Skittle's Sanctuary

🎮 OPEN TO EVERYONE

🎲 Random Encounter - Fic Request

Let RNG build your request for you.

First, spin the wheel: it will randomly choose both the character and the genre of your fic - angst, fluff, or whatever other chaos I decided to put in there.

Then, use the prompt generator. It will pull one sentence at random from a list of prompts.

Put the two results together and voilà: that’s your fic request.

For example:

Bucky Barnes - Angst + “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

Send me the combination you get, and I’ll take it from there. 🎮

And because even RNG should respect consent, if you land on a character, genre, or prompt you really don’t want, you can reroll. This is a celebration, not a punishment. 💜

🕹️ Build Mode - Build an AU / Headcanons

Give me a character and a few building blocks, and I’ll turn them into an AU, a set of headcanons, or a little concept for you.

You can send things like a trope, a setting, an occupation, a relationship dynamic, an object, a vibe, or even a completely ridiculous idea you want to see me make sense of.

For example: Bucky + coffee shop + enemies to lovers + one bed.

Think of it as giving me the pieces and letting me build the game world around them.

💬 Dialogue Option - Ask the Writer

Welcome to the part of the game where you get to interrogate the developer.

You can ask me anything about my fics, AUs, characters, writing choices, abandoned ideas, future plans, behind-the-scenes details, or things you’ve always wondered about while reading one of my stories.

Want to know what a character was thinking during a particular scene? Whether I considered a completely different ending? Which character gave me the biggest headache?

This is your chance to ask.

🔍 Dev Commentary - Director’s Commentary

Choose a specific scene, paragraph, line, or moment from one of my stories and send it to me.

I’ll give you the behind-the-scenes commentary: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I made certain choices, details or foreshadowing you may have missed, alternate versions I considered, or anything else hiding behind the finished scene.

Basically: DVD commentary, but for fic.

And possibly with significantly more rambling.

💜 MUTUALS ONLY: BONUS CONTENT UNLOCKED

🖼️ Custom Loadout - Moodboard Request

Mutuals get access to the customization menu. 💜

Send me a character, ship, OC, AU, fic, trope, or general concept and I’ll create a moodboard inspired by it.

You can give me a specific aesthetic, colors, season, location, song, quote, or overall vibe if you have something particular in mind - or you can give me complete creative freedom and see what happens.

Yes, purple requests are particularly welcome. Obviously.

💘 Player Match - MCU Matchmaker

Send me a little bit about yourself and I’ll match you with an MCU character.

Tell me whatever you’re comfortable sharing: your personality, hobbies, likes and dislikes, habits, love language, biggest green flag, biggest red flag, ideal date, or simply a handful of random facts about yourself.

Then choose your game mode:

💘 Romantic Match - who would fall for you 🫶 Best Friend - your ride-or-die ⚔️ Nemesis - who you would absolutely clash with 🔥 Bad Decision - incredible chemistry, questionable consequences 🏠 Domestic Ending - who you’d somehow end up building a life with

I’ll pick your match and tell you exactly why I think the two of you would work - or, in some cases, spectacularly fail.

⚙️ GAME RULES: A Few Guidelines

Before you hit Start, just a few things to keep in mind:

🎮 There is no limit to how many times you can participate. You can send as many messages as you want, whether you want to stick to one category or try several of them. Go wild. 💜

👾 For every category, I will only work with the following characters: Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes, Thor, Clint Barton, Tony Stark, Pietro Maximoff, and Sam Wilson.

This applies to fic requests, Build Mode, Matchmaker, moodboards, and anything else included in the celebration.

🚫 No DDNE content. As a general rule, there will be no Dead Dove: Do Not Eat content on my blog. Darker themes, angst, violence, or heavier subjects may occasionally appear when appropriate, but there are lines I simply won’t cross.

🧩Please start your message with the emoji corresponding to your chosen category, it’ll help me keep everything organized!

💜 And, as always, please keep things respectful. This event is meant to be fun for everyone, including me.

Tagging a few of my lovely mutuals who might want to join the game - absolutely no pressure, of course. 💜🎮

Not that he knew you. That was the cruel logic of it all. To Sergeant James Barnes, you were nobody. Nothing but a nurse he'd been introduced to twice, and forgotten both times. A face in a crowd of pretty faces, but by no means the prettiest.

You had stopped being able to feel your own face somewhere around the third song, no longer pretending to smile.

"You gonna dance, or you gonna be a wallflower all night?"

You turned. One of the girls— Doris, or maybe it it was Lilian, you weren't paying attention— was smiling at you with the social grace that women in this time seemed to possess effortlessly. They belonged in a way you never would. You gave her something that was probably a smile.

"I'm alright watching."

"Watching him, you mean." She followed your gaze to where Bucky stood in his dress uniform, left arm braced against a pillar as he leaned down to murmur something into the ear of a redhead who laughed like he'd hung the moon. "Half the room's watching him. Don't feel bad, sweets. He's real generous with the old charm."

Generous! You laughed to yourself, that was certainly one word for it.

You'd been in 1943 for eleven days. Eleven days since the machine in your lab had done whatever it was that it did. There had been a surge of power, a blinding flash of light and the smell of ozone that still hadn't left your nostrils. You had woken up staring at a strange sky, in an alley between two buildings you didn't recognize.

Eleven days later, you had talked your way into a nursing post with the competence that only came with training from a program that wouldn't exist for another sixty years.

The first time you had seen him, you hadn't been able to move. You almost walked past without a backward glance. The thing that had gotten your attention wasn't how he looked, it was his voice. It hadn't changed. What had changed was how freely he laughed

It was all you could think of as you lay on a narrow rented bed and stared up at the ceiling, thinking: He's here. He's alive and whole and here, and he has no idea who I am.

You'd thought seeing this version of him would be a comfort.

You'd been so stupid.

So there you were, contemplating your existence, a woman out of your own time. And you realized that the thing nobody told you about time travel was that it was mostly waiting.

You had managed to track down a physicist— a nervous, but brilliant scientist who was well ahead of his time and happened to work for Stark Industries and liked to carry out experiments in his basement.

When you'd described the machine, he had gone very pale and very quiet and then become very interested. He offered to help you. He thought it would take weeks. He speculated a great many things, and every one of them required you to stay close to the war effort, close to the base, close— by fate or by accident— to Bucky-freaking-Barnes.

You should have quit, but you needed the money and a place to stay. So you saw him. Constantly. At the mess, in the corridors, at these godforsaken dances the other nurses dragged you to. And every time, the same knife went in.

Because Bucky Barnes flirted with everyone.

You watched him do it like a case study you had a vested interest in. In a way, you did.

He flirted with Lilian and Doris and Elizabeth, with Marian and Margaret and even Sandy. He flirted with the girl who sold cigarettes and the middle-aged woman who ran your boarding house who flushed like a school girl every time he tipped his cap.

He flirted with the same energy that other men breathed— unconsciously, effortlessly and with enthusiasm. With the whole world except you.

With you he was polite. God, the politeness was utterly devastating. Every 'ma'am.' Every 'miss.' Every nod.

Once— and only once— he caught you looking at him for too long across the mess hall and you had noticed a flicker on his face. It wasn't interest, no you knew his expressions well enough, it was something closer to confusion. Almost as though he couldn't quite figure out why this particular nurse kept staring at him like she was drowning.

You'd looked away so fast you'd spilled your coffee.

So here's the thing you could quite wrap your head around. It was the splinter which kept digging it's way deeper. He was still Bucky. Before the fall. Before seventy years of ice and torture. Before his free will had been ripped away. It was still him. The same kind man you loved.

And this man had looked at you and felt nothing.

"You look like you're thinking too hard," Lillian said. "Never a good idea at a dance."

"Sorry." You forced a smile and made yourself relax. "Long shift," you lied with a shrug.

She patted your arm sympathetically and drifted off in the direction of a corporal who had been eyeing her from across the hall. And then you were alone. Again. Listening to Bucky laughing at something across the room, his eyes crinkled and nose scrunched. You had to close your eyes.

In the present, you told yourself, he loves you.

But did he?

This thought was the poison of the past, the reason the past eleven days had hollowed you out and given you reason to doubt. Because you'd met your Bucky broken. You'd met him after— after the Soldier, after the torture, after the long slow work he had done to put himself back together, with therapy and effort and the kind of hard-won stillness that made his rare smiles feel earned. Your Bucky was quiet. He was careful. He loved you the way a man loves the shore after a shipwreck— grateful, fierce, like something he'd been afraid to hope for.

When you thought back, this stillness had always felt like the depth in your relationship. That his quiet devotion was the shape of a man who had survived far too much to be careless with his heart. That when he reached for you in the dark, when he said your name with reverence, when he told you that he loved you, it was the truest thing in him.

Only now you'd seen the before.

Now you'd seen who he was when the world hadn't broken him yet.

And that man— that carefree, radiant, flirtatious man— he wouldn't have looked at you twice. That man had a type, and you were watching him charm her across the dance floor right now, and it most decidedly wasn't you. It was never you.

So what did that make what you had back home?

It was the ugly thought. The one that had been circling your brain in different iterations for the last eleven days.

He's with you because you were there.

Because you'd been kind to him at the worst point of his life.

Because you were willing, and steady, and you'd stayed when staying was hard.

Because a drowning man doesn't check whether the hand pulling him up is the one he'd have chosen.

He grabs what's offered.

You were what was offered. Convenient. Present. Undemanding.

Not chosen. Settled.

You believed it completely, while standing in that dance hall. It sank deep into your bones, like the weight of something you'd always half-known and finally let yourself see.

"You're that nurse."

You startled so badly at his voice that you knocked your purse off the table. Bucky was standing in front of you— right in front of you, close enough that you could smell the pomade and the wool of his uniform. And he was looking at you with that faint, puzzled crease between his brows. He bent down and retrieved your purse without a second thought.

"I— yeah. Sorry. Yes. I'm a nurse."

Brilliant. Very cool. Totally nailed that response. You mentally face palmed yourself.

"You keep looking at me." He said it plainly, without judgement. "All week. At the mess, and now here." He paused, studying your face. "Do I know you? From somewhere? I feel like I oughta, and it's drivin' me half crazy tryna figure it out."

You don't know me yet, was the thought didn't say. You won't know me for another eighty years.

"No," you managed in a flat tone. "You don't know me."

He studied you. And for one horrible, hopeful second you let yourself imagine that something would spark between you. That he would recognize something buried deep inside himself, the one who would one day become the man you loved. That he'd feel it, the way you felt it. The impossible gravity that existed between you.

He didn't. You watched him not feel it. He just gave you a small, courteous, sorry-can't-place-you smile and the last shred of hope shattered in it chest.

"Well," he said. "You alright? You look a little—" he gestured vaguely at all of you, "—pale. Rough night on the ward?"

You laughed dismally. "Something like that."

"You want some air? You look like you want some air."

And there it was. Not attraction. Kindness. The reflexive decency of a good man toward a woman who looked unwell. He'd have offered the same to Doris or Evelyn, to the redhead or the blonde, to anyone really. You knew it, and you took it anyway, because you were weak and you loved him and this was the closest he'd stood to you in eleven days.

Outside, the night was cold and wet and smelled of the harbor. Bucky lit a cigarette, offered you one, seemed unsurprised when you shook your head. For a while neither of you said anything.

"You got somebody?" he asked finally, and your heart lurched dangerously. "Back home, I mean. You got that look. Like half of you is somewhere else."

You laughed and it came out wrecked.

"Yeah," you said. "I've got somebody."

"He treat you right?"

He loves me like a man loves the thing that saved him, you thought. And I don't know anymore if that's the same as loving me for me.

"I don't know," you said honestly. "I used to think so. Now I'm not sure he'd have picked me. If things had been different. If he'd had… options. I think maybe I was just… the one who was there."

Bucky was quiet a moment. When you looked at him he was frowning— not the usual puzzled frown, it was something more thoughtful.

"That's a helluva thing to carry," he said. "You wanna know what I think?"

He looked at you, barely waiting for you to answer before he continued.

"I flirt with every dame in that room. You've seen me, don't pretend you haven't." He gave you a rueful half-smile. "It's easy. Don't cost me a thing. You smile, they smile, everybody has a nice night, nobody gets hurt. It's—" he searched for the right word, "—it's cheap. You understand? It's the cheapest thing I got."

You stared at him.

"You know what's not cheap?" he went on, looking out into the night. "The stuff that costs you something— and that's not the girl you charm across a dance hall. That's the one you'd still want around when there's nothing charming left in you. When you're scared, or sick, or done things you can't take back."

He exhaled smoke. "A fella who's had it easy, he'll flirt with anybody. Don't mean anything. But a fella who's been through the wringer, and he still reaches for one particular person—" he shrugged, "—seems to me that's the only kind that counts. The rest's just… noise."

You couldn't breathe.

He didn't know how deeply what he'd said had resonated with you. He couldn't have. He was just a kind man being kind to a sad woman outside a dance hall, offering the accidental wisdom of someone who'd one day live every word of it. But he'd reached across eighty years and removed the splinter from your heart.

A fella who's been through the wringer, and he still reaches for one particular person.

That was your Bucky. Not a drowning man grabbing for the nearest hand. A man who had been through the absolute worst the world could do. A man who had every reason to be closed and cold and careful with the little warmth he had left. And instead who spent it, deliberately, expensively, on you.

Not because you were convenient. Because when everything cheap had been burned out of him, you were what remained. You were the thing that counted.

The flirtation you'd been grieving wasn't the love you knew. It never had been. It was the noise. And your Bucky had gone silent with everyone else in the world and still turned, in the dark, toward you.

"Thank you," you whispered.

Bucky looked faintly bewildered. "For what? I didn't do anything."

"You'd be surprised," you said, tears slipping down your cheeks before laughing at the way he was hastily patting his pockets for a handkerchief with the flustered gallantry of a man way out of his depth

And for the first time in eleven days the ache in your chest had somewhere to go.

The scientist sent for you nine days later. You had pulled yourself away from the pub, one last glance at the Sergeant before you scurried away under the cover of darkness.

The machine hummed and the basement reeked of ozone. Suddenly your heart was pounding and you were looking back at the strange world you were leaving. At the war that hadn't broken him fully yet. At the still charming boy who would become, through unspeakable years, the quiet man who loved you.

I'm coming home baby, you told him, across the space-time continuum. I finally understand what I'm coming home to.

With that vow, you stepped into the light.

When you opened your eyes it was day and you were back in your lab, surrounded by your things and there— there was already someone crossing the room toward you at a dead run. Someone with a metal arm and a face raw with grief and terror that lasted twenty days. Someone who caught you and held you like the shore holds the shipwreck.

"You're back," Bucky said into your hair, over and over, wrecked and reaching only for you. "You're back, you're back, you're back."

"I'm back," you said. "I know exactly where I am."

You smiled as you opened the door to the control room at the new paddock for the upcoming Indominus Rex attraction and saw your girlfriend inspecting the controls. If nothing else, Claire was an absolute perfectionist with a tendency to forget things. Important things. Things like her own damn birthday.

She barely even looked up as you walked in. It gave you a minute to check her out, though, so you weren’t complaining. Tight cream-coloured pencil skirt hugging her ass and highlighting her curves, light see-through blouse with a tight tan tank top underneath that was cut low enough to give you a view of her breasts as she bent over the console. She chewed on her bottom lip as she focussed on the task at hand, whatever that was. Your girlfriend was gorgeous.

“Hey, baby,” you called, startling her out of her focus. “It’s getting late.”

Claire blinked at you for a second, then her face fell. “We had plans.”

You shook your head, still smiling as you crossed the room to wrap your arms around her from behind. “It’s fine. We can still have plans here,” you murmured, kissing her shoulder.

Her fingers slid up to curl in your hair and hold you close as she leaned against your cheek with a sigh. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” you said, kissing her cheek. “You know, we can always have our date here.”

Claire spun around in your arms and gave you a confused look as your hands settled on her hips. “Here? In the Indominus control room?”

“Yeah. Why not?” you asked, shrugging. Granted, there wasn’t a lot in there, but ultimately all you needed to enjoy yourself was Claire. The rest was just dressing.

“What would we even do? It’s not like we even have a couch to curl up on and watch movies.”

A smirk tugged at the corners of your mouth as you eyed her up and down. “I can think of a few things, baby.”

“Be serious,” she sighed, cupping your cheek. God, her fingers were so soft.

You leaned into her touch and murmured, “I am serious.” One of your hands slid from her hip to the hem of her skirt, then over the soft skin of her thigh as you pushed the fabric up her legs, earning you a soft gasp as her eyes fluttered closed. “You like that?” you whispered as your fingers ran over the smooth skin of her thighs.

Claire closed her eyes and nodded as you reached her lace panties, tracing patterns over the scalloped edge.

“Do you want me to keep going?”

Claire’s eyes fluttered open and she stared at you for a minute, chewing on her bottom lip. “If we get caught, I’m blaming you,” she said softly.

You chuckled and bent to lick and kiss the spot on her neck that made her melt in your arms. “I turned off the cameras,” you whispered against her skin, nipping gently.

She gasped, her finger tangling in your hair as you pushed her back toward the control panel. “You’re saying you planned this?”

A smile pulled at your lips as you kissed across her collarbone. “Planned to make love to my hot girlfriend on her birthday? Yeah, baby, I did.” 

Claire hopped up onto the control panel, winding her arms around your neck as you stepped between her legs and ran your hands over her thighs. She sighed into your kisses as she dropped her blouse on the control panel. “I’m sorry I forgot.”

“Part of your charm,” you murmured, nipping at her lips. “Only you would get so caught up in work you’d forget your birthday.”

“Luckily, I have an amazing partner to remind me,” she murmured. Cupping your cheek, she drew her thumb lightly over your skin.

You leaned into her touch and pressed a kiss into the palm of her hand. Gliding your lips along her smooth skin, you placed another kiss on her wrist. 

Two more trailing up her arm.

Your fingers pushed at the lace under her skirt.

Another kiss in the crook of her arm.

Up to her collarbone.

Fingers dancing over her underwear while she sighed contentedly under your touch. 

Her fingers tangled in your hair as you licked and teased the sensitive spots on her shoulders and neck, gently biting to earn little moans. Dipping your fingers between her legs, you found her already wet for you.

“Shit, Claire,” you sighed against her neck.

Your girlfriend gasped and tightened her grip in your hair as you ran your fingers over her panties. “Please!”

“‘Please’ what, baby?” you murmured, nuzzling her neck. Shit, her perfume smelled amazing.

“Touch me,” she breathed. “Please.”

Smiling, you kissed your way back up to her lips. “Hips up,” you said softly as you hooked your fingers in her panties. As soon as Claire’s hips left the control panel, you slid her panties down and let them drop on the floor, then surged back to her lips again. With a quick nip at her bottom lip, you trailed your lips back over her neck and collarbone. At the same time, you pushed her pencil skirt up around her waist and drew patterns over her inner thighs with your thumbs.

Your name left her lips in a stuttered moan as you kissed over her breasts, pulling one of her clothed nipples between your lips. Sucking and nipping at the peak, you groaned low in your throat as she cried out for you. If you weren’t at risk of being caught, you’d toss the tank top to parts unknown and take your time.

But as it was, you reluctantly pulled away and kissed down over her stomach. You were so close, you could smell her arousal and fuck if that didn’t make you wet.

Slowly, you got to your knees and blew a puff of hot air over her folds before moving to kiss your way up her thighs.

One kiss.

A gentle nip that you soothed with your tongue.

Another kiss.

Another bite and lick.

All the way up her thigh as she whimpered and gasped under your touch. When you reached the top of her legs, you reached up to part her folds with your thumbs. Her freshly waxed pussy glistened with arousal and you chuckled a little. “And you were teasing me about planning this?”

“Never hurts to be prepared,” Claire sighed as you stroked her gently; her hands urged you closer with a whispered ‘please’.

Who were you to deny the birthday girl?

You let her guide you and as soon as you were close enough, you licked a hot stripe through her wetness, moaning at the taste that was uniquely Claire. “Shit, baby,” you sighed.

Soft whines and cries guided you as you pleasured her while her hands held you firmly in place - not that you had any intention of moving. Claire’s fingers massaged your scalp as you lapped at her. “Fingers,” she gasped.

You smiled as you licked between her folds, then pulled back and teased her with your fingers, gathering her wetness before pushing your middle and ring fingers inside her slowly. Her warmth welcomed you easily. “You take my fingers so good, baby,” you whispered, nipping at her thigh. “So beautiful.”

“Oh god,” she cried when you found her g-spot. “Please!”

“Since you asked nicely,” you breathed, smiling against her thigh. Your lips trailed along the soft skin, alternating kisses and bites. When you reached her clit, you flicked your tongue gently over it as you sped up your fingers inside her. 

Claire’s hips jogged against your face, matching your pace as you fucked her. “Baby!”

“You close?” you murmured between kisses

“Yeah,” she whined, fingers digging roughly into your scalp. “So close!”

If nothing else, you knew just how you were affecting her by how informal her speech was; Claire stopped using full sentences and started using more contractions in her speech the further she lost herself. It was one of the things you loved most about her and you found it adorable.

Part of you wanted to torment her further, to prolong her pleasure, but the goal was to get her to stop focussing on work so you could get her home and have your way with her.

“Then cum for me, Claire,” you sighed. You pulled her clit between your lips, gently scraping it with your teeth, and sucked as you pushed your fingers harder against the spongy spot inside her.

A sharp gasp reached your ears before her thighs clamped down around your head and her pussy clenched around your fingers. Your name echoed around the tiny control room as she cried out for you.

Shit, you were pretty sure you were soaked through your pants, you were so damn turned on. As soon as you got her back to the penthouse….

You kept your pace until her hips slowed against your face and her cries died down. Then, after a few soft kisses, you slowly stood up and she pulled you to her lips, arms sliding around your neck.

“Happy birthday, baby,” you sighed between kisses.

You barely made it to the couch before you collapsed, groaning as you buried your face in the cushion. You only lifted your head to breathe and check your phone when it went off. A smile touched your lips when you sat that Bucky texted you. 

No matter how rough the days were, your boyfriend was a bright spot.

“Barely heard from you today, sweetheart. You okay?”

Your heart sank when you scrolled through the chat. You usually sent him memes or gifs that you knew would make him laugh, along with sweet messages to let him know you were thinking of him. Today you hardly sent a thing with everything going on.

It was touching that he noticed something was off.

“Rough day. Sorry I worried you.”

You curled up with a yawn, the phone resting beside you.

“Just resting my eyes,” you mumbled.

You weren’t sure how much time had passed when the familiar rumble of a motorcycle engine cut through the quiet of your apartment, making you sit up slowly. Your heart fluttered, not needing to look out the window because you knew exactly who was there. One of your favorite people.

Bucky.

Your Bucky.

The sudden knock at the door sounded impatient as you stood up and stretched. You almost laughed when the knock continued, louder and more persistent. Maybe it was time to give him a key.

You barely got the door open before Bucky pushed his way inside, forcing you to step back as he kicked the door shut without taking his eyes off you. Your breath rushed out of your lungs when you looked him over. The sight of him in a leather jacket always did something to you.

But the crease between his brows pushed the excitement away. 

“Bucky?” you asked.

A small sound left your mouth when he wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you against him. His other hand came up to cradle the back of your head, his hold protective and tender. It felt like your feet weren’t on the ground. 

“I’m here,” he answered, his voice rough and low. “I’ve got you.”

You felt his heart beat against you steadily, grounding you as your fingers curled in his jacket. The scent of leather and cologne filled your nostrils as you took a deep breath. Your eyes burned suddenly when he held you tighter, almost like he was giving you permission to fall apart if you wanted to. It wasn’t just a hug.

It was exactly what you needed without realizing it.

“I’ve got you,” he said again, his lips touching your temple.

You didn’t break down, but you did sniffle.

“Today sucked,” you said, proud of yourself for not pouting.

It sounded ridiculous. Bucky had lived through years of torture, brainwashing and more. You hadn’t experienced even a tenth of the pain he endured and you were whining about-

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said sincerely, rubbing your back soothingly. He never invalidated your feelings. “I’ll listen if you wanna talk about it, or I can punch something or someone if it makes you feel better.”

You let out a watery laugh. “No punching,” you said, pulling back far enough to look at him. “Did you really speed all the way here because I said I had a rough day? I know you sped.”

“I may have.” The small smile on his face made you smile. “You tell me something like that and you think I won’t drop everything to get to you?”

Your heart skipped a beat. No other boyfriend dropped whatever they were doing to get to you in the past. But Bucky always managed to find ways to put you first. The male species could learn a thing or two from him.

“You were probably busy,” you guessed.

“Doesn’t matter. Nothing’s more important than you.”

Your eyes burned again, but you blinked the tears away. “Thank you.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled. “You don’t have to thank me for showing up,” he said, grasping your chin carefully. “Can I do one more thing?”

His mouth found yours before you finished nodding.

It wasn’t a rushed or hungry kiss. It was something warm and impossibly gentle, like the grip on your chin, a kind of kiss that resonated in your core. He deepened it, like he needed a reminder that you were real and safe as he comforted you. 

It felt like love.

His forehead rested against yours when he broke the kiss. “Did that help at all?” he asked, his breath ghosting your lips and thumb stroking your chin.

“More than you know,” you murmured, leaning into him. 

“Good.” He pressed another soft kiss to the corner of your mouth. “Did you eat?”

Your silence answered that question.

He sighed, not waiting for permission as he walked you backward toward your couch. “I’m ordering your favorite,” he said, pulling you onto his lap once he took a seat. His jacket was still on. “And I’m gonna hold you until it gets here, feed you if you let me, and do whatever you want for the rest of the night.”

You settled into him, your body truly relaxing this time. “Even watch a bad romcom?” you asked, still in awe of how much he wanted to take care of you.

He rested his chin on your shoulder. “If that’s what helps.”

“Getting a hug and kiss from you did wonders,” you said honestly.

Knowing that someone saw you made a world of difference. 

“Wonders, huh? Didn’t know I was that powerful,” he teased, taking out his phone to order.

You giggled and titled your head a bit. “You didn’t tell me about your day.”

“I got to see you,” he said, smiling gently. “So it’s a good day.”

And being in Bucky’s arms made your day much better.

I know a hug and kiss from Bucky would help me, okay? Love and thanks for reading! ❤️

The first thing you noticed, before you had even opened your eyes, was that the mattress beneath you felt wrong. It was firmer than yours, angled differently, and the pillow smelled like cedar and gun oil instead of the vanilla candle you kept burning on your nightstand. You lay there for a long moment trying to piece together why your body felt heavier than it should, why your shoulder ached in a way it never had before, and why, when you finally cracked one eye open, the ceiling above you was unfamiliar in a way that made your stomach drop. This was not your room. The realization crawled through you slowly, the way cold water spreads through fabric, and you pushed yourself upright with a suddenness that made the world tilt. That was when you caught sight of your own hand braced against the sheets, except it was not your hand at all. It was broader, scarred across the knuckles, and where your left arm should have been there was instead a gleaming column of vibranium plates that shifted and clicked as you flexed the fingers in confusion.

You screamed. It came out lower than you expected, rough and unfamiliar, and the sound of your own voice startled you so badly that you scrambled backward off the bed and landed hard on the floor in a tangle of limbs that did not feel like they belonged to you, because they did not. You caught your reflection in the dark screen of a turned-off television mounted on the wall and nearly screamed again, because staring back at you was not your face. It was Bucky's face, pale and wide-eyed and looking every bit as horrified as you felt, and it took several seconds of frantic, disbelieving staring before the truth of the situation settled into your bones with all the grace of a falling piano. You were in Bucky's body. You were in Bucky's room, in Bucky's bed, wearing Bucky's face, and somewhere in this tower your own body was presumably waking up with someone else's consciousness rattling around inside it.

Down the hall, in your room, Bucky was having a considerably worse morning. He had woken up warm and soft and smaller than he was used to, which alone might not have alarmed him on a groggy morning, except that his hair was suddenly long enough to fall into his face in a way that felt distinctly wrong, and his hands, when he lifted them to rub the sleep from his eyes, were not his hands. They were smaller, softer, unscarred, and both of them were flesh, which struck him as so deeply strange that he sat bolt upright and stared at them for a full ten seconds before his brain caught up to what his eyes were telling him. He looked down at himself, taking in the oversized band shirt you always slept in, the unfamiliar shape of a body that was not his own, and felt a wave of nauseated vertigo roll through him so intensely that he had to grip the edge of the mattress to keep from toppling over. He knew immediately, with the kind of instinctive certainty that came from a life spent adapting to impossible things, exactly whose body he was in, and the knowledge did nothing to make the moment any less disorienting.

"Oh, no," he said, and the voice that came out was yours, bright and startled and nothing like the low rasp he usually spoke in, which made the whole situation feel about ten times more surreal. He scrambled out of bed, nearly tripping over the hem of the shirt because your legs were shorter than his and his brain had not yet recalibrated to the new proportions, and made his way toward the door on legs that felt borrowed, because they were.

You met in the hallway between your two rooms, both of you frozen in matching expressions of horror, staring at each other with a kind of dawning, mutual dread. Bucky, standing in your body in your oversized sleep shirt with your hair a wild mess around your face, looked at you, standing in his body in nothing but the sweatpants he usually slept in, and for a moment neither of you said anything at all, because there did not seem to be words sufficient to the occasion.

"Please tell me I'm dreaming," you said, and the sound of Bucky's voice coming out of your mouth again made you flinch, because it was deep and rough and utterly bizarre to hear yourself produce.

"If you're dreamin', so am I, and that don't seem likely," Bucky said back, and hearing your own voice say his words, his careful old-fashioned phrasing, was almost worse than hearing his voice come out of you. He dragged a hand through your hair, a gesture so purely his own that it looked strange performed with your fingers, and let out a breath that trembled at the edges. "This is your doing, isn't it. Your powers did this."

"How is this automatically my fault," you said, though even as the words left your mouth you knew, with a sinking certainty, that it probably was. Your abilities had never been predictable things. They had announced themselves eighteen months ago in a burst of energy that had knocked out three city blocks and had been misbehaving in small, unpredictable ways ever since, flaring during nightmares, sparking when you were startled, and apparently now, evidently, swapping your consciousness into your boyfriend's body while you slept. "Okay. Okay, it might be my fault. But I didn't do it on purpose, I don't even know how I did it, and also can we please not stand in the hallway discussing this while you're wearing my face and I'm wearing yours, because Sam already thinks we're weird and this is not going to help."

As if summoned by his own name, Sam Wilson chose that exact moment to round the corner from the kitchen with a mug of coffee in hand, took one look at the two of you standing there in matching states of dishevelment and panic, and stopped so abruptly that coffee sloshed over the rim of his mug and onto his knuckles. He hissed at the heat, set the mug down on the nearest surface without looking, and pointed a finger back and forth between the two of you with the slow, deliberate motion of a man trying to make sense of something his eyes refused to accept.

"Why is Barnes standing there in his pajamas talking like he just walked out of a soap opera," Sam said, gesturing at you, "and why do you," he continued, gesturing now at Bucky, standing there in your shirt with your face doing an expression Sam had genuinely never seen it make before, "look like somebody just told you the sky was falling."

"It's a long story," you said, and your voice, Bucky's voice, came out clipped and irritated in a way that made Sam's eyebrows climb even higher.

"That's the thing," Bucky cut in, using your voice, and gesturing helplessly between the two of you, "he's me. I'm—she's me. I'm her. We switched, Sam, we woke up like this, and I don't know how to explain it any better than that."

Sam stared at the two of you for a long moment, his expression cycling rapidly through confusion, disbelief, and something that looked dangerously close to delight, before he pulled out his phone and started typing without so much as blinking. "Wanda," he said, more to himself than to either of you, "you are gonna want to see this."

Within twenty minutes the common floor of the tower had assembled into something resembling an emergency briefing, though the mood was considerably less tense than most of the briefings that usually took place in that room. Steve stood near the window with his arms crossed, doing an admirable job of keeping a straight face while looking back and forth between you and Bucky. Natasha had claimed the armchair in the corner and was watching the proceedings with the quiet, focused amusement of someone who fully intended to remember every detail for future use. Wanda sat cross-legged on the couch with her hands hovering an inch above the coffee table, red light curling faintly around her fingers as she studied the two of you with genuine scientific interest rather than mockery, which you appreciated more than you could say. Sam had not stopped grinning since he walked in, and had already, to your considerable irritation, taken several photographs on his phone before Steve told him to knock it off.

"Okay," Wanda said, drawing the attention of the room back to her as she let the crimson light fade from her fingertips, "so it is not a spell, and it is not an external interference. Whatever this is, it originates from inside you." She looked at you, sitting stiffly on the edge of the couch in Bucky's body, still visibly unnerved by the extra height and the metal arm you kept accidentally knocking into things. "Your ability reacts to emotional states, yes? Stress, fear, strong feeling."

"Usually, yeah," you admitted, flexing the metal fingers experimentally and wincing at the faint whir of servos that responded, a sound that felt deeply invasive to be hearing from your own hand. "It flares when I'm upset. It's never done anything like this before, though. Usually it just breaks windows or sets off the fire alarm."

"You've been more anxious lately," Bucky said quietly, from where he sat beside you, and it struck you as strange and a little tender to hear him voice that observation using your mouth, your inflection, though the concern underneath it was entirely his own. "About us. About whether you're settlin' in here alright, whether the team really wants you around, whether I'm gonna get spooked and pull away like I do sometimes. You've been carryin' that around for weeks and not sayin' anything."

The room went very quiet, and you felt your face, or rather his face, heat with an embarrassment that had nowhere to hide, because apparently even body-swapped and disoriented, Bucky Barnes was still entirely capable of reading you like an open book and saying so out loud in front of everyone you knew.

"That is not the point right now," you said, aiming for firm and landing somewhere closer to strangled.

"It's exactly the point," Wanda said gently, though there was a knowing softness in her expression that told you she understood precisely how mortifying this conversation was for you. "Powers that respond to emotion often manifest their most dramatic effects during sleep, when the conscious mind isn't there to suppress them. Whatever you were feeling last night, it was strong enough to reach across the hall and pull the two of you together instead of just breaking something."

"Well, that's romantic in a deeply inconvenient way," Natasha said from her armchair, not bothering to hide her amusement, and Sam let out a laugh that he quickly turned into a cough when Steve shot him a look.

"So how do we fix it," Bucky asked, cutting through the commentary with the steady practicality that had kept him alive through decades of far worse situations than this one. "She just needs to calm down, and it reverses itself?"

"In theory," Wanda said, though the caveat in her tone was not lost on any of you. "Emotional-trigger abilities tend to be symmetrical. If distress caused the swap, then resolving that distress should, eventually, cause it to reverse. I cannot promise a timeline. It could be hours. It could be days."

"Days," you repeated, the word coming out flatter and more horrified than you intended, and beside you Bucky went very still in a way you recognized even through the unfamiliar shape of his own face on your body, the particular stillness that meant he was doing everything in his power not to laugh.

"This isn't funny," you told him.

"No, it's not," he agreed, and then immediately ruined the sentiment by grinning, an expression that looked deeply strange stretched across your features, all wrong in the eyes and too wide at the corners, because it was his smile trying to exist on a face that had never learned to make it. "Sorry. It's just—you're really tall right now, and you look real unhappy about it."

"I am extremely unhappy about it," you said, "your center of gravity is completely different from mine, I nearly walked into a wall on the way down here, and this arm keeps twitching whenever I get startled, which, given the morning I've had, has been constantly."

"Yeah, that happens," Bucky said, glancing down at your much smaller, much softer hands with an expression of genuine bemusement. "I keep forgettin' I don't have the arm right now. Tried to catch myself on the doorframe back there and just about ate concrete because I reached for stability that wasn't there."

"You're shorter than I expected it to feel," you admitted, studying him, studying yourself, from across the couch, and there was something surreal and oddly intimate about watching your own face express an emotion that was unmistakably Bucky's, the crooked half-smile he wore when he found something charming despite himself.

"You're heavier than I expected," he shot back, and you swatted at his arm before you both remembered, in the same instant, that the touch landed strangely because neither of you was quite where you expected to be inside your own skin, and the moment dissolved into a fit of laughter that neither of you could entirely explain, except that it felt better than the panic had, and that counted for something.

The rest of the morning unfolded as an extended lesson in the particular chaos of occupying someone else's body while a team of superheroes tried, with varying degrees of helpfulness, to figure out how to reverse the situation. Bucky discovered, with visible dismay, that navigating your body meant navigating reflexes he had never had to think about before, a lower center of balance, a different length of stride, hands that did not carry seventy years of muscle memory built around a metal prosthetic. He knocked over a glass of orange juice within the first hour simply by reaching for it the way he always reached for things, with the confident, weighted certainty of a man who knew exactly how strong his grip needed to be, only to discover that your grip strength was nowhere near what he was used to compensating for.

"This is genuinely humbling," he muttered, mopping up the spill with a dish towel while Sam watched from the kitchen island with poorly concealed delight, "I've fought off a small army with this arm and I can't pour a glass of juice without makin' a mess."

"To be fair, that's not your arm right now," Sam pointed out.

"I'm aware, Sam, thank you," Bucky said, in a tone that was unmistakably his own despite emerging from your mouth, dry and a little put-upon, and Sam laughed so hard he had to set his coffee down again.

Across the room, you were discovering your own set of complications, chief among them the sheer, unrelenting awareness of the metal arm attached to your shoulder, which whirred faintly whenever you moved it and which responded to your thoughts with a fraction of a delay that felt deeply unnerving. You had watched Bucky use that arm a hundred times, had marveled at the easy, practiced grace with which he wielded it, and had never once considered what it might actually feel like to have a machine grafted onto your nervous system, responding to signals your body had never learned to send. You knocked a mug clean off the counter within your first ten minutes of trying to make coffee, catching it half a second too late with reflexes that were faster than yours had ever been but calibrated to a different set of instincts entirely.

"You get used to it," Bucky told you, coming up beside you to help gather the pieces of the broken mug, and there was something gentle in the observation, an old, worn patience that had clearly been earned the hard way. "Took me the better part of a year after Wakanda before I stopped breakin' things. You're doin' better than I did, honestly."

"I highly doubt that," you said, but the comment settled something warm in your chest anyway, and you found yourself looking at him, at yourself, with a fresh kind of appreciation for everything he carried around every single day without complaint.

Steve wandered through around midmorning with the particular expression of a man determined to be supportive while also visibly fighting laughter at every turn, and made the mistake of asking Bucky, still occupying your body, whether he wanted to spar later, a habit so deeply ingrained between the two of them that the question came out before Steve had fully processed who he was talking to.

"Steve, I'm real flattered you think this body could take you in a spar," Bucky said, gesturing down at himself, at your frame, considerably smaller and considerably less enhanced than his own, "but I think you'd break somethin' that ain't mine to break."

"Right," Steve said, looking faintly embarrassed. "Sorry. Force of habit."

"S'okay," Bucky said, and then, because he could not help himself, added, "Though I gotta say, findin' out what her cardio's like on the treadmill this mornin' was an experience. I ran two miles and about died. You've got stamina for days but your legs give out way before your lungs do, doll, you know that?"

"I did not need a full report on my physical fitness," you called from across the room, though you were laughing despite yourself, because there was something endearing about the fact that even trapped in your body, disoriented and off-balance, Bucky had apparently spent part of his morning testing out what your workout routine felt like from the inside.

By early afternoon, Wanda had set up a small monitoring station in the common room, mostly out of scientific curiosity and partly, she admitted, because she found the entire situation genuinely charming and wanted an excuse to keep an eye on it. She had you both sit across from each other at the kitchen table while she studied the faint shimmer of energy that occasionally sparked around your borrowed hands, a visible tell, she explained, of your powers still actively holding the swap in place.

"It's stable," she said, tilting her head as she studied the two of you, "which is good news, in the sense that neither of you is in danger, and bad news, in the sense that it means whatever emotional knot caused this hasn't come undone yet."

"So we just have to talk it out," you said, and felt Bucky's gaze land on you from across the table, steady and searching in a way that made your chest feel tight even filtered through the strange, secondhand experience of watching your own face hold an expression you knew to be entirely his.

"Guess so," Bucky said quietly, and Wanda, with the tact of someone who had clearly decided this was not a conversation she needed to witness, rose from her chair and excused herself from the room without being asked twice.

You ended up on the small balcony off the common floor as the afternoon light softened toward evening, the city stretched out gold and hazy below the tower, and for a long moment neither of you spoke, both still faintly unsettled by the strangeness of watching your own gestures performed by someone else, your own voice carrying words you had not chosen.

"I didn't mean for you to find out like this," you finally said, wrapping Bucky's arms around yourself, a gesture that felt oddly comforting even secondhand, "the stuff about being anxious. I didn't want to make it your problem."

"It's not a problem," Bucky said gently, turning to look at you, "it's just somethin' you're feelin', and I'd rather know about it than have you carry it around alone until it short-circuits your powers and swaps us into each other's bodies." A faint, crooked smile tugged at the corner of your mouth as he said it, an expression that looked so purely like him despite being worn on your face that it made something in your chest ache with fondness. "I know I've got my own baggage about pullin' away when things get too steady, too good. Old habits. I'm workin' on it. But I need you to know that you bein' here, with all of us, with me, isn't somethin' I'm gonna spook over. You don't have to walk on eggshells wonderin' if I'm gonna bolt."

"I know that, logically," you admitted, and it was strange to hear Bucky's low, rough voice say something so vulnerable, though the words were entirely your own, carried across through borrowed vocal cords. "It's just hard to shut the worry off sometimes. Especially with everything that happened this year, the team splitting, you being on the run, all of it. It still feels new, being here, being with you. I keep waiting for the ground to shift again."

"Yeah," Bucky said quietly, "I get that better than almost anybody could." He reached out, his hand, currently yours, small and unscarred, and closed it gently around your borrowed metal fingers, the same gesture you had both performed a hundred times before in your correct bodies, and it landed strange and familiar all at once. "But I ain't goin' anywhere. Not unless you get sick of me first."

"Not likely," you said, and the words came out steadier than you expected, and something in the air between you seemed to loosen, a knot you had not realized you were still holding onto finally beginning to slip free.

You felt it before you saw it, a warm, prickling rush that started at the base of your spine and rolled outward, and Bucky must have felt it too, because his grip on your hand tightened and his eyes, wide and startled in a face that was currently yours, went bright with a familiar shimmer of gold light that had absolutely nothing to do with the sunset. The world tilted, briefly and gently this time, nothing like the disorienting lurch of that morning, and when your vision settled you were looking up instead of across, and the hand wrapped around yours was broad and scarred and metal, and the voice that came out of your own mouth when you gasped was unmistakably, wonderfully, your own.

"Oh, thank god," you said, staring down at your own hands, flesh and blood and entirely familiar, and then up at Bucky, back in his own body, tall and solid and grinning at you with an expression of such open relief that you laughed out loud.

"There she is," Bucky said, reaching up to brush a strand of hair back from your face with his real hand, warm and steady in a way that felt like coming home after a very long, very strange day. "Was startin' to get used to bein' shorter, not gonna lie."

"You complained about it for six straight hours," you reminded him, though you were still laughing, giddy with relief and the simple, uncomplicated joy of being back in your own skin.

"A man's allowed to complain," Bucky said, tugging you gently into his side, and you went willingly, tucking yourself against the solid, familiar warmth of him, feeling the low rumble of his laugh against your ear. "For what it's worth, I meant every word I said out there, even if it came out of your mouth instead of mine. You don't gotta be scared this is gonna fall apart."

"I know," you said, and found, for the first time all day, that you actually believed it.

The two of you made your way back inside just as Sam was rounding the corner with his phone raised for what was very obviously going to be another round of photographic evidence, and he stopped short at the sight of you, back in your correct bodies, tucked into each other's side with matching expressions of exhausted relief.

"Aw, you're back to normal," Sam said, sounding almost disappointed. "I had a whole album goin'."

"Delete it," Bucky and you said, in unison, and the perfect synchronization of it startled a laugh out of both of you, loud and easy, the kind of laugh that came only after a day spent thoroughly, thoroughly weird.

"Absolutely not," Sam said, already backing away toward the elevator, phone clutched protectively to his chest. "This is goin' in the group chat. Steve! You gotta see this, they're back to normal and Barnes still looks personally offended about the whole thing!"

Wanda's voice drifted from the kitchen, warm with amusement. "I told you it would resolve itself. Emotional-trigger abilities. Very predictable, once you understand the pattern."

"Predictable," you repeated, shaking your head as you let Bucky steer you toward the couch, both of you dropping onto it with the particular heaviness of two people who had spent an entire day fighting their own nervous systems for control of unfamiliar bodies. "I woke up as my boyfriend this morning. Nothing about today was predictable."

"Fair point," Bucky murmured, tucking you against his chest, his arm, the real one, settling warm and heavy around your shoulders in a way that felt like the single most normal thing that had happened all day. "Though I will say, for the record, you make a much better version of me than I made of you."

"You were a decent me," you said, tilting your head back to look up at him. "A little dramatic about the running, though."

"Two miles, doll. On legs I've never had before. I think I earned some drama," Bucky said, and pressed a kiss to the top of your head, easy and warm and entirely his, in a body that was, thankfully, entirely his own again.

Chairs scraped sharply against the floor as at least two people reacted a fraction too late to hide it. Sam’s shoulders came up, wings twitching reflexively before he forced them still. Clint’s hand moved, then stopped, hovering uselessly near a weapon that wasn’t there. Natasha went perfectly still, eyes narrowing as she recalibrated in real time.

Tony swore.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t dramatic. Just a sharp, incredulous sound pulled from him before he could stop himself.

Steve’s heart hammered once, hard, then steadied. Training kicked in, the familiar rhythm of threat assessment taking over.

Nyx had bypassed every layer of security.

Every door. Every checkpoint. Every protocol.

She hadn’t come through the entrance.

She hadn’t come through anything.

Tony was staring at her like she’d personally insulted his entire worldview.

“How,” he demanded, taking a step forward before stopping himself, “do you know what the inside of this room looks like?”

Nyx turned her head slowly toward him, eyes bright with interest.

“Sometimes,” she said lightly, “I don’t get paid in cash.”

Her voice carried easily in the room, soft but precise, cutting cleanly through the tension like a blade through fabric.

“Sometimes,” she continued, “information is worth far more.”

Tony’s jaw clenched. “You’re saying you hacked–”

“No,” Nyx interrupted gently, and that somehow made it worse. “I’m saying people talk.”

Steve watched Tony’s expression shift – disbelief giving way to irritation, then to something colder and more unsettled. The Tower was his domain. His fortress. The idea that someone had walked its blueprints into Nyx’s hands as currency sat badly with him, Steve could tell.

Nyx let her gaze drift away from Tony, slow and deliberate, taking in the room.

Steve felt it immediately – the way her attention moved, the way it weighed. She didn’t rush. She didn’t scan the way soldiers scanned. She evaluated.

Sam, standing near the table, posture alert but restrained. Clint, leaning against the wall, eyes sharp and calculating. Natasha, composed as ever, a closed book even to someone like Nyx – or at least trying to be. Tony, vibrating with barely contained offense.

And then…

Steve.

Her gaze lingered there a fraction longer than on the others.

Not lingering like hunger. Like recognition.

Steve met her eyes steadily, refusing to look away.

The room was silent enough that he could hear the faint hum of systems in the walls, the distant whir of something mechanical deep within the Tower. Familiar sounds, suddenly fragile.

Nyx smiled.

Not small. Not polite.

Wide enough to be unmistakable.

The kind of smile that didn’t ask permission.

The kind that suggested she was enjoying herself immensely.

“You look uncomfortable,” she observed, glancing between them. “That’s a good sign.”

No one laughed.

Steve felt a flare of irritation at the way she seemed to feed on the unease, the way her smile widened as if she could taste it.

“You weren’t invited in like this,” Steve said.

Nyx tilted her head slightly. “And yet.”

Tony crossed his arms, expression dark. “You don’t just appear inside Avengers Tower.”

“I do,” Nyx replied mildly. “You’re looking at it.”

Steve resisted the urge to grind his teeth.

She took a step forward then, unhurried, boots barely making a sound on the floor. Steve tracked the movement automatically, body angling without conscious thought, positioning himself just enough to be between her and the rest of the team.

Nyx noticed.

Of course she did.

Her eyes flicked down, then back up, something like amusement dancing there.

“Relax,” she said softly. “If I wanted to hurt anyone, this would be a very different conversation.”

Steve didn’t respond.

He didn’t believe her – not entirely – but he believed something else just as strongly: she wasn’t lying. Not right now.

Nyx stopped near the table, close enough that Steve could make out the finer details he’d missed in the bar. The faint shadows beneath her eyes. The calm set of her mouth. The way she stood balanced, grounded, as if every muscle knew exactly where it was meant to be.

She inhaled slowly, then exhaled, like someone settling in.

“Hm,” she murmured. “You brought everyone.”

“That was the condition,” Steve said.

Nyx’s gaze flicked to him. “And?”

“And we’re here to give you an answer.”

Her smile softened – not kinder, just more intent. “Before that.”

She turned, pivoting smoothly, and walked a slow circle around the table, her fingers trailing just above its surface without touching. Steve’s skin prickled, instincts screaming at the casual breach of personal space, at the way she treated the room like it belonged to her.

She stopped near Natasha.

“You’re calmer than the others,” Nyx said. “You’ve been here before.”

Natasha didn’t blink. “So have you.”

Nyx’s lips curved. “True.”

She moved on, stopping near Clint.

“You’re measuring exits,” she noted. “Good habit.”

Clint’s mouth twitched. “I like knowing my options.”

Nyx nodded approvingly. “Smart.”

Then Sam.

“You’re worried about collateral,” Nyx said. “About consequences.”

Sam held her gaze. “Someone has to be.”

Her smile didn’t fade. “Indeed.”

Finally, she stopped in front of Tony.

“And you,” she said, head tilting again, that familiar angle. “You’re offended.”

Tony scoffed. “You think?”

Nyx’s eyes gleamed. “You built a fortress and assumed it made you untouchable.”

“I built a system,” Tony snapped. “And you violated it.”

“Yes,” Nyx agreed. “That’s why you’re upset.”

Steve saw Tony’s hands curl into fists at his sides.

“And you did it to make a point,” Tony said.

Nyx considered that. “Partly.”

“Partly,” Tony repeated flatly.

Nyx turned away from him and faced the group again, arms folding loosely across her chest.

“And partly,” she said, voice light, “because I enjoy it.”

The words landed like a stone dropped into still water.

Steve felt a chill trace down his spine.

She smiled again – open, pleased, unapologetic.

“Sometimes,” Nyx continued, “I do things because they’re efficient. Sometimes because they’re necessary. And sometimes…”

Her eyes flicked back to Tony, then to Steve.

“…because they amuse me enormously.”

Steve felt the tension spike in the room, sharp and electric.

“You think this is funny?” Steve said.

Nyx’s gaze met his immediately. “Don’t you?”

Steve frowned. “No.”

She studied him for a long moment, the smile fading just enough to reveal something beneath it – something thoughtful.

“No,” she echoed softly. “You wouldn’t.”

The way she said it – not mocking, not dismissive – unsettled him more than if she’d laughed.

She straightened, posture shifting subtly. The amusement didn’t vanish, but it receded, like a tide pulling back to reveal sharper edges beneath.

“All right,” Nyx said. “I came here to hear your answer.”

She paused deliberately.

“So,” she said, eyes sweeping the room once more, “are you all ready to live with it?”

Silence answered her.

Steve felt the weight of the moment press into his chest, heavy and unavoidable. This was it – the line drawn cleanly in front of them. Not later. Not after more discussion. Now.

He looked around the room, meeting each of their eyes in turn.

They had talked. Argued. Weighed. Revisited old wounds and newer doubts. There had been no shouting, no dramatic declarations – just the slow, painful process of coming to terms with a choice none of them wanted to make.

Steve turned back to Nyx.

“We are,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, searching his face.

“All of you?” she pressed.

Steve nodded. “All of us.”

For a moment, the room held its breath.

Then Nyx smiled again – smaller this time. Sharper. Satisfied.

“Good,” she said.

Tony exhaled sharply. “That’s it? You just take his word for it?”

Nyx glanced at him. “Do you disagree?”

Tony hesitated – just a fraction.

Nyx caught it.

Her gaze snapped back to him, laser-focused. “Do you?”

Tony clenched his jaw. Steve held his breath.

Then Tony sighed, long and resigned. “No,” he said. “I don’t.”

Nyx’s smile returned in full.

“There,” she said lightly. “Consensus.”

Steve felt something shift – not relief, exactly, but inevitability settling into place.

Nyx stepped back, creating space again, reclaiming distance as easily as she’d crossed it.

“Now,” she said, “we can talk.”

Steve squared his shoulders. “About the target.”

“Yes,” Nyx replied. “About his habits. His protections. His tells.”

She paused, eyes flicking to the ceiling briefly, as if she could see through layers of reinforced structure and glass.

“And about your leak.”

The room went cold.

Tony stiffened. Natasha’s gaze sharpened. Sam inhaled slowly through his nose.

Steve felt his jaw tighten. “You said you’d listen.”

“I am,” Nyx said calmly. “But this is part of it.”

She looked back at Steve, expression serious now, the amusement gone entirely.

“If someone in this building is feeding him information,” she said, “I need to know who.”

Steve met her gaze. “So do we.”

Nyx inclined her head. “Good. Then we’re aligned.”

She took a step back, the faintest ripple in the air marking the shift of her weight.

“I’ll need access,” she added. “Not unrestricted. I’m not suicidal. But enough to observe.”

Tony bristled immediately. “Absolutely not.”

Nyx didn’t look at him. “That wasn’t a request.”

Steve raised a hand. “We’ll discuss parameters.”

Nyx smiled faintly. “Of course you will.”

She glanced around the room one last time, imprinting it – Steve was certain of it now – into memory.

“I’ll be back,” she said. “Sooner than you think.”

And then she was gone.

No flash. No sound.

Just absence.

The space she’d occupied felt wrong without her, like a note cut short.

Steve exhaled slowly, tension finally bleeding out of his shoulders.

Tony stared at the empty space, then dragged both hands through his hair. “I hate her.”

Sam snorted softly. “You admire her.”

Tony shot him a look. “I can do both.”

Natasha spoke quietly. “She’s serious.”

Steve nodded. “Yes.”

Bucky, who hadn’t said a word the entire time, finally did.

“She enjoyed that,” he said.

Steve closed his eyes briefly.

“Yes,” he agreed. “She did.”

And that, more than anything else, told him exactly how dangerous Nyx truly was.

For a few seconds after Nyx disappeared, no one spoke.

The briefing room felt… wrong. Too empty. As if something had been removed that shouldn’t have been there in the first place – or worse, as if something had passed through and left a residue behind. Steve was acutely aware of the space where she’d stood, of the exact patch of floor his eyes kept drifting back to without his permission.

Clint broke the silence.

“Okay,” he said, pushing off the wall at last, voice deliberately casual. “So. Small problem.”

Steve didn’t look away from the empty air. “Go on.”

Clint gestured vaguely at the room. “We still don’t have a way to contact her.”

That landed harder than Steve expected.

Tony let out a short, incredulous laugh. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope,” Clint said. “No number. No signal. No ‘call me if things go sideways.’ Nothing.”

Sam frowned. “She said she’d come back.”

“And I believe her,” Clint replied. “That’s not the point. The point is we’re completely at her mercy when it comes to timing.”

Steve felt something cold settle in his stomach.

Because Clint was right – and because Steve hadn’t fully articulated the thought yet, not even to himself. He’d been too focused on the shock of her appearance, on the way she’d walked through their defenses like they were a suggestion, on the unsettling ease with which she’d taken control of the room.

But now that the adrenaline was ebbing, the realization sharpened into something uncomfortable and sharp-edged.

They couldn’t summon her.

They couldn’t prepare for her arrival.

They couldn’t even be sure where she would appear next time.

Steve’s jaw tightened.

Tony paced once, then stopped abruptly. “I don’t like this,” he said, unnecessary but sincere. “I really don’t like this.”

“You didn’t like the first part either,” Sam said dryly.

“That was different,” Tony snapped. “That was my pride. This is my sanity.”

Natasha tilted her head slightly. “You’re used to controlling variables.”

Tony shot her a look. “We all are.”

Steve remained silent, but his mind was racing now, mapping out scenarios without his consent.

Nyx reappearing in the middle of the gym. In a hallway. In someone’s quarters. In a secure meeting that wasn’t supposed to have anyone else present.

The idea made his skin crawl.

It wasn’t fear, exactly. Not in the way fear made his heart race or his hands shake. It was something more rigid. More personal.

Control.

Steve Rogers was very good at operating in chaos – but only when he understood its boundaries. He needed to know where the edges were, where the lines could be drawn. Even the battlefield had rules. Even the most unpredictable enemy still obeyed physics, logistics, some version of cause and effect.

Nyx didn’t.

Or worse – she did, but on a set of rules Steve couldn’t see.

And he hated that.

“She said she doesn’t need a contact method,” Sam said, thoughtful. “Which means she’s already decided she can reach us whenever she wants.”

Steve exhaled slowly through his nose. “And that we can’t reach her when we need to.”

Bucky shifted beside the table, metal fingers flexing once before going still. “That’s deliberate.”

Steve glanced at him. “You think.”

“She wants control of the engagement,” Bucky said. “Same as in the bar. Same as here.”

Tony stopped pacing and looked at him sharply. “You’re saying she’s conditioning us.”

Bucky shrugged slightly. “Or testing how much we can tolerate.”

Steve felt a flash of irritation – not at Bucky, but at the fact that this made sense.

Natasha crossed her arms. “It also keeps her safe. If there’s a leak, a fixed channel would expose her.”

“Yes,” Steve said automatically – then paused.

Because that was the rational explanation.

And yet, it didn’t erase the feeling in his chest.

The tightness. The frustration. The deeply ingrained dislike of not knowing.

Clint watched Steve closely, head tilted slightly. “You really don’t like this.”

Steve stiffened. “I don’t have to like it.”

“That wasn’t what I said,” Clint replied.

Steve realized then that he’d clenched his fists at his sides. He forced his fingers to relax, one by one.

“I don’t like unknown variables,” Steve said finally. “Especially ones that can walk into a secure room without warning.”

Tony let out a sharp breath. “Welcome to my nightmare.”

Sam leaned forward slightly. “But she’s not doing this randomly.”

Steve looked at him. “You’re sure?”

Sam nodded. “She’s precise. Everything she’s done so far has been intentional. She didn’t show up early or late. She didn’t interrupt. She waited until exactly 15:30.”

That was true.

Steve hadn’t missed it. Hadn’t missed the way the clock had ticked over to the exact minute before Nyx had appeared, as if time itself had been a cue she was responding to.

“She wants us aware,” Sam continued. “Aware that she’s out there. Watching. But not panicking.”

Steve frowned. “You think this is supposed to reassure us?”

“No,” Sam said. “I think it’s supposed to train us.”

The word hit harder than Steve liked.

Train.

As if they were the ones being brought into line.

Natasha spoke quietly. “She’s establishing boundaries.”

Steve turned to her. “By making herself unpredictable?”

“By making herself uncontrollable,” Natasha corrected. “There’s a difference.”

Steve ran a hand over the back of his neck, feeling the familiar ache there. “That’s not a boundary. That’s a power play.”

Natasha didn’t deny it.

“It is,” she said. “But it’s also honest. She told us upfront she wouldn’t operate on our terms.”

Steve’s jaw tightened. He knew that. He’d agreed to it.

That didn’t mean his instincts weren’t rebelling against every inch of it.

Tony blew out a breath. “So what, we just sit here and wait for her to pop back in like some kind of homicidal Mary Poppins?”

Bucky snorted quietly before he could stop himself.

Steve almost smiled – almost.

Clint pushed off the wall again, hands on his hips. “We should at least establish internal protocols.”

Steve looked at him. “For what?”

“For when she reappears,” Clint said. “Where she’s allowed. Where she’s not. What happens if she crosses a line.”

Steve hesitated.

“Because,” Clint added, voice serious now, “we don’t want to be improvising the next time she decides to ‘amuse herself.’”

That last phrase made Steve’s stomach twist.

Nyx’s smile, wide and unapologetic, flashed through his mind again.

And sometimes, I do things just because it amuses me enormously.

Steve hated how easily that memory surfaced.

“All right,” Steve said. “We set ground rules. Even if she doesn’t follow them, we need to.”

Tony nodded immediately. “Thank you. I feel better already.”

Steve turned slightly, addressing the room. “First rule: no one is ever alone with her unless they choose to be.”

Natasha inclined her head. “Agreed.”

“Second,” Steve continued, “if she appears unexpectedly, no one reacts aggressively unless she does first.”

Tony grimaced. “That’s going to be harder than it sounds.”

Steve shot him a look. “That’s why it’s a rule.”

Tony held up his hands. “Fair.”

“Third,” Steve said, “we don’t chase her if she leaves. No tracking attempts without discussion.”

Tony opened his mouth.

Steve raised a hand.

Tony closed it again, scowling.

Clint nodded. “That’s smart. She’d notice.”

Steve swallowed. “And fourth–”

He paused.

Because this one was harder to articulate.

“We accept,” he said carefully, “that we don’t control when or how she shows up.”

The words tasted bitter.

Sam studied him. “That’s the part you hate.”

Steve met his gaze. “Yes.”

No deflection. No justification.

Just truth.

“I don’t like not knowing where the threat is,” Steve said quietly. “Or when it’s going to reappear. I don’t like not being able to protect the people around me because I don’t have enough information.”

The admission sat heavy in the room.

Bucky shifted closer, not touching, but near enough that Steve felt the familiar presence at his side.

“She’s not the threat,” Bucky said softly.

Steve closed his eyes for a brief moment.

“No,” he agreed. “She’s the variable.”

Natasha watched him closely. “You’re worried she’ll show up when you’re not ready.”

Steve opened his eyes. “I’m worried she’ll show up when someone else isn’t.”

The room was quiet again – but not stagnant. Thoughtful.

Tony rubbed his temples. “I don’t like being outplayed.”

“Neither do I,” Steve said.

Sam exhaled slowly. “But we invited this.”

Steve nodded once. “We did.”

And that was the part he couldn’t escape.

They had opened the door.

Nyx hadn’t forced her way in.

She had simply stepped through – on her terms.

Clint broke the silence again, softer this time. “For what it’s worth… I don’t think she’ll abuse it.”

Steve glanced at him. “Why?”

Clint shrugged. “Because she could’ve done a lot worse already. Showing up here like that? That was a flex. Not an attack.”

Tony grimaced. “I really hate that you’re right.”

Steve leaned back against the table, shoulders heavy. “That doesn’t mean I’m comfortable with it.”

“No,” Sam said. “It just means we live with it.”

Steve looked around the room – at the people he trusted with his life, with the world, with choices that left scars whether they acted or not.

Nyx had demanded certainty.

Not obedience. Not trust.

Certainty.

And now, with no way to call her, no way to summon her, no way to predict her movements, Steve understood exactly why.

Because certainty didn’t come from control.

It came from commitment.

He hated that.

Hated the way it sat in his chest, uncomfortable and unavoidable.

Steve straightened slowly, resolve settling back into place – not because he felt calm, but because he didn’t have the luxury of uncertainty anymore.

“She’ll come back,” he said.

Tony arched an eyebrow. “You sound sure.”

Steve wasn’t sure how he knew.

But he did.

“Yes,” Steve said quietly. “She will.”

And until she did, he was going to have to live with the thing he despised most…

The unknown.

The waiting.

The awareness that somewhere, just out of sight, Nyx was watching… and deciding when it would amuse her to step back into their lives.

The training room smelled like rubber mats and disinfectant, steel and sweat layered beneath it all. It was a familiar scent, grounding in a way few places were. Steve had always liked it here – the simplicity of it. Clear rules. Clear consequences. You hit, you miss, you adjust.

No gray areas.

Which was probably why he’d brought Bucky here instead of trying to have this conversation anywhere else.

They moved through warm-up drills in silence at first. Steve rolled his shoulders, feeling the pull and release of muscle, the steady rhythm of breath settling back into his body. Bucky mirrored him across the mat, movements smooth, economical. The metal arm caught the overhead lights as he rotated it, recalibrating joints and grip with absent precision.

They sparred lightly at first – testing range, speed, balance. Nothing aggressive. Just enough contact to keep their bodies honest.

Steve blocked a strike, countered, stepped back. Bucky pivoted, adjusted, smirked faintly when Steve overcommitted by half an inch.

“You’re thinking too much,” Bucky said.

Steve huffed. “That obvious?”

“Yeah,” Bucky replied. “You always do that when your head’s somewhere else.”

They reset, circled again. Steve let instinct take over for a few exchanges, letting the familiar language of movement pull him out of his thoughts. It helped – a little. Enough that when he spoke again, it didn’t come out tangled.

“Back at the bar,” Steve said, parrying a jab, “the dart.”

Bucky’s brow lifted slightly. He didn’t slow. “What about it?”

“The way she handled it,” Steve continued. “The throw. The control. The way it looked like it just… appeared in her hand.”

Bucky stepped in close, forced Steve back a step, then disengaged. “You didn’t see her draw it.”

“No,” Steve admitted. “And I usually notice things like that.”

Bucky nodded, expression thoughtful now. “She didn’t pull it out of nowhere. She was just faster than you expected.”

Steve grimaced. “That’s not reassuring.”

Bucky snorted and threw another punch, lighter this time, almost lazy. “It’s not supposed to be.”

They broke apart again, breathing steady.

“She’s trained,” Bucky went on. “Not flashy. Not sloppy. That juggling thing?” He lifted his metal hand and mimicked the motion loosely, a dart spinning between fingers that weren’t there. “That’s muscle memory. Repetition. Someone drilled that into her until it stopped being conscious.”

Steve watched him closely. “So not showing off.”

“No,” Bucky said. “Showing comfort.”

That sat heavy in Steve’s chest.

They resumed, movements slower now, more conversational than combative. Steve blocked, countered, stepped aside.

“And what about… her?” Steve asked carefully. “The way she is.”

Bucky gave him a look – not sharp, not defensive. Curious.

“Meaning?”

Steve hesitated just long enough to give himself away.

Bucky caught it immediately.

“Oh,” he said, and then barked a short laugh. “Oh. You’re doing that thing.”

Steve frowned. “What thing?”

“The one where you circle around a question because you don’t like how it sounds out loud,” Bucky replied. He lunged suddenly, forcing Steve to block hard. “Just ask.”

Steve exhaled and stepped back, lowering his guard slightly. “I’m trying to figure out how you feel about her.”

Bucky blinked.

Then he laughed – actually laughed – a rough, surprised sound that echoed faintly off the walls.

“You’re kidding me,” he said.

Steve straightened. “I’m not.”

Bucky shook his head, still half-smiling. “You think this is about that?”

Steve frowned deeper. “About what?”

Bucky stopped moving entirely, hands dropping to his sides. He looked at Steve like he was genuinely amused now, not offended, not defensive.

“You’re wondering if she… what, caught my eye?” Bucky said. “If I’m distracted because I think she’s attractive?”

Steve didn’t answer.

That was answer enough.

Bucky stared at him for a second, then snorted again. “Wow. Seriously?”

Steve bristled slightly. “It’s not an unreasonable question.”

Bucky stepped closer, not aggressive, just direct. “It kind of is.”

Steve held his ground. “You said she was pretty.”

Bucky tilted his head. “Yeah. And?”

“And–”

“And that’s it,” Bucky cut in, still smiling. “That’s literally it.”

Steve opened his mouth, then closed it again.

Bucky shook his head, amusement softening into something warmer. “Just because I can acknowledge someone’s good-looking doesn’t mean my brain shuts off.”

“I didn’t say–”

“You didn’t have to,” Bucky interrupted gently. “I know what you’re asking.”

Steve’s shoulders tightened. “Then what am I asking?”

Bucky’s expression shifted then – not defensive, not joking. Honest.

“You’re asking if I’m vulnerable to her,” Bucky said. “If someone like her gets under my skin because I recognize parts of myself in her.”

Steve didn’t deny it.

Bucky studied him for a moment, then shrugged slightly. “Maybe I do recognize something.”

Steve’s chest tightened.

“But that doesn’t mean I want to be near her,” Bucky continued. “And it sure as hell doesn’t mean I trust her.”

Steve searched his face. “You’re sure?”

Bucky nodded. “I can see what she is. I can appreciate the control, the discipline. I can even admit she’s… easy to look at.”

He smirked faintly. “Doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

Steve exhaled, tension easing a fraction.

“She’s dangerous,” Steve said quietly.

Bucky’s smile faded. “Yeah. She is.”

“And you’re not… tempted?” Steve asked. “Not curious?”

Bucky considered that, gaze drifting briefly toward the far wall before returning to Steve.

“I’m curious,” he admitted. “In the way you’re curious about a loaded gun someone left on the table.”

Steve grimaced. “That’s not comforting.”

“It’s realistic,” Bucky said. “She’s interesting. She’s not safe. Those two things coexist.”

Steve nodded slowly.

Bucky rolled his shoulders, metal arm whirring softly. “But don’t get it twisted. I’m here for you. For the team. For stopping a guy who deserves to be stopped.”

He stepped back into stance, eyes sharpening. “Not because I think she’s fascinating.”

Steve felt something loosen in his chest – not relief exactly, but reassurance.

“Okay,” Steve said.

Bucky smirked. “Also,” he added, “if you’re worried about anyone getting distracted, you might want to look in a mirror.”

Steve froze.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bucky lunged again, faster this time, forcing Steve to react. “You’re the one she keeps poking,” Bucky said between strikes. “You’re the one she’s testing.”

Steve blocked hard, muscles burning. “That’s not the same thing.”

Bucky grinned. “Didn’t say it was.”

They traded a few sharper blows then – not angry, not aggressive, just enough intensity to bleed off the last of the tension. Steve felt himself settle fully into his body again, thoughts aligning with movement.

Finally, they broke apart, both breathing a little harder now.

Bucky wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Relax,” he said. “I’m not going to lose my head over a pretty assassin.”

Steve nodded. “Good.”

Bucky tilted his head. “You, on the other hand…”

Steve groaned. “Don’t start.”

Bucky laughed again, softer this time. “Hey. Just saying. You hate not knowing where she is. You hate not being in control. That’s what’s messing with you.”

Steve didn’t argue.

Because Bucky was right.

He looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers slowly. “I don’t like her,” he said.

Bucky shrugged. “You don’t have to.”

Steve lifted his gaze again. “But I have to deal with her.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed. “We both do.”

They stood there for a moment, the hum of the room settling back into familiarity.

Steve squared his shoulders, resolve firming again.

“Come on,” he said. “One more round.”

Bucky smirked. “Thought you were done overthinking.”

Steve raised his guard. “I am.”

Bucky lunged.

And for a few precious minutes, Steve let the world narrow to movement and impact – anything to quiet the part of his mind that kept replaying a soft voice, a dart spinning between fingers, and a smile that had been far too aware of how deeply it unsettled him.

The lights in Steve’s quarters were low, dimmed to something closer to evening than night. The city stretched beyond the glass in a scatter of distant gold and white, blurred by height and reflection. He hadn’t turned on the television. He hadn’t put on music. He’d meant to shower, to sleep, to do anything that would signal the end of the day.

Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed, forearms resting on his thighs, hands loosely clasped.

Still.

The conversation with Bucky replayed itself whether he wanted it to or not.

Not the jokes – those had been easy to shrug off, a familiar rhythm between them. It was the part beneath that had lodged itself somewhere uncomfortable. The part where Bucky had stopped smiling and said the thing Steve hadn’t wanted articulated.

You’re wondering if I’m vulnerable to her.

Steve dragged a hand over his face, exhaling slowly.

Bucky hadn’t accused him. Hadn’t mocked him. He’d simply… named it. Or something adjacent to it. Held it up long enough for Steve to see the shape of it clearly – and realize how much he didn’t like what he saw.

Nyx is pretty.

The thought came unbidden, immediate and unwelcome, and Steve felt irritation flare in response – sharp, reflexive, as if he could scare it off by refusing it.

It wasn’t admiration. It wasn’t longing. It wasn’t anything that clean.

It was awareness.

The kind that registered before judgment kicked in. The kind that lingered despite best efforts to categorize and dismiss.

He leaned back slightly, staring at the ceiling, jaw tight.

She was aggravating. That part was easy. Infuriatingly self-assured. Deliberately destabilizing. She enjoyed discomfort – not just creating it, but watching it unfold, like a puzzle she’d set in motion and was now observing with interest. She broke rules not because she had to, but because she wanted to see which ones mattered most.

Steve hated that.

He hated unpredictability. Hated variables he couldn’t account for, couldn’t shield others from. Hated the way she treated boundaries like suggestions instead of lines.

And yet…

There it was again. The uncomfortable and yet.

She wasn’t chaotic.

Not really.

Everything she did had been precise. Timed. Measured. Her arrival at 15:30. The way she’d waited before speaking, before smiling. The way she’d walked the room, taking inventory of each of them like she was committing details to memory for later use.

Especially him.

Steve’s chest tightened slightly at the thought.

He sat up straighter, elbows braced on his knees again, gaze unfocused now, inward.

She had looked at him differently.

Not longer, exactly – though there had been that too – but deeper. Like she wasn’t just assessing his threat level or his role. Like she was trying to understand the mechanism beneath the uniform.

Not Captain America.

Steve Rogers.

It unsettled him how quickly she’d seen things he preferred to keep buried under discipline and duty. How easily she’d named his discomfort in the bar. How accurately she’d identified his hatred of compromise, his resistance to gray.

You’re the one who hates this the most.

He closed his eyes.

She hadn’t said it with contempt. Or mockery.

She’d said it like an observation.

Like something she’d already accepted.

Steve shifted, fingers flexing against his palms. “You don’t know me,” he muttered under his breath, the words barely audible in the quiet room.

But the lie rang hollow.

She knew enough.

Enough to poke where it hurt. Enough to recognize that he was the one who would struggle most with letting her do what she did best – and that he’d do it anyway, because people were suffering and he couldn’t look away from that.

She’d seen that too.

That was the part that bothered him most.

Not that she was beautiful – though she was, in that understated, disarming way that made it harder to file her neatly under enemy or asset. Not even that she was dangerous – Steve understood danger. He lived with it.

It was that she seemed to want to understand him.

Not to manipulate him – at least, not overtly. Not yet. But to dissect him the way he dissected threats. To learn his tells. His limits. His breaking points.

And worse, she seemed entertained by the process.

Steve let out a quiet, humorless breath.

Bucky had been right. Not about attraction – Steve bristled at that framing even now – but about attention.

Nyx had been testing him.

Hadn’t bothered with subtlety. Had pushed, corrected, reframed his words until he was forced to confront what he was actually asking of her. She hadn’t let him hide behind euphemisms or moral language.

She’d demanded ownership.

And somehow, impossibly, she’d made him feel like he was the one being evaluated.

Steve stood abruptly and crossed the room, stopping in front of the window. His reflection stared back at him, faint and fractured by the city lights beyond – broad shoulders, familiar posture, the outline of a man who was supposed to have answers.

He didn’t like how much she’d unsettled that image.

He didn’t like that when he thought about her, it wasn’t just the knife, or the teleportation, or the threat she represented.

It was her voice.

Soft. Controlled. Almost gentle – and therefore infinitely more dangerous than if it had been sharp or cruel. A voice that didn’t need to raise itself to be heard. That assumed attention rather than demanding it.

A voice that had asked him a question he still hadn’t answered honestly.

Do you want him dead because he deserves it… or because you’ve decided you’re allowed to want that?

Steve’s reflection didn’t answer.

He pressed his palm lightly against the glass, grounding himself in the cool solidity of it.

“I don’t like you,” he said quietly, as if she could hear him somewhere out there in the city.

But the words felt thin.

Because liking her had never been the point.

The truth – the one Bucky had nudged him toward and then left him alone with – was more uncomfortable than that.

Nyx fascinated him.

Not in a way he wanted. Not in a way he trusted. But in the way something dangerous and precise fascinated a man who spent his life trying to keep the world from splintering.

She was a contradiction he couldn’t resolve.

A woman who spoke softly and demanded certainty. Who smiled easily and drew lines that could not be crossed. Who killed without apology and still insisted on consent.

Steve closed his eyes and let his forehead rest briefly against the glass.

Tomorrow, she would come back.

Or not.

There was no way to know.

And he hated that the uncertainty gnawed at him – hated that part of him was waiting, alert, listening for a presence that might not announce itself until it was already there.

Nyx wasn’t just a problem to solve.

She was a mirror held up at an angle Steve didn’t recognize – one that reflected not who he wanted to be, but who he was when choices became impossible to avoid.

He straightened slowly, pulling his hand away from the window.

Whatever she thought she saw in him, whatever she was trying to understand, Steve knew one thing with grim clarity; he would not let her define him.

But the fact that he felt the need to promise himself that at all told him just how deeply she’d already gotten under his skin.

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“Are you fucking kidding me?” you groan aloud, nearly spilling your wine all over your expensive Moroccan rug.

The alarm doesn't stop. It wails with a violent, ear-splitting urgency that vibrates in your teeth. You slam the wine glass down on the counter, your heart kicking into a frantic, panicked rhythm against your ribs. You grab your phone, slide your bare feet into a pair of slip-on Converse sneakers, and bolt for the door. You don't even think to grab a coat, completely forgetting you are only wearing a thin tank top.

Throwing the heavy door open, you're immediately hit by the chaotic din of the hallway. Neighbors are spilling out of their apartments, eyes wide, voices overlapping in confused, sleepy panic. There’s no thick, suffocating smoke rolling down the ceiling, but there is a distinct, pungent odor wafting through the air, burnt plastic and cheap, stale weed.

You push through the milling crowd toward the end of the hallway where the heavy, reinforced fire escape door leads out to the iron stairwell. It’s supposed to be the fastest way out for the fourth floor, bypassing the narrow, claustrophobic central staircase that is already clogged with people from the upper floors.

You reach the heavy metal door, grasping the emergency push-bar. You shove your weight against it, but the mechanism is stubbornly jammed. The ancient hinges groan, resisting your effort. Panic flares hot in your chest as the alarm continues its deafening, relentless assault. You hit the bar again with the heel of your hand, swearing violently under your breath. “Come on, you piece of shit, fucking open!”

“Hey, back up. Let me get it.”

The voice is deep, calm, and immediately recognizable. A large, warm hand clamps down over your bare shoulder, gently but firmly pulling you back. The touch sends a jolt of electricity straight through your system. You stumble slightly, looking up to see Bucky Barnes stepping in front of you.

He looks like he threw his clothes on in a matter of seconds, but somehow he still looks effortlessly magnetic. He’s wearing a battered, heavy leather jacket zipped hastily over a dark grey hoodie, clearly his go-to “emergency” grab, paired with dark jeans. His dark hair is a messy, beautiful tangle falling into his striking, sharp blue eyes. He doesn't look panicked at all; he just looks mildly annoyed at the inconvenience.

Bucky places his hand, his knuckles dusted with faint scars, flat against the door. His other hand grips the heavy iron bar. With a sharp, sudden flex of his broad shoulders beneath the layers of leather and cotton, he shoves. There’s a loud, metallic crack as the rusted latch finally gives way, and the heavy door flies open, letting in a violent rush of crisp, freezing night air.

“Ladies first…” Bucky says, his voice a low, rough rumble over the screeching alarm. He throws you a quick, reassuring smirk that makes your stomach do a completely unhelpful flip.

“Thanks…” you breathe out, stepping past him onto the grated iron platform of the fire escape. The sudden, brutal drop in temperature immediately bites through your thin tank top, raising goosebumps all over your arms. You shiver instantly, crossing your arms over your chest. The city below is alive, a swirling mass of neon lights, honking cabs, and the distant, rapidly approaching wail of fire sirens.

Bucky steps out right behind you, his large frame blocking a bit of the wind. The platform isn't exactly spacious. You’re forced to stand close together, backed against the rough brick wall of the building as a few other neighbors push past, hurrying down the zigzagging iron stairs to the narrow alleyway below.

You stay put on the landing, the cold metal of the railing biting into your lower back. Bucky leans casually against the brickwork beside you, entirely unbothered by the frantic exodus of the rest of the floor. He pulls a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his leather jacket, snapping a Zippo lighter open with his thumb. The flame illuminates the sharp, strong lines of his jaw and the relaxed, easy set of his mouth.

“You're not going down?” you ask, your teeth beginning to chatter slightly as the autumn wind whips around the building.

He takes a slow drag, blowing the smoke out into the chilled air, the plume mixing with his breath. He shakes his head, his blue eyes dropping to meet yours. “Nah. We’re on the fourth floor, Y/n. If the building was actually going up in flames, you'd feel the structural heat by now. Look down there.” He gestures lazily over the railing with his cigarette.

You uncross your arms for a second to peer over. The flashing red and white lights of a massive fire truck are already bouncing off the damp brick walls of the alley. Firefighters are piling out, moving with practiced efficiency, but there’s no frantic shouting, no rushing of heavy water hoses. They look bored.

“It's that little shit, Tyler, from the third floor…” Bucky says, a lazy, amused grin spreading across his face. “The twenty-something kid with the terrible bleach job?”

You snort, leaning back against the wall next to him. “The one who constantly leaves his empty, greasy pizza boxes in the stairwell?”

“That’s the one!” Bucky laughs, the sound deep and rich, settling warmly in your chest despite the freezing temperature. “Fucker bought some bad shit, got paranoid, and tried to hotbox his walk-in closet to hide the smell from his roommate. Dropped his lit joint into a pile of synthetic nylon gym bags. Smoked up the whole damn floor. Fucking idiot.”

You can't help it, you let out a loud, genuine laugh, the tension bleeding out of your shoulders. “Are you serious? God, I thought my night couldn't get any more ridiculous. I was exactly halfway to the sofa with a very necessary, very expensive glass of wine.”

Bucky’s eyes drag over you, slow and deliberate, taking in your messy bun, your thin white tank top, the faded sweatpants, and your bare ankles above your sneakers. There’s a sudden, heavy shift in the air between you, the kind of charged, undeniable electricity that has always simmered beneath the surface during your brief hallway encounters, but amplified tenfold now that you are isolated above the city streets.

He notices you shivering, your shoulders hitched up to your ears. Without a word, he unzips his leather jacket, shrugs it off his broad shoulders, and drapes it heavily over yours. The jacket is massive on you, smelling incredibly of rich leather, expensive cologne, and a faint hint of darkroom chemicals. It’s wonderfully, instantly warm from his body heat.

“Shame to interrupt a good drink…” he murmurs, leaving him in just his dark grey hoodie. His voice drops an octave, rumbling low. “Especially after the week you've had. I saw the layout for the September issue you pushed through. You completely gutted the initial spread and rebuilt it. It’s sharp as hell, Y/n. Visceral. I liked it.”

You stare at him, genuinely shocked, pulling the lapels of his leather jacket tighter around your chest. “You read my editorials? I didn't think big-shot, high-fashion photographers cared about the text formatting or the written features.”

“I care when the text is actually worth reading.” he replies smoothly, stepping just a fraction of an inch closer, holding your gaze intently. “Most of the shit in that magazine is vapid, corporate garbage aimed at selling insecure women overpriced handbags. But you actually give a fuck. You write about the clothes like they’re armor. Like they matter to a person's identity. It's good. Fucking brilliant, actually.”

A flush that has absolutely nothing to do with the freezing wind creeps up your neck and colors your cheeks. You’ve worked your ass off for years to get to this position, battling rampant sexism and corporate greed, and hearing validation from someone whose artistic eye you deeply respect, someone who usually terrifies the industry’s top editors with his uncompromising, brilliant vision, feels incredibly intoxicating.

“Well…” you manage to say, fighting down a proud smile, “coming from the guy who shot the entire Milan campaign in a literal abandoned slaughterhouse just to prove a point about the brutality of fast fashion, I'll take that as a massive compliment.”

Bucky chuckles, tossing his cigarette over the edge and watching the glowing ember fall into the darkness. “It was a statement. And the creative director almost had a fucking aneurysm on set. It was hilarious. I thought the guy was going to actually weep when I brought the fake blood out.”

You spend the next forty-five minutes just talking. It’s remarkably, dangerously easy. The cold air bites at your exposed face, but wrapped in Bucky's heavy leather jacket, with the heat radiating from his large frame beside you, you feel perfectly anchored. You talk about the industry, tearing down the inflated egos of terrible designers, laughing at the sheer, unadulterated absurdity of the fashion world. He is completely unfiltered, swearing casually, his observations sharp, cynical, and ruthlessly funny. You find yourself matching his energy, completely dropping your polished professional mask. You let out your own frustrations about your boss, the agonizing late nights, the constant, draining pressure to be perfect in an industry that profits off imperfection.

It's liberating. Here on this rusted fire escape, suspended above the noisy, chaotic city, stripped of your titles and your pristine outfits, you are just you and Bucky. Two overworked, exhausted people finding a bizarre, unexpected sanctuary in a false alarm. You realize you haven't talked to anyone this easily in months. Maybe years. Every time he looks at you, his blue eyes are heavy with a quiet, intense interest that makes your pulse hammer in your throat.

Down below, the fire truck’s massive diesel engines roar to life, shaking the pavement. The firefighters have cleared the building, evidently dealing with Tyler and his melted nylon bags, and are slowly backing the massive rig out of the narrow street. The flashing red lights click off, plunging the alleyway back into its usual, shadowed dimness.

“Looks like the show's over…” you say, a strange, totally unexpected pang of disappointment tightening your chest. You don't want this bubble to pop. You don't want to go back to being just passing strangers in the hallway.

Bucky looks down at the departing truck, then back at you. His eyes linger on your lips for a fraction of a second longer than is strictly polite before he offers a soft, entirely devastating smile. “Yeah. Suppose we should get back inside before you freeze to death, even with my jacket. I'll let you get back to your wine. Though, honestly, I've got a bottle of rare Kentucky bourbon in my place that easily beats whatever vintage you’re currently drinking.”

You raise an eyebrow, a bold, teasing smirk playing on your mouth. “Is that an invitation, Barnes? Are you trying to get me drunk on a Tuesday?”

“Maybe…” he says softly, turning toward the heavy metal door, his shoulder brushing against yours. “Depends entirely if you can handle your liquor. I don't drink with lightweights.”

He reaches out, his large hand grasping the iron handle of the fire escape door. He pulls.

Nothing happens.

He frowns, his jaw tightening. He grips the handle with both hands, planting his heavy boots firmly on the grated metal floor, and gives it a massive, violent yank. The door rattles loudly in its steel frame, echoing in the quiet night, but it doesn't budge even a fraction of an inch.

The quiet amusement instantly vanishes from Bucky's face. He drops his hands, staring at the thick, unyielding metal.

“What's wrong?” you ask, stepping closer, your heart skipping a nervous beat.

Bucky turns his head, looking over his shoulder at you. The easy, flirtatious energy has completely evaporated, replaced by a grim, deadpan expression that would be terrifying if it wasn't so incredibly hot.

“Some paranoid fucker closed the door behind us.” Bucky says, his voice completely flat.

“Okay, so... just push the bar from this side?” you suggest, your voice pitching up slightly in alarm.

“It's a one-way emergency exit…” Bucky sighs, dragging his hand heavily down his face in deep, profound aggravation. “It only opens from the inside. When the door shuts, the deadbolt drops automatically so people can't use the fire escape to break into the building from the alley.”

You stare at him, the reality of the situation slowly crashing down on you like a bucket of ice water. The freezing air suddenly feels ten times colder. The distant, mocking noise of the city seems to laugh at you.

“Are you... are you fucking kidding me right now?” you ask, your voice trembling between genuine panic and absolute disbelief.

Bucky leans back against the door, crossing his arms over his chest, his grey hoodie pulling tight over his biceps. He lets out a long, heavy breath, a dry, humorless chuckle escaping his lips as he runs a hand through his messy hair.

“Well, shit…” he mutters, looking at you with a mixture of apology and dark, undeniable amusement. “Looks like we’re officially locked out. Good thing you've got my jacket, doll, because it's going to be a long fucking night.”

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@pattiemac1 @lovely-geek @hzdhrtss

For decades, dozens of handlers had come and gone. Different voices. Different faces. Different methods. The Asset adapted because adaptation had been built into him. Loyalty was neither expected nor desired. Attachment represented vulnerability, and vulnerability had no place inside HYDRA.

Which was precisely why the reports had begun accumulating. Nothing dramatic enough to justify immediate intervention on the items separately. Nothing any single technician would have questioned.

Only patterns.

The Asset consistently positioned itself closer to its assigned handler than operational protocol required. Its threat assessment shifted when another operative entered her personal space. Its physiological readings stabilized more rapidly in response to her voice than to any corrective conditioning.

When conflicting commands were issued within fractions of a second, it demonstrated measurable hesitation before ultimately favoring hers.

Each incident, considered alone, was insignificant. Together, they suggested something unacceptable.

A dependency.

The conclusion circulated only among senior personnel. If the Asset required one specific handler to maintain optimal efficiency, then HYDRA had introduced a vulnerability into its most valuable weapon.

One person. One point of failure.

That possibility alone warranted immediate investigation, so the solution was approved before dawn.

No discussion. No consultation. No warning.

For seventy-two hours, the Asset would be assigned to another handler.

The current one would observe.

She would not interfere.

----

DAY 1 – 6:00

The alarm on her tablet beeped at 0600. She reached for it from the bed, blinking against the light of the screen, her fingers finding the familiar shape of the device.

And then she saw it.

The message was brief. Bearing the authorization codes of three senior officers she recognized by name but had never met.

RE: TEMPORARY REASSIGNMENT OF ASSET

Effective 0800 today, Asset 001 will be reassigned to Handler Lukas Voss for a 72-hour operational evaluation period. Current handler is to assume observation duties in Control Room 3. No contact with Asset permitted.

Any deviation will be treated as a breach of protocol.

She read it three times, but the words didn't change. The authorization codes remained. The cold, bureaucratic language offered no explanation, no justification, no recourse.

Fuck.

She dressed in her uniform. Standard-issue black. In the small mirror above her sink, she caught a glimpse of her own reflection. There were shadows under her eyes. The hair could be worse.

She stared at herself for a moment, and ordered herself to keep her face blank. To move through the world like she was made of the same cold steel as the walls around her. Then she turned away and walked out the door.

The corridors were quiet at this hour. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, casting that same sterile glow that made everything look washed-out and faintly unreal. The air was cold, recycled, tasting of metal and cleaning solution and the particular absence of anything natural.

She walked past the holding cells. Past the training rooms. Past the medical bay where they did things to the Asset that she tried not to think about.

She kept her eyes forward.

Control Room 3 was a narrow space, cramped with monitors and consoles. Three technicians were already there, their faces illuminated by the blue-white glow of the screens. They didn't acknowledge her when she entered. They never did.

She took her station in the corner, the one with the best view of the containment chamber on the other side of the one-way glass.

The Asset was already there.

He had been stripped of his tactical gear, dressed instead in the same dark training uniform he wore between assignments. He was sitting in a thin metal chair in the center of the room, back straight. Hands against his thighs. Gaze forward, fixed on nothing.

There was a small smear of dried blood on his jaw, just under his ear, where a cut had already scabbed, and the blood hadn't been washed away.

The door to the containment chamber opened. A man entered. Lukas Voss, she knew from the file she'd been given. Mid-forties, gray-streaked hair, solid build. His uniform was immaculate. His expression was professional, detached.

He looked at the Asset the way one might look at a piece of equipment.

"Soldat. On your feet."

The Asset obeyed. His movements were smooth, automatic. The same precision he always had.

But she noticed the way his eyes flickered, just for a moment, toward the door the man had come in.

Looking for something.

The man didn't notice. He was already moving on to the next instruction.

"On the floor. Maximum rep push-ups."

The Asset dropped to his hands and knees, his body lowering into the familiar rhythm of the exercise. His hair fell across his face, obscuring his expression. The long strands caught the light as he moved.

After that, the handler began cycling through more complex command sequences, deliberately varying their cadence. Short pauses. Interrupted instructions. Corrections delivered halfway through a movement. The sort of inconsistencies meant to confirm that the conditioning -not familiarity- governed compliance.

He obeyed flawlessly, but there was an emptiness to it she had never seen before. The movements lacked the fluid efficiency she had grown accustomed to. Every action appeared fractionally delayed, as though each command had to force its way through layers of invisible resistance before reaching whatever remained of the man beneath.

A technician frowned at his monitor.

"...Response latency increased."

Another compared the numbers to a previous mission log.

"Point three seconds."

"Within tolerance."

"Yes."

Still, the note was entered into the report.

She watched the secondary monitors, the ones displaying his vitals. Heart rate: 88 BPM. Slightly elevated from his baseline. Respiration: within normal parameters.

Everything looked fine.

Everything looked fine, and yet she felt something cold in her gut, giving a side glance to the technicians. Because she knew, in that moment, how the next seventy-two hours would be.

She knew, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

----

Day 1 - 14:00

By the afternoon, the numbers had started to matter less than what she could see with her own eyes.

Voss ran through the standard protocols efficiently. The kind of handler who trusted data over instinct, who wrote down what he saw instead of asking why he was seeing it.

The orders were followed. The commands were executed. But there was a hesitation now, small enough to miss if you weren't looking for it, and she was always looking for it.

The way his fingers moved a fraction slower on the reload. The way his aim was off by some negligible degree that would mean nothing to anyone who hadn't watched him shoot a thousand times before. The way his gaze kept drifting, just briefly, toward the door of the training room, like his body was checking an exit that had nothing to do with the exercise.

"Reload."

He complied. Late. Not by much. Enough.

"Again. Reload."

This time it landed within range. Voss made a note and moved on, already thinking about the next drill, already forgetting the first one.

Behind her, one of the technicians murmured something about motor latency. Another read a number off a screen. She didn't need to hear it to know what it would say.

She already knew where his heart rate sat with her. She didn't need a monitor to know it wasn't sitting there now.

Day 1 - 22:00

The Asset was returned to his cell.

The night vision cameras showed him sitting on the floor in the corner, his back against the wall. He didn't lie down. He didn't close his eyes. He sat with his hands resting on his knees, staring at the door.

The technicians noted: "Sleep pattern absent. Possible lack of fatigue."

She knew it wasn't lack of fatigue. He was restless.

She watched his face on the monitor, watched the way his eyes remained open, fixed on the door. Watched the way his fingers moved against his knees in small, restless motions, reaching, curling, going still, reaching again. Like they were trying to grasp something they used to hold.

Day 2 - 09:00

Combat training against other assets.

"Engage. Non-lethal neutralization."

He moved, but the word moved felt generous. He was slower than she'd ever seen him, and the others noticed it too. Low-grade serum subjects, dangerous but expendable, usually the kind of opponents he dismantled without much thought. Today they dodged things they shouldn't have been fast enough to dodge. In one exchange, a blow he would have read and avoided in his sleep caught him clean across the cheekbone.

She watched him take it. Watched his jaw lock down around the impact. Watched him make no sound at all, the way he'd been trained not to for longer than she'd been alive.

"Focus," Voss said, flat, already annoyed.

He didn't answer. In the next round his performance climbed, marginally, still well under baseline.

"Performance degraded by 12.7%," someone read aloud. "Cause: indeterminate."

It was somewhere in that round that she looked at him -not at the fight, not at the numbers, but at him- and noticed his hair.

It hung in his face in matted, sweat-dark at the roots and tangled through to the ends, sticking to his temples, his jaw, the corner of his mouth when he turned his head. There were knots in it thick enough to see from across the room, the kind that came from not being washed, not being brushed, not being cared for in even the smallest, most animal way.

The dried blood under his ear from the day before was still there.

No one had told him to wash himself. No one took the effort to clean him, either. It simply hadn't occurred to anyone that it mattered, that the version of him standing in this room was, in every visible way, coming undone, and that no one assigned to watch him even knew to look.

Voss was filling out his tablet, eyes on the numbers, not on the man.

She saw everything.

Day 2 - 11:00

Voss decided a correction was needed.

She watched through the one-way glass as the Soldat was positioned against the wall. No straps needed. Just cold steel and the implicit understanding that resistance wasn't on the table.

He stood with his hands flat against it, fingers spread, feet shoulder-width apart. The position was standard for this kind of correction, the kind that exposed his back, his ribs, the vulnerable stretch of skin between his shoulder blades. He'd been in it before. Many times, with many handlers.

Voss approached with the baton already in hand. Standard-issue, black, unremarkable. The kind the paperwork called corrective, never punitive, as if the distinction meant anything to the body absorbing it.

He didn't hesitate. The first blow landed just below the shoulder blades, sharp and metallic against cold flesh.

The Soldat’s body went taut, and his hands pressed harder into the wall, but no sound came out of his mouth.

The second blow came lower, across the ribs. Then the mirror of it on the other side, with the rhythm of someone who'd done this enough times that it no longer required thought.

She watched the tendons stand out along the Asset’s neck, watched his fingers close against the steel, nails scraping faintly with each impact.

Then, the baton caught the back of his thigh and his knee buckled, just slightly, before he caught himself. Still no sound.

Voss paused to adjust his stance -the same clinical recalibration a man might give a golf swing- then continued.

She made herself keep watching. Every instinct in her wanted to look away, to shut her eyes, to scream at him to stop. She let none of it reach her face. A flinch here would be a confession.

It would hand them exactly the vulnerability they were already circling, on a silver plate. So instead her hands found the edge of the console and gripped it until the metal bit into her palms, until the ache there gave her something to feel that wasn't fury.

She watched the welts rise, dark red against pale skin. Watched his breathing turn ragged, his chest heaving between blows. Watched sweat run down through his hair and drip from the ends of it onto the floor.

The final blow landed near his groin, and this time his breath caught -audibly, just once- before he wrestled it back under control. It was the only sound he'd made in six minutes.

Voss stepped back, and the baton went back into its holster. The correction was complete.

The Soldat stayed against the wall a moment longer, hands still flat, breathing hard, before Voss's voice cut through it.

"At ease."

He straightened slowly. She could see the effort it cost him in the strain of his back, in the way he favored his right side as he turned to face Voss, expression wiped clean of everything that had just happened to it.

Voss was already making notes, not looking at him at all.

"Correction administered." He said it more to the device than to anyone in the room. "Compliance maintained."

Then he left, and the Asset stood alone in the center of the chamber, blood beading along one line of welts where the skin had split, hair plastered to his face, waiting -the way he always waited- for someone to tell him what came next.

Her hands didn't unclench from the console for a long time after the door closed.

Day 2 - 13:00

They left him in a holding room while Voss went to review equipment.

The feed showed him standing in the center of the room, at rest position. Hands loose at his sides. Shoulders back. Eyes forward, fixed on nothing.

He didn't move for forty-seven minutes.

"Partial catatonic state," someone noted, typing without looking up. "No response to environmental stimuli."

She watched his stillness and thought that word was wrong. He wasn't unresponsive. He was waiting. The particular kind of waiting that came from a body that had learned, somewhere beneath conscious thought, that if it held still long enough, the thing it was waiting for might eventually come.

But it wasn't going to come. Not for forty-seven minutes. Not for the rest of that day.

Her hands were flat against the console, pressing down until her fingers ached, because it was the only way she had left to keep them from doing something else.

Day 2 - 23:00

Back in his cell, he still didn't sleep.

But now his gaze had started to move. From the door. To the ventilation grate. Then to the camera in the corner, holding there a beat too long before sliding away again.

"Atypical behavior," the log read. "Search pattern detected. No identifiable target."

She almost laughed, and the sound that almost came out of her wasn't anything close to a laugh at all.

She knew exactly what he was looking for. She'd known since the first minute of the first day, watching him check the door before he even understood, consciously, that she wasn't going to walk through it.

He wasn't scanning the room for threats. He wasn't disoriented. He was doing what he always did when a session ran long, or a mission went sideways. He was looking for the one fixed point that told him it was safe to stop bracing.

He was searching for her.

And she sat there, hands pressed flat against her knees exactly the way his were pressed against his, and gave away nothing.

Because that was the assignment. Observe. Do not interfere.

She had never hated an order more in her life.

Day 3 - 07:00

By the third morning, she no longer needed to check the monitors to know something had broken.

Voss gave the first order of the day in the same flat tone as always, registering nothing different.

"Move."

The Asset moved. But something in the way his legs answered no longer held any of the fluidity she knew. It was like watching him wade through water.

"Stop."

He stopped. A second late.

"Reload."

His fingers closed around the magazine and for one instant -barely an instant- they didn't seem to know what to do. It was so brief that two of the three technicians didn't even look up from their screens. She saw it. She saw the way his knuckles went white before his body remembered the motion for him.

No one logged that one. There was no number for it.

"Engage. Target practice."

He raised the weapon. Fired. Most of the rounds landed where they should, tight, precise, the signature of years carved into muscle. But two pulled wide, drifting off into nothing, as if for a fraction of a second the hand belonged to someone else.

Her nails dug into the edge of the console.

Voss's jaw clenched. He didn't say anything yet, but his silence carried a different weight than it had the last forty-eight hours. He took a step closer.

"Soldat. Focus."

That was when she saw it: the Asset's eyes didn't move toward Voss. They went left, toward the glass, toward the darkness behind which she sat, motionless, holding her breath as if that could make her invisible.

He couldn't see her. She knew he couldn't see her. The glass had been built for exactly that.

He looked anyway.

"Look at me when I speak to you."

The Asset's head turned, slow, heavy, like his neck had to be talked into obeying before the rest of him would follow. His eyes found Voss's face.

The man felt something cold trickle down his spine. He didn't know why

Day 3 - 11:00

Voss spent the late morning going through the file. Not the operational reports - those told him nothing he didn't already know- but the psychological logs, page after page of observations filed by technicians who'd spent years watching the Asset the way other men watched machinery, looking for wear before it became failure.

One phrase kept surfacing. Repeated across dozens of entries, always attributed to the same handler, always followed by a measurable -if minor- improvement in compliance and vitals.

You did good, Soldat.

He read it two times. It struck him as almost embarrassingly simple. Positive reinforcement, the kind you'd use on a dog or a child, dressed up in a soldier's vocabulary so no one had to call it what it was. Still. If it worked, it worked.

That afternoon's session had been poor. Sloppy footwork, a delayed reload, a wide group on the range that made Voss's mouth press into a thin line before he even finished writing it down.

"Your performance was insufficient," he said, flat, clinical. "But within acceptable parameters."

The Asset said nothing. Just stood in the center of the room with his eyes fixed somewhere past Voss's shoulder, at the wall, at nothing.

The man hesitated -just slightly, just enough that she noticed it even through the glass- and then added, in a tone that tried and failed to soften:

"You did good, Soldat."

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then something did.

One second he was standing still, and the next his whole body tensed and his head snapped toward Voss with an expression on his face that had no business existing on someone who'd been conditioned not to have expressions at all.

"Don’t say that again." His voice came out wrong. Rougher. Lower. Not the flat, affectless register he answered orders in.

Voss blinked, perplexed. "Soldat-"

He didn't finish. The Asset closed the distance between them in under a second, and Voss didn't have time to raise his hands before he was slammed back into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster, a metal hand fisted in the front of his uniform, lifting him half onto his toes.

"Don't." The word came out through his teeth. "You don't get to say it-"

Alarms started somewhere behind her, distant and tinny. She heard chairs scraping, heard someone reaching for a radio, heard her own pulse roaring louder than any of it.

Voss clawed at the arm holding him, choking out something that might have been a command and might have just been his name, and the Asset's face did something she'd never seen it do openly in the two years of handling him: it broke, entirely, grief and fury occupying the same features at once, like his body didn't know which one to become.

"Containment team, Room 3-" someone was already saying into a radio, and she was on her feet without remembering standing, hands flat against the glass, every professional instinct in her screaming that this was the tell, this was the thing that would get her killed, and she couldn't make herself care.

He slammed Voss into the wall a second time.

The door burst open. Four men in tactical gear came through it fast. It took all four of them to pull him off. It took a fifth to get the sedative into his neck, and even then he fought it, fought them, fought everything, his eyes never leaving the door the entire time, the same door he'd been watching for three days, the one that never opened the way he needed it to.

He went down slow. Not the clean, immediate drop she'd seen from higher doses. His knees buckled first, one hand still reaching, and he said one more thing, quiet, barely audible over the chaos, not meant for Voss, not meant for the men holding him down, not really meant for anyone who could hear it. But she read his lips.

Please.

Then he went still.

----

Day 3 - 23:00

They'd sent her back to her quarters after the incident. No explanation. Just two words from a senior officer who wouldn't meet her eyes.

An hour later, a stack of paperwork arrived at her door. Routine administrative backlog, officially: requisition forms, equipment logs, nothing that couldn't have waited a week. She understood it for what it actually was the moment she saw the volume of it: something to keep her hands busy and her location accounted for, filed and stamped and traceable.

She did it anyway. There was nothing else to do with the day, and refusing would only have raised the kind of questions she couldn't afford.

It took most of the afternoon and half the evening. By the time she pushed the last form aside, her neck ached, and she still had no idea what had happened to the Asset after they'd carried him out of that room.

She tried to sleep, but it didn't take. She lay there under the covers with her eyes open, listening to the recycled noise of the ventilation system, running through everything she'd seen that morning. His hands on Voss's collar, the sound the wall made, the word please in his lips.

At 22:47, her comm buzzed. Report to Control Room 3.

She was through the corridors before she'd finished reading it twice.

By the time she reached the observation deck, the session had already started. Combat simulation. Multiple targets. She didn't know what they'd done to him in the hours between the sedative and this -no one thought it necessary to tell her.

Voss gave the order from the observation platform, his voice steadier than it had any right to be given the bruise already purpling along his jaw.

"Engage."

The Asset complied. But something about the way his body moved was wrong. Less precise. More aggressive. Not the usual calculated economy of motions, something rawer, something that spent force instead of conserving it.

He took the first two targets down clean. On the third, he misjudged the trajectory -she saw it happen, saw the half-second where his weight landed wrong- and the android's strike caught him in the shoulder. A real hit. It should have stunned him, slowed him.

But he swung at it instead.

The training android slammed into the wall with a crack loud enough that two technicians flinched back from their consoles. He didn't stop there. He hit the fourth target with the same force. Then the fifth, before it had even finished powering up, metal fist driving through its chassis until sparks scattered across the floor.

"Soldat. Stop."

Nothing.

"Soldat! Stop!"

He turned slowly, and for one full second, she was certain he was going to close the distance to Voss the same way he had that morning, and her hand was already moving toward the comm switch, toward some override she didn't have the clearance to use, toward anything-

He stopped.

He stood in the wreckage of the fifth target, chest heaving, both fists still clenched at his sides, and his hair hanging across his face in damp, tangled pieces that stuck to his cheekbones with sweat.

He wasn't angry. She could see that clearly, even through the glass, even with everything in the room built to make her doubt her own reading of him.

He was lost. Standing in the middle of a room full of things he'd just destroyed, and no idea, none at all, of what he was supposed to do now that there was nothing left in front of him to hit.

The technicians noted: Erratic behavior. Increased aggression. Possible psychological instability.

----

Day 3 - 23:40

The message came to her comm with no context. Go to room 3. Now.

She was moving before she finished reading it, and made herself stop two steps later, made herself breathe. By the time she reached the door, her face had settled back into the blank, professional nothing she'd worn for three days straight.

The containment room door opened with a hydraulic hiss.

He was on his knees in the center of the room.

His breathing was too fast. Too shallow. His chest rising and falling in short, ragged pulls that had nothing to do with exertion.

Eight technicians stood around the edges of the room, tablets raised, recording. None of them had moved closer than the doorway in the last ten minutes. None of them were going to.

Voss stood near the wall, arms crossed, jaw tight, the bruise along it darker now than it had been that morning.

She stepped inside.

Her footsteps were quiet, but he heard them anyway, and his head lifted, just a fraction.

She stopped three meters away. The only sounds left were the low whoosh of the ventilation system and the fast, thin rasp of his breathing.

She kept her face blank. Her voice came out the way it always did in public: flat, even, betraying nothing of the last three days' ordeal.

"Asset."

His head came up further, unfocused.

"Eyes on me."

And then it happened.

His gaze sharpened all at once, snapping into focus, locking onto her face, the thing he'd been searching for since the first morning, finally, impossibly, standing in front of him.

Around the room, tablets kept recording. She heard the murmurs start, quiet, clinical, utterly indifferent to what they were actually watching.

"Heart rate dropping."

"Cortisol levels decreasing."

"Pupillary response normalizing."

Someone, quieter than the rest, almost to himself: "He's... regulating."

She didn't look at any of them. She kept her eyes on his, and made herself hold perfectly still while every instinct she had screamed at her to close the three meters between them.

"Stand at attention."

He obeyed before she'd finished the sentence.

No hesitation. No delay. He rose to his feet with a precision that hadn't existed in this room since the message had arrived on her tablet at six in the morning three days ago.

Unsurprisingly, nobody applauded the result, but she felt the room exhale anyway.

Voss said something to the sector director standing in the doorway, low enough that she couldn't hear it, and didn't try to.

Then, someone finally called it: Evaluation period concluded. Asset and handler, dismissed.

----

The door to her quarters finally closed behind them.

He stood in the center, the way he always did, waiting to be told what to do with himself in a space that had no orders. His hands hung at his sides.

His posture was still rigid, still holding the shape of at attention even now, but something had changed: a slight inward curve in his shoulders, like the effort of standing straight had finally started to cost him. His head was bowed just enough that his hair fell forward, hiding most of his face.

What she could see of it wasn't good. Yellow-green bruising along his cheekbone. His hair was beyond disheveled, matted in thick sections, knotted past the point where fingers alone would work it out. Near his temple, something dark had dried it against his skin. She couldn't tell in the low light if it was blood or dirt or both.

She reached up and brushed it back anyway, the evidence that no one looked for him the way she did.

It was heavier than it should have been, greasy with three days of neglect, and her fingers caught almost immediately on a knot behind his ear, but he didn't flinch.

"You should have slept, should have… taken care of yourself," she said quietly, not really expecting an answer.

She didn't get one.

But then he moved.

Slowly. Carefully. His human hand went to the pocket of his tactical pants, the motion hesitant in a way none of his motions ever were, like he wasn't certain he had permission for this.

She watched, not yet understanding.

He drew his hand back out and in his open palm sat a hair tie. Yellow, with a ridiculous little silicone strawberry stuck to the band, one of the ones she only ever wore in the privacy of this room, off duty.

He must have taken it before going to Voss, while she slept. Kept it with him through three days of corrections and sedatives and people watching him come apart.

He held it out to her. Returning it.

His eyes found hers and stayed there, but there was nothing steady in his gaze. It was the look of a child holding out something he wasn't supposed to have taken, watching her face for the exact moment it would tell him whether he was in trouble.

She looked at the hair tie sitting in his palm, at the way his fingers curled loosely around it even as he offered it up, like some part of him didn't want to let it go even now. Watched him watch her, waiting to find out which one it would be. Her throat closed.

She didn't take it.

She closed her hand around his instead -gently, fingers lacing through his around the small, ridiculous item- and stepped in until there was no space left between them, until her forehead came to rest against his chest.

He went utterly still.

Then, slowly, he bowed his head. His nose brushed her temple, the barest contact, and he breathed her in. His hair fell against her cheek, dirty, still carrying the smell of the days they had been apart. She didn't pull away from it.

She pressed her fingers tighter around his instead.

Somewhere beyond the door, the technicians were already compiling their data. Someone was already briefing the higher-ups on what it meant.

Removing her was raised and dismissed within the hour, because of the cost. Months of instability, continued wiping and performing more damage to the brain, versus an asset who already performed exactly as needed with her guidance.

And performance was the only metric that had ever mattered there.

The vulnerability was filed. Flagged for future review. And left, for now, exactly where it was.

Steve knew that feeling. He knew it so well it was almost another sense.

Outside the narrow windows, the night was a blur of cloud and darkness, the kind of black that made the world feel smaller. The quinjet’s lights washed everyone in a hard, unforgiving glow. It made faces look sharper than they were. It made fatigue look like anger and anger look like something uglier.

Natasha sat opposite Bucky, her spine straight, legs crossed at the ankle like she’d decided to be made of iron for the duration of the flight. Her hands were clean – too clean – resting in her lap with deliberate stillness, like she’d scrubbed away more than grime in the field. Her expression was neutral, almost bored, but Steve had learned that Natasha’s stillness wasn’t calm. It was control. It was restraint with teeth.

Clint leaned back against the cabin wall, head tilted slightly, eyes half-lidded as if he were trying to sleep. Steve could tell he wasn’t. Clint’s bow case sat at his feet, straps undone, everything about it suggesting a routine that had been interrupted. His fingers tapped once against his thigh and then stopped. That tiny motion – the aborted rhythm – was the only tell Steve needed.

Tony stood farther forward, closer to the cockpit, arms folded, shoulders tense beneath the sleek lines of his suit’s underlayer. He’d taken off the armor in pieces the moment they were airborne, as if the metal couldn’t stand to stay on him when it had failed. The arc reactor glow shone faintly through fabric, a cold little circle of light at his chest. His brows were drawn down, eyes fixed on nothing. When he exhaled, it came out through his nose in a sharp, controlled burst.

Sam sat near the ramp, bracing a forearm on the bench, gazing at the closed door as if he could still see through it to the city they’d left behind. His wings were stowed, but there was a restlessness to him, a contained urge to move. He kept rolling one shoulder as if trying to work a knot out of muscle.

Steve sat with his hands on his thighs, gloves off, fingers flexing once and then going still. His knuckles were scraped – nothing serious – but the sting was a reminder, like his body was keeping score.

They’d been so close.

That was what made it worse. Not just that the mission had failed – they’d lived through failures before, swallowed them, learned, moved on. This one… this one had been almost. Almost in their grasp, almost a clean collar, almost the end of a thing that had been rotting under the surface of the city for too long.

The target had a name, an alias that shifted like water. In their files, he was a neat stack of paper and photographs: a man with a forgettable face and expensive suits, the kind of person you’d pass on a sidewalk and never look at twice. In real life, he was a shadow behind a network that swallowed people. Young women, boys barely old enough to look like men, children who disappeared between districts and borders like the world had agreed not to see them.

Steve had seen them tonight.

Not all of them – not enough. But he’d caught glimpses in a warehouse corridor lit by flickering industrial bulbs: a girl with duct tape around her wrists staring at him with eyes too old for her face, a boy who flinched at sudden movement, a row of cages that had once held something living and now held only the smell of fear. He’d heard the muffled cries and felt his own pulse quicken with something that wasn’t adrenaline.

Rage had a temperature. It had weight. It settled in Steve’s chest like hot iron.

They’d breached fast, coordinated, clean. Natasha dropping two guards before they knew she was there. Clint’s arrows pinning weapons to walls, disabling without killing. Sam sweeping the upper catwalks, calling out positions, his voice clipped but steady in Steve’s ear. Tony cutting through a reinforced door with surgical precision, sparing the people behind it from a longer wait.

And Steve – Steve had run straight for the office.

Because that’s what it had become with this man. A pattern. A game. The boss always held himself separate, always had an exit route, always had a contingency. He didn’t get his hands dirty, he didn’t get caught in the chaos. He didn’t run.

He disappeared.

Tonight, they’d built their plan around that. Tony’s surveillance. Natasha’s intel. A net designed to close every gap. Bucky and Steve moving like they’d been made for this – flanking routes, anticipating movement. They’d cornered the man in a steel-framed room that smelled of expensive cologne and cheap cigarettes, paperwork strewn on a desk like the world’s ugliest ledger.

Steve had seen him clearly then. He remembered thinking, absurdly, that the man’s tie was perfectly knotted.

The target’s eyes had met Steve’s, and something cold had flickered there – not fear, not surprise. Calculation. Recognition. As if he’d expected the Avengers to arrive eventually, and this was merely a late appointment.

“Captain,” he’d said, smooth as silk.

Then the lights had gone out.

Not an accident. Not a power failure. Tony had cursed in Steve’s comm, something about an EMP pulse that shouldn’t have been possible in that building without warning. For a second, the world had been a void – only the red emergency strips along the floor, only the sound of boots and breath and the distant panicked shouts of guards.

Steve had lunged forward anyway, guided by instinct more than sight. His hand had brushed fabric – a suit sleeve, slick and expensive – and he’d closed his grip hard enough to feel bone beneath. He’d thought, Got you.

Then something cut through the dark, a blade whispering close to his ribs, not deep enough to injure but enough to warn. Steve had twisted, bringing the shield up, feeling metal catch a glancing strike. The sound had been wrong in the dark – too intimate, too close.

By the time Tony restored partial lighting, the office was empty.

Only the tie clip remained on the floor, still gleaming. A small, ridiculous trophy.

The man had slipped through them again, like he was made of smoke.

Steve’s stomach turned now, remembering the smugness in those eyes. Remembering the sound of that blade in the dark.

Bucky’s voice cut through the cabin, low and rough. “He knew.”

Steve didn’t look at him right away. He stared at his own scraped knuckles, at the dried blood beneath one nail that wasn’t his. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “He knew.”

Bucky’s prosthetic hand flexed once, fingers spreading and closing in a motion too controlled to be accidental. The metal caught the overhead light, bright and clean and unforgiving. “This isn’t just him getting lucky,” Bucky added, and there was an edge in it, something sharpened by the fact that Bucky understood predators in a way Steve wished he didn’t. “He’s got someone. Or something. Feeding him.”

Natasha’s gaze shifted toward them. Her expression didn’t change, but her eyes did – a fraction more focused, a fraction less distant. “He has systems,” she said. “He has money. And he has people who are terrified of him.” She paused, then, very slightly, her mouth tightening. “That’s usually enough.”

Steve heard what she didn’t say: It shouldn’t be.

Clint’s eyes opened more fully. He didn’t speak. He just watched Steve, like he was reading the part of him that wanted to go back, right now, drop from the quinjet into the night and hunt the man down with his bare hands.

Steve forced himself to breathe slowly, in through his nose, out through his mouth. He’d learned, with time, that anger could be useful – it could drive you, keep you moving – but it could also make you sloppy. The man they were chasing thrived on mistakes.

Tony finally turned from the cockpit area, his boots thudding softly on the cabin floor. He didn’t look at Steve first – he looked at the others, scanning faces like he was taking inventory of damage.

“We saved thirty-two,” Tony said, voice flat.

Steve’s throat tightened. Thirty-two was not nothing. Thirty-two was lives. Thirty-two people who would go home, who would get help, who might one day sleep without flinching.

But Steve also saw the other side of it like a second image burned onto his mind: the empty cages, the list Natasha had shown them, the estimated numbers that had made Steve’s stomach drop.

“How many did we miss?” Steve asked, even though he already knew.

Tony’s jaw clenched. “We don’t have an exact–” He stopped, then forced the words out like they were bitter. “Dozens. At least. And if he relocates again, we’ll be chasing smoke for another month.”

Bucky made a sound under his breath, something like disgust without language.

Natasha’s fingers twitched once in her lap and then stilled again. Steve caught it – the brief betrayal of control – and it made his own frustration spike. If Natasha was tired of this, it meant they’d reached a point where even her patience was fraying.

Steve felt it too. Not fatigue, exactly. Something deeper. A weariness that came from fighting the same evil in different faces, over and over, and knowing that the world kept producing more. That there were always people willing to profit from suffering.

He looked at the closed ramp as if he could see through it to the darkness beyond. “We can’t keep doing this,” he said, and the words came out harsher than he intended. “We can’t keep letting him slip away.”

Tony’s eyes flicked to him. “Not for lack of trying, Cap.”

Steve knew that. He knew Tony had been up for thirty-six hours straight, building predictive models and hacking surveillance systems that were never meant to be touched. He knew Clint’s hands had been steady in the field even while his eyes looked older every time they saw another trafficking ring. He knew Sam had flown himself to the edge of exhaustion, pushing his suit to keep up. He knew Natasha had dug into shadows that even she didn’t like to revisit.

That was part of what made it unbearable. They weren’t failing because they weren’t trying hard enough.

They were failing because someone had built this network to survive them.

Steve pressed his palms against his thighs, grounding himself in the pressure. “Then we need to change the game,” he said.

Silence. A collective pause, like the quinjet itself was listening.

Sam exhaled and finally turned from the ramp, looking at the group. His eyes were tired, but there was something firm in them, something that refused to let frustration become despair.

“We need a different approach,” Sam said.

His tone wasn’t dramatic. It was simple. Practical. The kind of statement that sounded obvious until you realized no one had been willing to admit it yet.

Tony arched a brow. “Okay,” he said, voice edged with skepticism. “Do you have one? Because last I checked, we already tried ‘kick in the door’ and ‘kick in the door harder.’”

Sam didn’t smile. “Not like that.”

Steve watched him, studying the set of his shoulders, the way he held himself like he was preparing for pushback. Sam was choosing his words carefully – and that, more than anything, made Steve’s stomach tighten.

Natasha’s eyes narrowed slightly. Clint’s attention sharpened. Even Bucky lifted his head a fraction, as if he’d sensed the same thing Steve had.

Sam glanced between them. “We’ve been playing by rules he understands,” he said. “Predictable. We gather intel, we raid locations, we rescue who we can, and he slips out because he’s got a head start every damn time. We’re fighting his system. And his system is built to survive us.”

Steve felt the truth of it settle like a weight.

Sam continued, “We need someone who doesn’t come at this like us. Someone who can get close. Someone who can move where we can’t.”

Tony’s mouth tightened. “You mean an undercover.”

“Maybe,” Sam said. “Or maybe someone who lives in the gray already. Somebody who knows these kinds of networks from the inside.”

Steve’s pulse ticked up, slow and steady, like a warning bell.

Because he knew where this was going.

Natasha shifted her gaze toward the floor for a second, then back up. Her face remained composed, but there was a flicker of something in her eyes – memory, maybe. Recognition. She’d been in the gray. She’d crawled out. She also knew the cost.

Clint’s fingers curled once, then relaxed.

Bucky’s shoulders went rigid.

Steve leaned forward slightly without meaning to. “No,” he said, and it came out too fast. Too instinctive.

Sam met his eyes. “Hear me out.”

“I’m hearing you,” Steve said, and he could feel heat rising under his skin, anger trying to find a target. “And I’m saying no.”

Tony’s gaze flicked between them, wary now, curiosity sharpening. “What exactly are we saying no to?” he asked.

Sam hesitated – just a fraction – and that hesitation was the last confirmation Steve needed.

Steve’s mind supplied the file before anyone said it out loud. A dossier he’d skimmed once and hated immediately. A name that wasn’t a real name, a shadow with a pattern.

Nyx.

Steve could see the first page of it like it was projected behind his eyes: black-and-white stills pulled from security footage, timestamps, locations, bodies on polished floors. Notes in clinical language that tried to make violence sound like data. A list of confirmed kills and probable kills, each one reduced to a bullet point.

And then the part that had made Steve’s skin crawl the first time he read it – not the number, not the blood, but the detail that felt like a choice.

Knife only.

Up close.

Personal.

No mask.

No shame.

A woman with a young face and eyes that, in the still images, looked almost amused.

Steve’s jaw clenched so hard it ached. He hated how quickly his brain provided the image. He hated that it had stuck.

Sam said quietly, “We could use Nyx.”

The words landed in the cabin like a punch.

For a second, no one spoke. The quinjet hummed around them, steady and indifferent, as if it didn’t care what bargains people made in its belly.

Steve stared at Sam, feeling his heartbeat in his throat. “Absolutely not,” he said.

Natasha didn’t argue – not yet. She just watched Steve with that unnerving stillness, like she was waiting to see whether his refusal was principle or fear.

Tony’s brows rose. “Nyx,” he repeated, tasting the name like he was testing it. “You mean the knife artist with the teleportation problem and the moral allergy to killing kids and puppies?”

Bucky’s gaze snapped toward Tony, sharp.

Tony lifted a hand. “I read the highlights,” he said, defensive but not apologetic. “It’s a hell of a résumé.”

Steve’s hands curled into fists. “She’s a murderer.”

“So is our target,” Sam said, voice tight. “But he’s also a businessman. He’s a network. And he’s still out there because we’re not getting ahead of him.”

Steve felt something shift inside his chest – a pressure, a crack. He didn’t want to consider it. He didn’t want to weigh it like an option. The very idea tasted like compromise, like defeat.

Nyx wasn’t a solution. Nyx was a problem you contained.

And yet, Steve’s mind betrayed him with another flash: the cages. The eyes of the girl with duct tape. The boy flinching. The ledger of lives. Dozens. At least.

He swallowed, his throat tight. The anger didn’t vanish. It just… changed shape. Became something sharper, colder.

“Get me the full file,” Steve heard himself say, and he hated that he said it.

Sam’s shoulders eased a fraction, relief threading through his exhaustion. “Yeah,” Sam said softly. “That’s what I’m saying.”

Steve looked away, fixing his gaze on the cabin wall, on a small scratch in the metal paneling that someone had left there months ago. He focused on it like it was an anchor.

Because if he looked at the others, he might see agreement. He might see resignation. He might see the first steps toward a line he didn’t want to cross.

And if he let himself think too far ahead, he could already imagine the first image the file would show him: a young face, unmasked, eyes dark and bright with something he didn’t understand – something that looked too much like laughter.

Steve’s stomach turned.

He didn’t believe in using monsters to catch monsters.

But the world didn’t care what he believed.

The quinjet flew on through the night, carrying them toward home, toward a briefing room, toward a dossier Steve already knew he would read too closely.

And somewhere out there, in a city full of hidden rooms and locked doors, the man they were chasing was already moving again – smiling, probably, because he’d done it one more time.

Steve closed his eyes for a second, feeling the vibration of the engines through the bench, and tried to prepare himself for the idea that stopping this might require stepping into darkness on purpose.

The briefing room felt colder than the rest of the compound.

Steve knew it wasn’t, not really – the temperature controls were calibrated to be uniform throughout the Tower – but something about this room always sharpened the air. Maybe it was the lighting: too bright, too even, designed to erase shadows rather than soften them. Maybe it was the table, a long slab of dark composite material that reflected faces back at themselves in muted distortion. Or maybe it was simply what happened here. Decisions. Compromises. Lines redrawn in careful language.

They filed in one by one after stripping off the last of their gear.

Steve had taken his time removing his suit, methodical in a way that bordered on ritual. Unfastening straps. Rolling his shoulders. Letting the weight lift from him piece by piece. It helped him separate the mission from what came next – helped him remember that this was supposed to be the part where they thought, not fought.

It didn’t help much.

Bucky arrived just after him, freshly showered, hair still damp at the ends. He wore a plain black T-shirt and jeans, the fabric pulled taut across his shoulders like his body hadn’t quite relaxed yet. His metal arm was uncovered, fingers flexing occasionally as if it were still recalibrating to stillness.

Natasha entered with a tablet tucked under one arm, her hair pulled back, face scrubbed clean of makeup and blood alike. She looked unremarkable in the way only highly trained people ever did – deliberately neutral, deliberately unreadable.

Clint slipped into a chair near the wall instead of the table, boots hooked around the rung of the chair, arms crossed. He’d swapped tactical black for a worn gray hoodie, the sleeves pushed up. His eyes tracked everything.

Tony came in last, coffee mug in hand, the scent sharp and bitter as he set it down. He hadn’t bothered changing out of his underlayer entirely – dark shirt, slacks, a visible sign that his mind had never really left the mission.

Sam took the seat beside Steve, close enough that Steve could feel the warmth of him, solid and present.

The door sealed with a soft click.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Steve stood at the head of the table, hands resting on the back of a chair he hadn’t sat in yet. He looked at the blank screen on the wall, the inactive interface, and felt a familiar tightening in his chest. This was the part where they named the thing they didn’t want to name.

“All right,” Tony said eventually, breaking the silence with practiced ease. “Since we’ve officially crossed the line from ‘bad idea’ to ‘actively considering the bad idea,’ let’s get our facts straight.”

Steve shot him a look. Tony met it evenly, then shrugged.

Natasha stepped forward without comment and connected her tablet to the system. The screen flickered, then came alive.

A single word appeared at the top, stark white against black.

NYX

Steve felt it again – that low, instinctive resistance, like his body recognized the name as a warning before his mind caught up.

Below it, a photograph resolved into focus.

The room shifted.

It wasn’t dramatic. No one gasped. No one leaned back. But something in the collective posture of the team changed – shoulders stiffening, attention narrowing.

Steve stared at the image.

Nyx was facing the camera, not head-on but angled slightly, as if she’d been aware of the lens and chosen not to confront it directly. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders, dark and thick, catching the light in a way that softened the edges of her face. Her features were composed – not tense, not aggressive. Calm.

Too calm.

Her eyes were dark, large, fixed on something just beyond the frame. They weren’t empty. They weren’t cold. If anything, they looked… engaged. As if she were present in the moment, fully and deliberately.

Steve felt his jaw tighten.

She looked young.

Not in the way some people looked artificially youthful – smoothed by filters, sharpened by angles – but genuinely, unsettlingly young. Barely older than the recruits he’d trained before the war. Barely older than the soldiers he’d watched die.

“Jesus,” Tony muttered under his breath. “She looks like she should be in grad school.”

Clint shifted in his chair. “Or art school.”

Natasha didn’t react. Her gaze was fixed on the image, assessing, cataloguing. “This is one of the clearer stills,” she said. “Most of the footage we have is worse.”

The screen changed.

Video this time. Grainy. Security footage from a parking garage. The timestamp blinked in the corner. Nyx stepped into frame like she belonged there – unhurried, unmasked, a knife already in her hand.

Steve felt his shoulders tense.

The kill was fast. Efficient. Close.

Too close.

The blade flashed once, twice. The man crumpled, blood darkening the concrete. Nyx stepped back, avoiding the spill with practiced ease. For half a second, her mouth curved – not a smile exactly, but something adjacent to it. Satisfaction, maybe. Or relief.

Steve swallowed hard.

“Pause,” he said before he realized he was speaking.

The video froze.

The expression lingered on the screen, caught in the stillness of a single frame.

Steve stared at it, his reflection faintly superimposed over her face. He didn’t like how easily his eyes tracked the line of her jaw, the curve of her mouth. He didn’t like that he could imagine her expression shifting, softening, hardening.

“She looks like she’s enjoying it,” Sam said quietly.

“That’s what it looks like,” Tony agreed. “Which, from a PR standpoint, is… not great.”

Natasha shook her head once. “Don’t project,” she said. “We don’t know what she’s feeling.”

Steve exhaled slowly through his nose. “What we know,” he said, grounding himself in facts, “is that she chooses this. The method. The proximity.”

Natasha nodded and tapped the tablet again.

The screen filled with text.

Known Parameters:

– Primary weapon: bladed (confirmed knife use only) – No firearms – No explosives – No disguises or facial concealment – Targets selected based on contract; refusal clauses documented – Absolute refusals: minors, animals

Steve’s mouth tightened at the last line.

“That’s the part that bothers me most,” he said before he could stop himself.

Tony glanced at him. “The no-kids thing?”

“The idea that she draws a line,” Steve said. “As if that makes the rest acceptable.”

Sam shifted beside him but didn’t interrupt.

Natasha’s expression remained neutral. “Every operative has a line,” she said carefully. “Even us.”

Steve looked at her then. Really looked.

Natasha met his gaze without flinching.

“That doesn’t mean we like where it’s drawn,” she added.

The screen shifted again. More images. Different locations. Different angles. Always the same constants: the knife, the lack of concealment, the ease with which Nyx moved through the frame.

And always that unsettling composure.

“She never runs,” Clint observed. “Not after. She just… leaves.”

“Teleportation,” Tony said, tapping a control and pulling up a schematic overlay. “That’s the fun part.”

Fun.

Steve clenched his fists.

Tony continued anyway. “Short-range, line-of-sight or close approximation. We can’t track it, can’t replicate it. No residual tech signature. No energy spike we can reliably isolate. It’s either biological, extradimensional, or some really advanced tech she’s not sharing.”

Bucky had been silent.

Steve had noticed immediately. Bucky wasn’t studying the data the way Natasha was, or watching for patterns like Clint. He was watching the screen like he was trying to reconcile something that didn’t fit.

Another image appeared – a close-up, this time. Nyx looking directly at the camera.

Steve felt it hit him like a physical thing.

She didn’t look dangerous in the way HYDRA assets had looked dangerous. There was no blankness, no deadened stare. Her eyes were alive. Curious.

Human.

Bucky leaned forward a fraction.

His voice was barely more than breath when he spoke.

“She’s… pretty.”

The word slipped out without intention, without volume. It wasn’t meant for the room.

Steve heard it anyway.

The rest of the team didn’t. Tony was mid-sentence. Natasha was scrolling. Clint was frowning at a data point. Sam was watching the screen, jaw set.

Steve’s attention snapped to Bucky instinctively.

Bucky didn’t look at him. His eyes were still fixed on the image, brow faintly furrowed, like he was surprised by his own thought.

Steve turned back to the screen, heart pounding harder than it should have.

Yes, he thought grimly. She is.

That was the problem.

It wasn’t just that Nyx was young – and she was, alarmingly so, no more than twenty-five if Steve had to guess. It was that her beauty complicated things. It disrupted the neat moral categories Steve wanted to place her in.

It was easier to hate a monster when it looked like one.

Easier to condemn someone when their face didn’t invite empathy.

Steve felt irritation coil in his chest, sharp and unwelcome. At her. At himself. At the part of him that noticed the softness of her features even as he catalogued the violence attached to them.

He didn’t miss the irony.

“She’s been active for at least six years,” Natasha said. “Which means she started young. We don’t have confirmed origins. No childhood records. No known affiliations before her first contract.”

“Someone trained her,” Steve said.

“Yes,” Natasha agreed. “And someone taught her to survive.”

The screen shifted again, this time to a map. Points lit up across cities, countries, continents.

“She moves freely,” Sam said. “Borders don’t slow her down.”

“No,” Tony said. “Physics doesn’t seem to either.”

Steve folded his arms across his chest, feeling the weight of the shield resting nearby even though it wasn’t strapped to his arm. “So what happens,” he said, “when we invite someone like this into our operation?”

Tony shrugged slightly. “Best case? She helps us get to our guy. Worst case? She kills him and disappears before we can blink.”

“And the people around him?” Steve pressed. “The ones we’re trying to protect?”

Natasha’s gaze flicked to him. “Her record shows no collateral damage,” she said. “That’s rare.”

“That’s not the same as harmless,” Steve shot back.

“No,” Natasha agreed again. “It’s not.”

Silence settled over the room, heavier this time.

Steve looked at Nyx’s frozen image one more time.

He didn’t see a savior.

He saw a woman who had learned to live in violence without letting it consume her – or at least without letting it show. He saw a person who stepped into the dark willingly and came back out unchanged, or pretending to be.

He didn’t trust that.

Didn’t trust her principles. Didn’t trust her restraint. Didn’t trust the calm in her eyes.

The image of the cages rose unbidden in his mind. The ledger. The numbers.

Steve closed his eyes briefly, then opened them.

“We review everything,” he said finally. “Every scrap of footage. Every refusal. Every anomaly. If we’re even going to consider this, I want to know exactly who we’re dealing with.”

Tony gave a low whistle. “That’s not a no.”

Steve met his gaze steadily. “It’s not a yes.”

Sam nodded once, accepting the compromise for what it was.

Bucky leaned back in his chair, expression unreadable, eyes flicking once more to the screen before he looked away.

Nyx’s image remained, silent and still, watching them from the wall.

Steve felt a chill run through him – not fear, exactly, but something close to anticipation. The kind that came before a battle you weren’t sure you wanted to fight.

He had the sinking sense that this woman – this pretty, dangerous, unrepentant unknown – was already changing the shape of the war they were in. And they hadn’t even met her yet.

For a long moment, no one moved.

The screen remained lit, Nyx’s face suspended in artificial stillness – the curve of her mouth caught halfway between amusement and indifference, eyes dark and unreadable. The room’s lighting reflected faintly across the glass, layering their silhouettes over her image, as if they were already intruding into her space.

Steve felt the silence settle into his bones.

It wasn’t the productive quiet of thought crystallizing into strategy. It was heavier than that. Uncertain. Charged. The kind of pause where everyone was thinking the same thing and no one wanted to be the first to say it out loud.

He shifted his weight slightly, boots whispering against the polished floor. His gaze stayed on the screen, though his eyes had begun to blur around the edges of her face. He focused instead on details – the way the light caught in her hair, the faint tension in her jaw, the stillness that suggested control rather than ease.

That smile.

Steve didn’t like it.

It wasn’t wide. It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t even obvious. But it lingered in his mind like a question that didn’t want an answer.

Finally, he broke the silence.

“Do we have anything on her past?” he asked.

His voice sounded louder than he’d intended in the closed room.

Natasha’s fingers paused mid-swipe on the tablet. Tony’s mug hovered just short of his mouth. Sam leaned back a fraction, arms crossing loosely over his chest. Clint tilted his head, attention sharpening.

Natasha shook her head slowly. “Nothing verified.”

Steve frowned. “No birth records? No family ties? No early sightings?”

She tapped once, pulling up a dense block of text – redacted fields stacked one after the other like a wall.

“Her first confirmed appearance is six years ago,” Natasha said. “Not suspected. Confirmed. Before that, there’s nothing we can prove belongs to the same person. No consistent aliases. No childhood records that survive cross-referencing.”

Steve felt a cold knot tighten in his chest. “That’s not normal.”

“No,” Tony said, finally taking a sip of his coffee. “It’s impressive.”

Steve shot him a look.

Tony lifted a shoulder. “I’m not saying I like it. I’m saying someone either erased her very thoroughly, or she was never on the grid to begin with.”

Sam frowned. “Everyone’s on the grid.”

“Not if you’re born somewhere the grid barely exists,” Tony countered. “Or if you’re taught how to stay off it from the start.”

Steve’s jaw clenched.

He turned slightly, addressing the room rather than the screen now. “FRIDAY,” he said, keeping his tone even. “Do we have any indication of origin? Accent patterns? Linguistic markers? Movement habits? Anything that points to a country or region?”

There was a brief pause – the kind that reminded Steve just how much processing happened behind the calm of the AI’s voice.

“I’m afraid not, Captain,” FRIDAY replied. “Available audio samples are insufficient for reliable accent analysis. Visual data does not correlate with any specific regional biometric patterns at a statistically significant level.”

Steve frowned deeper. “Nothing at all?”

“No,” FRIDAY said. “I cannot determine her country of origin.”

The words landed harder than Steve expected.

He turned back to the screen, staring at Nyx’s face with renewed unease. Even the smallest detail – a trace of an accent, a familiar gesture – would have grounded her in reality. Would have made her make sense.

Instead, she felt like an absence. A shape carved out of missing information.

Clint let out a low breath. “So we don’t know where she’s from,” he said. “We don’t know who trained her. We don’t know who she answers to.”

“She doesn’t answer to anyone,” Tony said. “That’s kind of her whole thing.”

“That’s not comforting,” Clint shot back.

“No,” Tony agreed quietly. “It’s not.”

Steve rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the drag of fatigue beneath his skin. The day pressed down on him now – the mission, the failure, the images that refused to fade. He lowered his hand and looked at Nyx again.

“You don’t just come out of nowhere like this,” he said, more to himself than anyone else. “People don’t become this… precise without a reason.”

Natasha studied the screen, her expression unreadable. “Whatever her origin,” she said, “she learned early that visibility was a liability. That anonymity was survival.”

Steve glanced at her. “And you think that excuses it?”

“I think it explains it,” Natasha replied. “Those aren’t the same thing.”

Steve didn’t argue – not because he agreed, but because the distinction felt thin and dangerous, and he didn’t trust himself not to cross it.

Another stretch of silence followed.

This one felt different.

Heavier still.

Clint straightened slightly in his chair, boots dropping to the floor. “Okay,” he said. “So here’s the million-dollar question.”

Everyone looked at him.

“What are we actually doing?” Clint asked. “Because staring at her face isn’t getting our guy out of hiding.”

Steve felt the weight of that settle into his chest.

Clint wasn’t being flippant. He was being practical – the kind of practicality born of too many battles and too many nights watching the same evil slip away.

Sam nodded slowly. “He’s right. We need to decide.”

Tony set his mug down carefully. “The options as I see them,” he said, ticking them off with his fingers, “are: one, we keep doing what we’re doing and hope he eventually screws up. Two, we expand our net and risk tipping him off even more. Or three–”

He stopped.

Steve knew why.

“–we bring in outside help,” Tony finished.

The words sat there, bare and undeniable.

Steve folded his arms across his chest, feeling the tension coil tighter. “Outside help that kills for money.”

“Outside help that knows how people like him think,” Sam countered. “That knows how these networks hide.”

Steve shook his head. “We don’t even know if she’d take the job.”

Natasha’s lips curved slightly. Not a smile – something sharper. “She would.”

Steve looked at her. “You’re sure.”

“She takes contracts that interest her,” Natasha said. “This would.”

Steve didn’t like how easily she said it.

Bucky shifted beside the table, his chair scraping softly as he leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. He hadn’t spoken since his earlier murmur – and Steve was acutely aware of that. Aware of the way Bucky’s eyes had followed Nyx’s image with a kind of wary focus, as if he were seeing something familiar and unsettling in equal measure.

“Even if she agrees,” Steve said, forcing his attention back to the issue at hand, “we’re talking about trusting someone who operates completely outside any system we understand. Someone who doesn’t answer to law, or morality, or–”

“–to us,” Sam finished quietly.

Steve’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”

Another pause.

This one stretched.

Steve felt the unspoken truth hovering between them, heavy and unavoidable: they were running out of options.

Tony broke the silence first. “Look,” he said, rubbing a hand through his hair. “I hate this. For the record. I really, truly hate this. But if there’s one thing our mystery friend has going for her, it’s that she doesn’t leave trails.”

Steve looked up sharply.

Tony continued, “Our guy? He’s slipping away because he’s always a step ahead. Someone’s tipping him off. Someone knows when we move.”

The room seemed to contract around the words.

Natasha’s gaze sharpened. Clint’s jaw tightened. Sam straightened fully.

Steve felt a cold line trace down his spine.

“You think there’s a leak,” Steve said.

“I think there’s been a leak,” Tony replied. “For a while now.”

Natasha nodded slowly. “The pattern fits,” she said. “Too many clean escapes. Too many perfectly timed disappearances.”

Steve’s thoughts raced, unpleasant possibilities stacking on top of each other. “You’re saying someone inside–”

“I’m saying we don’t know who,” Tony interrupted. “Which means we can’t widen the circle.”

Sam let out a slow breath. “Which means if we do this, if we even consider it–”

“It stays in this room,” Clint said firmly.

Steve looked around at them.

At Sam, steady and exhausted and trying to hold the line between right and necessary.

At Clint, who’d seen too much and trusted too few.

At Natasha, whose past gave her more insight into this choice than Steve liked to think about.

At Tony, whose skepticism was tempered by the kind of brilliance that saw patterns others missed.

At Bucky, silent, guarded, his gaze flicking once more to the screen before settling somewhere distant.

The responsibility pressed down on Steve’s shoulders, familiar and heavy.

He turned back to Nyx’s image.

She stared out at them, frozen in a moment that wasn’t really hers anymore. A smile caught between frames. A woman without a past, without a country, without a name that meant anything beyond the shadows she worked in.

“She doesn’t play by anyone’s rules,” Steve said quietly.

“No,” Natasha agreed. “Which means she’s harder to predict.”

Steve swallowed. “And harder to control.”

“Yes.”

The word echoed.

Steve exhaled slowly, feeling the weight of the choice settle into place. He didn’t like it. Didn’t trust it. Didn’t trust her.

But he trusted the alternative even less.

“All right,” he said at last.

Every eye in the room turned to him.

“If we do this,” Steve continued, voice steady but tight, “we do it carefully. No official channels. No digital trail beyond what we absolutely need. No one outside this room knows we even considered it.”

Tony nodded immediately. “I can sandbox everything. Offline systems only. Air-gapped.”

Natasha inclined her head. “I’ll handle contact,” she said. “If we decide to proceed.”

Steve hesitated – just a fraction – then nodded.

“And we don’t give her everything,” Steve added. “We give her just enough. We don’t trust her with names. Or locations we can’t afford to burn.”

Sam met his gaze. “And if she refuses?”

Steve looked back at Nyx’s face.

At the calm. The confidence. The unsettling ease.

“Then we keep fighting,” he said. “The hard way.”

Silence fell again – but this time, it felt different.

Resolved.

The decision wasn’t spoken aloud in so many words, but it settled into the room all the same, heavy and irreversible.

They were going to step into the gray.

Steve stared at the screen for a moment longer, then nodded once.

“Turn it off,” he said.

The image vanished.

The room felt colder without it – emptier, somehow – as if something had already slipped away.

Steve straightened, shoulders squared, the familiar weight of command settling into place.

Whatever Nyx was, whatever she had been before she became this ghost with a knife and a smile, she was about to walk into their war.

And Steve had the sinking feeling that nothing about it would be clean.

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