So. I saw Captain America 2...FINALLY. And although I'm really on the Loki/Thor feels right now...I need some Steve/Bucky in my life too. [I knew this would happen]. We'll see where this story goes and who pops in. But for now...enjoy!~

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"What's the point in going, Buck? No one's gonna ask me to dance, and I don't know how anyway."

A laugh. "Well, yeah, with that attitude. Besides, dancin's easy. I'll show ya."

"H-Hey! Don't just grab me-"

The laughter continued. "-Shut up and follow my lead."

A sharp intake of breath followed another painful mental assault. Flickers of memories filtered through a brain which, following it's initial damage in the winter tundra years ago, had been tampered with and damaged repeatedly. The memories were a blur; some were clearer than others, some seemed like silent pictures, while others were just echoes of conversations and flickers of emotions that he couldn't understand.

"Please! Please, don't hurt her. I'll do anything, I'll give you anything. Just not my little girl." A man sobbed, and the child in his arms cried.

But the mission was clear. The ambassador, the wife who carried his son, and his daughter. All targets that needed to be taken out.

The Winter Soldier didn't waste breath with a reply, he simply finished his job. He didn't think twice about the little girl's screams, as he hadn't with so many others.

There was a faint moan, and the a grunt as a man slammed his head against the nearest wall. "Stop it...stop it...stop it!"

"No...this is...this is wrong...what...what have you done to me? No! I won't, stay away-"

"Fry him, then put him back on ice. He's been out too long."

"What a pain...too long out and he becomes so unstable...still, he'll last longer this way. And we can always shock the memories out of him."

A clenched fist drug along the wall until the knuckles bled, before it opened as fingers dragged down idly. "No more." he whispered.

Captain America, wounded and exhausted, looked the Winter Soldier in the face without fear or disgust. He smiled faintly. "You're my friend."

"You're my mission!"

"Then finish it...because I'm with you till the end of the line."

"Agh!" The Winter Soldier slammed his metallic fist against a wall then, and shattered the brick before him. Those words, those damned words, haunted him. There was a meaning to them that he didn't understand, he just knew it somehow. And he had a feeling [and what a strange thing that was] that if he could remember that, everything else would fall into place. Every thing would make sense. But that was wrong, because he had no past, and no friends, and he was only the Winter Soldier.

But he hadn't gone back. Not to Hydra, not to those fools, not to that damned electric machine or that cryo-tube.

He'd gone to a museum called the Smithsonian, where he was faced with a monument in memorial of Lieutenant James Buchanan Barnes, 'Bucky', as Captain America a.k.a. Steven Rogers had apparently called him.

"...Bucky?"

"Who the Hell is 'Bucky'?"

"You know me!"

"No I don't!"

"You've known me your whole life!"

The man on the monument looked just like him, but he didn't see himself in that man at all. Nothing made sense, nothing was what it was supposed to be. But if, by some stretch of reality, he was this 'Bucky' fellow...where did that leave him? What had he been doing with his life, and what would he do now?

But he had nothing concrete, and frankly, he almost didn't want to. This was too much to process at once, too much for a man who had been treated like a living tool. He had been tortured, bred, and trained to have no emotions, no thoughts or desires beyond his missions, no compassion, mercy, or bonds. The Winter Soldier had no idea how to cope, and the unfamiliar territory did nothing for his wanting to discover...himself.

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Nearly two months had passed since Shield had disbanded and the team had gone their separate ways. Natasha kept in vague contact, Fury was...Fury, and Sam had agreed to go with Steve to find Bucky, a fact for which he was still grateful. But being grateful and having any luck were too different things. Natasha had been right about chasing ghosts as far as the Winter Soldier was concerned. The bits of information he could glean about the Soldier were clearly only half-truths, half-tall tales. But the bits of truth that came out of them made his heart wrench. Even Loki didn't sound so bad compared to what the Winter Soldier was made out to be. Loki was a giant, spoiled brat...but the Winter Soldier...he was a monster.

But he was also [somewhere deep inside] Bucky, and a monster was something Bucky could never be.

Steve had managed to reveal that Bucky hadn't returned to base to become a human popsicle again, that was a good sign. But aside from giving them no clues about where Bucky had gone, there was a prevailing theory that the reason they kept him on ice wasn't just to keep him alive longer. The tall tales seemed to agree that the cryo-freezing and shock-treatments kept him sane, and that without it, he'd go competely berserk.

Steve hadn't seen any disastrous scenarios from a berserk super soldier of late, but that didn't mean that Bucky was alright. He needed help, and Steve intended to give it to him.

Steve was jarred from his thoughts by the sudden blare of his cell phone, and he was only slightly surprised to see 'Nick Fury' on the call I.D. "I take it this isn't a social call?" he answered by way of greeting.

"You're damn straight. I've got something you'll like. Might be your friend. Could be a headache. Either way."

As it turned out, within the past half hour, there had been an explosion in an area that should have been deserted forest. A ranger had responded and filled the air waves with tales of gunfire and a metal-armed man before he'd apparently lost consicousness. The fight seemed to have moved on, but that didn't mean Steve couldn't 'haul a** and have a look' as Fury put it.

That lead was about the best he'd had, and he was more than willing to look into it.

"We're heading out?" Sam wanted to confirm.

"Gear up, we've got a lot of ground to cover."

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By the time they reached the area [courtesy of a jet-because apparently Fury was a one-man Shield team himself], nearly an hour and a half had passed since the incident. Steve didn't expect Bucky to be mulling around, but if he could find any clues or even a point in the right direction, that would be a better lead than any he'd had. And sure enough, as they made their way to the patch of forest where the incident was said to have taken place, there were signs of Bucky having been there.

Several bodies lined the ground, and the area was charred where fires had been put out-fires which were caused by a makeshift explosion of some kind. The police had barred them at first, but upon seeing Captain America, they were practically tripping over themselves to give him the story. He settled for the officer who had taken in the ranger.

"What happened?"

The officer was one of the scant few present who didn't seem terribly impressed by the Captain's presence, but he answered anyway. "According to the ranger...he'd been doing a patrol and heard shots fired. He approached and found a small group of men against a single man, with an arm made of metal. They mentioned something about him needing to come back, and from what I understand it progressed to the metal-armed man creating a small bomb."

Needing to come back. Steve mused before he offered a glance to Sam, whose expression suggested that he'd reached the same conclusion. Hydra. Despite having gotten their rear ends thoroughly kicked, there were still stragglers popping up that could still entice new members. Apparently they'd decided to get the Winter Soldier back on their side.

The morons.

Steve and Sam, who was tricked out in an upgraded set of wings, agreed to meet up in an hour's time if neither found anything. Sam could search in the skies while Steve covered the ground. That being said, there was a lot of ground to cover. Steve considered his options and tried to imagine where a pursued Winter Soldier would head in this situation. Did he run from the scene, or was he still being pursued? And why did Hydra think they could take him on at all? Shouldn't he, most of all, know exactly how to take a Hydra operative down? It seemed like a suicide mission, so there had to be a bigger end game than getting the Winter Soldier back. But what? What was he really worth to them?

Steve considered his options again as he scanned the area before he took off in the direction the fire would have traveled if it had continued. That would have been a potentially dangerous avenue if the fire hadn't been stopped, but that aside-instinct would be to run away from a fire. It was the less expected road, and he hoped, the one the resourceful 'Winter Soldier' would have chosen to cover his tracks.

Around fifteen minutes later with no sign of life, he began to wonder if he'd made the right call until he took note of a body several feet away. The neck had been snapped, and the man was clad in all black. He had a holster, but the gun was gone and Steve was sure he knew who had taken it. Steve was going in the right direction, but how far ahead was Bucky? He considered calling Sam over, but in case Bucky had diverted, it was best to let him keep all areas covered for now.

As Steve continued, it became clear that Bucky had indeed been pursued further, despite the operatives he had already killed and the explosion, which only increased his suspicions that there was a greater end game than capturing the Winter Soldier. But even if they were desperate, were they really stupid enough to try taking him on?

His thoughts were interrupted by a bullet that whizzed past his head, and he was on guard in an instant as he whipped his shield out and scanned the area. Steve didn't have long to maintain that position when he found himself attacked from behind by a man with a knife. "Really? That's your best plan?" Steve whirled around and slammed his shield into the man's chest, which sent him sprawling several feet away. He turned back to defend against the shooter from before, startled to see that the matter was already well in hand.

No more than fifteen feet away, the shooter was deftly disarmed and shot through the head with brutal efficiency. And the one who had done it was the very man he had been looking for. The man's gaze slid towards Steve and Steve was startled by what he saw.

It was definitely Bucky, and Bucky hadn't exactly looked like man of the year when they'd last seen each other. But two months had taken quite a toll it seemed. Bucky's hair had grown longer and more ragged, he seemed disheveled and mucked, his nose was bent askew and there were fresh and fading bruises that littered his face as well as a jagged scar down his lip. His clothes were torn and his shoes ragged, not to mention it seemed Bucky had lost some weight, the angles of his face had sharpened and his clothes which had been tightly fitting before were slightly loose.

Steve took a step towards him, his heart aching from the sight. "Bucky-"

Bucky's gaze had been blank on Steve at first, as if he didn't really see him. But when Steve spoke he blinked slowly before his eyes narrowed and he promptly turned and ran.

"Bucky, wait!" Steve was off in pursuit. Finally, finally he had found him. He couldn't let him get away again. At first, it seemed the Winter Soldier would pull another fast one on him, they were both super soldiers and Bucky was probably just fine in the unfamiliar terrain. But then he realized that Bucky seemed...slower, and if he didn't miss his mark, his left leg had a limp. Just what the Hell had happened to him in the past two months?

Steve pushed himself, just that little bit harder, because just a little bit more...and then he had him. He surged forward and tackled the other man down, it seemed like the surest bet to stop him. Steve expected an instant fight, so despite the momentary confusion involved in their rolling bodies, he managed to wind up straddling Bucky's waist as he pinned his arms above his head. It was easier than he'd expected, and while Bucky jerked and writhed beneath him a moment, it seemed more like instinct that moved him than actual desire. Bucky's eyes were focused on Steve, so intently it was almost unnerving, but they had a glazed look that was unfamiliar to him both for Bucky and for the Winter Soldier.

"Buck...?"

Bucky stared up at him with clenched fists and a blank expression, and then finally mumbled something Steve couldn't catch.

"Whad'ja say?"

There was a brief silence before Bucky snarled. "Not my name!" He surged forward, his strength combined with Steve's off-guard moment combined to allow him to throw Steve off.

But Steve caught him by a fistful of tattered shirt and made a move to kick him. Bucky beat him to the punch and landed a whallop on his head. But the force of it didn't seem quite up to par, and Steve jumped up to land a firm punch to Bucky's gut. He had hoped it would knock the wind out of him a bit, what he didn't expect was to find his fist stained red with blood, or for Bucky to gasp and stumble backwards. Steve hadn't noticed it through Bucky's black clothes, but it seemed that at some point Bucky had been stabbed and had simply chosen to ignore it. Likely something important had been stabbed, given Bucky's actual reaction of pain, and in Winter Soldier fashion Bucky had been inhumanly ignoring it.

"Buck! You're hurt!" Steve stepped forward to grip Bucky's shoulder and he tried to meet the other's gaze. "Let me take you to a hospital. We gotta get you help."

"The patient is prepped for the procedure, take him to the hospital wing. Give him a sedative to help the muscle spasms when you attach it."

Bucky flexed his metallic arm, the 'it', reflexively.

"Yeagh!" The shout was inhuman, painful and choking, and the man barely realized it was his own as fragments of thoughts became disjointed to sensations loosely associated with words in his fractured mind. Who was he? What was he? What was this? Pain. Pain. The scalpel went in. The knife. Cold metal. Pain. A scream. Pain. Burning. Bleeding. Dying. Stop it. Please. Pain. Click. Shock. Pain-

"No" Bucky's next movement was better than par as he rammed a sharp elbow into Steve's face and jerked his head back. It was enough to actually make his nose bleed a little before Bucky delivered a punishing blow to his stomach that nearly knocked the wind out of him. His eyes were wild and frantic as he charged Steve and dug dirty, jagged nails into his throat as he tried to break his neck.

Whatever Bucky was, he was even less stable or sane than the last time Steve had seen him, and he was currently bleeding out despite his attempts to disregard it. He had to act fast-for Bucky's sake. "Sorry about this, pal." he said through gritted teeth before he aimed a light punch to Bucky's wounded stomach, enough to get the other to release him a bit. In that moment of slight distraction, he aimed his own punch at Bucky's head and gave him a punch that might have snapped the neck of a regular man. If Bucky, or rather, the Winter Soldier were at his best it might not have connected or worked. But whatever was wrong with Bucky, when punched, his eyes widened before they closed and he fell slack, unconscious as Steve had hoped.

Steve caught him before he hit the ground, and carefully hefted the other man up. He had had close contact to the other, when he'd had to choke him out on the heli-carrier, and he was certain that Bucky's frame was slightly smaller. Had he been starving himself? But there wasn't time to dwell on that as he pulled out his cell and called Sam.

"Go ahead, Cap."

"I'm about five miles west of the start point, I need the jet and a medical team asap."

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, it's not for me...I've got him."

A moment later the call ended and Steve braced himself for what he expected to be a short wait. He looked down at the disheveled man in his arms, and the pang in his heart was accompanied by a familiar brush of memories. Steve had had too much time to think on those memories, it seemed.

"Ow! Careful where ya stick those!" Sixteen-year old Bucky complained. He'd have a nice shiner on his cheek, to say nothing of the bloody nose he'd gotten defending Steve from a group of bullies. Four on one. And Bucky had knocked all their blocks off, so to speak.

Steve shoved the other tissue into Bucky's nose anyway, with maybe a little more force than was necessary. "Don't be such a baby, it's your own fault."

Bucky winced and scoffed as he knuckled Steve's ear a bit. "Whose fault was it, punk?"

Steve's eyes narrowed as he shoved Bucky's hand away. "Don't treat me like a kid! I coulda taken care of it myself!" he snapped, and Bucky blinked before Steve scowled and turned away. "Forget it."

"Hey...I said hey!" Bucky rose and caught Steve by the arm. Steve tried to pull away, but Bucky was by far the stronger as he held him fast. "What's your problem?"

"Maybe you're my problem!" Steve snapped, and Bucky's eyes flashed with hurt a moment, and Steve regretted his words instantly. Bucky wasn't heartless by any means, but neither did he let anything phase him, he lived aloof despite his playful attitude. Steve was one of the few people that could get past that, and he hated to be the cause of pain on Bucky's part. Which was exactly the real problem.

Bucky's expression suggested that a biting remark was in Steve's future. But in the end he just sighed and punched his fist gently to Steve's cheek, where he let it rest. "I know ya wanna fight your own fights, Steve. But you can't expect me to stand back and let those bastards go at you. You're my best friend, there's nothin' I wouldn't do for ya, you know that."

Steve's expression softened before it became pained. His voice was laced with frustration as he admitted. "It's not about me fighting...not just about that...it's the same for me, idiot. I...I wanna be able to watch your back too. I should be able to do that much for my best friend, at least."

Understanding dawned and Bucky chucked slightly as his gaze softened and became fond. Another side of Bucky that Steve was one of very few to see. He lifted his hand from Steve's cheek to Steve's hair as he ruffled it affectionately. "Dummy. You do more for me than I do for you, trust me. You keep me on the straight and narrow." Steve snorted, and Bucky shook his head. "No, I mean it. If I didn't have you, I wouldn't...it just wouldn't be the same."

"Yeah, you wouldn't get laughed at for hanging out with the neighborhood freak." Steve said bitterly.

Bucky was a bit taken aback to hear his usually optimistic and never-say-die friend speaking so low of himself. He frowned before he flicked Steve's head, none too gently.

"Hey-"

Steve's protest was cut off as Bucky shoved Steve back onto his bed before he plunked down beside him and made them eye level. "Now, you listen to me, Steve Rogers. You're not a freak, you're my best damned friend. Yeah, I could hang out with other people, but it wouldn't be the same. Because none of them would be you. None of them could hold a candle to ya. You got more in here-" he punched the area above Steve's heart lightly, "Than all those bastards combined. And you got what's up here-" he tapped Steve's head. "You could do anything you wanted, ya know? I'm not like that. If we weren't living in a neighborhood of idiots, it might be you gettin' laughed at for hanging out with me. I wouldn't care though. They don't mean a damn thing to me. You do. Okay? You're like...you're like a brother to me, Steve..." he trailed off softly, before his eyes narrowed and he growled. "And if ya ever make me say something this freaking girly again, I swear, I will punch you." he held up a threatening finger, pleased when Steve after a moment of looking stunned, broke into a smile.

"Bucky...I had no idea you were such a sweetheart." Steve crooned, and Bucky shot him a glare before Steve's small form embraced Bucky's larger one. Bucky seemed surprised, and he huffed, but in the end his arms encircled Steve as he hugged the boy tightly. Steve gripped his best friend a moment before he said softly. "I know you're just looking out for me...I just wish..."

"I know, pal." Bucky said gently, and he did. The same way Steve knew the real Bucky, the one few knew, Bucky knew the real Steve too. And moreover, actually cared about him.

"Thanks, Buck...for everything, really...you're like a brother to me to..."

Silence stretched on for a moment, and he could practically feel Bucky's smile. Steve was sure that it mirrored his own. But the moment past and the hug grew comfortably awkward. Steve pulled away and playfully knuckled Bucky's head as he drawled. "And you were wrong. You've got a pretty good head on your shoulders yourself. For being you, I mean." Steve said, playfully matter-of-fact.

Bucky lifted a brow as he released Steve, his hand lingered on his friend's shoulder a moment, wanting to be sure that Steve was really okay and not just pretending. But as the other teased him, he knew he must have gotten through. Steve was himself again, and all was right with the world. "When I said you 'got what's up here', I meant hot-air. You got that, right?" he teased back.

Steve snorted, and the two shared a look that had them dissolving into laughter. It was just one of those carefree, warm moments, and the pair laughed together until they could hardly breathe, red-faced and watery-eyed.

"Thanks, Buck." Steve finally said in a laughing exhale.

Bucky grinned. "Anytime, pal."

The jet touched down about fourty feet off in a large clearing, right about as Falcon dropped down beside him. It wasn't easy manuevering in a forest, but Falcon was the expert 'not-pilot', after all.

Steve took one last glance at Bucky, at what lay between them. And he was resolute in at least one thing: he was going to save Bucky Barnes, whatever it took.

This time, I'll have your back, pal...

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I didn't plan on that last flashback. Originally, I was going to stop at 'I've got him', but that seemed a poor ending and I wanted to get Steve's thoughts on the moment. So there would be a short flashback highlighting Bucky and Steve's mutual devotion, and Steve's desire to be stronger to protect his best friend. It'll be a bit of a theme later on. So it worked out. And it was cute and fun to write. And Bucky went and exceeded my expectations in saying just the right thing in his own, tough guy kind of way. XD This could have been a one-shot, but naahh, I've got plans for these boys. Bwahaha! Reviews are like verbal hugs, they feel my soul and inspire me to write! Enjoy!~ Witchy~