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The next morning, Rosemary pulled into the parking lot of the cryo-freeze facility and wasn't completely surprised that Steve's motorcycle was already there. It was only nine but Steve didn't quite strike her as someone who slept in.
She'd gone over and over the conversation she'd had with Steve and Fury all night, not really having slept at all. The plan they'd constructed was simple and theoretically wouldn't be that hard, but Rosemary couldn't stop stressing about it. Steve was going to unfreeze Bucky and then immediately introduce him to Rosemary. They'd figured that maybe the easiest way to ease him into the whole thing was if he knew right off the bat exactly what was happening.
Rosemary opened her car door as she let out her breath and was startled to see Steve suddenly standing right in front of her. She jumped slightly and he smirked.
"Are you nervous?" he asked, and she shrugged. "Don't be. It'll be fine," he told her, his voice sounding much less reassuring that she was pretty sure he meant for it to.
They walked into the facility and Steve led her to Bucky's chamber. The metal shoulder his metal arm had once extended out of was extra frosty in the ice, shimmering as it caught light. His eyes were closed peacefully and he looked like he was just casually napping.
Steve looked at Rosemary for confirmation and she nodded.
"I'm ready," she whispered, and he nodded back.
"Here we go," he said, pushing the button on the control panel beside the chamber.
In the next second, the ice started visibly thawing. Once it seemed to be completely gone, the chamber slid open. Bucky remained still for a few long moments and then his eyes opened slowly, his thick dark lashes shrouding them in the bright light of the room.
"Steve?" Bucky mumbled, his voice sounding like his mouth was full of marbles.
"Hey, Buck," Steve shot back, reaching to offer his hand to help Bucky step out of the chamber. Bucky shook himself off as he stood solidly on the tile floor, looking around.
"How long has it been?" Bucky asked, and Steve hesitated.
"Not as long as you're probably assuming it has," he told him, and Bucky shot him a look.
"What does that mean?" he asked, and Steve hesitated again.
"You don't deserve to be in there, Buck. You don't. You deserve help," Steve told him, and Bucky just watched him, his eyes a storm of unreadable emotion. He thought for a long time and then seemed to shake off whatever emotion he'd been feeling.
"Who's this?" he asked Steve, motioning to Rosemary. She felt herself cower just slightly under his gaze and cursed herself for it.
"This is Rosemary Jackson," Steve said, putting a hand on Rosemary's shoulder like he'd instinctively known she needed steadying. She was appreciative for it and leaned into it just slightly.
"Hello, Rosemary Jackson," Bucky said to her, repeating her name unsurely, like he absolutely knew Steve was about to tell him something he didn't want to hear.
"Hi," she said quietly, taking the hand he'd extended for her to shake.
"You're my babysitter, aren't you?" Bucky asked her point-blank, and she didn't know what to say.
"Kind of," she admitted and he smiled, surprising her. He looked at Steve, shrugging.
"At least she's cute," Bucky mumbled, walking past them and towards the door.
"Well that wasn't... that bad," Rosemary mumbled to Steve, trying her best to keep the excitement out of her voice at the fact that his first instinct upon finding out what was going on was to call her cute.
"He's probably just tired. Give him time to warm up," Steve told her, warning thick in his tone.
•••••
A few hours later, Bucky had a brand new shiny bionic arm to replace the one he'd lost in battle just before he'd elected to be frozen, and it seemed Steve had been right about him just needing time to warm up before his true personality started to shine through. He kept making snarky comments about how he didn't need a babysitter, which she'd fully been expecting.
Something she hadn't been expecting, though, was the fact that she kept catching him staring at her. She wasn't sure if he was just trying to figure her out or if it was something else, but it seemed like every time she glanced at him, his deep blue eyes were fixed right on her. Normally, such a gaze would've made her ridiculously uncomfortable, but there was something about it that didn't seem threatening to her. She wondered if maybe she was just imagining it, but he seemed like there was something he wanted to say to her or something.
Eventually, they finished at the SHIELD facility and Steve showed them to their new apartments, which of course just so happened to be across the hall from one another in a building that seemed to have very few, if any, other residents.
Steve stuck around for a long time, helping them settle in and helping Rosemary carry her boxes upstairs from the truck SHIELD agents had loaded them into that morning.
When Steve finally did throw on his jacket and prepare to leave, Rosemary couldn't help but feel a little nervous. Sure, she'd spent the whole day with Bucky and nothing catastrophic had happened, but she couldn't help but assume it would probably be quite different once his best friend was no longer there to keep him balanced.
Rosemary watched Steve's motorcycle speed away through the window in her apartment, startled a few moments later when Bucky's voice came from behind her.
"Are you afraid of me?" he asked her, his voice quiet. When she turned to look at him, he looked almost pained.
"No," she responded immediately, trying her best to sound confident. The truth of the matter was that she wasn't scared of Bucky Barnes. She was scared of The Winter Soldier.
"You're a bad liar," he said, sitting heavily on one of the stools near her kitchen island. She watched him as he ran his fingers over his new arm, seemingly getting a feel for it.
"I'm not lying," she pressed, and his eyes connected heavily with hers.
"You don't have to be afraid of me," he told her, his voice still quiet and gentle with a tinge of something that sounded a lot like anguish.
