"I bet you have a lot of questions." Steve said, once they were alone.

That was the understatement of the century.

Bucky blinked and looked to him, his eyes flowing from the top of his head to his feet. "Steve, what happened? You look so..."

Perfect?

Handsome?

Gorgeous?

Different?

Unreal?

He didn't know which to say, or if all of them tried to stumble out of his mouth at once; causing him to just half stutter and give up.

The Steve impersonator took a long breath. "I didn't tell you, but they accepted my enlistment that night at the Stark Expo."

Bucky blinked.

The memories where hazy and far away,but he remembered that night quite well. He had it all set up - double dates and all. He wanted to spend the whole night with Steve, the night before he was being deployed to London. He wanted his last night to be filled with drinking and dance and watching Steve try to have a good time. Instead, he had spent the whole night staring at the door to the dance hall waiting on his friend that never showed.

He always assumed he had gone home depressed when he was rejected again. There was no way he could have been enlisted.

And why didn't he tell him? Well, of course he knew why. Bucky would have shit a brick.

"How?" He was keeping his questions simple for now. Trusting this would all make sense. It was the only way he was going to process all this. One thing at a time.

Steve's lop-sided grin was back. "I was recruited by a scientist. Part of SSR - Strategic Scientific Reserve."

Bucky shook his head. "I've heard of them. Stark was a consultant. I thought they built weapons or something?"

It wasn't coming together yet, though Bucky's mind was doing its best to cut through the fog and make sense of it all. Steve was smart, sure, but he wasn't exactly a scientist. Not the kind they usually wanted in the army. He was never very interested in engineering or nothin' like that.

"I guess. I didn't ask questions, I was just happy to join up."

Of course he was.

"They were trying to build a super-soldier. And, I suppose it worked."

Bucky suddenly felt his temperature rising - it was like no time had passed at all. He wasn't sitting in some strange hospital room in New York in the future; he was just Bucky Barnes, looking at his best friend who had just admitted to doing about the stupidest shit he could imagine. His posture straightened. "Wait, you were experimented on?"

Steve shrugged sheepishly. God, how he could look so different and so exactly like how he remembered at the same time. "I didn't ask many questions. I just wanted to serve my country."

Bucky's jaw clenched; had this not been ancient history he would have given him more of an earful. But there were more pressing matters at hand for the moment. "That was stupid," he still seethed, his teeth tight. Steve exhaled a small laugh, which caused his blue eyes to light up like christmas lights and make Bucky's stomach jump in his belly. All these memories that seemed so far away, but crystalizingly sharp like a knife. It had seemed like a hundred years since he had seen Steve smile like that, but he couldn't remember why.

"Yeah, probably," Steve conceded. "But it worked, kind of."

Bucky's eyebrows raised curiously.

"Well, Dr. Erksine was supposed to perfect the formula and make an army. I was just the guinea pig. But, unfortunately, he was murdered. Took the secrets with him to the grave."

A frown pulled at Bucky's mouth, but he kept listening.

Steve had a kind of nostalgic look in his eyes as he kept on, leaning back in the chair he had planted himself in. "Colonel Phillips didn't think I'd be much use on my own. You know, five minutes before I was just a skinny kid who barely survived - literally - basic training."

Bucky would have smiled at the mental image, if the picture in his mind of Steve's weak, sick body being worked over by the U.S. Army for their own ends didn't piss him off so much.

"Anyway, they stuck me in the USO and, well..." he couldn't help but smirk a bit as he asked, "Didya ever see the Captain America comics?"

Bucky seemed caught off by the sudden shift in the conversation. Captain America? Wait a second...he searched his memory that name. Someone in his platoon had one of those flimsy books; some clown in a red, white, and blue get up who punched Hitler in the face like it was that goddamned easy. "Wait, you mean the mascot guy? Selling the war bonds?"

Steve simply nodded, waiting for him to connect the dots.

It took a second, as Bucky's mind processed the sequitor, and the image of that clown on the back of the comics solidified in his mind.

The recognition in his face was visible, eyes jerking up to Steve as everything clicked into place. "No fucking way," he exclaimed, his jaw falling open.

Steve couldn't help but strike his best pose, "Every bond you buy is a bullet in the barrel of your best guy's gun."

"I thought that guys was just some prettyboy actor..." he mumbled, the vertigo coming back.

"Well, well. I wasn't much more until I had to go save your sorry behind," he said, trying to bring some levity; and hide how severe that capture had actually been.

Bucky frowned deeply. "I was captured?"

There was a sad smile on Steve's face. "See, I don't hold the monopoly on stupid," he teased. "A good chunk of the 107th was trapped behind enemy lines. And I couldn't just sit back and let that happen."

Bucky went to rub his face with his hands, pulling back sharply as the cool, hard metal of his left hand touched his warm flesh. He had completely forgotten about that monstrosity for a few minutes, but now he was looking at it; staring at every metal glint and jagged angle. "Issat how I lost my arm?" he asked, his voice thick.

"No," Steve answered, truthfully. He really didn't want to go into details about what happened to him; that was kind of the whole point around this exercise. But at the same time, Steve Rogers was a horrible liar. Keeping things, especially important things, from his best friend was going to be hard. "There was an accident later. You, uh, were assumed dead. There was no way you should have been able to survive."

Bucky's face looked pale, his eyes flickering between Steve and the metal on his hand.

Steve himself felt a wave of guilt rise up in his chest. Every time he lingered too long on this - that horrible day on the train - he just felt sick to this stomach. He shouldn't have assumed Buck was dead. He should have gone to look for him - Hydra be damned. He should have known, just known somehow, that he had been experimented on; given the serum...something. If only he had found Bucky before...

"Steve?"

Bucky's worried query pulled Steve out of his own destructive thoughts. "Sorry," he said sheepishly. "It still upsets me. I thought you were dead, Buck." Steve's voice was suddenly tight with emotion, and Bucky's own chest contracted.

"But I wasn't!" he insisted, trying to pull his buddy out of it.

"But I thought you were," he said, leveling his eyes on him seriously. "Hydra found you and that's why you have that arm."

Bucky felt sick, his stomach dropping to the floor. "Hydra?" He flexed his fingers, watching the metal in the arm shift and move to his command, as if it was a part of him.

"Look, Buck, I'm not going to lie to you. You went through some hard times. They did stuff to your brain, so, that's what brings us here."

Bucky didn't like where this was heading. His pulse increased, the arm activating with a dull humm as he flexed his muscles.

"I'm sorry, Bucky. But we had to kind of...reset you."

"Reset me?" Bucky's voice sounded angrier than he intended. But he did notice Steve visibly flinch at the emotion in his voice.

"Look, Bucky, we didn't do anything without asking you first," Steve insisted, putting up his hands in a pleading gesture. "But you were having a really rough go of things. War can do that to a man, sometimes, Buck. It's nothing to be ashamed of!"

Bucky's hands went into fists, fighting back tears of confusion and frustration. "Those fuckers," he seethed.

Steve certainly hoped Bucky was referring to Hydra and not the team responsible for his most recent procedure. "Hey," he said, tentatively putting a hand on his shoulder. "Its a second chance is all, Buck. Its a new life, and you can do whatever you want now."

Bucky's eyes looked up from his hands to meet Steve's steady gaze. Something deep in his chest seized up as he looked at him, and it was like the world faded away. It was just him and Steve in a room, Steve giving him that look he always did when Bucky pulled him out of a fight. It all hit him at once. He was tired, confused, angry, hurt...but despite it all, it was Steve who was there.

He tried to choke back the sob that hit him unexpectedly, but the feel of his metal on his mouth just seemed to exacerbate everything. His shoulders shuddered, and he was quickly falling apart. He felt Steve's hands - now steady and strong - reach out and take him by the shoulders and pull him close.

It felt weird - Steve's didn't feel at all like his old friend. His shoulders were broad and his chest was hard under his cheek. His grip was strong and steady but it was still unmistakably Steve. He could tell. Maybe it was the smell or the soothing coo in his voice. But Bucky buried his face in his shoulder and felt his arms wrapping around him as he let the emotional overload finally brim over.

Steve held him as Bucky cried, until exhaustion overtook him.