Steve opened his eyes slowly. The world was spinning around him, all green and brown and blue and bright, and it took him a moment to realize that he was lying flat on his back. Then the green and brown above him formed itself into tree branches and the blue snapped into place higher up as the sky, and he blinked. What had happened?
The last thing he remembered was the plane. He'd been flying somewhere… but the rest of the memory danced away from him, laughing. God, his head hurt. He sat up and pressed his palms into his eyes, trying to push the pain away, but it throbbed insistently against the inside of his skull. He hadn't had a headache like this since before the serum.
The serum—he latched onto that memory like it was a life preserver. There was a plane crash. And then he woke up here… no—he'd been piloting the plane that crashed, but he distinctly remembered sitting comfortably in a private jet just before he woke up here. Howard's jet? He shook his head, and groaned when the pain rose up and slapped him at the movement.
One thing was for sure: he wasn't dead. The pain told him that, at least. Clenching his jaw, he pushed himself to his feet, pushing the pain away like he always did back when he didn't heal inhumanly fast. Spots danced in his vision and he blinked several times to dispel them, scanning his surroundings and brushing dirt and leaves from his t-shirt and jeans.
He'd been lying under a large tree whose branches spread out over a swath of clear ground, stretching out towards the edge of a forest all around. Beside him, a concrete well rose from the leaf-strewn ground, like something out of a postcard. He took a step, and it all swirled around him, threatening to throw him to his knees. Grabbing the edge of the well, he bent his head and closed his eyes, waiting for the dizziness to pass.
He remembered this kind of pain and sickness from before, but he was no longer used to it. How long had it been since he'd felt weak? Opening his eyes, he found himself gazing into the dark depths of the well. The rough roof blocked most of the sunlight that managed to sneak through the branches, and it appeared bottomless, like an opening into the underworld.
Stepping back, he turned away, moving slowly to keep the spinning under control. His eyes on his feet, he carefully put one foot in front of the other, with no notion of where he was going or which way he should choose. He was from Brooklyn; he had no idea how to navigate in the woods.
As this realization struck him, he stopped, swaying on his feet as if in a wind, though the air was still and heavy with damp and the mustiness of dead and dying leaves. He slowly raised his eyes to the treeline before him—and froze, hardly daring to breathe. A figure stood at the edge of the trees, half-turned as if arrested in midstep, clothed in a long black coat with a dark red scarf knotted about his neck.
But it was the face under the mop of disheveled dark hair that snatched the breath from Steve's lungs. When last he had looked into those eyes, he had been hanging on the outside of a train on the edge of a cliff, and then he had watched his friend fall, knowing he would never see him again. "Bucky?" he whispered, and his voice was raw and harsh as if he hadn't spoken in ages.
"Well, hello." His voice was wrong somehow, and there was no recognition in his eyes. He turned fully toward Steve, his hands tucked into the deep pockets of his coat, and sauntered closer. A smile that didn't reach his eyes played about the corners of his mouth. "Who's 'Bucky'?"
Steve gazed into the stormy depths of those eyes he knew better than he knew his own, and he felt his precarious anchor on the unstable earth slip. He remembered nothing but Bucky now: stepping in to help when Steve got himself into fights, setting Steve up on dates when girls didn't want to talk to him, always there for him. Even when he had nothing, he had Bucky.
He took a step forward and nearly fell, and Bucky was there to catch him—as he always was. Steadying Steve with one hand on his shoulder and one on his other arm, Bucky raised an eyebrow and pursed his lips in amusement. "Steady there. Wow. Do your muscles have muscles?" He stepped back and slipped his hands into his pockets again. "Now, who are you?"
Steve swallowed thickly, trying to find some moisture in the desert his mouth had become. Had Bucky always smelled like tea? "Steve," he whispered. "Steve Rogers."
"My name's Jefferson." Bucky spread his arms wide and bent his head in a half-bow. Straightening up, he tilted his head to the side and studied Steve. "So, what happened to you?"
"I—I don't remember." Jefferson? Who the hell was Jefferson?
Bucky tipped his head back and laughed a short humourless laugh. "Trust me, friend: remembering's a curse."