This is not the Endgame

The next day, Bucky went to the hardware store as soon as it opened and obtained the power cord for the heater. Ava had been right; they knew exactly what he'd need. They also sold him the ethernet cable, and he went on to make some other stops, including an electronics store, where he was able to find an external DVD player, and the grocery store. It was a pain not to have an oven; he could have made roasts that would feed him for a couple of days or other multi-serving meals. The best he could do was a toaster oven. Even there, he had to comply with the power restrictions in his lease, which meant that his new one was small.

When he got home, he saw an elderly woman being helped down the stairs. He'd met Mrs Alvarez on occasion, once helping her up the stairs with her shopping. The middle-aged man with her, holding bags of clothing, was her son, he knew. Mrs Alvarez saw Bucky as she scanned the lobby.

"Young man!" she called to him, and obediently he crossed the lobby to her. It amused him slightly to be called a young man; in elapsed time out of cryo, he was about 30, 35 years old. Elapsed age in total, he was older than this woman.

"Yes, ma'am?"

"You know Ava, I think?" He nodded.

"Yes, she lives a couple of doors down from me. She's going to fix my heater tonight." Mrs Alvarez smiled.

"She's a good girl. Please give her this." She offered him a small white box that was surprisingly heavy. "I have to leave. The rent increase." Bucky nodded.

"I'm sorry to hear that. I know Ava will be upset that she missed you."

"Oh, it's deliberate. This is been my home for twenty years, and I'm a little emotional. It's easier this way."

"She's going into a nursing home," her son said, his face sagging. "I wish that you'd come live with us, Mama. Four people in a room designed for two there," he said to Bucky.

"You have a full house as it is, Hector," she said gently. "And while it will be crowded, I'll get three meals a day and I will be all right." The old woman looked around once more, then glared at the super, who had followed them down the stairs.

"Can't do anything about it, Marla," he said, not sounding too sorry. "Gentrification is coming, the owner wants the building empty. Rent increases until everybody leaves without a fuss." The other three scowled at him, and realizing that they were not sympathetic to his issues, Stan retreated to his apartment. The man helped his mother out the door and into the chilly wind. Bucky went up the stairs to his place. He put away his shopping, did some work, grateful to be able to use his computer in the apartment, then when he stopped for lunch, signed up for a Netflix account and ordered some DVDs. He'd start with classics, then ask Sam for recommendations. Or maybe Ava. His mind shied away from that, though, after the probable embarrassment of the whole 'Netflix and chill' thing. That was no way to treat a respectable woman. Even as a young man who was highly sought after before the war, he'd always dated a woman several times, attentive, taking her nice places, before finding his way between her thighs.

He put the computer into sleep mode when he heard the tap on the door, and a quick glance through the peephole revealed his neighbor. "I got the cord," he said, inviting her in.

"Great," she said, and turned for the heater. Bucky thought she looked tired.

"Can I get you something?" he asked as she sat on the floor and opened the cord kit. "I'm just having sandwiches for dinner, but you're welcome to join me." She looked at him and smiled.

"That would be great, thanks," she said. "I won't have to rush to get ready for work."

As Bucky made sandwiches with roast beef from a deli, a lick of horseradish, lettuce on a hearty multigrain bread and quickly sliced up tomatoes and cucumbers for a simple salad, she competently changed out the cord and tested the heater to make sure it worked. She sat down at his table with him and sighed in pleasure after her first bite. "I don't remember the last time I had beef," she said. "Forget changing the lock, I owe you a favor for this. A big one."

"I don't understand why things are so expensive," he said. "After theUnsnappening, I was appalled to see how much prices had increased. Things cost at least three times what they did." The beef had been twenty dollars a pound. It was good that his salary from the Avengers was so lucrative. "And no, you don't owe me anything. It's nice to have the company." And it was.

"Thank you," she said, looking pleased. At the meal or at him, he couldn't tell. "Well, after the Snap, half the population was gone, half the crops, half the cattle and pigs and poultry. That meant roughly half the hands to work on the farms and the ranches. The news showed these vast fields where patches of the vegetation were just gone, like they'd never been there. Stretches of dirt, gaps in orchards. Immediately, the perishables ran out. Homes were broken into, people searching for food or things that could be sold for food. Interstate transportation, which is how most of the food was moved around the country before, was also halved, gas prices went way up. You see the problem." He nodded. "Martial law was imposed in all the bigger cities to help prevent looting until food started to get back into the markets. And things had just really stabilized when the Unsnappening happened. Suddenly, the population almost doubled, but the food supply didn't, the plants and crops were returned, but since the two snaps didn't happen at the same time of year, a lot of them were lost. It's going to take a year or two more to get full production back." He nodded. He'd thought about the problems from the return of the dust bunnies but not from the first snap.

"You don't have to answer if you don't want, but why is an engineer living here?" he asked, offering her the salad. "I was going to put in garlic and onions as well, but I didn't know if you'd want that since you have to work."

"How thoughtful," she said, then her face fell into her normal expression, which was both nice and a little remote. She spooned some onto her plate, carefully not taking too much, and ate a few bites with relish. "Well, before the Snap, the infrastructure was already stressed." He nodded. It hadn't been a priority in any budget, and patches to problems were applied when they got too acute rather than thinking ahead and strengthening and expanding the infrastructure. "After the Snap, the problem was that half the tax base had vanished, along with a lot of people who knew how to fix the roads, airport runways, all that. So the infrastructure continued to deteriorate, and the money went into the materials to keep commerce flowing and the manpower to do that work. Engineers were still needed, but there wasn't enough money to pay much. Still isn't, they say. Now we have to make the infrastructure work for a doubled population and worse, companies have seen that they can get people to work for far less than before the Snap. Before, a civil engineer like me with a masters degree and several years' experience could make about a hundred thousand a year. I make just over forty thousand, net pay just under two thousand a month due to the taxes. And although Congress finally voted to increase taxes on the wealthy--where all the money was and is--and reduce those on the lower classes, that won't go into effect until next year, and the wealthy have all these months to move their accounts to tax havens, protect their assets. It's not going to help much. There aren't any penalties for tax dodgers."

"Where do you work now?"

"The city. Before that, I worked for Damage Control. The pay's about the same, but my medical insurance is much better--my copays went from $80--in network--to $30. And I have dental and vision too. I've got applications out, though. There are some better jobs, they're just incredibly hard to get." She finished her salad as Bucky thought that over. "What is it that you do, Jim?"

"Corporate security," he said. It was true, just not the best descriptor.

"That sounds interesting," she said, looking like she meant it. "But I imagine your work is confidential." He nodded. "So what is a guy like you doing in a place like this?" She looked at him through her lashes before drinking her water.

"A guy like me?" he asked, a little panicked. What did she know?

"Well, you go to some lengths to blend in, but your clothes aren't inexpensive. You have new furniture, although none of it's terribly expensive, it's not cheap either. You don't quibble about a thirty dollar cord to fix the heater or a twenty-five dollar ethernet cable. And, critically, you can afford to feed a neighbor a very expensive sandwich. You look like you can do better than this, I guess is what I'm saying."

"Uh--" he didn't think she was that perceptive; people who had their own problems usually didn't have the energy to pay so much attention to others. "Before I forget, Mrs Alvarez asked me to give you this. She moved out today." He got the box for her.

"Damn it! I wanted to say goodbye." Diversion successful.

"She didn't want a fuss. It was hard enough for her to leave," he said quietly as she opened the box. She nodded, then smiled a little.

"She made fudge," she said wistfully, offering him some after picking a card off the top. "Aw, she gave me her recipe. She was really smart; right after the Snap, she loaded up on chocolate and coffee, because they're imported. A couple of times last year, she paid her rent with four batches of fudge a month. She was running out, she said." He bit into the piece he'd taken. It was rich and creamy, and he smiled. It tasted like how he remembered his mother making it. And if beef was expensive, chocolate, which had just returned to the shelves, was priced at about seventy dollars a pound. "I should get a safe for this," she joked, savoring her own piece.

"The super said that the owner was going to raise rents until everybody left. They want to gentrify the place," he said glumly. He sighed, and she briefly closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her forehead. "The Snap was traumatic for everybody who was left," he finally said. "But being a dust bunny wasn't easy either. I came back, found that most of my stuff was gone, aside from a few keepsakes my best friend kept. We'd been friends since we were kids, served in the Army together. He was there when I got this injury." He gestured toward his shoulder. "I trusted him with my life. But he'd changed in those five years. It was like somebody else was wearing his face. A week after the Unsnappening, he left, chasing a woman he'd had a crush on once, like seventy years ago." Whoops. Hadn't meant to be that specific, but she looked like she thought it was just hyperbole. "Haven't heard from him since."

"My sister is kind of like that," she said after squeezing his right hand. "Neither of us was Snapped, but our parents were killed immediately afterward in the chaos. She's eight years older than I am, though, and out of med school at the time. She's brilliant, finished college in three years, so she was out of school entirely in seven years, she's a GP, her residency was three years. Then she joined Doctors Without Borders, which was something she'd wanted to do for as long as I can remember, she's got a very strong streak of public service. A couple weeks ago, she had me clear out the storage space, I could keep what I wanted and she gave me a cut of the proceeds for selling everything else. She didn't say explicitly, but I don't think she's coming back here when she's done. And she's the only family I have." She shook her head. "God, I hope I get one of those jobs I applied for. I signed my lease, so I have some time. I've got to pick up the pace. I'd love to get down to one job again. It's a cold, hard world out there."

"Do you have a boyfriend?" Where did that come from?

"No. Not since college. He was Snapped. He'd been going down to North Carolina to interview for a job, get some experience in the Research Triangle before applying to grad school. He was on a plane... then, when the Unsnappening happened, he fell several thousand feet from a plane that had taken off from JFK five years before and was no longer in the air. It took the city a couple months to run the DNA from all of the people who had been killed like that, falling from the sky. Hit in traffic accidents, just being where they shouldn't. He'd put me down as an emergency contact because his parents lived in Vermont..." She paused a moment. "But after the Snap, I was focused on putting one foot in front of the other, getting through each day. Now, I'm just busy. And to be frank, it's just really hard to want to connect with somebody. What if there's another Snap? I stopped following the news very carefully unless I heard of something big, it all seems to be bad news these days, and nobody was very explicit about what caused the two snaps, just some alien." Bucky tried to find something to say but failed completely. "So that's me. What about you? Girlfriend?"

"No." His tongue came unstuck. "The things that happened to me after I joined the Army. I have nightmares." He thought of Sam, who kept trying to help him. "I'm not... I look back at myself. I used to be popular, fun. Liked a good time. Now, I can't relate to who that man was. It's like he's a whole different person. And my arm. Or lack of it. There's a lot of scarring at the shoulder. It's a lot to expect some poor woman to put up with." He was surprised that all this came pouring out of him. He didn't even talk about these things with Sam, who was about the only person left in his life who he could call a good friend.

She checked her watch. "I hate to eat and run, but I've got to get ready for work," she said reluctantly. She picked up her box of fudge and offered him an additional piece. He stood with her and walked the ten steps to the door, opening it for her. "Thanks for dinner. You're a good listener."

"You too," he said. She smiled at him and left. He cleaned up after the meal, washing and drying the dishes, sweeping up. The cockroaches were still at bay, but he didn't want to give them any reason to be interested in his place. His place. Like he had a place in the world again. He thought about that as he tidied. He hung the dishtowel and looked around. It was small and shabby, but it was an anchor in a world he still found puzzling sometimes. Familiar. He understood his work just fine and was still an elite professional. It was the rest of it that was weird. Social mores, the whole way of life was vastly different from when he'd felt his life was still in front of him, his best friend by his side, a good job, a wife and kids in the near future--after he'd played the field enough, met the right woman. He'd noted changes in technology and society each time he was brought out of cryo for a mission, so it wasn't the hugest shock. Sometimes he felt like sitting in the corner and never coming out, but he'd been given a second chance, bought at great expense, and he felt that he needed to make something of it. He hit the shower, using the sandalwood hair products and a rich scentless soap. It was made with goat milk, which he liked. A memory from his recovery in Wakanda. He'd found it on Etsy; he valued hand-made things in this age of mass production. He took the time to style his hair using Matt's instructions. He was just meeting Sam, after all, but... he felt disinclined to examine every little impulse he had. It was a control issue; he'd spent much of his life considering the impact of everything he did, every squeeze of his index finger. Well, now he could relax. There were times when he didn't need to be so hyper-vigilant.

He pulled on his jeans, a dark blue sweater, shoes with a silent crepe sole out of habit, and his black leather jacket, locked his place, and headed off to the bar. He was slightly early, but Sam had already arrived. With Wanda. That was unexpected. He joined them cautiously.

"I heard that Sam was meeting you for drinks and invited myself along," she said, smiling disarmingly. "Wow. Your hair looks amazing. You're the Avengers' hottest analyst."

"Is that all?" Bucky asked Sam, convinced it was not.

"I asked if she could take a look at this woman. Just superficially, you know, see if she's trustworthy," Sam said placatingly. He knew Bucky would leave if he wasn't up-front about his reasoning. He still might; he had real trust issues, even worse after Steve left, and he hadn't asked for the help. He was kind of surprised when Bucky sat down. Maybe this was a test for him to see if his judgment of a person's character was reliable. Sam hoped it was.

"I think that she is," Bucky said. Sam glanced over Bucky's shoulder and smiled.

"Is that her?" Wanda asked curiously, turning a little to see too. "She's pretty." Bucky grunted.

Five minutes later, a hand deposited a basket of peanuts on the table. "Hi there," a brisk alto said, and Wanda looked up. Their server wore a closely fitting black cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the buttons undone to just above her bra, revealing enough cleavage to increase her tips. Every now and then you could see a slice of skin between the hem of her shirt and her pants as she moved, just below her navel. Her black pants were inexpensive but fit well. "Sorry about the wait," the woman said. "We're down a waitress for a bit, she's running late. What can I get you to drink?"

"Bud light," Sam said defiantly. He took a lot of crap from his teammates for his taste in beer, but he liked it.

"And you, miss?"

"Irish coffee?"

"We can do that. What about you, Jim?" Wanda's eyes opened wide, surprised, and looked from the waitress to Bucky. The waitress looked a little confused, but refocused on Bucky. Or Jim. Whoever. Sam nudged Wanda under the table, distracting her before she could ask questions.

"Stout," he said.

"Coming right up," she said. "Do you want to run a tab?"

"Yeah, thanks," Sam said immediately, pulling out a credit card. She departed, stopping at a couple more tables as she made her way to the bar.

"Jim?" asked Wanda.