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He leaves the Soul Stone till last, because he's not sure he wants to face Vormir and that cliff and what happened there.
Actually, he's very sure, but it has to be done. He just wants to put it off as long as he can.
His reluctance means he cuts it almost too close, shows up just in time to see Barton materialize on the shore of a shallow sea and curl up in anguish. The blindness of grief is the only reason Clint doesn't see him, because there's really no place to hide between here and the mountain on this barren rock.
He wishes Clint had been a little more specific about just who guards the Soul Stone, though, because being greeted as "Steven, son of Joseph" in that familiar voice by the skeletal red face of seventy years of ice-bound bad dreams is enough to throw anybody off his game.
Good thing he already returned Mjolnir to Asgard.
The Soul Stone goes back to where it's supposed to be, wherever that is, and he and the Red Skull actually sit and talk for awhile. Like Dr. Banner said, on this side of things, he has as much time as he needs, all the time in the world, and whatever is left of Schmidt actually seems lonely. Maybe even a bit more human.
He walks to the edge of the cliff and forces himself to look down. She's still there. The blood still shines in the light from the eclipsing sun. "Can I take her?" he asks. "To...to take care of her?"
"The Stone has no use for the shell."
He swallows a surge of rage and grief at hearing Nat called a shell, just nods and heads back down the mountain.
She's still warm. He didn't expect that. He's lived through weeks since they lost her, full of battles and celebrations and funerals and frenzy. The dusted were unchanged but the universe was not; the thousands of people who died in the immediate aftermath, in plane crashes and famines and riots, couldn't be brought back. Nor could those who had passed of old age or accident since. And those were just the dead; life being what it was, there had been thousands of births in the last five years, as well.
She weighs nothing in his arms—well, she never did, not really. He's just never been as aware of it as he is right now, when all the vitality is gone. Nat and Tony had that in common (though Nat could turn it off when she wanted): Wherever they were, they filled the place, all out of proportion to their physical presence. Even that sprawling battlefield had felt smaller once Tony was gone.
"I'm taking you home," he whispers into her hair, and activates the handpiece.
***
He picks a time after all this land was purchased by Stark, but before the security had been put in place or any buildings built. He knows exactly where to go: A quiet, out-of-the-way spot near the woods, away from where the main complex—or the scars of the battle—will be; cleared, it will have a nice view of the water. He doesn't mark the grave itself—even accidentally finding a grave can cause all kinds of problems, and not just the "temporal anomaly" kind that Bruce and Scott kept rambling about—but deeply carves numbers on several trees nearby.
He's seen the numbers before, old and weathered, when making runs around the grounds or doing wilderness training. Nobody had ever been able to explain them; they'd always had too much to do to poke at the mystery. Now, when he goes back, he can explain it. Bruce will have some way of pinpointing the grave precisely, and they can clear out the spot and put up a nice stone, maybe a little something else. Clint hasn't said anything to him, but Pepper and Mrs. Barton and Bruce have all come to him about the possibility of a formal memorial. Whether this is only Natasha Romanoff's grave, or something to memorialize Vision and Tony too, he will leave to them.
"It worked," he says to her, finally, when he's tamped down all the dirt and rinsed off the worst of the grime in the lake and come back to watch the westering light sparkle on the water. "We got them all back, and we beat Thanos and his army." He takes a deep breath. It's been rough, these last weeks. Since they'd been working for SHIELD, she was the one he'd taken his grief to. For the last five years, she's been all he had. He'd had to keep his grief locked down in his groups, because seeing Captain America turn into a blubbering mess wouldn't have helped anybody.
It's not that Sam and Bucky don't understand, it's...habit. Habit is hard to break.
"We lost Tony, too," he says softly—why, he doesn't know, except that maybe this is his last chance to feel close to her. And he knows she would want to know. Some of that overgrown zoo of stuffed animals populating the corners of Morgan's room were from Nat. Tony hadn't wanted many visits, especially as Morgan got old enough to question, but Pepper had seemed to understand how much Nat missed being "Auntie Nat" to Clint's brood, and most of Tony's anger had been aimed at him, anyway.
He talks until dark—and it's a thick dark, more than he expected, but city lights don't reach out this far. He knows he can't risk a fire.
"I'm going to do something," he tells her, twisting the device in his hands. "Maybe something stupid. It's definitely selfish. But I'll make sure somebody knows where you are, I promise. It may take awhile, but they'll know you're home."
He hesitates.
"I wish I knew if you'd tell me to do this, or if you'd hit me in the head with a sandwich again. But I gotta try, Nat."
***
He looked up her address before he left, a little suburban place when the infant SHIELD was finally settling down enough that she was getting decent pay and not having to live undercover as a secretary. Seeing her in 1970.... It was too much, it really was, with everything that he's been through since he woke up.
He's said it to a thousand strangers, and Natasha and Tony both said it to him: Move on. Get a life. And the only thing that had been sharper than grief after the snap had been the bitter envy at Tony's idyllic retirement.
Neither one specified when.
He only intends to stay a few days. It's the late forties; there are still easy and respectable explanations for why a man who's appeared out of nowhere is suddenly in a single woman's life. He knows Peggy gets married eventually, and he doesn't intend to intervene in that, not at all. No, he's just looking for a rest before he goes back and hands the shield over to Sam and tries that retirement thing.
He's lost count of the times it's been said to him—by Bucky and Sam, Nat and Clint, Tony and Thor and even Peggy herself: When it comes to women, he's a little slow.
Because it's not until Peggy's inventing an identity for the marriage license that he remembers he's never seen a picture of her husband or even so much as heard his name. The only time he spent with her after he thawed, she had been half-lost in her Alzheimer's. Some of what she said then, about their life, that he'd always chalked up to dementia....
He apologizes, frequently and pre-emptively.
***
He keeps no secrets from her—he doesn't know how he can explain that he's here, and simultaneously lost and frozen in a block of ice, otherwise. The only thing he shades even a little bit is Hydra's presence in SHIELD. Too much of the future—of his past—is connected to it. And he knows that if she even suspects, she will burn SHIELD to the ground to rid it of the taint.
He becomes her eccentric artist husband, married at the courthouse on a whim, always conveniently out of town for commissions or a show when anybody from the office wants to meet him. He dyes his hair dark and grows a beard again and avoids family pictures like he's allergic to cameras.
It's easier than he expects to be Mr. Carter—though that's not his legal name, since Peggy doesn't change hers, an inordinate number of people assume that she married an American who also happened to be named Carter. He's afraid at first that he won't be able to stop himself from interfering, that Captain America will come charging out the first time he sees something bad going down.
Peggy helps. After she hears the entire story, she flat-out refuses to talk shop with him. SHIELD has its fingers in too many pies, and she knows that she won't be able to leave potential threat alone, any more than he could. She gripes sometimes, but it's never anything specific, just generic bureaucracy and the same sexism she's dealt with for her entire career. Sometimes, there's a funny story over dinner about Howard's latest invention backfire, like the time he accidentally dyed his wife purple.
He wishes he could meet Maria. She must have been an amazing woman, to survive marriage to Howard and raise Tony, and the words from Siberia that always cut him the deepest were I don't care, he killed my mom. But Howard would recognize him in a second.
It's a few years before he thinks to wonder, because while he knows it's coming eventually, right now, contraception is still a dream. Peggy can hardly keep women at SHIELD because the merest whiff of a pregnancy is considered a firing offense. But that's never a problem for them. They never particularly try, but they don't exactly not try, either.
"They never told you, did they," Peggy says flatly when he tentatively brings it up. "The serum— There was bound to be at least one negative side effect, Steve."
Maybe he should have seen it coming.
But even that, in its own way, works out. His workshop in the back of the yard provides a refuge to the growing pains of local children turning into teenagers, even encourages a few artists, and as for the ones who keep showing up with black eyes and broken bones— There are men in the neighborhood who find out the hard way that the quiet guy with paint in his beard still doesn't like bullies.
And if Peggy ever figures out why her sister's bastard of a first husband abruptly vanished on their first Christmas, never to set foot in Europe again except to mail the divorce papers, well, she doesn't say anything.
They know from the beginning that it won't be "till death does us part," despite what the vows say, but he doesn't realize how many years have gone by until Peggy's oldest grandnephew takes it into his head to go to college in America. That's the nephew who is—will be—Sharon's father.
There are things he can't stay for, things he won't risk, things Peggy won't let him risk. All he needs is to press a button, but that devious mind of hers is working on seventy different ways to fake his death. She insists that they need to make it legal and neat so nobody questions where he went.
Turns out, she doesn't have to.
Maybe, if they'd talked shop a little more, they would have seen the Winter Soldier coming. Not for her—whoever paid for the hit wanted Peggy to remain in SHIELD, just a little more cooperative.
To that kind of person, art is a waste, and artists are expendable.
It's kind of funny, really, the way the sight of Bucky makes him freeze, that street in Washington all over again, and it hurts like hell, but he still laughs when the bullets tear through him.
***
Sam finally leaves, still stunned and awkward with the shield, and Bucky comes over, sits down beside him, and they sit and look out over the water in companionable silence for a long time.
"When did you remember?" he finally asks.
"You know the Wakandan shrinks. Leave no memory unintegrated." Bucky huffs a sarcastic little laugh. "I think I had that particular flashback while delivering a baby goat, actually. Not sure who was more freaked, me or the nanny."
"So you knew all along."
"I knew." He's quiet a few moments, and clarifies, "I didn't understand. Not till you told me you were going to see her."
"And you didn't—"
"My past. Your future."
There's another long silence.
"You tried to kill me, you jerk."
"I thought I did kill you. Why do you think I refused to see you for those two months? My therapist thought she was going to have to put me back in the freezer." He chuckles. "How'd you survive, anyway?"
"I almost didn't. The serum kicked in, I guess." He sighs. "It was close to time, anyway. To leave. Half of what we needed, Peggy already had in place, so it was just a matter of finding a doctor she could trust to lie. And then...." He shrugs. "Nobody looks twice at an artist wannabe in Paris. Even an old one." Part time and holidays until she retired, and then a few precious anonymous years together, just them, no work, no war, before the memory loss built to a point where she began to worry about accidentally revealing secrets.
Then Peggy Carter, widow, aunt, went to a care home, and he...came home.
"Where to now? Brooklyn?"
He shakes his head. "Superheroes can't retire in New York. Every five minutes, somebody else is attacking the place. And honestly, I'm not sure that Queens kid of Tony's wouldn't be on my doorstep every morning trying to help me cross the street." Bucky laughs. "Some place quiet, this time, I think. Maybe I'll stay with Clint awhile, if he'll let me."
"I know a place. Nice people, not really nosy, used to weirdness. They'll even let you play with the goats, if you ask."
He smiles. Bucky has a point. And really, Wakanda may the one place on Earth where an old Captain America won't be an object of notoriety and constant demands for selfies. "We have to do one thing first." He pushes himself to his feet. The serum has made this entire old age thing easier than it should be, but he spent the better part of thirty years subjecting himself to an insane amount of wear and tear, even for a superhero, and between his knees and the bullet scars the Soldier left him, he moves pretty stiffly. "Is Clint still here?"
"I think so. Why?"
He glances across the water, then back at the facility wreckage, triangulating where the grove of trees, with its weathered, carved numbers, is. "He'll want to be the one who chooses the headstone."
the end