Starfall

Haircut

"Hi? Hello? Are you alive? Agent Moonface?"

Kiki opened her eyes groggily. There was a man she didn't know prodding her. "Hey. Hey! I'm awake now. You can stop."

"Oh, thank god. I was very scared your friends would think I'd killed you. And then they would let Loki kill me. Again." He stood up and offered a hand to Kiki to shake. "I'm Agent Coulson. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Hey, Coulson. I'm Kiki. Only people I don't like call me Moonface. Except Lee, of course."there was lots of people standing behind him, staring at her. "Who are they and why are they staring at me?"

"That's Agent Mackenzie, though most call him Mack. There's Agent Rodriguez, Agent Fitz, Agent Simmons, Agent May and Agent Johnson."

"Coulson, you really need to stop introducing us through our 'proper agent names'. It's offputting," Agent Johnson told him. To Kiki, she said, "Please, just call me Daisy."

"Elena."

"Mack."

"May."

"Fitz."

"And Simmons. He likes to make us all sound super professional, but we are all friends. And it's nice to have another British person here. It can get extremely stifling around all these Americans."

Kiki laughed.

"If you're done nattering, we have a debriefing to do." Coulson interrupted. Kiki felt the helplessness return as she thought of the time she couldn't remember. "I need you to tell me what happened."

"That's the thing, Coulson, I can't remember. I don't remember a thing past Bucky giving me the safety bag."

"But that was three weeks ago?"

Kiki blinked in surprise. Three weeks?

"You remember nothing?" He looked to Simmons as if to check that was what had happened. How would she know?

"She's not lying. It's the truth." That was the moment she noticed the wires attached to her head. That must be some kind of lie detector.

"We need to get in touch with Bucky. He was handling her." Daisy suggested.

"Yeah, I had to check in with him regularly." She heard a faint buzzing coming from her pocket. "Speak of the devil." She held up the radio.

"Ki? You there?" Bucky's voice came crackling out of the radio. "Ki? Answer me!"

"Chill, dude, it's all good. I'm here on the jet with Coulson and his team. They wanna ask you some questions." She sat up slowly and winced as she felt a twinge in her side. "Ow."

"Do you need medical attention?" Coulson asked, worry in his eyes.

"Nah, I'm fine. It's probably just a scrape."

"Ki, let them check you over."

"Shit!" She hadn't realised Bucky could still hear her. She quickly pushed the transmit button again to stop the sound and could practically hear Bucky rolling his eyes.

"He's right, though. We should probably look at that. If you don't remember we can't know for sure if its okay." Coulson reasoned.

"Fine." She lay back down again and Simmons removed the lie wires from her head. She felt dizzy and-

Oh, that was a lot more blood than she was expecting.

Simmons looked up at Coulson. "We need to get her to a medical facility. Bucky will kill all of us if she dies."

May nodded. "There's a military hospital we can land at nearby. I'll take us down."

"It's not that bad. It doesn't really hurt. Just get me to my sister, Sol, and she'll patch me up." Kiki protested. She tried to stand up but Fitz pushed her back down.

"Woahhh, you need a little more than patching up. Your side has been split open."

She smiled faintly. "My sister's a healer. Family magic."

☾

"Oh my GOD. You JUST got OUT of a HOSPITAL BED. And now, THREE WEEKS after you're cleared for missions, YOU'RE BACK IN ONE. I can't BELIEVE this. Someday you are gonna KILL me with worry. AHHHHH."

She could hear Bucky before she saw him. He was striding down the corridor to her room.

"I can't leave you for HALF AN HOUR. You lost your FUCKING MEMORY in under HALF AN HOUR. And got STABBED. BY WHO KNOWS WHAT."

It was getting louder- and closer. Crap.

"It could have been INFECTED or POISONED or SOMETHING WORSE." Then he flung open the curtain and she smiled weakly up at her. He sighed and stopped shouting. "I just don't want you to die, Ki. I get worried."

"I'm sorry. Do you know what happened?" Her memory hadn't returned at all – and it was worrying her. What had happened in the last 3 weeks that she didn't know about?

"You went in with Lee and her team, they came out. There was a bomb - that's why you stayed behind. But then the floor fell in on top of you and that when you remember."

"That makes sense. Do you think it was because something hit my head?" She wondered.

He nodded. "Quite probably. And you are not going on any missions for a looooong time now."

She sat up quickly, and regretted it a second later. "But I can't just sit there. I want to help people – I want to help Lee. She's lost a lot, Barnes."

"So have you. And she'd feel worse if she lost you too." He turned away, hand resting on the curtain around her bed. "Rest up, we're leaving soon."

☾

A flash of light.

Her ears were ringing. That was close – too close. She had only been thrown back, but she could see others around her that had been caught in the blast.

There was a woman – Crescentia – there. The name popped into her head, like she knew her. Crescentia was laughing. She turned to the man next to her and used a finger to lift his chin. Kiki couldn't see his face, it was just out of sight. But even through the ringing in her ears she heard what she whispered to him.

"Kill her."

☾

What was that?

"Ki, are you okay? You spaced out for a minute there." Bucky was waving a hand in front of her face, grinning. Was that a memory? It seemed... dangerous, somehow. She wouldn't tell him, not yet.

"I was just thinking." Later. When she had figured out what happened. Then she would tell him. She looked up and blinked in surprise. "Did you cut your hair?"

He blushed and nodded. It looked really nice. "It was based on something I saw online." That explained why it looked familiar to her. In Wakanda, while she was recovering, she had been scrolling through her phone and there was one video she had paused on, turned around, and told him to look at the nice haircut. She hadn't thought he would actually cut his hair, but it was nice he had taken to heart what she had said. Some good old friendly advice.

"Suits you."

Definitely friendly advice