Little Talks

Summary: "Your name is Jamie Buchanan Barnes. You were the first female sergeant in the 107th. We were friends. " "NO!" " You know me." "You're my mission." "Finish it, then. Because I'm with you to the end of the line." How Jamie Barnes stopped being the Winter Soldier, and took up residence in Avengers Tower while recovering her memory, herself, and her best friend. Fem!Bucky, Steve/Bucky pairing. Includes all Avengers, PLUS Loki! (Other pairings include the classic Clintasha and Pepperony, as well as Bruce/Betty, Thor/Jane, and Loki/Darcy.)

Category: Hurt/Comfort, Romance

Pairings: [Captain America-Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes]

Based off of the song, "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men

This is a little something I've been DYING to write, as I haven't really seen anyone else doing it. A fem!Bucky/Winter Soldier story, with past Steve/Peggy and obvious mixed feelings. Will include recovering!Bucky, conflicted!Bucky, adjusting!Bucky, and more. This is a shameless attempt to give others my OTP feels. Hope you guys like it!

I don't own Marvel. Shumucks to be me.

-1. How it began

When Jamie Barnes moved into Avengers Tower, it was perhaps the biggest upheaval in Avengers history – even over the time when Loki moved in.

"She's unstable," Tony had argued, eyeing the brunette with the long shaggy haircut with no hidden skepticism. "I know she's your friend and all, but I don't know if she's a risk we can take."

"Oh come on, Stark." Natasha Romanoff had spoke up from her position on Tony's couch. "She didn't even try to kill you. Do you hear me complaining?"

"I don't trust her either, Tasha. What if she just snaps?"

"Do you all hide from me because I might become the Other Guy? I don't see you guys kicking me out of the Tower."

"That's because Stark would never let us, Bruce."

"You have already destroyed this dwelling many a time, friend Banner. And was my brother not welcomed into this abode, even after all of his shortcomings? Surely the gravity of his plots and schemes outweighs the petty misdeeds of this mortal woman."

"That's because Odin banished him to Earth, and Fury deemed this Tower the only safe holding place for his sorry hide during his self-proclaimed 'reformation'."

"Yes, thank you for the kind summary, Barton."

"Simmer down, horny helmet head. The birdie's got a point."

Jamie had hunched her head a little more, hiding behind the fringe of dark hair covering her forehead and a great deal of her face. Steve had placed a warm, strong hand on her lower back, and she'd had to consciously remind herself that she didn't need to whirl and break his arm for it.

She didn't remember any of these people. Not the man with the strange light in his chest, not the dark haired man with the glasses; Not the tall blond man with the oversized mallet nor the man with the slicked back dark hair and piercing green eyes who was apparently his brother, and definitely not the man perched atop the bookshelf with an arrow trained on her forehead. Not even the redhead who had spoken, whom she had apparently met before.

Probably on a mission she'd had taken from her, she realized. A cold feeling settled in her stomach. A memory she'd had wiped away from her mind, like scribbling on a chalkboard deemed too messy to remain there permanently. Like a color on a wall that was painted over, because someone didn't like the shade.

"Bucky isn't going to hurt anyone," Steve insisted. Steve. She barely even remembered him, but the memories she'd recovered so far were of a man much smaller than him. A Steve who was several inches shorter than her five foot eight frame, and so much thinner she was afraid to hug him too hard for fear he'd break. Now he stood behind her, a huge mass of muscle towering above her at a good six foot two. Still, his hand was gentle, the way they'd always been.

Jamie wondered how she'd remembered that, when she couldn't even remember why he'd called her 'Bucky'.

"I'm going to be with her as much as possible, helping her to adjust to modern life," Steve explained to the strange group of people. "But it's not going to be easy. I'll need all of your help to see that she's able to remain in a non-hostile, recovery friendly environment."

"I'm sorry, do you live here?" The archer scoffed yet again. "Those are the last words I'd use to describe this place."

"As the resident god of mischief, I'm afraid I must agree," Loki said with the faintest of shrugs. His eyes landed on Jamie. "However, as another who is attempting to recover from a traumatic past" –another scoff from the bookshelf was met with a chilling green glare—"I must say that it isn't the most inappropriate environment for an undertaking such as this."

"See? I told you guys he likes it here at Stark Tower."

"Did I say as much, Anthony?" Loki challenged. Said building's owner merely shrugged, and ignored the use of his full first name.

"Pretty much. Yep." Tony crossed his arms and looked over at Steve and Jamie. "She doesn't seem like much of a threat right now," he admitted.

"That arm is a little offsetting, though." The archer appeared to think himself very witty, Jamie noted—though he really only seemed to state the obvious.

It was true, though. Jamie was used to living with her arm encased in the large metal sleeve. She couldn't really remember it being any other way—perhaps vaguely, but so far not enough to make her feel repulsed by it. She was used to the feeling of the cool metal that ran over her entire shoulder blade and down the length of her arm, fitting over her hand and fingers like a mechanized full arm gauntlet.

She could feel it pulsing, alive with energy. It was a normal extension of her body, and she honestly didn't know if there was any flesh left underneath it. Some of the doctors and scientists who had looked at her had speculated that the bionic arm was a prosthetic, a replacement for a lost limb. This could have been true, and Jamie wouldn't have known otherwise. She certainly couldn't feel anything else beneath it.

But she supposed that to people with both limbs intact, it could be viewed as rather alarming.

"That's off point." There was subtle shift in the mood of the man behind her. Steve had become slightly more protective, his voice deepening firmly. She could feel his gaze resting on the top of her head, but still she said nothing.

As if reading her mind (perhaps he had), Loki said, "She's certainly a quiet one, regardless of dubious appendages."

At this, Jamie looked up, deep blue eyes slightly challenging. "Talking hasn't really been my strong suit, of late," she said, her voice level, quiet, and yet surprisingly strong. She slowly met the eyes of each person in the room, evaluating them. Green: cunning, mischievous, unworthy. Blue: kind, powerful, restless. Brown: gentle, thoughtful, anger. Brown: quick witted, intelligent, self-conscious. Blue-grey: focused, protective, sarcastic. Green: secrecy, strength, pain.

Finally, Jamie looked up and met the eyes above her. Blue eyes. Blue: everything.

She frowned. Everything wasn't a reading. She tried again, peering up at the man through her hair.

Blue:

Everything.

She looked away, disturbed. Nobody could be everything. She had seen the weaknesses and strengths of everyone in the room, and yet she couldn't read the man she'd supposedly known all of her life?

Nothing is certain, she told herself. Not your past, present, nor future.

That was the only thing she could remember, above all else. It was the one constant factor in her vague, misleading and often terrifying memories: uncertainty.

Perhaps it wasn't surprising, then, that she'd finally resigned to it.

)( )( )(

The carrier fell in pieces into the water, as the Winter Soldier watched the man in stripes fall into the water below. All around her, the room was exploding, falling into ruin. Soon she too would join him in the water, forced to swim for her life.

But he wouldn't.

She had beaten him, fighting the internal screaming in the back of her mind, the revulsion that came with every blow she dealt him. She didn't understand why.

She'd seen this man before, she realized. On a bridge. He'd called her a strange name, a name that she didn't understand.

"Bucky?"

What was Bucky? No, who was Bucky. It was obviously a who, she realized: a 'who' that he'd mistaken for her, twice now.

Some part of her recognized that she was a killer, that this was what she did. She was given orders, a target, and it was her sole purpose to eliminate it. He was her target, and it should have been simple to eliminate him and move on, regardless of the burning vessel around them.

But the problem wasn't the situation, she realized, as her fist had pounded into him, marring his face horribly. He had already taken her knives from her, leaving her with only her arm to finish the job.

Complete the mission, her mind chanted at her. Complete the mission, and return to base.

Why couldn't she follow her orders? What was stopping her?

"Finish it," he'd told her. Now, looking down at his prone form falling into the water, she knew she needed to jump off the carrier and finish what she'd begun.

She'd already faltered once, already failed by letting him slip from her grasp and down, into the water. She knew what her mission was: eliminate the target.

She jumped off the ship, diving into the water. Finish it. Finish it. It pounded in her ears, assaulting her brain like the water pressure as she dove, swimming deeper to recover the man in the murky water filled with debris.

She found him, eventually; his body rigid in the cold water, sinking down towards the bottom. Drowning would be adequate, she considered leaving him to do so. It would be the most painless method.

Then it occurred to her: since when did it matter if her methods were painless?

Her good shoulder was full of a raging, burning pain. The dislocation had been expertly done, carefully inflicted so that it could be easily replaced. But at the moment it remained out of its socket, jarring with each stroke.

She could stop, she realized. She could leave him to his watery death, and consider her mission completed.

But her body had kept moving downward, as if overruling her head. It was as though her body needed to save him, regardless of whatever twisted logic tried to tell her otherwise. And her mind knew why, though it tried to push it away.

He was right. She did know him.

So she'd done it anyway. She'd pulled him up out of the depths, hauled him towards the shore, dragged him up onto dry land with her metal arm. She'd looked down at him, water leaking out of his mouth. She'd seen his eyes open, and a feeling hit her hard in the stomach, harder than any punch she could remember having taken—though, that might not have been saying much.

She didn't know what to call that feeling. It hurt, and burned, and made tears spring into the corners of her eyes. It made her want to be sick and scream and throw herself off a cliff all at the same time. It made her want to use her hands—the hands she used to take so many lives—and use them to save him, to undo what she'd done.

Feelings were weakness, she'd been told; had had the concept implanted into her mind too many times to count. And now she knew why. This man, this strange man who said he'd known her, had wounded her deeply, with nothing more than a few kind words.

So instead of making her way into the brush, towards base or wherever the hell she could have gone, she sat down on the rocky bank beside him, and waited for something.

Anything.

And then, while still struggling with his own breathing, the man had done the most unthinkable thing. He had reached out, with an amount of effort that he didn't even have, and taken her hand. Her good hand. Her hand that could feel his skin, still cut and bruised from the blows she'd dealt.

"Finish it," he'd said, back inside of that burning ship. Through bloodied , swollen, torn lips he'd said the words that would haunt her endlessly. "Because I'm with you to the end of the line."

And so it was that when the authorities found them not long afterward, they saw a beaten , half drowned and semi conscious Captain lying with his hand in the grasp of a woman with a strange, bionic arm. She was clutching his hand, staring off at the wreckage almost blankly.

She'd turned to look at the medics, deep blue eyes bloodshot. "I couldn't," she told them. "I couldn't."

They, of course, hadn't understood. But she'd seen the man, slipping into unconsciousness, give her a single look with those watery blue eyes, and she knew that he'd heard her.

)( )( )(

"Spunky."

"And she's is kinda cute, once you get past the whole…ya know."

Jamie snapped back to reality, finding herself in the present with the motley group of superheroes.

A small part of her wasn't exactly happy that her fate seemed to rest in their hands. After all, these people were dangerous; every sense that she had was telling her that, loud and clear. But the intriguing thing was that despite that, they were willing to give her, a woman with a notorious past and questionable mental stability, a chance to live with them in their home.

Of course, there was also Steve to consider. He seemed absolutely set on her being there. "I know being here has helped me adapt. I want that for her, too."

"To be honest, Spangles, you've still got plenty to catch up on. We're far from finished with you," Tony said somewhat ominously. "I mean, you've barely watched any movies more recent than the eighties. That's practically a crime against humanity."

He observed the newcomer carefully. "Alright Cap. I'll give her a month. If she can go that long without serious incident—and by serious I don't mean lighting the toaster on fire; I mean attempted murder—then she can stay on indefinitely." He looked around at the rest of the group. "Who's with me?" Tony lifted a hand.

Natasha's hand went up without hesitation. Next was Bruce's, and then came Thor's shortly after that. Loki lifted his with a shrug. This left Clint, who was still observing her with a great deal of caution.

"I don't know about this," he said, eyes narrowed suspiciously. "She seems…off, somehow."

"Well after seventy years of being HYDRA's top assassin, you'd be feeling a little off too," Natasha told him dryly. "I know that feeling, more or less." That was the look Jamie had seen in her eyes: understanding. She too had been a pawn in a game larger than herself, that much was clear. Perhaps she would make a good ally—or was that the incorrect word? Something in the back of Jamie's mind told her it was.

"Also, if you'd cease pointing your weapon at her she would undoubtedly feel more at ease," Loki told the archer smoothly. "Pointing an arrow at someone's forehead isn't exactly the most welcoming of gestures—or perhaps they didn't teach you that in the circus."

Slowly, Clint lowered the arrow, glaring all the while at the god.

"So we're in agreement then?" Tony asked. "If I'm not mistaken that was seven against one—youch. Sorry, bird brain, but you've just seen democracy in action."

Steve let out his breath, his face lighting up with relief, a great smile on his lips. "Thank you guys," he said, happy blue eyes lighting on Jamie's uncertain face. "You won't regret this." She wasn't sure if he was saying it to her, or them. Perhaps it was a little bit of both.

And so Jamie's fate was sealed by the Avengers themselves. She would live in Stark Tower for one month, and if she was able to keep herself in line, she would be able to stay longer. At the moment, Jamie wasn't sure if she wanted to be there at all, but it didn't really seem up to her.

Of course, it was perfectly possible that one of her flashbacks would get too intense, or some kind of reflex would take over her and she would find herself out on the curb faster than she could say 'repeated brainwashing'.

She wasn't even sure if being on her own would honestly matter at this point, when she didn't know who or what she was except for the Winter Soldier, a renowned killer. The possibility of her having been or ever again becoming Jamie Buchanan Barnes was slim, at best. Especially when she didn't even know what Jamie Buchanan Barnes was like, or believed in, or cared about.

But Steve seemed to, she told herself. At least he knew the woman he called 'Bucky', regardless of how strange and unfeminine a name it was for a woman. Not that 'the Winter Soldier' was much better, but that was made to leave much to the imagination. And Jamie hadn't exactly thought of herself as a woman in a long time.

She didn't know any of these people, she realized, even the ones who claimed to know her. But it looked like she was going to get her chance, forgotten memories or not.

Jamie knew one thing: by the time her month was over, none of them would ever be the same.

The rest was swamped with uncertainty, as per usual.

Apparently, this had just become her new mission.