A/N: This chapter is long. I couldn't find a good place to split it up, so you get the whole thing!

*Warning for ableist comments relating to brain damage.


Natasha found Steve in the kitchen, nursing a glass of pink liquid. He opened the fridge.

"Lemonade? I think it's raspberry. It's really good, actually."

She nodded. "Thanks."

Steve took out the pitcher and poured her a glass. "Weird weekend, huh?"

"I wanted to do something." She held the glass in both her hands and looked down at it. "I wanted to stop him from going, to help him get out, but he still has loyalties. You can't change someone's mind on such a short deadline."

He shook his head. "It's not that. He told me, it was just like you were thinking. They used his therapist against him. However the doctor found out about what was going on, however he tracked down Falsworth, it landed him in trouble."

She leaned against the counter next to him, her shoulder close to his bicep. "I got Darcy to fill in for me tomorrow. She might not be the most technically-focused instructor, but the kids love her. If you don't wanna make the drive back just yet, you won't be alone. I'm taking the day off either way."

He smiled close-lipped. "Thank you, Natasha. I don't know if we should impose on Monty, though."

"I think all things considered, he might not mind."

"I probably shouldn't cancel my sessions."

"I imagine your clients will forgive you. Skipping back and shoulders day once never made anybody fat."

"Now that's just not true."

She smiled a little and finally took a sip of lemonade. "We have the bastard's name, if it's a real one. Even if it's not, Clint might be able to find something, either on him or on Bucky. Clint'll be back soon, maybe even tomorrow. He texted me, said they were closing in."

"That's good."

She bumped her shoulder into his arm and then slid her arm around his waist, pulling him into her side. Steve managed to hold out for another five seconds before he gave in. He leaned his cheek on her head and let the tears come.


"Blin."

"No big deal, just reload and try again."

"I have been doing for the past forty minutes, Vasya. I'm getting worse."

"Just one more time."

Sasha grunted and then reloaded, aiming at the far target and closing his eyes, taking a deep breath and opening them again. He kept breathing, waiting until it wasn't quite so shaky. On the next exhale, he paused halfway through the release of air and pulled. The shot hit at the bottom of the 7.

He was using an M66 Combat Magnum for the sole reason that it was a piece of cake to shoot accurately. It was built on a K-frame, easy to control. And yet.

"It's just psychological. Your left hand's solid as a rock. Your right one's a wreck on its own, but the other one's making up for it."

"My breathing sucks, too." He knew it was psychological. Knowing that didn't help a bit. It was maddening, because it wasn't like he'd been the one to shoot Pietro. Holding and shooting a gun shouldn't be this much of an ordeal, if all of this was supposedly stemming from that incident.

"I could put you on some counterintelligence assignments like Wanda's doing," Vasya suggested, but he looked a little doubtful. "You can still fight better than most, if the need arises."

"That's not what you hired me for."

"No, but I think you're trained enough for it. You might even still be able to kill. Close combat. No guns needed."

"Only if I have to."

"Of course."

"And if I can't?"

Vasya shrugged. "It could be bad. We could maybe withdraw without it being too messy."

"Probably not, though."

He bumped his shoulder against Sasha's. "Come on, let's go work on knives."

They went to store their guns. "I'm sorry," Sasha said. Vasya shook his head, waving it off.

"Don't be. You're doing fine. I'm proud of you."

"Thought I might find you two here." Sasha started. Wanda was down the hall, walking towards them. "Do you have some time?"

He looked at Vasya, but when his gaze fell back on Wanda she was looking at him. He raised his eyebrows. "Are you talking to me now?"

"Obviously." She rocked on her toes. "So do you?"

He shrugged and nodded, following her out. This could be interesting.

"Finally tracked you down."

"You've been looking for me?"

"Yes, for the past few days."

He shrugged. "I've been around." She led him out to the parking lot and to her car. "Are we going somewhere?" he asked.

"No." She unlocked it. "Get in." Sasha hesitated for the barest second, though he couldn't say why exactly. Once she was in the driver's seat, just waiting, he opened the door.

"So?" She started once the door was closed behind him. "Let's hear it."

"Hear what?"

"Don't give me that, Sasha."

"I'm sorry?"

"You know what!" She smacked her hand against the bottom of the steering wheel. "God, you are unbelievable." He just looked at her, eyes wide and hopefully conveying the extent to which he did not know what.

She pursed her lips and let out a long breath through her mouth as if praying for patience. "Explain to me what happened March 13. Why you didn't come when I called."

His eyebrows drew together, his heart plummeting into his stomach. "Wanda…" Why was she doing this? "We've been over this. I can't remember any of it, you know that. You know I'd do worse than kill to be able to remember."

She stared at him a moment longer like she couldn't believe what she was hearing, before her expression turned icy. "Get out."

"Wanda." He put his hand on her arm. She slapped it away.

"I hate you!" Her voice was jagged.

"Wanda, I'm-"

"Get out of my car!"

He did. As soon as he'd closed the door he could see her shoulders shaking. He backed away, almost stumbling over the asphalt.


His alarm hadn't gone off that morning. When he'd woken up it was too light out, and Sasha sat up quickly, swiping at his phone. It was already past 8.

"Shit." He tumbled gracefully out of bed, sifting through his contacts. "Shit, shit, shit." To shower, or to brush his teeth? He hardly had time for both. Maybe brush his teeth in the shower. He swayed a little on his feet as it rang. Waking up late made him disoriented. His phone seemed cleaner. "Filippa Mikhailovna, I am so sorry. My alarm. I'll be there in twenty minutes, I promise, and I–my hair!"

Filippa made some confused question on the other end. He swiped his hand down his neck again, pulled at the top of his head, then stumbled into the bathroom.

"–that you weren't going to come in today."

He stared at himself in the mirror, his mouth falling open. "What?"

"You cancelled your classes for today."

He frowned at the phone then put it back to his ear. "No, I have systema right now, and then BJJ."

"Well, you don't have any students."

"Who cancelled my classes?"

"You did. We weren't expecting you back until the 16th." He heard the sound of typing on the other end and then she said, "Oh, my mistake, I see the email now, so we can expect you back tomorrow?"

"Uh. Yes. Expect me back tomorrow."

"Glad to hear it, Aleksander Vazhevich."

He hung up and redialed, glancing in his trash can for clippings. It was empty. The ringing stopped, and he heard a click. He spoke before Vasya could say anything.

"Did we go out last night?"

"We most certainly did."

Sasha shook his head, still swiping his hand over the top of it. "I do not remember that at all."

"Honestly I can't remember the last time I've seen you get quite so trashed. Don't worry, I didn't let you do anything too idiotic."

"Except cut all my hair off and cancel my classes for the next two weeks!"

"Oh, well, yes, except for that. But we got the class thing sorted out, don't worry about that."

He pressed his thumb and forefinger into his temple, screwing his eyes shut. "Explains the headache. God, I'm never drinking that much again. Or at all. You know how much I hate not remembering things."

"I do. I'll cut you off next time."

He sighed. "Whose phone am I using?"

"Yours. You dropped your old one off Patriarshy Bridge. Luckily Gemini was nearby and always open. Couldn't keep your same number, though."

Good grief. "Good thing only like five people had that number."

"I was about to head to the range, if your head can stand it. It's been a while since we've gotten a session in."

"Yeah, why not. It wasn't gonna be a good morning, anyway."


"Vasily Karpov. Got his bachelor's in biomedical engineering at MIPT, or PhysTech as the cool kids call it, then a master's in neuroscience. It's unclear if he ever did anything with either. Looks like he started a PhD program but never finished it, in favor of enrolling in the FSB Academy. All of this was a while ago, though, there's nothing recent on him."

"Still a lot more than what Google came up with." Steve took the offered paper, his eyes drilling holes through the few lines of text, as if they would offer up more than what Clint had just read off if he stared at them hard enough. "Thanks, Clint."

"Odd areas of study for someone who wants to go into federal intelligence," Nat mused. "I wonder what brought on the career shift."

"Early midlife crisis?" Clint shrugged. "As for the other two, the first name 'Scarlet' isn't much to go on, but there's no indication of a connection between anyone with that name and Karpov. Could be below our radar, could be a fake name. Alexander Volkov, on the other hand, is a Russian MMA fighter known commonly by the pseudonym 'Drago.'"

"Common name?" Steve guessed.

"Yeah, but one with no recorded connection to the FSB. If that's really the name he's using, he's not on the books."

Steve sagged a little against the wall. He wasn't sure what that might mean. It could be that they'd never entered him into whatever system they had because everything about Bucky was illegal. But how many people knew that? Was it just Karpov acting alone, and everyone else thought Bucky was legit? Or did they all know and just didn't care?

He pulled out his phone for the thousandth time in the past two days. He'd sent off a text to Bucky the day after he'd gone, but so far with no results.

"You're gonna drive yourself crazy with that thing," Nat warned.

"I'm worried." He shoved the phone back in his pocket, his hand with it. "Maybe I shouldn't have given him my number. He might've gotten in trouble for it. And maybe we shouldn't have dragged you into it, Clint. After what Scarlet said–"

"There's no way they can know that we told him." Nat's voice was firm and calm. "They're just trying to scare you, because they're scared of us getting them in trouble. There's nothing they can really do to stop us, so their best bet is to intimidate us into silence."

He felt a little like a scared child being comforted by his mother that there were no monsters in the closet. But Natasha was the one who was usually paranoid about bugs, and they'd checked his apartment twice over. They hadn't found any, and no one involved in this had ever even been in Steve's apartment. He tried to be reassured.

"Right." He swallowed. "As long as we don't make a big public stink until we know he's safe." If only there was some way to get a hold of him. He'd told Steve this wasn't over. Steve just had to trust that he wasn't giving up on getting back here.


Work quickly started running Sasha ragged, or maybe it was just being awake that was doing that. The kids at the martial arts academy were about as cooperative as usual, so he couldn't really blame it on them. In his apartment (one of the few Khruschoba still standing in Moscow, though every day he half-expected to find a notice from the city calling for the demolition of the crappy Soviet-era building), he sprawled out on his bed with his pillow bunched up in half under his head, set a reminder on his phone to see Vasya for overhaul on his arm, and opened Youtube.

Still no new video from SteveGRogers.

It wasn't the end of the world; he could just watch one of his old ones like he'd been doing for the past week and a half or so. Still, it was disappointing. The channel was supposed to post every Tuesday and Friday and had always been pretty consistent about it in the past.

He picked one of his favorites–a painting of sunset over the Brooklyn Bridge, the New York skyline silhouetted behind it–and slipped his earbuds in.


The kids sat spread out on the floor, their feet flat on the ground in front of them.

"Alright, we're gonna do backward break falls. Arms crossed over the chest, chin tucked. Count out loud."

They started rocking themselves back, the rhythmic sound of their hands slapping the mat echoing in time with their counting. Their counts sounded feebler than usual, especially for so early in the class.

"I'm not sensing a lot of energy in the room today," Sasha called out as they kept drilling. "Are we tired already?" That got their voices to ring out louder for about five seconds before they faded to even more pitiful than before. Once they finished their set of twenty, most of them just stayed lying face up on the mat instead of sitting back up to be ready for whatever was coming next, like they usually did.

"Alright," he said after the next set was even feebler, brow furrowing. "Is there something wrong? Some virus sucking the drive out of my hard workers?" They shook their heads, the kids on the ground sitting up, all of them looking at him with wide eyes like they were afraid of being punished. "I know fundamentals aren't the most fun, but we've got to get through them to get to the fun stuff." At that the kids just looked at one another, silently communicating or commiserating over something Sasha didn't understand. After a beat, one of the older kids snaked his hand into the air.

Sasha nodded to him. "Rudy."

"Are we doing the exercise wrong, Professor?"

"You're not doing it wrong. You're all looking at me like I'm torturing you, I'm just looking for more energy."

Rudy just fidgeted, looking like he wanted to say more. When Sasha didn't move on, holding his gaze, he spoke up again, sounding sheepish, like he didn't know if he should be saying what he was.

"I just thought we must be doing something wrong, because you're having us drill it so many times."

"What are you talking about? I've had you do two sets of break falls."

The kids all looked at each other again. "We've been drilling break falls for forever," piped up one of the younger kids, Anna.

Sasha frowned, looking around at the other students to see if they were all trying to pull one over on him. Was he going crazy? "Is that true?"

They nodded, seeming encouraged that someone else had spoken up about it. "Usually we would have partnered off a long time ago."

He looked at the clock. They were twenty minutes in. Holy shit. Maybe he was going crazy. How could they have been drilling forever? He could have sworn they'd just done it twice.

"Is everything okay, Professor?" Anna asked.

He swallowed and nodded, figuring the only thing he could do right at the moment was move on. "Everything's fine, Anna. Okay, done with warm-ups, then. Everybody pair up. Remember, we've been focusing on limb control. Position before submission doesn't have to mean you've got to wait until you have control over your opponent's entire core. A single arm or leg can be enough, and sometimes it has to be. Everyone ready?"


"Ah, shit."

"What happened?" Steve called from the living room. Nat and Clint had come over to play board games, because one of them might've been an ex-spy and the other might still currently be working for a vague yet menacing agency, but they were still boring adults when it came down to it. Steve used to comfort himself that he wasn't a thousand times more boring than his friends with the fact that Clint was trying to recruit him as an agent every other time they hung out. See, it wasn't that Steve was inherently boring, he was just choosing to stay out of that lifestyle. These days, though, he was wishing his life was a little less interesting. The stress of not knowing if Bucky was okay, of not being able to contact him, was wearing on him.

His friends had been meeting in Steve's apartment any time they got together, understanding his unspoken reluctance to talk about anything to do with the entire situation in an apartment that was probably bugged by Clint's job. Steve was grateful, because although it was getting frustrating just throwing back and forth the few things they knew without knowing what they could do about it right then, he also wouldn't like to feel like he couldn't talk about it.

"I dropped my pizza!" Clint lamented. Steve rounded the corner to see the slice, face down on the linoleum, his friend staring down at it morosely. He clapped a hand on Clint's shoulder.

"I just wanna thank you for being here with me, and for me, in this dark time," Clint said, covering Steve's hand with his own. "Would you like to say a few words, on this the saddest day?"

"You're gonna eat it anyway."

Clint nodded, solemn. "I'm gonna eat it anyway," he repeated profoundly. He patted Steve's hand. "Thank you."

"Are you planning on joining me?" Natasha asked as Clint picked up his pizza, coming up behind him and resting her forehead in the small of his back. Steve always felt most like a third wheel when Clint was fresh from a mission, because as much as she might deny it, Nat always got a little clingy. He grabbed them all some drinks and then they were off to battle it out in Clue.

They played this game partly for the fascination of the experience, because although Clint was employed by some shadowy intelligence agency, the most mysterious thing Steve knew about him, or anybody, for that matter, was that he was undefeated at Clue. Steve didn't understand it, but after watching him closely enough times to be satisfied that he wasn't cheating, he couldn't help but have the highest respect for it. It didn't stop him from trying to dethrone him every time.

Playing with a master did make for frustrating games, though. Nat, who operated under no illusion that she might ever win, got bored and chatty pretty soon.

"Are you still working on your visa?"

Steve nodded. "I got the tourist invitation. But unfortunately you need a passport before you can get a visa, so I'm still waiting on that."

"And you're sure you don't just want me to go? I could do it, Steve. Right now."

He shook his head. She sounded like she already knew he was gonna say no, anyway. "I don't want you getting mixed up over there in something that could be dangerous for you. It's not as risky for me. I know," he said with a pointed look when she opened her mouth, "that you'd be careful, that you're professionally trained to be careful, but I couldn't live with myself. Please." He knew that if she decided to go anyway there'd be nothing he could do to stop her, so he hoped she understood that the thought of her old demons catching up to her because she'd been trying to help him was just too much for him to bear. He was already losing enough sleep as it was.

He was relieved when she nodded, using her turn to peek at one of Clint's cards. "I hope the doctor's okay."

The doctor. He'd been so caught up worrying about Bucky that he'd forgotten about the doctor. God, he was a terrible person. But all guilt aside, there might actually be something there. "We never looked into who he is, how he might have known about all of this."

"But we don't know his name, do we?" Nat asked, passing the dice.

"Erskine," Steve muttered, pulling out his phone.

She straightened. "Erskine, right! I'd completely forgotten."

He punched 'erskine moscow therapist' into Google while Clint and Nat abandoned their cards in favor of hovering around him to see. It didn't immediately come up with much.

"Change the ccTLD." Clint pointed at the address bar.

"Oh, right." Steve went to google dot ru and tried again, then handed the phone to Natasha.

She smiled. "Abraham Erskine, licensed professional therapist. Can't be that many therapists in Moscow with the name Erskine, right?"

"What's his background?" Steve asked. She scrolled.

"He got his master's at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, then taught a bunch of various brain-related subjects listed here at MIPT for several years before becoming a therapist. Seems like kind of a downgrade if you ask me."

"MIPT. That's where Karpov went."

"Small world."

"Or that's how they know each other."

"If they know each other. Should we give him a call?" She didn't wait for an answer before hitting the number. The phone was only up to her ear for a few moments before she shook her head. "Number is no longer in use."

"That's kind of what I expected," Steve said. It was still disappointing, though.

She nodded. "Yeah."

"It doesn't necessarily mean something terrible," Clint said. "Could be an old listing."

"I don't see another way to get a hold of him…" Nat scrolled up and down the short listing. "No email or anything. I guess this is more of a therapist phone directory."

Another way… Steve worried his bottom lip, tapping his stubby pencil against his knee. Another way to get a hold of someone.

He sat up straight, his pencil stilling.

"I know how to contact Bucky."


what to do if you start having short-term memory problems

Sasha glanced over his shoulder quickly before starting to scroll through the hits on his phone. Vasya was in the cafe's bathroom, but he would be back before too long. Sasha had met him here for a light dinner after work, but what had happened in his first class had been bothering him all day and he couldn't quite wait until he was home to do something about it. Or at least, to feel like he was doing something about it.

A lot of the hits had to do with Alzheimer's. He added 'young' to the end of the search.

The possible causes offered were medications, alcoholism… not likely to be those. Whatever had happened that night he'd gone out drinking with Vasya was not exactly a habit. Emotional factors like stress or anxiety, head injury, sleep deprivation...well. That made sense. Maybe he shouldn't be surprised this was happening.

Vitamin B-12 deficiency. Wouldn't that be something.

The general recommendation was if memory loss is a concern, see a doctor. Of course. Only, he'd really rather not if he didn't have to. The only reason he'd agreed to start seeing Dr. Erskine in the first place was because Vasya knew him and had assured Sasha that the man wouldn't commit him to an asylum. But now Dr. Erskine had left him. Gone to practice in Germany. It wasn't uncommon, plenty of Russian psychiatrists and therapists left to practice in places where the mental health industry wasn't in crisis. And Erskine was German, anyway. Sasha just wished he'd had a bit of warning.

"Excuse me, do you speak English?"

Sasha quickly turned off his screen, before realizing that the person who had spoken probably wouldn't have been able to read it if that was the question they were asking. Oh well, better safe than sorry.

A woman, he'd guess 26 or 27, stood in front of him smiling expectantly. "Yes," he said in English. He tried not to jump to any conclusions Dr. Erskine wouldn't be proud of.

"Do you have a Russian phone number? The Wi-Fi is asking for a phone number but it doesn't like my country code." She spoke with an English accent, though not a pure one, underneath it was remnants of her first language. Maybe Japanese; this cafe did have several Japanese dishes she might be missing from home.

Sasha didn't really want to give her his phone number. But if he gave her a fake, it might not let her on to the Wi-Fi. "Yeah, no problem." He gave her Vasya's number.

"Thank you!"

A moment after she'd sat back down in her seat across the cafe, Vasya was back. "Green shirt, bun, East Asian." His voice was low. Sasha was still looking at her.

"What about her?"

"Your new target."

Sasha's skin prickled. "Why?"

Vasya seemed to be trying to read his expression. "She's been making some dangerous connections. Also, she cheated on my cousin."

He tore his eyes away from her to glare at Vasya. "I'm not your own personal hitman."

His friend tilted his head. "Aren't you? I don't see your paychecks coming from the state."

"You don't pay me to kill, you pay me to protect." Granted, in the line of protecting their agents and state officials, occasionally it wound up being the same thing.

"I know that, Sasha."

He glowered. "Is she even a red flag?"

Vasya grinned. "No. No idea who she is. She's cute, though, isn't she?"

Sasha shook his head. He wasn't in the mood for this. "Guess so. Then I guess you'll be glad she already has your number."

"What?"

He pushed his chair back. He'd finished eating, anyway. "She needed one to connect to the Internet."

"You're leaving? You're not upset about the joke, are you?"

He shook his head again, standing. "It's just been a weird day. I'm gonna go… buy some vitamins."

"Vitamins?"

"Tell Wanda hi from me. And that I'm sorry. Unless you think it would upset her."

He left and headed straight for his apartment.

The most obvious thing to try to fix was sleep deprivation. The thing was, he'd already been trying to fix that for months, with little success. It was still early, and he probably wouldn't be able to get to sleep for several hours at least, but he was so exhausted. More than usual, even.

Eventually, after cleaning his entire bathroom, he deemed it an acceptable time to at least start trying.

No position on his bed was comfortable. His sheets stuck to him even though it wasn't all that warm. He pictured his brain running a marathon, dropping things every few kilometers to lighten the load, but it didn't make it run any faster, it just left it feeling like it was missing something it needed for the race.

He groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. It hadn't quite been a dream, but his mind had definitely seemed to be wandering in that direction. Too bad he was fully conscious again. He gave in and picked up his phone off the nightstand.

SteveGRogers had a new video.

He sat up, before realizing that wasn't the most conducive position to fall asleep in, and lay back down. It had been weeks since there'd been a new video.

By the time the video was done, though, he was sitting upright in bed again, all thoughts of sleep forgotten. He played it back so he could actually listen to the words this time.


The edges of the photo were curled just a little where it laid on his desk. Steve didn't often draw straight from photos, but he needed this particular drawing to look as true to life as possible. He opened up his tin of colored pencils, hit record on his camera, and got started.

"So today's drawing is pretty special to me. It's a fond memory of mine." He penciled in the outlines of the shapes with a light stroke, using his hardest graphite at first so the lines could be easily changed. "So if you're not interested in hearing about my life, feel free to find something else to watch, I won't be offended. I won't even know. But I'm gonna get a little personal in this video. It's a little sad, real nostalgic. Bear with me, if you choose to keep watching.

"I'm drawing from a photograph today, taken during the summer after my buddy and I graduated high school. My nineteenth birthday, to be exact. At that point my buddy Bucky, who is this outline right here, had been living with me and my ma for a little over a year. It was a really hard year. Bucky's dad, who was raising him by himself at the time, was killed in a car accident, so understandably Bucky was dealing with a lot. But it was a good year, too, and maybe I say that a little selfishly because I got to live with my best friend.

"Anyway, on my nineteenth birthday, my ma took the two of us out to Coney Island. We'd all been there and to Luna Park several times before over the years, early on just me and my ma, and then when I was older just with my friends, but we'd never gone the three of us together before."

He put down his graphite pencil and picked out some of the colored ones. "Now you might've noticed that there's just two teenagers in my picture and no one else, and that's because my ma took the original photo. She was left out of a lot of pictures because she was always the one who insisted on taking them, but she never seemed to mind. Said she didn't look good in front of a camera anyway, which is not true, for the record.

"Behind us over here you can see the base of the Astro Tower, which was Bucky's favorite ride because he's a maniac. We'd just gotten off of it. Now I can do roller coasters all day, and have only thrown up on one once, an incident which Bucky used to like to bring up as often as possible. I still say there was something not right about that hotdog. Anyway, my point is, I love roller coasters, but rides like the Astro Tower are just not fun to me. I don't like that feeling of being in free fall, my stomach just flips worse than any roller coaster I've been on. But I did it because Bucky loved it, and right here in this picture I'm feelin' real proud of having done it.

"Now as I keep adding color to this I'm gonna tell you why this particular day is so special to me. As far as birthdays went, it was a good one, yeah. It was a fun day. But the whole day I was trying to memorize everything that was happening, too, because Bucky was leaving for basic training soon and I knew that it was my last birthday before everything would be different. I was a little resentful that I was being left behind just because I had a history of asthma and they wouldn't take me, but that day I was just thinking about how much I'd miss him. And it turns out that it was maybe a good thing, staying behind, because soon after Bucky left, my ma got sick, and I was able to be with her. So this is also one of my last stand-out memories of when my ma was healthy, because she was sick for more than a year after this before the illness beat her." He cleared his throat but didn't pause the stroke of his pencil. He'd known what he planned to talk about while he was making this drawing; he'd mentally prepared for it. "Sorry, like I said, it's a little sad, and unfortunately gets worse before it gets a little better. I saw Bucky briefly after he came back from basic, but then he was off to his base and later on, off to invade Iraq. Then about seven months after my ma passed, I got the notice that Bucky was gone, too. So yeah, that was pretty much the worst year of my life by a long shot.

"I don't say all this to make you all depressed, I'm just trying to express why this moment means so much to me. Doing stupid shit with my best friend, my ma calling us her 'brave boys' as she snapped the photo even though we were legally adults. The two of them are my family. Maybe one day I'll draw my ma for you, 'cause she really was beautiful."

He continued drawing in silence for a few minutes, focusing on getting Bucky's distinctive features exactly right, because if he wasn't recognizable then this whole video was a bit pointless. Once he moved back to shading his own blond hair, he started talking again. "One good thing that came out of it all was, when I was going through some of the worst of it I got involved with a program at the VA that was aimed at the family and friends of veterans and soldiers, and met one of my current best friends. He was actually the one who came up with the idea for this channel. I used to draw a lot as a kid but I hadn't really done it consistently for several years. It's been good, being able to draw for you guys and talk to you guys, even if it kind of just feels like talking to myself. I always am a little bit surprised whenever someone leaves a comment. Surprised in a good way, I mean."


On the screen, Steve Rogers's hand finally put down the pencil. "I think that about does it, huh? It could use some fleshing out, sure, and maybe I'll do that later, but I kind of like it simple like this. Thanks for staying with me 'til the end. I hope you have a good night."

Sasha's eyes bore into the screen. The drawing showed two teenage boys, a brunet kid with his arm thrown around a blond kid. The blond kid was laughing at something while the brunet, Bucky apparently, cheesed at the camera.

Sasha turned and looked in the mirror on the back of his door. He put on a big stupid smile like the brunet in the picture, then looked back at his phone, the smile dropping. It was weird. A little too weird for his heart to beat entirely normally. He didn't know what he'd looked like as a teenager, but this guy looked enough like Sasha did in his early twenties to guess that it wasn't far off from that.

He tapped out of Youtube and took out his headphones. That video did the opposite of help him sleep. Sure, doppelgangers were a thing, but still, it was unnerving. Looked like it was gonna be a long night.


The next day while running with Vasya, he passed out cold on the track. When he came to he was leaned in a sitting position up against the wall, Vasya's concerned grey eyes staring at him.

He blinked and looked around in confusion, his head throbbing. The building was empty save the two of them. "What happened?"

Vasya held his water bottle out to him. He took it gratefully. "You just… collapsed." Sasha rubbed lightly at the part of his head that hurt. Vasya's eyes followed the movement. "Careful. I think you hit your head."

"Should I go to a doctor?"

"No," Vasya said quickly. Sasha winced at him. "You don't want them to diagnose you with some crazy thing. They might commit you."

"The other day in class, I blanked out. Just completely forgot that I'd been drilling my kids in warm-ups; they had to tell me and they never go against what I say so it must've been for a long-ass time."

Vasya looked taken aback at that, but shook his head. "Even more reason."

Sasha splashed some water on his face and then cocked an eyebrow at his friend. "Well, you studied neurology, didn't you? What the fuck do you think's wrong with me?"

"I think… you've had a hard time ever since Chechnya."

"It's never been this bad, though, has it?"

"Maybe you need to get more sleep."

He took another swig of water, nodding absently. That was definitely true, but it wasn't like he wasn't trying. Sleeping pills would be amazing, but it'd probably be too risky to try and get some of those. Dr. Erskine had always encouraged other methods first, anyway.

"I think we should call that a day, huh?" Vasya offered him a hand up. He took it.


The night was particularly humid, the air heavy and sticky and the streets quieter than usual, likely due not only to the oppressive atmosphere but also in anticipation of the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow, which was the next day. Wanda was making herself a cup of tea after a long day of paperwork when there was a knock at the door of her apartment.

She pressed her eye up to the peephole. Sasha was standing there, wiping his hands on his pants and shoving them in his pockets then bringing them back out again. She hesitated a moment before unlocking and opening the door just a sliver.

"What?"

"Can I come in?" Sasha's hands were back in his pockets again. He sounded like he expected to be denied. "I need someone to talk to, and I just...don't know where else to go."

Wanda considered him, her lips pressed together in a thin line. She'd been dodging his calls, but it was a little harder to slam a door right in his face, especially when he was looking so pitiful.

She opened the door. He smiled gratefully and toed off his shoes. The slippers she kept for guests were next to the door, and she nudged them towards him with the side of her own slippered foot.

"Thank you," he said, sliding into them as she closed the door behind him.

"Did you see the candles on the river?" Wanda had been entranced by them on the way home. There were 1418 of them along the bank of the Moskva, one for each day of the Great Patriotic War.

He nodded. She was still getting used to seeing him with this haircut; he hadn't had it short in a few years. He might look younger if he didn't look so tired. "They're beautiful."

"Come sit. What was it you wanted to talk about?"

They sat across from each other in the living room, she on the couch and he in an armchair. Sasha seemed to be casting around for the right beginning for a moment. "I haven't been doing… well."

"You look like you haven't been doing well."

He'd been staring at his hands, but he looked up at her now. "I know it's not your problem. And I'm not here to ask for your help; I don't know what I would expect you to do, really, I just…" He grimaced, his gaze lowering to his hands laced across his stomach again. "I don't know."

But looking at him, Wanda thought she did. She could see the uncertainty in his posture, hear it in his voice, and yet he'd pushed through it and come across town to see her. He probably felt pretty alone; he probably missed her. "You just need someone to talk to."

He peered back up at her through his lashes and nodded. "And I thought maybe you might too."

Something hardened in her a little at that. It might have been true, of course it was true, but she didn't want to talk to him about it. "Let's just focus on you for right now."

His piercing eyes held their gaze for a moment but she ignored it, and eventually he gave in. "I feel like… this is gonna sound weird, but I feel like my brain is just...deteriorating, or something. I can't sleep, I'm blacking out, I just… feel like I'm going…"

"Crazy?" she supplied. He winced, but nodded.

"Not in a dangerous way."

"Have you talked about any of this with Vasya?"

"Yeah. He recommended I get more sleep."

"A difficult feat to accomplish when you can't sleep."

His lips twitched. "Exactly."

Blacking out… she didn't know exactly what he meant by that now, but she'd thought it sounded rather convenient, back when it had supposedly happened in London. Too ashamed to admit that he'd failed to save Pietro, so he claimed he couldn't remember what had happened and then had some sort of nervous breakdown to keep it up. Why would he be so affected by it? It was her brother who had died, and she managed to keep functioning when she needed to, even though she was the one who was walking around missing half her self. Sasha must have just been putting it on, and it grated on her to no end.

But he really did look like shit.

"There's another thing…" He started again, looking even more uncertain, if that was possible. "It's maybe nothing, but I just gotta show you." He slipped his phone of out his pocket. "Maybe it's just cause I was so tired, that it rattled me the way it did."

"What is it?"

He tapped the screen a few times before passing it over to her. It was a screenshot of a drawing of two teenage boys. One of them was clearly Sasha when he was younger, and after a moment she recognized the other as one of the men who had been at that house in America, but also younger. Slimmer, more boyish. But she never forgot a face. She was trained not to.

She raised her eyes back to Sasha, who was looking back at her so expectantly she wondered if he was even breathing. She turned the screen back around to him, her finger next to the blond's face. "Who is that?"

The question did not seem to be what he expected. "What? I don't know. I mean, he's the guy who drew the picture. I was more focused on the other kid."

"Isn't that you?"

Sasha nodded emphatically, seeming pleased. This was the reaction he was looking for, apparently. "It looks just like me, doesn't it?"

She frowned. "Yes, but.." She moved the screen closer to him, still pointing at the blond. "You're telling me you don't know who this is?"

He seemed more perplexed than ever. "No. Do you?"

"Yeah! I mean, not really, I don't know much about him, but that's Steve, isn't it?"

Sasha, strangely, paled at that. "I didn't tell you his name was Steve."

What had gotten into him? "No, but I heard you call him that."

"I didn't say anything! I just showed you the picture!"

"Sasha, what are you talking about? I mean at the house in Lake George, you called him Steve!"

"The house where?"

The man sitting across from her looked so wildly lost that it gave her pause. A slick, uneasy feeling was forming in her gut. There'd always been something that didn't sit right with her about that weekend. She didn't like how no one would tell her what was really going on back there. Now that feeling that something was off was even stronger. "You don't remember that?"

The confusion slid away into something more neutral, more guarded. "Well, fuck. Something else? I swear, one of these times you're just gonna be messing with me."

She dropped her head into her hands. "So you really don't remember what happened in London."

"I told you I don't. You didn't believe me?"

Not really, no, she hadn't. God, Sasha really did have something wrong with him. It seemed a little weird, though, that he had no memory of the time in America that Vasya had specifically told her not to ask him about. She didn't like it.

"So I do actually know Steve G Rogers?"

"I don't know."

"And the two of us, me and you, we were both in Lake George? That's in New York, right? I think my old therapist might've mentioned that place. When was this?"

Wanda lifted her face out of her hands and took a deep breath. "I don't think I have enough information to properly answer your questions right now. I'll find out what I can, though, and we can talk about this later?"

Sasha's leg was bouncing up and down. He seemed agitated, and rightly so. "Really?"

She felt a little bad about how doubtful he sounded. "Really."

"Soon, though."

She nodded, and he stood up, his shoulders hunched. He wasn't even pressing the matter. She watched as he went to retrieve his shoes, and she realized that he probably didn't think he could demand anything of her. It was a jarring realization.

"See you soon, then. I'm...sorry. Have a good night."

She turned her gaze resolutely to the mug cupped between her hands. "Goodnight, Sasha."


Vasya's office was nice. It had big windows overlooking the city and plenty of open space, at least compared to Wanda's. She often preferred to hang out in his office when it wasn't entirely necessary for her to be in her own, so he wasn't surprised to see her at his door the next morning.

"Are you busy?"

"Just catching up on emails." He leaned back in his chair, motioning her in. "The Day of Remembrance and Sorrow really ought to be an official public holiday. Nobody wants to work."

She hummed her agreement, leaning up against the side of his desk with her arms crossed over her chest. "So I talked to Sasha last night."

"Oh?"

"He's not doing well, Vasya."

He grimaced sympathetically. "Yeah, seems like it."

"He looks like shit, says he can't sleep, that he blacked out the other day. He doesn't even remember being in America."

"Wanda!" He threw up his hands in frustration. "You're not supposed to be talking to him about that. It's classified."

"Well it doesn't matter, does it, because he doesn't remember it. You don't exactly seem surprised that he's forgotten an entire weekend."

Vasya shrugged. "He's been telling me he's having memory problems."

"It's just weird." She shook her head. "I don't know. I'm worried about him."

"You're worried about him? Really?"

She ignored that. "Seems like he should see a doctor."

"They'd send him straight to a nut house."

Unfortunately he was probably right about that. Mental problems were not things that were treated lightly, it barely mattered what form they took. "Are you sure there's nothing you can tell me about what was going on that weekend? Everything Sasha does is classified, but we've always talked about it in the past."

Her boss and friend stood from his desk, pacing across the room. Walking often helped him get his thoughts in order, so she waited. "Actually, Wanda," he started after a few moments, his fingers tugging at his collar, "I find myself in a bit of a predicament right now. Maybe you can help me."

Her ears perked up at that. "Of course, if I can."

Was she imagining things, or was Vasya nervous right now? He seemed to be steeling himself for something. "Okay, oh boy, this is gonna be a long story." He folded his hands under his chin and stopped his pacing. "Wanda, Sasha is not who you think he is."

When he didn't say anything else, Wanda scoffed. "I think I've known Sasha long enough to know who he is. At least, as much as anyone does. Even he doesn't really know who he is."

"No, you're right. He doesn't. But I do."


"Damn, girl!" Steve bounced on his toes from his position from behind Natasha's head. "She's going for the 50s! This woman's a badass, you guys!" He called out to the gym at large.

"Shut up!" Nat's voice was strained as she started her reps on the bench, her arms trembling slightly. "You're gonna make me drop it on my chest from laughing."

"I am here to make sure that that does not happen," he said in his most serious voice. Nat cracked up and then grunted.

"Shut up!"

"I'm not even being funny, you're just in a mood. 7, 8… were you wanting to go 12?"

She breathed out harshly through her nose. "Yeah."

He counted her to the end of the set and then took the bar off her. "You're amazing. Especially after wearing your arms out like that."

"Yeah, they feel like noodles." Still lying on the weight bench, she reached out for her water bottle, which Steve handed to her. "And now I'm gonna take a little break, so you can check your phone like you've been itching to all morning."

Steve ducked his head. "Sorry."

She waved him off. "I wanna know too. Anything?"

He'd set his Youtube app settings to notify him if he got any comments or private messages, but he still found himself checking every chance he got. His hope had been that if Bucky hadn't been able to text him or had lost his number for some reason, seeing Steve reach out through his video would prompt him to make contact. There wasn't any username subscribed to his channel that seemed like it would belong to Bucky, making it difficult for Steve to try to make contact directly, so he'd thought this would be his best shot. Maybe the story he'd told would trigger some old memories, maybe it wouldn't, but still, he wanted to remind Bucky that he wasn't alone. That he wasn't abandoning him, in whatever subtle way he could. And even if Bucky didn't remember the things Steve was talking about, he wanted him to know about them.

There was still nothing. Maybe he wasn't able to reach out through Youtube any more than he was able to text.

"Negative?" Nat guessed from his face.

He shook his head. "Come on, Barnes, show yourself…"


Now Wanda was the one pacing. "So you're saying you abducted a random foreign soldier from a prison camp in Iraq, lied to him and said that he'd been fighting Chechen rebels, and then trained him to work with us?" And given her false intel about James Falsworth. She didn't appreciate being lied to about an assignment.

"He would've died, Wanda. They were doing terrible things to him. When I found him he wasn't anybody, so out of his mind he could barely even talk. No past, no identity, just some dog tags that, with a little research, proved that he had no family. I gave him a noble past, an identity, a family. An arm."

And took his dog tags, clearly. Maybe Wanda should have put it together. She'd known that Vasya had done a few stints in Iraq, helping defend Baghdad by supplying weapons, even as the second Chechen campaign was going on. And she'd known that he'd saved Sasha from some sick people who were doing experiments on POWs. Did it really matter, if he'd taken a Russian soldier out of a prison camp or an American one?

Maybe not, but it kind of seemed like it did.

"Aren't you worried, talking about this in your office?" She glanced instinctively to the camera in the corner of the ceiling.

He waved away the concern. "The only surveillance in here is video. Besides, they wouldn't do anything. This was 2003 when I did this, the FSB really needed someone like Sasha after Khattab was assassinated in Chechnya, and then especially after the whole Alexander Litvinenko catastrophe. The whole organization was under way too much scrutiny after that. If they were listening right now, they'd probably destroy the tape."

Khattab was a jihadist commander in the conflict in Chechnya who had been killed in 2002 by the FSB. But things hadn't really blown up for the agency until Alexander Litvinenko. Wanda had always thought there was something a bit racist about that. He had been a traitorous FSB officer who'd sought asylum in the UK until he was murdered, supposedly by a polonium-laced letter. British investigators had accused both Putin and the FSB chief of approving Litvinenko's murder, and the investigation was still going on, after years.

So yeah, Wanda could see the appeal of someone like Sasha. Someone who wasn't technically affiliated with them but would do what it took to keep the important people safe, even if it turned into dirty work. Since Sasha was working for Vasily Karpov, not the FSB, he and Vasya would be the only ones to take the fall if things were to go south. And in all honesty, 'the fall' hadn't been too bad for the main suspect of Litvinenko's murder, Andrei Lugovoi. The man had been made a national hero and a member of the Duma.

She wondered sometimes if that's what Vasya was picturing, when he thought about what might happen if Sasha was ever brought into a mess like the Litvinenko case. After all, he was an FSB bodyguard just like Lugovoi had been, if unofficially. But she thought maybe her boss hadn't really thought of all the implications of the agency having an off-the-books person to pin things on. They had made Lugovoi their champion because he was one of their own and they were too proud to be seen doing otherwise. She had a feeling that if Sasha ever fell under scrutiny, they would bury him.

"But if the Americans make a big fuss and claim him now, do you think your big officer friends would help you?" she asked dubiously.

"No." Vasya was pinching his brow like he had a headache. "I don't. That'd be my mess. Which is why we need to make sure the Americans don't make a big fuss."

"But how could we do that? We can't just kill them all."

He shook his head in agreement. "Any one of them might reasonably commit suicide on their own, but all four of them together? It's way too suspicious. Unless there was an accident, when they were all together…"

Wanda rolled her eyes. "Any real ideas? It seemed to me like your plan to get away with this relied upon everyone involved taking your threats very seriously for the rest of their lives."

"Right. Which is why we need a better plan. I was thinking," he shifted a bit in his seat before he cleared his throat and continued, "we could erase their memory of it."

She was ready to throw her hands up in exasperation, to get him to be serious, but he just kept looking at her with this appraising look, like she was being tested. She stared at him. "You...think you can really do that."

"I can. And it's the only way to be sure."

"Oh, God." Her mind was racing through all the dots. Her grip tightened on the edge of the desk. "Sasha didn't just lose his memory, did he."

"He did!" Vasya defended quickly. "At first. Because of what they did to him, to his head. But it didn't stick. I assumed it would, but he kept having these weird little moments, where something would come back, and then it would grow into a little more."

"You mean he was healing."

"Yeah." He nodded, as if equating healing to a problem was a normal thing to do. "I was able to explain it away for a little while, to fit some of it into something that could have been his life in Russia and to shrug my shoulders at the rest, but I knew it wouldn't work forever. So I put my studies to good use, and with some help from an old cognitive neuroscience professor, I figured out a way to target specific memories in the brain."

He sounded proud. Wanda didn't even know who she was talking to right now. "How many times did you do it to him?"

"Just a couple." He shrugged. "The first time took really well."

"He told me he feels like his brain is deteriorating." Her words were slow and carefully controlled.

"Yeah." His shoulders slumped slightly. "That's not good. He shouldn't just be dropping random short-term memories. I'm afraid tampering more might just make it worse, though."

"How could you do that, Vasily? He's one of our own. And I don't mean Russian, I mean… he's family."

"Oh now he's family again?" He raised his eyebrows. "After what he did to Pietro?"

"He didn't kill him," she said without much feeling.

"He didn't put a stop to it, either."

"Neither did I." The words felt like lead in her mouth. She had trouble swallowing.

Vasily's eyebrows raised even further, and he leaned back in his seat. "No, but that wasn't your job. Besides, he's only family because of what I did to him. Otherwise you never would have known him."

Of course that was her job. She was his twin sister, that was always her job. Even without weapons, she should have found a way. She should have subdued the assassin.

"I don't think I can do this by myself, Wanda. You're my best friend, I don't know who else to turn to. If I do nothing I'll go to prison for sure."

But if it went wrong, so would she. Caught up in an international trial. "I don't know about this, Vasya."

He sighed, nodded, and then stood slowly from his chair. "I hate to pull this card, because we're friends, but need I remind you that I am your boss?"

She scoffed. "What, are you going to fire me?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "I decide what your next assignment is, not you. If you're not happy with that system anymore I'm sure you can find employment elsewhere. No hard feelings."

He was standing close to her, with her back pressed to the edge of his desk, but she stared him down. Whatever feelings she had toward her oldest friend right now, she would not give him the impression that she was afraid of him.

"You would fire the person who now knows enough to get you thrown in prison?" Her voice was quiet but calm, and maybe she wouldn't actually do it, but as long as they were throwing around empty words.

"Wanda." He shook his head with an amused little smile. "Have you forgotten already? I can make you not know anything very quickly. If it'd be easier for you, we can do that."

Her composure slipped, and she gaped at him. As much as Vasya was often full of idle threats, usually directed at other people, she leaned toward believing him on this one. He could be as pigheaded as they came and he always found a way.

"But I'd really prefer it and appreciate it if you would help me."

She couldn't find employment elsewhere. He knew that. This job was her life. Pietro had died serving their country, and she'd sworn to herself that she'd serve her until she died, too.

Damn it all. "What do you need me to do?"


Maybe he should make another video. Be a little less subtle. Steve was still debating with himself what might be the best way to proceed by the time they left the gym. He was so preoccupied with it that he only caught the end of what Natasha was saying as they pushed through the double doors.

"The last time I heard from her, she was telling me how she was getting over her addiction to pain pills. And now she's inviting me to her baby shower! Life's weird, huh?" Now Steve kind of wished he'd been listening. Before he could agree that life was weird, though, his phone started buzzing in his pocket.

"Sorry, hold on." It was an unknown number. He decided to answer it anyway. "Hello?"

"Steve Rogers? This is Scarlet."

Steve stopped on the sidewalk. Nat put her hand on his arm.

"I want to help you get back with your friend."