A/N: A minor oops was pointed out to me in Chapter 20. It's fixed now.
Bucky is standing there waiting for him in the morning, when the company starts moving again. Steve doesn't bother questioning if he's feeling up to it this time, just falls in beside his friend and hopes for the best. To Steve's great surprise, Bucky marches steadily with the others all day, though he looks like the effort is wearing him pretty thin.
Steve says nothing, but he's startled at how quickly Bucky seems to be improving. There's still something hard and unfamiliar in his eyes that doesn't seem to be fading, but the bruises are already turning green and brown instead of black and blue, and now that Steve thinks about it, the hint of a limp he had the first day has entirely vanished. He's also showing absolutely no lingering signs of the pneumonia Dugan mentioned. He's barely even sniffled since leaving the factory.
Bucky's stamina is rebounding impressively, and though he's still a bit gaunt and abused looking, the dark circles under his eyes are fading.
Honestly, Bucky's always been sturdy, and he's always mended quickly from injuries… it's just… Steve can't account for it being quite this quick.
He wonders, privately, if his mind is playing tricks on him. If maybe he's just imagining things with the serum to fuel his already vivid imagination.
If Bucky is healing faster than usual, he can't imagine it's connected to anything they'd have done in that lab. Why would Bucky's captors take the time to make him healthier if the whole idea was to torture him? … Steve decides he doesn't want to follow that train of thought to conclusion.
He sets the issue aside for now, deciding just to be grateful that his friend is alive and beside him again. Steve knows intimately how much the universe likes to take things away from him. If, just this once, it wants to let him -however improbably- have Bucky back?
He'll take it.