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After the five seconds, he gets another twenty-three years. It’s the blink of an eye. In the mornings he notices gray in his own hair and stubble. His left shoulder begins to ache before it rains, in the muscles behind the socket. He has known Steve in old age as long as Steve in youth. Peggy got his best years, but Bucky was there first and he would be there last; that was the deal. Steve had come back to him, for him.
He is off-planet on a SHIELD mission when Steve has the first heart attack.
“It’s been going on since the snap reverse,” Marvel says as they approach an asteroid belt, dark rocks blotting out the stars beyond. “The background frequency is off somewhere. Not this universe, according to Strange. Is he always that vague?”
Like one key on a piano that’s gone out of tune, one string in the hidden innards that needs a fine adjustment.
“Barnes, urgent transmission on line three. It’s Rogers.”
He had two decades to prepare, and if he’s being honest he was preparing long before that, but it still hits him like a hammer to the gut. Bucky listens to the doctor talk about imminent heart failure. Steve looks out the window, hands in his lap. The skin over his veins is paper-thin.
“They can give you a transplant,” Bucky says, because he has to say it even though he knows the answer.
Steve says, “Living forever? Sounds terrible.”
He goes on leave, which Steve dislikes, and they argue, then they settle back in together with a different routine. Blue pill and white pill in the morning, yellow and red in the evening. Fresh air, so he wheels him down to the park and back on the nice spring and then summer days. Careful in the bath, help with the zipper and the buttons and the loosening belt buckle on his clothes. Do the laundry, cook an easy meal. Read the fan mail, of which there is plenty, and balance the accounting. They watch a documentary retrospective series on the Howlies and make fun of themselves.
Morgan throws Sam a retirement party, and Sam passes the old shield to the rookie, Chavez. Bucky still calls her rookie but she’s been running with them for the past ten years. Time moves too fast.
They host a steady stream of well-wishers, some of whom bring casseroles and salads and home-baked desserts. Steve gripes about fruitcake -- again -- because it’s been one hundred years and someone still makes fruitcake. Bucky puts it in the fridge because he’ll eat it later anyway. Old students drop by to reminisce about SHIELD Academy, NYU, West Point; they are human rights lawyers, four-star generals, and one former President. The art gallery owner sends a card and the illustration is one of Steve’s works. Sam’s kid visits, fresh off his first year of high school. Peter introduces his wife, who graciously does not bring fruitcake.
“You moved to New Jersey.”
“I did not.”
“You did, I swear, Buck,” Steve chortles as Bucky wheels him over the bridge at Prospect Park. The leaves are starting to turn. “And you liked it!”
“Unbelievable.”
“I’ll never forget, you bought the most beautiful car. This white Pontiac coupe, chrome trim. Air-conditioning. You pulled up to the house and Peggy said the Pope must be here.” Steve is still laughing.
He has heard this story many times. He asks Steve what eventually happened to that Bucky, the other him, the one that was rescued, but Steve never tells that story.
Steve is slowing, now. He needs help with more than zippers and buttons, he grows frustrated. He pauses to catch his breath on the way to the bathroom. Bucky is steady. Steve is twelve with a black eye and a bloody lip, saying he can take care of himself. Yeah, pal, but you don’t have to.
There is an envelope with a letter on the old drawing desk in the study. It was there when Bucky returned from off-planet. His name is in Steve’s wobbling script. He keeps the door to the study closed.
A snowstorm blows in after Thanksgiving and Steve doesn’t get out of bed. Bucky’s left shoulder hurts. He changes the pillowcases. He makes them soup for lunch. He reads a book, Pepper Potts’ new memoir that is at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. When it becomes too dark to read, he watches Steve watch the snowflakes.
The end of the line is quiet, and more peaceful than he’d ever hoped. He holds Steve’s hand for a little longer.
One year passes, somehow. He returns to SHIELD, continues the frequency investigation under Marvel’s command, travels light years in seconds to visit planets with near-celestial beings. He grows accustomed to space travel and to the silent void.
Strange finds a lead. He returns to Earth, where he visits Steve’s gravesite, and Peggy’s. It is covered with American flags and handwritten notes and photographs and candles.
“This will take more than five seconds,” says Strange. Morgan and Marvel boot up the machine. Sam gives Chavez a tight hug, and flashes him the thumbs-up.
“Are you sure, Barnes?” Marvel asks, and she looks just the same.
He’s sure. He steps onto the platform.
Marvel says, “When you find the right dimension for the re-alignment, you’ll be able to feel it. We all will.”
“Is she always this vague?” Strange asks.
There are hundreds of dimensions on his mission itinerary. Enough for a lifetime, even one as long as his. He doesn’t tell them about the letter in his pocket. A date, a time, a place. He has put his affairs in order, meager though they were. The apartment is sold, the wheelchair donated, the estate willed to Sam’s VA foundation.
He thinks about the hundreds of Steven Grant Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes, their threads tied together in this universe. If he follows the string, he thinks maybe it will always lead him to Steve, wherever he is. Whenever he is.
The light burns bright and takes him down to atoms.
Ten seconds later, the tracer blinks off the tracking monitor. Marvel waits. There is a feeling like after a thunderstorm passes, or tracing the perfect swirl on a seashell.
Like a musical note falling back into tune, a sigh of relief, the tension eased.