ADITI
"Bastardo!" The girl kicked the crate of vegetables, swiping her long hair back behind her face. "Pezzo di merda." She kicked it again angrily.
"Ciao bella." She looked around. A man was standing, leaning rather, on the back of the truck, his army uniform slightly rumpled. He was young, clean shaven, with a squared jaw and short brown hair. He didn't sound Italian, his accent wasn't quite right.
"Rimarra lì a guardare a bocca aperta? O mi aiuterai?" The girl asked him angrily, arms waving in his face, before again sweeping her incredibly long dark hair off her face.
"Woah woah woah," he put his hands up in front of him, "I don't actually speak Italian doll."
"Then why the hell did you talk to me in Italian? You soldiers are useless!" She put her chin up, hands on hips.
The man was taken aback. He was expecting maybe broken English in an Italian accent, or an American accent. Not an English one. Her voice was a lot gruffer in English, down to earth, practical.
"Uh." He closed his mouth.
She glared at him and went back to trying to pick up the crate.
"Do you want help with that?" She glanced up. He was crouched beside her, his face close to hers, hands on the wooden planks that made up the box she was trying to lift. She tried very hard not to concentrate on the fact that his fingers were slightly over hers. He had blue eyes, like hers but lighter.
She nodded and together they lifted up the crate.
"Where are we taking it?" He asked.
"The food store, the building," she grunted and readjusted her grip, "building over there." She nodded to a large building with a domed roof, covered in corrugated iron.
They walked together, sidestepping past people as they went, taking it one step at a time.
"I can't believe they were going to make you carry this on your own." He glanced down at the contents of the crate. Potatoes. It was a big container, far too big for one person to carry alone.
"All of you are busy getting ready to fight Nazis," she blew some hair out of her eyes, "who else would carry it?"
The sidestepped together into the building. It was big and cool and dark. They heaved the crate into a space and leant on the wall, panting.
"James Barnes. 107th." He held out a hand.
She hesitated, hand hovering above his, "Hazel. Hazel Jones." They shook.
"What did you shout at me, back there in Italian?" He asked, wiping his hands off.
"Oh something along the lines of 'are you going to stay there gawking or will you help me?'" She gave him a cheeky smile.
"What are you doing in Italy Hazel Jones?" He asked, blue eyes glinting in the darkness.
"I came over to help. Actually I got stuck in Germany and had to escape across the Austrian border, came over to Italy. I could have gone home to England but..."
"You decided to stay."
She nodded and rolled her sleeves up her arms to her elbows. "It seemed the right thing to do. I work at the shop, we bring in the food supplies and make some of the meals."
"I was thinking I'd have noticed you before if you were around here more often."
She blushed. She wasn't one for blushing, but it was the way he said it. She resumed her composure, hoping he hadn't seen her cheeks turn pink in the darkness, and crossed her arms. "I'm sure you're quite the lady's man back home. Brooklyn is it?"
"Yeah... how... how did you know?" He frowned, looking her up and down. She was clearly English, not a touch of American in her.
"Oh, I spent some time there, when I was younger, and I know men like you." She winked at him. "Always able to reel a girl in, aren't you..." she inspected the dog tags around his neck, "Sergeant Barnes."
"I don't think reel is quite the right-"
"How many girls have you taken out but then just as fast moved onto the next girl?" She laughed. "I doubt you even remember."
He put his hand on his neck awkwardly, about to answer, but she got there first.
"Don't worry Sergeant. I've already had my heart broken. You won't be able to do that to me." She looked him up and down. "But maybe in your dreams."
"And what about your dreams?"
She turned around and called behind her shoulder. "I'll see you round Sergeant Barnes. It was nice meeting you heart-breaker." She blew him a kiss and then left, the door of the supply building swinging open behind her.
James Barnes put his hands in his pockets and let out a low whistle. "Well I'll be damned."
I woke up, gasping, clutching my sheets.
"Hey." A low voice, not Peter's voice, said in the darkness.
I scrambled to turn my light on, pulling the cord beside my bed. Bucky was sat in a chair in my bedroom, watching me.
"Peter had to go out." He stood up. "I was told to watch you."
I wiped the sweat off my forehead. "She called you heart-breaker." I blurted out, then calmed down a little and tilted my head, looking at him. "But you broke each other's hearts in the end." Sometimes I had to get out things from my dreams, speak them aloud, or at least write them down. If I didn't I felt itchy all day long and I could never get the feeling to go away.
He stopped, mid-stride. "I... I don't think I remember that." I felt the agony of his confusion and frustration wash over me.
I took a drink from the glass of water by my bedside, "The first time you met."
His eyes cleared slightly, as though I'd been able to jog his memory. "She had long hair back then."
"Very long." I agreed.
He sat down on my bed, opened his mouth, and then shut it again. He finally said, "Why don't you like being around me? Besides the fact that not many people do, you really seem to not like me."
"You're very..." I struggled to find the words. "You carry a lot with you. I feel it, you see, everything you try to lock away. Other people can't see it, but I can feel it. I've been learning to try to shut it out so it doesn't overwhelm me, but yours always gets through."
I put my glass back down on the beside table, the clink of the glass touching the wooden surface loud in the silence. I checked my phone. It was 6am. Steve and Alina would be up by now, training together. Apparently Roara used to join them, and often worked with Steve alone too, but she was still recovering.
"Can you do something for me?" I asked cautiously.
"What?"
"Can you teach me how to shoot a gun?"
The shooting range in the basement was empty, the sounds of our footsteps and voices echoing slightly off the walls. It was a mostly black room, with targets in the shape of people lined up at the back, behind the lines of counters.
"Have you got the sights lined up?" He asked me.
"Uh huh."
"Made sure your stance is strong?" He tapped my thigh.
I repositioned my legs. "Yup."
"Okay, now shoot."
I took in a deep breath and blew it out slowly like he'd told me. I pulled the trigger. The noise was as loud as I'd remembered, and Bucky didn't believe in training with safety headphones. I dropped the handgun and pressed my hands to my ears looking at him as though to say what the hell! He laughed a little bit and I felt his pressure ease slightly.
He pulled my hands off my head and pointed to the target. "Look."
There, in the centre of the chest, was a hole. I'd hit a bullseye.
"Oh." I picked the gun up. "Can I do it again?"
He showed me how to take apart a gun, clean it, and put it back together again. He explained how to load it too, showing me slowly the steps, and then demonstrating how fast he could do it. It was like watching a video at 3 times the speed.
He was a lot calmer with a gun in his hand, as though he was in his element. I suppose he was. From an early age he trained to be a soldier, and from then on he was jumping from one fight to another.
"You're getting good." He commented, after I tried my hand at a rifle. I was much better with hand guns we'd found. "Why do you want to learn how to use a gun? Can't you hurt people with your mind?"
I put down the rifle and sighed. "When I hurt people, I feel it, the emotional response. I can't kill them, I can only make them feel pain. I see how horrified they are at this ability I have. People don't react that way with guns. I mean they feel fear at dying, but that's not being afraid of me. I don't know how Alina does it. I heard you and Steve talking about a thing she did once. You called it 'the strike'. She... she killed a lot of people, didn't she?"
He put his metal hand on my shoulder and led me away from the gun range. "It was the day you and I met. We went to protect another girl, one like you. Alina was cornered, the man who captured you was trying to take her. She slammed a fist on the floor and her eyes blasted out white light." Bucky shrugged. "When the light cleared all the Ascendency agents were dead and Gunn was gone."
I paused. "She doesn't feel guilty." I said quietly. "Not like you do."
"I didn't kill to protect myself. I killed innocent people. It's not the same." His hand dropped from my shoulder and he began to walk away, I could feel the darkness beginning to shroud him.
"Bucky."
He turned around.
"I care about Alina, I really do. But she scares me far more than you do. Feeling guilty shows that you care." I shrugged. "I know I haven't experienced a lot myself, but I've lived lifetimes through other people. I know I'm quiet and people think that means I don't know a lot, but I do see a lot. You're a good person, and I don't think you hear that enough."
His eyes darkened and he began to stalk towards me, metal hand clenching into a fist.
I held up a hand in front of me, pressing his emotional wall back. He bumped into it. Frowned. Tried to walk close to me again, but he couldn't. I'd been able to do this a couple of times before, but only when someone was really emotional. It was a way of protecting myself, placing an emotional barrier between me and them, and because of what I could do, it became a physical one.
"I know good and bad people. I know that it isn't as simple as that either. But on the scale of things, you're on the good side." I dropped my hand and Bucky staggered forwards, before standing upright before me.
I was about 5 foot 6, pretty average for my age. Bucky was at least half a foot taller than me, and it felt like he was towering over me.
He looked as though he was about to say something but stopped. "Why do you always feel so calming?" He asked quietly.
"Because if I felt any other way, I worry that I'd endanger those around me. When you can touch people's emotions like I can, you need to be careful." I reached up and touched his forehead with my forefinger. I could feel the connection, like ice water running down my arm.
We stood there. The 17 year old and the 97 year old, facing one another.
I let go of his mind, let my hand fall to my side, watching his face closely.
"Thank you." He said softly. "That helped."
"You're welcome. It's temporary. I'm no therapist, though I'd like to be one day. Right now that's the best I can do." I sighed. "Don't tell Alina what I told you though. I don't think she's even realised."
He nodded and we walked back to the elevator.
"Where have you two been?" Tony asked, stepping into the elevator on the fourth floor.
"Training." Bucky said.
"You two? Together?" He looked at us, then crossed his arms and shrugged. "I suppose the quiet ones are always the most dangerous."
The elevator doors slid open and together the three of us stepped out.
Tony stopped in his tracks, a finger raised. "Did you hear that?" He whispered.
"Hear what?" I asked.
"That." He replied, raising a finger to his lips.
Then I heard it. It was distant and far away but sounded a little like screaming. I paused for a second, not sensing any immediate fear around. The noise died out and then started up again, a little closer.
"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeee!" Roara, in her wheelchair, whizzed past us, down another hallway. Wanda was following her, her fingers moving gracefully as she manipulated the red energy that was pushing Roara forward.
"Wheeeeee-" Roara stopped, as did Wanda, when they came back the same way. They stared at us, and we stared at them, jaws on the floor.
"What?" Wanda asked, putting her hands on her hips. "We're just having fun."
Roara grinned and put her hand over her mouth to try and stop herself from giggling. Then footsteps sounded down the hall, light and fast. Loki rounded the corner.
"I have been chasing you for twenty minutes! Why the hell-" He saw their expressions and then turned slowly to see Tony, Bucky and I all gawking at them.
"Nothing to see here." Loki promptly turned and walked the other way.
Tony rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Roara if you break another leg I'm not fixing it." He muttered as he went past her.
"Got it boss." She gave him an overly dramatic salute. Wanda punched her lightly on the shoulder.
"You're feeling better." Bucky said, striding towards her and taking hold of the handles at the back of her chair.
"Yeah." She smiled. "Today's a good day."
"Anything special about it?" He asked as they went down the hall.
"Oh no." She said softly. "Just a good day." They disappeared into down a corridor, presumably to head to her room. It'd be about time for her medication.
"She's lying." Wanda sighed and glanced at me. "Could you tell?"
I nodded and walked over to her. "What's special about today?"
"She turns 422 today." Wanda grinned. "Should we get her a cake? It'd have to be a big one to feed everyone."
"I don't think we'll be able to fit 422 candles on it though."
Wanda surveyed me. "Did you just tell a joke?"
I smiled sheepishly and shrugged.
"You did!" She laughed.
I looked down at the ground, hiding my enormous smile as we walked.
"I'm going to go through some of the mission objectives for when we go to the prison opening, do you want to come?"
I hesitated. "I'm coming to that?"
"Of course! You're one of the team." She smiled. "Then we can bake a cake."
"That sounds nice." I let her lead me to the living room, grinning to myself as we went.