I'm walking down the line
That divides me somewhere in my mind
On the border line
Of the edge and where I walk alone
Read between the lines
Of what's fucked up and everything's alright
Check my vital signs
To know I'm still alive and I walk alone
I walk alone, and I walk alone

Green Day, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

A little shorter than usual, but I split the chapter in half when it got a bit on the bulky side. The next chapter should be out late tonight or early tomorrow morning as I finish the scenes off and polish it up.

Content Warning - PTSD episode, mental manipulation. Chapter may cause inchoate rage in reader.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-

oOoOoOo

Location Unknown
Date Unknown

He dreams of a woman with curly brown hair and an infectious laugh, calling his name as the world goes dark and cold. Dreams of a man laughing in sunlight, looking up at him in candlelight. Dreams of fights in trash-strewn alleyways, grunting and cursing and the sound of flesh punching into flesh. Dreams of a metal coffin and a bright white light, a soft-spoken man with a German accent and another with dark hair and a vandyke who talks fast and big.

He dreams of fire and ice, snow and flame. He dreams of smoke and ash drifting in the still, forest air. Of cheering chorus girls and lifting a motorcycle above his head. A dancing monkey punching the face of evil in the name of patriotism.

He dreams of voices and hands, harsh commands and wheeled gurneys. Dreams of hallways and stone-faced men dressed in black. Dreams of the prick of a needle in his neck, dreams of a man with craggy lines in his face, sandy blond hair and a politician-sharp suit leaning over him at him with a satisfied smile.

He dreams of red stars and blue circles and white triangles. He dreams of pain and suffering, terror and rage, despair and emptiness.

He dreams in red and gold, in black and silver, in metal and flesh, in wet red blood and glowing blue lines.

He dreams of sleeping in the earth. Dreams of burning in the desert. Dreams of drowning in the sea.

And then he dreams of nothing at all.

oOoOOOo

Toni's Workshop, Stark Tower
April 25, 2012

Silence reigns, broken only by Bucky's soft, lost swearing and Toni's ragged breathing. They're still huddled together like survivors of a natural disaster, staring at nothing, clinging and clutching and hollow-eyed.

Time passes. Toni isn't sure how much. She loses track of everything; time, herself, her thoughts. For the first time in a very long time, her head doesn't chatter with designs and ideas, bits of song, lightning-bright innovations and sharp snarky one-liners. She's so used to having a constant feed of information cheerfully steamrolling across her synapses that the still, grey quiet physically hurts.

She doesn't even know if she's still breathing, if her heart is beating. Is this what being dead is like? This cold, frozen, utterly soundless existence? Her only points of warmth are where skin is touching hers, and those places are lines of searing fire, but even that's not enough to keep her rooted.

She drifts. Floats away. Sinks like a stone. Deep down into the cold, drowning dark.

Eventually warmth penetrates, spreading with a feeling like a head breaking water. She surfaces again, shivering violently under a thick, heavy blanket on someone's lap on the floor, pressed in and held on all sides by warm bodies.

There's a hand on her face, pressing against her cheek, holding her against someone else's face. The scent of cucumber and pear shampoo, Natasha's brand, and a song, lilting and minor, Natasha's sweet alto quietly singing in her ear, "Богатырь ты будешь с виду И казак душой. Спи, мой ангел, тихо, сладко, Баюшки-баю."

She pulls in a breath, sharp and cold, and her lungs twinge, dully throb. Her eyes are dry and gritty, and she drags a hand from under the blanket to rub at them. The song trails into silence. Natasha slides into view in front of her, a hand on either side of her face, cradling her jawline. Toni meets her gaze, tips up a half-assed smile she doesn't feel, and rubs her eyes again.

"Welcome back, солнышко," Natasha says, and presses a light, dry kiss to her forehead. "That was a bad one."

"Sorry," she whispers.

"Don't even," Clint warns, voice a mumble in her shoulder, and the fingers threaded in her hair scratch at her scalp, light and gentle.

Bucky sighs against her shoulder blades, forehead tucked into the back of her neck, and the arms around her waist tighten. "Do you know where you are?"

She blinks, watches Natasha watching her with concerned eyes. "My workshop," she says, clears her throat because her voice is scratchy. Continues, soft and unprompted, "Stark Tower, New York City. It's April 25th, 2012. I'm Toni Stark. You're Tash and Clint and Bucky."

"Good," Natasha says, closes her eyes and leans her forehead against Toni's.

"Not yet," Bucky says into her back. "Are you twelve?"

Toni starts. "What? No. I'm 32."

"Are you drunk?"

"... No."

"Do you give a fuck how hot I am?"

Natasha is smiling, and Clint's snort is muffled in her shoulder. Toni is lost. "...no?"

"Then why're you calling me Bucky ?"

Oh. Oh. She has been doing that a lot lately, hasn't she? "Because it's catchy," she mutters. "Shut up."

Bucky slumps against her back again and his arms loosen, but stay around her waist. "Kay," he mumbles.

She stays quiet for a few minutes, gratefully drinking in the warmth of her people around her, grateful that none of them seem inclined to move just yet. "Did you tell them?" she murmurs.

"Yeah." Bucky's voice is raw. "I told 'em."

"Whatever you need, солнышко," says Natasha, and her thumbs smooth over Toni's cheeks. "we are here."

"I know," Toni says, pressing into Natasha's forehead just a little, and closes her eyes.

"What are we going to do?" Clint asks, breath warm on her neck. "What's the plan?"

Toni untangles her hands from the blanket, letting it slide away from her arms. She leans back into Bucky's shoulder, one arm looping up and around his neck. She grasps Clint's forearm with her other hand, and his palm is warm and tight on her arm. Feels Natasha lean forward, follow her back, foreheads still touching. "I'm thinking," she says. "And once I'm done thinking, I'm pretty sure there's going to be some violence."

oOoOoOo

Location Unknown
Date Unknown

The first time he opens his eyes, everything is wrong. It's too bright, too clean, too sleek and shiny. It smells wrong, it sounds wrong, the air is too cold on his skin, the sheets too smooth. There are distant voices murmuring, squeaking shoes on linoleum, steady soft beeping. None of it is right. It's all wrong .

It registers long before he's awake, and he thrashes to consciousness in blind panic. His hands sweep, and sweep, catching on tubes and wires as he kicks against the thing choking and tangling around him. His arms twinge, tape rips off, sharp pain in his elbow and wrist and the back of his hand.

An alarm blares, and he hits the floor on his hands and knees, heaving and coughing and choking. Flails back, feeling water fill his throat, his lungs. His bare ass hits the cold floor, and he yells something wordless and aggressive.

Footsteps thunder in the hall, voices calling excitedly, yells back and forth that echo and rebound through his ears. He tenses, crouching on the floor like an animal, head swinging back and forth until he locates the door. He is all instinct now, tight and ready to bolt the moment he has an opportunity.

The door opens and a woman in white comes through with a syringe in hand. His legs push, and he launches across the room in a single jump. He shoves the woman roughly out of the way. She bounces off the door and sprawls onto the floor, crying out in shock. He doesn't pay her any attention. He's already past her.

The hallway is thick with bodies in bland white and blue uniforms, lab coats and medicine carts. Hands reach for him, snag the flimsy gown, fleeting grabs at his arms and shoulders and hands. He lashes out without thought, without control, pure rage and coiled strength and brutal efficiency. His knuckles impact teeth and noses and eye sockets and skulls, stomachs and throats and chests. Every body he hits crumples like paper.

Muscle memory makes him reach over his shoulder for a weapon that isn't there. His fingers don't find smooth, curved metal, and close around air. It throws him off-balance, out of rhythm, long enough for a white-coated man with blood and snot streaming from his nose to jab him in the neck with a syringe.

He puts the man down with a quick jab to the chest, might have crushed his breastbone, doesn't think twice about it. There's a momentary gap in the crowd rushing to subdue him, and he spins on the ball of one foot, jumping over a cart filled with bandages and metal instruments, sending it crashing to the floor behind him.

He's winded as he races down the long, long hall. Not because of the physical exertion, but because his lungs seize with every step. He instinctively knows he has the stamina to run for hours without getting tired, but he's gasping and wheezing like an old man by the time he finds an elevator. He bends over, hands on his knees, head hanging low. He's trying to catch his breath, but it's elusive. He can't find the rhythm, can't figure out how to pull oxygen into his lungs.

Knows somewhere deep inside that asthma attacks happen like that.

His head swims. His vision doubles, blurs together, doubles again. He reaches out to swipe at the buttons, but they're too far away and his fingers miss. His left knee gives out, then his right. He falls heavily to the floor, drowning in the air and fading out of consciousness again.

The footsteps that rush up to him echo in his head. A blurred-out figure kneels beside him, he can't tell if they're male or female. Hands reach out. A voice says, from five miles under water, "We've got you, Captain Rogers. You're safe now."

Doesn't know who they're talking to. Can't focus. Can't think. Can't stay awake.

Can't sleep… gotta stay awa-

oOoOoOo

Phil Coulson
The Helicarrier, Location Classified
April 25, 2012

Phil Coulson doesn't consider himself a violent man. He's a reasonable guy, able to think about the big picture while still attending to the little details. He's capable of violence, of course, because it's part of his job. But it isn't his first reaction. He doesn't reach for his gun the minute things go pear-shaped. He doesn't panic when an operation goes south. He relies on cool, rational thinking to keep himself and the men and women under his command alive. It's one of the many reasons he is considered by most of his colleagues to be the best handler SHIELD employs (though he, self-effacing, always says he's just doing his job to the best of his abilities).

Right now, he wants to reach for his gun. He wants to reach for it really badly.

Instead, he goes through a mental exercise to suppress the spike of anger, shock, disbelief, everything else that gets in the way of him protecting his people, and merely raises his eyebrow. "What do you mean, you lost Captain America? When did you find Captain America?"

Director Fury stands at the window, with his hands folded behind his back. "Six weeks ago, the Stark Industries polar exploration vesselNorthern Lights located the wreckage of an aircraft that fit the profile of the plane Captain Rogers was piloting when he disappeared in 1944. During the course of salvaging the plane, they also discovered what we thought were the remains of Captain Rogers."

Phil can feel a headache coming on. "What you thought. Were they not the remains of Captain Rogers?"

"Oh, it was Captain Rogers. It just wasn't strictly remains. We began defrosting his body, with the intention of burying him in Arlington. The process took three weeks, in order to preserve the tissues and organs. Only when the ice thawed, Rogers' heart started beating. He's been comatose ever since, in secure SHIELD medical facilities."

There are a great many things Phil can say to that. Most of them involve epithets and questions that involve the phrase are you insane, sir? asked with various inflections at increasing volumes. "And now he's…lost."

Barnes and Toni are going to declare war over this. Phil knows that as certain as he knows his own name. And they'll drag Romanoff and Barton into it, which will bring him into it. And Toni will reach out to Rhodes and Danvers, who have their own friends who'll be happy to help. There is going to be blood in the streets and heads on pikes and a lot of very sorry people by the time Toni steps off her warpath.

Phil may even enjoy helping that happen.

"More like, misplaced." Fury turns his gaze back out the window of the Helicarrier. "A team of STRIKE agents removed Captain Rogers from the hospital yesterday, approximately the same time Stark's home was hit. The hospital, of course, lost the paperwork, but they swear everything was by the book."

He says, "Of course they would. In all likelihood, it's even true. Agent Carter reported that Sitwell presented her with appropriate paperwork for the Manor op. She had copies. They're falsified, but they pass standard inspection." He pauses, because he isn't sure he wants to know the answer to his next question, because it has the potential to make his job that much easier, or that much harder. "Does Toni know SHIELD has been using her resources to carry out missions?"

Fury turns around, both eyebrows high on his forehead. "Toni doesn't need to know anything, Agent Coulson. Consultant Stark is a very intelligent, very clever, very curious woman who has a pathological inability to not stick her nose in classified business."

"So, that's a no, then."

"Yeah, that's a no." Fury sighs and spreads his fingertips on the desktop, leans forward on them. "Stark's a wild card, Phil. She doesn't take orders and she doesn't recognize authority. Since Iron Maiden debuted, she's been involved with at least thirteen incidents that have directly impacted covert SHIELD operations. Involving her when the secrets are this big is just asking for trouble."

"She runs two very successful Fortune 500 companies, sir," Phil feels compelled to point out. "I think she understands the concepts of confidentiality and classified material."

"I didn't say she doesn't understand them, Coulson. She understands them just fine. She only pays attention to them when it suits her, however, and that isn't something I can afford to risk in this line of business."

"With all due respect, sir, I think you're putting too much stock into Agent Carter's report. There were extenuating circumstances-"

"It's not just about the report, Coulson. She's impulsive, unrestrained, and arrogant. She threatened to cut ties and break her contracts with us, she assaulted Agent Carter and promised to bring SHIELD to its knees."

"She was under a lot of stress, sir."

"I'd laugh off a threat like that from almost anyone else. But Stark has the connections, money, and resources to actually accomplish it. There's a reason she's on the Index, Phil."

Most of the time, Phil respects Nick Fury, looks up to him. Seeks to emulate him, and master the vast range of skills Fury has in his arsenal. Today doesn't seem to be shaping up into one of those days. "Director Fury, as far as she knew, SHIELD agents had broken into her home, damaged and destroyed her property, and abducted her soulmate. What happened to Agent Carter was unfortunate, but understandable under the circumstances."

Fury makes a disbelieving noise. "Barton was registered as her soulmate too at one point, Coulson," he says. "Which is one of the reasons we recruited him. This Barnes now on record… how can we be sure he's the real thing?"

Phil thinks about Toni, asking for help, begging for him to call the shots. He'd known what she meant when she said bring me home. Thinks about the wild, desperate shine of her eyes. Thinks about her gasping for air over the open comm. Thinks about how readily she agreed to trust him with her property, her sanity, her weaknesses.

"We can be sure," he says simply. "If I may speak freely, sir?"

Fury eyes him. "If I said no, would that stop you?"

Phil shrugs. "Not really."

"Then by all means."

"I think your judgements about Stark are off-base. Yes, she's arrogant and impulsive, and it may seem like she sets herself against authority simply because it's there to be railed against, but authority has given her little reason to respect it."

Fury isn't dumb, and Phil knows that, but he honestly can't tell if that's ever come into consideration. Fury's face shows nothing. "Explain."

"Stark's entire history with authority consists of Congressmen trying to take her property, and SHIELD infiltrating her company to spy on her. Authority has come at her sideways, insinuated itself into her life, demanded things be done. Authority hasn't asked for cooperation and respect. It's ordered it, and done very little to earn it."

Phil isn't sure how he'd describe the expression on Fury's face, though he'd put it somewhere between aggravation and incredulity. "You're suggesting that if we'd, what, scheduled an appointment and asked pretty please, she wouldn't currently be a moderately troublesome pain in my ass?"

"Most likely, sir," Phil says.

Getting the stink-eye from Fury isn't a novel experience. He's the handler for both Hawkeye and Black Widow. The Fury glare is a regular feature of his mission reports. This one slides right off Phil's back, just like all the others do. "I don't have time to mollycoddle a spoiled rich kid, Coulson, no matter how smart she is or how many gizmos she sells us. The only thing I need from Stark is our business relationship, and the Iron Maiden suit, if we can pry it out of her hands. She doesn't listen, she talks too much, and she gets a bug up her ass about almost anything that shouldn't damn well concern her." He leans forward again, eye impatient, exasperated, unimpressed. "Do you understand what I'm saying, Agent Coulson?"

Suddenly, Phil understands perfectly.

He and Director Fury have been having two different conversations this whole time. Phil prides himself on his ability to catch the subtle cues, but Fury has apparently been leaving him in the dust since he walked through the office door. Nothing Fury has said is untrue, but there's an underlying meaning to every word that comes out of his mouth. Now who's slow on the pickup, Phil?

It's fine. He can adapt. He knows the game now.

"I think you're making a mistake, Director," he says. "I find her a little high-strung, but overall pleasant and cooperative." He shrugs. "I told her she would make a good agent. I'm usually right about those kinds of things. You just have to find the right approach."

"That's not really my problem. You say you can work with Stark? Be my guest. I wish you much joy in it. She wants a new liaison, you just volunteered." Fury opens a desk drawer, pulls out a stack of file folders tied together, and drops them on his desk. "She's all yours. Just don't come crying to me in a week's time if you can't stop her from taking over the whole damn world with her AIs."

Phil reaches out and takes the files, thumbs through the tabs. Sees they're labeled Stark Industries, Stark Solutions Inc, and Consultant Stark. Knows without having to look that they don't contain the documents those innocuous categories would otherwise indicate. "Understood, sir," he murmurs.

Message received, loud and clear.

oOoOoOo

Location Unknown
Date Unknown

The next time he wakes, it's slow and gentle. He opens his eyes, thoughts foggy and clouded, and lets the ceiling come into focus. His entire body hurts, and nausea churns in his gut with a mild but building urge to vomit. He groans softly, curls into himself, a palm pressed to his abdomen. He closes his eyes again, concentrating on breathing through it.

"Oh my god, Steve! You're awake!"

The voice is feminine, familiar, British. He opens his eyes, focuses past the swimming and shifting of his vision, sees brown curls and warm brown eyes, streaked with tears and rimmed with red. Her hands are shaking as they touch his face.

"Steve!" she says, laughing and crying and smoothing her hands over his skin. "God, Steve. You're awake."

Unease creeps up the back of his spine, settles into a knot in the base of his skull. A name sifts out of the mire of his jumbled thoughts, accompanied by the sound of that voice crying as it calls his name, before the water and the cold and the-

Not now. Can't think about that.

"Steve?" Her open, happy expression is less joy and more worry now, and she bites her bottom lip. "Steve, do you know who I am?"

"... Peggy?" Yes, he's certain that's her name, and her face lights up with relief. Things are coming back to him, sluggish and dim. "Peggy Carter. You're with Strategic Scientific Reserve. You oversaw the training for Project Rebirth. I remember-" He trails off, watching her face crumple again.

"No, Steve," she says, smiling sadly, and gently reaches out to push her fingers through his hair. The light catches a glint of gold. A wedding band. "No. I'm Peggy Rogers. Your wife."

The knot of unease, the sense of wrong, tightens and squeezes. Spots on his pectorals burn, right and left, hot and tender, and he scrabbles at his gown, hauls it aside, looks down expecting... something, (white and red star, blue circle white triangle, his mind whispers), but his chest only bears a white star inside what he thinks is a martini glass. His mind recoils, rebels, screams that it's all wrong. His head spins and the world crumbles around him. "You're my what?"

Peggy watches him carefully, eyebrows twisted in compassion and pain. "They said you might have some memory loss," she says quietly, and reaches out to touch his forehead, trace her fingers down his jaw. "I thought… I thought I was prepared for …." She looks away, swallows, closes her eyes. Turns back to him with a soft, gentle smile. "I'll get the doctor," she says, and kisses his forehead. "I'll be right back. Dr. Fennhoff can explain things."

He watches her go, lost and confused, can't wrap his head around any of this, can't … Peggy Rogers? That can't be. He crashed into the ice, promised her a date, heard her crying as he blacked out… They're not married.

Are they?

Dr. Fennhoff runs some tests, MRIs and CT scans and other procedures he doesn't recognize and finds the slightest bit fantastic, like something out of a Wells novel. Peggy is there with him, holding his hand, smiling encouragingly, trying not to cry. He lets her hold his hand, even though his skin is crawling, because something is just not right about this, but his head is too foggy to figure it out.

He sleeps for a while, exhausted by the tests. When he closes his eyes, Peggy is sitting in the chair beside her bed. When he wakes up again, she's still there. The doctor eventually comes back, does some more tests, simple ones, asking who the president is, the year, the date, other snippets of trivia that don't seem important. He answers, though he doesn't see the point. Feels his stomach churn again as her face just falls and falls and falls with every answer he gives.

Fennhoff hmms and makes a few notes, flips pages back and forth, asks him more questions with answers that just make Peggy more upset. Finally, Fennhoff clears his throat, settles his face into a professional mask, polite and sympathetic, and says, "Well, Captain Rogers, it appears you're suffering from retrograde amnesia."

Peggy lets out a soft, wounded cry, and her hand flies to her mouth. "Oh, Steve…"

"Amnesia?" Nothing about this is sitting easy. "But I remember my life. I remember being Captain America. I remember everything right up to the plane crash. I remember Project Rebirth and Arnim Zola and…" They're both shaking their heads, Peggy looking horrified, Fennhoff looking interested. "Did… none of that happen?"

He knows it did. He knows it did.

"It happened," Peggy says softly. "To the first Captain America. Steve, he died almost seventy years ago. He fought the Red Skull and Hydra and the Germans in World War II. He went down in a plane, saving the world."

No, no, no. His head is pounding, and his vision is going blurry again. "But…" He sounds lost and weak and confused, grits his teeth, forces himself to focus. "I remember it all. I am Captain America."

Dr. Fennhoff clucks, pulls a penlight from his pocket and clicks it on. "Look straight forward, please," he says, moving the penlight quickly from side to side. "I'm afraid you were in a coma for some weeks, Captain Rogers. There was some concern you wouldn't come out of it, even with your… enhancements. It's a miracle you're awake and as relatively stable as you are. For what might have resulted from your battle with Iron Man, memory loss is relatively good."

Nothing makes sense. Nothing sounds familiar. None of this is right.

"Iron Man?"

Fennhoff and Peggy exchange looks again, and irritation sparks, because he knows they're carrying out a silent conversation he's not privy to. "I have to tell him," Peggy murmurs.

Fennhoff shakes his head. "It's too soon."

"Tell me what?" he asks, and they both look at him with expressions he doesn't like. "Tell me what?"

Peggy sits down, folds his hand in both of hers, and he does his best not to yank it out of her grip. "You are Captain America," she says. "You're the second Captain America. The first one, Chester Phillips-" General Phillips? "-died in 1944 exactly as you said, in a plane crash in the Arctic. They never found his body. You're the first successful supersoldier candidate since Captain Phillips. They gave you the title and the shield." She sighs, and trembles a little. "Iron Man is... oh, it sounds so silly to phrase it like this, but Iron Man is a villain you've fought on a couple of occasions. He... hurt you pretty badly the last time you fought him."

"But-" Oh God, he's so confused. "My head hurts," he mumbles, pressing his palm against his face.

"I'll adjust your medication," Fennhoff says, and Steve hears him move to the IV stand beside his bed, sloshing of liquids. A little tiny voice from deep inside his mind is screaming and howling and clawing: Get up! Fight! This isn't real! You know who you are! Don't let them tell you you're not! GET UP AND FIGHT.

"I remember the Red Skull," he says weakly, massaging his temples with both hands. "I remember fighting Nazis in Germany. I remember Kreischberg..." I remember someone important falling from a train. I remember screaming his name as I watched him die.

"The brain is still a very mysterious place," Fennhoff says, and fiddles a little more with the hanging IV bags. "I believe your mind, in trying to heal itself from the serious injuries you suffered, created a very vivid, realistic fusion of your knowledge of the previous Captain America, and your own life." Fennhoff puts a hand on his shoulder, pats it gently. He has to fist his hands in his lap to keep from slapping the doctor's hand away from his body.

"Steve, it's 2012, not 1944," Peggy says, quiet but firm, and pulls a small black device from her pocket. It clicks and beeps under her thumb, and she turns it towards him, showing photographs, changing them one by one with the push of a thumb. Him and Peggy, with dogs around their feet. Him, serious and sober, in the Captain America uniform with a red flower lapel pin and the rows of crosses in Arlington behind him. Picture after picture. Evidence of a life together. Wedding photos. Candid photos.

He can feel the medication spreading, warm and numbing, through his veins, feel the lassitude creeping over him again. His stomach lurches unhappily. His head spins, hazy and pounding. It's all wrong, it's all wrong. But now there's another voice, a calmer, more rational voice, asking but what if it's not?

What if it's not?


END NOTES

The use of Iron Man instead of Iron Maiden is a deliberate choice, not a typo.

Also, a personal note: I understand some of you may wish to murder me for what happens here, but please bear in mind, the next chapter will not come out if I'm dead. :)

=o=o=o=o=
Russian in this chapter:

Богатырь ты будешь с виду И казак душой. Спи, мой ангел, тихо, сладко, Баюшки-баю. - lines from a lullaby transliterated as "Kazach'ya Kolybel'naya", the Cossack Lullaby. The lines Natasha sings, according to the translation I used, mean "You'll look like a hero and be a Cossack in your heart/soul. Sleep, my angel, sweetly, calmly. Bayushki bayu." (a basically untranslatable phrase, used to lull children to sleep)

[Go listen to it, if you can. It's absolutely gorgeous.]

солнышко - previously used a few chapters ago as its transliteration, solyshnko, endearment. "sunshine" or "little sun"

[As always, feel free to correct any mistakes I make. I do my best with the Internet at my fingertips, but I'm not even a rudimentary speaker, and I welcome assistance to get things right.]