Work Text:
Choosing to stay is easy. Steve is tired of fighting; he is tired of failing – failing the planet, failing the people, failing his loved ones and losing his friends. Here, in this universe, everybody knows that Captain America crashed his plane into the Arctic and died; and while most Americans have heard about him, it is only ten persons or so who actually know what he looks like. Here, Captain America is only a legend and Steve… Steve is finally allowed to be just Steve Rogers again.
Steve lives a discreet life, out of the public scrutiny. He finishes his degree in Art and goes on to become an Art Teacher. He marries Peggy. He saves Bucky – finally, finally he is allowed to save him. Steve cries like a child when this happens but Bucky is unconscious, and he will never know that it was Steve who killed his Russian captors, took him from his cell, carried his in his back for hundreds of miles and dropped him at the doors of a Military Hospital. It is too late to save the arm, but at least Bucky gets to come home as a war hero and Stark offers him a job in the engineering department. Stark feels guilty about Steve’s demise… and Steve never tells either of them he is alive. Steve is not the same person he was at the end of the war and trouble seems to follow him, everywhere he goes, so Steve decides that he won’t screw up Bucky’s second chance at life with his selfish desires, no this time.
Steve contacts Peggy after she moves to L.A to work as the head of California SHIELD headquarters. He has already killed Zola by that point in time, and he must confess that few things in his life have given him as much pleasure as the sound of his neck snapping, so even if HYDRA is still alive, this times it will not grow a head inside of SHIELD.
Steve will treasure the memory of his reunion with Peggy for as many years as he lives: Peggy is ecstatic. She has mourned him, but it’s only being one year since his death. Therefore, when she sees him, she doesn’t question it, she simply wraps her arms around him and cries like a baby, thanking the starts for returning Steve back to her. They spend the night together, cuddling, kissing and refusing to let go of each other. But in the morning, Steve tells her the truth: he is Steve, but no her Steve. Her Steve is somewhere in the Arctic and will be found in seventy years. He is not a warrior anymore, he is not hero; but he would be honored to be her husband if she allows him to.
They marry the next day. It is only a small ceremony in the City Hall. Steve asked two of his fellow art students to stand up as their witnesses. It feels wrong to see them there, where Bucky and Sam and Nat should be standing… but it also feels right. And he is still so tired.
In the evening of their wedding, Steve takes Peggy to a jazz club... and they finally share their long-awaited dance, which is soon followed by a hundred other dates. In time Steve realizes that the girl she mourned, back in the future, had never existed in the first place; she was but a dream. Peggy is much more than a dream; she is a real woman.
His wife is courageous stubborn, kind and intransigent… and Steve and her are not two sides of the same coin, no couple is. They disagree about many issues: Steve hates Harry Truman and Peggy looks at him as a necessary evil; Steve supports the antiwar movement and Peggy believes they are missing the bigger picture. Sometimes, they fight. Steve keeps himself out of SHIELD business and Peggy’s private life remains private. It’s a difficult road at times, but they learn to respect each other and to support each other and to compromise. And they love each other. That never changes.
From time to time, very discreetly, Steve checks up on Bucky. He works for Stark Industries for almost a decade and, at one point, it even looks like he is ready to settle down. However, he never does. Howard calls Peggy one day, quite disappointed, to let her know that Bucky has quit his job and disappeared from New York. Steve worries like crazy and is ready to throw away the life he has built to search for him until he reads an article in a well-known Antiwar Newspaper signed by Bucky Barnes. Steve has never felt so proud.
As a disabled, WW2 veteran Bucky becomes one of the lesser known faces of the antiwar movement. He keeps writing articles and sometimes there are even pictures of him: his hair is long, his eyes clear and he has fully adopted the seventies fashion. Steve collects all the papers he can find about him. It turns out that Bucky is living in San Francisco, right in the epicenter of the Hippy movement. He is less than four hours away by car and Steve’s heart hurts with yearning, but despite the temptation, he never goes to see him. Bucky has moved on with his life, and he is doing just fine – he is doing great, in fact, without Steve Rogers there to screw it all up for him.
The seventies give away to the eighties. The Vietnam War is over and America is at peace. Women begin to take a more active role in their lives, homosexuality is no longer a criminal offense and black people are no longer banned from public transport. Things start to become right again. Engross in his little life, teaching art to a bunch of elementary school kids, Steve didn’t quite realize until now how much time he has spent looking forward to this: for everything to become right again, for things to go back to the way they were supposed to be.
(A man out of time, still.)
Peggy grows old; Steve grows old as well – just a bit slower. The year is 1993 and it has been at least ten years since Steve last heard news about Bucky Barnes when he sees him again. By that point Peggy has given up her position as Director of Shield and Steve looks nothing like the man he used to be, so they decided to move back to New York to enjoy their retirement.
In New York, the VIH Epidemic is in full and Steve works as a volunteer in several Support Centers across the city, doing whatever he can do to help. Most days he helps take care of the sick and visits patients in their homes; sometimes, he is asked to pack or distribute the belongings of those who pass away. Steve hasn’t seen Death up this close since Thanos, and, in a way, it is worse here. Young men senselessly die by the hundreds – men with full lives ahead of them, with love ones they leave behind, with dreams and hopes and oh, so much to do. The worst thing is that nobody cares. At least, it seems like nobody cares. So Steve does what little he can do to help.
It is in one of these visits when Steve sees him again. Bucky has aged well, much like himself, and yet there is little of the cocky young man who had left for Italy, all those years ago, or of the hunted soldier who had returned from the war. His face is covered with wrinkles and his hair is nearly white; only he eyes haven’t changed. They are the same blue Steve still sees when he dreams. Despite all these changes, Steve recognizes him immediately – he wants to believe he would recognize him anywhere. Steve’s heart jumps in his chest, beating wildly, and he watches him.
Bucky is seating in a chair, next to the only bed in the room, and he is holding the hand of the man lying on it. The man is a good few years younger than Bucky – his brown hair still retains much of his color – but he is also visibly sick, another victim of the virus. Steve has seen enough patients to know that he has very little time left. Bucky seems to know it too, judging by the way he positions his body towards the bed and refuses to let go of the man’s hand, even when sleeps.
There is a weight knotting up his throat and, for a moment, Steve can’t speak, can’t think, can’t move at all. He stands there frozen for what seems like ages, but it’s probably just a few minutes. Bucky doesn’t notice; all his attention is for the man lying in front of him. Then, the man opens his eyes and looks at Bucky, and Bucky greets him – “hey”, he says, swiping his hair back from his forehead –, lowers his face down and kiss him in the lips.
It is short and loving kiss... Somehow, it takes Steve's breath away.
Steve can't breathe and something inside of him hurts. Steve doesn’t realize he has released a chocking noise until Bucky turns his head to look at him, eyebrows raised and worried eyes, and asks, “You okay?”
Steve nods. Bucky turns back his attention to the man on the bed. Steve’s eyes are wet. There was no recognition in that brief glimpse they shared, and why should there be? Steve is just a random old man, now. Bucky buried Steve fifty years ago. Soon, he’ll have to bury a man who obviously means much to him. Bucky’s lover. Bucky’s partner. Bucky is no longer Steve's. He belongs to this other man, now. It was Steve’s own doing.
Steve feels like a fool.
He excuses himself and leaves the room. He leaves he house. He takes the subway and rides the train back to home. Thankfully, Peggy is there. Thankfully, she doesn’t ask questions when Steve throws himself into her arms and cries for hours. She just holds his head in her lap and silently lets him know that he is not alone. Steve doesn’t understand why he feels the way he is feeling – like a hot iron stake has just been embedded in his chest - but he knows he has not right to feel this way. He made his choice, all those years ago. All that is left now is to keep living with it.
Steve does. He mourns for what he has lost - something he didn't even know could be his -, and then he doesn’t allow himself to look back. He and Peggy live a good life through the nineties. They have no children, an effect of the serum; but they both carry out voluntary work and live their retirement to the fullest. It is only when the new millennium approaches, that Peggy’s health declines and she starts to show signs of dementia.
Steve knew it was coming and he had made sure to inform her while there was still time, so Steve follows the plan they have agreed on. The first few years, he cares for her at home: Peggy’s courage and strength have not deserted her, despite her age and poor health, and she fights every day for another day to remember. Then, when the disease becomes too strong for them to fight it alone, Steve takes her to an Elderly Care Home and bids his time, making daily visits to his wife. Steve waits.
In 2008 Captain America’s frozen body is recovered from a frozen plane in the Arctic, along with his Shield. Steve doesn’t have to wait anymore.
Bucky looks… nothing like the old man Steve have seen only once in the nineties. He is young and strong, and when their gazes meet, he smiles reassuringly at Steve. This is a Bucky who knows him, who loves him; a Bucky who Steve betrayed when he left him behind, when he chose to grow old without him. For a moment Steve wishes he could turn time back, he wishes for another chance; but by now Steve understands that time travel doesn’t work like that. He and Peggy were happy, and despite everything, he can’t bring himself to regret his choice – that would feel like betraying her. And yet, he is jealous.
“You are not staying, are you?” Bucky guesses, after Sam has already left.
Steve shakes his head. Part of him wishes to stay; his heart years to stay with Bucky, to share with him all the things he has seen and done in the many years they were apart, and to spend the last days of his life peacefully by his side. But Steve has have a long time to come to term with his choice and staying… staying would be too painful. It would be selfish too.
“You know how much you mean to me, don’t you?” He asks Bucky. Bucky pauses – Steve hates himself for noticing that little pause, for causing that little pause –; then, slowly, he nods. “I have something to ask of you.”
Bucky listens to Steve's plea and he doesn’t need time to think about it, because it is Steve Rogers who is asking. Bucky has always said yes to Steve Rogers, even if they have reached the end of the line, even if Steve left him behind and now is leaving again, Bucky still loves him. He will always love him. So he notes down the date and the address, and he promises Steve that he’ll be there.
“He is… someone I wronged,” Steve tells him. “I did wrong by him as I did wrong by you.”
“Steve…” Bucky tries to deny it, because if anybody in this world deserved a chance at happiness, that was Steve, and Bucky is not angry that he took it, that he was selfish for once. Steve dismisses his words. “I am old,” he says. “Once you reach a certain age you realize what a waste of time it is to lie to yourself. And I don’t have much time left.” Bucky feels a lump in his throat. “I have been happy, Bucky. I chose the way I wanted to live my life, and despite everything, I have been happy. All I need to find peace now is your promise that you will do the same.”
Bucky trembles; he lowers his face and cannot bring himself to meet his best friend’s eyes. “I… I’m not like you, Steve. There are many things I have to make up for.”
Steve’s hands grasp his shoulders and takes a step closer to him. “That is why I am asking you. Do it for me, Bucky. Promise me, please.”
Bucky swallows; he raises his gaze. Steve’s eyes are still so blue, the same color they were the first time Bucky look up into them, when he was still a child. There are so many memories of that early part of his life that are still lost to him, and yet the memory of meeting Steve for the first time is as clear as it happened yesterday. He wears the same hopeful expression now, the same stubborn eyes. Bucky cannot bring himself to refuse him. “I promise. I promise, Steve.”
Steve smiles and his shoulder relax. “Good. Then remember: I loved Peggy. I was happy with her. But… I could have been just as happy with you.”
Bucky’s eyes open wide, but he doesn’t have time to properly process those words because, a second later, Steve brings their faces together and kisses him. It’s not a proper kiss, more than a feathery touch. But Steve’s lips are warm and Bucky doesn’t understand what it’s happening but he stands very still and there are tears in his eyes… because Steve Rogers is kissing him. And then… then Steve Rogers disappears, just like that, and Bucky is left there, standing alone in the woods… Alone again.
He should have grown used to it by now.
In the days that followed, Bucky is shocked. He is confused. He is upset. He is mourning. As the times goes on, he even becomes angry. Nevertheless, when the date comes, Bucky keeps his promise to Steve. He takes a plane to England, walks up the stairs of the modest Inn Holiday Hotel in the skirts of London, and opens the door of room 309. Sitting in the bed with his legs cross – hair as blond as the sun, face young and hopeful eyes – is Steve Rogers.
Bucky’s heart skips a beat.
He tries to speak… but his throat is closed up and no sounds escape from him. He stands there like a fool… until Steve takes pity on him.
“He promised you would be here. Hello, Bucky.”