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"Don't. It's not funny."

"I—"

"Don't."

Willow bit her lip, trying her best to keep from bursting out with laughter only to fail just seconds later when Loki sneezed, a tornado of white swirling through the air and joining the thin blanket of flour that was spread across the kitchen floor.

The god of mischief waited patiently until she got all the giggles out of her system before he spoke.

"Must you stand there so uselessly?"

He was clearly annoyed by the defiant flour bag and even further irked by her catching him in the act which made the little mess a picture perfect moment for Willow to revel in his clumsiness.

"What were you trying to do?"

"I was attempting to recreate those flat pieces of food that you made last week and, not that it matters, I was getting along quite well until this," he held up the empty sack, "broke open."

"Mhm. So, you didn't get very far, then," she said, looking around the kitchen for any other signs of Loki's trial-and-error and silently thanking the gods that there wasn't anything else to clean up besides the flour footprints.

"My motivation died along with this sad little pouch."

Loki tossed the bag onto the counter.

"It's almost dinner and you want pancakes?"

"It's your fault. You make them exceptionally, can you blame me for wanting more?"

"You're only saying that because it was your first time eating them," she countered.

He opened his mouth to argue then closed it, scrunching his nose thoughtfully.

"I'm sure you're right. Nothing else you made before looked or smelt edible enough, anyways."

"Always the charmer. How does eggs sound?"

"Not as good as pancakes."

"Okay, compromise," she said, rolling her eyes. "After we make the eggs, I'll go get more flour, but you're making dinner. Deal?"

"Deal."

They proceeded to clean up the flour before getting to work.

She dug a small basket out of the icebox and broke six eggs into the bowl he handed her before passing it back to him. He whisked them with a plastic fork until it was a bright golden color as Willow brought out two smaller bowls for them to eat out of.

A few minutes later, the eggs were cooking away in the frying pan while Loki hovered over it, awkwardly brandishing a wooden spoon.

"Did I choose first yesterday?"

Willow was in the corner of the living room rifling through the crate of random books she'd collected during their journey—quite a few of them considering most of the space in their packs were taken up by weapons—but they shared a fondness for literature and he couldn't complain as it became a shared activity, as well.

The only downside was that they were both very fast readers and what seemed like a lot of books at first quickly became repeats.

"You do know we can't take all of those with us when we leave."

"Aw, come on. This is a beautiful collection!" Willow exclaimed, holding up a book that looked like it's lifespan had expired years ago with its wilting spine and yellowed pages.

"I wouldn't call that motley pile a collection and you chose yesterday, so it's my turn."

"Mean."

"Charlotte's Web."

"Sit back, you know I just started reading that!" The young woman complained.

"I fail to see your point. Besides," he pointed the spoon at her, "you're the one that came up with the rules."

"Fine."

She brushed off her cargo pants and stood up.

"Pick one for me, I'm gonna get the flour before I end up sitting here the rest of the day."

"I'm going to make you read Twilight again," he mumbled mostly to himself, though he knew she could hear him.

"And I'm gonna pull out your intestines if you do. Please burn yourself on the stove," she called before closing the door.

"You mean don't burn yourself, right?...Right?"

Willow wove through the streets, sidestepping a children's ball game and the decapitating of a large fish on a wooden block, the head flopping to the dirt almost ceremoniously. She had gotten used to seeing these things the more she surrounded herself with it and she found, as she rambled along, that she would miss it. The super soldier walked into one of the few shops the town had, home to an old lady who always seemed to have it out for her. They weren't very fond of each other, but Willow put up with it to keep herself in the good graces of the old lady who supplied most of their food. She had a long, gaunt face with glinting eyes that would follow the young woman around the store like a hawk and she had a wooden cane that she would use to poke Willow in the side when she felt like it.

"Anele," she greeted.

She was behind the wooden counter and turned around with a bitter glare.

"Where is the sour-faced one?"

I'm looking at her.

"Home."

"This is not home, girl. Not for you."

Willow wanted to roll her eyes all the way up into the clouds, but it would only invite the old lady to poke at her again.

"It is for now."

"Tch," she clicked her tongue impatiently. "I know why people come here. They come with their secret intentions and their violent ways, taking what little we have for their own."

"Anele, we have no ill will towards anyone here."

"I know."

Surprised, she looked at the old lady who scowled at her.

"I have been watching you and that man since you stepped foot on our soil. You are not like the others. But, this is not your life."

"I'll just take the flour, please."

"You cannot stay here," the old woman continued, accepting the payment.

"Oh, believe me. If I could leave, I would."

"So, what's stopping you?"

"My friend—"

"He's just your friend?"

"What are you doing, Anele?" She sighed as the old woman passed her the burlap sack, but held onto it and leaned closer.

"I'm telling you what you need to hear. You wander around like an aimless child, unsure of yourself, lost."

"I'm figuring it out."

"Are you?"

"Look, every time I see you, you tell me the same thing," the super soldier said sharply, losing her patience with the old woman. "Every time. You think I want to be here? I'm going crazy in this place and there's nothing I can do about it. I have no control over my own life anymore. I have nothing."

"No," Anele said fiercely. "There is nothing for you here. You may have more than you think, girl. There is always more."

"I don't know if there's anything left for me at all. I don't...I don't know what I'm doing."

Her voice had fallen into little more than a broken mumble and she cleared her throat with discomfort.

The soft touch of Anele's hand on her own made her look up.

"There is always more," she repeated, gently this time.

She picked up the sack of flour and handed it to the young woman, nodding her begrudging appreciation before rambling off into the back of her shop, leaving Willow a little disturbed by her outburst as she walked out.

She had never verbally expressed her displeasure with being in the position she was in because she didn't think there was anything to complain about.

There was no one to blame for any hardships coming her way but herself. After all, she had made her decision—she had chosen Loki and she did not regret it for a second.

But, choosing him meant giving up on Steve, something she had never done until now.

So, wouldn't it be selfish of her to want anything more?

Such thoughts were never entertained by her will, but even the slightest nudge towards the matter was enough to open a floodgate of questions that, against her better judgement, began to make her doubt what she was doing.

And what the hell was she doing?

Thick tears suddenly began to blind her vision and she stumbled through the market with stuttered apologies, aggressively wiping at her cheeks. The throng of locals began to thin as she moved into the part of town that sheltered nothing but clouds of dust.

Anele had told her why no one lived there and only the one time for her patience wore thin and she disliked speaking about it.

The people believed the particular piece of land to be cursed, plagued by tormented spirits that wept in the night. Innocents from the past had built upon the land and suffered the consequences, leaving behind a maze of old, crumbled houses and broken belongings that once had proud owners.

Willow absently ran her fingers along the side of a cracked adobo wall when she stopped, leaning against it and sliding to the ground with a hiccupping sob.

She buried her face in her hands as though she were trying to hide her tears away, but what the woods could not see, they could hear.

It took her a few minutes before she could fully compose herself and even then, she was sniffling like a child with a nasty cold, a stray tear escaping here and there against her will.

Tilting her head back against the clay, she closed her eyes as the sun slowly shifted to bathe her in it's warmth.

Her mind was racing despite her outward appearance.

All she could really think about was the one thing she had been trying to avoid: how she wasn't Steve.

He would've known what to do if he was put in her situation.

He would've been cool and calm and collected with his comforting tone that always made her feel sure.

He would be handling it like a champ, not breaking down the one time she was slapped in the face with facts by a complete stranger that this really wasn't her life.

But, what was there for her to do? There was little chance of her life going back to normal and what had been normal about it to begin with? She was a science experiment, a guinea pig that had gone down in a plane full of bombs in the Arctic Ocean only to find that she'd been preserved like a—

"Fucking ice cube! I was an ice cube for seventy years and the first thing they wanna do is put on a baseball game?" She threw her hands in the air. "A baseball game? Who even watches baseball anymore?!"

Willow abruptly took in a sharp breath when she realized she was yelling at the trees as though they had personally wronged her.

"Sorry," she muttered, running a hand along her forehead.

The trees swayed in an almost forgiving response as a soft gale caressed her wet cheeks.

She wrapped her arms tightly around herself and drew her knees up to her chin before going completely still.

Something about her surroundings suddenly made her feel small, like an inconsequential speck in the movement of the universe that had bigger things to worry about.

It didn't exactly make her feel better, but it did make her wonder of things better suited to her current mental state. She didn't know long she stayed like that, her face a perfect mask of detachment, when a sudden chill ran over her skin brought by the setting of the sun as it balanced over the horizon and cast a long shadow over her that she hadn't noticed before.

The young woman let out a heavy sigh and stood up, slipping the pack over her shoulders.

Her limbs cracked in protest, gone stiff by her lack of movement, and she went to stretch when the sound of a branch cracking in the distance made her freeze.

It was pure muscle memory that had Willow's own gun drawn in the same exact moment that she heard the shot before seeing it, the sack of flour that she'd dropped bursting in mid-air as the bullet sailed right through the burlap.

Like a statue in the midst of the woods, he silently stood with a mask covering the lower half of his face and a gun in his hand, clothed completely in black tactical gear.

It wasn't this that caught her attention, though.

 It was his left arm, replaced with a silver-plated bionic limb and on his shoulder, a dark red star like a splatter of blood.

Willow should've been scared.

Everything in her body was reacting exactly the way it was supposed to for a regularly working anatomy, but it wasn't quite reaching her brain to give her the fight-or-flight signal.

Instead, the staggering blow of decades lost and the whispering remembrance of sorrow for the death of a loved one left her absolutely dumbfounded.

A part of her still wasn't registering what she was seeing, even when the alarm bells in her head were going off like shrieking harpies as he moved closer.

It was when she saw his eyes, a sight she could never forget no matter how much time she spent in the ice, that her mind fell helpless to her aching heart.

She slowly holstered her gun.

"Bucky," she breathed.

They stared at each other, seconds turning into painful, adrenaline-filled minutes of not knowing what to expect. 

Frankly, Willow knew exactly what to expect—he'd been sent to kill her, after all—but it was the natural instincts, not her common sense in the moment, that she'd developed over her time in the army that saved her life as he lifted his gun and began to shoot.

She scrambled into one of the houses, barely escaping the bullets, and went for her own weapon when it was knocked out of her hands and a stunning blow was dealt to her jaw.

Sharp bursts of white light exploded in her vision, but she shook her head and leapt to her feet.

She made quick work of disarming the soldier when he punched her in the face again.

This time, he gave her no room to breathe.

It was a stunning visual, breathtaking yet horrifying all the same, as the Moonshadow and the Winter Soldier were quickly locked in hand-to-hand combat—an onslaught of fists hammering together, limbs entangling, bodies pressed and pushed and pulled against the other. Strangely enough, the friends of a time past had found themselves in a deadly dance, different from the ones in another life where his touch had been gentle, almost feather-like and her eyes would glitter with amusement as they spun around under the low lights.

A flash of silver suddenly caught Willow in the arm and she cried out in pain, blood spilling from the wound like a furious stream.

He flipped the knife through his fingers as she stumbled away, cradling her arm awkwardly against her chest.

They had already beaten and bruised each other to the point where an average human would've been knocked out and most likely dead, but they weren't average—she knew this fight was lawless, ruthless, and would last forever as long as she tried to keep herself alive. The Winter Soldier himself wasn't about to let up and began to slash at Willow mercilessly, but the young woman was just as determined, using her good arm and legs to block and kick away his advances. By the time she managed to make him drop it, he had punched her twice in the abdomen with his metal fist and she was gasping for air as he attacked again and again and again. Struggling to fend him off, Willow desperately kicked him in the chest and he flew across the room into a wooden rocking chair, breaking it into pieces.

She knew it wouldn't hold him off forever, but it gave her time.

The young woman quickly picked up his forgotten blade and rushed at him once he was back on his feet.

He reached out to hit her when she grabbed ahold of his arm, swinging herself into the air and onto his shoulders, locking her ankles over his chest. She gritted her teeth and lifted the knife before slamming it down into his right shoulder.

It was the first sound of pain she heard him utter since they started fighting, a horrible and humane sound that startled and distracted her for the slightest second, her grip on him slackening.

He dragged her off his shoulders and, lifting her into the air, flipped her into the opposite wall—the force of his throw caused her to go right through the hardened clay and he watched as she fell to the ground, a pained groan escaping her lips before the adobo house collapsed on top of her.

The Soldier waited for a few minutes for the dust to clear.

He pulled the knife from his flesh with no concern and slowly walked towards the wreckage where he could just see her laying on her back underneath the remains, her hair a wave of white against the dark brown earth.

She was limp, unmoving...and then her chest rose with newly drawn breath.

The Soldier gripped the knife tightly in his hand.

He was careful to kneel beside her and brush the hair away from her throat.

He didn't know why.

She didn't matter.

None of them ever did.

But, he wanted to be careful, wanted to be cautious.

He lowered it to her skin, feeling the point of her beating pulse when he stopped.

He hesitated.

And her eyes flew open.

She quickly twisted the knife out of his hand and wrapped her arms around him to anchor herself before lifting her lower half and snaking her legs around his neck.

With all the strength she had left, Willow slammed the Soldier against the ground and tightened her knees, holding onto his flesh arm to pull it back for leverage. It was like trying to hold onto a big, slippery fish that wanted to kill her and she prayed for the energy to hold on, yelling aloud in desperation because she knew if he got back up, there was no way she would make it out alive.

Little by little, his frantic struggling ceased until he was absolutely unconscious.

Willow waited for a few seconds, chest rising and falling rapidly as she tried to catch her breath, before releasing him and rolling away. Her body felt like it had been dragged over a bed of nails a dozen times over though having a house fall on top of her would be enough explanation for how much pain she was in.

She crouched beside his inert figure.

Despite the fact that she was covered in her own blood and almost unable to move her right arm, she delicately pulled off the mask to fully reveal his face, a ragged gasp catching in her throat.

There were wrinkles imbedded in his forehead that had never been there before, lines that creased the corners of his eyes and his mouth. Faded cuts along the sides of his jaw reached all the way under his earlobes, none of which looked familiar to her, and Willow's eyes began to sting as tears dripped down her cheeks.

She was staring into the face of her best friend and yet she almost couldn't recognize him.

But, it was still him.

It was still her best friend.

Her James Bucky Barnes.

She slowly stood up and although she was a little wobbly, managed to find her pack and pull out the burner phone she always kept with her from the smallest pocket. Her fingers trembled as she typed out as much of a comprehensive message that her befuddled brain would allow before dropping it back in and slipping the pack on when her foot ran into a metal object.

The young woman quickly knelt back down to grab the knife and paused for a moment, glancing at Bucky—she leaned over to press her lips to his forehead, whispering a soft apology for everything and anything she could possibly say sorry for.

Willow wanted nothing more than to sit beside him until he woke up, to hug him and cry with him and hold him close.

But, as much as he was hers in a different time, he was not now.

And she couldn't do anything about it.

The town had grown dark as she crept back home, the faint sound of clattering dishes and raucous laughter floating through the open windows. Thanks to the serum she'd been shot up with in the 40's, her body was slowly relieving itself of the cuts and bruises that covered her skin, but she was sore as hell all over and the slash on her right arm was still pouring with blood, deep and wide.

She could taste it on her lips, too, when she suddenly fell to her knees and threw up all over the dirt. The super soldier clutched her stomach as it emptied itself and a raging sensation tore through her head—her mouth had turned bitter, a rancid taste.

If she wasn't feeling like it before, she sure as hell was wobbly-kneed and queasy now as she wiped spit off of her chin.

Another wave of nausea made her retch and she pressed her palm to her forehead to try and control her breathing.

"Well, well," she froze as the barrel of a gun suddenly dug into the back of her neck, "fancy meeting you here, Agent Rogers."

"Can't catch a fucking break today," she muttered to her puddle of vomit.

"Get her up."

She didn't know if she was grateful or annoyed as two pairs of arms dragged her to her feet—she didn't have to do it herself, thank the stars, but she hated when people touched her unnecessarily.

The grating voice of an underpaid goblin definitely matched the face and Willow's mouth curled in irritation.

"The old buddy did a number on you, didn't he?" Rumlow laughed mirthlessly.

"You look like shit."

"Me? What the hell happened to your face?"

His amusement faded into a dark glower.

"I was hoping he'd kill you, ya know," he said bitterly. "Too bad he didn't. You would've had a better chance dead."

"You can't touch me here," she snapped.

"Ah, it's a little more complicated than that, Rogers."

"You have such a way with words."

"Private education."

"Has clearly done nothing for you."

"Stick her. We have places to be," the man demanded.

Willow wasn't in the mood to be fighting anyone else off after barely escaping her best friend alive, but if there was one thing that she hated more than anything in the world, it was needles.

The super soldier grabbed the wrist of the agent trying to insert the needle in her neck and forced it out of his grip before pulling him forward and slamming her forehead into his nose, freeing up her arm as he fell to the ground.

She reached for the knife she'd taken from Bucky to slash at the other man and he yelped, alerting Rumlow to the situation.

At the same time he turned, Willow flung the knife as hard as she could and it imbedded itself in his abdomen with a sickening thunk!

"Fuck!" He yelled, grabbing the handle.

She rushed at Rumlow, viciously tearing it out herself, before knocking him down when the sound of a gunshot rang through the air. The impact of the bullet glancing off her hip threw her forward and the string of violent swearing that followed would have done her dead drill sergeant proud as she pressed her hand against the wound and ran for her life.

She could hear him shouting orders, his voice dying out the farther she got, but she knew there were more. HYDRA never did have an end to its amount of thick-headed cronies and even as she slipped around buildings and through alleys, she could see thin lights sweeping across the town that had mysteriously gone silent, the windows closed and all traces of laughter gone.

By the time she reached her apartment, every single one of her nerve endings were going berserk, making it five times harder to climb the stairs as she practically dragged herself to the third floor.

She twisted the knob and shoved the door open before dropping her pack with a loud thud that made Loki look up from the book he was reading.

"You certainly took your sweet time...," his teasing abruptly cut off at the sight of Willow standing in the doorway.

Quite honestly, while trying to stay alive, she hadn't completely prepared herself for the kind of reaction she would gouge out of the god of mischief by showing up bruised and beaten with a crazed look in her eye and blood dripping from various wounds as she tried to circulate air through her lungs.

Based on the level of shock on his face, she must've looked worse than she felt.

"I...," she looked down at her empty hands, a bubble of hysterical laughter threatening to escape her lips, "I lost the flour."

"What happened?"

"We have to go. Get your stuff."

He closed his book and stood up.

"Willow—"

"We don't have time," she interrupted roughly, trying and failing to shove past Loki when he quickly grabbed her by the arm.

He had her in a tight grip and was careful to pull her towards him as she winced in pain. His gaze wandered over her bruised face. She could see the wrathful green fire that swiftly grew in his eyes and yet it was the worry he held for her that overshadowed his anger and prevented him from leaving her side.

"Who did this to you?"

Loki's voice was almost a whisper.

Soft and trembling with pure rage.

A subdued danger on the verge of completely disintegrating.

Willow wanted nothing more than for him to gather her up in a tight embrace, his arms being a place she knew she would be safe and sound from everything around her.

Instead, much to her own personal protests, she moved away.

"Rumlow. He brought a team."

A beat, and then—

"Wait here," he said roughly.

The young woman quickly grabbed onto Loki's hand as he surged towards the door and pulled him back with all the strength she could afford.

"Loki, no!"

His eyes, burning like a great wildfire, were moving over her face as if he couldn't see her, and she could feel the tremble of his hands, see the tightening of his jaw.

"We don't have time!"

"You expect me to do nothing?" He snapped.

"Listen to me!" She snapped back. "The best chance we have is to get out of here and we need to do that right now!"

She watched him struggle with himself for a minute, torn between listening to her and listening to the voice inside his head urging him to make the streets run red with blood.

"Please."

With a muttered curse on the man's head and promises of revenge, he pushed aside the drawer near the couch and pulled their stash of hidden weapons from the big hole in the wall Willow made when they first moved in, shoving it all into the pack she handed to him before slinging it over his shoulder.

"What of your friend?"

As tears sprung into her eyes for the third time that day, the god of mischief began to inwardly curse himself ten times over for not going with her to protect her like he had promised himself he would back in the safe house, the night they had laid beside each other with their hands safely twined together. The night she had, without knowing it, shown him that she fully trusted him to be her partner.

"I couldn't do anything for him," she muttered in admitted defeat.

"It's not your fault."

"But, he was the reason we stayed! I helped you! I thought—I thought I could—and then, I just left him there! I left him—"

The young woman cut off, her throat being choked up with sobs.

He gave her a moment to lament for her friend and folded her delicate and worn frame into his arms as she shook with the weight of her despair, but it was a moment he would have to end.

He reluctantly moved back to cradle her face in his hands, an action that was of no thought.

His heart mourned to see her in such a distraught condition, even more so knowing he could have prevented it from happening, and it was this—the way she balanced precariously on the edge of consciousness that kept him from finding and slaughtering every single person who had a hand in her assault.

"Your wounds," he said softly, "let me heal them."

Of course, he did mean her physical wounds.

He also meant something else entirely as she stared up at him with tear-filled eyes of the most gentle blue, a sight that sent a stab of pain through his chest.

The young woman nodded and took his hands to hold them in her own.

It was a sign indicating her consent to his statement, but mere seconds later would prove it was for naught.

He never got the chance to do that one thing for her as he felt her body suddenly stiffen, hands tightening around his and eyes widening for the slightest second before she went completely limp. It was as if she had slipped right through his fingers like the wind itself and as he tried to grab ahold of her, he couldn't understand why his vision had grown impossibly blurry and his limbs lost all its feeling and there was no concrete direction for him to go except down, sharp pricks biting into the flesh of his back over and over and over again.

He was falling.

Down, down, down.

But, he was falling with her.

When Willow's eyes slipped closed, she didn't see the way he looked at her, the way he reached for her in feeble desperation, confused and fading from the world and Loki didn't hear the way she called his name on the edge of consciousness, letting it fall from her lips like a heavy stone before she let go and, fingers curling around the air, fell into the darkness that awaited her.

He was stuck.

Stuck in a state of oblivion.

Dark and empty and lonely.

He could see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing.

Who could live in such circumstances as the one he had found himself in?

Certainly no one who had something to live for.

He...he did.

He had something.

He had someone.

But, when he woke, the echo of her laugh, the twinkle of her eyes, the flash of her smile...all of it was gone.

She was gone.

And he thought, as he sat upon the floor with his face in his hands in, not a state of oblivion this time, but one of deep and profound grievance, that it would have been better if he had not woken at all.

For his purgatory had become his reality.

Dark and empty and lonely.

——————