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"Jackson!" Rosemary Jackson's supervisor, Craig, called her name roughly, snapping her out of her thoughts. She snapped to attention and listened immediately when he motioned for her to join him in his office.
"Close the door," he instructed, and she did. It was only when she turned back around that she realized he wasn't alone in the office. Two men Rosemary immediately recognized as Steve Rogers and Nick Fury stood near the window, looking down on the street below.
"What's up, Cap?" she asked Craig, calling him the sort-of nickname that she knew he hated, but she couldn't ever stop herself from calling him anything other than it. Mostly, she thought, because she'd been a regular old beat cop for most of her career.
That is, of course, until aliens and other various previously fictional creatures and people started blowing up cities and superheroes became the country's first line of defense. A lot of cops had ended up in one branch of the FBI or another since the FBI suddenly needed to be much more diligent and pay more attention to almost everything, especially since the people that were supposed to have been doing that all along, SHIELD, had been mostly corrupted.
Somehow, Rosemary had ended up in a division that paid constant direct attention to the Avengers and their counterparts. Because of that, she'd met both Fury and Rogers plenty of times, but it was still quite strange to see both of them in her supervisor's office.
"I've got something for you, Jackson," Craig told her, settling into his chair behind the desk. Rosemary couldn't really focus on him as he slipped a folder across to her and she grabbed it, in shock at the name printed across the top.
"Barnes, James Buchanan," she whispered it under her breath, glancing up at Steve and Fury.
"This is... the Winter Soldier?" she questioned, even though she knew the answer. The other two men nodded.
"He prefers Bucky," Steve told her, and she nodded.
"He's in cryo-freeze, isn't he?" she asked, and Steve nodded again.
"He is," Fury spoke up, and she vaguely wondered why Craig was even there. "He is, but he's about to not be. The remaining agents of SHIELD want to study him, to help him, to balance him out," Fury explained, and Rosemary nodded knowingly. She'd heard a million times about the bad spot Barnes had been in when he'd opted for the cryo-freeze himself. The way she figured it, you probably had to be in a pretty bad place to willingly freeze yourself for an indefinite amount of time.
"Does he know he's coming back?" Rosemary asked, and neither Steve nor Fury would look her in the eye.
"Not yet," Steve admitted, and she nodded.
"I've got to be honest here. I'm not sure what my task is," she said, her eyes flicking to Craig, who just looked back at Steve.
"He needs someone to look after him, someone who can make him feel like they're not just watching him because it's their job. I asked for you specifically because you're... genuinely nice. I'm not sure anyone other than me has been genuinely nice to Buck in a long time, and sometimes even I'm not," Steve explained, and Rosemary couldn't help but let her heart swell a little bit at the fact that apparently they'd hand-picked her.
"But... he'll still know that I'm watching him, right? I won't be undercover or anything?" she asked hesitantly, shooting a glance at Craig. She'd always been absolutely terrible at anything undercover; she kind of thought it was part of the reason she'd ended up in the division of the FBI she had, where most of what she did dealt with people directly.
"He'll know, and if I'm being completely honest with you he'll probably be pissed about it, at least at first," Steve told her, and she nodded. "You don't have to take this if you don't want to, Rosemary. You don't. But this has been the plan for a while and I've been watching your division, studying everyone. You're the only one that won't make him even more murderous than he can be on his own, I'm sure of it."
Rosemary thought about Steve's words, letting them sink in. She couldn't believe he'd somehow hand-picked her out of everyone she worked with. She'd never been tasked with a job like this; the most she'd ever really done was just meetings and negotiations. She hadn't even ever met Bucky Barnes, which when she thought about it, was maybe better. She knew all about him; the whole world did. She knew it wouldn't be easy. He didn't exactly have the best reputation, even when he wasn't in super soldier murder mode.
"I'll do it," she said quietly, the words surprising herself.
"You will?" Craig asked, also sounding surprised. Rosemary suddenly came to the conclusion that he had been so quiet the whole time because he hadn't expected her to say yes. Either that or he didn't think she could do it.
"I will," she said, looking at Steve and finding herself unable to not return the wide smile he was offering her.
"We'll bring you up to speed on Bucky. Craig, thank you for your assistance but I think we're okay on our own from here," Steve said, shifting his attention from Rosemary to Craig, whose eyes widened briefly before he nodded and left the office quietly. "He's a little bit of a jerk, isn't he?" Steve asked Rosemary once the door was closed again, and she snorted out a laugh.
"That's putting it lightly," she confirmed, pulling out a notepad and pen to take notes.
Over the next hour, Steve and Fury brought her up to speed on everything she was going to need to know about Bucky, ending with letting her know she'd be starting the job the next morning. She thanked them, leaving the office in a complete whirlwind.
She wasn't sure she was ready for a job so big, but she also couldn't find a reason not to take it. Sighing heavily, she drove home, wondering what this whole thing was about to bring for her.
