How could he have forgotten strawberries?

He had taken a handful of them back to his room on Steve's floor, and had lined them up carefully on the edge of the empty desk. Then he rested his chin on his folded forearms and studied them. He could smell them, and if he closed his eyes, he could almost still taste them. Steve had said they'd been one of his favorites. But he had no memory of them at all, other than what he had experienced a few hours ago.

The feeling of wanting things still struck him as wrong, somehow. There was no immediate need to be filled, like locating an ammunition cache, or finding a covered vantage point. But more than anything, he wanted to remember Steve's friend who had liked strawberries.

"JARVIS?" he said after a few minutes of debate.

"Yes, Bucky?"

"Want to remember James Buchanan Barnes."

"Would you like to see some archival material?"

"Affirmative." He turned toward the flat viewer on the desk. JARVIS had selected a set of clips that were tagged "Courtesy of the Smithsonian." The first times he watched them, he mentally tuned out the descriptive voice-over and concentrated on the images. Steve was laughing easily with a uniformed man, thumping him on the back. The man in the video clips had kind blue eyes, an expressive face, and a ready smile. He watched it over and over. "Is that James Buchanan Barnes?"

"Yes, it is."

"Steve says that is me," he said, frowning a little.

He watched it ten or fifteen more times, then began to pay attention to the audio. They were inseparable, from the schoolyard to the battlefield. He had fleeting sensory impressions of battlefields. Drifting smoke from burning machines. The whump of distant artillery. The weight of a pistol in his grip. But trying to think about school brought nothing. The fight on the helicarrier was the only memory he had of himself and Steve together, so he concentrated on that. What had stopped him from killing Steve and completing his mission had been the strange multiple image of Captain America and a much smaller, thinner man. He'd jumped into the river and dragged Captain America to the bank because the two sets of eyes had been so absolutely clear where the images had met. He still didn't understand why that should be. They could not have been the same man.

He watched the video clip again, and asked JARVIS to freeze the playback on the image of "pre-serum" Steve Rogers. That small man had been Steve too! Then there was no doubt that he had remembered Steve on the helicarrier. But when he tried to remember anything else about him, he found very little, other than the impacts of his fists on Steve's face and the echo of his own voice crying for him in the dark.

"Are you all right, Bucky?" JARVIS inquired.

"Think so," he said, blinking. His eyes had gone dry from staring. "Show more?"

There were several paragraphs of text which contained basic biographical information. Barnes' birthday that meant nothing. The names of Barnes' parents, which also meant nothing. Lists of military postings. The date...his stomach suddenly twisted. The date that Barnes and 150 men of his unit had been captured. That date was highlighted in blue and underlined. "JARVIS, show this link," he said, pointing.

"I strongly recommend that you view material of this nature with Captain Rogers present," JARVIS replied.

He had no idea of what he would find behind that blue link, other than that the possibilities made his stomach hurt. His memories of what had happened because of stomachaches were hazy, but he knew that HYRDA had never permitted him to feel that way for long. It was wrong, like wanting things. Steve would give him that disappointed look when he tried to explain…if he could tell him why he wanted to see it at all. He felt himself losing his grasp on speech even thinking about trying. He lowered his head onto his arms.

He raised his head again when he heard JARVIS. "Bucky, no one will stop you from doing what you feel you need to do, or hurt you for it afterward."

"Want to…want to remember. Have to see."

"Then that is what you should do. Let me know when you are ready."

He sat up straight and faced the viewer. His right hand clenched into a fist, but he did not try to loosen it. "Ready."

He did not get the chance to read many of the words on the next page. The information was headed by a grainy photograph of a vast hangar full of crisscrossed metal beams and cables. Sheets of shining fabric rippled from impossibly long girders. And among the grinding machinery and the barked orders and the cuffs and slaps and ringing shots were tiny men, laboring like ants.

He was coughing and sweating and shivering with fever. The other men tried to distract the watchers to let him rest, but they could not keep up the deception forever. When the guards eventually noticed, they dragged him away to wherever they had taken the others who couldn't work.

He felt bile rising in his throat, and gagged. Don't you dare! a harsh voice ordered from somewhere inside him, but it was already too late. He had just enough time to push away from the desk and target the trash can before he lost everything in his stomach. When it was over, he curled on his side on the floor, boneless and dizzy, his body automatically braced for punishment for failing to control himself. Instead of pain, however, there was a passing scent of something that seemed to clear his head and tame the nausea a little. When he felt steadier, he rolled over onto his back. "What is that?" he asked, his voice weak and gravelly.

"Mint, with citrus," JARVIS replied smoothly. "Mr. Stark occasionally requires assistance of this type. I had no assurance that it would be effective for you as well, but there seemed to be no harm in trying. Are you all right now?"

CONDITION ASSESSMENT

Functional. Acute nausea subsiding. Discomfort in head and stomach unremarkable, decreasing to pre-event levels.

"Remembered something, something bad."

"I cannot speak for how human memory works, but in my own case, stored information is often interconnected. Retrieving one file of required information will often retrieve associated subclasses of files, which can then be selected or rejected, depending on the context."

So in theory, the more he remembered, the more he might remember. The speculation was encouraging and frightening at the same time. "You control the process?"

"In general, I do not have to. But yes, I can make certain clusters of files more or less likely to be retrieved. In my experience, however, humans do not so function."

He sighed. JARVIS was probably right. "Want to remember. But scared."

"There is no need to try to remember everything at once."

He pulled himself slowly to his feet, then made his way over to the sink and rinsed his mouth and washed his face. JARVIS told him that it wasn't necessary to clean the trash can, but he didn't like the thought of someone else having to do it, so he did that too. Then he stood for a little while in the center of the room, struggling to decide what to do next. He had a strong urge to find Steve and try to tell him about what had just happened, or even to just sit quietly and watch whatever Steve was doing. Maybe he would try that later, after he'd calmed down some more and didn't have to risk throwing up on Steve. He didn't particularly want to sit in his room, but the only place in the tower he could clearly remember was the rooftop. "JARVIS?"

"Yes, Bucky?"

"Is all right to go to roof?"

"Of course it is."