The door opened behind Steve. Bucky twitched, O'Malley walked in, looking like a doctor again.

"How are you doing?" Bucky didn't reply. "I just want repeat bloods and vitals. I won't be a minute." Bucky had gone very still. He hadn't been moving much before, but now only his chest was moving at all, he was breathing fast and he wasn't blinking.

"Bucky?" He didn't answer. O'Malley had clearly noticed something was wrong, but seemed to have decided to ignore it. She walked around to stand next to Bucky and reached for his wrist. The instant she touched him, Bucky jumped up, pulling his arm out of her hand and jumping up on to the bed, kicking O'Malley in the chest as he went. O'Malley cried out and staggered back in to the wall, she almost fell down. Bucky jumped off the other side of the bed and backed away until he hit a shelf. Sam had had the sense to get out of his way. Steve called out to Bucky, he didn't seem to hear. He just stood stock still, backed in to the corner, left shoulder back, right arm held up in front of him, eyes wide, mouth open, panting. He looked terrified.

"Doc, are you OK?" Steve said.

"Think so. Just a shock." She got up. Steve nudged her behind himself. Bucky looked… above all else he looked scared. He looked like a wild thing cornered. He'd pulled his drip out, it was lying on the floor, oozing slowly, and blood was seeping down his arm where the drip had been. Sam had his hands spread out in front of him again.

"Bucky, it's OK. Nobody is trying to hurt you. I can see that you're scared and that's OK. Nobody wants you to be scared. Can you tell me what you're afraid of?" Sam took a step forwards. Bucky turned his head to look at Sam, then back at whatever he could see of O'Malley from behind Steve. Sam took another step forward. The length of time Bucky was looking at him each time he moved his head got longer. This was way too precise. "All on me. All on me, OK? I'm not gonna hurt you."

"Sam-" Steve started. The door opened. Steve forced himself not to look round.

"Wilson, back down." Romanoff's voice. The door closed again. "He'll kill you if you touch him." Sam didn't move. "I'm serious back down." Sam hesitated, then took a couple of steps backwards. "Soldier, stand." Bucky stopped on Romanoff. "Soldier," Romanoff repeated, more firmly. "stand." It was as though a switch had been flipped in Bucky's head. His mouth closed, the panic in his eyes dimmed and he straightened in to a disarmingly normal At Ease, feet shoulder width apart, hand by his side. "Soldier, acknowledge handler." Bucky walked forwards, not even glancing at O'Malley as he passed her, and stopped in front of Romanoff. His breathing was settling down too. Bucky dropped to one knee directly in front of Romanoff and dropped his head down. That was creepy.

"Romanoff…"

"Let me do this Rogers. You'll never get near him otherwise." She rested the tips of her fingers on Bucky's shoulder for a moment. "Stand." Bucky got back to his feet. This was sick.

"Buck," Bucky didn't even look at him.

"What did you want to do?" Romanoff asked O'Malley.

"Ah… vitals and repeat bloods. But I need to fix that drip now."

"Do you want him standing or sitting or…"

"Um, either." O'Malley walked back round to Bucky slowly.

"He won't hurt you now." Romanoff said. "He won't move unless I tell him to." Steve met Sam's eye. This was sick. This was really sick.

O'Malley listened to Bucky's. The people in the room who looked calmest now were Romanoff and Bucky. When O'Malley tried to pick up Bucky's arm to take blood, he let it drop again as soon as she let go of. Romanoff smiled, picked up Bucky's arm positioned it and said "stay". Then Bucky didn't move an inch until O'Malley had drawn blood and set another drip up and Romanoff had told him to stand. This was just…

"Will I know if I hurt him?" O'Malley asked.

Romanoff frowned. "Presumably at some point he'd wince or yelp." That just wasn't right.

"But he'd never stop me? Can he not do as you say?" Romanoff thought for a moment.

"Obviously he can disobey, he was ordered to take Rogers out, but it must cost him a lot. That's my guess anyway."

"Can he tell me if he's in pain?"

"Soldier, condition report."

"Tissue oxygenation sub-optimal. Mentation optimal. Respiratory function assessment impaired, not critical. Hydration status sub-optimal. Nutritional status impaired. Skeletomuscular function cause for concern. Prosthesis missing, data missing. Emesis has occurred." What the heck was all that?

"Prosthesis is not a cause for concern. Location known." Romanoff said.

"When did emesis occur?" O'Malley asked. Bucky ignored her.

"He won't answer you." Romanoff said. "Soldier, when did emesis occur?"

"Approximately eight hours ago. Time measurement impaired."

"It was mostly water." Steve put in. "He drank a few cups and brought it more or less straight back up." O'Malley frowned.

"Even with the drugs… how fast did he drink?"

"Pretty fast. He's had a bit more to drink since and that hasn't come back up yet."

"OK, that's less worrying. Are you in pain?" O'Malley asked.

"Soldier, are you in pain?" Romanoff repeated.

"Do not understand."

Romanoff sighed. "Of course, they programmed him to ignore pain." Programmed? He wasn't a computer. "Status report? Is that it?"

"Status: ambulatory, sub-operational. Request assistance."

"Assistance is being given." Bucky looked around blankly. Why was he like this? He'd been fine ten minutes ago.

"When did you last eat?" O'Malley asked. Romanoff repeated the question.

"Data corrupted. Before December 18th, 2014."

"Ten days without eating?" O'Malley repeated incredulously. "He reacted to the drugs like Rogers does, with that metabolism..." That was true. Steve knew very well what happened when he didn't eat enough. He didn't have to miss many meals before it got bad. "He'll be OK with another injection, won't he?" She turned away to the shelves. "I'm just concerned he'll crash if he's that hypoglycaemic. This is unorthodox, but it does work. I've used it before." She filled the largest syringe on the shelf with clear liquid, came back to Bucky and stuck the lot in to his stomach. "I just don't want to shove more fluid in to him than he can cope with. If I come back again in six hours and do the same, do you think he'll react the same way?"

"Yes." Romanoff said at once.

"He might do better if we talk him through it first." Sam countered. Romanoff shook her head.

"Might. You can try, but…"

O'Malley picked up the blood and walked out. "If these are better, we might be able to wait longer."

"Romanoff, let him go now." Steve said.

"Soldier, at ease." Bucky didn't react at all. "I don't know that I can, I might be able to order him to rest or something. Soldier, up." She tapped the bed with one hand. Bucky jumped on to it and just stood there. This was just creepy. "Soldier, lay down." Again, Bucky obeyed. Romanoff pulled the blanket over him. "Stay, sleep." Immediately, Bucky's eyes flickered closed. Romanoff looked up and met Steve's stare.

"Now you're going to tell me what you're holding back." He saw her hesitate. He saw her calculating how much to give him. He hated that. What was he going to do with the information to hurt her? She turned and walked towards the door. Steve went after her, longer strided, and caught up with her just over the threshold. "No." He said firmly. "You're not walking out on me." She closed the door behind them.

"If you wanna know, fine. But just you, not him."

"Fine." He wanted whatever she had out of her enough that he didn't bother to defend Sam.

She hesitated again. "You know how the Red Room worked; take young girls, take all their childhood to mould them in to weapons, spies, whatever they needed us to be. After the Iron Curtain came down in the Cold War, what was left of HYDRA that wasn't growing inside the SSR allied itself with the KGB. We traded tech, skills. Red Room girls are trained in hand to hand combat. By the time I was about ten, some of our handlers were getting shy of training with us, we were getting strong. Some foreign men brought in a man to train us, they said he wasn't so much a man as a machine, they just called him The Asset, 'Soldier' when they were talking to him."

"And you think that was-"

"I wasn't sure. They didn't tell us anything about him, I spend a lot of time trying hard not to think about the Red Room. All I had to go on was a white man with brown hair of that build and something about how he fought. They kept the arm hidden from us."

"When did you figure this out?"

"I wasn't sure until he stood when I told him to."

"But you suspected?"

"From a bit after we left the HYDRA base."

"And you didn't think it was worth telling anyone."

"It was only a suspicion, what I remember from my childhood isn't that reliable." He had no way of knowing if she was lying, and that bothered him.

"OK. What does that mean?"

"Only that there's a way of restraining him. He was just sitting talking to you before, I didn't ever see the man who was brought in to fight us do that, he was like he was a minute ago the whole time. I think that's how he was run on missions. Most of his down-time he must have been frozen. I won't go far. I'll come back if he wakes up like…" She walked away. Steve didn't stop her. He was too tired. He wasn't up to fighting her right now.

"There's gotta be a story to tell about last night." Sam said as Steve walked back in. "You've gotta tell me how it all went down."