"'What you did all those years... it wasn't you.'
'I know. But I did it.'" - Captain America: Civil War

Chapter 1: Making Strides

"Okay, this time should work." Tony backed up and adjusted his goggles, tucking his gloved hands under his arms. "Just... take it slow, and don't try anything crazy. Just make a fist."

Bucky rolled his eyes but, remembering the past few times he'd tried out the arm, he decided to do as Tony said and take it easy.

The new arm still felt strange on his shoulder, although it wasn't too heavy. It just wasn't right there yet. It didn't help that the first time they'd had him fit it on, it had responded entirely too well and the fingers had gotten messed up. Tony had cursed a lot and detached the arm (leaving a strange empty feeling that Bucky really hated) to work with it. They'd tried it twice more, and each time something was off with the calibration, but this time... this time, as Bucky carefully turned his wrist, then curled his fingers inward, it reacted as his real arm would. He opened his hand and lifted it carefully, picking up a pair of tweezers off the table, careful not to pinch the tweezers shut. This time it worked.

"I think it's good," he said, smiling slightly.

"Yes!" Tony scrambled over to a different table and came hurrying back with a pen and a piece of grease-stained paper. "Try writing something. Your name."

Simmons interjected. "Go slowly still, Bucky. We don't want a minor technical difficulty to get dangerous."

Bucky nodded and slid the paper closer to him. He wasn't naturally left-handed, but he'd been trained to be. It felt strange writing "Bucky Barnes" with that hand - he didn't think that was what his handwriting had used to look like. The arm cooperated, and he didn't make any mistakes, which made Simmons and Bruce high-five each other and take several notes.

"We could revolutionize the medical world with this," Tony said happily, sliding his goggles up into his messy hair and pulling off his gloves. "Go ahead and keep that on, Terminator. Just don't do anything stupid with it and don't get it wet. It's supposed to be a waterproof housing, but I want to test that in a controlled setting."

"Thank you," Bucky said, flexing the hand and watching it with a sense of fascination. It looked real, with skin stretched over the metal joints and bones. He forgot where Tony had said he got the skin; he'd been told about it in the midst of a whirlwind of other technical information, and when Tony started talking like that, Bucky preferred to tune him out.

He rolled his shirt sleeve down and left the lab. He couldn't help running an agitated hand through his hair as he got in the elevator – ever since it'd been cut he hadn't been able to help fussing with it. It had been seventy years since he'd had short hair, and it felt ridiculously strange. Shortly after deciding he was going to be Bucky again, he'd done what he'd been wanting to do for some time and asked Natasha to cut his hair. That had been a slightly awkward conversation, but she had agreed to do it with almost a gleeful attitude – he got the sense she found the situation hilarious. Whatever she felt about it, she'd sat him down in the Tower kitchen one day and taken to his hair with a pair of scissors and a somewhat worrying smile. It turned out well, or at least he thought so. He wasn't sure whether his judgement was really trustworthy on that point and he was not going to ask anyone else.

Going upstairs to the common area, he was almost immediately swarmed with questions about his arm by Clint, Natasha, and Steve – all three of whom managed to pester him without actually getting in his face. Bucky was fairly sure it took special talent to be able to do that.

"Go ask Tony," he grumbled, waving them out of the way with his right hand. "I'm sure he'd be happy to brag about it. Still dunno if it's gonna go off in my face." He shuffled past them and aimed for the kitchen. He'd first tried coffee (on Thor's suggestion), and he was hooked. It gave him a rush of abnormal energy and made all his senses feel more alert, which helped him feel more able to deal with potential threats. It felt a little like an adrenaline rush, which he hadn't felt much as the Winter Soldier. It also helped him stay distracted from his memories, not because he didn't think of them but because the thoughts felt less consequential and didn't stay as long.

Steve trailed after him, looking surprisingly small despite the fact that he was actually taller than Bucky. So very different from when they were boys. Bucky tugged open the cabinets, hunting for the mugs (he didn't really know where everything was kept still), and said back over his shoulder, "You need somethin'?"

Steve opened a cabinet and pulled out a green mug with the words "Hulk Smash" printed on it. "Here."

Bucky took the mug, lifted it a little in thanks, and went about pouring himself coffee.

"Um, yeah, actually."

Bucky used his new hand to hold his mug while he stirred his coffee. It felt natural, easy. There was slightly more feeling in the fingers of his left hand than he'd had with his metal arm, which was strange. It was like a phantom sensation, barely there, just noticeable enough to be uncomfortable. "Okay, shoot."

Steve crossed his arms and spoke very carefully. "You remember how I said we needed to publicize you being here?"

Bucky frowned. "Yeah?"

"And said we might need to do some kind of interview or at least get your picture taken?"

"…Kinda." Actually Bucky had been ignoring that part of the topic. He'd just kind of hoped it wouldn't be an issue and moved on. "Why?"

"Well… We managed to set up an interview with NBC news. It'll be here, and you don't have to talk much, but… We need people to be reminded of the Bucky Barnes they read about in history class, not the Winter Soldier who went on the news recently, and the best way we can do that is let people see you. We haven't finalized plans yet, so we can still back out of it and do a published article with pictures instead, but…" Steve didn't finish, but Bucky knew what he was implying: it would be better if they didn't.

From now on, Bucky had to play a part in front of the nation. And a news article with pictures and stale quotes would never convince people as well as seeing him sitting next to Steve answering questions with an appropriately saddened smirk would. Sighing, he lifted his coffee to his lips and took a long sip. He didn't want to do an interview, but he'd managed it with Murdock. He got the sense that this interview would be a shallower thing, maybe a little nostalgic. Not digging into all his difficult memories.

"No, go ahead and confirm it," he shrugged. "It's not a big deal."

Steve gave him that look, that "I'm not sure I believe you" look, and then nodded. "Okay. We will. It'll be on Friday morning, then."

"Cool." Bucky glanced down at his new hand, then got an idea. "Sam?"

The therapist looked up from the book he was reading (it was a huge book) and blinked a few times. "Huh?"

"You wanna play pool?"

Sam grinned slowly. "What, and make it a real challenge this time?"

Bucky scowled. "I was keeping up, thank you. With one hand. If anything that says you're a bad player."

"Oh, that's how it is?" Sam got up and made a big show of rolling up his shirt sleeves, setting his book down on the coffee table.

Bucky smiled a little. "Yup."

Realistically, he thought he could beat Sam now. With two hands and the training he'd had (the training that, unfortunately, was a part of him now), beating Sam couldn't be that hard.

He didn't say so. It would be way more fun to see the look on Sam's face when he won without breaking a sweat.

…

"Unbelievable." Sam tossed his stick onto the table with a hopeless gesture. "You're definitely cheating."

"Nope." Bucky grinned and set down his own stick. "I'm just talented." And his new arm was amazing. He hadn't thought it was possible for Tony to improve on the old arm, but the genius had – go figure – and the prosthesis felt completely natural. Almost eerily so.

Sam grumbled under his breath and retrieved his cue to put it away. "Uhuh. You sure Tony didn't build a targeting system into your arm?"

"Yeah, you're just a sore loser," Bucky said smugly. "You don't wanna admit you lost to a guy with only one arm."

"One arm and years of training," Sam muttered, rolling his eyes. "Unfair."

Bucky snorted. "You can keep sayin' that all you want, Wilson, but that doesn't make it true." He picked up his coffee mug from the edge of the table and took it into the kitchen. Natasha was spreading cream cheese on a bagel with a plastic knife.

"Nice going, Barnes," she said, smiling a little.

Bucky nodded. Talking to Natasha was extremely uncomfortable. Sure, she was nothing but friendly and light-hearted with him, but he always felt like he had a thousand things to apologize for and he didn't know where to begin. "Thanks. It wasn't that hard."

"I heard that!" Wilson called.

"I know," Bucky answered. "That was the idea."

Natasha laughed and took a bite of her bagel. "Well, aren't you modest? How's the haircut working for you, by the way?"

He shrugged, self-consciously reaching up to run his hand through it again. "It's good. Feels a lot better. Thanks."

"No problem. How are you feeling about this whole public attention thing?"

"Great," he said blithely, raising an eyebrow at her. "Just swell. What I always wanted, you know, the whole world knowing about my problems."

Natasha chuckled lightly, sympathetically, and nodded. "I can hardly blame you for that." She glanced over towards the couches. Sam had returned to his huge book and Steve was tapping his fingers listlessly on his knee. When she turned back to him, she spoke more loudly in Russian. "We should drive Steve insane, what do you think?"

Bucky wanted to have fun at Steve's expense (that was normal), but he also didn't want to speak Russian. It was a loaded language. He didn't say so, however – the last thing he needed was for people to tiptoe around him anymore than they already did. "He speaks some of the language."

"Barely any." Natasha's conspiratorial smile was so mischievous and bright it threw him a little. One of the many problems with his memories of her was that she was someone very, very different now. It almost made him hope he could find his way back to a normal life, too. But he knew that was mostly just wishful thinking.

"Okay, fine." He glanced at Steve, who happened to be looking at them, and said to Natasha with a smirk, "How long do you think it'll take for him to crack?"

"Not too long," Natasha said. "He's stubborn but I'm willing to bet we're worse."

"Actually," Bucky said, pitching his voice to sound like an agreement. "He's the stubborn one. Not that I was- I'm not stubborn. But that kid could out-argue me most any day."

"Good thing I'm around then," Natasha chuckled. "Look at his face."

Steve looked supremely annoyed, but as if he was trying to hide it. He was staring studiously at his knees, face and neck flushed red.

"You're right, Natasha," Bucky nodded, forcing a laugh. "This could be fun." If there was one thing that kept him himself these days, it was Steve's friendship. It was something he could get back, it was something he could call normal. James had told Steve things were never going to be the same again, but now he wanted to at least pretend they were. That was the only thing that kept the screams quieter.

Part of him clung to believing that he was what Steve thought he was. If he could just make Steve believe he was the same, then maybe he'd believe it too. Steve always thought better of him than he did of himself, anyway. This was just… bigger. Worse.

Steve looked back at them and made a face like "I hate you guys" and Bucky couldn't help a grin.

A/N: Hey guys! I'm back with more fic!

This chapter takes place a little under a month after the end of I Knew Him. I feel good about it, but in case you guys haven't worked it out by now, I have more trouble with these chill, happy chapters than I do with the sucker-punch-to-the-feels chapters. I have no idea why that is.

Y'all may have noticed that the I Knew Him chapter names were all one-word names. I could not repeat that this time around, I'd run out of words, so since this is part 2, we have two word titles. :)

I'm trying to think if I have anything else to tell you guys... I thought I did. I got my driver's license yesterday! And... OH. I REMEMBER.

I know I'm fairly slow at publishing chapters of this as it is, but I'm going to be even slower now, for which I apologize. But I'm getting really busy with the business of adulting, and also with the business of buckling down and focusing on some original works. (YAYYYY!)

I love you all, thank you for continuing to read and be patient! This is one of the craziest things I've ever done - it's been almost two years working on this fic, and I have literally written a novel's worth of content. Now I know I can write a real book if I take the time. XD

Reviews and suggestions greatly appreciated, as always.

Credit to my brother David (who has a Fanfiction but whose URL I don't know) for the cover image of this fic.