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"You’re going after him."
It wasn’t a question, and yet, Steve somehow knew the answer. He turned around to face Sam, and quietly reveled that a man he’d known for such a short time could read him so easily. Maybe it was true what they said: Steve Rogers was an open book, an instruction manual front to back. He took the look in his new comrade’s eyes, the amazement and doubt that resided there.
"Yeah, I am."
Sam didn’t ask why, and internally, Steve was grateful. He didn’t know if he could explain he and Bucky’s illostrous history together, starting with the night Bucky was to be shipped out, to the time he fell, all those years ago. That moment had haunted Steve for years; it surprisingly didn’t dull the ache knowing he didn’t suffer permanently - rather, it hurt worse. Even when he had nothing, when he was just a small, ninety-five pound sack of meat, he’d had Bucky. Bucky had had his back for always, from the bullies in the schoolyard that would pick on him because of his abnormal size, to times in training when he couldn’t quite keep up. When he had nothing, he always had Bucky.
He remembered when he thought Bucky was dead, and he recalled waking up each day, (since he’d been woken up, of course) and feeling the pain of losing him over and over again like it was new.
He remembered standing on the bridge, out of breath from the fight, and seeing the ‘Winter Soldier’ mask lying on the road. He remembered looking up, and meeting such familiar eyes, and his blood ran cold. His heart stopped beating in his chest. The eyes pierced him, like the icy cold wind on a winter morning in Brooklyn. The sight of Bucky’s face, after all these years, thinking he’d lost his best friend forever, was liking coming home; he felt a rush, felt tears prinpicking the bottoms of his eyes.
His mind teemed with ‘this is impossible’.
His heart exploded with, ‘Yes, oh yes. I’ve waited so long, My friend, my dearest friend. You’re back, at last!; I awaited you, oh so long!’
He remembered Bucky not recognizing him, and his feelings crushed, like a flimsy house of cards in the ferocious gales of a windstorm, or that season’s fiercest tornado.
Steve would have never predicted it would hurt that much.
Internally, he asked himself, why exactly he was doing this. He knew Bucky wasn’t who he had once been, that that man was no longer Steve’s best friend.
But he knew, inside, that he would never accept that. He would try and find Bucky, to try and help him remember who he used to be. He wouldn’t give up on him. Of course he wouldn’t.
After all, he was with him until the end of the line.
He looked up at Sam.
Sam cleared his throat.
"So, when do we start?"