Bucky leaned back in Natasha's office chair, putting his feet on top of her desk as he waited for her to finish her classes for the day. They'd been seen a lot less of each other recently. Fury had him off doing mission for SHIELD more often than he'd like, but he didn't complain...not to Nick at least. He smirked when he heard Natasha approaching her office door. She was talking to someone...judging by the slightly irritated tone of voice she was using, he was sure it was probably Tony bothering her about something.

I just wanted to thank you for the birthday present.

The Academy was a nice change from skipping from motel to motel. But after running into the KGB in Latveria, James couldn’t fully relax. He was still checking the classified section of the newspaper every morning for any ads placed by his handlers, any codes encrypted within the paper’s ink. Even lying next to Nat, he still felt on edge. Part of him wanted to believe nothing would happen that Russia’s Department X would give up on him and let him be. But he was their best asset; he was sure they wouldn’t give up that easily.

Without the backing of the Soviet Union, Department X and everything associated with it had gone underground. From what he had been able to discern after being brought out of stasis, a lot of time had passed. James hoped that was true, hoped that he hadn’t been forced to cause anymore damage since the fall of the USSR—besides the mission that brought him out of stasis. But he still couldn’t be sure.

Although his memories before he was killed and revived by General Karpov were slowly falling into place, the memories from the first time he was put on ice till the last were still eluding him. Maybe it was part of him that just didn’t want to know that kept these memories at bay or perhaps there was something he’d done that they wanted to make sure he never remembered.

Whatever the reason, James knew it wouldn’t belong till he began to remember. The memories were there; he could feel them—like getting flashes from a blackout. It was the last moments before the stasis took full effect that what was coming back to him first.

He tried to drive these thoughts from his mind as he listened to Nat’s history lesson. She’d taken to catching him up on the historical events he had missed over the past five decades—some of which he felt he might’ve been partially responsible for or a part of, although he didn’t say this.