The Winter | Bucky Barnes Fanfiction |

Chapter 6

Bucky had a lot of questions for me the next morning. He had obviously let our adventure rattle off to him over and over again until the next time we saw each other.

The whole ordeal had taken a lot out of me, and I was perched at the counter with a glass of orange juice where my tea usually was. Although I wasn't feeling up to it, I was answering his questions as best I could.

"So we're not traveling through time?"

"No," I ran a hand through my hair and rested my head on my hand, "I can nearly recreate a memory. It's sort of an illusion. I can change whatever I want based off of the memory I've found."

"Right," Bucky bit off a chunk of the toast he had made for himself.

"It's a hard topic to grasp, so I understand your confusion. Steve and I had to sit down a couple of times so I could remind him that the things I do aren't all real."

"But yesterday, that memory, it was real? Wasn't it?"

"It was," I rubbed the space between my eyes before situating myself again. "That version of myself died along time ago. I got interested in past life regression while I was in college. Originally, I had thought it was just bunch of influence, and then I got a glimpse of myself. Happy. Young. In love."

"But the house is the same," Bucky took another bite.

"Yes," I caught his enthusiastic gaze and I gave him a sly smile, "You can't imagine how ecstatic I was that it was still standing. However, that wasn't the first memory of my life. Everything came back like shards, or pieces to a jigsaw puzzle. I learned to recreate my own memories, and I was able to do it more efficiently for others. I was always able to see peoples memories, but only the ones they were thinking of. I was't able to pick and choose what we saw, and I wasn't able to have an effect on the people in the memory. It was more like a picture show than it was a video game."

"You're not older than me, are you?" Bucky's eyes narrowed at me from across the counter.

I laughed a bit, "No. I don't believe I am. I think I just have an old soul. Why? Do older women scare you?"

"Not at all," Bucky flashed me a smile back. "So how did you start working with Shield?"

"Nick Fury found me. I'm not sure how he did it, but I had just graduated with my bachelors the University of Pennsylvania and he came and talked to me about being a consultant. I wasn't too sure at first. I still wanted my doctorate, and he assured me that I could finish my schooling, I would be just be asked to assist in ways that only I could. I decided to help, and then I worked with them full time I had to be about twenty two when I started with them."

"Are you from Pensilvania?"

"Hm?"

"You went to school there, I just figured you were from there."

"Oh! No, I'm from Maine. It's where my father decided to retire, he enjoyed lobster enough to buy a house there. He was from New York, and my mother was born in Boston."

"Were they like you?"

"No, I don't think so. My mother could always tell when it was going to rain, but other than that no. My mother did have family that fled the witch trials, but that doesn't particularly mean anything. Hysteria doesn't often find real witches."

"It seems like a pretty good answer to me," Bucky commented. He had long finished the toast, and I downed the last of my orange juice in one large gulp.

"Perhaps," I picked up our dishes and put them in the sink.

"Will we keep working today?" Bucky asked. I had started to feel faint as I rinsed off the glasses. Barnes was behind me in what felt like a second. He supported me with one arm and caught the glass in the other before it shattered in the sink.