"You let them in here? They aren't staying! I refuse to-oh my god, Bruce Banner!" Toni's voice reached a pitch Bucky had never heard before. "Howard wouldn't let me go to university, but I smuggled in all your papers! Your gamma ray research is the bomb! I have so much shit I need your brain for!"

And that was it so far as Toni was concerned. Bucky barely saw her grab onto Bruce like an octopus attacking, then she was dragging him farther into the keep and they were both gone.

"That is one weird-ass princess," Sam commented, but a growl from Bucky had him backing off before disappearing himself.

They all found rooms in the keep, or so Bucky assumed. He was too busy prying at Steve to really bother finding out.

"You're still so tiny." He poked at Steve's chest.

"Hey, you just got bigger. And I'm big for a human." He dodged Bucky's claw to sit on one of the tables Toni had thrown together some time back, when she said they needed furniture.

"Human." Bucky shook his head, still riding the edge of disbelief.

"Peggy's human, so I had to find a way to be with her, Buck." The look in Steve's eyes was far away and fond as he began pulling off his armor.

"She couldn't get that wizard of yours to change her into a dragon?"

"She already is one!" Clint laughed as he hung over a balcony two stories up.

Steve threw his armored boot up at him, but Clint was already gone.

"He just means she's a stern taskmaster, Buck. And some people could use the discipline!" he yelled at the balcony.

"You never had a disciplined bone in your body." Bucky hooked a claw in the boot and picked it up off the floor.

Steve nodded his thanks at the return of it.

"Like I said, I changed. I had to, Buck, after you disappeared."

"I…don't remember a lot of it," Bucky admitted, stretching out to lie on his stomach, snout pointed at Steve. "I remember a bit of my family, you, exploring the weirs and then the mountains. I…did I…fall?" He couldn't quite grasp onto the memory; it slipped away, as so many early ones did.

"I don't know, no one does." Steve's concerned gaze never left him even as he neatly stacked every piece of armor he removed. "You left one day to hunt and never came back. We looked for you, for months, never found a sign."

"It was HYDRA, I know that." Bucky was certain of it. "Most of my memories, the few I've got, are about them, being used by them."

"HYDRA!" Natasha snarled, suddenly standing there with a goblet of wine in one hand. "ненавижу этих ублюдков!"

"Yes! Fuck those fuckers!" Clint was dangling by his knees from the chandelier, seven stories above.

When Bucky looked back down, Natasha was gone again.

"We know they enslave every powerful creature they can." Now in just trousers and shirt, Steve crossed his legs and ran a hand back through his hair. "If I'd known they had you, Buck."

"I escaped." Bucky dismissed his regret. "Their magic only works so long on dragons, no matter what methods they use to reinforce it."

Too many memories of beatings, torture with heat and fire, sharp impliments prying at and beneath his scales.

"I wish I'd known. I would've come for you, you know that."

"I've moved on."

"I can see that." Steve let him change the subject. "Setting up house with a princess, Bucky." He shook his head, giving him a mock-disapproving look. "What would your ma say."

"Probably tell me to say 'yes, ma'am,' 'no ma'am,' and 'anything you say, ma'am."

"So just like you're already doing, huh?"

"Yeah, punk." There, he remembered that.

Steve grinned brilliantly in response. "Jerk."