September, 2014.

Somewhere around Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom.

True to form, it was raining the next morning. Bucky made breakfast while I cleaned the bedroom and bathroom, then I packed the Jeep while he cleaned the kitchen and living room. We flipped a coin to decide whether to drive north or south and made one stop in town before we got on the road. Gerald accepted my pitiful excuse for running out so quickly. I told him that Jaime and I had gotten word of a music festival in some tiny eastern European country and were going to pick up our journey again.

We ended up going north up the coast for half the day, battling a sudden downpour of rain. Bucky could hardly drive in good weather, and so he pulled over on the side of a gravel road sometime after a very hurried lunch.

"It's impossible to see the road, much less the right boat," Bucky complained, making fun of my insistence on psychoanalyzing boats.

"We can stay here until this storm passes by," I said. Bucky was already unbuckling his seatbelt. Getting him to actually wear the seatbelt had been a struggle in itself, leading to a little bit of arguing over the merits of modern safety features before he finally put on the 'stupid thing'.

"Wonder how long it'll last," he mused. He grabbed his backpack from the backseat and put in on the center console between us. A few moments later he was tearing into a chunk of beef jerky from the packet I had bought for him before we left.

"Your metabolism is ridiculous," I laughed. We had ate lunch an hour before.

"I was always hungry before Hydra gave me whatever the hell they gave me. The problem was whether or not there was food around for me to eat," he said. He offered me the packet of jerky, and I took a slice. I was tempted to respond to him, but he kept talking. "My parents were raising four kids during the Great Depression. Then it was me and my sister trying to feed the four of us after they died. Army rations were terrible. Hydra fattened me up, but I wouldn't call what I ate food."

"You remember all those little things? What you ate?" I asked. I knew some of his memories were mundane; he wrote them down anyway.

"They're vague, but yeah," he answered. "Still only remember the name Rebecca."

"They'll come back," I promised him. A little more each day it seemed. He nodded and sealed the pouch of beef jerky. You could forcefully kidnap and freeze the man until the forties were long gone, but you couldn't get him to stop rationing smoked and cured meat.

~

"That one," I decided, and I pointed across Bucky and out the driver's side window. The rain had let up while Bucky took a nap on the back bench seat, but I hadn't had the heart to wake him. He needed extra sleep. We started driving again when he woke up, and after another hour of steadily tracking up the coast I spotted a boat I approved of.

It was large enough to handle the brutish open water, but it was in a state of slight disrepair. There was no rust on the hull or the equipment, and there was a roll of fishing nets on the pier next to the boat. Whoever owned the thing was probably still operating it but would probably accept a hefty amount of cash without too many questions.

"So are we stealing it?" Bucky asked.

"Keep driving," I instructed. "We need to look pitiful, and a walk through the rain will do that just fine." Instead of stopping and pulling over in the middle of the tiny fishing town, Bucky shifted in third gear and kept moving down the gravel road. "I'd prefer not to steal it, but if I must I will."

"I feel like you must be Catholic," Bucky said randomly.

"What? Where the hell did that come from?"

"The only people I've ever known who have been so well intentioned with such lax moral codes have all been Catholic. They do whatever the hell they want then go to confession and feel better," he reasoned out. He was smiling at his own dumb joke, and I shook my head. I was grinning too and couldn't help it.

"I was never particularly religious," I objected.

"You carry a Bible. A GI New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs. Pocket size and woodland camo edition," Bucky reminded me. I hadn't forgot.

"I don't carry it for the spiritual enlightenment," I amended. "I carry it for sentimentality's sake. This is far enough."

Bucky dropped the Jeep into second and pulled over next to a discarded tire. Most of the drive had been pretty uneventful, but the engine promptly died when Bucky pulled his foot off the clutch before taking the Jeep out of gear. He grinned sheepishly when he realized his misstep, but swung open the driver side door without any hesitation. I followed suit, and we gathered our things from the back seat.

"Ready?" Bucky checked. The rain lingering in the air was already sticking to our clothes and skin and hair. It was kind of miserable.

"One last thing," I told him. I turned Bucky around and pulled his knife out of the main pocket. "I really hope this doesn't dull it too bad."

I didn't give Bucky a chance to ask questions before I sat the point of the blade in the middle of the tread. I had to carefully stomp down on the damn thing to puncture the tire. Nothing happened until I jerked the knife back out, and there was a slow hiss.

"There we go. Now we have a sob story that anyone can verify if they get a little suspicious," I explained.

"It looks like someone stabbed it," Bucky said smartly.

"And you can do better?"

"Yes," he answered shortly. He took the knife from me and replaced it in the hole I had made. With a terrifying amount of skill and ease, he took hold of the knife with his left hand and twisted it sideways. He drug it down the arc of the tire, halfway around its circumference. The new hole was far larger and much more ragged. "Our tire blew out. See?"

"I see."

"I could've done that before, but you didn't ask," Bucky pointed out. He was smirking. In matters of brute strength, he would always outshine me. I rolled my eyes and started walking away from the mutilated car.

"But it's so much more satisfying when I get to be the violent one."

*

Author's Note:

Same, Gail. Same.

There are still a few more chapters to go before everything is up on Wattpad.