Steve rolled over away from the sun streaming in the window and assaulting his eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept this late, but admittedly he'd needed it.

Daaamn. He'd slept so late that Bucky had gotten up rather than wait for him. That was impressive. But it also meant that Bucky had probably gotten up and eaten breakfast without prompting. Probably. That was good, right?

Except that he couldn't find Bucky anywhere on their floor. "...Hey JARVIS?"

"Sgt. Barnes is downstairs in the armory with Agent Barton."

"I'm predictable, huh?"

"Indeed."

"They're getting along though?" This was actually fantastic. Bucky was socializing willingly, and Clint and Bucky would be good for each other.

"Famously."

"Has he eaten?"

"Technically."

"Technically?"

"They have been stuffing themselves with candy bars."

Ok, so not proper food, but Steve would let Bucky get away with it this time. He'd probably never had modern candy before, and they'd certainly never gotten much candy when they were younger.

"You beat me to it."

Natasha glanced up from the safe. "Only barely- Ah, shit. Maria, got another hairpin?"

Hill handed one over. "Cap, do you want to start going through the loose things over there, see what you can figure out about them?"

"Yeah, sure." Steve pulled the first item off the pile. Round, silver, reminded him a little of Bucky's arm in the way it was marked. He wasn't sure what it was, but didn't want to prod it too much. "I'm going to put anything potentially explosive in the Hulk-testing room for the moment, okay?"

There was a soft click as the lock released under Natasha's skilled fingers. "Sounds good. Maybe we should be getting Bucky to help us here. He might actually know what a lot of this is."

Maria straightened. "You found him?"

"Yup. He's not a threat, I promise. I broke the brainwashing. I don't know if we should call him in for this though, he's got some serious PTSD. I don't want to trigger him."

Natasha flipped through a file pulled from the safe, before handing it off to Maria. "Notes from some sort of experiments. I'll translate them when we're done cataloging. He's a grown man, Steve. He can decide for himself whether he feels up to helping us." Something fell out from between two files and she picked it up. "Heeyyyyy. Steve, catch."

"Huh?" He caught the small object automatically and looked down at it. Dog tags. Not just dog tags. Bucky's dog tags. He grinned, then frowned. Something felt off. He set them down on the table and took a step back suspiciously.

"Cap, what's wrong?" Maria was immediately at attention.

"I don't know. Something's not right."

"You think they're fake?" Natasha asked, joining them in suspiciously eyeing the dog tags. "Why would Hydra have made fake American dog tags for him?"

"I don't know. That's your territory more than mine. I just have a gut feeling that something about them isn't as it should be."

Natasha examined them. "They look authentic. Right sort of metal, notched, formatted correctly. James B Barnes-I'm assuming Bucky comes from his middle name-"

Steve nodded. "Buchanan."

"-Serial number makes sense for a guy from New York circa World War II. Tetanus shot dates make sense for when he would have joined-I don't suppose you would remember exactly when he would have gotten them-"

"I think they give them to everyone on joining regardless of whether they've had them before."

"So yes, that looks right. Do you know his blood type?"

"No." Steve admitted.

"JARVIS, do you know?"

"A-positive."

"That checks out. And his religion?"

"Parents were Protestant, but he never took it real seriously."

Natasha looked up. "It all checks out, Steve. If these are fakes then they're really good ones." She eyed Steve's wary expression. "You know what, let's see if we can't settle this. JARVIS, can you get Bucky to come take a look at these for us? And ask Clint and Tony and Bruce to give us a hand examining all these mystery objects too."

"He's still amnestic. Like he'd know if they're real." Steve protested.

"He might."

Bucky poked his head in the door. "JARVIS said you found my old dog tags?" Natasha pointed, and Bucky made a beeline for them.

Steve caught his arm. "Don't touch them. Something's not right."

Bucky peered at them. He could see them in his mind's eye, hanging around his neck. "No, they're mine. They're real." Ignoring Steve's warning, he put them on.

Steve reached over and covered the tags with his hand. "What religion would you have told them you were when you joined?"

"Protestant. You know that's what I was raised."

"Do you remember your serial number?"

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating hard. He'd had that drilled into him, and he'd been repeating it in the memory of being experimented on, the way they'd been trained to do under torture. He could do this. He just had to remember remembering. "3255...70...3...8? Right?"

Steve removed his hand and looked at the tag. "That matches. But it doesn't sound right."

"I have accessed the army's files, and Sergeant Barnes is correct." JARVIS told them.

Steve frowned. "Are you certain? I feel like it should start with a...one."

"Volunteers had serial numbers beginning with one," JARVIS confirmed.

"See, so yeah. That can't be right."

"...and draftees had serial numbers beginning with three." JARVIS finished.

"Yes, that's right. And Bucky should have a serial number starting with a one, because he enlisted." Steve said, "So those tags can't be real."

"Army records indicate that Sergeant Barnes was drafted." JARVIS informed them.

Steve whipped around to look at Bucky, who looked like he was hoping the floor would swallow him up. "Buck, that's not true, is it? You enlisted. After Pearl Harbor. You said you wanted a piece of the action."

Bucky squirmed under his best friend's gaze. "...no. JARVIS is right."

"Are you certain? Your memory is still pretty patchy, just because you don't remember it..."

"I remember it. Standing in our kitchen looking at that draft notice. Hiding it in a hurry because I heard your key in the door." The memory had been a vague impression that the event had occurred, but paying attention to it brought the picture into focus, the flood of emotions attached to it rushing back. Bucky hung his head, knowing that he had to tell him because he couldn't hide anything because Steve was going to look up the records now, to confirm it, and would find out everything. "...desperately trying to convince the recruiter that I needed to stay home and look after you."

He could see the recruiter so clearly. Sergeant…Perkins? A middle-aged man who kept a bottle of whiskey in his desk and a walking stick tucked behind a file cabinet for the bad days, pinching the bridge of his nose tiredly as he regarded the younger man in front of him. "James, I understand your position, really, I do." He'd said, "I had a sister who was delicate. But you can't get an exemption to care for someone who's not family." Bucky had tried to protest that he was all the family that Steve had, but the recruiter had cut him off. "I can't help you dodge the draft, but I can help you help your friend. I can tell people the right things to put you on the radar as a candidate for promotion." He flipped through a binder and turned it to show Bucky a list of figures. Salaries by rank. "You live up to that praise, and you'll be sending home enough money to pay all his medical bills."

Steve's jaw dropped. Bucky cringed. "I'm sorry?"

Steve opened and closed his mouth a few times before he found his words. "But...Why did you lie to me about it?"

"You wanted so badly to go. I didn't have the guts to tell you I didn't want to go. And I knew you'd be offended by the implication that I thought you couldn't look after yourself if you found out I was trying to dodge the draft because of you." He glared at Steve defiantly, voice rising as he spoke. "But I was right, wasn't I? You couldn't look after yourself. Within minutes of the last time I saw you before leaving, you volunteered yourself as a fucking lab rat for some crazy German scientist."

A myriad of conflicting emotions crossed Steve's face. He reached out to grab Bucky by the collar and give him the what-for, as he had done many times before in a much smaller body when his friend had questioned his toughness, and Bucky automatically flinched away from the sudden movement. Steve felt his heart break into a thousand tiny pieces.

Yes, it was dangerous. Even with his injuries, Steve had no doubt that Bucky could snap his spine like a twig with that metal arm if he were to startle and lash out. But he did it anyway. He closed the distance between them in a single step and hugged his friend fiercely. Bucky jumped and tried to pull away, but Steve didn't let him go, and after a minute he felt Bucky's breathing steady and his arms wrap around his waist. "Don't do it again, you got that?"

"Wish on, punk." Bucky's voice was a little shaky, but the insult was a good sign. "My only regret is that I failed to protect you."

Yes, that serial number is MCU canon (he's repeating it on the table) and the meanings of the digits are historically accurate. I don't know if they still have those meanings, but they did in WWII. Bucky was drafted, meaning there was no free will involved in the winter soldier's origin story, not even choosing to go to war. Ouch.

The rest of the info on his tags I got off the replica tags that I got for him.

Okay, fanboy time. I met Sebastian Stan at Wizard World Philly (and caught his cold from him but...worth it). The photo and more detail can be found on my cosplay facebook (under Ciaran Chameleon), but I will briefly report here that he's even more adorable and charming and dorky in person and my attempt to make his day made a very good impression.