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Chapter Text

Reader's POV

Your eyes, like sleepy tombs, splintered open and eventually found a focal point on which to flex their powers, and lo - a digital clock coalesced in bleary circles, slowly settling from a figment to a tangible annoyance on the bedside table. Just barely able to eke out 5:02 and translate with logic that it was AM not PM was a struggle, so imagine the mental coding it took to reaffirm that you did not, in fact, own a digital clock. That was what your phone was for, and where was your phone anyway? The next realizations clicked into place exponentially faster, as if - now that the mental code was written - it ran automatically in the background. You remembered, vaguely, falling asleep on the floor of Bucky's quarters. So why did your back and neck not crackle? As the numbers sharpened in front of you, it was oddly disconcerting that - were it a snake - the fangs of father time would have bitten you. How was it possible that the hour, so large and leering, stared at you in judgement from a point-blank range? As the wheels began to turn, a glaring alarm went off, though not from the clock.

"Oh my god," you steepled your hands just beneath the bed covers, before skimming them over the day-old clothes you'd apparently slept in. "Oh thank god," you exhaled to yourself, and on and on the manic merry-go-round went for a few more turns as you assessed the situation. Firstly, Bucky's mechanical arm was draped haphazardly around you - panic - but momentarily the tension abated as you realized he, too, was fully dressed, sound asleep, and very chivalrously sprawled on top of the covers. As you peered around him, it was hard to contain a surprise fit of hilarity eyeing the basket of pastries that was a bit less full than you remembered from the night before. Therapist note-to-self: Bucky was a covert midnight snacker, whatever good the knowledge might actually do toward a breakthrough. You smiled at the absurdity of your thought process in the early morning. The goal was to extract yourself from this ridiculous school-girl situation, and yet you couldn't resist distraction as you looked over to Barnes' relaxed, creaseless face in a deep sleep. Without an ounce of tension in him, he looked like a different person entirely, but he felt exactly the same.

How the hell did this happen?

"For heaven's sakes," you scolded internally. This is what happens when you sentimentalize, when you blur the edges of professional conduct! In spite of yourself, you didn't regret extending the hand of friendship to Bucky. Not one bit. But this was a downward slope, and if you spent one more second in this room, you could just imagine tripping over the sheets and rolling down that hill into...truth be told you weren't sure what else. But you weren't prepared to find out. Carefully you slide out from under Bucky's casual, sprawling form, not without considerable effort to displace the weight of metal. Grateful for both the metallic absence of touch and the soft fabric between you that negated a certain amount of friction, you were surprised for a moment when his cold fingers gleaned your shoulder. The tepid surface of vibranium against your warm skin evokes a shudder. A small shudder to be sure, but in the surrounding stillness you're almost certain it shakes the entire bed. It's a miracle Bucky doesn't stir.

"Steady," you caution yourself, as you ease your weight onto the wooden floor boards. Where the hell are your shoes? Why would you have taken off your shoes and nothing else? After a cursory search around reveals nothing, you make a tactical decision to leave them behind. How crazy would it seem if you tried to hail a cab in your socks? This is New York, I'm sure the cabbies have seen stranger sights. Step by step toward the door you take stock of what you do have. Wallet, phone - newly discovered in your pant pocket - with whatever meager charge it has left, and a windbreaker to cover up the stale, wrinkled shirt. The doorknob does not protest as you step out into the hall, so you nearly shout when Steve's voice greets you.

"I hope you slept well. I thought we could go for a run." From the tone of Roger's voice, it wasn't a request.

As you caught each piece of running gear he hurled through the air, stressing that not a single thing hit the floor lest it wake Bucky, you pleaded. "While I appreciate the offer Captain, I'd much rather shower and -"

"Flee?" he finished for you. "Fleeing is just like running, except with less purpose and more panic. So I think you'll do fine. And in my experience, its far better to shower after you run."

In other words, you admitted, resistance is futile. "Thanks for the clothes," you offered as you awkwardly side-stepped him into the apartment's only bathroom.

"Thank Natasha. Don't be too long, I'd like to wrap this up before the sun's up." Clearly, he was not just referring to his morning workout.

Oh fantastic - you closed the bathroom door and unraveled, literally and mentally. It was too early to handle this degree of strategic, crisis-diffusing cognition without coffee. As you assembled yourself into Natasha's clothes, everything a size too small except perhaps the running shoes, you entertained the idea that perhaps that was the point. That Steve was making you uncomfortable and off-balance on purpose, but you stowed it away and whispered through the door, "Natasha doesn't have anything a bit more casual in her on-the-lam wardrobe?"

"That's about as casual as it comes."

"Fair enough." With a splash of water and soap on your face to remove whatever scraps of makeup may have survived the last 18 hours, you pulled your hair back up and burst through the door without giving Steve a spare moment for outfit commentary. "Try to keep up."

Steve welcomed the banter with grace. "Always do, doc."

"Was it your doing, last night?" You said at the corner of the street, waiting with Steve for the cross signal to the corner park.

"Be more specific," Steve replied as he walked across the road, easily putting half a block between you: not quite fast enough to break into a jog, but with paces too long to match at a walk.

As silly as it looked, you put a bit more enthusiasm into each step, as if you were bouncing, in order to catch up while absently tugging at the edges of your absconded workout ensemble. Natasha's 'comfortable' clothes put you at a severe disadvantage. They fit, but you were a different build than she was and it showed. Banishing the circumstances, and refocusing on Rogers, you were intent to getting to know him (and his motives) better. "I woke up in yesterday's clothes, next to Bucky, in his bed, and consequently rolled out onto the floor in a panic. It certainly wasn't my doing. Since you lead this team, I would like to know who is responsible."

"I'm sure you would."

"I know which bedroom in the loft is yours, Captain" you threatened, provoking a smile, glad to finally break into a running stride as you both felt the transition to the smooth park path underfoot.

The route was fairly simple. The park was about a block and a half from Sharon's apartment with dense tree cover all the way around the three-mile perimeter and a few zigzaging diagonal foot paths laddered from corner to corner. As you got used to the running lane, the conversation became amiable under a foggy mist, minus the icebreaker.

"I take full responsibility," Steve replied without any difficulty. It was no stretch of the imagination that he was holding back his pace for you, and you hated it. But thankfully that anger was something you could use to push through the lactose pain in your sides that were already twinging. "The floor is uncomfortable. He should have offered you the bed. I made the correction."

"Even if he had, I would not have accepted."

"I know that you're stubborn.  I didn't know that you interpret the misconduct of 'sleeping with patients' so literally." You missed a step. Hearsay about Steve from Bucky's point of view was quite a different experience from running alongside him. Comparing the idolized version to the man in stride was a double-take to be sure. For someone who grew up in an age of staunch mannerisms, you were surprised at Roger's direct, almost brazen, approach where his friend Bucky was concerned. His lack of eloquence was unexpected, but the honesty to be admired. In reality, you were beginning to understand how the ideal version of Captain America fell short in the shadow of Steve Rogers the man.

"On a day-to-day basis, I can't tell whether we are amiable Rogers, or whether you detest me." 

"Beg your pardon?" It was Steve's turn it miss a step barely avoiding an early morning dog walker as you rounded the first corner of the park off to the left, roughly 200 meters and two revelations of honesty from where you both began, with a long 400 meter straight stretched out dauntingly ahead.

"I mean this run isn't strictly recreational, I take it. It's a debrief," you said. "Or a warning, I'm not sure which."

"I don't detest you," the Captain said, nervously raking his palm across his scalp.

"Then you are uncomfortable." Steve began to back-pedal and you took the opportunity to slow your pace to a jog, working out a tweak in your foot. "Give me some context. I see your sidelong glances after Bucky's sessions, critiquing my methods. Yet today, you push Bucky into my proximity. I can't get a read on you, even Bucky's an easier case study."

"I apologize for any offense I've caused, if I have been critical it's only because I'm compelled to keep a close watch on him. I've spent my life trusting people. Even in the worst of situations, there have always been people willing to help. But in all that time that I've seen the best that the world has to offer, I've also seen it's darkness. Lately, I have a tendency to suspect the latter."

"Am I talking to Steve Rogers right now?" Exasperated but exhausted, barely a quarter mile into the run, you couldn't be bothered to be anything but blunt. "Or is this Tony-in-a-Captain-America-suit? Forgive me, but the world doesn't need another high-powered pragmatist. One is plenty."

"After our confrontation with Tony, I see now that the world is no less dangerous than it ever was. Except that people who are willing to help, protect, and serve have to spend their time looking over their shoulders," he took a deeper breath, perspiring whether from exercise or tension you were not quite sure, "protecting ourselves because we've been targeted, like we're as dangerous as the threats we stop. Because we are different."

You both ran the last of the long edge of the park before turning the corner away from the pavement, down a narrower diagonal path that cut through the wooded interior. You had to run nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with him to stay on the cleared trail of packed earth; you could feel his thoughts collecting with each step. Steve began again, "If I'm short with you, it's not because of you as much as what you represent."

While it was disconcerting to be muddled in with the rest of the prying world, you understood Rogers' point of view. The sweat was beginning to sting your eyes, but also made you hyper focused on his voice as the sights around you shifted in and out of focus. "I wish I could say that you shouldn't bow under the weight of public opinion, but under the circumstances I don't know that I'd fair any better," in fact you were certain you'd be much less hospitable. "Is that why we're both running at this ungodly hour under a shroud of darkness and fog?"

"In a manner of speaking. This a one small window of time that we can escape the scrutiny of the world watching us."

"In microscopic detail. How exactly is this arrangement in the loft working out for everyone?" You were beginning to understand, even empathize, for the Captain's position. Living without engaging, let alone helping people, was no life at all - driving Steve into literal and figurative circles, and your addition to the close-quarters confinement had likely caused more strain.

"It effects some of us more than others." Steve began. "Clint has a family he can go back to, Sam can work. The containment effects Natasha, Wanda, and I the most, and of course Vision." At this point the wooded path broke through to a grove in the center of the park, cobbled and decorated with fountains and pebbled recessed of granite benches and steps. But no sooner had you glimpsed the hidden refuge than you veered sharply down another diagonal path that would likely reconnect to the perimeter of the park. Just before you left the shaded haven you spotted the mile marker and as a sprinter, not a distance runner, you wondered how many more zig zags this conversation and this run would take by the end. "Until the Accords Amendments come to some sort of resolution," which you knew was far from expedient based on T'Challa's daily memorandums from the political battlefront, "we are not fugitives, but nor are we free or allowed to be armed, even for our own protection. We are not allowed to engage in active missions except under the supervision of the military, our movement is monitored and reported everyday by Stark." He paused to measure his next words carefully, though he was steadily gaining speed to the point where you were glad none of the conversation fell to you, because you wouldn't have been able to speak. "Under positive evaluations like yours, we are allowed to move in the world, but not freely, not part of it. We're not hunted, but we are not allowed autonomy. I spend my waking hours everyday watching injustices, and yet my first priority is to hold myself and my team back from intervening, or risk our tenuous privileges." You could tell by his tone that these freedoms were hollow in his estimation. "This will go on indefinitely until some head of department decides what is to be done with us."

Your head was swimming not only at the rush of neurochemicals, but the impact of Roger's implications. Evaluations like yours... what exactly had Tony made you complicit in?  A complicit spy? A jailer. "You didn't have to submit to authority. You could have stayed out of sight off the grid when your team broke out of the Raft." You breathed raggedly as the perimeter of the park came into view again.

The idea was not lost on Steve when he answered. "We could have, and we did, but when Wakanda came into the public eye as a nation of technological prowess, we all agreed that it was no longer a safe place to keep Bucky hidden. When he rejoined us, we couldn't stay off the radar with him and do what was best for him."

"Why?" You wondered aloud. With a strained sigh you and Steve slowed to a jog. A crawl by his standard, a pained pace for a complicated exchange. "With Barnes' skills, he could have stayed undetected for some time. He has a record of evading surveillance, even from you."

"It's not his covert ability that forced our hand. When we left Bucky in Wakanda, it was at his request. He didn't trust his own mind, and when we extracted him he would not go willingly, in part because he didn't want to be an internal liability." At that prompt, a thought took root. A scribble from your notebooks. Corruptible. That was how Bucky described himself, like data on a drive. As your concentration played over this, equally Steve seemed to lose himself in reflection: all that had happened, all the mistakes and the ego that had led to such a deep fissure among the allies that he considered friends. "I think in part he felt...feels responsible for the break in the team." Team - more than friends then. Steve didn't always agree with them, but even then he had trusted them, trusted Tony. And that trust on both sides, simply by being forced into sides, had gone so terribly wrong. But it wouldn't due to anguish in the past, and so with a second wind you ran onward, forcing Steve out of his reverie and back into step. "So we had to coordinate the next best plan to being off the grid and hide him in plain sight. "

"I understand how Tony's involved in your direct supervision for the Department of Homeland Security. What I don't understand is why? Tony has a storied history and entangled trauma with Barnes, but whenever I ask why he agreed to bury the ax with you-" Steve grimaced as if to say that that ax had never quite been buried; as it were, they could just as easily bury it in one another. "- he's several shades obscure. What brought Tony on-board with harboring you, let alone Bucky?"

Steve couldn't help a lopsided grin, despite the fact that the smile never reached his eyes. "That's the same question I ask myself every morning, when I wonder if today is the day Stark will go back on his word. Imagine my surprise when Tony reached out to me."

"I can't imagine it," it was your turn to be blunt. "Why the sudden change?"

"Truth be told, I don't think it was all that sudden. Wakanda set into motion a series of events that forced Tony's hand as much as our own. Terror cells in neighboring regions attempted to exploit T'challa's people and their resources, which sparked the United Nations to reconsider the implications of Sokovian Accord restrictions on T'challa directly and, by extension, his humanitarian agenda. Bad press. So they began offering their aid to the region. Thus began the Amendments process in an attempt to bring the 'gifted' Wakandan population into the fold, the shield -"

You scoffed. "The alliances," with audible dubiousness. "The attraction of Wakandan commerce at the global trade table, and the ensuing political dominoes of swooning foreign suitors. I've only known him a minute, but T'challa's personality seems to have that effect on any number of people. "

Steve, satisfied that you gathered the political pressure points of the situation, continued, "That was the turning point for Tony's restlessness. It's his business to know the lengths and depths that career politicians will go for innovation. To get out ahead of disaster he flew to T'challa with a business proposition for an open technological quorum between the tribes and Stark Industries-"

"and T'challa countered with a condition; to lift the warrant on your heads and replace it with a government contract. He's a good man," just as you finally fumbled past a few side stitches into stride with Rogers, your feet skimmed the transition from paved blacktop back to packed dirt. "That explains how Tony yielded to you, but not how Barnes fits in to all this. Couldn't he have come forward to cosign the contract?"

The grind at the back of Steve's jaw was nearly audible. He could have simply said no, but that would not cover the depth of his contempt at this point. It was a strange thing, as you both came to an impromptu stop, to watch him wrestle with himself. A deep love and a deep despair of country, feelings at war, were both eclipsed in the end by an iron determination for the truth. "The Accords state that we are not, without express consent to the Department, to be armed." You could tell that this struck the cord at the heart of Rogers' dismay. "And according to the DOD, Bucky is classified as a weapon."

The realization was a mudslide of churned up frustration and crashing irate debris. Corruptible - that's what Bucky said he was. Not just a machine, a drive of data, a dehumanized assembly of parts; it was something even more degenerate. The Department had called him a weapon, and he believed it.

The paths through the park, which was more a wooded preserve, were well defined in some areas and barely discernible in others where fewer runners had carved them out with footfalls, so at times it was challenging to keep Rogers in sight. "So what exactly do the Avengers get out of this contractual agreement? The government pays you in..."

"Food, shelter, and secrecy."

You rolled your eyes. "Of course, the basic needs of the human condition. What rags!" A bit of levity was needed.

Steve laughed more loudly than he intended for 5:25 in the morning, his humor finally taking an upward swing in the midst of a dense and murky topic. "That's one way of putting it. Essentially, we stay dormant, on stand-by out of the public eye until the Amendments are ratified, and the government overlooks our stockpile of equipment, training, and helps us stay out sight from any private entity who might be searching for us."

"Are you thinking HYDRA?"

"Not only HYDRA." You wanted to pry further, but your mind was already thrumming from the possible implications that the vast 'gifted' world, which might pose any number of threats to which terrorists like HYDRA cowered in comparison.

"And when you say the government..."

"A very select few know exactly where we are and what we've agreed to. And none of those people, except Stark, know that Bucky is in our custody."

"Bargaining with Tony for Bucky's release must have been a large task."

"Try small miracle."

"Okay, I'll bite. What was the small miracle?"

"Who. And her name is Shuri."

The name rang a very fond and memorable bell. "T'challa's sister negotiated Bucky's release?"

"I wouldn't call it a negotiation as much as a battle of wits. When Tony first met Shuri at T'challa's technology quorum in Oakland, there was a bit of a rivalry between them as to who was the better engineer. Shuri made a bargain-"

"You mean a bet, just so that I'm perfectly clear," you could hardly believe what you were hearing.

"If you like. Shuri told Tony that Bucky was under Wakanda's protection and that if Tony could prove himself superior, she would personally deliver him to Stark. But if he lost, Tony was to escort Barnes personally out of Wakanda and into our safe house arrangement."

"Did anyone consult you in this little gamble?"

"Ha! Shuri didn't even consult her brother, it was quite the shock to us both. Which in the end turned out to be a good thing because neither of us would have agreed to it. But with a growing watchful eye on Wakanda, there wasn't much choice in the matter. She knew it was time to get Bucky out." Steve emerged from the woods back to the pavement on the opposite corner of the park, with you five or six feet behind, and made a sharp left. You took full advantage and leaned in hard, feet striking fast and solidly. It hurt, but it was worth it, because the gain in momentum allowed you to close the gap and pull ahead ever so slightly.

"On your right!" you called, at near full tilt.

"That's quite a second wind you've got-" Steve adjusted his pace.

The fog was growing more dense with each stride. "What can I say, all this talk of bets brings out a bit of competitiveness." A bit winded, there was still enough left in the tank to finish your closing mile. 

"So the bet was struck, suit for suit, on which design was more efficient."

"Oh, I would have paid good money to see that."

"A lot of people did," Rogers recalled. "It was the headlining exhibit at the last Stark Expo, with proceeds split equally between the Oakland STEM outreach center and The Maria Stark Foundation. Needless to say, the bet did not go how Tony imagined." Steve was neck and neck. "You've got to admit," he said to lighten the tone, "you're at a disadvantage on these straights."

"I'm at a disadvantage period. This is not your full speed."

"No," Steve admitted, "but honestly I'm getting warm."

"Ladies and gentlemen, [she] gets Captain America to sweat! Is it because he knows there are still two more turns to gain on until the finish line where we began?" You were struggling to hold ground as Rogers pulled ahead three feet, then four, as you settled into a more conservative break-neck pace behind him.

"Exactly," he huffed.

The short, straight side of the park passed in a long silence while you contemplated all that Steve had shared in such a small window of time. When the penultimate turn came about and you powered forward to meet him on the last long straight was when you finally mustered the question. "Steve, you don't have to tell me this. You know that, right?"

"I understand." The extra care he took to form his words took a few beats from his step, as if it took a heavy effort to get right. "You were right when you said that you're not part of our inner circle. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be. It's been a challenge in two ways. We are supposed to be off the radar, so we're not accustomed to being open with civilians. But also, we're not very self-aware that civilians aren't accustomed to living the life that we do. Running on dark, foggy mornings for example." You laughed. "Staying mostly indoors, and away from the windows. Going out at night or not at all. And the culmination of both makes us, myself in particular, seem a bit-"

"Inhospitable?"

"Yes. But we want you to know that you have an invitation into Bucky's life, and by extension the same door is open to all of us. We have an extra person to look out for, and until we acclimate you to our safety protocols, we're all a little on edge. A threat to one of us is a threat to us all, and I'm ultimately responsible. Just give me time." 

"I'm not sure what I can say to ease your discomfort, Steve-" it was all a bit overwhelming as you both rounded the final corner and you pushed ahead with a renewed fire, feeling for the first time throughout the run that you were actually on pace and tuned in stride with the Captain.

"Just promise me that you won't flee under the cover of darkness without one of us at your back."

"Me? Never-" You shook your head to erase any memory the early morning walk of shame.

"And that you will be careful." As you came around the corner and the starting crosswalk signal came suddenly into view like a lighthouse to moor them, just as abruptly came a thought. No, not really a conscious thought as much as a feeling. A lurching feeling that moved you from full sprint to a skidding stop. You put up your arm as if to brace Steve from some impending threat, but even mere seconds behind the fog was too obscuring. Rogers couldn't see until you were close enough to touch and he came crashing into your back, sending you both hard to the ground in a heap among the cover of trees. As Steve rolled up to his knees, he loomed furiously. "What did I just say? I could've broken your neck."

"You may have very well broken something, just not my neck," you whispered. "Now is there another way to get back to the loft under some cover, not through that intersection?" you gestured.

"Why, what's the matter?" He was not without a few sore spots himself, and a bit irritable because of it.

"Nothing, just a feeling."

"If you had to put a name on it," Steve closed the gap and gave you a once over. Two scraped palms, one gashed elbow, and a swollen knee intent to bruise. He carefully tested it's mobility, and when you grimaced so did he. "What kind of feeling would you call it? Also," Steve motioned to a small, but profusely bleeding cut on your ear. "How's your head?"

"Still attached. And it's a feeling like we're being watched. It could be nothing." 

"In my experience," Rogers helped you to your feet and took some of the weight off the hobbled knee, "that's a gut feeling, and I typically put faith in those. I'm glad to see you do too, even if we're both a little worse for wear because of it."

And so at 5:43 AM, you and Steve stole through a service alley and up the fire escape to the back entrance of the loft, just a precaution. "Same time tomorrow, Steve?" you joked.

"It's way too early for jokes. At least until after breakfast."

You cleaned off the trail of dried blood down your neck and hastily patched up your fettered ear. "Too early for jokes? It's too early to be running a track meet but that doesn't seem to stop you! Coffee before breakfast please, I need to take the edge off and the endorphins aren't doing it for me."

You half expected to land back into bed in a sweaty heap, but upon peeking through Bucky's bedroom door you could see the sheets tangled like a torrential sea and, on second look, found him dreaming fitfully with a heavy slick of sweat on his forehead. You thought better than to join or wake him. So you pulled up a chair and simply listened, sometimes taking notes and other times offering a small gesture of soothing reassurance, all the while getting no sleep at all until the smell of coffee naturally woke Barnes and you pretended to be asleep, with your head resting on the mattress. Bucky hid his sudden jolt into wakefulness and you thought for certain he could hear your heart pounding the same way you could. But all he said was "hi" which you replied back in kind. 

"You look like you got hit by a bus."

"Close, a tank. Steve and I went for an early run and I fumbled back to bed."

"How'd you sleep?" Barnes asked, none-the-wiser.

"Good," you lied, "though I could use another ten years. You?"

"Well."

"The whole night?"

"Yes. Let me get you some coffee, you look like you could use some."

"Thank you, Bucky." You said. But I could use some truth more.

Chapter Text

Reader's POV

Bucky had never been inside the Avengers Tower before and it clearly did not agree with him; everything was new but in his mind one laboratory was just like any other, so given his history every glance at an exit was observed, every machine analyzed. Tony deemed the facility off limits to Barnes until he got his head right, with one exception. You laughed to yourself - should you remind Tony that he was still working with you to get his own head right? Probably not the best idea since he was keeper of the tower keys. At any rate, you were Tony's exception – essentially Bucky's day pass. In your presence he could access almost all of the building, though Tony trailed at a watchful distance, regardless of whether he was in the building or not on any given day.

Today was training day: recalling words and commands under pressure. Subliminally, you had also planned this day as a kind of distraction. The more that Bucky trained and retrained his subconscious mind, the more the fluid pool of remembrance churned and settled with a murky haze of uncertainty. Nightmares had begun to dislodge and come to the surface. Sparring was supposed to shift his mind off the constant worry and to tire him enough to force him to get more sleep, but for Bucky sleep was just another enemy waiting to catch him unaware.

 Three nights ago...

The first nightmare had caught both you and Rogers by surprise. Steve had moved Sharon's foldout from Bucky's room to the common space, where you found yourself pitching camp some evenings prior to your sessions with Bucky (added bonus, Bucky and Sam were finally forced not only to share a room, but the same bed, and Sam could not stop cracking big spoon/little spoon jokes for a week). Stark raised an eyebrow at this migratory living arrangement, but it was convenient for you to observe Bucky in his home, and out of respect Tony didn't object too loudly, conceding for practical purposes that the loft drew less attention from your nosy work tenants if something were to crash or explode.

It was during one of those evenings at the loft that the attack unfolded. You and Steve were the only ones home, everyone else had the night off (though what they could afford to do in public without being truly seen was beyond your imagination), when you heard Bucky yell.

Steve was first to respond, in the sense that he was first through the door but repelled backward by some unseen force, which was quickly revealed to be Barnes himself. Unwilling to hurt Bucky, Steve had to settle for retreat and parry. Once you saw them in the common area, you joined Steve in a tandem effort to contain the sleepwalking fury, though taking a more evasive approach.

“Leave!” Steve said immediately, “and get Sam.”

“Nope,” was all you managed before Bucky took a swing at you. Stepping off line to your right, avoiding his first move was fairly simple, but it put you directly in the line of his left overhead punch, which was a mistake you had to redirect creatively. In order to change the path of force you stepped backward into Bucky's line, dropped a knee, and arched your back; by some stroke of luck you grabbed his metallic wrist while he supplied the staggering force to lever all 240 pounds of him flying over your hip toward a sure-footed Steve Rogers. Steve answered with the crack of his shield across Bucky's face. Unfortunately for you, it was an incredibly reverberate hit that set your ears ringing, and in a split second of disorientation you did not reset your position for the impending fallout of human dominoes. As Bucky went crashing backward into the living room table, so did you. In an unlucky turn, you went down at the bottom of the pile.

The good news was that Bucky awoke immediately.

Steve reacted quickly to one-arm his dismayed friend back to his feet. When he motioned to help you up, you signaled him to hold. You needed a moment on the floor to catch a breather. Self assessment: no table shard impalement – good. Everything hurt – also good. Everything could be moved to some degree and nothing was disjointed. But the godawful ringing in your ears was going to give you a headache, and your jaw had a click to it that you were ostensibly certain didn't exist before.

Bucky rounded quickly, fully conscious and cognizant of what happened. “Goddammit it,” he said before you lost it in laughter, his face red with embarrassment. You extended both hands, Steve took up one and Bucky the other, and in a swift, horizon-shifting takeoff, you were corrected to an upright position.

“Nope. That's the best response in a situation like this?” Steve marveled. “As a part of this team, I have to say, you make a terrible partner.”

“Well, thank goodness I'm just a therapist.”

“He's got 80 pounds on you.” Steve retorted.

“Yes, I hadn't stopped to consider that a metal arm certainly tips him into the next weight class," you deadpanned with a twinge of satirical, sleep-deprived ire. "Do you see me taking him on hand-to-hand, no. My training consists of evasion and misdirection. I provided distraction, you provided the heavy. As a team, I say we did okay.”

Steve was just short of baffled. “Where did you learn how to do that?”

“Tony wouldn't send me into this job without the right training, and he had some assistance from Fury. God Steve, did you have to hit him so hard? My ears are still ringing.”

“Yeah Steve, next time ease up on the face pal.” Bucky clapped his friend on the shoulder, trying to make the situation humorous, but you could detect frustration as he addressed you. “Seriously, are you sure you're not concussed?”

“Seriously though, you're missing the bigger question. What happened?” You said, scanning him once over to count the lacerations to his face and arm, only to realize that your hand had found a resting place on his. Your first instinct was to remove it, but by the practiced ambiguity of Steve's countenance, you could guess that he'd already made a mental note, so you made a show of inspecting his palm. Finding an fortunate speck of glass, you removed it and pressed your night shirt to the cut while Bucky's recollection took halting shape.

“I was dreaming, I got flashes of you two standing there. One moment you were both you, but somehow the next you were HYDRA. And I had to get out of here before you...” his voice trailed off, but you knew all about the apparatus he was running from. The chair.

In the cold, thinly humming silence you felt compelled to lighten the mood. “Your mind is elastic, and every second it's working to repair fractured memories, including while you sleep. That's okay,” you yawned. “Let's all get back to it then. We have to get up early in the morning and replace Sharon's table. I really hope it wasn't a family piece from her grandmother.”

Steve and Bucky looked at each other as if trying to determine whether they were being played. Steve pressed on with the groggy interrogation while Bucky, suddenly aware of his hand in yours, withdrew it with a muddled look of embarrassment. “That's okay, is it? There's not a why or a how you want to explain here?”

“Well Steve, thankfully most of my patients who have lucid dreams don't sleep walk or have ridiculous strength. But talking and difficulty waking during sleep cycles, those are documented responses to recall-therapy. Your mind,” you said, switching tracks to Bucky, “is piecing together incidents, seemingly as they relate to events around HYDRA's reconditioning program. Escape attempts, compromised missions, temperament flares.”

Bucky looked like he wanted to put you through the ringer. “Does your therapy come with a warning label for this kind of stuff?”

Thanks to the truce you made with Bucky some weeks ago, your friendship had grown. You'd been able to speak more easily and casually than you would normally with a client. It was a tenuous situation to be friends with Barnes and still treat him; to admittedly care about him and allow yourself to be cared about. In what way you were both at a loss to describe.

“You know me Bucky, what do you think? Hand me the Aleve”. The bond required constant checks and balances; both of you still needed complete clarity when it was time to work, and a mutual respect even if you did not see eye to eye, even if one of you had a bad day.

 Or, as was the case today, as you tetrised out the sparring mats and kicked the edges into place, even if you knew Bucky had avoided rest at every turn for the past three days. Work was work.

“I don't want to spar today.”

“Tough. Who flew across the apartment on Monday, me or you?”

“I rest," lie.  "I heal," lie. "You've still got bruises from yesterday.” The session yesterday had been tough, but you were becoming used to Bucky's patterns of movement enough to defend them.

“Bruises yes, soreness yes, but I've stretched, iced, and wrapped. You, on the other hand, haven't been sleeping as you suggest. And you've got a broken thumb. Not exactly healing well. We're on pretty level ground, if you ask me.”

“What are you getting out of these sessions? You don't fight back.” A thought which made Bucky more tense and nervous.

“I'm getting what I need - information. Fighting back is not helpful where that's concerned, and it's not how I was trained.”

“Then let me teach you,” he implored.

“Not interested, not on your life. I don't pick fights with people, Barnes.” At the screwed-up look you received from Bucky, a smile swept over your clinical expression. “I don't pick many fights if you're counting battles of wit," you corrected. "But if people bring fights to me, I do my best to finish them. They usually give me all the ammunition I need for the job. Now come on, let's roll.”

The first time you paced Bucky through your warm-ups he was out of element, but within a day now you flowed rather smoothly together, even if it wasn't Bucky's style. Forward and backward dive rolls on the mat, take-down and rolls, and your personal favorite (his least favorite) - toe walking. It was amusing, recalling the first experience you had with Aikido and eastern styles, your reaction had not much differed from his own. “It'll grow on you Buck. You're a big guy, but quick. This supports how you move. Almost everything you do is a powerful, aikido moves are powerful, except it's not from this" you motioned for his wrist to relax his hand, flexing in and out of a tense coil. "It's from the core.”

“So what's the point of this?” He complained about the shikko, knee over knee across the mat, toes flexed.

“Feet are the foundation for your core, take care of them and they take care of you.”

Now sufficiently warmed and stretched, you felt willing to compromise and gave a swift, decisive gesture to the equipment rack. With a fraction of relief, Bucky threw two pads across the mat, bulky but you managed to catch them. “Put these on.” You strapped on the forearm pads on top of your bracers.

“The shin ones too?”

“Yes.” Bucky was going hard today. Hopefully he'd sleep well tonight. Maybe, with a little luck, he'd finish one of his dreams all the way to the end. The extra padding did not make agility easy, but the point of today was for him to land some solid hits, in which case the extra layer was a good trade for lack of comfort. The strikes began, strong but half-speed.

“To keep this light, how about 20 questions?” You suggested in between Bucky's series of crosses. Mixes would come later, right now your job was human-shaped punching bag...who occasionally ducked.

“You first." He requested. This was the mental warm-up they'd grown accustomed to before the real work began.

“Where in all the world would you go if you could leave today?”

“Brooklyn.”

“You're not playing the game.” You scolded, making mental note that Bucky struggled to release the here-and-now in order to entertain a future, even a temporal one.

“Bucharest. My mother's family was from there. You?” Again, you noted the past tense, not keeping his eyes or thoughts ahead.

“Queens.” Bucky didn't dignify you with a verbal response, only an exceptionally strong left cross, which was punctuated by a surprised misstep when you switched lines and it didn't connect. Crosses then became jabs and crosses. “Nepal.”

“Any reason?”

“I hear from a few colleagues at Metro General that I could learn a few things in Kathmandu.” It was Bucky's turn now, so his strikes slowed a fraction in thought.

“How did you first meet Tony?” The fact that he wasted no time with the big guns line of interrogation suggested that Bucky had been building to ask that question for a while.

“It was 2009 I think. Tony had come back from the Kumar Province, he was still getting used to the responsibility that came with being Iron Man, but at his core still every bit the Stark. The whole family, speaking to the eternal question of nature or nuture, seems to have spades in avoidance, emotional sequestering, and the occasional panic attack. Tony needed strategies to readjust to civilian life. So one day I got a call from Pepper, this woman I had never met before, who thought I was uniquely qualified to offer some professional services to his company. At the time, I didn't know she had Tony singularly in mind.” 

“What made her think you were the right fit? That you could manage it?”

“That's funny, I don't manage Tony, I don't think anyone ever could,” you said, as uppercuts started finding their way into the mix. “We just seemed to click. I can't disclose much detail that would make any sense of that, only to say that Tony had to confront trauma: being a hostage, near death, and watching death of his company. Except he wasn't confronting or dealing with it. Those were things I could relate to, because of knowing Liam. Not just what I learned from him, but through living with his unit. It made me...uniquely confrontational enough to cut through Tony's pretentions.”

Uniquely confrontational, Bucky thought, was an interesting mission code for stubborn. “You're not combat trained. What strings did you have to pull to work with an active duty attachment?” He took his punches down a tick to give you some breathing room, and in response you became much harder to hit.

“Careful Barnes, you've smoked three questions in one round. I wasn't embedded with them, if that's what you're asking, but field work seemed like the next logical step after a short lived residency and re-education in psychological trauma. I shadowed them in Turkey, then Iran, living in a gated compound adjacent to our embassy. Liam's commanding officer recommended me to the attache, not unlike my present situation, because of my medical expertise. So I became a contractor.” Bucky's rhythm faltered with mentions related to Liam. When he fell back into step, if a little slower, you closed Bucky's fourth opening for questions with one of your own. 

“What was your mother's name?” A simple query, perhaps a wasted one, but it was something that you wanted to know anyway. A gateway to the questions you really wanted answered.

“Winifred.”

“Do you...what do you remember about your immediate family?” That's when Bucky's legwork kicked in with a blow to the thigh and entrapment of your instep. Your cue to go to town, at last. You trapped his leg as his came up for a kick to your center but had to settle for releasing it when the second leg twisted round for a high kick that barely missed your head. That was new.

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything you are longing to share.” His kicks and punches were quickly sighting into their marks, now was the time to test the boundaries. Immediately you could tell that the HYDRA command caused Bucky physical pain, but he didn't say any counter commands.

“My father's name is George. He met my mother in Vienna in 1897. They are...were married 32 years when I was deployed. My younger sister Rebecca, married a man called Proctor, had children, lived fully.”

“That's all? Your memories have rusted, don't you think?” Still Bucky didn't react, though his movements were getting more erratic. All of the sudden, you weren't quite sure how except that you felt your knee twist in a direction it shouldn't, he had you on the ground and was unleashing a hail of blows. It was all you could do for the moment to fend them off while you analyzed the position you'd gotten into. Arms defensive, legs saddled, pinned at the hips, no leverage. Not much room for error.

“Do you have anything to remember them by, a photo, a keepsake?”

“Anything that remains of them no longer belongs to me!” This round would go to Bucky if you didn't flip the script soon. You would have to create some leverage. Lifting your shoulders a fraction off the mats, which was all Bucky gave you, you struck a blow to his chin which gave you the pause you needed to sweep your arm over the nape of his neck and forcefully downward. His body followed down into the mat, and yours shortly thereafter completed the roll with his left arm barred in both your legs. If you could just get purchase enough to twist the arm behind his back. You began to count, “One, two, three...”

Bucky was intent not to remain face down as he began to struggle. “Seven, eight, nine...” It became clear that you had enough strength to immobilize his arm or keep him grounded, but not both. When you realized that you'd split his lip, you sacrificed the arm to roll away clear of the entanglement and start fresh. “Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.” Bucky was up and coming at you with a knee to the chest. You deflected it down with a shove from both hands, but he would not let you step off line again. As you stepped to pivot, he grabbed you by the shoulders and part of your hair. Too late you realized it was an error to turn your back to him, even to evade. He had your head and neck in a hold. It was time to tap out or commit.

“Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen.” At the final word, Bucky's whole frame shuddered and you were able to create some space between the crook of his arm and your throat. Tucking your chin and inserting your hand just under his elbow, there weren't many options left. His knee jutted into your back, shifting your hips forward, intent to bring you to the ground off your foundation where he had advantage.

Take care of your feet and they'll take care of you. At this touchstone, you dropped your center a fraction, allowing yourself to be arched as you swung your left foot and arm from the inside of Bucky's stance almost 270 degrees around to the outside of Bucky's back. “Daybreak,” your arm came through like a blade in the narrow space between Bucky's neck and shoulder. Your wrapped your hand gently around his chin, stepped back, and threw him down. His legs too wide to support the weight of him, gravity did the work as he rolled to the edge of the mats.

“Why aren't you rehearsing your words like we've practiced!?” You said, exceeding in frustration, but glad for the moment's peace. It provided a few seconds rest. You would not attack Bucky, not with your strength. He'd have to come at you. And then you would finish this. "You need to be on the defensive if someone is trying to command you." 

Bucky assured, "I'm fine, they're in here.” He tapped his temple as he pushed up off the ground, realigning his prosthetic arm with a whirl of gears and a circle of his shoulder. “Careful now, it's you burning through questions.” Redoubling his effort to use his feet (that a boy) Bucky went on his third successful barrage when his final, lethal question surfaced, “How do you think they did it, how did they destroy my mind? How would you do it?”

The idea was so appalling to you, physically, that it hitched every joint. You deserved what came next. In one fluid movement Bucky's shin connected just below your knees to stop your lower body momentum and his forearm cut across the back of your shoulders. Like a hinge you went down with such acceleration that your arms didn't even make in underneath you and...black.

 Pa, pa, pa, pa came the percussion of a slow clap from the stairs, where Tony had been watching the sparring match unfold for god knows how long. “I've always thought hardheadedness was the best defense, you've proven my point, thank you.” He paced over between you and Barnes like a referee breaking up a match between prize fighters, except that a referee would not be sipping some exotic iced Chilean cold brew wearing rose-colored glasses. “Way to stop the ground with your face by the way, my favorite therapist. Nice maneuver, I should name it after you.” He was talking to you, but staring straight at Bucky, as if to guilt him into submission over yet more harm he'd caused. Landing off the mat and on the hardwood did not help the situation, but it certainly wasn't Barnes' fault. As you came up to your elbows, it took only a breath or two before you felt a pulse pounding in your head. Even at that very moment, you knew your brow was swelling, and decided to file it under 'I don't give a damn.' Stark offered you a hand up, you also logged that under 'not a damn', and proceeded to ignore it.

Swiping his coffee and placing the cold thermos to your temple, you shook Bucky's hand, the pliant fleshy one, as you allowed him to help you remove the upper pads and bracers. “Nice match Barnes, you did well. Shower, and meet me at the lower floor, there's a latter part to this exercise I have yet to show you.”

“Are you alright? Can you see?” Barnes glanced over your face. He didn't dare touch the maturing black eye as it blossomed. If it hurt him to look at, he could only imagine the hot, radiant discomfort it caused you.

As he brushed back your hair to get a better assessment, you intervened. “The swelling will go down, Bucky.”

Unsatisfied and not wholly convinced at the casual tone of your assessment, his grimace settling into a permanent feature. “Does it sting?” In his mind there was a distinct possibility, if not probability, that the orbital bone was fractured.

“Probably about as much as that fat lip. Go on, get out of here, I've gotta spar with this one next." You side-eyed Tony. "You don't want to be around for that. Get something to eat, meet me on sub-level 1 after you clean up.”

You made sure that Bucky was well on his way down the hall to the elevator before you turned, and with as much triple extension as possible, elbowed Stark in the face. It knocked off his stupid peach glasses.

“Ow! When you said 'spar' I thought you meant some witty verbal banter at which I excel.”

“What the hell is your problem Tony?! Your legitimate problem, not your therapeutic problems. This is why you contracted me. 'Ensure to me that Barnes is no longer a threat.' That was the sole condition of my job and his release. You briefed me, you had me trained to defend against him, why are you getting in my way!”

“I trained you to protect you, not so that you could throw yourself into the path of a tank. You're not even in his weight class.”

“Tony, I'm beginning to think that being on your payroll is a conflict of interest.” You sat down on the mat to stretch all the sore bits. Tony made a move to help you undo the shin pads and guards, and you gave him a look as if you might rip him apart, but he did it anyway.

“I just want you to be safe, who else is going to listen to my neurotic behavior if not you?”

“Pepper.” You softened a little. For better or worse, and despite every angle of his weirdness you enjoyed talking to Tony. He earned second chances. Fifth chances too. He paid them off with progress, a better sense of self, and well concealed altruism toward others. Tony had earned your trust, in his intentions if not his actions at any rate. “How did that date turn out anyway? At the hotel?”

“Better than expected, those self-reflection lists really hit home. Home runs too.”

Childish as it may be, you made a mock attempt to cover your ears. “I don't need to know anymore. I'm not a sexologist.”

“Pepper thinks it shows how much effort I've put into examining our relationship.” Tony said, proudly cocksure.

“I hope you've framed that list for daily reflection.”

“It's ingrained for all time.” Tony said tapping the side of his head. “Speaking of which, how is Barnes doing? His fighting skills seem to be in rare form, but how's his head when he's not cracking yours”

“I can't discuss this and you know it. He's made progress Tony. You took a risk agreeing to release him, but it's paying off. He's in good hands.”

“I have no doubt how good your hands are (Y-N), but he's a killer, he could turn on you at any time. You need to be prepared,” How could you quell Tony's worry without invalidating his past altercations with Barnes? He had every right to grieve his loss, but it was like a mourning shroud that obscured objective reason. But then Tony took a step too far, too personally. “He's not a do-over for Liam.” Your compassion began to bleed away, leaving in it's place a bit a shock that was steeled by coldness.

“Did you ever talk to your mother with that mouth, Tony?” you lashed out, raking through his personal debris for a hot coal.

“No (Y-N), I didn't. I never would have," and just as you were about to cut in with "never is a long game to play, Tony," he reared abruptly. "But really, we'll never know because I never had much of a chance, did I?”

“Twenty one years. You had 21 years to share with her, to learn from her example. That's more than some get. Maria Stark didn't raise that kind of man, Tony. If you can't be better for me or yourself, be a better man for her.” You turned and walked away toward the elevator.

“I'm sorry, (Y-N), I am. I didn't mean...you owe me a coffee!” Tony called ahead as you gave a last defiant slurp.

Chapter Text

Bucky's POV

Stomach too unsettled to hold a meal, Bucky took [Y-N]'s advice and went to the showers on the main floor, two flights down from training, to clean up. Workout clothes and gym bag were quickly discarded like a crumpled heap into the nearest open locker. The water came crackling down from the shower head in a gentle cascade, warm, soothing, and therefore unwelcome. He adjusted the dial until a hot fog cloaked the room, hot enough to ease the pain but on the edge of uncomfortable to keep him alert. Reaching up to the spout, it rotated with some considerable coercion, transforming the cascade into a jet which lashed down the back of his neck while his mind thankfully drifted away from the spar. It wandering for a bit, till it settled on the sorry state of his hands.

The hot water made quick work of the tape holding the splint around his thumb. It flexed into a fist, no longer broken but painful, which considerably diminished the power of the grip, a problem that the metallic hand did not suffer. Comparing the two side by side, they were not so visually dissimilar as he had once thought. Where the one held finger prints and trace lines of scars, the other had leafs of metal which nestled precisely into joints, so remarkably constructed that water would not penetrate. As good and functional a skin as the one he was born with. On closer inspection, the artificial hand also had a certain kind of unique print, not like the loops and whorls and fortune lines that a palm could reveal, but rather a marked history of misfortunes. Substantial damage to the battle arm was rare, and while there were no dings, gouges, or pockmarks to speak of since T'chala had forged it anew, there were thinly veiled glinting lines that pulsed like veins when light caught them in just the right way. Over time and exposure to sun and the elements, the metal took on a darkened patina as skin would a golden tan; given a strike of enough sharp force however, and the patina would be stripped away to reveal the polished metal underneath. So it was that the cycle repeated and created a myriad web of threads with varying shades of polish and fade, a tapestry of unfortunate encounters that Bucky watched unfold in the blackness of his shuddered eyes, remembering each one in blinding clarity until...

He willed himself awake and, eyes wide, he turned to face the forceful stream of water full-on to sate the tendrils of sleep. The water unfocused his gaze, diffusing the dull metallic veins and sharpening the fresh ones, one in particular which caught his fascination. A glint between the first and second knuckle that was brand new from the spar. Though he couldn't recall how it got there, absently he caught himself smiling, pleased that [Y-N] had delivered some swift enough blow to leave a mark, that she fought back. Pleased too that, upon turning his palms up, he noted on the opposite hand a faint white mark rimmed in red where days before [Y-N] had removed a shard of glass and replaced it with a swath of her shirt. A matching set that belonged to her, marking both hands indiscriminately. The smile that she brought to his face then cracked as quickly as it appeared. “If she marked me,” and so minimally, “how much have I marked her?” Running a finger over the scar on his palm, the difference in the hands became clear, not in their appearance but in their touch and their ability to touch. Were it not for the dulled nerves and the callouses of leathery scars that built up over years in thick layers throughout his left shoulder, the metal arm would be painful and heavy and unbearably warm. Whereas at the moment his shoulder only absently throbbed, pressing his soft palm against the metallic fingers was an altogether different, scalding experience. He switched the water to a jarring cold and rested both hands on the shower wall as the frosty downfall of water hit him and forced deep, involuntary gulps of air into his chest. Still, he could not shake the memory that had come into his mind unbidden, of her skin that night on fire escape, so warm in contrast to the cold, wet air that when he touched her, she may has well have been all flame and brightness; nor could he dispel the thought, the dark imagining, of touching her face - the bruise on her forehead - in order to ease the ache and instead, with the hot metal of his hand like a forge, causing her to cry out. Indeed, Bucky cried out in a phantom kind of pain and slammed both open hands into the tiles, causing them to fissure - if not quite break - at the seams, as the word furnace rang through his head – pech', pech', pech' - like nothing that blanching hot nor frigid cold would conquer.

And so he slammed the water off, closed his eyes and sank with only the wall to hold him half upright, focusing on the slow drip of droplets, trying in silence to amplify each splash into a hammer, and when that failed – with deep, raspy gulps – he echoed “bridge, rainstorm, morning, neversink.” They were ragged chants at first, quietly no more than gasps, but over time “bridge, rainstorm, morning,” became steadying and audible. “Neversink” was never quite as strong, if only because he couldn't shake the feeling that he was sinking, slumping, failing somehow. But eventually the sound of the words in his head were drown by the mantra. When he came around to attention, it wasn't clear how long he'd stood there, except that he was exhausted, and water no longer streamed off him, and only the occasional drop fell from his hair, which was no longer wet but only damp. “This isn't working – this won't ever work.” Even after all this time and practice, I still don't have a remnant of control.

But a voice, in the recess of his mind, checked him back. Not like the voice that sought to control and manipulate, but a different voice that was as deadly as it was direct. It has to work, there's no second choice.

With little wasted effort Bucky pulled a towel from his gym bag and rough dried his hair. A fresh change of clothes donned complete with clean gray shirt and blue jeans, and he departed the locker room as swiftly as he could manage without any careless slam or disturbance. As he approached the stairs with every intention aimed at his room, to pack whatever clothes his travel bag could bear and leave the building in favor of the open road away from here – and where to next he hadn't decided – the voice forced his eyes to shift to the elevator. It could take him anywhere in the building. It could take you directly to her, on sub-L1, he thought to himself. Or he could stop his losses and leave.

There is no second choice.

Reader's POV

"What is all this?" Bucky called out, as he disembarked from the elevator onto sublevel one. More a warehouse than a level, the large, open floor-plan was simplistic in style: one room, which seemed like several through the use of glass partitions, that contained assorted scientific equipment. Some were familiar pieces of stress testing machinery, others were used of environmental simulation, and some were altogether foreign, clinical looking contraptions including the two focal points of the central rotunda, an opaque oblong pod and a looming steel chamber with a top latch door, large diverting pipe, and a constant, low decibel whirl that filled the air with an ambient static that made Bucky's nerves twinge.

"Right on time, and freshly pressed. This is the last part of our training for the day," you hummed with excitement, buzzing about the lab with last minute preparations of the recording databases. A final adjustment of the control panel would just about do it to get things off to a running start, "and most appropriately after a long and arduous physical session, this part is called REST. Restricted Environmental Stimulation Thera-" you stopped yourself short from a whirlwind of tasks to examine Bucky in full portrait, gym bag packed, jacket on. "You weren't planning on skipping out I hope, you'd need a doctor's note for that and unfortunately for you, your PCP is me."

Bucky laughed, "I considered it," he began. "But no. I feel out of place here. When we're done, I was going to head back to the loft." He was about to say "you could join me" but thought better of it as he appraised the situation, his focus trained on your two blooming black eyes. "Clear my head."

"Feeling like you've outstayed your welcome? Join the queue."

"I'm not sure that I was ever welcome here."

"Nonsense, as my guest you are always welcome in Tony's lair."

Bucky's gaze darted around the room, as if expecting a sarcastic retort at any moment. "Is he still here?"

"No idea, but my guess is he's out on the town getting a new coffee, or a new business acquisition, one of the two," you said before switching tacts. "Do me a favor and stay at least another night. I would like to conduct a sleep study when all this training is done."

"I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonight."

"Suit yourself," you baited the hook casually, trying not to make it sound like challenge accepted. "And please try to check your apprehension at the door Barnes, you look like you're about to claw out of your skin."

"We're in a laboratory, were you expecting a different response from me?" Now he was the one baiting you, to distract from some latent thorn that had been gnawing at him since this morning, which he gripped even tighter despite it's bite. You turned away from him and made a flamboyant dash on his chart, at nothing in particular, hoping to catch his attention. He raised an eyebrow. Success. "What are you doing?"

"Giving you a point." You said, resting the clipboard on the steel workbench. "You're ahead 1-nil on the scale of obvious observations, so this lab seems to suit you and your sarcasm." His face was a blank fortress of secrets, clearly unmoved nor amused. "Trust me Bucky, or if that's too much to ask, at least allow me to finish my explanation." He made no motion for you to continue, but his feet parted and stance eased with an affirmative groan. "Both of these are different models of sensory deprivation units."

"They're tanks"

"If you like."

"Sounds ominous."

"They're not really. Each is filled with a dense salt water solution that allows individuals to be buoyant. Even you." You crossed the room and pulled Bucky by the wrist towards the steel lab table. On the surface was a fluid receptacle filled with the salty substance. You handed Bucky a metal pellet. "Go ahead, make it as compact as you can." He made short work of the orb, condensing the volume by at least half, but it stubbornly refused to sink into its watery surroundings despite his best efforts. "Tony had these tanks installed as tools for meditation and relaxation.” 

Bucky's face broke protocol with a quizzical expression. "Are you sure it wasn't just as an entertaining talking point for his corporate soirees?"

"Two-nil," you continued with minimal acknowledgment to his sharp remarks. “These units are regulated so that the air and water match body temperature: salt-water filled, sound minimizing, and lightproof. Under supervision and for finite amounts of time, they're a useful medium for alternative medicine and guided exercises. Specifically in your case, the buoyancy of the water will offset the weight of your prosthetic with a zero-gravity quality to help express movement. It should also help with muscular-skeletal relaxation. The lack of a temperature differential plays with your ability to perceive where your body ends and where the water and air begin. A perfect environment for guided lucid dreaming, without the risk of sleepwalking.”

"No."

"No what? Do you doubt the accuracy of my description?"

"Not at all, that's why I'm saying no. I'm not an experiment."

That strung even worse then your brow ached. "Jesus Bucky, of course not! What have we been doing all this time? I'm not here to take you apart like a machine. We're in this together or nothing, yes?"

"Yes."

"Then you'll try this."

"Absolutely not, if I'm barely in control out here what makes you think I'll have any control in there? You can't possibly anticipate how I'll react. And if this goes badly, you can't check me, restraint me -"

"Stop you? This exercise is not about controlling you."

"Then what are we doing here?" Bucky echoed your sentiment of primal frustration. "The whole point up till now has been to reach a moment of power and control!"

"Exactly, yours. Not mine, nor anyone else's. Guided recall in a sensory mitigated environment puts the patient in control of recalling dreams or memories. You can reorder them, sharpen them, step into or out of them at will. The ultimate control, just not by me."

"I won't do it, it's dangerous."

"You're losing your lead two-to-one now. That's categorically false. Danger is a matter of circumstance..."

"That's funny," Bucky interrupted. "Natasha's always said something similar about the truth, it's a wonder you didn't conspire this together."

"...In a clinical setting, we have all the circumstances at our whim. It's safe..." you went on a scientific barrage of facts, but Bucky was already turning to go, and to make him stop you'd say almost anything - do anything, "so what if I demonstrated this first?"

Bucky stopped to consider the question and what it meant. He would ask questions, you would be the subject. It shook something in him. It was a fundamental violation, somehow more insidious than being tortured, to be the inquisition. "I can't do that."

"Yes you can, you have my permission. I actually offered. Think of it as role-play if that's easier."

"I'm not going to interrogate you."

"Is that what you think I do for a living? Is there an imbalance of power in this dynamic, yes. Do you know what negates that? Professional conduct and trust. I trust you. Can you say the same?"

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't trust you..."

"No, do you trust you?" And without enough time for Bucky to over-analyse, second guess, or run himself into the ground, you threw him a towel.

"What is this fo-" but the answer was self-serving as you began to tie up your hair and remove first your shoes, then your socks, then nearly everything else. Even as Barnes held up the towel to obscure the view, he looked side-long at the floor, as even the thought of his eyes forward was unseemly and therefore rejected. You saved him from extended lengths of embarrassment by swiftly and deftly wrapping the towel around you.

"So which is it to be, the float tank or ambulatory immersion?" You gestured between the small and large enclosures.

Barnes looked from the shallow unit to the larger imposing contraption and the choice was clear. “The float tank.”

You took a small breath, steeled your nerves that you shielded from him, and clung to the small bit of relief at the less daunting option before stepping forward. Bucky instinctively offered you an arm, not expecting anything in return. You took it, but not without first offering him an headset and slipping on it's corresponding monitor. "The device on my wrist is essentially a modified fitness tracker that is water proof up to an eight-foot-depth. It relays observational data – pulse rate, respiration - to a monitor and memory bank, which can be used for later study. It also allows two-way communication between us," you said as Bucky adjusted the earpiece to suit him. "As I think you can guess, the goal is to disrupt a session as little as possible, but with the use of this tool someone on the outside can communicate directions, and someone on the inside can communicate sensation or discomfort. Everyone's tolerance to the experience is different. The important thing to remember is that you are in complete control," you repeated, more for your affirmation than his, as you undid the towel and Bucky retreated back to a respectful distance after you stepped in to the tank. "There a light switch for getting in and out, and a handle inside the door."

"How do you start?" Bucky asked.

 "Lay back and relax" you said, trying to do just that and failing. "Bucky would you do the honors?" You gestured to the lid and latch.

There was a moment's hesitation as Barnes approached the container before he asked, "why do you want me to close it?" and a moment's more hesitation as he stopped to look at you. Once he did there was no undoing it and also no looking away. In flashes, observations came to him, as was his way, catching any and all relevant details to the task or target, though he tried to force the training out of mind and stamp out any private intrusion.

"It's just easier that way, from the outside."

He brought the lid down just far enough that only one of your hands were visible. You gave him the thumbs up sign and reached up to turn off the light, but it did not make watching the scene unfold before you any easier as the sliver of atmospheric light narrowed into a slim, sharp beam of dying illumination. As Bucky watched the enclosure, the blistering image in his mind was that the container looked not much unlike a coffin. So it was that the next moment passed in silence, and then another, stretching on intolerably for the both you until at length, you spoke.

"So that you know what to expect, I'll give you a narration. For the first few minutes the air and water temperature will feel slightly different until you acclimate. The next step should be targeted relaxation. Focus on releasing one muscle group at a time until you are just floating."

"Forgive me, I'm out of my depth," Bucky made his apologies, and you thought you're not the only one, before he stumbled on, "but what should I ask you?"

"At first nothing, simple focus cues will suffice. 'Notice' or 'observe' for example."

"Alright...observe your breathing..."

"Good. To start with, breath should be slow, regular, and deep." You aided him in aiding you, and the momentary distraction of being able to teach felt empowering in the darkness.

"Observe your breathing from the diaphragm.” Bucky instructed. "What comes next?”

“It's not uncommon for a person to doze off, we'll let that happen uninterrupted for the most part. You may also experience phantom sensations. Feeling something in your hand that isn't there, for example. We focus on those sensations next to try a recall key elements of dreams, or memories presenting as dreams.”

"So how does it feel?"

"Try and be more specific if you can, without leading too far into your questions." You prompted while trying very hard to find a point of focus for your eyes in the dark. Not finding any, and feeling anxious from that the grainy film of static that came from the stain of searching, you shut them. Images and colors began to swirl, nothing more than amorphous shapes but with every intention of becoming something else. You and tilted back your head to submerge your ears in water, finding some measure of calm in listening to the thrum of their pulse. It made it difficult to hear Bucky, but not impossible.

"How does the water feel on your skin?"

"Actually the feeling is almost gone; the more still I am, the more calm the water is to the point where it almost isn't, if that makes sense. Except it's hard for me to stay still very long."

"Is that because you're restless?" Bucky asked.

Restless was a good word for it. Better than what it could become, a fledgling kind of panic. "Yes, a little. It's because I'm still in the moment and there's nothing to focus on. I'm not used to it, so right now I'm listening to my heartbeat. It's a bit of a meditative cheat, one patient to another." You could hear a half-laugh from Bucky through the comm, which moved through the water like a deep an gentle hum that settled in your chest and made you feel better. Connected. You to him, like a tether. "I'm serious. Rhythm helps."

"Okay," Bucky thought in an effort to raze some of the restlessness. He found himself presently leaning on the chamber with his back to it. Though he couldn't bring himself to look at it, it felt steadying to be near it. "Then focus on the rhythm of your breathing again. Is it fast or slow?"

"Slow."

"How does the air around you feel when you breathe?"

"Damp, heavy. It feels quite warm...except my feet which feel very cold..." You knew that this was not a product of your environment, but a sensation from memory that you did not want to recall. Except this was an exercise in self-control, and if you wanted Bucky to believe it, you had to practice it too. "Tingly, like ice, like winter when there's a hole in your shoe."

Bucky's back straightened, as though he knew they were on the edge of something the he had to tread on carefully. "Is that a memory of yours? Of winter?"

"Not exactly, we're not there yet, it's just a feeling. When you sense something in here, it helps to clarify it. Don't worry about dredging up a whole memory. Sharpen the one detail until it's clear, until it's real from all angles."

"How can I help?" Bucky asked, at another impasse for what exactly to say next.

"It's tricky from here. The same details that you want, I want. Start with a question - " But at that moment your train of thought was interrupted by an unforeseen entrance. Bucky heard the electronic click of a door lock before he saw Tony enter through a side door into the lab, connected to some sort of service elevator (if you already had control of a biometric building, who could possibly need a private entrance and a hidden lift... but then again, it was Tony), with two cups of coffee in a carrier tray. As Stark locked eyes with him and assessed the scene, as Bucky had already, there was a bristling quiet between the two of them, unbeknownst to you. "Bucky, is something wrong?"

"You were right," was all that Bucky responded at first, "Tony went out for coffee. He has one for you, too," he said, recognizing the drinks as a peace offering. 

"Actually, this one is tea..." Stark replied, face drawn and tone perplexed at who Bucky was talking to. Then he observed the headpiece, the microphone, and putting the situation together Tony thought his response was quite measured and reasonable under the circumstances when he shouted, "what the hell are you doing with my equipment!?" It was loud enough for you to hear through Bucky's end of the comm.

"Tell him that this is a private session and that I'll talk with him later." You instructed Bucky, unaware that Tony already had the microphone in hand. While Barnes made no effort to obstruct him, neither did he take any care in giving it over, forcing Tony to take it and - in doing so - Bucky did not back away to the point where the two men were brawlingly close.

"You'll talk to me now," Tony said exactly, painfully into the comm in order to ensure that his ire was well-understood.

"We're nearly done with this demonstration." You countered coolly.

"No, you are done." Tony concluded, if falsely. He made a sharp, swift tug on the lid of the chamber and, finding it locked, you were satisfied with his heavy sigh.

"I'm glad you installed locks on these." You said. "It's far better than a do-not-disturb sign."

"You know that I can override the locks from the control panel."

"You can, but you won't. It would take at least 10 minutes, and by that time I could be finished if you would just let me do my job."

"It wouldn't take me any more than two minutes," Tony shot back, irked not only by the situation but the implied insult that he could not resolve any technical problem in his domain at the snap of his fingers.

"You think that you could crack my new security coding and password reset that quickly? Best of luck."

"You didn't."

"Test it. It'll keep you diverted until we're finished here."

"Please..." Bucky, only witness to half the conversation up till this point (though he could guess the tone), watched as Tony rested his hands on the tank, resigned, as if it added weight to his plea. "Unlock the latch. Barnes can use the equipment, I'll make no objection, I'll stay out of your way. But I want you out." It was the way in which he said it, implored it, that spoke of a quiet and longstanding admiration that Bucky understood intrinsically. Tony had a fierce, protective nature, rarely seen but always felt, for those closest to him. The same way that Bucky would protect Rogers given the chance. Tony looked back from the tank to Bucky, as if feeling the weight of watchful eyes, of kinship, and resenting it.

"You owe me Tony," you replied.

The moment of reverie broken, Tony shot back intensely. "I may owe you an apology. I don't owe you indulgences in insanity."

"Fifteen minutes Tony, that's all I'm asking."

"Five minutes."

"Ten minutes and a favor to be named later."

Bucky interrupted with an outstretched hand. "May I?"

"If you think you can change her mind, I'll match you one better," Tony insisted with a simple voice command, "broadcast." A latent buzz undercut the conversation of the room, "[Y-N], you're live, I'll be your moderator this evening...and you have ten minutes," Tony conceded, while listening to the now very public conversation echo through the lofty space. Even still, he refused to pass the earpiece to Bucky as he strictly instructed, "make it count."

"Where were we?" Bucky asked into the silence, loud enough so that he could be picked up by the audio equipment of the vast room. You couldn't concentrate, knowing that Tony was steering the conversation. It wasn't the lack of privacy that troubled you, your dreams and memories were nothing that would shock Tony - as you had shared them over a drink, but it wasn't a  conversation that you wanted him to narrate and novelize. It wasn't a story that Bucky should hear from him. "What was it you were last thinking about?"

"I don't remember." 

"Are your feet still cold?" Bucky asked.

"Yes." You waited patiently for Barnes to fill the hollow silence but there was an audible click and you were left alone with your thoughts, exactly where you didn't want to be.

"Ask her to describe how cold. Ask her to look and tell you why its cold." Tony intervened, but with the microphone in the head piece switched off so that only Barnes would hear.

"Why are you helping?" 

Tony's answer was curt, "I want this to be over as swiftly and painlessly as possible."

"Yes, but why? You don't want her in there, and even though she volunteered, getting her to go in there wasn't exactly a smooth transition."

"Easier, it seems, than getting her out."

"Something is wrong that neither of you are willing to share..."  scout badge in observation Tony thought to himself, you can pin that next to your Howling stripes and I still wouldn't tell you a damn thing.

“That's something that you ought to ask her for yourself, Barnes.”

A strenuous impasse hovered between them as Bucky paced the control area, observing the technology to pass the time. Tony lingered not more than an arms' length behind him, ashamed to admit that he longed for a reason to confront Barnes, hoping that he would reach out to touch something so that Tony would have an excuse to reach out and hit him.

"You have history. It seems like you and her are in a contest to see who cracks first. I don't know whether your contention comes from her helping me, or her using this equipment without permission, but...”

“She's a professional. I trust that she knows what she's doing, this lapse in judgement excluded. It's you that worries me. She's in up to her neck with you. The rest is none of your business. Eyes front soldier," Tony said before switching the headset back on and redirecting his attention on his priority. "Nine minute mark," he announced, with a "you're doing fine" affirmation tacked to the end, making his best effort to ignore Barnes for the rest of the experiment.

“Okay, thank you,” you replied. But truly, you were struggling to stay the course. You knew, with each moment of quiet, that Tony and Bucky were anything but peaceable. With each breath you fought the urge to abort the plan, in part due to claustrophobic anxiety, in part to jump out and break them up before they caused any lasting damage to the lab. "How are things on the outside?"

“We haven't killed each other yet, thanks for the concern,” Tony's mood grew a little brighter as each second ticked off the clock, and yet he too was struggling. "See anything interesting on the inside, perhaps you can regale us with an anecdote?”

"Well, distractions aside, right now I'm thinking of a white, bright room, a table, and a worn, wicker chair."

"Somewhere sunny I hope." Tony pandered like the reluctant accomplice that he was.

“Are you supposed to be able see things?” Barnes was a little disconcerted, and beginning to piece together why Tony was unsettled by watching his friend go through this recall.

"That depends on the person. Images are the brain's way of trying to make sense of the absence. Phantom sensations aren't limited to touch, they can be anything. Sights, sounds."

"[Y-N], please give Barnes and I another moment." In his natural state of impatience, Stark could only ignore an impending disaster for so long, and so he acknowledged Bucky's inquisitiveness, if only marginally. “We do have history. The first time I met her, it was a business meeting gone bad, and she threw me into an isolation tank, much like that one.” He gestured over to the larger of the two tanks. It looked as if Tony's explanation would stop there, but the look on Bucky's face betrayed the inner working of his imaginings.

"You're right, she's a complete professional."

Tony could see the questioning look as Bucky began to guess at all the reasons someone might want to throw a CEO into a tank, and so he went on in greater detail. “To her credit, I deserved it. I said some dismissive things about her clinical methods.”

"When I first met her, I was manacled to the floor of her office,” Barnes recalled with some smirking fondness. “Her methods have a learning curve.”

Tony looked at Barnes side long, and were it not for the gulf of history between them, he may have enjoyed the company for a moment. A lost opportunity. “Pepper argued that [Y-N] came recommended and that our company could use a counselor on the steering committee for improved workplace morale, so I took a meeting for the position. But [Y-N] was never there for morale. Pepper wanted her there to assess me before our quarterly board meeting. By the time I realized this, I snapped. I said that she had no idea what it was like to come back from a hot-zone and that she could take her crackpot advice to my assistant, Miss Potts, who would direct her to the lunch hall and where to get her parking validated on the way out of my building.”

“I take it things did not go well.”

“She found Potts, who found Rhodes, and in quite the team effort I went ass-over-teakettle into the drink. When Happy pulled me out a couple of hours later, she was standing over me. 'I've interviewed prisoners of war, Middle Eastern refugees, and injured veterans. I know a bit about what you're going through,' she said 'like I know that you've just experienced one of seven primary torture techniques. When you're done being coddled, let me know if you would like a demonstration of the other six.' She is infuriating, but there is no one in the field quite her equal. It's her life experience that makes her the best and it's because of that experience that I don't want her in there." Tony concluded. "But her confidentiality works both ways. It's not my story to share." 

Bucky weighed the remarks a moment before the comms switched back on. "I'm sorry I've been distracted. How are you doing?"

"I'm fine, except that you interrupted a relaxing nap," you lied.

"There are only a few minutes left. Would you like to stop?" Barnes asked. He closed his eyes and filled the interlude with all the things that she might say. 

In the end, true to form, you settled into the usual way of answering one question with another. "Bucky, are you satisfied with the demonstration, or do you still have questions?" You asked.

Bucky ruminated over the the idea for a moment before considering Tony's advice. "I have questions, but I don't think I'll get any answers until I test this for myself. Come on out."

Tony had the lid open in a snap. “Adjust your eyes, here's my hand.” Tony said, stopping just shy of “are you alright?” while he handed you a lab coat, doled out with a cursory look.

“As you can see, the experience is a bit disorienting, but nothing more than momentary. You may lose track of time, which I suspect will be the most troubling side effect for you given your past experiences in cryostasis, but you will be in complete control of this. I'll help you in and out,” you said, just as you were very aware of Tony's help, your hand was still on his arm, which provided a good deal of support for your wobbly legs.

“I really am sorry about earlier,” Tony began.

“We both stepped out of line. It's as good as forgotten, some things aren't worth remembering.”

“Truce?” He proffered up a beverage. "I come bearing tea."

“Thank you. I made you fresh cold brew, but I still need that favor. You won't like it, but if you want to help, it's what I need.”

“How many pounds of my flesh do you require?” Tony mumbled beneath his breath.

“All I ask is that you call the National Archivist. I know that you and she are still on good terms,” you prodded. “And get me whatever information you can on these names. Full disclosure,” You scratched them down as quickly as you could on the back of a receipt from your slacks pocket, hanging as you left it on the back of a lab chair. “The information is for Barnes. Some might be hard to come by, photos and graphics being first priority. Can you manage?”

Tony hesitated.

"Will you manage?"

“I usually clean up just fine.”

“Then can I see what you come up with before the day is done?”

"Any reason for the arbitrary deadline?" At this you were aware that Bucky was watching you keenly, so you whispered to Tony. His eyes widened a bit, but otherwise gave away little of his surprise as he sighed. “I do love a challenge.”

“Thank you Tony.” You said as he sauntered from the room, not before you caught him in a discreet half-hug. Turning again toward Bucky, you both sat in lab chairs facing one another. “You said for that you had questions," you began, clinging to the tea cup for warmth in the drafty room before taking a sip. "I'd like do my best to answer yours before I do the asking. What's on your mind?"

"Tony and I talked." He said, as if to begin a long apology.

"Miracle of miracles."

"About you."

"Is that why my ears were ringing?" You tried to play it down as if it weren't concerning. "Look Bucky, I'm just glad to be common ground for you both."

"You threw him into a tank."

Shifting your weight in the chair so that it spun a bit, you took a beat on the best way to respond. "That's not a question, but if you're seeking second confirmation, yes I did. Did he tell you why?"

"He called it an isolation tank. He said that you were demonstrating torture. You failed to tell me that sensory deprivation is an interrogation technique."

"It can be, like most good things used with ill-intent, as I'm sure Tony also mentioned. But it doesn't produce reliable results for unintended uses. It's sloppy. Prolonged periods of exposure cause hallucinations, impaired memory, speech, and cognition. So no, it probably wasn't something HYDRA did to you, if that's where this line on reason is going."  It was, Bucky confirmed with a suspicious glance, "I don't think this has any danger of breaking you."

"Tony mentioned six other torture techniques. Can you name them?"

"I can." You confirmed, and waited to see if that was enough to satisfy Bucky's morbid curiosity. It wasn't. "Prolonged stress positioning, hooded interrogation, sensory overload, sleep deprivation, hydro therapy, and starvation."

"And are you afraid of them because you witnessed them or because you executed them?" Bucky finally came to the point of it all. He looked at you like an enigma, reworking all the things he knew, calculating the kindness, balancing the honesty and the humor on the hard, hidden edges of what he did not know but could suspect, and at the sum of it all he came up with no solution.

You smiled and considered playing off anxiety that he was able to palpate from the situation as mere claustrophobia. "You're reaching," and making assumptions, "but you're also right." To make any excuse for your fear would have been feeble. "I've made some choices I'm not proud of, and the memories that go with them are not easy to recall." But perhaps they're also not what you think. "Does what you believe you know change the decision you've made about going through with this?" And does it change your opinion of me?

“Do I have a choice?” No  do-overs, no second choice, Bucky's shadow-self drummed. He queried your face, trying to withhold the look of judgments unspoken, just as you tried to withhold the look of inner ethical turmoil that read across your face like a journal. At first you wanted to say "there's always a choice” but in your experience that was humbly not true. Then you thoughts turned plaintive, “tell me what you want me to say, Bucky.” Until at last you settled into the usual way of answering one question with another.

“Which choice will bring you closer to what you want?” Bucky looked down at his hands for a moment as if the answer, the cipher, the cheat might be written there; finding nothing, he looked up with the decision in his eyes. "Then let's begin."

Chapter Text

Bucky's POV

Sixteen rungs, seventeen steps, Bucky paced them off in his mind as he climbed the ladder up the sidewall of the submersion tank. The bars were smooth on the soles of his feet except the top two, which had a cross hatch sort of texture. Hand over hand, he cranked the wheel of the lid until it released with a kind of depressurized hiss and the hatch opened of its own automatic accord.

“Are you sure you wouldn't prefer the flotation tank?” [Y-N] called. Bucky didn't know what to reply with civility, because when he looked at her now all he could see was a pool of secrets, so he chose to say nothing. He swung his legs over the edge of the opening and began to remove the grey shirt and jeans, which he folded and placed on the top step of the ascending stairs. Conversation was not something he had the stomach for. Peering down into the tank, he could see the water only by way of the lights reflected back. The rest was inky blackness. Bucky thought for a second about grabbing the inner ladder that scaled down the hatch before he slid himself off the ledge and into the tank feet first. It was a strange feeling after the splash, after the rush of the water immersing him, to shoot back up to the surface so quickly like a bottle adrift in the ocean. He brought both his arms to the surface and pushed back a salty swathe of hair from his eyes before he heard her speak.

“Does it feel like what you expected?” [Y-N]'s voice echoed through the chamber as the wristband broke the surface of the water.

Bucky held the tracking monitor up to his face for clarity. “I don't think any on this is what I expected,” he said, examining the barren surroundings. The tank, which looked large and imposing from the outside, seemed even more expansive from within, as Bucky stretched his arms wide and found nothing but air to any side of him, kicked his feet at floor and felt nothing pushing back except the waves. Pulling in a breath and forcing himself down, releasing the air during the slow descent, he took a deep dive until his toes just grazed the bottom, estimating 12-15 feet. When he shot back up the second time the briny smell hit him full in the face. “What about the hatch?”

“When you're ready, say 'initialize protocol.'"

As Bucky spoke, the light from open top began to wane, like a new moon until he was fully eclipsed by darkness. It was more unnerving than he thought it would be, having nothing to hold on to and no sense of spatial awareness. Everything began to quicken, and his legs gave way to small spasms as he tread through the water.

"You're working too hard, thinking too much." [Y-N] said, observing the respiration monitor. "You don't need your legs to stay afloat. Tilt your head back."

"I prefer to keep my feet underneath me."

"Then don't lean into the tipping point, just look up and relax your shoulders." [Y-N] reassured.

"Which way is up?" Bucky said, but reluctantly he did as instructed. 

Gradually the ache in his legs ebbed away as he surrendered, for the most part, to letting the water carry him. For lack of anything else to do, he imagined looking up at stars in a clear night sky, a view that he had few experiences with but could imagine well enough from fragmented memories of night ops. A pieced together atmosphere, like a quilt of Tehran, Odessa, Constanta Romania, Azzano Italy...

"Are you still with me?" A voice asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Were you anywhere worth mentioning just then?" [Y-N] repeated.

"No, just a bit of everywhere - were you ready to ask me something?"

"Not especially, I just want you to ease into it and mention what comes to you. We'll go from there."

"Right now I only see colors, reds and greens mostly, some grey, and moments of white."

"Without focusing too hard on them, breath deeply and tell me about the greens you see. Every other breath. What kind of green is it?"

Bucky let the colors pass one by one from his central view to the periphery; with each pass, it was as though the colors, like grains of sand, were sifted, softening around the edges. The deeper heavier colors settled to the bottom so that the green came through more vivid and clear. "One green is like an army drab, and the other one is like...the scent of snowy pine. What's that called?"

"Synesthesia, when the senses mingle." [Y-N] scrawled out a few working notes between hurried sips of quickly cooling tea. "Some people can hear color, others might associate it with smell. Focus on the scent of snowy pine. Is it the only smell? Breath it in and hold for a moment."

"There's a smell like leaves burning and another, stale, like dust kicked up from a road."

"Don't get hung up by an image until you see it clearly. The staleness could come from a dirt road, or something else entirely. Go back to the greens. I want you to imagine the color is at your finger tips. Place it into the shapes it ought to be." 

This was a stumbling point for Bucky, the color would not be still. Each time he tried to make it into a form, his mind rejected it, and the elusive forest-like hues would slip. So did the whites and the greys...every color evaded except for the red. When he took hold of it, or it of him, the burnt amber color pulled and stretched until it was at length a road. No, not a road, at trail. Around it other images seemed to gravitate. The trees planted themselves into a somber, veiled processional of white and green. The drab hue became a soldier's uniform, and the thrum of his heartbeat took on the rhythmic crunch of feet, a company of them, compacting the soft pockets of snow. "It's the forest," he said at length. The red path they were on lead away from him, the path of his own blood on the ground, the only witness to the fact that Bucky was there and it was already being tucked away by the fresh falling snow. Like floating, somewhere so far removed beyond the threshold for pain, it was no effort at all being dragged along the ground on a makeshift gurney. "I remember being pulled through the snow, the world was upside down." Bucky's eyes shifted from the cloth wrapped stub that was his arm, to the man following the red road. He kept his eyes like vigilant marksmen, between moments of wakefulness, trained on the man whose eyes were also trained on him.

"Who is he?"

"Armin Zola." From what [Y-N] understood of Interpol's red list, the first credited assassination of the Winter Soldier's 50-year career was carried out in 1945. This memory must have been sometime in that ballpark. 

"How do you know it's him?" [Y-N] guided with extra caution, being weary not to break the theta state. 

"Because he is the only one smiling." There was no mistaking Zola's smile when he was pleased. And he was exceedingly pleased. "He's waited for this moment, this new Fist of HYDRA, for so long that he's mesmerized. He calls it the algorithm of fate that we should meet again."

"Armin may have been waiting for this moment, but so have you. Everything that you are has brought you here." This was, perhaps, the first tipping point of controlling the narrative in Bucky's nightmare. "When you see him next, when you open your eyes, stand up and approach him."

 "I can't."

"Perhaps not then. But in this dream, now, you can make it so by force of will. Stand and face him. If you could tell him one thing, what would you say?"

Bucky felt heavy and cold on the stretcher, at the mercy of each bump in the road, threading the needle of consciousness.

"You are not weighed down by this dream. You are not injured. You are not the prisoner in this exercise, you are the jailer. And on your next breath you will. Stand. Up."

For a flickering instance, Bucky saw himself from outside himself, through another set of eyes - a predatory gaze as Armin Zola would have seen him. Like a hound stalking after the scent of prey. But Bucky was not prey. He pulled himself upright. No longer hurt or weary, simply a soldier with one good arm, he took that arm and seized Zola by the side of the head. "Fate is like smoke. It twists and blows away in the wind like it was never there at all. And so did you." Beneath Bucky's fingers the winds of shifting time passed over Zola until he unraveled into rivulets of smoke, and the dream once again became a harmless series colors for Bucky to wade in. Still, the red thread lingered at Bucky's feet and as he reached for it, it was as though it came alive and pulled him, like a repelling rope down a cliff face and into a new scene no longer white and red and green, but a cold blue and a hot tungsten yellow.

"What is the red thread connected to? Pull it taut."

Bucky heard a warning in the ether, like Natasha's words but not quite her voice, when it said "you might not want to pull that thread." He grasped at the red wisp anyway, and it hummed as if plucked, breaking up the colors with vibrating distortion. When they settled again, white reappeared. Not a luminescent snowy white, but a clinical one. A sterile white sheet above him, a chilly table beneath, and three sterile sets of eyes investigating him. "There are three surgeons, but they might well be cogs, they're interchangeable in every way except their eyes." Each was cloaked from head to foot in a pale blue uniform which shifted to a sickly, eerie color beneath the boiling yellow spotlight.

"Which of them holds the thread?

"None of them do. " A drill, a syringe, and an alloy silver bowl, but no thread. No source of the memory. No reason that it plagued his nights. "They're all wearing black rubber gloves, the kind you use for wet work. The drill makes a sonic, high pitched, saw-like scream." 

At this, [Y-N] noticed that she hadn't sipped from her cup in so long that the tea had gone cold, and that the page of notes she'd started had spilled over into the next. She put the pen down to flex the tension out of her wrist and collect her thoughts. "If you don't like the detail, you have the power to change it." The sound of the drill faded into the background, and Bucky lifted his head off the table to observe the operating theater. "Is there anything in the memory that stands out to you in a way that it hasn't before?"

"No. I'm awake while they cut, covered by a sheet." It doesn't do anything to dispel the cold or shield him from the intrusive stares. "I don't know how they kept me awake, or kept me from screaming." He paused, remembering the smell of burning leaves from earlier, but coming to understand that it wasn't leaves. "I'm awake while they cauterize." The stale dusty smell is not a smell after all but a taste; the dry, sandpaper essence from the raw back of his throat, the taste inside of his mouth clamping down on a bit. "That's funny."

I can't imagine that there's anything funny rattling around in there right now, [Y-N] thought. "What's that?"

"I never noticed it before, that when I fell the ravine only took part of my arm. It shattered everything up to the elbow and tore the flesh away. But that wouldn't due. The elbow joint is weak, it wouldn't wield the weight of a metal alloy. The elbow wasn't strong enough to handle the recoil of their weapon." And when history did not cooperate, history was changed. "The joint wasn't strong enough, so they took more. With each pass of the drill, taking another inch more. Solder, heat, solder. How much more?!" 

There was a slam in the container, like the strike of a hammer, and a simultaneous warning indicator from the tracker triggered by all the heightened stasis markers.

"Bucky, focus on my voice. What they took from you is irreplaceable but that doesn't mean you can't take something back. Imagine something, reach out -"

"That's not hard at all. The scientist with the clipboard comes by after to inspect his work for quality. I can't tell if he's one of the three from the operating room without the surgical masks. I don't care. He's close enough that I have him in the vice, by the throat, for at least half a minute before one of the others can sedate me."

The imagery was getting wildly out of hand, to the point where [Y-N] swiftly maneuvered from simple guidance to direct commands, and began to climb the rungs of the ladder. "Bucky, take yourself out of the situation. Step out of it, like stepping out of a picture -" 

"That's where they made the Winter Soldier, when they put me on ice. Before I went under, the last thing I saw was my reflection in white..."

"No, take yourself out of cryostastis now. Open that door from that memory and haul your ass out."

"Gotov soblyudat', mem (Ready to comply, ma'am)," came that familiar stranger's voice.

Reader's POV

The moment it happened stopped you on your toes three rungs from the top of the chamber. Your foot slipped, and your body swung on the rail and into the steel wall with an inelegant thud. "To whom am I speaking?"

"I think you know." The Winter Soldier replied. "The one on the end of the thread."

Truth be told, you were shocked that you weren't dead, that he hadn't already punched his way out of the tank by force, but moving past the initial reaction...curiosity overtook the fear of present danger. "I've always wondered Sergeant," you steadied yourself on the final step, "what do you call yourself when you look at your reflection? The intelligence community calls you the Winter Soldier, but I'm much more interested in what you go by."

There was no response, not to the question at any rate. "Nepravil'no (not true), he remembers it wrong."

It took a moment to realize that the Winter Soldier was silent witness to every word that Bucky had spoken, biding his time listening to the story. And that made for an interesting hypothesis; what if Bucky had not lost control? What if the Winter Soldier had come forth by choice, by an impulse undeniably strong, because he finally had something to say. "What did you get wrong, soldier?" You corrected his use of the third person.

He did not follow suit, but with his brevity he commanded attention. "I was with him before he lost the arm."

"I'm above you now, on the hatch. If you reach your hand directly up, that's where I'll be." A dangerous tactical use of honesty. "So that I can let you out. Do you want to come out of the chamber?"

If a smirk could make a sound, his did. "Do you suppose I would need you to let me out?"

"No."

"Then why would you ask?"

"Because I don't imagine anyone ever has."

The Soldier went silent before uttering what sounded like a command. "Vibrayt'."

"I'm sorry, my Russian only goes so far. What is that?"

"The word that repeats itself in his thoughts like a thorn. It would do well to be the next thing he learns if he continues to work with you," the Soldier said, "though I doubt he will."

"I have to ask," knowing that you were well past the point of safety and running head long at the danger anyway, "to Bucky, the Red Book commands are a weapon: a means to turn him into you. You know the words I am speaking of by heart, yes?" You asked delicately, both as a show respect and extreme caution not wanting to repeat the coercive curse.

The Soldier laughed. "Zhelaniye (Longing)," he confirmed by reciting the first in sequence. "Sprosi menya, govori pryamo (Ask me what you mean)."

"I have been trying to make sense of them, but all I have is speculation. What do the commands mean to you? What are they?"

"Why should they mean anything to me?"

"For the same reason you won't tell me what to call you. Words have power."

You had a moral obligation to try, though it was a long shot. The Winter Soldier was trained to safeguard intelligence and eliminate all threats to disclosure. You were certain that there was no answer to be found, which made the subdued response all the more deafening when you least expected it. "Vykup. If you insist on finding meaning where there are none, he should look back. And you may call me the White Wolf."

And just and quickly and unceremoniously as he surfaced, the White Wolf was again a ghost. You could tell by the tone of Bucky's voice when it returned to him. "Barnes, can you hear me? Where are you right now?" When are you?

"I hear you. I don't know where I am, I just know that I'm alone."

"And how do you know?"

"Because no one answers when I call their names."

"Who are you calling for -" You asked, just before something in you clicked into place, unleashing momentum. You slid down the rails of the stairs and ran to the desk, in a frantic search tearing through chapters of pages of notes on Bucky. Scribbles in you own hand, excerpts from biographies, redacted SHIELD reports, decrypted STRIKE files backed up before the fall of the Treskelion, quotes from an interview with Peggy Carter, until you spotted the yellowed ocher page. A single dogeared document, clipped to the notes you borrowed from Steve, that were passed to him from Natasha, that were confiscated in counter-intelligence raid in Kiev. An original so frail that it was sheathed for protection, from "Дело no.17 (Case number 17), том 2ŭ (volume 2, part и, the 11th letter in the cyrillic alphabet)." HYDRA's dossier on Barnes, or what was left of it. If there was ever a volume 1, it was never recovered. Scrolling down the margins, where you had affixed English annotations to the page cover, you found it. "The 107th," it began, as you skimmed through large sections of notes, chasing your suspicion: 

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes / born:1917... eldest child of ... excellent scores in marksmanship. Interrogation assessment: training Camp McCoy… enlisted Winter, early 1942 following attack on Pearl Harbor. Barnes unit, the 107^th were deployed to the Italian front of European theater....Asset acquired (captured?) by HYDRA, Autumn 1943. (Axis?) Reassignment: Azzano Decimo nuclear facility. Repeated citations. Recommended course of reconditioning: isolation, deprivation, physical torture, and supplementation of regimen beta.

Signed Armin Zola

Even though the annotations were written in your own hand, they might as well have been written in Cyrillic, such was the soggy state of your mind as you reviewed them, trying desperately to remember the context they were originally written in so many weeks ago. You stumbled over the notes the first and second time you read the English translation, so much so that you went back to the original script combing for interpretive errors, when at last a word caught your eye. Isolation. Why is that relevant?   

 If you insist on finding meaning where there are none, he should look back.

From what you knew of the Winter Soldier's reputation, he never did anything without cause. And from the chilling brevity of your encounter with the White Wolf, this included the way he chose to speak. Where there are none: in isolation. 

"Bucky..." you were on the edge of something, and the answers were falling into place now like drops of rain, slow to come these many long weeks, but all the sudden a downpour. "What year is it?"

"1943." Look back. Before he was HYDRAs captive, he was a prisoner of war.

"Alright, don't try to remember this all at once, or in order. Let it come to you however it wants.  Is there anything you have with you that can tell you where you are?" You asked.

Bucky's hands drifted, remembering the sensation of something heavy around his neck, something cherished, important. Metallic plates, grooved by a stamp, both unique in pattern and neither belonging to him. They were dog tags. "There are leather straps around my wrists, and an IV in my arm." Regimen beta, you thought absently and rubbed your temples at the thought that it may have been a prototype serum. "I think the reason they're still keeping me alive is to work..I think it's a labor camp." 

"Then why are you alone?"

"Because they were taken from me."

"The rest of 107th?"

"Yes. I've called out their names. All hundred and sixty five of them."

"Wait. I'm sorry, Bucky, but I'm confused. The history says that there were a hundred and sixty three liberated from the nuclear labor camp, yourself included, when Rogers found you. How is it that you remember 165?" 

"I helped two of them escape, John and Anthony LaVaroie." Bucky said. Repeated citations of rebellion. Recommended reconditioning - isolation.  "I must be losing my grip."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because no one is answering me, but someone is calling my name."

No, you thought, you were losing it. The answer was in plain sight, after all this time, and voluntarily given by the most unlikely of sources. "Alright Bucky, you've done well. Here's what I need you to do now. I want you to remember the day Rogers liberated the camp, can you do that? He breaks the straps, you lean on his shoulder, and when you reach the door, this day, this dream will be over." You said, counting down the final moments in your head. Three...Two...One. " 'Complete protocol.' "

Bucky's POV

Waking from the dream recall was easy, because in a sense Bucky had never been asleep at all. He had just been temporarily free of himself. Finding his legs on the other hand was a spectacular challenge. He felt disembodied, even as he ascended up through the open hatch. The only thing that assured him of reality, to the sense that he was awake and not still deep in thought, was stepping out and finding his clothes exactly as he had left them. But as he stepped down the side of the tank, slipping more than once, [Y-N] had to help him off the final rung, and still dripping wet Bucky nearly took them both down in a heap. Though he had mixed feelings about accepting her help, knowing now that she had her own dossier of undisclosed secrets, the recall sequence had provided some much needed sobering clarity. Regardless of whether he liked to lean on her didn't alter the fact that he needed to. Bucky knew that need like a fundamental truth, just as he realized that all the history and speculation that he didn't understand about [Y-N] didn't alter what he already knew: she was invaluable. "So, how did I do?"

"How do you feel?"

"How did I do?"

"Ha! I think it went fairly well, all things considered. Now, how do you feel?"

"Like I'm a head without shoulders to sit on." Bucky said as [Y-N] guided him to a chair, but she chose instead to sit on top the table just beside him in a gesture of team-like solidarity. "The nightmare I've been having was more clear and fluid than I've ever experienced it before. But I've never been able to manipulate it like that, like a book. It was open, and then shut. Thank you for doing that."

"It's not me, it's all you. I'm just the tour guide. Do you think that you could do it all again if you had to?"

Bucky knocked on the surface of the lab table, the metal on metal making a gavel-like, percussive sound. "At the risk of sounding optimistic -"

"Never!" [Y-N] cajoled.

"I think there's a good chance that I could. Which begs the question - what's next?"

"Christ sakes, you want more training? It's 8:02PM, Barnes."

"I've been in there for two hours?" He countered, incredulous.

"Just about, doesn't seem likely though, does it?" Barnes glanced down at the wrist monitor just to be sure, and in glaring red digits it confirmed the testimony of 20:02 hours. "Time doth fly like a Falcon."

Bucky laughed heartily. "So tell me, honestly, what's next?"

"I think you'll like this next exercise. It's an op, priority 1, code name SLEEP, short for SLEEP, and there's only one objective. To find the elusive target called SLEEP, and put her to bed once and for all."

"The night is still young."

"But you, my good friend, are not."

"Oh, so that's how it is." Bucky crossed his arms in feigned indignation, taking a page out of Sam's book though [Y-N] dare not point out the similarity. "Well said. I think I can handle that." He ran the length of his shirt over his forehead to dry his dripping mess of hair, not caring that it was a poor excuse for a towel. He didn't need it anyway if the next stop truly was his pillow. "Good night then. Sleep well." 

[Y-N] slid off the table and together they walked down the rotunda on course for upper levels of the Avengers Tower. Their paths diverted as she turned for the elevator, and Bucky approached the stairwell. She stopped to call the lift, but didn't turn to look at Bucky before she spoke. "There's something that's bothering me and I don't think I can sleep until I ask."

Bucky stopped half way up the first flight of stairs and turned. "What's going on?"

"How's your Russian?"

"Passable. Why?"

The elevator arrived as if to challenge her pursuit of knowledge. "It's nothing," she resolved to herself, though Bucky wasn't convinced. "Tell me, truthfully, does vybirat' ring any bells for you?"

"Not a one."

"What does it mean though," she said, stepping into the lift, "rough translation?" 

"In a context it could be 'to decide,' or 'to solve' or on it's own 'choose' like a command." His steps started to reverse course when the sound of his own voice - which seemed somehow foreign to him - vibrated through his back like pins and rattled something loose inside of him, a recollection of hesitation, a moment of weakness. "Is that all you want to know?"

"Thank you Bucky. That gives me plenty to think about. Good night," [Y-N] called out as the sliding panels began to shut.

Before he was aware of exactly why, Bucky's metallic fingers found their way around the sliver of space between the doors and pulled them ajar. [Y-N] made no objection, perhaps anticipating it, and moved only a fraction to tap the button for his destination, though her eyes were not as direct as he was used to. They were averted up in a state of calculation. As she looked over, Bucky evaded, trying not to give away that he was observing, all while the elevator, oblivious to their spy games, commenced it's course.

Her voice was the first to split the quiet apart, "There's just one more word that I'm struggling with."

"So ask." When she didn't, when the pause became unbearably breathless, Bucky felt compelled to fill the silence. "I lied to you. I didn't plan to finish training today. I made up my mind to leave, I packed a bag, I made as far as this elevator, and then I stayed. Because something changed. I've been bothered by that moment all day..."

"I know..." [Y-N] interrupted at the same moment as Bucky concluded.

"...and I don't know why."

Again she said "...I know."

The whole exchange left Bucky a misstep behind. He flipped the emergency stop switch, the red flood lights filled the space between them, and he stared intently - perplexed and patiently waiting - until [Y-N] met his eyes. In that moment he understood that her ambiguity had purposeful meaning, that she knew about the lie and something more besides. That she knew his thoughts.

"What do you know?" He began haltingly, still doubting his judgment. And how could you know it?

"From the information we've gathered today, I think the sequence of counter commands you've learned so far has a new addition. Most, groza, utro, ne tonut', vybirat' ," she said, lost to her clinical thoughts. "Bridge, rainstorm, morning, never sink, and choose." Unknown to Bucky, the White Wolf had given [Y-N] a message - two gifts in a single word: one for Bucky demanding a choice, and one for her, a dare to solve the problem that was right in front of them and be honest with him about it. 

"This doesn't make sense. You weren't there. You couldn't have known I lied."

"I understand you well enough to see that you were about to run, that you weren't telling the truth."

"And up until today thought I knew you well enough to see a lie for what it was. How did you know what I was thinking and how could you possibly know why?

"You told me what you were thinking, and as to why - I'm not sure you want that answer tonight."

"I didn't. I don't remember telling you -"

"Yes, you did." She took a sigh and braced herself, "when you were him." 

"I thought you said that the training went well." Bucky said, in all ways subdued. The response was not what she had expected, and that was worse. He didn't strike outwardly, she could handle that. Calm was a more volatile reaction waiting for a catalyst.

"It went well all things considered..."

"How could you not tell me that I lost control!? How could you keep it from me?" Finally, his anger found an escape.

"I'm not keeping this from you. Not now, not ever." And with her head down, and no heart to look at him, [Y-N] outstretched her hand first to restart the elevator, and then to pass Bucky his file. He did not expect it, and indeed his body's first instinct was to recoil from it.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

"These are the notes I've taken today and more besides. They're yours to read should you choose. Let me know if you come to the same conclusion."

"And what conclusion is that?"

"Vykup. I know it's Russian, but what does it mean exactly?"

"Goddammit, do you know how frustrating it is when you answer one question with another, and just decide to do it anyway?"

"My answer is contingent on yours. Please," she implored. "It's the most important thing I've ever asked you."

Bucky was not prepared for that depth of candor, and felt the forthcoming explanation would be even more unsettling. "Vykup comes from Vykupat.' It's a word that's like a coin. It means both to owe, as in to atone, and to pay a debt, like a ransom, in order to redeem."

"I thought as much," her conclusion affirmed, [Y-N] looked Bucky once over, as if from this moment either he would never look the same or else never see her in the same light again. It seemed that they were both trapped in the moment imagining all the consequential outcomes of what the other might say. "I think it's time for us to re-evaluate our course of treatment. I think we need to take a closer look at the Red Book - "

"Are you giving up?"

"We have always acted like the commands of HYDRA are a weapon to manipulate you, to summon the Winter Soldier. But I've come to consider now that we've made an assumption, and if we're wrong it could change everything."

"Are you giving up on me?"

"I'm with you, whatever it takes, but what if -"

"Don't say it -"

"What if HYDRA didn't do this?"

"Shut up -"

"Not all of it," HYDRA didn't make a soldier. HYDRA didn't, by dark alchemy, pull something out of nothing. "I believe HYDRA's commands are a ransom, are a debt to be paid, but not by you. By him." Of all the research and the study she had done for Bucky's case, the fact that stood out most was one of Steve's marginal notes. And it wasn't even about Barnes. It was something the Dr. Abraham Erskine had said to him long ago, when Rogers enlisted for basic training:

 The serum amplifies everything. Good becomes great. Bad becomes worse. You will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.

"The Winter Soldier is not your enemy Bucky; HYDRA didn't create him by forge and furnace, you did by longing. He's been with you, he is you, since the beginning. When you were prisoner, you were never alone, because he was there. When you were in a backyard Brooklyn alley standing up for your friend, he was too. When you were captured behind enemy lines, the science division gave you a serum to be a stronger, more tireless, more complaint worker, not yet realizing it's full potential to bring out inner strength. That serum may have given him a form you didn't recognize, but the Soldier is still you. I'd argue, he was the best of you."

"Stop -"

And when you were at your end, near to death, beyond pain, he stood in the gap and said 'no more.' He was your will to escape and survive by all means, a force so strong that he had to be corrupted in order to be contained. And so you were tormented, and Red Book is the proof of that. With each new torture that worked to provoke that part of you, a new word was created, a new link in the chain so that they could bring him to heel. Break him. And he let them. He accepted the bit, never fought the memory wipes, so that he could do the unspeakable things that you wouldn't have to. You needed him to survive and he needs you to -"

Bucky didn't shout again, but he couldn't bear it any longer. In an instant he had [Y-N] pinned against the elevator door, his hand over her mouth dangerously close to something he couldn't undo, but not before she managed to say "redeem him." He stood frozen for a long moment as she labored to breathe against his hand, the fog of her breath obscuring her ashamed but resolved expression in the metallic mirror of his grip. He brought his face low, just next to her ear, as the elevator slowed to a stop. He wanted it to sting when he said, "If you can't even confront your own past, how could you possibly understand mine?" And he wanted some measure of finality when he added, "you repeat what you said ever again, and this arrangement is terminated. Not another word," As the door opened, he swung her around to the back of the elevator where she collided abruptly with the wall, hard, with enough force to make the apparatus shake. Bucky had every intention of never looking back when a hoarse, raspy whisper caught his ear. He had to read her lips in order to make it out clearly. 

"I'm sorry-" she said.

"For what-" was his terse reply.

"That I have another word. Words, really," it was then that her voice cracked and he looked closer. Bucky caught a quick glimpse of red rimmed eyes just as the elevator was about to close. "Happy Birthday." Even though he had forgotten his own birthday, she hadn't. While the impact was brutal, the regret wasn't instantaneous, it was a time-release kind of dread by way of aftershocks. By the time Bucky had reached his temporary sleeping quarters at the end of the hall, it had seeped into his steps with dragging lethargy. When the bio-metric door unlocked, there was a slump to his shoulders that weighed him down to the point where his fell into bed without reaching for the light. It was then, as his body hit the pillows and a crumpling noise startled him, that the full gravity of the situation slammed him. The lights flickered on to reveal three short stacks of folders and a wrinkled piece of paper on his mattress that were once piled neatly, now in an artful impressionistic array. He reached for the crumpled note first. On the front, it was an ordinary receipt from a local pharmacy: a bottle of pain reliever, ACE wrap, and an ice pack. On the back were two familiar sets of handwriting. 'This completes my I Owe yoU' was scrawled and signed by Tony, like an informal business contract, but the names 'Winifred Barnes nee Georgeta,' 'George Barnes,' and 'Rebecca Proctor nee Barnes' were written in [Y-N]'s elegant (though often illegible) psychologist script, along with an afterword. 'Happy Birthday. A gift - homework - for the next round of Twenty Questions", and in equally elegant subtitle, “from Tony, obviously.”

There was once a stack of files for each of them. Bucky opened the least disheveled one at random, and clipped to the inner cover was a photo of the Barnes family c1934. George, Winfred, young Rebecca elbowing an even younger Steven Rogers, and James Buchanan Barnes. On the edge, he could just make out the hand of Steve's late mom ducking out of view before his father, behind the camera at the time (how did Bucky remember that?) snapped the picture. He wandered about the room in rapt fascination, barely kicking off his shoes as he paged through more stories and photos and articles than he could have dared to imagine. They survived even when I was gone, he thought with hope, they lived. And their lives had meaning because people like [Y-N] had chosen to remember them.

"Oh hell, what have I done?"

Bucky was intent to stay up the night and commit all three of the files to memory, a valiant effort till just past the photos of Rebecca among her graduating college class, when sleep won the sparring match in the end.