Bucky started a memory notebook.   Unlike his other notebooks, this one was meant for writing things he remembered down, instead of jogging his memory.

Unfortunately, without Steve there with him, he couldn't make sure what he remembered wasn't really just his imagination.

But he wrote it all down anyway.

One entry was all about what he remembered about HYDRA.  He'd only been doing missions for about fifty years.  They took twenty of those to break him down, to build him into a super soldier, then break him down again to do their bidding.  Between missions, he was placed under cryo.   Without time to rest and recover afterwards, he'd be placed into the shock chair, shocked into submission, and read the trigger words.  He rarely saw the same officers twice when he woke up.  He had done twenty-three missions, and remembered the names, voices, and final words of each of the forty-nine people he'd killed, no matter what HYDRA did or how they manipulated his memory.  They were always there.   All of them. When he was hiding out, they were the first things that came to mind when he laid down to go to sleep and the first things he thought of when he awoke.

He remembered the names of his victims better than the name of his two-year girlfriend when he was in high school.

Another page was titled 'The Future,' because that was the first thing that he remembered of the World's Fair.

He wrote about the Stark car, thinking about how completely ironic it was that a technology similar to what he had, which failed, kept multiple aircraft and even two men aloft whenever they wished.  He finally remembered the names of the girls he had taken to the Fair, setting one of them up with Steve.  Bonnie and Connie.  He'd initially asked Connie, but she begged him to let Bonnie come with them.   Steve had wanted to come also, so Bucky set him up with Bonnie.  She didn't like him much, and ended up hanging on Connie the whole night, leaving Steve the odd one out.   Bucky regretted leaving him out, but there was no way to go back and change it.

Each time he remembered something, he wrote it down in the section it applied to.  Soon, he was scribbling things in the margins and taping in fold-outs to add more.

His memory seemed to accelerate.

But at the same time that he was remembering more about his past, it seemed that he was forgetting more about Steve.

He forgot how his best friend looked in the uniform that he now wore.

He forgot how the boy he grew up with walked, or talked, or even held himself.

Wanda mentioned once that he walked around the Tower singing when he was content.  Bucky hadn't remembered that until she told him.

He forgot what is sounded like when Steve called him "Buck" and hadn't called anyone "Punk" since he died.

Bucky missed him so bad that it hurt.  It hurt when he flung the shield.  It hurt when he put on the uniform and clipped on the mask's chinstrap.  It hurt when he passed the floor Steve had lived on, now empty.

Nobody had wanted to go in.

Somehow, Bucky found himself in the training room.

There was nobody training at the moment, so he went over to where the punching bag was. 

Taping up his real hand, he circled the bag, checking for any flaws in the casing.  He knew his left arm would destroy it immediately if he wasn't careful.

Bucky squared up and began to rapidly barter the bag with his right hand.  Eventually, with sweat pouring into his eyes, he swung with his left arm.  The bag broke from its chain and went flying.

He put his hands on his knees and tried to get his breath back.

Then he went on a search to find more punching bags.  Six closets later, he found them.

Bucky pulled a few out and dragged them over near where the chan was.

He hung the next bag, and proceeded to knock that one off too.  While he was putting up the third, someone said behind him, "Steve used to come down here and do the same thing when he was stressed."

Bucky froze.  "I never saw him using the punching bag."

Natasha walked around the bag to the other side.  "He didn't seem as stressed when you were here, even though those last few days probably were some of the most stressful."  She spun and kicked the bag, hitting it with the back of her calf.  It swung from side to side.

He reached out and steadied it.  Then, not looking at the bag, swung with his left hand.  It thumped to the ground ten feet away.

Natasha raised an eyebrow.  "That's a record."

He held up the hand he'd punched with.  "It's the vibranium one."

"I know."  She jumped up and hung from the chain, unclipping the bit of chain left behind by the bag, a dropped back down.  "Can you feel anything with it?"

He swung his arm back and forth, stretching it out.  "A little.  Pressure mostly, but no temperature.  So when it gets wet, I can tell that there is something on it, but not whether it's cold or warm."

"Did it hurt when Tony--"

"Blasted it off?  Yeah.  The wires are connected to nerves so that it is a fully functional arm."

Bucky hung up another punching bag.

Natasha stepped back and watched as he battered it.