our bodies possessed by light

Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake

and dress them in warm clothes again.

How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running
until they forget that they are horses.

It’s not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere,

it’s more like a song on a policeman’s radio,

how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days
were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
 Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means
we’re inconsolable.

Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.

These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.

(Scheherazade by Richard Siken)

---

The 21st century was a shiny new world bursting with opportunity.

Opportunity Steve Rogers found himself less than inclined to take.

There was so much of everything.

Entire cultures and movements had been birthed and died in the time he had been frozen in the arctic.
Technology had made an inhuman leap, many more wars had been fought, medicine had saved many people who wouldn't have made it to twenty in Steve's time.
Cigarettes were bad now, everything had seat belts, there was a man made of iron flying in the sky.
Steve found himself very worried about inflation once again, even after Director Fury assured him there was nothing to worry about.
He showed him a long string of numbers on a screen and it took Steve almost a minute to realize that was - his money, that ridiculous amount, and another ten minutes to believe it.

Most of all, the people had changed.
They thought differently, felt differently, dressed differently, they even moved differently.

Steve thought it would take him another century to adjust to this new world.

---

"We have technologies now", Michael Reynolds, an overeager but pretty incompetent agent who Steve suspected Fury had assigned to Steve for his personal entertainment, informed him, after Steve failed to identify a red ball pen as such.

"You could see colors, Captain"
He looked excited, proud almost, like he was offering Steve an exciting adventure here.

Steve frowned.

"Technologies?"

He had grown very wary of the technological advancements of the year 2011 after Fury had handed him a flat little rectangle, declared it a phone even it looked nothing like one, and told him to 'shut up and play some Subway Surfers' when Steve got too opinionated about the decoration of his future apartment (he still hadn't quite figured out what Subway Surfers was. Either a very boring movie or a very advanced ... something. Fury called it a game. Steve called it 'that thing". Steve called a lot of stuff 'that thing' these days.)

"Medication", Reynolds explained, "The effect is not permanent, but you would be able to see the 21st century in color, I am sure that-"

But Steve was already shaking his head.
"No, no, I don't want to. Thank you. But no"

He could tell Reynolds wanted to ask, so he quickly started asking about that IKEA that was going to supply the furniture for his apartment once again.

Fury had explained the concept of IKEA to him at length the day before, although it was clear he was not happy about having to waste his very important Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. time on this.

He had assured Steve that the furniture would be all set up when he was cleared to leave the facilities and venture into the future on his own.
Perhaps that was Fury's way of getting back at him for asking, because Steve had noticeably perked up at the mention of building furniture.
Now that could not have changed that much in seventy years. A table was still a table.

Much later, when curiosity got the best of him and he opened a book about himself, Steve found out history did not mention Captain America having a soulmate.

It had been a well-kept secret of course.

Their families had known and Peggy had known, had seen right through his and Bucky's careful public touches and the lingering smiles.
(And in turn Steve had seen through her, too. The soft blush on her cheeks when a female officer walked up to her. How she bit her lip and then hurried away to rejoin the guys, because that was easier, safer.)

The Howlies might have guessed but they had been smart enough not to ask.

It seemed no one had ratted them out to the hordes of reporters that had assaulted Steve's friends after his death.

Documentary after documentary, dozens of books about the heroic Captain America, and barely anyone had hypothesized that Steve Rogers had a soulmate. Those who did, and the few who had gotten it right, had very little evidence to back up their theories.

In late December, in a tiny second hand book shop tucked away in an alley Steve found a book telling not his, but Bucky's story.

He bought it without a second thought.

The minimalistic cover was water damaged and the book smelled moldy, but it described the life of Bucky Barnes with so much care.
It contained more accuracies then inaccuracies, something that not even half of the books on Captain America could claim.

Still it seemed the thin paperback had found very little acclaim amongst experts, discarded as wishful thinking of one solitary enthusiastic young historian at some point in the eighties and it hadn't been in print in years.

She had done the legwork and dug up letters, unsent from before Bucky's unit had been captured.
Those letters had never reached Steve, but someone had kept them safe all those years.

Seventy years later he read them over and over, until he knew them by heart, whispered them into the lonely quiet of his new apartment late at night.

When he was writing those letters, the evening before the 107th was to depart on their next operation, Bucky had suspected them to be his last words to Steve.
In a way, now they were.
Those letters, to Steve, read as declarations of love. As had Bucky's every word to him.
But Bucky had been careful. Wording his affections just vaguely enough that they could be interpreted in multiple ways.

Steve tore the pages with the letters out of the book and put them on his HEMNES nightstand.

The corners of the yellow paper were brown with age, and now tear drops blurred multiple passages.

---

The worst of it was that Steve still dreamt in color.

The past and future mixed together in his dreams, his brain filling in the blanks where it was missing information.
Steve had no way of telling if the shield above the bakery he passed every morning was actually green. He didn't know what color Coca-Cola was now, he only knew the taste had changed.
He didn't even know what color the sweatshirts S.H.I.E.L.D. had so generously supplied him with were, although he strongly suspected they were in fact grey.

As much as he would have loved to know the answer to all these questions, Steve was also afraid to find out.

In 1945 Steve had not lived in black and white for long.
And even in those few months, every time he found out the color of something new that he hadn't been able to guess correctly, it had broken him just a little. Every reminder deepened pain of losing Bucky.

The world might have spun on for seventy years but Steve Rogers had not changed much.
And he knew he wasn't strong enough for those answers.

The night he aquired and devoured 'Never Coming Home: The Short Biography Of James Buchanan Barnes', Steve dreamt about red.

Red had been the first color Steve ever saw.
Crimson blood, trickling down on his white shirt.
Steve had watched in awe as it spread through the fabric, like a flower blossoming.
Ruining his shirt, as they had many more times before but this time red became not just a word, but a real color.

His Ma had always described meeting your soulmate like trickling water.

It would come in "waves, remember the waves that time we went to the beach, Stevie? It's like that, but not water, but colors. So many colors, my love, I can't wait until you get to see for yourself. The sea, the sky, the peaches"

His mother described soft colors to Steve.
Clouds and kitchen curtains. The fields she grew up surrounded by, dyed pink by sunsets. Apples and peaches.
She said his dad made the best peach pie she had ever tried, and that was why she never made it, because she knew it wouldn't be as good.
Steve was fine with it. He liked apple pie better anyway.
Apple pie, his Ma said, was golden.
Warm pockets of sun, she said. It was warm on Steve's tongue as it burst out of its doughy shell.

Love, for her, had been softness.
The safety of her late husband's embrace and the tickle of his stubble.
Love became sadness, sweet melancholy. She looked out of the window, remembering the colors of the sky, and thought about the love she lost.

(His Ma would cry when Steve told her. Because she knew Steve would have to face more hardships than she ever did. Steve did not realize that quite yet.)

Love, for Steve, was a solid right hook that sent his tormenter tumbling while blood exploded out of Steve's nose and colors exploded around him.

"Here", the boy said, and offered him a tissue.
For a moment, the world stood still.
The boy's hair was dark, ruffled from the short fight. His eyes seemed to reflect a million colors at once but most of all the blue of his shirt.
(Blue, his Ma said. The sky, the ocean, Steve's favorite cup.)
Steve's hands were covered in red.
(Cherry popsicles, his Ma's lipstick. Blood.)

The boy hesitated.
Something inside him shifted, as colors no doubt overwhelmed his vision too, and he straightened his back.
He was taller and broader then Steve. Would be for longest time.

"Let me help you", he muttered. Not meeting Steve's eyes, but smiling.
His lips were a different shade of red. Softer, sweeter then the blood. Steve was yet to learn the color of peaches, but Bucky's lips would remind him of them.

The red soaked the tissue as he cleaned Steve's hands and made him press it against his nose. A few droplets stained the blue of the boy's shirt.

"I'm sorry-", Steve yapped, struggling to breathe through his mouth as the blood just wouldn't stop flowing. It got everywhere, making him taste iron, and the tissue had been fully drenched long ago.

"You're good", the boy assured him.
"My name's James. You gotta turn your face upwards so it stops bleedin'"

"Steve", Steve introduced himself as he followed James' instructions.

James would soon become Bucky in Steve's world. His best friend, his protector, and the unspoken promise of a lifetime together.

In Steve's dream there was a lot more red.
Bucky fell.
He was always falling, in most dreams.

Steve's hands were sticky with blood. Bucky's blood. It coated his fingers, seeped into his uniform, wandering up his arms and threatening to cover him whole.

No matter how hard he tried, how far he leaned out of the train, the icy wind hitting his face, Steve could never reach Bucky, who just kept falling and falling, always just out of reach.

His hands were slippery from all the blood. He tried to hold onto the door handle, but the icy metal slipped out of his grasp, and then Steve was falling, too.

---

Three months into his new life, Steve purchased his first set of pencils.

The apartment S.H.I.E.L.D. had set him up with was functional, but impersonal.

Steve had been given clothing, which had been clearly picked out by an agent who just assumed Steve would dress like his grandparents;
dishes, cleaning supplies. Even his fridge had been stocked up when he moved in.

There were books filling the shelves.
The great classics of the second half of the 20th century that Steve had missed.
He now owned a TV and a computer, both took him ages to figure out.

But nothing that truly felt like it was his.

The computer was convenient, once Steve figured out how the internet worked, even if he didn't exactly understand it - he had been informed it was pretty hard to understand even if you weren't just chucked into its reality -, and the TV was pleasantly mind-numbing.

But Steve's fingers itched for pencils and paper.
Even in the war he had carried a small sketchbook. He took it with him into battle, which the Howlies always teased him about, and he felt awfully naked without one.

The computer came with a printer, which came with paper, and of course Steve had been given pens, but it wasn't the same. His hesitant attempts at drawing looked awkward and wrong.

It took him a very long time to gather the courage to venture into the modern stores. Walmart had been horrifying, but Steve - with the help of The Internet - found smaller shops nearby that weren't as overwhelming.
He visited his local farmers market and shopped for books in vintage second hand stores.
While he didn't like the clothing he had been given, it was still functional, and he figured it would be a waste to buy new clothes just because he liked them better.
He had money in abundance now, but he was still hesitant about buying things he didn't need.

Steve's favorite grocery store, one he only visited rarely, when he ran out of basic products that he couldn't acquire anywhere else, had a tiny stationary section. He picked out a set of seven pencils with different levels of hardness and a small sketchbook with nice paper, and tried his best to ignore the colored pencils and crayons taunting him in different shades of grey.

When Steve got home he filled the first pages with what he saw around him - a mug, an apple, the tree by the window, the lady from the generic movie poster on his wall.

That was easy, it didn't involve any thinking. He wasn't putting anything of himself into the sketches. Steve was simply an observer, cataloguing the world around him.

In his and Bucky's apartment every surface had been pilled with sketchbooks and loose papers.
Bucky was Steve's favorite model.
Bucky sleeping, Bucky on the couch, Bucky smoking out of the window. Bucky's back, Bucky's arm, Bucky's smile.
Every moment of Bucky, every line and quirk, Steve had them all memorized.

When Steve started unconsciously drawing the familiar outline of a face, he put the pencil down and slammed the sketchbook shut.

He didn't pick it up again for almost two weeks.

---

The first time it happened was days after New York.

Stark was showing them around the construction site that was soon to become the Avengers Tower.
It did not look like much yet, but Stark was nothing if not a visionary.
He had private floors planted out for everyone, multiple labs, a common room (that was also its own floor), something he jokingly called "the ball room", a meeting room equipped with multiple high end screens and the best of the best of communication technology. And now he was talking about a jet.

It was all very over-top, as everything Stark did.
He was obviously very eager to get their supposed team started. In a way he reminded Steve of a child in a candy store, the way he bounced around the rubble, never ceasing to talk.

Barton and Romanoff looked awfully unimpressed with Stark's high tech equipment, probably used to stuff like that. Banner had an expression on his face that looked like people were singing him Happy Birthday and didn't know what to do. Stark had brushed off his concerns about the Hulk in such a populated area early on.
Thor would have probably been as amazed by all this as Stark wanted them all to be, had he been there. But he had promised to return to earth once things were sorted with Loki, so Stark was also planning a floor for him.

Tony Stark and Steve might have had their disagreements in the past but he tried his best to look appropriately excited and grateful for Stark building them such an extravagant home.

"I'm starving, guys", Stark announced finally when he had bored them for twenty minutes talking about the wiring of the tower.
"I think they got that pizza place two blocks down opened back up", Barton suggested, relieved for an out of the Tony Stark Zone.
Steve had noticed him taking out his hearing aids less than an hour into Stark's tour, but he must have read his lips.

The people of New York were resilent, it had to be said.

Calling the pizza place 'open' had been a bit of an exaggeration.
Part of the front wall was missing, metal constructs were propping up the ceiling by the entrance. The tables had been moved to make room for the clean up, but there were a few costumers sitting at the far back, enjoying what looked like really good pizza.

The owner was inappropriately excited to have the Avengers in his restaurant. It took a while to convince him not to kick any other costumers out so they could have the best seats.
Instead Clint and Steve moved two round plastic tables together so they would all have room.
After apologizing over and over for the state of his establishment the owner hurried of to make their orders.

One moment Steve was taking a bite of his pizza and the next yellow and red was flashing in front of his eyes.
He could see the red plastic table and all the yellow and red shades of the pizza he was holding.
The dark navy of his sweater out of the corner of his eye.

Steve dropped his slice.

Then the colors were gone.

"You okay there, Cap?"
Steve barely understood Romanoff over the rushing in his ears.
The entire table was staring quizzically at him now.

"Yeah", Steve mumbled, "Pizza's hot"

---

Dear Stevie,

how is home? Are you taking care of everything over there for me?

The 107th is taking off on a new mission first thing tomorrow.
We're marching towards Azzano. Don't have a great feeling about this one.

Italy is nice. It's warmer than the alps. I think you would like it.
... That's not an invitation to join me here, Stevie.
You keep the homeland safe.
Take care of Ma and Becca for me. Tell them I got the letter and I will reply as soon as I get back.
Tell them I love them. The whole family.

'till the end of the line,

JBB

---

The colors returned infrequently.

Flashes of green, purple and red that made Steve fumble for balance and shiver.

Terrible reminders of everything he had lost.

Steve would squeeze his eyes shut and wait for it to pass, because this was not right, it wasn't real.
Just his brain playing tricks on him.

Bucky was dead. And the colors should have died with him.

"Natasha?"

It was late. The warm glow of Tony's programmed lights colored the scene in what would be hues of red and orange.
Steve knew, because just a few moments ago he had seen them.

It felt like he was falling, even as he remained firmly planted on the sofa.

"What do you think of soulmates?"

She smirked.

Natasha rarely smiled, it didn't reach her eyes. The upturn of her lips conveyed confidence to the world and lies to those who knew her well. Steve liked to think he did.

"Children's tales", she said, "Сказки. For those who like to believe in them."

"I have- I had a soulmate"
Those words hadn't been spoken out loud in a long time. They had been buried in the sand of history.

"Good for you", she said softly. "And I'm sorry, for your loss"

"I lost most people", Steve shrugged, "everyone I knew really."

"It's not the same. What was she like?"

"Bucky", it was barely a whisper.

Natasha's eyes widened, but she was quick to hide her surprise.
"You know", she huffed, "the history books certainly never mentioned that Captain America was gay"

Steve smiled weakly "I think the word you would use nowadays is bisexual.
Well, it doesn't matter anymore"

"You've been doing your reading"
Natasha took a tentative sip of the wine glass, that she had placed on the coffee table when Steve started the hesitant conversation.

"Life's still worth living", she added. "As much as it hurts sometimes"

Steve nodded.
He thought about her and Clint, their silent communication, the unconditional trust neither of them offered anyone else in their lives.

Сказки, Natasha had said. Clint had not dyed her world in colors.
And still she shone in his presence.

Just as the moon shone bright outside the window, never meeting the bringer of her light.

Steve was not the moon. He felt more like an asteroid, adrift in the dark vastness of space, a celestial body torn away from its source, on a predestined path to destruction.

"That's the most accurate representation of the solar system I have ever seen an allegedly non-sciency person draw", Tony pointed out when he caught Steve drawing at the kitchen table one very early morning.
"I've been ... thinking"
Tony quirked an eyebrow at him "I know it is an offense and a tragedy that they took away Pluto's title as a planet, but I don't think even you could change that, Cap. I mean, they had their reasons."
Steve gave him the same sarcastic expression, mimicking the eyebrow.
"Did they, Tony?"
He appreciated that Tony had taken the hint that he didn't want to talk about it.

Sometimes the colors stayed longer.
Entire minutes Steve spent looking at the world in marvel, unable to believe and unable to forgive himself.

In the middle of battle the assault on his senses would strike him down, leaving his team to fight not only for the safety of the world but also his.

Seeing his own blood dripping onto the pavement was always the worst.
Crimson flowers, just like the first time.
But this time there was no Bucky to save him.
Steve's fist collided with his enemy's cheek and the pain that bloomed in his knuckles reminded him he was alive.
When the red faded back into dark grey, he could breathe again.

With the colors came a whole new set of nightmares. Different then the vivid flashbacks of the war but equally as painful.
Nightmares featuring a Bucky that was not his.
Bucky strutting through the twenty-first century, bleeding out of the bullet holes in his chest and white-eyed.

The blood was always red but the rest of the dream was black and white and Steve knew, he just knew, that wasn't just because he had survived his soulmate by almost a century. That world, the other Bucky's world, existed solely in greyscale.
The only splashes of color was Bucky's, Steve's, their pain.

The sensation of falling remained even in those nightmares and sometimes Steve forgot who it was who had fallen.

---

Washington was calmer.
It felt colder than New York, even the shades of grey seemed to take on a colder hue in this city.

Steve took a deep breath of relief as he stepped out of the plane.
Self-hate curled in his chest.
Tony had not understood why he was leaving, moving closer to S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ, instead of remaining with the Avengers.

What was left, anyway.
Thor popped in and out, sure, and Bruce had nowhere else to go. Not that he wanted to leave, last Steve checked. Natasha and Clint had returned to the world of spies long ago.
Even Tony, for all his promises, had other things to worry about. These days he was more like a hotel owner then a member of their team.

The Avengers would return when the world needed them.
But as it peacefully slumbered, there wasn't much use for them to stay together.

So, when Fury called, Steve followed.

Washington was easier. No one asked how he was and meant it in Washington.

And Peggy was there.
But her memory was fading and seeing her hurt more then it helped. Steve still came around for tea regularly.
She had lived a good, long life. She had helped build S.H.I.E.L.D., picked up where Steve left off. He was grateful for everything she had done for him and everything she had done for the world.

"We're going to have to move her to a nursing home soon", her caretaker told him in a hushed voice when she caught him alone in the kitchen, "She needs 'round the clock care. I'm sorry"
"Don't apologize", Steve told her, pouring hot water into two mugs, "If it's the best for her"

Steve lived in yet another impersonal apartment, looking eerily identical to the one Steve moved into two years ago.
Non-descriptive art and another set of IKEA furniture.
Even the same novels, which made Steve suspect every S.H.I.E.L.D. safe house was stocked with the same pieces of literature. He had read them all already and enjoyed few but loneliness and boredom would surely drive him to pick one up soon.

TV was supposedly all in color now.
As medicine and technology had marched on towards a world where everyone, if only with the help of pills, to be taken twice daily; could enjoy colors, the greyscale the early 20th century, Steve's world, had existed in had been replaced by colors everywhere. Billboards, walls, clothing, television.

Had Steve gone without that knowledge, he might have been able to enjoy the wonders of modern television, with the computer effects and inhuman stunts, the endless list of movies and shows Tony and, some, Clint had recommended.
But with books it was easier - he knew he wasn't missing anything. The letters had remained printed in black and white for centuries.

Even in Washington there was still one person who occasionally asked how he was.

"You need a hobby, Steve", Natasha said in a rare moment of peace.
They had just gotten out of a debrief and she had dragged him to the cafeteria for bad coffee.
"I have hobbies", Steve argued.
"A hobby that involves other people"
"Do you have one of those?"
"Knitting club", she said, smirking, and sipped her coffee.

The days he got home late, after spending his day punching villains and saving innocents, and fell into bed barely out of his uniform, were the days he slept peacefully.
So Steve tried really hard to make most days like this.
Save as many people as possible, punch the bad guy's lights out and get a good night's rest.

Steve spent Christmas 2013 jumping over boats in Venice, taking out a smuggler ring with Natasha and Clint.
When it came to stealth operations, it was usually the three of them.

"Merry Christmas!", Natasha called over the screams of a bad guy getting his shoulder dislocated.

Somewhere in America kids were tearing through wrapping paper, still dressed in their PJs, at this very moment.
In Italy the holiday dinner was soon to be served, the warm glow of the family celebration emitting out of the windows onto the empty streets.

Steve let his shield fly, taking out four guys at once and sending their precious cargo scattering over the basement floor when the shield hit one of the containers, cracking it open, before bouncing back.
"Happy Holidays!", Clint yelled back as an arrow pierced through another ones skull.

In January the colors were muted. It wasn't quite black and white but it also weren't anything's true colors which Steve saw for almost three days.
It was still enough to send him into a panic.
Google, for the first time, was no help at all. Steve found conspiracy theories and self-published romance novels upon his search but no real information. His case seemed unique.
Then again wasn't everything about him? Who was to stay it was not the serum going haywire in his veins. It even made sense in a way, enough for Steve to convince himself. The serum was meant to optimize him. Maybe that was it.
The answer didn't feel right, as hard as he tried to hold onto it.

Steve had a strong suspicion it was Natasha who had hidden the colored pencils in his apartment. He had never noticed them, mistaking them for one of the many sets of grey he sporadically purchased with another sketchbook.
Six days into the new year Steve found them on his desk. He could just barely tell their colors apart, yellow melting into blue fading into orange, and they seemed to flicker in front of his eyes.
Like ghosts.
With shaking hands, he picked up a green pencil. It hovered above the page.

Steve swallowed and put down a shaky line.
Another.
A third, more curved now.
The greens molded into a shape - a green shirt stretched over broad shoulders, and then he reached for pink.

Bucky had always been his favorite subject.
His name etched above an empty grave seventy years ago, he still remained alive and, now for the first time colorful, in Steve's sketchbooks.

When Steve finally put the pencil down hours later, his hand cramping slightly, apart from the many sketches of Bucky's face, like Steve was trying to get to know him all over again, was a hesitant reply to his last letter.

---

"You look like you've seen a ghost"

It was a very unflattering picture.
Taken a week after New York in the then barely-standing pizzeria, a very happy business owner and six semi-enthusiastic Avengers, still spotting the bruises of the battle of New York, were looking into the camera.
Steve did in fact look like he had seen a ghost.

An image of the pizza - red, yellow, orange, pink and beige, dough and cheese and sauce - flashed in front of Steve's eyes.
It was ridiculous how much it haunted him, considering it was fucking pizza.
He had seen a ghost that day. Colors, for the first time in over seventy years.
The restaurant owner had asked them if he could take a picture just a few minutes after and the shock still showed on Steve's face.

"I'm gonna go see if the owner wants to take a better one, since we got the band back together anyway", Tony grumbled.

Thor was back, at least for a bit, and so the team was back in New York and Tony was having a party. Because he was Tony and that was what he did.
And because S.H.I.E.L.D. was nothing if not efficient, and put the god to good use immediately, they had spent the last two days hunting a horrifying tag-team of two radioactive supervillains through Peruvian swamps.
The Avengers barely had time to peel out of their muddy uniforms before the tower was buzzing with guests.

"Enjoying yourself?"
Bruce very clearly was not.
For a guy who could grow so big, he looked tiny the rest of the time. Not just standing next to Thor and Steve's bulky frames, but from his posture, his hands always in front of himself like he was shielding himself, eyes cast downward.
It came with the territory, Steve guessed. The Hulk might be an ally nowadays, and he was getting along great with Natasha and Thor specifically, but he was still a risk and the world loved to remind Bruce of that.

Steve took a sip of his by now lukewarm beer. "I don't think we need to be throwing this many parties"
Bruce shrugged "It's good publicity"
But he didn't disagree.
"So Tony says"
Bruce eyes flickered over to Tony, standing beside Rhodey, surrounded by a crowd of admirers. He was in his element, making jokes to a captivated audience.
Bruce looked so impossibly fond it made something inside of Steve ache.
Tony caught Bruce's gaze and winked over at him.

"Things going well with the three of you?"

While Steve had been hiding in Washington and Clint and Natasha had been playing James Bond - well, the tower had gotten quite domestic.
Tony and Bruce had been close from the start, surprisingly so.
When one thought of a stress-free environment Tony Stark didn't immediately come to mind. Yet, somehow, he had become a safe haven for Bruce. And Pepper had been .. very open to these developments.
They weren't quite official yet, or, as Clint called it, a throuple, but it was good, for the three of them. Bruce looked much happier and more relaxed than Steve had ever seen him.

Bruce nodded hesitantly, but he couldn't quite fight the grin on his face "Yeah"
"Good", Steve smiled, "Good for you"
"And you?"
"Me?", Steve frowned.
"Have you been ... dating?", by the look on his face it was clear Bruce was not enjoying this conversation either.
Steve shook his head "Not really my thing"
"You mean after,-" Bruce hesitated.

The team knew, of course. Once he had realized that these things weren't as taboo anymore, Steve had stopped lying so much about himself.

Telling the truth had been relieving. It did not ease the pain.
Steve nodded "I've been in love once. I think that's enough for me"
Bruce gave him a crooked smile "You're still in love then"
"I'll always love him", Steve agreed, "But he's dead and I, somehow, am not. So I gotta keep going. Do what I'm good at. But me dating wouldn't be fair to anyone"
"Guess not", Bruce sighed, "I didn't mean to bring your mood down"
"I'm not in a party mood, anyways", Steve admitted.
"Still", Bruce reached over the bar, none of the staff was going to argue with the Hulk about serving himself, "This is a party"
He held up a carafe of a solidly colored liquid "Is this orange juice?"
He sniffed it. "Smells right", he decided. "Don't think they mixed it with anything"
Bruce refilled his glass and raised it towards Steve, who clinked his beer bottle against it.
"Cheers", he said.

As the evening wound down Steve found himself on the couch with Thor.
Everything always seemed a little easier when Thor was around. Not only the fighting (although an actual alien god on their team was certainly an advantage), but some tension seemed to ease out of the whole team when Thor was there.
He was easy to be around, easy to trust. Even the Hulk liked him.

Thor was also the only other member of the team who physically could not get drunk on human alcohol, so they frequently ended up together on evenings like this, nursing beers that were drunk purely out of habit.
Bruce, sober, had dragged a giggly Tony, who had clearly overestimated how much one could drink once they didn't do it regularly, off to bed a while before the last few guests left and Natasha and Clint had disappeared to do whatever it was the two of them did.

"How's Jane?", Steve asked.
Thor smiled fondly "Good. Busy. She just got this huge grant from one of your human scholars, so she has to work a lot"
"That's why she couldn't come?", Steve asked.
Thor nodded.
"Guess you're stuck with me then", Steve joked and they clinked their bottles together.
While Steve felt sorry for Thor not being able to see his girlfriend on the rare occasion Thor visited earth, it was nice to not be the only one with no one to pair off with at the end of the evening.
"You're fine company, Captain", Thor assured him.
Steve smiled weakly "I'm afraid not so much today"
Thor nodded grimly.
"There is sadness to you", he admitted.
Another great thing about Thor was he was honest. And he listened.
"Guess it's just getting to me, the future. Parties like this are always a great reminder of how everything changed"
"Not for the worse, I hope"
Steve looked down at his bottle, the label he had been subconsciously rubbing of with his thumb for the last half an hour. He thought about smokey bars and last dances.
"No, that's not it"

---

Dear Bucky,

a lot of things have happened since your last letter. Some of them you know, others you never got to hear about.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry for letting you fall. I'm sorry for dragging you into this. I had to do what was right but you should have gone home.

I wish you had gone home.

I would have found you, in every life time.
I can't do that with you gone. I have been given another chance but it doesn't feel right here without you.

You were with me till the end of the line.
I miss you.

-Steve

---

Steve was hunting a ghost.

"Bucky?"

Until he wasn't.

"Who the hell is Bucky?"

And the world crumbled away underneath Steve's feet.

---

Their Brooklyn apartment had yellow curtains.
The bench below their window was turquoise, the paint chipping away at the edges.

When the lady in the bakery asked Steve if he wanted the chocolate or strawberry donut, he squinted and pretended to be trying to make out the difference until she politely pointed to the signs.

Bucky flirted with the girl at the fish market, Katie, for weeks before he took her out. He got home at 11pm, showering Steve in kisses and apologies.

But the truth was Steve hadn't worried about the date for a second. He had gotten home from work and painted the yellow curtains and the blue vase filled with tulips Bucky had brought him the day before.

"Can't have people be suspicious", Steve said, before Bucky could.
"Yeah", Bucky chuckled wetly, "Yeah, we can't"
Steve pulled Bucky closer, still losely holding the paint brush.
"I love you", he breathed.
"Love ya too, punk", Bucky whispered back, finally smiling. He pulled Steve into a sloppy kiss.
Steve pulled Bucky down onto the squeaky mattress.
Steve was not jealous, he knew Bucky was all his, but he still made it a point to touch every part of his body, mark every spot that could have possibly been touched by Katie before.

Later, Bucky's arms wrapped around him and his even breath warm against Steve's temple, Steve looked over to the window. The yellow curtains, just barely distinguishable in the street light shining in. Behind the glass, Brooklyn.
His home.
New York never truly slept. Steve could make out flickering lights of the bar on the other side of the street.

He thought he could stay here forever.

In the bed, covered in his mom's floral sheets, with the squeaky mattress which springs dug into his back. With the framed picture above the bed, hiding the cracks in the walls extending from the left corner of the room.

Steve traced the veins on Bucky's arms with spindly fingers.

Steve never wanted to leave this bed. Never wanted to leave Bucky.

Sam was talking. Steve was even replying something, but his mind was drifting. Drowning a whirl of painfully bright memories.

A painting, jarringly clear in his mind.

Bucky in a tank top on the backdrop of the yellow curtains. Shirtless, the setting sun tainting his skin golden, reflecting in his eyes like droplets of gold, pink lips wrapped around a cigarette, smirking at him.
Floral bedsheets, cool against his sweaty skin. The smell of sex.

Steve remembered thinking he could spend his entire life drawing, learning, mastering all techniques - and he would still never be able to capture such beauty.

That was the picture of Bucky Steve preferred to keep in his mind.

Bucky marching alongside Captain America had been different. Tired, worn down. There was a fear in his eyes Steve never managed to make disappear. His edges were sharp and worn, tearing up against the grime of war.

And then there was the Bucky in his dreams. Black and white, and falling.
The same Bucky on the bridge today.
Seventy years after the love of his life had died. It shouldn't be possible.
He looked at Steve like he didn't know him.
This Bucky, this nightmare, had become an impossible reality.

Steve's vision flickered.
Grey became hues of green, brown and blue. The river rushing by beneath their feet reflected the sunlight in every shade of the rainbow.
Then it faded back to grey.
Once he had realized the colors wouldn't return again, Steve swallowed down the tears and straightened his back.
"You gonna fight a war, you gotta wear a uniform"

---

Steve fell.

As he was crashing into the icy depth, the last thing he saw was how blue the sky was.

---

Steve was operating on pure instinct when he dragged Sam to Romania.

As his body healed the world had once again blossomed in colors around him, but Steve didn't have time to stop and smell the flowers.

Bucky was out there.
Bucky was alive.
And Steve was going to find him.

They hadn't reached the end of the line yet.

Two weeks prior Steve's vision had suddenly faded to black and white.
It felt like plummeting into the icy depth of the arctic all over again.

Natasha held his hand as Steve cried and she stayed with him until Steve could make out the red of his shirt again.
She made him breathe with her and tell her five things he could see, four he could feel, three he could hear, two he could smell and one he could taste.

Her hair (red), his hands (cream), his shoes (brown), the carpet (green), the chair behind her (white).
The wall behind his back (white), the friction of his shirt (blue), her hand pressed on his chest (a lighter shade, pinker than his), the digital watch on his wrist (black).
Voices outside the window, the hum of the fridge coming from the kitchen, his own breathing.
Her lipgloss, fresh paint.

His own salty tears.

It helped a little.

Steve had thrown himself into the search for Bucky with even more vigor than before after that, fear constantly thrumming beneath his skin.
He needed to find him, needed to hold him, needed to make sure Bucky never forgot again.

The moments the colors flickered would send his heart racing, cause his breath to catch in his lungs.

"Romania?", Sam frowned, when Steve presented him with the tickets (there was only so many times even Captain America could borrow the quinjet)
Steve nodded.
"Natasha heard whispers", he said, "about the Winter Soldier being Germany. If he actually did, we wouldn't know, not even Natasha would know."

Sam gave him a quizzical look.
It was one he gave Steve a lot lately, as he dragged his new friend around the country and the globe, the two of them seemingly always jetlagged and sleeping in run down motels.
Sam never complained (he did, loudly, constantly, about the motel beds, the bad airplane food, the lack of free water in European restaurants, but never about Steve doing this. Never about that.) but he gave him that look a lot.

"I know", Steve shook his head as if trying to rid himself of Sam's dark eyes drilling into his soul, "I know you think seventy years is a very long time. It is. But I know him. I know - that he wouldn't. He's good, Sam, he has been in hiding for months now. And I know what he would do"

Sam sighed.
He took the ticket and put it in his wallet wordlessly.

"Thank you", Steve said.

He knew he was acting like a lunatic.
Tony had told him, multiple times, that he was being completely crazy, called him a "crazy ex-girlfriend", joked maybe that was why Bucky wasn't coming knocking at Steve's door. He joked, his nervous energy swiftly turning into venom, until Steve worldlessly left, too tired, too desperate to argue with him. They hadn't really talked since.

The elevator button flickered (red-white-red-red-white) and Steve froze.
"Looks like we have a little technical issue with the LEDs, Captain Rogers", Jarvis said and Steve exhaled in relief.
Maybe he was being crazy.

Natasha said she was worried about him and had started sending him texts reminding him to eat and sleep. Said she did that sometimes for Clint, too.

"I get it", she whispered into a hug that was just a little too long, "I really do. But don't let it consume you. He wouldn't want that."

Steve had not asked her to drive them to the airport. He hadn't even told her about the flight.

"He will come to you", she said in the car, "he will come to you if you give him time"

The hoodie she was wearing was a dark green. Her nail polish was burgundy.

"I can't wait that long", Steve admitted.

Getting to Bucharest was one thing. Finding Bucky was another.

There had been a HYDRA base not far from the city, and Steve dragged Sam there the moment their plane touched the ground.
When they arrived they found a whole lot of nothing - the building was a ruin, taken back by nature.
But Bucky had been here, not too long ago. The tracks inside the base where fresh and sporadic. No one who wasn't specifically trained and knew exactly what to look for would ever be able to tell anyone had been there at all.

"He can't have gotten that far from here", Steve said when they had hailed a cab to take them to the hotel.
Sam sighed "This isn't some quaint mountain village, Steve. Almost two million people live here"
"1.84 million", Steve said quietly. He had run out of stuff to research at some point on the train ride from the airport.
Sam sighed, louder this time. Steve didn't need to look up to know he was giving him the look again.

Steve pulled out his StarkPhone, scrolling through his notifications to distract himself.

Natasha had sent him an email.

It contained a grainy picture of brutalist architecture. A lot of buildings like that were scattered across the city, left over from soviet times.

Steve scrolled down.
Numbers - coordinates. A time stamp - yesterday.

"Natasha you fucking genius", Steve whispered.
His fingers shook as he typed a reply.
Sam perked up "What'd she find?"

Hundreds of square darkened windows peeked down on them like fogged up eyes, when Steve and Sam made it to the address Natasha had shared.

Squinting up, Steve could make out one that seemed to be covered with newspaper, not a crack of light coming through.

Steve swallowed.

The last few weeks the colors had flickered a lot, as Steve had grown more and more desperate.
The colors had been his lifeline since that day in Washington, the only connection to Bucky.

There was no telling what or how much Bucky remembered.

"He might fight us", Sam reminded him.

Steve nodded, gripped the shield tighter.

"I know", he said.

Sam stretched his arms, rolled his shoulders. "Then let's go"