It was sometime around three in the morning. Steve had been wending his way down the Eastern Seaboard for almost a month, zigzagging and backtracking, following a feeble trail of blurry cellphone videos and hearsay in a self-financed attempt to track down Bucky. Now, tired and hungry and damp from an early spring rain, he shuffled into a near empty Waffle House in North Carolina and ordered half the menu. At the counter, a woman in pink scrubs was talking to the waitress.

"You know how I swear weird shit happens on the full moon? Yeah, well, I'd have sworn it was a full moon tonight until I got outside." She took a bite of hashbrowns. "This John Doe wanders into emergency around ten, no clue where he is or who he is or anything."

"Police bring him in?"

"No, no, he walked himself in. He was babbling in about four languages, seemed confused about the date too, we got him in a bay and he was pretty chill considering the fact he seemed to be having vivid hallucinations. We thought he was on drugs so we had to run a tox screen. Poor Mathew goes in there to draw blood and this guy flips his shit. Tore up half of emergency, punched a hole or five in the nurses' station, took a door off its hinges before security tackled him. Took all the security staff on that floor to hold him long enough to get some lorazepam in him and knock him out."

"Damn."

"I know."

"More tea?"

"Please. Anyway, after that, working theory changed from crazy druggie to some Navy SEAL or something back from the Middle East with one hell of a case of PTSD. That theory has the bonus of explaining why he's an amputee and where the hell he got such a fancy prosthetic. When I left, they had him unconscious, handcuffed to a cot, arguing about trying to get an MRI, make sure his brain is all together, but nobody can tell how to get the metal arm off a him."

Steve set his fork down and crossed the small restaurant. "I don't mean to intrude, but what hospital is this at?"

The nurse blinked at him. "Duke University Hospital. Buddy, if you're a reporter or a lawyer or something—"

The waitress smacked her hand on the counter. "Hang on, are you—? You can't be. But you are, aren't you?" She looked at the nurse while gesturing at Steve. "My grandmother was a Cappette."

Steve tried very hard not to sigh but wound up sighing a little anyway. "The man at the hospital is my friend and may be a threat to national security."

The nurse pushed her plate away. "Well, guess I'm going back to work."

"Thank you."

#

The moment Steve walked into the hospital, every eye turned to him. A little boy sitting on his mother's lap was staring open mouthed. After a moment of quiet, all the nurses moved in sync to point across the wreckage of half the E.R. toward the closed door of an examination room flanked by two nervous looking security guards. Steve nodded and made his way to the room. A young, redheaded doctor with the beginnings of what was going to be a nasty bruise forming on his cheek intercepted him at the door. "Sir, I—"

"I got the story from one of the nurses."

"Right, well, even so sir, or Captain, or how should I address you?"

"Captain is fine," Steve said impatiently.

"Why exactly are you here, Captain?"

"I know who your John Doe is, and I need to take him. For security reasons. So if you don't mind." He gestured at the door.

"Of course..." The doctor opened the door and followed Steve in.

Awake but staring blankly at a spot on the ceiling, Bucky was laying on a cot, ankles and right wrist shackled to the frame with padded cuffs. The other arm, the metal one, was lashed to the frame with a least a dozen jumbo zip ties. Steve shot the doctor a look.

"He broke the cuff," the doctor muttered, ghosting a finger against the bruise on his cheek.

"Right." Steve nodded and sighed then went to the cot. "Buck? You there?"

A muscle next to Bucky's eye twitched then, slowly, he turned his head and managed to focus on Steve's face. He blinked blearily. "Steve...?"

"Yeah, Buck."

He blinked again. "...why are you so big?"

Heart tight, Steve still couldn't help but smile. "It's a long story." He looked back over at the doctor. "He—"

"He was delirious when he came in and we've had to sedate him. We have no idea what's wrong, his tox screen came back clear and we can't run the usual scans because of that arm. If we could take it off—"

"I don't think it comes off."

"What kind of prosthetic doesn't come off?" The doctor sounded dumbfounded.

"The kind that's way above your pay grade."

The frame of the cot rattled as Bucky noticed he was shackled and tugged at his cuffs. "Wha...? Why am— Steve? Did Hydra— Hydra..."

Bucky fell silent, his eyes glazed over, then snapped back to focus on Steve's face, and he started shouting in Russian, pulling roughly against his restraints. The doctor grabbed something off a tray, brushed Steve aside, and injected the contents of a syringe into a cath on the back of Bucky's right hand. After a minute of continued struggle, Bucky slipped into unconsciousness. The doctor let out a breath, looked at Steve, and gestured at the limp body on the cot. "Does he have insurance?"

Steve hesitated. "No."

"Well, somebody needs to pay for all this, but then, by all means get him out of here."

Steve scrubbed a hand over his face. "I need to make a phone call."

"Be my guest." The doctor left the room.

With an internal groan, Steve fished his phone out of his pocket and punched a number he'd really hoped to not ever need. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he listened to the ringback in his ear. After what felt like an eternity, the line picked up. "Do you have any idea what time it is, old timer?"

"You don't sound like you were asleep."

"That's not the point, Old Glory, you never call me. You never call anyone. It's nearly five a.m. What gives?"

"I need you to foot a bill."

"Ah, party get a little out of hand, run up your tab?"

"Stark."

"Don't you have cash?"

Steve glanced out the window in the door at the wrecked nurses' station. "Not this much cash and my S.H.I.E.L.D. credit card doesn't work anymore."

"Fine, fine. What am I paying for?"

"An E.R. visit."

"Yikes, what did you do?"

Steve's phone beeped in his ear, possibly with a money transfer. "It's not for me. I'll explain later. Also I might need to house a couple people at the tower for a while?"

"As long as that couple people includes you, my offer from New York still stands. I've linked your phone into my accounts. Tap on the little icon that looks like a wallet and pay for whatever."

"And I sort of need to buy a car."

"Buy all the cars you want, Cap."

"I should probably thank you for this."

Tony made a sound through his nose. "I'll just tease you about it for the rest of forever."

"Fair enough."

#

After a quick jaunt two miles down the road to a Ford dealership and coming back to pay the hospital bill, Steve buckled an unconscious and thoroughly sedated Bucky into the reclined passenger seat of a shiny new, bright red pickup truck. He had reluctantly tied Bucky's metal arm to the seat with rubber surgical tubing, just to be safe.

A nurse, a different one than before but also in pink scrubs, came out to the parking lot and pressed a bag of pre-filled syringes on him. "In case you have to knock him out again. This stuff, just jabbing him in a muscle will do. It's faster if you get a vein but..." She shook her head, morning sun glinting off a clip in her hair. "Last thing this country needs right now is Captain America running off the road 'cause a some crazy in the passenger seat."

"Thank you."

"Not a problem."

She went back inside. He checked his bike in the bed of the truck, got behind the wheel, and turned north. Ten hours and two shots of sedative later, Steve turned out of the city evening traffic into the Stark Tower parking deck. Leaving his bike to be dealt with later, Steve hoisted Bucky onto his shoulder and took the elevator up to the tower's private floors, pushed the first unlocked bedroom door he found open with a foot, and dumped his burden rather less gently than he'd meant to into the bed. He let out a breath, carefully smoothed a lock of hair away from the familiar face, brushed a thumb along the unshaven line of jaw, then jumped at someone clearing their throat behind him. He turned to find Tony, arms crossed, leaning in the doorframe.

"So, this is what Jarvis meant by 'The Captain seems to have brought in a potential security threat.'"

"He's confused—"

"By all accounts, including Natasha's lovely little press conference circuit, he knew exactly what he was doing when he was trying to kill, oh, everyone."

"Yeah, he sure did, but at the hospital in North Carolina where I found him, he thought it was still the 1940s for a minute, then he started yelling in Russian. He's confused, unwell, and currently heavily sedated." Steve shooed Tony out into the hallway, followed him out, and shut the door. "Haven't you Hulk-proofed, anyway?"

"Yes, I have—Banner is asleep down the hall, by the way, yeah I know it's only like seven, he and I both have screwed up sleep schedules—but Hulk-proofed or not I don't want the fucking Winter Soldier in my tower."

"He's my friend."

"Uh, maybe he used to be."

The two of them started down the hall to the floor's common room.

"Whatever's happened to him, he's still my friend."

"Yeah, friends don't normally fire rocket launchers at each other. I don't want him here, this place just finished getting rebuilt from the chitauri bullshit."

"I just got here, I'm not leaving again right now, and even if I did, this is the most secure place to have him. Mama S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't here to clean up anymore, remember? Can you give him half a chance to heal?"

"Why should I?"

"How many third and fourth chances have you gotten, huh?"

"Don't start comparing your little boyfriend to me."

Steve half choked. "My what?"

"Oh-ho, have I touched a nerve?"

The elevator chose that exact moment to ding open and disgorge a rather ragged looking Barton. He stared at the two men in front of him, then pointed an accusing finger at Steve. "You, fuck you, thanks for the whole saving the world thing, but fuck you." He dropped his tattered backpack and bow on the floor, stalked to the nearest sofa, and lay down, either not seeing or ignoring Tony's cringe as he dirtied the white upholstery. "I was in goddamn Argentina, way down in Rio Gallegos, and I don't know why, but when you brought those fucking helicarriers down, all my fucking tech went dead. Phone, GPS, laptop, everything but my flashlight and my quiver bricked up. Even my fucking hearing aids. Fun fact, I'm damn near completely deaf. You know why you didn't know that? I have fucking fantastic tiny little in-ear hearing aids I wear all the fucking time, that stopped fucking working. Have you got any idea how paranoid that makes me? Don't answer that, I'm not looking at you. And I hope I'm shouting obnoxiously loud."

Steve and Tony glanced at each other. Tony took a breath. "We'll finish this argument later." Tony moved around the sofa and pulled Clint's arm from over his eyes. "I'm getting you a drink."

"Water and food first. Then you're telling me exactly what's going on. Then you are getting me very, very drunk off hard lemonade." He hid his face in his elbow again.

Tony went to order pizza. Not sure what else to do with himself, Steve brought Clint a glass of water. Clint sat up with a groan and took the glass. "Thanks"

"Are you okay?" Steve sat across from him.

"As okay as anyone would be after hitchhiking back from South America missing a sense they're used to having." He emptied his glass and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. "Was more than a little worried I'd get here and find a nine-eleven redux instead of a tower. Until I got here I hadn't heard from anyone. Everything I know about what happened comes from news channels on TVs in public places." He looked at Steve again. "Where's Nat?"

"No idea."

"Say again?"

With a slight jolt, Steve realized he'd been looking at the floor. He made sure to face Clint before speaking again. "I don't know where she is."

"Went off to figure out a new cover?"

Steve nodded.

Clint lay down again. "After I eat, I want internet."

The two blonds sat in silence on opposite sofas until Tony returned with pizza. After everyone had taken a few bites, Tony waved a hand to get Clint's attention, then, ever tactful, he asked, "So, did you go to a loud Lady Gaga concert or were you Born This Way?"

Clint dusted crumbs off his fingers. "Tony, please never make any hard of hearing friends other than me. The answer is 'neither,' though. I lost my hearing when I was ten, just woke up one day and everything was quiet. It wasn't completely gone, I can still technically hear you if you speak loudly, but I don't get enough auditory information to understand what is being said. Everything is muffled, really muffled. You've both been in explosions, seems like somebody turned the volume down on the world and what you do get is distorted for a while afterward? It's like that."

"Hm." Tony leaned back in his seat.

"This month is the longest I've gone without average or better hearing since S.H.I.E.L.D. picked me up in my teens. I'm not sure if I'd forgotten how much I hate it, or if I hadn't realized how dependent I've gotten on my hearing aids, or both. Luckily, working in intelligence has kept my lip reading skills up." He inhaled another slice of pizza. "Don't get me wrong, nothing against the Deaf community, I just get really jumpy when I can't hear things sneaking up to kill me. On that note, Stark, if you sneak up on me before you've made me a new pair of aids, I will rip your throat out."

"I'm making you hearing aids?"

"You better be."

"Do you not have spares?"

"I do. None of the S.H.I.E.L.D. issue ones work and the only civilian pair I had were in my office at the Triscalion, which is now rubble according to CNN."

"You have an office?" Tony snickered, picturing Barton in a cubical doing paperwork.

"I used to have a very nice office."

"Did you ever use it?"

"When I didn't want anyone to bother me, yes."

Steve set aside a pizza box he'd emptied by himself, grateful Clint's arrival had distracted Tony. A moment later, he realized he'd sent up that silent thanks a little early.

"Steve...?"

Both Steve and Tony looked toward the hallway. Following their gazes, Clint looked too, and his mouth fell open. Shuffling down the hall, leaning on the wall for support, left arm hanging limply at his side, was Bucky.

"Steve, I think—" He paused and blinked as Steve stood. He straightened up, looking for all the world like a chastised schoolboy. "Oh, uh, Mr. Joseph, I was just, just looking for Steve."

For a moment, Steve didn't say anything, then he cleared his throat and said gruffly with a touch of what might have been an Irish accent, "Well, he ent here. Go home, Barnes."

"Sorry, sir." Bucky turned and retreated to the bedroom Steve had dumped him in.

Tony gestured down the hallway. "What the hell was that?"

"He thinks I'm my dad." Steve headed after Bucky.

As Steve left, Clint pointed after him, looking at Tony. "Was that—?"

"Yeah, Cap dragged in the Winter Soldier. Yes, that's who shot Fury. Also happens to be Cap's buddy from the forties."

"Damn."

Steve slowly opened the door to the bedroom. Bucky was curled up in the corner of the small bed, his back pressed against the wall. He sat up quickly and stared at Steve. Steve shut the door behind him, shrinking the chink of light from the hallway until it vanished. For a long moment, neither of them moved. Bucky ran his knuckles along the metal of his arm. "Who are you?"

The broken confusion in his voice squeezed at Steve's heart. He took a step forward. "It's me, Buck, it's Steve."

Bucky shook his head. Carefully, slowly, feeling like he was dealing with a stray dog instead of his best guy, Steve sat on the edge of the mattress. Bucky shrank back, then, haltingly, he reached out and touched Steve's arm as though to assure himself Steve was really there. Suddenly, he surged forward and grabbed Steve around the chest. Steve tensed, ready to fight him off, then he realized Bucky's lunge wasn't an attack, but rather a desperate child's move to cling to something comforting. He rubbed Bucky's back, his throat tight with memories of too many nights Bucky had held him like that, comforting him through his father's lashing out, his mother's illness and then death, his own feeble health. But Steve was alone with those memories. Bucky was blank. His steel-gray eyes were empty. For several long minutes, Bucky clung to him, breathing hard. The he stilled, sat up straight, and cocked his head to the side. "Wo sind wir?"

Where are we?

It took Steve a second to switch his brain over to German. "Gute Frage. Du bist in Sicherheit."

Good question. You're safe.

Bucky made a sound through his nose, leaned back against the wall, took a breath to say something else, then didn't. He went blank again. Steve reached over and patted his knee. Eventually, Bucky shook himself. He looked at Steve, his eyes widened, he dropped his face into his hands, and his shoulders started to shake. He took a ragged breath and started mumbling apologies.

"Hey, it's okay, you're okay."

"I've killed so many people."

Steve hesitated. "I know."

"I thought— I didn't— I wasn't— They—"

"I know."

"I'm sorry."

"I know." Steve put an arm around Bucky's shoulders and let him cry—until it was back to Russian with a metal hand around his throat.