How do you heal?

Chapter 90: I Never Meant To Lose You

"FUCK!" Annie screamed into the void of her room as she slammed her phone onto the desk and tears flowed down her face.

"No luck?" Pietro asked from the couch.

Annie's necklace with her wedding ring had broken sometime while she was in Ohio over Thanksgiving and she had called every place she had been while there with no luck. Loki, her mother, the bar, even the gas station they had stopped at on the way to the Easton house. "Nothing." She said and buried her face in her arms, tears falling onto the desk.

Pietro stood and walked over to her. They had been searching for the ring for a week and had no leads and he knew she was near breaking. So he made her stand and took her into his arms.

"I'm sorry, Солнышко. I know how much it meant to you and we will keep looking."

Annie pushed her face into his chest. "How could I lose it? What the fuck is wrong with me? I'm such a fucking idiot!"

"Солнышко, it was an accident. The chain broke. You can't blame yourself. It will turn up."

"Hey Barnes," Nat said cheerily as she answered the phone about a week after Thanksgiving. "How's Indiana?"

Bucky couldn't help but smile as he replied. "It's good. Turns out small town life ain't all that bad and I'm pretty good at being an uncle. Who would have thought kids like to hang from a metal prosthetic?" Nat could hear the joy in her friend's voice as he spoke. "How's everything there?"

"Good, still quiet on the mission front with Fury and Hill taking all the small potatoes stuff. I guess Fury has a new team in operation right now and they are doing pretty well."

Bucky started to ask how the holiday had been when he heard a loud scream in the background. "What was that?"

"Sorry," Nat said in a hushed voice. "I'm walking down the hall to the elevator, background noise."

"It sounded like someone's pretty pissed. Everything okay?" Nat was quiet for a moment and Bucky could tell she didn't want to explain whatever caused the noise. "Nat, who was that?"

"Annie." She said softly and he could hear the elevator ding and all other noise faded away as he assumed she stepped on. "She went home for Thanksgiving and her necklace broke. She lost her wedding ring and is having a melt down. No one can find it."

"Shit." Bucky remembered the first time he saw the ring around her neck when she had come back from Ohio after his episode, the night he kissed her. From that day on she wore it and used it as a touch stone whenever she was upset or nervous or uncomfortable, which was often for her. She's got to be a mess. "Do they have any idea when she lost it?"

The elevator dinged again and Bucky could hear the click of Nat's boots as she walked to her room. "Best they can guess is at a bar. Her mom has a few pictures of her with it on from dinner that night and a friend posted one from the bar that shows a glint but it's hard to tell. My best guess is it fell off that night and someone picked it up and pocketed it."

"Have you looked into it at all?" He asked, hopeful the master spy had laid some groundwork for what he was about to do.

Bucky could hear the 'duh' tone in her voice when she replied. "What do you think, Barnes?"

"Good, send me what you've got."

"You sure? I mean you're supposed to be taking time for yourself, getting to know your family."

"Yeah. Can't go too long without a mission, Romanoff. You know what they say about idle hands. Plus I'm only a few hours from her parents house, I can make it there and back in a day. Don't want to wear my welcome out here too fast by being around all the time anyways."