"They're allowed to write things like that," Liz pointed out. "I don't like it, especially if they actually manage to dig up my name or Hillary's, but there's not too much we can do to stop them."

That didn't mean that she wasn't already starting to feel anxious over the story, though.

"I'll find a way to make them stop," Bucky replied, still a little angry. "They might have underestimated how many accidents I've arranged over the years."

"As tempting as that is, arranging accidents isn't the way an Avenger goes around dealing with these things." Liz paused for a moment. "I, on the other hand, absolutely can help them off a cliff."

"I wasn't always an Avenger," Bucky said, though he did back off a bit. He was still going to pass the word to Natasha, though; Romanov would likely have an idea of how to scare off the reporters.

Liz shook her head a bit. "Doesn't matter, you're not doing anything about it anyway," she said stubbornly. "You're not going to ruin your decently good shiny reputation because of this." Not because of her, she meant.

Bucky raised an eyebrow.

"My reputation is nowhere near shiny," he said. "And I refuse to let them get away with this kind of shit. It's not okay for them to do this." He knew how anxious it was making her, he could feel it. And he wanted to do everything he could to ease that anxiety away.

"It's kind of shiny, the Avengers are making it shinier," Liz pointed out. "Really, we'll just have to lay low for a while, let this blow over, no problem." As long as they didn't get any names, anyway. If a reporter got her name, she was so, so screwed.

Bucky grumbled a bit under his breath in Russian, but didn't push the issue any more. If the reporters got worse, he would take matters into his own mismatched hands.

Liz relaxed a bit at that, although she wouldn't relax for a while. Anxiety still made her Extremis roil, though.

It took Bucky a little longer to relax, but he eventually did. He still made a mental note to go down to the gym later on, though. He needed to vent on a punching bag.

By the time Bucky left, Liz was a bit more relaxed. But she still had trouble sleeping, and when she did sleep she had nightmares, worse than normal, about being torn apart and remade, about being trained, about missions. She woke up in a cold sweat early in the morning, trembling and gasping.

Bucky had actually been getting some sleep for the first time in a couple of days, after the date with Liz. He'd just dropped off a bit after midnight when the nightmares started. While none of the images were familiar, the feelings in the nightmares were something he knew well, and he sat up in bed with a strangled gasp, knocking over the lamp on the nightstand in his attempt to turn it on.

Steve woke up at the little thump of the lamp hitting the floor, and he blinked a few times before he got out of bed to go check. It wasn't the first time he'd gone in to Bucky's room on a rough night.

"You alright, Buck?" he asked, opening the door.

Bucky didn't reply, jaw clenched tight and a knife within reach. He hadn't moved to pick up the lamp, yet.

"Bucky?" Steve shifted his weight, watching a little more carefully now. Bucky still occasionally slipped into Winter Soldier, which usually ended Badly.

Bucky was quiet and tense for another few moments, and then the tension bled out of his shoulders slightly.

"Still here," he muttered, carefully moving the blankets aside and swinging his feet over the side of the bed.

"What was it this time?" Steve moved over to sit next to him, once again relaxed. Nightmares weren't uncommon for either of them, after all.

"Not mine," Bucky replied quietly, still trying to get himself completely under control. There was a trembling in his good hand that he couldn't quite shake and his heart was still pounding. "Nothing I ever saw before, but... It felt the same, Stevie. Like everything before with Zola."

Steve went still at that. "Are you sure it wasn't you?" he asked quietly. "Just something you hadn't remembered before?"

"'M sure," Bucky replied. "None of it was mine. But it felt the same."

Steve frowned, and then realization dawned on him and he looked at Bucky.

"Buck, what if that was Liz?"

"Might've been," Bucky replied. He looked at Steve, his eyes a bit haunted. "It was bad, Stevie. Bad as anything I've got in my head."

Steve nodded, resting a hand on his good shoulder. "So what do you want to do? There's plenty of punching bags, or it's early enough no one else will be out running."

Bucky just shook his head. Running and punching bags weren't enough, not right now. He needed something that would hit back, but that wasn't something he would just suggest to Steve.

"Boxing, then?" Steve asked, getting up and offering him a hand. Because that was the third go-to option, and that one usually got more of a response. So long as it got Bucky on his feet, moving, and not thinking, Steve didn't care.