The Agent and Assassin (A Winter Soldier Love Story)

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Nicole's Point of View

After that night, something had changed between us. We both were somehow bonded, although neither of us had said anything more about it. We didn't need to talk about it because as surprised as we were to have woken up together, we were both comforted by the fact that we weren't alone anymore.

We settled into a routine over the next month. In the mornings, I would get up and start breakfast and he would come in, help if I wasn't quite finished and then clean up. After we would sit around talking about things that he missed. Sometimes it was just a little game of question and answer about things that he was curious about. Other times, he would have read something in one of the books that I had gotten him that just didn't make sense. I learned quickly that he was an avid reader in his pre-war days, and he devoured any book that I gave him.

Sometimes in the afternoon we would go walk around D.C. At first he was only comfortable walking around my neighborhood, thinking that someone was going to recognize him. After a few days of doing that, he wanted to venture further out into the city. One day we walked around the Washington Monument, and spent the day talking. We even sat on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial for an hour enjoying the evening as the sun went down. He was becoming more and more comfortable being out, especially since I had brought him a pair of black gloves to keep his metal hand from showing. That was still a dead giveaway to his true identity.

We even managed to get into a museum through a back door since we didn't want to chance his arm setting off the metal detectors. He didn't know that I had disabled the cameras in the back to ensure that we wouldn't get caught breaking in.

"What kind of job gives you this much free time?" He asked one evening when we were walking back to my apartment.

"I used to be a police officer," I said reminding him of a previous lie I had told him. "I moved here a few months ago, but the job fell through so I just do remote data entry for a local precinct. It's easy work, so I usually take care of it after we go to bed or before you get up."

"Must pay well to live in such a nice place," he said as we continued walking. That answer seemed to satisfy him and he never brought up my line of work after that.

Fall is D.C. was always a nice time of the year. Most of the tourist had disappeared by this time of the year, so it was easy to walk around without a bunch of people getting in the way. The leaves were starting to change, and the summer heat was gone. When it rained, it wasn't as humid anymore either. Sometimes I would just sit outside a cafe under the shade of an umbrella, listening to the rain as it came down. It was always the calmest time of the year.

When we would get home after spending the day out, I would put on a movie or show just for him to see something new. Sometimes it would be a classic and he surprised me with some of the things that he had already seen. I did pick those ones just for him, to see if it would trigger anything for him from his past.

Dinner was always a mix. As much as he loved the fact that he could get food delivered in an instant, I still liked to cook. Sometimes he would offer to help, but after he had seen how commanding I was in the kitchen, he retreated, preferring to sit on the barstool at the counter top. Sitting there was where I would get him to open up a little more, and often I just let him talk and tried to soak in everything he said. It was usually stories from his childhood that were coming back with more and more ease.

After dinner, if we didn't want to watch anything else we usually ended up going to bed. The night time routine was always different. Some nights, even after I had retreated back to my room, I could hear the buzz of the TV playing until late in the evening or early morning. I didn't want to say it, but I knew the longer he put off sleeping, the worse the nightmares would be when he drag himself to bed.