After breakfast, Steve, not meeting Bucky's eye, took him downstairs to the lab where Bruce and Tony were waiting, medical instruments at the ready. Bucky looked at them in apprehension and shied at the door, his fingers tightening around the door jamb as his eyes darted around the lab, taking in the shiny steel instruments. Steve swore that he could feel the tension colouring the air, and was mentally bracing himself to prepare to rip Bucky away from the door.

"Steve," Bucky hissed under his breath, his eyes fixated on Tony and Bruce, who were all decked out in scrubs and surgical gear, arms scrubbed up to the elbows and mouths covered with peppermint green masks. "I can't do this. I really can't."

Steve found his eyes drawn to the death grip Bucky had on the doorjamb. His metal left hand was actually digging through the plaster, and Steve absentmindedly wondered if Bucky realised he was doing that. The knuckles on his other hand were clenched white around the wall, and Steve could almost hear Bucky grinding his teeth through his jaw. Sweat stood out on Bucky's forehead and he was staring at Tony and Bruce with haunted eyes, shaking his head almost imperceptibly, his lips pressed white together as if he was keeping the words from leaking out the corners of his mouth.

"It's okay," Steve murmured soothingly, reaching out and patting Bucky's shoulder. He could feel the tension in the muscles underneath his fingers, a live wire ready to snap at the slightest provocation. "It'll be okay. They're friends, you've met them before, they just have to wear those things because of, because of contamination or something like that."

Bucky looks at Steve out of the corner of his eye, his dark eyes inscrutable.

"I promise you they won't hurt you. I swear they won't. And I'll be right here beside you the entire time, okay? I promise." Steve reached down, wrenched Bucky's hand off the door frame (there were indents from his metal fingers that Steve wasn't sure could ever be repaired), and pressed his lips to the cold metal, unsure if Bucky could even feel it and wondering what he was thinking if he did. Bucky's flesh hand was still clinging desperately to the doorframe, but with some coaxing, Steve gently tugged Bucky's arm, encouraging him to let go of the frame, and watched with knit eyebrows as Bucky's flesh hand instantly clapped itself over his eyes so he wouldn't have to see as Steve led him step-by-step across the white and black checkered laboratory floor, making shushing, soothing noises the entire way.

Bucky kept his eyes firmly clamped shut even after Steve had manoeuvred him onto the examination table. The scent of fear was heavy in the back of his throat; it tasted like sweet copper and dust, and Bucky swallowed hard, biting down on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from screaming. He clutched at Steve's fingers tightly, grabbing for anything that felt like hope, and felt only vaguely apologetic at Steve's responding hiss of pain.

"Okay, Bucky, we're just going to put you under, alright? Maybe we can see why you've been forgetting all these things," a voice came from above him, and he knew it wasn't the Surgeon, knew that this was a completely different thing, that anesthesia was a luxury he hadn't been afforded before, but he couldn't stop himself.

"Don't make me go back into the dark," he begged Steve, cracking open his eyes and finding Steve's gaze above him and slightly to the right, just as promised. "Don't let them hurt me."

Steve's grip tightened on his fingers as a mask was fitted over Bucky's nose and mouth. "I won't," he said firmly, and clutched tightly as Bucky's fingers slowly went limp and his dark eyes rolled back, fluttering closed after a few moments.

Tony and Bruce moved around gently, almost gracefully, and Steve watched them almost through a fog as they carefully detached Bucky's metal arm and set it on a separate table for examination purposes. The seam looked raw and Steve's shoulder ached just looking at it.

"We were thinking of doing an MRI," Tony says over his shoulder to Steve, who is only half listening and is instead tracing the furrow between Bucky's eyebrows with his gaze. "Brain function. To see if there's damage or trauma, you know. And we can probably throw in a full-body scan, just to make sure he's in top shape. We own the MRI machine anyway, so it's not like we're running the risk of incurring state medical fees. That okay with you?"

Steve looked at the prone form in front of him, wondering what they'd find in the scans. If they could find the memories that Bucky admitted to not being able to remember. If they would find big, black gaping spots where the memories were supposed to be, gone, irretrievable.

Steve wasn't sure which one he'd prefer.

"I can't watch this," he said after a few moments, biting at his lip. "I can't."

Tony walked over, placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "You don't have to if you don't want," he said after a few quiet moments. "You don't have to do any of this, we could just wake him up and that would be it."

Steve worried his lip between his teeth, grasping Bucky's limp fingers and trying to find an answer.

"I just want him to stay with me," he murmured. "I don't want him to leave again. Losing him once was enough."

"Maybe you won't have to lose him again," Bruce murmurs from the side, where he is looking through Bucky's metal arm and the cogs and springs and pieces within. "But you won't know unless you try."

Steve looked down at the white and black checkered floor, staring until his gaze burned tears into his eyes.

"Okay," he whispered, furiously scrubbing away at his eyes with the heel of one hand. "Okay."

"Don't make me go back into the dark," he begged me, clutching at my hand like a saving grace, like a last prayer. "Don't let them hurt me."

"I won't," I promised him, clutching tightly at his hand and watching as he halfheartedly struggled against the anesthesia mask being placed over his mouth and nose, watching as his dark eyes rolled back and his hand slowly went limp in mine. The heart and oxygen monitors were beeping along at a normal clip, but it was so hard to believe that he wasn't dead, lying all still and stationary like that.

I kept trying to reassure myself that this was all for his own good, but maybe somewhere deep in my heart I know this is just a completely selfish request. I can't handle losing him twice. Even now, though I know it was ages ago, I keep picturing his face as he fell through the air, his hand stretched up towards me, a silent plea for salvation that I couldn't give. Even though I look across at him now and see the angular lines and planes of an adult face that's borne too much sadness, I can still make myself see the hopefulness and cheer that once turned up the corners of his mouth and smoothed the furrow between his eyebrows.

His metal arm lies on a table nearby, Tony fiddling with it with a magnifying glass and the tiniest pair of tweezers I've ever seen, and he's muttering into a little recorder as he examines its contents. Bruce, meanwhile, is fussing over Bucky, something about just checking to see if there are any physical abnormalities he can detect, leaning over his chest and pressing the rubber cup of a stethoscope to his skin, frowning.

"Tony," he calls over his shoulder. "You ought to come and listen to this."

Tony abandons the arm, walking briskly over and taking the stethoscope from Bruce. He listens a few moments, makes a face. "What is that?" he mutters. "He sounds like a goddamned clock. Or a bomb."

My heart leaps into my throat, and I squeeze Bucky's fingers tightly inadvertently.

Tony turns to me, his eyes apologetic. "We're going to have to see what it is," he says after a moment. "We're going to have to...you know, cut him open. Well, Bruce will do that; I'm not exactly trained in invasive surgery, kind of skipped those courses in college. Ideally, we could try to scan it, X-rays or something, but with weapons technology these days, radiation might be able to trigger it, if it does turn out to be a bomb. And then, well, I'm pretty sure super soldier serum won't bring him back from that."

I don't remember nodding; I don't remember putting on the surgical cap and mask and gown; I don't remember the process through which Bruce opened up Bucky's chest. I do remember the rusty brown colour of the solution they put on his chest before cutting, the liquid spreading across the flesh like a birthmark, the exact same shade as the one he has on his lower back in the shape of a marshmallow; I do remember their collective gasps of breath as they peered into the cavity of his chest, their gloves stained bloody; I do remember them waving me over, telling me to come and have a look, and the squeak of my chair as I pushed it back and went over.

"Look at this," Tony prompts me, and I sniff back my tears and lean over to look as well.

Inside, amongst all the red and crimson and scarlet, something silver, pulsing, mechanical, clicking away in perfect rhythm, never faltering, never missing a beat. And I'm not a doctor, but I'm fairly sure hearts are all red and ropey, and Bruce only confirms my suspicions a few moments later.

"Well, it isn't a bomb, I'm fairly sure," he says, looking down into the cavity. "That's his heart."

I return to my seat, wrap my fingers around Bucky's again, and wonder if this is why he's never told me he loves me, because he can't. Because he doesn't know how to. Because he just doesn't feel that way.

I lied. I do remember one other thing.

I remember looking over at Bucky's face and learning that you do not have to be awake to cry.

He comes back to me a few hours later, the scar on his chest already healing, and he wakes up groggy and confused and complaining about his head hurting.

The scans that Tony and Bruce had ended up doing hadn't revealed anything conclusive, they'd told me. But that didn't mean there wasn't trauma, Tony had pointed out. It could just mean that there was, but that it was healing too fast for them to see. Super soldier serum, enhanced regenerative effects, etc etc. But at the present moment, his mind appeared perfectly intact and healthy.

They threw words like "aphasia," and "dysfunctional," at me, said that Bucky just might not be able to express himself through language, that he might forget words on occasion. But I wasn't listening, or maybe I didn't want to listen.

"How you doing?" I ask him, squeezing his fingers lightly and smiling as he squeezes back weakly.

"Head hurts," he muttered.

A few moments of silence, during which I just stroke along the back of his hand with my thumb.

"I'm very proud of you," I tell him, smiling past the tears that threaten to clog my throat as I catch sight of that hideous, ugly scar on his chest, rapidly fading away before my very eyes. "They say you're strong as a horse. You'll live for a long time yet."

He scoffs. "I don't feel like it," he says, and my heart skips a beat. Is that an "I don't feel like it" to the strong comment, or an "I don't feel like it" to living for a long time? "I feel like I got hit by one of those really big cars, you know the ones that carry cows from one place to another."

I smile. "You mean a truck?"

"Yeah," he nods. "That."

I wait a few moments to see if he has anything else to say, but he is quiet and staring at the metal hand that lies placid on the thin white sheet that drapes over his lower body. I make to stand up.

"I'm going to get something to drink," I tell him. "Do you want anything?"

He shakes his head, still fascinated by his metal fingers.

At the door, he clears his throat and I turn, attention drawn to him as it always is.

"I did it because I..." he struggles for a moment, biting at his lips as I wait patiently. "Because I like you," he says finally, and my heart sinks. I suppose it's a start, but it hurts nonetheless. It isn't exactly what I wanted to hear.

"No," he says, his voice desperate as I turn again to leave. "You don't understand. I mean, like, really really really like you."

I turn back to face him. He's holding out his hands, supplicating, and I know what it's like to be abandoned, and I can't force myself to be the abandoner. That's just not a role Steve Rogers, or Captain America, is supposed to fill.

My footsteps seem like gunshots in the room as I walk back towards him, seat myself in the chair by his right side again and take his hands in mine. His metal fingers are cool to the touch.

"Do you mean," I say cautiously, staring at some point on his forehead so it could appear that I'm looking into his eyes, "that you love me?" My voice almost breaks on the last word.

I look up to find him smiling a huge smile of relief.

"Yeah," he says, and for an instant it's 1940s Bucky all over again. "That."