We've got a bone this life can't break
We've stared at darkness face to face
Under our skin, this fire won't fade
It'll burn so bright
Yeah, it'll burn so bright

Hold on tight
We're gonna make it to the other side

- "We're Gonna Make It" by Sam Tinnesz

When he heard the bathroom door open and Bucky shuffle into the bedroom, Steve sent the text he'd had ready for the past twenty minutes. Coast is clear.

Bucky stepped back into the common room and dropped onto the couch next to Steve. He was wearing his blue pajamas that said Winter Is Here on the shirt, and the fuzzy grey socks Darlene Wilson had given him for Christmas. He slumped wearily against Steve, smelling fresh and clean.

"You're here," he breathed.

Steve wrapped one arm around Bucky and grasped his right hand with the other. "I'm here."

Had he not been there to witness Bucky falling to pieces, Steve might have been surprised at how relieved Bucky sounded to find him sitting on the couch. That had been the one request Bucky had made when Steve had finally coaxed him into taking a shower—that Steve would still be there when he was done. It was literally the least Steve could have done for him.

Bucky let out a heavy sigh and settled deeper into the couch and Steve's arms. His hair was damp and cold against Steve's neck, but Steve didn't mind. It was enough to have Bucky here—right here, right next to him, so close he could feel his chest rise and fall with every breath. Maybe he was just imagining it, but he almost thought he could feel Bucky's heartbeat pulsing against his shoulder.

Steve closed his dry, itchy eyes, resting his cheek against the top of Bucky's head. This was everything he'd ever needed. Everything he'd ever wanted. They didn't need to say or do anything. Every second spent at his brother's side was another tiny stitch mending the deep gashes in his heart. He hoped it was the same for Bucky.

Steve's phone buzzed, breaking the silence. It was a text from Sam, just a single word: Incoming.

As if on cue, the hall door opened and Jake quietly stepped inside. After carefully closing the door behind himself, Jake stepped into the room and stared at them. Steve wondered what he made of two grown men lounging on the couch, arms around each other, Steve's feet up on the coffee table and Bucky's tucked underneath him. Both of them probably looked strange with their bloodshot, puffy eyes. No Hydra agent would have cried on another agent's shoulders or gone to him for comfort, so Jake had no context for what he was seeing.

Steve smiled sadly. "Hey, Jake. Come here."

Jake obediently crossed the room and stood in front of them, still staring. He eyed Bucky especially—not surprising, since the two hadn't been around each other much in the past week.

Part of Steve wanted to tell Jake that this was his grandfather. But would that make any sense to him? Had he known Mabel at all? Had they had any contact after he was born? Besides, he wasn't sure he should mention Mabel right now. He could tell that Bucky was still struggling to keep his composure.

But there was one thing he could explain. "I'm sorry I didn't say good morning earlier. Bucky needed to tell me something that was really hard to talk about. And I needed to tell him I love him."

Bucky squeezed his hand, and Steve could hear his breath hitching slightly.

Jake's eyebrows rose in recognition when Steve used the word love, but he didn't look any closer to comprehending what the word meant. If anything, he only looked more confused as he glanced between the two of them.

Patience, Steve told himself. Just give it time. Keep giving him examples, and he'll get it eventually. He will. Even if it takes years.

The day had come to an end, and Bucky couldn't decide if he was relieved or filled with dread. He hadn't really done much that day—mostly, he'd just sat around watching Steve and Jake interacting. He could tell Jake was ill at ease around him; he kept glancing over at Bucky, then quickly looking away again when he saw Bucky watching. Steve didn't seem to notice, though he might have just been pretending.

Bucky didn't know what he was supposed to be doing. Helping Steve, of course, but he didn't know how. Sam seemed to know instinctively when to throw in a comment to keep the conversation going, or when to leave them alone and then show up an hour later with snacks.

But Bucky? He'd been no help whatsoever. All he'd done was sit there and watch Steve struggling to relate to his son, and occasionally steal his attention. He could tell Steve was still worried about him, but Bucky had no idea how to reassure him.

Since he'd been wearing pajamas all day, Bucky didn't bother changing. He just climbed into bed and sat leaning against the headboard, waiting for Steve to finish tucking Jake in and getting ready for bed himself. In the silence, Bucky sighed and stared dully at the abstract painting on the wall.

He might have actually been somewhat helpful if he'd still been analyzing the files today...but even if Natasha hadn't effectively banished him yesterday, he didn't think he could convince himself to go back. Not right now. Maybe not ever.

Did that make him a coward? Probably.

When Steve stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, he looked over at Bucky and smiled. Bucky didn't know why he looked so cheerful. Just because Bucky was there? It wasn't like Bucky had anything positive to add to the conversation.

As Steve changed, Bucky pulled his knees up and rested his forehead on them. I have to tell him, don't I? he thought, his heart sinking to the pit of his stomach. Ohhh, I do have to tell him.

The mattress sank slightly as Steve slid under the covers. But he didn't lie down or turn off the light. A warm hand rubbed up and down Bucky's back. "You okay, Buck?"

Bucky squeezed his burning eyes shut, trying to focus on the soothing motions of Steve's hand. "Not...really."

Steve scooted closer. Bucky could feel the warmth radiating from him like a fire now. "What can I do?"

"Just...listen, I guess." Bucky drew a shaky breath, raising his head enough to stare unseeing at the wall. He didn't think he could bear to look at Steve right now. "There's something...I have to tell you something. But it's not...very...you won't like it..."

Steve's hand was still rubbing gently back and forth. "You can tell me anything."

Bucky closed his eyes again. "In the files. Found some stuff. You should know."

"Okay."

There were iron bands around his chest, no matter how soothing Steve's touch was. No amount of affection or reassurance would make this easier to say. Swallowing hard, Bucky managed to choke out, "Mabel. She wasn't...the only one...you know? They tried it before...remember? F-Five times...before. And they all died, but...but they still..." His voice broke, and it took several tries before he could whisper, "Five women died carrying my children, Steve. That's ten people that Hydra killed...before they made Mabel."

"Oh..." Steve's hand slowed to a stop. Then both strong arms wrapped around Bucky, pulling him close. He kissed the top of Bucky's head. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Buck..."

Bucky squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fingers tightly around the blanket, unable to breathe. Because that wasn't even the worst of it.

For a few moments, they sat like that, Steve trying to comfort Bucky because he had no idea that Bucky should be doing the same. Bucky opened his mouth several times, but his voice kept dying in his throat.

"Steve..." he finally managed to gasp. "I-I'm sorry...Steve..."

"No, no, shhh...it's not your fault..."

Bucky pulled back, unable to bear it any longer. Steve was right next to him, so selfless, thinking of nothing but how he could ease someone else's pain. Bucky hated knowing he was about to break Steve's heart.

He made the mistake of looking up and meeting Steve's gaze. Tears filled Bucky's eyes as he said through trembling lips, "Steve...y-you have...eight kids. In-Including Jake..."

Steve went completely still, his face blank, his hands dropping on top of the blanket. When he spoke, his voice was a mere breath. "Eight?"

The tears rolled down Bucky's cheeks as he nodded. As he blinked the blur away, he looked up at Steve's face, afraid of what he would find there.

At first, Steve just stared down at his hands, expressionless. His eyes were a thousand miles away—maybe all the way back in Siberia, where seven innocent lives had begun and ended. After almost a minute of dead silence, he muttered, "How." He clasped his hands together, the only emotion showing in his knuckles turning white. "Tell me how they died."

So Bucky did. He told him, hating every word that passed his lips. He told him about the miscarriage, the premature births, the abortion, the termination orders. He told Steve that Hydra had created two daughters and six sons. He told him that Jake was the only one of his children who had lived to see his second birthday.

And Steve sat there, listening. He'd done his best to comfort Bucky when he was grieving his dead children. But what did Bucky do? Just kept making it worse.

Bucky fell silent, trying to brush his tears away. He should leave...shouldn't he? Before he could hurt Steve even more. Besides, there was nothing he could say or do that would make any of this more bearable...

Steve swore under his breath, digging his fingers into his hair like that was the only thing keeping him from tearing the world to pieces. "I should've stayed," he growled. Bucky couldn't see his expression from that angle, but he could see his shoulders trembling. "I should've made sure that everyone in Hydra was dead or captured." He spat out a string of epithets for Hydra that Bucky heartily agreed with.

But no amount of profanity or righteous anger could take away the knowledge that they hadn't been able to save their family. Eighteen innocent people lay cold in their graves because of Hydra's sick project. Eighteen. Eighteen.

"Hold me."

Bucky looked over just in time to see the anger bleed out of Steve's slumped shoulders. Moving more on instinct than thought, Bucky immediately wrapped his arms around Steve as he covered his face and shook with enormous sobs.

It was only a few moments before Steve turned to Bucky and clung to him with all his strength, burying his tear-streaked face in Bucky's hair. Knowing there were no words that would help, Bucky just held him tightly. All they could do was weep for the children they'd lost before they could ever be found.

That night, they cried themselves to sleep in each other's arms.

"Okay, Jake, just try to get some rest," Steve said, backing away from the bed as Jake climbed in. "You can come out when the clock says 3, all right?"

Jake glanced over at the digital clock on the bedside table. "Yes sirImeanSteve."

Steve couldn't repress a small, sad smile. Jake tended to slip up on his name more often when he was tired, and right now his voice was beginning to slur with exhaustion. And no wonder—it had been a busy day, playing basketball with Sam and then helping Wanda bake some Sokovian treats. There had been a lot of people and activities for Jake to keep track of.

"Sweet dreams." Steve closed the door behind himself, leaving Jake alone. Hopefully, he could at least relax a little, knowing no one would come near him for another hour. At least, he hoped Jake believed that.

With a sigh, he turned to find Bucky watching him from the couch. Even though it hadn't been that much time that Bucky had been avoiding him, Steve's heart lifted considerably every time he looked around and found Bucky there. It was a wonderful reminder that he wasn't alone.

The couch was a comfortably spacious one, but Steve sat right next to Bucky and settled into his arms. He closed his eyes and rested his head against Bucky's with a relieved sigh.

For a while, neither of them said a word. Steve didn't really want to break the silence. The last few conversations they'd had, just between the two of them, had been full of heart-breaking revelations and confessions. He didn't think either of them really wanted to dwell on those for a while. At least during the day, they should focus on what was right in front of them.

"I'm worried about Jake," Steve finally mumbled.

"Naturally."

With a sigh, Steve opened his eyes and stared absently at the small stack of picture books on the coffee table. "No, I mean...I'm worried he's not getting enough sleep."

"What do you mean?"

Steve frowned, absently running a fingernail across the grooves in Bucky's metal hand. "I can tell he's worn out when I put him down for a nap...but sometimes, he seems just as exhausted afterwards as he was to start with. And sometimes he just looks so tired in the morning, like he didn't get much sleep at all."

"You'd be surprised, how hard it is," Bucky muttered. "Learning how to fall asleep when you know you're perfectly safe."

Steve straightened up just enough to look at Bucky. "Was it...really that hard for you?"

Bucky shrugged, keeping his eyes fixed on their clasped hands. "Well...I had Brad keeping me awake too. And with...cutting...and everything...yeah. Sometimes it's still hard to go to sleep. I got so used to trying to stay awake. So they couldn't sneak up on me when I was defenseless."

Steve glanced over at the door behind which Jake was hopefully getting some rest. "What helps?"

Bucky gave him a half-smile. "Well, you do."

He couldn't help smiling back, but he shook his head. "Something tells me Jake's not ready to share a bed yet. How can I help him feel more comfortable?"

"Maybe...change something so it'll remind him of what he's used to?"

"Like what?" Steve snorted. "Make him sleep on a hard cot with just one blanket and turn off the heat?"

"No, I mean like the recordings."

"What recordings?"

Bucky blinked. "Oh...I didn't tell you about that, did I?"

Steve sat up fully. "What are you talking about?"

Bucky bit his lip and averted his eyes again. "There were these...recordings they'd play over the loudspeakers when he was supposed to go to sleep. It's in the files."

Steve narrowed his eyes. "What kind of recordings?"

"I mean, I could try to explain, but..." He drew a deep breath and looked up. "Can I show you? That might be easier."

Knowing how much those files had haunted him, Steve was a little surprised that Bucky would be the one to suggest looking at them again. But he couldn't deny that he'd been morbidly curious to know what else Bucky might have discovered about Project Legacy. So all he said was, "Lead the way."

When they reached the conference room on the second floor, they found Natasha and Clint sitting at the table, diligently going through the files. Both looked up in surprise to see Steve and Bucky there. "Hey," Natasha said, her eyes sliding from one of them to the other.

While Bucky wordlessly pulled out a screen and started tapping away immediately, Steve nodded a greeting to the others. "Hey," he said softly. "Bucky's...showing me something he found."

Natasha pushed her chair out, half-rising. "We can leave..."

Steve felt that the polite thing would be to protest that she and Clint could stay. But he wasn't sure what they were going to find, so he just murmured a quiet thanks and stepped aside to let them leave.

By the time Steve pulled up a chair next to him, Bucky had found the audio clip he'd been looking for. "I think it was to teach him different languages," Bucky mumbled, not looking at Steve. "Just...simple sentences, repeated in different languages. English, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Mandarin... Kind of like what they did with me."

Steve frowned. That was it? Just language learning? Why couldn't Bucky have just explained that? It was a little odd that they'd played it while Jake was supposed to be sleeping, but he supposed it made a certain kind of sense—Hydra would have wanted to be as efficient as possible with his education, and they would have wanted to take advantage of the greater capacity young children had for picking up foreign languages.

Bucky hit the Play button, and a monotone voice began to speak. "Knife." It repeated the word in several different languages; Steve recognized the German word messer and the French word couteau, but he wasn't sure about the other languages. The voice continued, cycling through six languages with each phrase or sentence.

"Sharp knife... The knife is sharp... The boy holds the sharp knife... Gun... Old gun... The gun is old... The boy holds the old gun..."

It was unsettling, hearing this emotionless voice calmly talking about one weapon after another. Didn't language-learning programs usually start by teaching you how to say colors or food or something? They should have begun with sentences like The boy walks to the school or I like chocolate ice cream. Not...this.

By the time the recording got to the sentence The blood on the floor is red, Steve's head was in his hands. This was what Jake had been listening to every night of his life? He struggled to get enough rest because he was used to this lulling him to sleep?

Belatedly, he realized Bucky had reached over and turned off the recording. He raised his head and stared bleakly at the screen. He didn't know why he was surprised anymore. Project Legacy was Hydra's plan to raise an army of obedient assassins. Of course they would want to normalize violence for their young charge. The only kind of world they wanted him to know was their world of blood and death.

My job is to show him that there's more. The thought was like a shaft of light breaking through the dark clouds. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to sit straighter. They just needed to focus on the future.

"Okay," he said slowly. "So...we can still have him listen to language training when he goes to sleep. We can continue that part of his education, just...with normal sentences."

Bucky nodded. "That might be close enough to still feel familiar to him. So...are you going to buy something for all of the languages, or just focus on one or two?"

Steve eyed him thoughtfully. "Bucky...you know all those languages, don't you?"

"Yeah, they..." Bucky blinked, looking surprised. "Wait, what are you saying?"

Steve smiled. "You should make some recordings of your own. You can speak those languages, and you'd certainly do a better job of it than they did."

Bucky stared at the screen for a few minutes, processing the idea, then peeked over at Steve with a timidly hopeful expression. "Will that help? Do you think?"

"Anything that can get Jake to sleep better will be a huge help." Steve smiled and nudged Bucky in the side. "Besides, you're the one who brought it up in the first place. That means you get dibs."

Bucky had been afraid that going back to the files would throw him right back into the pit of despair he'd barely crawled out of two days ago. To his surprise, though his stomach tied itself into knots as they made their way downstairs, he discovered that it wasn't so bad once they actually got into it. The material they went over didn't change, but having Steve right there with him made all the difference in the world.

Once Steve had heard the recordings that Jake used to listen to at night, he wanted to know what else Bucky had discovered about his life with Hydra. So Bucky started showing him the records, the training notes, everything he'd compiled on Jake. Discovering this information in the first place had been disheartening, even sickening. Some things had reminded him a little too much of his own brainwashing process. Other things had gotten him thinking about Mabel.

Telling Steve, though...it was strangely cathartic. He didn't have to be the only one carrying this burden. He felt a little guilty, watching the same emotions he had felt playing across Steve's face, but he knew that Steve needed to know what his son had been through. That was the only way Steve could figure out how to help him. Bucky tried to summarize as much of the information as he could, so that Steve could glean the essential information without wallowing in the crushing weight of every last detail Bucky had uncovered.

He could tell, just by looking at the haunted look in Steve's eyes, that it was going to take a while for all of this to sink in fully. "Is any of this actually going to help?" he muttered.

Steve breathed in and blinked several times, as if waking from a deep sleep. "Yes," he said, rubbing his eyes and leaning back in his chair. "Knowing what Jake comes from...maybe we can figure out how to bridge the gap to where he needs to be." Suddenly, he surged to his feet. "Oh no—Jake!"

Bucky glanced at the clock in the lower right corner of the screen in front of them. 3:37. They'd gotten so engrossed in the files that they'd lost track of time, and now it was well past Jake's naptime.

Steve made a beeline for the stairs. Bucky stayed behind just long enough to close down the computer screen, then hurried after him. What would Jake have gotten up to when left to himself for so long? Bucky had a feeling they'd probably find him just sitting there, waiting for orders...

When they got to their common room, they found it empty. Both bedroom doors and the bathroom door were open. Bucky peeked over Steve's shoulder as he checked Jake's room, but there was no little boy standing at attention or sitting at the foot of the bed.

While Steve checked their bedroom, Bucky poked his head into the bathroom. But there was no one there, nor any real hiding places. He turned to follow Steve into their room just in time to catch sight of Jake standing in the corner in front of the gun safe, reaching for the door handle.

"Jake!" Steve cried in surprise. "What are you doing?"

Jake jumped, snatching his hand back as if it had been burned. Bucky scrambled to remember if he'd locked the safe or not. When had he touched it last? When he'd put his weapons away after the raid on the Hydra base?

"That's not something to play with," Steve said more gently. "I'm sorry for startling you, but...wait, no..."

Trembling all over, Jake yanked his shirt off and threw himself face-first onto the floor. He lay as stiff as a board, clamping his arms tightly against his sides and pressing his face into the carpet. "Ready to receive my correction," he said.

"No, that's not what I..." With a sigh that told Bucky this had happened before, Steve slowly lowered himself to his knees, right where Jake could peer at him out of the corner of his eye.

Bucky cast his gaze over the boy lying on the floor. He took in the bare back, the stiff anticipation in every muscle, the way he held his arms against his sides. He didn't know if someone had taught him this position or if it was one he'd adopted on his own, but Bucky understood immediately the purpose it served. It was a submissive posture, but also one that allowed him to subtly protect his most vulnerable body parts. He'd been beaten—that much Bucky had easily been able to infer already—and maybe even seriously hurt before. He was trying, as much as possible, to prevent that from happening again.

"It's okay, buddy," Steve was saying, keeping his voice low and soothing. "You're not in trouble. Some things are off-limits to little boys, but no one is going to punish you for that. You didn't know. And I already told you I'm not going to hurt you, remember? That's still true."

None of what he said seemed to have any impact on Jake. The boy still looked terrified, convinced he was about to get a brutal beating just for being somewhere he hadn't been ordered to go. Punished for the natural curiosity of any four-year-old.

Steve was being his usual gentle, encouraging self. He spoke to Jake the way he'd often spoken to Bucky. But it wasn't working. That much was obvious. Jake was convinced he deserved to be punished, and Steve simply telling him no punishment was necessary...it didn't matter. It wasn't getting through the walls Hydra had built.

He hated that. He hated Hydra for making anyone impervious to Steve's affection.

On impulse, Bucky stepped forward, leaned down, and grabbed Jake by the ankle. He hoisted Jake into the air and carried him like that out into the common room, where he dropped Jake unceremoniously onto the couch. The boy lay on his back, his wide eyes looking more stunned than anything else as he stared up at Bucky.

"This isn't Hydra, Jake," Bucky said simply. "The rules are different here. So until you learn what they are, stop assuming you know what the punishments are."

Jake's eyes were as round as saucers. "Yes, sir."

"Bucky," he said shortly. "My name is Bucky, and I want you to use it."

"Yes, Bucky."

"Now, why don't you sit up and put your shirt back on?" He glanced up and found Steve peeking around the doorframe, his shocked expression perfectly mirroring his son's. Bucky held out his hand, and Steve tossed Jake's shirt to him.

As Bucky handed the shirt over, his brain caught up with him. That probably hadn't been the right thing to do, had it? He'd probably just undone all the painstaking work Steve had been toiling over the entire time they'd had Jake with them. Jake wouldn't trust them anymore; he'd be even more uncertain of what to expect...

He glanced over Jake's head at Steve, half-expecting to see outrage now that the shock had worn off. Instead, a slow smile spread across Steve's face. Clearing his throat, Steve walked over to Jake, who looked up expectantly at him—still a little timid, but no longer frightened.

"Um...how about a snack?" Steve suggested. "Maybe some apple slices and a glass of milk?"

Jake nodded and calmly got to his feet, following Steve over to the door. As Bucky trailed after them, Steve mouthed at him, How did you do that?

Bucky shrugged, his heart lifting slightly. Had he...helped?

To say that Bucky's little intervention changed everything overnight would have been overstating the matter. But over the next few days, Steve felt like he and Jake were beginning to stumble their way to a better understanding of each other.

Having a clearer picture of Hydra's training helped immensely. Somehow, even knowing that they had more or less been trying to make another Winter Soldier, it hadn't quite clicked in Steve's head until he saw the files. The cold, clinical reports on Jake's growth and behavior, like he was some kind of lab rat, put everything into perspective. After four years of being treated like he was a cross between a robot and a soldier, it was no wonder that Jake was so baffled by the freedom of his current life.

Steve wanted to differentiate himself as much as possible from Hydra, to show Jake what life was really like. But Jake couldn't make that leap all at once. Steve was the one who had to bridge the gap.

One thing he'd already known would be essential for Jake was predictability. Winter had always been calmer when they followed a routine, so he figured Jake was probably the same. Steve started coming up with a schedule for each day, instead of asking Jake what he wanted to do and inevitably having to come up with an idea on his own, one that Jake would automatically agree to. Even if Jake thought all of these activities were tests or some kind of training, at least he would be able to predict it. They could work on spontaneity later; right now, Jake needed to be able to rely on something playing out as he expected it to.

Every day, Steve would tell Jake the schedule for the day as they ate breakfast, then do his best to make sure they stuck to it. Sometimes he opened the floor for suggestions of specific activities they could do. Though Jake never made a peep during these conversations, he would watch them all intently. Steve hoped he was absorbing their model of how friends decided what they were going to do, rather than the authority figure merely giving orders.

Steve had already been praising Jake for his little, everyday accomplishments. He knew Hydra probably wouldn't have bothered to say anything to him unless he did something wrong—that much was clear by the surprised look Jake frequently gave him when Steve complimented him. But now that Steve had seen Hydra's records, he knew the areas Jake particularly excelled at. Maybe, if he praised Jake for the things even Hydra had admitted he had a talent for, Jake would believe him about the other things too.

Of course, that didn't mean Steve took him to the shooting range or made him run on the treadmill as fast as he could go. But when Sam enthusiastically had Jake show them all how many baskets he could shoot in a row, Steve praised his aim. When they cleaned up the kitchen after supper, Steve would have Jake move the chairs so he could sweep underneath the table, and exclaim over how strong Jake was for being able to lift two chairs at once even though they were taller than he was.

Jake even seemed to be gradually comprehending that he wasn't going to be punished for every tiny misstep. One day, Steve pulled out some watercolors he'd bought and set them up on the kitchen table. He was trying to get Jake used to being around the other Avengers, rather than just the three of them. In the kitchen, the others would occasionally walk through to get a drink or see what was going on. Jake carefully watched each of them, observing their interactions and probably trying to gauge the potential danger each of them posed.

Sam and Bucky joined the two of them in their artistic endeavor, Sam painting a lopsided house with stick figures out front, and Bucky scowling at blobs of paint that ran together in a muddy mess no matter how many times he started over with a fresh paper. Steve smiled to himself as he worked on his painting of the trees he could see out the window. It had been a long time since he'd dabbled with paint, which he'd never been quite as good at as he had with pencil drawings. But then, he'd rarely had the money for many art supplies besides scraps of paper and a stub of pencil. He just needed more practice.

Curious, Steve peeked over to see what Jake was doing. He sat in the chair next to Steve, perched on a stack of pillows and wearing an old T-shirt with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo printed on it, to keep paint off his clothes. It had taken a lot of time and coaxing, but Jake had finally begun to paint something. As usual, he hadn't seemed to know what to do when Steve had told him he could paint anything he wanted to. Maybe he thought it was a trick somehow, and he was supposed to figure out what the 'right answer' was.

Jake's paper was filled with wobbly circles and stars and...were those smiley faces? He was working on his third row of these simple shapes, all of them in red paint. As Steve looked closer, he realized those shapes looked familiar. Yes...those same designs had been on the sugar cookies Sam had made with him the week before.

Jake didn't look relaxed or content as he worked. Instead, he wore the same intense look of concentration as he did when they were putting a puzzle together, or throwing a ball around outside. To him, this wasn't a relaxing afternoon of painting, it was an assessment of his skill.

When Jake looked up with a resigned expression as though bracing himself for the worst, Steve smiled back at him. "I like your picture," he said. "That's a nice color you're using. Do you like red?"

His eyes flitted from Steve's face to his paper and back. Cautiously, Jake nodded.

"That's my favorite color too," Bucky said, setting aside his fifth failed painting with a sigh.

Sam craned his head to look. "What's your picture, anyway? A mammoth?"

Bucky glowered at him. "It's a dog!"

"Then why does it have tusks?"

"What? No, those are its teeth!"

"They're bigger than its feet!"

"The paintbrush slipped, okay? And why don't we talk about your picture? The house has two chimneys!"

"Yeah, well, some houses have two chimneys, Bucket-Brains."

As the two bickered back and forth, making fun of each other's handiwork, Jake watched them with a mixture of anxiety and confusion. With a chuckle, Steve said, "You'll have to get used to that, Jake. They could go on like this for hours. Here, do you want to use a different color for your picture?"

Jake looked back down at his painting, then nodded. He glanced up at Steve again, as if checking to make sure he'd given the right answer.

"Okay, how about blue?" Steve suggested. "That's my favorite color. Just remember to clean your paintbrush off first," he added, pointing to the plastic cup of murky water in the middle of the table.

Jake reached over to swirl his paintbrush in the water, but when he pulled his hand back, the cup tipped over and sent dirty water everywhere.

"Woah, careful!" Steve cried, grabbing for the now-empty cup. The others sprang into motion, grabbing paper towels to sop up the mess. Steve took the paints and brushes over to the sink to air-dry, then attempted to salvage their artwork. Sam's picture was unharmed, and all but one of Bucky's creations were drying at the other end of the table. But Steve and Jake's paintings were little more than clumps of drenched paper that broke apart at a touch.

"Don't worry, Jake," Steve said, wadding up the clump of paper as he turned, "we can try again tomor—"

Pale and trembling, Jake yanked off his makeshift smock, then his shirt underneath it. He made as if to throw himself on the floor, then stopped. Still shaking all over, he slowly, slowly looked up at Steve. "Ready...to receive...my correction?"

Steve lowered himself to one knee to look Jake in the eye. "You don't need to take your shirt off for your 'correction,' buddy. Here, let me help you put that back on." He pulled the shirt over Jake's head. "Now, all you need to do when you make a mistake is say sorry. Can you do that?"

"Yes."

Chuckling, Steve realized he should have seen that response coming. "Okay. Just say, 'I'm sorry.'"

"I'm sorry," Jake immediately parroted back.

Steve wondered if Jake actually understood what that meant. But to start with, it was probably enough just to teach him how to go through the motions. "And we forgive you." He slowly, gently put a hand on Jake's shoulder; Jake watched him warily, but didn't flinch. "That's the end of your correction."

Jake stared at him with wide, stunned eyes, but Steve just smiled back. Maybe...just maybe...he was beginning to get the idea.

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

1 John 4:18