#

When Bucky woke up, he took stock of his surroundings. No panic yet, because he had become accustomed to drifting off during the charging procedure as part of pain management. No one working on him cared if he slept, because he wasn't doing anything. Plus, they were probably too terrified of him to ask if he was blacking out repeatedly. No, that question went to the neuroscientists— who all gave him passing mental grades or they would lose their jobs.

So. Surroundings. High ceiling, comfortable lighting. Decent cot. A machine going 'beep' next to him. Something alive lying across his legs – between thirty and fifty pounds, it kept shifting. Both of his arms moved when he pushed his weight up on them to get a look at it – the metal arm was fully charged, good.

The alive thing –a dog— lifted its head and looked back at him. Somebody's pet, no attack dog this. It licked its nose and continued staring. The machine began beeping gently. He glanced down at his hand, where the other end of an IV had been inserted. Sticky notes covered his hand, having been taped on to prevent them from falling off.

There was no way he had slept through the insertion of an IV. Damn it, the iron man had drugged him! He went to tear the IV off, then saw the words DON'T PANIC at the beginning of the post-it. Groaning, he held up his metal hand to read the series of notes.

DON'T PANIC

And leave it in. It's putting nutrients and antibiotics back in you. Steve says you're going to hate us both for this. [new post-it note, new handwriting] Buck, you needed medical help. This might've been wrong but… [new post-it note, old handwriting] But I can live with it. Medical help. That's all we did. Now, JARVIS should have noticed you're reading by now and alerted me to you being awake, so I should be—

"Good morning, sunshine," the iron man said, striding into the room.

The dog was lying on his legs and refused to move, so Bucky sat up slowly. Surprisingly, he didn't feel… bad. It was a strange feeling—without exhaustion, without a wet need to cough, or the dull pain in his—oh. He had on a knee brace.

"You drugged me," Bucky said, careful to get the words right. He wanted to bend the knee, test and make sure it was still all his, but the dog was lying on it and had no intention of moving.

"And you have my formal apology for that," Stark answered as he approached the cot. "Namely because Steve says apologies are important. It was going to be much more comfortable for you to be sleeping when we set your leg, inserted the IV, and ran a full diagnostic. To say nothing of the arm charging."

What if he had wanted to be awake? The thought of what could have happened while he was asleep – who Stark could be working for – the thought that Steve could have been changed or mind-controlled or something and delivering him back to his handlers… so much could have happened and how did he know it hadn't and this was all – then he realized Stark was talking in a controlled, even voice. A steady drone which punctured the spiral of terror.

"Keep breathing. Nothing happened while you were asleep. Everything is fine. Steve's in another part of the tower. The dog is friendly even if it has an uncontrollable bladder and its name is Lucky. You can pet it, it would probably enjoy the attention. Steve's in the tower and nothing has happened to him, or to anyone else, and you are under Stark hospitality for what that's worth and that's certainly something to be confident about, but keep breathing, no one's done anything to you that didn't help you since you went to sleep. Pet the dog, it's been statistically proven to improve mood or at least it probably is, I haven't run the numbers in a while."

Bucky stared. Startled out of the doom-spiral of fear.

"…what? I can recognize panic." Stark pushed himself away from the cot, checking the vitals on the computer with a few quick keystrokes. "The arm is charged, you can unplug. The IV, I'd like you to keep in."

"…knee brace. IV. Useless this way."

"Steve disagrees. For that matter, I disagree. Finding a friend of Steve's, our resident Cap-sicle, isn't useless."

"He already has people," Bucky said.

"There is no one else Steve's age from the '40s. We are running out of WWII survivors in general. Steve has 'people,' he doesn't have anyone like you."

Bucky said nothing, so Tony went on, making movements on the screen, moving things from one side to the other.

"Unfortunately, he seems to assume you're just as indestructible as you were in the forties, so he's wants you to come on the 'hunt-down-Faustus' trip, doubling as a 'hunt-down-renegade-Avengers-idiots' trip."

"Steve's not going anywhere with me." Panic started to spiral again. "Steve can't go anywhere with me. That's %^&*ing obvious."

"Cap is going with you," Stark said with absolute confidence. "And Falcon is going with you both. Those two took down HYDRA, as Avengers we took down Loki and an entire alien race hell-bent on invasion. I think they can handle a whackjob psychologist."

"I'm not—"

"Look, nobody's safe around Banner either. Which is who they're going to stop. I wouldn't send you, but Cap didn't exactly give me a vote because he told me what he was going to do, in detail, if I tried to keep you here against your will."

"… you don't…."

"Seem like the type to listen? No. But it looks good for PR when Cap's on my side."

"So…" Bucky was losing the conversation again. "So what are you doing?"

"You've got three days. Steve's not going to let you keel over in pursuit of Faustus, given that the guy isn't an intergalactic threat. I recommend you sleep. A lot."

"I don't need to—"

"Yeah, y'do. Buttsniffer?" This last was addressed to the dog, whose tail happily started thumping the cot again. "Make sure he stays."

Thump thump thump.

"Good." Still addressing the dog. "Still haven't forgiven you for Tuesday."

And that was how Bucky left things with Stark.

#

Every time he woke up, he remembered more. It took less time to come back to himself, because there was a 'himself' to come back to. The dog had adopted him, more or less, even when he moved from Stark's lab to the bedroom Steve had originally showed him. It was 'his' and the dog didn't find it weird that he slept on the floor, deciding instead that it meant an awful lot of bedspace for Dog.

Remembering.

That passed in and out like a radio station. He still hadn't really talked to Steve, though it was coming. He could feel conversations on the horizon, things that Steve wanted to ask him or tell him that went beyond 'how are you,' 'shouldn't you eat,' and other questions with difficult answers.

The knee brace helped. He didn't want to admit that. The knee brace helped. And he was on antibiotics, so the cough and the inflammation around his shoulder were slowly, slowly leaving.

A pathetic sort of soldier.

That hurt. Realizing that there was a sizeable part of him that didn't feel he was any good unless he was of use and realizing, upon carefully broaching the subject with Steve, that it wasn't a part that was going to go away. 'Decades of use,' Steve had said, 'and they didn't treat you like a human being. Buck, there are people – soldiers – going through that now who haven't had that happen, and they're struggling to adjust.'

Though, as he was reminded at every turn, he had support which many other veterans didn't. He could live at Stark Tower, he could eat at Stark Kitchens, Jarvis knew where he was at all times – and yet all that just conspired to remind him that he was an enemy of the state. And had been for decades.

The night of the second full day, Steve made sure he was safely in his room, made sure he took something to help him sleep, and left.

Bucky promptly tossed the pills, put the knee brace back on, and opened the window. Stark had left him alone in the lab again that day. It was the work of moments, with HYDRA's training, to get everything he needed: Barton's last-known-position and access to Jarvis's surveillance in his bedroom.

Lucky watched him from the bed, interested but not interested enough to follow him out the window. Barton had probably trained it not to come careening after him. Good. If all went as planned, nobody would know enough to follow, including Steve.

It took some doing, but he got out of his room, quietly broke the window of one two floors down (where he had also disabled security), and broke back in. The door there was unlocked. Exiting the tower after that was easy and by the time he was walking out into the moonlight, he was only just limping.

The first cab driver that stopped probably thought he was going to get a huge tip, picking up a fare in this area, this late. Maybe even Captain America.

"Where to?" the man asked as the door opened.

"Nearest bus station."

The man obligingly pulled onto the public streets then, with a final glance in the rearview mirror, joked:

"Going to the bus station this time of night, coming out of the hero-tower, and you aren't taking back-up?"

"I am back-up."

The statement –once true, now false, but true again – sent him into a mental tail-spin, which he didn't surface from until the cab stopped in front of the bus station. In his confusion and hurry to get out of the vehicle, the taxi driver got a $50 tip.

"Thanks, Cap!" the man cheered as Bucky slammed the door. Gah. It took the rest of his energy to get on the bus for Chesapeake Bay, where Barton and Banner would be doing… whatever it was they were doing. Six to eight hours on the bus was like another day of recuperation and, if the pair had found Faustus by the time he got there, so much the better.

#

For anyone who knows Bucky from the comics, he DOES do this kind of idiotic thing. Like training with broken ribs and calling himself a 'fast healer.' [argh, Buck, why.]

To anyone who has hung in there to read this drabble thus far [and to those who've reviewed], y'know what, you're cool. And I hope it amuses. :) Fighting the urge to replot and rewrite the whole thing but I just don't got the time right now, so I'm gonna plunge forward while I still want to tell this story. == Edit: I did. Cheers, and thank you.