NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
2015

IT was eight in the morning, and Steve sat on the edge of his bed, chin rested on his hand, struggling to contain his misery.

He tried to force himself not to think about June. He tried to force her smile from his memory, to force her mannerisms and habits and overall self from his mind, though it was a useless feat, like trying to fill a strainer with sand.

Steve stayed perfectly still as another wave of anguish hit him, choking him down to his bones. He had tried to convince himself that there was a chance that he and June would work—maybe after so long she'd feel differently about Bucky, or maybe their kiss could really mean something. He was willing to latch on to any flicker of hope.

Unfortunately, Steve was smart, and he knew, deep down, things like this didn't work that way.

He remembered a film he'd watched last year, per Natasha's recommendation, called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It was about a couple who had broken up and had their memories of each other erased to make the pain of loss more bearable. Steve thought that he'd lost enough of his own life already . . . but forgetting what he felt for June didn't seem so bad at the moment.

He ran a hand over his face, dreading leaving his room, dreading facing the world and not being able to let a shred of what he was feeling show. Worst of it all was Steve could hardly enjoy Bucky's return because he was so overwhelmingly jealous of him. It was the most despicable he'd ever felt, but it was jealousy he could not suppress. He would hide it, however, from both of them. He would not lose his two best friends over something so frivolous.

Weighed by his hopelessness, Steve stood and trudged to his door, grabbing his gym bag on the way out. Punching the shit out of something seemed like a good way to calm down.

• • •

IT was eight in the morning, and June wondered, very seriously, how much coffee was too much coffee.

She had already downed three cups. Her hands were shaking, and she could feel the sporadic hammering of her heart, but that didn't discourage her from pouring a fourth mug. Coffee was good. She needed to be alert.

Alert, hyperactive, bordering on paranoid. She didn't want Bucky or Steve surprising her again.

June was grateful no one had ventured into the kitchen yet. The canary sunlight poured through the windows and striped the floor, and the humming yawn of New York rose up with it. June closed her eyes and imagined she was normal—this was her penthouse and her kitchen, and she would proceed with her day like any common person would, without the Avengers, and without international terrorists. Maybe, in another life where Hydra had not stolen her, June had a boyfriend that didn't hide his feelings for her, or disappear for months at a time. Maybe she had a real job, and maybe she could call her mother for her childhood gazpacho recipe when she fancied it and could meet her niece at least once. In this other life, June came back from that hospital after donating blood and taking their survey with the $300 she was promised, and bought her family dinner, and ended her twentieth birthday with falling asleep in her own bed, in her own home, on her own terms.

When she opened her eyes the world was unchanged. Her hand seared where boiling coffee spilled over her skin, and June realized she had overfilled her cup. She cursed sharply and dumped the excess in the sink, and mopped up the mess with a dish towel. When June looked up, she found Tony watching her, eyebrows knit with concern, though it was difficult to ascertain how sincere he was because meanwhile, Tony was dressed in slippers and a zebra-print robe.

June grimaced. "Morning."

Tony shoved his hands in his pockets. "I can see you vibrating. Put that down," he gestured to her cup.

"No," June said, hugging it close to her.

Tony shook his head. "You're gonna screw up the tests."

"What tests?"

"Bruce wants to evaluate you," he said smoothly as if discussing the news, "to see what exactly Hydra tampered with in there." He reached forward and tapped her on the temple.

Suddenly anxious, June drew back. "I thought we already did that."

"When you got your meds? That was a pretty surface level diagnosis—Bruce is gonna look at the biological and structural changes of your literal brain."

June couldn't come up with a reply that conveyed the exact spike of terror that struck her, so she murmured, "Sounds geeky," and nothing else.

Tony cocked his head, eyes dark and warm. "I knew you wouldn't be happy about it, but I think it's time." He put his hands on her shoulders. "Your reaction to Strucker was bad, Junebug, and it makes me think you haven't told us everything."

June darted a little ways away, one hand hung on her opposite shoulder. "I've told you the gist of it," she whispered.

"'The gist of it' isn't enough," Tony replied evenly. "We think is gonna help you. Don't you wanna know exactly what they changed in there? Why you can't sleep, or what helps you heal faster, or what enhanced your hearing and vision?"

June shut her eyes. "I thought I already knew. It was some weird drug or something."

"This way we can know for sure."

She gnawed on the inside of her cheek. As terrifying as it was, June was curious. She wanted to know what caused her to feel like an entirely different person was controlling her thoughts and emotions, and what made her panic attacks as horrible as they were. Bruce probably wouldn't find anything of interest to her, likely just data that restated everything June had heard before—severe chemical imbalance, hyperactive body systems, the whole bit. She did preserve some hope, however, that a few more evaluations could unearth revelations previously unknown. Perhaps more searching would ultimately help her understand her own brain for the first time in ten years. "Okay," June whispered. "Okay, I'll do it. Where's Bruce? Is he ready?"

Tony nodded. "He's setting up in the lab right now. I bought a CT scanner on Amazon."

June scowled at him. "You didn't know I'd say yes," she said.

"Okay, I didn't get it off Amazon—"

"Tony!"

"All right!" He held up his hands. "All right. Look, Bruce sent me in to convince you. If that didn't work, he would have insisted."

June exhaled through her teeth, her fingernails pressing little crescents into her palms. "If he had tried to make me, I—"

"Woulda fought the Hulk?" Tony interrupted. "I'm sure. C'mon. It's just a blood test and the scan. You'll be out in two hours, tops."

June eyed him, frustration boiling up in her stomach. Not at Tony, but at the reality that nothing would ever truly be on her terms ever again. She wasn't a person anymore, she was a phenomenon. A lab rat. She let out a furious groan. "Fine. I'm coming. I'll do it—whatever."

June turned on her heel and marched to the elevator, not bothering to wait for Tony.

• • •

THE CT bed was frigid against June's legs and arms, clad in black athletic shorts and a useless tanktop. The thick, ring-shaped scanner loomed close over her head and pressed her in on all sides, giving the sickening feeling of being inside a coffin. Nothing felt any different, at least as far as June could tell, but Tony remained hunched over a series of monitors, adjusting and calculating vigorously.

Bruce had gone off to examine June's blood samples, which he estimated would take only forty-five minutes.

"How so quick?" June had queried, rubbing her stinging finger.

"Well," Bruce had said with a shrug, "you're the only, uh, patient, I guess, and Tony's a billionaire, so I have the equipment. And I know what I'm doing."

Just as June was becoming unbearably restless, Tony's voice broke through the PA system installed in the scanner. "I think that should do it. I'm wheeling you out."

The machine clicked and whirred, then shut down slowly. The bed slid from underneath, and as soon as it was possible, June shot up. The lab was so cold. Smelled of rubbing alcohol that stung her nose offensively. The presence of light was somewhat comforting, different from the underground hovels June was once kept in, but still, the memories seeped in. Tony's hand on her shoulder was what forced her from her thoughts.

"It's weird," he said with a vague gesture to her head. "You're weird up there."

"Is that the consensus?"

"Not all of it. From what I can tell, your cerebrum has been enlargened. Not so much that you suffered, like, damage, but enough so its function is piqued—you know, balance, muscle coordination, all that."

June frowned. That was it?

"There's more," Tony assured her as if reading her thoughts. "Your frontal, temporal, and occipital lobes are . . . overactive. Neurons are firing almost constantly. Any idea what that means?"

She thought for a moment. "Increased cognitive thinking," she said carefully, touching a finger to her forehead. "Enhanced hearing," two fingers on her temples, "and enhanced eyesight," a hand patted the nape of her neck. "That's fricken' crazy. That's how they did it?"

Tony gave an unsure expression. "I think so. It's iffy. It's not clear what drug they used to target these specific areas without, you know, killing you. My theory is Strucker used a variation of the super-soldier serum, or maybe a very diluted dose of whatever they stuck in Barnes. If that's true, then—"

"Guess what June?" called Bruce's voice. "You're O-negative."

Tony and June turned to the door to see Bruce walking towards them with a small vial of June's blood in one hand and several clipboards tucked under his other arm. His face was grim.

"What'd you find?" June asked, struggling to hide her dread.

"Well," Bruce set down the vial and clipboards, "to put it in broad terms, your neurotransmitter production is unlike anything I've ever seen. Your norepinephrine levels are abnormally high. I assume Hydra's goal was to influence the amount of adrenaline your brain produces, which I realize now they succeeded in doing, but it leaves your response processes in total disarray. You said you take meds for anxiety and panic attacks? This is why. Strucker jacked up your GABBA production, too. It's supposed to help reduce neural activity, but your brain is constantly active—you have almost none. Serotonin is down, too. Results in mood swings, depression. That kind of stuff. I'll have to do a little more analysis, but . . . that's what I know."

June blinked. She waited for fury or fear to overtake her. Nothing came. What should she even feel at a time like this? Helplessness, maybe, because it's not as if she could reach through her ear and scramble her brain back to normal. But what was normal, now? Could normal hear a pen hit the floor three rooms over, or read a license plate a mile away? Could normal spar with the Black Widow and, on rare occasions, win? Or help Steve Rogers track down an international terrorist? What place did an ordinary girl from Russia have among these heroes—these gods?

How would a normal person hope to understand Bucky?

June gnawed on the inside of her lip, hands rested on her knees. She could feel Tony watching her carefully, see Bruce flipping through one of the charts he had brought from the other lab in her peripheral. June kept her stare on the floor. "Should I try to reverse what they did?" she asked. "Could I even?"

Bruce made a noise like he was thinking hard. "Maybe," he muttered. "It would require a lot—very specific doses of very different neurochemicals . . . but it's certainly plausible."

June's eyes drifted out of focus as she thought intensely, her lips slightly agape. "I wouldn't be me, though, would I?"

She sensed Bruce and Tony exchange muddled looks. "You'd be normal," said Tony, his eyes soft. "No more missions or Hydra, just . . . June. June in all her glory." A lopsided smirk. "I could relocate you if you wanted. Steve could come over every Sunday and tell you stories about the war, and Barnes . . . well, I assume you'll save him for Friday nights."

June swatted him in the arm and felt herself grow hot. "I'm supposed to talk to him today," she sighed, suddenly feeling both guilty and excited. "I don't really know what to say, if I'm honest."

"I'm sure he has questions," supplied Tony. "He'll keep you talking."

"That's almost worse," said June, only half-joking. She let them lapse into a long silence, and then, "I don't think I want to change. Not now, at least. Not while there's still people that need to be stopped. I said I was going to help people . . . I can't go back on that."

"No, you can't," agreed Tony. "That's one of the drawbacks of this job—your word sticks with you. People turn you into something to worship and look to when everything goes to shit. And that's just how it is sometimes." He suddenly had the face of someone who had touched the rim of emptiness and felt its vacuum. Tony's eyes bared his entire soul. "But the benefit of making some kind of difference justifies all that other crap."

It was then June knew exactly what she had to do.

She hugged Tony very tightly and thanked Bruce for his help. She grabbed her clothes and headed back upstairs, where she knew her greatest loss awaited her.

If he had not already left again.

June found him on the terrace that stretched out from her room. She resigned to asking him what he was doing there another day. For now, she took a seat across from him and looked him in his face. Bucky's eyes were shocking as ever, but circled with purple and shot with blood, indicating he had not slept in some time. He was not shaven, his face shadowed with scruff, but he was cleaned up, stitched back together where June had pummeled him open, and though exhausted, seemed more alert than he had been in a while. His hair was tied back in a way that suited him, though June understood the observation was appropriate for another time.

"Hey," he said, sounding immensely surprised. He moved to stand, but June stopped him, grasping his arm. Bucky stared at her hand, then met her eyes and cleared his throat. "Hey."

June laughed weakly. "Hi. How'd you sleep?" She knew the answer but expected him to lie.

Bucky rubbed the back of his neck. "All right. For the most part."

June lowered herself into a chair across from him. "Sorry about that," she said, gesturing to a short band of stitches at his hair line. "You surprised me."

"You kept punching after you realized it was me."

June leaned forward on folded arms. "You pissed me off."

Bucky sighed in resignation. "Listen . . . I'm so sorry. I was selfish—I never should have left. Again. I shouldn't have lied to you. I just couldn't . . . I didn't get why you would want me to stick around. I wasn't safe—I still don't . . . trust myself . . . It was only a matter of time before—"

"—I wanted you to be with Steve." June cut him off. "That's what I asked. There would have been time for . . . whatever we were doing . . . after you had reconnected. He was so worried about you, James. He had been all over the world looking for you. It didn't matter if you were stable or not."

Bucky sighed again and folded his hands. He shifted, then stood, and began to pace around. He turned his head to the sun and his irises burned white. "I didn't forget about either of you. Thought about what I'd done every day. I didn't have the courage to come back until I really thought about how I felt."

"About what?"

"You."

June felt a muddling pang of excitement and embarrassment. Why did he have to be so earnest? "You needed to come back for Steve," she reminded him.

"I did," Bucky said with a weak shrug. "But I came back for you too."

Then he did something he shouldn't have done. He glided in front of June and touched a hand to her cheek, drawing her close and kissing her slowly. June screamed at herself to stop him—to be angry with him and start punching again—but her mind had no control of her body. She kissed him back. She relished the feeling, one she had not been swept up in for so long, and almost, almost guided him back when he tilted his head away.

"Sorry," he whispered. "You can hit me again if you want."

June swallowed a whine of disappointment; she wished he would stay close. "Don't want to," she managed. She slid her hand over his shoulder and grasped the collar of his shirt idly in her fingers. He knelt down so their faces were level. "Don't fucking leave again," she said. She'd meant to sound severe, but her words came out like a plea. "I mean it. I'll have all of you or none of you. I'm not holding on to whatever pieces you decide to give me. If you run out again, stay gone."

Bucky wrapped his silver fingers around her wrist. "Wouldn't dare," he said, stare intensely sincere. Then an playful gleam passed over his eyes. "You could stash me in your room. To keep an eye on me."

June tried to match the mischievous look Bucky could conjure, but she wasn't sure it had the same effect. "I just might have to," she laughed.

They went quiet, but it was pleasant. The city buzzed a hundred feet below them. Birds dove in between the skyscrapers. Smells of exhaust and food carts wafted along the morning breeze. June savored these good things. She savored the good thing kneeling in front of her. She feared they wouldn't last long, so she dug her nails in as deep as they could go. The moment was hers, and hers to bottle up. Salt and save for whenever she needed it.

She combed her hand through his hair and found a scar on the back of his head that ran from the nape of his neck to the bottom of his ear. A stroke of that ear revealed a nearly undetectable knick in the flesh, likely from a bullet by the feel of it. Another willowy scar cut across his temple, visible only when the sun illuminated him just so. June liked searching him, uncovering secret treasures that made him belong to her. She'd let him uncover hers eventually. There were scars even she had forgotten about.

It was one of the better moments. One that made June feel human. Gave her a right to exist. She dug her nails in. It will last, she chanted softly to herself. Trust that it will.

She wasn't altogether sure what trust felt like anymore. But whatever it was she had right then was enough.

note.
i understand that i literally have not updated since september but that's okay because i gave you guys Content™️
happy new year!! i really hope 2019 is nice to all of you because you all deserve it so much. i love you guys.