AN: So this is my first MCU story. I've had a Loki/OC in the back of my brain for a while, but after watching Captain America: Civil War this idea wouldn't leave me alone. I'm going to try my best to keep the characters from going OOC, but bear with me.

As of February 2018, this story has been slightly rewritten from its original posting back in 2016. There were weak parts I thought could be changed but haven't gotten around to doing it until now for how much I was cringing at my own writing. So hopefully this is better!

When in Romania

"Made up my mind to make a new start
Going to California with an aching in my heart
Took my chances on a big jet plane
Never let them tell you that they're all the same
The sea was red and the sky was grey
Wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today,"

—Led Zeppelin, "Going to California"

I: Her

RUSSIA – 1991

When the ice thaws and his lungs work enough for him to take an audible breath, he sees several men in uniform and lab coats and thinks of nothing. Remembers nothing. A man—a commander by the look of him, holds a red book that triggers the slightest inkling of something in his mind. The man utters a series of meaningless words in Russian that make his insides churn like metal cogs.

"…One…freight car."

He is ready to comply.

As she's dragged onto a hard gurney and struggles against leather binds on her wrists and ankles, electrodes being connected across her forehead as a leather gag is forced into her mouth, she thinks of her mother. Clings to the one image in her mind that helps calm her breathing.

Not so much the face. That's been faded to a dull outline of long dark hair, the impressions of sadness around soft eyes. Her father's were always harsh. Cold like his hands directing her away from a building burned down by rebels. That much she knows.

Her father's clipboard hovers over her head as his older, now wrinkled hands adjusts fluid levels. She knows not to plead with him.

Fluid swirls down tubes and into her veins and it starts.

Her mother disappears.

.

.

.

When it's over (the walls have stopped absorbing her screams), her throat is sore and there's drops of blood from her ears staining the floor but she can breathe. Uniformed men lift her off the gurney and keep her on her feet as they make their way out of the lab and down the hall, back to her cell.

A flash of silver catches her eye and with what little awareness she has, she turns her head.

He is unlike anything she's ever seen.

Tall and broad. Dark hair; long and unkempt and dripping wet. He walks almost silently in fluid motion, not mechanically, despite the metal arm.

"Move," a soldier commands her. She's stared too long.

To her surprise he looks her way—sharp eyes boring into hers with depth that stuns her.

And she stumbles when she's shoved forward.

.

.

.

BUCHAREST, ROMANIA – 2014

It's been three months since he effectively disappeared. Two weeks since he first crossed Romanian borders by train. As Bucky looks out the window of his shoebox apartment to the expanse of Bucharest, while sipping coffee that tastes like shit, he considers the fact that nobody has recognized him so far as a lucky break.

He had to invest in (steal) a few long-sleeved shirts and jackets, which makes the sweltering Romanian summer a problem he didn't foresee. Though a compelling reason on its own, it's not the only reason why he would rather not leave the apartment.

The spongy bed and the yellowing walls, if a bit suffocating, are safe. The alternative is not.

But he's also hungry, and he finished the last of the peanut butter with the last of the bread.

So after finishing his coffee, he (reluctantly) throws on a jacket, grabs what little money he has from fixing his neighbor's TV and makes his way down several flights of stairs.

She's late.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" she mutters as she nearly plows through pedestrians. The wide, busy sidewalk is filled with locals and tourists alike, rushing to hail cabs or enter shopping plazas and markets, or like her, trying to meet a daily schedule.

She shifts from heel to heel impatiently at a crosswalk and adjusts the messenger bag on her shoulder while trying not to spill hot coffee from her to-go cup.

Traffic slows to a stop and she moves with the crowd, which disperses once reaching the other side of the street. She walks brusquely around the corner of the same shabby, brown brick apartment building as every morning, and waves to Emil, a graying man in his early seventies who has lived in the building for thirty-two years and counting. He never fails to greet her with a smile. Today he stands at the bottom of the stairs with a lit cigarette in hand.

"Running late today, Lesya?" he calls jovially in Romanian. His voice is almost drowned out by a loud bus horn sounding on the narrow street behind her.

"I overslept!" she returns over her shoulder as she passes by, and for a moment takes her eyes away from her path to give Emil another retreating wave. By the time she looks ahead, she's crashing into something hard and tripping and falling onto the pavement below.

Bucky passes his neighbor at the ground floor.

"Oh. Good morning, Luke," the older man greets as he grabs several envelopes from a metal lockbox—one of several that line the walls for their respective residents.

Bucky nods in response, would've kept on his way if Emil hadn't stopped him.

"Thanks again for your help, by the way," he says, and leans toward him with a conspiring grin and a glint in his eyes. "The picture is clear as a bell! It's much easier now to ignore my wife's yapping."

Bucky's mouth twitches at something like a smile, but doesn't quite complete it.

"I'll follow you out," Emil gestures to the large door ahead. "It's hot as hell, but I need a morning smoke."

Humidity hits them both the moment the door creaks open.

"Dear God," Bucky hears Emil mutter. The younger man rolls his shoulders and starts down the sidewalk. He's already down a block when he realizes he's missing his baseball cap.

He doesn't exactly need it…but it helps cover his face—his second most recognizable feature.

He turns and makes it back halfway toward the apartment building when he stops.

It shouldn't be a problem, he reasons. There are almost two million people in Bucharest.

His thoughts are disrupted by a loud bus horn that grates on his ears. He turns and sees a line of cars blocking a bus stop.

"I overslept!"

A feminine voice.

He looks ahead and barely falters when a figure barrels into his chest and stumbles to the floor. A woman, petite. He tenses subconsciously, but doesn't sense a threat. The contents of her messenger bag are half strewn onto the ground. A cup of coffee hit the curb and spilled into the street.

Brown eyes glare up at him.

"Hey! What the hell is your problem?" Her accent is slightly off, her Romanian only slightly strained.

His brows furrow at her question.

"Are you just going to stare at me? Stand there like the Chrysler Building?" she snaps. At the prod, he reaches out his right hand automatically.

"Sorry," he mutters. She gathers her belongings back into her leather bag and takes his offered hand and stands.

With her hand in his, he sees her falter slightly, her eyes growing wide. They flicker up to his and see something. What she sees, he doesn't know. But there's something about her face that stirs…something.

The eyes.

Then she blinks, and releases his hand to straighten up her clothes—dark jeans and navy blouse. Eclectic rings on her fingers, but otherwise pretty plain. She tucks a strand of dark reddish hair, formerly in her ponytail, behind her ear.

She looks up at his face again, indiscernible emotion crossing her features.

"Sorry, I guess," she says. "For running into you. But it didn't seem to, eh, hinder you much."

He shakes his head.

"It's fine."

She checks the time on her cell phone and her eyes widen.

"Okay, well I've got to get to work," she says, and continues on her way. Over her shoulder she calls to him, "Bye!"

Bucky stands there for a few seconds longer, slightly confused. Remembers his baseball cap and,

Fuck it.

He walks to a nearby market without it. He prefers outdoor markets. The different food stalls, smells, people—it's easier to blend in. Easier to pretend at being just another one of them in the throng of locals and tourists.

He rifles through plums but his thoughts drift to brown. Honey brown.

Those eyes.

There was recognition there. She'd seen his face before.

So had he, he thinks. Maybe.

But maybe not. His brain is still pretty fried.

After all, he only learned his real name three months ago.

"That's Lesya," Emil says, leaning back into his chair. His wife Lina pours stew into the bowl in front of Bucky. When his neighbor invited him over for dinner, he took it as an opportunity to get information (and a free meal). Nothing more.

He was here to disappear, not to make connections.

"Such a nice girl," Lina says. "Very sweet."

Bucky is skeptical, vividly remembering her glare and quick mouth.

"She is not from here originally," Emil says. "She says she came to Bucharest six years ago. From where, I don't know."

That starts to explain things, Bucky thinks. The name is Russian, not Romanian (he doesn't know how he knows that). Her accent, though fluent Romanian, held hints of what he recognized as familiar.

"She is…a little weird, that girl. She's got a little shop around the corner, where she does some kind of psychic readings," Lina adds. "She explained it to me once, but it all sounded too much like hocus pocus for me."

Emil nods with a smile. "Eh, but she's harmless. Passes by every morning and says hello." He looks over at Bucky, mischief crinkling the corners of his eyes.

"She's pretty, no?"

Bucky blinks.

"Have you a lady friend, Luke?" Lina asks. Her smile is similar to her husband's, but better contained.

"No," Bucky says. He feels uncomfortable, like this couple is questioning him as they would their son, single and available. He's starting to remember these things—social paradigms, discerning daily habits from potential threatening gestures.

It's been a learning curve from those first few weeks; after walking aimlessly through the woods, a pounding in his head he couldn't shake until he was slamming it repeatedly into a tree trunk to shake the vice grip on his mind loose.

What came out felt like the main wall inside crumbling, letting certain things through but not others. Not the bulk of his memories, at least.

Occasionally one manages to slip through by different sense triggers, like seemingly innocent questions about "lady friends."

"You just blew three bucks," a skinny blonde informs him, grinning. There's a pretty girl hanging on Bucky's arm.

"I know," he shrugs with a grin. The other guy shakes his head, but is clearly amused.

"Doesn't seem like it held you back any."

He knows the words, his own face, the Captain's on a smaller body…

"You're my friend."

"You all right?" Emil asks. Bucky blinks again and the memory fades, but not the feeling. Like it's something he should remember remembering.

"Yeah…yeah, I'm fine."

A week later, he runs out of food again. But he doesn't realize it until after he's spent the day cutting wood and unloading metal beams; Emil put in a good word for him at his nephew's construction company that's putting up a new apartment building a few blocks away.

Despite Bucky's stamina being well above a normal man's, his boss has been giving his crew the brunt of the heavy lifting for the few days that he's started working with them.

And it's been hard for him to sleep—dreams, memories, whatever they are, won't let him.

He stares into an empty refrigerator and sighs. All he really wants to do is shower and sleep, but there's a hole in the pit of his stomach that hasn't been filled since around noon, and it's almost sunset now.

He does shower, but also throws on a jacket (and his baseball cap) and walks to the nearest open market. It's still relatively busy though the sun is setting, the smell of meats cooking still in the air as people shop.

Bucky can't really afford meat yet, so it's rice and vegetables in his basket for now. When he gets his first real paycheck, that's the first thing he's going to splurge on.

Instead he turns over apples, searching for one or two that look ripe to him and aren't bruised. Then he spies one in the middle that looks just the right shade of red. Before he can grab it, another hand snatches it up.

He looks over in annoyance, only to falter in surprise when familiar brown eyes blink up at him.

"Oh, sorry." She smiles sheepishly and offers him the apple. "You saw it first."

He shrugs and picks up a different apple. Her smile turns genuine as she looks for another one.

"Sorry about the other day, too," she says. "Snapping at you, I mean."

"You were in a hurry."

He pays the vendor and moves onto the next stand for plums and peaches. She follows him.

"True," she replies easily. "And you made me spill my coffee."

He grabs three plums and attempts to move on from her, but she follows close behind with a basket.

"I don't like plums. They have a strange texture," she shakes her head.

"They're fine," he shrugs again. "Tend to be sweet."

"A sweet think like you..." he hears in his mind and furrows his brows in confusion. The words were familiar, an echo of something he can almost grasp.

"You like sweet things," she notes.

"Not really."

"Doesn't look like that's true."

He shoots her a look as they make their way to whole crates filled with cherries and grapes.

"You don't know me."

He watches her discreetly out of the corner of his eye to gauge her expression. There's something in her eyes that's warm, yet perceptive. Sharp, like his own.

"Maybe not," she says. "But I'm a good judge."

"Of fruit?" he remarks dryly.

She only smiles and starts picking at the cherries. "Of people."

He's on guard now; the recognition is there, but well-hidden. If she doesn't know who he is, she thinks she does. And it makes him wonder why snipers are not already trained on his back.

He scopes their surroundings while she picks out cherries, but there's nothing out of the ordinary—

"Here, try this." Her palm is upturned to his face and he leans back, glances at her in annoyance.

"No thanks."

"But they're good! Just try a couple," she insists, and continues to hold her hand up, parallel to his chest. Bucky almost rolls his eyes, but grabs a few cherries and pops them into his mouth. After chewing for a bit, his face involuntarily screws up in distaste. But then he feels bile rise in his throat.

He has to spit them out quick in a nearby trashcan and still pay the vendor. She stops his hand and hands over some money though, redeeming herself only slightly.

What the hell was that? he wonders.

He glares at her when she has to hold her hand to her mouth to stifle giggles.

"Sorry, didn't know you hated cherries so much," she says, and a knowing glint appears in her eyes. "But you're not in danger."

Immediately his gaze sharpens and his muscles tense, but otherwise he knows he'll seem outwardly calm.

"You just scoped the environment. Your body is coiled like a spring and your eyes keep shifting," she says. "Emil told you what I do for a living, yes?"

"He says you're some kind of gypsy."

She lets out a disbelieving chuckle. "I doubt he called me that. I'm one of the few he actually likes."

Bucky shifts his stance subtly, slides his hand into his pocket and fingers the edge of one of his large pocket knives. She doesn't have the right posture or gait to be recognizable as a trained operative (not from any group or style he's been trained to recognize). But that doesn't mean she isn't a threat.

"Then what are you?" he asks. Her brown gaze meets his for a moment, and she smiles a little.

"People call me a lot of different things," she says. "But I can tell when people are on edge, when they don't have to be."

He doesn't relax.

"Walk with me? I'm not quite ready to go home yet," she says, though her basket is full-to-bursting and already making a red mark on the crook of her arm. Bucky glances down at his own, then at her, dubious and wary.

"Fine, we'll walk towards your building. I'm headed that way anyway," she smiles, and continues walking down the busy sidewalk. Sighing, he follows. Curiosity, and the prospect of getting more information out of her, eggs him on.

"So Emil says you're new to this country."

"Yeah."

"What brought you here?" she asks.

"I could ask the same thing," he replies, thinking of the name Emil gave him that somehow doesn't match the woman beside him. Lesya. It's not particularly strong, but not very common (he looked it up at the local library).

For a moment she seems confused, until her eyes light up.

"Emil and Lina, they were kind neighbors to me when I first came here," she says. "I left Moscow a long time ago."

So his instincts were right. Fine.

"Why?"

"Why does anyone leave a familiar place," she asks him. She smiles, but to him her eyes look heavy. "A new start."

They're standing in front of Bucky's apartment building before he realizes.

"You didn't tell me your name," she says. He debates with himself.

He still believes she recognized him, but for some reason isn't threatened by him and hasn't called the police. She could still be HYDRA then, maybe formerly SHIELD. Or something else entirely. But he doesn't have to blow his cover, not while he can keep an eye on her until he can figure out who she really is and what she's doing in Bucharest. Even if it's nothing, even if she's a harmless immigrant, he can't afford to ignore anything.

"Luke," he replies, and heads up the stairs to the front door. Despite himself, he looks back and watches her walk away, until her figure disappears around the street corner.

Bucky looks skyward and sighs. Not even four months on his own and things are complicated.

Shit.

When his lack of sleep makes him late to work one morning, he starts setting his alarm half an hour earlier, gets up and makes shit coffee and leaves for work in his usual dark green jacket, despite the fact that it's in the high 80s outside and only getting hotter in the summer.

Consequently, he sees her coming around the corner at a brisk pace. Her morning coffee is in a stainless steel to-go mug this time.

"You're up early this morning," she says in greeting.

"You're on time," he retorts. She smiles wryly.

"I choose to get myself up early, otherwise I'll never open up the shop," she says. "Hard to make money when you're lying in bed."

But when she truly sees his face, her expression turns to one of concern. "You look tired."

"Long night," he replies. They fall into step with each other down the sidewalk.

"Coffee is the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning." She raises her mug, he raises a brow.

"Well, not the only thing," she amends. "Ice water to the face also works, but I prefer this."

"Both don't sound inviting," he says. He's had his fill of cold, which is half the reason he's willing to put up with the sweltering heat.

Bucky notices out of the corner of his eye when she looks over at him curiously.

"You don't like coffee?"

He shrugs. The caffeine does its job, but he can't help but think (with vague echoes of memory) that it should taste as good as it smells when it brews from the old, leaky coffee maker a previous tenant left behind. Instead, it tastes metallic and almost stale.

"You should try mine then. It's homemade, but if there's one thing I splurge on, it's good coffee," she says with a smile, and offers it to him. "Two spoonfuls of sugar and cream."

Bucky glances down at it, then back up at her.

Sugar. That's what he was missing. Not that he can afford it, anyway.

"I'm not gunna take your mug," he says.

"I'm not giving it to you. I'm giving you the coffee inside and lending you the mug," she clarifies with a grin. "My shop has a coffee maker. Besides, you need to be awake for all that heavy lifting."

How did she know…

Then he sighs. His neighbor needs to learn to keep other people's business to himself.

"Old man," he murmurs.

"Emil," she corrects, and again offers him the mug. Reluctantly, he takes it.

"Go ahead and try it if you want. I only took a couple sips."

It's better than the grounds he bought for next to nothing, but that's not saying much. The sugar and cream does make a difference though.

He nods anyway, and he can't help but discreetly continue watching her smile to herself.

They walk in silence the rest of the way to the construction site gate, but it's not unpleasant with the sounds of the morning traffic covering for them.

"What are you building?" she asks, looking over at the groups of men already working inside the gate.

"An apartment complex. We're setting the foundation," Bucky replies.

"Hmm. When it's done I may apply for one. It would bring me closer to work," she says.

"Is it much farther?" he asks.

"No. It's that flat building down there." She points across the street to the far corner of a four-way intersection. It's not quite on the corner, flanked by a bakery and a boutique. The sign is in glass, and without it being lit up it's hard to tell what it says even with his excellent vision. All he can make out from this distance is a large window with red closed curtains.

"Luke! Are you coming into work, or what?" a man from his crew calls. Andrei. He and Tom and Frank amble over, not strictly because of him, Bucky thinks.

"Yeah," he replies, annoyed at their crowding.

"I'll see you later," she says, and smiles as they both turn to go their separate ways. Or would have if Andrei hadn't clapped Bucky on his non-metallic shoulder.

"Now who is this? Your girlfriend?"

"No," Bucky says flatly. He itches to twist and break the hand clasped hard on his shoulder; half from instinct bred from his training, half because he doesn't particularly like the man. He often lies to their boss about his work hours, and is such a heavy smoker that you smell him long before you have to catch sight of him.

Tom and Frank aren't much better. They're hard workers, but they fall in line to Andrei whenever the man wants to cut corners on construction tasks. Bucky is nothing if not efficient, and is used to having no other choice but perfection, which means cutting corners is not an option either. No matter how appealing after a ten-hour day of cutting and hauling wood and working with power tools.

Bucky's eyes glance at her as she introduces herself to all of them.

"Nice to meet you all, but I do have to go," she says apologetically, and waves goodbye. Her eyes linger on Bucky. "Bye!"

All three men's gazes trail after her, but there's a glint in Andrei's that makes Bucky frown.

"Nice friend," he says, and claps Bucky's shoulder again. "Maybe next time she'll stick around longer."

Don't hold your breath, Bucky thinks, then immediately wonders why he thought it.

"We're not friends," he says instead. Andrei scoffs.

"Sure."

Their morning go on like this for the next few weeks. With each one he gathers more information about her, besides what research he's able to do on his own from the computers at a public library (he doesn't have a phone or technology of any kind in his apartment that can be traced). He gets a last name that comes up in a search of local vendors. Belevich.

Lesya Belevich.

She even has a website. From what he can tell, she's some kind of hack. Curiosities, Readings, and Aura Cleansings.

Somehow her online reviews are all nearly five out of five-stars, most of these people writing about how they had to keep coming back for how effective her "treatments" were.

What bullshit, he'd shaken his head. But whatever she's selling, these people are buying in spades.

There's nothing he can find about her background. Her family, where she lived, nothing. Not even a birth certificate on record of a Lesya Belevich that matches.

That's how he finds himself by the storefront one late night after work, the sign Curiosities, Readings, and Aura Cleansings already turned off. But she hasn't closed the curtains yet; he can see her from the corner of the display window where he hides just out of view from the outside. She's locking up the glass cases by the main desk and cash register, full of jewelry and nick knacks and other pointless crap, tidying up shelves of books and other displays of old records and cassettes.

Bucky leans back for a moment.

This place is more like a shitty thrift store, he thinks. When he looks back though, the curtains are already closed. Damn it.

The door shoves open, but by then he's already walking down the sidewalk with his hood of his jacket over his head.

"Hey, don't tell me you're just gunna window shop!"

At the sound of her voice, Bucky lets out a long breath. When he looks back, she's standing there holding the door open with a hand on her hip, smirking.

Against his better judgment, he turns back and follows her inside. "You knew I was there."

She points up at a small TV on the main desk facing away from the window. It shows a surveillance visual of the sidewalk just outside the store.

"I'm no idiot," she winks. "I've got another one in the back so I can monitor who comes in when I'm in the middle of a reading."

"No one else works here?" Bucky asks as he looks around. It's a congested little space, filled with useless junk, he thinks—old lamps and clocks, shelves of books on the wood-paneled walls. It smells like incense, and whatever those purple flowers are that she has in a vase by the register. There's another door though, towards the back where there must be another room.

"Just me," she says. Want a beer?"

"No thanks," he shakes his head. Not that it would affect him any, but he won't take the chance that she adds narcotics or poison to it.

Behind the desk, she pulls a bottle out of a mini fridge for herself, and she shrugs. "Okay. I have to ask though, why you were lurking outside? Were you going to mug me?"

"No," he shoots back.

"Are you some kind of predator?"

"No."

Then Bucky quiets, thinking about how he wants to go about this. With the surveillance evidence she has, she could call the police if she really wanted to. She doesn't seem threatened, or even nervous by his presence (which is hard to believe), but her posture and focus isn't shifting. She isn't visibly trembling or sweating.

"I thought our morning walks were nice, but maybe I'm getting on your nerves," she grins. "Or maybe you're a bit curious about my little slice of Bucharest?"

After a few seconds more deliberating, he finally asks, "What's that back room for?"

She glances over and back at him, and smiles. "All right. I guess I'll show you, but I can tell you're a skeptic."

Bucky rolls his eyes and follows her into the room after she unlocks it. It's small, with a soft-looking carpet on the floor and pillows. It smells earthier in here, probably more from the large candles she lights around the room with a lighter she grabbed from her pocket.

She didn't shut the door behind them, and he's grateful for it. This already looks way too weird for him.

"Sit down if you like. I know, it's all very cliché, but tourists expect it to be like the movies," she says as she plops down on the floor, sitting with her legs folded underneath her. "I like a bit of theatrics, personally."

"Is that what this is?" he asks her warily, and with a bit of warning in his voice as he sits down across from her. Her dark eyes are still perceptive, and knowing.

"Not even remotely."

"What is it then?"

"I try to help people," she says. Bucky doesn't realize at first how captivated he his by how honest she sounds, or is trying to sound.

"Even if they don't know it, they come in here looking for something," she continues. "I listen to them, to their stories, their pain, whatever they decide to trust me with. I don't promise to fix whatever's broken."

"But you charge them for trying," he says, a not-so-subtle accusation. He saw the prices for readings on the website. He can't be sure how competitive the fees are, but whatever people get out of this, it can't be worth paying for.

"I'm not cheating anyone," she retorts, and then with a gleam in her eyes, "If I was, I wouldn't be about to give you a free reading."

"The hell are you talking about anyway?" Bucky shakes his head. Suddenly he feels real stupid, coming here and sitting in front of some gypsy woman about to practice some kind of hoodoo on him. Maybe a little part of him is curious (the part that got him here in the first place), but he isn't interested in lies or tricks.

"If you really want to know, you're just going to have to go along with me on this." She offers him her hands. Her small, feminine hands with long, dark red-painted nails.

With one final glance up at the surveillance TV in the top corner of the wall, he gives her his glove-covered hands. If she was expecting him to take them off she doesn't say anything about it, but she asks him to close his eyes and breathe evenly. He does reluctantly, his awareness no less sharp.

"Do you often have anxiety?" she asks softly. He thinks, about the nights he wakes up in a cold sweat and the hours he spends trying to forget what he dreamed.

"Sometimes." He hears her breathe deeply, and he wonders (not for the first time) just what the hell he's doing here. Again, he feels stupid, and wary.

"Do you dream?" His brows furrow at the question.

"Yeah," he admits eventually.

"The weird ones we all have, like a bad acid trip?" she asks (and he has a feeling she's grinning), "Or are they more realistic…"

Images pull to the forefront of his mind involuntarily.

"The Asset can't be seen."

Bucky doesn't realize how he tightens his grip on her hands.

"Are your dreams like memories," she asks, "that you can feel them like the first time you were there?"

He hadn't missed, but it's not a confirmed kill.

"The Asset can't be seen," they told him. Except if he's required to give chase.

The target tries to slip out the back of the rickety building, down the fire escape. He moves—jumps from the roof of the next building over and lands yards behind. He follows, snow barely crunching underneath his boots, and yet the target is just slightly faster. Even wounded and dragging the hand of someone smaller (possible second target), a dark braid of hair flies behind her. He'll wait to shoot until he can shepherd the target into a more contained area.

She makes it easy for him by ducking into an alleyway.

Sloppy, he thinks.

And the moment he opens his eyes he breathes in sharply, letting go of the hands he was clenching so tightly and standing in one fluent motion.

"Are you all right?" she asks, staring up at him with a frown. He reads concern in her eyes, and a little surprise, but mostly just concern. He takes effort to control his breathing and notices how she rubs her likely aching hands. He gets up swiftly and exits the small room, finding himself back in the shop front.

"W-Wait!" she calls after him and follows him out. Through a gap in the window curtains he sees how pitch black it is outside.

She hesitates to grab his arm, in the end stopping short of it when he stops at the door.

"Look, whatever happened, if I made you uncomfortable—"

He grabs her shoulder, suddenly and hard enough to elicit her small gasp.

"What did you do?" he asks sharply. Her eyes blink and grow wide with surprise.

"Do what? I barely started."

Bucky searches her face for any tell, any shift or shake or deviation. When he doesn't find anything, he relaxes and lets go of her, feeling slightly guilty when her hand flies to her shoulder.

"Never mind…I'm sorry."

She seems to recover herself, letting go of her own shoulder to eye him with concern. "Okay…well, if you want a rain check, let me know."

She smiles easily then, something that kind of annoys him. But as he walks out into the street, still alive with nightlife even though it's coming up on midnight, he wonders what the hell just happened.

In the end, Bucky doesn't learn much from the experience. Only that it takes less than he thought to trigger things he doesn't want to think about. Nothing about the woman he's investigating. But from the woman herself he learns quite a bit. She loves sleeping in, watching old movies and documentaries, prefers listening to music on a record player, and loves pastries of any kind. She also lives alone.

"I'm thinking about getting a cat," she says, and hands him his cup of coffee before sipping at hers. She's gotten into the habit of bringing one for him every morning.

"Don't they shed?" he asks. The flash of memory comes without warning—a grey and white stray that begged hungrily every morning, rubbing herself against his legs when he brought out a saucer of milk. He wasn't allowed to bring her inside the house though…

"I won't have my new curtains ruined!" A woman's voice he can't place…

" Well yes, but it's either that or stare at my empty bed, my single toothbrush and two dining chairs for eternity."

Bucky comes back to himself with a glance in her direction that almost reflects his amusement.

"Your place fits two chairs?" he asks. She shoots him a dry look.

"Ha-ha," she mocks.

"Dropping him off for us again, Lesya?" Andrei asks when they get to the site gate. He's standing outside of it, smoking.

"That shit will kill you one day," she says, waving the acrid smell of smoke out of her general proximity, without success.

"Not if operating the forklift kills me first," he retorts. "Frank fucked with it yesterday while I was on break and messed up the gears."

"Only 'cause you stole my new tools, jackass," the other man called from inside the gate.

Andrei rolls his eyes, but he smiles with a wink, "I only borrowed. Hid 'em under his hard hat."

She looks uncertain, but takes his word for it.

"I've got to go. I'll see you, Luke," she says, and turns to leave.

"What, no goodbye kiss?" Andrei asks. Her retreating smile is ambiguous at best.

Andrei laughs at Bucky's flat look.

"I'm kidding, my friend. That stoney face is impressive though," Andrei says. But something flickers in his eyes, and Bucky sees it, just for a moment and it's gone.

Why do I care?

For all he knows, she could be a spy, or a former SHIELD operative. She could be working for any number of governments that want him killed, or at the very least incarcerated.

Who is she?

It's the only question he really cares about. If anyone impedes that, he'll deal with them however he has to. He has to wonder though, if he's putting too much mystery and borderline obsession in one woman.

That day he's one of the last ones to leave the site. It's usually Andrei and Tom who lock up the main gate, but the man claimed he hurt his back and told Tom to recruit Bucky if he really needed help.

It was dark by the time the two left in opposite directions heading home. There's not that much traffic and fewer pedestrians.

He passes a restaurant and the pleasant savory smells hit his nose. He stops for a moment and considers going inside, maybe get something to-go since the last thing he wants to do is cook. He's able to afford it now that he's getting paid (under the table but still getting paid).

But he pauses when his advanced hearing picks up something faint. A distant conversation. One—two voices. He tilts his head, realizes it's coming from the alleyway up ahead.

"Just...don't scream. Unless you can't help it."

Realization hits him and his muscles automatically tense.

"Stop."

Bucky starts at a dead run, hesitates only at the edge of the dark alley when he sees her behind a bulk of a man standing in front of her, his body swaying until her eyes—glowing unnaturally amber in the darkness—catch Bucky's.

It's a moment of distraction that lets the man be rid of whatever was controlling him. He charges forward with a solid grip to her arm, and a backhanded slap that catches her right below the eye and a kick to the ribs that sends her the rest of the way to the floor. But that's all he gets in before Bucky has him by the shirt and throws him at the opposite wall. His back hits hard enough that he doubles over coughing and laughing.

"I have the worst luck," he grins, and throws a punch that Bucky could've seen coming with his eyes closed. He blocks with his left arm, which fractures Andrei's. The other man recoils holding his arm. Bucky...doesn't want to kill him.

He doesn't want to add to the faces he sees at night, to continue being used by them.

"Gah…what the fuck?" he hisses, but his eyes widen when Bucky's foot makes contact with his sternum. He crashes back into the wall, but Bucky's human hand keeps him up. The other man's eyes widen at seeing a flash of silver under Bucky's sleeve.

I don't want to do it anymore…

But he can't be found, either.

It only takes one more solid punch with solid metal and it's over when Andrei's broken skull hits the ground. Bucky stares down at the ground, feeling numb.

"Thank you…but you didn't have to kill him."

Bucky looks over his shoulder at her. She's holding her side and he knows she's in pain, just like he knows she saw exactly what happened, how it happened. But it's not fear in her eyes, just gratitude and regret for the death in front of her.

"You blew your cover as much as I did mine," he says. She sighs and stares down at the body.

"Someone will see him here."

Bucky looks around until his gaze catches a sewer hatch.

Her apartment isn't what he imagined, but it makes sense. It's bigger than his, with a dining table in the kitchen, a cluttered living room, and a narrow hallway that probably has a bathroom and bedroom. There aren't many decorations, but there are plenty of books and magazines and newspapers, and a whole shelf full of DVDs and VHS tapes.

Bucky guides her over to the small, gray couch and asks her if there's ice in the freezer.

"Top left," she says, smiling gratefully. He comes back with a wad of ice chunks swathed in a hand towel he found in the kitchen and hands it to her. She presses it to her swollen cheek.

"The game is over then, I guess," she says with a hollow smile.

"You knew who I was the second you saw me," he states.

"I knew your face," she replies. "I know the world is afraid of you."

"And you're not?" he asks. She looks up at him thoughtfully.

"Not at the moment."

His expression sharpens slightly.

"Then who are you?" he finally asks. She inhales deeply, lets her hand fall to her lap, and meets his eyes.

"The same people who used you, used me too," she says in Russian. "My name is Milena Malikov, and thanks to my father and HYDRA's unit in the Soviet Union, I'm an empath."

AN: Woo! That was long. It's surprisingly difficult to write this version of Bucky in-character, since he doesn't really remember who he is yet and his brain is still pretty fuzzy. So sorry if he's OOC at all, it's my first Avengers/Captain America story.

The OC I introduced isn't based on any Marvel character. Believe me, I looked and couldn't find one that I thought would match the MCU and still be what I wanted in relation to Bucky. But there we go, chapter one.