one
Steve Rogers has had a rough year, and that’s saying something for someone who has already lived a pretty rough life as a whole- grown up dirt poor in the Great Depression, fought in the second World War, then died before he ever saw it won. Or, he guesses died isn’t the proper word. Been lost maybe.
To what? He’d have to guess again on that one. Time is the obvious answer, but it’s more complicated than that. Sometimes he thinks he’s lost to himself as well, at least as a person. In this new century (and maybe even before that) he’s definitely painfully out of place.
Then again, in this new century, he doesn’t quite yet have a good grip on what their version of the word proper means either. Everything is so different. Steve knows he’s different too, but while his mind- or his memories, at least- seems to be stuck in the past, everything else has him sped up and thrown headfirst into the future where he’s landed upside down and still doesn’t know which way is rightside up.
He’s no stranger to sudden changes by any means, but at least with the serum, when he’d stepped in that chamber he knew he had people on the other side waiting for him were he able to make it out. Even if he didn’t, he knew his Ma would be waiting for him if things went down south or in the opposite direction.
He’d thought when he crashed the Valkyrie that he was setting himself up for something similar to that second situation, albeit with someone different that was supposed to be waiting. He wasn’t expecting to make it out, bombs on board aside. That crash was supposed to seal his fate, but apparently he’s such a fuck up that he wasn’t able to finish that job right either. He picked a fight he finally wanted to lose, but somehow someone managed to step in even sixty something years too late and tug him out into a world he isn’t supposed to be in. A world he doesn’t want to be in.
The only person he’d formerly been used to helping him out when he was in over his head was Bucky. There’s something bitter inside Steve that still hasn’t settled about Fury being the one to take that job even now, six decades after the position lost the man who was always at its post.
But Steve tries not to think of that now, hopefully never again. He tries not to think of a lot of things, but the noise in his head doesn’t fall easily quiet. The only way to shut it out seems to shut himself down. Drown out the noise like the water drowned him before and let the cold of it die down until the numbness takes over.
He tries not to think of his mother and how he’s not even sure if her grave is left standing, let alone kept in a condition he’d want to see. He hopes that maybe, Mrs. Barnes had left her flowers when Steve was overseas. He hopes that someone had been there to visit her grave even after he was gone, because he can’t bring himself to go about doing that himself now. Not yet. Maybe not ever. He wishes hers was next to his own.
He tries not to think about the rest of the Howlies and how he’d never gotten to say goodbye or tell them that they were the closest thing to brothers he’d ever had. He had never gotten to see how their lives and families had grown, and maybe he could go see those families now, but he doubts they’d want to see a stranger. They must have grown up with legends and stories of Cap- and in comparison, Steve Rogers is not a catch. Especially not with how he’s been lately.
He tries not to think about Peggy and how people have somehow gotten so caught up in the tales of what they could have or should have had that they can no longer see that she and him hadn’t really had anything at all. They’d been in a warzone, seeing each other only a few times every other month. Steve had been busier trying to keep people alive than he had been trying to find a wife. He wasn’t looking, not back then- again, most likely not ever. Why should he want a wife when he had the love of his life sleeping not six feet beside him on every mission?
So what if Bucky wasn’t a woman? They were in a war. That was no place for them to start plans of maybe getting married or what that would mean for men like them. Why worry about what the future might hold when they were merely trying to make sure they had a future in the first place?
It’s cruel that Steve would wake up in that future without Bucky by his side.
Steve also tries not to think of Bucky now. Especially never, ever late at night when he’s by himself in his too big too soft bed and feels so very fucking alone, skin hurting because no one touches him anymore. Not that there’s anyone left he wants to touch him, not in the ways that matter. He tries not to think of him, but that only works until it doesn’t. Until not thinking of Bucky or the others makes it feel like they’d not existed and Steve had never once been loved at all.
He had been loved once, had been held. But no one is here to do those things now, and that hurts almost as much as the ache inside that Steve still feels for home. Waking up, he’d had no one real to turn to for help. No one to run to. No place to go.
He thinks sometimes that he hasn’t stopped running since Fury and those SHIELD agents chased him out into Times Square. Maybe that’s why he’s so tired, but what Steve feels isn’t as superficial as being out of breath. Steve feels goddamn exhausted all the way down to the bone. He’d slept for so long, but when he closed his eyes, it was supposed to be for forever. It was supposed to be for good.
There’s nothing good about where Steve is now.
Now is six weeks after he’d been woken up. It hasn’t been that long, but then again, Steve has always hated having to wait. Though he doesn’t really know what he’s waiting for now. He knows what he wants. But he also knows he’s never going to get it again.
SHIELD had kept him at their facility for five days after the incident with the set and Steve bolting his way right out into traffic, getting introduced to this world in maybe the worst possible way. In his defense, they shouldn’t have lied to him like that. He knows they all know it, but they aren’t anything let alone saying sorry, so the anger about that is just another thing Steve decides to bottle up and not talk about.
That first week is spent with SHIELD doctors monitoring him and making sure his time in the ice isn’t going to cause him to keel over or shut down from the shock. Whether that’s supposed to mean medically or mentally, Steve doesn’t know. He doesn’t ask, because he doubts he wants to know (and also doubts they’d tell him anyways).
Even if the answer is more the first option than the second, Steve knows it’s probably still part of why they start out treating him like a child, or some kind of caged animal. He’s not explicitly told he’s not allowed out, but he knows he isn’t. He’s so shaken up and unstable that he doesn’t even try to fight it. Whatever fight is left was frozen with the rest of him and is apparently slower to thaw out than the rest.
Sometimes Steve still wakes up unable to feel his fingers or his toes. He shakes and gets shivery when he’s stressed. The doctors say it will come to pass, but part of Steve doesn’t want the hurt to go- it’s the only thing that keeps him human, feels like. He’s used to pain. Pain like this is the only thing familiar he seems to have left.
He doesn’t ask questions anymore, but right after he’d woken up and dashed out the door, he’d had plenty of them. He’d been scattered and scared enough to still get defensive when Fury and the other agents approached him- cornered him- in the street. They were armed, even if they tried to keep the crowd from seeing it. Steve had seen it. He’d had the hysterical urge to do something sudden and stupid just to get all the confusion to stop, but Fury had walked up and introduced himself before he had the change and what ended coming out instead was a too quiet “who are you?”
Then, where am I?
Break what to me?
How am I alive?
That last one had come out unhappier than Steve would like to admit, especially to anyone in a white coat with a clipboard and the power to put him away at the funny farm. Maybe Steve deserves the diagnosis it takes to go there, but that’s now who people see when they look at him. They don’t see the coward Steve Rogers who committed pseudo-suicide by taking a dive down into the ice without caring enough to get out. They see Captain America. The brave, strong, hero who gave his life to help take down Hydra and the Red Skull, who saved the world and went down in a fight.
There’s truth to the latter part of it, but it’s the former that Steve still feels. It’s the first half that no one likes to see, because no one likes to see Steve. Sometimes, he doesn’t even like to see himself. In part, he knows he might be feeling some of that because his return is still somewhat of a secret, but he feels that way half the time doing things as simple as crossing the street or scuffing his feet on the sidewalk. He feels that way especially when he’s stuck up alone in his SHIELD provided apartment with more privacy than he’s had since 1943 and now nothing personal left to fill it.
He spends a lot of time walking these days to try and avoid that. He never has a destination, but that’s to be expected, because he no longer has a home. He’s a nomad. A man with nothing. A man that’s on his own. He wasn’t even this alone when his mother died, because Bucky- Bucky had been there and made himself Steve’s home. Maybe nothing isn’t the word for what Steve is stuck with, because before… even when he had nothing, he had Bucky.
Now what does he have?
Six weeks of the new century and Steve feels just as lost as he had that day on the train. Six weeks into the new century and the loss is still sinking in. He doesn’t want it to, but there’s only so much running a man can do, and isn’t this pain what he deserves? He took the coward’s way out trying to chase Bucky into the darkness. He feels like one of the downfallen heroes he used to learn about in Art History back before the war when he was still taking classes. Punished for his crimes by being given everything he once wanted with the object of his real desires forever out of his reach.
He wanted a future once. He wanted Bucky out of the war. He wanted to be a hero. Looks like he fucking got it, but he wasn’t careful enough with what he wished for, and look how that’s wound up. Fate is cruel, but life is crueler. That’s a lesson Steve has now learned in full.
Steve sighs and hunches his shoulders in to better dig his hands down into the pockets of his coat. It’s leather, like he’d been wearing when he rescued the 107th from Azzano, but impossibly nicer. Most material things apparently are nowadays, at least according to the advertisements. Steve’s not sure any of them are true, but the jacket had cost more than a month’s worth of rent would have back in the day. It damn well better be worth it no matter how much back pay Steve now has behind him.
The coat fits comfortably, but Steve is still uncomfortable under the self scrutiny he feels himself settle under while watching everyone else mill around him on the sidewalk where he’s standing. It’s overwhelming being out during the day still sometimes, but it’s not like he has anything else to do. He’s spent enough time asleep already and he can’t sleep even at night half the time anyways.
He’s not even sure what he’s going to do if he ever settles on where to walk, but standing in the way of everyone else definitely isn’t helping him decide. He steps to the side and leans against a building, staring against his shoes to resolutely keep from making eye contact with the man selling what appears to be phones a few feet away. He’d learned the hard way that they like to prey on people passing by in an even pushier fashion than paperboys had back in the forties.
After the first incident of someone trying to sell him something on the street (a watch, which Steve later learned was fake) he’d started taking to turning his head away. He does that now. A trash can isn’t the best view (when did people become so casually wasteful?) but it’s better than being bombarded by a stranger. People have odd boundaries nowadays, and apparently leaving people trying to take innocent walks be is not one of them, especially in New York City.
After about another five minutes of wasting time, Steve eventually pushes off the wall he was leaning against and looks up, then around to see where he wants to go. There’s too many people around here. He wants to crawl out of his skin even more than usual.
He chooses to go left and see where that takes him- he’s taken a different path today than he did last week, so the sights are still new even past them being so futuristic. Though when Steve sees the car across the street in what looks to be a window for some kind of dealership, he has to note that there are no flying ones like Howard had promised.
Howard has a son now living somewhere in the city, but Steve hasn’t taken the time to find him. He’d barely known Howard, really. They were once friends, but that had passed away when he did. Steve never even got to meet his wife, so he doubts their child will care to meet him now.
He’s probably older than Steve anyways. Everyone at SHIELD seems to think that he’s a hundred, but really Steve is stuck between waking up a hundred and still being twenty six. Bucky was twenty seven when he fell, but maybe that doesn’t matter anymore. Steve’s own twenty-seventh birthday was technically last week.
He didn’t feel like doing much to celebrate.
His mood isn’t much better now even if his headspace is clearer, but he settles for scuffing his shoe against the sidewalk and trying to keep up with everyone else’s pace. They’ve got places to be. Steve just doesn’t want to be by himself.
The pace is so brisk that before he knows it, he’s having to step off to the side again just to catch his breath. It’s not hard to breathe exactly- he hasn’t had asthma since the summer of ‘43- but like he said, being out here is overwhelming sometimes in a different sort of way than he feels when he’s alone. The noise here might not be inside his head, but it can still be a lot.
Thankfully, it only takes him a second to spot his sanctuary in the form of a diner with outdoor seating down the block. It doesn’t take much debate on whether to go sit down or not. Seeing as the options are the diner, his empty apartment, or at SHIELD with the shrinks- it’s for once a fairly easy choice that he doesn’t mind making.
He goes to the diner and takes an empty table, intentionally choosing the seat that won’t expose his back to the street. There’s no one here to watch his six, and they might not be at war any more, but old habits die hard. Apparently some people don’t die at all.
The waitress is walking over to Steve not two seconds after he sits down, and it’s so quick that he’s almost alarmed. It’s not that this woman looks like a threat, but being treated nicely isn’t something he’s exactly used to when off the job. He tries to enjoy the kindness when she asks him for his order, but can’t quite keep the awkwardness from showing on his face. He’s never been a people person, but now it’s even worse.
Thankfully, his order isn’t too complicated. “Just a coffee, please,” he says, quiet and polite. He adds on a tentative smile at the end to mind the manners his mother taught him.
She’s brighter than him when she speaks and when she smiles. “Sugar is already set out. I’ll bring the creamer with the coffee. Will that be all?”
Steve nods, stomach turning at the mere thought of eating right now. The doctors said that’s another side effect. It’ll take time for his body to get used to being able to keep down food after being frozen for so long. That might be true, but Steve suspects the base level nausea would remain even if it wasn’t. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”
She clicks the pen she’d written down his order with and slides her notepad into the pocket of her apron, turning to go back to what Steve assumes will be the kitchen. “I’ll have that out in a moment!”
Steve almost thanks her again, but she’s already gone. He’s alone again at a table for two wishing he has someone to sit on the other side of it.
Back when he and Bucky were still together (still able to be together, Steve reminds himself, because they would have never voluntarily broken apart) they wouldn’t have been able to afford eating somewhere like this even if their sort of relationship was allowed anywhere but behind closed doors and curtains shut tight. That was just how things were. Meals, when they had the money for them to begin with, were eaten in the kitchen of their apartment or from a brown paper bag when on the clock for work.
Steve never said, but he actually sort of had a soft spot for making Bucky lunches to take down to the docks. They never were able to afford much when living together, but what little they had was always enough, and even if Steve wasn’t always the one able to provide it- he could at least serve it up. Bucky was always bad in the kitchen with anything other than making sandwiches anyways. Buttered bread and burnt coffee were his specialties. No matter how bad they tasted, Steve still made sure to eat them without (and, fine, maybe sometimes with) complaint.
He’s still dwelling on that a few minutes later when the waitress walks back up, this time with his cup of coffee and a small pitcher of creamer in both hands. She sets them down on the table and then leans back, hand on her hip while she tilts her head at him to smile again. “I’ll come around and see if you need any refills while I make my rounds, but if I miss you, just try and flag me down. I’ll get your check as soon as I can.”
“Thank you,” Steve repeats, feeling suddenly fidgety from something he’s not sure of that bothers him. He clenches his hands under the table on his thighs to keep them from shaking- he needs to do something with them, but he doesn’t know what. Then, spotting what looks to be an extra pen in his server’s apron, he has an idea. “Ma’am?”
Turning back to face him from where she was about to step away, his waitress- Debby, so her name tag says- looks at him, customer service smile seeming to be cemented in place. “What can I help you with?”
Steve doesn’t want to waste more of her time, so he gets right to it despite feeling the hesitance wanting to rise up inside. He pushes it back down with a swallow. “Would you mind if I used your pen for a while? I don’t have one with me and I’d like to… write some stuff down.” Draw, he almost says. Because I’m an artist despite what they’ve made of me.
He doesn’t say that. This woman is a stranger and so is he. He doubts she would understand. Really, neither does he.
Regardless of whether she sees anything odd on his face or not, she nods and hands it to him. “You can keep it if you want,” she tells him, this time turning and staying that way. “We always have a million lying around.”
Steve thanks her a third time and waits until she’s walked back into the building to bring his hands up to the table. They’re still shaking, but only slightly. He closes the left one around his coffee cup and uses his right to pick up the pen. That seems to stabilize them some, and by the time he has the cap flicked off the the ballpoint he’s been given, there’s barely a tremor when he scoots the paper placemat at his seat closer and draws his first straight line. He takes a sip of his coffee and tunes out the bustle of the people passing by to focus on drawing the second.
He’s not really sure of what he’s sketching in specific outside of the city- that is, until he looks up and sees something that he suspects is what made that uneasiness rise in his subconscious in the first place, smack dab in the middle of his muse. It’s a tower, taller than anything else in sight, so tall it sticks out like a sore thumb against the skyline. It’s silver, sleek, and shiny, but even that doesn’t stop Steve from thinking it’s one of the ugliest things he’s ever seen.
To be fair, maybe he’s biased. The tower is almost like a symbol of how much the times have changed- how things in the future have apparently gotten better, bigger, but still feel no less out of place. Steve feels no less out of place. Staring at the building makes him feel a bit sick to his stomach, but he stays at the diner and continues to sketch it anyways. He’d rather feel sick than be alone.
It takes another hour and a half and two cups of coffee for him to finally bring his time out today to a close, making the decision to finish up right as Debby approaches with the check. He’s still finishing some shading up around the edges of the mat, hand cupped around the edge to hold the paper still, but she must notice what he’s sketching because she decides to comment right as she sets her piece of paper down.
“You waiting on the big guy?” She says that like he should know what it means, but as usual, Steve doesn’t have a clue what people these days are ever referring to.
Bucky used to call him big guy after the serum, but he doubts that’s what she’s referring to. “Ma’am?”
His confusion must show up on his face as well as in his voice, because she’s quick to explain. “Iron Man,” she clarifies, waving up at the sky and looking slightly embarrassed he didn’t understand, as if she’s the one that’s on the outs here. “A lot of people eat here just to see him fly by.”
He’s still confused, but at least can pretend to understand now. People can fly now? He’s seen stranger things, he supposes. He’ll have to ask Fury about it next time they meet, or maybe look in the files they gave him to catch up with to see if there’s any mention. In the meantime, he nods slowly. “Right,” he says. Then, to change the subject and get going, “Maybe another time.” He begins pulling his wallet out of his jacket pocket to pay.
Debby smiles at him and uses the coffee pot she’s holding to pour Steve another cup despite the fact he hadn’t asked. “The table is yours as long as you’d like,” she says, and Steve can’t tell if he’s imagining things or if she’s really trying to get him to stay. Somehow, that makes him want to go even more, even when she continues. “Nobody’s waiting on it. Plus we’ve got free wireless.” With that, she begins to walk away yet again.
Steve frowns and begins folding the paper placemat to pocket back along with his wallet. He’s confused again, but he only gets a weird look thrown back at him when he asks. “Radio?” As with SHIELD, the more questions he asks, the less that get answered.
The older man behind him leans over while Steve is still at the table and gives him an exasperated look. He looks to be about the age Steve is supposed to be. “Ask for her number, you moron.”
Steve blinks at the partial insult then feels the tips of his hears burn at the implication. He’s not asking a woman out in this century- why should he? He didn’t in the last. Besides… Bucky might not be coming back, but it’s the least Steve can do to honor his memory by not moving on so fast even if he knows Bucky wouldn’t have liked it. Were they anyone knew, could they really blame him?
On paper, it’s been sixty something years since that day on the train. For Steve, it’s been not even three months.
Once he gets back on the street with his jacket pockets once again filled with his hands, he decides to skip the walk back and take the subway instead. It’s not something he does often (or as close to often as one can get in only six weeks) but that’s because it feels sort of special. The subway is one of the last things left over from when he and Bucky were young. It’s definitely changed a little, but- not a lot. Not as much as everything else.
It’s the same sort of rickety ride he and Bucky used to take together to go to baseball games or for nights out on the town, though it takes twice as long tonight to get back to the new park of town he resides in. It’s too swanky for him to really like it, but he hadn’t had a say in where they stuck him, so stuck there he is. He doesn’t talk to anyone the entire way there, choosing instead to sit in silence, staring at the world passing outside the window with both hands clasped between his knees to keep from starting to shake again.
He can remember sitting like this next to Bucky the same way, hip to hip, the closest they could ever risk getting when going somewhere public. If they were riding back from somewhere particularly late, sometimes Bucky would let Steve set his head on his shoulder and tell him he could shut his eyes until they were home. The sway was always comforting, as was the warmth and safety of Bucky sharing the same seat.
Now, not many people are talking in the car that he’s in, busying themselves with headphones or books or for some people, both. Somehow Steve still feels more content sitting there than he has at any other point during the day, and it’s such a nice chance that he’s almost sad to get off.
That’s until he does get off, though. That’s when the sadness actually starts to set in, so fast that by the time he’s made it up the stairs to his door on the third floor, his walk is more of a trudge. He hasn’t done practically anything today, but he’s still tired.
He slept sixty six years straight and yet he’s still so goddamn tired.
He unlocks his apartment door and steps inside to the same sort of somber silence he’s been welcomed with for the past six weeks. The lights are off, but Steve doesn’t bother to turn them off as he shuts the door behind him. The serum has it so he can see in the dark, and it’s not like there’s anyone around to need them on. Steve knows he doesn’t. All that would do is let him see the mess his life and what little belongings he has left have become.
Bucky would have had his ass back in the forties for letting their home go like what Steve’s got in front of him right now- records he didn’t pick out strewn around a machine he’s not sure how to work, dirty dishes piled in the sink, enough laundry on the floor to last a lifetime in comparison to what he used to wear. Bucky wasn’t a neat freak, but he was no slob either, and sharing a space with Steve was a small miracle that had come at the cost of Sarah’s life cut short. He wanted to respect that, and really, Steve did too. It was just hard to care sometimes when on some days, he couldn’t even manage to get out of bed, let alone make it up.
To Bucky, though, a well kept apartment was the sign of a well kept life, and more importantly, the opposite was a sign that Steve wasn’t taking care of their home or himself.
“You damn jackass,” he often said, usually after finding out Steve hadn’t taken out the trash for over a week. Sometimes, worse. “We’re both the men of this house, so don’t you start up that ‘not your wife’ shit with me. You respect our place and your person, you hear me?”
Even with only one good ear, Steve always had. He just didn’t always have an easy time listening to what it was Bucky said. He did his best after those bouts of exasperation, though, sweeping up the kitchen and minding his half of their evenly split chores consistently until the charm of that broke and he was back to being lectured just to repeat to loop all over again. He’d had to make Bucky dinner more than a few times to make it up.
But Bucky’s not coming home for dinner to this apartment. He’s not coming home at all, and really, neither is Steve. He’s here, but his heart isn’t, and he wishes his body wasn’t either. He feels about as close to a hollowed out human as the mannequin in the corner meant to keep his uniform crisp. In case you need it, Fury had said.
What for, Steve isn’t sure. They’re no longer supposed to be at war. They won that when Steve was asleep.
Steve toes off his shoes, then takes off his coat and skips hanging in by the door in favor of tossing it on the sofa on top of where his clothes from last night are still crumpled. He sleeps on the couch most nights now. The mattress… Steve doesn’t know if he’ll be meant for something that soft ever again. And hey, if it means he doesn’t have to make the bed, maybe it isn’t so bad. Left in only his socks, slacks, and too large dress shirt, he passes by his nest of blankets to go sit in the hard chair in front of his desk instead.
There are files sitting on it in a brown box Steve has yet to open and a computer he can’t bring himself to turn on. He’ll get to that later- for now, the files can come first. Those will hopefully be easier to work with, and he needs to accomplish at least one thing at some point today. He takes a deep breath and straightens up his posture, shifting to slide the box closer until it’s positioned in front of his chest.
He pulls the tabs open, fingers curling around the cardboard so hard it cracks when he takes his first glimpse at what’s inside the square space. More importantly, whose face he sees once he switches on the desk lamp and finally lifts the first of the papers up.
It’s Bucky. The printing is bad and the ink faded, but it’s him. That’s his picture. His name. His birthday, his rank, his serial number, even his goddamn blood type all filled out on a file that’s marked with a stamp in red ink that reads DECEASED. Steve doesn’t know what to do with the sudden swell of emotions that rise up in his throat, but his fingers are shaking yet again when he lays the file flat on the desk to touch over Bucky’s black and white depicted face.
It’s so quiet in the apartment that Steve is almost startled by how loud he sounds when he finally starts to sob, shoving the paper away so that the tears don’t stain what little of Bucky he has left in this life.
Barnes, James Buchanan. Born March 10th, 1917. Height 6’0. Weight 185 pounds. Eyes blue. Hair brown. Blood type O negative. Serial number 32557038. Rank Sergeant. Stationed with the 107th.
Status. Missing in action. Presumed deceased.
These are all things Steve knows, some of them that he’s had memorized since he was six years old, but the sting is still so sharp when he sees it laid out in front of him that he can’t help crying. He’s always been an easy crier, though. Not about physical pain, but some of the mental. Usually after a loss. He’d cried over his Ma when she died, same with Dr. Erskine, and Bucky then along with Bucky now. He’d cried when Bucky got his orders. He’d even cried the first night after he shipped out.
Big ol’ crybaby, Bucky used to tease him, just to get Steve to scowl and smack his hand away when he tried to sop up whatever remaining tears Steve had left by the time he let Bucky see his face. Bucky was always someone who didn’t know how else to help but to let himself be the shoulder to cry on, then the words of wisdom, and then, the one to help Steve blow his nose. Like he couldn’t do that himself- but that was always the better option over Bucky giving him space. Sometimes Steve needed that, but other times… he just needed to know he was safe.
Bucky was always more stoic about shedding tears, but that didn’t mean Steve never saw them. Being the big brother, the Barnes’ only son, and Steve’s self-proclaimed rock meant that he didn’t see them often, but there were times when Steve held him as close to his frail chest as Bucky always did to his firm one. Steve wishes he were able to hold Bucky now, even while he’s the one that can’t stop the tears from falling. The first fucking file and he’s already a mess.
He feels lonelier than he ever has in his entire miserable life. Staring down at these files is the tangible proof of his loss of everyone he’d ever valued. Every red stamp only seals in the certainty that Steve’s known since waking up in that washed out set of a life he’s never getting back. He’s going to be alone for the rest of his life. There’s no one left who loves him. No one left who even knows him, but Steve knows one thing, and that’s that somehow he has to go on. There's no heroics to hide his cowardice behind at the current moment.
Bucky once told him that he didn’t have to get by on his own, right after Steve said he could. Now Steve has to, but he feels like he can’t. He will, though- he has to. He’s already seen what happened when he decided he didn’t want to anymore, and that’s a hurt he doesn’t know if he could withstand again. That’s a spit in the face of Bucky’s sacrifice that he shouldn’t put to waste.
He stares down at the file some more and lets his vision go blurry while he strokes over Bucky’s name. Bucky is gone. Steve can grieve even if he can’t move on.
-
Not wasting Bucky’s sacrifice still has its loopholes, Steve comes to find. He lasts about another week before coping through walks and treks around town stop cutting it and he feels so pent up he would crawl right out of his skin even if it meant he’d be skinny again. He’s cagey enough for that to be the case either way. Size hasn’t changed his stubborn streak or his impulsive tendencies.
He’s settled into sort of a sad routine that bounces between being stuck in a lethargic sort of rut and then running into something more reckless. It’s like he’s waiting for the world to spin out from under him while he’s walking just so whatever happens won’t be his fault, whether that be riding around the city at night on his motorcycle too fast or crossing the street during the day without checking for cars coming his way. It’s the type of behavior Bucky would have threatened to beat his ass black and blue for.
“Punk,” he can picture him saying in that tone that was always equal parts both fond and frustrated. “I know your eyesight sucks, but you need to start looking out for yourself. You’re smarter than all that, so if you want me to quit calling you stupid, you better stop acting like it.”
Actually, Steve may have liked to read more, but Bucky was always the better student. Steve was more preoccupied in school with the bullies than he was with being a brain. Bucky was still somehow a better fighter than him, though, especially after he picked up boxing.
Funnily enough, that’s what Steve is on his way to go do now.
It’s an even longer ride than yesterday for Steve to get to the gym he has in mind, but he sits through it best he can even if it’s with a bouncing leg and lip bitten raw by the time he’s able to get off on his stop. It’s a familiar one- he and Bucky grew up coming down this block every other day. Steve for the grocer that gave him his first job and Bucky for the gym that gave him those back muscles Steve used to love so much.
The YMCA may have been more respectable, but Goldie’s was where Bucky really got into boxing, and it was closer to their old apartment anyways. Bucky used to go there at least three times a week after work to punch out some of the frustration about cuts in pay or the crises going on overseas. He liked fighting in his own way- different from Steve’s, but similar in the fact he liked to win. He just only wanted to fight when he knew it was fair. Steve doesn’t think before the serum he’d ever been in a fair fight at all.
Bucky always fought dirty when they would wrestle or fight over dumb things when they were younger, but in the ring he was different. He was respected. Revered, even. The best boxer in all of Brooklyn, three time champion of his class, and nicknamed after Coney Island’s most popular ride to boot: the Cyclone. Steve wonders while he’s walking towards the building of Bucky”: picture will still be up somewhere inside. He’s a hometown hero, after all.
Going info Goldie’s is almost painful. The place hasn’t changed nearly as much as the rest of the city has, and Steve is torn up and thankful for it all at once. He may not have been the member here before the serum made him so muscular, but he tagged along with Bucky to enough matches to manage to get to know his way around even while Bucky was busy in the ring.
Bucky used to tease sometimes that Steve was with him before fights so much that maybe he should just manage him instead. “My little lucky charm,” he liked to joke, always ruffling Steve’s hair to rub his head before every match. “You gonna be my ring boy?”
It actually took a lot longer for Steve to convince Bucky to let him get in the right with him so he could learn how to hold his own in a proper fight. He’d begged and pleaded for years- something he usually wouldn’t have been caught dead doing otherwise- but it was always to no avail. Bucky didn’t want him to learn how to box, always spouting some bullshit about it giving him a big head or being too hard on his body, which of course only made Steve want to push himself even more.
Unfortunately, it had taken Pearl Harbor and the US finally wintering the World War for Bucky to finally give in, and even that was after a bunch of groaning about how Steve needed a lot more than some training to pass the physical required to enlist. Steve hadn’t ended up passing it despite all the training Bucky had taken the time to help with. That first rejection hurt almost as much as all those practice punches to the face.
Steve’s still feeling that different sort of sting when he walks up the steps to where the gym owner’s office is located above the reception desk. The secretary is the one who actually hands Steve the key to his locker for the day after he pays, but Steve still thanks him and calls him sir anyways. He knows what it’s like to work grunt jobs. Gratitude and respect go a long way.
The interaction goes relatively early, but the key still feels heavy in his hand as he climbs back down to the ground floor and sets about going to the locker room instead. It’s still in the same place as it was back in the forties. Steve has to suck in a deep breath before he dares step inside- he hasn’t been in here since before Bucky’s last fight.
It’s not that much difference. Still dank and somehow perpetually damp even though the communal shower and stalls are in the next room over. Steve has to inhale again before he can approach the line of lockers anyways. He unlocks his assigned container and starts getting changed as quickly as he can. There’s an itch under his skin that’s been simmering for the past six days, and he’s burning with the need to scratch- or at least punch- it out. Shedding his button up and the slacks he’s in in favor of a t-shirt and some sweatpants makes him feel a bit better, but he knows what he really needs to do.
He also knows that Bucky would hate that he’s going to do it.
He takes his duffel back with him to the empty ring set up in a side room off of where several men are in the main area playing basketball on the court set up in the center. He considers staying out there- after all, doesn’t he come out to feel less alone?- with what he’s got planned, he’s pretty sure that for once he wants to be by himself. No one else needs to see him like this.
Like this is standing in front of a punching bag, poised perfectly into the form Bucky taught him with both hands positioned up to pull their first punch. That’s not the problem. No, what is is the fact that he’s chosen not to wear the gloves still sitting in his bag over on the bench. He could say he doesn’t know why he made that decision, but really, he does. It was conscious. He’s not even sure why he bought the damn things- maybe to put on a show, even if it was only for himself.
He might not want to waste Bucky’s sacrifice, but he still wants to hurt. If he doesn’t deserve to die, he damn well deserves this.
He has his hands wrapped, at least, but he’s not fool enough to think for a second that that’d be good enough in Bucky’s eyes no matter how good his form is when he lands his first few hard hits. They're honed. Precise. Bucky would be proud of him for them if it weren’t for the blood he can feel starting to soak through the bandages not thirty minutes in as his knuckles start to split.
When they first began with Bucky finally agreeing to teach Steve how to box, it started out with Steve making an agreement of his own with the older man, smart mouth and stubbornness set to the side for a second while he took in just how strict Bucky was being about it. The first lesson was taught to him on a weekend the both took off of work- Bucky had gone over the top decking Steve out in all the gear, half of which he didn’t even use himself. A headgear, knee pads, a mouth guard, the works. He’d gripped Steve’s chin to slide the guard in himself and held his face still so Steve couldn’t speak while he worked, and more importantly, couldn’t interrupt his words when he spoke his piece.
“Boxing regimen is the toughest there is,” he’d said, stern and so serious that Steve’s stomach had done a flip even before the next part got out. “You do what I say, when I say it, or I walk out that door and you don’t see me ‘til the war is over.” Steve had given him a glare behind the guard met with a pointed look from Bucky’s own eyes and an upturn of the corner of his mouth. “We understand each other?”
Steve had scowled and shoved Bucky’s hands off of his face just so he could take out the guard to answer. “You’re already enjoying this.” His tone was accusatory, but privately, there was something sort of charming to him about seeing Bucky so competent and even more in his element than his usual confidence made him. Even while he was being an asshole about it.
Case and point, his cocky grin and the first playful punch he had tapped with his bare hand against Steve’s cheekbone. It wasn’t a real hit and it definitely didn’t hurt, but Steve still huffed anyways. Bucky’d laughed. “You bet your ass I am.” There it was. Asshole.
The agreement on Steve’s end had been sort of hidden in that statement when he didn’t protest per his usual agitated antics every time Bucky tried to boss him around out of anywhere but their bedroom. He would listen to Bucky while he was learning as long as Bucky kept teaching him in the first place.
They had prepared for weeks for that physical, and when the devastation of not passing hit… when at least Steve had a few new fond memories of Bucky teaching him how to properly fight. They were just as important to him as the lessons later were once he finally did join Bucky in battle.
You’re weak. You have to stay alert all the time or the strong will take advantage. Bigger means slower so you’ve gotta get fast. Not all big guys are dumb, but you’ve still got to be smarter.
Give you all in a fight or it might be your last.
It hadn’t all been roughhousing and lectures- there had been some light moments in there too, where Bucky would say subtly sweet things even while Steve was taking swings at him.
“Gimme an uppercut- Good!”
“Don’t punk out on me now, Steve-o. Keep it coming- that’s it, be the man!”
At the end, he’d usually ruffle Steve’s hair while they were still panting and give him a smile so proud Steve’s face stayed red from more than just exertion. “That’s my boy,” he always said.
Sometimes, he even took the time to help wrap Steve’s hands in the back, kissing his knuckles between open locker doors to make sure no one was watching. “Gotta make sure to keep those artists' hands of yours safe,” he would murmur.
That agony that those memories make Steve feel might be what’s causing him to be so reckless with it now. He’s no one’s boy anymore. He’s twenty six- twenty seven, he has to remind himself. He hasn’t been a boy for quite some time, let alone one who belongs to someone, but Bucky calling him that wasn’t really about being literal. It was just another dumb way he used to tease him. Bucky always liked doing that.
Bucky, whose blood is on those artists’ hands he used to adore. Bucky, who because of Steve, can’t be here now in this building in any other way than in a photo on the wall. Steve’s not sure his picture is actually in here anywhere, but he thinks some of his trophies might be in the corner locked behind the case. He can’t bring himself to look. Bucky had been so proud of himself. He’d been so proud of Steve for merely learning how to throw a proper punch in the first place.
The punch Steve throws now lands crooked, and he can practically hear the knuckles crack. He grunts, loud and low into the emptiness of this lonely room he’s let himself go off into, but he doesn’t stop. Like he said, he wants it to hurt. He wants at least some small part of him to still be human.
There’s nothing human about how fast he heals, split skin stitching together so fast Steve almost wants to scream. He hits the bag harder instead, for what might be fifteen minutes, or maybe an hour. He doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter. He’s used to losing track of time.
The pain eventually blurs between physical and what Steve guesses the shrinks would say is psychological, but he still doesn’t stop. He almost feels like he can’t. His mind has memories on repeat, replaying in his head like they had on the computer screen he’d finally switched on earlier this week. There was a tape on it of him and Bucky during the war being filmed laughing together at something stupid someone said off camera. Even scruffy and soot streaked in probably unwashed clothes, Bucky was beautiful. The quality was the same shitty black and white stuff as the rest of the pictures from the forties, but their smiles had been so bright, Steve doesn’t think it matters. He also doesn’t think he’s smiled like that since.
He had cried even harder at that than he had for the file. He hadn’t seen Bucky’s face moving that clearly since the train, and a computer might not be able to properly showcase the crinkles by his eyes or the cleft in his chin, but Steve doesn’t care. The smile on that screen was from Bucky. The smile on that screen was meant for him.
He’d kill Steve if he saw him not using gloves when he has them with him, probably pop up one in the side of his head and give him a lecture about being reckless and running the risk of damaging such a precious part of his body. His hands. His goddamn hands, that hadn’t been able to hold onto Bucky when he’d needed him most.
All he had to do was hold him.
He lets out a sound that he hadn’t even known that was about to slip free- something anguished from the top of his throat where the words always feel trapped when he even thinks about wanting to speak about what he’s feeling. It rings around the room for a second or two, but that’s before he punches his bag so hard, it rips off the hook and the thunk of it hitting the floor overshadows every other sound in the room save for what’s in his head.
He’s overwhelmed and unsettled by it even though it’s a product of his own actions. The casing of it has split open to spill sand, just like Steve’s skin has done to spill the blood underneath the tape over top of it. He feels guilty seeing the spread of it. As usual, someone else is going to have to mop up his messes.
He tries to control his breathing where his chest is still heaving from the workout and maybe something more, giving himself a few seconds before he goes over and begins to unwrap his hands so he can put fresh tape on so they won’t see any blood when he goes and asks for a broom. He can help, even while he’s hurting.
Everyone knows what happened to the last man that tried to clean up after him. There’s apparently an exhibit on the Howling Commandos in the Smithsonian where Bucky has a memorial, at least according to the files. Steve wonders that if when the world learns he’s alive again, they’ll have to edit out his own death date below his name. Bucky is the only Commando to give his life in service of his country- Steve… he was just being a coward. He couldn’t go on without him.
He doesn’t know if he can go on without him even now. He knows he should, but… it’s so hard. It’s so hard and nothing comes easy and he feels so painfully out of place that the point of living escapes his sight a little more every day. He’s not Captain America right now, so who is he?
What’s the old saying? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Supposedly the answer can be argued to be no, so by that logic, if no one who knows Steve Rogers is left alive, does he really exist at all?
He wishes the answer was no. He’d accept it without argument.
By the time he finishes sweeping the spread sand up and heads back to the locker room to change back into his street clothes, his hands feel almost fully healed. He takes the tape off again, feeling a little bad about the waste, but sets that to the side in order to wince when the material pulls on a patch of skin still sticky with drying blood. The healed area might not be an open wound anymore, but the skin is still stretched thin enough for him to see the whiteness of where he’d almost beaten himself down to the bone underneath when he flexes his fingers.
He bends down to start untying his Converse, but something about the sudden motion makes bis grip go weak while pulling the laces. When he stands back up, he’s so dizzy that he has to collapse onto the changing bench behind him and lean down to hand his head over his knees in an attempt to catch his breath. He’s not sure if it’s dehydration, exhaustion, or something else, but he feels sick. His head is spinning and everything hurts, but he doesn’t feel human in the way he usually does after doing stuff like this. He just hurts and wishes more than anything he was able to go home.
He drags in a deep breath and tries to sound determined in his head when he tells himself he can do that. He can catch a subway back to his apartment, maybe even pick up dinner. Finally use the television they gave him to try and feel less alone. He tries to tell himself that, tries to convince himself best he can. He really fucking does. But it doesn’t work. It never does.
How can he go on like this? Knowing that anyone and anything that could make it get better is dead and buried, gone somewhere he isn’t sure of or buried in the ground. He wonders, and then he wishes with all the energy he has left to exert that the Valkyrie had let him go down in the same way. He wishes it had worked so he could stop having to hurt, hurting inside and hurting himself.
He shudders in a slow breath and snuffles when letting it make its way back out, so wetly that he has to wipe his face off on the bottom of his t-shirt before he can finish changing to head back to his supposed home. His hand aches when he goes to get his wallet out of his coat pocket in preparation for paying his way onto the subway and he hisses at it, trying to hide the expression when he has to walk back out into the main room to exit the building.
The desk worker who had given him the broom gives him a slightly concerned look, but Steve only speeds up towards the doors. He doesn’t want them to ask. He doesn’t know what he’d say.
He does know that bloodying up his hands was probably a dumb move, but the burn of that isn’t the only thing that’s aching. Used to be, Bucky would have seen him stinging like this and sighed before taking him to the bathroom or the back of wherever they were to try and help sort him out, all while either giving him the silent treatment or tearing him apart with words rather than action. Steve always hated the lectures even if they were part of what let him know Bucky loved him, but still, he wishes with everything in him that Bucky was still around to scold him.
He’d rather be flayed apart in a fight, fair or unfair, than have to feel this way for the rest of his life. If he didn’t run the relative risk of being recognized he might even go out and pick one right now.
He’s still debating over doing just that when it happens. He’s not exactly how to describe what it is. He’s seen some goddamn strange things in his less than normal lifetime but this is something entirely different than a man with a red skull and no skin on his face. It’s a lot weirder than that, he would say.
He’s walking down the sidewalk, heart still aching and hands itching to go do something stupid, feeling worse than he thinks he has since Peggy found him in that bombed out bar. Going to Goldie’s was a mistake. He doesn’t think he’ll do it again.
He might not get the chance to do it again, because anomaly makes its appearance almost right after his phone- something he’s still not used to having- starts ringing in his pocket. The only numbers saved in there are people from SHIELD so Steve knows this is a call he should probably pick up, but he’s not the best at working his phone yet in general, let alone while walking with so many people around. He ducks into an alleyway so he doesn’t jumble anyone else up while he fumbles himself to get the device out to answer.
He gets as far as letting out a gruff “Rogers” in greeting. That’s when it happens. Right as he starts to hear a response from whoever is on the other end of the line (Fury, he would wager from the sound) there’s a bright flash of white light all around him and then the world goes dark while the ground collapses beneath his feet. He’s gone.
Once again, he didn’t even get to say goodbye.