Sorry about the long wait guys! School started back up and things have been a bit hectic lately! This story is now complete but I'm working on the second part now! Thanks so much for reading guys! :D

He arrives in Bucharest by freight car. It's late afternoon and the sun is high and bright overhead, warming the chilly gusts of wind that cut through the car every once in awhile. He's tucked into a corner behind a stack of crates, comfortable enough with the space allotted but hidden all the same.

It had taken a bit of maneuvering but he'd managed to go completely unnoticed when the containers were loaded onto a freight ship, slipping into the car and disappearing into the back. No one knew he was there and he had enough food and water stashed in his backpack to keep it that way for the duration of the trip.

The ship reached its port and the container was moved to a waiting rail line a few days later. No one bothered to check the containers before the transfer and he remained hidden in the back compartment of the car. As long as he kept a low profile and stayed quiet, he could slip out at the next stop and disappear, nameless, into a new city.

The train rattles along for a little over a day before finally pulling into a station in the city. He waits for just the right moment to leave the car, the few seconds when the rail line workers will be distracted with unloading other cargo. The container is opened and he creeps through the shadows along the side of the car, slipping out between one second and the next and mingling in with a crowd of people passing by the station. With the backpack slung over one shoulder and the baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, he looks just like another tourist stumbling along the crowded streets.

The city is large and sprawling but it still doesn't seem big enough. He needs a metropolis, a major city with hundreds of thousands of people. He needs a place where he can disappear, erase himself and start over. Maybe then he'll be able to start undoing what Hydra did and get his life back. It's a long shot and he knows it but he has an abundance of time now so what else is he going to do?

He wanders the city for an entire day before finally finding a boarding house on a less crowded side of town. As much as he needs to blend in to avoid raising suspicion, he also wants to avoid hurting anyone in the process. He's getting better, slowly, painfully slowly, but he's still unstable and he doesn't know what might happen if he gets triggered again.

He finds an apartment building somewhere in the middle of the block with a sign that says there are rooms available. The man that meets him in the manager's office doesn't ask too many questions; the wad of cash dropped on his desk ensures that his newest tenant can pay and that's all he cares about. He gives him a key and makes him sign a piece of paper that looks nothing like a legal document and then nods him toward the stairs.

His new apartment is on the ninth floor, last door at the end of the hall overlooking the open atrium in the center of the building. It's sparsely furnished with a refrigerator and a small, twin bed frame with a ratty mattress on top of it pushed up against one wall. The walls are a dull yellowish-brown that could be attributed to either cigarette smoke or mold and the windows are grimy both inside and out. It's a small, cramped space with leaking faucets and rickety floorboards but it has four walls and plumbing and for now that's all he really cares about.

The first thing he does is pry up the floorboards in the kitchen and tuck his backpack inside. He doesn't unpack it or take anything out, he leaves it exactly the way it is. The backpack contains all of his money, the notebooks, and the few scraps of his personal life he's managed to salvage along the way. He knows from experience that if it ever comes down to it and he has to leave in a hurry it helps to have the bug out bag already packed and ready to go. He repositions the floorboards and taps them back into place, hiding everything in plain sight.

He stands, suddenly exhausted. The days he spent in the freight car had been comfortable enough but it still put an undeniable strain on him, physically and mentally, and he's reached the end of his energy reserves. He stumbles over to the threadbare mattress and collapses on it it, wincing just slightly when a wayward spring pokes through the material and jabs him in the kidney. He reaches under his back and deftly snaps the spring with his metal hand, tossing it across the room carelessly. It bounces off one wall and scitters across the floor.

The mattress is old and smells like mildew but it's comfortable enough so he doesn't complain. He's tired, more exhausted than he ever remembers feeling, and all he wants to do is sleep. His mind won't let that happen though, always alert and hyper aware of everything around him. It's worse now that he's in a new city. He lays on the bed and he stares at the ceiling and he doesn't sleep.

OOOOO

The first month passes by in a blur. He becomes acquainted with the city, the ins and outs and in betweens, and figures out how he'll live there. He picks up the language easily enough and finds it's easier to speak when he's not responding in short, clipped Russian. It doesn't happen often but occasionally he'll allow himself to be drawn into a conversation with some of the other tenants, discussing problems with the building or events going on around the city. His neighbors are kind enough but they keep to themselves too so he doesn't feel quite so guilty when he disappears back in his apartment at the end of the day without saying anything to anyone.

He develops something of a routine as the days stretch on, something to cling to and add balance to his life. When he gets home he pries up the floorboards to make sure his backpack is still there. Reassured of its location, he pulls out the notebooks and reads through every single one of them, sometimes only once and sometimes multiple times. He reads the words and commits them to memory day after day because he doesn't know if he'll ever find himself in another position when he forgets everything written in the notebooks again.

He collects two more empty notebooks and fills them with his memories and facts. It still feels strange sometimes, the memories of his life still so foreign even as he writes them down. He does it anyway because even if he can't remember it fully he knows they must have some significance. He writes down words and phrases, snippets and snapshots of a life long ago. It gets committed to paper and then tucked away beneath the floorboards for safe keeping.

After another month, the notebooks no longer fit in the backpack. There are too many of them now, every sheet filled to the margins. There's no space inside the backpack so he allows some of them to spill out onto the kitchen counters and windowsills. He's collected photographs and newspaper clippings to go with them, tucking them in between pages and using them for bookmarks and emphasis. The only photograph that doesn't get tucked away is one of Steve.

He doesn't really remember where he found it (he thinks it came from a Library), only that it ended up in his possession and now he clung to it like a drowning man grasping at a life preserver. The photograph shows Steve decked out in his Captain America uniform, head-to-toe in red, white, and blue. The shield is by his side and he's looking off in another direction, jaw set tightly in determination. It's a striking photo, one he remembers seeing emblazoned in the Smithsonian.

He stares at it and frowns, pulling down a half-filled notebook from one of the shelves. There's something about the uniform that tugs at his brain, pokes and prods like a child with a stick. He remembers the uniform on the battlefield, streaked with ash and frozen dirt, the white star standing out like a beacon. But that was the second (or maybe third) uniform. No, he remembers the first one, the one Steve wore when he broke into the Hydra facility.

He flips the notebook open to one partially filled page and jots down a few words.

Steve wore a brown leather jacket and a costume helmet. There were goggles attached to the helmet; he jumped out of an airplane over Nazi Germany. Into the middle of a war zone. Steve is a fucking idiot.

He leaves the notebook, along with the picture of Steve tucked inside, resting on the counter. He thinks he might write more later as more memories resurface but for right now he's tired.

The mattress got thrown out a few weeks ago, replaced with one not quite as old and not smelling of mildew and old sweat. He sleeps in a sleeping bag, not comfortable enough to sleep with sheets or blankets or anything he could get tangled in. It never hurts to be too careful.

OOOOO

The world grinds to a halt on a Thursday. He's standing in the market, speaking with a woman at a fruit stand. She's kind and smiling, telling him about the produce and the prices for it, and he speaks easily with her as he picks out a few plums. Something catches his attention though; call it a feeling or intuition or just years of being on the outside of the law but he knows someone is looking at him.

He turns and there's a man standing at a newsstand across the street. He has a newspaper in his hand and he's staring at him with an odd expression on his face, almost like he knows something no one else does. A wave of dread hits like a sucker punch.

The air suddenly feels chilly and he abandons the fruit stand with a quiet apology, walking across the street to the newsstand. The man sees him approaching and steps away, dropping the newspaper on the counter and walking in the opposite direction. He comes to a stop at the newsstand, reaching out to grab the paper as he watches the man walk away. The images on the front page causes him to suck in a sharp breath.

There's been a bombing at an embassy, multiple casualties, a few fatalities, and for some reasons his face is on the front page. The image is blurry and grainy, captured by a security camera, but it's him. Or at least he thinks it's him. He didn't do this, he's at least somewhat certain of that, but he has no explanation as to why his face would be the one on that security camera. The logical answer is someone is trying to frame him (he's not sure why) but a more troubling thought creeps into his mind behind that: what if I did do this?

He knows all too well that he's done things he has no memory of doing. He's broken into buildings, kidnapped targets, killed anyone unfortunate enough to have their name end up on his list. He's done all of this with no memory or control of his actions and snapped back to reality hours or days later with nothing to go on other than the blood on his hands. It's sick and terrifying and the worst part is he has no idea if it's happened again.

He feels sick and dizzy, his mind spinning wildly like a satellite knocked out of orbit. He tries to think, tries to remember. Did I do this? Was I the one responsible? He doesn't know…

His feet carry him back to the apartment almost as if they're acting on their own; he certainly doesn't remember walking in that direction. It's not until his foot hits the first step on the ground floor landing that he realizes where he is and what's going on. He needs to leave, grab his things and run. It doesn't matter if he was actually responsible for the bombing or not; people think he is and that's a death sentence.

A list of tentative locations and how to get to them rattles through his head as he takes the stairs two and three at a time. The train and the freight cars are his best option, they would conceal him well enough to get him out of the country without someone seeing him and raising the alarm. The next train is set to depart in an hour and he knows he can get to the loading dock in about thirty minutes. He just needs the backpack and his notebooks.

He freezes momentarily when he reaches his floor, every muscle in his body going rigid. The door of his apartment is closed but knows someone is inside...he can feel it. Maybe he should abandon the apartment and the backpack and the notebooks and just run, leave everything behind. He dismisses the idea quickly. He doesn't want to fight, doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore, but those notebooks and the memories they hold are the only things that truly belong to him and he can't leave them behind. He opens the door and steps inside.

The man standing in his apartment is not armed and while he's obviously here for him, it's not a threat. He has his back to him, one of the notebooks cradled in his hands, and his fingers are brushing over a picture of himself in the front of the book. He seems to realize he's not alone almost the second the other man enters the room and he turns to face him. Blue eyes lock on him and his expression is unreadable.

"Do you know me?" he asks, his voice slightly clipped as he speaks. There's no wariness in his eyes, no hint of fear or doubt or uncertainty. The question is not so much a question as a formality; they both know he knows him and there's no way to deny it.

He wants to though; God, he wants to. Because if he denies it maybe Steve will leave and get away from him because it's not safe, especially now. He has a target on his back, bigger and brighter than it's ever been, and Steve being close to him will only end with him hurt or dead. He can't let that happen. He wants to deny it but the question hangs in the air like a pause.

Do you know me?

Of course he knows him. Steve is the only thing he does know, the only thing he wants to know. He knows him better than he knows himself, knows him better than his own life. He knows Steve and for some reason that feels like the only thing that's ever mattered. He offers a very small nod in response.

"You're Steve."

And I'm Bucky...

Thanks for reading! :D