Disclaimer: I (sadly) own nothing in the MCU.

Author's Note: This is the buildup to a much larger story. When I first started this AU, it involved an established relationship between Bucky Barnes and the OFC Tessa Sullivan. But the more I got into it, the more I began to want to see how they fell in love. So... In the Beginning...

Twenty-two hours. It had been twenty-two hours since Steve was found on the banks of the Potomac following an anonymous phone call from a good Samaritan. He'd been unconscious the entire time, his body healing, only partially thanks to the care of the doctors and nurses on staff at United. Tessa was actually fairly certain it was in spite of them, considering they how little attention they paid to the man. Sure, the city was falling apart around them and they had an influx of trauma patients unlike anything anyone in the area had seen. So they were busy. Fine. And yeah, okay, this particular patient was pretty well equipped to heal on his own, that's true. But really, that part they didn't know until she arrived nearly two hours after he'd been admitted.

It was hard to believe that it hadn't even been a full day yet. Just yesterday, she'd been taking a much needed break from her lab at Stark Industries, sitting at her desk with a Powerbar and a coffee, flipping aimless through the tv channels to pass the time while the cells she'd been working on proliferated in their petri dishes. It was pure luck that she'd been in her office when the news reports started to break. Had she been buried in the lab it would've been hours before she'd even realized something had happened.

She fled the tower about five seconds into the report – that was all the time she needed to glean that Steve was almost certainly involved with the strange air battle taking place in the nation's capital. It wasn't until she tuned into more reports in the car on the way down that she heard Captain America had actually been on the run for nearly two days and SHIELD director Nick Fury had been assassinated.

What the fuck? was the only thing on her mind for hours after that. Even once she discovered where Steve was. Even as she forced her way into the trauma center, telling everyone that she was his physician and as such demanded to see his chart. Even as she begrudgingly allowed Natasha to introduce her to this Sam guy before laying out the details of what had happened. Right up until the point that Nat had told her every single detail, in fact. For at least five of the last twenty-two hours, nothing but What. The. Fuck? rolled through her mind.

"On your left," she overhears from her perch in the corner. Peeking over the top of her laptop where she'd been catching up on all of the work she ran out on the evening before, she sees Sam smile wide at a bleary eyed, but very much awake Steve Rogers.

After a long moment, Sam looks across the room at her. "Hey, man," he says to Steve, "How is that you know so many gorgeous women and you've only even been in this century for like a week?"

Steve follows his eyes over to the corner where Tessa's sitting, her legs curled up beneath her in an uncomfortable looking way. She raises a single assessing eyebrow at him. He smiles wide in return. "Just lucky, I guess."

Tessa closes the laptop and slowly unfolds herself as Sam continues. "You've been holding out on me. And we've been friends for what, at least a day now?"

"Sorry," he replies, "Sam, this is Tessa. Tessa, Sam."

She moves closer to the bed, but nearly trips over her own left foot, which is so fast asleep that it's gone completely numb. "Yeah," she says, just barely catching herself on the bed's guard rail. "We've been hovering over you for about 20 hours now. We've met."

Steve chuckles. "Good. He tell you that he pretty much saved my life?"

Sam blushes a bit and ducks his head. "He mentioned it," she says with a shrug. "But really, at this point, who hasn't saved your life?"

Steve smiles briefly before giving her a strange look. "Nat?" he asks. "Is she okay?"

Sam responds with, "She's fine. Already took off."

"Yeah, not before sharing all of Hydra's secrets with the world, though," Tessa says with a huff. "Oops, I mean all of SHIELD's secrets." Steve's features turn grim, his lips tightening into a straight, reproachful line. "Too soon?" she asks with a grin.

He shakes his head. "She released everything?"

"Everything."

"Even –"

"Everything, Steve."

The two share a look that Sam can't quite identify and he's struck by how well they must know each other. Tessa had told him all about being there for Steve after he came out of the ice, being his SHIELD-appointed doctor at first, but rather quickly becoming his friend as well.

They'd had several hours together with not much to do once the debrief with him and Nat had finished. So she filled him in on their story – meeting in a hospital setting after Steve had been thawed, helping him acclimate to the 21st century when it became clear no one else was going to. She'd advised him, repeatedly, not to get involved with SHIELD or any initiative designed by them. Screamed bloody murder at him for putting on the uniform again so soon after coming out of the ice and agreeing to sign on with the Avengers. After that, she'd decided that he owed her, in part for not heeding her advice and making her worry, and in part for very purposefully leaving her out of the action during the battle for New York. (How exactly she would've or could've been involved in the action, Sam couldn't get out of her.) She made Steve introduce her to Tony Stark, which he did with extreme reluctance. And she somehow managed to get a rather coveted position in Stark Industries' newly created medical research division. Steve moved to DC to lead a team of SHIELD operatives, though both he and Natasha still stayed on in some capacity with the Avengers. And now… well, now they were here.

"Romanov said she'd be back for Fury's memorial," Sam mentions. "It's supposed to be this weekend."

Steve turns to Tessa and arches a questioning eyebrow. "Yeah," she says with a nod. "I know. Nat told me. He'll be laying low for now."

"Sorry to disappoint you," he says. "I know you hate the guy."

She's quick to correct him. "I don't hate Fury." She lets out a frustrated sort of huff. "Didn't I tell you not to trust SHIELD?"

He nods solemnly. "Yeah, you did."

"Fuck." She glances over at Sam and sees him watching her carefully. "I always knew they were filled with megalomaniacal assholes."

"Tess," Steve says softly, taking her hand. She looks down at him, her anger fading. "Did Sam tell you about Bucky?"

She nods slowly. "He did."

"And what… happened to him? Did he tell you what Hydra did?" Again, she gives a curt nod. "I have to find him."

Sam had told her much more than just what Hydra did to Bucky Barnes. He had filled her in on what Bucky Barnes, AKA the Winter Soldier, had to done to Steve. And to Natasha. And to Sam's car. So she wasn't exactly optimistic about this reunion Steve was angling for. But she also understood, better than most maybe, that just because someone seems bad doesn't mean they really are. And just because someone seems too far gone, doesn't mean they can't be brought back.

"Okay," she says simply. "Let's find him."

She looks up at Sam and is met with a confident grin. "I'm in," he tells them both. "As long as somebody reimburses me for my car."