest section of his hair. He, too, had lost all of his color. His breaths came in quick and shallow like if he breathed too deeply, the metallic scent of the blood would stay in his lungs forever. 

I turned my attention back to the machine. The man’s body had gone limp, but I could see his chest continuing to rise and fall. He mustered enough energy to attempt to straighten himself up, and as he did so, the blood that had pooled at his feet, his own blood, betrayed him. His foot was planted only for a moment before it slipped out from under him. He lost his footing in an instant, all of his weight going on the bone that held him up. It didn’t break away cleanly. No. That would have been too kind. He was held there by his humorous before it shattered, and when it did shatter, it sent him to the floor like a discarded sack. He pushed more of his own blood towards the ledge like a slow wave, and a good amount of it fell over the side all at once in a dull slap against the floor. It had already started to thicken in the heat of the shop.

The people around us who had been so clear previously now moved around like clouds. Blurs that seemed impossibly out of focus. The man on the floor wasn’t moving anymore, just breathing. Barely. The room blurred at the edges, the dark vignette of a panic attack starting to pull at the corners of the memory. The sounds around us were garbled now, like listening to a conversation through a wall. 

Bucky’s chest continued to rise and fall in shallow bursts. He took a single step back. Then another. Slow and mechanical, his eyes were still fixed on the blood. He shook his head once, blinked hard, and then he turned. Not with urgency or fear, just a kind of numbness that had spread through his body, like his mind had left him behind.

He stumbled as he descended the metal stairs of the work area, and he gripped the banister for dear life like his legs, too, would betray him. His boots clanged against the steel in a way that cut through the muffled hum around us, although they seemed impossibly loud. No one stopped him. No one even noticed, although they had bigger things to deal with. He made it out into the hallway beyond the shop floor, one hand pressed flat to the wall, the other gripped the light grey fabric over his chest. His hand then pressed against his stomach as he tried to slow his breathing.

I looked up at the Bucky beside me. My Bucky. And I didn’t need to say anything. He was already following. His hands were in his pockets, and his jaw had relaxed some. He knew how this memory ended; he was just along for the ride as I watched. 

The air outside the shop was cooler, if only slightly. Tinged with something sweeter. Grass maybe? Or motor oil that hadn’t yet turned acrid. The long shadows of the building stretched out across the concrete lot.

We followed him to the edge of the slab, and the concrete was replaced with a straw-like grass underfoot. He stopped to brace himself behind a rusted stack of scrap. His shoulders heaved once. Then again.

His body lurched, spine rolling forward as he folded at the waist. A horrible sound wrenched its way out of his throat as he vomited. He stood there, knees locked, mouth open. A string of saliva hung down from his bottom lip as he tried desperately to catch his breath. 

“Fuck,” he heaved again with another gag, but nothing grand came out. He spit, trying, I assume, to get the bitter taste of stomach acid out of his mouth. 

He dropped to his knees after. Leaning into the metal that belonged to what I had started to recognize as the mangled body of a car. His hand came up to press against his mouth. Eventually, he was sitting, knees pulled up to his chest, arms around them to pull them closer. He stared out into the field past the shop. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He wasn’t sobbing, but still the tears seemed to fall in silence. 

Behind us, the shop was a blur. The flashing lights of an ambulance were near where the entrance should have been, and if I tried to listen past the ringing, I could barely hear their sirens. I paused the playback, not wanting to have to run through it again. I stood next to him, still, arms loose at my side. 

“They weren’t all going to be walks in the park, Doc.” He paused and drew in a deep breath as his boot moved to push a glass Coke bottle. It rolled away some and then rolled back in reverse to reset itself. 

He drew his bottom lip between his teeth and then let it slide back into place before he spoke again. “I didn’t cry until after,” he said, and a rasp had settled in his voice. “Didn’t even feel it then. Just heat in my throat. Like I was being gutted from the inside out.”

I nodded once. “That’s how shock works. It protects us. And then it doesn’t.” I paused, looking down at the Bucky that was frozen next to me, still clutching at the fabric of his shirt. “So why this one?”

He looked over to me and then back out into the field, now warm with the setting sun's light. “As far as bad ones go, this one is pretty nice.”

I thought for a moment, and then it hit me why he let me walk into this memory. I turned slowly to face him, but he kept his eyes trained on the edge of the memory. “Are you testing me?”

His jaw set again, and he didn’t look at me. Didn’t respond. 

I pulled us out of the memory quicker than I had meant to. There was no soft dissolve of visuals or a dream-like feeling of reawakening. No, I pulled out of his head fast, and I could feel the start of a migraine—the light feeling of vertigo swaying me for a moment and then a sharp pain biting down on the base of my skull that even last night’s dose of Lythrax couldn’t help to numb. I pulled my hands away from him and stood with a huff as I walked towards the exit. 

“Doc!” Bucky called, and I could hear the platform shift as he got up to follow after me. The door to The Study slid to the side, and I walked out to the library. The windows were dark with the threat of rain again. Bucky jogged up the stairs, and I was already halfway through the library before I spoke. 

“What the hell has gotten into you?” I could feel the anger building in my chest like a wildfire as I continued towards the door.

“What? Was it too much?” He asked, and it sounded genuine, but something in the phrasing. It was something off-hand. Pity. Not for himself but for me.

I stopped dead in my tracks and turned. “Don’t do that.”

His brows pulled together. “Do what?”

I crossed the room, not trying to shout across the library. “Test me.”

“I wasn’t—“

“You brought me there, into that memory, Barnes. It’s fun to start with ones that are soft, get used to the feeling of the meditations, but that. That was gore for the sake of gore. You had no hand in that. It’s bad, sure. But I know when I’m being tested, James. You wanted to see how I’d react. If I’d flinch. If I’d run.”

“I didn’t—“

“You did.” My words came out sharp, but I didn’t yell. That would have been easier. “You are here to work through the war. Hydra. Not machine shop accidents from when you were seventeen that you had no hand in causing.” I paused again, shaking my head, stepping closer to him than I had meant to. “You know damn well that wasn’t about working through the Winter Soldier programming. Do you think that you’re the most dangerous thing I’ve seen? Did you think that if I saw you fall apart in that machine shop, I would suddenly decide …what? That I can’t handle you?”

He stood still, staring down at me.

“Do you think you’re the most dangerous thing in this house, Sergeant?” It came out before I could think, and he opened his mouth to speak, but I was already moving. I pulled open the door to the library and started down the hall. My footfall echoed as I made my way to the back porch. My chest heaved in deep breaths, and my heart fluttered in my throat with a quiet panic that had settled there.

The air was heavy and damp, and had it not already been dark outside, the storm clouds above the house would have drowned out the sky in those beautiful bruised hues. Thunder rattled somewhere past the trees, and I could feel the wind picking up. The glass bottles and wind chimes hanging from the lower branches of the black cherry tree out on the yard clanked together, and I focused on the sound as I tried fruitlessly to slow my breathing.

My eyes were pressed together, and the pain that had started at the base of my skull spread to my temples and behind my eyes. My hands were shaking as I reached for the railing. Some of the paint flaked away and stuck to my palms. Two days in a row of losing my cool had to be a record of some sort. What the hell was my problem? Losing my composure was one abnormality, but in front of a patient? To be fair, all of the others (save for Steve and Bucky) hadn’t been…salvageable, but still. 

It thundered again, this time closer to the house. I hadn’t noticed the door to the porch opening, but I heard it close. 

“You okay?” He asked finally.

I scoffed, soft and bitter. “Do you really want to know, or is this just another test?”

“Doc.” The quiet stretched out between us again. Finally, my breathing started to even out, but the beating of my heart sent throbs of pain through my skull. I could hope that the leftover drugs in my system would take care of it eventually, but I doubted it. 

“I saw into the mind of a god once.” My voice was quiet, flat even. Just a calm hum compared to what it usually sounded like.

The floorboards shifted under his weight, but Bucky didn’t say anything. 

“I walked into Loki’s mind when I was in New York. I was right there on the helicarrier before the sky opened up. S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t ask me to go with the Avengers; Steve almost killed me for following them out to the jet. But I went anyway. And do you want to know what they called it?” I didn't wait for an answer. “Insubordination. I told them that if I got to him, got close enough to touch him, I could lock him in his head from the outside. I knew… I knew that I might not have made it out. I knew what it would cost me, and still, S.H.I.E.L.D. labeled me a liability.”

I turned to catch his eye briefly, and I could feel tears burning at the edge of my vision. “They saw what I could do, and didn’t want me freed, Bucky. They wanted me filed away, strapped down, and experimented on. And when I saw the glint of fear in their eyes, I lied. Said that Loki messed with my head when I was in there. Said my powers were gone to save myself. So don’t sit there and act like you’re the litmus test for danger.”

His eyes held mine, and I could feel the tightening in my chest start again. I pulled my gaze away and looked out at the trees just as the rain started to fall with a light patter on the land. “I have a doctorate. I don’t need to be vetted.”

He walked closer to me and leaned his elbows on the railing. The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. Weighty. Reverent, maybe. The rain started picking up, and I could finally see the lightning as it reached across the sky. The light glinted ever so curiously off Bucky’s arm. 

I could hear the plates shift as his lungs drew in a breath. “You think I’m underestimating you.”

I thought about my response for a moment. “I think you’re sparring me. Sparring yourself the hurt that could come from me turning away from you when I see what you’ve done. All I want to do is help you, and I can't help but feel like you’re fighting me on every move I try to make to do so.”

Something in his face changed. It didn’t soften but reset itself as he looked over my features. He turned his attention to the storm. “I wasn’t trying to test you,” he said again, quieter this time. He hesitated before he spoke again. “I didn’t want to show you anything…simple… Or something I was responsible for.”

“You think I’d respect you less for a simple pain?” His eyes searched mine. I drew in a deep breath, holding it a while. “And I know how a game goes when your hands are forced, Bucky. I know you weren’t controlling them.”

He looked down at his fingers as they laced between each other. “They were still my hands, though, Doc.”

“When I say I don’t care what you show me, I don’t mean it out of apathy. I’m not here to judge you or the memories. But you need to show them to me so I can do my job.” I paused. “When I was at S.H.I.E.L.D., they would send me into rooms. My patients would be bound. If I were being called in, they were always combative. They’d have me pull information out of them or…” I trailed off, not letting myself think about the other uses for my power. “I’m giving you the choice to show me what you want because it’s easier on you, but you can't dance around your programming and expect results.”

He didn’t respond to that, but I could see the thoughts churning in his head like the clouds above us. “So that’s why you’re canceling the party. It’s not just me.”

“It was never just you, Bucky.” I ran a hand through my hair. It has started to stick together with the humidity. “If someone recognizes you, S.H.I.E.L.D. or whatever it is now that you and Steve blew that all up. I obviously care about Steve and you, but if someone sees you here, they will know that I lied, and I promise you it’s not you they’ll be knocking that door down for.” I taped my chest once, and Bucky watched my hand out of the corner of his eye. “It’s me.”

He swallowed hard. “Magnolia.”

I looked at him then. My eyes searched him over in the dim lights filtering out of the house as he straightened up to look down at me again. I stared at the lines of his forehead, the furrow between his brows that hadn’t softened since he stepped out onto the porch. I stared at the guilt starting to simmer beneath his skin. 

“I was never going to turn Steve down,” I said, almost to myself, with how quiet it came out. “But I didn’t sign up for this to be tested. I signed up to help you.”

“You cancel that party,” he said finally, “And people are going to notice.”

My breath came out sharp. “Let them.”

“No.” He said, firmer now. “No, you don’t get to do that.”

I kept my gaze up at his, my face contorting in confusion. “Do what, Bucky? Try and keep us out of the kill-box at the bottom of the ocean?”

“Through yourself under the spotlight,” he shot back, stepping closer. I looked up through my brows at him to keep from craning my neck. “Make people wonder what you’re hiding. You think canceling it now, after all of these years, especially now that Steve and I are on the run, when half the town is already talking about it— You think that's subtle?”

“I’d rather be subtle than stupid.”

“And I’d rather you be safe,” he snapped. 

That made me laugh. A cold and humorless sound that choked its way out of my chest. “I’m a walking liability with enough redacted information on my file that the ink could black out the sky, and what’s not covered paints me as the threat to national security. I touch the wrong person, I get locked away. I look the wrong way, and someone with a badge or a gun shows up at my door. Do you really think I give a damn what the town thinks?”

His voice dropped. “I think you care far more than you let on.” 

I pulled my eyes away from his and looked out into the yard. The herbs swayed in the rain, and if I breathed deeply enough, I could smell the rosemary. I stepped to lean against the railing again, and the rain reached my fingers. “This isn’t about appearances. It’s about you not ending up in chains.” Neither of us ending up in chains.

He shifted again, and I heard a deep breath fill his lungs again. “So let me stay out of sight.”

“I already said no-” 

“I’ll stay upstairs.” He stepped closer to the railing and leaned against one of the posts that led up to the ceiling. “Guest room only. Lock the damn door if it makes you feel better. I won’t go near a window, I won’t make a sound. You can tell the townies that I’m a research assistant who's too square to take part in the festivities or part of the company prepping for the party, whatever lie you want. Just don’t cancel it.”

“Why would you stay in the guest bedroom?”

“Huh?”

“The guest bedroom is on the other side of the house.”

“Where do I sleep then?”

“In your room, Bucky. You sleep in your room.” I shook my head. “You think I care about jack-o-lanterns and cheap cider more than your life?”

“I think if you don't throw it, people will start asking why,” he said. “And if they ask why, they start poking around. And if they poke around—“

“They’ll find you,” I finished.

“No,” he said quietly. “They’ll find you.”

My mouth felt dry. S.H.I.E.L.D. or whatever psycho crazy enough to go through the files already knew where I was, but I knew what he meant, and that realization settled in my chest. The cloud of stubbornness cleared enough for me to see it then. 

He watched me, the tension between his brows softened, and so did his gaze. “You’ve already put yourself on the line for me. I see that. But don’t make yourself look guilty just to keep me safe. Let them see the same thing they’ve seen for the past two years. Dr. Amherst in her spooky old house, throwing her big weird party.”

I ran a hand through my hair, then rested my chin on my palm before looking at him again. “And what if someone recognizes you?”

He gave the smallest shrug. “Then we burn that bridge when we get to it.” That boyish smirk tugged at his lips for just a moment before he settled his expression, “and we see what swims later.”

My jaw clenched, but I didn’t argue. I didn’t have the energy. “Fine,” I said after a moment. “I’m not going to make you lock yourself in your room, that’s barbaric, but you stay out of sight or I swear to Christ.”

He nodded once, the corner of his mouth pulling into a smirk. “Deal.”

He pushed himself off the post and went to walk back inside. Before the door shut behind him, he caught it. “Besides. You already said I should go as the Manchurian Candidate. It would be a shame to waste a costume idea.”

“You don’t know who the Manchurian Candidate is, Bucky.”

“Steve let me Google it.”

“Of course he did.” My eyes narrowed. “That was more of a snide comment than an actual costume Idea. Wasn’t meant to be funny, either.”

“I think you could pull off the red queen. If push came to shove.”

“God, you’re not funny.”

He grinned, just slightly. “You’ll come around.”

Chapter Text

New York, 2012.

The Battle of New York: Stark Tower.

In Loki’s mind, I was in a dark room, in what seemed like an endless void, space without the stars, without the satellites. My feet were bare, and I stood in about an inch or so of warm water. My reflection reached out and quivered in the small ripples of the water. 

“Curious,” I whispered. In all of my time inhabiting someone else’s mind, I had never seen anything like this. I had seen everything from terrorists and anarchists to Presidential candidates and mobsters. But there was never anything so, well, void. 

“Quite the gift,” A voice breathed behind me. It echoed somewhere past the dark. I whipped my head around, but there wasn’t another sound other than the water gently splashing onto my ankles. 

I reached for Loki in the dark, pulling at his thoughts like threads. But they slipped through my fingers. The more I dug, the more the void seemed to swallow them whole. My control was gone.

“I can feel you poking around,” he purred, whispering with a breeze of scold air that ran the length of my spine. I froze. My heart kicked at my ribs. He shouldn’t have been able to speak here, not with that much control.

“How?” I turned again, trying to find anything in the void, trying to materialize anything, to find one memory, but I was stuck. Digging got me nowhere. I wasn’t the one driving the trip, and it occurred to me that I never was. How naïve I was to rush it and just jump into the mind of a literal god, thinking I would be the one making the decisions, to think he would be at my mercy while we were in here. 

The void went on, and my reflection stretched out further and further. I started forward, splashing more and more water until it became cold. There was no end. 

“They can’t help you.” The whisper was almost inside my ear, and I whipped around once again. Nothing. “Your friends. The Avengers.” There was spite on his tongue, and I could feel the distaste start to bubble up in my own chest. 

“Come out, you coward.” I was suddenly aware of another sound piercing through the ringing silence. A soft murmuring started to thrum around me, several words from the same hushed voice humming in the darkness with a quiet fervor.

“Is this not what you want? The space to do anything? To have no responsibility, no quota, no Big Brother?”

“I didn’t pin you for a fan of Orwell.”

“I’ve never cared for mid-guardian drivel, but I know you are. I can poke back. See what you’ve seen, and my how you've seen a lot.”

“For drivel, 1984 is a pretty good.” A shiver ran through my body, and a cough pulled its way out of my lungs. My feet were starting to get colder, even as I stopped moving. I took a few steps forward before the pins and needles in my feet started to burn a little more than I wanted to tolerate.

“What are you getting at anyway?”

“Join me. Stop seeing things others want you to. Operate under your own will.” Loki’s voice was echoing now, mixing indiscernibly with the voice from before, and I glanced at the ground. Another reflection stretched out to meet mine. 

He was dressed in all white, contrasting starkly against the true, all-consuming black of the void. His hair still looked inky, almost blue. He was leafing through my head, combing through my memories, and I couldn’t stop him. All of the case files I had read described what my power felt like, and now I was experiencing it firsthand. Childhood memories. Burnout. Failures. My mother whispering scripture into my ear as she clutched my gloved hands in hers. I couldn’t stop him. He was wearing my memories like a coat he’d always owned.

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

“I can give you freedom. True unbridled freedom. Your handlers want to keep you soft and pliable under their fingers. They care not for your potential. But you could free yourself from their watchful eye with my help. Doesn’t that sound nice, Little bird?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Show them that they are a part of something greater. Help them see their true purpose.”

“As their God?”

Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.

He smiled, not with cruelty behind his eyes. No, he smiled with belief. The water had begun to rise, and it was burning cold against my skin. It had almost reached my knees. I sank into it, shaking. My body wasn’t mine. My power felt distant, behind pains of glass. A memory surfaced. Needles, hospital lights, the tremor in my mother’s hand as she looked at a little girl through the observation glass at the hospital near our house. Dianna. I hadn’t meant to. Christ, I hadn’t meant to hurt her. 

My throat was burning with tears, and my chest wanted to collapse in on itself. God, I’m sorry. I hadn’t meant to. 

“You don’t have to suffer anymore,” Loki murmured. “Not for them. Not for him.”

“You don’t know what I suffer for,” I said. But my voice trembled. 

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do Thou,

“Oh, but I think I would understand more than most, Little Bird.”

“I told you not to call me that!” 

“I know what it feels like to carry the sins of a father, and what it feels like to be burdened with this higher purpose. Join me.

“Begging is unbecoming of a God, don’t you think?” I coughed again and brought my hand to run under my nose. It came back clean, although I was sure I had felt something warm brush my lip. 

O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God,

He laughed. A dark, raspy sound I’m not sure he was used to making. 

“Maybe,” he stepped closer, and the water sloshed onto the hem of his linen pants. 

“The migraines,” I paused, his eyes looked intently into mine. “You can get them go away? Forever?”

A small smile cracked onto his lips. The pit in my stomach deepened, and I could feel a sick feeling wash over me. I didn’t want to be the pincushion anymore. I was stuck, and Loki was right. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes, and I finally let my knees give in. The now icy water splashed onto my legs, and chills shot through my body. My chest heaved.

cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.

At the very back of his mind, I could see something that he was trying to hide from me. I reached out for it, and something flickered behind his eyes. His smile faltered, and then widened. He looked down at me, and his step pushed more of the water toward me. The cold had cut to my bone, “What a petulant child you’ve always been.”

Amen.

My mother held my hand with her gloved fingers, but her left hand was up to her mouth as she whispered to herself, speaking into one of my father’s handkerchiefs. She couldn’t seem to tear her gaze from the room past the glass. 

I stared up at her. She looked so much younger than I remembered. Her strawberry colored hair was still full of life, and although she did it every day, it was curling at the edges and around her face. It had been raining, and she had been crying. 

“Mama?” She couldn’t look at me. Couldn’t pull my eyes away from the child on the other side of the glass, and although I couldn’t see over the wall, I knew she was there. “Mama. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.” I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Mama, Please. 

Please.

“Do you see it?” Loki’s voice oozed into the memory, curling between my mother's prayers. His reflection stood beside her as I looked up at the glass. Too short to see through it, but tall enough to see him and my mother framed by a set of curtains. The lights above us flickered, and the strong smell of the hospital churned my stomach. Tears pulled at my eyes, and I whipped at them with my free hand. My hand wasn’t wet when I pulled it away, but I could feel the stream run down my cheeks. 

“She prayed for you,” he said, not looking at me. His eyes were crinkled with a smile as he looked on with my mother. His eyes met mine in the reflection. I could hear the beeping of the monitor start to pick up. “And look where that got her.”

“No!” I pulled my hand free of my mother’s, covering my ears, and dropping to a couch on the floor like they had taught us for tornado drills. 

The monitor's tone grew louder, warping and reverberating as the void created back. My screaming wove in with it, the two sounds knotted together until I couldn’t tell them apart. The linoleum gave way to water, and then very suddenly, the marbled floor of Stark's bar.

There were cracks along the floor leading every which way. The dust had settled, and I could hear sirens that seemed so far away. Voices, too, although I could barely hear them, one seemed familiar. Deep. Panicked. Steven. 

“Medic! Call for a medic!” Ambulance, Steve. We’re not at war. I guess we are. Maybe medic is okay. War against aliens. My eyes fluttered. God, I was tired. Who do we need a medic for anyway? I pulled air into my lungs. Had I slept the night before? Surely I had. But my head hurt. Did it? I don’t know. It all felt so far away. God, I’m so tired. 

“Magnolia, you’re okay. You’re going to be fine.” 

The grass was still damp from the nights before. I had come out barefoot, walked past the porch steps, and let the dew gather at my ankles. By the time I crossed the yard, the hem of my pants had started to cling to my legs. 

I laid on the grass, and the cool touch of the earth seeped through the fabric and worked itself to the curve of my spine. I hadn’t brought a blanket or anything but myself. I just wandered out past the porch until I could get a good enough view of the stars. The garden beds were a little way past my feet, but I was still close enough that I could smell the herbs. 

The storm had long since passed, but some thin, painterly clouds still streaked their way across the sky. They looked harsher than usual. Sharper, but maybe I was just in the mood to notice sharp things.

The crickets had quieted down a bit, but I could still hear them hum with the frogs and other creatures beyond the fence. I shut my eyes and listened to them, to the calm heartbeat in my ears. I could feel the beats in my chest and in my fingertips if I focused hard enough. 

The weather had brought a chill to the late September air. It was funny to think that Steve and Bucky had been her for almost a month. 

I weaved my fingers into the grass and pressed them lightly against the cool earth just below the surface. 

The door opened and shut; it wasn’t loud, just a gentle click of the catch. I don’t think I would have noticed whoever it was if it hadn’t creaked upon its return. Their footsteps didn’t announce themselves either, just the soft crunch of dew-heavy grass under careful boots. As I opened my eye just a hair, I watched him as he approached.

Bucky didn’t say anything when he reached me. Just knelt down and placed a mug near my hand. I opened my eyes all the way to see the cream colored ceramic steaming in the dark of the backyard. The porch lights illuminated the whips rising up off the surface of the tea. 

He was sitting with his legs crossed, looking past the flowerbeds. I sat up slowly and brought my knees up to my chest. I brushed my hands off on my pants before I reached for the mug. The ceramic mug was warm in my hands.

“We were out of honey,” he said finally, a little sheepish. 

I brought it to my lips and let the mint steam hit my nose. Just the right amount of sugar. The right mug, even. It was perfect. Christ, of course it was. I took a deep breath, and the hole in my chest that had started forming the moment we stepped out of the grocery store twisted deeper. 

I set the tea back down on the grass between us and laid back down. I stared out at the stars for a moment before speaking. “Bucky…”

He didn’t respond. Just waited for whatever was coming next.

“I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”

He dropped down onto the grass beside me, slow and deliberate. His legs were crossed at the ankles, and his hands were crossed behind his head. “It’s not the worst doctor's visit I’ve had,” he said.

I turned my head toward him, expecting maybe the edge of a smirk, but he was looking up at the stars, his face unreadable in the dim light. I had rehearsed a longer apology after I realized how much different it was to have a patient that you cared about getting better. One that you thought could get better. God, I had been such an ass, but he didn’t seem angry or upset in the slightest. 

Steve had been one thing. A patient who didn’t need redemption, just needed a skilled hand to help him adjust to the 21st century, a meditation here or there to walk around the streets of 1940s Brooklyn, but I was quickly becoming aware of how different this would be. The tact and care I was lacking in a way that was quite frankly egregious.

We stayed silent for a long time after that. It was so quiet that I swore I could hear the soft lapping sounds of the lake that had to be 100 yards past the garden wall. The fogs and the crickets, the steady sound of Bucky's breath combined with the soft, mechanical noise of his arm, all seemed so much louder than they should have been. 

Bucky’s voice cut through it all softly, like he had been thinking about whether to speak at all. “That’s Cassiopeia.”

I followed the line of his finger as he carved up the night sky. “The W,” he added. 

I squinted, tracing the stars until the shape came into focus. “You can see her upside down this time of year,” I said. 

He hummed, barely audible, as his hand dropped to his chest in a flash of silver. 

“And that one there is Orion, His belt, right there.”

“I know that one.”

“Everyone knows that one,” he murmured, and I thought I caught the faintest curl at the edge of his mouth. One by one, he went pointing things out, low and unhurried. Ursa Major. Draco winding like a crooked spine. Lyra with its one bright star. He wasn’t showing off; he just… knew them. 

“You’re good at this.”

“I’ll let the Boy Scouts of America know that you approve of their work.”

“I didn’t pin you as the Boy Scouts type.”

“Ya know, believe it or not, I was a kid once.”

“I would not have guessed.”

He chuffed, “Luckily for me, the stars haven’t changed much since 1930.”

“My mom used to know them,” I blurted before I could talk myself out of it. 

Bucky turned his head slightly, but I kept my gaze up at the sky. 

“When I was little, she’d take me outside on a night like this. We didn’t always have a great view, but she knew the shapes. She would tell me the stories that went along with each of them—at least the stories she could remember. Heroes. Monsters. Gods. It all seemed like fairy tales, back then, anyway.” My throat tightened, and I forced a small breath through my nose. “She, uh, she passed when I was eleven.”

Bucky drew a deep breath into his lungs. His hand was between the two of us, playing absentmindedly with one of the longer blades of grass as he listened. 

“She would have liked you,” I said after a pause. “Both of you. She was… good. The kind of good you don’t question. One of the most devout people I have ever met, and she didn’t believe in Hell. Thought that God forgives everyone. That it all comes out in the wash somehow. She didn’t believe forgiveness had limits.”

“And you don’t agree?”

The question wasn’t sharp, but it found its mark. I stared up at the stars until they started to blur at the edges of my vision. “I think… I think it’s easy to take advantage of that kind of grace, and I don’t know that it should be given so freely.”

He made a sound in his throat, a quiet hum. For a moment, I thought he might leave it there, but then he shifted, propping himself on his elbows. His head lulled to the side, resting on his shoulder. His brows were knitted together in thought as he continued to play with a different blade of grass closer to his hand. His hair pooled over his shoulder and swayed lightly with the soft breeze coming off the lake. 

“It’s a comforting thought, though.”

“Well, sure. As I got older, it didn’t feel like the truth.”

“Sometimes,” he said, voice low, “you hang on to a thought like that ‘cause it keeps you standing. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not.”