YN awoke suddenly and lay perfectly still as she tried to clear her sleep-muddled mind. Keeping her breathing slow and steady, she opened one eye and glanced toward the nightstand and the familiar red glow of the digital alarm clock that should have been there. For a moment she wondered if the power had gone off, and the sound of silence had been what had awoken her, but then she realized that she wasn't in her own bed. The room was enveloped in a thick blanket of darkness and she was struggling to make out the various pieces of furniture that sat along the walls of the bedroom Ana had shown her to earlier in the night. As her brain fought through the layers of sleep that still weighed her down, she began to remember the events of the previous day and she allowed herself a moment of self-pity as she wondered if she and Bucky would ever make it back to the twenty-first century.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a floorboard creaking just outside of her bedroom door. That must have been what had woken her up, but who was in the hallway creeping around in the middle of the night? Reaching under her pillow, she pulled the knife she hidden there before bed from its sheath and slipped out from under the covers. Silently cursing the nightgown that Ana had allowed her borrow, she picked up the hem with one hand while the other tightly gripped the hilt of the knife with the other. Tiptoeing across the floor, she was careful not to make the same mistake as the person in the hallway, lest a creaking floorboard gave away the fact that she was awake and aware of the person lurking in the hall.

She stopped at the door and flattened her back against the wall next to it. Listening carefully, she heard the muffled footsteps growing closer to her door. Every instinct in her urged her to throw open the door and face the unknown person on the other side, but she reminded herself that there were four other people currently occupying rooms on this floor. As far as she knew, no one other than Howard, Jarvis, and Ana knew she and Bucky were in 1942, but years of S.H.I.E.L.D. training forced her to stay alert and wary of anything out of the ordinary. Someone creeping along the hallway in the wee hours of the morning was definitely out of the ordinary, but for all she knew, Tony had picked up his nocturnal working hours from his father, and the footsteps she heard were simply Howard coming or going from his workshop in the basement of the house. It wouldn't do to hold their host at knifepoint just because she was too paranoid for her own good.

When the footsteps stopped in front of her door, she gripped the knife a little tighter and slowed her breathing as much as she could. There was no light, either in the hallway, or her room, so she couldn't see the shadow of the person on the other side of the door. Her heart began to pound in her ears despite the slow, shallow breaths she was forcing herself to take. As blood started to rush through her ears she found it hard to hear anything that might give away the identity of the person that was only separated from her by a slab of oak. She glanced down at the knob and distinctly remembered turning the thumb lock the night before, but she knew from experience that a lock that flimsy wouldn't stop someone that was determined to gain entry into her room. She'd only locked it because she knew she would've never fallen asleep knowing anyone could silently slip into her room. At least the breaking of the lock would've given her a few moments to prepare herself for an attack and allow her a chance to arm herself.

She was growing impatient with the stalemate and every cell in her body was screaming at her to take action, but she kept tamping down the instinct. As the seconds dragged on, she was finding it harder to ignore the unease she felt at having someone listening in at her bedroom door.

Finally tired of waiting, she dropped the hem of her nightgown and reached for the lock, but before she could turn it, a quiet knock sounded on the thick oak door. Had she really heard it, or was her mind running wild with the flood of adrenaline coursing through her veins? Mentally shaking her head, she decided it didn't matter as her fingers found the cool metal and twisted. The door was well-oiled and didn't make a sound as she flung it open and twisted herself around to lay her knife along the throat of the person standing just beyond the threshold.

"Dammit, YN," a hoarse voice said as cold metal fingers wrapped around her wrist and effortlessly twisted her hand so that the knife was no longer pricking into his neck.

The metal fingers had given away his identity, but she'd known it was him before he'd grabbed her arm. The current of air that had rushed past her when she'd flung open the door had carried a faint whiff of that intoxicating cologne, but she hadn't had time to stop the momentum of the hand holding the knife. Grabbing his right arm with her free hand, she pulled him into her room and shut the door behind her before flipping the switch to turn on the light above her bed.

"What the hell are you doing, Barnes?" she hissed in a whisper once she was sure the door was firmly shut and locked again. "I could have killed you, you know."

A smirk flitted across his face. "You could've tried, doll." The smirk faded as he gave her an appreciative glance. "I'll admit, I'm impressed. Not too many people are that quiet when they walk across a room, even barefooted."

"You heard me?" she asked in disbelief.

He pointed toward his ear with his right hand. "Super soldier, remember? I can hear as well as a dog."

"Is that the only characteristic you share with our mangy, flea-bitten friends?" She hadn't meant to say it, but sometimes she couldn't stop the snarky comments her brain came up with from flowing freely off her tongue. She chalked it up to too many years of hanging around Nat and Tony. With those two, you either learned to give as good as you got, or suffer the consequences.

He gave her a chastising look which drew her attention to the fact that she was wearing nothing but Ana's nightgown. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the thin robe that matched her borrowed sleepwear and quickly grabbed it off of the footboard of the bed and knotted the belt tightly around her waist. "You didn't say why you're up creeping along the hallway in the middle of the night."

Bucky pursed his lips and looked toward the rumpled sheets behind her. "I couldn't sleep. What about you?"

"Honestly, I was sleeping just fine until I heard you," she answered, shocking herself when she realized that she had been sleeping peacefully – she couldn't even remember a single dream, so she must have been in a deep sleep state before Bucky had awoken her. "Why can't you sleep?"

His eyes met hers and instantly she knew why he couldn't sleep. She'd been stupid not to realize it sooner. Of course he would be playing the night of December sixteenth over and over again in his mind as he lay in bed a few rooms away from Howard. She'd spent a few minutes before she fell asleep trying to think of some way to alter the course of events without jeopardizing the future, but at this point, there was no way to know just how much of an impact they were already having on their personal timelines, or even the timeline of the world in general.

"Don't answer that," she finally said when the pain in eyes became too much for her to bear. "I got a few good hours – I think – so I'll be fine for a while if you want to stay and talk."

Bucky let out a deep breath and glanced around the room, considering her offer. He knew he didn't want to be alone right now, but he hated to impose upon her. Normally he had Steve to help him through the worst nights, but he wasn't here right now. Well, technically, he was just a few miles away, but that version of his best friend wouldn't be capable of understanding his torment.

He looked back at YN and saw the questioning look on her face, and he knew that she was serious about her offer. Steve had told him a lot about the group of friends he'd made once they'd unthawed him from the ice, and he'd seemed especially fond of the two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents that seemed to be joined at the hip. Deciding to take a chance, he walked over to the small sitting area on the other side of the room and sank into one of the plush arm chairs facing the fireplace.

She hadn't really been expecting him to take her up on her offer, so she was shocked when he took a seat. Not really knowing what else to do, she followed him and curled up on the matching chair opposite of him. She racked her brain for topics of conversation that wouldn't trigger some sort of bad memory for him, but she came up blank. Just when she was about to resort to discussing the weather, he began to speak.

"How does it work?"

Her eyebrows knitted in confusion and she began to shake her head. "How does what work?"

"Magic," he answered, taking her aback with his reply.

She took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling as she tried to remember the words the Ancient One had used to explain it to her all those years ago. "Magic is simply harnessing the energy that's all around us and channeling it to fit the purpose we need it to serve. There are actually three categories of magic. There's personal energy which can allow someone to achieve astral projection or telekinesis, but it weakens you fairly quickly. Strange was using his own personal energies to keep Mordo immobile and he overextended himself which gave Mordo the opportunity to break the Eye and, well. . .that's why we're in the mess we are right now." She shook her head and continued. "The most widely used magic is universal energy. Basically, we were taught how to channel the energy of the world around us to create shields and weapons – you saw that with the sorcerers back at the Sanctum. If you have a special device called a sling ring, you can use the universal energy to create a portal like the one Strange used to get us from the Compound to the Sanctum. . ."

"If you had one of those, could you create a portal back to our time?" Bucky asked, interrupting her.

She sadly shook her head. "That's not the way it works. If I had a sling ring, the most I could do is create a portal to the other side of the world. The Eye is the only relic that can manipulate time."

"Okay," Bucky said, nodding his head in understanding. "So, what's the third type of magic?"

"The third type is dimensional energy," she began to explain again. "It's the most dangerous type since the other dimensions are occupied by some not-so-friendly beings, and most of them aren't so willing to allow you to 'borrow' their energy. I'm still not sure how the Ancient One was able to draw power from the Dark Dimension to stay alive for so long without any consequences, but perhaps that's for the best. We definitely don't need other sorcerers trying to follow in her footsteps – apparently the world almost ended the last time someone tried."

"So, can you still use magic?" Bucky asked, gesturing toward her hands. "Can you create those orange sparks like the others?"

YN looked down at her hands as she turned them over in her lap. It had been years since she'd attempted to conjure anything. She'd sworn that she would never use magic again once she left Kamar-Taj, but for some reason, she wanted to show Bucky what she used to be able to do. Lifting her hands, she closed her eyes and took a few slow, deep breaths to center her Chi. Positioning her hands one on top of the other with her palms facing inward, she closed both hands into peaks with her fingertips just barely touching. Drawing in a deep breath, she pulled her hands in opposite directions and her eyes flew open when she heard the sparks flying from her fingers. With a laugh, she began to rotate her hands to create various geometric patterns, each new one surrounding the others until she had an elaborate kaleidoscope circling in the air in front of her.

"Amazing," Bucky said in awe as his eyes widened.

With a sigh of resignation, she clapped her hands together and the magic disappeared as quickly as it had been conjured. "I've left that part of me in the past. I'm a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent now – or at least I was before S.H.I.E.L.D. fell and the Accords tore what was left of us apart."

Bucky gave her a long look before dropping his head to stare at his mismatched hands. "I understand wanting to leave your mistakes in the past, but they always have a way of creeping back up on you."

She started to correct him, but changed her mind. Becoming a sorcerer had never been a mistake. It just wasn't the path she was destined to follow, but he didn't really care about her reasons for leaving. Instead, he was voicing his concerns about his own past and the torment he continued to endure because of it. She debated letting the subject die, but he had asked about her past, so it was only fair that she got to ask about his.

"I've been told that you have issues with your memories," she began hesitantly.

His gaze slowly rose to hers and she could see the raw torment swimming in the blue-grey depths. "Not anymore," he said with a sardonic laugh. "King T'Challa's sister, Shuri, is a genius unlike any I've ever encountered in my unusually long life. She and Wanda were able to unlock my mind to remove the trigger words HYDRA had buried there, but in doing so, they also unlocked a hundred years worth of memories."

"It's both a blessing and curse, isn't it?"

"That's the perfect way to describe it," he said, nodding in agreement. "I can remember every detail of my life growing up with Steve, but I can also remember watching the life drain out of the eyes of every man and woman I killed as the Winter Soldier."

"That wasn't you," she quickly assured him as she leaned across the low table between them and grabbed his vibranium hand. "All of the evil HYDRA put into you was wiped away, and whether or not Tony will ever admit it, he destroyed the only physical part of HYDRA that killed his parents. This is a new arm, and a fresh start for you. You get to decide how to use the power within you, and from what I've seen, you have a kind, sensitive soul and I'm positive you'll use your abilities for the good of mankind."

"I've been thinking about that," he admitted as he gave her hand a squeeze before letting it go. "You mentioned once before that maybe we should stay in 1942. . ."

"And you shot down that idea as soon as I voiced it," she interrupted.

He held up a hand to concede her point. "I know I did, but I've been thinking. Maybe you should work on a way to get back home, but I think I should stay."

"Give me one good reason why?" she asked in exasperation.

He didn't answer for a moment, and she knew that whatever he was going to say was something she wasn't going to want to hear. She waited a few moments and was about to ask him again when his gaze settled on hers and a chill went down her spine.

"So I can kill myself before HYDRA has a chance to turn me into the Winter Soldier."

___________________

Author's Note: Thank you for reading Part 8 of this story! I hope you enjoyed it! So, that cliffhanger!! Were you shocked when he said that?? I know I was! That was one of those times that the story took a turn and ended up somewhere I hadn't intended to go, but once I saw where it was leading, I had to write it!! This definitely puts a new spin on things! How do you think the Reader is going to react to his new plan? I look forward to your comments and please consider voting if you enjoyed this part!