A/N: Get ready for a +3500 word chapter. Oh, and this one's in a different pov ;)

Enjoy!
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"It was her chaos that made her beautiful."

BUCKY

For a moment, everything was quiet, except for the distant music that came from the ballroom. No one moved, they just stood there with their weapons pointed, wondering who'd make the first move. In hindsight, Bucky and Nadine must've looked ridiculous pretending that they stood any chance against automatic rifles, but they didn't budge. Minutes passed until François got bored with the standoff, and motioned for the men behind them to get closer. "My gem, please."

Bucky looked at Nadine, noticing the apprehension in her demeanor. She knew how much of a risk it was to give it back, but there wasn't much that they could do without getting shot in the head. "Where's Kaia?" she asked, her tone dangerously low.

"Where is she indeed?" he half-mocked, but by the way a muscle on his jaw tightened, it's clear he wasn't pleased that the French woman escaped his clutches once again. "It appears she ran once she killed Mr. Delacroix after discovering his deceit. If she's smart, she'd leave you and give herself more time to live. Now, the gem, if you will."

Nadine clicked her tongue, trying to act nonchalant, but her mouth twitched as she held back a scowl. Slowly, she lowered her weapon and extended her purse towards François, watching in anger as he snatched it from her grip. As he studied the glowing sphere, Bucky knew it was the best time to try to come up with a plan. They needed to do something, but they couldn't speak freely without being caught. So, he did the next best thing in hopes that it'd work. "Скòлько?" he asked in Russian, hoping that Nadine would catch on and understand what he meant.

She did. Thank you, Romanoff. "Я бы сказал, что около двадцати." Her Russian's clear and easy to understand, her twang-y American accent slipping through the last few syllables. She eyed the men that were on the first floor, weapons pointed at their direction from below. "Может быть, тридцать."

Around twenty men didn't seem like a terrible amount, but seeing the amount of weapons at their disposal didn't make it easy.

"Я очень хочу, чтобы мы принесли винтовки," he said as he lowered his weapon to the ground, never letting François out of his sight. He'd brought three of them, but handguns could only do so much in situations like this. He hoped they didn't check him for the other two.

"Винтовки более тверже скрывать в смокинге, хотя," she muttered in contempt, her eyes figuratively burning a hole through their opponent's head. Despite having only known her for a few weeks, he'd realized early on just how much anger she could put in her stare. It was actually intimidating; it's like she'd set the world on fire in order to get to those who've wronged her. And maybe she would; she certainly seemed capable of doing so.

"Stop your Russian conspiring before I shoot your pretty face," François snapped, zipping the purse back up after being satisfied that his prize was in one piece. His gaze was focused on Nadine, and by his wolfish stare Bucky knew exactly what he was thinking, and was ready to kill him for it. "And it'd be a shame to do so. With a face like yours, the possibilities are endless."

Bucky decided to ignore the innuendo and instead try to distract him. Maybe if they kept him talking they could stall their eventual execution. "Does he always talk this much or are we getting the special treatment?"

François scowled, turning his attention towards Bucky, his brows furrowing as he studied him. "Do I know you?"

The man's eyes flickered towards Nadine again, and Bucky clenched his jaw, his fingers digging into his palms to stop him from punching him. "You're gonna wish you didn't if you don't stop looking at her like that."

"Ah, l'amour est trop cute," François mocked, a smirk on his face. Bucky really wanted to punch him. "But it's also quite dangerous. It can get you-"

Whatever he was going to say was cut off by gunshots coming from the ballroom. People screamed, scattering out of there as best as they could while evading getting shot in their thousand dollar dresses. "Sounds like your art gala's gone to shit," Bucky pointed out, much to François's annoyance as he angrily yelled in French at the guards on the first floor to do something.

"Yeah, about that, I may have shot at a Bratva member and made it look like it was one of François's men," Emilia said, and Bucky had to bite back a laugh. Of course she was the one to instigate the chaos. "You're welcome?"

"Still one problem," Nadine eyed the reduced amount of men, and the look she gave Bucky was like a silent agreement that they could take them. "Well, twelve problems."

As if on cue, and out of nowhere, Bucky watched as Kaia and Emilia shot down the six men behind François. Amidst the chaos, Nadine and Bucky attacked the two men that were directly behind them, and used them as shields as they shoot the remaining three down. Bucky pushed the thought of killing them out of his head. He'd killed terrible people in the forties, before Winter, and this wasn't any different. These people have done horrible things, so it wasn't any different.

But it was still killing, wasn't it?

They all held their guns at François, Kaia hovering hers at the back of his head. "Hello again, François."

"Ms. Gerard," he spat, contempt written all over his face. "Or should I say Ms. Labonair? I suppose they're different people, aren't they?"

"Correct," Kaia agreed, motioning for Nadine to grab the purse. She did exactly that, purposely stepping on François's foot with an innocent smile on her face. "But they had one thing in common: neither of them love you."

"I will kill you for this," he threatened between grit teeth, his eyes flickering towards Bucky as well. "All of you."

"No, you won't." Kaia pulled the trigger, and down he went, his face bloody and warped by the gunshot. "Bâtard."

"What happened to emotions making you reckless?" Nadine questioned as she picked up her handgun, eyebrows raised in surprise at her friend's actions.

"That went to hell once Henri tried to kill me," Kaia replied. "And besides, you're the last person who should chastise me about revenge."

"Why didn't Taj warn us?" Leave it to Emilia to change the subject when she knew tensions were getting high.

"Question of the evening."

"I swear, I've been staring at the screens all this time, I don't under-shit. Shit!" Taj started cursing in another language, and despite the imminent danger Bucky's in, he couldn't help but rack his brain at the familiarity of it. He'd heard it before, but where? "It's a fucking loop. That French prick's got the cameras in a loop. He planned everything!"

Great. Just great.

"We're wasting time," Emilia said, already about to continue to the end of the hall. She didn't notice the men pointing guns in their direction. "We need to go."

"Wait! Emilia!" Before she could keep moving, he pulled her back towards the staircase where they'd been caught. Gunshots flew past them as she looked at him in surprise.

"Shit." Nadine lowered herself to the ground and half-crawled, half dragged herself until she was able to pick up one of the rifles from the nearest body, pointing it at the men that were on the first floor through the wooden railing. Judging by the way they were pulling out weapons, it meant that they weren't friendly. "The Bratva."

Wonderful. Nadine handed him the rifle as she went to get another one. "When I count to three, you run until you reach the end of the hall. Got it?"

Kaia and Emilia looked like they were about to protest, but Bucky shook his head. There's no time to play hero. "We'll cover you," he said, giving them a nod. "Nadine?"

"One..." She pulled the trigger once, and Bucky saw as one man collapsed. She had good aim, he'd noticed. "Two... three!"

They started shooting. There's a flash of gold and green as Emilia and Kaia left their sides, but Bucky was more concentrated in pushing their targets back. Sure enough, the men scrambled for cover, cursing in Russian as a lot of them started dropping like flies. When Kaia and Emilia reached the end of the hall, they proceeded to start shooting to give them a chance to do the same. Bucky pulled Nadine off of the floor, and steered her towards their direction.

"Go!" Bucky pushed her to continue running towards Emilia and Kaia and jumped over the railing, landing on the floor with a thud. He quickly grabbed one of the wooden tables and used it as a shield as he shot at people, before throwing it at his opponents's direction and scrambling towards the nearest column. The whole scene was chaotic, like a gang war they'd shot their way into. When he looked to his right, he saw Nadine fighting off an assailant, his arm around her waist, ready to slam her against the wall. Her skirt somehow was nowhere to be seen, so she's in her jumpsuit and closed-toed shoes. Seemingly unable to shake him off, she proceeded to lift her feet onto the wall and use the momentum to flip over her assailant's shoulder, which freed her from his grip. Slamming him against the wall, she quickly slid against the floor to grab a gun, twisting onto her knees to shoot him down. All in one swift motion.

Damn.

"Bucky!" Taj's voice snapped him out of his thoughts, reminding him of where he was. He quickly shot in the ballroom's direction before covering himself with the column again.

"Not now, Taj!" He grunted as he smacked his weapon at a would be attacker before using him as a shield to move himself back, and he was facing his assailants now. "Little busy!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Taj dismissed, and if he wasn't trying to not get shot, Bucky would've snapped at him. "But I can get you out of there."

"But, Nadine-"

"Don't worry about me, James," she replied, and when he turned to where she'd been, she was gone. "Just be careful."

Well, his "shield" was starting to lose body mass, so it was now or never. At this point, Bucky could only hope that she was okay. "Lead the way, Taj."

"Okay, there's a door to your right that'll lead to a kitchen, which in turn leads to a door that leads to the backyard," he instructed. "Got it?"

"Do I have a choice?" Bucky questioned, and threw the body forward before bolting towards the kitchen as Taj said, the boom of the gunshots following him. He stopped in the middle of the kitchen, looking at the three people dressed in black and red. They only had their eyes uncovered, and possessed knives instead of guns. What in the world? All Bucky knew was that they were standing between him and his exit.

They stood there, waiting for the one brave (or stupid) enough to make the first move, the chaos in the ballroom seemingly never ending. Bucky's hands curled into fists, and he quickly positioned his feet so he's ready for any attack.

And then one of them lurched forward.

Bucky quickly placed his hands on the island countertop and shifted his weight on them, swinging his left leg back and kicking his foot into his first attacker's chest. They fell back, and the second one swung their arm forward. Bucky ducked before punching them in the shoulder and slammed their head onto the countertop. The first one managed to kick Bucky in the side in a sneak attack, but the super soldier recovered quickly and grabbed their leg, punching their knee in with his metal arm. Definitely broken, judging by the way his opponent screamed. He let them go, narrowly avoiding the knife attack from the third opponent, blocking it with his left and uppercutting them with his right. With his fingers still locked on his opponent's wrist, Bucky quickly twisted his body back and flipped them over his shoulder, slamming them onto the floor in a rough manner. All three were down.

He bolted out into the backyard, throwing himself onto the ground as he heard a bullet wheeze past him. "Taj, now what?!"

"Down the hill, to the left. There's a garage. Know how to hotwire a car, Barnes?"

Bucky snorted and crouched, hiding behind a stone bench near some elegantly trimmed bushes. His eyes followed a figure in a tux near the pool, making their way towards him, and Bucky pulled out one of his handguns, ready to shoot. But he didn't have to, because just as they were about to turn the corner of the pool, a figure shot up and wrapped around the man's legs, dragging him into the pool with screams and unpredictable gunshots. Bucky waited tediously for one of them to come back up to the surface, but nothing happened for what seemed like the longest time. Finally, one of them pulled themselves up, rifle in hand, and Bucky almost shot them if it weren't for the familiar looking jumpsuit. Nadine.

He stood, and she ran towards him, tossing the newly acquired rifle at him. He caught it with ease, and did the same with his handgun, to which she turned the safety off and pointed it forward as she followed him down the small hill. "What the hell, Nadine?" he finally said as they reached the garage doors, surprised at how relieved he sounded at seeing her alive and next to him.

"I may have taken a detour?!" Nadine replied, watching carefully as the garage door slowly crept up. The way her breathing was shallow made it obvious that she was cold. "Also, I lost the fucking sphere."

Frankly, he expected to be more pissed about it, but he just wanted to get out of there. He proceeded to give her his suit jacket. "Well, it's too late to go back for it. We gotta go."

Nadine scrambled into the nearest car, which didn't have a hood. He didn't know what year it was, but he wasn't blind to the fact that it wasn't new. Nonetheless, the sleek black and red car looked better than the more futuristic-looking cars next to it. When she managed to turn it on, she quickly slammed the pedal, the car lurching forward before speeding down the cement ramp, connecting them to the road, and leaving all the chaos behind.

• • •

They ditched the car at some point, figuring they couldn't continue for too long with something that linked them to François. They continued running through vineyards, keeping close to the road just in case, but deep enough in the foliage to remain hidden.

Suddenly, Bucky felt himself running alone, and when he stopped to look at Nadine, he noticed that she'd stopped a few feet behind him, her hands on her knees. "Nadine?" he asked in concern, jogging back to stand in front of her, his eyes scanning over her form as best as he could in the darkness of the night. From what he could tell, she only seemed out of breath.

"J'Just give me a sec-ond," she gasped between breaths, shaking her head. "Oh fuck, you make me feel out of shape."

Bucky snorted, but felt a bit guilty as well. He hadn't taken into account that unlike him, she was 100% human, so their staminas were different. "We really need to keep moving, Nadine."

She waved a dismissive hand at him, a silent plea to give her a moment to control her breathing. "T-Tell that to my lungs, I'm dying."

Ah, shit.

"Okay, here." Bucky placed the rifle's sling on her shoulder before he turned so his back was towards her. "We're not getting anywhere if we wait. We need to get to the city."

They stood there like that for a second before Bucky felt her hands gripped onto his shoulders, her thumb brushing against neck, making him choke on a breath. It was such a simple thing, and yet...

Pushing the thought aside, he lifted her onto his back, his hands clutching the back of her thighs to support her weight. She was surprisingly light despite her athletic physique. You'd be blind not to notice that she was made of pure muscle, lithe yet strong. Once she was settled, he took off, dodging as best as he could the vineyards so they wouldn't scratch them that much. "I'm glad I didn't wear heels," she muttered eventually, her breathing still shallow. He was extremely aware of her damp clothes, her chest rising and falling roughly and her warm breath on his ear. "I would've died."

"You should've chosen another dress while you were at it," he replied. "Exposing your torso like that could've gotten you killed easier."

"Are you judging my choice of clothes?" Nadine inquired softly, and his lips quirked into a ghost of a smile at the small tease. When he didn't answer, she leaned forward to try and get a look at him, but she most likely only caught a glimpse of Bucky trying to hide his amusement. "Don't go all cold on me now, James. I'm wounded that you think this outfit's bad."

Bucky thought back to the moment he saw her in his room and how he couldn't stop looking at her. His mind then shifted to the different men that had stared at her unabashedly, François included, and how he wanted to punch their teeth out. And his lips on her neck, breathing in the warm, spiced scent of her perfume, forever etched into his brain after that. Bad was definitely not the word he'd choose to describe it. "Well, I didn't say that... It was a good choice. Plenty of men were ogling you because of it."

"Ogling me, huh?" she teased, and he cursed himself for even saying it. They shouldn't even be having this conversation.

He chose to ignore it. "I just don't think it was a practical thing to wear at a place where you were possibly gonna get shot at, that's all."

Nice save, Bucky.

Nadine hummed quietly, the sound creeping in her ear because of how close she was. They didn't speak for what seemed like a full minute, until she broke the silence. "Remember when I asked you about whether or not you'd like to go back to being the guy you were before all this?" she asked, to which he nodded. "Well, I feel the same."

"What do you mean?"

"Sometimes I remember the little girl I used to be," she replied, and he could hear the melancholy that she was trying to hide in her words. "My parents. The culture I was being raised in. I used to be so proud of it. Now, it's just, nothing. I've gone through so many changes, I just focus on who I'm gonna be tomorrow instead."

At the mention of this new information, curiosity sparked inside of him. He realized that what he knew about Nadine was actually pretty limited. "Are your parents...?"

"Dead? Yeah, they are," she confirmed, but there was no sadness in her words. "It's better that way."

"Why?"

"Better dead than to see who I've become."

The words made him stop. Bucky felt like he'd been knocked off his feet. He hadn't expected such quiet vulnerability, let alone the self-deprecation in her words. Clearly, she wasn't as proud of what she's done as Bucky'd originally believed when they met. It was just another thing that seemed to connect them. He didn't know if that was a good thing or not, just that it was nice that they seemed to share similar qualities. And yet, despite seeing her in action, despite knowing she had no qualms with killing someone to get a job done, Bucky disagreed with her.

He decided to place her on the ground again, turning around so he could look at her in the dim light. "Well, I think... they'd be proud."

It was the truth, even if she didn't believe it. Nadine didn't have time to respond as car lights neared towards their position. Bucky quickly tried to hide in the foliage, but she stopped him. "I messaged Taj so he could pinpoint our location for Kaia. I think that's them."

She slowly walked closer towards the road, cautious as ever, and Bucky reluctantly followed. A car slowed down next to them, and the window rolled down to reveal Kaia, her face as passive as ever. "Need a ride?"

They didn't think twice about it and just settled in the backseat, removing their weapons and gloves. After the atmosphere calmed a bit, Bucky looked down at his metal hand, noticing the close proximity to Nadine's. The only time he'd ever touched her with it was when he almost broke her wrist. Other than that, he'd tried to keep his distance. He didn't think about it much, and grabbed her hand. Maybe it's just a gesture, or maybe it was a sign of reassurance. Like, an everything would be okay type of thing. Whatever it was, he wasn't running from it, not for the time being, at least.
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WORD TRANSLATION:
1) Скòлько? (russian)- How many?
2) Я бы сказал, что около двадцати. Может быть, тридцать. (russian)- I'd say around twenty. Maybe around thirty.
3) Я очень хочу, чтобы мы принесли винтовки. (russian)- I really wish we brought the rifles with us.
4) Винтовки более тверже скрывать в смокинге, хотя. (russian)- Rifles are harder to hide in a tuxedo, though.
5) l'amour est trop cute (french)- love is so cute
6) Bâtard (french)- Bastard