Finding Memories

Chapter Two

The next morning, Bucky was hesitant to knock on her door. He didn't want to overstep the one space that she had to herself.

Though it wasn't like he was barging in, yet again, he knew what it meant to have a place of peace and how easily it can lose its sense of amity the more traffic it received.

So he waited. He waited in the lounge area, then he waited in the kitchen, then he waited in the den/ library. Then he waited back in the kitchen again.

He checked his watch and saw it was 7 in the morning. He had already been up for two hours and had done nothing useful besides reading up on the reports Nat gave him over and over again with no change in information.

They would just have to wait until someone was able to decode more of the encrypted drive they had taken.

"I'll be ok. I've had worse."

Bucky turned at the voice he was becoming more familiar with.

"Are you sure? We can go back to the med bay and have them take a look. It looks like it's bruised up pretty nice," another voice came from the hallway he was eavesdropping on.

"It's fresh," she replied shyly, not caring for the attention. It's a lot different from the attention she was used to and a change of intention can be hard to adjust to. "In a few hours, you won't even be able to see it."

They finally came from around the corner and Bucky stood up from his chair, closing the book he had zoned out of multiple times.

"Hey, Barnes," Nat smiled with Y/N by her side. "How long have you been up?"

"A couple of hours. Was doing some research," he replied absentmindedly. His eyes immediately searched for the bruising he heard them talking about. It was hard to miss even when she was actively trying to keep him from seeing it as she looked anywhere in the room but at him. "What happened?" he asked anyway as he was shocked by the black eye she now had.

She looked at Nat and then at him.

"I had a nightmare. Fell off and hit my head on the nightstand," she replied sheepishly.

In truth, she was used to being tied down to a table when she had nightmares, so silk sheets and a bed with no restraints made it easy for her to find herself on the floor the next morning and a black eye for proof of her night terrors.

He looked at the damage as best he could as she tried to cover it with her hair and not bring attention to it.

Before he could make any other comment on it, she excused herself to the kitchen.

"She doesn't like attention, I can tell you that much," Nat whispered as they watched her carefully move around the modern kitchen. Not sure where to start as she had only been there one other time and Bucky was the chef. "Maybe just don't mention it or try to make her feel better about it. She's pretty adamant on not discussing how she got it."

"She doesn't need to say anything. I can imagine what she saw last night," Bucky replied with a deep sigh. "Now let's see what she thinks of on-the-go food."

"What are you doing with her, Barnes? She's barely accustomed to this palace, you better not be taking her to an overpopulated place. She's already on edge about the fact she knows nothing about herself," Nat gave him a raised eyebrow.

"What kind of person do you take me for?" he rolled his eyes. "Obviously I'm not going to put her in a high-stress situation, one day after waking up from a two-day sleep and everything else she went through before."

"I know," Nat chuckled, patting his back. "I'm just making sure." They paused to watch her as she went about the kitchen inspecting appliances and items. "She seems like she'll make it out the other side of the tunnel though," Nat whispered. "She's got some spunk in her, I can tell. We just got to fish it out."