"Alright," she says, snapping off the latex gloves, "You are done here." She tosses the gloves in the bin, makes some final notes on his chart, and grabs her coat off the back of her chair. "C'mon," she says, smiling over at him. "You are no longer my patient – well until your next physical – so I can ethically buy you a cup of coffee." He watches her as she whips around the small clinic room, quickly gathering her things, which seem to be scattered all about. He hadn't moved since she began the blood draw – the final blood draw apparently – several minutes earlier. She glances over her shoulder at him as she prepares to flip off the lights and lock up the room. "Come on," she whines impatiently. "I'm starving and I need some coffee."

He gets up and follows her out. "Why do I have to come with you?"

"You don't," she says trying to work her arms into the fluffy coat. He grabs the back of the collar and holds it open for her so that she can get situated. "Thanks," she replies before turning to face him. "Technically, you aren't supposed to leave the tower unescorted. I think that policy is bullshit, but I don't make the rules. Anyway, I just thought I'd be nice and escort you to the bakery down on the corner where we can get some croissants and coffee. A celebratory, you no longer have to be a test subject treat. On me."

He hesitates only briefly. Truth is, he's losing his shit in this place. And as much as he hates the cold, he's kind of desperate for some fresh air. "I'll get my coat," he says turning toward the stairs.

They meet at the rear entrance to the building, the private one that only people with a certain security clearance have access to. And they walk down the block to the little bakery on the corner. As soon as they enter, Bucky's overwhelmed with a feeling of calm. It's the smell. The smell of fresh baked bread and cookies, and freshly brewed coffee. "Good morning, Dr. Sullivan," the older man behind the counter greets. "Coffee black and a fresh croissant?"

She makes a beeline for the counter and nods at the man. "Yes please. Make it two."

The bakery is largely empty, the morning rush having ended about an hour earlier. He can't help but be pleased about that. He likes being in crowds when on the street – they're easier to blend into, to seamlessly move in and out of. But if the plan is to sit and enjoy a cup of coffee, he'd really prefer not to have anyone else around.

While Tessa chats with the man at the counter, Bucky finds a table in the back corner of the room. He sits with his back to the wall so he can see the street through the large plate glass windows. From this angle, he can see anyone approaching the entrance, and he can also see a bit of the back rooms to ensure no one gets the drop on him from back there either.

"I see you've found the safest seat in the house," she quips, coming over with two cups of coffee and a plate with croissants. He jumps up to help her, taking the two mugs off her hands and setting them on the table. "I didn't know how you like it, so I just got black."

"That's fine," he says, waiting for her to sit before lowering himself back into his chair. He watches as she dumps far too much sugar into her coffee and begins swirling it with a small spoon. There's no way that's all going to dissolve, he thinks to himself. "What did you mean, the safest seat in the house?" he asks absently, still watching her stir.

She looks over her shoulder at the front windows, throws a glance behind toward the back hall. "You don't have to be a soldier to know a good vantage point," she says, gingerly taking a sip from the mug. "So," she says, setting it down, "Steve said that you might start training with the rest of the team?"

He lets out a sort of psht before saying, "I don't know about that. They still think I'm… well, what I am."

He expects her to react as Steve would to that, tell him that what he is isn't bad, or some such nonsense. What he gets instead is, "Yeah, you don't want to be part of a team that doesn't trust you."

He looks at her closely. There's something in the way she says those words, some sort of commiserative knowledge, that makes him wonder about just who this woman before him really is. "Why'd you get into this anyway?" he asks, realizing as soon as the words leave his mouth that it's a question he's been wanting to ask her for some time.

"What do you mean?" she asks, wrinkling her brow at him. "With the Avengers?"

"No," he says with a quick shake of his head. "Well, yeah. But I mean, all of it… the Avengers, Stark… being a doctor?"

She shrugs and begins to pick at the croissant in front of her. "I don't know. Why does anyone want to be a doctor? To help people, I guess."

"But, the genetic stuff. That's your specialty, right?" She nods. "And Steve said you worked for SHIELD."

"No," she spits out quickly. Then, looking him dead in the eye and speaking with a sort of hardness he hadn't yet heard from her, "I never worked for SHIELD." She lets her shoulders relax a bit and brings another small piece of food to her mouth. "I did some contract work with them. Only as a favor to an old friend. And I guess that, in the end, it was the right decision because it got me here. But I never actually worked for SHIELD, and I never would."

"Isn't working for Stark kinda the same thing?" he asks, genuinely curious.

She shakes her head and takes another sip of her coffee. "Tony lets me choose what I work on. For the most part. I help him with certain Stark Industries projects and he leaves me to my research. SHIELD… they had a mission. And it never really lined up with my mission, I guess you could say."

"I know that it ended up Hydra was part of SHIELD. Or SHIELD was part of Hydra. But weren't they the good guys? Or supposed to be, anyway?"

She shrugs her shoulders and gazes absently at the mug in her hands. "Depends who you ask, I guess. Or who you are."

"Okay," he says, his brain suddenly doing somersaults inside his skull, "So who are you?"

She sets down the mug and looks across the table at him, takes a long pause before saying, "I chose to study genetic stuff because I believe it has the potential to truly change the world. Our DNA…" she turns her eyes away from him, shifting her gaze off to the corner of the room. "Well, I guess that's who I am. I am who my genes say I am." She lets out a long, dejected sounding sigh.

"And me?" he asks, an edge to his voice. "Am I just what my genes say I am? Just a guy who's… what did you call it? Impervious?"

"You're probably a bit more than that," she replies with a small smirk.

"Is that what you're studying, though? People like me? Like Steve?" His tone is accusatory, almost threatening. "You want to do this to more people?"

Her eyes suddenly go wide, a realization hitting her. "No," she says, more of a squeak than anything. "No I don't want to…" She looks at him nearly fuming across from her. "No, it's not like that," she says, dropping her gaze back down to her mug.

"What's it like then?"

She sighs and closes her eyes, rubs the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger as though trying to keep a headache at bay. "Mutation occurs in nature too. That's what I study." Then, looking back up at him, locking eyes, "What they did to you, they had no right. At least Steve volunteered. But really, he didn't know what he was getting into. Back in the day, testing on human subjects wasn't prohibited in the way it is now. So maybe… I don't know. Maybe they didn't realize the implications." She shakes her head rather fiercely. "I don't believe it was right, making the supersoldier serum. Using the serum. Any of it. I think it was a fascinating blunder of postmodern science."

He lets his body relax back into the chair a bit as he asks, not entirely satisfied, "So you don't want to make anything… like that?"

"Like the serum? No." She takes a deep breath before saying, "We don't need it anyway. Nature can handle mutation all on its own. And quite frankly, the trial and error out there is bad enough without megalomaniacal scientists getting involved."

They sit in silence for a long moment, Bucky finally taking a few sips of his coffee. It's good coffee. I'll have to remember this place, he thinks, if they ever let me off my leash. She continues to pick apart her croissant, piece by piece, and he mumbles, "You eat like a rabbit."

"I know," she says with a small laugh.

"So," he starts to say, shifting in seat. "So, that's why you got into it, then? Genetics? To save the world?"

She looks at him long and hard, clearly assessing something, though he's not quite sure what. "Tell you what," she says finally, a crooked smile on her face, "you buy me dinner sometime and I'll tell you all about it."

He smirks in response. But he most definitely does not refuse.