Chapter 6
It's 1am, and for the first time he can remember, he's happy Steve isn't back, the fact being that it means he's somewhere with Peggy, finally having that chance of happiness.
With Becca sleeping in his bed in the back, he decides to quietly as possible uncrinkle the paper baggie holding the scotch, getting a glass to pour it into. He then suddenly hears a soft whooshing. "James Barnes."
He turns, seeing a strange yet familiar man, red cloak with an invisible air moving it and a full mustache.
"Who the hell are you?"
The man sighs, looking around. "I saved you for the last, if it's any consolation."
"What do you mean?"
"Because I knew it would hurt."
He sets down his yet unfilled glass as he began to sit down in a chair he remembers being worn, hating that he was right. "....I'm not dead."
"No. Not in that sense."
He looks back at him, trying to set aside the sadness that none of it was real. "....Who are you?"
"Stephen Strange. Fighting Thanos, same as you when you disappeared.
"What happened."
"The only outcome that would make sure we won. We had to lose."
And he recalls more of the fight, a purple being and a death filled wind that came with him. Wanda's distant screams as a bright yellow light brought him back into a Wakandan jungle. "He got them. He did it." He adds, the failure hitting him.
"But he doesn't understand them." He pauses. "Each stone has it's own being, the soul stone isn't different. He didn't know that the gem is a parallel plane of existence. It hungers for the very thing it is, trapping them in a fake reality. Something we're in right now."
"So why haven't I woken up?"
And in that moment, he swears he saw a slight pang in the man's eyes. "I think you even know the answer I that."
He doesn't want to admit he does, looking over at Becca's sleeping figure, before Strange confirms it.
"Because you don't want to. ...And I can't get you out unless you do."
The pang he's been hiding surfaced, the knowing that never left him since he woke up here.
The life he was going to have. Get out of the impossible war, alive. Come back home, settle down. Have a family. And he feels again, that same dread he felt in Wakanda fictional weeks ago, Romania before that. That peace, that type of peace, wasn't his to have. It was his to give to others.
He looked back at the room one last time, picking up the sketch she had drawn, a side view of Bucky. Still regulation hair, and the ending he was never going to have.
A mirror-like crack appeared in his view, spiderwebbing slowly around everything except him and the man as he heard the cracks, an orange light appearing inbetween them.
"I'm sorry." Strange says, as the world began to fall apart.
The orange light overtakes them.