I found Steve Rogers in the atrium of the hospital. He was standing at one of the windows but his attention was focused on the cup in this hand.

"You stare into that cup as though it holds profound secrets," I said.

He chuckled. "I served under a colonel once who sure thought coffee held profound secrets. I'm just trying to get my thoughts together."

"Do these thoughts involve Tony's offer and Bucky's refusal?" I asked, and answered Steve's questioning look, "I spoke with Tony this morning. He told me Bucky's position on altering his memories."

"Yeah. No. I don't know. No." He sighed and stared once more into his cup. "I guess I'm finally processing everything that's happened with Bucky. With me. With both of us."

"Having your friend returned to you under these circumstances cannot be uncomplicated."

"Ha, no. It is definitely not that."

"If I may be of any assistance to you, you know you have only to ask."

"Thanks. Thank you. This, all this," he gestured about the room. "Has been more than I could've hoped for. If you hadn't offered us help, God knows where we'd be right now, or what shape Bucky would be in."

"Heri yako heri yangu," I said. "Your happiness is my happiness. Every guest is a blessing, as rain to parched land."

"That's a nice sentiment." He smiled and gazed into his cup one last time before setting it down on the windowsill. "I'm worried about him. Not – I'm not worried about his safety here, I know he's safe. I know we're all safe here. But what Bucky's been through – the memories he's going to have to live with the rest of his life. I just – I don't know."

"You think he should allow Tony to alter his memories?"

"I think Bucky should do whatever the hell he wants about anything and everything," Steve said, his smile turning into a brief grin. "But I know him. Even the short time we've been back together, even if he's not 100% the Bucky I knew, I know that the man he is is tortured by those memories. I still live with the things we had to do in the war, and that was war and things I chose to do, not things I was tortured into. I guess I just can't stand the pain I know Bucky's in, the emotional pain, and there's nothing I can think of to make it any better."

"Simply being with him, accepting him just as he is, is a gift far greater than you can imagine," I said.

"How do you know?"

"Hasn't it been true your entire lives that Bucky accepted you just as you were, accepted you as Steve, with all that meant, whether you were Steve or Captain America?"

He smiled a fond smile. "Yeah, he did. Before the serum or after it, I was his friend, that was it. He never saw me different. Never treated me any different. After all the nonsense, all the mess after the serum, it wasn't until I had Bucky back with me that I felt normal again. That I felt safe, I guess."

"And so you would agree that having you beside him is not only what Bucky wants, it is what he needs? That your friendship alone makes 'it' better?"

He took a breath and started to speak and his tense expression led me to believe he was about to argue my point. Instead, he said, "It doesn't feel like enough. It's not enough. For everything he's been through, everything he's going to have to go through the rest of his life –I want to break something, destroy something. I want to find every last HYDRA agent and destroy anybody, everybody, who had anything to do with hurting Bucky. I want to demolish that place they kept him in Siberia, take it apart brick by brick. And I could do it."

"Which makes simply walking beside Bucky the harder task to accomplish. Harder even than taking apart that missile silo brick by brick. Isn't that true?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it is."

tbc