Chapter Text
In the end, it’s Bucky who finds him, and not the other way around. It isn’t surprising, not really. The closest Steve’s ever gotten to Bucky since DC was the UN. Even in Europe, when they were actively looking for the Winter Soldier, he and Sam had never really gotten any more than glimpses of silver on the nearby rooftop.
Steve gets back from his morning jog, pours himself a cup of coffee, and is just about to sit down with the paper – SIX MONTHS AFTER: WHAT REMAINS OF S.H.I.E.L.D? shouts the headline – when there’s a knock at the door.
He opens it to see Bucky, standing across the hallway with his back to the wall. It takes a moment for it to actually register with Steve, because while logically he knows that, as the Winter Soldier, Bucky has the resources to find where he lives, Steve had never actually expected this to happen.
“I’m not here to kill you, or anything,” Bucky says quietly, pulling both hands out of his pocket and holding them, one metal, one flesh and blood, in the air in the universal gesture for I’m not armed.
Steve knows Bucky probably still has some kind of weapon on him, but there’s something in the gesture that Steve finds reassuring anyway.
“Do you want to come in?” he asks.
Bucky steps inside; Steve can see how he hesitates, how he looks around the room for other people and for escape points. “I wasn’t sure you weren’t just something my brain made up,” he admits as Steve closes the door. There’s almost a bit of humor in his tone, and God, he sounds like Bucky again.
“Of course I’m real,” Steve says.
He doesn’t say that part of him has thought the same thing about Bucky, that he’s been terrified the stress of waking up seventy years in the future has caused some part of his brain to go haywire and make him think his best friend isn’t, in fact, dead.
They stand there, staring at each other for a moment, before Steve breaks the silence. “Do you want some coffee?” he asks awkwardly, gesturing to the pot that’s on the counter.
Bucky shakes his head, shoves his hands into the pockets of the worn leather jacket he’s wearing. His hair is still long, though he’s pulled it back, and the stubble on his face is gone.
“I’m fucked up, Steve,” he says quietly, after another long pause. “I’m not the guy you think I am.”
Steve can see parts of the Winter Soldier in the way Bucky stands, even hunched over like this, as if he’s ready at any instant to reach for a weapon. His back is to the wall, so he can see all the exits, and his stance is solid. And yet, he sees his best friend there, too, in the way he’s got his hands balled up in his pockets, in his expression, in the way he looks at Steve.
“You’re my best friend,” Steve says. “Being through hell doesn’t change that.”
Bucky huffs, then. “I killed people. You’ve read my file, right?” he asks.
Steve hates this, hates how far away Bucky seems even though he’s standing just feet away. He wishes Sam were here, because they’ve talked about Bucky and how he might be dealing with his memories. Sam’s got experience with this. But he’s out with some of the guys from his unit, and it’s just Steve and Bucky here now.
“I’m not going to pretend that the Winter Soldier never existed,” Steve says, trying to remember what Sam had told him about PTSD. “But that was HYDRA that did that to you.”
Bucky laughs, and it’s a cold, empty laugh that has no humor in it at all. It sounds foreign.
“You don’t think there was a part of James Barnes that was capable of doing those things before HYDRA messed with his brain?”
And Steve knows what he’s saying is true, because they’d all done things during the war that none of them were proud of, even if they said it was justified, even if they’d done it in the name of protecting others. For every one of the Howling Commandos’ daring missions that made it into the history books, there were three that weren’t quite so heroic. And hadn’t that kept Steve up at night sometimes, wondering if he wasn’t turning into the bullies that he’d hated so much.
“The James Barnes I knew was my best friend. Just because he could do those things didn’t mean he liked doing them.”
“You deserve better friends than me,” Bucky says, rubbing his left arm.
“I don’t want someone else, Buck. I can’t lose you again.”
And there it is, the thing that’s kept Steve awake all these months. He still wakes up in a cold sweat sometimes, remembering how all he could do was watch as Bucky fell into the white abyss. But the thing he’s been even more afraid of is that one day, Bucky’ll just be gone again.
Howard, the Commandos, Peggy… they’re all gone, and he’d thought Bucky was gone too. Now that Bucky is here, standing in front of him, Steve isn’t going to let him go without a fight.
“You’re my family,” Steve says. “The only family I’ve got.”
There’s a long silence between the two of them, and Steve wants nothing more than to reach out and touch Bucky, to reassure himself that his best friend is here. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t do anything that might scare Bucky off. Instead he watches Bucky, who seems lost in thought.
After what seems like an eternity, Bucky speaks again. “And I came here hoping you’d never want to see me again.”
It feels like all the air has disappeared from his lungs. “What?” Steve gasps.
Bucky shrugs with his right shoulder, the flesh-and-blood one, and there’s almost a hint of a sad smile on his face. “I thought about leaving, but part of me always kept coming back here. Guess I thought it would be easier if I knew you hated me.”
Steve tries to smile, but it’s hard. “You’re my best friend. I could never hate you.”
He steps forward, then, so there’s only an arms’ length of distance between them. “Tell me to leave, Steve. Just tell me you never want to see me again and I’ll be gone.”
His tone is so desperate, it breaks Steve’s heart all over again. Not for the first time, he wishes Zola had survived the missile attack just so he could kill the man himself.
Moving slowly, carefully, making sure Bucky can see what he’s doing, Steve reaches out and puts a hand on his best friend’s shoulder. “I can’t do that, Buck. You know I can’t.”
Bucky, who had stiffened at the contact, nods, a hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Never did know what was best for you,” he says.
Steve lets himself smile too. Something inside him breaks, and he lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding. It hits him like a freight train that this is real and that Bucky is alive and standing in front of him and remembering him. He doesn’t feel so empty anymore.
And he thinks that maybe, just maybe, against all odds and in spite of everything that’s happened, he and Bucky might be all right.