A/N: This one takes place during Captain America: The First Avenger. It mostly centers around Steve breaking into the Hydra camp to save Bucky. The rescue and return to camp are just a quick little set of scenes, but there's a lot of wonderful emotion going on there that I wanted to unpack. As we see in the movie, Bucky comes around pretty quickly to the new Steve and he's cool with it, because Bucky is a great guy. But it had to be super-weird for him initially. Let's explore.

The title comes from a quote by Clara Ortega: "To the outside world we all grow old. But not to brothers and sisters. We know each other as we always were." Isn't that lovely?

I've borrowed a good chunk of dialogue from the movie. And the boys don't belong to me, but I love them dearly.


"Who're you supposed to be?" came a voice from below Steve's feet. An American voice. Steve's heart soared—he'd found them!

"Captain America," he told the voice. He felt a little silly, but it sounded impressive, and it certainly sounded better than just giving his name. It's not like anybody here knew who Steve Rogers was. He finally found the key he was looking for in the downed guard's pocket and moved for a set of stairs he spotted ahead in the shadows.

Getting down to the prison level was easy enough, and the guards must have been patrolling elsewhere at the moment—he didn't run into anyone, which gave him time to scan the rows of cages. There were…There were an awful lot of them. Hydra must have captured way more than just the majority of the 107th. He moved to the first cage in the row and unlocked the door. He scanned the inhabitants quickly, determining that Bucky wasn't among them. He didn't see him in any of the nearby cages either.

He passed the key to another solider who began to run along the row, unlocking cages as he went. Steve didn't want to shout for Bucky—he wasn't sure if he'd gotten all the guards or not, but he wasn't going to assume Bucky was in the crowd and he wasn't leaving until he laid eyes on him.

Fortunately, the English solider knew Bucky and told him where he'd gone. He didn't sound particularly hopeful that Steve would find him alive, but Steve ignored that, quickly giving directions and moving off in the direction the man had indicated.

"You sure you know what you're doing?" the American guy asked.

Steve gave some glib answer about knocking out Hitler and kept running. There wasn't time to stop and explain anything, and maybe if he acted like he knew what he was doing, he'd start to believe it. It had worked on stage. Sure, this was an actual battle, with actual Nazis with actual guns, but the principle had to be the same, right?

He took the first corridor he came to—if the isolation wing was for the prisoners, it had to be near to the prison for easy transport. The farther he got down the corridor, the more he felt he was right. It was cold, poorly lit and damp. The doors were thick and metal, and the air felt oddly muffled. If any place screamed isolation, this was it.

Before he could decide which door to check first, he saw movement up ahead. He jogged forward and saw a small figure—not a guard, based on the rumpled suit and hat. He was carrying a roll of papers tucked under his arm and a briefcase packed hastily enough that bits of paper were still sticking out the sides. He was obviously in a hurry.

Steve ran toward him, but stopped as he approached the open door the little man had come out of. He should chase him, but something he couldn't put a name to drew him into the room. As he stepped inside, he heard a sound, a voice too low to make out. He moved in farther, rounding a shelf, and froze for a moment as his stomach twisted itself into a knot. The voice was close enough to hear now— "Sergeant…three…two…five-five…seven…Barnes…"—and it was coming from Bucky, strapped to a gurney underneath some kind of machine on the other side of the room.

His voice was soft and flat and monotonous, like he wasn't paying attention to what he was saying, or maybe wasn't even aware that he was saying anything at all. Steve swallowed down a sick feeling in his gut and moved forward as Bucky started the broken recitation again. "Bucky?" he breathed as he approached the table. His friend fell silent.

"Oh my God," Steve whispered, very nearly turning around and vomiting on the floor. Bucky was dirty, thinner and paler than last time Steve had seen him, and, aside from a few cuts and bruises, he had no injuries that Steve could see. But he lay motionless on the table, eyes glazed over and drained and far away, staring dully at the ceiling. The gurney shook as Steve bumped into it, and Bucky lolled from side to side with the motion like a rag doll, making no move to steady himself or giving any indication that he was aware anything was happening at all. His eyes remained alarmingly empty.

Swallowing down his fear, Steve moved to undo the restraints. It seemed easier just to rip them off. He pulled away the ones on Bucky's legs first, giving himself a moment where he didn't have to look at that horrifyingly vacant expression. He didn't know what the hell they'd done to him, but he refused to believe he was too late. Bucky just needed help. Steve would get him out of here, the doctors back at camp would take care of him, and he'd be okay. Bucky was going to be okay. He'd be okay. Please be okay.

Steve turned back, ripping away the restraints across his chest, jostling both the table and his friend with the force of the movement, and this time, Bucky reacted.

"Is…is that…" he muttered, head lolling to the side, eyes searching.

Steve's heart leapt into his throat and he leaned in eagerly, grabbing Bucky's shoulders. "It's me, it's Steve," he said quickly.

For an agonizing second that felt like a day and a half, Bucky just stared blankly. Then his lips curled up slowly, like they were too tired to smile but just couldn't stop themselves, and Bucky flickered back to life inside his eyes. "Steve?" he breathed, disbelieving, confused, delighted.

"Come on," Steve said, grinning, grabbing his other shoulder and starting to pull him up.

"Steve," Bucky said again happily, like he was confirming what he saw. He sounded and moved like he was falling-down-drunk, but Steve didn't care. He was still here. Steve would carry him out if he had to.

Steve pulled him off the table and onto his feet, keeping a strong grip on his shoulders as his feet hit the floor and he wobbled dangerously. Bucky clung on to Steve's arms like they were all that was keeping him up, bending over to catch his breath. They needed to get out of here, but Steve gave him the moment, partially to see if he could get his feet under him, and partially just to drink in the sight of the face he'd thought he'd never see again.

Steve swallowed down the memory of how it felt to think his best friend was dead, taking a moment to catch his breath and clapping a hand carefully to the back of Bucky's head, reassuring himself that he was alive and real and right here. "I thought you were dead," he breathed.

Bucky looked him up and down, like he was seeing him for the first time, and his eyebrows wrinkled in confusion. "I thought you were smaller," Bucky said, meeting his eyes again. He still looked completely out of it, and now, also a little scared.

Steve opened his mouth to reply and something exploded outside. Steve whipped his head back the way he'd come. If the base was self-destructing, that probably explained why the little man had been in such a hurry. He swallowed down the sick realization that the man had been in here, preparing to flee and fully intending to leave Bucky to die as the place burned down. His eyes caught the map on the wall as they swung back to Bucky, and he forced himself to look at it for a second, try to take it in. It was probably important.

Not as important as getting out of here, though. "Come on," he said, sliding Bucky's arm up over his shoulder and wrapping his arms around Bucky's waist. Bucky's feet stumbled as Steve moved forward, starting to hold his weight but struggling to keep up.

"What happened to you?" Bucky asked shakily, his other hand reaching up, grabbing onto Steve's sleeve.

"I joined the Army," Steve replied.

Bucky's hand pawed at his sleeve. "No," he mumbled. "What…" He was dragging his feet now, no longer trying to keep up, but actively trying to slow down. "What's going on?" he demanded.

Steve stopped and looked down at him (and wasn't that weird, looking down at Bucky?), and immediately regretted his snappy reply. It had been automatic, a snarky quip in response to his friend's question. Something they did all the time. But right now wasn't 'all the time'. Steve was different, and Bucky was hurt and confused and the look in his eyes told Steve that he had no idea what was going on and that it scared him.

Steve propped Bucky up against the wall and took his face in both his hands. "Bucky," he said gently. "I know I look different, but it's still me. It's really me. Can you see me in here?"

Bucky blinked sad, sick eyes at him and looked, really looked, into Steve's eyes. "Steve," he whispered. "You're really Steve."

Steve nodded.

"But how…" Bucky trailed off, looking him up and down again. "How did you…What happened?" One of his hands moved up from Steve's shoulder and pawed clumsily at the side of his face. "Are you really this big? I'm not…"

"You're not crazy, Buck," Steve assured him. He wondered angrily what they had done to his head—what they had done to make him wonder if what was happening was real. "I really am this big now."

"You weren't always," Bucky insisted. It almost wasn't a question.

"You're right, I wasn't." Something else exploded, sounding closer this time, and Steve put his hands back on Bucky's arms and pulled him up from where he'd slid down a little bit. "I promise I'll tell you what happened, but we need to be moving while I do that. Can you do that?" he asked. He knew Bucky's pride would rail against being carried out of here, but he was this close to tossing him over his shoulder and running. He hadn't come this far to lose him now.

Bucky blinked a few times, clarity settling back into his eyes. "Yeah," he said, nodding. He straightened his shoulders. "Yeah, I can do that."

Steve smiled and clapped him on the shoulder, and Bucky managed to smile back. "Can you walk?" Steve asked.

In answer, Bucky pushed himself away from the wall and started moving toward the door. "Start talking, punk."

Steve moved through the door ahead of him—he was walking on his own, but not very steadily, and certainly not ready to fight anyone off. "You remember the fair?"

"Yeah. When you ditched to go try to sign up again. Don't tell me they actually took you?"

"Sort of," Steve replied. His eyes were constantly darting ahead and behind, looking for threats, then back to Bucky to make sure he was alright. "There was this doctor there, he asked me some questions and said he could give me a chance, so I took it. He was working with Howard Stark—"

"You met Howard Stark?" Bucky interrupted, soundly slightly awed.

"Yeah, he's a civilian consultant for this science division, and he had this machine and Erskine—the doctor—had this formula—"

"This is starting to sound like a science experiment," Bucky growled, putting a hand to the wall to steady himself as another explosion rocked the floor.

"I mean, I guess," Steve conceded. "Erskine injected me with his formula, and I got into the machine, and there was light and electricity and stuff, and it just made everything…grow, and I came out looking like this. Ow!"

Steve turned around. Bucky had slapped him on the back of the head and was now leaning on the wall, glaring at him. "What the hell, Steve?!" he demanded. "I'm gone for, what, like, an hour, and you're signing up to be a freaking lab rat! I told you not to do anything stupid while I was gone, and what's the first thing you run out and do?! No, no, this, this isn't even stupid! This is beyond stupid!" He slapped the back of his head again. "What the hell were you thinking?!"

"I was thinking this was a chance to finally serve my country, like everybody else was doing," Steve replied, resisting the urge to yell back. Bucky was just worried. He always worried about Steve. "Like you were doing," he finished quietly.

He held out a hand, and after a moment, Bucky accepted it, allowing Steve to get him moving again, although he still didn't look happy. "It's not like I jumped into it blind, Bucky," Steve continued. "I had to go through training, I had to be evaluated, and Erskine laid the whole thing out for me—repeatedly and at length—so I would know what was going on. He knew what he was doing, Howard knew what he was doing, and I trusted them."

"Did you know it would work?" Bucky asked.

Steve sighed. He knew the answer Bucky wanted, but he couldn't lie. "No."

Bucky shook his head. "Did it hurt?"

Steve almost wanted to laugh. Bucky had been captured, tortured, looked sick as a dog and was almost bent double, weaving back and forth as he walked, but all he was worried about right now was if his best friend had been hurt. It had only been a couple of months, but, oh, he'd missed Bucky. "A little," he responded. Some lies, he didn't mind telling.

"Is it permanent?" Bucky asked.

Steve looked back, making sure he was keeping up. "So far."

"You're an idiot, Steve," Bucky huffed. There was no heat in it.

Steve smiled. "Takes one to know one," he replied, holding open a door that should lead them up and out.

Bucky smacked him on the back of the head again as he stumbled through.