Clara Lewis: S.H.I.E.L.D agent, New Yorker, accidental time traveller- wait what?!
Clara thought being a S.H.I.E.L.D agent made her life as crazy as it would get. Ever since her accident in the field, she'd become a desk agent but working as Phil C...
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Having her first day away from the lab in months, Clara decided she would spend it out and about the town. It amazed her that, in a country that was at war, everything carried on as normal. Ordinary people continued to work their nine to five jobs, including herself, they carried on going about their day to day lives, they even carried on going out on dates to the pictures. Everyone lived, worked and loved and nothing seemed to change. Another thing that amazed Clara was how similar everything looked. Having moved to Brooklyn when she was still a young girl, she had grown up on these very streets. Years in the future she would trip on the very sidewalk she was walking along now and break her elbow. Years later she would go on her very first date in that very cinema. That cinema with it's shiny, new lights along the walls that, when Clara would attend, would be all blown out. How pristeen the brick work looked now.
"You okay there, Lewis? The time you spent staring at that cinema, anyone would think you'd never seen one!" A chipper voice rang out, loud and confident, snapping at her attention.
"Bucky!" Clara said as he dashed across the road to join her. He was in army uniform.
"You not working today?" He asked all too casually, that familiar smile creeping onto his face. It was a half smile, splattered on his face to hide his true intentions. She had seen it so many times before but never had it been directed at her, always at Steve. Always when he was attempting to flirt, and failing.
"I took today off. Howard's busy, says he'll be going away soon. Looks like he's not the only one." She said overly cheerfully to try and mask her panic. Of course she knew what would happen, it was very unlikely that all these men she knew and all the men she past in the streets would never come back home. But to think that Howard and Bucky could be one of them was something different. It was terrifying. It was at times like these that Clara tried to remember what Phil Coulson's vintage Captain America trading cards said about Bucky. If only she'd listened to him.
"What're you thinking about?" Bucky asked. They had started slowly trudging along the streets as Clara was lost in her thoughts. She looked up at Bucky, stared into those familiar eyes that she had someone never really noticed until now. They were blue, seriously blue, sickeningly blue: breathtakingly blue. Why did they have to be so charmingly blue? Someone should name a crayon after those eyes: Prince's Charming's blue eyes. Or terrified of war, clouded over blue. Either way, they could both be Bucky's eyes.
"Do you want me to be honest?" Clara asked cautiously. Obviously she would never tell him she might just have fallen in love with his eyes, or that she came from the future where her boss had a trading card with his face on it, but this might well be the last time she would have an opportunity to talk to him.
"Should I be worried?" He said, cocking his head to the side. They had stopped their crawling stroll. Bucky folded his arms over his surprisingly tight army jacked and leaned assuredly against the faded brick wall of a grand apartment building. That would gone by the time Clara moved to Brooklyn. Demolished or bombed, it hardly mattered.
"Not at all." Clara fibbed. He should be, he definitely should be. He was about to be deployed, off to fight at a war he may never return from.
"So?" He prompted and Clara took a deep breath.
"Come back"
"What?"
"Come back." She said again but more firmly.
"I didn't know you cared so much, Clara. You're not going soft on me, are you?" Bucky teased but that hidden terror concealed deep inside his blue eyes still pushed through. But there was something else shining through in his eyes, something that Clara had never seen before. It made his eyes soften as his smile crinkled the skin around his eyelids. Vulnerability. Clara thought it could not be possible yet here it was. If he is to go to war, he will need to keep his shields up.
"I won't if you won't." Clara challenged and his eyes lit up again.
"Deal." He said, springing back off the wall to carry on walking beside her. "Now I'm going to have to arrange a date for us to meet up to see if you kept your side of the deal."
"You've got my address. Write and we'll set a date."
"In the meantime," He began- was that a slight waver in his voice?- "There's a show on in a couple of minutes." He said, gesturing behind him to the cinema they had just passed.
"You're going to have to elaborate." Clara teased, trying to suppress a smile.
"Don't do this to me, Lewis.
"Okay."
"Okay? You could sound a bit more enthusiastic!"
Clara had only ever gone to a movie showing in the 40's once before now, with both Bucky and Steve, and the only thing on had been Bambi. Now, like last time, there was a war effort advertising at the beginning. A series of footage of soldiers at rest, sharing a cup of tea, having a good old chat, even footage of them all marching while one comically, repeatedly, tapped the mettle army hat of one of his friends. A worryingly positive image of war. It came as no surprise they didn't show what they were marching towards. And to think one of them could be Bucky.
Clara was just starting to drift off into her panicked thoughts when the revered silence was broken by a brash yelling of: "Show the damned film!"
Clara flinched as she was snapped away from her thoughts. Instinctively, protectively, Bucky's hand found her own and gave it reassuring squeeze. She turned to face him, suddenly yet briefly completely calm. But Bucky's attention was elsewhere. His eyes were darting around the theatre, undoubtedly trying to spot the perpetrator of such coarse language. Half the audience had probably lost someone already, the woman next to Clara was sniffling and clutching at a tissue. Poor woman. But still the harsh, grating voice continued, "Hey, roll the film!"
"Will you shut up?" a placid, tender and not at all convincing voice rang out despite it's clear attempt to stay quiet and respectful. "Show some respect."
"Do you want to make me?"
"Actually, I do."
First the man hurling abuse at a screen stood up. He was fairly scrawny but certainly had a fair amount of muscle on him that would lend well to a powerful punch. It made Clara all the more anxious when it was Steve who stood up. His skinny frame could never protect himself. Bucky sighed from beside her and relinquished his grip on Clara's hand. He leaned in to whisper in her ear.
"I'm going to save that kid's ass again. You wait here, I'll come back. You might as well enjoy the film."
Clara watched him leave, sauntering up the aisle and out of the theatre. Clara new Steve would already be in trouble. How many times had she witnessed first hand how truly pathetic the Captain America could be. She smiled to know what he would grow into. She sounded like a proud mum and, to stop it from becoming too weird, she focused her attention on the pre-film, war propaganda.
The screen no longer showed men heroically fighting to protect their country, their families, their wives. The camera had panned to show the very women they sought to protect, saving the lives of their men. Nurses, the unsung war heroes. It amazed Clara how much it reminded her of S.H.I.E.L.D. Of course she knew of S.H.I.E.L.D's origins, she had needed to in order to pass her exams. It was unsettling to see, first hand, how nothing had really changed. From her time in the field, Clara had seen her comrades hastily patching each other up, rushing around to attend every injured agent. As she watched those army nurses, Clara saw herself. She saw herself in the nurses and she saw Phil in the injured and knew, she would be a nurse.
