Steve felt unaccountably guilty in the face of that hopefulness, wanting to do anything but disappoint the woman, for all the fact that she was a strange (and that the world was very, very strange in that moment). But with the only other option being to lie to the stranger, he was left to answer with nothing less than honesty.

The shake of his head came with a touch of annoyance as his hair fell again in his face, but already catching the habit of brushing his hair back out of his face, he dealt with it with no more than a second's pause before he continued. "Sorry, no, I didn't mean...automail? Not exactly anyway, I'm not all that clear on the mechanics myself." For every line blacked out in Bucky's file, there were two of technical jargon he did not understand himself. Strange mechanics built on a science that was cobbled together of Hydran tech and Zola's madness.

Where he never would've wished the confusion of having traded in one gender (or was it sex, the lines between the two were more blurred in the modern day) for another on someone else, he was not about to deny that he was relieved to hear that he wasn't alone in that particular boat. "Yes!" A beat, and then he shook his head. "I mean, no. Not usually a woman, no. Is this- is this normal here now? I've been gone awhile."