Summary: It had always been Steve and Bucky. Always one for the other, and always in an effort to support. From the struggle of an impoverished childhood to the trials of an adult war, t had always been. And it always would be.

When they were children, some days Bucky had been all that kept Steve afloat. Years and a century later, it was Steve's chance to return the favour. Across the years, to offer of a hand was something that would never change, even if the one who extended it would.

NOTE: this is a two-part series, each part a story of multiple chapters. Part one takes place during before the CA trilogy and during CA:CW, while the second part ensues afterwards.

Rating: T, increasing to M in Part 2

Tags: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes, Canon Universe, Pre-Canon, Post-Canon, Time Jumps, Multiple POV, Trauma, Trauma Recovery, Camaraderie, Action, Drama, Friendship and Family

Chapter 1: Always

When he woke up, he hurt.

Such an awakening wasn't unusual for Steve. He always hurt in some way or another. His chest would be aching, constricting as though crushed in a vice of variable tightness. His throat would be raw, his breath coming short, or his head would hurt with the throbbing beginnings of an encroaching migraine. His back would protest the simple act of lying immobile, or his feet from the abuse of standing for what most would consider a negligible period.

Steve wasn't unused to hurting. Most of the time he could overlook it, even. It was when he first awoke in the morning to the feeble light of dawn, however, the familiar discomfort of a hard bed and flat pillow, scratchy blankets and the sound of Brooklyn yawning itself into mumbling wakefulness, that it struck him most fiercely.

Sighing, Steve sild his elbows behind him to prop himself into sitting. It was often a struggle, with some days his back twinging more than usual, or a dizzy spell sending him slumping heavily back onto his mattress. He managed well enough that day, however, a one hand rose to rub at his blurry eyes and squint around his gloomy bedroom.

It was little more than a shoebox in size, barely large enough to fit a narrow bed and a rickety chair wedged in one corner. Steve didn't really care. He didn't need grandness. He was lucky enough to get his own room at all in the broom-closet of an apartment his mother had managed to cling to for years.

The dawn paleness did little to alleviate the shadows, but as Steve pushed himself further up to lean against the wall behind his bed, it was to blink the plainness of his room into better clarity. When he spared a glance towards the chair opposite him, Steve couldn't help but sigh.

"What are you doing here, Bucky?" he asked.

Bucky was a light sleeper. It was something that Steve teased him about – that he never liked to fall too deeply into unconsciousness for fear of missing out on the excitement that could potentially be playing around him. As such, though Steve spoke at little more that a murmur, more to himself than to his friend, it was enough that Bucky shifted in his seat, brow wrinkling slightly in the beginnings of wakefulness.

He was curled in what had to have been an uncomfortable position, with his legs dangling over one of the arms of the chair and half-twisted so his shoulders still slumped against the back. It was something of a miracle that the chair didn't fall apart beneath him, or that he didn't rock it over when he wriggled into wakefulness.

Yawning, Bucky's hand rose in a knuckle one eye. He blinked the other open blearily, peering around him before his gaze settled on Steve. A small, sleepy smile touched his lips. "Hey, Steve. Alright?"

Steve nodded, ignoring the slight objectionable twinge at his nape when he did so. "I'm alright. What are you doing here? I though you said you had to stay at home all this week to look after Rikki?"

Slinging his leg from the arm of the chair, Bucky pushed himself to his feet. He was still dressed in the clothes Steve recalled he'd worn the day before, and the day before that, the plain slacks and shirt too cool for the autumnal weather and slightly stained by wear and tear. In nearly silent steps, he crossed the room and dropped himself onto the end of Steve's bed. He shrugged a shoulder in reply. "I dropped home to say hi and make sure she had something to eat but then I came over here."

"You shouldn't have left her alone," Steve chided without any real force.

"She's old enough to look after herself for a night. She knows not to play with the heater or start a fire or whatever."

"She's seven, Bucky."

Bucky shrugged once more, his familiar half-smile slightly rueful. "And? I was looking after myself when I was seven."

Steve dropped his gaze to his lap. Bucky was always offhanded about such things. It was as though it didn't bother him, as though he didn't care that his mom was gone and his dad nearly there. As though he didn't care that his father's absences were driven more by his tendency to lose himself in the dregs of a bottle than anything more profound. Bucky had indeed been looking after himself since he was seven. Steve could remember. He'd been taking care of himself before that, even. The memory of a five-year-old all but dragged through Steve's door by his overly-caring mother years before would be one that Steve would never forget.

Shunting the thought aside – for Bucky never sought pity or sympathy, and would ignore it if it was offered – Steve adopted a small smile of his own. "Yeah, well, I though we'd worked out you're something of an anomaly."

Bucky laughed quietly. "Are you calling me weird?" he asked, though lacking the affront that such a question would suggest he held.

Steve nodded. "Yep. I'm convinced you could walk through fire and come out the other side perfectly fine."

"I'm indestructible like that."

"Thankfully. It's a good thing Rikki didn't inherit your pyromania."

Lifting his gaze, Steve met Bucky's with a chuckle of his own. His friend was slouched with bony elbows rested upon his knees, scratching at his head in a way that might have been trying to fix its sleepy messiness but was doing a poor job of it. His smile had widened, though, as it always did when they spoke of his younger sister. The Barnes children doted upon one another, a fact that no one in their entire shambling clutch of backstreets was unaware of. Even with only five years between the two of them, in many ways Bucky was more Rikki's father than his own was.

"Next time just bring her along with you if you wanted to come," Steve said, shifting in his seat in an attempt to ease the unshakeable tightness in his back. He drew his knees up to his chest. "Mom will tell you off if you don't."

"Actually, I already talked to her about it," Bucky replied. "Last night, when I got here. She said the same thing. You two are exactly the same, did you know that?"

"When did you even get here?" Steve asked. He wasn't surprised he'd missed Bucky's arrival. Steve tended to retreat with the sun most nights, the simple weight of his body dragging him into exhaustion. It was sometimes even a struggle to force down a meagre dinner. "More than that, why are you here?"

Bucky dropped his hand from his head as he turned towards Steve. His smile faded into seriousness that looked far too mature for him. Steve would always marvel at how Bucky could do that; he wasn't even a year older that Steve, and most of the time he seemed to dance through life carefree and jovial. But that was only most of the time.

Bucky wasn't a fool, nor was he ignorant or blissfully unaware of his circumstances. He had it shit, Steve always thought. In many ways, despite the plethora of illnesses Steve was afflicted with and the scraping of earnings his mother managed to pull in from her long hours, Bucky had it worse. At least Steve had known both his parents were respectable people, even in poverty. Bucky's dad, though in the army, was… not.

It was when Bucky's expression turned sober like that that Steve was reminded all too starkly that his friend was wise and world-weary beyond his years. That half the time his good humour was an act. "You're an idiot if you don't know why I'm here," Bucky muttered with a slight pursing of his lips.

Steve opened his mouth to reply but paused. Frowning, he sunk back into his the wall behind him, wincing slightly as the motion sent sparks of pain simultaneously down his spine. He did know. Steve knew exactly why Bucky had come because he'd done just the same countless times before when Steve had fallen prey to an attack at school, or had a fall coming home, or anything other drama that befell him. He would always show up on Steve's door, sometimes even after Steve had retreated to bed, and just sit in his room or sleep on his chair. Always, and just to make sure he was alright.

Slowly, Steve nodded. "Yeah, I… yeah. Right." He swallowed, dropping his gaze to his knees. "Thanks, Bucky."

"'S alright," Bucky replied quietly.

"You didn't have to."

"I know."

"I'm alright, you know. It wasn't anything serious. I should have just sat down when I felt tired and all, but…"

"I know," Bucky repeated, his tone of a constant mildness, almost offhanded. Despite that, Steve could hear the unspoken understanding in his words. They'd been through such instances enough for him to understand, Steve knew. Bucky understood that Steve was embarrassed for his feebleness, that he felt frustrated by his bouts of ailing, that the guilt accompanying the act of leaning upon someone – most often Bucky or his mother – always arose afterwards. It was likely the main reason that, at least from Bucky, Steve never saw even a hint of pity.

He couldn't be more thankful for that fact.

Swallowing once more, Steve nodded shortly. Pushing himself from the wall, he swung his legs from the bed and, with a tentativeness that he didn't even try to hide from Bucky, slid onto his feet. He could see Bucky watching him attentively from the end of the bed. Steve knew that, for whatever reason, should his body not be up to the task of rising that day, Bucky would be at his side in an instant and grabbing him before he fell. He'd done just that before on multiple occasions.

Blessedly, despite his collapse at school the previous day and the aches he'd endured the previous night, Steve didn't falter that morning. It was with a smothered sigh of relief that he realised he was capable. Bucky would always be there to help him, to catch him, but Steve didn't want to weigh his friend down any more than he already was. Steve's mother was already struggling to keep both of their heads above water; they didn't have to drag anyone else down with them. Bucky was just a kid, too. Just a kid.

"Did you want some breakfast?" Steve said by way of breaking the attentive silence.

Bucky was still for a moment before he offered his one-shouldered shrug. "Yeah, alright. I can go and grab something from home if you'd like."

Steve shook his head, skirting his bed to where he'd discarded his shoes and the previous night. Systematically, he went about poking the mangled balls of newspaper sticking from the mouth back into his shoes, stuffing them to the toes to fill them out just a little. He, just like Bucky, hadn't the care to undress the previous night so he didn't need to change. Not unless he was too filthy to be seen outdoors, which a glance down at himself proved he wasn't. Laundry wasn't for a couple of days, anyway. Steve could scrape through.

"It's fine," he said. "I think we still have some bread left over from last night."

"Probably not enough for four, though," Bucky said, rising to his feet and yawning as he stretched once more. "I should probably go home and pick up Rikki. Take you up on your oh-so-generous offer and all."

Steve could hear the smile in Bucky's tone even before he glanced up from tying his laces. The words weren't sarcastic precisely, nor disregarding the offer ungratefully, but it was teasing nonetheless. Before he could reply, however, Bucky dug into his pocket and extracted a twine-wrapped packet of waxed brown paper. "Here. Your mom told me to give this to you to take straight away when you wake up. Seeing as I'm the first face you'll see and all." He flashed Steve his crooked smile before flipping the package to him.

Steve just managed a fumbling grab, falling backwards onto his arse with a thump. "Thanks," he muttered, even as resignation rose within him. He never like the medicinal granules his mother made him take after he'd had a 'spell'.

"No problem," Bucky replied, already making his way to the door. He stepped into his discarded shoes without pausing to untie them with another smile spared over his shoulder. "I'll see you in a bit."

"I mean it, Bucky," Steve said, clambered to his feet once more. He offered his friend a smile in return. "Thanks. For always, you know… being around for me."

Bucky paused halfway through the doorway with fingers on the handle. His smile softened slightly into one of greater sincerity and, taking a step towards Steve, he reached down to clamp a hand upon his shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze. It was an adult kind of gesture, but seemed to suit the moment.

"Always," he said quietly.

Steve watched as Bucky turned and disappeared through the doorway into the darker recesses of the flat. The tread of his footsteps that were barely audible in his room were utterly absent. The door closed in a creaking swing behind him, and Steve was left alone with one foot shod, staring in his wake.

What did he do to deserve such a friend? He wasn't sure, but he knew that he would never forget the gift Bucky was.

Pain wasn't a foreign feeling to him. He was used to pain, hardly even felt it anymore. It was because it was a different kind of pain, awkward and twisted but not really painful, that Bucky even noticed it at all.

His head hurt. It throbbed, and each thump in his temple sending sparks skittering across the inside of his eyelids from where it centred in his forehead. His muscles protested the simple act of awakening, remembering the abuse they'd been dragged through prior to his unconsciousness.

Bucky couldn't in that moment recall the nature of that abuse. Stranger, however, was the twisting of his left arm, elevated slightly and unmoveable. Pinned, as though crushed in a vice.

Bucky didn't like being contained. He didn't like that at all.

Bad. It was bad.

He didn't like –

He didn't like being confined. Not that anyone really cared what he wanted, not even Bucky. Not really, but…

Bucky didn't move, didn't struggle in an attempt to free himself, regardless of his desire to do so. he knew better than to do that. Slowly, wincing before even a hint of light filtered into his vision, he opened his eyes. The stringy tresses of his fringe were a matted curtain before his eyes but he could see well enough through it. He could see the room, a wide room of grimy walls and artificial light overhead contesting with that seeping through the broken smudged windows overhead.

In seconds, with barely a flicker of his eyes, Bucky absorbed his surroundings. Four walls, high ceiling, double doorway directly ahead and divided by a blank wall. I was sparse; a factory by the looks of it, and it appeared to have been cleared of anything that could be used even remotely as a weapon. The post half stuck into the wall? Maybe Bucky could use that if he could get his hands on it. It looked stuck pretty fast, but he wagered he could tear it loose. Any weapon was a good one in an unknown situation. To be without was asking for trouble.

There was one – one? – potential threat idling just within sight in the doorway. A tall man, dark, and with a scratching of a beard on his chin. About six-two, he came in at what Bucky mentally tallied at somewhere around two-hundred and forty pounds. Maybe more, it was hard to tell through the thumping in his head. A ball of muscle, he could handle himself; that much was apparent.

All of it, every detail, Bucky noted within seconds of blinking awake. His gaze fastened upon the man. He could take him out. He wasn't going to, but he could. Or he would have been able to, except that…

There was a vice. On Bucky's arm. A real vice clamping his metal arm in place and preventing movement. Bucky did not like to be confined, and it was that more than the awkward positioning of his arm that drew a feeble groan from his lips.

Immediately, the man in the doorway snapped his attention towards Bucky. He spared Bucky nothing more than a glance before he was calling out in a tone of wary attention. "Hey, Cap!"

Cap? Cap was… Bucky blinked to the sound of footsteps rapidly approaching. He shifted, testing the vice on his arm, but – no, he couldn't pull it loose. Even if he could, would he? Likely not. Most likely not, because – because Cap was – he was –

Steve appeared in the opposite doorway to the other man. Even through his grogginess, through the pounding in his head, Bucky couldn't help but stare. Steve. His Steve, just as he remembered him as being from… God, but it was from so long ago. Not the long, long ago, but from before. From before, when Bucky was…

Steve approached him, pausing until he was barely half a dozen paces away. Bucky couldn't help but stare up at him, even if the twisted angle was difficult, was uncomfortable, and the light that pierced his watering eyes from the overhead windows was nearly painful. Steve was tall, just as he remembered, taller even than Bucky was, and big. He had the look of a man who regularly lifted pick-up trucks for kicks, who would raise the roof of a burning building to free a trapped family with barely a grunt of effort.

He was strong, Steve Rogers, Bucky knew. Strong, and good, and that strength and goodness radiated from him. Even had Bucky not accepted as much as a fact, he felt sure he would have suspected. Steve was good.

He was Bucky's polar opposite. So far out of reach. So far away from him.

And yet, even with that thought, even in the second it arose, Bucky felt an unfamiliar upwelling of affection for him. It was one he hadn't felt in years. Decades. Bucky didn't feel; not like that. But when his attention skimmed over the familiar curve of blond hair, the sharp, strong lines of Steve's face, the unblinking intensity of his eyes, Bucky…

He felt.

That was the most uncomfortable, unfamiliar part of the entire situation. It was weightier, even, that the urge within him to get out, to move, to break free and run, but somehow in a good way. Steve's presence, the fastening of his gaze upon Bucky and only Bucky, somehow grounded him. It seemed to shunt any thought of escape, of fighting, of anger and aggression and the urge to return to where he should be, from Bucky's mind. He'd been fighting that urge alone for so long that it was unhinging to have the weight lifted from his shoulders by the simple presence of another. And it was all because of –

"Steve," he found himself muttering. His words were little more than a croak.

Steve didn't blink. His expression was schooled and unchanging but for the barest of frowns and the slight tightening of his jaw. "Which Bucky am I talking to?"

Fair call, Bucky thought, blinking the residual grogginess from his mind. It was a struggle, but with Steve's words memories rose to the surface. Memories of years long gone, mostly forgotten but not yet wholly lost. "Your mom's name was Sarah," Bucky mumbled, the words supplying themselves for him and posing an image of the woman herself in all of her smiling, affectionate, maternal beauty. That, and –"You used to wear newspapers in your shoes."

Quite against his will – and much to his surprise – Bucky found himself chuckling. It was a strange feeling, foreign, and the sound was more the croaking huff of a sigh than real laughter. He couldn't remember the last time he'd managed such a sound.

Just like that, Steve's expression changed. Bucky was staring – staring at everything, but mostly Steve – so he saw the instant it happened. His eyes softened, brow wrinkling just slightly in something other than a frown, and the smallest smile settled on his lips. "You can't read that in a museum," he said, something like relief touching his tone.

"Just like that we're supposed to be cool?" the other man said flatly.

Bucky instantly snapped his full attention towards him, focusing on the incredulity that the man didn't attempt to hide. He spared a brief glance for Bucky, and there was something more than wariness for an assumed threat in his eyes. There was understanding. He knew.

Fuck. Fuck, not again. I though I might have managed to… Bucky had tried so hard. So hard, to thrust his unshakeable urges aside, to vanquish the compulsions HYDRA had forced upon him from his mind. From the man's glare, he clearly hadn't been successful.

Abruptly, a previously forgotten torrent of memories flushed through Bucky's mind. Strapped to a chair. A reinforced glass cage. A man with glasses and a knowingly intent gaze. Those horribly familiar words. "What did I do?"

"Enough," Steve said, more sorrowfully than curt.

Bucky fought against a cringe and failed. His bowed his head with a sigh. "I knew this would happen," he muttered, peering up at Steve. "Everything HYDRA put inside me is still there. All he had to do is say the goddamn words."

"Who was he?" Steve asked, the softness fading from his face once more into a long-ago familiar expression that took Bucky a moment to identify. It was resolute. Hardened. Shunting aside the personal for the professional, for the necessary.

Bucky dropped his chin further. "I don't know."

"People are dead," Steve said, curt this time but not cruel. "The bombing. The set up. The doctor did all that just to get ten minutes with you. I need you to do better than 'I don't know'."

So much Bucky had almost forgotten. So much fluttered on the edges of his consciousness, called forth with Steve's very presence. It had happened before, each time Bucky had confronted him, but this time was different. This time was more.

It was hard to concentrate, hard to focus anywhere else, even upon the other man who clearly hated him. Which, Bucky realised, he couldn't exactly blame him for. He recognised him now; he was the birdman, the one with the metal wings. The metal wings that Bucky had torn off his back with his bare hands before throwing him from the sky.

Huh. So he hadn't died. The man must be more resilient than he'd given him credit for.

But Bucky barely noticed such memories. He barely noticed them at all but for acknowledgement, for Steve had spoken and the memories he requested were coaxed forth. Even at his weakest, at his most feeble, when he was young and sickly and beaten down, there was something about the way Steve spoke. He was always sincere. He always spoke from the heart, even about the simplest of things.

A distant recollection of their old team, the Howling Commandos, rose in Bucky's mind. Steve could give any order, and even if it seemed impossible, the entirety of their troupe would do their utmost to fulfil it. That was the sort of person Steve was. He made people want to follow him. He gave them faith

Blinking, forcibly shoving the bleariness from his mind, Bucky raised his chin. He fought a familiar struggle against the throbbing in his forehead, he peered up at Steve as he dredged up as much of what was asked of him. His memories were always hazy, unreliable at best, but…

"He wanted to know about Siberia," Bucky said. "Where I was kept. He wanted to know exactly where."

"Why would he want to know that?" the birdman asked sharply.

Bucky paused, briefly closing his eyes. The answer supplied itself with regret and frustration, despair and weariness. Just a touch of anger that he had never allowed himself to feel welled within him; that was a strange feeling too. Not good or bad, but strange. "Because I'm not the only Winter Soldier."

Steve and the birdman were silent. Bucky saw them exchange a glance, weighted and filled with unspoken words and foreboding. Then Steve returned his attention to Bucky, and his expression softened again slightly once more. "Good job."

It shouldn't have felt as good as it did to be complimented, Bucky knew. It shouldn't have warmed something within him that had felt nothing but icy cold for what felt like centuries, but it did. The foreignness was unnerving. Bucky dropped his chin once, hunching slightly. His motion tugged at his metal arm that refused to budge even a little in the vice's grasp.

With a huff, he gritted his teeth. "Get me out of here," he muttered.

In an instant Steve stepped forward to comply. It was perhaps a good thing that it was Steve who did so; even when it was him, Bucky felt the near compulsive urge to withdraw. He probably would have snapped the birdman's head off.

Bucky couldn't feel pain exactly in his left arm, but he sighed in unrestrainable relief when the pressure eased, slumping from the awkward position to lean with elbows on knees. There was a part of him – a very big part – that longed to leap his feet, snap a series of punches at the birdman, a kick into Steve's gut, and make a break for escape. It was almost overwhelming in its demands, but Bucky resisted. It wasn't so much that he wanted to remain crumpled to the floor in a grimy factory. It was just that Steve was there. Steve, who was looking at him with soft, familiar eyes, and stepping to his side to drop into a crouch before him.

"You alright?" he murmured, tipping his head slightly in an attempt to peer at Bucky's face.

Bucky didn't raise his chin. Instead, he slumped back against the machine that, until seconds ago, had been an unbreakable prison. He shrugged one shoulder, ignoring the twinge at the point his metal arm fused to his skin. How long had he been held in that vice like that?

"Fine," he muttered.

"You don't look fine," the birdman said, setting up a slow pace back and forth between the two doorways into the room. "You look like shit."

"There's a reason for that."

"Yeah, I'll bet taking out a bunch of the world's leading agents is real tiring."

Bucky raised his gaze to pin the man. He'd already decided he didn't like him. That in itself wasn't particularly unusual, as Bucky didn't really like anyone, but the birdman was annoying. It wasn't the suspicion that he trained upon him; Bucky had undergone his fair share of such in his life. It was more that he was sarcastic, unrepentant in his accusations, and blunt. He reminded Bucky too much of how he'd been in his younger years – or at least what he could recall of how he'd been, which admittedly wasn't all that much at times.

Before Bucky could reply, Steve half-turned towards his friend. "Sam."

"Yeah?" the birdman said without breaking the staring match he and Bucky shared.

"Just take a moment, would you?"

Sam's expression remained flat for another long moment, gaze trained upon Bucky, before he seemed to deflate slightly. Then, with a slight scrunch of his nose, he nodded. "Whatever. Just don't drop your guard and let his smack your head off or anything."

"He's not going to do that," Steve replied with that age-old touch of utter sincerity in his tone. It hurt a little to hear.

When he turned back to Bucky, drawing his attention from where Sam returned to his pacing, it was to affix Bucky with that same sincerity. Bucky didn't think he could have attacked him then even had he orders to.

"Are you alright?" Steve asked again. His voice was lower this time, deeper and more genuine, as though he truly wanted to know rather than just offering a superficial query to the matter.

Bucky shrugged again. It twinged a little less this time. "Fine."

"Bucky."

"I'm fine, Steve." Bucky dropped his gaze. It was difficult to meet Steve's eyes. He felt dirty, tainted, as though Steve were an exalted image of purity and he truly was his polar opposite. He wasn't, Bucky knew. His old friend – so, so old – was far from innocent. It was just that, as they were now, as he felt now, Bucky was about as deep and filthily in the mud as he could get.

Steve crouched beside him. It couldn't have been a particularly comfortable squat, but Bucky had no doubt he could remain like that all day if he chose to. Steve had always been stubborn. As Bucky peered up at him through the strings of his fringe, Bucky saw his forehead crease once more, a soft, sad little smile touching his lips. He managed to make expressions of the faintly heartbroken a form of art.

"You've been through hell, Buck," he said quietly. "It would have been impossible for you not to acquire some sort of injuries, even if your regeneration takes care of the worst of them. Tell me."

Bucky shifted uncomfortably, though discomforted more for the words than for his position. Steve shouldn't be asking him such things. No one should. Why did it matter? Bucky wasn't dead, he was mobile, and he could see and think with relative clarity. He knew that, should he need to, he would be able to spring into action, and he would put up a good fight for Steve and Sam both. Somewhere in the back of his head, Bucky knew that Steve's question was what normal people asked one another. It was what he'd asked once upon a time, long ago, when he was a deluded and ignorant child. But now was different.

"I think it would be better to skip the pity act and get to business," Bucky said.

"Bucky," Steve began, eyes tightening slightly as though he was physically pained.

Bucky stared him into silence. "What do you want, Steve?"

Steve pressed his lips together, his brow crinkling further. "I want to help you, Bucky. Always." A small, pained smile touching his lips, even as his frown remained. "Just like we always did for each other."

For another long moment, Bucky stared. That warm feeling in his chest, almost painfully warm as it chewed at the hard iciness within him, swelled just a little. He remembered that. He could remember it from so long ago. It hurt to recall, and Bucky suspected he understood where the pain from Steve's smile arose.

With a sigh, he raised a hand to rake through his matted hair, forcing the thought aside. "I'm fine, Steve. Just… just fine."

"'Fine' doesn't exactly instil a whole lot of confidence," Sam said from the doorway. He wasn't looking in Bucky and Steve's direction, but clearly the stillness and quietness of the factory was enough that their murmured conversation was audible.

"No one asked for you opinion," Bucky mumbled under his breath.

"What was that?"

"Said thank you for your contribution."

Sam glanced his way, regarding him with a raised eyebrow before he snorted and shook his head. "Right. Sure." He turned towards Steve. "We gonna tiptoe around the topic here or get down to it?"

Steve gave a soft exhalation that wasn't quite a sigh. "Alright, then. Alright. Just – keep me updated, Bucky."

Whatever that meant, Bucky didn't want to consider. He didn't really understand it; a distant memory niggled of some vague understanding existed, but he couldn't quite make sense of it. Instead, he only nodded. "Yeah."

"So, these Winter Soldiers," Sam said, stepping back across the room in slow steps. He kept his arms folded across his chest, but the stance was more assertive than defensive. Bucky couldn't help but follow him his eyes, glaring at shift of his movements. Step… step… step…

"Who were they?" Steve asked.

It was distraction enough that Bucky managed to draw his attention from Sam, Steve's question demanded in the politest way possible.

Bucky didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to recall that time, those days, the darkness and the fighting. He didn't want to think of the soldiers with their emotionless faces that hardened only slightly when they threw themselves at their targets. But he'd been asked. Bucky didn't have much, didn't know and couldn't do much good; he would likely never be able to.

But Steve had asked him.

With a deep breath, Bucky closed his eyes. "The most elite death squad…" he began, and fell to the emotional state of reporting as he told them everything he knew. It was, he'd found, easier that way. It was easier to pretend he didn't care.