Author's Notes: Many thanks to you all for the feedback as this fic begins! Please keep it coming! This fic (as most of you have probably guessed) takes place at a point after Civil War when Bucky has been freed from Hydra's influence on his mind. My theory is that Wanda, along with advanced Wakandan medicine and the generosity of King T'Challa, took part in removing Hydra's conditioning (and got Bucky as a surrogate big brother in the process). However, removing Bucky's PTSD (or that of anybody else on the team, for that matter) is impossible. Also, this isn't a Stucky fic. I love a good Stucky, but this is merely intense platonic friendship a la Frodo and Sam, especially since Steve is still grieving for Peggy, and Bucky is still too traumatized for romantic/sexual pursuits.

Chapter Two

As best Bucky could tell, Thor and Diana were immured together muttering about the movement of the stars and the signs beyond mortal senses for the rest of the week. After a couple of days, Thor persuaded Bruce to help them, and while Diana looked dubious at first, she and Bruce ended up having an animated conversation that lasted until after midnight, poring over stuff on a laptop.

"What is it they're searching for?"

"Signs of whoever - or whatever - is trying to collect these powerful gems," said Wanda. "Whether the presence of gems here on Earth is drawing the attacker or if the gems are just a side benefit."

"Ominous as all hell whichever way you look at it," said Clint, studying two silhouettes on the roof. (Bruce was below them on the balcony.) "Have they had any luck?"

"Not much. There's evidence in Asgard and the worlds that Thor and Bruce visited, and Bruce's work with radiation can reveal more signs. But they don't answer the central question: who is it and what are their intentions?"

Sam sprawled on the grass, examining the first stars peeking through the jewel-colored sky. "All that's in the hands of smarter people than us. I wanna know the big issue - why's she scared of Cap?"

"Sam," Steve muttered in protest. Bucky laughed quietly.

Diana was warm and friendly with the rest of the team, but cautious and, well, jittery, for lack of a better word, whenever she had to interact with Steve. And she only interacted with him when she had to. But Bucky saw the glances she stole at him when he wasn't looking.

Wanda rolled her eyes. "And I'm not going to tell you that 'big issue.' It's nothing the Avengers need to know, and I violate people's privacy enough as it is. You'll have to wait until she's ready to talk about it."

The Secret Avengers deployed ten days after Diana arrived in response to some gas that was turning people into zombies in Dubai. Luckily, the gas didn't seem to be killing anybody; it just made them wander around mumbling to themselves while a gang of gas-masked thugs relieved them of their wallets and drained their bank accounts.

People went into some kind of rebound once the stuff wore off and panicked, adding to the chaos.

That left all human Avengers on the sidelines at a very long distance, while Thor, Diana, Bucky, and Steve (the two supersoldiers wearing borrowed gas masks) moved in. Bruce opted to stay with the distance crew and analyze the gas for an antidote and some kind of counter-agent for the withdrawal symptoms.

Wanda could direct her power for a fairly wide distance, so she stayed with the unprotected humans and cleared the gas from the city, and put the victims to sleep.

Diana got...a little agitated, to say the least, once the team found the dirtbags responsible. She beat the living shit out of the leader - some loser American who'd recruited himself a little militia under the guise of fighting ISIS (translation: anybody with dark skin and/or religious garb in a wealthy Middle Eastern city).

Bucky pulled her off the guy - only for her to accidentally dislodge Bucky's gas mask, and yeah, that wasn't good.

Natasha had the presence of mind to turn the coms to recording mode once Bucky started talking to himself. Maybe it was a little callous, but some of the things he murmured were Hydra-related, and it was always possible that Bucky hadn't consciously remembered them before. Steve led him back to the rendezvous, where he remained completely docile, but no way was that going to hold once the withdrawal kicked in.

"Have we got that supersoldier sedative handy?" asked Clint. "Wanda's a little busy keeping people from running off bridges."

"Yeah, I've got it," said Bruce, digging through their ample medical supplies. "I want to wait until the gas effects have stopped. This sedative will slow his metabolism way down. We want the gas all gone before we put him under."

Wanda didn't take her eyes off the city, but held out an arm and tugged Bucky against her side. "It's all right, Steve, go back to work. We'll keep him safe." Bruce parked himself on Bucky's right, hypo-syringe at the ready.

Reluctantly, Steve obeyed.

Bruce had never managed to put a single monitoring device on Bucky Barnes without argument - until today. Bucky submitted quietly to the vitals monitors and even the brainwaves halo that Bruce and Tony had designed (but Bucky hated because it reminded him of something back at Hydra). Bruce felt shitty for doing it when Bucky wasn't capable of resisting. Still, the readings might have more useful information on counteracting the gas and its withdrawal effects.

Thor, Diana, and Steve were all back in a few more hours. Most of the Dubai victims were sleeping the withdrawal off, troops with hazmat gear and masks were moving in, and the attackers were secured. Bucky was still glassy-eyed and lost in his own mind when Diana hurried up to him, all apologies.

Steve, priorities in life unchanged, nearly bowled her over to get to his friend. No other victim had shown any awareness of the here and now beyond following a direct instruction, but Bucky blinked at Steve and smiled. "Your mom's name was Sarah."

"Aw, hell," muttered Sam.

Steve sighed as Bucky laughed softly, "You used to wear newspapers in your shoes."

Everybody except Sam exchanged baffled looks, and Steve pulled Bucky to his chest. Bucky was as content to stay there as he'd been on Wanda's shoulder. Maybe more so.

However, there was no missing when the gas wore off. Alarms on Bruce's laptop squealed as Bucky's blood pressure, pulse, and brainwaves recovered from their artificial low by shooting off the chart. Bucky cried out, rigid and wild-eyed. "Shit, sedative now! Right now!" Clint ordered, but Bruce was already moving.

"Buck! Bucky, easy! C'mon, stay with me!" Steve shouted, wrapping Bucky in a bear hug, but when Bruce hesitated, he nodded. "Do it."

Bruce shoved the syringe against Bucky's thigh and discharged it. For a few seconds, Bucky just struggled, blind and terrified, then his eyes fluttered and rolled back, and he collapsed, limp in Steve's arms. "Check his breathing, check it," Bruce warned. "A surge and a crash like that, even a supersoldier might go into shock."

After monitoring Bucky's pulse and breathing for several tense minutes, everyone sighed in relief. Steve glanced up and caught Diana's stricken expression. "It's okay. It was an accident, it happens. We all know that."

Diana sighed. "Even so, I'm very sorry. I wouldn't have put him through that for the world."

Steve mustered a smile. "I know. Thanks."

It was a tremendous relief to get back to the house in Bordeaux without being tracked. Steve carried Bucky to the room with the biggest window upstairs and threw the balcony doors wide open. "Any idea when he'll come out of it?" he asked Bruce as the rest of the team trailed in.

"The supersoldier sedative runs four to six hours under normal circumstances, but these definitely weren't normal," Bruce mused, studying the readings on his laptop. "Wanda's sedation of the other victims held for a natural sleep cycle. From the hospital reports Clint hacked for me, that's more than enough to see them through the rebound. The gas was a powerful hypnotic, it's in the system hard, depresses it hard, leaving the victim in a highly suggestive state, but when it wears off, all the systems that were suppressed come exploding back - too hard, in some cases. So far there've been thirty-one fatalities out of almost three thousand victims."

Steve winced, but Sam caught Wanda when she started to turn away. "Hey. If you hadn't cleared the gas when you did, and sedated the rest of those victims through the withdrawal, it would've been a lot worse."

"He's right," said Diana. "Those people in the city were helpless. You saved more lives than the rest of us combined."

Wanda smiled, but she was still a little shaky. She crossed to the bedside and kissed Bucky on the forehead. "Call me if he gets restless. I should be able to help." Then she left in a hurry.

Most of the team trickled out after here, except for Bruce, Diana, and Steve. "She still gets upset about mass casualty events," Bruce explained. "Not that we all don't hate them, but it's really hard on her. She lived through one when she was ten."

"She's a brave woman," Diana mused. "I read a great deal about her after the events in Sokovia. To do what she did - ally herself with evil men, serve them, and then return to the side of good when she saw what they truly were - that took tremendous courage."

Steve scowled, but to himself, it seemed, rather than anyone in the room. "People look at her in black and white. They either don't know or don't care that she and her brother were sixteen when Hydra got to them. Orphans on the street. Kids like that don't have the ability to make an informed choice or volunteer to be human guinea pigs. They had no way of understanding, but half the world still thinks she's a monster."

"Is it true, what Thor tells me your government did to her after the fight in Germany?"

"You mean the Raft, a straight jacket, drugs, and a shock collar?" Steve answered, his words sharp and biting. "Every bit of it. When I got to her, she looked like - like Bucky, and a lot of those people today. Incapable of thinking or acting for herself."

Bruce let out his breath as his own pulse jumped. "On that note, I think I need to exit the conversation - don't worry about it," he said, as Steve and Diana started to blurt apologies. "You don't really need me. Bucky's going to be fine. He's sleeping comfortably, and I already can't detect any of that gas in his system. I'll leave the vitals monitor on his hand; it'll page me if there's a sudden change in pulse, respiration, blood pressure, and he'll feel better without that halo on when he wakes up. In the mean time, I'm gonna go have Clint and Nat make some anonymous tips to the World Health Organization and the CDC about treatment."

"Okay. Thanks, Bruce."

Once Bruce Banner had gone, the past came crashing back over Diana, sending her heart racing as if she'd been dosed with the gas herself. To her relief, Rogers (she deliberately focused her mind on not thinking of him as "Steve") was too preoccupied with his friend to notice.

On the other hand, that left his back to her, and Diana found it difficult to look at him from that angle. He was bigger than Steve had ever been, broader in shoulders and narrower in the waist, more than enough for someone of Diana's observation skills to know that this man was not Steve. So why did her heart pound and her stomach twist when she saw his build and his fair hair above a leather jacket? Why wasn't that reaction at least starting to wane after weeks in this man's company?

Well, in all honesty, she avoided Rogers' company whenever possible, and was embarrassed to admit to herself that he and his team undoubtedly noticed. Maybe now she should finally just force herself to work through it.

Steve had been fond of Sam, Charlie, and Chief. He'd been gentle with Charlie in distress, kind and concerned to all of them as well as Diana.

But there was something else entirely in the way Rogers looked at Bucky, the gentle pressure of his hand on his friend's face. It was almost like desperation. Captain America was revered as a good man, the pinnacle of all human decency (to the point that Diana had assumed long before his return in 2012 that most of it had to be myth), but this suggested a side to him that might have been deliberately hidden.

Diana forgot her manners. "Are you lovers?" she blurted.

Rogers did a full-body jump, either because he'd forgotten she was here or her question had just shocked him that much. Then he blushed so deep red that she wanted to burst out laughing - he was even redder than Steve had been when...she wrenched her mind from those thoughts. "N-no," he stammered. "No, it...'s nothing like that. He's my best friend, that's all. And he's been through a lot, and he used to take care of me when I was sick, so now I..."

He was babbling. It was funny - and quite cute. Like - damn the gods, why does everything Rogers does make me think of Steve?!

Diana mustered her own scattered wits and tried to backtrack. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. It's unusual nowadays, for men to be so close as you are to Bucky - or at least to admit it."

Steve - Rogers - huffed out his breath. "Yeah, I noticed. Especially when I came out of the ice. Strange. It was illegal when I went into the ice, but in a way, you could be friends with a guy, hug him, look after him without anyone assuming you were anything more than friends. Now it's perfectly legal - well, almost perfectly - and everyone's looking for it."

Seeing Rogers in the media, especially after he returned in 2012, was very disconcerting to Diana, to the point that she was a little ashamed of herself now for not considering more how disconcerting it must have been for Rogers.

"I wish I could explain it to you," she said, making her voice light. "But I was conscious and paying attention for the past ninety years, and widely read before that. Even so, I can't explain how or why sexual mores developed the way they did among mankind. They make no sense."

Rogers choked out a laugh and looked down. After a minute, he returned his hand to Bucky's head, which he'd snatched away when she startled him. Bucky sighed softly as Rogers rubbed his temple. "At home, back then, he used to work long hours. He'd come home exhausted, falling asleep in his food with a pounding headache. Aspirin, a drink, that helped, but we couldn't always afford it. So I did this. It made him feel a little better. After Austria, where he'd been a POW, I started doing it again. It helped with his nightmares. Sometimes he still lets me do it."

"That's very kind. For both of you, it must be a relief to have each other back again." She pushed her thoughts furiously away from something more bitter. "So the stories are true, then? Your heart belonged to Peggy Carter?"

Rogers blushed again, but his eyes grew damp, and Diana was embarrassed. She really didn't mean to keep hurting this man. It's not his fault.

"I..." Rogers fumbled into his pocket for a compass, that he'd checked in the fog of the gas of Dubai when visibility was limited. It had caught Diana's eye, the soft smile of the woman in the photo. She'd seen it in the Smithsonian. The curators must have returned it to him. "Yeah," Rogers finally said. "Yeah. She passed away last year."

"I know. She led a great and full life, but I'm sorry for her loss." She probably shouldn't have put it like that, for this man displaced from his own time. It would only remind Rogers of the full life with Peggy Carter that he'd been denied. And I'm sorry that you didn't get to be part of that full life. But you're alive. You get to live, even with someone from your old world.

That wasn't fair of her. Sometimes Rogers seemed so sad, and she wanted to snap at him to be grateful. She'd felt that way the first time she'd seen him on the Internet in 2012. Completely unfair.

But why did the gods choose to let this Steve come back and not my Steve? What made Rogers deserve it?

"It's not about what they deserve. It's about what you believe."

Why did it hurt so much again now, after so long, just from looking at the picture Bruce Wayne had found and now meeting this one man who shared one name?

It wasn't right to say any of this to Rogers at the bedside of his best friend. So Diana muttered an apology and left the room.

Outside on the soft grass, she avoided the milling Avengers until music floated over the light breeze. Curiosity piqued, Diana followed the sound until she came upon Wanda Maximoff, some distance away from the others, practicing a guitar.

The young human woman blushed when she saw Diana watching her, cringing in a way that made Diana think she expected to be teased, but Diana wouldn't do that. "I didn't know you were a musician," she said mildly. "That's very pretty."

Wanda relaxed and smiled. "My mother played guitar. I always wanted to learn. Until a few years ago, I never had time."

"Do you sing?"

The vigorous way Wanda shook her head made them both laugh. "No, no. I don't even like to sing."

"Very well, I won't demand singing, but you must play for me!" Diana sat down, and Wanda hesitated for only a moment before beginning.

It was a folk song, not like most of what Diana had heard in Paris, London, or even Themyscira, but eastern European, probably from Sokovia. It was very pretty, and Wanda played with passion, half-losing herself in memories. Diana couldn't guess the subject if Wanda was unwilling to sing, but she had a feeling it was the sort of song that a mother would play and sing to her young children.

"Did you have guitar in...where you come from?"

"Themyscira? Not exactly, not like your modern guitars. We had the veena and the lyre, other strumming instruments. No banjos either." As Diana hoped, Wanda laughed at the mental image.

Then Wanda stole a sidelong look at Diana, and though Diana couldn't see what Wanda was seeing, she could guess. "I don't mean to intrude," Wanda said hesitantly.

"It's all right. I know you can't help it." Diana sighed. She'd consciously tried to keep the picture off her mind when in Wanda's presence, but she knew that it was only a matter of time before it appeared before the telepath's mind's eyes.

Steve...oh my Steve…

Wanda caught her breath, and Diana smiled. "Yes, his name was Steve. That's...partly why, I suppose." Why I can barely stand to look at your captain. "I know, that's not fair."

"If I got offended because things people feel aren't fair, I'd have gone insane a week after they enhanced me," Wanda replied. "Sometimes I hate people who still have brothers and parents. Nothing about the world is fair."

I still have a mother. You must think I'm cruel for never going back to her.

Wanda answered her thought. "It's not up to me. I've learned not to judge. Hell, I've got no right, after what I've done."

"You were a child," Diana said, though she had little doubt that Wanda Maximoff would have had this argument before.

Wanda shrugged and looked away. "I knew the difference between right and wrong." Wanda's phone buzzed before Diana could respond to that. "Hello?"

"Wanda, get up here. Bucky's flipping out."

Wanda spun away, her guitar tumbling to the ground, and rose into the sky on streams of her red power, soaring back towards the house.

Diana stared after her, then laid the guitar carefully back in its case and carried it back to the house so it wouldn't get dirty. At least I can do something somewhat useful for her.

By the time Diana arrived, the crisis had passed, and Bucky was asleep again. Wanda and Steve sat on either side of his bed, Wanda with her hand on his forehead still shimmering red. "What happened?" asked Diana.

"I don't think that was the gas," said Bruce, studying his laptop.

Sam read the laptop over his shoulder, then straightened up, giving Diana a grim, weary smile. "This kind of thing can happen, even without being drugged. Guys wake up, don't remember where they are, then they panic. It's kind of risky for supersoldiers with weaponized arms."

"I can imagine," Diana sighed, noting Rogers' dishevelment and the disarrangement of the bedside table. The lamp that had been on the table was now on the floor, and there was a dent in the wall behind it. She had read about the Winter Soldier with horror and pity, sometimes with rage. For long years, he'd had no memory of his past life or even the lives he'd taken under Hydra's control, but now those memories were returning. They had to be horrific. "The people who did this to him..." Anger swept through her on Bucky's behalf again. She bit her tongue for Bruce Banner's sake, and Bruce shot her a grateful look.

But Rogers looked up, and there was a black rage behind his eyes that, for once, let Diana completely forget about the man who'd had the same name, fair hair, and blue eyes. She'd never seen her Steve with such naked fury in his gaze, the fury that promised carnage on evildoers...and vengeance. Fitting, for an Avenger. The Winter Soldier's true identity hadn't been known at the time that Captain America had been discovered in the ice. Rumor had it that Rogers hadn't known his best friend was still alive, let alone in Hydra's cruel hands, until the events of Washington several years later.

If I found my Steve, or Sammy or Napi or any dear friend I've made during my years in this world, treated the way Bucky Barnes was treated, I'd become a berserker. I don't know what would stop me.

Yet as far as Diana knew, Steve Rogers hadn't become a berserker. Hydra was his enemy, and he fought them fiercely, but for all he was an Avenger, somehow, he'd found it within himself not slaughter them indiscriminately.

That capacity for mercy reminded Diana again…

She sensed someone watching her and turned to find Thor in the doorway. "Can I be of any help, my friends?"

While Diana had no doubt that Thor would gladly step forward if Rogers asked for assistance for himself or Bucky, she also had no doubt that the offer was primarily addressed to her. Chagrined, she let herself out, and Thor followed her.

To Be Continued...

Coming Soon: Diana and Thor have another talk, and this time, Diana can share her grief with an all-too-sympathetic friend who knows what it means to outlive humans.

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