This Is Stella's Reality

April 27, 2015

The team sat around the compound's conference room. It was freezing, and my anxiety did nothing to warm my body.

Tony and Steve were at the front of the room, conferring notes and going over data. Steve looked handsome. His blonde hair was fluffy and untouched by products today. He looked confident, in-charge and self-assured as he directed the meeting.

I sat next to Bucky. His arm was around my chair, and his fingers played with my hair. Anxiety rippled through him as well.

We were discussing Hydra. Known operatives and their last locations, missing files and data, anything we had was on the table in front of us.

Steve rested his weight on the table and looked at all of us. "Tony and Bruce are still working on trying to locate Loki's scepter; however, the signal is weak, and we can't get much more specific than Eastern Europe."

He paused, analyzing something on his tablet. His head shook, "Maria Hill, ex-SHIELD agent will be joining Stark Industries as the team's intelligence liaison."

I smiled. I loved Maria. She was one of the smartest people I knew at SHIELD and an excellent agent.

"So what's our play?" Clint asked, eager for a chance to go on a mission.

Tony sucked his teeth and turned to the group with an exhausted expression. "We have no play for now. All we have is noise and more noise and oh, more noise."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Sam, Clint, and Nat, I'm putting you on surveillance. Hill is going to start collecting all of this noise and assigning it to each of you to follow up on. Anything of interest comes back to me."

He sat in a chair and slid each of them tablets. "Tony and Bruce are going to keep working on locating the scepter. Thor, if you have anything useful that may help them, feel free to go over to the lab at any time."

His eyes landed on Bucky and I, "As for the three of us, we sit tight until we have a location on anything." My heart skipped a beat. The conversation with Steve from a few days ago rang in my ears.

Bucky shifted in his chair and stared at Steve. "Couldn't we be a bit more useful?" He asked.

I felt the tension grow between them. Bucky didn't like feeling useless, also didn't want Steve to treat him or I differently just because of our relationship. And Steve wanted Bucky to listen to his commands without a show or power struggle. I swallowed back the anxiety in my throat and stayed silent. This was their fight.

Steve leaned forward. "And what do you want to do, Buck? Can you help Tony and Bruce locate the scepter? Do you want to read pages and pages of noise every day? By all means, tell me what you'd like." There was a bit of danger in his voice. The blue in his eyes was sharp like broken glass.

A huff blew through Bucky as he leaned to meet Steve's intimidation. "I would love to read pages of noise every single day until we find the fucking scepter, Cap." I winced at his words, afraid to touch either of their thoughts.

Their eyes held all I needed to know. Frustration and annoyance. One trying to protect the other. One tired of being protected.

I sighed and placed a hand on Bucky's shoulder. "Anything we can do to help the team, we'd be happy to do." I smiled at Steve and the rest of the team.

They hadn't seemed to catch onto the boys' intimidation game, or they just didn't care. The team simply nodded back at me and turned to Steve.

He was still staring at Bucky, but he finally leaned back in his seat and adjourned the meeting.