The most welcome sound that you could hear, even amongst the screaming of townspeople, friends that you had made in this past year, was the roar of Tony's suit appearing overhead. You looked up and peered through the dusty haze to see the brilliant glow of his repulsors firing towards the battle where Steve, Nat and Clint had remained, and your adrenaline again began to surge with the need to help them. But for as much as you yearned to fight at their side, you couldn't turn away from the rescue efforts that you and Bucky had begun.

"Buck, we gotta start separating out the survivors," you called out to him, your eyes still towards the sky. Your heart skipped a beat in relief when another quinjet passed over, and you caught a glimpse of Sam at its helm. "Okay, stay here and start triaging those who are hurt the worst. We need communicators if we're gonna get this done, I'll be right back." You took a few quick steps towards where Sam was to land, but Bucky's metal hand grabbed your arm in a hold that wasn't about to let go.

"No, stay here! If you go off alone they could take you!"

"Dammit, Barnes," you groaned, staring him down, "you need to learn to follow orders!"

"I do when they make sense!"

"It's just you and me out here, and we can't do this without coordination, and we can't do that if we can't communicate with the team. Now do as you're told! Stay here!"

"Yes, ma'am," he said and released you, unwillingly but relenting to your authority with a huff and clear signs of demanding that the two of you talk about this later. Bucky watched you run from him and into the clouds of smoke until your form disappeared, leaving the hollow ache of panic building in his gut. He hadn't been more than a few feet from you in any time in the past year, and suddenly, he felt abandoned and completely alone; he felt like a child wandering the world with no direction pointing his way home, spinning helplessly in the midst of hell on Earth without the first clue as to where to begin.

~~~

"So, it looks like you found them," Tony smirked within his mask, landing with a jolt next to Steve, "I could hear the explosion half way across the planet."

"Yeah, we could use a hand, thanks for stopping by," Steve struggled, reaching out to strike down an assailant, only to pull his shield back when Tony made the hit first. "(Y/N) and Buck are working on finding survivors while we keep the attention out here."

Tony looked around, surveying the situation as he shot a few quick blasts without much effort, taking out a half-dozen more Hydra agents like nothing. Clint, Sam, and Nat were holding their own, and Steve really didn't seem to need him like he had said; as you emerged from the hazy war zone not so far away, FRIDAY turned the suit for Tony to see you approach, making sure that he caught you. "Hey, Cap, you got this? (Y/N)'s making a hike for the jet."

"She what?" he stopped, turning quickly to find where Tony's attention was held. "She ran in with Buck...where is he? What's she doing?"

"I'm about to find out." Before Tony could take the first step in your direction, however, Steve reached out and grabbed his wrist, hurrying to stand in front of him and block his path.

"Tony, hang on. That might not be her," he warned, "I couldn't get a great read on her before this all started. I think she was on our side, but it was hard to tell. She wouldn't talk to me."

"Noted."

You hurried into the open door of the quinjet, frantically throwing open the communications cabinet and pulling out two earpieces for you and Bucky. Your hands fumbled as your adrenaline continued to control your body, but your mind was at least sharp enough to think about opening up a weapons console to grab a rifle for him and a handgun for you; never a bad idea to be prepared, you figured. It was in a different mind that you had been this person, an Avenger, and even though you recognized your own name on one of the cabinets in the jet, the idea of who that persona had been was fuzzy to say the least. No matter how much Bucky had removed from your memory before your life here in Romania had begun, by some miracle, the deeply seeded training that Steve had given you remained to a good degree.

"(Y/N), whatcha doing?"

"Tony," you sighed in relief, turning to face him. The weapon held in each of your hands set him on edge, but the charging replusor aimed your way kept them held low at your sides. "It's me, I promise. Bucky's in that mess without me. I came to grab comms and a little protection, that's all. I need to get in there and find survivors, but honestly, I really don't know if we're gonna find any."

"Okay, it's you," he muttered quietly relieved. "Alright, tell me what you need."

"Just keep them away from us, Tony, please. We have friends in there, and...I don't know how this is gonna go...but this is something that we have to do on our own. This has been our life for a year, and before we can come back to this," you paused, waving your hand to the inside of the jet, "we owe it to these people to save as many as we can, and say goodbye on our terms."

Tony lifted the mask from his helmet, looking at you with a compassion that you had never known from him, or at least, you didn't remember that you had known before. "I've already called in relief teams, okay? Medical care, rebuilding, whatever. I'll do anything that you say you need, just give the me word. Alright, go. We've got this out here."

~~~

After leaving Tony, with hands full and your eyes sharp for any signs of movement at your feet as they stepped over things that you hoped to never see again, and that you hoped you could keep from your nightmares, you called out for Bucky, hearing no call back in return. He was busy, you decided, far too busy with keeping your neighbors alive to be bothered with the sound of your voice. As you continued into the scene, the sounds and cries much further muted as they were when you had left only moments before, you wondered if you actually wanted his voice to be added to them. The feeling of relief at the tone of his voice would only draw your attentions away from what you were feeling at the sights; you wanted to remember this pain and anguish at what you were seeing, if for nothing else than to preserve the memories of those lost within your own. Bucky had given you a new memory to fill, so who better to take that space than those lost because of you.

You stopped at each face looking back at you, now vacant and absent where light had once been; committing those faces to your mind before moving to the next. As your journey continued and the faces carrying light dwindled in number, you found that you couldn't go on. Your body just...stopped.

"(Y/N)?" Bucky called out to you, finally, but you couldn't bring yourself to answer. "Doll, come on. We should go. I've found as many as I could, and I've got them together in a building at the end of the street where its safe. Come on, they need us down there." He gave your arm a gentle pull, but to no effect. "(Y/N)?"

"Why didn't you tell me, Buck?" you finally whispered, refusing to look at him. "Why didn't you tell me that you were a part of what they did? What they turned me into?"

"Doll-"

"You took away the part of me that they could control, and I'm grateful...but still...it's because of me that these people are gone. It's because you turned me into that person."

"(Y/N), we can talk about this later-"

"No! We can talk about this now!" you erupted, taking a step away from him. "It's not like things can get any worse! Tell me, were you selective about what you took out of this busted brain of mine? Because I remember how to do my job, I've realized that pretty quickly. But the time we've spent here seems like you've been determined to keep me from knowing anything about myself, and don't you dare say that you were trying to protect me because you know how that conversation is going to end."

The rumble of a jet flying overhead took his attentions for just a second, looking back to you with a new expression of worry when it began to circle before coming in to land uncomfortably close to where you both stood.

"That's the Stark Relief Foundation," you answered the unspoken question. "Tony called them in, so that leaves you and I will all kinds of time to talk about this."

"We're not talking about this standing here."

"Why not? What better place than amongst our friends? Oh, is it because they're dead? I can see how that would make you uncomfortable."

"(Y/N), that's enough."

"How could you have done that to me?"

"That wasn't me!" he argued, taking the bait despite his own insistence to leave. "They controlled me just as much as they controlled you! Do you really think that if I could stop, I wouldn't have? When I was finally able to think for myself just a little bit, I got you out of there! Do you know how risky it was for me to contact SHIELD to give you to them?"

"To give me to them? Was it too much of a burden to just let me go?"

"You were a trained assassin, (Y/N), and I needed to make sure-"

"That I could still be controlled."

"No," Bucky sighed heavily, "that's not what I was going to say."

Another roar of a jet sounded overhead, this time not pulling your attentions away, the two of you assuming that it was just another one of Tony's team coming in to help. "Then what were you going to say, Buck?"

He opened his mouth to answer, though still hesitant as if he hadn't really put the words together, but at this rate, you might never know what he was about to say. He looked at you with remorse and pain in his eyes, knowing that in a way, you were both right. He could have been more honest with you about the past you had shared, but he didn't want that to be a deterrent to you becoming who you were really supposed to be. Yeah, he was protecting you, and he didn't see that as a bad thing. In fact, he was feeling a little put out now that you didn't appreciate it more. "You know what, doll-"

"Get down!" Steve yelled from behind you, seeing him sprinting towards the two of you as you spun around towards the sound of his voice. The jet overhead wasn't Tony's at all, but reinforcements called in to help Hydra take your group out. Bucky grabbed your arm and tried to run, but there wasn't time; instead, you pulled back against his hold, dropping the two of you to the ground. He rolled over you just as the blast hit, throwing Steve from your view, the explosion deafening you to the sounds of Bucky promising that it was going to be okay.