Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If I'm gonna get back to you someday,
I'll need your light.

The National, "Walk It Back"

It’s right about when the talking raccoon with the machine gun shows up to the fight that Bucky decides that he’s done with trying to make sense of anything that’s happening. Clearly, there’s no sense to be had, and it doesn’t matter if Bucky understands anything that’s happening anyway: he is a weapon in the battle’s hands, and it’s almost restful, how easy it is, how simple. There are aliens trying to destroy the world. Bucky has to stop them. If there’s one thing Bucky can do, it’s fight, so he fights.

Things don’t get any easier to understand when Bucky has a second to see, to realize, that he is gently dissolving. It doesn’t hurt. Bucky’s last thought is of a distant sort of gratitude for that. The fear and horror of what this means for the battle, for the world, for the universe, are only just starting to hit when Bucky ends. Or dies? It feels less like dying and more like just—ending. Stopping.

Only to restart some indeterminate amount of time later, when things continue to fail to make sense, but hey, there’s a fucking sorcerer and a glowing portal to another battle, or maybe it’s the same battle, so it doesn’t matter, because Bucky is still a weapon in the battle’s hands.

Then the battle is over, and Bucky is just Bucky again, tired and confused and longing helplessly, idiotically, for the cryochamber. It would be so fucking nice to just—be put away again. To stop. Then he wouldn’t have to care that nothing is making any sense yet.

He’s not the only one having trouble, at least. Even when the steady litany of what the fuck is not escaping Wilson’s mouth, it is very much present in his dazed and faintly panicked eyes, so they stick together in the chaos after the battle, even though Bucky is very tempted to just—go. Leave, disappear, run—but no. That’s little more than an animal instinct. And anyway, someone’s gotta look out for Wilson, and the Maximoff girl too. The shock is hitting them, and while Bucky might be used to this kinda thing, the losing time and getting shoved into battle and realizing just what and who else you’ve lost along with that time, Wilson and Maximoff aren’t. Bucky can’t help them with the grief, but he can handle the logistics of food and shelter and clothes, even here, even now, so he does.

The shocked and grief-stricken and exhausted group of ragtag Avengers and associates limp their way from the battle site to some other Stark property upstate the next day, and Bucky tags along, if only to make sure Wilson and Maximoff are alright. He gets them situated in a cabin—whose, Bucky doesn’t care—and makes sure they have everything they need before he leaves again.

“What—Barnes, where are you going?” asks Wilson, his eyes already struggling to stay open. “There’s plenty of room here for you too.”

“You need to rest too,” murmurs Maximoff.

“Just checking on the perimeter,” Bucky says. “You two sleep.”

Either Wilson buys that, or he’s too tired to care, because he lets Bucky go without any more questions, and Maximoff has dropped off already, exhausted by her grief, poor kid. Bucky does check the perimeter, but mostly, he just kind of wanders aimlessly, until he ends up at a bench by the lake. It’s not the lake by his little cabin in Wakanda, but it’s close enough to soothe him a bit, and focusing on cataloging the different plants and animals and sounds and smells does a lot to calm his jangling, post-battle nerves.

Steve finds him, eventually.

“Hey,” he says. “You alright?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” says Bucky, and gives Steve a hopefully reassuring smile.

It doesn’t feel quite right on his face. Most expressions don’t when he’s actively trying for them, so mostly he doesn’t bother, just lets his face do whatever it does naturally. This makes him easy to read, apparently, judging by the way Shuri and Ayo react to his expressions like he’s actually said something even when he hasn’t. Maybe this time it works though, because some of the tension in Steve’s shoulders eases.

By now, Bucky is accustomed to the paradoxical way the sight of Steve makes him think, I miss you. The groove the thought has worn in his head is deep, deep enough that the chair and cryo never entirely smoothed it out. Bucky suspects he has been looking at Steve and thinking it since the war. Steve hugs him, and Bucky thinks, I miss you, even as he hugs Steve back.

Steve doesn’t let him go for a long time. The shoulder of Bucky’s shirt grows damp.

“I missed you so much,” Steve says.

“Me too,” says Bucky.

When Steve finally lets Bucky go, he doesn’t let Bucky go far. His big hand cups Bucky’s bearded cheek. Under Steve’s touch, Bucky feels solid and real in a way he hasn’t since the battle began a couple days ago, five years ago, seventy-five years ago. The warmth of Steve’s palm sparks nonsensical tears in Bucky’s eyes. I miss you, he thinks again, and blinks the tears away.

“You should get some rest, Buck. You look beat.”

“Right back at you,” Bucky says, because while Steve’s battle injuries have mostly healed already, only a few fading bruises and red marks left, he still looks exhausted and heartsore.

“C’mon, let’s go,” says Steve, and puts an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, walking them both somewhere. Presumably some other cabin.

Bucky gives Steve a sitrep along the way, for lack of anything else to say, until Steve lets out a choked and tearful laugh.

“Stand down, Sergeant, okay? Let’s just—let’s just get some rest. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

The cabin Steve takes them to is nothing like Bucky’s little two-room cabin back in Wakanda. It’s more of a small house than a cabin, for one thing, and for another, the bed is a luxuriously large four-poster that frankly doesn’t seem like it’s meant for actual sleeping. It seems more suited to looking pretty in a real estate listing, even if it is dusty and shabby with disuse, and Bucky doubts he’ll be able to sleep a wink in the thing. But Steve chivvies him to the bed, and the mattress turns out to be firm as a rock, so Bucky stays. Steve stays too, which is no surprise. They usually share a bed in Wakanda. Bucky’s hut hasn’t got anywhere else to sleep, other than the one futon. Only in Wakanda, they usually sleep—slept—back to back. Here, now, Steve faces Bucky with wide eyes in the twilit dimness of the bedroom.

“Is this—is this okay?” asks Steve. “I just—I need to know you’re here.”

“Yeah,” Bucky mumbles, his eyes suddenly heavy. “I’m here, Steve.”

This isn’t cryo, but it’ll do, thinks Bucky, and lets his mind go dark with sleep.

Bucky wakes first, the next morning. If this can even be called morning. Dawn is nothing more than the very slightest brightening in the bedroom’s dark. He doesn’t get up, not yet. His usual morning litany runs into some roadblocks pretty early on. My name is James Buchanan Barnes, I am no longer the Winter Soldier. It’s the year 2018—no. Two thousand…what? 2023. Maybe. Probably. He’s tempted to wake Steve up and ask, but it’s not that important, really.

He takes the time to study Steve instead. He hasn’t seen much of Steve since the battle, Steve’s been too busy, but they’d spent time together in Wakanda, and Bucky carefully compares his memories of that Steve to this one. No more beard, which is kind of a shame; it had suited Steve better than Bucky ever would have expected. Maybe that’s why Steve looks older. The lines around his mouth are much deeper than they used to be. Like Steve’s spent the entirety of the last five years frowning, like he’s stopped smiling entirely. He’s still frowning now, even in his sleep. He looks stern, and grave, more statue than man, until the room lightens more with the dawn and Bucky can see all of Steve’s beloved imperfections: the bump in his beak of a nose, the faint stubble, the shadows under his eyes.

A few new wrinkles shouldn’t make Bucky feel so unmoored, but they do. This is a Steve Bucky doesn’t know. Time keeps carrying them away from each other, a current they’re both helpless against, and Bucky wonders if now, finally, it’s taken them so far they’ll never reach each other. ’Til the end of the line, they’d told each other, but this isn’t a train they’re on, and anyway, they haven’t had good luck with trains. This is a river, an ocean, and Bucky lost sight of both land and Steve a long time ago.

In the morning, over breakfast, Steve tells Bucky about his plan. Bucky stops trying to make much sense of it right around the time he hears the words Infinity Stones and Pym particles and time travel. He gets the gist of it, though, he thinks.

“Why does it have to be you?” he asks.

“I’m the only one who can both carry Thor’s hammer and get the Stones back to where they belong.”

“Someone should go with you—I’ll go with you.”

Steve shakes his head. “There aren’t enough Pym particles.”

“So we wait until there are,” Bucky presses, and Steve shakes his head again.

“The longer the Stones aren’t in their proper time and place, the less stable this timeline gets. We’re pushing it enough as it is by waiting until after Tony’s funeral. It has to be now.” Steve pauses then, and gets that too-familiar asking for forgiveness and not permission look on his face, that infuriating and endearing mix of stubborn and guilty certainty. “There are some other things I have to do too. It might—it might take me a while.”

“Well, it’s time travel, right? You can be back seconds after you left.”

“Yeah, I guess,” says Steve. Then, “I saw Peggy, when we went to get the Tesseract. It—it got me thinking. About the past. About the things I’d change. The life I could’ve had, the life I want.”

Oh. The life with Peggy. The life Steve always should’ve had after the war.

Bucky supposes he can’t blame Steve. The impossible is about to be very possible for him. A do-over, or if not that, at least a chance to claw back the years that had been taken from him. Bucky’s not sure how the timelines would work out, but maybe Steve could save Bucky too, before they finish making him into the Winter Soldier, and he’ll have someone closer to his Bucky back. Of course he would want—

“There are things I can fix, and if I understand the timelines right—well, I have to try,” continues Steve. There’s a beseeching kind of intensity in his eyes, something close to fervor. “So it might—I don’t know how long it’ll be until I make it back. Or I guess, what I’ll be like when I do. But Buck, I have to try. For Natasha’s sake, if nothing else. I’m not sure I can live with myself if I don’t.”

“Of course,” says Bucky, because it seems like Steve is waiting for him to say something. “I—I’m glad.”

Steve reaches across the table to take Bucky’s hand. “When I do get back though—Buck, I’m gonna give up the shield, for good, pass it on to Sam.”

“Retirement, huh?”

“Yeah,” says Steve with a smile. “Figure I’ll have earned it.”

“You have,” Bucky says, and tries to smile back.

Bucky might not understand much about Infinity Stones and time travel and timelines, but he understands this. He was always going to have to let Steve go, one way or another. This, at least, is a gentle and kind goodbye.

“Everything’s gonna be alright, Buck. I promise.”

It is only a small lie, when Bucky tells Steve, “I’m gonna miss you.”

It’s not even a lie, not really. It’s a half-truth. He misses Steve already. He has been missing Steve for years, for decades, will keep on missing Steve for however many years he has left. Steve disappears on the platform, off to some better, happier past, and the countdown to his supposed return begins, and Bucky misses him and misses him and misses him.

You would think he’d be used to it by now. He isn’t. There are time machines and a goddamn magic rock that controls time, and somehow they’ve still run out of it. Or no, he and Steve haven’t run out of time, it’s just carried them away from each other again.

The countdown reaches zero. Wilson and Banner are frantic, and Bucky ignores them. He knows nothing has gone wrong. Steve doesn’t return, and he’s not going to.

Or maybe he is, realizes Bucky, as the glint of sunlight on white hair catches his eye. Over by the lake, there is an old man sitting on the bench, and this, Bucky understands.

“I can’t stay,” the older Steve tells Bucky, his eyes twinkling with fondness. “I just had to pass on the shield to Sam.”

Bucky swallows hard. “Yeah, no, of course.”

“It’s really good to see you, Buck,” says Steve. He’s looking at Bucky with such—Bucky doesn’t even know. It’s a wonder so tender that Bucky can’t stand to look at it, can’t stand to be the subject of it.

“You too,” Bucky says, and it’s even the truth.

This is a Steve Bucky never would have imagined being able to see: old and peaceful and happy. All those bedside vigils as Steve fought for breath, all those battles, all those times Bucky had been certain he and Steve wouldn’t make it to a moment like this, and here Steve is, old and gray and happy. Bucky is glad to see it, glad to know that Steve got this chance, even if—

“That’s all?” asks Steve, raising an eyebrow. “No questions? I don’t think I can stay much longer, but we’ve got some time to talk.”

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” admits Bucky. He doesn’t know what there is to say, other than goodbye. “But it looks like—you look good, Steve. Seems like you’ve had a good life. The one you always should’ve had.”

“It has been good,” says Steve with a misty-eyed smile. “Not always easy, but it’s been good. I’ve had Peggy, our kids—you.”

“Me?”

“What, you think I wouldn’t save you?” asks Steve gently, and bumps shoulders with him. “Buck, of course I saved you. Me and Peg, we went to Siberia and got you back. We brought you home.”

Bucky frowns. His head is starting to ache from the tension radiating through his shoulders and up his neck. “But I’m still here.”

“Different timeline,” says Steve with an apologetic grimace. “I know that might not be much consolation to you.”

“No, it’s—it’s good to know. Thank you.”

Bucky’s not sure he can stand to know anything more about that Bucky, the less broken one, who has less blood on his hands. He’s glad Steve got more time with that Bucky—the real Bucky, whispers a bitter voice inside him. He’s even almost relieved about it. Whatever else awaits Bucky now, at least he won’t have to keep struggling and failing to be Steve’s version of Bucky.

Except now Steve looks concerned. “You’re awfully quiet, Buck,” he says. “Everything okay?”

Is everything okay. Is everything okay. Is everything—

Nothing has been okay for Bucky since—

Bucky breathes, slow and deliberate. This is quite possibly the dumbest question Steve has ever asked him. Maybe Steve is going senile.

“Yeah,” Bucky lies, trying not to grimace, then chases it with a truth before Steve can notice. “Uh—it’s been a pretty crazy few days. I’m just—getting my head around it all.”

“It is all pretty crazy, I guess,” says Steve.

“There was a talking raccoon with a machine gun,” adds Bucky, helplessly.

Steve chuckles. “Rocket’s a good guy.” He looks at Bucky, far too keenly for Bucky’s liking. “So what’s next for you, Buck? I’d like to know, before I go. Make sure you’re alright. I know it’s not my place, not really, but—“ Steve grins, and it’s that same beloved crooked grin, the dry and slightly rueful one that invites you in on the joke. Bucky misses this grin already. This is maybe the last one he’ll see. “Humor an old man.”

“Oh. Uh. I—I don’t know.” Just thinking about his future is exhausting. And depressing, given that he can’t really imagine much of one. And yet Steve is sitting there, smiling encouragingly, waiting for more of an answer than that. So Bucky shrugs, and says, “Wait for the next fight, I guess. Try to fix some of what HYDRA used me to break.”

Fuck. If it’s gonna be like that, someone should just put him in the cryochamber again. There doesn’t seem to be much of a point in being outside of one. Ayo and Shuri might be pissed about it, but surely it’ll be more convenient, and anyway, isn’t he technically still a fugitive? Cryo is preferable to prison. He hasn’t finished watching all of the Star Treks yet though. Also, he has a really big to-read stack back in his hut—or at least, he did. Who knows what’s happened to his small collection of stuff. And he supposes that Wilson might need some back up with that shield. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad…

“Buck, there has to be more for you than that,” says Steve, indignation rising in his voice.

Bucky has a fleeting urge to crack a joke about all the TV he plans to binge watch, but suddenly he’s just too fucking tired to bother. Sometimes he really wonders why the hell he’s fought so hard to survive.

“I don’t think there is, Steve. It’s like I told you back in Bucharest: it always ends in a fight,” he says, hating the way his voice cracks. He closes his eyes, so that at least he won’t have to see Steve’s pity.

The one bright side to it always ending in a fight is that someday, it will end. God, he’s so tired.

“It doesn’t have to,” says Steve vehemently, and Bucky snorts, opening his eyes again.

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

“There’s so much more you can do, Buck,” says Steve, fervent, leaning towards him, and oh, even in that wrinkled face, the same faithful fire is in his eyes. “There are so many beautiful futures you could have. You wanted to go to college, remember? Or to be an engineer, to work for Stark Industries. Hell, or be an actor. I know you were mostly just joking about that, but god knows you’ve got the looks for it. And you’re so good with kids, you could be a teacher, or a dad. You’re—you would be such a good dad.” Steve’s voice breaks on the word, and Bucky cannot think about why, he can’t. “Or a writer, you’re amazing at that, I have loved reading every single one of your letters—”

Bucky wants to say, I’m not your Bucky, whatever happily ever after future he got, it’s not for me, none of that’s for me—except those are Bucky’s own old and faded dreams Steve has just rattled off, Bucky’s childish and naive when-I-grow-ups, things he’d wanted back when wanting came easy.

“I can’t,” Bucky chokes out.

“Why not?” demands Steve. “Buck—“

Steve is interrupted by the sound of some commotion from the direction of the quantum tunnel platform. Bucky turns to look—is it malfunctioning? has something else come through?—and what he sees makes even less sense than the damned talking raccoon with the machine gun.

“Oh good, they’re back,” says Steve. His tone turns dark and determined. “I’ve got some words for my counterpart. Has he been looking out for you at all?”

Because it’s Steve on the quantum tunnel platform: Steve in the same white suit he had on when he left, the same age as when he left, the only apparent difference being that he’s bearded again, and Natasha is with him, looking disheveled and dirty and very much alive.

“What the fuck,” rasps Bucky.

“This would’ve all been easier if he’d gotten back before I did, I really was just supposed to drop off the shield and leave, but like hell I’m leaving you like this, Buck, someone’s gotta—“

The light by the quantum tunnel platform does something strange. It ripples and shimmers, and then there’s another Steve. Bucky would think he’s seeing double, only this Steve is wearing a different uniform, the red, white, and blue one, and he has a different haircut too. He’s looking around like he has no idea where he is, turning frantically to take in his surroundings.

“Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen,” murmurs the Steve who’s still sitting beside Bucky.

“What the fuck is going on!”

What’s going on is that Steve—the Steve from this time—has managed to fuck up the multiverse.

“Hey, I got the all clear from the Ancient One!” protests Steve. “The Infinity Stones are back when and where they belong, and I got Natasha back too!”

“That’s great,” grits out Banner, clutching the machinery of the quantum tunnel platform. “I’m super happy about that, glad you’re alive again, Nat—”

“Thanks,” says Natasha drily.

“—But if the multiverse is about to collapse because you’ve fucked up the timelines, Steve—”

“It’s not going to collapse,” says Steve. “I told you, I got the all clear on this plan. The Ancient One and the Soul Stone both said—”

“The Soul Stone? Since when does the magic space rock talk?” asks Sam.

“It’s a long story,” says Natasha.

“—that there might be some time-space hiccups for a bit, but that it will all work itself out once the Infinity Stones finish reforming in this reality.”

“I thought we were trying to get rid of the Stones,” Bucky says, because in all the confusing talk of the last few days, he’s at least understood that much. Magic space rocks = very powerful and bad to have hanging around.

“Yeah, well, unfortunately they’re apparently fundamental to the universe’s stability or something,” says Steve, rubbing at his forehead. “Gonna be honest, I didn’t understand that part so much, apparently it’s ‘beyond mortal comprehension,’ but the, uh, sorcerers will know when it happens.”

“Okay, but that still doesn’t explain why there are three of you here, Steve,” says Sam, and Steve grimaces.

“Oh, young Steve here asked me to swing by and give Sam the shield, and let all of you know he might be back later than expected,” says Old Steve.

Their Steve looks mildly hunted and faintly constipated. “It’s—a little more complicated than that, actually—“

“We’re gonna have words about that, by the way,” Sam tells their Steve. “That is not a thing you just drop on a man and then bounce.”

“You didn’t get around to mentioning that last part though, about Steve—our Steve—coming back,” Bucky pointed out, and Old Steve smiles ruefully.

“Sorry, I got kinda distracted talking to you and Sam, Buck.”

“Okay, so what about the other Steve then?” asks Banner, gesturing wildly at the young and clean-shaven Steve who’s looking very overwhelmed.

“I don’t know how I got here,” says Younger Steve. “We’d just started looking for Loki after the battle, I was just talking to Stark, and next thing I knew I was here.”

Younger Steve is understandably still looking pretty wild around the eyes, and he keeps staring at Bucky too, in a way that suggests Bucky’s survival is news to him. Shit. That can’t be good.

Their Steve looks at this younger Steve guiltily. “Yeah, he’s not supposed to be here. The time-space hiccups are going to be focused around me, since I’m the one who returned the Stones and, uh, did some other things—”

“What other things, Steve,” asks Banner, with a growl in his voice that’s somewhat concerning. Bucky is pretty sure the guy is turning a darker shade of green, which doesn’t seem great.

“Just, you know, tweaked a couple timelines—”

“Like mine,” adds Old Steve, helpfully. “He told Peggy about me and Buck, so she found me in the Arctic, then we went and busted Buck out of Siberia.”

“He told me Bucky’s alive,” says Younger Steve. “I thought he was Loki, impersonating me and trying to trick me, but—“ He looks beseechingly at Bucky, and the hope in his eyes is keen enough to cut. “Buck, is that really you?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Bucky says. More or less, he thinks, and doesn’t say.

“You made new timelines, is what you’re saying,” says Banner, and rubs at his forehead. “The exact thing we weren’t supposed to do—”

“The damage was already done when we got the Stones,” says Natasha, apologetic.

“And after Thanos came here from that other timeline,” adds Steve. “This is repairing all the damage, believe it or not. It’s just gonna be, uh, a little weird in the meantime, until things level out again.”

If this is what Steve is calling a little weird, Bucky doesn’t know what would count as fully weird.

“Okay, well, you get to explain all this to Dr. Strange,” says Banner.

The sorcerers are called in and a lot of science and magic talk happens, and in the end, it all pretty much amounts to what Steve had said already: there are going to be some weird hiccups in time and space, mostly in the form of various timelines’ Steves popping in and out, but it will all resolve itself eventually, like rough seas calming after a storm passes. The Steves will return to their timelines, mere seconds after they left, and everything will go back to what passes for normal.

“So we’re gonna get more Steves showing up,” says Sam.

“Probably,” says Steve, and Bucky feels a little faint.

Three Steves is already a lot of Steves. This is going to get really confusing. Bucky is pretty sure he has too much brain damage to deal with this.

“Only none of these other Steves are gonna have any idea what’s going on—” continues Sam.

“—I still have no idea what’s going on,” says Younger Steve, plaintively.

“—so we’re gonna have to explain it to them, and make sure they don’t, I don’t know, make a run for it, or fight us, or god knows what—”

“They’re not gonna fight us,” says Steve, and Bucky snorts.

“Steven Grant Rogers, that is a sparkling clean lie,” he says, and Natasha laughs.

“It is, I definitely fought him,” says Younger Steve, giving his older, alternate self some grade A Rogers stink eye.

“Well they won’t fight me, who’d fight an old man,” says Old Steve cheerfully, which is fair enough. There’s probably no Steve who’d go in swinging against a harmless-looking old man. Old Steve turns his cheer Bucky’s way. “And Buck’s here too. Between the two of us, I think we can keep any Steves who show up calm enough.”

Bucky’s not sure how he feels about being volunteered for Steve Watch when all he really wants to do is pull his Steve aside to demand about a dozen different variations on what the fuck, and then take a nice, long and icy nap in a cryochamber until all this is resolved and the world makes sense again. Ayo would probably tell him that he can’t solve all his problems with cryostasis, but whatever.

“Neither of you can tell any of the other versions of Rogers about why Barnes is alive, or anything else about their potential futures,” says one of the sorcerers sternly, the one with the cape. “Bad enough Rogers has changed two timelines already, we cannot risk further destabilization in the multiverse. At any rate, you can quite truthfully tell them that you have no idea how things stand in their timelines.”

“We can’t exactly control what the other Steves will tell us,” points out Natasha, and the other, capeless sorcerer waves that concern away.

“You only have to worry about that if they’re from our future. Ask each Rogers who arrives what year they’re from, and if it’s from the future relative to us, tell them not to say anything about their timeline, otherwise they’ll need to be quarantined to preserve timeline stability.”

Bucky nods. This, at least, he gets, and quarantine is something any version of Steve raised by Sarah Rogers will understand.

“Are all the Steves gonna show up here, if they show up?” he asks, because being on Steve Watch sounds exhausting enough, especially if he’s going to have to keep things from Steve. If he has to go out and hunt various Steves down too…well, it’ll definitely be some ironic and probably deserved cosmic payback for all that time he spent running from Steve, but it won’t be fun.

Steve nods. “The Ancient One told me that the time machine is going to act kind of like a magnet. They’ll show up in the general vicinity of me or the quantum tunnel platform, if they show up anywhere.”

“We’re going to have to destroy the time machine once this is all over, to avoid leaving a weak point in the multiverse,” says the caped sorcerer.

His name is Dr. Strange, Bucky recalls. It can’t possibly be his real name. Also, does he have a PhD in sorcery? Who hands those out? If he has a PhD in sorcery, does that mean it’s a science? These are the questions Bucky contemplates rather than paying basically any attention at all to the logistical planning that’s happening, or thinking about all these Steves. He squints at Dr. Strange’s cape. There’s no breeze, and yet it’s moving. As he watches, it wiggles in something alarmingly close to a wave. What the fuck kind of Fantasia bullshit is this?

He tunes back into the discussion when Banner says, “We can’t just keep calling all the Steves Steve. That’s confusing.”

“What’s the plural for a group of Steves?” asks Natasha, and it’s weirdly comforting that the question has a hint of whimsical hysteria to it. Good, Bucky’s not the only one who’s not dealing well with all of this.

“A clusterfuck,” he says. “A clusterfuck of Steves.”

“Hey!” protests Steve—Bucky’s Steve, that is—as everyone but the Steves laughs. Old Steve is smiling ruefully like he can’t quite deny the clusterfuck classification though.

“One of you causes enough trouble, multiples of you can’t be classified as anything other than a clusterfuck of it,” Bucky retorts, and Steve makes a face at him.

“Banner’s right though, we can’t call all the Steves Steve,” says Sam. “Steve from 2012, you’re Cap. Old Man Steve, you’re Mr. Rogers. Not that Mr. Rogers, but—you know.”

Bucky cannot conceive of calling any version of Steve, no matter how old, Mr., so he privately decides that Old Steve will remain Old Steve to him.

“I was on Mr. Rogers’ show once,” says Old Steve. “Kindest man I ever met.”

Whatever plan got put in place while Bucky was contemplating what the deal is with sorcerers is set in motion as people begin to scatter, the sorcerers stepping through portals, some others heading for the Starks’ lake house and others making their way back to the quantum tunnel platform, probably to check on the equipment. Steve looks over at Bucky, the desperation to talk to him clear as day in his eyes, only for Old Steve to head purposefully towards his younger counterpart.

“You and I need to have a talk,” Old Steve says to Steve, practically dragging him away, and before Bucky knows it, he’s left alone with the younger Steve.

Faced with this younger Steve, and his big, wounded eyes full of desperate confusion and hope, Bucky can’t bring himself to think of him as Cap. Cap is the guy on the posters and in the comic books, Cap is the guy on the battlefield. This is just Steve: over ten years younger and fresh off the ice, looking very lost. In some ways, this Steve is more legible to Bucky than his own. This, after all, is the Steve who just lost Bucky, and this is the Steve who Bucky left behind when he fell off that train.

Bucky has no idea what to say to him.

“Hey,” is what comes out of his mouth. “Um, do you want to get cleaned up, or—are you hungry, do you need—”

Steve stumbles forward and puts his arms around Bucky. He holds on tight, too tightly, almost, like holding onto Bucky is all that can keep both of them alive.

The missing comes again, even in Steve’s arms. I miss you.

Steve—Bucky’s Steve—had not held him like this, at any of their reunions. There had been no time or opportunity, during the whole mess with Zemo, and in Wakanda, Bucky had been too hurt at first. After he got out of cryo, Steve had hugged him, of course, but he’d been careful about it, like Bucky was too fragile to even be held properly.

Maybe he was and maybe he is. But this Steve does not think Bucky is fragile, so Bucky holds onto him just as tightly.

“You’re alive,” whispers Steve.

“Yeah, I am,” says Bucky.

“I’m sorry. All I had to do was hold you, and I couldn’t—”

“Hey, shh. It’s okay. It wasn’t your fault.”

After a couple shaky minutes, Steve pulls away and says again, “You’re alive. How?”

“I don’t think I’m supposed to—”

“You heard the wizard, my timeline’s already changed. Even if you don’t say a damn word, I’ll know it’s true, that you’re alive in my world too.”

“Sorcerer,” Bucky corrects, on autopilot, but he’s already thinking.

To buy himself some time, he guides them both towards the lakeshore and the bench there. He starts with the part that Steve himself could deduce already, if he actually stopped to think.

“In the factory at Kreischberg, when Zola had me, he experimented on me, trying to recreate the serum. It worked, mostly. Enough that I survived the fall from the train.” He lifts his left arm in a demonstrative shrug. “Lost an arm though.”

This leads to the expected guilt and apologies about not having looked for him, etc etc, and Bucky handles that with half his attention, soothing Steve through the coulda woulda shouldas that are useless now. The other half of him is thinking about what he can tell Steve, and how.

Bucky never actually had to tell his Steve what happened to him. Steve learned about that from other people, from files, from the silent testimony of all the HYDRA bases he and his team razed to the ground. Bucky hasn’t ever actually had to tell anyone, he realizes. Either the people he knows already know, or they’re people who cannot ever know for their own or Bucky’s safety, and either way, Bucky has never had to say a word about it, not really. Even his Wakandan therapists haven’t pressed for details.

If he tells this younger Steve now, he’ll get to see Steve’s first, unfiltered reaction to the knowledge of what HYDRA turned Bucky into. Bucky suspects the desire to see this is about on par with pulling a knife out of his gut: he’ll have fixed one problem (the knife in his gut) only to replace it with a much more imminently fatal problem (bleeding out).

But hey, the knife has to come out sometime, right? And maybe it’ll be to that other Bucky’s benefit. Maybe that poor bastard could—well. Bucky doesn’t know. Bucky doesn’t know how it gets any better than this, for him: sure he’s a homeless fugitive with dubious mental stability who has—had?—tentative sanctuary in Wakanda and who’s tried to kill most of the people he knows, but also, he’s free, and he’s as safe as it’s possible for him to be.

“I don’t know if I can tell you what happened to me,” he says. “I’ve never actually, uh. Said, any of it. Not really. I don’t—I don’t think it’s a kindness, telling you. But I suppose you ought to know, if only for that other me’s sake.”

Steve pales, and then sets his jaw with stubborn resoluteness. “Buck, you can tell me anything. Take your time.”

It’s a pretty short story, actually, given Bucky leaves out all the details of the torture and the killing and the torture and the escape attempts and the torture and the killing and killing and killing—

Anyway. It’s a short story. Seventy years condensed into a few minutes. He watches Steve the whole time. It’s a little like he’s watching him from behind the glass of the cryochamber: cold, distant. He notes with vague interest the horror on Steve’s face, the tears that fall from his eyes, the helpless rage that follows after. No disgust and no fear though. No pity either. That’s nice, he supposes. That’s good to know, that Steve doesn’t—that he hasn’t ruined this, for that other poor Bucky.

“There’s a lot I don’t remember, still. So. I can’t give you any more details. Sorry. But I—I killed a lot of people, and if you—if that’s—”

The glass fogs over, until Steve reaches out and wipes Bucky’s eyes, the touch of his fingers warm and tender, shaking slightly, and right—there isn’t actually any glass between him and the world.

“Buck, you’re shaking. Hey, come here, it’s okay. Thank you for telling me.” Steve holds him again. Tightly. Steve rocks them both, his breath coming out in shaky little gasps, or maybe that’s Bucky’s breath, maybe it’s both of them. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, I—what they did to you—when I go back, I’ll find you, I’ll kill whatever’s left of HYDRA, I’ll—”

“That’s not what I’m going to need, Steve,” Bucky says, surprised when his voice comes out so thin and raspy. He clears his throat, blinks rapidly to clear the stinging in his eyes.

“Then tell me. Tell me what you’re going to need,” Steve pleads. “I’ll do it, I’ll do anything.”

“I’m going to need you to let me go.”

Steve lets him go. “What?”

“He’s not going to remember you,” says Bucky, and the words come out in a torrent he can’t stop. “He won’t even remember his own name. And when it starts coming back, it’s—it’s going to be—so overwhelming. It’s going to hurt so fucking much. He won’t know who he was or who he is, and you can’t—you can’t tell him any of that, okay? That’s not for you to decide. He has to figure it out himself, or he’ll never—he’ll never believe it, never trust it. He has to do it himself. And anyway, he won’t be safe either, he won’t be free, the trigger words—”

“Okay, okay,” says Steve. “I hear you. But Buck—you don’t have to do it on your own.”

“I don’t know how else to do it,” Bucky says. “I know it’s going to hurt you, I know it’s hurting you now, but I’m sorry, I don’t know how else to—“ He shakes his head, rubs at his eyes. “You have to let him go.”

“There’s gotta be a happy medium here,” Steve says helplessly.

“Maybe it’ll be different if—I don’t know. Just—I’m a fucking mess, Steve. You’re not gonna be able to fix me.”

“You don’t look like you need fixing to me,” says Steve softly, pained wonder in his eyes. “You look like—you’re a miracle, Bucky.”

Bucky cannot believe in any god that has made this kind of miracle out of him.

“I’m no miracle, Steve, and I’m not the Bucky you remember either. I’m never going to be him again. I’m a broken weapon that’s trying to be a person again,” he says. “And I’m not really that good at it either.”

It’s easier somehow, to say these things to this Steve, rather than his own. Maybe it’s just that the consequences of his words will be borne by a different Bucky. Or maybe it’s just that he hasn’t hurt this Steve yet.

Steve smiles, only it’s his sad smile, the one that means his heart is breaking. “You’re not the only one,” he says. “Since they woke me up, it’s been—it’s been like Captain America’s the only part of me that came back to life. It’s the only part people seem to care about, that’s for damn sure. So I haven’t been doing so great at being an actual person either. Maybe—maybe we can try to be real people again together.”

Bucky blinks, taken aback. His Steve hasn’t ever mentioned anything like that. Then again, his Steve has been busy being a fugitive, so. Maybe it wasn’t only the fight with Stark that had made it so easy for Steve to leave the shield behind.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“I know it’ll be hard, but I swear, Buck, you’ll still be the best thing about being here in the future.”

“Me?” says Bucky, laughing. “Come on, no way.”

“Won’t even be a contest,” Steve says, grinning a little, and Bucky wrinkles his nose at Steve.

Bucky has plenty of complaints about the future he’s found himself in, both personal and political, and he’s sure he’ll have more after the latest five years he’s missed. But there’s still a lot to be amazed by, and a lot that’s just 100% better than the past. Even on the run and in various stages of mental breakdown, Bucky had found time to do some exploring of the things he’d missed: a couple hours of escape in dark movie theaters at early afternoon showings, using stolen wifi to watch Youtube video after Youtube video of people dancing, books recommended by kind librarians, delicious street food and ever-more dessert-like coffee concoctions…and that’s not even mentioning the catch-up syllabus Shuri had given him in Wakanda.

“Sounds like someone hasn’t tried sushi yet, or all the new flavors of ice cream,” he tells Steve. “Or—wait, Steve, did you know The Hobbit has sequels? And they made movies out of them? The Lord of the Rings, you gotta read them, and the movies might as well be magic. And animation! You loved Disney movies, right? There’s so much more amazing art in animated movies now. You gotta add all that to your list.”

“What list?”

“What—are you not keeping a list yet? Of stuff to look up, or try? You gotta keep a list, Steve.”

That’s how Bucky’s Steve finds them: Bucky having scrounged some paper and a pen, scribbling down a list of things that make the future worthwhile for this younger Steve.

“Pictures of outer space!” Bucky is telling the younger Steve. “You gotta look ‘em up, they’re amazing.”

“Hey Buck, everything alright?”

“Yeah. Your younger self hasn’t got a list of cool future stuff yet, I was just helping him get started.” This seems to inspire some weird and decidedly concerning mix of agony and joy in his Steve’s face, so Bucky hastens to change the subject. “Uh, what did Old Steve need to talk to you about?”

“You, mostly,” says Steve with a rueful grimace. When Bucky’s eyes widen with alarm, he adds, “Don’t worry, nothing bad. He just, uh, worries.”

Great, that’s the last thing Bucky needs: the grandpa version of Steve fussing over him like he’s a wayward grandchild. “About?”

“How I’m not taking proper care of you, mostly. Speaking of, there’s still plenty of food down at the lake house, you should probably go eat something while you have the chance.” Steve’s eyes skitter guiltily over his younger counterpart. “And, uh, I need to talk to Cap about something.”

This seems suspicious, but whatever, Bucky is hungry. “Yeah, alright. Try not to fight each other again. Or fuck up the multiverse any more.”

Bucky makes use of his assassin skills to sneak in and out of the lake house for some food. He knows he doesn’t need to sneak, but there are a lot of people still hanging around, Stark’s funeral having become an impromptu wake, and what with the clusterfuck of Steves situation and also having murdered Stark’s parents, he doesn’t particularly want to deal with any of the inevitable and intense awkwardness. So he grabs some sandwiches from the extensive spread of funeral food, and heads for the lakeshore again, this time steering clear of the bench where the Steves are still talking to each other.

Unfortunately, he isn’t stealthy enough, because Wilson catches up to him.

“Hey Barnes, you good?”

Bucky nods. “Yeah. Just getting some food. I figured it’d be weird if I stayed in there, so—”

It had been awkward enough when Ms. Potts had taken him aside to let him know that Stark had ended up forgiving him in the end. That’s pretty much the limit of Bucky’s ability to endure awkward funeral interactions.

“Fair enough,” Sam says with a sympathetic grimace. “How are the Steves doing? Everything alright?”

“Uh yeah. I mean, I’m not sure where Old Steve is, but Steve talked to him. And, uh, I told Steve. Cap, I mean.”

“Told him what?”

Right, yes, great job making sense, Barnes.

“What happened to me,” he clarifies. “How I survived. I figured he already knows I’m alive, so.”

“Yeah, that horse has left the barn,” says Wilson with a sigh. “How’d that go?”

“I don’t know. I—it was kind of the first time I’ve ever actually told anyone.” Wilson’s brow furrows in concern, so Bucky hastens to add. “It’s fine. I’m fine. It was just—uh. A lot.”

Wilson studies him in silence for a long moment, his expression unsettlingly soft. Where are the insults? It’s freaking Bucky out. Maybe Wilson is worried that he’s about to have a breakdown or something.

“I’ll bet,” Wilson says eventually. “If you don’t want to be on call for dealing with this clusterfuck of Steves situation, just say the word, Barnes. Steve can nut up and handle his own damn alternate selves.”

Bucky shakes his head. “No, it’s fine, I can handle it.” Wilson frowns. “I can,” Bucky insists.

“Alright,” says Wilson. “I gotta go visit my family, but if this Steve clusterfuck situation isn’t over in a week or so, I’ll come back and give you some back up for the Steve wrangling.”

“You don’t have to, you should stay with your family, Wilson.”

“This is my family too, man,” says Wilson, and claps him on the shoulder. “So hang in there. And send me photos if any really funny or weird alternate Steves show up.”

“I don’t have a phone,” Bucky tells him.

“I will be texting to check in, and you better answer! Have someone teach you how to text!”

“I know how to—again, I do not have a phone, and even if I did, I wouldn’t answer your texts!”

“Bye Barnes!”

Steve spends what’s left of the late afternoon and the whole evening at the wake, so Old Steve takes charge of younger Steve, telling Bucky, “Go get some rest while you can, Buck, I’ll look after myself.”

“When in your entire goddamn life have you ever looked after yourself, punk,” Bucky gripes, and Old Steve just grins, evidently delighted.

“We’ll be fine, Buck. We’ll, uh, keep our eyes open for any more of us showing up,” says the younger Steve. “Get some shut-eye.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” says Bucky, because Old Steve is probably right, he should get some rest before the next disaster strikes, or more Steves appear.

He goes back to the cabin he shared with his Steve last night—was it only last night?—washes up, and gets in the too-luxurious four-poster bed. He doesn’t expect to fall asleep, but the day’s grief and surprises and revelations have left him exhausted, and he drops off quickly. He wakes when Steve slides into the bed.

“Shhh, it’s just me, it’s Steve,” he whispers.

Bucky snorts sleepily. “Which Steve? Lotta ‘em around lately.”

Warmth presses up against his back, and a hand strokes his hair. Bucky considers opening his eyes, but the leaden weights on his eyelids dissuade him, and the world is already dissolving back into sleep.

“Your Steve,” is the last thing he hears before he falls asleep again.

Chapter Text

The next day, life by the lake in the woods takes on an even more surreal tinge than it already had. Most of the funeral goers left last night and the remaining stragglers leave in the morning, leaving Ms. Potts and her daughter, of course, along with Bucky, the Steves, and Banner. The woods are quiet and calm, as if they’re a world apart, and yet Bucky knows that outside these woods, the world has ended and unended. It must be chaos out there, with the return of billions of people, and part of Bucky itches to go back to Wakanda, where there must be something he can do to help with the rebuilding and recovery.

But everyone from the big battle against Thanos has got their assignments and marching orders, from Colonel Rhodes and General Okoye, or from Steve and Natasha, and Bucky’s latest mission is officially Steve Watch. He’s been handed a new phone full of pre-programmed numbers—including Wilson’s, to his mild annoyance—and a gun just in case something other than Steve comes through, and now all he’s got to do is hang around the quantum tunnel platform and wait, and wonder about the Steves he might yet meet. And worry about the Steve he’s got, too.

There’s something alarmingly brittle about his Steve now, and Bucky has no idea what to do about it. There had been a certain stiffness to Steve before, on his visits to Bucky in Wakanda, but he’d always relaxed after a day or so. Steve isn’t relaxing now. Which is probably just the circumstances—Steve has lived through what amounts to the apocalypse, for god’s sake, and he’s just lost a friend—and yet Bucky can’t help but worry that Steve’s disconcerting brittleness will end in him shattering.

He’s idly contemplating plans for how to help Steve—a vacation? is this what vacations are for? avoiding nervous breakdowns? Bucky wouldn’t know, he’s never actually been on a vacation—when the light near the quantum tunnel platform goes strange. A figure appears, as if through the shimmer of heat haze: someone in a space suit, one of the big, clunky white ones with the mirrored helmet. They look as if they could have stepped right out of the black and white footage of the moon landing, except for how water is streaming from their space suit. As Bucky watches, wary, they struggle with the helmet until they manage to pull it off to reveal—Steve, of course.

“Bucky?” he says, and the shock on his face is swiftly replaced with wonder and joy, and, somewhat worryingly, dismay. “Aw hell, am I dead?”

Commander Steve Rogers is from 1969, and it takes some time and all three of the other Steves to convince him that he’s not dead and in heaven.

“It’s a reasonable assumption!” Commander Rogers had protested. “I was training for a damned spacewalk in the pool, I figured something must have gone wrong, that I’d died, and of course Bucky would be the first person I’d want to see in heaven, other than my mom—“

He takes the news of what’s actually going on pretty well, and it turns out that Commander Rogers’ timeline has one small divergence from theirs, as best as they can tell, one difference that led to a whole new world: according to Commander Rogers, Bucky never fell from the train during the mission to capture Zola. Instead, he made it to the Valkyrie with Steve, and they’d crashed the plane together. But where Steve had survived, recovered in the Arctic and thawed out by Howard Stark in 1949, Bucky had not.

It was probably for the best, Bucky does not tell Commander Rogers. 

Grief-stricken and battle-weary, Commander Rogers had eschewed the SSR and SHIELD in favor of NACA, which would become NASA, joining the race to space rather than the Cold War. He didn’t beat Yuri Gagarin to space, but he did end up being the first man on the moon.

“They figured I’d have the best chance of surviving whatever the conditions were up there,” explains Commander Rogers. “And I did.”

“That’s amazing. No offense,” Bucky tells his Steve, wide-eyed. “But you’re never gonna be able to top that.”

 Steve’s looking equally wide-eyed, and impressed. “No, I’m not.”

Commander Rogers beams at Bucky. Despite the fact that his Bucky is dead, he’s not looking at Bucky with heartbroken wonder. Commander Rogers is looking at him with nothing but joy, a radiant sunburst of happiness beamed straight Bucky’s way. Bucky can’t do anything but flush and squirm under that bright regard, and fight against the impulse to skitter away like some roach exposed to the light.

Even without the space suit, Commander Rogers looks every inch the confident and steady astronaut. There’s something settled about this version of Steve, a calm centeredness that’s close to but not quite the almost amused ease in Old Steve. Commander Rogers has no rough edges, no raw and simmering anger. He seems content and happy.

Is this what Steve could look like, if he let go of the war? If he let go of Bucky?

“Thank you for spending time with me, Buck,” says Commander Rogers. “I know you’re not my Bucky, but it’s—it’s still so good to see you.”

“Of course,” Bucky says. “Um, I’m sorry about your Bucky. I hope you’re not blaming yourself more for his death, just because you’re seeing me now.”

Bucky can’t tell Commander Rogers much about what happened to him, given the impact it could still have on his timeline; while Bucky might no longer be alive there, HYDRA no doubt is. That’s going to have to play out however it’s going to play out, without interference from this timeline, for the sake of the multiverse. So all Commander Rogers knows is that Bucky fell from the train during the mission to capture Zola and that he survived, but was held prisoner for some time, much of it spent frozen like Steve had been.

Commander Rogers smiles at him, the fondness on his face as difficult to bear as staring straight at the sun. Bucky looks away, towards where the lake glimmers gently in the sunshine.

“I won’t say I didn’t think it for a minute, but I’m not blaming myself, no,” he says. “I had to let go of the guilt years ago. I spent a long time being furious that I survived and you didn’t. It was never supposed to be that way, you know? I wasn’t—god, I wasn’t ready for it. I know no one ever can be, but—I never for a second thought I’d ever outlive you. And then for me to survive like that, everyone calling it a miracle…” When Bucky looks back towards him, Commander Rogers is shaking his head. “I didn’t handle it well.”

“You never did handle grief well,” murmurs Bucky.

“Don’t handle guilt well, either,” says Commander Rogers. “All I could think was, I should’ve sent you home after Kreischberg, I shouldn’t have let you go on the Valkyrie with me. I obsessed over it, went over every moment we spent together during the war, over and over again. It made me realize some things.”

“Like what?” asks Bucky, not sure he wants to hear the answer.

“How miserable you were. How much you hated the war, how much you hated fighting, the toll it was all taking on you…all the things I was too determined not to see while I was so damned excited to finally be making a difference with this big, strong body,” says Commander Rogers, a thin thread of bitter self-recrimination underlying the matter-of-fact recitation.

“It was my choice to stay, Steve,” Bucky tells him. “Even with everything that’s happened, I’ve never regretted that. Your Bucky never would have either.”

Commander Rogers sighs, and smiles softly at Bucky. “I know. And Peggy kept telling me I had to allow you the dignity of your choice. But I still felt like I failed you.”

“You didn’t,” Bucky insists.

Bucky, after all, is the one who never said any of it. 

“Was I wrong though, about you hating fighting?”

“No,” Bucky confesses quietly.

He’s good enough at it that he might as well be meant for it, and he can’t pin that on the serum; he was an exemplary soldier before Zola ever got a hold of him. But he fucking hates it, and he’s so damned tired of fighting.

“I couldn’t stay in the fight, once I realized how much you’d hated it,” says Commander Rogers. “It just became the thing that took you away from me, that—that stole all your light, and happiness, and I realized it was stealing what was left of mine too. Me and Peggy never talked about anything but work, and I didn’t have anything in my life other than her and work, and it wasn’t good for me, or for us. So I quit the SSR. Howard suggested NACA, said they could use test pilots….”

“And then you ended up on the moon?”

“Then I ended up on the moon, yeah.” 

Commander Rogers looks oddly bashful for a moment. It’s an expression that sits oddly on his face, seasoned as it has been by a couple of extra decades. It’s not that he looks so much older than Bucky’s Steve, because he doesn’t—there’s maybe a hint of gray at his temples, a slight deepening in the lines of his face. He doesn’t look fifty-something. It’s more that his face has gained the dignity of years and experience and wisdom, and this shy sweetness is straight out of 1938.

“Howard suggested it, but it was really because of you, Buck,” he adds.

“What?”

Commander Rogers smiles at him, and it’s—adoring. Happy.

“Remember all those pulps you used to read? How much you loved Buck Rogers?”

Bucky laughs. “So, what, you decided to become Buck Rogers?” he asks, incredulous, and Commander Rogers laughs too, shakes his head.

“Kind of, but no, it was more like—you had all this hope, for the future. You loved the Stark Expo, you thought the future was going to be amazing. That we’d go out there into space and find wonders.”

He had thought that, Bucky recalls. Turns out, space is full of talking raccoons with machine guns and talking trees and alien gods and giant genocidal purple maniacs. Which are wonders in a way, he supposes. He does still love a good space documentary though.

“So you just decided to do it? Go out there into literal outer space because I was a dumb kid who thought we’d be living on the moon by the year 2000?” asks Bucky, both appalled and charmed.

“You mean that doesn’t end up happening?” asks Commander Rogers drily. “What a disappointment.”

“Steve—“

Commander Rogers laughs, his eyes bright and shining. With tears, maybe, but there’s still joy in his laughter.

“Yeah, Buck. That’s why. It’s dumb, I guess. But—it kept me going. Every training flight, every test flight, every mission, I’d think of you, what you’d say. How—uh. Proud you’d be. First time I was in orbit, you were all I could think about.”

“That seems unsafe,” is all Bucky can think of to say.

Commander Rogers beams at him with those still shining eyes. “Yeah. I was out there in goddamn orbit, in outer space, awed by the majesty of our beautiful, perfect planet and thinking of you, and what I’d tell you about it. Real poetic shit,” he says, the Brooklyn in his voice growing stronger with every word. “And then I realized, ‘Rogers, you dumbass, Buck would be telling you to get your shit together and pay attention so you don’t blow up in space.’”

“Yeah, Rogers, I would,” says Bucky, and they grin at each other like idiots. The feeling comes again, the I miss you feeling. Bucky and his Steve have not shared this kind of easy joy in a long time. So he blurts out, “Tell me now. All the things you wanted to tell your Bucky.”

And Commander Rogers does. He tells Bucky about his life, about the last twenty years. He tells Bucky all of it, and even dead, Bucky is in all of it: in every choice and every joy, every sorrow and every setback, Commander Rogers has thought of him. What he’d say, what he’d do, how he’d comfort Commander Rogers, how he’d advise him, how he’d yell at him or how he’d laugh, the things Bucky would love and the things he would hate. He is, it seems, the commander’s most beloved, constant ghost.

He’s named one of his kids after Bucky, for god’s sake: James Carter Rogers.

Commander Rogers is clearly still grieving his Bucky, even after all that time, and yet—Bucky hadn’t known grief could be like this: the bitter guilt and pain of it subsumed by the sweetness of love. It’s so much love, and joy too. And it’s not for him, not really, but Bucky will take this time basking in the sunshine of Commander Rogers’ affection anyway. He figures that other version of him, blessedly dead, wouldn’t mind.

“And you’re happy?” he asks Commander Rogers.

They’ve been talking for hours. The golden hour has long since passed, and dusk is falling. That doesn’t dim the brightness in Commander Rogers. 

“Yeah, Buck. I’m happy. Even happier now that I’ve gotten this chance to talk to you again.”

“Yeah? Even like this?”

Commander Rogers’ brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

Bucky gestures to himself. “I’m not exactly your Bucky.”

He figures it’s obvious, the many and varied ways in which he is no longer the Bucky Steve once knew.

“You’re still Bucky,” says Commander Rogers. “Of course I’m gonna be happy to see you, to talk to you. This—this has been such a gift. I miss you every day, I’m gonna keep on missing you, but at least now I’ll have this, too. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” mutters Bucky, his eyes growing hot with tears. 

Of course I’m gonna be happy to see you. Like it’s a given. Like it’s something that can even apply to Bucky.

Commander Rogers frowns at him. “What about you, Buck? You—maybe it’s not my place, but you look sad. Tired. About as tired as you looked during the war.”

The feeling of not being tired is a memory that has never come back to Bucky. Or maybe he’s simply always felt like this.

“Yeah, well. My war’s not over yet, I guess,” he says, and Commander Rogers looks stricken, so Bucky dredges up a smile for him. “I’ll be fine, Steve. I’m sure things’ll finally calm down.”

That’s all Bucky really needs: a little bit of calm before the next fight comes.

“What were you talking about for so long with Commander Rogers?” asks Steve’s Bucky later, when Bucky returns to their shared cabin to turn in for the night.

Steve turns to look at him. For a long moment, the look in Steve’s eyes winds Bucky more swiftly and effectively than any blow to the chest ever could, because this is Bucky’s Steve, a Steve who until a few days ago, had been without Bucky for five years, and he looks at Bucky like Bucky is breaking his heart. The contrast is obvious, now that Bucky has seen Steve properly happy: there’s grief in Steve’s eyes, when he looks at Bucky. Grief and guilt, and something that teeters between agony and joy, but that mostly ends up tipping into quiet agony. This has been the look in Steve’s eyes since Steve first found him.

Bucky is standing here right in front of Steve, alive and breathing and more or less sane, and yet he might as well be a ghost. Not the beloved kind, like Commander Rogers’ Bucky, but the painful kind: a specter that’s proof of a violent past, a poltergeist in need of exorcism. Bucky can’t exactly blame Steve for it. It’s nothing Bucky hasn’t felt himself.

It’s just that he’s been trying very hard to be a person, more than a haunting.

Are you ever going to be happy to see me again? Bucky wonders. Can I even still make you happy, when I’m just what’s left of someone who used to be your best friend? 

What he says though is, “Space, mostly.”

“I’ve been to space too, you know,” grumbles Steve.

“Not like he has,” says Bucky. “And he’s walked on the moon, Steve.”

“I’ve time traveled,” Steve says.

“Are you jealous of Commander Rogers? Because if you are, that’s understandable, he’s an astronaut, that automatically makes him way cooler than you—“

“Oh I see how it is, an astronaut is more impressive to you than a guy who’s helped save half of the entire universe—“

They get in bed, still talking, but it’s empty banter. It’s comfortable in its own way, it just doesn’t mean anything. It’s old habit, inertia—noise to cover a deeper silence.

Bucky tries to break free of it and asks, “So, uh, what were you up to while I was with Commander Rogers?”

“A lot of calls and video conferences, mostly,” says Steve. “Boring stuff. It’ll probably be more of the same tomorrow.”

Bucky waits for Steve to say more: for the rant about some clueless official, the jokes and dry asides Steve had held back all through the day, Steve’s plans to help people, his witty observations. But Steve doesn’t say anything else, and Bucky doesn’t either.

They settle down to sleep back to back, like usual. Steve is a warm and solid presence at his back.  

Objectively, Bucky is safe and warm, alive. He doesn’t really feel like it though. He feels like he’s still in the cryochamber, like once he stepped into it of his own free will in Wakanda, he never quite managed to step back out, and he’s still there, cold behind the glass and caught in some grey area between life and death. 

Steve’s breathing deepens into the slower pace of sleep within minutes, but sleep stays out of reach for Bucky. He gives up on trying after an hour or so, and slips out of bed and goes outside into the welcoming dark. The moon hasn’t risen high enough yet to be visible through the trees, and the only lights are the ones that mark the paths that wind between the cabins. In the dark, the lake could almost be the small lake near his hut in Wakanda, his patient companion through many sleepless nights and weary dawns, though the night air here is much cooler, the scents and sounds different.

He’s going to have to leave.

The realization is almost a relief. The triggers are gone, and he’s as safe as he’s going to get, even if he’s still a super soldier fugitive. So he’ll stick around through this whole clusterfuck of Steves situation, then he’ll go. He’ll leave a note for Steve, of course, make sure no one thinks the Winter Soldier has gone AWOL to go on a murder spree or something. He’ll even tell Steve the truth: that he has to try to fix some of what HYDRA used him to break. Even though he can’t bring back the dead, maybe he can help the people his targets left behind.

He’ll miss Steve, but what difference does that make? He misses Steve now, and Steve is right here. So what if Bucky had thought that—if he’d hoped—whatever. It’s fine. People grow apart, relationships change. Bucky now is not the Bucky who’d been Steve’s best friend, once upon a time. It’s been nice to pretend he still is with Commander Rogers, who’s blissfully unaware of what Bucky has become, but Bucky can’t pretend with his Steve, and Steve clearly feels too damn guilty to cut Bucky loose, so Bucky’s the one who’s going to have to go.

It’ll make for a grim and lonely future for Bucky. It’s alright though, because Steve will still have Wilson and Natasha, and all his other friends and teammates. He’ll be fine. Bucky will be fine too.

Bucky’s just wiping his eyes—he really fucking hates how damned leaky his eyes have become—when a sound in the woods sends all his instincts into overdrive. Or not only a sound, but a sound, and then the notable absence of sound. The forest and lake’s nighttime chorus has gone quiet, save for the hushed rustle of a breeze through the trees.

There’s something out here with him, and it isn’t some harmless forest animal, or any of the people who are supposed to be here. Did the sound come from the direction of the quantum tunnel platform? Banner’s supposed to be on Steve Watch for the overnight shift, but maybe he’s fallen asleep, or he’s missed the appearance of a Steve. 

Or maybe something else has come through. Given the givens, a monster in the woods is far from the least likely thing that could happen.

So Bucky prowls carefully through the woods, alert to the signs of anything out of place, as he slowly makes his way towards the quantum tunnel platform. Banner can almost certainly take care of himself, even with an injured arm, but who the hell knows—

Bucky has a scant half-second of warning—the snap of a twig, a shift in the air—before he’s slammed against a tree with enough force to knock the wind out of him. Before he can manage to push his assailant away from him, he’s pinned to the tree with a preternatural strength that even his vibranium arm is having a hard time overcoming.

So this is less than ideal. Perhaps he shouldn’t have gone for a walk in the dark woods alone, even if he’s generally confident that he’s the most dangerous thing in any given five-mile radius. On the plus side, he hasn’t been attacked by a bear; whatever has him pinned is person-shaped, and as he struggles to catch his breath again, the person lowers their head to Bucky’s neck where they—sniff it? There’s the distinct sound of a deep inhale, and then Bucky is—nuzzled, for lack of a better word, a touch that sends confused signals racing up and down his spine, his instincts warring with each other: the urge of cornered prey to fight and thrash and flee, and another urge entirely, to offer himself up for a pleasure he’d almost forgotten.

“Bucky?” comes a rumble of a voice, and Bucky goes still with shock for a moment before he squirms to try to get a proper look at who’s holding him.

“Steve?”

Holy shit, it is Steve. Not his Steve, obviously, but a Steve. He’s wearing combat fatigues, and his hair is disheveled; his body against Bucky feels—different. Bigger, denser, than Steve already is, and his face—the features are familiar, they’re just arranged in an unfamiliar expression of raw wildness that Bucky would have never thought was even possible on Steve’s face.

There is a space inside Bucky where he thinks fear should be, at this point, but—this is Steve.

“You’re Bucky, but—not Bucky.”

Well isn’t that just a pithy distillation of Bucky’s ongoing existential crisis.

Also, what on earth is the deal with this Steve? Because something’s clearly different, and Bucky has no idea what it is. Did something go weird with the serum in this Steve’s timeline? Is this Steve about to turn into a Hulk or something?

“Yeah, uh—it’s kind of a long story. What year do you think it is, Steve?”

“1944, what year do you think this is?”

“2023,” says Bucky, and as the moonlight filters through the trees, he sees some of the wildness on Steve’s face shift to insulted incredulity.

And then Steve turns into a fucking wolf.

To Steve’s credit, he’s a very polite wolf—werewolf?—and he doesn’t devour Bucky or bite him or anything like that. He simply sits on his haunches and glares at Bucky, affronted. 

He’s a handsome wolf, as wolves go: big and rangy, with a healthy coat of fur that’s probably a sandy pale brown in the daylight. He doesn’t seem like a ravening beast at all, and his blue eyes—the same color as they are in his human form—are alert and intelligent. The space inside Bucky where entirely rational fear should be continues to be empty.

So Bucky sits down and explains the situation to him, as best he can. Wolf Steve is not impressed.

“You just turned into a wolf. Are you really gonna sit here and look at me like I’m the crazy one because my explanation involves some time travel and space aliens?”

Wolf Steve tilts his head and huffs as if in acquiescence. He inches closer to where Bucky is sitting at the foot of a tree, and with careful slowness, he pokes his snout at Bucky’s left hand and sniffs gently there.

Bucky sighs. “Yeah, this is a new addition. Sorry, I can’t tell you much, I don’t want to wreck the multiverse.” Wolf Steve whines softly, and Bucky says, “I know it sounds like bullshit, but the sorcerer was pretty insistent about it.” Wolf Steve narrows his eyes, and Bucky glares at him. “You are a werewolf, do not start shit with me about the sorcerer.”

Wolf Steve sighs and plops his head in Bucky’s lap. Surely he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t want Bucky to pet him, so Bucky does, stroking his thick fur and scratching a bit behind his ears.

“Are you going to change back when the moon sets?” he asks, and peers up at the moon, still just barely visible through the trees. It’ll be at least another few hours before it sets, he thinks.

Wolf Steve nods, thankfully, so they’ll have some explanations in a few hours, to the extent that any explanation is possible beyond Steve is a werewolf. In the meantime, Bucky’s happy to hang out with Wolf Steve, whose company is pretty restful, actually. He is a warm and heavy weight on Bucky’s lap, his fur soft under Bucky’s hands.

“Kinda ironic,” he tells Wolf Steve. “I managed to pick up the nickname White Wolf without being a werewolf at all, and here you are.” He snickers, feeling a little punch drunk. Shit, too bad he doesn’t have his phone, he’d send Wilson a photo of— “Cap Wolf! I’m White Wolf and you’re Cap Wolf—“

“Bucky, get away from that animal!” hisses Steve—his Steve, who’s running up to them, looking wide-eyed and panicked, still in his pajamas, the dumbass.

Bucky gives Cap Wolf a reassuring pet, and presses on his suddenly tense shoulder, a silent stand down.

“Hey Steve,” he says, and smiles up at him. “Meet Cap Wolf.”

Steve is not happy to meet Cap Wolf. Cap Wolf is currently sniffing at the other Steves, bemused, like he can’t quite believe the evidence of his nose, while the other Steves look at him like they can’t quite believe the evidence of their eyes.

“Why didn’t you call anybody?” demands Bucky’s Steve. He’s…weirdly frantic. Bucky frowns.

“I didn’t have my phone.”

“Why did you not have your phone?!”

That’s a very 21^st century thing to ask. Bucky’s lips twitch with a smile, but the look on Steve’s face has him tamping that smile down. Shit, Steve was really worried.

“Because I was just going on a walk to clear my head when I couldn’t sleep? Steve, seriously, it’s fine—“

“That is a wolf, Bucky, it could’ve eaten you—“

“That wolf is you, Steve, would you eat me—“

“I’m not a—a werewolf, what the fuck—and how did you even know it was me, it could have been some—some random wild wolf—“

“Well, Cap Wolf kind of…transformed right in front of me, so—“

Steve blanches. “Oh my god, and what if he bit you, and—and turned you into a werewolf too—“

“Well, then it’d be really accurate when people call me White Wolf—“

There’s a chorus of curses from the clusterfuck of Steves, and a Steve says, “I wouldn’t bite Bucky!”Where Cap Wolf had been, there is now a fully human Steve, naked but for his, ha, dog tags, and glaring at Bucky’s Steve. “Not like that, anyway.”

Wait, what?

Over breakfast, Cap Wolf tells them just how he got werewolfed.

“Remember that mission in Gévaudan? All those campfire stories Frenchie told us about monsters in the woods?” says Cap Wolf, and Bucky and all the Steves nod. Cap Wolf grimaces. “Yeah, they were real, and I got bitten by one. It healed up just fine, but then—well, you know.”

For the sake of his precarious mental health, Bucky makes the executive decision to ignore what this may or may not mean for his own timeline and the possible presence of werewolves in it.

“Is it permanent?” asks Cap, looking morbidly curious.

“Don’t know,” says Cap Wolf with a shrug. “It’s not so bad, really. It’s even come in handy on missions.”

“Seems pretty inconvenient, actually, randomly turning into a wolf and all,” says Bucky’s Steve, thin-lipped.

Bucky glares at him like, what the hell. Inconvenient? Being a werewolf is extremely cool, actually, even if it does suggest some pretty alarming things about the world as a whole. What is Steve’s problem?

“It’s not random,” says Cap Wolf with a frown. “I turn into a wolf on our near the full moon. I’m still working on being able to do it on my own, getting more control.”

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Bucky tells him encouragingly.

Steve sighs and rubs his forehead like he has a headache. “Alright. A werewolf version of me, sure, whatever. This is fine. So, listen up everybody, here’s today’s Steve Watch schedule…”

Steve chivvies Bucky into a nap, because you stayed up all night dealing with Cap Wolf, you need some rest, and Bucky goes along with it, fully intending to sneak back out to—well he’s not sure what, but he doesn’t need a damn nap. Only he does end up falling asleep until it’s his turn to go back on Steve Watch, which Cap Wolf seems determined to join him on.

Bucky doesn’t mind; of all the Steves, Cap Wolf’s company is actually the least demanding. Cap Wolf still has his Bucky, so seeing Bucky alive isn’t some big emotional—thing. It’s normal in a way it isn’t for the other Steves. It’s a nice change from how not normal everything has been for so long between him and his Steve.

“Hey, are you alright, Buck?” asks Cap Wolf.

“I’m fine,” Bucky says, and Cap Wolf frowns.

“Buck,” he chides. “You’re in pain.”

“What?”

“I can smell it, Buck, you’re in pain. What’s wrong, can I help?”

Oh. Geez, his arm. 

“It’s just my arm, it always hurts at least a bit. I’m fine, it’s a lot better than it was before.” 

The new prosthetic Shuri made for him is much, much lighter than his last one, and that alone reduces a lot of the pain he’d dealt with before. Even without the prosthetic though, there’s usually at least some pain: phantom pain, and the ache of the port and plating that are grafted onto his existing bones. He’s used to it, lets the pain fade into so much background noise. 

This does not assuage Cap Wolf, who’s, oh god, looking very sad and beseeching, so Bucky adds, conciliatory, “Though maybe I should take the prosthetic off at night to sleep.”

Cap Wolf brightens a little bit at that, but there’s still a worried furrow cutting a deep line of worry in his brow.

“You smell sad, too.”

“You really smell all that?” Bucky says. “Must make sharing a camp with the Howlies pretty damn rough, Dum Dum’s socks were disgusting even to a normal nose—“

The deflection doesn’t work. “You were crying, just before I saw you last night,” says Cap Wolf. “I could smell that too.”

Bucky closes his eyes, clenches his jaw. He does not want to talk about this. “Yeah? So what? How’s your Bucky doing?”

Because Bucky doubts that poor bastard is doing much better than Bucky is now.

Cap Wolf snorts. “Fuckin’ miserable. If he’s not shit scared of all of us getting killed, he’s pissed off, and if he’s not that, then he’s exhausted. That’s the goddamn war, and I am doing my damndest to end it quick, so I can bring him back home. He’s worried about what Zola did to him too, and I told him who cares if he’s tougher and faster, he’s not turning into a wolf, so he’s probably fine.” He looks at Bucky, and fuck, Bucky doesn’t have many defenses against Steve looking so pleading and worried. “Why are you sad, Buck? Why isn’t the other me fixing it?“

“Because you can’t fix me, Steve,” Bucky says with a sigh. “I’m past fixing.”

“Who says you need fixing? I said why isn’t the other me fixing it, why isn’t he fixing whatever it is that’s making you so sad.”

Because he can’t fix that either, thinks Bucky. He says, “Because it’s not your—his—job.”

“I’m your m—your best friend, of course it’s my job, Buck.”

“I’m fine, really. Don’t worry about me.”

Cap Wolf’s mouth takes on an unhappy tension. It makes him look a lot more like Bucky’s Steve.

“So I’m guessing you never talked to your Steve about any of it.”

“Any of what?” snaps Bucky.

“How you’re—how you were, I mean—really doing, after Kreischberg. I know my Bucky never wanted to tell me, until I told him I could smell all of it, and that I’d send him back home unless he could actually tell me what was wrong.”

“No, I never told my Steve any of that, because it wouldn’t have done any good. And now it’s eighty years later, so it doesn’t fucking matter.”

And it would only give Steve more reasons to feel guilty, more reasons to look at Bucky like he’s some ghost rattling his chains, more reasons to see Bucky as a tragedy of a person. Bucky cannot handle any more guilt; his own is almost too much to stand as it is.

“What matters is what’s making you sad now,” says Cap Wolf, like a, ha, dog with a goddamn bone. 

“Steve has enough going on without worrying about me,” Bucky says. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

If he keeps saying it, maybe it will come true. Or maybe it’s just him being a broken record.

Cap Wolf narrows his eyes, and capitulates with concerning ease. “If you say so, Buck.”

Of course, that’s not the last Bucky hears of it, even if Cap Wolf doesn’t actually say anything. Cap Wolf seems to think that the cure for what ails Bucky is a truly excessive amount of cuddling and physical affection, in both human and wolf forms. And honestly, it’s not not helping. Cap Wolf’s hugs and touches are somewhere between an embrace and roughhousing, and it’s nice, to be touched like that, without real violence, and like he isn’t fragile or dangerous, like touch can be as freely given and shared as smiles and laughs. And when Cap Wolf shifts to wolf form again as the moon rises, it’s easier to return affection too, to bury his hands in that soft and fluffy ruff, and sprawl against his warm bulk.

God, maybe Bucky should get a dog or something. That’s the only way he’s likely to get this kind of easy affection once he leaves.

“So, you’re taking the whole werewolf Steve situation pretty well,” says Bucky’s Steve that night.

It’s only been a few nights, but turning in for the night together has already become a routine that’s almost odd in its normalcy. Nothing about the world outside or the life they’re living is particularly normal, and yet, this right here is effortlessly comfortable: sharing a bathroom, a bed, moving around each other in the little necessary habits of life like brushing teeth and washing up. It’s almost easy and comfortable enough that in the space of these mundane moments, Bucky can forget all the time and pain that’s separated them so often.

He’ll miss this, when he goes. Even if it’s not really his to miss, not anymore.

“I mean, seeing a werewolf version of you isn’t the weirdest thing that’s happened to me this week,” says Bucky. “Not sure it’s even in the top five, to be honest.”

Bucky removes his prosthetic—shit, maybe he should’ve done it days ago, judging by how the reduced weight immediately reduces the achy strain on his neck and shoulder. Maybe Cap Wolf had a point when he’d insistently if gently poked his muzzle at Bucky’s left shoulder before Bucky left him to his wolfy plans for the night.

Steve stares at him in consternation for a second, then slumps with a tired laugh. “Yeah, okay, fair enough,” he says, rueful, then nods towards where Bucky is setting his prosthetic on the dresser. “Everything okay with your arm?”

“Yeah, I’m just not used to weight yet, after going without for a while. I should probably be taking it off at night more often.”

Bucky’s just getting in bed when Steve turns the light off and says, hesitant, “I feel like we haven’t gotten the chance to talk much, since—since the battle.”

“It’s been pretty hectic,” says Bucky, already settling in on his side, his back to Steve. “We haven’t exactly had the time.”

Steve gets in bed too, his weight settling on the other half of the bed almost gingerly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was planning to do, before I left with the Stones. I mean, it wasn’t much of a plan, I guess, but I didn’t want you to try to talk me out of it, or stop me. Hell, I wasn’t even sure it’d work. I figured if it didn’t, I’d be back five seconds later, and you’d all be spared the worrying.”

Bucky snorts. “Yeah, I knew you were pulling that ask for forgiveness not permission shit, Steve.”

Steve always does whatever the hell he wants. No, that’s unfair; Steve does what he thinks is right, and he won’t be swayed. It’s a good thing, a lot of the time. That stubbornness and that goodness has saved lives, has saved the whole damn world. But god is it exhausting.

“So, uh—do you?”

“What?”

“Forgive me. It, uh—I’ve just been thinking about it, and I figure you must have been pretty confused about everything going on, and I didn’t really explain myself—“

“I thought you were going to stay in the past,” says Bucky shortly. “So yeah, you didn’t really explain yourself real well.”

The sudden tension in Steve is palpable, even with Bucky’s back to him. The bed shifts as Steve turns over. “What? You thought—“

Bucky huffs and turns to face him too. “You really didn’t explain yourself well, Steve. The way you were talking, mentioning Peggy and the life you could’ve had and the life you wanted, doing things for Natasha’s sake—I thought, oh, okay, Steve’s got a time machine and he’s gonna go back to when and where he belongs, he’s gonna get his happily ever after.“

“That’s not where I belong! Do you—do you think that’s where I belong?”

“It’s not my place to say, is it?”

Steve stares at him in the dark. “You really think I’d just leave like that. That I’d—I’d tell you some vague plan and tell you not to do anything stupid, and just leave.”

“Why are you making it sound like I’m the asshole here?” asks Bucky, peeved. “That’s what you did, Steve.”

“To try to save Natasha! And to—to try to salvage those timelines we fucked up by getting the Infinity Stones!”

“You said literally none of that,” Bucky points out, and Steve takes in a deep breath, probably so he won’t yell at Bucky.

Instead, he says, low and hurt, “You thought that, and you let me go.”

“Literally when have I ever been able to stop you, Steve,” says Bucky, and closes his eyes, exhausted.

“You—you thought I was going back for good, and you didn’t—you think I’d go without you?”

Bucky opens his eyes again. “I literally offered to go with you, and you said some bullshit about how there weren’t enough particle whatevers and there wasn’t time to get more of them.” Bucky sighs. “But even if there had been, if I thought—if I thought you were going back for good, then yeah, I wouldn’t have gone.”

“Why?” demands Steve.

“It’d kinda defeat the point of you going back, wouldn’t it? You’d have a better model of Bucky already anyway. And I don’t want to go back, Steve. That doesn’t—it wouldn’t fix anything for me.”

Bucky has done enough running to know that he can’t outrun his past or his memories or his guilt, that he will never be truly free of the Winter Soldier.

“I wouldn’t leave you,” says Steve, furious and broken.

“I know that now,” Bucky says, gently.

That’s why Bucky’s going to have to be the one to leave.

“And there’s no—Jesus, Buck, I’m not out there shopping around for Buckys. I like the one I got just fine.” Steve clenches his jaw, then sighs. “But if you prefer one of the other Steves, I guess I can’t blame you.”

It’s not that I prefer any of them over you, it’s just that most of them seem a hell of a lot happier than you, Bucky thinks.

He keeps his tone light, and says, “I like all Steves equally, it’s just that some versions of you are a lot cooler and more exciting than others.”

It works, thankfully. Steve huffs, but he relaxes too. “I don’t get why you’re so impressed by Commander Rogers, I’m telling you, I’ve been to space too!”

“Who says I was thinking of Commander Rogers?” asks Bucky, raising a teasing eyebrow. “Werewolf Steve is incredibly cool.”

“He is out there running through the woods and howling at the moon right now,” says Steve repressively.

“Yeah, and that is very cool, he’s a werewolf. I sent Wilson a photo of Cap Wolf, he agrees with me.”

He hadn’t been planning to answer Wilson’s carefully casual check-in texts beyond emoji proof-of-life responses, but Cap Wolf is too amazing not to share.

“Yeah, well, you’ve read too many pulp novels, and Sam’s watched too many horror movies,” says Steve with a fond smile, then he groans. “God, I really hope Cap Wolf is the weirdest version of me we’re gonna get.”

“Guess we’ll find out. Hopefully you didn’t just jinx it.”

Steve grumbles something about there being no such thing, and they settle down to sleep, turning again so they’re back to back like usual. Steve drops off quickly, judging by the sound of his breathing, but it takes Bucky a while to follow him. 

It’s nice of Steve to say, that he likes the broken down Bucky he’s got. And Bucky’s not delusional, he knows Steve loves him. It’s just that Bucky suspects the grief and the guilt Steve still feels outweigh the love—or not outweigh, no. That’s unfair to Steve. They’re just all tangled up together, and Bucky can’t see any way to cut through the mess, other than to cut them both loose.

Chapter Text

No new Steves show up the next day, so Bucky spends the time he’s not on watch keeping the Steves company. If too many more of them show up, it’s going to become something of a complex logic puzzle to sort out which Steves can talk to which other Steves without contaminating one timeline for another. For now though, they’re managing.

Bucky starts his day by helping Cap out with his list of 21st century catch up, scrounging up some ice cream and watching Spirited Away with him. Cap is rapt, and restarts the movie the second it’s over. Yeah, this Steve’ll be fine. Bucky hands him some paper and pencils, and leaves him to it.

He hates the way Old Steve makes him feel like a dumbass kid, but he sucks it up and hangs out with him anyway, and this time it’s Old Steve who’s the one insisting on some 21st century catch up, only for Bucky, not himself.

“I can’t believe no one’s shown you The Princess Bride yet, it’s exactly the kind of thing you love,” says Old Steve, and he’s right, it is, Bucky laughs himself sick.

Of course, Old Steve doesn’t let the opportunity to advise Bucky pass him by either.

“I know this kind of thing—the new movies and books and all—it’s not much of a consolation for what you’ve lost. But it can bring you some joy, and Buck, I think you ought to be grabbing for all the joy you can.”

“Is that a nice way of saying you think I’m really depressed?” asks Bucky.

“I know you must be working hard to get better, I just don’t want you to forget to have some fun too,” says Old Steve, all the wrinkles on his face underlining his concern.

And yeah, alright, maybe he has a point there.

Commander Rogers is content with a nice long stroll around the lake, which he spends telling Bucky about his kids, and while Bucky knows the stories aren’t for him, not exactly, it’s still nice to hear about James and Michelle.

A worrying thought does occur to him though. “Did the serum get passed on to them?” Bucky asks.

Commander Rogers grimaces. “It’s hard to say. They don’t have super strength or anything, no, but they do seem to be a bit…hardier, I guess. They’re old enough that I figure any other obvious effects would have shown up by now.”

“And Christ, 1969—is James up for the draft?” Bucky asks, and Commander Rogers looks grave.

“No, thankfully. He’s at college, he’s exempt. Not that he’d go even if he was called up, that kid is firmly anti-war.”

“Good,” Bucky says. “He should be.”

Commander Rogers sighs, then smiles. “I’ll tell him his namesake would say so. I’m proud of him and Michelle both, they’re pretty active in the civil rights and anti-war movements, and they ought to be, but god are they being difficult about it. Won’t listen to me and Peggy about anything, say we’re part of the ‘establishment.’”

“I mean, you are,” Bucky points out.

“Technically, sure, but not the establishment they’re talking about!”

“Hmm, who would have guessed that you and Peggy’s kids would be incredibly headstrong and stubborn and committed to doing what’s right?” says Bucky, and Commander Rogers laughs ruefully.

“I know, I know, we just worry about them. But they’re not wrong, about any of it. Me and Peggy do what we can too, and I’ve been pushing for Black and female astronaut candidates, but that’s the kind of thing that sounds boring to the kids. They’re full of fire, they want change now.”

“They’re kids,” Bucky points out. “And they’re your kids. You and Peggy weren’t exactly known for your patience either.”

“I definitely have a much better appreciation for how hard you must’ve worked to keep us alive during the war,” says Commander Rogers with an apologetic grin.

Bucky hangs out with Cap Wolf next, and it’s clear that the whole werewolf thing has left more of an impact than just the occasional transformation into an actual wolf. Cap Wolf has also taken on some more wolfy qualities, one of which is the willingness to chill the fuck out when his HYDRA hunting and/or punching skills aren’t required, so he seems content to alternate between runs to burn energy off, and lolling around relaxing.

“This isn’t exactly the kind of R&R I ever expected, but I’ll take advantage of it while I can,” he says. “It’s been a long damn war.”

Bucky had learned the value—and the necessity—of lolling around relaxing in Wakanda, and he’s relieved this Steve has learned it too—his Steve sure as hell never seems to have—so he’s happy to join Cap Wolf in his laziness, just dozing out in the sun by the lakeside, or in a meadow.

“Do you feel different than you did before the whole, uh, werewolf thing?” Bucky asks him.

The serum changes enough as it is. Everything is more intense with it, and just plain more: more sensory input and more feeling. Steve himself had confessed to Bucky once that it was all overwhelming sometimes. Bucky sure as hell thinks it is. And yet, Cap Wolf seems to have an ease that not even the serum gave Steve.

“I do feel different, yeah,” says Cap Wolf thoughtfully. “My instincts are different, and not all in a bad way. A lot of things seem simpler, I guess. More straightforward. And god, I never imagined you could learn so much just from smell, but you really can. It kind of makes a lot of things make more sense.”

“Huh. Seems like becoming a werewolf has been good for you.”

Cap Wolf grins and shrugs. “So far, yeah.”

Nights are reserved for Bucky’s own Steve, in the bedroom they’re still sharing even though there’s plenty of room elsewhere. It’s almost like when they were kids, only this time neither of them are on couch cushions on the floor. Or maybe it’s more like all the times they shared a tent or a bed during the war, one of their few opportunities for privacy, when they could air doubts and worries, or just shoot the shit as Steve and Bucky rather than Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes. Because Steve, evidently feeling contrite and mildly embarrassed about how spectacularly obtuse he’d been before he left to return the Infinity Stones, recounts the events leading up to Thanos’s final defeat with a lot more detail. Bucky appreciates the effort, especially since Steve seems to be trying hard to make it more than a debrief by talking about how he actually felt about things, and when Bucky says as much, Steve smiles his sad smile.

“Yeah, well, you know, I ran some support groups for survivors, after the Snap. Not sure I was any good at it, but I did get a little bit better at talking about my feelings.”

“Took some inspiration from Wilson, I see,” says Bucky, and the way his heart clenches is a lot like the feeling he gets missing Steve.

“It’s all that got me through it sometimes,” Steve says quietly. “Thinking about what Sam would do. What you would do.”

Bucky blinks in surprise. “And what did you think I’d do?”

“You wouldn’t give up on life. You’d survive. So that’s what I did too.”

“Yeah, that’s what I’d do,” Bucky whispers, the words too bitter on his tongue. “I’m glad you didn’t give up, Steve.”

It’s the truth: he’s so glad Steve endured what must have felt unendurable, that he didn’t give up. But what’s a virtue in Steve, Bucky can’t help but feel is a flaw in himself. Yeah, Bucky survived. It’s just that his survival is not a comfort or a triumph or a miracle—his survival is a horror and an obscenity, the literal stuff of nightmares, his own and others’.

It is also a simple fact, says a voice that sounds a lot like Ayo’s in his head. One you must learn to live with. And one you can make part of a better story.

He’s trying. He is.

The next Steve who arrives doesn’t end up being as weird as Cap Wolf, what with not being a supernatural creature out of legend. And yet, Bucky has to admit that the lady version of Steve is somehow even more of a surprise.

At first glance, Bucky almost mistakes her for Sarah Rogers: they have the same blond hair and cornflower blue eyes and stubborn, strong-boned face. The same shoulders too, broad and strong. But Sarah Rogers, god rest her soul, had been worn thin by hardship and later illness, and her beauty had been of the saintly, martyred sort. She’d been wiry and strong and tough as nails, and her good heart had shone out of her, but her beauty hadn’t turned heads.

Steve as a woman is a knockout, a blonde bombshell, a pin-up brought to life, if your tastes in pin-ups ran towards the Valkyrie end of feminine beauty. She’s got Steve’s muscles and Steve’s height, right alongside curves that could almost rival Peggy Carter’s, and seeing her makes Bucky feel about as dizzy and unmoored as seeing a serumed up Steve for the first time. She looks decidedly modern too, wearing the tightly-fitting workout gear that seems to be a common uniform of sorts among women nowadays, with her golden blond hair up in a no-nonsense ponytail.

She’d shown up during Banner’s shift on Steve Watch, and while she’d recognized Banner, she’s understandably wary and skeptical of her many male counterparts, so of course Bucky has been summoned to what’s now the little Steve welcome-and-debriefing center beside the quantum tunnel platform, where they’ve set up a couple picnic tables and some dubiously helpful signage. Which they’ll have to update now, since all the signs are for Steve Rogers.

The way lady Steve—Stephanie maybe?—absolutely lights up into possibly the most beautiful smile on the planet when she sees Bucky makes his entire stomach dissolve into rainbow sparkles and bubbles while he blushes furiously, which is, wow, extremely embarrassing.

Get it together, Barnes, it’s not like your Steve is any less attractive. In his defense, he’s used to his Steve’s looks by now; he’s got no defenses against Steve as a woman.

“Stevie?” he says faintly. “Or, uh, is it Stephanie…?”

She grins at him, evidently delighted by him being so flustered.

“It’s Stella. Stella Barnes,” she says, and only then does Bucky notice the wedding ring on her left hand, gleaming with gold and a hint of vibranium, like an inversion of Bucky’s prosthetic. Beside her, Bucky’s Steve has gone wild-eyed and dumbstruck.

“That makes sense,” murmurs Banner for some reason.

“Oh, your timeline’s version of me is the luckiest bastard in the universe,” Bucky blurts out, and Stella laughs, a joyously uninhibited sound.

“Don’t you go wasting that charm on a married lady, Bucky Barnes,” she says, grinning. Her eyes are still sharp though, and she quickly takes in Bucky, his Steve, and Cap with a sweeping, assessing glance. “And what, being married to Steven over there doesn’t make you the luckiest man in this universe?”

Judging by the way his face goes hot and tingly at the same time, he’s probably turning some real interesting colors as he says, “Oh, uh—Steve and I aren’t married.”

Bucky determinedly does not look at his Steve. He does not have the mental fortitude to handle whatever expression is on Steve’s face right now, he just doesn’t. Unfortunately, avoiding Steve’s expression makes not seeing Cap’s impossible, and Cap is—is that yearning? If it is, it’s quickly replaced by somewhat abashed curiosity, like he thinks there’s something improper about staring at his female counterpart.

“You’re not married? Why the hell not?” demands Stella, hands on her hips. This draws attention to a small sliver of bare, practically glowing skin that peeks out between her top and her workout leggings, and Bucky cannot handle anything about that so he keeps his eyes on Stella’s as she says, “It’s legal now, isn’t it?”

As if that’s the only impediment. As if she knows that Bucky—goddammit, what the hell has his alternate self been telling his wife?

“Um, yes, but Buck and I, uh—we aren’t. We’re just friends,” says Bucky’s Steve, stuttering awkwardly over his words in a way Bucky hasn’t heard since the days he used to drag Steve along on double dates.

Stella does not look convinced. She arches an eyebrow at Bucky, and it turns out Bucky’s knack for reading Steve’s every gesture and expression carries across to Stella too, because he reads the he doesn’t know? on her face all too clearly. He clenches his jaw and gives a barely there shake of his head, and Stella narrows her eyes.

“Well, that’s dumb of you,” she says, and Bucky knows that’s directed at both Steve’s words and his own silent admission. She turns to Banner. “Alright, I suppose I believe you, Dr. Banner. But I’m still going to need more in the way of an explanation.”

The grim and determined look she sends Bucky and Steve’s way kind of suggests she expects to hear more explanation of just why Bucky and Steve aren’t married too.

Bucky is not looking forward to that conversation.

It’s 2018 in Stella’s timeline—which means none of the other Steves apart from Old Steve and Bucky’s Steve should be talking to her, to prevent timeline contamination, so Cap leaves with a polite it was nice to meet you, ma’am that makes both him and Steve cringe and Stella raise an eyebrow—and just as Bucky’s stomach sinks with the knowledge of what must be in store for Stella and her Bucky, she matter-of-factly informs them that Thanos has been dealt with.

“His daughters killed him,” says Stella with grim satisfaction. “And the Infinity Stones are safe and secure.”

Which is good to know, Bucky supposes, and it means they have less to worry about on the timeline contamination front, but he’s far more curious about how Stella made it to 2018, and with the super soldier serum to boot. Stella is looking at Steve with a similar curiosity, and he can tell she’s compiling the differences and similarities between them, both visible and not.

“I was a nurse, when Bucky got called up,” Stella tells them, after Steve bites the bullet and asks. “After he shipped out, I managed to get a job with the SSR’s Brooklyn office—“

Oh, Bucky has a bad feeling about this. He crosses his arms and glowers at her. “Oh? And how’d you manage that?”

Stella smiles at him, angelic. He melts instantly.

“Entirely legally!” she very clearly lies. “Anyway, I ended up working with Dr. Erskine on Project Rebirth. During the first test of the serum, we were attacked by a HYDRA mole. Explosive device. I got hit by a lot of shrapnel, and a lot of serum from the broken vials along with all that shrapnel. And since the Vita-Ray machine was still on and its door was completely open—“ She shrugs. “I ended up like this.”

An accident. She got the serum in an accident.

“You didn’t choose this,” says Bucky, dismayed. “I’m sorry, Stella—“

She reaches over across the picnic table to take his hand and squeezes it with a reassuring smile. “It’s alright. No, you’re right, I didn’t choose it, and I’m not glad Erskine and Hodges died, but I’m okay with this, really. It got me to the front to be with you, for one thing.”

“That’s not a good thing, Stella,” he says, and she narrows her eyes, a familiar righteous anger sparking there. Before she can really get started on the rant he knows is forthcoming, he adds, “Not because you’re a woman. I never wanted Steve in that damned war either, but the stubborn asshole managed to get himself on the frontlines anyway.”

“And I’m guessing he saved your life in Kreischberg just like I did, and the serum would have been worth it just for that, even if it had turned me into a monster,” says Stella, lifting her chin.

“So okay, you managed to save what was left of the 107th. How’d you manage to stay on the front?” asks Steve. “Because I had enough trouble getting Gabe and Morita on the team, I can’t imagine the brass would’ve been alright with a woman on the frontlines, even if she did have the serum.”

Stella smiles somewhat sheepishly. “You’re looking at Lady Liberty, gentlemen.”

Of course. Of course that’s what they’d call a female version of Steve. Bucky has a very brief and inappropriately sexy vision of Stella as the Statue of Liberty, and swiftly refocuses on the conversation before the situation can become undignified. As if Bucky’s reaction to the ridiculous tight shorts Steve had work in his USO show hadn’t been bad enough…Anyway, according to Stella, USO performer is actually a pretty good cover, and Stella managed to join the Howling Commandos on a lot of their missions between and even because of performances. That’s a Peggy Carter plan if Bucky ever heard one.

“The rumors of Lady Liberty fighting alongside Captain America ended up being good for morale, and the stories seemed unbelievable enough that they gave the Howlies a lot of cover,” says Stella.

“Wait, Captain America? But Steve’s Captain America in this timeline. So who the hell is Cap in yours?” asks Bucky.

“You are, of course,” says Stella, as if it’s obvious, as if she hasn’t just turned Bucky’s world upside down, and then she winces. “Were, I mean. After everything…well, you’ve refused to take up the mantle again, not that I blame you for it.”

“Yeah, it’s not a good look to have the Winter Soldier, noted assassin, try a comeback as Captain America,” Bucky says through his shock.

Him? As Captain America? It just doesn’t compute.

“That is not why, though for the record, the world should be so lucky as to have the Winter Soldier as their Captain America,” says Stella fiercely. “There isn’t a stronger, better man in the world than the one who can come back from being used so—so terribly, and hurt for so long, and still want to help and protect people.”

Good for that other Bucky, he supposes. He’s not sure any of that applies to him, given he’s spent most of his post-HYDRA time trying to avoid recapture and avoid hurting anybody. Even fighting against Thanos and his army wasn’t exactly heroism. That was simple necessity.

But his Steve murmurs, “She’s right,” and in that moment, Steve and Stella could be twins, their eyes faithful mirrors of each other, full of the exact same love.

Bucky flushes and looks away, fiddling with some peeling wood on the picnic table.

“So, uh, if he’s not Cap, what’s your Bucky doing now?” asks Bucky, half dreading the answer.

“My Bucky’s going to college to get his degree,” says Stella, aglow with pride.

Fascinated despite himself, Bucky asks, “In what?”

Stella bites her lip, then smiles apologetically. “I don’t think I should say, actually. Contaminating the timeline can go both ways, can’t it? And I think that’s a choice that ought to be entirely yours, Buck.”

“So Buck still ended up in HYDRA’s hands in your timeline,” says Steve, and Stella nods, pain etching lines around her mouth and eyes.

“Yes. Not that we knew it at the time, he was assumed KIA,” she says.

“And the Valkyrie, did you—”

“Yes. I was the only super soldier left to go up against Schmidt and stop those bombs. I brought the plane down in the Arctic, and then they found me again in 2012.”

Steve sighs. “Yeah. Same here.”

There’s not much to say after that, everyone is too wary of timeline contamination to risk swapping more stories, and anyway, as fascinating as it is to compare and contrast the differences between Steve and Stella’s lives, it’s not actually all that relevant to the situation at hand. So everyone goes back to their Steve Watch posts, leaving Bucky alone with Stella.

“Take a walk with me,” she says, and before he can answer, she tucks her arm in his, leaning sweetly against him.

She could ask him to walk into hell and he’d do it. A surge of rueful sympathy for Stella’s Bucky has him smiling down at her and the way she’s looking up at him through her lashes, a blatantly manipulative move given the effort it takes to manage that maneuver when they’re pretty much the same height. Bucky figures it’s a safe bet that this look has inspired Stella’s husband to do some real dumb shit over the years.

“Alright,” says Bucky, and leads them in a sedate walk around the lake.

He gets about a minute and a half of peace and the comforting sweetness of Stella’s head’ on his shoulder before Stella demands, “So why the hell aren’t you and Steve married? My Bucky and I got married when I turned 18, and we’d already been together a couple years by then, so what the hell is taking you two so long?”

Bucky grins despite himself. Ah, there’s the Steve Rogers spirit.

“Steve’s not queer, Stella,” he says.

Bucky is reasonably certain of this, because back in the day, Steve used to get called a fairy and worse all the damn time, and if Steve’s contrary, belligerent ass had in fact been inclined that way, Bucky knows Steve’s response to such remarks would’ve been yeah, and what of it? followed by a punch. That had not, however, been Steve’s response, save for the punching, so Bucky highly doubts Steve has any inclinations towards men.

Stella shakes her head. “James Buchanan Barnes, there cannot be a single timeline where any version of me isn’t head over heels for you,” she declares.

“He’s platonically head over heels for me,” retorts Bucky weakly, because Shuri has informed him that his and Steve’s particular brand of friendship is not normal. “And maybe not even that any more.”

That takes Stella aback, her brow knitting in confusion. “What? What does that mean?”

“Nothing, sorry, it’s not important,” he says, already regretting having said it.

Stella pinches his arm, and he glares at her. “No, tell me!”

“It means I just feel like—the way he looks at me. It’s like I’m still dead, like I’m breaking his heart.”

It’s kind of pathetic, when he puts it like that. What, should things between them have been all fun and games when Bucky was still a mess and Steve was a fugitive and everything was so uncertain? Bucky’s the one who missed his chance at a less disastrous reunion, not Steve. Maybe if he’d gone to Steve sooner, maybe if he’d found some way to get rid of the trigger words on his own…

“He just got you back again, didn’t he? Maybe he needs some time,” says Stella, before she glowers, like a raincloud scudding across her sunny skies. “Or a kick in the ass.”

“Maybe. But he looked at me like that even when he visited me in Wakanda, before Thanos,” Bucky tells her.

Not all the time, thankfully; he’d looked at Bucky with a frankly uncomfortable level of gratitude and wonder too, sometimes. Either way, Bucky never knew how to react. It was only in the last couple of visits that they’d started falling back into some kind of sync with each other, and then Thanos came and Bucky died again and now it’s like they’re right back at square one.

“Visits? You mean he didn’t stay with—” Stella presses her lips together and takes a breath as if to calm herself. “Well. Maybe it’s different if you two weren’t married. But I stayed with Bucky in Wakanda, even when he was in cryo. Your Steve didn’t?”

“No. He’d visit for a few days or a week here and there, and we’d call each other,” he says, and Stella does not look happy about it, so he rushes to add, “Which is fine, I didn’t need him hanging around all the time. Anyway, the point is, he’s not in love with me. He was in love with Peggy.”

This mollifies Stella a little, though she still shoots him a sidelong glance. “Well, I suppose I can’t blame him for that. But I can’t imagine being any version of myself, man or woman, and not being in love with you,” she says with steady confidence.

God, Bucky has got to stop blushing, this is embarrassing. He ignores his blush and how horribly romantic Stella’s declaration is to say, “How the hell do you know about me liking fellas too, anyway? Don’t tell me I stepped out on you—”

“No! Of course not!” she says. “I just saw the way you used to be around Arnie Roth, is all. You remember Arnie?”

Oh, shit. Yeah, Bucky remembers Arnie: he’d been the closest Bucky ever got to going steady with a guy. They’d met in the art classes Bucky had taken with Steve, and he’d caught Bucky’s eye right away, with his tall, lithe frame and messy brown curls and fine, dark eyes. They’d hit it off right off the bat, thanks to a shared love of science fiction and baseball. It had been Arnie who’d taken Bucky to his first queer bar. Arnie had been a lot of firsts for him, actually.

“Yeah, I do,” says Bucky softly. “Uh, he and I—we had a thing for a while.”

Stella grins at him, unfazed. “You had the cutest crush on him, you were always asking him about his art.”

“So I’m guessing you’re not the jealous type,” says Bucky drily, and Stella shrugs.

“No point in being jealous when I know you’re mine,” she says simply, with absolute certainty. “I notice you didn’t object on the basis of you not being in love with Steve.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I love him, of course I love him, but—I don’t know. It’s all jumbled up.”

The love, the wanting, the certainty that nothing can come of the wanting…Bucky suspects it had all been a confusing tangle back in the 30s and 40s, and a bout of amnesia hasn’t improved matters any, to say nothing of their long separations. It doesn’t help that the parts of him that are interested in sex and romance, or even just sex, still seem to be pretty much AWOL, appreciation for Stella’s obvious beauty aside. His therapists in Wakanda have assured him that’s normal, that he’s still healing. But who’s to say if what Bucky still feels for Steve isn’t just the echo of what some past version of him felt? Bucky sure as hell can’t, and if he can’t be sure, then he’s not about to risk what’s left of their friendship.

“That’s fine,” says Stella softly. “You two have time to figure it out. It took me and my Bucky some time to figure things out too, after I got him back.”

“But you two are alright now?” he asks, and Stella nods, smiling.

She practically glows with love. Christ, that other Bucky is a lucky bastard. He hopes that version of him knows it.

“Yeah, we are. We got married again,” says Stella, and when he glances at her in confusion, she clarifies, “To each other, I mean. I guess they call that a renewal of vows nowadays. But it was a kind of fresh start, I guess. A way to tell each other that we wanted to be married as the people we are now, not just because of the past.”

“Is—am I—the other me, I mean—is he a good husband to you? Sorry, I know that’s not really any of my business--”

“The best,” says Stella vehemently. “He’s the best husband, he always has been.”

“Even as an amnesiac wreck of a broken-down old soldier?”

“Our vows were in sickness and in health, Bucky,” says Stella, reproachful. “But now that Bucky has most of his memories back and he’s free of the trigger words, yes. Even when he didn’t really remember me yet, he was still—” Stella’s eyes take on a distant, fond look, and she shakes her head and laughs. “He did his best to take care of me. He’d take out HYDRA bases before I could get to them, he’d leave me intel and trussed up HYDRA agents, he’d send me postcards of museums he thought I’d like…he’d even have food sent to wherever I was staying while I was out looking for him. It made me so furious that he’d do all that but he wouldn’t let me find him, but it was sweet. I know he was doing his best.”

Bucky had not been aware he even had that kind of romance in him, damn. “God, that’s really romantic,” he mutters, feeling pretty inadequate in comparison.

He still thinks he had the right of it, to stay away from Steve as long as he did, it had been safest for both of them, but maybe, he thinks guiltily, he should have opened up some channel of communication, even one-way.

“It is, isn’t it?” says Stella, starry-eyed for a moment before she fixes Bucky with a narrow-eyed glare. “I still would’ve preferred he just come back to me though.”

“So your Bucky’s going to college, Thanos isn’t a problem anymore…what are you up to? You’re not all fugitives or anything, are you?”

“No, no, that all got worked out after the battle with Thanos. The Accords still need to be overhauled though, so I’ve been working on that, and on training with a new Avengers team.”

“And, uh…are kids something you two are…?”

He’s not sure why he asks, other than that kids are on his mind after talking to Commander Rogers about his. Whatever Stella and her Bucky have planned, or not planned, isn’t Bucky’s business, and isn’t even relevant to any life he might have with his Steve. But he finds he wants to know anyway.

“I miscarried once,” says Stella quietly. She looks out at the lake, an old sorrow misting over the sunny blue skies in her eyes. “Before the war. I hadn’t been far along, and honestly, the pregnancy probably would have been a danger to me, but…we did want a baby.”

“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry,” he says, his eyes prickling with sympathetic tears at the wistful pain in her voice.

He puts an arm around her shoulders, and she leans against him with a shaky sigh.

“We still want a baby, even though we’re terrified of, god, everything about it. But—with what HYDRA did to Bucky—you—it’s not possible. Not without some intervention.”

“Oh.”

Bucky knew that, actually; the doctors in Wakanda had told him. It’s just never seemed relevant to the life he’s living, because, come on. With or without the physical ability to make them, kids are not in the (former) Winter Soldier’s future. His poor alternate timeline self though. Bucky can only imagine that guy must want kids with Stella real bad, enough to overcome any Winter Soldier-related misgivings, so Stella is definitely understating what a goddamn heartbreak this must be for them.

“And we’re not sure how my body would react to a pregnancy either,” adds Stella. “Shuri thinks there are a couple of things we can try, but…me and Buck, we’ve been going back and forth about it, about if we can handle raising our hopes like that. Same with adoption.”

“I think we’ve hoped for harder things, Stella,” he tells her quietly. “And look how that turned out, huh?”

She takes a shaky breath, and takes his hand in her own, squeezing tight. “Yeah, maybe,” she says.

They turn to lighter subjects after that, though it’s Stella who carries most of the conversation there, since Bucky’s light-hearted stories are pretty much limited to whatever mischief the goats on his farm got up to and his assorted misadventures as a clueless foreigner in Wakanda.

When Stella mentions Wilson in one of her stories—who wants to bet Bucky’s counterpart finds that guy insufferable too—Bucky stops and pulls out his phone.

“Shit, wait, I need to take a photo of you to send to our Wilson, otherwise he’ll never believe me.”

“What, no photo just for you?” says Stella. There’s a wicked coyness in the flash of her eyes and the curve of her lips that has Bucky fumbling his phone and turning red.

“No! I mean, obviously you’re beautiful, but that wouldn’t be appropriate, you being a married lady and all—”

Stella laughs and declares him adorable, which only makes him blush more, ugh, and he takes the photo and sends it to Wilson before this situation can get any more mortifying.

Who is THAT? texts Wilson, along with a frankly disrespectful little emoji face. Bucky scowls down at the phone.

That is my alternate timeline wife, have some respect, Bucky texts back. We’ve got a lady Steve now, her name is Stella.

Bucky more or less immediately regrets it, because shit, if Wilson says anything about Bucky and Steve—but no. A respectfully awed little emoji face follows, then, Alternate timeline Bucky is the luckiest man alive.

Yeah, no argument there, thinks Bucky, and texts back, I know right?

They keep ambling around the lake until the sun dips low enough to turn the lake and woods shadowy and cool, and Stella’s stomach growls, which makes Bucky feel like a cad.

“Aww, Stella, you shoulda mentioned you’re hungry. C’mon, I can make you something for dinner.”

By now, they’ve had supplies delivered to the cabins, so they’re not all still living off of funeral food, and there’s a decently stocked pantry in the kitchen of the cabin Bucky and Steve have claimed for themselves, even if Bucky hasn’t had much call to use it himself yet. Various Steves have taken to bringing him food the past few days. Bucky’s not complaining; it turns out that Steve actually gets pretty good at cooking in his old age, because the food Old Steve brings him is always pretty good, and Cap Wolf has an unconventional but delicious approach to sandwiches. Anyway, he doesn’t know where Stella will be bunking tonight, but he figures treating her to dinner is the least he can do, even if dinner is just going to be pasta or whatever he can toss into a pan with some eggs, or maybe sandwiches.

“You don’t have to go to any trouble,” protests Stella as he deposits her at one of the stools by the kitchen island. “I’m fine with a couple of peanut butter sandwiches.”

“I can feel the wrath of my alternate timeline self here, Stella,” he says. “At least let me make you a hot meal.”

“Alright, if you insist,” she says, and takes a seat with an indulgent smile.

Bucky respectfully does not look at what this position does for her long legs and muscled thighs. Good god. How does the other version of Bucky ever get anything done when Stella’s around. Bucky focuses on making them some dinner: a whole enormous pile of carbonara, with a pile of salad and vegetables on the side.

When Stella catches him humming as he cooks, she says, “Oh, that’s a good song, hang on—“ and comes over to grab his phone—straight out of his pocket, Bucky nearly combusts even though the contact is fleeting—tapping away at it until a song starts playing. Bucky has no idea when or where his swiss-cheese brain has dredged up the song from, but Stella’s right, it is a good one, and it unlocks some muscle memory along with it that has his feet moving in a rock step despite himself.

“Sometimes I think the kitchen might as well be the dance floor for you,” says Stella fondly.

“Ha, well, it’s the only dance floor I’ve been on this century,” he says.

“You haven’t gone dancing yet?” asks Stella, and when he risks a glance at her, she looks stricken.

“Haven’t exactly had a partner,” he points out, and turns back to the pasta. “Or the opportunity.”

“But you love dancing!”

He did. He still does, maybe. Not that it matters. He shrugs. “I guess.”

“Okay, come on Barnes, we are dancing,” says Stella, and okay, wow, that’s awfully close to Steve’s official Captain America voice. “My Buck would kill me if I left here without taking you for a spin when you haven’t danced yet this century.”

Stella tugs him away from the stove and reels him close to her.

“Stella—!” he protests, and she glowers at him as she determinedly gets them both into position before she takes the lead. Even having taken the lead, she still manages to step on his toes, and she’s got the rhythm all wrong too. All of Bucky’s protests dissolve into laughter at the sheer familiarity of this particular ineptitude. Trying to teach Steve to dance had left Bucky with bruised toes and Steve with a bruised ego. “Okay, I see you’re just as bad a dancer as Steve is.”

Stella’s glower turns into a pout, but she can’t hold it for long before she’s laughing right along with him.

“Oh, I’m hopeless enough that not even your teaching skills can help me,” she says cheerfully enough as he gently takes the lead from her. “The fact that you put up with it is either some kind of proof of how much you love me or how much you love dancing, I can never decide which.”

“I’m guessing it’s both,” he tells her, and that earns him a raised eyebrow of don’t waste that charm on me, Bucky Barnes, but there’s an adorable flush high on her cheekbones.

It’s a short, clumsy dance, and they keep bumping into the kitchen island, nothing like the kind of energetic and athletic swing dancing he used to do in dance halls. He doesn’t think people dance like that much anymore. He wouldn’t mind that so much, if this were the kind of dance he’d have for the rest of this new century. It isn’t, of course—Stella isn’t his, and Steve isn’t either. But it’s nice to pretend for the space of a song.

After dinner, Stella pulls him into another dance, this time to something sweet and slow, one hand at her waist, the other in hers. Bucky suspects this is, if not quite a pity dance, then a consolation, and honestly, he’ll take it. Stella isn’t his wife, Steve will never be his husband, but for one song, he’s willing to imagine a future where at least the latter is possible.

Though Stella can’t be mistaken for Steve in his arms, that’s for damn sure. She has the same stubborn fire, the same deep-down goodness, but like Commander Rogers, there’s something more settled in her, and a sweetness that his Steve doesn’t often show, as full of piss and vinegar and just plain grit as he is.

And that sweetness isn’t because Stella is a woman, Bucky realizes. It’s because she’s happy.

“You should go dancing again, with or without Steve,” says Stella. “You’re so amazing at it, and you love it so much. I’ve always loved watching you dance, you know.”

“Don’t tell me you were a wallflower too,” he says, and she grins at him.

“Oh, you’d always take me for a spin or two, but I’d always cut you loose to find a proper partner.”

“Nice to know me being a terrible dancer is a constant in all timelines,” says Steve from the cabin’s front door, and Bucky very nearly springs away from Stella, which is stupid, because it’s not like they’re doing anything wrong.

God, it kind of feels like it though, with the way Steve is looking at them, his jaw tensed and clenched, those new lines around his mouth etched deep.

“Certainly makes me feel better,” says Stella lightly.

She meets Bucky’s eyes and raises an eyebrow, the flinty satisfaction of a battle plan sparking in that sweet cornflower blue, before she presses a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth, a kiss that lingers just long enough to take his breath. Despite the brief contact, it’s a kiss that’s more than friendly; it’s intimate, comfortable, a kiss from a wife to her husband, and oh hell. Goddammit, Stella, he silently tells her with a glare, and she winks at him, unabashed.

“Thank you for dinner and the dance, Buck. I hope you’ll have more chances to dance soon,” she says softly.

She shoots Steve an inscrutable look on her way out, and Steve practically flinches.

“I made dinner, there’s still plenty left for you,” Bucky says into the awkward silence after Stella’s exit.

“She’s married, Buck,” Steve says, pissy, like Bucky’s goddamn seducing Stella.

“Yeah, to me,” he says, and Steve grimaces. “I’m not making a move on my alternate timeline wife, that was a pity dance, Rogers, on account of how I’ve been a sadsack wallflower for the last eighty years.”

“You miss dancing that much?” asks Steve, his shoulders relaxing.

Bucky shrugs through the sharp pang of how much he misses all of it: the hot and sweaty dancefloors, the thrill of connection with his dance partner, the pulse and thump of the bold and brassy music. And not only all of that, but the closeness of a dance, temporary and fleeting as it was.

“I guess, yeah.”

“You, uh—there’s no one else you’ve danced with, or—“

Bucky scoffs. “No,” he says, and—is that a flicker of relief in Steve’s eyes? It’s swiftly followed by, surprise surprise, guilt. Bucky is sick to death of Steve’s fucking guilt. Maybe that’s why he finds the dregs of his old flirty cockiness and asks, “You offering?”

That surprises the damned guilt from Steve’s expression, at least. “I thought we just established that I’m an awful dancer in every timeline.”

“Maybe you’re still teachable,” says Bucky, and holds out his hand.

To his surprise, Steve takes it. He is, in fact, still awful at dancing. Bucky doesn’t mind. Steve’s grip on his hand is strong, his hand at Bucky’s waist firm. Bucky takes the lead, and for once, he doesn’t feel brittle or broken in Steve’s arms.

“People—uh, people still swing dance, you know,” says Steve, keeping his eyes on his feet, the dummy, as if Bucky hasn’t told him a thousand times not to do that. “I could—we could go, some time.”

“Eyes up here, Rogers,” orders Bucky. “We?”

“Yeah. I love watching you dance too, Buck, same as Stella,” says Steve quietly, and then, before Bucky can even begin to formulate a response, Steve steps on his damn toes again. “Shit, sorry!”

Bucky laughs, and tugs Steve in for a quick hug. So this was Stella’s plan, thinks Bucky with begrudging appreciation: to goad Steve into dancing with Bucky. Apparently, she’s as good a tactician as Steve is. It won’t amount to much, of course, but it was nice of her to try.

“We’re practically in sync during a battle, I don’t know why you can’t manage a simple dance,” Bucky says, fonder than he has any right to be of bruised toes and Steve’s embarrassed flush. “And yeah. Maybe we could go sometime.”

It’s a stupid offer to make, given what Bucky plans to do. Steve’s smile in response makes it worth it though: sunny and a little sly in that way Bucky has never stopped finding horribly charming, a smile that makes the sorrows of the last five years fall away.

“C’mon, have some dinner,” says Bucky, stepping away from Steve. “Have any more of you showed up?”

“No, thankfully…” says Steve, and proceeds to actually tell Bucky about his day as he eats dinner, and it’s almost like it used to be, before the war: teasing and banter over a meal, Steve getting so worked up about the latest bullying asshole that he makes emphatic gestures with his fork, both of them talking through a plan of action that isn’t just punching their way through it.

Between that and goddamn sharing a bed, Bucky can probably be forgiven for indulging in a stupid fantasy before he falls asleep that night: what if he and Steve did get married? What if they could have this every night? Stella is proof that there’s at least one timeline where a version of Steve is married to a version of Bucky, and more than that, she’s proof that a version of Steve could want that even with a version of Bucky who’s been the Winter Soldier.

It’s a painful kind of hope, given the reality of Bucky’s relationship with his Steve: a friendship that seems to be hanging on more out of inertia than anything else, a Steve who too often looks at Bucky like he’s a ghost rather than a person. Maybe Stella’s right and time will fix it, maybe Bucky’s being unfair, given everything Steve’s gone through. Maybe he should stick it out and stay. Or maybe he needs to give Steve space in addition to time. He goes round and round in circles—stay or go, go or stay—until he finally wears himself out and falls asleep.

Chapter Text

When the next Steve shows up, Bucky doesn’t find out for hours. It’s not like he’s doing something that can’t be interrupted: he’s watching the Lord of the Rings movies with Cap, and sure, Bucky would complain about being interrupted, but it’s not like this is actually a mission-critical activity.

“What the hell?” Bucky hisses when his Steve finally comes to tell him about the new Steve’s arrival before Bucky’s shift on Steve Watch starts. “I thought the whole point of Steve Watch was that I’m supposed to help keep Steves from freaking out!”

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” says Steve, looking grave and exhausted. “I’m not sure you would keep this Steve from freaking out.”

“Why? What’s his deal? Can’t be any weirder than Cap Wolf,” he says and Steve snorts, which isn’t a great sign. “Or is this a timeline contamination thing?”

“Who the hell knows, actually. He couldn’t tell us when he’s from, but, uh. It’s pretty bad. His timeline, I mean. Earth is gone, he’s been living on some planet called Battleworld as some kind of…gladiator? I guess? Bruce says it sounds kind of like Sakaar—anyway, you’re dead in that timeline, and he is not dealing with it well. At all.”

“All the more reason for me to go talk to him!”

Steve shakes his head. “I don’t know if it’s safe for you, much less if it would be good for him. He doesn’t seem…stable.”

“And what, you think I can’t handle you when you’re not stable? You think I’m too fragile?”

Bucky crosses his arms and glares, and for a fleeting moment so fast Bucky thinks he might have imagined it, a shadow of grim despair flits across Steve’s face.

“I don’t think you’re fragile, Buck, for god’s sake. You’re the toughest son of a bitch I know,” says Steve, exasperated.

Geeze, you sure don’t fucking act like it, thinks Bucky. That’s not exactly the point right now though.

“Then let me try to help!” he says.

“That’s the thing, Buck, I don’t think you can help,” says Steve, and Bucky would’ve gotten pissed about that, if not for how sorry and worried Steve looks. “You’re not his Bucky. He’s going to go back to whatever hellish dystopia he’s from, and you’ll still be dead. Seeing you, seeing a world that isn’t falling apart—that’s all just going to make that harder for the poor bastard.”

“So what, it’s almost the same for Commander Rogers, and talking with him has been fine. He’s a little sad, sure, but he’s mostly just happy he can talk to me again.”

Commander Rogers had told Bucky as much on their last walk around the lake, when Bucky had tentatively raised the possibility that maybe spending so much time with him was reopening the wound of his grief. No, Buck, this is nothing but a gift for me. I’m always going to miss you, and maybe I’ll miss you a little more when I get back, but these memories will be more than worth it, he’d said. It’ll be like a dream, you know? I still dream you of all the time, dreams where we’re talking a lot like this. Ma always said dreams like that are a blessing.

“Yeah, well, Commander Rogers is disgustingly well-adjusted,” snaps Steve, briefly sour-faced, and it startles a laugh out of Bucky.

“No argument there, I guess,” he says. “What an asshole, with his superior mental health and healthy, effective coping mechanisms.”

“Yeah, what the hell, Commander Rogers never even had to go to therapy,” says Steve, with exaggerated annoyance, his lips twitching into a smile. “Fucking astronauts, am I right?” Bucky laughs again, and Steve breaks into an actual smile for a second, before his expression sobers again. “Anyway, the Captain—that’s what we’re calling this Steve, apparently that’s what they call him in the, god, gladiator fights—is not going to take it as well as the Commander, trust me. At least, not right now.”

“So what, we leave the poor bastard on his own?”

“No, of course not. Mr. Rogers is talking to him right now, and I called Sam, asked him to come and help out, see if he can’t talk to the Captain and calm him down more. If Sam gives it the all clear, then you can talk to him. Just—be careful, if you do. He seems like he’s strung pretty tight.”

“Alright,” says Bucky. “Though I’m not sure what you think he’s going to do to me.”

“I don’t know, but I’m not about to risk your safety, not if I don’t have to,” says Steve grimly.

Wilson arrives early the next morning and spends hours talking to the Captain before he tentatively gives Bucky the all clear to go see him.

“I don’t think you can help him much, to be honest,” says Wilson with a rare solemnity. “The world he’s from…you can’t really heal from trauma if the trauma never stops.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bucky says, and either his voice or his face must give something away, because Wilson’s eyes widen slightly.

He recovers quickly and says, “You can compare tragic backstories, since you don’t have to worry about timeline contamination. Maybe that’ll make both of you feel better. You can be like, ‘damn, at least I don’t have to be a gladiator on some kind of horrifying Mad Max hell planet,’ and he can be like, ‘damn, at least I have a dinosaur sidekick instead of a farm full of mean goats.’”

“My goats aren’t mean, Wilson! They’re total sweethearts, you just don’t know how to—wait, there’s a dinosaur?!”

Wilson grins. “Not here, no, but the Captain was pretty worried about his dino sidekick—whose name is Devil, by the way—before we told him the anomalies are only affecting Steves, and that he should be back in his world not long after he left.”

“This is all definitely weirder than Cap Wolf,” Bucky decides, and Wilson scowls.

“Ugh, don’t remind me, I can’t believe I’m not allowed to meet the fluffy wolfy version of Steve because of timeline contamination.”

“You’re missing out,” Bucky says, remorseless. “He’s so fluffy and cuddly, it’s the best.”

“Rub it in, why don’t you!”

When Bucky first sees the Captain, he almost mistakes him for Thor: long hair, weird armor, intimidatingly large muscles. But no, it is Steve. A very different kind of Steve, scarred and ragged, but Steve nonetheless. Between the timelessness of the sunny forest clearing he’s sitting in and the battered armor he’s wearing, Bucky could almost imagine this Steve is from hundreds of years ago, shield and all. Unlike some ancient warrior though, he also has a prosthetic arm strapped to his back—Bucky’s prosthetic arm, a silver one like the one he used to have. So that seems…not great. Also not great: the absolutely devastated look on the Captain’s worn and stubbled face.

“Hey, Steve,” says Bucky, keeping both his voice and his approach soft, like the Captain is an injured animal. “I know I’m probably pretty different from your Bucky, and that you must be missing him, so I thought I’d, uh. Keep you company for a while. If you want.”

The Captain just stares at him in agonized silence. And here Bucky thought his Steve looks at him like he’s breaking Steve’s heart; Steve’s quiet and guilty agony is nothing compared to this desperate pain. Bucky has been through the damn apocalypse, and somehow, this feels more apocalyptic even than that: no Steve should ever look like this, not when Bucky’s here, not when Bucky ought to be able to fix whatever’s hurting him so much.

Except Bucky can’t fix this, not really. His presence is, at best, a very small bandage over a gaping wound, and it might not even be that. With the Captain still staring at him, Bucky suspects he’s more like a canister of salt poured into the Captain’s fresh wounds.

“Thank you,” says the Captain, his voice low and gravelly, after two minutes and forty-two seconds of nearly intolerable silence. He closes his eyes, and doesn’t open them again as he says, “Truly, thank you. But I can’t do this. I can’t—it hurts too much, knowing my Bucky is—”

The Captain covers his face with shaking hands. Everything in Bucky says he should go to him, but—

“Steve—”

“Please go. Thank you, but you have to go,” rasps the Captain. His shoulders begin to shake, and god, Bucky can’t leave him like that, so he takes a step forward, only for the Captain to shout, “Go! Leave!”

So Bucky goes.

He finds Steve in their cabin, in the living room that’s pretty much become a makeshift office for Steve’s post-battle work. The work must not be going well, because Steve’s shoulders are tense and his spine is set in such rigid uprightness that it has to be painful.

“Thanks, Natasha,” he says into his phone as Bucky comes in. “At the very least we can stall until the Mind Stone reforms, and then we’ll have Vision back and this’ll all be moot. Yeah. You too. Bye.”

“Everything alright?” asks Bucky, and Steve sighs, but he nods.

If this was eighty years ago, Bucky would flop onto the couch right next to Steve and sling an arm around his shoulders without a thought. It isn’t eighty years ago though, and he has no idea if that’s the kind of thing Steve is okay with nowadays, so instead Bucky spends too-long seconds awkwardly dithering before sitting down a respectable distance from Steve.

“Yeah, we’re just trying to get this mess with Vision’s remains sorted out. Some agency has been hanging onto them, and—anyway. Vision’ll be back soon, and it won’t matter,” says Steve. “You okay? Did everything go alright with the Captain? I thought you’d be with him the rest of the day.”

“I’m fine. Just, uh, he didn’t want to see me. Said it hurt too much.”

Steve does not look surprised by this, and Bucky tries to convince himself it’s remembered grief, not present, that fills Steve’s eyes.

“I figured he’d say something like that,” says Steve.

“He doesn’t really seem to be—he’s carrying my arm around,” Bucky says, somewhat helplessly.

Bucky is not a paragon of mental health by any means, but he is reasonably certain that is not the action of a well man, and that it’s also kind of beyond the usual grieving process. Then again, Wilson wasn’t wrong about how you can’t heal from trauma if the trauma keeps going. Who’s Bucky to judge the Captain’s coping mechanisms for living in a crazy world.

“Yeah, he likes to hold hands with it,” says Steve tonelessly.

“Oh.”

Somehow, that’s worse than just carrying the thing around. His own left hand twitches, an involuntary movement that’s probably just as much a testament to Shuri’s genius as it is his own discomfort.

“Can’t say I blame him,” says Steve, still toneless. Cold trickles down Bucky’s spine, almost but not quite like adrenaline, and nothing like the all-consuming ice of cryo. “I probably would’ve done the same, if there’d—if there’d been anything left of you.”

The cold drips into Bucky’s stomach and turns into an icy weight. It’s not the thought of his death—memories like that are practically commonplace for Bucky by now, and the work he did in Wakanda has leached the worst of the trauma response from them. And really, painlessly turning to dust is kind of up there with dying in his sleep in terms of desirable deaths. No, it’s the way Steve is talking about it that’s dripping icily down his spine to sit cold and awful in Bucky’s stomach right now.

Fear. That’s what this is, he realizes belatedly. Something is wrong here. Bucky needs to fix this, and he has no idea how. He scoots a little bit closer to Steve on the couch.

“Steve. I—”

“But there was nothing left,” continues Steve. “The—the ash, it drifted away on the wind, and before, when I woke up, I had nothing left of you then either, it was like you’d never even existed—”

“Steve, I’m right here—” he tries, and fuck it, he hauls Steve against his side, puts his arms around him, and Steve isn’t even shaking, it would almost be better if he were, instead he’s just stiff and unyielding, not even moving apart from his heaving breaths—

“Even your fucking hut in Wakanda got—got demolished, by fucking alien space ship debris—”

“Wait, what?!” says Bucky, aghast. “Were my goats okay?”

Steve laughs, a high and hysterical sound, until he’s gasping. “Your goats! Your fucking goats! Of course you only care about—Yeah, they were okay, they were fine, but all I had—”

“Steve, buddy, you gotta breathe—”

“All I had left of you was—that fucking voicemail you left me. Three minutes and seventeen point two seconds, most of it you bitching about those fucking goats and telling me I should paint the lake some day—”

Shit, Bucky remembers that. He’d actually meant to call Steve for a reason, let him know that Bucky would be in Shuri’s lab for a few days the next week, to work on the prosthetic, so he might not be available for their usual check-in video call, but it had been early in the morning, and he’d ended up rambling nonsense about the goats and the view, the words oddly loosened in him in a way he usually couldn’t manage in person or even over video then, but could now that he was spilling them out into the comforting empty silence of a voicemail box.

“—and it was all I had. No pictures even, because of the goddamn security risk, but I’d kept that fucking voicemail, and—”

“Steve, I’m here, I’m right here—”

“So yeah, Buck, I’d have kept your fucking arm, if I could have! I think the Captain’s coping just fine, actually! I told Sam, I told him, once, before the—the helicarriers, that even when I had nothing, I had you. Not a fucking cent to my name, kicked out of my ma’s apartment after she died, but I had you and now, nothing, just—just your voice, in my phone—”

The words are rushing out of Steve in a torrent, so fast his tongue is practically tripping over itself, his voice stuttering and cracking, and Bucky has never heard him sound like this, never. Steve always holds this shit in, even after his ma died, his grief mostly stayed locked up inside of him, and to hear all this coming out now—

This is Steve’s brittleness finally cracking.

“No, not now, you have me,” Bucky says, and takes Steve’s face in his hands. “Look at me. I’m here. I’m alive. I’m right here, Steve. You have me.”

He says it with as much certainty as he can, says it firmly and almost too-loud, meets Steve’s wide and horrified eyes with every single hard-won measure of calm and peace he managed to scrape together in Wakanda.

It does not feel like enough. He has to try anyway.

“I know! You think I don’t fucking know?!” spits Steve. “You’re back, I got you back, twice, three times, and all I can think of is losing you—you keep dying—and I can’t—I can’t do it again, Buck, do you hear me?” Steve’s hands come up to grip his, tight enough to hurt Bucky’s right hand. “I can’t do it, I can’t. I gotta go first, this time around, okay? I know that makes me a coward, I know I can’t ask that of you, but I can’t lose you again, I can’t, I can’t, I’m not gonna make it—”

“Okay, okay,” Bucky soothes, terrified. He pulls Steve into a hug, rocks them together. “I hear you, okay? I’m here, right here, alive and well. Listen to my heartbeat, okay? Just listen, take some breaths, Steve.”

Bucky calls on his skill as a sniper and all his godawful Winter Soldier training and all the practice in meditation he got in Wakanda to keep his own heart rate and breathing slow and calm and steady, and it works, thank fuck. It takes a while, but Steve does calm down, his body falling into sync with Bucky’s.

“I’m sorry,” Steve rasps, miserable and ashamed.

“There is nothing to be sorry for,” Bucky tells him, so vehement he’s furious with it.

“I shouldn’t put all this on you—”

“Bullshit, I want you to. I don’t want you holding all this shit inside, it’s obviously terrible for you.” He gets up and pulls Steve up with him. “C’mon, get up, let’s go to bed. You need some rest.”

“No, I gotta—”

“Nope, rest—”

“You can’t just put me to bed like a cranky kid!”

“Watch me,” he says, and heaves Steve into his arms. Steve squawks but doesn’t break free, so Bucky carries him to the bedroom and deposits him on the bed, where Steve stares at him with wide, red-rimmed eyes.

“Are you gonna stay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and he doesn’t just mean now, not that Steve knows it.

He can’t leave. Not with Steve in this kind of shape. But if he stays, will it help Steve any? Or is Steve just going to keep seeing the Bucky he’s lost?

Bucky doesn’t know what the right call is here. Steve just goddamn said the Captain is doing fine, and that guy is carrying his dead best friend’s prosthetic arm around, and holding hands with it. If Steve thinks that’s fine, then he’s clearly got no idea what a healthy coping mechanism is, and it’s not like Bucky knows either, his only coping mechanism is to do whatever it takes to stay free of HYDRA, to survive.

He can’t leave, but he can’t stay, not if staying is only going to hurt both of them more, with Bucky falling short of being the Bucky Steve wants and needs, and Steve not seeing Bucky as he is now, to say nothing of the way guilt might as well be a miasma choking them both sometimes.

For now, Bucky pulls Steve close and cuddles him aggressively, hoping the physical contact will help. “What’s all this about?” asks Steve, sounding almost drowsy, but not resisting the affection.

“Implementing some lessons from Cap Wolf. It’ll help,” Bucky says. “I’m here, Steve. I’m—I’m sorry I wasn’t always.”

“It’s not your fault,” says Steve.

“It was after Insight,” Bucky says quietly. “And when I went into cryo. And I’m sorry for that.”

“It was what you needed though, wasn’t it? To feel safe.”

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers.

“Then don’t be sorry, Buck. I understand,” says Steve, his mouth quirking into a small, sad smile. He sighs and scoots in even closer towards Bucky. “Hey, you know what, I think this actually is helping.”

“Score one for werewolf instincts, I guess.”

“I will not be running through the woods howling at the full moon though.”

“Hey, don’t knock it until you try it. Maybe it’s therapeutic,” he says, and Steve snickers. Then, because it’s kind of making him anxious, “You’re sure my goats are okay? I mean, I know they’re not really my goats any more…”

Steve’s smile isn’t at all sad this time, it’s sweet and bright in a way Bucky hasn’t seen in a long time.

“Your goats are fine, Buck. The village has been looking after them.”

“Okay,” says Bucky, relieved. “Did you—uh, did you ever end up painting the lake?”

“No,” says Steve, solemn again. “No, I—” Steve cuts himself, shakes his head. “After we killed Thanos—the first time, I mean—I spent days just listening to your voicemail, over and over again. I listened to it all the fucking time. Nat kept telling me I had to stop, that it was—that it wasn’t healthy, and eventually I guess she figured maybe if she dragged me to Wakanda to do it, to paint the lake like you’d talked about, it’d be some kind of closure. But I got there, and your hut was gone, and I could barely see a damn thing with how much I was crying.”

“Steve…”

“I wasn’t—things were really bad, Buck. Those first couple years,” says Steve, barely above a whisper. “I tried to pull myself together after a while, but—I get where the Captain is at, okay? I was just as bad as he is now.”

If Bucky can’t leave, and if he can’t stay, then there’s really only one other option. He has to know for sure, one way or the other, if the weight of the past is too much for this friendship to bear.

“He, uh. He told me just seeing me hurt too much,” Bucky says. “Is it—is it like that for you? Because sometimes when you look at me, it’s like—like I’m breaking your heart. Like you see me, and it just makes you miss your Bucky more.”

Steve looks immediately stricken.

“My Buck—you’re my Bucky,” says Steve. “I know you’ve changed—we’ve both changed—but I’m not looking at you and missing some—some ideal version of you or whatever it is you’re thinking.”

“Then why the looks, Steve? Because I gotta tell you, it doesn’t feel great on my end, when almost every damn Steve looks happier to see me than you do.”

“I don’t mean to—” starts Steve, before his voice gets too choked up to continue. He clears it and says, “I’m so glad you’re here, Buck, you have to believe that. Each time I lost you, I missed you more than I could stand.”

“But?”

Steve closes his eyes, his face almost like one of those exaggerated theater masks of pain.

“I told you, I keep thinking that I can’t lose you again. It’s like—like missing you, grieving you, is a rut I’m stuck in and I can’t get out of it. You’re—god, you’re right here, you’re holding onto me, and part of me is still thinking I’ve already lost you.”

So it’s not only Bucky who’s been missing someone who’s right in front of him. Bucky doesn’t know whether that’s a good sign or a bad one.

“This is real, Steve,” he says. “You lost me, and you got me back.”

“I know! I know that! But tell that to my damn heart, because it’s still fucking broken by all the times I’ve lost you, Buck.”

Great, now they’re both crying. But Bucky thinks he at least sees the solution to their problem now: it’s not Bucky who has to leave, or stay.

“So stay with me,” Bucky pleads. “Just—just fucking stay, stop running off to fight, stop throwing yourself at every problem in the world. Take a goddamn break and just stay with me until your heart gets the damn memo that I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I promise I’ll do my best not to get killed right in front of you again.”

“That easy, huh?” sniffs Steve, his eyes wide and still shining with tears.

Unwelcome reality intrudes, and Bucky fidgets awkwardly.

“Well, uh, I mean. I say stay with me, but I’m technically homeless right now, so…”

Steve laughs, scattering the tears in his eyes. “No you’re not, I’ve got a place.” Steve leans in and presses his forehead against Bucky’s. “So you’ve got a home too. Always.”

“Okay,” whispers Bucky. And hell, he’s not finished yet, not while he’s riding this terrifying actually talking about feelings train. “While we’re having, you know, emotional revelations and shit, I might as well say—Steve, you gotta let go of the guilt. What happened to me, it’s not your fault.”

“Yeah, that’s not really what I’ve felt guilty about, lately,” says Steve, rueful and almost bitter. “And honestly, seeing Commander Rogers…he saved you on the train and still lost you anyway. Maybe there’s some Steve out there who managed to keep both of us safe through all that, but I’ll try not to beat myself up about not being that Steve, alright?” Steve gentles his voice then, and says, “But Buck—right back at you about the guilt.”

Bucky rears back and narrows his eyes at Steve. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What happened to you, what they made you do: none of it is your fault either,” says Steve. “And you don’t have to keep quiet about it just because you don’t want to hurt me, or because you’re afraid I’ll think less of you. I can take it, Buck. I won’t make it about me, I swear, I’ll help however I can.”

There’s something practiced about this spiel, like Steve has spent time carefully figuring out what to say and how to say it, and it scrapes against a raw nerve in Bucky, making his hackles rise.

“Did you practice that little speech?” asks Bucky, if only for the sake of stalling. “Or did you ask Wilson for it? Or is this wisdom from Old Steve?”

Steve clenches his jaw, and doesn’t rise to the bait. “I had a lot of time to think about the things I should’ve told you, Buck. That’s one of them. I messed up when I never pushed you to tell me what was going on with you during the war, and I messed up when I couldn’t figure out what to even say to you in Wakanda. I have a—god, a third chance at this point, I don’t intend to fuck it up again.”

“And if I don’t want to tell you a single fucking thing about all that shit?” he bites out.

“Then I’ll wait until you do. Or I’ll try to help you find some other way to deal with this. But Buck, you can’t just pretend everything is okay. It’s making you miserable.”

“Pretending I’m okay is pretty low on the list of things making me miserable,” Bucky says. “Pretending I’m okay is the only goddamn thing that keeps me going sometimes.”

“Yeah,” says Steve, sounding about as exhausted as Bucky feels. “I know what that’s like. But I’m here, Buck. And whenever you’re ready, I’ll listen, because I’m going to stay, okay? No more going on the run, no more missions. I’ll stay, I promise.”

“Okay,” Bucky whispers, and doesn’t know if the feeling rising up through him like the flutter of wings is dread, or hope.

He has nightmares that night, of course. It’s frankly a miracle that he’s gone without for so long, so he’s overdue.

He wakes with a gasp and struggles to break free of the nightmare’s grip, his mind already desperately grasping for the familiar litany: I am James Buchanan Barnes, I am no longer the Winter Soldier, it’s 2023, I’m alive, I’m awake, I am James Buchanan Barnes…

He focuses on Steve’s heartbeat, slow and steady beside him. Steve hasn’t woken, which is a small blessing. It’s enough that he’s here though, real and warm and solid beside Bucky, enough proof of when and where and who he is that the panic and horror subside more quickly than usual.

The thing about his nightmares is, they’re not actually nightmares. He calls them that, everyone calls them that, but most people’s nightmares aren’t memories. Most people can wake from a nightmare secure in the knowledge that it wasn’t real, that it never happened, not like that.

It’s not like that for him. He doesn’t dream, he remembers. Whatever awful thing he sees in his sleep, whatever awful thing he did, it actually happened, he really did it.

So it’s not much of a comfort to think, it was just a dream, and when people say, it wasn’t your fault, that’s not a comfort either. Because, yeah, it was a dream, and yeah, it wasn’t his fault, but it still happened, he still did it. Steve always says it wasn’t you, and it makes Bucky feel fucking insane. Because it was him. The Winter Soldier isn’t some other person. That was still him, Bucky remembers being him, remembers being that version of himself with almost every good part of him burned away. And it still is him, all of that is still in him and always has been.

His therapists in Wakanda said it’s good, that he accepts all of that. That he’s not in denial.

But it leaves with him all this fucking blood on his hands and this weapon of a broken body and a head full of horrors, and he doesn’t know what the fuck to do about any of it, now that the triggers are gone. Pretending he’s mostly okay is all he’s got, because otherwise he can’t—god, he can’t live like this, under the weight of this. The only thing he can think of to do is try to fix some of what HYDRA broke, and if he tries that, and it doesn’t work—

Steve wants Bucky to talk to him, but how is he supposed to tell Steve any of this? Steve will just freak out, tell Bucky there’s nothing he has to do, that none of it is his fault, and Bucky will lose what’s left of his goddamn mind. It’s all well and good for Steve to say he wants to help Bucky, but Bucky has no idea what help he even needs for dealing with this. Maybe pretending he’s okay is as good as it gets.

“What’s with the broody grumpy cat face?” asks Wilson when Bucky goes to relieve him on Steve Watch the next day.

“Existential crisis,” Bucky says, deadpan, but also, truthfully.

Wilson nods cheerfully and claps him on the shoulder. “Understandable! Hope your watch is uneventful, man!”

Great. Wilson has jinxed him. Bucky absolutely blames him for the next Steve’s arrival, though it’s probably Bucky’s own absolutely awful luck that’s to blame for the version of Steve who appears next to the quantum tunnel platform a couple hours into his shift on watch. This Steve is wearing all black tactical gear, with shaggy hair, a full beard, a disconcertingly blank expression on his face, and an entire arsenal’s worth of weaponry strapped to his person. At first Bucky thinks, great, this Steve just got zapped here mid-op, what a pain in the ass.

And then he notices this Steve’s left arm. His left arm, which gleams silver, and has a red star on the shoulder. Like Bucky’s old prosthetic. The one HYDRA gave him.

No. No no no no no.

The fact that this Steve is pointing a gun at him is unimportant, compared to what that fucking arm means.

“Steve?” whispers Bucky, even though he suspects he should be asking, “Soldat?”

Steve—the Soldier—doesn’t answer, save for the tightening of his finger on the trigger. No Steve has ever looked at Bucky like this: cold, assessing, distant. It hurts more than Bucky could have ever imagined, more than Steve’s guilt or grief or even his disappointment.

Had it been this bad for Steve, when he’d first realized who the Winter Soldier was? Of course it must have been. Selfishly, Bucky’s glad he doesn’t really remember it.

“Steve, do you know who I am?” Bucky manages to ask. “Do you—do you know who you are?”

“James Barnes,” says the Soldier, and Bucky barely holds back his sigh of relief.

Okay. Not great that he didn’t use the name Bucky, but at least he knows who Bucky is. So maybe this Steve isn’t still with HYDRA. The Soldier’s icy gaze flicks to Bucky’s own left arm, bare in his one-sleeved uniform jacket, then darts around the surroundings. The Soldier’s jaw clenches, fear beginning to widen his eyes.

“I was just in Siberia. No one else was there. This is not Siberia. Is it—what’s the date.”

Shit. Bucky knows what he’d be thinking, if he got zapped somewhere unfamiliar mid-mission, or even while he was on the run: he’d assume he lost time to flashbacks or seizures, or worse, that he’d been wiped, or triggered.

“You haven’t been wiped. No one’s used the trigger words,” Bucky assures him, and keeps his arms at his side, hands empty. “The date—that’s a little complicated, and it’s gonna make you freak out, if you even believe me. What were you doing in Siberia, Steve? No—nevermind. I think I know.”

Bucky knows what he would have done, if he’d remembered enough on his own: he’d have gone to the base in Siberia to kill the other Winter Soldiers there, and then he’d have blown the base too.

“What do you think you know,” grits out the Soldier, still not lowering his gun.

“You’re there to take out the other Winter Soldiers, right? The ones they—the ones they used to make us fight, the ones who were supposed to be our replacement. The ones who were too unstable and dangerous even for HYDRA.”

“Us?”

“I’m not—I’m not the James Barnes you know. I’m the Winter Soldier too, Steve.”

“Not possible,” says the Soldier, curt and dismissive.

“It is, if I was the one who fell from the train instead of you,” says Bucky.

Finally, there’s a flicker of real emotion on the Soldier’s face, a brief flash of horror.

“But you didn’t,” says the Soldier.

“Not in your timeline, no. But you’re in a different timeline now. It’s, uh. A pretty wild and crazy story.”

“You’re lying,” says the Soldier, eyes narrowing. “This is some kind of trick, a HYDRA mind game—”

Bucky snorts. “Yeah, no, I guarantee you that HYDRA is not this creative. There’s, like, seven Steves in this timeline right now,” he says, then amends, “Well, six Steves and one Stella. You can meet them right now, and if that doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will.”

Finally, the Soldier lowers the gun. “Show me,” he demands.

Meeting half a dozen different versions of himself goes a long way to convincing the Soldier of the admittedly insane truth of what’s going on. It doesn’t make him particularly communicative though. He tells them the basics: what year he’s from, that he’s no longer with HYDRA, that his universe’s version of Bucky Barnes has made it to the future too, and that he’s safe and well. He volunteers nothing else. At least, he doesn’t to Bucky and most of the clusterfuck of Steves. Bucky’s Steve takes the Soldier aside to talk to him, and they both return with grim, pale faces.

Bucky drags his Steve aside to hiss, “What the fuck did you say to him?”

“I needed to make sure he remembers enough that he won’t hurt you.”

“The way I hurt you,” says Bucky, reeling back, his stomach roiling with sudden nausea.

“No. Hey, no,” says Steve, and puts a hand on Bucky’s neck, bringing their foreheads together. “You didn’t hurt me when you knew your own mind, Buck. Hell, you saved me, you pulled me from the river. But we don’t know where that Steve’s head is at, or exactly how much he remembers, and I don’t want to risk your safety.”

“And? What’s the verdict?”

Steve sighs and pulls away, unhappy and stressed lines deepening around his mouth. “He remembers enough, and he won’t hurt anyone. But I don’t know that it’d be a good idea to talk to him, Buck.”

“Who better to talk to him than someone who knows exactly what he’s going through? We can be a little support group of two.”

“Yeah, I don’t think he’s ready for a support group,” says Steve.

“Okay, well, I don’t feel good about leaving him alone.”

Steve smiles at him, fond and pained in equal measure. “Now you know how I felt about you,” he says, and they share a tired, grim laugh at the insane situation, before Steve sobers again. “Buck, I know you want to help, but I don’t know if you can. This is probably going to be like the whole thing with the Captain.”

“What, you can help me when I’m a wreck of a formerly brainwashed assassin, but I can’t help you? I know I’m not, you know, a paragon of stability, but I think having some personal experience of what he’s going through should count for a hell of a lot.”

“That’s not what I—” Steve shakes his head. “It’s not about your ability to help. If it was another you in this situation, yeah, of course you could help. But I’m—he’s—not strong like you are.”

“What? Bullshit. What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“All that’s keeping that Soldier going is the mission, Buck. He’s not like you, he’s not working hard to heal. He’s pretty much only living for revenge, and once he’s taken out the last of HYDRA, he’s going to fall apart.”

Bucky doesn’t know how that makes him stronger than Steve, but whatever. “All the more reason for me to talk to him,” he insists.

“I won’t stop you,” Steve says with a sigh. “And I hope you can get through to him. Just—don’t beat yourself up about it if you can’t, alright?”

In his black tactical clothes, the Soldier is an inky black shadow in the dappled sunshine of the clearing. For a moment, Bucky has the dizzying sensation that he’s looking at himself from a distance of both space and time, but then the Soldier turns, and the dizziness turns into a sick lurch of his stomach. There’s a fundamental wrongness in seeing Steve as the Winter Soldier, like the laws of the universe are being violated.

It doesn’t seem possible, that Steve could ever have become the Winter Soldier. And it’s not like Bucky blames him for it. He just can’t quite believe that Steve couldn’t find a way to escape, a way to resist, a way to beat HYDRA. Bucky hadn’t been strong or smart enough to manage it, he hadn’t fought hard enough, but surely Steve would have. At the very least, he wouldn’t have broken as easily or as thoroughly as Bucky had, becoming a perfectly obedient little toy soldier.

But Steve had, apparently. The proof of it is standing in front of him, dead-eyed and blank-faced. And if Steve had become the Winter Soldier, then that means—no. Bucky can’t let himself go down that road.

“Hey,” he says. “You, uh, doing okay? With all of this? I know it’s pretty crazy.”

The Soldier says nothing, only nods with one short, sharp motion, then stares at Bucky. God, is this what it’s like when he stares at people? If so, he gets why it’s so unsettling. The Soldier’s stare is impassive and assessing, nothing like the way any of the other Steves look at Bucky.

“And, uh, being free of HYDRA…how are you doing with that?” Bucky ventures, stifling a wince at the awkwardness of it all.

“Not as well as you are, apparently,” says the Soldier, toneless. His stare shifts to Bucky’s left arm. “New arm?”

“Yeah. It’s better than the old one. Less painful. But uh, what do you mean, not as well as I am?”

“You’re just like the Barnes in my universe,” says the Soldier, and fuck, but it hurts more than it should to hear any version of Steve refer to him with that kind of distance. “Sad. Tired. But—good.”

Bucky blinks, taken aback. “Not sure that says good things about the state of your Bucky, to be honest.”

The Soldier’s brow furrows in frustration and he shakes his head. “I mean—you’re—you’re still you.”

“Hey, you’re still you too,” says Bucky. “I’ve had the time to—do some healing, I guess. To get most of my memories back. I’m still a mess, but I’m a lot better than I was. It’ll be the same for you too. I mean, I’m not the same person I was, and you won’t be either, but you’ll still be you.”

“I don’t think it will be like that for me,” says the Soldier, matter-of-fact.

“What? Why not?”

“There’s not enough left of me for that.”

Yeah, Bucky remembers feeling like that. He still feels like that sometimes.

“Maybe not yet,” he tells the Soldier. “But it’s like—” He looks around the wooded clearing that surrounds them as he tries to find the words. “It’s like a forest, after a fire. You think there’s nothing left, that it’s all burned down to ash, but it hasn’t. It grows back, after long enough. It was like that for me, and it’ll be the same for you.”

The Soldier’s cold impassivity finally falters, revealing something more familiar: a look like Bucky is breaking his heart. The Soldier shakes his head.

“I’m not as strong as you are,” he says, almost gentle, an echo of Bucky’s own Steve, and it’s still just as baffling.

“What? I’m not stronger than you, what is that even supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re still you,” says the Soldier again. “And if you can rebuild from this fucking wreckage—“ he says, gesturing in the general direction of his head and left arm, “—then yeah, you’re stronger than me, because all that’s left for me is ending HYDRA.”

So Bucky’s Steve hadn’t been exaggerating about the revenge thing.

“If I’m still alive in your timeline, then you have more than that. You have me.”

“I have never once in this life deserved you, but I sure as hell don’t deserve you now, after the things I’ve done,” says the Soldier, his voice low and vehement, but even. “If you knew…if my Bucky knew, I mean, he’d never forgive me for the things I’ve done.”

“I’ve done the exact same things, are you gonna say I don’t deserve you?” Bucky retorts, and that hit actually lands, judging by the way the Soldier’s jaw clenches. “And are you gonna decide for your Bucky what he can or can’t forgive? Because that’s his call to make, pal.”

“No, I guess not,” says the Soldier, after a long moment of silence. “But the only way I can live, the only life I can imagine, is a life spent ending HYDRA. That’s all I’m good for now, that’s what I owe to the people I killed. That’s all I want.”

“So, what, you’re just going around taking out HYDRA bases? Burning off HYDRA heads?” he asks.

It’s nothing Bucky hasn’t considered doing himself. In the first year or so after Insight though, he hadn’t been willing or able to risk recapture, and after that, he simply hadn’t wanted to fight. He’d taken out some bases after looting them for cash and supplies, dispatched some too-persistent HYDRA agents who’d gotten lucky and found him, sure—but actively going after HYDRA? No. It had felt too close to becoming the Winter Soldier again. And now—maybe it’s what Bucky should do. Go on a vengeful rampage, destroy what’s left of HYDRA for good.

“Yes,” says the Soldier.

“Do you think it will help?”

The Soldier narrows his eyes. “Less HYDRA in the world helps everyone.”

“No, I mean, do you think it will help you?” Bucky asks, and when the Soldier looks pissed, Bucky adds. “I’m not asking just to be a dick, it’s a genuine question. I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do after this whole clusterfuck of Steves situation is over. I don’t know how to live with—with knowing what I’ve done, what they used me to do.”

The Soldier smiles, a grim and hopeless twist of his mouth. “Yeah, see, this is why you’re stronger than me. You’re asking how to live with this. I’m not planning to live with this, Buck. The base in Siberia, taking out the Winter Soldiers—that’s my last mission.”

“What?”

The Soldier can’t mean what Bucky thinks he means.

“That base needs to be destroyed. There are things in there—not just the Winter Soldiers—that can’t ever be allowed to see the light of day again. My plan was to start the self-destruct, and see it through.”

“It’s a self-destruct, you don’t need to stay in the base for it to work! Steve, you can’t do this,” says Bucky, horrified.

The Soldier’s face is set in desolate determination. “I can. I have to. I’m just as much of a danger as those other Winter Soldiers. The triggers HYDRA put in me, they’re still there—“

“Yeah, so were mine, and now they’re gone! You can get rid of them without killing yourself!”

Fuck, Bucky hopes he hasn’t just screwed up the Soldier’s timeline, but he can’t just let Steve—the Soldier—kill himself. Bucky can barely even believe that any version of Steve would—

Except Steve has. Bucky’s own Steve brought the Valkyrie down in the Arctic, and never made all that much of an effort to try to survive that mission. Given that, is it really a surprise that a Steve who became the Winter Soldier would pull the same damn move, just in a different context?

“This is the safest, best choice, Bucky. My Bucky will understand that. He’s better off without me anyway, always has been.”

“Bullshit. If I can live with all this Winter Soldier bullshit, so the fuck can you, Steven Grant Rogers, and don’t even get me started with that better off without you shit, I am miserable without you, you asshole.”

The Soldier scoffs. “You literally just said you don’t know how to live with this.”

“Yeah, well, fine, I don’t know, but I keep going anyway. You have to keep going, Steve.”

Bucky is intimately acquainted with how survival is sometimes a matter of seconds: you make it through this second, then the next, and the next, even though the pain is all-consuming, even though it seems as if each of those seconds is unsurvivable. Then the seconds turn to minutes and hours and days and weeks and months and years, each of them unbearable in the moment, and yet, something has kept Bucky going: sheer cussed stubbornness maybe, and a body that will not give out.

Or maybe it’s just the glimmers of light in all the deep, crushing oceanic depths of his darknesses: little things like fresh fruit after too long without, or sunshine through the leaves of a tree in full and riotous bloom, or a book he wants to read, and big things too, like Ayo’s inexplicable and stern faith in him, and Steve. Just Steve: the fact of his existence, his friendship, his trust in Bucky. No matter how much Bucky hates himself, no matter how much he hates that he’s survived, those persistent glimmers of light banish just enough of the darkness to keep him going, to keep him swimming up towards the possibility of light and air.

“I don’t know how!” The Soldier looks at him with agonized awe, a wildness creeping in around his eyes, his breath coming fast. “I don’t know how the hell you can do it.”

“Find your Bucky, and you will figure it out together, I promise,” pleads Bucky, holding the Soldier’s stare. “Please, Steve. At least try.”

It reminds Bucky of nothing so much as that moment in Kreischberg, when a chasm of fire separated them from each other, and Steve, the idiot, tried to get Bucky to go without him. As if Bucky could ever leave him like that. As if he wouldn’t have stayed in that collapsing factory until Steve jumped across the gap too.

They’re not separated by a chasm of flames in a burning factory this time, and yet, the actual few feet of grassy earth and the diverging timeline that separate them make the gap between them seem just as impassable and impossible. Bucky can only stay on his side of the divide, reaching out. The Soldier is the one who needs to jump.

So when the Soldier doesn’t say anything, Bucky says, “Remember when you found me in Kreischberg? When we were escaping the factory? The place was coming down around us, it was on fire, and part of a walkway collapsed, me on one side, and you on the other. And you—you fucking asshole—you tried to tell me to keep going, to get out on my own. And I said—“

The Soldier closes his eyes, as if in pain, or maybe just as if he’s remembering it. Or both. God knows remembering hurts, a lot of the time.

“Not without you,” whispers the Soldier, and opens his eyes again, and this time, when he looks at Bucky, it’s a lot like the way Steve’s own Bucky looks at him: wonder and grief and something too soft and hurt to be called joy.

“The world’s an awful lot like that burning down factory, I know,” says Bucky, his voice ragged now. “But even if it’s on fire and coming down around our ears and we can barely fucking breathe, I won’t leave you in it on your own, and I won’t let you leave it on your own either. So please, when you get back to your world, ditch your suicide mission and find me.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” says the Soldier, and Bucky laughs in relief, a few stray tears escaping his eyes, because that’s Steve, that’s Steve’s desert-dry humor and that’s Steve’s crooked grin, always a bit wry and bashful, and that means this Steve is going to be okay. “Alright, Buck. I’ll—I’ll leave the base, I’ll find you.”

If this counts as contaminating the timeline or ruining the multiverse, Bucky does not fucking care.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Do you—do you really think my Bucky can forgive me? That he can forgive what I’ve become?” asks the Soldier, both shame-faced and hopeful. “I—I don’t know if I’ll even be able to tell him half of it, it’s—it’s so fucking bad.”

“Well, I know all of it. You know I know all of it, because—because I did it too, it all happened to me too. And I forgive you. He will too, whether or not he knows everything.”

Bucky is as certain of this as he is about gravity: there’s no timeline where any version of Bucky would blame Steve for this. The possibility of not forgiving him simply doesn’t compute. There’s only one possible solution to this equation. Bucky knows Steve, knows his stubbornness and his righteousness and his deep-down goodness, and if despite all that, even he became the Winter Soldier, then clearly, there was no amount of strength or resistance that could have prevented it.

“That easy, huh? You forgive me, just like that,” says the Soldier, his low voice wavering with the tears that are finally streaming from his eyes.

“Of course it’s that easy. I know, Steve,” he says, then hesitates before continuing, “Sometimes I thought—don’t take this the wrong way, but sometimes I thought, if it had been Steve instead of me, he wouldn’t have broken. He wouldn’t have become the Winter Soldier. But you did. And that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you, it just means—I guess I have to accept that it means that there was nothing either of us could have done,” he says, his voice wavering now, and if he thinks too hard about that, then he will not be able to keep his shit together. “So yeah, I forgive you, and yeah, it’s easy. Are you—are you saying you wouldn’t—you don’t—forgive me?”

“Of course I forgive you,” says the Soldier. “There’s nothing to forgive, as far as I’m concerned.”

“There you go,” says Bucky with a watery smile.

Unsurprisingly but somewhat hilariously, Steve’s immediate response to Bucky being obviously upset after his talk with the Soldier is to want to go start a fight with the Soldier.

“I knew it wasn’t a good idea for you to talk to him,” says Steve, getting that familiar, stubborn fight me look on his face.

Bucky always used to tell him his face would get stuck that way some day, and hey, he’d ended up right, in a way. The lines of Steve’s fight me face are slowly but surely being etched into his face with every passing year. Maybe—hopefully—there’s still time to change them into something more peaceful: smile lines, or crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes.

“Stand down, Rogers, it was fine,” Bucky tells him, as he sits on the couch. It’s practically impossible to resist the squashy couch’s gravity, so Bucky doesn’t, and slumps into its upholstered embrace. Now that the adrenaline of talking to the Soldier has faded, he feels weighed down and exhausted again. “It was just—a lot. Brought up a lot of stuff.”

Stuff Bucky usually can’t really deal with thinking about too much. In a way, it was almost a blessing that he’s spent most of his time after breaking free of HYDRA just coming to grips with the return of his memories, and getting rid of the trigger words. Because what’s left after all that is the guilt: about what he’s done, about how somehow he’s survived all of it. Bucky can’t blame the Soldier for trying to find a way to be free of all of that.

“If he said anything shitty to you, I’m going to go kick his ass, Buck, just say the word.”

“Don’t think you’d win, to be honest,” says Bucky, and Steve looks about as affronted as a wet cat. Bucky gives him a brief, tired grin. “He didn’t say anything shitty. Not like that, anyway.”

“Then what’s got you so upset?” asks Steve, joining him on the couch.

“You’re not allowed to go on any more suicide missions, Rogers,” says Bucky, and rubs at his aching forehead. It does nothing to ease the building tension headache there. “Because I’m beginning to notice a pattern with all these versions of you, and I really don’t like it.”

“Oh,” is all Steve says. “Yeah, no, you don’t have to worry about that, Buck, I promise. I stuck it out after Thanos, didn’t I?”

“And that first mission to go kill him wasn’t a suicide mission?” asks Bucky, tilting his head to look at Steve.

“It was a whatever it takes mission,” says Steve, but he doesn’t meet Bucky’s eyes as he says it. “Whatever the Soldier does or decides, that’s not on you, Buck.”

“I know that. But he did agree to go back to his Bucky, so…that’s something, I hope.”

“Hey, that’s more than something, that’s amazing.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“But you’re still upset,” ventures Steve.

“He said he’ll talk to his Bucky, yeah, but he also said he doesn't know how to keep going, knowing what he’s done. And I don't know either. I don't know how to live with this, I don’t,” he says, his chest growing tight, a vice-like pressure building there. “And don’t you dare fucking say it’s not my fault, or it wasn’t me, or any of that shit. I know all of that, but I still did it. I still have to live, knowing I did all that.”

Steve is silent for a long moment, and Bucky can’t bear to look at him, for fear of what his face might say. The sound of his own heartbeat is loud in his ears, a desperate thump-thump battering against the walls of his ribcage as if his heart wants to make an escape.

“I know it’s not the same, but—after Thanos, after we realized there was no way to fix what he did—I pretty much felt the same way. I didn’t know how to live, knowing I failed to prevent it. When I wasn’t grieving you and Sam and Wanda and everyone else, I was hating myself.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Steve,” Bucky says, almost automatically. “That was—god, everything about that was beyond your paygrade. You, everyone—we all did the best we could.”

“I know that. All of us knew that. We had limited intel, we were up against something unimaginably powerful. Tony said—” Steve closes his eyes, his face spasming with grief. “Tony said we might as well have been cavemen with sticks going up against an atom bomb. We were that badly outmatched. So yeah, you’re right, we did the best we could,” says Steve. “But half of the entire universe was still gone.”

“So what did you do?” asks Bucky.

“Natasha dragged me to therapy, pretty much. I didn’t think it’d do much good, if I’m being honest. I felt like, well, obviously, the therapist is gonna hate me too, they’re gonna blame me for everything. But she didn’t, and when I told her that I thought she would, she just said, ‘I forgive you. What do you gain by not forgiving yourself? Who are you helping?’ Now, I spent that whole session arguing with her about why she shouldn’t forgive me—”

“Yeah, that sounds like you,” says Bucky through a throat so tight he can barely get the words out.

“—but she just kept saying she did, and why didn’t I forgive myself.”

“And?” whispers Bucky.

“I told her I didn’t know how. That I didn’t think I could. And we did some exercises—I wrote letters to people, a whole public apology to the world—not to send or anything, just to write—and worked on making amends. Which seemed stupid to me, to be honest, how do you make amends for failing to save half of all life in the universe—but she told me to try, called it living amends.”

“Did it—did it work?” Bucky asks.

Steve shrugs. “I didn’t have some big moment where I forgave myself, no. I just—I kept going, because I knew that’s what you would’ve wanted. I did the support groups, because that was what I thought Sam would’ve done, volunteered wherever and however else I could.”

“So you think that’s what I should do,” Bucky concludes. “The amends, I mean.”

It doesn’t sound like enough, but it does sound close to what Bucky was already considering: trying to find ways to fix what HYDRA used him to break.

“I think it might help, yeah,” says Steve. “It’s worth a shot, anyway. But Buck—you have to forgive yourself, too.”

“I can’t,” he whispers, eyes burning.

“You just talked to a version of me that became the Winter Soldier. You telling me you wouldn’t forgive him?”

“I did—I do. He—god, he asked, and I told him I did, that his Bucky would too—”

“But you won’t forgive yourself? Buck, you gotta see the double standard there,” says Steve gently.

All the pressure that’s been building in Bucky’s head and chest and throat gives all at once, a dam crumbling under the force of everything that pours out of Bucky, everything that he kept in for the Soldier’s sake, and for Steve’s, coming out of him in a rush that he thinks is going to sweep what’s left of him away, like some vital part of him is coming out in these tears and awful, animal noises of pain. But Steve holds onto him, he holds firm against the onslaught, rocks Bucky in his arms.

Whether this onslaught is the relief of release, or just plain destruction, Bucky’s in no state to know. All he knows is that he’s caught between two impossibilities: living with this guilt and pain, or forgiving himself.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” says Steve. “Let it out, it’s gonna be alright, you’re gonna be okay, we’re gonna be okay.”

Bucky tries very hard to believe him.

Chapter Text

“So this is what happens when I don’t pretend I’m okay,” Bucky tells Steve, post-embarrassing and exhausting nervous breakdown, after Steve has bodily carried Bucky to the bed, all turnabout’s fair play, Buck. “As you can see, it’s not ideal.”

He feels like shit, and undoubtedly looks it too. His head is pounding dully, his eyes ache and burn, his throat feels raw, and he’s so tired that he gives quite serious consideration to the prospect of never leaving this bed again.

Steve sits on the edge of the bed beside him, and pushes Bucky’s hair out of his face, smoothing it back.

“It’s alright, Buck,” he says. “You can have as many breakdowns as you want, I figure you’re more than entitled to them.”

“Thanks, I’ll pencil the next one in for a month from now,” rasps Bucky, and Steve smiles down at him, fond but worried.

“What do you need, Buck? You want a cool cloth for your eyes? Some tea?”

“Moves from the Sarah Rogers mom manual, huh?” says Bucky with an exhausted attempt at a smile.

“Figure I can’t go wrong there,” Steve says. His hand is still in Bucky’s hair, stroking it gently.

“Think I just wanna sleep,” Bucky tells him, his eyelids heavy.

“Sure, but can you drink some water or something before you do? Don’t want you waking up with a headache.”

He’ll probably wake up with a headache or something hurting regardless, but Steve will worry less if he does drink something, so he nods and struggles to sit up in bed as Steve goes to get him a drink. He returns with water and a protein shake, and Bucky drinks it all with only minimal complaint about the shake’s chalkiness.

“Help me get my arm off?” he asks, once he’s finished with the drinks, and Steve does. It’s way too early for Steve to join him in bed, but he stays anyway, pulling Bucky close and holding him.

“Cap Wolf really is on to something with this,” Steve says, and Bucky sighs and hums his agreement, already drifting into an exhausted doze that quickly drops off into real sleep.

It’s a bad night.

Which isn’t a surprise. Before the battle, in Wakanda, it had only been in the last month or two that the balance had tipped, just barely, to more good and okay nights than bad for Bucky. Given the last week—the battle, the stressful conversations and revelations, the memories he’s dredged up and dragged out into the light—the nightmares are probably to be expected. 

Only this time, not all of the nightmares are memories. Some of them are good old-fashioned nightmares, surreal and horrifying blends of actual events and awful possibilities his scrambled brain dreams up: a long walk through a labyrinth of a HYDRA base as he hears someone screaming and screaming, the air getting colder and colder, until he finally reaches the sound only to find Steve in the Chair; being trapped in the cryostasis chamber, awake and frozen, and seeing Steve on the other side of the glass, pointing a gun at him, pulling the trigger; trying to finish a mission, because if he doesn’t, he’ll be punished, they’ll put him in the Chair and leave him there, but he can’t finish the mission because he’s dissolving, disintegrating, turning to dust—

The dreams come every time he closes his eyes, like there’s some projector in his brain that has to play these nightmares out, the reel spinning faster and faster, flickering and rattling, the machine almost but never actually burning out. He’d rather have all the Winter Soldier memories than this, because at least there’s a certain chilly distance to those dream-memories; these nightmares are suffused with a choking, icy dread and terror that lingers and won’t let him go. They feel too real and not real enough, compared to his memories, and it makes his grip on reality feel all too tenuous. Each time he wakes gasping or crying out from a nightmare is like getting one breath of air before the roiling dark tide in his head pulls him under again.

He’s too tired to stay awake, even though there’s no relief in these snatches of awful sleep, not when sleep is more like drowning than anything else, and after the seventh round of nightmares and still hours to go until dawn, the only things that are keeping Bucky from entirely losing it are the buoys of Steve’s arms around him, and Steve’s deep and steady voice, proof of what’s more real than the horrors his overwrought mind keeps flooding him with.

“I’ve got you,” says Steve. “I’m here, you’re awake, you’re safe.”

Steve keeps up a steady stream of nonsense chatter, wipes the tears that keep leaking unbidden from Bucky’s eyes, holds him tight through the shaking, breathes slow and even until Bucky’s body can’t help but fall into sync with his, and eventually, he manages an hour or so of actual, restful sleep, blessedly dreamless. 

Not that it does much good. He wakes more exhausted than he’d been before he tried sleeping, his head pounding, his eyes gritty. His currently non-existent left arm sparks with phantom pain.

“Is it always like that?” asks Steve, sitting up in bed beside him. The long night has left shadows under his eyes, and tension is drawn deep around his mouth and eyes. “The bad nights?”

“Pretty much,” says Bucky dully. “This was worse than usual. Sorry.”

He should probably get up properly, get dressed, eat something. All he’s been able to manage so far is to take a piss and brush his teeth though, and he suspects that’s all he’s got in the tank for the day. He’s so, so tired. But the dark undertow that dragged him under all night is still there. It always is. If he doesn’t at least try to tread the treacherous waters in his head, it’ll only pull him under again.

Someday he’s going to be too tired to swim back up towards the light. 

“You’re not the one who should be apologizing,” Steve says, low and furious. Bucky flinches. “Hey, no, I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself. I should’ve been there for you, on nights like that.”

“‘S’okay,” Bucky says. “I wasn’t alone. Ayo would sit with me.”

She’d been so steady, those nights. It had been such a relief, having her there, knowing that if it came down to it, if he was too dangerous, she would grant him the mercy of a swift and clean death, and in the meantime, she offered the mercy of her simple presence, the rock of her comfortingly pitiless calm and compassion. He’d seen her briefly, after the battle, even a fleeting glimpse of her proof that the world hadn’t gone entirely insane. 

“And before Wakanda?”

Bucky closes his eyes. “I’d stay awake until I passed out.”

It wasn’t ideal, obviously, given how long he could stay awake if he really put the effort in. But it had been the best he could manage.

“Yeah, no, that’s not happening any more,” says Steve.

“It’s fine, I’ll be—fine. You can—you should go. Get some rest or do some work or whatever. I’m just gonna—you know. Stay here.”

Maybe in a couple hours he’ll have the wherewithal to take a shower, or watch something on his phone. 

“Be right back,” says Steve, and Bucky hears Steve leave. He returns a few minutes later, saying, “C’mon, get up for a sec.”

He’s brought a tray with a steaming mug of tea, and a few pieces of plain toast with some apple slices. Bucky isn’t all that interested in eating any of that, or anything at all, but Steve has the fight me look on his face, only with worry instead of anger in his eyes, so Bucky sips at the tea and finishes a piece of the toast.

“Thanks,” he says.

“If there’s anything else you want, you name it,” says Steve, clearly aiming for cheerful and falling into anxious instead, as he sets the tray aside.

“A few months in cryo,” Bucky says, joking, but also not really joking. The still peace of the ice would be preferable to the treacherous tides in his head.

Steve looks horrified. “What?”

“Sometimes I just want to—stop, is all,” he says, and rubs at his face. “Sorry, it was—I didn’t mean it, not really. I’m just tired, and I can’t sleep, and I—sorry. I told you, you should go. I’m no good right now, you shouldn’t have to deal with my shit.”

“I’m not leaving you like this, Buck, and I want to deal with your shit,” says Steve, all stubborn jaw and earnest eyes.

“I’m not exactly good company right now.”

“I don’t care. I wasn’t good company all those times you nursed me through asthma attacks and bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia, but you stuck around anyway. Let me do the same for you,” says Steve, and gets back in the bed with Bucky, puts an arm around him. He’s warm, the thump of his heart just about audible to Bucky’s enhanced hearing, and Bucky sighs, leans against him. “Want me to read to you, like you used to do for me? Help keep your mind off things?”

Shit, Bucky hasn’t thought about that in years, but he did used to read to Steve, when he was too sick to do it for long himself and bored as hell in his sickbed. 

“Yeah. Yeah, alright,” whispers Bucky.

Steve gets through three chapters of some fantasy book that Bucky can’t quite focus on enough to really follow, before he has to go to cover Bucky’s shift on Steve Watch and do some work, not that he wants to go. Bucky tells Steve in no uncertain terms that he does not need babysitting and pretty much shoves him out of the bed.

Bucky’s pretty sure the only reason Steve leaves is that Bucky gets out of bed to take a shower, and emerges looking marginally less like depressed wreckage in the vague shape of a person, and also because Bucky asks him to check on the Soldier.

“If yesterday was hard on me, then it was just as hard on him,” he says, and Steve’s worry softens into a bittersweet smile before he reels Bucky in for a hug.

Which is kind of weird, Steve doesn’t usually do this kind of thing, but it’s nice. If his Steve has picked up some touchy-feely habits from Cap Wolf, Bucky won’t complain.

“Sam’s got the Soldier covered, but alright, I’ll check on him too,” says Steve, rubbing Bucky’s back. “I know the other Steves are gonna want to check in on you too, if that’s okay.”

“Sure,” Bucky says.

In retrospect, he probably should’ve guessed that the clusterfuck of Steves would do more than just check on him.

After Steve leaves, Bucky roams restlessly around the cabin for a while, taking in some of the details that he’d ignored as unimportant before: the bland art on the walls, the cabinet stuffed full of board games, the telescope and game equipment gathering dust in the hall closet. It all clearly marks this place as a vacation cabin, as does the small selection of books on a low shelf in the living room, which seems to be a hodgepodge of books people have abandoned here, plus a couple of local guidebooks. Bucky grabs a somewhat lurid looking hardback that promises to be a thrilling mystery, and retreats back to the bedroom, already tired out by the short burst of effort and nervous energy.

He’s only about a dozen pages into the book when someone comes into the cabin.

“Hey, Buck, it’s me, Steve!”

Bucky rolls his eyes, lips twitching into a small smile, and calls out, “Which one?” as Cap appears in the doorway, grinning sheepishly, holding a couple of notebooks.

“Fair question, it’s Cap,” he says, unnecessarily by then. Bucky can tell all the Steves apart by sight. “Steve said you weren’t feeling so hot today, thought I’d come keep you company for a bit.”

It’s a reversal of their once-familiar positions: a century ago, it was Bucky who would cheerfully barge into Steve’s room, saying something breezy about keeping Steve company while he was under the weather. Cap is more tentative than cheerful though, and he can’t quite hide the flash of worry and alarm when he sees Bucky.

Right. Bucky used to put up a better front of being okay for this Steve. He doesn’t have the energy for it now, and he wouldn’t be convincing anyway. Besides, Cap will probably see him in worse shape than this, once he finds his Bucky.

“I’m not gonna be good company,” cautions Bucky, same as he did his own Steve, and Cap shrugs.

“That’s fine, I’m just gonna get some sketching in. Brought you a notebook too, in case you wanna join me, or if you wanna write.”

“Thanks,” says Bucky, surprised by the unexpected kindness. “You’re the artist in this friendship, though.”

Cap raises an eyebrow, and passes over a notebook, then pulls a handful of pens and markers and pencils out of his pocket that he dumps on the bed. 

“You took some of those art classes with me,” he says.

“I wasn’t exactly taking them seriously,” Bucky protests.

He’d really only gone to encourage Steve to go; he’d spent most of the time messing around, doing whatever he wanted. Still, he takes the notebook Cap gives him, and picks one of the thin-tipped markers.

Steve shrugs. “Sure, but you had a good eye, an interesting style.”

“If that’s what you wanna call my doodles,” says Bucky with a snort.

He scribbles aimlessly for a bit, everything turning into some variation on stormy waves, comforted by the soft scratching of Cap’s pencil beside him. Does his Steve still draw? Bucky hasn’t seen him sketching or anything, but surely he must. He should ask, or get him some new art supplies. Shit, they can probably afford nice supplies now—or at least they can once Bucky regains access to some of the HYDRA funds he’s squirreled away. Bucky kind of wants to mess around with some paints, actually.

He gives up on his own scribbles after a few minutes, and rests his head on Cap’s shoulder to watch him. Serum or no serum, his hands have never changed, and if Bucky focuses on Cap’s hands, this could be any time between 1935 to now. Cap’s sketching Banner at the quantum tunnel platform, and with his swift and exacting pencil strokes, Bucky sees the grief Banner is trying and failing to ignore. Natasha might be back, but Stark isn’t, and now Bucky realizes that Stark and Banner must have been close. Steve always has had a keen eye for people, his art uncovering truths that aren’t always readily apparent until they’re rendered with the clarity of pencil or charcoal on paper.

Bucky wonders what his Steve’s art is like now, and the wondering comes with a keen and sharp stab of missing him. He’s glad of Cap’s company, he is, loves him like he does any and every Steve, but he wishes his Steve was here too.

“It’s interesting, seeing Banner and the Hulk as one person, kind of,” murmurs Cap. “Makes me realizes there’s always been a lot of the Hulk in Banner, and a lot of Banner in the Hulk."

He moves on to a beautifully shaded sketch of the lake next, and keeps up a running commentary about how inspiring the animated movies he and Bucky had watched together were, how much he admired the lovely and detailed landscapes, and it all quiets Bucky’s mind for a while, letting him drift on the sounds of Cap’s pencil as he watches Cap bring peaceful nature scenes to life.

“You can sleep if you want, Buck. You look tired,” says Cap softly, not looking away from his sketchpad. “Get some shuteye, I’ve got this watch.”

“I know,” says Bucky, and closes his eyes. “But you can’t protect me from the shit that’s in my head.”

The icy undertow is still there, still ready to drag him down, still sapping all his strength with the effort to stay afloat. That undertow always roils and rushes with images, memories, terrors. He’s tried convincing himself that it’s all over, it’s the past, it’s done, but the thing about amnesia is, it kind of fucks with your experience of time. Things aren’t ever over, not when remembering makes it as if they’re happening all over again, for the first time.

Making amends, forgiving himself, moving on…all of that seems impossible, when Bucky can barely manage to keep his head above these dark waters.

“Maybe not,” concedes Cap. “I’ll be here with you though. You don’t have to bear it all alone. It’s like you told me, after my ma died: you don’t have to get by on your own.”

Bucky dozes and Cap gets through a couple more sketches before another Steve joins them.

“Hey Buck, brought you some lunch!” a Steve calls out from the direction of the kitchen.

Old Steve, Bucky decides. Or hopes, anyway, given his doubts about any of the other Steves’ or Stella’s culinary abilities. He shakes off his lingering drowsiness, and stops using Cap as a pillow.

“You up for talking to him?” asks Cap, peering at Bucky with poorly hidden concern. “I can tell him to leave the food and go.”

“Nah, it’s alright,” Bucky says, marshals what strength he’s got, and gets up to head for the kitchen, where Old Steve greets him with a smile as he sets a big pot of something on the kitchen table. Whatever it is, it smells delicious and familiar, and something about the aroma makes Bucky instinctively relax.

“You didn’t have to bring me lunch,” Bucky says. “But, uh, thanks.”

“Figured it was a comfort food kind of day,” says Old Steve, giving Bucky a onceover that’s both concerned and assessing. Bucky’s glad he took a shower earlier so that he at least looks slightly less terrible than he feels. “So I brought you some stew, with fresh bread.”

Bucky still hasn’t got much of an appetite, but he should probably eat something anyway.

“It smells really good,” says Cap, already pulling dishes and silverware from the cupboards and drawers, and Bucky nods in agreement.

“Plenty for you too,” Old Steve tells Cap, and they all sit down to eat.

The stew tastes as good as it smells, and it’s hearty and meaty, simply and richly flavored with garlic and herbs. Enough of Bucky’s appetite returns that finishing a first bowl, and then a second, isn’t a trial, and with every spoonful, the taste and smell grow more and more familiar. He’s eaten this before, he’s pretty sure; this isn’t just any stew.

Bucky frowns down into the bowl. “This tastes familiar. Why does this taste familiar?”

When he looks up, Cap isn’t fast enough to hide his briefly stricken expression. Old Steve just smiles at Bucky, soft and sweet, the creased wrinkles on his face turning the smile deeper, silent proof that smiles carved these lines in the first place. And that’s good, that’s a comfort that’s just as warm as the stew.

“It’s your ma’s recipe, Buck,” says Old Steve. Oh. Fuck, Bucky didn’t remember, how could he not remember— “Me and Peg made pots and pots of the stuff for you—for our Buck—after we brought him home. Neither of us was a great cook at the time, we managed to mess it up the first few times, but Buck was so damn skinny, and he couldn’t stomach much, but he could usually manage this stew. So we kept practicing ‘till we got it right. Figured it’d be the same for you.”

“Thank you,” Bucky whispers.

“I’ve left the recipe and a few others for you and your Steve, I figure that can’t possibly count as timeline contamination,” adds Old Steve briskly. He refills Bucky’s bowl. As the rich aroma rises, another sense memory rises with it: the cool press of his mother’s lips to his forehead, her laughing admonishment to let the soup cool a bit, darling. “You’re looking worn thin, you gotta eat more.”

Bucky sniffs, and blinks tears away. “You’ve turned into such a grandma in your old age, Rogers,” he says, and eats another mouthful of the stew as Old Steve beams gently at him.

The stew doesn’t fix anything. No more memories return, he doesn’t feel magically happy. But it fills him up and warms him, and for now, that’s enough, it’s a ray of light bright enough and close enough that it’s worth swimming upwards for.

Cap Wolf arrives just as they’re finishing lunch, and he comes bearing dessert: a huge bowl filled to the brim with wild blackberries.

“Found ‘em in the woods,” he says. “Thought you might like ‘em, Buck.”

Old Steve leaves, pressing a fond kiss to Bucky’s temple on his way out that Bucky wants to protest but ends up leaning into, and Cap goes too, flashing him one last hopeful smile, leaving Bucky with Cap Wolf, who’s staring at him with solemn concern, his nostrils flaring. God, Bucky does not even want to know what Cap Wolf’s werewolf nose is telling him about Bucky’s sad sack state right now. At least he showered off the stale fear sweat of last night’s nightmares.

“Do you guys have a Bucky sitting schedule or something?” asks Bucky.

“Or something,” says Cap Wolf peaceably, nodding. He sets the bowl on the kitchen table and sits down. “C’mon, have some berries. They’re good.”

“I don’t think I’ve had blackberries since before the war,” Bucky says.

Bucky picks one out of the bowl, plump and ripe enough that just touching it stains his fingers purple, and pops it into his mouth. It’s perfect: sweet and the slightest bit tart, still sun-warm, the essence of summer. It’s almost overwhelming, how good it tastes. His eyes flutter closed, and he sighs.

“See? It’s good,” says Cap Wolf with a satisfied smile.

“It is,” Bucky confirms. “Thank you.” He pops another berry into his mouth; somehow, it tastes just as good as the first, if not better. “We should save some for Steve. Uh, my Steve, I mean.”

“Sure,” says Cap Wolf, and scoops a couple handfuls into another bowl, setting it aside.

“What else did you find in the woods?” asks Bucky. “Not Little Red Riding Hood, I hope.”

Cap Wolf laughs and rolls his eyes. “Like I haven’t heard that one before. No, no fairy tales. Just normal forest stuff. There’s a real pretty stream a couple miles away though…”

Cap Wolf is better than a nature documentary, and before Bucky knows it, he’s learned all about some evidently intense beaver drama, and they’ve almost finished the bowl of berries between them, their fingertips stained a deep purple. The color lingers on Cap Wolf’s lips too, makes them look just as tempting and bitable as the berries. Which is, wow, an inappropriate thing to think.

“Shoulda put my prosthetic back on and used that hand,” says Bucky ruefully, as he and Cap Wolf try to wash the color out at the kitchen sink. It’s tough with just one hand, but Cap Wolf helps, brisk and unfussy, and then he chivvies Bucky to bed the same way.

“You need more rest,” he declares. “You smell worn out, Buck. You look it too.”

“Thanks,” says Bucky drily. “Didn’t have much luck with sleep last night.”

“Bad dreams?”

Bucky nods. “They wouldn’t stop.”

The dark undertow of last night’s awful dreams hasn’t gone anywhere, though it’s maybe a little more distant now, lapping at the edges of his mind, ready to pull him under again. Mentally treading water to stay above that tow is still taking most of his energy right now, for all that he has precious little to show for it. Like, hooray, he showered, he ate, he talked a little. Great job managing the bare minimum, Barnes.

“Just lie down with me,” Cap Wolf urges. “It helps my Bucky, it’ll help you too.”

Bucky’s about to protest that Steve’s presence last night didn’t exactly keep the nightmares at bay, but then there’s the odd, almost crossed-eyes sensation/sight of Cap Wolf transforming into his wolf form, human one moment and wolf the next. He hops onto the bed, and when Bucky follows, he drapes his heavy, furry weight half on top of Bucky.

It should feel suffocating, but it doesn’t. It just feels good, makes everything go quiet and easy in a way that might as well be a life raft keeping him safely above the dark and cold undertow in his head. He buries a hand in Cap Wolf’s fur, clutching it in a loose grip, and takes a few shaky breaths in sheer relief. He shivers, as if his muscles have been expending physical effort, and now, freed of the necessity to keep Bucky afloat on their own, they turn weak and limp. Cap Wolf nuzzles his cheek, and his cold nose makes Bucky laugh.

“Alright, alright. Let’s try it your way.”

Whether it’s the pressure of Cap Wolf’s comfortable weight on him, or just the novelty of cuddling with a damn wolf, Bucky drops off quickly, lulled by the oddly primal sense of safety in hearing the soft huffs of Cap Wolf’s breath and the warmth of his silky fur. The undertow doesn’t take him, thank god, and he drifts gently in dreamless sleep until he wakes again a couple hours later, judging by the light.

He feels steadier for the sleep, but he doesn’t want to get up yet, not when he’s warm, and the sunlight is inching across the bed, and Cap Wolf is a patient, restful presence beside him, nuzzling close to Bucky as he slowly strokes his thick fur. This is a kind of peace Bucky’s Steve hasn’t often slowed down enough to appreciate, as far as Bucky knows, and Bucky misses him, wishes he was here too.

“Is it weird if I think being a werewolf has been really good for you?” he muses, and Cap Wolf snorts. “Thanks for the nap, Steve.”

They laze together long enough that the patch of sunlight has almost moved all the way across the big four-poster bed. It’s meditative, almost, and it’s a stillness Bucky’s pretty sure his Steve wouldn’t be able to stand, at least not yet, anyway. Wolf instincts are different, Bucky supposes. And it’s nice to have the company, furry or not, even if they’re doing literally nothing together. Maybe Bucky can coax his Steve into this kind of peace. It’d be good for both of them.

Huh. Come to think of it, maybe this is the kind of rest his therapists in Wakanda kept going on about while he kept insisting on needing to be useful.

After a few minutes of telling himself he’ll get up in a minute, really, Bucky hears someone trying to quietly open the front door. They do not succeed at keeping quiet, nor are they particularly successful at sneaking around the cabin. It briefly gets his heart rate up, his muscles tensing in anticipation of a fight, until he realizes that Cap Wolf’s ears are doing little more than giving a lazy twitch. So it’s a Steve then.

“I’m awake, you don’t need to sneak around,” Bucky calls out, and a few seconds later, an apologetic Commander Rogers appears in the doorway. “You’re very bad at sneaking,” Bucky informs him.

Cap Wolf woofs softly in agreement, and presses up to nuzzle against Bucky’s face in a friendly kind of way. Bucky gives him a thorough scritch behind the ears and over his fluffy ruff, then refusing to overthink it, presses a kiss to the top of his furry head. Cap Wolf yips quietly, a happy little noise, and leaves with one last nuzzle against Bucky’s cheek, and a nod at a bemused Commander Rogers. 

Time for a shift change in the clusterfuck of Steves’ Bucky sitting schedule, it seems. Bucky would be more annoyed about being managed like this, but it actually hasn’t been that bad. It’s a hell of a lot better than a day of losing time and dissociating, that’s for damn sure.

“In my defense, there’s not much stealth involved in being an astronaut,” says Commander Rogers, leaning on the doorjam with a grin. “I didn’t want to wake you in case you were asleep. How are you doing, Buck? Your Steve said you had a rough night.”

This feels a little too close to a parent checking up on him, to say nothing of how dumb it feels to tell the disgustingly well-adjusted Commander Rogers any variation on, well, sometimes I’m just too fucking sad and tired and fucked up to function properly. Bucky knows that by any objective measure, he has plenty of reason for all that, but it still feels kind of shameful and embarrassing, and it’s an old, ingrained habit to avoid letting Steve see him hurt.

“Uh, yeah, didn’t sleep so great,” Bucky says. “Cap Wolf is a great napping buddy though.”

Commander Rogers shakes his head. “A werewolf version of me, who’d have ever imagined,” he says with a wondering chuckle. “You up for a walk?” He peers closely at Bucky, his brow furrowing. “Or we could stay here, if you want.”

“A walk,” Bucky decides.

The nap has given him enough energy for that, and maybe then Commander Rogers will stop looking so worried.

It’s a beautiful day out, the day’s warmth lingering and pooling in these late afternoon hours, the lake serene and quietly buzzing with life: the hum of insects, the calling of birds, the sloshing of water. Getting fresh air seems like such a cliche platitude that every time, Bucky is somewhat chagrined to remember how much it really does make him feel better.

He and Commander Rogers amble in comfortable silence for a few minutes, until the Commander asks, “How are you, Buck? Really?”

They’ve reached the lakeshore by now, and Bucky crouches down to pick up a rock for skipping. He sends it across the water with a flick of his wrist, and watches the ripples of a dozen skips form and dissipate.

“Fine,” Bucky says, automatic. “Tired. But I’m fine.”

Commander Rogers exhales sharply, and when Bucky glances over at him, he’s surprised to see a flash of stormy temper in his expression.

“Don’t bullshit me,” says the Commander. “That’s the same thing you told me through the whole damn war, and I let myself believe it, because I had no idea how to help you. But I know better now. I know you always tried to be strong for me, but I—your Steve—he doesn’t need you to be strong, or even fine. He needs you to be honest. He needs you to let him be there for you.”

Bucky laughs, mirthless. He picks up another rock to skip: 15 bounces across the water this time.

“I’m not trying to be strong, the bar is not that high. I’m trying to—to be a person. I’m trying to get through the fucking day.”

“Then let your Steve help you get through the fucking day,” says Commander Rogers, mulish.

“Hey, I’m letting half a dozen Steves help me get through this fucking day,” protests Bucky.

He only needs one of them though, says a quiet voice inside of him, and the familiar ache of missing his Steve comes again.

“And have you told any of them what’s going on in here?” asks Commander Rogers, with a stinging  flick of his fingers to the side of Bucky’s head.

“Ow!” Bucky glares at Commander Rogers, who just raises an unimpressed eyebrow and glares right back.

“Because ‘I’m fine’ is not what’s going on in there.”

“What’s going on in here is not fit for public consumption.”

“Since when am I the public?” retorts Commander Rogers, and Bucky can’t help but laugh.

Disgustingly well-adjusted or not, Commander Rogers is still Steve, and Bucky’s glad to see he’s still got some of the same belligerent fire.

“Yeah, okay, I hear you,” he says. “I just—it’s bad enough how much this shit hurts me. I hate letting it hurt anyone else too. I don’t want—it’s my shit, you know? Steve shouldn’t have to deal with it. I can handle it on my own.”

Commander Rogers chuckles ruefully, shaking his head. “We’re too much alike sometimes, Buck,” he says.

“What do you mean?” asks Bucky, blinking in surprise.

“All those times I was sick and struggling, I never wanted you to know,” admits Commander Rogers. “I used to think, bad enough that I was stuck with a sickly body that never worked right, I shouldn’t make it your problem too. I wanted to protect you, I guess, the way you want to protect me from your pain now.” Commander Rogers smiles wryly. “I couldn’t exactly hide getting sick, of course, so I was an awful patient instead. But you put up with me anyway.”

“Someone had to,” Bucky jokes, and then, more honestly, he says, “I wanted to. ’Til the end of the line, remember?”

“I remember,” says Commander Rogers softly. “And I remembered a lot of other things too, after I lost you. How you kept me company when I was sick, all the times you finished my fights, how you tried to get me to have some fun, dragging me out to movies and on double dates, convincing me to take those art classes, helping me train for the army even though I know you never wanted me to go…all the ways you loved me.”

This recitation leaves Bucky feeling embarrassed and exposed enough to want to reflexively deny Commander Rogers’ assertion, like, that can’t all count as loving Steve, any more than breathing can. Except he can’t deny it, of course.

“None of that was anything special, Steve,” he says instead, his face going hotter than the late afternoon sunshine can account for.

Commander Rogers smiles at him with fond exasperation. “Yeah, it was. And even if it wasn’t, it was special to me. The point is, you loved me, even when I was a grumpy asshole and even when I made it hard for you. And when I lost you, when I realized all those things you did were you loving me, one of the things that hurt the most was knowing I couldn’t do the same for you anymore. That I’d missed the chance to love you the way I should have.”

Does he mean…? No, he can’t mean that. This is all strictly brotherly love stuff.

“You loved me just fine, Steve,” Bucky mumbles, thinking of Steve’s boundless faith in him, his support for even the wildest of Bucky’s dreams, his steadfast company, and the little things too—the funny doodles he’d slip into Bucky’s notebook and lunch pail and pockets, meant to brighten Bucky’s long work days; the way he’d always spend money he should have saved on some fresh fruit for Bucky; the way Bucky’s clothes were always pressed and mended for him, no matter how much Steve teased him for being a vain peacock.

Commander Rogers shakes his head, his eyes shining. “Buck, take it from a guy who—who doesn’t have so many ways left to—to love you,” he says, his voice growing thick. “Let your Steve love you.”

Let your Steve love you. It sounds deceptively, seductively simple, the way Commander Rogers puts it. And maybe it is, maybe it will be, if Bucky stays, and Steve stays, and they have time together that isn’t stolen under the long shadow of the last battle, or the next. Maybe Commander Rogers is right, and Bucky doesn’t need to protect his Steve from his pain. He doubts it’ll mean the kind of love Stella seems to think he can have with his Steve, but that’s alright, Bucky doesn’t need that. Bucky isn’t even sure he wants that.

Thankfully, Commander Rogers seems satisfied that he’s made his point, and doesn’t push for any more confessions or revelations, and the rest of their walk passes in thoughtful, peaceful silence. When Commander Rogers walks Bucky back to the cabin, Stella is waiting for him.

“I thought we could make dinner together,” she says, with a winning, hopeful smile that Bucky does not have the willpower to resist, let alone deny. She is a daffodil in human form, and Bucky has the sudden, damn near psychic certainty that Stella’s Bucky must call her buttercup as an endearment, and that she hates and loves it in equal measure.

“Sure,” Bucky says, smiling back at her, and soon enough, he and Stella are in the kitchen, chopping vegetables for a roast.

“This is pretty much the only kind of cooking I can’t mess up,” confesses Stella. “Chopping things, sticking them in a pan, and roasting them.”

“Can’t really go too wrong with a roast,” Bucky agrees.

They work together easily, comfortably; Bucky would say it’s muscle memory, but he hasn’t got any of that with Stella, and Bucky has been shooing his Steve out of the kitchen as often as possible since 1935, out of sheer self-preservation. Things are just easy with Stella, and he thinks again that her version of Bucky has got to be the luckiest guy on the planet, if not the universe.

It helps too that she doesn’t ask him how he’s feeling, or shoot him any concerned looks, or in any way act like Bucky needs handling. Everything’s just normal, and it’s such a fucking relief.

When the food’s in the oven, Bucky makes them some coffee, and he almost adds Steve’s usual splash of cream, before he remembers: right, Stella might have different preferences.

“How do you take your coffee?” he asks.

“With about a third as much sugar as you take yours, sweetpea,” she says with fond asperity, and Bucky grins and brings her a mug, joining her at the kitchen table. “So, how’d your dance with Steve go?”

“Nice try at matchmaking,” he deflects. “Or should I say timeline contamination?”

Stella scoffs. “I’m not changing anything, or telling you anything you don’t already know. Just…trying to hurry things along.”

“There’s nothing to hurry along, Stella. Me and Steve had a good talk, it helped, but we’re just friends.”

Stella raises her eyebrows and takes a sip of coffee. “Uh huh, tell that to someone who hasn’t seen the way he looks at you.”

“Like I’m breaking his heart? Like he misses me? The old me, I mean.”

“Oh sweetheart,” says Stella, somehow how both merry and sympathetic. “That’s not why he’s looking at you like that. Or not only why. That look on his face, that’s yearning.”

“What?” says Bucky, nearly choking on his sip of coffee.

“All those pained looks, kind of soft and hurt? It’s yearning,” says Stella, widening her eyes in emphasis. “Pining. Longing, practically hungering for—“

“It is not!”

Stella lifts her chin and meets his eyes, stubborn and certain. “It absolutely is.”

“Stella—“

Stella continues, heedless, “It took me a while to realize, because me and my Bucky never managed to get much yearning in, since I was ten when we decided to get married—“

“Precocious, but adorable,” says Bucky, with a surge of something too sweet and wistful to be jealousy. Stella kicks him under the table and otherwise ignores the interruption.

“But when I realized, it was obvious. He’s pining away for you.”

Bucky crosses his arms and sits back in his chair. “I don’t buy it. Unless—did he tell you something—”

“No, and I’m only telling you this because if you won’t try for something more on your own account, that’s one thing, and I won’t try to convince you otherwise. You can take all the time you need, and you can decide you don’t want it, it’s your choice.” Stella leans forward, holding his eyes with steady faith. “But if you’re holding back because you think Steve isn’t in love with you?” Stella shakes her head. “Believe me, that’s not an issue.”

Stella drops the matter after that, which is good, because Bucky has no idea what to do with the knowledge, or if he even believes in it. Dinner is delicious, not that Bucky much notices, between all the food for thought Stella has given him and their easy conversation, though he has the forethought to save some food for his Steve.

It’s only when Stella leaves that she alludes to the reason she’s here, and even that is lightly done.

“I hope tonight’s a better night, Buck,” she says, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. “And that tomorrow’s better too.”

Every bad night or day feeds the fear that the balance will tip irrevocably, sinking him down into more dark, drowning days than good ones. And yet, the good days do come again, and this bad day has already turned into a much better one.

“Me too,” he tells her. “Thanks for dinner. And…I’ll think about what you told me.”

Bucky’s Steve texts him to let him know he’ll be back in a couple hours—battles are preferable to all these calls and conferences, but at least I get to yell at assholes—and Bucky figures he’ll have a couple Steveless hours to himself, which he tries not to mind, at this point, even if he does miss his Steve. A very bad night and bad morning have become—well, pretty much alright, by now. It’s no longer taking all his energy to tread water over the dark undertows in his head.

He’s just contemplating cracking open the mystery novel he’d started earlier when there’s a knock at the door. Bucky half expects Wilson now that the Steve rota has been exhausted—at least, he assumes it’s been exhausted, because the Captain isn’t likely to want to see him, and the Soldier—

Except it is the Soldier at the door, and, incongruously, he has a pie in his hands, a somewhat absurd sight given the contrast between the black tac gear he’s still wearing and the pie’s homey domesticity. He has much the same haggard and hollow-eyed look Bucky had seen in the mirror this morning, but he looks okay otherwise, and there’s even a small, if somewhat strained, smile on his lips.

“Got room for dessert?” he asks, and hands the pie over to Bucky. Apple, by the smell of it.

“Always,” says Bucky. “Uh, thanks. Wanna come in, have a slice with me?”

The Soldier nods, and Bucky leads him to the kitchen table, fetching some plates and silverware for the pie. The Soldier cuts them both generous slices, the filling redolent with the aroma of warm spices and apples.

“Thank you. For, uh, talking to me yesterday,” says the Soldier, after they’ve both taken a bite of the pie, which is quite possibly the most delicious pie Bucky has ever had, though he admittedly hasn’t had much pie these last few years.

“Holy shit, this is really good,” says Bucky. “And, uh, you’re welcome. Sorry if you had a rough night after that.”

The Soldier gives a one-shouldered shrug. “It is what it is. Wilson helped, actually. Your Steve helped you?”

Bucky nods. “And all the other Steves—and Stella—too. And now you.”

“This is nothing,” mutters the Soldier, looking down at his slice of his pie as he spears a piece of apple with his fork. “And anyway, the Captain made this pie for you. I’m just the messenger.”

“What? Seriously?”

“Yeah. Someone let slip that you were having a rough day, so he asked if he could make you something. Said this is—was—his Bucky’s favorite.”

Bucky blinks rapidly in a hopeless attempt to disperse the tears rising in his eyes. The Captain, who was hurting so badly, who was from some kind of awful hell world, heard Bucky wasn’t feeling well and baked him a pie. His Bucky’s favorite, which is also, honestly, kind of Bucky’s favorite too. It’s such an unexpected gift, a kindness unlooked for, and to think of the Captain doing it for him, when Bucky’s very existence hurts him and only makes the Captain’s loss harder to bear, when the Captain is missing his Bucky so much—

The Soldier looks alarmed. “The pie was not supposed to make you cry.”

“It’s just—so nice, and the Captain’s so sad, and he hasn’t got a Bucky to make pies for anymore—and it’s really good pie—“

“Aww, Buck,” murmurs the Soldier, before reaching across the table to give Bucky’s hand a stiff but sincere squeeze. “The pie was supposed to make you feel better.”

“It does,” says Bucky with a sniffle, because he feels so fucking cared for that it’s almost unbearable. He’s got no defenses against it. “It just makes me sad for the Captain too. I wish we could help him.”

The Soldier gets a too-familiar look on his face, the you’re breaking my heart look, his eyes bright and stricken, all the stern lines of his face softening, and it makes Bucky’s stomach sink.

Except then the Soldier says, “I miss you so much,” with so much desperate longing in his voice that it sounds as if it must hurt, and Bucky’s own throat aches in sympathy.

And then he realizes: oh. Stella’s right. This look on the Soldier’s face, on any Steve’s face, on his Steve’s face, it’s not heartbreak—or it’s not only heartbreak. It’s longing. 

“So find me, when you get back to your timeline,” says Bucky, giddy with the realization, and the fear that follows it.

The Soldier sets his jaw, his eyes burning with determination. “I will. I promise.”

Bucky exercises heroic restraint and does not eat the rest of the apple pie, saving it for his Steve. He should probably try to process the last day or so, think about the implications. He doesn’t. He goes back to bed with his mystery novel instead, and has figured out whodunnit by the time his Steve returns.

“Hey,” says Bucky, greeting him with a smile. Steve, who’d been coming into the bedroom, stands arrested in the doorway for a moment. “There’s dinner, if you haven’t eaten yet. And fresh blackberries and apple pie, if you want dessert.”

For a long moment, Steve says nothing, and the heartbreak—no, the longing—on his face is strong enough that it seems to exert its own magnetic field, tugging on Bucky, on the yearning he’s lived with so long he’s almost stopped noticing it.

“Thanks,” rasps Steve, and the odd moment fades, the magnetism between them subsiding to its usual, almost ignorable and steady pulse. 

Stella really is right. And Bucky doesn’t know what the hell he intends to do about it. 

Steve comes into the room properly, sits down on the edge of bed beside Bucky. “You look like you’re feeling better.”

“I am,” Bucky says, then shrugs and grimaces. “We’ll see how tonight goes though, I guess.”

He hopes for an okay night, if only for Steve’s sake. Steve’s eyes look almost bruised, those new lines around his mouth carved deep. Bucky sets his book aside, and resists the urge to cup Steve’s cheek.

“You look like you could do with some dinner, or some dessert,” he adds.

“I had dinner with Pepper and Natasha,” says Steve, then smiles. “But yeah, I could do with dessert.”

“Stay here,” Bucky says. “I’ll bring it to you.”

Steve raises an amused eyebrow, some of the weariness on his face easing. “Dessert in bed?”

“Treat yourself,” says Bucky firmly, a phrase Shuri likes to insist should be his life motto.

So he brings Steve the pie and the berries, and tells Steve about his day while Steve eats.

“Sounds like the other Steves helped a lot,” says Steve, eyes downcast as he chases the last few bits of apple filling in the pie tin.

“Yeah. I missed you though,” says Bucky, and Steve’s eyes snap up, surprised.

“Why?” Steve blurts out. “I mean—the other Steves—they helped you more than I ever could.”

Bucky frowns. “What? What do you mean? They didn’t do anything special. They just—stayed with me, kept me company, even though I wasn’t up for much. It was nice, but I still missed you.”

“You had a whole clusterfuck of Steves though,” Steve points out.

“But not my Steve,” he says, and Steve smiles, face flushing, adorably bashful in a way that turns that magnetic pull between them warm and bright. Bucky wants, suddenly, to kiss Steve, to let his lips brand the truth of his words onto Steve’s skin, mine mine mine and yours yours yours.

“I thought Cap Wolf was your favorite,” says Steve.

“Cap Wolf gets a few extra points for being so fluffy. You’re still leading in the points total though. Barely.”

Steve laughs. “I missed you too,” he says softly, and oh for fuck’s sake, now he’s looking guilty again.

Bucky sticks his hand over Steve’s face. “No, no guilty face,” he orders. “You’re doing what you have to do, and I wasn’t alone.”

“Alright,” Steve concedes, smiling again. He takes Bucky’s hand in his and lowers it from his face. He does not let go. Bucky finds he doesn’t mind. “No guilty face, see?”

It’s not that late, but after last night, they’re both disinclined to stay up, so they make an early night of it.

“Is there anything I can do? To help?” asks Steve, when they’re settled in bed together, not yet back to back, but facing each other in the dark. His eyes are shining with worry and care, and there is no guilt at all there, no heartbreak.

He needs you to be honest, Commander Rogers had said, and, let your Steve love you.

So Bucky says, honestly, “I don’t know. It’s like—the bad nights are like trying not to drown, like an undertow is going to pull me under, and the undertow is—you know. All of it, the—the nightmares, the memories, the Winter Soldier shit. It’s always there, but sometimes it’s—it’s like it was last night. It takes everything I’ve got to keep my head above water.”

“But you do. You keep your head above water,” says Steve quietly.

“I’m trying.”

Steve’s mouth twists into something too rueful and knowing to be called a smile. “Not much I can do other than be here, is there,” he says, his voice low, sounding as if he’s realizing the truth of the words as he says them. “There’s nothing to fight, nothing to fix.”

“Yeah,” whispers Bucky. “That’s—that’s pretty much it, yeah.”

“Then I’ll be here,” says Steve, resolute, and gentle with it. “I’m not going anywhere.”

And Bucky believes him.

It’s an okay night, thankfully. Some vaguely unsettling dreams and a couple memories, but Steve is there, and Bucky can swim clear of the dark undertow in his mind, even if he has to cling to Steve and gasp for breath afterwards. 

I’m here, you’re okay, I got you, murmurs Steve, and his arms around Bucky are more safety than salvation.

They both get some solid sleep in, though Bucky wakes earlier than he’d like. He doesn’t get up yet though. He watches Steve, still asleep. Some of the new lines on his face are finally smoothed out in sleep, and there is, as ever, something almost cherubic in the loveliness of his thick eyelashes, the plushness of his lips. He’s as beautiful as he’s always been to Bucky.

Is it an old desire that makes Bucky want to kiss those lips, or a new one? If Steve kisses him back, will he be kissing Bucky as he is now, or some memory of him?

Is it worth taking a risk to find out?

As the room fills with light, the colors shifting from blue to gold, Bucky does not find an answer.

Chapter Text

“Is it weird if I think this is the weirdest Steve we’ve gotten yet?” says Wilson.

“You’re saying the completely normal, not Captain America, no super soldier serum, didn’t grow up in the 30s version of me is weirder than Cap Wolf? Weirder than the Captain?” asks Steve. Bucky and Wilson both nod in unison, and Steve laughs, incredulous, before he sighs and nods too, rubbing at his forehead. “Yeah, no, he’s definitely the weirdest Steve.”

It probably doesn’t say great things about any of their lives that they think this Steve—dubbed Grant, because he’d vociferously objected to Stevie, and they’re running out of things to call the new additions to the clusterfuck of Steves—is the weirdest of all the Steves. Grant was born in the 90s. The 1990s. Grant has never heard of the super soldier serum, or Thanos; his New York has never been invaded by aliens. Grant has the physique Bucky imagines his Steve should have had before the serum, had he and Sarah Rogers had access to modern medicine, so he’s only a handful of inches shorter than Steve, and he’s not so much skinny and sickly as he is lean and wiry. He wears glasses, and he dresses like any twenty or thirty-something you might see on the streets of a big city. He’s an artist, but, he confesses wryly, he has plenty of side hustles to pay the bills: food delivery, website design, and a part-time gig at a print shop. He has never had any interest in or desire to join the army, though he approves of punching Nazis, and is happy to do so himself.

He is, pretty much, just a guy. A normal civilian, leading a normal life, with a normal job and normal friends.

And he does not know Bucky.

“At least we don’t really have to worry about timeline contamination with him?” says Bucky. 

The only Steves Grant really needs to avoid are Commander Rogers and Cap Wolf, since Grant’s 2022 knowledge could potentially contaminate their timelines. Grant’s timeline is different enough from the other Steves’ timelines though that it likely won’t matter what they do or don’t give away to each other. 

“That doesn’t mean he should be wandering around on his own, or that we should just lock him in a cabin or something,” says Wilson, then looks at Bucky for some reason.

“What?” says Bucky, defensive. “I didn’t suggest that! He can hang out with Stella, or Old Steve. Or you! Or our Steve! He’s taking things pretty well, I think he’ll be fine.”

There’d been some punching and shouting, sure—Steve’s black eye has only just healed—but the situation is sufficiently insane that Grant has accepted it must be real, because all the other options are either worse, or even less believable. Bucky’s not sure what else they can do for the poor guy.

“I’m busy with the Captain and the Soldier, and Steve’s busy with end of the world recovery shit,” Wilson tells Bucky. He scribbles something in the notebook he’s carrying. “So I’m adding him to your schedule of Steves.”

“There’s a schedule?” says Bucky.

Steve peers over Sam’s shoulder at the notebook. “How come I get the least amount of time with Bucky! He’s my Bucky!”

“You get evenings and all night with him, don’t whine,” says Sam, elbowing Steve away. “Bucky loves all his Steves equally.”

“I don’t care for Old Steve,” quips Bucky, because he’s seen this meme, and Wilson laughs as Steve rolls his eyes.

“Time spent asleep doesn’t count!” says Steve, pouting now.

“Well, have some compassion for these other Steves, Steve, some of them don’t have any Buckys at all,” chides Wilson.

“He’s got a point there,” Bucky says, and Steve’s pout turns into a scowl. “But Grant’s never even met me, I’m as much a stranger to him as anyone else here.”

“Sure, but you’re a Bucky, and he’s a Steve, and that means you’ll probably get along, and you can make this whole crazy situation a bit better for the poor guy,” says Wilson

“We have literally nothing in common,” Bucky points out, very reasonably in his opinion. “Again, I’m a total stranger to him, and I’m, you know. A semi-stable ex-assassin.”

Bucky’s not sure how to even interact with a Steve who he shares no history with. Even if one or both of them have scrambled memories, their history is still there, it still ties them together. And even if there’s a Steve without that, then any Steve with the serum, or who grew up in the 30s, or who went to war, still has plenty of life experiences in common with Bucky. But a Steve like Grant, who’s grown up in modern times, who’s never even heard of the serum, who’s never had to fight outside of a back alley or a bar…why on earth would he even want to talk to Bucky? How can Bucky talk to him? Bucky is self-aware enough to know that he no longer has the social skills for this.

Steve narrows his eyes at Bucky. “But you’re still Bucky, and he’s still me. Sam’s right, he’ll feel a lot better if you spend some time with him.”

“I have no idea what to even say to him!”

“Befriend him the same way you befriended your Steve,” suggests Wilson.

Bucky crosses his arms and glares at Wilson. “By punching the bully who was stealing his lunch money?”

“Awww, that’s adorable,” says Wilson with a grin. “You’ll figure it out, I’m sure Grant will be weirdly obsessed with you in no time at all.”

“Hey!” Steve protests, and Bucky rolls his eyes, even as his general chest region feels all warm. It’s nice to think Grant will like him, even if it is unlikely.

“Fine, but if he’s creeped out by me, then his slot on the schedule is going back to my Steve.”

“Hey, it’s, uh, Bucky, right?” says Grant, when Bucky joins him at the picnic tables near the lake.

“Yeah. Hi.”

Seeing Grant is almost but not quite like deja vu. He doesn’t look exactly like his Steve looked before the serum: his face doesn’t have the pale almost-gauntness that had lingered on Steve after all his bouts of illness, and he’s trim and lean, rather than skinny. He looks healthy, everything about him a silent testament to the marvels of late 20th century medicine, and probably to vaccines too.

It’s a good look. Bucky has the urge to tuck Grant into his side, an arm around those narrow shoulders, but he sits across from Grant instead.

“Are you here to babysit me and make sure I don’t run screaming into the woods?” asks Grant.

“Kinda. Do you want to run screaming into the woods?”

Grant chuckles, and shrugs helplessly. “No? I don’t know. I still feel like this is all a really weird dream that I’m going to wake up from any second now. I keep trying to figure out what it, like, symbolizes.” Grant meets his eyes as his fingers tap nervously at the picnic table, his cheeks going very slightly pink. “But, uh, I don’t think I could dream you up. Unless I saw, I don’t know, some ludicrously beautiful model or actor or something, and based you off of him—”

Bucky smiles, delighted and so damn charmed he doesn’t know what to do with it. God, Grant is adorable. Bucky’s always loved it when Steve’s usual dignity falls apart into this kind of sweet, nervous babble. 

“Oh god,” whispers Grant, wide-eyed and staring at Bucky, his face getting redder and redder. He clears his throat. “Yeah, nope, I definitely could not dream that up.”

“Thanks, I guess,” says Bucky, his own cheeks heating in sympathy. “So, in the interest of honesty, I feel like I should tell you that I met my Steve when I was eight, and he was seven, and I punched some little jerk for stealing his lunch money, and we’ve been best friends ever since. I’m, uh, not sure how to talk to a version of you who hasn’t known me since we were kids.”

“You’re doing okay so far,” says Grant. “But if someone tries to steal my lunch money, I’ll know who to call.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “Yeah? Because my Steve punched me right after that, said he had him on the ropes.”

Grant laughs, wincing. “Yeah, that, uh. That sounds like me as a kid,” he says. “So, uh, Bucky? Is that a nickname, or—”

“Short for Buchanan. James Buchanan Barnes. I know it’s kinda a weird name nowadays, but…”

“There are about a million Jameses,” says Grant. “I like it though. It suits you.”

“Thanks,” Bucky mumbles, more touched than he ought to be. He’s tried hard to be Bucky again, to reclaim this name. It’s nice to hear that it fits from someone who can’t compare him to who he used to be.

“You don’t have to keep me company if you’ve got, you know, more important things to do,” says Grant. “Or even if you don’t, I figure there are plenty of other versions of me you could be talking to instead right now, ones that know you.”

“Yeah, there’s a whole schedule, my best friend services are in high demand right now. But you’ve got the next couple hours, if you want ‘em.”

Grant smiles. “And what’s included in the best friend services?”

“Telling you when your plans are dumb, making sure you remember to have fun, listening to you rant about whatever bully or asshole is giving you or the world grief, punching assholes with you, making you laugh with my sparkling wit, praising your art…”

“That all sounds pretty great, not gonna lie,” says Grant. “Making sure I remember to have fun, huh? I have fun, I’m a fun guy.”

The wry, lopsided curve of Grant’s lips suggests he knows he’s stretching the truth, and is inviting Bucky in on the joke.

“Yeah? When’s the last time you went out, and what’d you do?”

“I, uh—” Grant squints like he’s trying to remember, and Bucky laughs softly, shaking his head. “I went bowling! With some friends from art school!” finishes Grant triumphantly.

“And when was that?”

“A couple months ago,” admits Grant. “I’ve had some commissions to work on, and there was this mutual aid thing I was doing graphics for, and canvassing for the affordable housing initiative on the ballot—”

Yeah, that’s Steve, thinks Bucky fondly, beaming at him. Grant’s recitation falters, and he goes wide-eyed and pink-cheeked. “What? What’s that look for?” asks Grant.

“Nothing. Just—you’re always you. Wanting to help people, stick up for them. It’s nice to see.”

“I’m not exactly saving the world. Not like your Steve, or some of these other Steves. One of them is an astronaut, for god’s sake.”

“Yeah, the Commander was the first person on the moon in his timeline.”

“What?!”

“It’s ridiculous, he’s got a beautiful wife, two kids—he’s disgustingly well-adjusted.”

“God,” marvels Grant, with the same mingled disgust and awe that Steve tends to display towards the Commander. “Guess Ma was right about how I could be anything I wanted to be. Talk about not living up to my potential.”

“Don’t worry, my Steve feels pretty inferior compared to that guy too,” says Bucky, and Grant’s answering smile is wan. “But hey, listen, don’t compare yourself to all these other Steves, okay? Yeah, some of ‘em have saved the world in some, uh, alarmingly literal ways.” He leans in to hold Grant’s eyes. “But the stuff you do? Helping your community? That’s important too, and it’ll keep you a hell of a lot safer and happier. And anyway, it’s not all world saving. My Steve ran support groups for a while.”

There’s an odd relief in knowing there’s a version of Steve that isn’t out there fighting the biggest bullies in the universe, that Grant is doing good, important work that seems to make him happy. Maybe, hopes Bucky, it can be the same for his Steve.

“Pep talks and being a hype man are part of the best friend services too, I see,” says Grant, his smile more genuine now. He shakes his head. “Those other mes are real lucky bastards to have you.”

“Not all of them,” says Bucky, with a shrug. “I’m dead in the Commander’s timeline, and the Captain’s. Maybe in Old Steve’s too, he’s been squirrelly about it. And I’m presumed dead in Cap’s, but that cat’s out of the bag now, so he’s gonna go back and find me.”

“Huh.”

“Be grateful for your very normal life, is all I’ll say about all that. And hey, I probably exist in your timeline too, no reason you can’t find me.”

Shit, does this count as timeline contamination? Hopefully not. Bucky wonders where the hell that alternate version of him is, if he’s not with Steve: is he a soldier? Or is he in Brooklyn, and it’s pure chance that Grant and that Bucky haven’t crossed paths yet? Is that Bucky leading just as blessedly normal a life as Grant is?

“Yeah, that won’t be unhinged at all, finding your alternate self and saying we’re best friends in countless other timelines,” says Grant wryly, and Bucky laughs.

“Maybe try punching a guy who’s stealing his lunch money instead,” he suggests, and then they’re both laughing and smiling stupidly at each other.

“Okay, I’m pretty impressed with the best friend services so far,” says Grant, damn near twinkling at him. “Except, do you only remind me to have fun, or do you have fun with me? What’s there to do around here anyway, other than…woodsy stuff?”

“City boy,” teases Bucky. “What, you don’t wanna go on a hike, or go fishing, or, uh…”

Grant puts his elbow on the picnic table and holds his chin in his hand. “Yeah, you don’t know what people do for fun in the woods either.”

“I’m also old and tired,” Bucky says wryly, and ignores Grant’s polite scoff at this characterization. “So mostly I’ve just been watching movies and reading and taking walks with the Steves. Uh…there’s some games and cards in the cabin, I think? We could play something.”

“Yeah, alright,” says Grant, grinning at Bucky. He looks—tempting, is the only word for it. Here in the sunshine, with his hair flopping over his glasses, his eyes bluer than the sky above them, Bucky is horribly, embarrassingly tempted to lean across the table and kiss him. Not even on the lips, but on the tip of his slightly crooked beaky nose. Jesus Christ, he’s got it bad. “Sure.”

There aren’t so many options for two-person games in the cabin’s game cabinet, and Bucky rejects a two-person game of Pictionary on the basis of Grant having an unfair advantage, which leaves them with Jenga, a game where you build a tower of blocks, then remove blocks and add them back to the top one by one until someone collapses the tower. This seems too simple to offer much challenge or interest, but it proves to be surprisingly compelling, and they’re both pretty well-matched at it.

And it’s fun. It’s fun to play a game with Grant, and it’s fun to talk to him. Neither of them talk much about their pasts, so tragedy and trauma and wars don’t loom large between them. Grant has never mourned Bucky, has never even missed him, and Bucky has never run from Grant, or hurt him. They didn’t forge a friendship in the schoolyard, or on a battlefield. They don’t know each other, not really. But they like each other anyway.

The bitter thoughts that roil in that dark undertow in Bucky’s head say that of course, if Grant really knew him, if he knew what Bucky has been and what he’s done, he would react with pity at best. Bucky doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter, when set against the slowly building realization that it isn’t only the past that ties Bucky to Steve, that makes Bucky want him. It’s just—who he is. Who they are. With or without the serum, with or without the war, as a man, or as a woman, or as a goddamned werewolf, Bucky will love Steve and want him and even just plain like him. 

And Steve will love him too. All those Steves, and each of them loves Bucky, even on Bucky’s bad days, even exactly as he is now. Maybe they don’t all love Bucky in the same way, maybe they don’t all want him. But, after yesterday, Bucky can’t deny that they love him, or that his Steve loves him too.

It seems monumentally stupid now, to have ever doubted any of that.

“Your turn,” says Grant, startling Bucky out of his belated epiphany. “Uh, Bucky? You okay? It’s your turn.”

“Yeah, sorry. I’m good,” says Bucky, unable to keep the smile off his face.

“Uh huh,” says Grant slowly, narrowing his eyes at Bucky. “What’s this look about? Jenga’s fun and all, but it should not be making you this happy.”

Bucky laughs. “Sorry, I just—I realized something, is all,” he says, beaming at Grant, and Grant smiles back, looking somewhat dazed.

The tower of blocks is, by now, quite precarious. Grant is a canny Jenga player, and as good a tactician as any Steve, so he plays in a way designed to maximize the possibility of Bucky’s next move being the one to bring the whole tower toppling down. A single block two-thirds of the way down the tower is currently holding up the whole thing. Bucky slides it out swiftly, unhesitating, and drops the block back onto the top. The tower doesn’t even wobble, still standing tall on the coffee table.

“That was hot,” mutters Grant, blinking at the tower in surprise. “Why was that hot?”

Bucky grins at him. “Your move,” he says, and Grant scowls at him, opening his mouth to say something, but he’s interrupted by someone barging into the cabin.

“Buck? Is Grant still with you?” he calls out.

It’s Bucky’s Steve, looking urgent and harried as he reaches the cabin’s living room.

“Yeah, obviously. What’s up, has another Steve shown up?”

Steve shakes his head. “No, no—it’s the opposite. The Steves are starting to disappear, they’re going back. Cap and Old Steve are gone already—“

Grant’s eyes go wide, and before Bucky can say anything to reassure him, he lunges across the coffee table, grabs the front of Bucky’s shirt to pull him close, and kisses him. It’s little more than a warm and enthusiastic press of lips against his, so sudden that Bucky doesn’t even close his eyes, and he can see the furrow of determination on Grant’s brow and the way Grant’s eyes are squeezed shut.

Bucky barely has a second to kiss back, and then Grant is pulling away, flushed and apologetic, a bit wild-eyed.

“Sorry, sorry, I know I should have asked, I don’t even know if you have a partner, but—I had to. If this is my only chance, if I never meet you in my timeline—I had to do it at least once,” babbles Grant. He laughs once, short and sharp, his eyes roving rapidly across Bucky’s face as if to memorize him. “This has been the best date I’ve been on in years, and it isn’t even a date!”

“It’s alright,” Bucky manages to say, through the butterflies rising up from his stomach and into his chest, a fluttering that seems to replace his heartbeat. He brings a hand up to cup Grant’s cheek, and leans in for a softer, sweeter kiss. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’ll be your only chance.”

And then, with little more than a tingling against Bucky’s skin and an odd shimmer in the air, Grant disappears.

Bucky doesn’t think he’s ready for whatever look is on Steve’s face right now, so he stays where he is and doesn’t look. Either he’s just ruined everything, or saved it, and if he doesn’t look yet, then he won’t have to know which it is.

After a seemingly eternal few seconds of silence, Steve says, “I can’t believe the version of me that doesn’t even know you got to kiss you before I did!”

Bucky stands and faces Steve, who is, to Bucky’s slowly increasing delight and terror and relief, looking indignant and somewhat pole-axed, and more amused by the second.

So amused, in fact, that he laughs, then groans. “God, I’ve been twisting myself into knots, and he just did it. Grant’s braver than I’ve ever been when it comes to you, Buck. And he doesn’t—didn’t—even know you! You’re some guy he’s just met!”

Now Steve sounds both scandalized and impressed.

“That, uh. That might’ve made it easier on him, actually. Less, uh, pressure,” says Bucky, laughing too, before he sobers again, nervous about where this is going, if they’re really going to do this. “Steve. I’ve been twisting myself into knots too.”

“Yeah?” 

Bucky nods, and the hope lighting up Steve’s eyes gives Bucky the courage to be honest. 

“Yeah. I—I’ve wanted you for so long. And I spent a while confused about that. Because I haven’t—I haven’t really been interested in anything to do with, uh, romance or anything like that since—you know. So I thought—I worried—that wanting you was just—a memory. An echo of something some other version of me used to feel. And I was afraid that you were still waiting for the old me, and I can’t be that guy.”

“I don’t want the old you, Buck,” says Steve, his voice low and shaky. “I just want you. But, uh—are you—is you wanting me just an echo, or do you—are you—”

“It isn’t,” Bucky rushes to say, and Steve’s throat visibly works in a nervous swallow. “Meeting Grant made me realize that. Because we were practically strangers to each other, barely had a damn thing in common, but we still liked each other. And all those other Steves too, and Stella, I still—I still loved them, still wanted them. Because they were you. And they all loved me too.”

“So do I,” says Steve, heart in his eyes.

“I know,” Bucky says, and finally, Steve steps closer, and so does Bucky, until they’re in arm’s reach of each other.

“Grant’s just about the only Steve that didn’t read me the riot act about you, you know,” says Steve with a crooked, wavering smile. “Old Man Steve lectured me about not taking proper care of you, and Cap thought I was insane for not spending every second I can with you. Commander Rogers said I’d be wasting about half a dozen miracles if I didn’t make sure you knew I loved you, if I didn’t show it to you every minute of every day. Cap Wolf called me an idiot, and Stella said I was making pining look like a terminal illness.”

Bucky laughs, and Steve steps closer still, wiping a few stray tears from Bucky’s face. Steve’s expression turns solemn and almost reverent, his touch as gentle and tremulous as if he’s touching something far more precious than Bucky’s bearded cheek.

“And the Captain—he said I was the worst kind of coward, not owning up to this, not loving you the way you deserve,” says Steve, his voice shaking now. “And then the Soldier said I didn’t deserve you, and you know what, no argument there, not with either of them.”

“Steve, no—“ starts Bucky, but Steve just shakes his head.

“I’ve been a coward, Buck. I’ve been so scared of fucking up, of losing you, that I’ve been running from this, and from you. And then I lost you again, and I—I didn’t know how to stop being scared, when I got you back. God, I’m still scared.”

“That’s okay,” says Bucky. “I’m—I’m scared too, Steve. I wasn’t ready to—to be your friend again, much less anything else, for a long time. I’m sorry for that. But I think I’m ready now.”

Steve rests his forehead against Bucky’s, and Bucky brings his hands to Steve’s waist, his neck, to keep Steve close.

“I don’t know how to do this,” whispers Steve, and they’re so close to each other that the words reach Bucky as breath before sound, an airy caress against his lips.

“Neither do I,” admits Bucky. “But I think—I think that could be a good thing. We can figure it out together, it’ll be—something new. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with the past, or those other versions of us, it can just be us, now, the way we are now.”

“Okay,” says Steve, closing his eyes with a sigh. 

With his hands on Steve, Bucky feels it when some aching tension, some heavy weight, finally leaves Steve’s frame, and then, smoother and sweeter than any dance, they come together in a kiss. It’s a tentative thing at first, soft and careful. It reminds Bucky of nothing so much as nursing a kindling spark into a flame, turning the flickering, trembling warmth between them into a brighter and deeper heat with every movement of their lips and tongues and hands.

Maybe it’s taken them both this long to break free of the last vestiges of the ice that’s carried them to this moment. Maybe Bucky’s been under the waves this whole time, sure that the current had carried him and Steve away from each other, only to finally break the surface of the water and see that Steve’s been here all along, reaching for him. Maybe they can finally make it safely to land—

“This is better than when Grant kissed you, right?” murmurs Steve between kisses, and Bucky grips Steve’s chin, the better to hold him still and glare at him.

“Steve, are you being serious right now? Are you competing with your alternate timeline self, who kissed me for, like, a second—“

Steve grins, then blinks wide, innocent eyes at him. “I just want to make sure I’m the best Steve I can be for you, some of those other Steves seemed like stiff competition—“

Bucky gently shoves Steve, walking him back towards the couch and tripping him onto it before climbing into his lap and cupping his face with his hands.

“Every time I was with one of them, I missed you, Steve. You’re my Steve. I’m your Bucky.”

Steve smiles up at him, adoring and bright. “As simple as that, huh?”

Bucky leans in to kiss the tip of Steve’s nose. “As simple as that,” he says, and Steve kisses him again, the little spark between them now well on its way to becoming an inferno. “But if you happened to find a werewolf to get bitten by, I wouldn’t be mad about it—“

Steve shouts with laughter, and kisses him and kisses him. “Oh yeah?” says Steve, breathless now. “And here I was thinking I’d take you to the moon for our first date.”

Then they’re both laughing too much to keep kissing, and their happiness is a wholly new thing: not a memory, or even a homecoming, but a new way to be Steve and Bucky. Bucky doesn’t know what their future will be, and that’s alright. They’ll figure it out together.