When his eyes opened, he was laying on a bed—a too-small bed. His feet hung off the edge slightly. A fan hummed somewhere in the room. He lay there for a moment, disoriented. His skin felt sweaty, his hair was sticking to his face, and he was uncomfortably aware of how bad he smelled. And then he suddenly sat up straight, his assassin instincts kicking in. Just because he no longer worked for HYDRA didn't mean he could un-learn what they had taught him—nor should he. He would be a target for several people if they learned he was alive, so he had to constantly be on his guard.

However, his balance was a bit off because he still felt ill and also he hadn't slept like this—on a soft, fluffy mattress—since…well, ever. He'd had a bare room in some HYDRA compound with a hard cot for the days when he wasn't in action but couldn't go back in the ice yet. So he stumbled as he leaped to his feet and bumped into the delicate-looking night table. A white ceramic swan fell off and shattered on the ground and he stared at it in dismay. Not that a ceramic swan was of any importance to him—but what if mattered to the lady? He hadn't meant to destroy it.

The door opened and he whipped around to see the woman (really, what was her name? That was probably something he should learn sometime soon) peeked in. "Oh, good! You're awake—" She paused when she saw the shattered ceramic swan. She stared at it for a moment and he couldn't read her face. He thought something close to upset flickered across her face, but the next second she was smiling slightly. "No big deal. It was just an old thing I got from Home Goods. I've made food. Would you like some?"

Now that she mentioned food, the Winter Soldier realized just how hungry he was. He nodded and followed her silently out the room down a small hallway, down two steps, into a kitchen area. She'd set out two serving dishes of noodles and red pasta sauce and she gestured to it. "You first."

Had the Winter Soldier been a normal man, he might have recognized that this was his cue to say, "No, please, you first." But he didn't think about courtesies like that and he took a seat at the table, looking around silently. The first thing he did when he was in any location was assess any and all entryways that either enemies could come through or that he could escape from. He didn't really see much of a problem here; she had some normal windows in her family room that he could easily shatter and duck out of in a matter of seconds. He pondered for a few minutes what he would do if someone did come in and attack them. He wasn't in much of a shape to fight someone, but he could if he needed to. It would be easier to escape. However…there was the matter of the woman. Did he stick around to save her? She was irrelevant to him, but she had let him stay in one of her rooms… It took him a few minutes before he realized she was asking him a question. "What?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"I asked, is there something you'd like to drink?" she asked.

"Uh, water," he said, naming the first thing he could think of.

"Okay," she said. She turned away to get a glass of water and he watched her closely to make sure she wasn't putting anything into it. He didn't really think she was some sort of enemy at this point—but he couldn't let his guard down so easily. As he watched her, he cleared his throat and then said, "Uh, what's your name?"

"What's yours?" she joked, setting the glass in front of him. Before he could answer, she said seriously, "Just kidding. My name is Aritamis Madden. But you can call me Ari."

Aritamis. A strange name. Not a name he'd heard before. But he could work with it. "Okay…Ari," he said slowly, testing it out. She smiled encouragingly.

They ate in silence. She didn't look at him directly but he could feel her gaze on him when she thought he wouldn't notice. It was a very clinical gaze, as if she were assessing him. It made him feel self-conscious and annoyed but he didn't know what to say so he said nothing about it. After he was done eating, she gathered all their plates and put them into the sink and clapped her hands once. "Okay! You need to take a bath. Sorry, I don't have a shower," she added apologetically. "This house is…old. I should renovate, but…yeah. Anyway. Do you think you can manage that?"

He stood up and nodded stiffly. She let him to the bathroom and ushered him inside, closing the door and calling through it, "Feel free to use the soaps up!" which might have been her polite way of saying, "You smell disgusting, please use as much fragrant soap is needed to make yourself smell delightful." And he agreed. He'd never used cologne or anything before but he'd never been this filthy before.

He undressed slowly, wincing at all the aches and pains that stabbed through him, and then a wave of nausea hit him and he fell to the ground, hitting the floor with his knees with an extremely loud thud sound. He heard footsteps and then Ari was calling through the door, "Are you okay? I heard…noises."

He wanted to say he was fine but as he gripped the counter to stand up, a shocking pain went through his head and he groaned instead, wondering what the hell was happening to him. It felt like he was being obliterated from the inside out. Was this some backup plan of HYDRA's? Destroy him somehow if he managed to escape from them? Had they planted something in him to kill him internally?

When he didn't immediately respond, Ari knocked firmly once and then entered, looking worried. When she saw him kneeling on the ground, she didn't look embarrassed, to her credit. Her eyes widened for a moment at his cybernetic arm and he braced himself for her to start screaming or hurling frantic questions at him—but instead a determined, professional expression came over her face. "Right. It's clear you're unable to bathe yourself. I'm going to help."

"Wh—NO!" he managed. This was beyond humiliating. The Winter Soldier, reduced to this? Being bathed like some sort of squalling infant by a woman half his size? He would never allow it.

"Except you will," said Ari. He had spoken his last thought out loud without even realizing it. "Because you're filthy and while I'd like you to be clean for my, and my house's, sake, it's more important that you get clean for your own health. All the dirt on you can lead to you getting some sort of infection. I can see you have wounds even from here. Do you want them to get infected?"

They won't, he wanted to say, but he couldn't make the words come out. She helped him and then helped him into the bath. The next half hour was a half hour the Winter Soldier wished would be erased from his mind. Ari, on her part, was very professional. She kept her eyes on his face, scrubbed him briskly, and didn't seem to be embarrassed or hesitant at all. The only things she asked him was if the water was too hot or too cold and to tell him if she was hurting him. She avoided scrubbing his cybernetic arm and kept it elevated out of the water. He couldn't comprehend how she could be so calm in a situation like this. On his part, it was less being unclothed and more so being treated like a weakling, like a human child, that made him grit his teeth. But he bore with it because he really did need to get clean and it appeared that his illness and wounds were going to make that impossible for him to do alone.

When she was done, she stepped back, washed her hands at the sink, and said, "Wait here. You need new clothes. I'll wash your old ones. I'll be right back." She was gone for a few minutes and then she returned, leaving a folded stack of clothes on the toilet lid. "My brother's clothes," she explained. "He used to sometimes stay with me until he got a job in California." Something funny flashed across her face then but it was gone before he could catch what it was. She paused. "Sorry if they're too big… Okay, I'll throw your old clothes in the wash. Here, wait…" She hurried over to him and helped him stand, handing him a towel, her eyes never leaving his face. She gathered up his disgusting old clothes and left, shutting the door behind her.

He dressed slowly, wincing. She was right—the clothes were large on him. He was a relatively large man, well-built due to the injections HYDRA had given him and constant training, but her brother must have been simply enormous, because the flannel shirt she had given him hung off him like he was a scarecrow. Or perhaps he had gotten thinner in the last few weeks? He looked at himself in the mirror, brushing his long brown hair back from his face. His face was extremely stubbly and he looked clean but he still looked pale and gaunt. There were dark shadows under his eyes and he did look a bit thinner, though not much. Another perk of being a superhuman—it probably took double or triple the amount of time to starve himself and make himself weak from poor eating and sleeping habits. He wondered if Steve was the same way; he had looked like a robust, healthy man, though not when he'd been covered in blood after the Winter Soldier had given him a beating on the helicarrier…

"I'm with you till the end of the line."

He bent over the sink, wincing at the sharp pain in his head. For some reason, thinking about that phrase—and thinking about Steve—physically hurt. A fuzzy image floated to his mind, looking at Steve…except Steve was shorter…why was he shorter…?

A knock at the door startled him so badly he knocked over the toothbrush mug, though this time he caught it before it shattered. "You done?" called Ari.

"Yes," he said, exiting.

She stepped back and looked at him. "Yep. Too big. Oh well, you're clean now. Okay…" Her voice trailed off as she surveyed him. "I realize you're tired and ill…but you've eaten and bathed now. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

He was instantly on his guard, looking at her suspiciously. "Why?"

"I think you may have some form of amnesia," she said gently. "I'm not sure if I can help—but I can try. I'd have to start with collecting some information first."

"Why did you say I was 'obviously hiding from someone'?" he asked suddenly, ignoring her request. He had just remembered this and it alarmed him; he'd never said anything about being on the run from HYDRA or SHIELD or Captain America. How did she know? Did she work for someone?

"An educated guess," she said. Seeing the terrifying expression on his face at her response, she said, "Okay, how about this. You answer my questions and then I answer yours. Deal?"

"Deal," he said gruffly. He followed her to the family room, where she gestured for him to sit down. The whole room was rather floral and made him feel somewhat sick. He'd never been around so much lavender and sky blue and floral print in his life. It felt so feminine and delicate, like he'd destroy something just by touching it. She owned a lot of odd glass figurines for someone so young.

She sat on a sofa across from him and pulled out a notebook and a pen.

"No recording," he snapped.

"But…how will I remember your information to help you?" she asked, staring at him.

"Fine," he conceded, "but I keep the papers."

"That works," she said. "Okay…" She tapped the pen against her teeth while staring blankly at her notebook for a moment. Then she looked up. "What's your name?"

"I don't know," he said.

"You have no memory of a given name or a nickname?" she asked.

He hesitated, wondering whether he should tell her—but why not, at this point? He desperately wanted to know who he was and she was his best chance, since he didn't know how to get his hands on HYDRA's files. So he said, "There was this…man. I don't know who he was. He said he knew me. He said my name was…" "Your name is James Buchanan Barnes!" Steve Rogers' voice seemed to echo in the room. "…James Buchanan Barnes. Bucky, for short."

"Okay," said Ari. "Do you feel like you know this person? James…or Bucky? Would you like to go by that?"

"No," he said immediately. The name unnerved him. He felt like he had some sort of connection to it—but it was so blurry and confusing and it felt painful to think about it. "I go by the Winter Soldier."

She looked up slowly and he sensed something wary in her gaze. "Would you like me to call you that? Or…"

"You can call me Soldier, I guess," he said.

She went on asking him questions. First very basic ones—what foods did he like? Colors? Books? Movies? His answers to all of them were "I don't know" because he truly didn't know. Or "I don't have one." HYDRA hadn't allowed him much downtime.

Then she asked him, "What do you do for a career or a job? Are you a…soldier?"

"I'm an assassin," he said bluntly and then gauged her reaction. She did look momentarily surprised for a moment—and then she very carefully asked, "Do you have a current target or someone you're planning on hurting?"

"No," he said.

"Okay." She looked relieved. "Sorry—it's just that if you had plans to hurt yourself or someone, I'd be obligated by law to report you to the police. Although…would Duty to Warn still apply since he's not an admitted patient…?" she murmured to herself, lost in thought for a moment. Then she shook herself and asked, "You're clearly suffering from some sort of amnesia. What I'm trying to figure out is what kind, or if some sort of trauma caused it. Once we know the cause, we can work from there."

"I know the cause," he said. "My…agency wiped my memories."

She stared at him. "I beg your pardon? You mean…they hypnotized you to forget your memories?" She seemed uneasy now.

"No, I mean they sat me down in a chair and used a device and serums to wipe them from my mind," he growled.

"Have you had any flashbacks to any memories?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Do these have any side effects?" she asked.

"Yes," he admitted. "They make the pain worse. In my head. And stomach."

"Okay," she said. "That means that they didn't actually completely 'wipe' your memory." She held up air quotes around the word "wipe". "They did, in a way, hypnotize you—though I'm sure it was more powerful and painful than that. But the memories are there still underneath."

When he stared at her, she smiled and prompted, "That's a good thing, Soldier. That means your memories can be recovered. You can find out who you were before."

He clenched his cybernetic arm and she noticed the movement. She cleared her throat and for the first time looked a bit embarrassed. "About your…"

"Cybernetic arm," he said dully. "Works like a regular arm except stronger."

"Right," she said, staring at it with abject fascination. "And…did your agency give this to you?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember what happened to your old arm?"

A suddenly flashback—

He was laying in something cold and wet…snow? And everything hurt, hurt like hell… His arm was burning, as if it was on fire, and he could feel something warm and wet all over his side…and the pain, the pain was so intense… It felt like some beast had ripped his arm off in its mouth…

"Soldier!" Ari was suddenly crouching near him as he bent over, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, letting out a groan of pain as it felt like someone had shoved a white-hot knife into his head. "Soldier," she repeated, rubbing circles on his back. He felt so sick that he didn't even shove her away though he desperately wanted to. She must have sensed his wishes because she backed off slightly and said, "It's okay, you don't have to try and remember anything anym—"

"I WANT TO!" The words burst out of him and he sat up, blinking away the pain furiously. "Keep. Asking. Questions." He wouldn't let this pain conquer him.

"Okay," she said warily, returning to her seat. "Are you…sure?"

"Yes," he spat out, furious with himself for being so damn weak. What kind of "super soldier" was he if he couldn't even handle this much pain?

"Okay," she said. "Can you remember your first memory…from this life? As Soldier?"

He thought about it for a moment. HYDRA obviously wiped his mind after every mission and stuck him back in that suffocating ice…but they only erased the shallow details from his mind, little things that might have made him have more of an independent personality. He still got to retain his memories of being the Winter Soldier, of being an assassin, of his kills. He still obviously got to regain his physical memory that remembered his learned and trained motor movements.

"The assassination of Kennedy, I think," he finally said.

In all this time, Ari hadn't lost her cool once and he had admired her for that. But now she looked up, her eyes wide, and swallowed. "Wait—excuse me—what?" she demanded. "The assassination of Kennedy?"

"I've been around for years," he said. "Frozen in ice."

"Like Captain America," she said faintly.

He looked at her sharply. "You know about…him?"

"Well, yeah, he's an Avenger," she said. "The whole world knows about him."

The Winter Soldier didn't know what an Avenger was. She looked at him and faintly asked, "And…and Kennedy…was that…was that…"

"My work," he said.

She sat there, her expression stunned. She was sitting in a room with someone who had pulled off one of the most famous murders in history. And it didn't seem like it was sitting too well with her. She rubber her temples and whispered, "Well then…" She slumped back into her sofa, apparently at a loss for words. "I don't know what else to say right now."

"My turn to ask the questions," he reminded her.

She still seemed shell-shocked at the knowledge that he was more than quadruple her age (technically, though he had remained frozen somewhere in his early twenties, he didn't know when) but she sat up, upholding her end of the deal.

"How do you…" He gestured to the room vaguely. "How are you so calm…this isn't bothering you?"

She actually laughed at that, looking relieved that the conversation had taken a normal turn. "Soldier, I'm a nurse."

Nurse. Nurse. He was sitting on a cot, a springy dirty cot, grinning up at a nurse who was frowning at him. He had gotten some sort of injury and was teasing her. She wore a white dress and cap. She was pretty, long golden curls that she had pinned up and a disapproving smile. And then the memory was over as quickly as it had begun, flashing in his mind. Ari noticed the change in his expression, the pained way he winced and clutched his stomach, which was roiling again, and asked, "Memory? But what triggered it?"

"The word 'nurse'," he said.

"What was the memory?" she asked. "If you don't mind me asking."

He looked at Ari. She was a nurse. The memory didn't make much sense to him—but he still felt somewhat awkward telling Ari about it. "I do mind," he said curtly.

"Okay." She held up her hands in defeat. "Back to the question… I'm a nurse, I got my degree last year. I'm twenty-three, if you're wondering. I work in a hospital. That's how I knew how to assess you, how to bathe you—" She grinned apologetically at his ugly expression. "Yeah, awkward for you, isn't it? But trust me, it's nothing I haven't seen before."

The Winter Soldier had the sudden urge to kick something or punch a hole through the wall. Anything to make this conversation go the hell away. So then he asked, "Why did you think I'm hiding from someone?"

She pursed her lips together. "Well…it was just a guess. But…you look like you've been through a war," she said, nodding at his bruises and scrapes. "And…well, all the news has been talking about is what went down in D.C., and how some 'suspects' were still missing. Not that I'm saying you're a suspect…or maybe you are," she added under her breath, thought the Winter Soldier didn't think she knew he could hear her, "…but I kind of put two-and-two together. You seemed like you were hiding, or on the run."

"So why did you decided to help me?" he asked. He couldn't comprehend why any sane person would want to help him at this point.

"Well, at first I thought you had a mental illness," she said. "You looked…well, you looked homeless, and mental illnesses are highly prevalent among the homeless and medically-underserved. Unfortunately. And I couldn't just leave you; I was going to take you to a shelter. But then you just seemed like you had amnesia. And then I realized you were physically sick. I thought about driving you to my hospital, but you seemed so tense and antsy, like you might run away if I took you somewhere public."

So she had noticed, in the car. She was more observant than he'd realized. Humans generally weren't this observant.

"And, as a nurse, I've sworn an oath to protect people and help them heal," she said. "So I couldn't just leave you by the side of the road to die."

"I've just told you I'm an assassin," he pointed out, "and you think I'm on the run. You weren't afraid?"

Her smile faltered a bit and she cleared her throat, looking him dead in the eyes, and slowly said, "And who said I wasn't afraid?"

A heavy silence settled between them then, unspoken words hovering in the air. What now? What did either of them do now? She knew too much about him. The Winter Soldier had been considered a ghost in the world of espionage for so long, and now she knew things about him and she was interacting with him. This made him feel incredibly uneasy and his instincts kept whispering in his ear, urging him to kill her and be done with it. It would have been so easy, too. A million ways to do. A slit throat. Strangled. Or—if he wanted to be less violent—smothering her with her pillow. She looked an average 120-pound young woman. It would be so easy.

And yet—she'd helped him. She hadn't shown any horror or disgust towards him. Sometimes a HYDRA scientist would come to his room to assess his mental state and they'd tell him that it was imperative he stay out of the public view, not only because he had to stay covert, but also because regular humans would think he was disgusting and strange and dangerous. "You would never be accepted," they said, "because you're just a soldier. People fear those that can kill them. Know your place, Soldier." And he had accepted it because it was true.

But was it really? Captain America was a superhuman too. Yet people liked him. True, he fought for the opposite side…but no one had seemed disgusted by him. He'd even had an exhibit in a museum dedicated to him. An exhibit that also talked about a man named James Buchanan Barnes…Steve Rogers' best friend…a man who looked just like him…

He covered his face with his hands. Everything about Steve's story matched up—but at the same time it didn't. How could he be both the Winter Soldier and James Buchanan Barnes? How could he be two people while also not being either of them? He was the Winter Soldier, but he wasn't, because now he was lost. He was James Buchanan Barnes, but he wasn't, because he didn't know who James Buchanan Barnes was. Steve recognized him, the museum exhibit told the same story that Steve did…

It was hard to accept something that made no sense. He had flashbacks of being someone else—but they blurred in with the memories of all the times he'd been taken out of the ice. What had happened to him? How had he turned from that smiling man into this creature? Who was that man who'd laughed with Steve in that video? He was young, full of life, handsome. He had the Winter Soldier's face but the Winter Soldier was dirtier, rougher, more angry.

As for Ari…she had a choice now too. She knew who he was, what he could do. She had helped him but she wasn't obligated to help him any further. It only put her safety in danger. She could easily tell him to leave now.

But she didn't. She stood up and said, "I'm working the night shift at the hospital. Do you think you can manage yourself while I'm gone?"

He looked up from his hands and hoarsely asked, "You're letting me stay?"

"Hell yes," she said. "It's obvious your previous…agency"—the word lingered distastefully on her mouth—"has done a number on you. They've erased your memories but in the most damaging and harmful way. You also have some obvious cognitive issues and you're physically sick. And I'm no expert on memory and amnesia—but I'm going to help you get your memories back. You may never feel like James Buchanan Barnes…but knowing who he was is something you need, if you ever want to progress."

"How can you help me?" he asked.

She grimaced, a tight smile that had a clear bitter edge. "Trust me. I have my ways. To start off…I'm going to call my brother." From her expression, it was clear that this idea was extremely unpleasant to her—but there was a determined look in her eye that made the Winter Soldier feel like nothing in the world could stop her now. So he let her change into her scrubs and walk out the door. And he stayed in the house while she worked. He could have easily left…but he stayed.

And that was the first step.