Chapter 21: Family

The morning was awkward. They showered and, somehow, Natasha came out of the bathroom in 15 minutes looking fresh, her hair dry and neater than he would've thought possible given the tools he knew were in the bathroom—basically a comb and gel he had no use for with his cropped cut. He figured she must have done a quick soap up and rinse off from the neck down. She dressed in her clothes from last night. Bucky threw on jeans and a T-shirt, his standard wardrobe these days.

He cooked eggs, sliced and seasoned an avocado, and layered it all on whole grain toast with strips of smoked salmon. He let the Keurig handle the coffee. He didn't understand how the coffee brewed so quickly, but he'd stopped questioning the magic of modern technology.

Grabbing the remote, he turned on the television as they sat at the small dining table to eat breakfast. Natasha eyed her plate with interest and raised her eyebrows at him.

"What?" he asked.

"You just threw this all together?"

His face flushed. "I have time on my hands and a fast metabolism. I've been updating my culinary skills."

"Culinary skills?" She tilted her head. "I see."

He took a sip of coffee and grabbed the remote, flipping through channels until he found the morning news, wondering whether they'd see the events from last night. They listened to the broadcast for a while until the story they were both interested in came on.

Footage showed the children, their faces blurred, being herded into vans. Police, EMTs, social services, and even FBI were visible on scene in the news footage. The caption read, 'Avengers break up child trafficking ring.'

"Have you heard anything about where they came from?" Bucky asked.

"No, there's a briefing in 20 minutes," she said.

FRIDAY'S voice interrupted. "Steve Rogers is at the door."

He glanced at Natasha. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged a shoulder. Bucky finished his toast quickly, tossed the dish in the dishwasher, and took his coffee to the kitchen island, leaning against the counter nonchalantly.

"Let him in," he told FRIDAY.

Steve walked in and stopped, obviously surprised when he spotted Natasha. "Good morning," he greeted.

She smiled. "Morning, 'Cap."

Bucky took a sip of his coffee. "Late start this morning, Steve? It's well after eight. Rough night?"

Steve gave an uncertain smile and sank into a chair at the dining table. "I came to brief you and see if you wanted in on the meeting this morning."

Bucky nodded. "Natasha's already started catching me up."

She took a sip of her coffee and looked at Steve over the rim. "I figured he'd want to know as soon as possible."

"Oh, well, thanks." Steve glanced briefly at the news playing on the TV then jerked his chin toward the Keurig machine. "Can I get a cup?"

Natasha rose, carrying her empty dish and handing it to Bucky. "Thanks for the grub. I'll see you both at the meeting in a few minutes."

She gave Bucky a tight smile, which he studiously ignored, and left the room.

-0- -0- -0-

This was the first time Bucky had been in the large conference room. Steve sat at near the end of the table next to him, with Tony on the other side. Vision and Sam were also on the opposite side and Wanda sat next to Vision. A carafe of coffee and a box of donuts were in the center of the table.

Natasha walked in, wearing fresh clothes, though most of her outfits looked so similar he barely paid attention. He was used to seeing her wearing black. This time, she wore black pants and a black leather, zip-up jacket. He wondered how many versions of the same thing she owned. He glanced at Steve, who didn't seem notice of the outfit change. If he did, he wasn't letting on.

She took a seat at the other end of the table, giving him only the briefest of glances and the barest hint of a smile. He felt his cheeks flush, and a smile threatened to break out on his face, so he leaned forward quickly, grabbed a donut, and took a large bite.

"Welcome to the team, Barnes," Tony said, swiveling back and forth in his chair. "Good job, last night. How'd the arm do?"

Bucky swallowed the bite of donut. "It came in handy, thank you, but there was a little hiccup with it later. And, I'm not part of the team. I'm not an Avenger. Last night was a one-time thing."

"Uh-huh, okay, well, come to my lab later and we'll go over whatever kinks still need to be worked out on the arm," Tony slapped his hands on the table. "Cap, you're up."

Bucky listened to Cap's briefing and summary of last night. In many ways, it reminded him of World War II, Steve giving his briefing before and after each mission to eradicate a Nazi-Hydra base. Seventy-one years later, and they were still taking out Hydra bases. He wondered if he and Steve would ever find peace.

"What's happening with Tanaka?" Bucky asked.

He knew how violent the man was, even before he volunteered to take the serum. The police or FBI would be no match for him, and a normal jail cell could never hold him.

"The Raft. It's a high-tech prison in the middle of the ocean designed to hold enhanced individuals," Tony explained. "He'll be transferred there."

Bucky tried to visualize such a thing. That's where the government would probably send him when they found out he was alive.

"Oh, and Barnes," Tony swiveled to look at him, "we found a digital copy of your journals from the photo scans those tosspots took. Feds don't know it exists." He slid a flash drive across the table.

Bucky grabbed the flash drive and stared at the drive. A tingle of relief spread from his chest. Everything he'd written down during the six months he'd been on the run—capturing fragments of memories—was on the tiny device in his hand.

-0- -0- -0-

"So, what's wrong with the arm?" Tony stood over a workstation in his lab and glanced at Bucky.

Bucky didn't want to tell him the truth, but he needed to be sure there wouldn't be a repeat of last night. "I… had a dream and the repulsors fired. I didn't mean to activate them."

Tony nodded. "Well, they're connected to your nervous system and they respond to your brain, so simple solution, we can just deactivate them when you're sleeping." He reached out with a 'gimme' gesture. "It'll take me a day to make the modifications."

Bucky removed the arm and handed it to Stark. "Thank you."

He hadn't been technically asleep at the time of the incident last night, but he didn't want to go into details with Stark. Deactivating them while he was asleep was, at the very least, a good start.

"That's how we do things on the team," Tony muttered.

"I'm not on the team."

"Whatever you say, Barnes."

"I have an appointment with the Doc, now." Bucky wasn't looking forward to that.

He liked Dr. Abodon well enough. He just didn't like talking about the things Hydra had done to him. After last night, he knew there was so much more crap in his head besides the code words. He was a mess, but he'd come this far. Everyone had spent so much time, money, and energy on trying to fix him, he might as well give the whole process a chance.

-0- -0- -0-

Bucky sat in the armchair facing Abodon, once again one-armed while Tony worked on the prosthesis. Bucky didn't know how to start, so he just dove in.

"Something happened last night."

Dr. Abodon gave an encouraging nod.

"I've been seeing things at night. Shadows around my bed. Past victims. The first time, I saw myself as the Winter Soldier standing at the foot of my bed."

Dr. Abodon's expression never changed. "Do these occur when you're fully awake, waking up, or falling asleep?"

"When I've woken up, and I'm falling back to sleep."

"Hypnagogic hallucinations," Dr. Abodon said matter-of-factly.

Bucky took a breath and nodded. He knew he was hallucinating. He didn't need the Doc to tell him that.

"They're common, actually, about thirty-seven percent of people will experience one in their lifetime. Have you had any when you're waking up?"

Common? Bucky felt such a profound sense of relief that it took him a moment before he could muster a reply. "I don't think so," Bucky said.

"Well, you might. Those are called hypnopompic hallucinations. I know they must have been quite disturbing. They can be. But they are normal. Both forms of these hallucinations originate during early non-REM sleep stages, typically. Think of it as wires getting crossed in the transition between sleep and wakefulness. You might even experience sleep paralysis if you're waking up and have one of these incidents. If you do, don't panic. It can last from a few seconds to as long as a few minutes. How often have these occurred?"

"A few times this week," Bucky replied.

He wasn't crazy. Well, he was, but not so crazy he was losing the ability to know what was real. He could almost kiss the doctor.

Bucky wondered, though, if the nighttime hallucinations were so normal, why had he never had them before? "This is a new thing for me. It's never happened until..." he thought about it, "after the Wakandans."

Dr. Abodon nodded. "The scans Shuri did accessed memories and brought them up in a very real, vivid way. Your brain is no doubt now forced to process a lot of your past trauma in a more direct, accelerated way than, perhaps, it would have otherwise. Or, who knows, it's possible this is an actual side effect of the scan. I can reach out to Shuri and discuss it with her. In the meantime, I'd like to go over some cognitive behavioral therapy techniques for you to try prior to going to sleep. They may help reduce the severity or frequency of these nighttime hallucinations."

-0- -0- -0-

Bucky was on his way outside for some fresh air when he heard voices in the lobby.

"You don't have an appointment with anyone?"

"You tell Steve Rogers that I need to speak with him as soon as possible, young lady."

Bucky came out of the stairwell and saw one of the staffers—Kari, he thought—speaking with a thin elderly woman who seemed perturbed about something. The white-haired woman held a bright green purse in her right hand and wore a flowing dark purple dress that fell mid-calf with white socks and sneakers.

"I did. He's on his way," Kari told the ancient-looking woman.

He didn't know what was going on, but she asked for Steve. He patted his pants and realized that, once again, he'd left his cell phone in the room.

"What's going on?" Steve asked, emerging from the stairwell behind Bucky.

The old woman looked their way, and her eyes grew wide as she stared at Bucky. "Jimmy?" Her face paled.

Bucky froze, studying her. Her eyes were familiar, as was the shape of her face…

She walked up to him and stopped uncomfortably close. He looked down at her. It couldn't be.

Her eyes went to the metal stump of his left arm, then back to his face. "Oh, Jimmy."

He shifted his left side away from her. His chest was tight, his knees weak.

She raised a shaking hand to his cheek. "You look… the same." She blinked at him through wire-framed glasses as though she couldn't believe her eyes.

He could barely believe his own. He recognized nothing about her except her eyes—they were like his own. They'd gotten them from their mother. The shape of her face was the same—a little thinner and much more wrinkled.

It had been so long, and she'd been so young—barely an adult—the last time he saw her. "Becca?"

Her cold hand touched his cheek, cupped it. Tears filled her eyes. "How can it be?" she whispered. Her eyes drifted behind him, to Steve. Her brow furrowed.

Steve moved closer, falling into position to Bucky's right. "Hello, Becca," he greeted softly.

"Is this really?" Her gaze went back to Bucky. "How?"

Bucky stood frozen, his throat too tight for words. He could barely move air in and out of his lungs.

"It is." Steve said.

Becca's bottom lip quivered. Tears spilled onto her cheeks. Suddenly, her eyes were angry, and she slapped him on the chest. "Say something, damnit!"

Jimmy. The way she said his name reminded him of their mother. Suddenly he was a kid again in Brooklyn.

"B-Becca." The word erupted as a sob.

She leaned forward and wrapped him in a hug. Her head rested against his collar bone. She felt small and frail against him. Her body trembled. His did, too. He wrapped his right arm around her, barely touching her, afraid he might accidentally crush her.

He was crying, and the release was almost painful, like pulling out a splinter. He closed his eyes, rested his chin on the top of her head, tears breaking from him, his body shuddering with their escape.

"How is this possible?" she asked again, her voice barely a broken whisper.

-0- -0- -0-

They went to the lounge, an unspoken decision between Bucky and Steve. The Veronica room was nice enough, but windowless and therefore still gave the hint of a cell. The lounge had expansive views of the beautiful landscape and a full kitchen.

Bucky sat on the couch next to Becca. Steve gave them space, making refreshments in the kitchen.

"I did fall off that train," Bucky said. "Steve thought I was dead. He didn't lie to you."

Steve smiled at Bucky feeling the need to defend him to Becca.

"I don't understand," Becca said. "How are you here? How do you look the same? Steve, I know, was in the ice….and…. he got that drug… but how are you here?"

Bucky glanced over Becca's shoulder at Steve. It was obvious he had no idea how to explain any of this without lying. Bucky cleared his throat and turned his gaze back to his little sister.

"I-I was captured. They kept me prisoner. They put me in a cryogenic chamber."

"Your arm…" she gently brushed his left shoulder.

Bucky swallowed. "I lost it in the fall."

"Oh, Jimmy." She placed her hands on either side of his face. "You have nieces and nephews. You have a whole family that doesn't know you're alive. When did you escape?"

"It's a long story." His shoulders sagged, his face pained. "Very few people know I'm alive."

"But why?"

"When I…woke up…I didn't know who I was. I didn't remember. They made me do some things… bad things. I recently got my memory back. Steve helped me."

The words were clipped, almost breathless. The devastated helplessness on Bucky's face tore at Steve's heart. He knew what Bucky was desperately not saying. Becca thought he'd died a hero. Bucky didn't want her to know he'd been turned into a weapon, an assassin.

Steve's phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket and glanced at the caller ID. It was James Proctor. He glanced at Bucky and answered the phone.

"Steve here," he said, turning away and keeping his voice low.

"I'm sorry to bother you, Steve, but I rang Bucky's phone. It went to voice mail, and I there's a bit of an emergency with mom. She's missing. I've called her phone, and…"

The genuine panic in Mr. Proctor's voice made Steve interrupt. "She's here."

"What?"

Becca turned. "Who is that?"

Steve turned around and looked at her. There was obviously nothing wrong with her hearing. "It's James, your son."

She rose from the couch and walked slowly to the kitchen. Bucky followed. For a woman who was 90 years old, she walked well.

"Give me that phone, Steve." She held out her hand.

Steve raised his eyebrows at Bucky. "Uh, Jimmy," he said into the phone, "your mom wants to speak with you." He handed her the phone.

She took it and held it to her ear. "James Barnes Proctor, you lied to me."

Steve could hear Jimmy sputtering on the other end—something about how he didn't lie, he did go to New York unexpectedly and he did see Captain Rogers. Steve wondered what Jimmy told his family to explain his disappearance when Hydra kidnapped him. He kept the police out of it to protect Bucky, and with very little explanation why. Steve could only imagine how difficult it had been to go through such a harrowing ordeal without telling his family.

"Don't give me that. You disappear, you don't answer your phone, and when you finally come back, you have bruises on your wrist and give me some crazy story about an emergency out of town and stopping by to see Steve. I always know when you're lying. If you were here, you saw my brother, and you didn't tell me?"

Steve felt really guilty about the position Bucky's nephew was in. "Becca, this is my fault," he interrupted. "I asked him not to say anything."

Becca held her hand up to silence him and Steve leaned back, astonished. He threw Bucky a look and saw the shock on the other man's face melt to amusement.

"Jimmy, I don't care," she snapped into the phone, "if the President himself orders you not to tell me something, I'm your mother. I went through thirty-two hours of labor with you. I raised you better than this…. Now you know how I felt when you disappeared and didn't answer your phone…. I'm old, not incompetent. It's a two-hour plane ride. I know how to book things on my phone… I took an Uber…. Yes, an Uber."

'What's an Uber?' Bucky mouthed silently at Steve. In response, Steve raised his hands like he was steering the wheel of a car.

Becca continued berating her son. "You knew my brother—your namesake—was alive, and you didn't tell me?"

"It wasn't safe," Steve interjected.

Becca looked up at him and lowered the phone from her ear. "Young man, if you interrupt me one more time, I'm going to kick you in the shin, and I'll probably break my toe!"

Wow. Bucky mouthed at him, his eyes twinkling with amusement and disbelief.

Steve remembered Becca being spunky, but nothing like this.

She brought the phone up to her ear. "You know what the doctor's said." The anger drained from her voice, replaced by a weary sadness. "How could you not tell me about my brother?"

Steve saw the mirth drain from Bucky's face as the weight of her words sank in.

The doctor?

Damnit. Steve took a deep breath. He hoped Bucky wasn't reuniting with his sister just to lose her.

"Becca," Bucky stepped forward, his voice gentle, "if anyone finds out I'm alive, they might lock me up forever."

Becca looked at Bucky, her eyes sad, and said, "Jimmy, I'm going to call you back. You better answer the phone when I do. Not like last time."

Steve grimaced. Jimmy hadn't answered his phone the last time because Hydra kidnapped him. She ended the connection and handed Steve the phone.

Becca moved to stand in front of Bucky and look up at him. "What happened to you, Jimmy? Really? What did they make you do that is so bad people wouldn't understand you were a prisoner of war? Whatever they made you do was under duress. Did you tell them war secrets?"

"No. I didn't know who I was."

"That's right." She nodded. "Sorry, I remember you saying that."

Bucky placed his right hand on her arm. "Becca, what's this about the doctor?"

She sighed and gave him a sad smile. "Alzheimer's. It's early. That's why my son is so panicked, but I still have my wits about me, and I can still do things on my own."

Bucky looked like he had been punched in the gut by a jackhammer. "How long?"

"They don't know. Could be five years or twenty years." She walked back to the couch and sank down on the cushion.

Steve and Bucky followed. Bucky sat next to her, and Steve took up the armchair.

"How long have you been here?" she asked.

Bucky shifted uncomfortably. "About a month and a half."

"A month and a half, and you didn't contact me?" She shook her head. "Why? I'm your sister. If you didn't want me to tell anyone, I wouldn't have."

"There are bad people looking for me." Bucky said. "I didn't want to risk anything happening to you."

"Did my Jimmy get involved with that?"

Bucky nodded. "I'm sorry. He didn't say anything because we asked him not to."

"Was he in danger?"

"Yeah, but he's okay, and that's all over with now," Bucky said. "Steve and the Avengers took care of it."

"I came here to get answers from Steve about what happened with my son, and now I find out you're alive." Becca asked, a strain in her voice. "Do you have any idea what this feels like? You're my brother. I love you. You're the only sibling I have left. I thought I was the last one. All these years, I thought you were dead."

"I'm sorry." Bucky scrubbed his hand over his face. "I'm sorry, Becca. I can't tell you everything. Please don't keep asking me."

She sighed, stared at him for a moment, then nodded. Her gaze once again went to his left shoulder, and Steve saw a mixture of sadness and horror on her face, which quickly gave way to acceptance. "I'm just glad you're alive, and that we have a little time left with each other." She took a deep breath. "It was your birthday last month. I had a drink for you."

March tenth. Steve had forgotten. Everything happened so fast with the search for Bucky, finding him, and then Hydra. The date came and went without Steve giving it a second thought.

"I haven't thought about my birthday in…" Bucky's voice trailed off, and he raised his eyebrows. "You drank for me?"

She nodded with a proud smile. "Every year since you died, on your birthday, I have a shot of whiskey and toast you. I thank you for your service to our country and for giving your life to help defeat the Nazis."

Bucky's eyes grew wet, and he stared at her with that long, distant gaze that spoke to the depths of turmoil behind it. Steve knew his friend well enough to read his thoughts. There was pain, guilt, shame. Steve couldn't let it stand.

"Yes," Steve leaned forward, "Bucky's a hero. Always was. He saved my life on that train. He helped us turn the tide in the war. He was captured because he stepped in the line of fire to save me." Steve looked directly at Bucky, almost undone by the sorrowful wonderment in his friend's eyes, and continued, "He followed me into the jaws of death, and he paid a steep price. Without him, I wouldn't be here now."

Tears spilled from Becca's eyes, and she wiped at her cheeks, then placed a hand over Bucky's heart. "You have a whole family I hope you'll meet, and soon, while I'm still myself and able to be part of seeing my children and grandchildren get to know you, and you them. If you have time now, I can tell you all about what you've missed."

Bucky nodded, lowering his head and scrubbing hard at the back of his neck. "Yeah." His voice was rough. "I'd like that."

-0- -0- -0-

Eight hours later, Bucky was exhausted. His sleep issues were catching up with him. Becca told him all about Maggie and Ruth—their lives, their children. Maggie's son, Fred, was a lawyer and her daughter, Jamie, was a veterinarian. Fred had a daughter. Jamie didn't have children. The son Ruth lost in a car accident had been named Jonathan Buchanan.

She showed him photos and videos on her phone, social media pages, photos she carried in her purse. She gave him two of the small ones. One was a family Christmas portrait from 1949, shortly before his father passed away. The other was from five years ago—a large family gathering at Thanksgiving, with Becca and Jimmy in the front and two other faces she told him were Gwen and Richard, Becca's other two children that Jimmy had mentioned during his visit.

Bucky walked into his room with Steve behind him, the two photos in his right hand. He'd settled Becca in a guest bedroom. They'd spend tomorrow together, then she'd fly back to Indiana in a private Stark jet. She got a kick out of that.

"You okay?" Steve asked as Bucky sank onto the couch with a tired sigh.

"It's…a lot. But, yeah." All those years he missed weighed heavy on him. He could never get that time back.

His parents… his father's funeral. Being there for his mother. Her funeral. His sister's lives, their funerals, their children. All of it. Gone. He only just remembered them, and now they were all lost to him, except Becca.

And she would be, soon enough. Time would make sure of that.

One day he'd been a kid in Brooklyn with the world at his feet and an unwritten life ahead of him, with a best friend and a loving family. A blink of an eye later, he was a young man, sent off to war. A breath later, he was the Winter Soldier. He was the Winter Soldier more than twice as long as he'd been James Buchanan Barnes.

He stared at the photo from 1949 with the only family he'd ever known. He should have been in that photo. He wished he could transport himself back to live the life he would have lived if not for the war and Hydra.

He never grieved them. They deserved that, at least. They grieved him, but he wasn't sure he was capable of feeling those emotions. His fried brain was still messed up. Would it ever work normally again?

"Bucky?" Steve sat next to him and looked down at the photo. "I remember them like it was just yesterday. You and your family practically adopted me after my mother died."

Bucky smiled quietly at those memories. "You were the little brother I never had." He looked up at him and his smile widened. "Not so little, anymore."

Steve's eyes were deep with gratitude. "You were always there for me. I never told you how much that meant to me, especially when I had nothing."

Bucky swallowed and felt the breath hitch in his lungs. He gazed back down at the photo. "I should feel sad."

"What do you feel?"

Bucky shook his head. "I don't know." He set the photos down on the coffee table and tapped his chest with his fist. "I don't know what this is in here, this feeling. I remember being normal, feeling normal things. I haven't been that for so long, I don't know what this is, anymore, what I'm feeling. I don't know the name for it."

Steve was taken aback for a moment. This was one of the most honest responses about emotions he'd gotten from Bucky since finding him. "You get to feel however you feel. There's no right or wrong, Buck."

He swallowed. "They deserve more from me. They deserve someone who can mourn them, grieve them, like Becca grieved me."

The warm weight of Steve's hand came down on Bucky's shoulder. "I think you are, Bucky, but maybe you just don't realize it yet."

-0- -0- -0-

Steve had fallen asleep on the couch half-reclined after they finished watching a couple of movies from the list—Rocky I and II. Bucky decided not to wake him and, instead, did his business in the bathroom and settled into bed. He stared into the darkness and worked his way through the meditation exercises Dr. Abodon had suggested. He drifted off in the middle of them.

He woke up in the middle of the night with Zola's face staring at him with those round glasses and malevolent smirk. Bucky knew it was another sleep hallucination, even as his heart pounded frantically in his chest.

He tried to roll over, away from the face that tormented him—in real life and in his dreams—but he couldn't move. This was new. Doctor Abodon told him sleep paralysis was a possibility, and Bucky didn't know if it was happening only because of that inadvertent suggestion or whether it would have happened regardless, but the lack of control over his body was even more terrifying than the vile face hovering over him in the darkness.

This would last a few seconds to a few minutes, the doctor told him. Bucky closed his eyes and swallowed. He took in a long, deep breath, just as Abodon had instructed, and let it out slowly, counting eight seconds. He opened his eyes. Zola was still there, a needle held in the air, and Bucky still couldn't move.

This isn't real. This isn't real, he told himself, over and over.

But what if it was? What if Steve finding him was the dream and being saved by strange doctors and a princess from a country few people had ever heard of was all part of the same long, wishful dream? What if Bucky was in Zola's lab right now, and the face above him was reality breaking through?

It felt like a lump of clay filled his throat. He swallowed hard and croaked, "FRIDAY, lights."

Bright lights flooded the room, bringing agonizing relief. He could move again, and he sucked in a deep, greedy breath, toppling off the edge of the mattress and hitting the floor face-first, his right arm tangled in the covers and leaving nothing with which to catch himself.

"Bucky?" Steve was there suddenly, detangling Bucky from the covers. "Are you okay?"

Bucky scooched back against the wall, trembling like a fool, his lungs working overtime under the rush of adrenaline.

"I'm fine," he managed to gasp out, waving his hand in the air. "It's nothing. Just a thing I'm going through."

Steve sat on the edge of the bed. "What kind of a thing? More nightmares?"

Bucky tilted his head. "Sort of. Not exactly." He didn't know how to explain it to Steve without it sounding crazy, even if Dr. Abodon assured him it was normal.

"What's going on, man?"

Bucky took a deep breath, blew it out, and slumped against the wall. He knew if he didn't fess up, Steve would wonder about it nonstop until he somehow ferreted it out of him.

"I have these sleep hallucinations. Dr. Abodon says they're normal, something to do with the transition between sleep and awake." He managed what he hoped was a reassuring smile, but he suspected it came off more like a grimace. "He's not sure if it's a side effect of the device Shuri used or just my screwed-up brain trying to figure things out."

"How long has this been going on?" Steve asked, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. His voice was low, without judgment.

Bucky tilted his head. "Off and on since the Wakandans left."

"Every night?"

"No. A few times a week, maybe. The other nights are just standard nightmares."

Steve sighed. "How much sleep are you actually getting?"

"Enough."

"How much?"

Bucky shrugged. "Some nights an hour or two. Other nights a few hours. More than enough for anyone with serum running through their veins. It's not like I have a job that requires me to be well rested. I'm just a semi-stable freeloader with a creepy alter ego waiting to spring out like a psycho jack-in-the-box to kill everyone."

Steve tilted his head and gave Bucky that god-awful pained look that made him instantly regret the sarcasm.

"You think you'll be able to get back to sleep?" Steve asked.

Bucky shook his head. "Not likely. You should head back to your room. I'll watch some TV."

Steve stood. "Why don't you throw on some clothes? We can go for walk."

Bucky glanced at the microwave clock. "It's two a.m., Steve."

The other man tilted his head. "I know."

With a sigh, Bucky got to his feet. A walk in the cool night air didn't sound so bad, and the walls of his windowless room were starting to feel oppressive. He dressed quickly and followed Steve outside.

The air was crisp and refreshing, an almost full moon hung in the sky, and the river glistened beneath the pale kiss of its light. They started off on a brisk stroll around the grounds, past the hangar and the equipment locker, then back around to the river.

Bucky stopped at the edge of the steep bank and took in the serene beauty of the night. He glanced up at the black sky. Few stars were visible, but he could just barely make out the big dipper.

"I've been talking to Tony," Steve began, his voice low against the quiet of the early hour, "and if you want, we can move you to another room. There's no need to keep you in the Veronica room, but it does have a full kitchen and a pretty luxurious bathroom. There's an empty room upstairs near mine. It has a small private bathroom, windows, but no kitchen. Your choice, of course. We don't have an immediate need for the Veronica room, and you're settled there."

Bucky sighed and thought about it. "I know at some point we'll need to figure out other arrangements, but I like the kitchen. I've been watching cooking shows, trying new things." He felt a tinge of bashfulness at the admission.

Steve turned to look at him in surprise. "You've been watching cooking shows and making meals?"

He shrugged and gave a self-conscious grin. "Yeah. I went from crappy army rations to Hydra slop for 70 years. It's nice eating real food, trying new things."

Steve's face fell for a moment, and Bucky regretted bringing up his Hydra years.

"So, uh," Steve gave an obviously forced smile, "why haven't you invited anybody over to try your stuff?"

Bucky shrugged his shoulder and tried for a self-deprecating smile. "Man, I'm not that good at it. You know I grew up making beans, eggs, mulligan stew, macaroni and cheese. My mom did all the real cooking and baking. I'm just learning how to braise and curdle things… oh, and flambé. FRIDAY was alarmed by my first attempt at that last one."

Steve shook his head. "How is it, after all this time, you manage to surprise me? You're turning into a chef."

"Definitely not." He cocked his head. "I have a lot of spare time on my hands. I would, however, love it if the cameras could be turned off. I'm feeling like a bug under a microscope all the time."

Also, he really wanted the privacy if Natasha decided she wanted a second round—not that he had his hopes up after his little freak out their one time together.

"Oh, yeah, of course. Consider it done." Steve grinned and turned to look up at Bucky. "How 'about you cook us dinner tomorrow before your sister leaves?"

"I don't know." He scrunched his nose. "You'll just wind up with macaroni and cheese. It's what I know. I don't think I've perfected anything yet."

"I'll come over and help. I'm sure you can manage more than mac and cheese."

"How much do you cook these days?" Bucky asked him.

"Not much, but I can get by."

"Well, if Tony doesn't have my arm ready tomorrow, you're gonna need to do all the chopping."

Steve slapped him on the arm. "So, tomorrow… dinner?"

"I guess so, sounds like my draft card just came up again."

He saw Steve's face flicker uncertainly. "Hey, Buck, if you don't want—"

Oh, for crying out loud. He gave him a modest shove on the left shoulder. "Shit, Rogers, it's a joke."

A relieved, almost surprised smile touched Steve's face. "Hopefully, your cooking won't be," he retorted.

"Oh, that's how it's gonna be, huh, Punk?"

"Yeah," Steve shoved him back.

"I can't believe you just hit a one-armed man."

Steve's laugh was as crisp and refreshing as the night air.