Disclaimer: I own nothing Captain America-related, not even Bucky Barnes…though I might consider asking Marvel to loan them and the rest of the Avengers to me for a while. Until then, only original characters and plots/ideas are mine.

AN: So, going off of what I remember from the first Captain America movie, Bucky was a bit of a ladies man (though not up to Howard or Tony Stark's caliber). It's only my interpretation, and imagination, so please no flames (constructive criticism is okay, though). Please enjoy, and don't forget to review. Thanks!

Chapter 8: Glimpsing the Past:

It took a few days for the exercise equipment to arrive, but when it did, the workout room was ready. Anna made sure she was the one who signed the delivery papers, and once the truck had vanished around the corner, she summoned Bucky to help haul it all inside.

For an hour, the two of them worked together to get the space fully set up. It was almost like those 'team building' exercises that offices put together for their employees, mostly about forming relationships and trust with one another. Anna liked to think that their time together was a success, especially when, after they'd finished, she and Bucky managed to exchange a smile that spoke proudly of their completed work.

Once that was done, Anna decided that she had to talk to Bucky about his past. Now that they'd been living together a little over a week, it was about time. They had started to become comfortable with one another, so she decided to push things a little.

Unfortunately, the day she decided this, her parents called her personal cell phone, wanting to know how things were working out for her in the "big city."

As he neared the stairs going up to the second floor, Bucky heard a phone ring in Anna's room, and a sudden realization hit him: he hadn't seen a single phone in the house, not even when he'd actually been in Anna's room.

'It must be her own cell phone, though how she got it past Natasha is a wonder.' The fear of it being discovered and confiscated must have been why she'd kept it out of sight.

Or perhaps she'd been allowed to keep it, so that she could talk to her family. Director Coulson might be the head of a secret government agency, but he wasn't heartless.

The ringing stopped quickly, and as he crept up the stairs to the hallway just outside the door of Anna's room, he could hear her greeting her mother though the line. Her door was only open a crack, so Bucky could barely hear Anna assuring her parents that things were going well for her, and that she'd settled in very quickly.

"Oh, work is fine," she said, keeping her tone moderately cheerful. "You know how difficult the first few days are, when you're just starting out."

He had to admire how well she was acting over the phone to her loved ones. As she talked about a job that didn't exist, as well as an apartment she didn't live in, even he began to believe that she was happily settled into a new life, one that didn't involve living with, and rehabilitating, a former HYDRA assassin and agent.

The conversation quickly turned towards whether or not Anna had made any friends, and Bucky listened intently as Anna admitted that, yes, she was forming a friendship with a male "co-worker" she'd met on the job.

"Yes, he's very nice," Anna said. "No, Mom, he's not my boyfriend! I barely know the guy, for Christ's sake! We're just friends; that's all!"

He couldn't help but blush at the word 'boyfriend,' but he pushed that aside so that he could try and focus more on what she was saying.

Unfortunately, the topic of romance became the focus of the phone call, and he was amused to hear Anna argue that there was nothing happening in regards to his relationship with her.

Then, like a ton of bricks, Bucky felt a wave shatter against his brain.

He was lost in a tornado of images and memories, some involving a much smaller, and very helpless, Steve Rogers. He saw the tiny Steve trying to get the attention of several females, but always getting rejected because of his small stature and weak frame.

Bucky also felt his mind reliving moments scattered throughout his life, the images hazy around the edges, but clear when it mattered. He saw times where he put a sympathetic hand on Steve's shoulder, offering a smile and making jokes he couldn't remember, all to make his best friend smile again. There were no words in his memories, just images; but from the way Steve's mouth was moving, it was clear that he was thanking Bucky for his efforts.

With those memories came faint traces of emotion, ranging from sympathy for his friend, to anger at those women for hurting his friend. Steve might not have had the physique that most women wanted, but he had one of the most caring hearts Bucky had ever seen.

Quickly, Steve's plights with women faded, giving way to others that appeared to be part of Bucky's own past life.

In them, he saw beautiful, smiling women who seemed to be flirting with him, and laughing at things he either said or did to impress them. Blondes, brunettes, and the occasional redheads fluttered their lashes at him and gave him flirtatious smiles as they looked his way.

Various dating situations traveled like a tornado around his brain, and he struggled to sort them out. In some, he took a girl to a fair or circus, while in others, he and a girl were at a bar; a dance hall; walking along a boardwalk; or watching movies, his arm carefully slipping around her shoulders as they watched scenes unfold up on screen.

In all of them, Bucky saw his date draw close for a kiss, or playfully run off, causing him to chase them in order to get the kiss they 'owed' him.

The memories skidded to a halt, and though he could swear that he'd been lost in them for hours, his instincts told him that it had probably been only a few seconds.

'Who were all those women?' he wondered, silently gasping for air as he tried desperately to hold onto the fading images, fighting to pull names from the haze of his mind.

He failed. Soon, everything that he had seen fell away, and all that remained was the damaged man he was now.

Angry, afraid and frustrated, he rushed downstairs towards the workout room, his hands hurriedly pulling out the punching bag and somehow locking it in place just as he felt something inside him snap. His metal arm lashed out, clocking the bag soundly with a resounding thump.

Next was his right hand, then his left again, the motions repeating for God-knows-how-long before he felt tired enough to stop and take a breath. Then he started again, the rhythm becoming hypnotic and soothing to him. He tried changing it a few times, going faster during some instances or slower in another, but it wasn't as therapeutic as his original pace.

After a while, he noticed that there were dark shadows on the walls, and that the sun had set. His stomach growled, demanding that he feed it, now. The ache he had growing up his right arm and down his sides also cried out for a break. So, feeling outnumbered by his own body's needs, Bucky took a deep breath and began to stretch out his sore muscles.

A soft sound from the doorway caused him to turn around. He felt himself grow pale as he saw Anna standing there, a worried expression on her face.

"Are you okay? I heard you beating away on that thing, and came to check up on you." She gave him a weak smile. "You've been at it for a few hours now."

He continued to take several deep breaths, calming himself down so that he could answer her. "I'm sorry. I just got hit with a lot of memories all of a sudden, and it just got to me." He swallowed hard. "I'm okay now."

She perked up a bit. "Memories? Do you want to talk about it?"

No, he didn't. The last thing he wanted was for those images to possibly cause him to lose control and hurt Anna.

However, part of him said that he should speak to her. Isn't that why she was here in the first place? She might not be a therapist, but she was starting to become a friend –she was the warm, solid person he could turn to if the memories became too much for him.

Nodding, he motioned her out the door. "Alright."

But to his surprise, she shook her head. "You're tired, sweaty and hungry. I can see how exhausted you are, and I heard your stomach growl." She grinned. "Plus, I can smell you from here. Go shower; I'll fix something to eat, and we can talk over dinner, or afterwards. It'll be done in half an hour."

Watching her vanish out the door, Bucky tried not to be offended at her comments. But after taking a sniff of the air, he realized she was right; he did smell.

Snorting in annoyance and amusement, he headed up to his room to wash up.

Dinner was something called fried rice, with steamed veggies and some chicken in a sticky-sweet sauce. Bucky found it hard to believe that Anna had whipped it up in such a short time, but had to smile when she motioned towards a pile of plastic wrappers on the counter.

"Frozen food," she said with a shrug. "It really is amazing how far we've come when it comes to that sort of thing."

He agreed with her. Vague memories inside his head said that frozen food hadn't existed back in his day, and anything HYDRA had ever fed him had been so utterly tasteless and forgettable that he couldn't remember much of what he'd eaten over the past several decades. His handlers had claimed it was all nutrient-rich and 'good for him,' so like any HYDRA agent, he'd done as he was told.

There had been times where he'd been able to sneak a few mouthfuls of vodka, or a few bites from a plate left behind by a forgetful soldier, but that hadn't been often.

Was it disheartening, knowing that over the past few weeks, he'd eaten far better food than he had during the past seven decades –at least, as far as he could remember?

Bucky quickly finished off the last of the food, and helped Anna put the dishes into the dishwasher so that they could talk. When the table was cleared, he made his way into the living room, settling down on the far end of the couch, leaving Anna plenty of room, in case she wanted to set up her laptop and take notes.

But rather than pull out a computer or even a pen and paper, Anna simply sat down next to him and smiled. "So, do you still want to tell me about what you remembered earlier?"

He looked at his hands, which were clenched tightly into fists –he was that tense and afraid. As much as he felt he should talk to her, Buck truly was afraid of the possibility of losing control and harming her.

Then he felt a delicate touch on his metal arm. All of a sudden, he wondered: what did she feel when she touched his hand? He knew that the outside coating was fairly cool, but the interior moving components created enough warmth to keep the prosthetic limb from feeling like a non-living machine.

He felt her gently squeeze his arm, the sensors channeling the sensation straight into his body. HYDRA had truly spared no expense when it came to making his false arm work and feel as real as the original had been.

"It's alright," she whispered, the softness in her voice causing a bit of his fear to fade. "Take your time."

They sat there for what felt like an eternity, at least in Bucky's mind. He could feel her hand warming the metal as she waited for him to talk to her. It was comforting, just sitting this way –he didn't want to end it by talking about memories that seemed half real, half imagined.

But he knew he couldn't hide them forever. So, taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and began.

Anna hadn't known how this meeting could have gone; she just knew that Bucky needed someone to talk to and be there for him. He needed a friend, and Anna was it. So she sat and listened.

It was, oddly enough, sort of her fault his memories had surged in his head. He'd overheard her chatting on the phone with her mother, and for some reason, the mention of relationships had brought about his trapped memories involving all the women he had dated.

In a way, it was interesting and tragic. Anna would never have thought Bucky Barnes to be a 'lady's man,' or a playboy –she and most of her family had thought him to be exactly like Steve Rogers, who, if rumors were to be believed, had never really been comfortable with women.

'Well, until he met and fell in love with Adena,' Anna thought, hiding her amusement. How that had happened, she didn't know, but she was glad it, and to someone she felt deserved it.

But it seemed that pre-WWII Bucky Barnes had been quite popular with the ladies, and from what she could see of the man before her, Anna understood why.

Regardless of the metal arm, he was quite handsome. The dark stubble on his face was neater than when he'd first arrived, but even with it, it didn't take away from the finely sculpted face that lay beneath. There was a sort of sad puppy-dog look that he always seemed to have, which only added to the pain and fear in those blue eyes of his.

However, Anna very much doubted that the Bucky of the past had borne such a dark and dangerous air around him.

Today, he did, and it was the only thing that would prevent women out in the world from trying to get close to him. True, some women liked dangerous men, but with Bucky, the danger was genuine, and sometimes, that seemed to flow off him in invisible waves that made her afraid to go near him.

Not that she let her feelings show so openly. Anna did everything she could to treat him normally, even kindly, and so far, it had mostly worked. He appeared to drink in the positivity, as though it healed him just a little on the inside.

But there were times where she truly feared him. Today, listening to him beat the hell out of the punching bag even from upstairs, she had been afraid that she had angered him somehow, and so she'd stayed out of his way until she heard his aggressive movements slow down a bit. That's when she'd approached him, even though it had made her nervous to do it.

"I'm sorry for listening in on you like that," he was saying, looking ashamed and irritated at the same time. "I was on the steps when I heard it through your door, which was open. It was wrong, I know, but I couldn't help hearing it."

As angry as she had the right to be, given the situation, Anna couldn't find it in her. Yes, it was a breach of privacy, but it was her fault for not closing her door. If what Natasha said about her door was true, if Anna had actually done the smart thing and shut it, he wouldn't have overheard her conversation.

But if she hadn't, Bucky wouldn't have had those memories surface. It was the silver lining to a situation that could have turned out a lot worse, if Bucky had been offended by what he'd heard.

"Well, no harm, no foul," she said, smiling as she patted his hand.

Not for the first time, she marveled at the technology that lay beneath her fingertips. The metal was at a slightly cool temperature, but after a moment, she could feel it warm a bit, almost as though it were a slightly chilled hand that had simply needed to be warmed up by another person's touch.

'How is it that such amazing technology exists, but that it lies in the hands of a crazed group like HYDRA?' she wondered. 'Just think of how many people in the world could benefit from a limb this advanced!'

Maybe she should send a note to Adena, and have her cousin suggest to Tony Stark to get started on something like Bucky's arm. If the billionaire-genius could build his Iron Man suit from scraps in the middle of the desert, than creating limbs for others should be no problem, right?

Bucky was giving her a look that said he didn't believe her. "You're forgiving me that easily? I thought women tended to get angry about that sort of thing."

She sighed. "In most cases, that would be true. However, I happen to have a little sister, and many younger cousins, so I should have remembered to, as my dad likes to say, 'close the god-damn door' when I'm on the phone."

He chuckled at her choice of words. "So I should count myself lucky for getting off the hook so easily?"

Anna couldn't help but give him a teasing smile. "Yes, indeed. Next time, you face my wrath, and then you'll really be sorry!"

Bucky grinned. "I consider myself warned."

"Good," she stated. "But we should be glad that you did listen in, if it triggered some memories. Though, I'm not sure how I feel, living with such a ladies-man."

She instantly regretted her words as his amusement turned melancholy. "I'm not sure if that's a part of me I want to remember," he told her. "I mean, I'm hoping that I wasn't the sort to just break hearts and not care about women and their feelings, but that's not who I want to be. Does that make sense?"

It did, and Anna told him so. "Let's count those memories as a good thing," she suggested. "From them, you can learn about who you used to be, and can now decide to make a change for the better."

That idea seemed to sit better with him, as she watched the melancholy fade a little from his face. "So, that's one step in the right direction. It looks like we're making progress."

"Hooray for progress, then," Anna said, clapping her hands. "To celebrate, I suggest ice cream. I found a couple containers in the freezer while I was digging around for dinner food. How do you feel about chocolate?"

A smile began to peek through again. "I don't know. Let's see if I'm more chocolate or vanilla."

Anna got up and motioned for him to do so, too. "Guess that means two scoops for each of us."

Later that night, as he lay in bed, Bucky stared at the ceiling of his room. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had ice cream, so his experience with Anna was almost a new one.

Still, it was a good one. Over dishes of chocolate and vanilla ice cream, the two of them continued talking about what he'd remembered, and how he'd like to try and get other memories to come out. Anna told him that there were other ways to trigger memories, and he found all of them interesting.

"They say that the sense of smell can bring out memories, either good or bad," she suggested. "Taste can do it, too. Apparently the brain links those senses to memories, for some reason. I'm not suggesting that I should sit down with you and wave random things under your nose, trying to get memories to pop up, but if you think it might help, we can try it and see if anything triggers a memory or two."

He wasn't sure if he was ready for that yet, but if Anna thought it would help, Bucky would try any type of memory-invoking experiment she wanted –but only when he was sure he could handle it.

Then Anna began shifting uncomfortably in her seat. "SHIELD gave me a few pieces of information that they thought might be useful, so I know a bit about your background," she reluctantly admitted. "But I don't want to start diving into that until we tap into your memories on our own. Anyone can pop open a file and read things about your life to you, but there's always a chance that something in there is wrong, and you'll end up having conflicting facts and memories in your head when you actually start remembering things about you and your past."

He had tried to argue, but Anna persuaded him to at least try to make it on his own. "After all," she said, "An Army, SHIELD or HYDRA file won't have your favorite foods or colors listed. They probably wouldn't have anything from your childhood in there, unless someone who seriously knew you mentioned something in passing, which is unlikely. If you want real details about yourself, we'll have to work for it."

He had agreed, and the two of them had parted for bed. As he changed and prepared for sleep, Bucky had to admit that he'd been perilously close to making a grab for her laptop and doing everything possible to see if there was a file on him stored there. It was sheer determination that had restrained him, as well as the desire to try and do things on his own, like Anna said.

Closing his eyes, Bucky let his mind drift, both excited about and dreading what tomorrow, and the future, might bring.

AN: Review?