This fic was written based on a short section of another story I'm writing. I thought it'd be a nice break from writing that story...10k maximum...well the first chapter alone is 6k which can tell you how much I underestimated. Some of the headcanons are the same as the larger story but others aren't; this is an independent AU.

Warnings for each chapter will be in the notes. I didn't want to use the tags for all of them and not every warning is for every chapter. Depiction = portrayed in-story and described by the narrator; description = in-depth explanation by a character or narrator; mention = alluded to/said in passing by a character or narrator.

Title is from "The Old Astronomer" by Sarah Williams.

Image from here: [bit] [.ly] /1QZOtIf

(Depictions of violence; descriptions of torture and experimentation; mentions of suicide attempts.)

The tip had come from a lab assistant working under Arnim Zola. Director Carter had placed him there purposefully, hiding the source of his assignment to the lab, with instructions to update her weekly on his activities and actions. She still didn't trust the Hydra scientist, but his claims that he cared only for the science had convinced the fools in Washington to override her rejection and assign him to SHIELD.

The assistant's information was vague – "he draws schematics on blank paper and keeps people from looking at them" – but enough for Carter to convince her co-director, Howard Stark, to place a tail on him. Zola was violating his contract with SHIELD by keeping designs to himself, and they were well within their bounds to have him surveilled.

Still, it took almost a year and a half for the surveillance to pay off. When Carter finally dragged Zola in for questioning – her lieutenants protesting heavily, because they'd all fallen for his facade of honesty – he spent thirty minutes playing dumb before snapping and revealing just enough to leave no questions in anyone's minds about his guilt. He had then bit the cyanide capsule in his teeth, foamed at the mouth for the requisite ten seconds and died in the interrogation room.

They entire agency had given Director Carter wide latitude after that. "It's like you radiate anger," Angie explained to her over dinner the night after Zola died. "They're avoiding you because they know you were right and they're scared you'll go after them for the mess."

The lab assistant, meanwhile, received a commendation and a raise.

Carter turned her director's duties over the Stark – he was none too pleased about the increased load and complained loudly and constantly about it – and retained only her authority as she chased down leads and methodically took down the Hydra cell Zola had been building in the states.

Eight days in, a Hydra operative tried to kill her – "tried" because she impaled him with a chair leg before he succeeded. Unfortunately someone told Congress and she was subpoenaed to explain her actions.

"Ms. Carter –"

"Director, senator. You yourself voted for my appointment, I'm surprised you've forgotten my title."

The senator sighed. "Director Carter, you've taken an incredible number of risks for the position you hold –"

"I am the operational director of SHIELD. I plan and lead individual operations at my discretion."

"And if those operations put you in the line of fire –"

"– then I'm doing my job, Senator Greeman. Now if you're done interfering with one of my investigations, then I'd like to get back to it."

The congressman sighed, consulted his fellows on the committee and told her she could go.

They found the base only a few days later.

Agent O'Molloy had traced the system that Zola and three other scientists – one each in SHIELD, the FBI and an as-of-yet unidentified agency that immediately torched the third man's apartment when O'Molloy arrested him – had used to communicate with the men and women they'd recruited into the "new Hydra", as one compromised agent had told Carter in an interrogation.

"Seven teams," she told the agents assembled in front of her. "Teams one and two will secure sections A, B and C. Team three will locate and secure the technological equipment. Four, find any prisoners there may be. Section H, probably. That's where Zola would put them.

"Five and six are with me, securing D, F and G. Seven, the record rooms will probably be in E. Keep them from being torched. This isn't grade school, Tang."

Agent Tang lowered his raised hand. "Uh, how do you know where things'll be, ma'am?"

"The same way we have the building's layout. It's an abandoned factory complex and the plans are on government record. They never bothered to remove them from the local courthouse."

What she left out: she'd fought Hydra for nearly two years during the war and knew how Zola thought. But every agent in SHIELD was already well aware of her credentials.

"Any prisoners they have, you leave in their cells until I arrive." She'd learned her lesson about deceptive captives while tackling Leviathan; Johann Fennhoff had killed her boss, after all. "No exceptions."

"Ma'am?" asked another agent – Votto, one of the only women Carter had convinced to join. She was dead-set against letting SHIELD become just another boy's club but very few women found the job's demands acceptable. "Why is Director Stark here?"

"For the technology. He's with team three. My orders overrule his during the mission. Get to your positions."

They stormed the base quietly, choosing a stealth approach to keep Hydra from resorting to self-destruction and taking half of SHIELD with them. Because that was the situation: despite Carter and Stark's best efforts they'd barely recruited or kept on enough agents to fill two offices – one in New York City and a required one in the capital, DC. Peggy had tried to spare every agent she could afford to but the size of this complex required a large team to properly secure it.

Team one reported minimal resistance in what they'd identified as the barracks, but team two had a more difficult time capturing the armory. Teams five and six easily secured their objectives and Carter felt confident they could handle going through the buildings room by room, so she jumped between captured buildings until team four radioed in, requesting her presence.

She arrived at one of the buildings in the center with one agent who doubled as radio man and guard, and found the team four's lead agent, Wietsma, waiting for her at an entrance.

"The prisoners?" she asked as they walked through the hallway.

"Almost all dead."

" 'Almost all'?"

"There's one still alive," Wietsma reported. "He looks like shit. We're getting a medic."

"You entered the cell?"

"No, ma'am. There's a hole in the door. He's chained to the wall so we think it's safe to go in, but..."

But she had ordered them not to and so they left the room alone. It had taken far too long for Director Carter to establish her authority among the mass of mostly male agents under her, but now they followed her orders almost unconditionally and it was honestly a greater relief than she'd imagined it would be.

They stopped in front of a closed door, labelled M148, and Carter gestured for it to be opened.

She recognized the man inside immediately.

"Two of you on the doors, the rest of you join the other units. Yoshida, go find that medic."

"Ma'am –" said Yoshida, "what's going on?"

Carter looked back into the room and shook her head. "I know who he is." She noticed a flash of light reflected inside the room and realized it was coming from the man himself – or rather a piece of metal attached to his arm. "Fetch Stark as well. Tell him it's about what we lost on the train."

"The – 'lost on the train', ma'am?"

"He'll understand. Go."

Yoshida nodded and left, and Peggy Carter turned her attention to the prisoner. She walked in, conscious that he was watching her – wary, hostile, still as stone – and bent her knees to get to his level.

He looked at her like she was a ghost – as if he finally had proof he was going insane.

"Barnes, dammit," she muttered, "say something."

His eyes cleared. "Well, you're a sight for sore eyes," he quipped, though his voice was hoarse and cracking. "Even if I'm hallucinating."

"I'm not real? I'm insulted."

"Hey, I didn't say you weren't real," he told her, grinning weakly. "Just that I think you're not real."

His hair was caked in blood, he shivered where he sat, his face was hollow, his left arm and hand seemed to be covered in some kind of metal and he was shackled at the wrists, ankles and neck to the wall – and still he smiled.

"There's a difference?"

"Small but important one."

Director Carter turned around to look at one of the agents guarding the door. "Water and bolt cutters," she told him, "now."

She heard the patter of footsteps on concrete, and returned to the sergeant to inspect his bonds. The ones on his hands were held together by a thick strip of metal – keeping his hands a half-foot apart – as were the ones on his feet. "They're very tight – and this thing covering your arm – it's probably all infected underneath..."

Barnes shook his head. "Nah. The arm's gone, this is something he came up with to replace it." She looked up and he took a deep breath. "Holy shit."

"What?"

"I just – wow. I stopped thinking I'd ever get out of here. Gimme a sec."

Peggy smiled – honestly, not the tight grimace she usually held as director – and said, "I suppose today's your lucky day. Now, why isn't your arm infected? How did you survive that fall?"

"Well, uh – d'you remember in forty-three, that Hydra camp?"

"Yes – Zola had been experimenting on prisoners but he hadn't gotten started with you yet –"

"Is that what Steve said? – I didn't remember. Yeah, well, that's bullshit." He laughed – a quiet, regretful chuckle. "Most guys didn't make it past twenty-four hours, but somehow..."

"How long?"

"At least two days."

" 'At least'?"

"I wasn't paying attention to the clock, Peg."

He used Steve's nickname for her so casually, despite how little true interaction – alone, away from the Captain – they'd had with each other in the year and a half they'd served together.

"You never displayed any changes –"

"It wasn't much, just... better eyesight, a little stronger. I kinda ignored it."

"And that's still –"

"No. He made more of it and... and it hurt." Bucky coughed. "So, uh – this is Hydra, I'm guessing Steve'd come –"

"He died," said Howard Stark. Peggy turned and found him in the doorway, holding the bolt cutters she'd requested, his expression stunned. "Four days after you did."

"How?"

Stark walked into the room, bending down across from his co-director. "Forgot he didn't know how to fly a plane."

When Barnes had died, Steve's reaction had been to try to get drunk to drown the pain. Peggy hadn't known Bucky so well, but she supposed his reaction would be similar.

She was surprised, then, when he leaned back against the wall and muttered, "What a fucking surprise. Stupid punk. Where'd it happen?"

"We can talk later," said Peggy. "Let's get you out of here." She eyed the bolt cutters and told Stark, "Those won't work. The cuffs are too tight."

"Not around his neck. Maybe a blowtorch for the other ones..."

"Just – get his head free first, huh?"

"Yeah – uh, okay, let's see..."

Peggy caught sight of Bucky's expression when he saw the bolt cutters and said, "Stark, stop. Get those away from him."

"All right, then do you have a suggestion for how to get these damn things off?"

She looked at Bucky, and he held her gaze. "Can you do it?"

"Y'know," he told her, "I'm still not sure my brain isn't making you up."

"What – we're not hallucinations, Barnes," said Stark.

"No offense, but that sounds like something a hallucination would say."

"Bucky," Peggy said softly, "please try."

Barnes looked down at his cuffs and muttered, "What the hell. Can't get more screwed than I already am." He twisted his arms, grimacing as the metal strip in between the cuffs warped and finally broke. He immediately reached for the collar, wrapped both hands around it and snapped the thing off.

Stark gaped and Bucky told him, "I've been working on the cuffs long as I've been in here. Not like I broke 'em from nothing."

"Zola was exposing POWs to his serum at that camp Steve destroyed," explained Peggy, interpreting the expression on her co-director's face better than Bucky had. "Barnes was the last one taken before Steve showed up. That's how he survived."

"Oh. Okay," said Stark, "I guess."

"Cut the rest of them and find that medic," she ordered Howard. "The other teams need my supervision. Is there anything I need to know about this complex, Barnes?"

He thought for a moment. "They keep the records in two rooms near the exit. There's one big room with all of his... tools. And they have an operating theater. And, Peg – I'm not the only one who went in there."

That was a worrying statement, Peggy thought, but she pushed it out of her mind. "Well, they're all dead so we don't have to worry about that."

Director Carter returned to the agents waiting outside. "Get Agent Rosario on the radio," she told her guard. She relayed the information Barnes had given her and ordered teams one and five to reinforce three and seven, respectively.

"Director..." said one of the agents from team four – name of Temple, a woman. "You said 'Barnes'. Is that really –"

"Yes."

"How did he – if you don't mind me asking, how did he survive?"

"Zola had his ways," she said simply.

Temple accepted Carter's explanation with a knowing nod and stepped back. SHIELD's agents had already begun to villainize the Hydra scientist, or so Daniel Sousa had informed her after her appearance in front of Congress, and the rumor mill had probably commenced its aggrandizement of Zola and his talents.

Carter was waiting for an update from team one – she would go out to them herself but didn't want to leave Barnes – when another voice came over the radio: "We've got a runner," the man reported. "Just entered building M."

"What building is this?" Carter asked Stark's guard.

"Uh, M. Oh, shit."

"What entrance?" asked her radio man.

The reply was, "Southeast," though Carter knew it'd be no help. They didn't know the layout of this building well enough to ascertain the hostile's path to them, and anyways none of them had a compass on-hand to even find his relative location.

"Temple and Reinfeldt" – her guard – "to my left. Tang, with me down to the right. Kovacs" – Stark's guard – "in the room with Stark and Barnes."

There was a crowbar on the ground, left probably by someone in team four. She picked it up and handed it to Agent Kovacs. "Give this to Stark. Keep against the close wall so the hostile can't see you. Mute the radio equipment and give it also to Stark."

They assumed their positions at either ends of the hallway. The left end hit a perpendicular hallway in a T-shape and the right turned at a ninety-degree angle; Carter had taken with her who she'd judged to be the least experienced of her agents present and positioned herself on the outside of the corner.

Unfortunately the intruder came from the other direction. Temple shot thrice and Reinfeldt four times – calling Carter and Tang's attention to them – before a breathtakingly large man reached them. He grabbed Temple by the throat and tossed her against the wall, then swatted Reinfeldt like a mosquito when the agent kept firing.

The giant picked Reinfeldt up and looked ready to crush his neck. Carter held Tang's hand back as he raised his gun. "You could hit Reinfeldt," she told him. "Wait."

"I know, but... we can't let him kill him, ma'am."

"I know. Hey, meathead!" she called.

The giant turned to look at Carter. She raised her arms up and to the side – come here. "If you want a real fight, I'm waiting over here."

He dropped Reinfeldt on the ground and walked towards them – Tang made a noise like a whimper but held his gun steady as he shot twice, to no effect – but then stopped by a door and entered it instead of confronting Carter.

She rushed towards him, directing Tang to look after the fallen agents, and swore silently: he'd gone into 148. Just before reached the open door she heard a crack – a few seconds later a clang – and immediately after a thump.

Barnes stood inside the door, holding the crowbar – bent, now, slightly – in his metal hand and standing over the prone giant. His uncut hair stuck to his face, his jaw, but it couldn't hide the expression he held: satisfaction, pleasure – and hate.

He looked up, at the door – at Peggy – and held her gaze for a long moment before collapsing onto the ground.

Carter didn't trust Stark to properly supervise the detainment and processing of the Hydra operatives they'd captured, so she sent him off with Barnes and did the supervision herself. Despite Howard's claims to the contrary, she knew how to inventory the various pieces of unknown technology that he would want to look at later.

She also was wary of leaving him with the experimental explosives that team two had found in the armory. Zola's notes were in German so she'd need a proper translator to look at them, but one of her agents who roughly understood the language said they were comparable to TNT and that was enough for her to lock them down.

She was inspecting an inventory list of firearms when a voice in front of her said, "I got a call at the station from Stark. He wanted to talk to you."

Carter looked up and found Agent Sousa leaning against the wall. "Take a message."

"That's what I told him you'd say." He pulled out a piece of paper and limped over to give it to her. "Stark says he decided against the Bronx hospital and 'knows a guy' at Johns Hopkins."

"What?"

"Yeah, I told him you'd have a problem with that. Then he went off on some rant about how Hopkins is better but I stopped listening to the reasons. The cops found it funny that I could just ignore my boss. The sheriff didn't, though."

Peggy stifled a laugh, picturing the local police station full of cops, wide-eyed, watching Sousa holding the telephone receiver away from his ear as Howard Stark gabbed.

The agent grinned, but it quickly faded. "Peg – I heard the rumors. Is it true, is it actually Barnes?"

She sighed. "Yes. Did Stark have an update on his condition?"

"Only that he kept throwing up whenever they tried to get food in him. They were doing x-rays when I finally convinced the director to hang up."

"Security?"

"Pulled some guys from DC. How long are we gonna keep this under wraps?"

Carter looked over at the other two agents checking inventory – or pretending to, and probably instead listening to her and her second. "Go take a bathroom break," she told them.

After they'd shut the door behind them she told Sousa, "Until I'm sure Hydra did nothing to him mentally that can't be reversed."

"But I heard he took down Meathead. And you served with him in Europe too. You talked to him, can't you tell?"

"We worked out of the same field office but we didn't interact that often. And, in case you've forgotten, I've preferred not to rely on my first impressions since that time when a Russian assassin lived undetected next door to me for weeks."

Sousa winced at the memory of one of the people who'd murdered their old boss. "Point taken. D'you wanna take a break?"

"I'll rest when I'm done."

"...And I just won five bucks from the fellas in team six."

She glared at him but he only smiled smugly in return. Quite honestly they'd been getting along much better since he'd asked her to dinner two years ago and she turned him down; now they could work together without his puppy-dog eyes and her guilty-ridden annoyance.

Peggy had chosen him as her second-in-command when she'd been appointed co-director, and also set him up with his now-fiancée. She considered him a friend and even tolerated his teasing about her seeming addiction to her job.

"Good. You can buy Harriet a longer veil now."

He frowned. "She wants a veil? I thought she didn't want a veil. How do you know she wants a veil?"

"She told Angela she wanted a veil. Angie told me, and to tell you to pay attention to your fiancée's wedding plans before she spends a hundred dollars more than you'd budgeted, because she's not sure how much more talk of garlands and appetizers she can take."

"I'll call her when we get back to the city. Do you need help with this?"

"Just finishing it now. Do the locals need any more liaising or can you supervise transporting the prisoners to detainment?"

"Cops are all taken care of so I'm free. Would appreciate an explanation on why you keep giving me liaison duties, though."

Carter looked up at Sousa. "You're affable," she told him. "SHIELD is a shadow agency and you're third-in-command, and you walk with a limp. Makes us seem tame compared to Hoover's boys, and that's something the locals seem to like. I can give it to someone else if you prefer."

"Uh – no, that's fine. I'll go check on the prisoner transfer, then."

"Oh, and – Daniel?"

He swung back around on his crutch. "Yeah?"

" 'Meathead'?"

"It's what everyone's been calling that guy who attacked you and Barnes. Dunno why. He's dead now so I don't think he cares. We found out why you couldn't stop him with the guns, there was this vest with a magnetic field and some tough material that stopped the bullets. Barnes must've whacked him pretty hard, huh?"

"Patient X wakes up at least once an hour, sometimes twice. He can't hold down water and the only food he hasn't thrown up is cornmeal. He's dehydrated, he gets dizzy if he tries to stand and he panics at the sight of needles. We tried to shave his hair to look at the injury on his head but he grabbed the razor and crushed it with his left hand. Other than that, though, he's behaved."

"What about his injuries? These x-rays?"

"A lot of healed breaks and fractures – some weird burn marks on his temples – four bullet holes in his chest and these surgical scars that, uh..."

Carter looked away from the x-rays and asked Doctor Reuter, "What about them?"

He couldn't meet her eyes. "They cut him open breastbone to navel. More than once. I can't find any medical reason for it. And I haven't even started looking at his left arm. Here, I have pictures." The doctor handed them to her and explained:

"That's his right arm. There's a bunch of healed cuts that... well... we see them with people who try to kill themselves. And there's this head fracture – it's at the front of the head, think forehead, and I think it's also self-inflicted. It's still healing – I'd say it's why his head was covered in blood, but the amount of healing is comparable to... three or four days ago."

"He was exposed to the same treatment as the other patient whose files I had sent over," Carter told him. "That man had increased healing capabilities – it took no more than a week to recover fully from a broken arm, as I recall."

"I'll take a look at those files. And, miss..."

She held the photos out for him to take. " 'Director' or 'ma'am' will do, Doctor. What is it?"

Doctor Reuter looked at her for a moment – gauging her, whether he could put down the twenty-seven year-old for demanding to be called "ma'am", probably – before saying, "Two things. He has a cut across his neck, like someone slit it, but while it's clear he's been tortured all his broken bones have been set, and it looks like they wanted to keep him alive."

"Except for the gunshot wounds."

"Yes. Except for those."

"So you're saying he cut his own throat?"

"Yes. Director Stark said that the bruises around his neck were from a collar – they might have been trying to keep it from happening again."

"And the other thing?" The doctor stared blankly at her, and she prompted him: "You said there were two things."

"Oh, yes. This."

He handed her two last pictures. "Good God."

"The only comparable examples of this are those pictures you see in school textbooks about slavery."

"They... whipped him."

"Back and legs. They're keloids."

"Which are?"

"Scar tissue. Harmless but can be painful. You'd think a supersoldier wouldn't develop them."

Peggy gave a start, and the doctor continued, "There's only one guy who the SSR had with super-anything, and that was Captain America. This guy looks a lot like one of the men in his unit. You may lie to me, miss, but I won't go along with it."

Well. She would have to have a discussion with Howard Stark about how he chose doctors, then.

"Thank you, Harold Reuter of three-eight-two-zero Beech Avenue," she said curtly, "husband to Diane and father of Agatha, Gregory and Harold Junior."

Oh yes, she would play that card. "Having a doctor two thousand dollars in debt to the races isn't something I'm inclined to 'go along with' either, but according to Howard Stark you're the best there is for veterans' recovery. And I'm the best at what I do too, which is why I am a director, not a 'miss'. So here we are."

Director Carter gave Doctor Reuter a long moment to gather himself, but when he didn't speak she asked, "Do you have any concerns for his recovery?"

"No. Especially with that miracle serum."

"Good. There'll be three hundred dollars in an envelope in your car this evening. Use it only if your debt collectors offer to cut what you owe them if you tell them about James Barnes, and if they do then you tell me. Once he's discharged from your care, you may use the money in whatever way you'd like."

"What –?"

She looked him in the eye. "This is what I do, doctor. Have a good night."

Peggy found Agent Andrada from the DC office stationed in front of the room door; he and two other agents took eight-hour shifts and slept in one of the FBI's houses in Baltimore.

"Report?"

"Uh... nothing unusual. Docs and nurses only. The hall's mostly long-term patients so there aren't many visitors. We've coordinated with the hospital's guards –"

"I meant on the patient, agent."

"Um, ma'am, I'm guarding the door. I don't interact with him."

"Do you make small-talk with the doctors? Flirt with the nurses? Say good day to the cleaners?"

Andrada looked confused. "Do you want me to?"

"Yes. The key?"

She walked into the hospital room and found Barnes lying on his side, eyes shut but muttering – some foreign language, unintelligible to her but obviously familiar to him. He opened his eyes and sat up in the bed when she sat down next to him.

"Hey."

"Hello. How are you doing?"

"Well, my stomach's seen better days. And sleeping's hard. New noises."

"This is the quietest wing of the hospital," she told him. "Something about dying of cancer takes all the energy out of the patients."

That made him smile, at least. "Thanks."

"Thank Stark. He was the one who called in the favor to have you brought here. Normally we'd have just used a hospital in the city but he seemed to think you'd benefit from something removed."

Bucky nodded. "I'll thank Stark, then."

Something in his voice made Peggy take a closer look at him. "Are you all right, Bucky?"

He winced at the nickname. "No. I want this to finish."

"The tests? I believe Stark has a couple more to run but otherwise –"

"No. This. All this." He gestured to the room.

She still didn't understand. "...The hospital?"

He glared at her. "Y'know, for someone my mind's making up you sure are dumb."

"And for someone who has a hard time distinguishing the tangible from the imagined, you're doing a very good job pretending you aren't questioning your own sanity," she replied sarcastically.

"I just want it to end."

"And what happens when it ends?"

Again with the angry look. "You know exactly what happens, Carter."

"Why don't you tell me, just to make sure you know it yourself?"

Bucky was gripping the sides of the metal bedframe with both hands, and Peggy winced as she watched one – the left – crumple in his clenched hand.

She decided to stop making his day worse and told him, "Get some rest, and try to eat something. Maybe you'll sleep better on a full stomach."

He laughed – a snarl, a fire in his eyes that she'd never seen before – but didn't reply. He didn't have to; she understood the meaning full well: fat chance of that.

Carter heard the door open and she turned to find Stark and two of his lab technicians, the latter looking bone-tired. She stopped all three by waving an open hand and led them back out of the room. She left the techs with the guard and stopped a few paces away with Stark.

"He needs rest," she told her co-director quietly, "not more tinkering with."

"I'm not gonna do anything to him, just take another look at his arm –"

"I'm not worried about his physical health, Howard."

With some things at least, Stark was perceptive. "You think he's gonna have some kind of break with reality?"

Peggy glanced at the guard and the lab techs. "He thinks he's in the middle of one," she whispered. "So give him the chance to calm down. And for God's sake, don't tell anyone."

"What, just go in there and act like everything's fine?"

"No, act as if we just rescued him from three-years'-long captivity. But don't bother him tonight, or he might tell your lab assistants that he doesn't think they're real and I don't think we can keep them from gossiping."

"Okay. What're you gonna do now?"

"Find his family. Then finish my report for the mission."

"I don't know why you insist on writing those," he muttered.

She rolled her eyes; this was a common complaint of his. "Because it's good form. And one less thing –"

"– that Congress can criticize you about, I know," finished Stark.

"I'm glad you understand. I'll expect yours by the end of the week." She smiled and walked away from him, towards to exit.

"What – Carter! Where're you going?"

She called back, "To Brooklyn!"

Mr. and Mrs. Barnes had moved after their son bought the farm, according to their former landlord. When Peggy asked further he had shrugged his shoulders and said, "Long Island. That's all I know. Go by their synagogue, someone there might know."

She got the address of the synagogue from a neighbor, introduced herself to the rabbi there and quickly found herself in his office with a cup of tea in front of her.

"SHIELD – so, you're asking about James Barnes, right?"

"His parents, actually."

"Finally going to apologize for that screw-up with the coffin?" asked the rabbi, his voice a tad bit angry.

Coffin – what? "There shouldn't have been a coffin, we never recovered his body –"

"Didn't stop some schlemiel in the Army from sending home a coffin filled with rocks."

Peggy's mind slowed to a crawl, going through names of military administrators who would have done that – or would Phillips – there was no way that Phillips would've –

"How did they find out it had rocks in it?" she heard herself say.

The rabbi laughed, bitter. "We're Jewish. We wash bodies before we bury them. Didn't matter that the coffin was nailed shut."

She didn't reply, and the man asked, "Director Carter? You didn't know about any of that, did you?"

"No, I did not. I will find who was responsible for it, though."

"Then why're you asking after Sara and Josef Barnes?"

Peggy drew herself up. "You'll read about it in the papers in a few days. I can't say any more than that, but I do need their new address if you have it."

"Did you –" stuttered the rabbi, eyes wide, "Did you find his body?"

"I'm sorry, that's all I can say. The address?"

The Barnes house wasn't very large but it sat nestled in one of the less-populated neighborhoods on Long Island, and Peggy got turned around a couple times before she found it.

She checked the time on her watch – 1900, dinnertime – and sighed internally. It was a Friday, too, so she'd probably be interrupting a Shabbat.

Well, she reasoned, it wasn't as if they'd necessarily mind the intrusion – especially with the news she was going to give them.

Carter parked on the road and knocked on the front door. It was quickly answered by a young man – twenties, probably. She didn't know the name of Bucky's siblings, though, so she quickly said, "Good evening. Are Sara and Josef Barnes here?"

She received an annoyed glare in reply. "We're eating dinner," he told her.

"Simon!" called out another voice – male, older. "Who is it?"

"Margaret Carter," Simon Barnes replied. It surprised Peggy but she bit her tongue.

Another man appeared – Josef, probably – and said, "Miss Carter – come in."

She entered, coming to a stop in the living room. As she'd thought, the dining table was set with good china and candles. "I'm interrupting, I apologize."

"It's not a problem," said Mrs. Barnes, rising from the table along with a daughter. "How can we help you?"

"By apologizing for the casket," Simon muttered; his mother shot him an angry glance.

Peggy ignored the boy – man, she remembered; he looked near the same age as she. "Please, can we sit down?"

"Sure," said Josef.

They sat down in the living room, and Peggy was suddenly at a loss for words.

"I'm not here about the casket," she said finally. Simon – standing behind the couch his parents sat on – opened his mouth, and she plowed on: "I wasn't aware of it but I will find the idiot who thought going against army protocol was acceptable. No soldier is declared dead without a body or a confirmed sighting – dead – by a comrade – neither of which happened. But, again, that's not why I'm here."

Peggy took a deep breath and decided to stop stalling. "Your son isn't dead."

She took in their reactions – shock, disbelief, wariness on Simon's face especially – noting that the daughter spoke first: "He fell off a train. More than a hundred feet."

"That he did."

"We read the report – Steve was there. He watched him fall."

"Yes he did, and he didn't lie," she told the girl – Rebecca, Steve had called her once, the baby of the family – "about that."

"Then what did he lie about?" asked Mrs. Barnes; she was keeping herself together better than her husband but had the beginnings of tears in her eyes anyway. "We know Steve, he doesn't lie."

"I only knew Steve Rogers for two years, ma'am, but I'm rather sure we both know the conditions under which he would twist the truth."

Simon cut in: "So what actually happened that day?"

"Exactly how the Captain said it did. However, a year and a half previously your brother was a prisoner of war of Hydra's for just long enough to be dragged into a room and experimented on."

" 'Just long enough'?"

"It lasted no more than a couple days. When Rogers entered the camp, he found him in that same room. In admittedly poor condition, but not bad enough to warrant more than a cursory physical afterwards. If either of them had told us of what had actually happened, we would have caught that Bucky was exposed to a lower, modified dose of the same serum that made Steve – taller."

She was unsure how much the family knew about the effects Erskine's serum had had on their eldest's best friend, and didn't want to elaborate on that at the moment; it would bring up questions about what Bucky could do now, and that was something she preferred the doctors address.

However, Simon rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, and made him stronger, probably got rid of his color blindness and all that other crap he always hated –"

"Simon," said his mother sharply, "now is not the time."

"Mom –"

She said something quickly to him in another language – one that Peggy couldn't identify – and Simon threw up his hands but stayed quiet.

Peggy looked at Josef Barnes, who had frozen where he sat on the couch when she told him his son was alive. Aside from his wife rubbing his hand none of the family had even so much as glanced his way. He didn't register Carter's glance, or if he did she couldn't tell.

Mrs. Barnes turned back to her guest. "How do you know all of this?"

"Your son told me himself, two days ago. He's in remarkably good spirits considering the condition we found him in."

"What do you mean, 'condition'?"

"I really can't say any more than that."

"Hydra, right?" asked Rebecca. "What did they do to him?"

Director Carter detested repeating herself. "As I said –"

Simon interrupted: "Where is he?"

"Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland."

She and Sara Barnes arranged for the latter to travel down to Maryland on Monday: SHIELD would provide a car to the train station, and again from the Baltimore train station to the hospital. Peggy couldn't justify the expense of the train ticket so she decided to lie to Mrs. Barnes and say it was covered, and then pay for it herself.

Carter stood to leave and Sarah and Rebecca followed suit, but Josef stayed sitting.

"Mr. Barnes," said Peggy quietly.

He looked up slowly, the same brown eyes and hair as his son but framing a very different face. It was clear that Bucky took after his mother in looks, but his father carried the same desperate look, struggling to understand this shock of information.

Josef Barnes stood up and hugged her, suddenly.

"Thank you," he whispered.

Director Carter patted him awkwardly on the arm and said, "You are most welcome."

He let go and stepped back, the clarity in his eyes fading. "I'll – I'll show you out."