Chapter three for y'all!

...Yaaay.

Disclaimer: Bucky Barnes, and everyone depicted in this chapter and all that will follow, do not belong to me. Marvel Cinematic Universe holds all authority and owner-ness, and I'm just borrowing them because I love them!

"I remember."

Charlie looked up to make eye contact with bright blue eyes. She nodded slowly, showing that she'd heard, but afraid to say more, lest she scare him away. It had been nearly a week ago when he'd first said the same thing, and he'd locked himself in his room immediately after. He'd finally come out for breakfast two days later, but didn't seem apt to speak. Charlie had just curled up in her loveseat with a book when James moved to stand a few feet away from her and said once more,

"I remember."

Charlie moved so she faced James head on, putting her book down and giving him her sole attention. His jaw was tense, but he seemed determined to speak of it, and so Charlie sent him an encouraging smile. He took a deep breathe, and continued.

"I remember the war, and being captured. I remember the experiments, and the, trials they put me through." His eyes were unseeing, as if by speaking of his memories, he was making them real, reliving them. He very well could've been, so Charlie remained supportively silent. "I remember being rescued and coming back, but coming back less. Less than I was before. A shadow of myself, and nothing I seemed to do helped that. Except for Steve. I remember Steve too."

Charlie's breath caught when blue eyes met her gaze and were clear, focused.

"I remember other things too. My childhood. My mom. I had a sister." Bucky looked away, jaw clenching. "You said it's been a while. Did, is she?"

"She passed." Charlie spoke lowly, hating to break the news. "But she had two kids. They're both still around, I can look them up, if you'd like?"

He shook his head. "No. that's fine." Charlie made a mental note to look them up anyway.

A bitter sound escaped his throat, and Charlie belatedly realized it was a laugh. "Everyone else is probably dead as well, then."

"Not everyone." Charlie argued. "You're not alone."

"I'm not then?" James glared, his eyes glacial. "I may remember some, but I still don't remember how this happened," James jerked his left arm forward, and he turned his glare to the metal. "I don't know what I've been doing the past what, 70 years? It's all vague, choppy, and I hate it." James turned half away, as if he wanted to pace, but he didn't seem inclined to move any further from Charlie. "How is anyone else going to understand what's it's like to wake up in a world that looks like your own, but it's so obviously not?"

"You'd be surprised," Charlie interrupted his rant wryly.

He raised a brow mockingly, though his eyes had softened. He was probably thinking back to when she'd shared her tale.

Charlie shrugged. "I may not know what it means to wake up 70 years later, with little to no memory in a body you don't remember, but the whole, alienated, no one understands? It all looks vaguely familiar but this isn't my home what happened? I get that."

James scrutinized Charlie.

Then he looked away.

Charlie sat back slightly, surprised. She just went head to head with an ex-assassin, and not just an assassin, but THE assassin, the Winter Soldier, and he blinked first.

Weird.

James began to speak again, his voice low.

"I can't really explain…for the most part I don't even understand what I'm feeling, let alone why, and then I get so angry, for no reason, and, I just," He lifted both hands to run through his hair, but he flinched when his metal arm made contact with his skull.

He dropped both hands uselessly in his lap.

"I want to remember. But what if I don't like it when I do?"

Charlie moved then, till she was kneeling in front of him, grabbing his left arm, the metal one, and wrapping both hands around it. He looked startled, and confused.

"Your past is not your fault. What you did is not on you; you are not to blame. You were stolen from the ice; taken apart, and remade. What you'll remember are tasks they forced on you; when they saw you as nothing more than a weapon."

James's mouth twitched. "Isn't that what you did?"

Charlie paused, and her brow furrowed. "What?"

"Didn't you steal me too?"

"Huh." Charlie sat back on my heels, her hands still clutching his, and smirked. "I guess I did." The smirk fled as she turned serious once more. "But I'm not them. I want to help you."

"I know that." He agreed.

Charlie smiled then, a fleeting, almost bitter thing. He was so earnest. "You'll forget. You'll fight me. You'll get angry, have outbursts, and I won't know what to do with you. You'll have nightmares, only to wake up and realize that your nightmares were actually memories. It's going to be a tough journey back." James lips tightened, but he didn't look away. Charlie grinned, squeezing his hands. "But as long as you're in, so am I. I'm not giving up on you."

James eyes narrowed. "Back to what?"

Charlie tilted her head in confusion.

"A long hard road back to what?" He clarified.

Charlie thought for a moment. Then she grimaced. "Back to…"

She turned his hands over, both of them, then folded them together. He winced slightly, but let her do as she wished. She covered his folded hands with her own. "Back to human."

James stared down at their interlocked hands, then he scoffed. "I reckon I can handle that. I'm not a fan of easy anyway." He smirked. "I'm a soldier. Or I was."

Charlie smiled softly at James when he looked back up, and corrected him. "You still are, Sarge."

Then she realized maybe she wasn't speaking to just him, anymore.

Once a soldier…..

After that conversation, James had done the unthinkable; he'd begun to share. Whatever he shared, Charlie made sure to reciprocate in kind, in order to keep each other on equal footing. James shared anything and everything that came to mind; As James's memories returned of his childhood, Charlie reminisced on what it was like to grow up an army brat.

When James got to meeting Steve, Charlie found that James had trouble saying his name. Trouble meaning, he refused to. He referred to Steve only as He, or Him, after the inital. Charlie knew that if James couldn't even say his name yet, no way would he be ready to see Steve again. So she waited, letting him grow comfortable with memory Steve before she would bring up the real Steve.

"It was my mom and sister and I, just the three of us growing up. I was the man of the house, so from an early age I learned how to take care of people. I was surprisingly good at it. Back then, it was my sister while my mom was too grief stricken from my father's death to care for her, and then when she got better and took over, I was kind of listless for a while. I didn't know what to do with myself.

Then I met Him.

When I was forced into the war and forced to leave Him behind, my fellow soldiers became the objects of my care. Then….He found me. When I fell from that train I was too mindless to care about anything, and then I was brainwashed to care about nothing…but completing my mission. The hardest part about waking up," James ran a hand through his hair, and Charlie reminded herself to get him a haircut, "about being me again, is that…who do I care about now?"

James thought about that….then shot Charlie a look she couldn't decipher. He needed to take care of someone? She'd figure something out for that. Charlie thought back to her own childhood with a soft smile.

"I was a spoiled brat as a kid. My parents were both in the army, so I never really saw them together all that often, but someone was always around. If not my parents, then my big brother who was five years older than me, or my uncle Rick. Uncle Rick was a marine," James snorted and Charlie smiled, "Yeah I know, but he'd been injured in the line of duty before I was born, and he'd lived with us since i was a baby. He was the only who taught me to read, ride my bike, shoot a gun. He died when I was 11. At that point my parents decided to come home for good, though they stayed in the army and got positions in D.C. they were great parents. It's been a while since I've seen them."

The next time James shared the two were sitting on opposite sides of Charlie's couch, Charlie with a stack of papers in front of her and James with the remote held uselessly in one hand. Why were there so many buttons? When James started to speak, Charlie put her files on the coffee table and turned to face James with bright eyes.

"It was first grade. He was new, the tiniest primary schooler I'd ever seen. My sister, four years his junior, was bigger than him. I didn't pay much attention to him right away, why would I? But then I noticed he was being bullied, and instead of backing down, like most individuals his size would do, he stood firm. He impressed me. So one day I helped him fight the bullies off. The rest, as you could say, is history. Our friendship began in a way that it would continue. At least, until I was shipped off."

"My best friend, disregarding my older brother, his name is Ryan. We met in sixth grade. There was no big event resulting in the creation of our friendship, we just all of a sudden were a duo instead of two separate solo acts, if you will. All through school, it seemed we were connected at the hip. He was there for me when my uncle died, when my life went crazy, he was there through it all. We graduated together, worked together at points, and he supported me through all of my career choices. I haven't seen him in a while, either."

"You miss him?" James asked, and Charlie nodded.

"Yeah, I do."

James placed his right hand on her shoulder in empathy, and Charlie shot him a smile.

They were in the kitchen; in the middle of making cookies, with Charlie placing the dough on the pan and James scooping the piles for her, when he next spoke of his past.

"I never wanted to fight."

"What do you mean?"

"I was drafted into the army. I didn't want to go. Steve needed me at home, to take care of him. The only fights I wanted to fight were ones with him by my side, and all of a sudden, the government, the country took away my choice. I hated them for that."

James' voice went deep and raspy with anger, and Charlie winced sympathetically. "Did you try to get out of it?" she asked softly.

James snorted. "Of course I did. My recorded reason wasn't substantial enough, and they rejected my stay. So I had to go and pretend that I wanted to go, that I wanted to fight, all the while knowing being a soldier was the last thing on my mind and it was all Steve wanted. It was torture." James smirked when Charlie winced.

"Maybe not the best phrase." Charlie mentioned delicately.

James shrugged. "It all means the same to me, nowadays." He admitted freely.

Charlie winced again. "That's what I'm afraid of."

A moment passed, then Charlie placed the filled plan in the oven and turned to face James, arms crossed and face soft.

"All I ever wanted to do was fight."

James shot her a surprised look. Charlie shrugged. "I had two parents who joined the army and a marine uncle. My brother wanted nothing to do with any of it. So the legacy, if you will, fell to me."

James raised a brow. "You make it sound like you had no choice."

Charlie shrugged. "At first, I didn't feel like I did. But as I got older, and seriously started considering my future, I realized it was something I really wanted to do. I was always running around the neighborhood, saving cats in trees and birds with broken wings and bullied kids. Why not save the country while I was at it?"

"What group?" James asked interested.

Charlie grimaced. "This group was founded after the howling commandos disbanded. It kind of took their place actually. They're called army rangers. Of course, it was a men-only group. Too dangerous for women, you know." James smirked.

"But they took you?"

Charlie laughed. "You bet they did. I was the first female they accepted, and I had to prove myself. I did, though, I earned the respect of my fellow officers, and when they shipped me off, it was the happiest day of my life. But my father was NOT happy."

"He didn't want you to go?" James inferred.

Charlie shrugged. "His favorite argument was that he fought so I wouldn't have to. He just wanted me safe. And I get that, I really do. But I wanted to fight."

"And so you did."

Charlie smiled, and James returned with a smirk. "Yes, I did."

Their conversations took a turn for the darker with James' memories, and Charlie did her best to be understanding, accommodating.

"He was huge."

"Who?"

"I remember being delirious; at that point they'd injected me with drug after drug and while nothing seemed to be working to their satisfaction, it was successfully scrambling my brain. Then all of a sudden he was there, leaning over me and freeing my restraints, larger than life and in the silliest goddamn American flag thing that if I could've, I would've laughed. But all I could do at that point was babble."

"Then I got to see him in action, and as out of it as I was…" James smiled softly. "He was…spectacular. He was a hero; a soldier. He'd always had that spirit in him, you have no idea how many times I'd had to drag him away from a fight; almost always guys bigger than him, almost always outnumbered, but always for a good cause." James chuckled. "He never did like bullies. But then, it was like his body had finally caught up to his spirit, and he could do everything he'd ever wanted….as much as I don't want to admit to being a damsel in distress…he saved me. So many times I'd admit to having his back, protecting him, and all of a sudden the tables were turned and it was super confusing for a while. Then we were back at base and I just…"let's hear it for captain America." James spoke a bit wistfully. "You should've seen the look on his face. He was so surprised. It was interesting because he was always a big part of my life; he was always huge to me, it didn't matter whether or not I was looking down at him or not. It was just that, after the serum, everyone else could see it too."

"He's always been this big personality to me." Charlie began.

"Who?" James asked slowly.

"I never knew him as a small person, he was always larger than life. More so when I turned fourteen. I can't imagine him small, the way you can."

James frowned. "Who?"

Charlie grimaced, pausing her memory to stare frankly at James. "You and I aren't the only ones who shouldn't be here."

James eyes narrowed, then widened as he put the pieces together.

"Steve."

Charlie nodded, and James fell into a kitchen chair with a shocked look. "How?"

Charlie settled across from him and told him Steve's tale.

At the end of it; James looked like he would cry, but he did something else instead.

He laughed.

Charlie smiled, despite herself.

"Figures." He chuckled. "70 years later and I still can't get rid of him. Does he know I'm still kicking?"

Charlie shook her head. "Not that I'm aware. Shield has been notified that there are traitors in their midst; but they don't know much else at this point. They'll find out eventually. They'll get ahold of Hydra's file, and then Steve will know.

James winced slightly at Hydra, but more so at Steve's name.

"Are you telling me I should tell him myself before he finds out by other means?" He guessed.

Charlie shrugged. "No. I think you should do what you feel, whatever that is."

James thought about that. Then he shook his head. "I'm…I can't."

Charlie nodded. "Okay. But when you're ready…." James grinned lightly.

"You'll be the first to know." He promised.

Charlie grinned.

I freakin' love them so much.

So much bonding and memories and deep looks into Buck as a person.

He will eventually get ahold of others...but not right yet. He's still getting fixed.

Yaaay!

Reviews/Follows/Favorites are so great! I love them!

but more...I love YOU

~CLC~