Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

ACT I: The Changeover.

“It’s called a changeover. The movie goes on and nobody in the audience has any idea.”

If Steve could’ve thought much of anything he might have blamed the shock for what happened after.

One second he’s on a train; snow whipping across his cheek like razor blades and cold steel pressed against his face as his heart thrums louder in his ears than the whistle of the biting wind. He’s trying to make sense of what shouldn’t –what couldn’t have happened. An impossibility that’ll become reality –how can I have, how, it can’t be real, it's not, what did I do, it can’t it be, it can’t no no –the moment he opens his welded shut eyes.

There’s a part of him pressing to finish the mission, catch Zola before it’s too late.

He thinks he might be screaming. The fresh taste of blood fills his mouth and throat as he curls into the broken wall hanging over the edge.

He can’t move –all he can do his hide his face against the metal and will time to go back –will everything to just cease. He’s holding his breath, his tears frosted against his face and thinks he might just be able to pry his frozen fingers free off the rail and follow behind; he can’t on his own, he can’t go on, he can’t it’s too much he can’t he failed he can’t–

✪

When he opens his eyes the cold of the Alps is nowhere to be found, and for a split second Steve thinks it never happened at all.

But he’s leaning against a wall with Colonel Phillips’ hand on his shoulder. The normally stoic man looks apologetic and he’s telling Steve ‘Barnes was a good man. A good soldier.' He's telling Steve to ‘Get a drink son, honor your friend.’

Steve’s clean as a whistle, alone, in his dress uniform, being told Buck. Bucky–

He’s living a nightmare.

His throat feels raw and he can still taste blood in his teeth.

Steve manages to make his legs move and finds himself wandering the deserted streets of London trying to not fall to his knees and yell until his brand new lungs give out. He doesn’t know what happened with Zola. He can’t begin to reconcile the fact that that rat might be alive out there when Bucky. When Bucky.

He can’t. He can’t think about it.

There are spots in his eyes as he finally stumbles into the first open door he sees.

A bottle and a half of bitter whiskey later he gives up trying to get drunk and peels at the label. He battles off reality from attempting to overwhelm him, cursing at everything that brought him into this awful fucking nightmare. The Nazi’s, God, Zola, the government, the g–the goddamn train. Steve hates himself. He hates Hydra. He hates being Captain America. Hates the fucking military for dragging good men into war; good men who never wanted to hold a rifle in the first place.

He didn’t risk his slender frame in jail trying to join a fight that sent good men to –fucking die for government acquisitions. He joined to save people. He joined to fucking help people who needed him.

Was this what he asked for? Was this helping?

Peggy finds him when there’s a quarter of the bottle left, giving platitudes that with every line send him deeper and deeper into his guilt. Steve knows she means well, but he’s still on the train, the taste of blood in his mouth and the feel of frost on his face. Peggy wasn’t there. Doesn’t know how close Steve was, how he failed.

How Steve failed the one thing he had in this world.

He can’t drown out the horror as much as he tries to; knocking back glass after glass, the whiskey burning hot down his throat.

‘His choice.’ Peggy’s voice fades out as he stares into his glass, vision finally going hazy. The last thing he can think before his head tilts forwards is that Erskine should’ve picked someone else.

✪

Steve blearily opens his eyes again surrounded by shards of shattered glass, metal, and snow; a trail of blood from his slumped over body slowly leaking towards the rising frigid waters by his feet.

His chest feels heavy with a physical pain that sends his guilt out of his head for the first time in hours. He can’t seem to move his legs. His arm is bent at an angle it shouldn't be able to. He’s locked to a wall by a pole through his shoulder –he can’t feel his arm past the rod. The only warmth that seems to be left in him is the hot blood pouring down his face as he gasps out frosty ragged breaths.

His mouth gurgles with blood –the taste familiar in this unknown frozen hell.

He doesn’t know where he is, what happened, or how long has passed – He can only see white snow and blue metal, a film of red over his vision, blood running over his eyes. He can barely make out the ripped Hydra banner in the corner. It tells him nothing and he doesn’t care much regardless.

With every breath he chokes back blood, tears and sobs. There’s no energy left in him as the water reaches his hips, his skin feeling too cold to bare before the feeling resides and fire starts burning the core of his bones. Minutes – hours –seconds pass before he realizes he’s going to die.

Steve closes his eyes with a gasping sob as his chest is submerged.

He’s going to die, and that’s alright with him –as long as he got one over Hydra, it’s all fine with him…

✪

Steve wakes up listening to a baseball game he’s already been to, and air that didn’t smell like anything at all. The taste of blood is replaced with cotton and his clothes are softer than anything he’s felt in his life.

His heartbeat starts to thrum in his ears as he thinks-

Something’s not right.

Steve slips back asleep.

✪

His head rolls up and he blinks back to consciousness sitting in a rich leather car with a strangely dressed woman. She has a sharp cut fringe and is wearing a man’s suit and slacks. She taps away at a bar of metal –maybe glass? plastic?–in her hand and doesn’t seem to pause as she explains to him that a team of doctors and psychiatrists are ready to help him adjust to his seven decades asleep.

Seven decades.

There’s a heart stopping moment while she talks on and on that this might not be a nightmare but another cold hard reality of the last few hours of his life. This morning he’d been on a cliff side, going over a crazy mission with his men like any other day and now –now he’s barely holding back from doubling over and screaming into his knees.

By some grace of God she doesn’t drop any more life changing truths on him but it doesn’t stop the pressure building behind his eyes as he watches the sleek metal buildings pass.

“Don’t worry Captain. We have everything on hand to make this transition as smooth as possible for you.”

There’s still always a chance this might be hell.

He does what they ask of him in a haze; his almost hourly vital checks, heart monitoring, machines to look at his bones and brain. He’s confided to some upscale hospital room while this goes on, the occasional medic or agent slowly updating him on technology and medicine as equipment click, beep, and trill without pause. None of it truly feels real.

For two days he lets them poke with their sleek, futuristic tools until they insist he sees another doctor to make sure he’s adjusting smoothly. Steve really isn’t keen on seeing somebody to ‘talk’ to but the medical doctors had insisted ‘mental health’ was important and vital to his well-being.

He suspected they just didn’t want to lose an asset like Captain America to shell-shock.

As much as he wants to refuse it‘s unfortunately a condition he has to follow if he wants to leave the four walls he’d been trapped behind.

Until that point Steve had honestly considered his lost time to be a mixture of grief and shock. An hour before he’s to leave his S.H.I.E.L.D assigned housing he debates whether or not he should mention it at all. The fact that he couldn’t remember the apparent week he had lost between the train and the Valkyrie going down.

But it had stopped hadn’t it? What would be the use bringing it up now?

Keeping it to himself was his first and really only plan of action, and the biggest obstacle seemed to be Steve himself. Not taking into account that Steve couldn’t tell a lie to save his own hide, if he said he was absolutely fine (which he wasn’t, he knew) he would just be put back into action wouldn’t he?

Why would they care if some footnote from their past was raised from the dead if not to be used for something? There would be no reason not to use him at that point. He’d put on the uniform and head right back out. On his own. Doing what needed to be done.

His breathing was rapid and short, a pressure pressed against his forehead as the sound of rushing water filled his ears. Steve’s eyes closed, his body beginning to gently rock back and forth, back and forth, as he racked his brain for some sign, some strength to do what he needed to do, what he had to do-

He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t live in this time, he couldn’t sit back and do nothing, he couldn’t talk to these strangers, he couldn’t let them down, he couldn’t go back out there again and he couldn’t do it alone he couldn’t be-

✪

He doesn’t know what he talks to the doctor about.

Steve slowly comes to a few hours after his appointment sitting on a plush bed in what appears to be a plainly furnished home from the richer side of Brooklyn. He looks down to the lined notepad in his hands. DR YUSIAN 1600 MON. WED. FRI. LIVING ROOM TELEVISION is written at the top in his shorthand.

He doesn’t know who Dr. Yusian is; he can’t remember writing this, or even leaving the hospital room at all.

There’s a few other things written down too –a few dates, words or places Steve can’t recognize. Some numbers in random sequences, two addresses written down at the bottom. One is his current location if ‘HOME’ was supposed to be where he currently was. The other is for a gym around the corner if the New York street system hadn’t changed completely.

He knows he should be concerned now –that the gaps in memory are probably more than just grief. He admits it to himself as he stares at the number two pencil by his side, the notes that mean next to nothing to him that he left….for himself.

This wasn’t normal grieving behaviour. This wasn’t normal war stress.

Steve can’t bring himself care.

✪

Steve blacks out three more times (that he knows of) in the week following his wake up; always an hour or so before his appointments, always for roughly the same amount of time, and always waking up sitting back straight on his bed.

He spends a good amount of time staring at walls while waiting for nightfall or the early morning. There’s a voice in his ear that sounds like someone only he can remember from last week 70 years ago saying You’re in the future Steve! Get out there and take a look! And with a heavy heart he follows that advice as much as he hates to give credence to his new world.

Steve looks out of place and he knows it as he rides the train to absolutely nowhere and back. He knows as he circles parking lots that use to be jobsites and coffee shops that serve more sugar in a cup than he’s ever had in a cake. He knows as he pays for groceries and his heart beats in his chest as he tries to rationalize spending a month’s rent on meals for two days.

Steve learns about the time he missed, fiddles with the S.H.I.E.L.D provided glass device until he stumbles upon a search option and pops in the dates and places on the note pad.

He’s horrified and unsurprised –a resigned disgust settling over him as he reads on and on.

They won the war with something called a nuke and proudly did it twice. They went back to war. Again. Again. And again. Good men shot for good things, countries rising doing cruel ones.

He finds a pile of files in a drawer one day, a note paper-clipped onto the top in his writing reading ‘DO NOT READ' and he opens it up to learn all the Howling Commandoes are dead. Howard died in the 1990’s, B- the Barnes’ are all gone too. Peggy is alive but her mind is going from old age –dementia they call it now –they give her a few years at best.

Most of the time he hides away at the local gym, trying to get out his frustrations and confusions to no avail –it’s possible he loses time there too. His mind can’t help but fill with photographic memories Steve wants to never lose and never think of again. He finds himself spiralling until he blinks; his knuckles cracked and bleeding and his mind blissfully quiet.

He’s not sure what he does during these blank moments but whatever he’s doing its working. Some S.H.I.E.L.D liaison calls to tell him Steve only had a few appointments left of his psychiatric evaluation. They’re glad to say there’s no appearance of permanent lasting damage.

Steve begs to differ but he’s grateful he’s not receiving electroshock or multiple lobotomies.

Steve has meetings with people who look uncomfortable and hesitate to inform him there are things he can’t say and things they advise him that he’ll have to get used to. He knows they expect him to snap when they tell him things. That dames aren’t dames anymore, queers have a community, smoking kills, a black man is president, women can wear as little as they want and all religions should be considered equal.

Would they be surprised Steve’s reality shattering moment is when he learns a soda costs as much as a load of groceries? How that’s the change that has him biting his fist at night thinking about years scraping together every last cent to survive the month –

How he wishes more than anything he could go back to that?

✪

Steve wakes and the first thing he takes in is that he’s eating.

Well, he’s in the middle of chewing something, jaw slightly unhinged, elbow on the table, head resting in his hand as he nearly spits out whatever’s sitting on his tongue in surprise.

He blinks a few times –tries to figure out where he is through his exhaustion. Steve knows before his mind clears that he’s neither at home or the gym, the sounds of sweeping and heavy armour trucks ringing around him.

He manages not to startle when he sees he’s surrounded by strangers in costumes –all more elaborate and modern than his own; each exhaustedly gorging down overstuffed rolled up bread. A man in a suit of steel, a woman in a skin tight black getup, a massive man in a red cape, two more men at the end, one older and shirtless with glasses, one blond in purple with a bow at his side.

Steve glances to the food in his hand to see he’s only taken a few bites, and slowly takes another to avoid attention. He doesn’t know what else to do. He doesn’t know how he got here, he doesn’t know who these people are and he’s not about to ask. He chews his spicy, chewy… thing (sandwich?) and tries to aim for subtle as he sits up to look around the area, nearly desperate for the smallest clue that will tell him what the hell is going on.

Everything he lays eyes on is covered in dust with the windows bombed out and debris littering the ground. Outside in the street a monster in armour lay unmoving. The strangers don’t seem to care –they look like they’ve been in a battle themselves. A few are even bleeding and based on how his face, arms and ribs feel, he thinks he might be in a similar state.

He might be in New York, there’s a certain look to the buildings but he can’t be sure. He hardly knows the city he was raised in anymore –not even the smell stayed the same.

Last he remembered he was walking into the gym, railing into a creaking punching bag as his frustration seemed to bubble over –now he’s in the aftermath of destruction with a bunch of comic book characters eating food he’s never seen nor tasted before.

Maybe he was going insane. After all; he was seeing a man in a cape and a man inside a robot eat sandwiches rolled into cylinders.

He thinks he might be breathing heavily as he chews on his fairly decent sandwich.

Steve may or may not be losing his mind and no one seems to notice and he can’t even be sure anyone else is real because he doesn’t know how he got here and the man in the red metal looks an awful like Howard Stark but what the hell was that thing laying in the street, how could he think up something like that? And God, it was only a week ago they were in the Alps-

His head droops back into his hand.

✪

The people in the restaurant were called the Avengers.

The Avengers were a group of enhanced individuals whose goal was to take down threats against the country and the planet.

The robot who looked like Howard Stark was in fact his son, Tony, who had more money than Steve thought humanly possible for one person to have. The man in the red cape was Thor, the actual god of lightning Thor. The man in the glasses was named Bruce Banner and he was also a massive green chaotic beast named Hulk. He didn’t know the name of the bow man and the redhead was only publically known as the Black Widow.

Captain America was the defacto leader of this group.

Steve Rogers learned this via public library computer.

Steve Rogers had to learn all this on a computer because 6 calendar months after that moment in the restaurant, he still hadn’t met his teammates.

Well he had met them. He just never seemed to remember it.

Anytime he walked into the massive eyesore that was Avengers tower, whether called or by free will, he was gone by the time the elevator doors closed. He’d resurface later always sitting on his bed, arms at his side facing the window out of his brownstone in Park Slope. Sometimes hours would have passed, sometimes days. When he’d been gone awhile, he’d sometimes come to with dirt and blood caked into his hair, stomach aching with hunger pains and head throbbing with the need to sleep.

The news sometimes told him what happened to him on those days, but most of the time Steve went without knowing.

He didn’t really mind.

Instead Steve spent his free time trying to cope with his new world. Sometimes he ate an early breakfast in a quiet diner, or grabbed a too sweet drink from a café before the morning rush. He bought clothes that other people his (mental) age were wearing and tried to navigate the internet. He took walks in the nearby park and around the neighbourhoods he used to frequent when it didn't hurt to do so.

He’d only managed to make two acquaintances; a pair of ladies named Bernice and Sandra that were long past retired and did laps to keep their hips in shape. Steve didn’t know if they knew who he was but they were always happy to stop and chat when he crossed their paths. When he started carrying around a travel notepad to write down the confusing words he heard every day, their suggestions for things to catch up on were the first things he jotted down.

Steve didn’t know if the him who worked with the Avengers had any friends.

He wasn’t really confident he knew what the other him did with his time their lives were so separate. The one time it did intersect it had been a jarring experience that had only resulted in an awkward encounter with the man with the bow.

He’d received a text one day from Tony Stark telling him to come in for a uniform adjustment and last he remembered was crawling into bed sometime around midnight before Steve suddenly had come to mid run in a futuristic high tech gym.

His leg gave on impact, not realizing he was in a dead sprint and he quickly tucked his body into a roll on instinct. He was catapulted back by the treadmill, machine cracking as he hit the tail of it with his shoulder. Steve’s body was tossed into a roll before coming to a stop on his back a few feet away, blinking up in shock at the ceiling as he panted heavily.

What am I doing here? He distantly thought as someone came running over calling him by his title in a panic.

“Cap! Cap –Hey man, you okay?”

After a pause Steve jerkily nodded his head trying to calm his breathing. The machine hadn’t done any damage but the sudden arrival in a place that wasn’t the room was leaving him lost and thrown. Literally.

He sat up on his elbows as his eyes bounced around the room; the equipment, mirrors, and obvious StarkTech adjustments standing out. The scruffy blond man leaning over him in mild worry was only adding to his confusion because Steve didn’t know this man’s name and Steve didn’t know why he was here.

“Rogers, you good? You’re scaring me a bit –gotta let me know you didn’t get a concussion or something. Wait, can you even get a concussion?”

With effort Steve swallowed and tried to get his senses together. “Yea- yea’ Sorry, had m’head in the clouds an' lost my footing.”

The man regarded at him with raised brows before he put his hand out to help Steve up, a smile fighting around the edges of his mouth. “Captain America can’t multitask? Ain’t that bad for the team leader?” He teased, smirk out in full.

Steve managed a weak chuckle as he let the smaller man help him off the floor.

Was he a friend? What was his name? Why can’t I remember?

“Thanks. Think I’m gonna’ call it a day.”

“Probably for the best. Machine looks beyond repair anyways -Hey, you know you should really join us tonight. You know how badly Tony’s dying to educate you on modern film.”

Steve rubbed at his neck awkwardly, shaking his head with a falsely apologetic smile. “Thanks but not tonight.”

The man waved Steve away with a tsked tongue, his eyes rolling before Steve was finished speaking. “Sure, you always say that. We’ll get you one of these days Cap. Ay, just so you know –the Brooklyn accent? Makes you ten times cooler. Can’t believe it took a fall on a treadmill to get that to come out.”

Steve blinked stupidly before he forced another wooden laugh, “Right. I’ll –uh, see you.”

He turned to leave, realizing 10 steps in that there wasn’t a door in sight. His back straightened, and trying his best to ignore the blond man’s amused (and worried) expression, Steve headed back the other way, ears ringing as he walked through the first set of doors he saw.

By the time the change room tiles come into view he’s leaning against the wall with his vision rapidly darkening.

✪

One Tuesday Steve wakes up with a pencil and his notepad held weakly in his hands, a dozen or so boxes surrounding his bed half filled with items. He looks down and the words scrawled in his own quick hand make his heart stop.

He knows he should be concerned he’s directly talking to himself and he knows he should be worried that he’s making decisions when he’s blacked out. Steve knows he’s going insane because when he came to covered in bruises with four days gone he didn’t bat an eye but moving away from Brooklyn disturbs him a thousand times more than that had. And he should be worried about all that. He knows.

But his overwhelming thought while his blood pumps in his ears is absolutely none of those things.

It’s; I wonder who he is.

Steve would look up his problem on the internet if he didn’t think SHIELD was watching his every move. It’s why he buys paperback books and uses public libraries.

(He likes to believe it’s why he doesn’t let himself break down in his too soft bed shattering apart at the seams like he aches to weekly.)

They probably already knew he searched ‘Captain America’ and ‘Avengers’ after nearly every mission on his phone; probably thought he was an ego maniac with the amount of hours Steve spent looking at footage of himself. Rewinding videos of some destroyed street turned battlefield, watching himself call out commands that he had no memory of and talking to the public with a smile and voice a team had trained into him in 1943.

God knows what they would think if he started looking up ‘losing days to memory loss’ and ‘blacking out before battles’. He doesn’t even take the chance searching it, that query not being nearly as easy to write off as searching video footage of himself and his teammates.

He lets the other him move to D.C without hassle and says his goodbyes to Sandra and Bernice. Steve leaves New York with all Avenger’s numbers in his phone and by process of elimination he finally learns the Black Widow ( Nat ) and Hawkeye’s ( CLINT :) ) names.

Steve loses more time in D.C. then he did in New York. They want him at the Triskilion nearly every day and the missions are almost weekly, lasting for two or three days at a time. He gives up his workouts to the other him when Steve realizes he’s working out twice a day –everyday –and after a few days his muscles stop burning with every twitch and breath.

He spends his nights walking a city he can’t compare to anything else and sketching out places that don’t make his heart bleed. Sometimes he’ll find an addition on his list by the other him and looks it up. Steve finds a bodega that’s cramped enough to remind him of Brooklyn but doesn't hurt to wander in and indulges in random off brand snacks that catch his eye. He does his best to catch up on history and events and tries his hardest to keep up with the world.

More notes show up over time and Steve can’t help leaving some of his own. The first is the only one he burns in the sink to ash. The rest are just as incriminating but without knowing what they’re really about they end up appearing closer to sad daily reminders on the pages of an aging man’s notebook than anything worrisome.

BLONDE NEIGHBOUR SHIELD AGENT Steve gets a week after moving in.

Peggy is doing well. She has bad days. He leaves on the nightstand after his second visit to the nursing home.

They continue like this for months.

Steve trusts them. The notes –the other him.

The advice is usually sound and true –his ‘nurse’ neighbor was more often than not in the halls constantly running into him. Sugar appears in the cabinets. Steve’s ankle was definitely broken that time.

Nothing he’s seen has made him feel the slightest amount of worry and if Steve was being honest with himself; he likes someone having his back again. Even if it is only himself.

It’s a small comfort to not have to worry about USO training and civilian body shields –about doing the right things and the wrong things. Failing.

He knows he’s lonely.

He knows he’s gone insane and lost control of his own life.

Steve calls him Cap.

✪

Besides the notes Steve lives his life nice and separately from Cap for a good 8 months two calendar years or so.

Cap went on missions for SHIELD, went running, met people and smiled for the camera. Cap did his dishes, shaved his face, made the bed with military neat corners and wore khaki and briefs Steve hated. Cap didn’t listen to Steve’s messages and never brought work stuff home.

He rode a motorcycle, but didn’t wear his helmet (if the one gathering dust in the closet was anything to go by). Cap stopped by the grocery store near work and bought food when they ran low. He didn’t cross things off the list, always left things for Steve to search up; he put a X beside the things he’d tried and liked –usually food, sometimes music.

On the odd occasion he might smell like a pack of Camels, a lingering taste of tobacco staining their shared mouth.

Steve went on walks, mostly late at night to avoid crowds. He hardly shaved his face and never managed to get the sheet corners to stay on the mattress. Steve drew the old New York skyline and apartment he ached for when he wished for the ability to drink himself into a coma. Steve ignored texts from Avengers and someone named Sam and learned how to work the fancy tablet Cap brought home to play movies from his lap.

Steve went to the 24 hour bodega a few blocks away and bought food he’d never had before and wanted to try. He took the subway when he wanted to go places and, if he needed to, the occasional cab (the fare made him feel sick but then again so did the crowds).

He wore XXXL hoodies and too large plain T-shirts with loose frayed pants and jeans that made him feel small. Steve left doodles beside the things he liked on the list –usually food, sometimes movies.

Sometimes Steve stood in the liquor aisle and considered filling his cart to the brim –testing out the serum against this century’s alcohol.

Steve was getting by –he wasn’t thriving or anthing, he wouldn’t even say he was happy or content, but…

He was getting by.

✪

Then Steve came home to his SHIELD agent neighbour warning him about music and the next time he blinked –

✪

–Oh God, I don’t understand, what the fuck is going–is that ‘Bucky?’ how, how is he –‘Who the hell is Bucky?’ oh God oh god –

A man with metal wings soared down, launching Bucky (Bucky, his Bucky) off to the side with a powerful kick. Steve was barely able to grasp what the fuck was going on before he was dodging grenade launchers and reeling at the sight of Bucky. His Bucky, in 2014. In 2014 with a metal arm.

Before his mind could put together what he’s seen,

(It’s what he wished for everyday. It’s what will haunt him in this hell. It’s a horrible truth and an ugly lie. It’s all his dreams, it’s his worst nightmare. It’s a delusion, it’s a fantasy, its madness and real, god its real isn’t it, it’s real and Bucky is-)

Steve’s rounded up and escorted into a van with Nat and the man with wings.

He’s dazed as he takes in the bleeding Avenger (Avengers?) across from him, the winged man saying God only knows what. Steve can’t really follow along –he might be talking too; he’s lost in 1936, 2014 and 1945 all at once while his life is thrown another unimaginable horror. A gift. A curse.

Steve’s locked in metal cuffs and Bucky is out there alive, trying to kill him, without a clue as to who either of them are.

And Steve doesn’t know where to even begin to help him.

The guard is taking off her helmet, and Maria –the very woman he’d met only 5 hours after he’d watched Bucky fall. The woman who’d told him he was alone 70 years in the future –she’s there, asking who the winged man is.

As Maria unlocks his cuffs, Steve bows his head, screams into the far corners of his brain that he can’t lose Bucky again, he can’t lose him he can’t he can’t fail again he won’t survive it and.

He fades away.

✪

Maybe Cap heard him because the next thing he knows he’s in pain, metal falling around him as blood oozes out of his gut. Whatever the hell he’s on lurches to the side and he can hardly balance himself through the burning ache in his stomach and havoc playing out around him.

He hears an animalistic cry of panic and when he heaves himself to look over the banister; Bucky is there alive and trapped.

Steve doesn’t hesitate to jump down, gunfire and bombs going off at every angle as he drags himself towards Bucky, one mission on his mind.

Not this time.

Something pings in the back of his head that Bucky doesn’t know him, is going to hurt him. The empty look on Bucky’s face and confusion screaming in his eyes don’t stop Steve’s movements for a second –he won’t fucking lose him again. Bucky could hate him for all he cared and Steve would still walk through hell to help him.

Bucky writhes, his oily long hair stuck to his face as he looks furiously at the blond. Steve can’t be bothered to care as he lifts the metal off of him. His guts feel like they’re tearing to shreds but he powers through, Bucky moving lose and free like a trapped animal, grunting and panting.

It turns out Bucky may in fact hate him when the friend from childhood Steve would die for throws the first punch.

Bucky howls with hate and anger as Steve tries to remind him again, again and again. He drops the shield and for the first time since the train he holds off from fading away. He doesn’t want Cap to win this one; this is his fight to happily lose. He won’t get Bucky’s blood on his hands not even for his own life. He couldn’t live with himself.

Steve falls this time.

✪

Steve wakes up at night alone in the hospital wondering what happened to Bucky. What happened to him? Both of him. He can’t risk leaving any notes for Cap to ask, not with the nurses coming in every few minutes to poke and prod at Steve in awe.

Instead he catches up on news until the morning, watching the helicarriers turn on each other –knowing he was a passenger in one of them but not knowing why until they mention Hydra and he cracks a tooth gritting his teeth.

Sam and Nat stop by in the morning; he pretends the pain medication affects him more than it does and feigns semi consciousness while they discuss in low tones to each other about what Bucky did to him. Steve doesn’t care. He tells himself over and over while he’s laying there useless and wasting time to find Bucky find Bucky bring Bucky home help Bucky.

Steve spends weeks at a time blacked out while Cap pours over files and Hydra bases searching for the man Steve failed. He loses two months straight at one point but can’t complain even though he sleeps for 4 full days afterwards; there’s a CCTV photo of Bucky leaving a train station sitting on his nightstand because of it. All of Cap’s contacts get emergency ringtones and they instantly send Steve away when anyone calls or texts.

Steve’s willing to do anything to help, even if that's stepping back and doing nothing.

He could try and find Bucky himself but he’s not the one with the SHIELD training. Steve’s been stumbling his way through the 21^st century for the past nine months. What more could he offer than Cap would?

Steve does read whatever Cap leaves out though. He’s sick for hours when he finds Zola’s files but pushes himself to keep going. If Cap ever found –When Cap found Bucky, Steve wanted to be prepared for who came home. He’d be there if it was the Winter Solider, he’d be there if it was the blank faced Bucky from the war –he’d be there any damn way he could, anyway Bucky would let him.

So Steve read on days he was awake. He read everything he could while he waited; the leaked SHIELD files and maps, the countless Hydra notes –he read them day after day after day.

It works out somehow; all Steve knows is on a windy day in late October he gets a call with the emergency tone and next he's waking up in a different city, God only knows how long later exhausted and hungry. He’s not at home, yet he’s sitting upright on a plush bed, one even more disgustingly soft than the last. Curiously he looks around the dark blue and cream room, taking in the telltale signs of advanced technology.

He looks to the notepad in his hand, Cap’s writing glaring up at him.

For the first time since 1944 Steve lets himself cry as he burns the note in the sink.

Living with Bucky again is… It’s everything Steve could have wanted –and it’s absolutely something he’s not equipped to deal with.

Especially now that Cap exists.

The first day is hard. The brown of Bucky’s hair is only a few shades off, but the distinct grey tinged with blue of his eyes and the heavy weight of his silence are exactly the same. Steve has to hide in the washroom to calm his breathing when Bucky’s spot on the couch becomes too overwhelmingly real.

Steve tries his best with Bucky; he doesn’t overload him with memories, tries his best not to coddle him. Steve doesn’t take it to heart when Bucky seems cold and distant. He thinks he’s doing a decent job of it. Bucky always responds in that deep gruff tenor of his, sometimes he’ll spew a long forgotten moment –Did Mrs. Cartel wear orange shoes?  –looking to Steve for confirmation or understanding, Steve’s not always sure.

The first time he rambles into a memory Steve wants him to never stop because that’s Bucky, that’s Bucky’s voice it’s gravely and scratchy; sometimes a hint of Brooklyn, sometimes a touch of Russian, but its Bucky through and through.

He’s not sure how much of their relationship Bucky remembers –if you want to call what they had a relationship. He hadn’t given it much thought these last ten months two years in this century, the memories too painful to dissect and to reimagine going differently.

It would have probably been more if they’d been in this time –maybe ended up like Sandra and Bernice; two old men coming together after a lifetime with others.  What Steve had was reality. Reality meant Bucky had dated most of the women who crossed his path. It meant a thin veil of platonic comfort that never strayed towards sexual. It meant no declarations were ever made.

Reality didn’t explain the push together beds in June though. The intimate touches when they passed, a hand through his hair during a coughing fit. The years they spent living together, eating together, supporting each other. Home early from a night out with the prettiest girl in town. All the lazy Sundays lounging on the threadbare couch drawing and hours pressed thigh to thigh in the cold Europe landscape waiting.

Steve thought Bucky may have loved him back then. Steve certainly did, would have been happy with what they had for the rest of his (short) life, even if Bucky went steady with every dame he saw.

‘Till the end of the line’ they had instead. And for Steve that had always been good enough.

They’ll sit on the couch together inches apart and Steve will bite his tongue to stop from asking if he remember us. A small part of him thinks Bucky remembers fine –just doesn’t feel the same, doesn’t want to hurt Steve’s feelings.

Maybe he never felt the same way and Steve was delusional long before the train.

They don’t sleep in the same bed, not like before. There was no need for it now and even if Steve dreamed about having that again under the cover of darkness when the loneliness grew too much –he didn’t expect anything. Things were different in any case. Bucky wasn’t the same man from the war and neither was Steve.

Steve was two men now.

What Steve had now was an aching distance. Look but don’t touch. Just like the paintings in the museum he’s too tempted to get close and feel the texture of something so precious and old. Bucky’s worn and scarred, he doesn’t look like the man that pried him from grime filled alleys and he looked exactly the same in all the ways that made up James Buchanan Barnes.

This new Bucky is up before Steve every day. It’s not a hard feat; Steve’s always been a late riser, military service excluded. He’s not really sure when Bucky wakes up, or how much sleep his friend gets these days. The circles under his eyes faded within a few weeks but since Steve isn't awake most mornings he isn't to be able to check for himself. Cap has control about three to four days a week, Steve only gaining consciousness sometime around 5:30pm.

Cap never mentions anything (not that Steve really thinks he would) so he tries not to worry. He doesn’t bother telling Cap to be friendly to Bucky or not give anything away; they already spent something like three weeks together and Bucky had yet to bring anything up, so Steve figured everything between them had gone smoothly.

New Bucky reads a surprising amount of thrillers and horror and switches with surprising ease between the kindle and paperbacks. Not a far jump from the science-fiction he used to favour. It’s a familiar sight to see him engrossed in a book on a couch, though he holds himself differently than before; instead of sprawled out where his limps could fit, he now rarely made himself comfortable. Reading for hours as still as a mannequin, socked feet planted on the hardwood, back painfully straight as he turned the pages with robotic precision.

New Bucky stays on their floor. He doesn’t join Steve on walks or grocery trips. He doesn’t start conversations –unless random blunt statements and asking Steve to order more kitchenware for him to take apart counted.

He eats what Steve eats, and if Steve doesn’t conjure up something or suggest a meal, he’ll feed himself a bowl of cereal with water just like its 1937.

This new Bucky tinkers and reads his books in silence, and Steve can’t help but orbit around him, double checking he’s actually alive, breathing, and here.

Steve hasn’t a clue what happens on Cap days.