Bucky looked around Steve's hospital room as he walked through the door, stopping when he noticed how pale some of the members of the team looked, and the guilt lingering on Bruce's face.

"What happened?' he asked.

"We...we just went through what the kid had with him when you brought him in," Sam offered, pointing at the pile that was resting on the small table in the room. Bucky could see the black pants and jacket the boy had been wearing, and the bow he had been wielding.

"This was in the pocket of the pants," Bruce offered passing Bucky a small zip locked evidence bag with a single white tablet in it. Bucky held the tablet up to the light, examining it, frowning as a suspicion began to form in his mind.

"It's a cyanide tablet," Tony offered heavily in explanation, confirming Bucky's fears. Bucky felt his heart leap into his throat and his legs trembled beneath him as he realised what might have happened had his pursuit of the kid...his son... gone differently.

"Bucky...are you ok?" Steve asked, his voice filled with concern. Bucky hesitated, before he shook his head, unable to bring himself to speak. He was reasonably sure that, if he opened his mouth, he was going to throw up. His breathing hitched in his throat, and Bucky reached out for something…anything…to steady himself as the world seemed to spin around him.

"Easy," Rhodey was the closest to him and Bucky barely felt Rhodey's grip in his arm, steadying him. He tried to breath again, but nothing got past the tight feeling in his chest. The evidence bag slipped from his slack fingers and fell to the floor.

"Bucky, hey, look at me," Sam snapped his fingers in front of Bucky's face, and Bucky blinked, having not realised that he'd closed his eyes. His legs chose that moment to buckle beneath him, and Rhodey swore as Sam grabbed onto Bucky as well, both of the other men supporting Bucky as he dropped to his knees.

"Bucky? What's wrong with him?" Steve's alarm was evident from his voice.

Tony's quiet, "panic attack," was lost to the roaring in Bucky's ears as his mind spun faster and faster as he realised what could have happened…what Natasha's little boy…his little boy…had been expected to do, and may well have done, had things turned out differently.

Instead of laying in a hospital bed, only a few rooms away, unconscious, but without life threatening injuries, the little boy, only six years old, could be dead by his own hand, or rather, at the orders of his own handlers.

"Hey, come on man," Sam rubbed Bucky's flesh arm, "You did the right thing, dude, chasing the kid down." Sam counselled, "We don't know if the kid was going to take this or not. At least now he's got a chance of having a life. Yeah, he's a bit banged up now, but...but it's better than him taking this."

Bucky tried to focus on Sam's words. His son was alive, and couldn't get to the poison anymore. He shouldn't try and focus on what might have happened. The vice around his chest eased a little, and Bucky let out a wheezing breath, before inhaling and letting out another one, Sam and Rhodey remaining by his side on the floor.

"I must admit, I don't understand the significance of this cyanide," Thor admitted.

"It's poison, Thor," Steve explained sadly, his eyes haunted, "If the kid put that in his mouth and bit down, he would have been dead within a minute...there would have been nothing we could have done to save him."

"But...but why would a child do something like that?" Thor exclaimed in horror.

"If he was scared of what was going to happen to him with his Hydra handlers gone," suggested Rhodey.

"If he was following orders, and it was Hydra trying to make you all feel guilty about a kid killing himself," Petro added.

"Because Hydra are sick, twisted evil and manipulative sons of bitches," Tony finished, "and they would have put the idea in the kid's head. If they couldn't have him...no-one could."

Bucky found himself nodding at Tony's words, as Sam passed the tablet back to Bruce, who took it, frowning in concern at Bucky.

"What's wrong?"

Bucky forced himself to respond, "The DNA tests came back...the kid is Natasha's son."

"Shit," Tony swore. For once Steve didn't call him out on the bad language.

"Why is that a bad thing...we've been searching for the kid for years," Steve questioned instead.

"I never wanted for us to find him in a Hydra base obviously having been trained and brainwashed into being the perfect mini assassin though," Tony explained, "I mean, if it was between that and dead or mortally injured, then yeah, Hydra base wins every time, but...I didn't want the kid to have been made into a weapon to be used against us. To be raised in an environment where carrying a suicide tablet around in his pocket was a normal thing."

Bucky watched Steve slump a little against the pillows supporting him.

"How did Natasha take the news?" Wanda asked from where she sat between her brother and Vision.

"She kind of expected it...I think it would have been more of a shock if he wasn't her kid," Bucky replied, his voice only shaking a little bit.

"There's something else though, isn't there?" Vision speculated, watching Bucky with narrowed eyes.

Bucky nodded and swallowed nervously, "Turns out I'm the kid's biological father."

A stunned silence met Bucky's announcement as the Avengers in the room tried to process this new piece of information. If the situation wasn't so serious then it would have been funny to see the locks of shock on everyone's faces.

Bruce was the first to open his mouth to speak, "It makes sense, if they wanted to use the kid as a weapon. Having a super soldier as a parent would definitely be seen as an advantage, especially if you passed some of the additional abilities the super soldier serum gave you to him."

"Do we know it he has inherited anything special?" Rhodey asked.

"I had a quick look at Helen's preliminary reports," Bruce offered "I would guess that, with the signs of" …Bruce cringed and paused before speaking again, "…abuse that the healing factor might not be as strong as it is for you guys. That being said…without knowing how severe the injuries were to begin with, how old they are, and how they were treated…it's hard to say"

"He might be a little stronger than normal six year olds, but...that could be from extensive training," Tony pointed out, picking up the boy's bow and pulling the draw string back, "This has been designed to be kid sized, but I don't know how much a regular six year old could pull this back. This thing could pack a punch, It's a good thing that Steve's built like a tank, especially when it was fired at close range."

"Less than 6 feet," Bucky nodded in confirmation.

"So...maybe a bit of super strength, but it's too early to say for sure," Sam confirmed, and the rest of the Avengers nodded in agreement.

Bucky stumbled to his feet and moved away from the doorway, sitting back in his spot beside Steve's bed, ignoring his best friends questioning glance. He couldn't let Steve or the rest of the Avengers focus on him right now. Their first priority was helping Steve recover, and their second priority was the kid, and helping him recover from whatever Hydra had put him through and getting him used to life away from Hydra and in the care of the Avengers.

Deep down Bucky knew that the team, as a whole, and his and Natasha's little boy in particular, had a long, difficult road facing them.