Bucky starts to give his hand a testing little tug back, wanting to tuck his arm under his torso almost protectively, not because he's in significant pain so much as he is unfamiliar with a gentle touch in general. He understands the doctor's language intimately well. The violence. The violation. The loud whirring of machines and the red and green lights flashing across an array of cold steel panels. The pinprick of a thousand needles that have pierced through his veins over decades and decades of experiments and enhancements and failures. He also knows of Wakanda's touch, the silent judgement of technology far beyond his understanding, the precision and the necessary picking at scabbed over wounds to force him on a better path of picking up the pieces.

But this - a smaller hand holding his, even though it's not much smaller - this he doesn't quite understand. His eyebrows furrow as he tries to make sense of the question - 'with what'? - and push aside the unnaturalness of the strange warmth in his palm.

With what? Their conversation isn't easy to follow, and he's quiet for a moment, both wanting to be left alone but craving the company in an inexplicable sort of push-pull struggle.

"Here." Here. This place. This time. Compliance with this town. Whatever authority runs it. Whatever deeply problematic interpretation of Captain America this is supposed to be. Whether this is an experiment or a mistake or some timey wimey multiverse shit nobody can make sense of. Playing pretend at their happy family.

"Home." Bucky swallows. That word, like the feel of Sokka's hand, is also uncomfortable to say. This isn't home. He doesn't know these people. Beyond looking out for them in case of imminent danger, he's not really in a position to help them nor does he have any interest in all this-- domesticity. Why it's important that they just go along with it is something Bucky will mull over when he's in better shape. For now it's all one increasingly frustrating and incoherent mess.