The headaches that plagued you when stress was high were enough to lay you out in bed for days on end, and you couldn't remember a time in your life when you didn't have them. They weren't uncommon after a particularly difficult mission, or those occasions when you would hit nearly 48 hours without so much as a nap, but you hadn't had one in a while and it was throwing you off. The side effects of a headache like this were a mixed bag of vomiting, dizziness, fumbling hands and feet, and the penchant for mumbling in Russian without realizing the shift in language. After the last few years with the team, they had acclimated around you, sending Nat to babysit until you could get safely into bed and back to using only one language at a time. It usually took more than the little scuffle that you had with Bucky to bring one of these on, but now that you realized that you never knew a day without suffering with this, you wondered what else in your life you were missing and just how large of a hole was left in your mind once you had fled Hydra.

"Anything...anything," you mumbled, your hands struggling to hold bottles as you searched your bathroom drawers and cabinets desperately, "there has to be something to kill this headache."

"Just come lay down, (Y/N), let me look," Natasha urged, leaning against the doorframe. "If I don't find anything, I'll just go raid Stark's bathroom."

"Why? Does he get headaches too?"

"No, but I'm sure he's got something to offer. If the guy gets a wild hangnail he calls his doc, so I'm sure that I can scrounge up a pill or two."

"Thanks, but I'm not taking anything that isn't mine, Nat. I can handle only so many surprises today. The last thing I need is to start hallucinating or getting his delusions of grandeur." A few more inept handlings of your belongings left you finally fed up once and for all, slamming the drawer shut with a loud bang and muttered angry words slurred in messy Russian. It got Nat's attention to hear, making her stand up just a little bit straighter when you finally pushed past her to heavily drop yourself onto your bed in complete defeat.

Natasha didn't immediately follow you, though her instinct was to hurry to sit at your side and talk you down, just as she had done so many times after Nick had brought you into SHIELD and the Avengers. She knew your history, even when you didn't; she had a clear timeline when all you had were broken pieces of memories that you weren't sure belonged to you, and none of them fit together. It wasn't what she wanted, to keep all of it from you, but it was what she had promised to Nick, though her determination to believe that it was for your own good was beginning to waver. With your soft, subtle whimpers of pain with each movement of your head as you tried to rest next to her, her heart ached with the heavy duty it carried. These weren't stress headaches, and she knew it; they were remnants of an old life trying to break free.

"(Y/N)," she sighed, finally moving to sit next to you. Her feet were tapping incessantly and her hands fidgeted in her lap as she stammered over her words. "I...okay, so listen...um, there are a few things...well, a lot of things, actually-"

"Nat, not helping," you groaned, pulling one of your pillows over your head. "Spit it out or get out, please. I mean that in the nicest way that I can right now."

"Right, sure. Well, so when you started at SHIELD, Nick assigned me to you for a very specific-"

"(Y/N)!" Bucky's banging of his fist against your door reverberated through your room like it could have just as easily been hitting the inside of your skull for the sheer volume of it. You grabbed another pillow to hide under, as if that would really help; there was no mistaking the sound of metal as it crashed into its target. "(Y/N), please! I really need to talk to you! I don't want to fight, I just want to talk, I swear!"

Natasha stood and hurried to the door, finding the volume hurting her ears too and only imagining the pain it was causing you. With a firm grip and a furious pull on the handle, she swung the door open to reveal a panic-stricken Barnes, who seemed remarkably immune to the cold glare she was giving him. He pushed past her like she was nothing, inadvertently pushing her against the door with his metal arm when he didn't give it proper attention.

"Excuse me, Barnes, what the hell do you think you're doing?"

When he stumbled into the room, he was full of anxiety and urgency to connect with you, but once he actually laid eyes on what was happening, and how you were shielding yourself away, his urgency was replaced by concern. "(Y/N)?" he called to you, now much softer in his tone, almost apologetic, even. "Are you okay?"

"She has a headache, and it would be best if you save this for another time," Nat answered for you. She reached out to take his arm so that she could lead him away, but he pulled back and out of her hold. "Are you going to listen or do we have to do this the hard way?"

"I'll go," he finally relented, "just give me one minute, please."

"Fine, I'm counting. Go."

"(Y/N), you don't have to say anything, okay? I just want to tell you that I'm sorry for what happened back there, and that Clint told me how we know each other." Bucky stopped when he heard an enraged hiss from Natasha, now standing with her back turned and typing something frantically on her phone. "I won't go into it now, but I would appreciate the chance to talk to you alone about it. I just want to say...I'm just really sorry for all of it, alright? I don't want to fight."

"On vsegda zakanchivayetsya bor'boy, (it always ends in a fight)" you mumbled, your voice muffled under your covers. Nat turned sharply, her phone now hanging in her hand weakly at her side as she stared at the two of you. Bucky stood, surprised to hear the same words that you had spoken to him in the hallway and refused to repeat.

"What did you say?" he asked hesitantly. "(Y/N)?"

"Barnes," she interrupted, shaking her head for him to stop, "leave it. I think it's best if you go now and let me handle this."

"What is my mission?" you asked, pushing up from the bed and onto your feet, but now your voice had changed, become colder, and not your own. "I've been waiting for you to return, sir, and I'm ready to comply."

Bucky turned and looked to his newest teammate, conveying both his pain and his confusion; he hadn't expected this when Clint told him about his role in your past life, and he certainly had no urge to return you to that mind. Nat appeared much less phased, as if she had dealt with this before, so he tried to step aside to let her take charge, but you only followed his movements.

"My orders?" you persisted, and it turned his stomach.

"Um...your orders..." he coughed, his voice cracking with panic and uncertainty, "are to...uh, your orders are to...to stand down."

"No."

"No?"

"Bucky, go," Nat insisted much more determinedly now, and not taking his refusal for an answer. She positioned herself between the two of you and pushed him back with all of her strength until she had him to the door. "I've got this," she tried to reassure him, closing the door in his face, but the last view that he had of her was as your arm came around from behind to crush the air from her throat.

"Natasha!" Bucky cried out, trying to push the door open, but it wouldn't budge. It wasn't a problem that he had ever had before; usually a firm kick or a solid hit from his metal hand would be enough to at least make it budge a little. "FRIDAY, open it!"

"I've been ordered by Miss Romanoff to keep the door locked and to detain you if you try to enter the room."

"Well, override it or something! I need to get in there to help!"

"You do not have security clearance to override an order by a senior team member."

"Jesus, are you kidding me? This isn't the time for some stupid goddamn rule-" he stopped, taking a startled step back at the sound of what he assumed was a body hitting the other side of the door. It sounded vicious. "Okay, to hell with this," he mumbled, turning and looking from one end of the hall to the other for anything that he could use. He finally settled on a heavy bench that rested at the far end, hurrying to retrieve it; he came back to your door with it and steadied his grip, preparing to use every ounce of strength he had to ram it open.

"Nat! If you can hear me, get away from the door!" Bucky warned, beginning his run. The edge of the solid steel leg of the table scratched against the barrier just as it opened to allow him entry, your hand quickly jutting forward to catch it and stop his momentum. He was left with nothing more than a stare of disbelief and a new lack of faith in any of his abilities if you were nearby. Whatever it was that they did to you...whatever it was that he did, and however it was that he trained you, he had done it too well.

"Bucky, what the hell?" you asked, taken aback with shock. "All you have to do is knock, you know?"

He set the table down in the hallway behind him, turning back with absolutely no idea as to what he would say. Just over your shoulder, he could see Nat bent over and trying to catch her breath, wiping away a small trickle of blood from her split lip and the telltale bruise of a solid hit beginning to discolor the skin around her eye.

"See," she panted, glancing back for a second, "I told you. I can handle it."

~~~

After doing exactly what you told her not to do in raiding Tony's medicine cabinet, Natasha waited until the sleeping pill she had given you began to work before leaving you alone in your room. Usually after these episodes occurred, you needed to sleep for nearly a full 24 hours to return to yourself and for the accompanying headache to abate. It also left you with no memory of the event, as if your brain had been conditioned for a reset with each turn. She had been doing this routine with you for years now, and even though she took her fair share of hits by your hand, she had no intention of stopping any time soon.

Unbeknownst to Bucky, at least not yet, Steve was exactly the same. He made sure that you were always assigned to missions that included either himself or Natasha or both, because they were still finding surprise triggers that would flip your personality in a second. It didn't happen very often, almost a rarity really, so no one ever thought to consider it a problem; Steve and Nat had mastered keeping the upper hand, but now that Bucky was going to be here all the time, they had to look at reconsidering everything that they knew.

"You're insane," Bucky snapped, pressing a wet gauze pad against Nat's cheek where you had landed a solid hit. She winced ever so slightly, hoping to evade his notice, but she knew that was unlikely.

"I'm insane?" she huffed, pushing his hand away. "When I tell you to clear a room, you clear a room, understood? I don't care if you're Cap's best buddy or not. On this team, I'm your superior and you follow my orders."

"So, Steve does this for her too?"

"Don't dodge my lecture. I don't get to give them very often."

"I'm sorry, sorry," he deflected, his hands up in defeat and with a tiny smirk, "I got it. You're the boss."

"That's better," she nodded, grabbing his hand to place it back over the wound with another grimace, "and yes, he's known as long as I have. We work together to help keep things...manageable. She hasn't flipped in almost a year, and I dared to think that my attempts at deprogramming were working. I'm worried that now that you're here-"

"That she'll turn and not come out of it."

Natasha gave him a silent nod in response, watching the expression he offered changing before her eyes; she could almost recite the stages of grief as they passed across his features. "When SHIELD fell, and when we took down the helicarriers, she was there. It was an intricate dance to keep the two of you apart, but we did it. When we found out that Hydra took up half of SHIELD, I thought for sure she would run to their side, but she didn't. She never questioned following Steve. But, you were still the Soldier then, and if you had even a minute alone with her, that would have been it and you two would probably still be out there on the wrong side and making my job a hell of a lot harder than what you just saw."