This is not the Endgame

Steve was sick. Tired, fed up, at the end of his rope and losing his grip.

Peggy, when she'd been succumbing to dementia, had once told him that you can't go back, that it's up to you to make the most of the time that you have. But she was wrong.

He could go back. Back to a time that made sense to him. A familiar Brooklyn, a lower-tech environment. He could find out who he was meant to be, no pressure. All his life, he'd been inadequate. Before the serum, his memories were hazed by the grip of angina, the constriction of asthma, shitty eyesight, scoliosis... his many maladies. He'd had a certain talent for art and an unshakable disdain for bullies. Couldn't get into the Army, couldn't get a good job, couldn't get a steady gal. He did have Bucky, who had all these things, but didn't properly value them. Right after the serum, he'd chased down a Nazi spy, barefoot, punched through the glass of a submarine, for Christ's sake. Only to have Chester Philips tell him that he'd been promised an army, and all he'd gotten was him. The disgust that twisted his voice on his last word.

Once again, he'd been inadequate.

But he'd done his part--bond sales had soared following his appearances--and he'd gotten to go over to the European theater of war. That's when he'd truly started to find out what he could do. His spine was straight, all his ailments had vanished, he was taller and stronger and head-turning. He felt like what he thought Bucky always felt like, and it was great. Finally, he was enough. He rescued his best friend and hundreds of POWs, single-handed. He got a special squad as an award, heads turned in his direction, positively for a change, and Philips finally acknowledging that he WAS enough. Girls were flinging themselves at him. Even Peggy, who'd initially just seen his intelligence and drive but dismissed his exterior, had come around. She'd been interested in him, not Bucky.

And for several months, he was enough. He led his men against Hydra, and they had significant victories. But then there was Zola. And the train. And all he'd had to do was hold on. Hold on to his best friend's hand, with all his new superstrength.

He'd failed.

He was not enough.

And when he'd wrested control of the Valkyrie away from Schmidt, there was a certain serenity in his choice to put the plane in the ice. He could save the mainland from the Hydra bombs. He could be enough. And, in his ending, he would stay that way.

He was considerably dismayed to wake up and find himself in a future that he could not have imagined. The change in technology, in the social mores, fashion, the role of women and minorities... the world had moved on in ways that boggled his mind. His transformation was no longer extreme; movies envisioned far more. Fury had given him a lifeline in the offer to join SHIELD. He could contribute to the team's successes. Except then it all went bad. Hydra had infiltrated SHIELD and was an insidious world force once again. He had to burn it down. And he butted heads with his teammates. Well, mainly Tony. He cut him a lot of slack because he was Howard's boy and they were on the same side, or so he thought. But Tony had problems, ones that he wouldn't face, and he turned into quite a fascist. Project Insight, Ultron, his insistence that his tech could save the world. And Bruce, while Steve had no quarrel with him personally, enabled his behavior. Tony could be spiteful and had a bad habit of objectifying people and threw his weight around rather than taking the time to compromise, to actually use his genius to think through problems rather than suiting up and trying to blast his way through. Thor had a similar mindset as Steve, but he was often gone to Asgard and wasn't terribly open either. Clint, he'd thought, was a good man, a family man, a good friend. Nat... Nat and Sam were special. He acclimated to the new time, made a found family, and he was enough.

Then he'd found out that Bucky had survived his fall from the train, thanks to whatever experiments Zola had put him through--and he'd never asked Bucky about that time in Azzano, figuring that if he wanted to talk, he would, but that was cowardly, and he was not a good enough friend--and he'd found him and took him to Wakanda, and T'Challa had offered them safe haven and a cure.

And more god damned aliens showed up, a different bunch, and he was, spectacularly, inadequate. He'd lost, spectacularly. Failed utterly. Sam and Bucky, gone. Other friends, including T'Challa and his supergenius sister Shuri. Half the life in the universe, as a matter of fact. Those who were left were not... well, Tony hadn't been Snapped, for one thing. And he'd had a hissy and went off to pout. Until Scott had shown up with the answer. Time travel, a way to get the Infinity Stones and undo the Snap.

But he couldn't even do that right. Tony had insisted that his daughter outweighed all the harm done by the Snap, all the suffering and trauma and loss, and so it hadn't been undone, as such. Life--barring Natasha and Gamora--had been brought back, to great chaos.

Well, he was done. He was tired of not being enough, for his best efforts to be insufficient. To have people always saying he shoulda coulda done more to prevent harm. Screw that, the people who said it, their issues, and whatever the hell they'd rode in on. He made his plan, told Bucky. Said goodbye. Bucky would be ok. His head was fixed now. Sam didn't particularly like him, but he'd see that Bucky was put on his feet. And he'd make sure that Sam got a reward, the shield, because Sam was a good man who would be successful as Captain America.

Steve took the stones, put them back in the past, and stayed to find the peace and adequacy that had mostly always eluded him.

"Look, man, you don't have to go. The government's buying the Avengers complex from her, the sale is in progress as well as them taking over funding the team. We're just waiting for the ink to dry. She doesn't have authority over us." Sam's voice was frustrated, but Bucky kept his head down, slapping the tape over the box flaps. He didn't have a lot of stuff.

"I don't really want to be here in the Avengers complex. I can do my work easier if I live in the city anyway," he said, straightening up and hefting the box. "Pepper Potts doesn't have to like me, I don't have to like her. I need a new start, now that Steve's gone."

"And isn't that fucked up," Sam muttered. Bucky barked a laugh. "I get that Steve was depressed after the snap and he kind of fixated on the 40's, the last time he had a clear conscience. But what the hell's he going to do for money? He doesn't have cash with the right dates, his credit cards aren't going to work, he has no ID. How's he going to get a job? He'll still be recognized, he's still in the wreck in the ice." Sam sighed. "You know what? This time travel shit makes my brain hurt. It isn't logical, it doesn't make sense. It's ridiculous."

Bucky shrugged. "He didn't like the 40s much when he was living it. The food was boring, there weren't any vacuum cleaners, nobody we knew had a washer or dryer. No internet, and we were mostly broke. He was small, sick, and hostile a lot." He snorted. "At least he won't have to worry about the primitive state of medication any more." Sam sighed again and picked up another box, one of three.

"Ok, so why are you moving to such a shithole? It's older than you. I mean, literally. It's so old that it probably doesn't have a sewer line, it probably all just dumps into the basement. The neighborhood is shitty. There was a junkie passed out in the hall, Buck. There are drug dealers on the street." Bucky was silent. "Do you not think you deserve to live somewhere that's not about to be condemned?" he asked incredulously. Then, when Bucky walked to the door of the room in the Avengers complex, hurried after him. "You're taking your antidepressants, right?" he asked quietly as they walked through the empty hall.

"Yeah."

They walked out and put the boxes in the back of the van that Bucky'd rented for the day. They could have gotten by with a sedan, Sam reckoned. Steve had left all the possessions he hadn't taken with him--everything but some clothes and a few personal mementos he took back--to Bucky, but Bucky'd gotten rid of the furniture, given out other things as mementos to Sam and a few other people. The only thing he'd actually kept was the motorcycle; he had a parking space in a rental garage in a nearby neighborhood that was secured.

"Look, Buck, at least buy some decent furniture," he begged on the way over. He knew that money wasn't a problem for Bucky--he was on the Avengers payroll, and after the court-martial that had formally cleared him of all charges stemming from his actions as The Asset, he had a massive chunk of back pay and a payout that he'd accepted rather than suing the government officials who had tried to have him killed rather than incarcerated. His civil rights had been violated in a big way, but Bucky had just wanted to put everything behind him. No longer the Winter Soldier, just Bucky Barnes. Whoever that turned out to be. And he refused to join the Avengers as an operative; he was working intelligence for them, but he was done with missions. Especially since SHIELD was back in business, the Avengers sort of their special branch.

It took some badgering, but eventually Bucky agreed to go to a real furniture store and purchase the furnishings for his new apartment. ("You don't want bedbugs from second-hand furniture," Sam had pointed out.) Sam looked nervous as Bucky parked the van in front of The Shithole. From the outside, it didn't look THAT bad. It had nice bones, but it was neglected, weeds growing out around the foundation and through cracks in the sidewalk. There was ornamentation on the building that had crumbled away over time, and it was a walkup. Bucky's place was on the third floor. It smelled mildewed inside. There actually was an elevator, but it didn't work, didn't look like it had for several decades. The stairs were squeaky and a little shaky. They carried the boxes into the lobby, in which the key-opened mailboxes were the best-kept part, past a woman on a cheap flip phone. Most people didn't have smartphones any more; the devices themselves were pretty cheap on the secondary market, but the service plans were out of reach for a lot of people. You could go month to month, which was why old fashioned flip phones and Nokias were back; those plans were still expensive, but at least you didn't rack up a lot of debt just using them for phone calls and texts. The only reason that personal computers were still viable was that Congress had put a cap on the rates. And it was still significantly more expensive than before the snap. Bucky quickly surveyed her as he passed; late twenties, shiny dark brown hair, big eyes, a bit plump. She was dressed in a white button-down and khakis, flats on her feet. Cheap clothes, but there was energy in her voice. She was talking about having just graduated with a masters degree. Not a threat. He dismissed her from his thoughts and started up the stairs.

They went back and forth a few times, and Sam was glad that Bucky had so little, just the boxes and a couple of bags of clothing, a couple of towels, a blanket. There was a sleeping bag on the floor. Sam winced. He couldn't say truthfully that Bucky was incompetent, but he did need... something. Monitoring. He laughed at himself; he'd accepted Bucky as a project as soon as Steve had buggered off. They went back downstairs; Bucky was going to return the van, but Sam pointed out that he'd have a hard time getting furniture delivered, and they went to a store.

"No point in getting anything too nice," Bucky said as Sam tried to get him to reconsider his choices. He did agree to a platform bed instead of just putting the mattress on the floor, and a small sectional rather than the single chair he'd been planning. This joined a cafe table with two chairs, two end tables that Sam talked him into, a coffee table, and a flat-pack bookcase. Sam was right; the store refused to deliver to that neighborhood, but it all just fit in the van because most of it would have to be assembled. Even though Sam had to sit with one of the end tables in his lap. At the apartment building, they traded off guarding the van with hauling stuff up until the sofa was all that was left, and that took two trips, one for each chunk. Sam chased off a couple of kids who were trying to steal the van, and offered to return it for Bucky. There were some quiet thanks, some shoulder-slapping, then Bucky trudged into The Shithole and Sam drove off, feeling better. He'd come to like Bucky as a person, but he was kind of a rain cloud in human form. Not that he didn't have ample reason, he reminded himself.

Bucky sighed as he looked at his new apartment, a studio. Sam was right, it was a shithole, but he couldn't summon the interest to care. It looked the way he felt, and that was enough. He put the bookcase together using the tool pack that came with it, folded his clothes on the shelves, then swore when he saw the state of the bathroom. He could probably make biological weapons with what was growing there. He reluctantly examined the rest of the place, checking to see that the refrigerator worked, made a list, and went to a store.

It was a long way away, actually; The Shithole was in a food desert. After he invested heavily in cleaning products, supplies, and nutritious food, he hailed a cab and went to a hardware store, then a home goods store, having the cabbie wait for him at each stop. He had a lot of bags when the nervous cabbie dropped him, and he included a good tip as compensation. He unpacked the food, stowing things quickly, washing the kitchenwares that he'd gotten, a frying pan, a sauce pan, a spatula, two cooking spoons--one with slots, and a set of three mixing bowls. Place settings for four. Silverware, eight settings in the box. Four glasses. He snorted. Three place settings too many, seven settings of silverware, three glasses, all too many. He was going on faith that the washing machine worked; it was ancient and there was no dryer, but there was a retractable clothesline that ran across the kitchen. He tossed the sheet set, the bath towels, and the kitchen towel in, then took hold of the bucket with the cleaning products and bravely entered the bathroom.

He had to take a break, so he ripped the drill he'd gotten at the hardware store out of the plastic clamshell and replaced the cheap door lock with a heavy-duty model, adding two deadbolts, one high, one low, to prevent the door from being forced. Put together the bed and the kitchen table and chairs, shoved the double mattress on the platform.

He tidied the sawdust and packing materials up and finished the Bathroom of Doom.

While he'd never say he enjoyed being The Asset at any time, there was no denying that during that time at least he'd never had to clean any grotty bathrooms.

When he was finished, the washer had loudly finished the cycle, so he made a fast dinner and then hung the laundry on the line; he'd been surprised that the grocery store still had wooden pins in the cleaning section. He spent the remainder of the evening cleaning the rest of the place with strong cleaners, just to be sure nothing gross was lurking, then took the plastic off the sectional and took the garbage out to the dumpster in the alley behind.

He sat down on the sofa when he got back. The microfiber was soft under his hand, a little like suede. The cushions were firm but comfortable. His metal fingers tapped the arm, then he got up to put the the mattress protector on the bed--he'd gotten ones for the exclusion of bedbugs, allergens, and water--followed by sheets, stuffing the new pillow into the pillowcase. He fussed with the blanket, folding it at the foot of the bed; fall was here pretty early but it wasn't really cold yet. The sleeping bag was folded neatly and placed in the corner. Bucky turned, getting a 360 degree view of his apartment. Not bad. Better than the tenement he'd lived in pre-war, certainly better than anywhere he'd been kept as The Asset. Better furnished than his apartment in Europe. The heater, washer, refrigerator, and cook top were ancient but functional, the cabinets and countertop worn but serviceable. He'd been informed that in mid-June, window air conditioning units would be installed for anyone who paid for them, one per apartment. He absently wiped his eyes, watering from the pungent pine scent of the cleaner he'd used. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, and stripped off his clothes, sliding between the sheets on the firm mattress, even though it was just past ten.

The next morning he was up early, mechanically making a large hot breakfast--the serum he'd been treated with had also boosted his calorie needs high to support the cellular changes, plus he just loved bacon--and went out, developing his contacts in the city. He had a decent network internationally, all of whom still feared him, but domestically, he had nothing. He'd need to travel to other important US cities to find sources of information, but New York was the best place to start. The senior Senator from the state was the chairman of the committee that was holding the Avengers' reins these days. Any dirt about the man, he wanted to know. Always good to have your blackmail lined up before you might need it. Hopefully they would never need to use it.

Intelligence gathering should have been Natasha's job, but... It wasn't like he didn't know how she'd been trained; he'd received the same education even though he'd never been permitted to use it. As The Asset, his missions had been planned for him; all he'd had to do was execute. Still, because of the possibility that a mission could be busted and he'd be exposed, his handlers hadn't wanted to unnecessarily risk losing their weapon. He knew how it worked. Another reason that he'd said he'd collect intelligence was so that he wouldn't have to work with Barton on missions. Barton, who should have tried harder to keep Natasha from sacrificing herself. He should have known better. Natasha was one of a kind, she'd had heart, but there were others who had long-range weapons and could pilot the quinjets. He'd felt malicious satisfaction when he'd heard that Barton's wife had had a fit about her husband's activities during the Snap and they were separated. Bucky wouldn't have trusted himself to have the other man's back in a crisis.

He came and went at irregular intervals, avoiding patterns. He rarely saw the other residents, aside from the junkie who often passed out in the hall on his way to his apartment or on the stairs. A person here and there at the mailboxes. He'd seen the woman with the shiny dark hair twice more, both times on her phone. Cell reception was vile here and only seemed to work in the lobby and a little way up the stairs. His hearing had been enhanced by the serum as well, and he could hear both sides of the conversation. The last time he saw her, she was listening to her sister commiserating with her that a promotion she'd been counting on as the reward for getting a masters degree turned out to be a twenty-five cent raise, 'Senior' added to her title, and no new responsibilities. He eavesdropped out of habit, sorting through the junk mail slowly, tossing it into the city-mandated recycling only after a thorough inspection. But hearing nothing suspicious--the Unsnappening had created a world of trouble on many fronts--he headed upstairs. Family. You were better off without it.

The next month was devoted to work, and he was pleased with his progress. He'd found access to a lot of places he shouldn't be, and had planted a whole genus's worth of bugs. They were hooked into an Avengers' program that scanned for key words, sparing him a lot of hours of listening. So far the only dirt he'd turned up on the Senator was that he had a mistress, but that wasn't exceptional, really. A whole lot of politicians had them, apparently, it just made him disgusted that the Senator prattled on about 'family values' and voted consistently against money for Planned Parenthood, sex education in the classroom, and a host of other programs that gave women autonomy over their bodies, or school hot lunch programs, or benefits for the unfortunate. Not to mention that the mistress was a former intern, still in college, and there were hints that she'd had to have an abortion. Bucky was quite sure that those were not the family values he'd been raised with. His mom would have made his dad's life hell if he'd even thought of straying. Well, the world had changed; nowadays finding out about a mistress just barely out of her teens and formerly pregnant would collect some tuts but not cost the man his job as long as he continued to vote in line with the party policies. Hypocrisy was no big deal any more.

He was making inroads into Avengers-class villainy, too, identifying major players and their underworld specialties. He'd identified a good hiding place in the apartment for his Avengers-issued laptop, carefully removing the staples holding the lining to the base of the long part of his sofa to create a flap, which was held in place with small flat thumbtacks. His options were limited in the studio apartment.

He discovered a new downside to The Shithole. Roaches. The day after he'd moved in, he'd gotten an ultrasonic repeller that he could only leave on when he was gone since he could hear the whining sound clearly, and several different types of roach bait and deployed them in his apartment. It wasn't a change in his habits to be neat with his food and clean up after every meal, but he'd also gone to another store and bought airtight containers for the limited number of staples he had. And he had gotten hanging tiered wire baskets for his fruit. The thought of roaches wandering over his food repulsed him. He'd complained to the super, who said that there'd be the yearly extermination treatment the next month and to watch for the announcement.

When the exterminator came, Bucky was displeased with the little work that was done and complained again to the super, who shrugged it off. "You can always break your lease, pay the penalties, move out if you don't like it." Bucky didn't want to leave; he'd just got settled in, learned the regular sounds of the building, and the investment of his labor cleaning the bathroom hadn't been paid off yet. Besides, finding cheap quarters in the city was difficult. He'd spent a few evenings carefully pulling out the kitchen and bathroom cabinets, wrinkling his nose at the roach leavings that had accumulated, and gotten some personal protective equipment to use cleaning up before applying professional-grade extermination products. Then he patched holes and cracks in the walls and floor, and moved the cabinets back. He slept with the windows open for a couple of nights, but his roach problem cleared up nicely.

"That's your big triumph for the week?" Sam asked over beer one night, eyebrows raised. "Dude. You need a hobby." There'd been a bit of terseness over this, then Bucky'd asked about Sam's life. Sam had been on a couple of dates; you still had to kiss a lot of frogs apparently, but Sam was undaunted. He was having a good time and adjusting to his new role as Captain America. And doing a good job, by the look of the after-action reports that Bucky read. Sam wasn't terribly happy, but he was content.

"I don't like the way I got the shield," he confessed, circling the bottom of his pint glass on the table. "And there's a lot to live up to, Steve's reputation. There are many people who don't like the idea of a black man as Captain America." Bucky shook his head silently. Assholes. "But at least I didn't get any of that serum. A supercharged black man would drive them out of their damned minds."

"You do a good job," Bucky said. "Fuck the racists."

"Thanks, I'd rather not," Sam said dryly, and Bucky huffed a laugh. Well, more like half a chuckle, but it was something. And the conversation turned, in carefully veiled terms, to how Bucky's work setting up his intelligence network was going. Pretty well, actually. Some of the geeks at SHIELD (100% Hydra free, they had promised) were hacking into computer systems, so he didn't have to worry about that avenue of information. He got daily updates about what they'd found in order to shape his targets for human intelligence. After Sam felt that Bucky had been adequately socialized--he spent a lot of time alone, Sam was worried--they said good night. Sam went back to the Avengers complex and Bucky faded into the night to make one last penetration, plant a bug, and ghost back home.