The next Avenger he met was a thoroughly unexpected, highly unpleasant accident.

He had taken to wandering the floors of the tower at night in lieu of sleeping (with Jarvis as his reluctant guide), and in the time he had been exploring, he had discovered just about every nuance on every floor. There were three separate gyms bigger than most houses he knew of on three of the lower floors, an armory that stretched from one side of the building clear to the other, a library consisting of an eclectic mix of physical books and electronic tablets, and a smattering of conference rooms and apartments the higher he went. He didn't explore those as much, as he figured it was better to respect Steve's team's privacy. By the end of the first week, he had memorized most of the tower's layout.

Except, of course, the lowest levels.

Jarvis, despite the gradually growing sense of tolerance that had begun to form during the nightly treks between the two of them, had blatantly refused to allow him down to the labs where the elusive Tony Stark apparently was. When Bucky had questioned him as to why, the only answer he had received was that "Mr. Stark was busy with preparations for a new floor addition.

Bucky knew bullshit when he heard it. But, for the sake of staying in Jarvis' relative good books, he didn't press the issue.

He had gotten on the elevator on this particular day to go down to the main kitchen where Steve had sent a "request for his presence" through Jarvis. The sudden interruption of the AI's voice in his apartment had actually startled him into dropping the book he was staring blankly into on his foot, and the twinge from where it had hit was still running through his toes as he shifted his arm out of the way of the lift's doors. Jarvis had given him a halfhearted apology with no small degree of amusement.

If the robot was this insensitive, Bucky wasn't entirely sure he wanted to meet the man behind its creation.

Picking lightly at a loose strand on the deep green flannel he had chosen, he stood impatiently in the elevator as he descended. There was a certain… wrong feel to clothes nowadays that he just hadn't gotten used to as of yet, and while the rolled sleeves looked right to him, they were much lighter in weight than he had expected. He shifted slightly as he dutifully turned his focus away from the deceptively thin shirt, the denim pants he had chosen for the day rustling with the movement.

All in all, he was still fairly uncomfortable.

The door opened to the main floor and apparent communal kitchen where he had only just met Thor a few nights earlier. He felt an almost imperceptible twinge of amusement at the memory of Steve's face when he had walked into the room at five thirty that morning to find the two of them seated on the couch with crumb covered plates and the hammer Thor called "Mjolnir" resting haphazardly on the coffee table in front of them.

He was lost in the thought when he rounded the corner leading to the bar, and in the future, he was certain that that was the reason he had not noticed the next Avenger.

He ran solidly into someone's back as he made his way around the thin wall of the small hallway, and before he could so much as give a muttered apology, he found something gripping his arms and flipping him solidly to the floor. He landed on his back with a pained whoosh and blinked up at his accoster, his muscles already tensing to retaliate. His brain started filing away what strengths and weaknesses he had felt in the one move alone, and as he moved to push himself back up and engage, he heard Steve's shocked voice.

"Natasha, what are you doing?"

He froze then, his palms planted solidly on the floor above his head as he blinked past the adrenaline fueled haze that had covered his vision. When it cleared, he saw a wild eyed woman standing above him, her dark red hair drifting lightly around her face as she glared down at him with an animosity that left him reeling. Her face registered dimly in his mind, and a vague picture of her sprinting from a smoking, battle scarred highway flashed through his mind. He couldn't quite push the memory away this time, and he lost himself to it as Steve's berating faded into nothing.

It was a perfect shot.

The target spun out, slamming into a car as she gripped her shoulder. He saw her eyes for only a short second, but what he saw ran a twinge of grim satisfaction through him.

She was scared.

The target disappeared behind a car, and he slowed his stalking, eyes roving over the mess of the road in search for an alternate opening. His gaze landed on an abandoned car, the roof just barely tall enough to offer any extra height. With lethal precision, he checked his gun and calculated the angles within seconds of his eyes landing on the possible perch.

It would work.

Then he was jogging, and leaping, and sure enough the target was looking in the other direction, expecting him to come from the other side, and he had the shot, all he had to do was pull the trigger-

But then the moment was gone .

The man had come running at him from his blind spot, and he turned just in time to slam his fist against the multicolored shield being shoved up at his torso. His fist connected solidly with the star in the center of the ludicrous thing, and the sight sparked something in him.

He shoved the spark aside along with the man's shield before hefting his gun and aiming squarely for the man's determined face.

He had work to do.

A hand suddenly appeared beneath his nose and overtook the fuzzy images he had been sluggishly following, and Bucky squinted at it in confusion as he was forcefully pulled out of his flashback. He followed the arm up to it's owner, and was surprised to find the woman extending her hand to him. Her face was carefully blank, but her eyes held the slightest hint of bitter resentment in them.

He didn't take the hand.

Pushing himself back to his feet, he rolled his shoulders with a solid crack, his arm clicking back into place somewhat painfully as he shook his head to clear it. Steve was standing in the kitchen, his expression baffled as he stared at Natasha. She shrugged back to him, her voice deep and even.

"He surprised me."

Steve didn't quite look like he believed her, but he let it slide as he turned to scrutinize Bucky. "You alright?"

Bucky nodded slowly, but Steve didn't look convinced. He grunted slightly as he eyed Natasha, who eyed him right back. "Yeah, I'm good." He looked at Natasha for another long, tense moment before throwing all caution to the wind and exhaling deeply. Strangely, the first ice breaker that came to mind was Sam's comment from when he had been reintroduced to him. He wasn't sure what it meant, but it had done the trick to ease the tension then. He only hoped it would do it now. Natasha was looking at him, a tiny crease between her eyebrows the only thing belaying her unease. He rolled his shoulders again with a grimace before speaking haltingly.

"I'm guessing you've never skipped arm day."

She blinked at him, her shaped brows soaring to her hairline as Steve choked on the water he had been distractedly drinking. He spluttered wetly in their peripherals as Natasha regarded Bucky curiously, the unease draining from her face at an agonizingly slow pace.

After another long moment of Steve hacking up a lung in the background, she finally broke the mask she had set so firmly in place. Her lips quirked up in the corners, the barest hint of a smile as she crossed her arms and leaned back against the countertop. Her voice was still low, but her tone was tinged with amusement instead of the thinly veiled distrust it had held earlier.

"No. No, I didn't."

He heaved a barely perceptible sigh at the response, relief sweeping over him in an enormous wave that caught him slightly off guard. The last thing he needed was an enemy on Steve's team, and thankfully, it didn't appear that Natasha would prove to be one. At least, not right off the bat, that was.

He'd have to work on apologizing to her someday.

He turned his attention back to Steve to take some of the focus off of him, and he felt a tug of remorse in his gut at the continued coughing in the kitchen. When he spoke, his voice was entirely toneless. He only wished it was on purpose.

"You need a hand, or would you prefer to choke in peace?"

Steve waved him off with a glare as he sucked in a harsh breath. "Oh, I'm sorry, was I disturbing you?" His voice was strained from the abuse his throat had taken, and Bucky couldn't keep in a short, half hearted laugh at the baleful look he shot him.

He was surprised at how easy it was becoming to do that these last few days.

Bucky wandered aimlessly into the kitchen as the hacking finally subsided, and after a moment of mentally debating with himself, he eased open the gleaming refrigerator as Steve mumbled something incoherent behind him. He scanned the shelves dutifully, but his focus was zeroed entirely in on the eyes he knew were watching him from behind. It had been a week since he had been taken in to the tower, and Steve still hadn't stopped staring at him like he might break into pieces right in front of him at any given moment. While it was a nice feeling to have someone actually care if he was stable for once, it was starting to slowly get on his nerves.

He wasn't made of glass, after all.

The light hearted moments Bucky had were few and far between still, but they were slowly becoming less forced. All the same, that 2 a.m conversation with Thor had seemed to be the only solid conversation he had yet to have that wasn't overshadowed with some sense of horrible guilt or dread or suspicion. As it was, the tension he had just broken had already dissipated into an awkward silence.

Steve cleared his throat loudly, and Bucky threw a glance over is shoulder at him, his face carefully schooled. Natasha was watching him openly as well, and he couldn't quite keep himself from shifting under her blank stare.

Damn, that was unnerving.

Steve was gesturing to the nine burner gas stovetop on the lower counter beneath the bar. A pan of what looked like scrambled eggs was already simmering lightly on one of the prongs, and a cutting board with a thick slab of prepped bacon on it was sitting on the counter next to the range, an empty frying pan lying in wait beside it.

"I didn't just invite you down here to socialize, Buck, I'm already making breakfast. Sit tight for a few minutes, okay?"

Bucky eyed him for a moment before shutting the fridge door solidly, the rattle of the bottles inside the door a little louder than he had intended. He moved back to the outside of the counter to reclaim his stool from the few nights before and settled in to watch Steve go back to cooking. Natasha snagged the seat next to his, and the trio spent a few impossibly long minutes in silence.

This time, Natasha was the one to break it.

"That's a Soviet star."

Steve tensed noticeably at the statement, and it took a few seconds for Bucky to realize the question was directed at him as he watched Steve curiously. He looked to Natasha with a jolt, who in turn was looking at his prosthetic arm. He followed her gaze, his eyes locking on the grotesquely red, five pointed star plastered across what would be his bicep. The sight still made him slightly sick to his stomach. As it was, the sight of Natasha's inquiring face was overlaid with quick, merciless flashes of a laboratory and hellish equipment that should never have existed, and the smell of eggs and bacon was replaced by the stinging scent of antiseptic and tangy iron.

He pulled himself harshly from his "dead zone", as he'd taken to calling his frequent, morbid zone outs, and felt slightly proud that he had managed it on his own. As he shut his eyes to expel the last of the images and let the sensations of the kitchen come swamping back over him, he banished the memory to the corners of his mind to be dealt with later.

He kept telling himself that.

Later. He'd always deal with it later. Just not now.

There would be one hell of a 'later' to deal with eventually.

He opened his eyes when the smell of greasy food replaced the horrible smell of the laboratory, and what he saw didn't entirely surprise him.

Natasha was looking at him expectantly, her face neutral and her eyes blank as she regarded him with a quirked brow.

Steve was letting the eggs burn as he stared at his friend with a worried furrow in his brow.

Bucky told him as such without breaking eye contact with Natasha, and Steve turned back to his cooking with a very un-patriotic curse. Bucky ignored him and settled for leaning further against his arms as his eyes travelled back down to his star. He spoke with a sigh, his voice weary and sorely failing at achieving the light tone he hd been aiming for.

"Yeah. It is. Guess they just wanted to... add some pizzazz." The bitterness in his voice didn't surprise him as much as he would have expected. He paused for a moment before nodding his head to Natasha slowly, his brain running rapidly through what little information Steve had told him about the Russian assassin. "You know it well, I'm assuming."

She tensed at that, and he had just begun to mentally kick himself when she let herself relax. She appeared to have reached some sort of compromise as she leaned further against the counter as well, he chin resting lightly on her palm.

Painful reminder for painful reminder, it would appear.

"I know it," she said slowly, her eyes sliding back to watch Steve place a new slab of bacon into the pan, the hissing and popping of the grease growing exponentially louder in the thick silence. Her voice was slightly bitter when she spoke again. "They just can't help but mark what they've made, can they?"

Realization swarmed over him then, and with a suddenness that left him reeling, he saw the assassin before him in a whole new light. He stared into her eyes in earnest, his own gaze searching. There was a careful measure of confidence in her eyes, but it was all but overtaken with the deadness of what he assumed were the memories she was silently sorting through.

He wasn't the only one who had done some damn deplorable things as someone else's work.

The thought created a splintering crack in the thick wall he had shakily built around his mind in a cold cabin in the hills of Tennessee, and he could have sworn he saw sunlight filtering through the webbed fractures as the foreign feeling of relief swept over him.

It took him a minute to call himself an idiot for "seeing" something that didn't physically exist.

And yet, the metaphor eased some of the despair he had been feeling, and the odd numbness he had felt when talking with Thor crept over him warmly.

Natasha was speaking to Steve again, obviously trying to change the subject.

"Who knew you had cooking chops, old man?"

Steve shot her a look, his eyes hooded as he stared pointedly back into her face. "Everyone who's ever known me for more than a month." At her disbelieving expression, he jabbed a thumb in Bucky's direction. "Just ask him. He was my critic when we were growing up. Got a lot of free meals that way, pal."

Bucky settled his chin in his palm, nodding benignly when Natasha turned her focus back onto him. "Kid made one hell of a stew." He slid his elbows off of the counter when Steve settled a plate of steaming eggs and bacon in front of him. He nodded his thanks as he picked up a still sizzling piece of the bacon and took an enormous, crispy bite.

He hadn't realized just how hungry he'd actually been.

Natasha's eyebrows rose as she turned back to accept a plate from Steve as well. "Well. Who knew. Captain America, poster child of domesticity."

She almost didn't duck in time for the dish towel Steve threw at her to go soaring over her head.