MY HOPE HAD begun to wane. It wasn't the first time, of course, and it wasn't the worst, but it was sure as hell discouraging. We'd been in Queensland for almost ten days now, and there was no sign of Bucky, or Cerberus, or anything in that regard. We were running blind, and unless we found a lead soon, Bucky's fate would no doubt be soon decided for him. 

It was terrifying, but I had no tears left to spill over my cheeks. I had cried too many of them. Now I was just ready. Ready to save my Bucky like he'd saved me. 

As I lay there one night, retreated back into our invisible Wakandan jet, I'd finally found myself resting. No more tossing and turning, like I'd done so many nights before, so often that Cara had begun to ask me to take melatonin. I was finally...still. Peaceful. Bucky rode the waves of my mind, as always, but it was a gentle journey this time. He was not harsh and cruel as he so often was. He was a gentle presence instead of the usual penetrating intruder. 

Unlike my recent daydreams, when I could hardly piece together the features of his face that I thought I'd known so well, I could see a clear picture. I was in my room, the light casting a gentle cadence around the familiar space. I was laying on my back, in the exact position as I was in real life. That only made it so much harder to remember that none of it was real. 

But it was so good. So good. It had been so long since I'd looked upon Bucky's face, seen every line and freckle on his perfect skin. So when I looked above me at the figure hovering over me, his body dividing my legs and wrapping them around his waist, I nearly cried at the sight. 

"Bucky," I breathed out, and I couldn't tell if it was aloud or in the silence of my own head. I hoped it was the latter. "Bucky. You're here."

Above me, his soft lips curled in a gentle smirk. "Did you really think I'd ever leave you?" He caressed my cheek with his fingertips, and I could feel the ghost of the feeling, a feather-light brush of his hand against my skin. 

My eyelids fluttered shut at the sensation, and I let out a shaky sigh. "You're not here," I said. "You're just in my head."

"Yes," he conceded, his long strands of hair falling into his eyes, "but that doesn't mean that I'm not here. That doesn't mean I'm not with you." He leaned in and pressed his lips to the crook of my neck, eliciting a breathy sigh from me. "Come on, doll," he spoke, his voice muffled. "I'm trapped here with you. There's no way I'd leave."

I chose to ignore the fact that this was all in my head, that none of this was real and I didn't have Bucky above me, I didn't have my legs wrapped around his waist, holding him close to me. I refused to remember that it was all an illusion. This was the man I loved, and I'd not seen him for the last several months. Most times when I thought of him, I thought about all the horrible things that might have been happening to him. But now, with this Dream Bucky, I could throw it all to the wayside. I could be happy, if only for a little while. 

My smile was wide as I felt his lips travel from the crook of my neck to my clavicle, planting sweet kisses along my collarbone. He reached the center and lifted his head with a mischievous smirk, dragging his index finger from the dip in my neck to the bottom of my sternum, pulling my shirt down with him. It didn't reveal much skin, but it didn't matter. He leaned down and continued his assault, kissing the tops of my breasts, sometimes giving me a gentle lick. 

I grew impatient and put both hands on either side of his head, lifting him from my chest to pull him back to my lips. I looked at him for just a few seconds, savoring the look of his extra plump, red lips. With a smile, I reached up and closed the distance between them, anticipating the taste of his lips—

"Dude, are you having a wet dream or something?"

And there was Cara, right on time, to drag me back to bleak reality. Once again, interrupting a moment of peace and bliss that I'd been unable to have for several months. 

Only minor embarrassment gleaming on my face, I looked over to the other side of my room, Cara propped up on her elbow, staring right back at me. "No," I protested, though I knew it would be to no avail. 

Cara only chuckled. "Good. It would have totally ruined my impression of you."

As I lay back on my bed, I felt the warm rush of tears back on my cheeks. No matter how hard I tried to stop them, they rolled down my cheeks in hot strokes anyway. 

"Oh, shit," Cara whispered. "You don't...you don't cry after sex, do you?"

I glared at her. "I told you, it was not a wet dream," I insisted, but she was already going off on her own tangent. 

"You know, you'd think that Steve would be a crier after sex. I mean, with his whole...nature and everything." Cara stared up at the ceiling, speaking indifferently. "But no, he's pretty normal after the deed. Surprising, wouldn't you say?"

"Cara," I sighed. "I'm really not in the mood to hear about you and Steve's sex life. Besides, if you hate him so much, shouldn't you be shutting out the fact that you two ever dated at all?"

She grew silent. "I don't...hate him," she said softly into the darkness.

"No?" I asked. "Then why can't you stand to be in the same room with him for more than five minutes? As far as any of us can see, he's done nothing but be kind to you and try to talk to you. It seems like he wants to repair whatever was damaged."

I couldn't see her well enough, but I knew her well enough to know that she was no doubt rolling her eyes at my opinion. "You're a good person, El. You believe in people. So does Steve. He just...he needs to sort out his priorities." Cara paused in thought. "Or at least...he needed to."

"So why don't you give him the chance to explain himself? Why can't you believe in people like Steve does?" It pained me to say the words. Even though I meant nothing of it, it sounded exactly like something my parents would say to me about being just like Cade. 

Cara didn't notice, though, and just shrugged. "I guess that's just not the way I'm built, Elda. I'm still the same as I was, but I've changed over the years. I'm different."

"So is he."

"It's different. Never mind."

I felt my eyelids tugging closed, tempting me into the glorious state of sleep that I craved. Giving into it and forgetting the conversation with Cara, I rolled over and watched the blackness on the backs of my eyelids, waiting for Bucky to re-materialize. He didn't.

||

That first week was boring, and the second was long, hopeless. The third week with no news, no leads and no sign of the US military, I was starting to get pissed. 

We'd done everything we could think of. We'd searched the streets by foot, looking up close at everything and anything we could find. We took to the skies, trying to see if we'd find anything while being airborne. We'd thought of as many codes we could think of, anything that would connect Cerberus to Australia, any famous place that they could have taken, building up their headquarters there. 

Nothing. We'd been rather unsuccessful. 

Until that day. 

We were in the common area of the jet, our presence unknown to any and all Australian authorities. We'd traveled around the continent, but even though we were on the western side of the country, the desert that surrounded us looked exactly the same as the one in Queensland. It turned out that most of the Australian inland was rocky desert. Cara wasn't happy about it, but we could all tell that she was getting restless. Nat joined her in that regard. 

Frankly, so did I. 

Cade rubbed his face with his hand, the other going up to tug on his hair. "What do we know so far?"

Steve scoffed. "Nothing." Sam hummed in agreement. 

My brother rolled his eyes and tilted his head, agreeing with the statement even if he didn't want to. "Okay, point taken." He glanced at me again and asked, "You're sure you can't think of anything? Any sort of clue?"

I shook my head. "If I could, I'd tell you. I swear, there's nothing."

He sighed. "That doesn't make any sense." His voice started to rise in volume. "I don't understand how I could have left Cerberus only a couple weeks ago, and now it's as if they never fucking existed!" He shouted, swiping his hand across the table in front of him. Any and all papers we'd collected, writing notes on them, were now sinking to the floor. His hands clenched in fists, I watched my brother get angry. And I mean angry.

"I was here. I was in Australia. That's all I know. But then I left. No one knew I left, they all thought I was dead."

"You're getting pretty good at faking your death, huh?" Cara mumbled, to which I hushed her. 

Cade raked a hand through his hair and stared wildly at all of us. "I don't fucking get it. I don't get it. They're unlike anything I've ever seen, they can disappear and reappear wherever they please. They're like—hold on." His short fit of rage ended just as quickly as it had begun, and now we were all just watching him, trying to understand his every movement. "Cerberus," he said, looking at me with a sort of smile on his face. "Cerberus," he chuckled, his breathy laugh turning into a full on roar. "I can't believe we didn't think of it before."

"Think of what?" Sam asked. Wretton leaned in, his elbows on his knees. 

My brother blinked. "Do you guys know the story of Cerberus? I mean, do you know what they are?"

We all shook our heads. The expression of glee on his face was so similar to the old Cade that I thought I was seeing a ghost. "Perfect," he said softly, "that's perfect."

"What is?" I asked impatiently. "Cade, spill it."

"Cerberus isn't just the name of a Hydra-born terrorist organization," he explained, "it's also the name of a Greek mythological creature—dog, more like—of the Underworld. They call him the Hound of Hades, and he protects the gates to keep the dead from leaving. With his three heads."

Nat raised her eyebrow. "You're telling me that they picked a name to match a dog?"

Cade shook his head. "Not just a dog. Cerberus is known to be the fiercest creature under Hades' rule, its three heads doing anything and everything to keep the dead and tortured souls inside the Underworld, forced to live out their punishments."

I furrowed my eyebrows. "Hold on, like Fluffy?"

Cara groaned, "Please do not tell me you had a three-headed dog as a kid," as Nat asked, "Sorry, what?"

"Fluffy. The dog." I narrowed my eyes, watching their blank expressions. "From Harry Potter. Come on, seriously?"

I looked up at Cade, my unexpectedly nerdy brother, who was practically jumping up and down with excitement. "Yes, exactly like Harry Potter!" He agreed, a wide smile on his face. 

Cara raised her eyebrows. "Okay, I wasn't expecting that. A hot, nerdy guy?" Her expression of surprise changed to one of cheeky desire suddenly. "Oh, hell yeah."

A frown plastered on my face, I retorted, "Dude, that's my brother."

"So?" Cara shrugged. "He's not my brother."

"Just..." I trailed off, raising a hand. "Keep your thirsting over my brother away from me."

Cade cleared his throat and hummed in Cara's direction. "Sorry, you're not my type."

Wretton jumped to his feet. "Can we not talk about this right now? We've got a job to do, a person to save." He glanced at me with a dipped chin, to which I smiled in return. 

Just that one moment, and I realized something. I'd spent most of this trip being wary of Wretton, the man who'd been assigned to me, assigned to this case. I'd thought that he would seize any chance he could get to rip Bucky away from me and deliver him right back to Ross' waiting arms. But that gesture, and all the days preceding this one told me different. Maybe, just maybe, Agent Red was some sort of an ally. 

Cade flushed. "Sorry. Back to my point." He rummaged through the papers on the floor and came up with a large one, a printed map of Australia. "I've seen it in movies. There's no way it won't work for us."

As we came to stand around him and peer down at the map, I saw Cara smirk out of the corner of my eye, undoubtedly looking at me. "Reminds me of someone I know." 

"If we draw three lines, connecting three points on the map, then it's safe to assume that whatever lies in the middle could very possibly be the spot." Cade grabbed a pen and uncapped it, tapping it on the table. "But how do we know where to draw the lines?"

"Well, Cerberus is newer, right? So what if they paid homage to the past by planting their headquarters right in the middle of the three oldest buildings on the continent?" I offered.

Nat shook her head. "I thought they hated everything about the past, why would they—"

"No, no, it's the perfect thing," Cade said with a smile. He squeezed my hand. "It's exactly the kind of backward thing they would do." He put the pen in his mouth and reached for his untraceable phone. "I want to know the oldest standing buildings in Australia. Now."

It wasn't long before we had our answers. "Okay, Elizabeth Farm in Rosehill, opened in 1793," he said, marking a dot on the southeast side of the continent. "Next?"

"Barracks Arch," I answered. "It's in Perth." I watched as he marked another dot on the southwestern part of the country, connecting the two with a line. 

"The last one is Royal Darwin Hospital, in Darwin," Sam read off the screen. "It was opened in 1874. That's gotta be it." It was on the northern edge of the continent. 

We held our breath as my brother connected the three locations with two more lines, forming a large triangle around the country. Right in the middle, well, it didn't look like much. I let out my breath. 

"So much for that," I groaned. "It was a good try, Cade. We just have to keep thinking."

But he was shaking his head. "No. It might be it."

"What?"

"They were underground when I was with them. There's no way they'd move above ground and risk their assets getting free." He circled the space in the middle of the map, which was a whole lot of nothingness. "Looks like we won't be leaving the desert any time soon," he chuckled.

I looked down at the map, the middle of our triangle ending up to be desert, like he said. "Well," I shrugged. "It's starting to grow on me."

"Speak for yourself," Cara scoffed. "I'd do anything to get all the sand out of my nether regions."

I shrugged. "You're going to want to hope that it grows on you, Cara. We're gonna be there for awhile."

||

wow, over 2500 words! damn, i hope you enjoyed this one! i'm off to work, so i hope you are all having a great start to your week! see you on thursday!

september 16, 2019