Backing up a little bit here for Bucky's POV.

Bucky wasn't sure what just happened, but his face hurt and his head was spinning and he was on the floor. He should get up. Was he…he was in a fight? He should get up, but everything was tilting weirdly and he couldn't tell which way was up. He grunted in pain as a boot connected with his stomach. Someone was yelling. He didn't think they were yelling at him. They were just yelling near him. Yelling in some very colorful language. It was probably Dugan. Someone was yelling back in German. That was probably the guy that punched him.

He reached out a hand searching for something, anything, to pull himself up on. He didn't remember what exactly he'd done to get punched—his head felt like it was full of rocks and cobwebs and was possibly on fire—but he knew staying down would only get him hit again. He found something metal and started to pull, and if his head was full of rocks, his body must be too because this shouldn't be that difficult. He thought he'd made it up to his knees when he opened his eyes again—yeah, that was Dugan, and there was Monty over there, and they both looked worried, and there was the guy that punched him, and…

He was on the floor again, and he thought he was bleeding now. How was he supposed to get up if the guy kept hitting him? That was just cheating.

A whistle sounded shrilly overhead, and when it was done, he was surprised his head hadn't exploded. "Your ability to work is the only thing keeping you alive, American," a thickly accented voice said from above him, emphasizing its point with another kick to his stomach. "If you're not ready to work in the morning, it will be the last sunrise you see. Get him out of here."

Strong hands wrapped around his arms and he lashed out—not particularly effectively, but he hit something. "Easy, Sarge, I gotcha," a deep voice said.

"Sorry," he muttered. Colors were starting to swirl together, but they sort of looked like Dugan and Monty.

"One foot in front of the other," Monty's softer voice said, slipping underneath his other shoulder to prop him up. "That's the way," he encouraged. "You've got to hold on, old man."

Bucky's feet were moving, but he wasn't holding any of his own weight at all, and he opened his eyes in alarm when he felt himself sliding back towards the ground. "Wha's…" Oh. They were back in the cage already.

"Easy, Sarge," another voice said. Gabe, he thought. "You're gonna be okay. Have some of this water, alright? Then you can get some sleep." Something cold pressed against his mouth and he drank it eagerly once he remembered how to swallow.

"Thanks," he managed. The water had cooled the burning in his throat, but the rest of his body felt like he'd been set on fire.

"Bucky, can you look at me real quick?"

Bucky grunted at the hands on his face—they felt wonderfully cool, but they were pulling at his eyelids. His eyes kept shutting without asking. He opened them, blinking until he thought he saw Morita. Morita looked worried too. "Why's everyone keep lookin' at me like that?" he slurred.

Morita smiled, but not with his eyes. "You're sick," he said. He dabbed something under his nose, where Bucky was pretty sure the blood was coming from. "You're not looking so good. What happened?"

Bucky wasn't sure, but when Dugan answered he realized the question wasn't directed at him. "He's been working slow all day—barely moving this afternoon, and then he just fell over and didn't get up. Fritz started layin' into him and woulda killed him if the whistle hadn't gone," he spat.

"His fever's worse than it was yesterday," Morita said, hands pressed to the sides of Bucky's neck. "He's burning up. If this doesn't come down…" He sighed. "They didn't give us any food tonight, did they?"

"Couldn't eat anything anyway," Bucky said, startling Morita and surprising a small chuckle out of him.

"Probably not," he agreed. Bucky's eyes were slipping shut, and he didn't realize he was shaking until Dugan's jacket was settling over him.

"Mmm," Bucky groaned, trying and failing to swat it away. "No, no, you…you need that." Forget being set on fire, it was freezing in here. Last thing they needed was someone else getting sick.

"Not as much as you do."

"Hang in there, Sarge," Gabe said softly, settling down next to him. He was nice and warm. "Don't clock out on us yet."

Bucky wanted to say something, to let him know he wasn't going to leave them there, but the next thing he knew, someone was pulling at his arm and everyone was yelling.

"Sarge, you gotta get up," Gabe hissed.

Up. Right, right, 'cause they were gonna…He tried to push himself up, but he couldn't find his arms. His eyes were no help in finding them either—everything was swirling together and spinning, and whoever was yelling wasn't helping.

He found one of his arms just as Gabe's hand was yanked away from it and he crashed back onto the floor. He forced his eyes open again. There were Monty and Morita. Dugan being held back by two masked guards. Gabe and his little French friend. And there, big Nazi guy with a gun.

He wished Steve was here. Steve and his ma and his pop and Becky—just so he could see them one more time. Tell them he was sorry he wasn't coming home. But he was glad they weren't. This way they'd remember him how he used to be, not this broken shell he was now.

With his last remaining burst of strength, Bucky grabbed the bars behind him and pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. If he was going to die, he wasn't going to do it in a ball on the floor. He nodded at his team. Dugan tipped his hat. "Do it," Bucky said.

"A moment, Commandant," came a small, nasal voice from behind his would-be-executioner. "If you are prepared to dispose of this one anyway, might I have him? I could get a bit more use out of him before he goes." The Commander looked uncertain—he really wanted to shoot him, Bucky could tell. "If it sways your decision at all," the little man continued. "What I have in mind is going to hurt."

"Take him, then," the Commander said. Two guards came forward and grabbed his arms. "The rest of you, get to work!"

His friends shuffled slowly toward the factory floor, watching him with no less sorrow in their eyes than when they thought he was going to be shot. Bucky tried to keep up a brave face for them until he was dragged out of sight. He knew why they were looking at him like that. While the name 'isolation ward' might sound like where people would be taken to recover, no one the little man took ever came back.

He didn't know what they were going to do to him, but he almost wished they'd just shot him and gotten it over with.

He wasn't sure how long it took to get to the isolation ward. He thought he might have passed out on the way. His eyes couldn't keep track of the floor and the walls as they moved, and his head still felt like someone was driving a railroad spike into it. He was reasonably sure he'd thrown up on someone's feet. Not his, because they were dragging along on the floor behind him. But someone's.

He woke up strapped to a gurney. It was…kind of nice to be lying down. The room was still spinning and he would have just fallen over if he'd been upright anyway. The little man was hovering at his side with a clipboard. "Good morning, Sergeant," he said. "My name is Doctor Zola. You and I will be working together quite closely for the rest of your life, which, at the rate you're going, isn't going to be very much longer. Let's see if we can't fix you up enough to be of some use before you go, hmm?"

He felt his sleeve being rolled up and a needle jabbing into the crook of his elbow. "That's going to take a minute to kick in," Zola said. "Why don't you tell me about yourself?" he asked. "Where are you from? America, obviously, but which part?"

Bucky tried to glare at him, but he had turned on some sort of light above him, and it hurt his eyes. "Barnes. Sergeant," he recited. "Three-two-five-five-seven."

Zola sighed. "Yes, I know that, thank you. It's on your dog tag. Are you going to answer the question?"

"Barnes. Sergeant. Three-two-five-five-seven." He had no desire to share anything personal with the little scientist. It may seem innocuous, but he didn't know what this guy thought was important. They were just going to kill him anyway, why should he play nice?

"I am not asking because I want to be your friend, Sergeant Barnes," Zola snapped. "This is for research purposes. Surely you can appreciate the need for accurate data in science?"

"Barnes. Sergeant. Three-two-five-five-seven." He knew it by heart, which made it easier to say—especially now, when his brain was foggy and heavy. He didn't have to try to think of anything else to say. Besides, it sounded like it was starting to annoy Zola, and Bucky was fine with that.

"As you wish," Zola sighed. "I don't know why so many of you insist on being so stubborn. It's not as though it's helping anything."

Bucky twitched. The spot in his arm where the needle had gone in was starting to itch. The itch was climbing up his arm and out into the rest of his body, and it was really, really cold. Something hummed above him, and he cracked his eyes enough to see a large machine had been pulled closer and was hovering over the table. It was making the humming noise, and maybe it was his imagination, but it felt like the humming was making the itching in his veins spread faster. He writhed in the straps holding him in place, groaning as the humming encouraged the pounding in his head. The cold and the itching reached his brain, and he thought he might have started screaming before he passed out.

The next time he woke up, his head felt remarkably clearer. It was still freezing, though. "Feeling better?" Zola asked. Since he could open his eyes without splitting his head in two, Bucky was going to go with 'yes'. Although, he couldn't think of a reason they'd want to fix him up. Not any good ones, anyway. He glared at Zola in response.

"I'll take the glare as a yes," Zola said, making a mark on his clipboard. "In case you're curious, we haven't done anything particularly interesting yet. Just some antibiotics to keep you from dying. Well," he amended. "To keep you from dying right away, anyway. I don't think there's enough of you left to go to the trouble of actually curing you, but you'll keep long enough to add to the data set this way. A dead test subject is no good to anyone."

He moved away, busying himself with something at a table Bucky couldn't quite turn far enough to see. "You're quite fortunate, you know," he told him. "We're far enough along in this process that you'll probably survive the application of the formula." He returned with a syringe in his hand, flicking the glass casing to get the bubbles out. "A good many of your predecessors died to get us this far. Of course, what happens if you do survive is the interesting part."

He moved forward with the needle and Bucky instinctively tried to pull away, even though there was nowhere to go. "What are you doing to me?"

"Ah, he speaks!" Zola said. He smiled, not at all pleasantly. "We are experimenting, Sergeant. We won't really know what we're doing until we see if it works, will we?" He stabbed the needle into Bucky's arm more forcefully than strictly necessary. "This will probably hurt, by the way. And if you feel the need to vomit, do turn your head—I'd hate for you to choke."

Whatever he'd stuck in his arm was a lot faster acting than last time, and he was right—it did hurt. His blood boiled in his veins and he screamed. It took him a long time to pass out.

He'd gotten good at keeping time without windows in the cage, but there had always been the work shifts to count with. Here, he drifted in and out of consciousness, and his head felt foggy, but in a different way than when he'd been sick. Sometimes there were needles in his arms when he woke up—it took him longer to realize than it should have that he hadn't eaten anything since before he'd gotten sick, but he still didn't feel hungry. Zola must really want whatever he was getting out of this test if he was going to the trouble of feeding him intravenously. There was probably other stuff in it too. His arms always felt full of lead, his stomach always felt like snakes were roiling around inside of it, and Zola kept sticking him with things and then taking his blood. He seemed awfully pleased that Bucky was still alive. Apparently, no one had gotten this far yet.

Zola talked an awful lot. He still hadn't gotten around to telling Bucky what he was doing to him. Bucky still didn't feel the need to answer any of the questions he asked. Zola was always badgering him to tell him what hurt, what felt better, what felt worse any time he did something. Just to piss him off, Bucky only ever answered with, "Barnes. Sergeant. Three-two-five-five-seven."

After the second time Zola had injected him with the stuff that made him feel like his blood was boiling and was full of shards of glass, he turned on the humming machine overhead. Whatever the machine was, it definitely sped up anything Zola injected him with. Bucky learned that pretty quickly. It hurt like hell, but he never passed out—his brain would go all fuzzy and he would drift for a while until he slammed abruptly back into reality where it was cold and dark and everything hurt.

Zola never took him off the table, but after a few rounds with the mystery injection, he started having some of the soldiers come in and beat him. Zola would take note of who hit him and where, take photographs of the bruising and cuts, and check on them regularly. Bucky finally had a few hours where his head was clear and figured out that he was testing how fast he healed. Why, God only knew. He wondered if the shots and the humming thing were supposed to make it better or worse.

The longer he was there, the more often Zola injected him with the stuff. The more of that stuff was in his body, the longer and further he drifted, and if he drifted too far, he started to see things. Things he was mostly sure weren't real. It was getting hard to tell. He'd see home and his family and Steve, but everything was wrong and sad and broken. He'd see the war, with Gabe and Dugan, but it was too loud, too bloody, too bright and hot and on fire. He'd see the cage and the factory, and it felt like it never ended, the work and the pain and the war machines. Sometimes it all blurred together—his sister was working in the factory and the guards were yelling at her, then she was on the table and Zola was cutting her open; Steve was on the battlefield, lost and torn to pieces; Gabe was in New York, having tea with his ma, but they were bleeding and crying and laughing. Everything was…everything was wrong. It was almost a relief to come back to the pain and the little scientist and the lab.

Sometimes he drifted somewhere in the middle—not in the lab, not anywhere else—and he thought he could feel people moving around him. He thought maybe he would start up his recitation when he did. He wasn't sure. He wasn't sure of much of anything, really. Pain would occasionally come shooting through, dragging him partially back to reality, but never all the way. He wasn't sure where he was the rest of the time.

Zola had been there…it hadn't been too long ago. Now he was back. Or someone was back. Someone was moving around the room. They might have bumped his table. Distantly, he felt someone touching him, and he braced himself for another barrage of fists. They didn't come, but there was a noise that was different. He was moving now, more than he should have. Whoever it was was up by his face now, undoing the straps across his chest.

He blinked a few times, trying to pull his brain back out of wherever it was floating. It took a lot of effort, but he was pretty sure he was seeing the room now, someone hovering over him. Someone who didn't feel dangerous. He couldn't really see him, but he was able to roll his head a little in the guy's general direction. "Is...is that…?" He wasn't sure who he thought it was, but his eyes rolled around, trying to find his face.

A warm hand gripped his shoulder. "It's me, it's Steve," a very familiar voice said.

Bucky blinked, and he finally saw him, and, yeah, there he was. It was Steve. "Steve?" He shouldn't have been here. At least, Bucky didn't think so. But he had wanted to see him. Steve always knew when Bucky needed him. He was so glad to see him. And it looked like he really was here.

Steve smiled down at him, relieved. Had he been worried? Oh, yeah, he probably still looked like crap, didn't he? Gabe and Morita had been worried too. "Come on," Steve said, putting both hands around Bucky's shoulders and pulling him up.

"Steve," Bucky said again, just making sure. He was so happy to see him. He'd missed the little punk.

Steve's hands were on his arms and suddenly he was vertical. Vertical and a little surprised the sudden motion hadn't made him throw up. The snakes in his stomach didn't like it when he moved too quickly.

He was on his feet, but Bucky wouldn't exactly say he was standing yet. Steve kept his hands on his shoulders, and Bucky clung on to his arms—they were all that was keeping him up right now. The fog was starting to clear in his brain, though. He just needed a minute.

As his head and his vision cleared, Bucky looked up at Steve, who still looked kind of worried. He—wait, he looked up at Steve? That…he didn't think that was right.

Steve swallowed and sort of smiled, clapping an awfully big hand to the back of Bucky's head. "I thought you were dead," he breathed.

Bucky's eyebrows drew together, looking his friend up and down. This was, no, this was…something wasn't right. "I thought you were smaller," he replied.

Steve started to answer, then whipped his head away. There was a loud noise somewhere, but Bucky was too busy trying to figure out what was going on to care. Steve should not be this big. Also, Steve should not be in Germany…or Italy, or wherever the hell he was. Europe. It wasn't America, which was where he left him, and why the hell was he so tall?

"Come on," Steve said. He slid one of the hands he had on Bucky's arm under his shoulder and wrapped the other one around his waist to keep him up, and just started going. Bucky stumbled along in surprise, his feet starting to take some of his own weight now, but not nearly fast enough to keep up with Steve, and that was all kinds of wrong.

He reached up a hand to grab Steve's arm, trying to anchor himself. "What happened to you?" he asked, a little shakier than he would have liked.

"I joined the Army," Steve quipped, and it was so something he would say, but it just freaked Bucky out, because he sounded and acted just like his best friend, but everything was wrong and he shouldn't be here, and what the hell had Zola done to his head?!

"No," Bucky mumbled, trying to get his feet under him enough to slow down. "What…" He had wanted to see Steve. He really had, but this, whatever Zola was doing, this was just sick, and he didn't want anything to do with it. "What's going on?" he demanded, trying to pull away.

They stopped by the door and Steve looked at him, his face suddenly sorrowful. He let go of Bucky's arms and put his back to the wall, where he was able to keep himself on his feet. Steve's hands moved, one covering each of Bucky's cheeks, and he tilted Bucky's face up to look him in the eye.

"Bucky," he said slowly. "I know I look different, but it's still me. It's really me. Can you see me in here?"

Bucky blinked up at him. He'd know that voice anywhere, those soft, gentle tones Steve always used when he really meant something. His eyes were joyful and fearful and looking at him with that compassion that just screamed 'Steve', and Bucky could see the memories of schoolyard games and fights in alleyways, sketchbooks and double dates and newspapers in shoes and a tiny apartment, safety and home and the brother he'd left to go off to war, all of it dancing behind the stormy blue of his eyes, and he knew it was real. Zola couldn't fake this. This was really… "Steve. You're really Steve."

Steve nodded.

"But how?" Bucky's voice faltered. He knew it was him, but…He looked his now-enormous friend up and down. "How did you…" He didn't even know how to ask the question. "What happened?" he asked again. His hand was still on Steve's shoulder—and there was a lot of muscle under there—and he moved it up to touch Steve's face. "Are you really this big? I'm not…"

"You're not crazy, Buck," Steve said gently, and that, that knack that Steve always had for knowing what Bucky needed, that was just one more assurance that this really was his best friend. "I really am this big now."

"You weren't always," Bucky said. He was…he was mostly sure that was true. He just needed Steve to say it.

"You're right," Steve said with a smile. "I wasn't."

Bucky nodded. Good. Well, maybe not good—the punk had some explaining to do—but at least Bucky's head was where it was supposed to be.

There was another loud noise, which Bucky registered this time as an explosion. He slid a little bit down the wall and Steve took hold of his arms again, pulling him up.

"I promise I'll tell you what happened, but we need to be moving while I do that. Can you do that?" He eyed Bucky, as if assessing his ability to walk, and Bucky straightened his shoulders.

"Yeah," Bucky replied. Now that he knew the place was coming apart, he agreed with Steve's earlier urgency. "Yeah, I can do that."

Steve grinned and clapped him on the shoulder, and Bucky smiled back. Freakishly huge or not, it was good to see him again.

"Can you walk?"

Bucky pushed himself away from the wall. He was a little wobbly still, but adrenaline was accompanying his newly-returned clarity, and that would get him going. He moved toward the door. "Start talking, punk," he said, cocking an eyebrow at Steve.

Steve moved through the door ahead of him, scanning the hallway for threats. Walking, Bucky could handle. Fighting off Nazis was probably not in the cards just yet. Although, it was seriously weird having Steve be the one out front to do that.

"You remember the fair?" Steve asked, moving forward and beckoning for Bucky to follow.

"Yeah." Bucky thought for a moment. "When you ditched to go try to sign up again." Disbelief bubbled up in his chest. "Don't tell me they actually took you?"

"Sort of," Steve replied. He sounded slightly distracted, eyes darting up and down the hallway, but Bucky would give him that. Imminent threat of death and all. "There was this doctor there," Steve continued. "He asked me some questions and he said he could give me a chance, so I took it. He was working with Howard Stark—"

"You met Howard Stark?" Bucky cut in, impressed.

"Yeah, he's a civilian consultant for this science division," Steve explained, sounding annoyingly casual about it. Oh, sure, just palling around with a genius billionaire. No biggie. "And he had this machine and Erskine—the doctor—had this formula—"

Bucky growled. "This is starting to sound like a science experiment." Another explosion rocked the floor, and he put a hand to the wall to steady himself. What had the stupid little punk done while Bucky was gone?

"I mean, I guess," Steve agreed. He had stopped along with Bucky and subconsciously gone into watch-dog mode, blocking Bucky's body with his own and looking up and down the hall for threats. Bucky used to do that with him after fights in back alleys. "Erskine injected me with his formula, and I got into the machine, and there was light and electricity and stuff, and it just made everything…grow, and I came out looking like this. Ow!"

Steve turned around, surprised that Bucky had slapped the back of his head. Bucky was glaring, furious. "What the hell, Steve?!" he demanded. "I'm gone for, what, like, an hour, and you're signing up to be a freaking lab rat?!" How could he be so stupid?! Bucky had just been a lab rat. It sucked. And Steve was volunteering?!

"I told you not to do anything stupid while I was gone, and what's the first thing you run out and do?! No," Bucky shook his head. "No, this, this isn't even stupid!" he sputtered, so angry he was stumbling over his words. "This is beyond stupid!" He reached out and slapped his head again with all the force he could muster. "What the hell were you thinking?!"

"I was thinking this was my chance to finally serve my country, like everybody else was doing," Steve said, infuriatingly calmly. He shuffled his feet a little, looking at Bucky with those ridiculous puppy-dog eyes that had, somehow, only gotten more powerful along with his change in size. "Like you were doing," he finished softly.

That guilty, desperate-for-Bucky's-approval look on his face made him look so much like he was ten years old again that Bucky felt bad—a little—for yelling at him. Steve held out a hand hopefully, and, sighing inwardly, Bucky took it, allowing Steve to get him moving again.

"It's not like I jumped into it blind, Bucky," Steve continued. "I had to go through training, I had to be evaluated, and Erskine laid the whole thing out for me—repeatedly and at length—so I would know what was going on. He knew what he was doing, Howard knew what he was doing, and I trusted them."

Bucky really did hate yelling at Steve. And he knew, he knew Steve wasn't stupid. Most of the time. It was just the idea of some scientist poking and prodding at Steve, and Steve being so desperate to prove himself that he signed up for it…He sighed. What if something had gone wrong? "Did you know it would work?" Bucky asked, wrapping a hand around his middle where the snakes had started churning again.

Steve sighed, and Bucky knew his answer wasn't going to be the one he wanted. "No."

Bucky shook his head. Idiot. "Did it hurt?" His own stint as a lab rat had been hell on earth, and he was more than ready to knock the teeth out of anyone who inflicted that on Steve.

Steve smiled to himself and Bucky wished he was close enough to slap again. He knew what Steve was thinking, and, yes, he was the POW here, and, yes, he was having a little trouble walking in a straight line, but he was walking, and they weren't talking about him right now anyway. "A little," Steve replied.

Bucky didn't buy that for a minute, and decided he needed to have some words with this Erskine when he met him. "Is it permanent?" he wondered.

Steve looked back at him to make sure he was keeping up, something else Bucky realized he used to do all the time. "So far," he replied.

"You're an idiot, Steve," Bucky huffed. It was true, but he said it fondly.

Steve grinned. "Takes one to know one," he answered with a smirk. He peered through a door, then seemed to decide it was the one he wanted and held it open.

Bucky smacked him on the head again as he stumbled through it. He was an idiot, but he was alive and he was here, and Bucky really was glad to see him again.