"Koi No Yokan (n.) The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love."
Two days and nothing changed. Bucky didn't have another seizure after Erin's last injection, but despite T'Challa's team bringing him from his cryo sleep, he still hadn't woken up.
Everyone on the team took turns watching him, keeping eyes on him 24/7. Steve took most of the shifts, almost never leaving Bucky's side. Erin took most of the other turns, mainly because she didn't know what else to do.
Everything was quiet in the house and everyone but Erin seemed to have a groove, some kind of pattern to follow. She felt useless and out of place. Her shifts watching Bucky were the only thing keeping her from completely losing her mind.
"Steve," Erin said walking into the lab three days after they reattached Bucky's arm. A book and some files were tucked under her arm and she held of mug of coffee in her right hand.
Steve was sitting at the metal table next to Bucky's cot, his head resting against his hand. He was asleep.
"Steve," Erin said again standing over him.
"Hmm?" Steve said with his eyes still half closes.
Erin slammed her book onto the table sending a vibrating noise that jolted him awake. "What?" He said rubbing his eyes, "I'm awake."
Erin raised an eyebrow. "You've only slept for three hours in the last two days. Being a super soldier means you need super sleep." Even though he was sleepy, she could see the edge in his eyes. It was an alertness that never seemed to go away. She learned to recognize the look in her grandfather. It seemed Erin knew PTSD all too well.
"I'm fine." Steve said unconvincingly.
Erin sighed, "Go get some sleep," Erin said, "I'll stay with him."
"How do you plan on staying awake?"
Erin held up her thick stack of files, "I have more research to do. And if I get done with that..." She held up her copy of a book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy , "I've got three hundred pages left," She gave him a smirk.
He gave her a sleepy grin and got up from the chair.
"I'll let you know if anything changes," She said.
"Thank you," Steve said placing a hand on her shoulder.
Erin nodded and watched him walk out. When the door slid shut behind him, she turned to look at the Winter Soldier. He was still sound asleep. I wonder if he dreams. She thought to herself.
Shaking the silly thought from her mind, she put the files and book on the table, sat down, and got to work.
She first looked at the file she found in the room of the warehouse. The formulas she had seen on each paper had been bothering her for days, like a puzzle not quite fitting together.
She examined the symbol on the front of the manila folder. The symbol contained four circles each one inside of the other. The two smallest circles were closed, but in the two outer rims, there were wide opened gaps where two dots separated the circles from closing. She took out the phone Steve had given her and snapped a picture, reminding herself to look it up later.
She flipped over the folder and went over its contents more througouly. Each picture of the metal ligaments seemed to be results of different experiments. Each time she saw a new picture, the formula changed slightly. After she went thought all of them once, she reached for a pen and paper in the drawer of the desk she was sitting at and wrote them down one by one.
It took her an hour to organize the formulas into anything that made sense. She spent the next two looking for a pattern, stuck in a constant loop of getting somewhere and then backtracking. As soon as something started to make sense, the end result didn't.
She knew these were formulas of electric energy. From atoms to neurons she knew all the formulas of the mechanical prosthetics made sense, but there was one element in each that didn't and she couldn't figure it out.
After three and a half hours after Erin had sent Steve to bed, she finally shoved the file aside. She rubbed her temples in frustration and reached for her cup of coffee. Wanda had been kind enough to deliver her third one of the night.
There was another file Erin had been eyeing, but she wasn't quite sure she was ready to know its contents. She took a deep breath and grabbed the file Steve had given her about what happened to Winter Soldier in Siberia. She flipped open the folder and her eyes scanned the first page. There was a picture of Bucky in an unforgiving metal box that HYDRA kept him in during his cryo sleeps. She flipped to the next page. The names of all the scientists who experimented on The Winter Soldier were written and what they had each contributed to him were scrawled onto various sheets of paper. Every compound they had used to wipe his brain was listed along with the tools to do it. The results were listed as well. The experiments they did had given him enhanced strength similar to Captain America, only used for more a more deadly purpose.
She turned the page over and stopped in her tracks. She was looking at another list of name and dates. She was confused for a moment until until her eyes stopped on two names: Howard and Maria Stark. Date of kill: December 16th 1991, the year of her own birth. This was a list of The Winter Soldier's kills.
Something in Erin's stomach turned to ice. She had interned at STARK industries every summer since she was 15 until the last summer before she dropped out of college. She only met Tony Stark a handful of times, but her grandfather had been close with Howard when they first began S.H.I.E.L.D. It was enough to make Erin hurt for their loss. She couldn't imagine what Tony had been through, finding out that your friend's ghost turned assassin friend killed your parents.
But she also couldn't imagine being manipulated so much that you were unknowingly being forced to kill someone who had once been a comrade and the parents of a person who could have so easily been your friend.
She shut the folder quickly and looked up at the Winter Soldier again. It felt impossible... impossible that he had been turned into something like that.
A memory surfaced in Erin's mind.
*****
"Grandpa you didn't tell me you knew Captain America!" Five-year-old Erin said to her grandfather. She was sitting in his office one afternoon going through pictures he kept. She found one dated from 1944.
The picture she held in her hand had three men in it. One of them was of her grandfather, much younger than the white haired man who stood in front of her now. In the picture he stood on the left side of Captain America and there was a dark haired man on his right side.
Erin knew all about Captain America. Her father had taken her to the Smithsonian for her fifth birthday just a few months ago. Ever since she watched the documentary shown there, she became obsessed. She asked her father everything he knew about him. She wanted books, documentaries, comics, anything that had Captain America on it, she wanted. She was even more estatic when she found out that she had been named after Peggy Carter, one of the founders of S.H.I.E.L.D. and friend of her grandfather. She was still a little young to really understand what exactly S.H.I.E.L.D. was and what both her grandfather and father did there for their jobs.
In the picture, they all looked tired and dirty, necklaces her grandpa called "dog tags" hung from their necks and they had cuts all over their faces, but their arms were around one another as they smiled for the photo.
"Who's that?" She pointed to the man with the dark hair on the right side of Captain America. She recognized his face from the Captain America exhibit, but had been so caught up in the star of the show she couldn't remember who he was.
She noticed her grandpa's face turned sad. "He was my friend," He said quietly, "You remember I told you I was in the Army?"
Erin nodded her head, her curly pigtails bouncing up and down, "You stopped the bad guys."
Her grandpa smiled, "I tried, but his man right here," He pointed to the other man in the picture, "He stopped the bad guys too. He saved my life more times than Captain America."
Erin's jaw dropped, "More than Captain America?" She said in awe her eyes widened, "What happened to him?" She asked.
The sad look on his face returned when he gave him answer, "He gave everything he had to stop them. He's not here anymore."
Erin's face fell, "What was his name?" She asked softly.
"James Barnes," He replied.
"Like our James? My brother?" She asked excitedly.
Her grandpa smiled and nodded, "It's who he was named after, just like you were named after my dear friend Peggy. But he didn't go by James or Jim like your brother, back then everyone called him Bucky."
"Bucky," Erin repeated looking at the picture again.
"Why don't you keep that?" Her grandfather said.
"Really?" Erin squealed.
He nodded, "But you have to promise to take good care of it."
"I will," She said clinging the picture to her chest.
****
Erin didn't remember falling asleep. Guess I'll try four cups of coffee next time. She thought to herself when she woke up with the back of her hand plastered to her cheek, her head laid down on the table.
She slowly sat up and rubbed her eyes awake. When she looked up, she found two blue eyes were staring at her.
"Where am I?" the Winter Soldier asked her.
Erin's brain stopped working again. All she could do was gape at the Winter Soldier, alive and talking to her.
"Gdh ya?" He spoke another language. She had no idea how to reply. Words seemed to always escape her.
"Wo bin ich?" He asked again.
It took her a moment to realize he had asked the same question but in Russian and then in German.
"You're at a safe house," Erin finally found her voice and replied in English, "in Wakanda."
The Winter Soldier scrunched his face together, confused by her response. He looked around frantically at the lab. Erin watched his eyes note everything exit and things that could be a potential threat.
Then his eyes landed on her. He was taking in her size and calculating if she was friend or foe. He met her gaze and something, some small flicker, flashed in his eyes. Erin felt something then, something she couldn't quite explain. Whatever it was disappeared and his eyes turned cold again. "Where's Steve?" He demanded. His tone was hostile and for a moment Erin thought she should be scared.
"He's here," She moved to press the call button but he was too fast. He jumped off of his cot and snatched her left hand before she could press it, "Hey!" She said standing up, "I'm just going to call him."
He narrowed his gaze at her and gave a cold look, but released her arm.
She gave him a venomous look back and rang Steve's room.
"What happened?" Steve answered the call, evidence of sleep still in his voice.
Bucky seemed to relax a little at the sound of Steve's voice, "You should come down here. He's awake." Erin said not taking her eyes off of Bucky. They had entered into some kind of staring contest. He wouldn't drop his eyes from her either.
"I'll be right there," Steve replied before cutting the line.
"See?" Erin asked.
Bucky just gave her a once over, "Who are you?"
"My name is Erin." She told him. They still hadn't broken their staring contest. "Can you tell me yours?" She asked trying to keep her mind at bay.
"Bucky," He replied, "Bucky Barnes."
Erin nodded approvingly, "Well, Bucky, what do you remember?"
His eyes turned skeptical, "The last thing I remember was talking to Steve. That's all I know."
He was lying to her. She let out a frustrated breath. "How about your arm? You remember blowing that off?" She gestured to it.
Bucky was the first to drop his gaze. He looked down at his vibranium arm, confused as to how it got there, "How did-"
"I'll tell you when you tell me the truth about what you remember."
Their eyes met again and they stared at each other for a moment, seeing if the other would back down. Bucky was the first to give in, "I was with Steve at the HYDRA base in Siberia and... he was fighting."
Erin nodded, "Anything else?"
He thought for a moment, "Tony," He said quietly, "Tony Stark was there." Bucky looked off, reconstructing the memory in his mind. "That's how my arm blew off. Beyond that, my memory isn't very good."
Erin nodded again, "It should come back to you in a few hours. You've been in a cryo chamber asleep for almost a year."
Realization flashed over Bucky's face, "Why am I awake? It's not safe for me to be awake-"
"Steve will explain everything." She quickly said.
Erin didn't have time to say anymore before Steve came striding into the room, "Bucky!" He exclaimed. Bucky turned his head and his eyes lit up when he saw Steve stop at his bedside. "How are you feeling?" Steve asked.
"Fine I think... What happened? My memory is still hazy." Bucky suddenly, "And how the hell did you do this?" He gestured to his metal arm, examining it further than a few moments ago.
"You should thank her for that." Steve said turning to Erin and beaming at her, "This is-"
"Erin," Bucky said interrupting Steve, "We've met." Erin couldn't tell if there was distain behind his words. Whatever it was she didn't think it was meant to be friendly. "You fixed my arm?" He asked like he couldn't believe it.
Erin lifted her chin and nodded her head confidently, "Well, it's not completely fixed yet. I still have work to do. There's room for improvement, but we can talk about that later." She turned to Steve, "I'll go tell the rest of the team he's awake." She didn't give Steve a chance to reply or look at Bucky before she headed out of the lab.
"Are you insane like me?
Been in pain like me?"
-Halsey, Gasoline