Chapter Text
October 30, 2023
"Where is he?"
"I don't know, he blew right by his time stamp. He should be here."
"...Well, get him back."
"I'm trying."
"Get him the hell back!"
"Hey, I said I'm trying!"
"Sam."
The man on the bench was Steve, he knew as soon as he saw him. He was grey-haired, but the shape of his shoulders was the same. An hour or so ago, he'd had his face tucked into those shoulders. There was a leather case propped against the bench, and he guessed that held the shield. Had he gone to Wakanda to get it? Last he'd heard, the Wakandans were still repairing it after the battle with Thanos.
"Go ahead."
Bucky watched Steve talk to Sam, watched him hand over the shield. He hadn't expected this when Steve said he wasn't coming back. Five seconds ago, Steve was 105. Now, he had to be about 180, give or take a few years, if he had gone to Peggy in the 40s. Bucky hadn't expected him to live this long, to pass the mantle of Captain America on personally. He'd expected to have to do it himself.
Finally, Sam looked back at him and jerked his head, indicating he should come over. Bucky took the first step, and then another, and then he met Sam halfway. Sam patted his shoulder as he passed, but didn't say anything before continuing on to talk to Bruce. Bucky came up behind Steve, then rounded the bench. His face was older, but those were still his eyes. The same eyes he'd looked into at the age of sixteen and knew he was in love.
"Aged pretty well, didn't I?" Steve said, smiling. "Gotta be closer to two hundred by now, but I think I look more like seventy."
Bucky forced a smile. "Must be the serum. Wonder if Hydra's'll do that for me."
"We can only hope." Steve's eyes were shining as Bucky sat beside him. He picked up Bucky's hand, his flesh hand, and squeezed it gently between his own. Bucky saw the gold ring on his finger. "Missed you, Buck."
Bucky stared at their hands. Steve's were wrinkled and soft. "So you married Peggy?"
"No."
He looked up at Steve, glanced down at his hands to make sure he hadn't imagined the gold band, then looked back at his face. "No?" he repeated incredulously. "Wasn't that the point?"
Steve pulled his hands back, folding them in his lap. "I did go see her, gave her the dance I promised her. She set me up with an identity, helped me stay hidden until it wasn't so obvious I was Captain America back from the dead. But she's not the one I married."
"Who was the girl then?"
Steve hesitated, twisting the ring around his finger. "It was Becca."
Bucky stared at him, expecting him to laugh like it was a joke. He didn't. He opened his mouth, closed it, then, "You married my sister?"
"Buck…"
He rubbed his hands over his face. "When I said you were taking all the stupid with you — "
"You asked me to go see them."
"I asked you to look in on them, make sure they're okay, not marry Becca!"
"It was the best way — "
"How?!"
"It was a marriage of convenience."
"I — what?"
"She was a lesbian."
Bucky stared at Steve, mouth hanging open. "...What?" he wheezed. She couldn't be. She liked boys, went to school dances with boys, gushed about boys just to annoy him. But all the same — he himself had leaned into his attraction to women because he could never indulge his attraction to men. And he knew what it was like then, the fear and not understanding why and constantly being told you were a disease that needed to be hidden, and his little sister had gone through that, alone, he wasn't there to help her —
He didn't realize he was barely breathing until Steve grasped his shoulder, squeezing firmly. "Breathe, Bucky, come on." He forced himself to suck in a whole lungful of air. His hands were shaking. "That's it."
"She — she was — "
"She was safe, Buck, I promise. I kept her safe."
Bucky nodded, sitting forward again and tangling his fingers in his hair. "Okay. Okay."
Steve rubbed his back. "There had been gossip about her and her girlfriend. It was 1952, and — well, I suggested it because I thought it would be safer if she needed a cover. I knew what was coming. I know you haven't had a chance to look yet, but you really should learn all the gay history you missed."
He knew the highlights. Stonewall, AIDS, legal marriage. But Becca had lived through all of it without him. "Yeah, I should. She — she had someone?"
"Yeah. Avis. Avis Welch. Beautiful lady. Five-foot-nothing and sweet as pie, but she'd swear like a sailor if you got her mad enough." Bucky laughed wetly. "They met in 1943, while we were overseas, and Avis died in '93. They were together for fifty years."
Steve opened the shield case again. This time he pulled out a large, leather-bound album. "Bec kept this for you. If you want to go through it on your own, I understand, but I just want to show you..."
He turned pages, and he saw glimpses of photographs, some he recognized, others he didn't. His parents' wedding portrait, a picture of him, Becca, Ellie, and Johnny —
Bucky's hand shot out to stop Steve turning pages. "That's — Johnny, I — I forgot his face."
He was a sweet, round-faced kid with big bright eyes — though the black and white photograph didn't show it, he was the only one of the four of them to get their mother's hazel eyes. He and Johnny were wearing matching shirts and ties, and Ellie and Becca had matching calico dresses and large bows on their heads. "You were so excited to finally have a brother," Steve said quietly.
"You were my brother too."
Steve looked up at him, all teary, and shoved at his shoulder. "Don't make an old man cry, Buck."
He huffed out a laugh and leaned into Steve's side. Steve took that as an okay to turn some more pages. "There, our wedding day. Avis and I arranged for her and Becca to have their own private ceremony on the same day. We surprised her."
"She's beautiful." It was a color photograph, and it took his breath away. Becca was wearing Ma's wedding dress, her hair pinned up under the original veil. She looked so happy, her arm around Avis's waist. Avis was a petite lady, sleek black hair and tan skin. And Steve was there, his arm around both of them.
"I insisted on the color film. It was damn expensive, but it was worth it. I wanted you to, y'know, feel like you were there. Like you should have been." Bucky swallowed tightly. Yeah, he should have been. He could have given Becca away. "I drew pictures of you, so she could see what you looked like in the future. She wanted me to tell you, she can forgive the beard if that's really the style, but you need a haircut."
He laughed. "Sounds like Becca. Maybe I should cut it, some modern style."
"As long as you don't try the mustache again."
"That was one time — "
"You should have the full beard, or be clean-shaven, nothing in between."
"Wow, don't spare my feelings, pal."
He sniggered, looking back down at the album. His eyes went all soft as he sighed, running his fingers along the edge of the page. "I wish they could have had the opportunity you do."
"What opportunity?"
Steve smiled. "To be free to love whoever you want. If I'm any indication, you got a long life ahead of you. Don't spend it alone."
Bucky frowned, staring down at the album in his lap. "I don't — I think, maybe, Ted might have been it for me."
Steve grasped Bucky's shoulder, and Bucky leaned into him. "You still don't have to be alone. You've got Sam. And Ellie's kids are around, Deb lives in Scarsdale, she'd love to meet you. She always loved the stories I told about you."
Bucky frowned to himself. Why would Sam waste his time on Bucky? He couldn't just show up on his niece's doorstep, and it could be months before the terms of the pardon were set. "Maybe." Steve didn't look real convinced, and Bucky changed the subject. "What about you? Two hundred years old, you're not about to kick the bucket, are you?"
Steve laughed. "No, I'm perfectly healthy. Maybe a little slower than I used to be, but I'm still moving. I'm thinking I'll travel for a bit. See the world I spent all that time saving. Although," he gestured at the wide expanse of the Hudson, "this is quite the view too."
"Yeah," Bucky agreed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, "it is."
Steve closed the album and set it aside, then took Bucky's hand. "Sit with me a while, Bucky. I'm an old man now, you have to listen to me talk about the good old days."
He squeezed his hand. "Anything you want, buddy. Tell me everything."
August 8, 2018
Three months after the snap, Steve couldn't stop thinking about Bucky.
He would have thought he'd be used to this by now, losing people. But no, he'd watched his best friend of over a hundred years dissolve into to dust, and though he hadn't understood at first, it still hurt as much as watching him fall from the train. He'd failed Bucky, again, and this time, there was no fixing it. He was gone for good.
Sam was also gone, and that hurt just as much. And Wanda, Vision, King T'Challa, Princess Shuri, Spider-Man (just a boy, still in high school), Doctor Strange, almost all of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Clint had called Natasha demanding answers after his wife and three children had disappeared, and they hadn't heard from him since. Nick Fury and Maria Hill had also disappeared, their car found abandoned in Atlanta.
Tony wanted nothing to do with any of them. He was still funding the Avengers, allowing them to remain at the Compound, but as soon as he was stable, he'd purchased a lake house further upstate and moved there with Pepper. Left at the Compound were Steve, Natasha, and Bruce. Captain Marvel had returned to space to assess the situation in the rest of the universe. Rhodes was back in DC, and Thor was in Norway, where he was trying to settle the surviving Asgardians. Rocket, the talking raccoon, and Nebula, the blue cyborg woman, were working to repair the spaceship, complaining all the while about how primitive everything on Earth was.
They'd spent the last month after returning from Wakanda just trying to help, anything they could do — maintaining order, assisting with cleanup of accidents caused by the Snap, that sort of thing. Cleanup was the most pressing issue, with vanishing drivers and pilots causing crashes all over the world. The worst of it was a commercial flight that crashed on a packed highway outside London, Ontario.
Today was the first real break they'd had in a while. Bruce was up to something in the lab he wouldn't elaborate on, so Steve and Natasha were relaxing in one of the lounges. She was across the room, absorbed in a book, sitting sideways in an armchair with one leg over the arm. He was on the couch, having sat with the intention of watching an old black and white sitcom, but he was drowning in his thoughts again.
Nat's position in the armchair had reminded him painfully of Bucky's sister Ellie — she had always pushed the envelope, drove Mrs. Barnes and later Becca up a wall with her unladylike ways. She'd wear slacks to school and inevitably get sent home, talk loudly and swear, beg Bucky to teach her to ride his motorcycle. Ellie and Nat would have loved each other.
Bucky had adored both his sisters. When he was younger, he'd complain about his kid sisters following them around and always wanting to be involved, but Steve knew he really loved them.
More than anything, Steve wished he'd made more time to visit Bucky in Wakanda after he'd come out of cryo. The last time had been four months ago, when Bucky had remembered Ted.
Ostensibly, Ted Clark was a close friend to Bucky during the war, but Steve suspected they'd actually been lovers. Something else he regretted — had he not done enough to assure Bucky that his attraction to men would never make any difference to Steve? Should he have made his feelings more obvious? Said something like, 'Bucky, did you know queers can marry now? Isn't that great? They deserve to be happy.'
He'd known a long time, since they were teenagers, at least. He'd only ever known Bucky to step out with women, but he'd see the way he looked at men sometimes, how he'd see Clark Gable movies more than once. He'd claim it was about whoever the leading lady was, but Steve had been skinny, not stupid.
Ted's watch, which Bucky had given him during the war, was sitting in the Smithsonian, collecting dust in storage. Not even on display, according to their website. He'd tried to get it a couple weeks after the Snap, but the very frazzled curator (one of the few staff members that hadn't been Snapped) informed him that unless he could prove ownership, they couldn't release it. And that was impossible. So what was left to do? Steal it?
Maybe.
He looked over at Nat. She was an assassin, highly trained in stealth in a way he'd never been. Breaking into the Smithsonian to steal a watch was probably child's play to her.
"Nat?"
She hummed in acknowledgment, turning a page of her book absently. He frowned, unsure how to ask the question. Surely it was an insane idea.
"Do you...wanna help me steal a watch from the Smithsonian?"
She looked up from her book and blinked at him, bemused. Then she smiled. "Sure," she said, sticking a bookmark in her book and unfolding herself from the chair, "I got nothing else going on. I'll drive, you get coffee and snacks."
"Deal." He turned off the TV and stood, stretching. "Can we get Doritos?"
"Wow, coffee, Doritos, and a museum heist. You really know how to show a girl a good time, Rogers."
"Well, you gotta get creative with dates these days." He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Thanks, Nat."
"Yeah, yeah," she dismissed, but her arm tightened around his waist as she leaned into his side. "You can tell me the story on the way."
"The story?"
"Why we're suddenly stealing a watch. Better be good, it's, what, a five, six hour drive to DC? Is it yours?"
Once again, he wished Bucky was there — if only to ask if he minded Nat knowing. But did it even matter if Bucky was dead? And Nat would keep it a secret if he asked.
"It was Bucky's, actually. But yeah, I'll tell you the whole story."