"We don't know who we are until we're connected to someone else. We're just better human beings when we're with the person we're supposed to be with."

-Tara Knowles in "Sons of Anarchy"

Ophelia was facing Bucky, the sun only an orange sliver now, she slipped her hand in his and ran the pad of her thumb over his fingertips. His skin was surprisingly soft, not calloused and hard as she had expected. She brought her green eyes up to his ocean blue ones, looking in them for answers or signs of remembrance, but saw nothing.

As she thought about the best way to approach the mental bridge, she tried to recall the most powerful link she had with Bucky. It had to be a the time when they were so emotionally connected to each other that all their walls had fallen down. While Ophelia knew their walls were crumbled now, both of them at their most vulnerable, she knew she had to establish an emotional connection.

"I want to try something," she began, finally grasping how to approach this. "To create a stronger mental link."

"Okay," he agreed, and when she paused, he added, "What is it?"

"I want to kiss you," she told him with a blush.

Bucky's lips crept up at the corner ever so slightly, making him look both shy about the idea and confident. Nodding, he moved towards her, as she was too bandaged up and broken to actually do what she suggested. He got onto his knees in front of her and tucked his hand underneath her brown hair, his skin touching her neck. His metal hand reached up and touched her chin. Ophelia pulled her knee up to her chest, and Bucky put one knee between her thighs, the other outside of her right thigh.

Looking into her eyes, his metal finger tilted her head up and he brought his soft pink lips down to hers, pressing them gently at first.

The kiss was so authentic, so natural between them despite how few kisses they had actually shared in their life time. She had no doubt, after seeing his image in the museum, that he was well practiced in his kissing. But in the last few decades, he had only kissed her. Ophelia nearly forgot to create the mental link, his lips feeling so familiar and yet she had not truly kissed them like this in fifty years.

As the kiss endured, Ophelia still struggling to create the link as she was entirely swept up in the sweet passion, Bucky inched closer to the woman, his grip on her tightening. His hand wrapped around her side, fingers tickling her back, and his metal hand lifted her chin a little higher.

Everything about the moment felt so good, attacking her senses. She could taste him, and he was delicious. She could feel him, and it gave her shivers. She could smell him and it made her euphoric. She could see Bucky through the hard shell that had formed around him. And she could hear the thoughts bouncing through his skull as she connected to him; the bridge was formed, and she could sense every neuron firing in his head.

Ophelia had never been told about her abilities beyond the pathfinding; she had learned on her own that she able to access more of the mind than just their location. Over time, she learned that it was a curse to be able to feel what another person felt verbatim, but once she developed the ability to understand it, it became a gift.

Once again the pain of what he had suffered and endured in the last while shocked her, but Ophelia held on to the bridge until he found something more than pain. As she dove deep into his mind, she could feel the happiness and the memories fighting to get out of what seemed like a cage. As she moved closer to the memories, she moved closer to him physically; her back arched. The memories of her, among others, were just aching to be released, as if they were reaching out through bars of a jail cell, screaming for their overdue freedom.

Then all at once, they got their wish.

The memories and emotions of the years past exploded through Bucky's mind and Ophelia was forced out. She gasped as she realized where she was, her lips parting from Bucky's as he scrambled back away from her. It looked as if he had been hit in the face, his eyes wide and his breath staggered. Leaning against the glass railing of the balcony, Bucky studied Ophelia from his distance.

Dropping his eyes at last, Ophelia began to wonder what he was feeling. She was tempted to enter his head again to figure it out, as the anticipation was eating away at her like mites in wood, but she held off. It was his turn to take control, she had done her part and now she had to wait.

"Ophelia," he mumbled her name, his eyes narrowing as he looked up at her.

"Bucky...?" She was still unsure of what he remembered. She had seen all his repressed memories of her, but had he?

"I'm so sorry..." he said through a cracked voice.

Her heart shattered then, knowing that even though she had seen the memories, they had not been able to reach Bucky. It wasn't fair; they were in his head and he should have known them, he should have seen them when they exploded from the cage. If he were still unable to access them, what chance did she have at getting them out now? She had done all she could; mission failure. She dug her nails into her palms, trying to calm herself but only ending up causing more physical pain to aide with her mental agony. She locked eyes with him, her lip quivering.

"You don't remem-" She was cut off by him.

"I remember everything," he said, his voice still shaking, but it had a dominant feel to it. It sounded as if he was finally confident in who he was. "You saved my life so many times. You brought me back to humanity when they thought nothing could. Over and over you saved me from myself, Ophelia."

She gaped at him.

"I can't make up for what I have done to you, I can't fix you. I can't make you forget the bad I've done to you, in this lifetime nor our last. It seems like no time has gone by since I looked at you, wondering how you could be so... so human in the world of HYDRA," he began, still gaining small fragments of memory. Each new memory could trigger a new one, but he wasn't getting a full thread just yet. There would always be blank moments, memories he struggled to reclaim. But she seemed to be there in his mind.

"You did everything you could for me, you risked everything for me, you were sentenced to death because of me, and you somehow... over the years of being in the back of my mind, you kept me alive while I was someone else. You have never given up on me, Ophelia, and for that reason alone I thank you." He took a breath. "I broke you down until you nearly died, and yet you still clung onto the idea of me. In return you broke me down, you shattered these... walls inside of my head until you found me underneath that shell."

He leaned forward, kneeling in front of a completely stunned Ophelia, his hands grabbing hers, holding them tight. His metal hand was ice cold, but his human hand was as soft as silk and as warm as the summer sun. The contrast revealed more than just what was him and what had been HYDRA; it revealed exactly what could happen now. The past and the future were very different, and there was so much possibility now. No longer did there had to be meaningless bloodshed for the sake of HYDRA; but that didn't mean that things could suddenly go back to normal. At this point, what was normal?

Blood raced to Ophelia's cheeks, burning her skin as she flushed furiously. Though she was completely stunned and thrown off, she realized that no one had ever said words like this to her. No one had ever given her this much compassion, affection and care.

"I promise you, Ophelia, I will never hurt you again. I will never put up any walls against you," he added.

He had not said he loved her, and Ophelia did not feel that sting as deep as she thought. But she understood why he hadn't said it. Bucky was hardly himself again, only fragments of his past reminding him of who he used to be. He would never again be the man Steve Rogers grew up with, or the soldier who fought the war with pride, he would not be the Winter Soldier. Instead, he would become something of all of them.

And that was a beautiful thing; more beautiful even, than loving her.

She realized that she was not selfish, she did not expect him to feel that way in the past nor the present. But perhaps the future could offer her that.

The sun had set.

Tomorrow was another day.