Sam bows out of the search somewhere around the nine month mark, in Ireland. He takes a flight from Dublin airport to Atlanta, then a connecting one to Washington. He texts Steve when he lands and takes off both times.
Steve doesn't blame him. Not at all. It's been nine months of whispers and ghost stories, and Sam actually has a place to call home, and family around to care about him more than formality. Steve understands the pull to the homestead, even if it's not what he wants it to be.
Steve’s nursing what he thinks is his fourth, fifth beer of the night. The little bar - or rather, pub - he’s in is in the middle of Temple Bar in Dublin City, crowded even on a weeknight. To be in such a public area is dangerous, with HYDRA, the American Government, and faithful SHIELD agents alike on the lookout for him, but he figures one night wallowing in his own guilt and numbness is okay.
He knows it isn’t, but.
The television behind the bar is playing the news on the channel RTÉ, not Fox, which he considers a god-send. If Fox News was on, spitting falsities left, right, and centre, he’d put his head through the wall.
Honestly, coming to Ireland was a fool’s errand, a strand of smoke in fog. There was no real reason Bucky would come here, he’s never been in Ireland. Neither had Steve, but their parents were both immigrants, their mothers having walked off ships and through the halls of Ellis Island with swollen bellies. Steve’s always felt a connection to this country even though this is the first time he’s ever set foot on the so called Emerald Isle.
It’s definitely different from America. The roads are smaller, the air not as polluted, the buildings erected a long time ago standing proudly. Nothing in New York is as old as these buildings; the oldest here predates the oldest there by about four hundred years.
Steve looks down at the beer bottle in his hand. It’s half full, but he can’t remember drinking any of it, so lost in his own head. It’s at times like this that he wishes he could get drunk, have a night off from everything, from being Captain America, being an Avenger, being in a time he doesn’t belong to.
“Penny for your thoughts?” says a voice, painted with an Irish drawl that distantly reminds him of his mother.
Steve looks up from under the cap he has shielding his eyes, at the bartender. She looks about nineteen, which threw him a little when he first saw her at the start of the night. The legal drinking age here is lower, he recalls. Her hair is cropped short, a deep green in colour with chestnut roots and her thick glasses frame misty blue eyes.
(She would be an interesting model to draw if she sat for him, all plump curves and pale skin showing through the floral net shirt. He doesn’t even know her name yet.)
Steve chuckles nervously. “It’s been a long time since someone asked me that.”
She smiles, all big straight teeth behind pink lipstick. “You’re not from ‘round here.”
“How did you guess?”
“Well,” she says, grabbing a pint glass and running a cloth around the inside, “Let’s see - the hat, no one wears caps here if you’re not a tourist -,” she rolls her eyes, stating this as an undisputable fact, “- the accent, dead give-away - the fact that you’ve drank eight of our highest quality beer and you’re still stone-cold sober when the guy who sits there on the regular,” she nods towards his stool, “would be flutered by now.”
“Have I had that much?” Steve asked mildly surprised. “I thought I’d only had five.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She throws him a careless crooked smile, sticking out a long fingered hand. “Ciara.”
He takes it. “Steve.” He forgoes formalities such as surnames. Understandably.
“So, Steve, what’s brought you to the land of Saints and Scholars?” She holds the nickname in her mouth with obvious sarcasm.
Steve swallows, suddenly nervous and strangely compelled to tell her everything. “I’m looking for someone.”
“Aren’t we all?" The words are amused, so Steve forces a chuckle.
"A specific person. I'm not just browsing."
"Well, she must really be something if you willin' to spend your downtime in a kip like this."
Ciara's deprecation of Ireland is fond, reminds him of Bucky in a way. He always talked about how much of a shit hole Brooklyn was, with its dangerous streets and drafty buildings, and folk who'd step right over you if you were lying down in the street. But the minute someone from the outside, someone who'd never lived there talked crap, his hackles would rise and he'd defend his home tooth and nail.
"He really is," he sips his beer, and then keeps talking, for some bizarre reason. He feels like he can trust Ciara, like she won't judge him for his lot. But then again, she's a bartender. She probably listens to hundreds of sob stories a day and only gets a tip to show for it.
He leaves out all things that could give him away; a lot of things. She doesn't call him out on the obvious chunks missing from his tale, which he's thankful for.
"Wow," she says, when he uses the end of his story to polish off his beer. "I've heard some stories from behind this bar, but never have I heard something like that. That's shit, mate."
Steve nods, accepts the new beer she places in front of him.
"You care about this guy?"
Steve feels a lump form in his throat. "Yes."
"Love him?"
Steve studies the condensation on the neck of the bottle, thinking, before looking up again. "Yes," he repeats, voice growing smaller.
"Here's what I'd do," she says, and Steve leans in because maybe he needs to hear this. Hear advice from someone who isn't so deep in this. Maybe, he thinks, he needs to be told to give up by someone who hasn't spent months dedicated to this cause.
"If you find him, tell him everything. Don't leave a damn thing out. Love is a powerful thing, Captain Rogers. Love is what keeps you going, and it'll keep him going too."
Steve nods, looks down at where his hand is squeezing the glass of the bottle; not enough to break it, not yet, but enough that he consciously relaxes it.
"Now, I think you might want to close your tab, and get some sleep. I think tomorrow's gunna be a long day for you."
Steve nods again. He stands, puts money on the counter (with a generous tip) and gets his bearings for a second, before something dawns in him. "You called me -"
"I was a big fan of your comics as a kid, Captain. Now go bring Bucky home." She smiles an all-knowing grin, and turns away, leaving Steve to stare after her from behind the bar. Through the net of her shirt, he can see a tattoo of his shield on the pale skin of her shoulder.
A year later, when Ciara gets up in the morning to have a strong cup of coffee and add a top up of bright pink dye to her hair, she stops at the front door to pick up her mail.
Bills, bills, survey, take away menu - handwritten envelope?
She tears open the seal carefully, and slides the contents into her other hand. There's a folded piece of thick paper and a photograph tucked into a handwritten letter.
She opens the heavy paper first, and has her breath blow away by the drawing. It's her, with her thick glasses and her million rows of teeth smile. She's stunned, and touched, for so long that she almost forgets that there was other things in the envelope.
In the picture, when she slides it out, Captain Steven Rogers is beaming next to one long haired Bucky Barnes. The two men look tired, and Bucky seems somewhat apprehensive of being photographed. The contrast to the Steve, grinning like an idiot here to the man who sat in her pub a year ago is amazing.
She doesn't need to even read the letter to know that Bucky's come home, for good.