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When Rosemary woke up again, she was in a hospital room. Steve was sitting in a chair beside her bed and she reached for him wordlessly. He stood, moving closer so that she could have his hand.
"Did you find him?" she asked, her voice hoarse. Steve didn't answer, just reached for the table beside the bed and handed her a bottle of water, opening it for her. She drank almost all of it down at once, sighing. She knew the answer to her question. "You didn't, did you?"
"No. The field you were in was miles from anything. We have no idea how you got there," Steve told her, letting her squeeze his hand again.
"Am I... okay?" she asked, suddenly becoming aware of the fact that she didn't feel any pain.
"As far as they can tell, yes. Best guess is someone cut you up to send a message. None of the smaller cuts were deep enough to actually harm you. Your right arm is broken from what seem to be defensive wounds and when they cut into your guts they didn't take anything out... or put anything in," he told her, and she nodded.
"Well, I need to get out of here. We need to find him," she said, moving to stand. Steve put his hand on her shoulder, holding her down firmly.
"You'd be of no use out there right now, Rosie. The Avengers are on it," he said, his voice grim.
"Why aren't you out there?" she asked, and he smiled a humorless smile.
"We were all pretty sure I was the only one that could keep you in here," he said, scooting the chair he'd been sitting in closer to her and perching in it again.
"I think... I think Bucky's the one that let me go," she said, the memory suddenly hitting her like a train.
"What?" Steve asked, and she told him what she remembered, how he came into the room and was obviously the Winter Soldier but didn't harm her, just picked her up, and how the next thing she remembered she was waking up in the field.
"Well that's good. If he's got any sort of awareness, that's a good thing," Steve told her. "But you do also have to consider that it might've been his order to let you go, to send you back to us. Like I said before, it almost seemed like they were trying to send a message."
"Yeah, well they've sent it. Buck was obviously right about someone trying to get to him," she said, and Steve nodded.
"It's looking that way."
"Any ideas?"
"Not really. Bucky did a lot of things as the Winter Soldier, a lot of terrible things. This could be anyone he's hurt, any son whose father he killed or anything like that, or it could be someone completely different who just wants a piece of the whole super soldier thing," Steve said, sounding sadder than she'd ever heard him.
"How are we going to find him, Steve?" she asked, trying to hold back tears.
"I don't know," he responded, squeezing her hand as he held his face with his other one.
•••••
An hour later, Steve fell asleep finally. Rosemary had been impatiently waiting for him to. Once their earlier conversation died off, she'd sat there in silence, flipping the TV in the corner of the room to some boring nature show, hoping it would eventually knock him out.
Checking to make sure he was actually out, she quietly pulled the IV out of her arm and stood, going to the small bathroom to change into her dirty clothes. She stealthily made her way out of the hospital, hailing a cab on the street.
She got out of the car at the hotel they'd been staying at, looking at it sadly. Part of her had this irrational hope that she was going to go upstairs and Bucky was just going to be in the room, waiting to surprise her. She burst through the door of the room, just a little disappointed when that wasn't the case.
She stripped down, taking an assessment of her wounds. Most of the smaller cuts on her arms and legs weren't bandaged and most of them were already starting to scab. Her right arm was in a sling and the cut on her stomach seemed to have been torn open and re-stitched by someone who was much more skillful at it. She looked overall okay but her entire body ached as she changed into clean clothes.
She winced, shrugging into one of Bucky's hoodies and grabbing the few guns that they had in the room, holstering both of the pistols on either of her hips. She grabbed the couple of knives that she knew Bucky's hiding spots of, putting one in the hoodie's pocket and the other in the pocket of her jeans.
She fished her phone out of her pocket, knowing it was a long-shot but dialing Bucky's number anyway. It shocked her when he answered.
"Yeah?"
His voice was rough and she wasn't sure which Bucky she was talking to. She did her best to keep herself calm, not wanting to sound too concerned.
"Bucky?" she asked into the phone, and the other end was silent for a long while.
"Yeah?"
His voice was unsure and she still wasn't sure which side of him she was speaking to.
"Do you know who I am?" she asked, and he was quiet again.
"No," he answered, and she had to fight herself to stop the word from breaking her heart.
"Where are you?"
"I don't know."
The three words tumbled out of his mouth and he sounded worried. The line went dead and she shook her head, cursing.
She clicked to her 'find my friends' app, praying that by some chance he had the GPS on on the phone. Shocked, she saw that he did. Without even thinking about it, she grabbed her car keys off the dresser and went down to the parking garage.
