Steve’s timer stops on his seventh birthday.
He watches it with bated breath in the moments beforehand, as minutes turn to seconds and his heart turns to a hummingbird in his chest.
At first, he can’t decide whether to focus on the back of his hand or his surroundings, but in the end the choice is made for him when another kid barrels straight into him, knocking him down onto the dry grass.
“Crap, I’m sorry.” Says the assailant, “We were trying to play tag, and- hey, are you okay?” He panics slightly as he notices Steve’s short and staggered breaths, and offers, “Come on, grab my hand!”
Steve’s still winded, but he nods, accepting the arm offered to him and hauling himself up.
The other boy glances downwards at their clasped hands momentarily, then does a double take at the matching pair of markings they’re sporting: 0-0-0-0.
“Oh.” He says. “Oh.”
Steve doesn’t really know how to respond, because he’s also currently a little transfixed on their twin timers, but somehow he has the presence of mind to murmur, “Hi. I’m Steve. Steve Rogers.”
“Bucky Barnes.” Comes the awestruck reply, before they’re interrupted.
“Bucky! It’s getting dark, Mr. Miller is going to set off fireworks soon!” The voice belongs to a small girl who has the same eyes and chin as Steve’s soulmate, and is racing toward him at a rate of knots.
“I’m coming, Becca.” Bucky promises, “Just, uh, give me a minute?”
Becca huffs and pulls a face at him, but resigns to turn back and make her way towards a small huddle of other children at the end of the field.
Bucky rolls his eyes, “Sisters.”
“I don’t have any.” Steve says quietly, trying not to be too obvious about the way he’s studying every feature of his apparent soulmate’s face. It would, he thinks, be quite nice to draw.
“You can have mine if you want, they’re so annoying.” He says, though the fondness in his eyes is impossible to miss.
Especially since Steve can’t stop staring into them.
“Uh, anyway.” Bucky asks after a beat, “Do you want to come see the fireworks with us?”
“Sure.” Steve allows himself a hint of a smile, “That sounds like fun.”
“Great,” Says Bucky, failing to mask his relief that his proposal wasn’t rejected, “let’s go then.”
-
“Hang on!” Steve’s screaming, and this is a nightmare. It has to be a nightmare, because they’re hanging onto a carriage hundreds of feet above a ravine, and if this is real then so is the possibility that he’s about to lose the love of his life.
Bucky’s tenuous grip on the icy bar he’s holding is growing weaker. There’s panic etched into his features, but what worries Steve more is that beyond that, there’s a serenity in his eyes that can only come from acceptance of a horrific fate.
“Grab my hand!” Steve yells, his skin burning with the cold through his thermals.
And Bucky tries to.
Their hands are close; so close.
Then something snaps, and Steve can only watch in slow motion as Bucky falls into the abyss, the distance between them becoming something that Steve, in all his determination, cannot close. He hides his face and wills himself to hold on, despite the overwhelming urge to follow his soulmate into the dark.
-
Later, when he removes his gloves, he sees the spaces from which the numbers on his skin have dissipated.
-
When Steve wakes up in 2011, the first thing he notices is how loud everything is.
Sure, Manhattan has always been busy, but this is a different kind of noise. It’s visual and it’s tangible and he can’t escape it; he’s walled in from all sides.
He’s trying to adjust from the second Nick Fury introduces himself and explains the situation, but then he realises a second issue is unfolding when the man offers him a firm handshake. Steve reaches his right hand forward to meet Fury’s, and on its dorsal surface is a new set of numbers.
1086-11-17-32
He feels like driving his fist through a wall. He wants to scream and cry and tear the skin from the back of his hand because he doesn’t want anyone else. There is no prospect that appeals to him less, in this new world of things he doesn’t recognise, than a person who is supposed to fill a void that opened in him all those years ago.
The pain he carries is the only semblance of familiarity he can hold on to anymore.
-
If New York is the city that never sleeps, Steve Rogers must be a true New Yorker, because neither does he.
Especially not since shield has been compromised, and his timer has ticked away into the single digits of days.
Somehow, the latter issue is what bothers him the most.
How is he supposed to meet his new soulmate in the midst of this? He’s not even sure that the mission he’s embarking on is the sort he can leave alive, and yet he’s supposed to accept that there’s someone ready to take it on with him, now?
Surely there’s been a mistake.
-
He’s fucked.
Actually, he’s probably something beyond fucked. Steve has officially ventured into the territory of the truly tragic, and he can’t even stop to think about it because the Winter Soldier has him pinned to the side of a van, and he’s out for blood.
He could almost laugh. His initial plan was always to apologise to his new soulmate once they finally met; he’d have a heartfelt conversation with them, take all the time they needed to ask questions and then part ways, as painlessly as possible given the situation.
The new plan is to not let this guy drive a knife through his throat.
It’s working, too; the Soldier’s hand to hand combat is remarkable, but Steve is managing to hold his own, right up until Steve throws him to the ground and his mask is displaced.
Then all bets are off.
“Bucky?”
“Who the hell is Bucky?”
-
Waking up on the bank of the Potomac is puzzling, considering that Steve had expected this time to really be the end.
He’s had more chances at life than most; even before becoming Captain America, he cheated death on multiple occasions- he can recite the last rites like they’re his name- but this time feels ridiculous. Like he’s overstepping or something.
Struggling to breathe like he hasn’t since his asthmatic days, he moves to sit up, startling as he notices the figure crouched beside him, staring down at him with glassy blue eyes.
“My timer hit zero.”
Steve doesn’t reply because he’s too busy hacking water from the depths of his lungs.
“It hit zero when we were fighting. You touched me and it- it hit zero. It hit zero.” He keeps repeating it like a mantra, and Steve wonders if he needs to do that to avoid forgetting who he is again.
“That’s right, Buck.” Steve finally says, then he lifts his right hand and places it in Bucky’s prosthetic left, watching him study the four circles that mean everything.
Bucky frowns, “It’s happened before. We were… Smaller.”
“We were.” Steve tries to smile but pure melancholy permeates through him, and he can’t quite muster it convincingly, “It was a long time ago.”
A pause. “Are we still… Do you still want us to..?”
Steve moves his left hand, placing it into Bucky’s right, so they’re holding hands and facing each other head on.
“’Til the end of the line, pal.”
The Potomac ebbs and flows, and Steve matches its lulling rhythm with his breath. Bucky leans his forehead forwards to rest against Steve’s, and the hummingbird in his chest resurfaces for the first time in almost seventy years.