Hello Sergeant (Bucky Barnes)

bring it on

Sarah's POV

James brought his metal hand up to stroke my face before setting me down on my feet and letting go of me. He walked past Jace, who was digging in his bag, studiously not looking at either of us. I walked over to him and sat down next to his bag. He glanced at me, but was ignoring me as he found a shirt and pulled it on.

"I'm sorry if I did something to make you mad at me, Jace. I thought Nat said she'd talk to you, so I don't know what you want to hear from me." He didn't even look at me, so I continued talking, knowing he was listening. "So I went for a run this morning to try and figure some things out. Clint and Maria were in already when I got to Shield."

"You ran to the Triskelion this morning? That's like 20 miles from here." He looked at me incredulously. It wasn't often I did things that reminded him I wasn't just human, so when I did, he noticed.

"15, but yeah. It's only a 45 minute run for me, Jace. Steve's faster; he can do it in less than 30 minutes and not even be winded." He gave me a look and I got back on subject. "Nat said she told you what she expected me to do, right?" I pushed, needing to hear him acknowledge me.

He finally nodded, "Yeah. I mean, the way Nat said it made it sound so reasonable, and it kind of made sense since he came here for you in the first place."

"So what's with the silent treatment?" I said, looking at him with a confused expression. "I thought we talked about this already and you knew -"

"I just wasn't expecting to see you making out with him in front of me," he cut me off, his voice low and harsh. He met my eyes and let me see what he was really feeling; I wasn't prepared for the angry accusation in his eyes. "What are you going to tell Steve when he gets back? He at least deserves an explanation for why his girl is fucking his best friend!"

"The truth; I have no intention of hiding anything from him, even if that means that I lose him! Steve may be your friend, but I love him," I said quietly. "I'm not doing this to hurt him, you know."

"I didn't say that -"

"Yeah, you did! Nevermind - I'll be downstairs." I sprang up from the couch, intending to walk away, but Jace caught my wrist, pulling me back over to him.

"I'm sorry for jumping down your throat. I shouldn't have overreacted like that, but you knew what happened with Kendra, right? I walked in on them going at it and they'd been sneaking around behind my back for a while."

I paused, looking at him steadily. "No, you never told me that. I waited to hear about it from you after Chloe told me, but you never said a word about it, not even when you broke up. I probably would've beat the snot out of the little bitch for two-timing you."

"Yeah, you would have. Sorry I didn't tell you. This whole thing just rubbed me the wrong way, I guess. This -" he gestured to my room, "is a little different than that."

"You think? He doesn't know who I am half the time, Jace! He can't remember his best friend from one day to the next!"

Jace nodded, "What did Clint say? He usually makes more sense than Nat."   

"He thinks that I found James for a reason. I'm supposed to be helping him get his memory back, but the only thing he never forgot was Peggy. To him, I'm always Peggy."

"So you have to go through this all over again, like with Steve?"

"Basically." I said, looking down at the floor.

It wasn't easy for me to admit, but that'd been really rough on me emotionally, getting Steve to understand that I wasn't Peggy. This was going to be even worse because while I knew what to expect, James' memory quirk meant that we were going to have the same conversations more than once, aggravating my bruised heart. I took a deep breath, steeling myself for rejection.