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She kisses him, and he is transformed. Transported. To a time that does not exist.
Something he’s been reaching for without knowing the shape of it.
Longing was always just a word.
The first on a list of ten. Meaningless, until Natalia.
Natalia kisses Bucky, and it is fifty years ago. He was never The Asset, never a weapon. He is back home after a long work day, and so is she. Kissing him at the front door.
The kiss deepens—knocks him back into reality. He was The Asset. A weapon. He remembers all of it.
He was The Winter Soldier, and she kisses him still. Soft. There. Real.
So real. He could never imagine anything that felt like this. Even his deepest desires could not invent Natalia.
He feels it everywhere.
The press of her mouth. The brush of her breath. The skin of her chin against his palm. Jasmine all around him.
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It took twelve days to get from Seattle to New York.
Twelve—Maya's lucky number, which her mother pointed out with great flourish. The sudden shift from total despair to enthusiastic support was still confusing. Not that Maya was complaining.
It would have taken less time to reach New York were it not for a few key factors.
The U-Haul was the main issue. The thing was on its last leg and had stuttered to a stop twice on long stretches of interstate. The second issue was the tour bus. Because somehow, Maya's cross-country move became not only a family affair, but a Dragon Slayer affair.
Her dad's band was selected to perform a show up in Chicago. It was nice because she now had five middle-aged men to help move her furniture, which had been sitting in a storage unit, and annoying because every time they stopped for the night, the members of Dragon Slayer woke up hungover after regaling the glory days they’d soon be reliving for a one-night-only benefit show!
After the show, her dad flew back from Chicago to Seattle to join Renata at a conference, leaving Maya with ‘Uncle Jack’, who would drive the shoddy U-Haul up the rest of the way to her apartment in New York.
Maya hadn’t yet seen the apartment. A real-estate friend of Sofia's had set her up, and Sofia was Type-A enough that Maya was confident it would be a nice place. It better be, considering the fact that she was going to wipe a good chunk of her savings on its rent before even touching her first paycheck.
Uncle Jack wasn’t actually her uncle, but had been affectionately dubbed so, considering all three Silva kids had grown up closely with him. He was her favorite member of Dragon Slayer besides her father and, conveniently, a car mechanic. A career that came in handy many times in the name of shoddy U-Hauls.
He spent the last leg of the ride quizzing Maya on music history trivia and chain-smoking enough that she never wanted to see a cigarette again.
Over forty hours and nearly three thousand miles later, they were here.
New York, her apartment building. Tall and shiny and right in the middle of everything. Thank you, Sofia.
Jack parked the truck in the loading zone and instantly frowned. “Get behind the wheel while I pop the hood. I need to check something.”
Maya was itching to stretch her legs, but crawled over the console and plopped herself behind the wheel as Jack did whatever it was he had to do. She quickly responded to Skylar’s thousand text messages about arrival times when she realized with great dread that the truck was moving.
A quick check confirmed that yes, the gear was in park, and no, this was not a relief. Because it was sliding down the street and would soon cause a major accident.
“Oh my God!” Maya screamed, looking up helplessly to see Jack frantically waving his hands and stepping out of the danger zone.
“Hit the brakes!”
“I’m obviously hitting the fucking brakes!” She cried, slamming them as hard as she could to no avail and pounding on the horn like it might accomplish something.
To make matters worse, an innocent pedestrian appeared to be walking at the unstoppable truck as if crosswalks could defy the laws of physics.
The road, naturally, was slightly downhill, and she was about to be arrested for vehicular manslaughter and—
The truck stopped. Just stopped. So abruptly that her head slammed into the windshield.
Maya practically dove out of the front seat and stumbled on the asphalt.
She was fully prepared to see a body flattened on the floor when she froze in her tracks.
It was him. Boogeyman. Winter Soldier.
Alive and well and holding the truck in place with one hand.
He glanced up like it was a regular Tuesday.
“Is everyone alright…” He blinked, seemingly absorbing the same thing she was.
Him. Her. New York. The near-death with the truck.
Then, at least for Maya: whiplash, shock, years of mythic existence, impossibility… anger.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Move it out of the way!”
There was this split-second look on his face like he might say more before remembering that he was, in fact, holding a truck in the middle of a busy New York intersection. Granted, it was impressive that it appeared to take him minimal effort to push several thousand pounds of a vehicle back into a parking spot.
Dumbly, Maya followed him while avoiding the honks of many angry New Yorkers. Great start.
It was then that Jack reappeared on the scene, patting the boogeyman’s arm with a huff of relief. “Thanks, buddy, that was a close one.”
Somehow, her uncle was not questioning the fact that one person was able to achieve what just happened. Either he knew he was dealing with a serum-charged super soldier, or he was too deluded to question it.
Once it was clear that the truck was not going to move again, he stepped back. James? Bucky? Maya couldn’t decide what to call him and wouldn’t get the chance because he was already retreating with a “no problem.”
“Mai,” Jack moved toward the back, “you go up and unlock the door, I’ll start loading the service elevator.”
Maya, still dumbfounded, said, “On it!”
Grabbing her purse from the car, she made her way inside and toward the front desk. It only took her a few minutes to sign some papers—once again, thank you, Sofia—before the receptionist was handing her a set of keys and pointing her toward the elevator.
The elevator was slow, which Maya could have expected considering the height of the building, and she was instantly shoved into the back corner as it filled with tenants.
She lived on the twelfth floor, yes, lucky number, and the elevator did not empty out until the eighth.
Almost empty out—there was one other person inside.
It couldn’t be. This was purely a side effect of too many hours on the road and a catastrophic experience via U-Haul. She was imagining, hallucinating—
“What are you doing here?”
Once again, Maya was struck with the realization that not only was James Buchanan Barnes real, he was standing less than a foot away from her.
“I’m moving in—home,” Maya said to answer his question.
He frowned. “Home?”
“Home, as in the place where you live—”
“I know what a home is…” His frown deepened, directed now at the range of floor buttons where only one was still lit. “Which floor did you need?”
Because it was obvious, Maya huffed as she pointed. “Twelve.”
“No.” And that was all he said.
“Yes,” Maya didn’t have to inspect her key or her paperwork or anything. Lucky numbers were a big omen in her family, and nobody would soon forget that her apartment address began with 1212.
The door finally opened on the twelfth floor, and Maya stepped out. But then so did he. “Don’t follow me.”
“I’m not,” He was still frowning. “I’m going home.”
Then it was Maya's turn to ask. “Home?”
It was an unfortunate thing, getting your own words thrown back in your face. “Home, as in the place where you live.”
Touché.
“Maya!” From down the hall, Jack waved her over. Her couch was already taking up the hall beside her door. “C’mon, we've got a lot of furniture to move.”
By the time Maya reached her door, she realized he was still behind her.
She glanced once at the couch that was blocking off the rest of the hallway and winced, turning around. “I’ll move it or… You can climb over?”
“It’s fine,” He said, and then unlocked the door directly across from hers.
Oh. No.
And then Jack was talking. Oh no. He was saying, “Hey, you’re a strapping young man.” Oh no. Oh no, because Maya couldn’t hear the words ‘I’m 106 years old,’ but she could see them in his eyes. Oh no, because she knew what was coming next. “Wanna help an old man out, move some furniture, and I’ll buy ya a drink?”
“He doesn’t need to do that!” Maya practically yelled.
Both of them shot her a puzzled glance.
“I’ll give you a hand,” boogeyman said. “And you can call me Bucky.”
The daughter of the woman he nearly killed was moving into the apartment across from his.
The daughter of the woman he nearly killed was named Maya, and she was strange.
From her clothing to her furniture, she was strange. Everything she owned was brightly colored enough to give him a headache. Her couch was purple, her coffee table was green, the overstuffed boxes of clothes came in colors and materials he did not know existed.
Not only was she strange, she was unhelpful.
Not that Bucky needed help. The man she came with, Jack, at least, tried to help. Holding large boxes before realizing Bucky could handle the weight and stepping away to collect smaller boxes. Maya could only be described as useless.
And that was him being generous.
She was actually a hindrance. Either standing in the way and yelling, “That says fragile!” Or standing in the corner, talking on the phone and shrugging, “No, I’m not busy, I can talk.”
A fact that especially annoyed him was that her cat hated Bucky.
Cats don’t hate him; most of them liked him. In fact, Alpine, his cat, only liked him. Jiji, on the other hand, hissed every time Bucky got too close.
After the third hiss, Maya grimaced as she scratched the cat's head, “She’s just testy after traveling for so long.”
The excuse held up until Jiji was rubbing herself on the legs of one of the other neighbors who had popped in to meet Maya. It was not lost on him that, in the months Bucky lived here, he had only one conversation with the woman, and Maya was already promising to get brunch with her sometime this week.
Bucky finally set the last piece of furniture down and dusted his hands on his pants. On cue, the cat was hissing. The count was now up to five.
Maya waved it off, “The travel.”
It was a lie, one Bucky was taking personally.
“Don’t take it personally,” She continued, bending to scoop the animal into her arms. “So that’s everything?”
Bucky tried not to stare at her in disbelief. A disbelief that was layered. The biggest source was the absurdity. Renata, and forty years later… Maya. The second layer, the sincere way she was asking. Like if there were more, she’d go down to the truck—the one that almost flattened several pedestrians—and actually pick up a box.
“That’s everything,” Bucky confirmed, because what else could he say?
Maya drummed her fingers against the wall. “Who was the last tenant?”
Bucky shrugged. “This older guy. I didn’t know him.”
Quickly, her hand fell, and she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Did he die in here?”
“No—not that old. Fifty, maybe. He moved out.”
“Half your age,” Maya muttered, before glancing up almost apologetically. “Was he nice, good neighbor?”
Bucky wanted to go back across the hall. Or look at other apartment buildings. “I didn’t talk to him much.”
This earned him a judgmental stare, “He lived like five feet away from you. This is so unhelpful. I need to know what kind of cleansing this place needs.”
Bucky had a bad feeling that she didn’t mean with a mop.
Saved by the bell.
“I’d say it’s about time for that drink now,” Jack groaned in a way that suggested he did more manual labor than he actually did, completed by rubbing his back and stretching.
“No worries,” Bucky assured him, “You can go do what you need to do.” Like dealing with the disaster of a U-Haul.
Maya nodded, “You can crash here if you want, or if you wanna start driving back.”
“I want a beer, then I’ll hit the road. Plus, I told Bucky here I owe him one.”
Bucky shook his head again. There was a long list of things he’d rather do than get a drink with an old target’s daughter and her supposed uncle. Including actually showing up to his next therapy session with Dr. Raynor. “Don’t worry about it—”
“No way, man. Don’t make me drink alone!” He laughed like it was hilarious.
Maya laughed too before sobering quickly. “Jack, he doesn’t want to.”
Which was true, she really could read his mind.
Jack just grinned. “I ain’t taking no for an answer.”
The daughter of the woman he nearly killed was moving into the apartment across from his.
The daughter of the woman he nearly killed was named Maya, and she was strange.
From her clothing to her furniture, she was strange. Everything she owned was brightly colored enough to give him a headache. Her couch was purple, her coffee table was green, the overstuffed boxes of clothes came in colors and materials he did not know existed.
Not only was she strange, she was unhelpful.
Not that Bucky needed help. The man she came with, Jack, at least, tried to help. Holding large boxes before realizing Bucky could handle the weight and stepping away to collect smaller boxes. Maya could only be described as useless.
And that was him being generous.
She was actually a hindrance. Either standing in the way and yelling, “That says fragile!” Or standing in the corner, talking on the phone and shrugging, “No, I’m not busy, I can talk.”
A fact that especially annoyed him was that her cat hated Bucky.
Cats don’t hate him; most of them liked him. In fact, Alpine, his cat, only liked him. Jiji, on the other hand, hissed every time Bucky got too close.
After the third hiss, Maya grimaced as she scratched the cat's head, “She’s just testy after traveling for so long.”
The excuse held up until Jiji was rubbing herself on the legs of one of the other neighbors who had popped in to meet Maya. It was not lost on him that, in the months Bucky lived here, he had only one conversation with the woman, and Maya was already promising to get brunch with her sometime this week.
Bucky finally set the last piece of furniture down and dusted his hands on his pants. On cue, the cat was hissing. The count was now up to five.
Maya waved it off, “The travel.”
It was a lie, one Bucky was taking personally.
“Don’t take it personally,” She continued, bending to scoop the animal into her arms. “So that’s everything?”
Bucky tried not to stare at her in disbelief. A disbelief that was layered. The biggest source was the absurdity. Renata, and forty years later… Maya. The second layer, the sincere way she was asking. Like if there were more, she’d go down to the truck—the one that almost flattened several pedestrians—and actually pick up a box.
“That’s everything,” Bucky confirmed, because what else could he say?
Maya drummed her fingers against the wall. “Who was the last tenant?”
Bucky shrugged. “This older guy. I didn’t know him.”
Quickly, her hand fell, and she dropped her voice to a whisper. “Did he die in here?”
“No—not that old. Fifty, maybe. He moved out.”
“Half your age,” Maya muttered, before glancing up almost apologetically. “Was he nice, good neighbor?”
Bucky wanted to go back across the hall. Or look at other apartment buildings. “I didn’t talk to him much.”
This earned him a judgmental stare, “He lived like five feet away from you. This is so unhelpful. I need to know what kind of cleansing this place needs.”
Bucky had a bad feeling that she didn’t mean with a mop.
Saved by the bell.
“I’d say it’s about time for that drink now,” Jack groaned in a way that suggested he did more manual labor than he actually did, completed by rubbing his back and stretching.
“No worries,” Bucky assured him, “You can go do what you need to do.” Like dealing with the disaster of a U-Haul.
Maya nodded, “You can crash here if you want, or if you wanna start driving back.”
“I want a beer, then I’ll hit the road. Plus, I told Bucky here I owe him one.”
Bucky shook his head again. There was a long list of things he’d rather do than get a drink with an old target’s daughter and her supposed uncle. Including actually showing up to his next therapy session with Dr. Raynor. “Don’t worry about it—”
“No way, man. Don’t make me drink alone!” He laughed like it was hilarious.
Maya laughed too before sobering quickly. “Jack, he doesn’t want to.”
Which was true, she really could read his mind.
Jack just grinned. “I ain’t taking no for an answer.”
The three of them sat at a small table at the nearest bar.
Jack spent the last ten minutes talking about growing up in New York and how much the city changed since then. When he said, “Thirty years is a long time, man,” Maya almost buried her head in her hands.
An urge that grew when he started asking Bucky about how he grew up in Brooklyn. Which led to questions that were increasingly difficult to answer. She could see that all over Bucky’s weary face.
A server finally came. Jack ordered the beer he was apparently dying for, and two more for her and Bucky. The waiter was definitively hipster, and delighted by the mix of people at the table.
He adjusted his beanie and widened his eyes. “I’ve got to know how you two know each other,” He pointed between Bucky and Jack. “I worshipped Dragon Slayer,” He turned his gaze toward Bucky solemnly, “And you… man.”
Initially, Maya was both annoyed and sort of horrified at the idea of getting a beer with dear old Uncle Jack and the boogeyman. Especially considering that she could be getting drinks with Skylar and her friends.
Now, it was kind of entertaining. Watching Bucky try to interact in any social situation was… interesting.
Jack patted Maya’s knee, “I’m just up helping my niece move in. We actually had a little show up in Chicago,” His voice faded, and then he was staring at Bucky. Which she could tell Bucky hated. “You in a band, too, buddy or…”
The hipster server raised his brows. “You don’t know who he is?”
“Now that I think about it, you do look kinda familiar,” Jack narrowed his eyes.
Before he could get an explanation, the server was called over by another table.
“Your face…" Jack continued staring, "You an actor or something?”
Bucky shook his head. “No.”
Interrupted once again, Jack's phone rang. He raised one finger before hurrying out the door. If the duration of phone calls he took on their ride up were any indication, he’d be gone for a while.
Bucky cleared his throat as Maya rubbed her brow.
The idea was that the physical act would distract her from staring at his face. A face that had been so prominent for her entire life. Years before the public ever saw it—at least the modern public. And the majority of them were spent thinking he couldn’t possibly be real.
“It’s this painting,” Maya blurted out before she could stop herself.
Bucky looked justifiably confused. “What?”
“Jack—he doesn’t really watch the news, or ever know what’s going on in the world. He recognizes you from this painting that…” She fell quiet as the three beers were set on the table.
Maya took a large swig before remembering she hated the taste.
Bucky followed suit before shaking his head. “No one’s ever… painted me.”
He said painted the way a regular person would say stabbed.
The beer was gross, she knew that now. And yet, she brought the bottle back up to her lips. It was the only way she’d possibly be able to say, “My mom did.”
His bottle hit the table hard. “What?”
“You’ve gotta learn some new words.”
Bucky deadpanned, “Here’s one: explain.”
“It’s like, freaking huge,” Maya rambled, her hands waving the way they often did, “And it actually looks just like you, I mean, your hair’s longer, and you’re wearing some kinky leather thing…”
“Renata painted me,” He repeated, like maybe hearing it again would make it more absorbable.
Maya nodded and took another sip, “She shows everyone.”
His face morphed into slight mortification. “Why?”
If Maya was being honest, all her sips were chugs, and she was reaching the bottom of the bottle far too soon. She just laughed. What a question. What a stupid, dumb question.
Why?
Why might her mother have painted him? Why would he possibly have stuck in her mind? Why, oh why, was he now her neighbor? And moving her furniture? And drinking beer with Uncle Jack—who’d abandoned her with the freaking Silva family Krampus.
“You have no idea,” Maya told him, laughing again because…
She must have known, her mother. Somehow, she knew this would happen. It was the only possible explanation for the sudden change of heart.
“I’m so out of here!” Maya declared suddenly, shooting to her feet and hightailing it out of the bar.
Outside, she thanked Jack as quickly as she could, making him promise to call once he hit the road.
She needed Skylar, something stronger than beer, and a serious explanation from the Universe.
Everyone said so, and those who never voiced it, thought it.
Her three children and her husband always knew it.
When Maya and her twin brother Nico were born, their uncanny resemblance to their mother made her cry hysterically. Renata believed, quite firmly, that the likeness meant she would surely die soon, as her soul was being reincarnated in her children.
She didn’t die; she was still alive and well today. And again, two years later, when their younger sister Sofia was born, the crying. The firm belief of her preemptive reincarnation.
Her mother was insane, and therefore their childhood was insane.
The primary years of Maya's life were spent following her father on tour with his band, Dragon Slayers. They spent the late 90s and the early two-thousands getting home-schooled in the back of trailers and exploring whatever city the band was performing in that night.
All the major milestones of puberty were reached somewhere in Europe. Maya got her first period in the bathroom of the Colosseum. Convinced that she was dying, she and Nico had run home in tears. They both got their ears pierced by a random woman in Amsterdam with a needle and a lighter, and covered their first pimples in the streets of Prague.
The members of Dragon Slayers were practically their uncles. Teaching them how to drum, or play guitar chords, or discover that Nico was a vocal prodigy like his dad. A photo of her and Sofia dressed as witches was the cover for a Grammy-winning album.
By the time she and Nico were about 14, the family finally settled down in Seattle to send them off to high school. It was only then that they fully realized that dad’s fame actually was sensational. The identity of their father was very impressive to nearly everyone at their school. It was also only then that they realized their mother was kind of a genius. Turns out, Renata's homeschooling had set them above and beyond their peers.
When Nico started a garage band their sophomore year, everyone was rushing to join it. When Maya accidentally broke up Nico’s garage band a year later—dumping his drummer—he didn’t speak to her for a month.
Which was incredibly annoying, because other than Sofia, he was her only company when the family hit the road again. This time, the Dragon Slayers tour remained in America, which meant more firsts in random places.
Nico nearly broke his month-long silent treatment when the two of them experienced their first hangover in Joshua Tree Park—discreetly puking in trash cans after stealing a bottle of something strong from a concert after party.
She earned a sharp, “Ew!” when he saw her kissing one of the band members' nephews at a diner off Route 66.
Eventually, they made up, going to college together at the University of Washington so they could stay close to Sofia. Nico dropped out after two years to pursue his music dreams, and Maya graduated with a degree in Biology before going straight into a highly competitive PhD program.
That was where she met Skylar. Initial roommate and eventual long-time best friend. Nico paid her back tenfold for the breakup of his beloved high school band by sleeping with Skylar whenever he got the chance. Skylar would then even the score by constantly rejecting him when he tried to get more serious.
She liked her life. Despite the crushing stress, she liked her PhD program. Not to say that she wasn’t very relieved when it was over. And she liked the job offer that she got when the light finally shone at the end of the tunnel.
Because a new stage of her life was about to begin.
And then she disappeared. For five fucking years.
The first few hours after the Blip could only be described as chaotic.
Dressed in an elderly woman’s bathrobe and slippers, Maya had practically sprinted the three miles from not-Trevor’s apartment to her parents' home. The roads were teeming with people. Everyone equally confused and frantic.
In record time, she reached the house, banged on the door, and was very relieved to discover that her mom and dad had stayed in place over the last five years.
The second the door opened, she’d collapsed into a hug with a very pathetic; “Mommy!”
Unbeknownst to her, Nico had also been snapped and then blipped. After another panicked phone call, they discovered that he’d zapped back into the empty stadium in Rome that he’d been performing in five years prior.
As it turned out, things were worse for the people who did not go in the Snap. They were left on Earth with no explanation and no answers. For a while, it was unclear whether or not half the population had died or simply disappeared.
She was Schrödinger’s fucking cat. The costume was a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Sofia was now older than she and Nico, far more pragmatic, and overwhelmed with the legal mess that came with the return of billions of people.
Blip, or Snap, or not, she had no job. Which left Maya and Nico to their own freakouts in their childhood home.
Said freakouts were often followed by Renata’s repertoire of sound baths, meditation sessions, and intense horoscope analysis.
When the spiritual cleansing failed, Nico went to their father, Vince, for advice, which mostly led to them smoking pot in the backyard. Maya turned to the numbers.
Fact. There was a 50 percent chance for anyone in the world to have Blipped. A 25 percent chance that neither twin would blip. And a 25 percent chance of both twins blipping. There was a 12.5 percent chance that all three siblings either stayed or snapped, and a 37.5 percent chance that only one did.
Fact. 15 percent of her life had now been spent in non-existence.
The science of everything was all very confusing. There was one relief: Maya snapped out of existence at 28 years old, and she was still 28 years old. Citizens affected by the blip were required to renew their licenses with a symbol denoting that their biological age was five years less than their birth year would suggest. She found it thoroughly entertaining that Sofia had breached 30 before the twins did.
More questions spiraled. Animals were blipped, so how did that affect the ecosystem? Did deer populations explode? Did algae collapse? Did carbon cycles shift?
Truthfully, all it accomplished was driving herself slightly crazy.
Hence, Nico standing at the door of her childhood bedroom with a blunt he rolled himself. “Smoke with me, sister,” he said earnestly. “You’ll feel such clarity.”
When she hurled her calculator at his head, he wisely took it as a no.
Maya didn’t want to get high with Nico for a multitude of reasons.
For one, she did not feel like crying—and Nico’s strange drugs almost always made her cry.
But mainly, it was because she was keeping a secret, which was nearly impossible to do when one had a twin. And if she were under the influence, she would surely spill. And then cry.
The secret was, of course, her clandestine run-in with one James Buchanan Barnes in the alleyway.
She hadn’t actually meant to see him. At the end of a long day spent hunting for jobs and spiraling, she’d been in her room with her cat Jiji. Contrary to popular opinion, the Silva family did not believe that black cats were bad omens. Naturally, perhaps predictably, Jiji was named after an animated black cat that could speak, a young Maya found the resemblance uncanny.
In a wholly out-of-character move, her cat had sprung out the window and ran down the street. Which wouldn’t be unusual were it not for the fact that Jiji notoriously hated the rain.
It had been in the cards, she supposed. Maya’s psychic did say that the threads of past and present were coming together in unprecedented ways. A message Maya had written off as relating to the Blip. At least until she chased Jiji into an alley and saw her mom conversing with that man.
For a while, she’d just stared in shock before deciding to follow and corner him with the help of her cat. For good reason.
Very good reason.
In her household, the man was never James, or Bucky, or even the Winter Soldier.
He was always ‘the dear captive’.
The boogeyman. A ghost story. Mythic, in his existence.
The reason their family remained analog longer than anyone else they knew. No MySpace when it came out, no cellphones, no Instagram in their later years.
The reason all three children were black-belts in Karate, well-versed in self-defense, and slightly more paranoid than anyone else their age.
Because while other kids were threatened with Santa’s naughty list, the Silva children heard stories of a Soviet assassin who almost killed their mom.
Her mom spoke of the night often. How silent he was, how cold and deadly. How he’d been sent to kill her before she gave him a frying pan to the head and a tarot reading. There was even a painting to memorialize the moment. Because of course, among other things, Renata Silva could paint.
The painting sat in her studio when they finally had a stable house in Seattle. There he was. Immortalized with his blue eyes, and his long dark hair. The mechanical arm, they all believed was a figment of their mothers' imagination. Because why would any assassin be decorated with a star on his metal arm?
They weren’t supposed to be afraid of him. Not all the time. Despite the fact that he was dangerous and a killer, he was the reason her parents met, after all! Leave it to Renata to put a positive spin on the night she was told to start her life over.
Naturally, their belief in the boogeyman faded as they grew.
By high school, it became a running joke.
In 2016, she hardly ever thought of him. By then, Maya was knee deep in the thick of her PhD program.
She’d been home for the weekend, the news on in the background as the family gathered in the kitchen. Nico was on break from tour, Sofia took a rare week away from law school, and Maya was able to pop in thanks to UW being so close to home.
No one had been watching the news—at least until her mother dropped and shattered her favorite teacup. They’d all followed her gaze to the TV screen where a man’s face was displayed beneath the words, The Winter Soldier Identified—James Barnes; Bombing in Vienna.
And then all of them were staring in shock. Because there he was. The man from the painting.
Down to the godforsaken star on his shoulder.
Real, very real. An old Soviet weapon that had somehow been kept alive despite being presumed dead in the 1940s.
Her mothers: “That’s him! That’s my dear captive!” Had been redundant at the time, but nonetheless shocking.
Predictably, her mom fainted, which happened whenever she was overwhelmed.
And a few months later, she all but demanded everyone fly out to New York for the weekend to visit his memorial at The Smithsonian.
On her mother's end, there was a lot of crying. A lot of yelling anyone who would listen that she met him, she read him a fortune, and he spared her. “My dear captive would never have placed that bomb in Vienna!”
Nico and her dad were both stoned, less teary eyed, and she and Sofia stared at his photo in shock. It was Sofia who said it first, eyes narrowed like it angered her.
“Is he… kinda hot?”
Maya's staring had graduated to a glare. Suddenly, there was a human face to it all. To the paranoia, and the ghost stories, and the way her mother was a general pain in the ass.
He was—hot. But that was beside the point.
“He ruined our lives,” Maya said, glaring and glaring at some old video of him laughing beside Captain America.
Nico reeked of marijuana, eyes red as he stepped too close to the do not touch sign beneath the jacket. “I’m gonna write a song about him.”
This decision was supported heavily by both their parents.
And then he was missing. Gone. No one in the general public knew where he was. One news story had leaked that he’d been apprehended after the bombing in Vienna, but nothing came out after that.
Life moved on. She graduated, she blipped, she spiraled. And then she ran into him less than a mile from home.
If Maya could describe ‘Bucky’ in one word it would be… well, large, and in dire need of a haircut. And more notably—guilty.
The man looked sorry to be alive, borderline apologetic about his own existence. Which Maya knew she wasn’t helping with all her questions he so clearly could not answer. His ‘I’m 106 years old’ was replaying over and over again in her head.
Like many a teenage girl, Maya had a vampire phase. For the first time, she questioned the awesomeness of immortality.
The whiplash of it, among other reasons, was why Maya kept their meeting a secret. Notably, so did her mom, which was odd for a woman who normally discussed every minute detail of her life, down to a hangnail.
Plus, she had bigger problems than reincarnated World War Two veterans.
Like her job. Or more accurately, talking to her family about said job.
The interview that morning was for Vireo Genesis Labs, a research institute focused on engineering more resilient crops and agriculture. Maya had already seen the headquarters just a few miles from here and knew that her PhD would make her a perfect applicant. The caveat, getting a job was hard enough before the chaos of the Blip. Going into it, she was fully planning to take what she could get.
It went well. The board of interviewers had her discuss her dissertation in detail, which was still fresh in her mind, despite being technically five years old.
At first, she was sure she was imagining, and had to blink twice before fully registering the words: “Our world is in dire need of plants capable of rapid recovery—urban green systems, hydroponic grids, global crop stabilization. Dr. Silva, we are highly inclined to offer you a position.”
Which, of course, resulted in Maya stuttering in a way that would later make her ill with embarrassment. “That would be amazing. Seattle has been my home and—”
“I’m sorry, I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding,” One of the women said. “You wouldn’t be at the Seattle office; the position is for our headquarters in New York.”
And then Maya heard herself saying, “New York, I love the city!”
Which wasn’t true. Thanks to following Dragon Slayer around over summers in high school, she had been to New York, and thanks to a bad case of the stomach flu, she’d only seen glimpses of it through the trailer window.
They wrapped quickly, start date, relocation package, paperwork. Maya said yes to all of it before her brain had time to catch up.
Not that she actually had to think about it. The decision was easy.
She needed a job, she needed to live in a bedroom not decorated with posters of The Killers and Orlando Bloom. A few phone calls over the past month had confirmed that Skylar was still in New York and enjoying it, so she wouldn’t be completely alone.
So, a few hours after her conversation with one James Buchanan Barnes, Maya figured she might as well share the news with the rest of her family.
She skipped down to the kitchen, acting as enthusiastic as possible so her mother would not cry.
“I got a job!” Maya exclaimed as Nico slunk in to see what the noise was about.
Her dad gave her his signature thumbs up as her mom clapped, “I told you, didn’t I tell you the interview would go well?”
“Yes, mom—it was all you.”
“Oh, honey,” she waved her hands, “that’s not what I’m saying!”
“Maya has more to say…” Nico sang in the ever obnoxious, all-knowing twin way.
“Shut up,” Maya bristled at him.
Her mom was quick to interject. “Don’t tell your brother to shut up, Maya. And Nico, don’t antagonize her.”
Very constructively, her dad said, “Hey!”
Granted, the Blip did make the issue of aging confusing. To her parents, it was simple; in their eyes, Maya and Nico were forever eleven.
Alas, Nico was right. From experience, Maya knew it was better to rip the band-aid off. “I’m moving.”
Cue three sets of protesting cries and a mix of: “You’re leaving when we just got you back!” Or, “Seriously, Maya, abandoning me with mom and dad right now?”
Maya's mom was crying, which wasn’t all that rare of a thing to see. Everything made her cry, which she called ‘a healthy display of emotional expression’. Right now, Maya wished she would chose to be a little less healthy.
“You can’t move!” She wiped her tears even as more fell, “I thought the job was here in Seattle.”
“It was—or I thought it was, but they were very explicit that—”
“No. No, I’m putting my foot down!”
“I’m not ten years old, mom.” Maya tried not to laugh. “And any other parent would be happy about this.”
“No one said you were ten years old, honey.” Her dad cut in, “I think it’s very rock and roll that you wanna move, we just like it when the whole family is close.”
“Sofia’s in California,” Nico pointed out.
Maya threw her hands up. “Thank you!”
“…and we never see her.”
Once again, she glared at him. “Hey, peanut gallery, whose side are you on?”
“There’s no sides,” Her mother shrieked. “Would you just sit down and talk about this?
“No! No tarot or reiki or meditation. I’m moving and—”
Her mother was inconsolable. “Do you hate us, is that it?” As she moved across the kitchen, Maya already knew where she was headed.
The much despised spiritual pendulum.
Again, Maya wasn’t a complete cynic, but the pendulum was often the bane of her existence. A small lapis lazuli crystal that hung from a chain on a beam. The pendulum and the truth stone answered many yes-or-no questions in the Silva household. All the kids hated it.
For years, they were plagued with variations of ‘did Maya and Sofia actually make curfew last night’ or ‘was it Nico who dented my car’. Maya could hardly watch as her mother swung it now, shrieking loudly. “Maya! It says you should not take that job!”
“Honey,” her dad cut in rationally. Somewhat rationally. “The rock is tired, you used it this morning.”
“Mom. It’s a rock on a string.” The worst thing about the pendulum was that no matter how hard they tried to get rid of it, it always made its way back into her mother's clutches.
“Don’t you dare!”
Maya wasn’t going to let the interruption stop her. “I’m moving, and I think it’ll be an amazing opportunity, and Skylar is still in New York—”
“What did you just say?” Correction, her mother wasn’t inconsolable, she was a maniac. In one second, all her tears had dried up. She had that look in her eyes now. The one she wore whenever she thought the threads of the universe were falling into place.
“New York…” Maya glanced at her dad for help since it was clear that Nico was still being a menace tonight.
And then her mom was crying again. But it almost looked like happy tears. “Well… I think that’s just lovely.”
The entire family fell silent. Maya had whiplash again.
Nico coughed and shifted on his feet. “Are you sure?”
“Shut up!” A calculator, or anything heavier to chuck at his head would come in handy right now.
“I do.” Her mom said, misty-eyed, “I’ve always told you, everything happens for a reason.”
The event, which would be later referred to as the Snap. When she, along with fifty percent of the Universe, disintegrated into dust.
The sex wasn’t supposed to happen. But it was a big night, and she ran into her ex-boyfriend, Trevor.
The sex had been good sex. The potential for greatness, even, had she been able to finish. No pun intended.
Several hours before, Maya was having a good day.
It was the day of the University of Washington’s ‘Defense Bash’. An annual tradition where every burnt-out PhD student who had finally, finally, defended their dissertations was thrown a party in their honor.
To be specific, a costume party.
The night felt earned. More than earned. For five years, she had been toiling away to earn her PhD in Molecular and Environmental Biology. Sacrificing sleep, social life, and her general sanity to earn the title.
Maya's mother, being who she was—a vehement believer of all things spiritual—was also quite the genius, and had sent Maya following in her footsteps. If Maya could believe in the magical mysteries of the Universe, she would also master the science of the Earth. Hence, the PhD and her mouthful of a dissertation: Adaptive Chloroplast Signaling and Gene Transfer in Post-Stress Photosynthetic Recovery.
Or, in layman’s terms, how plants reboot themselves after environmental distress and how we can help!
Skylar, Maya’s best friend and fellow burnt-out PhD student, was also celebrating today after defending her own dissertation on something within the realm of mechanical engineering that went above Maya’s head.
The night was bittersweet. Both of them were headed into the fabled ‘industry’ and would be parting ways in a few short days. Skylar had been offered a job in New York, while Maya planned to stay here and work for a lab in Seattle.
The two of them were throwing on their costumes with very different urgencies.
Skylar, who decided to go as ‘the plasma state of matter, of course,’ was slathering herself in pink and purple body paint that was meant to glow in the dark.
Maya's costume was not all that exciting. She wore a black dress with cat ears and taped the phrase, alive/dead, across her chest.
To her dismay, very few people understood that she was, of course, Schrödinger’s cat. Her cohort did, but plus-ones and people in other departments required explanations.
And for the next few hours, she’d repeat something along the lines of: “No, it’s not a real cat, it was a thought experiment by this physicist. He said if you sealed a cat in a box with something that might kill it, then until you actually look inside, the cat is technically both alive and dead at once. That’s the joke. And that’s why my costume says—nevermind.”
The relevance of said costume was contingent on the arrival of Trevor.
The aforementioned ex—Maya knew she’d probably see him. The program was small, everyone came to the party, and he, too, had defended his dissertation this spring.
For his costume, he’d worn his hair slicked back, round glasses, a bow tie, and a name tag that read: Schrödinger.
Nearly six months after their all but catastrophic breakup, they were in a couple's costume.
Naturally, they came to the same conclusion. They would be having sex tonight, and Trevor’s apartment was just two blocks away.
Skylar was very supportive of this decision; she was supportive of most decisions that involved sex. Maya didn’t have to feel bad about leaving her alone at the party because Skylar was gleefully seated beside a man whose hands were covered in pink and purple body paint.
Back at Trevor’s apartment, Maya was on top, her knees sinking into the mattress as, piece by piece, their costumes were thrown across the room.
Despite the problems that led to the catastrophic breakup, sex between them was always good. She’d been thoroughly enjoying it until she blinked.
And fell, stark naked, onto cold, hardwood floor.
Trevor was gone. The bed was gone. Their costumes, which had been littering the floor mere seconds ago… gone.
In fact, everything was different because she’d traveled five years into the future in the blink of an eye.
Well, not traveled, but, semantics she would learn at a later time.
Maya yelped, covering her naked body uselessly with her arms as she scrambled to get her bearings. Shooting upright proved to be a mistake. It brought her face-to-face with a mirror in which she could see her makeup smeared on her face and the cat ears atop her head.
Glancing around made it all the more clear. This was not Trevor’s apartment. Or it was, the layout was the same, but nothing else was.
Was she dreaming? Possibly. Her mother was always pushing her to attempt lucid dreaming, and maybe that’s what this was. Resting her palm on the table below the mirror brought no answers.
That’s when the old woman screamed.
“Chester!” The woman shrieked, wrapping her bathrobe tighter around herself like she was the one indecently exposed, “One of ‘em is in here!”
Maya screamed back, stuck between deciding which part of her body she should cover.
“What’s going on?” Maya's head spun wildly between the woman and the open window. “Who are you people?”
Should she dive through? No, Trevor lived on the eighth floor, diving wasn’t an option. Not unless she wanted to die. To add to the chaos, the unmistakable sound of several car crashes and wailing sirens reached them from below.
“It’s on the news!” The woman hollered. “The Snap! It’s been reversed!”
“That wha—where is Trevor? Trevor, I was with him. We were uh… um…”
The old woman’s husband joined her then. An old man with more speed than she thought possible sprinting into the room. With a rifle. Pointed at Maya's chest.
She screamed, more fearful than confused now, and he screamed back.
“Naked!” He yelled, spinning in the other direction and nearly falling in the process.
Right. The gun was pointed at Maya's naked chest!
“Oh my God. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. A phone!” Maya waved her hands frantically, pleadingly. “Can I borrow a phone or something? I don’t know where my bag…”
“Chester!” The robed woman howled again. “Get her some clothes.”
Because, of course, she was still naked.
Chester ran, returning with his hand clapped over his eyes as he hurled a robe like the one his wife wore at her feet. A phone was thrown in her direction next, the couple backing away like Maya was radioactive or something.
Ignoring them, she shoved herself into the robe and dialed her mom's phone number.
It picked up on the first ring, and Maya was still screaming. “Mom, hello—”
“It’s Maya!” The sound of her mother's voice surely broke the sound barrier. “Vince, it’s Maya! Baby… five years… oh my…” Her mom was wailing, and if Maya wasn’t mistaken, the couple whose apartment she was in was calling nine-one-one.
“Mom. Mom. What the hell is going on?”
“It’s a miracle. Oh my—the cards!”
Outside noise alerted her to the window again, and this time she poked her head out.
The street below was absolute chaos. Ambulances and crowds, more media vans than she could count.
Hands shaking, Maya pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at the date.
The Winter Soldier did not understand what was happening.
The woman, his target, should not have been able to restrain him.
Every word out of her mouth was foreign. Unfamiliar.
“Tarot reading.” And then, “Pick a card, my strange captive.”
It was because of the knife in his side. The blood loss. That was how she got the upper hand.
How the woman he was supposed to kill ended up incapacitating the Asset in her kitchen.
The mission parameters were simple. Primary objective: assassination. Secondary: collect intel.
Failure was not an option. The Soldier did not make mistakes. Not in a long time.
The memory of the last mistake he ever made was still harsh. Saturated with red blood and blue light. Anger in the Director's eyes because the Winter Soldier was not supposed to miss, and he did.
He should have been more focused today, but everything was strange and new.
The first target's house was easy to break into. But he caught the Soldier off guard and sank a knife into his side.
The Soldier’s hand shot out, wrapped around a throat. The target choked and gasped as the knife in the Soldier’s side pulsed.
“I know who sent you.” The man rasped. His fingers clawed uselessly at the metal hand around his neck. They were red and slippery with the Soldier’s blood.
The Soldier said nothing. Silent, planning.
Now, he would have to snap his neck. It was his least favorite way to eliminate. The echo of breaking bones stayed with him until cryostasis took over. Often, even when he woke. His first memory would bring him back. I snapped a neck last time. He would not remember why, but he would know that he did.
But he hated the other ways, too. The splatter of blood from a gunshot. The wet heat from a stabbing.
It didn’t matter; he had orders. The orders said to eliminate; he was built to follow orders.
The metal hand squeezed. The man's neck snapped, tilted on its side.
The body was disposed of at another location. The Soldier drove the target's car there—sleeker than he was used to. The world always changed while he was in that chamber.
Two handlers waited at the meeting point. They did not speak. Watching as the Soldier pulled the knife from his side and packed the wound.
He was then sent to the S.H.I.E.L.D. building in the city. The target's office was on the thirty-third floor.
By the time he reached it, the wound ached with every breath. He ignored it. Pain was nothing new.
He moved straight to the terminal in the corner, setting down a thin metal device the handlers gave him.
The machine hummed as it connected—data transfer, untraceable. Within minutes, the files Hydra wanted would no longer exist.
Already, he planned an exit route.
He turned to leave—and froze.
There was a sound beyond the office door. Light footsteps, hesitant and too close. A soft creak as the handle turned.
The Soldier stepped back into the shadows, around a shelf. Silent and unseen as the door swung open.
It was a woman.
Young. Movements frantic.
She shouldn’t have been there.
Her pace slowed as she entered, eyes scanning the room with a faint frown. “Reid?” she called cautiously into the empty room. Almost anger. “You in here?”
The name lanced through him. Reid. Recognition—on the passport, in the neat block letters above a photograph of a man who wasn’t breathing anymore.
The woman exhaled, long and frustrated, and moved toward the desk. There was a key in her pocket. She used it to open the bottom drawer. Retrieved a paper file and stuffed it in her jacket.
Watching her, he frowned. This file was not mentioned in the mission debrief.
The rules were clear: no witnesses, no loose ends.
This made her a loose end.
It was easy to follow her home. Forty-three minutes because she stopped often.
Half entered open doors to say hello to people. To speak nonsense. “Your spirits seem lifted today, honey. The crystals I gave you must be working.”
The Soldier did not understand.
They crossed a bridge. The city turned residential. Smaller. Cracked pavement and trees.
Some of them, she touched as she walked. Muttering to herself. To the trees?
Her house was right by the bridge, just across the street.
He crouched below and watched her push through the front door.
For a while, he saw nothing. An open window faced him, dark until she flicked on a light. Incriminating file set on the counter.
Ran her hands through her hair. It was long, jet black. Curiously, the Soldier watched her. The unfamiliarity of it all. Everything was strange. Even the lights were strange.
Orange, soft. The color of warmth.
The Soldier could not remember lights like that. All he knew was the fluorescent white hue when his eyes were open. Led from one hallway to another. Blue when they were shut, and electricity flared in his skull. How the chair lit him up from the inside out.
He watched for long enough that the cold reached his bones. The only heat radiated from his side. Flaring. Pulsing. Aching.
The pain would go away when they put him in the chamber. Cryostasis had almost become a solace.
When the woman slipped further into the house, the Soldier knew he needed to get inside. To see the contents of the file. No loose ends, no witnesses.
He knew how. Went through his usual steps.
After, he stepped up her porch and checked. The back door was already open. Just a screen between him and the house. The file.
Straining his ears, he listened. She was somewhere to the left in the house. Talking. Was there someone else inside?
Inch by inch, he slid the screen door open, listening.
Her voice, distant and muffled. “Moirai, where are you?”
A child? That would complicate things. Faster, he entered the house. Moved toward the kitchen.
The woman was still far away when he grabbed the file. Just five steps away from the door when he heard a sound.
Unrecognized, like a scratch. Alive but inhuman. The Soldier scanned but could not place the source.
The sound came again. Distantly, the woman exclaimed. “Ah! There you are, sweet baby.”
Ignoring the sound, the Soldier took a step forward, and his boot landed on something squishy. The source of the noise—making him stumble. Breathing too fast and bleeding again.
His eyes flicked down to a blur of black fur climbing up his leg.
Footsteps. Coming closer.
What was this?
It writhed against his boot—small, alive, wrong. Instinct flared: threat. His arm twitched toward the holster before logic caught up.
And then the woman screamed so loud the Winter Soldier’s ears rang.
He turned as her footsteps retreated again. Fast and panicked.
At first, he thought she was going to run out the door, but she reached the phone on the wall.
Dialed three numbers frantically as the Soldier watched. It wouldn’t work. She was about to find out.
“No!” she screamed, trying again. Nothing. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Spinning in his direction. Still frantic, crying. “If you’re going to rob me just—” Her eyes flew to the file in his hands, and she screamed louder.
“Stop.” He struggled with the word. Not one he often said. Not anymore. He was not allowed.
She did not stop.
“Oh shit. I knew I shouldn’t have… shit fuck shit shit shit.”
The animal was still hissing at him from below.
“Moirai!” she cried, gesturing wildly with her hands. “Get away from him!”
“I’m not going to kill you,” the Soldier managed to say, glancing once at the animal. “Or your…” He blinked.
“Cat,” She hiccuped, glancing toward her front door.
“Don’t,” He warned, stepping closer. The cat stopped hissing, and the woman quieted. Just shaking. “It will be worse if you try to run.”
She wrung her hands, frozen in fear, the way his targets often got. “My God, I should have listened. My horoscope told me to stay home today! I should have listened!”
The words meant nothing to him. They made his head spin.
No, he realized, that was the blood loss.
The woman's mascara was running down her face. “The universe has been sending me such mixed messages lately! I need my tarot cards. I need, I need…”
She wheezed and hit the floor. Unconscious.
Using the silence, the Soldier braced himself against the wall and opened the file. It was handwritten, a list of names the Soldier recognized. Hydra, people embedded in S.H.I.E.L.D.
Something was burning. Distinct smell. There, where the woman fell. A candle rolling on the floor. Fire burning from it to the curtain on the side of the window.
File in hand, he walked over and stamped it out. The woman was gone. Where did she go?
Something was flying at his head. A heavy metal pot.
Quickly, the Soldier raised his hand to deflect it. Too fast. Too much. Blood poured from his side at the sudden movement.
His vision tilted, and then it was he who hit the floor.
Darkness.
The world came back slowly. The obvious facts first.
The throbbing in his head. She must have hit him. The sharp tear in his side from the still-open knife wound.
For a moment, he didn’t understand why he couldn’t move. Then he felt the pull. Rope dug into his ankles, another length cut into his wrists. Both led back to the same cold, cast-iron radiator pipe behind him.
It was clever. Crude, but clever. Every time he shifted, the tension tightened somewhere else. Ankles to wrists, wrists to pipe, pipe to wall. Even if he tore the ropes at his legs, the anchor behind him would hold. Even if he snapped the ones at his wrists, the tension at his ankles would keep him in place.
Something softer was woven into the knots—silk, maybe. A scarf looped around one wrist. A belt wrapped twice around his chest. Another connecting the metal arm to the pipe. Improvised and chaotic. Effective.
When he strained, the radiator groaned. It did not budge.
Warmth trickled down to his leg. Still bleeding.
Then, her voice. “Don’t bother.” The woman was standing above him with her arms crossed. “My dad was a sailor. You won’t be able to untie those.”
Save his strength, he realized. Once the pounding in his head stopped, brute force could break him free. Eventually.
More details came into focus then. Each stranger than the last.
The candles had been moved, arranged around him in a semicircle. At his knees, there was a spread of cards. A formation he did not understand.
The woman wiped her streaked mascara, exhaling slowly.
“If you tracked me down because of the names in that file, I can’t trust that the police would help me, even if my phone was working.”
When he shifted, more blood spilled. The black cat was back, crawling between his knees, no longer hissing. Now that she knew he couldn’t kill it, the woman let it stay close.
There was a kitchen towel in her hands. Clumsily, she shoved it into the gap in his leather armor, pressing it against the wound.
He grunted, doubling as far forward as the restraints allowed. The pressure made it worse. Strained hiss escaping from between his teeth.
Satisfied, she stepped back, checking the belt looped around his metal arm wearily. Her eyes narrowed. Eyes fixated on the red star marking his shoulder. “Where did you get that?”
The Soldier did not answer. Could not answer. It had always been there, hadn’t it?
Defiantly, she lifted her chin. Asked another question. “Who are you?”
Again, he was silent. Again, it did not stop her.
“Fine. If you won’t tell me, the cards will.”
The cards? Arranged in three piles before him. The woman sat, cross-legged, with a few feet of space between them. The cat crawled forward and curled itself in her lap.
She fanned the first stack out on the floor and moved her finger back and forth across it. “Typically, in a tarot reading I’d have you draw the card but…” She nodded her head toward the restraints, somehow holding him in place. “Some improvisation will have to do.”
The Soldier stared in confusion. He had experienced blood loss before, to a magnitude worse than today. This was by far the strangest consequence.
Her finger continued its motion over the cards. “Pick a card, my strange captive. Tell me when to stop, and I’ll pull the card that calls to you.”
His blood soaked the kitchen towel. By then, breathing felt impossible. He just stared.
She glared. Redefined in his head. She could not be a target. His targets never glared. They were rarely alive long enough to see him coming. “Tell. Me. When.”
He did not bother to look at the cards. Teeth gritted, he spoke. “Stop.”
She stopped and pulled the card, flipping it right side up and staring for a while in silence.
“This card represents your past,” She said with a swallow. “The Tower. Upheaval, sudden collapse. Something catastrophic that tore everything apart.”
When he said nothing, she moved to the next pile. Repeated the same motions. His head spun. Left with no choice but to indulge her, he said, “Stop.”
Another card flipped, her face paled slightly. For a moment, she studied him. Took him in. Focusing heavily on his leather armor. The metal arm she tethered to her wall.
“This is your present. The Eight of Swords.” Maybe he was hallucinating. None of this could be real. And yet, she continued to explain. Words his brain could not have conjured during even the longest isolations. “You feel trapped, powerless. Maybe even imprisoned?”
This time, she did not wait for a response. The final pile was spread. His head felt too heavy to lift, so he watched her finger, curious as he’d been through the window. “Stop.”
Again, she pulled the card and flipped it, sighing heavily like it meant something.
“Judgment.” She said with finality. “Reversed. Like this, it means self-doubt, self-loathing. A very tangled draw, my strange captive.”
She was the strange one. And he should not have been captive. Everything about this was wrong. Somehow, the woman was unfazed, wholly focused on the cards.
She gathered the three cards into a neat line on the floor, sitting back on her heels. The candles flickered, catching in the glossy surfaces.
“Taken together,” she murmured, “they tell a story.”
Her finger hovered above The Tower. “Your past was destruction. Total ruin. Something violent ripped your life apart. You fell, and when the dust settled… nothing was the same.”
Something moved in him at that. A flicker he couldn’t stop—a crease between his brows, a twitch of muscle. He didn’t know why the words fit, only that they did.
She noticed. Hand twitching to the necklace at her throat. Some kind of rock. Her gaze lingered too long before sliding to the next card.
“The present.” Her tone softened, cautious now. “The Eight of Swords. You are trapped, not by chains or knots or… radiator pipes.” A faint, almost apologetic glance. “But by something larger. By fear. By what’s been done to you. You could walk out of those binds, but you don’t know how.”
To that, he gave her nothing. Face blank, eyes steady. If she was right, she’d find no confirmation from him.
“And then,” she exhaled, “Judgment, reversed.” Her voice grew brighter, lilting toward the absurd again. “Which sounds bad. Self-loathing, guilt, resistance to change. But it’s also a challenge, dear captive. It means that if you ever want a future that’s different from this…” Her hand gestured at the ropes, the room, everything. “You have to seize it. Reclaim your story. Choose to be more than what you are.”
As always, as he was trained, the Soldier said nothing. The words were ridiculous, unbearable.
His blood dripped and spilled on the card, making her gasp then wince.
“If I give you that file, you’ll go without killing me?”
Slowly, he nodded. There were no words to convince her, that much was clear.
With a flourishing sigh, she rose, moving toward the window.
“Guide me, stars,” she said wistfully, pondering them for a long time.
By the time she returned, he managed to speak. “You need to go. Get a new job, a new life.”
“I gathered as much.” She shook her head, arms crossed again, he could see panic creeping in. “Are you from Hydra?”
She should not even know that name.
Knowing was dangerous. It made her more than a loose end.
But she had become a problem for him. Messy and complicated. Part of him knew. If his handler was here, they’d demand her termination. It would be an execution he did not question.
Without direct orders, he did not know what to do. Knew, vaguely, that when he killed, it was never by choice.
“Don’t ask me questions.”
Her face paled like before. Muttering to herself as she paced. “Everything happens for a reason, everything happens for a reason.” She picked up her cat and turned back to him. “Where the hell do I go?”
The Soldier did not know how to answer this question. City names were not often given to him. He traveled through coordinate points and time stamps. Street names when necessary.
For some reason, when he opened his mouth, he said, “New York.”
This made her blanch. “That’s the best you can come up with?” Her hand waved, and she was crying again. “How much time do I have?”
“What time is it?”
She craned her neck to a clock across the room. “Almost one in the morning.”
It’ll be 0400 hours soon. When he will meet his handlers and give a mission report. Even if he manages to lie, they will check the details.
“Less than three hours.”
Sensing her distress, the cat hissed at him in her arms. “My psychic told me I’d be meeting someone very important this year. She said, perhaps, a lifelong friend.”
The Winter Soldier was running out of time, and so was she. “You need to get moving.”
She glared at him for a very long time. “I’m getting a new psychic.”
Seattle — December 8, 2023
It took him three months to find her.
To be specific, it took him 38 years to find her.
Not all of that time was spent looking.
For another 29 years, he belonged to Hydra. Came in and out of cryostasis and watched the world change again and again. Some things remained the same. Like Steve. Steve, who managed to undo it all with a singular phrase before Bucky left him by the river.
For 2 years, he hid in Romania. And he would have stayed there for longer, forever even, had it been up to him.
Wakanda let him stay for a few years. Helped erase the parts of Hydra that controlled him. It was quiet there, peaceful even.
With a new arm and a new mind, he fought at Steve's side. Tried to save the world like it might redeem him somehow. It did not. For five years, he was dust along with half the population.
When he came back, he fought again. He said goodbye to Steve.
And now he watched. Changed with the world around him. He was part of it.
Steve went back in time. Lived the life he deserved in the past. That was what made Bucky remember her, the woman with the cards. Seeing Steve choose his past made him revisit the pieces of his own.
So began the mission to find her.
The internet made things faster, and still, it was difficult.
Hours spent combing old S.H.I.E.L.D. records of past employees. The task would have been easy if he knew her name. If he knew what year it happened. Looking back, he was able to place it sometime in the 80s.
And finally, there she was. Renata Silva. With S.H.I.E.L.D. for three years before her sudden departure in December of 1985.
Present day, she worked for Google. Had been with the company for nearly twenty years in their Seattle office. Again, they were in the same city.
And again, he followed her home from work.
Renata Silva still walked home from work. She still stopped to chat with random store owners and speak to the trees despite the late hour and the dark.
It was raining, Seattle apparently always was, and she held an umbrella decorated with hearts to keep her dry. Bucky didn’t plan for the rain, and felt himself getting more soaked by the second as he followed that umbrella down an alley.
The logical part of him knew he should either say something or walk away. Following her home like this was probably a bad idea. So lost in his thoughts, he could no longer see the umbrella or which direction it had gone.
And then he realized why he lost her. The roles reversed. It was him being followed. Impressive that she’d managed that.
Now that he knew, it was obvious. Tentative footsteps behind him. He froze, did not turn. Careful not to startle her.
She too went still. “James.”
“You can call me Bucky.” Slowly, he turned to face her.
And there she was. Forty years later.
She was different. The evidence of the passage of time all over her. Steadier, calmer. Wrinkled slightly. Around her eyes, her mouth. Smile lines, he thought, hoped.
And her hair. It wasn’t so jet black anymore. Streaks of silver and gray caught in the dim streetlight. She still wore it long, pushed away from her face.
This was strange. A feeling he thought he’d be prepared for, but could not truly predict. It was not often that he was faced with people from his past. Everyone he knew was dead. Steve looked the same until the day he passed his shield down. To be so suddenly faced with aging was disorienting.
The fact that she’d caught him amused him. Bucky wasn’t sure he was allowed to feel this way.
“How did you know?”
“Two decades of paranoia and constantly looking over my shoulder.” It was delivered like a diagnosis. A cold she got over a week ago. “What are you doing here?”
It was not that cold, and yet his hands burrowed in his pockets.
He heard himself say, “I wanted to say sorry.”
Surprise twisted her features. And confusion. “To me?”
“I think I might have ruined your life.” Awkwardly, his hands found the bottom of his pockets.
“Funny,” She said, “I think you might have saved it.”
Her words were replaying in his head. Repeated back to her. “Paranoid and looking over your shoulder for two decades.”
When she smiled, the lines around her eyes crinkled. “There were good parts, too.”
“I know,” He admitted, “I googled you.”
“I sensed that you would come see me today. It was in the cards, after all.”
He didn’t move. Still, he remembered the way she’d paled at the sight of him that day. “You get a new psychic?”
This made her grin. The way she did in the pictures he saw on the internet. Several promotions with Google. A wedding to some man in a relatively famous band. She wore the t-shirt for it now.
“I did,” She confirmed, eyes light, “She said I’d be reunited with an old friend. Guess the first one was right, after all.”
To this, he had no idea what to say. Objectively, they were not friends. Finding it suddenly hard to breathe, he cleared his throat. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
“Are you?” She asked it so quickly, he got whiplash. “I still remember that reverse judgment card.”
Of course she did. And ever since he was reminded of her existence, of course he did. But his life had been too cut and dry to consider tarot. Or fate. Despite the inexplicable accuracies she laid out on her living room floor that day.
As always, she took his non-answer as a reply of its own. “I’ll be praying for you.”
One of her many gods or spirits, surely. What could he say?
“Thank you.”
The wind shifted, and she was grinning again. This time, it is like before. Like she knew something he did not. “I’ll be seeing you.”
Bucky was walking again. Letting the rain soak through his clothes on the way back to the motel.
He could have taken the bus, but needed time to think. Absorb.
It was all too much, and all he absorbed was rainwater. What felt like buckets of it.
Just as he was beginning to regret his decision, a sound he now recognized as a feline hiss stopped him in his tracks. The cat seemingly dropped from the sky. Landing about two feet in front of him and primed to attack.
He tried to ignore the fact that the cat was black. Eerily similar to the one he trampled in the kitchen decades ago.
And then it lunged.
Off-kilter, Bucky moved at the last second, pivoting away from claws and fangs and déjà vu.
“You,” a voice said, cutting through the rain. Distinctly feminine and highly accusatory.
When he turned, he stepped through a time machine. Only for a second. His eyes focused, sent him back to present day, and he saw her.
She was her mother and entirely independent.
The same jet black hair, but bigger, messier. A few tiny gold piercings he didn’t know how to file. A thin gold ring in the center of her lip. Something sparkling at her nose. People put metal in their faces now, apparently.
And she was taller, brown eyes instead of green.
Color aside, they shared the same tendency to see right through him. “You’re thinking I look just like her.”
He blinked, stupid again. Too slow to keep up with this family. “You’re Renata's kid.”
“Maya,” she clarified before her eyes flared with amusement. So silently, he was being laughed at. His jaw twitched. How did she do that? Make him feel inexperienced and stupid? She wasn’t finished with mocking him.
“Kid. You’re probably only a few years older than me.”
To this, he did have an answer. “I’m 106 years old.”
The words had no effect on her. All at once, she was quiet and loud. Somehow, he could see the storm of thoughts behind her eyes and was entirely blind in navigating it.
Maya. Strange as her mother. Following him into an alley and spinning his head.
The black cat wove itself between her legs, meowing once in Bucky’s direction.
His question came out awkward, almost weary. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
If her mother's words made him hide his hands in his pockets, her stare alone made him want to dig a hole through them.
“I’m trying to figure something out.” Her head tilted on its side, and then she was pacing. Walking in a slow circle around him.
When she was at his back, he exhaled slowly, staring at the sky. He hated having people at his back. At the risk of intimidating her, he held still.
Asking her anything felt dangerous, especially entertaining whatever this was. “Figure out what?”
Once again, they were face-to-face. The rain didn’t seem to bother her. Even as it made her sweater cling to her skin and plaster her dark hair to her face.
“If my mom's lunacy is on your account or a genetic predisposition.”
It was hard enough keeping up with her words; the glint of gold at her lip wasn’t helping. Why get a piercing there?
At a complete loss for words, Bucky just cleared his throat. “I came to apologize—”
“Oh, I know.” I know, somehow meant a million things at once. Beneath the streetlight, he was transparent. Predictable. The woman had x-ray vision and could read his mind. He’d been naive in thinking he could frighten her. “So what’s your take?”
“My take on what?” Why? Why ask? Just say sorry and go. Except it was too late for that now.
“My mom. Was she already crazy when you met her, or did your upheaval of her life cause it? I mean, you saw her, before. Was she totally insane?”
Bucky said nothing. He was back in the Time Machine, watching Renata. At the time, every human interaction was foreign. An oddity in and of itself. But…
Hadn’t she called that black cat her closet confidant? And made him sit there as she read from a deck of tarot cards while he bled out in her kitchen? Not to mention the candles, and the crystals, and all the—
“Ah.” She laughed like he told a joke. “Genetic predisposition, it is, I see.”
Pant pockets should go deeper. They really should. “I didn’t say that.”
Her amused hum cut him short. “You didn’t have to!” As quickly as it began, the laughter ended. She straightened, accusing again. “I’ll accept that she was a lunatic all by herself, but you definitely made it worse.”
He didn’t need anyone’s reminder to take responsibility. And if it’s an apology she wanted—
A painted black fingernail was in the air.
“It’s okay. I really don’t need you to apologize to me. After the Snap and everything…” She waved her hand, like the idea of being dust for five years was far behind her. “I’m trying to take the whole ‘life is short’ thing seriously. Plus, I’m moving, so I am letting go of my past troubles.”
He went entirely still. “Moving where?”
The cat at her legs distracted her, fussing for attention. “Jiji,” Maya addressed it calmly, “I trust you to make it home, you can go if you wish.”
The cat understood English, apparently. It froze, seemed to nod its head at her once, and zoomed in the other direction.
Bucky pushed his wet hair back in disbelief. “Where are you moving?”
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In 1985, the Winter Soldier did not kill his target. In 2023, he came face-to-face with her strange daughter. Freshly Blipped back to Earth, Maya is startled to learn that her new neighbor is the ex-assassin who haunted her family for years. Call it fate, karma, or one cosmic joke. Even weirder, she thinks he’s hot. She should avoid him. She should definitely not consider the possibility of a friends-with-benefits situation.
Alas, the Universe has other plans.
Bucky Barnes: in therapy, overwhelmed, trying to get through day by day.
Maya Silva: just moved to a new city, loves life, totally isn’t checking out her neighbor.
Who almost killed her mom like 40 years ago. But he said sorry. And he did stop her U-Haul from colliding with incoming traffic with one hand! Plus, their cats really want to be friends.
That’s the only reason she knocks on his door.
Obviously.
New TFATWS era fic! Yay! The Reason (Everything Happens) now on ao3 🤸🏻♀️🐈⬛🔮
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Bucky died and he is sure of it. Fell a distance undeniably lethal and died on the ice.
Watching, disembodied, as they buried him, a graveyard in the snow. Large and cavernous. No headstone or flowers. Just a lab, needles. The Chair. The Cell.
In his grave—the cell, they do not let him die. Slowly, painfully, they bring him back to life.
There is a man buried with him. Buried alive in a matching tomb fifty meters away.
Bucky is not sure who got there first. Him, or the other prisoner.
They do not speak to each other. Bucky tried once. Called out to him, voice echoing across the distance. He’d been angry that the man did not reply. Maybe he did not hear him.
A guard did. One of the many men in black. A skull and tentacles sewn into their shoulders. The ones who carry those sticks with the electricity.
A question is forced to be asked. Is he in hell?
He must be, and he is, in a sense. Every time he skipped Sunday Mass, his mom warned him. This must be hell. This can’t be hell. There is no fire, no horned demons. The guards are human, in a sense.
Sneezing and nodding off on their posts. One of them coughs loud enough to echo.
Other than this—they do not act human. They do not treat him like one.
If he is not in hell, then where is he? The question goes unanswered when he poses it across the fifty-meter stretch. The man never answers because he understands consequences better than Bucky does.
It is an unspoken rule: Bucky is not allowed to speak. Especially not in English.
All he hears anymore is clipped Russian. Maybe someone did tell him the rule, and he did not understand. Either way, he knows. Whenever he does try to speak, the stick comes out. Electricity courses through his veins.
There are other rules. Always administered in The Chair.
The Chair is in a faraway room. Across a maze of hallways and closed doors and labs. Three guards walk him there. For some reason, he is always unsteady. Off balance.
The rules are always in Russian. Not understood. If he knew what they wanted, he’d give it to them. The only reason he knows that they are rules is their cadence. Succinct. Demanding. All he can do is scream, beg for them to stop. They never stop, not on his account.
Not until the list of words is read. The worlds always come with electricity. The words themselves are electric.
Ten, he thinks. Counted the first time he heard them. Now, a blackout usually hits him around the seventh or eighth. When the pain is too high to bother fighting for consciousness.
It is not a battle there is any use in winning. When he is awake, they hurt him. What does it matter what they do when he’s out?
To an extent, he welcomes the blackouts. Because the words used to mean nothing. As time passes, understanding tightens the noose around his neck.
Longing, the voice behind the red notebook says. And then it says Rusted.
He fears something terrible will happen by the time he understands all ten.
Something terrible already is happening. He is forgetting.
In sleep, he remembers. Wakes up and tries to hold the images that slip away. A set of numbers once stamped into the dog tags around his neck. His friend, unnamed but right there in his mind. Blonde and blue-eyed.
Already, though, his brain betrays him. Perhaps there are two of them, the blondes. One much larger than the other. Taller and broader. But, they smile the same. Make the same bad jokes. Brothers?
Did he have a brother? A sister? The second choice feels right. His mouth remembers sounding the words out. My sister.
And he knows he should remember his parents. Everyone has parents. Some time ago, he could picture them. How come he can’t recall his? On the cell floor, he practices. My parents. My parents.
My name is.
Vaguely, he wonders if the same thing happens to the man in the cell across from his. Or if they knew each other. Before the underground and the electricity and the cold.
Bucky tries to ask him. Fails. His mouth is ash, body still burning from his time in The Chair. He wakes up on the floor of the cell and thinks he can hear a single word reverberating in his skull.
Maybe: Furnace.
As time passes, Bucky looks less at the man in the cell.
He is disfigured and scarred.
Screaming and crying on the cell floor like it will make any difference. Bucky never hears him speak, but he hears him screaming. Hates it when the man screams, the sound scraping across his skull.
For some reason, the guards allow the screaming.
Bucky does not know if the man is also taken to The Chair. Can assume it by the way he often writhes on the floor, pulling at his long hair. Screaming. Crying. Screaming. Crying.
Russian, too, like the rest of them. Maybe he’s been here even longer than Bucky has.
“Pozhaluysta.” Over and over and over again.
Somehow, he knows this word, too.
It means please.
Bucky craves sleep because he craves remembering. The screaming interrupts this.
If Bucky had the strength to lift his body off the concrete floor, he’d scream back. Tell him to stop.
This is a war. Don’t you know this sometimes happens in war?
Sometimes it is as if the man can hear what Bucky is thinking. When Bucky silently calls him pathetic, he stops.
Because there was a war, wasn’t there?
Yes, of course there was. His dog tags and a uniform the day he enlisted. His friend who couldn’t enlist but then made it somehow. Bigger, different. No. Impossible.
Except, that is him. Bucky said his name when the bigger one found him once. The first time the people with the skull and tentacles had him. Unless, that too, was a dream.
Today, it feels like he has always been with them.
The guards come to take the man in the other cell away. The Chair is both of theirs. The man does not move, does not scream.
Bucky’s vision goes black before he sees where they take him.
When he wakes, he hurts. The man is back. Curled on his side in Bucky’s direction. He clutches his shoulder and vomits.
Even from a distance, the smell reaches him.
The man vomits again.
A new word finds its resting place beside the others in his head. Daybreak.
It changes nothing. It changes nothing until he remembers he already asked the question. Did he have a sister or a brother? At some point, he’d been able to decide. It evades him now.
Like he has before, he practices. My sister. My brother. My parents. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
My brother. For a second, he sees a scrawny kid with blue eyes. My brother, he thinks again. And there is the face. Changing, tricking him.
Bucky yells at the man in the cell across from him. He is not sure why. Some days, The Chair makes him angry. He’ll rage against the guards. Fighting off the beast of tentacles and skulls.
The man yells, too. Bucky cannot hear what he says. Looking at him makes Bucky sick.
So he turns over. Concrete floor beneath him. Scraping the skin of his right arm. He always sleeps on the right, sometimes his back.
Something burns very badly on the left side of his body.
Closing his eyes, he tries to picture that face. The one that changes.
Instead, he sees letters.
The letters spell: Seventeen.
It is the first thing that feels significant. Hauntingly familiar. Someone's birthday. Maybe his mother. Except that doesn’t feel right. Except she is faceless, shapeless, entirely imagined.
Nothing feels right, because that makes five. Halfway through the list that he does not want to understand.
Somehow, he can hear the man in the other cell crying. Saying; please, please, please, in his fractured Russian.
Bucky hears the guards coming. Tastes electricity on his tongue.
The words come faster now. Electric, always.
A tooth broke once, and they put rubber in his mouth. When he bites down, he chokes.
The Chair and the red notebook. The man reading the way he always does. They reach, Benign.
He does not black out anymore. No matter how badly he wants to. As it has been for some time, his body betrays him. Has betrayed him since that first day when he did not stay dead.
Blood in his throat. Torn ragged. Screaming hurts. He must scream. Desperate attempt to drown it out. Erase the words they carve into him.
It is not his anymore, the body. His body. Past tense. Foreign and caging. The thing that keeps him trapped here. He must have walked, before. Everyone else does. Their boots heavy on the floor.
Not like his. The way he drags. Pulled back and forth between the places they take him. The cell. The Chair. The cell. The Chair. The cell. The Chair. The Chair:
Another word today. New. Irrevocable. How frustrating, everything goes, fades. Never the words. With their electricity, they burrow into him. Deep. Today he learns—Nine.
The man with the red notebook asks him a question. Something about a name.
Again, he practices. Silently. My name is. My name is. My name—
A fist cracks across his cheek. The right arm is locked into The Chair. When he swings with his left, nothing happens. Different from the usual betrayal of his body. An emptiness.
The hand strikes him again. This time with the notebook. He says the Russian word for Soldier. Another one he does not understand.
Time passes in the cell. He knows only because he comes to and from The Chair often.
Whenever he tries to practice saying his name, the man in the cell interrupts him. Says something about Winter.
Two sets of guards come. Three for each of them.
They return at the same time. Crouch in their corners.
Bucky was not in The Chair today. Maybe the other man was. Turned away, but already glancing at Bucky whenever he looks over his shoulder.
The Chair was a while ago. He is not sure and time passes anyway. They need it less now, The Chair. Because he understands.
There are ten words. They end in Homecoming. And then One. Finally, Freight Car.
They have always been there, they must have. The weight feels permanent. Etched into the gray matter that defines him.
When they ask him his name, he tries not to let them win.
So he opens his mouth to spit, to curse.
Instead, he is possessed by that scarred and disfigured man. What comes out instead of a name is half true. True, that he is a Soldier. This is how he got here. Once a point of pride. And then he says something about Winter. Mirroring back what the man mumbled so frantically on the floor.
The holder of the red notebook looks pleased. No longer striking him. No longer lighting him with currents.
There are three words he wants his Soldier to say. The Soldier says them before he understands what they mean.
That he is ready. That he will comply.
Something happens, and it hurts so badly, he blacks out.
A pain that overrides the betrayal of his body. Overtakes his entire left side.
With fire. So much fire. Cold fire. Ice in his veins. They fill him where he is empty. It does not feel like a gift.
The words replace his memories. Gleaming metal forged to fill what was once his.
They take him back through the hallway. He is heavier. Off balance for new reasons. What did they do to him?
Back in the cell, he watches the man across from him.
The man watches back and he screams horribly. Why is he screaming? When he is the one disfigured like some man-made monster.
The man, now part machine, stumbles back, like he cannot bear the sight.
The Soldier is uneasy. Unsettled.
Raises his right hand to remind himself that he is still himself. Nameless, yes. But not—
But not—
The man across the cell lifts his right hand, too. Draws it across his body to the left the way The Soldier does.
The Soldier vomits at the same time the man across from him does.
Cannot bear to look at himself. Cold sweat, pale skin.
He lifts his head and so does that monster.
The man lifts his arm. New and shining. Harsh silver metal jutting from the shoulder.
The Soldiers arm lifts in tandem. Clicking and whirring in his ear.
A glance down and it is true. A glance down and he is wrong.
The metal fist tightens.
Rips a post off the cot in his cell and hurls it through the bars in a rage.
It arcs across the space and reaches the bars of the opposite cell.
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