Evangeline woke up to the strains of Bing Crosby singing duet with various people, the songs a few of the beautifully timeless hits – a good number of which were particularly popular in the World War Two era, and had been sung by lots of different people over the years. Confused by the presence of music, she pulled on a pale blue terry-robe over her pyjamas, slid her feet into her fluffy white slippers, and went to investigate.

A certain sergeant was sitting on the couch in the living space with a book in his hand, a steaming tin cup on the coffee table by his elbow, and the record player going round beside him. Evangeline had long-since come to realise that more modern methods of music recording didn't like being surrounded by magic. Even just being kept in a magical tent meant that CD players started skipping and scratching the CDs, and tape-decks pulled the ribbons and ate them mercilessly. Vinyl was the only option, but that was alright, because gramophones could be enchanted, unlike CD players and tape-decks.

"You found my record collection then," she observed with a smile. Mind, it had also been her Potter grandparent's record collection, as well as Sirius' and Remus', before all of the records had come into her possession. It rightly should have included records that belonged to her parents, but the house at Godric's Hollow had been... well, what records there might have been weren't in any condition to be played. She'd added a few of her own choices over the years too. Not a whole lot, and most of the newer artists hadn't caught on that vinyl was still a viable medium for making sales in, so what she had bought was more of the same artists as had already been bought, but still.

Barnes looked up from his book and smiled back.

"I didn't recognise more than half of what you've got," he admitted freely, "but Crosby is good for just relaxing to. I boiled the kettle a little while ago as well, if you wanted tea or coffee. It should still be hot."

"It's been a lot, hasn't it?" Evangeline posited softly as she shook her head to the offer of a hot drink, and settled down beside him on the couch. "A lot, and all so suddenly as well. I don't know what possessed me to just... no, I do know. In a war, you need every advantage you can get, and what these Hydra people are doing disgusts me. Thank you, Sergeant Barnes," she said suddenly.

"For what?" he asked, a vague smile on his face, amused at her half-awake ramblings and the abrupt change of direction.

"For not running screaming from all the strangeness," Evangeline admitted, voice small. "It didn't even register last night that I was introducing you to the spirits of the dead, no preparation or warning. I'm sorry for that, and truly grateful for the care you've shown me."

"Doll, I ain't gonna lie to you, there's moments where I think I'm stuck in a fever dream or having some bizarre post-death experience," Barnes admitted with a rueful, crooked smile. "But like you said, I couldn't dream you up if I tried, and I owe you big time for saving me."

"You don't owe me a thing," Evangeline protested. "You were injured, I'm a doctor, I couldn't not help you. If anything, I owe you, for taking care of me while I ran myself ragged."

"For which the whole division is in your debt," Barnes pointed out with a chuckle. "Alright, alright. Enough of the 'owe you more' game," he said, waving the argument off as she opened her mouth to take her turn. "Call it square, but you'd better talk to Colonel Philips about you getting paid for what you did."

Evangeline shrugged.

"I got paid," she murmured. "I got copies of all the notes on Hydra projects that can be modified to serve a medical purpose, rather than just being weapons. Money doesn't mean much to me really. I'm already rich enough to buy New York. I don't need more money."

"All the same," Barnes whispered, stunned by the casual declaration of just how very rich the young woman at the other end of the couch was. He couldn't even imagine that much money. "If you don't make people pay for the things you do for them, then they won't appreciate it quite as much. They'll just take it, and take it for granted."

"Mm," Evangeline hummed in soft agreement. "Sad, but generally true."

Barnes set his book down in his lap then, closed it, and Evangeline caught sight of the cover. She winced at the sight of it. Great Wizards and Witches of the Twentieth Century. She was in that book. So were relevant dates. Why did she even have that book? No, wait, that was the re-print that had come out after the war. She was actually quoted in that one. The publishers had given her a free copy as thanks.

"Of all the books you could have picked," she moaned softly, and thumped her head back on the couch.

"Well, after meeting four ghosts, I got curious about what-all was going on with my favourite lady doctor," Barnes admitted. "And on one of the earlier... turns... you said I could help myself to your library if I wanted. I thought you said you couldn't go back more than twenty-four hours? Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to go tattling if you lied, you're exhausted enough as it is and I do not want to imagine what you'd be like if you were taken advantage of further than that, but..."

"Not a lie," Evangeline answered. "Unless there's an accident, then a Time Turner does have a maximum range of twenty-four hours. Trouble is, accidents with Time Turners can dump you in distant places, not just distant times. When I landed, completely lost, I did some snooping about to try and figure out where and when I'd landed."

"Sensible enough," Barnes agreed with an understanding nod, but his words clearly filler, his tone blatantly prompting.

"As far as I can puzzle out, I'm not even on the same planet, or I am, but in a parallel world, if that makes sense," she explained. "Instead of German wizards led by Grindlewald working with Hitler to create a 'perfect race', it's Schmitt and his Hydra working through and beyond Hitler to create a 'perfect world', possibly for Hitler's 'perfect race', because he is still doing that. I'm a very long way from home, and I have no way, none at all, of ever getting back."

That was the first time she'd actually admitted it out loud.

Unbidden, unwanted, hot tears sprang up in her eyes. She hadn't given thought to the friends she'd left behind, to their reactions to her being gone, she'd stayed focused on her immediate situation. It was just living from day-to-day at first, camping in the unforgiving mountains. Then it was saving Sergeant Barnes and getting him back to his unit, very closely followed by helping the company safely launch an attack on a Hydra base. She'd been too busy to think about the life she had left behind, but now... Now as Bing Crosby crooned May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You in duet with Nat King Cole, and a strong arm slowly wrapped around her shoulders, Evangeline broke down.

"Get it all out," Barnes urged softly as he pulled her close. He let her bury her face in his chest, and he rested his chin on top of her head. "Don't you worry about a thing, you just get it all out."

"It's not like I left much of a life behind," Evangeline admitted when she had her sobs under control enough that she could talk through her sniffles. "All my friends had families of their own, and we were growing apart as we had less and less in common to talk about, since none of us wanted to talk about the war at all. I've got a clean slate, a fresh start... I've even got a handsome man in my life now," she added and directed a wet but still teasing smile up at Barnes.

"That's right you do, Doll," Barnes agreed softly, and gave her a tender squeeze. "At least until you get sick of me."

"I honestly can't see that happening, Sergeant Barnes," she said with a weak little smile. "Not if you're still sticking with me after reading that."

"Bucky," he corrected.

"Not James?" Evangeline asked, and her smile grew a little stronger, a little wider.

"You can if you like," he allowed, even as he shook his head, a slightly exasperated expression on his face – though the exasperation was tempered with fondness. "Just about everyone calls me Bucky though, or Buck, and didn't you say your dad was James?"

"And his friends all called him Prongs," Evangeline said with a nod, a distantly fond smile touching her lips. Reminiscing on long-dead was easier than thinking about those who she had just recently left behind. It was an old pain that she was used to.

Bucky frowned with his eyebrows, though the smile stayed on his face. It was the expression of someone who knew they were being led to ask a question, and whatever the answer was, it was likely to be a punch-line.

"Alright, I'll play, why'd they call him Prongs?"

"Because of his impressive antlers when he turned into a stag," Evangeline said, and bit her lip as her green eyes danced behind their left-behind sheen of tears.

A male deer was alternately called both stag and buck. Maybe it had something to do with being named James by their parents? No, that couldn't be it. There were two other guys in the Commandos who were called James. Neither one had a connection to deer, well, not that he knew of. Whatever else, Bucky laughed. He laughed loud and deep and rich, and when Evangeline giggled into his side, he shifted his arm down from her shoulders to her waist, and tugged her a little bit closer.

"And do you turn into an animal?" Bucky asked. "Wait, that's even possible?"

Evangeline bit down on her lip and tried not to outright laugh.

"In reverse order: yes, it's possible, and no, I don't," she answered, and finally relented and let her own arms slide around Bucky's waist. "I could learn how if I wanted to, but it would almost definitely take a couple of years, and it's really best done with someone around who can help reverse the transformation if you screw up."

Bucky pulled one corner of his mouth back in a 'yeah, no' grimace.

"Which counts me out, along with everybody else in the world, leaving you in a situation where you're all the help you've got here for that sort of thing, apart from the dead people you can call on," he recognised. "Can they... ?"

Evangeline shook her head.

"No," she said firmly in answer to the half-formed question. "The magical core in a witch or wizard is partially spiritual, a big fat pile of esoteric, and a pinch ephemeral, but it is also actually a lot more physical than a lot of people give credit or credence to."

"I'll take your word for it," Bucky said with a giving smile. "I can tell you were just about to launch into a technical explanation, but I wouldn't understand what you'd be talking about. I'm not stupid, I'd probably understand more than a lot of folks from my neighbourhood. But you're a very clever doctor, and while I read whatever I can get, I'm still just a guy from Brooklyn who used to sell and haul furniture for a living. That's before I was drafted, anyway."

Before he lost his arm was what he meant.

"I personally think you could do a lot better than just selling and shifting furniture," Evangeline declared softly. "But I'll make it possible, if you want to go back to that job."

"I didn't love it," Bucky admitted, "but it beat the – well, it was better than being told to shoot people, or being shot at, or having to worry about being gassed, or tripping over a landmine. Army pays better, but it's a lot more dangerous than shifting furniture. It was a comfortable, solid job. It got me out of the house, kept all the bills paid, and I could afford to take a girl or two dancing on the weekends too."

"Kept you off the streets too, I expect," Evangeline teased.

"Nah," Bucky denied, and shook his head sadly. "Steve's my best friend, and he's a punk. Is, was, always will be. And until he got pumped full of that Super Soldier Serum, he was ninety-pounds wet. Small, weedy, asthma, sinusitis, heart problems, twitchy, and he caught everything. I mean everything. His mother was a nurse, you see. She worked with the people who had this or that disease, always brought a little of whatever it was home with her, and Steve always came down with it. Didn't let anything beat 'im though. Whole world was determined to kick his ass, including just about every guy he met that wasn't me. I was always having to pull him out of it, because he wouldn't run away from a fight, and he wouldn't stay down."

"You care a lot about him, don't you?" Evangeline observed.

"He's practically my little brother," Bucky explained/excused/admitted with a shrug. "When we were kids we used to take the cushions off the couch, lay 'em out on the floor and sleep on 'em. We lived in each other's houses, anything one of us was short on, the other helped out. Even when I was in the trenches, I still worried about how Steve was doing without me there to pull him out when he got himself too deep in."

"I'd better get to work on that new arm for you," Evangeline decided, though she made no effort to move from where she was on the couch, snuggled up beside the sergeant. "If you're going to insist on being there to drag him out of the messes he will no doubt continue to charge into. With Erskine's formula, he can get into much worse than fisticuffs in a back-alley in Brooklyn."

"You're not wrong about Steve," Bucky agreed wryly. "I'm just glad the stuff didn't do to him what it did to Schmitt."

"Mm, Erskine told me a bit about that," Evangeline offered.

"Yeah?"

"You ever hear people talk about how... how a hard-ass is actually a big softy once you get to know them? Or how a pretty face hides a cruel heart? That sort of thing?" she queried.

"Sure," Bucky said with a shrug and a nod.

"Well, Erskine's formula brought that out. He described the effects as 'good becomes great, but bad becomes worse'," Evangeline explained, "and for what it's worth? I think you'd be a prime candidate for the Super Soldier Program."

"You think I'm a good man?" Bucky asked hopefully.

"I think you're a great man," she corrected. "A little busted up right now, but great despite that. My interest in seeing what the formula would do to you is forty-eight percent medical, and forty-seven percent academic, and five percent just plain curious. 'Good' became Captain America, after all. It kind of begs the question over what Erskine's formula does to 'great', don't you think?"

"I dunno," Bucky admitted as he shook his head slowly. "I mean, maybe, but I already went through hell on Zola's cutting table, and Steve said it hurt 'a little', which means 'a lot' for most other folks. It'd be wasted on me anyway. I never wanted to be a soldier in the first place, however good I was at it. Don't really need to be a one-armed Super Soldier."

Evangeline bit her lip nervously as she considered broaching exactly that issue. She hadn't discussed the theory circling in her brain with Erskine, but she didn't think it was completely unfounded.

"And if it grew your arm back?" she pressed tentatively. "I'm not saying it would for certain, but as I understand it, Rogers grew just shy of a foot due to the procedure, at an age where he should have well and truly stopped growing. As a side-effect, the serum fixed all of his listed medical problems and then some. I am still going to work on figuring out how to make the prosthetic arm happen – it would be a great medical advance all the world over if I can make it work like Zola implied it could, if those plans pan out – but..." she trailed off.

Bucky didn't react straight away, and Evangeline didn't push him. It was another option laid out on the table for him. One that was entirely at his discretion to accept or reject.

The record finished playing, and the silence stretched. Eventually, Evangeline slowly drew back and stood.

"It's your choice," she insisted. "Take as long as you need to think about it, I'm just going to start breakfast."

"Okay," Bucky said softly, and managed to tear his gaze away from the middle distance to focus on her. "I... I'll put the book away and pack up the record player, then I'll come join you."