Archive of Our Own

“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

May 1945

Bucky pulls at the straps holding his arms down as his eyes blink open. He takes in the machines and bland walls with blurry vision. His heart pumps, and he pulls harder against the straps until they snap and he can sit up. The surface beneath him is a bed, not a table, and this realization only brews more confusion. A person in a white jacket appears, but Bucky’s limbs are too heavy to stop them from approaching. Something is injected into his IV, and he disappears into a flurry of snow.

The next time he wakes up, the room is more solid around him. He lies with eyes half open but can only see the wool blanket on top of him, his feet sticking out of it on the other end, covered with bandages. Bucky twists his arms as slowly as possible and discovers that they are free to move. The room is quiet. He can hear the machines on his right. There are voices outside of the room, but he cannot quite make the words out. He opens his eyes completely, and they stop on the chair beside him.

Agent Carter sits in uniform with her head resting against the wall. Her eyes are partially closed, but when Bucky shifts in the bed she sits up. Eyes now alert, she takes him in. This is not a new trick, Bucky realizes. This is not the table, not the chair, and not some new way of burrowing into his brain. He sits up in the small bed and takes in the room again, realizing that he has never seen the inside of a military hospital. He turns back to Agent Carter.

“He did it again.” Bucky’s voice is gravel. He coughs and swallows, and his eye catches on the metallic glimmer that comes as he covers his mouth. He looks down at where his left arm should be and finds it replaced with something cold and solid. Carter hands him a cup of water.

“You’ve been asleep for weeks,” she says as he drinks. “They were not sure that you were going to wake up until last night.”

“What happened?” he asks, throat still rough.

“What do you remember?”

“We were on the train,” Bucky says. He imagines himself falling and can feel the ice covering every inch of his body. “Then it was cold, then I was...” A fog creeps into Bucky’s brain, and his thoughts become jumbled.

“They were clearing the last of the Hydra compounds when they found you. The last POW.”

“The last?” Bucky tries to remember before the train, tries to sort out the details.

“We won, Sergeant.” Carter’s voice is hollow and holds no note of victory.

“Where’s Steve?” he asks, the fog receding a bit. Carter’s lips settle into a tight line. “Where is he?” Her eyes grow wet, and Bucky knows.

“There wasn’t time to do anything without the bomb deploying, so he put it down in the water.” Carter’s voice breaks, and she stands from the chair. Regaining a bit of composure, she wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. Bucky stares at the white wall. How else could it have ended than with sacrifice? He should have known from the beginning that the boy he knew was never going to make it out of that war alive.

“Bucky,” she says, the name sounding foreign on her lips, “I’m so sorry.”

“You should have left me in that compound,” he replies.

***

After he is awake, the doctors can find little reason to keep him there. They spend a week observing him, but the wounds have long healed, and he cannot stand to sit in that bed another minute. More than a few officers show up to examine his arm, but he never lets them spend too much time on it. It feels strange enough to have it there beside him without people studying it. Agent Carter appears regularly, but Bucky doesn’t protest. When he wakes in the middle of the night still feeling the ghost of a scalpel cross his skin, he sees her asleep in the chair beside him, a reminder of where he is. They don’t say much, just sit in the small room and let time pass until the day he gets up and gets dressed.

“What will you do now?” he asks as they walk down the halls of the small European hospital.

“Go home,” she says in a sure voice. “I need some time to work through it all. What about you?”

“The same, I guess.”

Two days later, Bucky stands alone on the front steps, looking up at the building and remembering the day he left. It seems like a lifetime ago. Taking a deep breath, he heads upstairs and shoves his shoulder against the door as he turns the knob. The door opens more willingly under his weight than it used to, and Bucky practically falls into the small kitchen. He closes it carefully; the hinges are loose now. No one at the hospital had been able to say exactly what had been done to Bucky, but moments like this remind him that his body has been tampered with twice at the hands of Hydra scientists.

He had felt different the first time. Bucky had always been capable enough, but when the Commandos came together there was more strength under his control than had been before Zola’s table. Nothing too noticeable, except maybe to Steve. And he had certainly healed from the knife he took in Italy quicker than Morita could explain. Now, the differences are more tangible to him. The arm, of course, feels massive. He reminds himself constantly to use his right hand for everything, afraid of breaking whatever he touches. There is an energy too, something he cannot define but was never there before. He wonders if this is how Steve felt after taking the serum and pushes the thought from his head.

The apartment is almost exactly as he left it. An outdated newspaper sits on the table next to one of his old sweaters. He sets down the green duffle he has been toting around, which is filled with as much of Steve’s things as it is his own, and wanders into the bedroom. The bed is unmade, the closet open and mostly full. He wipes a layer of dust off of the bureau and picks up the stack of envelopes that sits on top. Each is addressed to Steve in Bucky’s own small, neat handwriting. He can still feel what it was like to sit in the quiet moments and write them, back when everything had been simple. Without thinking, he opens the first envelope and unfolds a mud-stained paper.

Dollface,

I don’t want to hear another word about recruitment offices. If by some miracle you manage to get sent over here, I’ll kill you before any Kraut gets the chance. That’s a promise. I know you think that this war has something to do with you or is your chance or something, but I’m telling you that there’s nothing good about it. Any day without mail I feel like I was put on this earth to carry a rifle. They say my aim is good, but I wonder what your mama would say about it. I wish I could ask her what that book of hers says about sinning when you don’t have any other choice. I have to get out of here alive, don’t I?

I don’t mean to talk about this stuff. I know you won’t like any of it, but I promise I’m not so bad as I sound. Lord knows I’m just cold and tired of the mud. Tell me about home and how you’re getting on. If I try real hard, I can almost see those fireworks they shot over the roof on your birthday last year. Sometimes I close my eyes and pretend that that’s what I’m hearing instead.

A lot of the boys here write letters home to their girls, but some of them don’t get anything back. They need something to hold on to, which I guess I understand when you’ve been sent out here to die. Some of them want to trade stories. They talk too much. I just tell them that I’ve got my one and only and keep the letters to myself.

Till the end,
Bucky

He folds the letter back into the envelope and tries to remember what happened to the ones Steve had sent before ending up on the front. Bucky closes his eyes, but the letters get lost in a blur. He had them one day and didn’t the next. Now there is nothing, but maybe it is better this way, Bucky thinks. He can barely stand to look at the drawings sketched absentmindedly onto the outside of the envelopes in his hand.

Bucky falls into a routine. He finds an old jacket that he can still squeeze into and goes to the docks to get his old job. He cuts through the park on the way back every night and half expects someone to be waiting for him when he gets there. Instead, the apartment is always silent and empty. He goes to the bar but can never get more than a buzz, so mostly he sits in the apartment he used to call home and tries not to look around too much. The world around him is the same one he left, but it doesn’t feel like the warm return he had expected over the last few years. The city keeps living and moving while he stands still.

The dreams are the worst part. Barely a night goes by without Bucky waking with a scream in his throat. A scalpel carving into his feet. A wooden guard being shoved into his mouth. Blue eyes before endless white. The pop of his rifle. A body beneath his, neck gushing red. The burn of being buried in snow. The scenes are always the same, and Bucky always wakes with a pounding heart, drenched in sweat.

He has been awake for hours after a particularly rough night. After watching the sun rise on the fire escape, the memory of a boy beside him, he sits at the tiny card table pretending to read the newspaper when the bell rings. Sure that it is the landlord or a salesman, he opens the door to find Agent Carter in a pristine gray pantsuit, lips painted red like the day he met her.

“Good morning, Sergeant Barnes,” she says with a pained smile.

“Carter?” Bucky stalls for a moment before opening the door.

She steps past him into the small kitchen and looks around. Bucky moves a few plates into the sink and hopes that the mess is not too bad. He hadn’t exactly been expecting guests. She takes in the apartment without judgement and turns back to him.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t call first,” she says crisply. Bucky shrugs.

“We fought together, right? Probably earns you the right to drop by unannounced.”

They stand for a beat, neither having any words. Bucky isn’t sure what to do with his hands and feels suddenly aware of his arm. He nearly shakes his head. Since when has he ever been this fumbling around a dame? Steve had trusted Carter, had loved her even, but before the hospital Bucky isn’t sure that they had ever exchanged three words that weren’t about a mission. He moves awkwardly into the living room, which is more of an alcove than an actual room, and gestures for her to sit. She takes the small armchair as he pushes his blankets and pillow off of the couch and sits as well.

“I’m assuming you didn’t just come to say hello,” Bucky says. He is surprised that it took the Army this long to show up on his doorstep, though he hadn’t been expecting Agent Carter to be doing the recruiting. “I thought you went back to England?”

“I did,” Peggy says. “I took a leave and visited with family, tried to forget some of what happened. They assigned me to New York when I came back. I’ve only been here a few months, but it’s different than it was before the war.”

“I know what you mean.” Bucky can’t help but wonder if she wakes up in the middle of the night thinking she’s in a trench too. She looks at him for a long moment.

“I’ve decided to leave the SSR and start a new organization. Howard has the capital and the connections in Washington, and I have the intelligence experience. We want to start something good to prevent another war like the last one.”

“And you want me to come work with you?”

“Yes,” Peggy says with a business-like smile. “I’ve seen your file more than once; you were quite talented even before the Commandos. You could be more than a soldier. I think that you could help us build something.”

She allows him to digest the proposition without further pushing. It doesn’t take him long.

“I can’t.” He does not know how to tell her that the thought of holding a gun again makes his hands shake. That the idea of being in the field without Steve backing him up is unimaginable. That his whole world has caved in, and he wouldn’t begin to know how to serve anything. They stare at each other for a long moment.

“I understand,” she says in a sincere voice. She looks around again at the sparse walls with their peeling wallpaper. “It is strange to be back in this city without him. After hearing him tell stories.”

Bucky remembers sitting around in the lulls, waiting for orders and exchanging adventures with the others, recounting the hundreds of times their recklessness had gotten them into trouble. Agent Carter had always been quiet, but she had always been there.

“He really loved you, you know,” she says softly. Bucky falters, but only for a moment. It does not surprise him as much as it should.

“I know,” he replies. He watches her stand and smile. She takes one last look before resting a hand on his shoulder. The motion is less uncomfortable than he would expect.

“If you ever need anything, you know where to come.”

***

Bucky arrives home one morning after a graveyard shift and falls onto the couch. He has abandoned all hope of of being able to sleep in the bedroom. It feels too much like a grave. He kicks off his boots and stretches out across the sofa. This isn’t the first time he has slept like this. Steve had grown distant when Sarah died. Bucky found him one night drunk and bloody outside a bar a week after the funeral. He dragged him home and ended up sleeping in the living room for months to make sure that Steve didn’t disappear into nothing. That winter he moved into the bedroom to keep warm and spent all night listening to the rattle in Steve’s chest to make sure that he was still breathing.

Bucky can still feel that January chill coming in through the windows like yesterday. The apartment is quiet now, without even the comfort of the noise from the street below. Bucky stares at the cracks in the ceiling in silence until the shapes he finds all turn into snow drifts, and he sits up. Without much thought, it is decided.

He goes to the bedroom and pulls his old duffel out of the closet. After a few minutes staring around the room, he cannot bring himself to put a single thing inside of it. He walks around and around, but if he chooses anything, it feels like he may not ever be able to leave. So he pulls on a jacket and boots and stands in the doorway for a long time. The memories play like a movie reel as he watches the life he used to know fade into fog. He leaves his key on the kitchen counter and never looks back.

February 1947

This is a different France than the last time he was here. Bucky remembers an abandoned pub, blackened brick, and white treelines. Now the streets are busy and the buildings full of people. He spends most of his days in the parks reading dime books and watching people pass by with shadows under his eyes. The nightmares never disappear, but they begin to come and go in waves. After a month, he goes into Paris for the first time, and the dreams hit him hard. He closes his eyes and can feel the crunch of snow beneath his boots, can smell sweet oil under-toned with carbon and taste smoke in the back of his throat. He wakes most nights reaching out, gasping as the sensation of falling dissipates.

He spends days walking by the museum before he finally gets the nerve to go in. Even after years of hiding, it is as grand as he expected. Bucky takes in every wall, corner, and detail. All he can think about is lying on that old mattress on summer mornings, listening to Steve go on about all of the art he wanted to see one day. Bucky walks into the first gallery and stands still for a long time. Countless other Louvre visitors brush past, filtering from exhibit to exhibit, before Bucky can take another step. He recognizes some of the paintings from the old books he used to haggle for at the second hand shop, spending his last dime to bring home and surprise Steve. Sacrificing a pack of cigarettes for the week was worth the hours they would spend stretched out, flipping through the pages as Steve talked endlessly. Each of their favorites jump out at Bucky as he walks through the museum, the knot in his stomach growing. He spends that first afternoon floating through one gallery and has to come back the next day. He steps through arched doorways every day for a week, always returning to one spot in particular. He has not seen this painting before, but he stares at it for a long time.

What first draws him to the triptych is the contrast. The woman in the center panel is naked save her shoes, with a curving stomach and one hand on her hip. Her reflection in the mirror she carries hold’s Bucky’s attention before his eyes flow along the sunrise and picturesque background. The body in the panel to the left is nothing but bone and skin, and Bucky can’t help but think about the way Steve’s ribs used to peek out during the winter when they were boys. The tearing wound in the grinning skeleton’s stomach is familiar too; Bucky has felt his own body rip apart more than once. The faces of the last panel make eye contact with him. The hellfire licks up, burning cold around the bodies it surrounds. The eye of the beast is sure to make an appearance in Bucky’s dreams that night, floating above him as he lays on the table again.

He leaves France with some hesitation, but he had never intended to stay in one place. There isn’t the money to do so anyway, so he starts in the first direction to present itself and does not realize where he is going until he is nearly there. Bucky loses track of the date as he wanders through Austria, not sure how long he has been walking. He finds it easy enough, tucked into the woods, like there’s a compass inside his chest pointing right to it.

It’s nothing but a slight crater now, filled with rubble. The ruins are massive, and he grabs a few of the bricks, ash rubbing onto his right hand. He walks through them and expects something. An epiphany or a meltdown, maybe. But he just feels tired, so he sits in the charred bones of a Hydra truck and tries to forget the feeling of a cool blade between his toes.

By the time he gets to the nearest city, his clothes are wearing thin and his hair is matted with sweat and dirt. It is longer than it has been in years, brushing the tops of his ears. A makeshift shower is simple to come by, but the clothes need to be gone. He swipes a jacket from a street market, fingers still as nimble as they had been by the fruit stands in Brooklyn. He finds a bed above a bar, trading the space for work and promising the owner that he won’t be around for long. He sleeps through the night without a single dream and wakes up early to move some crates around downstairs.

On Bucky’s last morning in Austria, he goes to a small café to think. He hasn’t decided what to do next or where to go, but he knows that it is time to leave. He won’t come back. He is considering Italy and the memories it carries when someone sitting a few tables over catches his attention. The man’s clothing is bland, but he wears military grade boots and has his eyes trained on a building across the street. For a moment, Bucky is sure that he is mistaking, but the man’s profile is familiar. Bucky approaches the table. The man turns at the movement, but his hand freezes near his waist when he sees Bucky’s face.

“Jones?” Bucky says, turning to take in his full face and confirm it. Gabe’s eyes grow wide. Bucky smiles and sits in the chair across from him.

“Sarge...you’re supposed to be dead…”

The shock on his face is from more than not expecting him in Austria, Bucky realizes. Confused anger boils up inside of his chest as he realizes that nearly everyone who knew him must think he is dead at the bottom of a mountain. Is his existence classified?

“Didn’t anyone tell you that you can’t get rid of your CO?” Bucky asks. The charm feels foreign in his voice and less familiar than the metal arm has come to be. Gabe just grins and relaxes. “What are you doing here?”

The smile falters. Gabe looks around and gives a half-hearted, “Vacation,” as a response.

“So she got you to join the new agency.”

“SHIELD,” Gabe says. “I wasn’t sure if you knew.”

Shield, Bucky repeats the word in his head. He wants to smile, but he doubts that a secret government organization could properly uphold that legacy.

“Turned it down,” Bucky explains. “I guess I should have figured that they’d be recruiting the rest of the team. I thought you couldn’t wait to get out and go home to your wife?” Gabe’s face grows somber.

“I did, but turns out nobody was interested in hiring a black soldier. Then Faith got pregnant, and Carter came around offering promotions, so…”

“We do what it takes.”

“We do what it takes,” Gabe agrees.

“What about the others?”

“Morita retired, moved around a bit. I’ve seen him a few times. Dum-Dum’s working with the SSR now, I think. He’d still rather talk about his marriages than work, though.”

Bucky can feel the time stretching as he smiles, a few short years feeling like ten. He had found a place in the war that threatened to swallow him up, had even found a family of sorts, even if they didn’t all know that much about him. He exchanges a few more details with Jones, but Gabe is on assignment, after all. In another life maybe he and Steve would be working beside him, Steve and Carter both running the show like the old days. He does not hate the image, but the idea of trying to follow that path alone is not entertainable for a second. Bucky is done being a soldier. There will be no more blood on his hands, no matter the cause. If the world thinks he is dead, let it move on. It already ended for him the day the war was won. He leaves Gabe to his work.

August 1960

The water that comes from the faucet is ice cold and smells slightly metallic. The taste is bitter in his mouth, but Bucky has never minded much. The slum apartment is a single room, and he can practically reach the top of the kitchen table while lying on the thin mattress. Bucky turns the faucet off and takes a drink. He sets the glass in the sink and turns off the small portable radio that sits on the table. He considers the bound notebook next to it, a few words turning in his head, but does not feel like writing. He pulls on a baseball cap and locks the door behind him.

The market is busy for such an early morning, and Bucky steps through the crowds in practiced steps. He stops for a loaf of bread, a bag of plums. Thinking twice, he buys another portion of the ripe purple fruit, thinking about the children in the apartment below his. The building is mostly abandoned, but a few people have found space there like he has. The little one in unit twelve seems scared of him, eyes always following the silver bit of arm peeking out of his sleeve. The fruit might make a good peace offering.

He spends a few minutes looking at soaps near the end of the market when the hair rises on the back of his neck and he gets the distinct feeling that someone is looking at him. He glances around at the other stalls, but the locals all seem focused on their shopping. Stepping away from the soaps, he can feel the sensation continue, his body temperature rising. Without a glance backwards, he leaves the market and heads to the center of the city. After three turns, he sees a blur of red hair that won’t seem to disappear. There are not too many options that pop into his head. No matter who is looking for him, it cannot mean anything good after all this time. Walking along one of the less busy streets, he waits for a group to pass before falling into an alleyway. He runs to the end and around a brick corner. One more dash and a quick climb over a fence will land him in one of the busiest sections of town. He maps the route in his head, weighing the merits of fleeing versus facing whoever is following him.

Before he can decide, a figure appears at the entrance of the alley. She is much smaller than him with pale skin and bright red hair that hits past her shoulders. She approaches without hesitation, and Bucky falls into a ready position, hoping that he is not as out of practice as he feels. She steps towards him, and Bucky is frozen for a second in shock. He looks over her expressionless face again. She cannot be much older than sixteen.

She uses the moment of surprise to rush at him, and he can barely step aside as they begin to circle each other. He hurls the bag of groceries at her and charges after them, leading with his right fist. He feels it connect with the side of her face. Her whole body moves backwards, but she recovers quick enough to round into a high kick, the sole of her black boot hitting Bucky square in the face. His hands come up involuntarily as he closes his eyes, stepping back for a split second. He regains his posture as she rounds again, this time pulling a knife with her.

The blade glints as she slashes for his wrist. He blocks the attempt, and the knife hits his left arm instead. The sound of metal on metal does not surprise her. He grabs her by the shoulder but gets an elbow to the face and releases her. Then the ground is beneath his back, and the breath is knocked out of him. She straddles him, but the weight is nothing. He pushes his hips upward and reaches his hands for her throat. She moves quickly with the movement of his hips, and suddenly her leg is over his face as she snaps backwards gripping his left arm.

Bucky hears a crack, and a brief shot of pain goes through his shoulder. His reaction is enough for the girl to regain her footing and raise a gun aimed at his face. His breathing is shallow as he stands, and something in his arm is offset as it lies at his side. She stands firm, her cheekbone red and swelling. He waits for the shot, idly wondering if it would even do the job, staring at her. Something crosses her blank face; she hesitates. He disarms her in a single movement, tossing the gun far behind him. Her green eyes flash as she sprints for the fence behind her, quickly climbing over and disappearing down the same path Bucky had been following. He stands for a second as his breathing evens out. Sweat dampening the front of his shirt, he doubles back to the apartment.

Quickly, he repeats to himself, locking the door as he enters and taking a look around the room. He unbuttons his jacket, unable to stand another second, and wastes time trying to get it off with one hand. His left arm will only do about half of what he tries to. A noise from the floor above startles him, and he holds his breath for a second trying to decide whether it was just another squatter. He grabs a black backpack from its place beside the door and throws in the few things worth taking. Another noise has him paranoid, so he zips it up quickly, takes one last look around, and jumps from the side window to the roof next door.

It almost hurts to leave Romania. It is the longest he has ever stayed in one place, and Bucky had almost started to think about staying forever. Another year and he might have moved out of the city, found an old farm miles away from anyone and settled into an even more invisible existence. Maybe it was the stories his mother had always told about the countryside she had left when she was barely old enough to remember. As a kid he couldn’t imagine leaving the city. There was nothing more safe to him then than a Brooklyn fire escape, but something about Romania had started to feel almost like home.

Less than a week passes, and he finds himself sitting in a sleek triangular chair halfway across the world. The office is minimal and looks much like what he assumes every other office in the city would. To his right is a large window, to his left a sitting area with an uncomfortable-looking couch. The wall behind the desk in front of him is covered with plaques and frames. He recognizes himself in one of the photos, standing in the center of the group, half cut off by the striped shield.

The door opens, and Bucky stands, the movement shifting his arm in a way that shoots pain through his shoulder. Carter smiles as she walks in, eyes trained on him as if she isn’t sure that he is really there. She has traded her signature red lip for a muted pink and her uniform for a pale blue skirt suit. Her hair, gray at the temples, is pinned back out of her face.

“Barnes,” she says, shaking her head slightly. She looks him up and down again. “I wasn’t sure that I was ever going to see you again.”

The last thing Bucky had wanted was to end up in Washington DC, wrapped up in all of this again, but seeing Carter again is like a sigh of relief.

“I need some help,” he says.

***

Bucky looks down at the space where his arm should be and finds nothing past his shoulder. If he closes his eyes, he can feel it there beside him, but when he opens them it is just empty space. He watches the head SHIELD engineer as she examines his arm where it lies on a table. The blades whir as they shuffle, and she picks up a tool from her work station. Bucky turns away towards Peggy, his hand coming up to rub his shoulder absentmindedly.

“Agent Carter—”

“It’s Director now, actually.” Her heels click on the lab floor as she steps closer. “And there’s no need to be so formal. It has been nearly two decades, hasn’t it?” She gives a warm smile, which Bucky returns.

“Thank you, Peggy.”

“Of course. Dr. Forest should have the problem fixed quickly. In the meantime, maybe I could convince you to stay a while.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Besides, I was a soldier, not a spy.”

“Don’t forget that I worked beside you, Sergeant. I know exactly what you are capable of bringing to this agency. Those years during the war were the best and worst of my life. I think I can understand some of why you left. For me, I knew I had to do something bigger than what the SSR would allow. SHIELD has become one of the most important organizations in international affairs without a single public scandal.”

“Because the public doesn’t know that you exist,” Bucky cuts in. Peggy’s smile is dripping with charm.

“The next global conflict won’t be fought with tanks and machine guns. Intelligence is the future. After the war I wanted to be able to use that to do real good in the world. Please, just let me show you what I built.”

Bucky accepts a tour of the facility, which certainly puts every operating base he has ever worked from to shame. He listens to her proposals for possible roles working at SHIELD. It surprises him when he starts to imagine himself in them. All he has ever tried to do is forget the war, forget Brooklyn, forget himself. After enough time passed, it had almost felt like he had fully disengaged himself from his life, but the girl in the alley had blown that apart. Bucky knows now that even without Steve to drag him into the fight, he will always be attached to this world. Hydra made sure of that when they experimented on him. And deep down, Bucky has known from the beginning. From the first punch he took at twelve, to the bar scuffles and worried glances at the cops, to the first time he picked up a rifle. He never had a chance.

When they are back in her office, he tells Peggy about the girl in Romania.

“Was she a Soviet?” Peggy asks.

“I wouldn’t know. No insignias, and she never said a word. But she was well-trained. She nearly killed me.”

“Ever since Captain America, every major power has attempted to recreate the serum. Most have given up since no one can come even close to replicating it. They aren’t even worth devoting our resources to, honestly, but there have been rumors of the Soviets’ continued attempts to make a super soldier program, among other endeavors. Or it could have been someone who knew your past and wanted revenge. I wouldn’t be too concerned about it.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter since I’m here now.”

“You’ve decided to come back, then?” She quirks an eyebrow at him.

“Maybe,” he says in an evasive voice, though he has already decided. Peggy smiles as if she can read his mind and stands again.

“I have something to show you.”

In the basement of the facility, beneath the lab where his arm is being picked apart, lies a massive storage room. Most of the space is occupied by backless industrial shelves filled with file boxes. Bucky follows Peggy through the dim walkways to a door in the back corner. The opaque glass window has no label, but Peggy pulls a key from her pocket to unlock it. Bucky follows her inside the small room as she flips on the light to reveal a handful of boxes, not unlike the others in the warehouse. On top of one sits a brown file. Bucky thumbs through the folder, his heart freezing in his chest. Paper clipped to the second page, right above a red-stamped DECEASED, is a photo of Steve. It is him from before the serum, small and skinny, standing in a white t-shirt and looking away from the camera. Bucky closes the file and lifts a dusty lid from one of the boxes. It is packed with neatly folded clothes.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Peggy says from the doorway. “I know that you left it all behind, but I thought you might change your mind about a few things.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say. He opens another box and can barely breathe. A pile of envelopes, a few spiral-bound notebooks with papers sticking out, a knife, a pack of colored pencils, a thick bound book with a worn cover, a red-beaded rosary. That night, Bucky dreams of two small hands reaching out. But instead of being out of reach, they pull him onto an old twin mattress.

March 1962

Bucky shifts his weight carefully, the layer of muddy snow beneath him barely crunching. He looks through a scope past the building under observation, which isn’t far from the treeline that hides them. There is no movement. Everything is the same as it has been for days. Bucky listens to two junior agents tapping their feet together, toes gone numb in old boots. He sits up and stretches, turning to Wilson, who shakes his head. Bucky is considering making a sweep of the building when he hears more crunching snow.

He turns to see two soldiers appear out of the woods behind them as a series of pops fill the air. The first shot hits Hartley in the back, the second in Evanston’s abdomen. Bucky rushes towards the shooters, knocking the first out with a blow to the temple. The other has begun to retreat as Wilson fires at them. Bucky leaves him to manage the others and runs through the trees. The operative is fast, but Bucky is faster. He tackles him on the edge of an icy river. He turns him over and sits with a knee to his neck, arms pinned on either side. The man struggles against his weight before stilling. Before Bucky can realize it, he has chewed a cyanide capsule.

Bucky pushes off of him, swears, and does a quick search of the body before running back towards the others. The bullet that hit Evanston seems to have missed anything too bad; she is sitting against a tree holding pressure on the wound with one hand, her gun in the other as she watches the trees. Wilson is on top of Hartley, trying to stop the bleeding.

“Sarge,” Wilson says when Bucky comes over to help. “You hit?”

Bucky follows the look to his side. A small tear in the black fabric of his uniform is sticky with blood. He feels around gently for a second, but it is just a surface wound. He turns his attention back to the other agent and can feel the blood pumping through him. They need to move, now.

***

The wound on his side is barely that. He cleans and bandages it himself on the plane, after the others have been taken to a medical base, both stable. He runs a red-stained hand through his hair, leans back against the seat of the cargo plane, and ends up sleeping for most of the trip. Something about being in the air keeps the dreams away. He wakes up stateside and is opening the door to his apartment around 2200. He shrugs out of his bulky black tactical uniform and lazes in the shower after the sweat and dirt has been washed away. Standing in his bathroom, he reexamines his right side and puts a clean bandage on it. The pain is barely there. He looks in the mirror for a long moment, really looking at himself.

His hair is long now, just brushing his shoulders in areas. Besides that, he looks much the same as he always has. He turns his face to the left and right, searching for any sign of age. He thinks about the lines emerging around Peggy’s eyes and on her forehead, the soft gray beginning to bloom in her hair. He could pull off thirty at best, he thinks. He shakes his head and gets dressed. Before he leaves the apartment, he pulls Sarah’s rosary from the pocket of his gear. He rubs the beads in his hand and sets it on the bureau beside the small square photo of Steve that sits in a simple frame.

He finds Peggy in her office, stretched out on the couch with her eyes closed. She glances at the door as he enters and makes room. He sits beside her as she pushes loose curls out of her face.

“How did it go?” she asks.

“It got complicated, but everyone is alive.” He leans back with his head against the wall. He must have gotten hours of sleep on the plane, but the geometric couch seems welcoming nonetheless.

“Tell me about it tomorrow. I’m done being in charge tonight.” She closes her eyes again, and he smiles. Every year that has passed, in the warm lamplight of that office, she must be the most beautiful woman he has ever known.

“Did you eat?” he asks. She shakes her head.

“Everything will be closed by now.”

“What about that diner downtown?”

“In a minute,” she says with a smile.

They both sit with their eyes closed. Bucky isn’t sure that they will ever make it to the restaurant, but he doesn’t mind. A soft rain begins to hit the window of the office, and Peggy sits up with a sigh. She sets her hand on his shoulder as they start to stand up. Bucky pauses for a second, eyes on hers as she stops. Then he kisses her, and she kisses him back, and it has been a long time since he has kissed anyone. He holds her, one hand on either side of her back. She puts a hand on his face, and he leans into it. A second later, they pull apart. They sit facing each other, still breathing the same air.

“I’m not him,” he whispers.

“Neither am I.”

She kisses him again, briefly, before they stand up. He runs a hand through his hair, and she brushes away an invisible smear of lipstick. They get dinner.

Bucky never mentions that night again, and nothing feels too different between them. She still gives him assignments, he still checks in frequently, and every February they lock themselves in her office and drink. He comes in to see her the day she returns from a trip expecting a briefing and gets a proposition instead.

“I saw Howard while I was in California,” she says. Bucky rolls his eyes and settles further into the chair across from her desk. “He made some interesting suggestions.”

“Nothing Stark has to say is interesting.”

She smiles and considers him for a moment. Bucky rarely sees hesitation in her, especially when it is just the two of them. He sits up.

“What is it?”

“Well he— we thought that you could...wear the suit.”

“No,” Bucky says firmly.

“Just think about it for second,” she says, hands held defensively.

“I have. It’s not happening.”

“Who else could hold the weight of that shield than you? You already do the work; putting on the suit could sort of resurrect the image of Captain America.”

“Peggy,” he says seriously. “Captain America died almost twenty years ago. He is barely a memory to them.”

“You could change that.” Her voice is sincere, and he knows that she doesn’t ask this lightly. For a moment, he considers what it would mean. To put on the uniform and become Mr. Stars and Stripes himself. He imagines the shield held by a metal arm. All the image makes him feel is cold.

“I can’t. I’m not good like him.”

Her face says that she knew he wouldn’t agree, but the last part makes her frown. She crosses her arms in front of her chest.

“My whole life I’ve been afraid,” he says in a quiet voice. “Afraid of my parents, of the police, of myself. I spent years so terrified that he was going to die that I could hardly breathe. Then they sent me to war, and I knew that all the worrying had been for nothing because I was supposed to die on a battlefield. When he showed up, there was just a minute where I wasn’t afraid of anything. I wasn’t being completely eaten by the war anymore, and he was practically bullet proof. And then it was all gone. He became Captain America, and then I lost him. They got their martyr, and I lost my whole world.”

Peggy watches him with a kind face. It is strange to talk about, after all these years. Sometimes he thinks that he is alright, that SHIELD is enough, that he can live this way and be almost whole. It only takes one look at an old sketch or a glimpse of blonde hair on the street to remind him that a part of him lives at the bottom of the ocean.

“He told me once,” Peggy says, “that we were alike. We reminded him of each other, both thinking things through.”

“Something he never did,” Bucky says. They smile in that way that only two people remembering the dead can.

“I would give anything to see what the world would be like with him still in it,” she says. “But I am very glad that you are here.”

July 1965

Hi Doll,

It feels a little dumb to be writing to you again after all this time, but that’s what we do here when there is a second of peace. We sleep, we eat slop, and we write letters home. It’s not so different from the old days. I think I finally understand why you couldn’t stay home. I know you needed to prove yourself, but you were never one for sitting still either. I used to come back from the field and watch it all on television. It brought back every second of the war, but this was right in front of all of our faces. Most of the kids out here are younger than we were. Peggy wasn’t happy. She thinks I’m more useful working with SHIELD than out here fighting a losing battle. I asked her if she thought you would have waited a second to come out here with that suit of yours. If I can keep just a few kids from dying out here, it will be worth the trouble. And if we get burned up, I’ll probably crawl out the other side wishing I hadn’t. Been there before.

Every time we come under fire I half expect to see that ugly skull patch on the ones shooting at us. You want to hear something funny? I haven’t had a single dream since coming out here. Most of us are sleep-deprived and on edge at all hours. I’m not saying it’s the best sleep I’ve ever had, but I’ve felt worse. There’s something about the heat here. The way it sticks to your clothes. When we were kids this is what I thought hell would feel like. I’m too familiar now to be scared.

Still yours,
Buck

Bucky folds the paper and tucks it into his pocket with the stub of a pencil. He feels the chain of the rosary brush against his fingertips. The others must think him religious with how often he worries it sitting up on watch. He stopped believing in God a long time ago, but that rosary brought Steve back from the brink more times than he can count. He isn’t sure that it still works without a mother’s faith, but he carries it with him anyways. An unconfessed sinner toting around the cross, he thinks with a smile.

The other boys have finished their food, and the scraping of tin cans is replaced with quiet stories and joking for those who haven’t settled in to try and sleep. Bucky kicks at the small space he has claimed, a tree trunk for his back and one to push his legs against. Everything is wet. His hair hasn’t been dry since the day he got off the plane. He pulls it back with a rubber band and listens to the noises of the jungle intermix with the soldiers’ voices.

A group of boys a few feet away are talking about what they’ll do when they get home and what their families think of the war. Someone mentions something about being the next Captain America and ending the whole thing. Bucky opens his eyes and peers over at them in the evening light.

“My grandpa collects those old comics,” says one of the new kids when the others start to make fun of him. “I used to read them when I was a kid, and they say Rogers was a nobody before he saved the world.”

They joke around for a few minutes, louder than they probably should be, about which of the Howling Commandos was the best. Bucky shifts his weight and tries to ignore the conversation, wishing he had a cigarette. The private closest to him is awake and listening to the debate. He turns to Bucky and studies his expression.

“You ever read those comics, Sergeant Byrne?”

The kid is tall and a little gangly, with dark skin and a slight southern accent. Fury, says the faded block print on his shirt. Bucky shakes his head.

“Didn’t think so,” Fury says. He takes a long look at Bucky’s face, which Bucky tries to set into the most uninterested expression he can manage. It hasn’t been that hard keeping quiet here. He is in charge, after all, and the fact that he has a mechanical arm and writes letters home seems to be enough for the others. There is amusement in Fury’s eyes but respect too. He smiles once before leaning back and closing his eyes.

Bucky escapes another war mostly unscathed, carrying a cold weight in his chest about leaving before it is over. He stops writing to Steve the day he leaves Vietnam, tucking the notebook he carried with him into a box and pushing it to the back of his closet. He goes back to work and finds an appreciation for it that he didn’t have before. He takes assignments designed for five, hunts and interrogates suspects that have been wanted for years. And when he isn’t in the field, he is walking the halls of the main SHIELD office. He asks more questions, and Peggy starts relying on him for more than just field work. Half of the time, he ends up sleeping in a chair in her office.

The years pass quicker than they have before as Bucky settles back in to his new world. But he can still remember the wet heat of the jungle on his skin whenever he is reminded. It isn’t so harsh as the ice.

He comes in one morning to find Peggy in one of the empty offices on the fifth floor. A stack of files sits on the table in front of her, and she is reading through the top one with a frown.

“What's wrong?” Bucky asks, walking up behind her. She doesn’t answer, so he looks down at the file. “Potential recruits?” he asks.

“We’re understaffed,” Peggy grumbles, pushing the top folder off of the stack in irritation. Instead of reading the second one, she takes off her glasses and looks at him. “I can’t stand reading these assessment reports. It would be so much easier if I could just see them all in person and get a feeling of what they are really like.”

“You could have hosted more job interviews if you didn’t start a super secret spy agency,” Bucky teases as he sits down. He pulls the stack over to him and starts to skim the top one.

Peggy rolls her eyes, glances at her watch, and starts to look at the first file again.

“If we had relied on paper reports, there wouldn’t have been a proper Captain America.”

Bucky smiles softly as they keep reading. He has heard Peggy tell the story many times, half-drunk on the floor of her living room. The first time, though, she had said it in passing. They were still in Italy, and the Commandos were all appropriately impressed. Steve’s eyes had grown wide as Peggy mentioned the grenade. He looked at Bucky, but his face held no shame, only regret that Bucky knew. All Bucky could do was sit around the others with his jaw clenched and watch Steve anticipate the fight that was sure to come the next time they were alone. Bucky’s first idea was to finish what the grenade hadn’t been able to and kill Steve himself. He imagines it now and can see that scrawny kid jumping for it, going out of his way to find trouble like always. Bucky flips to the next file and finds a familiar photo attached to it.

“This one,” he says, sliding the file over to Peggy.

“Nicholas J. Fury...a few years in the CIA, and the Army before that,” she reads the file, which is unremarkable compared to the rest, and looks up at Bucky.

“Trust me,” he says. “You want him.”

June 1979

It has been nearly a month since Bucky has been in the field, and he is going stir crazy. He has lived in the same apartment for ten years, but it barely feels like home. The items on his desk and in the bedside table are familiar. The clothing in the closet all fits. But when he is not on assignment, he is usually working at the SHIELD office and finding a place to sleep there. Peggy had suggested a break after his last assignment left two agents dead. It didn’t bother him as much as it used to; there were enough faces for him to mourn and enough blood on his conscience without worrying about two deaths that were not his fault. But the idea of a break sounded nice, so he went home and slept for a few days. Every minute since has left him with nothing to do.

He works his way through the stack of books that has piled up on the desk, the ones he always means to pick up but never does. He cleans the apartment, then pulls everything out of the drawers and cupboards and closets to sort. Sitting on the floor of the living room, he finds a piece of paper stuck between two records. A drawing of himself, he finds upon turning it over. He rubs his thumb over the once heavy pencil lines that make his jaw.

It was a Thursday morning, and they had been fighting about something. Steve had probably been looking for work and gotten fed up with being turned down. Bucky had always insisted that they could survive just fine on his money from the docks, though the sparseness of the kitchen cabinets protested. Steve had a way of arguing quietly, his voice filled with anger but not raised at all. Bucky was the one who yelled. He had been yelling at Steve his whole life. The words got out of hand on either side, and Bucky pushed too far. Steve blew up, yelling that he had never asked Bucky to move in there in the first place.

After an hour of stomping around outside, walking the street like he was headed somewhere, Bucky went home to a silent apartment. He climbed through the open window onto the fire escape and sat beside Steve without a word. Staring out at the city, he pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and rolled it absently between two fingers.

“You came back,” Steve said. His voice was as stubborn as always, but the anger had drained from it.

“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” Bucky replied. Steve turned to look at him, but he kept his eyes locked straight ahead.

“You know that I want you here,” Steve said, reaching tentatively for Bucky’s arm. Bucky did not shy from the touch, but he resisted the urge to worry about how long Steve had been outside and his lack of a sweater. “I’m sorry, Buck.”

Bucky finally turned to look at him. His blue eyes were worried as he squeezed Bucky’s arm.

“I’m sorry too.”

Bucky leaned forward, pulling Steve closer, but pulled away with a glance around and crawled back through the window.

“I don’t care about this place,” Steve said after following him through the window and pulling Bucky close again. “You’re my home. You always will be.”

He had pulled out his sketchbook later that day to do a quick impression of Bucky. It was one of countless others; Steve had always said that he was his favorite subject. Bucky sets the sketch apart from the rest of the junk to tuck away in the box at the top of his closet. All they had ever wanted was a working thermostat and enough money for books and paints and canvases. Then the country went to war, and everything changed. Thinking about it now, Bucky knows that his chance at another life passed him by long ago. He finishes the apartment, not minding so much that in some ways it feels less like home than squatting in Romania had, and decides to go back to work. Even if it isn’t ideal, it is Bucky’s life.

He is on his way in to Peggy’s office the next day to tell her to put him back in rotation, but something stops him. It is just a glimpse of red, but he backs up a few feet and peers into the small window of the conference room. A white woman with straight red hair stands motionless across the room. Bucky slides his key card across the security panel and opens the door. The woman looks up as he enters, but her face is expressionless. She crosses her arms but stands still as Bucky studies her. Her face is familiar, but it can’t possibly be who he thinks.

“Sergeant Barnes,” he says after a moment, his voice filling the room. The corner of her mouth raises slightly.

“I know who you are.”

Bucky watches her watch him. His brain is having trouble connecting the dots. Why would she be here, now, lounging in a secure SHIELD building? Every second he looks at her he grows more sure that she is the same woman from all those years ago. The reason he is here.

“You were just a kid, weren’t you?” is the first thing that manages to come out of his mouth.

“It’s impolite to ask a woman her age,” she replies in an impeccable American accent.

“Who are you?” He steps closer and can see her measure the movement as she shifts her weight.

“A spy, mostly.”

He narrows his eyes and takes one last look before leaving the room. He finds Peggy alone in her office.

“What are you doing here?” she asks with a glance upwards as she continues writing something at her desk.

“The woman in 22A, who is she?”

“Natasha Romanoff,” Peggy says, glasses slipping down her nose as she looks at the papers in front of her. She pushes one file towards the edge of the desk, and Bucky picks it up. Romanova, the file reads. “A charity case. We’ve taken some before, but I can’t use her if I can’t trust her, which I’m sure that I can’t.”

“She’s Russian?”

“She was trained from a young age in one of their clandestine projects. She defected and volunteered to work for us instead, but her programming was serious. I can’t afford any double agents right now.”

As Peggy shuffles through a file with a furrowed brow, Bucky thinks about her—Natasha Romanoff, the person who had sent him back to SHIELD all those years ago with a broken arm. She had been a teenager then, but she had been deadly. He opens the thin file and scans the papers inside. The little information they contain is mostly confirmed deaths. He wonders what life she was taken from to be turned into an assassin, whether she was willing and, if not, what they did to make her so.

“Let me take her into the field.”

Peggy looks up from her desk, her head tilted like she heard him wrong. She sets her glasses down and says, “She’s too much of a risk.”

“Not for me,” Bucky says, omitting the part about her having once had him at gunpoint. Peggy considers this for a moment. She cannot argue after years of sending Bucky on missions she knew would have left any other agent dead.

“It would have to be a training mission. Something without any opportunities to harm us.” Bucky nods, giving her a questioning look. She shakes her head at him before returning to her paperwork. “Alright then. She’s your responsibility.”

The assignment is not necessarily easy, but it is meaningless. Their success or failure will have little impact on SHIELD’s efforts or the US’s overall. Bucky does not bring along any other agents, unwilling to sacrifice their lives if he has misjudged Romanoff. Besides, he has a feeling that she won’t need any backup.

“You know it’s true what they say.” It’s the first thing she has said to him since he pulled her out of the conference room and started briefing her on the assignment. He turns to where she sits next to him in the back of the truck. She is almost smiling. “You haven’t aged at all, have you?”

Bucky rolls his shoulder, the plates of his arm whirring softly as he looks ahead then back at her. He had forgotten about the incident in the alley over the years, letting it fall into the recesses of his mind. The more time that passed, the less important it seemed to consider who might have been after him. Now, though she has said nothing, he is sure.

“What did they do to me?” he asks.

“You already know.” She quirks her head at him and takes a long pause. “I was supposed to bring you in so that they could finish the job.”

“And turn me into what?”

“Oружие. A weapon.” She looks straight ahead, her face falling blank. He watches her, irritation growing. He conjures the image of her standing there, practically a child, eyes empty but hesitant.

“Why did you let me go?” he asks. Her straight-cut hair swings as she turns to look at him. It falls like a red curtain around her face, another layer of defense.

“Why did you?”

They spend a day doing recon, but Bucky watches Romanoff more than he watches the abandoned safe house they are observing. She sits near the window of the top floor apartment, watching the street below through a scope. She accepted the mission without comment and has barely said a word since they arrived. Bucky sits on a sofa filled with broken springs, appreciating the silence.

That night she takes first watch. He could manage both shifts if he wanted to. Lord knows he has worked on less sleep before, but he figures that he might as well lie down for a while. She watches him from her spot against the western wall as he settles in for the night. She must be smart enough to know that he wouldn’t take her on a mission that was too important, just as he figures she must realize why he is the only one with her. It takes him a while to decipher the amusement on her face.

“Aren’t you afraid that I’ll stab you in the middle of the night?” she calls.

“You already had your chance to kill me,” he answers easily. He positions his head against the wall and closes his eyes.

She changes watch without protest a few hours later, going to lie down on the lumpy green couch as he takes guard. She spends the rest of the night staring at the ceiling, her breathing steady. Bucky lets it be. In the morning, they search the house across the street, and she moves with precise training, sweeping each empty room like a machine. The stairs to the basement are narrow and dark. They tread noiselessly into the lower level, and Bucky searches the recesses of the rooms while she begins to examine the documents stored there, looking for the file they are after.

Bucky relaxes, lowering his gun as the last corner is cleared. He retreats to the storage bins surrounding an industrial green desk. He tries the drawers, but they are all locked. He pulls harder, yanking the first out without much effort. It is empty save a few paperclips and an old camera. He takes a step back to look at the bins, trying to decide if one is more likely to hold the information they are after than the others. It is a file about Soviet movements in the Pacific. Peggy is sure that the information is outdated, but it was a good enough opportunity for Bucky to get Romanoff in the field.

She turns to him holding a thick manilla envelope with a promising looking label, but before he can reach for it, she pulls her weapon and fires two shots. The sound reverberates in Bucky’s ears as he turns and watches someone fall to the ground, their semi-automatic pistol striking the cement. Bucky turns back to Romanoff, who still has her gun raised and is searching the room with her eyes. Bucky drops to the ground. Both shots caught the man in the chest, but he’s nearly gone already. Bucky doesn’t know what questions to ask. This wasn’t supposed to be an interrogation. The man looks up at his face, blood spilling out from his lips.

“Xаиль—” he gurgles.

***

“You could have died getting completely pointless intel,” Peggy groans again, rubbing her eyes.

“That’s not the point. It was fine. Romanoff had me covered.”

She wears pale blue striped pajamas, sitting at the breakfast table in her mostly unused kitchen. The lamp behind her casts a warm glow over the room, but Bucky is wide awake. He glances at the clock and experiences a pang of guilt for waking her up at this hour. It is easy to forget at times that she is not the young and relentless woman who founded SHIELD. He nearly smiles at the thought, knowing that she would murder him if he said something like that outloud. As if sensing his doubt, she pushes the hair out of her face and looks at him with bright eyes.

“I suppose I haven’t managed to lose you yet.” She stands and starts preparing a kettle of water for the stove. “Tell me again about the operative.”

“He was alone,” Bucky says. “The house looked abandoned, and he didn’t have anything linking him to anything.”

“And you searched the house?” She sets two mugs on the counter as she looks at him, taking the information in.

“It was all useless. Not a shred of intelligence worth anything.”

Her face is busy with thought as she makes the tea. She sets one mug in front of him and takes a seat at the table again. Bucky takes a sip, the warmth spreading down his throat and into his chest. There was a time when all he could afford to make on winter mornings was hot water.

“There should not have been anyone there,” she says finally. “He had to have been a rogue or sent to see if anyone came looking for anything. I doubt that it means anything.”

“But what he said,” Bucky says, lowering his voice without meaning to. They are alone in the apartment, and it is not like anyone is listening. “You can’t tell me that didn’t mean anything.”

“James, I haven’t heard even a whisper about Hydra in nearly thirty years. No one has.”

Bucky takes another drink. He works for the most powerful intelligence agency in the world. Surely if they were back, SHIELD would know about it. Still, he can’t shake the sinking feeling that there is something lurking in the shadows.

April 1995

Bucky throws himself up the narrow staircase, taking it two steps at a time. He rounds the last turn into a dingy hallway and catches a glimpse of movement at one end that he follows. Natasha is only a few seconds behind, and they enter the room together. Bucky has barely taken a step when something hard comes down on the side of his head, sending a shock through his skull. He doubles over for a second, but sends his metal fist upwards as he rises, catching the attacker in his ribs. The man dashes through the condemned apartment and down a hallway. Beside him, Natasha has balanced her weight against the other, bringing him down with a twist of her legs. He is out the second his head hits the floor, and she follows Bucky down the hall.

The last door is broken in. The man looks back once before tumbling out the open window. Without thinking, Bucky follows. He lands on his feet, crouched onto the alley below. The man has not landed quite as well and only makes it a few feet before Bucky has him in a chokehold. The man’s body goes limp, and Bucky looks back up at the building. Using the window railings, Nat has slipped down each story and is beside him before long.

“You’re not going to miss this?” she asks while grabbing the man and putting a zip tie around his hands.

“It’s not like I’m quitting,” Bucky replies, breathing heavy. He jogs towards the back entrance of the building and starts up the stairs again.

It isn’t until they are in the truck that they talk about it again. This is how conversations go with her. A few words exchanged during a fight, a lot of silences, calling each other out. He can’t count the times he has been grateful to have her on a mission with him—they have all started to run together at this point—but sometimes he wishes she would mind her own business.

It hadn’t taken him long to realize that they had something similar inside them, but that isn’t what drew Bucky to her most, what makes it seem like he has known her his whole life. Nat sees past the bullshit and has since the very beginning. She gives him that look of hers, mouth quirked with eyes that say she has his number. Every goddamn time, he swears that he’s looking at blue eyes instead of green

“It’s not like we’re even partners anymore,” Bucky says from the passenger seat. The men they took in are both unconscious in the cargo area, but he doesn’t expect any trouble on the trip home. Nat ignores him, looking straight ahead at the road. “You spend most of your time undercover anyways,” Bucky adds, irritation growing in his voice.

“Remind me how this new thing is any different than what you do now?”

“They want me to start a special ops unit with low-level agents, take new recruits with potential and make them better.”

“It sounds like you’re being forced into retirement,” Nat says with a glance at him. This surprises him.

“It’s not,” he says with certainty. “Fury asked me himself.”

“Where did the order come from?” She raises her eyebrows, and Bucky shakes his head.

He looks out the window. In the afternoon sun, the flatlands stretch out endlessly, green and blue meeting on the horizon. All these years and he will never get used to being in the country. It’s beautiful, he thinks, looking up at some of the whitest clouds he has ever seen, but he will still be happy to be back in DC. There is something comforting about being in a place with buildings towering over you.

The anger sprouting inside dissipates as he looks at her again.

“I’ve been doing this for a really long time, Nat. I’m ready to try something different.”

***

Bucky handpicks his first group to train from a batch of new hires. They all have substantial intelligence experience, with only two being accustomed to sitting behind a desk. He elects to test them all out as a unit on a field assignment, figuring it will give him an idea of their raw compatibility. He looks them over, spread throughout the seats of a small plane. As they board, loading their equipment into the cargo hold, guilt begins to form in the bottom of Bucky’s stomach. He reminds himself that these aren’t kids plucked from normal lives and pushed into a fight. They are trained operatives, and that fact helps lessen the worry.

This is the first time he has seen them in person and knows them only by their files. A group in the far end of the plane has gotten to talking, which he takes as a good sign. Their conversation isn’t quite audible, but they send more than a few glances his way. Bucky sighs as he tries to decide if being a Howling Commando will gain him respect or be trouble. It doesn’t help that his existence is a loosely kept secret, something that isn’t discussed outside of secure doors. Bucky likes it that way. The world forgot about him the moment he fell off that train, and it makes sense. Bucky is only a ghost of the man that fell, if anything.

The agent sitting next to him is quiet like most of the others and stares straight ahead at nothing in particular. Her blonde hair is tied into a ponytail. Her eyes are focused, her face calm. Bucky shuffles through the files in his head. Agent Thirteen, he remembers. She has a considerable record at the CIA and sparkling recommendations, especially for someone so young.

“When did you lose your name?” Bucky asks. She looks over at him, barely distinguishable concern flashing across her face.

“After being compromised a few years back,” she replies easily. “They had it classified.”

“Guess my security clearance isn’t as high as I thought,” Bucky says.

A hint of a smile plays on Agent Thirteen’s lips. She’s all business, which he appreciates. There is something about her face, though. A familiarity about her cheekbones, the slope of her nose. She turns a few degrees to the right, and the nagging feeling that he has seen her before subsides.

“You ready for this?” he asks.

“Yes sir,” she answers without a note of hesitation.

***

After a few months and almost a dozen field ops, Bucky thinks he has a strong feel for them all. He sits on the floor of Peggy’s home office, a bowl of pasta in his hands, Peggy working at her desk.

“There’s a couple I still have reservations about. I’m gonna have to transfer them, which is going to be very fun for me.”

Peggy smiles with the face of someone who has done more demoting, promoting, and general repositioning that he can imagine.

“But the rest of them work well?” she asks as he takes another bite.

The rest of them have all proved to be as useful and skilled as their files suggested. The truth is, though, that they aren’t much of a team. They work well enough together, but it’s missing heart and soul. Maybe they just haven’t been through it together yet, but they all seem to hold each other at arm’s length. Maybe it’s better that way, Bucky thinks.

“Yeah. All together, they’re good. And Agent Thirteen, she’s born for it.”

“Thirteen?” Peggy asks, turning back to her desk and typing away at her computer.

“She’s got the drive, the calmness, the confidence.”

Peggy nods, and he takes another bite of spaghetti.

He is still thinking about it the next morning as he mentally lays out his plans for the group. Now that he knows what he’s got, it’s time to start molding. The choice for team leader is obvious. As if he had been calling with his thoughts, Agent Thirteen appears in front of him in the lobby. She asks to go over a few things, wanting to review meeting points and discuss some future operations. He leads her to the cafeteria to start with coffee.

***

Bucky’s hair is still wet from a shower, and small droplets of water drip occasionally onto the floor as he rides the elevator upwards. He likes working in the training room at night when the nonessential personnel have left. The other agents traversing the halls after hours either understand the life of walking the building in uniform sweats or are too preoccupied to care. He stops on the sixth floor to grab some papers to take home with him but stops when he finds Thirteen in the operation room with a stack of paperwork in front of her.

“It’s almost midnight,” Bucky says, leaning against the doorway. “Don’t you have anyone to see?”

She raises her eyebrows casually, as if to suggest that it is what it is.

“Unfortunately, my boss likes to bury me with paperwork,” she says.

“The burden of leadership potential,” Bucky says in a mock-sigh. Thirteen smiles and sets her pen down, stretching her wrist a little too emphatically. She’s in a pinstripe pantsuit, her hair swept to one side of her face, shoes discarded beneath the table.

“Don’t you have a date for the holiday?” she asks. “Or is New Year’s less significant when you’re exempt from aging?”

It’s the first time she has ever mentioned anything about him being him, and Bucky grins.

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m happily married to my work. What about you? That guy down in communications—Jackson?—something tells me he wouldn’t mind being your midnight kiss.” It feel strange to joke like this with someone new, but it is also surprisingly easy.

“Trust me,” she says, her voice changing tone. “He’s not my type.” She looks at him for a minute before her eyes drop to the table. It takes Bucky a second to decode the emphasis. Thirteen clears her throat, clearly regretting starting down this path. Bucky doesn’t know what to say, not wanting to make it worse, so what comes out is a strange sort of “Oh.” She turns to look at him, brows turned down slightly.

“Is this going to be a problem?” she asks in a tense voice. Bucky almost laughs at the irony of it, someone wondering if he has a problem with being gay. But he knows more than a few COs who would have her dismissed over it.

“Trust me, Thirteen, I don’t care.” He tries to be casual in tone and thinks he is successful.

“Alright then,” she says formally, going back to her work.

Bucky watches her for a second longer before turning back out the door. He grabs the files and finds the elevator. Every year brings new surprises for him to navigate, trying to balance two sides. He likes Thirteen. There is something about her that he admires, and even after moving on to new units to train, he makes sure to keep working with her. He has just started to realize that she is something more rare than a good leader: a friend.

January 1999

Bucky grits his teeth as the elevator doors close, part of him wishing that a cable would snap and send them plummeting. Graham won’t shut up. Bucky closes his eyes as he goes on and on about the details of their last mission. He has a decent service record for a rookie, but Bucky isn’t sure he can train him anymore. He certainly can’t spend another international plane ride beside him. Bucky wants to be a good teacher, he really does, but he just can’t review every detail of every assignment ten times. It is starting to affect the rest of the team, and Bucky knows he is going to have to talk to Graham. Being an agent in this division is about more than just field skills. Bucky opens his eyes, nodding as if Graham needs any response to keep talking.

Thirteen leans against the left wall of the elevator behind Grahams back, trying to hide a smile. They make eye contact as the doors open, and Bucky shakes his head, trying to be good natured.

“There you are,” Peggy says, waiting outside of the elevator. Graham shuts his mouth, and Thirteen glances from Peggy to Bucky.

“Give me a second with Sergeant Barnes please,” Peggy says to them. They both nod as Peggy leads him to one of the empty rooms in the hall.

“Is something wrong?” Bucky asks. Ever since Peggy stepped down as Director, she has spent less time in the office, though he is sure she is the most hands-on board member there is.

“Nothing, you’ve just been unreachable for a while, and I need to talk to you.”

Peggy glances around the room, a nervousness in her face that is rarely there.

“A few weeks ago, I was approached by the Smithsonian.”

“The Smithsonian?” Bucky’s mind is immediately filled with images of a dramatic mission hunting lost artifacts.

“They are preparing a permanent exhibit about the war to debut next winter, for the fifty-fifth anniversary. They were hoping to expand their collection about Steve.”

“They want the suit?” he asks. She nods.

“And any other momentos we might have.” He takes a step back, thinking. “I didn’t give them an answer. None of it is mine to give.”

“It’s all good?” Bucky asks after a long silence. She nods again, her face reassuring.

“They want to commemorate the man who saved the world.”

He bites his lip. This shouldn’t be so difficult. Hasn’t he always been frustrated with the country’s willingness to forget Steve? The way he has become more of a story character than a real remembered person?

“You don’t have to give them anything,” Peggy says firmly. “They’ve had enough of him.” Bucky shakes his head.

“I’ll look through my things. Maybe you could help me sort through the SHIELD vault?”

“Of course,” Peggy says. Bucky nods once, as if to cement the decision in his head.

***

Bucky walks up the stairs feeling constrained by the suit and tie. With a handgun under his jacket and a knife on his ankle, he almost feels prepared to go to a gala full of politicians. Of all the things he has done, going to this party may end up being the one he could never have predicted. A tour through a museum with his own photo on the walls, surrounded by the most powerful people in the country, none of whom know anything about the man they are celebrating.

When Peggy had invited him, he had nearly turned it down.

“The exhibit is for us too,” she said, her voice almost chiding.

“And what happens when the photos on the wall look like they were taken yesterday?” Bucky had asked. Donating Steve’s old things was supposed to be about cultivating his legacy, not announcing to the world that he was still alive.

“Would it be so bad if the public knew? You could be something tangible, to remind them that it wasn’t as long ago as they think.”

Bucky takes a deep breath as he arrives at the door. He knows that he is early, but he wants to get this over with. It is his responsibility to uphold the legacy of Captain America, he reminds himself as he knocks. When there isn’t a response, he turns the knob and steps inside, calling out to announce himself.

The apartment is mostly dark, with most of the light coming in through the living room windows with their view of the twinkling cityscape. Bucky switches on a lamp just as Agent Thirteen appears from the main hall wearing a long cocktail dress. Bucky pauses with his hand on the light switch, his left arm fighting the black fabric on the suit. Confusion spreads across his face as he cocks his head at her. She pauses in the doorway and opens her mouth, but the words that come first are Peggy’s.

“Sharon, dear—” She emerges from another room in the middle of putting an earring in. She stops, eyes sweeping from one of them to the other. “Hello, James.”

Peggy has always been the most graceful person he knows. She smiles warmly and grabs a sheer shawl off of a chair. She steps towards him in a floor length blue dress, her gray hair swept up into nostalgic victory rolls.

“I was just discussing with Agent Thirteen her orders for the opening later.”

Her red smile is as faultless as always. Peggy does not have a tell, but if she did, Bucky would know it. He looks at her for a long moment, then to where Thirteen stands across the room with a tired look on her face. He imagines her for a second as a brunette in a British uniform and smiles.

“Would you give us a minute?” she asks.

Peggy looks back at her with an apologetic smile.

“I’ll be in the car, James,” Peggy says as she passes him. The door clicks shut as she exits.

“Sharon Carter,” Bucky says. “I feel stupid for not realizing sooner.”

Sharon smiles and steps forward away from the desk.

“When I was a kid, I loved listening to Aunt Peggy’s stories about Captain America and all of the things you all did. She’s the reason I followed this career, but she founded this place. I didn’t want to use her name, so she promised to help me keep it a secret.”

Bucky finds himself nodding.

“I know what it’s like to have a name no one will forget.”

The museum is filled with mostly politicians and agency directors using it as an alternative venue for funding negotiations. The handful of cameras present are more focused on the President’s brief appearance and the exhibit itself, thankfully. Bucky thinks he may actually escape unnoticed.

It feels strange to navigate this space, and he wonders for a moment at how Peggy has spent her life commanding rooms just like this one, garnering enough power to shape SHIELD into what it is today despite the fact that most of the people in the room are members of the old boy network. Bucky steps away from the bar with their drinks and spots Peggy a few feet away talking to a handful of other board members. The youngest of them turns, and Bucky slips into the crowd. The last thing he needs tonight is to have to talk to Alexander Pierce.

He wanders among the assemblage of elites, loosening his tie as he takes in the exhibit. It is odd to see it all enclosed in glass, the details of a war that still wakes him up at night made into a clean display of weapons, photographs, and other artifacts. He steps into the side room to find the busiest part of the exhibit. The first thing he sees is the suit, cleaned and displayed in the center of the room so that the bright stars and stripes can attract everyone’s immediate attention as they enter. Bucky can only see from a distance; he doesn’t bother maneuvering through the throng of people admiring it. It sits, goggles, helmet, and all, on a mannequin of Steve’s measurements post-serum. Strung across the mannequin’s arm is the flimsy metal shield from his USO days.

Bucky walks along the rest of the rooms, looking at items he has held in his hands countless times. Some came from his own closet: a carefully chosen sketchbook, a pair of Steve’s old shoes, worn to their edge by years of use in Brooklyn, something Bucky had never been able to throw away. Some things Bucky didn’t realize still existed. A knife, a jacket, a rosary that has been misattributed. Bucky imagines them changing hands over the years, acquired by the museum who knows when.

A photo has been blown up on one end of the side room. In it, a grainy Steve looks up at the camera, smiling, blonde hair falling over his forehead. He leans over a table, planning something, and the others standing around it are blurred. Bucky can make out Peggy’s hair to the left, his own hand on the far end of the table. He is surprised that they choose one of the unstaged photographs, but then again, Steve had never needed to be posed when it came to being Captain America. There are a few smaller paper items beneath the photo, including a few comic books in mint condition. Bucky pauses at a faded piece of paper, encased in glass a little lower than eye level.

A Letter Home to a Special Girl? reads the block lettering of the caption. The pencilled words of the letter have faded, making it nearly impossible to read. After staring at it long enough, Bucky can barely make out a small selection of Steve’s disappearing handwriting.

   k ,

                       a wh e since w te.                                                      hink too                                         out alive f

say,          mad.                   here                                        right thing                                                         right?

different now.
                            whole world
                                                                                                      You’re still

Til
S

Bucky reads the letter again and again, eyes scanning for any other words that can be made out over the stains and discoloration. He searches his mind for any memory of the letter, of any of the ones that he received before, but none of the words are there any longer. He can remember with great clarity the feeling of blood trickling down his feet, the cold whisper of a scalpel. The letters, though, escape him. His eyes grow wet, and he moves away, other spectators taking his place to squint at the papers on display. He watches them flow through the room, most of them half his age. They take in the exhibit with admiration, intrigue, boredom.

“You alright, darling?” Peggy asks as she comes up behind him.

He nods as she stands beside him in the alcove he has taken refuge in. She slips an arm around his, grabbing his bicep as if getting an escort. He leans into her small frame, some of the tension releasing from his body. If anyone could understand how suffocating this room is, it would be her. They stand for a moment, neither saying anything, and she is like a liferaft keeping him afloat.

“Do you think they would all be here devoting this to him if they knew?”

“It is an interesting thought,” Peggy replies. “Do you wish they knew?”

Bucky has to think about this for a second.

“He would,” he says with certainty. “He wouldn’t be able to stand the thought of them erasing that part of him. I can see him all these years at the marches, finding his new fight.”

Peggy smiles as she looks into the crowd. Bucky knows that they weren’t the only ones, during the war or before, but it still felt that way to him. He could hardly imagine what the world would have to say about their hero being queer.

***

The shrill chime of the alarm rouses Bucky out of a dream he can’t remember once he opens his eyes. The room is dark. He gets out of bed and shivers once. Rolling the stiffness out of his shoulder, he pulls open the curtains and blinks at the late morning light. He does not technically have any reason to go in today, so he takes his time getting dressed and making breakfast. The blackberry jam he spreads on his toast reminds him of summer, and he leans over the island, pulling out his phone. Fourteen missed calls make him pause and set down the toast. The eggs on the stove behind him start to overcook as he scrolls through the call log. Most of them are unfamiliar numbers. He plays the first voicemail, and Peggy’s voice fills the kitchen.

“Call me and we’ll figure this out.”

Ignoring the other messages, Bucky redials her number and puts the phone to his ear. For a moment he considers that something big might have happened, and he’ll have more work to do today than he thought. As the line begins to ring, he opens the front door and sees his own face staring up at him from the doormat. He grabs the paper and clicks off his phone.

It’s his official photo, the one that still shows up in his SHIELD file. His face may be the same in structure, but his hair is cut short under the olive cap and his eyes are too warm. Bucky stares down at the headline, a numbness invading his brain like fog. The phone rings next to him, and his eggs are ruined.

FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH?
WWII HERO JAMES BARNES ALIVE & WELL

It is not that big of a problem, he assures Peggy that afternoon in her office. She looks at him hard, the guilt clear in her eyes over pushing him to attend the opening. He offers a smile. He doesn’t want her to feel bad about this. It should not bother him so much, he thinks. He had a few decades of anonymity, and he is still a SHIELD agent. He’s perfectly capable from avoiding attention if he wants to.

“Maybe it’s time,” she says as he starts to leave, having assured her that nothing needs to be handled. There is no warpath for her to start down. He turns back in question. “You’ve distanced yourself from it for a long time. Maybe it is good for you to be more than a character in stories that no one reads anymore.”

He spends three days on SHIELD property with no field assignment but unwilling to leave the building. It surprises him that he misses his apartment.

Sharon comes in from a solo assignment for a briefing and stays after the meeting is ended. She lingers near the end of the long conference table as the rest of them file out. Bucky stands, stretching his back. The sleeping quarters lack decent mattresses.

“The whole country is going crazy over you. They’re full of questions and conspiracies.”

“Yeah, well, look at this face. I was born for fame.” He forms his mouth into a smile before falling back into seriousness. “Is it mostly good or bad?”

Sharon shrugs and says, “Depends on the news outlet. Most people just want to know where you’ve been.”

An empty laugh escapes his mouth. There are a few stories he could tell them.

May 2000

In Conversation with James Barnes
His First Interview Since 1945

When I meet Sergeant James “Bucky” Barnes at a local diner, he looks like any other patron. He has a vaguely military presence, and as we exchange pleasantries, he maintains a business-like attitude towards the interview. He may not look like the comic book character our parents grew up reading about or the figure mentioned in your history textbook. Long brown hair tucked under a baseball cap, his eyes sweep the room every couple of minutes without breaking focus from our conversation. He is tall and broad, his eyes kind but tired. Just visible at the end of one rolled shirt sleeve is a metal prosthetic arm. He listens to my questions with some scrutiny, seeming to anticipate a trick.

We start with the question that has been on everyone’s minds since he was first spotted at the Smithsonian’s World War II retrospective only three months ago, looking as if he had stepped out of one of the exhibit’s photographs.

The government has been rather unwilling to comment on your physical appearance, much to the scientific community’s frustration. Maybe you could help fill in the gaps for people who remember your story ending at the bottom of a mountain?

Most people know where Captain America came from. They picked a scrawny kid from Brooklyn and pumped him full of an experimental serum. It cured his asthma, made him big and strong. Then he saved a bunch of POWs—my sorry self included—and won the war. Well when they had me in that prison camp, they gave me their own version of that serum. Nobody realized at first, not until I fell off the train and survived. The serum kept me alive, and now it keeps my cells from aging. At least that’s what they tell me.

So you survived that fall and were found after Captain Rogers’ crash, once the world thought you were dead?

Yeah.

I have to ask, what have you been doing all of this time?

That’s a pretty long story....

September 2001

Bucky hears it on the radio first. A few minutes later, he has practically run across the city. Peggy is still in her pajamas, a cup of tea gone cold on the table in front of her. Bucky closes the door and sits on the couch beside her. He tells her that Sharon is in London, and the panic disappears from her brown eyes.

“We’re both going to be busy today.” His words float in the air of her perfectly clean living room as they watch the first tower fall.

“We’re going to be busy for a while,” she says, going to get dressed.

April 2005

The scent of Dior and lavender hits Bucky the second he walks in the door, mingling with the smell of the take out bag in his hand. He breathes in deeply. It’s his first day back after nearly a month in the field—the longest he has spent out of the city at once in a long time. Part of him wanted to go home and fall into bed, but more than tired, he is lonely. He sets the food on the kitchen counter.

“Pegs?”

“In here,” she calls from the living room. He finds her sitting with a glass of amber liquid, Sharon in the seat across from her.

“I thought you were back in London,” Bucky says, sitting in the empty chair and stretching his legs out. Sun shines in through the window behind him, warm on the back of his neck.

“I got homesick,” Sharon says with a smile.

“I would have brought more food if I’d known,” Bucky says.

Peggy’s phone rings, and she rolls her eyes as she looks at the number. The lines around her forehead and mouth are etched deeply and her hair has thinned out. Bucky smiles as she answers the phone curtly and walks to her office. Just this morning he had been searching the mirror for any trace of a gray hair, any wrinkle beginning to appear around his eyes, but the only thing that looked older to him was his eyes.

He comes out of the thought he was lost in to find Sharon watching him, a small smile playing on her lips. He makes a face, trying to pretend he hadn’t wandered off.

“You know I was only ten years old the first time we met,” she says.

“I remember,” Bucky says with a smile. “Peggy brought you to the office with her, and you shook my hand.”

Sharon thinks for a second. “I’d spent my whole life listening to Aunt Peggy’s stories and reading those comic books. I was so nervous to actually meet you.” She lets out a laugh. Bucky grins. “When I was a girl, my mother used to worry about her living up here all alone, working all the time. It wasn’t the right life for a lady. But none of us knew that she wasn’t alone. She had you.”

Sharon takes a drink, and they let the room grow quiet. Bucky looks down at the carpet. It had taken him too long to realize the same thing.

“I never really considered that she had actually lived those stories,” Sharon says wistfully. “Not fully at least. People forget that the two of you were there doing the things they read about. You lost your best friend and had to spend the rest of your life listening to the world memorialize him. I understand why you don’t like talking about it to the journalists and historians.”

Bucky smiles a wry smile and leans over to pick up Peggy’s glass. “It’s not just that,” he says. He takes a drink, an old habit even though it doesn’t make him as brave as it did once upon a time. Sharon is looking at him, curious. Sitting there with that open expression on her face, she looks exactly like Peggy from years ago.

“Before he was Captain America he was just Steve, and he was mine.” He takes another drink, emptying the crystal glass. “I’m not sure when it started, it was growing for so long. We were pals our whole lives, and then it was like he was part of me, even before. I knew him better than I knew myself, and he knew me back. They can remember him however they want. That’s how it works. But I remember him small and stubborn, the way I loved him first.”

Sharon’s face carries a note of surprise, but only for a second. The truth seems to dawn on her as she nods. He has always wondered why no one could see it. It felt like the truth was written all over his body, always had been. It’s the reason he used to be so damn scared all the time. She doesn’t say anything, and for that he is thankful. Something about saying it out loud after all this time makes him feel inescapably tired.

***

After they eat and Sharon goes home, Peggy takes a seat on one of the stools at the breakfast counter. It had been easy living with Steve when they were young. He had always practically lived there, after all, even before Sarah died. There was hardly a transition; one day he just stopped leaving. He has lived alone for most of his life, ever since waking up in that hospital. It had seemed absurd, the idea of sharing that space with anyone else, someone who didn’t know him the way Steve knew him. In this moment, though, as he starts washing the dishes, Peggy sitting idly a few feet away, he can see it. Another life, maybe. Or just the understanding that it would have been alright. They see each other, him and Peggy. He loves her in a way he never expected. And in this kitchen right now, he is content.

He sets the last dish in the drainboard, dries his hands, and turns to lean against the counter. Peggy is looking at him, and he can tell that she has something to say.

“I’m retiring,” she says.

This should not be surprising, but it has never crossed his mind before. No matter how silver her hair turns or how much slower she walks, it is difficult to remember that she has changed in the ways that he hasn’t. He might have considered it when she stepped down as Director, but her board position has kept her nearly as busy. She still works out of the same office, for Christ’s sake, even as the building evolves around her.

She watches him, the lines at the corners of her brown eyes creasing with anticipation for his reaction. He smiles an honest smile.

“I’m happy for you, Pegs.”

“Really?” she asks, the corners of her mouth rising. He pulls her off of the stool and into a hug. She reaches her arms up around his neck, and they’re more fragile than he had noticed. They stand there for a moment, and he breathes in the scent of her perfume.

“You could do it if you wanted,” she says softly.

“Retire? Haven’t you read the magazines? I’m not even thirty.” He tries to turn it into a joke, but she looks at him with a serious face.

“You’ve given up enough of yourself. You don’t have to give anymore.”

“Thank you,” he murmurs, pulling her close again and planting a kiss on her temple. He thinks about a million things when he says it, the countless times over the years that he didn’t say it. It might not have always been perfect, he thinks, but she has.

She smiles at him with sad eyes. She knows that he can’t put it down, or won’t.

May 2010

The idea had made him a little uncomfortable when Peggy first suggested it. It seemed like too much, like a spectacle. It would have made Steve uncomfortable, for sure. Maybe that’s what made him agree. He passes it so often walking through the lobby that he barely notices it anymore.

Put simply, the statue is beautiful. It is more relief than figure and about three times lifesize. Bucky stares up at the clean black marble surface as he scans his security card. The features of Steve’s face are unmistakable, as if the sharply carved shield in his hands doesn’t give his identity away on its own. He isn’t quite charging into battle, but it looks like he might be about to. Bucky pictures the handful of self-portraits that Steve had drawn back in the day as he walks towards the elevators.

“Have you seen the news?” Sharon asks.

Bucky sets two coffees down on the table and takes a seat as she slides her phone over. Bucky makes a sound of affirmation, scrolling through the article briefly anyway. He has been seeing the headlines ever since the infamous Stark made his announcement and sent the press into a frenzy.

“Do we have hands in this?” she asks, bringing the disposable coffee cup to her lips.

“Not since he got back,” Bucky says. “I asked Fury if we’ve got it handled, but I guess he’s not an easy kid to control.” He drinks his coffee.

“Tony Stark is a little old for you to call him a kid, don’t you think?” Sharon tilts her head at him.

“I wanted to punch Howard Stark in the face before the kid was even born. I’ll call him what I like.”

“You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead,” she teases. Bucky laughs and takes another drink.

“I’m sure Stark would have plenty of shit to say about that suit.”

June 2011

Bucky turns the last corner and catches a glimpse of blonde hair.

“Sharon?” She is standing down the hall beside his front door. He closes the distance between them and sees her furrowed brow and nervous eyes. “What’s wrong?”

She shifts her weight once, but hesitancy really was never her style. Tact, maybe. Strategy, absolutely. Her eyes meet his as she speaks.

“There have been rumors.” Bucky takes a breath. Sharon reporting SHIELD rumors cannot be a good thing.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“They say that a team found something in the Arctic. A plane.” Cold swells into Bucky’s chest. The cube. Of course it couldn’t stay hidden forever. No matter what sacrifices had been made.

“What did they do with it? That thing is too dangerous to have in anyone’s hands.”

“They found something else,” Sharon replies, brushing past his concerns. Bucky’s mind goes blank. “People are saying that they found Captain Rogers. Alive.”

***

He has been pacing for so long it feels like he must have worn a groove into the hardwood floor of the office when the door finally opens.

“Get me the senator on—” Fury breaks off when he sees Bucky standing in front of his desk, one of the most powerful desks in the world. “How the hell did you get in here?”

The door closes behind him, and Nick shakes his head, not acknowledging the look on Bucky’s face as he walks casually towards his desk and takes a seat. He mutters something about the best security in the world.

“Where is he?” Bucky demands. He cannot wait another second, not with this red panic-rage boiling inside him. Fury looks up at him seriously, measuring the situation in a look.

“Who?” he asks in a calm voice. The word barely escapes before Bucky has thrown his hands down onto the desk, cracking the surface, his metal fist creating a dent.

“Don’t play games with me, Nick. Where is he?”

Fury studies him for a moment before standing and sweeping around towards the front door, his long coat following like a cape. Bucky unclenches his fists and follows.

They end up in a warehouse of sorts, though it sits in the middle of the busiest part of the city. Bucky follows Nick through a large cement room shrouded in shadows, full of agents, some in lab coats. Bucky’s boots pound on the floor as they approach a room-sized box in the middle of the space. Fury turns to face him.

“What is this place?” Bucky asks.

“When he wakes up, if he wakes up, we don’t want him to go into shock. This is a very different world than he left.”

As if Bucky needs to be told that. Fury gestures to the door without another word, and as Bucky opens it, his stomach grows heavy, a layer of ice seeming to settle into his chest.

The room is a miraculous illusion. The details are good, down to the breeze coming in the open window. The only thing that draws his attention, however, is the figure sleeping in the cot. He pulls a wooden chair from the wall towards the side of the bed and silently sits. His eyes sweep over Steve, getting caught on his face. It is as peaceful as the summer mornings when Bucky had been unwilling to wake him and disturb that serene look. Stay asleep, he thinks for a moment, but every cell in his body begs for the opposite. He had always been selfish when it came to Steve. He watches the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, afraid to move and disrupt anything. Finally, Bucky reaches out and grabs his hand.

Bucky doesn’t know how long he sits there, empty prayers echoing inside his head. If Sarah could see them now, he thinks for a moment. Steve’s hand tightens for a second before going limp. Bucky stands up, leaning over the bed in panic. Steve’s eyes blink open, and they are even bluer than Bucky remembers. They are blank for a moment, then flash with fear, before softening.

“Buck?” he says in a gravelly voice. Bucky’s throat seizes at the sound. He grabs Steve’s hand again and smiles.

“Hey, Stevie.”

Steve’s forehead wrinkles as he sits up. Something comes together on his face.

“We made it,” he says, looking around in wonder, though it quickly turns to confusion.

“Steve,” Bucky manages to keep his voice even. “What do you remember?”

“I was flying the plane,” he says with some confusion. “I didn’t have any options. I flew it into the ice.” Bucky watches nervously as Steve gets out of bed. He is not ready to call in a medical officer. Steve looks around the room as he speaks before finding Bucky’s eyes. “Buck, where are we?”

“Steve, you’ve been asleep for a long time.” Artificial sunlight strikes Steve’s hair and turns it gold as he looks at Bucky. “It’s 2011. It’s been almost seventy years.”

It takes a moment for him to process this, but then he looks up at Bucky, still lost.

“But you died. And now you’re…” He reaches out a hand and touches Bucky’s face.

“The fall didn’t kill me. It wasn’t until after you crashed that they captured the last Hydra bases and found me.”

“Buck,” Steve whispers, cautiously taking his hand. Bucky considers the number of cameras that must be in this room, the number of SHIELD employees currently watching their every move. He doesn’t care. He puts his hands on either side of Steve’s face and pulls him into a kiss. He dissolves into him, into a moment decades overdue. When they step apart, Steve stares at him with a smile before glancing at their surroundings.

“Where are we?” he asks again.

“Home,” Bucky answers.

***

Steve keeps pace with him as they walk through the familiar halls of the building. It used to make Bucky uncomfortable signing in and walking through the assisted living center, mostly because it made him nervous to see Peggy so different. Some days it seems like she is slipping away, her memories encased in a thick fog that leaves her dazed. Others, it is like nothing has changed. Bucky worries sometimes that he makes it more difficult, looking the same as always, jumbling any sense of chronology. At least with Sharon, Peggy has a visual reference.

He glances over at Steve, who looks nervous. He has taken everything in quietly as Bucky struggles to remember to explain the things that are so familiar to him now. They haven’t had much time to talk about anything; Steve finally managed to ward off the science team that has become obsessed with him. Bucky wouldn’t have minded them observing Steve for a few more days, even if it meant being stuck at the base. Most of the time, he looks at Steve and expects him to disappear.

They arrive at the private room and stop in front of the door. Steve looks at him, but Bucky is uncertain how to proceed.

“I think I should probably go in first,” he says. “She gets confused sometimes, and I don’t want to make it worse.”

Steve nods, but there is something in his face. He is still trying to catch up on almost seventy years. It dawns on Bucky that the last time the three of them were in a room together, Bucky had felt mostly indifferent towards Peggy. Steve offers to wait there, and Bucky nods appreciatively.

“Morning Pegs,” Bucky says as he steps inside, not bothering to close to door behind him.

“Have you read about this?” Peggy is sitting up in bed. She gestures to the newspaper in her hand, gold-rimmed glasses perched on her nose. She looks at him with bright eyes, her voice all business. Bucky can imagine her walking past the identity checks into Nick’s office to criticize whatever current event has caught her attention and what SHIELD should be doing differently.

Panic courses through him for a second, but there would be no reason for Steve to have made the papers yet. Only a select group at SHIELD had been allowed access to the information, and they had yet to discuss press releases. The storm is coming, Bucky is sure, but he wants hold it off as long as possible and let Steve adjust.

“How are you feeling?” Bucky asks. Peggy folds the newspaper and shrugs. She does a double take as he stands next to the bed.

“What is it, James?” She pulls out her commanding voice, sensing his atmosphere. He knows she hates being handled lightly, but he just doesn’t know how to say the words. Something inside makes him irrationally afraid that if he makes it real by telling Peggy, it won’t be any more. That he won’t be standing out in that hallway.

“Fury’s been sending crews to the Arctic,” he finally says. Peggy studies him, her brow furrowed. “They found him, Pegs. Steve is alive.”

“I don’t believe it,” she whispers. Steve has appeared beside him, and Bucky is almost startled for a moment.

“It’s me,” Steve says. He steps forward when Peggy reaches a hand out. She rests her palm on his chest as if to feel that he isn’t a mirage. She looks at Bucky with wet eyes and laughs. It isn’t quite sad or joyful, but the laugh is years in the making. They stand there, the three of them. Bucky grins.

***

STEVE ROGERS FOUND ALIVE
GOV ASKS FOR FOR TIME AND PRIVACY

CAN IT BE TRUE?
CAPTAIN AMERICA BACK FROM THE DEAD

2011 PERSON OF THE YEAR:
A HERO RETURNS IN OUR TIME OF NEED?

***

“Just when I thought I’d gone off the celebrity radar,” Bucky grumbles playfully. Steve pulls out the smile that he used to reserve for the cameras as they take turns signing an old comic book. After the others in the park have settled and left them alone, the smile becomes wry, which is also familiar. Steve pulls the bill of his hat lower over his face and settles onto the bench they have claimed for the afternoon. If Bucky tries real hard, he can almost pretend that the man sitting next to him is small and that they’re in Central eating day old ham sandwiches. He wonders if Steve is thinking of the same thing.

Sharon will be around later. She has kept her distance, but Bucky knows she is as excited as the rest of the country to meet Captain America. More so, perhaps, because she knows some of Steve too. Another thing to figure out, Bucky thinks grimly. There is so much to consider, so many journalists and spectators, when all he wants is to hold Steve’s hand and feel him there beside him.

“Is this what you did while I was gone?” Steve asks, pulling Bucky out of his head. “Sit in the park and pine after me?”

Bucky’s laugh is genuine, and he pushes Steve’s shoulder.

***

“I’M NOT STRAIGHT”
CAPTAIN AMERICA COMES OUT OF ICE, CLOSET

CAPTAIN QUEER
STEVE ROGERS THREATENS REPORTER

CAPTAIN ROGERS AND JAMES BARNES:
SCHOOLYARD FRIENDS OR BATTLEFIELD ROMANCE?

***

Bucky walks into the bedroom with a sense of nervousness, feeling stupid about it. He doesn’t know why having Steve in the apartment makes him uneasy. Nothing in the world should feel so familiar as seeing Steve standing at the bureau in the morning light. He watches from the doorway as Steve runs his hands over the items on the top of the dresser: a watch, a journal, Sarah’s rosary, the framed photo of Steve, an old shot of Bucky and Peggy taken in her office. Steve turns to the stack of books on the side table, and Bucky is hit. He goes to leave, but he must make some noise because Steve turns and notices him.

“What is it?” he asks, seeing Bucky’s face. Bucky shakes his head, the words caught in his throat. He sits on the bed, his vision going blurry.

“I’m so sorry. Steve, I’m so sorry.”

The bed shifts as Steve sits beside him, a hand on his shoulder.

“You couldn’t have known, Buck. I– I’m the one who left you on that mountain.” Steve’s voice breaks, blue eyes watery.

“I was supposed to be dead,” Bucky says with eyes closed, shaking his head. “But I knew what that serum could do, and I just accepted that you were gone. I should have known. I should have known.”

“Hey, look at me.” Steve grabs him by the shoulders, forcing them face to face. “I’m here now, okay? I’m here.”

With the warm weight of those hands on him, Bucky lets himself accept it for the first time. Bucky nods, and Steve leans in to brush their lips together softly, like a question. Bucky laughs as he returns the kiss.

“What do we do now?” Steve asks.

A lot of futures spread out before them in Bucky’s mind, and he knows that things are going to get complicated. Ghosts don’t get to come back from the dead and get an easy happily ever after. But in that moment, they are alone. No SHIELD, no reporters, just two sixteen year-old boys in a tiny apartment, trying to take care of each other. And that is enough.

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be;

and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger...

He’s always, always in my mind...as my own being.”