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Chapter Text

Chapter One: Metal Armed Angel of Death

No one even noticed Darcy Lewis was gone until she was found again.

Looking back, Steve would blame himself; he always did.  Tony would blame Fury.  Fury would blame Asgard.  Asgard would blame Hydra.  There was blame everywhere, but blame wouldn’t get her five hundred and seventy-two days of her life back.  It wouldn't turn back the clock and it wouldn't undo what had been done to her.

On the first day of the New Year in 2014, Jane Foster had hopped merrily into a portal with Thor, shortly after receiving Darcy's official resignation as her ever lasting intern.  It had been a long time coming, she could only do so much for Jane, physics-wise, and it wasn't known how long Thor would be keeping Jane off of Midgard's surface.  

The split between the two brunettes had been amicable enough, but both seemed to feel abandoned by the other.  Still, Jane had Thor to comfort her, and Darcy had very nearly nothing, besides a non-disclosure agreement a mile long, and an opportunity to meet Pepper Potts with the hope that maybe, just maybe Stark Industries had a place for her so she wouldn't have to resort to joining SHIELD just in order to have a job and an opportunity to put a roof over her head.

Pepper had been unavailable, and it had been Tony that had greeted her with a squint and a grumble, ushering her up to the penthouse and shoving her towards Steve, who had been quietly conversing with Natasha at the bar.

"This is---uhm---Great rack," Tony said in his distracted, anxious way, waving his hand full of whiskey towards Darcy.  "Here to interview to be your right hand gal."

"Tony," Steve sighed.  "I'm sure she has a name."

"Darcy Lewis," Natasha answered, staring Darcy down in an assessing way.  "Twenty-four years old, Baltimore native, no known living family, Culver University drop out---"

"Harsh," Darcy muttered, her shoulders hunching in and hands fiddling with her glasses.  She had thought she was here at Avenger's Tower to interview for an entry level position down in some dark, cave-like office.  This was the first she had heard of Captain America needing an assistant.  If she ever got to see Thor again, she was going to have a meaningful conversation with him about appropriate interview preparations.  

She felt very, very small as both Natasha and Steve gave her a once over.  She knew that the business suit she had on was probably about a size too small (perhaps even two sizes too small), She knew that her shoes were scuffed and not stilettos and not red-soled.  She looked ill prepared and unqualified for most jobs at Stark Industries, but especially inept for being the assistant to Steve Rogers.  

"She's refused to join up with SHIELD twenty-three times in the last two years, despite having a level three clearance and already signing all eighty-three NDA's," Natasha continued to talk about her as if she wasn't even there.  "It's not so easy to find a job in this market anyway, but add that baggage to it and the huge two year hole in your resume, I suppose job hunting isn't easy."

"Nice to meet you too.  Next time want to take me to dinner first before getting to third base with my background check?" Darcy snapped at the Black Widow, essentially throwing the middle finger at her own, very limited, self preservation instincts.  

Natasha smiled at that, and her eyes slid to Steve, surveying his reaction.  He'd been getting better at hiding things on his face, but he couldn't hide the blush at the tips of his ears.  

"She'd be good for you, Rogers, she'd keep you on top of that inbox you blatantly refuse to look at," Natasha shrugged before going back to making her martini.  

"I didn't know that this was a job interview for---for this," Darcy blurted, looking up at Steve warily.  "I thought it was human resources."

"He's human, he's a resource," Tony checked his phone again for a call from Pepper's doctors.  "Assist all over him, Little Miss Great Rack."

"Stark!" Steve clipped out angrily.

"This is so far beyond my capabilities," Darcy said quietly, taking a step backwards from Steve, who took one step closer to her in turn, his eyes doing a once over of her again, from the top of her head to the bottom of her scuffed pumps and back up again to settle on her eyes.

"You managed Doctor Jane Foster for three years, and Doctor Erik Selvig for one," Natasha reminded her.  "You were good enough for Coulson to attempt to recruit."

"That's not an option," Darcy waved that accolade off easily.  "SHIELD never interested me.  They're kind of full of snakes and liars, no offense."

"None taken," Steve was the one to answer.  "But Miss Lewis, if you were to take this job on, you would have to work with SHIELD, as that's where my contract is."

"Well, then, not going to happen I guess," Darcy took another two steps backwards, and this time Steve didn't follow.  She nodded and turned to Tony, "Yo, People Magazine's Fifty Most Penicillin Resistant Bachelors?"

"You rang?" Tony smirked again, looking away from his phone and surveying the girl who Thor had told them felled him in one shot.  

"Need someone to push paper in your offices at all?" Darcy asked hopefully.

"Leave a card, I'll hand it over to Pepper when she's recovered," Tony nodded.

"Right---card," Darcy let out a little sigh.  "I'll leave it at the front desk."

"Miss Lewis," Steve called out as she made a quick getaway.  His smile was small, and felt foreign on his face as she turned to look at him, a little peach blush spreading across the bridge of her nose to her cheeks.  "If you change your mind, I could use a level three clearance assistant to help me deal with the SHIELD bureaucracy.  And the snakes and liars.”

"Right, yeah, I'll think about it," Darcy nodded before making a quick getaway to an elevator.

She loved Thor, she really did, but he was a royal idiot for thinking that she was in any way qualified enough to be a secretary to Steve Rogers.  

A month after that meeting at Avenger's Tower found her living off the very last of her savings as she traveled the country, winding up in Missouri of all places right when something very interesting happened.  

If she didn't know any better, the black, glittery goop coming out of the ground behind the Dairy Queen might have counted as her third alien invasion.  She didn't wait around to find out, after having touched some of it with her toe, she caught sight of a SHIELD agent and made a run for it.

She really hadn't wanted to sign another forty-one non-disclosure agreements.  

She had made it to New Mexico when SHIELD fell in 2014.  She was two or three towns away from Puente Antiguo, at a Holiday Inn Express, watching the news in horror as Steve Rogers was named an enemy of the state and the murderer of Nick Fury.  

And she knew for sure that that was a damned lie.  

She'd been halfway back to Thor's first landing site, ready to yell up to the sky for help if she needed to when her pitiful little clunker of a car was run off of the road.

When Darcy had woken up, it had been in chains.

**

They never explained why they wanted her.  It might have originally been her connection to Thor and Jane, who were still off planet and would remain off planet until 2015.  But it was exceedingly clear that you couldn't ransom people who weren't in the same solar system as the kidnapped.  And as far as the Avengers, even Hydra knew better than to think that they should bring attention to a missing young woman who had only met with half of the Avengers once.  

SHIELD was in such a state of upheaval after Natasha Romanoff dumped the Hydra bucket all over the internet, that no one took notice of a missing former intern.  Darcy had no family.  No close friends that expected her to check in regularly.  

In the end, her Asgardian connections were dwarfed by the fact that she was essentially a free and easy guinea pig.  

She didn't remember much, thankfully.  Five hundred and fifty days passed before something really stuck in her mind as memorable.  There was pain, but that was to be expected.  Of course there were the vials and vials of nefarious serums that they injected her with, seeing how one serum reacted with another.  

She'd been in a floating state of consciousness when one of the scientists, in a heavy European accent that Darcy couldn't quite place, let out a celebratory cheer after one of the serums seemed to have stuck.  

"If we only could bring her to the sceptre...."

"The sceptre is compromised, we no longer have access to it."

"Fine---then she will be ready to accept the samples in six months time."

Darcy's mind rarely seemed to work during her time with Hydra.  But she remembered the conversation about the sceptre.  Thor had said he would have to return to Earth eventually and get it back from SHIELD, after their experiments were finished with it.  He hadn't wanted to leave the sceptre behind at all, but Erik Selvig had been the one to coax him into leaving it, claiming that the Midgardian scientists needed to know how it worked in order to know how to never allow it to affect human minds again.

Darcy had sluggishly realized that being close to the sceptre would have probably meant some kind of rescue from her current hellish existence.  If she was with the sceptre, someone would have to rescue her if they rescued the glowing stick of mind control.

She hazily wondered what samples she would have to receive, but was soon placed into the cold sleep they had so often put her in since one of the original serums seemed to have stuck as well.  She had no idea how long she had been in Hydra's clutches, because the cold, painful sleep left her without any idea for the passage of time.

Her waking life revolved around pain, her once sharp mind dulled into complacency by drugs, and experimentation.

The rest was cold sleep that made her muscles pinch and tingle in the most uncomfortable of ways.

Five hundred and fifty days after she had been taken, she woke up and felt warm.  Comfortable.  She was as comfortable as she could be given that she was strapped to a gurney, her legs spread in stirrups as people in lab coats organized trays of little instruments that didn't look quite as bad as they usually did.

Darcy didn't know whether to be thankful for the drugs that kept her complacent or to hate them.  She was stuck watching everything from afar, as they injected her arm with god knows what.  In the beginning, before the drugs started to be pumped through her system, she'd been a smart mouthed piece of shit, screaming and yelling and practically begging to have her face rearranged.  

One of the guards she had spit on so long ago when there was fight left in her, now stood on the opposite side of a two way mirror, in shackles, looking underfed and even more abused than she was at that point.  

Good .  

Was the only thing she could bring herself to think.  

A soft, feminine voice sounded behind her, too far away for Darcy to even try and turn to glimpse her face.  The voice was surprisingly sweet, sounding a little like a sorority girl that Darcy used to know back during the time when she was a normal college girl, and not Lab Rat #1342.

"Pay attention, Miss Lewis.  After today we will be unable to keep you on the psychotropic relaxants that keep you compliant."

Well that would suck.  Those mind fuckers were the only thing keeping Darcy relatively sane.  She definitely didn't want to be here if she couldn't have them.

She wondered if it was an option to tell Sorority Sister Scientist that, but her mouth wasn't quite up to it.  It was working up to it, Darcy managed to make a noise, and she was fairly certain she hadn't been able to make a noise in quite some time.  Her eyes darted to the IV that had been placed and she blinked, realizing that they were flushing her system of the drugs.  Very, very rapidly.

She watched as the guard on the opposite side of the two way mirror was led to a large black chair, with a nefarious looking circular bit of metal and electrodes held by a mechanical arm hovering over it.  The guard was pushed into the chair and strapped in, and a mouthpiece was shoved into his mouth.

"If you are not compliant without the drugs, Miss Lewis," Sorority Torturer said with perky optimism, "you will be put in that chair and we will find a frequency that will make you compliant."

Darcy drew in a slow breath through her nose as the man who she would have gladly fried herself two years ago screamed and writhed in pain when the metal ring was brought down over his head.  The torture lasted for a short ten seconds before the guard was bleeding from his ears and nose and slumped in his chair.

A living breathing vegetable puddle in a matter of ten seconds.

"We can keep you alive, but we don't necessarily need that brain of yours to be working...we think," Sorority Sally Sunshine chirped in her ear.  "But let’s not risk it, okay?  Just---stay calm, and accept your fate."

"As---" Darcy's voice hadn't been used in at least a year, "--what?"

"Hydra's last great hope."

The drugs had been pushed out of her veins quickly, and a new alertness came over her.  She was acutely aware of a surprisingly gentle gynecological exam being done, the excitement in the other doctors and scientists palpable.  She was spoon fed soup afterwards and found that with the warm food in her stomach, she quickly succumbed to sleep, real sleep, for the first time in a very long time.

When she woke up, it might have been half an hour later, or it might have been days later.  She was off of the gurney and strapped to a bed this time, more comfortable than she could ever remember being.  She was fed for a few days after that, and she could tell that she was getting stronger and healthier, but for what reason she still didn't know.

"We just have to run a few tests," Super Smiley Sicko Lady grinned down at her before she had maniacally taken the bedpan that Darcy had peed in and rushing for the door in excitement.

"I hate you," Darcy whispered, loud enough to be heard.

"Oh, honey, I know.  That's okay," Perky McPsycho had the audacity to wink at her.  "I doesn't bother me one bit."

Darcy felt her blood pressure surge and the intercom in her spartan room clicked on, an accented voice filling all the empty space.

"Tell her to calm or we will find a way to calm her."

"Not exactly helpful," Darcy rolled her eyes.  "Calm your tits or we'll cut your tits off.  What? Did Hydra never give classes on how to soothe their captives?"

"I can't wait until we can turn you into a vegetable," Sunshine Murderbitch smiled at her.

"Fuck y----"

The intercom was still broadcasting into Darcy's room, and the sound of a quick scuffle came over, along with three gunshots, and then two pained yelps along with five bodies falling to the floor.

Darcy felt her heart leap into her throat at the suddenly panicked look on Rainbow Bright Killer's face.  

She was rescued.

She was getting out.

It was over.  It was finally over.

The observation glass on the wall opposite her shattered and before Little Miss Asswipe could react more than dropping the bedpan of piss on the ground, she had a hand wrapped around her throat.

A metal hand.  

"Don't---don't," she struggled.  

"Kill her---kill her please," Darcy whispered to herself.   She didn't know who this brute was.  He was impossibly muscled, dressed all in black, a muzzle over the bottom half of his face, his brown hair wild and tangled as it lay long against his face, hiding most of his angry, gray eyes.  

Darcy didn't even care if the metal armed man killed HER next, she only wanted to see the person who seemed to be responsible for most of her torture was dead.  It's the only thing she wanted, and she would follow that bitch to hell happily after everything and spend the rest of eternity pushing her into the brunt of the flames.  

A human neck doesn't snap all that easily, but this one did, and the look of terror was frozen on Strawberry Short-torture's face as she was dropped onto the ground in a puddle of Darcy's pee.  

The man with a metal arm, who Darcy was seriously considering naming an honest to god Angel of Death looked to her next, restrained on a bed, covered in a thin, flimsy hospital gown. He pulled off his muzzle to reveal an absolutely unfair face and nodded once at her, short and tight.

"I will make sure someone finds you soon," the gravel voiced angel promised her before turning away.

"No, there's---no one will come to get me," Darcy said desperately.  "Please---please, help me.  Please, don't leave me here."

He turned to look at her again, his eyes going up and down her body from the top of her greasy brown hair to the tips of her woefully unmanicured and overgrown toenails and then back up again, his glance reminding her of something from a million years ago.  

"I'll drop you at a hospital," he said softly as he approached her bed and shredded the restraints that they had tied her down with easily.  "You're the only living prisoner.  Except for the wiped vegetable next door."

"Oh---oh, can I go and unplug him?" Darcy wondered, her voice hopeful and sounding impossibly foreign to her ears.  The Darcy who had been crashed into in New Mexico would have never thought to do such a thing.  It was funny what two years with Hydra would do to a person.

"You sure you want to do that?" came the low, dulcet voice, sounding a little wry and irreverent.

"Do I want to watch the man who tried to rape me repeatedly when I got here slowly die in a shell of what used to be his body?" Darcy questioned angrily, and to her rescuer's credit, his jaw twitched in anger at her revelation.  "yes---absolutely."

"It might be more torturous to leave him be, stuck in his body with his brain all mush until the power runs out someday."

Darcy looked up at her savior as he helped her to her feet and she smiled very slowly.

"That sounds way better actually."

"I have to clear the computers and get the data," he carefully walked her out of the room, a flesh hand on the small of her back as he guided her around the dead body and puddle of piss.  

"Okay---can I go and put something scratchy underneath the vegetable's nose?" Darcy wondered hopefully.

The sound of his chuckle was the most beautiful thing Darcy had ever heard.

Chapter Text

Chapter Two: A New Pet

Bucky Barnes knew who he was.  

Well, he knew who he was supposed to be.

The name Bucky seemed ridiculous to him, actually.  That cold, cynical dagger of a man that took up hind quarters in his brain and constantly threatened to take over at every moment of the day certainly thought that Bucky was a ridiculous name.  And even though he was no longer the Asset, no longer a machine to be programmed for the despicable and nefarious intentions of Hydra, he wasn't quite Bucky either.  He had decided to just refer to himself as James, as that seemed newer and so much more safe.

Which was why it felt odd to have the girl following him doggedly around the Hydra facility.  Her legs hadn't been the most faithful of appendages after getting up.  She'd gripped onto the back of his shirt as he slowly walked back towards the command center where the answers would be.  He felt a moment of puffed up pride as her grip tightened every time they came upon another body he had felled.  

It was a foreign kind of feeling for him, something old and forcibly forgotten, that feeling of being able to provide protection for someone small who desperately needed the protection.  It was something he used to do, but was no longer suitable for.  He knew he didn't deserve that rush of accomplishment at providing comfort to someone who needed it.  It had used to be a feeling he chased, he was sure of it, but he wasn't deserving of it anymore.  So now, he ran from the one he used to protect, as fast as he could.

But this slip of a girl had been through hell.  He knew what kind of hell Hydra could inflict on a strong body and mind.  He'd been poked and prodded and injected even before he had been rescued by Steve during World War II.  He needed to know what was done to the girl shuffling slowly behind him as she tried to use legs that were unused to the physical activity.

She made a humorous sound of exertion as she pushed a dead body out of a plush office chair and climbed up in it herself, taking a break as James immediately went about shoving USB sticks into ports and starting programs to download material.  The girl watched him carefully and he had a moment of indecision, knowing that she was about to ask questions.  Her blue eyes were impossibly huge, made to look bigger due to the fact that she was seriously underweight.  

"That's me," she pointed to a screen that James had brought up, showing a picture of her that had been taken when Thor had first come down to Earth.  

James looked to the screen and nodded.  Darcy Lewis, he pounded on a few keys and her entire file went onto one of his usb drives to be read later.  He did glimpse a few things very quickly as the files copied and he managed a dry swallow at the highlights of what had been done to her.

"How're you feeling?" his voice was a soft thing he wasn't used to.  He'd done nothing but whisper or shout the past two years.  Polite mumbles made to people he had to interact with for necessities.  Angry, guttural growling shouts made to the people he'd been avidly trying to destroy for two years.  

"Better," Darcy admitted.  Her face twisted with sudden annoyance, "I probably shouldn't be feeling so good already, should I?"

"The file says you received a serum," James said as gently as he could.  He remembered another girl realizing that she had been gifted with something she had never wanted before, the eyes from the hazy past were green instead of blue though, but there had been forced bravery stewing in front of fear then and now.  James remembered a glimpse of his own realization of what had been done to him.  

Standing by the side of someone suddenly too big.

Staring at a man peeling off skin to reveal a red face.

Suddenly realizing that he had been made a monster too, and he couldn't even tell Steve about it, the one person he trusted with everything else but the worst of him.

"Am I gonna be able to benchpress a motorcycle full of hot ladies too?" Darcy asked, glib humor brandished as a shield in front of the fear.

"Not quite," James could feel the smile tugging at his lips but it didn't quite make it a full smile.  "Hydra doesn't believe women should be that powerful."

"Assholes," Darcy's eyes slid back and forth between the four dead bodies in the room.  

"You ever hear of the Black Widow?" James asked, surprised at the hint of his accent seeping out unbidden.  

"I snapped at her once upon a time," Darcy laughed.

"You were given the same serum, but in a smaller dosage," James relayed to her.  "Enough to make you resilient."

"Resilient enough to torture," Darcy took a piece of paper off of a desk, crumpled it into a ball and threw it at one of the dead bodies.  A computer made a noise on the desk beside her and she slowly managed to roll the desk chair closer, pressing a few buttons experimentally.  Computer skills seemed to be like riding a bike though, and before she knew it she was typing rapidly, pulling up the window that showed that the warning system had been tripped and overrides would need to be entered.  "Uhm...we have twenty minutes to get out of here, I think?"

"Done," James nodded, pulling the USB drives out one by one and placing them in a bulletproof pocket on the side of his black jacket.  He got up and looked down at the small woman dressed in a spartan hospital gown, sitting with her legs pulled up against her chest, her hand on the keyboard to the computer.  

She was impossibly small, and he was sure that her collarbone was not supposed to be jutting out in such a way.  James felt that nostalgic pull on his brain again as he thought of ways to get her fed and healthy once more.  

He'd need to find her clothing, and he hoped to find something in the base before leaving, opening doors in hopes that they were some fool's living quarters to grab her something to cover up before taking her out into the cold.  He doubted her immune system would be able to fight off much of anything at this point, serum or not.

One more locking system met its demise by way of his metal hand, and when he kicked the door in, he stopped short, staring inside at what the room contained.  He felt Darcy's hand grip the back of his shirt tighter and heard a little intake of breath, but that was it.  

When he came back to himself, it was to see her holding onto the door frame, looking at him in true and utter concern, not a sign of fear on her face.  He looked down at his hands and he held a warped and twisted piece of metal.  He was standing amongst the ruined shambles of one of the chairs, one that had probably been used for him some time in the past.  He swallowed and looked back up at Darcy, who had had enough sense to cower from whatever destruction he had unleashed in the last few minutes, but still was not backing away from him entirely.

"I take it you know what that thing was for," Darcy said quietly.  "You feel better now?"

"Did they use this on you?" James demanded.

"No---they just threatened, recently threatened," Darcy assured him.  "And made me watch the vegetable get fried.  You're made of stronger stuff than him if you survived it."

"Yeah.  I survived it," James said softly, dropping the metal and making his way back to her at the door where she readily grabbed onto him again as he led her down the hallway.

"Can we destroy this whole place?" Darcy asked suddenly, very hopeful, the hint of youthful eagerness and joy in her voice.  "Like, boom, explosion?"

James furrowed his brow.  He didn't usually do that.  He'd spent six months after the fall of the Triskellion figuring out who the hell he was supposed to be.  James Buchanan Barnes, war hero on one hand and the Winter Soldier, deadly cyborg assassin on the other hand.  He'd then spent every single waking moment using the gifts that Hydra had stuffed into him.  He used the unwanted skill set to dismantle them piece by piece by piece, while staying one step ahead of Steve Rogers and any other person that would want to bring him back in.

Because it hadn't been just Steve Rogers and the Avengers.  It hadn't just been the bird-man and the Widow.  It hadn't only been Hydra either.  

He had dismantled a rogue faction of the KGB who had come after him less than a year after the Triskellion.  He'd destroyed an assemblage of Special Forces from what remained of the World Security Council.  He'd even made sure the new SHIELD faction couldn't rope him back into unwanted service.  

He'd just unearthed every Hydra facility he could, killing every last minion he could and leaving a trail of stolen information and blood in his wake.  Steve and his team probably hadn't even been able to get to every one of the facilities, big and small that he'd hit in the Southern Hemisphere.

"Burning it down would bring it to the attention of the Avengers," James muttered, more to himself than to Darcy.  

"Fuck the Avengers," Darcy scoffed, bitterness clear in her voice.  She shook it off quickly though and her words were genuinely sweet and wheedling, "But what you're saying is that you're totally capable of burning this place to the ground, right?  I mean---you seem like a man capable of something like that.  Like a metal-armed angel of pain and retribution and pretty eyes."

James stopped short once more and found himself almost laughing out loud again, for the second time in less than an hour.  He turned and saw that her face matched the sweet begging in her voice, looking vulnerable and beautifully needy.  James already knew far too much about Darcy Lewis, and that was without perusing through the file he would have to un-encrypt later.  She was a sarcastic, genuine and funny little thing, and resilient as hell if she was still able to access such qualities after what she'd been through.  

Memories of going to picture shows came unbidden into his brain, a black and white movie with a fast talking dame whose brain was quicker than a cheetah and sharper than a tack and she traded barbs and insults with a man so hopelessly gone for her for the whole movie.  And in the back row were two young men, one big and one small, staring up at the screen in wonder and sharing a bag full of peanuts later saying that if they could only find a girl so smart mouthed, then life would be pretty damned perfect.

"Let me get you to the car, it'll be faster if I can rig it on my own."

Darcy decided she kind of liked the way the metal-armed Angel of Death and Destruction smelled.  He had put her in an old, dark colored SUV, reached into a bag and popped a black henley over her head, carefully putting too thin arms into the arm holes, before reaching in and grabbing a pair of pants that had no hope of staying up on her hips.  She had put them on anyway, because anything was better than freezing to death so shortly after having a second lease on life.  

It was cold, where ever they were.  There was snow drifts as far as the eye could see, and Darcy wagered they were up a little high, too.  

She snuggled deeper into her rescuer's shirt and sniffed indulgently.  The stale smell of smoke, mentholated smoke at that, mingled with the scent of something old fashioned, like barbasol cream or something, along with ivory soap.  And something unique, which Darcy had the grace to know was probably sweat.  

She'd read once that a study had been done to have women smelling shirts that men had sweat in excessively.  Women were repulsed by the smell of men that were related to them, but those that were genetically viable smelled good and actually got motors running.  

Sweaty shirts.

Darcy didn't know how genetically viable a man with a metal arm was, and she doubted Hydra had left her lady bits completely intact to even have children someday, but she had no problem admitting that he smelled good.  And he was an attractive sort of murder man.  And he hadn't murdered or tortured her or left her behind, so that automatically scored some brownie points.

She saw a shadow in the darkness of night, which was---new and strange.  Darcy realized for the first time that she was seeing clearly without the aid of glasses or contacts.  

"Thanks Hydra asscanoes," she mumbled, snuggling deeper into the shirt and the comfortable bench seat of the car.  

The most beautiful thing she'd ever seen suddenly came to life before her very eyes.  Far more exquisite than the lights of the bi-frost.  More elegantly wonderful than any stars she had glimpsed around the world with Jane Foster.  Even better than the patriotic jawline of Captain America.  

She saw flames light up the night sky, followed by a large explosion.

And she laughed.

The man who rescued her was back in less than thirty seconds after the explosion went off, and he actually smiled down at her as she laughed as uproariously as her current energy would allow.  He eased himself into the car and continued to watch her laugh and point as a few new explosions went off, bigger and brighter than the first.  

"You got your fill?" he asked quietly.  "We should be going before someone comes to see why this happened."

"Yes, this was---I can't even tell you what it means," Darcy wiped the tears from her cheeks, her face hurting from smiling after so long a period without mirth or laughter.  She scooted on the bench seat and put her head against a non-metal bicep and sighed.  "Thank you for doing it."

She was asleep within minutes, her hands clutching around his elbow, her head against his bicep.  She seemed to have no idea of personal space.  And she definitely didn't have an ounce of care to her own self preservation.  He'd just killed about twenty people.  Granted, they were the people responsible for her torture and captivity.  

But still, a normal person would have been just a little skittish.  They definitely wouldn't have cuddled up to the big scary murderer like a tiny, adorable kitten.  

The muddled consciousnesses in his brain were in turn sneering at her weakness and also marveling about how such a dame might have made the tips of Steve's ears turn red before the idiot chased after her all day, shadowing her every move with a dopey, dreamy smile on his face.

The two diametrically opposed views warred and nothing won out. James began driving hard into the night, thinking of all the things he would need to see to her comfort and care and finally came up with one course of action.  

He had to get her to Steve.

When Darcy next woke, it was in a bed so much more warm and comfortable than her last bed, in that she was covered in at least one warm blanket and could actually move her limbs, should she so choose.  Also, the smell of ivory soap mingled with the hint of cool smoke and lay just under the smell of warmed brown sugar.  

"Coffee?" she mumbled.

"Can't have stimulants," her metal-armed Angel said gruffly from his place on the end of the bed where he was staring down at a very old laptop that appeared to be fire and bullet proof in its brick like density.

"Pfft, I'm not pregnant, I can have whatever I want," Darcy scoffed.  

"It might react badly with what they were dosing you with, you can have it in about two weeks, when it’s flushed from your system," he said calmly.  

"Tyrant!" Darcy accused, easily sitting up in the bed, her joints a little achy from rest, but certainly feeling so much better than she should at the moment.  "Whatcha workin' on Angel?"

"Angel?" he gave her a raised eyebrow and a frown.

"I don't actually know your name."

"It's---it's complicated," he admitted with a huff of exasperated air.  "For now---James will do."

"I like Angel," Darcy shrugged.

"Hungry?" James pushed a styrofoam container her way, and the source of the brown sugar and buttery smell was revealed to be a stack of the most sinful french toast Darcy had ever lain eyes on.  It seemed to be made out of huge sliced cinnamon buns, battered and fried on a griddle then covered in chocolate drizzles and nuts.

"Oh my god is that bacon crumbles?" Darcy gasped dipping a finger into the heart disease laden diabetes inducing dessert that was masquerading as breakfast.  She put her whole finger into her mouth and let her eyes roll into the back of her head.

' Take her now.  Make her our pet .'

James’ jaw ticked in annoyance at the sound of the murder puppet that was always trying to take up more and more space in his brain.  His hated alter ego had been silent during the takedown of the base, far too pleased with executing people to take a look at the girl that James had managed to pick up.  But it had been sixteen hours between the driving and the obtaining a seedy motel room and watching her sleep.

The assassin he used to be was bored, and had been eyeing up the freed Hydra captive as if she was a particularly delicious morsel meant to be eaten.  The Soldier argued that they had been gifted pets before, certainly none so unbreakable as this one that seemed to be gifted with and SURVIVED the administration of a serum that had killed far more women in the Red Room than was necessary.  She had been rescued from a horrendous fate, the Soldier wagered she would be grateful to be made his pet.

The other women had been grateful as well, happy to serve Hydra in such a way, never knowing they'd be dispatched with when they couldn't obtain the end results that the handlers wanted.

James was very happy he had found her when he did.  A year earlier and he would not have been able to push down the warped part of him that would have pulled over to the side of an abandoned road and used her body cruelly to satisfy his base urges.  The thoughts that his other half was having were making his stomach turn unpleasantly.

He'd read through her file while he waited for her to wake up.  The girl had been through enough.

"Oh God, so good," Darcy moaned out, having quickly demolished a third of the breakfast before pushing the container away, licking her fingertips lazily.

"You finished already?" James questioned.

"Haven't had much more than soup lately, and before that---nothing that they couldn't put in an IV," Darcy lay back down on the bed, her limbs stretched and askance.  She saw that the television was on mute across the dark room and sighed, catching some of the closed captioning about the Avengers press release regarding an exposed Hydra base in the wilds of Canada exploding the day prior.

Twenty-three casualties.  No known survivors.

"So, we're in Canada?" Darcy questioned.  James nodded.  She looked to the corner of the television and saw the date scrolling across the screen.  Her mind calculated the amount of time she'd been gone and she actively fought against the panic creeping in on the edges of her vision.  She took a shaky breath and shrugged before blurting, "Explains the maple syrup coated bacon bits.  Delicious."

James' gaze over her face was assessing in a way he hadn't meant to display, the rest of his face emotionless and blank.  He'd read her file.  He knew what she'd been through, things that she had no way of knowing due to being knocked out most of the time.  He knew their plans for her.

He hoped like hell they hadn't succeeded.

"I honestly thought I was going to be waking up to the smell of antiseptic," Darcy admitted as she stretched out her limbs experimentally, like a little kitten getting ready to wake up from a nap, and move to wherever the sunbeams lived and go for another nap.

She looked around at the burgundy themed motel room.  She hadn't known burgundy could be a theme, but far be it from her to try and dictate interior design to whomever had set up this ridiculous room.  The walls were a hideous purple red, probably the best color to hide blood stains.  The queen sized bed she was on had a burgundy comforter that looked like it would be itchy.  She had to be thankful for James at that moment, because he had placed a large fleece blanket down before putting her on the bed, so her skin wasn't actually in contact with a plethora of venereal diseases.

Even the furniture was stained to look a little burgundy.  Along with the 'artwork' which Darcy was pretty sure was supposed to be a counterfeit Monet in a tin frame spray painted gold.  The picture seemed to be printed out on regular old eight and a half by eleven copy paper, four sheets pasted in place to make a picture, their seams slightly off so the facsimile painting looked more modern and absurdist than anything.

They had a box of an old black and white television, a closed door that certainly led to a hopefully clean bathroom that would have some kind of hot water, and one large window behind tightly drawn burgundy curtains, the slivers of sunshine peeking around the corners.

In the corner was a little burgundy waste basket with gold accents, and it was already full of possibly three or four styrofoam containers, food that James had already eaten while she was sleeping.

"It's a nice surprise to be waking up to coronary clogging breakfast instead," Darcy shrugged as she rolled experimentally on her side, looking at James as he continued to stare at her with that impassive face, although his eyes, which she had thought to be gray in the harsh light of the Hydra facility, were actually a very light blue.

His eyes were an interesting sort of thing to watch, even more so than the Stark Industries figure head that was being interviewed on cable news about the Hydra facility, telling the world that it was not a terrorist attack, and that the general public should not have to fear for its safety.  James eyes were on her though, and in one blink they were calm, welcoming and something resembling friendly.  Another blink and it almost felt like he was trying to undress her with his gaze, cocky and sure and something nefarious that Darcy couldn't quite bring herself to dislike.

He'd looked like that when he'd snapped the neck of the woman who had been one of the only faces Hydra had presented to her.  Darcy realized she had come a long way from the intern who had saved puppies, kittens and gerbils in New Mexico.  But she refused to mourn the loss of the wide eyed co-ed.  She'd more than earned the right to appreciate a person's helpful dark side.

"If I took you to the hospital, your regenerative rate and anything residual in your system would raise red flags," James explained, sitting back in the spartan chair next to a spartan wooden desk (burgundy colored, of course).  "Red flags would only wave Hydra back to you."

"Fuck that noise," Darcy scoffed, sitting up and swinging her legs over the edge of the bed.  "The only way they're getting me back is in a body bag."

She stood up on shaky legs and nodded in the direction of the bathroom.  James watched her go and had a silent, internal war with that monsterish asshole who had come up with a good handful of scenarios on getting to the girl and making sure she was quiet as he did his worst.

' Our missions are successful.  We get a reward.  She will be willing. '

James pushed it down and checked the surveillance he had set up, making sure that no Avengers managed to pick up his trail.  None of them had gotten very close yet, although once, the archer had managed to get to the same town James had found himself in after a takedown of Hydra.  The man was even better at tracking than the Widow, which was saying quite a lot.

"It's so nice to pee in a toilet," Darcy jabbered as she came back out, a towel in her hands.  "I see you bought me some soap and whatnot, muchos of grass and ass, dude.  And not to be a needy kind of rescue project or anything, because I'm grateful for what you've done, but---any chance we have clean clothes now too?"

Her voice was a light, playful, hopeful thing.  James didn't remember the last time someone had spoken to him in such a way.  He knew he was missing a few things still, but he didn't think anyone had ever spoken to him in such a way.

' Allow us to bathe the Pet .'

"Here," James gestured to a bag he had under the desk.  "The sizes might be off, I was going off of your original measurements from your file."

"No complaints, man, I've worn a hospital gown for the last two years," Darcy dug into the grocery bag and pulled out a five pack of underwear and a package of heavy duty sports bras.  She smirked at the size of the bra and then looked down at her chest, which was still an impressive thing, no matter how thin she was everywhere else.

James watched her pick out an outfit from the comfortable clothing he had procured for her.  Soft grey sweatpants that promised to still fall off of her and a trio of shirts: white tank top, red and black checked flannel shirt and a discounted blue sweatshirt with a logo from a local sports team on top of that.  Warmth and softness and comfort.

When James had come back to himself, he'd dressed in soft layers too, along with kevlar.

While she disappeared back into the bathroom and the shower started, the heat and steam from it finding its way through the bottom crack of the door, he busied himself in the room.  He took the rest of the clothing she had not chosen and carefully and efficiently packed it into a child-sized gray back pack, along with a small handgun, a well hidden tracking device, and a small box of little granola bars.  Her stomach may not want to accept a lot of food now, but soon it would be able to keep up with the newly enhanced metabolism and she would need it.

He polished off the rest of her now cold french toast, and it really was delicious.  A trip to the soda machine at the end of their floor doubled as a perimeter check, and as hoped, everything was quiet and still and no archers were watching and waiting from the wings.

He didn't fear the Avengers.  He just didn't want Steve to try and force him in.  He wasn't finished yet, not by a long shot.  And yes, he would take the journey across Canada to upstate New York to drop Darcy off so she could be well taken care of, but that would be under his terms, and he would be a puff of smoke before Steve and his band of merry idiots could try to catch a glimpse of him.

He feared what he'd do to Steve when he saw him.  If he could barely stop the Soldier from demanding a glimpse of their wet and naked pet, there probably was little to no chance of stopping him from taking over and completing his last failed mission.

That would be unacceptable in James' book.

He got back to the room with two bottles of cold water and packed up the bedding he used for nights in the woods, setting it aside to put back in the car before he sat back down at the hideous desk and checking Hydra's security chatter once more.

"THAT was life changing!"

He fought against a smile when Darcy came breezing back out of the bathroom, holding onto the bottle of shampoo he had gotten her as well as the toothbrush.  She was clean and rosy cheeked, although he could tell by the state of her fair skin on her shoulders and arms that she had used too hot of water and scrubbed far too hard.

But then again, he understood that too.  He'd rubbed himself raw a time or two after something horrible came back to his brain.

' Pay attention, the Pet is speaking .'

"---and honestly I was always a little crazy about dental hygiene when I was a kid, I'd brush my teeth five times a day, but not in an obsessive compulsive sort of way, I just really enjoyed giving myself a toothpaste foam goatee."

Darcy stopped talking altogether and gave him a big, beaming smile before putting on the flannel shirt and then drowning herself in the too large sweatshirt, pulling the hood up over sopping wet hair.  It was so utterly foreign that he felt his stomach roll over uncomfortably, threatening to bring back the cold french toast.  When was the last time someone smiled at him like that?  Had anyone ever smiled at him like that?

' We shouldn't even need to force her.  Eager pets are acceptable .'

"Thank you," she said it on the exhale, making it sound even more lovely somehow.

"For what?" he managed to ask.

"For not leaving me while I was in the shower.  I---I, uh, panicked when I heard the door open and close, and was going to chase you, but I was naked and wet---"

' Yoptel-mopsel! ' [ God dammit]

James swallowed as the voice in his head swore in increasingly creative Russian and tried to focus on Darcy’s words instead.

"And then you came back in and---"

She paused and shrugged, fighting back tears.  She was unable to articulate what she wanted to say, looking angry at herself for a second before finally aiming that big, honest smile back at him.

"Just thank you."

"You're welcome," James answered back, still dumbfounded.  He didn't know what to do as she looked at the small shoes and socks he had left out for her, getting on the bed again and easing the thick, warm socks on her feet, followed by the sneakers.  He looked back to the computer that he had closed and nodded to himself.  She'd been talking of silly toothpaste stories and thanking him and she hadn't even asked why she seemed to be very nearly at one hundred percent physically.

She hadn't asked anything about what Hydra might have done to her.  The reaction was so eerily familiar.  He had tried to pretend nothing had happened at first, and the euphoria of being reunited with Steve had allowed it to happen.

The girl didn't have a Steve though.

"Do you wish to know what happened?" James swallowed back the annoyance at himself.  He had sounded clinical and foreign there.  That's not how he sounded.  He sounded like the Soldier there, without speaking in Russian at all.  Stilted and unemotional and terse.  He didn't WANT to sound like that.  It just happened.

"Nope," Darcy shrugged, double knotting her sneakers in such a way that they would never untie, but she still would be able to slip the sneakers on at a moment's notice.

James realized he should have bought her the silly looking sneakers that just slipped on.

James thought to the pages and pages of experimentation notes he had read.  His mind lingering on the last one that had been performed prior to him arriving at the facility.  It was perhaps the most disturbing of them all, and yet, he felt a sort of calmness at her not wanting to know any piece of the horrid details.

He would have to get to another facility to answer his own burning questions regarding the last experiment.  One burning question in particular.

"Hey! Did you eat the rest of my french toast?  I had jiggled around in the shower to make more room for it."

Chapter Text

Chapter Three: Warning Label

Rolling with the punches seemed to be a thing that Darcy Lewis did extraordinarily well.  Her ability to adapt so well to a rough and tumble life on the road with a smile that seemed to get bigger and wider each day was a thing of beauty, if James thought about it too long.  Her sarcasm was a powerful, but still light thing, and it seemed to blend quite well with her enthusiasm that was ebbing back into her every waking minute.  

She enjoyed sleeping in the car on the second night and she'd been giddy about the little motel they'd stayed at on the third night, despite having climbed up onto his back in a panic when a very long legged spider crawled across the mirror.  She'd been rapturous about the food, which had all been junk, really, procured at gas stations and diners.  But James didn't seem happy when she'd cleared her plate, as she still looked severely underweight, although her bruises were all cleared up and the circles under her eyes had lessened.  

She'd taken his coddling much better than that asshole from another lifetime had taken the coddling.  She seemed to eat up the extra attention, declaring him an adorable, murderous mother hen and very nearly listening to everything he told her to do.

Unlike that other tiny asshole.

Not tiny anymore.  James had to shake himself out of it when one day he had stared at Darcy as she'd doggedly finished the milkshake he had shoved at her unceremoniously.  His thoughts had strayed when he'd stared at pouting lips sucking on the straw and thinking of how nice it would've been to have a matched set at the same height, with him in the middle standing tall.

He wasn't short like Darcy anymore.  The museum had said Captain America stood six feet two inches tall.  A whole two inches taller than James now, truth be told.  

' The Pet is an ideal height to bend over, that is all that matters when you let me make her mine .'

Bucky's bottom lip pinched in a bit at the sound of the assassin in his head all damned day.  The things he said about Darcy at all hours of the day where inappropriate at best, and absolutely infuriating at worst, which was more often than not.  His alter ego clearly wanted to use Darcy, and James knew that it wouldn't be the first time the Soldier had used a woman so savagely.

He absolutely refused to let the cretin surface now.  It had been a close thing though.

They'd run into a rogue Hydra operative on the fourth day of their travels, and Darcy had been nonplussed, even going so far as very quietly, but enthusiastically cheering for him when he choked the life out of the desperate Hydra man.  He felt the Soldier impinging on his control, wanting to rip the man's head clear off of his shoulders with the metal arm. James wanted to let him do it too, Darcy probably would have been a little shocked, but would have gotten over it quick enough when she realized the man was Hydra.  

But Bucky knew if he gave the Soldier his way then, he'd be hard pressed to get him back in his box, and he'd lose Darcy's trust forever after the Soldier had his way with her.

' Trust is unnecessary.  The pet will be pleased and squealing like a pig in heat. '

He was disgusting, base, and awful.  Bucky beat him back with metaphorical sticks in his head and looked to Darcy as she smiled at him from her comfortable perch in the truck.  She held up a big white sheet of paper with a '10' on it, a smiley face in the middle of the zero.  

' Forget the small man.  Claim our Pet .'

"Good violence, James.  Excellent work," Darcy grinned at him.  "Now, you promised me something coated in cheese, let's get him all covered up so we can get the cheese."

"Tell me you have something."

Steve looked up at Natasha with genuine, heartfelt pleading.  He'd been going out of his mind for the last eight months.  Since Ultron, Bucky had been making pretty noticeable appearances at Hydra facilities around the world, concentrating on South America, the United States and now Canada.  

Even though he was systematically dismantling places, he hadn't been easy to trace or track.  Neither Clint, nor Natasha nor Friday could find him.  

But this last base was different.  Forensics showed that it housed another wiping machine that had been used to electrocute Bucky's brain into the order following soldier that Steve had fought against over a year ago.  

The machine had been completely destroyed and the base had been burned to the ground.  Steve had interpreted that to mean that Bucky---the Winter Soldier, was getting more unstable.  The other machine that had been in Brazil had just been destroyed with the base intact.  Steve errantly hoped that it meant the hot headed half Italian half Scotsman he remembered meeting so many years ago, quick to shout when angered, quick to throw an alarm clock against a wall when it annoyed him, was coming back out, burning things to the ground that upset him.

"Two things," Natasha pushed folders to him a sad smile on her face.

"Either of them good news?" Steve sighed, putting his hands on the folders.

"Depends on what you consider a happy ending nowadays," Natasha said honestly.  She shook it off and opened the folder on the right.  "There was someone on that base."

"I read the body count and the forensics, I know how many he killed," Steve said quietly.  He wrinkled his nose minutely and shook his head, his jaw going taut as he insisted strongly, "And quite frankly, I really think he has every RIGHT to do it.  Those Hydra scum did---"

"Save the impassioned speech for someone who doesn't already agree with you," Natasha smiled and tapped her finger against a sheet of paper with an incomplete medical report taken off of the nearly wiped Hydra database.  "Friday is working on trying to recreate it from the deleted files, but she's not having much luck."

"They had a person there?  With experiments?" Steve's eyes flew over the words of the report.  It was missing every fifth word, practically, so it was not an easy read by any means.

'Twenty-five.  Female subject---serum---success.  Healing factors---further tests.'

Steve felt his stomach turn.

"Do we have any idea who she is?" he asked.

"Is?" Natasha said softly.

" IS ," Steve insisted.

"You think the Winter Soldier killed every soul at the Hydra facility and didn't kill the woman they were torturing and experimenting on?" Natasha said without an ounce of judgement on her face.

"He wouldn't have killed her," Steve shook his head, looking at the incomplete report.  Frowning when the woman was simply referred to as Codename Ostera and mentioned multiple times with the procedures missing.

"Bucky Barnes wouldn't have killed her," Natasha was playing a gentle devil's advocate.

"Friday, please search through hospital admissions within a two hundred mile radius of the Hydra facility, see if you can find a young woman---"

"A woman between the age of twenty-five and twenty-seven, underweight, malnourished, severe physical trauma, contusions, bruising, broken and re-set bones and sexual abuse," Natasha interrupted.

"Poor girl," Steve felt another piece of his heart clenching.  So many had been hurt by Hydra, not just him.  Not just Bucky.  Nameless girls, taken away from their lives and tortured endlessly, all in the name of Hydra's greater good.

It only made him want to destroy them more.

"What's in the other file?" Steve sighed.

"I have news on Retta," Natasha gave him a sad smile.

Retta Archie was his eighty-seven year old personal assistant.  Peggy had recommended her when Darcy Lewis had never called Steve back all those years ago.  Retta had a level four SHIELD clearance and had been Peggy's most trusted girl from 1962 until Peggy's retirement in the nineties.  She'd survived the fall of SHIELD, taking out four Hydra men in the process and had finally stated she would retire.

She hadn't of course, and had been secretly organizing the details of Steve's travel and finance during his mad search for Bucky.  She'd gone missing three months ago, and  Steve had been searching for her just as relentlessly as he had Bucky.

"Clint found her two days ago," Natasha revealed, opening the folder to show a picture of Retta from the 1970's.  Shrewd, dark brown eyes stared at Steve from her SHIELD photo, a smirk playing on full lips and her naturally styled hair was in a stylish (for the time) afro.

"She had been taken by Hydra, and she activated a morse code call for help using two exposed wires in her cell," Natashas chuckled.  "That call for help was picked up by a ninety-one year old ex security guard for Peggy Carter, and within days, Retta had gathered a crew of a dozen senior citizens that have been loyal to Peggy every damned day since they met her."

"Jesus Christ," Steve let out a watery chuckle as he paged through the surveillance photos, showing a bunch of snowy haired, rounded back individuals, men and women, some with canes, one in a motorized scooter, all of them armed to the teeth with various firearms.

"They got her out, and they've been underground ever since," Natasha grinned.  "But Retta said she quit being your secretary because she's found something more meaningful than making sure you had a hotel reservation for the night.  Unearthing other Hydra faithful that may or may not be confined to senior citizen care centers."

"I'll be damned," Steve laughed and sighed, happy that Natasha had let him have the good news last.  "I'm glad she's alright."

"Yeah," Natasha agreed.  Retta had always been kind to Natasha, even when she had first come in as a skittish, angry Russian spy.

"Could you imagine if Miss Lewis had taken me on instead?" Steve shook his head in disbelief.

"To hear Thor tell it, you both would have probably exposed Hydra two weeks into the position, and then ridiculously set the entire building on fire," Natasha said seriously.

"He talk to her lately?" Steve asked casually, which was a mistake, because Natasha sat up straight immediately.

"I'm not sure, but I can find out."

Her smile was like a cat who had eaten the sweetest cream and her green eyes sparkled in a way they hadn't in a few months.  She'd given up on setting him up after Ultron had happened, both of them too involved in establishing the new facility in upstate New York, searching for Bucky, and training up the new Avengers.  She would be all too happy to find Steve a date.  Or a girlfriend.  Or a wife.  Whichever.

"Don't go overboard," Steve sighed in exasperation.

"What's overboard?" Natasha smirked.

"You are not allowed to coerce the girl into a date with me," Steve said resolutely.

"Rogers, when have I ever had to use coercion to get people to do what I want?"

If Darcy noticed they were moving southeast through Canada, she didn't say anything.  She seemed to be not only content with her current situation in life, but overjoyed at every little thing, nearly every day.  She learned how to clean the guns, one late night in the motel, and James didn't think anyone had ever taken such enjoyment in such things before.

The Soldier had noticed, and if anything, seeing her clean the guns made the louse want ' their pet ' even more.

She'd been with him for eight days now, and while James couldn't shut up the lecherous beast in his head, he noticed that the Soldier was speaking less of forcing himself on her and more about wooing 'the pet', and thinking of how something 'the pet' did was particularly adorable.

It was disconcerting to say the least.

"You have like, a lot more bullets than you had yesterday," Darcy looked down at the backpack that James kept.  It was a lot different than the one he packed for Darcy.  His were full of notebooks and bullets and gloves and a hell of a lot of knives.

She never asked questions of him.  She simply went with the flow, happy enough to be free and of sound mind and not in pain.

' The Pet is safe with us.  She will reward us for keeping her well fed and safe .'

"You planning something fun?" Darcy wondered as she went about cleaning his favorite rifle with the calm and patience of a saint.

"There's a facility ten miles from here, hidden in the woods.  They might have a server there with information on it," James revealed as he paged through a newspaper's classified section carefully, intent on looking for coded words.

"Information about me?  Or information about you?" Darcy wondered.

"Both, hopefully," James admitted truthfully.

"Are there Hydra assholes guarding the information?" the hope in her voice was unmistakable.

"Seven men, three inside, four guards on posts outside," James nodded.  He furrowed his brow as he came upon a coded message in the classifieds.

"What's that?" Darcy noticed right away, looking at him with concern.

The message was clear as day to him.  It was a code used by only one other person in existence.  The Widow.  ' He misses you.  You are welcome here .'

"Why would a person buy a used mattress?" James asked, covering for himself.

"Disgusting," Darcy nodded.  She held up one index finger, as if asking him to hold on a second as her face went pale and her brow went sweaty.

' The Pet is ill.  Help her .'

James listened this time, getting up and reaching for her immediately, picking her up and out of the rifle parts undisturbed before quickly walking her to the bathroom, placing her on her feet so that she could rush to the toilet.

She was crying, which wasn't a strange thing to happen to a person currently spewing their guts out into a toilet.  But her whimpers and tears did awful things to his insides and James was on his knees behind her in no time, pulling strands of her hair out of the way of the sick she was coughing up.  His metal hand moved up and down her back on instinct and he was reminded of doing the same thing for another small, sick person a million years ago.

"Ugh, I shouldn't have eaten those gas station nachos," Darcy lamented.  "Don't let me eat nachos with mystery meat chili and cheese food product on top of it anymore."

' Poor Pet.  Rub her lower .'

"You're okay," James promised, knowing that now more than ever, he had to hit that Hydra facility.  "You're going to be fine, Darcy."

James went over the plan with Darcy, relentlessly, for the better part of the next twenty-four hours.  Her attention span and seemingly limitless patience for anything related to him was surely waning, but he needed to make sure she would be safe.

The Soldier would not accept anything less.

' The Pet is to be kept in one piece.  Her figure becomes more pleasing every day.  Feed her more cakes .'

Still, as he drove them to the facility, he found that her usual levity and mirth were disappearing and a grim determination set in its place instead.  She was to follow him, and he had armed her with his most forgiving handgun, along with a baton he had taken from another Hydra outpost.  She favored the baton heavily, but he had to make sure she could shoot, and when they had practiced that morning, she had been a natural.

Apparently, an arcade game called Deer Hunter at her corner sandwich shop had been an excellent trainer throughout her youth.  She was itching and raring to go by the time he put the truck in park at a nearby camping ground that they would take a hike through to get to the facility.  She made her way to hop out when James put a gentle hand over her thigh.

"Darcy," he whispered as she sorted out her clothing.  He'd procured dark clothing for her, layers of it that still allowed her to move as quickly as she was able to.  He'd squeezed a layer of kevlar onto her that morning, black, tight material encasing her chest and protecting her vital organs.  She'd been gaining weight back at a steady pace, her enhanced body wanting to operate at optimum efficiency.

And neither the Soldier nor James would ever deny her whatever she had wanted to eat.

"James," she gave him a small smile back.  "I promise you I can do this.  Let me---let me feel useful.  Let me earn a little piece of revenge back, okay?"

'Our Pet wants blood. We will give her all of their blood .'

"I'm not worried about you," James clarified.  "You can handle your weapons well for being untrained.  I believe you will do well."

"Thanks," Darcy grinned at him unabashedly.

"It's---I'm worried about me," James admitted.

' Nyet! '

"When I've been doing this, I slip," James admitted.

"Slip and fall?" Darcy gave him a small, confused headshake, a look of concern stealing over pretty features.

James gave her a very small, very soft, very genuine smile.

"They programmed me for decades, to be their Soldier, the Winter Soldier," James admitted.

"Sounds spooky and dangerous," Darcy's grin was back, her eyes lighting up.

' Our Pet will enjoy me, of this I am sure .'

"He's a killer," James dissuaded.  “An assassin who only cares about violence and destruction.”

"Cool, he's gonna have seven people to dispatch with soon," Darcy nodded.

"He is ruthless," James shook his head in slight frustration.

"Sexy," Darcy winked at him.

' Pretty Pet, a good girl should be rewarded .'

"Darcy, he's an animal, and if I can't keep a handle on him, you're in danger," James blurted, the barest hints of an accent tinging his frustrated words.

"But---he saved me, didn't he?" Darcy asked calmly.  "He was with you, in your head, when you found me and saved me."

"Yes," James wrinkled his nose.  "But---"

"No buts, buts are dumb," Darcy waved him off.  "He hasn't hurt me yet."

"YET," James whispered.  "He wants to have you."

"Well, I'm right here," Darcy chuckled.  James threw her a pained look and she nodded.  "OH!  Oh, like---"

She made a crude hand gesture in combination with her eyebrows lifting up and down suggestively.

"Yes," James sighed, trying desperately not to let her levity cause him to forget why this was important.  He didn’t want to come out of a fog with the thinly veiled memories of forcing himself on her.

"And you're afraid that when you go all GRRRRRR, he's gonna ravish me?" Darcy wondered as she inched closer to him on the bench seat of the truck, her hands reaching and rubbing up and down his flesh bicep.

Another sigh along with a nod of his head.

"And he's---this soldier in your head, he's YOU, right?" Darcy asked thoughtfully.  "Just a dissociative aspect of your personality, something branched off that was created because of what Hydra did to you, born of pain and anger and rage, right?"

James blinked at that, wondering if it was true.  The accented voice in his head had always felt like a foreign entity, a whole other person that constantly threatened to take control and do unspeakable damage.

"Did the Soldier do all the killing, James?" Darcy asked softly, running her hand up to his shoulder, fingers inching up his neck so that she touched his face.  “Did he do what was asked of you, when you didn’t want to do it?”

' Our Pet is so clever.  She knows you are too weak .'

"Yes," James whispered.

"And there's nothing wrong with that," Darcy assured him.  "The human mind, the soul, the whatever that makes us tick, we will do what we can to survive what we're put through."

"What did you do?" James countered.

"Dreamed about this," Darcy admitted.  "Dreamed about being strong enough to fight back.  To destroy them."

'Pretty, clever, Pet. So beautiful in her anger .'

"If he gains control--" James sighed.

"If he does something to me, I will know that it is you, it's your body, it's the side of you that deals with the destruction and the death," Darcy said calmly.  "And he won't hurt me.  Because I'd wager that you like me a little, to have kept me around for more than a day or two."

James could only nod, afraid that if he opened his mouth too much truth would spill out.

"If you can't control him, then the Soldier and I will figure something out," Darcy assured him, her hand petting at his stubbled cheek, smiling at him when his eyes closed in obvious enjoyment at her touch.  "Don't worry so much James, I'm not made of spun glass."

"I know that, I do," James promised her. He took her hand off of his face and held her hand, bringing it to his lips for a kiss before mumbling, "You're a helluva dame, Darcy Lewis."

Darcy blinked up at him curiously when he dropped her hand, his words heavy with an old accent once again.  She watched him as he did another once over of the multiple weapons on his person, hidden amongst the black leather suit with the straps and buckles all over his torso.  She smiled and  picked up the mask he had worn to rescue her and handed it to him.

"Let's go kick some ass."

Chapter Text

Chapter Four: Revenge Therapy

The Soldier looked at his little Pet, unabashedly coveting her behind his mask, his eyes focusing on the ample bosom she had been blessed with, constrained but not hidden behind layers and kevlar.  When she was properly fed, she would be plump.  Of that he was certain.  And he found himself impatient for that time.  He looked forward to the day where he would be able to grab her and pull her on to his lap, taking her at his leisure, fingers pressing into plump flesh and leaving marks behind.

Although he had not seen the need to escape Hydra's control nearly two years ago, he did have to admit that this sort of life would be better than cryofreeze and unending orders.  

He still could indulge in violence, discord and brutality, but now he had his soft pet to fatten up, and the freedom to have her whenever he could, whenever he could get the weak and stupid James out of the way.  

He knew she coveted him as well, he had caught her staring at him as he dispatched with one of the perimeter guards.  Her pouty lips had been open, slow but erratic breaths pushing and pulling between them.  She had given him a little smile, shyness creeping into her expression when she realized not James, but the Soldier was staring back at her.

"Come here, Pet," he gestured for her.  

She looked confused, blinking adorably at his words, which had been muffled behind the mask and were in Russian to boot.  He repeated his come hither hand movement and she got that shy, lovely little smile on her face again before tiptoeing through dead leaves and the debris of the forest to stand beside him.

"You're thirsty for blood," the Soldier said softly, still speaking in garbled Russian.  "It's understandable.  Commendable."

"Whatever you're saying sounds awesome," Darcy grinned at him.  "Like dark and dangerous and angry, and, you know.  Sexy."

She shrugged her shoulders a little and the grin was replaced with that timid little smile that the Soldier wanted to bite at.  

"What do you want me to do?" she asked in Farsi.  "Cause watching is fun, but doing is better."

The Soldier managed a chuckle at that, understanding her perfectly.  He pulled her to stand in front of him, her back to his front, her body soft against the unmoving wall of his.  His hand trailed from her shoulder, down her arm, grabbing her hand and guiding it to the gun that James had holstered for her.  She took his cue and held onto the handle as he un-holstered it.  There was movement coming from the last outpost, and the Soldier wanted to give his Pet a treat.

"When you are well again, and not so easily breakable, I want to have you bent over in front of me so I can grab you here," he mumbled, still speaking in Russian and not following her lead into Farsi. He gripped her hips that were still not quite as full as he would like them to be, pulling her into a proper stance, his fingers caressing more than they needed.  "You will be so happy, Pet, you should never want to leave me."

"Dude, Boris and Natasha were never this hot with their accents," Darcy swallowed nervously.

Her slightly anxious reaction to his special brand of flirting had him smiling ferally under the mask as he brought her arms up carefully while she held the gun like James had taught her.  He helped her to aim and they waited.  She mimicked his long, slow steady breaths, her back flush against his chest, her proud little rear end pressed against his front.  

He was straining behind the protective cup built into his suit, and he wanted more than anything to be able to shove her to her knees and relieve himself in her willing mouth.  He would wait though, because she promised to be a willing and eager participant, the Soldier could tell.  Even the foolish James knew that she looked at him with more than just the grateful eyes of the rescued.  

But first, she had to be well and healthy.  And then, they needed to find out what samples had been used to put her in her current condition.  He errantly wondered when she would want to know what Hydra had done.  She would know sooner rather than later.

"Be calm, be patient," the Soldier whispered in Russian, his voice low and raspy.  "Look here."

His finger hovered above the sight, which he knew was expertly aimed, waiting for the walking guard to hover within it.  The wait wasn't a particularly long one, the Soldier had been trained to wait for however long it took to take the perfect shot.  Days if need be.  But it was more than a minute, and when Darcy's arm started to tremble from holding the gun up for so long, the Soldier supported her and forgave her for her weakness.  

She was not a Red Room trainee.  She was his soft little Pet playing with revenge like a ball of yarn.  He would indulge her little, precious appetite for payback.  She was trying very hard, he could tell, because her nonsensical words had not fallen from those coveted lips since he had her take aim.  She simply mimicked his breathing pattern, the steady slow breathing of a sniper and waited.

"Now," he whispered in English, bracing her for the backfire as she immediately squeezed the trigger, no doubt or hesitation in the movement, the sound of the bullet was muffled and silenced and it hit the mark the Soldier had set for her, falling into the man's weak spot on his kevlar, right above his right armpit.  

The Soldier smiled beneath his mask and his hands fell to her hips again, giving her a congratulatory squeeze before he rushed to the outpost, intent on finishing what the Pet had started.  He heard her heavy, clumsy footfall following him as fast as she could.  But he'd already snapped the guard's neck by the time she caught up.

"HEY, hey!" the Pet whispered, pouting and clearly a little upset.

The Soldier's eyes were curious, and amused as he watched her catch her breath quickly, his gaze falling to her bosom, which rose and fell in delightful ways.  She snapped her fingers at him.

"My eyes are up here, pervy Soldier," she glibly asserted.  "That was my kill...you aimed my gun and everything."

"My sweet Pet doesn't need to do the hard work," the Soldier parroted in Russian.  "Your hands are better suited to pleasing me than killing."

"I don't speak Russian, switch to Farsi, dude!" Darcy whined.

"I will allow you to play," he switched languages to Farsi easily.  "But you may only play."

"That's bullshit!" Darcy grumbled, crossing her arms under her chest and remembering she still held the gun.  She jumped a little and wound up holding her right arm at an awkward angle away from her body so the gun didn't touch her.  The look in the Soldier's eyes, amused and fond, seemed to be some kind of vindication for him.  She pouted and the Soldier was utterly bemused with her.

He pulled off his mask and stepped forward, placing a surprisingly gentle kiss against the tip of her nose before re-holstering her gun for her.  

"I will let you play, my blood thirsty little pet," he promised.  She seemed slightly placated.   "And you may watch me finish them.  Come along, ten minutes until they expect reports inside the facility."

"Cap!"

Steve bolted upright in his bed.  He didn't need much sleep to begin with, but he'd been having trouble even catching the three or four hours that his body needed.  He was out of the bed and halfway into his uniform as he rushed from his bedroom into the living area of his spacious and spartan quarters.  Sam was standing there, grabbing Steve's go bag.

"Friday pulled a call to authorities about three hundred miles from the Hydra bombing.  Muffled gunshots," Sam reported.  "Nat's got the quinjet ready."

"Thanks," Steve grabbed the bag an already uniformed Sam handed him and they ran the short distance to the launch pad.  He buckled in while Sam joined Nat in the cockpit and they were off the ground seconds later.

"We diverted the call to Friday's servers, no local authorities are dispatched," Sam assured Steve.  

"What were the details of the reports?" Steve wondered.

"Two figures walking into a campsite eighteen hours before a snowstorm was due," Natasha reported.  

"Two figures?" Steve asked hopefully.

"Two figures," Natasha repeated, she looked to Sam, expecting HIM to play the bad guy this time.

And if the man hadn't wanted to impress Natasha so damned much, he probably would have flipped her off.  But instead he took the comfort of a nearly silent sigh before turning to Steve and giving him a very careful, stern look.

"Just because it's two figures, doesn't mean that it's the girl from the Hydra facility," Steve said quietly.  They still didn't know very much about the girl, just that she had been Hydra's guinea pig for two years and that her remains were not found among all the other Hydra operatives.  

They knew she'd been exposed to unspeakable things. They knew that she had not volunteered for it.  And they knew she was now missing again.

"Yeah, Cap, but if it is," Sam's voice was a steady firm thing as he squared his shoulders, "it doesn't mean that she's a willing guest of Barnes'."

"He wouldn't," Steve said grimly.

"But it's not just him," Natasha reminded him.  

"He wouldn't hold her against her will after everything that had happened to him," Steve insisted.   

He'd consulted plenty of psychologists and people with multiple letters behind their name regarding blind case studies detailing what Bucky had been through.  Most agreed that the brain was capable of regenerating broken neural pathways, especially given the presence of an undisclosed 'mutant' factor.  

The data dump that Natasha had orchestrated had been picked up by Friday, and it was confirmed that Bucky had been exposed to a variant of the super soldier serum, prior to Steve's rescuing him at Azzano.  His healing rate wasn't as quick as Steve's, but it was much faster than Nat's according to some sickening research they had done shortly after his fall from the train.  

His brain was healing, Steve knew it.  That's why he had recognized him and pulled him from the river.  And if the real Bucky was even a quarter of the way there, Steve knew that he would never hold a woman against her will, especially one that had been so unjustly hurt and tortured already.  

Steve had faith.  Something good had to come from this, even if it was Bucky Barnes helping a hurt woman regain her footing despite how ill advised that seemed.

"Just---drop it, and get us there."

Infiltrating a Hydra facility felt a lot like that time Darcy had been in her tenth grade production of 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'.  She had been cast as a teenaged prostitute, and not only got to do a vastly inappropriate sexy dance at the age of fourteen, but she also got to participate in a chase scene while wearing the musical theatre equivalent of a bikini.  Halfway into the second show on Saturday, the police raided the auditorium and arrested three child molestors.

It hadn't come as a surprise when the drama teacher was fired at the end of the school year after that, really.  

But although there was no bouncy and catchy show tune playing in the background, Darcy kind of felt the same way while she and Bucky made their breakin at the Hydra facility.  She was standing directly behind a man much larger than her, and she was expected to follow him, movement for movement across a stage.  They waited, and waited, and Darcy didn't know if he'd remember his cue and she'd have to shove him towards the Hydra agents that needed murdering, but soon enough he pounced and Darcy followed after a moment of surprise and it was over in the blink of an eye, really.

And lying dead at her feet were two disgusting Hydra losers, their necks snapped handily.  The third was being held at his throat by a seriously amazing metal hand and Darcy calmly walked over to where Bucky had the last of the scientists, a small, grayish green hued, trembling man in his thirties.  The top of his balding head was breaking out in a panicked sweat and beady little blue eyes were darting between a blank faced Winter Soldier and a smiling and waving young woman.  

His face displayed recognition at Darcy's appearance.

"Help me?" he breathed out towards Darcy before whimpering as the hand clenched around his windpipe threateningly.

"Oh, dude, no!" Darcy snorted.  "I hate you.  I mean, I've never met you, but I really hate you.  And I'm kind of wondering why my guy here hasn't snapped your disgusting neck yet."

"My good Pet gets to play," the Soldier said in Farsi.

Darcy clapped her hands together in excitement before fairly skipping to stand next to Bucky and the man in his clutches.  She saw as the Soldier's grayish blue gaze darted to his thigh and she got out the small blade he had tucked into a loop in his trousers.  She marveled at it, two inches of steel, but it was tiny and curved and almost pretty in a way.

"Doesn't look very dangerous," she admitted.  

"Tiny things can be sharp," the Soldier told her, still in that monotone Farsi that was making the Hydra lackey in his grip nearly wet himself in fear.  "This one is a coward, Pet.  He has not used the pill in his mouth. I believe he will give us anything we should need."

"Cool.  Cool.  Cool," Darcy nodded, holding up the wicked tiny blade and placing it against the slight paunch of the man's stomach.  "Do you still have an appendix?  I mean, I was shit at the physical sciences all throughout my life..."

The blade pressed easily through clothing and into flesh and the man whimpered.  

"I read once, that people got appendectomies without anesthesia before," Darcy continued to converse congenially as she let the tip of the blade make an inch long shallow  cut.  She then made a swooping motion and the line turned easily into the letter 'D'.  "And I always wanted to be a surgeon, even though I was complete shit at science."

"No letters," the Soldier warned his Pet.  "Forensics might get ideas."

"I---I---will tell you," the Hydra lackey promised, not knowing if the Soldier was ordering the deranged little lab rat girl to do worse with her knife.  The coward's voice was a strained, weak thing already.

The Soldier's eyes narrowed at him in disgust.  The man had barely endured what the Soldier would consider highly enjoyable foreplay, and he was willing to throw in the towel so quickly.  He supposed he understood to a degree, the Pet's cheerful bloodlust was palpable...a thing of beauty really.  Most weak mean would waver at the sight of a beautiful face easily promising pain as if they were being promised that the sun would rise the next day.

Darcy wrinkled her nose though, and the Pet did something that almost made the Soldier laugh out loud.  She took the tiny blade away from the man's stomach and very quickly jabbed it into his stringy right bicep, all two inches of it slicing through flesh like a hot knife through butter.

It took a certain strength to get a blade into human muscle like that.  And the Soldier felt himself straining against his protective cup again, because his Pet was everything he ever wanted and more.   

"RUDE!" Darcy hissed out.  "I was going to be so good at torturing you."

The Soldier's gaze fell away from Darcy reluctantly.  His Pet was so adorable when she was angry and he wanted to find ways of pushing her buttons again at a better time for both of them.  He saw out of the corner of his eyes, the surveillance program he had disabled earlier automatically reboot and while he had expected to see the signals of four fallen bodies, instead, he saw those and three unknown heat sources approaching from a mile out.

He cursed in Russian and dropped the snivelling coward to the ground, where he landed in a heap, his hand going to the blade sticking out of his arm.  

"Don't pull it out," Darcy warned helpfully.  "You'll TOTALLY bleed to death."

While that wasn't true at all, the man seemed to listen to what she said.  

"Records," the Soldier demanded.  "You have clearance for the records."

"I---yes, for your records only," the coward admitted.  He flinched when Darcy's hand went for the knife jabbed into his arm and nearly cried when the Soldier came to his rescue, lifting him up and putting him in the chair, throwing a small USB drive to him.  

"Two minutes," the Soldier warned and the man began typing faster than humanly possible, immediately.  

Darcy was letting one of her black sneakers that James had provided for her toe obnoxiously at the ass of one of the dead Hydra already, looking a little bored.  The Soldier smiled at her, the expression useless since he was wearing his mask, but something in his eyes had Darcy smiling back and shrugging.  He gestured for her to follow him and she did, going to the door on the side of the room.  His metal hand obliterated the doorknob and he opened the door to reveal a small room full of a lot of explosives.

"Hydra is practical," the Soldier intoned.  "One man for technological needs, one man for weapons maintenance and storage, one man for chatter translation, all in one building, neither needs to interact with the other, all the work is completed for Hydra's glory."

"Hydra is a bunch of cheap bastards is what I'm getting from that," Darcy nodded.  "Sending their wimpy contractors to work in a shack in the woods that they use for bomb storage."

"You may set one," the Soldier smiled indulgently again, but Darcy didn't catch the twinkle in his eyes as she began doing a small, celebratory dance that involved raising her hands in the air repeatedly and shaking her hips back and forth.  He cleared his throat so that she would pay attention and he showed her the simplistic keypad. "Five minutes, my Pet."

He wanted to kiss her nose again, but wasn't willing to remove his mask to do it, instead, he gave her behind a pat with his left hand.  She made a delighted sound at it and gave him a wink and a finger gun before inspecting the little bomb that would give her a small sense of satisfaction, but not serve as a beacon for the Avengers or other various sundry authorities.

The Soldier went back to the coward, and he could see that in addition to downloading the files, he was trying to type out an SOS.  He screamed in agony when both of his hands were efficiently broken and then proceeded to wet himself.

"What do you know about the girl?" the Soldier demanded.

"We---videos would go around of her," the coward admitted, the flush on the bridge of his greasy nose indicating that he had partaken of those videos.  "Surveillance, when she was having nightmares.  Naked.  Nothing interesting until they had her in stirrups and implanted the samples a month ago.  Made a show of it for Hydra's continuing glory."

The hint of fond remembrance colored the coward's face.

The Soldier seethed silently, his vision going red as he pulled his knife out of the man's bicep and aimed it for the man's groin instead.  He took delight in the wail of anguish as he twisted, pulling the knife out and wiping it on the coward's shoulder.  He reached for the USB port and pulled out his information before taking the entire computer tower and ripping it out of the wall, taking it and bashing the large, bullet proof box against the skull of the coward, once, twice, three times...

He heard the crack of bone but was lost to it, continuing to beat the skull in of the dead coward, imagining with each blow he was righting some wrong.  Taking back the image of his Pet being violated by hundreds of Hydra faithful. Taking back the knowledge that he too had been similarly violated decades earlier.  He and his Pet were alike in so many ways, and he could feel the weak James in the back of his head trying to be the voice of reason.

' We need to give her to Steve.  Alone we'd ruin her, turn her into a violent, angry mess .'

"C'mon Soldier," Darcy said softly, her hand gently placed against the small of his back, mid-swing of the computer tower.  

He halted his violence immediately, dropping the electronics to the ground as Darcy placed both hands at his waist and pressed her face into his back.  He took deep even breaths, looking down at what used to be a human face and immediately turned in such a way that the Pet couldn't see, her hands still on his waist as he looked down at her, wondering how much she had heard.

"This place is gonna go psssh boom pssh--fireworks," Darcy's eyes lit up like a child getting a Christmas present.  "We should go."

He nodded and made sure to resheath his knife before pulling up Darcy's black hood attached to her outermost layer, hiding dark heavy curls and her brow.  He walked quickly, feeling her hand going to his back and gripping onto one of the straps as she followed a step behind.  

He had them safely behind a rock when a shout caught Darcy's attention.  He had seen the oncoming trio immediately upon exiting the shack-like building.  But Darcy had not.

"I saw some movement, Cap!  Lost it---no, it was bigger than a damned squirrel, Nat. Approach with caution."

"Uh oh," Darcy whispered as she watched a tall, muscular figure in a dark blue tactical suit approaching the hut, an iconic shield in his hand, followed closely by a much smaller figure in all black. "I think that's Captain America?"

"Fuckin' punk."

Darcy furrowed her brow at that, having caught another hint of a third separate kind of voice and accent coming from the Soldier.  That wasn't James and it wasn't the Soldier.  That was someone different.  

"He's gonna get a face full of explosion if he doesn't bring that shield up," Darcy wagered, looking a little contrite and conflicted.  

The Soldier nodded, knowing that James wouldn't forgive this.  It felt odd to see that shield and that man in the darkness and stillness that preceded an oncoming snow and not want to KILL him.  He was just staring at him in a sort of clinical fashion, his brain working fast to figure out threat levels, to wonder how best to defend his Pet.

James wanted to give the girl to Steve, but the Soldier didn't.  Darcy was his Pet. He would keep her forever if he was able to.  She was getting anxious though, she had no love for the Avengers, the Soldier could tell, they had failed her after all.  But she knew that obnoxious Captain was essentially good and didn't deserve the fate they had so happily dealt the Hydra loyal.  The Soldier knew what he had to do, taking the small explosive from it's spot in the back of the jacket and tossing it very carefully so it landed a decent enough distance from the Pet, to keep her safe and un-singed, but close enough to garner attention.

Luck smiled down on him as the bird man started to descend just as the explosive went off, tossing him out of the air and onto the ground.  The Widow, perfectly poised and trained didn't turn to the explosion, but instead looked inside and saw the ammunitions room open.  

"Rogers, cover!" she called out, turning away from the door and careful to make sure she was small and compact before Steve did the same and shielded the both of them.  

The first explosion from the shack was about the same that had thrown the Birdman from the air, but then, much faster than they should, the other bombs started to explode, and Natasha and Steve were turtle crawling to a more safe zone.

Darcy laughed, loud and clear as a bell.  

"I set them all off, thirty seconds apart,” she giggled as the Soldier got her to her feet and began rushing back to their vehicle now that the Avengers were occupied.  "That's what they get for leaving me to ROT!"

"Yes, Pet, you've had your revenge, let's go."

Chapter Text

Chapter Five: Blast from the Past

Steve's ears were ringing, but it wasn't due to the fact that he'd just been nearly blown up by the man who had warmed his bed and then taken possession of his everything back in the 1930's.  It was funny to think that there were certain historians who not only missed the fact that Bucky and Steve had not been the most platonic of relationships (something that Uncle Sam had managed to hide spectacularly well), but also simply assumed that Bucky had been some coddling, gentle force in Steve's life.

He had not been.  This hadn't even been the first or second time that Bucky had nearly exploded Steve.  The first time had been on his fourteenth birthday, when Bucky had obtained a few illegally imported fireworks from somewhere foreign. They had been a little too amazing, and Steve's eyebrows took a whole ten months to grow back properly.  

Bucky back in the late 30's and early 40's had always been concerned about Steve's health, wanting to make him as healthy as possible.  Steve had always thought back then that he wanted him to not be sick just so he could continue to try and explode him, or launch him into the stratosphere on roller coasters, or just that one time sticking him in a barrel and rolling him down a sloping hill.  Essentially, Steve needed to be well so Bucky could try to get the little guy to do ridiculous stunts with him.

History only remembered the fact that Steve had been a daredevil.  They hadn't known how he had gotten to be that way.

But yes, his ears were ringing, but not with the explosion.  The sound of laughter was ringing in his ear, sounding so strange in such a setting.  It was clear and mirthful and delighted, like someone who had just received the Christmas present they had wanted so badly.  It was a woman's laugh, an infectious sound that had Steve forgetting the stinging slaps from the debris landing on the parts of his legs that were exposed.  

He looked up and squinted, Natasha cursing at him as the shield moved as another explosion went off.

In the distance, he could see Bucky, rushing away at top speed, hidden by darkness and shadow.  But clearly, something was thrown over his shoulder.  Something decidedly feminine shaped and Steve could see the bounce of a curly piece of dark colored hair in the shadows that had escaped whatever was covering the woman's head.

The sound of thunder was louder than the third explosion to go off, each one split by thirty seconds.  Rain began to fall instead of snow, in a torrential downpour as lightning split the sky.  The fire extinguished and it would seem it had a dampening effect on each consequential bomb that went off.

"AWWWW MAN!" came the annoyed shout from the laughing woman, nearly a mile away at that point.  Only Steve heard it, Natasha was not quite as enhanced in her hearing ability.  "JAMES, LET ME GO, I'M MAD.   NOW HE SHOWS UP?!"

Steve left the shield to cover Natasha in case any of the explosions were larger, he hopped to his feet and was off at a blistering gallop in the direction of the woman screaming, his arms pumping viciously as tried to access some hidden speed when he heard a truck roar to life in the distance.  

"ROGERS, GET BACK HERE!" Natasha shouted through the comm unit.

But he wouldn't, he couldn't.  Bucky was right there.  The woman had said James .  She'd asked to be let go, but Steve didn't think it was in a way a kidnapping victim would say it.  The request had been annoyed, but playful, just like the mirthful laughter had been at the explosion of the Hydra shack.  She'd said JAMES.  Which meant he knew who he was.  He was James now, and not some cold, unknowing killing machine.  Steve ran as fast as he could, getting to the truck which was stopped in the middle of the exit from the campground.  

His heart hammered in his chest.  Bucky had stayed.  He hadn't run off.  He'd stayed and that meant he remembered and Steve could HELP him and bring him home.  Or hell, go with him, because he'd been all of thirteen years old when he realized that home was where Bucky was, and nothing else really mattered.

He could see a lone figure sitting behind the driver's wheel of the truck and Steve felt his stomach do a flip flop.  

"Bucky?" he called out hopefully, yanking off his helmet and throwing it to the ground.  He shook his head and amended, "James?"

No response, but Steve wasn't about to be deterred.  He took another step forward and called out, "Is the girl with you?  The one from the last facility?  Do you need help?"

The silence was making Steve even more anxious as he stepped forward again.  

"I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want you to do anything against your will, but we can help you.  The both of you.  You should come with me---Buck, please talk to me.  Goddammit!"

"Yo, Captain Twenty Questions!"

Steve jumped in his place, his hands going up as he started to turn when he felt an absolutely unforgiving amount of pure electricity course through his body.  He'd once had Thor zap him with Mjolnir during a team practice, and this was just a shade or two below that.  It felt like one of the Strike team's batons turned up way past 100.  He was on the ground, flat on his stomach with the electric baton still pressed to his neck.  

"Just---just leave us alone!" the woman spoke again sounding churlish and annoyed.  She stepped around him as he still spasmed, opening the back gate of the SUV and hopping in.  

Steve struggled to get his eyes on her, but his vision was a little blurred thanks to the volts coursing through him.  She was a small thing, from what he could see, and he couldn't see much.  Her dark clothing made her blend into the night and the hood on her head covered her brow, whereas a too large mask, borrowed from Bucky, he knew, covered the bottom half of her face.

What he could see was the stark paleness of what little skin was showing, and the hint of large eyes, narrowed in righteous anger as she glared at him before bringing the gate closed.  

He tried to open his mouth to say anything, but the vehicle was gone by the time he could speak again.  He pulled himself to his knees to see Thor approaching him with a congenial grin.

"Steven!  Natasha is most pleased with Wilson," Thor announced.  "He sent a message my way to arrive with assistance, and now she believes much evidence can still be gathered from the wreckage."

"Great---good," Steve managed to squeak out of a too raw voice box.  

"Did I hit you with lightning by accident, friend?" Thor worried.

"No---it was---a girl," Steve said between shaky breaths to refill his lungs.

Thor laughed in spite of the annoyed look Steve threw him.  He helped his fallen comrade off of the ground and tried to dust him off.  But Steve was having none of it, too angry that a damned rescued Hydra hostage, probably still recovering from torture and injury, had managed to get the drop on him and took him down. He'd been so swept away with the idea that Bucky was within arm's reach that he'd been taken out like some idiot recruit on the first day of the job.  

And he knew, if that had been the real Bucky, with all of his memories back, he would have laughed at him immediately for being taken down by such a tiny slip of a dame.  

Steve shrugged Thor off, which Thor was having none of, gripping Steve by the shoulder of his uniform, staring down the scant two inches that separated them.  He gave him a commiserating look and then a small smile full of humility.

"There is no shame in being felled by a small girl," Thor promised him.  "I was felled by a small girl in the past."

"Yeah," Steve nodded as the two men began walking back to the wrecked Hydra facility.  He felt a jolting shock run down his back from the origin point of the hit to his neck and had to mentally will himself to swallow, as if his body had forgotten the steps thanks to the shock.  "Darcy Lewis, right?"

Thor gave him a shrewd smirk and shrugged, "You play coy, Steven, but Natasha has told me of your interest."

"It's not interest---it's just, she was an interesting sort of girl---woman," Steve amended.  "Bucky would've gotten a kick out of her."

"I have not heard from dear little Darcy in two Midgardian years, at least," Thor sighed, giving Steve an apologetic smile.  "She and Jane severed their connection and their work together, for what reason, I don't know.  Jane's work has never fully recovered, there was none so loyal to her as Darcy."

"So---she just, Jane doesn't even know where she is?" Steve furrowed his brow at that.  

Two years. A little less than two years ago SHIELD had fallen, Steve's world had been upended.  SHIELD had been upended.  The timing of it made Steve suspicious.  He doubted that Miss Lewis was Hydra.  Thor had sung her praises to any who would listen.  Steve had even heard Erik Selvig go on about her when they were setting up the labs at the new facility.  

"Our friend Natasha is 'working' on it," Thor made air quotes, and then grinned, pleased with himself for getting the quotes right.  "You would suit each other extraordinarily well, if you enjoy hearing pleasing chatter."

"I don't mind it," Steve admitted it.  There had been days where Bucky had chattered on endlessly about anything and everything, and Steve had just sat and watched him go through the very dramatic retellings of mundane events.  

"I would have hesitations about you meeting my dear friend from the past, should your heart already be sworn to another," Thor said delicately.  "One that you chase relentlessly."

"No---ah, that's not," Steve shook his head.  "I mean to say--we had always wanted, uh..."

"Ah, no, I see," Thor laughed.  "I am not of the proclivity to enjoy all sexes.  But my brother Loki was always very fluid in his conquests.  He often enjoyed taking the shape of a woman and being taken with fervor."

Steve looked a little scandalized, but covered it quickly with a nod, "Well, that's just---great."

The laughter in the SUV was loud.  So loud it rattled the little plastic hula girl that Darcy had defiantly placed on the dashboard despite James telling her that it made their car noticeable.  But there Hannah Hula was, her grass skirt shaking because the laughter was maniacally loud and booming.  Darcy flinched when a metal hand hit a thigh extra hard.

She was chuckling too, because James' laughter was downright infectious.  But she still worried that James was laughing so hard that his eyes were squinted shut as tears rolled down his face, and she didn't understand how he was driving on the winding, dark back road at such a high speed with his eyes closed from laughing so hard.

He'd been at it for five minutes, every once in while taking a gasp of air or choking out words. Joyous words like

' Like a sack of bricks !'

' Shaking like a leaf !'

' Scared of a little slip like you !'

' Jumped out of his skin !'

Darcy was very much aware that the man uproariously laughing at the moment was definitely not the Soldier and he was not quite her steadfast and lovely James either.  This was someone different, hints of him had been coloring James' speech and expressions in the barest little slips in the past days.  She liked it though, but then again, she liked all of him.  She liked James.  She liked this mysterious, mirthful guy with the Brooklyn accent.  And she liked the Soldier in spite of James' attempts at keeping her safe from him.  

She hoped someday, with enough time to heal, all three of them would be harmoniously living inside the brain of the man laughing his ass off at the moment.  That was a man she really wanted to meet someday.

His laughter was finally dying down a little as they got on the highway and backtracked, going North and West into the heart of a blizzard.  Darcy felt greedy though and wanted more laughter so she leaned into James with a smile pulling at her pouty lips.

"He smelled like star spangled barbecue."

She giggled in delight as it set him off again, laughing so hard that Darcy was sure a normal man's abdominal muscles would have been aching by now.  She was pleased with herself, one for taking out two of six Avengers with her own special brand of lightning, and two for extending James' mirth.  She shimmied on the front seat and leaned into him, absolutely giddy when he lifted up his arm and wrapped it around her.

"Oh Dollbaby, that was the best," James sighed, pulling her in as close as she could go and squeezing her arm.  "I might let him get close again someday just so you can knock him out again.  Right on his ass.  You're a champ, a real doozy of a dame."

Darcy giggled and preened at the glowing words of praise and they drove in the comfort of silence for a few seconds.  Precious few seconds.

"You know Captain Rogers, then?" Darcy wondered.

"A few life times ago, yeah," James sounded a little more subdued.  A little more like the calm James she had been spending most of her time with.  

"So---you're old," Darcy made the statement, not a question.  She looked up at James through her lashes and said, "And you're like a super soldier, like him, strong and fast and strong."

"Yeah," James patted her shoulder.  "Darcy, what do you know about James Buchanan Barnes?"

"That he died a long time ago," Darcy said truthfully.  "And one of my friend's great, great aunts who used to live in Brooklyn said he was smokin' hot and a great kisser.  She bragged about the smooch behind a dance hall endlessly every Thanksgiving.  I think her tombstone says, ‘ Beatrice Dettler, I made out with Bucky Barnes in 1939’ .  She was very proud."

James laughed again, this time shorter and more explosive.  He shrugged and looked down at Darcy for a split second, seeing only gentle curiosity in her expression, no judgement or censure at all.

"Steve used to call me Bucky.  A long time ago."

Darcy nodded and waited a beat before saying in a silly sort of voice, "In a Galaxy far, far away."

James gave her a confused look and she shrugged.  

"Tell me?" Darcy asked hopefully.

He took a very long inhale and blew it out slowly before nodding once.  

"I don't remember everything.  But I remember he used to be smaller."

Darcy knew that James didn’t need a lot of sleep.  She honestly didn’t even know that he did sleep.  She knew that when they slept in the car, he might have caught a few winks in the front seat.  But when they stayed in motels, he would tell her to take the bed and never take her up on her offer to share.  The first few days, she had fallen asleep mid word, chatting about anything and everything.  

She’d told him about a lonely childhood, being raised by a grandmother for the first nine years of her life.  She hadn’t had the opportunity to socialize with anyone under the age of seventy before going to school, and it showed.  She hadn’t known how to make friends, but she had tried like hell to do it, and the cheerful enthusiasm that James enjoyed so much about Darcy hadn’t exactly endeared her to her classmates.  She’d been an outcast from an early age, but had kept on trying, working so hard at finding friends all the way up until she had taken an internship with Jane Foster.

She had clammed up about Jane though.  However, James could tell what went unsaid.  Darcy had thought Jane was her friend. A close friend.  They’d been through some pretty amazing things together.  They’d never done what Darcy had deemed ‘best friend rituals you see in movies or on tv’, but Darcy had thought that it was because Jane was always preoccupied with being brilliant.  

James could tell she was still sore that Jane had never raised the alarm.  James himself was pretty sore about it.  He’d searched through the security file Hydra had kept on Darcy, and there had been only two requests that had to be diverted from SHIELD resources.  Both of them had been from the same person. Erik Selvig had demanded to know where Darcy was right before the fall of SHIELD, having called her cellphone and gotten no response.  He’d been fed a story by a Hydra agent, stating that Darcy had requested a new start far away from SHIELD.  

Selvig had tried to find out where she was again, just two days after the fall of SHIELD.  The smart man had figured the first response he had gotten from SHIELD had been someone lying to him.  But the second call had been intercepted by Hydra as well, and this time, Selvig was placated by Darcy himself.  A voicemail was downloaded on the man’s phone, with Darcy’s voice telling him that she was fine and that she wanted to continue her new life away from the antics of heroes.

Bucky knew how they had gotten Darcy’s words too.  Darcy wouldn’t have remembered it, being blissed out and drugged as she was, but they had managed to get enough sounds out of her to manipulate them into any words they wanted.  

It had been enough for Erik Selvig to drop looking for Darcy any further.

They’d hit another motel just a few days after their brush with Steve, and Darcy had given up on trying to get James to sleep in a bed, figuring that he must get enough sleep, because he certainly always looked and seemed well rested in the morning.  She simply crawled into the bed while James combed through reports and chatter feed, all the while chattering away.

That night, her one sided chat fest had been about how the one thing she had always wanted to do was travel, but her work with Jane hadn’t exactly taken her to the places she had wanted to go.  A desert in New Mexico, a lab in Oslo, and London had been the extent of it.  She had hoped for astronomical phenomena to take her to more exotic locale, and she yammered on about a list of countries she might like to go to now that she was no longer a labrat for astrophysicists or Nazis.  

‘ We will take our Pet to Europe.  So many enemies to destroy and places to debauch her.’

“And I’ve never seen Paris...I can speak French, did you---did you know?” she whispered drowsily.

“No, I didn’t know that,” James smiled at her as her eyes closed and didn’t open back up.  

“Voulez vous couchez avec moi se soir,” she murmured, then giggled herself to sleep.

James silently chuckled and watched her greedily as she slipped further into slumber.  He indulged for countless minutes before going back to the small laptop he had secured months ago, allowing him to find all the Hydra bases, keep track of Steve and his friends, and digest all of the information he had taken from Hydra.

He’d finally managed to decode the files they’d gotten from the last base.  His entire file.  He’d gotten pieces of it before, but this was the entire file.  He navigated through it, skipping to what he wanted to know right then.  His genetic samples had been collected decades ago, he remembered the unusual mission that the little scientist had set for him in the fifties, stating that with new techniques, the Soldier could continue fathering children hundreds of years from now.

The procedure had already been performed on older samples that Hydra had found in SHIELD laboratories.  James hadn’t understood then why Zola had told him then.  

He had already forgotten Steve by then.

James had destroyed the stockpiles of his own genetic material less than three months after breaking away from Hydra.  It had turned his stomach to remember what they had aimed to do.  What they had tried to get him to do with nameless, forgotten, destroyed women throughout his servitude.  

It was necessary to look to the future after all.  To continue to make Hydra great, even after his own expiration.  

He pulled up a file and read it quickly, seeing for the first time the reason why none of the women who he had taken repeatedly had ever been deemed competent enough to bear the children of the Soldier.  Apparently, not just any woman would do.  

She would have to be enhanced in order to complete it.  And even then, it was not a sure thing that any child would develop.  It was problematic for Hydra, for the only women that were worthy of being enhanced were the Widows from the Red Room, and they were only enhanced after their graduation ceremony.  

And James knew from his own memories that the serum didn’t take to everyone it was administered to, not the bastardized version that was available to Hydra anyway.  There had been a reason why there was only one Asset for so very long.  Hydra didn’t have access to the real serum.  And they certainly didn’t have access to Howard Stark’s vita-rays.  

‘ We are lucky that we were the ideal physical specimen prior to our serum . Our Pet is also ideal.’

James read on as quickly as possible while Darcy started to make incontent sounds in her sleep.  It had been happening more often.  As she seemed healed and happy throughout the day, at night, her sounds of discomfort and pain were enough to fuel both James and the Soldier with seething anger for the ones who had caused her pain.  

He rose out of his chair and approached the bed, placing his right hand on her forehead, pushing long hair away from her face as he soothed her quietly.

“You are safe, I won’t let anyone hurt you anymore,” he whispered.  

‘ Hold her, you fool. ’

James didn’t quite trust the animal in his head to hold the beautiful woman in a bed.  He doubted the beast would stay down should such an opportunity present itself.  He continued to stroke her hair and whisper reassurances until she calmed, then went back to his research.  

He didn’t quite know what he wanted to find.  If one of his samples had been moved to the facility that Darcy had been in before he had the opportunity to destroy it, then he knew that Darcy was carrying his child.  Once he was certain of that, he would gently prod her into realizing what her condition was.

She seemed blatantly ignorant of the fact that Hydra’s last experiment on her had been a success.  She was also intent on being equally as ignorant of the file that James had obtained, not interested in the least.  James had tried to ask her if she wanted to know, nearly every other day, and she had said no every time.  He’d even let the laptop up and running with the synopsis of her on the screen, giving her privacy in the name of obtaining her breakfast.

He’d come back to the room to see her watching cooking shows on the television, the laptop turned off due to inactivity.  

He felt that if he knew whether he was the father or not, he’d be able to get her to listen to him about what had happened to her.  

Darcy was enhanced with Hydra’s serum, the same that ran through his veins, if at a lower dosage.  She’d survived it at impossible odds and hadn’t turned into a monster even when Hydra had tried to force her into being a monster.   And when they couldn’t make her stronger or faster or less human , someone came up with the brilliant idea of making her a broodmare for a new generation of super soldiers.

And the first try at artificial insemination, done as crudely as possible, had been successful.

‘ A child of mine with the Pet would be a fearsome, beautiful creature .”

James sighed, not wanting to hear the Soldier’s hopeful dreams about a small, beautiful murder baby.  He almost feared what the Soldier would do if the baby was fathered by a different enhanced monster.

“Attempts to obtain Winter Soldier’s samples have failed, all are destroyed,” James whispered aloud from the file, feeling his stomach turn over as the words blurred in front of him.  “Alternative enhanced samples will be requisitioned for Project Ostera.”

James sat back in his seat and ran a hand over his brow, up into his hair.  It was a weight off of his shoulders, in a way.  He wouldn’t want to be the person responsible for putting Darcy in this impossible situation.  He didn’t remember everything about life and humanity, but he knew that making a child should be done out of love and want for that child.  And if it wasn’t his child, Darcy wouldn’t feel pressured to keep it out of some sense of loyalty to him.  

‘ The child will still be a beautiful, stunning creature, because it is hers. It shall be weaker though because it is not ours.  We will need to protect it. ’

James’ head fell back at that surprising declaration from the Soldier, and he closed the laptop down before pulling off his boots and turning to look at Darcy in the bed, sleeping soundly through her nightmares now.  He took a slow, measured breath, feeling exhausted suddenly, something he didn’t feel very often, thanks to the serum.  

He lay on top of the quilt that Darcy was wrapped in, scooting close to her and laying on his side.  She turned into him immediately, and small arms wrapped around his waist and held on tight.

He maneuvered his left hand to lightly brush against her lower abdomen, wondering what she would decide to do.  He couldn’t detect a heartbeat yet, not even with the delicate sensors on his index finger.  

“James,” Darcy whispered, burrowing into him as best as she could with the quilt in between their bodies.  A contented sigh blew from her lips and landed on his collarbone, causing him to shiver.

‘ You will tell her about her child tomorrow.  She must know .”

For once, James agreed.

Chapter Text

Chapter Six: Pet Care

Darcy woke up to incredible warmth, and the feeling of her hair tickling at her forehead.  She blinked her eyes open to see her whole area of vision taken up with a soft gray long sleeved t-shirt and she let her eyes slowly move up to see the column of James' throat, along with his stubble that was a few days away from being a full fledged beard.  Her hair moved again, being pushed by the air James let out through parted lips.  They were laying on the bed together, Darcy wrapped up in the quilt, face to face while they were on their sides, James lay on his metal arm, but his right arm was wrapped around her middle, and both of her arms were wrapped around him in kind.  

"Nice to wake up to," Darcy murmured.  "If you won't let me have coffee, this will do."

James made an aborted little sound in the back of his throat.  It sounded like he was comfortable and pleased with how he was slowly surfacing to wakefulness.  His right arm pulled her tighter and Darcy gladly snuggled into him and all the heat he was giving off.  She hummed in contentment and started to stretch her body out, starting with her toes and moving up.  

"Bucky," she whispered, testing the name out on her lips.  It seemed wrong somehow.  

She knew that Bucky was the one with the lazy accent and sweet, but outdated terms of endearment.  Darcy figured that it would be hardest to bring Bucky back, seeing as he was buried so long ago.  

But someday, she'd figure out a way to help him get himself all put together again, all three parts that she liked very much.  Then he'd be Bucky, and maybe he'd be willing to stop running and burning and pillaging.  And she'd probably be sated for revenge then too.  

She didn't know what happened then, and she was willing to bet James and Bucky and the Soldier didn't know either.  But they could figure it out together.

Darcy wondered if Steve Rogers and the rest of the super squad were in her future.  Bucky had seemed fond in his reminiscing about Steve, what little he could remember.  And he'd randomly interspersed his memories with chuckles about seeing the 'punk' laid flat out on his ass by a tiny little dame.  All of it was said with an underlying fondness.  

Darcy couldn't understand it, but then again, she'd never had the opportunity to care about someone as much as Bucky and Steve apparently cared for each other.  She realized that Steve was chasing after Bucky for a long time now.  Nearly as long as Darcy had been taken by Hydra.

No wonder they hadn't had time to notice she was missing.  The Super Squad had been busy looking for Bucky Barnes.  

She felt her stomach lurch suddenly and went to jump out of James' embrace.  He resisted her escape, his eyes snapping open, cool and assessing, the sudden jolt into wakefulness bringing out the Soldier immediately rather than James.

"Sleep," the Soldier muttered in Russian, closing his eyes when he realized there was no threat to him or his Pet.  "Gain your strength so I might ravish you, Pet."

"I'm gonna hurl," Darcy warned before clapping her hand over her mouth and turning olive green in her complexion.  She didn't know if he understood exactly what she meant by that, but he hopped off the bed and grabbed for her, rushing her to the bathroom, but she couldn't hold off and got some sick all over the front of her before he tenderly placed her on the ground by the toilet.  

"You're alright, Pet," he whispered in Russian.

"Farsi, dude," Darcy reminded him miserably, her head completely in the toilet as her entire body heaved with the next wave of sick.  

"You will be a good little mother for your bastard," the Soldier continued to coo at her in Russian though.  "And I will protect you.  Both of you.  My pathetic, sweet, little Pet."

"Ohhhh," Darcy sighed as she sat up a bit, looking completely drained and disgusting to boot.  "Don't know what you're saying but it sounds nice."

"Come along, Pet, you need a bath," the Soldier insisted, picking her up and placing her on the sink counter and handing her her toothbrush full of paste before going about flushing the toilet and starting the running water.  

Darcy watched in exhausted amusement as he filled the tub with scalding hot water, looking around the pitiful motel bathroom for anything to make the water better, settling on taking a bar of soap and crushing it in his left hand before sprinkling it all over the water.  

She had her head leaning against the wall, scraping the toothbrush in her mouth lazily,  feeling bone crushingly tired despite the fact that she had just woken up.  She was pretty sure her upper intestines had been flushed down the toilet with the rest of the contents of her stomach and she had no fight left in her.  And she didn't want to fight the Soldier when he stood in front of her, leaving no personal space as he went for the t-shirt she slept in, pulling it up.  He moved her around like a doll, toothbrush taken from her hands, lifeless limbs raised just enough to the get the shirt off of her, and suddenly she was just sitting there in a pair of underwear, staring up at a covetous assassinating machine.

"Not plump enough," the Soldier sighed, still in Russian, his hands going from her shoulders, down her arms to rest at her stomach.  “Smaller than just a few days ago.”

"Too tired for shenanigans," Darcy whispered as his hands went for her panties and eased them down, allowing her to move her bottom so he could get them off of her.  "Not that I'm saying shenanigans aren't gonna happen, cause let's face it, all three of you are hot, but I'm too tired right now."

"Don't worry, Pet," the Soldier finally spoke in English to her, his voice just holding  a bit of Russian accent, the words low and raspy.  "I will have you when you are wet with wanting me."

"Sounds nice," Darcy nodded as he lifted her off the counter again and took her to the bath, easing her into the piping hot water.  "If you leave me I'm gonna drown.  That's a thing that happens in bathtubs, you don't need more than like, an inch of water to drown, really."

"Don't worry, Pet," the Soldier repeated, before quickly divesting himself of layer after layer of clothing.

Darcy felt a little more awake now, sitting up straight and staring as skin started to be revealed.  Her eyes were drawn to the metal arm, because the only thing that could take her eyes away from a stomach like that was a metal arm, and she frowned at the sight of the angry looking scars.  

"You frown, is it not pleasing?" the Soldier demanded, looking down at his fully erect, twitching manhood.  Undressing the Pet and seeing her full bare beauty had made him hard with the want for her, and he had always thought his manhood to be very fine indeed.  

"Huh?" Darcy blinked, looking down to what the Soldier was staring proudly at.  He was long and wide and uncut, and jutting up towards his belly button, twitching under her inspection. "Holy shit."

"Much better," the Soldier smirked at her immediately flushed cheeks, parted lips and wide eyes.  "Another time, Pet."

He climbed into the tub with her, the water just barely sloshing over the edge, and he opened his arms to her.  A low groan of contentment rumbled in both of their throats when Darcy turned in the tub and rearranged herself so that she was sitting with her back against his front.  

"And you thought you were some raging beast about to ravish me," Darcy scoffed as his cock lay against her back, his arms wrapped around her middle.  

"I am no animal," the Soldier insisted. "James is weak."

"No, not weak," Darcy corrected.  "He's strong where you're not.  You're strong where he's not.  Together, you make a pretty amazing person.  Minus a few memories and old timey ways to say girl."

The Soldier scoffed at that, but cupped his left hand in the water, bringing it up and out to gently pour it on her shoulders.  She moaned in appreciation and he spent the next fifteen minutes gently bathing her, the soap infused water settling into their skin.  

"Sleepy," she was a melted puddle of a woman against his front and he had to pick her up out of the water as it started to go cold.  

The Soldier was concerned that her strength was flagging.  It was certainly because of the bastard child she carried.  He would have to find a way to help her somehow, medication or some kind of vitamin.  

He didn't want her to lose the bastard child without even knowing of its existence.

Darcy woke up to find that they were already on the road, and a container of something warm and delicious smelling was underneath her nose.  She looked around, peering in the orange light and realized that it was already late in the afternoon, the winter sun setting in the distance.  She also noticed that instead of the usual trees and nearly abandoned roads, they were in a city.  A very metropolitan city.

"Where are we?" she whispered, a spoon being gently teased against her lips as soon as her words were done.

"Calgary."

It was the Soldier that answered her, which was unusual.  She'd only ever seen him a few times now, and usually those times were tied to violence.  Well, twice it had been violence and this last time had been to bathe her.  

"Why?" Darcy questioned and got another spoonful of delicious soup shoved into her mouth.

"You are ill," he answered shortly.  

"Don't leave me here, don't leave me," Darcy was suddenly full of energy, sitting straight up and looking around in a panic.  "I know I'll slow you down, if I'm sick, but I promise, I'll get better.  Please don't leave me.  James---Bucky---whoever, PLEASE."

"I will never leave you, Pet," the Soldier answered, his words a solid and sure thing.  He looked at her with the closest thing he had to sympathy and gave her a small smile.  "I will never allow anyone to take you from me.  You are my Pet, now."

"Oh," Darcy whispered.  She grinned at him suddenly, big and bright and lovely.  "Thank you."

"Yes, Pet," the Soldier nodded.

"So---are you going to have to you know---grrr," Darcy made a finger gun and pulled the trigger a few times.  

"Nyet," he shook his head.  He fed her a few more spoonfuls of soup and frowned severely when her energy seemed to flag and wane.  "You require medicine.  I will obtain it for you."

"This doesn't seem like a Hydra facility," Darcy whispered, looking around.  They were in the middle of a bustling city landscape, namely a very avant garde building full of chrome and high windows, built up to the sky like some sort of obnoxious monument.

"It is not.  There is more research and information here about the serum that is affecting you so adversely than anywhere on Earth.  Hydra has been trying to gain access here for quite sometime.  It is Stark Industries."

"Well---shit."

"Boss, there seems to be a hostile attack on one of the hidden servers."

Tony, sitting on a low stool, a blowtorch in hand as he worked at the undercarriage of the Hulkbuster suit, did a full seven hundred and twenty degree turn before stopping with a jerk  He went over the statement in his mind and then stared up at the ceiling contemplatively.

"We have hidden servers?"

"The servers were established by your father over thirty years ago," Friday explained.  

"And---no one ever told me about them, why now?" Tony wondered.

"They were never under hostile attack before," Friday answered back, and her tone was definitely glib.

Tony heaved a sigh and stood up from his rolling stool, grabbing a large bag of something slightly sweet and crunchy before walking towards the nearest screen, he stuffed his mouth full of sustenance before he began to work in earnest, trying to quickly ascertain what his father might have put on hidden servers thirty years ago.

"Vita-ray research and serum development," Tony rolled his eyes.  "Way to be predictable, Dad."

"Boss, I'm not going to be able to hold off the attack, I've done what I can to modernize the server, but it's still a big room full of computer closets," Friday reminded him.  

"Shut them down," Tony advised.  The world didn't need to know what Howard had figured out about the serum that made Captain America.  Especially since it seemed Howard had it all but figured out according to what he was seeing.  “Do we have anyone close by?”

“Captain Rogers is roughly an hour away,” Friday revealed.  

“Send him there, and can you shut it down already?” Tony demanded hotly.

"It's not that easy," Friday practically seethed.  "I'd be shutting down the electricity to an entire city block."

"DO IT!" Tony insisted.  "And suit me up, like, five minutes ago."

The Soldier smiled when the lights to the building went out.  He nodded at Darcy who was in the car, working at his laptop to continue the attack against the Stark servers.  He didn't need to know what Howard Stark had gotten out of his research and recreation of the serum.  He knew how that story ended already.

What he needed, was to get into the building, on the third floor, in a little office that had been rented out to the same person since 1986.  He easily got into the building through a door he had scoped out around back, kept open with a brick so that a few people could sneak out and catch a cigarette throughout the day.  The door had probably been open for decades now, and the alarm had been dismantled on it long ago.  

The cover of darkness and the fact that more than half of the workforce was already gone for the day allowed the Soldier to walk through the halls unnoticed, and before long, he was standing in a cheerfully decorated office, with old fashioned rock music playing softly from a desk.  

"Good afternoon, young man.  I've been expecting you for some time."

The Soldier turned to see a little white haired woman staring back up at him, a smile on her thin, wrinkled lips.  Her big brown eyes weren't quite hidden behind thick lenses and hair the solid color of gray fell around her cheeks in a bob.

"I'm Doctor Carla Rivera, and you must be the Winter Soldier.  It has been a very long time since we saw each other last.  But you look exactly as I remember you."

Chapter Text

Chapter Seven: Compromised

Darcy startled awake for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last forty-five minutes.  She no longer had to aggressively type out damaging code into the laptop as the Soldier had encouraged her to do.  What had started as a power outage in the building to discourage the hacking had rapidly devolved into the entire information highway in Canada being obliterated and useless.

Tony Stark was NOT fucking around, desperate to keep the information that Darcy was toying with secret.  She didn't blame him, really, because like hell did she want any more people suffering through the super soldier serum.  The world had lucked out with those two Brooklyn boys being the primary recipients.

She looked down at what she'd managed to pull off the servers before they'd been yanked away and put under the cover of darkness.  Howard Stark had hired a very small, elite crew of people to recreate Erskine's brilliance.  What they found out was not so encouraging.

The Vita-rays were what had made Steve Rogers turn from a 98 pound asthmatic into two hundred and twenty pounds of All American Beefcake.  If he hadn't of had those, his health would have improved with the serum, and everything in him would have been amplified.  So, essentially a tiny Captain America, brilliant master strategist.

Darcy ruminated over the other super soldier , the one that had decided to adopt her as a road trip companion and hopefully a potentially, eventually sexy times Pet. He hadn't had the vita rays, but apparently he didn't need to gain extra inches or bulk.  But it had taken what was there already and made it stronger and more resilient.  The only thing she really knew about Bucky Barnes from history class and Great Great Aunt Dettler was that he had been loyal, smart and the best kisser in Brooklyn.

And the serum had taken that and made it stronger and better.

And Hydra had used that loyalty and wickedly fast brain and turned him into a killing machine.

"Well suck it up buckos, we're bringing the pain to you now," Darcy mumbled to no one as she looked around with sleepy eyes, wondering how much longer they had before Iron Man came rushing onto the scene.

Her mind wandered to her own version of the serum.  From what James had managed to tell her when she'd been willing to listen, and from what she could put together from Stark's research, the serum didn't take to everyone.

There was less than a five percent chance that any test subject would react positively to it.  Stark was fairly certain that if a person didn't become a monster, they would probably die.  He hadn't been willing to do the experiments, but Darcy knew others had.  The Red Skull.  Hydra.  Bruce Banner.  It didn't tend to go well.

She wondered if that was why she was so tired and sick feeling.  Was her body finally rejecting what had been pumped into her months and months ago?  Was she going to die unless the Soldier could find a cure inside?

What had the serum amplified in her?

That made her stomach turn unpleasantly and she made a conscious effort to stop the meager soup she had managed to get down from coming back up again.  She noticed that on the floor of the truck was a brown paper bag from the takeout place the Soldier had gotten the soup and it was full of individually wrapped saltine crackers.  She pulled up a handful and opened one, nibbling on it absently as her exhausted mind wandered.

She'd been just a normal person before.  A flighty millennial that Jane Foster had always scolded for getting distracted by music or the latest buzzfeed article about what people really do behind closed doors with their significant other.  Thor had once called her a maiden of Hestia, goodness and warmth and home.

She'd liked that, it had made her blush.  She sighed and wished that Thor had actually thought well enough of her to wonder where the fuck she had been for two years straight.

Erik Selvig had thought she had been clever, but had also called her catty in the same breath.  It hadn't been her fault that she HAD to have gotten a little bit of juvenile revenge against the SHIELD agents who had shown up too late in London, intent on getting her to sign even more of her free will away with all of the nondisclosure agreements.

Darcy wondered though if the serum had stuck on her because there just hadn't been anything to enhance.  She was a plain vanilla cone of ice cream in a world full of fantastical sherberts and fancy loaded Ben and Jerry's pints.  You couldn't be made more dangerous if there was nothing remarkable about you to make dangerous in the first place.

The city block their SUV was parked on was completely dark, but she still saw a small movement about one block down.  Something shiny descending quickly and the outline of large wings that resembled angel's wings.  She squinted, knowing she shouldn't be able to see anything at all in the pitch black, but sure enough, she saw the faint outline of a shield going off running towards the building Bucky had gone into, leaving the one with wings behind to handle anything nefarious on the outside.

"Really Captain Assface? You had him for decades, can you give me like, a month with him before I have to give him back to you?" Darcy sighed before cramming another saltine into her mouth and closing the laptop.  She reached under the seat and grabbed her weapons of choice (the only weapons James and the Soldier agreed she was more than capable of wielding) and then very carefully opened the door to the SUV, her slow and sluggish movements allowing for silence at the very least.

For a member of the Super Squad, the Big Bird with the wings wasn't exactly stealthy, he was talking into a comm unit and wasn't even using coded words.  Darcy wasn't a super spy by any means, but even she understood why the Soldier used different languages all of the time.  Darcy managed to get herself leaned up against a dumpster well before Ducktales McGee managed to get close and she shamelessly listened in on his conversation.

"No, I'm telling you, he's crazed right now.  If this asshole Fucky doesn't come back in house soon, Cap's gonna just---combust," Flip Flap muttered into his comm.  "You can't get him that date with Little Miss Great Rack any sooner?"

Darcy scoffed at that silently.  Only one person had called her that in her lifetime, and she had hoped the nickname wouldn't stick.  She much preferred what the boys in eighth grade called her when she'd been forced to wear a smaller t-shirt during gym class.  Bazooka Boobs was better than Little Miss Great Rack.

"Yeah, well find her, because Cap needs a distraction before he runs himself into the ground."

Darcy didn't want to hear anymore.  She didn't want to hear herself being gossiped about when she had been MISSING and TORTURED for nearly two years of her life.

"And you don't find that suspicious at all?  No one's heard from her for two years? Nat---"

The rest of the Woodland Fairy-man's words more closely resembled one of those old fashioned cartoon animals that had dropped a toaster into a full bathtub and after his gibberish ended he dropped face down on the ground.

"What's up Donald?" Darcy asked, from just out of the grounded duck's line of sight.

"Nat---down," Sam whispered.

"You're lucky I turned it down, I could have used a Captain Asshole sized charge,"

Darcy shrugged, turning the voltage down again and giving Tweety bird a smaller, but still painful zap in his bicep.  "I'm gonna say this once, alright?"

The singed goose managed a wrinkle of his nose and a nod as the baton crackled ominously.   His hand moved to the screen he wore on his wrist, intent on tapping something out.

"Don't even think about it, dude," Darcy warned.  She sighed and sounded quiet and serious then, "Leave us alone.  Just---just find a way to occupy your Captain, alright?"

"Why?" Peking Duckling wondered.

"Because, James needs this," Darcy answered.  She did too, truth be told.  "We just need a little more time, he's coming back together, I can tell.  Just---we're not hurting anyone that doesn't deserve to be hurt."

"Not for you---to decide," the bird gasped out quietly.

"YEAH?  And it wasn't for me to decide to get run off a road in New Mexico and have two years of my life taken from me, either!" Darcy spat out.  "You don't get to tell me I can't have this.  Fuck you, man."

"Steve---"

"He can have him back when we're done!" Darcy spat out, sounding petulant and annoyed.  She felt her stomach lurch and turned, coughing and spluttering as she expelled her soup and crackers.

"You---you alright?" the flightless turkey boy asked in true concern.

"Just---I'll give him back when he's ready, he's getting better, I can tell," Darcy whispered, on the edge of tears.  "Until then, just, occupy your Captain, alright?"

Sam wasn't arguing, but he wasn't agreeing either.

Darcy nodded and turned up the juice a little once more, giving him a little zap that had him passing out on the alley floor.  She slowly walked back to the truck, pulling herself in with just enough time to spare before the Soldier had the driver's side door yanked open, climbing inside and making the engine roar to life.

"What's---what's going on?" Darcy wondered softly.

"We will have your medicine in forty-eight hours," the Soldier answered, turning on the car and pulling out quickly.

"That's good, but---there's company here," Darcy told him, holding up her baton and giving him a little shrug, her cheeks tinged with color that stood out on too pale skin, a smile pulling at her lips.

"Yes, I just missed the Captain inside," the Soldier nodded curtly.  "We have a safe space to wait, my Pet, don't fear."

"Really?  How did we get a safe space?" Darcy furrowed her brow.

"A very old friend, apparently."

Sam had been twitching and knocked out for quite a bit of time, long enough for Tony to arrive and start destroying old fashioned computers and servers.  A little white haired doctor had shown herself at the lobby, when Steve and Natasha had dragged Sam from the alleyway he had been found in.  Natasha had left Steve to tend Sam's bedside, intent on combing the alley for any evidence.

"He'll be fine," Dr. Rivera announced in a way that was both cheerful and businesslike at the same time.  "He'll need a week of downtime for his muscles to get over the shocks, but it could have been worse."

"He could be dead," Steve sighed.  If the current of electricity that had gone through Sam had been anything like what had gone through him, by all means Sam should be dead.  His friend twitched in his sleep again and Steve sat back in his chair, running his hand over his face as he tried to figure out his best course of action here.

Obviously Bucky and his rescued cohort didn't want to be found and had no problem hurting anyone who came after them and tried to stop them.  But he couldn't just let them run around, wreaking havoc on Hydra facilities and civilian facilities alike.  It was only a matter of time before someone got hurt by their tour of vengeance.

If only Bucky trusted him enough, Steve would HELP him.

"Captain Rogers, you appear exhausted," Dr. Rivera said softly.  "There is another bed in the examination room, perhaps you would benefit from lying down."

"Can't sleep anyway," Steve said quietly.

"I could give you something," Dr. Rivera offered quietly.

"I don't quite work the same way as your normal patients," Steve wagered, looking around at the cheerful posters on the wall, targeted to children about how to keep healthy.   

"No, you don't.  You have a metabolism that burns four times faster than the average human," Dr. Rivera replied with casual banality.  "Any normal medication would burn out of your blood stream before it could do anything to help you, I'm sure."

"How did you know that?" Steve asked bluntly, too tired and frustrated for politeness.

He looked around again and guessed, "Bucky came here to see you?"

"I don't think he goes by the name Bucky at the moment," Dr. Rivera smiled placidly, although her dark eyes looked mischievous.  She opened up one of the cabinets and pulled a few things out, bottles and vials and an empty mixing beaker.  She walked out of the room that Sam was in and wasn't surprised when Steve followed her into the small, but cheerful lab she spent most of her hours in.  "Not yet, anyway.  Your healing factor is perhaps the fastest out of any serum enhanced individual, aside from Dr. Bruce Banner, but then again, nothing about Dr. Bruce Banner is normal, is it?"

"What did he want?" Steve demanded as he looked at the four small countertops in the room.  One of the countertops was already rigged with beakers and apparatus, boiling down some kind of solution and filtrating into pipes and tubes and another beaker.

"Help," Dr. Rivera answered back without hesitation as she began to set up a different apparatus quickly. "Much needed help."

"For him or the girl?" Steve felt his pulse quicken.

"The woman," Dr. Rivera raised an eyebrow at him.  "From what he told me, she is a strong, beautiful thing.  I believe he is quite enamored of her, truth be told.  He was willing to come here, after all."

"Dr. Rivera, whose side are you on?" Steve asked very quietly, his voice a low, dangerous thing, meant to intimidate people looking to start wars.

"I wasn't aware that there were sides when it came to fighting illness, Captain. I assumed we were all on the side of illness losing.  And life, precious and beautiful and real, well, life should be the victor," Dr. Rivera nodded in agreement with herself.

"I want to help him," Steve was quiet as he watched Dr. Rivera working, his anger flown from his sails.  "I want to help them both."

"And lessen his triumph over his own demons?" Dr. Rivera nodded as she set a bunsen burner ablaze to boil the latest rounded beaker she had dumped contents into.  She turned to Steve and smiled, "Give me an hour, I should have effective sleeping pills for you, feel free to take a few to your laboratories in New York to have them replicated."

"What about your other experiment?" Steve looked at the slower moving experiment that had been set up.

"That is for the woman," Dr. Rivera revealed with a smile.  "She is in great need of these pills, without them, she would surely die within a week."

Steve sucked in a breath.  He didn't know the woman who had been taken and rescued by Bucky.  He had been laid flat out by her a few days ago, Sam had been taken down by her earlier that night.  Natasha had been suspiciously quiet, refusing to speculate about what had happened to the girl---the woman.  He didn't know the woman's name, didn't know where she had come from.

But he cared.  Bucky had taken her under his wing, and he had lived a solitary existence for years.  So that must mean she was something special.  Steve didn't want the poor woman to die after finding freedom after so long.

"I will send a few to you in New York, to have your laboratories replicate them as well," Dr. Rivera nodded in agreement with herself.

"You seem to think---that she'll be coming to me eventually," Steve said quietly.

"Oh yes, that was part of the agreement," Dr. Rivera nodded.  "When it became too much for her, she would have to turn herself in for treatment."

"Oh," Steve nodded dumbly.  "What's wrong with her?"

"Doctor patient confidentiality, Captain, you should know better," the small, gray doctor scolded playfully.  "But rest assured, she will have to eventually give up this tour of vengeance."

"Good," Steve sighed.  Enhanced or not, this was not safe work.

"And, as I stated previously," Dr. Rivera had a playful little smile playing against her face, dark eyes now dancing.  "He is quite attached to this small mystery he has rescued.  He will not be separated from her when the time comes, I feel."

For the first time in a very long time, Steve felt hope bloom.  He watched as the sleeping aids the doctor was working on began to take form, a thick, honey like liquid slowly dripping into a beaker for collection.  Bucky just needed space.  He just needed time.  He would come back to Steve when they were ready.  He had to believe that.

Bucky had always come back for Steve before, after all, never leaving him alone for too long.

He would be back.

Forty-eight hours passed by in a blur for Darcy.  It felt very vaguely like a lot of her time with Hydra had felt like.  Dull, throbbing pain.  The gnawing of a stomach that was too empty.  The hazy sleep that seemed to rob her of her concept of time and her surroundings.  She could feel herself whimpering every time she was moved around, not knowing if this was the time she'd be poked, prodded, cut open or worse.

But still, she wasn't panicking.  Because while there were similarities, there was also the soft, low whispers and murmurs in her ear.

' You'll be alright, Pet.  Open and drink this.  For me, Pet, please. '

' I'll keep you safe, Darcy.  I promise.  You're going to be fine .'

' Look at you, my poor dollbaby, shivering like a leaf, c'mere, let me hold you till the Doc can come with the medicine .'

She was clean and warm and even though she was hungry, she could tell that James or the Soldier or Bucky, was trying their best, seemingly taking turns in running a cool cloth over her brow, or gently pushing a straw between her lips and encouraging her to drink what tasted like a lukewarm milkshake, or holding a cracker up to her lips while she nibbled slowly.

His metal hand found its way to her stomach more often than not, petting her lightly there, as if in search of something.  She liked it, she liked all the little touches she could vaguely realize he was giving her.  Sweet kisses on a sweaty brow as she burned like a furnace.  The soft pull of a comb through tangled tresses.  Metal armed embraces that made her feel safe, and cherished and wanted.

She heard the sharp tones of an older woman, going over instructions very clearly, a warning given that they only had a few more months left before it wouldn't be enough.

And then she felt a pill being pushed past her lips as James encouraged her to swallow it down, giving her a straw that delivered extra sugary juice past her lips.  She wavered between consciousness and sleep after that.  But she felt her body being arranged just so and had a moment of panic when she realized an examination was being  done, just like before, her legs spread and someone doing something she didn't want.

"Shhh, shh, my Pet, it's alright," the Soldier soothed her, and suddenly he was solid behind her, holding her in surprisingly gentle arms, his lips pressed against her ear.

"We must make sure you are well, you will not be hurt, I would never allow it.  Never again, Pet, I promise you."

She whimpered but stopped trying to struggle and melted against his body, drifting back to much needed sleep as she heard the sound of a machine and something cool and wet being pressed against her stomach, and then the very rapid sound of someone's heartbeat.

James didn't quite know what to do with himself when Dr. Rivera left, leaving behind a four month supply of medication.  He would never understand how he had managed to find such loyalty in a person so damned smart, decades ago when he had been the brutal Winter Soldier, but he had been glad for it.

Once upon a time, the Winter Soldier had inadvertently saved small, scared Carla Rivera.  A bullet through the head of an abusive step father who had managed to get on the wrong side of a conflict with global political ramifications had changed her life forever for the better.  He had saved her when she was at her most vulnerable and she would never, ever forget the silent, metal armed man who had stalked out of her bedroom that night.

She'd devoted her whole life to repaying the favor, tracking down Stark Industries and waiting patiently, developing ways to help a man who had strength far beyond a normal human.  She knew more about super soldier serum than any one person on Earth, and not because she had wanted to recreate it, but because she had wanted to help those that had been affected by it.

Darcy slept for another fourteen hours, and James tidied the cabin Carla had provided for them, gotten their bags ready to leave at a moment's notice, and gotten up to date on chatter and security reports.  Steve and his friends had returned back to the upstate New York facility for Avengers, focusing on training missions and tracking down high profile Hydra enforcers instead of combing through small towns in Canada looking for the Winter Soldier and a young woman with previous trauma.

It was good.  James knew that.  When Darcy was well enough again, he would move them further along the planned out tour of Hydra facilities around the world, getting more and more files until he could be certain who the father of Darcy's baby was.

Her baby.

He went into his front shirt pocket and pulled out a small, black and white photo that Carla had printed out for him to show Darcy when she was recuperated enough, when the pill the elderly doctor had created for her started to work, to balance out her hormones and the serum enough to stop killing the mother to enhance the fetus.  It was a small little dot on the picture in a sea of black.

Just six weeks along, but the heartbeat had been strong and steady and fast enough to cause the Soldier alarm.  Carla had smiled at him and reassured him that although it was early to hear the heartbeat, that the sound of it was encouraging.

"I'll protect you," he looked down at the picture and gave a small smile.  "I will always protect you."

'Do not listen to him, I will be the one to do the protecting, little sweet bastard.'

"James?"

He put the picture back into his pocket and ran swiftly to the little room that he had placed Darcy in, looking a little more flustered than he usually did as he stared down at her.  She was inching herself into a sitting position, looking less ghostly pale than she had over the two days of her convalescence.  He was at her side in a moment, gently bringing her to sit up straighter.

"I have to pee," she whined out in annoyance.  "Like, thanks for the juice dude, but now I'm gonna piss myself, I swear, and that's just not something you live down with a friend.  You know?"

James smiled, picking her up quickly in a fireman's carry, stepping quickly into the hallway and then into the bathroom of the small cottage they had been holed up in.  She was only wearing one of his t-shirts and he placed her on the toilet and turned around to give her some semblance of privacy.

He snorted with laughter as she let out the longest sigh of accomplishment as she took a very long time to empty her bladder.

"Holy shit, that's so good," Darcy giggled.  "Wow, I feel so much better."

"Yeah," James nodded.  "We figured it out."

"So I'm not gonna die?" Darcy asked,

"No, we have a---a vitamin of sorts to keep you balanced out," James admitted.

"Excellent," Darcy sighed as she finally finished.  She didn't ask anymore questions, not wanting to know that she had almost died, her body doing everything in its power to put all of her internal resources into growing a bundle of cells rather than keep her alive.

It was getting a little frustrating for James.  She should want to know what happened to her, what was GOING to happen to her, but she was still intent on being blissfully unaware.

"Do I have panties at all?" Darcy asked hopefully.  "Commando is a choice every person should make for themselves, and I'm all about letting people free ball it, but I don't really think I want that for myself...soooooo...."

Chapter Text

Chapter Eight: A Monster

"Cap?"  

The sounds coming from Steve's quarters were not promising.  For one, they were entirely foreign.  Sam stepped gingerly past Steve's unmade bed towards his en suite bathroom, where the harsh and disgusting sounds of gagging and dry heaving were originating from.

"Friday, what in the hell is going on?" Sam wondered, having just been released by medical after his electrified convalescence.  He hadn't been too badly injured, but Natasha Romanoff had warned the emergency medical personnel that normally reported to Dr. Helen Cho, that if he wasn't treated properly, there would be hell to pay.  

They'd not only made sure that Sam had no more twitches or other nasty side effects from electrocution, they had also ensured that he left with better vitamin levels than he had entered with, along with straightening out that soreness he got in his right knee whenever it got a little too humid out.  All in all, the last eighteen hours had felt like he had been on the medical version of Pimp My Ride, and now he was shiny and new and wanted to ask Steve what it meant when Natasha was so concerned about your physical well being.

But here Steve was, tossing his cookies.  Or attempting to.

"Cap's been a little sick," Friday admitted.  "Although it just appears to be nausea, disorientation and dry heaving.  He hasn't actually regurgitated---"

"Gross," Sam interrupted.  "I thought the guy was indestructible?"

"It's nothing," Steve called out, pulling himself to his feet with an audible grunt.  He began running the sink and Sam poked his head into the bathroom to see Steve brushing his teeth. "I just---I feel sick sometimes.  Just the last few weeks."

"Okay, that's weird," Sam said bluntly.  "I once saw you eat Clint Barton's salmonella delight, and you didn't turn one shade of green.  You stomach is indestructible and so is your immune system."

"I'm not actually vomiting, I'm just---sort of feeling sick," Steve waved him off.  "It passes in a few minutes and I'm fine."

"Still, what if it's those pills that Cho's team was so keen to work on?" Sam demanded.  "What if Fucky’s doctor friend is poisoning you?"

"That wouldn't happen," Steve rolled his eyes.  "Just drop it, it's just---phantom illness.  I'm fine."

"Sure," Sam nodded, clearly not buying it at all.  

Steve didn't look like himself.  He looked like he'd been put through the wringer...a few times.  He was a little paler than his normally pale Irish ass was.  His eyes had dark circles underneath them, and his lips were looking extra chapped.  

"What did you need, Sam?" Steve wondered.

"Oh---yeah," Sam shrugged.  "So, would you think that if Natasha, you know, was ready for me to take her to dinner and a movie when she's all 'if he's in pain I'll destroy your world' to the med staff?"

"Huh," Steve shrugged.  "Either she's ready for you to ask her out, or she's ready to become your mommy."

Sam's eyes narrowed as Steve regained some of his color at having found his insolent words once more.  Sam held up both middle fingers in Steve's face.

"I hope you spend the rest of your day with your head in the toilet, Cap."

Darcy recovered quickly, once everything found a balance thanks to Carla Rivera's miracle vitamin, her serum enhanced body was back on track.  She still experienced occasional nausea, but found if she concentrated hard enough, she could will it away.  She had also found her appetite again, the morning sickness that had been so dangerous before now manageable.  James found that their path meandered according to Darcy's appetite and cravings, and he seemed helpless but to spoil her completely rotten.

"This website says they have the best donuts," Darcy announced as they pulled into a TIm Horton's.

"How is it different than the twenty other Tim Horton's we've been to in the last five days?" James smirked at her as he put the car in park and turned to tighten the scarf around her neck a little more securely, pulling her in a little closer (she was already quite close, cuddling up to him as they drove all day to the next destination).

"The internet said this one was the best one, and the internet has never lied to me, ever," Darcy grinned at him.

"You...you are a menace," James whispered before tugging her by the scarf so his lips hit her forehead.

Darcy lingered after his sweet kiss and angled her face upwards, her grin disappearing as pouty lips pursed for a kiss on the mouth.  She waited a full five seconds before smiling again, her eyes full of understanding as she shimmied backwards and away from him as far as the hold on her scarf would allow.

"So when is our next stop?" Darcy wondered.  "You know.  For vengeance."

"I already went last night after you were asleep," James said quickly, like ripping off a verbal bandaid.

Darcy scooted back further on the bench seat, her scarf stretching the entire width of the car.  Her pretty features quickly twisted with the stinging shock of betrayal and she yanked on her scarf to no avail, as James had the fabric firmly in his grip.

"Let me go," she whispered.

"Dollbaby, no," he said softly.  "Don't be sore, now."

"Oh, now the charmer comes out!" Darcy scoffed.  "Give me the Soldier, Bucky!"

"Really?" Bucky scoffed at her, pulling her closer by an inch.  "C'mon, give us a hug and don't be mad.  It was better to let you sleepin'."

"I'm not sick anymore!" she countered hotly.  "You know that I want to help---that I need to help.  They need to pay for what they did to us and I want to help do that!"

"Dollbaby, don't be sore, honest, I'll take you on the next trip," Bucky gave her his best wheedling little smile and was absolutely shocked to have Darcy dart forward and smack him across the face, the hit was barely enough to hurt a fly, but his entire face went blank at the movement and he dropped her scarf.

She scurried out of the car and ran into the Tim Horton's, rushing around the store and grabbing everything and anything she could think of, paying with the cash that James regularly replaced in her coat pocket.  The Soldier was standing outside in the cold, his back against the SUV, his point of view allowing him to see clearly into the store to make sure that she had been fine the whole time.  This only seemed to incense Darcy more and she shoved him in order to clamor into the car and slam the door behind her.

The Soldier took it in stride, immediately circling the car and going to open up the driver's side door when Darcy reached out and pressed the lock button.

"Open," he ordered tersely.

"Fuck off," Darcy threw him two middle fingers before shoving a donut into her mouth.

"Pet, open," the Soldier repeated.  "Now."

"Kindly fuck, the ever loving fuck, off," Darcy said through a full mouth before picking up a big glass bottle of iced coffee.  She shook it triumphantly, waving it around as the Soldier stewed.  She hadn't had caffeine in years, and was fairly sure that the turbo charged, espresso boosted beverage in her hand would send her into cardiac arrest.  "Hmmm, yummy.  My introduction back into the world of stimulants!"

She jumped in her seat, but didn't screech when James broke the glass window with a metal fist and opened the door.  He yanked the bottle from her hand and threw it about a hundred yards into a neighboring field before he got into the car and immediately took off.

"That was mine, you big jerk ass bitch!" Darcy screeched at the top of her very powerful lungs.

"You are not allowed caffeine of that size," the Soldier said calmly, racing to get them to a spot he knew would afford privacy should she continue to scream dramatically.

"WHY?" she continued to shriek.  "Why do you get to tell me what I can and can't do?  Why do you get to decide to let me sleep when all I want to do is kill every single Hydra person out there that is wasting oxygen?  WHY?"

"Because you are expecting a bastard baby," the Soldier said calmly as he threw the car in park on the side of a road.  He looked to her and pointed at her stomach.  "You are seven weeks pregnant.  It was the last experiment that Hydra subjected you to and it was successful."

Silence extended between them, cold and harsh.  Darcy gave him a look of utter disbelief, her face frozen in a mask of horror as her brain struggled to digest what he had just bluntly said.  It was impossible.  She knew it for a fact.

"You're a liar," Darcy whispered.

"I do not lie," the Soldier disputed calmly.

"You're a liar!" Darcy screamed immediately, reaching out and pushing against his bicep, not even moving him.

"No Pet, you are Project Ostera, the aim was to bring forth a new generation of super soldiers," he calmly explained.  "They succeeded."

"No they didn't!" Darcy yelled, shoving him one more time, this time, succeeding in moving him slightly before she jumped out of the car and made a run for it down the side of the road.

He caught up to her easily, wrapping her up in an embrace she tried to struggle out of.  She was wriggling, her chin digging into his chest, her feet kicking just below his knee caps, hands like claws were digging into his sides in an attempt to get him to put her down.

"Pet, I'm sorry," he whispered softly, placing his lips against her temple as she railed against him.  "I'm so sorry."

"It's not true, it's impossible, it's not true," she repeated, her tone desperate and wild.  Her knee managed to connect with his unprotected groin, powerfully so that the air went from his lungs and his hold loosened, allowing her to drop to her feet and try running again.  She stopped about ten feet away and doubled over, vomiting in a snow pile.

He made an aborted move to go to her, but she held up her hand to stop him and tried to compose herself.  Instead, he dug into his pockets, bringing out the pack of gum he had taken to carrying with him, unwrapping a piece and waiting for her to at least let him get close.

She walked right into the middle of the completely empty road and sat down right in the middle of it, putting her head in her hands and sobbing.  The Soldier was next to her in a heartbeat, picking her up and putting her in his lap, wrapping her in a metal armed embrace.

"I know you did not want to know, Pet," the Soldier whispered.  "I know that there is comfort in ignorance.  But you must know."

"What did they do to me?" Darcy whispered, taking the gum he offered her and shoving it into her mouth before wiping her tears on his shoulder.

He held her tight and began petting the braid she had put in her hair with his flesh hand.

"When you were taken, it was obvious that the timing was off to leverage you against Thor.  Selvig was deemed useless at the time," the Soldier said in that lightly accented, disaffected English.  "After being beaten and tortured for information on Foster's theories, you were given what the little heathen scientists had called a preservative and shoved into cryofreeze."

"I remember that," Darcy nodded.  "After waking up and it being painful, there's not much else."

The Soldier nodded, he knew how painful it was to wake up from cryofreeze.  And he knew that Hydra had developed ways to make a person forget about the pain and the torture without resorting to the wipes.

"Someone noticed you had a certain resiliency.  You were quick to recover from whatever had been done to you, your spirit had been..." he paused and pressed his lips to the tip of her nose quickly before giving her the most tender smile she had ever been the recipient of.  "You are indomitable and they used that for their advantage."

Darcy melted into him, sniffling and crying into his shoulder as he rocked her slightly back and forth, whispering little Russian words into her hair as he attempted to soothe her.  It hurt, after all, to find out that one of the best things about you was what someone else wanted to torture out of you.

"What else?" she squeaked out.

"You were given a variant of the super soldier serum, less than a five percent chance of success.  Most will die when they receive it, those that do not die become monsters," the Soldier said clinically.

"You're not a monster," Darcy whispered.

"Pet," the Soldier sighed and held her tighter.   "Your body took to it. And they tested it in the worst of ways, cutting you open, breaking your bones, all the pain is there, Pet, you felt it all, and the serum doesn't make it hurt less, it just allows for you to heal faster."

"That's why I'm so mad," Darcy whimpered into his shoulder.

The Soldier smiled again, knowing that her version of mad was that of a harmless kitten.  His Pet was not built for anger.  Not even before the serum.  She felt it, but turned it into something else, fuel.  Energy.  The sheer will to survive and be defiant at any and all who should try to hurt her.

"You were moved a few times, frozen each time," the Soldier revealed.  "They attempted to weaponize you, to see if the serum would affect you in the way it affected others."

"Others?" Darcy pulled away and looked up at Bucky warily.

"Do not worry about them, Pet.  I will handle it," he promised.  "Project Ostera had lay dead in someone's cabinet, dusty and old.  Decades ago they collected samples from me and---others.  To ensure Hydra's weapon would live on to new generations.  They attempted to bring women in, to have them carry my children.  But each woman was found wanting, they could not even conceive."

"So they fridged it, and you," Darcy scoffed.

"With you, a young woman who had survived the serum, who could not be tortured and programmed and trained into a killing machine, they revived Project Ostera," the Soldier revealed.  "You were placed in sleep for six months while the samples were obtained."

"Bucky---Bucky?" Darcy whispered, pulling away, looking up at him with large, watery eyes.  "Bucky?"

The Soldier looked at her with unmasked curiosity and saw that something was blooming in her gaze as she stared at him, her mouth open.  The mint from her gum wafting the short distance between them.

There was hope there.  The Soldier felt a pang go through him when he realized she hoped that he was the father of her unborn bastard.  He gave her another kiss on the tip of her nose and sighed.

"I destroyed my samples weeks before they decided to move forward with Project Ostera," he revealed.  "Other serum enhanced samples were used to make your baby."

Darcy choked in a breath and immediately began to hyperventilate.  The Soldier did his best to calm her, but he knew it wasn't enough and soon enough his accent shifted and the way he held her changed, instead of her straddling his lap, suddenly she was being held with her back to his chest.

"Dollbaby, it's alright, it's fine, you're gonna be fine," Bucky promised.  "Breathe in with me."

He made her breathe with him for five whole minutes until she regained control, all the while, his lips frequently landed on the top of her head, his arms steel bands around her.

"Monsters," Darcy managed to whisper when she'd calmed.

"Hey now," Bucky pulled away and looked at her with a smile.  "You had the serum and you ain't a monster."

"But---"

"And the Widow had it too, and she ain't quite a monster," Bucky smiled.

"She's a nosy bitch, but---"

"And Captain Damned America had the serum and he's the best damned man I ever knew," Bucky said resolutely.  "And dollbaby, you said I wasn't a monster, you can't take it back."

"But if it had been you, then I'd know it wasn't a monster," Darcy sobbed, reaching out and shoving at his shoulder ineffectively.  "Why couldn't you destroy it all a little while later?"

"Sorry, sugar," Bucky gave her a slow simmering smile before pulling her in again for a hug.  "But you know what, even if it was one of those nasty sons of bitches, it wouldn't matter.  You know why?"

"Why?" Darcy sniffled.

"Cause you're this little thing's mama, and that means a lot, really," Bucky promised her.  "And I'll be there, I'll protect you and the baby, and it'll know that it's not a monster, it'll grow up right."

"Yeah," Darcy sighed.

"But dollbaby, that's only if you want to keep it," Bucky said gently.  "Dr. Rivera said she could do a real quick procedure, you wouldn't barely feel a thing."

Darcy stiffened and took in a long, slow breath.  "I don't know."

"It's not a baby yet, I saw a picture, amazing damned thing, looked right in you and found the smallest thing," Bucky sighed, juggling his hold of her and taking out the picture that looked well worn and wrinkled by now.  "Just a little blob of stuff, it wouldn't feel anything if you didn't want to keep it."

"How long do I have to think about it?" Darcy whispered.

"Two more weeks," Bucky said.  "Doctor Rivera said that the serum would make it more---difficult to terminate after that."

"Alright," Darcy nodded.  "I'll think about it."

"Alright, good," Bucky nodded.  "Now, dollbaby, can you drive at all?"

"Yeah, I can drive," Darcy turned to take a look at him, and his face looked very drawn and pale.  "What's the matter?"

"Taxes the old noggin, this switching around," Bucky said softly.  "S'easier to be just---James, and not the Soldier and not what I can hardly even remember yet."

"I'm sorry," Darcy put her hands on either side of his bearded face.  "You should be whatever makes you feel comfortable."

"Nah, I'm gonna be what you need me to be.  For forever," Bucky promised.  "But my head hurts now, and I need to sleep a little.  If you could get us to the next safe house, well then, I owe you one, sugar."

Once Darcy finally understood what had happened to her, she didn't seem to want to rest until she'd come to a decision.  She could feel herself getting healthier every day, and although she wasn't sporting a baby bump, she knew that she'd been grabbing for Bucky's greens off of his plate whenever they stopped at a diner because her body knew it needed it.

She'd been using Bucky's laptop to email Dr. Rivera too, asking her all kinds of questions now that she knew.

James knew that she'd started a pros and cons list too, about a mile long at this point.

"When do you think we'll have Hydra all destroyed and stuff?" Darcy wondered one day while they were doing a set of laundry in the middle of the night.  She had a king sized bag of chocolate licorice and was tugging strands of it between her teeth to viciously rip off.

"Let me check my crystal ball," James smirked at her.  "Hmm...nope.  Not destroyed yet."

"No, seriously, how long until we're done?" Darcy wondered, looking at the napkin she scribbled things on.

"Darcy, I can do this on my own, you know," James gave her a small smile.

"You're gonna get this licorice shoved up your nose, is what you're gonna get," Darcy wrinkled her nose at him.  "You're stuck with me now, dude.  And I know, I know that makes your plans with Steve---"

"I don't have plans with Steve," James reminded her calmly.

"Yeah but, I mean, you guys were like," Darcy shrugged and looked off at the tumbling dryer, where her underwear tumbled with Bucky's undershirts.  "In love, and stuff.  And he still loves you, cause he just keeps chasing you."

"Maybe," James shrugged.  "I'm no good for him like this.  I can't be what he needs or wants."

"Well, I think that's for him to decide," Darcy pursed her lips.

' She is upset, soothe her!  Tell her she is the only one we want or need .'

"Darcy, the Soldier is SCREAMING at me right now," James sighed, looking up to the ceiling.  He pushed the cart that was full of their dark, dry wash towards the table she was sitting on and began throwing things up on it so that they could fold them.  "You should know that there used to be a time, when two boys from Brooklyn were together."

"I knew it," Darcy narrowed her eyes at him in comic shrewdness.  "Peggy Carter was a beard!"

"No, she wasn't," James laughed.  "Steve had fallen head over heels in love with her.  And he thought---he thought she'd be...open minded."

"Whaaaaat?" Darcy said softly, her voice scaling up into falsetto notes.

"Open minded," James shrugged.

"Explain and define open minded ," Darcy ordered, pulling another piece of licorice between her teeth.  "Explain and define in detail.  And use it in a sentence."

"Back in the day, now, I'm not entirely sure Steve is still like this, it's been a few years," James admitted, hints of Bucky coming through in his accent.  "Well, back in the day, we liked both."

"Both," Darcy repeated.  "So Great Great Aunt Dettler had a shot?"

"She didn't like Stevie," James shook his head.  "She had no shot."

"And Peggy didn't like you," Darcy concluded shrewdly.

"Not in that way," Bucky shrugged.

"So what would have happened there?" Darcy whispered. She made a little shocked gasp and pointed at James before hissing "SWINGERS!  And not the dancing variety!"

"We would have worked something out to make everyone happy," James assured her.  "Peggy wasn't exactly---exclusive to Steve either. They loved each other, to be sure, but they weren't married and you took what comfort you could get."

"SHOCKING BEHAVIOR!" Darcy pretended to faint into the pile of socks and sweatpants.

"You're a menace," James accused as he moved his sweat pant pile away from her.

"So, what you're saying is, that when we're done destroying Hydra, we're going to go back to Stupid Steve."

"Boy, this is gonna be a hard sell," James rolled his eyes.

"I'm not gonna fall in love with him," Darcy said stubbornly, crossing her arms under her chest with a playful glare in his direction.  "You can't make me do this weird 40's polyamorous thing.  I mean, honestly, the Baby Boomers seemed so normal and destructive, who would have known that ten short years before they were cranking out kids, their predecessors were all free love and taking comfort where they could get it."

"The short of it is, that unless you can figure out a way of getting the Winter Soldier his own body, then you're stuck with me.  Because he's never gonna leave you," James shrugged.  "And whatever might happen YEARS from now with Steve."

"I love my cuddly-murder-snuggle-buddy," Darcy smiled sweetly.

"Son of a bitch," James sighed before he felt his control slipping too fast.  The Soldier reached for her and held her close and tight, reverently murmuring against the top of her head,  "My sweet Pet."

Chapter Text

Chapter Nine: Goals

"I want to keep it," Darcy announced randomly in the car as James made lazy circles around the perimeter of Calgary, never straying too far from Dr. Rivera, just in case Darcy made up her mind.

"Okay," James nodded, pulling off the road immediately to get to the highway.  "Good."

"Good, that's it?" Darcy looked at him curiously.  "You don't want to hear my reasons why?"

"You've been reciting your pro and con list to me for days," James reminded her.

"Right, but I flushed it down the toilet this morning and realized that what bigger fuck you could there be to Hydra than having the baby they put in me," Darcy's eyes gleamed with mischief and revenge, "And raise it up to be even more righteous than Captain America?  They want a new generation of super soldiers? Well they're gonna get one and it's going to kick Hydra's balls in."

"Good," James shrugged.  He smiled at her and pulled up his arm so she could scoot underneath it.  "Darcy, I'm never gonna question your reason, you should know that.  A third of my mind is in complete love with you, you took a murderous son of a bitch and made him love you."

"Yeah?  What about the other two thirds?" Darcy questioned.

"The other two thirds is smart enough not to tell a dame he loves her without kissing her proper first," James arched an eyebrow.

"Well I love all three of you, I don't care about being smart," Darcy said primly.  "Now give me my Soldier so he can ravish me."

"No," James sniffed.

'I will find a way to separate us and kill you.'

"RUDE," Darcy gasped out.

"How do you feel about going to Europe?" James kissed the top of her head.

"To destroy Hydra once and for all?" Darcy clapped her hands in gleeful anticipation.

"Among other things," James nodded.  "See, a lady once told me she wanted to travel.  And it's a lot easier to travel without a little baby squalling and demanding to be fed. So I think we have a few months to sightsee."

"That's a great, and amazing idea," Darcy kissed his cheek tenderly.  "Thank you."

"Anything for you."

Doctor Jane Foster wasn’t that easy to track down.  Aside from her guest lecturing schedule, her research locations and schedule were kept more secret than most matters of national security.  Her security detail consisted of Sif and the ten women that Sif had chosen and trained to defend Jane.

But Thor was now in house at the upstate New York Avenger’s Facility, and Natasha didn’t think any less of Jane for wanting to spend time with him.  Their time together had been very brief in the last few years.  The strain was starting to show on the relationship, though no one quite wanted to admit it.

Natasha walked into Jane’s lab space cautiously, as Tony would always tell presumably tall tales about the dangers ever present in Jane’s lab.  Natasha knew not to put stock into everything Tony said, but she wasn’t about to take risks when the chances were high that she could be transported to a different galaxy.  The entire space was a mess, to be honest, and at first, Natasha didn’t even realize that Jane was there.

A moving pile of paperwork in the corner caught Natasha’s attention and she went to the back right corner of the lab, and sure enough, the pile of paper was on top of the desk, and in between the paper and the granite was one sleeping astrophysicist.

“Doctor Foster?” Natasha reached out a hand and gently pushed on a thin shoulder.  “Doctor Foster?”

“NO SIF, NO I DON’T WANT TO RUN DRILLS!” Jane shouted as she sat straight up, causing a lot of papers to float up and drift down into even more chaos.

“So much for having a paperless environment,” Natasha smirked at her.  

“What do you want?” Jane looked at the superspy suspiciously.  “If Sif sent you, I’m not doing drills.  I don’t care if it’ll help me not be kidnapped.  What good is a super hero boyfriend if you can’t get rescued from kidnappers every once in awhile?”

“You’ve never actually been kidnapped,” Natasha reminded her.

“Nope,” Jane smiled.

“So the drills must be working,” Natasha concluded.

“You are forbidden from speaking with Sif,” Jane warned, her eyes narrowing up at the Black Widow.  “Ugh, are you here to take Thor away again?  Because honestly, I had eight hours with him before you had him flying up to Canada.”

“I’m not here for Thor,” Natasha assured her.  “Clint is taking him to an all you can eat Chinese buffet.”

“Oh, awesome,” Jane nodded, pulling out her phone and texting rapidly.  “I’ve been craving sugar donuts.”

Natasha waited patiently for the texting to come to an end, but then Jane got distracted with a piece of paper that had landed in front of her and she dug a pencil from under the pile and began scribbling.  Natasha cleared her throat three times before she realized that Jane wasn’t about to pay attention to her any time soon, so she put her hand on the paper right next to Jane’s scribbling pencil and smiled at the Nobel nominee when she glared up at her.

“I’m here to ask you about Darcy Lewis,” Natasha said with the same calm, cool determination that she would use in the interrogation of a person immune to torture.  

“Don’t want to talk about Darcy Lewis,” Jane scoffed, pushing Natasha’s hand off of her paper, confident in the fact that she was safe to do so as only the beloved of the future King of the freaking Universe could be.  

“Have you been in contact with Darcy in the past two years?” Natasha’s voice was soft, concerned, really.  

Because Jane was shaken.  It was subtle and it was covered with annoyance and vitriol, but it was there.  Natasha could tell from the pursing of Jane’s mouth, the way her gaze drifted to the left, the slight drop in her shoulders, that there was hurt there.  

So Natasha went with it.

“Darcy quit her unpaid position as your intern less than a month after the London incident in 2013, is that right?” Natasha was purposefully airy and unconcerned.  

“Yes,” Jane said tightly, writing around Natasha’s hand on the paper.  

“And you never heard from her again?” Natasha nodded.  “After over two years of working with you?  Two thwarted alien invasions.  Travelling half the globe, really.”

“What is your POINT?” Jane snapped.  

“Seems off,” Natasha gently smiled.

“Yeah, it does seem off,” Jane grumbled, rising from her seat and stomping towards a machine set up in the middle of the floor.

Natasha looked to the nearest surveillance camera and arched an eyebrow, a code shared with Friday which would cut the power to Jane’s lab so no wayward portals could be created.  She then walked towards Jane who was digging through a toolbox as she muttered under her breath.

“Sorry?” Natasha blinked with faux innocence.  “I didn’t catch that.”

“FUCK OFF SPY CHICK,” Jane snapped.  She swallowed when Natasha arched a brow of warning and Jane had the good grace to shrug and say with some measure of authenticity, “I”m sorry.  I didn’t mean that, but talking about Darcy---it just annoys me.”

“Because you ended on bad terms?” Natasha prompted.

“No, I mean, I don’t think so,” Jane sighed.  “I didn’t think it was, but I’m not always---observant.”

“Really?” Natasha asked dryly as she surveyed something furry moving out of a beaker.  

“Darcy was like a miracle worker, I know that I teased her about not getting what I do, but, she was good at what she did do,” Jane admitted.  “And whatever she’s doing in her new life, I’m sure she’s great at too, but she left me.  She quit, right when things were starting to look up.  Didn’t even train her replacement. Or the ten other replacements after that.”

“She hasn’t contacted you at all?” Natasha prodded.

“Erik tried calling her a few months after she quit, right about the time that your former employer went bonkers and tried to kidnap him,” Jane admitted.  “SHIELD said they moved her into a new life, an alias or whatever.”

“They what?” Nataska demanded all pretense of gently interrogating Jane promptly thrown out the window.  

“You know, SHIELD did it’s mojo and now Darcy is happy doing something she’s qualified for or whatever, living a good, non alien invasion kind of life,” Jane looked down at the wrench in her hands and sighed.  “Erik got a voicemail from her a few weeks after SHIELD fell, telling him she was safe and happy and she loved him but she just wanted to be left alone.  I mean, she changed her name, moved away, cut everyone out of her life just to get away from me.  I know that I’m not good at the friend stuff, I don’t tell people they matter enough, I get that.  But---I would have tried harder.”

Natasha nodded and gave Jane a small, thankful smile.  

“I’ll be in touch, Doctor Foster.”

"So what exactly are we looking for at all of these little dens of disgusting and inept evil?"

The Soldier looked up from his work of clearing out ammunitions from the weapons storage of the Hydra facility.  This one was a little bigger than the shack they had first invaded.  His Pet had proven to be invaluable in their invasion of it.  Ten men seemed easy enough for him to dispatch with, in a melee at least.  It was more difficult when the targets were spread out and enacting specific security patterns to maintain their stronghold.  

Darcy had used the electric baton mercilessly as well as the two-inch small blade of his that appeared to be her favorite.  She would provide the shock or sting and he would swoop in for the kill.  

All in all, if Hydra had figured out how well they worked together, they might not have pursued Project Ostera so relentlessly.  

Now, the little mother to Hydra's shattered hopes and dreams was sitting on top of a tabletop, his laptop in front of her as she typed rapidly.  His Pet was not only cunning in her kittenish violence, she had proven to be better than him at electronic violence.  They'd hit two other bases on their way southeast through Canada, and Darcy had not only pulled every piece of information from their servers, she'd destroyed the evidence better than he had ever managed.  

She stopped typing and wrinkled her nose, her hand going to her stomach and she sighed, "Hungry."

The soldier stopped loading up on bullets and cash to go to a holster he used to keep his favorite knife in.  Now, in its place was a protein bar.  One day James had come back with one of each kind from a convenience store and told her to pick her favorite.  Nineteen of them had been disgusting, even to his tortured palette.  Darcy had deemed a non-offensive dark chocolate covered cookie bar to be acceptable, and James approved of the content of them, and now always kept one on his person.

Building a supersoldier from scratch was not the easiest of things to do, it appeared.  Aside from her daily 'vitamin' made by Doctor Carla Rivera, Darcy now required higher amounts of calories than her already serum enhanced metabolism would normally require.  The Soldier had been delighted to take her to diners along the way, ordering her all kinds of extra add ons and he had taken extra pleasure in actually hand feeding her french fries from his own plate on more than one occasion.  

It had been nearly three weeks since Darcy found out about the baby, it was officially too late to end it, and the passing of that milestone had brought something new and fierce out in all three aspects of James' personality.  He watched Darcy's every move, counted her every breath, and constantly tried to anticipate her every need.  Even the Soldier had decided he would not ravish her until she asked for it, and she hadn't.  To Darcy's credit, she'd only requested being cuddled at night while she slept, and James’ unwarranted concern had been overridden by the other two battling for space in his brain.  

He couldn't remember having slept so well before.  Having Darcy in his arms at night felt like the most correct thing he'd ever felt before.

And then a tickling would emerge in the back of his overcrowded brain, from Bucky's side, of course.  It was a feeling that there was just one thing missing.  Something that used to be small but was now very large.  James would sweep a left hand down Darcy's back and realize that it wouldn't be so cool to the touch if there was a solid warmth there.  If there was someone there at Darcy's other side, then she'd be protected from all angles.

That's how Bucky, his voice faint in the Soldier’s head but clearly wanting and all too persuasive,  tried to subtly sell the Soldier on where Steve would fit in eventually.

The Soldier replied by mostly swearing in Russian.

"I mean, we know you're not the father, Maury style," Darcy interrupted James' thoughts.  "But honestly, what does that matter?  Cause you, my cuddly-murder-snuggle-buddy, said you would never ever leave me, so you know---"

She waved her hands around as a way to end her thoughts before going back to typing very quickly.  The Soldier smiled at her and opened the protein bar, putting it against her mouth so she might take a bite.  

"I will claim your bastard as mine, Pet," the Soldier said softly, his mouth twitching into a very quick upturned quirk when she looked up at him immediately, her eyes so big and blue and hopeful.  "No matter who they chose to help you create it, it can be mine."

"Okay," Darcy said after swallowing a bite of her snack.  A soft, shy smile bloomed on her face and she very quickly pushed the laptop to the side and popped up so she was kneeling, her lips immediately pressing against his with more firmness than finesse.  It was over in a heartbeat and she sat back down with her cheeks pink and her eyes unfocused.  

The Soldier simply stood there, blinking very slowly as he stared down at her.  He could still feel the pressure from that pillowy bottom lip against his mouth, the almost sticky texture of the peppermint flavored lip balm she slicked on her lips every half hour.  His right hand itched and even one of the servos in his left forearm began turning needlessly.  

She went back to her work, and he quickly did the same, emptying the cash flow and picking up passports and the materials he would need for fake id's.  He grabbed one of the bombs that Darcy enjoyed so much and didn't need to ask her to follow him as he walked out of the room heading towards the entrance.  

Steve no longer chased the explosions.  The new faction of SHIELD was tasked with cleaning up after James and Darcy were through with each Hydra facility.  It was a mostly thankless task, because they very rarely left anything behind of any value.  He placed the bomb down strategically and gestured for Darcy to set it, giving her whatever tiny fractions of joy he could.

The ride to the next motel would take them right along the border of Canada and the United States, and it was a longer one.  Neither of them said anything and Darcy was asleep for most of the travel.  He carried her into the motel, much like he had the first night after rescuing her, placing her in the bed to sleep while he made them passports and id's.  

She woke up before dawn, and didn't say anything, just sat up in the bed and held her arms up and out to him.  The Soldier stood by the end of the bed and stared down at her, uncertainty showing on his face.

"I have stains on my hands that won't ever wash off," his voice was a low, rough thing, barely above the volume of a whisper.

"So do painters," Darcy reasoned.  "You just have different mediums.  And no offense, but I don't have any need for Da Vinci right now, only you can give me what I need."

When he didn't move, she stood up on the bed and walked to him, her hand going out to caress his temple.  He leaned into the touch.  No one had ever touched the Soldier with gentleness or reverence before.  He didn't remember much, but he remembered that.  Then again, Darcy was the first person to do a lot of things for the Soldier.  She was the first one to look to him for care and not violence.  She was the first one to give him that beautiful, soft and shy smile that never failed to make a pit of warmth appear in his stomach unbidden.  

"No one else could make me feel the way you make me feel," Darcy promised him, the words velvet against his skin, healing something that was broken up inside of him.  "Like I'm safe and cared for, and important.  And---and loved."

The Soldier put both hands on her waist and hauled her to him, pressing his mouth against her lips as she had done the evening before.  His press quickly moved from a firm touch to an open mouthed kiss, hungry and searching and lacking a certain finesse that only made it that much better.  His tongue swiped across the seam of her lips and he felt something turnover pleasantly in the pit of his stomach when she let him in, moaning at the first languid stroke of his tongue against hers.

His hands drifted from her hips to her backside and he lifted, making a low sound of appreciation when her legs wrapped around his waist.  He walked two blind, but sure steps to the side of the bed and brought her down to lay her on her back, quickly following down and supporting his weight above her with his left arm.  His lips never completely disconnected from hers during the slight change in location.  He continued to kiss her with nearly brutal focus, one moment biting her bottom lip, and another sucking on her tongue until she reached for his hair and pulled.

Her hips came up and off the bed, his hands still on her ass, and he met the twisting of her hips with a snap of his own hips against her body.  She cried out at that, right into his open mouth and he seemed to greedily stifle it before his mouth moved off of her lips, allowing her to take in harsh, panting breaths as he placed open mouth kisses on her jaw and down her neck.  

"Good God, that's---uh---good," Darcy panted, feeling like her brain was dribbling out of her skull and onto the quilt James always placed on the motel bed tops.  Another thrust of his hips had her eyes rolling into the back of her head and she drug her hands out of his hair to start yanking at the uniform he still wore, hands ineffectively pulling at straps to get it off of him as quickly as humanly possible.

"Pet, I promised myself I would not have you until you were plump again," the Soldier murmured against her collarbone before his tongue licked along it slowly.  

"You're lucky I used to be so, so proud of my body," Darcy giggled.  "A girl might get offended."

"You are the most beautiful creature I have ever looked upon, in seventy years of living," the Soldier promised.  His mouth had moved and he nosed under the loose t-shirt she wore to swipe a line down her cleavage with his tongue.  "But I will have you when you are delightfully plump again."

"Soldier, you can have me forever," Darcy winked at him, so blatant in her corny obnoxious silliness that the Soldier's resultant smile at her lasted longer than five whole seconds.

But then two pairs of serum enhanced ears, one slightly less enhanced than the other, heard a noise outside.  One they were both familiar with, although one slightly more familiar with it than the other.  It was the safety of a gun being clicked off.  The Soldier froze on top of Darcy before moving very quickly.  He reached for the kevlar he had peeled off of her earlier and draped it over her before placing a very gentle, very besotted kiss on the tip of her nose.

"Wait, Pet."

Darcy nodded in spite of herself and the the man who had been licking into her mouth and squeezing her ass seconds ago disappeared right in front of her eyes, the door to their room was silently shut and the Soldier was gone, leaving Darcy completely alone.  She lay there silent, holding the kevlar against her, before her mind started to catch up and she realized if someone out there was after them , then they'd have to get the heck out of Dodge as soon as the Soldier was done dispatching with them.  

She nearly jumped out of bed then, grabbing for items and shoving them in their bags.  Every time they left a motel room, they made sure that it was very nearly untouched by the time they left.  James used to do it alone, but Darcy had just started to do some of the things that James used to do, wiping down for fingerprints while he pulled hairs of hers off of pillowcases.  

She did her best with the chore alone, ignoring the sounds of multiple punches as the Soldier ended whoever dared to try and get them.  The bags were packed and everything wiped and she was just looking over the bathroom for any evidence of their stay, finding none, knowing that James would have likely just brought her into the room and watched her sleep.  She walked back into the room and froze as someone at the door held a gun up at her.

"He took a whore," the man dressed in head to toe black body armor grinned.  He shook his head in amusement and then his eyes narrowed.  "You."

"Me," Darcy said back hoarsely, her eyes flicking briefly to the bag that lay on the floor midway point between her and the door.  

"You're the little astrophysicist's girl," the man shrewdly guessed.

"Nope," Darcy narrowed her eyes at the man, trying to place him.  He had to be Hydra, the body armor was similar to what Darcy had already seen too much of at the facilities she and the Soldier had dismantled.  “Haven’t been for a very long time, now.”

"I saw a video of you getting knocked up," the man leered.  

"Shut up," Darcy swallowed as the sounds of more fighting outside filtered to her ears.  She didn't doubt that the Soldier could handle whatever was thrown at him, but if Hydra brought a battalion, it might take a little while.  She just had to take care of this one guy, and the Soldier would handle the rest.

"You were an uptight bitch in London, I wanted to waste you then," he shook his head.  "If Sitwell would have let me.  But then I would have missed the show."

Darcy's eyes narrowed at him as recognition sparked in her brain.  She remembered him, arriving after everything had happened in London, a part of a SHIELD strike team.  He'd been given the envious task of watching Darcy and Ian while Jane answered questions with Thor.  

He'd asked Ian if he could borrow the bimbo.

"Rollins," Darcy nodded.  "Where's your life partner, Rumlow?  I thought you guys were like Bert and Ernie, you know, totally married husbands who lick each other's assholes but pretend they like boobs and pussy."

"Filthy mouth on you," Rollins sneered.  He looked her up and down, focusing on her stomach which wasn't showing any signs of pregnancy yet.  "Mother of the year candidate, I'm sure."

Darcy froze for a second, not really knowing what to say to the deranged Hydra muscle in front of her.  She had no doubt that the Soldier would end him, but if he was wearing some kind of communications unit, that meant others within Hydra could hear.

For the first time, she felt a fierce, protective surge go through her body for the small thing that she’d been forced to have a hand in creating.  There was no way she was going to let Hydra lay a finger on the baby.  So she lied.

Chapter Text

Chapter Ten: Ruined

"It didn't take," Darcy lied easily.  "The Hydra abomination was terminated, dude.  Sorry.  I know you and Rumlow were looking forward to finally starting a family in the closet you crammed yourselves into.  You know, if you just admitted to who you were deep down, the caveman aggression might ease up?"

"Fuck you, bitch," Rollins grumbled, taking a step forward.  

Darcy's feet were braver than every other part of her, because at the moment they refused to take a step away from him even though her brain was screaming at her to run.  She borrowed one of the Soldier's expressions, staring at him with her mouth in a set line, her eyes nearly half lidded in her disinterest at the current predicament.

"Shame you got rid of the kid," Rollins nodded.  "The stuff they shoved up in your worthless cunt was priceless, really.  But I'm sure we can wipe the Asset into compliance and get you knocked up again in no time. Since all you're good for is spreading those fat legs of yours."

"He will never hurt me," Darcy said confidently.

"I thought they showed you the machine," Rollins laughed, he pointed his finger to his temple and shook his head with a grin on his face.  "He doesn't get a choice.  His brain gets fried, and then we give him a to do list consisting of YOU.  So instead of getting a turkey baster full of vintage jizz fucked into you till your drugged ass comes in front of everyone, this time, you'll get a real man.  Well, as much as a neutered murder puppy can be a real man."

"He will never hurt me," Darcy repeated, no less confident than before, completely ignoring the lurch in her stomach at the crass words being thrown at her.  She hadn’t remembered much about the last procedure.  It had been the one thing that hadn’t hurt, but now she realized that the evil bastards had made a disgusting spectacle out of it.

"He won't have to hurt you," Rollins laughed.  "I'll do it for him."

Darcy had to send out one small thanks to the serum running through her veins at the moment, because her reaction time was absolutely amazing as she jumped forward, going to her knees as Rollins made a grab for her.  She slammed her fist into the left side of his stomach, hoping that it hit something important as she scrambled to get to her bag and her baton.  

Even one of the Soldier's many, many guns would have been preferable at this point.  

She got her hand on the handle of her bag when she felt something hard hit her in the back of her head, and her entire field of vision went white.  She felt a vague pain at the back of skull, as if her hair were about to be ripped out as she was literally picked up by her braid, a meaty, unforgiving hand gripping it tight and hoisting her off the ground so that her toes scrabbled for purchase on the scratchy carpeting.  The spots in her vision cleared enough to see that she was now facing a very red faced, angry Rollins and he opened his mouth to spit more uncouth vitriol at her.

She swung the backpack right into his jaw with all her strength.  And the thing about the serum, she was rapidly discovering, wasn't that it made her as strong as Captain America, or as good at fighting as the Black Widow, or as beautifully deadly accurate as her Soldier...

It did make her strong enough to knock a steroid addled Strike team member off of his balance, causing him to drop her.  She immediately dug into the bag and pulled whatever she could out.  Rollins recovered quickly though and he yanked her up off the ground again and threw her on the bed, knocking her head against the bedside table so hard that Darcy wanted to simultaneously pass out and throw up at the same time.

"Your precious Soldier is out there getting reprogrammed as we speak," Rollins sneered down at her as she wavered on the bed, off balance and completely dazed.  "Before he wrecks that sweet little pussy of yours, let's have a go, yeah?"

"He will never hurt me," Darcy reiterated, her words sluggish as she reached for the phone on the bedside table.  She didn't know if she wanted to get the authorities on the line or if she wanted to use it to bash Rollins' skull into bits, but she didn't get a chance to do either, because Rollins reached for her arm and twisted her wrist at an unnatural angle, getting her to cry out in pain.  

He slammed the phone down on the receiver before launching himself at her, forcing her to lay on her back on the bed.  His hands went for her pants immediately, an absolutely disgusting gleam in his eyes: excited and anticipatory.  He looked at raping her like a kid looked at getting a new toy at a store.  Darcy refused to cry out again or whimper, but her eyes filled with angry tears.

"You're gonna love it I---"

His eyes widened in shock at the two inch blade stuck right in his throat.  His hands went for it and he feebly fought with Darcy's hand, trying to get her to release the grip of the knife.  In the process, it moved around in his flesh and ripped and broke free, a cartoonish amount of blood spilling out.

It took less than fifteen seconds after the small knife came out for Rollins’ skin to start to go ashen as he coughed and choked and spluttered, the blood flicking against Darcy's skin like stinging, hot rain.  He collapsed completely on top of her in a dead weight, and she didn't even dare open her mouth to scream out, afraid that the blood would get past her lips.  

She didn't know how long she lay underneath him, trapped by the seemingly unmovable weight of his body and what had just happened.  She understood now, she knew why the Soldier never let her take the kill shot, why he only let her play at revenge before doing the hard things that she was clearly not entirely capable of.

She was covered in blood, it was all over her.  She wanted a bath.  She wanted to sit with her back to the Soldier's chest while he poured warm, soap scented water over her gently.  She vaguely heard the roaring sound of a man's guttural shout, pained and angry.  She recognized it as Russian and then the heavy weight on top of her was gone, a loud crash rattling the entire room as the Soldier picked Rollins up and off of her, with one left hand, tossing him against the opposite wall.

Darcy felt that she was no longer laying on the bed, she was cradled in a pair of strong arms before she recognized the smell of their car, a combination of mentholated smoke that James sometimes smelled like after getting back in the car, along with an unholy amalgamation of all the road food they'd ingested over the last month.

The Soldier left her in the seat and she looked out through the front window, past Hannah Hula, who was rocking gently to and fro.  She saw a sea of bodies in the lot, ten---fifteen, she couldn't count how many.  Electric batons littered the ground, a rifle's barrel was bent upwards.

She threw up all over herself, combining with the caked on blood from Rollins.  The tears started to follow and she tried to focus on Hannah Hula and not the sea of dead bodies, and certainly not the Soldier tossing the lifeless body SHE had created onto a pile and then positioning one of the bombs Darcy had been so fond of and giving himself three minutes.

When he got back into the car, he swore in Russian at the sight of her.

"The rest of the people," she whispered.

"Empty," the Soldier advised her.  "There could be no witnesses of them bringing us back in, so they emptied the motel."

"Smart," Darcy nodded.  

"Pet, are you alright?" the Soldier asked in concern.  "Did he hurt you?"

Darcy shrugged, not really knowing how to answer that.  She'd killed someone.  What did it matter if he snapped her wrist and gave her a concussion or three?  She'd taken his life, so it was pretty clear that she won out in the pain inflicted column.  She pulled her legs up to her chest before falling over on her side, a small Darcy ball on the bench seat and she continued to cry.

She felt a flesh hand at her temple and she turned her face, pressing her lips into his palm.

"Don't worry, Pet. I'm going to make this right."

"That's a lot of bodies, Cap."

Sam sighed preemptively as Steve looked over the report from the border.  Eighteen bodies, to be exact, were found in the parking lot of a deserted motel, burnt to a crisp thanks to a small explosion.  The ones that were put together enough to identify were all former SHIELD, turned Hydra.  Steve was nodding as he turned the page.  

"It is," Steve nodded.  "They must have been pretty desperate to either stop him from what he was doing, or get back what he's taken."

"Maybe we should work with some of the Alphabet agencies on this one, throw it worldwide, see if we can bring them in sooner," Sam suggested.  "Just to bring the body count down a little, maybe."

"Sam do you know what Hydra's body count is?" Steve wondered with that put upon innocent look in his eyes that was just a precursor to him getting his way and Sam conceding that Steve was ultimately right.

"High," Sam nodded.

"I hate Hydra with everything in me," Steve said bluntly.  "And if it were up to me, I'd go after every single one of them and not a lot of them would make it to prison."

Sam nodded and rolled his eyes only a little as he pulled the report that Steve was clearly finished with back so that he could make sure Maria Hill and company dealt with the cover up appropriately.  He pulled on one of the folders that always seemed to be on Steve's desk and opened it up, the file picture of Retta Archie staring back at him.  

"She looks like she don't have time for anyone's shit," Sam chuckled.

"That's Retta," Steve smiled.  

"Your secretary?" Sam nodded.  "The one we were looking for right after everything went to shit?"

"Yeah," Steve sniffed.  "Hydra took her."

"Uh---she's like---ninety something?"

"Spring chicken at eighty-seven," Steve smiled.  "Took her and tried to torture details about me out of her."  

Sam was about to open his mouth to swear and Steve shook his head quickly and explained, "She's fine, she's good.  I had a highly covert video call with her a few days ago.  She's part of the underground group of ninety-year olds taking the old cash cows of Hydra down one at a time."

"Amazing," Sam huffed out a sigh.  

"Her one request of me, was to burn them to the ground," Steve nodded in agreement with her words.  "And look---what would you do, if you had just finished a mission, went back to the hotel with your girl, and wanted to just---sleep?  And they came after you.  And your girl."

"So you're cool with Bucky Barnes having a girl?" Sam asked in disbelief.

"She must be something pretty special for her to still be stuck with him," Steve shrugged.  His smirk was slow and downright devilish.  "Bucky always had the best choices in ladies who---were open minded."

"Define open---no, nevermind," Sam laughed just a little bit, clearly not wanting to know, but getting a clear picture anyway..  

"If the girl is important to Bucky, then she's important to me," Steve shrugged.  "And if they tried to hurt her, or take her back, then I think Bucky was justified for what he did here."

"Alright, but please promise me, that someday, you're going to hit a point where you don't just write off everything Barnes does," Sam said seriously.  "He can get away with murder, sure, but he can't get away with murder ."

"When Hydra isn't involved, I see a little more clearly," Steve promised.  "Speaking of, if he's working hard on his end to finish them, I think we need to do the same."

Steve pulled the folder back out of Sam's hands and pointed to one of the names.  "Jack Rollins was identified.  The coroner says he was stabbed in the throat."

"Jesus, your boyfriend is a terrifying son of a bitch," Sam blew out a long steady breath.  

"Let's start to look for Rumlow again."

"Cap, last time we looked for Rumlow we all almost---"

"Sam, we're Avengers, it doesn't matter what almost happened.  We go and find the bad guys and we get it done," Steve said resolutely.  "Let's go find Rumlow and finish it."

The Soldier was tired.  He hadn't been in control for this long a period of time in a very long time.  Even then, when he was Hydra's tool for death and destruction, he was never out in the open for as long as he had been for the last few days.  Not without a wipe in between.  He looked down at Darcy, who was clean now, the blood and sick having been washed off slowly and painstakingly in a roadside rest stop.  

He'd found that her wrist was broken when he was undressing her, and she barely made a sound as he set it and found something to make a splint with.  It was nearly healed already, the serum accelerating her healing nicely.  If only it could help with the catatonia she was stuck in.  Killing the Hydra scum who had tried to hurt her had been something that he had been trying to shield her from.  But it had happened in the worst possible way, and he felt sick from the guilt of it.  

He refused to give up control now.  His other counterparts wouldn't know how to help her. He was the only one capable of doing what needed to be done.  He had hand fed her the last twenty-four hours, holding her against him as she slept, soothing her when she woke up with a scream on her lips.  He would be willing to do anything to make it right for her.

She was curled up with her head in his lap, feigning sleep that wouldn't come.  They'd made it across the border and he had driven as far as he could without stopping.  The small bit of wilderness in upstate New York looked ideal, it looked beautiful and perfect, actually.  Bucky remembered dreaming about living in such a place, a short train ride away from the city.  The best of both worlds, with green and concrete every other day if they so choose.  

The Soldier blinked, wondering how such thoughts had wandered into his mind and he put the car in park, his right hand gently stroking through Darcy's hair.

"Pet," he whispered.

"Sleeping," Darcy promised.  "Don't have to pee yet."

"Pet, up," he said gruffly, pulling her gently up to sit.  They exited the car and walked a few steps away, his posture stiff and unyielding as Darcy followed him dutifully, her hand resting on the small of his back.

She looked around in confusion, but then saw the ostentatious 'A' cut into the shrubbery in the distance.

"NO."

"Pet---"

"NO!" she screamed, more life in her than before.  "I won't, you can't make me.  I'm not going back to them yet.  We’re not finished yet.  You said I didn't have to go back for MONTHS.  NO!"

“I can finish the work alone, I will leave for Europe and you will---”

The Soldier paused then for a moment and Darcy took it as an opening to counter argue.  She couldn’t help herself and pushed against him with both hands, hiding the wince from the pain in her broken left wrist.  The Soldier immediately put his arms around her biceps, his touch gentle but enough to hold her in place.  

“That’s not part of the deal!  You said when we were done we’d come back here together!” she shouted, the tears not falling gently, but rather falling almost explosively out of her eyes and hitting the ground between them.  “You promised, give me Bucky, give me Bucky now!  He promised!”

“Pet, no,” the Soldier’s voice was as soft as Darcy’s was loud.  “Go to the Captain, he will care for you until I can come back to you.”

“Fuck you!” she spat out.  “That’s not how this is going to work, you can’t just give me to your boyfriend and have me treat him like he’s you.  I don’t know him and you’re not interchangeable super soldiers.  And---and I love you.”

“He will love you as well, and he is the only one I can trust to protect you,” the Soldier admitted, pained, his chest rising and falling more rapidly.  His resolve was crumbling though.  He was loathe to part from his Pet.  Her admission of love for him, although it was a screaming and angry thing, affected him more than he wanted.  

He was a weapon.  A Machine.  An Asset.  

For nearly seventy years he had been starved of anything that wasn’t full of pain and blood and violence.  And at that moment, his Pet, a young, beautiful woman who couldn’t be broken by the things he had faced, was standing in front of him and promising him an entire world that he didn’t deserve.

“They will attempt to bring us both back to them,” the Soldier said softly.

“Fuck those guys, really,” Darcy shook her head.  “Just--- fuck those guys.  If they keep coming, then we’ll just keep burning them down.”

“Pet, you are not made for that,” he shook his head sadly.  

“So you do the hard parts, this---Rollins was a one time thing, and yeah, I’m shaken by it,” Darcy acknowledged.  “I don’t want to ever have to do that again.”

“You won’t,” he promised, pulling on her arms so that she was flush against him, his eyes closing when she wrapped herself around him.  “I’m sorry, Pet, I should have guarded you better.”

“Don’t do that, no one is better at guarding me than you,” Darcy promised him.   “You can’t leave me, promise me you won’t leave me.  I can’t do this without you.”

“The Captain would treat you very well,” the Soldier promised.  He swallowed and his voice was just a little looser, “He won’t have any other choice but to love you.”

“Please?” she looked up at him hopefully, those big blue eyes soft and searching.  “Please don’t leave me here.  Let’s finish it together, okay?”

The Soldier looked into the distance and could just make out the barest edges of buildings of the Avengers Facility.  She would be safe there, he knew it.  And while she protested about the Captain, he knew that the old voice in his head, the one that snuck out at times and called his Pet the sweet, old fashioned names, was correct.  Eventually, they would fit together, like three puzzle pieces.

But there were things that still needed to be mended in his own mind.  Hydra still had ways, buried with past handlers, on how to make him compliant.  And although he knew that the baby Darcy carried was as good as his, he had to find out what sample was used to create the child.  Darcy feared it was a monster, and he wanted to put her mind at relative ease.  If any ease could be found in such a situation.

He didn’t want to give her up yet.  He couldn’t imagine it.  With Darcy, he could feel the three jagged pieces of his mind coming back together slowly.  She anchored each piece, a precious touchstone for the fragmented parts of him to return to.  

“I love you, Pet,” he whispered, still staring ahead.  “Darcy.  I do.”

She melted into him and a happy sound was muffled into his chest.

“You will listen to me, Pet,” the Soldier whispered.  “You will do as I say so that you can remain safe.”

“I will, I promise,” Darcy agreed.  “Just don’t leave me.”

“I won’t.”

“Hey.”

Natasha looked up from her work and gave Clint a nod as he walked into her quarters.  The room appeared spartan to the untrained eye, but Clint made out quite a few things that made the place home for the Red Room escapee.  There was the bed spread, plain gray, but Clint knew just by looking at it that it had been selected with extreme care by both Natasha and Sam Wilson (once Sam knew Tony was footing the bill, the importance of ultra-deluxe interior decorating sky rocketed).  

Clint knew that if he opened up the sleek and modern armoire, the doors would be covered in his daughter’s art, along with a poem or two penned by his son.  As a matter of fact there was a visible picture on the desk that Natasha was working at of her with all three of the Barton children cuddled around her.   Next to that was a framed postcard from New Brunswick, New Jersey, showcasing Camp Lehigh and undoubtedly given to her by Steve Rogers.

The little things were everywhere.  And it proved to Clint that Natasha, who he had brought in broken and tired, a nearly feral thing with no trust and no value put upon any other living soul,  had finally found a home.  

Which made the little rubber duckie sitting on her bedside table even more surprising.  It had a pair of red wings on its back and was dressed in a black tactical suit.  Clint stared at it for a full thirty seconds before looking back to the desk Natasha was working at, unsurprised when she was waiting for him to pay attention to her, a photo of a young woman up on her screen.

“Laura’s gonna be disappointed,” Clint gruffly acknowledged, nodding to the duck.  “She thought you and Banner were kind of a thing.”

“Did she?  Maybe she is a fan of distance in her relationships, but I find that not knowing the whereabouts of a romantic partner for nearly a year to be----annoying,” Natasha smirked.  

“But the other bird?  C’mon, people are gonna talk that you only went after him cause I don’t want to do a threesome with you and my wife,” Clint whined.  “And the only reason for that is I’m pretty sure my wife would leave me for you.”

“I am superior in all ways,” Natasha nodded.  She looked to the duck on the bedside table and shrugged nonchalantly.  “That’s nothing.  He won it in a crane game and I thought it was funny.”

“Uh huh,” Clint rolled his eyes.

“How about we talk about the real reason I called you in?” Natasha offered and gestured to the screen with a tilt of her head.

Clint squinted at the picture of the young woman, brunette, bespectacled, cute as a button, truth be told.  She seemed familiar, but he couldn’t quite place her.  Her appearance gave him a feeling of amusement as she stared into the SHIELD picture with clear annoyance and a definite mischievous gleam in her eye.

“She jammed microwavable popcorn bags into all the SHIELD vehicles in New Mexico after Thor left,” Clint clicked his fingers and pointed at the picture in remembrance  “And Carter told the story of the tainted diarrhea brownies at a SHIELD breakfast in London.”

“She’s been missing since before the fall of SHIELD,” Natasha revealed with a sigh.  “The last contact that I can make out was an ATM withdrawal near Puente Antiguo, June 22, 2014.”

“Shit,” Clint sighed, walking up to stand behind Natasha, looking over what she had compiled.  “Selvig says he heard from her in July 2014?”

“A voicemail,” Natasha explained.  “Telling him that she had been relocated by SHIELD, new name, new identity.”

“Uh, we don’t offer that service to just anybody,” Clint shook his head.  It had taken an act of God and Fury himself to get his wife and kids hidden as well as they had been.  “Did you check with Fury and Hill?”

“They have no idea where she is,” Natasha admitted.  “And yes, I already hacked their servers, they really have nothing on her after she resigned as Foster’s assistant.”

“Well----shit,” Clint sighed.

“There’s more,” Natasha clicked a button on her laptop and a new picture displayed.  This one of some burnt skin, and a crudely drawn ‘D’ carved into skin with a blade.  “Forensics found this on one of the Hydra bodies recovered in Echo Bay in Canada.”

“Double shit,” Clint breathed out.  “You think Barnes has her?”

“I’m not willing to say I know for certain,” Natasha said softly.  

“But what’s your gut say?” Clint asked knowingly, knowing that Natasha’s instincts were very rarely wrong.  

“I think that Darcy was taken right after the fall of SHIELD, I think that Hydra was monitoring her, thinking she could be used as leverage against Thor,” Natasha’s voice was a quiet thing, her words accurate and to the point.  She paused and took a very small breath before continuing, “I think that she was tortured and experimented on ever since then, in ways that no person should be able to come back from.  And I think---I think Barnes hit that Hydra facility and found her.”

“And he’s kept her since then, that’s not really his style,” Clint furrowed his brow.  “I mean, Bucky Barnes taking a dame and going around the world Bonnie and Clyde style, maybe , I mean, if he could have Steve at his side too.  I could see it happening.”

“Peggy’s been telling you stories,” Natasha’s mouth lifted up at the right corner for the briefest of moments.

“Ole Peg don’t gotta tell no stories, you can see what Barnes means to Steve,” Clint shook his head.  “But the Winter Soldier’s not exactly---people friendly.”

“No, he isn’t,” Natasha admitted, her own memories verifying it.  Even when he trained her for a brief period of time decades ago, the Winter Soldier, the Asset borrowed from Hydra, didn’t interact with anyone with a pulse for any longer than he needed to.  He certainly hadn’t been swayed by any of the feminine wiles on display at the compound.  She hit the arrow key and a video began playing of surveillance lifted from Stark Towers.  “She met Rogers once, a few months before she was taken.”

“Oh---oh, he seems smitten,” Clint smirked at the screen.  “That’s a sight to be seen.”

“He wanted her to be his assistant,” Natasha smiled.  “She refused.”

“Either way, Hydra would have gotten their hands on her,” Clint sighed, thinking of Retta with a fond smile.  

“She made an impact on him, he asked about her a little while ago,” Natasha revealed.  “It’s why I started to look for her, to set her up with Steve.  Nearly two years, and aside from Selvig, I’m the only one to think to look for her.”

“Poor kid,” Clint nodded.  “It was a screwed up couple of months after Hydra, Nat.  No one knew what end was up.  She fell through the cracks.”

“She was on SHIELD’s watch list, and Hydra erased her from it so they could torture her,” Natasha said bluntly.  “And no one thought to look for her except for a man still recovering from being held at a mental institution thanks to SHIELD.”

“Have you told Steve?” Clint asked.

“No, not until I know for sure,” Natasha admitted.  “Because if he knows it’s Darcy Lewis with Barnes, then---”

“We might just lose Captain America to a Bonnie and Clyde and Clyde road trip of burning Hydra down,” Clint finished easily.  He nodded and took a deep breath, “What do you need me to do?”

“Carter is with the CIA right now, I think that’s our best way to try and find Barnes still,” Natasha admitted.  “Barnes and...and Lewis have exhausted Canada of Hydra outposts, and he’s clearly not going to start in on the United States.”

“Hey, Romanoff! I told you that the last time you put the grounds down the garbage disposal, Tony lost his---oh, hey Barton,” Steve stopped in Natasha’s doorway, and smiled in welcome at Clint.  “You know, I think I’ve seen more of you in the last three months than I’ve seen of you since the Avengers have been founded.”

“Nathaniel is teething, I take my breaks when I can get them, Cap,” Clint smiled.  

“If Laura calls me, I’m not taking the blame this time,” Steve said with actual sternness.  “Your wife is---she’s---”

“Terrifying, I know.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Eleven: Relocation

"I didn't think this was how a lovely and exciting trip to Europe would be, honestly."

James sighed and gave Darcy an encouraging little smile, before pulling her to him closely.  It wasn't exactly first class, he knew that.  But it was the only way he knew how to travel that wouldn't expose either of them to ever present surveillance in even the smallest of airports.  They were stuck in an large, insulated crate, just big enough for them to sit as they flew for ten whole hours in the cargo hold of an express shipping plane.

The serum had blessed the both of them for their trip, really.  Because it was very cold.  Not quite as cold as cryofreeze, but definitely cold enough.  He'd made sure Darcy was dressed in layers and layers of warm wool and cotton.  He'd done the same and he'd managed to bring the quilt that they had been sleeping on top of for nearly two months.  

The unit they were in was Hydra tech, it adjusted for the very unpleasant air pressure of the cargo hold, but it didn't much care for other physical comforts or temperature control.  James had been sitting on the floor of the crate, holding Darcy in his lap as she wavered between sleeping and chattering.  He realized about an hour in that he didn't quite understand how he had thought he would have been able to make this journey alone.  Without her there to share the body heat with, without her sleepy smile and the way she just never ran out of things to talk about...he would have lost his mind.

"Just, even coach seats might have been more comfortable, maybe," Darcy sighed into his neck.  "OH!  Or maybe getting a small boat, just big enough for the two of us, like the little boat that Pacey and Joey sailed away on at the end of Season Three."

"Hmmm?" James furrowed his brow adorably, not understanding what she was referencing.

"I'll make sure we netflix it later, someday," Darcy promised.  

"I never liked boats," James admitted.

"No?" Darcy looked surprised at that.

"Ferries, boats, dinghies," James wrinkled his nose just the slightest bit to show his disgust at it.  "I used to get motion sick when I was younger---"

"Really?" Darcy's eyes widened.  "So how did that work with tiny Steve Rogers?"

"Well, you can't really say no to a fella like that," James reminisce, sounding more and more like Bucky with each syllable.  "And not for the reasons you think."

"I don't know, if he had that pouty mouth and those big baby blues when he was a little guy, I think it'd be hard to say to no to him," Darcy wagered.

"Oh, dollbaby, he didn't pull the puppy dog look when he was a little guy, that came later when we had to get extra rations and supplies from the girls back at headquarters," Bucky laughed.  Because he was Bucky in that moment, a fond smile on his face.  "When he was a little shit, he was just that, a little shit."

"I believe it," Darcy agreed confidently.  "From what I've seen of him so far, he's been a little shit."

"He kept a runnin' tally of all the times I got us into scrapes, now not the fightin' scrapes, cause that was his specialty," Bucky clarified, holding Darcy a little closer, his left hand going to her lower abdomen, fingertips seeking out the faint hint of a rapid heartbeat.  Bucky kissed her temple slow and sweet before pulling away and continuing his lazy recollections, "I used to try and get us into schemes.  To make money, to get an extra bit of something in a restaurant, to have a little extra fun.  And he'd bring up the list and show it to me every time he wanted to do something that I didn't want to."

"Did you really run him down a hill once in a barrel?" Darcy whispered.

"I didn't tell you that," Bucky squinted at her with playful suspicion.  

"You said I could read your notebooks," Darcy reminded him.

"Oh yeah, well---yeah, I did, but it was only ‘cause I wanted to win that bet with those country boys.  That kind of money would have kept us fed and fed well for the better part of a week," Bucky revealed.  "Here's what I never got about Stevie, the punk would jump head first into fights, getting his face smashed to pieces over a principle, but he had to be dragged in kicking and screaming into stunts that didn't require getting the snot beat out of him."

"I'm sure once he got all beefy, he fell in line with your daredevil schemes," Darcy smiled.

"He did, mostly, still hemmed and hawed about things when he had more than a second to think about it though," Bucky cuddled her closer.  "Oh, Dollbaby, he's gonna love you so much."

"Did you win?" Darcy wondered, changing the subject back.  Bucky made his appearances with her more often than he had at first, and he always, ALWAYS managed to sound like he was selling the concept of Steve to her, like the best used car salesman of all time.

' Take a look at this old time jalopy right here, now there's some dings and scuffs, but I promise you that once you get that motor runnin', he'll treat you real nice and lovin', you won't be able to stop taking him for a ride.  And look at that back end...could bounce a quarter off it and he'd enjoy it too. '

She didn’t mind, if anything she was flattered to have Bucky think she was good enough to be invited to the party.  And she knew that if she really didn’t want it to even be talked about, much less ‘sold’ to her, Bucky would happily comply.  She spent most of her worry on the idea that Steve wouldn’t be sold on her , and she’d somehow lose Bucky, James and the Soldier all at once.

"Course we didn't," Bucky laughed.  "But only ‘cause they cheated.  And Stevie found out about it and all of a sudden, it was like he was jumping with his face first right into their big farm boy fists."

"You guys needed a handler," Darcy sighed, melting a little into Bucky's one armed embrace, his left hand still pressed against her stomach.  

"Funny you should say that, Dollbaby," Bucky chuckled.  "We always used to talk about needing someone else, a girl, cause we both liked girls plenty, in addition to liking each other quite a bit too.  Needed someone a little level headed, but still willing to go in for a real good time every once in awhile."

Darcy didn't say anything, but she smiled softly, so Bucky counted that as progress, slow and steady.  Before the end of her second trimester, she'd be ready to go back to the Avengers.  She'd be willing to spend some time with Steve and not hate him on principle.  If nothing else could go wrong between then and now, Bucky figured it had a very small chance of all working out.  Just maybe.

"We wanted her to be soft and funny and sweet," Bucky's words were like a tender lullaby, making Darcy's blinks last a little longer each time.  "Wanted her to love both of us like crazy so we could bicker about who she loved more."

"You, duh, I love you more," Darcy answered easily.

"For now, we'll see what those sparkling baby blues do to you, dollbaby," Bucky smirked.

"I like your baby blues just fine," Darcy stubbornly insisted.

"Stevie always thought he scared gals off, the ones I could find that were open-minded," Bucky revealed.  "I hated to see him so down on himself."

"Nooooo," Darcy whined quietly.  "Don't make him sympathetic.  I want to be mad at all of them for at least another year or so."

"He tried to break things off when I went to basic training," Bucky continued despite Darcy's sleepy protests.  "Said that I could find anyone better than him to enjoy whatever little freedoms I had left.  Boy or girl."

"He's dumber than a sack of rocks," Darcy mumbled.  "My Bucky is loyal as the day is long."

"I am that," Bucky smiled.  "And you can't just take that love out of your heart once it's there.  It stays."

"Forever?" Darcy ventured.

"Forever and ever," Bucky promised, bending his head so that his lips pressed gently against hers.  He smiled at her with a soft warmth that seemed to banish the cold out of their little traveling box.  "Hey Dollbaby?"

"Hmmm?"

"I got this friend you just gotta meet," Bucky launched into his pitch.  "He thinks he's not much to look at, but I'll tell you true, he's got a beautiful pair of eyes, a set of kissable lips, and a mind sharper than a tack.  And he's got the best heart."

"Sounds nice," Darcy whispered, falling back to sleep easily.  "Later."

"Alright, later," Bucky grinned, kissing Darcy's sleeping pout once more before settling in for a nice long bout of staring at her and getting lost in daydreams.

"I'm not trying to be a dick."

Steve looked up from his report, the one that was tracking down Rumlow's last known whereabouts.  They thought that he might be heading to Africa, along with a team of Hydra loyal, hitting up medical research facilities in the big cities.  Chasing him down would be a good training opportunity for Wanda, who was still having trouble standing out where she shouldn't.  

Sam was standing above his desk and staring down at Steve in concern.

"I never said you were trying to be a dick?" Steve questioned, curious as to where this was going.

"Chatter analysis thinks that Barnes and friend made the move out of the country," Sam revealed.

"I'm aware," Steve nodded.  "You told me to give them time.  Natasha told me to give them time.  Everyone told me to give them time, so I figured, that was probably a really smart thing to do."

"Right," Sam nodded.  "Time."

The pair remained in silence as Steve finished making notes on the report, before looking up at Sam with a small smile on his face.

"Go ahead, say what you have to say, Sam."

"You're not jealous?" Sam asked quickly.  "Cause look, I mean, not to project my own shit on this, but you know I have a thing for Natasha, and she has a thing for Banner."

"Had a thing," Steve corrected.  "You don't abandon Natasha Romanoff and still get to claim a stake on her heart, as far as I know."

"I mean, I get jealous and Nat and I are just...pre-relationship negotiations, we're not exactly a love story for the ages," Sam arched an eyebrow as he sat down opposite Steve at the desk.  "Barnes is out there, with a looker, on a clandestine and romantic kind of operation."

Steve rolled his eyes and smirked.

"She really a looker?" Steve managed to ask, his eyebrow arching in that trolling, teasing way.  "Like---could we get what you have to the sketch artist and maybe get a visual aid?  Because you and I might have a different idea on what a looker is."

"Smartass," Sam scolded easily.  "And from what I remember with my fried brain, she was pretty, you know.  For a recovering tortured kidnapping victim.  Pretty eyes.  Nice lips.  Curly dark hair."

"Sounds about right," Steve huffed a chuckle.  "Don't tell anyone, but me and Buck always sort of had a thing for brunettes.  Well, with one exception in Bucky's case."

"I can't believe I'm having this conversation right now," Sam sighed, his eyes rolling up to look at the ceiling, his expression dripping in horrified disbelief.

"Neither can I," Steve sassed back.  

"Is this how it worked in the roaring forties?  You sent out the pretty boyfriend to hook girls to bring back to the lair?" Sam demanded.

"Well, yeah, how did you go about finding a dame for your threesomes?" Steve deadpanned.

"Motherfucking asshole," Sam rolled his eyes hard.  

"You kids call it polyamory," Steve shrugged.  "Sometimes, in order to get a relationship to work, you need more moving pieces."

"And you and Barnes wanted one more moving piece," Sam guessed.

"Nothing wrong with it," Steve nodded.  “Not if everyone knows how it works going in.”

"Didn't say there was," Sam agreed.  "You hoping he brings her back here and---what, happily ever after?"

"No Sam, I hope he brings her back here so she can get the help she needs, so he can get the help he needs," Steve said seriously, his teasing and smirking vanishing.  "I want them to come back because they WANT to come back.  I want to make things right, I want the world to know that the both of them, their circumstances and their reactions aren't entirely their fault. I want to protect them."

"I still don't get it," Sam said after a beat.  "You're cool with the man you love running around with a beautiful girl, presumably sharing beds and bodily fluids and comfort."

"I'm totally fine with it," Steve said confidently.  "Just like Bucky was fine when I brought him back from Azzano and he saw I had met Peggy."

"Weirdos," Sam accused.  "But still, well adjusted weirdos for there not to be any animosity there."

"Thanks," Steve said flatly.  "They will come back though."

"That's what mystery zapper said," Sam nodded, giving Steve a soft smile.  "They just needed a little more time."

"Well, then that's what they'll get."

Traveling in Europe was very different to traveling in Canada.  For one, James and Darcy no longer had their cozy (secretly bullet proof) SUV.  They simply had their expertly packed back packs, all the weapons that Bucky could hide on his body and Darcy's, a lot of easily transferable cash, and trains that would take them absolutely anywhere.

They landed in Germany, and once their small travel crate had been loaded into a storage facility, James crushed the locking mechanism on the box and the door to the facility and had his arm wrapped around Darcy as they made their way to the nearest train station.  James kept sliding Darcy small snacks, quietly promising her that they'd eat once they arrived at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, where they would be able to catch a different train, taking them to their final destination.

No matter how Darcy had tried, James would not tell her their ultimate destination, but he had teased her with the very promising and tantalizing idea that they would be mostly centrally located, and would be able to stray from their base to missions.

"You mean a home?" Darcy murmured as they got off the small train at the large station in Berlin.  

"Hmm?" James hummed as his right arm went around her shoulders, his left in his jacket pocket where he held a small firearm.  

Darcy cuddled close to him as they made their way towards the food court.  He had hidden her electric baton in the small of his back, making it easy for her to pull it out and use it, should she have to.  But she still wasn't used to having it there, her eyes going a little wide as her fingers brushed against it in her cuddling of him.  

He gave her surprise a small, beguiled smile and kissed her temple adoringly.  To anyone who saw them as they skirted a very specific pathway that would keep them out of view of all of the security cameras at the facility, they looked like a young couple who were backpacking through Europe.  They were tired, but clearly happy, and very much enamored of one another, with the way the woman looked up at the man with softness and care, and the man looked down at the woman with nothing but adoration and worship.

"I smell---I smell munchkins," Darcy whispered, turning slightly out of James' embrace.  "Holy crap, there's a Dunkin Donuts down there."

"No coffee," James reminded her with an indulgent little smile.

"DECAF," Darcy insisted.  "And munchkins, honey.  MUNCHKINS."

James gave her a blank look.

“Little pieces of heaven?  Tiny circles of donut goodness?” Darcy prompted.  “Chocolate and jelly filled and powdered bits of sugary delight?”

"Donut holes?  You had Timbits a few days ago," James laughed as she made a horrified face, clearly not seeing how Munchkins and Timbits were the same at all.  He nodded and began pulling her along to the food court.  "If you eat something relatively healthy, we'll get you your donut holes and decaf coffee for the train ride."

' Give our Pet all the cakes.  She will feel so soft held in my lap. '

"Train ride to where?" Darcy wheedled expertly, fluffy dark lashes batting over big blue eyes.

"To a sort of---home," James shrugged.  "Almost home."

"Almost home," Darcy gave him a smile but still rolled her eyes.  She'd been getting the hard sell on Steve Rogers for a little while from Bucky, but now even James was getting into the mix.

She was going to be absolutely gobsmacked if the Soldier ever started in on her about how their duo should be upgraded into a trio.  Although she would find the slight Russian accent twisting and turning around the descriptions of what the three of them could get up to highly enjoyable.  

"Obsttresen---" Darcy squinted her eyes at one of the signs at the food court.  She had always been pretty good at languages, and had dabbled in some German in the hopes that she could figure out how to sound like a harsh schoolmaster one day but had actually wound up sounding like a badly accented idiot milk maid.  "Fruit trunks---bar?"

' Cakes, feed her cakes, not only fruit.  Cakes as well .'

"Fruit, yes," James nodded.  "Would you like some?"

"I want plums," Darcy put her hand on a low point of her stomach, feeling James' gaze move down to the gesture.  When he looked back up at her his smile was real, full of indulgence and affection.  "If they have something with plums, I want it.  Oohhhh, curry!"

James handed her a handful of Euro's and told her to obtain her curry while he went about getting the rest of their feast.  His eyes never strayed from her though, watching carefully as she stood in line trying to read the menu in German.  

' My Pet should not be made to stand alone. She is helpless and adorable .'

Darcy's face pinched when she realized that currywurst in Germany had little to do with rice and curry and naan.  But she ordered anyway, and carried her little tray of food to a table, leaving it sit as she wandered back to the food court, stopping at two other shops before meeting James back at the table.

"You're not sick of pizza, yet?" James stared down at the little box she had obtained from Pizza Hut.

"Dude, it's pizza," Darcy shrugged, as if that were the answer to everything.  

' Let the Pet eat her tomato cake, and give her the plum cake you found. '

James reached out and grabbed the little tray of sushi, reading the label carefully.  When he saw that it had raw tuna and salmon, he began popping pieces in his mouth at high speed.

"James, I haven't had sushi since London!" Darcy scolded reaching out for a piece, but James took the tray from her and began shoveling pieces into his mouth at a faster pace.  "At least dip them in the soy sauce, that's the fun of it."

"You are not allowed the raw fish," James said simply.  

"Why not?!" Darcy scoffed.

"Our baby will not have it," he replied softly.  

Darcy sighed and grabbed for the little plum cake he had on one of his trays, unwrapping it and taking an angry bite.  Her left hand went to her stomach anyway, and James knew that the day before they left on the plane, she had discovered that her usually soft flesh on her stomach had gone a little stiffer, indicating that that baby was growing quickly.  

"You said our baby," Darcy whispered around a full mouth, her words barely discernible.

"The Soldier prefers to call it our bastard, if you would prefer?" James offered.

"No, our baby sounds better than that," Darcy nodded as they steadily ate an obscene amount of calories together, like two bears readying for hibernation.  She had just started nibbling on the so called curry, which just looked like a sloppy sausage to her, when her expression turned pensive.

"You're thinking too hard, I can smell the smoke," James gently joked, hints of Bucky poking through.

"Did you mean it?" Darcy whispered.  "Or is it---is it some kind of thing you're saying to make us blend?"

"What, Darcy?" James furrowed his brow, she was clearly getting herself agitated and worked up emotionally and he didn't appreciate the feeling of the Soldier trying to take over so that he could hold her and hand feed her and soothe her.  

"The baby," Darcy shrugged, looking more vulnerable in that moment than she had since they had pulled her out of that Hydra facility two months ago.  "I know it's not ours, but---but, can it be ours?"

His left hand darted out, quick and efficient, just as it had when he'd been the Soldier and he'd taken the neck of some Hydra idiot in his grasp, ready to snap it.  Instead, it grabbed her own right hand and gloved metal fingers grasped hers as tenderly as they could.  She didn't mind the unnatural strength though.  The pressure of it felt right.

"Dollbaby," it was Bucky who sighed at her, his eyes sparkling and moving over her face with affection.  "I'd be proud to have that baby you're making call me it's Pop."

Her shoulders lifted, like he had taken a great weight off of them, but her big blue gaze was still doubtful.  She looked around the food court, it was an idle time of day, between lunch and dinner where most people were still at work or had already gone on their travels for the day.  But there was a family eating on the other side of area, a stocky toddler strapped to the man's front, little arms and legs waving about as they got a meal together to eat.  

"I'm really scared," Darcy admitted.  "That they used some awful monster's baby batter to put this little thing inside of me."

"No, we're gonna make sure we find out, and I'll take care of it," Bucky promised.  

"I decided that I kind of---I like it?" Darcy hesitated.  "I don't know that I love it, which says so much about me as a future parent, I know."

"Dollbaby, how could you love it yet, when you don't know it?  You didn't even have a decision in making it," Bucky reminded her.  "I'd say you're adjusting just fine."

"But I like it," Darcy insisted.  "One day I'll be able to hold it and protect it, and sing to it and---and I like to think that it'll make the bad things that happened---less?"

"That seems like it just might work," Bucky nodded with a hint of eagerness.  "For what it's worth, I think you'll make a real good ma, Darce.  Really good, cause you got a fierce loving heart, and that's what I remember the best about my own ma."

"Yeah," Darcy gave him a small smile, obviously a burden off her shoulders, but she was still looking at him with trepidation.

"Please, dollbaby, just say what you need to say," Bucky pleaded.  "The Soldier is going nuts up here with worry for you."

"What about Steve?" Darcy whispered.  

"What about him?" Bucky shrugged.  "Used to be short, now he's tall.  Still dumb as a box of self-righteous rocks most days."

"The Soldier will never leave me," Darcy nodded, believing it in her heart.  

"I won't either," Bucky promised.

"Okay, but---," Darcy sighed, not knowing how to voice the little seed of fear and instability that had been planted in her brain.  "Did Steve or you ever want kids when you were younger?  You know---before the war?"

Bucky sat back at that, clearly having to concentrate on bringing the memories up and back to the forefront of his mind.  He took a slow, steady breath and smiled like the sun when it came to him.  

"When we were still in our teens, I found a piece of old newspaper, and it had the fifty most popular names for girls and the fifty most popular names for boys printed on it," Bucky recalled slowly and deliberately.  "James was only second by then.  Robert---Bob was number one, ridiculous."

"Agreed," Darcy nodded.  Her fingers pressed against the harder flesh of her stomach and she whispered, "You are not a Bob of any kind."

"Mary was pretty high up for the girls, might have been at the top," Bucky tried to remember more clearly, but that would have been difficult for a normal person.  He was a nearly 99 year old man with traumatic brain injuries inflicted upon him.  "But anyway, I came over to his place, and found the paper, and he's got about ten or twelve names circled very decisively in pencil....a few erased off."

Darcy watched Bucky, absolutely engrossed as he thought of the small details, like pictures were slowly being revealed in his brain as he began to put the puzzle together.  She wished she could always get him to do this, to painlessly bring up memories of his past, ones that he had thought he had lost time and time again.  His expression was so fond as he spoke of a small Steve Rogers and a circled list of names.

"I asked why he had so many circled, didn't understand it at all," Bucky admitted.  "And he says to me, Well I like to daydream about the kids someday ."

"What a sap," Darcy said with downright fondness.

"That he is," Bucky nodded eagerly.  "I mean, we had just kissed for the first time on his birthday a few weeks ago, right when the fireworks were shaking the walls of the building.  And I'm staring at the paper and looking back at him like he's a crazy person.

"First off, I tell him, all we did was kiss, I wasn't proposing marriage yet.  And second off, I can't have kids, Stevie and neither can you, so are we gonna rob an orphanage or a ride along with the midwife and steal them as they get born?"

Bucky shook his head and chuckled a bit, that feeling of bewilderment still clear and palpable.  His hand was still clutching Darcy's and he squeezed.

"He called me an asshole and said he was very well aware that men couldn't have babies, but he figured that one day I'd find a nice lady who didn't find it odd that Uncle Stevie lived with them," Bucky shook his head.  "Course once he tells me this, I can't think of nothing else BUT finding a nice lady to bring home to him, and I knew that even if most girls turned their noses up at Stevie cause he was little, there were quite a few that thought he was still handsome and good, you know?"

"Yeah, I've seen the pictures," Darcy nodded.  "He was still real handsome then too."

"See, there you go," Bucky laughed.  "We talked about it a lot.  Liked kissing each other.  Found out later we liked doing other things together too."

"Ohhhhhhh," Darcy teased.

"Menace to society," Bucky squeezed her hand a little.  "By the time I went off to Basic, I knew that we'd have to find a girl that was okay with Steve as a lot more than Uncle Stevie."

"Kinky old bastards," Darcy mumbled.  "Why'd he have so many names circled?"

Bucky smirked and waited as she leaned forward and took a sip from one of her drinks, this one a water with fruit chunks floating in it.  She took a long sip and Bucky leaned forward and said confidentially,

"Well Stevie wanted a dozen kids, so he thought it would make sense to pick out his dozen favorite names."

Darcy choked on her drink uncontrollably, and Bucky laughed as he got up, finally freeing his hand from hers as he approached her chair, picking her right up and setting her on his lap as he rubbed her back.  

"Fuck you and your boyfriend and your twelve kids," Darcy coughed.

"Well, I came from a family of four kids, so that seems reasonable," Bucky offered playfully.

"Three, tops!" Darcy rasped out as Bucky brought the water she had just choked on back to her lips.  She sipped again and sighed.  "Three is the perfect number."

"Three then," Bucky nodded.  "Stevie came from a family of just him and his ma, so he was fearful lonely til I met him later on.  He always thought that with a whole house full of kids, no one would ever get lonely."

"Three is plenty," Darcy insisted, but her mouth turned upwards in a smile of understanding.  "So what were your favorite names on that list?"

"I liked Ruby, thought it was fancy and exotic," Bucky admitted.  "And Michael.  Seemed trustworthy."

"Hmm," Darcy sighed.  "I'm getting sleepy."

"Vitamin, doll," Bucky reminded her, digging in a compartment of her backpack and holding up her pill bottle.  "Now c'mon, finish your curry hot dog and we'll go get you your treats for the train."

Chapter Text

Chapter Twelve: Support Networks

Darcy was asleep in their private car on the train after being well fed and having the opportunity to wash up.  The Soldier was watching over her as he plotted out the hits he and his Pet would be able to make in the next two months.  Hydra had been very smart at hiding their information.  While the Black Widow had dumped all of SHIELD's information onto the internet, not all of Hydra's information lay within SHIELD's hold.  

His own information had been in Canada, in a non-remarkable shack that now lay in ashes on the forest floor.  He had obtained the female soldier's file in South America, learning from that where the icy resting place of the other soldiers was.  The others, the other soldiers, their files were scattered throughout Europe. Of these men, one of them must be their precious bastard's father.

Darcy turned in her sleep on the small pull down cot, and he reached his hand over from his perch next to her, his left hand pressing gently against her abdomen.  He smiled when he could feel the faintest hints of a fast heartbeat, steady and unwavering although still small and vulnerable.  

One of the soldiers he could rule out entirely.  His files lay in Africa, and he had been made a eunuch decades earlier by his own set of tormentors before being brought into Hydra as an assassin.  The Soldier was pleased that this man had not been used to create his precious little unborn bastard, because he had been a sick and twisted man, deadly and accurate with any weapon put into his hands.  He had craved pain and destruction.  He had been the first of the new soldiers to turn on the handlers, the ringleader so far as cruelty and violence were concerned.   The Soldier didn't crave such things.  He excelled at them, to be certain, but he didn't crave them.  They were a means to an end.  When Hydra pulled his strings, those ends were whatever Hydra wanted.  But now that he no longer had handlers, his only aim was to destroy the ones who had tried to contain him.  

And now, the rapid heartbeat along with the soft warm Pet laying in the bed...they were the new mission.  He would do what he had to do in order to secure their comfort and safety.  Even if it meant in a few months he would be pushed back further into the weak mind and be forced to play nice with the Captain and the Avengers.  

For his Pet and their precious unborn bastard, that would be a simple enough task to accomplish.  In the meantime, he would find which of the three remaining soldiers was the genetic contributor to his precious unborn bastard.  

And then he would kill them so they could never attempt to take his Pet or the bastard away from him.

A flicker in the corner of his eye had him standing, going to the door to their private cabin and glaring out of the small window.  Black jacket, brand new, dress shoes rushing down the narrow hall and no luggage of any kind on their person.  The Soldier grabbed a silenced gun and locked his Pet in the compartment, silently rushing to catch up to the man who had just glimpsed into their cabin.

He reached the end of the train without finding him, but was not deterred, turning and following his path back to his Pet.  He stopped in front of one of the supply closets and paused briefly, listening closely for signs of rushed breathing, finding none he walked further, stopping this time in front of a water closet designated for women only.  

He broke the lock on the door and quickly opened it, walking in to see the man who had been peering in at them, sitting on the floor next to the toilet, looking terrified.  The Soldier aimed his gun and the man held his hands up, panicked.

"Don't shoot, please, Oh God, I'm not---I'm not bad, I swear," he said quickly.

"Who are you?" the Soldier demanded, staring at the Asian man curiously.

"Nobody, nobody, I'm just here on a vacation with my wife, I swear, I'm nobody," he stammered.  

"You---you are familiar," the Soldier admitted.

"Yeah, so are you," the man whispered.  "It's why I stopped, I saw you getting on the train with your wife and I thought you looked like someone---like someone I've seen in a lot of pictures."

The Soldier blinked and ceded control to Bucky, who slowly smiled at the man staring up at him, scared out of his mind.  Bucky put the gun in the back of his pants and nodded.

"Morita."

"That's, that's my last name," Morita nodded.  "Are you...are you really him?"

"Jim Morita your granddad?" Bucky asked.

"How did you---you're really him, you're James Barnes," Morita looked amazed.  "I didn't know what to think, first Steve Rogers, and then you, is my granddad's friend Dum-Dum gonna come back too?"

"No," Bucky gave a sad smile.  "No, he's not."

They remained silent for a whole minute, Morita staring up at Bucky in wonder now, instead of fear.  Bucky withstood it, marveling himself at the nearly exact replica of his old friend sitting in front of him.  

"You can't tell anyone," Bucky said softly.  "Not a soul."

"I won't," Morita promised.  "I mean, I'm just a Principal at a school in New York, I doubt anyone would believe me."

"Thank you," Bucky gave him a soft smile.  

"Do you need help, Sergeant Barnes?" Morita offered.  "Do you need me to get in touch with Captain Rogers for you?  Or---or Jones's grandson is with one of those spy agencies, he might be able to help."

"I'm fine," Bucky promised.  "I just need time to get my head together, kid."

"Alright," Morita nodded.  "Alright."

He scrambled to his feet and went to his back pocket, flinching when Bucky tensed and reached for his gun once more.  Morita held up his hands in apology and moved slower.

"Just----my card, if you need help.  I can get you and your---your girl any help you need," Morita explained, handing it over. Principal of Midtown School of Science and Technology.  "Just got the promotion, taking my wife on a trip around Europe to celebrate."

"That's real nice, kid," Barnes smiled genuinely.  

"We do a Howlies tour," Morita blurted.  "You know, the kids of the Howlies did it with their dads, and then their kids started to go too.  And now we meet up every five or six years and do a tour.  England, France, Azzano."

Bucky stiffened at that.

"We did it to honor your sacrifices.  Your's and the Captain's," Morita explained.  His shook his head in disbelief.  "None of us would exist if it wasn't for you and Captain Rogers.  My grandfather---he told me that you volunteered for the experimentation so that the other men would be safe.  I can't----repay that.  But, Sergeant Barnes are you sure you don't want me to contact Captain Rogers for you?"

"No.  Not yet.  But thank you."

"Okay, open your eyes."

Darcy opened her eyes and James' right hand fell away from her field of vision, revealing where their home base would be.  She blinked very forcefully and the Eiffel Tower still stood in front of her face, tall and strong and right in front of her.  It didn't dissolve like a mirage.  It was right there.  

"Springtime in Paris, dollbaby," Bucky whispered, wrapping his arm around her, kissing her temple gently.  

"Oh---oh wow," Darcy breathed.  "You were listening to me when I---babbled?"

"Darce, why wouldn't I listen to you all the time?" Bucky chuckled.  

"But I babble, and some people find that annoying," Darcy admitted.

' I will find these people and point out the error of their ways .'

"Some people are idiots," Bucky promised her, hoping his murderous other side wouldn't come up with full-fledged revenge plans for those that had ever insulted their girl.  "I like the way you talk.  You remind me sometimes of Katherine Hepburn, just talk talk talking away all smart and sharp and gorgeous."

Darcy opened her mouth to say something and closed it, smiling at him as she shook her head back and forth.  

"Didn't want to make you speechless, dollbaby, that's the opposite of what I want, actually," Bucky said gently.

"It's just, no one ever listens," Darcy whispered, she spun around in his hold and was on the tips of her toes in a heartbeat, her lips pressing against his urgently.  

Bucky had to stop himself from grinning into the kiss, but he couldn't stop himself from holding her close, his hands very low on her back as he kissed her back with whatever old skills and charm that he could dust off.  Darcy's lips were quite a heavenly thing, to be sure, and she kissed like a champion, firm presses and tickling kitten licks of her tongue all making Bucky's blood rush to his head.

"You brought me to Paris," Darcy whispered when she pulled away.

"Dollbaby, I'd bring you anywhere, I promise," Bucky answered back.  "You want a tropical island---a moon on Jupiter?  I'll find a way to get us there."

"No, I don't need the moon.  I just want you," Darcy promised.

"Well, I don't think that'll be a big problem at all."

Candles.  Real fabric tablecloth.  An assortment of Greek food from his (their) favorite local diner, put into various pans and dishes to look like he'd made it all himself.  Otis Redding playing in the background, crooning his heart out and setting the mood sublimely.  The bottle of wine that was chilling in a bucket (that belonged to Steve, gifted to him by an earnest old Congressman) was more expensive than the amount of money he'd made the summer he had turned sixteen.  And he'd paid for it with his own money too, not taken Clint up on his offer to pilfer something from one of Stark's many varied and unoccupied safe houses (glorified wine cellars at this point) across the United States.

Sam Wilson folded the fancy napkin expertly into the facsimile of a swan and placed it on a perfect white plate.  That summer working at the fancy golf club restaurant when he was sixteen had clearly paid off.  Or he hoped it would payoff.

"You, are going to be charming," Sam lectured the swan in a mutter.  "She's gonna be charmed by you, and then your benevolent creator, aka me, is gonna get me some of that Russian sugar that she calls lips."

He pointed his finger at the swan menacingly and nodded.

"You get me, swan.  You get me."

Natasha was returning after a five day mission, doing God knows what, God knows where.  They were scheduled for a training mission in a few weeks, taking Wanda out and teaching her the ropes.  Poor kid needed some help, she was terrible with the covert missions, preferring to cheat with her red swirly hands of vague magic and mind manipulation.

He heard his door opening and rolled his eyes, albeit fondly.  

"Hey!  Thanks for just barging in.  I could have been in flagrante delicatessen in here, you know.  Unless, that's what you were going for, catching me in my dressing gown as I fluffed my face and painted my hair.  You know, the shenanigans aren't necessary, I'll put out if you want---oh shit."

Sam sighed as Natasha smirked at him from his living room, and she wasn't alone.  There was someone he vaguely remembered as being in the rendering department with Hill's investigative crew.  The young woman was on the tall side, her brilliantly colored hair a turquoise and lavender that was cropped short stood out against brown skin.  Her dark brown eyes were dancing with mirth at Sam's predicament.  

"Your hair used to be---uhm, green?" Sam had the good grace to feel a little foolish as the woman stared at him in amusement.

"Yeah, I went back to my natural color," she sassed, pointing to her fantastically colored locks.  

"Wilson, this is Maya Archie," Natasha introduced.  

"We've met," Sam nodded.

"But you didn't remember her name," Natasha clarified.

Sam sighed heavily, again, and aimed a pointed look at Natasha.  He sucked at his teeth before muttering, "Didn't actually have to call my shit out like that, Romanoff.  Rude."

"Ms. Romanoff has called in a favor with my grandmother," Maya revealed.  

"Retta Archie, right?" Sam squinted in remembrance.  

"Everyone always remembers my grandmother before they can even bother remembering my name," Maya laughed, but brought her large cross body bag up and over her shoulders as she and Natasha walked towards the table that Sam had been setting.  She picked up one of the swan napkins and wiggled it around.  "Wow, fancy."

"Yeah, didn't realize it was a working group dinner," Sam huffed out as Natasha began clearing things away for Maya to set out her tools.    "No offense, but I already did the sketch rendering of Bucky Barnes' mystery gal zapper.  All I could remember after having my brain fried by her was 'nice lips' and 'pretty'."

"Right, we thought we could get some help with that," Natasha nodded as someone came walking into Sam's quarters.  

"Wow," Sam said in a flat monotone.  He thought he had been perfectly clear when he'd invited Natasha over for dinner that it would be a completely non-working date.  But Wanda Maximoff was coming in with three boxes of pizza and a bag full of styrofoam containers.  "Throw in Helen Cho and this'll be a girls' night."

The door opened again, and Helen appeared with her hands carrying a case of wine coolers.

"Seriously?" Sam looked back at Natasha.

"Sorry, I got a little carried away," Natasha shrugged.  She gave him a small tilt of her lips and her voice was a soft murmur. "I'll make it up to you."

Sam blinked rapidly a few times before allowing that soft look of Natasha's to sway him.  The smile on his face grew a little too cocky and he waggled his eyebrows.

"Yeah?"

"Sure, I'll let you out of practice tomorrow," Natasha deadpanned.  She smiled at the girls and brought up the holoscreen in Sam's quarters that was currently showing a romantic sunset montage.  She replaced it with a file.  Specifically, the file of the woman the Winter Soldier had freed from the Hydra facility.

"Okay, Sam, work with Wanda and Maya to try and get a more concrete sketch of this woman.  I need something that can't be disputed.  Helen, you and I are going to go over what Friday has managed to salvage from her file to see what's been done to her, medically.  We have a few weeks until we're going to have to go off base, I'd like to get some actual work done."

Chapter Text

Chapter Thirteen: Home

James worked at the lock to the little studio apartment that they would call home for the next two months.  Darcy had been simmering with excitement as they remained within Paris, meandering around the left bank of the Seine into a very prestigious sort of neighborhood between the Champ de Mars and the Musee Rodin.  To her credit, Darcy didn't question his choice.  There was high traffic of tourists in the area, so even the locals didn't take much notice of each other's faces.  They could blend in with bland anonymity if they needed to.  

And after being attacked in plain sight at an out of the ways motel, it seemed smarter to be in a more densely populated and visited area.  It made it a lot harder to send a battalion of attackers against them if they were within walking distance of one of the world's most recognizable landmarks.  

"It's not much," James warned her.

"Because Hydra had me in a palace," Darcy shook her head slightly, an amused smirk on her face.  "C'mon, open it up, I want to see."

James did just that, opening the door to reveal a narrow, dark hallway with no windows.  Darcy pushed her head in and wrinkled up her nose.

"Neat. You got us a closet," she managed to sound slightly enthusiastic, but not nearly as enthusiastic as she had sounded the first night they'd slept in the truck back in Canada.

"Menace," James sighed before picking her clear up and off her feet, swinging her pliant body into a bridal carry.  "C'mon, there's more."

Darcy grinned as he carried her over the threshold, cuddling into him as he opened one of the doors in the hallway, revealing a small, but modern bathroom, complete with a tub that would just barely fit both of them and a few gallons of water.  But it had a clothes washer, so Darcy would not be complaining.  They'd seen too many disgusting horrors at public laundromats.  

"Go on," Darcy recommended in a lilting voice and a regal wave of her hand.  "I wish to see more of our palace."

There was an open archway in the hallway leading into the tiniest, narrowest kitchen that Darcy had ever seen.  But it was clean and very clearly all new stainless steel (tiny) appliances.

"That's the cutest damned oven, I've ever seen," Darcy remarked at the little thing that stood at the end of the narrow kitchen.  She was itching to be put down now, eager to try and figure out where everything was and how logistically she could make anything in such a small space.  

She was sure that her Soldier would be feeding her plenty of Parisian takeout, actually.  James wasn't about to put her down yet, and he stepped out of the archway of the kitchen and went to the doorway at the end of the dark hall, gently pushing the door with his foot and revealing the living space.  

The bed took up most of the space, and it looked heavenly indeed.  Faced opposite what she was sure was bullet proof glass windows with a really excellent view of the outside world, was a sumptuous looking king sized bed, already made up with soft blue linens and white covered pillows.  

The rest of the small room was filled with a tiny table just big enough for two and one dresser that would barely fit what they currently carried, along with a wooden bookcase that looked like it had never held a book in its life.  Darcy began wiggling to make James put her down, and she sighed happily when he kissed her lips with the barest, most gentle brush of his mouth before he did place her on her feet.  He went about doing a sweep of the small space, leaving Darcy to her devices in the living/bed room after he had deemed it safe enough.  

She spent just a few moments staring out the window, marveling at the view and the bustling streets below them.  There was a bakery on the opposite corner from their apartment building and her stomach made a small noise of want at the idea of french pastries and perfectly made coffee.

Not like James..or Bucky...OR the Soldier would allow her to have coffee.  To Darcy's amused delight and fondness, he had returned to one of their motel rooms just a few days after Darcy had decided she would not be terminating the baby that Hydra put in her belly, with a little paper bag with the logo of a family bookstore on it.  Inside were two books.  One was a well weathered and annotated used copy of 'What to Expect When You're Expecting'.  James had been fanatical about making sure she had a healthy and safe pregnancy.  Caffeine was limited to a very small amount, obviously raw fish was out of the question, and he had even taken away scalding hot baths, replacing them with regular, run of the mill warm water baths.  It was annoying, but she adored him for it.

The other was a little leather bound notebook, different than James' normal notebooks where he worked through memories and details of the past.  

She'd noticed that he had taken to writing in it every night, and eventually her curiosity won out, and she sat herself down on his lap and read what he had been writing.  

' Dear Baby,  Today, your mama said she didn't like the smell of poutine, but she really liked to eat it.  She blamed it on you, said you were a riddle making shit stirrer.  Don't worry, I figured it out, got a clothespin and popped it on her nose before feeding it to her.  I'll keep the clothespin just in case we need it for your smelly diapers later.  Love, Papa .'

The notebook was filled with similar little notes, nothing too heavy, just little glimpses into Darcy and James’ everyday life: cute little stories, tiny hidden pieces of advice, truly corny jokes and song lyrics that he had heard and enjoyed and thought the baby might like.  She’d cried her eyes out in an emotional haze, bringing the Soldier out full force as he desperately tried to get her calm and happy again.

Darcy opened up Bucky's backpack and lovingly handled the notebooks and the weapons alike, taking them out and finding space on the bookshelf that stood next to the dresser.  She then went to her backpack and set aside clothing, actually looking forward to putting them in the dresser, as if putting down little searching roots that would eventually grow fatter and take hold.  

She knew that those roots would take hold in New York, at that stupid looking Avenger's facility, and she'd have to learn how to share her metal-armed angel of revenge and pretty hair.  Whether that meant a threeway share of mutual satisfaction or simply waving at Steve while he took Bucky away from her every other night, she didn't know yet.  She wagered that she wouldn't know for quite some time, actually.  

While her emotions, loyalty and love had settled quickly upon James' shoulders, she didn't think that would happen again any time soon.  She didn’t even know if it was possible to happen again for her, as it had for James, seventy years removed.

She did know that she would never try to deny her James one small ounce of happiness.  So if him being happy meant that he would be in a relationship with both her and Steve, then that was the way it was going to happen.

She dug into one of the pockets of her backpack that James had wanted to store weapons in, but instead, she'd prevailed and she pulled out little Hannah Hula, who she had secretly wrenched from the dashboard before James had destroyed their car.  She popped the tiny plastic hula doll right on top of their dresser, poking at her skirt to make her sway.

"What on Earth?" James laughed.

Darcy spun around, he had silently entered the room and had been observing her, as he usually always did.  If he wasn't so darned good looking and she wasn’t so completely gone on him, it would have definitely been considered creepy and predatory behavior.  She grinned up at him as he came to stand next to her, poking at the skirt so Hannah Hula would dance a little more.  He finally looked down at her, his eyes sparkling with amusement, fondness and warmth.  

Darcy's mouth went a little dry at his expression, it almost felt, for the first time, that he was whole.

He wasn't just James, and he wasn't just the Soldier.  It felt like he was Bucky , that man she had wanted to meet so much someday, all three parts sewn together expertly, hardly a stitch showing.  His left hand settled at the small of her back and turned her to face him completely.  He bent his head and kissed the tip of her nose with the reverence the Soldier always showed with the small sign of affection.

"I love you, Darcy."

Before she could say anything back, he stepped away from her, picking up the bags that had been placed on the bed, depositing them on the floor and then quickly going back to her, lifting her up and into his arms again as he swept her towards the bed.  She whooped with delight before he placed her down, following her quickly to stifle any other loud noises with his kiss.  Darcy's hands went right for his hair, her fingers combing through heavy brown locks with reverence.

"Dollbaby," he murmured as soon as he broke away, the term of endearment hot and wet against her mouth.  He was breathing heavily, a feat that Darcy hadn't thought possible, as his eyes searched her face for any trace of hesitation.  Finding none his smile lit up his face.  "My sweet Pet..."

"Mmm," Darcy hummed as she stretched out underneath him, her hands straying from feather soft hair to the sides of his face.  She pulled him in for another kiss, soft and sweet and short this time.  "Am I plump enough for debauching, Soldier?"

Bucky snorted with a little laughter and sighed, holding himself up with his left hand over her, his right hand resting on the admittedly plumper waistline.  She'd come a long way from the malnourished kidnapping victim he had rescued.  She was back to what her file had said she was supposed to be, and then some.

"Let me check," Bucky winked at her, his tongue darting out to lick his lips before a moment of realization stole over his features.

"No, don't change your mind!" Darcy insisted, seeing that brief cautious hesitation flip into his eyes.  It was a look he usually got when he was preparing them for a Hydra raid, obsessively going over where weapons were placed on his person and hers.

Darcy might dribble into a puddle of nothing if he changed his mind now.  She was ten weeks along in this serum enhanced pregnancy.  She'd been at James' side for seven of those weeks.  And she'd wanted him days after meeting him, even more when her lovely, deadly Soldier had bathed her and taken such good care of her during her illness.  She wanted him, she wanted all of him, and she didn't know what she'd do if he didn't want to.

Her eyes began to well up with tears as he practically hopped off of her and went to the bookshelf.

What she would do is cry, apparently.  And she was totally blaming this one on the supersoldier baby.

Bucky had his back to her and he looked at the weapons she had unpacked, taking his favorite handgun and one of her batons along with the straps he would need to store them before turning back towards the bed.  

"Pet?" Bucky furrowed his brow, he took two quick steps back towards her, carefully placing the weapons where he could reach them easily, strapping them in.  Once finished he looked at her with utter concern, his right hand going to wipe at the tears staining her cheeks.  "Dollbaby, what's wrong?"

"If you don't make all the love to me right now, I think I'm gonna go crazy," Darcy sniffled.  

"Darcy, my silly Pet," Bucky sighed, the term of endearment was the Soldier's and it sounded foreign without the accent, but still, lovely.  He sat down on the bed and quickly pulled her into his lap, cuddling her close.  "All I want to do for the next few weeks is just make love to you, I promise."

"And get revenge," Darcy added with a slight sniff.

"Nah, I could give up revenge if it meant I got you," Bucky promised, his lips finding her forehead.  

"You have me, I promise," Darcy nodded.  "Forever and then two weeks past forever too."

"Sounds perfect," Bucky promised as he allowed her to maneuver in his arms so that she straddled his lap.  She kissed him fiercely, her teeth pulling at his bottom lip so that she could lick into his mouth filthily.  He let out a pleasurable moan as she pushed against his chest, making him fall back to the bed on his back.  

Darcy smirked from above him.  She realized that someone didn't mind being a little manhandled.  And she then remembered that he'd probably done every sex act known to man with Captain America on the frontlines of the war, and he would have definitely gotten manhandled then.  

She ripped off her shirt, then the other two layers of shirts that he dressed her in, her ever enlarging breasts heaving in the bright pink sports bra.  Bucky's hands went right for her bounty, but he stopped halfway when he saw her wrinkled nose and pursed pouty lips.

"What, dollbaby?" he asked cautiously.

"I didn't mean to think of Steve Rogers, but here he is, in my brain, taking you all manly and bodily style and it's driving me nuts!" Darcy's words were whispered and quick.  "Nuts in the pants, but also nuts."

Bucky laughed again, looking absolutely delighted at the revelation.  He sat up on his elbows and managed to get his chin to rest right on top of the line of her cleavage.  Sparkling, playful light blue eyes stared up at her adoringly.  

"He does like being the one who is doing the pushing," Bucky admitted.

"UGH, shut up," Darcy pushed him back down on the bed.  "We aren't talking about Captain America in this bed."

"Alright," Bucky nodded eagerly.

He brought her back down for a kiss, and easily flipped them so Darcy lay on her back.  His warmth disappeared from her body a second time, but this time he didn't go far, standing at the edge of the bed as he quickly and efficiently undressed.

"I'll tell you this, since I"m not in the bed right now," Bucky gave her a playful wink as he yanked his pants down along with his underwear all at once.  He straightened back up and smiled down at her sinfully, looking like an Adonis in a painting, beautiful muscles and beautiful scars creating a masterpiece.   "You'd have him in a damned puddle, useless and speechless, cause dollbaby, my sweet Pet, you are the most sinfully gorgeous thing I've seen in a long time.  

He still didn't climb back onto the bed, instead, he reached out his hands for her pants, and she avidly attempted to help him yank the yoga pants that  were starting to get a little tight, and underwear right down, wiggling her hips and putting her legs straight up as he peeled them off of her.  He tossed the pants to the side and placed a tender kiss on the inside of her right ankle while keeping a hold on her calf.

Darcy quickly went about yanking her sports bra up and over her head, wiggling and jiggling as she did so.  She grinned at Bucky, and the dazed expression on his face.  A shrug from her had his eyes drawn to her breasts, his tongue sliding out on his lips and leaving a wet shine.  

“So, am I plump enough, to you know,” Darcy’s voice was sweet and wheedling as she made a lewd gesture with her hands.  

Bucky laughed, explosive and satisfying before he knelt on the bed, still holding her calf.  A slight pull on her leg and she was exposed to him, his gaze falling from that mischievous face and the beguiling breasts right over the small belly she was sporting.  His tongue poked out again and made another swipe of his lips as he gazed at her wet center.  It was a fascinating sort of thing for Darcy to see the mirth in his eyes be replaced with hedonistic intent.  She could honestly say she wouldn’t mind seeing those pale blue eyes going half lidded very often in the future, as he took a deep intake of breath before very literally diving right in.

“Oh sweet Jesus,” Darcy sighed, her hands going to long brown locks, so soft underneath her fingertips.  

His focus was certainly that of the Soldier at the moment: precise, unrelenting, and devastating.  Instead of death and destruction, that focus and skill were being used to pull her apart, piece by piece.  She felt his tongue teasing at her lips, teasing at spots she hadn’t known had existed before.  He was working her up quick, his left hand resting on her ass, lifting her lower half up and off the bed so he could get to every beautiful spot of her.

“That feels so good,” Darcy gasped out as his tongue stroked right over her entrance, a sinful twirl and she felt the warm pleasure pooling from the point of contact into all of her extremities.  “ Fuck .”

“Dollbaby, you taste so good,” Bucky’s declaration was muffled and fast, like he wanted to get the words out sooner so he could get back to tasting her immediately.  

“Nobody has---nobody has done this for me before,” Darcy stuttered out, ending her sentence on a disappointed moan as Bucky immediately stopped.  “No, no, go back, do the swirly bit with your tongue some more, cause that was just---mind blowing.”

“Pet?” Bucky was looking up at her, his cheek practically resting against her thigh, his mouth wet with her arousal.  The pupils of his eyes were huge, leaving only a pale ring of blue.  Her hand drifted from his hair to his stubbly cheek, patting him gently as if to try and wake him up.

“No one’s ever tasted you, Pet?” Bucky’s voice sounded very far away, even if he was closer to her than anyone had ever been before.

“Right,” Darcy nodded.  “And you know, no one has ever---been with me before.”

He froze, every muscle in his body suddenly tight as he stared up at her.  Darcy’s mouth went pursed, her cheeks flushing red.  

“Please don’t make a big deal out of it, it’s not like---it’s no big deal, it’s just, I didn’t have anyone I trusted or loved.  So I didn’t do it,” Darcy shrugged.  “Please?”

“It is a big deal,” Bucky said quietly.  His expression finally broke from shock, and instead, he looked adorably flustered.  The fingers on his right hand danced along her inner thigh and moved to where his mouth had just been, gentle touches marking the places that had just made her shiver.  “Dollbaby, it’s a big deal.”

“Why?” Darcy sighed as she felt the rough pad of his middle finger easing gently into her.  “S’nice.”

“Well, let’s not get into the whole, Virgin Mary thing,” Bucky said wryly.  “My mother is probably in heaven, crying her Roman Catholic eyes out.”

“Let’s not talk about your mother when you’re inside me,” Darcy sarcastically pleaded.  Then moaned when Bucky sank his finger in just that little bit deeper.  The intrusion was a heavy feeling, and the slow, shallow pump of the digit had the pleasure building back up inside of her.  “That’s really good...really very good.  Please, I want you.   Please .”

“I want to make this special for you, Pet,” Bucky whispered, looking like he was concentrating very hard.  She was velvet soft around his finger, wet and warm and supple.  He didn’t believe for a second that he was deserving of what she was about to give him, but he was a no good louse, and he knew it.  Because he couldn’t bring himself to not give her what she was asking for.

One finger became two and Darcy tensed slightly for a moment before melting into a puddle as he stroked inside of her with meticulous care.  She’d never felt so full.  Her own smaller fingers had never managed to make her nerve endings sing like this.  She closed her eyes and just let the pleasure continue to build, her mouth falling open and little pleasured gasps falling from her lips.

“ Bucky ,” she whimpered when she felt his tongue on her again, his fingers never faltering in their pace.  Her hips jerked off of the bed when his tongue gently lapped at her clit.  

She felt like a finely tuned instrument, playing a symphony under his hands.  His left hand was kneading her ass, his fingers pressing inside of her, stretching and searching.  His skilled tongue ran a nonsensical pattern over her clit at a maddeningly erratic rhythm only he knew.  Every time her hips pushed upwards in response, a deep satisfied groan echoed from Bucky’s throat.

Her eyes were closed, but Bucky couldn’t stop staring up at her as he earnestly worked her over.  She was beautiful, every gasp and sigh, every piece of her was so beautiful.  He could feel her walls bearing down on his fingers and he curled them inside of her, pressing against her.  He tried not to grin as her thighs pressed against his ears with all of her strength, but he failed and he watched her carefully as she broke into gorgeous little pieces.

The first words she heard once she came floating back down to Earth, where his soft murmurs, repeating the same sentiment, soft and slow and over and over again.

“I love you, Darcy.”

“Yeah?” the smirk on her lips was sinful.  “Prove it, big talker.”

“I always get the smart mouthed ones,” Bucky sighed before giving her thigh a kiss and easing his fingers out of her.  He placed his hands on her outer thighs, keeping them there when he maneuvered on the bed so that he was laying on top of her, finding a place between her legs.  His erection pressed against her lower abdomen and he shuddered pleasurably at the contact.  

“It might be nice to have a partner in crime,” Darcy admitted.  

“Nevermind, we’ll keep you separate forever,” Bucky teased right back.  He pressed his lips to the tip of her nose and pulled away to look her in the eye with that laser sharp assessment of his.  “You sure, dollbaby?”

“Yes,” Darcy nodded eagerly.  “Please?”

“Stop me if it’s too much,” Bucky’s whisper was rough as he took one hand off her thigh and grabbed ahold of himself.  

“Okay,” she nodded again, a little too distracted with the feel of him against her core, She shivered with anticipation, he was hot and hard as he slowly moved the head of his cock between her wet lips.  He pressed inside of her and she stiffened at the foreign feeling, a small noise echoing in her throat.  She put her hands on his shoulders and gave him a pat, wordlessly encouraging him to go on.  When he pressed further she couldn’t help her mouth opening and a sharp gasp, “ Oh .”

“Are you alright?” Bucky panted above her.

“Are you? ” Darcy wondered.  “You’ve sprinted a mile with me over your shoulder and---and nothing.  And now…”

She couldn’t finish her thought, as he pressed his hips into her more, the feeling of it burning but not at all in a bad way.  It was slow and frequently halting, she realized, and his pace was exactly what she needed.  

“It’s you, Pet, it’s you,” Bucky was hoarse, ragged and absolutely wrecked with pleasure.  His hips were now pressed against her and she surrounded him in her wet, velvet warmth.  “Haven’t felt  something so good as you in a long long time.”

He stilled again, trying to regain his bearings while she did the same.  He knew in that moment, that leaving her was no longer an option.  She was the best thing that had ever happened to him in over seventy long years, and now she was his, completely and fully his.  Small hands went from his shoulders, tracing scars gently, before falling on the small of his back and giving a little push.  

“Oh God ,” she whispered when he withdrew slowly, only to push back in, his pace decadently slow.  He was perfect, giving her exactly what she wanted without needing it to be verbalized.  He was reading her every noise and movement, playing her body like he’d known it for years.  

Darcy felt like she was floating, the burn disappearing and being replaced entirely with the decadent coiling satisfaction as he rocked himself into her body.  She watched as a bead of sweat rolled from his forehead down the side of his face and disappearing into his scruff. She arched into him, her chin lifting up and managed to press her lips to the divot underneath his bottom lip.  

He kissed her back, his mouth sloppy against hers, and she felt his hands grip her hips harder.  The most desperate sounds were escaping from his mouth and Darcy realized he was holding on by a very thin thread.  She wondered how long it had been for him, being whole and being intimate with anyone.  

“Let go,” she whispered against his lips.

“Dollbaby, I can---I can get you there,” he panted above her.

“ Let go ,” she repeated.  “Let go for me, please?”

Another strangled moan from him and another drop of sweat on his brow.  He stared down at her and she put every ounce of love in her reverent gaze, kissing his chin twice for good measure.  His smile back at her was distracted, but genuine and she couldn’t help the stuttered cry of surprise as he doubled his pace, the rhythm of his thrusts into her going erratic.  

“So good, so good,” he whispered.  “You feel so good, Pet.”

She agreed with his sentiments, it really did feel amazing, and she could feel it building once more, the heavy coil reaching out from her center to the rest of her as he continued his frenetic thrusts.  She could feel it building again, just within the reach of her fingertips…

“ Fuck ,” Bucky croaked out, burying himself inside of her.  His face scrunched up adorably, his eyes going closed as he shook with the force of his orgasm.  “Oh hell, oh god damn, dollbaby, that’s---oh god damn.”

“Yeah?” Darcy nodded.  She waited until he caught his breath again, enjoying the warm feeling of his considerable release as he continued to twitch inside of her before she asked,   “I’m that good?”

“So good,” Bucky praised, placing his sweaty forehead against hers. “I didn’t get you there again, Darce---”

“I’m okay,” Darcy promised.  

“I will.  Just, just give me a second,” Bucky swallowed slowly.  “Just---just don’t tell Steve I didn’t--- I didn’t make it good for you.”

“Oh lord,” Darcy laughed.  “Now it’ll be the first thing out of my mouth when I meet him.   Hello Captain America, nice to see you again.  By the way, did Bucky Barnes make you orgasm the first time he made sweet sweet love to you?”

“Oh hell, dollbaby.  Don’t do that.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Fourteen: Day to Day

"Oh fucking hell..."

The whispered curse and the moan that followed it were foreign to Steve's ears.  He hadn't made a sound like that in a very long time, after all.  Probably since 1945, his last fleeting moment with Peggy, hasty and fast and messy in a weapons storage shed back in London before they had taken off for the last battle with Hydra.  That last private moment between them, so soon after Bucky's fall from the train, had been a tangled mix of tear stained cheeks, desperation and the need on both of their parts to reassure themselves that they were still there.  That Steve hadn't fallen from the train after Bucky and that Peggy had not been torn away from him too was confirmed in intense, passionate union.

Now, as he writhed in the ultra deluxe sheets of his bed, the high thread count still feeling too heavy and too much against his heated skin, he wasn't full of grief or longing or desperation.  He felt like he was flying high on a cloud, every inhale was exhilaration and every exhale was a heavy, full, complete feeling that had the butterflies in his gut swirling.  

He didn't know where it was coming from, but it had been coming quite often over the last few days, at the most inopportune times.  He'd had to let a training session out early at the base when he'd been so overcome with desire that he had not been able to see straight.  And he had barely made it back to his room before he'd dirtied his pants with his heavy release, untouched and unassisted, his back against his front door and his chest heaving with the effort of breathing as his climax eased but then quickly built right back up.

Super soldier serum was one thing, but he'd still never been gifted with multiple orgasms before.  He had inspired them quite a few times with his head between olive drab clad thighs, clever fingers curling and stretching, but he had never actually gotten to feel that rapid fire staccato feeling before.  It was overwhelming and exhausting and amazing .

If there had been some kind of schedule to it, he might have been able to feel alright bringing it up to Doctor Rivera, but as it currently stood, he had no control over when it would hit.  But he knew it hit a few times a day.  Quick spikes of pleasure, or long drawn out episodes where he'd feel his peak hit over and over again.  

This morning, he'd woken up painfully hard, sweating and twisted up in his sheets.  Happy to have managed to rid himself of clothing before hitting the hay the night before, he didn't even have to rid himself of boxer briefs as his hips strained on the bed, his considerable hardened length tenting his bedsheet.

"Shit," he moaned out again as the muscles in his stomach tensed as his breath stuttered on a wave of deep pleasure.

He didn't even have to touch himself, he'd become practiced enough in the feeling of it in the last week to know he didn't.  When he did touch, it felt like too much and not enough at the same time.  The arousal he was feeling was somehow different than what he normally felt.  It was a feeling of hot fullness, of decadent pushing and pulling and jolts of swirling pleasure deep in his gut.  His body would push his hips up on its own accord, erection twitching but he didn't need contact.

Steve didn't really want to tell anyone about this new development.  Not only would it be embarrassing to explain, but he was also hard pressed to want any of it to end.  It felt lovely as his vision went a little sideways and jolts of pleasure ran up and down his spine.  He planted his feet on the bed and thrust up into nothing, the images of lines of hard muscle and soft supple curves dancing behind his eyelids as his body seized and fists clenched in the bedsheets, tearing bits off.

He couldn't control what was coming out of his mouth and wouldn't be able to recall it later, but he knew it was loud and he knew it was filthy and he knew Bucky's name was a part of it.

" Jesus fucking Christ," he blasphemed as he tried to catch his breath, the bedsheet around his waist now sticky and wet.  He could finally think clearly, but now he was exhausted and just wanted to sleep, despite the fact that he had a full schedule ahead of him to prepare to leave for Africa.  

Just when he thought he could get up and get to the shower, he felt the pull again low in his gut, a fluttering of warmth and he knew another mysterious sensual round was about to start up.  

"Shit, I've got to figure out how to block this off."

Life in Paris settled pretty quickly for Darcy and James.  That first time when James had woken up just a few hours after making love to her, Darcy had been petting his hair as he rested his face against her bare breast.  She'd been looking at him with unfettered adoration, and James swore he could have lived off the look from her for years if he had to.  

The Soldier had come to the forefront then, less blended in with the other parts in James' brain and he'd insisted on spending the next twenty-four minutes making up the grievous error that he'd made in fulfilling his lovely Pet's needs a few hours ago.  He'd only stopped tasting her and coaxing her to shivering finishes with his fingers when she'd pushed him away and whined about needing food.

It hadn't mattered that it was nearly ten at night, they got dressed, with James avidly trying to keep Darcy undressed for as long as possible, swiping the shirt she pulled out and holding it behind his back as she wiggled and jiggled and attempted to get it back from him.  They managed to get to an old, cramped little cafe restaurant (au Pied de Fouet) just before close.  James and his bulk could barely fit through the door, he had to turn sideways to slip in and he gave a charming smile to the waiter and spouted off a lot of French.

Whatever he had said had worked, and he handed over a few euros in exchange for two bursting bags full of food.  They found a place to sit outside, watching the still busy streets full of tourists as they ate heavenly, buttery food, and eventually, James wrapped a concealed left arm around Darcy and led her back home.

It became a habit over the next week.  They slept and did so much more in bed, and every other square inch of their spartan little studio apartment, and then would meander into Paris, taking in the sights (Darcy), looking out for trouble (James), and eating at every little cafe they could find.

It was a nice life, and Darcy felt she could get used to it.  She wanted to go to museums, but James wrinkled his nose and patted her head and told her, ‘ Next time, we'll have Steve take you .’

It was jarring on the seventh day of their stay, when James packed her backpack and instead of leading her around Paris, he took her to a train station, heading to a rural village in Italy.  It was strange to not go about her now normal life of leisure with James spoiling her.

"Dude.  You are really slacking on your wing-manning."

Sam looked up at Tony with narrowed eyes, his lips pinching together in an annoyed way as the billionaire breezed through Sam's office space, colored sunglasses on his face, a look of disinterested boredom painting his manscaped face.

"Dude.  You are really slacking on your human interaction skills," Sam retorted.  "I thought we all talked about you trying to make an effort since Thor's offworld, and Viz looks up to you regarding human interaction.  He's already a fucking robot-man, at least have him be a nice robot and not one that's gonna melt my face off for science's sake."

"Fuck you, alright," Tony sassed back.  "Viz is the epitome of human grace and interaction."

Sam's phone chirped and he picked it up to see a text from Wanda.  Sam let out of a huff of disbelief and held the display up to Tony.

"He's the epitome of human grace and interaction, which is why Steve's gonna KILL him for walking through his bedroom wall and catching him---" Sam hesitated there, much to Tony's great delight.  The younger man shrugged and sighed, "Caught him in a delicate situation?"

Tony's grin could have split his face in half.

"Vision found him in the throes of passion," Tony corrected Sam with gleeful patience.  "Vision had been concerned due to the sounds that our good virtuous Captain was making in his sleep.  Sounded almost pained---although I've reviewed the tapes, and it wasn't pained."

"Do you have an off button, because I know where Vision's is," Sam sassed back.  He'd threatened to accidentally yank out the mind stone on more than one occasion when Vision had gotten on his and everyone else's last nerve.  Natasha had rewarded him once with a lingering touch on the small of his back when the android being had even gotten her to the point of annoyance with his incessant questioning of everything.

"I'm just saying, someone needs to find Cap a super friendly date while he waits for Barnes to fill the swiss cheese holes in his head and come back home to bone him," Tony shrugged.  "Friday tells me Natalie is trying to find somebody, but she won't tell me who."

"Cause it's none of your business?" Sam ventured, still clearly annoyed.

"See, that's a funny thing, because I fund everything, including those paperclips you’re bending due to your own sexual buildup---everything that happens here is kind of my business," Tony shrugged.  "So who is it?  The brunette from analytics?  The chick from the coffee cart that comes on Tuesday mornings?"

Sam was a stonewall of silence.  Tony actually wrinkled his nose in annoyance before turning on his heel and walking out of the man's office.

"I'll find out eventually. I always do!"

"You wanted to see me, Miss Romanoff?"

Natasha turned off her tablet that she had been working on and gave a surprisingly pleasant smile to the slightly disheveled scientist who had walked into the Avenger's common room warily.  Erik Selvig worked at the Avenger's facility, but aside from Thor and Clint, he didn't try to have that much contact with the super heroes.   Clint had explained it as a feeling of guilt over what had happened with Loki all of those years ago.  

No one really wanted to force the matter, all parties concerned could understand that level of guilt.  

"Thank you for coming to see me," she gestured to the fresh pot of coffee she had made and grabbed two mugs.  "How do you take it?"

"I don't," Erik waved his hands slightly before placing one on his heart.  "High blood pressure and caffeine don't always mix well."

Natasha nodded and went about pouring herself a mug before opening the tea shelf that Wanda kept meticulous, she pulled out the decaf options before going to put the kettle on..

"No offense meant, Miss Romanoff, but what exactly did you need from me?" Erik wondered.  "Most of my work deals with astrophysical phenomena, which in't exactly your area of expertise."

"No, it's not," Natasha agreed, going back to her tablet and projecting an image.  It was a really well done sketch in color, of a young woman with an irritated look on her face, dark, curling hair tumbling over her shoulders, pouting lips pushed in a frown.

"Darcy," Erik whispered, staring at the image in wonder.  He chuckled and shook his head, "That was her exact expression when she had realized SHIELD had stolen her stupid ipod."

"I still haven't been able to track that down," Natasha admitted.  "Whoever took it wasn't willing to part with Miss Lewis' eclectic musical tastes."

"Hmm," Erik nodded, picking out a blend of tea and getting it ready for the boiling water.  He looked up at Natasha hopefully and wondered in a quiet voice, "Has she gotten into trouble?  Is she being brought back to this world of superheroes and alien invasions?"

"Dr. Selvig," Natasha said softly.  "What made you call SHIELD back in 2014?"

"She had promised me that she would check in every month or so," Erik shrugged.  "I never had a wife, or children of my own.  Science was always my mistress.  But Jane and Darcy, although they are complete opposites, they were like my two girls."

Natasha didn't ask another question as Erik went over his memories and thoughts.  He was clearly sad, clearly MISSED Darcy very much.  But he had the resigned air of a father who knew that his daughter had had to go away for the greater good, no matter how sad it had made him.

"She saved me," Erik sighed.  "I was so hopelessly lost after Loki.  And she found me and saved me.  She is a young, brave, stubborn little fool of a girl, and she didn't deserve what SHIELD gave her.  She couldn't finish her degree, she couldn't find employment other than taking care of Jane.  And while I know Jane appreciated Darcy's help in her own way, she never really made an effort to help Darcy in turn."

"I've found that the many geniuses in my life rarely have the brain capacity to think of ways to help other people who don't outright ask for it," Natasha put in.  "I don't blame them for it, but it's why having someone like Darcy around makes things---better."

"Yes, better," Erik nodded.  "I wanted to make sure she was alright.  I owe Darcy too much to put into quantifiable measurements."

"What did SHIELD tell you on that first call?" Natasha asked gently.  

"I was transferred to four different agents on that first call, the first three couldn't have cared less about a girl that had gone missing," Erik said bitterly.  "A girl that had helped to save the world with her own bravery and cleverness.  They treated her and my inquiry of her well being as an annoyance."

"I'm sorry," Natasha said genuinely.

"The fourth agent told me she'd been relocated," Erik recalled.  "I didn't want to believe it.  I didn't think she would---abandon us, no matter how ungrateful myself or Jane might have appeared.  One of the reasons I called was because I had just been offered the guest lecturer position at Oxford, and wanted to see if she might like to go back to England as my assistant, you know."

"I didn't know that," Natasha admitted, taking the whistling kettle off of the burner and pouring it in the mug that Selvig held out to her.

"Darcy can make the most soothing cups of tea," Erik smiled, looking down as the clear water went brown and fragrant.  "She would never drink the stuff, but she had a knack for getting the right combination."

"Dr. Selvig, you called again, after the fall of SHIELD," Natasha prodded.

"Well, can you blame me?" Erik laughed bitterly.  "You had just revealed to the world that half of your trustworthy organization was full of snakes and liars and Hydra ."

"You suspected that the person who gave you the information was lying," Natasha nodded.

"I had read my own file, found that it was a Hydra directive to place me in the madhouse," Erik spat out.  "Jane's own file contained plans for her eventual capture and control.  And Darcy's file---"

"Was empty," Natasha finished.

"Her name and nothing else," Erik nodded.  "Suspicious, is it not?  SHIELD should want to know where the people are that hold information that  could be used against them.  But then she called and left me a message, and---and I realized I was being selfish, trying to pull her back into such a mess."

"What did she say?" Natasha asked quietly.  

Erik dug into his pocket and pulled out an older model iphone, which was supposedly forbidden on Stark property.  Erik clearly had defied that rule, and had also refused to give up a very old phone.  He pulled up his voicemails and played one of the few saved messages and suddenly Darcy's voice was on speaker phone, echoing against the stainless steel appliances of the little kitchen area.

'Hey, so I'm sorry that I just took off, but this was my only chance.  Just---stop, alright?  I'm okay.  I'm happy.  Leave me alone, please?  I don't want to spend my life like that anymore.  It's not right and it's not fair.  I'm going to be happy where I'm at, where people appreciate me.  So---yeah.  Bye."

"I didn't play the message for Jane," Erik admitted, sipping absently at his tea.  "I was properly chastised by it, but didn't have the heart to do the same to Jane.  When she returned in 2015, and saw that Darcy was well and truly gone, she was lost.  She's still a little lost, although she'll never admit it."

"I've seen," Natasha admitted.  She took a very slow breath, readying herself for Erik's reaction.  He needed to know, clearly.  "Dr. Selvig, I believe that Darcy was NOT moved into witness protection.  SHIELD never actually participated in such activities."

"But---" he attempted to interrupt, slamming his mug down on the countertop, his eyes going wide with intense worry.

"I believe that Hydra had been planning on trying to kidnap Darcy the moment she came under SHIELD's radar, in hopes of accessing Jane's research or leveraging her well being, and then after London, they found their opportunity," Natasha said quickly.  

"Is she alright?!" Erik asked desperately, quick tears making his wild eyes glassy.  

"The sketch is of her from a few weeks ago in Canada," Natasha gestured to the sketch.  "She was rescued from a Hydra facility a little over two months ago after being kept by them for over five hundred days."

Erik pressed a shaking hand to his mouth as he shook his head back and forth.

"I want to thank you, Dr. Selvig," Natasha said softly.  "For thinking of her, for raising the alarm."

"I should have demanded to speak to her, to try and find out---"

"No, there are much more nefarious people at work here, who worked very hard to make sure that Darcy wouldn't have been looked for," Natasha assured him.  "But I can promise you, that she's safe now."

"When can I see her--or speak to her?"

"Not for a little while yet," Natasha admitted.  "But she's safe, I promise you.  And she'll be home soon enough.  And Dr. Selvig, I'd appreciate if if we could keep this between us.  I'm not ready to have her name out there yet, or what's happened to her."

"Of course.  W-What did they do to her?" Erik whispered, his voice breaking as he wiped tears from his cheeks.

"I'm not sure of everything yet, but I'm going to find out."

The Hydra facility in Italy was even easier to infiltrate than the ones they had encountered in Canada.  The men at this facility were completely off guard, taking a smoke break of all things when Darcy and James got within sniping distance.  Apparently, Hydra had thought the vengeance seeking duo would have headed to American bases instead.  

When they finished taking the information from the computers and then destroying the place, they took a short walk to the nearest train station, ready to head home after a short day of work.

"I can't believe we came to Italy and we didn't eat food," Darcy sighed as she leaned into James.  "Half of the reason to go to Europe is to eat."

"You know, before you came along, I didn't much care about what kind of food I ate, so long as I had food to eat," James smiled at her.

"I'm a food enthusiast," Darcy gave him a little grin.  "It's how I stay so plump for you, Soldier."

"Hmmm," James looked her over with the Soldier's covetous, greedy leer, his hand that had been around her waist going lower and squeezing an ample hip.  "You do realize that Italy doesn't have anything to offer that is similar to your Pizza Hut, right?"

"Ha ha," Darcy rolled her eyes at him as he led her down a little dusty lane, away from the train station.  Her body went rigid and while her face kept resolutely forward, her eyes darted here, there and everywhere.  

If James was taking them off their path, that meant something bad was on its way.  She could feel herself breaking out in a cold sweat at the sudden terror going through her.  They were in a wide open space, but there were lots of people who could be hurt in the crossfire.  She knew that James could take on dozens of men by himself, she knew he was entirely capable, but she wanted to help in any way she could.  

She only hoped the baton she had used on three of the smoking Hydra goons would have some kind of charge to be able to be of assistance.  She had eschewed knives ever since what had happened with Rollins had---happened.  

"Pet, what's the matter?" James  wondered, feeling her tense in his hold.  Her panic was silent but he could feel it raising his guard.

"You tell me," Darcy demanded as they stopped in front of an incredibly rustic, incredibly small restaurant.  "Why'd we not go to the station?"

"Dollbaby, I saw this place and thought I'd get you a little Italian food before we go home," James smiled at her.  He leaned in and kissed the tip of her nose.  "I'm sorry, Pet, I should have said something, but this old idiot likes to be spontaneous sometimes.  I know you're not used to that."

"No, you haven't been all that spontaneous before, except for, you know, finding me and taking me with you," Darcy admitted.

"And falling in love with you," James said softly.

"Yeah," Darcy was a little breathless in her wonderment as she stared up at him with nothing but worship.

James felt all the tension bleed from him immediately, replaced with a buoyancy of sorts.  He'd only ever had that feeling with Darcy.  If a feeling could be a life preserver, then that's what this was:  happiness and safety and warmth, all wrapped up in the girl smiling up at him.  James knew that Steve also made him happy, but this felt a little different.  It felt like what SHE was feeling, not only what James was feeling.  

"If they don't have Pizza Hut, they at least have pizza right?" Darcy gave him a playful little smirk, knowing damn well that they probably did NOT have pizza.  

"I will get you your Pizza Hut when we return home," James promised.  

"And plums so I can make those little cakes we had in Germany," Darcy bartered.  

"What am I getting out of all this, dollbaby?" James wondered playfully as he took her hand and led her into the little restaurant that only had two other customers in it.  They took a seat and looked at the menu that was written in chalk up on the board.  It didn't much matter what was on the menu, they'd probably be trying a little of everything.

"My ever lasting love and gratitude?" Darcy offered.

"And unlimited kisses?" James prodded.

"Always."

Chapter Text

Chapter Fifteen: The Virgin Darcy

James was getting a little frustrated at this point.  Not with his life, his life was actually pretty fantastic, if missing a little fatheaded  stubborn stupidity and muscle.  He loved the little nest of a home he'd created with Darcy.  He loved spending every day with her.  He loved spending every night with her.  He  knew that as non-negotiable as eventually having Steve back in his life was, then forever having Darcy in his life was just as non-negotiable.

He worried a lot about Steve and Darcy just not clicking.  One third of him thought the idea ridiculous, for of course they'd get along like a house on fire.  Another third of him thought the idea ridiculous, because in no way was the Captain good enough for his Pet.  James hoped the bickering factions of his brain would eventually come together on the idea of Steve Rogers, because it was becoming increasingly apparent that time was running out on their Steve-free adventure.

It was March before he knew it.  Darcy was approximately three months pregnant, and James was constantly floored at just how gorgeous she was.  Her previously soft belly was now rounded and noticeable, especially when she was undressed.  And to be honest, whenever they were home, she was undressed an awful lot.  He wasn't going to be comparing her to the Virgin Mary anymore, that was for sure, having had her on every available surface in their little studio apartment.  She was discovering all things about what she liked, sexually, and he was discovering that he would do just about anything for her.

Including going back to New York.  She only had enough pills to last her another seven weeks, and when they were through, Dr. Carla Rivera had told him that she would need something more, as well as bi-weekly checkups.

James looked over the latest file he had pulled, this time from Spain.  It was another dead end.  Just like Italy.  None of the super soldiers that had been created over two decades ago had provided the genetic samples to be put on ice.  They had been deemed too dangerous prior to their last freeze, too unpredictable.  Too much like monsters.

There was only one more file to obtain in regards to the rabid monsters that the Winter Soldier had a hand in creating.  From what James could gather, it was in England, and he wanted to make a nice trip out of it for his Pet, while avoiding all the places in London that she had already declared she had never wanted to see again.  

If the final file wouldn't give information about Darcy's child, James didn't quite know what he would do.  

There were two other options aside from himself and the super soldiers that had been put into cold sleep so long ago in Siberia.  But they were both a longshot, to be sure.  

"I think I got it right this time!" Darcy called out, rushing from the small kitchen to the main room that James had been working in.  She had a plate with a large, still warm bundt cake on it, plums that were caramelized and sure to burn the roof of his mouth laying atop a golden sponge cake.  She excitedly handed him a fork and nodded. " Try it, try it."

James smiled and carefully took the fork to the cake, pulling off a piece and blowing on it patiently as Darcy watched him very very excited.  She'd made plum cakes nearly every day for two weeks, trying to recreate what she had eaten in Germany.  Every try had been delicious in its own right, and James would have eaten it had it not been delicious, but she still claimed that she couldn't quite get it right.  

The cake was moist and buttery, with the sauce of the cooked plums leaking into it, along with a hint of cognac, which James could appreciate.  But it was not her German plum cake by a long shot.  

"Delicious, Pet," Bucky assured her.

"But not the same," Darcy deflated.

"But STILL delicious," Bucky assured her.  "Maybe it's because the plums aren't in full season yet.  We'll have better luck further into Spring, I promise."

Darcy seemed to be placated by that, and he could feel her happiness at the idea that they might still be right where they were later in the Spring.  She took his tasting fork and went scurrying off back to the kitchen, intent on writing down what had worked and what had not.  

James marveled for a moment on how good she was.  How she managed to go through every day, knowing what she had gone through.  Knowing that the baby she carried was not of her direct choosing, and knowing that half of its DNA could have very well come from an out of control, serum enhanced monster.

Or a megalomaniac.

James sighed and pulled up the schematics for the Hydra facility in England.  The last file would have the answers.  Because he refused to believe that Hydra would have the ability to inseminate Darcy with the seed of the Devil himself.  His Pet was resilient, but he didn't want to discover how she would handle the possibility that the baby she carried was the Red Skull's.

"Romanoff, where are you?"

Natasha rolled her eyes fondly as Steve's voice practically shouted at her over the phone.  She walked through the permanent care clinic, beds filled with those that were no longer able to care for themselves, dressed as a run of the mill social worker, her cell phone to her ear.

"Some of us have real work to do, Rogers," Natasha said with as much patience as she could muster.

"You do have real work to do, back in New York, with the Avengers," Steve reminded her.  "We leave for Africa in two weeks, and you know that Vision isn't ready---"

"Vision will NEVER be ready for the kind of work we need to do in Africa," Natasha assured him as she scanned her badge to open the locked doors to the mental trauma ward of the clinic.  She nodded at the guard on duty with a small smile before walking onto her destination.  "Best to just leave him at home."

"But---"

"Not every tool we wield will be used for every task," Natasha reminded him.  "We'll focus on Wanda, and leave Vis at home this time.  Relax. It'll be NICE to not have him pontificating for once."

"Fine," Steve said shortly.  "What are you doing anyway?  I didn't see anything on the docket for you."

"I have my own side projects," Natasha said nonchalantly.  "Trying to find you a date, for one."

"Romanoff, I told you not to go overboard," Steve reminded her.

"I'm really not," Natasha promised as she walked right into a private room where a man was strapped to the bed.  "Talk to you soon."

She hung up the phone and took a few more steps closer to the bed, a neutral smile on her lips only as green eyes took in everything around the room in clinical interest.  The man in question was physically a wreck.  He was covered in intricate scars, his nose looked twisted, having been so violently broken six or seven months ago.  His eye had never recovered from the vicious beating, and was nearly swollen shut still.

"Herr Mitger," Natasha nodded.  "How is that Hail Hydra business working out for you?"

Mitger began to panic at Natasha's words, thrashing around in the bed and calling out sounds with vocal chords that were forever changed.  Natasha had spent a lot of time tracking this man down.  

He had been the Hydra operative in charge of the wiping procedure performed on the Winter Soldier.  He controlled the pain that was constantly inflicted upon James Barnes for seventy years.   Well, he had done so for thirty of those years, taking over for his father before him, another Hydra faithful.  

Retta Archie, Steve's former assistant, and her band of merry Hydra crushing senior citizens had been instrumental in tracking the man down.  Afterall, someone had to pay for the care of the physically and mentally destroyed Hydra man thrashing around on the bed.  Retta and her team investigated Hydra money, finding where it branched out to and branched out from.  

Mitger had been left for dead by James Barnes exactly one year after the fall of Hydra.  Only he hadn't quite been dead.  Natasha still didn't know if that was by the Winter Soldier's design or not.  Mitger certainly was not living life anylonger.  

But he was suffering.

"Do you recognize this woman?" Natasha held up the sketch of Darcy, her anger a small, pretty thing.

Mitger calmed instantly and smiled.

"Mary," he gasped out.  "Holy Mother..."

The look on his face wasn't that of reverence that the pious would usually display .  While his eyes held the madness that he had had when Natasha had walked in, there was a little snarl on his lips, greedy and disgusting, a covetous twisted expression on his face.

"Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope," he began in a whisper, his voice increasing in volume with every word.  "To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.  Turn then---"

"Enough," Natasha said sternly, her voice just sharp enough to make Mitger take pause. He was about to open his mouth again, but she held the picture in front of his nose, her hand going to his neck and pressing against a pressure point with considerable strength.  "Did you wipe her?"

"Nothing to wipe, all clean, beautiful and perfect," Mitger grinned ferally.  "Turn the, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us and after this our exile---"

Natasha wasn't a religious person.  You didn't go through the hell and trauma that she went through in her long life and come out the other side with a belief in one God.  Add the fact that Thor existed to the mix, and it seemed highly unlikely that there was just one God.  But that didn't mean she was ignorant.  She had heard girls in the Red Room, girls who never lasted very long at all, whispering fervent prayers to the Virgin Mary every night, praying for an impossible miracle.

"She was a virgin," Natasha blinked as Mitger strained against her hold on him and the straps holding him down, attempting to get a finger on the sketch of Darcy.  

"And after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb Jesus," Mitger whispered, sounding equal parts worshipful and unhinged.  "O clement, o loving, o sweet Virgin Mary. Amen."

Natasha's stomach turned as a possibility unveiled itself in her brain.  She'd not wanted to consider it before, but it had sat there in the ever growing file on Darcy Lewis that she kept in her mind, covered and banished to the corner.  Now the sheet had been violently yanked from it, and suddenly it was the only thing she could think of.  

Darcy Lewis.  Taken.  Forgotten.  Violated in the worst of ways.  

"Hail---"

Natasha moved her hand, a powerful fist striking what little remained of Mitger's rebuilt vocal chords, rendering them useless once more.  She moved quickly, yanking the electrical supply to the monitoring system before pulling out the IV's connected to Mitger as well as the small machine that was intended to keep his badly damaged liver working.  She looked down at the man with pure anger on her face.

"I won't allow her child to be used by anything that Hydra has left.  I promise you that, go to hell knowing that you all failed."

"Fair warning, I might just throw my hands up in the air and say WHEEEE for the next hour."

James snorted with laughter as he carefully placed his and Darcy's bags in easily accessible places as they got on the high speed train that would take them very quickly across the channel to London.  His eye caught on a small square of paper he had placed in his backpack weeks ago on their first train ride in Europe.  He pulled it out and stared at the last name on the card as he sat down next to Darcy, his left arm automatically going up for when she yanked up the seat divider and cuddled into him indiscriminately.

"What's that?" she whispered.

"Morita," James whispered.

"Like---the Howling Commando?" Darcy wondered.

Bucky gave her a humored look of suspicion.  "Have I got a Howlie girl on my hands?"

"Rude," Darcy accused turning her head against him and BITING him on his pectoral muscle.  "My bubbe was obsessed with all of you.  Like all the kids who were RESCUED by you guys in 1944 at---"

"At Treblinka," Bucky finished for her.  He remembered the Nazi concentration camp.  He remembered the Howlies teaming up with the Russians and trying to liberate the labor camp and killing center. He drew in a slow breath and shook his head in wonder, before placing a reverent kiss against the top of her head, sniffing lightly at the shampoo.  They used the same shampoo, but for some reason, it smelled so much better on Darcy than himself.  

"Bubbe was eleven at the time.  They tried to kill everyone before the Russians got there, she had to watch---she had to watch everyone else die," Darcy recounted with tears in her eyes.  Her expression turned bitter and she drew in a shaky breath,  "Looks like a few decades had them playing the same games, stealing Lewis girls and locking them up and doing whatever they wanted while the rest of the world spun madly on.  Hydra assholes, am I right?"

Her words were meant to be glib, but they seemed to have a tinge of real hurt there.  It was the first time she'd had that kind of reaction to Hydra, or even spoken out loud about what Hydra had done.  Bucky wondered if she felt like she could now, seeing as he was getting so much better, so quickly, in the mental department.   It barely felt like he was broken in three anymore.  His voice slid between James, Bucky and the Soldier so easily, as their three separate missions in life fell to the wayside and became one concentrated mission.  Keep Darcy safe.  Keep Darcy happy.  Keep Darcy loved.  

Maybe she noticed it too, how there weren't any jarring switches anymore between accents and countenances.  How JAMES started becoming just a blended version of Bucky and the Soldier.  It was a little jarring to think that he now felt ready to turn himself into Steve, mentally.  

He was just waiting on Darcy to give the okay.

It didn't even matter that he hadn't gotten all of the information needed to figure out who the father of Darcy's baby was.  And if this last super soldier's file didn't give him the answer he wanted, Bucky wasn't so sure on how much further they should dig.  There were only two other options left in the super serum category.  And it didn't seem likely that Hydra would have chosen Steven Rogers to father a legacy of Hydra warriors, even if they had access to his genetic material.  Given a choice, they would have certainly inseminated Darcy with a much more terrifying option.

Bucky would rather be thrown into the wipe chair than to have to find out and then reveal to Darcy that her baby might be fathered by the Red Skull.  So if this last file didn't have the answers he needed and so desperately wanted at this point, he might even try to convince Darcy that they could rendezvous with Steve, just for a meeting.  Something easy and safe.  Just to add that extra layer of security for her.  Just to hopefully give her one more wall of strength to love, safety and happiness to lessen the blow of what their baby might be.

"Bubbe thought Morita was the most handsome, said he had a kind smile and a sharp tongue," Darcy continued on, pulling the card out of Bucky's hands and reading it carefully.  "So, is this guy his son?"

"Grandson," Bucky corrected.  "Pet, if we ever get separated---"

"If we ever get separated, lord help the person who separated us," Darcy interrupted.  She wrinkled her nose, "I'll lift my no stabbing policy."

"If I should be compromised, or taken from you," Bucky continued.  He smiled at her fondly when she tensed and looked mutinous.  "Dollbaby, it could happen.  But just know that if it does happen, and Steve isn't there to protect you...you can go to this guy, and he will get you to Steve."

"Who says I want to be gotten to Steve?" Darcy pouted petulantly.  "Boring old man is what he is."

"I'm a year older than him, Pet," Bucky reminded her with the beginnings of a sly smirk on his face.  She was still pouting, so he forced himself to become serious and offer, "If you are uncomfortable with talk like that, you tell me, and I'll put the brakes on."

"I didn't---"

"I promise you, dollbaby, that you and I ain't got nothing to worry about.  I love you, and I'm gonna keep on doing that forever, whether things work out favorably for you and Steve or not," Bucky promised, his lips hitting her hair again.

"Swingers," Darcy muttered, turning her head again and biting at him like a contentious tiny kitten.

"There's no pressure," Bucky assured her.  "We would never---"

"I know," Darcy interrupted.  "I know.  And I just get mad sometimes.  At---everything Avengers, really.  And he wears a big fat A on his head for Avengers."

"Thought that was for America?" Bucky interjected playfully.

"Asshole, it's for asshole," Darcy decided.  "Asshole that wants the Black Widow to set me up on a date with him, except WHOOPS, she's been kidnapped by Hydra and we totally didn't even notice for you know, years.  That kind of makes it difficult---"

Bucky immediately felt her annoyance bleeding into him.  He sat up a little straighter, managing to stare down at her as she seethed and raged about the Avengers.

"He wants a date with you?" Bucky demanded.  "What are you saying, Pet?"

"It was---something the bird dude said.  I was sick, and didn't remember for a while, but I remembered it yesterday in the shower, and I was so pissed," Darcy admitted.  "Apparently, your boyfriend is very much on board with what you want.  Because the bird guy said something about setting Steve up with me faster so he'd back off on the Captain America-ing of it all."

Bucky blinked as he translated the Darcy-speak into something he could more easily digest.  

"That little asshole," Bucky whispered.

"Hmm?" Darcy looked up at him curiously.

"That little asshole," Bucky laughed.  "He was gonna get a date with you, make sure he flaunted it in my face from afar, seeing how pretty and perfect and downright kissable you are, just to try and get me back sooner."

"Bucky, I don't think---"

"No, no, no, that was his plan, I know it," Bucky insisted, shaking his head in amused disbelief.  "He was gonna try to make it all so perfect.  Him and a gorgeous, spitfire of a little dame, just waiting for me to come home and make everything the way we always wanted it."

"SO---I was gonna be Bucky bait?" Darcy smiled, unable to stop herself from liking the sound of that.

"Oh dollbaby, you are Bucky bait.  Wherever you go, I'll follow, I promise."

Chapter Text

Chapter Sixteen: Teamwork

The Hydra facility in London was very different than any of the other bases that both Bucky and Darcy had ever paid a friendly little visit to before.  While the previous hidey holes had been isolated and far off the map of the average citizen, this one was located in a set of apartments in Rowley Way, a housing estate in North West London.  The sprawling housing complex was all harsh cement block and slanted lines, almost beautiful in its terribly efficient ugliness.  

There were PEOPLE everywhere, in and out of their apartments, hanging out and smoking on their identical concrete patios.  This wasn't settled in the quiet, isolated bits of nature that Canada had offered.  This was loud and busy and perfectly hidden amongst the chaos and anonymity a crowd offered.  There was no car traffic thanks to underground parking, which meant that any escape would have to be by foot.  Darcy was confident in Bucky’s ability to get them out fast.

She was a little disappointed there wouldn't be any fun explosions this time, but she'd take solace in the spy games they were currently playing.  Bucky had been careful to drill her on acceptable escape routes as well as tactics to be the least memorable as possible to potential witnesses.  

Public displays of affection made people uncomfortable.

This was why his left hand, expertly veiled, was full out groping her ass in broad daylight as they walked down the brick lane that divided one set of concrete terrace monstrosities from the other set.  They arrived at one smack dab in the middle of the long row of apartments and Darcy looked up at Bucky questioningly before popping up on the tips of her toes and placing a fairly filthy open mouthed kiss to his lips.  

He took the opportunity to bring his right hand up and pull out a small, metal orb he had placed in her jacket pocket, palming it carefully before kissing her back with as much gusto as he ever did.  This section of housing seemed quieter somehow, the two apartments sandwiching the Hydra property were empty, making Bucky wonder if they were thinking about expanding.

"Love you," Darcy whispered against his lips.  She stood flat on her feet and pulled out their phone, pretending to check for messages, but really running a remote program she had managed to magic together that would destroy the surveillance currently running inside the building.  

"Hmm, love you too, Pet," Bucky rumbled, bending and kissing the tip of her nose before turning lazily and walking to the front door, Darcy following behind with her hand clinging to the back of his jacket.  

They meandered to the door and Bucky patted Darcy on her behind before reaching out with the left hand and destroying the doorknob, taking a small step backwards before rushing forward with his left shoulder, and the door gave but didn't fall off its hinges, reinforced as it was.  The pair entered the apartment, the foyer of which looked like any of the other five hundred apartments in the complex, before closing the door calmly behind them, Bucky's left hand jamming the door just hard enough so that a person with average strength couldn’t open it, but someone like Darcy could.

They were silent as they walked to the end of the little entranceway hallway, Bucky in front, his footsteps undetectable and effortless.  Darcy had to go a little slower to keep her tread light, but she never let go of the grip she had on his jacket, her other hand holding her electric baton tight, ready to discharge in a moment's notice.  

Bucky got to the bulletproof, reinforced door at the end of the hallway, and rather than bust in as he had the front door, he knocked, pleasant and friendly as he pleased.  

"Pet," he said tersely, the closest he had gotten to full Soldier in days.  

Darcy reached and pressed a button on his left wrist, loosening the nanotech veil that had been covering his left arm and projecting the image of moving flesh and jacket material alike.  She pulled it off completely, revealing his entire metal left arm, the jacket he wore not having the correct left sleeve.  She then plastered herself to his back, unseen and completely protected by his body just as the door opened and the gunshots began.  

There were only six men in this facility, and only two had come to the door with guns drawn.  Bucky easily deflected the shots with the metal arm before throwing the metal orb into the room.  Darcy ducked around him and let her baton go full blast on the closest body before rapidly going back to her hiding position.  

The gas began to unfurl from the ball as two more men ran into the main room full of computers and Bucky stepped back in concert with Darcy before he yanked the door shut, allowing the gas to do the work so that the noise would be kept to a minimum. He turned, keeping his left hand on the handle of the door so that it stayed firmly shut.  His mouth tilted up as Darcy simply plastered herself to his front, grinning up at him with adorable affection.  

He put his right palm against her cheek, his thumb caressing a dimple before drifting down to her neck and then right down the collar of her t-shirt, fingertips tickling sensitive cleavage as he pulled out a red handkerchief slowly.  One more kiss on her lips before he handed the piece of fabric to her so that she could tie it around her mouth.

"Ready?" he questioned, soft and quiet.

"Always."

Bucky was beginning to notice a few things about his little Pet.  While she absolutely wanted to exact revenge for everything she had gone through under Hydra's hands, as well as everything Bucky had gone through at Hydra's hands, she wasn't quite living up to her potential in the violence category.  A part of him thought there was nothing wrong with that, she didn't need to deal out violence the way he did.  One day she'd have not only him, but also Steve on the other side of her, and she'd never have to lift a finger when it came to protecting herself.

It wasn't for lack of trying though.  She was handy with her baton.  She was a good shot when push came to shove.  She no longer touched the knives, her terrifying incident with spilling the blood of the scum who tried to attack her had left its mark.  She worked well in tandem with him, still.  Protecting herself and giving him a sense of calm in the way she used him as cover without having to be told.  She would dart forward when whoever was coming at them was at their most vulnerable and jab her electric baton into a tender point, letting them drop to the ground, twitching.

As well as he knew Darcy, her likes and dislikes, what made her grin big and bright as the sun, how a lingering touch of his finger to the base of her neck could cause her entire body to shiver, how she felt when she broke all around him into a million beautiful pieces...there was still so much he didn't know, and that was thanks to her own reticence about thinking about what she went through.  There was only so much he could piece together based off of Hydra research.

She had been a virgin.  The knowledge of that and the notion of it she had willingly handed him.  She'd been in cryofreeze.  She'd been tested physically by the devils responsible for her torture.  That was all she was willing to talk about in the past few months.  So he had to find his answers elsewhere.

Hydra had given her a diluted version of the super soldier serum.  One meant to enhance her strengths and diminish her physical weaknesses.  If Bucky were to go by his history with the serum, it took what you already had and made it stronger.  Steve's goodness and idiotic bravery had skyrocketed.  Bucky's own sense of loyalty and quick thinking had increased so much that Hydra had forced that loyalty to them, as well as the brain power that made so much of the Winter Soldier deadly.  The Red Skull had become maniacal and even more focused on his disgusting goals.  Natasha's cool, calm collectedness was the stuff of legend, but so was her ability to shut down everything and focus solely on a mission.  

The other super soldiers' blood lust and ability to dispense pain seemed unending, which was why they were decommissioned shortly after their training and testing began.

Darcy was a mystery though.  Aside from making her strong enough to conceive a child whose other enhanced parent was still a mystery, he had not yet found what inside of her had been amplified.  She was physically  stronger than she had been, but it was far from being on the level of the super soldiers before her.  He liked to think it was that irreverently cheerful little bit of her that was now stronger and more resilient than ever.  But he suspected it was so much more than that.

He watched as another man tried to go for a gun, to hesitate and fumble once he got within ten feet of Bucky and Darcy.  Darcy used that opportunity to dart around Bucky's side, her electric baton extended, zapping the man and bringing him to his knees before Bucky could do more than smile.

There was another mystery there.  And as much as Bucky tried, he couldn't stop that little portion of his brain that had always loved trying to figure out the mystery in the cheap novels he would devour from the first word.  Even if he already had the worrying conundrum of the technical father of Darcy's baby to worry about.  

He kicked at the last attacker, the body sailing in the air and going to a small built in alcove with a weapons closet in it.  

"Play, Pet," Bucky advised.  "I will handle the computer."

"Okay," Darcy fairly chirped as she finally stopped hiding behind Bucky and fairly skipped to the still twitching goon.  She stared down at him and gave a cheeky little wave as the man looked up at her in fright.  "Sup."

He whimpered in response.

Bucky watched as Darcy exuded confidence...irreverence... glee .  She kicked at the man's shoulder to get him to turn on his side before she reached into her back pocket and pulled out a feather she had pulled from one of their pillows (probably Bucky’s).  She sat down on the man's bicep and held the feather against his nose.

"You want to itch it, don't you?" Darcy questioned cheerfully.  "I mean, it's right there, and if your muscles weren't all twitch-a-palooza, and there wasn't electricity overriding your spinal cord, you might be able to, but you can't.  Sad for you, really."

Bucky went about popping the new and improved thumb drive that Darcy had programmed.  He had to do nothing, just insert it into the computer and it would do the work for them.  Most importantly, they never had to have one of the Hydra scum do the work for them.  Bucky walked towards Darcy, as she ruthlessly itched the man's nose.  He crouched down low, giving Darcy a little, proud smile, before focusing his vitriol on the man who was whimpering in his low pain, no blood torture.

"You have a capsule, coward," Bucky demanded in German.

Darcy wrinkled her nose and shrugged, "I prefer the Russian, babe."

Bucky gave her a wink before looking back down at the man, who was wide eyed in fear, tears trickling out of the sides of his eyes and down cheeks that were fairly trembling.  The man was helpless in his fear.  He couldn't move, couldn't make a decision, couldn't do what so many of his former co-workers had done when captured.  

It had happened more than once before.  The first Hydra that Darcy had run into back in Canada, the one she had carved a simple D into with the little knife.  He hadn't used the cyanide capsule in his mouth either to stop the torture or stop himself from betraying Hydra in his dying moments.  The Soldier had thought it was only due to the fact that he had been a true coward.  

But it had been happening more often.  The Hydra that Bucky and Darcy had run into together fell at Bucky's hand, and not their own.  

They were so trapped in their fear, that it overrode their own conditioning.  

As if to reinforce that fact, Darcy cleared her throat and gathered the spit in her mouth, before letting the rather impressive glob of liquid slowly ebb out of her mouth, hanging above the man's ear.  

He wet himself in answer to the perceived threat and whimpered as if he were dying when Darcy's spit landed in his ear.

"Enough playing, Dollbaby," Bucky nodded, getting enough answers for now.  He stood up and picked her up off the man.      

"Awww," Darcy whined, wrapping her arms around Bucky's midsection, missing the fact that he had moved his boot covered foot slightly to land on the Hydra goon's neck, stepping down hard and not relenting as he whined and suffered in his death.  "I mixed cayenne powder with salt and wanted to smear it all over his mouth."

"We'll go to a store and get all the cookies you kept talking about," Bucky promised her.

"Sweet!" Darcy clapped.  Her face turned a little green at the smell of someone's voided bowels wafted through the room.  "Ugh, I gotta---I need fresh air."

"Go, I'll be out in two shakes," Bucky promised as he walked to the weapons closet to empty it of money and bullets.  

"Okay, love you!" Darcy called out as she made a run for it.  

Bucky looked at the computer, watching as hundreds of files copied over to the thumb drive and then destroyed themselves.  His eyes caught on the file he had come for.  The last super soldier created in the 90's.  He automatically went to the last line and sighed.  

' Subject not suitable for genetic harvesting. No samples obtained. '

Bucky sighed as he ripped the drive out, watching as the computer began destroying itself thanks to Darcy's clever programming.  

That only left two in the mystery of the baby's father.  

Steve or the Red Skull.

Darcy breathed deep as she sat on the bottom of the concrete steps to the apartment.  Her feet were solidly on the ground and the air was mostly fresh, making it so much easier not to toss her cookies.  The morning sickness had been disappearing gradually, but certain smells definitely set it off again.  Bucky had been very careful in their little Parisian apartment to make sure that she never got a whiff of any bodily functions.  Not after the first bout of gagging at smelling HER OWN had brought on.  

She stared up at the sky, miserably, wonderfully gray, not a speck of blue to be seen.  There was something to be said for gray skies, really.  Let the song writers praise blue skies, but blue skies usually meant blinding sun.  Right now, all Darcy wanted was cloudy and gray and cool.  No sun to blind her, no fluffy puffs of white clouds to distract her.  

Her thoughts and adrenaline settled and she sighed, closing her eyes and wondering just how many cookies she could stuff into Bucky's bag before they went home.

"Pretty one, moneymaker for sure."

Darcy sat upright, hearing the voice from at least four houses down.  It had been whispered.  She turned and looked and saw two sketchy looking men in their twenties, covered in piercings and tattoos, which would have been fine in Darcy's opinion, had it not been for the way they were looking at her.

They were silent now, but they were moving up on her.  

They weren't Hydra, she could tell that much.  And they certainly weren't SHIELD.  But she knew she was in danger.  She slowly stood and contemplated running back into the apartment, leading them into a bunch of dead bodies, and to their certain death, as she knew Bucky would handle them immediately.  

She squinted her eyes and saw one of them handling a rag as they stared at her.  She didn't know how or why, but she could see exactly what they were aiming to do.  She could feel the sense of pride and accomplishment, knowing that they'd done this before and it would be child's play to do it again.  Find a girl, knock the girl out, sell the girl, reap the rewards.

They'd done it DOZENS of times.  

She was caught in her own head.  It wasn't like a vision, persay.  She wasn't seeing them do these things.  But she could understand exactly how they were feeling.  Their intentions and excitement.  She was in a daze and in less than a minute, she could feel the rag on her face.

"Hey pretty, don't worry, you'll find someone to take care of you," one of them cooed at her.  

Darcy blinked as the chloroform hit her system and she swayed.  

She already had someone to take care of her.  She began to struggle, to move and they used strength to hold her still.  

She had someone.  She knew it.  He'd do anything for her, just as she'd do anything for him.  She had someone.  Someday, she'd have two someones.  Because even if Steve hadn't thought to look for her in two years, now there was Bucky.  She was important to Bucky, she could feel it down in her bones.  Bucky would make sure that Steve looked for her this time.  She felt everything going black very, very slowly and she focused on the feeling, the surety of knowing that if these idiots should get away with their plan, she had two someones who would move heaven and earth to find her again.  It wasn't like before, she wasn't alone.

With her last moment of conscious thought, she had a burst of panic, worried that Bucky would be upset at what had happened.

Steve gasped for air as he sat straight up in bed, looking around in a panic.  It was so dark.  It was terrifying and dark and his heart was hammering in his chest and he didn't know what was going on.  He took deep, even breaths as he tried to step out of bed, dizziness and disorientation taking over.  

The darkness ebbed and he could see the blue display of the clock reading four-forty-two in the morning.  

"Friday?" He demanded, walking as if his limbs weren't quite attached to his brain.  

"Captain Rogers?" Friday questioned as she slowly brought up the lights in his room from darkness to bright.  

"Is everything alright?" Steve asked, feeling foolish for asking, but too desperate, too scared and crazed all of a sudden to care about looking like a fool.

"Everything is fine on base, Cap," Friday assured him.  "All personnel are accounted for---"

"No, is there, check the chatter for all the top alphabet agencies across the world," Steve did a walk of his room before turning and going to his closet, pulling out his go bag and quickly pulling on his uniform.  "Check for anything that matches Sergeant Barnes' profile, any explosions---a---any hostage situations or disasters or---Fuck..."

He felt sick.  Cold and clammy and WORRIED.  

He'd woken like the shot from a gun, his adrenaline at max, his muscles tensing quickly for a fight that wasn't right there in front of his face.  He had the worst feeling of foreboding dread.  Of GUILT.  The clear picture of Bucky in his mind, worried and tense.

"Cap, I'm getting absolutely nothing," Friday announced.  "Can I get anyone to help you?"

"NO---I just---I can't," Steve felt tears sliding from his eyes.  The feeling was so real.  Terror and dread and guilt mixing altogether.  He wanted to fight his way out of something, but to hell if he could remember what he wanted to fight.  He put his shield down and sat back on the bed, his hands finding his forehead as he hunched over and tried to breathe through the panic and adrenaline spike.

"Cap, I really think you should see someone."

Friday's voice was a quiet thing.  Reassuring and kind, something that Steve never quite got over.  She was artificial intelligence.  But she sounded just like his ma, and there were times, like that moment right then, where she ACTED like his ma too.  

This wasn't the first time Steve had woken up in an altered state in the last month.  He'd woken up sick as a dog shortly after Sam's incident in Canada where he'd been electrocuted.  Despite having a perfect immune system, and the inability to contract stomach bugs, he'd found himself sick more often than not.  

And then there had been the unfortunate arousal incident from a few days ago.  

But those incidents hadn't felt real.  They'd been gauzy and fleeting.  Something he could write off as not enough restful sleep, too much stress and an overactive imagination.  

Now---this terror was real, it was palpable.  He was disappointing Bucky and he didn't know why.  He couldn't explain it.  

"Cap?" Friday said softly.  

"Yeah, can you---can you make an appointment with Dr. Carla Rivera?" Steve wondered.  "I think she might be able to help."

Chapter Text

Chapter Seventeen: Vigilantes

Something was wrong.

Bucky could feel it right down to his bones before he even hit the open air.  There was a panic, an undefined, unnecessary feeling of terror blended with guilt.  And underlying all of that just a shred of surety, the thin and narrow safety net that promised it would be made right eventually.  

Darcy wasn't on the stoop as he thought she would be.  

Everything in Bucky, his breath, his pulse, his thoughts, came to a grinding halt.  There was nothing there for a moment, his entire being was put on pause as he looked down at the empty stoop.  No sound, even though the birds were chirping.  No feeling, even though the wind had kicked up a little and it was moving his hair against the back of his neck in tickling little movements.  No breath, even though he would need it, and he found that his lungs were betraying the serum that enhanced him, burning even though they had lasted so much longer without oxygen before.

Thought came back to him in slow whispers.

'Activate her tracker.'

'Call Stevie.'

'Kill everyone until my Pet is in my arms again.'

'Call Stevie.  Call him so he can help before anyone hurts her.'

There was a flash of movement from a few houses down and just like that, the entire world came rushing back like the bang from a gun.  He drew in a harsh breath that was bordering on something sounding like a growl, his entire countenance went murderously angry and his legs set off quickly, jumping down the steep set of stairs and rushing four houses down in a blur.  

He didn't go blank this time.  Usually when the anger invaded his vision with swirls of crimson red and murky black, his brain never registered what his body was doing.  It had happened when he had destroyed the chairs used to wipe him.  It had happened when he had obliterated the skull of the coward that Darcy had stabbed back in Canada.  But this time, there was no annoying loss of time, blankness before he would come back to himself with blood on his hands.  

He saw himself kicking the front door to the apartment in, he saw the chaos of a group of young men reaching for guns to retaliate.  He saw Darcy being dropped haphazardly to a couch that already held another girl who appeared sluggish and drugged, tied up sloppily.  He watched as his hands became a blur of violent activity.  He felt a neck snap.  He felt the weight of the gun he had pulled from one of the men, felt the satisfying pull of the trigger.  Once, twice, three times.  

The last man, the oldest and most haggard looking, reddish hair thinning on the top of his head stumbled towards the couch, intent on finding some leverage with one of the girls against the angry, feral man who had destroyed his entire crew in less than thirty seconds.  

Bucky's eyes slid to Darcy, who was groggy and stirring.  He realized they must have chloroformed her, but that wouldn't last long on the serum enhanced Darcy.  Big eyes the color of the beautiful sea blinked open slowly and she looked around in a panic that Bucky could feel before her sight set on him and she managed the smallest, softest smile.  

Bucky could see everything, he didn't lose focus.  And he realized that it was thanks to the fact that every part of his brain was working in harmony at that moment.  It had happened just once before since his fall in 1945.  When he had dove into the water of the Potomac to save Steve.  

The look on Darcy's face was like a vial full of Hydra's most relaxing psychotropics being pushed into his veins.  No words were spoken, but Bucky knew what she was saying.  

'I knew it.  I know you'd come.'

And he did.  And he would.  He would protect her to his last breath, no matter the cost.  He would always ensure that she was safe.  

The balding man who had tried to take his girl, who had obviously been working at taking a lot of girls, made a sluggish movement to reach down and grab Darcy by the hair, she was an anchor of safety for a desperate man.  Bucky was on the idiot in a second, whipping the cheap gun against the man's temple and knocking him to the opposite wall of the apartment.  

He followed, left and right fists punching against the man's midsection with equal power.  

'Keep him alive, pal.'

'He will be far more tortured as a vegetable.'

'I was thinking he could tell the authorities where the other girls were, but yeah, that too.'

Darcy's hands were suddenly on Bucky's back, immediately stopping him from pulling another punch and destroying the man's internal organs completely.  Bucky took a step back and a slow breath pushed through his parted lips.  

"M'okay," she whispered.  

"Yeah?" Bucky questioned.

"Knew you'd find me," Darcy nodded.  She sighed happily when Bucky turned and wrapped her up in an embrace.  "I think these guys do this---professionally?"

"Yes," Bucky's eyes settled on the woman already on the couch.  "I'll---we'll call someone to come and clean it up and fix it."

"Are you kidding me?"

Steve tensed and looked up from his preparations on the quinjet.  They were due to leave for Africa in a day, hoping to track down Rumlow while simultaneously working on a few of Wanda's weak spots in the field.  He hadn't been able to go back to sleep that morning when he had woken up in a blind panic.  The feeling had faded almost as quickly as it had come on, and now he only wanted to get ready, to occupy his mind with something normal and routine.

And usually, that included getting cussed out by James Rhodes a couple times a week.  

Steve was used to the man standing in front of him, an Avenger, a friend, and a guy who didn't let ANYTHING go quietly.  Rhodey was a good man, but he was also very well practiced at getting his point of view across to people who weren't always great at listening to others points of view.  Steve mostly was appreciative of the help Rhodey provided in the training up of the new team.  His only prior experiences of being in charge of teams had been sort of happy accidents.  

The Howling Commandos were like lightning striking, an odd occurrence to get men from so many different backgrounds working so well together so quickly.  And then when the Avengers formed, it was like lightning striking again.  But things were a little more difficult now with Wanda and her trauma, Vision and his inability to shut the fuck up, Sam and his ability to smart mouth anyone and anything in his way, and Rhodey, who was kind of used to being in charge himself.  

Rhodey held up his phone in Steve's face.

"I'm not going to make it to Africa, you know why? Because I have to get my ass to England."

Steve squinted his eyes at the screen, not for lack of being able to see clearly, but because of what the words were.  It was a text message from Maria Hill.

'Air Force Cadet recovered in London, England.  We're going to need your finesse here.'

"I HATE having to finesse things, Cap.  I hate it," Rhodey reminded him.  "I spent the better part of three decades finessing my way around Tony Stark's shit.  I'm not in the mood to finesse anymore."

"I'm sorry you won't be able to make it to Africa, we'll miss you?" Steve said, unsure of where Rhodey's anger was coming from and why exactly it was pointed in his direction.  When Rhodey rolled his eyes and heaved a heavy sigh, Steve shrugged and said, "What do you want me to say, man?"

"This is your guy," Rhodey accused.  "Five civilians dead."

Steve went stone straight at that, his jaw clenching immediately.

"He hasn't touched a civilian," Steve's voice was a low, dangerous sounding thing.

"Friday, bring it up on the big screen," Rhodey asked, turning to face it.  

There on the screen, just the barest glimpse of a profile on the edge of a security camera in a residential neighborhood, was James Buchanan Barnes.  Steve felt his heart hammering in his chest like a pounding drum.  It was the first real glimpse he'd seen in quite a while.

And seen more fully on camera than Bucky's jaw, was the fact that his arms were full of a woman.  She was being carried like a bride, her hands clutching at Bucky's shoulders, her face mostly hidden in his shoulder.  Her jaw could just be made out, mostly hidden by dark curls.

"What happened?" Steve whispered.

"Five dead, Steve, that's what happened," Rhodey repeated.

"What HAPPENED?" Steve demanded.  In the picture, Bucky's jaw was clenched, as it used to when they were teens and Bucky had had to worry about money for both his family and themselves.  And the girl didn't look well, especially if she needed to be carried.

"Reports indicate that the five dead civilians were low level members of an international gang that kidnapped young women and sold them to the highest bidder," Friday interrupted Steve and Rhodey's silent staring match.

Rhodey did another patented heaving sigh.

"Before you do what you always do and write this off as Barnes being a well meaning vigilante, let's just make sure we realize that he's STILL a vigilante," Rhodey spoke before Steve could.

"Is the girl alright?" Steve asked.

Friday was the one to respond when Rhodey threw his hands up in the air and turned away in annoyance.  

"No reports at local hospitals," Friday revealed.  "Although a girl inside the house was found and taken to the local hospital.  Air Force---"

"Cap," Rhodey tried again to be the voice of reason that the Captain so desperately needed at the moment.

"Save it," Steve said gruffly.  If those human traffickers had tried to go after Bucky's girl---Steve couldn't find reasons to condemn him for what he did.  And Steve had a moment to realize that that was probably a problem, but he didn't want to discuss it with a sanctimonious, annoyed Rhodey. "Go to England, Rhodes."

They were back on the bullet train to Paris before Darcy felt like she wasn't disoriented.  She had felt like she had been placed in a snow globe, looking out at the world through something just a little thicker than water and distorted glass.  She'd managed to hide her state quite well, actually, cuddled into Bucky's side, allowing him to take the burden of half of her body weight with each step, allowing him to guide her to safety, allowing him to set the pace.  

There was some lingering panic.  Before she had passed out, the all consuming thought had been 'I don't want to make Bucky sad', and to be honest she still didn't want that.  She would never want that.  But he hadn't seemed sad.  He'd seemed angry, but not at her.  His touches to her had been a gentle thing, different than the heavier touches and fierce embraces he would give her in the bedroom.  

She was spun glass, and she knew it.  

She was a liability, whether it was Hydra or not.

"Don't.  Please, Pet," Bucky said softly, as if he could read her thoughts or feel what she was feeling.  He leaned imperceptibly into her, the physical closeness only a temporary band aid for the crash of adrenaline and the potent mix of dread and panic in his gut.

Darcy looked up from her hands in her lap, turning her gaze to Bucky, who was staring out of their small compartment, his entire body tense and alert.  She didn't know what to do for him.  She wanted to assure him that she was safe and well and fine and that she would never ever stray from his sight again, because she couldn't risk the thought of his despair at losing her.  She tried to formulate the words in her head, something soft and meaningful.

"Were you the catcher or the pitcher?" she blurted.

Bucky's head made a small shake as his eyes crinkled with confusion.

"Top or Bottom?" Darcy amended.

"Dollbaby, what are you on about?" Bucky demanded.

"How'd it work, I mean, when you had---activities with our guy?" Darcy shrugged.  "Like, were you the giver or the taker?  Were you Santa or the Christmas stocking? Were you the one to be---accepting the offering of the star spangled salami or were you the one pounding one home for the land of the free and the home of the brave?"

Silence extended, which was probably better than Darcy continuing her curious ramblings.  Bucky's lips fought in vain to hold back the amused little uptilt that her questioning brought on.  He tried desperately to hold on to the reasons why he'd been so upset to have her nearly taken away by the sadly ordinary thugs in the world.  There was a reason he was upset.  He knew that his entire association with her, from the moment he saw her in that torture chamber to right then sitting on a train that he was nothing but bad news for her.  But he'd been swept away with love and the feeling of having a savage beast inside him tamed for the first time in seventy years and the hope, the dream that maybe, someday, he might get a happy ending after all.  

He was bad for her, and he tried to remember that, but his stupid mouth was breaking out into a grin and Darcy was looking up at him with that off kilter irreverence that he really did love and suddenly the only thing that mattered was that she was giggling and making lewd hand gestures and being so damned adorable.

"I'm only asking because you know, wondering if things work out the way you want them to work out---" Darcy's eyebrows bounced up and down with salacious meaning, "---you know, where do I fit?"

"Pet, you fit everywhere," Bucky promised.  

Darcy looked supremely unimpressed.

Bucky looked back up to the only entrance point into their compartment before looking back down at her, leaning forward and kissing her lips, soft and sweet.  He didn't drift away, his words were hot, with breaths against her mouth.

"We're switch hitters, dollbaby.  And the one thing I can't wait for, the one thing I think about in my wildest dreams, in my weakest sort of moments, is being driven inside of you by Steve working me over and into you.  That'd be heaven."

"Huh," Darcy barely opened her mouth for the sound to come out.  

"Yeah," Bucky sighed against her lips.  His brain had a tickle at the forefront, he knew he had something else, he wanted to say something else, to bring up something that definitely didn't involve the hypothetical logistics of a trio of people equally defiling each other.  However, he suddenly couldn't care.  He just wanted to continue to rile his Pet.  

Darcy leaned back and away from Bucky and looked up at him with that little shit-stirrer look she so often got, like his pet was a tiny kitten, batting at a ball of yarn.

"So, you do know that in the modern day, I could TOTALLY enter the sword fight, right?  I mean..."

Another rude hand gesture involving her fist making a thrusting motion.

"I could TOTALLY do you proper if you really wanted it before we were ready to go back to the star spangled salami."

Chapter Text

Chapter Eighteen: Enhancements

"Captain Rogers."

"Hi, it's---hello, Doctor Rivera," Steve answered, looking around the spartan room of the SHIELD facility they'd be bunkering in for the night in South Africa.  He held the phone to his ear and took a silent breath, wondering what on Earth he was thinking.  

Friday, the ever helpful artificial intelligence that was terrifyingly interested in his mental well being, had set up alarms on his phone, alerting him to the fact that he had wanted to call the doctor for twenty four hours now.  They had six hours of downtime before picking up Rumlow's trail further north in the vast and all encompassing continent of Africa.  It seemed as a good a time as any.

"What can I do for you, Captain?" the doctor asked.  There was some commotion on her end of the call, someone making something like a squawking sound and a scuffle for the phone.  "Really? Ret---"

"Rogers," the new voice was smooth, low, like smooth dark caramel poured over slightly jagged baked goods.

Steve knew that voice quite well.  The confidence, power and authority in it was the only voice that had ever come close to matching his mother's tone.  Steve was confused for a second then shook his head in amusement.  Natasha had gotten in touch with Doctor Rivera just a few weeks ago, demanding the doctor's contact information after one of her own solo missions out.  She had said something about bringing the doctor in house for serum related patients.

Steve had eagerly complied, hoping that it meant Natasha thought Bucky and the mysterious woman would be coming in-house soon enough.  He had set aside some of his own budget for the doctor, unwilling to have Tony foot the bill yet again. Natasha had handled it all, but she'd not told him where she'd stashed the good Doctor Carla Rivera.

"Retta?" Steve questioned, although he knew it was her well enough.  His retired, but still Hydra hunting personal assistant was on the other end of the line and Steve realized just where Natasha had allowed Dr. Rivera to set up shop.  "Hi."

"Don't HI me, Rogers," Retta snapped cooly in her no-nonsense way.  "Carla says you were running yourself ragged a few months ago."

"Well I---"

"And I thought I told you after that whole debacle in December 2013 that you were under very firm orders not to run yourself ragged anymore," Retta plowed ahead, as she usually did.

"But I---"

"I didn't think I was wasting my breath on you, Rogers, when I give very reasonable orders," Retta continued as if Steve weren't trying to interrupt.  "Carla, I'm gonna ask you very politely to stop trying to get this phone away from me, I'm talking to my boy right now and I'll deal with you after.  Rogers, you listen to me, and you listen to me with both of your ears, and not just half of your ass, you get me?"

"Yes, Retta," Steve managed to say calmly, a smile spreading across his mouth.  

"Your boyfriend needs someone to come home to," Retta said with her trademark bluntness.  The woman lived her long life so far with the idea that there was no time for frippery or space wasting tact.  She drove to the point quickly and hammered it home.  

"I know," Steve acknowledged softly.

"And Carla says that someone else might be coming home too, and she'll need you," Retta's voice was softer then, soft enough so that Steve could hear the little doctor in the background protesting about Retta keeping her pretty mouth shut.

"Do you know about---what do you know about her?" Steve whispered.  "Is she going to be okay?  What was done to her?  What will she need?  Should I go and---"

"Rogers," Retta said with that caramel coated sharpness.  

"Yeah," he breathed out.

"You've always been an anchor whether you knew it or not because you were frozen in a snow drift at the time.  But you have been an anchor to Peggy, to Howard, to me, to everyone," Retta rattled off.  "But these two, they're going to need a real anchor."

"I can do that," Steve promised.  He hesitated, doubt plaguing him.  "I can do that, right?"

"There is no one else on the face of the planet that could, Rogers," Retta was soft again, encouraging.  "But you can't do that if you run yourself ragged.  I know you're in Africa and---"

"How did you---"

"---Don't interrupt, Rogers, I know exactly where you are and what you're doing, and I swear to the good lord above, if you don't take some care and come back in one piece and actually REST for the first time in your life," Retta heaved a heavy sigh.  "I'll slap you upside your head, Rogers, I will.  And I'll have this clever little doctor come up with a way to keep you in bed for a week."

"I'm okay," Steve promised.  "Actually, I had---I wanted to talk to the Doc, there's something strange going on.  With me."

"Alright, here you go," Retta quickly passed the phone off, and if Steve wasn't mistaken he heard the smacking of lips against a cheek and he wondered who was kissing who in that scenario.

"Captain Rogers," Carla said quietly.  "We have privacy."

"Good, I've been having, uhm, it's hard to explain," Steve admitted.  "A few months ago, I was sick."

"That's impossible," Carla disputed.  

"Well, I FELT sick, nothing came up, but I was more nauseous than I've ever been in my life," Steve explained.  "There've been moments where I'm sort of---overwhelmed with a feeling that I have no business feeling at that moment.  Ever since I started taking your pills to sleep."

"Are you accusing me of---"

"No, no!" Steve insisted.  "I just wondered if they could be side effects."

"Hardly," the doctor sniffed, clearly offended that Steve was questioning her abilities.  "Captain Rogers, there are a lot of things about the serum that we still don't know, namely because the two best cases of enhancement were stuck in various states of ice over the course of the twentieth century."

"But you still worked on it, how did you know --how to do the sleeping pills?" Steve questioned, his tone curious and non confrontational.  Natasha had always said his interrogation skills were worse than awful, but Steve hated playing games to get answers.  

"You were rejected from the army a handful of times and still found your way in," Carla shot back.  "When the desire to get something done is great enough, a person will find their way around it."

"Illegal experimentation?" Steve guessed.  

"In international waters, nothing is really illegal.  Howard Stark taught me that," Carla shot back.  "Do you want to know how I did it or what I learned?"

"What you learned," Steve said eagerly.  

"The serum enhances what is already within a person," Carla said with surprising softness, reverence echoing in the lyrical quality of her voice.  "We're not talking Vita-Rays here, Captain Rogers.  We're talking just the serum.  Erskine managed to have it settle in genetic code that we still haven't discovered yet.  Genetics that are responsible for temperament, empathy, all manner of things that aren't eye color and inherited disease."

Steve understood that, to a point.  He sat back on the cot, quickly switching the phone from one ear to another.  He couldn't see it so much in himself, it was always difficult for a person to acknowledge the best parts of themselves.  But he could see it in Bruce Banner.  The man's thirst for knowledge, the quiet calmness that was so strange for a man who shared his existence with a huge rage monster, his unique characteristics seemed bigger somehow than they should be.  

Natasha and her ability to juggle so much in her brain and keep it all straight and never let anyone know.  Aliases, schemes, knowing the next movement of her opponent. Her brain worked so fast that it wasn't natural.  And the fact that she could essentially look at a person and know inherently whether they were telling the truth or not was beyond impressive.

Bucky.  Bucky had always been loyal.  And Hydra had found a way to scramble his brains so heavily that he pushed that loyalty towards them instead of what it should have been aligned with.  

"I can't know for sure until I meet with the young woman," Carla's voice filtered back, breaking into Steve's thoughts.  "But given what I do know, what James has told me---"

"Bucky's been in contact with you?" Steve sat up straight at that.  "Are they alright?  What's wrong?"

"They're fine," Carla assured him.  "James was just noticing a few things about his new friend, in regards to the serum."

"What can she do?" Steve's voice was a quiet, curious thing.  He wondered what the girl who seemed to have bewitched Bucky enough to be traveling with him in close quarters for the last few months.  

Steve liked to imagine that she was a sweet, funny sort of lady.  He remembered when he and Bucky had thought Katherine Hepburn to be the epitome of any woman ever.  They'd thought that a dame who could talk faster than most people blink would have been a fascinating sort of dame to have in their life.  Smart and funny and never afraid to let words spill out of her mouth...in 1939, that had been their dream woman.

"It's all very interesting really," Carla admitted, sounding only as excited as a very brilliant scientist could.  "And while I can't tell you everything, I do find it exceedingly fascinating that you are feeling things you shouldn't.  Almost as if someone were pushing those feelings on you without them realizing it."

"She's an empath?" Steve wondered, knowing that such things were possible.  They'd run into it with mutants and inhumans before.  

"I don't know, Captain Rogers," Carla sighed.  "James has noticed that she can influence other's moods in accordance with her own.  Making people nervous or scared instead of being nervous or scared herself."

"But why me, then?  I'm nowhere near her," Steve admitted.  

"Perhaps she was thinking of you?" Carla offered.  "It's all very fascinating and I can't wait to meet the girl, quite frankly.  Because your friend Natasha was not overly eager in offering me any data points to study."

"You could have come to the facility and studied me," Steve offered.

"What's the point of studying perfection?" Carla scoffed.  "Like a lot of medically minded people, I much prefer studying irregularity rather than perfection."

"I'm not perfect," Steve was quick to shoot that idea down.

"Erskine's purest, truest serum runs through your veins, Captain Rogers," Carla clarified.  "But rest assured, Retta has been very clear on where your actual imperfections lie."

"Yeah," Steve huffed out an aborted laugh.  "So---so, maybe, maybe James mentioned me to her, and she was thinking about me when she was feeling---sick."

"Maybe," Carla offered.  "Or it could be something else entirely. I won't know until she offers to let me try and figure out what exactly the serums did to her, and if she received anything else from her captors."

"I woke up today and I was so scared, so worried, so panicked," Steve revealed in a hushed whisper, even though he knew he had privacy.  "And then we found a blip of James and the girl in London, they'd---they'd found a group of people kidnapping girls for sex trafficking."

"Dear God, the depravity in this world is a sickness in and of itself," Carla sighed.  "Are you better now, Steve?"

"Yeah, hungry, actually," Steve admitted.  Although there was something else too, that he didn't dare say out loud, even though he was sure the doctor would have been fascinated by it.

There was a low level warmth deep in his gut, spiraling up and out to the rest of his body.  It was a heavy, thick feeling, like honey dripping slowly out of a jar and onto warm toast.  He could feel it unfurling like a mystery, spreading from the origin point out towards his extremities, slow, steady and greedily taking up more and more of his brain space.  And he didn't need to feel his own cock going stiff to realize what the woman at Bucky's side was feeling at the moment, but that didn't stop it from happening either.  

"I uh, I gotta go," Steve said quietly.

"Grab a bite to eat and get some rest, before Retta gets upset with you."

Bucky nudged the little forkful against Darcy's lips, the pie he had managed to purchase at the train station before taking off back to Paris had been just what the doctor ordered, and feeding it to his little Pet in their bed was calming his frayed nerves at everything that had occurred on what was supposed to be a two day trip to England but had only lasted a few short hours instead.  

Darcy pursed her lips and shook her head.  She wasn't hungry anymore, and the pie, while delicious, was also sickly sweet.  Besides, she had other things on her mind.  She pressed her cold toes against Bucky's thigh and nudged him.  

He'd gone pretty nonverbal after their humorous exchange on the train, once they were in the more vulnerable streets of Paris, he was more singular Soldier than the blended Bucky he had been for the last few weeks.  The silence remained once he brought her home, stripping her naked and checking over her obsessively for any injury.  He'd wrapped her in the shirt he'd taken off of himself and then had proceeded to alternatively feed her sweet, creamy pie and run his hands up and down the length of her, as if to reassure himself that she was still there, solid beneath his fingertips.

She didn't mind the fact that he seemed unable to find words.  It had been a pretty intense experience, all in all.  So she let him coddle her, and stare down at her in wonder and thankfulness and she tried her best to assuage his fears.  And she'd tried in vain to not push him to his back on the bed and mount him every single time he kissed ridiculously sweet whipped cream right off of her lips.  

"I almost lost you today."

Darcy looked up into his eyes and saw there were unshed tears pooling in those pale blue eyes and she did manage to grab the pie box and place it on the ground before pushing him onto the bed on his back.  She straddled his body and put her head against his bare chest, her arms going around his torso.  His arms were quick to come up and encase her and they stayed quiet and content, listening to the other breathe for uncounted minutes.

There were so many things Darcy wanted to assure him of.  She wanted to tell him, to make sure he would always understand that he would never lose her if she could help it.  She wanted to make sure that he understood that she never felt safer than when she could feel him standing next to her.  That he was the best thing to have ever happened to her in the entirety of her life.  

"I love you," she whispered, pressing her lips to the expanse of skin above his steadily beating heart.  

"I love you," Bucky repeated, soft and with coarse and rough feelings threaded through the quiet words.  He looked apologetic as he swept his hands up and down her back before asking very quietly, “Darcy, dollbaby, are you ready?”

Darcy knew what he was asking.  It went unspoken, but she knew he was asking if she was ready to end their tour of vengeance.  He wanted to know if she was ready to give up this life of relative freedom and go to Steve Rogers and the rest of the Avengers and start something brand new.  He was asking if she was ready to potentially give a part of his heart back to its original owner and see if she got a new piece in return.  And she also knew why he was asking.  A violent, disgusting piece of the world had pushed its way into their revenge fueled paradise and the Soldier in him was willing to concede that he needed help in protecting her.

But she wasn’t ready.  And it wasn’t because she still craved vengeance any longer or didn’t want to go back into the world of superheroes and world ending disaster.  It was because she was legitimately terrified that when they did go back to Steve, she wouldn’t measure up and the Soldier that loved her so much would fade as Bucky took over and decided that in order to keep Steve, he would---

“Stop,” Bucky begged, tears welling in pale blue eyes and dripping out of crinkled corners that were barely touched by time.  He took a deep breath and felt a shiver work through him.  “I can feel it---what you’re feeling.  I won’t leave you.  I won’t .”

“But---”

“I won’t ,” he reiterated.  “I love you.  And no matter what, I will always protect you and I will always come back.”

It did nothing to calm her.  It all came back to Steve---Steve and the Avengers and Thor and Jane and SHIELD.  How would Steve ever come to care for her when she’d not even been thought of for so long?  She felt anger and spite and dejection just thinking of them, there was no way Steve would take a second look at her when she was most likely to hiss and spit at him like an angry cat.  She could see it now, he’d try to be understanding, but eventually her anger would drive him away and he’d take Bucky with him and honestly, without Bucky, she might as well be back in that Hydra facility, strapped to a gurney and drugged into nothingness.

“ Stop . Just stop, please Pet.”

Darcy looked up at his face and winced when she saw he was full out sobbing, his eyes red and leaking tears.  He took in a ragged, harsh breath and shook his head.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, bracing her hands against his chest and pulling herself up to sit astride his torso.  She pressed quivering lips to his, her hands cupping his cheeks.  A bone rattling sob shook his whole body in response and she kept kissing him, chaste and firm and insistent.  Her very real insecurity and deepest darkest fears got pushed down yet again, as the desire to ease Bucky’s mysterious  emotional response took over.

His sobbing ceased, and his breathing evened out after a full minute of loving, devoted kisses.  One flesh and one metal hand gently moved to her hips and he managed to maneuver her up and off of him, reverently placing her on her side and spooning close behind her.  His left fingers brushed against her small baby bump as he nuzzled his face into the crook of her neck.  He wanted to tell her a lot of things, he had so much that she needed to know, but she was overcompensating for her earlier dark thoughts and now he could only feel determination.

A single minded determination to please overtook him and in response he placed an open  mouthed kiss on her pulse point, lingering long enough to leave a mark.  He moved his left hand from the reassuring, rapid heartbeat that she carried and caressed her thigh, before taking a more firm hold and moving her leg up to allow his other hand better access.  His fingers moved with a practiced surety, rubbing up and down her folds before grazing his middle finger against the wetness gathering at her entrance.  

He had certainly never gone from sobbing to rock hard and twitching with want before, and he knew for certain that it was Darcy’s special brand of magic that had developed from her exposure to the serum.  The pregnancy hormones were probably playing a significant factor there as well.  But he didn’t care at the moment, the only thing that mattered was making her happy, and the surest way of doing that was proving to her how much he loved her through touch.

He could feel her moan, low and throaty against his bare chest as he worked his middle finger into her tightness, his palm lightly resting against her clit, providing just enough pressure to work her into a frenzy quickly.

“More,” she whispered, and he complied, adding his ring finger into her velvet soft depths. The only thing between the plump roundness of her ass and his suddenly aching cock were his boxer briefs, so when she whined with need and pressed back into him, a pleasurable jolt went  up and down his spine.  She was wet and grasping around his fingers, warm and willing and more than ready to go.  “ More, Bucky.”

He pulled his hand away and managed to pull his boxer briefs down low enough to expose his twitching length, feeling a low, rumbling moan echo in his own throat at the first feel of her soft skin against his cock.  She arched her back and pressed harder into him and he just barely managed not to curse.  

“ Fuck ,” Darcy whispered as he stroked himself against her wet lips before pressing into her with a jerk of his hips.  She rested her foot on his bent leg and made small moves with her hips the moment he was fully inside of her.  She turned her head and found he met her kiss right away, mouth opening and tongues pressing against each other in little strokes and languid circles.

She cried into his mouth when his hand wrapped around her again, fingers finding her clit.  It was a fast, steady pace they set, her hips moving in concert with his shallow thrusts.  The angle hitting every spot deep within her that made her thighs begin to tremble.  

Bucky’s fingers dipped to the point where his length worked in and out of her as he rutted into his very own personal heaven.  He spread her wetness that was coating the base of his cock to her engorged clit and rubbed with unerring precision.  Every time he pressed into her, he felt that jolt down his spine, pure pleasure and completion, as if he was having one continuous orgasm without spilling himself inside of her.

He realized that he felt it, the lust and the desire and the lovemaking from two sides.  His own and what she was pushing onto him.  That realization caused him to thrust harder, to have his fingers move with faster, heavier pressure against her clit as she panted and sighed against his mouth.  He gently grabbed for her cotton covered breast with his left hand, kneading with care, the unyielding metal of his thumb stroking across a pert nipple.

“I love you,” he breathed.  “I’m never gonna leave you.  I’m gonna be here for you, Pet.  You’re mine.  You’re mine .”

She could only moan and gasp in response  as she hovered over the edge of her quick and fierce orgasm.

“Do you understand?” he demanded.  “I will always come back to you, I will always want you.  Do you understand, Pet?”

“Yes, yes,” Darcy answered in a whimper, her body going completely stiff as the first waves of her orgasm hit.  

Bucky couldn’t comprehend how he hadn’t simply melted at everything that was hitting him.  He felt her pussy quivering around his length as he pressed as far into her as he could.  His balls tightened quickly as he felt her orgasm hit him through the mental link that was surely due to her serum enhanced abilities, as well as the gushing wetness as she shook against him.  

He swore out loud, his eyes squeezing shut and just let everything wash over him in waves as he came deep inside of her.  His fingers stilled against her clit when he felt the hint of overstimulation and he tried to remember to breathe as the bone crushing orgasm,both hers and his echoed within him.

“I promise,” Bucky whispered, his lips moving against her neck.  “You’re stuck with me, dollbaby.  I promise.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Nineteen: Domesticated

"I can't help but think you're spreading yourself kind of thin."

Natasha looked up from her place on a chair by the pool of an ultra luxurious hotel that all of the Avengers, minus Steve, were currently staying at.  Maria Hill's excellent chatter department thought that this hotel was where Rumlow and his crew of hired goons turned Hydra newbies had last stayed.  They were using it as an exercise for Wanda to try her hand at espionage.  With her powers, she would be an invaluable asset when it came down to it, perhaps even better than Natasha herself.  Though Wanda herself had scoffed at the idea when Natasha had presented it.

Wanda was taking to it well and currently was laughing with a bartender by the poolside drink station, a pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head and something rum based in her giant glass.  She was doing well with using the coded movements that Natasha had drilled into her to relay information immediately.  The young woman's stance could be better.  She was already vulnerable in her bikini and sarong and flip flop ensemble.  But her whole posture was relaxed and she was boxed in by two bar stools.  It would have been better to lean against the counter and have the ability to move freely if she should need it.

"Hello, Earth to Natasha?" Sam smiled, waving his hand in front of her face.

"Hmmm, just enjoying the sunshine," Natasha waved him off, her movement irritable even if her tone was placid and calm.

"Sure, yeah, you're watching the kid work the mark, second hand I might add, ‘cause I already worked the mark over and got us the information we needed," Sam disputed.  He pointed down to Natasha's phone, "You're running some kind of program on that, and it's not Candy Crush.  Plus you JUST sent off an advertisement to be put in major newspapers across the world.  A coded message that I can't break, and not to brag or anything? But I was really good at code breaking back at the Academy."

"How did you know about the ad?" Natasha demanded, betraying her calm cool demeanor with a furrowed brow and a slightly annoyed, put off pursing of her lips.

"You only text two people from that phone, me and Rogers," Sam's smirk was entirely too confident and the slight waggle of his eyebrows made Natasha want to kick him in the shins.  "And Rogers dropped his phone in the toilet---"

"Again?!" Natasha demanded with a snort.

"Again," Sam assured her.  His smirk was confident and smug and just the smallest fraction of cute.  He dangled his phone between his fingers.  "And I haven't gotten any text messages from you since two weeks ago when you wanted to play tonsil hockey with me cause you were bored."

Natasha rolled her eyes.  Sam was clearly fishing for something.  Reassurance.  An assertion that she hadn't called him to her quarters two weeks ago on a whim and perhaps he was looking for the slight chance that it could happen again.

"That still doesn't explain how you knew it was an advertisement," Natasha didn't take his bait.

"You think Steve, 'Space Case dropped my phone in the toilet' can be bothered with approving budgets?  After way too much spider web unweaving, I saw where your money was going, small ads in unreadable code all over the place," Sam admitted.  "More specifically going to local papers where we thought the Winter Soldier was going to be."

"You're very thorough with the budget," Natasha accused with some levity.  "If you were only that thorough with your field reports, I might not have to put coded ads into newspapers."

"So they are to the Barnacle," Sam heaved a sigh as he plopped his entire body down on a reclining pool chair, threatening to rip the thing apart at the seams with the force of his drama.  He threw one forearm over his eyes and sighed as heavily as he could.  "So you guys have your own code?  Cause you're long separated lovers and shit?"

Natasha looked down at her watch, seeing a separate message come through from Pepper on her separate phone line, the message was short and sweet.

'Sokovia Accords=bad news. Be 4warned. '

Sam heaved another sigh.

"We are NOT long separated lovers," Natasha said softly.  "I do owe him a debt.  A great debt.  He saved my life.  He taught me nearly everything I know, combat wise.  And he understood what it was like to have all your feeling ripped from you."

"How come Steve don't know about all that?" Sam pulled his arm just barely off his face so that he could peer over at Natasha.

"Because only you know about that now," Natasha shrugged.

Sam's grin was brighter than the African sun beating down on them.

"Before---when I was younger, I didn't have the ability to feel certain things," Natasha said delicately.  "It was burnt out of me, and it was burnt out of Barnes.  Had the situation been different, who knew what could have happened?"

"Gross," Sam sucked his teeth.

"Without him, I would be dead," Natasha said resolutely.  "And I feel---I feel responsible for the girl.  I want to help her."

"Why would you be responsible for some random girl?" Sam asked shrewdly, sitting up on his elbows and staring at Natasha intently, looking for some kind of facial expression or sign about what she was feeling, all for naught, because she just smiled back at him placidly.

"It's a little like helping myself, isn't it?" Natasha shrugged.  "I've been in her shoes.  Taken away from my life, experimented on, hurt.  I would have wanted someone looking for me...someone looking out for me."

"Hmm," Sam hummed softly.  "You know who it is?"

"I do," Natasha nodded.  "I'm nearly certain I know who it is."

"And you haven't told Steve who is potentially making whoopee with his guy?" Sam arched an eyebrow.

"No," Natasha shook her head.  "We'd lose him if he knew.  Nothing would keep him away from them. There are times when it's better to keep things closer to the vest."

"You got a lot held close to your vest, Nat," Sam sighed as she went to stare back at Wanda, who had never been more than five seconds out of her line of sight, all throughout the conversation.

"Well, now, thanks to you, I have a few things less," Natasha murmured.

"Yeah," Sam nodded.  Silence extended as Wanda finished up with the bartender and went to go sit with her legs dangling in the pool.  Natasha worked quickly and efficiently, using her watch to send messages and reports here and there.

She signaled to the waiter for two more drinks before turning to Sam and a real, genuine, little smile stretched those beautiful lips of hers.

"Go ahead, ask," she encouraged as she stood up from her chair and delicately pulled off the gauzy swimsuit coverup off, revealing a truly amazing black one piece with very strategic cutouts.

"Ask about how that thing is staying on?" Sam gave her getup a thrice over.  "Or ask where you're keeping your weapons?"

"I am the weapon," Natasha shrugged, a droll little smirk working at her mouth.  "Ask what you want to ask, Sam."

"You said you weren't able to feel those feelings before, they were burnt out of you," Sam's voice was a low, deep rumble and his gaze was soft as he stared up at Natasha.  "Is that still true?"

Natasha's smirk eased gently into a soft, almost shy smile.  She shrugged and her voice was a melody as she walked towards the pool, "Green things grow out of burnt places, Wilson.  All of the time."

Darcy woke up to the smell of something buttery and decadent wafting in front of her face.  She cracked an eye open to see Bucky sitting next to her, a large platter full of food in his left hand, waving it around.  It was like the smells of hot, fresh croissants along with what looked suspiciously like crispy oven toasted bacon were exotic, glowing tendrils doing an intricate dance around her head, slowly bringing herself into wakefulness.

"Good mornin', dollbaby," Bucky smiled down at her gently.  

"Morning," Darcy's voice was scratchy with sleep and she smiled softly as Bucky put the tray on the bed and gently pulled her by her forearms into a comfortable sitting position.  

In a moment, he was cozied next to her and brought the tray to his lap.  He ripped off a corner of flaky croissant and slathered it in more butter, then tapped a little mason jar full of something gelatinous and beautifully orange.  

"Marmalade," Bucky explained.  "There was a little jam vendor down the street by the bakery.  I haven't had marmalade in a very long time."

"I’ve never had it," Darcy shrugged as he opened the pot one handed and grabbed for a little spoon to smear it on the bit of croissant.  She opened her mouth eagerly and kissed his fingertips after accepting the morsel of food.  

"What do you think?" Bucky prodded.

It was delicious.  It was sweet and tangy against the richness of all the butter and flaky pastry.  She chewed thoughtfully, loving how each component seemed to match up perfectly with the other, the sweetness making the butter more rich, the pastry making the tangy orange even more delicious.  She sighed and smiled up at him.

"More please."

Bucky chuckled, but did what she wanted, happily hand feeding her an entire croissant, piece by piece.  He leaned in on the last bite and grabbed a kiss, full of butter and sweetness.  He sighed and shook his head.

"I love you so much," he said softly.  "Don't seem fair to have you all to myself."

"Too bad, cause you're stuck with me," Darcy insisted, cuddling into his body more insistently, finding that she fit perfectly under that left arm.  The heaviness of the metal felt right, as his fingertips traced patterns up and down the bare skin of her arm.  She looked down to the little, rounded ball of her stomach and put her hand against it for a moment, marveling at how foreign it felt.  Hard and stiff and unyielding where she had once only been soft and malleable.  "You're stuck with both of us."

"Wouldn't have it any other way, Pet," Bucky promised her.  He went to feed her another bit of breakfast, taking a piece of extra crunchy bacon and spreading some of the orange marmalade onto it.  She nibbled the entire piece with little bites until she kissed his fingertips again.

"Oh that's good, make me a sandwich of all of it together," Darcy licked at her lips eagerly.  

Bucky's tongue mirrored her movement and he looked down at her with half lidded eyes.  His left hand moved from her arm to her torso, cool, hard metal tickling at the sides of her breasts.  The slow smirk he gave her might as well have been patented at that point and she couldn't help the bright grin she gave him in return.

"How in the world did you and Steve fight Nazis back in the day when you have an insatiable libido?" Darcy demanded.

"Sugar, I hate to tell you, that's not only my libido here," Bucky assured her.  "You're pressing an awful lot of WANTING my way."

"Hmmm, have you seen you, lately?" Darcy countered.  She licked and nibbled at her bottom lip before shrugging, "Is that what we're calling it?"

"Calling what?" Bucky shook his head.

"Pressing?  Pushing?" Darcy questioned.  "Is that what it feels like for you?"

"Pet, I haven't felt it very much, so stop worrying that you're doing something wrong," Bucky quickly assured her.  "I think you've been pressing it elsewhere, or maybe it's not something that works all the time."

"What's it like, though?" Darcy whispered, truly worried at what Hydra had left her with.  "Does it hurt?"

"Not a bit, unless you're hurting," Bucky promised her.  "The moment I found you in that facility, I've started feeling more---ME.  Less, broken apart.  So I think you've been doing good.  But sometimes, there are places where you're feeling too much, and I can feel it too."

"Sorry," was a small, whispered word as she looked down at her hands.

Disgust.  She felt disgust.

"Dollbaby, no, it's not a bad thing, all in all when you're thinking about it, it's a great thing," Bucky assured her.  "I mean, those sons of bitches frozen up in Siberia, the serum took their cruelty, their violence, everything that made them less than human, and it made it WORSE.  All in all, pushing your feelings on someone else don't seem so bad."

"Yeah?" Darcy looked up hopefully.

"Seems more useful than me being able to calculate the best way to kill a person in two seconds time," Bucky said ruefully, leaning to place a kiss on top of her head.  "And Stevie's enhanced ability to be a righteous son of a bitch with no regard for the current arrangement of his face..."

"And the Black Widow being the nosiest person on the face of the planet," Darcy wagered.  Bucky laughed at that, nodding in agreement and Darcy couldn't help but find her smile stretching her lips once more.  She wrinkled her nose in an approximation of intense, adorable concentration before whispering,  "I'm sending you hungry vibes.  You getting them?"

"Not even a little bit, you tiny little menace," Bucky shook his head, feeding her one of the sandwiches he had assembled.  "I don't know how we'll work on getting a handle on it.  You seem to push it out when you're distracted.  When we hit Hydra bases, you're scared."

"I'm not scared!" Darcy disputed very quickly, looking a little heated.  "I'm---I'm kicking their butts."

"Feathers to the nose and arranging their cremations, yes, you are an asskicker," Bucky gave her a little goose with his left hand.  "You're pushing the fear to them so you don't have to feel it, I think.  Dr. Rivera will definitely want to know how, and why, and everything in between."

"Yeah, yeah, eventually," Darcy waved that off easily.  Suddenly all of Dr. Rivera's chatty emails, peppered liberally with invasive questioning that Darcy had conveniently ignored, made a lot more sense.  She wasn't signing up to be a lab rat though, even if the good little doctor had saved her and her unborn bastard child's life.

She looked up at Bucky with narrowed eyes.

"I didn't do it, dollbaby," Bucky automatically denied without knowing why she was annoyed.  "It was Rogers."

"I called the spawn a bastard in my head, and it's all your fault you sexy beast," Darcy accused.  

"So spawn is better than bastard?" Bucky asked, not looking at all impressed.  

"I could call it DEMON spawn," Darcy shrugged.  She looked a little contrite and uncomfortable even as Bucky fed her more of her cobbled together breakfast sandwich.  She chewed and swallowed before asking softly, "Do you know?  Is it---is it a monster?  Is that why you wanted to go back now?"

"No, Pet, I wanted to go back because I want you safe," Bucky said earnestly.  "And Steve may be a dope about keeping himself safe, but he is good at looking after other people."

"So you don't know yet, who---what was used?" Darcy's voice dropped in volume, sounding like a small murmur as her fingers worked over a small fray on the waistband of Bucky's pants.

Bucky felt like he knew.  He just had to be certain.  Communication with Dr. Rivera had told him that Bruce Banner couldn't be a contender, regardless of whether or not Hydra could have obtained samples.  He was sterile.

None of the sleeping beasts in Siberia could lay claim to the baby.

Which left only two other serum enhanced men in the last hundred years.  Steve Rogers, recipient of Erskine's most effective serum.  Bucky had seen first hand how blase Steve had gotten about filling up cups with any manner of bodily functions for the scientists and doctors that would poke and prod at him for a half hour every Wednesday.

Hell, Bucky had helped him to fill up one of those cups when he'd been bored and feeling extra affectionate.  

But would Hydra use the genetic material of a man who openly and loudly decried every thing that Hydra had ever done or will do?  Would they risk that loyalty and good heart passing down to what they would consider a replacement for all Winter Soldiers?  

Bucky believed, deep down in his gut, that they wouldn't.  They couldn't risk the small chance that a child couldn't be made into a weapon.  He fed Darcy another bite of food and kissed the tip of her nose for good measure.  Between Darcy as a mother and Steve as a father, it was doubtful that their child would ever break.  There was too much stubbornness and resilience there.  Neither one of the great loves of Bucky's life knew how to stand down after a punch.

Bucky was certain that Hydra had managed to retain something of the Red Skull's.  And that was half of what had gone into making the small, precious life that Darcy carried.  But he didn't have concrete proof, and he would want it before he told Darcy anything.

"I have one more stop, Pet, and then I will know," Bucky gave her a gentle smile.  

Romania, the hidden Hydra facility that would contain every medical procedure ever performed on the Red Skull.

"Barton's house of horrors.  Kids for sale.  Cheap.  OW, dammit Lila!"

Natasha couldn't help herself.  She snorted into the phone at Clint's antics.  The former Red Room Agent felt pride for the little girl she was enthusiastically trying to mold into her own image.  Lila was taking to it very well, using all the skills she was obtaining to annoy her father at every opportunity.  Even Laura Barton couldn't scold the child for booby trapping their closet, so long as Clint would up strung up from the ceiling.  

"Fuck off, Romanoff, I'm fucking bleeding," Clint huffed out.

"Really?" Natasha asked, clearly not buying it.

"She ripped a hangnail off, inadvertently, it hurts like a son of a bitch," Clint complained.  "What do you want, anyway?  I'm retired, remember?"

"Sure.  Retired," Natasha rolled her eyes as she made her way up the steps from the weapons room of the SHIELD base they were camping out at before moving to Lagos in the morning.  

"Getting any good work done?  How's my girl doing?" Clint wondered.  

"Good.  Surprisingly good," Natasha admitted.  Wanda had been really doing well with the light espionage work she had been doing.  And she had gotten great information about one of Rumlow's suspected cohorts, which was why they were headed to Lagos in a matter of a few hours.  "Just getting a few things wrapped up."

Clint grunted into the phone and Natasha knew he understood.

They worked really well together after all.  And after many years of missions, where Clint had been afraid he wouldn't make it back, he'd found in Natasha someone he could trust totally.  They had contingencies in place.  Laura and the kids would be protected if something happened to him.  

And now, Natasha was evoking the same, even though she had no blood relations left in the world.  Clint knew though, that over the course of a few months, Natasha had started to feel an unusual kinship with Darcy Lewis.  The Black Widow felt responsible for the girl who had been kept in Hydra's grasp for too long.  Clint didn't know everything, as Natasha never really told anyone everything, but he knew enough.

"Is she ready to come in?" Clint asked thoughtfully.

"Not even a little bit," Natasha admitted.  "But I've been getting nothing but bad news.  It's not going to be easy for them to be in a pair soon."

"You tell Sarge that?" Clint wondered, getting a humming noise in response.  "Don't worry.  If the worst happens, I'll be ready for pickup."

"Thank you," Natasha's words were soft and earnest.

"No big.  Between my wife, and you and Wanda, add another foxy lady to it, and I'll have a harem of rescued and recovered hotties," Clint chuckled.  

"You're an idiot," Natasha snorted again.

"Yup," Clint agreed.  "And so are you, if you think I don't know that you're standing in front of Wilson's room."

Natasha stopped in her tracks, looking truly perplexed. She looked around without physically moving and saw the small, dime shaped heat sensor stuck to a ceiling tile.  She rolled her eyes.  

"I get my kicks where I can," Clint laughed, knowing she was miffed.  "And Wanda's heat signature is smaller.  Caps is the biggest, so I imagine that's you standing in front of the door of the normal dude heat signature.  Go on, knock.  Give him a  hug and a kiss and whatnot."

"Fuck off Barton," Natasha snapped before hanging up on him and looking at Sam's door.  Her nose wrinkled imperceptibly before she sighed, held up her hand and knocked gingerly.  It took a full minute before the door creaked open and a bleary eyed Sam was staring back at her.  She gave him a half smile, full lips pulling up at the right side of her face before lazily blinking at him.  "Hey."

The Russian curse echoed in the previously silent and still apartment, and Darcy poked her head out of the bathroom/laundry room where she had been waiting for her favorite t-shirt of Bucky's to get out of the dryer so she could pop it on after her and Bucky's shared morning shower.  

"What's wrong?" she asked down the little hallway, getting no response.  She ambled down the little corridor and poked her head into their bedroom, where Bucky was pacing the short length of the room, a newspaper classified section balled up in his left fist.  "Is it Steve, is he okay?"

Bucky automatically stopped his pacing and gave Darcy a lovely, beguiled smile.  She realized why he looked so happy, at her first worry being about Steve, who she liked to think she didn't think about at all, ever, since he never thought about her ever.  But obviously, her brain went right into the sticky, delicious, honey filled trap that Bucky had slowly set for her in the last few months.  She shrugged and wrinkled her nose, her hands resting on panty clad hips, the rest of her bare as the day she was born.

"Not Steve, chatter says he's still in Africa tracking down Rumlow," Bucky promised.  He held up the balled up newspaper.  "We have a problem."

"People selling their used mattresses again?" Darcy asked hopefully.

"I have---I remembered, about a month before I found you, that I used to have a code," Bucky said softly, finding it difficult to remember that blank, bereft time he had had without Darcy.  He had been adrift and lonely and lost.  And then he'd found her and he'd been saved.  Every part of him had been saved and he now felt like he could go back to Steve and not have to worry.  

"A code with Steve?" Darcy wondered.

Bucky shook his head and put the newspaper down on the bookshelf before going towards Darcy, taking off his t-shirt he had put on with the goal of leaving the apartment to go and grab them some food.  He popped it over her, covering up her bewitching, distracting nudity and put gentle hands on her shoulders.

"With Natalia," Bucky admitted.

"Oh," Darcy blinked up at him.  "So---you guys were.  I mean.  You know."

She went to make one of her lewd hand gestures again, but Bucky stopped her, bringing her knuckles up to his mouth and kissing them soft and sweet.  His unwavering blue gaze, light and sparkling, was aimed right at her, as if he were trying to use it as some sort of warning beam to dispel the suddenly anxious feelings fluttering in her gut.

"We were never," he said with earnest honesty.  "She was an ally.  She's still trying to be an ally."

"Nosy.  She's trying to be nosy," Darcy mumbled, but the anxiety was gone.  She knew it was nonsensical, but Steve Rogers seemed like less of a threat to her than the formidable Black Widow in regards to Bucky's love and heart.  She highly doubted the Black Widow was into sharing much of anything.

Bucky kissed her knuckles again, before leaning in and kissing the tip of her nose and then her lips.  He then turned and grabbed the newspaper, showing her the passages that had concerned him.  They were normal ads, or appeared to be, but words were misspelled, and numbers were listed in nonsensical patterns in the sentence structure.  

"I'll teach it to you," Bucky promised.  "But for now, it says Hydra, looking for pairs, close to Paris.  Out of time."

Darcy stiffened at that.  

"They're going to be looking for us together if we try and leave Paris again," Bucky said softly.  "And I imagine they still have some agents in other agencies in Europe who can use bigger resources to cast a wider net."

"Oh," Darcy breathed out.  She stayed silent for a long time, her emotions unreadable to Bucky, both on her face and through the unidentifiable ether that she used to push her feelings on other people.  

It was like she had them under lock and barrel and was trying to internalize them even deeper.  There was a little divot between her brows, a fine line worked into creamy white skin, and the only thing Bucky wanted to do was swipe his fingers down it to ease it away and keep it away forever.  

"So, we don't leave?" Darcy offered hopefully.  "Ever?"

"Dollbaby, I gotta go and look, just this last time," Bucky said gently.

"And leave me here?" Darcy's voice rose an octave immediately and Bucky felt nothing from her, even though he could tell she was panicking.  "You can't leave us here."

"I'll come back," Bucky promised.  "Two or three day trip, tops.  But---this one I have to do."

"I'm not staying here waiting for you, I'm coming with," Darcy informed him resolutely, her spine going rigid and her eyes suddenly more serious than anything he had ever seen.  

"If we go together, they'll be a better chance of being caught," Bucky hesitated.  

"Who is to say it's safe here anymore, then?" Darcy reasoned.  "I mean, we've been out and about all the time together, they might know we're here, and if you go, I'll be---I'll be a sitting duck."

"Well, Pet, there is a way to keep you protected," Bucky said softly, gently, approaching the subject like he was approaching a skittish colt.

"Not without you," Darcy shook her head.  "I'll--we'll go together, after this last base.  I'll go with you.  I promise.  I'll play nice with Steve and the nosy Widow and Tom Turkey legs, and everything.  I promise.  Please, Bucky.  Please?  Don't leave me."

Bucky didn't need to feel what she was feeling, she didn't need to push that mysterious emotional energy on him.  He could see it plain as day on her face.  Leaving her behind, even for a few days, even for her safety, wouldn't be an option in her eyes.  He wouldn't be able to bear causing her that much heartache, not even temporarily.

"Alright, Pet," Bucky nodded, feeling her euphoria pushing towards him as she quickly pounced, her lips pressing wet, insistent kisses on his chest and neck.  He wrapped his arms around her and tried to think of a way to pull off the trip to Romania to get that last little piece of the mystery.  Just a quick trip before coming back to her and bringing her in to finally meet Steve. 

"Okay, now come on, teach me this code, so I can understand what that nosy woman is saying too."

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty: Left Behind

"I don't want to hear the goat's bubble gum, I want to spank Captain Buttmunch butt."

Bucky stared at the bed that the nonsensical sentence had come from.  Darcy turned over in her sleep, her arms reaching for Bucky, but not finding for him.  Her pout was noticeable, even in her deep sleep and she flipped to her other side, arms reaching out for another empty space.  

" Buttmunch ."

She muttered in her sleep again, rolling once more and grabbing the pillow that Bucky usually rested his head on.  She gripped it to her face in her sleep, the silly dream she had fallen into ebbing away as she fell into a deeper state of slumber.  Bucky would take these kinds of nonsensical dreams, the talking in her sleep to what she had done the first few weeks after being rescued from Hydra.  He had hated to see her tossing and turning, crying and whimpering, and just a few times screaming out in pain.  

He would have preferred being in bed with her at the moment, allowing her to cuddle against him to defy the ‘Captain Buttmunch’ in her dreams.  He would have coaxed her awake with lazy, sweet kisses and then tired her out so thoroughly that she would have slept like a log until mid morning.  But he had work to do, and he couldn't get it done during the day, because Darcy had taken to watching him like a hawk, the tingling feeling of her suspicion needling at him throughout the day.

He opened up an antiquated form of messaging on an untraceable connection and took a deep breath at what he saw.  Four apprehensions had been made of Hydra teams in four of the places he and Darcy had visited since arriving in Paris.  All within twelve hours.  The last one had been from three days ago when they'd gone out of the apartment to buy Darcy a pair of maternity jeans to fit over her baby bump.

There was one message on the list of reports from the Black Widow.  

' it's only a matter of time.  you must come in. '

Bucky knew that.  He knew it was only a matter of time.  He knew that the safest place for Darcy was at the Avenger's facility.  Steve would be there.  And the Widow would never allow harm to come to her.  But he couldn't.  If he went back with her not only would he be taken into custody for all of the crimes that the Winter Soldier had committed at Hydra's demand, but he wouldn't be able to get that last missing piece regarding who had fathered Darcy's baby.  He wasn't scared to face the authorities for what he had done.  On some level, he almost welcomed it.  He would be placed somewhere safe and Darcy and Steve would be able to visit until hopefully, one day it would be enough time away and he could finally live the rest of his days in peace, quiet and the love of the two people who owned his entire heart.

But he couldn't live without knowing whether or not the Red Skull was the father of the precious, unborn bastard.

And Darcy was not safe with him any longer.  He had two options.  Leave her in Paris and have the Avengers retrieve her and take her to safety, or he could leave her and give her instructions to follow him when it was safer.  He looked at the newspaper sitting on the right of the laptop and sighed.  The United States was leading the charge for the Sokovia Accords, an initiative and set of international laws to regulate all of those who were enhanced in any way.

That included Darcy and their baby.

Bucky couldn’t keep her safe from both Hydra and nearly every government on the face of the Earth.  But Steve might be able to until Bucky could find answers.

He typed out his response quickly and hit send before any part of him could think to hesitate.

' I will come back soon.  send someone for her now. and a way to keep her quiet .   She will not go willingly without me.’

He swallowed and waited for the Widow's response.  

'package on the way with what you'll need. pickup in seventy-two hours.'

“I don’t know how many times I have to tell you, no matter how stealthy you are, I can sense you there.”

Natasha smiled ruefully, put away her second phone and walked into the common room where Wanda Maximoff was staring forlornly into the refrigerator.  Natasha bypassed her and went for the cabinets, plucking out her hidden canister of the finest beans that money could buy, in her opinion.  Dunkin’ Donuts.  Sam made fun of her for her admittedly pedestrian coffee tastes.  But she had been around the world quite a few times, and her specific tastes had declared the brand her favorite.

She did hide the coffee in a canister and destroyed the evidence of where she had purchased it, but all the same, it was her favorite.  She set about brewing a pot, giving Wanda nothing but silence in return.  

“Steve is making you check in on me,” Wanda accused as Natasha unscientifically dumped a good portion of coffee grounds into the coffee filter and set it in the machine.

“He might have mentioned something in passing,” Natasha admitted.  “And he’s still in his own grief shell in his office.  Might be a little while before he can come out and mother hen you properly.”

“Mother hen,” Wanda huffed out with fond derision.  There was no other way to describe Steve Rogers that was more apt.  After Pietro’s untimely death, the Avengers had formed protective ranks around her, their new teammate.  If Clint was now her adoptive father, Steve was certainly her mother hen.  And Sam and Natasha had taken up the mantles of cool Aunt and Uncle, then as well.  

“Underneath the frozen bags of peas, I have dessert stashed in a box of lean cuisines,” Natasha whispered confidentially, as if she were telling Wanda what the nuclear codes were to all the countries in the world.  It was necessary though, because while they had all the finest ingredients that money could buy, not one of them knew how to cook or bake.  So if you brought something in that was particularly delicious, it was very likely that it would be stolen.

Wanda retrieved the box and opened it to find pieces of valuable treasure wrapped up in saran wrap.  She slowly and reverently unwrapped them and looked up at a smiling Natasha in shock.  

“You’re letting me have one?” Wanda asked in disbelief.

“They taste better when shared, believe it or not,” Natasha whispered as she reached for her own treat.  Laura Barton’s red velvet brownies were sandwiching a perfect layer of vanilla ice cream.  She quickly licked some excess ice cream around the edge before chomping down on the whole sandwich.  

Wanda quickly followed suit, and the two women ate their precious treats in silence.  By the time they were done, they were cold and the coffee was ready to be poured out.  Wanda wordlessly got up and dug around in the vegetable drawer of the fridge, pulling out a coveted bottle of Girl Scout caramel and coconut creamer.  She shared a secret smile with Natasha and admitted,

“Sam will drink it straight from the bottle if he had the opportunity,” Wanda admitted.  “I have to hide it.”

“Understandable, he’s a heathen,” Natasha said with inappropriate fondness as she went about fixing them two mugs of coffee.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I---I never wanted something like this to happen,” Wanda admitted softly.  “Not even when I was my angriest would I want so many lives to be lost for something that I did…”

“Wanda, if you had not been there, Steve would, at best, be in a coma as Helen tried to regrow pieces of him,” Natasha said softly.  “And just as many people on the ground would have died.”

“I should have been able to control it, to send him straight up,” Wanda was whispering as she stared into her coffee cup, the guilt twisting at her features.  

“Steve or Sam or Clint will tell you that there was no control there, that it wasn’t your fault,” Natasha put her cup down and went to clean up the evidence of her coffee brewing, taking the grounds and dumping them straight into the disposal with a quick smirk.  She looked back up at Wanda and her lips formed a small, sad smile.  “I”m not going to tell you that, because I know.  I know from personal experience, that it won’t matter.  That it won’t make you believe it.”

“You’re right,” Wanda agreed.

“What I will tell you, is that this, those people, their lives, they get added to the scale, the ledger, your column in red,” Natasha said softly.  “And you do everything in your power to make sure the other side of the scale, the lives you help, the lives you save, is heavier than the side that is lost.”

Wanda sniffled and sipped at her coffee again.  She took a deep breath and gave Natasha a knowing look.

“I meant it, you aren’t as covert as you think that you are.  I know that you’re looking for the girl,” Wanda whispered.  “ Darcy .  Your thoughts are consumed with helping her.”

“That might happen sooner rather than later,” Natasha admitted, unsurprised that Wanda knew.  The young Sokovian woman had delved into Sam’s mind to get a better picture, to confirm what Natasha suspected.  

“What can I do to help?” Wanda asked, her tone eager.

“I hope it won’t come to needing your help,” Natasha admitted.  “I’m sending your Dad to pick her up.”

“Is that wise?” Wanda’s doubt was clear.

“I do have backup plans,” Natasha assured her with a smirk.  “But until then, just---stick by Steve.  Okay?  We’ll figure it all out when things start happening.”

“And that will be?”

Natasha thought of her reports, of the Sokovia Accords, of everything she knew and worried about every second of every day.  She prefered to be in control.  She preferred to be in charge.  She preferred to know where all the moving pieces were, but at the moment, it wasn’t the easiest of things to do.  Things were about to get very hectic and harried.  She could tell.

“Soon.  Things are changing.  Very soon.”

Darcy liked to pretend that the mysterious pregnancy hormones that everyone talked about and Bucky read about had little to no effect on her.  Her need for additional calories could be blamed on the watered down super soldier serum running through her veins.  Her random bouts of weepiness and sad thoughts could easily be attributed to the vast and diverse trauma she had picked up in her last few years of life.  And her increased need to pounce on Bucky and have intimate and thorough carnal relations with him many times throughout the day could easily be written off as a case of hello, have you seen him without a shirt on ?

The nesting however?  She was having trouble finding an excuse for that other than the whole, being a few months pregnant with a mystery Hydra baby.  She was constantly cleaning their spotless apartment.  Their very small amount of possessions had been reorganized more times in the past few weeks than was strictly necessary.  Hannah Hula had been moved on the bookshelf twelve times, as she constantly tried to find just the right place for her.

She’d started a list in one of Bucky’s notebooks, two pages crammed between his messily recorded memories of Steve Rogers and it was titled:

‘ Things we will need before the baby brings the pain to Lady-ville ’

She didn’t presume to dream that they would stay settled in Paris, so the list was full of things that they’d need should they be in a bigger place, say the Avenger’s facility or even some remodeled brownstone in Brooklyn.  

Bassinet (for the first few months).  

Convertible crib.  

Baby monitors ( Bucky had written next to it VIDEO baby monitors).  

Rocking chair.  

Breast pump.  

Bottles.  

Diapers (Again, Bucky had written CLOTH diapers next to it).  

Clothing.

Swaddling blanket thing-a-ma-jigs.     

One of those strappy things to hang the baby off of your manly and pretty chest (Bucky had written a simple Thanks Dollbaby next to it).

The list went on and on.  Darcy had remembered a lot of it from the few baby showers she had attended.  She’d bought the baby baths and the special soaps and the ridiculously adorable onesies before for friends who were welcoming bundles of joy into their lives.  She snorted at the idea for herself.  She couldn’t quite picture a baby shower being thrown for her.  She could see the banner now...

Congratulations on the Hydra Spawn, if it’s a monster, we promise to Avenge it.

No, the superhero themed baby shower was not in her future, which meant she and Bucky had to go out and get the things themselves.  At least Bucky had loads of cash he had liberated from Hydra, they should be able to figure out the purchasing of it all pretty easily.  

Speaking of cash, she wanted to run down to the corner and grab more of the marmalade if it was available.  She and Bucky had been blowing through it, very quickly and if she couldn’t have more of it, well, she was afraid her first pregnant lady food tantrum would be happening.  She was already keeping her cool about the damned plum cake she wanted more of, she was not going to hide a hankering for orange marmalade too.

She went to the hollowed out book that Bucky kept the Euros in and furrowed her brow to find it empty.  When they had gone clothing shopping a few days before, when it was still safe to go outside as a couple, the box had been stuffed to the gills with cash.  It was now completely barren.

She wasn’t about to crawl on the ground and get the floorboard up where there was more cash hidden.  She could feel uncertainty bubbling up within her and was careful to try to tamp it down, less Bucky feel it in the kitchen.  She saw his cell phone lying on the table and went for it, picking it up and trying to see some kind of evidence to confirm her suspicions or assuage her fears.  

It was wiped clean.  Wiped clean in a way that she had taught him, so that no one could track him or ever get to the information that had been previously on the phone,  

She thought back to their last conversation, about her going back to the Avengers and him finishing up his mission.  She had thought that was the end of the discussion, but now she knew she was very, very wrong.  

“Dollbaby, I’m heading out for a moment to get us more marmalade,” Bucky called out from the hallway, sounding cheerful and nonchalant.  “Don’t forget to take your pill.”

Darcy opened her mouth to make a sound, but found that panic had caused her throat to dry up and no sound would come out.  He was leaving her.  He was hell bent on leaving her in Paris, where she would be a sitting duck for any friendly, neighborhood Avengers, and she didn’t know if she’d ever see him again.  He’d lied to her.  He was lying to her.

The one man in the whole word that she trusted, and he was going to abandon her.  She should have grabbed her baton and rushed for him, laying him out on the ground before he could leave.  She should have screamed and yelled.

Instead, she took a deep, calming breath, pushing her panic and anxiety down and away and she ran to stop him before he could go.

"Don't you dare even think about leaving."

A broad pair of shoulders slumped, a metal hand rested on the doorknob.  The warning had been stern and hard, but there was a wobble on the last word, the hint of tears, a heavy layer of desperation.  

"I have to," Bucky said softly, already halfway gone.  Gone was the playful tone in his voice, the smirk that you could hear in his voice when he talked to her.  He was full of resignation, of regret.  He'd hoped to leave while she was still sleeping, leaving her a note to explain.

"You don't have to do anything," Darcy insisted, stomping her way to the door and grabbing his left hand  "You told me we’d go together.  You promised.  Bucky, what's going on?"

"There was an explosion in Lagos," Bucky explained.  

"Is---is everyone, is Steve okay?" Darcy questioned quickly, clearly concerned.  She leaned her head against the impressive metal bicep, appreciating the unyielding metal that always seemed strong enough to hold her up.

She didn’t often bring up Steve.  It was usually Bucky who brought him into conversation.  When she did bring up Steve, he could feel the insecurity coming off of her in those pushed feelings.  He didn’t know how to make her believe that Steve wouldn’t turn her away or steal him from her.  It was more than her insecurity.  She couldn’t think of Steve---Captain Rogers...or any of the Avengers, Jane and Erik too, without feeling sad and lonely and desperate.  It had been so long since she’d even spoken to any of them, well over two years now.  

Thor had said his friends would make sure she was well, that she wouldn’t have to join up with SHIELD.  Jane had promised that she’d get back in touch with her once she came back to Earth, but Darcy had seen that she’d been nominated for the Nobel Prize the year prior, and didn’t seem too fussed that her former intern that had spent over two years of her life helping her find a way to travel between planets had completely fallen off the face of the Earth.  Tony Stark had said Pepper would call her, and Darcy had gone back and dropped a (handmade) business card.

Even SHIELD had failed her.  One of their numbered agents, Carter, had stood over her shoulder and made sure she had filled out all the NDA’s.  But apparently it hadn’t mattered whether she was tortured for SHIELD’s secrets, it only mattered that she couldn’t put it on Facebook.  Erik Selvig had said she was dearer to him than any daughter he could have had when she’d rescued him from that psychiatric ward.  He’d promised that if she needed him, he was only a phone call away.

And nothing.  

No missing persons reports filed, no news stories about a missing young woman.  She’d fallen off the face of the Earth into literal Hell and no one missed her enough to think to look for her.

She'd been at that medical facility for two years , most of that time in modified cryo freeze, before a fallen Angel with a metal arm lay waste to it, finding her in a cell, strapped to a table.  He'd lifted her up and had taken her to safety and she'd refused to leave him for the last four months.  He was the only thing that was safe for Darcy now.  And she'd be damned if she let him leave without her.  She knew who he was.  When she hadn't been able to sleep properly for a week after the rescue, he'd softly told her everything he could remember about himself.  Every day there was something new.

She knew he was James Buchanan Barnes.  She knew what he'd done.  She knew what he wanted to do.

"He's fine," Bucky whispered.  "But I need to move."

"Why?" Darcy demanded.

"Because if I don't move, they'll come for me, I know they will," Bucky explained softly.  "Someone always manages to get close after something big happens.  That bird-brain got close last year after the Robot attack.  They saw us in Canada.  The chatter is showing that they think I’m in Europe.  Pet, they’re close, they’re right outside our door, and they’re going to come for us.  It’s time for you to get to safety."

"I thought we already established that the safest place for me was with you.  And---and you’re ready to come back, aren’t you?" Darcy whispered.   He had brought it up before, after all.   "I mean---Bucky, I know that you love him, and he obviously cares for you deeply, he doesn't give up on---"

"I"m not ready," Bucky said resolutely.  "Don't know if I'll ever be ready, really.  But I will come back to you, as soon as I’m done."

"Alright," Darcy sighed.  "But you can't go without me."

"You'll be safe," Bucky promised her, turning so that he could wrap both arms around her, holding her close.  "Nothing safer than that facility in upstate New York.  Just---they’ll come for you and you should go with them.  They’ll come for you, I promise."

"I'm not important enough for them to look for.  That's already been proven. Besides, there’s nothing better than being with you," Darcy mumbled against his chest, feeling tension seep from his body.  His right hand rubbed up and down her back and his left hand went between their bodies, fingers touching the small swell of Darcy's belly.

"Strong," Bucky sighed at the feeling of a heartbeat.

It wasn't his biological child.  He knew that.  The files he had unearthed since then had proven it and the first time he and Darcy had made love was just a month ago, when she had been too impossibly beautiful after seeing the Eiffel Tower for the first time and Bucky had taken her to the little flat that was safer than anywhere either of them had ever been, and laid her down on a real bed and worshipped every square inch of her after waking up from their first time.

He needed to know who the other biological contributor to the child was.  He needed the peace of mind, good or bad.

And he was so very close to finding out who the father was.  

"I'm not letting you leave me," Darcy insisted stubbornly, stepping out of his embrace and staring up at him with a stubbornness that brought back another unbidden memory to Bucky.  Little Steve Rogers, all of eighteen, glaring up at Bucky as Bucky contemplated selling his own body to make rent for the month.  

"Steve'll take care of you," Bucky promised.

"He doesn't know me!" Darcy very nearly shouted.  "He didn't give enough of a shit about me to come and look for me.  He doesn't know me !"

"He will," Bucky promised.

"What did you do?" Darcy demanded harshly.

"Sent a message for you to be picked up," Bucky admitted readily.  He found the lies falling from his tongue, just as easy as they used to when he'd fib to Steve back in the day, "They'll be here in two days."

"Well they won't find me, because I'll be with you!" Darcy insisted, stomping to their room and grabbing her bag, filling it with the clothing that they had bought for her when her baby bump had gotten too big for her pants.  "Where are we going?  Somewhere warm?"

"China," Bucky lied.  He would be going to Romania, to where his answers about Darcy's baby were.  

"Okay, that'll be nice," Darcy admitted.  "A country to cross off the bucket list."

"Darcy," Bucky sighed.He shook his head and whispered with incredible feeling, “ Pet .”

"No, we're going.  That's that," Darcy said resolutely.  Her eyes got big, imploring and beseeching, "Please don't leave me behind.   Please ."

Bucky sighed again.  Her entire face should be made illegal.  He'd told her that weeks ago when he'd first tried to drop her off at the upstate New York Avenger's facility.  She'd agreed with him and pitied him and mocked him and he'd smiled that smile that was just for her, the one she’d inspired to bloom on his lips for the first time in decades.  In his new world where the only thing he knew was revenge and the fact that he had once been loved by the best man to have ever breathed and now no longer deserved, Darcy was a beacon, a life preserver, and everything he didn't deserve.

"I won't," he whispered, another lie.  

The Soldier was so angry at him that he wasn’t even speaking.

"Okay, we'll leave tomorrow morning, early," Darcy decided.  She stood up and pulled off the shirt she had nicked from him after his rescue of her.  Then the panties quickly hit the floor.  "C'mon, back in bed, sleep and travel tomorrow."

Bucky bit back a groan as she threw herself on the bed, bouncing in a very beguiling way.  He didn't know when...or even if he would ever be with her again.  Yes, he wanted to sink himself inside of her, to feel that wet warmth gripping him and pulling him over the edge.  But he also just wanted to hold her, to kiss the tip of her nose, to feel her pulse under his fingertips.  If he was leaving forever, he would take the comfort she was always willing to provide.

And with the feelings she was pushing towards him, the wanting, the desire and the heated feelings, he wasn’t having a problem pushing aside his guilt, knowing that he was going to be doing exactly what he had promised her he would never do.

"Did you take your vitamin, Doll?" Bucky asked, lifting the bottle of pills that Dr. Rivera had created especially for Darcy and the enhanced baby she carried, that was over two thirds of the way empty by now.  Yet another reminder that their time alone was coming to a rapid close.

"Shit, see, this is why I need you, I'll forget," Darcy smiled up at him as he grabbed the cup off of the bedside table and went towards the bathroom.  She took the pill he handed her and sipped at her water, watching as he began to strip.  "C'mon old timer, come help put me to sleep."

" Charming ," Bucky rolled his eyes at her fondly, and did exactly as she said.  He shucked his boxer briefs off, and couldn't  help the soft chuckle as she smacked her lips together.  

Her arms went up to welcome him as he crawled on the bed, laying on top of her and feeling his stomach turn over pleasantly when he kissed the tip of her nose.  She hummed happily and played with the long strands of hair that were escaping from the low ponytail he had put his hair in.  Her fingers trailed along the shell of his ear gently, and he couldn't help the pleased sound rumbling in the back of his throat.  

Her touches were everywhere and he tried to memorize how they made him feel.  It was a luxury he hadn't taken back in 1945, when he'd shared those last intimate touches with Steve.  He didn't know if it was due to having his brain fried hundreds of times since then, but he thought that their touches, while worlds and decades apart, still made him feel the same.  The feel of Darcy's thighs sliding along his hips as she wrapped her legs around his body was like the best pain reliever in the world.

Pain, both physical and mental, whether it came from a punch to the jaw or remembering some atrocity he had committed, disappeared when she touched him.  It had been the same with Steve.

He loved that about them.

He loved them.

"Darcy," he whispered, his mouth hovering on her chin, nipping at it lightly before going for her lips, delighting in her own moan as he kissed her thoroughly.

"I know," she answered when he pulled away.  "Me too."

"Yeah?" Bucky looked down at her with the same amazement he had felt when she had said it the first time.  It never felt less .  If anything it always felt that her loving him, this beautiful wonderful amazing woman loving him, made everything feel so much better.

"Bucky, of course I love you," Darcy gave a happy little sigh as he rubbed himself against her swollen lips, hot, hard and ready for her already.  She felt him push in and she let out a small gasp and swore, "Fuck you feel good."

"Look who's talking," Bucky drawled out playfully, the hint of Brooklyn chasing around the edges of his voice.  He didn't have much time before she would pass out, he knew that.  The moment his hips rested against her skin, he pulled out and pistoned into her hard and fast.

"Yes, yes," Darcy's hands went for his back, a fingertip rubbing at that place where metal met flesh, knowing that the softest touch made chills run up and down his spine.  

"Say it again?" Bucky was nearly begging, near tears as he continued to fuck her hard and fast, all the tenderness in the way his right hand touched the side of her face, his thumb running along her cheekbone.  The softness in his eyes as he stared down at her in wonder.

"I love you," she promised with a gasp.

"Again," Bucky pleaded.  "Again, please."

"I love you, I love you Bucky," she repeated.  "You can't ever leave me behind, you can't.  I love you."

"Shit," Bucky cursed as he felt the tingles running down his spine too soon.  "I love you, Darcy."

She writhed beneath him before clenching her thighs around his hips, her orgasm washing over her and him in a series of flutters and spasms that had him gasping for air as he quickly joined her.  

"What---what?" Darcy asked, looking sleepier than was necessary.  She squinted her eyes up at him in drowsy suspicion.  Tears sprung up and she shook her head ever so slightly.  "Bucky, no---"

"I love you," he whispered, kissing her forehead.

"Don't leave me here," Darcy begged.  

"I love you," he repeated pulling out of her gently and looking away as she tried to make her sleepy, drugged face display her anger properly.  

"Please," Darcy whispered in resignation.  "Come back to me?  When it's done?"

Bucky brought the blanket up to cover her, tucking her in tenderly, taking a sharp inhale when she reached out and grabbed his left hand.  

"Bucky---"

She was out like a light, and would remain out until after Steve and the rest of the Avengers came to retrieve her.  She'd wake up safe, and with Steve, who was the only one Bucky would entrust her to. Steve would understand.  Steve would know what she meant to Bucky.  He untucked her and quickly and tenderly dressed her before tucking her back in.  He gave her lips one last chaste kiss after he was dressed again and took a deep breath.

"I'll come back to you.  I will."

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty-One :

"Clint can't fly us?" Sam wondered softly as he watched Natasha prep the quinjet for Steve to fly he and Sam across the Atlantic.  

Steve had gotten the text message regarding Peggy's death less than an hour ago.  The man had been a wreck since then.  Not that anyone could see it, his face had been stoic, but after what happened in Lagos, the utter shit show that was the end of Rumlow's life and the horrifying cleanup and recovery afterward, and then Secretary of the Douchey State Ross and the Accords...Peggy's death was just another brick on top of him.  A brick right on top of his chest to add to the thousands of bricks already there, valiantly attempting to suffocate the life from Steve Rogers.

"He's got things to do," Natasha revealed as she programmed the automated flight path on the quinjet.

"Retirement is busier than ever, it seems," Sam arched a knowing eyebrow at Natasha.

"Three kids under the age of twelve will fill up the hours," Natasha said with no small amount of distraction as she looked down at her watch before going back to programming.

"You can't come with us?" Sam prodded.  "Not for me.  I mean, yeah, I wouldn't mind having you around."

Natasha stopped her quick and thorough work to give Sam an incredulous look.  Sam had the good grace to let a sheepish grin break out on his face.

"I not only wouldn't mind, it would be a damned pleasure," Sam corrected himself.  

"There are contingencies that need to be in place before the Accords go into effect," Natasha whispered.  "There are too many things that could happen between now and us signing it in Vienna in less than forty-eight hours---"

"I'm NOT signing them," Sam said pointedly.

"Well, then you retire too.  I hope your 401k is healthy," Natasha said dryly.  "Or you have a backup plan in place for when Ross comes after you."

Sam prided himself on being able to read most of Natasha's double speak.  He was one of very few who could.  Steve could do it if he tried hard enough.  Once he had seen the super mind manipulator Wanda squint at Natasha's casual double talk during a game of Uno while they were flying out to a crisis in Denver.  Really the only person who was as good as Sam was at finding the half truths and hidden meaning in Natasha's innocent statements was Clint.  And he had years on Sam in his Natasha study.

So Sam did pride himself in the ability to take a simple sentence from Natasha and translate it into what she really meant.

"I don't know how I'd even go about doing that," Sam sighed.  

Natasha gave him a very soft, very genuine smile that had Sam give a full body tremble that looked entirely delightful.

"Good thing you have me to pick up the slack.  Now, course for London is set.  Make sure Steve doesn't get into too much trouble," Natasha ordered in a quiet, hushed tone.

"Yeah, last time one of the great loves of his life kicked it, he wound up crashing the plane into the Arctic.  I'd like to be one of the people in this superhero club who hasn't been frozen alive, thanks."

Darcy blinked her eyes open with some difficulty, thanks to the crustiness of sleep gathered at the corners, along with the sedative that Bucky had administered upon her.  There was no sunlight streaming through the bulletproof windows of their little Parisian apartment, no moonlight either, but it was dark, and the light that filtered in through the breaks in the gauzy white curtains was artificial from the street lights.  

The serum that ran through her veins wasn't an optimum serum at all, but it was still difficult to get her down and out for the count.  And it had worked for hours at this point, when Bucky had taken his leave it had been afternoon sunshine.  There was anger simmering deep down that Bucky had done this to her, but she also knew that he deeply cared for her wellbeing.  And he was absolutely devoted to making sure the baby was healthy as well.  He wouldn't drug her if it had any chance to hurt the baby.  

Which meant that he had been given the drug to knock her out by someone they both had trusted: Doctor Carla Rivera.

Darcy winced as she pulled herself into a sitting position, every slow movement making her feel more and more awake and aware.  Bucky had put clothing on her before he had left, apparently.  She was dressed in her fuzziest pajama pants as well as a large t-shirt of his.  It smelled of him, the rich natural smell of his, tinged with mentholated smoke and simple soap.  She felt a stinging, tight sob climbing up her throat as she realized that he was gone.  He had left her, and she didn't know if he would be back.

It didn't matter that he did it for her own good.  It didn't matter what safety had been involved.  

He was gone and she was sitting on a bed with only a shirt to remember him by.  Her eyes scanned her surroundings in the dim light, looking for some other sign.  A note.  Something that told her he was sorry and that he would be back.  But there was nothing.

She felt the life she carried in her stomach flutter and her anger surged.  

She was up and out of the bed like a rocket then, rushing around the room as she grabbed her backpack and began tossing things in.  One set of clothes, anymore would drag her down.  Two electrical batons in the x-ray proof pocket, and one on her physical person.  The box of protein bars that they'd painstakingly selected weeks ago.  She looked at the bookshelf, which held trinkets they'd picked up on their travels, a notepad full of plum cake recipes, a leather bound notebook and Hannah Hula.  

Darcy's mouth opened and a stifled cry echoed out of it as she picked up the notebook first and opened it up, rifling through pages and pages of little notes that Bucky had written for the baby.  She got to the last page, and it was dated that very day.

' Dear baby.  I love you and I love your mama, and I promise, I'm gonna make sure you and your mama are safe.  I have some work to do, but I will find a way back to you. Love papa .'

Darcy felt like throwing the book into the toilet for one second before she ruthlessly threw it into her bag.  She KNEW what safe meant for Bucky.  He was going to try to make her go back to the Avengers WITHOUT him and she couldn't abide by that.  Like hell she was going back to those people who never cared enough to notice she was gone.  Like hell was she going to be put into a room full of scientists that would poke and prod at her and her child and wonder what Hydra had turned them into.  Like hell was she going to let stupid, noble Bucky do this on his own.

She'd follow him, wherever she went, and she'd make him cry and beg on his knees for her to forgive him for daring to leave her.  She grabbed Hannah Hula off of the shelf and threw her in her bag before going to the bed they had shared.  She got down on her knees and reached underneath, unsurprised to find batons strapped to where the guns had been.  She bypassed the additional weaponry and went for the floorboard where they kept a baggie full of cash and passports that they had been using during their travels.

There was nothing there.

"You son of a BITCH!" Darcy cursed, maneuvering her belly to see under the bed more clearly, and only seeing the weapons he had left, no cash and no passports to be seen.  "Oh James Buchanan Barnes, you are going to pay for this."

There could be only one reason why he would have left her without cash and a means to travel easily.  He didn't expect her to need to go anywhere or fend for herself.  He wanted to keep her right where she was so the Black Widow or Captain America or WHOEVER would be able to just pick her right up.  

Darcy struggled to her feet again and bit back the tears that threatened to fall.  She tried to focus on her rage and her anger instead, pushing the tears and sadness far away from her.

She didn't know how to direct the power.  She wanted to give them to Bucky.  She wanted him to feel how sad she was.  She stomped around the bedroom, getting her sneakers securely on her feet and grabbing a hooded sweat jacket and yanking it on.  She reached for the soft gray knitted hat  and stuffed her hair up and into it to hide the recognizable brown curls.  She sniffled and wished she knew how to handle the nebulous power that the serum had gifted her with.  She wanted Bucky to know what she was feeling.

But then the door to the apartment clicked open.

In all the weeks they had lived in the little Parisian apartment, Darcy had never so much as glimpsed another human soul on their floor.  The fact that this intruder was able to get into the doorway of the secure apartment had her taking a step or two back in fear.  Her hand went back under the mattress and she grabbed one of the batons, setting it to its highest setting.

It had been the charge that had taken Steve Rogers down.  If it was an unenhanced human, they would be out for hours.  If it was Bucky coming back and realizing his error in leaving her---well, he'd still be twitching on the ground, useless for at least a half hour.  

Darcy didn't hesitate in jumping back on the bed and diving under the covers, holding the ready baton in her tight grip.  She closed her eyes and focused, taking everything she was trying to push down, the fear, the hopelessness, the utter dejection and gut wrenching sadness at what Bucky had done, and she pushed with all of her mental might at whoever was walking down the hallway with a nearly silent tread.

The sniffles started nearly immediately, whoever it was they were getting what she was forcing on them emotionally.  She heard a masculine voice mutter 'fuck' and the handle to the door of the bedroom turned.  

That wasn't Bucky.

Darcy lay under the blanket taking deep and steady breaths as she continued to force her sadness onto the intruder, both of her hands steady as she waited.

"Jesus," the man muttered, his voice thick with tears.  "What in the hell?"

His voice broke on a sob and Darcy could feel him standing above her in the bed.  A hand gripped at the covers and he pulled them back slowly, sobbing the whole time.

His crying ceased though when she jabbed the baton in his midsection and let her charge loose.  She managed to scramble when he went down on the bed twitching, avoiding being crushed under his weight.

"Unenhanced then," she muttered, staring down at the unconscious man.  His face was on the rugged side, his dark blonde hair pushed up into haphazard tousled spikes.  She squinted at him in concentration, wondering why he seemed so familiar.  He was dressed in black leather, the hint of a purple t-shirt underneath his jacket.  He was also still breathing, and Darcy felt relieved at that.  She stepped off of the bed carefully and stared down at his face, willing herself to remember.

A face sprung into her brain, one similar to the man lying unconscious on her bed.  A smirking face from a magazine that Jane had tossed at her shortly after the Chitauri attack.  The picture had been taken by paparazzi in a park in New York City when Thor had left with Loki in chains.  That face had been smirking as the Asgardians left, and he had been standing next to the Black Widow.

Hawkeye.  Aka Jack-booted thug.  Aka the Black Widow’s cabana boy.  

She wasted no time in rifling through his pockets for money or a wallet, but came up empty except for a pack of juicy fruit and a five dollar bill which she happily pocketed.  

Darcy went back to the bookshelf and ripped a piece of paper out of the notebook with her plum cake recipes in it.  She scribbled a message to the unconscious AVENGER in her and Bucky's bed and placed it right in front of the man's nose.  

"Fuck off Parakeet ass.  Just try and catch me and bring me back to your weird spider girlfriend."

Darcy had never liked being so short.  At barely reaching five feet and three inches, she had spent the majority of her life reaching and standing on tiptoe to do normal things like grab a box of crackers from a store shelf, or put away dishes after washing them.  The most comfortable she had been, had been in the small motorhome in New Mexico with an equally tiny Jane.  Erik had hated it, knocking his head on the ceiling most days, but she and Jane had been so comfortable in a space seemingly built around their size.

Now, as she rushed through the streets of Paris, heading towards the train station that she and Bucky had used to get to England, she appreciated her smaller size.  She was well below the gaze of the average human, so no one was really looking at her and her oversized comfort clothing.  She didn't garner much attention, and that was a good thing.  She skirted the pavements the way Bucky had always done when they'd strolled through the streets of Paris together.  He was unnaturally adept at avoiding surveillance cameras, and therefore they never got on anyone's radar.  

She had no money.  She had no passport.  But she knew she had to get out of Paris.  Not only had Bucky allowed the Avengers to come and bring her in, but there was still the threat of Hydra.  She supposed that she was minutely grateful that Hydra was looking for them to be together.  Without James and his tall form and bulky stature next to her, she was practically invisible.  

But she still had to get the hell out of Paris.  She had to get somewhere she could lay low until she was able to search out Bucky on her own.  He had said he was going to China.  But if he had lied to her about everything else, including never leaving her, then she wagered he had lied about that too.

Bitterness coated her tongue and her heart and her brain waged a war within her.  Yes, Bucky had lied to her.  Bucky had drugged her and took off, leaving her behind.  But she knew inherently that he loved her and only wanted what was best for her.  Her brain won out after a complicated struggle and she retained her anger.

A few feet away from her at the center of the walkway, a man bumped into another man, and instead of politely nodding and acknowledging the movement, they lunged for each other simultaneously, spitting mad, violent and full of rage.  Darcy's eyes widened in surprise, but she didn't wait to see the outcome, she kept walking, heading straight for the entrance to the train station.

She had caused that, inadvertently, but still it had been her fault.  

She had to be able to control the empathetic power that had developed within her from the serum.  She had the ability to push feelings of her own onto others.  If she could do it---she could figure something out.  She rushed into the train station and found a bench out of view from the security cameras and took a deep breath as she observed her surroundings.  She just needed it to work once.  She just needed one person who she could convince to give her what she needed.

She saw the matronly, motherly looking woman, probably in her sixties, dressed to the nines but obviously on a vacation, what with the ridiculously expensive camera hanging from her neck.  The woman was walking into the station on the arm of her husband.  He made a beeline for the lavatory and Darcy stared at the woman unabashedly and tried her best to focus.  

Fear wouldn't do, how could Darcy play on her sensibilities if she was scared?  Sadness was out of the question, Darcy couldn't conceivably ask for what she wanted with the woman in tears.  Anger, well Darcy had plenty of anger (and sadness and fear), but it wouldn't work for what she needed.  She needed money.  She needed a way to get out of there.  Her hand fell to her rounded little stomach, well hidden behind cozy layers and she took a deep breath.  She needed to protect the baby, at all costs.

When Tracie Gray-King had planned the trip to Europe with her husband, it had been a spur of the moment thing.  Their children were grown, and her husband was retired.  They had a lot of time to fill up suddenly, and enough money to fill that time with very enjoyable things.  So a two week trip through Europe, not backpacking as they had in the sixties, but luxuriously instead, seemed like just the ticket.

But she was suddenly hit with a wave of fierce protectiveness.  She felt like she had when her oldest had started kindergarten and had come home crying one day and told her she had been deemed strange by a whole group of children.  She had wanted to shield her child and protect her from everything and everyone.  She had wanted to give her the moon.  It was a strange burst to be feeling and she reached for her phone, wondering if something was wrong with her now grown child.

She heard a sniffle and looked up, seeing the little slip of a young woman sitting on a bench, her hand pressed against a little swell of pregnancy.  Tracie didn't even have to think about it, she walked quickly to the bench and sat down next to the girl.

"What can I do to help you?" Tracie asked softly.

"I just want to go home," the girl whispered.

Tracie smiled and nodded.  She could do that.  She could help the girl find a way home.  She went into the crossbody purse that had cost more than what she and her husband had spent on their original backpacking trip and quickly went into the little zippered compartment inside, pulling out a relatively thick envelope.

Being a stay at home mother for so many years had taught her how to have a fun money fund.  It wasn't necessary since her husband spoiled her at every chance, but it had been instilled in her from her mother.  Never mind that her husband was the one who secretly put the money in places for her to find, it was her fun money and she could do what she wanted to do with it.

Tracie didn't hesitate to take the whole envelope out and press it into the girl's trembling hands.

"Go home," Tracie urged.  "Good luck."

The beautiful young woman's face bloomed into a fantastically beautiful and grateful smile and Tracie sat back a bit, feeling a surge of happiness and joy hit her squarely in her stomach, warming her up all over.  

"Thank you.  I---thank you.  I want to pay you back," the girl said with clear conviction.

"Sure, sure, although there is no need at all.  But let me find my card," Tracie laughed.  "Here you are."

"Hon!  Their johns are so much cleaner than I remember them!"

Tracie rose from her seat, giving the girl a wink before scampering off, feeling the most amazingly light touch of sweet relief hit her senses.

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty-Two: Prelude to War

'Go back to her or I will make you pay .'

It had not taken James long to get to Bucharest.  The travel was effortless, and the loss of his beloved travelling companion was keenly missed.  He'd arrived at the much less hospitable safe house and taken a look around, knowing that it was a lot easier to defend than the little love nest he had shared with Darcy, but not only was it dirtier and less comfortable than their home, but it was also not their home.  

‘ Bring me back to my Pet or I will find a way to kill you and take the body as mine.’

He'd gone right out again and purchased what he could to make the space more livable.  In the vain hope that she would join him there soon.  He'd put a message out to the Widow when he knew it was safe, and he would have Darcy at his side again.

' Bring my Pet back to me now and you will not wake up tomorrow with blood on your hands .'

Something was wrong.  It was more than the uncomfortable safe house.  It was more than the loneliness and worry about Darcy after having been at her side for months now.  It was more than knowing that even when they were reunited, she would be very, very upset with him and his decision to leave her.  And it was more than the petulant, angry soldier issuing desperate threats in his mind.

Without her---it felt like he was broken back up into three people again.  And it was more him and the angry Soldier living in his head.  Bucky---the closest he'd been to whole in a lifetime, was silent.  It felt like a dark and empty closet in his mind and Bucky had been left back with Darcy.

He hadn't thought much on the fact that Darcy had been a salve to his broken brain.  He had only focused on what she was doing to others with her empathy.  But apparently she had been doing so much more, allowing for something that had been broken into three to find its way to whole again.  

' Bring her back .'

He could do that.  He could make the space liveable.  He could have the Widow bring her back to him.  He cleaned as best as he could, stowing weapons and bug out bags and setting up the modest kitchen and dilapidated mattress on the floor.

Sixteen hours after leaving Darcy, when she would be waking back up in the custody and protection of the Avengers, he had wandered to the market and had been astonished by the plums.  They were the first harvest of the young season, and he wanted more than anything to have them for her when she came back.  He would beg for her forgiveness and provide everything she wanted or needed or even carelessly thought about.

He could make it right.

And then the sirens.

The nervous newspaper peddler.

' You fool.  You should have never left my sweet Pet .'

"Carter."

"Sharon, hi.  It's Steve."

Sam snorted with aborted laughter at Steve's awkward duckling impersonation as he piloted the quinjet towards Bucharest at max speed.  It wouldn't take them long to get there at all, having left Sharon Carter behind in Vienna to her job.  She had promised to keep in touch with them with any other important information about what the CIA had picked up about the Winter Soldier, but aside from a neighborhood sighting at a plum stand, there hadn't been much to go on.

Steve had been fidgeting for fifteen minutes before finally caving and calling Sharon through the quinjet comm system.

"No, I told you that you're to maintain your line of sight on the suspect," Sharon snapped into the phone, clearly around someone that didn't need to know she was on the phone with a rogue Avenger.

"Right," Steve hesitated, clearly trying to remember that Sharon wasn’t actually mad at him.  "In the hurry to get out of there, I didn't tell you---I didn't ask."

"I'm going to need you to spit it out, Agent," Sharon barked into the phone, clearly exasperated.

Sam was getting exasperated himself.  He didn't think that Steve was into Sharon, but here he was, awkward and nervous like a teenaged boy with a boner staring at the girl of his dreams across the room.  Sam was kind of suspicious that Steve was trying to get a girl so that he and Bucky could both have one, but he didn't take either of the men from another century to be such lotharios.

Then again, he hadn't thought that either men would be into open and honest polyamorous relationships either, but here they were.

"Have there been any reports of a woman with Bucky?" Steve asked quickly.  "Brunette.  Small.  Mid-twenties."

He paused and Sam saw a blush barely show up on the tips of Steve's ears.  

"Pretty as a picture, or so I'm told."

"This is new intel, why wasn't this given to me before?" Sharon demanded incredulously.  "Your one job, Agent, is not actually to get Ross's coffee, but to relay pertinent intel to me, remember?"

"I got blindsided about the whole Bucky reappearing and seemingly blowing up an office building," Steve snapped back.  Sharon was clearly mad at him now and not even playacting a little.

"He does that," Sam piped in.  "Get distracted about Bucky that is."

"Up until Vienna, we had assumed that Bucky was travelling with a woman, a woman he rescued from Hydra," Steve quickly revealed.  "I think she has some empathy powers based off of serum exposure."

"You WHAT now?" Sam demanded.

"And you didn't think to disclose this before?!" Sharon shouted in unison with Sam's angry words.

"She wouldn't hurt anyone with it.  I don't think they understand it," Steve admitted.  "I spoke with a Doctor who specializes in the serum and its after effects.  We think that she can force certain feelings onto others."

Sharon sighed heavily on the other end of the line.  Sam could feel her pain.

"I'm going to digest this and put it back into the pipeline to see what I can get," Sharon finally acknowledged, sounding pretty tired.  "YOU are going to do your job, and tell me EXACTLY what you learn.  Do you understand, Agent?"

"Crystal clear, ma'am," Steve smirked before the call cut off.  He looked to Sam, who was staring at him incredulously.  "It never came up before."

"So---she might have gotten the drop on me back in Canada because she was making me feel---distracted?" Sam asked quickly, clearly hoping to get some benefit out of this.

"Maybe, I don't know," Steve shrugged.  "I've been feeling things lately that I have no business feeling.  At the most random times.  Being sick after Calgary.  Being panicked after the London incident with the human traffickers.  Being---ah, just, Doctor Rivera seems to think this is the most likely explanation."

"So what are we hoping for here?" Sam wondered as he began to make his descent.  "Do we want Bucky here with your hopefully, future shared girlfriend or do we want him alone?"

"She might be able to keep him calm, maybe stop him from running," Steve reasoned.  "So, yeah, I'm hoping she's there."

"Yeah," Sam nodded in agreement.  Barnes obviously cared about the girl, and who knows, she might even be able to slow him down...or maybe even provide the former Winter Soldier with an alibi for the Vienna bombing.

"It'll be nice to finally meet her," Steve added, a small, hopeful smile pulling at the corner of his lips.  

Sam rolled his eyes as heavily as he could while he went to land the plane.

"Guess that answers my question about Sharon and you then.  You and your threesomes, man.  Seriously unexpected and still so strange."

The money had been enough to not only get her on a train out of town, but enough to buy her a burner phone smart enough for her to jailbreak and a printer where she could churn out some id's.  It wasn't enough to get plane fare, and she couldn't pay in cash anyway, so she had to figure something else out there.  

The rest of the money had paid for food, and she was on another train mechanically eating the cold sandwiches and chips, heading towards the airport, staring down at her phone.  She was now at a crossroads, ethically.  When Bucky and she had been living off of Hydra's dime, it hadn't seemed so bad taking money and using it for their own purposes.  Hydra was BAD, so it was a Robin Hood situation, taking from the rich and evil and putting ridiculous amounts of food into her poor stomach.  

Only the money was now for far more than food.  She needed to get somewhere safe.  And in order to do that, she'd need real money.  Or more specifically, the credit card information that she was currently staring at.  It was tied to Captain Rogers' Avengers budget.  His huge, Tony Stark funded Avengers budget.  He used it very sparingly, apparently, and using it to book airfare would be a huge red flag.  

She sighed and looked out the window as the train sped along.  She really wished that the last twenty-four hours hadn't happened.  Her phone chirped and she switched screens, going to the alerts that she had set up for Avengers and James immediately after getting the phone.