Steve Rogers
Flying out of Finland and it hits him.
A lightning bolt of clarity.
Suddenly it’s so absolutely obvious he can’t believe he hadn’t seen it sooner. The sort of intricate, living poetry and sadistic irony only Bucky Barnes could manage. That factory. In Austria. Where it all began. That’s where he’d be. That’s where he was leading them. That’s where he was waiting.
That’s where Steve would find him.
That’s when Bucky Barnes could finally come home.
“You see anything?” he calls over the comms to Sam. They’re close. So close. He can feel it.
The open channel was a mix of static and silence.
“Sam?”
“Yeah, Cap. I see something. But you’re not going to like it.”
Sgt. James Buchanan Barnes, 107th Infantry
1917-1945
Then, in bold Cyrillic script:
THE WINTER SOLDIER
1945-2014
“Unmarked, huh?” and he’s laughing, turning to Sam. “You never knew him. No one ever knew Buck like I did. Never knew what a dramatic pain in the ass Bucky Barnes could be.”
“If you say so, Cap,” Sam’s voice is light. Too light. “Sure he could say the same about you.”
“All the time,” he says, nods, knows this isn’t the end, it can’t be, Buck would never do this to him. It’s a trick, a joke, another smokescreen, make the world stop hunting for the Winter Soldier, let this whole mess with HYDRA, Sokovia, with Wakanda blow over. But he’d be back. Bucky Barnes would be back. One day he’d be walking the streets of Brooklyn, roaming the shores of Coney Island and that idiot would just be standing there, grinning, tell him he took long enough.
Took you long enough, Stevie. Took long enough to find me.
Bucky Barnes wasn’t dead. He was still alive. Watching. Waiting. One day he’d be ready to come home.
“Cap?”
“You’ll see,” he hears himself saying. “Buck wouldn’t do this. It’s just another ruse. Another clue—“
But at the bottom of the door, wedged through the narrow window between steel and stone, bent and crumpled where it’d been shoved forcefully through the plates, so small next to the stark epitaph it must’ve been an afterthought: a letter.
Sam pulls it gently from its resting place.
He feels his heart drop.
“It’s for you.”
STEVE ROGERS
And that handwriting is so heartbreakingly familiar.
Sorry, Stevie. It’s the end of the line. Go live your life, punk. Make it a good one.
PS: Sharon Carter? Please. Even Skinny Steve could do better than that. Don’t make me call Peggy to kick your ass. She’s 93, she might break a hip, and besides we both know your scrawny butt couldn’t take it.
Do yourself a favor, Stevie. Don’t open this door.
God. I wish
But the words ended abruptly, thick ink stretched out into nothing, a sentence incomplete, a life interrupted, a love ruined.
You know. Don’t make me say it.
“That what I think it is?” He hears Sam say. He isn’t listening.