The Hurt And The Healing: Bucky X OC

Chapter Fifty Four: A Dish Best Served Homemade

"And you want me to do what?" Zemo asked, his voice dripping with contempt that Bucky could hear from thirty feet away.

"Stand on one foot and balance this on your head," Mara repeated, holding the apple out before her. "I need to check your balance. You sustained a serious concussion after the Manor was bombed, and vertigo is no joke."

"But that was almost four months ago!" Zemo protested. He moved away from Mara and in front of the window, arms crossed.

"Aren't you always bragging about your 'powerful intellect?'" she demanded. "Do you really want to jeopardize it because you are too proud to balance on one foot with an apple on your head?"

Bucky grinned and waited.

"Fine," Zemo snapped, taking the apple from Mara and placing it on his head. "Happy?"

"No, we need to go outside," she explained, reaching up to take it back. "The uneven terrain will really help me make sure you are good to go."

"This is absurd," he grumbled as Mara prodded him out the door. Bucky shifted slightly and waited, making sure that he had his sights set on Mara as she guided Zemo to the spot she had carefully selected before placing the apple back on his head and taking a few steps back.

"Where are you going?" Zemo asked, wavering slightly in his one-legged stance. He stretched his arms out in order to keep his balance and Bucky bit back a laugh at his absurd position. He couldn't let Zemo know that he was watching. The paranoid little man would turn and run back inside if he knew he had an audience.

"Don't get your panties in a twist," Mara called back as she continued to walk away. "I just need to see the whole picture." Once she was ten feet or so from Zemo she turned to him and smiled.

A single bullet whistled through the air, pulverizing the small apple resting on Zemo's crown and sending all the birds in a hundred yard radius flying into the air. The Barron yelped in surprise and belly flopped onto the snow before looking around wildly for the source of the attack and crawling towards the safety of the cabin.

Mara's cackle ripped through the cold morning.

"Bullseye!" she shouted, turning to face the forest where Bucky had concealed himself. He rose and stretched before shouldering his rifle and climbing down the tree that he had been perched in since before dawn. Zemo would have been suspicious if he saw Bucky heading out too closely to when Mara suggested the "test." When she had proposed this crazy scheme he had doubted whether or not Zemo would actually fall for it. But the Barron was so convinced of his own brilliance that he never once paused to consider if Mara was tricking him. He would not make that mistake again.

Bucky jogged back to the clearing where Mara was doubled over with laughter and Zemo was desperately trying to regain his lost dignity.

"Great shot, babe," Mara congratulated Bucky, practically falling on top of him as she struggled to catch her breath. "I told you that once you had a live target your training would come back to you!"

"I beg your pardon?" Zemo hissed, storming over to the couple. Snow was caked into his sweater and hair, and he was turning an interesting shade of red. "A live target? Come back?"

"I was having some issues with aiming my bullets, so Mara thought that going back to the sniper days might trigger my memories," Bucky explained, wrapping an arm around Mara and pulling him to his side just in case the Baron was angry enough to try something stupid. "Good thing she was right!"

"So I was your trial run?" the indignant man shouted, startling away the birds that had just returned after the gunshot. "You could have killed me!"