Hello Sergeant (Bucky Barnes)

Agent Barnes

Sarah's POV

I dialed Tony's suit, and he answered right away. "Hey Papi, we're ready to get started."

"Morning, kitten. I wish I could be there, but Helen says she really needs my help on this project."

"Your curiosity got the better of you since she wouldn't tell you about it until you agreed to help," I said, smiling to myself. Tony wasn't a hard man to understand, for the most part.

"Maybe," Tony said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. "So Barnes is ready to join the team?"

"Yup. We talked about it on the way back from Princeton yesterday, and he says he wants to do this."

"You don't think he's ready?" Tony asked seriously.

"It's not that. He's ready," I said, which was the truth. I was just concerned about how he was going to handle all of this today. "I'm going to put you on speaker now, okay Tony?"

"Okay," he said, waiting for the call to switch over. "Hey everyone. Who's all there?"

"Nick, Agents Coulson, May, Skye, FitzSimmons, Steve, Bruce, Natasha, Clint, James and me." I said, rattling off everyone and letting them greet Tony.

I let Nick run the meeting, mostly just listening as everyone got a chance to speak for or against James joining the Avengers. Everyone was for him getting back into action, but the team knew about his episodes and had some reservation about what would happen to him in the field.

"James, are there any concerns you have about joining the team? Anything you need to work through before you could go in the field again?"

"My memory is mostly starting to come back, but I think I need to find a way to get rid of my residual programming," James said, looking at Steve.

"Can you elaborate on that, James?" Coulson asked, looking troubled.

"The last mission I was given by Hydra – the only one I failed to complete – was to hunt Steve," James said slowly. "I didn't know him at the time; I'd been wiped before that mission again because I'd been out of cryo too long for them to program me otherwise. There's been two times since I've returned that I've sleep walked and threatened him."

"Only once, actually. You didn't threaten him the first time," I said, my heart beating a little faster. I knew this subject would come up eventually, but that didn't make it any easier to talk about.

"Evans, what do you know about this?" Nick asked, focusing on me and leaning back in his chair. "Were you there when this happened?"

I shared a look with Steve, and he nodded, putting one arm on the back of my chair. James reached for my hand, holding it tightly in his as he struggled for control.

"Yes, I was there both times," I said. "James didn't actually go after Steve the first time. James initially stayed with me for two weeks until Steve got back from his mission." I paused, trying to decide how best to tell what happened. Nick made a motion for me to continue, so I took a deep breath and kept going. "Steve stayed over that night and James slept on the couch. I'm a pretty light sleeper, so I heard James when he started talking in Russian in his sleep, repeating orders for an assassination over and over. He didn't act on them, though and I got him to go back to sleep and went back to bed."

"And the second time?" Tony asked, his voice strained; I knew we were going to be having a private conversation later. He hated it when I put myself in harms way, no matter how good of a reason I had for doing it.

"The second time was after James moved in with me," Steve said, picking up the story. "We moved another bed into my apartment and he was sleeping on the other side of the room from me. I woke up when he started talking in Russian, but I couldn't understand him. I called Sarah and she was there by the time he'd aimed a gun at me."