(Depictions of memory loss .)

Steve ended up staying the night in Bucky's room. The thirty straight hours of sleep she'd had the day before had apparently not been enough but she started dreaming again after ten months of nothing, which brought their own problems.

No sleep, no food and no break from the torture for ten months; no wonder she'd decided to cooperate, even if it was faked.

Bucky woke up twice screaming before 2200, and both times she fell to sobbing in a matter of seconds. Steve rocked her back to sleep the second time and he hadn't laid her back down on the mattress by 2245, when someone knocked on the door.

"Come in!"

Stark strolled inside. "Came back from New York soon as I heard."

"Who called you?"

"Who else?"

Peggy, then.

"She said Zola left a bunch of designs and tech I should look at. Didn't realize that included Sarge." He nodded at her left arm. "You looked inside it yet?"

"No. She gets upset whenever someone tries."

"Huh. How functional is it?"

"Acts just like a real arm. Same range of motion. She can sorta feel pressure too."

"Neat." Stark shifted his legs. "Looks like it'll be a bitch to get off but –"

"I don't think she wants it off."

"Well, yeah, Zola messed with her brain. Probably made her think she'd always had it."

"Maybe." Maybe that's why she wanted to keep the clothes. "But it's still up to her."

"I'd get it off sooner'n later." He shrugged. "Anyway. Brass is running the headline tomorrow."

Steve frowned. "They should notify her parents before doing that."

"They did. Called the New York army HQ. Her mom wouldn't let the pen leave her apartment without her. You know how m– parents are."

"Yeah. Hers especially. Her mom was in the Brooklyn Mother's Association."

"I'll be on my best behavior. They talked her into waiting a few days for a commercial flight. 'Parently she was ready to take an air force transport."

"That's Missus Barnes all right. Thanks. I'll let you know when she's up for you to look at her arm. Hey – Jim's a couple rooms down. I talked to him yesterday. Docs are keeping him 'till he gains some more weight back. He'd be up for a visit."

Stark nodded – "Sure thing" – and left the room. Steve adjusted his best friend's position against him, making himself more comfortable on the bed. He could stay here all night but it'd be better if she laid –

"Why is she coming?"

Steve gave Bucky's back a few rubs. "You should be sleeping."

"You were talking. I'm gonna keep the arm. Why is she coming?"

"Because you're here."

Her voice cracked as she asked, "...And?"

This wasn't Bucky; she would've laughed at herself and said, "Damn right, I'm here." She demanded loyalty and attention from everyone she knew, and they gave it because she'd already given them hers. She knew everyone's secrets and strengths and weaknesses, but only Steve knew hers.

Well, he'd thought he did.

"And it's been ten months. She wants to see you."

"She can't wait?"

More code: "she can't wait" meant I'm not ready or why does she get to decide what time to come or what if I didn't want to fucking see her, did anyone consider that.

"She's your mom. Maybe you don't remember who you got your confidence from but I do."

Bucky made a sound of assent and Steve added, "She won't be coming for a few days. You have time. I can ask Phillips to stall her if you want."

No reply, which meant, "Thanks but I'll deal with it."

"So," she said with that slow, conversational tone that meant she wanted to talk about something – anything – else, "I don't know what I'm gonna do after I get out of here."

"The army'll give you a discharge. Honorable, maybe medical. And there's backpay – probably extra 'cuz you were a POW. Gabriel and Rebecca have probably moved out of your parents' house so there'll be plenty of space there. You could sign up with the SSR again, work out of an office. Or take the GI bill and go to college."

Bucky shook her head. "I meant when I leave the infirmary. 'Fore I go home."

"Oh. Peg can get you set up with base housing once you start going stir-crazy. They have plenty extra. God knows I should've stopped living in the barracks a while ago."

"I won't go stir-crazy. I like this bed too much."

"I know you, Buck. Give it a few days."

She made a noncommittal noise, paused and then said, "You can take my living room floor."

"What about the couch?"

"Peggy gets the couch." He hesitated and she added, "Better'n that, we can get one of those couches with the pull-out beds and I'll pretend I don't hear you two having sex at night."

Bucky pushed herself away from him and smiled – actually smiling. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed her grins until that moment, seeing one again.

"When did you get engaged? And why didn't you get her a real ring?"

Oh, we're interrogating now. I see. "I didn't get her a ring, she did. I think she found it in the lost-and-found. She handed it to me over breakfast and I gave it back at dinner."

Her mouth grew wider, splitting her face; Steve could see her crooked teeth showing. "Of course. I told you she wouldn't wait around forever."

"I know you did. I finally started listening" – after you died – " 'bout eight months ago."

"Took her dancing?"

"No, I copied you. Left a bouquet at her door with a note and paid a hotel clerk to give me their roof key for the night."

Bucky's expression grew soft. "You had a rooftop picnic."

"I brought a book 'cuz I didn't think she'd show." He'd been so engrossed, reading with the flashlight borrowed from his mission pack, that she walked right up to him and stood there for a good minute before finally clearing her throat.

" 'Course she would've, Steve. You bought her a fucking bouquet."

"Well it didn't hurt that it was VE day."

Her smile fell and she held a breath for a moment before letting it out. "Oh."

"What – what's – did they do –"

"No, I like your memory better. Keep going."

"Buck..."

She leaned her forehead against his chest. "That's the first time I went through the wipe machine. I heard the news on the radio after. God, it hurt."

Kotani had put her German-speaking pen on translation duty and he'd handed over individual entries as he finished them to a secretary to copy down. One of two entries from May 8th included the lines, "Our enemies have declared triumph. This is but a temporary setback, and with our new weapon we shall rise from the ashes again."

"I'm sorry, I should've known..."

Bucky shook her head, her mouth a resolute frown. "I fell two hundred feet, Steve. I don't remember it" – oh – "but I know it happened. There's no way you could've known I'd survived."

"That's not what you thought two days ago."

"Yeah, but..." She sighed. "Two days ago I cut wires out of my spine and killed a shit ton of pens and I didn't care who they were gonna ambush, I just knew I was gonna be next. And memories started coming back too fast to deal with...

"But now I've got a nice bed and a full stomach" – she fingered the tube going into it – "and I'm gonna be best woman at my best friend's wedding. At least," she added, pulling herself back again with a mock-glare on her face, "I better be."

"You are," Steve assured her. "We were planning it for next month but we can push it back. We haven't sent out the invitations yet."

"Better late than never. I'll help write addresses."

"You don't have to do that..."

"I need the practice. The serum makes us ambidextrous, right?"

She'd thought it was the best thing, before. One day Steve couldn't throw with either hand to save his life, the next he was pitching SSR baseball games switching between both. "Yeah."

"I noticed it did. For knives and shit. Anyway. I'm not blaming you for anything and you better not either."

"I still should've caught you."

"I'm gonna fucking punch you."

Steve smiled; that was Bucky. "Okay."

The headline in the New York Times the next morning read, "SGNT BARNES FOUND ALIVE IN E GERMANY, STOPS HYDRA AMBUSH, SAVES CAPN AMERICA".

Phillips had it framed and mounted on his wall; Stark used his copy to clean his soldering iron as he combed his way through the inner workings of the prosthetic arm.

Bucky glared at Stark the whole time he worked. Peggy, supervising in Steve's absence, gave him no pity for it. As she related, Howard deserved it because jokes about metal hands and blowjobs weren't that far off from Bucky's stories of the things boys in Brooklyn shouted at her – and somehow Stark, the center of all gossip on-base, never got the memo that Bucky was a lesbian.

For once, Steve was right and Bucky was wrong: she caught cabin fever in three days.

She started by jiggling her leg, tapping her fingers, twitching at motions in a way that wasn't at all flinching but rather an itch to go do what they're doing. Steve stuck a pencil in her left hand before the Official Interview on day three and she'd gotten up to a middle-school-level of drawing skills by the time the interviewer from the Pentagon walked in.

Said interviewer snapped an order twenty minutes into the session to sit still. Bucky held herself stone-frozen and answered in monotone until Peggy, who accompanied her into the interrogation room, fetched two bottles of Coca-Cola and popped one of the caps until Bucky relaxed.

She went straight from the interview to the bathroom; Frenchie switched off with Peggy to hold Bucky's hair back as she threw up. By the time they emerged it had been decided that she would visit the barber next.

Bucky walked into the mess hall – her hair looked like it had been cut a month ago instead of that afternoon, all disheveled and past the ears – and the GIs gave her a standing ovation. She hunched her shoulders, got into the line and refused every offer to take someone else's spot further up.

Yup. That was Bucky.

She tossed the tray down across from Steve at the table and eyed the food on it warily. They still hadn't taken out the feeding tube since her gag reflex still thought everything that touched it lethal, but that morning Doc X ordered her patient to start eating or else she'd keep that tube in forever.

The mess usually gave pens a choice between two meals, equally shit quality, but Steve had a choice of a plate of one and two of the other. Without any prompting the workers gave Bucky the same. It still wouldn't help her eat any of it, though.

"I'll trade your beans for my applesauce," said Monty, holding his bowl up.

Just like the good ol' days.

Bucky further exchange her rice – for applesauce – potatoes – applesauce – coffee – applesauce – and meat – heavy whipping cream, that was Stark's donation before he wandered off to play with more of Zola's inventions – and consolidated her gains into a large bowl Frenchie retrieved from the kitchens.

Dugan told her, "Uh-uh, I think that's too much applesauce."

"No such thing, Dum-Dum," Sam told him.

"Is this a New Yorker thing? – I've been meaning to ask."

Steve passed his best friend a larger spoon to mix the cream in. "Apples are. Cheapest thing around during the Depression, thanks to all the farms upstate. Let 'em stew and add some cheap cream and you've got –"

"The best thing on the planet," Bucky finished, her expression approaching a maniacal grin.

Laughs spread round the table.

Steve gave her hand a nudge. "Go easy on it, okay?"

"If my throat doesn't like this, it won't like anything."

She slowly put a spoonful in her mouth, held the food still for a –

"Put this on the list of things I didn't want to see," quipped Sam. "Barnes having an orgasm."

Bucky punched his shoulder – right hand, good – and he yelped. "Shut up. It's good. Why did everyone get applesauce 'stead of the canned fruit?" She looked around at the other tables. "Wait – didn't Peggy say they only did dessert on Sundays? It's a Tuesday."

"We... may have told the chefs that you loved applesauce," Frenchie admitted. "And Stark donated the fruit. It was not trouble."

Dugan: "No trouble."

"Or 'not a problem'," added Sam.

Steve poked Bucky in the shoulder. "You gotta swallow it eventually."

She swallowed, rolling her eyes, and took a deep breath.

"So far, so good?"

A nod.

"Great." Steve looked around at his pens. "All good."

They visibly relaxed – hell, the whole mess hall relaxed – and Frenchie commented, " 'Apple' is such a stupid word. Pomme – much better."

Steve looked up at Bucky and groaned, "Titim gan éirí ort."

She chuckled. "You're the one who fell this time around."

"Yeah, yeah. Help me up?"

Bucky pulled him to his feet and let him lean against her to get his balance. Around them a few pens applauded, others jeered and most fell silent under Captain America's gaze.

"You depend too much on being stronger than everyone else," Bucky told him, "but I'm stronger than you. You gotta be faster. Dodge more. Stop taking blows, they build up."

In his periphery Frenchie nodded approvingly. She was the one who always started the bar fights – her and Dugan, except he always went down fighting and she'd have to pull them both out.

"Is this how you two were before the army?" asked Sam. "Beating each other up?"

"Yeah, like he could've taken me."

Steve told Sam, "She kept trying to teach me how to box. It never stuck," and Bucky frowned in that way that meant the memory was lost to her.

He could tell she was putting on a front to cover up the memory loss; he just wished she'd drop it when it was just the two of them.

"Though he has remembered how to punch," she cut in. "Can't call it a total failure."

"Actually... that was Peggy. She made me punch a heavy bag for three straight hours 'till I got it right."

"When was that?"

"Pretty soon after we formed the Commandoes." You were standing right next to Peggy, giving me tips and telling me not to quit because dammit if you were gonna let me go to the front lines without knowing how to punch right. Even if you'd be there next to me. "I think you were sleeping with a pilot that night."

"Huh. Short, long fingernails, redhead?"

"Sounds right."

Honored guests, may I present to you: Steve Rogers, the biggest liar in the world!

"Speak of the devil," said Sam, and they found Peggy standing off to the side. She motioned with her head to Steve: come here.

"All right." Steve clapped Bucky on her shoulder – right, not the one that took more weight than it should thanks to the prosthetic – and ducked out of the ring. "Gimme five."

"Yeah, sure."

He followed his girlfriend over to the gym wall but she kept walking, down the hallways towards the latrines. She stopped still in view of the ring, probably so that Steve could keep an eye on Bucky.

"We found the shallow grave," Peggy murmured. "Two of the bodies had dog tags."

Oh, God. "Why didn't Jim tell us?"

"He was hoping we wouldn't find them. He worried Bucky would be treated differently for it. At least, that's what he told me when I asked."

"Who were they?"

"Both Marine pens, stationed out of West Berlin, serving as guards for a diplomat who escaped assassination two weeks ago. Obviously the perpetrators had been unprepared for their mission. Army investigators believed the Marines were paid to look the other way but Morita says they were tortured for everything they knew of the diplomat's routine. The damage to their bodies confirms his account."

"So what – Hydra thought the pens didn't know anything worth keeping 'em alive for?"

"Six days ago that same diplomat collapsed and died while she drank her morning coffee."

"Oh."

Peggy looked back at the ring, and Bucky and Monty wrestling. "They'll investigate."

"She already gave her statement."

"She killed two of your own."

"She barely knew her own name!"

His girlfriend dragged him into a hallway. "That isn't how our militaries work and you know that," she hissed. "They've opened an inquiry. We will show them Zola's file. You cannot think that they would actually court-martial her."

"Two GIs died!"

Peggy stared, then told him, "Stop playing both sides of the argument."

"I'm not, I'm just – trying to be realistic."

"Your role in this is as the stalwart leader who stands by his pens. I will be the put-upon fiancée who is annoyed that her beloved keeps putting off the wedding. Who is perhaps a bit jealous of the bond he shares with his sergeant, and doubts her claim that she was coerced into executing fellow soldiers."

"Understood, ma'am." Steve leaned down to kiss her. "You're not, though. Right? I hope not. I'm sorry I've been spending –"

Another kiss shut him up. "Heaven knows if my best friend came back from the dead heavily tortured, I would give them all the time I could. The last thing I could tolerate was an impatient fiancé. And if I needed a break" – a third kiss – "I would know who to go to" – again – "who wouldn't give me – watch the hair, darling, I just curled it."

Steve had never fully appreciated walls until he could push Peggy up against one. Asides from the comment – unnecessary, really; Steve was always careful with her hair, with all of her really – she responded enthusiastically. He felt her pulling him down and kissed her neck, ran his hand up her skirt. He liked it when she wore skirts.

Oh, God, he loved his best friend but right now it was a relief to hand her off to someone else and play hooky with the woman he wanted to marry.

Peggy groaned and hooked her leg around Steve's waist. The last time they'd had sex against a wall –

No, they weren't going that far. Maybe that night, but not at the moment.

– her thighs were sore for days after and she could barely sit down but for the bruises. They'd called a week's break from sex to force themselves to do something else.

Teaching Steve codebreaking was Peggy's idea of "something else", it turned out. His was showing her the ins and outs of lace stitching. "An unconventional couple," Phillips called them, and Steve had replied, "Everything's unconventional these days, sir."

Shit, he was getting hard. "We might have to take lunch off-base," he murmured in her ear. "If we want to keep going."

"How about an early dinner instead. I have a meeting with the military police in two hours."

"We can make it in less than two hours."

"Yes, but if you leave me like this I'll surely be very peeved by the time the police arrive."

He brushed her hair away and kissed her neck. "Still thinking strategically, huh?"

"Sorry to interrupt."

Steve pushed himself back from the wall and sighed. Break's over. "Yeah?"

Bucky swung her arms around her body, silhouetted against the bright lights in the training center. She opened her mouth, closed it again, wet her lips – stalling, unsure of the words she had planned to say.

Steve wondered when that would fade and old, confident Bucky came back in full force. It probably hadn't helped that he'd sighed.

"How long will the inquiry be?"

Of course she'd heard them; of course Steve had forgotten that her hearing was as good as his, now.

"Less than a week," Peggy told her. "You've been restricted to the base until everything is cleared. Your mother won't be allowed to visit until then."

Bucky nodded stiffly. "And if they don't clear me?"

"They told Hydra how to kill that ambassador. If they'd been recovered alive they would be court-martialed." Peggy sighed. "They didn't stop being soldiers just because they were captured. They were supposed to do their job and kept her safe but they didn't."

"Like I was supposed to do my job and not let Zola break me."

"You saved the lives of more than seventy American soldiers," Peggy countered, "and took down every Hydra pen in that base!"

"Sure." Bucky turned to go, adding, "But not before I killed them."