Gdansk, Poland. 

May, 2015. 

I remembered where I was on September 11th with perfect clarity, but for once in my life that wasn't special. Nearly everyone alive, save for young children, remembered it.

I was fifteen years old. I was focused on the next time my dad would let me practice driving. I was sitting in my genetics class, flipping through the textbook and looking for the chapter I needed, when the vice principal walked in without knocking and made a beeline for my teacher. The class stared as they had a muted conversation. The vice principal left, and I was finally able to see how pale-faced he was. Our teacher, an older woman who always wore a kind smile, had steeled her face into submission and turned on a rarely used TV. We had only used it to watch shuttle launches and political events, and it always crackled with a vengeance when first turned on. I expected Mrs. Gray, our teacher, to flip through the channels, but once I saw what was on the screen I knew that was pointless. Every news station would be playing a version of the same thing.

We were all sent to our homeroom classes to wait out the day. With every hour, more students were picked up by their parents. Except for the children of the military personnel on the bases nearby. A quarter of my high school's population consisted of military brats. When the final bell rang and the buses were cancelled, we were corralled in the gymnasium and allowed to try calling our parents. We all knew they wouldn't answer; their phone lines were being commandeered for more important things. The bases wouldn't let anyone leave, and they sure as hell wouldn't let anyone enter.

So I spent the night with nearly 200 other military kids, staring at the ceiling of the gym and listening to the radio. At the end of the day, both towers fell, the Pentagon was hit, and a flight went down in a field. At the end of the day, I was thankful that Norfolk was spared.

~

Bucky was running errands, and I was home alone. No one ever came to our door, so I was surprised and suspicious when I heard a knock on the door. I tucked my gun into my waistband and slowly opened the door. Our landlord was on the other side.

"You don't have a TV or radio here, do you?" he asked. I shook my head. On the rare occasions when Bucky or I wanted to listen to music, we opened the window and listened to whatever the restaurant downstairs was playing. "Then you'll be wanting to come with me. There is something you need to see."

I didn't know it then, but I recognized the look on his face. It was a combination of that vice principal, Mrs. Gray, and the gym teacher that had been responsible for babysitting the military brats since his wife and preschool aged son were stuck on base.

I followed him downstairs and around to the front entrance of the restaurant. It was a warm day for early May, warm and breezy. The perfect weather for customers to be sitting out in the patio seats, but they were all inside.

The television screens were all tuned to the same station. I gently elbowed my way into the heart of the crowd, closer and closer to the TVs on the walls until I could read the scrolling banner across the bottom, translating from Polish to English without even realizing it.

...in Novi Grad, Sokovia. The city has been lifted by unknown forces and citizens are being evacuated onto a helicarrier marked with SHIELD designations. Members of the Avengers were seen in the city before the elevation began, but it is unknown...

"Gosia! Gosia!"

I recognized the voice as Bucky's and turned around immediately, searching for him. The name was the one we had given to our landlord and passed along to Ian when he got us Polish passports; it took me a minute to remember I was Gosia Sadowski.

Both of us were pushing through the crowd in the restaurant until we were within arms' reach. Buck grabbed for me and pulled me into his chest. I put my arms around his waist and squeezed him tight. A sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, something I hadn't been able to name, began to dissipate. Worry, I thought to myself. You were worried about where he was. But he was holding me and it felt good, one of his hands against my back and the other at my neck. He was warm and solid and unmoving. He was what I needed.

"I was at the market when I heard Sokovia was under attack," he whispered in my ear. He hadn't let me go, but we weren't the only couple holding each other tightly. His hands had only moved to my hips and mine to his chest. "I came straight here. What's going on?"

I pulled away from his grip enough to look over my shoulder. There was still a generic picture on the screen, probably pulled from some Ministry of Tourism website. The facts of the story hadn't changed in the short amount of time I had been listening.

"Something launched Novi Grad into the sky. Right now, if it falls right now it would trigger the equivalent of a nuclear winter over Europe and most of Russia," I explained to him. His hands tightened on my hips. I knew the next question he would ask. Is it still gaining altitude? "If it goes much higher, it'll be an extinction level event."

~

Bucky didn't let go of me for the next several hours. Eventually, I found a seat on a stool at the bar, and he stood behind with one arm wrapped around my middle, the gun in my waistband pressed between us. He was boxing me in, walling me off from the crowd. Our landlord, the owner of the restaurant, fed his unexpected patrons as Novi Grad broke apart and came down to Earth in a million small pieces. We stayed to watch until the number of casualties seemed to plateau around 150 and the coverage began to diverge away from what was happening live.

When we left the restaurant, he put his hand on the small of my back while we walked up the stairs. And when we were safe behind the locked door of our little apartment, I stepped into his arms again. There we stood, in the middle of the too-small living space, for a long time.

"I didn't realize my first thought would be 'Gail's alone' when I heard Sokovia was being attacked," Bucky admitted. "I didn't expect to think about you like that."

"Like what?" I asked. The side of my face was pressed against his chest, and I could hear the steady, if not slightly fast, beat of his heart.

"Like the way I used to worry about Steve," he said. "I'd hear about the neighborhood thugs getting their new recruits to beat up on easy targets, and I would start to wonder if Steve was somewhere safe. And even though I knew we were both pretty far away from Sokovia, I still started to wonder if you even knew what was happening."

"Our landlord came and got me," I told him. "Brought me downstairs not five minutes before you came in."

"I almost started yelling out your real name," Bucky laughed softly. I could feel him lower his head, his nose brushing against my hair. I hadn't taken a shower or even put on deodorant; I had been too preoccupied. I didn't even want to imagine what I must have smelled like. 

"I don't think we should go to Sokovia," I said.

"Agreed. What do you think of Warsaw?" Bucky asked.

"I was actually thinking Krakow," I told him. He kissed the top of my head and loosened his hold on me.

"Krakow it is," he decided. We fully separated and went about getting ready for bed. I was the first one to get settled between the layers of sleeping bags, and when Bucky joined me he tentatively laid his metal hand in the space between our bodies. I pushed my hand under his and scooted a little closer.

*

Author's Note:

I had written a version of this chapter maybe a year or so ago, but ended up changing it completely after writing the chapter before and considering the next chapter. All in all, it fits far better and matches the development of Gail and Bucky's characters I needed.