~~~

        “So, Steve,” Romanoff called out, her voice teasing as she approached him in the hallway, eyes bright. “Did your ‘friend’ find you? Don’t tell me you turned her away. Shouldn’t you two be out on a dinner date or some such thing right now? Isn’t that what your old-timey nature would call for?”

        “Excuse me?” Steve asked, turning around to face Natasha. “What are you talking about?”

        “What are you talking about? You’re joking right?” Natasha asked skeptically, crossing her arms as they came to a stop. “Lithium? Celeste? Didn’t she come to see you? I sent her off from practice early for the love of-! If she chickened out I’m going to slap that girl so hard she’ll never forget to take advantage of an assassin’s kindness!”

        “So she’s not with you or Sam?” Steve asked slowly, his eyebrows stitching together.

        “Did I stutter?” Romanoff asked critically, glaring at him. “No. She’s not. She missed an hour of practice because she couldn’t focus. I sent her off to talk to you because I assumed that’s what the problem was. It’s the most obvious thing to block her focus, I mean, come on, Steve. You can’t deny that there’s something there without earning a slap yourself.”

        “Feeling a bit violent today?” Steve asked, his mind temporarily flitting from Lithium to the woman in front of him and her borderline eagerness to assault someone or something.

        Natasha smiled slyly, the pressure sliding off her with greater ease than a snake shedding it’s skin. “Can’t help myself some days, Stevey boy. We live with danger, after all. Sometimes it helps to just let it all come out in a whiplash. Now go find that girl. She owes me training time.”

        “That’s what I’m worried about,” Steve muttered as Romanoff stalked away, a deadly confidence in her stride.

        Steve was concerned, given the recently obtained information:Lithium was missing. Had been missing for a fair amount of time now. She was unaccounted for, and he wasn’t even sure how long it had been. Natasha hadn’t specified. A storm had been brewing outside for a while. The clouds had darkened the sky. Steve was going to find Celeste and suggest that they take the opportunity the storm provided to, well, enjoy a small candlelit dinner in her rooms, simply taking the time to talk to each other.

        But with her noticeably absent, that idea was quickly pushed aside. More so, it brought to mind the question of where she could have possibly gotten to, and whether or not she was outside in this brutal weather.

        The odds of that weren’t great, but it still made Steve uneasy to think of where she could have ventured off to unsupervised. It was a dangerous thing to be outside during a violent storm. And Steve cared too much for her to simply let it slide by like ti was nothing. He would do the same for Sam, or any of his teammates if the same would occur with them.

        So Steve set out, looking to find Lithium.

        His first point of interest: the diner, and he planned to progress from there.

        ~~~

        “It’ll be okay,” Lithium murmured to Bucky, savoring his embrace while she could manage to do so. “It hurts for now, but it won’t hurt forever. We’ll be okay. We’ll move on from this. Whatever it takes.”

        “I hope so,” Bucky replied gently. “Living in scorn . . . A friend’s scorn . . . Is a terrible thing.”

        “Is . . .” Lithium took a deep breath, pausing as she closed her eyes. Bucky titled his head slightly, confused as to why she had taken the moment to stop. “Do you think that’s all we’ll ever be, Bucky?”

        “Lith, do you-?”

        “I mean, I’m okay with it,” she interrupted, unable to hear his questions right now. “I’m very okay with it. I love having you as my friend. You’re a wonderful friend. But sometimes I just kind of wonder if that’s the end of the line for us, or if it’ll ever be anything different. I’d like to think it might.”

        “Lithium, I already hurt you!” Bucky objected. “I can’t do that again! I couldn’t live with it if I ever did something half as terrible. I couldn’t live with it, Lithium. I don’t think it would ever be wise for us to be anything more. For your safety, I don’t think I can.”

        “But do you want to?” Lithium insisted, pushing the issue further.

        “That’s not the point-,” Bucky argued, turning his head away from her.

        “Please, James,” she called quietly. “Just answer the question.”

        “I . . .” Bucky paused, taking a slow breath of his own as a few raindrops struck his cheeks. “I might,” he conceded.

        A slow smile spread across Lithium’s face. “We’re always friends, first and foremost, James. We will never have to be anything more or anything less. I’m more than all right with how things are, but my curiosity, is, well-.”

        The rain was picking up speed, but that wasn’t why Lithium stopped talking. James had cradled the back of her head in his hand, pressing his lips to hers in a careful, yet passionate touch. Once the initial shock had passed, Lithium smiled nervously against his lips and kissed him back.

        After a few seconds had passed, Bucky pulled away from her, his hand still tangled in her hair. “Does that quench your curiosity’s thirst?”

        Lithium smiled a bit more, a nervous, breathy laugh escaping her for a moment. “I . . . Yes . . .”

        “‘Leste?”

        ~~~

        Steve stood about twenty feet away, watching the pair. Bucky froze in place for a moment, preparing himself to run. A few bright flashes of lightning slashed across the darkness and the clouds, earth-shaking claps of thunder ripping through the air.

        For a moment, Lithium’s programming came back to her. For a moment, she was Hydra’s seductress, hunting down their foes and trapping them behind iron bars of their own making until reinforcements arrived.

        Then she would leave without another thought to the doom that would be upon them shortly.

        The flash of lightning reflecting off metal was what brought Lithium back to the world as it shone into her eyes.

        It wasn’t her own.

        Bucky was charging Steve, a knife in his hand. Lithium didn’t even know where he had gotten it, but he was an assassin. An assassin who’d turned his back on the organization that had trained and conditioned him. It made sense that he would always be armed. It made more than enough sense that he would be armed.

        “Bucky!” Steve called out as the rain started to pour, the true storm beginning to set in, the deadly glint of the knife shining as the weapon rose. In a moment, the knife struck down, and while Steve attempted to at least throw the blade off course, it had little effect.

        The blade sunk its teeth into Steve’s bicep, the flesh slicing open as Bucky impaled it, yanking the blade back out as he sought another strike. Out of instinct, Steve rolled away from his assailant. “Bucky what the hell? I thought you’d escaped Hydra! You saved my life!” Steve winced at the pain a moment as he looked at his old friend, the man wielding a knife that would prove deadly if he didn’t fight back.

        But Steve couldn’t fight back.

        He’d refused then and he would refuse now. Bucky was his friend, even when he was holding a bloody weapon.

        “Fine,” Steve muttered. “Kill me if you will. But I will not fight you, Bucky. I refuse.”

        Another flash of lightning came, and the brightness was enough to help Lithium break out of the trance-like state that had settled over her. Bucky. Bucky was assaulting Steve.

        “James!” She called out, her voice nearly a shriek as she ran over, kneeling over Steve as his arm bled onto the pavement, the red shade being washed away as quickly as it appeared. “James stop!” Lithium looked up into Bucky’s eyes. They appeared completely empty. Just as hers had felt a few seconds ago.

        Still, Bucky raised the blade of the knife far above his head.

        “Bucky, it’s us!” Lithium tried again, staring at him as her heart sat inside her chest, beating at a sprinting pace. “It’s Lithium and Steve! We’re your friends! Hydra isn’t here! We are safe! Bucky don’t hurt us again!”

        Her breaths were coming raggedly as Bucky paused, another earth-shaking roll of thunder crashing through the air, just seconds after the lightning lit up the sky. For a split second, the darkness had been illuminated to pure daylight levels, followed by near-deafening sounds.

        “Don’t hurt us, Bucky,” Lithium repeated, a fair amount quieter, taking a forced deep breath. Bucky hadn’t moved.

        When his eyes found hers again, Bucky sincerely hoped that somehow this was some sort of an illusion. Some sort of trickery Hydra had woven. But the desperation that had taken up residence in Lithium’s eyes, and the questions that had risen in Steve’s, told him more than he needed to know.

        This was no deception. It was no dream.

        Steve knew of his presence without a doubt.

        And he’d nearly killed him. He’d nearly killed both of them. If he hadn’t stopped, what would he have done then? What was there to be done now?

        Bucky dropped the knife, the metal clanging against the brick, shaking his head slowly. His hair was wet and stuck in thick clumps thanks to the rain, as was Lithium’s. But her expression varied greatly from his.

        “Lith, I . . .” Bucky paused, his eyes drifting to the man he’d been afraid to face for so long now. “Steve . . .”

        “James . . .” Lithium called out gently, her eyes tinting with sorrow. “I felt it too . . .”

        “It’s not the same,” Bucky muttered, turning away from them. “I need to go.”

        “Bucky, wait,” Steve murmured, looking at his friend. “I haven’t seen you, the real you, since the war. Is this the image you’re going to leave me with?” He shifted his weight carefully, trying to alleviate some of the pain the wound had caused him.

        Bucky paused a moment, unable to answer. “I have to go,” he repeated, the words harder to say each time.

        “At least help me get him to the hospital,” Lithium pleaded with him quietly. “Please, James. I’ve been training, but not enough for something like this.”

        “But I’m dangerous,” Bucky protested, his voice strained.

        “Everyone’s dangerous,” Celeste argued softly. “We’ll be okay.”