It had been five days since the downing of the Triskelion and James Buchanan Barnes's eyes flitted with interest over his own face staring back at him. A blue eyed, full lipped and handsome young man, his hair was cropped short and his skin shaved smooth. Only it wasn't his reflection. The picture he was looking had been taken somewhere between sixty and seventy years ago, with himself being caught unawares by the camera as he was scowling. He always smiled into a cameras lens. He remembered that from his past.

His reflection lay a little to the right of the picture. Although the same handsome face, it was hollow and built on pure muscle, his face covered in a scruffy beard and long hair pulled back in one of Mallory's dad's baseball caps making him almost unrecognizable. Nobody in the Smithsonian had recognized him at all, their eyes searching for a hero with short hair and a smiling face instead of what he believed was a villainous man in every sense of the word with unwashed, uncut hair and a scowl.

As if she was tuned for his negative thoughts, the brown haired woman beside him caught his eye and her full lips spread into a smile of reassurance. He remembered Mallory Smith and those feelings were a mixed bag. It felt like most of his memories that had came back to him had her in the epicenter. He could remember her crying the time she had brought him back in that bank fault. Her anger in that prison. The look of horror she had given him when he'd shot Kohl. At the moment it felt as if his entire world had Mallory involved in some way. It annoyed him, sort of. He didn't like being dependent on her when she clearly needed to be with her family but she had given him no choice. She had looked after him back when he was just the mindless Winter Soldier, forgiven him, saved him, put his arm back in his socket like it had been no fuss. She had given him a place to stay even if it was shadowed in grief – her mother who looked exactly like her was clearly devastated by Smith's death but had hid it well when she'd made him breakfast that morning and chattered to him in a chirpy voice. His responses had been monosyllabic as he had been uncomfortable watching her make him food as he worn her dead husband's clothes but the guilt of his lackluster attempts of conversation had forced him to be polite. Bucky was used to being polite; polite was his nature in fact. But the Winter Soldier wasn't. He didn't like being dependent on people in any capacity.

To be completely fair to Mallory, he had gone to her apartment after Steve had brought him back to humanity. Initially after he'd pulled him out of the water he had wandered the forests of D.C as a lonely, lost and frankly pathetic creature, planning on living off the land when the pain of his arm had gotten to him and he'd found himself back on the busy streets of D.C. It had taken ages but he'd known Mallory's address from... well he couldn't quite remember why yet and found himself breaking into her apartment, weakly explaining to the landlord who had asked why he was fumbling with her locks that he was her brother and she'd locked him out. And he'd waited for her in the dark, his hair dripping wet over the bed she shared with the bastard Rumlow praying that she'd return and when she had, the reliable girl she was, she had fixed him like always and given him a home for the time being.

He turned his attention to the eulogy he was reading:

Captured by HYDRA troops later that fall, Barnes endured long periods of isolation, depression and torture. But his will was strong. In an ironic twist of fate, his prison camp was liberated by none other than his childhood friend, Steve Rogers, now Captain America.

"Can you remember that?" She had asked that question a thousand times as they had weaved their way through the exhibition. She was so inquisitive. He remembered that from what he could recall of the sessions they had spent in that damned lab. She'd bought him food as well, the only doctor to ever go that far. What was it again? He couldn't remember the name but he could remember the taste. Cheesy with the undercurrent of tomatoes, with a slightly burnt crust but delicious all the same. He'd have to remember to ask her the name of it. He'd never had it before, even when he was Bucky.

He shrugged in response to her question. "Vaguely."

She met his gaze and smiled weakly, then her eyes trailed over his clothing. He wore her boyfriends shirt, her father's pants and shoes and hat, and her mother's jacket. He was a mash of bad and good memories for her and James noted with guilt that she swallowed tightly as her eyes roamed the shirt on his back. He'd have to find something else to wear soon. He couldn't have her wanting to cry every time she looked at his clothes. She had cried last night. James hadn't mentioned it but his hearing was sharp enough to hear how she had attempted to muffle her tears with a pillow and the gasping sobs that had kept him awake. What had she been crying over? To be honest, she had a lot of things to cry over. Her boyfriend, her father, him. Her eyes were red even now as she looked at him, and she was paler then usual looking frail and thin in jeans and a blue shirt under her jacket he was sure she had worn to sleep in the night before.

He shook his head to free himself of those thoughts and stared around the Smithsonian. Families weaved in and out of the display cabinets, interest in the Captain America exhibition reignited since his part in the dismemberment of S.H.I.E.L.D and his current place in hospital. Groups of children on a field trip cried out with glee as a tour guide pointed to Steve's old motorcycle he'd used in the war and how it had a button which made it go 'extra extra fast'. James wanted to call her out on her crap and correct her with the scientific mumbo jumbo Steve had attempted to explain to him over drinks one night.

Wow. He had remembered a new thing without going dizzy. Sometimes he had realized, unwittingly he would look at something seemingly uninteresting and his senses would then be assaulted with a new memory coming to the forefront of his vision. Usually it was accompanied by a sharp stab in his skull, and the sensation of going dizzy. It had happened to him in the shower he'd used in Mallory's mother's home. As the water sprayed him he remembered the time before he had fallen from the train, standing atop a cliff with his best friend getting ready to zip-wire across onto the damned train and feeling the snowflakes landing cold on his neck. He had almost fallen with the pain, steadying himself on the tile wall. Perhaps over time it would get less painful.

"Do you want me to leave you alone?" She took his silence for a dismissal.

He jolted and looked to her with alarm. "No."

She nodded and her easy smile soothed his panic almost instantly. It was embarrassing really. The Winter Soldier reduced to some anxious broken child being cared for by an equally as broken doctor.

"Okay. I won't leave."

Her spoken assurance relaxed him and he pressed his forehead to the glass, his breath fogging up the screen as he tried to breathe in deeply. The noise faded to a background buzz and beside him Mallory rested her back against the glass, close enough for comfort but not able to touch him. He had been so lost in his new memories that when she had hugged him he hadn't been aware that he didn't like the sensation but now despite their familiarity there was something about being touched by other people that set his skin alight horribly. Over time, perhaps that would lessen as well. Bucky had found it so easy, loving to hug and touch and kiss others. The Winter Soldier hadn't done it before. And James... well he was just a mess.

He found it easier to separate himself into three people. Bucky was his past, his easy past which had ended in heartbreak and the man he aspired to become again. The Winter Soldier was also his past, his terrible past which he aspired to forget completely as more memories began flooding in of the horrific things he had done. And James was his present, a confusing mess of both and a new man emerging from the fog. As he remembered more and more of Bucky he also remembered more of the Winter Soldier. He cringed at those memories. When he had finally fallen asleep he was plagued with visions of the prison and Mallory's horrified face when he'd completed his mission there. She hadn't looked at him for weeks after that.

"Did you hate me?" He said suddenly. "After what I did with Kohl?"

She stiffened and seemed to have trouble controlling her breathing. She thought hard, transporting herself back to that moment with a small crease appearing in her forehead.

"For a time. A long time." She answered finally, then a small smile appeared on her face at the memory. "You made it better though."

"I did?" Surprise was evident in his tone. He didn't think he had been capable of being kind when he was the Soldier. "How?"

"You made me feel better. For a time I thought I'd failed Sofia and Ariadne because I'd... I'd allowed her to die but you made it easier for me. You told me that his death was on you, not me. And that Sofia losing her mom and her leg wasn't my fault." She swallowed and her smile lost its brightness. "You said 'sometimes all you can do is watch them die'."

"I said that?"

"Yeah. You don't remember?" He shook his head and colour came to her cheeks, for which he was glad as she looked less like a mannequin. "Sorry. Dumb question. Well it worked. I stopped blaming you and myself. It reminded me that it wasn't your fault, that you were just following orders and you had no free will. I never said thank you by the way." She said suddenly.

He shook his head, uncomfortable. "No need."

She took a step to him like she was going to touch him then thought more of it and pulled her arm back; for that by itself his affection for her increased substantially like it had last night. "There is a need though. You helped me more than I'd like to admit."

"Is that why you're keeping me around? To make you feel less guilty?" His words were sharp and as she flinched he knew they'd stung. Guilt surged through him and he felt some of his old self come to the surface. "I didn't-"

The blush had vanished but then after a second she smiled. "That's exactly why I'm keeping you around. I hate feeling guilty. Only I can guilt trip me. That and my mom."

It took him a second to realize she was trying to lighten the mood and it worked. He rewarded her with a brief smile and she grinned back.

He turned back to the face in front of him, then stepped from the exhibition. The walls felt closed in and he was finding it a little hard to take it all in. His eyes roamed the hall for anything he missed before he could make his escape and he shifted uncomfortably under the borrowed jacket and shirt, his arm feeling heavier then ever.

"Can we go? I can't..." He trailed off, hoping she'd understand.

Mallory smiled in that gentle way of hers and nodded. "Of course."

As they left the Smithsonian, James pushed his cap off a little from his head and felt the warm sun outside. As much as he didn't like the feeling of being looked after he knew when he got back to Julie's home he would be asked if he wanted anything to drink or eat and informed of their plans of dinner. He would be looked after even though the family were going through some terribly hard times, given clothes, a bed, a shower. He would eat in a slightly uncomfortable silence but it was an easy price to pay for delicious tasting food and the chance to strain to think of more memories of his childhood best friend or his hometown or his part in the war.

As much as he hated to admit it and wanted to recover his old self, the Bucky that dangled within his reach but seemed so far, James Buchanan Barnes was reborn. And he was home for now.

It had been five days since the downing of the Triskelion and at first, all Brock Rumlow could think about was the pain.

He learnt later on he had been unconscious when the fire had caught him. Some fallen debris had cracked his skull so he'd been out for the most painful part, the doctor had told him almost joyfully. Of course the idiot, who looked like he'd just passed his exams, had never actually been caught in a fire before or burned beyond a simple domestic burn off an oven. He had been out when the recovery team had found him and taken him into the ambulance, and they'd sedated him further for the initial treatment. When he'd woken it was like a punch in the gut; no it was worse than that. Like somebody had stabbed him multiple times all over his body then rolled him in acid. It wasn't just horrible it was excruciating. The morphine had dulled it as first but somewhere in his skull he had gotten the idea that it would be good for him to feel the pain, so he'd know in his recovery how bad it had been.

What a fucking dumb idea, he'd scolded himself later. As the morphine had worn off it had crept up on him like an unwitting fly crawling up someone's leg on a summers day. But he couldn't swat this pain away. He couldn't think beyond his desire to scream out in pain and he couldn't put that scream into action as his throat was on fire. Everywhere was on fire. When he'd opened his eyes, red filled his vision and his mind tortured him with dancing flames. He couldn't move to press the button to fill his veins with any type of painkiller. Then he'd passed out again, flitting in an out of a red existence for what felt like decades.

When he'd woke the pain was gone and he'd almost cried with ecstasy at whoever had filled his veins. The nurse filled his mouth with ice chips and encouraged him to swallow them with a soft voice and a pleasant bedside manner. When their coolness dulled the burn in his throat he wanted to kiss her. But he was in love with another and he'd had to with making a noise in the back of his throat to indicated he wanted more.

Later he'd started thinking beyond the pain. Recalling through the foggy mists of morphine, he realized that he couldn't feel his feet at all yet his shins and thighs ached like hell. When he'd croaked to the nurse why she had smiled at him with sympathy.

"I think you should ask the doctor that when he comes, honey, not me."

He did just that and the doctor had gave him the same sad smile.

"Do you understand the classification of burns and the difference between them?" Outwardly he nodded mutely but inwardly he wanted to snap of course I do you fucking asshole, I've inflicted those burns on other people I know what they look like. "Well then you'll know that third degree burns have little to no pain because they kill off nerve endings. Your feet are a prime example of this. That's why you can't feel them."

So his feet were fucked. Everywhere else was pretty much a second or first degree burn and he had been assured his scarring on his face would be minimal if any. He was assured he would heal in time. Luckily the fire had been a natural fire and not electrical or chemical as apparently that would make things worse. As if a normal fire wasn't bad enough. They'd kept mirrors from him as sometimes the visual of the injury could cause shock but he'd caught sight of himself in the glass one day accidentally when going to the toilet and his breathing caught in his throat. Minimal scarring my ass. His face was a mess of burns. The face so many women had called handsome was gone. Red puckered blisters covered his cheeks and forehead, the skin red as if he'd been caught by the sun in the worst way possible. His eyes stood out but they were weak, watery with tears of pain, both emotional and physical. Any facial expression he attempted to pull ended in pain and even when he grimaced with pain as his reflex it sent a shooting spasm through his gut.

He stared at himself for what felt like ages. He stared till it didn't hurt. He stared until he could look impassively, his face settled into a look of indifference. He stared till he was sick.

On the fourth day, Rumlow had rolled carefully on his side to greet his new doctor who specialized in these type of accidents and saw she had the exact same shade eyes as Mallory's. And for a second, his heart had actually skipped a beat as shown on the monitor beside him, making her eyes widen in alarm and ask if he was okay.

Mallory. Even her name caused his chest to cave in with pain worse then anything a fire could throw at him. He had been trying not to think of her name, the girl whose heart he had smashed into a thousand pieces with lies. He wondered if she was aware of his situation; he wondered if she even cared. It seemed so obvious in the bank that she was through with him and that had killed him to watch her leave with her father and not even look back. She'd been in his arms and he was glad she had turned to him for comfort after watching the Soldier be wiped when she'd suddenly stiffened. It was then he just knew. Those words. The defeated look in her eyes.

"Don't touch me. Don't you fucking touch me. And don't deny it. I found the bug. Rumlow, I know."

The words rang in his skull. Soon after she had escaped her fathers house and went off the grid she had sent Rumlow into a panic causing him to threaten every single tech that HYDRA owned to find her otherwise he'd make them regret the day they joined. He remembered his exact words to David, Mallory's technician friend, when he'd informed him her cellphone couldn't be tracked and she had gone completely.

"How fucking hard can it be to find her?!" He'd reached over and had the technician by his neck his face quickly turning red. "Find her or you die."

But ironically, it had been Rumlow who had found her. Her voice on the phone. She had been so convincing, he'd forgotten every single second of his training as she ran to him and she had enveloped him. Mallory had once again seeped into his pores and he was there with the woman he loved. He hadn't even been all too bothered when it turned out she had betrayed him and joined the opposing team because she was alive and near him once again.

Yes he loved her now but he hadn't at the start, even he could confess that. Seeing her for the first time was like seeing a stranger in a crowd and being told they were a very famous actor or musician. That moment of disbelief. His first thoughts as she approached him were this is the woman who is causing Pierce so much trouble? She was a little thing, doe eyed and brown haired, smiling and nonthreatening. Pretty but plain to be honest. She looked as if she had never been unhappy in her entire life.

Their first date had been... weird. Some restaurant somewhere, where she had talked a lot about herself and Rumlow, unlike other contracts similar to this one had actually listened. He could still recall the story of her scar or how she had looked in that dress or how her face had automatically frowned due to his naming of Romanoff as a "bitch" then rearranged into a polite smile. And Rumlow had gone home with the deep feeling of a crush beginning to emerge and trying to convince himself to go to damn sleep and stop thinking of her entire face would light up with laughter and how her eyes really were the colour of chocolate.

Their second date was better, much better. Since her father had a hand in the mission details no sexual entanglement with the target was needed. But that hadn't stopped him. There was a moment when – and he couldn't remember when exactly, maybe after he saw the bit where she'd given the teddy to the little girl – he had looked at her and it all clicked and he'd made love to her, everything had become real. He was even guilty that he'd already bugged her apartment. Their relationship became something he'd never had before, an easy love born of mutual affection and his desire to just be with her and not even say anything. With his past fiancee Ava, the one who had softened his heart just enough for him to feel anything, it had been a love of intense passion and almost forbidden love. But if he was honest he'd take some crappy action movie and a pizza with Mallory in his lap over Ava and their midnight rendezvous any day.

And so Mallory haunted his thoughts day and night. Brown hair splayed over a pillow danced in his vision amongst the hardness of her slap she had given him. Listening to her endless serenades of her favourite song to the shower head as he brushed his teeth would always stay with him. She had been there when he'd almost died in that fucking building but he loved her too much to blame her. It was the other man's fault, the Falcon. If he hadn't of been on that floor, he'd have never had to fight him and fall to his almost death.

He had died for HYDRA but now HYDRA was gone. HYDRA, S.H.I.E.L.D... they were all the same to him now. A near death experience put things in perspective. Organizations putting forward a front of control in different ways, S.H.I.E.L.D with a gentle approach and HYDRA hard hitting and sneaky. They didn't really care about the people. S.H.I.E.L.D had after all just dumped it's entire database online including all of its secrets and HYDRA's. This put so much at risk, much he knew about and even more he didn't. Himself but Mallory more importantly. Many players would want to see what the pretty little doctor who had nursed their important assassin would have to say about the Winter Soldier.

He lay back on the bed and his thoughts swirled of Mallory and he fell to sleep.