"Well, what's new on the life with Tin-Man?" Tony inquired when Jarvis announced Jamie's arrival to his floor.

"Why is it no matter what you say I imagine you smirking all the same?" She asked, one brow raised.

"Because I am." He simply replied reaching his hand for the pack of gummy bears. "Candy?"

"Nuh, I just had a chocolate croissant. I'm screaming at myself for that...on the inside."

"10:30 and you've already had your fill of pastry?" Tony looked up from his computer. "Hot date?"

"At 10:30 am?" Jamie grimaced.

"You're right. Scratch hot. Date?" He popped another bear in his mouth, having thrown it up in the air prior to that.

"I had coffee with Leo." Jamie dismissed.

"So you had coffee with the guy who has the biggest crush on you. You're right, this was sooo not a date." Tony made sure to express his opinion very avidly about everyone around him and her friend in particular.

"I think we're done talking about my male friends. Though we can discuss those croissants from...Ceci-Cela..."

Tony almost spit the candy out:

"You went to Ceci-Cela with him?!"

"And we set at a little table under the Rue De Paradis sign..." Jamie went on with a sly smirk.

"Traitor!" The billionaire hollered. "That was our place."

Jamie raised her chin as if daring her friend to go on with their little show.

"You did what I asked?" She finally asked after it was evident that Tony was about to take on a long road of whining.

"Yeah. Jarvis will grant you access. But only to that room."

"Noted." She turned back to the elevator. "Thanks, Boss."

"I don't like that Leo friend of yours." He yelled at her back.

His answer was a closing elevator door.

- - -WS- - -

It's been a little more than a week since James moved into the Stark Tower. The days were pretty routine for someone who spent last unknown amount of years being an invincible assassin.

His nightmares were still in there every night that's why he slept 2-3 hours a night. The good thing was that having the enhanced health and recovery system it was enough for him. He sticked to his decision not to take any kind of medications for that.

It was very quiet in the Tower. If anything happened in the other parts of the building, he didn't know that.

Doctor Jamie came every day. They talked (she did most of the talking, telling him about how the memory works, about the WWII, how the life has changed), he sometimes remembered flashes of his past when hi mind relaxed listening to her voice. And when she cooked lunch for them, he caught himself remembering what the certain food tasted like.

Doctor Jamie...

I his eyes she was the strangest female he has ever encountered...as far as he could tell. She often laughed at herself having probably internal jokes with herself. He was most certain that she's never had a patient like the Winter Soldier and yet she acted as if she knew exactly what she was doing. And every time she entered the room his heightened senses detected honey and melon from her shampoo filling it with a light aroma almost completely.

And she was not fazed at all, at least that's what it seamed. Not with his hand, his attitude or his history of violence.

To her honer she did show up every day...Or maybe it was just her job.

"James?" As if on cue the little Miss showed up on his doorsteps.

He decided against answering, it's not like he had any place else to be.

"So, you know how you keep whining about you want to work out and there's no place for that?" She stopped in front of him, her skirt suit neatly schooled and her hair exuding honey and melon.

"Not whining." He just burked in return but inside he was amused.

"Not the point." She bubbled. "But you do. Anyway, come with me, there's something I want to show you."

"We going somewhere?" That picked his interest, staying in the same place (even if it was a Tony Stark's Five Dimond apartment building) could get anyone agitated.

"Pay attention!" She mocked and turned on her heels making no room for any kind of arguments or a possibility of him not following.

Once they entered the elevator the doors closed and the A.I. enquired:

"Where to, Dr. Loeb?"

"Did Tony give you specific instructions for James?" She asked.

"James, Miss? I have instructions for TinMan."

Jamie sighed, James' metal arm flexed.

"Jarvis, could you tell your boss that one of my high heels are gonna fly up his ass next time I see him, thank you. And yes, those are the instructions."

"On your way, Doctor."

"Thank you, Jarvis."

The ride was fast, uneventful and silent.

When the elevator doors beeped open the first thing James saw fallowing Jamie through them was darkness. A second later the sensors reacted to their presence and dim lights illuminated the big room.

James' breath hitched for a second. They were in a gym but...the gym looked like something from his time. He couldn't remember his time very good but from the pieces and bits he could tell the room looked like something that could be familiar.

"When Steve agreed to stay in the Tower from time to time Tony made a replica of the gym SHIELD had provide Captain America with when they first...defrosted him." Jamie said quietly next to him, mentally kicking herself for the choice of a word "...did I just really call Steve Rogers a frozen chicken? Just shoot me". "It's just two floors below and you're free to come here any time you feel like it. Just tell Jarvis you're heading to the gym."

He was listening to her but he wasn't at the same time. Suddenly he was sank into the world he's lost a long time ago. For the first time he felt some kind of connection with the time he was born in. It wasn't a bond, it wasn't strong but it was there in the color of the equipment, in a shabby wooden bench, in those walls...

Jamie's eyes were carefully trained on her patient. She was yet to see him like that. His eyes were looking at the things in the room but he was up in his own thoughts. What caught her the most about his state was that for the first time she didn't detect anything negative, no aggression or pessimism. It was just him, and he looked lost. Lost and searching.

And then something else happened. She felt it in her heart. One moment she felt lost too. Not the kind of loss that you feel when you're a little child who's ran away from their mom in a supermarket but the kind of loss when everything you've ever known is gone and there's no road back and you don't even remember if any of these roads existed. Jamie's heart became numb and then like a tidal wave it was covered with all the sympathy and safety and all the help that she wanted to give to the fallen soldier. And out of nowhere that wasn't a part of what she's planned she came closer and took his good hand in hers.

It felt so foreign that James almost didn't detect the change. The touch that wasn't there to hurt, that wasn't there to erase, to harm. He didn't do anything: he was just standing there with his hand just hanging numbly from Doctor Jamie's one. Her hand was warm as she was just standing there not moving any further. But at the same time his thoughts gained very strange momentum clarity. The two of them were standing in the middle of the gym and it seemed that there was something in the air: unfamiliar serenity.

It was gone the next moment.

-\\-

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RoadwayFox