Chapter Text
Bucky Barnes knew something was wrong from the way his best friend’s face twisted at the sight of him.
Perhaps wrong was the wrong word.
Bucky Barnes knew things would never be the same, that’s for sure.
Since he woke up in the year 2023 he was still getting his bearings, but the one jarring thing that he (and half the population) had to get a grip on was time travel, and the abject reality of it.
Bucky was staring head on at his best friend, at Steve , and he knew things were on the precipice of change.
Steve had the cautious, yet gratuitously fiendish glint in his eye that only came about when he was about to do something that was incredibly selfish, impossibly unlikely, or both. Steve was going to go back . Whether he was going to stay in the past, Bucky couldn’t give a definite answer, and it made something unsavory stick to the back of his throat.
He had just gotten Steve back, the only memory he had , and Steve was going to leave him. It felt selfish, and Bucky couldn’t be selfish when he was internally berating Steve for being selfish as well.
Steve smiled back at Bucky. “Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.” He said, and the words are decades old. They’re words from a past life. Steve might as well been a ghost, because those words didn’t exist in today’s world, not until now.
The response rolls off Bucky’s tongue, and for some reason he feels like it’s the end of an era. “How can I? You’re bringing all the stupid with you.”
Bucky wants to say more, do more. He wants to tell Steve to wait for him because he still doesn’t know what colour was the sketchbook Steve never let go of. Bucky wants to ask Steve if he could come with, he wants to plead for Steve to stay, because if Steve can go back to the time he was supposed to grow up in, Bucky should too.
But he doesn’t say any of that, because Steve wraps him in a hug both soul and heart crushing. Unbeknownst to the other, the both of them try not to cry.
Steve smiles, but it never quite reaches his eyes. Bucky gulps down, because there's only one thought swirling in his mind and it very might well be the most selfish thing he had ever thought of.
Bucky doesn't know how he'll be able to remember anything with Steve. Wakanda didn't give his memories back, not entirely. They just reversed the Hydra conditioning so that he would not revert back to his assassin tendencies as the beck and call of Russian trigger words. He knew how to wrestle with the Winter Soldier man in his mind, so he was more Bucky than not most days. But Wakanda couldn't give back memories, that was the stuff of fairytales. Memories were passed on through stories, eyewitness accounts, and conversation.
How was Bucky ever going to remember anything if he doesn't have anyone that remembers with him?
Bucky swallows hard, his throat drying out faster than he can salivate as he watches alongside Sam Wilson as Steve Rogers picks up Mjolnir, his shield, and the Infinity Gauntlet. Once more, for the very last time, he was going to do one more mission because nobody else would.
He saw Steve give him a small smile, and Bucky smiled for his sake.
Bruce Banner said some words to Steve, indicating that the time travel process was ready to proceed. Bucky didn't hear the tailend of the spiel, as with every growing second he felt like he was being submerged underwater.
When he was being tortured by Hydra, they electrocuted him. They froze out the man inside him. They chilled him to the bone and chased away any warmth he had left in him. That was pain.
Seeing his best friend and only memory being whisked away was torture, but it was an unfamiliar torture. It was like being in an aluminum pot with the boiler at low heat for hours. It was being burned from the inside out. That was pain, it was fire instead of ice, but pain nonetheless.
Bruce tinkered around with buttons and switches as he prepared to bring Steve back into the present time. "Bringing him back in five, four, three, two, one..." he trailed off, as Bucky felt the dread creeping up his spine, the inevitable gut feeling that he so desperately wanted to be wrong about.
He turned to the lakeside, and there Steve Rogers was, sitting on a bench.
Bucky couldn't do it, he couldn't face his friend. He could make countries cower at his feet, but he couldn't do this. He was a coward, but at least he had his pride.
Sam Wilson took a step towards Steve, as Bucky leaned up against a tree stump to eavesdrop.
Steve was older.
But not by much.
Sam looked at his friend, who couldn't have been more than thirty. Really, he hadn’t aged a day if the circles under his eyes hadn’t been so prominent. ""So did something go wrong, or did something go right?" He said, and the duo braced themselves to hear about all the trouble Steve encountered whilst skittering through dimensions.
Steve gazed off into the distance. "Well... after I put the stones back, I thought, why not try some of that life Tony was telling me to get."
There was a long silence, and Steve smiled. He really looked like he hadn’t aged at all, it would’ve only been Bucky and Sam who noticed the differences.
“And that life Tony was telling me to get… it led me back here.” Steve said slowly.
Sam chuckled and clapped his friend on the shoulder. “I’ll see you at work, then?” Sam joked, the two of them knowing they’d be up to their crime fighting shenanigans in no time.
“Hopefully not too soon. I think I deserve a vacation.” Steve says politely, standing up and smoothing his pants down.
Sam laughed, mumbling mostly to himself. “If anyone deserves one it’s you, Cap.” He said, as Steve walked over to Bucky with a smile.
“You came back.” Bucky whispered softly once they were out of earshot.
Steve smiled. “Course I did, Buck.” He said, nudging Bucky’s shoulder.
“Why?”
Steve was at the edge of saying something, but swallowed down on his words at the last minute. “Well for one, they don’t have the internet in the ‘40s.” He said jokingly.
Bucky smiled with a mournful shake of his head. “Where to, then?”
Steve grinned back at his friend. “Anywhere you want.”