"You guys are back."

Skye turned to see that Fitz had quietly walked up beside her as she was lost in her own thoughts. "Yeah," she agreed without looking at her friend and teammate.

"What about him?" asked Fitz, pointing to Ward through the observation window.

Skye considered Fitz' question carefully before giving him the most honest answer she could. "He's...a bit of a mess right now," she explained. "He's still trying to figure out what's true and what isn't."

"You told him about Garrett?"

Skye nodded...then turned to Fitz as a question came to the front of her mind. "Not that I don't mind the company, but why are you here? I heard about Cap's friend, I figured you'd be chomping at the bit to watch the surgery..."

Fitz blew off the question. "Ban...sorry, 'Yoda' didn't want an audience. The Yìzhī is assisting him, but he ordered me and Simmons to make ourselves scarce."

"I can understand that," Skye agreed, shrugging off Fitz' annoyance.

"You can?" asked Fitz, confused. Skye nodded again, which caused Fitz to grow suspicious of her casual acceptance of the issue. "You know why he has such an issue with observers, don't you?"

Skye sighed, knowing she probably wasn't going to be able to get out of the conversation without saying too much. "He's an empath," she explained. "He can feel the emotions of anyone who's in the room with him." Skye leaned in to whisper in a way that felt almost conspiratorial. "Your excessive levels of enthusiasm probably make it hard for him to concentrate."

"I do not..." Fitz started to protest before he realized that Skye was teasing him. He turned his attention back to the man in the room next door to them. That man was sitting on the floor of his cell, staring off into space with a grim expression on his face. "I still can't believe that Ward is HYDRA..."

Skye's face fell as memories of Ward's life flashed through her mind. "Believe it."

"Maybe...maybe he's deep cover? Maybe he's only working with HYDRA to get the information back to SHIELD..."

"Fitz," Skye broke in, interrupting her teammate's attempt at optimistic rationalization. "I've been in his head. Ward only applied to SHIELD to pass what he learned back to Garrett and HYDRA. He was loyal to Garrett long before he joined SHIELD, and that loyalty doesn't go the other way. I'm sorry."

Fitz opened his mouth to speak, but his mind latched on the beginning of Skye's explanation and it stopped him in his tracks. "I guess you can never really know someone," he finally declared, his heart breaking with disappoointment.

"I can," declared Skye, her eyes never leaving the observation window.

Fitz considered her words in the context of what he now knew about her. "Yeah," he agreed, awe breaking through at the edges of his voice. "I suppose you can." Fitz took a moment to watch Ward before turning his attention back to Skye. "What's it like?" he asked.

The question took Skye by surprise. "What's what like?"

"What...what you do. Being in someone else's head. What's it like?"

Skye struggled to put her gift into words. "Mind reading is a lot harder than projecting. It's like I have to braid the string before I put together a tin can telephone and connect my mind to somebody else's."

"But projecting is easier?"

Skye nodded. "You've seen Star Wars, right?"

"Of course," agreed Fitz.

"Ever try to imitate Obi-Wan Kenobi?"

Fitz' eyes lit up as he recalled the familiar movie scene. "You mean 'these aren't the droids you're looking for? Of course, who hasn't?"

"The difference is that for me, it works. Every time."

Fitz' jaw dropped in wonder as he thought about having that kind of power...but then his mouth closed just as quickly as he considered how dangerous such a power could be. "Wow," he exclaimed.

"Yeah," Skye agreed. Her voice was devoid of any enthusiasm.

The guilt in Skye's single word was not lost on Fitz. "Ward?"

"I thought I had control over all of this," Skye confessed. "Projecting is just so easy for me that I started to think I was Obi-Wan. But after everything I've just put Ward through..."

"With great power comes great responsibility?" added Fitz.

Skye sighed and nodded, smiling for the briefest of moments as she considered the classic comic book quote. "I don't think I ever really appreciated that line before now." She drew in a deep breath, letting it out slowly to steel her nerves for what she knew she needed to do next. "Well, wish me luck, Fitz," declared Skye.

Fitz blinked quickly, shaking his head in confusion. "Why would you need luck..." His question trailed off as he watched Skye move slowly toward the door to Ward's cell. "Wait, are you going back in there?!"

Skye's eyes showed a mix of guilt, determination and fear that broke Fitz' heart all over again. "I made this mess," she declared. "I have to help him clean it up."

#

"Steve? Steve?"

Steve looked up, responding to the quiet call of the unfamiliar female voice. In his half-awake stupor, it took him a second to place a name to the voice. "Yeah, Steph?"

"He's waking up," Stephanie replied.

The declaration got Steve's attention in a hurry. "Can you..."

Stephanie was already standing up to fulfill Steve's request. "On it," she replied, rushing off to get Lanie and Banner.

The departure left Steve alone in the room with Bucky as he opened his eyes with a quiet groan. "Hey," Steve greeted his friend quietly.

Bucky turned toward the sound. "How long..."

"It's been about four hours since we got here," Steve replied. The number surprised Bucky, who frowned as he struggled to sit up. "What is it?" asked Steve as he helped his oldest friend re-orient himself.

"Well...I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth," Bucky replied, his voice rapidly regaining strength as he awakened, "but I feel way better than I thought I'd feel. If you had said I'd been out for four months it wouldn't have surprised me."

Steve smiled. "Yeah, this place is kind of like that." A fresh pang of guilt crossed his face as Steve looked past Bucky's face to the rest of his body. "The Yìzhī said she couldn't do anything about your arm, Buck. I'm really sorry."

Bucky looked down his shoulder to his metal hand, flexing it as he considered his situation. "It's okay," he finally sighed. "I've had it for so long now that it's pretty much a part of me anyways..." It was only then that he caught the odd word in Steve's last sentence. "Wait, who's this Yìzhī? My doctor?"

"She's not," a new voice added into the conversation. "But I have a feeling we'll get to that."

The two men looked up to see Banner enter the room, with Stephanie filing in right behind him. Bucky's face lit up. "You're here!" he exclaimed, breathing out the words in a quiet whisper as his face broke into the first smile he could remember having in years. "You stayed!"

Stephanie's expression soon mirrored Bucky's. "I told you I would," she agreed, matching Bucky's whisper as she took Bucky's metal hand into her own.

Banner coughed quietly to get the group's attention...and to ruin the moment. "Sorry," he apologized. "Mister Barnes," he asked, as formally as he could, "how are you feeling?"

"Right as rain, doc," Bucky replied with a confidence he wasn't entirely feeling. "But how'm I doin?"

Banner closed his notes so he could look Bucky in the eye. "Physically? You're a hundred percent..."

Bucky glanced down at his metal arm. "Probably more like eighty percent..." he half-joked.

"No," Banner cut off the attempt at humor with a shake of his head. "A hundred percent. I heard what you said earlier and you're more right than you know. That arm is completely tied into your central nervous system. I've never seen anything quite like it."

Bucky winced as guilt flooded his mind. "You do realize..."

"I might not have seen a nervous system integration as complex as your arm," Banner corrected Bucky, "but the communication nanites flooding through your system weren't nearly as complicated."

Bucky's eyes widened as he tried to consider the implications of what Banner was telling him. "You guys cut off the signal? How?"

Steve was starting to feel a little out of the loop. "What signal?"

"Your friend here had the equivalent of billions of tracking devices coursing through his bloodstream on a micro-cellular level," Banner explained. "Completely undetectable through any conventional system, and his handlers could find him anywhere in the world."

"But you guys could find 'em?" asked Bucky.

"And get rid of them," Banner replied. "They're gone. As far as your handlers are concerned, they no longer have any idea where in the world you are."

Bucky shook his head in stunned disbelief. "How?"

Banner blew off the question. "I'm going to come back in a few hours to check on your arm and start your psych eval..."

Steve frowned at the idea. "Psych eval?"

"Jim's been through a lot, Steve," Stephanie explained. "You of all people should understand that. Even with his physical issues resolved..."

"And I'm not the one who's going to be conducting the psych eval," Banner agreed.

Steve's eyebrows rose as he caught on to what Banner was planning. "They're available? I thought they were busy with Coulson's man..."

"That issue is almost resolved," Banner explained. The corners of the scientist's mouth curled up into a knowing smile. "And in the meantime...I'm guessing you and your brother have a lot to talk about."

Steve and Bucky shared matching looks of confusion. "We're not related," Steve clarified.

Banner made a show of flipping through the pages of Bucky's chart. "Strange," he mused, "you two share so many similarities in your DNA that I just assumed..." The shock that rippled through the room told Banner that the true meaning behind his words had hit the desired mark. "I'll see you soon, gentlemen, Claire."

Steve sat back and let Banner's veiled news sink in as Banner left the room. Bucky turned to his old friend for answers as soon as the scientist was gone. "What's he talking about? That whole thing with calling us brothers?"

"Dr. Erskine's formula," Steve replied. "The formula that made me...who I am. HYDRA must have figured it out..."

"Not really," Bucky countered, shaking his head. "I think I remember some of the docs saying they couldn't copy what they did to me..."

"They couldn't," Stephanie agreed. "I think Jim was the inspiration for the Centipede project."

It became Bucky's turn to feel out of the loop. "Centipede?"

"A super soldier program we helped SHIELD shut down," Stephanie explained. "From what Phoenix told me the guys they faced were a lot like you."

"Who's Phoenix?" asked Bucky. Stephanie and Steve shared a knowing glance that wasn't lost on the third person in the room. "And...did doc call you 'Claire'? What aren't you two telling me? I thought you said this place wasn't SHIELD."

Steve turned away from Stephanie and toward his best friend, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out slowly, collecting his thoughts as he tried and failed to come up with an explanation he thought Bucky might believe. "This isn't a SHIELD installation," Steve began. "But what it is...it's kind of hard to explain."

"I'm sitting in a hospital bed in the year 2014 next to my super soldier best friend and a girl who can literally read my mind," Bucky argued. "Try me."

Steve sighed as his friend pushed him for the truth. Knowing that words alone wouldn't really suffice, Steve settled on a demonstration. "Bucky, do you remember how we got here?"

Bucky shook his head. "I figured you guys drugged me to get me up here."

"Not...exactly," Steve countered. "I think you need to formally meet my girlfriend." He turned his head toward the blank wall at the other end of the room. "You can come in now, Alexis!" Steve called out loudly.

Bucky's jaw dropped as a pretty redheaded girl appeared at the foot of his bed...from out of nowhere. "How...?"

The girl blushed and waved shyly at him. "Nice to finally meet you, Bucky," she introduced herself. "I'm Alexis."

Stunned speechless, Bucky turned to his best friend...who, to Bucky's amazement, was smiling. "Alice," Steve began, "welcome to Wonderland."

#