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Steve and Peggy are having them to their house for dinner tonight. After that, Bucky has promised Marty he would take him to fix this situation with his parents.
At first, Bucky and Eliot were sceptical about the boy who’d shown up int their town, claiming he could travel through time. But after their stint in the Old West, they’d travelled to the future, where Howard Stark’s son had made great strides with technology Bucky could barely imagine. Then, at Bucky’s behest, they’d gone back to 1945 and rescued an idiot who insisted on going down with a plane full of bombs all alone into an ocean of ice.
Now, Steve was safe with his lady love in 1955, after he led Bucky and the Commandos to truly destroy Hydra once and for all. Bucky then made a stop in the Red Room, ensuring Eliot’s beginning and then again to moments after Eliot had been born, and set his erstwhile wife on a different path, gifting her the chance both had been previously denied.
Doctor Brown was a bit off his rocker, but clearly cared for the McFly boy no matter the time period. Besides, his wonderful gift to humanity had ensured Bucky and Eliot could live their lives in safety and comfort. The least Bucky could do was support him in his experiments and help him navigate the timelines whenever he and Marty’s manipulations went awry.
Steve had figured out a way to get Marty back to where he needed to go whilst maintaining what Stark called “temporal integrity,” but insisted Eliot and Bucky take care of it without him so he could stay home and make a romantic dinner for his wife.
Joke was on him.
Eliot asked if they could see dinosaurs, so after rewriting the future a bit, Bucky was going to take his son to see dinosaurs.
Something went wrong, however, because they did end up in what looked like the future, and instead of seeing dinosaurs, the world was full of aliens. Bucky didn’t know what was happening, but when an alien started attacking a very familiar looking woman, he told Marty to keep Eliot safe in the DeLorean while he took his favourite guns and protected the fleeing Doc, who wanted to explore the hole in the sky.
Steve was in this future, too, inexplicably, as was another man who looked so familiar it stirred something deep inside the former assassin.
“Hardison, what’s the status on your wormhole generator thing?” the man was shouting, punching down all the alien creatures surrounding him, then kicking them hard in the chest as though it was just another Tuesday for him.
Bucky took aim at one that was zooming down from the sky, shooting it and watching as it fell in front of the man.
The man looked up at him and froze.
“Dad?” he asked, his expression morphing too fast for Bucky to track, before he nodded to something behind Bucky and said, “We’re trying to evacuate civilians, keep that street clear.” Bucky didn’t’ even have time to process what had evidently happened, turning and firing on instinct, watching as the man- as Eliot- gestured to a blonde woman who was leading a group of children down the same street Bucky had just cleared.
Bucky threw two of his guns to his, apparently now adult, son, who grunted down at them angrily, then began to shoot as accurately as his sniper father.
They made their way through the streets, clearing them of any alien creatures as they went, until they stood beside Steve’s familiar shield.
“Bucky?!” he heard his friend call, before he, too, directed the two of them to help a… flying red robot keep the aliens within a certain perimeter.
He watched as the robot flew into the hole in the sky before all the aliens just… stopped. He smiled at adult Eliot and called out to Steve, walking forward right as the DeLorean appeared directly in front of him.
“That was heavy,” his younger son seemed to agree with Marty about something, as he and the recovered Doc beckoned Bucky into the car.
Bucky turned, giving his adult son a proud smile and a salute, then drove off back to 1955, where he helped Marty with another situation with his parents and told Steve a whopper of a story. Steve just smiled a sly, incredulous smile and gave him a complicated look.
“I’m glad you were there, Buck,” he said, slapping him on the shoulder. Bucky had known Steve most of their lives, and he knew when his best friend was keeping something from him, like he was right now.
“What is it?” he asked hesitantly.
“Nothing. Just- if you knew something bad was going to happen, and had the power to go back and change it, would you?”
Bucky opened his mouth, thinking of all the adjustments he and Eliot had been making in their little adventure, and was about to answer his friend’s question when-
“Dad. Daaaad,” Eliot sounded like he was getting annoyed at having to repeat himself.
“Yes, Eliot?” Bucky asked as he drove them home from the cinema.
“I asked what you would do if you had a time machine like Marty and Doc did in the movie.”
Bucky looked down at his son, blinking away the strange, realistic daydream, and then stared back out to the road.
“Oh, I don’t know. Probably go back to when Reagan was in the pictures and tell him he’d be president someday. And tell him to get the word out about smoking and cancer.”
“Ugh,” responded his overdramatic teenager. “I should have known you’d pick something boring. You never do anything exciting.”
Bucky smiled at his son, the hazy images in his mind floating away like memories after being in cryostasis. He spared a moment more to mourn his long-dead, sacrificial best friend once again, then took a deep breath and directed a smile at Eliot.
“That’s me,” he chuckled ironically. “Plain ol' James “Bucky” Buchanan. Boring, ol' dad who never does anything extraordinary."