December // A Winter Soldier Story

23

The screen before her flickers to life with black and white film. JARVIS must be tracking Steve and Tony' movement and comparing it with local cameras, because each time Steve and Tony move out of range, a different angle from a different camera pops onto the screen.

Lea sits in the pilot's seat and watches the screen eagerly. She can see Steve and Tony moving across the city on the tops of buildings, leaping the gaps between them and looking down over the edge for Bucky. After a few minutes, they stop at a specific building, and spend a lot of time looking around the alleys nearby. Each time they jump down into one, there are no cameras to show what they can see, so Lea hopes they'll come back up to the roof with Bucky following suit. But Bucky never makes an appearance.

She watches them as they search, Steve running along rooftops and Tony taking flight every so often. Her heart is tired of the anxiety she gets waiting for her ghost to be found. She's not sure how much more of this she can take.

At this point she has to wonder if everything she thought she'd experienced with Bucky - someone to take care of, someone to talk to, someone who saw her differently than anyone had ever seen her before - is all in her head. Maybe none of those moments actually hold the significance she keeps giving them in her mind. She has to prepare herself for the possibility that when he is found, he won't think of her as anything more than a stranger. Perhaps she should just stop getting her hopes up now so she is less crushed when that happens.

It seems like both five minutes and forever has passed by the time they return, though they really searched for almost an hour to no avail.

Lea watches them board the plane again, knowing that when they both make it inside, there won't be a third person behind them. Despite the fact that she knows this, however, her heart still falls a bit at the empty air behind Steve and Tony.

You've got to stop this, she tells herself. Stop hoping he's the answer to your problems. He's not who you've been looking for all your life. You've barely even spent any time with him.

"No sign of him or Hydra," Steve sighs once inside, sitting down in the closest chair with a frustrated demeanor. His muscles are so rigid with anxiety he can hardly sit in the chair properly. As much as this is all paining Lea, all of this is on another level for Steve. His eyes hold so much suffering it almost hurts for her to watch. She'll never be able to understand how much pain they hold, and she never wants to be able to.

They sit in silence, Tony beginning to tinker with wires sticking out of the wall, Steve and Lea trapped in their own thoughts. Nobody moves.

Lea again reflects on how she ended up here, sitting in a military grade jet with two superheroes, searching for a broken man that was born almost a century ago and is wanted by nearly every government in the world who knows about him. All of this began with her simple decision to take a walk in the woods one day, and now her life is forever altered. She's gotten a taste of a life she'd never thought she'd have - one with other people, with villains and heroes, with adventure - and despite the danger, she has to admit she is intrigued by it.

She knows this won't last. She knows that soon enough she'll be back in her cold, empty home with a boring job everyday, waiting for some other adventure to find her. But she has to remember that despite how unappealing this now sounds to her, there are people who have it much worse. At least she has a life to return to - Steve and Bucky have nothing left that resembles home save for each other, and fate seems adamant at keeping them apart.

If this whole experience has given her anything more than just something to do, it's given her a whole new perspective on life - of what she wants, of how the world works, of how you never really know what people are going through. More than that, the two days or so she spent with Bucky made her question whether she's really ok with being alone. Maybe she actually does want someone to share her life with. Maybe it really is worse to be the only one in the bed.

These are the things still making her head spin about twenty minutes later when Tony asks if anyone is hungry. Once she pulls herself from her own mind, she realizes with a start that she is actually starving. She forgot that she didn't eat this morning.

She gives Tony a nod. "Yeah, I'm actually starving."

She's about to ask Steve if he wants to go somewhere and sit down at a place in D.C., but with one glance over at him, she decides to leave him alone. His eyes are closed as he leans back in his chair, and she feels it would probably be best to leave him be. So she turns back to Tony. "I'll go grab some takeout or something. I don't want to disturb him."

Tony gives her a skeptical look. "I'm not so sure if it's a good idea for you to go out alone. Hydra was just here this morning."

She waves her hand, disregarding his words. "You just went out there and didn't see any Hydra agents. Them and Bucky are long gone. We're all hungry, and I'm the only one who can go out and get food without drawing attention to myself. Plus, I could really use some fresh air. I'll only be gone a minute."

He eyes her again briefly, weighing the options in his head, before shrugging and nodding. "Fine. Grab me something unhealthy, and lots of it."

Lea smiles as he punches a button and the door to the plane opens, revealing the rooftop. Tony tells her of a ladder down to the street off to the left, and she heads out, making her way down the ladder and onto the street below.

She tucks her hands into the pockets of her coat and makes her way down Pennsylvania Avenue, her sights set on a line of shops and restaurants she knows to be just past Capitol Hill. She's thankful to have visited this city numerous times before so she knows a little bit about where to find good food.

Halfway there, however, she catches a glint of silver out of the corner of her eye between two buildings, and she stops cold in her tracks.

No. It can't be.

Slowly, her head moves to the side, her heart suddenly beating out of her chest.

Nothing. The alley is empty.

She takes a deep breath. Her nerves must be shot from so much worry and tension lately. Shaking off the weird feeling she has, she continues forward, walking quickly down the sidewalk.

Everything feels fine for a few more minutes, until suddenly she sees it again - a quick flash of silver to her left. This time she whips her head to look, but again, sees nothing.

Her heart continues to pound. She's likely just seeing things. But what if she isn't?

Lea is frozen to the spot. She has to know if he's there. She remembers how he first came to her - a ghost from the woods, a master of camouflage. It's entirely possible that she did just see him. Perhaps he's trying to get her attention. Or maybe he doesn't want to be found, but he does want to see her.

Her mind flicks back to the last night she'd seen him. What do you think happens to us after we die? he'd asked. She could almost hear his voice, every nuance in the words he spoke in the dim light of her bedroom while warm and safe. He needed to be warm and safe again. She had to see if he was there.

Lea turns sharply on her heel and hurries quietly down the alley, eager to turn the corner and see Bucky. She can imagine his reaction: his face will hardly change, but his eyes will reflect surprise, nervousness, and relief all at once. His body will be tense as he waits to see what she does, and then relax the closer she comes, knowing that she poses no threat to him. Lea thinks maybe she will try and slowly embrace him. She can picture him shaking in her arms, finally letting his walls come down after being on the run for so long. She'll ask him why he left.

But none of this happens.

The second she rounds the corner, a hard, metal object is driven straight into her head, and everything goes black. She's not even conscious long enough to watch herself collapse to the ground, nor feel her hair turn red with blood.