eachdraidhean (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eachdraidhean) wrote2022-06-29 10:40 pm
eachdraidhean) wrote2022-06-29 10:40 pm
Entry tags:
MCU Now and Forever
Title: Now and Forever
Characters: Hint of Steve/Bucky, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark
Rating: PG Steve/Bucky
Word Count: 1774
Beta: Seleneheart
Notes: Written as part of the 2018 Captain America Reverse Big Bang challenge. I was lucky enough to get to work with the lovely Madara_Nycteris who's gorgeous art inspired this story.
Summary: After the events of Civil War, Bucky voluntarily goes back into cryo. He expects that he'll sleep until a way can be found to de-program the triggers he carries in his head. He doesn't expect to find himself dream walking through the afterlife, and he really doesn't expect to find Steve there too. Seems like some things never change, and Bucky has to find a way to pull Steve out of trouble. Again.
The suite of rooms Bucky and Steve have been given in the building next to the medical facility is impressive. Bucky stands by the floor to ceiling windows that make up the outer wall. He opens a latch and pushes one of the windows open. It glides away from his touch, and he walks out onto the balcony, staring across the waterfall towards the intimidating obsidian panther keeping watch over the city. He tilts his face up towards the sun and closes his eyes, letting out a long breath. For the first time in so long, he feels content, at peace almost and he wishes he could settle here with Steve, away from the outside world, safe within hidden borders.
It’s still amazing to Bucky that Wakanda had been overlooked when Europe was intent on colonizing the continent. He remembers, back in history class when they were kids, Steve angrily demanding to know what had given anyone the right to walk into lands that were already populated and claim them for themselves. The teacher never did give him an acceptable answer.
Bucky walks to the edge of the balcony and places his one hand on the warm stone. He’s still getting used to only having one arm. The metal one was a weapon, it made him into a weapon, but it was his and he misses the dexterity and stability it gave him.
He can’t remember arriving in Wakanda, by that time he’d been unconscious and fully reliant on Steve to get him to safety. He’d woken briefly to find an anxious Steve being pushed out of the way by a young girl, and he hadn’t had time to fathom what was going on before he was out again. Later, he was introduced to Shuri, and was awed that someone so young was responsible for supervising the team of specialists and surgeons who had removed the damaged metal of his arm and made sure what was left of the prosthetic wasn’t causing Bucky any pain. Her team obviously had respect and affection for the young princess, and as he got to know her, he understood why.
He’s grateful that she and T’Challa could show so much compassion shown to a stranger after the violence of the preceding weeks. He’s also grateful that his request to return to cryo is being honoured. It’s the hardest decision Bucky’s ever made. He wants to stay in Steve’s world, at his side. But he can’t stay. Not yet. Not until he knows that no-one else will ever be able to trigger him again and force him to kill.
Shuri has assured him that she will work on finding a way to de-program him, but until then, he’ll sleep. He wishes that he could fall asleep wrapped up in Steve’s arms, as he has been doing every night since he was released from the medical center. Wishes Steve could sleep beside him, safe while Bucky isn’t able to protect him, until a solution is found. But the world needs Steve, even if most of it has branded him as a fugitive.
Bucky hears the door to the suite open, followed by familiar footsteps walking towards him.
“Hey Buck.”
Steve’s arm slips around his waist and a bearded chin rests on his right shoulder. They stand quietly for a moment, Steve’s breath warm on his neck.
“I know this is your choice, but you can still change your mind.” Steve is trying to keep his voice even, Bucky knows, but it’s not working.
Bucky wraps his hand around Steve’s wrist and turns his head a little, his answer no more than a murmur.
“I need to do this.” They’ve had this exchange so many times over the last few days.
“I know,” Steve sighs.
There’s a knock on the door, and Steve’s arm tightens around him for a second before he goes to open it. Bucky takes a deep breath and looks out at the view one last time before turning and walking towards one of Shuri’s team standing in the doorway.
“It’s time,” the woman says.
Bucky nods and tries to ignore the sadness in Steve’s eyes as they follow her out of the suite.
Less than an hour later, Bucky lies in a glass casket, watching Steve through the glass as his body temperature slowly drops. This is so far removed from the brutality of his previous experiences. Shuri calibrated the casket to cradle him, to let him go under before his body begins to shiver. It’s like falling asleep, and he looks into Steve’s eyes as his own close …
Bucky slowly becomes aware of warmth, and blinks, wondering how long he’s been asleep. It feels like only seconds ago that he was lying back in the casket.
But when he opens his eyes, he’s disorientated, feeling unsteady on his feet. He’s no longer lying in the cryo tube, he’s standing under a vast and beautiful sky. He takes a sharp breath in, letting his head drop back as his eyes open wider, taking in unfamiliar constellations scattered across a swathe of stars.
A rustle tugs at his attention, and he reluctantly looks away from the stars towards a tree, broad and strong, with predators lying along the branches. One of the panthers slips from its perch, paws silent as they land in the grass. It assesses him, gaze shrewd, then takes a step towards him.
As it moves, the long limbs change, losing fur, becoming skin, the transformation flowing across it’s body until a man stands in front of him.
“I’m dreaming,” he murmurs. His voice doesn’t scratch and scrape his throat as it always has before when he’s been pulled out of cryo, but he’s not sure exactly where he is, where this place is.
“No, you are not.” The man answers, creases deepening at the corners of his eyes as he smiles. Bucky can see traces of T’Challa in his features. “You sleep so deeply that you have made your way to the mystical realm, but you are far from home and not ready to stay. Please, allow me to be your guide. I am … I was King T’Chaka.”
“Thank you.” Bucky tilts his head in a small approximation of a bow and is rewarded with a smile.
“There is no necessity for formalities here, Sergeant Barnes.”
“In that case, please call me Bucky.”
Bucky eyes the tree as T’Chaka leads him, not past it, but away from it towards mountains in the distance. He can feel several sets of shrewd eyes on his back as they walk.
“Where are we going?”
“There are those who wait for you, as we wait for our travelers and our dead. Each culture, each religion, has their own version of the afterlife, so what awaits will be personal to you.”
With each step they take, the word around them transforms, dusty, wide open veld becoming soft green grass beneath his bare feet. Panic swells in his chest.
“Those who wait for me? The people I killed?”
He stops, unable to take another step if it leads to his victims. They have every right to hate him, to despise the way they had died, and to want to take it out on him, but he can’t face them. He is so tired of living with what he’s done, exhausted from the guilt he carries on his shoulders despite Steve’s resolute determination that it hadn’t been his fault. Deep down, he knows that, but his hands are still stained with blood.
“I can’t.”
“The dead aren’t those you killed, they are those that have gone before you, who wait to see you again with love in their hearts. As each soul passes into this realm, it leaves behind the reason it passes, whether that be illness, violence, or accident, and is greeted by those that care enough to want to welcome them home. You have nothing to fear, Bucky. Come, there are people that have waited a long time to see you again.”
Bucky follows as T’Chaka walks on, the scent of lavender reminding him of Europe.
“Hey sarge!” A voice he hasn’t heard for 80 years hails him. A kid from the 107th that he held while he bled out, is walking tall towards them.
“I will leave you here. Think of me, if you need me.”
T’Chaka squeezes his shoulder and turns and walks back the way they came, leaving Bucky to greet the man approaching him.
Even back in the war, he’d thought that Arnold Cooper was too young to be mired in the fighting, and now, he can see that he was never older than a kid, all lanky limbs and loose, easy smile.
“Hey Arnie. You look … good.” Is that the right thing to say to a dead person, Bucky wonders?
It must be, as Arnie’s smile grows wider, and he nods.
“You too, Sarge.”
Bucky’s confused, but when he looks down at himself, he’s dressed in his old uniform. It’s not the black tac gear he still feels comfortable in despite what he did while wearing it. And it’s not the blue wool jacket that Peggy had given him when Steve was putting together the commandos. No, this is the uniform he shipped out in, jacket open as if he’s ready to slip out of the barracks and into town for the night.
And then he looks at his left hand, and the world tilts as he flexes his fingers. His own flesh and blood and bone fingers. He raises his hand, turning his wrist to look at his palm, and there it is. A small scar at the base of his index finger.
He’d been a kid, walking home through the streets of Brooklyn, late already and minding his own business, when he’d heard the sounds of fists hitting flesh. If he’d walked on, he wouldn’t have ended up with that scar on his finger, but he also wouldn’t have pulled a weedy little kid out of trouble either. In the two years since he’d pulled Steve from the Potomac, and his memories had begun to resurface, he’d often wondered what would have happened if they’d never met.
And the conclusion he’d come to was that he couldn’t have walked away that day and left any kid to be pummeled like that. He’d been fated to meet Steve Rogers, and if it hadn’t been then, it would have been some other fight in some other alley.
“You okay?” Arnie asks with concern.
“Yeah, sure, just miles away.” Bucky smiles at him but continues to move the fingers of his left hand, stretching them out, and curling them back into a fist.
“Ah,” Arnie nods. “You’re not staying.”
“No, I’m … healing. In a deep sleep. Never expected to end up … wherever this is.”
“It’s not so bad,” Arnie grins and spreads his arms wide. “It’s wherever you want it to be, and everyone you know and love ends up here eventually. Even those you could sometimes do without, like my pain in the ass older brother.” Arnie chuckles.
“But you were so young, when you …”
Bucky can now remember how it felt, holding Arnie against the dirt of the foxhole, pressing his hands against the wound in his abdomen, blood pumping through his fingers. He’d tried to get Arnie to hold on, kept eye contact until the light in them faded, and Arnie sagged against him, a literal dead weight.
“When I died? It’s okay, you can say it. And I was, but that was the life I was meant to live.”
“I should have saved you,” Bucky whispers.
“There was nothing you could have done, Sarge. You were there with me when I went, makes me luckier than a lot of folks who have no-one with them.”
Bucky opens his mouth to protest, but Arnie continues.
“And I lived the life that was mine to live. Maybe all I was ever meant to do was to make my mom smile or help out around the farm when I was a kid so my grandad could rest on the porch. Maybe that was enough.”
Bucky smiles and nods. When he was a kid, he’d often thought that he’d been put on the earth just to pull Steve Rogers out of trouble. Maybe now he would get another chance to do just that.
Arnie looks off into the distance, then turns back to Bucky.
“There’s some other folks keen to see you. Why don’t I walk with you awhile?”
Bucky nods, and they walk in companionable silence as around them, the landscape changes, closing in on them, reforming itself, until they are walking through the streets of London.
“I’ll leave you here. I’m guessing you can find your own way.” Arnie claps him on the shoulder, and walks back the way they came, turning and waving as he leaves.
Bucky waves back, and hears him shout, “when you finally make it here to stay, look me up!” before he disappears from view.
Bucky gives him a cocky salute, and turns back to the London streets, being drawn on, led by the sounds of a piano playing, and mostly out of tune singing floating out from the door of a very British pub.
As soon as he’s through the door, he’s enveloped by welcoming arms, hands patting his back, smiles on the faces of men he knows so well.
The commandoes order another round and the pint that’s thrust into his hands, unlike the last time he’d been here, is icy cold, and tastes like nectar. It slips down smooth and easy, and there’s another one in front of him as he sits down.
“We know you’re not ready to join us but we couldn’t pass up a chance to see you again, even if you are just a tourist for now.”
“So this is …. Heaven?”
“It’s complicated.”
“And we’re not just here for you.”
Gabe smiles and they start up another chorus that Bucky joins in. Out of the corner of his eye, he could swear he sees Steve, sitting at the bar. The image flickers, there and gone in an instant, and Bucky thinks it must be wishful thinking on his part.
The singing dies down, and in a parody of a lifetime ago, a tall woman in a red dress walks towards them. This time, she hesitates, looking round at the bar, her eyes finally settling on the group around the table. Her face lights up, and they are all on their feet, trading hugs and tearful greetings.
“Took your sweet time.” Duggan’s voice is almost harsh with emotion, but Peggy smiles at him, the same smile that could light up a room, and touches his face with a fondness that makes Bucky blush.
“I was curious, so I took a look around.”
“Wouldn’t have you any other way.”
Peggy’s eyes scan the group of men and land on Bucky, her brow furrowing.
“Sergeant Barnes?”
“It’s just Bucky, Ma’am.”
“Are you …”
“Nah,” Duggan clarifies, “he’s just visiting.”
“Interesting.” Peggy sits down beside him. “And Steve?”
“Still out there in the world, trying to make it a better place.”
“Really? I could have sworn, when I walked in …” she glances towards the bar stool Bucky thought he’d seen Steve’s image flicker in, and his heart clenches.
“I need to go.”
Peggy nods. “Never could keep him out of trouble for long, either of us,” she mutters.
No-one stops him or tries to change his mind. There are hugs and calls of “See you later” and he realizes that one day he will.
His eyes are full as he walks back out onto the streets of London, but it isn’t London any more.
He’s standing on the dockside, the Brooklyn Bridge off to one side. He snatches a breath, and then he’s running down familiar streets, legs pumping, both arms pistoning at his sides, the wind on his face.
His run takes him through the neighborhood he grew up in, and he swerves around one corner, then another, and he’s home. Sitting on the stoop in warm, gentle sunlight are his parents, and his siblings, all exactly how he left them.
He doesn’t stop, running headfirst into his mother’s open arms, her familiar scent wrapping around him, soothing him in a way he’d forgotten was possible. His breath hitches, and he cries on her shoulder, chest heaving until he is wrung out and shaky.
“Oh, my boy, my sweet boy,” Winifred Barnes croons into his hair. “You grew up strong, my Bucky.”
When he steps back, his siblings crowd around him, kids on the cusp of growing up, all lanky limbs and open smiles. Then they change, and he watches them age into adults, their eyes the same, only filled with life experiences that he never got to share.
He reaches out and touches Rebecca’s cheek and she smiles at him.
“I called my firstborn after his uncle. He’s got grandkids of his own now, and shows no signs of joining us yet, just like his name sake.”
They shoot the breeze, all sitting on the stoop drinking his Ma’s lemonade and eating hot dogs from the vendor on the corner that they could rarely afford before he went to war.
Bucky is relaxing, listening to William ramble on about his life, drinking it in, when Rebecca sits up and waves towards the end of the street.
Bucky shields his eyes and follows her gaze. There’s a figure walking towards them, the sun behind them making it hard to make out who it is.
But with each step, Bucky is sitting up a little straighter. The figure is now achingly familiar. Bucky remembers bird bones in his embrace the night before he shipped out, a blond head briefly pressed against his chest. Nothing like the solid form he would later become, it couldn’t be anyone else.
In the land of the dead, a smiling Steve Rogers walks towards him.
“Steve?” Bucky walks towards his friend.
“Bucky? You’re here?”
“Yeah, just visiting, but why are you here?”
“I guess it’s time.”
Bucky takes a step back and looks over his shoulder at Rebecca.
“Is he … is he like me or …”
“It’s his time, sweetie.”
“No! No, Steve, what happened?”
“Does it matter?” Steve asks, as the Barnes family welcomes him as one of their own.
“Yes, it matters. If you’re here, then you’re dead. How did it happen?”
Steve frowns, and he sits down beside Bucky on the step. As Bucky glances at him, Steve flickers, his image blurring. With a jolt, Bucky remembers the pub in London, and Peggy’s concern.
“You’re not dead,” he states.
“There was a fight. Brutal. Someone hit me with a dart, thought it was a tranq.” Steve raises his hand and rubs at his neck behind his ear. “Sam, he was yelling at me to hold on, then I took a shot to the chest.”
“Where?”
“Farmhouse … outside Rome …”
Bucky throws his head back and screams. “T’Chaka!”
“Thinking of me would have brought me here just as quickly.”
The king looks out of place in his traditional garb on the streets of Brooklyn, but the brick buildings fade, leaving behind the wide open veld with a sky that goes on forever and a plane tree in the distance.
“Steve’s dying. I need to go.”
“It is not up to you to decide when his time has come,” T’Chaka holds up his hand against Bucky’s protests. “But you are not bound by the laws of this place. You can leave whenever you please …”
Bucky closes his eyes and wills himself back into the cryo tube. His body convulses, his heart pounding in his chest.
“… He’s having a seizure. Shuri, we need you. Now.”
“Open it up …”
Hands steady him as he fights himself awake, finally opening his eyes.
“Steve. He’s in a farmhouse, somewhere outside Rome, hurt, dying. He needs help.” Bucky’s legs give way. Kind hands hold him, stopping him from falling, but he passes out before they get him to a bed.
This time, there’s nothing waiting for him.
**************
He jolts awake, eyes searching for Steve, for anyone. Shuri is in the room, a screen floating in front of her in mid air as her fingers fly across it.
“Did you find him?”
“T’Challa and Wanda are almost at the location now. We contacted Natasha after you woke up, and she provided us with coordinates of a Hydra safehouse that Steve and Sam had gone to check out. They’d missed a check in with her, and she was already on her way.”
Bucky nods. There’s a little reassurance that the team on it’s way to rescue Steve is more than he had hoped for, but his heart is pounding at the thought of Steve in so much danger. He hates that he can’t be there with them, ready to pull Steve out of whatever he’s gotten himself into now. Shuri flips the screen towards him, and Bucky can see the view from the pilot’s seat in the plane.
“Wanda’s with them?”
Bucky remembers how withdrawn Wanda had been when Steve brought her and the others back from the Raft. Steve had carried her down the ramp, face the mixture of fury and concern that Bucky thinks of as being unique to Steve. She had still been recovering herself when Bucky went under.
“She insisted on going along, and she’s not someone to argue with when she has made her mind up about something.” Shuri smiles and shakes her head. “She is like your captain in that regard.”
“How long was I out?”
“Almost four weeks.”
“Four weeks? It felt like hours.”
“Did you dream?” Shuri’s sharp, curious gaze lands on him.
“I … I think I met your father.”
“Met?”
“There was a tree full of panthers, and one of them turned into King T’Chaka. He guided me through the mystical realm and helped me find my own people.”
“My father.” Shuri’s voice softens. “I knew you would sleep deeply, but I had no idea you would be drawn that far down.”
Their attention is drawn back to the screen as the plane touches down in a lush green field.
“I think my brother will want to talk to you about your experience on his return, if you would be willing?”
“Sure,” Bucky nods.
Clear as day, comms chatter fills the room.
“Approaching the building. Ms Romanoff is already at the rendezvous point.”
“There’s been no traffic in or out in the last 20 minutes, no movement from inside the house, and the outbuildings are clear. No heat signatures either.” Bucky is reassured by Natasha’s voice over the comms. He’s aware of her skill set and knows how much Steve values her friendship.
“Let’s go.” T’Challa leads them into the farmhouse. As Bucky and Shuri listen, they do a quick sweep of the place.
“Below.” Bucky hears Wanda say. “I can feel them, faintly, must be shielded.”
After several moments, that feels like hours to Bucky, the comms crackle again.
“Got it, panel in the floor here,” Natasha says, and he hears T’Challa make swift work of opening it. He winces at the sound of those claws scraping against metal, remembering just how deadly they could have been for him, and Bucky slips from the bed, pacing slowly, as the panel is ripped open. He wants so badly to be there, helping to tear the place apart to get to Steve.
“Sam. Status?” Natasha sounds as relieved as Bucky feels to hear Sam’s voice, but he needs to hear Steve’s too.
“He’s been down for over a day. There were eight of them, and in the middle of the fight, he was hit by, well it looked like a tranq dart, just below his right ear. They shot him while he was down, fucking cowards. I tried to get him out, but they set off a localized EMP, knocked out the comms and everything else, and one of them managed to get out and locked the trapdoor from up there. Couldn’t find a way out. He’s still got a pulse, very faint.”
“Let’s go,” T’Challa orders and Bucky waits impatiently until the screen in front of him flips and he can see T’Challa laying Steve on the bed in the plane’s small med bay.
Sam’s already by Steve’s side, stripping away the rest of Steve’s uniform around the gunshot site, and checking the wound.
“It’s already healing. This shouldn’t be enough to keep him out.”
Bucky watches as Wanda sits by Steve’s side, frowning.
“Don’t know what the dart did to him, but he’s more than unconscious. It feels like his mind is slipping away.”
Bucky turns and takes Shuri’s hand.
“Put me back under, into cryo. Let me try and bring him back.”
“We don’t know what they did to him. Once he’s back here …”
“It could be too late,” Bucky interrupts. “Please, Shuri, let me try.”
She nods curtly, and barks orders over the comms to prepare the cryo tube. Bucky follows her back into the room and climbs back into the glass casket. Her assistants buzz around him, settling him as she frowns at the control panel.
“This time, don’t make it easy, make it quick.”
Shuri glares at him, but the cover comes down over him, and before he has a chance to thank her, ice shoots through his veins and he’s on his knees in the dirt, gasping for breath that he doesn’t need.
“This is not something that should become a habit, Bucky,” T’Chaka chides him.
“Sorry, but I need to see Steve, right now.” Now he knows that time runs differently here, he knows he needs to act fast.
“Your friend is where you left him.” T’Chaka gestures with his hand, and they are back on the street where Bucky had met his family. Now, Steve sits on the steps with a woman Bucky hasn’t seen for so many years.
Bucky gets to his feet and walks towards them.
“Mrs Rogers,” Bucky feels like a kid again.
“Bucky! It’s so good to see you. Oh,” she looks him over. “You’re not staying yet?”
“No, ma’am, and neither is Steve.”
“Hey Buck,” Steve grins at him. “It feels kinda right here.” He smiles up at his mom.
“Think, Steve, you were with Sam, following a lead from Natasha. A Hydra base just outside of Rome. You were hit, and they drugged you with something. Got shot too, but it wasn’t enough to kill you. Remember?”
“Rome … I’ve never been to Rome, have I?”
“We were in Italy for a while, during the war, but not Rome. This was the first time you’d been. Steve, try and remember, please?”
“The war?” Steve frowned. “I … we fought together, side by side?”
“Yeah, we did, and then we got frozen …”
“You fell.” Steve looks stricken, but Bucky can’t let him dwell on that.
“I did, but you found me, years later, remember? On the helicarrier. You saved so many people that day. You and Sam and Natasha.”
“Sam? Natasha?” Steve’s image flickers as it had the last time, and the larger version of Steve now sits in front of him.
Sarah Rogers gasps. She reaches over and takes Steve’s hand.
“Bucky’s right, love, it’s not your time.”
“But … we could stay, both of us.” He looks up at Bucky, and Bucky imagines how good it would feel to rest, to be somewhere safe, with Steve, forever.
Steve’s image flickers again, and he’s smaller now, reaching out for Bucky’s hand, and Bucky wants that, wants to be pulled away from the world …
He could fall again so easily, but he feels a strength surround him, support him, and he remembers why he came back here. There’s a tug towards Steve, but this time it reminds him of the life they could have, and he can feel Wanda holding Steve still until he can catch him and keep him from falling. Light fills Bucky, and he remembers the breeze on his skin as he stood on the balcony in Wakanda, Steve’s arms wrapped around him from behind, Steve’s warm, living arms, and he looks down at small Steve and shakes his head. He’s slept too long, it’s time he woke, time to face the world again, with Steve, whatever it may bring.
“C’mon buddy, it’s time to go.” He nods at Sarah, and grasps Steve’s hand in his own. As their fingers touch, Steve’s eyes widen, and he’s big again, his uniform worn around the edges, and cut away to show the bullet wound.
“Bucky? Where are we?”
“Long story, pal, long story.”
Bucky looks back at the step, and is saddened to see Sarah has gone, but he sends a silent thanks for not making it harder for Steve to leave. He tugs on Steve’s hand.
“Let’s go home, Stevie.”
**************
This time, he wakes slowly, eyes fluttering open to find Steve looking over at him from a second bed in the room.
“Hey, you’re back,” Bucky observes, pushing himself up so he sitting in bed.
“Thanks to you.” Steve smiles, and Bucky nods.
“I always was pulling you out of trouble. Guess some things don’t change.”
“You can say that again.” Bucky grins at Sam’s grumbling, and he looks past Steve to see Sam and Natasha slouched in chairs across the room. Wanda is sitting on the wide windowsill, smiling and gazing out of the window.
No, Bucky thinks, some things do change. He’s not the only one looking out for Steve anymore, and that he can live with.
**************
Bucky leaves the hut, stretching his shoulders, and gazing up at the sky. It’s almost the same intense blue of the sky in the mystic realm, but to him it’s so much more beautiful. A soft breeze stirs around him, cool now compared to the heat of the fading day, and he watches as stars begin to appear against the slowly darkening night.
He can hear Steve moving around in the hut behind him and smiles. His smile deepens when arms wrap around him from behind, and he leans back against Steve’s chest.
“You okay?” Bucky asks.
“Yeah Buck, for the hundredth time, I’m fine,” Steve grumbles, tightening his arms around Bucky’s waist. “You let me sleep too long.”
“You’re still healing. Rest and food, those were the doc’s orders.”
Bucky was sure that Steve being the worst of patients had a lot to do with how quickly he’d been released into Bucky’s care on condition that Bucky made sure he ate well and didn’t push himself too hard.
He fingers the beads on Steve’s wrist, careful not to activate the comms. One of them is monitoring Steve’s vitals, a reassurance for Bucky that if anything did go wrong, help was at hand.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re like a mother hen?”
“I had plenty of practice, pal, back in the day.” Bucky glances back over his shoulder at Steve, then turns in his arms to face him.
Steve rests his forehead against Bucky’s, closing his eyes.
“You would have stayed. For me.” Steve whispers.
“I would have stayed with you.”
“The pull was so strong, it would have been so easy to give in.”
“You were dying and … “ Bucky sighs. “I couldn’t let you go. Maybe it was your time, but I couldn’t lose you.”
Steve pulls him closer, his fingers running through Bucky’s hair.
“So what do we do now?”
It’s an interesting question, Bucky thinks. They have choices now, and for the first time in a long time, can make their own minds up about the future.
He looks over Steve’s shoulder at the hut and the lake beyond it. It’s small and simple, but it feels right. He knows that Steve will eventually itch to go back out into the world, even temporarily. That’s who he is, a man who needs to have a purpose, needs to right as many wrongs as he can. But Bucky is done fighting, at least for now. Maybe he can make a home here, while Shuri helps remove his triggers, make this somewhere Steve will return to when he gets weary and needs a break from saving the world. There’s a moment of tightness in his chest. He’ll never have back what they had in Brooklyn, living a small life with just the two of them against the world.
“I want to stay here, maybe get a few goats, learn to grow things.” It’s vague, he knows, but it’s a start. “I’m done with fighting, for now.”
Steve nods. “You want me to stay too?”
Bucky pulls back just enough to look into his eyes.
“You can stay as long as you want, Stevie, and come visit when you can.”
With a handful of words, he gives Steve back to the world. He knows if he asked, Steve would stay with him, but there are some things that can’t be caged, and Steve is one of them.
Steve kisses him, soft mouth warm against his, under a wide Wakandan sky and for the first time in more years than he cares to count, Bucky is content.
Characters: Hint of Steve/Bucky, Sam Wilson, Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark
Rating: PG Steve/Bucky
Word Count: 1774
Beta: Seleneheart
Notes: Written as part of the 2018 Captain America Reverse Big Bang challenge. I was lucky enough to get to work with the lovely Madara_Nycteris who's gorgeous art inspired this story.
Summary: After the events of Civil War, Bucky voluntarily goes back into cryo. He expects that he'll sleep until a way can be found to de-program the triggers he carries in his head. He doesn't expect to find himself dream walking through the afterlife, and he really doesn't expect to find Steve there too. Seems like some things never change, and Bucky has to find a way to pull Steve out of trouble. Again.
The suite of rooms Bucky and Steve have been given in the building next to the medical facility is impressive. Bucky stands by the floor to ceiling windows that make up the outer wall. He opens a latch and pushes one of the windows open. It glides away from his touch, and he walks out onto the balcony, staring across the waterfall towards the intimidating obsidian panther keeping watch over the city. He tilts his face up towards the sun and closes his eyes, letting out a long breath. For the first time in so long, he feels content, at peace almost and he wishes he could settle here with Steve, away from the outside world, safe within hidden borders.
It’s still amazing to Bucky that Wakanda had been overlooked when Europe was intent on colonizing the continent. He remembers, back in history class when they were kids, Steve angrily demanding to know what had given anyone the right to walk into lands that were already populated and claim them for themselves. The teacher never did give him an acceptable answer.
Bucky walks to the edge of the balcony and places his one hand on the warm stone. He’s still getting used to only having one arm. The metal one was a weapon, it made him into a weapon, but it was his and he misses the dexterity and stability it gave him.
He can’t remember arriving in Wakanda, by that time he’d been unconscious and fully reliant on Steve to get him to safety. He’d woken briefly to find an anxious Steve being pushed out of the way by a young girl, and he hadn’t had time to fathom what was going on before he was out again. Later, he was introduced to Shuri, and was awed that someone so young was responsible for supervising the team of specialists and surgeons who had removed the damaged metal of his arm and made sure what was left of the prosthetic wasn’t causing Bucky any pain. Her team obviously had respect and affection for the young princess, and as he got to know her, he understood why.
He’s grateful that she and T’Challa could show so much compassion shown to a stranger after the violence of the preceding weeks. He’s also grateful that his request to return to cryo is being honoured. It’s the hardest decision Bucky’s ever made. He wants to stay in Steve’s world, at his side. But he can’t stay. Not yet. Not until he knows that no-one else will ever be able to trigger him again and force him to kill.
Shuri has assured him that she will work on finding a way to de-program him, but until then, he’ll sleep. He wishes that he could fall asleep wrapped up in Steve’s arms, as he has been doing every night since he was released from the medical center. Wishes Steve could sleep beside him, safe while Bucky isn’t able to protect him, until a solution is found. But the world needs Steve, even if most of it has branded him as a fugitive.
Bucky hears the door to the suite open, followed by familiar footsteps walking towards him.
“Hey Buck.”
Steve’s arm slips around his waist and a bearded chin rests on his right shoulder. They stand quietly for a moment, Steve’s breath warm on his neck.
“I know this is your choice, but you can still change your mind.” Steve is trying to keep his voice even, Bucky knows, but it’s not working.
Bucky wraps his hand around Steve’s wrist and turns his head a little, his answer no more than a murmur.
“I need to do this.” They’ve had this exchange so many times over the last few days.
“I know,” Steve sighs.
There’s a knock on the door, and Steve’s arm tightens around him for a second before he goes to open it. Bucky takes a deep breath and looks out at the view one last time before turning and walking towards one of Shuri’s team standing in the doorway.
“It’s time,” the woman says.
Bucky nods and tries to ignore the sadness in Steve’s eyes as they follow her out of the suite.
Less than an hour later, Bucky lies in a glass casket, watching Steve through the glass as his body temperature slowly drops. This is so far removed from the brutality of his previous experiences. Shuri calibrated the casket to cradle him, to let him go under before his body begins to shiver. It’s like falling asleep, and he looks into Steve’s eyes as his own close …
Bucky slowly becomes aware of warmth, and blinks, wondering how long he’s been asleep. It feels like only seconds ago that he was lying back in the casket.
But when he opens his eyes, he’s disorientated, feeling unsteady on his feet. He’s no longer lying in the cryo tube, he’s standing under a vast and beautiful sky. He takes a sharp breath in, letting his head drop back as his eyes open wider, taking in unfamiliar constellations scattered across a swathe of stars.
A rustle tugs at his attention, and he reluctantly looks away from the stars towards a tree, broad and strong, with predators lying along the branches. One of the panthers slips from its perch, paws silent as they land in the grass. It assesses him, gaze shrewd, then takes a step towards him.
As it moves, the long limbs change, losing fur, becoming skin, the transformation flowing across it’s body until a man stands in front of him.
“I’m dreaming,” he murmurs. His voice doesn’t scratch and scrape his throat as it always has before when he’s been pulled out of cryo, but he’s not sure exactly where he is, where this place is.
“No, you are not.” The man answers, creases deepening at the corners of his eyes as he smiles. Bucky can see traces of T’Challa in his features. “You sleep so deeply that you have made your way to the mystical realm, but you are far from home and not ready to stay. Please, allow me to be your guide. I am … I was King T’Chaka.”
“Thank you.” Bucky tilts his head in a small approximation of a bow and is rewarded with a smile.
“There is no necessity for formalities here, Sergeant Barnes.”
“In that case, please call me Bucky.”
Bucky eyes the tree as T’Chaka leads him, not past it, but away from it towards mountains in the distance. He can feel several sets of shrewd eyes on his back as they walk.
“Where are we going?”
“There are those who wait for you, as we wait for our travelers and our dead. Each culture, each religion, has their own version of the afterlife, so what awaits will be personal to you.”
With each step they take, the word around them transforms, dusty, wide open veld becoming soft green grass beneath his bare feet. Panic swells in his chest.
“Those who wait for me? The people I killed?”
He stops, unable to take another step if it leads to his victims. They have every right to hate him, to despise the way they had died, and to want to take it out on him, but he can’t face them. He is so tired of living with what he’s done, exhausted from the guilt he carries on his shoulders despite Steve’s resolute determination that it hadn’t been his fault. Deep down, he knows that, but his hands are still stained with blood.
“I can’t.”
“The dead aren’t those you killed, they are those that have gone before you, who wait to see you again with love in their hearts. As each soul passes into this realm, it leaves behind the reason it passes, whether that be illness, violence, or accident, and is greeted by those that care enough to want to welcome them home. You have nothing to fear, Bucky. Come, there are people that have waited a long time to see you again.”
Bucky follows as T’Chaka walks on, the scent of lavender reminding him of Europe.
“Hey sarge!” A voice he hasn’t heard for 80 years hails him. A kid from the 107th that he held while he bled out, is walking tall towards them.
“I will leave you here. Think of me, if you need me.”
T’Chaka squeezes his shoulder and turns and walks back the way they came, leaving Bucky to greet the man approaching him.
Even back in the war, he’d thought that Arnold Cooper was too young to be mired in the fighting, and now, he can see that he was never older than a kid, all lanky limbs and loose, easy smile.
“Hey Arnie. You look … good.” Is that the right thing to say to a dead person, Bucky wonders?
It must be, as Arnie’s smile grows wider, and he nods.
“You too, Sarge.”
Bucky’s confused, but when he looks down at himself, he’s dressed in his old uniform. It’s not the black tac gear he still feels comfortable in despite what he did while wearing it. And it’s not the blue wool jacket that Peggy had given him when Steve was putting together the commandos. No, this is the uniform he shipped out in, jacket open as if he’s ready to slip out of the barracks and into town for the night.
And then he looks at his left hand, and the world tilts as he flexes his fingers. His own flesh and blood and bone fingers. He raises his hand, turning his wrist to look at his palm, and there it is. A small scar at the base of his index finger.
He’d been a kid, walking home through the streets of Brooklyn, late already and minding his own business, when he’d heard the sounds of fists hitting flesh. If he’d walked on, he wouldn’t have ended up with that scar on his finger, but he also wouldn’t have pulled a weedy little kid out of trouble either. In the two years since he’d pulled Steve from the Potomac, and his memories had begun to resurface, he’d often wondered what would have happened if they’d never met.
And the conclusion he’d come to was that he couldn’t have walked away that day and left any kid to be pummeled like that. He’d been fated to meet Steve Rogers, and if it hadn’t been then, it would have been some other fight in some other alley.
“You okay?” Arnie asks with concern.
“Yeah, sure, just miles away.” Bucky smiles at him but continues to move the fingers of his left hand, stretching them out, and curling them back into a fist.
“Ah,” Arnie nods. “You’re not staying.”
“No, I’m … healing. In a deep sleep. Never expected to end up … wherever this is.”
“It’s not so bad,” Arnie grins and spreads his arms wide. “It’s wherever you want it to be, and everyone you know and love ends up here eventually. Even those you could sometimes do without, like my pain in the ass older brother.” Arnie chuckles.
“But you were so young, when you …”
Bucky can now remember how it felt, holding Arnie against the dirt of the foxhole, pressing his hands against the wound in his abdomen, blood pumping through his fingers. He’d tried to get Arnie to hold on, kept eye contact until the light in them faded, and Arnie sagged against him, a literal dead weight.
“When I died? It’s okay, you can say it. And I was, but that was the life I was meant to live.”
“I should have saved you,” Bucky whispers.
“There was nothing you could have done, Sarge. You were there with me when I went, makes me luckier than a lot of folks who have no-one with them.”
Bucky opens his mouth to protest, but Arnie continues.
“And I lived the life that was mine to live. Maybe all I was ever meant to do was to make my mom smile or help out around the farm when I was a kid so my grandad could rest on the porch. Maybe that was enough.”
Bucky smiles and nods. When he was a kid, he’d often thought that he’d been put on the earth just to pull Steve Rogers out of trouble. Maybe now he would get another chance to do just that.
Arnie looks off into the distance, then turns back to Bucky.
“There’s some other folks keen to see you. Why don’t I walk with you awhile?”
Bucky nods, and they walk in companionable silence as around them, the landscape changes, closing in on them, reforming itself, until they are walking through the streets of London.
“I’ll leave you here. I’m guessing you can find your own way.” Arnie claps him on the shoulder, and walks back the way they came, turning and waving as he leaves.
Bucky waves back, and hears him shout, “when you finally make it here to stay, look me up!” before he disappears from view.
Bucky gives him a cocky salute, and turns back to the London streets, being drawn on, led by the sounds of a piano playing, and mostly out of tune singing floating out from the door of a very British pub.
As soon as he’s through the door, he’s enveloped by welcoming arms, hands patting his back, smiles on the faces of men he knows so well.
The commandoes order another round and the pint that’s thrust into his hands, unlike the last time he’d been here, is icy cold, and tastes like nectar. It slips down smooth and easy, and there’s another one in front of him as he sits down.
“We know you’re not ready to join us but we couldn’t pass up a chance to see you again, even if you are just a tourist for now.”
“So this is …. Heaven?”
“It’s complicated.”
“And we’re not just here for you.”
Gabe smiles and they start up another chorus that Bucky joins in. Out of the corner of his eye, he could swear he sees Steve, sitting at the bar. The image flickers, there and gone in an instant, and Bucky thinks it must be wishful thinking on his part.
The singing dies down, and in a parody of a lifetime ago, a tall woman in a red dress walks towards them. This time, she hesitates, looking round at the bar, her eyes finally settling on the group around the table. Her face lights up, and they are all on their feet, trading hugs and tearful greetings.
“Took your sweet time.” Duggan’s voice is almost harsh with emotion, but Peggy smiles at him, the same smile that could light up a room, and touches his face with a fondness that makes Bucky blush.
“I was curious, so I took a look around.”
“Wouldn’t have you any other way.”
Peggy’s eyes scan the group of men and land on Bucky, her brow furrowing.
“Sergeant Barnes?”
“It’s just Bucky, Ma’am.”
“Are you …”
“Nah,” Duggan clarifies, “he’s just visiting.”
“Interesting.” Peggy sits down beside him. “And Steve?”
“Still out there in the world, trying to make it a better place.”
“Really? I could have sworn, when I walked in …” she glances towards the bar stool Bucky thought he’d seen Steve’s image flicker in, and his heart clenches.
“I need to go.”
Peggy nods. “Never could keep him out of trouble for long, either of us,” she mutters.
No-one stops him or tries to change his mind. There are hugs and calls of “See you later” and he realizes that one day he will.
His eyes are full as he walks back out onto the streets of London, but it isn’t London any more.
He’s standing on the dockside, the Brooklyn Bridge off to one side. He snatches a breath, and then he’s running down familiar streets, legs pumping, both arms pistoning at his sides, the wind on his face.
His run takes him through the neighborhood he grew up in, and he swerves around one corner, then another, and he’s home. Sitting on the stoop in warm, gentle sunlight are his parents, and his siblings, all exactly how he left them.
He doesn’t stop, running headfirst into his mother’s open arms, her familiar scent wrapping around him, soothing him in a way he’d forgotten was possible. His breath hitches, and he cries on her shoulder, chest heaving until he is wrung out and shaky.
“Oh, my boy, my sweet boy,” Winifred Barnes croons into his hair. “You grew up strong, my Bucky.”
When he steps back, his siblings crowd around him, kids on the cusp of growing up, all lanky limbs and open smiles. Then they change, and he watches them age into adults, their eyes the same, only filled with life experiences that he never got to share.
He reaches out and touches Rebecca’s cheek and she smiles at him.
“I called my firstborn after his uncle. He’s got grandkids of his own now, and shows no signs of joining us yet, just like his name sake.”
They shoot the breeze, all sitting on the stoop drinking his Ma’s lemonade and eating hot dogs from the vendor on the corner that they could rarely afford before he went to war.
Bucky is relaxing, listening to William ramble on about his life, drinking it in, when Rebecca sits up and waves towards the end of the street.
Bucky shields his eyes and follows her gaze. There’s a figure walking towards them, the sun behind them making it hard to make out who it is.
But with each step, Bucky is sitting up a little straighter. The figure is now achingly familiar. Bucky remembers bird bones in his embrace the night before he shipped out, a blond head briefly pressed against his chest. Nothing like the solid form he would later become, it couldn’t be anyone else.
In the land of the dead, a smiling Steve Rogers walks towards him.
“Steve?” Bucky walks towards his friend.
“Bucky? You’re here?”
“Yeah, just visiting, but why are you here?”
“I guess it’s time.”
Bucky takes a step back and looks over his shoulder at Rebecca.
“Is he … is he like me or …”
“It’s his time, sweetie.”
“No! No, Steve, what happened?”
“Does it matter?” Steve asks, as the Barnes family welcomes him as one of their own.
“Yes, it matters. If you’re here, then you’re dead. How did it happen?”
Steve frowns, and he sits down beside Bucky on the step. As Bucky glances at him, Steve flickers, his image blurring. With a jolt, Bucky remembers the pub in London, and Peggy’s concern.
“You’re not dead,” he states.
“There was a fight. Brutal. Someone hit me with a dart, thought it was a tranq.” Steve raises his hand and rubs at his neck behind his ear. “Sam, he was yelling at me to hold on, then I took a shot to the chest.”
“Where?”
“Farmhouse … outside Rome …”
Bucky throws his head back and screams. “T’Chaka!”
“Thinking of me would have brought me here just as quickly.”
The king looks out of place in his traditional garb on the streets of Brooklyn, but the brick buildings fade, leaving behind the wide open veld with a sky that goes on forever and a plane tree in the distance.
“Steve’s dying. I need to go.”
“It is not up to you to decide when his time has come,” T’Chaka holds up his hand against Bucky’s protests. “But you are not bound by the laws of this place. You can leave whenever you please …”
Bucky closes his eyes and wills himself back into the cryo tube. His body convulses, his heart pounding in his chest.
“… He’s having a seizure. Shuri, we need you. Now.”
“Open it up …”
Hands steady him as he fights himself awake, finally opening his eyes.
“Steve. He’s in a farmhouse, somewhere outside Rome, hurt, dying. He needs help.” Bucky’s legs give way. Kind hands hold him, stopping him from falling, but he passes out before they get him to a bed.
This time, there’s nothing waiting for him.
He jolts awake, eyes searching for Steve, for anyone. Shuri is in the room, a screen floating in front of her in mid air as her fingers fly across it.
“Did you find him?”
“T’Challa and Wanda are almost at the location now. We contacted Natasha after you woke up, and she provided us with coordinates of a Hydra safehouse that Steve and Sam had gone to check out. They’d missed a check in with her, and she was already on her way.”
Bucky nods. There’s a little reassurance that the team on it’s way to rescue Steve is more than he had hoped for, but his heart is pounding at the thought of Steve in so much danger. He hates that he can’t be there with them, ready to pull Steve out of whatever he’s gotten himself into now. Shuri flips the screen towards him, and Bucky can see the view from the pilot’s seat in the plane.
“Wanda’s with them?”
Bucky remembers how withdrawn Wanda had been when Steve brought her and the others back from the Raft. Steve had carried her down the ramp, face the mixture of fury and concern that Bucky thinks of as being unique to Steve. She had still been recovering herself when Bucky went under.
“She insisted on going along, and she’s not someone to argue with when she has made her mind up about something.” Shuri smiles and shakes her head. “She is like your captain in that regard.”
“How long was I out?”
“Almost four weeks.”
“Four weeks? It felt like hours.”
“Did you dream?” Shuri’s sharp, curious gaze lands on him.
“I … I think I met your father.”
“Met?”
“There was a tree full of panthers, and one of them turned into King T’Chaka. He guided me through the mystical realm and helped me find my own people.”
“My father.” Shuri’s voice softens. “I knew you would sleep deeply, but I had no idea you would be drawn that far down.”
Their attention is drawn back to the screen as the plane touches down in a lush green field.
“I think my brother will want to talk to you about your experience on his return, if you would be willing?”
“Sure,” Bucky nods.
Clear as day, comms chatter fills the room.
“Approaching the building. Ms Romanoff is already at the rendezvous point.”
“There’s been no traffic in or out in the last 20 minutes, no movement from inside the house, and the outbuildings are clear. No heat signatures either.” Bucky is reassured by Natasha’s voice over the comms. He’s aware of her skill set and knows how much Steve values her friendship.
“Let’s go.” T’Challa leads them into the farmhouse. As Bucky and Shuri listen, they do a quick sweep of the place.
“Below.” Bucky hears Wanda say. “I can feel them, faintly, must be shielded.”
After several moments, that feels like hours to Bucky, the comms crackle again.
“Got it, panel in the floor here,” Natasha says, and he hears T’Challa make swift work of opening it. He winces at the sound of those claws scraping against metal, remembering just how deadly they could have been for him, and Bucky slips from the bed, pacing slowly, as the panel is ripped open. He wants so badly to be there, helping to tear the place apart to get to Steve.
“Sam. Status?” Natasha sounds as relieved as Bucky feels to hear Sam’s voice, but he needs to hear Steve’s too.
“He’s been down for over a day. There were eight of them, and in the middle of the fight, he was hit by, well it looked like a tranq dart, just below his right ear. They shot him while he was down, fucking cowards. I tried to get him out, but they set off a localized EMP, knocked out the comms and everything else, and one of them managed to get out and locked the trapdoor from up there. Couldn’t find a way out. He’s still got a pulse, very faint.”
“Let’s go,” T’Challa orders and Bucky waits impatiently until the screen in front of him flips and he can see T’Challa laying Steve on the bed in the plane’s small med bay.
Sam’s already by Steve’s side, stripping away the rest of Steve’s uniform around the gunshot site, and checking the wound.
“It’s already healing. This shouldn’t be enough to keep him out.”
Bucky watches as Wanda sits by Steve’s side, frowning.
“Don’t know what the dart did to him, but he’s more than unconscious. It feels like his mind is slipping away.”
Bucky turns and takes Shuri’s hand.
“Put me back under, into cryo. Let me try and bring him back.”
“We don’t know what they did to him. Once he’s back here …”
“It could be too late,” Bucky interrupts. “Please, Shuri, let me try.”
She nods curtly, and barks orders over the comms to prepare the cryo tube. Bucky follows her back into the room and climbs back into the glass casket. Her assistants buzz around him, settling him as she frowns at the control panel.
“This time, don’t make it easy, make it quick.”
Shuri glares at him, but the cover comes down over him, and before he has a chance to thank her, ice shoots through his veins and he’s on his knees in the dirt, gasping for breath that he doesn’t need.
“This is not something that should become a habit, Bucky,” T’Chaka chides him.
“Sorry, but I need to see Steve, right now.” Now he knows that time runs differently here, he knows he needs to act fast.
“Your friend is where you left him.” T’Chaka gestures with his hand, and they are back on the street where Bucky had met his family. Now, Steve sits on the steps with a woman Bucky hasn’t seen for so many years.
Bucky gets to his feet and walks towards them.
“Mrs Rogers,” Bucky feels like a kid again.
“Bucky! It’s so good to see you. Oh,” she looks him over. “You’re not staying yet?”
“No, ma’am, and neither is Steve.”
“Hey Buck,” Steve grins at him. “It feels kinda right here.” He smiles up at his mom.
“Think, Steve, you were with Sam, following a lead from Natasha. A Hydra base just outside of Rome. You were hit, and they drugged you with something. Got shot too, but it wasn’t enough to kill you. Remember?”
“Rome … I’ve never been to Rome, have I?”
“We were in Italy for a while, during the war, but not Rome. This was the first time you’d been. Steve, try and remember, please?”
“The war?” Steve frowned. “I … we fought together, side by side?”
“Yeah, we did, and then we got frozen …”
“You fell.” Steve looks stricken, but Bucky can’t let him dwell on that.
“I did, but you found me, years later, remember? On the helicarrier. You saved so many people that day. You and Sam and Natasha.”
“Sam? Natasha?” Steve’s image flickers as it had the last time, and the larger version of Steve now sits in front of him.
Sarah Rogers gasps. She reaches over and takes Steve’s hand.
“Bucky’s right, love, it’s not your time.”
“But … we could stay, both of us.” He looks up at Bucky, and Bucky imagines how good it would feel to rest, to be somewhere safe, with Steve, forever.
Steve’s image flickers again, and he’s smaller now, reaching out for Bucky’s hand, and Bucky wants that, wants to be pulled away from the world …
He could fall again so easily, but he feels a strength surround him, support him, and he remembers why he came back here. There’s a tug towards Steve, but this time it reminds him of the life they could have, and he can feel Wanda holding Steve still until he can catch him and keep him from falling. Light fills Bucky, and he remembers the breeze on his skin as he stood on the balcony in Wakanda, Steve’s arms wrapped around him from behind, Steve’s warm, living arms, and he looks down at small Steve and shakes his head. He’s slept too long, it’s time he woke, time to face the world again, with Steve, whatever it may bring.
“C’mon buddy, it’s time to go.” He nods at Sarah, and grasps Steve’s hand in his own. As their fingers touch, Steve’s eyes widen, and he’s big again, his uniform worn around the edges, and cut away to show the bullet wound.
“Bucky? Where are we?”
“Long story, pal, long story.”
Bucky looks back at the step, and is saddened to see Sarah has gone, but he sends a silent thanks for not making it harder for Steve to leave. He tugs on Steve’s hand.
“Let’s go home, Stevie.”
This time, he wakes slowly, eyes fluttering open to find Steve looking over at him from a second bed in the room.
“Hey, you’re back,” Bucky observes, pushing himself up so he sitting in bed.
“Thanks to you.” Steve smiles, and Bucky nods.
“I always was pulling you out of trouble. Guess some things don’t change.”
“You can say that again.” Bucky grins at Sam’s grumbling, and he looks past Steve to see Sam and Natasha slouched in chairs across the room. Wanda is sitting on the wide windowsill, smiling and gazing out of the window.
No, Bucky thinks, some things do change. He’s not the only one looking out for Steve anymore, and that he can live with.
Bucky leaves the hut, stretching his shoulders, and gazing up at the sky. It’s almost the same intense blue of the sky in the mystic realm, but to him it’s so much more beautiful. A soft breeze stirs around him, cool now compared to the heat of the fading day, and he watches as stars begin to appear against the slowly darkening night.
He can hear Steve moving around in the hut behind him and smiles. His smile deepens when arms wrap around him from behind, and he leans back against Steve’s chest.
“You okay?” Bucky asks.
“Yeah Buck, for the hundredth time, I’m fine,” Steve grumbles, tightening his arms around Bucky’s waist. “You let me sleep too long.”
“You’re still healing. Rest and food, those were the doc’s orders.”
Bucky was sure that Steve being the worst of patients had a lot to do with how quickly he’d been released into Bucky’s care on condition that Bucky made sure he ate well and didn’t push himself too hard.
He fingers the beads on Steve’s wrist, careful not to activate the comms. One of them is monitoring Steve’s vitals, a reassurance for Bucky that if anything did go wrong, help was at hand.
“Anyone ever tell you you’re like a mother hen?”
“I had plenty of practice, pal, back in the day.” Bucky glances back over his shoulder at Steve, then turns in his arms to face him.
Steve rests his forehead against Bucky’s, closing his eyes.
“You would have stayed. For me.” Steve whispers.
“I would have stayed with you.”
“The pull was so strong, it would have been so easy to give in.”
“You were dying and … “ Bucky sighs. “I couldn’t let you go. Maybe it was your time, but I couldn’t lose you.”
Steve pulls him closer, his fingers running through Bucky’s hair.
“So what do we do now?”
It’s an interesting question, Bucky thinks. They have choices now, and for the first time in a long time, can make their own minds up about the future.
He looks over Steve’s shoulder at the hut and the lake beyond it. It’s small and simple, but it feels right. He knows that Steve will eventually itch to go back out into the world, even temporarily. That’s who he is, a man who needs to have a purpose, needs to right as many wrongs as he can. But Bucky is done fighting, at least for now. Maybe he can make a home here, while Shuri helps remove his triggers, make this somewhere Steve will return to when he gets weary and needs a break from saving the world. There’s a moment of tightness in his chest. He’ll never have back what they had in Brooklyn, living a small life with just the two of them against the world.
“I want to stay here, maybe get a few goats, learn to grow things.” It’s vague, he knows, but it’s a start. “I’m done with fighting, for now.”
Steve nods. “You want me to stay too?”
Bucky pulls back just enough to look into his eyes.
“You can stay as long as you want, Stevie, and come visit when you can.”
With a handful of words, he gives Steve back to the world. He knows if he asked, Steve would stay with him, but there are some things that can’t be caged, and Steve is one of them.
Steve kisses him, soft mouth warm against his, under a wide Wakandan sky and for the first time in more years than he cares to count, Bucky is content.