Sam manages to keep it together when they say goodbye to Steve and Banner, but Bucky can see the anger progressively building up during the car ride to the point where it’s just barely bubbling under the surface as they pull up into the driveway of the facility they’re staying at with all the Avengers while the compound gets rebuilt.
Well. All the Avengers that are still around, that is.
Natalia’s gone, as unfair as it is. A soul for a soul, it had apparently been, like that was a fair trade, and Bucky knows fully well just how hard she’d fought to create that soul for herself, to build it from the ground up. It stings that he never really got to know her new soul, but in a bittersweet way. She’d always wanted to be a hero, and now her ledger was cleared a thousand times.
Stark’s gone too, which him hurts less, but it still stings that they never did manage to get past their grievances with each other. Bucky thinks he would’ve liked the chance to be friends with Tony; Howard had been a good guy, back when he knew him.
And now there’s Steve -
Steve, who should’ve been coming back in the car with them. But instead of his stupidly large artist hands holding the wheel, it’s Sam who’s driving, and Bucky’s sitting in the passenger seat instead of the back of the car, and it hurts way more than a sting, of course it does.
It hurts like a knife in the chest that you saw coming. It hurts like finally hitting the ground after hours of falling when you know the pain will hit you at any time but you don’t expect it to rip through you like it does. You’re prepared for it, which almost soothes it, because nothing ever hurts as bad when you have time to brace for the impact. But that acceptance of the inevitability of the pain makes it settle onto your bones faster, and it’s hard to shake it off, and it stays there for a long, long time. Bucky knows this for a fact.
He can’t help but sigh as Sam shuts off the car engine. Getting up and out of the car feels like trying to stand after sitting for a century. It’s been a long day.
It’s been a long century.
They walk to their section of the facility in shared silence. The whole place is pretty quiet, with the heroes who still have homes returning to them (Barton to his wife and kids, Lang to his, well, whatever him and Hope are, Shuri and T’Challa and all the other Wakandans going back to their country) and all the off-worlders back in space (Thor with the Guardians, Danvers doing what she does). It’s really only Banner and Rhodes who are also living there at the moment.
The quiet unnerves him. He’d gone straight from the pleasant sounds of the Wakandan landscape to the cacophony of battle, and for all he’d had a five-year long interlude of silence, his ears were still ringing from the crashes and ear-splitting chaos that came with the end of the world. This distinct lack of noise feels empty, like the air itself is losing something it once held.
But it is very quiet. So he’s a bit startled when Sam breaks the oppressive silence in the middle of a hallway, and begins swearing.
“Fuck this. Fucking Steve. That asshole!” he mutters, shaking his head. He slams his hand against the wall. “That selfish son of a bitch.”
“Hey,” Bucky says. Steve is the antithesis of selfish, him and Sam both know that. “Take it easy, man, let’s get to our rooms -”
Sam bangs his hand against the wall again, shutting Bucky up. “Man, fuck off. How are you not pissed at him?”
“I - Sam, come on, you know I’m mad. Let’s just go -”
“No. Look at me,” Sam says.
Bucky looks at him, or at least he tries to. His eyes keep sliding away from Sam’s brown ones so he’s looking at the wall behind Sam.
He never used to be this bad of a liar.
“You knew he was going to stay,” Sam says. It’s not a question, but his next word is. “How?”
Bucky swallows. He had thought he would have more time before he’d need to explain this, but maybe he underestimated just how mad Sam would get. “Look, I -”
“Don’t bullshit me, Barnes. You told him you’d miss him, which I would have done too if I’d known it would be seventy years before he ever saw me again!” His hand curls into a fist where it rests against the wall, and he leans towards the surface it, like he’ll fall over without something to help him stand. He breathes heavily. “You knew he’d go back,” he says, voice low, which is even more dangerous than the shouting. “How.”
“Because,” Bucky sighs and closes his eyes, bracing himself for what he knows he has to say. He knows it’s not going to make it hurt any less, though. “Because I was the one who told him to.”
-
“Steve, I gotta talk to you about tomorrow.”
It’s the day after Stark’s funeral, and Bucky can tell that Steve’s not over the fact he’s gone, that he’s still buried deep in grief for the other man. Which would be dangerous in any other circumstance, given Steve’s history of doing stupid things out of grief, but this time, Bucky actually needs him to do the stupid thing.
Well, to be fair, he also needed him to do the other stupid thing as well, but he wasn’t really available at the time to provide any counsel. This time, however…
“Yeah? What about it?” Steve looks at him from beside the stove. His eyebrows furrow. “Wait, don’t tell me not to do it, Buck, I already promised Bruce -”
“It’s not that.” Bucky sighs. This isn’t easy. “Look, can you just come here for a second?”
Steve turns the stovetop off and walks around the counter to go sit beside Bucky. “Alright, what’s up?”
Right. How does he say this. “After you return all the Stones,” he begins, then stops. Sighs again. “Alright. Okay. After you deliver the Stones, you have to gobacktoPeggyandstaywithhersorry.”
Steve looks at him and blinks. He blinks again. “What?” he asks. “Come again?”
“Go back to Peggy. And stay with her. Sorry.”
“Alright, now what did you actually want to tell me?” Steve’s smiling easily, but the corners of his eyes are pinched.
“That is what I wanted to tell you.”
Steve’s eyebrows raise up. “Are you serious?” he asks. When Bucky nods, his eyes narrow. “Are you out of your mind? I’m not - you want me to just give this up?” He stands up, shaking his head, and begins to walk back to the stove. “No, Buck, I’m not going to go back - why would you even say that - what?”
“You have to,” Bucky says, slowly, like he’s trying not to startle a wild animal. He takes a breath. “Because you already did, at least for me.”
Steve stops. “Explain,” he says.
Bucky explains.
-
The Soldier is in the middle of receiving 110 volts straight to the frontal cortex when the lab doors fly open and the sound of gunfire bursts into the room.
The lab technician screams, hits a button on the desk in front of him, and promptly falls over from the brand new bullet hole in the back of his head. The button he hit must have been the kill switch, because the electricity shuts off and the machine retracts from the Soldier’s face, and he breathes what would be a sigh of relief, if it were anything else doing the breathing. The Soldier doesn’t feel relief.
(He doesn’t feel anything, except for pain, and, when no one’s paying attention, fear.)
Two guards snap into action, shouting out orders to somebody, before they, too, receive a bullet each in their skulls. Three more shots ring out (tech 2, guard 3, guard 4, a part of the Soldier’s mind relays) before the room is suddenly silent except for the sound of blood dripping, machinery whirling, and the Soldier breathing softly.
He stays sitting on the chair. He can’t get out of the restraints, first of all, and secondly, if whoever was shooting everyone in the room wanted to shoot him too, then they would have already.
Footsteps echo down the hallway outside, but they stop abruptly, cutting off with a strangled, wet scream. Suddenly, a figure stands in the doorway, looking into the room for a minute before moving directly for the Soldier.
The person stops in front of the desk where the dead lab tech’s blood is dripping onto the floor. They search for a moment before a hand whips out and presses a button. Immediately, the restraints on the Soldier’s arms and chest retract, and he tenses up.
The other person moves in response. They wear a mask, covering their entire face, and their entire gear is a matte black, not dissimilar to the Soldier’s own. They raise up their hands to be level with their head.
“Easy, buddy, I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m getting you out of here. Hopefully,” they say.
The deep tone of the person - man, the Soldier assumes - hits something inside of the Soldier’s subconsciousness, and the metal arm shivers reflexively. The man tilts his head at it slightly.
“I don’t want to fight you. Believe me, that’s the last thing I want to do.”
The Soldier stands up. No fighting sounds good, especially after his brain has just been electrocuted.
The man nods. “You followin’ me?” he asks.
The Soldier shrugs. He’ll follow whoever’s in charge, and at this moment the other man certainly seems to be handling the most authority.
The man laughs. “Alright, let’s get you out of here.”
They walk out of the facility easily, any resistance swiftly met with a fist or elbow from the man. Once they make it outside, the man leads them towards a nondescript grey truck that he climbs into the driver’s seat of. The Soldier opens the other door and slides in.
“At least it’s America this time, thank God. Much less driving to do,” the man says, as if the Soldier has any idea what he’s talking about.
The Soldier stays silent.
“Hey, this time we could get milkshakes again, you missed those last time, right bud?” The man looks at him expectantly. When the Soldier maintains his silence, he sighs. The Soldier recognizes his body language as that of disappointment and resignation. “Right. Back at square one.”
He reaches up behind him, and the Soldier acts on pure muscle memory, metal arm whipping out to slam the man’s wrist back and his other hand coming up to wrap around the man’s throat.
The man pries at the vice grip around his neck with his free hand, gasping. “Bu - uck - just - grabbing - mask -”
The Soldier releases his throat and wrist. The man takes a deep lungful of air, before muttering, “Alright, that’s on me.” He reaches his hand up slightly, then looks at the Soldier and says, “I’m just grabbing my mask. That’s all.”
His hand reaches behind his neck and pulls off the black expanse from his face, revealing blue eyes, a slightly crooked nose, and a small, sad smile.
The Soldier screams in pain as his head splits in two, memories leaking in between the hairline cracks of Hydra’s hold, before the walls break and crumble in the torrential flood of knowing that pours into his mind. That face, he knows that face, he knows that man, he knows him -
“Steve?” he breathes.
“Hiya, Buck,” Steve says.
-
“Just so you know, I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve says, out of nowhere, once Sam crawls out of the passenger seat of the car to source some food.
They’re twelve hours from Leipzig, and Bucky’s legs are beginning to cramping up. Nevermind that he’d been trained to stay in much more uncomfortable positions for a lot longer. This car is tiny. The bruises on his knees from where they kept bashing into Wilson’s knees are something else, he’s sure.
“What do you mean?” Bucky asks.
Steve laughs sarcastically. “I mean I’m sorry. Obviously.”
Bucky’s confused. “For…”
“What, do you want the list in alphabetical or chronological order?” Steve sighs. “Okay. I’m sorry for letting you fall of the train. I’m sorry for going into the ice and napping while you were getting tortured. I’m sorry for not finding you once I got out of the ice, I’m sorry for that time in ‘38 when I puked in your shoes, I’m sorry for not trying hard enough to find you the last two years, I’m sorry for not saving you!”
“Steve,” Bucky says, “what the hell are you talking about?”
“What? Jesus, Buck, ain’t it obvious, I’m trying to apologize -”
“You did save me,” Bucky says slowly. “You saved me a hundred times over.”
Steve shakes his head. “I got you out seventy years later, I wouldn’t call that saving you.”
“You couldn’t save me because you were in the ice after you saved the world. I’d say it’s better late than never. And you’re the reason I even got out at all, don’t you know that?”
Steve sighs. Bucky can’t see the expression on his face, but from what he can make out in the rear view mirror, his eyes are downcast. “It’s not enough.”
Bucky wants to look him in the eye, grab his stupid shoulders, and shake him back and forth until he sees sense. He opens his mouth to speak, to say of course it’s enough, I’m here, you’re here, and you do save me, you just don’t know it yet, but before he gets the chance to voice those words, the car door opens and Sam slides inside, holding a bunch of colourful plastic packages.
“I got snacks,” he says.
Steve looks in the rear view mirror at Bucky before he shakes his head once more, grabbing a bag of chips off Sam’s lap and tearing it open. The conversation moves on, and neither Steve or Bucky bring it up again.
-
The first time, in 1952, takes Bucky seven hours for him to break through the walls Hydra built inside his head around his memories.
Each time after that is easier, but harder, too.
It becomes easier because it takes them less time, each time. They whittle the initially arduous process down to only needing a name -
(“Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” the man says, confident even with the barrel of a gun aimed right between his eyes.
The Soldier cocks his head, but doesn’t move the gun. Incorrect. He does not have a name other than Soldier or asset, and those are more titles than anything.
“But I call you Bucky.”
I call you Bucky - Bucky - Barnes, James Buchanan -
32557038 -
strapped to a metal table -
familiar voice calling out in the empty Hydra facility -
is that - what did he do to himself, you idiot, Steve -
Steve?)
a face -
(The helmet gets lifted to reveal a shock of blond hair, blond hair, the Handler has blond hair, blue eyes, crooked nose that didn’t heal right after it broke in ‘37, he finally managed to grow a beard, huh, who would’ve thought, it looks good Steve -
Steve?)
and a phrase -
(“я убью тебя” the Soldier snarls at the man through clenched teeth stained red from his bleeding lip.
“Alright, Buck, ‘cause I’m with you ‘til the end of the line,” the man rasps out from underneath the Soldier’s metal fist.
The Soldier blinks, metal arm retracting, then he shudders, then sobs. “Steve?”)
- before the blank fury of the Soldier gives away to Bucky Barnes, bright and clear and true. It hurts, the constant becoming and unbecoming, and it’s not always perfect - one particularly memorable time in Cambodia in 1976 saw the Soldier and Bucky fighting for power so long that Bucky ended up punching himself in the head with the metal arm and knocking himself out for two hours - but each time it becomes easier and quicker, until Bucky feels he would recognize the sound of Steve’s footsteps, the smell of blood and gunpowder on his skin. Until he feels like he would come back to Steve through fire, through death, through the end of the world.
But it becomes harder, too, because each time Steve gets older and sadder and Bucky thinks, although he doesn’t know it for sure, that the line might be ending for them soon.
Hydra won’t let them keep this up forever. That would be too big of a miracle, even for them.
-
Steve won’t look at him.
“It’s gotta happen, Steve. I’m sorry,” Bucky says. He reaches his hand out to cover Steve’s, metal on skin, and when Steve doesn’t pull away from the cool touch he intertwines their fingers. “I wish it didn’t have to. You know I do.”
“But why now? Why can’t we wait for a bit, I just got you back, and now -”
“It’s unfair, I know. I know.”
“But why now?” Steve repeats, finally turning his sky blue eyes onto Bucky, and Bucky sees the tears that are welling up in the corners and threatening to spill over.
God. He hates this, he really does. If he could somehow go back in time to make sure that that look never comes onto Steve’s face, he would in a heartbeat.
“It’s because of the Stones. Going back in-between replacing them is the only way to make sure everything stays in our timeline. It’s not important -”
“Of course it’s important!” Steve exclaims. “If I’m gonna do something so - stupidly selfish, something that’ll change my life, change your life, I need to know why!”
“It’s to save my life,” Bucky says softly. “You said you’d always come back for me. I need you to do that one more time.” He meets Steve’s eyes with his own. “I know I’m basically asking you to put the plane in the water again, and I’m sorry. But it’s already happened, and if this world is to stay how it is, then you gotta do this. I’m sorry it has to be you. I wish there was another way.”
A tear finally escapes and slides down Steve’s cheek. “I do too,” he says. He looks at their hands, where they’ve stayed clasped onto each other in the space between their bodies. He smiles a sad half-smile. “End of the line, I guess.”
Bucky pulls him in for a hug. “End of the line,” he says into Steve’s neck, “even if our lines don’t end at the same stop.”
Steve laughs, though it comes out as more of a sob. Bucky can feel his heartbeat through where their chests are pressed together from the squeezing of their arms around each other.
If tears spill out of Bucky’s eyes and onto Steve’s shirt, neither one of them mention it.
-
The thing is, it sucks, letting go of something and watching it fall from your hands as if in slow motion.
Bucky wonders if this is how Steve felt, watching him disappear into the snow and the mountains. Then he immediately abandons that thought. If he never fell from the train, then they wouldn’t be here in the first place. No need to remind himself how it’s all his fault.
But it’s the worst thing. The five seconds that Banner is counting down seem to be the longest thing of Bucky’s life, longer than the decades of torture at the hands of Hydra, longer than the time it took to fall from train to snowy ground. And when the countdown finishes and Steve is nowhere to be seen, his heart clenches, then shatters, like a glass ball inside of his chest, stabbing him with the shards until he feels as though he might bleed to death from the pain of it all.
It means he’s going to stay alive, then. No vanishing from the 21st Century because of a time-travel paradox that still goes completely over his head.
It means he’s going to stay alive without Steve, though, and that’s the awful, awful truth about their lives. They were never going to live and die together. Luck gave them a second chance, somehow, but they were living on borrowed time here in this century, and they were naive to think it wouldn’t ever run out.
But there’s nothing he can do about it, except let Sam talk to the man sitting on the bench that he knows with a bone-deep certainty is Steve. He doesn’t go over to the bench just yet. He lets Steve pass on the shield to Sam; they deserve to have that moment together.
And he’s had almost a century of moments with Steve, so it hurts him a little bit less. Being apart from Steve always hurts. It might be a lesser pain, but it’s a constant one. One he has to live with for the rest of his life, now, never to grow numb towards it.
-
“So that’s it?” Sam asks. “That’s all there is?”
Bucky nods. “It was never about Carter,” he says.
“It was about you,” Sam says, looking up at Bucky through slightly narrowed eyes.
“It was about the world,” Bucky says.
“Right,” Sam says. “In order to beat Thanos, Steve had to lose you so he would try to avenge you, but in order to lose you…”
“He had to have me back in the first place,” Bucky finishes.
“You can’t lose something you never had,” Sam says pensively, like it applies to the whole situation, like it’s an excuse, like it removes some of the tragedy and makes everything easier to swallow.
And maybe to him it does. Maybe if he thinks about it like that, like Steve had always been on loan to the 21st Century, never to truly settle, it makes it less awful. But Bucky can’t let himself think that way.
“We had him, Sam.” He looks at Sam, who’s looking at the floor. “This world had him, and we lost him, but he was here. This mattered to him. Don’t forget that.”
Sam nods. “Right,” he says again. He sighs. “I wish we didn’t have to lose him, though.”
Bucky doesn’t say anything. They sit together in the unyielding, empty silence.
-
A twig snaps behind him, and Bucky turns around to see Steve emerging out of his tent. He catches Bucky’s eyes and tilts his head: mind some company?
Bucky smiles, shifting over on the log, and pats the space beside him. “Come on over, Cap, the fire’s nice.”
“Alright, Sarge,” Steve says, sitting down beside Bucky next to the fire, “if you say so.”
They sit in comfortable silence for a moment, warming up their bodies. Dernier is taking a piss somewhere far away in the trees, and all the other guys are all settled in for the night. They’re out of enemy territory, having hiked all day from the base they hit earlier, and it’s making for a nice, peaceful break from having to be on constant vigilance.
Bucky grins, thinking about the day’s mission. Him and Morita had been waiting outside of the base while all the others blew it all up to ash, but they’d been surrounded. Bucky had been worried for a moment, before Steve came in out of nowhere and knocked all the Hydra soldiers off their feet with a carefully thrown shield like a goddamn personal avenging angel.
He nudges Steve. “Thanks for comin’ back, earlier, those guys would’ve had us for sure if you weren’t there to whoop their asses.”
“Well,” Steve says, sitting down beside Bucky next to the fire, “I was goin’ through the area anyways.”
Bucky hums and stretches his hands out towards the fire. God, but November in the wilderness of Europe is really no joke. “Right. And hey, I never told you,” he says, keeping his tone light, “but thanks for getting me out of that place too. Earlier.”
“Hm?” Steve turns to look at him, the light of the flames reflecting in his eyes. “What do you -”
“You know. Azzano. Thanks for coming back for me.”
A branch pops in the fire, sending a swirl of embers up into the air. Steve shakes his head fondly. “‘Course I came back. I’m always gonna come back for you, Buck, you know that.” The fire is casting a funny light onto his features, and if Bucky lets his eyes defocus, it’s almost like the Steve from Brooklyn is sitting down beside him. “End of the line, remember?”
Bucky smiles and throws his arm around Steve’s shoulders, pulling him in closer like he did back when he only came up to Bucky’s chest. “I remember,” he says. “You know I do. Hey, Dernier should be on his way back by now, I think we could get some sleep,” but even after Dernier stumbles back into camp they stay sitting by the fire together, their faces turned to look at the flames as the embers float up into the night sky, bright young sparks that burn and fade and eventually become one with the stars.