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A month later, there had been three more break-ins at the Avengers facility. All of them claimed to be looking for Rosemary, but all three of them never ended up actually making too much of an effort to find her. It was bizarre.
They were all hired men who claimed to have no idea who exactly they'd been hired by. The conclusion was eventually come to that their minds were being wiped completely other than the fact that they were to find Rosemary and scare her but not kill her.
No one could figure out how they were getting in. Tony had even upped security protocols after the first break-in, but somehow they kept coming. It was almost like they were materializing out of thin air.
The inhabitants of the facility, Rosemary and Bucky included, stayed in a hotel while everyone tried to figure out what was going on.
In the meantime, Bucky quickly made it apparent that he was going to take Rosemary up on her offer to brush up on her combat skills. They trained every day and sometimes he'd even coerce other members of the Avengers to get involved. At first it was apparent that he didn't really fancy the idea of actually fighting with her. That only lasted, however, until she caught him off guard when he wasn't paying attention and tackled him to the floor of the training facility, giggling as she straddled him and held him down. That seemed to spark his competitive side and after that he started actually training her.
"Block him! He's going to-" Bucky yelled, watching Rosemary and Steve spar in a wrestling ring. "Go for your throat," Bucky finished, watching as Steve did just that. His muscular arm wrapped around Rosemary's neck and she smiled at Bucky, winking. She elbowed Steve in the crotch, knocking him to his knees.
"You know, I really wouldn't have brought you into our lives had I known how bony your elbows were," Steve groaned, taking the hand Rosemary offered to help him up. She bumped hips with him playfully, shrugging.
"A girl's gotta have some sort of defense against you super soldier types," she said, laughing as she glanced up just in time to see Bucky approaching her, a determined look on his face.
"Don't get cocky," he told her, putting his hands up defensively.
"I'm not, I just... I-" she started, but he cut her off.
"Don't," he said, his voice tense.
"Buck..." Steve said his name, trailing off when he shot him daggers in a look.
"Come on," Bucky said to Rosemary roughly, and she knew what he was doing. It was a tactic he'd started employing very early on when they started training together. He'd discovered shortly after they'd met that she had a very well-hidden and usually well maintained short fuse that led to a monster-sized temper and he'd gotten himself very good at lighting that fuse.
"Buck, I'm tired. I don't want to do this right now," she told him, already a little bit annoyed that he didn't seem to be able to acknowledge that she was improving by leaps and bounds since they'd first started. She already felt so much more comfortable with herself when fighting and felt like she'd learned a lot. All he ever had to say, though, was his signature tagline, 'don't get cocky'.
"They're not going to care if you want to do it or not, Rosemary," Bucky told her. Steve backed away quietly, taking a seat on a nearby bench to watch the situation unfold.
Bucky swung, a lazy punch that Rosemary dodged easily. She knew he was just warming her up. She swung back, her fist caught in his metal hand. She twisted out of his grasp, feeling her knuckles scrape as she did so. She swung again, her fist colliding with his shoulder and knocking him back just slightly.
Glancing down, she saw that her knuckles were bleeding but kept swinging anyway. He swung back, grunting as she skillfully dodged every single one. They did that back and forth for a long time until both of them were out of breath. She'd gotten plenty of punches in on him and he hadn't gotten her once, but she knew that didn't mean he was going to stop. He wasn't going to stop until she took him down.
Mustering all the energy she had left, she got around to his back, launching herself onto him. He swiped at her and she almost toppled off of him, but she kept her balance and kept pushing him forward as hard as she could, kneeing him in the backs of the legs as she did so.
Finally, he fell to his knees and she pushed his torso down, pinning his bionic arm underneath him and twisting the flesh-and-blood one behind his back. He grunted against her might and she clambered off of him, standing and going to grab a water from the bench where Steve was sitting.
Without warning he came at her from behind, easily lifting her over his shoulder. She lashed out, kicking and punching at him, but it was no use. In the position he had her in and with his strength, there was no way she was going to get out of his hold. He flipped her backwards on the mat, landing her flat on her back with a thud.
He pinned her, holding her wrists above her head. His blue eyes flashed with victory and her temper flared.
"Goddamn it, Bucky!" she screamed, managing somehow to push him off of her and pin him herself. She knew she'd only succeeded at it because she'd caught him off guard, but she didn't care. She sat on his chest, her legs straddled on either side of him. Her left knee held down his right forearm and she planted her right foot as steadily as she could on his bionic arm, holding it down with all of the weight that she could get on it.
He smiled up at her, his eyes teasing.
"There she is," he joked, winking.
"Shut up," she mumbled, standing up and watching as he did the same.
"That was really good, Rosie. Maybe the best I've ever seen you do," he said, surprising her.
"Shut up," she said again, rolling her eyes at Steve as she grabbed a water off the bench and stomped out of the room.
