As Time Goes By

by BouncingKappa

Sequel to Songbirds and Bombshells! Sadie Reid disappeared in 1949, never to be seen again until she resurfaces in 2016 with no memory of how she got there and one clue: the dog tags of her supposedly dead fiance, Bucky Barnes. Bucky is in Wakanda hoping for a chance at the freshest start he can get. Love found them once in the unlikeliest place, can it bring them together again?

4. Stardust

A/N: No. I'm not dead. The reason why I haven't updated sooner boils down to a combination of factors, the most important of which is that my caseload at work changed and I've been a lot of working 50+ hour weeks. And then, when I thought was going to get a break surprise! I ended up needing surgery. The bottom line is that between a husband, two dogs, friends/family obligations, working full time, working out six days a week, and pursuing other hobbies I've just been flat out busy. I know that can be frustrating for some of you and I'm sorry. If you ever want to know why it's been a hot minute since I've posted please, please, please sign in and PM me. I truly don't mind answering messages and as much as I wish I could promise things are going to calm down in my life I just can't.

In the meantime ho-ly shit y'all are amazing. Thank you a million times over for all of the follows, favorites, and especially the reviews! Extra thanks to the fantastic Not Enough Answers for her excellent beta work!

Chapter title is by the incomparable Nat King Cole.

Disclaimer: I don't own everything recognize as me not owning.

Chapter Four - Stardust

"Explain it to me again."

"The theory is simple enough, even if the process is not. I have developed an algorithm capable of rooting out HYDRA's trigger words and wiping them from Sergeant Barnes's mind while keeping the spirit and context of the associated memories intact. In order to perfect the algorithm, I am going to make a one-to-one copy of his brain to run simulations of the procedure."

"How many simulations are you going to run?"

"As many as it takes until the algorithm can successfully wipe the trigger words without disturbing the underlying memories."

Steve Rogers uncrossed his arms and shoved his hands in his pockets. Next to him, Shuri continued to tap away on her tablet, glancing up every now through the windows to monitor her patient's progress. According to Shuri, the thawing process was made easier by monitoring Bucky's physical metrics and adjusting the room settings in response, altering the temperature, light, airflow, and even the settings on the bed he lay on. Steve didn't know if Shuri was right and changing the color of the lights from soft blue to a cool violet made any difference whatsoever, but he was willing to go with it just in case Bucky had an easier time waking up. For the moment, Bucky lay statue still, arm resting at his side and chest rising and falling in even intervals.

His brows knitted together as he tried to unravel Shuri's simple explanation to root out the knots within. "So after you take out the trigger words he'll be fine?"

"I would not go that far. No one will be able to control Sergeant Barnes using the trigger words, but his memories from the past seven decades will remain. He will need extensive psychological rehabilitation."

"Can you wipe those memories?"

Shuri shifted her weight and in the reflection of the glass he caught her frown.

"I could," she said cagily, "but I don't recommend it. Leaving gaps in Sergeant Barnes's memory could cause more damage than good."

"I agree with you," he reassured her. "I was just curious. How long will it take?"

Shuri waved a dismissive hand. "I won't know until I complete the copy of his brain and begin running the simulations. The outcome of the first test will give me a better idea of how long it will take to perfect the procedure. Once that's finished, it's only a matter of placing Sergeant Barnes into an induced coma and performing the final run. How long that takes depends entirely on how deeply intertwined the trigger words are with the associated memories."

"But he won't be awake for any of it."

"No," she replied and tapped her screen again. Through the window Steve thought he saw Bucky's fingers twitch, the first signs that he was beginning to emerge from cryosleep. "Keeping him as emotionally and mentally stable as possible will be important for the algorithm to do its job without causing any extraneous damage."

Without the benefit of Shuri's genius, Steve still thought that was a good idea. The notion of anyone rooting around in his brain for any reason at all gave him the creeps; he couldn't imagine being awake while it happened. Bucky's fingers definitely twitched again and Steve released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Steve rubbed the back of his neck, unsure how to express his gratitude or even his disbelief that all along the secret to ridding Bucky of this unwanted companion rest within the mind of a sixteen year old Wakandan princess. If someone told him this time two months ago that this was how finding Bucky was going to turn out, he might have laughed himself hoarse.

The impossibly modern lab surrounding him said otherwise. Steve thought he hit the limit of modern technology and innovation with all of Tony Stark's creations, but now that he'd spent time with Shuri, there was no questioning that her brilliance exceeded even Tony's and Bruce's. She moved through her labs with the sort of unpracticed ease that only came with supreme confidence in her abilities and moreover the knowledge that she belonged exactly where she was. Steve didn't know many adults with that sort of self-assurance, much less a teenaged girl who could have easily spent her time spending time with her friends and indulging in all of the reckless delights of youth. And yet here she was, on the precipice of helping rid Bucky of at least a handful of his demons.

There wasn't anything that Steve could say or do to properly express the depth of his gratitude, not only to Shuri, but to T'Challa for making it happen. Nor did he imagine either of them would accept anything in return. Their sole focus seemed to be on bringing peace to the restless and Steve suspected that Shuri saw the entire exercise as an exciting technological leap forward. Bucky was both a patient and a test subject, albeit a subject in the most hospitable place he could imagine. At the very least he was far away from Secretary Ross's reach and safe from the world's prying eyes. And if Bucky had finally hit a run of good luck, then perhaps he would find a road to some version of healing and peace here in Wakanda under Shuri's watchful eye.

Steve's lips tugged towards a frown. He wanted to flick the thought out of the forefront of his mind but he couldn't help but wonder, what if Bucky's streak of bad luck continued?

"What happens if it doesn't work?"

"Oh, it will work," Shuri's assured tone bordered on overconfidence, a flash of her youth working its way through her professional exterior. Even the smirk on her face told Steve that she, like Tony, never walked into her projects considering failure.

"But if it doesn't?" Steve pressed.

The smirk slipped off Shuri's face and she gave him a sidelong glance, unamused that he'd deigned to question her genius plan. "In that extremely unlikely event during the process Sergeant Barnes could experience seizures, the algorithm might end up removing the associated memories, possibly even other memories he's accumulated from his past, possibly he could suffer neurological damage but none of that will happen."

"But there's always a risk."

Shuri rolled her eyes as she turned away from the windows and set her tablet aside, apparently satisfied with Bucky's room conditions. "There is always a risk but I am confident in the planned procedure and I will not attempt it on Sergeant Barnes until the simulation runs are perfect." She touched Steve's elbow, a gentle urge for him to tear his gaze away from Bucky to focus directly on her instead. "Captain Rogers, I am confident in this program and in my abilities. I ask that you try to be too."

It took all of Steve's considerable willpower to stop himself from pointing out that he was taking orders from a sixteen year old he'd only met two weeks earlier. Instead he summoned up a genial sort of smile and looked away, towards the enormous screens taking up this particular corner of her lab, each one monitoring something about Bucky, his condition, the thawing process, and more numbers that Steve couldn't hope to understand even if he had someone explain it all to him.

"This is just...it's a lot to take in."

"I understand," Shuri assured him, again showing that easy confidence she wielded like a shield against any would-be detractors. "But rest assured, Sergeant Barnes is in good hands."

A low groan threaded through the speakers from one room to the other. Together, Shuri and Steve's attention snapped to the windows just in time to see Bucky bend one of his knees and bring his hand to wipe across his face. Bucky raised his head to peer around the room and then dropped back down onto his pillow, exhaling in relief. He let his head loll to the side where he could see through to Steve and Shuri. Steve further relaxed when the corner of Bucky's mouth lifted in a smirk.

"Now I know how Snow White felt," he joked.

Steve laughed, more for the relief of hearing Bucky crack a joke than anything else. "Don't kid yourself, Buck. You're not nearly as good-looking as Snow White."

Bucky grinned, turning his face back up towards the ceiling. "Well, I guess we all can't be perfect."

Shuri led the way to the door and Steve followed her into Bucky's recovery room. Grinning ear to ear, he approached the table and held out a hand for his friend. Bucky grasped it and with a single hefty tug, Steve pulled him upright. Swinging his legs over the edge of the table, Bucky swayed uncertainly for a moment, finding his balance without his left arm. He rolled his shoulders out and then pushed his chin to the left and then the right, getting two solid cracks out of his neck.

"How ya feelin'?" Steve asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Not bad, all things considered. Coming out of cryo was a lot easier than normal."

Shuri shot Steve a look to say 'I told you so.' She swiped a finger across her tablet and raised the lights. Bucky blinked at her, trying to make sense of her intricate hairstyle along with the bright orange dress she wore with a pair of sleek sneakers.

"Well, your vitals are normal and your mental state appears stable."

Bucky snorted. "Stable is a relative term."

Shuri raised an eyebrow but wisely chose not to take the bait. Instead she continued to observe him, taking copious notes that Steve hoped would help for the deprogramming process. Bucky afforded her one last glance before he turned to Steve, a small smile tugging at his lips.

"So," he leaned forward, resting his forearm on his thigh. "Either the world's about to end or someone figured out how to get HYDRA's junk out of my head, which is it?"

Steve rolled his eyes but afforded Bucky a small laugh. He couldn't remember the last time they shared any kind of banter like this. For a flash of a second he felt like it was old times, but then he remembered that they were about as far away from old times as two people could get. Bucky shifted his weight, trying to get comfortable as his left shoulder rose too high, jutting out at a weird angle. Steve eyed the flexible black cap stretched over the metal arm socket and tried not to frown. It seemed longer than two months ago that he helped Bucky stagger onto a quinjet and helped him deal with the consequences of Tony blowing off his metal arm and the searing pain the hot metal transferred up to his skin, accompanied with the constant twitching that severing the old neural connections caused. It took a team of four Wakandan scientists, led by Shuri, to scan, examine, and operate on what remained of Bucky's arm, taking it apart piece by piece until only the socket remained. The loss of Bucky's arm was just another real, lasting consequence of the explosive confrontation that still seemed to be dealing out blows even weeks later.

"Steve?" Bucky caught him staring.

"Uh yeah, no, it's not the end of the world. Shuri thinks she's found a way to deprogram you."

All eyes turned to the princess, who fixed a beady eye on Steve. "I don't think I've found a way, I know I have."

Hope filtered onto Bucky's face, the first such expression Steve had seen from him since discovering he was still alive. "Are you-" he volleyed between Steve and Shuri, whose smile only continued to grow, "you're serious?"

"I am," she promised, and gestured towards the door that would take them back into her laboratory. "Come, we'll tell you everything."

X X X

"And that, my friend, is how it's done."

Sadie arched an eyebrow but accepted the steaming cup of coffee that Rhodey held out for her.

"And this is supposed to be?"

"A latte, decaf per your nutritionist's orders." She made a face at the notion of drinking decaffeinated coffee. Rhodey grinned. "Yeah, I don't get the point of decaf coffee either but I need a guinea pig and you're the best I've got."

"I'm so honored," she replied in a dry voice that only widened his smirk. Sadie eyed the foamy surface of the latte with some trepidation. Over the past two days she'd gamely submitted to trying six other of Rhodey's attempts at perfecting the art of the espresso machine, each one failing in one way or another. She had to admit though that this attempt was his best looking and didn't smell burnt, which was a marked improvement on his fourth try. Taking care to gently blow over the surface, she gave the coffee another brief moment before raising the cup to her lips and taking an experimental sip.

"Well?"

Rhodey braced the arms of his chair and leaned slightly forward in anticipation, reminding her of a soldier overeager to please his commanding officer. Allowing the coffee to coat her tongue, she sussed out the slight sweetness from the perfectly steamed milk to savor the bitter coffee that hit just the right spot. Slowly her lips curled up in a smile.

"It's just like they say, seventh time's the charm," she teased, but Rhodey was too pleased with his success to be bothered by her teasing. "If you practice this a few more times I'm sure you'll make a cup of coffee that will impress even Doctor Palmer."

"I'd better, there's a lot of pride riding on the line."

Sadie suspected there was more than mere pride riding on the playful bet between Rhodey and his physical therapist. Though Rodey took care to hedge his words in the most casual way possible it was hard to miss his clear admiration and affection for Doctor Palmer. A joking bet was a good way to break the ice and Sadie privately hoped that he managed to pass the test with flying colors in order to raise himself in Doctor Palmer's estimation. There was something sweet and endearing about the bet that put Sadie at ease. She liked the notion that people still met and flirted the same way they did before because then perhaps the greater world awaiting her outside the compound wasn't so radically different and scary after all.

The thought of the outside world set her slightly on edge. She sipped her coffee while Rhodey reviewed his coffee-making process, intent on trying another cup to taste his progress for himself. While he muttered under his breath, Sadie stared over the kitchen counter towards the windows and the beautiful early summer morning unfolding over the compound. Only the day before, she'd been granted a reprieve from two solid days of medical tests and she was finally able to venture outside where she felt the sun on her face and the warm breeze ruffled her hair. Under the safe shade of a large umbrella, she sat on the patio and read a history book until the light faded, forcing her to retreat back indoors where Rhodey decided it was time to introduce her to television, beginning with a review of the remote, the various channels and different types of programming. When his tutorial proved to be overwhelming, he reigned himself in and settled on a channel called ESPN where Sadie found herself dumbstruck watching what he promised her was a baseball game being broadcast live all the way from San Francisco. Together they watched the game, where she often found herself more interested in everything but the game - the bright lights in the stadium, the members of the crowd, the visible tattoos on the players' arms, and especially the commercials that rattled off a dizzying amount of products with so much color and sound that Sadie thought she might be sick watching all of it. Rhodey did his best to explain things as they came up but by the time Sadie crawled into her bed her mind was drowning in a deluge of information, leaving her exhausted and even more hesitant about the outside world than before.

Absently, she rubbed her thumbs along the outside edge of her coffee cup. She would have moved to take her necklace, but the chain remained hidden beneath the high neck of her pale blue dress, a conservative cap-sleeved garment courtesy of Pepper Potts who assured her that full skirt helped hide her thin frame and was a classic style. Sadie wasn't sure about style, but she still felt uneasy wearing such a nice dress without stockings despite Pepper's insistence that those were a thing of the past. Every time she felt the skirt brush past her bare legs, Sadie had to fight the urge to retreat into her room and hide from anyone who might see her running around with naked legs and her hair done so simply. Glancing down at her plain flat shoes, she wondered what her mother would think of the skirt cutting above her knees or the fact that women who worked at the compound exclusively wore pants. But just the mere allusion to her mother hit Sadie hard, pushing against a grief she'd been holding off because she simply didn't know how to address it.

"Something on your mind?"

Sadie blinked owlishly at Rhodey over the top of her cup. "No, I'm just a little distracted this morning."

"Looking forward to your next round with Ross?"

Rhodey grinned when Sadie rolled her eyes. "Does anyone actually like spending time with that man?"

"He's got some buddies in Washington, mostly old Army brass and senators who share his brand of politics."

"Sounds miserable," she muttered, thinking of the times she'd been thrust into the political lion's den when she was working to get IHAP off the ground. "But it also explains a lot."

"What does he want to talk about today?"

"No clue," she said as she rested a hip against the counter. "It's the first time he's been by since the finger-cutting incident, so I assume he's going to want to know more about my so-called enhancement. I've gotten the impression that he thinks I'm lying."

"About not knowing how you wound up here?"

She nodded. "That and where Steve and Bucky are."

Rhodey snorted. "Ross must be really desperate if he's leaning on you to answer the impossible."

"That's one way to look at it. I think he thinks I'm protecting them by withholding information. But the reality is that I think I want to find Steve and Bucky even more than he does."

The admission was the first of its kind she'd made to anyone, though she thought it was hardly surprising. At night she caught herself rereading Steve and Bucky's dossiers, pouring through the pages for any clues she could extract that could lead her to their whereabouts. Sadie hoped, in spite of her mounting fears, that sooner or later she would be allowed to leave the compound and her heart was set on finding Bucky and Steve. But, as it was, she was in the same predicament as Secretary Ross: no matter how hard she searched for clues or racked her spotty memory, she couldn't come up with even a wisp of an idea as to where they could be.

"That makes sense. To be honest, I wish Steve was here. It'd make all of this a whole hell of a lot easier."

Sadie considered the familiarity that Steve brought to the table, along with his own experiences assimilating into a brand new world. Blowing out a sigh into her coffee, Sadie felt her shoulders slump a little. "Tell me about it."

"It'll get better," Rhodey noted.

In her heart, Sadie wanted to believe him but she couldn't see her way around the dozens of roadblocks in her path. More than anything she wanted to find Bucky, to see for herself that he was truly alive and then throw herself into his arms. But finding Bucky was predicated on somehow getting out of the compound, of having identification, a means of transit and a method of financing her travels. According to history and Tony, she'd been declared legally dead some five years after her disappearance, and as far as Sadie knew even in the twenty-first century a dead woman couldn't simply walk up to the counter and purchase an airplane ticket. Moreover, she had no idea where to start looking and even if she did find Bucky, there was no telling what state he would be in. From everything she'd learned it would be a miracle if he even remembered her at all; for him to still love her the way he did so many decades before was nothing more than a childish fantasy. The thought of Bucky looking at her with no recognition and no affection or love in his eyes threatened to undo her where she stood.

But those were all bridges she would have to wait to cross. For now she was stuck dealing with more present problems, the least of which was Ross's apparent distrust of her and the fact that women no longer wore stockings with their dresses and skirts. Sadie bit back a sigh and settled for a small smile for her new friend.

"Right now I'm more interested in whether or not you're using your coffee making skills to try and entice Doctor Palmer to go out on a date with you."

Rhodey balked at the notion just a fraction to much to be believed. Sadie gladly took the bait and was still giving him a hard time when the elevator doors opened. Tony strode into the common area, wearing yet another strange ensemble and a pair of glasses with lightly tinted lenses.

"Rhodey, still fighting the espresso machine?" Rhodey waved him off and Tony turned his attention to Sadie. "Toto, nice dress."

Sadie fought a scowl. As a general rule, she didn't care for most nicknames, but she particularly disliked Tony's newfound moniker. He'd made more than one Wizard of Oz joke in the days since their meeting and lately he'd taken to calling her Toto, as a means of perpetually reminding her that she was stuck in her own version of Oz. Still, Tony was her one and only buffer against Secretary Ross's more belligerent lines of questioning and so she put up with his antics. She also suspected that any protests on her part would only yield even more sarcastic quips and an even worse nickname.

"Thank you," she muttered, brushing invisible dirt off the skirt.

Tony jerked his head towards the conference room. "C'mon, Ross is on his way up and he looks twitchier than usual."

Without waiting for Sadie to fall into step with him, Tony spun on one heel and cut across the common area towards the conference room. Another sigh escaped Sadie's lips. Watching Tony's retreating back, she considered what would happen if she fled to her room and locked the door behind her.

Tony whipped back around and brought his hands together in a few sharp claps. "Chop, chop, nurse!"

Sadie frowned. "And the morning was going so well."

Rhodey snorted in sympathetic laughter.

Tony left the conference room door open and she drifted to the opposite side of the table and her usual place. Within two minutes Secretary Ross appeared, a terse expression bristling his mustache. Behind him an aide trailed into the room, carrying a cardboard file box. The sight of the box both irritated and concerned Sadie. She'd thought that by now Secretary Ross would have run out of questions to ask and might have finally accepted the truth for what it was. She didn't want to know what was in the box because she suspected it was only more painful history coming to haunt her. Out of the corner of her eye, Sadie caught Tony rolling his eyes to the ceiling. His reaction made her feel better; at the very least she knew she wasn't being unreasonable in her trepidation.

"So, turns out you've been hiding a few tricks up your sleeve, Miss Reid."

The one and only good thing about Secretary Ross that she'd identified was that he didn't waste time getting to the point.

"I'm not sure that hiding is the appropriate term," she countered delicately.

Ross unbuttoned his jacket and took a seat directly across from her. The way he crossed his arms over his chest matched his grumpy expression. "Then what would you call it?"

"Simply another unexpected and unwelcome surprise."

"According to Doctor Cho's notes, you can heal yourself at an unprecedented rate. She's confident that's how you survived both the freezing and thawing processes. That's hardly what I'd call an unwelcome surprise."

"That depends on your perspective."

A flash of movement in her periphery distracted Sadie. Tony pulled out the chair to her left and sat down, face unreadable.

"Perspective aside, I'm having a hard time believing that you could be walking around with that kind of power and not know."

Sadie bit the inside of her cheek to hold in her sigh. How many times were they going to have to repeat this same song and dance? "I can assure you I didn't know, Mr. Secretary. How could I considering how long I spent in cryostasis?"

"Because we don't know how long you were actually under," Ross snapped. "And call me crazy, but I think you'd remember undergoing experiments to receive enhancements."

"That's not necessarily true. I treated plenty of soldiers who suffered memory loss as a result of the trauma they experienced on the battlefield. But that's beside the point, Mister Secretary. The bottom line is whatever happened to me is a mystery to both of us and unfortunately I don't see that changing any time soon."

Ross pressed the tips of his fingers together, hiding part of his face from view. The intensity of his gaze only grew as he tried to identify any sign, no matter how small, to confirm his bias. They were locked in a strange war of words and wits that had no tangible end. Sadie wasn't sure what Ross ultimately wanted from her and the longer he dragged her down stale rabbit holes the more she believed he didn't really know what he wanted from her either. Was it truly information about Steve and Bucky? Or was there something more? He reminded her of the Army brass she met during the war, men who didn't know what to make of her straight no-nonsense attitude and unblushing countenance. She wasn't what he expected and that left him at a loss as to what to do with her.

"I can see this is going to be a productive conversation."

Tony's colorful commentary accompanied him getting back to his feet, too fidgety for his own good. He swung around the table with an exaggerated movement of his arms and grasped the door handle, pushing it open and jerking his head towards the kitchen.

"I'm getting coffee. Anyone want any coffee? Anyone? You?" He tipped his chin up to Ross who answered with a murderous look. "Toto?" Sadie rolled her eyes and held up her coffee. "Right, hey, what about you?" He poked his head out into the common area where Ross's aide flinched so hard at being addressed that he dropped his phone. "Just making sure, and Candy Crush? Really?"

Sadie had to give Tony one thing as he practically sashayed out of the conference room to make his coffee, he certainly knew how to cause a scene and create a distraction. A moment of uncomfortable silence quivered in the air in the wake of his departure. Sadie took the time to recompose herself and reign in her growing temper. The last thing she needed was for Ross to catch her off guard or, worse, to provoke her into losing her cool and saying something she might regret.

"Let's start from the top, Miss Reid. In light of recent developments I want to go everything you say you do remember from the beginning."

It took every ounce of Sadie's considerable willpower to keep from dropping her head in her hands.

Thirty minutes later Sadie felt as though she'd been sucked into some strange real-life broken record situation. She bitterly regretted not taking Tony up for his offer to make her another cup of coffee because her patience was stretched to the breaking point. In all her life she'd never met a man with such a penchant for running around in circles, but Secretary Ross seemed to think only in terms of circular logic. Every question he asked her fed directly into the next and the next until somehow they arced all the way back around to his starting point, the very root of his frustration: how was it possible that Sadie couldn't remember the details he most desperately wanted to hear?

By now Sadie expected to feel an ache between her temples, but every time she thought she felt the first wisp of a headache it disappeared. It took her far too long to attribute that strange sensation to her enhancement and she wished she had more time to really soak up the fact that her body was healing at such a rapid rate that it nipped headaches in the bud before they even began. And if anyone was capable of giving her a migraine it was certainly the man pacing on the other side of the table. In the stretches of silence where Ross tried to collect and organize his thoughts, Sadie did her best to remain as still and quiet as possible. She didn't want to give him any more ammunition than he thought he already had. Even then, she caught herself glancing over at Tony every so often, just to see if he'd slipped into a coma over the course of this needless meeting.

"You spent over a year travelling Europe with Rogers and the Commandos. You know Barnes better than anyone. Are you really gonna tell me you don't have a clue where he'd go if he was in trouble?"

Tony let his head fall back with a pronounced snap and Sadie felt his frustration acutely.

"I really don't." A hard edge crept into her voice. "You keep telling me that the Bucky I knew is long gone so how could I possibly know what he would do now? But if you want my honest opinion, you're asking the wrong question."

"And why is that, Miss Reid?"

Sadie hated the way Ross called her Miss Reid. Disrespect dripped off each syllable, permeating the already tense air. Drawing herself up she crossed her arms over her chest.

"Because when they served together Bucky always deferred to Steve. If you really want to find them, then you're looking for the wrong man."

Tony sat up straighter, learning forward with renewed interest.

Ross considered her for a long moment.

"Alright then, where would Rogers go?"

Sadie knew it was wrong to stoop to Ross's level, but she just couldn't help herself. She'd had enough of this self-important man and his unnecessary, futile power plays. Against her volition the corner of her mouth lifted.

"I have no earthly idea."

Tony coughed on a laugh. Ross, however, was far less amused.

"Miss Reid, don't mistake me for a patient man. I don't take kindly to you making light of this situation."

"And I don't take kindly to being accused of things I didn't do."

"Nobody's accusing you of anything, Miss Reid. Quite the opposite. What I want is to figure out is how you wound up here and what Bucky Barnes has to do with it."

"Why do you think Bucky has anything to do with my disappearance? From the sound of it he was just as much of a victim of HYDRA as I was, and if you're truly so desperate to find him I don't know why you're trying to go through me. If what you say is true and Arnim Zola really erased Bucky's memories, then I guarantee you that he started with me and did it with the fury of God's own thunder."

For a tense second nobody moved or spoke. Sadie's words resonated in the conference room, bouncing off the glass walls, sinking into each occupant in a different manner. Just acknowledging aloud that Bucky likely didn't remember her needled the tender heart of Sadie's worries and insecurities. Ross, on the other hand, raised his eyebrows and then reached for the file box.

"You wanna bet?"

He cast the lid aside and tipped the box over. A stack of several black notebooks tumbled out, sliding across the table's slick surface. Little colored flags stuck out from the edges and she could see folded sheets of paper and other objects stuck in between the pages. Her heart leapt into her throat.

"My patience is starting to wear thin, Miss Reid. I know you're hiding something and one way or another I'm going to find out."

And with that he stood and strode out of the room. Through the windows Sadie watched his aides all scramble to their feet to follow him towards the elevators. She continued to stare after him even after he disappeared from eyesight. Frustration, indignation, and most of all hopelessness bubbled up to the surface, forcing the words into her throat and up to the tip of her tongue where they leapt off as pleading and desperate as she felt.

"I'm not hiding anything."

"I know."

Tony's response was so quick and casual she almost didn't catch it. Whipping her head around to look at him, she discovered he was staring at the notebooks on the table and not at her. When she didn't immediately respond he took it upon himself to elaborate.

"You're not the long-con type of woman; trust me, I've known a couple over the years. It's clear you don't know anything, just look at you. You stumbled out of the ice half-starved, tortured, and just as in the dark as the rest of us are. Besides, are you really gonna look me in the eye and tell me that if you knew where Barnes was you wouldn't be searching for a dozen different ways out of this place?"

In that moment Sadie's respect for Tony skyrocketed. Just hearing that he believed her, that he knew Ross was chasing phantoms down dead end roads made all the difference in the world to her. But his affirmation that he was somewhat on her side raised a litany of other questions she was at last ready to ask.

"If you believe me, then why are you going along with these ridiculous interrogations?"

"Because I need more time." Even the way he got out of his chair reminded her of Howard, a funny mix of swagger and business. A line formed between his brows as he strayed to the windows. "Time to figure out the extent of your enhancements, to figure out a game plan for you that doesn't involve being a semi-permanent prisoner here, just time to-" he broke off and wiped his face with a hand.

Sadie couldn't claim to know Tony well at all but in this one instance she could read him like an open book. "To figure out what to do with me before Steve finds out I'm still alive."

Tony looked back at her, one corner of his mouth lifting in a smirk. "You're a lot more observant than Ross is giving you credit for."

She shrugged. "The hazard of being a woman in a man's world."

He snorted in humorless laughter. "I'll bet."

He made to tap at the window and then turned around, bracing his hands on the sill and bowing his spine to the frustration of their situation. Sadie thought he looked more tired than their past meetings, his skin pale and drawn. She thought about the little details Rhodey let slip in their conversations and about the enormous pressure that must be weighing on Tony's shoulders when it came to letting Steve and Bucky get away, not aided in the least by her sudden emergence. But then she considered something Rhodey said earlier in the morning, about how much easier this entire process would be if Steve were involved, echoing her desperate desire to reunite with her friend because, if nothing else, he could help her make heads or tails of this brave new world. The fact that Tony hadn't swallowed his pride and reached out to Steve spoke absolute volumes.

"That must have been some falling out you had with Steve," she remarked, daring to wade into the uncertain waters.

Tony's gaze hardened when it snapped up to her. She started to recoil in anticipation of his rebuke but then he let go of his momentary vitriol and allowed his shoulders to sag. "That's the understatement of the year."

"Because of Bucky."

"Just a little bit."

There was a harshness to his admission, not direct at Sadie but at the universe in general. All she learned from Rhodey was that the mishap between Steve and Tony occurred in Siberia, at the former HYDRA facility where it kept Bucky. According to him, the personal details were a story that he couldn't tell and that if she really wanted to know then she was going to have to work up the courage to ask Tony herself. Sadie dreaded bringing the subject up for several reasons, the least of which was provoking Tony's ire, but also because she herself wasn't sure she wanted to know lest it only pile onto the enormous mountain of sorrows burying Bucky alive. But now that she was facing a no-win situation with Ross, Tony was maybe her best shot at extricating herself from this situation and getting a chance to rebuild her life such as it was.

"Tony, please," she pleaded softly. "What happened?"

"Trust me, Toto. You really, really don't want to know."

"But considering I'm tangled up in this mess I think it's only fair that I do."

Tony evaluated her carefully for a second before he shook his head in disgust. "Okay, you asked for it," he muttered under his breath. Pushing away from the window sill he retreated to the table and took up one of the black notebooks. "These are all Barnes's. Ross's people took them during the thirty minutes he was in our custody. I haven't read them myself but I hear it's mostly him trying to put his scrambled brain back together." He opened the cover of the book in his hand. "I bet even he was smart enough not to write down all of his victims in here, my parents included."

Sadie flinched when he snapped the cover shut and tossed the book back on the table. She stared at the notebook where it landed, too stunned by this revelation to make a sound. What she thought she heard Tony say sounded utterly impossible. There was no way that Bucky would ever-could ever-kill Howard. How many times had she seen them together at the pubs howling at the moon or stumbling into briefings the morning after those late nights? Bucky and Howard were good friends, always hustling GI's at darts, getting lost in deep philosophical conversations about war tactics, and more than once Sadie watched in amusement as Bucky used his uniform and good looks to help Howard woo the local girls before retreating back to her. Howard helped him pick out her engagement ring, and more than once he lamented that he'd never get as lucky as Bucky did. Picturing Bucky killing Howard Stark in cold blood didn't make sense. It defied everything she knew and forced her to confront the reality about Bucky that she just didn't want to see.

She started to say something in reply but stopped herself upon observing the cold expression on Tony's face. The last thing he wanted to hear were placations from Bucky's ex-fiancée recently returned from the dead. There was literally nothing she could say to improve the situation and, in fact, Sadie knew anything she said now would just make it worse.

"And Steve-" she prompted him instead, figuring it was best to get to the end as quickly as possible.

"Knew and didn't say a word."

Much as she hated to admit it, Sadie could see the basis for their falling out. Keeping a secret of that magnitude was enough to shatter any friendship. Glancing over to Bucky's notebooks, she understood now Tony's reticence to discuss Bucky and even the moments of his outright disgust aimed towards him. If she could ever meet the Japanese pilots who dropped the bombs that destroyed the ship that ultimately became her father's grave at Pearl Harbor, she certainly wouldn't be interested in sitting down to tea. And someone as guarded and difficult as Tony Stark likely wouldn't take kindly to anyone keeping that kind of information from him.

"I see," she whispered even as her fingers twitched towards the notebooks on the table. The drive to know more about Bucky was now insatiable. Sadie couldn't fathom what HYDRA did to him that could cause him to mindlessly murder someone he once knew well and called a friend. She had to know what answers those notebooks held, not just about what happened to him but whether he remembered her at all and if he knew anything about how she wound up a woman out of time.

"You should read them. I'm sure Ross will want a full book report when he comes back tomorrow."

Tony was clearly finished with the troubles of the day and with her. He made for the door and though she knew she was playing with fire, Sadie called out to him before he left.

"Tony?" He merely turned to look back at her. "I'm sorry about your parents."

His face was a blank slate before he took a deep breath. "Yeah well, what can you do," he shrugged her off and left the conference room, leaving Sadie alone with nothing more than Bucky's memories scattered across the pages of his notebooks.

X X X

Even after she made tea and retreated to the relative safety of her room, Sadie couldn't relax. Not even the storm system that moved in during the afternoon eased the anxiety coursing her veins. Sheets of rain hit the windows with a rhythmic, soothing cadence but that wasn't enough to quell Sadie's nerves or get her to sit still. Every time she tried to sit at her desk a fresh wave of restless energy drove her out of her chair and set her pacing, doing her best not to chew on her thumbnail while she circled her room. Her gaze alternated between the rain trailing down her windows to the notebooks neatly stacked on her desk, each one unopened and unread even four hours after Secretary Ross left.

Sadie didn't know what was wrong with her. When she first woke up, if someone offered her the opportunity to have even this small piece of Bucky she would have leapt without thinking. But now things were different. Having information revealed to her in tantalizing pieces over the course of interviews and impersonal dossiers was one thing, but touching the pages that Bucky touched and reading the words that he wrote was something else entirely. Every time she started to take the first notebook from the stack she stopped herself, feeling as though she was violating him by digging into what of his life he'd managed to piece together. Bucky clearly didn't fill the pages of the books with the intention of anyone else ever reading them and how would he feel if he knew there were people using them as a tool to track him down? How would he feel if he knew that Sadie, someone who used to be so close to him, was thumbing through the pages out of a desperate desire to be near to him?

And then there was the other reason her fears kept her from devouring all of this new information. What if she didn't want to read what was committed in ink? She continued to fidget with her necklace, drawing a thumb over her engagement ring. So much uncertainty clouded the journals but Sadie knew for certain that the man who wrote in them wasn't her fiancé, not anymore. She wasn't sure she could handle the crushing disappointment of reading his notes only to discover he'd regained certain parts of his past but not her? She heart leapt into her throat.

What if Bucky didn't remember her?

Sadie stilled and looked down at the ring pinched between her fingers. Light from her lamp shone off the sapphire's surface. Even decades later she could still remember the nervous energy emitting from him when he gave her the ring, scared that she wouldn't like his unconventional choice. Her heart ached as she considered that that Bucky wouldn't be in the pages and neither would any of their brief but intense history.

And yet Sadie knew that was her selfishness taking over. If she ever had any hope of seeing Bucky again then she would have to face this scenario one way or another. Wouldn't it be better to know now as opposed to learning the ugly truth if and when they came face to face? At least then she would be prepared for the worst.

With that rationale bolstering her, she stopped pacing and returned to her desk. The tips of her fingers trembled when she reached out for the top notebook and slipped the elastic band off the cover. Sadie closed her eyes and took one more beat before opening the cover.

"Whatever it is, you can handle it," she told herself in a firm but soft voice. "You've been through worse."

But it wasn't what Bucky wrote on the first page that took her breath away. Rather, it was his handwriting that caused her knees to give. She sank to the floor, fingers brushing past the scrawl that she would know anywhere. How many times had she peered over his shoulder while he wrote to Rebecca? She liked to wind an arm across his collar and point out little grammatical errors just to annoy him before planting a pert kiss to his cheek. More than once he'd pulled her into his lap so he could let her dictate her responses to Rebecca's questions. Rebecca let her read all of his letters home, even the ones from before they fell in love and Sadie's mother gave her the letter he'd written asking for her mother's blessing. And then there was the note that Bucky wrote her, a hasty apology on a scrap of paper that she carried with her everywhere she went. Sadie read and reread the note so many times the paper was starting to fall apart but she loved that little tattered scrap and the untidy scrawl with all of her heart. Bucky's handwriting in the notebook was a perfect match to all of his letters, potent enough on its own to bring tears to her eyes. She traced her index finger along with the first word, caught between crying and laughing because it finally felt real to her.

Bucky was alive. He was miraculously alive and he'd written in the very same notebook she now held in her hands.

Even the first word struck her as momentous and crucial in its own right.

Brooklyn.

Leave it to him to start at the beginning, she thought with a tiny smile even as the first tear slipped onto her cheek. Brooklyn accompanied a date: March 10, 1917, his birthday. They'd only celebrated once together but she recalled it involved a cake that Howard produced seemingly out of thin air and enough alcohol to turn all of the Howling Commandos into potted plants. Bucky told her once about how his mom always pulled out the stops for his and Rebecca's birthdays, cooking special dinners and scraping together just enough money to buy them a nice present that she presented with the lament that her babies just wouldn't stop growing.

A few lines down he'd scribbled a few more bullet points, names or locations that Sadie didn't know. Further into the notebook he'd jotted down the names of his family, odd fragments of memories that he hadn't quite pieced together. His early attempts at putting points on a timeline were rough and heavily punctuated with gaps. She could see the times his frustration got the better of him and he pressed his pen down too hard, poking holes through pages, even ripping the paper in one place. From between the pages little extra bits of information jumped out at her - printouts of obituaries, a picture of his family's apartment building, and postcards he'd gotten depicting the Brooklyn Bridge and even the Statue of Liberty. Sometimes his writing was almost impossible to decipher and she guessed those were moments he wrote as fast as possible to commit the memory to page out of fear that his moment of clarity would slip through his fingers. Her heart broke for him with each page, each scattered compilation of events that he could now recall but seemed so wholly divorced from his emotions. Bucky wrote little questions next to certain entries, perhaps the saddest of all being the question he wrote next to Rebecca's name. Little sister - did we get along?

If only Bucky knew! Another knife twisted in her gut. If only poor Rebecca knew that her brother had been alive this entire time!

Sadie poured through the notebook, spanning an odd assortment of years of his childhood and she absently reached for the next only to start when a picture of Steve in his uniform slipped onto her lap. From that point forward Bucky's musings slowly grew more coherent, transitioning from single words and phrases to full sentences, lists of details he remembered about certain people, and even answering his own questions in the margins. The steady progress he made continued to grow until she reached the middle of the third notebook and another printout stuck between the pages. Sadie unfolded it and let out a little cry of relief mixed with a gasp.

All her fears turned out to be unfounded because there she was, memorialized in black and white. An SSR photographer must have taken the picture because she recognized the SSR hospital. She thought she wore her white uniform quite well as she treated a patient, smiling demurely more for his sake than the camera's. Sadie had never seen the picture before, but she was startled to see a caption set beneath it like she'd seen in other history books. Was she really in history books? The notion amused and exasperated her in equal turns.

Setting the picture aside, she let out the breath she'd been holding for far too long. There it was in all its glory.

Sadie Reid - New York Point of Embarkation.

Seeing her name released tension from her body in a flood and she sank deeper against her desk out of sheer relief. Below that he'd scrawled out a note that drew a laugh out of her she didn't think was possible.

She didn't like me.

No, she hadn't cared for Bucky on their first meeting, but back then she had no idea how important he would turn out to be. She loved that he remembered their meetcute and the sparks that flew between them even during a simple medical exam. In the years after his death Sadie often thought about their first meeting and found it more perfect every time. Seeing his brief summary in print did wonders for her. For the first time in days she felt lighter and less afraid. Clutching the notebook to her chest, she let her head fall against her desk and she closed her eyes, letting fresh tears trickle down her cheeks even as she smiled up to her ceiling.

"He remembers."

For now, even in the face of everything that still stood in her way, that was enough.

X X X

Rhodey couldn't get comfortable. A combination of numbness and sharp pain woke him at four o'clock that morning, leaving him with a pins and needles sensation in his spine that refused to subside no matter what position he tried. Easing himself higher in his wheelchair, he did his best to shift his weight a little to his left side but to no avail. His doctors warned him that he would experience all manner of aches and pains as his spinal cord continued to heal and this was one of his worst episodes yet. When he realized he wouldn't be getting any more sleep, he ventured out into the common area and turned on the TV to catch up on sports highlights before Doctor Palmer arrived for his morning physical therapy session.

A blanket of tension smothered the compound. It always felt this way on the rare nights Secretary Ross made himself at home. Rhodey wished he would make the short drive back to the city and stay there but Ross seemed even more hesitant than usual to leave. That probably had everything to do with the stack of black notebooks he'd seen Sadie carry back to her room the day before, bearing a shell-shocked expression. She never came out for dinner which was just as well, it was a stiff event with Ross presiding over cartons of Chinese takeout. If Rhodey had been able to avoid the affair he would have too.

Another pain shot up from the point where his sensation ended. Fighting a grimace, he shifted again.

"You too, huh?"

Tony wandered into the room and flopped down on the sofa. He dragged a hand over his face still drowsy with sleep. Rhodey didn't answer him right away; he didn't want to pile onto Tony's woes any more by revealing the source of his restlessness.

"What's the score?"

Rhodey raised an eyebrow. "To what?"

"I don't know - to the game -" Tony circled a lazy finger in the air, searching for the answer to his own question. "What sports are on right now?"

"Uh, considering it's five-thirty in the morning-"

"You know what I mean."

"Baseball and hockey. And you'll be happy to know the Red Sox lost."

"A victory for New Yorkers everywhere," Tony grumbled and groaned as he sat up to watch the early-morning sports commentary. The morning programming was tailor-made for guys squeezing in early morning workouts, broken down into segments that could be easily digested between reps or during grueling runs on the treadmill. Another stab in his back accompanied a familiar stabbing in his heart. This time three months ago Rhodey would have been up with the rest of them, pounding the pavement.

"Honestly, Rhodey, I don't know how you watch this stuff."

The mild contempt in Tony's voice might have amused Rhodey on any other morning. Instead of fighting fire with wit, Rhodey reached forward to the coffee table and snatched up the remote. He tossed it to Tony where it landed on his chest before bouncing off onto the floor.

"Knock yourself out."

Grumbling under his breath, Tony retrieved the remote from the floor and fumbled with the buttons until he changed it over to his preferred news network. He slowly sat up at the same time Rhodey gripped the arms of his chair and leaned forward, mouth falling open in surprise. Well, he supposed he shouldn't have been too terribly surprised but even Rhodey had to admit, he and his contacts had outdone themselves orchestrating this leak. Still, it was jarring to see Sadie's Army Nursing Corps personnel photo splashed across the screen accompanied by the headline "Sixty-seven year old mystery solved!" An anchor sat to the right of the images speaking at a rapid clip all about Sadie and her alleged recovery. Tony hit the volume button several times with a sharp thumb until the anchor's voice filled the entire space.

"We've received reports from multiple anonymous sources that after her recovery Sadie Reid was flown to the United States where she's being held for further examination and interrogation at the Avengers Compound."

"Being held - fucking great they're making it sound like she's a prisoner," Tony grumbled and shook his head.

Rhodey bit the inside of his cheek to keep from pointing out that technically she was being held at the compound, like a prisoner with the world's most comfortable set up. Rather than open the door for any accusations, he did his best to pretend to take this bombshell with an air of shock and surprise. Sooner or later Tony would figure out he was the source of the leak but that wasn't something they had to get into right away. Luckily for Rhodey, Tony's brain was already racing far ahead of the source and looking to the massive consequences now staring him down. He got to his feet, muffling a groan in his hands before he scrubbed his face.

"Gird your loins, Rhodey. Today's about to get real ugly."

Tony's prophecy turned out to be a severe understatement. By the time Doctor Palmer came upstairs with him after physical therapy, the entire floor was crawling with suits - men and women of all ages with cell phones glued to their ears or up to their eyeballs in paperwork. Meredith paused just outside of the elevator, her hand dropping onto Rhodey's shoulder.

"I think maybe we should take a rain check on that cup of coffee," she murmured.

"Yeah," said Rhodey slowly, blinking in the face of so many strangers. Physical therapy had only been an hour and a half and somehow in that short window the masses had descended on the compound like a plague. Shaking his head clear, he offered Meredith a weak smile. "How about next week?"

She gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "It's a date," she promised and drummed up a smile. "Good luck in there."

After she left, Rhodey wheeled his way down the main aisle, garnering more than one curious glance. He remembered then that his paralysis wasn't a widely-publicized event. Everyone thought it was for the best to keep the particulars out of the news in order to protect Vision from further scrutiny. He could only imagine that the sight of him-of War Machine-wheelchair bound was enough to make anyone pause even in these extraordinary circumstances.

Ignoring the eyes on him, he rolled down towards the conference room, hoping to get a glimpse of the goings-on. A nasty part of him privately hoped that Ross was cowering in a chair, surrounded by a dozen members of the UN yelling at him for his total lack of transparency and for failing to follow the provisions of the accords that he championed. After all of the headache Ross had put them through over the past two weeks, Rhodey thought it was the least the man deserved. Between two knots of harried staffers he could see through the window into the conference room. His stomach sank.

Instead of Ross suffering the consequences of his monumental bad decisions, he stood at one end of the table, gesturing with a sharp hand. His face was red and eyebrows knit together and Rhodey could just hear his muffled shouting. The other members of the council, people that Rhodey did recognize from both the signing and other events, all sat stone still, staring at him with slightly slack jaws. Tony stood at the window, looking far too cavalier with his hands shoved in his pockets. But while everyone else in the room was clambering to talk over one another and get a word in edgewise around Ross's bellowing, a lone figure sat in the corner, looking small by comparison. Sadie's bony arms stayed crossed tightly over her chest and a stony expression held her face. The fact that she sat shunted off to the side while everyone else in the room debated her fate boiled Rhodey's blood. He remembered that helpless feeling when others started talking about his future with the Avengers shortly after his accident. There was nothing more insulting and degrading than having no say in your future.

Rhodey was so busy examining Sadie that he didn't see Tony push away from his post and wander out of the room. Sadie watched him go but hesitated and just when she was about to get up she changed her mind and stayed put. Tony let himself out of the room and jerked his head towards the far end of the common area where they could talk without being overheard.

"How's it going?"

"Oh you know...terrible."

"Ross in trouble?"

"Enough, but the Accords don't reserve punishment for the gatekeepers so he'll have to take this verbal lashing, but that's about it."

"And in the meantime Sadie is being talked about like she's not even there?"

"Something like that. Ross is posting extra guards and snipers on the premises in case Rogers tries to stage another prison break. Everyone on the council is already pissed about the Raft incident; they'd rather die than suffer the embarrassment of him breaking her out of here."

They came to a stop near the staircase where Tony could still keep an eye on the conference room but any nosey staffer would actually have to walk over to them to hear their conversation. Rhodey leaned back, his back finally feeling better after physical therapy. There was an imbalance of power at the table that he recognized didn't benefit Sadie any more than it would benefit him, and he wondered if she found it offensive that the majority of the people discussing her fate were middle-aged white men. He shook his head clear of the thought and returned to the matter at hand.

"You don't actually think he'd try, do you?"

"Depends on where he's hiding. I wouldn't put it past him."

Neither would Rhodey. "How is she taking it?"

"Well, she's now officially an international incident and her face is on every major news network in the world, so I'm assuming she could be better. Mostly I think she's just too overwhelmed to know what to do."

Rhodey hadn't completely considered that part of the inevitable fallout of his decision to go against Ross. In his mind he'd only thought about the injustice of her situation and how now wasn't the time to abandon the Accords. The voluminous Accords, however, gave him a brand new idea to help Sadie navigate this mess she'd been thrown into.

"There's bound to be a loophole or two in the Accords for a situation like this. Sadie's not a fighter and honestly if her enhancement is limited to just healing herself then-"

"You can go through the Accords with a fine-toothed comb all you want, but she's not getting out of here unless she's released into someone else's custody. Nobody is going to just let her go out into the world without testing her enhancements and besides, where would she go?" Tony's frown deepened. "Aside from the two most wanted criminals in the world everyone else she knew is dead; I checked."

Rhodey's heart sank into his stomach. That was another detail he hadn't considered. "Still," he said slowly, "giving her a choice has to be better than what Ross has been doing."

"Yeah," Tony finally agreed. He dropped his gaze to his feet and shifted his weight in a fit of discomfort. "One of these days I might even thank you for creating this clusterfuck."

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

A pained expression pulled at Tony's mouth. "Don't make me say it again."

"I wouldn't dream of it," he mused, surprised that Tony was so slow on the uptake. Though Rhodey was positive he'd effectively covered up his tracks and nobody would find out he was the leak, he was glad that Tony could see right through him. Rhodey didn't like keeping secrets from his friends. Even though Tony knew and didn't seem all that bothered, Rhodey felt the sudden urge to explain himself. "I couldn't stay quiet. After everything that's happened lately and knowing the consequences of holding people against their will for flimsy reasons - I just - it wasn't right."

"Yeah," Tony kicked at the ground. "I probably also ought to thank you for not saying 'I told you so.'"

"The day's still young, Tony. Don't get too far ahead of yourself."

For the first time in days, a genuine smile pulled at Tony's lips and he coughed over a laugh. The tension between them eased. Rhodey felt better knowing that Tony wasn't going to blow a gasket over his decision and that he also wasn't going to report him to the council.

"Ross is on the warpath. If he finds out it was you-"

"He won't. I've got friends in places he can't reach. Besides, what is he gonna do? Kick the paraplegic guy off the Avengers? I doubt I'm worth the bad press he'd get."

"I've gotta say, watching him flounder for an explanation has been pretty fun."

"You need to get out more," Rhodey pointed out and Tony's chest rose in a half-chuckle.

The conference door room flew open and Ross appeared. He searched the common area until he found the pair of them. "Stark! Get back in here!"

Tony shook his head and Rhodey thought he saw a flash of regret on Tony's face - though what that specific regret was he couldn't say.

"Do me a favor and start going through the Accords. See if there's any provision that might help us out."

He clapped Rhodey on the shoulder once before making his way back to the open door. A pang of sympathy tugged at Rhodey's heart; he wouldn't wish the coming misery on anyone and especially not Tony. But he took comfort that as long as Tony was in the room Sadie had something of an ally. After all, this wasn't about Tony or Ross or Rhodey. This whole nightmare unfolding was about Sadie, an unwitting victim sucked up in a tornado of misery that quite simply refused to let up. He didn't see the storm quieting any time soon, but Rhodey knew that Tony was finally shifting into the right mental state and between the two of them surely they could safely guide her through the worst of it.

Rhodey shifted his chair back into action, bound for the elevator. The Accords were dense and if he had any hope of finding something helpful he would need to get started as soon as possible.

X X X

King T'Challa set Steve up with a small room in a discrete wing of the palace. He was out of the way where he was, which suited everyone. T'Challa didn't have to make a ton of explanations and Steve didn't have to answer many questions. Despite being tucked away from prying eyes, Steve's room exceeded all of his expectations. His window opened onto a stunning view of the city skyline and he often slept with the window open so the sounds could drift up from the streets, a comforting sound for a Brooklynite. The peace afforded him from this small corner of the palace helped him relax. He began to really process the magnitude of the fallout that Zemo created, letting the emotions roll over him in waves that left him sad, angry, frustrated, hopeless, relieved, and hopeful all at once. Maybe he couldn't rely on Tony, but when he thought about what he did have in his place, things didn't seem so bad. After all, Sam, Natasha, and Wanda were already working out new missions to run while they waited for him in Warsaw, he had a strong new ally in T'Challa, and at long last he fulfilled his mission of tracking down and saving Bucky. Things weren't ideal, but they could certainly be worse.

In Wakanda the days felt longer, punctuated with blazing sunrises and sunsets that bathed the world in glorious ruby red light. Steve enjoyed the heat that pressed in on all sides along with the feeling in his lungs when he inhaled the pristine air. Wakanda was a marvel of technology and engineering on every level, from the planning of the city, to the palace itself, to the unbelievable environmental quality-Steve knew that the world would soon be benefitting enormously from T'Challa's gutsy decision to share Wakanda's bounty.

When Steve first arrived he spent most of his time with the young king, hearing about his turbulent transition into power and the short-lived civil conflict that nearly spread beyond the country's borders. They talked about his vision for the country, in particular the announcement that he was bringing the true nature of Wakanda onto the global stage, something he'd done only two days before calling Steve back to discuss Bucky's future. But now that Bucky was awake, Steve split most of his time between his room and Shuri's lab where she'd started running an entire battery of tests on Bucky. Though Bucky was no stranger to being a lab rat, he seemed to appreciate Steve's presence and support.

Three days after Shuri pulled Bucky out of cryo, she was still examining every aspect of her patient she could. According to her, the more accurate of a picture she could get of Bucky's entire physical, mental, and emotional state before beginning the simulations the better. That way she could account for as many unknown variables as possible and make the procedure even safer. Steve only just understood her dumbed down explanation and so he did as she asked and went on faith, trusting the child prodigy to see Bucky through the life-changing process. For his part, Bucky was on his best behavior and only grumbled about the never-ending stream of scans, sensors, and needles when it was just Steve and him. Steve knew that Bucky was grateful beyond words for even the opportunity to rid himself of the trigger words that held him prisoner for far too long.

At the moment, however, Bucky wasn't happy with anyone. Shuri spent most of the afternoon running neurological test after test culminating in a series of scans to test the firing rate of his neurons, something that required gluing several electrodes to various points on Bucky's head. By the time Shuri armed him with a small bottle of acetone to dissolve the glue before he showered, Bucky's frown was so deep that he reminded Steve of the pictures of the unhappy cat that Natasha liked to text him at odd intervals. Bottle in hand, Bucky shuffled off to the hazmat shower, muttering what Steve suspected were Russian obscenities.

Shuri sat on a stool, one leg crossed over the other while she examined a hologram of Bucky's most recent brain scan. With a graceful turn of her wrist, she turned the scan to review a different angle. Her brows furrowed in concentration before smoothing over, a tiny smile playing at her lips.

Steve started to ask her what she was so pleased about but stopped when T'Challa swept into the room. At once Shuri was at his side, reaching for his elbow.

"Brother? What's wrong?"

Something certainly was off with T'Challa. His shoulders were rigid, pairing nicely with the serious line of his mouth. "I need to speak with Captain Rogers."

Steve rose to his feet. "Your majesty, what do you need?"

"I need you to tell me if you know who this is."

T'Challa touched one of the beads on his wrist. A hologram flashed to life. Steve's jaw dropped.

"That's Sadie Reid," he said, taking in the sight of her dark curls and sharp grey eyes set above a full red mouth. "She served as a nurse in the SSR during the war. We were good friends and she was engaged to Bucky."

"Do you know what happened to her after the war?"

A horrible feeling began bubbling in the pit of Steve's stomach. Swallowing hard, he took a step closer to the hologram and drummed up the information. Even as he started to speak he couldn't take his eyes off Sadie's picture; it had been a long time since he'd really looked at her. "She transferred to the Pacific theater. I read that after the war she started the International Humanitarian Aid Project. She was travelling from a work site in Hamburg to Ypres when she disappeared. Nobody else ever saw her again."

"Yes," T'Challa confirmed, pleased that Steve was up to date with his history. "That was until two weeks ago."

Very little surprised Steve anymore. But this particular grenade exploded right behind his knees, forcing him to reach back and grasp the back of his chair so he could sit down with a hard thud. "She's-what?"

"Alive, Captain Rogers."

T'Challa went on to give both Steve and Shuri a brief explanation of Sadie's recovery, ending with the press leak and confirmation that she was being kept at the Avengers compound in New York. For a long time after T'Challa finished Steve heard nothing else but the roar of blood in his ears threatening to drown out the voice in his head. This was news he never expected. Every history book and website that mentioned her went on to point out that she'd disappeared without a trace and no lead was ever found. She'd been declared dead; hell, Steve had even gone to visit her grave in Arlington during the short period he lived in Washington D.C. He thought her untimely death had just been another tragedy in a long line but as he sat with the news his mental gears creaked to life, turning the details over and over, generating one question.

What he really all that surprised?

People didn't just disappear. Everyone knew that Steve had been frozen in the Arctic; over the years multiple enterprising individuals attempted to find the wreck of the Valkyrie. When he started catching up with missed history he discovered a bevy of newspaper articles and even a few dissertations all devoted to the subject of Sadie's post-war life. Those authors presented multiple theories as to what happened the day she vanished, though now that he knew the full story none of them were even remotely close. In fact, the only thing any author got right was that Sadie was definitely alive when she disappeared. And now not only was she alive, but she was in New York, holed up at his former residence. Steve's impulsiveness, driven by his twisting heart, jumped far in front of his head.

"I've got to see her-if Ross has her in his custody he's got nothing good planned," Steve was already half out of his seat, a half-baked plan forming in his racing mind. A moment for logic was a moment wasted.

T'Challa held up a sharp hand just as Okoye slid half a step to her right, making to block Steve's exit. "I have been called to New York as a part of a panel of Accords nations. The goal of the panel is to determine the best course of action for Miss Reid."

A panel? Was he kidding?

"She's not a prisoner, she's a victim! Shouldn't it be Sadie's choice what happens to her?"

"Of course she should, but it is not that simple."

That drew Steve to a grinding halt. Complicated could mean many things but he was too experienced with this world to know better. His eyes narrowed, flashing from Okoye's own distrustful look to T'Challa who suddenly couldn't quite meet his eye.

"She's enhanced, isn't she?"

"Accelerated self-healing capabilities," T'Challa explained. Shuri stood up a little straighter, eyes shining with curiosity. "But the scientists studying her case haven't even scratched the surface. Her abilities could be much more advanced than that."

"You mean like me and Bucky."

Steve froze. The shocking nature of the news momentarily blocked all other thoughts out, but now he had a new elephant in the room to contend with. Sadie's emergence in the modern world didn't just alter things for him. After all, she'd been Bucky's fiancée, the love of his life. Earlier Steve hadn't been able to bring himself to ask Bucky if he remembered Sadie. What if he didn't? More importantly, what if he did? How was this news going to affect Bucky?

"We will not know without further testing," T'Challa guided him back to the subject at hand.

"Something we cannot achieve if you try to break her out," Okoye added with a scowl.

Steve absolutely hated admitting it, but Okoye was right.

"But, brother, she must come here," Shuri argued. "Imagine how we could advance our medical technology with her DNA."

Steve didn't know whether he should be offended that Shuri only thought of his one-time friend as a science project or relieved that he could count on her as an ally. Okoye's frown deepened and she started to argue, but T'Challa held up a hand once more.

"It is too soon to make such decisions. Captain Rogers, I would like for you to accompany us to New York. From there we can determine the best course of action."

It was a diplomatic answer if Steve ever heard one, but he realized that was the best he was going to get. With that settled, he shifted back to the other pressing matter. Glancing over his shoulder towards the other exit out of the lab, he thought of Bucky who was likely still washing the glue out of his hair, completely unaware of the situation.

"What about Bucky? What do we tell him?"

"Nothing," said Shuri in a firm voice. "In order for these simulations and the eventual deprogramming to be successful, Sergeant Barnes must be as emotionally stable as possible. Somehow I don't think telling him his ex is back from the dead is going to help with that."

"You know he's not stupid," Steve pointed out with a frown. "Eventually he'll figure out something is up."

"Not if you're all in New York and not in contact. Leave managing Sergeant Barnes to me. He'll be so busy with pre-program testing and preparation that he won't have time to notice anything else."

Somehow Steve doubted that was going to go as smoothly as Shuri predicted, but he didn't have the time to argue. Everything was happening fast and he needed to alert Sam and Nat as to his change in plans. So he left Bucky in Shuri's hands, promising that he'd be back soon and wouldn't miss the deprogramming. With any luck, he'd be back with a big surprise in tow.

A/N: Slowly but surely I'm moving all the pieces on the board. I'm also still getting into the groove with some of these characters so be kind. Next chapter picks up where we leave off.

Anyway, loved it? Like it? Think that Rhodey and Sadie's growing friendship is basically the best thing ever? Looking forward to alllll of the shit Shuri is going to give Bucky? I'd love to know your thoughts! Much love - Kappa