Stephanie paced the length of the stage, nervously moving her way in and out of the small radius of light coming from the single glowing bulb on a metal lamp post. Her mind was racing almost as fast as she was, consumed as it was not just by her own thoughts, but by the anxious thoughts of the man who was quietly waiting just beyond the edges of her sight. "They only called me back twenty minutes ago," she told the man. "Apparently Alexis twisted her ankle during a shootout with a team of HYDRA agents. They said they would be here right after they got her fixed up." Stephanie stopped as a barrage of questions ran through her mind, and she chuckled when she realized the common thread between them. "Jim, trust me, if Lex tells me they're on their way, they're on their way."

The quiet thump of two sets of feet hitting the floor interrupted all further attempts at 'conversation'. Stephanie turned toward the stage door to find the couple she was waiting to see heading straight for her. "Hi Lex!" she greeted Alexis and Steve. "Thank you for getting back so quickly..." Her attention wavered for a moment before she turned away from the new arrivals and back toward the man she had been waiting with. "Ji-im," Stephanie called out into the darkness, clearly annoyed by the thoughts that had been going through her mind. "I can promise you, Alexis was not lying about her ankle. Mind reader, remember?" She shifted her weight from side to side as more of Jim's thoughts ran through her mind. "There are other things going on here, Jim. Things I didn't want to tell you about..." Stephanie rolled her eyes and sighed as the thoughts that entered her mind started to exasperate her. "Goddamn it, Jim, will you give it a rest! You wanted to talk to Steve, he's here...Yes, that's 'your' Steve, and if you'd get out of my head for half a minute I could prove it to you!"

Alexis studied her friend's face, trying to figure out when she would be able to get and keep Stephanie's attention. "Steph?" she asked, treading carefully, "what's with the one-sided conversation?"

Stephanie sighed again, pinching the bridge of her nose to stave off the approaching headache as she tried to calm her fraying emotions. "Jim's head is pretty messed up," she explained. "He hasn't said a word to me since we met the other day. The only way we can 'talk' is by me reading his mind."

Steve stepped a bit closer toward the light...which elicited a gasp from the man in the darkness. "Why is he so sure we're lying to him?" Steve asked Stephanie.

"Jim heard you were dead, same as the rest of us," Stephanie replied. "I had to do some convincing to even get him to believe you *might* be alive." Steve peered into the darkness, trying to see who this 'Jim' was...and failing miserably.

Alexis watched the conversation between Stephanie and Steve carefully. "So if Jim was so convinced that Steve was dead, then why was it so important for us to meet?"

Stephanie drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "I can't be sure, because you look so different in so many of his memories," she explained, turning to Steve, "but I think you and Jim grew up together."

Steve and Alexis each drew in a quick, excited, nervous breath as they turned to each other for support. "You don't think it's him, do you?" asked Alexis.

"His real name was James," Steve replied. "So it's definitely possible..." He pulled away from Alexis, moving closer and closer to the light at the center of the stage. Steve turned his eyes to the darkness, hoping to get a real look at 'Jim' and confirm his suspicions. "Bucky?" he asked. "Bucky, is that you?"

Jim moved cautiously toward the light, stopping at the point where only Steve could possibly be the one to recognize him. "I remember Bucky," Stephanie declared, speaking on Jim's behalf. "But I don't remember if that's me or not."

"Come closer," Steve suggested. "Let me see you."

"You see me now, don't you?" Jim/Stephanie countered.

"I do," Steve agreed. "But there's too many shadows. And without hearing your voice..."

Jim took two steps further into the light, making his face visible to everyone in the room. "Does that help?" asked Jim/Stephanie.

Steve found his own voice getting caught in his throat. "Yes, that's better."

"You are Steve, right?" Jim/Stephanie asked. "You look like him."

"Yeah, Bucky," Steve forced out in a strangled gasp as he wiped tears from his eyes. "It's me."

"Prove it."

Steve pushed himself to focus on the request, racking his brain to think of something that Bucky, even after everything he had gone through, would still remember. One memory stuck out like a sore thumb. "You were a real ladykiller back in the day," Steve told Bucky. "In fact, there was only ever one woman who was more interested in me than you..."

"P-p-p-peggy," Jim stammered out in a quiet whisper.

It was enough of a sound to confirm everything that Steve had suspected from the moment he entered the opera house. "It is you, Bucky," he declared. "It's really you. God, I never thought I'd see you again..."

"Same," said Bucky through Stephanie. When Steve turned to Stephanie, looking for an explanation, Stephanie raised her hands up in surrender. "I told you his head was in bad shape," she insisted. "He can't talk anymore right now..."

"That's all right," Steve agreed, waving Stephanie off to focus on his best friend. "You pulled me out of the river. Saved my life when your handlers want nothing more than for you to kill me. Why?"

Bucky hesitated, his mind fighting through decades of programming to form an honest answer to that question. "We've always had each other's back. No matter what," said Bucky/Stephanie.

"Yeah, we have," agreed Steve.

"I couldn't let you die, then," Bucky/Stephanie added, Stephanie's eyes welling up with tears of her own as the memories played out in her own mind. "Not when I could do something about it."

Steve's face fell as a dark cloud of guilt descended over it. "If I had known you survived that fall from the train, Bucky," he declared, "I never would have stopped looking for you."

"He was looking for you now," Alexis chimed into the conversation for the first time. "Finding you has been the only thing he's wanted since he woke up. That's why we were in Europe."

"Someone I trust thought he saw you," Steve agreed. "It was a longshot, but I took a chance."

"But I was here," Bucky/Stephanie countered. "I never left DC."

Steve let out a nervous chuckle and a small smile. "Sure, I know that now," he teased.

"Why...why did you want to find me?" asked Bucky/Stephanie. "I could still kill you..."

"I don't think so," Steve countered, shaking his head. "I think if you really were going to kill me you would have left me at the bottom of the Potomac."

"You don't understand," Bucky/Stephanie argued. "The men who made me, they...they remade my mind from the inside out. I have no choice. I have to do what they tell me..."

Steve shook his head. "You've already proven that's not true."

"And what if I told you that that never had to be true again?" asked Stephanie. "Remember when I told you earlier that there were other things going on her beyond everything that's happened between you and Steve?" When Bucky nodded, Stephanie approached Bucky slowly, step by tentative step, as she continued, "I know a place where, if you're willing, they can heal every part of your body that those butchers tried to take from you and they can rebuild your mind so that the only one who has any control over you is you...yes, Alexis is a part of this group, too...no. No, it's not SHIELD."

"SHIELD doesn't exist anymore," Steve admitted. "At least, not like you knew it."

Ignoring Steve's comment, Stephanie's eyes never left Bucky's. "Jim...do you trust me?" she asked quietly. "Then trust me when I tell you that there is a way to get your life back...if you'll let us help you."

Bucky broke his eye contact with Stephanie, looking down at the floor as he carefully considered what few options he had. When his eyes met Stephanie's once more, they spoke of an all-consuming desperation. "You'll be there?" he asked Stephanie in the barest of whispers.

"Every step of the way," Stephanie declared confidently.

"Then let's go," Bucky agreed. "I want to be me again."

The group disappeared less than a second later.

#

Raina wiped the sweat from her brow when the last of the gold ran out, smiling with the satisfaction of someone who had completed the first step of her life's work. She stood in the middle of the room, wishing her new wardrobe out of the space so that she had an unobstructed view of the three now gold-covered walls. Moonlight streamed in through the wall of windows, causing her writings to reflect just the slightest amount of shine.

It wasn't enough, though, Raina quickly realized. With no artificial and limited natural light to work by, she was finding it next to impossible to study her work. "Let there be light," she muttered under her breath.

The writings started to glow in the darkness, bathing the room in a gentle golden light. She crossed to one of the walls, smiling proudly as she caressed her work and discovered that the glowing writing was still cool to the touch. Light, she thought, and only light...

Raina returned to the center of the room, sitting down and getting comfortably cross-legged. She closed her eyes and willed herself to rise and rotate slowly...only to be disappointed when her body never moved. "Huh," she mused. "Guess these powers have some limits after all..."

Undaunted, Raina shifted her position slightly, pulling her attention away from herself and focusing on the first wall. She knew that she had just inscribed the fundamental truths of the universe on the walls of this room, but one question was begging for an answer that eluded her.

What does all this mean?