A/N: There's never enough about Peggy and Bucky. This really has no point to it; I just needed to get it out.

Warnings for: violence, some language.

Title inspired by a line in 'Tessellate' by Ellie Goulding.

Peggy's flat is in darkness when she returns home from HQ, exactly as it should be. The only sound is that of the clock on the wall in the sitting room - a gentle, familiar tick tock. Nevertheless, Peggy's got a sour, unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her body is tense, ready to fight or flee, but no attack comes. There is only darkness and the quiet ticking of time passing.

After standing in the foyer for a solid minute, too wary to move, she finally reaches out and flicks on the lights to the foyer and the sitting room. Totally empty, as expected. The entire apartment is devoid of anything that shouldn't be there. Peggy feels ridiculous, all things considered. Here she is, five whole years out of the war, practically still jumping at shadows. At any rate, given her job description, she ought to be immune to fearing things that go bump in the night.

It's a quiet evening in for Peggy. She eats dinner alone, with nothing but the radio for company, and then settles in at her desk to look over some reports which she'd brought home from headquarters. It's nothing important, but Peggy likes to be up to speed at all times. Her father - God rest him - always used to say one can never be too careful, and it's a philosophy Peggy has taken to heart. It's saved her life more than once, although it's probably fostered a bit more paranoia in her than is strictly necessary.

The reports don't hold her attention for very long. She still feels rather cagey, so in an attempt to shake it off, she takes a long, hot bath. By the time she gets out of the soapy water, it's late enough for her to justify turning in for the night. She puts on her nightie and, after a few moments spent in bed reading a magazine, she retires for the evening. All told, a rather dull night - but a safe one, which doesn't explain the nervous energy she still can't shake. At this point, she's either being watched or she's going mad.

Still wired, she only manages to fall into a light slumber, waking every so often before drifting off into that fitful half-sleep again. It's during one of those moments of wakefulness that she happens to look over at her bedroom window. Moonlight is bright against the white curtains, which are rippling ever so gently in the breeze.

The window is open.

Peggy snaps to alertness with a speed born of years of military training. She's felt off all evening, but now she knows something is up. There's no way she left the window open, so unless she's suddenly become a sleepwalker, someone else has opened her window. Someone is either in her apartment or has left recently. She rather hopes for the latter, but unfortunately, she's not that lucky.

She doesn't have time to react when some assailant leaps out of the shadows and grabs her. He's lightning fast, and the hand that clamps over her mouth is cold and metallic. Inhuman. Peggy can't even scream.

She can, however, fight like hell. Peggy starts thrashing immediately, arms flailing wildly. Her fingers tangle in too-long hair and yank, and her attacker grabs her more firmly with a hand that feels much warmer and fleshier. Peggy tries to kick him and he squeezes her arm so brutally that she can feel the bone crack. She screams, unable to help herself, and the sound is muffled by his metal fingers.

His human hand finds her throat and wraps around it, and she sucks in as much air as she can before he can squeeze the breath from her. She looks up at him then, finally getting a clear view of his face. Illuminated only by moonlight, he looks horrifying - the lower half of his face is completely covered by a black mask. The blue eyes staring back into her own are empty. Soulless.

Lack of oxygen makes Peggy clumsy, but she's close enough to the bedside table to reach for a weapon with her uninjured arm. There's a pistol in the drawer, but her fingers are fumbling to much to get to it. She grabs the first thing she gets a good grip on as black spots start to appear in her vision. She realizes what it is immediately, her fingers curling around it as they have so many nights before, but she doesn't have time to hesitate.

With a desperate, wheezing sound, she throws all her might into slamming the picture frame into the side of her attacker's head. She manages to catch him near the eyes, and he grunts in surprise and slackens his grip just enough that she can wrench free. She goes for the gun next, her breaths coming out in heaving gasps, but he recovers with unnatural speed and tackles her as she rises, knocking her to the floor next to the bed. She's no match for him physically, she realizes on the way down. He's too heavy, too big, too strong. She's going to die here, on her bedroom floor, clutching her only picture of Steve to her chest.

She keeps fighting, because it's not in her nature to give up - not even when the battle is clearly lost. He punches her in the face - with his human hand, thankfully, because a good blow to the head from the metal hand would probably kill her instantly - and she kicks him in the groin as violently as she can. He might be some sort of cyborg, but he's got something down there, because he flinches away from the impact instinctively. That gives Peggy the split second she needs to whack him across the face with the picture frame again, and this time, the glass shatters and rains down on her. It doesn't do much damage since half of his face is covered, but for some reason, he jerks back and goes rigid for a split second.

Peggy scoots away, hardly aware of how badly she's shaking as she reaches up, wrenches her drawer open, and finds her handgun. In the mere seconds it takes her to do that, he still hasn't moved. He's staring at the picture, which has fallen face-up. Steve, thin and solemn, stares at some point to the side, immortalized forever in grainy black and white. The attacker snaps out of it, finally, and grabs Peggy before she can put a bullet between his eyes. She fires and misses him by a fraction of an inch, and he wrenches the gun away from her, but his movements are less mechanical and practiced than before. He doesn't even break her wrist when he takes the gun, although he easily could. It's the smart thing to do - it would render her incapable of fighting with her hands. As it is, Peggy is still capable of punching and kicking.

"Let me go, you son of a bitch," she spits at him, struggling against him for all she's worth. "Let me go!"

He grabs her uninjured arm and pins it to the floor, using his body weight to hold her down. She kicks frantically, but she can't unseat him. They're down to wrestling on the floor like children, and Peggy is hopelessly outmatched here. She strains towards the gun, the picture frame, anything she can use as a weapon - but he doesn't give her the chance. He grabs her by the neck - with the metal hand this time - and bashes her skull against the floor, as if she's nothing more than a broken plaything, a useless rag doll. Everything goes black.

She comes round in fits and starts. Her head is throbbing viciously and there's blood in her mouth. Something hot and sticky is matting her hair to the back of her head, and after a minute, she realizes that broken glass from the picture frame is digging into her scalp. She cracks open her eyes and sees nothing but blackness for a second, until gradually things come into focus. She's still on the ground next to her bed, the side of which is a dark shadow looming above her. When she flicks her gaze in the opposite direction, she sees her assailant. He's kneeling on the floor next to her, and he's holding something with his metal hand. Her picture of Steve, she realizes. He's looking at Steve.

She's angry and she wants to snatch the picture away. He has no right to look at Steve like that - no right at all, she thinks rather mulishly. And God only knows why he's so transfixed by the photograph - Steve doesn't even look like Captain America there. He's still the skinny boy that she first met (that she first loved, really), all but unrecognizable except to those who really knew him.

But alas, Peggy is too dazed to move. Her limbs feel heavy, leaden. The blood leaking from her scalp is sapping her strength, bit by bit. She's going to die, she realizes once more. Once he finishes with his bloody ogling of Steve, he'll kill her. She doesn't have the strength to win now, only to prolong the inevitable. She supposes bargaining is in her best interest now. "Hey," she rasps, attracting his attention. "If you let me live -," she begins, swallowing her pride, but he doesn't let her finish.

"Shut up," he says gruffly, shifting closer. She falls silent and doesn't move, aware of the threat evident in his posture. "Who is this?" he asks abruptly, practically growling the words at her. The voice is muffled through the mask, and he's speaking almost gutturally, like he's not used to talking at all - but it's familiar. Something about his voice piques her interest.

"His name was Steve," she says raggedly, not quite sure why she's dignifying his question with a response. She's long past the stage where speaking Steve's name hurts, but for some reason she suddenly feels tears filling her eyes. Perhaps it's due to stress, or fear, or both. Or perhaps she'll never really be past the stage where his memory hurts like an open wound. "Steve Rogers."

Her attacker is silent. In the faint light from the moon, she can see him staring at her. Suddenly, with that lightning speed of his, he reaches out and grabs her face with his free hand. To her credit, she does not cry out. Peggy Carter will not die screaming and crying.

To her surprise, he simply - holds her still. He doesn't snap her neck. He doesn't choke her, or pull out a weapon. He's still staring at her, his eyes boring into hers. Eyes which had seemed cold and calculated before now seem - well, slightly less so. She refuses to be moved by what looks like hesitation and angry confusion.

Defiant til the very end, Peggy blinks back her tears and says hoarsely, "If you're going to kill me, you bloody well ought to get it over with."

He lets go of her face and, to her immense surprise, he stands. He stares down at her for a moment longer, and she knows that if she makes even the slightest move, he'll end her here and now. He seems to still be struggling with the urge to do so anyway, his hands clenching and unclenching fitfully at his sides. Peggy tilts her head ever so slightly to the side, so that she can see the picture frame where her attacker had left it, face-up on the ground a few feet away. If she's going to die now, she wants to do it with thoughts of Steve.

She registers his boots moving away, but when she looks up again, he's nowhere in sight. She is alone, on her back on the bedroom floor, with nobody to thank for her life except a photograph of Steve and a mysterious attacker who is already long gone, leaving behind no trace of his identity - familiar though he may be.

Strangely enough, Peggy doesn't think she's heard the last of him.