A/N: This story is like an onion. Layers. It was supposed to stay a viggie, but then I got reminded that I killed five ink pens getting here (and later six and seven), and it turns out... nope. Didn't want to stay a viggie. On-going plot bunny attack/ambush of awesome is on-going. Enjoy. :)

Four months ago...

It was well into his second day in the rural locality of Oymyakon when Tony started noticing the smaller, finer details of his surroundings. For instance: the medical clinic didn't just have diagrams of human anatomy, but also animal anatomy. He found it weird, but interesting at the same time. Partaking of his second bowl of Reindeer Meat Soup (it still needed salt, and what he wouldn't do for a burger and fries), he watched again as the doctor took inventory.

"Soup good?"

"If I say I'd rather have a burger, would you be offended, Doc?"

The doctor smiled. "No. Buns imported, though."

"That's..."

"Permafrost."

"Oh."

"Not insulted. Food here acquired taste."

He continued to eat his soup.

"Could be worse."

"Yeah?"

"Could have no Reindeer at all."

"Did you just make a joke?"

"You know what joke is now. Improvement."

"Doc!"

"What? Is true. You show up in armor. You need help getting out. Town tools useful. Is good joke, though not seem like one."

"Can you go get the rental counter guy? At least his sentences are complete ones."

The doctor chuckled. "He busy. Said arm you brought in fascinating."

In the end, he finished his soup and was ordered to take another nap. He was starting to hate it here a little less. Still wanted out of Siberia, though.

The rental counter guy looked up from his study of the prosthetic when Tony re-entered the shop, this time in the parka and borrowed clothes. "He's letting you walk around now. That's good."

"Here for the arm."

"You leaving yet?"

"No. Why?"

Counter guy smiled. "Then I'm not giving it back, yet. Go catch another nap, Mr. Stark. Besides... did you know this thing was booby trapped?"

Tony blinked. "No. It was?"

He nodded, pointed to two piles of devices. "Don't know what those do, but..."

Tony stared at the two piles for a long, long moment. Was it his imagination, or were those in the first pile remote-detonated explosives? "Somehow, that makes so much sense."

"It does?"

"Guy this came off of had been... used. Badly."

"Oh."

"Catalogue and label everything, okay?"

The counter guy nodded and Tony left the rental shack again, in desperate need of fresh air. Later, he would find that the counter guy labeled everything in his native tongue and FRIDAY would have to translate it.

Now...

He found her on the third floor of Maimonides Medical Center, sitting at a nursing station while intently typing in front of a computer screen and chewing on her lower lip in thought. Unlike when he'd first seen her, and then again at the party, she was wearing solid light blue scrubs and had a stethoscope hanging from her neck... a purple one. "So this is what you look like when you're where you're supposed to be and not breaking into places? Good to know."

Rebecca frowned at the sound of his voice and glanced away from the computer screen to look at him, then returned her attention to it as she continued typing. "If you're going for incognito, Anthony, lose the hat and the hood. You're inside and it makes you stand out."

He chuckled as he pulled the hood down. "My hat, my head."

"Hmm... and I didn't break into the NAF. I had permission to be there." She finished her typing, made the computer save everything, and then turned to him. "Nursing notes wait for no man or woman. Something you want?"

"You have a minute?"

She glanced over to another nurse, who was watching them covertly. "What do you think, Sheryl? Can we spare me for a bit?"

Sheryl smiled. "Sure. She's right, by the way, Mr. Stark. That is an awful disguise. The idea of a disguise is not be noticed. Everybody notices a man wearing a hoodie."

"I didn't come here to be insulted," he squinted at her name tag. "Nurse Connors."

She frowned at him. "If you can't take it, don't dish it out."

Tony paused, nodded. "Fair enough." He pulled a bundle out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Rebecca. "Thank you, by the way."

Rebecca smiled as she accepted the bundle of letters. "Did it help?"

"Some. Still mad at him, though."

Sheryl frowned again. "At who?"

Rebecca sighed long-sufferingly. "Oh, he has every right to be upset, Sheryl. Bad stuff happened. I simply provided another perspective on the matter."

Sheryl's gaze landed on the letters in her hands, noted how yellowed they were. "Are those what I think they are? I've seen you reading 'em before."

Rebecca nodded. "From 1944."

"Oh." She waved them off. "Go on. Go have your talk."

From the table he'd snagged in the hospital's cafeteria, he watched her cobble a meal together before joining him. He got a good look at what was on the tray, and frowned because... "I'm not all that hungry."

Rebecca smiled. "Well, I am. And I lived through the Depression. It's rude to eat in front of people and offer them nothing." She took a deep breath. "So... what can I do for you now that I'm not likely to be mean due to not eating right." He stared at her. "What? I get extra cranky when I don't eat. Less logical, too. Doesn't everybody?"

"Is that why you hit me twice?"

"No. You were saying stupid things and trying to rationalize your behavior based on the actions of others. Being a nurse, I know a thing or two about psychological processes. Also, I was already mad, and you startled me." She paused, watching him. "Not that you weren't correct about certain things. You were and had every right to be pissed off. It's just... most people don't go for attempted murder and assault in super armor."

Tony sighed. "Nothing I say will make it sound less grotesque, will it?"

"No." She picked at her salad, then looked at him again. "Did you enjoy the party?"

Tony nodded. "Certainly more enjoyable than spending the better part of eighty-five hours cooling off in the Sakha Republic." She stared at him blankly, fork half-way to her mouth. "They left me Zemo's snowmobile and a map with directions to the nearest settlement. Also, I'm pretty sure that town doctor of theirs in Oymyakon might also have been the town veterinarian."

Fork forgotten, she continued to stare at him. "Oh, you're kidding!"

He shook his head. "No. Never piss off both Captain America and the King of Wakanda... for you might get stuck in the back of beyond, on the worlds worst road trip." He watched as she set the fork down and dissolved into silent laughter. "What? It's not funny, Rebecca."

It took her a minute to stop laughing, and then she sobered. "Oh yes it is, Anthony! Not funny ha-ha, no, and really they shouldn't have, but did you cool off enough to realize why they would have done it?"

"After a while, yes. It was weird to feel wanted by people in the middle of nowhere."

"And how did you get out of Siberia?"

"Iceland Air." He smiled wryly. "No one else knows that, not even Pepper. I'd have had to arrest myself."

"That just sounds like an insufferable amount of paperwork."

"Steve said that, too," Tony said as he pulled a thick, padded envelope out of his other coat pocket. "This is for you, since you did make me think about it, in fact, right after Pepper did. It's information on the B.A.R.F. system. I looked into the compliance trigger thing for you, came out the other side with a maybe of weather or not it would work. I'd know more, but haven't gotten to examine the guy, more than visually mostly from a distance, the three or four times I saw him. From what I saw when Zemo triggered him in Berlin..." He shuddered. "No one deserves to be lost in their head like that. Not that way." Looking over her shoulder, he frowned at the young man sitting three tables away, wearing green pants and a black top with Micky Mouse Heads on it, reading a book and frequently glancing at them. On the way to the cafeteria, he hadn't seen anyone wear anything like that...

Rebecca frowned. "What do you mean?"

Dragging his attention back to her, Tony frowned for a moment, then handed her his eyelink glasses. "Put them on. Friday's going to show you the A/V footage from Berlin." Rebecca continued frowning, but did as he instructed. He watched as she took it all in, in utter silence, then took the glasses off and stared at them. "Sorry. I know it's not an easy thing to watch."

She shook her head and handed them back to him. "No, I needed to see. Any chance you'd show me some of the footage from Siberia?"

"No. Not ever showing that to you, as you already want to kick my butt. Pepper saw it and I was suddenly restricted to reading psychology articles... and for some reason, Friday wouldn't let me watch anything but Animal Planet or HGTV."

Rebecca stared at him again. "She can do that?"

"Until this, I didn't know she could, either. It's not so bad, though. Animal Planet has that show about Treehouses, and at least it gave me a break from politics." Suddenly remembering something, he fiddled with his watch and showed her a picture.

Rebecca frowned at it. "Nice cat. Cute."

Then he showed her another picture, this one of his mother holding the same cat, only it was wearing a bow and somewhat smaller than the other picture. "This is from November 1991. I wasn't home much during that time, so I didn't know Dad had gotten her a cat. College."

"I don't understand..."

Tony sighed and made it so both pictures displayed side by side. "This cat, the same one that my mother is holding, showed up mysteriously next to my bed the morning after the accident, in a cat carrier. At the time, I wondered if Jarvis had decided to play secret Santa and then never fessed up to it. Now... I wonder." He stared into the distance for a moment in thought. "And I remember seeing an odd shape in the back of the car in that video. About the right size and shape for a pet carrier."

Rebecca stared at the two pictures. "So you're saying..."

"That Barnes might have given me my mothers cat?" She looked at him funny. "You're right. It's ridiculous."

"Not necessarily. He loved cats. Ours looked like this one."

"What?"

She nodded to the pictures being displayed. "We had tabby cats, growing up. Made Steve sneeze like crazy, had a tendency to set off his asthma something fierce, sometimes." Rebecca glanced at him. "What was his reaction to the video?"

Tony took a deep breath, and showed her a third picture, this one of Barnes before he'd snapped. "About like that. Pepper made me look at this, and that's when I realized he might have been more horrified than it seemed at first blush. As if he'd just found out himself, who it was in that car."

Rebecca nodded again. "That's what Steve thought, too, in his letter. Amnesia isn't something to completely dismiss out of hand. You can know something, the barest details of it, without knowing all of it."

"Says the nurse."

"What? You've not dealt without a person who's had head trauma while on morphine? They ask the same questions repeatedly, and they tend not to retain any of the information, so it's a cycle of you answering them after they've already asked the questions sixteen times before, because they're back at square one every time. And... often they remember none of that when they're better."

"Oh. Now you're just making me feel guilty."

"Over?"

"Snapping the way I did."

She sighed. "Emotions never make sense, Stark. And, apparently, my brother might have given you a cat and likely doesn't remember it. Or even why. I'd say you're about even for things that make people feel guilty."

"Rebecca..."

"What? Just because the whole thing is tragic, doesn't mean there isn't humor in there somewhere. Cat. Snapping due to bad revelation on top of bad week when you're already anxiolytic... take your pick."

He blinked. "Anxiolytic?"

"You mean you weren't?" She gazed at him with raised eyebrows. "Because I think you were. And with what was going on, I don't blame you. Not at all. But the snapping thing..."

He rolled his eyes and glanced over at the guy who was still reading that book and glancing at them frequently. "You seem to have an admirer with your taste in clothes."

Rebecca turned and chuckled. "Mason, get your butt over here right now!" She turned back and rolled her eyes at him. "Would you believe the State Department is run by an idiot?"

"Huh?" Tony wondered as Mason joined them and blinked at the pictures, and Rebecca handed the second sandwich to him. "Who are you, kid?"

"He's my grand-nephew. Mason, this is Mr. Stark. Sit. Eat." She smiled at the confused expression on Tony's face as Mason pulled a chair over and sat down obligingly. "He's undercover from the CIA at the State Department, acting as part of the detail on me and my family, just in case my brother is stupid enough to actually show up on our doorsteps." She motioned to the scrub top with the Mickey Mouse Heads. "He wears things like this here so no one asks him to do anything medical, except for being the floor runner, since he is here when I am."

Tony stared at Mason. "You mean..."

"That General Ross ordered me to watch my Grand Aunt?" Mason asked. "Yes. None of us wanted to tell him he's an idiot, and so our entire detail team has coffee at Aunt Becca's house every Wednesday to discuss strategy. So far... let's just say that he's not reading the real reports because no one, not even his secretary, is on his side. He'd probably be the last person to know if Steve and Uncle James dropped by."

Tony chuckled. "Right. You wouldn't be the one who bought this woman a scrub top with peace symbols on it, would you?" Mason grinned. "You are! She doesn't come in peace, kid!"

Rebecca snorted in laughter. "Depends on your definition of peace. Also, you're the one who tried to kill my brother in a fit of somewhat understandable rage."

"And-"

"Try to rationalize, and you risk getting a very physical correction. Again."

Tony stared at her. "Huh?"

"You did not see my initial reaction to Steve's letter, Anthony."

He glanced at Mason. "How Bad?"

"She lost the English in her head for an hour," Mason told him soberly. "Miriam had to call me in from the detail to contain her and prevent her from actually flying to Germany and causing an international incident in her skunk scrubs. And she really was wearing the skunk scrubs. It would have been the cutest scary thing the JCTF has ever seen."

Tony frowned. "Germany?"

Rebecca nodded. "That's where the neghiob is, right? Zemo?"

"Oh. Yes. Still waiting for trial."

"He set my brother off with dangerous intent. He got people killed. Supposedly, all he wanted was revenge for Sokovia." She studied him for a moment, then looked at her grandnephew. "You have the manual?"

"In my locker."

"Go get it, please?" She watched him go, then returned her attention to Tony and looked at him thoughtfully. "Steve didn't mention your getting waylaid in Siberia in that letter of his."

"Would he have?"

"He knows better than to hide things from me, Stark. What he did mention was passing out due to having to stop you when Mr. T'Challa offered them a ride out of Siberia. Adrenaline can go only so far. Also, it had been a really bad week, what with the funeral before everything went to hell, and he hadn't been eating right. Did you see him eat in Berlin?"

Tony paused and thought about it. "No. Not even a meal supplement bar."

"And as much as I hate those things, what is his normal MO?"

"To... oh. Crap. You're trying to tell me something here, aren't you?"

"Yes. Remember how I said when I sat down that I get weird when I don't eat? Well... so does Steve. If he doesn't eat right, he gets a bit weird. You didn't see him eat, he told me he didn't eat enough for a week straight. Lots of physical activity? Injuries from fighting you?"

"And I tried to talk him into something he already wasn't going to sign and put my foot in my mouth."

"Exactly."

He gazed at her for a long, long moment. "So if it wasn't Steve leaving me a note in the snowmobile, then who did?"

"Certainly not James. Concussion. Also, he's left-handed. And was missing a left hand."

"You mean... I got a Siberian mini-vacation courtesy of the King of Wakanda because he thought I needed a time out?"

"Didn't you?"

"Apparently, because I didn't find that note odd until just this moment. The phrasing was off, just enough that..." Tony paused. "Damn."

"What?"

"I just realized that the handwriting didn't match between letters, as much as the phrasing didn't." He sighed, and didn't get to finish his thought about the situation because Mason came tearing back into the cafeteria, a thick binder under his arm. "You call that thing a manual?"

Rebecca laughed as she took it from Mason and he sat down again. She showed him the cover, which had 'Barnes Family Psych Manual' on it in big letters, followed by 'Read it, or risk Becca getting mad at you for idiotic things.' "This was actually Fran's medical assistant psych handbook that she made up from typing all her class notes. The kids pass it around, because they all know my stance on psychology and defensive mechanisms. Education is key, you know? The next thing on your reading list is this thing. We will be wanting it back, Anthony."

Tony glanced at Mason. "Why do you have it?"

"I'm on the detail, and Bill said something dumb during the weekly strategy session."

That caused Tony to chuckle. "So she really doesn't come in peace, then?"

"Not really, no. Nor is she sweet like a monkey, either," Mason told him. "Have you seen the Pink and Green Monkeys yet?"

"No."

"You'll love 'em."

Tony glanced at Rebecca with raise eyebrows. "Is everyone in your family crazy?"

"We have three Medical Transcriptionists, an MD studying psychology, another studying engineering, several mechanics, nurses, some accountants, and lawyers. Would do you think?"

"Ah." Suddenly, he had an idea. "Mason? Do you know if Ross types his own letters?"

"Lucinda doesn't do those for him, no."

Tony grinned and wiped the pictures away in lieu of a keyboard and screen display that was streaming lines of code. He did some midair typing, smiled. "There."

"What is all of that?" Rebecca wondered.

"A very specific computer virus. Took this long to get it exactly right, to make it untraceable, even with SHIELD software, and to be as annoying as possible for it to do what I want, how I want."

"Which is?"

"To annoy the daylights out of Ross, to raid and copy all the data on the State Department's computers" He smirked again, caught Mason's eye. "And to entertain Lucinda."

Rebecca frowned. "Who is Lucinda?"

"The Secretary of State's secretary. You'd like her. She went to college with Pepper."

Rebecca glanced at Mason to find him grinning. "And you're giving the State Department's computers an entertaining virus... why?"

"Because Ross wrote the Accords. The first draft, anyway. We need what he's got in order to get them nullified. Also, he's having you followed, even if the detail is on your side."

"Ah. Virus way, then. Just don't wreck the computers to the point that the State Department Employees don't get paid."

"Already thought of that... except for the one woman who gave me a guilt trip at MIT. That time out in Siberia was worth something after all. Had a lot of time to think things out."

"Huh?"

"Long story."

The secretary had just returned to her desk from getting a glass of water when she heard the oddest music coming from General Ross's office. She frowned, knowing he was in there writing up a report. Slowly, she stood up and went to check on him. She found him staring at his computer in confusion. "General?"

"Every time I go to type, it keeps playing that," he said slowly, eyes wide. Slowly, he reached to the keyboard just as the song ended and pressed a key. When that didn't set it off, he began again, only for it to start again. He frowned down at the keyboard and experimentally pressed one, the 'a'. It happened again. "Huh."

"Do you want me to call tech support, sir?"

He pressed another one, the 'c', and it happened again. And then the 't'... "Probably. I'm not going to get through this report on Captain America's actions if I can't use those letters without this awful song blaring at me!"

"You could just turn the speakers off, sir..."

"Didn't turn them on, Lucinda! This thing has a mind of it's own!"

Lucinda had to close the door again, lest he see her lose her composure to a fit of very physical laughter. She wondered if he actually recognized the melodic version of 'Star-Spangled Man with a Plan.'

In Wakanda, Steve Rogers gets a text message on his burner phone: Rogers, tell Barnes when you're finally able to defrost him that his sister is a terrifying know it all. I like her. Even if she gives homework and calls it "providing perspective."

Sam later finds him still laughing and doesn't get an explanation for a while...

A/N: When a certain two things were written, I had no idea I'd be using either for this. And then I started writing this, and suddenly Tony was talking about Oymyakon and a cat...

Translation from Romanian...

neghiob: "blockhead"