Bucky woke up with a jolt, his mind still tangled in the remnants of a nightmare. For a moment, he wasn't sure where he was, and his instinct was to scramble off the bed and find a corner to hide.

He blinked a few times, trying to steady his racing heart. He was in a small, comfortable bedroom — nothing like the cold, metallic cell in the Siberian HYDRA facility. He could hear the faint hum of the coffee machine from the kitchen and the distant sound of traffic.

This was your home, and you'd been kind enough to let him stay with you while he tried to recover, piecing himself back together, trying to remember what he did in HYDRA.

But he felt like he didn't truly belong. Not in your home, not in modern society.

Nowhere.

He tentatively swung his legs over the side of the bed, his bare feet touching the cool floor. He paused, trying to remember what he was supposed to do next.

Every movement felt like a decision he had to think through.

He approached the door carefully, almost as if it might bite him. He hesitantly gripped the handle with his bionic arm and walked through the hallway.

He reached the kitchen and found you sitting at the table with a steaming cup of coffee. You said something, but it all sounded distorted to him before he realized you were asking him to sit and have some breakfast.

Or something. He was guessing.

He stood awkwardly in the doorway to the kitchen, eyes flicking from you to the chair next to you to the coffee in your hand. The idea of sitting at the table was foreign, almost wrong.

In his mind, he wasn't worthy of these privileges.

His voice was barely above a whisper as he shifted his weight awkwardly. "I don't want to intrude," Bucky mumbled after what seemed like hours of hesitating.