After You

|8| Memories

pov bucky~

The device attached to my head started to feel strangely out of place this morning. I wasn't able to immediately put a reason on it, but now I see that this was what remembering felt like.

I saw a romance, only it wasn't the one I was hoping for... the one I felt coming to the surface recently. This was something else entirely, something I wasn't aware I was missing.

It was a faceless woman with beautiful ginger hair, she was dancing and I was watching her. When her face came into view, she was smiling at me.

"Natalia-" I announced loudly.

"What?" Shuri cut in.

"He said Natalia," Tony replied. "Barnes, what are you seeing?"

The machine turned off and I felt everything starting to flood back into view. "It's Natasha, but I called her Natalia then. I didn't know we were together."

"You aren't," Banner jumped in defensively. "You must be mistaken."

"I'm not, there's no way I could make all of that up," I answered. "I need to talk to her as soon as possible."

It was within five minutes that we were together and alone in a small room connected to the lab. I was almost certain they were listening in on the conversation from outside via microphones, but I didn't have any actual proof.

"They said you wanted to talk to me because you remembered something," she started.

"I- Natalia," I began, her face surprised that I'd called her that name. "Why didn't you tell me that we were together?"

"I didn't want to overwhelm you," she detailed. "I knew Steve was the one you were really in love with, you even mentioned it to me once all those years ago, so I didn't want to ruin your chances of remembering him while you tried to remember me."

"I guess I was meant to remember you first," I shrugged, she smiled.

I explained to her everything I remembered about our time together, going as specific as I could with other people's names and years and locations, and she clarified that everything I was saying was real... I remembered it exactly as it happened.

When we left the room, Tony pulled me aside.

"Barnes, this treatment-"

"It's working," I smiled at him.

"And it's exponential," he explained. "What I mean by that is... with each detail you remember, the more likely you'll be to remember things in the future. It's like a puzzle; once everything starts coming into view, it's only a matter of time before you fit in the remaining pieces."

"Do you really think so?" I wanted to know.

"Think?" he scoffed. "I've been analyzing the data with Shuri; Barnes, this is a fact. It really is only a matter of time before everything else starts showing up again. It may not make sense as quickly as all this stuff with Natasha did, but it'll get there eventually."

"Thank you for everything," I answered.

"Of course," he smiled at me. "Are you ready for more today or-"

"Well, do you think it'd be best to wait until tomorrow to continue or would it be beneficial to go on today?" I cut him off.

"I think you're on a streak right now, and you might as well keep going," he said. "It won't harm you either way, and I think it'll only help you in the long run."

"Alright," I replied. "Let's get back to it, then."