Stark asks if the Soldier has eaten anything other than the "highly suggestive marshmallow glop" today and the answer is no, so the Soldier relocates to the kitchen of the tower. When he arrives, Steve is there. He rarely finds himself alone in the common areas of this building and he is not sure if that is by design—if JARVIS alerts the others to his presence and they do not want him unescorted—or coincidence. There is a not unpleasant noise when he enters the room and it isn't until Steve looks up at him and smiles that the Soldier realizes the sound is called humming and it is coming from his own throat.

"Been catching up on music history?" Steve asks.

That Steve has also slept through most of the century is something the Soldier has known but has not thought to focus on before now. There is very little he can remember of his life, but there is even less he can remember that does not include either Steve or a facsimile thereof. For him, the man is as ever present as mission assignments or the cold, and rarely does the Soldier think of the world outside of his own experiences. Steve has always been a constant, self-assured and reassuring.

But objectively, Steve is another man out of time. Sitting down, the Soldier mulls over this realization. Very few of the ideals or events Barnes shared with Steve remain in his memory, but perhaps they can share being lost. Something flutters in his chest at the thought and the Soldier tries to subdue it. He cannot envision Steve being ever truly lost no matter how much of the world slips by him. The man is too alive for that.

"Did Stark teach you about music too?" the Soldier asks.

"He tried." Steve sighs, but he is also smiling. "I told him I'd already looked into it, but he insisted I had to learn the right way. And then he declared me a lost cause because I liked Journey more than AC/DC."

The abrasions to Steve's hands have healed. He had not thought to check the rate of recovery earlier in the day, between the VALOMILK and the therapy session, but the Soldier imagines that the healing had occurred before that point. He smiles until he thinks of the gunshots and stab wounds from the helicarrier and wonders how long those took to heal.

"Are you hungry?"

The Soldier nods because he has researched how often the body needs food and enough time has passed since his last substantial meal for him to require more. He has no sense of appetite. Three-quarters of a century fed intravenously has destroyed that sensation; he can feel the pain of starvation, but not the longing for food.

"Okay." Steve pushes his chair back. "What do you want?"

"Something I like." If Sam were here, the Soldier thinks he would be made to choose. They keep impressing the notion of autonomy onto him, the ability to think critically for himself. It isn't that he is incapable or that he necessarily rejects the notion, but to go from no options to every choice is dizzying. There appears to be an infinite amount of foodstuffs in the tower, with equally vast combinations, and he has no desire to be in charge of what his body intakes on top of everything else.

Besides, Steve knows the things that he likes better than he does, so it isn't as if the selection will be unpleasant.

"You know, you're lucky you tried modern food here." Steve opens the refrigerator, spilling yellow light over the floor tiles. Cold and light: the combination is incongruous and the Soldier cannot look away. "I mean, don't get me wrong, there's more variety these days, but a lot of it tastes kind of metallic. Or like chemicals. At least, compared to what we're used to. But the stuff Pepper buys doesn't have that—I don't know if it's a quality issue or what."

The Soldier does not remember the taste of the food he was used to. His knowledge of both the past and the present are the minimal amount needed to function, informed by secondhand sources rather than lived experience. He and Steve cannot really be lost together if one of them can remember the first stretch of the journey while the other might as well have wandered in halfway through.

He watches, brows knit, trying to will memories to the surface. They must have eaten together in trenches or in Brooklyn—did Steve cook or had Barnes?—but he cannot pull together any coherent scenes. A scent of garlic, a hand stinging where it had brushed against a hot pan, a chest like a refrigerator but with a block of ice inside—all of it flashes in his mind, but he has no context.

A plate is placed in front of him and the Soldier is drawn back to the present, glancing down at a sandwich.

"It's ham," Steve says, sitting again. "I don't know if you remember, but that's your favorite."

People have so many favorite things. What purpose is there to a preferred type of dead flesh? It takes the Soldier a moment to remember he is meant to say "thank you." Etiquette was never a part of his programming.

He takes a bite and immediately understands why this was Barnes's favorite.

The Soldier is smiling then, and Steve is smiling. It is symbiotic and a desire deep within him is tapped: he wants to smile more, have more of the correct reactions, in order to see the happiness in Steve. Is this friendship or an imprint designed to ensure he pleases his handlers?

"Hey, Bomb Pop." Stark walks in, giving Steve a glance before his focus returns to typing on the screen of his phone. He leans against the table beside the Soldier and nods to him. "Lady Gaga. I have news."

For once, it is Steve with the blank expression while the Soldier's mind prickles on the edge of a memory. There was something familiar in that statement, something beyond the word "bomb."

"Why's Bucky Lady Gaga?" Steve asks, and the memory slides into place.

"Poker Face," the Soldier says, and the other men stare at him.

"So you did listen to more than one song when I left? That's good. I'm starting to think my punk rock prediction was off, but at least—"

A shake of the head. "Нет. I heard it before. On a mission."

After a mission, to be accurate. The mission had been in Gaza, but they crossed the border into Israel to await extraction. The safe house had been small, hot. The other team members slipped in and out of the bathroom to dig shrapnel from their skin.

The asset sat in a corner, mask off. His hair was slick with sweat, face caked with drying blood. A blow to the face had made his nose bleed and no one had told him to wipe away the mess, so he hadn't. No one approached him. They kept less of a distance before missions, allowing themselves to brush up against him on transports or at the base. The contact triggered something within him, an instinct to protect those who provided it so long as the protection did not compromise the mission.

In the moments when the asset slipped up and allowed himself to think, he thought the others were aware of that instinct.

But once a mission ended, no one approached him unless they were guiding him to the next destination or assessing for injuries. It was one thing to make sure a trap was in perfect working order before laying it. It was another to linger near the trap once it was set.

There was a radio within the safe house, covered in dust and barely functioning. Of the few stations it received clearly, only one broadcast anything in English. The asset sat rapt with attention, committing the messages to memory. Over the course of a half hour, it transmitted one particular message five times, occasionally interrupted by others. The message came in the form of music and it sounded synthetic, as if the voice and instruments were somehow automated. It was fast and made no sense, though he had committed to memory easily enough.

The fifth transmission of the message was interrupted when Rumlow grabbed hold of the radio and lifted it, tearing the plug from the socket in the process. He must have found the message in some way unfavorable, and appeared to be contemplating throwing the machine against the wall before the bathroom door opened.

Rollins stepped into the room. He had taken shrapnel to the face and there were stitches in his skin now where there had previously been blood and debris. Rumlow exhaled, set the radio down, and limped into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. The asset was not sure if the man had taken a bullet to the leg, or shrapnel. It was not his place to ask. Not his place to think to ask.

Minutes passed with the only sound being the faint shuffle of cards, before another team member, Murphy, began humming the tune of the repeated message.

"Don't." Anderson, the youngest team member—the asset knew this because Rumlow had addressed him as "rookie" before—set his cards down on the table. "Don't you dare."

"I can't help it," Murphy protested. "It's in my head."

"Think a concussion would help?" Rollins asked.

"It's catchy."

"It's terrible." Anderson shook his head. "It's—'bluffin' with my muffin'? What does that even—why—what?"

He was asking for clarification. The asset could not parse the meaning of the message, so he simply repeated the next line. Perhaps that would suffice. "I'm not lying, I'm just stunning with my love glue gunning."

Things went very quiet. They collectively turned, staring at the asset. He couldn't be sure, because he couldn't remember enough for certainty, but he thought the last time anyone had looked at him with eyes that wide and faces that blank, he'd been carrying a severed head. Why he'd had a severed head, the asset had no idea.

"What," said Murphy, with none of the upward inflection that indicated a question.

"I'm not lying, I'm just stunning with my love glue gunning," the asset repeated. There was no comprehension in their eyes, so he continued. "Just like a chick in the casino, take your bank before I—"

"We broke him," Anderson said. "We broke the Winter Soldier with terrible music."

"Breathe, rookie." It was Rollins speaking, though he'd looked as dumbfounded as the rest of them. "The Soldier memorizes radio transmissions. No one must have cared to differentiate between that and any other broadcast. It all gets wiped anyway, right?"

There was a pause in which they tore their eyes away from the asset to look at each other, before simultaneously turning back to him. "Do the whole thing," Murphy said.

"Mum mum mum mah," the asset said.

"Wait, wait." It was Rollins speaking. He outranked Murphy, so the asset fell silent. "Sing it."

The asset did not sing. It had never been necessary and he was not sure how, but it was an order, so he forced his voice to do it. "I want to hold them like they do in Texas please. Fold them let them hit me raise it baby stay with me I love it." His voice was flat in comparison to the transmission's, ugly, and it ached in his already dry throat, but the asset continued.

At first, they listened in silence. The disbelief was still on their faces but some quality of it had shifted. By the time he was stammering "P-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face," there was laughter.

He was not yet midway through the message when the bathroom door flew open and Rumlow stalked out. "Whoever's imitating a dying cat, I will blow your head off—"

His eyes met the asset's and he fell silent.

The asset had gone similarly quiet. He had not received a direct order to cease, but the senior officer had not liked the noise so he halted, awaiting further instruction.

Rumlow blinked, shook his head. Limping to the table, he took his chair, shifting it to face the asset, and sat down. "I didn't say stop."

The asset exhaled, picking up midsentence where he had paused. "—and baby when it's love if it's not rough it isn't fun."

It took them three minutes to stop laughing when he was through relaying the message. The asset counted the seconds.

"Someone teach him 'Take On Me'," Rollins had said.

The Soldier shakes his head. The memory makes his face hot.

"A mission," Stark repeats. "Please tell me this mission involved body glitter and club kids."

"What is glitter?"

"You said you had news?" Steve is addressing Stark, but his eyes are on the Soldier.

"A certain itsy bitsy spider just texted me." Stark slides the phone into his pocket. "She and Barton apparently need to place to lie low, so I said they were welcome to roost here."

"Natasha?" Steve's brows draw together as the Soldier tries to place that name. "I thought she was trying to disappear. This place isn't exactly subtle, no offense."

Stark shrugs. "Well, the files she leaked blew all of Barton's covers, so I'm guessing that has something to do with it. Point being, I'm now running a halfway house for superheroes. I mean, not that I mind, but hey." He glances to the Soldier. "Try not to get homicidal on them, would you? I'd hate to be viewed as inhospitable."

"I don't kill outside of missions."

"She was a mission, Buck." Steve sighs. "Maybe we should relocate for a bit, just to be safe. We could—"

"Safe?" Stark repeats. "I'm Iron Man. You're Captain America. They're both practically ninja and we've got a guy with wings. I think we can handle this, Cap. Also? Might be nice to have a guy with brainwashing experience around for a bit."

Steve appears to consider it, nods. "Point."

AN: Iceboxes began to be phased out by refrigerators in the mid-1930s, so I imagine Bucky would have had one in his home for at least part of his childhood.

Bomb pops are red, white, and blue popsicles that may or may not be sold outside of the US. I'm not actually sure.

Bucky earned the Lady Gaga nickname by 1) liking pop music and 2) being stoic and dark and generally everything Gaga isn't.

"Poker Face" was quite popular on the radios in Israel when it was first released there. It peaked as the second most popular song on the Israeli Airplay Chart for a time.

I actually intended, when I first had the idea for this flashback, for it to be kind of a cute moment but then "cute" turned into "dehumanizing jackassery" because I am incapable of making happy things.

"Take On Me" is a 1986 song by the group a-ha with a very famous music video that cuts between animation and live action.