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The Ship of Theseus

Summary:

Wherein Bucky Barnes tries to discover who he is outside of Steve Rogers, fights his way out from the shadow of the Winter Soldier, goes to (real) therapy, and maybe even makes some friends along the way

(and somehow we figure out how to explain Endgame!Steve and give Bucky Barnes the happy ending he deserves)

Notes:

Hellllo!!!

I am back on my Stucky bullshit once again!

Each chapter will have a journal entry and 'regular' narrative. It will have details from TFATWS, but it will diverge from the show (so don't worry too much about spoilers - if something seems super spoiler-y, I'll tag it!!).

If there's a specific warning for a chapter, it will be in the notes! Throughout the fic, there's a warning for general angst/grief/conversations about death

As the tags suggest, we might not always like Steve in this fic, and it does deal with his Endgame decision (and hopefully I'll bring it to a point that offers some closure). Bucky is going to be sad and angry in equal measures in this, so yeah, he'll think and say and believe some uncharitable things about Steve!
Rated M for cursing, violence, and sexual references/recollections

PS The title of this fic is absolutely what you're thinking about (Thanks, WandaVision for casually dropping an age-old identity question in the middle of a chaotic discussion of grief!)

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: Longing

Chapter Text

 

 

“The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.”

Plutarch, on Theseus


I guess when it comes down to it, I was born with you under my skin. Sure, it took a few years for our atoms to find each other. But when they did - it was one of the first things I remembered. The museum told me all that, at least: “inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield.”

Inseparable. Shit choice of words, I think. The draft separated us easily enough. Trains. Ice. International justice crises. Big purple assholes. 

And you. 

Got a new therapist now. You’d hate her. ‘Least, I like to think you’d hate her. She gave me this fucking journal to write in. Guess she caught wind of all the paper they confiscated from me after Bucharest. 

I miss those scraps of paper. It was almost easier then, to exist between the pages. Fragments of memory. Snippets of birthday parties. Fractions of a life. The color of your eyes. They were like shrapnel in my chest, and I was pulling them out one by one, slow enough that the healing factor could keep up. 

Now it feels like I took a grenade to the gut. 

Raynor - that’s the doctor making me write this shit - she says that she doesn’t need to read what I write. That I can put whatever I want in here. Whatever comes to mind. Whatever I want out of my mind. I know I’m supposed to be sorting through my traumatic experiences or whatthefuckever, or maybe making lists, or writing the three rules over and over and over again like Sister Ignatius used to make us do when she caught us whispering in class or caught me trying to pass you a note. (“write it until it sticks, Mr. Barnes, if it hurts, it’s working”). But see, all I can think about is you.

You’re a handful of blocks away. Seventy years behind, tucked away in your precious fucking house. You’re a thousand lightyears off, on a point of light so fucking far away the light from your sun won’t reach me for another millennium. And you’re twenty minutes away on the R.

You had a beautiful life, goddamnit.

I’m glad you did. I’m glad you lived. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you loved. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you married. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. I’m glad you did. I’m glad. You did, and I’m glad. I’m glad. I’m happy that you did.

Write it ‘til it sticks. If it hurts, it’s working.


(Brooklyn, 2023)

Pens sit more comfortably in Bucky’s hand than most things do these days.

He misses writing with his left - the delicacy of holding normal ballpoint pens is more or less lost on the vibranium arm, no matter how good a job the Princess had done. But, Bucky likes holding the grip of the pen in his right, likes the way it feels when he presses nib to paper. He likes it.

A thing I like, a distant part of his brain notices. We like things now. 

A rattle of gunfire has him glancing up at the screen: unrest in Northern Ireland, covered on the 7 AM news. The IRA’s out bombing Protestants and Catholics alike. Again. 

Post-Snap (Bucky isn’t going to call it the Blip, he isn’t, he isn’t, he wasn’t blipped, it was so much worse than blip ), the UK had gone to shit slightly/worse-than-slightly, and the Troubles had re-troubled worse than before. Just another way they’d all been screwed by the first and second Snap. 

Bucky checks the time and then tucks his journal behind a brick he’d loosened from the wall when he moved in. 

It’s 7:15 now, and he brushes his teeth without looking in the mirror, smoothing his hair back from his face with his hands. He misses how long it was, and he almost misses the regulation haircut they gave him a month after they beat Thanos, when they trotted him out to talk about miracles and pardons and covert work and forgiveness and mercy.

Doesn’t feel a whole lot of mercy some days, leaving him alive. Doesn’t feel like mercy to let him walk around among the echoes of the ghosts he’d haunted and killed. Doesn’t feel like mercy to deny him the kindness of a quick death.

Intrusive thought, his brain notes coolly somewhere. Raynor had mentioned those. He’s supposed to stop them somehow.

He has a flit of a vision of his metal fist slapping the shit out of some little thought cloud, and that at least makes him smile before he laces up his boots, left then right, yanks on a coat, and hustles out of his shoebox apartment.

The city isn’t too loud yet. Some of Brooklyn’s still asleep, and the parts waking up aren’t really designed to grate on his nerves. It’s mostly people bustling to work, people setting up shop along the road, doves rustling in the eaves, the quiet conversions between some homeless vets that gather a block away from his apartment (and isn’t that fucked, Bucky thinks, these guys who’d been forgotten by their government, left out in the cold while the fucking Winter Soldier gets a pension and a warm room).

It’s not too loud yet, at least outside his own head.

He nods to Clive, honorably discharged in ‘06, who nods back, and then Bucky’s walking quicker, hands shoved in his pockets as he passes the gleaming windows of a storefront, headed to the bodega. 

The first disaster of the day occurs in the back aisle of T&F Grocery.

There’s an empty slot where half his breakfast is supposed to be.

“Hey,” Bucky manages to whisper hoarsely as a kid restocking the packaged goods walks by. “Um.” 

Clearing his throat, Bucky tries again. “Hi?”

The kid looks up; his name tag reads Ty.

(He’s five feet, eight inches. He weighs approximately 155 pounds. There’s a slight give to his left leg when he walks, suggesting that he’s either injured or predisposed to imbalance. Striking the right leg would doubly force him to adjust his stance, gaining 4.2 seconds in combat, if the Asset needs to defend itself. Right pocket of jeans holds a blade - box cutter? - but a neutral threat, given lack of calluses on target’s hand. He is right-handed. He-)

“Um.” He hadn’t been expecting to have to talk so early in the day; the kid doesn’t seem to think him too weird, though, and thank God the kid isn’t a mind reader. “Are you out?”

“Out?” Ty repeats, eyebrows lifting a little. 

“Of milk.” Bucky gestures with a gloved hand at the fridge. “Uh - whole milk?”

Ty glances at it for a second and then nods. “Yeah?”

“Oh.” Bucky nods and Ty rolls his eyes, goes back to counting bags of chips. 

There’s two other types of milk in stock.

Bucky swallows, feels sweat build under his collar. The fluorescent light two aisles over is buzzing. It sounds like helicopter blades. 

“Which would you drink?” Bucky’s surprised the words managed to come out - he hadn’t even realized he was thinking of asking.

“Which would I-” Ty blinks, and stands up straight, eyeing the case and then the other man dubiously. “What?”

“If you couldn’t have whole milk, which, uh -” Bucky shakes his head and mutters, “nevermind.”

He’s ready to go, sprint down the block until he can find a different bodega - even though this is his shop, he’s counted the steps to it and everything, he knows each exit, why should he have to find a new one? - but then Ty tilts his head and gestures at the row of milk jugs directly to the right of the empty slot. 

“2% is way closer to whole milk than skim,” Ty explains. 

“Thanks.” Bucky nods and grabs a gallon of milk with the dark blue label, careful not to slam the fridge door as it closes. 

He grabs a box of cereal from its usual shelf - in stock, thank Christ - and heads to the counter where Ty rings him up.

“That shit tastes like sawdust, dude,” Ty says with a wrinkled nose and a handful of Bucky’s change.

Bucky smiles mirthlessly. “Yeah.”

Eight minutes later, and he’s back in his apartment, sweating profusely from the unplanned change in routine. He watches the news, taking in the information without thinking about it, as he fills a massive bowl with the dry cereal (still way the hell more sugared-up than anything he got in the 40s, to be fair).

He cracks open the gallon of milk and sniffs it.

(No toxins. No poisons. No paralyzing agents. No drugs of any kind. No explosive devices. No blood. No sign of spoiling.)

“Smells like milk,” Bucky mutters, dumping most of it into the large bowl. 

Oddly proud of himself, he takes a sip from the jug - okay, a little more watery than he’d like, but it’s calories, so whatever - and then carries his bowl over to his thin sleeping pad, determined to get his day back on track.


With a large bag under his arm, Bucky is walking up the street at 12:05 PM, set to be on time at 12:30, when a figure drops off of a fire escape and nearly lands on him.

In a second, Bucky has a knife in his hand, the bag is on the ground, and his metal arm is whirring as he strides towards the new target, assessing the threat level.

(Unidentified combatant. Agile. Fast. Five feet, ten inches. Weight, 180 pounds. Scarred eyebrow. Hearing aid visible in both ears. Taking evasive action backwards while shouting nervously-)

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa !”

“Clint!” Bucky roars in exasperation. “You fucking asshole-”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Clint waves his hands and dodges out of the way of a half-hearted swipe. “Sorry, dude, really-”

“You -” Bucky slips his knife back inside the sleeve of his jacket and sighs, turning back around to snag the abandoned bag. “You lived with an assassin! You know that was a dumbass idea!”

“In my defense, I thought it would be funny!” Clint gives him a grin that’s only slightly dampened, and Bucky feels a twist of guilt in his gut.

He hadn’t meant to mention Natalia so casually.

“I’m sure it looked hilarious,” Bucky allows. 

Clint beams at him and falls into step beside him. “So, where are we going?”

I’m going on an errand.” Bucky cracks his neck with a groan. 

“Cool!” Clint dodges a crack in the sidewalk and manages to keep up with the definitely enhanced walking speed Bucky’s chosen. “Did you see that Sam’s going to be on the news today?”

That makes Bucky pause for a second. “Everything okay with Bird Brain?”

“Y-eah?” He can hear the confusion in Clint’s voice. “It’s some … Captain America thing.”

Bucky grunts at that, and it’s only the palpable nervous energy pouring off of Clint that has him slowing his stride a little.

“Anyway, I don’t think it’s anything bad, he just saved a buncha lives in Romania-”

“He did?”

“Ugh, yes, it was all over the group chat, Barnes, c’mon-”

“I don’t look at the group chat.”

“Of course you don’t. But, yeah, me and Rhodey think he’s getting a medal.”

“Colonel Rhodes is on the group chat?” Bucky blinks in surprise, holding a hand out to stop Clint from walking into oncoming traffic at the intersection.

Clint bumps into his hand and keeps talking. “Yeah, and you’d know that if you checked the group chat. Ooh! Dog!” Clint waves at the German Shepherd across the street. 

“Where is your dog?” Bucky asks, suddenly aware of the absence of Lucky.

“She’s with Hawkeye,” Clint explains. 

The light changes, and Clint’s in the intersection before Bucky can fully process that statement.

“Uh.” He takes three steps to catch up and then frowns down at Clint. “...You’re Hawkeye, I thought?”

Did you retire too?

And then, more mutinously: at least you didn’t leave.

“Yep!” Clint shrugs, unaware of the tangle twisting up inside of his walking partner. “But Lucky’s with Hawkeye. ” 

The way he stresses the name suggests that Bucky should already understand the implications of it. 

“The girl one,” Clint clarifies without clarifying, but Bucky grunts and nods.

Clint keeps talking about something or other while they walk, and Bucky does listen, he really does, but there’s something clawing at his throat as they approach his destination, and it keeps him from really engaging. It’s when he makes the final left turn that Clint clears his throat.

“So, I, uh - know this neighborhood.”

They’re on a street of tidy brownstones. The cars parked on the street are nicer than the ones on Bucky’s street. There are even fucking trees lining the avenue. Dogs bark in the distance, and the sounds of children’s laughter carries on the southeastern wind. 

Bucky doesn’t respond to Clint’s observation, only picks up his pace. 

“I have a confession to make,” Clint says, slightly out of breath as he jogs at Bucky’s side. “So, let’s say, hypothetically, that I - I’ve seen you walking this way before.” He waits, clearly for Bucky to snap at him, but Bucky’s eyes are fixed on a point a hundred yards up, and his feet are suddenly filled with lead.

“And, let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I - that I was curious why you’d - y’know, come here every day, and -”

“Clint?”

Clint lets out a tense breath. Bucky stops, and so does Barton. They look at each other for a long second.

“Just.” Bucky shakes his head. “Stay here, okay?”

“Got it.” Clint nods, already bouncing on the balls of his feet, and Bucky walks the last hundred feet by himself. 

It feels as though the street is watching him as he climbs the steps and knocks on the green door.

Mrs. Reynolds answers it with a smile. She’s a nice lady - a knockout when she was younger, Bucky can tell - but she’s still only about half his real age. A spring chicken. She looks as pleased as ever to see him.

“James!” She beams at him, and he offers her a tight smile. “You’re always on time.”

“Yes ma’am.” He fiddles with the strap of the bag and then hauls it over to her side of the door.

She peers inside and then smiles even wider. “You always remember his favorites.”

Bucky has a sudden vision of the front stoop cracking open underneath him, the soil of Brooklyn swallowing him whole, the earth reclaiming what it’s owed. He wonders if it’d be peaceful, all the way down there. If he’d be able to sleep, down there. 

“Yes, ma’am.” He might be suddenly more exhausted than he can handle, but Bucky refuses to be rude to Mrs. Reynolds. 

“Would you like to come in?” She asks every day.

“No, ma’am,” is his answer every time.

Does he ever ask about me? The thought forms, unbidden. Does he talk about me? Is he sorry? 

“Well, you boys at the VA are so kind to remember the captain,” Mrs. Reynolds says gently.

The words force out of his throat, harsher than sandpaper. “I’d never forget.”

“Do you want some water, dear?” She looks genuinely concerned.

But he excuses himself as politely as he can, and stumbles down the steps, down the sidewalk to where Clint hovers.

They walk back the way they came, quiet at first. Then, Clint asks in a much more subdued voice than he used on the way over:

“You do that every day?”

Bucky jerks his head noncommittally.

Part of him wants to turn around and see if he’s standing in the window. If he’s standing there, watching the thing his wife’s legacy had built. If he ever puts a wrinkled hand to the pane, withered mouth forming the syllables of his name, the first thing he’d given back to him on that bridge years ago.

But, no. Bucky’s the one left standing in the tatters of the future, longing for the past, a past that was never really his to begin with, bleeding out from a wish that never seems to go away. He doesn’t look back.

Ten minutes later, Clint speaks again; they’ve been walking quietly, at a much slower pace than before. Bucky’s shoulders are rounded in the jacket, as if to ward off some cold wind that won’t happen on an August day.

“Last night, I had a dream that Nat was blipped.”

Bucky doesn’t break stride, but he does look over at Clint. He sees the lines on his still youthful face, the tension in his shoulders. He sees the tear forming, and that makes his chest tight for some godforsaken reason.

“I had a dream that we were standing in a field, and she turned to dust in my arms.” Clint’s voice grows thick. “And - and I woke up, and I was - I was so fuckin’ relieved.” He wipes his nose with the back of his arm before laughing angrily.

“Isn’t that fucked?” Clint scratches absently at the back of his crew cut. “Isn’t it fucked that I was so - I was so happy ? I’m sitting there, half-awake, thinking I was still covered in dust, covered in her, and I just …” He trails off and shakes his head. His voice is smaller when he finishes, “All I could think was, but it’s over now , and if she’d been taken that first time, all it woulda been was five years. Five fucking years, and then she’d would have come back, and I’d be able to hold her. I was half-awake, thinking she was in the next room because she’d come back from the dust.”

Bucky stops walking, and Clint does too, facing him.

“I didn’t come here today to support you in that - that act of masochism, whatever the fuck that was,” Clint informs him. If it surprises Bucky to hear that, it doesn’t register fully in his turbulent thoughts.

“I didn’t,” Clint wipes his nose again, “I - you’re the only person I think who could understand it.”

“Understand what?” Bucky asks quietly, the words shredding his mouth on the way out.

“She saved us all,” Clint says, tears in his eyes. “She saved - the whole fucking universe. And, I don’t give a fuck. If it came down to the universe, and, and Nat? I’d choose Nat.” His mouth quivers before setting tightly. “I’d choose her every goddamn time.”

And there isn’t a whole lot to say after that.


There had been some footage that Shuri showed him, when she was mapping the idea of Bucky Barnes out on her computers, finding the thread of Bucky’s self through the bombed-out disaster zone of his ruined mind. When she was reconstructing him in bits and pieces, algorithms and memories, she showed him footage.

From the day that started the dominoes that led to her father’s death. 

“Something made the Captain lose focus,” Shuri had said gently, the video of the fight between Crossbones and Captain America flickering behind his eyes, projected by the VR helmet she’d placed on him. “Something you should hear.”

He wasn’t sure how she’d gotten a hold of this scene, this line of dialogue - apparently some sort of invisible Wakandan surveillance bot had recorded it in the chaos of destruction - but it was the lines of dialogue that had Bucky weeping uncontrollably hours after the memory session.

It wasn’t Rumlow’s taunts, per se, the mocking of Bucky’s own pain (and Christ, that asshole loved torturing the Asset, loved tormenting it, loved the process of wiping and wiping and wiping), that made Bucky lose his shit.

No. It was what he had said that caused Captain America to lose that star-spangled focus and drive:

“Your pal, your buddy, your Bucky.”

And even in the agonized hurricane of Bucky’s thoughts in those days, he’d been able to recognize the visceral reaction the words had caused in their target. Foolishly, Bucky had taken it as confirmation of ownership, of possession, of pride -

Your, your, your -

(But what was he now, when Steve didn’t want Bucky to be his anymore?)


On the five o’clock news, Bucky watches from the floor as Sam Wilson gives up the shield. He sees fingers tightening on the vibranium, notes the way his throat bobs in grief and stress, studies the line of tension in Sam’s shoulders. He doesn’t miss the way some of the tension disappears as the shield is put away behind multi-paned bulletproof glass.

He watches Sam give it up.

Words echo emptily in his head as the newscasters go into the next story of the night, cutting away from the broadcast. Bucky doesn’t so much as blink in the minutes after the shield disappears from sight. His throat burns. His face screws up like he’s going to cry. Only, he doesn't cry. Can’t cry, really.

If Sam thinks he doesn’t deserve the shield -

There’s an uncomfortable rush of thoughts, drowning out his peripheral awareness like a tidal wave, but in the midst of the chaos, he recognizes one thought: if Sam Wilson thinks he doesn't deserve the shield, did Steve ever really deserve it either?

If he were still the Asset, he’d punish himself for that thought. And even the recognition that he would punish himself on behalf of Steve fucking Rogers makes his stomach curl from the implications that the Asset still inside him thinks of Steve as an authority, as the instructor. Maybe as a handler.

And Steve doesn’t deserve that legacy.

Bucky grabs his journal from its hiding place and sits down to write. The light changes against the kitchen walls as the sun sets over Brooklyn, sweeping in shadows that crawl along the ceiling like low-hanging clouds. In the distant hush of evening, police sirens wail, and dogs bark, and children laugh - birds rustle in the eaves as Brooklyn pulls itself towards sleep, and Bucky doesn’t move, doesn’t look up from the page in front of him.

An hour, and all he’s managed to write is your pal, your buddy, your Bucky, over and over again in rows and then spirals and then waves, always coming back to your Bucky, your Bucky, your Bucky -

Yours .

(But not anymore)

Chapter 2: Rusted

Summary:

Bucky struggles to get back into the swing of things and tries to make friends.

Notes:

Chapter Warnings
Major Warning References to suicide (Bucky thinks of past suicidal ideation/Sam discusses friends' suicides)
Bucky's sometimes an unreliable narrator - he's struggling with self-hatred, depression, and anxiety and his thoughts definitely do not reflect my own personal views of people struggling with these issues! He's in a rough spot mentally!
TFATWS Spoiler Yori is a character in this fic, and a spoiler about his character's connection to Bucky is in the chapter! I'm not following most of the plotlines of TFATWS, but I wanted to leave in smaller character details before I jump into the plot of this one (yes, there's going to be a plot!)

 

Chapter Notes
Bucky has a flashback to 1944, and the verb tense changes/fades in and out of past and present tense there - it's on purpose!
Also, the poem at the start of this chapter is one of my favorites from Heaney.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text


 

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

 

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

 

-“Blackberry-Picking,” Seamus Heaney


We’ve been around for too long.

Both of us. We’ve stolen decades that never should have happened. I was watching a documentary last night when I couldn’t sleep. Came on a few hours after midnight. The scientists in it were talking about something called oxygen toxicity. Isn’t that so fucking weird? That we need air to breathe, to exist, but too much of it, or the wrong kind or the wrong pressure or the wrong concentration - it just rips through your cell membranes. It fucks up your eyes. Busts up your lungs, your heart, and it kills you. The thing I need can kill me. Fucking weird.

I think I’ve been exposed to too much oxygen. Sometimes I wanna call the Princess up and ask her about everything she saw when she was spooling me up into something resembling normal. No fucking way those Hydra assholes didn’t goof it up somewhere along the activating and wiping and activating. I remember what it felt like to breathe coming out of cryo. I remember it burning. I was blind most of the time, blind and fucking freezing like Harrison Ford in those Star Wars movies Shuri was so keen on. Only there wasn’t any beautiful dame there to kiss and make it better. To save me and drag me out of hell.

I remember Coney Island, your seventeenth birthday. Fireworks all along the boardwalk. Can still hear the waves and the shouts from the pier, if I close my eyes. That day, I’m sure there was candy floss and hot dogs and brine from the salt water all along my ankles. But I remember closing my eyes, and all I could smell was you. The soap you used back then. I could smell it so … perfectly, I guess. A whole world in front of me, and I was only eighteen, and I learned how to breathe shallowly, so shallowly that it made my chest tight, and I stood there like some chump, sipping back air so that I could focus on you. 

You had your face tilted back, watching the fireworks, and the stars even further past them, and I was staring at you, and my lungs were fucking full of you. I wanted to breathe deeper, wanted to tuck you away, safe somewhere in my chest. Cage you in, even. You must have caught me staring because on the walk home, you tugged me into an alley and kissed me so fucking hard that I finally saw fireworks. And I realized that it was you breathing me in. I wanted to crawl inside you. I wanted you to swallow me whole. I realized I’d fucking let you. 

The next few weeks, we’d be sitting on the couch, you drawing, me reading but really staring at you. And I forgot how to breathe like a normal fucking person. All I could smell was you, and the regular air that normal assholes breathed, it wasn’t fucking enough suddenly. 

Sometimes when I wake up, I can smell soap. Nothing is clean when I’m sleeping. There’s blood dripping from my mouth, feels like. I’m always cold. Dreaming of cyanide and gunsmoke. Grenades and garrotes and tables and the ice, always the ice. And I wake up, and I can’t fucking see, and I’m gulping down air like I’m the one they pulled out of the water. And all I can smell is that shitty, cheap soap.

And sometimes, I think I’m dead. That eighteen year old who thought it was a good idea to follow the punk from down the street certainly is.

Anyway. I think breathing is what’s going to kill whatever’s left of that kid. So it goes. 


“It’s Sam, leave me a message at the beep.”

Beep .

Bucky stares at the brick facade of the building opposite his and hangs up. Wilson not taking his call is an … alarming development. Yeah. Call it alarming. The guy texts Bucky three times a week since … well, since Tony’s funeral, and the one time Bucky reaches out, the guy …

You pushed him away. You’re good at that.

He swallows around the thought like it’s a lump in his throat and then stares at the sky above Brooklyn, the way it’s fading into light blue at the edges as day approaches. 

On the tv, the morning news starts up in earnest. A bombing in Prague. A tsunami threat in the Pacific Islands. A series of targeted strikes in the Middle East. 

The stories slip past, and Bucky can’t help but wonder how many of these seemingly incongruous stories link back to him. He can’t really be blamed for a deep sea earthquake, but the rest of it …

You shaped the century.

If he were Sam, he wouldn’t take his call either.

At 7:20, Bucky stands despite the shiver in his limbs, pulls on his shirt, jacket, and gloves, and heads to the bodega. 


Thursday is a slightly different day compared to the other days.

On Monday and Wednesday, he has therapy to change up his routine. But, he doesn’t really have a choice to show up or not to that appointment - vibranium handcuffs and enough tranqs to knock out a stampede of rhinos await Bucky if he fails to show up either in person or on-holoscreen. 

On Thursday though, after Bucky’s delivered his groceries and declined the invitation to come inside for the one hundred and fifty-second time, after he’s gone to the gym, checked in with the agent who’s basically a parole officer, and scarfed down his usual three boxes of Kraft macaroni, he goes to the bar.

Yori isn’t hard to spot. He’s in the middle of a probably lengthy tirade, wagging his finger a little at the grinning, pretty bartender, and Bucky smirks at her as he walks up behind Yori.

“James!” Yori gestures for him to take a seat next to him. 

There’s noise in the bar - the good kind of noise, with people laughing and drinks clinking, but even the overall sense that everything’s good here, Bucky can’t stop his quick sweep of the restaurant.

(Sixteen occupants. Three wait staff - no new faces among employees. Back entrance, unobstructed. Kitchen door, unobstructed. Front door, viable for enemy egress.)

Bucky stations himself with the back against the half wall and keeps an eye on Yori, an eye on the front door. He offers the bartender - Leah, he learned her name last week when she started, learned that she was friends with the boss’s son, indicating a low level of threat to the establishment- a smile when she hands him a glass of clear liquor.

“Thanks.” 

“No problem.” Leah raises an eyebrow at Yori. “You’re gonna need it tonight, with the big game he’s been talking.”

“Big game?” Bucky lifts an eyebrow as well, and that’s enough to get Yori going.

Bucky likes listening to Yori talk. He really, really does. It’s like a knife in his fucking throat, sure, just a little bit. A white-hot evisceration every time the guy opens up a little when talking to him, but beyond the general carving-up of Bucky’s guts that it inspires, Yori’s just a great person. Funny, opinionated, and his tastes and turns of phrase tended to be more like Bucky’s than the average … what were they called?

Millennials. 

He tunes back in a little more when Yori says, “but that was always RJ’s thing, not mine!”

“RJ liked cards, huh?” Bucky fiddles with his now empty glass and sets it down, worried that he might crack it in his grip. “Here I was, thinking you were the only guy in the world who’d cheat at pinochle, and I’m supposed to believe that you don’t have any interest in cards?”

“Hmph.” Yori gives him a smirk, even if it’s sad around the edges.

His eyes daze off a little then, like they always do when they talk about RJ.

I killed him. 

It’s always there. On the tip of Bucky’s tongue, slamming against sealed lips, thrashing around in his chest like some ancient beast yearning to be free. 

I killed him. I had to eliminate any witnesses. He begged me to spare him. He probably thought about you when I pulled the trigger. I’m the reason you don’t have a family, anymore.

I’m the reason a lot of people don’t have a family.

“How are the doctor visits going?” Yori asks, and it feels as though the restaurant quiets a little. It’s just the buzzing in Bucky’s ears.

“Not great.” Bucky feels his mouth tightening. He doesn’t want to lie to Yori. Beyond the obvious one, of course. “She, uh, I’m sure she’s great. It just … feels a little like getting my eyeballs scooped out with a spoon, sometimes.”

“Hmm.” Yori frowns a little at that and drains the rest of his beer. “Let me give you the number for my doctor.” He pats around the pockets of his jacket until he finds a small piece of paper and pen. “He helped me a lot after … well, after…”

Yori trails off, and Bucky feels cold in the tips of the hand he doesn’t even have anymore as he watches him carefully write out the ten digits. He takes the card without protest, and Yori pushes his forearm a little before pulling away. 

“Call him,” Yori urges. “Actually call him. I’ll know!”

“Know what?” Leah’s come back around the bar by this point, and she offers them both a friendly smile.

Bucky clears his throat, at a loss for what to say that isn’t a version of: he just gave me the number of the therapist he saw to handle the trauma of losing his kid, and I’m going to go in and talk to a therapist because of all the trauma I have from killing his kid, and then we’re going to go to Bingo night next Tuesday, wanna come? 

“I’ll know if he spends another Friday night inside by himself,” Yori lies easily.

Smooth fucker. Bucky may be a recently unbrainwashed assassin in his early 100’s, but he can spot where this is going from a mile away, without a sniper scope.

He glares at Yori while simultaneously trying to offer a ‘not a murderer, and also you’re very pretty, but also I’m not currently interested,’ preemptive vibe to Leah. Who then gives him the weirdest look he’s gotten in a while, which tells him he didn’t do a good job with the facial expression.

“Is that so?” Leah grabs another beer for Yori and cracks it open when he nods in approval. 

“Yes!” Yori pats Bucky on the arm, and Bucky’s just glad it’s the flesh one, or else they’d all hear the plates whir from unexpected stimulation. “He should be spending his time with pretty girls, not with his sad, lonely apartment.”

“Hey,” Bucky chuckles weakly, holding his hand up in protest, “easy now, I like my lonely apartment-”

“He thinks you are very pretty,” Yori informs Leah, who looks utterly amused by Bucky’s growing mortification. “And we were wondering-”

“-Yori was wondering, actually-”

“- We were wondering if you wanted to go on a date with him tomorrow!” 

“Hmm.” Leah looks back and forth between them for a second before nodding. “Deal.” She grabs a towel and moves down the bar, and Bucky stares after her in mild horror. 

“Deal?” He repeats croakily.

“Deal!” Yori seems deeply pleased now. 

A few minutes later, Yori excuses himself to use the restroom, and Bucky tugs at a seam on his left glove, trying not to make eye contact with anyone else. His drink glass being collected drags his attention away from his hand, and up to Leah, who’s giving him a sympathetic smile.

“Hey, heard you have a hot date tomorrow,” she jokes, and Bucky feels his face heating up a little. 

“Um, about that-”

“No worries.” Leah smiles at him kindly. “I know gay panic when I see it. Made the same face through high school whenever my aunts would ask me where my cute boyfriends were.”

Something painfully close to relief washes over him.

“Oh, so-”

“I actually don’t know anyone in this neighborhood, though, and there is a movie marathon playing at the theater tomorrow night.” Leah tosses the towel over her shoulder and leans into the bar with a bright, engaging smile. “We should go. As friends, of course. If you’re interested.”

He considers it. For what feels like several hours. Considers the possibility that something will happen that makes him panic, that makes him feel like he’s back in that chamber, that makes him feel like he’s not behind the wheel of his own body again - considers how he might scare the shit out of this nice, kind woman, how he isn’t normal, doesn’t do normal people things.

Then, he remembers Dr. Raynor’s near-taunts from yesterday’s session. Remembers Yori’s painfully happy face when he thought Bucky would be going on a date. Remembers how his call went to voicemail today. 

“Yeah,” he manages to say in a creak of a voice. He clears his throat and tries again. “Uh, yeah, that sounds - swell.”

That seems to amuse Leah, whose eyebrows lift in delight. “Swell.” She giggles a little. “Haven’t heard that one in a few decades.” 

“Right.” Bucky huffs a laugh too, and spots Yori coming out of the restrooms at the other end of the restaurant. “So-”

“Pick me up after my shift tomorrow. The movies start at 9. Horror flicks, so, bring your comfort blankie.”

“Right.” Bucky feels a little dazed, and he’s still staring at Leah’s retreating form when Yori slides back onto his stool.

“Did you make plans for your date?” Yori asks with an annoyingly fond level of smugness.

“Mhm.” Bucky smiles at the wood of the bar, and when Yori shoves his shoulder good-naturedly, he leans into it, swaying with the motion so he doesn’t accidentally knock Yori over with the natural resistance of his heavier frame.

He has a date. A friend-date? Whatever it’s called, Bucky can’t help the smile on his face. He’s doing something with a friend. He has a friend. Maybe he isn’t as bad at this human stuff as he thought.


Sam calls him at 9:15 AM on Friday morning, and Bucky lets it ring three times before picking up.

“Hey.”

“Good morning to you too, Sunshine.” There’s warm amusement in Sam’s voice, and Bucky feels his mouth forming a stiff smile despite his gnawing anxiety from Sam’s press conference on Wednesday night.

“What’s up?”

“You called me,” Sam points out, mirth still lingering. “I should be asking you what’s up, if you’re suddenly calling me like a real boy after months of radio silence-”

“You know what’s up,” Bucky grits out. 

He’s standing at the small counter in his kitchen; the granite makes a groaning noise under his left hand, and Bucky yanks it back, grimacing when he sees the four indents left in the dark grey countertop.

Sam sighs. Deep, near-theatrical. Disappointed. Bucky’s blood boils a little.

“Buck-”

“Don’t call me that,” Bucky says, brittle and sharper than he wants. “Don’t - what the fuck were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that it was my own damn decision, and I didn’t have to run it past my friend who doesn’t even call me -”

“No, don’t turn this around on me!” Bucky steps back from the counter before he can do something stupid like punch his toaster.

He did that last month, and it was over-fucking-whelming to get a new one off of Amazon. 

“I - I should have called, you’re right,” Bucky allows, wilting a little as he starts to pace, no doubt wearing a groove into the vinyl flooring under the pressure of his thick boots. “Yeah, I - I’m sorry, okay, but that’s not - that’s not a reason to give the shield up!”

There’s a muffled click on the other end, like Sam’s closed a door near him, and his voice is quieter the next time he speaks. 

“Why the hell do you think you not calling me would be any kind of factor in my decision-making?” He sounds calm, but Bucky can sense the quiet rage in his tone. “Why - where do you get off, thinking that you can call me up out of the blue and scold me - when you have no idea, no idea whatsoever, what I have going on in my life?”

Bucky’s throat spasms. He’s being selfish. He’s being a rat bastard, he’s being selfish, he’s being mean -

(He was never mean Before. He wasn’t. He wasn’t an asshole, he really wasn’t, but they twisted him up inside, and now all he ever is, is mean, and he used to be kind, Sister Eustace would make him write lines, fuckin’ sure, but she’d slip him a rod of candy for Becca after class because she knew he wouldn’t sneak it for himself, she used to tell him he was a good boy, that he’d get that rotten Steve Rogers to Heaven with his smiles and his sweet soul, and God, why is he such a fucking asshole now?)

“I’m sorry,” Bucky creaks, but Sam’s still going.

“It’s just - man, I think you’re dead half the time,” Sam’s voice wobbles dangerously. “I really fucking do. Do you know how many of my friends from the service, they just - I call ‘em, they don’t pick up, - do you know how many times I’ve gotten the call that -- that they --”

“Sam.” Bucky freezes a little. “Hey. Wilson, shit, I’m - I’m actually sorry, I am, I wouldn’t -”

(But he would, wouldn’t he? If he wasn’t so busy trying to make up for what he did? Didn’t he think about it, all the time in Budapest? Wasn’t it only the blue of Steve’s eyes in those photographs that kept him from finding a way to finally terminate the Winter Soldier?)

“Fuck you,” Sam says, and there’s a muffled voice saying something, muffled through whatever door Sam had closed to have this conversation. “Nah, Jody, I’m good - get those plates fixed up for your mom, okay?”

“Jody?” Bucky asks after Sam’s been quiet for thirty seconds.

“Nephew,” Sam answers. “My sister’s kid.”

“I didn’t know you had a nephew.” He feels guilty about that, too.

“Two of ‘em, actually,” Sam sighs a little, but it’s less angry than before. “Jody and … James.”

“...Nice name.”

“We call him Jim,” Sam mutters, and Bucky nods, rubbing the back of his neck, feeling utterly wrong-footed. 

“I had a friend named Jim,” Bucky says after a few seconds. “Jim Morita.”

“He served with you, right?” 

“Mm.” Bucky frowns and stares a little at a discolored water stain behind his sink. It’s larger than it was last week. He should probably buy paint to clean it up. He should probably -

Pay attention to his phone call. He blinks as hard as he can, and tunes back in to hear Sam say:

“I’m having some … personal issues right now.” Sam clears his throat. “Down in Louisiana.”

“Oh.” Bucky fiddles with the corner of his phone case. “I can - do you need some help? I can come down there-”

“It’s not a problem you can shoot.” Sam laughs a little, and it quells some of the ugliness of the implication, but Bucky winces through his smile all the same. “Appreciate the offer though, Buck. I just - the shield, after everything that happened … and what’s happening right now … I wasn’t …”

“No, no,” Bucky shakes his head and winces again. “You don’t - you don’t owe me an explanation. Sorry that I …”

( Existed, didn’t die the first time, was bad at coming back to life all the other times, bothered you, got you exiled, killed all those people, wasn’t enough )

“We’ll talk again soon, yeah?” Bucky clears his throat a little. He wishes he had a landline. He feels stupid holding this little rectangle next to his ear. “I mean. If you wanted to. I’ll … I’ll try to be better at picking up the phone.”

“Do or do not, there is no try,” Sam says serenely, and Bucky smirks.

“You know, I actually understand that reference.”

“I’m sure you do. You’re over there in the big city, watchin’ Netflix all day, huh.” Sam sounds teasing again, his voice a pleasant drawl. 

Something unexpectedly warm fills Bucky’s chest.

“Yeah.” He smiles a little and nods. “Yeah, somethin’ like that.”

He’s still smiling after they say their goodbyes, and Bucky stares at his tv, which is showing the mid-morning news.

For the first time since he moved in, he grabs the remote control from the small table against the wall, and clicks through to the TV guide. In fifteen seconds, he’s found a showing of The Little Mermaid on the Disney Channel, and he settles in on his sofa to watch Ariel wish herself a pair of real, working legs.

If he’s crying by the end, no one has to know. 

(And, when he’s thirteen minutes late to drop off his daily delivery to the pleasant little brownstone on the quiet little street, Mrs. Reynolds doesn’t say anything about it)


The horror movie festival turns out to be a great time. Leah steals all his popcorn and hogs the armrest, but she makes him laugh, deep in his belly, with her inane impersonations of the swamp thing - using twizzlers as sticky-swamp hair - and her muttered commentary on Dracula.

She doesn’t expect him to say things all the time. She doesn’t seem to notice the way his eyes slide over away from the screen when they strap Franeknstein’s monster down. She doesn’t care that he’s a second late to laugh most of the time. 

Leah’s good, Bucky decides. Deep down into her bones, good. 

(It makes him worry that all the awfulness stored up inside him, that threatens to ooze out and infiltrate every semi-nice thing in his vicinity - the shit luck that’s followed him his whole - well, it all makes Bucky worry that he’ll find away to hurt Leah, too).

“I had fun tonight,” Leah informs him cheerfully after he’s walked her to her waiting Uber. “Really. You aren’t as weird and old-mannish as I thought you were. I mean you are weird. And you are an octnangerian crammed into the body of a young Mark Hamill, but way more fun than I thought that combination would be.”

Bucky grins self-deprecatingly down at his shoes. “Aw, shucks. Guess I shouldn’t ask you to come to Bingo with me and Yori on Tuesday, then.”

“At the community center?” Leah jabs her thumb over her shoulder and laughs when Bucky nods.

Laughs harder when he adds, “I’m bringing warm milk and Bengay for the table.”

“Eh. Sure. You’ve convinced me - I’ll be there.”

“Good to know my charms haven’t totally faded away with time.” He snorts a little because if only she knew.

“Guess so,” Leah pushes his right arm playfully, and he pretends to move with it. “You aren’t totally rusty, old man.” She waves as she gets in the waiting car. ”See you around, James.”

He watches the car drive off, and then heads down the block, gloved hands crammed in his pocket, the warm feeling that he noticed from his call with Sam flaring back to life in his chest.


Saturday morning’s news broadcast is interrupted when Princess Shuri of Wakanda calls him. Bucky nearly drops his box of cereal in his haste to pick up. 

“Good morning, James Barnes speaking,” he says with all the prim cadence his mother had impressed on him as a child. 

“Bucky!” Shuri greets him with all her usual warmth, and then she laughs. “Old man, I am FaceTiming you!! Show me your wrinkly face, not the inside of your ear!”

Bucky scrunches his nose up a little as he pulls the phone away from his ear and directs it at his face. “Is that better?”

“Put the puppy dog filter on, and we’ll be in business.” Shuri beams at him, beautiful and young and kind, and Bucky wilts.

God, she’s such a good kid. It tears him up a little. It really does.

“I missed you,” he tells her honestly. His throat gets tight. “I miss … I miss Wakanda.”

Her eyes look sadder - it’s not his imagination - and she gets a little closer to her camera. “You can come back any time, Sergeant Barnes,” she informs him. “You’d be a guest of the royal household - or, you can go back to your goats.”

Bucky gives her a wobbly smile. “Those guys probably already forgot about me.”

“Forget about the White Wolf?” Shuri scoffs playfully. “No one ever could.”

He blinks away an unexpected set of tears and coughs a little, glancing away from his screen. Shuri’s scrutinizing him carefully when he looks back.

“Have you … how have you been feeling recently?” Shuri asks tactfully, but he can hear the scientist in the question.

Out of respect, he doesn’t sigh at her or even roll his eyes. “No fugue states,” he reports. “A lot of nightmares. Night terrors, even, but they soundproofed my walls before I came in so I wouldn’t scare the neighbors by screaming all night.”

Shuri just nods, like he hadn’t said something mortifying.

“Arm’s been acting like a dream.” He rotates his left arm in demonstration. “Seriously - no infections, no back pain, no more tension headaches. It’s -- thank you doesn’t feel big enough.”

“No thanks needed.”

“How have you been doing?” Bucky smiles at her. “Gonna win the Nobel Prize this year?”

“Pfffbt,” Shuri rolls her eyes. “So pedestrian.” Then, she eyes something over her shoulder and grins at him conspiratorially. “I mean, I totally could. Wanna see what I’m working on?”

The answer is, of course, a hearty yes, and the next fifteen minutes Bucky spends enjoyably confused and interested as Shuri shows him science that he certainly does not have security clearance to view. Feels nice though to see her so excited, after the shit she’s been through. 

As the call seems to draw to an end, Shuri repeats her offer.

“Whenever you’d like,” she assures him. “Say the word. We’d be happy to see you.”

“Thank you, Princess,” he says, as earnest as he remembers how to be. “But … I need to … figure out who I am now. Beyond all the memories and ... “ He trails off. “I just need to figure out who I am.”

“You’re Bucky,” Shuri answers with the firm confidence of a young genius.

He leans against his fridge with a dull thud. “I’m not sure what that means.” 

Her gaze is probing, so he adds, “Especially with … with him gone.” His mouth spasms, and he looks away so he can’t see her pity.

Shuri saw the gamut of his memories, after all. She saw every single thing attached to those trigger words. Saw the parts of him he still wanted to keep, the parts of him he needed to carve out, the parts of him that threatened to drown him in sleep even now.

“He isn’t … he wouldn’t want you to-”

Bucky shakes his head. ”You know what we were to each other - well. You saw what he was to me.” He laughs again. It tastes like tar, clogging up his throat. “You know I can’t walk back from that.”

In the quiet that builds over their connection, Bucky feels the past creeping up on him, sending tendrils into his consciousness, pulling him back and back and back -

He registers Shuri saying, “For what it’s worth … I saw all of you, James Barnes, and … and I think you are very much a man worth knowing.”

His smile feels broken around every single edge. “Thanks.”

They hang up less than a minute later. The phone goes loose in his hand. He smells woodsmoke.

Bucky slides down his fridge until he crashes into the floor, and it’s like darkness rushing up around his eyes, darkness that sucks him down and pulls him under, and Bucky gasps for air-


(European Theatre, 1944)

“Buck?”

He rests his head against the cool metal of his fridge.

No. Not metal. Tree bark.

There’s a fire going nearby, and the smoke’s clogging up his nose. There’s a deepset chill in the air - 

It was almost the end of the year, after all. The blue jacket he had worn for years now felt thin around his shoulders, but Bucky didn’t feel cold, really. He didn’t feel much of anything, those days.

There were footsteps approaching. Bucky kept his eyes closed.

“Buck, what are you doin’ over here by yourself?”

He smelled soap then, clean and sharp and good, clear over the heady woodsmoke.

“Thinkin’,” he muttered up to the starry sky. If he opened his eyes, he’d see how his breath crystallized into a cloud above his mouth. 

If he opened his eyes, he’d see the way blue eyes tracked the movement of his plump lips. He’d have to admit that those eyes looked at him the way no one else ever would.

They were two days away now from the last safehouse, Agent Margaret Carter having imparted the Howlies’ next mission with her usual grace and steel and class. It’d be easier, Bucky thought viciously. It’d be easier if he could hate the woman. 

“Thinkin’?” Steve drawled a little, sliding up close to him until Bucky could feel the heat that radiated from him. “That sounds dangerous.”

“Only ‘cuz you never fuckin’ bother with it,” Bucky muttered. He felt his lips tug into a smile against his will when Steve leaned into his arm, his chuckle throaty and stab-you-in-the-back familiar. 

Over near the fire, Morita got the radio working. Vera Lynn started to sing after a light rush of applause, and that damn song came on. It followed them fuckin’ everywhere in those days.

“We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when -”

“They shouldn’t be playing that so loud,” Bucky said.

He opened his eyes to see Steve staring at him with painful, naked want. He cleared his throat and stepped away from the tree, leaving Steve behind him a little. 

“We should tell ‘em to turn it down-”

“No one’s around for miles,” Steve chided gently. “Let ‘em have this, Buck. It’s just music.”

“Just music that’s gonna get us fuckin’ captured,” Bucky said. “Or worse.”

He could see Steve smiling at him, gentle and sweet. 

(Why could he see him smile in the dark? Even with the moon caught up in the tree branches overhead, there wasn’t near enough light for him to be able to see the sweet crookedness of Steve’s smile, that Rogers grin that the serum couldn’t perfect, that little piece of home - there was no reason on earth why Bucky Barnes should be able to count Steve Rogers’s teeth in the dark from eight feet away. Human eyes weren’t that good. They weren’t.)

“You haven’t spoken to me in a few days.” Steve, fuck him, sounded nervous. “I - I waited up for you last night-”

“Is that so?” Something hideous and twisted snarled up to life inside of Bucky. “Damn. Sorry.”

“You don’t sound sorry.” Steve’s earnestness was brighter than the moon as he stepped towards him.

Bucky took a step back. 

He could practically feel Steve wringing his hands together as he said, “Did I - shit, did I say somethin’? Did I offend you?”

“No.” Bucky snorted. 

“‘Cuz, if I did, shit, Buck, tell me, I’ll make it up to you-”

“You ain’t doing penance for me, Rogers.” He snarled the word penance, angrier than he thought he had the right to be. “Just drop it.”

“No.” Stubborn son of a - “No, Buck, I ain’t droppin’ it, not ‘til you tell me-”

“I said, forget it, Rogers, you didn’t say anything-”

“I clearly said something, or else-”

“You didn’t have to say anything.” The words ripped out of him, involuntarily. It felt like machine gun fire leaving his mouth. “You didn’t. There’s nothing you had to say. Nothing you can say.”

“Buck?”

He tried to take a steady breath in. He tried to calm himself. He tried to steel himself, put up a metal wall thick enough to hold back the tide of his anger, his rage, his pain, always his fuckin’ pain, every day since Azzano and probably even before then, his absolute fury that Steve Rogers had the nerve to exist and then ask Bucky why he was so upset -

“You can’t have us both.”

All they could hear for a few seconds were the voices of the Howlies and light laughter. Bucky tilted his head back to glare at the sky, and almost missed Steve’s pained, “ What ?”

Bucky looked at him this time. “You can’t have both of us.” 

The music drifted in between the trees, and Bucky spoke in a harsh whisper that could only be interpreted as the shouting he wanted it to be. “You fuckin’ can’t. You can’t marry her, put babies in her, settle down and play house and then - and then just have me strung along ‘til I fucking die”

“Bucky-”

“No! No, it’s not - it’s not fair, Rogers! Because you know I’d do it. You know I’d be so stupid to just … let you fuck me like that, until I die, if I even make it outta here.”

“No, you aren’t being fair right now, Buck, c’mon, when did I ever make you feel like-”

Bucky shrugged off the hand Steve put on his shoulder viciously. “I won’t be some filthy secret,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t live like that. I’ll die, Steve, you’re asking me to fucking die for you, and it’s one thing in war, it’s another fucking thing entirely in the goddamn suburbs !”

“You were the only who always said we’d - we’d find nice dames and marry ‘em, and be neighbors and-”

“I was a fucking kid.” Bucky laughed. It tasted bitter in his mouth, like a rusted-out metal bit. “I was a fucking - I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

For a moment, the air was gone from the clearing, and there was only the small point of space directly above Steve’s right shoulder, that little ball of space and Vera Lynn’s suddenly irritating optimism: “But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day-”

“Buck-”

“Don’t Buck me.” He wiped his mouth and laughed again. “Don’t - just fuckin’ don’t, okay? And don’t promise me anything, either - I’ve seen how you -  I saw you two … Jesus Christ.” 

He was panting then, panting like he’d run for miles. 

“Jesus Christ, ” he said, weaker then, “It’s like you fucking want me to die, sometimes.”

He hated how he was the one shouting, the one losing his shit (and hadn’t he been losing his shit since Azzano?), and the one curling in on himself. And there was perfect Captain America, broad shoulders full and strong under his leather jacket, only the hopeless look on his handsome face to indicate that he might feel anywhere in the vicinity of shitty. 

“Bucky. C’mere.” Steve reached for him, and Bucky swatted him away.

Didn’t stop him from pulling him in on the second attempt, and then Bucky was crying, full-on, embarrassing, gulping sobs, and Steve’s voice was unfairly broken as he cradled Bucky’s head against his stupid, broad shoulder and kissed the side of his head.

“Don’t say shit like that to me, James Buchanan Barnes,” Steve whispered in his ear. It’d be tender, with the way he was holding him, the lips that brushed against the sensitive skin there. It’d be tender, if he didn’t sound pissed off enough to fight God. “Don’t you ever fuckin’ - don’t ever think - doubt me, question my plans, yell at me all you fuckin’ want, but don’t think for a fuckin’ second that I’d ever want to be on any Earth where you weren’t breathin’ the same air as me.”

Bucky wanted to snap at him, he really did. But he just muffled his crying in Steve’s jacket, shaking his head weakly.

“Shhh. Shh, shh, you goddamn asshole.” Steve kissed his cheek this time, not seeming to care about the tears and the snot there, “Jesus Christ, Buck. Don’t you know? I can love Peggy Carter-”

Bucky tried to pull away at that, but Steve was stronger. Fuck him, he was stronger.

“- I can, ” Steve insisted, and it was like all the fight drained out of Bucky again. Steve didn’t seem to notice how much limper Bucky got in his arms, and he only continued, “and it’s - it’s not the goddamn same. It’s not, and if you were thinking straight, you’d know it too. You’re - you’re like air, Buck. I’d die without you, so don’t you dare tell me-”

“Can we just dance?” Bucky whispered. Steve’s hand spasmed on his back. “Christ, Rogers, can we just - I’m tired. Of talking.” Of breathing . “Can we just dance now?”

There was a long moment, and they could hear Falsworth singing with the radio in that goddamn irritating falsetto of his. The fire crackled, and all Bucky could smell was smoke and rotted wood.

“Yeah, Buck.” Steve kissed his hairline and held him somehow tighter. “For as long as you want.”

It seemed unfair to point out the illogic in that, so Bucky just let Steve sway against him, let himself move in the overpowering current of Steve’s arms, matching him breath for breath, his miraculous heart beating under his ear like an ox or some goddamned automaton.

They danced for what felt like an hour, and Bucky tried his hardest not to think about the day where Steve would forget dancing in the Polish woods, would forget his weak, empty promises, would forget Bucky. 

It didn’t end up mattering, a whole lot, in the end. Bucky was dead three weeks later.


(Brooklyn, 2023)

A rhythmic thumping pulls Bucky out of the past, out of the clean, smoky leather shell of Steve Rogers’s jacket, the firm grip of his arms.

It’s his hand, balled into a fist and pounding the door of the fridge next to his head, over and over and over again. 

When he realizes what he’s doing, Bucky swallows and pulls his arm into his lap, laces his fingers together, squeezes. He breathes in for ten and out for ten. Tilts his head back, swallows again. In for ten, out for ten.

Distantly, he swears he can still hear Vera Lynn. Can still hear Steve’s useless promises. Can hear the place along the plates of his metal heart where it had finally rusted and snapped.

The mid-morning sun glances off the stainless steel utensils on his counter, the inescapable brightness swamping his kitchen as Bucky’s breathing slows and rushes, slows, rushes, slows again. 

In for ten and out for ten. Do that for now. In for ten. Out for ten. Keep doing the thing that’s killing you. Just breathe.

He squeezes his eyes shut and continues to breathe while the world dips and spins lazily around him. After he’s calmed down enough to stand, Bucky grabs his journal and begins to write. He writes for what felt like hours; ink flecks the webbing of his right hand by the time he’s done.

It’s a weird feeling, Bucky decides, where he can fill eight pages in his journal and still feel so empty. But is it all that weird, if he’s writing to a man who’ll never read what he has to say? Is it all that weird that Bucky would feel empty when he’s trying to talk to a man who’d disappeared into a past so far gone that Bucky never had a chance to make him stand still and really listen?

If you’re the man out of time, Bucky thinks to the half of himself who hasn’t wanted to be there for years and years, then why’d you get so much of it, and why did I get so little?

The thought tears around his head and leaves him more exhausted than before. He crawls under his blanket after pulling the blinds, and he doesn’t come up until it’s dark outside. 

Later, he’ll realize it’s the first day where he hasn’t walked to the tidy little brownstone in months and months. Later, he’ll realize that he’s eaten less than a tenth of what he’s supposed to in a day. Later, he’ll realize that his fist had left dents the size of oranges in the refrigerator. 

Later, Bucky will wake up to the replay of John Walker accepting the mantle of Captain America from a faceless government man. He’ll stare at the television in confusion and then distress. 

And, as he watches the red, white, and blue disk be traded off to some discount All-American boy, he’ll think, just for a moment, that there’s rust spilling out over the shield. Just for a moment. Then he’ll blink, and it’s gone. 

It will all be gone. 

Notes:

thank you to everyone who's given this fic a chance so far!! I PROMISE I have a plan for Steve, and he really isn't nearly as awful as he seems in that segment (I mean ... we probably all have our own opinions on Endgame!Steve, and ... we're gonna keep digging into that and what it meant for Bucky and Sam ... so ... that's gonna be rough - BUT I promise, I'm gonna ..... make it work ... somehow ... sooooomehow)

Notes:

thank you for reading so far!!! please let me know what you think xoxo!