Seated on the floor, leaning against the wall behind him, touching the tip of each finger on the left hand to the thumb over and over again, Barnes shrugged. "Ich vergesse." I forget.

Seated next to him, Steve sighed and replied, also in German, "That's probably because of the drugs this time." Steve held out a hand, wrist balanced on a knee. After a long moment, Buck fit his hand into Steve's, palm only a little rougher than it had been most of a century ago, still familiar. Steve squeezed lightly. "You still have to go in that thing but you can be asleep first and I swear you'll wake up the next day every time."

The sergeant nodded. "Okay."

Steve got to his feet. "You ought to shower." He got a blank stare and rephrased. "Du sollst dich duschen."

Sometime later, down in the lab, Clint was perched on the corner of a workbench, looming over Tony, who was micro-soldering. Tony shoved his work glasses up on his head, leaned on one elbow, and looked at Clint. "Three hours. Give me three hours. I'm working on it, okay? The hovering doesn't help."

"If I walk out that door, you will distract yourself with something shiny. You'll make a toaster sentient or something."

"I would not."

Bruce laughed from behind a microscope. "Yes you would."

Tony glared at him for a moment then faced Clint again. "I can't work with you looming over me. Go get G-Man to blow you or something."

Clint reached across the bench to cuff Tony's ear. "Phil is locked in my room with Maria, busy trying to rebuild the foundations of S.H.I.E.L.D. I'm also still not speaking to him."

Tony narrowed his eyes and flipped his glasses back down. "No. Hovering."

Which a frustrated sigh, Clint slid off the bench to the floor, pulled his phone out of his pocket, and called up a game. Tony resumed soldering. Bruce chuckled and shook his head. All the Avengers were children in one way or another it seemed. A few minutes passed before Jarvis interrupted the non-conversation. "Sir, I've just received a message for you." The A.I sounded vaguely confused. "It seems to have been sent from a Nintendo Game Boy."

Tony, who was the only person who usually didn't try to look at Jarvis, actually stopped and looked at the ceiling. "What?"

"I think you'd best read it for yourself, Sir." Jarvis pulled the text of the message up on the nearest screen.

Hey Ned,
I hear Steph's caught up with her BFF Jill and they're crashing at your place. He said she said, y'know? I totes gotta see Jill, will pop by soon as Mom lets me out of the house.
—Naptheli Renner

Tony frowned at the message, utterly baffled. Bruce got up from his own work to frown at the message as well, then leaned over to nudge Clint, who was completely unaware that anything had happened. The archer looked up. Bruce gestured at the screen. "Does this mean anything to you?"

Clint got to his feet, frowned at the message, then made a face like someone who had just eaten sushi for the first time. "It's from Natasha."

Bruce looked at him. "You sure?"

"Oh yeah." The archer grinned and poked at the signature line. "One time when we were in Alaska a barista misheard Natalie as Naptheli. We joked about it for a week. Renner is the last name of my go-to alias. Only she'd put those together."

Tony flapped a hand at the screen. "What the hell does it mean then?"

"Look at me when talking to me or finish the damn hearing aids already."

"Gyah, sorry." Tony faced Clint before repeating. "What does it mean?"

"Well, Ned is probably a reference to Ned Stark from Game of Thrones, so that's you, Tony. Steph, female form of Steve. Jill is Barnes then, I guess. So that's 'Hey Stark, I hear Steve found Barnes and they're at the tower.' 'He said she said' is basically short for it's a long story how she found out. She wants to see—probably interrogate—Barnes. She'll be here as soon as she gets out of Russia."

"Russia?" Tony and Bruce asked as one.

Clint grinned and poked at the screen. "Mom."

News of the message spread quickly through the tower. Coulson demanded Tony trace it. Tony abandoned Clint's hearing aids again in order to try before announcing that he couldn't even figure out how Natasha had managed to send a message using a Game Boy.

"There must be some way you can—" Coulson began before Tony cut him off.

"There probably is, but I don't know what it is and it'll take a while to figure out and longer to implement. I have other projects and I don't see that this warrants the effort."

"Doesn't warrant the effort!" Coulson exclaimed.

"Look," Clint, whom Jarvis had helpfully been subtitling the conversation for, inserted, "this is Natasha we're talking about. She's in Russia. She's basically home, and I think we all know we won't find her if she doesn't want to be found. That's what Tony means by it not warranting it. She says she's coming here, so he can ask how the hell she texted with a Game Boy when she gets here and then he'll know for future reference. In the meantime it would be really fucking nice if he could finish my hearing aids, there is no reason this should be taking as long as it has." He glared at the two of them until Coulson left the room and Tony returned to his work.

Upstairs, Steve was sitting on the carpet in the perimeter hallway that ran around the outside edge of the floor with the common room and guest bedrooms. His sketchbook was in his lap but he wasn't drawing, he was staring out at the city and the overcast sky. He heard footsteps behind him and looked around. Bucky padded barefoot down the hall toward him, left arm hanging limply at his side. Steve had noticed that, sometimes, it seemed like Buck's brain forgot the arm was there. With a heavy sigh, he sat down next to Steve and leaned against the glass, metal shoulder hitting the window with a soft tick. "I don't remember anything since this morning until about twenty minutes ago."

Steve closed his sketchbook. "You seem okay right now."

"Yeah." Bucky shoved his hair out of his face. "Think I prefer being out to lunch."

"Don't say that."

"When I know what's going on, I know how crazy I am—"

"You're not crazy, Buck—"

"I spend most of my time thinking I'm somewhere or somewhen I'm not, my memory's shot, don't even always know my own name, I—" He slammed his prosthetic fist against the window. The glass shuddered but held.

"You aren't crazy. Listen to me." Steve snapped his fingers next to Bucky's face a couple times to get him to look away from his own metal hand. "You are not crazy. You're sick and hurt. Yeah, you're pretty delusional a lot of the time right now, there's a lot wrong with your memory, and right now I'm honestly expecting you to lose your grip on reality any second—and I'm sure you are too—but you're getting better. Everybody's gonna help you, we are helping you. We can help you remember and—"

"What if I don't want to remember?" Bucky looked darkly through the fringe of his hair that refused to stay out of his face

Steve sighed, understanding the unspoken the things I've done at the end of that sentence. "Do you remember Natasha? She was with me back in spring when I was your assignment." Bucky frowned a little. Steve flipped through his sketchbook and held up a portrait he'd done of her. "Red hair, not very tall."

"With the little electric things that look like nickels?"

"That's her." Steve nodded. "She's done a lot of bad things too. She's coming here. I'm not sure when, but you can talk to her. If anyone knows how to live with the kinds of things you're having to live with, it's her."

"Didn't I shoot her?" Bucky asked, his tone clearly conveying his skepticism that Natasha would want to help him.

"I'm pretty sure she met her best friend by getting shot by him."