"You know, you never answered my question," Bucky said as he sat across from Doctor Potter at her kitchen table. The soup she'd set down in front of him was, quite possibly, the best thing he'd ever tasted. It felt really good to be wearing something other than a uniform as well.

"Hmm? Oh! What's got me distracted, Sergeant Barnes, is puzzling over how to make a prosthetic arm for you," the pretty lady doctor answered. "With the way technology always seems to advance around wars, I'm sure I could pilfer some interesting schematics from somebody that I could modify."

"You can do that?" Bucky asked, stunned to wonder, and with a candle-wick of hope lit in his chest at the idea. Being less than whole... Before the war, he hadn't known there were worse things than dying. He'd gotten his first taste of that thanks to Zola. Now with just one arm, he was reminded all over again. A prosthetic arm wouldn't be his arm back, but it would be better than having nothing there at all.

"Which part?" she asked with a smile that had more moxy than he'd ever seen on any dame before. Even that Agent Carter hadn't ever looked like that, and he watched how she acted around Steve real close. "Modify schematics? Technology isn't my strong-suit, but I'm an intelligent woman with some handsome motivation sitting in my kitchen. The sneaking about, finding and stealing of those schematics?"

Bucky took it back. Now he'd never seen an expression with so much moxy. Whole lot of mischief too. Wow but this woman -!

"In and out unseen is easy," she declared firmly. "Finding what I'm actually looking for? That is much harder. But I was also thinking about what to do in the meantime. You're going to need something, and I could probably jimmy up a fairly basic rig without too much trouble. We should also see about getting you back to your base-camp, platoon, or whichever. Wouldn't want you to be declared dead and worry anybody back home."

Bucky stiffened.

"My little sister already got that letter once. And Steve... He... he's practically, and he saw me fall," he said softly.

"Right," she said, colour draining from her pretty face. "Any chance you could still make it to rendezvous?"

"The squad was meant to rendezvous back at base camp, fourteen-hundred hours, two days after we hit the train with Zola on it," he answered, his hand reached up to fist in his hair. "You said it's been eighteen hours I was out already, and there was more before that, right?"

"Sergeant Barnes, look at me," the lady doctor ordered, her voice soft but unwavering.

He looked up.

"Finish your soup, put your boots on, and then there's a walking stick by the door. You'll need it. I want you to keep your weight off that leg as much as possible for the next three hours still, at least," she instructed. "You go outside, I'll secure everything, and I will get you back to your base camp in time for rendezvous. Your friend won't have to mourn you."

"Again," Bucky corrected. "It will be the second time he'll have thought I died in this damn war, begging your pardon for the language Ma'am."

The lovely lady huffed.

"I assure you, Sergeant Barnes, I have used coarser myself when the situation merited it," she informed him with a smile. "And I find that few things merit strong language quite as well as war, however..." and here she ran a thoughtful, assessing gaze over him.

He carefully didn't tense up, though he certainly came to attention under the gaze of those pretty green eyes.

"I might give you a few more things to swear about before this day is over," she said, and her smile was as sweet as cheery pie. Even if it also looked like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

Bucky finished his soup, as instructed, pulled his boots on over the borrowed socks, and tucked the borrowed trousers into the tops. He found the walking stick, long and slim and black with a leather-wrapped section at the top that twisted strangely beneath the silver pommel that he would put his weight on. He stepped out through the door and promptly shivered. He probably should have asked for a coat. A shirt and a pair of slacks weren't enough to keep out the cold of European mountains in winter.

Five seconds later, Miss Potter followed him out, two large coats held over one arm, and a length of wood held in the other.

"I'm so sorry," she apologised, and helped him into a heavy wool coat the likes of which he'd only seen in books that had pictures of folks in Victorian England. "It was so cosy inside, and the company so wonderful, I completely forgot about the snow out here."

"I didn't freeze in the five seconds I was waiting for you," Bucky answered her with a smile, "though I am mighty grateful, for everything."

She smiled back at him a moment, then shook herself and pulled on her own thick coat. While she as doing that, she flicked the stick in her hand at the... no way. Tent? No way that had been a tent they'd been in! There'd been a stone fireplace! And now... it was packing itself up. Not just collapsing after a central pole was removed sort of 'packing up'. Actually neatly coiling its own ropes, bundling its one poles, and folding the canvas down into a neat little square.

The apparently logic-defying beauty set a little red thing on the ground, tapped it with her stick, and it grew to be a leather-covered trunk, with brass fixtures, big enough that Steve could have fit inside before he'd been turned into a Super Soldier. Another flick, and the lid popped open, the pieces of tent flew inside, and then she shrank the trunk down again and fixed it to her silver charm bracelet.

Bucky knew it wasn't polite, but he stared. He outright gaped, even. Silently worked his jaw like a fish gasping for breath on land.

Then she pulled the little black motorcycle off her charm bracelet, and Bucky was only slightly more prepared for the sight of it growing into a full, massive bike with a side-car. There were even two helmets tucked into the side-car, and Bucky didn't move as the woman (who he wasn't so sure was actually real any more, but might more likely credit her to the delusions of a dying man) pulled the helmet onto his head and buckled it beneath his chin. Didn't flinch when she slid a pair of goggles over his eyes, and was mutely docile as she manoeuvred him into the side-car.

He finally blinked at the sound of the engine revving.

The stick had disappeared, but there were strange gold lights dancing over the black-painted petrol-tank. He watched as she ghosted her fingers over them absently as they roared forward. Then he made the mistake of peeking over the side when he felt his stomach drop, like the sensation from going up in an elevator.

"Holy shit!"

It seemed he'd finally rediscovered his voice.

"That's right, Sergeant Barnes, you are riding a flying motorcycle. One that is invisible to eye and ear unless you are riding it, or it is on the ground," Potter (who he was increasingly sure was a figment of his imagination, a hallucination right before he died) called over the roar of the engine and the wind. "Now, if I'm going to take you back to your base, I'm going to have to know where it is."

Seeing as he was probably already dead, and was having some post-death dream (because he fully believed in life after death), Bucky saw no harm in giving her the co-ordinates for the base and the rendezvous point. He knew that Howard Stark had shown off a floating car at his expo, he'd seen it, but it hadn't stayed floating for long, and it certainly hadn't gone anywhere. This black motorcycle quickly proved infinitely superior to the red show-piece.

He was never, ever going to tell Stark about this.