"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME, ESPERANZA?"

"But Ramon—he looked just like you—"

"The MAILMAN looked like me? ¿Que? I've never heard such garbage!"

"But Ramon!"

Bucky woke to the sounds of a couple yelling at each other in Spanish. He blinked the sweat out of his eyes—the result of another night of tossing and turning, twisting his sheets over disturbing dreams (though these had been only mildly bad; he'd actually fallen asleep, at the very least)—as he tried to focus on the sound of their voices. For a moment he thought it was someone in the apartment complex. But then he remembered that he'd scoped out every single tenant in the building before moving in (he wanted to make sure there wasn't anyone laying in wait to ambush him) and there was no Spanish or Mexican couple that lived in the building. Only a Brazilian couple that lived far below on the basement floor. Too far for him to hear them and besides, Brazilian people spoke Portuguese. These voices also sounded vaguely fake, as if they were coming from a…

Television. He suddenly bolted upright, realizing far too late that the voices were coming from his television—one that he definitely hadn't left on. My reflexes are slow, he thought to himself furiously as he launched himself at his bedroom door, wrenched it open (it slammed against the opposing wall with a shuddering smack), and lunged down the hall, round the small corner ready to kill whoever had entered his apartment uninvited—

Only to find Ari sitting on his sofa, watching a Spanish soap opera with her mouth slightly open. He halted to a stop and she looked up at him. "Oh good," she said. "You're awake." She checked her Stark phone (Tony had gotten to her as well, except he'd done it much more nicely; he'd sent her a phone and a bunch of other shiny gadgets with a note that looked suspiciously like it was written in a woman's neat cursive that said To our lovely friend who saved the day. Ari had actually been quite excited, since Stark gadgets now rivaled those from Apple and Lumina, the two other biggest markets out there; Ari refused to buy from Lumina on principle, saying any company stupid enough to reward a criminal psycho like her brother with a job didn't deserve her money). "It's pretty late."

Bucky looked at the analogue clock on the wall (he'd refused to get a digital one; he was trying to act more like the old Bucky Barnes and the old Bucky Barnes wouldn't have grown up with a digital clock). "Ari, it's seven a.m.," he said.

"I know, it's so late, right?" Ari glanced at him again and said, "Aren't you cold? It's kind of chilly in here."

He was actually kind of warm—he always felt slightly overheated these days, especially his head—but he suddenly became hyperaware that he wasn't wearing a shirt. Ari didn't seem too affected (after all, she'd once bathed him) but his skin felt like it had heated up some more suddenly so he hurried back to his room, threw on a t-shirt that said MADMAN WITH A BOX that he'd picked up at some thrift shop (he'd found it darkly funny; he was, in a way, a madman and he'd certainly been frozen in a box for long periods of time…), and came back out to sit next to Ari. He couldn't believe he'd forgotten that Ari had a key to his place. She hadn't used it in a few weeks.

He didn't ask her why she was here; he knew she'd tell in her own time. So he waited for the next fifteen minutes while she watched her Spanish drama. He even tried to watch it with her. It seemed the woman had carried on a two-year affair with the mailman and was now trying to claim she thought it was her husband this whole time because she had amnesia from when she was in a car crash four years ago. And the husband was angry except he didn't have much of a leg to stand on either because the episode ended on a cliffhanger and as it turned out, he'd gotten his wife's sister pregnant…for the second time.

This makes even my life seem normal, Bucky thought to himself, mildly amused but more disturbed. Did people find this weirdness entertaining?

The program ended and Ari turned the TV off. They sat in silence for a moment and she grabbed Bucky's right hand and traced a circle onto it. "So."

Bucky tried to ignore how her hands on his hand felt. He still wasn't used to human touch, so it gave him a shuddery, jerky feeling inside, like he wanted to pull his hands away...but Ari wasn't so bad. "So," he repeated.

"So I might have had the day off at the clinic," she said. "And I might be used to waking up early. And so I might have been bored and I might have come over here to see if you wanted to do something."

"That's a lot of 'might's," Bucky noted.

Ari traced the word M-I-G-H-T onto the back of his hand. "Yup."

He pulled his hand away as he got up to make himself some coffee. He'd never been fond of it, still wasn't in fact, but the acrid taste of black coffee usually jolted him awake after another restless night. "Well, I'm not busy today," he said. "I'm never busy." He was vaguely aware of how pathetic it sounded to admit he had no life, and had it been anyone else sitting here, he might not have even done it. He might have acted like he had things of importance to do. But this was Ari; there was no point hiding things from her.

Well, there was no point hiding most things from her. Because she still was in the dark about a few aspects of his life lately…

"Where's Steve?" she asked, twisting around on the sofa to rest her elbows on the edge and then her chin on her elbows.

"Fury wanted to see him," he replied, "but I'm not sure if he'll still be there when we go back."

Nick Fury had always been a mysterious man—the oldest high-ranking SHIELD agents could attest to that—but this past year he'd amped up his mysteriousness and lack of availability, if that were even possible. For the first four months after the Triskelion had gone up in flames, Fury had vanished completely. Radio silent, no sightings of him; he truly was a dead man to everyone except Natasha, Steve, and Sam, Bucky, and Ari who just happened to know because they'd been along for the ride a year when ago when they'd hunted down Bucky's files and memories in Pennsylvania. Then Fury had suddenly appeared back in D.C., much to the shock of lower-level SHIELD agents remaining. And ever since then, he'd partly been there and partly vanished. He was occasionally at 24 Pryde, barking orders and planning missions, but more often than not, he was gone completely. Disappeared into the world, doing God knows what, meeting with God knows who. And then it had only been a little while back they they'd realized he wasn't even technically the director anymore (by his own doing) and this mysterious figure was, who none of them had met (though Bucky suspected Natasha knew who it was). Bucky figured that whenever Fury vanished, he was going to meet with this mysterious new director—though he could have been wrong, of course. Perhaps Fury was sunning himself out on the French Riviera, having decided that with SHIELD shot mostly to hell, he only had to be there half the time anyway.

"So I think I'm going to make some house calls today," said Ari casually. "Want to come?"

"Isn't that against HIPPA or whatever?" Bucky asked. God knew he'd heard enough about these guidelines for privacy, conduct, and safety this past year.

"Well, yeah, sort of," admitted Ari, "because I'm doing these house calls…er, off the books. I have the day off but I want to check up on some people who never came back for their follow-up visit. And it's kind of a rougher neighborhood so I thought…not that I need you to protect me, but I thought maybe you'd wanna come along…"

He realized she was, in a way, hoping he'd come along to protect her. She worked in a clinic in the rougher, more dangerous part of town but working in a free clinic was one thing—making house calls, going into these peoples' homes was another. He knew that being in poverty didn't automatically make someone a thug but he also knew crime and violence were highest in these areas. "I'll go," he nodded. He'd protect Ari no matter what. It wasn't as if he could ever really repay her for taking a chance on him and ultimately saving his…well, his existence. But he'd spend the rest of his life trying.

"Good!" Ari brightened, clapping once. "We can get lunch or something later too."

Bucky got ready while Ari made herself a thermos of coffee as well (she kept a pink thermos at his apartment since she swung in so often; Bucky was sure that the neighbors all thought he had a very erratic girlfriend who didn't appear to understand normal human timings, since she turned up at the strangest hours. Being a nurse, she was used to strange hours). At the very last minute, he loaded the inside of his black combat jacket with weapons. The jacket was a perfect thing—it looked like a normal black windbreaker type of jacket on the outside (albeit slightly bulky) but it had lots of straps and pockets on the inside for weapons. He wasn't going to unnecessarily flash any weapons in these areas—waving around a knife or gun was asking to be challenged to some sort of fight—but he was definitely going to be prepared. He doubted Ari had brought her own weapons, she was always forgetting despite being an agent (or perhaps she forgot on purpose; she still found extreme violence incredibly distasteful), but he had a smaller pocketknife just perfect for her slight frame. It had a wooden handle with one small mother of pearl inlaid into the top. Steve had given it to him, telling him that it had been Bucky's back in the day and it had somehow been saved with Steve's belongings when Peggy Carter saved them. Bucky had probably given it to Steve to defend himself with, he didn't really remember. Now he was giving it to Ari.

It seemed Bucky Barnes was always going to spend his life trying to protect people ultimately much better than him. It wasn't something he was bitter over. He accepted it as his role. He wasn't as good as these two, wasn't as moral, so they had their roles to play—and he had his.

His showering, getting ready, and then eating breakfast while Ari flipped through the early morning talk shows ate up an hour so it was around eight a.m. by the time they left.

Ari drove them and it was noticeably visible that they were heading deeper into the more poverty-stricken part of town. They stopped seeing shiny BMWs and Mercedes and started seeing more beat up Toyotas and older cars from the '90s and '80s as well. He did see one gleaming Jaguar gliding slowly on a parallel street for just one second. Heavy bass music was pumping from it and all of the windows were tinted, so he assumed it was a gang member or a drug kingpin. These types of guys likes to show off their flashy wealth and intimidate the areas they targeted and controlled the most. Weeds stuck up from in between sidewalk cracks, graffiti covered the walls of buildings, and many stores had bars and metal grates on them, something one didn't see in the wealthy section of town.

And yet, despite the obvious poverty and evidence of crime (or at least young teenage hoodlums), there was life. Bucky observed it silently. It was a brilliant, sunny summer day and small children played hopscotch and double dutch on sidewalks and outside front stoops while mothers scolded them, hefting laundry baskets and grocery bags under their arms. Teenagers lazed on front steps of apartment buildings and skinny townhouses, smoking and joking around, and he saw one shop owner watering two potted plants with brilliant pink flowers outside his small Mexican convenience store. Life went on for these people despite their more difficult living situations.

"There's a school dance coming up," Bucky remarked casually, lolling his head to see Steve who was bent over a sketchbook, sitting at the picnic table. They were both sixteen and spending their Saturday afternoon lazing around at the local park.

"So?" Steve asked absentmindedly.

"So you goin'?" Bucky asked.

"Nope," Steve said resolutely. His eyes were still fixed on his sketchbook but his shoulders tensed just a tiny bit and Bucky knew he'd captured Steve's attention.

"Why not?" Bucky asked lazily, sticking a dandelion stem in his mouth and ripped it apart with his teeth. "Pretty girls in nice dresses, spike the punch a little bit…what's not to like?"

"I don't exactly have money for a new suit, Buck," Steve said. "And my old one is too small—even for me."

Well…Steve did have a point. Bucky himself didn't have much money, he and his folks weren't very well off, but Steve had even less money than he did. No one had much money these days; Bucky had seen the state of the economy and the stock market crash really take a toll on everyone around him. People looked thinner, more withdrawn these days, and clothes didn't seem as new or shiny. An ice cream parlor down the street from Bucky's apartment had even closed because the owner wasn't getting enough business these days.

And yet, life went on. Young people had dances, snuck around, fell in love. Bucky had had his eye on that new girl, Angelica, for a while now. He wanted to go to the dance to see her but he wouldn't go if Steve couldn't go.

"We're here." Ari's words jerked him out his memory and he rubbed his forehead. The tiny throbs and pricks of pain that pulsed behind his eyes at the onslaught of memories—they never seemed to go away. Even after getting his memory back, he remembered a new thing every now and then, in full color and detail, and it always hurt his head to do so. He turned to see Ari watching him closely, carefully. "New memory," she announced. She knew what it looked like when he got lost in one. "What triggered it?"

"Uh, poverty," he said slowly.

"Wanna tell me about it?" she asked. He could read the curiosity on her face, see the questions in her bright blue eyes. Her eyes matched the brilliant summer skies today almost perfectly.

"Not right now," he said.

She shrugged and nodded, getting his need for privacy. She was usually pretty good about privacy. She was, of course, breaking confidentiality rules by bringing Bucky along to her unofficial house calls but he was glad he'd brought her because along with seeing the normal human life on the streets, he'd caught sight of several unsavory looking characters loitering against alley walls and outside store front stoops, smoking and silently eyeing their car as they drove past. People in a shiny, clean, and expensive car wasn't exactly normal around these parts and Bucky didn't want anyone thinking they were a naïve and lost couple who could be easily robbed. Anyone tried anything, he'd make them regret being born.

It was around nine a.m. now. It had taken an hour to make here, simply because of D.C. traffic, which was almost always hideous and never let up, not even in the early hours on a Saturday morning. This was the downside to living in a city full of government, business, and tourists; it was almost always too crowded and congested for Bucky's liking. He didn't feel stable around crowds. Living in isolation in the mountains of Tennessee might have been safer for him but then he'd have to leave Steve and Ari and SHIELD behind and he didn't want to do that.

They were parked outside a tiny one story house boxed in next to others of the same type, looking almost like small garages than actual houses. This one was painted pale yellow though the paint was peeling and chipping. The tiny patch of lawn was un-mown and Bucky saw a naked Barbie doll laying in the grass.

"Alright, keep quiet and try not to be scary," Ari said in a low voice as they walked up the front door and Ari knocked.

"Scary," Bucky repeated quizzically.

"You get your Winter Soldier face on sometimes," Ari explained, "and it kind of looks like you want to murder everyone in sight. So don't do that. This lady is already—Carmen!" she exclaimed as a heavily pregnant Mexican woman opened the door. She was so tiny that Bucky couldn't understand how she could be this pregnant. She had long dark curling hair that was wet and a pretty face but it was screwed up with stress and worry and she had dark shadows under her eyes. She wore a loose pale blue shirt-dress with black tights and a colorful shawl around her shoulders, despite the fact that it was summer. She held a wooden spoon in one hand. He could hear the sounds of a TV blaring inside and kids shouting at each other. A toddler was crying somewhere.

Ari began speaking in Spanish to the woman. Bucky didn't understand. He spoke Russian and English and he knew some broken Romanian and Polish but that was about it. HYDRA hadn't cared much about making him multilingual; he killed people, he didn't chat with them. And interrogation had been for people like Agent Rumlow who had more people skills than the Winter Soldier (though most people on the planet could boast the same, really).

The woman looked at Bucky and he could read the fear on her face. He wondered if her husband was home. He tried to make himself less imposing by hunching over slightly and giving a tentative smile. He hoped he looked friendly and not like a wolf who was planning on devouring her. Being friendly, looking normal—this still sometimes too practice. A guilty part of him knew he should have been trying harder to be his jokey, talkative old self now that he had his memories back—but the thing was he had the Winter Soldier's memories as well. And it was much easier to slip back into the routine of ignoring people and avoiding social contact than it was to…well, be social and friendly.

Ari spoke a few more words in Spanish, probably reassuring her that Bucky wasn't here to kill her or drag her to the police, and finally the woman nodded and let them in. They both stepped inside and the smell of something savory cooking assaulted him in the face, as did the heat. This woman didn't have AC so ceiling fans and plug-in fans whirred and lazily spun warm summer air around the tiny house.

The woman gestured to the family room where three kids—boys, the eldest who looked about fifteen and the youngest who looked about eight—lay sprawled on the ground, watching an action movie on the TV. Toys littered the floor and the crying continued from a different room at the back of the house. "She says you can wait here," Ari said. "I'm going to go to her bedroom and check up on her, okay? Stay here." Ari gently guided the woman to the room where the toddler was crying and Bucky heard a door shut. After a moment, the toddler stopped crying as well.

Not having any idea what to do now, he gingerly stepped over the dangerous LEGOs littering the floor and sat down on the sofa. He looked at the TV; some movie with giant robots destroying New York City was on. He watched while a scene showed a semi-truck racing down a highway that suddenly transformed into a robot. It truly was amazing, the technology humans had come up with these days. Bucky remembered a time when simple black and white films could elicit gasps of delight and wonder.

The eldest boy nearest to his feet grunted something to him. Bucky had no idea what he'd said so he studiously ignored the boy and kept his eyes on the TV. Young people were something he had absolutely no time or patience for. They were the ones who stared the most often and the most mercilessly. They were also rude. Bucky disliked attitude and arrogance in young people immensely and he often itched to wrap his hands around the throats of local street punks and teach them a lesson in manners, show them that there were real dangerous people in the world and some teenage boys on the street flicking lighters weren't them. But that, of course, wouldn't be…socially acceptable. So he controlled his urges.

"Who're you?" the boy asked again. "You with the doctor lady?"

Bucky waited a slow moment before answering. "Nurse," he grunted, "and yes."

"She's hot," the boy remarked appreciatively, "even if she a snow bunny. You bangin' her?" The younger boys giggled.

Bucky's fists suddenly flexed slightly and he clenched his teeth and stared at the TV, determined to ignore the boy. He's just a stupid kid, he told himself. Saying stupid things that all boys do. Do not kill him.

"I'd do her," the boy continued.

Bucky rolled his eyes slightly at the boy's attempt to sound like some sort of macho big man and he relaxed his fists. There was no need to get worked up over a silly child. A sky scraper fell onscreen just as he heard the bedroom door open. The woman waddled back out, this time a little girl—she looked about two—in her arms. She still looked tired but slightly happier. She and Ari spoke for a few moments, Ari a bit slower and not as fluent in her speak. Ari handed the woman some pamphlets and then they were gone. Bucky didn't give the house a backwards glance. He could hear the woman scolding the boys as they left.

"She's alright," remarked Ari, more to herself than anything. "Expecting twins. A lot of stress and it's not helping her…I think she's definitely going to deliver premature…but then, people with twins often do so… I just wish she could lower her stress levels slightly but with that many kids and no help around the house, I guess it's unavoidable. Her husband works all day, some factory an hour away…"

Bucky sensed Ari needed to get this off her chest and she wasn't even really talking to him so he let her ramble as she drove to her next location. Ari was a strange mix of tough and bleeding heart. She was stoic and could internalize tough problems and issues, could handle death and crying and handling difficult people (after all, she'd somehow singlehandedly befriended and helped the Winter Soldier)—but she also took hardships and losses very hard. They affected her. She truly wanted to help people but there was only so much one woman could do and he knew this frustrated her. If there were some way she could become a superhero and save every poor, sick, and ailing person in the world, he knew she'd do it.

Their next stop didn't go as peacefully. It was the apartment of a white woman with frizzy blonde hair and a pair of 10-year-old twin girls who were very silent and sort of empty-looking. Seeing their vacant expressions and comparing them to the rude but lively boys at the last house made Bucky uncomfortable. Shouldn't children be doing something, such as playing or watching TV or sassing elders? But they merely sat slumped on the sofa, staring off into space. The woman had some kind of disability or disease but she wasn't friendly or receptive at all. Ari tried to talk to her about coming back for a second visit, treatment options, programs, but the woman merely darted her eyes around wildly and scowled and eventually demanded, "The hell you doing here?"

Ari took a deep breath. "Ms. Bartlett, I'm here to talk about—"

"Get the hell outta my house!" the woman suddenly yelled, as if she hadn't taken in a word of what Ari had been trying to discuss for the past twenty minutes. It was as if she'd just realized Ari was here—and she hadn't seemed to notice Bucky at all. The twin girls had, though. They stared at him as if they could see through him but they looked at him nonetheless.

"Ms. Bartlett—" Ari tried one last time but the woman sprang to her feet and threateningly picked up a nearby plate and brandished it wildly.

"Okay, time to go," Bucky muttered. He grabbed Ari's shoulder and steered her out of there as Ari called over her shoulder, "I've left the clinic's card if you want to swing by—!"

"You're going to get yourself killed, you know that?" Bucky asked as they walked down the steps back to her car.

"Hey, I'm a SHIELD agent now, I can handle my own," Ari joked. "I've been trained, remember, Soldier?"

Bucky did. And he still sometimes doubted whether that was enough. Had it been the old SHIELD, the one that had existed before it had fallen, he'd have been secure in the knowledge that Ari's training would keep her safe. But they didn't have many resources now and he had a feeling that her training had neither been as in depth nor as skilled as he would have preferred. There just weren't training facilities and agents available to put her through the grueling and complex paces most SHIELD agents were put through. Physical, mental, emotional—all of it was included in training. But Ari had just received physical training and only basic training at that. He knew she could withstand torture—she'd withstood it once for him, after all—but being tortured once for a few hours was different than being tortured and psychologically abused for weeks and weeks on end in total isolation. He was worried about how she'd fare if she ended up in a situation like that.

He recalled the woman's waxy and sunken face and shook his head. Drugs. One crime that he'd never indulged in and one he didn't plan to. If there was one thing Bucky craved, it was control. He needed utmost control over himself and his life. This was why he didn't even drink. He was afraid of losing control for even moment. This was also why his day terrors and nightmares bothered him even more than was normal. He didn't like feeling like a loose cannon, though that was all he'd felt like since recovering himself.

They visited three more houses but Bucky decided to stay in the car this time. They couldn't find anywhere to park outside the final apartment building so Ari parked down the street in front of a convenience store and walked down the street to the apartment building. He watched Ari enter the apartment building and then he leaned back and closed his eyes, trying to zone out. Normally he didn't relax his guard for one moment, was always scanning for danger, but nothing had really happened today and most people nearby seemed harmless. And he really was…very sleepy…

He dozed. His instincts wouldn't let him fully fall asleep but he closed his eyes and drifted into a half dreamlike state. Not asleep enough for nightmares, so that part was nice. The windows were open just an inch and a warm breeze snuck into the car, warming his face. That was also nice. He could hear the faint sounds of kids playing somewhere down the street and then was warming his face…

It was probably because he lulled himself into an unusual lazy state that he missed what happened next. Normally the guy wouldn't have gotten even close to Ari because Bucky would have seen him coming from a mile away and stopped him. As it was, he opened his eyes lazily twenty-five minutes later (as he had been doing every five minutes or so to just glance around) to see Ari walking down the street towards the car—and a man moving in a shuffling way towards Ari. He would have looked like any other homeless person except he was moving a little too quickly for comfort: he had a target.

Bucky sat straight up, his eyes flying wide open as the man grabbed Ari's left arm, wildly snatching for her handbag, which was hanging onto the crook of her left elbow. Bucky grabbed the car door handle and would probably have ripped the car door off in his haste to get to her—but to his immense surprise, Ari swiftly handled the situation more quickly than even Bucky could move. She swung low and then leaped back, slamming his right fist—thumb inside her fist, just as Bucky had taught her—into his face and sending the man spinning. As he fell, Bucky realized he wasn't even a homeless guy, just a twentysomething street punk with ginger hair who had worn a baggy overcoat to pretend like he was homeless. He had a gold chain around his neck, for God's sake. The man stumbled and fell over, probably more from surprise than Ari's force (she was tiny, after all) but then she lifted her right leg and slammed him right in the face with her foot. He fell over with a yell and she swung her bag at his head, slamming it with one well-aimed hit. Bucky heard a dull thunk and the man let out a low groan and was still.

Unbelievable. She'd knocked him out in about thirty seconds. He was skinny, of course, and she'd have a much tougher time with an assailant with more muscles—but still, she'd knocked him out in half a minute. Less time, honestly. Bucky couldn't help but feel a tiny thrill of gleeful pride in her. She'd come very far from when he first met her.

She hurried down the street and slid into the driver's seat, wiping a strand of dark brown hair off of her slightly-sweaty face. She turned and grinned at Bucky. "Told you I could handle myself."

Bucky raised his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth turned up a little bit. "Hey, never said you couldn't." He looked at the man who was laying on the ground, stirring feebly and groaning. "Are we just going to leave him?"

"Yeah, he's just some wimpy loser," she said. "Not some serial killer or anything. Maybe he'll think twice the next time he tries to mug someone. Besides, I don't want to call the cops." This, Bucky was sure, was added more for his benefit than hers. Ari knew Bucky was very jumpy around cops, almost as jumpy as he was around doctors. Authority figures in general made him feel very unsettled.

"So," she said, turning the keys in the ignition and pulling into the street. "Want to get lunch?"

"Lunch sounds good," said Bucky.

Ari drove down the street and they sat in silence for a few minutes. But then she suddenly silently lifted a fist towards him, eyes still straight on the road. Bucky suppressed a sigh but smiled slightly to himself, keeping his own eyes straight on the road, and held out a fist as well, returning her fist bump.