It was three in the morning and Mallory Smith sat on a toilet seat.

The coldness of the ceramic had long since been replaced by the warmth of her bare thighs, no longer bare as she had pulled her pretty pink underwear back on without removing herself entirely from the seat. The pyjama bottoms however lay pooled around her feet; the night was too warm, too stuffy to be wearing thick pants. She had long since finished peeing but she sat still as stone on the toilet seat, waiting, contemplating, counting as the seconds faded into minutes.

Unlike her bathroom at her apartment, her childhood home had a decent shower under a reasonably large bathtub. She'd missed having baths. In fact it had been the third thing she'd done after moving back temporarily to her childhood home – the first being crying a lot over the state of her life and the second being sleeping. The toilet was huge and weirdly, comfortable enough for Mallory to sit on and the sink was in the current ruin of a gender-based civil war, the right side a cluster of feminine products in various shades of pink and green, the left a smaller neater row of blue and black masculine ones. A lump in her throat suddenly formed as a grief induced thought invaded her senses. He'll never get to wear that cologne ever again. The smell of it would never mix with the scent of her father's skin and envelope her in a hug. She shuddered, suddenly freezing but unable to draw the strength to pull the pants up her legs.

Stop it she scolded herself, her eyes finding their way to the drugstore bag and it's contents that lay inside the sink. The patronizingly happy face of the drugstores mascot smiled at her, as she shook the drying pee on the stick and counted down the minutes till she reached three. The instructions insisted on waiting two to three minutes but to be absolutely sure she was going to wait three. The stick was face down, the results impossible to see until she turned it over.

This was the only way to do it. She had to keep it secret. Her mother would freak out completely if she had noticed what else inside the drugstore bag when she came back. Her mother had been suspicious in the first place when after almost three days of lying in a fetal position talking only to her and the other practically silent resident of the Smith household she had suddenly announced her intention to go the drugstore and buy some natural herbal remedies to 'help James sleep'. It wasn't entirely a lie; James's new remedy had been taken before he'd went to bed and so far, none of his usual nightmarish screams echoed the halls of the Smith household. She was glad she had gone, both for herself but especially for James. His sickening nightmares gave him headaches the next day and nights filled with pointless sleep. He told her quietly when they'd come back from his big outing to the Smithsonian three days ago that the nightmares made him exhausted. Her true intentions of the drugstore trip had to be hidden and James did need something to help him sleep and this was a compromise. Her mother couldn't know about the test.

There was really no need in telling her mother she reasoned. It wasn't certain anyway that she was actually pregnant. She had just been a couple of days late; well in fact a week late. After the downing of the Triskelion two weeks ago, she had expected her period to show up on the Monday, exactly a weeks anniversary to the Triskelion tragedy. But it had never showed. She'd put it down to stress; stress of planning a funeral, caring for a mother who so obviously was pretending everything was okay, keeping James away from Steve as per James's request, waiting anxiously for Natasha to announce any legal troubles Mallory might have, listening to Steve lament about how he desperately wanted to have even a second look at James to make sure he was okay.

But at the end of the second week when it still hadn't came and Mallory suggested the trip to the Smithsonian, inside in the museum she had saw a woman cradling her huge bump and it had clicked. With worry she had clamped up and thought about it for three days; should she? Shouldn't she? In the end she had made her excuses and gone for it, coming out of the drugstore with a guilty face as if she had just committed a crime in buying natural remedies for a good nights sleep and a pregnancy test.

Swallowing, Mallory reached the final thirty seconds in her countdown and finally it sunk in. How stupidly huge and important the next few moments were for her. In thirty seconds, her life could change forever. One outcome would have her a mother in nine months to a slightly unwanted baby who's only shot at a father was a dead and dangerous lying neo-Nazi. That's if of course she didn't go down the abortion route. Would she do it alone? Could she pluck up the courage to ask her mother to come with her? Could she even do that to her? Mallory didn't think she could ask her family to watch her be responsible for another death when they'd just attended the funeral of a death she was partly responsible for. Another would be better; another would have her destroy the stick, box and bag entirely, wash her hands both metaphorically of the business and literally of the remnants of pee and go back to bed and pretend it had never happened.

And all could be changed by a few chemicals released in her pee made obvious by a few lines. One line meant she was in the clear; two lines meant game over.

Of course she wanted children. Just not right now. Not with this father. Not with this current situation. She couldn't bring a baby in the world when she could barely remember to eat every day. It was unthinkable. And the time was up; she reached thirty. She took a deep breath, stood from the toilet and walked to the sink where she was reflected in the mirror – the t-shirt that belonged to her dead and ex-boyfriend in a dire need of a wash – and turned it over in her hands.

She was silent for a beat, registering the results. One line. She wasn't pregnant, just very late. Relief coursed through her, alongside with the strange bitter tang of disappointment. She put the used stick back in the bag and bundled it all up, opening the cupboard under the sink and stuffing it at the bottom of the bin. The dark wood of the cupboard door blurred as she searched for a nighttime sanitary napkin, anticipating the irony of her uterus to kick in. As she put it in place, binned the remains and rewashed her hands, a choking sob escaped her throat and hot tears fell down her cheeks.

It took ten minutes to calm herself down. The image of the one line on the test was burnt into every corner of her brain, the only thing she could see. Her frame rattled with each howling sound, echoed around the small confines of the bathroom, the sound horrible to her own ears. She tried to be quiet but it was impossible; no matter how much she covered her mouth the sound of something dying would escape and echo around her. She wasn't even sure why she was crying; she didn't want the baby and she was wasting time that she could've spent sleeping or staring into space. But even as she attempted to coax and bully herself out of crying, she couldn't stop.

Get a grip, Mal, she hissed at herself as she ran the tap and splashed her face with cold water to reduce the redness. It's over, you're not pregnant its fine.

She switched the light off and went back to bed, creeping past James's residence in the guest bedroom and her mother asleep in the big room. She crawled under the covers, shivering and fell into a cold sleep filled with dreams of sharks with cool blue eyes swimming in waters filled with lillies.

In the same house, James Buchanan Barnes lay awake as the floorboards creaked outside his door as someone sneaked past to go to bed.

His eyes burned with half-forgotten memories, as he stared at the cream ceiling and wondered how much could change in such a short space of time. A week ago he'd been the Winter Soldier, wandering from place to place with zero memories and an attachment to a lively doctor who seemed to be the only colour in his monochrome existence. Then his life had exploded into memories that were physically painful to remember and sometimes he forgot where he was. He squeezed his eyes shut and recalled the facts as he always did before he tried to sleep; his name then and now, his titles, where he was.

James Buchanan Barnes. The Winter Soldier. Sergeant in the army, member of the Howling Commandos. Assassin. Mallory's house.

He opened his eyes to the cream ceiling again and sighed, breathing deeply, in and out. A loud gust of wind blew the drapes of the window swirling, and a rash of goosebumps covered his arms and naked chest. His shirt lay abandoned on the floor, his pants loose on his form as they belonged to Mallory's dad. Her dead dad.

He'd had mixed feelings about attending the funeral. Mallory's hadn't forced him to attend but there had been something pleading in her face that had stayed with him and made him insist on attending. Part of him didn't really want to pay his respects to a man who had direct responsibility over keeping him in captivity but another part wanted to be with Mallory. He had noticed, even when he had been the Soldier, she had strangely seemed to draw some strength from his being near her; on the wasp as they had been airlifted to that Russian prison so long again she had sat a little straighter and looked a little less homesick by just looking at him.
His suit had been borrowed, another Sampson Smith number which drooped horribly over his frame and the day had been refreshingly cold. Mallory's lovely mother Julia had smiled so kindly when he'd automatically helped her out of the car following the hearse that he knew he'd made the right choice. He closed his eyes and remembered the painful scene for the Smith family; Julia being comforted by her sister as she sobbed noisily through the sermon, Mallory staring forward with her lower lip wobbling attempting not to cry. It was then he had remembered Steve's mother's funeral, so long ago, and his hand had reached out and loosely held hers. Sampson had been cremated, and the wake was at the Smith household where he'd gone to bed early listening to the muffled cries of Mallory in the room near him, his accentuated hearing amplifying the noise painfully.

He wasn't even sure if the Steve memory was real or not, but he did remember it somehow. Steve had that same empty look in his eyes, that determination not to cry in public as they had carried their ceremony forward. It was the same look Mallory had shared. It had triggered the memory. Could looks trigger a memory? It seemed only Mallory could trigger things within him, words or sights or sounds. Was it because he trusted her? Even smells she could bring back. She mentioned vanilla once when she was talking to her mother about a cake and for a moment James swore he was back in his childhood home watching his mother pull something out of the oven with the scent of vanilla in the air.

He returned to the present, to the cream ceiling and the borrowed bed when an aching feeling in his bowels returned. He got off the bed and headed in stealth mode to the toilet, careful not to wake the now sleeping Mallory and Julia whose combined breathing floated through the walls. He did his business and washed his hands, and it occurred to him he had forgotten to brush his teeth and take the herbal remedy Mallory had bought for him before going to bed. He opened the cupboard and searched for the small glass bottle filled with vile smelling and tasting liquid that seemed to have little to no effect on his nightmares. He was about to pull it from behind a bottle of bleach when his eyes fell across the bin.

A happy face logo was printed across a small pink plastic bag. He would've ignored it if not for the way the bag had been carefully folded at the top to prevent whatever was inside to come out. He examined it closer; through the pink plastic the name Happy Family Pregnancy Test was almost visible. His mind went blank like a memory wipe, as he pulled the box from the bag. A small plastic stick clattered to the bathroom floor. He bent to pick it up, the faint smell of urine assaulting his senses.

As he turned it over with a thick sense of dread, he saw one line across the small plastic screen. He searched almost frantically for the instructions, his heart thudding in his chest, but could not find them anywhere. It didn't say on the stick whether one line meant pregnant or not.

Was Mallory pregnant? And why did she hide it?

He felt like was invading her privacy, so he replaced the bag in and hid it even better than she had. He went back to bed without brushing his teeth, feeling a swish of mouthwash was enough. He stopped outside Mallory's door, hand poised to knock. He didn't want to disturb her sleep but he was... concerned about her. Was she okay? Did she need anything? His hand fell and he went back to bed, attempting to focus on his memory recalling tasks but failing, drifting to a needed sleep filled with nightmares of babies with blue eyes and metal arms.

A/N: As said in the summary, this will be a collection of mini fics documenting the time between Captain America: The Winter Soldier and my planned AOU fic. Enjoy!