Pushing Daisies [BUCKY BARNES]

13

It was almost a week before I got his phone call. Steve had found me this time, hauling me back to the hotel over his shoulder and demanding that Tony and Clint get me out of Washington, that it wasn't safe anymore.

At this point I had obliged, knowing that I had an assassin, an engineer, and a nuclear scientist a little more then worried about me and my slowly rising antics. When Steve had dumped me back off at the hotel, with little more then a telling off, I was mauled. I was covered in hugs and 'I was so worried about you's, and eventually the scolding did come but not without tears shed on my end.

I couldn't remember my family, and Juliannes mom was never around when I lived next door to them by myself. I had never had anyone there to worry about me, to sit me down and scold me for disappearing. I had always just sort of done my own thing, but having them voice their concern had broke me down to tears. I had never felt so loved.

Of course, we had all flown back to New York then, resuming our residence in the Avengers Tower. Bruce and Tony had retreated to the labs, and Clint had taken me in and given me a bow and a quiver filled with arrows that had foam on the tips. He had then hoisted me up into the vents and told me to have a war with him.

Needless to say, we had spent the next two days in the vents, only breaking to get food and to go to the bathroom.

Steve had been the one to halt our endless attacks on each other by coming home and climbing up into the vents himself to drag both of us out.

And so here I was, home only a week, when an unidentified number came up on the only landline I could find. I was reading when the call came through, so without taking my eyes off the page I picked up the cord phone and raised it to my ear. "Hello, this is Wesley Powers, human at Avengers Tower, what superhuman or resident assassin could I direct you to?"

The line was quiet for a while.

"Hello?" I asked again, finally looking up from my book as annoyance crept up in my throat.

"It's me." A gruff voice whispered through the line, and I almost dropped the phone.

"James?"

"Yeah."

The annoyance was replaced by happiness now. "Hey James! What can I do for ya?"

"Could I stay with you? I don't know where to go."

I froze at this, memories of the black clad assassin shooting at my friends. But then again, Steve seemed excited to see him. When I gave the HYDRA soldier my phone number I hadn't expected him to ask to stay with me. "S-sure James. I'm in New York, I can meet you in front of DelMonico's at 4. Is that okay?"

"Yes." And then the line clicked dead.

Sighing, I stood and placed the phone back on the receiver. A slight twang of panic crawled its way into my throat, but I choked it back down. This man made me nervous, more nervous then anyone else, and that was because I knew him. I knew him yet I didn't at the same time. I knew his name, and I was damn well sure I had seen his face before Washington, before ever seeing his plaque. I knew him from that blurry space of anything before sixteen, and it pained me to try and think about it. I wanted nothing more then to learn who this person from my past was, but at the same time I wasn't sure if I wanted to delve into my own past myself.

I packed up a backpack for the day, still stuck in my own head. Still stuck on my seemingly permanent amnesia. When I had woken up in a hospital on my seventeenth birthday, I was surrounded by people I didn't know. I didn't know who I was, where I was, or what had gotten me into the hospital. I couldn't remember anything.

They had placed me in an apartment right next to Julianne and her mothers, introducing me to them, and informing me that my parents were dead. They didn't know my name, so they gave me permission to build my own life from there. I simply built my life around my amnesia, the thing the doctors claimed I had and who also claimed that I may never get my memories back.

I had established myself, established my life, and thrown myself into weight training, working at Juliannes shop, and sassing off to everyone I encountered.

That is, until I ran myself into that Archer, and now I was starting to unearth the past I never wanted to remember.

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Bucky's POV

I almost worried that she wouldn't show, but I had to admit that sitting on the corner of Delmonico's wasn't an awful way to spend a day. It still looked like it was going to rain, but that was alright too.

"Hey," I hadn't heard her come up behind me, but I did hear her sit down. Her waist-length blonde hair swished around her as she dropped down to the curb, her bent knees almost touching her chest. "Fancy meeting you here."

I stayed silent, not sure what I wanted to say to her. She looked so familiar, and the little voice in the back of my mind kept screaming 'Lilly' over and over. I knew that I knew her, I just wasn't sure how or why or from when.

"We can go now, if you want. You look like a sad trash hobo."

I couldn't help the chuckle that rose from my throat at that. It's been so long since I've laughed. Long enough that I don't even remember it.

She stood, holding out a hand, and I took it with my flesh one quietly.

She was different from all the other girls I remember interacting with. She was... spunky.

"Lets get a move on my trash hobo." She tugged on my arm, seeming almost excited. "You're gonna have fun crashing my bachelor pad."

She was too familiar, it elicited that spark of fear in my chest. The way she laughed, the way she flipped her hair over her shoulder, the way her hand felt gripping mine. She was familiar, something from my past, and I had a gut feeling that she was someone important.

And as soon as she had started walking she stopped, looking around silently. "Gunmen." She whispered, squeezing my hand tighter. "Left corner, six o clock, and tailing us. Only three I can find."

She was right. When I looked I saw them too, but it baffled me that she had noticed them before I did.

She picked up the pace, moving from her excited walk to a jog and then to a sprint, while I was being uncomfortably dragged along behind her the entire time.

And then one of the gunmen shot, and I felt my heart leap uncomfortably into my throat (for reasons still unknown to me). And then I watched as Wesley Powers, the girl who was so willing to be my savior at the drop of a hat, plummet face first to the pavement below our feet.