Note: Ignore the fact that all the Howlers should be dead and this should be fun!

"Hey," Steve said.

Bucky stilled his hands but gripped the whetstone harder. His reflection looked up at him from the blade of his knife. They could say over and over again that they weren't keeping Bucky in a cell, but he knew a cage when he saw one. This was just a more luxurious cage than he was used to; he supposed he ought to be grateful for it.

He rearranged the parts in his head that weren't tied down to anything solid until he knew his face would look like something Steve recognised; Bucky met Steve's gaze. "What's up?"

"Uh, visitors. Feel up to it?" Steve was leaning against the doorframe in a would-be casual sort of way.

(In or out, Rogers, the doorway is creepy.)

After all this time, Bucky could still read Steve like a book. Shifty little punk. Bucky looked down and pulled the whetstone across the blade so that he couldn't see himself. Those tiny bits of carbon steel sloughed off the blade; collateral damage for a better cutting edge. The soft grind wasn't enough noise to cover Steve's sigh. Tension built in Bucky's shoulders when he heard Steve walk deeper into the room.

"You don't have to stay in here all the time, you know," Steve said. He sat in the chair orthogonal to Bucky's bunk. The Eyes were out in full force. "You're free to roam the place with the rest of us."

The implication being that all of them wandered around, mindless, from time to time. None of them were all that different from each other.

"I know," Bucky said to the spot of wall just beyond Steve's left shoulder.

"I think Nat's starting to take it personally that you won't introduce yourself."

He chanced a glance at Steve. The Eyes—he looked down and said as casually as he could, "We've met."

"Only as the Winter Soldier and Black Widow. Would be nice for you two to meet as Bucky and Natasha."

Black Widow. Black Widow. Bucky tried to remember if he knew that name — or was it a title? Black Widow, or the Black Widow? Specifics were blurry, but he knew that he came across an awful lot of people with absurd titles (himself included).

A shrug shivered out of Bucky. He pulled the stone over the blade again so that his own eyes could peek at him. The question he wanted to ask was why. What was the point? Why do anything else when it was so much easier to stay in his cage? They had gotten it for him so that he'd stay in it, so that they'd have somewhere to put him and not have to worry.

It was a good arrangement. A logical arrangement.

Steve had carved out a place for himself here, in the future — the present. Friends, family — Steve had made a new everything from scratch. That sort of thing took a lot of time and a lot pain. Bucky wasn't going to break it any more than he already had. He could just stay in the cage that they'd given him and come out when Steve was feeling nostalgic and lonely. He could put on a show and then go back to his cage when Steve was smiling again.

Bucky could do that; he'd been doing something just like it for decades.

"You go on ahead," he said.

"The visitors are here to see both of us."

"Two weeks ago you were telling visitors asking for me to get the hell off the property or else."

Steve rolled his eyes. Bucky didn't need to see it to know it happened.

"The trial's over now; we don't have to worry about those types of visitors anymore."

If anything, since the verdict, they had to worry about it more — not that it was really something that needed to be worried about. That being Bucky's security (or was it safety?) inside the Avengers' facility. A programmable assassin was valuable and tempted a certain type of person. But while a building full of extraordinary people all but invited that sort of competition, upheaval — invasion — was unlikely.

Steve got up and bumped Bucky's shoulder. "C'mon. It'll do you some good to get away from these four walls."

The gesture would have been friendly seventy years ago. Now, though, Bucky knew it meant that Steve wanted him to come out and put on an encore of the Bucky Barnes Show circa 1937.

How could Bucky say no? After everything, how could he refuse?

Funny thing was, Bucky still remembered all the steps, all the lines. He knew how to be Bucky Barnes. It was just strange that it didn't feel like him anymore. Acting like his old self didn't mean he was his old self. The muscle memory was still there, somewhere, it just didn't feel like his muscle memory.

The whetstone and the knife found their home on the table beside the bunk. Bucky hated to separate them; they were a pair.

"OK," he said to Steve.

—

Bucky was starting to pout again. Steve just couldn't figure it out; he couldn't tell what made Bucky get all sulky like this, but it happened all the time. A lot about Bucky was difficult for Steve to get a handle on these days. It was impossible to tell how much distance was right. Steve didn't want to crowd Bucky, but he didn't want to make himself too distant either.

It was already clear that Bucky was never going to say anything when he had a need. Natasha had suggested that Steve just leave Bucky to rot in his room. She said, when Bucky got desperate enough, he'd come out and ask for whatever he needed. Steve didn't have the patience to sit around waiting for that to happen; if one thing was constant, it was the stubborn-as-an-ass attitude of Bucky Barnes. (Not to mention that Steve never could wait for time to be convenient for someone else. He was ready for action when he wanted to be.) So Steve was left with carefully-and-hastily feeling his every move out before acting.

And this little move with the visitors?

Geez, who knew how this would work out? Steve supposed he ought to just be grateful that he had been warned they were coming; the visitors hadn't exactly asked for permission to come. Rather, they'd invited themselves, and good luck standing in their way.

Steve led Bucky through the long hallways of the new Avengers' facility. The walls were buzzing with white noise in some places, deadly quiet in others. Still more sections vibrated with music and chaotic noise. It all depended on the preference of the occupants.

At last, Steve led Bucky into the room Natasha had shown their guests into. It helped that none of the guests were being very quiet, and their voices carried down the corridors. Both super soldiers were able to hear where their guests were and how many they were in number. Behind Steve, Bucky had gone stiff. He kept walking but it wasn't casual or loose anymore. Steve really hoped this wasn't a mistake.

They were greeted at the threshold by, "Well, I'll be goddamned!"

tbc

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