In the car on the way to the airport still in Bucharest, Bucky sat in the back, Sam was in the passenger seat, and Steve drove. "Can you move your seat up?" Bucky asked.

"No," Sam said coldy.

As Bucky moved over to the middle seat, Steve said disapprovingly, "Sam."

"What?" he said defensively, "Dude wrecked my car and almost killed me by ripping off my wing and chucking me off of a helicarrier thousands of feet in the air. I don't want to be nice to him no matter how great of a friend he was to you back in 1940."

"That was you?" Bucky asked as the memories came back to him.

"Yes," Sam said, "my insurance payments are through the roof now and I have points on my license for causing a major accident on a highway and endangering so many people thanks to you." He looked in the rearview mirror and stared at Bucky intensly.

"Oh," he said weakly, "sorry."

Steve said, "See Sam, he said he was sorry. Now Bucky, I need some explanations out of you right now about how you got here, and how you got that apartment of yours, and how you've been sustaining yourself for last two years without a real income."

As Bucky recounted everything that had happened, the memories came flooding back to him from the moment he stopped punching Steve in the facing and hearing him say he was with him until the end of the line.

He watched Steve fall to the water as he grabbed onto the helicarrier with his metal arm for support. The wind whiped around him as he looked down in horror at the atrocity he was so close to committing. The pain was catching up to him. Cuts, bruises, his natural arm broken, he needed to get out of there. No witnesses. Echoed in his head, but those words were wrong. Steve Rogers was a witness, but he couldn't kill him.

For what he thought was the first time ever, he decided to defy his orders.

He took the plunge into the cold icy waters. His pain numbed, he grabbed Steve and quickly swam to the surface of the raging river. He scanned the river for the nearest shoreline, and began walking when his feet touched solid ground.

Trembling, he placed Steve on the ground away from the water.

Breathing.

Water left his mouth.

Alive.

Steve was alive. But that was wrong, yet Bucky wanted it, so he turned and left as Washington D.C. smoked behind him.

He didn't have the words to describe what he was feeling. Scenes from his perspective came flooding in for what he thought was the first time ever. What was he seeing?

As he stumbled onto an empty sidewalk with cars passing by rapidly, it came back to him faster than he could understand.

The end of the line, in front of Steve's house after the funeral.

Getting draft papers.

War in Europe.

Hydra.

Zola.

Steve's new body, and getting rescued.

When did all of that happen? He had no idea. Instead, he sat, knees to his chest, and cowered in an alley as sirens went off constantly around him. He had to focus. What was he remembering? Who was Steve Rogers and why did he matter so much?

A flyer for the museum was thrown in that alleyway. The Air and Space Museum down the street, featuring Captain America: Steven Rogers' exhibit now that he had come back from the icy waters of the Arctic.

If he was going to see what the museum said, he needed a disguise. He went to a nearby strip mall type store after he had dried off, and snuck out with sunglasses, scarf, a hat and a backpack, the same one he later hid under the floorboards of his apartment.

The museum.

He took one step inside and saw the metal detectors. An obstacle stood in his path to what he wanted and he hated obstacles.

He saw red.

No one ever got in his way. There was a way to take out the guards swiftly, and make it passed the security quickly, and move through the crowd seamlessly. He was already making the plans. He could make it through the building in seconds flat and no one would know what hit them. He could easily incapacitate and get rid of everyone in his way.

But this wasn't for Hydra. No one needed to die on this mission he created for himself. Stealth was the key. He had to make sure he didn't cause a scene. He took a deep breath and left the building in daze. There had to be another way, a side exit no one noticed. Even the tightest security detail became lax when everything always went according to plan.

Smoking employees, perfect. He snuck in behind them when they didn't bother to check to see if the door had closed all the way. He was in, and he saw Captain America.

James "Bucky" Barnes, a man who had lost his life fighting against Hydra and was a childhood friend of Steve Rogers. It was coming back to him as he read his own life story. The images on the screen that played, they were him. He recognized the uniforms.

Missing arm.

Russians.

Zola.

Russian language.

Training.

Killing.

Electrocution, pain, and suffering.

He had pieced it altogether. His mission, Steve Rogers, hadn't lied to him. He told the truth, he really was Bucky, and now, for the first time in 70 years, he wanted to live that truth and be himself again.

But how? Hydra was expecting him. The Russians were expecting him. He was supposed to get wiped again. He was supposed to be frozen over and told when to wake up and what to do next but he didn't want that! He wanted a life of his own. He had to stay hidden.

In that museum, he managed to pull himself together and come up with a plan.

Money.

Stay hidden.

A life.

That's all he needed. Even if it was a fake life in hiding, it was better than going back into the freezer and having everything he had just learned taken away from him all over again. His life would be in his own hands.

He found a bank afterhours, and broke in through a back exit by using his metal arm to force the door open, making sure to wear the hat, scarf, and sunglasses so the cameras couldn't see his face. He broke into the vault and grabbed as many stacks of bills he could fit into his backpack.

He made it to an international airport by the time night fell. He stole a fully fueled plane, and flew east for a far as it would take him. It was only by chance that he landed in Romania outside of Bucharest.

Stunned, Steve and Sam glanced at each other. Sam asked, "How are we supposed to help him when he robbed a bank, stole a plane, and illegally entered a country after he supposedly stopped working for that crazy terrorist organization?"

"Where did you land the plane?" Steve asked, ignoring him, "Is it still there?"

"I crashed it into a forest outside of Bucharest," Bucky answered, not looking either of them in the eye and avoiding their glances of nervousness.

Steve asked, "How much money did you steal?"

"I never counted it," he confessed, "but it's a lot."

Sam said sarcastically, "Awesome."

Steve said, "I'm still going to help you, Buck."

Bucky shifted awkwardly and looked at Sam as best as he could from the backseat. He asked, "You're a friend of Steve's?"

"I am," he answered, then looked at him and asked, "why? Is there a problem?" He waited to hear something racist as he glanced at Steve nervously, who shook his head.

"No, I'm just proud and impressed that Steve here finally managed to learn how to make friends all by himself without me," Bucky replied as he leaned forward and poked Steve in the face with his left hand.

Annoyed, Steve scowled and pursed his lips together but didn't say anything. Sam asked, "Is that true? You didn't know how to make friends before?"

"No," Steve said defensively, "I just...things were different and complicated back then, okay? I had other things to deal with."

"What about the Howling Commandos we all learned about in school?" Sam asked seriously, "Was that all a lie?"

Bucky said, "They were my friends first. Steve just happened to show up later. How did you two meet?"

"I was on my regular morning run," Sam explained, "And this dude passed me, and then he passed me again, and then again, and he ran 13 miles in 20 minutes without breaking a sweat, which was fun to watch. Then later, he showed up at my house and was like, 'Everyone I know is trying to kill me.' Then we fought against you together."

Bucky smiled and said, "Yeah that sounds like him."

"I have a plan," Steve said, ignoring what they were saying, "we'll make sure you're safe in the Avengers headquarters in upstate New York, and then I'll go to S.H.I.E.L.D. alone and ask hypothetically what would happen if we found you and try to convince them you're alright and you were brainwashed into working for the Russians for all of those years against your will."

Bucky leaned back in his seat and said sadly, "I don't know if they're going to help me, Steve."

"What you did for all of those years," he said, "it wasn't you. You didn't know what you were doing."

"I know," Bucky said solemnly, "but I did it. In the beginning, I even did it willingly."

Sam asked, "What are you talking about?"

"After the concussion I sustained from falling hundreds of feet into a ravine healed," he explained slowly, as if it were too painful to say, "I didn't remember much of my past. Zola and the Russians taught me Russian and told me I was working for them, for Hydra, and I got hurt and they made sure to rescue me. I didn't remember the truth so I didn't question it. I had a name, an identity they used for me, James Barnes or sometimes Sergent Barnes. I worked for them willingly for the first 15 or so years."

"You mean they cohersed you," Steve said, "an injured man who couldn't remember the truth, to work for them. I'd hardly call that willing, there's a difference."

Bucky asked, "Is the government going to see it that way?" No one said anything.