Inspired by (Fe) by Tsume_Yuki on AO3.

This story is an attempt to expand my writing with a focus on Bucky/Winter, and Tony. It will include DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder with Bucky and Winter which was the main idea behind this story.

I've done a complete overhaul of this story. Now instead of creating a completely new book for each story, they will all be a part of this one. Chapters will be labelled for each one correctly. There will be eight books, for each new one, the chapter title will signify it, much like this chapter title. They will also include the summary, again like below.

Solar Path saga

Book 1: Dawn

Summary: The Asset finds himself waking in Afghanistan with no Handler but then stumbles upon Toni Stark as she makes her great escape. Surely this must be his new Handler? So Toni returns to America with an electromagnet in her chest and a new metal-armed bodyguard.

Pre-slash

The Asset—The Soldat—The Winter Soldier had never awoken in a desert before. Never awoken to a lack of a handler before.

(At least that's what his mushy hole-ridden brain could inform him of.)

His eyes scanned the mountain and burning camp and he spotted something east to him.

He finds a young woman there, in the wreckage of a broken and crude invention. It looks to have been a kind of accident he'd be ordered to create; to make it look like an accident happened. He'd done that before.

Only she's alive inside the pieces of metal still attached to her and her half-buried body.

She looked up at him, cheeks a blistering red from the sun and minor cuts covering her body, a possibly broken arm, and a strange star-like glow in the centre of her chest.

She has large umber doe eyes(familiarfamiliarfamiliar) as she gapes up at him. She looks partly out of it, her head bleeding and cheeks hollower then the Asset thinks she should have.

Then she speaks.

"Wha? What's someone like you doing out here?"

He stared blankly down at her with dull stormy blue-grey eyes.

"Well." She coughed and grimaced, sticking her tongue out and quietly complained about sand. She shook her head and focused back on him. "Guess us none-desert folk should stick together."

He didn't react, just watched as she pulled herself free but didn't stand, seemingly unable to. She grinned up at him, teasingly saying: "Hey, think it's possible if you could carry me till I can feel my legs?"

A nod, her words were taken seriously; the joke going over the Asset's head.

"Understood."

She yelped as he lifted her, placing her on his back. Her arms instinctively wrapping around his shoulders and her legs wrapped around his waist.

The Asset walked on under the blistering heat.

The order had been given after all, and he once again has purpose because surely this must be his mission. His new Handler.

He's never served a woman before, but there is no one else around, no other living thing that could possibly mean they're his Handler.

It's only logical to the Asset that this woman, a young woman who couldn't have been any older than mid-twenties, was his new Handler. So he must protect her so that he can serve her.

"Toni! Oh, thank God, Toni!"

Struggling to stay awake, Antonia Peggy Stark, blinked blearily up at the dark-skinned man rushing over. She's awake enough to acknowledge that one of the hands holding her thighs was different—something was wrong with the hand, something wrong with the shoulder—the entire arm.

She blinked, her mushy mind recalling the fact that, yeah, her darkly dressed savour had a metal arm.

Her mind still active and whirling with ideas, wonders of how it works, even in her exhaustion.

She could do better, she thinks, knows she could do better.

But Toni's attention was brought back to the present when tall and dark and possibly handsome steps back, body tensing and ready to defend even when she knows he's as dehydrated and exhausted as she is.

Toni recognises the voice, however, the tone and the way her name's called, and she warbles, reaching with one hand towards Rhodey with his name on the tip of her tongue but her throat too sore to say it.

When she wakes up, she's on an aircraft, tall and dark is still there and she reaches out before she even registers it and pats his knee, slurring: "I'm gonna have to keep you, dude."

He just stared down at her, expression giving nothing away.

Antonia Stark—Toni as she very much preferred—left Afghanistan with an electromagnet in her chest and a strange companion by her side.

She waved off Rhodey's offer for a bed, her hearting pounding loudly—louder then she'd ever felt or heard it—at the thought of sleep, at the idea of laying on a shitty cot like the one in the cave.

She can't.

She closes her eyes, even while awake, and can see—relives—everything that happened. The torture, leering looks, the cold, and unending fear. She sees Yinsen laying there, bloodied and dying all over again.

But she accepts the water, taking slow sips as to not shock her system.

And she also sits beside tall and dark and even then her mind is whirling with ideas for his arm. Perhaps it's a distraction…

Oh, who was she kidding—it was totally a distraction for not letting her mind submerge itself into the rabbit hole of the last three months.

Drawing in a breath, one that doesn't burn the back of her throat because of the heat, Toni turned her eyes onto the semi-familiar figure.

Coming too after landing—crash landing more like—the suit, she wasn't sure how long she'd been out of it. Maybe a few seconds, or a few minutes. She's not sure, but what she does know is that she'd come around with a sprained wrist, several minor injuries, and a terrifying figure looming over her.

At first, she panicked—it had to be a terrorist, there had been a chance she'd not gotten them all—but she took in the clothes he wore. They were dark. Too dark because black absorbed heat and that was a no-go in a desert, especially for those that lived in said desert.

It was a strange comfort because of the simple colour of his clothes. But he wore dark lensed goggles pushed up onto his forehead and a mask that covered the lower portion of his face.

But, in her delirious state, she hadn't noticed how empty his eyes were. The conversation they'd had—as one-sided as it was—is a blur in her mind but now she can recall his eyes the clearest.

No doubt sensing her stare, her savour turned to her.

Before she could stop herself, Toni blurted: "Okay tall, dark and possibly handsome. Please let you be, I mean, not that I could have a problem if you weren't but I just gotta see what I'm working with, yeah?"

Her throat burns and Toni's quite positive her tongue might stop working altogether soon because talk required energy and she was running low on that front.

He doesn't say anything, his gaze heavy and seemingly peering into her very soul.

"C'mon, take off the mask, I gotta know so I can plan ahead, darling."

She tries not to focus on his arm, but in the dim light of the overhead plane lights, it gleamed, practically calling to her. She wanted to drool over it, such a piece of art, even she could admit that. Was it connected to his nerves? Can he feel some sort of touch? How advances are its capabilities?

Toni would be vibrating if she had the energy. Her body itched with her desire to find out but knew the advancement would be rude. Touching his prosthetic without permission could potentially be traumatising.

She knew that if anyone asked about the mini-arc reactor in her chest, she'd feel that way.

So yeah, she'd not going to be grabbing at his arm any time soon.

Then, ever so slowly, he reached up and removed the goggles and mask. There are pressure indents on his forehead from the goggles, the temporary lines looking funny—those sort of things had always been funny to Toni, she had no idea why.

Toni smiled, a slow but easy one when she finally gets to see his face. Her minds whirls with something she can't quite place, she blames that on her exhaustion. But she knows she's never met the man nor seen him anywhere else.

She thinks.

But Toni does know that tall, dark, and handsome is a definite fit for him.

Toni thinks she might start drooling for another reason besides his arm.

Instead, she holds out the canteen of water she'd been given. "You haven't had anything to drink yet, have you?"

He takes the cup without any more prompting.

Toni counts that as progress and holds back a grin in excitement.