"Fate is a creul whore."
Present Day: A couple weeks after Steve left.
Bucky swings his beer, his long hair swinging, as he drinks and drinks and drinks, and he still can’t feel buzzed, he glowers, and the poor woman nursing her drink next to him, on her creaky barstool, gives him an uneasy look.
Bucky winces, and tries not to glare so much, has to remind himself, he isn’t the soldier, and that this isn’t Hydra, Rollins isn’t leaning against the bars of his cell waiting to prod him with an electric baton because he didn’t like the way the Asset had drunk his water, or the way he would stare at him.
Bucky clears his throat and tries to smile, and the woman, who’s pretty, if not tired, gives him a disturbed, terrified look, and Bucky sighs. Yeah, a real charmer, he was now.
He signals for the whole bottle and puts down more money than this dingy bar, with its rude red-neck server probably deserves, but he takes the bottle by its glass neck, and walks straight and narrow to the door. A patron by the door, a reedy, thin man who’d been nursing his single shot, and staring into it like it’ll give him answers as to why his wife cheated, gapes at the way Bucky walks, and then his head swivels to Bucky’s now abandoned barstool, where about 50 or 60 shot glasses lay on the table.
Bucky shoots the man a grin, and the man goes white as a sheet, and Bucky has to bite back a laugh as he walks out of the shitty bar and into the crisp, Brooklyn air.
Once upon a time, he’d had a smile that Steve had told him, (during their brief time in Wakanda before Bucky slept), that he had a smile that was warmth, and charm and swagger. That would make girls melt into butter, mothers turn into smiling, crooning pudges and would make men like soldiers follow him into battle, even if they did know he was a bit of an asshole.
Now Bucky’s left with no great, charming smile, and left with all the asshole bits, and thank you, Hydra. He raises the bottle to the now buried damned Nazi group, and this part of Brooklyn is sketchy enough that he can walk around acting crazy without cops eyeing him like he’s committing a federal crime. Little did those men and their searching eyes know, he already had! J.F Kennedy, who? Steve had nearly cried upon finding that out, and Bucky had laughed hysterically at the face he’d made then, all puckered and sad, like some Irish grandma. He nearly howls into the dark of the night, shoulders shaking, tears of mirth falling down his face, as he leans against a run down, brick building and okay-maybe he’s a little drunk.
Bucky then starts crying, and crying and crying, rough and empty sobs tear their way from his throat, and he thinks of Steve, Steve with his big ugly-but not quite so ugly face, that had left him, Steve who’d said, “Till the end of the line,’ and they had reached it.
Steve who’d gone back to Peggy Margret Carter, with her red lips, and “the devil fears me” attitude, and Bucky was so wretched, and so hopelessly lost and angry, he can’t even be happy that his old time pal is finally getting with his forever gal.
He wipes his tears, shaking and slumps against the building, staring into the empty street, the light golden hue of the lamp-lights lit nothing in this dark alley of a street, and he remembers Stevie’s face, the way he’d sat beside Bucky near the river bank, after Tony’s funeral, when Bucky had known he’d lose him forever.
Back then: Just right before Steve left.
“You know-” Steve had started, and Bucky was waiting, because he’d had a bad feeling all day, it worsened when he was called last minute to Starks funeral, and that old, tired monster in his chest roared to life, as he remembered that he hadn’t even had the chance to apologise to Stark. To tell him, he was friends with his dad, and that his daughter should have been able to have had the chance to meet her grandfather and grandmother. That he was so very, truly sorry that he took that away from the Stark family.
But he would never get the chance; story of his life.
So he’d sat by a tree, which looked as old and gnarly as him, so out of place in this beautiful forest of radiant, green trees. Far, far away from the house, feeling grief and a terrible ache in his chest, because one look at that little girl, and he’d seen Howard’s smile on her lips, Tony’s smile, yet he hadn’t known the man well enough to know if he had gotten Howard’s; “Aw shucks pal, gimme five more minutes to just work on this gizmo, would ya?”.
No, the only time Bucky had properly even seen Stark’s face was when he lay there, all busted up and broken by Steve’s fist and betrayal during their fight in Siberia, or when he was trying to kill Bucky, and even then Bucky didn’t really want to look at him, he couldn’t.
“You alright?” Steve asks, as he makes his way to where Bucky sits, his face pinched in that overly cautious way he wears now, because Steve’s older too, like this tree, like Bucky- he’d changed. He’s not the skinny kid with too big of a heart for this awful world, and Bucky misses the spark that used to lit the man’s bright blue eyes- wondered when it had started to fade.
“Yeah-tired.” Bucky manages a tired smile, and Steve grins back, a flicker of the boy Bucky knew on his features, “Guess we’re both a couple of old cranks, huh, Buck?” Steve remarks as he lowers himself beside Bucky, the too clear sky, and bright sun casting an emphasis on wrinkles and crinkles in the grooves of his perfect skin that Bucky hadn’t seen, even during the war.
Bucky knew logically Steve hadn’t aged in the five years he’d been gone, the serum wouldn’t allow it-yet he looked as though he’d aged twenty years. He looked so tired, and so very done, and Bucky wondered what the hell he looked like.
“Buck-” Steve begins, and it’s spoken with such a heaviness, a guilt Bucky knows, because all he knows is guilt. It’s something he remembers being more intimate with than any gal, than any crushing religious confession.
Bucky shakes his head, and interrupts, “Steve-” He croaks, and he looks out at the water, at the grass twisting beneath his hands, not pulling, just yanking because Bucky Barnes was not a killer, not anymore. He leans back to the bark of the tree, the uncomfortable texture more familiar and more comfortable than any bed he sleeps on now,
“Reminds you of the war, huh?” He murmurs quietly, thinking of the days they’d spend leaning against towering spruces, filth and blood on their faces, as they’d smoke and laugh, just the two of them, just for a few moments to act like the two stupid boys from Brooklyn and not the men, war made them.
Steve’s frozen, and he swallows thickly, “Not really.” he says quietly, and Bucky glances at him, he looks so tired, and Bucky supposes he’s still in war, maybe he never really left, Bucky hadn’t. Which is why he knows what to do, what to say, even if the terror and grief of that decision is the worst rotten thing he’ll ever have to face on any battlefield, and he’s been on several.
He turns to face Steve, and his eyes are blurry, and if he squints through the tears he fights back, he can almost pretend Steve is skinny, young Stevie with his hopeful eyes, and angry, stubborn twist of his mouth, and that he himself, is big Bucky, with his charming smile, and less rotten, more humane soul.
“It’s okay.” He croaks, “You can go home.”
Simple words, but Steve looks as though Bucky had hit him, he looks stunned and his face crumbles, and with that movement he truly does only look 39.
“Buck.” It’s said with so much emotion, and Steve’s shoulders start shaking like it did when he was little, and had, had the shakes and the hacking cough that the Bucky back then, had feared would send him to an early grave, and Bucky has to look away.
Because he isn’t Steve’s home anymore, he was once, in a rundown apartment, music playing on the radio, sun drafting in as Bucky sang along, exhausted from his day at the docs. Steve would have been reclined on the floor, his fingers red and charcoal painted and stained, as he would have drawn roughly at some comic strip he’d been working on the paper for.
Steve hadn’t said anything, maybe he didn’t know what to say, maybe as Bucky had grieved little Steve, but still loved the big Steve in front of him. Maybe Steve had never truly gotten over losing big Bucky, maybe he wasn’t able to love the small, hunched broken man Bucky was now, maybe that’s why he was leaving. Maybe he’d lost his true home, and didn’t want to bother camping out in the fragile, broken foundations in the ruins of it.
“I’m sorry-” Steve chokes out, still with the damned shakes, his face in his hands, and of course he feels guilty, of course he’d stay and be miserable and tired, without Tony or Natasha or any of the people he’d grown to love and call family in this strange new world. The world he’d lost again and again.
Of course, he’d stay and pretend to love small Bucky like he did big Bucky, because Steve Rogers, in any version-in any universe, was good. Bucky knew that, as concrete as he knew that the god in the sky he’d wept to, for the past hundred years of his life, knew that in every version, and any universe-James Bucky Barnes was a bad, rotten and ruined person, and that the deal Bucky had made all those years ago was benign.
Because Bucky was alive, he didn’t want to be, but Steve was a stubborn son of a bitch, and fate was a cruel whore, and the devil- was just sad, and god wept for them all.
Because Bucky Barnes was alive, and god would take Steve Rogers away from him.
That was the worst kind of punishment he’d ever had to face, and Bucky had been forced to kill children, and had been forced to forget his mother’s name.
Forced to do and endure a great deal of many terrible things, and yet he was choosing to do this now.
Steve wraps his arms around him, and Bucky loses the fighting battle against his own resolve, his tears fall, and for a man who says a great deal of soul striking speeches, Steve seems at a loss for words. As he cries, his face nestled in the crook of Bucky’s neck, like he was trying to find some remnant of home.
“Name your kids after me, huh?” Bucky cracks a grin, and it doesn’t reach his broken eyes, yet Steve doesn’t see that, and he draws away from the embrace first, and he looks stricken at the half-hearted joke.
“I’ll name them James, Jerk and Stupid.” Steve sniffs, and for such a big man, he looks incredibly small as he leans against the gnarly tree.
Bucky can’t help the twitch of his lips, “Jesus pal, I don’t think Pegs would like that.” He croaks, and Steve cracks a watery grin.
They’re pretending, Jabing and joking like they’ve done their entire lives, and Bucky’s screaming on the inside, he’s screaming and roaring so badly that even the monster in his chest goes silent with pity.
Stay with me! He wants to beg. Stay with me and I’ll pretend to be whatever I was, I’ll do anything, be anything-just don’t leave me, pal. Don’t leave me in this world when I have to remind myself that the face I see in the mirror in the morning is mine. Don’t leave me, because I’m not like you, you always knew who you were, even when you couldn’t even walk, even when you were dying and couldn’t get out of bed, and the whole world told your Ma, she’d be better off if you were just that-dead. Yet you stood tall, gave Death one of your boring ass speeches, I bet, and had defied all odds, because that’s just who you are.
Don’t leave me, because the war’s not over for me too, and if you leave I won’t know who I am, and that rotten, twisted beast inside of me will come out and I’ll do terrible awful things. Please. Please. Please.
He doesn’t say that though, because Steve deserves that happiness, deserves to finally live his life and settle down, and Bucky knows that, hell, he’s always wanted that for him. But there’s a small, broken part of him, that sounds eerily like the Asset, which whispers in the hollow of his chest, where the grief and rage and all the bad things sleep. Why can’t he have those things with me?