FIC: Double Dog Date [MCU, Bucky x Jane & Steve & Thor & Tony & Loki & etc]

[omnicat]

Title: Double Dog Date
Author: Omnicat
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: The entire Marvel Cinematic Universe up to and including Ant-Man, but mostly the first and second Thor and Captain America installments.
Warnings: [zo serieus of ludiek als ik maar wil]
Characters & Relationships: Bucky x Jane & Steve & Thor & Tony, plus a bunch of cameos from others.
Summary: Loki returns and commits his most nefarious act of villainy yet: he... turns the Avengers into animals? Not the team’s usual fare, but alright, they can roll with that. Jane looks after Thor the alien monster dog while she searches for a way to turn the Avengers back to normal. Bucky, still on the run, can’t seem to shake Steve the labrador and his attempts at rekindling their friendship no matter how hard he tries. And along the way, the two so-called ‘dog owners’ take a shine to each other.
Author’s Note: Enjoy!



Double Dog Date

The first thing James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes (currently going by Travis Osmond, though that is strictly an alias) did whenever the twenty-first century’s many news outlets lit up with reports of Avengers activity, was thoroughly Google their adversaries’ names. The internet was an incredibly useful, versatile, liberating tool, so of course Hydra had kept it away from him. Sometimes he sent a little ‘suck it, Hydra’ search out onto the web just because he could.

Today, he sat up straight in his dark apartment and searched ‘Loki’.

Usually, when the Avengers did something newsworthy, James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes (currently going by Travis Osmond, though that is strictly an alias) knew better than to get involved, no matter what the nagging mumble and half-remembered urgency in the back of his mind said. The Avengers were a highly capable combat force. The Avengers had never lost a member in action. The Avengers had taken down bigger and scarier things than this. The Avengers were not the Howling Commandoes and Captain America was not his CO. He did not owe that rat bastard Captain America a single rotten thing.

Hence, James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes (currently going by Travis Osmond, though that is strictly an alias) knew better than to get involved – most times. This was not one of those times.

This time, his internet search brought up ‘mind control’ as a result.

It was three in the afternoon and Jane Foster was just brushing her teeth before breakfast when the doorbell rang. She spat out her mouthful of foam, ran a brush through the worst of her hair and shot into her jeans to at least make it look like she’d woken up at a reasonable time, and opened the door.

She shrieked and slammed the door in the face of whatever the hell that was.

"Okay, bad idea, point taken," a mechanical-sounding voice said from her doorstep. "Foster, I’m sorry, please open the door."

"Tony?" Jane asked, brandishing an umbrella at the closed door. Did Darcy leave her taser here yesterday? Would a knife accomplish anything?

"Yes."

She peeked through the mailbox. The creature lowered its creepily elongated head and stared at her with dark eyes framed by a luscious, weirdly human-looking head of hair. It made a sound like a muffled ‘woof’.

Jane stuck the sharp tip of her umbrella through the narrow slit of the mailbox and shook it threateningly. "What the hell is that thing?"

"Loki called it a dog, and it’s your boyfriend, Foster. Look what it’s holding."

Boyfriend? "I don’t have a boyfriend."

"Details, details."

The ‘dog’ helpfully turned its head and turned out to be holding Mjolnir’s handle in its mouth.

Jane’s jaw dropped.

"Morning," Tony said, flipping up the visor of his helmet when she opened the door for the second time. A rush of chilly autumn air washed over Jane. "Have a good afternoon’s sleep?"

"Thor?" she asked, ignoring him.

Something that could’ve been a tail or a skinny, hairy tentacle with equal likelihood started wagging at the sight of her.

"Woof!" the creature said around the handle of the hammer. It looked like a cross between a dog (the basic build), a horse (the size), and one of those abduction-happy aliens with big round heads and grey faces (the abnormally long, skinny, gangly limbs and weirdly proportioned head), all adorned with curtains of hair like someone had draped it in a shiny golden bed sheet and Fabio wig.

"Loki did this," Jane said. "And it’s supposed to be a dog."

"Some kind of alien breed, I’m guessing. You should see the other guys," Tony said. "Actually, that’s why I’m here. I need you to look after Labra-Thor while I look for the other guys and gals. Well okay, that’s a lie. I don’t necessarily need you to, but you two never seem to spend any time together anymore, what’s with that? Plus Pepper is allergic and Janet’s in San Fran freaking out, Hill is having a field day at the other facility, and – we have some minor issues, okay."

"How minor?"

"We can’t find Wasp or Mr Wasp, which is what’s making Mama Wasp so very unhappy, nor is there any trace of Cap and Vision for that matter, Hawkeye seems to be flying cross-country for his coop and Redwing is monitoring Falcon while he gets into fights with all the other birds in the city, but we really need to catch them soon or god knows where they might end up flying off to, we nearly stepped on Black Widow, who, guess what, is now an actual –"

"Okay, okay, got it," Jane interrupted. "I watch Thor, you catch the rest of the zoo. Godspeed, my friend."

"Thank you." He flipped down the visor. "I can’t believe I got dragged out of retirement again. For this. Oh, by the way, if you could run some tests –"

"What do you take me for? Already on it."

(Xeno)biology was very much not her field, but Betty, for one, would die for pictures of whatever the hell Thor was, let alone tissue samples.

"This is why you won that Nobel, babe. I’ll let you know when something happens."

And he flew off, while Thor the dog-monster cheerfully padded into Jane’s living room.

He’d been too far away. By the time he arrived in the combat zone, Target: Loki and the Avengers were nowhere in sight. The place was crawling with local law enforcement and Stark Relief Foundation personnel instead. Bucky retreated as unobtrusively as he’d come and Googled the latest reports.

"Fuck," he said to the latest reports. He slipped into an alley. "Fuck."

"Woof!" replied the alley – and a big golden labrador with a red-white-and-blue frisbee in its mouth came bounding up to him, tail wagging furiously.

James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes (currently going by Travis Osmond, though that is strictly an alias) stared, horror-struck. "Steve?"

"Woof!" dog-Steve said, dropping the frisbee and jumping him.

"Holy –" Bracing himself against the weight and the sudden onslaught of ohfuckohfuckohfuckthiswasnottheplan THIS WAS NOT THE PLAN both, Bucky clutched at dog-Steve to keep him still and look him over, while dog-Steve tried his very best to tackle him and lick his face. "How are you a dog? How can I tell it’s you when you’re a dog?"

How fucking co-dependent were they in the forties?

"Woof, woof woof!"

Checking both ends of the alley, James Buchana – Bucky dragged dog-Steve into the shadow of a dumpster and forced them both into a crouch.

"Did Loki do this?" he asked, needing to be sure there wasn’t a second hostile in play.

"Woof!" dog-Steve said.

"I don’t speak dog. Nod or shake your head if you understand me."

Dog-Steve nodded and barked again.

"Is Loki still in the vicinity?"

Dog-Steve shook his head and growled.

"Are the other Avengers still in the vicinity?"

Dog-Steve cocked his head for a moment, sniffed the air, and shook his head and started wagging his tail.

"Why the hell would being abandoned by your team make you happy?" Bucky asked.

In answer, dog-Steve pounced on him again, and this time he succeeded in laying him out flat and slobbering all over his face.

Fuck.

Thor the alien dog-creature seemed quite content to be the focal point of Jane’s scientific attention. In between stale, soggy donuts, she unearthed one measuring instrument after another from the piles and cabinets in her lab, the boxes in the attic, and every closet in the house. Thor held regal pride of place in the center of the chaos, his shining golden tenta-tail wagging like an overly fancy feather duster, while she ran the scanners all over him and noted the results down on her whiteboard or laptop.

"You see this, these spikes?" she asked, tapping some numbers on the whiteboard with her marker. She took a long drag of her now-cold coffee. "Asgardian background radiation. No matter what kind of magic you guys do, these emissions stay the same unless there’s a specific element of masking involved. Mjolnir gives off interference no matter what, which you can see here –"

She moved to the laptop and pointed out the place on the graph. Thor leaned his alien Fabio head down to look.

"– and Bifrost activity and the mechanisms that keep the Realm Eternal afloat soak into everything but fade just as fast, which you can just barely make out here. You’ve been clean for weeks, meaning this is fresh transference from Loki, though I’ll have to analyze footage of the battle and see how much physical contact you guys had to give you an estimate of how long he’s been on Earth. Plus some illusion work, here, also second-hand. He’s gotta blend in somehow, I guess. Which leaves this, right here, as the energy being thrown off by the spell that turned you into – whatever you are."

Jane’s phone beeped. She tossed her marker aside and checked the message.

"Huh. Betty says you look like an Afghan windhound in a funhouse mirror."

She google image searched ‘Afghan windhound’.

"Holy shit, you are an Afghan windhound in a funhouse mirror."

Thor made an inquisitive noise. She showed him the search results, prompting a happy bark and a proud doggy grin. Jane smiled in return and thought better of telling him that even without the funhouse mirror effect, Afghan windhounds still looked like freaky alien pseudo-dogs to her.

"Anyway, back to my point..." she said, dialing Tony’s number.

He picked up on the first ring. "Jane, you miracle worker, what do you have for me? I assume you have something for me."

"I take it you haven’t found everyone yet?"

"No."

"Then I have something for you. I’ve isolated the signature of the magic used for the transformation and am going to program it into a couple of wide-range radiation detectors of mine. Come get them so we can track down the victims before the trail cools. Oh, and bring a suit for me to fly. This’ll be easiest with two people."

"I spoke not a moment too soon. Be right there!"

"You can’t stay like this. How do we fix it?"

Dog-Steve gave Bucky an unimpressed look and didn’t even woof for an answer. He couldn’t answer. He was a dog. And Bucky didn’t speak dog.

"Right. Great." He clearly retained most if not all of his human mind, though. "I have an idea. Let’s go to my place. I live not far from here."

Steve’s look of utmost betrayal was clear even on his doggy face. ‘I’ve been scouring the world for you for years and you have a place right here in New York?!’

Yeah, I’m not happy about it either, pal. Now I’ll have to move again.

But it seemed there was nothing Bucky could do that didn’t make dog-Steve deliriously happy sooner or later. He picked up the frisbee – which of course wasn’t a frisbee – in his mouth and trotted along after Bucky.

They made a detour to purchase a block of drawing paper, pens, and other office supplies, plus a bag of basic dog gear. Hopefully it wouldn’t be necessary, but Bucky hadn’t made it this far by not being prepared for anything. Best case scenario, dog-Steve would be back to regular Steve before the day was out. Second best case scenario, Bucky dropped the kit off on the Avengers’ doorstep along with dog-Steve before the day was out, and they got him back to regular Steve not long after.

"You’re a dog right now. Does this smell acceptable to you?" Bucky asked dog-Steve, holding out a bag of dog food. Dog-Steve didn’t even sniff it before backing away and whining unhappily, a shiver moving down from his nose to the tip of his tail. But he nodded anyway.

Bu – James – the soldier once known by any of those names – had a sudden burst of memories of the progressive downslide from a recovering economy to civilian rationing to army rations to prison slop to what seemed like prepackaged portions of gelatinous vomit, until the day that Hydra decided his ice-fucked digestive system was just too much trouble to bother with anymore and they switched him to tubes and drips came as a relief. He shivered from head to toe, bought the dog food, and then made a beeline for the nearest butcher shop. And then the greengrocer next door. And a bakery three blocks south, for good measure.

When he stuck his key into the lock of his apartment, his backpack and arms and dog-Steve’s mouth full of grocery bags, dog-Steve was wagging his tail in furious excitement. When dog-Steve darted inside the moment Bucky cracked open the door, the wagging abruptly stopped. Dog-Steve put down the bag with the stationary and his shrunken shield inside, turned a pair of ridiculously sad dog eyes on him, and whined – almost howled.

"What?"

Dog-Steve pointedly looked around the apartment and then back to him, and made that same mournful sound again.

"What?" Bucky asked, bewildered. "What the hell’s wrong with it?"

He had a secure location with heat and a working stove. There were facilities with hot water. And a lock on the door. Plus more of them on the front door, to which he and he alone had the keys. There were no cockroaches, vermin, or mold stains of noticeable size, and only minimal amounts of spiders. And he had a whole pile of blankets. All to himself.

Dog-Steve kept whining. Aside from his pile of blankets under the radiator, his emergency pack leaning against the wall beside it, the garbage bags he’d taped over the windows, and the built-in kitchen cabinets full of his usual supply of canned foods, the apartment was completely bare, which made dog-Steve’s whines echo hollowly. Huffing, Bucky kicked the door shut and put his bags on the kitchen counter.

"Look at all this space," he snapped, gesturing expansively. "It’s all mine and I get to move around all I want. I can even leave whenever I feel like it!"

Dog-Steve stopped howling, but he trotted over to lick his hand and kept looking at Bucky like he had personally drowned an entire litter of kittens.

Ugh. Whatever.

"How do we fix this?" he asked after laying out a couple sheets of paper with a paw-sized ‘typewriter’ drawn onto it on the floor.

Dog-Steve spelled ‘dunno’ by tapping letters one by one.

"Do the Avengers have anyone on staff who would know how to fix it?"

Dog-Steve shook his head, then nodded, shook again, then cocked his head in an approximation of a shrug and spelled ‘research’.

"So there’s no fix right now, but your team will be looking into it?"

Nod.

"Then you should go to them."

Dog-Steve shook no vehemently.

‘others hit too’

Bucky frowned. "You mean they’ve got others to study and test solutions on."

Nod nod.

"And in the meantime, you want to stay with me."

Dog-Steve nodded with extra emphasis and demonstratively plonked his head down in Bucky’s lap.

Great. Just fucking great.

"Be careful taking things out of the fridge and please don’t chew on anything," Jane said to Thor, because knowing the dog-alien was Thor did not outweigh that time a college boyfriend had dumped his real dog on her when he fled the state wanted for arson and it took her three months to track down his family.

Then Jane squeaked. The lightweight white guest suit Tony had brought for her was adapting to her measurements by shortening the limbs and torso and inflating the interior lining one section at a time. It tickled.

"Okay, all set?" Tony asked.

"All set," Jane and FRIDAY said in tandem. Jane turned to Thor one last time. "But seriously, behave. No chewing. Not even on the remote."

Thor nodded solemnly and waved goodbye with his front paw.

Flying the suit was exactly as awesome as she had always thought it would be. And the fact that technically, JARVIS and now FRIDAY had gathered enough user data over the years to basically fly the suit for her, really only made it better. It was less like handling complex machinery and more like being Peter Pan. Jane didn’t bother holding back her delighted whoops as she shot up into the sky and got a couple of loops, sprints and dives in before getting down to business.

Tony waited patiently for her to get it out of her system.

"This is the best," she said, and pulled up beside him in mid-air. "Okay, how do we do this? We start at the scene and try to find a trail to follow from there, but then what?"

They fired up the repulsors and headed for the site.

"Frankly?" Tony’s voice said over the comms. "We wing it. If Wasp and Boy-Wasp are as tiny as I’m expecting them to be, there are safe little compartments in the thighs and shoulders you can transport them in. If they’re not insects, grab ’em and see if you can bum a box or shopping bag from someone in the vicinity or something. FRIDAY’s authorized to pay for anything you need."

"Are they the only ones still missing?"

"No, it’s Van Dyne, Lang, Vision, and Cap. I already talked down Barton and Wilson while you were working. They’re in the Tower, no doubt shredding my nice leather couches with their nice sharp raptor claws. The others didn’t stray too far from the scene and have been with Pepper and Happy this whole time. Before you ask, Rhodey is an owl – he couldn’t fly off because War Machine turned into a medieval suit of armor he was stuck inside – and Wanda a goat."

Jane stifled a laugh. "A goat?"

"See, that’s what I said. I thought for sure she’d be something more majestic or mysterious, but nope. A goat. She climbed a police car. We’re here."

They touched down in the middle of a street cordoned off with police tape. The cops keeping the public at a distance and processing the scene barely reacted to their arrival, so they were clearly informed of their involvement beforehand. The place was a little worse for wear, but nothing of an explosive nature seemed to have occurred. A few shattered windows and crumpled cars, some dents in the bricks and the asphalt – small fry.

"Small fry," Jane repeated to herself, shaking her head.

"No casualties except for that tree over there," Tony said, gesturing. "We took him by surprise while he was shopping, if you can believe it."

Jane could. She could also vividly imagine how Tony kept being ‘dragged’ out of retirement, what with housing one of the Avengers headquarters in his proverbial basement and using ‘we’ to describe mission teams he hadn’t been on.

"How did you lose track of so many people when they’re still lucid?"

"I don’t think they were lucid right when it happened. It’s actually a pretty funny story, remind me to tell you and absolutely everyone else once we’re all in the clear. You take that end of the street, I’ll look around Boerum Place and beyond."

"Okay."

Armed with Jane’s scanners to pick up the magic energy and memory files of Tony’s earlier search to rule out the paths taken by Avengers already recovered, they thunked through the alleys and floated through the streets, above the heads of the thronging onlookers. It was even odds whether any of the remaining missing Avengers were flight-capable animals. There definitely seemed to be a theme going on. Was Steve a bald eagle? Hope a Wasp? Scott a flying ant?

God, Jane hoped the whole point of this stunt of Loki’s hadn’t been to turn Vision back into an Infinity Stone and steal him. There had been too many conflicts over those things as it was.

Ten minutes down the first trail she’d found, Jane found the answer to that question.

"Oh my goooood," she whispered as she descended. The group of children clustered around Vision looked up. "FRIDAY, does this suit have a camera function?"

"Of course. You want me to mail you a nice shot of the Pokémon?"

"I want you to mail me a whole bunch of nice shots of the Pokémon. Photo and video. Anything you can grab."

"Consider it done, doc."

Vision, currently inhabiting the form of a Porygon2, turned in the arms of the delighted little girl petting him and blinked his big cartoony eyes up at Jane.

Dog-Steve spent the rest of the afternoon and evening looking like a kicked puppy and trying to get Bucky to talk to him.

‘howve you been’ he spelled, and ‘when did you go back to ny’, and ‘what do you do now’

None of his business, none of his business, and none of his business.

‘how much do you remember’

‘im so happy youre okay’

‘i was worried sick you jerk’

‘why were you avoiding me’

‘bucky please talk to me’

‘should i still call you bucky’

‘bucky please im sorry’

‘bucky please’

It was much harder being an asshole to a dog than a human being, but Bucky dug in his heels, didn’t look at the paper typewriter Steve kept dragging over except from the corner of his eye, and ignored anything he said that wasn’t relevant to his furry little problem.

It would be better this way.

Instead of warming up a can of something like he usually did, he rinsed the rest of his pots and pans to make them both dinner (dog-Steve’s steak extra extra rare, his own a little burned because this may as well have been the first time he ever cooked one), and he kept the little light over the stove on even though he’d already exercised that day. Not something he was in a habit of doing, but he couldn’t very well make a dog sit in the dark all day while he went about his usual task of poring through the SHIELD-Hydra data dump and peripherals on his phone.

At the end of the night, he folded up one of his blankets for dog-Steve to sleep on and laid it out a good ways away, against the other wall. Dog-Steve tentatively approached Bucky’s blanket cocoon instead.

"No," he warned severely. Half a day and he’d already run out of patience with Steve’s presence. And he hadn’t even had to look at the face he remembered with so much renewed clarity, or listen to his life-long best friend’s voice, for it to happen.

He felt darkly, depressingly vindicated.

"Woof?"

"I said no. You come near me in my sleep and I will stab you. So don’t."

Not quite an hour after Jane delivered Pokémon-Vision to the tower, Tony got a call about an old man claiming that the ant colony in his back yard had started playing Scrabble with him and told him to call the Avengers. Half an hour after that, they traced Hope to Central Park, where she flew into Jane’s bare hand and gratefully hid in the curl of her fingers.

At sunset, all the magic had gone cold, and they hadn’t found Steve anywhere.

They’d double-checked all the trails, old and new – even Hawkeye’s Ohio-bound, airborne trajectory – and combed one neighborhood in particular from top to bottom because there were energy readings all over the place.

"It’s Brooklyn," Jane said, flipping up her visor and opening her arms in a gesture of defeat. "Maybe he fled towards ‘home’ on instinct."

"He never lived anywhere near here," Stark said, also opening his visor. "New theory: he was chased around by the nefarious organization of the week until they finally managed to drag him into their nefarious van."

"There would still have been an energy trail," Jane argued. "Unless they were as intimately familiar with Asgardian magic as I am and had the foresight to bring a lead-lined vehicle. Plus, they would have had to catch a super dog."

Stark gave her an unhappy look. "All that would take is numbers. But, again, a lot of foresight, I’ll give you that. Especially to get around undetected."

Jane sighed and let her gaze wander the surrounding apartment buildings. "Maybe we missed something. Maybe he flew away. Maybe he’s a flea."

"Maybe he’s napping in a dumpster. You know what we need? A burger. Or a hot dog. Something as American as Captain Absent. Come on, let’s eat."

They ate in the suits and searched for another couple of hours before finally, reluctantly, calling it a night.

The guest suit peeled itself off of her at her front door and followed her into the house, installing itself in the hall for the night for the sake of both convenience and security.

"Thor?" she called.

She heard the toilet flush, and Thor came out of the bathroom. Jane repressed the urge to tell him ‘good boy’.

"Did you miss me?" she asked instead, and petted his head. "Everything go okay in here?"

Thor barked cheerfully and showed her the empty lasagna container in the sink. This time Jane did say "Good boy!" – and promptly smacked herself in the forehead. Thor made a wheezing noise that was 100% possibly laughter.

While Jane made herself coffee and settled in for a long night of research, she filled Thor in on the results of the day’s search. When she talked about Steve, Thor put a paw on her hand as if to say ‘don’t worry’, or maybe ‘don’t blame yourself’. She smiled at him gratefully.

"Anyway, the Stark Relief Foundation will be taking up the search for him tomorrow, which frees me and Stark up for finding a way to fix this. I’m totally fine with you staying here in the meantime, but just a few ground rules, okay? No sniffing my crotch and no watching me change or stuff like that. I know you’re a dog right now, but we both agreed that part of our relationship was over, and I’m sticking to that boundary. Deal?"

Thor said "Woof!"

"Awesome."

Not surprisingly, the nightmares gave it all they had that night. It started with regular Steve coming at him on all fours demanding answers while all he could manage himself was a one-armed belly crawl, and went steadily downhill from there until his own pathetic whimpering finally woke him.

"James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant, 32557038," he forced out, voice trembling. He pressed his face into one blanket and clutched at two fistfuls of another, arm wrapped over the back of his head and curling his body up as tightly as possible. "Bucky. 2016, New York. Location secure. They’re all dead. It’s not real. They’re all dead. They’re all dead."

Something moved behind him.

A knife was out of his hand and embedded in the far wall in an instant.

The something yelped and ran for dear life, nails scrabbling across the floor and around the corner to the bathroom.

"Shit," he croaked, his heartbeat picking up. "Steve."

He fumbled for his flashlight and clicked it on. Dog-Steve tentatively stuck his head around the corner. He’d only missed him because he had aimed for something person-sized.

"You think I tell people I’m gonna stab them just for the hell of it?!" he shouted, voice breaking. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Do you wanna die?"

Head and tail held low and timid, dog-Steve crept toward him.

"What?"

Dog-Steve whined.

"Your bowls are over there," he rasped. "And you’re big enough to reach the toilet, so use that if you have to. I’m not walking you."

Steve closed the last of the distance between them and licked his hand.

He snatched it away. "No. Get lost."

"Whiiine," Steve said.

Correction, he thought to himself: dog-Steve didn’t keep looking at him like he had drowned a litter of kittens, but like he was the litter of kittens that had been drowned.

He snatched up his other knife and stabbed it into the floorboards right between the bastard’s furry feet.

"Go back to your own fucking blanket," was the last thing he managed to say before his voice gave out completely.

Heartbroken, dog-Steve obeyed.

Jane meant to leave Tony a message before going to bed, but was not surprised to find him still awake too.

"You got any more miracle work for me?" he asked.

"Based on transference from some of the other magical energy Loki carried around with him, I’m guessing he hasn’t been on Earth for more than a day or two."

"Really? That’s interesting."

"I thought it might be. The news says he just dropped his illusion outside of that store?"

"That’s how we found out he was even on Earth, yeah."

"So if he hadn’t done that, he could have gone about his business completely undetected."

"Exactly. And yet he didn’t seem happy to see us."

It was definitely something to sleep on.

Next, she called Heimdall’s name and told him everything that was going on, just in case he didn’t already know. That call went unanswered. Which was comforting, because ever since Frigga took the throne, there was one thing they could be sure of: the princes of Asgard were never left to just try and bash each other’s heads in in some remote region of the cosmos anymore. If Frigga thought this matter was serious, she would have intervened.

No wonder Thor seemed so unconcerned about the whole thing. More than unconcerned.

"You’re bored, aren’t you?" Jane asked.

"Eh," he huffed, and shrugged in a disconcertingly human way.

Definitely a relief. Though it only made Jane more curious about what Loki was up to.

Come morning, dog-Steve’s sad dog face had disappeared and been replaced by an unmistakable expression of bull-headed stubbornness.

He’d given him time to think and come up with some kind of plan. Terrific.

‘walk me’

"I already said I’m not fucking walking you."

‘youll need more groceries sometime’

"And yet I’m not walking you. Why the hell would you even want that?"

‘im a dog’

"Tell that to the marines."

Dog-Steve started barking at the top of his lungs. Not at him, but at the walls. Then he looked Bucky in the eye and spelled out his demands.

‘i told the neighbours’

‘walk me or theyll suspect’

Bucky glared. "No."

‘walk me or noise complaints’

And he started barking again.

Bucky lasted five minutes.

(No surprise there, he thought bitterly. Hydra had already proven how weak he was under torture a thousand times over.)

He manhandled dog-Steve into a collar, geared up, and half dragged him out of the building, half was dragged by him. Fine. If the Avengers didn’t already have a solution, he’d walk the rat bastard while looking for that other rat bastard, Loki, so he could beat a cure out of him.

The next day, Jane called in Darcy to take some more readings and crunch the numbers, while she took Thor to the park.

"Everybody’s staring," she whispered. Of course they would be. Her – free-roaming – ‘dog’ was almost bigger than she was. "What’s the PR spin on all this, anyway?"

"Woof," said Thor. Of course.

Oh well.

It was getting close to dinnertime when they arrived at the park, but there were still plenty of people, many with dogs of their own. And every single dog there had some kind of visible reaction to Thor.

A few were frightened or started growling when Thor came too close, but most were intensely curious. Some strained against their leashes to get an up close and personal whiff of him, in which case Thor padded over and obliged with the grace of someone who’d inspired similar behavior all his life.

Even without a leash, Thor was ‘walking’ Jane more than the other way around. She thought it was probably best not to let the distance between them get too large, lest someone called in animal control and they broke out the elephant tranquillizers.

"Can you actually understand what they’re saying?" Jane asked into the camouflage of her scarf after a teenage girl had finally gathered her wits about her, scooped up her tiny chihuahua, and beat a hasty retreat, thereby cutting Thor and the excited little dog’s conversation of yips and wuffles abruptly short.

Thor nodded. "Woof!"

"That’s incredible. Thor, when we get back home, do you think you could –"

But just then, another dog owner showed up around a bend in the path. He was tall and built, dark-haired, and scruffy. He was scowling down at his phone for all he was worth. His dog, a big and handsome golden breed, looked no less cranky – until he caught sight of Thor.

"WOOF!" the new dog bellowed.

The guy barely had time to look up from his phone before the dog came sprinting toward Thor and Jane. Yelling "Hey!" didn’t help. Digging his heels into the gravel and throwing all his weight in the opposite direction didn’t help. The dog dragged his owner along by his leash and he only barely managed to stay upright until Thor – just as suddenly overjoyed – met them halfway.

Jane scrambled to catch up. "I am so sorry! This keeps happening."

The guy caught his footing and turned wide eyes on her. "What the hell is that thing?"

"Afghan windhound," Jane lied for the fifteenth time that day. "With a growth defect. I know, it’s super freaky, and he’s gonna die young because it causes so many health problems, but apparently it makes him smell like some kind of dog celebrity too, because this seriously happens all the time."

Thor and the other dog were over the moon with each other, yapping and sniffing and darting around and against each other like long-lost friends.

"That’s not a female, is it?" Jane asked, suddenly alarmed by Thor’s unprecedented enthusiasm.

"No," said the guy.

Thor shot her an unmistakably amused look before returning his full attention to his brand new best friend. What the hell?

"Looks like something out of a science fiction flick," the guy muttered, and then seemed to catch himself. "Sorry."

But Jane laughed. "No, no, you’re absolutely right. I’m Jane, by the way. And this is Thor."

The guy looked at her sharply. "Thor?"

She chuckled a little nervously. "Well, yeah, I mean look at him."

Was she supposed to keep this under wraps? She’d downloaded surveillance footage of the battle straight from the Stark servers and hadn’t turned on the news at all. Why hadn’t she turned on the news?

More importantly, though, the dogs’ behavior coupled with this man’s odd reaction to Thor’s name lit a spark of suspicion in Jane’s gut.

"Right," the guy said. "Yeah. I see."

"What about yours?"

"My dog?" He looked almost startled. "Oh. Um. Dodger."

"That’s a nice name," Jane said. That hesitation didn’t put her mind to rest... though on the other hand, why and how would a complete stranger adopt Steve as a pet overnight? And why on Earth would Steve go along with him?

"You think?" Suddenly the guy’s expression turned sardonic, and he raised his voice. "’Cause I named him after the Brooklyn Dodgers, who left Brooklyn. Just like he keeps running off into dangerous situations when my back is turned."

His owner’s voice brought Dodger up short. He looked at the guy with the kind of soulful eyes only a dog could pull off, and then said something to Thor, who promptly turned toward the guy too.

It was a little unnerving.

"Hi, Dodger," Jane said, giving the dog what she hoped was a significant look. Dodger met her eye and wagged his tail a little, but didn’t otherwise react. Jane’s paranoid worry took that as its cue to go back to sleep. If this random dog had been Steve, he would have let her know by now.

Which left Jane in the park with a handsome (if uncomfortable-looking) man walking a perfectly ordinary (if overenthusiastic) dog. A handsome man who kept shooting her almost startled looks and then quickly averting his eyes when it turned out Jane was still looking straight back at him.

Jane knew shy, unprepared attraction at first sight when she saw it.

It had been a while, but it was always flattering to be the subject instead of the sufferer for a change.

Thor came up to sniff at the guy’s chest, and then his left hand, which he snatched away, the leather of his gloves creaking audibly as he clenched his fists.

"So, uh," Jane said, trying for another smile as she gently tugged at fistfuls of Thor’s long, long hair to get him to back off from the tense stranger. "You come here often?"

"No," the guy said.

"Woof!" Dodger said eagerly, nodding.

"We should go," the guy said.

"Woof!" Dodger said angrily, shaking his head.

Jane couldn’t help but laugh. Then she caught sight of the look on the guy’s face.

"Oh," she said, sobering, as he turned away and tugged at Dodger’s leash. She tried not to sound too disappointed. "Sorry. Again. About... all of this."

He hesitated.

"Not your fault," he mumbled without looking at her. "Bad day."

...and yet, the very next day found James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes (currently going by Travis Osmond, though that is strictly an alias) and dog-Steve aka Dodger (also strictly an alias) right back in that same corner of the park. With coffee.

Dogs had to be walked multiple times a day, every day. That bred routine in their owners. And Jane had asked about his own routines, more or less implying that this was hers.

"Whatever it is you’re thinking, you can knock it right off," he warned dog-Steve with his stupid doggy grin.

So maybe yesterday had been the first time in weeks Bucky had had a conversation with another human being that went beyond ‘that’ll be seventy years of inflation please’ and ‘hrm’. And maybe he felt bad enough without being a jerk to a pretty girl on top of everything else. Big deal.

"She’s not the first beautiful woman I’ve seen since I escaped. I’m not gonna drool all over her like some wet behind the ears horndog." That had been embarrassing, in hindsight. "Just here to apologize."

Steve made some indeterminate little noise and gave his hand a lick. Bucky had to fight the urge to stroke his head. His family had had a dog when he was a boy. Just for a few years – he’d been old when they got him – but he’d loved that mutt, walked him, fed him, bathed him, fallen asleep in the sun with his arms around him. He and Steve had played fetch with him.

And he’d only remembered the real Dodger this morning.

So much for it being a bastardization of ‘Roger’ because Rogers or Steve or any other more obvious variation thereof was too conspicuous. So much for it being a disguised jab at Steve for ditching Bucky to sell his body to a mad scientist on the last night Bucky would ever be safe and happy and good and normal.

Every time he began to think there couldn’t possibly be anything more he was missing, his brain coughed up some new mind-boggling fact about himself – along with a new reason not to trust his perception or rational judgement and follow his gut feelings instead. Like the gut feeling saying he should find Jane again. It was just unnerving how many of the memories and instincts coming back to him were... well, nice ones.

He knew how to deal with the muscle memory urge to dodge cameras and muffle the sound of his footsteps and not talk back to the man in charge. That’s how Hydra had trained him to function in the absence of any conscious life or combat experience. But failing to perform a risk assessment because he was staring at a passing woman’s backside, or finding out after the fact that his fake names held incredible emotional significance from some forgotten part of his childhood? That was something else entirely.

Jane rounded the corner, a tiny slip of a woman dwarfed by her monstrous dog, her brown-blond hair covering her ears and tucked into her scarf like a hood. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and sue him but she really was incredibly pretty.

James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes (currently going by Travis Osmond, though that is strictly an alias) stood from the park bench and raised a hand in greeting.

"Hey, it’s you again," Jane said with a smile. "So you do come here more often."

"Hi. Yeah," Bucky said, oh so suavely. He reached behind him for the coffee. "I brought a peace offering."

Her eyes widened. "Seriously? Oh, you shouldn’t have."

"Yesterday was a bust. I wanted to make it up to you," he insisted.

A slow smile spread across Jane’s face. When Bucky smiled back, she ducked her head, giggling a little, and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Not a bad result for something that felt so artificial.

"Yesterday –" Jane said. "– was two complete strangers whose dogs went nuts on them. It went about as well as I would expect that to go. Thank you, though." She took the coffee. "That’s really sweet, um... did you ever tell me your name?"

"Uh, no. It’s –"

Travis Osmond. Strictly an alias.

But was it really? Or was that another suggestion from the legion of ghosts in his subconscious?

"James," he said. "James Freeman."

A) Wow, good job, Barnes.

B) Wow, that’s really subtle. Not tempting fate at all. That sure won’t come back to bite you in the ass.

Jane smiled at him and said, "Nice to meet you, James Freeman."

It sounded pretty damn good, though.

Thor had found a stick somewhere that he was trying to push into Jane’s hand. She took it and looked questioningly at Bucky. "Is Dodger going to try to run if I throw this?"

Bucky looked down. Dog-Steve wagged his tail in happy expectation.

"He’s welcome to it," Bucky said, and unfastened the leash from the collar.

Jane threw the stick. It got decently far, but not actually very far at all. Thor and Steve both went for it and were back in the blink of an eye.

"Let me," Bucky said, and hurled the stick with all his strength.

"Wow," Jane said, staring. "That’s some arm you got."

Bucky shrugged. His left arm was even stronger, but its noise would give him away.

"You must work out a lot."

"Kinda. You?"

"Ha, no. Just my brain. But I have a fast metabolism, so I still get to pretend I’m pretty fit."

"Hm."

Thor returned with the stick in its mouth and Steve trailing behind, saving Bucky from having to come up with the next thing to say. He threw again. Steve ducked under Thor’s belly in full sprint, tripping the bigger dog up and giving Steve an opportunity to dart ahead.

"That dirty cheat!" Jane laughed.

"It’s only cheating if you set rules beforehand," Bucky said.

Jane gave him a cheeky look. "Really?"

Bucky shrugged and hid his face in his coffee cup. It was pathetic. He used to flirt like a champ.

Luckily, Jane didn’t seem deterred yet. He could feel her studying him from the corner of her eyes as she sipped her own coffee.

"This is good stuff. Where’d you get it?"

"A little place I passed on my way here."

"Not a Starbucks fan? I think I passed at least three on my way here."

Bucky couldn’t help but make a face. "There’s so many of them. It’s just not natural. There’s no way their coffee’s good enough to merit that many stores."

"Have you ever tried it?"

"No."

"I could bring you some to try. How do you usually take your coffee?"

Bucky stared. "Is this some kind of newfangled advertisement strategy?" He’d gathered that they were invasive in this century, but...

"Oh, no, no," she laughed, blushing. "I just mean – you brought me coffee and you didn’t even know if I’d show up again. I just thought I’d return the favor tomorrow. And like I said, there’s at least three Starbuckses on my way here."

"Tomorrow," Bucky repeated.

Jane bit her lip. "Unless this was supposed to be a one time thing?"

He hadn’t thought that far ahead. Did he want there to be an ahead? Sure, she was a looker, and he hadn’t automatically scared her off yet like so many other people, and human contact was addictive. But – but there were so many ‘buts’ he didn’t even know where to start.

And none of them stopped him from wanting.

"No, tomorrow is good," Bucky said.

"Great!" Jane’s smile was dazzling. "So, any coffee preference?"

Geeze, one big choice at a time, please. "As long as it isn’t made out of chicory."

"What’s chicory?"

"Not coffee no matter how hard up you are for it."

Jane grinned, even though a joke she didn’t understand couldn’t be all that funny. Bucky took a long, satisfying drought of his real coffee and looked around. What was keeping Steve and Thor?

The dogs were stretched out in the grass on the opposite side of the field, staring at Jane and Bucky. The stick was lost from sight in the piles of dry leaves surrounding them. Great. He’d forgotten about Steve’s dastardly plan. Whatever that plan entailed beyond ‘be my buddy again and don’t disappear the moment I turn back into a human’, the rat bastard could probably make Bucky getting friendly with Jane work in his favor somehow.

Jane waved goodbye to James and didn’t look at Thor until they’d left the park.

He was wagging his tail at her.

"It’s not just Dodger being a great conversationalist, is it?" she asked. "You approve of James. All this time I thought you were above such practices, but you were just biding your time until a guy came along who looked like a fellow Asgardian warrior worthy of me. Stooping to Darcy’s level. Have you no shame?"

"Woof," Thor said, and licked her cheek.

Jane shoved him playfully. "I have the worst friends."

And they knew her far too well. It probably said something about Jane that ‘pretty cut for a crazy homeless guy’ was her type. Something Thor ‘sometimes you remind me of my brother’ Odinson and Darcy ‘I keep dumping perfectly nice boys to follow my boss around and it’s not even a closeted lesbian thing’ Lewis had no room to talk about.

Jane sobered. "As nice a distraction as James is, though, we should go back to looking for Steve and finding a way to turn you all back to normal. I don’t like this one bit."

Thor made a thoughtful dog-monster noise.

They made their way to Avengers Tower in slowly dimming twilight. The weather was getting colder and wetter and the light shorter by the day, and that was another thing: wherever and whatever Steve was right now, did he have adequate food and shelter? He’d survived freezing to death once before, and theoretically that was a good thing, but honestly, the fact that there was a ‘last time’ just made it worse. Nobody should have to go through such a thing, ever, let alone twice.

A hair-raising yowl split the air.

Jane and Thor’s heads whipped around. Something rattled, and a thin, papery voice started babbling in fright, incomprehensible with the distance. They exchanged a look and hurried toward the mouth of the alley ahead.

"I’m sorry, kitty, I’m sorry, I’m just trying to help you, please hold still, you’ll only make it worse!" the voice turned out to be saying. It was a bent, portly old woman crouched by a bunch of trash cans, her hands fluttering in a panic. When Jane approached, she looked up and beaconed. "Oh, young lady, please help! This kitty –"

Jane peered a little more closely into the shadows. There was a cat there; it had big bones with not nearly enough meat on them, mottled, matted fur, and only one ear. Its front paw was stuck in an empty can of beans.

"Oh, no, poor thing," Jane said. But when she knelt down and reached for it, it hissed and flinched away, the can rattling along the cobblestones and a fresh trickle of what Jane realized was blood dripped down its leg. "Oh, shit. He needs a tetanus shot."

"Woof, woof," Thor said over her shoulder.

The old woman yelped and scurried away much like the cat had just done. While Jane tried to reassure her Thor was tame and harmless, Thor lowered his head toward the cat and started talking to it. He succeeded before she did; he nudged her shoulder, and the cat limped toward her, meowing plaintively. Wide-eyed, Jane grabbed the cat under one arm and very very carefully eased its paw out from underneath the sharp lid of the can. The poor thing trembled violently, but Thor kept wuffing at it, which was what seemed to keep it so docile.

"Oh," the old woman said. "He’s a good dog, isn’t he?"

"Yes," Jane said, tucking the cat more comfortably against her chest. "Yes he is." Thor started humming. "Shall I take this little guy to the vet?"

"Do you have a car?"

"No."

"I can drive you. I know a little clinic nearby that provides good care without bankrupting you for it."

"That would be great, thank you so much."

They followed the old woman, who introduced herself as Gloria, to her apartment building and the car she had parked in front of it, and all the while Thor kept humming and nudging Jane’s shoulder and the cat and giving them both looks.

Finally Jane recognized the tune. "Is that ‘Star Spangled Man With A –’" She stopped dead in her tracks. Looked down at the cat. Looked up at Thor. "Steve?"

Thor nodded and wagged his tail and wuffled. The cat looked at Thor and then at Jane, and mewled, and timidly licked her hand.

"Oh my god!"

Gloria gave her an odd look. Jane stepped into the circle of a streetlight and pretended to hold cat-Steve up for inspection. She didn’t have to feign either her delight or her dismay.

"I think this is Steve! Steve, my cat. He ran away months ago," Jane told Gloria. "I didn’t even recognize him at first. I thought I’d never see him again!"

Gloria was so touched by the lie, Jane ended up having to drive.

Meanwhile, the Steve who was currently a dog but usually a man called Steve Rogers instead of a lucky stray cat Thor talked into the ruse of nine lifetimes, was trying to rip the garbage bags from Bucky’s windows. Swearing up a blue streak and accumulating more scratches and punctures in the process than he’d had since the last time he killed a man, Bucky dragged dog-Steve away from the windows, put the leash back on his collar, and tied the leash to the oven.

"WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM."

"WOOF."

"THAT IS NOT AN ANSWER."

"WOOF."

"OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE."

Bucky stomped off and taped the bag back to the windowpane. Brandishing the paper typewriter, rolled up like a newspaper, he gestured angrily at Steve from across the room.

"I know you’re not stupid enough to have missed the fact that I am in hiding, and I know don’t think I’m stupid enough not to realize how suspicious boarded up windows in an occupied apartment look."

That’s what the printed images and timed ambience LED lights on the outside of the bags were for. Bucky was proud of his handiwork. The place looked real cozy from the outside. You’d have to stare awfully hard at Travis Osmond’s windows to notice anything out of the ordinary, and anyone willing to waste that much time on Travis Osmond’s windows already knew his real name and was about to get mauled on Bucky’s way out anyway.

"So, what? You don’t approve? You think I should be out on the town every day and have two people’s lives crammed into one apartment, like the good old days?"

Steve barked at him, some kind of frown in his body language.

"Well, guess what. You’re too late. It’s not an option anymore. I don’t get to be that person anymore. I don’t even remember how, all thanks to you."

Steve went very, very still.

"I do remember what a selfish asshole you could be sometimes, but I never thought you were cruel. Even for you this is low, Steve."

Bucky came toward him and sank down to Steve’s eye height.

"I am a defective killing machine on the run from the law, the anti-law, and everything in between," he said slowly and clearly. "If the Winter Soldier’s identity got out, if some obscure file surfaces or I start making some escaped Hydra agent who worked with me once too antsy, there won’t be a soul on the planet who wouldn’t try to hunt me down, either to put me down or strap me down again. That nice girl we met at the park? She was making eyes at a lie. And maybe this little stunt of yours will prove I’m enough of a selfish coward to take what I can get and run with it as far as it’ll go, but any house I build will always be a lie with a foundation of quicksand.

All because I had to go and turn down the offer of a medical discharge out of that hell so the home front could figure out what in god’s name Zola had been doing to me in Krausburg, and go off running around cleaning up after you instead. Because you asked. And you knew I’d never say no to you. Because you knew, right? That I promised your mom on her fucking death bed that I’d always look after you? I would’ve done anything for you, and you hated it, so then when you suddenly didn’t need me anymore, you dragged me along to rub it in, to show off your super strength and gloat about how I was the one who had to scramble to keep up with you now. But who cares how badly I needed help, right? Because the people in Europe needed help a hell of a lot more, and if I fell behind or I left and you got your stupid ass shot without me there I’d never have been able to live with myself. I’d rather die. So I did. I turned myself into a cold-blooded murderer for you and let Zola’s poison run its course for you and then I died for you. Except I didn’t, and you just left me there!"

(He was screaming. And he didn’t see the dog anymore – wasn’t aware of much of anything in the here and now anymore. He’d been stripped of his self-control more thoroughly than any human being ever should, but never in his unnaturally long life had he lost control quite like this before.)

"YOU LEFT ME THERE, STEVE. I fell and you didn’t come for me, nobody ever came for me, and I begged and I begged and I begged, but you just let them – let them do those – things – to me – and – and then it was me who had to save your ass, again. I didn’t even know who you were and I came for you when you fell, do you realize that? I keep wondering, how fucking hard could it have been for you to return the favor for once in your ungrateful life? And now I’m sticking my neck out for you fucking AGAIN and you try to tell me how to live my life just like they did all those years. So you know what? Th–"

Bucky had to scrape his throat to continue and suddenly realized it ached like he’d swallowed a mouthful of glass, and his voice had been warbling accordingly for god knew how long. Tears were flowing hot and thick.

"So thanks for finally caring, but no thanks."

"Why is it so hard for rich people to understand that we don’t want your help just because we are not rich?"

"Why is it so hard for the not-rich people in my life to understand that I am drowning in more money than I could spend in a millennium and ‘helping out’ actually doesn’t mean shit to me because my bank account literally wouldn’t even notice if I did this for them a hundred times a day every day for the rest of their lives?"

"...I mean don’t get me wrong, I was a starving college student and a starving fringe scientist long enough that I’m not saying no. It’s just. The principle of the thing."

Jane rubbed the back of her neck and looked everywhere but at Tony. Tony patted her shoulder on the way to the bar.

"Don’t thank me. Trust me, it’ll be better for both of us that way."

"Only if you promise never to talk to me about this again."

"Deal."

"Okay, then deal to you too."

As it turned out, Gloria’s idea of ‘won’t bankrupt you just to keep a beloved member of the family alive’ had been slightly different than Jane’s. Still, since Steve’s transformation had obviously put him through the wringer in a way it hadn’t any of the others, Jane had insisted on giving him a full work-up. And on not letting Gloria foot any of the bill for miraculously ‘finding’ ‘her cat’.

"I’m also paying your cab fare," Tony said as he returned and handed Jane a really stiff drink in a really big glass, and for that, she did thank him.

They – Jane, Tony, and all the affected Avengers – were on the Avengers common floor of the Tower. Pepper was nowhere in sight and Jane didn’t even blame her, even though it left her to deal with Tony’s Tonyness all by herself.

Natasha, Scott, and Hope were all still insect-shaped and, through strategic application of growth-particles, now ‘safely’ pony-sized. Little Cassie Lang, who had flown over along with Grandma (slash Auntie, because her apparent youth confused people) Janet, was overjoyed. Jane tried very hard not to scream, because once she started she didn’t think she would ever be able to stop.

"Anyway," Jane said, took a big gulp of her drink, and coughed liberally at the burn. "The whole gang’s back together. Now we just have to find a way to turn them back to normal. Piece of cake."

Natasha clicked her jaw-pincer-things up in the massive web she’d spun in a corner of the room, Vision produced ‘Pory pory!’ sounds from the general vicinity of his mouthless anime head, and Wanda let out a sleepy ‘meh’ and nestled a little further into the couch cushions.

Admittedly, there was the small matter of Steve’s missing shield too, but in the grand scheme of things, that was the least of their worries. There were only so many uses the thing could be put to in its current state, and after Ultron ,the control of vibranium trade was stricter – i.e. trade was more non-existent – than ever. If it never resurfaced it would be missed, but it would hardly be the death of Steve.

"Yeah, about that." Tony took a long drought of his own and pointed at Steve. "Why that? I need someone to explain Captain America the mangy, roughed-up alley cat to me."

Steve, nearly completely buried in Thor’s shining golden fur, silently tracked their movements with his eyes.

Jane sighed. "He was a sickly back-alley brawler when he was a kid, wasn’t he?"

"Super soldier, Jane."

"Singularity-powered cyborg, Tony," Jane said, pointing. "Mind-fucking, telekinetic witch, Tony. God-like alien, Tony."

"Why are you so cranky? You saved our national kitten from a tree today."

"Visits to the vet are the opposite of fun for everyone involved and this room is full of monsters, no offense, and I’m either gonna show up to my coffee date tomorrow late or with a sleep hangover as it is, so excuse me if I’m not in the mood for –"

"Wow wow wow, back up. Coffee date?"

Jane heaved a deep, deep sigh.

"Are you okay?" was the first thing Bucky said to Jane the next day. "You look a little peaky."

Poison? Weaponized virus? Torture and intimidation in the night?

"I’m fine, just didn’t sleep very well. Weird dreams."

"Oh." Right. Normal people did have that problem too. "Guess that makes two of us."

"Great. Misery loves company. Here, try this. It’ll make everything better," she said, and handed him a coffee and a smile. The dogs wandered off without prompting.

The sweet, creamy concoction she’d chosen for him did not come close to justifying Starbucks’ ubiquitous presence, but it was still pretty damn good.

"I dreamt I was at a work meeting with a bunch of giant wasps and spiders and stuff," Jane told him. "Woke up feeling like a thousand bugs were crawling all over me."

"I killed a lot of people again," Bucky reciprocated honestly, because Hydra hadn’t hugged him enough as an impressionable amnesiac and therefore he was incapable of loving himself.

"Oh, gosh, I’m sorry," Jane said, wide-eyed. "Were you – overseas?"

"Yeah."

Jane hesitated. "I’m holding back a lot of well-meant but probably completely ignorant platitudes right now."

That startled a laugh out of Bucky.

"Thanks," he said eventually. "Sorry. I left my manners in the mud somewhere over there. You’re not supposed to bring the awkward stuff up so soon."

"No, no, it’s fine. I kinda had a hunch, anyway. You remind me of another veteran friend of mine, a little. Something about your – oh god, I’m sorry if that’s weird."

"Nope," Bucky said, and he was extraordinarily proud of himself for sounding almost up-beat and not at all bitter. "That’s pretty typical. But enough about me, tell me about you. Third date and all I really know about you is your name."

Keeping the conversation going was a lot easier today, much to Bucky’s surprise. Jane did most of the talking. She was a doctor (Bucky blanched) of physics (Bucky felt muscles relax he hadn’t even realized existed), studying things she took great joy explaining to him, because he was pretty sure he’d always had an interest in these kinds of things and apparently a good audience was hard to find.

It occurred to Bucky, quite suddenly, that there was more to the internet than porn and the roadmap of all his sins. It wasn’t just a century of political unrest and global human suffering by his own hands he’d missed. He could read up on this too. How the hell had he read the words ‘moon landing’ and just not cared until now?

"Have you eaten?" he asked after half an hour of hesitation, when they’d sat in the park for hours and finally the streetlights sprung to life.

"One leftover poptart." Jane gave him a bright, considering look. "I could eat."

So they went looking for a place to eat.

"Enough about me. It’s your turn again," Jane said fifteen minutes later, around a mouthful of burger. "Tell me something about you."

James had ordered fries and was eating them with a little plastic fork as they meandered aimlessly through the lamp-lit streets. Jane had pounced on his suggestion that they get something they could eat on the go. Thor made people uncomfortable enough in wide open spaces and with his ‘owner’ close by; she wasn’t looking forward to trying to cram him into a crowded diner or leaving him waiting on the curb.

"Not much to tell," James mumbled down at his hands.

"Come on, I don’t believe that," Jane said, gently teasing.

He shrugged. (Jane idly wondered how much of his bulk was his jacket and how much was his own honest-to-god shoulders.) "Went overseas, came back with my head screwed on all wrong. Now I live off the state and don’t get around much."

Folding down a bit of the wrapping around her hamburger, Jane hmm-ed thoughtfully. "Well, okay. What’s your favorite color?"

James looked up, confused. "What does that have to do with me being –"

"A disabled veteran? Nothing. A person like anybody else? Everything," Jane said airily, and took another big bite. Smooth, Jane. Ten points to Ravenclaw.

James looked astonished.

...oh. Oh, no. That was heartbreaking.

They both looked away at the same time. Jane because, instead of the pity some rational part of her brain... suggested? expected?, she felt a strange tendril of self-doubt creep down her throat and flit around inside her chest. James because who knew; maybe he was embarrassed to have been caught unaware and vulnerable. What would Jane know? Just because she’d helped save the universe that one time and won a Nobel Prize and changed the world with her research didn’t mean she was all that interpersonally savvy. Her smoothness was a fluke.

"...yellow," James said, just as Jane decided: But I’m a grown-ass woman. If there are bridges coming up ahead, I’ll cross them when I get there. "And orange, maybe," James went on. "But definitely yellow."

"...huh."

Jane studied James’s profile – the luscious scruff of his beard, the long, chocolate brown hair held back from his face by a well-worn baseball cap, the tiny dip in the bridge of his nose that was just begging her to run her finger from there to the junction of his eyebrows and back until his lashes fluttered down and brushed the back of her hand, the absentminded distraction in his eyes – and she felt herself smile, completely smitten.

"Wouldn’t have pegged you for the type at all. See?" She nudged him with her elbow. "I’m getting to know you better already."

He gave her a faint but sincere smile in return.

They kept walking, and eating, and slowly, in fits and starts, he opened up to her.

"I used to have three of the exact same yellow shirts, before I... before. Made up almost half my wardrobe. And for a couple of years, bow ties. My friends were always making fun of me for it, but I’d wear them wherever I could get away with them. Looking back on it, I honestly don’t know what possessed me."

Jane laughed.

"And I had really nice hair," he said almost plaintively. "Not this..." He grabbed a fistful in his gloved hand. "...cavemannish, washed up bum, barely human –"

"You don’t like your hair the way it is?" Jane asked, eyebrows shooting up.

"I... didn’t choose it."

"How can you not – how does that work? Why don’t you just get it cut, then?"

He barked out a humorless laugh. "If there’s a way to get a proper haircut without having strangers hold sharp objects up to your throat, in your blind spots, I’m all ears."

There were plenty, Jane thought. Surely a man would know that even better than she did?

"Well... how long or short do you want it, exactly? ’Cause electric trimmer attachments come in all kinds of different lengths, no scissors necessary."

This laugh bordered on hysterical. "That’s even worse."

Dodger squeezed his way between Jane and James to nudge and lick at his hand. Jane almost yelped; she’d totally forgotten the dogs were there. And from the looks of it, so had James.

They fell into something of a routine. Several times a week, they would meet, sometimes for just ten minutes in the park, sometimes for however long Jane’s workload and other social obligations allowed. Searching for Loki proved close to futile, but Bucky kept it up and even allowed it to interfere with seeing Jane from time to time just to keep up the appearance that he, too, had something resembling a life. He tried to make sure their meetings and movements did not become too predictable and was thankful that Jane did not mind his wholesale disruption of her and Thor’s routine.

Sometimes they just walked and talked, and sometimes they went to see a movie, or the sights of the city. "It’s amazing how much more you suddenly see of a place you’ve lived for years once you have someone to see it with you," Jane said after an afternoon of mocking modern art and pointing out all the barely disguised pornography in the classical section at the Met. Bucky had kept his left hand in his pocket and slipped the glove off the other. They’d held hands.

Bucky bought a deck of cards and cheated mercilessly; Jane brought a variety of board games and failed to teach him half the rules until pointing them out conveniently let her win. They played in diners and at stone tables in the park, Jane bundled up endearingly in her long, puffy coat and huge scarf while Bucky layered on another piece of clothing every time the temperature dropped further.

They never made plans more than a day or two ahead, and only ever face-to-face. Neither of them suggested visiting each other’s apartments. Bucky couldn’t see a way to ask her why she didn’t that didn’t carry the risk of making her change her mind and want to see his place, so he let it be.

Jane hit a wall in her current research project and two out of her three assistants and coworkers were apparently insufferable in one way or another. Bucky put his own attempts at charting the scope and gradations of his guilt on hold in favor of the history of the space program for one day and realized more than a week later that he was reading about the cure for polio and newly discovered species of frogs and an arrogant little twerp called Justin Bieber, but hadn’t thought of the SHIELD data dump in days.

He hadn’t had a nightmare in almost as long, either. Unless he counted the one where he tried to furnish his apartment, had to assemble all the hideously expensive furniture from unlabelled pieces the size of his thumb, and kept having it all collapse under his weight once he tried to use it.

And through it all, Bucky steadfastly ignored Steve.

He ignored Steve even though everything he told Jane about himself and his life was a barely edited memory of their life before, and every one he spoke of aloud brought three new ones to the surface. He ignored Steve even though he started making out increasingly clear outlines between things he remembered and things he didn’t, things that stubbornly refused to return and which only Steve now knew. He ignored Steve even though, while he may have quieted considerably after Bucky’s outburst, his devotion never wavered, and he didn’t need a human voice or face to show Bucky how the stories about their childhood made him feel. He ignored Steve even though an ever-growing part of him looked at the dog and missed the man like a physical ache.

He ignored Steve because the rest of him still had a very different opinion, because even the smallest and most innocuous thing could be the wrong thing that caused the dam to break and all that anger and resentment to burst back to the surface. He ignored Steve because he knew that once he stopped pretending there was nothing for them to talk about, he would only say more things he would regret.

And most of all: he did not apologize for or take back anything he’d said already. No matter how much he wanted to.

It would be better this way. All he had to do was hold out until either he found Loki or the Avengers found a cure. Then they would part ways for good, Bucky could let Jane down gently, and he’d go back to – to –

Afterwards, she couldn’t really remember what he’d said to finally make it happen; just that she’d waited long enough and knew with absolute clarity that this was what she wanted. Jane kissed James because sometimes his eyes were so soft and kind she couldn’t stand it, and they crinkled along two distinct little lines when he smiled, and he made her laugh, and he was reading up on the entire history of mankind’s reach for the stars in chronological order just to have something to talk to her about, and he was built like a bull but gentle as a kitten just the way she liked ’em, and generous, and he didn’t even realize how wonderful he was.

So she stood up on her tip-toes, pressed into the whole solid length of him, cupped the back of his neck and the small of his back, and kissed him.

When she pulled away long, mutually eager minutes later, his eyes were closed and his lips moved as if mouthing silent words.

"What?" Jane whispered.

Opening his eyes, he rested his forehead against hers and almost tentatively put his hands on her hips. "I think I –"

"You think you what?"

He opened and closed his mouth. "I think you know what."

"Probably, yeah."

"But you deserve a guy who..." James searched her eyes for a long moment, then swallowed thickly. "A guy with the guts to say it out loud."

Jane couldn’t help it: she burst out giggling.

"I swear, if you’re about to turn all insecure self-loathing martyr on me, I will take my research into bending the fabric of reality to my will and go supervillain on your ass."

James looked a little stunned.

She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Come home with me tonight. We don’t have to use the bed, I’ve got a great couch for snuggling on. Plus it’s warm inside."

The corner of his mouth curled up minutely. "How warm?"

"As warm as we damn well please."

"My one weakness. How could I refuse?"

On the way there, with the hand not tugging James along, Jane surreptitiously texted Darcy to get the hell out of her house and take Thor with her. And for Thor to take Mjolnir with him. And also to get rid of Tony’s guarding armor, Jane’s collection of alien souvenirs and scrapbooks she’d collected when she was still dating Thor and he took her sight-seeing, every photograph depicting an Avenger, and to put all her animal shapeshifting research in the safe.

‘r u under attack??’ Darcy texted back.

‘Worse. If any of it is still there when I get home, I’m not getting laid.’

She didn’t really want to think about that conversation yet. James, somewhat to her surprise, had yet to put two and two together and realize she was that Jane Foster, the one from the Convergence and the Bifrost and the Nobel and the Avengers. That hadn’t been entirely intentional, but as long as the team was still incapacitated, Loki still at large, and she the world’s leading expert on Asgardian technology i.e. their best shot at a solution, she wasn’t going to disabuse him of his ignorance if she didn’t have to. Tony had yet to retrieve his suit from her hallway closet for a reason, after all.

Darcy had been very thorough. Without the results of her methods and other actually important things to balance out the whole, it seemed Jane’s apartment was filled with nothing but chaos and her own slobbery.

"It’s, um," she said with a fake little laugh, kicking some laundry under the couch. "Usually I know I’ll be having guests over beforehand."

"It makes me feel a lot better about my own apartment," James joked. "Where’s the dog?"

"Darcy borrowed him. You want something to drink? A snack? Wait, don’t answer that – I’m not sure I have anything."

While Jane went through her kitchen cabinets, James first took in her space in that soldier’s way she’d come to recognize from Thor and some of the other Avengers and hanger-ons, and only then took off his shoes and coat.

"It is nice and warm in here," he said, as if it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him.

"I have a present for you," Jane said after a moment of deliberation. She urged him to get comfortable while she went into her bedroom, and came back with her hands behind her back. "I was gonna save this for the one month anniversary of our meeting, but... close enough, right?"

She held it out to him with a fiendish glint in her eyes.

"You said you liked the color, but I never see you wear it."

Slack-jawed and wide-eyed, James took her gifts and unfolded them. It was a short-sleeved t-shirt, a button-up shirt, and a cable-knit sweater, all an eye-searingly bright canary yellow. The tee and sweater had one big white banana on the chest and back and the button-up was covered in a pattern of little white bananas all over. James ran the fingers of his ‘good’ right hand, without the burn damage he was so self-conscious about, over the fabric. He started laughing.

"So you like it?" Jane asked, grinning.

"I love it," he said. Touching the banana on the t-shirt, he started laughing even harder, until he collapsed in a shaking heap on her couch, his hand pressed over his eyes.

She’d never seen him like this before. She hoped they could make it a habit.

"Good. I thought you’d like bananas."

"Oh no, I hate bananas," he corrected her, hiccuping a little. "So much. They taste like deceit and disappointment. I have no idea why that makes this even better, but it does."

"That works too," Jane said easily. "I hope they fit. Wanna try them on?"

He changed in her bedroom and showed his new clothes off with a lot of mirth but all the grace of a rake, and kept his own grey zip-up hoodie on over the t-shirt. The complete lack of skin was a little disappointing, but his eyes had practically begged her not to push when she first brought up the glove thing, so she stuck to a wolf whistle and saved further cajoling for later. Everything in its right time.

"Nailed it," she declared, and kissed him again. The button-up, tucked into his jeans for extra effect, perfectly accentuated the width of his shoulders, and the dip of his back, and the size of his arms, and his thighs too come to think of it, and god she could jump him right here and now, clownish banana shirt and all.

Eventually he put the sweater on over his own black Henley, and they ordered pizza. Jane didn’t think James saw much of the movie they watched, though. When he wasn’t sneaking her glances filled with wonder and barely concealed adoration, his thoughts seemed a million miles away.

When he got home, he sat in his pile of blankets in his pitch-black apartment, his back pressed to the blazing radiator, lost in thought.

He laid out the facts, as he had countless times before:

- What had happened to the world because he didn’t die when he was supposed to, could never be undone.

- He was out now, but Hydra was not gone.

- Hydra would never be gone.

- He was never going to forgive himself for what the ‘Winter Soldier’ had done.

But this time, he put opposite it:

- His name was James Buchanan Barnes, and he was a free man.

- He hadn’t deserved any of what happened to him.

- He didn’t want to go back to being lonely and miserable.

Bucky didn’t sleep that night.

At 05:02, he set his phone on the floor in flashlight mode. He stood and turned to the windows. His fingers shook as he went to work.

"Steve?" he whispered some time later, stilling the tremors by laying his hand on Steve’s head. Steve blinked quickly into wakefulness, ears perking and eyes widening. "I’m gonna need your help with something today, okay?"

After breakfast, they geared up and went out. He bought a packet of razorblades and as many clothes as he could stuff into his backpack. They took a train to the nearest Ikea and arranged for his purchases to be delivered to his address. He didn’t skimp on the furniture either. One thing he was willing to hand to Hydra: once you knew where to look and who to shoot, they had excellent retirement and inheritance packages.

And then they visited a barbershop run by a young lady combat veteran. Steve pulled Bucky the last few feet across the threshold and pressed heavily into his knee the whole time he was in the barber chair, staring over Bucky’s shoulder and ready to tear the hairdresser’s throat out the moment she made one wrong move with the scissors, or suddenly whipped out a syringe or electric charge device, or tore her face off, or the chair spontaneously grew restraints, or –

She was real considerate about the whole thing. That did make Bucky feel a little better as he fumbled through the adrenaline crash back at his apartment until he had to give up on assembling his brand new wardrobe and just clutch at Steve and breathe into his neck for a while. This gave Steve the opportunity to finally lick Bucky’s ear to his heart’s content, but he figured they both deserved that.

We’ll get you back in shape, pal, he thought, running the fingers of his right hand through his old friend’s fur. We’ll get the both of us back in shape.

The next evening, Bucky Barnes showed up on Jane’s doorstep looking like someone he might actually enjoy being.

"– come on. Look, I know you’re supportive of my career and the advancement of the human race and everything, but Asgardian magic requires resources we simply have no access to at this point in our development, and I’m not gonna get another Nobel Prize anytime soon for cracking the tech of a civilization we’re trying to build friendly ties with. Historically, taking things you haven’t been freely offered hasn’t worked out so well for us. It would s – cough –"

She took a gulp of her honey with tea.

"– send all the wrong messages, you know?"

Jane did not, in fact, know. This was Darcy’s area of expertise. Jane was just bluffing. Jane was, at this point, talking entirely out of her ass. Jane was at her wit’s end, out of ideas, out of options, and out of patience most of all. Jane had been talking at the ceiling for two fucking hours straight after weeks of futile attempts at cracking this mystery and Asgard still wouldn’t budge, which meant one of three things.

One: the whole situation down here on Earth was so trivial she had been making a fool of herself for two fucking hours straight and Heimdall was laughing himself blue in the face from on high.

Two: Asgard was under attack and the whole universe could be fucked without them even knowing it.

Or three: like Thor when it came to doing anything for the Avengers that looked remotely like giving orders instead of following them, Frigga was invoking a selectively overzealous Prime Directive over this mess for shits and giggles. Which would mean – and the realization hit Jane like a ton of bricks – that the ‘magic’ Loki had used was neither of Asgardian nor of any other extraterrestrial origin.

"Son of a bitch," she said.

Chewing on the biggest dog bone she and James had been able to find, Thor wagged his tail at her.

"That son of a bitch," she said ten minutes later, having double-checked all her data. "Not you, Frigga."

She sat back in her chair and let this change of perspective cascade through her thoughts like falling dominos.

A lot of alien magic was, by definition, so advanced that even Jane’s attempts at affecting it were like banging on an old television to get the static to clear up. She could deduce what was happening on the physics level, but Earth technology simply wasn’t advanced enough yet for the how, let alone reproducing that how. That’s why trying to mine the ‘Space’ Infinity Stone had given them ray guns and an invasion, their attempt at slotting the ‘Mind’ Stone into the most advanced digital framework on the planet built by the greatest engineering mind of the century promptly went Skynet on their asses, and SHIELD-Hydra had taken an artificially intelligent, fuel-free furnace armor that could be telepathically controlled from the other end of the galaxy, stripped it of everything that made it incredible, and turned it into a laser bazooka. Somehow, almost being blown up by the original made Jane no less bitter about stumbling across that little detail on the Insight Day wiki.

Point being: all this time, Jane had been looking for a hammer to smash a lock too intricate to pick – while what she was dealing with was actually a knot. Or, more specifically, she’d been trying to apply physics to a biological problem.

She grabbed her phone and dialed up Culver University.

"Hey, Betty? It’s Jane. I need your help with something."

"Oh, hi. What can I do for you? Is this about the... ‘dog’ thing?"

"Yeah. I’ve been looking at this all wrong, Betty. I’m gonna send you some blood samples. Ten bucks says the magic was only a small part of it and the real key is a mutagen. As in, an actual physical substance."

"You mean –"

"Manmade. Human made."

"Oh my god."

"My thoughts exactly."

Next, Tony:

"What kind of store had Loki visited before he dropped his disguise?"

"Uh, I think it was..."

"A Petsmart, boss," FRIDAY supplied.

"Right, what she said."

"Shit. Wait, seriously? A Petsmart?"

"Why? Did you find something?"

"I have reason to believe there might be illegal biological experiments being conducted in that establishment, or at least the products of it being sold, and that’s why Loki came there."

"Oh. You’re right. Shit. FRIDAY, get me the chief of police. And the Queen Mother Bee. This calls for some heavy-duty shrinking and entering."

The rest of the day passed in a flurry of activity. Tony, Janet and Betty kept Jane informed of their findings and developments, and Jane’s own research progressed by leaps and bounds now that she’d finally found the missing link. All Loki’s magic had really contributed was a metaphorical jumper cable and the sorcerous imagination and will necessary to choose such a symbolic new shape for each Avenger. Two could play that game. Jane didn’t even have to be a sorceress for it. A little mutagen, a little of the Avengers’ original DNA, a little of the right zap!, and they’d have the gang right back to normal.

An awl, not a hammer.

She slept fitfully, ate a cup of coffee for breakfast, and went right back to work and did not stop until suddenly, the doorbell rang. Jane jolted in surprise, knocking the half-empty Tupperware container of lasagna Thor had microwaved for her off of her desk.

"Aw, crap," she grumbled, standing and stepping on the bra she only now remembered she wasn’t wearing. Stretching away the worst of her stiffness, she stumbled out into the hallway. "The hell do they want from me at a time like this anyway."

She opened the door.

"Hi."

Jane blinked. "Uh. Can I... help you?"

The stranger furrowed his brow and twisted his mouth, and suddenly Jane’s brain clicked into place.

"James?"

"Hi," he repeated, grinning wryly.

"Oh my god. I almost didn’t..."

It was James alright, but not like she’d ever imagined him. He’d shaved off his beard, for starters. In spite of all conscious knowledge and prior experience, Jane was astounded by how much younger and softer that made him look. He might even be younger than her. He had a cleft in his chin she’d never noticed before. His mouth looked somehow more expressive. And good lord, the difference the short-cropped hair made. A pale blue checkered button-down she’d never seen before under a leather jacket that looked brand new...

"Is this how you normally look?" Jane found herself saying.

"It’s been a while," he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets self-consciously. "But yeah. More or less."

"It’s a good look."

James smiled, and it looked almost relieved.

Jane shook off her little stab of disappointment at the loss of the Viking warrior look. She had known he wasn’t fond of it himself all along. She’d get used to the change.

"Who knew you’d clean up so nice," she said with a smile, and grabbed his hand to draw him out of the cold and close the door to it behind him. "Wow."

He gave a little laugh and kissed her cheek. "Go easy on me, I feel exposed enough as it is with all this wind and sun on my face."

Thor’s nails clicked against the floor, and he stuck his head around the living room door.

"Look Thor, it’s James."

"Hey, big guy."

"Wuf?" Thor said, looking pleasantly surprised.

"Sorry pal, I left Dodger at home this time," James said.

"Woof!" Thor came up to them, tail wagging, allowed James to ruffle his fur for a moment, and nodded in approval. "Woof."

Jane drew his head toward her to kiss his whiskered cheek, whispered "close my files and laptop" in his ear, and she and James watched him stroll off together. Only when her ex turned alien dog was out of sight did Jane turn her attention back to James.

"So. Not that you weren’t a handsome devil before, but what brought on the make-over?"

"Sometimes..." He linked the fingers of their other hands too and looked her in the eye very earnestly. "Sometimes it’s hard to remember I have options. Thank you for reminding me. Would you like to go dancing?"

Jane’s brain came to a screeching halt. "What?"

"Dancing. To music. With steps."

"I – uh –"

"It’s fine if you don’t know how! I’m roughly fifty years out of practice myself. But I found this little place that offers lessons, so..."

He looked at her expectantly.

But my work! her mind cried.

But your hot boyfriend, her loins whispered. Yes, he’s your boyfriend now. It’s official. And dancing is really intimate when you want it to be. And he smells so good. Are you ovulating? Are you overworked? Is the new look just that hot? Who even knows.

"I. Uh."

"Woof!" Thor said, sticking his head into the hallway again. ‘Woof’ clearly meaning ‘SAY YES’.

"Um."

He growled and came toward them. "Woof. Woof woof wuffle woof."

He took her coat from the coat rack with his teeth and pushed it into her arms. If she tried to go back to work he would probably sit on her stuff. Or on her directly, come to think of it.

She was way ahead of the others, she supposed. She couldn’t get all that much more done until she heard back from Betty or Tony, or Janet and the police investigators.

"Can’t argue with that," Jane laughed. "Just to warn you though, I’ve been told I have two left feet plus a phantom third. Is there a dress code? I should probably freshen up before we leave either way. I made a major breakthrough in my work today. I can’t talk about the details yet, but it’s amazing and I’m gonna talk you ear off about it in all kinds of roundabout ways on our way there."

"Wow," James said, looking at Thor with wide eyes. "Thanks."

For a while after, he could remembered helping Jane into her coat, but most of the rest of that night was merely snippets; the sound of Jane’s laughter, the smell of her hair, the complete trust she put in his nearness and the sudden realization of joy that after everything, his body was still good for this thing he loved. He was dancing again to all the best swing, with his combat boots and his metal arm and his twenty-first century girl, and for the first time in a long, long time, the world was good and he just knew everything would be alright.

Bucky fell into bed with the biggest smile on his face – and awoke screaming in a strange bed with Jane’s blood on his hands, because Hydra didn’t need to get him back when they still had him, when they were inside him, their tentacles buried deeper in his brain and his bones than Bucky himself could reach –

No.

Stop.

It was a dream.

None of it was rea–

He didn’t recognize the room he was in. His apartment didn’t have all this furniture in it. Hydra had found him. They’d done this. They’d moved him, they could’ve done anything to him, made him do anything.

Jane.

– helicarrier burning and groaning blood everywhere his fingers slipping in it as he tightened his grip and brought his hand down again her lifeless eyes staring up at –

Oh god, Jane.

He stumbled out of the strange bed and tore the farce of a home apart until he found his phone... right smack in the middle of the coffee table. The room was spinning.

"Jane Jane Jane Jane please Jane," he begged the dial tone until finally there was a click and she answered with a groggy, "Hello?"

"Jane, you have to run. They’re coming for you."

"Whah – ? Who is this?"

"It’s Bucky, it’s – it’s me, James. Jane, they found me," he said, words blurring together as he tripped over his tongue. "I don’t know what they did but if they knew I was here then they know about you and’ll try to get you next. You have to –" He faltered. "Have to –"

"Call the Avengers to your aid," a helpful voice supplied. "Let them fall out for your protection."

Bucky’s knees gave out. Slumped against the coffee table, he went very, very still.

"James?" Jane sounded more awake now. "James, what’s going on? What are you talking about?"

"Jane," he said, as clearly and calmly urgent as he could. "Listen to me. Go to Avengers Tower. Ask them for shelter. Avoid the obvious routes. Detour. But hurry. They’re coming."

"James, you’re scaring me. Are you okay? Should I come over?"

"No, you need to run."

"You sound really not okay. Shit, I don’t even know where you live. Listen, James, I’m gonna call a friend of mine to trace this call so I can come over. Everything will be okay. I’ll be there before you know it. Just stay where you are and – and don’t do anything stupid, okay? Promise me."

"The Avengers –"

"Yes, I’ll bring the Avengers, I’ll call them –"

"No, don’t make them leave headquarters, go to them –"

The line went dead.

"That’ll be all, good soldier," said that same smooth, deceptively pleasant voice. Clammy fingers plucked the phone from Bucky’s grasp. "Thanks ever so much for your service."

In one last burst of strength and coordination, Bucky whipped around towards the origin of the sound and struck like a snake – only for his outstretched metal wrist to be caught in an unyielding grip. A man (or three) shimmered to life before his unfocusing eyes; raven-haired, narrow-faced, and dressed in a fine but frightfully thin linen suit. He was starkly pale beneath his flush and seemed to be sweating like a pig.

"Loki," Bucky said – or tried to. Whatever the rat bastard had done to him had finally stolen away control of his mouth and vocal chords altogether.

With a thin smile, Loki flicked Bucky’s arm away from him like a piece of lint, and sent Bucky straight through the coffee table after it.

"Why don’t you take a nap while I walk the dog, hm, Sergeant?"

Fear, clear and sharp like ice, penetrated the distorting fog trying to smother Bucky’s mind and senses. He tried to get up, to look around, to get to Steve, but his limbs would no longer obey him.

"Right here," Loki said, as if from very far away. Through the swirling darkness, Bucky thought he saw him hoist Steve’s limp dog body over his shoulder. And then Loki carried him off to whatever scheme he needed Jane for, while unconsciousness descended over Bucky, powerless to stop him.

And to think Bucky had come to believe there were no more new ways left for his heart to break.

"The cell signal’s coming from this apartment," Tony said.

Jane pressed the doorbell. It didn’t work. She started knocking, then banging with the side of her fist.

"James? James, it’s Jane! Please open up! James? Are you there?!"

The next door up the hall opened, and a gaunt-faced woman stuck her head out into the hallway, glaring at them with a mixture of irritation and mistrust. Then she caught sight of Tony, all suited up, and her expression morphed into one of slack-jawed horror.

"Oh Christ, I knew that creep was up to no good!"

And she slammed the door and locked what sounded like five different locks.

Jane could only gape, her frantic worry momentarily overwritten by pure indignation. "Creep?!"

Tony frowned. "Stand back for a sec, would you? I’m breaking this door down."

"He is not a creep," Jane insisted as Tony lowered the visor of his suit. "He’s just –"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, combat vet with post-traumatic stress."

"Just please don’t scare –"

But Tony very calmly and neatly popped the door out of its hinges and propped it up against the hallway wall.

The moment Tony moved aside enough for Jane to get a peek through the doorway, she gasped and rushed inside. "James!"

He lay crumpled on his side in the middle of the living room, amidst the splintered remains of a table. He was pale and still and looked like a discarded rag doll, and Jane was thrown back straight to Thor lying broken in the middle of a New Mexico street, the shadow of the blazing Destroyer still hanging over them as his life left him right there in Jane’s arms, and to a courtyard in Greenwich, futilely trying to drag his insensate body out from under collapsing black death. And Thor had been a god, but James was just a man –

"No no no no no no," she realized she was begging as she touched James’ cheek and shoulder and neck and wrist trying with numb fingers to find a pulse or a breath or or or –

"FRIDAY?" Tony said.

James groaned minutely. Or maybe he didn’t and she was just imagining signs of life.

"His vital signs are all stable," Tony said, flipping up the visor.

Jane promptly burst into tears.

"No, no, I’m okay, I’m okay," she said a minute or two and several deep breaths later, wiped the tears from her face, and cleared a patch of floor of debris so she could gently turn James on his back. "Tony, call an ambulance or something. Something clearly happened to him."

"Jane," Tony said in a very strange voice. "Jane, step away from that man."

"What?"

Jane looked up. Tony had his repulsor up and aimed at James.

"Your boyfriend’s been lying to you, Jane. You see his left arm? That’s the Winter Soldier. And – FRIDAY, help me out here, is that the face I think it is?" The visor closed again, and sprang open moments later. "Yep. He’s also a dead ringer for a dead man called Bucky Barnes."

"Bucky Barnes," Jane said flatly. "As in, Steve’s Bucky Barnes."

"Exactly. Which answers one question I’ve had for the past two years and raises about a million more, but that can wait. Because Winter Soldier."

She’d never paid much attention in history class. She wouldn’t know Bucky Barnes from James Dean. She’d been around Steve long enough to know that ‘Bucky Barnes’ and ‘that Hydra assassin who almost killed half the current Avengers roster and nearly beat Steve to death on Insight Day’ were inherently incompatible, though.

"Tony," Jane said impatiently. "Either call an ambulance for James or for your own paranoid delusions, but call an ambulance or get out."

"Hey, a little gratitude would be nice."

"A little less slandering an innocent man in need of medical assistance would be nice!"

"Did you know about that arm?"

Jane focused on it for the first time. James was wearing sweat pants and a singlet, as if he’d stumbled out of bed and crashed straight through the table, and his left arm was – well, not horribly burned all over like he’d made it sound. Looking at the scarring around his shoulder she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d lost the entire limb in a fire instead, though. Maybe that’s what he’d meant with ‘burn damage’.

"There’s a lot I don’t know about him yet. Why do you think I needed you to find his apartment for me?"

Come to think of it, she couldn’t even remember giving him her number. She sure didn’t have his.

"Yeah, that’s pretty convenient too, because – take a whiff – do you smell that? I smell it. The whole place is drenched in eau de fresh plywood. That trash bag over by the door? Full of packaging materials. All of your boyfriend’s furniture is a week old tops, and if you’ll tear your eyes away from his pretty face for a sec, you’ll see that he has literally nothing but the bare essentials in here. An unused prison cell has more personality."

Apparently confident that James wouldn’t wake up right that second, Tony turned away and went to inspect the other two rooms of the apartment. Jane couldn’t tear her eyes away from James’ pretty face until Tony could no longer see them. He was right about the state of the apartment. Jane even spotted bits of styrofoam in the creases of the couch cushions, a little errant sawdust by a cabinet against the opposite wall.

Not that it proved anything. James could’ve just moved here this week. She wouldn’t necessarily know; they hadn’t often talked about big things like that.

Basic things like that, Jane realized with something like a jolt.

James hadn’t, as a rule, volunteered information of that kind, and Jane was suddenly coming to realize that she hadn’t even really noticed there were different kinds of information at play. The lack of that weight – of knowing where he fit into the world when he wasn’t awkwardly flirting with her, or taking her sight-seeing like a tourist in their own home, or telling her about a youth that more often than not sounded like it belonged to a dead man, a man who had never made it back from the war; of knowing where his independent trajectory might take him, and lead him to want to take them – had just been so convenient to her. She already had one big project on her mind: turning the Avengers back into themselves. There hadn’t been enough room left in her mind to start a relationship with too much obvious potential for long-term commitment.

Oh, she was head over heels for the guy, no doubt about that. But the unsentimental, analytical side of her had to admit she’d been using James as a distraction all this time.

"Jane?"

Tony came clanking back into the room. He’d found a backpack in what must be the bedroom, the big, sturdy kind with extra straps you took hiking. Grim-faced, he upended the contents onto the couch and began sliding pertinent items towards Jane.

Two guns of different kinds. A silencer. Four knives in sheaths with straps of different lengths. A coil of wire with a handle on each end. High-denomination rolls of cash – dollars, euros, pounds, rubles. Six passports.

Jane lifted her hand from James’ shoulder and opened the passports one by one.

Travis Osmond. Vasily Bogoslovsky. Dietrich Schreiner. Thierry Pétain. Ian Doherty. Alexandru Vinea.

James’ face was on all of them.

"Right." Thoughts racing and getting to a lot of nowhere, Jane bit her lip. "Yeah. Um."

Okay, this looked bad. Still didn’t rule out a set-up or plain old trauma-induced paranoia, but this looked really really bad.

It’s Bucky, it’s – it’s me, James, Jane suddenly remembered. He’d said that on the phone, hadn’t he? It’s Bucky. Or was that just wishful thinking rewriting memories ripe for misremembering because of the haze of sleep enveloping them?

"And then there’s this," Tony said, and held up... a frisbee.

"That’s his dog’s," Jane said.

"FRIDAY says it’s made of vibranium," Tony said.

Frowning, Jane took the red-white-and-blue vibranium frisbee – and felt herself go cold all over. "Tony, where’s the dog?"

"I didn’t see any dog. Just a bag of stuff for one."

Jane turned around and started shaking James’ shoulder. Hard. "James, James, wake up, wake up, come on. James – Bucky –"

"Oh, now you believe me and you immediately start poking the sleeping Winter Soldier? For god’s sake, Jane, stop poking the sleeping Winter Soldier."

"I’m not poking the Winter Soldier, Tony, I’m poking Bucky Barnes."

"Woah, back up, I never said he was Bucky Barnes, just that he looked like Bucky Barnes."

"He is Bucky Barnes. I don’t know how, but trust me, he is."

James – Bucky – groaned.

"That’s it!" Jane cheered. "Come on, wake up, Bucky, wake up."

"Jane?" he slurred, slowly prying his eyelids open and blinking his eyes into focus. Then he became aware of something other than her face, took in the rest of the room in a flash (Tony waggled his fingers at him around the light of the repulsor), and turned wide, desperate eyes back on her, his whole body tensing. "I can explain all of this."

"Never mind that right now. Where’s Steve? Dodger?"

Jane took that ‘desperate’ back. This was what despair looked like. "Loki. Loki took him. I woke up and he’d drugged me. I couldn’t stop him."

"Hold on," Tony said. "Dodger is his dog?"

"Yes," Jane said.

"And you’re insinuating that Dodger is Steve Rogers?"

"He is," James said wretchedly.

"But we already have Steve. He’s a cat."

"Thor lied to me," Jane deduced. "All we had to go on by that point was his word, remember? Not a trace of magic left to corroborate his claims."

"Hold on," James said, sitting up warily. "Thor?"

"My dog Thor," Jane said. "He’s the real Thor, the same way Dodger is Steve. Loki got almost all of the Avengers last month and turned them into various animals."

"Yeah, Steve told me that much," James said.

"Why did you steal Steve?" Tony asked.

"I didn’t. He used his dog’s nose to sniff me out and once he found me, he refused to leave. What I don’t understand is," James said to Jane. "How did you end up looking after Thor?"

Jane blinked. She’d almost forgotten he still hadn’t realized. "We’re friends. And exes."

James frowned. "Exes? Wait, you’re Jane Foster?"

"You know I am!"

"Not until now I didn’t! You never told me your last name!"

"I didn– and it never occurred to you to ask?"

That threw him for a loop. "I, uh. No."

"How – ?" Tony started, making a face.

"Names get weird when you’re made to forget your own for seventy years, okay?" James snapped.

Jane and Tony stared. "Made to forget?"

"Oh, god help me." James pushed his real hand through his hair. "We don’t have time for this. Loki took Steve and lured you away from Avengers Tower and the others!"

"No, no, we have a little time for this," Tony insisted. He still hadn’t lowered the repulsor. "Let’s say that you being Steve’s Bucky is an undisputable fact. That still leaves the question of how you’re also the Winter Soldier."

James’ expression shuttered.

"I signed up for the US army after the attack on Pearl Harbor. My unit was captured by Hydra at Azzano in 1943. Hydra scientist Arnim Zola experimented on me to no apparent effect until Steve came and busted us out," he rattled off, his voice completely void of inflection or emotion. "In ’45, I fell off a train and lost my arm, but the experiments turned out to have had an effect after all; I didn’t die. Hydra captured me again, wiped my memory, tortured me, and brainwashed me to be their obedient killing machine. If I resisted or started remembering things, they would wipe the slate clean and recondition me using electric shocks and psychotropic drugs. They kept me in cryogenic suspension between missions until Steve showed up again and disrupted the programming. I’ve been on the run ever since and I’ll die before I let Hydra take me a third time."

Tony stared, slack-jawed. Tears escaped down Jane’s cheeks when she blinked.

"Wow. Did you – rehearse that?" Tony floundered.

"After I escaped I had to relearn how to sleep naturally. Sometimes I’d get things mixed up and wake up thinking they still had me and I was just coming out of cryo, blank slate memory and all. So I wrote the truth down and used to read it first thing every time I woke up." James’ hands were balled into shaking fists on top of his thighs. "Happy now? You trust me enough to fucking go save Steve and the others now?"

"Um. Yeah. I guess. Yep. Totally," Tony said, flipped down his visor, and hurried off.

In the sudden silent isolation, Jane tried to stifle her hitching breaths.

"Please don’t cry," James mumbled at his knees.

Jane wiped at her face. "I’m sorry."

"No. I lied to you. I’m the one who should be sorry."

He got up a little unsteadily and disappeared into the bedroom. By the time he came back, dressed in what she could only think of as urban combat gear, and started disappearing the weapons from the couch onto his person, his stance was solid and Jane had pulled herself together.

"It’s pretty freaky, not gonna lie," she said. "But on the other hand, I kinda understand why you did it."

"It’s no excuse," he said without meeting her eyes.

"I forgive you anyway."

He looked up warily. She shrugged.

"So we both forgot to mention a couple of things about ourselves. Big deal. It’s not like I pushed you for any of the important stuff." She held out her hand. "Hi. Jane Foster. Nice to meet you."

Slowly, he took her hand and shook it.

"James Buchanan Barnes. My friends called me Bucky, when I still had them."

"And what should I call you?"

He looked at her like he might drown in her. "Bucky. I never want to be anything but Bucky again."

"Alright. Bucky."

"How are you taking this so well?" He seemed to be waiting for the other shoe to drop – with a bomb in it.

"My last boyfriend was the Norse god of thunder," Jane said. "My former brother-in-law tried to conquer the planet. Tony nearly ushered in a robot apocalypse, and professional curiosity once lead me to being possessed by a semi-sentient concentrated singularity from before the start of the universe. Betty – my friend and sometimes coworker – used to date the Hulk. Maybe is again. She won’t tell me, he’s supposed to be MIA."

"Huh." Bucky stared, then blinked. "Where’s Thor?"

"My place."

"That at least means he won’t have access to everyone at once. I don’t suppose you brought a car."

"No, I hitched a ride with Tony. And I take it you don’t have a car either."

"No. We can’t take public transport."

"Or walk. God knows what Loki’s gotten up to by the time we arrive at the Tower."

"Yeah, walking didn’t go so well for me last time."

They looked at each other for a moment and then, in stereo, said: "We could steal a car?"

"Oh thank god, I thought I was going to regret saying that," Bucky said.

Jane grinned. "We’ll bring it back after. Let’s go."

They pulled up to the private entrance to Avengers Tower just as Iron Man slammed a crater into the pavement. Luckily, Tony Stark’s expertise in shock-dampening technology was greater than any magic, so the man inside the suit was fine.

"Ouch," Stark croaked.

Mostly fine.

"Oh, hi Jane, Sarge," Stark groaned, twitching and sparking a little. "Right on time. Oh sweet mother of ouch."

"Tony!" Jane wrestled out of her seatbelt and hurried over to Stark. "Are you okay?"

"What’s the situation?" Bucky demanded, following on Jane’s heels.

"The building’s been evacuated. Loki’s up in the penthouse. He’s got the whole petting zoo caged up and ready to ship out, but Janet’s still holding him off –"

As if on cue, an explosion and a shriek resounded. Jane and Bucky looked up to see a woman tumbling from one of the top story windows, just as Stark had. The dragonfly wings of her suit were just barely visible, flapping at full speed but too flimsy to bear a full-sized woman’s weight.

"Oh my –" Jane started, but Bucky said, "Don’t worry, she’s fine."

And she shrunk, disappearing in mid-air and letting the change in aerodynamic variables put her wings back in action just as she had when the Winter Soldier threw her off a different skyscraper during the Cold War. Which was another conversation Bucky was not looking forward to having.

"Stay with Stark," he told Jane. "I’ll help the Wasp take Loki down."

"Wait, I –" she yelled after him, but he was already out of earshot.

Riding an elevator in his current state of suspense was hardly one of the worst things he’d ever experienced, but it definitely felt like it. He fired a bullet at Loki’s head the moment the elevator doors opened onto the top floor. The alien bastard had heard him coming and dodged, retaliating with a flurry of knives like shards of glimmering pale blue light.

"Oh, for Yggdrasil’s sake!" Loki swore.

Look who’s talking, Bucky thought, drawing a knife of his own and lunging. Loki deflected Bucky’s attack only to be socked right in the jaw by the miniaturized Wasp coming at him from the other side.

Just as Bucky had hoped.

The three of them fought viciously. Both sides smashed through pieces of furniture or used them as improvised bludgeons as their grappling led them through the rooms (and walls) of the penthouse. Wasp specialized in close-range attacks and Bucky focused on supporting that, saving his bullets for distraction shots after Loki batted one too many of them out of the air like flies. Loki’s supply of magic knives was endless and what barehanded blows he dealt were frightful, and just when Bucky they couldn’t be more outmatched, he made it worse by filling the room with a blinding, thronging crowd of clones.

"YOU CANNOT WIN THIS," all the Lokis chorused. "THE EVER-EXPANDING UNIVERSE HAS LEFT YOU TWO FORGOTTEN SOLDIERS IN THE DUST."

A few of the clones went up in showers of light as the Wasp shot through them like a bullet and alighted on Bucky’s shoulder. For him, she only made the impact sting a little.

"They’re just holograms," she said, her voice tiny and tinny. "They can’t hurt us."

"But they can let the real deal get away while we stare ourselves blind on the doubles," Bucky said, cutting a swathe through the illusory Lokis as he made his way toward the animal cages. New holograms sprung up as soon as he’d passed.

Then the sprinkler system turned on.

"Jane," Bucky realized immediately. And, grinning fiercely, he shot a look at the nearest security camera before turning toward the one remaining solid Loki in the room.

Loki tsk-ed and brushed his sodden hair from his face. "She always was clever, that mortal. I was almost looking forward to gaining a sister in her. But enough, now. This pointless resistance has gone on long enough."

Bucky gripped his knife more securely and advanced. The Wasp darted away through the rain.

"Believe me when I say this pains my heart as much as it will pain the whole of you," Loki murmured, expression grim and face draining from any color it had had...

Only to be replaced by blue.

What the fuck? was all Bucky could think – before Loki threw all his strategies so far to the wind and barreled straight into him. And the next thing Bucky knew, he was strapped into the chamber and the cold of the flash freeze washed over him, eating through his skin into his flesh and bone and brain like fire, like acid, and all he could do was scream and lash out with the one part of him that wasn’t dissolving in terror and agony, and hold on –

CLANG, something said. And, "Hulkbuster, smash! Take that, you blue –"

– and then Bucky went very, very far away.

When Jane didn’t know what to do with herself, she worked. And she may have set up her workplace in the infirmary this time, but work she did. She had finally relocated her research to Avengers Tower, and Betty had flown in, and between them and Tony and Janet, it was a matter of days, maybe hours, before they had the Avengers back to normal. Minutes if Loki stopped being a dick, but, predictably, Loki did not stop being a dick just because they wanted him to.

And Bucky... Bucky would wake up when he wanted to, they supposed.

Initially it seemed like he would regain consciousness as soon as they thawed him out of the block of ice Loki had encased him in. They’d all but kidnaped Helen Cho from Seoul just to have someone absolutely trustworthy oversee the process. Steve – the dog, not Imposter Steve the cat – had snarled any lesser suggestion into non-existence. Steve the dog had also been right beside Bucky when his vitals leveled out and he started twitching and whimpering and his heartbeat spiking, right on the verge of waking up in a haze of misery and panic until Steve stuck his nose in his ear, and wuffled comfortingly, and pressed his furry body into Bucky’s side until instinct had him curling around the source of warmth and comfort, deep and peacefully asleep.

Steve-the-dog hadn’t left Bucky’s arms since, nor Jane his bedside. No matter what, they wouldn’t let Bucky wake up from his ordeal alone this time. Not again. Never again.

"Jane?" Darcy stuck her head around the doorframe. "Betty’s done. Sciencevengers assemble!"

Jane and Steve exchanged a look.

"You stay," Jane said. "I’ll be back."

They tested their finished transformation pod – modeled after the Project Rebirth cradle used on Steve way back – on Thor first. All things considered, he was the hardest to kill out of all of them. So if they’d made a mistake somewhere...

They hadn’t.

Thor emerged from the pod naked, and therefore very obviously completely unharmed and unchanged from his old self.

"You did it!" he laughed, and, after haphazardly wrapping himself in a robe Darcy pushed on him, swept Jane up in a hug. "My dear friend, I knew you would do it!"

"We did it!" Jane cheered along with everyone else, and hugged Thor back tightly.

Jane relieved Steve-the-dog from Bucky-sitting duty while the others prepped the machine for their next patient, and twenty minutes later, Steve-the-man came to a sliding stop in the doorway in sweats and a shirt, clearly having sprinted all the way back.

Jane hung back for a while.

Looking like he’d fought seventy years worth of war chasing a fool’s hope and now found the reward beyond even his wildest dreams, Steve sank down on the edge of his friend’s bed. He touched the sides of Bucky’s face, and his metal arm, and the IV cannula in the back of his real hand, and lay his head on his chest and just felt his heart beat for a while, his shoulders shaking minutely.

When Steve finally turned to Jane, his eyes were red-rimmed and his smile bigger and brighter than she’d ever seen it.

"Doc... Jane..."

"You think you’re funny, don’t you?" Jane interrupted with a watery grin of her own. "And so clever. Woof woof, let’s play matchmaker for my friends! Who knew Captain America was such a..."

She couldn’t seem to finish that sentence, so Steve just hugged her. Tight.

Yeah.

Yeah, that about covered it.

"Thank you," he said eventually, voice wobbly.

"For what? He did all the work himself."

"Only because he had you to put in the effort for. I don’t know how I would have ever gotten through to him otherwise."

Jane laughed. "Steve, I’ve been in on the two of you for two days and I can list a million ways how. But if we’re going to be grateful, thank you for making it so I got to meet him in the first place."

"He did all the work on that himself too."

"Steeeeeeve," Bucky whined. "Stop talkin’, I’m tryna sleep."

"Really?" Steve asked, obnoxiously chipper. "That’s the first thing you’re gonna say to me?"

"Ugh."

Bucky threw his arm over his head, intent on ignoring the light and the noise both, but felt something pull unpleasantly at the back of his hand. He blinked his eyes open and squinted at it – then beyond it at Steve, human Steve, big Steve, sitting next to him.

"Steve," he said stupidly. Memories and context came flooding back. "I thought..."

"Jane figured out how to turn us back," Steve said, beaming.

"Jane had a lot of help," Jane corrected from the other side of Bucky’s bed. "Because that’s how science works."

"Jane," he said, whipping around, just as stupidly.

"Jane figured out how to turn us back practically all by herself," was Steve’s compromise.

Bucky felt himself starting to tear up. He grabbed Steve, pulling him into a crushing hug and clinging to him like a lifeline.

"Hey, hey, it’s okay," Steve said, even though he wrapped his arms around Bucky just as tightly. "You’re okay. Jane and I are okay. Everything’s okay now."

"Shut up. It’s the ice, it fucks with my brain chemistry," he blubbered. "Why the hell do I remember ice? Wasn’t I fighting Loki?"

"Loki caused the ice," Jane said. Bucky let go of Steve and grabbed Jane’s hand instead as she explained about Loki’s adoption into Thor’s family and his ability to switch between the different species of aliens they belonged to. Clearly his face spoke volumes about his incomprehension, because she said tentatively, "There’s footage. If you think you’re up to watching yourself get, uh –"

"Show me."

She retrieved a tablet from another room and asked FRIDAY to play the recording of the end of the fight.

"I was watching from the security room downstairs," she explained. "Tony had FRIDAY give me access."

The footage was as Bucky remembered. Loki turned blue and bowled him over. Then the part that had made Bucky’s brain go haywire: ice grew straight from Loki’s hands and enveloped him, spreading outward from his chest. Bucky’s metal arm flailed around and he managed to grab Loki by the throat until the Wasp showed up in the Hulkbuster armor, whacked Loki over the head, and knocked him out cold.

Ha. Cold.

Bucky’s teeth ached from the force with which he clenched his jaw. "That bullshit line about how the ice was gonna hurt him as much as it would hurt me..."

"The frost giant thing is a reeeeeaaaally sensitive subject," Jane said, grimacing.

"Oh yeah? Well cryo is a really sensitive subject for me. Do the Avengers still have him in custody? I wanna see him."

Jane and Steve exchanged worried looks, but didn’t try to dissuade him.

Loki was in the tower’s reinforced glass-walled former Hulk-containment chamber, repurposed as a whatever-needs-containing-chamber upon Bruce Banner’s retirement from superheroism. He was wearing Asgardian shackles and looked human once more – and was also sweating profusely again, just as he had in Bucky’s apartment. He even sounded rough.

"Well well, look who it is," Loki said listlessly from where he was slumped against the smooth glass wall. "That was quick. You are truly a master of the defrosting process, aren’t you, Sergeant?"

"It’s called revictimization, asshole, and it’s not funny," Bucky snapped. Steve and Jane stared at him. "What? I read."

"I would apologize," Loki drawled. "But I find I cannot currently bring myself to give a damn."

"You mean you ever do?" Jane asked.

"You know I do, Jane Foster."

"Lots of otherwise remorseless killers love their families, Loki. It really doesn’t mean much."

Loki sighed in irritation. "I did not come to your pathetic little planet to play games or commit wanton and pointless murders, Jane Foster. I came for that," he said, pointing between Jane and Bucky, at Steve. "For the serum your warriors forced me to squander on use as an offensive weapon."

The three of them stared at Loki, and then each other, in confusion.

"Are you saying... you never meant to use the animal transformations as a weapon?" Jane asked.

"Why in the Nine would I do that?" Loki groused. "What kind of lunatic would use animal transformations as a weapon when there are so many easier and more direct ways to incapacitate an opponent?"

"Oh, I don’t know, a trickster god?"

"May I remind you that you mortals, not we Asgardians, came up with that ridiculous moniker while Thor and I were but little children?"

"Somehow I have a hard time buying into the idea that you grew out of it."

Bucky looked over at Steve to see if he found Jane and Loki’s descent into bickering as bizarre as he did, and was comforted to find that the answer was yes. Yes he did.

"I need the serum," Loki said through gritted teeth. "Because ever since Odin passed, the spell keeping me Asgardian has been fading, to the point that any stray thought can now banish it like mist."

"Is that why you’re –"

"Melting? Yes, quite. Frost giants are no more suited for extended stays in temperate climes such as these than Asgardians are for their sunless, icy realm. I have lost count of the number of heat strokes I have suffered recently. But to use one of your Earthly expressions: so sue me, but I happen to like living on planets with light and vegetation and liquid water, and I am not about to give that up just because someone lied to me all my life."

Jane threw up her hands in exasperation "You couldn’t have just said that?"

"This conversation is humiliating enough as it is." Loki looked like he might have an aneurism or explosive diarrhea any moment. "Asking Thor or the Queen for help with this? I would rather hurl myself into a star. If the spell hadn’t slipped from my grasp in a thoughtless moment, none need have known I was ever here. That was always my intent. So, for once not wishing to court any more trouble, after losing the serum, I went in search of similar solutions on other worlds. I found several, but all so sophisticated that they too, like Odin’s spell, were subject to the whims of my subconscious. The primitive nature of your Earthly mutagen turned out to be its unique strength. Indeed, when I returned, all of your Avengers were still trapped in the shapes the serum had given them, despite their desperate desire to return to their original forms. But lo and behold, the creators of the serum had flushed all their remaining product down the drain in a failed attempt at avoiding arrest by your warriors’ hands. So you see it’s all your fault I had to actively target you this time, Jane Foster."

Jane pinched the bridge of her nose and took a very, very deep breath. "Okay. Fine. Betty recreated plenty of the mutagen to go around and SHIELD had your DNA on file from New York. I’ll see what I can do."

"What?!" Bucky and Steve exclaimed.

Loki’s eyes were bright, his expression pinched. "I would be forever in your debt, Jane Foster."

"You better," she said, turning on her heel and leaving the room. Struck speechless, Bucky and Steve followed.

"Don’t tell Thor!" Loki called after her.

"I’m telling Thor. I am not enabling your family drama!" she yelled over her shoulder.

"You’re not seriously going to help him?" Bucky said.

"Look..." She heaved a deep, deep sigh. "I’m not siding with him, okay? But I know a little bit about the way Asgard does things, and especially the way Frigga does things now that she’s in charge. She doesn’t really believe in retributive justice anymore and has declared that Asgard, as an intergalactic mediator, has a duty to practice restorative justice instead. Loki is her poster boy for the kind of rehabilitation and community service approach she’s trying to iron out, and from what Thor has told me, it’s mostly working. He violated the conditions of his parole by coming to Earth, so there will absolutely be consequences for all of this when Thor takes him back. But the bottom line is that the more comfortable Loki feels in his own skin, the better it is for the universe at large. If not for our generation or our children’s, then for the ones after that."

"It’s complicated," Steve confirmed unhappily.

"Can’t we just kill him while we have him?" Bucky muttered.

"Heimdall heard that," Jane said wryly. She shrugged helplessly. "If nothing else, the royal family owes you weregild – a blood debt – for what Loki did. And it’s Loki, so they’ll be damn generous about it."

"Do they have time machines on Asgard?"

"No."

"Then I don’t see how they could possibly offer me anything useful."

"Hmm." Jane gave him a considering look. "You might be surprised."

Jane left to go talk to Doctor Betty and the other eggheads, leaving Steve and Bucky back in the infirmary with a promise that she would be back for Bucky once she was done. It was hard to wrap his head around everything that had happened – and might still happen. Bucky and Steve settled on the edge of the bed and mostly just stared at each other a lot.

"I’m so glad you’re back," Steve said. "I can’t even tell you."

Bucky could only nod, and smile.

"Do you, uh, wanna meet the others? The Avengers? I bet they’d like to get to know the guy who helped save their hides."

"Right now? Do I have to?" Bucky grimaced. "I know they’re your friends, Steve, but the last time I met half of them, I shot your Black Widow – twice – tore off Wilson’s wings and kicked him over the edge of a helicarrier, and tore off the elder Van Dyne’s wings and tried to beat her to death until she managed to crawl into my arm and tear it apart from the inside."

Steve cringed with him, not away from him.

"And I blew up the car of the boss of three of them with him inside and forced Howard and Maria Stark’s car off the road."

"God, they made you do that? Buck, I’m so –"

"Sure, sure, and look, no offense," Bucky went on quickly. "But I’m not coming within a hundred yards of that Maximoff girl and her horrible mind-reading, mind-controlling –"

"Yeah, you’re right. There’s no rush." Steve nudged their shoulders together. "I’m sure they’ll understand if I wanna keep my best friend to myself for a while."

Bucky conjured up a smile and nudged back a little harder. "No more slobbering though, okay? I ain’t Agent Carter."

"Coulda fooled me, with that head’a hair of yours."

"Don’t make fun of my torture, you ass."

It was so easy, in the end. They slipped back into their friendship like nothing had ever gotten in the way of it. Talking so easily and openly about ‘the past’ – about a life that wasn’t real anymore for anyone but the two of them – was like watching the sun rise after months of polar winter. Which was a terrible analogy, but Bucky was already laughing at something Steve said, so he just laughed harder and delighted in the sight of his friend, his partner, his brother laughing along with him again, finally, after all this time.

"Steve?" Bucky said afterwards. "I’m sorry. I take back everything I said to you that day you tried to open the windows. I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry."

Steve was infuriatingly ready and willing to sober up. "No, Bucky, you have no idea how long I’ve been telling myself the same things."

"That’s exactly why I’m taking it back, dumbass," Bucky said heatedly. "I know it’s bullshit. You know it’s bullshit. None of it was true. None of what happened to me was your fault, and I know I shouldn’t, that they put that poison in my head –"

"No, Bucky, Bucky, Buck..."

Steve pulled him into a one-armed hug that turned into a needy, full-blown hug Bucky couldn’t even bring himself to be ashamed of.

"You’re allowed to feel angry and hurt and betrayed," Steve said, looking him in the face. "And if you want or need to feel that way towards me, I’m okay with that, because I’m your friend and I want to help you."

"That’s real swell of you, Steve, but I don’t want to feel it at you. It’s not helping. But there’s so much of it, my brain just can’t seem to find any other direction to point it at."

"At Hydra?" Hydra said mock-innocently. "Just a suggestion."

Bucky smiled wryly. "There ain’t nearly enough of them to go around for what I’m feeling." The smile slipped away. "Actually, that’s not true. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why I got so mad at you, but I think I got it."

"Yeah?"

Steve had the look of a man bracing himself to get sentenced to death. Bucky dropped his eyes.

"It’s because you’re the only person left in the world I know beyond a shadow of a doubt would never hurt me. ’Cause I’m too much of a coward to put my anger where it belongs. But I knew it wouldn’t be fair to put that on you either, so I... I tried to make sure you never saw my face again."

Silence greeted that statement. Bucky looked up. There were tears in Steve’s eyes.

He poked Bucky in the chest. "If you ever call my best friend names again, I swear to god –"

Bucky huffed out a watery little laugh. Steve pulled him in for another hug. All of this emotional excess started feeling a little, well, excessive, but hell. He figured they’d earned it.

"You dumbass," Steve said into his shoulder. "You dumbass. Remember what a little shit I could be when I got sick and needful?"

"Oh, you bet. First memory in line to come crowding back. Real treat."

Steve laughed. "And you didn’t think sticking around through all of that meant I owed you the same in return?"

"...that was different."

"No it wasn’t," Steve said, settling with his back against the wall and his arm around Bucky’s shoulder.

"That was totally different."

"I felt bad, took it out on you, and you stuck around. You went through hell, wanted to take it out one me – I’d have stuck around."

"This is not helping my long-standing impression that you just like getting punched."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Ingrate."

"So," Jane said when, at last, all the Avengers were their own humanoid selves again, and all the ones with worried loved ones elsewhere had made their long-awaited good news calls, and Loki had received his own dose of the mutagen, and Steve’s shield and Rhodey’s armor were back to their original size (that had been all magic), and cleaning crews had cleared the rubble out of the penthouse, and Pepper had started making plans for the renovation, and the evacuation order on the building was cancelled, and and and and...

"So," Bucky answered. "Now what?"

"I was hoping you’d have some ideas."

"Up until a couple of days ago, my plans for a scenario like this were ‘leave Steve safely in the care of the Avengers, let Jane down gently if at all possible, and disappear forever’. I haven’t gotten around to formulating an alternative yet now that that’s off the table."

"In that case, here’s an idea: stay."

Bucky smiled. "Yeah, I’ll stay."

"And kiss me again."

He searched her face. "You really want that?"

"I thought I’d already answered that."

In case she hadn’t been clear enough before, she pulled him down and kissed him herself. He responded with breathtaking enthusiasm.

There was a hell of a lot of change and work waiting for him, and for them, down the line. He couldn’t – clearly didn’t want – to stay an unholy combination of a wanted man and a dead man forever. The legal nightmare alone could drag out for years, and Jane had already made Thor promise that if worst came to worst, Asgard would repay Bucky’s weregild in either asylum or some kind of honorary function granting him diplomatic immunity for the crimes he had been forced to commit as the Winter Soldier.

But that could wait. For now, everything could wait except getting to know this strange, wonderful man better. No more secrets. No more distractions. Just him, and her, and –

Wait.

Jane disentangled herself from Bucky and said: "Steve the cat!"

"The imposter cat?" Bucky said with a frown.

"Yes."

"What about him?"

"We can’t just kick him back out onto the streets. I... I think I might adopt him."

Bucky stared.

"To be perfectly honest, I’m more of a cat person than a dog person," Jane confessed.

"I like both," Bucky said, grinning.

Phew.

Everything would be alright, then.