Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Steve

Leaving Brooklyn wasn’t easy, but come on, he’d been thinking about this for months. Sure, it was home, and sure, the streets and rooftops were familiar, but how many more sketches of the same brownstone could he possibly make before they all started to look like each other? He pressed his sketchbook to his knee, pencil tapping against the page as the train rattled along. Okay, new scenery, new light… maybe even new inspiration.

He glances out the window as the city blurred into suburbs, then rolling fields. England. Peggy. Half a decade since he’s last seen her. Not since she moved back, not since they’d broken up sensibly and promised to stay friends. Which they have. They talk nearly every day. He smiled. Friends. That’s what this trip is about… and maybe a little more.

The train jolted, making his coffee wobble. He caught it with one hand; sketchbook balanced on the other and laughed at himself. Focus, Rogers. Don’t spill the tea before it even gets cold. Peggy would absolutely kill him for ‘running a perfectly good cup of tea.’

The countryside rolled past, green and misty and entirely unlike Brooklyn. Trees bent with the wind, and somewhere ahead, a river glimmered like a silver ribbon. He leans forward, pencil moving faster now, trying to catch the curve of a hill, the texture of a stone wall. He felt alive in a way he hadn’t in years. This is it. This is what I’ve been waiting for.

England was nothing like New York. Just a few hours here and that was for sure. And expected, logically. But knowing something and seeing it, actually seeing it, for yourself are two very different things. Peggy has been begging him for years to visit her, so here he was. Small suitcase by his feet, sat in one of the most uncomfortable seats he had ever sat in. He could feel the pain in his spine that this will cause.

Rolling hills replaced steel towers, mist curled around stone cottages, and the air smelled of damp earth and distant woodsmoke. Steve drew a shaky line to mark the hills, then another to trace the path of a winding river gleaming silver in the morning light. Everything here felt alive in a different way. Soft, slow, inviting curiosity instead of noise.

Getting off the train was almost a welcome sight, as he pulled into the small station everything felt final. A few weeks in England before returning home, with new inspiration and material to paint.

Peggy’s house was a welcome sight: low stone walls, a garden in bloom, and a warm front door that opened to laughter and the smell of tea. “Steve,” she says, grinning as he drops his bag, “you’re just in time. I was afraid you’d get lost among the hedgerows.”

He laughs. “I almost did.” He is grinning now, an expression just two people can draw from him. Sam, his best friend. And Peggy. Hugging her fiercely, he replies “I had to ask for directions like… 10 times.”

Peggy hands him a steaming mug of tea the minute she has ushered him through the door, telling him to put his bags in the spar room, then moving them into the small cosy kitchen. She was currently leaning against the counter. “I’ve marked a few spots on the map for you, lakes, ruins, old manors. All good for sketching. And…” she lowers her voice with mock seriousness, “…keep your eyes open for the haunted manor in the woods. DI know how much you like an adventure so no point warning you off.”

Steve raises an eyebrow. “Haunted manor?”

“Locals whisper. Old stories. Nothing to worry about, just… be polite if the ghost asks you for tea.” She raises her eyebrows at this, making it obvious what she believes about the story. Rubbish, as she would say. Yet the premise of something unknown to him, an experience he hasn’t had yet, is mostly what he thinks of as she continues to speak.

Haunted or not, he loved the idea. The unknown always made the brush move faster.

Steve wanders through Peggy’s Garden after tea, letting the warmth of the house trail behind him. Flowers bloom everywhere, riotous colour against the stone walls, and bees hum lazily from blossom to blossom. There’s a slow rhythm here, a pulse that feels… different, somehow. He brushes his hand against the petals of a bright orange marigold and, for a moment, swears it lingers a second longer than it should. He shakes his head. Must be imagining things.

An ancient oak leans over the gravel path, gnarled limbs like hands frozen mid-reach. The bark is rough under his fingers, knotted and lined with years, and yet he catches a glimmer of green that seems almost to glow in the shade. A shiver runs down his spine, quickly dismissed as a breeze. Or perhaps the thrill of being somewhere new.

Steve settles onto the low garden wall, sketchbook open on his knees. The flowers spill around him in a riot of colour. Marigolds, foxgloves, daisies nodding in the soft breeze. He tilts his head, catching the sunlight as it glints off the dew on the petals. Okay, focus, he thinks, tapping the pencil to the page. Just the shapes. The light. Don’t mess it up.

Lines form under his fingers, tracing the curve of a stem, the shadows between blossoms, the lazy flight of a bee. He leans closer, pencil dancing, trying to catch the twist of the ancient oak in the corner, the shimmer of moss along its roots. It’s like the garden’s breathing, he wonders, like it’s alive in a way I’ve never seen back home.

The wind lifts a petal against his hand, soft and startlingly warm. He pauses, pencil hovering. Am I imagining things? Or is this… more than just light and shadow? He shakes his head, smudging graphite across the page. No, just focus. Capture it before it changes.

Every leaf, every petal feels urgent under his gaze, a story he wants to hold on paper before it shifts again. I could sit here forever, he thinks, and still not get it right.

A voice calls from the doorway. “You’re still obsessed with capturing every leaf, aren’t you?” Peggy leans on the frame, arms crossed, a teasing smile on her face.

Steve grins without looking up. “Some of us appreciate the finer details of life!”

Peggy steps closer, peering over his shoulder. “And some of us just like to watch you get lost in your little worlds.” She shakes her head. “I swear, you could spend hours on a single bloom.”

He laughs softly. “Better a single bloom than five hundred city rooftops, right?”

Peggy crouches beside him, resting her elbows on her knees. “True. But don’t forget, there’s a whole countryside out here waiting for you. You might miss the bigger picture if you stay glued to your page.”

Steve shrugs, pencil still poised above the page. “Maybe. Or maybe I just like noticing the small things that make a place feel alive.”

Peggy smiles warmly. “Well, you’re certainly good at it. Even New York couldn’t make you overlook the tiny details. Bet the countryside will be easier on your eyes.”

The wind lifts a petal against his hand, soft and startlingly warm. He shakes his head, smudging graphite across the page. No, just focus. Capture it before it changes.

Every leaf, every petal feels urgent under his gaze, a story he wants to hold on paper before it shifts again. I could sit here forever, he thinks, and still not get it right.

Peggy straightens, brushing imaginary dust from her hands. “Come on, Steve. There’s more to see. The woods behind the old stone wall? Perfect for a painter in need of inspiration.”

After her quick explanation of just what he could see, he has never been more intrigued, remembering her words from earlier.

Steve blinks, excitement creeping into his chest. “Ruins? Hidden corners? That sounds exactly like what I need.” He quickly flips to a fresh page in his sketchbook, jotting down ideas for tomorrow. “Lead me the way, Peggy. Show me what I’m missing.”

She laughs, looping her arm through his. “Careful now. I know I’d be shattered after a whole day of travelling. I’ll show you the way tomorrow.”

Steve grins up at her, heart lighter than it has been in years.

The next morning, he set out with sketchbook tucked under his arm. Peggy leads him along a narrow dirt track into the woods beyond her garden.  Her small comments only adding to his excitement for the day. The air smells damp, earthy, full of growth, and mist curls lazily around the roots of old trees. Birds call from the branches, though some sounds are too sharp, too fleeting, almost like whispers.

Deer appear in the distance, frozen, then gone before Steve can blink. Stone walls lean into the mossy ground, crooked from centuries of use. The moss itself seems impossibly vibrant, brighter than anything he has seen in New York, almost glowing. Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees a figure. Tall, pale, and still. But when he blinks, it is gone.

Peggy hums beside him, oblivious to his hesitation. “Keep moving, Steve. The manor’s not far,” she says lightly. He nods, curiosity pulling him forward faster than caution.

Not long after, Peggy returns to her home. Leaving Steve to his job. Exploring the woodland forest area. And by midday, he was already lost in the rhythm of the countryside, pencil flying across pages as he tried to catch the texture of moss on an ancient stone wall, the curve of a ruined arch, the way sunlight pooled in the grass. Unaware of it, his half-fae energy hummed faintly around him, drawing attention from things that were watching, waiting.

Steve laughed softly to himself, thinking. This is going to be a good summer.

Back at Peggy’s, Steve sinks into a chair by the window, sketchbook open on his lap. Utterly exhausted. Peggy was right, travelling really takes it out of a person, not to mention the jet lag. He’s sure, even with his insomnia he will be asleep soon. Pencil scratches across the page as he tries to capture the shapes of the mist, the wild twist of the old oak, the impossible glow of the moss from memory. Feeling hopeful for it’s outcome.

His thoughts drift to tomorrow. The manor. The ruined walls he glimpsed in the distance, tangled with ivy and mystery. There is something about this place. Something alive. Steve feels, unreasonably, that it knows he is here.

He pauses, hand hovering over the page, a flicker of unease passing quickly, replaced by excitement. This is what he came for, he thinks. Adventure, inspiration… maybe even something more.

Steve tucks away his sketches and stands at the window, staring out into the fading light. Somewhere unseen, a pulse brushes against him like a tide.

Tomorrow, he will see the manor. He will explore the woods. And unknowingly, he will step closer to something older, stranger, and far more alive than anything he has ever known.

Sleep comes slowly, restless with anticipation and the strange thrill of the unknown.

Chapter Text

Bucky Barnes:

He was not born as men are. Yet was born of the sea. Spat out of it's waves, woven in salt and storm and fury. That was his beginning. Placed into the world alongside humankind, the creatures who hated them. Hunted them, feared them.

Yet that life he was given, had a cost. She gave breath, a beating heart, thoughts and feelings.

Yet the element that grants also claims.

Each life he took was paid to Her, the Endless Mother. A payment, a token of gratitude for the gift she bestowed upon him and his kind. For all born from her know one simple fact, if they hadn't done it, taken this lives in her honour, they too would have been taken to the depths of Her.

He took and claimed the lives of those less than him. Those who didn't deserve their lives. For centuries he did all was asked of him. Every task every deed required of him to belong. Yet the truth was learnt. Never would he truly belong.

They say he is unselie. A fair folk to bow to the ruler of his realm, yet he is not. Or suffice to say, not merely that. He is born from and for the sea.

Bucky Barnes was made for drowning, not for dancing.

He was banished, reasonably or unfairly so, depending on who you ask. If he were to be asked. The person asking would regret that moment in their life more than any other lived.

Banishment was the worst fate he could have received. Cut if from the sea, made solitary and alone. Yet alone never meant ruined. Or broken.

It meant angry.

It was easy to look upon him and believe him someone else to the creature he was two centuries prior. Yet that old him still lived beneath the surface, bubbling, clawing to find release. To make blood fall.

Banishment suited Bucky. Life at court was always more tedious than anything else, engaging with politics and arse kissing was never a fancy he, himself took. He neither naturally acquired the skill nor warmed to it. Unlike his closest friends. No, solitary life suited him.

To call him solitary is enough of a descriptor, yet living in a forest one may believe he had some company over the years. Animals? People? He didn't. Not at first.

The birds always fell silent as he stepped into the dense foliage. They always did. Even after all these years, the wild things remembered who he once was. What he once was. What he still is, to an extent.

Nature was his only solace at first. The lack of water was the designed punishment, to draw him into insanity without the only connection he had ever known. The comfort of it never arrived, instead other things did. Little things that kept him sain.

Alpine. A fearsome Cù-Sìth. She found him, one day. An ordinary day nearly 3 decades into his banishment. She never left his side once in the years that occurred since.

For humankind, most things in this world move on. They die, or forget, or wander back to whatever realm spat them out.

The Fairfolk are different. Nearly eternal, or in appearance of to the mortals who cannot comprehend their life span.

For his people, thing simply stop. Things leave, they pretend to forget. Yet Alpine stayed. She is stubborn like that, loyal in a way that feels less like devotion and more like inevitability.

Her fur looks black until the light catches it, then the green shows through. Moss-dark, forest-deep, the colour of things that thrive where sun never reaches. Her eyes glow the same way. She doesn’t need to bare her teeth to unsettle anyone. The sight of her is enough.

She was the original preventative measure to the insanity probing at his mind. She kept the claws of it from shredding what was left. Mended the remaining over the years.

The second thing he came to rely on was more simple. Less permanent. The abbey that he learned to call his home. A appearing abandoned building hidden in the depths of old trees he planted himself. Ivy clung to its walls, stone looked crumbled and ruined. A deliberate choice of glamour and lack of care to keep people away. The few brave enough to enter his grounds, became just another human in the long list of names his hand claimed. Another offering to replenish his soul.

From the outside it looks abandoned, and that is how he prefers it. Ivy drowns the walls, towers lean as if exhausted, and the roof long ago gave itself to the sky.

He lets it stand like that, a ruin, a warning. If people think it haunted, they keep their distance. If they whisper that crops won’t grow near it, all the better.

Inside is different. The air still carries damp and salt, always will, but the walls are clean. Furniture from centuries gone rests in its proper place, oak darkened by age, velvet faded to dusk tones, a Persian rug soft beneath his bare feet. He keeps it orderly. He always has. The villagers call it cursed, but he calls it shelter.

Light breaks strangely here, fractured by glass that should have fallen to dust centuries ago. Stained colours move across the stones like tides. The halls echo with dripping water though no leaks streak the walls. Plants take root where they shouldn’t, a fern climbing a crack in the flagstones, moss spreading in patterns like script.

At the heart of his home lies the pool. The spring never falters, never grows stagnant. Its surface is still as glass, though sometimes his reflection betrays him, his glamour fades when close to his truest desire. Eyes appear too dark, mouth too full of Teath that are too sharp, hair floating as if submerged. Even while dry. He doesn’t linger there. He doesn’t need reminding.

The abbey is ruin to the world, but to him it is all that remains of who he truly is. A place to disappear. A place to endure. A forgotten place for a forgotten myth.

Alpine stirs before he does. Her scenes keen and well used. Her ears prick, her chest rumbles in a way that can simply mean but one thing. Intruder.

After all, her reaction to food or game or the monthly return of a friend, is vastly different. This reaction is not for a fox. Nor deer, not the soft footed hare.

As much as Bucky would like to claim he felt the presence that caused her reaction mere moments after here. It is a claim he cannot say, for it is false. Instead he closes his book with a simple peice of green silk, older than the current kind of the mortal country, and listens.

In all his years with her by his side. She has never been wrong.

The air is restless, the way it is before a storm. That is nothing new, Bucky sensed the arriving storm days previous. But not only the way before a storm. There is a different feeling. In addition to the energy of water coiling and ready to rage, a feeling he knows all to well, there is an other.

Something else, not like anything (or anyone) he has felt in his whole existence. Let it be known, for all who care, Bucky barnes knows his Fairfolk. Knows the many categories that they are classed into, knows the feel of each type of magic. Yet the being that has broken through his wards, so apparently easy, as there is not a tear or broken ward feel to be felt. Is not something that he can identify.

Its a thought so thrilling and fearful to him. Could it be anything else that would draw him out of his isolation. Would it be anything else that could draw him to the very end of his wards, right on the invisible line between glamour and real. No, Bucky Barnes would not willing socialise for anything, but this. Apparently.

The walk through the property is a beautiful one, that is an undefinable fact. One of the truths of existence. With so much free time, not spent drowning mortals, he had learnt to garden. And garden well.

Alpine pads alongside him, a green-eyed shadow, silent save for the soft brush of her paws. He speaks to her once, a muttered thought made sound, and she flicks an ear as if to say she’s heard.

It was then that he saes the intruder.

A figure, harmless-seeming at first glance, but carrying something rare about him, an element unlike anything Bucky had ever seen in mortal kind.

He is small, not in presence, but in stature. Short, quite a margin shorter than he is. His frame is slight, his body narrow, as if built of stubborn bone rather than strength itself. Yet that is a sort of strength he supposes.

He spares a glance to Alpine, wondering if she were in agreement.

Bucky dared not approach. He knew that looks are more than enough to deceive a person. After all, were it not his looks that drew in many unsuspecting mortals to Her waters, where they never rose again for breath?

Bucky knows all too well that a trap can wear a gentle face, hold an innocent frame. He will not allow himself to be deceived so easily.

And yet--

The man sways, falters, collapses. His body betrays him. Feet move without his explicit or even informed consent, arms reaching before thought can stop them. He curses under breath.

Bucky catches him. That too, seems to be a simple fact. But in truth, no matter how true it simply is. He finds himself wishing it weren’t so. Wishing he can understand the logic in his body’s movement. The man is feather-light. Alpine outweighs him by far.

Still he looks down. Perhaps he should know better. Know not to allow him even a moment of deception from this man. No matter his appearance. Yet he still wills his gaze down to the stranger cradled in his arms.

The face is delicate, pale hair plastered flat, from rain. His mouth parted with shallow breaths. Long lashes clump wet against his cheek. Fragile, but... something else. Something that hums against the wards and glamours.

This is the one who broke them. With nothing impossible or powerful about his appearance, other than the seamless beauty he carries.

It should be impossible. Only one person has ever managed to find him. And only able to after years of searching and months of figuring out how to break through the wards. But here he lies. The storm lashes harder. To leave him would be cruelty, and even though death would be simple. Bucky has no need of more ghosts on his conscience. No need to be the cause of yet another. So he holds on. Against all reason, against centuries of instinct, he carries the man inside. And though he would never speak it, not even to Alpine.

Already he is intrigued.

Chapter Text

When Steve wakes up. He is immediately aware of three things.

 1. The rain hammering his body.

They say the English weather is rainy and unpredictable. But jeeeze this is something else. Considering it was nice just moments before. Now it feels like the world is trying to drown him in a reenactment of the great flood.

 2. He is vaugly aware that he is being carried.

Which is strange in on itself, but maybe Peggy? Or Peggy found him and got someone to carry him? He decides not to dwell on it to much.

Then. Oh.

 3. This last thought occurs the moment his eyes crack open. The person carrying him is a man.

Well, to call it thought is a massive overstatement. As he said, hes being cardied by a man. An unreasonably attractive man. His brain more shuts down and repeats weird noises at him, that he hopes remain very much inside his head thank you.

A stupidly attractive man does not entirely do him justice. Not just handsome, beautiful. The kind of beautiful Steve has only ever seen in oil portraits, carved statues, the rarest brushstrokes of a master’s hand.

He believes then, at this moment. He is dead. With a list of medical conditions as long as his arm, sooner or later one of them was bound to do him in. And if death looks like this, this impossible man holding him, then Steve must have lucked into an angel to guide him out.

The next thing Steve knows. He promptly passes out again.

The second time Steve wakes, he immediately knows two things:

 1. 1. He’s not outside anymore.

Which is as good as it is obvious. But being as waterlogged like a sack of laundry wasn’t exactly fun and he could feel an ache in his body forming. He was grateful for the assistance of whoever helped him. (Steve simply won't believe that whoever he saw carry him in what he cpuld reasonably call a dream existed. Nope.)

 2. He’s still damp.

Less good. His clothes cling, his hair feels like it’s plastered on, but at least he isn’t freezing.

Whoever dragged him inside gets points for that.

It’s warmer here. That’s the next thing. Not fire-warm, not cozy blanket warm, just… sheltered. The air doesn’t bite his skin anymore. He can breathe without tasting rain.

He can hear faint sounds of movement if he turns his good ear toward that direction. The source of the movement, still unknown.

Steve stays still, blinking against the damp ache in his bones. The surface beneath him isn’t stone at all but something softer, an old firm sofa coushio, springs creaking faintly when he shifts. His back still protests, but less than it would on bare ground. He coughs once, the sound catching sharp in his chest, and freezes. Whoever’s moving out there will have heard it.

He opens his eyes.

This isn’t Peggy’s place. This isn’t any place he’s ever seen.

The ceiling arches high, beams blackened with age. The walls are hung with tapestries, their threads faded but still rich with hunting scenes and twisting vines. A heavy wooden chest sits beside a lacquered cabinet that looks stolen from some Eastern court. A candelabra droops with wax, clearly used, while next to it, ridiculously, a glass jar filled with smooth river stones. Some looking older than others.

Every corner of the room is like that: mismatched, centuries colliding, odd trinkets lined up like trophies.

It feels less like stepping into history (Steve may not have been an avid student, but hes studied enough paintings, and the objects here do not match just one era) and more like stepping into someone’s memory. Someone very old. Which is ridiculous. Maybe whoever lives here is just... an avid collector?

Honestly, Steve doesn't know.

And there...

The man.

Sitting in a chair at the far end of the room, one ankle hooked over his knee. The other, barefoot against the stone floor. A book rests in his hands, its script a language Steve doesn’t recognize. And can just about see to know that if he squints heavily. Which seema to draw suspicion of the other man, as the book is quickly closed with a glare. His hair is dark, curling damp at his jaw, his body lean but solid, shoulders broad under the loose shirt he wears.

Steve stares. Because this... this is ridiculous. Nobody looks like that. Nobody belongs in a place like this.

The thought blurts out before he can stop it. “You’re the ghost.” he cringes before the sentence is even finished being said. As first words said to a new person, a person who potentially rescued him from a horrible storm, accusing them of being dead? Not the most ideal first impression.

His own voice sounds thin in the vaulted room, hoarse from damp lungs.

The man looks up, and for the first time they make eye contact. Whatever expression Steve was expecting, it was not the complete confusion he got. It did, however, allow him to see the face again. Without hair stuck to it from rain, obscuring the view. Robbing his eyes of the art that this man's face is.

The man’s mouth twitched, the ghost of a smile threatening to break before vanishing again, his expression flat as a blade.

“Can ghosts touch people?” Steve asked, bewildered. Desperate to continue the conversation, or well. Start one. “I would not know.” The words dropped heavy and final, shutting the question down.

His accent is strange, and not in the way that is English, or from anywhere in the United Kingdom. He sounds like the language is new to him, as if he has only learned it recently. And yet… there is a hint of a northern accent buried somewhere within it. Subtle, almost imperceptible, like a whisper carried over decades.

It is almost lyrical. As if it would be better used to sing then speak.

Each syllable rolled off the man's tongue carefully, measured, deliberate. There’s a softness, a musical quality that makes Steve’s chest tighten without knowing why. The words are perfectly understandable, and yet they feel… different. Somehow older.

The man turned away, unconcerned, while Steve shivered in his dripping clothes. He tried not to chatter his teeth, but the stone floor was leeching the warmth from his soaked boots. The man glanced back once, frowning slightly. “What is wrong with you? You are shaking.” Steve gapes, shivering despite himself. “I’m cold. And wet. Thanks for the update. Really, I had no idea. Next you’ll tell me I’m also breathing.”

The man tilted his head as if the words that Steve said were confusing. “Cold.” He repeated it like he was testing it for the first time. His brows drew together in faint, bemused confusion, as if he couldn’t imagine what it meant.

“Okay.” Steve gave him a look. “Do you have anything dry to wear? Or am I embracing hypothermia and death?"

Without a word, the man disappeared through an inner doorway. Hesitating just briefly as he passed through a doorway hidden by a tapestry. Steve is unsure if this man is fetching him dry clothes or perhaps leaving him to freeze to death.

The tapistry moves moments later, without a sound. Or perhaps with a sound, just kne too soft for his bad hearing to pick up.

The man returns with carefully folded clothes, placing them on the chair next to his seated form. Looking at him with a small, sharp nod. As if saying, is this what you wanted?

 The clothes themselves were weird, well-kept but eons out of style, fine stitching, heavy wool, a cut Steve had only seen in portraits. He took them anyway, shrugging iut if his wet clothes and into the dry fabric, hanging his wet things by the hearth that held no fire.

Normally, he would care that he was changing so close to sombody. Especally somebody he didnt know. At all. But the stranger simply walked out the door himself as Steve begun to undress.

When the man returned again, Steve had to fight not to stare. Bare feet against stone, trousers clinging to long legs, shirtless save for a heavy wool garment half-unbuttoned, collar loose against his collarbone. His hair was damp, plastered against his temples, droplets slipping down the line of his throat. He sat with quiet heaviness in a carved chair, reopened the book he was reading before, with the weird language. Yet this time it was angled away from him. Which, okay... weird. But didn't begin to read.

He was looking at Steve. Intensely. The expression on his face was gorgeous in a way that hurt to look at, like staring into sunlight until your eyes watered. Gorgeous in a way that made Steve’s chest feel too tight, like he’d forgotten how to breathe. The man tilted his head, studying him as though he were the strange one. His eyes dragged over Steve with the same weight Steve had been trying, and mist likely failing, not to use. Steve’s ears burned hot. He turned his gaze to the broken stone arch instead, telling himself it was safer to look at old rocks than keep getting caught up in that impossible smile.

While still looking away, Steve begins to speak. “Thank you, for—”

“Your gratitude has no place here. I do not collect on such things, nor partake in their exchange.” It was the second thing the strange man has said. And it was as bazzare as the first. Yet Steve knows he could listen to the man speak all day if he could.

But, what the hell kind of response is that? Who talks like this?

And of course, he’s strange. Completely, impossibly strange. The way he tilts his head, like he’s studying a bug or a pattern in the stone, the faint curl of his lip that’s not quite a smile, not quite anything. Steve has no idea. And yet, it’s magnetic.

Steve swallows, muttering, “…Right. No… thanks. Got it.”

Even as he says it, he’s caught by the way the man’s coat falls perfectly on his shoulders, how precise his movements are, how… wrong it feels that someone could be this alive and terrifyingly gorgeous at the same time. English are weird. Too beautiful. Too strange. And somehow, he wants to look at him forever anyway.

Almost wishing he has a name to call the other, but Steve doesn't think he has that luxury.

Not yet at least.

Chapter Text

Bucky never spent time around humankind. Not even when he was living a life free of banishment, when he had the choice if he wished to, or not. Bucky chose not, every time.

Or, it would be more accurate to state. He supposes that Bucky never spent time around mortals, except when he was drowning them to pay back his debt. And that time was never substantial. It was expectingly brief, fleeting.

A fast seduction, an even quicker death. Mortals mistaking the shimmer of danger to that of beauty. They craved the brief moment he offered them of being wanted. However false it turned out to be. Their hearts quickened for him, lips would part, then gasp desperately for breath as water filled lungs.

Suffice to say, he is unfamiliar with them. Outside, that is, of that one situation.

Their quirks, to some extent the expanse of their language remains utterly peculiar. It dawns on him; while watching the person in front on him, he is even more unfamiliar with them now. This new version of humans, that have grown and changed with time. A thing he himself has not achieved.

Their clothes are different, their speech unfamiliar in a way that seems to have created an entirely different language from the English he knows.

They are even more absurd than ever before.

Yet this person, this creature in front of him now, does not strike as particularly strange. Not more than fae do, at least. He is… different, certainly, unpolished in ways that matter only to centuries-old eyes: lacking knowledge of his customs, ignorant of them in a way that can only mean the world has moved on from their fear of them, moved on from the knowledge of their existence.

He offers gratitude as though it were a simple statement to be said, rather than a chain to bind.

And yet… there is something to observe, something to note. Something that he finds refreshing in its lack of showmanship, the man feels not like an actor or act to observe. Each of his movements do nit look rehearsed, planned. He looks pure, seems free.

His excitement is absurd and precise. Fitting from one trivial object to another, eyes bright with curiosity over mundane details. Searching his home for “historic insights,” speaking aloud to himself as he moves, as if the stones, the worn wood, the dust can whisper their secrets if he asks politely enough.

Bucky finds it… fascinating. Frustrating, perhaps, to witness the inefficiency of a mortal so alive, so transparent, yet undeniably compelling. He does not like the warmth that creeps into his awareness, the pull of fascination that is both dangerous and… inevitable.

He wishes to speak to him. To learn about this mortal. Find out just what, exactly, he is. His energy is still reading as something unfamiliar, telling Bucky to be wary. Alpine has yet to show herself to the mortal. Most likely enjoying the rain, while keeping a very keen and close eye on the situation inside his home.

He wishes he had things to say, information to share. Yet he cannot find anything of substance to share. What is concerning, moreover, is that he wishes he did. Bucky has never been talkative, never been one to share trivial matters, he never spoke much to mortals. Or even his own kind.

Truly, there have been a handful of creatures he has associated himself with. Fewer still, that remain alive. Natasha, his only friend with a humanlike appearance. Alpine. And a weird creature that attached himself to Natasha centuries ago named Clint. He would not call this being a friend. More of a permanent annoyance with too much energy.

Yet he finds himself wishing he were different now. Watching the beautiful mortal move through his home, stiff and incomprehensible in his motions, Bucky cannot parse the meaning behind them. And yet, he is curious.

It happens, as it turns out, through involvement not of his own. He never started a conversation. Merely spend time sat watching the other interact with his home. Surveying what the mortal deemed important or interesting, cataloguing it away in case the need ever arose for the information.

He is still, simply watching the other as he flits through the room. Eyes taking in everything they could, but with added attention on the various pieces of art scattered around. Bucky cannot help but wonder why? Is this man perhaps an artisan, a craftsman or painter of some sort?

"Hey... er, could I ask you something?" The surprisingly deep voice broke him from the thoughts he was weaving around the mystery the man provides. As fascinating as creating the ideas was becoming, the break was a more than welcome destruction.

"I believe you just have." It was a true thing to say, and a statement which in itself, was the only response to the question. Yet, he knows the second the words leave his lips that there is a custom for mortals he is unfamiliar with. The man across from him in the room frowns.

An expression most amusing, he himself tends not to make many himself.

"Yeah, yeah. Okay Mrs.English teacher," is all that is muttered in response. The meaning of such words mean little to him. That is not his name, as he hasn't given it, or any indication nor hint to what title belongs to him.

He says as much, earning a laugh from the other. Simply adding to his confusion. "Wow, you really are weird, aren't you?" Shaking his head the mortal continues, "I was just wondering, I mean- this place is amazing, do you know the worth of the things here? Like I'm no historian or anything. But this must be worth a fortune!"

"I know they exist; the value is not something I have desire for. Each object's value is personal, not exchangeable for coin."

"Right," the word was drawn out, the mortal’s expression strange, "no of course not, I have my most loved things as well, and let me tell you I wouldn't exchange them for nothin'."

Again, Bucky is struck in unfamiliar territory, one in which information is given so freely and honestly. He can never do the same. Or perhaps, would never. Honestly, while vital, is often shared so freely. Or so openly. Where he is far more familiar with veiled truths spoken to deceive or confuse. The way this man speaks shows he knows not of what he is revealing.

"You referred to me as 'weird', and while I know not the true meaning of such a term, I may only infer your intentions of it." He begins, "you should heed this warning, and listen well. Insulting statements or words do not come without consequence, communication with one such as I are dangerous. You should leave here and forget it's very existence if I were you."

Bucky so desperately wishes he wouldn't, the company is exceedingly better than that in which he is accustomed to, however strange it may be, yet the truth was said. As it always is with fae, in one way or another. He is dangerous and has killed men for smaller of offences historically.

"Hard to forget a place like this, trust me."

"I am not close enough with you, nor do I know you well enough, if at all, to place my trust within your hands."

The man laughs in response. That look, whatever it may mean, has returned. Brows drawn together, mouth pressed thin, tilted head. It is shocking how endearing he finds it. "I can fix that, I'm Steve, Steven Ro-"

Bucky cuts him off before he reveals more than any person, or creature ever should in the presence of one such as himself. "Names, are dangerous and sharp things. Speak your name with caution. Lest it cut and bind you, Steve."

Saying the mortals, Steve’s, name felt akin to what he knows of human emotion around prayer. Knowing Steve's name felt far more joyous.

"Right, okay." That expression has returned upon Steve's face again, except now, Bucky can simply assume it has depths of amusement hidden within it. "Am I going to get your name? You see it would help to build that trust I mentioned?"

"You may call me Bucky if it suits you, Steve." It was not truly his name, no creature with such inclinations and knowledge of the dangers of true names would share such an intimate detail. Yet it was as close as he could get to the real truth. He is aware that is did not answer the question, not truly. But no lie was spoken. Steve, may simply call him Bucky.

"Your name is Bucky?" This was said with a just concealed smile. Mirth clear in his eyes, and his voice.

"It is a name, that is safe to be shared. You should do well to learn that names hold more power than you realise."

Steve, for all his... mortalness, seems to take that on board. After all, he should. With the otherness in him, the something more than human he is in possession of within his being. He need be more careful, less carefree with that in which he shares.

Eventually, after what feels like both mere moments and hours at the same existence, the storm begins to quiet. The man, Steve, is still invading his home.

Arguably, an invasion it is not. As Bucky himself brought him here. Yet, it would not such an ask that Steve sits quietly in wait. And yet, that was, in itself far too much to hope.

Steve, in his strangeness, asks many questions of him. Many of which he never answered. The question far too pointless to dignify a response to.

Questions such as:

"Do you live here alone?"

That much was obvious, is there another being present in the space that Steve could see? Are there hints at the home being occupied by another. No. There very much is not. Alpine herself masking her presence better than he ever could.

Yet the need for it answered felt great. The want of conversation struck him yet again, and he found himself replying, despite himself. "No, I do not. The memory of every voice and being that has passed through these walls remains. It is never empty here."

Or questions such as, "So, you never get lonely then?"

That question is simply a weighted one. He almost doesn't answer. Afraid to give too much away. On truth, yes. He does indeed feel fleeting loneliness. On days when Alpine is hunting for long periods of time, or the period just after his one consistent visitor has departed. Yet, they are just that. Fleeting moments of weakness, moments when his banishment is achieving its desired effect.

He does not say this, however. Instead he finds himself replying, after a pause that shows tue clear deliberate quality of his word choice, "Solitude is merely the absence of company. I may appear alone to one such as yourself, yet I never truly am. Feeling 'Lonely' as you called it, is not a constant emotion I allow myself to settle into."

Steve blinks at him, brows drawing together in confusion, and Bucky feels the smallest flicker of satisfaction. Yet he also feels the weight of those clear blue eyes on him, sharp and searching. Strange creature. Restless, graceless, too quick with gratitude and questions. And still, Bucky finds himself listening for the next one.

The next one never arrives, sadly.

The storm has eased to nothing more than a fine mist against the stone. The heavy sounds of rain beating on the roof softened to a quiet pattering. The abbey breathes differently now, quieter, as though waiting. Accepting its fate at once again going onto science, the kind that Bucky and Alpine live in. They maintain a quiet existence, the weight of presence together more important than words could carry the meaning of.

Steve gathers his clothes from where they’ve been drying, testing the weight of each piece before tucking it under his arm. He lingers with them, folding and refolding as though searching for excuses not to finish the task. His eyes stray toward the door; not the right one, but Bucky lets the mistake pass.

Each motion seems stretched thin with hesitation. Fingers slipping on a boot lace. A pause before he turns his back and pulls at the shirt Bucky had provided, sliding it off with care before setting it neatly aside. His own shirt comes next, rougher fabric, familiar seams, to Steve at least, drawn over his shoulders with a kind of quiet resolve.

The change is subtle but undeniable. He looks different now. Increasingly less familiar with every piece of mortal cloth he fastens, as though each one pushes him further from the odd presence he had been in Bucky’s own clothes. More other than he had been a moment before.

And yet, seeing him like this, not in garments too large or ill-fitting, but in what belongs to him, is a sight Bucky finds himself unprepared for. He looks, truly looks, in a way he hadn’t before.

Narrow shoulders, sharp in their thinness, revealed when he pulls the fabric across them. Damp curls cling stubbornly to his temples, softening the edges of his face. There is a faint weariness in the slope of his posture, the kind born of long days carried in a body too slight for the weight of them.

Beautiful, still. Beautiful in a way that unsettles, because it feels suddenly real. Bucky finds it is a sight he cannot look away from. Not for strength or grandeur, but for something else entirely. A fleeting, stubborn kind of beauty, woven into the delicacy of him.

There is the set of his jaw when he casts another glance across the room, torn between here and elsewhere.

Bucky watches, unwilling to correct, unwilling to interrupt. The silence presses close, louder than any storm. The space between them feels charged, unsettled, as though something might shift if either of them breathes too deeply.

At last, Steve straightens, ready to leave. He steps once, twice, toward the door, then stops to look back. The weight of his gaze lingers, steady and questioning.

Bucky holds it. He does not tell him the door is wrong. He does not tell him to stay. But when he speaks, his voice is low, reluctant to release the sound at all.

“Steve.” The name leaves him softer than intended, barely more than a breath. But it is enough. Steve stills, one hand resting against the frame of the wrong door. He turns, brows raised, as though waiting for more.

Bucky has nothing more. The silence stretches, weighted, until Steve exhales and shifts uneasily under the gaze. “Yeah?” he prompts, cautious.

Still, Bucky cannot force the words. He only looks at him, really looks, memorizing the damp curls at his temple, the faint stubborn set of his mouth. The quiet feels like a binding cord between them.

At last, Bucky finds something, though not what had threatened to rise. “You are walking toward the incorrect door, if you wish to leave.”

Steve blinks, then laughs, low and tired, shaking his head. “Well, I was unconscious when I was brought in, so forgive me for not knowing my way around.”

The mortal’s tone is light, teasing, but the words catch at Bucky all the same. Forgive. The request, unthinking, spoken without the weight Steve does not know it carries. His mouth flattens into something that is not quite a smile.

“Do not offer such words to me so freely,” Bucky says quietly. “You know not what they mean.”

Steve frowns at him, puzzled but not cowed. Then, with a small shrug, he steps toward the true door. Bucky follows, slow and silent, until they reach the edge of the abbey grounds.

He does not cross further. He only stands at the boundary, watching as the mortal walks on into the washed-clean day, each step carrying him further from the silence that now feels too wide, too empty.

Each step creating a weight upon Bucky, one he never realised was gone until it's return. Such a weight that through the presence of Steve, this apparently mortal man, had managed to remove from his shoulders.

Bucky does not feel relieved, as he had hoped he would upon Steve’s departure. He feels... something. But it is not relief. He does not know what it is he is feeling. Longing perhaps, at the lack of company. However, that was not true, not entirely, he had company. In his own way.

The abbey falls quiet once the mortal slips through its door. Once Steve leaves that is. Presumably not to return again. Why would he? Can he not sense the danger that Bucky holds? Even mortals in the past had been able to identify his presence as something else. Surly Steve has, had and will continue to do. Bucky knows that the only logical and intellectual response to him would be to run away as far as possible. As Steve should, and most likely would do.

The abbey is quiet in a way that feels heavier than silence should. Bucky lingers in the hall where Steve last stood, gaze tracing the empty air as though the shape of him still clings to it. The hearth glows steady, but the warmth feels hollow.

A mortal’s presence should be fleeting, hardly a disturbance in the rhythm of his solitude. Yet it hangs here still, unsettling as a draft that cannot be found, reminding him of what has gone, of what should not have mattered.

Alpine’s absence sharpens it further. She has not yet returned to the hearth, not yet broken the hush with her soft tread. As if even she does not trust the air left in Steve’s wake.

The silence fractures, low and resonant, as though the walls themselves had drawn breath. Then Alpine emerges from shadow. Her vast paws make no sound on the stone, her coat glistening as if dew clings to it though no grass has brushed her. Green eyes fix on him with the terrible patience of the hills, carrying storms and graves and promises of endings. A mortal would not survive a glance like that. Few of his own kind could, either. For she is Cù- Sìth a harbinger of death and doom.

She halts before him, tilts her head, not as a beast would, but as a question, deliberate and measured. Intelligent. Expecting an answer.

“You disapprove,” Bucky says, the faintest curl of a smile tugging his mouth as he lowers himself to meet her gaze. “Kept to the dark until he was gone. Caution suits you, yet in this case, I am unsure whether it was warranted.”

Alpine exhales, the sound like distant thunder rumbling through stone. Her stare lingers sharp and bright, weighing him, not indulgent but exacting, as though his choice requires judgment.

His fingers brush the thick ruff of her neck, a reverent stroke. “Don’t look at me so,” he murmurs. “I’ve not forgotten what he is. What I am. But I am intrigued as to what else he may be, you felt it too I presume?"

Her answer was evident, a small, low rumble in her chest. Agreement and a warning. Be careful.

Alpine presses closer, silent now, yet the weight of her presence is an answer in itself. She will not let him forget.

Morning drips slowly into his house. He busies his hands with small things, repairing the warped latch on a shutter, tracing weathered script in a book long memorized, listening to the steady rhythm of water running down the stone walls. Tending to his garden, weaving the wards into place, strengthening his glamour where it frays at the edges of his land.

These rituals usually pass the hours cleanly. Today, they fail. His grip slips on the latch twice before it takes. The words blur on the page he’s read a hundred times. Long since memorised. His wards hold steady, yet he reweaves them anyway, again and again, until even Alpine huffs at his side, impatient with the needless repetition.

His steps wander to the threshold where Steve departed. Bucky studies the ground, though he knows the rain has already washed away any trace of him. Still, he feels as though there should be something left. Mortals are supposed to fade quickly, their voices, their scents, their shapes. Yet this one has not. His presence clings to the air like damp mist, refusing to dissipate.

It confirms what he already knows as yet another simple fact. Steve is mortal. Yet, that is not all he is. Or perhaps, not what he is at all.

There is an undefinable presence to him, something Bucky cannot place. Something sharp and soft in equal measure, impossible, and therefore irresistible. Something he aches to understand.

His fingers hover at the latch of the door as though he might open it, step outside, follow the path Steve took. Foolish. Reckless. Dangerous. He lowers his hand but finds his body leaning forward all the same, caught in the pull of an absence.

Alpine pads closer, allowing him to hear her steps, to know her presence as she approaches. Her ears twitching toward the road, then fixes him with a look sharp enough to cut. He almost laughs at it. “Do not stare at me so," he murmurs as his hand brushes against her soft fur, "I know the thought you currently carry as if it were my own, dear Sìth, you believe I will follow the path he travelled. You believe that I desire to."

She answers with silence, but the silence speaks truer than words.

The truth is simple. Impossible to speak into existence, for then it is a known truth, one admitted and therefore, undeniable. The truth is so simple in its very simplicity. He longs for Steve to return, to appear again, at the threshold of his wards. To seamlessly break his way through. Just as he did the night previous. He wishes to observe that mortal awkwardness, with those too many questions that stumble and trip over themselves, with glances too earnest for his own safety.

He would love to hear that voice, low and rough, asking him for things he has no business granting.

The glamour at the boundary shivers, a faint pulse, as if some distant gaze has brushed against his wards. He stiffens, closing his hand around the air where Steve’s outline should be. It fades quickly, leaving only unease.

He shuts the door, though it does not silence the pull in his chest. Nor does it provide any help in dampening it, suffocating nor killing it. It simply allows it to grow further.

Most importantly, it does nothing to science the one constant thought in his head. The voice that is honest. Without scrambled words and half-truths weaved within a riddle. The truth that represents the very core of Bucky himself. If Steve returns, despite its inherent danger, he will always allow Steve in.

Days pass in much the same pattern. Somewhere, in his mind he keeps track of the date as it changes with each rise and fall of the sun. Looking to the moon to figure out the next meeting he has scheduled, and when she is due to arrive. Yet, even while doing so, his gaze wanders, each and every time, to the boundary. As if hoping to see the small frame of the man consuming his thoughts. Expecting him every time. Only to be filled with a new wave of disappointment.

By dusk, on the fifth day with no return of Steve, another presence disturbs the abbey. She slips in without knocking, as she always does. She crawls through the cracks in his wards, ones he was unaware of himself. With rain on her cloak and sharp amusement in her eyes.

A faint tap of claws against the stone announces her arrival. One might call it polite. One might be mistaken. Nothing she does is without deliberation. Perhaps she wishes only to display them. Elongated, wicked extensions painted red, tipped like promises of pain and mischief.

Bucky feels it immediately: the air tilts, the room hums with her presence, and Alpine stirs beside him, tense and alert. She has arrived, predator and confidante both, and everything else. The echoes of the mortal boy, the quiet of the abbey, the lingering scent of rain, sharpens around her.

Alpine’s ears twitch the moment Natasha’s presence settles in the room, the faintest ripple of recognition running through her taut muscles. She does not rush forward. For a Cù-Sìth never moves without purpose. But the tail flick, subtle yet deliberate, betrays her pleasure. Her body relaxes fractionally, the rigid alertness of her usual vigilance softening in the Baobhan Sith’s presence.

“The wind told me that you brood here still, my Fideal. You linger too long in the quiet, I have arrived to remind you how dangerously beautiful it is to breathe.”

Her words curl through the stone, teasing, dangerous, exactly as they always do. Bucky turns, letting his eyes drift over her. Not with shock, nor with that of surprise. He glanced at her with the casual attention of centuries of familiarity.

Rain beads along the dark folds of her cloak, glinting faintly, and her hair clings damply to her temples, streaks of copper catching the light. Pale skin, high cheekbones, eyes sharp and alive with intelligence.  She is exactly as she has always been predator and confidante wrapped in one lethal, familiar form.

The claws at her fingertips glint red, reminiscent of the blood that she has spilled over the many years of her existence. An affectation he has long since learned to accept as part of her game. The faint, subtle aura of mist and chill follows her, yet he barely takes any notice of it anymore.

Bucky allows his face to morph into one that holds a smirk, folding his arms across his chest as he allows her the same courtesy she provided him. The time to take him in. “Dangerously beautiful? I fear you are speaking of yourself more than that of breath. After all, you are what one would call… unfamiliar with breathing.”

She tilts her head, a faint smile playing on her lips. “Careful now, friend. For one day, I may decide to remind you just how easily that same breath you have may be taken away.” She replies. And even in his centuries of knowing her, he cannot hide the faint thrill that she still carries danger, even now, it is comfortably familiar.

“I would welcome the reminder, at least from you.”

It is now, that she takes but one look at him, a look that feels as if she is gazing into his very core, before deciding his fate. She grins, the kind that cuts straight through bone. It is ruthless in its appearance. Deadly, in its context. Natasha is many things. Fae. Unseelie. Ruthless. Commanding. Loyal.

She is not one to smile, to show emotions. The choice to display one such expression on her face is deliberately done. Of that Bucky is sure.

"Being heavy-hearted suits your poorly, water’s child." She says, voice low with the undeniable undercurrent of danger present, "tell me, did you break your oath? Am I to find some mortal drifting in your pond, a smile clinging to their lips?"

Bucky narrows his gaze, bristling. “I have kept my oath. As always. If you have arrived expecting mischief, I regret to inform you that my waters hold only stillness and silence. As they should.”

Her brow arches, the weight of disbelief almost cruel. “Very well, friend. Still and silent it shall be. Though banishment may have tempered your hand, I know you. Even when you pretend.”

Bucky feels insulted at this. If feelings were a thing, in which he commonly experienced. He supposes the irritation that lurks beneath the surface is that of feeling insulted. “I may have learnt restraint, but stillness does not erase what I am, no more than water can wash away the proof from my stained hands.”

Bucky allows the words to hang in the air, allows the scent of wood and wet stone fill the air as it mixes with the smell of fresh blood coming from his friend. Even as he speaks, his eyes trace the empty threshold through which Steve has left. His distraction, obvious to those who know him. A fact he is more than aware of without their confirmation.

Yet Alpine shifts at his side, a low rumble forming in her chest as her ears move and her gaze falls to Natasha as if asking if she is seeing what her eyes are. The air itself seems heavier in the moments in which he waits for the comments he will surely be receiving.

Natasha, indeed, does notice his behaviour. Her brow arches, yet again, as she paces the room, fingertips brushing across shelves, pausing at the faint mark where Steve’s hand had rested. She moves through the room without a sound, flitting between the furniture with an easy one could only achieve through the familiarity she holds to this place. “Curious. The air tastes warmer than it ought. Alive, in a way that we Fairfolk are not. Tell me, have you invited somebody else inside? That would be shocking indeed.”

Silence gathers around him. Her laughter shatters it, soft, sharp, ringing, like glass catching sunlight.

“Careful, James,” she murmurs. “Mortals are dangerous. Even more so when they are beautiful.”

Bucky feels it, the pull of the words, the weight pressing against the hollows of the abbey. The use of his true name adding weight to them that she needn’t have done. He would always heed a warning from his old friend. Especially this one. She had never turned her back on him, not even through his banishment.

“I did not inform you of his beauty?” He replies, once again astounded at her intuition.

“You need not. For what other reason would you partake in such an act. One so unlike you and the hermit you have become?”

That, Bucky supposes, is a more then fair assumption to make about his character.

He wishes he could deny it, desires to erase the thought of Steve’s presence clinging to him like dew on stone. Yet it lingers, stubborn, undeniable. Alpine shifts at his side, ears catching the echo of absence. His hand drifts to her fur, steadying, tethering himself to the world he knows, even as his thoughts wander beyond it.

“You linger too long in silence,” Natasha says, voice a low tide. “Affections are folly. You forget the dangers, my friend. But more importantly, you forget yourself.”

He remains still, the room full of shadow and smell and memory. Steve is gone, yet the echo of him is here. In the dampness of the floor, the curve of light through the window, the ghost of a warmth that should not exist. And Natasha, predator and confidante both, sees it all.

Her eyes glint, sharp and teasing, as though she’s read the thoughts he refuses to name. “Ah,” she murmurs, voice curling through the stones, “so the tide carries whispers, does it? Which mortal has left your heart half-full, half-empty?”

Bucky shifts slightly, aware of the familiar weight of her presence. He traces a finger along the edge of a shelf, tasting the memory of Steve in the silence. “The tide carries nothing,” he replies, voice low, steady. “Nothing at all.”

She tilts her head, amused, pacing with feline grace. “Nothing?” Her laugh breaks the stillness, soft and brittle, like frost cracking. “Perhaps it is the moon then, or the stones themselves. Which is it that haunts you?”

“The moon carries no weight either. Nor do stones.”

“Riddles suit you poorly,” she teases, circling him. “Still, I enjoy the games.”

They pass into a beat of silence. The kind that is welcoming, the simple enjoyment of another’s presence. Before it is broken, yet again, by Natasha. “Do you remember, long ago, in the northern forests..." Her smile twists. He can imagen a great many of their shared memories may start similar to that. When they were younger, they were undoubtedly foolish in their naivety. He has matured, forced to with time. For it had not been a friend to Bucky. “When you dared to steal from the Seelie? Your pride, and the shriek of that foolish courtier, how it echoed beneath the trees.”

A memory stirs, faint and bitterly sweet. “I remember all to well. If I recall correctly, and I know that I do. I did not simply ‘dare’. I do know I was in fact dared to engage in such a manor. Has your memory been failing you with your age Baobhan? Are you to tell me that you remember incorrectly?”

“My trusted Fuath,” She states his being with humour, amused most likely he used her denomination himself. “I remember every wretched detail,” she says, eyes glinting. “Do you recall how I left him tied to the oak, a spider weaving its web across his eyes?”

He nods, amusement catching him despite himself. “And you wondered if I would be impressed, or fearful.”

“You were both,” she admits. “It was such a joyous beginning of our kinship.”

And just like that, the room tilts into their old rhythm, words are exchanged like a currency, shared history slipping through words, teasing and probing, a dance centuries in the making.

She speaks of mortals, of the tides of the Seelie and Unseelie, of mischief in the courts; he listens, adjusts wards, nudges Alpine, and occasionally answers in kind, a smile twitching against his lips despite the weight of longing pressing at his chest.

Her idle gossip has never drawn him fully before. He would have listened, nodded, offered polite murmurs in return for the hours she spent gathering scraps of mortal folly. Now, her words coil around him, soft and dangerous, and he hangs on them as if drawn by some current beyond his control, sweet poison spilling from lips he has known across centuries.

“Seelie stir uneasily,” she says, low, each word a feathered dagger. “Their Prince. The one who once would have seen your spine shattered for defiance. Weakens more and more as the moon passes through the sky. He whispers for allies he can no longer trust. Your name lingers in halls that should have forgotten it, dear friend.”

Bucky’s hands tighten on the edge of a shelf. Long ago, he chose to align himself with a tide no being unknown to Her would comprehend refusal where obedience was demanded. An oath remained unbroken yet his defiance absolute. The memory is a ripple, a quiet ache, yet the shadow of it stretches still, brushing against him in the silent corners of the abbey.

“Your defiance,” Natasha continues, stepping closer, voice curling through the air like smoke, “was admirable, foolish in their eyes, yes. But brave in my own. The tide favoured you. Even the Unseelie hesitate to touch a Fidela without consequence. He grows old, and still you linger. Untethered. Unclaimed.”

He exhales; a sound caught between stone and shadow. Alpine brushes against him, grounding him, reminding him of the life he maintains here, even as history gnaws at the edges. Words feel small. There is nothing to say.

Her gaze, sharp as a knife drawn slowly, meets his. “Mark me,” she whispers finally, “they have not forgotten. Those who remember, who hunger for account. Soon, friend… someone will rise to see debts repaid. Perhaps not for you, but for them.”

The air tastes of rain and distant danger. He feels the pull of centuries and old names, the weight of choices made and refused. And yet he lingers, anchored by Alpine’s warmth, and by the faint, insistent tug of a mortal presence that should have no part in this world.

The abbey hums around them, alive with shadows and memories and laughter, as if the storm outside has carried them both into some liminal space where past and present, mortal and fae, intermingle without consequence.

And just like that, she melts back into the shadows, leaving a trace of her presence and a swirl of whispered riddles, history, and warnings in her wake. Bucky lingers, hands brushing the air where she passed, thinking of mortal and fae alike, the threads they leave behind, and the games that never truly end.

Later, when Natasha has gone and the abbey is once again his alone, he finds himself back at the window. The storm has passed, but he cannot shake the sense of it still rumbling just beyond the horizon.

He half-expects to see Steve’s figure coming up the path, small and stubborn against the wilds. The thought is foolish, mortals do not return. They scatter, they forget. Yet Bucky finds himself listening for the sound of boots on stone, almost certain he could catch it if he tried.

The absence gnaws at him worse than presence ever could.

Chapter Text

Steve Rogers couldn’t stop thinking about it.

About him. About Bucky. And really, what kind of name was Bucky anyway? It sounds like the nickname of a kid who was given it by an unfortunate sibling. It sounds more belonging to a scrappy kid from Brooklyn. Not the name of a man (?) who moved like he’d been carved out of stormlight and shadow.

Definitely not the name of a man who looks like Bucky. He's sharp in a way people shouldn't be. Weird in a way that Steve laughs at himself for thinking was just "being English," it's like his cheekbones are carved, not grown. He's the sort of man that even drawing can't capture fully.

Beautiful isn't the right word. But it's the only one that sticks.

Beautiful is the best word Steve has. Yet, dangerous also works. Because underneath that beauty, his looks, the loneliness that Steve can see clear as day. It's there. Danger.

It's in the way he talks, with subtle warnings of things Steve doesn't understand. The way he moves, too graceful, yet somehow forceful. A contradiction if he's ever seen one. Flitting between seeming like a trained dancer and an assassin.

Steve shouldn't be thinking of him.

And yet, here Steve is, stuck at Peggy’s table three days later, tracing the lines of that name in his head like it might reveal something if he thought on it long enough.

Peggy keeps him close. Too close. She says it’s because she doesn’t trust the damp air with his lungs, or the draft under the doors with his still-healing ribs. But Steve isn’t an idiot. It’s because last time she let him out of her sight, he vanished for a whole night in the middle of a storm, and came back with nothing but excuses.

He'd normally be annoyed, angry. He hates being treated as less than any one else. But he understands. Look he really does! He disappeared for 12 hours, in the middle of a storm. But now! He can't even leave her eye line. Peggy is a force to be reckoned with, and he is definitely afraid if her sometimes. This is one of thoes times.

She doesn’t ask outright. Peggy never does. She just keeps making tea, keeps finding reasons for him to stay where she can see him. And Steve, he sketches, listens to the rain, tells himself he doesn’t mind.

But he does.

Every ordinary thing here, the steady drizzle, the clatter of cups, the way the street outside smells faintly of skmething both unfamiliar and yet so familiar at the same time, he measures it against something else now. Against the abbey’s damp stone and Bucky’s voice in the half-light. Against the way the hearth glow made shadows curl along his jaw. Against eyes that had looked at him like he was both fragile and… seen.

“You’re staring out the window again,” Peggy says, setting down a plate of biscuits at his elbow. Her brow creases just faintly, almost hidden, but Steve catches it. He always does.

“I can’t have you vanishing again, Steve. Not after last time.” She sits across from him, folding her hands together. “The storm hit, and you were gone twelve hours without a word. I thought...” She cuts herself off, but her voice had already cracked on the word.

Steve keeps his eyes on the page, his pencil still against the paper. If he looks up, she’ll see too much. She always does.

He didn’t vanish. He was lost. He was saved. Most importantly, he was found.

“I’m here now,” he says quietly.

“You are,” Peggy agrees. A long breath escapes her, and her hand drifts toward him, resting near but not quite on his arm. “I’ve been watching you like a hawk since, haven’t I? It’s maddening, I know. But I couldn’t stand it if you went out into another storm and never came back.”

He looks at her then, soft despite himself. “I know. And I’m sorry for scaring you.”

The tension eases just a little. She smiles, wry and weary both. “Well, then. Eat your biscuits and stay where I can see you. That’ll do for now.”

Steve does as she says, breaking the biscuit in two, but the taste of it is ash against the memory of salt on his lips. His hand itches for the pencil again, for the half-finished sketch hidden beneath his sleeve: a shadowed abbey, an archway of crumbling stone, a man standing in the threshold with eyes clear as tidewater.

He wants to see him again. Wants it with a bone-deep ache that makes him restless in Peggy’s house, no matter how kind her care, no matter how warm the fireplace. He thinks of Bucky in fragments, the rasp of his voice, the shape of his mouth around a half-smile, the way the storm had seemed almost afraid of him.

Peggy worries over storms and vanished hours. Steve worries over something else entirely.

He doesn’t say any of what’s burning in his head. Instead, he finds himself smiling, small and wry. Peggy’s answering glare is more than enough to warn him she won’t like what’s about to come out of his mouth.

“I would like to actually see the scenery I came for though, Pegs.”

Her brows shoot up. “In that case,” she says crisply, “I shall escort you.”

Steve groans, leaning back in his chair. “No need, I’ll be fine. Look. Checked the weather and everything.” He gestures vaguely toward the window where a pale scrap of sunlight fights through the clouds, as if that settles the matter.

Peggy doesn’t budge. Instead, she tilts her chin, the picture of unyielding reason. “How about a compromise then? I’ll show you around town. I’ll even point out historic things for you to draw.” Her lips twitch, a smile nearly breaking through. “I’ve been reading up on it and everything.”

That gets him. She’s worried, he knows. Always watching him now. But she’s offering it like a gift, not a leash. And besides, it means they’ll actually be out of the house together.

Steve’s smile this time is easier, more genuine. “Alright. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

Peggy, triumphant, pushes the biscuits closer. “Good. But you’re eating more than a bite before we go. Can’t have you wasting away before you’ve sketched my painstaking research.”

Steve huffs a laugh, reaching for another. The taste still doesn’t settle right on his tongue, ashes against salt, but her fussing makes the hollow in his chest feel a little less sharp.

The village could be mistaken for a movie set, if Steve didn’t know better. Cobbled streets that haven’t been repaved in centuries. Crooked stone cottages dressed in ivy and roses. Shop windows crammed with sourdough loaves, glossy pastries, and hand-lettered chalkboard signs. Peggy navigates it all with sharp elegance, tote bag hooked at her elbow, calling greetings to nearly everyone they pass. Steve lags a few steps behind, sketchbook tucked under his arm.

“You ever get tired of people knowing you everywhere you go?” he asks.

“Not when they save the best scones for me,” she tosses back, quick as anything.

He snorts. “You’ve bribed them.”

“Bribery?” She turns with a raised brow, walking backward for a few steps. “That’s just good customer loyalty, Rogers. Something you could learn.”

He huffs, adjusting his grip on the sketchbook. “Right. Because I’m the problem in bakeries.”

Peggy’s smile softens as she loops back beside him, sliding easily into stride.

Still, his attention drifts. A puddle by the curb stirs though the morning air is perfectly still. A raven perched on the pharmacy sign doesn’t so much as twitch when a car horn blares. A little girl, jumping rope outside the corner shop, hums a tune that doesn’t belong to any cartoon, pop song, or nursery rhyme he knows.

The melody clings to him like mist, too old for bright sneakers and a plastic skipping rope.

Peggy reappears from the bakery, brown paper bag in hand. “You’re woolgathering again,” she says, slipping the bread into her tote.

Steve shrugs. “Just taking it in.”

“Good. Take it in properly.” She gestures with her chin toward the village square. “That oak tree’s older than the United States, I’ll have you know. The benches were dragged here by schoolchildren in the fifties. The pub there is where half the town still argues about football like it’s a matter of national security. And that shop. Oh, and don’t buy the tea there, it tastes like floor sweepings.”

Her voice is brisk, informative, but Steve knows her too well to miss the undertone. She’s keeping him anchored, keeping him close. He’s been under her watch since the storm, since that night he disappeared. And he can’t exactly blame her.

He smiles despite himself. “You’re starting to sound like a tour guide.”

Peggy cuts him a look. “Better than you staring off like you’ve seen a ghost. People will talk.”

That pulls a laugh out of him, quiet but real. “They’d be right.”

Well, thats the thing. They would be. The ghost of their stories. The one people swore lived out in the trees, in the ruins, in the half-forgotten songs. Steve had seen him. Talked to him.

And that was the thing: Bucky wasn’t a ghost. That much Steve knew. When he thought about it and he had been, for three days straight, barely pausing for food or sleep, that was about the sum of it. Bucky wasn’t a ghost.

But old, yeah. If the clothes meant anything. Old in the way the forest felt old, in the way the air tasted different around him.

Weird, too. Not human, or not entirely. The thought always stopped Steve cold, because it asked too much of him. It pulled at everything he’d built his understanding of the world on.

So he tried not to think it. Because believing Bucky wasn’t human felt more impossible than meeting him in the first place.

“Mm,” she hums, already moving again. “You’re sketching that square before dinner. And if I don’t see at least three pages, I’m confiscating your pencils.”

He grins, shaking his head. They’re teasing words, but they feel safe, grounding. The kind of fondness that steadies him when the world around him feels tilted, shadows sticking too long and puddles moving without wind.

Normal, he tells himself. Just normal things. But the word doesn’t sit right anymore. 

By the time the fire burns low, Steve’s fingers ache. He flexes them, rubbing the smudge of graphite down the side of his hand, then studies the stack of pages balanced on his knees.

Today it was the market square, Peggy’s teapot, the slant of rain on the window. Yesterday, though, yesterday had been different.

Yesterday he’d drawn Bucky’s home, the stone walls hung with tapestries, the dark table in the center, the crooked candlesticks.

He’d filled a whole page with the jar of pebbles alone, sketched each one carefully, shaded until the curve of the glass caught light the way he remembered. He doesn’t know why that jar matters so much to him. He just knows it does.

He’s proud of it, proud enough that he almost doesn’t want to put the sketchbook away. But his hand throbs, the fire dips lower, and he’s thinking of bed when his phone buzzes.

“Sam,” he mutters, a little surprised. Time difference, should be afternoon in Brooklyn, where Sam’s probably just finished work. Here it’s nearly midnight.

Steve answers, leaning back against the couch. “Hey.”

“Rogers!” Sam’s voice comes warm and easy, familiar in a way that makes Steve ache for home. “How’s merry old England treating you? You gettin’ soft on tea and scones already?”

Steve huffs, smiling despite himself. “It’s been five days, Sam.”

“Five days too long. So, c’mon, met anyone yet?”

Steve pauses, thrown. “Met anyone? What, like—no. No, it’s… no.”

There’s a beat, then a sharp laugh in his ear. “Ohhh, wait. That tone. That pause. You have. You met someone.”

Steve frowns. “I didn’t—”

“You did! Don’t even try to lie to me. It’s the first time in years your voice hasn’t sounded like it’s been chewed up by barbed wire. You got that… thing. Like you’re distracted but tryin’ not to be.”

Steve presses his mouth into his shoulder, trying to smother the grin he doesn’t want Sam to hear. “It’s not like that. Not entirely like that.”

Sam whoops. “ ‘Not entirely,’ he says. Alright, spill. Who’s got you tied up in knots over there?”

Steve drags a hand over his face. He doesn’t want to say too much, doesn’t even know how to explain it. But the words come anyway. “Okay, well I guess there is someone?"

Sam's excited noise was loud, even without the speaker on. "I knew it! Go on, tell me about them!"

And Steve, well he does. Not knowing where to start he just lets the words flow out. "Well, like. I was in the forest right?" At Sam's encouraging noise he continued, "I got so lost, and then the rain started. Real heavy. It was bad, like the heavens had opened, you know? I think i must have passed out, I dunno. I vaugly remember someone helping me, picking me up. And Sam?" Again, an encouraging noise was made, "he was fucking gorgeous, tall, muscular, almost like a painting. He's got this look about him? A serious one, but I almost made him laugh. I know I did."

Sam was quick to speak, now that Steve had finished, "firstly, why is this the first time I'm hearing of you being a dubass and nearly dying in the English countryside. Secondly, is that all I get! Common Rogers!"

So, Steve continued. "He’s… different. Alone. Strange, I guess. He moves like—” Steve swallows, heat creeping up his neck. “Like a dancer, but not. Like someone who could kill you in a second if he wanted. But graceful, y’know? Controlled. And his eyes…” He stops, realizing what he’s saying. “They’re blue. Real blue. Almost… eerie, if you stare too long. I swear down, this is the most beautiful man i've ever seen in my life Sam!”

The silence that follows stretches longer than it should.

“Sam?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here.” Sam’s voice is steadier now, lower somehow. Less like the friend who jokes over beers, more like, something else. “Where exactly are you again? Like exact town.”

“Suffolk. Little place, uh—” Steve gives the name, the one hardly anyone outside the county would recognize.

Another pause. Too long.

Steve frowns. “What? You suddenly a geography nerd?”

“No. Just... listen.” Sam’s voice shifts again. Something careful, deliberate. Not his usual cadence. “You say he’s different. Different can be a gift, sure. But it can be a snare, too. People like that, they don’t always play by rules you’ll recognize. Just… keep your feet under you, Steve. Don’t follow where you can’t find your way back.”

Steve sits forward, caught off guard. The words don’t sound like Sam at all. They sound older, heavier, closer to the way Bucky spoke. Steve lets out a snort, leaning back in his chair. “Yeah, that’s not vague at all. You’re talking like some fortune cookie, Sam. What’s going on? You sound weird.”

Sam takes a deep breath, Steve wonders if it's because he is trying to think of his next words and phrase them carefully. An act that is so un-Sam-like it's almost funny to assume. “I’m just… thinking about the company you keep, Steve. Some people, some things, aren’t what they seem. You’ll see for yourself soon enough, but...”

Steve cuts him off. Look, he can put up with a lot. But? If you wanna say something, say it plainly. This is just pissing him.off to be honest. “Yeah? Well, I’ll be fine. You’re not exactly making it sound comforting, Sam.”

"Maybe not. Just… don’t trust what you think you know. And don’t follow paths that feel too easy.”

He tries to laugh it off, but it doesn’t quite reach his chest. “You’re acting like I’ve wandered into a crime family or something.”

Sam doesn’t laugh back. “Just promise me you’ll be careful.”

And Steve, not knowing what else to do, promises. Even with how absurd this feels, with everything feeling slightly out of place. Wrong in a way. He promises.

Steve leans back in the chair, pencil hovering over a half-finished sketch of Bucky’s stone hearth, the phone pressed to his ear.

Sam’s voice crackles warmly through the line. "Anyway… enough about your mysterious man in England. I ran into someone i used to know recently. Fiery woman. I swear she hasn’t aged a day."

Steve snorts, leaning his head back against the couch. “Oh? Come on, don’t leave me hanging. Fiery woman, hasn’t aged a day. Sounds like you’re smitten or terrified. Or both.”

Sam chuckles low, and there’s a pause that makes Steve grin on instinct. “Let’s just say… she has a way of making you question if you’re brave or foolish every time you see her. Reminds me why I stayed away for so long.”

Steve waggles his eyebrows. “Definitely sounds like someone you might know. Hot, scary, and beautiful, right? Ugh… you certainly have a type.”

“And you? Don’t act like you don’t. Tall, brooding, capable of killing you and comforting you in equal measure. You’ve got a thing for that too, don’t lie.”

Steve snorts, swiping a hand over his face, smudging graphite. “Ha! Look, let’s leave it there before you start diagnosing my love life too. Tall, brooding, beautiful. I mean… you might have a point, but I wasn’t going to say it out loud.”

Sam laughs, warm and teasing. “Yeah, sure, Rogers. Keep telling yourself that. Just remember… sparks like that? They bite back sometimes.”

Steve leans forward, pencil poised but forgotten, thinking about Bucky’s hands, the curve of his jaw, the blue eyes that refused to look ordinary. “Mhm… bite back, huh? You’re speaking in riddles now, Sam.”

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just telling the truth in a way you’ll understand when it matters. Just… be careful, Steve.”

Steve nods to the empty room around him, whispering, almost to himself, “Yeah… yeah, I’ll be careful.”

After that, the pair simply catch up. In the way friends do, the slightly codependent friends that Sam and Steve are. Even after only five days apart, when they didn't have much to catch up about, they still found ways to fill the silence. Idle gossip, old stories. Lots of laughs.

Next thing Steve knew they'd been talking for Iver an hour, and he realised he really needed to go to sleep. And says as much.

The line goes quiet for a beat, then Sam says lighter, joking, “Anyway… enough about my ancient crush. What about you? Sounds like you’re drawing like a man possessed. Fill me in, what have you sketched today?”

Steve’s grin returns, more real this time. “Everything. The abbey, the forest, the town. Every little detail I could remember. I even spent a page on the jar of pebbles in that one room—” He trails off, realizing how ridiculous it sounds to explain the obsessive care he’s giving every tiny detail. “It’s… it’s probably overkill.”

“Overkill, huh? Sounds about right for you, Rogers,” Sam teases. “You’ve got to show me these when you get back. Maybe I’ll finally see what has you so… distracted.”

Steve huffs a laugh. “Distracted? Nah, not distracted. Just… inspired.” He pauses, looking at the sketches spread across the floor. “Yeah. Inspired. That’s it.”

Sam snorts. “Inspired, sure. I’ll hold you to that when you get home. Don’t be making excuses for whatever mischief you’re up to in England, yeah?”

Steve presses the phone to his ear, smiling softly. “Deal. I’ll see you soon, Sam.”

“Soon, yeah… and Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Watch where you put your curiosity. That’s all I’ll say for now.”

Steve leans back, phone finally down, pencil hovering over a blank corner of the sketchbook. Sparks, mystery, danger… and somehow, he knows Sam’s warning isn’t just about him.

Steve steps lightly onto the cobblestones, careful not to wake Peggy. Her door is shut behind him, the faint light spilling into the quiet village. He tugs his jacket tighter, the rain having stopped but the damp still clinging to his skin.

The streets are empty, the smell of wet earth and old stone thick in the air. A lantern swings gently from a post, casting shadows that seem to stretch longer than they should. Steve walks past the bread shop, the window fogged, loaves still warm inside. It should feel ordinary, but it doesn’t.

Fields open up ahead, wild grasses brushing his knees. Each step squishes softly in the mud, but somewhere deep in the undergrowth, he senses eyes. A fox, small and sharp, stares at him too long, tilting its head as though it knows something he doesn’t. He blinks. It disappears.

The path into the forest waits like a mouth, dark and narrow. Trees bend closer, leaves dripping with the remnants of last night’s storm. He pulls his jacket around him again and steps in. The air changes immediately, heavier, tinged with moss and something older, something alive.

A rustle. He freezes. Leaves shift behind him, but nothing moves. Then, a whisper of his name in the wind. Steve…

He shakes his head. Just the wind, he tells himself. Except the sound carries a weight, a nuance no ordinary breeze could have. He swallows. His heartbeat jumps.

The path underfoot twists, dips, and then is straight again. A trick of the light? Or something else? He can’t tell. The forest is testing him, and he doesn’t know the rules. Each step demands attention, a care he didn’t think he’d need.

A crow calls, then pauses mid-flight, watching him with a tilt of its head, unafraid. The stillness of the forest presses against him, the way it seems to lean in just slightly. Steve quickens his pace, but cautiously. He knows he isn’t simply walking. He is being watched.

Studied.

Judged.

And yet, beneath the tension, a thrill pulses through him. Every strange sound, every unnatural shift in shadow, every lingering gaze of a creature, it all draws him forward.

Somewhere ahead, beyond the dense trees and curling mist, Bucky waits. Steve’s chest tightens at the thought. He doesn’t know what he’s stepping into. He doesn’t fully understand the rules. But he cannot turn back.

The forest presses closer the farther he walks, paths narrowing, branches clawing at his coat. Twice, he thinks he’s gone wrong, should’ve turned left, should’ve cut back across the stream. Nothing looks familiar. His pulse kicks harder with every step, heat prickling under his collar.

Then it happens.

The path folds open, smooth and sudden, like he’s stepped through an invisible curtain. The air shifts, cool and still, and there it is, impossibly there.

The abbey.

Stone rising high and blackened with rain, ivy curling thick up the walls, the heavy weight of centuries draped over it. Windows glint faint and watchful, as if they’d been waiting all along.

His throat goes dry. This wasn’t here a second ago. He’s sure of it. He would’ve seen the tower through the trees, would’ve noticed the walls. He isn’t that careless.

A sharp thought cuts in, one he’s been trying not to name: not human. The man in the storm, the way he moved, the way the air felt around him, it all adds up to this.

Proof.

And yet, even as the certainty prickles through him, Steve tries to shove it down. People don’t just vanish behind storms. Buildings don’t blink in and out of sight. He must’ve been turned around, that’s all. Lost in the woods, too wrapped up in his head to notice where he was going.

He almost convinces himself to turn back. Would Bucky want him to return? Is this like, an invasion of privacy? Yet he finds his feet moving him forward regardless of his minds inner chaos. They carry him forward across the damp grass. He doesn’t realize until later that he never once questioned how it suddenly appeared.

The heavy door creaks under his push. Inside, the air is cooler, thicker, carrying the scent of moss, damp stone, and something sharper beneath it, like metal and water. Light spills through narrow windows, bending strangely, edges hazy, as though it doesn’t want to settle in one place. Shadows pool in corners where they shouldn’t.

And then there’s him.

Bucky stands just beyond the threshold of the hall, half-shadowed, like he was waiting.

Or maybe like he simply appeared the second Steve walked in. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t move much, either. Just tilts his head the smallest degree, watching Steve with those piercing eyes.

Steve’s pulse hammers. Does he want me here? He can’t read the expression, not really. But then Bucky’s mouth shifts, barely, something that might be a smile. Steve seizes on it, decides it means yes. Decides it means welcome.

He clears his throat, too loud in the silence. His hands ache with the weight of his sketchbook tucked under one arm. “I… uh—I drew it. Your home. The forest. The town.” He fumbles, words tripping over each other, heat crawling up his neck. “I just… didn’t want to forget.”

Bucky’s gaze lowers, fixed upon the sketchbook as though it were something alive. When he looks back up, the air stirs, thickening, shimmering. His appearance changes for the barest heartbeat: skin gone pale as frost, hair dark as a raven’s wing, eyes lit with an ancient gleam.

Then it smooths again, human-shape restored, though the echo of strangeness lingers.“You set my likeness in charcoal and line,” he says, voice low, threaded with something sharp and wondering. “You would keep me within paper, within memory? Steve, do you know what it is you have done?”

Steve swallows hard. Pleased. He’s pleased. The words sink into him like warmth spreading through his chest. He doesn’t know what else to say, so he stands there, nervous as hell, clutching the sketchbook like it’s proof he belongs here.

The silence stretches, charged. The abbey itself seems to lean closer, its stone walls humming with the same quiet tension that thrums in Steve’s chest.

And for the first time since stepping inside, Steve lets himself believe he was meant to come back.

The thought makes him want to laugh, a little wild, a little breathless. Meant to come back.

Like he’s some fairytale hero instead of a guy from Brooklyn who gets lost too easily and spends too much time with a pencil. Maybe that’s what scares him most: how easy it feels. Like he didn’t really have a choice. Like the road, the rain, the forest, they’d all been waiting to bring him here. To bring him back to Bucky.

Steve breathes easier when Bucky doesn’t send him away.

Bucky studies him in silence for a long beat, gaze too sharp, too unblinking. Then his eyes flick to the sketchbook still pressed against Steve’s side.

“You would draw for me,” Bucky says, and it’s not a question. His tone has that strange rhythm again, as if he’s weighing the words, testing their weight in the air. “What else would you shape on your page, Steve? If I asked.”

Steve shifts, clutching the sketchbook tighter. “What do you want me to draw?”

For the first time, something flickers across Bucky’s face, a flash that looks almost like surprise, then something warmer, stranger. A beat of pleasure, quickly shuttered. His gaze drops, then rises again, sharp as ever.

“The ocean,” he says at last, and the word doesn’t sound casual on his tongue. It lands heavy between them. He hesitates  actually hesitates, and when he continues, his voice carries a cadence Steve hasn’t heard before. “Not the gentle face they paint on postcards. The true sea. Rough waters that pull and drag, that break ships and bones alike. The tide that gives life and takes it away in the same breath. I would have you set that down, if you can.”

Steve’s throat goes tight. There’s no way he can capture all that, but he hears the longing buried in Bucky’s tone, the way he almost sounds uncertain in asking. And he can’t bring himself to say anything except, “Yeah. Okay. I’ll try.”

Without another word, Bucky turns, leading him down a narrow corridor. Steve follows, boots echoing against stone that seems older than it should be. The room Bucky shows him into is different from the cluttered hall of their first meeting. This space is sparser, deliberate. Fewer shadows clinging in the corners, furniture set out as if it might welcome a guest. The air still holds that faint undercurrent of salt water, but softer here, threaded with woodsmoke and old vellum.

Bucky crosses to a shelf, retrieves a bundle of chalk and paper, and sets them in Steve’s hands with a grace that feels ceremonial. “Then draw.”

Steve blinks, caught flat-footed. “You mean… now?”

A tilt of the head, not quite a nod, not quite a smile. “Yes. Now.”

Steve’s mouth goes dry. “Uh... sure. I can do that.”

Before Steve sits, Bucky brushes a hand over the cushion, scattering dust that Steve hadn’t even seen. A small, pointless gesture.

Careful, deliberate. Steve freezes for a second, struck by how unnecessary it was—by how gentle it was. The man’s got edges sharp enough to cut, but then he does something like that and Steve doesn’t know what to do with it.

Steve does his best. He tries to catch the pull and churn of the waves the way Bucky describes them, the kind that don’t just move but take, the kind that can drag whole lives under. It’s guesswork, mostly. He’s never seen the sea like that, not really, not in the way Bucky speaks of it. But the man gives more than enough to work with. Words like jagged rocks, like foam torn to ribbons.

Sometimes he gestures, long fingers cutting sharp lines through the air as though he’s shaping the water himself.

Steve bends over the page, charcoal staining the side of his hand, trying to catch the curve of the wave Bucky had described. When he glances up, he finds Bucky watching him, head tilted, eyes softened in a way Steve hasn’t seen before. There’s no hiding it, not fast enough anyway. Bucky just looks at him, openly, like he’s studying a puzzle he doesn’t want to solve too quickly. Steve’s pulse trips. He looks back down at the paper, but his lines falter, smudge.

Steve sketches quick, faster than he usually allows, chasing the rhythm of Bucky’s descriptions. The shading’s off in places. The waves don’t quite break the way they should. He knows it. But his hand aches, and his back protests from hunching over, and still, he keeps going.

Because every time he falters, Bucky offers another detail. Another fragment of memory pressed into the drawing.

When it’s done, Steve pulls back, flexing the stiffness out of his hand. He half-expects criticism, sharp and cutting. Instead, Bucky leans in. He studies the page for a long moment, eyes narrowing not in judgment but in something quieter. Something that makes Steve hold his breath without realizing it.

Bucky doesn’t smile. Not in the way people usually do. But there’s a shift, subtle, undeniable. His features ease. The hard lines of his mouth soften. His shoulders drop, and for the first time since Steve’s walked into this place, the man looks less like a figure carved from stone and more like, something else. Something alive.

He takes the paper carefully, almost reverently, as if it might disintegrate between his fingers. He sets it on a small table beside the sofa, deliberate in the gesture, before returning to his seat. This time he sits closer, nearer than before, like the space between them no longer needs guarding.

Bucky returns to the sofa, not across from Steve but beside him. Close enough that Steve feels the weight of his presence, the brush of air when he moves. It’s not quite touching, but it’s close. Too close for someone who’d barely looked at him days ago. Steve tells himself not to notice, but of course he does. Every muscle in his arm is suddenly aware.

Steve notices the change instantly. The air feels different now, less brittle, less guarded.

Softer.

And for reasons he can’t put into words, the ache in his spine and the throb in his hand feel more than worth it.

Steve’s proud enough of the drawing that he almost wants to apologize for the uneven shading, for how quickly he sketched it, but then he catches the way Bucky looks at it, quiet, intent, almost reverent, and all the apology burns away.

Bucky sets the page down with care, like the paper might tear if he breathed too hard on it. Then, without a word, he slips a hand into his coat and produces a small, dark stone, smooth as river glass. He balances it on his palm, then presses it into Steve’s hand.

“A gift for a gift,” Bucky says, voice carrying that strange rhythm again. “Keep it. It will remember the way, even if you do not.”

Steve blinks down at it. The stone is heavier than it should be, cool against his skin even this close to the fire. “I—Bucky, I can’t accept this. I gave you a sketch, that’s not..." He fumbles, shaking his head. “I wasn’t expecting anything back.”

Something shifts in Bucky’s face then, subtle but sharp, the set of his jaw, the sudden chill in his gaze. He looks… offended, almost insulted. His words cut low. “Would you refuse me? Would you make it uneven?”

Steve’s throat works, guilt flaring at how serious he suddenly seems. He curls his fingers around the stone, trying to ease the tension. “No. No, of course not. I’ll keep it.”

The change is instant. Bucky softens, not quite smiling, but the tension unwinds from his shoulders. He leans back, satisfied, as if balance has been restored.

Steve slips the stone into his pocket, the weight of it unfamiliar but strangely grounding. He doesn’t understand, not really, but he knows enough to take Bucky’s seriousness at face value. Some things weren’t worth arguing with.

The quiet lingers, thick enough that Steve can hear the tick of his watch and the faint drip of water somewhere deeper in the abbey. He shifts, opening his mouth to say something, thank you, maybe, but before he can, Bucky’s voice cuts through.

“You draw like the paper remembers your hand,” Bucky says, gaze still on the sketch Steve gave him. “How did you come to it?”

Steve startles a little, then lets out a breath. “Oh. Uh, been drawing as long as I can remember, I guess. When I was a kid, Ma couldn’t really afford much, but I’d snag whatever scraps I could. Grocery lists, old envelopes, the backs of receipts. Anything with a blank space. I’d sit by the window and just—” He stops himself with a short laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to ramble.”

But Bucky doesn’t look put off. If anything, his head tilts, that faint shimmer of interest in his eyes. "It is okay to speak at length, I asked a question, did I not?” he says, tone simple, certain, like it’s a fact that doesn’t require explanation. "Besides, I find myself enjoying your voice as you speak."

The words land heavy. Steve feels the heat rise, crawling up his neck, and before he can stop it, his face is burning.

Bucky’s brows knit, the faintest trace of confusion flickering there. “Are you unwell? Your skin appears to gave changed colour?”

Steve coughs, tries to wave it off, which only makes the flush deepen. His mind reels, trying to grab at steady ground. Its yet another tally in the this man isnt a human box.

Bucky didn't seem to understand the concept of being cold, of shivering. Asks weird questions, reacts weirdly to things. His mannerisms and speech is... off. His house hides itself in plain sight. He talks like no one else Steve has ever met. Not to mention the inhuman levels of attractiveness that Bucky seems to posses. And the weird shift in his appearance earlier?

The only thing keeping him from fully believing his half concocted story, is this. Magic doesn't exist.

Steve presses his palms to his knees, steadying himself. How do you even ask someone that? Hey, so you’re not human, right? The thought alone makes him snort under his breath.

Instead, he just shrugs, muttering, “I’m fine. It happens.”

"Do many of your kind experience such a change?" Bucky seems genuinely curious at this. It's yet another tally in the Bucky isn't Human list

Bucky lets the moment drop as if it was never there, slipping back into his strange, lyrical cadence. He answers Steve’s careful questions with more questions, with hints that only deepen the mystery, like the forest is still speaking through him. Steve doesn’t push, though the temptation sits heavy on his tongue. He just listens, lets the conversation unspool, watching the way Bucky’s voice wraps around the air like a tide.

Chapter Text

New York at night was never quiet, but Sam liked it that way. The streets hummed with life, horns blaring, heels striking the pavement, a dozen conversations overlapping. Most people heard noise. Sam heard rhythm. The city beat like a drum, steady and alive, and he moved with it as easily as breathing.

A breeze lifted as he crossed into Central Park, tugging at his jacket. Mortals would call it wind. Sam knew better. There were always currents running through the world, carrying scraps of laughter, fragments of old songs, whispers in languages long forgotten. Fae voices, if you knew how to listen.

And he always listened.

Joggers passed him, none sparing more than a glance, though one woman’s gaze lingered a fraction too long. Sam offered her a smile, warm and easy, and watched colour rise in her cheeks before she hurried on. It wasn’t intentional, it never was, but glamour clung to him no matter how carefully he masked it.

As he takes his time returning home, the sun was now just starting to set. His emotions going haywire from worry.

Although he supposes, now, that he was right. As he often is.

Steve is in trouble, and once again unaware of it. Listening to Steve recount his tale of the mysterious man he met, Sam was struck still from fear.

Sam sets his phone down on the counter a little too carefully, like if he lets it drop the whole damn thing will shatter. His kitchen is quiet except for the low hum of the refrigerator. The blinds are half-closed, stripes of city light cutting across the walls, catching on the spines of books stacked haphazardly on the table. A mug of coffee sits forgotten beside his elbow, gone cold hours ago.

He exhales slow through his nose, rubbing a hand over his face. A Fideal. Not just anyone, but one that is exiled. And for a very good reason. A fae who was once one of his friends, centuries ago. The exiled Unseelie. That’s who Steve described, it has to be. Who else could it be? A hidden house, speech that moves sideways instead of straight, the old fae habits of trading gifts. The unkindly one, stripped of his place in court, left to wander. Alone. Isolated.

Now found.

By Steve of all people. Steve, who has a problem of finding trouble. It’s not that Sam believes that Steve cannot defend himself. Look, he can’t against this creature. But more importantly he doesn’t know what it is he should be running from.

And Steve. Poor bastard. He has no idea what he’s walked into.

Sam pushes away from the counter, pacing the length of the apartment. The wooden floor creaks under his steps, the place cluttered with signs of a life he’s built to look ordinary, jackets hung by the door, a pair of running shoes kicked against the wall, dishes in the sink. Mundane camouflage. He’s been hiding in plain sight for centuries and grown comfortable in it.

Comfort feels far away now.

Steve isn’t just stumbling into danger. He’s already entangled. Threads winding, knots forming, Sam can almost feel them tugging when he thinks of it. And that’s what frightens him most.

But Steve isn’t mortal, not really. Sam knew it the first day they met. The boy’s blood sang in his veins, bright and clear as a bell. Not the dull hum of human life, but something finer, sharper, a note that belonged to another world. Half-Seelie, though Steve never knew. Son of a warrior who fell before his son’s birth, leaving behind one child to grow up blind to what he was.

Steve’s kind is rare. If anyone were to find out about him he wouldn’t know a moments peace again.

Sam stops at the window and stares down at the city lights below. Cars thread along the streets, horns cutting through the night. All of it so fleeting, so fragile, and yet Steve loves it, throws himself into it like it’s worth every ounce of him.

Sam’s chest aches. In two hundred years he’s never had a friend like this. Never let someone close enough. And now? Now Steve Rogers is walking blind into a snare spun by an exiled with nothing left to lose.

Sam presses his palm to the cool glass and shuts his eyes. He doesn’t know how the hell he’s supposed to pull him back.

Sam keeps his palm pressed against the glass, the city lights blurring beneath his hand. His thoughts drift, not to Barnes, not yet, but to the very first time he saw Steve.

A campus café. He can still smell the burnt coffee grounds, the sharp ink of textbooks spread open on tables. Steve had been standing by the counter, a little awkward in his own skin, shoulders hunched but chin lifted like he refused to let the world see him bow. His features were sharp, too sharp, cheekbones cut like they’d been carved with intention, mouth expressive even when silent. He should have looked unreal, too precise to be mortal, and yet there were flaws etched into him. A nose broken once and never set right. A scar just above his lip, pale against his skin. Sam’s kind don’t scar. That mark alone spoke of a body fragile, human, breakable.

And yet, his blood sang. Sam had heard it as clearly as a note struck on crystal, bright, ringing, pulling his attention across the crowded room before he could stop himself.

Half-Seelie.

Steve had smiled then, wide and easy, at the woman beside him, like the world hadn’t already carved him up. That smile had been more dangerous than the song in his veins. It made Sam’s chest ache with something like recognition.

He remembers deciding, right there, that he would keep the boy safe. Whatever it took.

It started with shadows. Standing just close enough to catch glimpses, making sure no one with sharp eyes or sharper intent noticed him. Always “accidental,” the way their paths crossed. Once outside a lecture hall, once in the library, once at the park where Steve sketched on a worn pad of paper. Enough to be familiar, never enough to draw suspicion. Until one day Steve greeted him first, casual, like it was only natural they’d run into each other again.

From there, the thread had wound itself into something sturdier. Friendship. The closest Sam had ever allowed in two hundred and fifty years.

The closest he's ever gotten to a person. Their bond is real. Sam knows that and knew it could be once he accepted that they were becoming friends. He trusts Steve, with his life. Scary concept as that is.

Yet, he knows he isn’t the friend Steve needed. Or even needs.

He’d seen the cost early. The blood that marked Steve as fae-born was thin, diluted. His body frail, prone to illness, his strength fleeting. A constant ache in his chest, a cough that lingered too long. Sam had recognized it, the hunger of fae blood left untended. The boy needed to connect to his nature, to claim what he was. Only then would his body heal.

But Sam also knew what that path demanded. The cost. Once Steve stepped into that life, once he let the Otherworld claim him, there’d be no going back.

He remembers the first time Steve said his name. Not his true one. No, that is a thing bound and buried, known only to two still living. A name carries power, and Sam has never given that away lightly.

But he’d chosen something close enough, a shape he could wear among mortals. And when Steve said it, grinning, “Sam, right?” it had lodged in his chest like a seed. Small, ordinary, and yet for the first time in centuries, he felt himself seen.

The city lights blur further as his reflection looks back at him in the glass, older than the towers outside, older than the roads beneath. He closes his fist. Allows his hand fall from the glass, curling into a fist at his side.

And now Barnes. Barnes threatens all of it.

Having friends is tricky business. Mortal ones age and die at the blink of an eye. A fair folk’s life is long, endless. Immortal. Unless directly ended.

A friend with a similar kind, is risky. His kind lie without lying. Twist words to sound correct but are inherently deceitful. They offer promises, promises that hold a cost greater than a mortal can pay. Even the seelie, the supposed "kind ones" have a dark side. Yet, when Sam made his first real friend, he chose not a mortal, nor a seelie. He chose two unseelie's. Viscous as anything. Bloodthirsty and capable of acts of violence Sam hoped he wasn't.

Hia kind are hard people to befriend, real friendships rare outside of business.

Sam knows this. Knew it then as he does now.

Yet when he reflects, on her the women who became everything. He can never find it in himself to regret such choices.

The forest had been bright that day, all spring light and quick birdsong, the Seelie court in full flourish. Sam was younger then, though still centuries old, his smile more careless, his tread so light it left no mark on the moss. He carried a charm at his belt, silver-threaded, humming with Seelie craft. A simple thing, but potent. Protection woven into a circle. He never noticed the shadow that followed until it was too late.

A hand darted. A flash of pale fingers. The weight at his belt vanished.

Sam spun, but the thief was already gone, nothing left but a ripple of laughter, dark and quick, brushing through the trees like smoke. He gave chase, deeper into the green. The air thickened as the light dimmed, as though he had crossed some unseen border. And then, pain. A sting at his wrist, a tug at his ankle.

Netting. Ropes. No. A weaving. He fell hard against the roots of an oak, and in the dappled shade above him, she stepped into sight.

Red. That was all he saw at first. Red cloak, red lips, red nails sharp enough to pierce skin. Natasha, as he later knew her by. Younger then, but already dangerous, already carrying herself like she owned every shadow that dared to touch her. In a way, as Sam quickly understood. She did.

“Kind one,” Natasha purred, her voice a silk-edged blade, the lilt unmistakably Unseelie. “Why do you not slip free of my weaving? Do you enjoy the sting of ropes, or are you simply slow to learn?”

Sam tested the bonds, tugging at the ropes with a careful, measured pressure. They held. Taut, cruelly clever. He bared his teeth, a glint of anger flashing behind his smile, though his tone remained measured, Seelie calm. “It is well knotted, nightwalker. Your craft is precise, as is your nature. Yet I wonder… do you always weave such traps for sport, or is this… necessity?”

Her grin widened, sharp and knowing, eyes glinting like fire caught in water. She leaned closer, her hair a sheet of flame in the green gloom, red cloak brushing the forest floor. “Necessity? Perhaps. Or perhaps I wish to see how long you will wriggle in my keeping before despairing. Let us discover what sport may be had, Seelie sprout.”

Sam held her gaze, careful not to falter. His voice was soft, almost casual, but threaded with the authority of his kind, subtle in its warning. “I have no wish to trespass, Red Shade. But know this, every trap has its reckoning. Every thread may be cut, every weaving undone. I am not without teeth myself.”

She laughed then, a sound like dry leaves in wind, and the forest seemed to still around her. “Teeth, yes, little predator. But even predators can be admired… before they are set upon.”

And then she was gone again, vanishing like smoke.

Sam cursed under his breath, pulling at the knots until his skin burned. That was when he heard it: the crunch of leaves, the snap of a twig. A mortal hunter stepped into view. Bow on his back, sword at his hip. Iron sword.

Sam’s blood chilled. The stink of it burned the air between them. He froze, heart hammering, every instinct screaming to flee, but the weaving held.

The hunter’s eyes narrowed. He saw not a man, but something other. He drew the blade.

Sam thought all manner of helpless things. A member so high in court to be felled by a mortal with luck on his side. His story, be believed then, was to be told as a mockery of his memory for centuries to come. The once fearless warrior reduced to nothing by a mortal.

But before the blade could fall, the forest shivered. A blur of motion, red against green. The red draped sìth returned. Burst back into the clearing like the storm given flesh. Her claws, true claws, bone-white and curved. Tore across the man’s throat before he could cry out. His blood sprayed dark across the moss, and he collapsed at Sam’s feet.

It was over in less than a breath.

Natasha stood over the corpse, chest rising, a cruel, sharp smile tugging at her mouth. Every movement marked her as predator and hunter. Sam, for the first time, felt the weight of real fear, the kind that pricked the skin and unsettled the bones.

She turned to him, tilting her head like a cat assessing prey. “And yet, you linger in my weaving,” she said, voice low, a playful hiss beneath the lilt of her accent. “Tell me, kindling of the light, why do you not slip free? Would you have me sever the thread that binds you?”

Sam’s jaw tightened, forcing a steady tone. “If the bonds were meant to hold, do not suppose I would not have slipped them, had my life not hung so precariously. Yet, you--” He inclines his head to the stain of blood at her feet. “--have spared me a stroke I could not have dodged. Allow me to balance the scale. Permit me to return the favour you have granted me, nightwalker.”

A flicker of amusement, mockery, almost, passed over her face. She leaned closer, hair a burning ribbon in the filtered green light of the woods. “Surely, you jest, little knight. You would speak of balance when it was my hand that placed you thus?”

Sam swallows, nodding. “Perhaps. But I would not have been so ensnared, had it not been for your… exuberance. Yet, the debt remains, does it not? The stroke spared must find its mirror.”

Her eyes, dark pools edged with fire, narrow with curiosity. “Clever, Seelie. You would bargain so soon, even as your pulse races? There is cunning in you.”

He inclines his head again, formal and unwavering. “Cunning, perhaps. But honour binds me more firmly than fear.”

A smile, sharp and teasing, curves her lips. “Then the debt shall be tended. You will visit, kind one. Sit at my side. Speak, watch, remain, until the balance tilts to my satisfaction. And know, your company is my sport as much as your repayment.”

Sam nods, the gesture sealing the accord, the weight of centuries pressing into that instant. “So it shall be, nightwalker.”

With a flick of clawed fingers, the ropes unravel, falling harmlessly to the mossy ground.

And just like that, the bargain was struck.

Just as agreed, he had sat. Afternoon after afternoon, season after season, for years that blurred and bled into one another. He spoke not a word to a mortal of their arrangement. Nor did she, save for the occasional acknowledgment to her Fideal companion, as fearsome and precise as she was.

He returned again and again, at times often, at times months apart, the cadence inconsistent, unpredictable, measured by her will, the sway of the Unseelie tide. And yet, with each meeting, each shared glance and quiet exchange, the distance between them narrowed. The sharp edges softened, not enough to forget the danger, but enough to sense companionship, and something more something neither of them would name aloud.

He remembered the first time she had lingered near the riverbank, letting the wind lift her cloak as if daring him to speak. The day she traced her fingers along the carved stone of the hearth, murmuring riddles of light and shadow. The afternoon she laughed, soft and dangerous, at his fumbling attempt to match her wit.

Each moment etched into him as clearly as the blood in his veins. The debt had been the pretext; the bond that had grown between them, undeniable. He had learned her rhythms, her whims, the cadence of her moods. And in the pauses, in the moments when she simply existed without pretense, he had glimpsed the heart beneath the predator a heart he would never claim, yet could not ignore.

He went, again and again, following the terms of their bargain, though in truth the debt was little more than pretence. The forest, the ruins, the hidden corners of mortal towns she led him there, each meeting a lesson, a test, a game. Sometimes Bucky was there, a shadow at the edge of her firelight, silent and watchful, their presence a constant reminder of the peril that swirled around her. Yet it was Natasha he circled closer to, the predator who measured him with her gaze, the fire in her hair and the ice in her eyes. He remembered the lantern-lit ruin, the stone archways wrapped in ivy and frost, where she let him speak of his home, his family, the blood that ran like a song beneath his veins. He had never spoken so freely, and she had listened not as a mortal might, but with the keen interest of one who could smell the truths beneath words. Winter nights brought the most perilous closeness. Under stars silvered and brittle, he had traced the edge of her cloak, just short of touching. She had let him, for a heartbeat, a breath, a fraction of a moment where warmth passed between them.

His lips had hovered near hers; the world had seemed to hold its breath. And then she had pulled back, claws half-hidden beneath the red silk of her sleeves, eyes glittering with fury and fear. She stepped backward, each pace deliberate, distancing herself as though the air between them might burn.

“You would tempt the tide, Guen,” she said, voice low but cutting, each word measured like a strike. “Do you not see? You reach for what cannot be held. Desire is a leash; pride a chain. I give nothing that is not earned, and this ” her hand flicked toward him, gesture sharp and fleeting, “…this is not yours to claim.”

Sam stepped forward, heart aching but voice steady. “I would not take what you do not offer. I only…”

She snapped her head toward him, eyes narrowing, glamour shimmering over her face like frost, before disputing completely, hiding and revealing in a heartbeat. “You wish for my heart, kind one. Yet i gave no heart to offer. No love to feel. You reach for that of your destruction.”

Her gaze hardened; her glamour seemed to shift, mask-like, before breaking for a single, fragile moment. Sam saw the glimmer of her true face, the one she had never fully revealed. The moment passed, and she replaced it with steel. Her shoulders squared, expression closed, the mask of cruelty restored.

“You will forget this foolishness, Guen,” she said, tone sharp but underlined with something unspoken, almost mournful. “It serves neither of us. Leave desire to those who can wield it without ruin.”

She began to walk away, her crimson silk trailing like spilled blood over the frost. Halfway into the shadows, she turned back. For the space of a heartbeat, Sam believed she might relent that she might come back to him. But then he saw her face: shuttered, resolute, cruel with necessity.

Her voice was a blade, bright and merciless.

“Samuel Wilson. You will never seek me, never speak my name, never come to me unless I summon you first.”

The words clung to him like chains. His name, his true name, rolled from her tongue with deliberate cruelty, sealing the edict. His chest tightened, breath stolen, as if the forest itself had leaned in to enforce her decree.

Inside him, something splintered. To command him so was no small cruelty, but to wield his name like a knife, he would never have done that to her. Not even in wrath. Not even to save himself.

Betrayal burned beneath his ribs, a fire he could not quench. And yet he bowed his head, because he had no choice. The bind was stronger than longing, stronger than pride. Stronger than his heart.

She had cut the thread between them, and all he could do was bleed quietly in its absence.

He stayed away, then, for decades. For centuries. Two hundred and fifty years passed, the world turning, humans rising and falling, wars beginning and ending, while he honoured her decree and let the memory of her linger in the quiet places of his life. And still, in his mind’s eye, he could recall the brush of her fingers against the lantern, the tilt of her head in consideration, the light in her eyes that promised both danger and delight. It was exquisite, unbearable, and entirely hers.

He hadn't spoken her name. Not once since then. Not seem her truly. Aside from the red dressed figure he sometimes saw in the corner of his eye.

He had stayed away, for he had no choice.

Sam had known the instant her shadow slid across the floor. The mortal café, with its steam and chatter and clinking of porcelain, dimmed around her like a stage bowing to its star. Natasha Romanoff. Red hair caught by the light of the window, eyes sharp enough to cut through centuries.

He thought, for one long breath, that his heart had ceased. That she was glamour alone, some cruel echo sent to haunt him. But then she smiled, that same tilt of her lips, unreadable and taunting, and he knew. She is real.

She did not stand. She waited. Always the predator. And Sam, fool that he was, crossed the floor and sat down across from her. He had faced death a hundred times over, but never had his pulse felt quite like this.

“Greeting, kind one,” she said softly, her words gliding in that lilting cadence of their kind. “Well met. It has been long since when last we spoke.”

The sound of her voice was claws at his chest. He could not, would not, keep the look from his face. The fury that rarely surfaced in him, the ache of betrayal burned bright. Two centuries of silence, and here she sat in a Brooklyn café, as though she had merely stepped away for a season.

“That was your decision,” he said. His voice was steady, but too sharp, too brittle, half Seelie, half mortal, softened by centuries among humans. “I could not have met you if I wished.”

Her eyes narrowed faintly, a shadow of something like guilt passing over her features, brief, almost imperceptible, but there. She tilted her head, studying him as if he were a puzzle piece she remembered but no longer quite fit.

“You’ve lost something,” she murmured, not cruel, not kind, only stating truth as the fae must. “A light you once carried. A sharpness that used to shine from you.”

He gave a small, bitter laugh. “Yes. I wonder why.”

Her lips twitched, a near-smile that didn’t reach her eyes, and for the first time in centuries, Sam saw her hesitate, caught between her pride and something unspoken. The fae were never awkward with one another, not like mortals, who stumbled over words, who tripped on silence. And yet as Sam sat there across from her, he felt it claw at his heart: an unfamiliar, mortal sort of ache.

The first time he had heard her voice in two hundred years, and it cut deeper than any blade.

However weird the experience was, the prices of her motivation are starting to piece together.

For Steve's mysterious man can be but only one. Natasha, with her loyalty to him, would be aware of all the goings on that occur. She only sought him out now, not due to longing. But desire for information.

And yet, he sits back in his chair, phone in hand. The city hums faintly beyond the window, a low murmur that barely reaches him. He doesn’t bother with riddles, not with her. There’s no need.

He dials, letting the line ring once before she answers.

"You have reached out at last," her voice ripples through the line, smooth and measured. "I had wondered if you might. Yet tell me, what stirs you to disturb the hours of your kind, Seelie? Or do I already know the burden that plagues you?"

“Tell your friend to leave mine alone,” Sam says, precise, clipped. No flourishes, no hiding behind Seelie cunning. No formal address, no. Sam is angry, Steve is in danger. He hasn’t the time to mess around with word play.

His eyes scan the room, but his attention is entirely on the call.

A soft laugh drifts over the line, dark and amused. "Unseelie are not given to friendship, little light. Do you imagine otherwise? I would think you know by now the truth?"

Sam leans back, letting a slow exhale escape him. “You’ve always been good at half-truths, Natasha. Your court has no proclivity towards friendship, you? You have more than you’ll admit. And you know who I speak of.”

There is a pause. The hum of the city seems to fade; he can almost hear the faint, impossible rustle of leaves at the edge of the mortal world. She does not speak immediately, a concession in itself.

Finally, she answers, cryptic yet yielding. “Very well. I shall watch… lightly. Consider it a courtesy. For now.”

Sam feels the weight of the agreement, but there’s something else in her tone. Sharp. Dangerous. He tenses, aware that she has not spoken her whole truth, that never happens.

Before the call ends, she leans closer to her own unseen confidences and asks softly, velvet and cutting both: “What is he, that mortal you guard so closely? He is not untouched, his presence near my Fideal was clear as the untouched water.”

Sam remains silent longer than he should. That pause is acknowledgment enough.

Her voice slides back, soft, intimate, yet laced with judgment. “So I was right. He carries our mark.”

“He does,” Sam says finally, deliberate. “But it is my kind who may lay their claim. He is not of the dark court.”

There is a hum on the line, low, pleased, or dangerous. Sam cannot tell. The faintest curl of amusement in her tone threatens to unsettle him, reminds him that she has not forgotten the power they wield, nor the centuries between them.

He sets the phone down, letting the silence settle over him. The city moves around him, unaware of the ancient games playing out just beneath its surface.

Three days. Three whole days. Steve hasn’t answered. Not a word.

Aside from the message that informed him that Steve is extending his stay.

Sam stares at the phone, the glow harsh against the dim light of his apartment. Late night in Brooklyn, earlier afternoon in England. It doesn’t matter. It’s been too long, and every second he waits tightens the knot in his chest.

He runs a hand over his face, jaw tight. He knows Steve. He knows that stubborn streak, that… that bleeding-heart streak that gets him into trouble. And he knows who Steve has tangled himself with. Bucky Barnes. The exile. The shadow bleeding through the edges of a world Steve barely understands.

No. He can’t sit here, waiting. Not for three more days. Not for three more hours.

Sam grabs his coat. The familiar weight feels like armour. Not the kind he once wore in battle, but a comforting familiarity that provides peace of mind, something he seeks currently.

He checks the door once, twice, as if the apartment itself might try to stop him. His boots hit the pavement, the city quiet around him, and still he feels the pulse of urgency, the pulse that has beaten in his chest for centuries whenever one of his own strays too close to danger.

He pulls out his phone. A message to Natasha, brief, certain: I’m going. Pack. You’re coming.

Her reply is instant. A soft, sharp laugh floats across the line. Of course.

Sam doesn’t ask why she’s coming. He doesn’t care. Her reasons are hers, as always. Whether it’s amusement or obligation, or some cruel mix of both, she’ll be there. Watching. And that’s all that matters.

He stares at the message, fingers curling around the device. A moment passes. The quiet hum of the city presses in, but Sam’s mind is already over the Atlantic, already in Suffolk. Already at Steve’s side.

Three days is too long. He won’t let it stretch any further.

He guesses he's going to England.

Chapter Text

Steve came back, just as he said he would.

And then again. And again.

A mere handful of days strung together, hardly a drop in the river of Bucky’s exile. Yet it had become the shape of his world. The rhythm of his waking. He found himself rousing with the dawn not for the hunt, not for the keeping of his forest, but for the thought of him. Steve.

Bucky had not believed himself lonely. Not once in two and a half centuries. Solitude had been his cloak, his punishment, and his peace. He had Natasha when she chose to walk his halls. He had Alpine at his heels. He had stone and ruin and the great dark forest, all the companions a creature such as him might claim. And he thought it enough.

But now he knew better.

Now he knew more.

Steve had given him that much, without meaning to. Company, regular and unflinching. The proof that some part of him, however buried, had hungered for this closeness all along.

It was not possession, not yet ever. It was simply presence. A new thread woven into his days. And it astonished him, the ease with which Steve moved through his moods, as though he had always belonged in the broken abbey, among the ivy and ghosts.

All the things Steve called “strange” or “odd” about him. Bucky knew them as his own natural order. Yet Steve did not mock, did not recoil. He adapted. Seamless as water finding a new course. And Bucky, for the first time in centuries, felt what it was too long.

Even Steve himself seemed less bizarre to him now.

The mortal strangeness that had first unsettled Bucky, the constant turning of his small machine in his palm, the clipped way he spoke, the endless references to things that lived only in the world beyond the forest, had softened into something almost familiar.

At their first meeting, Bucky had found it all confounding. Humans were always strange, yes, but this one seemed to carry strangeness as if it were a banner. He laughed at odd moments, spoke truths with no caution, and placed his trust as though it were a coin to be given freely. Such recklessness had made Bucky wary, made him wonder how such a man had survived as long as he had.

But the more he learned, the more he watched, the more it became clear: it was not strangeness at all. It was humanness. Mortal rhythm and mortal weight. The quirks that once set Steve apart now revealed themselves as the most natural things in the world.

Bucky had come to understand his habits, the small patterns that made him who he was. The way he fidgeted with the corner of paper when silence stretched. The way his face lit when the spoke of art or dimmed when the talk turned to war. The way he stubbornly carried his own weariness as though it were a thing he alone must bear yet offered his strength to others without thought.

More than that, he understood his heart. Steve’s goodness no longer seemed naïve to him, but deliberate, a choice renewed again and again, even when the world might have taught him bitterness.

And so, what had once been oddness became clarity.

Humanness made sense, more sense than perhaps it should.

And Bucky, who had walked centuries among mortals without caring to know them, now found himself learning what it was to see one.

Yet today, eight days since their first meeting, Steve is changed.

An expression Bucky cannot name, for he has never before seen it, mars the beauty of Steve’s face. It pulls the corners of his mouth downward, sets shadows beneath his eyes, and tightens the air between them until it feels fragile enough to crack.

Bucky, in his fumbling way of imitation, finds his own brows drawing together, copying a look he has seen Steve wear so often. If he must name it, he calls it worry. But worry has always been a foreign thing to him, an emotion carried by mortals who had reason to fear the passage of years, not by one who has already outlived lifetimes.

It is the unknown that unsettles him. Not knowing why Steve feels distant today. Why his nearness is suddenly far away.

For Steve is not at his side, not perched upon the sofa where his presence has become a familiar weight. Nor is he wandering about the room, touching the small trinkets and oddities Bucky has collected, the things he pretends not to care about, though he would fight to keep them.

No. Steve is still.

He has taken the narrow wooden chair in the corner, the one Bucky keeps more for symmetry than for use.

And that is wrong.

Utterly wrong.

Bucky knows three truths, each as sharp as iron:

First, Steve despises that chair. He had sat in it only once, declaring it made his joints ache.

Second, whenever the chance arises, Steve sits beside him. Always. It is not habit; it is choice, deliberate and constant.

And third, Steve never sits still. He is a man of ceaseless motion, tapping his foot, drumming his fingers, pacing when thought overtakes him. A direct contrast to Bucky’s own silence, his stillness that never wavers.

But now? Steve sits motionless in that cursed chair, as though pinned there by an unseen weight.

And Bucky feels something crawl into his chest, clawing at the steady rhythm of his heart. A nameless dread.

Wishes he could do something. Anything.

To draw Steve nearer. To spin a word that would catch his attention, even if Steve laughed at it without meaning.

But fear claws at him. Another feeling he has little practice with. Fear, not of blade or banishment, but of what thoughts may have rooted in Steve’s mind. What has pulled him so far away.

At last, the silence is too brittle to bear.

He wishes he could do something. Anything. To draw Steve nearer. To spin a word that would catch his attention, even if Steve laughed at it without meaning.

But fear claws at him. Another feeling he has little practice with. Fear, not of blade or banishment, but of what thoughts may have rooted in Steve’s mind. What has pulled him so far away.

At last, the silence is too brittle to bear. “You are displeased with me.” His voice is soft, measured, almost careful. “I taste it in the air between us. Your heart beats wary. Do not deny it.”

Steve blinks, startled. “Uh… what? No. I’m not, why would I be?”

Bucky’s eyes narrow, his tone winding, insistent. “Because the mask has slipped. You have seen me true, and the sight unsettles you.”

“I’ve… what now?” Steve says, frowning deeply.

“You have uncovered the shadow I carry,” Bucky says, low. “The thing I keep hidden in silence. You know what I am.”

"Okay… you’re gonna have to spell that one out. What exactly do you think I know?” He says as his brow knits tight together

Bucky tilts his head, gaze unblinking. “You are clever enough to turn my words against me, mortal. To weave ignorance as a net. I will not contest the game. The truth is plain: I am Unseelie.”

Steve just stares at him. “…You're what?”

"Unseelie.” He speaks the word like a tolling bell. “Bound to the dark court. Kin to no mortal bloodline. A child of twilight and thorn.”

“…Right,” Steve says slowly. “Still not helping. What’s that mean?”

“I am that of the Fair Folk,” Bucky says, correcting himself, voice low and steady. Trying to speak plainly so that Steve could grasp his meaning. He wishes, in this moment, for the clarity the very words would once hold. When mortals knew of the truth, feared them. Respected them. If that were the case, he would not have to minimise his existence down to the spoken word. “Not born of your world. Not bound to its frail little laws. Surely you had guessed? Our customs are clear as the sky when the veil is thin."

Steve snorts softly. “Honestly? No. I mean… yeah, I figured you were different. Weird, sure. But I didn’t know it meant that. I knew there was something, magical about you.”

Something flickers sharp in Bucky’s eyes. "To call me 'magical' would be to call the sea a puddle."

He hears his voice, it holds a little veiled trace of amusement, he can, also feel the tugging of his lips. Desperate to turn upwards. "We are much more. I am much more. What I am has no words to adequately describe not in your language, and not in your time."

After the words left him, Bucky felt regret, he was supposed to be explaining himself further. Not add to the confusion Steve, someone who lived in the mortal world unaware of the other his whole life.

So he tries again, calmer now. Softer. At least that is what he is aiming for. “If it is not fear that repels your presence from me, then why do you sit so far from me? Why the silence, the frown you wear like armour?”

He can hear it in his voice. The sound that carries and forms words is not one of softness. It's one of vulnerability. He will allow it. Just this once.

Steve exhales. “Because of Sam.”

The name makes Bucky still. He repeats it, careful, tasting it like a stone on his tongue. Could his luck be this horrendous that this person Steve mentions, is the very same he once knew. The likelihood was slim. But Bucky has terrible luck. Simple terrible.

“Sam.” His head tilts. “Is this 'Sam' you know perchance, similar to this? One of pressing height, broad of shoulder. Does he carry strength lightly, as though the mere possession of such ability is nothing at all? Are his eyes ones that look too closely at things. See too deep, too much. But use this gift for kindness? Is his laugh one that strikes like sunlight off water, bright sharp and gone before you can grasp it?"

Bucky pauses, to see Steve nodding along. Visible confusion deepening. This confirmed what he feared to ne the case.

Yet he continued his description regardless, thoroughly enjoying the way he holds Steves attention. "He would hold beauty, a near impossible amount of it. In the way much of my kind do. The sort of beauty that makes eyes linger or struggle to tear away from his figure. His words are a game, much like my own. Yet different, more plane. Never cure. Do you find yourself lighter when he is near?"

Steve freezes. “… Not sure that I'd describe him that way, but yes. Sounds like Sam." As Steve said the Seelie’s name he smiled, true and soft. "Wait...You do know him.”

"Once.” Bucky’s voice is soft, faraway. He can hear it himself as the noise leaves his mouth. Almost allowing himself to be lost in the memories of a never forgotten friend. “An exceptionally long time ago. We were like one. A small group, oddly fitting together. Seelie and unseelie, trooping and solitary. We moved in tandem, he and I. Another beside us. For a time, we walked as though we were-" Bucky hesitates, attempting to swallow the words down. Conceal the meaning they hold a bitter curve presses to his lips, "friends. Or as close as some such as we can achieve. What has the kindly one done to you? What has caused this emotion you feel?"

"It’s, well." Steve begins then cuts himself off. Bucky is confused, he himself had always managed to find the words to provide explanation and description alike easily. Yet, Steve often struggled with such. He has noticed it occurs on many occasions. "Look, so ... I spoke to him about you. Just on passing," another thing Bucky has learnt. Steve is not a good liar. Although he knows not what Steve would discuss about him.

"And Sam, well he's protective. He was worried. Thought I'd convinced him I'm good. Clearly not. He got all cryptic, started speaking riddles, and he texted me earlier. Saying he's booked a flight here. So that's what I am thinking about."

Bucky knew not if he felt relieved or concern. Steve was not afraid of him, nor did he know his nature. Except, in his fear Bucky laid himself bare. Granted, he could have stated more than he did. Could have told Steve more of his truth. He is lucky, he supposes, that he did not.

Yet, Sam. The issue at hand. Coming to his home to see Steve. To the solace he had found in his banishment. Its upcoming destruction is counting down. That much is a simple truth.

“Wait. You said... No. That’s not possible,” Steve says quickly. As to what he referred to, Bucky had not an idea. More accurately, he had many ideas. Yet he cares not to ponder them at length when he is sure Steve will inform him regardless. “Sam’s never left America. He’s lived there his whole life.” Steve’s eyes catch the light strangely. Almost turning a paler shade of blue. Much like the oceans distant he once visited. They almost appeared to gleam, shine.

Whatever it is he has sensed in the man before him, is close. Close to the surface. Or closer than before. This knowledge is wonderful, exciting. Bucky allows a beat to pass, as he ponders way to bring whatever it is out further. “His mortal life, yes. But tell me, does a man’s story begin with his cradle, or does he carry older chapters unwritten upon his unmarred skin? Or perhaps, are the stories shared to you even true to begin with? Are they spun with elements filled in truth and ambiguity together, to further set the deception? Sam has worn many lives upon your soil. Possessed many names, yet the span of his own runs longer still.”

Steve groans under his breath. “Okay, you’re officially talking in riddles again. What are you actually saying?”

Bucky leans forward, voice like velvet and flint. “I have already said it, mortal man. I am Fair Folk. And so is your Sam. We are kin not by choice but by nature. Courts divided, blood bound to courts that despise one another.”

Steve drags a hand down his face. “…So you’re telling me you’re... what a fairy? And Sam is, too. And you were friends? And enemies?”

“We possess many names, Steven. That is not one of them.” Bucky almost sneers the word. “You should do well not utter it again, for the offense it holds is great."

He wishes to leave the other questions unanswered. Allow the mystery to survive, allow the memories threatening to spill to remain hidden. Yet once look upon the man in front has his mouth opening and words to pour from it. "Yes, we were close. As I have said. An allyship born from a life debt between he and another. Cemented into closeness through the centuries."

He decides to leave it there. Hoping that Steve will not ask for the remainder of the story.

Yet, despite knowing each other such a brief time, Bucky knows one thing the minute Steve opens his mouth. That he is, indeed, going to ask.

"What happened?" It is a quiet question, asked softly, but it is there. The curiosity to know more.

 "What happened indeed," Bucky exhales, the sound it makes is low. Tired, yet almost a laugh. One without any mouth. "As I told you, we were close. He was one of two people I gave my trust to. Simply put. We had set aside out differences," he looks Steve dead in the eye at this, "differences that were in abundance plain as day to us, and others. We simply functioned as if they mattered not. When exile fell upon me, I thought he would come. That the centuries we had shared would weigh heavier than the laws of a court. Both mine and his, for that never mattered before. That he would set foot upon this ground, if only once, to prove our bond still lived. He did not seek me out, not once in all that time."

He knew he should stop speaking. Close his mouth and let the bitter resentment remain hidden to all. Something about this, however, this person, this situation Bucky found himself in. Something about it allowed the words that once were locked away for centuries flow out. "Seasons turned to years. Years became a decade. After that, the hope had long since gone. Remained in its place was hatred. Hatred and a realisation. That what the Seelie call loyalty is but a ribbon, bright when the sun is warm, frayed and broken when shadow falls. They cloak their faithlessness in honeyed words, but what is abandonment, dressed in silk, if not betrayal still?" Bucky is shocked at the words just as Steve is. For even he, could not have predicted the sadness that they held, the woe in his voice.

He is giving far too much away, so Bucky turns the conversation on. “Enemies, as you phrased it, is not false. Yet it also is not the truth of the matter. Your kind believes our courts forever at war. We are not. Just as night does not rise to strike the day, nor does winter intend to strive off the summer heat. They simply exist as opposites. As do the courts."

"So, not enemies? But not friends then?" Steve tentatively askes, he is far closer than Bucky remembers him being. Steve is sat upon his sofa, their legs almost making contact. His hand hovering just inches above Bucky's own. "But they are opposites? Good and evil?"

"Good and evil are indeed in existence, yet one thing may not be wholly good. Or wholly evil. The seelie, although with their facade of pureness and beauty, are just as capable of the acts my kind are capable of. Mortals named them the Kindly Ones through fear. Believing that they were always watching, listening. Name born not from truth but mortal terror. Feared to call them cruel, lest cruelty invaded their lives, roosting upon their hearth." He had Steves full attention, which was lovely. He would have, however, preferred to gain such attention through the normal means. Not through sharing ling forgotten pieces of history and facts.

"In truth, the seelie are no kinder than unseelie. Both courts may bless, both may ruin. However, we of the unseelie walk the path closer to hunger. The winter that rarely pretends to be warmth. Capable as they are of such actions, the possibility of such deeds are forgotten." He was finally fed up with the feeling of not enough. Shifting slightly on the sofa to being their bodies into contact. Raising his hand to meet the, still, shivering one of that above it.

"The unkindly one's truths are barer, bargains less sweet, claws not perfumed but plain. Not always because we are worse, but because we do not smile as we strike.”

As he finishes, he realises he probably spoke far too much in answer to a simpler question. Yet, Steve did not ask him to stop. Not to share. Her simply tightens his hold on Bucky's hand. And allows science to fill the room.

It feels only like acceptance, something he has craved for far too long. He cannot claim this, not without telling Steve what it is that he needs accept.

"I am, as I said. Unseelie. A banished one at that, Steve. It would be better if you leave. I carry danger within me that-" he finds himself cut off, and by a jab to his ribs no less. Few would attempt to do such a thing. Not many would dare. Yet Steve has. It is oddly endearing.

"You're way to dramatic, Buck. So you're unseelie? Okay, so what? Why should I leave?" The simplicity on which it was spoken provided Bucky with the knowledge that Steve simply does not understand that in which he is trying to share.

"My past is unpleasant. Perhaps you should research before making a decision."

"Or, how about this. You can tell me."

"I could. That is correct."

His hesitation was clearly written for Steve to see, "you don't have to. It was just a suggestion Buck. But whatever you did. I know who you are." Steves voice was kind, comforting.

Bucky didn't deserve it.

"You have known me for a short time. You do not know my nature-"

"I do. You rescued me when I could have died in that storm. Answer my questions, let me ramble on about thinks I know you don't care about. You listen to me vent about anything. Pose for me when I want to draw you. Yeah, you can be an ass, but that’s normal. A person isn't perfect, humans aren’t perfect. Why should you be?"

"I spent centuries killing humans. Men, women. Anyone who stumbled across my waters. Perhaps, you would find a better understanding if you were to research my kind, both unseelie and that of the Fidel. Most sources are incorrect, getting our likeness wrong. But I believe it will inform you enough of who I am." He stood up, walking to the door and opening it, leaving it like that, a clear dismissal that Steve is smart enough to register before continuing, "of what I truly am."

Bucky watches him leave, chest tight, waiting. Waiting for the recoil, for the disgust, for the step back that must surely come when next they meet. After all, who could haze upon a monster, a killer and find fond feelings of friendship?

Steve:

Bucky said he should look into the Fair Folk.

So Steve did.

If only to prove that it wouldn’t change how he thinks of him.

And it hasn’t.

…Or well, maybe it has. But not in a bad way.

He understands now, more than before.

There are so many rules he’s been breaking without knowing.

No iron in pockets. Don’t thank him, don’t say sorry. Never eat what’s offered unless, you’re sure.

All the things Bucky’s brushed off with a faint; indulgent smile now click into place.

Steve leans over Peggy’s kitchen table, the laptop humming, the glow of a dozen tabs open.

Searches litter the screen:

“Unseelie Court folklore,” “difference between Seelie and Unseelie,” “true names fae,” “how to apologise to a fae without saying sorry.”

Beside him, a mug of tea gone cold, and a notebook crammed with half-legible notes and tiny sketches.

He’s surrounded by open books, ones Peggy once owned, about Celtic myth and Scottish folklore. The margins are filled with her handwriting.

He finds references to the Unseelie. A court of those cast aside, hunters by moonlight, cruel to mortals. The words “malevolent,” “blood-drinker,” and “shadow kin” appear more than once.

Steve chews the inside of his cheek.

None of it fits.

Not the man who feeds stray cats or repairs the rotted beam in his own home with his bare hands or carefully avoids stepping on fallen petals.

And then there’s this:

"Some say the Unseelie were not born wicked but made so by exile. Their beauty turned sharp in grief, their kindness buried under centuries of hunger."

That one stays with him.

He scribbles it down. Circles it twice.

Somewhere between the words and the silence of the kitchen, something settles heavy in his chest, pity, maybe. Or fear.

Not fear of Bucky, but for him.

If this is the truth of his kind, what must exile have done to him?

A new tab opens: “How to protect yourself from fae influence.”

He reads a few lines, then scoffs quietly and closes it.

He doesn’t want to protect himself from Bucky.

He just wants to understand him better.

Peggy leans on the counter behind him, mug in hand, eyebrows arched. “You’ve officially gone feral,” she says. “It’s like watching a conspiracy theorist have a breakdown.”

Steve doesn’t look up. “Yeah, well, maybe I’m onto something.”

“‘Something,’” she repeats, amused. “Or someone?” Her face holds a knowing look. Confusing Steve. He hadn't mentioned Bucky, not once.

That gets her a look, the kind that would have made most people backpedal. Peggy only grins.

He sighs, sitting back. “Someone?”

"You've been disappearing a lot recently, but since you've been coming back, and I never needed a search party. I figure it's all good. But yeah," she indicates to the mess of her kitchen table, "This. You wouldn't do this for just anybody. So who are they?"

"There is a man," he takes a deep breath, can't believe he is saying what he is, "living in the forest, in a home that disappears and reappears as you cross a certain line." That also gets him a look. The bewildered and genuinely concerned kind. "Don't look at me like that Pegs, I'm sane. Promise. But he told me to look into this, to understand him. Said he's unseelie."

Peggy blinks, lips twitching. “That supposed to mean something to me?”

“Apparently, it’s… like the other court. Opposite of the seelie. The fairfolk. But they're darker. Meaner, I guess.” He scrolls, frowning. “Except none of this really fits him.”

Peggy moves closer, peering over his shoulder. “You’re reading mortal interpretations of immortal things. Of course it doesn’t fit. Mortals always make monsters out of what they don’t understand.”

He shouldn't be surprised at how quickly she's just ran with this conversation. After all, Peggy was always like this. But he is.

He glances up at her, smirking. “Since when are you the folklore expert?”

“Since you started spiralling, when you got home, I started googling myself.” she says dryly. “Someone has to sound clever while you panic.”

He huffs a laugh, the tension breaks for a second. Then his eyes drift back to the screen.

“Unseelie: creatures of night, born of sorrow, unable to lie,” he murmurs. “They say their beauty’s a weapon.”

Peggy hums. “Sounds familiar to you then?”

“Yeah,” he admits softly. “I get it now. The way he talks. The way he avoids certain words.”

“And?” she asks.

Steve’s quiet for a beat. “And I think he’s lonely. Has been for a long time.”

Peggy studies him for a moment, then taps the side of his mug. “So were you.”

'Were' past tense. Steve supposes she's right. He hasn't felt lonely since he met Bucky.

He gives her a look. She just shrugs.

They lapse into easy silence, the kind born of years of friendship. The rain keeps falling, the tea goes cold, and Steve keeps scrolling.

He reads never thank them, never accept food without invitation, never call them fairy.

“Okay,” he mutters. “Definitely broke that one.”

Peggy snorts. “You called him a fairy, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Steve admits. “Didn’t go down great.”

“Idiot,” she says affectionately.

“Yeah,” he says again, smiling faintly.

Peggy watches him a moment longer, then turns back to her tea.

“Careful, Steve,” she says, almost kindly. “You sound enchanted.”

He doesn’t argue.

Hours pass, and Steve carries on the same.

Rushed notes scrawled across open pages. Too many tabs glowing on his old laptop.

The sketches, half-done shapes of wings, antlers, and shadows, lie abandoned at the corner of the table.

He doesn’t notice the rain stop. Doesn’t notice the light dim.

Not until the doorbell rings.

Loudly.

Or maybe not. Maybe it’s always been that loud.

It just feels louder now, slicing through the hush of paper and thought.

He doesn’t move at first. It’s Peggy’s house, after all, and she’d murder him if he so much as looked like he might answer her door.

He doesn’t move until he hears a voice, that voice, followed by a laugh so familiar it cuts straight through the fog of his thoughts.

That gets him up, faster than he’s moved in hours.

And all Steve can think, blinking toward the hallway, is:

Why the hell did Sam have to come here?

Peggy’s laugh meets him halfway down the hall before he even rounds the corner.

She’s standing by the door, arms crossed, an amused tilt to her mouth. Beside her, rain-speckled and grinning far too broadly for Steve’s liking, Sam.

Steve blinks, halfway between confusion and disbelief. “Why did you come here?”

“Steven,” Peggy chides immediately, tone all sharp edges of manners. “Don’t be rude. He’s here. Be nice.”

Steve glares at her, gestures toward Sam. “What, you taking in strays now?”

Peggy laughs outright. “He’s hardly a stray, he’s, our friend. And for the record, he told me he was coming.”

Sam’s grin widens, smug as anything. “I told you too, but you never answered your messages. I was getting worried.”

He did tell Steve. He saw the message. But Sam is right. He never responded to it.

“Worried,” Steve repeats, jaw tightening. “So not because I ran into your old friend, the Unseelie in the woods you’ve apparently known for centuries?”

That wipes the grin clean off Sam’s face. His expression folds into something wary guilt, even.

He takes a slow step toward Steve. “So… he told you?”

“Yeah,” Steve says flatly. “Known him a few weeks and he told me. Known you half a decade, and you never did.”

The room goes thick with silence. Peggy shifts, lips parting to say something, but Steve’s already moving.

He grabs his jacket off the chair, sweeps the mess of notes and books into his bag with too much force.

“Steve…”

“Don’t,” he says, not looking back.

Then he’s gone.

The place hums with low music and the smell of stale beer. Steve’s half through his pint when the seat beside him creaks.

Sam doesn’t say anything right away. Just sits there. Orders his own drink.

When he finally does speak, it’s quiet. “You’re angry.”

Steve huffs a humourless laugh. “You think?”

“I should’ve told you,” Sam admits. “But it’s not exactly small talk, is it? ‘Hey man, by the way, I’m fae.’”

Steve glances at him. “So you are. Fairfolk, right?”

Sam nods once. “A kindly one. I’m Seelie. Older than you thought. And yeah… Bucky and I used to be friends.”

“Until you abandoned him?”

Sam’s eyes flick up sharply. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Then what was it like?”

For a moment, Sam doesn’t answer. Then he sighs, looking down into his glass. “I was commanded. Full name and all. Ordered to stay away from someone, and she was always with him. I couldn’t visit. Couldn’t even walk close. You don’t break that kind of command, not if you want to keep breathing. And when he was banished…” He trails off, shaking his head. “You don’t go near a banished fae. Not unless you’re looking to share the same fate.”

Steve sits back, absorbing that. The anger hasn’t gone, but it’s dulled now, turned to something tired and hollow.

He stares at the condensation on his glass. “He said the Unseelie aren’t evil. And that he was exiled.”

Sam’s mouth quirks. “Yeah. Some of the best ones are.”

A silence settles between them. Comfortable, if a bit fragile. Steve clears his throat.

“I’ve been trying to speak differently,” he says. “You know, to avoid breaking any rules. Watching what I say.”

Sam snorts. “Don’t worry about all that. I’m not gonna twist your words. You’re safe with me.”

Steve nods, relieved, and for a long while they just sit there. Two men one human, one not sharing the same heavy quiet.

Then Steve lets out a laugh, sudden and unguarded. “This whole thing’s ridiculous, you know that? Forest houses that vanish, people hundreds of years old, curses. I used to think my life was complicated.”

Sam clinks his glass against Steve’s. “Yeah, well,” he says lightly, “welcome to ours.”

Sam rolls the rim of his glass between his palms, the condensation slick under his fingers. He looks like he’s been debating whether to tell Steve something for a while.

Steve, already two drinks in, cuts in. “That woman you mentioned the one who kept you away from him. She’s the ‘her’ Bucky talked about too, isn’t she?”

Sam exhales, quiet but rough. “Yeah. She’s from his old court. We met a long time ago, strange circumstances. She saved my life. Though knowing her, she probably arranged the whole mess just to make sure I owed her.”

There’s no bitterness in his tone, just weary affection, and something like regret.

“I paid the debt,” Sam goes on. “We were friends. For a time.”

Steve leans back, eyes narrowing slightly. “So she’s the one who commanded you away. The one you saw again.”

Sam stills. His jaw works before he finally nods. “Yeah.”

“And she’s here now?”

A longer pause this time. Then, a small nod. “She came with me. She’s probably at the abbey with her friend by now.”

Steve finishes his drink in a single swallow, setting the glass down hard enough to make the table jump. He stands.

“Then let’s go.”

Sam blinks. “What?”

“You heard me,” Steve says, grabbing his jacket. “You’re long overdue a reconciliation with Bucky, don’t you think?”

Sam just stares at him, stunned, caught somewhere between laughter and horror. “Steve. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Maybe not for you,” Steve says, already heading for the door, “but I’m mortal. We don’t have centuries to fix things. So, we don’t wait.”

Something flickers across Sam’s face, quick, unguarded. Guilt, maybe. Or pity. Whatever it is, it twists his expression before he smooths it away.

“Yeah,” he mutters under his breath, too low for Steve to catch properly, “sure you are.”

Steve turns, frowning, but Sam’s already moving, sliding off the stool, tossing a few bills onto the table.

“You’re going to get me killed, you know that?” Sam says, following him toward the door.

“Yeah,” Steve says without turning, a small grin tugging at his mouth. “But if that happens, just walk it off.”

They walk in silence for a while. The forest grows denser, older. The kind of green that swallows light.

It’s quiet until it isn’t.

A fox slinks across their path, pale as ash, eyes catching the dim light. Then a raven lands low on a branch, tail flicking once, twice. Rabbits that should’ve darted at the first snap of a twig linger instead, watching.

Steve frowns. “That’s… new. They don’t usually come this close.”

Sam doesn’t even look surprised. “They know what walks among them.”

Steve glances sidelong at him. “Meaning?”

“Animals recognise us,” Sam says, voice even. “My kind, and the dark kind. They flow toward Seelie, and away from the Unkindly Ones. It’s instinct.”

Steve nods, doesn’t comment. The term Unkindly feels like a blade turned gently in his gut.

They keep moving. The path curves, dips. He almost doesn’t notice when the air changes, when the smell of rain and moss turns sharp, metallic, heavy with something older than the earth beneath their feet. The world wavers.

And then Steve realises he's crossed it.

The boundary.

The glamour.

He feels the weight settle on his shoulders like pressure from the deep. Turns and Sam is gone.

No, not gone. Still there, only… hesitating. Standing just before the threshold, eyes fixed on what lies beyond.

“You coming?” Steve asks.

Sam’s face is unreadable. “I can’t. Not yet.”

“Why?”

Before Sam can answer, the air shifts again.

And then he appears.

Bucky is no longer the quiet man who shares coffee and half-formed jokes. The air itself seems to sharpen around him, his presence cutting through the room. Light bends strangely against his outline, as if the world itself is wary of him. Steve blinks, frowning. Something shifts. The edges of Bucky’s form blur, shimmer, then straighten. The glamour falls away, subtle at first, then fully, revealing the creature beneath. He is taller, straighter, impossibly poised. His skin is paler than any human’s, almost luminous, yet carrying a shadowed depth. His eyes dark, red-tinged catch the light, flickering with a predator’s calculation. The faint curve of his jaw is sharper, the lines of his face more severe, like he has been carved from stone and shadow.

Steve takes a half-step back, uncertain, caught between awe and instinctual wariness. He has seen creatures of myth in paintings, in stories, yet nothing prepared him for this. Bucky’s lips twitch, a hint of amusement, or challenge, and he tilts his head just slightly. Even standing still, he is motion, tension, the unspoken promise of power contained within him. Steve feels the air thrum around the man, heavier, charged.

The fae before him is no longer just a friend. He is something older, dangerous, and entirely mesmerizing. Steve swallows.

Whatever Bucky is, the truth of it is far more compelling, and far more terrifying, than any story he could have imagined.

Behind him stands a woman, tall, terrible, dressed in red and black like blood and shadow. Her beauty is immediate and cruel, her smile unreadable. Her hair spills like liquid ink over her shoulders, and her eyes catch the light in a way that isn’t human.

Steve’s first thought: so this is the one Sam was talking about.

Bucky’s voice unfurls, low and dangerous, like smoke curling over a dark fire. “How dare you tread upon my halls, intruder of the waking world.”

Sam’s words are steady, lilting with a subtle cadence, a thread of music beneath the firmness. “I have not set foot upon your threshold, Fidela of the Winter Court.”

Sam’s voice shifts, settling into a resonance that feels older than the forest itself. Each word carries the weight of his being, musical yet edged with authority. “I have not trespassed, Fidela of the Winter Court. The threshold remains unclaimed by my foot, though my purpose brings me nigh.”

Steve watches, heart hammering. There is no artifice here, no softening or hiding behind mortal tones. The cadence, the music in Sam’s voice, the faint shimmer at the edges of his presence, everything announces a truth Steve cannot deny.

He swallows, realizing it now. If there had ever been a doubt, it is gone. This is not a man merely clever in speech, nor one pretending a little charm for effect. Sam is something else. Something older, something far removed from Steve’s understanding of human life.

And yet, the words carry no threat for him. Only certainty. Only the clear, undeniable mark of a being who exists beyond the bounds of the mortal world. Steve believes.

Bucky’s gaze sharpens, the edges of his glamour flickering and brightening like frost caught in moonlight. “Then may your presence grace it now, for delay serves no purpose.”

For a heartbeat, the world seems to hold itself between them. The trees lean closer, the wind stills, even the shadows hesitate. Sam exhales softly, the faint hum of his power brushing against the clearing, and takes a single, measured step forward.

It’s like the forest exhales. Wind rustles the leaves, and every shadow seems to lean closer.

They fall into speech that doesn’t belong to the human tongue, words layered with meanings Steve can’t parse, sentences that sound like riddles and threats at once.

The forest held its breath. Even the air felt taut, trembling with the strain of unspoken things. Mist drifted through the ruins of the old abbey, pale and slow, wrapping around the broken stones and the man who stood before them like a spectre wrought of moonlight and fury.

Bucky’s voice broke the stillness first. It carried that strange music again, the kind that sounded both ancient and deliberate, every word sharpened to a point.

“You left me in cowardice, in shame,” Bucky’s voice rolled across the clearing, low and sharp as broken glass. “When exile pried my name from your lips, you turned. You let the centuries gnaw the silence between us. And now you return, bold as if the years were mere heartbeats.”

Sam did not bow, though his head dipped enough to honour the weight carried in Bucky’s tone. “Do not weave the tale falsely,” he murmured, voice threaded with quiet authority. “I left not for fear, nor for shame. I departed because my name was spoken, my will bound by one who held it tight as iron.”

Steve stiffened, sensing the shimmer in the air, the subtle pull of power that he could not hope to fully understand. Every word, every shift of Sam’s posture, was a mark of the unearthly.

Bucky’s eyes flared, silver catching the light in sharp glints, a frozen storm barely contained. “Few may hold such right,” he said, each syllable a blade.

Sam’s gaze drifted, deliberate, toward the woman who lingered at Bucky’s side. Her gown of red and black seemed woven from the mist itself, glimmering where shadow and light kissed. “And one of those few,” he said softly, the music in his voice curling through the air, “stands still beside you.”

Steve felt the forest tense. The wind seemed to pause. Even the birds held their breath.

Bucky spins on his heel, a motion so swift Steve barely tracks it. One heartbeat he faces Sam, the next, the woman. “You,” Bucky says, the single word sharp as fractured glass, each syllable cut short by fury. “Does the betrayer speak in truth, or weave shadowed lies?”

Steve’s eyes flick to Sam. He notices a brief, almost comical twitch at being called “betrayer,” a narrowing of lips, a curl of disdain that in another moment might draw a laugh. Here, though, it only deepens the tension, highlighting the centuries of unspoken grievance and the dangerous weight in Bucky’s gaze. Sam’s voice remains steady, almost musical, though edged with mild irritation.

“A title is poorly placed,” he says, the words flowing like water over stone. “I betray not you, but the chains that held my will in sway.” Steve swallows hard. The words are layered, the kind only one steeped in centuries of fae rules could speak. Every syllable, every tilt of their heads, feels loaded with history he can barely begin to untangle.

The woman smiled, carved and precise, cruelly measured. “I,” she said, voice smooth and dark as obsidian, “held the right to his name. I forbade him my shadow, my company. He could not tread where I lingered. And linger I did, oft at your side, unkind one.”

Bucky’s hands clenched, the glamour around him bending subtly as his fury radiated outward. “So by your whim,” he said, voice low and dangerous, “he vanished. And you tell me now as if confession were mercy?”

Her lips curved. “Would you have me lie? I possess no ability for falsehood, only concealment. And concealment I wielded as I willed.”

Steve’s chest tightened. He could see the raw edges of centuries-old pain etched into Bucky’s face, the tension of unspent anger twisting in his jaw. The forest seemed to pulse with it, old and knowing.

Bucky’s voice rose, echoing through the trees, a storm barely held in form. “And yet, for two centuries you hid the truth. You may not lie, dear friend, but you hold the art of shrouding it in craft.”

Sam’s voice hardened, the music beneath it threading through the space like a river of light. “Enough. The past, once sung, cannot be unspoken. Had I the chance, I would have come.”

Bucky’s gaze locked on him, cold and unyielding. “And yet you did not.”

“Because I could not,” Sam replied, each word deliberate, each pause a chord struck.

“Then you should have tried.”

“Who is to say I did not?”

Steve’s mind raced. He had never seen such unearthly tension, such a precise balance of fury and grief. Every movement, the way Sam’s shoulders shifted, the light in Bucky’s eyes, the woman’s stillness, was a language he only partially understood. He could hear the centuries in their voices, the weight of unspoken debts, and he shivered at the music of it.

“Do you think me to be a fool?” Bucky’s tone was a growl now, but beneath it, Steve caught the thread of something nearly human, nearly regret.

Sam’s lips twitched faintly, a hint of wryness bleeding through. “I would never deem you such, once friend. Yet a fool may yet stumble, even in light.”

A pause stretched. Words fell away, leaving only the pulse of the forest and the crackle of ancient power in the air.

Steve stepped lightly, careful not to intrude on the rhythm of their argument, feeling as though he were walking in the middle of an old song. Even from where he stood, he could sense the sharp edge of betrayal and the bitter sweetness of loyalty unfulfilled.

The forest itself seemed to lean closer, listening, humming with old power. And still, neither Bucky nor Sam yielded, the echo of centuries in every movement, every note of their voices.

Steve watched, frozen where he stood. He didn’t understand half of what they said. The words sounded like English but twisted with meanings he couldn’t reach, like a song sung in a tongue older than any written down. Bound by a name. Command. Exile.

He couldn’t tell what was promise and what was curse, only that each sounded equally dangerous.

The two stood facing one another still, centuries of fury and sorrow burning in the space between them.

Steve thought, with a helpless kind of awe, that it was the most terrifying and beautiful thing he had ever seen.

Their voices twist like music and thunder, and Steve feels them as much as hears them, the rhythm of another realm, every syllable heavy with old law.

He catches words: kin, oath, banishment, debt repaid. But much of it flows past him like water over stone.

Beside him, the woman in red watches with detached amusement. Then, softly, she turns to him, her voice like smoke curling over wine.

“They will gnaw at old bones for some time, mortal,” she murmurs, the lilting accent just off enough to unsettle him. “Patience may serve you here... a skill you will be in need to learn, as your blood sings half of what mine does."

Steve hesitates, brows knitting. He can’t place what she means, but the weight behind her words pricks at something faint, unrecognized in himself.

“Sure,” he says cautiously, voice quieter than usual. “Lead the way.”

She smiles, sharp and knowing, letting her eyes linger just a moment longer on him. Steve feels the weight of it and straightens, wary, but steps forward. He casts one last glance over his shoulder at Sam and Bucky, both tense, glowing with unspoken histories, before following her into the abbey.

The doors close silently behind them, leaving only the faint rustle of the forest and the echo of old debts in the air.

Steve steps fully into the abbey’s sitting room, eyes drawn immediately to the familiar clutter. Books stacked in precarious towers; odd trinkets perched in unlikely places. But then his gaze lingers, catching something unexpected, his drawings.

They have taken residence here. Scattered across tables, pinned to walls, nestled among Bucky’s collected objects. Creatures and landscapes he’d sketched absentmindedly now feel alive in this space, as if they’d grown into it. He feels a flicker of surprise and pride.

Her voice cuts through, smooth and lilting, carrying that strange, otherworldly cadence. “He is fond of you,” she says, eyes glinting as they scan the drawings, “fonder still of the works your hands produce.”

Steve shakes his head, cheeks warming slightly. “It’s hardly art.”

Her smile sharpens, a touch of mock offense in her tone. “Do you call me a liar? I am unable to do so. I have seen a great many painters produce their labour. Yours is what I would call art."

Steve swallows and exhales, conceding. “Shit." He mutters under his breath. The look the women sends him tells Steve she heard. He’s already breaking the rules he just found out. "Of course not. You’re right. I suppose they are good."

A faint laugh drifts from her, dark and amused. “You may call me Nat.”

“I thought… you can’t give out names,” he says, blinking.

Nat's amusement deepens, lilting and knowing. “You have researched, I see. And no, I cannot, nor did I." Her words feel like a contradiction to Steve. He clearly shows as much on his face, as she elaborates, "but it is what you may call me. A name. Just not my own. I can feel the desire you hold to speak a name. So I provided one.”

Steve hesitates, then smiles faintly. Remembering never to thank her. “I suppose then, you may call me Steve.”

The air between them hums with unspoken understanding. Nat's eyes hold a moment longer, sharp, and perceptive, before she inclines her head slightly.

Steve takes a breath, feeling the weight of the room and the subtle hum of Bucky’s presence beyond the walls. “He… you seem to keep them,” he begins, careful, measured, his voice low. “All these… drawings. Do they matter to him?”

Her gaze flicks toward the sketches, then back to him. Her words flow like smoke curling around fire, teasing, testing, precise. “They matter,” she says softly. “Not for what they are, but for what they carry. The imprint of your hand, the shadow of your thought. He sees what others overlook, mortal.”

Steve swallows, letting the pause stretch. “So… he values them? Or me?”

A faint smile twists her lips, amused, just enough to unsettle him. “Perhaps both, perhaps neither in the way you presume. Some things are kept, not for their weight, but for the echo they leave behind.”

Steve frowns, caught between comprehension and mystery. He wants clarity, but every answer draws him deeper into the rhythm of her words, a puzzle both frustrating and fascinating.

Her gaze lingers on him, sharp and knowing, yet softened by amusement. “And you, who treads beside the winter wolf… do you carry his shadow willingly, or does something unseen pull your feet to him?”

Steve blinks, unprepared for the weight in her words. He frowns, trying to parse them. “I… I don’t think I follow,” he says carefully, choosing each word as if they might betray him. “I mean… Bucky? No. He’s just… he’s been here. I’ve never felt alone since I met him. Never. It’s… easy, I guess. Being with him. I don’t even think about it much, it just… is.”

She tilts her head, the corner of her lips twitching in a shadow of amusement. “Is that so?” Her tone is light, but each syllable carries the weight of one accustomed to reading the unspoken. “And if the forest whispered, would you follow where it bids, or remain tethered to the warmth of what you have found?”

Steve hesitates, feeling a flicker of unease he cannot name. “I… I don’t know,” he admits honestly, hands tightening slightly on the edge of the table. “I don’t even know what I would do. But I… I know I want to stay near him. It’s… right. Comfortable. Safe, somehow. I just… I want to be near him. That’s all.”

Her eyes soften almost imperceptibly, as if weighing his truth against the currents of the unseen. She says nothing more, letting the quiet settle, allowing the unspoken to hum between them.

Steve catches himself, the conversation feels like a game. A question game. He asks, she answers, she asks, he answers. A subtle dance, each probing the other, measuring what is safe to reveal.

Steve sits back a little, studying her the way he studies his sketches, trying to understand the lines that make her real. Her question still lingers in the air, soft but unsettling. He clears his throat.

“Can I ask you something now?”

A faint curve touches her mouth. “You may.”

He hesitates, searching for something that won’t sound foolish. “You and Bucky… you’ve known each other a long time, haven’t you?”

The woman, Nat, she’d said, hums low in her throat, a sound like silk drawn over steel. “Longer than your mind can measure,” she says. “Long enough to forget what the world looked like before his exile.”

Steve frowns, fingers tracing the rim of the mug before him. “And you stayed,” he says quietly. “Even when everyone else didn’t.”

Her eyes lift to him, something sharp flickering there. Pride, maybe. Or guilt. “I am no gentle creature, mortal. Loyalty is not in my nature.” Her tone softens, almost wistful. “And yet, I found myself unwilling to abandon the unkind one. He has teeth, yes, but also a heart that remembers kindness even when it costs him.”

Steve studies her for a long moment. “You care about him.”

She gives a small, dangerous smile. “Care is too fragile a word for what binds us.” Then, after a heartbeat, more softly: “He is my mirror, in ways I would not admit to most.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. It sounds honest, but not fully human. Like truth spoken sideways.

He nods instead, quietly. “He’s… important,” he says simply. “To you. To Sam. To me.”

Her gaze lingers on him again, thoughtful. “Yes,” she murmurs. “And that, perhaps, is what frightens him most.”

Steve looks down at his hands. “He’s got no reason to be afraid of me.”

Her laugh is soft, sad, almost pitying. “Oh, little half-light,” she says. The words too quiet, too quick for him to catch their shape, “if only you knew.”

Steve glances up. “What was that?”

Her smile returns, unreadable. “Only that fear and affection are often the same root, watered differently.”

He doesn’t understand her meaning, not fully. But something in his chest twists anyway.

He is aware, every moment, of what she is. A fae. An Unseelie. An unkindly one. He keeps his responses careful, his tone neutral, cautious not to give too much away.

And yet, there’s a thrill in the game, a pull he cannot fully name.

The door opens without sound, but the air shifts, the way it does when thunderheads gather on a clear horizon. Steve looks up.

Bucky steps through first, Sam a pace behind, both half-shadowed by the dying light filtering through the high windows.

Yet that isn’t what draws Steve’s attention.

Which is saying something because it takes something incredible to draw his attention from Bucky.

No. What catches his gaze is the creature padding silently beside him.

A dog, or near enough to one. Its fur is the green of deep moss and northern pine, gleaming faintly with an inner light. It is huge, larger than any hound Steve has ever seen, and each step it takes is silent, deliberate, too measured to be anything other than dangerous. As is everything, everyone in this room aside from Steve himself. When it draws breath, the air mists white, though no cold stirs the room.

It watches him, eyes like dull metal and old storms. Not cruel, just ancient. Steve goes still, breath catching sharp in his throat. Instinct screams that the thing before him is both magnificent and deadly.

And then Bucky laughs.

It’s sudden, unexpected, roughened like stone dragged over silk. The sound pulls at something in Steve’s chest, something he hadn’t realized he missed until now. His pulse stumbles.

As Bucky looks at him, the tension in his shoulders loosens, the edges of his features soften. The shimmer of glamour fades, and for a moment he looks entirely human again, almost.

In the corner of his eye, Steve sees Nat observing. Looking considerable amused at Bucky’s behaviour.

Bucky stands a little taller, and his voice when it comes is nothing human at all. It winds and echoes, a tone older than words, heavy with glamour and song.

“This is Alpine,” he says, and the name carries weight, as if the syllables are carved from ice and night. “My Cù-Sìth companion. She has walked beside me through centuries uncounted, guarding against silence, against solitude, against the ache that follows both.”

The sound of it vibrates through Steve’s ribs. The words are English, but they feel like more meaning than words alone.

From her chair, the woman in red stirs. Nat's gaze lifts, cutting and amused, the glint of a blade in candlelight. When she speaks, her voice is smooth and strange, each word precise, deliberate, wrapped in melody.

“Have I not done the same?” she asks, and the tone is velvet over steel. “My Fidel, has the frost of your exile thinned your memory so soon?”

Sam, beside Steve, snorts. He’s trying not to laugh, though his shoulders shake.

Steve fails worse. A breath of laughter escapes him before he can stop it.

Bucky’s head turns, slow, sharp, dangerous, but the glare that follows holds no true anger.

He exhales, the light in his eyes dimming from silver to soft grey. “Perhaps,” he says, his voice still edged in that unearthly cadence, “I misspoke. Alpine guards me from the solitude I seek. You, my Baobhan Sith, from the solitude I deserve.”

The air stirs. Natasha arches a brow, the corner of her mouth curving. “Flattery ill suits you, Winter-born,” she murmurs. “Your tongue was forged for sharper things.”

“Not flattery,” Bucky replies, his tone quieting to something rougher, closer to mortal. “Survival, perhaps.”

Alpine presses her massive head against his hand, a soft growl rumbling like distant thunder.

Sam grins behind his glass, one he mist have acquired in the moments Bucky has been speaking, shaking his head.

Steve just watches, caught between awe and unease, as light plays strange across Bucky’s face, as Natasha’s faint smile fades into thought.

He feels the hum of magic through the stone floor, through the air, through them.

They look like a portrait come to life, a knight of frost, a queen of flame, a hound wrought from mist, and Steve, standing among them, can’t help but wonder which world he truly belongs to.

The Cù-Sìth, Alpine Steve corrects, lifts her head at the sound of his voice, eyes flicking briefly toward Steve, almost approving, before settling once more at Bucky’s feet, the weight of its gaze easing.

Steve sits long after the others have fallen into their strange rhythm again, Bucky speaking softly to Alpine, Natasha’s laughter like glass in candlelight, Sam pouring another drink and pretending not to watch them all.

He sketches without thinking. The curve of Bucky’s hand on the hound’s fur. The twist of light over the abbey’s cracked walls. The faint shimmer of something that isn’t human but isn’t monstrous either.

When he looks down, the lines move faintly on the page. Just enough to make him blink.

Maybe the fae have touched him after all.

He closes the book and says nothing.

Bucky lingers by the dying fire. The room is all quiet glow and shadow, the last of the light catching on the glass and silver that clutter the shelves. Somewhere deeper in the abbey, Natasha and Sam have withdrawn to talk. Their voices are too low to catch, though Bucky’s faint smile says he hears every word.

Steve doesn’t move to leave. He sits where he always does, half turned toward the hearth, sketchbook abandoned beside him, its pages fanned like wings.

Bucky moves closer. It’s not a walk so much as a glide, soundless, deliberate, as though the air shifts to make space for him. He stops at Steve’s side, close enough that the scent of frost and old earth gathers around them.

“Long day,” Steve says softly, his voice feeling too loud in the quiet.

Bucky hums, an absent sound, and sits beside him, too near, not near enough. His gaze lingers on Steve’s face. For once, it’s open. The sharp fae polish gone. What’s left is something older, lonelier. Something that aches.

Steve feels it like static, crawling beneath his skin. He doesn’t mean to lean in, but he does. A breath’s distance, then half of one.

Bucky follows. Slowly. The faintest shift forward. His eyes flick to Steve’s mouth and back again, an unspoken question hanging in the quiet.

The world seems to narrow to this: firelight, breath, the small tremor where their hands almost touch.

Then, somewhere distant, laughter. And it abruptly ending.

Steve barely registers it. The sound feels underwater, far away. But Bucky hears it. He freezes.

Alpine lifts her head where she lies by the hearth, a low growl rumbling in her chest. The sound vibrates through the stone floor, through Steve’s bones.

“Bucky?” he whispers.

The fae’s head turns sharply toward the door, eyes flashing silver in the half-light. The air grows cold, charged. Steve feels it too. Not just the chill, but something stirring deep in him, something answering. It frightens him, though he doesn’t know why.

Then the door to the room that Sam and Nat held bursts open.

Nat and Sam spill into the room, no longer wearing the faces Steve knows. Their glamours have dropped.

Natasha is terrible and beautiful both: her hair like flame caught in the wind, her skin carrying the sheen of something inhuman. Her eyes burn molten gold, and the air around her hums with danger, a music that is both invitation and warning.

Sam follows, taller now, brighter, his presence radiant and cold as dawn. His voice, when he speaks, resonates like bells struck in the deep of night. “It crosses the boundary.”

Bucky stands. The glamour slips from him too, dissolving like mist. What remains is not a man, but a creature made of winter, pale, sharp-edged, terrible. His eyes gleam red in the firelight, his skin ghost-pale, his beauty too precise to belong to any mortal world.

Steve can’t look away. He should be afraid, but his pulse doesn’t seem to understand the difference between awe and fear.

And yet. He is afraid.

Not of Bucky, whose presence, even sharpened and inhuman, feels inexplicably steadying.

Not of Sam, who he’s known for years, who has never once failed him.

Not of Nat, whose blade has hovered close to his throat more times than he can count, yet never once drawn blood.

No. His fear isn’t for them.

It’s for whatever has caused this.

For whatever makes Bucky go still as carved ice.

Whatever draws that warning growl from Alpine’s chest.

Whatever makes the air itself pull tight, as though the abbey is holding its breath.

The light from the hearth flickers once, twice, and dies.

Shadows pour outward, thick, and strange, like oil blooming through water.

Something presses at the threshold.

Something old enough that even the fae recoil.

Steve’s heart stutters, the air sharp in his lungs. His skin hums with the same energy that sings in the stones beneath his feet, something that shouldn’t answer but does.

Outside, the night itself moves.

And Steve knows, without understanding how, that whatever waits beyond those doors is not mortal.

The abbey itself hums underfoot, the old stone answering the shift in the air.

Outside, something moves.

Alpine growls again, louder now, fur bristling, claws scraping against the floor.

The fire gutters low. Shadows stretch too far, reaching across the walls like living things.

Steve’s breath catches as the air twists, electric and wrong.

Whatever peace the night held is gone.

Something is coming.

And this time, he knows, it isn’t mortal.

Chapter Text

Natasha:

Why is it, that whenever something is going well, good even. It is destroyed?

Sam and she are good. Truly good. Reconciling in a way they haven’t on their last meeting. Finally, existing in each other’s presence without pretense, acknowledging the past.

They laugh, joke. She swears she sees something glimmer in his face, just a fraction, but it is there, the Sam she knew before. Before she pushed him away, before fear dictated her actions.

Her feelings for him never wavered. They grew like ivy, taking root in every corner of her mind, until all she can think of is him, how his lips would feel on hers. She remembers the moment he leaned in, tentative and hopeful, and she pulled back, sharp and cold, the cruelty in her own reflex disguised as control. Fear had driven her hand, not malice, yet the sting in his eyes had seared into her memory. She had acted as though his affection was a danger to be rebuffed, when in truth it was her own heart, she could not trust.

That memory, that shame, twists through her still, reminding her that even the purest desire can be met with the hardest of walls.

When the opportunity presented itself, she ran. As she often does when too much threatens to make her feel. No. More accurately, she strikes. She betrayed Sam the way she always can be cruel; she commanded him away.

Mistakes are hers. She knows that now, just as she knew it then. But then, fear ruled. She feared the truth in a way she accepts now.

She regretted it almost immediately, but there was no time to dwell. Not then, and not now. To ensure the command held, she stayed away.

She needed to. Feelings would have gotten in the way of her revenge.

Instead, she plots. She manipulates. Makes everything just so. Crafts the perfect day she counts toward, for Bucky’s unbanishment.

Treason? Committed.

Murder? A hobby.

Spying? A favourite activity.

Natasha Romanoff is many things. Forgiving is not one of them.

She has not had time to luxuriate in the fragile peace. The abbey settles around them, stone and salt and long, stubborn habit, when the air changes. Not the old warning tremor of a threat, but a different signature: bell-light and warm mischief braided with the certainty of someone who thinks themselves larger than they are.

Alpine stiffens with an amused sniff; Bucky’s shoulders tighten in reflex. Sam inclines his head, the faint glimmer at his skin answering the shift like a chord struck true.

Natasha moves first by habit, not by fear. Years of surviving teach muscle memory. She crosses the hall with the same efficiency she brings to a blade. The door creaks; the night leans in.

The air shifts before the night makes a sound.

Natasha freezes.

Nose lifting slightly, she senses the tremor in the magic surrounding the abbey. The stones hum beneath her feet. Faint, almost inaudible to mortal ears, but alive and aware. Alpine stiffens, the low growl vibrating the floorboards. Bucky’s shoulder tenses, silver gleam under candlelight. Sam’s eyes twitch, subtle, instinctive, as if attuned to something beyond human measure. The way they all are.

Steve straightens too, gaze flicking toward the window. He doesn’t know what he’s sensing, his pulse is too uneven, his mind still too human, but he feels it all the same. Another thing to confirm her suspicions that Steve shares their blood.

“Something’s here,” Sam murmurs, voice low.

“Uninvited?” Bucky asks. Which, in her opioun, is a stupid question. Of course whoever this person is, is uninvited. Who else do they know to invite?

Natasha’s lips press into a thin, knowing line. “Unclear.”

Alpine’s tail lashes once, a silent warning.

Then, light. Not threatening. Golden. Warm. It drips through the windowpane like sunlight caught in glass, settling across the threshold. Natasha exhales, tension easing, but not entirely.

She knows who, exactly who, this is. The dramatics? Yeah, she knows who has tracked her. Who followed her to England.

This is the only person, aside from Bucky able to track her down so easily. If not at all.

“Stand down,” she says, sharp, firm.

No one moves.

Sam’s eyes narrow, hand flexing near his blade. “You sure?”

Bucky’s voice is cool as frost. “I don’t take orders blind.”

Steve watches her, uncertain but alert, gaze darting between them.

Natasha’s expression softens, fractionally. “If he wanted us dead, we’d already be ash.”

From the dark steps a figure unwinds, arms wide, grin broader than is sensible for any being who lives two hundred years. Sunlight bleeds from him like perfume; he moves with the casual slouch of someone who has survived by charm and a remarkable inability to take anything seriously. Clint.

Clint, ridiculous and bright, an old rat of the Seelie courts who decorates death with a joke and a ribbon. Who is capable of causing death without a second glance, then prone to comfort the families of whoever he just killed.

The sort of ally who once shot a prince through the hat and then apologized for the hat. He bows with mock ceremony, flourishing an umbrella he did not need and a smile that is far too warm for the company.

“Have I missed the roast?” he bellows, voice carrying the ridiculousness that has made him an impossible blessing for her for centuries. “Or is this more of a…” he peeks at Alpine, who sniffs him as if offended by his insolence, “…sit-down-and-stare-at-the-dog occasion?”

Steve laughs, light, musical, relieved. Bucky’s mouth stiffens, unsure on what to do with the unfamiliar face. She straightens. She does not laugh. That is not her instrument tonight. Instead she throw a knife at him.

One which he dodges easily as breathing. Catching it in his left hand.

“Clint,” she says, cool as a drawn blade. “You are late.” It reads more like a statement than accusation. She lets him have the space to be his theatrical self; she trusts him in ways she trusts almost no one. "By quite a while I would say. And at the wrong meeting spot."

“What I’m hearing is that you missed me? Was the knife really necessary? You could have hit something!” Clint grins, that irreverent, unshakable smirk curving his mouth. His tone is light, his magic brighter, laughter in color and movement. "How could I miss a meeting like this? I mean you have everything! Look there is fire! And a mor-" he cuts himself off studying Steve closer. "There is another man, I do not know. Well met stranger." He inclines his head in respect before going off rambling again. About everything in the room.

Sam lowers his blade only half an inch. “This your friend?” the statement is whispered, hushed. Only for the ears of those close to him. Clint would hear it regardless.

“Insofar as anyone can be,” Natasha says, arms crossing. “You may call him Clint. He is the Seelie court’s favourite thorn. Clint," at the sound if his name his head draws up, he stands still and straight, "you may call then Bucky and Sam. The other who insists on standing too close to danger may be called Steve.”

Clint bows with exaggerated grace. “Pleasure’s all mine. Been wanting a meeting with you two for a while I have." He says indicating towards Bucky and Sam. "Heard you’ve been making quite the mess, Tasha.”

“Occupational hazard,” she says dryly. “Why are you here?”

He straightens, and for a moment, the levity drops. His eyes are serious, sharp, even reverent. “The thread held, and the wind blew our way, my friend. The world favours a gentle hand that sways the fate as mine oft does."

Natasha ignores the theatrics, cuts to business the way she cuts through a rumour. “You flatter the thresholds with your sunshine. Speak plainly.”

Clint drops the theatrics, just a fraction, and leans in, because he knows when to lean and when to be the idiot who keeps the world from collapsing into grief.

“It worked,” he says simply. “Not the all-at-once, blow-the-crowns-and-dance kind of worked. No, no. Subtler. The lines shifted. Voices in council creaked like old wood and the Unseelie, well. They are listening. The king had to listen. Your petitions, the evidence, the…” he waves a hand as if stirring soup, “…the right people remembering debts, it bent the court. They will speak for your friend.”

The words land like a hand on her sternum. For a breath, disbelief and ache and a heat she labours to tamp down mix in her ribs. Bucky’s jaw loosens and exhales in a sound that is almost a sob. Even Alpine’s ears perk; the animal seems to approve, as she would approve of a good kill well arranged.

Natasha’s smile is small and something like private triumph. “You are sure you’re not twisting the truth to my face because you enjoy my scowl?” she asks. The scowl is reflex; the triumph is stupidly beautiful.

Clint cocks his head, mock offended. “Natasha, me, conceal the whole truth? To your face? I would sooner put a thorn in my tongue and sing lullabies to iron. For I fear your wrath more than that of any other." He winks. Then, softer, “You made me promise, you know. You and I, we made plans in the dark long before it became fashionable. I kept my end.”

“Then tell me plainly,” she says. Soldier first. Friend after. Their plot, years of quiet bargaining, truths traded like currency, has to be checked, verified, folded into new plans.

Clint names the names, states the seats that have been shifted, whisperings turned to votes, a couple of old grudges settled when the right ledger was consulted. The Unseelie, he says, are not turned to whole-hearted allies; no banished ever returns so easily. But cracks favoured Bucky. Arguments that once closed mouths now open. The king himself had to listen. That counts.

Bucky does not speak for a long moment. When he does, his voice is low and not quite steady. “You set this in motion?” he asks, not asking for praise but for confirmation that it’s real and not an illusion conjured because they want it so much. Clint’s answer is a ridiculous flourish of a bow and a hand on Bucky’s shoulder that is unexpectedly tender.

Clint tilts his head, golden light catching in his hair. “So this is the shadow you wagered everything on. I remember when his name was only a curse whispered under breath and now the courts speak it with reverence.” He looks at her, grin softening. “You moved the needle, Tasha. Bent the tide. You made the right ugly choices. And the result has been rewarded."

Relief is a clumsy thing. It lands as quiet.

Sam hums, a strange, small song of gratitude. Natasha lets the tightness in her chest ease fractionally, the tension loosening like a string finally untied.

Clint waggles a finger, then grows peculiarly sober. “Not without cost,” he says. He is not theatrical now. The sunlight about him dims for the space of a heartbeat; the warning is a small shadow passing over his face. “The tide does not turn without pulling something with it. Debts that were asleep wake. Old prayers find mouths to listen. People who were silent will take notice.”

Natasha’s jaw tightens with the politics of it. Of course there are costs. There are always costs. The relief now tastes of iron and smoke. She files the warning into the ledger of what comes next. “To be expected, was it not?”

“You expect a knife,” Clint says, “and you will get one. But this knife will be yours to point. That is the work of friends.”

For a beat she allows herself to look at them. Bucky beside Alpine, king of his small ruin; Sam, who has been the patient tide she turned her back from; and Clint, ridiculous and infuriating and utterly loyal. He’d stood by her for two centuries trying to make right the wrongs of banishment. Steve stands off to the side, watching with the wide-eyed earnestness of someone who has been given a map he does not yet know how to read. His face is a study of focus and small betrayal, because hope feels like something else entirely.

“Then we plan,” Natasha says, voice settling into business with the gravity she wears like armour. “We do not celebrate yet. We prepare. We take the leverage given and we make it permanent.”

Clint’s grin returns, crooked and fierce. “And when you do,” he leans forward, conspiratorial again, “we have a party. You, me, and your friends here. No rules except that I dance on the table. It has been a dream of mine since I observed a mortal do it once.”

Natasha allows a real, small laugh. Sam chuckles. Bucky’s mouth twitches up. Steve’s expression loosens into a grin that looks almost like prayer.

Clint steps back into the dark then, already the itinerant light he always is. “I shall bring news as it comes,” he promises lightly. “And pies. Don’t forget the pies.”

When the door closes and the night settles again, there is a different hum in the stones, less the tension of an incoming blade and more the steady, uneasy music of a tide turning.

Natasha breathes in. The plan worked. The courts shifted.

The cost will come, but for the first time in an eternity she allows herself a thin, dangerous pleasure: the thing she has been building toward is finally, finally possible.

She straightens her shoulders, the soldier in her already recalculating next moves. Forgiveness is not her nature, but tonight she keeps a quiet reckoning with a softer truth, there are loyalties that wind deeper than fear. There are allies who will stand, for reasons no ledger can hold. And sometimes, very rarely, the world yields what you have bled for.

The abbey has fallen into quiet again. The laughter that once threaded through its halls has stilled, replaced by a hush that tastes like ash and old magic. Clint’s message still hangs in the air, heavy and bright.

The Unseelie have bent. The tide has turned. Bucky’s name, the one once struck from every record, cursed to be unspoken, has been murmured again in the courts. Freedom, not yet given, but no longer forbidden.

Bucky stands very still. He has not spoken since Clint departed through the shimmer of light, vanishing as easily as he came. His eyes, cold river blue, sharp as carved glass, remain fixed on her. She can read every thought, every tremor beneath the surface.

Confusion.

Gratitude.

A careful, unspoken ache.

Sam and Steve shift near the doorway, uncertain. They understand enough of fae etiquette to recognize the intimacy of the silence between the two. Natasha tilts her head, the faintest motion. A signal. A dismissal.

Sam’s gaze lingers a heartbeat longer, worried, but he nods once and steers Steve from the room. The door closes softly behind them, sealing the quiet.

Only the hum of the old stones remains. The abbey feels alive beneath her feet, listening. Bearing witness.

Bucky speaks first. “You have moved the courts.” His voice is low, the cadence of his kind, lyrical, crystalline, layered with meaning. “You twisted the threads that bind their laws.” His head inclines, faint but deliberate. “You did this… for me?”

His words are not accusation, but wonder, something dangerous and fragile beneath it. Natasha meets his gaze and does not look away. She feels the weight of every secret choice she has made, every lie told, every whisper traded in darkened halls.

“For you,” she says. The words are clean, deliberate, spoken in full fae speech. A vow of intent. “For the name they took. For the silence they forced upon it. For what should never have been buried.”

Bucky’s breath stirs, sharp and uneven, like a storm pressed tight behind ribs. “You risk much,” he says softly, and there is reverence in the sound. “To turn a court against its king is to invite ruin. To speak my name before witnesses, to pull me from exile, these are not acts without price.”

She steps closer, her expression unflinching. “Ruin and I are well acquainted.”

The words draw the faintest curve of a smile from him. But there is something else in his eyes now. Something deep and aching, older than all her sins. Gratitude. And fear.

“You would do this,” he murmurs, “for one cast aside. For one who cannot return the favour in kind.”

Natasha tilts her head, slow, precise. “You think I act for favour?” The faintest edge of her accent colours the words. “No, Bucky. I act for what is owed. For what they broke in you. I mend what should never have been shattered.”

And it is true. Is it not? What happened to her friend was unjust. Cruel. And while she enjoys cruelty on occasion, when needed, this was an occurrence that did not warrant the punishment.

Silence folds between them again, but it is no longer cold. The air hums, charged with something ancient truth, unmasked and perilous.

Bucky’s gaze lowers. His hand lifts slightly, fingers curling as though to reach for her, but he stops himself. Instead, he inclines his head, the old fae bow, spare and grave.

“Then let it be said,” he whispers. “ Before the stones that remember, before the night that listens, I thank you.”

The room stills.

The words ‘thank you’ is not simple among their kind. It carries binding weight, a tether between giver and receiver. A promise of debt freely offered. Natasha feels the word strike the air; feels it pulse through the old walls like thunder.

She exhales slowly. Do not,” she says, but too late. The word has already settled. “You would owe me nothing. Do owe me nothing.”

Bucky’s eyes lift, a glint of silver in their depths. “And yet, I feel as if I do. Furthermore, I utter the words with love, Natasha Romanoff. I mean them. And the promise that that made.”

For a heartbeat, neither of them move. The world narrows to breath and heartbeat and the low hum of old magic weaving around them.

Then Natasha steps closer, close enough that she can see the faint shimmer of light in his hair, the small tremor in his jaw. Her voice lowers, almost human again. “You owe me nothing,” she repeats, quieter this time, less command, more confession. “If you must speak debt, let it be only that I returned what should never have been taken.”

Bucky watches her for a long moment, then nods once, slow, deliberate. “Then I am restored,” he says softly. “Not whole. But nearer.”

A faint smile ghosts across her lips. “Nearer will do. For it is what we have.”

Outside, the wind shifts. The abbey sighs, as if easing the weight of centuries. And for the first time in too long, Natasha allows herself to believe that perhaps not all things that break must remain broken.

The door opens softly. Sam steps through first, all fluid grace again, though the faint gleam of wariness still clings to him. Steve follows, quiet, uncertain where to look; his small frame seems swallowed by the long shadows the fire throws across the room.

Bucky straightens instinctively. Natasha watches his shoulders square, the tension folding inward like a blade being sheathed.

It’s almost imperceptible, the way his gaze finds Steve, how the tightness in his jaw softens by a fraction, how something unguarded flickers through that winter-blue stare. He doesn’t speak, but his body tells the truth. Natasha sees it in the way he tracks Steve’s movements, the way he listens without meaning to, like the mortal’s voice is a sound he has longed for without knowing it.

There’s a gravity there, quiet but relentless, the kind that drags the stars down from their courses.

Natasha doesn’t miss it. Few things escape her notice, and certainly not this.

She marks the signs: the gentler edge to Bucky’s silence, the pulse that shifts whenever Steve draws near. It’s not infatuation; it’s older, deeper. Dangerous. The sort of attachment that bends rules, that pulls immortals toward ruin or redemption.

And though she’d never admit it aloud, she understands. Because she’s seen that look before, on her own face, once.

“Everything all right?” Sam asks, glancing between them.

“For now,” Natasha answers, voice even. She gestures toward the fire. “Come. There’s news to share.”

They gather close, the hearth’s warmth caught between them. For a moment the crackle of flame fills the silence, until Steve, tentative, asks,

“So it’s true? You’re... you’re not banished anymore?”

“Not yet,” Bucky replies, his voice deep and steady, words formed in the elegant cadence of full fae speech. “But the path opens. The Courts begin to murmur. It seems treachery loses its lustre when truth claws to the surface.”

Steve frowns. “What happened? Why were you banished?”

Natasha glances toward Bucky. His expression flickers, pain, memory, the faintest thread of pride refusing to bow.

“The tale is not brief,” he says. “But you deserve it told plain.”

He steps closer to the firelight, the shadows sliding over him like water. “The Unseelie King made a request. A command, more truly. And though I served with loyalty, even when I could not refuse him. To do so would surely create my ruin. I did so. I accepted whatever fate would occur afterwards. It was meant to be a quiet task, unseen. But the deed twisted into blood. A Seelie knight fell. One high in standing.”

Steve’s breath catches.

“I did not strike the blow; I was not on the mission itself.” Bucky continues, voice like frost catching the edges of flame. “Yet when the sun rose, the whispers named me. Murderer. Oathbreaker. My name ran with ruin. No one trusted me, not a sole believed me at first. Aside from my friend here,” he indicated to her, a feeling of pride nestled in her chest. She would always believe him. Always stand by him, no matter the cost. “I left the Court rather than kneel to a lie. Thought I could live as solitary. The king saw only betrayal. Thus my banishment.”

Natasha adds, calm but edged, “He was framed. The king ordered one of his own trusted knights to do it. Then set the blame on Bucky. I spent years visiting in secret still, against his own decree.”

Steve looks appalled. “That’s… But that’s not fair! He ruins someone’s life, and you all just let him?”

Bucky’s tone holds something older, colder. “It is not our way to defy the crowns. To do so is to invite ruin.”

Sam, half amused, half dark, leans back. “No. You don’t defy them.” His eyes glint. “You destroy them. If you’re brave enough.”

The remark pulls a quick, sharp grin from Natasha. The look Sam sends her, it one full of admiration. Of respect.

Even after years apart, there is fondness there still.

Yet, Steve’s anger visibly doesn’t ease. It clearly builds instead, his shoulders trembling.

“They’re bullies,” he snaps. “All of them. You can’t just let them keep hurting people because they’re royalty!”

The words ring out and something in the abbey shifts.

The air brightens, impossibly. The light from the windows bends toward Steve, refracting like sunlight through glass. His eyes flare, an electric blue that seems to pulse. For a heartbeat, his skin is flawless, aglow. His features sharpen, the bend in his nose gone, the scar on his lip removed. He looks timeless, he looks fae. The fire bows toward him as though drawn by gravity.

Everyone stills.

“...What,” Steve says, voice trembling, “why are you all looking at me like that?”

Sam’s pointing before he seems to think better of it. “You might want to see for yourself, mate.”

Steve blinks, fishes his phone from his pocket, and turns the front camera on. The small gasp he makes is sharp enough to cut the silence. “What the fuck…”

Natasha steps forward, steady, quiet. “Steve,” she says, careful now. “Listen to me. What you’re seeing… it’s not a trick. It’s your blood answering itself.”

He stares at her, wild-eyed. “My blood…? What are you talking about!" Steve doesn't understand the meaning of her words.

"Your blood is that of the kindly ones Steve." Sam's voice is soft as he says it. Kind. Understanding.

"No, that doesn't make any sense! My ma was human." At the look she and Sam send his way realisation clearly dawns on him. "No. My dad… he was a soldier. In the army. He died overseas before I was born.”

Sam’s voice is soft but certain. “He was a soldier, all right. Same army I served in. The Seelie’s.”

Steve’s face hardens. “So now you’re telling me he wasn’t human either? That I’m... what, fae?”

“Half,” Natasha corrects. Her tone holds the same precision as a blade being placed back in its sheath. “This, a rarity, even after many centuries if our kinds existence. Perhaps this is why Bucky didn’t sense it immediately. The human half masks the song.”

Bucky, who’s been silent until now, finally speaks. “I felt something,” he admits, low. “But I couldn’t name it. It wasn’t like anything I’d known before. I thought i could figure it out. Then I stopped trying to. For your company was enough for me.”

Steve takes a step back, shaking his head. “No. No, this is… I’m just me. I’m not…”

The room trembles with him. The flame gutters, the air thickens. Somewhere beyond the windows, wind surges, scattering leaves in sudden wild motion. The abbey seems to breathe, alive to his emotion.

“Steve,” Natasha warns, voice soft but commanding.

But he’s already turning, shoulders taut. “I need… I need a minute.”

He leaves before anyone can stop him, the door slamming on a gust that shakes the panes.

Silence falls.

Sam exhales slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well,” he says dryly. “That might be a problem.”

Bucky’s gaze stays fixed on the door. The faintest flicker of worry, real, sharp, unguarded. Crosses his expression.

Natasha’s eyes narrow toward the window, watching the wind churn the trees. “More than a problem,” she murmurs. “That, boys... might be a reckoning.”

Bucky:

Many thoughts race through his head at Steve’s departure from the room. Fragments of voices, glances exchanged, truths revealed and half-swallowed. But above them all, one rises, clear and undeniable. He should follow.

Much like the first time they met, his feet move before his mind catches up. No thought directs him, no logic commands him; only that pull, soft and insistent, a thread that winds through his ribs and drags him toward the door.

The abbey’s air greets him cool and damp, its silence almost sacred after the storm of revelation within. He breathes in deeply, the scent of moss and rain grounding him. Yet even that fails to settle the tremor beneath his skin. For he can feel Steve out there, his presence a faint shimmer against the edge of Bucky’s senses. A warmth among the green. A fragile, flickering light.

So he follows.

Each step feels both his own and not. As though the path remembers Steve’s tread and guides Bucky to the same places, the broken stems, the faint indentation of boots in damp soil, the echo of a heartbeat still fading in the air.

He does not know why he goes. The impulse is foreign, confusing. To seek another. To offer comfort. These are not things he has ever done, nor learned, nor needed. He is a creature of salt and storm, he takes, he endures, he obeys.

He has never soothed. Not once in his long life. Not when he had past romances, not once has he ever felt the need to do so.

And yet he goes. Goes with that very intention to do so.

Perhaps it is curiosity. Perhaps it is guilt. Perhaps, though he dares not name it, it is something older still, something his kind were meant to be incapable of.

Care.

It sits uneasily within him, this need to see Steve’s face, to hear his voice and know that it still holds warmth, still belongs to the living world.

He tells himself it is obligation, nothing more. That the boy is half Fae now, that one such as Bucky cannot risk leaving him unguarded. That it is duty that drives him into the night.

But as he steps beyond the threshold and feels the faint pull of Steve’s presence, bright as sunlight refracted through mist, he knows that is not true.

He goes because something within him cannot bear to let Steve grieve alone. Cannot bare to allow Steve to be in pain alone, no matter the type.

The air outside the abbey tastes of nature and rain. The soft smell draws him in, damp earth and leaf-rot and the faint pulse of something living beneath. Comforting to him, as all wild things are to those who were never meant to live among walls.

Perhaps this is what Steve will require. Something of the natural world to ease him, to coax him back from that hollow quiet that had settled in his gaze.

Something physical, perhaps. A blanket of warmth. A token, even.

The thought forms unbidden: the image of Steve in his arms, narrow frame pressed against his chest, the fragile sound of mortal breath ghosting over his collar. The thought is vivid. Too vivid. He feels the echo of it in his palms. So real he could almost feel the weight of him.

He swallows hard. Shakes his head. Continues the path before him.

He has not the right to touch freely. Not yet.

And yet, is it not true that Steve had leaned in, that hour not long ago, the distance between them thinned to nothing? Is it not true that Bucky had allowed it, had wanted it? That he had tilted forward too, as if drawn by a tide far older than thought?

Is it not also true, he thinks, that they would have met, touched, had fate not chosen that moment to jest at his expense? The air had been charged, poised on the edge of something rare and fragile. And then, her ally arrived. The fool, bright and loud, cutting through the moment like sunlight through still water.

Though the tidings he carried gleamed with promise, their timing was cruel beyond measure.

Bucky could curse him through all the long ages yet to come, for stealing from him a moment the world itself seemed to hold its breath for.

The memory strikes like lightning through water. His breath catches.

No. He would have to find something else to bring comfort. A physical warmth perhaps, not born of touch but of kindness. Perhaps Sam should have been the one to go after him. Sam, who understands mortal grief and mortal hope. For he has lived among then for many years. Whereas Bucky, has not.

The only understanding Bucky possesses, or possessed before Steve entered his life, has the knowledge of how to kill a mortal. Not comfort one.

Sam, who knows this man, his habits, his laughter.

But it was Bucky who rose. It was he who crossed the threshold, who broke the stillness of his home to follow the half-mortal into the dark.

Half mortal.

The words taste strange on his tongue. Like contradiction, or prophecy.

He had not known such a thing was possible. Not in all the long centuries he had walked this earth. The Seelie and Unseelie keep their boundaries, their lines of blood and pact. To bind with humankind was to court ruin. To create life between such worlds. It is unthinkable.

And yet Steve had stood there, light flaring in his eyes, voice thick with power, and the very stones of the abbey had listened.

The earth had listened.

Bucky had felt it, his own skin prickling, his own magic faltering in the face of it. The song that rose from Steve’s fury was not mortal. It was old. Older than kingdoms. Older, perhaps, even than Bucky himself.

And it unsettled him.

How could a creature so slight, so frail, carry such force within? More importantly, how had he not noted it previously?

He remembers the tremor of Steve’s hands when the power had passed. The exhaustion in his eyes. The fear, real fear, that what he’d done was wrong. That he had broken something.

Bucky had wanted to tell him it was not wrong. That he had only woken a part of himself that had slept too long.

He had wanted to tell him that the world had changed when he entered it.

That Bucky had changed when he entered his world.

But words, once spoken, bind. And he is not yet ready to speak a truth that would hold such weight.

So instead he follows the scent of rain, the faint warmth of part-mortal breath ahead of him and tells himself this is reason enough.

Reason enough to walk into the night after him.

The pond glimmers under the half-light, still, dark, waiting.

Bucky lingers at its edge but will not cross. He shall not draw closer. Even for Steve. He has learned to fear still waters, for they remember what he has done. Water holds remnants of Her. And she will hold anger for his lack of sacrifices, of fuel for her these centuries past.

Steve sits upon the bank, his back curved, his shoulders drawn tight with thought. He does not turn when Bucky steps closer, only speaks, voice low and rough around the edges.

“You shouldn't have followed me, Buck.” Steve says. He sounds as if his breath is struggling to reach his lungs. Sounds as if his throat may feel raw from retching. His voice is filled with emotions that he cannot name. Bucky wishes he understood more. If only to help the man who is curled up on himself before him.

He says it so lightly, as if he knew that Bucky would, in fact, follow him. He sounds not surprised at the sound of Bucky’s feet upon the floor. A deliberate noise on his half, to make sure Steve knew there was a person coming up behind him. Either Steve recognised his foot fall, absurd a notion to believe. Or he knew it would be him to follow, to find, to comfort. Which is, to say, even more strange of a thought.

“And yet,” Bucky answers, “I find my feet ignore sense and listen to something softer.”

Steve turns his head then; eyes pale in the dim light. “You never do make perfect sense you know that right?"

Bucky finds his lips drawing upwards. He allows the movement. Testing it out on his face. It feels good. "You say such a thing, while you have held the ability to respond correctly in the past. Lying is not becoming of a person Steve." He couldn't help the slight tease in his words.

"That, however, is not the reason I followed." His voice is serious now. He feels at odds, given their positioning. He is stood away from his friend, a title he gladly gives Steve, stood while he sits. It feels wrong. The imbalance in the situation clear. "I believe we should talk. I may be able to provide some semblance of clarity to the chaos your mind may possess."

“We should,” Steve agrees.

“I am glad you have willingly listened to me for once." Steve snorts at his words. Bucky feels that he is doing very well indeed at this comfort he is attempting to provide. "But not there.” He nods toward the pond, its surface trembling faintly with his unease. “But…” He ponders, for a mere moment. Of how much to reveal to Steve. His friend. The person he is boarding on more with. For just a moment. “But, I would request that we converse away from the water’s edge, if that pleases you?”

Understanding flickers across Steve’s face. “Right,” he says softly. “You’re a water fae, aren’t you?”

Bucky stills. The question drifts between them like mist over a still tide. He does not answer at once. Words, when they concern his making, are not easily given. But this half-mortal, this strange, luminous man of blood and sunlight, has already seen too much truth to be denied a gentler one. Has he, Bucky, not revealed the truth? What would explanation to his words shed matter?

His gaze falls to the pond’s surface. “I am. I am Fideal, as I have said before. Born of the deep,” he says finally, his voice low, shaped by the cadence of tide and storm. “Forged in the womb of the Endless Mother, who births and devours in the same breath. I am Her child, though not a child in the way mortals understand it. I am of salt and wrath and mercy entwined.”

The words taste ancient on his tongue. He feels the air shift around him, the faint thrum of recognition from the distant water.

He does not look at it. He dares not.

“The sea remembers what it makes,” he murmurs. “And I, fool that I am, remember it too. The tide is never silent to me. It hums beneath my skin, whispers to me in sleep. To stand too near it is to invite its voice back into my bones. To be too close is to invite Her wrath to enter me once again.”

His eyes flick to Steve, softer now. “She calls me home,” he admits. “But what waits there is not peace. It is hunger. And I have learned, over many long years, not to answer when Her hunger calls.”

The silence that follows is full of distant water sounds, the drip from the oak leaves, the soft pulse of the pond.

He wonders if Steve understands what it means: to be made by something that could love you and drown you in the same heartbeat. To be its child, but never its equal.

And when Steve’s gaze lingers on him, not with fear, but with quiet wonder, Bucky feels a strange ache bloom low in his chest.

If the sea were here, it would mock him for that, for thinking something so mortal could make him feel alive again.

Bucky inclines his head. “To be Her child and Her burden both. Is an existence born of contradiction, it is one I am used to. Yet, I have not stepped forward within Her boundaries for too long. Forgiveness, I fear will not be granted to me."

Steve shifts away from the riverbank, carrying himself like a leaf caught in a gentler wind, toward the oak that has stood sentinel over the pond for centuries. Its gnarled branches stretch low, draping over the water like the protective arms of some ancient, watchful friend, whispering old secrets in the rustle of leaves.

He pats the mossy earth beside him, a quiet invitation. “Here, then,” Steve says, voice small but steady, the sound mingling with the sigh of wind through the branches and the soft murmur of water lapping at stone.

Bucky joins him, as he now believes he always will, settling with careful grace. With the ease that only one so attuned to nature capable of achieving.

The air carries the scent of wet earth and fallen leaves, crisp and damp, stirring the memory of centuries in the stones and soil. The breeze brushes Steve’s skin, and he shivers. Fragile, fleeting as frost at dawn. Mortal fragility, ephemeral and bright against the enduring dark.

Bucky recalls the first moment he had understood this ‘cold’ the man spoke of. A sensation unfamiliar yet understood in its meaning. Cold is more than temperature. Cold demands layers, protection, rituals. He remembers small habits, mortal comforts, the ways Steve’s kind preserve warmth against the world.

He shrugs off his own coat, dark and weightless as shadow, and drapes it over Steve’s shoulders. “You require warmth,” he murmurs, each word measured, deliberate. “Here is an additional layer for you to wear.”

Steve’s eyes flick to him, hesitant. “Then you will be cold.”

“I do not feel the cold, not such as this, created by air or rain.” His hands linger a heartbeat longer, ensuring the fabric settles, oversized but still intimate, swallowing Steve’s frame in gentle folds. Yet it suits him.

Always has, Bucky now understands the reason why. The clothes, the protection, the weight of fae craft, they were always meant for him.

Bucky’s gaze traces Steve’s form, noting the lines and angles of the mortal body beneath the fabric, the way the jacket swallows him yet suits him as if it were always his own skin. It is… arresting, more than simple warmth. He feels the pull of something old, something protective and covetous, and even that thrill is tempered with restraint.

And yet, seeing Steve adorn himself in the garb of the fae, the mortal and the magical intertwined, is a sight that roots Bucky to the spot, sharp and magnetic in its quiet allure. He inhales it, memorizes it, though he knows not what permission to name such feelings.

Steve laughs, the sound bright and human. “I thought I couldn’t accept gifts from the fae?”

Bucky’s lips curve. “You accepted my gift before, have you not. The exchange has passed between us beforehand. There is no harm in one more, my friend."

Recognition dawns. Steve’s hand dives into his pocket, fingers closing around the small, smooth stone. He pulls it free, holding it up between them. “You mean this?”

Bucky smiles, faint and fond. “You carry it, then?"

“Always in my pocket,” Steve admits. “Helps me think.”

“So you see, we are already bound by gift and token,” Bucky says. “Another layer will not harm you.”

Steve takes the coat, fingers brushing the fabric as though it were something living. “It’s… beautiful.”

“It should be,” Bucky murmurs. “It was woven before your country had a name. Faerie cloth endures. It remembers every storm.”

They fall into quiet. The night hums around them, wind in branches, frogs by the pond, the far-off hush of unseen wings. It feels like a space apart from time.

“How long were you banished for?” Steve asks softly. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

It is a question, innocent enough. Though revealing in its answer. It would reveal aspects of his age. Aspects of his isolation. Although, he fears not the truth as it spins from his lips.

Bucky’s shoulders tighten, but his voice stays even. “Two hundred and fifty years I had been alone, or close enough. I found time did not haste, no matter how I wished it so."

Steve whistles low. “That’s… Hell, that’s longer than my whole country’s been alive.”

Bucky huffs a laugh, something small but real. “A fitting measure, perhaps.”

Another silence settles, comfortable, dense with all the things unsaid. The night hums around them, the pond breathing softly, the oak whispering above like an old god half-asleep. Bucky studies the mortal beside him, the half-mortal, he corrects himself and wonders when his still heart began to turn toward him.

Steve’s presence is strange. Soft, yet fierce. He stirs the air, the earth, even the water beneath its glass surface. Power hums in him, quiet but sure. The kind that does not yet know itself.

Bucky’s fingers twitch once before stilling. He has never been good at such moments, never been one for gentle truths. Yet the words find him anyway. “Steven,” he says softly, the name slipping past his lips like an oath. “There is something you should know.”

Steve looks up, brow drawn. “About what?”

“About what you are.”

The mortal frowns, his expression a knot of confusion and denial. “I understand you think that… but it can’t be true. I mean, I saw what happened in there, but…” He gestures helplessly. “I’m not like you. I’m half your height, half your weight. I can’t breathe underwater or talk in riddles. My body breaks too easily. I’m not even—” He stops, voice quieting. “Not even beautiful like you.”

Bucky blinks. The words strike him somewhere deep, unexpected. Beautiful. No one has ever called him that and meant it. Weapons are not called beautiful. Curses are not admired.

He, logically, is aware of his beauty. Yet, he is beautiful as all fae are. In the sense of being in the possession of too great an amount of it. In comparison to others of his kind, he is average in appearance. Yet, for mortals he knows all too well what his looks are for.

He knows he is attractive. His past warrants such a truth to be known. He would never been successful at his actions, luring and killing, if it were not so.

Yet, Steve stating this. Believing this. Even knowing fragments of his past. It speaks of fondness, that his past, may not matter to Steve.

“You think me beautiful?” His voice comes out lower than he intends, rough with surprise.

Steve flushes, and the sight sends a slow warmth through Bucky’s chest. “You know you are.”

He huffs a small, quiet sound that might almost be laughter. “I do know that, yes.” His tone softens, deepens. “However, what I also know to be true is your beauty.”

Steve looks up, startled. “Mine?”

Bucky tilts his head, studying him as though committing him to memory. How fragile he is, how painfully human, yet how his light refuses to dim. “You carry light where there should be none,” Bucky murmurs. “You are not made as we are. No glamour nor a veil to conceal you. Yet you shine. Do you think I did not notice?” His voice gentles into reverence. “Since the moment we met, I have seen it. And I have not been able to forget.”

He means it. Every word. He had thought the memory of Steve’s smile a trick of the mind, a curiosity. But it lingers, the way sunlight lingers on water long after the sun is gone.

Steve’s lip’s part. No sound comes. The mortal heart in him beats fast enough for both of them.

The oak sighs above, shedding a leaf that drifts lazily between them. The pond ripples, and the breeze brings the scent of earth and rain and something faintly sweet, like beginnings.

Bucky wonders, distantly, how dangerous this moment is. To care for a half-Seelie. To find warmth in something that should not exist.

And yet…

He cannot make himself move away.

For a long, quiet heartbeat, they sit together, two creatures of divided worlds, pretending that the stillness between them is not the edge of something vast.

Steve turns to him again, eyes bright with reignited anger and confusion. “Sam knew. My best friend knew. And he didn’t tell me. My Ma never told me. How could they not? How could no one tell me what I am?”

Bucky takes in the tremor beneath his voice, the sharpness of betrayal. He knows that tone well, has heard it in mortals and fae alike, in those who find their world reshaped in an instant.

He exhales slowly. “You should speak to Sam. As the truth of his silence belongs to him, and him alone. His reasons are his, his to understand and justify.”

“That’s not an answer,” Steve bites out.

"No, it is not." Bucky lets his hand touch Steve’s shoulder. "Did you truly expect one?"

Steve leans into the touch, "not really. Not from you."

"Good, for this information was not withheld by me."

 “It just... it changes everything, Bucky. Everything I thought I knew about myself—about who I am.”

Bucky hesitates, then leans forward, closing the distance until the air between them hums faintly. If he were to move a fraction more, bring up his other arm, they could be hugging. Not stuck in the weird looking embrace, stuck in between. “No,” he says softly. “It changes nothing.”

Steve gives a sharp, disbelieving laugh. “Nothing? You can’t be serious.”

Bucky’s lips twitch, a ghost of a smile. “All right,” he concedes quietly. “Perhaps it changes much. But you, Steven… you remain as you have always been. The same heart. The same loyalty. The same maddening courage that drives you toward danger instead of away from it.” He tilts his head slightly, eyes searching Steve’s. “You are still you. Only now you see a little more of what was always there.”

The words hang between them like a fragile thread.

Bucky’s tone softens. “I cannot begin to understand the weight of what you feel. I was born knowing what I am. It was not a revelation; it was a condition of existence. But I can empathize. I can stand beside you in this.” He pauses, meaning each word. “If you will allow it, I would be by your side.”

Steve’s breath catches, the anger thinning into something rawer, something achingly human. “You… you want to be at my side?”

Bucky’s gaze does not waver. “I wish to be by your side,” he says, voice low and steady, “until the end of the line. Whatever, or whenever, that may fall to be."

The forest seems to hush in answer. The breeze glances through the branches, catching Steve’s hair, catching in the faint wetness at the corner of his eyes.

He longs to draw Steve in further. To embrace him fully. Yet he is content with this. Of this is all he is allowed.

Steve moves first.

Just a breath, a heartbeat, a surrender shaped in motion. Then he is there, folding into Bucky’s chest as though the tide has found its shore. The contact steals the air from him.

Instinct guides what reason cannot: his arms rise, circling the mortal close, the gesture more prayer than touch.

He allows himself this moment, this fragile thing of warmth and weight. For a breath, or perhaps forever. He lets the world contract to what rests within his hold: the rhythm of a human heart drumming beneath fragile bone, the quiver of breath against his throat, the faint scent of rain tangled in Steve’s hair.

He wishes—oh, how he wishes—for more. Yet no spell he knows could summon what he truly desires. There are no words in his tongue for the wanting that coils in him, sharp and tender all at once. Desire was never meant to feel like reverence. And yet—here he is, worshipping quiet breath and mortal warmth as though they are relics of the divine.

When Steve leans back, the air grows colder, lonelier. His hand lingers—hovering, trembling—a mere whisper of space between them. Bucky bends toward it without thought, offering the permission he cannot voice. Touch me, his stillness says. See that I will not break.

Steve’s gaze drifts to his mouth, and something deep within Bucky shifts—like the sea turning over itself. Hope, delicate and impossible, rises where none should live. He lifts a hand, lets his fingers brush the back of Steve’s neck, steadying him, not claiming, not yet. The ocean’s rhythm thrums through his veins. If this is to happen, he thinks, let it be chosen. Let it be real.

And then Steve closes the distance.

The first touch is fragile. Barely a brush. Yet to Bucky it feels as though the tide itself has turned to meet him. His breath falters. Every part of him goes still, waiting. Listening to the heartbeat that flutters against his chest, the soft warmth of lips against his own. Steve tastes of rain and salt and something faintly sweet, like sunlight caught on water.

The kiss deepens by degrees, not through hunger but through need. A steady, aching reverence. Steve leans in again, bolder now, and Bucky answers him, letting the shape of his mouth guide the rhythm. His own lips move with a care he didn’t know he possessed, tracing the outline of this mortal’s courage, his fragility.

It feels sacred. It feels wrong to call it anything less.

The sea stirs in him, old and restless, remembering what it is to take and be taken. The air hums faintly, the pond shivers, a ripple crossing its mirrored surface as if the water itself leans closer to witness.

Bucky feels it rising in him: the pull, the ancient instinct to drown what he loves so that it cannot leave. He holds it back. Not this one, he tells the sea inside him. Not him.

Steve makes a quiet sound, half a sigh, half a gasp. Bucky softens further, one hand rising to cradle the side of his jaw, thumb brushing along his cheekbone. The warmth there is dizzying. His world has always been salt and silence, stuck in monochrome, but this… this is colour.

When they part, the air between them feels newly born, fragile, trembling with what it has just witnessed. Bucky’s breath shudders. The taste of Steve lingers, as if it were carved into the air.

It feels like surf withdrawing from sand, leaving behind something raw and glimmering.

He looks at Steve and knows, this was no enchantment. No deliberate move from Bucky to draw Steve in. This is just two souls, colliding in the quiet ruin of their own wanting.

And for the first time in centuries, Bucky Barnes feels almost human.

The silence that follows feels sacred. Even the wind seems to still, unwilling to trespass upon what has just been undone between them. Steve’s breath trembles, shallow and human, ghosting warm against Bucky’s cheek. His hand still hovers, caught halfway between retreat and reaching, and Bucky, who has never known how to ask for gentleness. Leans into it without thinking. A plea made of motion, not words.

He feels the shape of Steve’s pulse beneath his fingers, a fragile, living drumbeat. The mortal’s heart, unguarded in his chest, seems louder than anything else in the world. It echoes through Bucky’s ribs, stirs something ancient and aching that no name can hold. He wants, but desire is a language he long forgot how to speak.

The taste of salt lingers. Not only from the sea that birthed him, but from Steve himself, sweat and breath and something that feels almost like prayer. He lets his eyes fall shut and thinks, for a heartbeat, that this could be enough.

But the world never stays still for him.

A shiver moves through the ground, subtle as a sigh. Beneath them, the pond stirs. Its dark surface, which moments ago held their reflections, begins to ripple outward, slow, deliberate, as though something vast and unseen has turned its gaze upon them.

Bucky’s breath catches.

The ripples multiply, silver threading through black, until the water glows faintly, impossibly, as if the stars themselves had sunk into it. The pull in his chest deepens, an old ache blooming like pressure before a storm. He knows this feeling, the sea remembering him. Answering him.

Steve shifts, eyes wide. “Bucky… what’s happening?”

“The water,” Bucky whispers, voice low and hollow. “She knows.”

The glow brightens. Every drop seems alive, thrumming in rhythm with his heartbeat. The wind carries salt now, sharp, unmistakable, impossible this far inland. His magic hums in response, called to heel like a hound hearing its master’s voice.

“She knows my heart is no longer hers alone,” he says, though the words feel dangerous on his tongue. He half-expects the air to split for saying them.

Steve steps closer instead of away. His hand finds Bucky’s sleeve, grounding him, warm and certain. “Then let her know it. Let her rage. I’m not giving you back.”

The words land like a spell.

The pond’s surface quivers once, then stills, as though considering. The light dims, fading back into the calm black mirror of before. Only the faint scent of brine lingers, heavy and mournful.

Bucky stands unmoving, unable to tell if he’s been blessed or cursed. The night feels altered sharper at the edges, fragile in its quiet.

Steve’s thumb brushes the back of his hand, small, human, and wholly real. “You okay?”

Bucky exhales slowly, his voice barely above the hush of the leaves. “No. But I think I will be.”

He looks to the water once more and sees, reflected there, not just himself but the mortal beside him, two figures bound by a moment the world itself seemed to witness.

And for the first time in centuries, Bucky lets the thought take root: perhaps even the sea must learn to share.

Chapter Text

Sam knows many things. A great many things.

He’s lived long enough for lifetimes to blur, for centuries to fold in on themselves like pages in a wet book. The world keeps turning; he keeps watching, learning its secret songs.

He knows about friendship, the kind that roots deep and won’t be dug out, not by distance or death.

Riley: a flame that burned too fast, leaving only smoke and ache behind.

Natasha: a blade disguised as silk, her silence a language Sam speaks fluently. They don’t need words to know what still binds them.

Steve: the sun to his steady ground, friendship forged through memory and mortal love, bright and breakable.

And Bucky, ah, that one. Storm-born, mercurial, loyal like a wolf that bites the hand that saved it. True all the same.

But even the truest paths can twist. Friendships, like wild vines, grow thorned when left untended. Roots strangle themselves when they forget the sun. That’s where Steve and Sam stand now. On overgrown ground, brambles between them.

Sam knew the truth of Steve long before Steve did.

He carried it like a hidden seed, tucked in his chest where it would do no harm.

How does one tell a man such a thing?

Hey, you’re half fae. I’m fae.

As if truth could ever be so small, so tidy.

So he held his silence, for Steve’s sake, or his own, he’s not sure anymore. Silence is a fae mercy. Words can wound far deeper than secrets ever could.

He doesn’t begrudge Steve’s fury. It’s earned, and old as the hills. If the roles were reversed, Sam would’ve burned the whole forest down for less. Guilt, though, that’s a slower fire. It eats at him still, gentle as rot, patient as ivy.

Another thing Sam knows is the language of nature the Seelie knowing.

He knows how rivers hum beneath the frost; how old oaks murmur to their kin. He’s bartered with storms, lulled lightning to sleep, mended soil with song. His magic breathes with the earth; it never commands, only converses. To tend is holier than to rule.

He knows of wars too, mortal, and fair alike.

The mortal ones stank of blood and iron; the fae ones sang themselves apart. No trumpets, no flags  only oaths, and betrayal dressed in beauty. Sam fought in both and learned this: no side wins. Only the stories survive.

But most of all, Sam knows Steven Rogers.

Knows his stubborn heart, his bone-deep decency, the way his eyes soften when he believes he’s found something worth keeping.

And what he’s found this time is named Bucky Barnes.

The moment Sam first heard Steve’s voice over the phone, from. Across the sea, he knew. There was a tone there, wistful, honeyed, full of that dangerous hope mortals get when they look at something not meant for them and love it anyway.

When Sam learned who had caught him, worry bloomed sharp as hawthorn in his chest.

But worry fades, as all things do. Because now he’s seen them, the way Bucky looks at Steve like the world has gone quiet to listen. The way Steve’s hand always finds his without thought, like water returning to its source.

If Sam didn’t know better, he’d say the two of them were enchanted.

But he does know better.

This is love. The oldest kind of magic.

And when they return to the room at last, hands joined, eyes bright as dawn, Sam only smiles.

“About damn time,” he says, and the abbey hums its quiet agreement.

***

The forest breathes around them, ancient and alive. Sam kneels by the fire, weaving his hands over the coals, and the flames ripple under his touch like liquid glass. Seelie magic thrums beneath his skin; roots bend subtly, ferns curl protectively, responding to his will. He can coax them into forming a canopy of shelter, a ring of safety that mortals would never notice, or survive.

Natasha moves like shadow through the glen, her hair glowing like coals in the moonlight. Even unglamoured, the Baobhan Sith radiates lethal beauty: pale, sharp-featured, predatory, yet hypnotic in her slow, confident sway. She hauls a net over her shoulder, rabbits swinging gently, the tips of her fangs catching firelight when she grins at him.

“Seriously,” Sam says, brushing ash from his hands, “you could at least pretend to miss me.”

“Miss?” she tilts her head, amused, crouching to gut a rabbit with centuries of practiced precision.

“I thrive on the thrill of the chase, Seelie boy. I don’t miss. I hunt. I conquer. You should take notes.”

He laughs, the sound threading through the forest, mingling with unseen streams and distant birdsong. “Conquer, huh? I suppose I should feel threatened.” He leans closer but pulls back just before their knees brush. “I’m too well-trained in self-preservation to fall for a predator so easily.”

Her eyes glitter, dark amber in the firelight.

“Predator, am I? Careful, or you'll start thinking I enjoy your fear. However, it suits you, you twitch just the right amount.”

“Me? Twitchy?” Sam smirks, letting a tendril of ivy coil toward his hands, glowing faint green as it responds. “Never.”

“Not even when I’m standing three feet away, dangling death in a net?” She crouches beside him, knee brushing his. “That doesn’t make you twitch?”

“I’m calibrated,” he murmurs, hands resting on coiled ivy, watching her. “Precision fear. Elegant. Like… the tasteful kind.”

She hums, leaning slightly closer. Their shoulders touch: the pull of her proximity sends a shiver through his magic. For a heartbeat, the forest stills. Leaves shiver, but no wind stirs. His heart hammers, green light throbbing beneath his skin.

He leans in but stops. He cannot make the first move again. Not after last time.

He lets his hands hover near hers, brushing the firelight along her fingers, and the world narrows to the two of them. The smell of damp earth and pine, the heat of the fire, the subtle shimmer of his Seelie aura, and the danger of her presence her truth, her raw beauty all of it presses in. He leans in, a fraction, just a whisper of a movement, and then stops, pulling back gently.

Sam won’t make that mistake again, this he knows. Not unless she is the one to reach for him. Not until she makes that choice.

They settle, hands brushing, bodies near but not touching more than necessary. Natasha tends the rabbits with practiced ease, seasoning the meat over the fire while Sam weaves small vines and ivy into a lattice above them, letting it glow faintly and hum with protective magic. No glamour needed. No masks. Just the truth of their forms, their magic, their proximity.

“So,” Natasha murmurs between bites, “Bucky and Steve are…?”

Sam grins faintly, slicing meat into careful portions. “Together. Finally. Banishing almost lifted. The abbey feels lighter, softer. I can feel it from here.”

She nods, a quiet smile tugging at her lips. “Good for them. They’ve earned it.”

He leans back, looking at her across the firelight. “And us?” he says softly, voice almost conspiratorial, teasing. “Where do we fall in all this?”

Her eyes glint with challenge. “That depends entirely on what you do next.”

Sam laughs, low and musical, brushing a stray lock of her red hair behind her ear. “I’ve learned my lesson. Last time, I leaned too soon. That… didn’t end well. My full name, your power… I remember. That’s why I wait. Because I’m terrified of that happening again.”

“Terrified, huh?” she murmurs, letting her fingers curl over his wrist, just enough to anchor him, to tempt him. “And yet, here you are. Still playing your little Seelie game.”

“And you,” he replies, with a roguish grin, “are no longer afraid to play yours. Look at you now threatening, teasing, patient. Dangerous. And radiant.”

They eat, side by side, sharing bites, tasting herbs and meat over the fire. The forest hums around them, a living canopy of watchful trees and stars, magic singing through roots and leaves, listening to their quiet laughter, their teasing, their unspoken longing.

He smiles softly, recalling the near kiss, the shadow it left, the caution it instilled. He swallows, letting the forest settle around them.

“I don’t think the forest minds my delay,” he says, adding herbs to the stew. Aromas curl through the night, protective magic coiling invisibly around the clearing. “It likes our company anyway.”

“Like our company,” she echoes, settling cross-legged. Her eyes flick to the abbey, barely visible through the trees. “And your conscience with Steve?”

Sam’s lips twitch. “Complicated. Still silent, still stubborn. I give him space. I honour him. But he’s always… stubborn. Rules are meant to be broken when unjust, yet he never bends.”

She smirks, brushing ash from her hands. “Strongest moral compass I’ve ever seen. Even with centuries, you should know he’ll do what he wants when he’s ready.”

“I know,” Sam nods. “Which means I give space. And Bucky? Quiet. Healing. Banishing almost finalized. It’s… good. Happy for them. But…” His gaze flickers to her. “You’re here. Right beside me. And that’s complicated differently.”

Her lips twitch into a teasing smile. “Complicated can be fun.”

He watches her adjust the fire, moonlight catching her pale sweep of skin, the subtle luminescence of her Baobhan Sith aura. No glamour. No artifice. Just her. And he loves it. Perhaps always has.

She senses the tension and teases further. “You’ve been quiet today, Seelie boy. Planning to whisper sweet nothings into the leaves?”

"I gave a lot to think about, unseelie." He doesn't day her court like an insult. That he knows. And perhaps centuries ago, he would have. Not now. Never now.

“Still Steve?” Natasha asks softly.

“Still Steve,” Sam admits. “I’ve visited Peggy while you were busy. She listens. Doesn’t mediate. Doesn’t push. Just… shares stories. Keeps the world moving when mine feels stuck.”

“She sounds remarkable,” Natasha smiles. “Glad you have her.”

“I do,” he says, eyes on her. “But… I want this more.” He gestures vaguely between them. “Us.”

Her grin is soft, predatory, luminous. “Then stop talking, Seelie boy. You’re making it harder than it needs to be.”

The forest listens, indifferent yet intimate, as they sit in quiet, laughter, and tension sweet enough to taste.

Later, when she is busy again. Maybe visiting Bucky, maybe conducting tasks for the lifting of the banishment Sam makes the trek to Peggy’s house. Steve is away, and so he is free to step inside the mortal world, to touch objects unenchanted, to sip tea from a real mug instead of feeling the forest breathe through him. Peggy greets him with warmth and laughter, and for a while, Sam tells stories, half-truths, embellishments, but also truths he has kept secret for centuries.

“You’re a great bloody tosser,” Peggy calls out once, and the words land, sharp and real, but then she smiles and moves on. She doesn’t meddle. She doesn’t function as mediator. She only listens and laughs and asks questions and lets him spill the weight of years he has carried alone. And he loves it. Loves it in the way a fae might love the sun: desperate, fragile, and necessary.

Back at the camp, he and Natasha talk quietly of Steve and Bucky. He listens to her recounting Bucky’s moods, intricate details that only someone who has lived through centuries of friendship with him could know. He shares updates on Steve, careful, careful, never pushing. They laugh softly. They are happy for them both. He’s happy, but… Steve still hasn’t spoken to him. The shadow of unspoken words lingers.

The fire crackles. The night deepens. Sam reaches for a branch, murmuring words of power, coaxing a vine to curl into a seat beside him, curling around it to make a living chair. Natasha perches there, grace folded into motion. He watches her hands move, her eyes bright, her lips tugged faintly in amusement. He inhales, feels that old pull, and knows he will wait.

In the end, it resolves the way most conflicts do, he supposes   with a drink.

So here they sit: Sam, Natasha, and Peggy. The latter two he’s already beginning to regret introducing. They get along far too well. The pub is dimly lit, tucked at the edge of the village, its old stone walls smothered in ivy that hides the centuries it has witnessed.

Sam likes it here. It’s the kind of place that remembers its ghosts kindly. The air smells of hops and rain-damp wool, of roasting meat and wood smoke mingling with the faint tang of ale. Laughter snags in the rafters like stray cobwebs. The hearth burns low and steady, throwing a soft glow across the floorboards. Outside, the night presses against the windows, curious.

He sinks into the corner booth, letting himself take it all in  the low hum of conversation, Peggy’s easy smile as she leans back in her chair. Across from him, Natasha’s glamour holds perfectly: every bit human, her red hair catching the lamplight just so, a subtle shimmer disguising the predatory grace beneath.

The pub feels ordinary, warm, inviting  and for the first time in centuries, Sam can let the forest, the magic, the weight of waiting fall away. If only for a little while.

Mortals don’t see what clings beneath the glamour  Natasha’s dangerous beauty, or the faint green light beneath Sam’s skin when he smiles, the mark of a Seelie heart too long hidden. To the eye of the room, they’re just three friends in a corner booth, half-drunk and far too loud for the hour. Three friends. That’s the story the pub believes.

It doesn’t see the history coiled between them  two older than the pub itself, and one a mortal who carries her years honestly. Peggy’s laughter holds no magic, only warmth, a brightness Sam envies. The patrons don’t notice the web of time binding them: two bound for centuries, two for mere weeks, two for five mortal years.

If anyone looked closely,  truly looked,  they might glimpse more than camaraderie. The conversation flows easily, but beneath it hums a current that could drown the unwary. Words layered in glances. Laughter too warm, too careful.

As for two of them, their eyes drift back to each other despite themselves. A story that belongs to Sam. Natasha’s fingers brush his sleeve as she laughs. Sam steadies her glass when it tips. Their knees meet beneath the table as naturally as if gravity itself were guiding them.

They speak in glances  half-second ones that say everything and nothing. She teases him with sharp, knowing eyes. He pretends not to blush, rolling his shoulders, but listens too intently when she leans closer, her voice dipping lower than the noise requires.

Sometimes he catches himself thinking he could stay here forever. Not for the pub, or the warmth, or the noise  but her. Her laughter curls around him like smoke, her hand brushing his, small gestures screaming louder than words ever could.

If anyone in the pub paid attention, they wouldn’t need to look closely at all. Sam knows he’s transparent in a way a fae shouldn’t be. His emotions spill like light through a cracked lantern, colouring everything he touches. Perhaps Peggy notices. She usually does, teasing him kindly for the things he can’t hide.

The table is scattered with empty glasses, pint rings ghosting across the wood, shot glasses lined like soldiers, bottles stripped bare. Mortals might call them reckless, but fae don’t get drunk on mortal spirits.

Natasha likes the ritual anyway  the way men try to outdrink her, their bravado crumbling into awe. She drinks like it’s a dare, an art form, and Sam’s lost count of the human hearts she’s broken in pubs just like this.

That was then  ages ago, before all the drama invaded his life. Two hundred and fifty years ago. Sam loves that some things haven’t changed.

Tonight, though, it’s gentler. Her laughter is softer, more melodic, settling into the hollow places in him where memory and longing coil.

They’ve each brought their own drink  ancient, potent fae brews shimmering like liquid moonlight, mixed with mortal spirits and hidden beneath glamour.

To the pub, it looks like cheap vodka. To Sam, everything glows.

Peggy, the drunkest, slouches sideways, cheeks flushed, hair tumbling free of its pins. Every time the band strikes up a rowdy tune, she slaps the table.

“That one’s a classic!” she declares.

“You’ve said that about every song, Pegs,” Sam quips, a grin breaking out across his face. This, too, feels like old times  sitting and drinking with Peggy. It’s been far too long.

“Well, then they’re all bloody classics, aren’t they, Sam?” Peggy shoots back, eyes bright.

Natasha laughs  a sound rare as starlight. Most get a chuckle from her, maybe a wry snort. But this is real. Drunk, yes, but real.

“You shouldn’t argue with the lady,” she teases, grin sharp and bright. “I feel she means business about her classics, my friend.”

Peggy’s face lights up, thrilled to have an ally. “I do! I really do! And if I say so, it’s true.” She laughs, shoulders shaking. “I’m glad someone finally respects me.”

Sam opens his mouth to protest but feels a small pressure against his leg  Peggy’s foot. She’s kicked him.

The night rolls on. He knows he’s drunk far more than he should have, yet he’s enjoying himself. Peggy, too  taking to Natasha like a house on fire, and vice versa. He’s starting to regret introducing them. The power they hold together is too much.

“Peg,” he says, ducking her flailing hand, “you just hit my elbow. Again.”

“Good! Elbows need love too,” she slurs, laughing like it’s the cleverest thing she’s ever said. “Seriously, though, five years into this friendship and I still don’t understand how you managed to keep a secret! I mean, no offense, Sam, but you’re awful at it!” She gives him a pointed glare.

“Clearly not, my dear.” He grins. “Besides, allow a man a little mystery, won’t you? The truth is well, it’s complicated.”

Peggy leans closer, tilting her head. “Complicated, sure. But I’ve earned honesty here, Wilson. Don’t pretend you’re unreadable. I’ve got your number.”

Sam laughs, shaking his head. Natasha rolls her eyes softly.

“Some of us prefer mysteries,” she murmurs, almost to herself.

Sam drinks in the curve of her lips, the glint in her eyes.

Peggy grins, teasing. “And you, red-haired enigma, don’t toy with him. I might be human, but even I can see the centuries of heartbreak in those eyes.”

Natasha smirks faintly, head tilting in that quiet, deadly way that says everything. Sam feels it like a pulse beneath his ribs.

Peggy leans back dramatically. “Now tell me again  the duke, the diamonds, the incredible theft. Third time’s the charm, right?”

Sam groans but grins. “Third time’s the charm.” He spins the tale theatrically, Natasha watching, fingers brushing his once, twice  teasing, intentional.

They laugh, stories rolling like smoke from the hearth, small touches heavy with what-ifs. Sam won’t reach this time. Not until she decides.

Peggy, mid-laugh, calls out, “Steve and Bucky should be here soon.”

Sam freezes. Two weeks of silence with Steve. Two weeks of careful distance. Visits to Peggy, avoidance of the abbey. Guilt curls through him like ivy. He calls it patience, but it’s fear.

Ten minutes later, the door swings open, frigid air spilling in. Steve and Bucky enter like twin stars dragging night behind them.

Bucky first  silver glinting at his wrist, damp curls catching the light. There’s a wild, unearthly brightness in him now, softened from the abbey’s isolation. Steve follows, shoulders straight, the sharp lines of pain gone, color high in his cheeks. Fae blood has found its rhythm.

They approach the table. Peggy waves them over, radiant, oblivious to the tension threading between the men.

Bucky slides in beside Natasha, careful, one hand brushing Steve’s beneath the table. Steve takes the seat opposite Sam. The table creaks with unspoken words. Conversation limps along  Peggy filling the gaps with chatter, Natasha weaving her subtle rhythms through the noise. Sam resists the Seelie cadence that begs to rise on his tongue.

Steve’s shoulders tighten. His jaw flexes. Peggy slams her glass down.

“Right. You two. Out. Now. Fix whatever this is before it ruins the night.”

“Peg, that’s” Steve starts.

“No. I don’t care who’s right. I don’t care who started it. You’re both good men acting like fools. Go outside and sort it. Now.”

Natasha laughs softly. Bucky looks torn, a faint blush colouring his cheeks. Steve exhales and stands. Sam follows.

Outside, the night air is cold and clear, scented with wet earth and smoke. The pub door closes behind them, muffling the music and laughter. Silence pools at their feet. Two old friends, two stubborn hearts  and all the words left unsaid, waiting to be spoken.

Steve:

Peggy Carter is evil.

Maybe not evil, exactly  that’s a little harsh.

But a menace? Yes. Definitely a menace.

Steve knows this as he stands outside in the cold English air, arms folded tight against the chill. The pub’s door swings shut behind him with a soft thud, muffling the warmth and laughter within. Cigarette smoke curls through the night; he already smells like it. Someone near the doorway hums tunelessly, and a balding man lights what must be his fifth cigarette in the last ten minutes.

All Steve wanted was to wallow  to stew in his irritation, to be angry in peace.

Surely, he deserved that.

Apparently not.

According to Natasha, he should talk to Sam. Bucky had said the same, and Peggy  well, Peggy had made sure there was no escaping it. And now here he is standing in the cold, glaring at his best friend.

Sam looks maddeningly calm. Hands in his pockets. Shoulders relaxed. The faintest shimmer of something otherworldly clings to him  not visible but felt. Fae. Steve knows what he is now. What they both are. And that makes this worse, somehow. The betrayal deeper.

He scuffs his boot against the gravel.

“Hey,” Sam says softly, tentative.

Steve doesn’t answer. He turns instead, eyes tracking the small patch of streetlamps glowing through mist. The drunk man down the road starts singing again, some old country tune he doesn’t quite remember. The world feels too human, too normal, for the conversation they’re about to have.

“So,” Sam tries again, tone lighter, “we should probably do what Peggy said. Otherwise… well, I don’t really wanna deal with her wrath.”

Steve’s voice comes out flat. “Why?”

Sam blinks. “Why what?”

“Why did you lie?”

“I didn’t lie.” Sam’s tone stays even, but there’s something older underneath it  a steadiness that doesn’t sound quite mortal. “Technically, I can’t.”

Steve snorts. “Fine. Lying by omission, then. Whatever you call it.”

“There wasn’t really a time to tell you.”

Steve turns to him fully now. “Five years, Sam. You had five years, and never found the time?”

Sam’s gaze doesn’t waver. The air between them hums, just faintly, like the echo of a string pulled taut.

“Would you have believed me?”

The question stops Steve cold. He opens his mouth, then closes it. Because no. He wouldn’t have.

He remembers all the little oddities  Sam’s uncanny intuition, the way animals quieted around him, how storms seemed to skirt their path when Sam was in a good mood. Things he’d written off as charm or luck. And now they glimmer like truth, sharp and unavoidable.

Steve sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. The anger’s still there, but quieter. Worn down. “You should’ve told me, “He says, voice low. “Even if I wouldn’t have believed it.”

Sam’s expression softens, but his words stay careful. “Maybe. But you were human  or thought you were. At first. And when I realised that you weren't. I well- I didn’t want to take that from you. The Seelie in me thought it a kindness.”

Steve gives a rough laugh. “Yeah? Look how normal that turned out.”

Sam’s lips twitch. “Normal’s overrated.”

For a while, they just stand there, the night holding its breath around them. The fae quiet is different from human silence  deeper, listening. Even the air seems to lean in, waiting.

Steve glances at him, studying the calm set of his face, the stillness that isn’t human. “You talk like everything’s simple,” he says finally.

“It isn’t simple.” Sam turns slightly, eyes tracing the line of the treeline just beyond the pub. “But truth rarely is. Meaning’s a fragile thing in your tongue. You said what you meant, even if you didn’t mean to.”

Steve frowns, trying to keep up. “That’s, what does that even.”

Sam smiles faintly. “Humans name things to claim them. We name to remember. You see the difference?”

Steve hesitates. “You mean you don’t”

“I mean,” Sam interrupts gently, “that what we are doesn’t belong to us in the same way. You, though… you still think you can own your story.”

Steve exhales frustrated but intrigued despite himself. “I’m trying, alright? I’m just… always one step behind.”

Sam looks at him then, really looks  and something warmer flickers behind his eyes. “Then keep trying. I’ve no wish for you to be like us. Only to see me as I am.”

The wind shifts. A strand of Sam’s hair moves across his forehead. The pub door creaks faintly behind them, then closes again. Someone inside laughs.

Steve stares at the ground for a long moment, then up at the stars barely visible through the mist. He feels small and huge all at once  the ache of being half of something, the wonder of finally understanding why he’s never fit in.

“I’m still mad,” he says finally, voice soft but true.

Sam nods. “You’re allowed to be.”

The silence that follows is easy, almost gentle.

Steve watches him  his best friend, a being older than the pub, maybe older than the village.

And somehow, still Sam. Still the man who showed up when Steve needed him most, who laughed too loudly, who always ordered one drink too many just to make a mortal night feel endless.

“You know,” Sam says after a while, glancing at him, “it’s not the worst thing, being what you are. Half of something still counts. You’ve always belonged. You just didn’t know where to look.”

Steve doesn’t answer right away. He just breathes, slow and deep, and lets the night settle. The anger has cooled into something else now  a raw, hesitant understanding.

He meets Sam’s gaze. “Guess I’m starting to see it.”

Sam’s smile is quiet. “Good. The world’s wider than you think, Rogers. You’ll learn to listen to it.”

They stand side by side for a while, saying nothing more. The air between them no longer hums with tension, only the faint echo of something mended.

Through the pub’s walls, faint music starts again  a low, winding tune that sounds like it remembers where they’ve been.

Steve glances at the door. “Think Peggy’ll let us back in?”

Sam laughs, soft and bright. “Not until she’s sure we’ve hugged it out.”

Steve huffs, shaking his head. “That’s not happening.”

But he’s smiling, faintly, and for the first time in weeks, the weight in his chest feels a little lighter.

Bucky is grateful for Peggy Carter.

Truly, sincerely, perilously grateful.

She has done what he could not, coaxed mortal stubbornness into speech. Gotten Steve and Sam to talk. A feat worthy of the old tales, and she’s done it with the grace of a trickster queen: subtle as smoke, dramatic as thunder. He respects that. Almost admires it.

They’re outside now.

He tries not to listen. Tries to let the pub swallow the sound whole the crack of the hearth, the laughter that spills like ale, the music of coin and glass. He weaves those noises into a ward of sorts, a soft barrier against what waits beyond the door. It mostly holds.

But Seelie voices never stay contained. They slip through the smallest seams, honey-slick and glimmering, carrying the kind of warmth that tempts even shadows to lean closer. Sam’s voice has always been like that amber caught between sunlight and dusk, careful and dangerous in the same breath.

Bucky’s eyes stay on the table. His fingers circle his cup once, twice, thrice ritual, not restlessness. The grain of the wood winds beneath his thumb, lines twisting like runes, stories he can’t quite read. He pretends the pattern matters more than the way Steve’s heartbeat falters when Sam speaks his name.

Jealousy isn’t the right word. Not for him. It’s awareness sharp and ancient. The knowledge of something once his to understand and now turned stranger.

The pub’s warmth curls close, rich with hops and hearth fire. Bucky sits very still, letting it wrap around him like a glamour, soft and false. Pretending that the noise, the laughter, the light all of it is enough to drown out the ghosts that whisper of friendship, and light, and things that should have mended, but never quite did.

Conversation drifts between the tables, threads of mortal chatter weaving through the air. Bucky listens, because it is easier than hearing what’s happening beyond the pub door.

He now knows far too much about the lives of strangers  the husband who strayed from Mrs. Benet, the return of a long-lost lover whose absence had once been cause for gossip, and the reasons  very messy ones  for their breakup.

He listens to everything.

Everything, perhaps, except what he should be listening to.

In his defence, he’s out of practice. The clamour of public spaces still feels foreign against his skin. He’s grown too used to the hush of the abbey, the stillness that hums like a living thing, the rare company of those who do not fill silence simply to banish it. This noise is a tide, and he is not built for tides.

Alpine, for obvious reasons, remained at home  indignant and offended by the decision, her parting glare sharp enough to draw blood.

Across the table, Natasha watches him, exasperation written clear across her face. Peggy, on the other hand, looks quietly entertained. He’s missed something important.

He tilts his head  that small, precise movement he’s borrowed from Alpine  and meets Natasha’s gaze with patient expectancy. The faintest quirk of her mouth betrays her irritation softening.

“Good. I clearly have your attention again,” she says. “You should know it’s rude to ignore one’s friends when they’re speaking to you.” Her hand gestures lazily between herself and Peggy.

Friends.

The thought gives him pause. Peggy Carter  his friend. New, but not unwelcome.

“My apologies, my friends,” he says, tone formal, polite in the way of old courts. “I did not intend to ignore you. What was it you were discussing?”

Peggy snorts  an inelegant, human sound that still manages to hold charm. “No need to play diplomat. I’ve heard enough stories to know you’re a little shit.”

Bucky blinks, half in surprise, half in amusement. Her audacity is… refreshing. She doesn’t flinch from him, doesn’t bow or stammer. She ignores the instinct that ripples beneath his skin  the ancient urge to make her pay for such words  and something about that earns her his respect.

He swallows it down, the reflex, burying it deep beneath restraint. Steve wouldn’t appreciate him hexing one of his dearest friends.

Peggy continues, leaning back in her chair, eyes bright. “What I said was  what are you going to do, long term? With Steve needing to return home and all?”

Her words settle like a pebble dropped into still water, quiet but rippling outward  toward a future he hasn’t yet dared to picture.

“Oh,” Peggy says, at whatever look must cross his face  brief, unguarded, a flicker of something too human to hide. Bucky rarely allows his emotions to surface so plainly. Or perhaps it’s fairer to say he does, but only for those who know how to read them. Peggy shouldn’t. There’s no reason she should. Unless it was obvious.

“You haven’t thought about it, then?” she asks, voice gentler now.

“I was unaware that he would leave,” Bucky replies, as if stating the simplest, most immovable truth of the world.

Natasha’s expression softens  just for a heartbeat, but enough for him to notice. “He’s only here on holiday,” she reminds him quietly. “He already extended it once to stay longer. You didn’t know?”

“Obviously not.” The words come out sharper than he intends, petulant even, and he hears it the instant they leave his mouth. He exhales slowly, like that might cool the sting of them. “Regardless,” he continues, forcing steadiness into his tone, “I do not wish to be away from him. Perhaps…” his gaze flickers to the window, where the night glows faintly with lamplight, “…if he will have me, I shall move to his home.”

The thought is so simple to him. He will go where his Steve goes. It is not a question, but a truth spoken into the marrow of things. The rest, those mortal tangles of how and where will have to be untied in time.

Alpine complicates matters. His truest companion, his shadow for more than two centuries. The mortal world would never allow her, and he cannot imagine a life without her steady presence. The soft thrum of her breath against the silence has become as necessary as air. Yet she would not thrive among iron and smoke.

Nor, if he is honest, would he. The city Steve calls home bright, loud, bristling with life would swallow him whole. He is not made for the hum of traffic, the throb of human crowds.

And still… he cannot leave Steve.

Nor can he ask Steve to unmake his world for him.

A conundrum indeed one of those mortal words too small for what it means.

The silence that follows hums with surprise. Both women stare, their expressions twin portraits of astonishment.

Then the pub door opens, a breath of chilly air curling through, and Steve and Sam step inside. The shift is instant, Bucky’s shoulders loosen, the weight in his chest lifts just slightly. The tension between the two men still lingers, fragile but mending, yet it’s enough.

Yes, Bucky thinks, allowing himself the smallest of smiles. He is incredibly grateful for one Peggy Carter.