Bucky had been under supervisory care since the former prisoners' dramatic return two and a half weeks ago. He was beginning to think he'd have preferred fighting his way through another 30 miles over the boredom.

The low-burning fever he'd been nursing all the way back to camp had passed, but the doctors still wouldn't let him leave. Now he had little to do but sit around all day, either reading or sleeping. Steve hadn't even been allowed to visit since the first day.

He hadn't really been expecting anyone, or he'd have put on some pants…

"Sergeant Barnes! I understand you had a little adventure of your own out there. Care to tell me about that?"

The colonel was pulling up a chair beside his bunk. Bucky snapped upright, dropping the comic book that he'd been reading beside the bed, and saluted.

He yanked a blanket up over his shorts and tried to look respectable.

"At ease son." The colonel waved the salute away. "I just want to know exactly what we're dealing with, here. Rogers has informed us that you have in some way been experimented upon by enemy scientists. I need to know the what, the when, and the how."

"Sir... I have no idea what they did to me." The words were out of his mouth before he realized that admitting to memory loss was probably not the best way to prove he was fit to return to duty.

"Sargeant, you were held prisoner by HYDRA forces for somewhere on the order of 6 weeks before that base was destroyed. You spent at least half that time separated from the other prisoners, presumably in the lab where you were discovered by Captain Rogers. What happened to you in there?"

"I'm sorry sir, honestly… but I don't remember anything. I just know that it hurt… a lot."

The colonel looked tired.

"You know you're the only one they took that came back alive?"

"Yes sir. That's mostly because of Ste- 'Captain America'. I don't know what would'a happened if he hadn't gotten us out."

He hadn't really intended that to sound quite as bitter as it had…

"Look… Barnes." Colonel Phillips leaned forward. "Do you know why you're still here?" He gestured to the med tent around them.

"No sir."

"You're here because until I know what you've got floating around in there," he poked a finger at Bucky's chest. "I can't safely let you walk around my base. God only knows what kind of diseases you might spread."

He sat back, hands folded in his lap, and sighed.

"I had your blood tested as soon as we debriefed Rogers." He said solemnly. "Wish I had some better news for you, but for now the best I can offer you is you're probably not gonna die anytime soon.

Looks like you got some bastard version of Rogers' super-soldier formula. …The unstable, possibly deadly version.

Now, we're not sure what it's gonna do, or if it's gonna anything at all. Dr. Haywood thinks there were probably more steps involved before anything was actually supposed to happen, which makes you damned lucky that those steps didn't happen.

He... also speculates that you are not the first. You probably don't wanna know what happened to the guy who was."

"Yes sir..." He really, really didn't.

"For the time being, as far as we know, you're fine. As long as that continues to be the case, we can all just pretend this was a real bad dream and get on with winning this war.

But anything changes - you so much as sniffle- I wanna know about it.

"Yes sir! … Does uh… Captain Rogers know about all this?"

"No." The colonel informed him bluntly. "And I want it to stay that way. Captain Rogers needs to stay focused on stopping Schmidt. He gets real, real stupid where you're concerned, Barnes, and I need him smart. Understand?"

"Yes sir. So… what happens now?"

"Now? Now you get your ass out of that bed and get dressed, soldier. There's a war on, and if you're not gonna keel over and die today, I need you in it."

Finally.

"Sir, yes sir!"