“James!” Lithium called out, her voice barely above a whisper, hushed, but urgent. “James this isn’t funny!” She stalked through the alleys, frowning as the sun was starting to set on the horizon. “James!” She called out a bit louder, her concern growing. “James come on! You’re scaring me! Where ARE you?” Her voice had dropped to a murmur, and her heart dropped in her chest. Closing her eyes, she backed up against a wall, a hand to her forehead as she tried to fight the worry that was washing over her.

        “Don’t worry . . . Don’t worry,” she muttered to herself, arguing against the tears that were threatening to stream down her face. “You still haven’t checked the apartment . . . Maybe he’s asleep already . . . Even assassins sleep sometime, right?” With a quick shake of her head, Lithium pushed off against the wall, wiped her eyes and continued down the neglected pathways to the building that housed Bucky’s ‘hideout’.

        “It’ll all be okay,” she assured herself quietly, trying to fight the fears that were welling up inside her. With a shiver, Lithium picked up her pace, her mind searching for the confirmation that somehow, Bucky was all right. Every step was torture as she walked through town without so much as a stray shadow that could’ve been attributed to the silent man, the silent, deadly assassin she’d come to know.

        One of the few, the rare, that could possibly grasp what she’d been through. And the other two, well, one was debatable in the form of the captain, and the other . . .

        Well the other was Copper, Iris, and she was dead.

        The thought of losing another one of those few was torturous. “Bucky . . .” Lithium muttered as her pace picked up again to a light jog. Within seconds, it had turned to a sprint, and terrifying thoughts were rushing through Lithium’s mind as she fought to get to Bucky’s apartment. He had to be all right. It wasn’t possible for him to be less than okay.

        But what if Hydra had found him without her?

        What if she was next?

        Lithium quickly shook her head, her heart seizing in her chest as she fought to keep going. Her stamina had, thankfully, built up quite a bit in the time she’d spent training, and the run was far easier than it would have been before.

        But that didn’t make the anticipation any easier to deal with.

        Dashing up the stairs and down the hall, Lithium began knocking on the door rapidly. The noise was loud and rushed, but she didn’t care to control herself. The way her heart was pounding, it may as well have been inside her skull rather than her chest. “James!” She called, knocking harder and louder. “James, open up!” He was in there. He had to be in there. “James!” Lithium called louder, not caring if the other residents heard.

        After about a minute, she stopped calling for him, she stopped knocking. The space inside was silent. Lithium’s eyes stung with the tears that were threatening her as it sunk in that no one was answering her call tonight. “James!” She called one last time, pulling back her arm, letting it loose as the metal shifted in her skin, effectively bursting through the wooden door as it splintered and cracked.

        After fumbling for a moment, Lithium had managed to reach through and unlock the door from the inside. Sliding it open, Lithium found only one thing: a vast emptiness that wasn’t natural. While the apartment was still furnished, it was clean and tidy to the point that it looked lifeless. No lights were on, no appliances were plugged in.

        Frowning, Lithium walked around the apartment slowly. “James . . . ?” She called softly, her heart dipping low as her anxiety dropped and her sorrow picked up. “Where are you . . . ?” Gradually, Lithium made her way into the bedroom, silently hoping she’d manage to find Bucky there in a deep slumber that would mercifully explain why he hadn’t been outside or answered her calls at the door.

        Even there, the space was empty, the room and even the bed, clean cut and tidy. A sadness settling over her, Lithium lay down on the bed, dreaded scenarios cloaking over her mind. Bucky, James, was gone, and even more so, it appeared that he had been planning to leave. The place was without flaw. Which, mercifully, meant that Hydra hadn’t taken him away.

        But it also meant that Bucky had run from her.

        Sighing, Lithium closed her eyes as the setting sun cast long shadows in the otherwise dark room, noting how this place felt as empty as a corpse.

        ~~~

        “I’ll admit it, Sweetheart, I never thought I’d be picking you up from jail,” Romanoff said with a smirk as Lithium was released from behind the bars. “You look too good to be back there. But I promise, if we ever end up in there at the same time, I’ll make sure we’re cell mates, all right? We’ll give those boys a run for their money.”

        Lithium sighed, shaking her head as she walked past the redhead. “Stupid civilians,” she muttered, her eyes glued on the ground.

        “It’s not their fault you don’t know how to pull off a B&E without making a racket,” Widow reminded her, quickly catching up with the brunette. “If you need some instruction I can show you how to do it properly. You’ll be silent as a cat by the time I’m done with you.” Natasha winked, grinning.

        “You know what,” Celeste said, coming to a halt outside the police station. “I would love that. The captain might be teaching me strength and endurance and everything, but damn it, I should learn practical skills, too, if I’m going to stand a chance.”

        Agent Romanoff paused for a moment, staring at Lithium, sweet, kind, innocent Lithium, before her smirk returned. “That’s what I like to hear. We’ll get you in lessons as soon as you’d like. I’ve got a little time to kill. Maybe we can ease in some weapons training, too, eh? Can’t ever be too prepared.”

        Lithium nodded firmly. “Can’t ever be too prepared,” she agreed. With the night she’d spent in jail, Lithium had had plenty of time to think about James, and where he may have gone. Right now, she could think of only a few places, and she was willing to give them a shot. Bucky was somewhere. He had to be somewhere near, at least for a little longer.

        ~~~

        The beach was empty the next night as the sun cast a few lingering shadows and the temperatures dropped. Lithium sighed, having spent the fair amount of her day training, first with the captain, and then with Widow. While combining the both of them had been tiring and straining, Celeste didn’t want to be unprepared in any way if Hydra found her out.

        And all through the day, her mind kept flickering back towards Bucky and his absence. It was impossible to think what could’ve happened to him. The assassin had to be somewhere around here.

        Unfortunately, he most obviously wasn’t here, and she didn’t know how to find him. So, down on her luck, Lithium decided to try the last place in town that she could even think he would be: the diner.

        After staking out the small restaurant for five straight nights, Lithium’s mind and body were broken -- both from her failure and her recent training load having doubled. Bucky was gone. He’d vanished and it had taken her far too long to notice.

        Had he run off because he’d known she wouldn’t notice until it was too late?

        Lithium hated the thought of that. Didn’t he know what he meant to her? Didn’t he know how much it meant that they knew each other’s struggles so well? Was their fight against Hydra so worthless?

        “We’ll fight.”

        Lithium sighed as she stalked out of the diner for the fifth time in a row now. “Yeah, right,” she muttered. “If we’re going to fight, then why did you run away? What the hell did I do wrong?”

        “It wasn’t you.”

        Lithium froze as the voice hit her ears, and she quickly glanced down the alley, into the dark shadows that hid Bucky’s form too well. She couldn’t pinpoint him. “James?” She called out quietly, looking around.

        “It wasn’t you,” he repeated. “Go home. I need to leave.”

        “James you bastard!” She called out, closing her eyes to fight the tears. “Don’t you dare tell me it wasn’t me and then say you’re leaving when you spent the last week avoiding me! Because that is exactly what it is if you have the nerve to leave like this! I have been nothing but kind to you! What is the problem, James? You had me worried sick! Don’t you dare go out like this or I will-!”

        “Ssshhh!” He hushed her, slipping out of the shadows, placing a finger to her lips gently, stunning her into silence. As soon as she was quiet, he backed away from her again. “We don’t need that sort of attention, Celeste. We’re still too close to the diner and plenty of housing.”

        “You’re scared of me, aren’t you?” Lithium asked slowly. “Or are you ashamed? What changed, Bucky? What the hell did I do?”

        “You didn’t do anything,” he insisted again. “I just need to go. I need to do something else right now. It doesn’t benefit us to be so close.”

        “What are you talking about?” Celeste asked, looking him over as she crossed her arms. “We’re okay. We’re fine. We’re fighters, James. Why is it suddenly so wrong for us to be around each other? What happened that shouldn’t have happened? Is something wrong? . . . Was I wrong . . . ?”

        “That’s not what it is,” Bucky replied vaguely, looking away from her. “I just can’t be around you right now.”

        “And you’re going to try and tell me it isn’t my fault?” Celeste asked firmly, crossing her arms, in disbelief. “What is this?”

        “I just need to be alone, Celeste.”

        “No, you just need to tell me what’s going on!” She insisted, her eyes starting to water again. “Do you have any idea what I went through, thinking something had happened? I thought Hydra had gotten you, and no, you’re just blocking me out because I did something irreversibly wrong and I know it’s irreversible because you won’t let me even try to fix it! You won’t even let me know what it is that happened!”

        “Because you don’t need to know!” Bucky shot back. “I didn’t even remember until recently! I didn’t realize-!” He shook his head. “It’s not important.”

        “Tell me!” Lithium insisted, a few tears slipping out of her eyes and down her cheeks. “Tell me where I went wrong that I’m losing my friend! Stop blocking me out and just tell me what I did wrong!”

        “You did nothing wrong!” Bucky insisted, the words hissing out between his ground teeth. “It was nothing you did! It was Hydra, and . . . It was me . . .”

        “What the hell are you talking about, Bucky? You’re not making any sense!”

        “I didn’t mean to . . .”

        “Bucky! Just tell me, for the love of-!”

        “I killed her, all right?” He shouted, finally blurting it out. “I killed Iris and I shot you! I pulled the trigger on the silver bullets! I was the one who stole her from you!”

        Lithium froze, shock and fear filling her face, her voice hardly more than a whisper when she spoke. “What . . . ?”