A/N| Bucky's stuck in my head and I don't know what to do with him up there. Normal people get songs stuck in their head. What do I get? Movies.
This isn't intended as a romantic Steve/Bucky fic but fans of the pairing can probably read it that way if they prefer. (I see them as a bromance, but it's not a stretch to see how people make the romantic leap).
Be warned Bucky is somewhat traumatized through the majority of this chapter. Hey, he can't be badass all the time.

"Thanks for the info, Tony."

"Sure you don't need a hand? I could put on the suit, be there before sunup."

"He'll ghost again if I wait. Besides, I need to do this alone."

"Alone, just you and Sam?"

"You know what I mean." Steve grumbled. "The team has bigger problems than the ghosts from my past. Let me know how Bruce's mission goes, okay?"

"Romanov's got her eye on him, so he won't dare step heavy. Peace out, Cap."

Steve Rogers tapped the com link and turned to look at Sam, watchfully scanning the dark horizon with his goggles for night vision. He felt a wave of affection for the friend who had stood by him all these months. Dear loyal Sam, who could never stop himself from standing up for the underdog, who always knew the right way to do things, who he could always rely on.
And yet... Sam wasn't Bucky. He didn't fill the empty space in Steve's heart that had settled in permanently after Bucky fell from the train.

That was the problem. Steve had been good about not living in the past... until Bucky came back. Except he wasn't his Bucky, not anymore.

"Wheels up, SW. Tony found us a sighting - there's been a fight in the CBD, reports of a man with a metal arm."

"Who's he fighting?"

"Nobody's sure."

"I'm on it. Recon first, or engage?"

"I won't be far behind you - stay out of reach until I get there. But don't loose him."

"See you there, Captain."

Sam had his wings on - willingly repaired by Tony, ever eager to get his hands on new tech. Naturally Tony had been all for adding in strobe lighting, flares, a Jarvis com-link and heat-seeking missiles, but Sam convinced him to stick with the more traditional model. Now the impressive wings flicked open and Sam leaped effortlessly to the rail of the bridge and jumped into the night. Steve opted for his traditional form of terrain-based transportation - a bike.

It was late enough that there weren't many lines outside the nightclubs, so the screams were easy to track even if Sam hadn't been showing him the path overhead. Steve nearly lost his grip on the handlebars when he saw Bucky standing in the middle of a street, the neon lights reflecting bright colours down his metal arm. He was lashing out at - something. Even Steve, with his better than twenty-twenty vision, was having a hard him making it out. As best he could tell, it seemed to be a whirlwind, around the same height as a man, whipping around Bucky in a blur as the Winter Soldier lashed out in frustration with his metal arm.

He was bleeding. As Steve gunned the bike, he saw a flash of steel not connected to his best friend and heard flesh rip. A knife - the whirlwind was attacking Bucky, cutting him open one slice at a time. A gash under Bucky's eye gave the warped impression he was weeping blood... except Bucky didn't cry.

"Buck!" Steve ditched the bike, sprang to get his old friend's back. He was moving at half-speed, the asphalt speckled with his blood. There was a flash of recognition and something that may have been a cross between fury and relief - then they were fighting together, trying to corner the endlessly moving blur of motion between them.

"Sam!"

"On it!"

The Falcon swooped in, providing a trio of targets to force the whirlwind to give in. For the briefest second Steve thought he caught a glimpse of a scowling human face in the shifting fury, then Bucky was knocked down, staying down, the blur vanishing.

"Buck!" Steve dived into the ground so hard if he'd been normal he would have torn open his knees and palms. He ducked the half-hearted punch aimed at his face, looking into Bucky's weary eyes, and wondered if he'd ever be able to get through to him without Bucky lashing out at him.

Some of the knife wounds were only superficial - but there were three that were more serious, and Steve applied pressure to them until Sam appeared with the first aid-kit, then stood watchfully over the two of them with his wings extended protectively, occasionally warning the small crowd to stay back.

"You found me." It was the voice of the Winter Soldier, not Bucky, and in decidedly an unfriendly tone. But Steve was so relieved to hear him speak instead of pass out, he didn't care. "Don't move, Buck. I got you."

"I'd kill you if our places were reversed." The words were slurred. Steve didn't flinch.

"You wouldn't. You didn't. You're still my friend, Bucky Barnes, and something in you remembers it or I'd have drowned that day."

Bucky's eyes slid closed. He could heal fast, but not all at once. He forced his body to stay conscious. It was hard to believe that after months of avoiding Captain America, here he was now, fully suited up and trying to save his life.

He remembered the day on the helicarrier.

I'm not fighting you. You're my friend." The stubborn insistence of Rogers' voice. The way he'd launched himself at him, taken him down. "You're my mission!" He'd yelled at Rogers, furious, trying to convince himself.

"Then finish it. Because I'm with you... til the end of the line."

The Winter Soldier froze, fist raised. The words didn't click - they triggered no latent memory from the past. But he knew inherently that they should. The words meant something important to him. He just couldn't remember what, and the pain of trying to remember locked his muscles in place.

The words matched the honesty in Steve Rogers' face.

The flashback triggered an enormous surge of painful pressure through Bucky's mind, a thousand migraines wielding drums and hammers inside his skull. He'd first felt that... that he recalled... that day on the helicarrier, when he'd faced Steve on the bridge. He could only assume it was either a side effect of Hydra's brainwashing or some sort of block they'd deliberately introduced, to prevent him accessing any subconscious memories of his past life. He groaned, the pain worse than any of his knife wounds. The sound tore at Steve's heart.

"Should'a left me under that beam."

"Out of the question." Steve pressure-bandaged one of the worst stab wounds, on Bucky's flesh arm.

"Don't... understand. I can't be fixed."

"You'd be surprised. I'm going to get you to some friends who can help."

"The man.. you knew... is... dead." Speaking was beyond painful now. Being this close to Steve, hearing his voice, familiar-but-not, was triggering the pain reflex like nothing before. "Died falling off... train. I'm not him... anymore..."

Steve stopped tending to his wounds long enough to peer down into the eyes of the Winter Soldier. They were still the same - dark blue, far darker than Steve's own - but they were so very, very different too. Colder. Unforgiving. Filled with so much pain it hurt Steve to look into them.

"My Bucky is still in you." Steve insisted. Stubborn, oh so stubborn. He always had been stubborn, thought Bucky weakly. He had lost too much blood. He couldn't fight the exhaustion anymore. He tried to fight Steve instead, his metal fist clenching, taking another swing, but he wasn't really surprised with Rogers caught his hand. It was tantamount to how much blood he'd lost that his opponent - friend - enemy - mission - pushed his arm back down with no visible effort. Trying to strike Steve brought on a fresh wave of pain and he couldn't handle it anymore - he couldn't fight him. Couldn't be close to him... couldn't stay away from him, he'd tried that option and here that was now. What else could he do?

"I'll prove it to you. You'll be okay. I'll look after you, Buck."

The dark blue eyes closed. Sam paced restlessly a tight circuit around them. "Help's on the way." Steve glanced at their spectators, then pulled Bucky's metal arm over his shoulders and lifted his friend, cradling him like something precious.

"We'll meet them on the way. Let's get him out of here - lead the way, Sam."

Maria organized treatment the way she always did - swiftly and efficiently, using the best of Stark's medical team, many of whom had been recruited from SHIELD after their collapse. (Most had been in on Nick Fury's 'death'). Bucky was unconscious through the operation to repair his collapsed lung, and once he was stable, still unwoken, Steve insisted on taking him from the small hospital to the Avengers Tower, where there was no way that press, public or enemies could breach the defense system to get to them.

Steve refused to leave Bucky's bed in the days following his recovery. Maria had warned there seemed to be significant activity going on inside Bucky's mind according to the next-gen scans that had been run on him. "It's almost like a form of electricity - some sort of organic static that's playing havoc inside his head. How he tolerates it when he's awake I don't know - he must be in constant pain for however long it lasts."

Jane, who could forgive anyone, was the one to bring him meals. She and Thor had been off on one of their round-the-world trips (Travel courtesy of Mjölnir airways) but had returned so they could help support Steve once they heard about Bucky. She even helped changed Bucky's dressings, while Steve helped her and tried to tune out both her sympathetic chatter and the watchful gaze of Thor, who would hardly allow his fiance anywhere near an assassin unsupervised. Tony and Pepper dropped by to offer company, but Steve was lost in thoughts of the past, BuckyBuckyBucky rattling around his mind in an endless loop, and they eventually left when they ran out of ways to coax Steve into talking to them.

It was two in the morning, with everything quiet and the city lights dimmed far below them, when Bucky woke up. He didn't speak, but Steve had woken at the purposeful sound of motion and found him sitting up, the dark blue eyes open for the first time in three days.

"Hey." Steve's voice was just above a whisper, although the room was soundproof and the other Avengers didn't even sleep on the same floor as the medical wing. "How are you feeling?"

Bucky's gaze met his, and Steve flinched. The pain had returned full-force, the same expression from the helicarier, only amplified. Steve felt as if it were inside his own mind, wondered if it hurt Bucky to look at him the way it did to see his old friend in this much pain.

"You're in the Avengers tower, our home base. No S.H.I.E.L.D., no Hydra, just us. You've been out for three days. You're healing, and the stitches all came out yesterday. Medics had to repair your lung, so it's probably still tender."

Still nothing from Bucky, though he stared at Steve with the same desperate pain radiating from him. Steve couldn't bear to see him like this. Without thinking he reached out and rested his hand on Bucky's forehead, just the way he would have back in the old days if he wasn't feeling well. Bucky blinked, but he didn't lash out as Steve half expected. He was burning up. There was a dried smear of blood underneath the cut on his face. Steve hadn't noticed how bloodied and dirty his friend was. "We need to get you cleaned up now you're awake. Can you get up?"

Finally, a tiny response. Bucky nodded, just once. He pushed the covers on the bed aside, then blinked as if he'd forgotten the next step. Steve held out his hand, still expecting a black eye for thanks, but to his amazement Bucky accepted his help and allowed Steve to support him as he stood. The hope began to build inside him. Maybe his Bucky was really in there, did still need him in some tiny way. Bucky swayed, but stayed on his feet. Steve cautiously put an arm behind his shoulders, taking some of Bucky's weight. The metal arm was cold to contact, in contrast to the rest of Bucky's skin which was burning up. "Come on, this way." He tried not to notice the way Bucky flinched at the sound of his voice.

The doctors had cut Bucky out of the top of his uniform when they patched him up, leaving him in a button-up hospital gown top that Steve removed without resistance when Bucky showed no signs of doing so himself, just slumped against the shower doorframe looking more lost than anyone had a right to. Steve almost wished for the aggressive assassin to rear his head again. Fighting and reasoning, he could handle, but he didn't know what to do with this subdued shadow of his old friend. He didn't blush removing Bucky's pants or pushing him gently into a hot shower - they had been friends a long time and had seen the other without clothes before now. But still, Steve wasn't prepared to see what Bucky had been through since then. It wasn't just the still-fresh knife injuries that made him stare. Bucky's body was littered with the scars of other people's wars, mapped out mostly on his chest and arm with a few extending down to his legs. As the first torrent of water hit him and washed off a layer of grime and blood, Steve grabbed a washcloth and stripped down to his boxers to scrub the most stubborn stains from his friend's skin. He was careful around the new injuries, dabbing the dried blood carefully away, sometimes with only his fingertips. Bucky was in enough pain.

He waited for the rage to hit, for him to get hurtled through the tiled wall, but it never happened. Bucky just stood there, head bowed, broken. Even when Steve tilted his chin up to the light so he could wash his face, there was no response.

Once he was clean, Steve turned the water off and guided Bucky to stand dripping on a bathmat while Steve dried him off. Once Bucky had a towel around his waist, Steve took a second and sat him down on the wide edge of the bath to dry his oddly long hair, still unfamiliar when the Bucky of his memory had always kept it close-cropped. He tried to be careful, but it was hopelessly tangled. Steve finally draped the second towel around Bucky's neck and found a brush to deal with the knots, and still as he brushed there was no fighting response, though it took an age to work through each snarl. Steve did so gently, pulling the worst tangles apart with his fingers before brushing the rest through. Bucky barely blinked. Steve had to leave him to find clean clothes - he got boxers, a t-shirt and shorts of his own - and Bucky was in the same place when he returned, hair now falling in soft waves around his face. Steve dressed him and then took him out of the hospital wing, up two floors and into a sparse but spacious spare room, sitting him on the bed. Bucky looked around, made a conscious move to press his metal hand against his forehead with a grimace, then slumped back into the pillows, though his eyes stayed open. Lost. Pleading. Steve reached out and took the closer hand - it was the metal one - and squeezed Bucky's fingers tightly.

"Whatever you're going through, you don't have to go through it alone. I should have come looking for you after the train, and I'm sorry. This time, I'm here for you, Buck - to stay."