Titanium ~A Bucky Barnes Love Story~

Chapter Five

The following days seemed to go by slowly, with almost no progress whatsoever occurring with Bucky.

The day after Rogers brought him in, Bucky went with him to his rooms. He refused to come back out, afraid of what he might do, and what the people in the Tower might do to him. He did eat though, a lot. He quickly started to put some weight on him, making him look more and more less-sickly by the day.

Caden came to Rogers' quarters every day, sometimes for an hour, sometimes half a day. She would sit down with Bucky and Rogers, listening in on the stories Rogers would recall and watching for any keywords that might have triggered a memory in Bucky, sometimes even adding a detail or two from the two super soldiers' Howling Commando days that had been passed down the Stark family from her uncle, Howard Stark.

But talking just didn't seem to be working.

"Nothing can be reported on when all he does is stare into the distance while we talk to a stone wall until our voices raw," Caden reported to Commander Hill at a team meeting a week or two after Bucky arrived. "I can literally count all the words he has said one on hand: 'No,' 'no,' 'no' 'no,' and 'go away.'"

"Um, my dear cousin," Stark, who was sitting opposite her in Hill's office, jutted in. "I believe that's-"

"I know it's six!" She pointed her finger at her cousin. "I'm tired and not thinking very straight today, alright?"

"What if you tried a different way of approach?" Banner suggested from his corner chair. "What if you used actions, made Bucky participate in an activity of some sort that triggered a memory? Nothing major, just everyday things around his rooms he wouldn't even have to leave."

Caden looked at Rogers, who sat next to her on the leather sofa, a thoughtful look on her face.

"That doesn't sound like a half bad idea, you know," Rogers said.

"Yeah," Caden agreed. "Maybe we should pause the talking and make our new short-term goal to get him to interact more."

"Sounds like a good as any plan," Sam put in. "When I worked at the VA with the veterans, we talked a lot, but we also did stuff around the facility to take their minds of their PTSD and be more interactive with each other. A lot of them benefited from it, more than they ever did from the talks."

Caden nodded, pointing her finger at Sam. "That's good."

"The point is," Hill spoke up from behind her desk, "Something needs to be decided and carried out quickly. If no progress is made with Sergeant Barnes, or if his condition worsens, within the next couple of weeks to a month, we run the chance of having to relocate him." At the she looked at Rogers. "That's why I decided to call this meeting. Rumor has it the government is on to us. Now, it is just a rumor right now, and I've sent Agent Romanoff to investigate, but if they find out we have the Winter Soldier here, their actions proceeding could jeopardize all our efforts towards Project: Resurrect. All attempts at rebuilding S.H.I.E.L.D. could be lost, depending how badly the government wants him. And they really want him."

"What does the government even want with Bucky?" Rogers inquired irritably, though the concern was evident in his tone of voice.

"Interrogate, experiment on, and punish him for his crimes," Hill listed.

"But that wasn't Bucky who did those things!" Caden exclaimed. "He was literally a puppet, being controlled by Hydra! Don't they realize this?"

"They do, but they don't care. They only see the person responsible for the crimes, and that person just happens to be Barnes."

"I thought the government was on our side!" Caden argued back, her temper rising. "I thought they claimed they were the 'good guys!'"

"The government does has the power to do whatever the hell they want, and they know it," Sam muttered.