NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE ∙ Peter Parker

✸ Chapter Twenty-Five: The Blindspot Project

"When did you find out about her?" he asked, careful with his questions. What he'd learned was that Steve got defensive about Lizzie, after what he observed earlier in the work mill.

"Met her a few months before..." Steve trailed off, his eyes meeting Bucky for a moment before turning back to her. A flash of emotion appeared. "I met her, Sharon, and Sam in D.C. a few weeks after I moved there. Sharon used to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. before the CIA, and her mission was me. Lizzie's was, too."

You're my mission, the Winter Soldier had said to him that day. Just before Steve caught sight of the dog-tags and thought that Lizzie was dead. The memories were never good ones for Bucky, but that one in particular made his stomach twist. Steve, however, did not show any signs of avoiding the conversation. Nor did he seem upset with the topic, or the words he'd used, while Bucky tried his hardest to imagine the then-thirteen-year-old being a S.H.I.E.L.D agent, tasked with a mission on Captain America. Steve said all of that willingly because Steve trusted Bucky. He didn't trust the Winter Soldier. Bucky didn't know if there was a difference, though.

"You called her Teenie," Steve brought up, pausing. "Do you remember..."

"I know I had a sister. I don't remember her," Bucky answered honestly, glancing down at his gloved hand for a moment. Then, he turned to Steve. "I used to call her that?"

"Yes. Her name was Rebecca."

Bucky nodded, taking the new information and storing it into his brain. He knew he had a sister, he'd been able to find that out in a biography about himself during the war. James Buchanan Barnes, whoever he had been, had a family. Friends. A life which was ripped out from underneath him. His worn eyes watched as Lizzie adjusted again in her sleep, hands making fists that he was sure would cause her palms to bleed. Something nagged him. Something that he could not yet figure out.

"I didn't understand it either, you know," Steve began slowly, coming to stand closer to Bucky but still enough distance to let him breathe. He leant against the side of the car, careful not to jostle it. "That pull toward her...to understand."

Bucky frowned. "They'll kill her."

All he saw was his hand around her throat, twice. He could only imagine what would happen to her if she had to defend herself against others like him. Others with no triggers and no distractions to play.

"She's not coming inside," Steve said, making Bucky's eyes lift in confusion. She'd come this far. "I made some calls to a few friends. I've got reinforcements meeting us at the airport but...I've spent three years trying to make calls for her, so has her sister. Never got us further than a door slammed in our faces. I stopped fighting against it when I realized it never stopped her. She'd learn how to fly a plane to us if it meant she could help."

"Sounds like someone I used to know."

The fleck of nostalgia was masked with pain soon after because the comment rolled so casually off his tongue that it must have been the part of him he didn't know anymore. Steve did, though, and he hummed in thought. "I guess. She's always reminded me of you, actually. Peggy, too...but she's got your heart."

Bucky remembered the way she moved when she fought him, the second time. There were less similarities to the girl he'd encountered three years ago. She had been trained, specially trained, and her actions mimicked her counterparts, the woman with the red hair and her sister—but there was something else in her eyes, when he'd caught her defenseless—that could not be trained. Only learned. Only experienced. He'd noticed the scars on her hands, her subtle rubbing of her left knee, as memories resurfaced in more than just her nightmares.

"Is that why she had them?"

The dog tags. Bucky couldn't forget the look on her face when he mentioned them—when she saw them—like they were more than just what saved her life that once. That still did not answer why she had them in the first place.