Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It's the first thing he asks when they sit him down in a clean blue room, after they woke him up in a fake hospital bed with a fake skyline and a fake radio and the sounds of an airplane crashing into ice still ringing in his ears. 

"What about Steve Rogers?"

Director Fury is gruff and severe and no bullshit but his one eye cuts to the side like he doesn't know what to say and the dread sinks like a rock in Bucky's stomach. 

It's been 68 years they told him, when he pulled free of the handlers and darted through glossy hallways and out a glass door and into a world that was too loud and too fast and too bright. Sixty eight years since he had sat in a plane filled with a payload that would wipe New York City off the map. It had been cold and lonely and he had pictured Steve in Brooklyn, hunched over his art book with his pencils and his struggling lungs and imagined him gone in a puff of smoke, ashes and blood where there once had been blonde hair and blue eyes. Peggy's voice on the radio asking him for coordinates and that awful knowledge that there was only one option and he wouldn't be returning to Steve in that little apartment.

"I gotta force her down.” I gotta save Steve. Steve, please forgive me.

Sixty eight years. 

His ma once said Steve wouldn't make it to 25. She hadn't been trying to be mean, just realistic and trying to prepare her son for the cold reality she saw rolling toward them. But Bucky had cried and cried until she had apologized, holding him tight. "Sometimes the good Lord takes the best ones young," she whispered into his hair. "They burn so bright that their flame can't go on as long."

Steve had been the brightest flame that Bucky knew. And Bucky had promised him that he would come home after the war. Then he had gone and died in fire and ice and left Steve alone. He did the math, hours ago, when they first told him the year. Steve would be 94. Almost 70 years older than his ma had predicted.

The woman next to Fury slides a stack of folders across the table. "Captain Barnes. Information," she says, straight to the point. "Your parents. Three younger sisters. And Steve Rogers." She hesitates. "Rogers is still alive."

His parents died in 1982, three months apart and peacefully. Becca died of a heart attack in 2002. Josie died of cancer just last year. And Ella died in a car crash in 1972. 

And Steve Rogers. 

Steve Rogers is alive. By some other miracle or blessing or luck or hand of fate, he is alive. Steve Rogers is alive and living in the West Lawn Nursing Home, just outside New York City. 

Later that night, after they've convinced him he can't go see Steve right that moment (they use words like delicate and fragile and frail and shock and all of those sound just like Steve and also nothing like him), he sits in the small apartment they've given to him and reads through the files. He doesn't sleep. He hasn't needed much sleep since the Zola had strapped him to a table and pushed fire into his veins. 

His sisters got married. Had children. Worked as a nurse (Army, two tours in Veitnam and Korea) and a teacher (a high school in Brooklyn that Bucky recognizes) and a reporter. They smile up at him from family photos and newspaper clippings and passports. And obituaries.

In between two pages, an article is pressed neatly like a dried flower: "Ten Years Out: the Winter Soldier's Family Reflects on his Sacrifice and how the World has Changed since the War." Near the back, another clipping: "Josie and Rebecca Barnes attend the ceremony memorializing the fiftieth anniversary of the Winter Soldier's sacrifice." 

An essay Josie wrote in college: “The Winter Soldier's Lasting Impact on the American Military."

And then he can't avoid it anymore. 

Steve's file is thick, pages neatly stapled and organized. It starts like the others, current address and status: Steven Grant Rogers. Ninety-four years old. West Lawn Nursing Home, Assisted Living. Unmarried. No children. There's a picture dated Christmas 2011: A small old man cocooned in a large sweater on a thick couch, Christmas tree in the background, a goateed man on one side, a redhead on the other, four more men standing behind. They're all smiling. 

Bucky looks for Steve in the small wrinkled face, shock of white hair flopping over a narrow forehead. There's the strong nose and the blue eyes and the delicate jawline. He presses his finger to the tiny face and feels his insides shake. 

He can't read anymore. 

When Bucky opens the door to his suite the next morning, he expects an agent, respectful but distant, maybe with breakfast or at least coffee. Maybe orders - they say they’re not at war, but Bucky knows better than anyone that there’s always a war.

Instead, the goateed man from the Christmas picture is eating granola out of a black bag, looking him up and down. "Did anyone ever tell you they thought you'd be taller?"

He pushes right into the small living room and does a slow spin. "Wow. Are you a defrosted war hero or a political prisoner because this place could use a serious decorator."

Bucky closes the door and walks to the table, to the folder still open to the Christmas picture. "You know Steve."

"Not one for small talk? Okay, gramps." The man sets a metal briefcase on the table. "They tell me you want to see Steve. And while I think it's fantastic you want to look up old war buddies and reconnect - high school reunions are an American tradition after all, there's some things we have to discuss." He draws himself, looks taller even though he’s a couple inches shorter than Bucky.  "Look. Steve's been telling me about you my whole life. If you're half the man he says, you're better than Gandhi and Mother Teresa and Neil Armstrong combined. But I have to be sure." He sits down at the single wooden table and gestures for Bucky to do the same.  "I'm Tony. My father was Howard Stark. You met him after... Well, after."

It had been a cold day in early November and Bucky had ripped himself free of Zola's table only five days before. He'd marched himself and 300 men over 45 miles to the nearest Allied base. He’d barely had a moment to rest when they'd realized what the experiments had done to him. Within hours, he’d been on an airfield waiting for a plane.  The pilot had been Stark. He had flown him to London for more tests, talking to Bucky in this half absent way. Bucky remembers appreciating the normalcy of it.

He nods. 

Stark steeples his fingers. "My dad was brilliant but he wasn't the greatest father. Steve... Steve was a good father. Even if he wasn't actually mine. So I'm pretty protective of him." His mouth purses. "Steve never stopped mourning you. Understand? He never stopped. No kids. No wife. No husband. Just me. And his work. And your ghost.

"But he also lived. He shaped the century. He changed the world. And now he's been talking about going to sleep and waking up on the other side and seeing you again soon and now you're sitting here looking like that photo he keeps at his bedside and I'm afraid he's gonna take one look at you and his heart is gonna break all over again because now he's gonna die and leave you." Stark stops and takes a breath. "I can't keep you from him but you need to understand that he's not the kid you remember. He's 94. His memory is shaky sometimes and he can barely get out of a bed on a good day and he sleeps like 18 hours a day and he doesn't have much time left. If you can't handle that, if you can't support him, it would be better for him not to know. Okay?"

Bucky swallows. The day the guards had dragged him to Zola's table, he'd had a cold pit in his stomach - just like this one. "I would never hurt him," he says roughly. "He's my.  He's. Steve. I love him," he finally finishes, helpless with every last vulnerability ripped open and exposed, weeping and oozing. "I never wanted to leave him. That was the last thing I wanted. I just want to see him. Please."

Stark softens a little, mouth losing the pinched look. "You know," he says, "the whole world knows you were gay for each other."

Bucky tenses, hand going into a fist. "What."

"I mean, I think Dad always knew and Steve came out to me when I was 12. And then when they passed Don't Ask Don't Tell in the nineties, oh boy Steve was mad. Even when everyone was calling it a victory for gay rights. He said hiding never went well. Called up the New York Times and gave an interview to the first reporter who could grab a pencil. Told the world that you two had done the dirty in Brooklyn. Winter Soldier being gay was a real shocker. Changed a lot of minds."

Bucky knows he's gaping. Most of the words flew over his head like Stark was speaking another language. But the important parts came through. "And it's okay?" he asks.

Tony smiles. "It's okay. Two men could even get married now."

The night before he had shipped out, they had lain on the narrow bed and Steve had pressed his bony fingers to Bucky's.

"Come home to me," he had whispered. "Please. Just come home."

Bucky passes a hand over his face. He's twenty seven and he's ninety three. The entire world is unrecognizable and turned on its side. But Steve is alive. And there is no hiding.

SHIELD isn't happy with him leaving. 

"Captain Barnes, we'd really like to do some more tests. No one's been able to successfully replicate the serum and we're hoping that with having living samples..."

Bucky remembers bleeding into tubes and sharp needles and electricity arcing across his bare chest, how he had tugged against cuffs and straps until his blood had made his wrists slick. "No."

Tony has his hand on his back, nudging him forward. "You heard the man. None of this. Or you'll be hearing from Captain Barnes's lawyer. Well my lawyer. But I assure you he is the best money can buy and he will tear you to pieces and let Barnes snack on the rest."

They're in the car (it's flashy and bright but it doesn't fly so Bucky isn't impressed though he doesn't tell Tony so) when Tony speaks again. "A lot of people are gonna be after your blood. Bunch of vampires. Dad tried for years to figure out what they had done. The closest they got was Steve actually. Got a modified version that managed to get him up to at least normal health. Only reason he's lived so long."

"Howard experimented on Steve?" The table had been freezing and the straps had made his wrists bleed. He had cried for Steve near the end. 

Tony's hands drum on the wheel. "Steve was dying of some super flu in the eighties. It was a last ditch thing." There's a long pause and Tony says, almost below the car's air conditioning. "I don't think Steve ever quite forgave my dad for saving him. He thought he was so close to seeing you again." He glances at Bucky, just the corner of his eye.

Bucky clears his throat. "A week ago, I was on a plane and I imagined Steve dying from whatever weapon Zola and Schmidt had cooked up. If not from the blast, from whatever poison came from the fall out. I couldn't let that happen. So I stopped it. I died hoping he would live, long and happy."

The care home is nicer than anything Bucky had ever seen.

He'd been imagining some mix between the TB ward and the county hospital. Cold hallways and overworked nurses and cold beds: Steve lying against thin pillows, then Steve's ma and then Steve again. But this place is more like a resort, something Bucky's only seen in pictures. Lush landscapes extending back, wide walkways with bright flowers and low benches and running water falls that merge with deep ponds where bright fish pass lazily to and fro. 

"Best money can buy," Tony says after they leave the car with a man in a sharp suit. "I paid for some of the upgrades myself when Steve." He stops. Turns. "Was he always such an independent dickhead? I wanted him to stay at the Tower with me after the docs said he shouldn't live alone anymore. But he insisted that he didn't want to be a burden." He snorts. "Meanwhile, I poured more money into this place than it would've been to hire a full hospital to have moved into the Tower for 10 years. Don't tell him that though."

"Mr. Stark," a sharply dressed woman comes around the lobby, hand extended like this is a formal meeting. "A pleasure as always. We weren't expecting you today. Miss Romanov actually arrived about an hour ago."

"Unexpected visit. Keep you on your toes." Tony takes off his sunglasses, shakes her hand, and doesn't introduce Barnes. "How is he today? Up to more visitors?"

"He slept well last night and the nurse said he ate all his breakfast. I imagine he'll be tiring soon - but he's always glad to see you."

She walks with them, down a bright, wide hallway, windows showing bright green and trailing flowers. There are low, soft benches and several are occupied with older men and women, hunched and wrinkled. Bucky realizes that some are younger than he is. Up a large elevator that is so smooth and silent Bucky isn't even sure they've moved until the doors open on a new floor. 

They come to a wide, closed door, a welcome mat and a potted plant. Stark rubs his hands on his pants and instructs Bucky to wait when he slips inside. The woman vanishes, back down the way they came.

He sits in the hallway, stares at the door and tries to think of what he'll say. It's been a year since he saw Steve, the morning before he shipped off to war. It's been 69 years since Steve saw him. What words fill those gaps? I'm sorry. I love you. I love you. I love you. I'm so sorry. I'm here. I'll never leave again. 

The door opens and he looks up to a slim red head that he recognizes from the photograph. 

"Captain Barnes," she says and slides down to sit next to him. She sits cross legged, nimble and still in a familiar way. "Tony brought you here so I assume he told you what would happen if you hurt him." Her gaze is sharp like a knife. Dividing spirit from flesh. 

"I'd never hurt him."

She leans forward. "I owe Steve my life. He saved me. Cared for me when everyone else was ready to lock me up and throw away the key. I don't care if you're the Winter Soldier. I will end you."

He meets her gaze, steady and grateful that she cares for Steve. "All I want is to be with him.” All I’ve ever wanted, really. From childhood to grave to this cold, new world. I was buried in the ocean for 68 years and I woke up asking for him. This is my loyalty. I can do nothing less.

“I’m Natasha,” she says and is silent after that. 

Stark comes out long minutes later, quiet and eyes rimmed with red. “Take it slow, okay?” 

An oxygen tank hisses and the room is dim and warm, smelling of vanilla and cinnamon and old age. Curtains are drawn over a window and a yellow lamp lights the room in a glow. There’s a kitchen and a low couch and down a hallway, a bedroom. This room is brighter, curtains pulled back halfway to show trees,  a forest so dense he can’t see the ground, and blue sky extending as far as the eye can see.

Steve is in the bed and Bucky wonders at how he had to look for him in the photograph by the Christmas tree. Because this is Steve. Almost seventy years older - blond hair turned to white and pale skin turned to wrinkles. But that nose, that mouth, those eyes - those fingers lifting, trembling, from the blanket to reach out and beckon…

Bucky stumbles forward, goes to his knees, hands grasping (but, careful, so careful, because Steve was frail when they were children and now his bones feel like they could shatter in a strong breeze). He brushes a kiss to thin fingers, feels the curve of delicate wrists. He’s crying, tears clouding his vision and making him gasp harshly.

“I love you,” he says. “I’m so sorry. All I wanted was to come home. I just wanted to come home. I wanted for you to be safe. That’s all I wanted. I love you.” The words are only a half coherent jumble and his throat closes over them. 

One hand is between his and Steve’s other hand settles on his head, stroking over his head. “Bucky?” Steve murmurs, voice wondering. “Tony said but I didn’t… Bucky?”

Bucky raises his head, meets the familiar blue. When he had driven the plane into the ocean, he hadn’t seen Steve for almost a year. Steve has not seen him for 69 years. 

“You look exactly the same,” Steve’s hand presses against Bucky’s cheek, the skin is dry and soft like an old loved book. “You look…” Tears drip down the paper thin cheeks and the hand shakes harder. “I missed you so much,” Steve murmurs, just louder than the hiss of the oxygen tank. “I waited to come home to you. But then you came home to me.”

Bucky slides closer, catches the tears with his thumb, presses a dry close mouth kiss to a wrinkled forehead. “I came home."

Chapter Text

This was Steve’s life. As told to Bucky from files, articles, and anecdotes.

Steve marched his way into Stark’s house after the war, only a few months after Bucky had died in some desolate spot in the Atlantic Ocean, and demanded to speak to Howard. Demanded to know what was being done in the search to find the body of the Winter Soldier.

According to Tony, Howard had fallen in love. According to Howard’s journals, he’d never met someone like Steve before and he knew he couldn’t let him get away. According to a letter written by Steve, a lasting, if tumultuous, friendship had formed.

Steve started working for Stark Industries, sketching designs and lending a critical eye to whatever Howard had been working on at the time. There’s a photo of him in a lab, shirt sleeves rolled up and pencil between his teeth as he studies schematics. He looks worn down, sad.

SHIELD was founded a few years later. Steve was to the side in the founder’s photograph, tucked into an oversized sweater (one sleeve pushed up to show a thin wrist) with thick glasses on his nose. He wasn't smiling - but he leaned toward a dark haired woman (Peggy Carter, Bucky realizes) like they both knew a secret.

Around this time, Steve started drawing again. There was a few photocopies of sketches tucked into the binder from SHIELD.

And then a note, “Steve Rogers published ‘Winter Soldier Vol 1’ via a private publisher. The comic book was a massive success. First edition runs of that comic can fetch prices upwards of $30k.”

Steve went on to personally write and draw the comic for fifteen years and then sporadically after that. There’s a few pictures of the comic panels in the folder: Bucky’s own face in a blue mask, white star emblazoned on his chest.

The comic starts at the beginning - a younger Bucky swept into a war much bigger than he was, taken prisoner by Hydra, experimented on and turned into a super soldier. There is a panel of Bucky tearing free of the lab table - running across the compound to the cages with his friends, using the power the Nazis and Hydra gave him to do the right thing. Because Bucky Barnes was always a good man. He looks brave and heroic, majestic. For the rest of the war, he fights Nazis and Hydra agents, saves soldiers and civilians and prisoners. And this Winter Soldier doesn't pilot a plane into the ocean - this Winter Soldier returns to the U.S. and helps to rebuild a world hurt by the war. He is celebrated as a hero - what should have been the greatest achievement of the Nazis, turned into their undoing. A partner comes along in the second volume: a blonde analyst and soldier, code named Captain America. There are hints of Steve in the character, Bucky thinks, in the corn colored hair and sharp chin - but not in the broad shoulders and barrel chest. Captain America and the Winter Soldier are a team. They work together, fighting villains and protecting the innocent. They survive, together.

For the next couple decades, Steve headed up the Strategic Ventures branch of SHIELD. There are pictures of him with diplomats and presidents, kings and prime ministers. Never smiling. He gets older, steadily and inexorably, wrinkles creeping into the corners of his eyes.

In 1984, there was a picture of him in a hospital bed, equipment surrounding him and a younger Tony sitting on a chair nearby, sullen and frightened. A heavily redacted report follows, summarizing that a highly experimental serum was injected into Rogers after the doctors said he wouldn’t survive the night. The serum worked.

Steve looked healthy for a few years, even put some weight on. In the nineties, he made headlines with his interview with the New York Times ("Bucky died to stop bullies, so people wouldn't need to hide, and he would be ashamed of this."). There's some cryptic notes about Steve's brief involvement in research with a Dr. Banner in the late nineties, but the file is incomplete and redacted. In 2000, there was a picture of him with a younger Natasha. She was pale and serious and his hand rested on her shoulder like he was comforting her.

Below, it reads: “Steve Rogers was a part of a small team that successfully integrated ex-Soviet spy, Natasha Romanov, into SHIELD.”

In 2009, The Steve Rogers Veteran Center was founded in Washington DC. Sam Wilson, director, had met Steve a few years prior and the two had become close. Steve donated much of his fortune (made from the comic books, other art, and the absurd salary Stark insisted on paying him for most of life) to the center, the note says.

After that, a slow deterioration as Steve began to look thinner and frailer and older - no more photos at public events, just family gatherings. A slide into old age that continued until he matched the old man curled on a bed in a small room, just pages away from that final ending.

And, then, the love he thought he had lost 68 years before finally came home.

 
Steve falls asleep, hand still slid between Bucky's. His breathing is wheezy, strained against his bird thin chest even with the oxygen tube draped over his ears and under his nose.

Tony comes in and jerks his head toward the door. We need to talk, he doesn't say. But the meaning is clear.

In the living room, Natasha is pouring coffee and she sits at the kitchen table, both hands wrapped around a plain mug.

Tony doesn't sit, paces the kitchen. "He doesn't have much time left," he says, brusque and efficient.

Bucky's heart turns over but he nods. He'd felt the way Steve's pulse fluttered and broke against the thin wrist bones, seen the way Steve had only just been able to lift his head.

"The doctors say he has a couple months. Maybe a year. If we're lucky. Or he's unlucky. Do you understand?"

"He's going to die," Bucky rasps. And thinks that, really, he had been waiting for this sentence is whole life. He looks around the suite. He can sleep on the couch. Or the floor next to Steve's bed. He's been caring for Steve since they were kids and this will be no different. Except, now, there'll be nurses and doctors and the best medicine. Bucky won’t have to work at the ship yards all day - he can be here all the time. Wildly, Bucky thinks that he has nursed Steve back to health before when everyone else had already given up.

Except he knows this is a battle that was never supposed to be won.

Stark nods. "He is. Unless." He flicks his wrist and suddenly the dark screen across the room lights up, flickering to colors and rotating strands of blue.

"That serum. That saved Steve in the eighties? We tried it on other people. It would've been miraculous. A serum that heals people? Maybe not forever healing. But enough to save them from the brink of death? Enough to extend their life by 20-30 years? It would've changed the world. But," the screen changes, "it never worked on anyone else. Only Steve. And Steve didn't want it again. I think he was afraid he'd live forever. I told you he never really forgave my dad for saving him."

"You think it could extend his life now." The serum and a cold metal table and pain are intertwined, threads of the same cord, in Bucky's memory. The Steve, in there on that bed, would never survive it. Bucky would never put him through that for just a few more good months.

Stark looks at Natasha then meets Bucky's eyes, steady. "I think we could save his life. I think your blood has the link we've been missing to make our serum skip from just healing current diseases to curing the entire body. Super sizing the whole body. I think I could give him a whole new lease on life. I think we could make him like you."

"Or it could kill him." Natasha leans forward. She doesn’t look opposed, exactly, just pragmatic. "Steve flatlined twice during the first procedure in the eighties. I've seen the tapes."

Stark snaps his fingers. "He's gonna die. His body, time, entropy... it's killing him and it’s inevitable. Capsicle over here said it himself. Isn't this at least worth a try?" He turns to Bucky. "You could stay here with Steve. Just give me some blood, hair, tissue, maybe semen, if you're into that. SHIELD will never get their hands on it, I swear. And I'll take it back to my lab and Bruce... You haven't met Bruce. Great guy. Occasionally green but who isn't now a days. Bruce and I will give it a try. If it doesn't work, we won't even bring it up to Steve. But if it does," his gaze turns pleading. "Don't you want to save him?"

And Bucky says yes.

Steve is everything that Bucky remembers: stubborn, proud, independent, fervent, kind, brave. And also changed: softer somehow, thoughtful where he would've been the loudest voice before, introspective, weary.

He insists on going for a walk in the gardens when he wakes up next. Complains about the wheelchair Natasha brings out of a closet. He doesn't let got of Bucky's hand. He gripes and teases and his eyes find his way back to Bucky like, you're here you're here you're real.

Bucky helps Steve into a sweater, covers his legs with a blanket and tucks it close around his hips. He goes back two years (70 years) to Brooklyn and winter months when he'd stuff rags into the window sill to keep the wind out.

They get to a sprawling garden and Natasha says something about checking the perimeter and vanishes into the trees.

Steve sighs, the oxygen tank attached to the back of his chair hisses. "I look at you and I think it's a dream," he says. "I dreamed of you for years. I don’t think I ever stopped. I dreamed of you and I'd wake up and you were never there." He looks at Bucky. "Will I wake up now?"

Bucky leans close. "I'm here. I'm really really here."

"They found you in the plane?"

"Yeah uh. I guess the serum. It uh." He stops, looking down at where his smooth hands rest against Steve's. Is there any way to explain how he froze in time and Steve slogged on?

Steve touches his face. "You always loved the future, Bucky. I remember you and your science fiction and inventions. They went to the moon, did anyone tell you? When it happened, all I wanted was to be able to tell you. To show you. You would've loved it. One small step for man. But you were gone." He leans into Bucky. "You're going to love this world. It's messy and awful but the people are so bright and things move so fast. You were born for this world, I think. I know you'll do great things here."

He's convincing himself, Bucky realizes. Spinning a story of Bucky in this new world, happy and meaningful. Without Steve. Because Steve has to leave.

"Natasha and Tony... They'll make sure you're taken care of. And I'll have Tony call the lawyer. Change my will. Plus getting you your back pay from the war. That should be a good amount by now. It'll be enough for you to do anything you want. Be the Winter Soldier. Be someone else." Steve's gaze drifts over the gardens. "They told you it's legal now right?"

He doesn't have to clarify. Bucky nods, feeling the air breaking around him.

Steve nods. "I thought of you then too," he pauses and when he speaks again, his voice is wet. "I imagined if you'd come home and we'd grown old together. There were men on the news... About my age and marrying the men they had been in love with for sixty years. I wanted... I was so angry. It wasn't fair. I wanted that to be us. I was so angry you never came home."

"I'd marry you now," Bucky says, the desperate words tripping passed his tongue. "I'll marry you tomorrow or tonight or next week or right this very second. I don't care. In front of the whole world. You're all I want. I'll get you a ring and and and..."

He can't go on and Steve is shushing him, finger pressed to his lips.

"I don't need a ring," Steve says, soft and gentle like Bucky is the one who's fragile. "I don't need a wedding or a marriage. Or the whole world watching. This is enough. I just want to be with you."

They end up bringing Steve back to the Stark's big tower only two days after Bucky basically moves into West Lawn Assisted Living.

Steve puts up a token protest but Bucky squeezes his hand and says please and that's that.

Stark sends a chopper and an army of nurses and doctors and orderlies. Bucky sits on the side of the bed and helps tuck wool blankets over Steve, checks to be sure the oxygen tube is comfortable.

His blood pressure starts to go up a little so a doctor who looks only a little older than Bucky gives him a shot and Steve's head rolls, relaxed and boneless on the pillow.

"You're more handsome than I remembered," he confides, voice thin and slurry with the medication.

"Yeah? Forgot how good looking this mug was?" Bucky cocks his head and winks. "Good thing I'm here to remind you."

Steve smiles, like this is the best kind of dream. "Good thing," he agrees.

Bucky rests his thumb on Steve's chin, on the bony cleft and sharp jawline. "You're more handsome too," he promises, and it isn't a lie. Steve's face is aged and every line tells a story of how Steve had lived a full life, made something of himself. How could that not be beautiful?

Steve scrunches his face up. "Charmer," he says.

"Only with you, doll."

The chopper lands on the outside lawn, residents peeping from their windows and staff watching from the courtyard.

Bucky turns his body to shield Steve's face from the wind kicked up by the rotors, leaning close over him. Steve's white hair whips around his face, a wild halo, and Bucky gently sweeps it out of his eyes once they're safe on board.

"It'll be about twenty minutes to the Tower," one of the pilots tells him. "Nice easy flight." He turns to Steve, leans close so the older man can hear him over the thump thump thump. "How ya doing, boss?"

Steve opens his eyes a crack and waves two fingers not connected to a little white clip. A tiny smile pulls up the corners of his mouth. "Hanging in there, Clint. How're the kids?"

"Getting bigger and bigger every day. They loved the drawing books you sent over." He pats Steve's shoulder like an old friend. "You just relax. You'll be hearing Tony talk your ear off in no time at all."

Tony, and another bevy of medical workers meet them at the landing pad on top of the tallest building that Bucky's ever been on the roof of.

He pauses, halfway across to the glass door leading in, hand going slack in Steve's as he stares out across skyscrapers and more skyscrapers and the sparkling water of the river and the buildings of Queens and Brooklyn just beyond the bridges. It looks the same - but different: stretched weird and warped in a funhouse mirror compared to the New York of Bucky's memory.

"Is our building still there?" He asks Steve, absent and distracted. Brooklyn is brown against the blue sky, blurred bits of green at the river front.

They gave Steve an oxygen mask for the flight and he pulls it down now, frowning. "I tried to have it designated a historical landmark but the building had too many structural issues. They tore it down back in '91. It's a gym now."

Steve is almost asleep by the time they get him settled in the suite Tony set up. He's fading fast, hand alternately loosening and clenching around Bucky's fingers as they settle him into the new hospital bed and get him back on the nasal cannula. A doctor sets up an IV, threads a needle into Steve's forearm.

"He's a little dehydrated," he explains to Bucky's question. "Plus something to help him relax. His heart rate is elevated."

There's a glossy glass screen situated near the foot of the bed, vital signs bleeping steadily along.

"Staying?" Steve murmurs, already asleep.

"You bet, pal."

"So. First things first." Stark claps his hands together. "Bruce, Ice Ice Captain. Ice Ice Captain, Bruce."

The bespectacled man reaches forward. "I've heard a lot about you, Captain."

“Bucky.”

They’re in a lab. But nothing like Zola’s. Zola’s had been dank and dim and filled with blood and piss and decay - leather straps braced over flesh and Zola’s pinched little face saying, “fascinating” as Bucky writhed below him.

This lab is all gleaming white and silver, mirrored surfaces. There are clear screens and a couch pushed against wall. Two robots stand against one wall, chirping occasionally. Tony is in just a t-shirt and Bruce is wearing a clean lab coat, open at the front to show a plaid shirt, untucked from his pants.

“Business.” Stark moves his fingers and data streams through the air, blue and clear and clean and incomprehensible. “This is the serum my dad gave Steve 30 years ago. This is the serum you have in your blood now.”

The spinning lines look like forks of lightning, spinning across the empty space, colliding in intricate patterns that remind Bucky of crawling vines and old tree branches and the East River in moonlight.

“Yours has this whole sequence here that’s missing from dear ol’ Dad’s attempt.  I couldn’t figure out what it did at first. But I’m pretty sure, now, that it’s a binding agent. Dad’s stuff gets in there, sits in your white blood cells and starts fixing what ails you. But, the serum only lasts as long as the blood cell, which is a year, tops, if you got it at the very beginning of its life. So, what you get, is short-term healing but no lasting health benefits. Like we saw with Steve.”

Bruce leans forward. “The papers that were recovered from Zola’s lab say he used a high dose of radiation to kick start the sequencing. Amplify it. Put it on steroids. It caused the DNA to mutate, first in the white blood cells, and then spreading through out the body in a manner of seconds - something that Howard’s formula never managed to achieve.” He looks down at a shiny metal screen in his lap. “There were notes from a Dr. Erskine. I’m not sure if you remember his name.”

A bearded man, leaning over the table, touching Bucky’s forehead with a cool, dry hand, holding a cup of water to his parched lips. “I’m sorry,” he said, German accent soft. “I’m so sorry. I’m trying to save you. You must be brave and hold on just a little longer. You are a good man."

Bucky rubbed his forehead. “I think he worked with Zola? He didn’t believe in Hydra though. I don’t think he was there voluntarily. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have survived if it wasn’t for him."

“Erskine is credited with being much of the brains behind the ultimate success of the serum. It says that he hypothesized that the radiation had to be introduced at exactly the right moment - once the initial DNA mutation had begun, but before it had a chance to complete. He has pages and pages of calculations, trying to figure out just the right moment. His notes don’t come to a conclusion, but he clearly figured it out. Unfortunately, all reports say he died soon after you escaped and his findings were never documented."

Tony taps the table. “Do you remember when they injected you?”

They’d lowered him into a metal coffin. He’d been begging: “I’m not dead… I’m not dead yet. Please.” But they had closed the lid and there had been darkness - then a thousand tiny pricks all over his body. And then, light. Pain. His bones being ground to ashes and his blood turning to rivers of fire. Hell contained within his own marrow.

“It wasn’t long.”

Bruce frowns. “I’ll keep going over it.” Then he looks up, smiles kindly. “I think we’re getting close though.”

Steve makes lists. He has a paper thin tablet that he keeps by his bedside and pokes at with his bony fingers.

"You'll need to try Thai food," he explains like this is critical. "And sushi. I know it's raw fish but it's amazing. I couldn't eat some of it because of allergies but you should be fine."

Then the next day: "You wouldn't believe how many movies Disney made. I'm making you a list of the ones you should see first. I asked Natasha. She said she'll take you to Disneyland. Disney World too. I know you're gonna be a big hero but even heroes need vacations." He smiles up at Bucky, like if he makes these lists, plans these trips, leaving Bucky won't be as hard - like Bucky will be okay once he’s gone. Bucky never has the heart to tell him that he will never be okay.

Other days are bad days. Steve's perpetual wheeze turns into raspy gasps and his hands won't stop shaking and he can't even sit upright without help - unable to even eat really. Bucky's learned to climb into the bed with him, curl himself around the small frame and support his shoulders and hold his hand and say, "breathe with me. I'm here." It's like they're kids again.

The doctors have no fixes. They talk about palliative care. About comfort and end of life directives and dignity.

There are chalky protein shakes and Bucky constantly begs Steve to just take one sip. And then one more. And then another. He can hold both of Steve's wrists in one hand and Steve's clavicle is a sharp line below his throat.

Some days, Steve's muscles all seize up and Bucky spends hours massaging his back and his shoulders, feeling the delicate bones and trying to bring some comfort to a fast failing body.

Some days, Steve is quiet, like talking takes too much effort. He curls on his side and stares out the floor to ceiling window across the south wall of his room. The Chrysler Building is framed perfectly, catching the light on its ridges, and the Trump Tower, ugly and black, beyond it. Bucky sits beside him and reads: science fiction and mystery and thrillers. They're the same kind of books he read when they were young, dime store novels with more two dollar words than sense, and each page is laced with memories of reading to a feverish, coughing, rasping Steve.

And then there are the days when Steve makes the real plans. For after. After he’s gone.

“The Avengers Initiative,” he tells Bucky. “You know there are aliens now?”

Bucky does know. Steve has told him the story of New Mexico several times now, each time excited to tell Bucky the story anew. He hasn’t yet corrected Steve. Bucky loves the way Steve’s eyes light up when he talks about the whole systems of other planets out there - planets just waiting for someone from earth to arrive.

“That could be you,” he says dreamily to Bucky. “I’d like that. You would be beautiful in the stars."

"The Avengers need a leader," he confides quietly one evening, after he's choked down some of his protein shake and Bucky's helping him sip some tea. "Tony is... He's a good man but he's absent, brash. He's too focused on his own thoughts to lead a team. They'll need someone to unite them." He's looking at Bucky, pointedly, asking him things that Bucky wants to reject. But he can't with Steve's eyes on him.

Bucky thinks of the way Tony and Bruce and Natasha and Clint listen to Steve, love Steve, respect his word above all others. Steve is the leader this team needs - the leader Bucky needs. Bucky knows it in his bones. He thinks of Tony's shiny lab and the blue lines of data, ways of saving Steve spinning in the air.

He can't reply. So he lays his head down next to Steve's on the thick pillow and matches their breaths.

Every day, Bruce and Tony are saying “so close” and “just a little longer” and “just one more vial of blood.” And, every day, Tony doesn’t smile and Bruce’s eyes get more pinched.

And then the aliens come.

Chapter Text

Bucky doesn’t want to go when they get the call from SHIELD. Steve spiked a fever in the night and the doctors have him on an oxygen mask and antibiotics and fluids and he’s been mostly asleep, but now and then he wakes up and mumbles for Bucky, only half believing that it’s not a dream that Bucky is alive and next to him. The naked relief on his face every time Bucky takes his hand cuts like a knife.

Bucky doesn’t want to go, tells Tony that the others can handle it without him, but then they hear that Clint’s been taken and Natasha looks like she’s been sucker punched.

If he were coherent, Bucky knows Steve would demand that he go (Clint has kids, he remembers). Hell, if Steve knew what was going on, he'd probably try to go anyway - despite the fever and the old age crippling his limbs. Bucky knows that he needs to go because Steve can't.

He suits up, presses a kiss to Steve's forehead.

Steve blinks his eyes open, still so blue even when the rest of him is losing color, for just a moment, only partially aware. "Bucky," he murmurs, like he's lingering in a dream.

"I'm here. Go back to sleep, Steve," he says in his good ear, knowing the hearing aid will catch it.

A sleepy smile tugs at the wrinkled, pale lips and Steve murmurs something just under the hiss of the oxygen before he closes his eyes again.

Tony calls Wilson as they head to the quinjet, asks him to come down from D.C. and sit with Steve while they're gone. “Steve loves him. He’ll be okay with him,” he promises as they lift off, leaving Steve and New York behind. “It’s all good, Winter Wonderboy."

And, somehow, Stark is right. Things work out. Stark is abrasive and Fury is inscrutable but somehow they're winning, stopping the bad guys and saving the innocent, and Bucky even gets to meet an alien.

Thor is loud, angry in the face of his brother's betrayal, but gentle still. He smiles when Natasha introduces Bucky. "Friend of Steve!" he crows. "Such might in one so small. I am pleased that you are reunited."

Sam conferences in from the Tower as they're flying back from Europe, says Steve is just fine. "Just a little crabby he's not a part of the action," he says with a grin. His fever has gone down a little and he even had some tea.

For a moment, when Loki is locked in the cage and the helicarrier is headed back toward New York, Clint tucked safely in Natasha's care, that Bucky lets himself believe that it's all over; let's himself look forward to seeing Steve soon and telling him about Thor. Sure, they have to figure out what to do with SHIELD and the scepter - but all that can be done from the Tower. With Steve.

Steve will probably know just what to do, Bucky thinks.

Then all hell breaks loose. Bucky learns what Stark meant when he said Bruce got green and somehow, in the confusion before Natasha manages to talk Bruce back down, the scepter and Loki are gone.  When Bucky realizes that one of Steve's beloved aliens has decided Stark Tower would be a great location to open a portal to an alien planet, the floor drops out.  

Bucky's pretty sure this is not what Steve was intending when he talked about visiting other worlds.

Tony turns as white as a sheet when he puts together where Loki is headed. "There's a safe room," he's barking a minute later over a secured line, Sam Wilson on the other side. "On Steve's floor. Down the hall. Get him in there and ask Jarvis to activate Project Vibranium." He pauses. "I know you said you weren't interested in going back up, but there's a prototype of your wings in the 30th floor lab."

Bucky can't hear Sam's answer.

Tony is halfway into his suit when he finally meets Barnes's eyes. And Bucky sees the same terror in his eyes that he feels in his gut. "I'll go to the tower first. Steve will be okay. I've always had a plan."

He's being comforting but Bucky can hear the hollowness in the words. He fastens a buckle on his body armor and stares Tony down.

Tony offers a wry smile and flips down the face plate. "Save the Steve. Save the world," he says, tinny through the speaker, like Bucky is supposed to recognize the words. "See you in New York, Frosty."

Bucky watched him go and turns around to board the aircraft that Clint is piloting. His stomach is bound up in knots. He's been Steve's defender since they were boys. And now, at Steve's most vulnerable, he'd left him exposed, alone, helpless.

This is how Natasha describes what happens on top of Stark Tower to Bucky later.

She rolls onto the tower roof, focusing on the power source gleaming on one edge. She sees Selvig, huddled against one corner, hands fluttering like broken wings. "I can't shut it off!" he's saying, the spell finally lifted, there at the end of it all.

And, then from behind her, Loki, smooth like oil. "You really didn't think it would be that easy?" he says, scepter in his hands. "My dear, you will make an excellent soldier." He tips the glowing point toward her chest.

She can't look away. But she hears.

Something from behind him whines, a repulsor charging. "Loki," a deep voice says, a hint of electronics on the underside.

Rising over the side of the roof is a suit of armor, gleaming blue and white in the sunlight, with red star across its chest. It's smaller than the Iron Man armor, smoother. Like it was made, hollowed, fashioned with great care out of a single block of metal. Delicate almost, like a porcelain doll perched on a high shelf.

But this is no doll.

Loki turns, mouth o-ing in surprise. And that’s when the hands fire. It's a clean, well-aimed shot and Loki skids across the roof and ends up slumped against a large vent, unmoving. The scepter goes the other way.

The suit of armor looks at Natasha, tiny slits of eyes glowing a bright blue. "That just stunned him. I'll watch him while you take care of the portal." The voice is deep, self-assured, commanding.

She scrambles, taking the scepter with her.

And then there's a nuke and a portal and Tony falling from the sky, only to be caught by a sleek pair of wings. The aliens crumple and Natasha watches as the last of their aircrafts tumble into the rivers.

(On the ground, Sam Wilson alights right in front of Bucky and Thor, a grim smile on his face.

"I think you dropped something," he says as Tony squawks and flails about not being a damsel.)

When Bucky arrives with the others, the suit of armor looks up wearily from where he has been standing guard over Loki, head bent forward like the weight of keeping it lifted is becoming too much.

Natasha is keeping a wary distance and Bucky doesn't put down his gun.

The eyes flare briefly, when they lock onto Bucky. "You kids can take it from here," the armor says then, and sags like its strings have been cut. Metal knees clank when they hit the ground, broad shoulders wavering like a tree in the wind.

Tony darts forward, catching the armor and settling it back, so gently. And that's when Bucky understands.

"Project Vibranium," Tony explains when Steve is settled into bed and the doctors are buzzing around him, "was my father's idea. He never managed to implement it though. When I was in Afghanistan, I tweaked those plans to create Iron Man. And once I got that working and came home, Captain America wasn't that much different to build."

The armor is folded neatly into a tiny briefcase, tucked agains the wall.

"I made adjustments as Steve got older. It was less of a weapon and more of a," he hesitates, shifting, "a life boat. Full life support systems, all that medical jazz. He could have a heart attack in that suit and it would shock him back to life. Weapons got added later because I wanted Steve to be able defend himself. It's made out of vibranium. Strongest metal on earth. It was supposed to keep him safe."

The armor had folded off of Steve smoothly on Tony's command. He'd been wearing just his pajama pants and a thin tshirt beneath the metal and the instant the suit's oxygen had folded away, his lungs had started hitching.

Steve had met Bucky's eyes, one hand reaching to grip his fingers. They had been so weak against Bucky's, flutters of air. "We won?" he breathed, eyes barely open.

"We won," Bucky had confirmed. The air had been cold and Steve was shivering all over, shaking like his bones were coming undone.

Tony was shouting for a blanket and Thor was draping his cape gently, so gently, over Steve. Somewhere, in the background, Bucky could hear Natasha and Clint cuffing Loki.

Steve stared up at all of them, smiled like the dawning of a day. "Good." And he had fainted dead away.

By the time they had gotten him back to his room, limp in their hands, his blood pressure had been plummeting and his shivering had gotten worse as his fever climbed yet again.  Now, he was still and silent on the bed while the doctors moved around him, faces pinched.

Tony hasn't left the doorway of the room, braced against the wood like he's expecting a large blow. His mouth is pulled together, guilt written in every line, as he stares at the machines beeping around Steve.

Bucky shakes his head. "You give Steve Rogers a weapon, make him a super hero. He's gonna use it. That punk never ran away from a fight." His hair is sweaty and greasy between his fingers. "You were trying to protect him," he tells Stark, trying to absolve whatever he can. Stark had done more than Bucky had.  Bucky had left Steve behind. Again.

He thinks of a plane and a frozen landscape and weapons in the cargo and Steve, young and alone, in an apartment in Brooklyn, waiting for Bucky to come home. Waiting and waiting and waiting - until he was old and gray.

The doctors are solemn when they come to talk with Bucky and Tony, closing the door behind them like they're afraid Steve will hear. His health is tenuous. He's very old. Very weak. He exerted himself dangerously. His body wasn't equipped to handle the strain he put it under. He needs rest. Antibiotics for the fever. Fluids. All the protein shakes he can choke down. Medication for his heart because it’s failing him. And then, we'll wait and see. But, Mr. Stark, Mr. Barnes, he is old. You should prepare yourselves.

One day passes. And then another. And then a week. Then a month. Steve does not get better. But also he does not die.

Loki goes back to Asgard with Thor. Natasha disappears and reappears, sometimes sitting quietly for hours by Steve's bedside and sometimes not calling for three days. Clint lurks in hallways, brings little drawings from his kids and pastes them on the walls in Steve's room. Tony and Bruce bury themselves in the lab. Bucky doesn't ask, but he knows what they're working on.

Wilson drives up every weekend from D.C., sometimes just for a few hours and sometimes over night. He doesn't say anything but Bucky sees it in the way he says goodbye to Steve every time he leaves, like this could be it.

Steve only wakes in snatches now, like he expended all his remaining energy on corralling Loki and now there's nothing left but a slow slide to the end. All the fight is drained away and now Steve is just barely slowing his own descent.

Sometimes, more and more, though, as the days drag on, he's confused or frightened by a world quickly slipping out of his reach. He's often too weak to speak or sit up or even lift his own head. Sometimes he cries. Not loudly. Just steady tears pooling in the corner of his eyes to run down sunken cheeks.

Sometimes he forgets Bucky is alive, thinks he's waking up in heaven and they're finally reunited. Sometimes he thinks they're back in Brooklyn in the '30s and he has the fever yet again. Sometimes he asks Bucky to get his ma, calls for her like a child. Sometimes he's aware and he looks at Bucky with such an exhausted, melancholy expression, like he can't bear to go but also can't bear to stay.

Bucky thinks, even in the confusion and the tears and the silences, every time Steve opens his eyes again, it's a gift. It's one more moment to be with him.

He can't bring himself to go down to the lab, can't bring himself to hope, can't bring himself to spend even a moment focused on anything but this - just in case these are the last days.

He moves a cot right next to Steve's bed, has his meals brought there. Sleeps with one arm outstretched, fingers wrapped around Steve's hand, feeling the warmth and the pulse. The heart monitor beats on.

Steve loses whatever weight he had, until he's just wrinkled skin pulled over frail bone and Bucky can count the little joints in his hands when he clasps them, can run his thumb along the ridges where his elbow joints come together.

Eating is a struggle. He chokes on anything but the protein shakes and can barely stomach those. Steve refuses a feeding tube when the doctors bring the possibility up and Bucky cringes at the idea too.

Stark spends one day, pleading with Steve to change his mind, for Bucky to convince him.

"I need more time," he hisses to Bucky, outside the room when Steve is sleeping with Bruce hovering nearby, "I need just a little more time. Okay? Then this will all be over. If you ask him, he'll do it for you."

Bucky thinks of the naked fear on Steve's face whenever the doctors have brought it up. Thinks that Stark is right, Steve would do it for him. Steve would put himself through unwanted fear and pain just so Bucky could have a few more days with him.

"I can't," he says helplessly. "I can't put him through that on just the chance..."

"While you're sitting there ushering him to his grave, I'm trying to save his life. Okay. So don't tell me you can't..."

Bruce puts a hand on Tony's shoulder. "We're doing the best we can," he says to Bucky softly. "Tell him to hang on just a little longer."

And Steve does. He keeps waking up, keeps smiling at Bucky, keeps holding Natasha's hands, praising the artwork Barton brings, and listening intently to Tony's rambles.

Bucky can hear Steve's voice, still young and thicker with Brooklyn and echoing off the walls of some alleyway as a bully stared him down.

"I can do this all day."

Steve Rogers never ran away from a fight. Not a day in his life. It's fitting that he wouldn't even stop fighting now. Bucky isn't sure if Steve even knows how to quit. Bucky imagines Death just turning around and walking away, fed up with the tenacity of a kid that should've died decades ago.

But it's only three weeks later when Steve opens his eyes late one evening (a Friday, Wilson will be coming in the morning) and looks at Bucky like he knows something.

The room is lit by a single lamp, curtains drawn across the large window and door to the hallway closed.

Bucky had been dozing but he comes awake quickly when Steve squeezes his hand.

"Hey," he murmurs and leans close, smoothing his thumb over Steve's wrist. "You with me?"

Steve smiles, slow like it hurts. "I'm with you." His voice is basically a puff of air. He blinks, long and tired. "You're so beautiful," he murmurs. And then his face crumples.

"I spent years," he says, "trying to do you proud. Waiting until I could see you again. And now you're here and I don't want to leave you. I don't want to wait anymore. I don't want to go anywhere without you."

"Shh, shh." Bucky cups the side of his face, leans close and presses a close mouthed kiss to his lips. "Don't be sad. I'll be along. You just gotta be patient a bit longer. Bet my guardian angel could use a little help. And I'll know you're with me. Every day."

Steve sniffs, shakes his head. "You need to move on, Buck. Okay? You need to live and do me proud. I didn't do a good job of that. You were always stronger than me."

"Steve." Bucky tightens his grip, can barely breathe past the weight of awe at this man. "Steve, I couldn't be prouder of you, of this world, of this team. You've done more than we ever dreamed. More than I could've had it be reversed. And, if it's time, you deserve," he almost chokes on the words but plows on, "you deserve your rest now. It's okay to go. I promise. I'll be okay. I'll take care of them. And I'll be along to join you when the time comes."

And if Bucky prays that the time comes sooner rather than later, he doesn't need to tell Steve.

Steve looks at him, long and hard. "I've thanked God, Bucky Barnes, every day, that I got a chance to know you. And I'll thank God that He brought you back and let me see it. This world needs you more than I do. Just wish I could be here to help." He sighs, strength fading fast. "I'm sure Tony told you. I almost died back in the eighties and Howard had some magical potion that brought me back. I was so angry then. Furious. I thought he kept me from you. But, now." He sighs and he looks so defeated, so tired. "Now I would take it again in a heartbeat, just for a few more good days with you."

Bucky thinks of the lab and the hope. But he can't offer that, not when death is looming close and Steve needs peace. "We had good days," he says instead. "I'll thank God every day that I woke up to a world with you alive."

Steve manages another smile, smaller this time. "You're gonna do amazing things, Buck," he whispers. His eyes are closing and something about it seems very final.

Bucky swallows. "I love you," he says, kissing Steve's palm. "I'll be here when you wake up."

He can barely see the blue, slitted between Steve's eyelids. "Love you too." And Steve falls asleep, gently sighing like whatever dream he's headed for is a beautiful one.

Steve doesn't wake for Sam's visit the next morning. Or the next day. Or Monday. That evening, the doctors shake their heads and say, "Any time. Any moment. There's nothing to be done."

And that's when Tony calls up from the lab.

Steve looks very small and half dead in the bright white lights of the lab. They've stripped off his shirt down to lay him down in the big machine and Bucky thinks he can count every bone.

His chest is barely moving now. The doctors had been equal parts horrified and sympathetic when Bruce and Tony had commandeered a gurney and Bucky had helped to move Steve from the bed to the thin mattress. The doctors didn’t ask where they were taking him, faces sad and resigned, and none of them had volunteered. There was nothing to be done.

Bucky felt guilt coil in his gut. After everything, didn’t Steve deserve to die in peace?

"This will work?" He asks again.

Stark looks slightly manic, hands fluttering over a control panel. "Or it'll kill him. But he's well on his way to that anyway.” He sounds cold, but his fingers are trembling.

Bruce is inserting vials of a bright blue liquid into the sides of the pod. "It's our only chance. But I think the odds are good.” His face twists like he’s trying to smile but can’t bring himself to follow through.

"And he won't be in any pain?” Bucky is still holding Steve’s hand, feeling the dry skin and the light tremors. Steve’s face is slack and empty with approaching death, so close to the edge of oblivion.

There's a hesitation and Stark looks down. "I don't think he'll feel anything. He's too far gone. But,” he grimaces. "If he was awake, this would hurt like hell."

Bucky glares. But Bruce is right. This is their only chance. He remembers Steve's words from Friday night, how he would take the serum. I'm sorry, Steve, he thinks. I hope you would choose this too.

Bruce stands back. "We're ready.”

“See you soon, Steve.” Bucky brushes a kiss to his knuckles and then reluctantly settles Steve’s hand back to his side, stepping away.

Stark nods and the pod closes around Steve, like a coffin.

Bucky clenches his hands so hard that his joints creak. He's said his goodbyes. But something in his gut burns at the chance that the sight of metal enveloping a frail body might've been the last time he saw Steve alive.

"And we're a go. Levels are holding steady." Stark's fingers are flitting over the screens, surer now that there’s a task to be done.

The pod begins to hum. And then glow. Sparking from the huge cables connected to it. The humming turns louder, thrumming against Bucky's bones. He can hear Bruce counting down down and then a soft, "now."

Three more seconds and Bucky hears a noise just above the pod, something human and high and he flinches like a live wire touched him.

"He's awake,” Bruce says, voice wet with horror.

The sound grows into a scream, torn from vocal chords not meant to sound like that, like something rough and violent.

"Stark! Shut it off! He's awake! You said..." Bucky spins and Tony's face is pale but set like a rock.

"We're almost there. We have to finish it. It wouldn’t do any good to stop it now."

Bucky gapes at him, horror galloping through him. What had he done. "Steve!" He spins and charges for the pod. There's a window near the top, bright as the sun. "Steve!" He bangs on the top, kicks at the cables. But nothing moves and the scream breaks for just a second before carrying on, not even sounding human anymore. He kicks again and then throws himself against it, presses his face to the glass. "Steve. I'm here. It'll be over soon. I promise. I’m so sorry. Just hold on." He has no hope that Steve can hear him. Or understand, even if he did.

He is no better than Zola, Bucky thinks wildly. Sending someone to die in agony for his own selfish needs.

The scream cuts off, abruptly, like a heart stopping. The tears come then, a desolation in his gut and Bucky knows that he will never forgive himself for this. Never be okay ever again. Steve didn't deserve this - didn't deserve to die in pain on a fool's hope.

There’s a huge whooshing sound, vacuumed seals breaking, and the pod cracks open, sides sliding apart. Bucky scrambles off of it, already reaching out, wanting to lift Steve from the cold, cruel space where he died. Just wanting to hold him one last time, comfort him once more in the chance he might feel it.

Except.

Bucky blinks. Once. Twice.

Steve is gone.

Or rather.

He's changed.

Where there had been wrinkled skin and bird bones and ribs and age spots and wasted muscle is now gleaming healthy skin, stretched over lean muscles and strong limbs. The fingers are still long and slender, but they're no longer curled with arthritis and the palms are broader like Steve could now carry the world in his hands like he had always wanted to do. His hair is still snow white, shockingly white now against his tanner skin, but thicker like a young man’s hair. And his face.

Bucky reaches a trembling hand forward. The chin. The jawline. The cheekbones. The mouth. It is Steve. Steve from 1943 and Steve from now and, yet, different still. Steve like he was always intended to be, a part of Bucky supplies.

He can hear Bruce and Tony behind him, coming around and staring too, questioning.

But Bucky still cannot speak. Because in that changed face, Steve's eyes are the exact same color that Bucky knows so well - and they stare like blue marbles at the ceiling. No breath passes his lips. His chest does not move. His lips are going gray even as all the machines in the room go silent.

Bucky presses his hand against Steve's face and closes his eyes. Tries to breathe. Because it worked. It worked. But it was already too late. They had killed Steve as much as they had healed him.

Tony is beside him now, talking loud and fast as he does and Bucky can make out none of it. Can make out nothing but his own pulse thundering.

A hand settles on his shoulder. Bruce.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm so sorry, Bucky."

"No!" Tony spins. His jaw is clenched. "This isn't how it's supposed to go."

"Tony..."

Stark pushes past them, back to the control panels. "Our calculations were right."

Bruce moves carefully, hands outstretched. "Steve was old. He was frail. It was too much..."

"It doesn't make sense. Look at him. For the change to have been completed, he had to have been alive up until the very last moment. He was healed. He wouldn't have died then." Tony slams his fist and something shatters.

Bruce murmurs something but it fades. All the rumbling noise coming to stillness in the face of a great loss.

Bucky leans down, lays his hand over the staring eyes. “Forgive me,” he murmurs. This, he thinks, is a moment he will never forget. This feeling of desolation and guilt and horror at his own selfishness and arrogance. This is a moment he will come back to and linger on, rubbing the wound raw as penance for what he has done.

He keeps his eyes open, even as they burn.

And so, James Barnes sees the exact moment when Steve Rogers takes a large gasp of air and wakes up.

Chapter Text

"Well, doc, is it permanent?" Steve is perched on the exam table, legs crossed at his ankles.

Bucky is leaning against the wall. Some days, he finds he cannot look away from Steve.

It's like all the brightness and strength and courage that had always been inside is now steaming out of Steve's pores. He is the sun.

Bruce smiles. "Your cells have completely stabilized. Your blood work is a thing of beauty. Congratulations, you're a super soldier."

Steve's face loosens slightly, a great weight slipping away. "And it only hurt a little."

And Bucky feels himself relax.

Those first few days after the lab, after Steve had died and come back, had been the best and the worst of Bucky’s life. First, the relief of having Steve alive and healthy, looking like he was the same age as Bucky, if not for the whiteness of his hair. And then, the absolute terror that this wouldn’t be permanent, that Steve’s body would fail again or he would just fade away in the night.

“What did you do?” Steve had asked, still halfway in the pod, large hands braced on the side as he tried to catch his breath. “Oh god what did you do to me." His face had been half terror, pupils blown wide.

Bucky had yanked him from the pod, desperate to pull Steve from the metal, and they had tumbled together to the floor.

Steve struggled for a second and then gave in, letting Bucky wrap his arms around his neck and cry into his shoulder.

"You said," Bucky had choked finally. "A few more good days."

Steve had inhaled sharply at that. Bucky could feel that he had lifted his head to stare at Bruce and Tony, at the lab, at the big metal pod he had just came out of. His brow furrowed. "Did it work?" he asked.

Tony had knelt next to them then, hand touching Steve's shoulder. "It worked."

"How do you feel?" Bruce had asked from somewhere above.

Steve had looked down at himself. "I can breathe," he says, dazed. "I forgot how that really felt."

Of course nothing was that easy. The next few days Steve had oscillated between anger and wonder at his new body. And the new body had swung between perfection and, what Tony called, puberty on crack. Muscle aches, tremors, and clumsiness (growing pains really) had plagued Steve for almost a week before settling down.

But, Bucky's deepest fears had not been realized. Steve was healthy - healthier than he'd ever been before in his life. Bucky didn't have to say goodbye to him.

He had a brief fantasy of he and Steve leaving. Just taking a car or a plane or a bus or a boat and slipping from all their responsibilities and duties, finally living out all of those days that they had lost.

But Steve was Steve and he was never one to shirk from the battle, even at almost ninety five years old.

He and Tony had been down in the work room lately. They hadn't let anyone else in but Bucky had an idea of what they were doing. The vibranium Captain America suit was no longer needed and Steve was making noises about using the metal for something else. He would show Bucky when it was ready.

They go running that evening, dusk fading over Manhattan. Crisscrossing the streets, following the walking man across the busy intersections, until they reach the Brooklyn Bridge. They race across, as the lights come on beneath them and the train rumbles by them, so loud Bucky can't hear his own footsteps.

They reach the other side and curl around toward the river front, passed the cafes and the shops and the bars. Right on the edge of the river, Steve stops.

Manhattan gleams across, tiny pinpoints of light going up up and up across the skyscrapers.

"I missed you, Buck," he says. "I know I've told you before but it's hard to put into words how big that feeling was." He turns and their eyes meet. "It engulfed me. It dogged me. No matter the people I met or the places I saw or the things I did, I missed you. When I was dying," his gaze goes faraway. "I never said it, but I worried. I wanted you so badly to be okay - but I knew how not okay I had been. But you were always stronger than me."

Bucky leans close, sets his hands on hips he knows so well, and also barely recognizes. "Neither of us are going nowhere for a long time, pal. We don't have to worry about that again. All the good days we want."

Steve smiles. "It's a big world, Buck. Still a lot of bullies out there."

"We'll fight 'em off."

"You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?"

Bucky snorts. "Hell no. That name is cheesy."

"And Winter Soldier is so much better."

There's a smirk on Steve's mouth and Bucky kisses it off. "I think," he says, pulling away. "I think I've been following this punk from Brooklyn for almost 90 years and I don't think I'm gonna quit any time soon."

Steve leans close.

The river churns by and Manhattan hums. The world awaits. And they've made it.

The future is theirs