Chapter Text
The days following the snaps, the one that brought half the universe back and the one that took Tony Stark’s life, are quiet almost too quiet.
Laughter rings through the camps as families reunite, but beneath every embrace lingers the weight of what was lost. Joy and grief walk hand in hand.
Short-term goals seem to be the only way anyone can get through the days. The Avengers begin by clearing the rubble of what used to be their headquarters.
Bruce Banner and Steve Rogers already have their next mission. The stones must be returned to the exact moments they were taken from. Bruce gets to work rebuilding a quantum tunnel and Steve prepares himself to step through time once more.
Steve Rogers has never been a selfish man. Every time the world called, he answered. Even after waking up in a century that wasn’t his, he found ways to keep fighting. To serve. To lead.
But time travel changes everything. For once, he could have the life he’d lost. The life he’d always wanted. He’s helped save half the universe but now, for the first time, he just wants to rest.
Still, before he can make that choice, there’s someone he needs to talk to.
He follows a narrow path cleared through the ruins to the small trailer that was his and Bucky’s temporary home.
“Hey, Buck, I’m back,” Steve calls as he pushes the door open.
Bucky sits at the small table near the entrance with a newspaper spread in front of him. The headlines are filled with reunions, relief, rebirth. For once, the stories are good. It feels strange but good to know he helped make that happen. After years of tearing lives apart, it’s nice to be on the other side of things for once.
“How’s construction going?” Bucky asks without looking up.
“It’s slow,” Steve admits, sinking into the chair across from him. “But it’s getting there. Sam’s really stepped up with keeping the teams organized.”
That makes Bucky lower the paper. He’s known Steve long enough to spot when something’s brewing. Steve’s shoulders are tense and his jaw is tight. Classic signs of a confession coming.
“As much as he bugs me,” Bucky says with a smirk, “Sam’s a good man. He followed you into every crazy plan you cooked up.”
It’s good to see him tease again. Steve knows Bucky may never be who he once was, but seeing those small sparks of the boy he grew up with, the one who laughed easily and dreamed loud, gives him hope.
“Just remember,” Steve replies, “one of those crazy plans was saving your hide.”
Bucky rolls his eyes, but there’s warmth in it. They’ve always looked out for each other.
Silence settles between them, not awkward but full of shared memories. Bucky’s mind drifts back to simpler times like Steve sneaking flowers through his window on Mother’s Day and helping (doing) his homework assignments. Steve was always doing that, saving him in small and quiet ways.
Then he notices the frown forming on Steve’s face. Something big is coming.
“I know that look,” Bucky says. “What’s eating at you?”
Steve hesitates, then meets his gaze. “I do need to talk to you about Sam... but there’s something else first.”
Bucky arches a brow. “You want me to follow you into another war?”
He tries to sound light, but the thought twists in his gut. He’s tired of fighting. He’s been fighting his whole life.
“The opposite, actually,” Steve says with a faint smile.
That catches Bucky off guard. Steve Rogers wanting to stop fighting? To put down the shield? He never thought he’d hear it but if that’s what Steve wants, Bucky would back him all the way.
“You want to retire?” Bucky asks slowly. “Find a pretty girl and settle down?”
Steve’s smile widens, soft and nostalgic. “I already found the pretty girl.”
Bucky blinks. “Wait, what? Who?”
“Peggy Carter.”
Bucky stares at him. Of all the names he expected to hear, that wasn’t one. He thought Steve had made peace with the past or at least buried it deep enough to move forward.
“Steve,” Bucky says gently, “I know she was the love of your life. But she’s gone. We’re not in that time anymore. We’ve got to try to move on.”
Steve holds his gaze. “But what if we could?”
Bucky frowns. “Could what?”
Steve’s voice drops to a whisper. “Go back.”
Bucky stares at Steve, stunned. Go back? They’d figured out the quantum trick to bring everyone home but to actually stay? How could Steve even swing that? He’d heard Steve was leaving soon to return the stones… was he saying he meant to remain in the past?
“How do you plan on doing that?” Bucky asks, voice low.
Steve straightens as if the question gives him an anchor. “When I put the stones back, I want to stay. And I want you to come with me.”
Bucky is on his feet before Steve can finish. He paces the narrow trailer like a caged animal.
“You’re crazy,” he snaps. “Isn’t the whole point to return them so we don’t screw up the past? How do you think the world will look if there’s no Captain America? Hell, if I go with you, there’d be no Winter Soldier either. Maybe the numbers even out.” He spits the words sharp, half jesting, half desperate.
The joke rings hollow. Bucky can feel the dark rooms in his head opening, the Winter Soldier’s memories, the things done to him and by him. If he goes back, do those ghosts go with him? He bristles at the next thing Steve says.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Steve explains gently. “If we go back, it’s our past. Nothing we do there can change the present we already lived. There would still be a Captain America and a Winter Soldier.”
If the past keeps the consequences, what life could he possibly carve out in the 1940s? He could never be the light, charismatic Bucky Barnes that he was. He would never be whole in the ways that matter.
“I’m gonna miss you, buddy.” The words come out small.
He won’t meet Steve’s eyes. If he looks, he’ll have to face the fact he might be losing his best friend again. Steve rises and lays a hand on his shoulder.
“I want you to come, Buck,” he says.
“There’s nothing for me there,” Bucky replies before he can stop himself.
He won’t let himself imagine. He remembers the first shard of a memory, a flash of her looking up from a book and smiling and the way those flashes grew into a living ache. The image makes him dizzy. She was untouched in his memory. Unmarred by the things he’d done or the ways he’d been used.
“That’s not true,” Steve says softly.
Steve’s confusion is real. He expected hesitation or maybe even fear. He didn’t expect outright refusal. To Steve, home is not here. The Brooklyn that was home still exists but in the bones of their past. Home was nickel hot dogs and the Dodgers, the old lookout, smoky dance halls, tomato soup and a backyard tire swing. Those small, ordinary things are as much Bucky’s as they are Steve’s. How can Bucky not want that life back?
“Everything would remain the same in the present,” Steve says. “Everything would be exactly as we left it in the ’40s. The only thing different would be us.”
Bucky jerks Steve’s hand off his shoulder and steps away. Talking about her is poison, the memory of her is both balm and blade. He remembers when the memories first rushed back about how real she became and how much he’d truly lost. She had been the one pure thing in his life. He clutches at that purity like he needed it to breathe.
“That’s the problem, Steve.” He lets the words come out in a rush now. “I’ve changed. I refuse to drag her into that darkness. You don’t understand. You’re still the big-hearted kid from Brooklyn who never backed down from a fight. I am… I’m the world’s deadliest assassin. My head’s been through the blender one too many times.” He shoves his metal arm forward, the vibranium glinting between them.
“And don’t start me on this. I will never be physically whole, either. I’m a weapon. I can live with that. I refuse to make her live with it.”
Steve hears the pain in Bucky’s voice and doesn’t dismiss it. He knows darkness clings to him like a second skin. But Steve sees something Bucky refuses to see. A chance. A life waiting.
“You know she would face your demons with you,” Steve says. “She loved you. She loved you more than anything.”
Bucky’s face softens at the words. Thinking of her is a wound that never scabs properly and sometimes forgetting felt like mercy. When he’d been the Winter Soldier, not knowing was easier. Remembering made the loneliness physical. He’d made peace with the idea of being torn from her. Before his fall, he thought it would be by death, not decades of torment.
“I know.” He swallows. “That’s why I love her. She’s the love of my life. But I don’t have to be hers. When I started remembering, I looked her up… like I looked you up. She married. She had two boys, James and Steven. She built a life. She found happiness. How can I say I truly love her if I take that away?”
Steve watches him, reading the turmoil behind the tired eyes, but he senses there’s more Bucky isn’t saying.
“But you want to go,” Steve says quietly.
Bucky throws his hands up, frustrated. “Of course I want to go! If I could wish for anything, it would be to have her. I want her now as much as I did then,
maybe more.” His voice cracks and he hates that it does. Tears sting behind his lids. He’s lucky, no blessed, that Steve’s the only one who knows this particular weakness, because anyone else would get punched for even asking about her.
“I want to be selfish,” Steve admits.
The confession stops Bucky cold. Steve and selfishness don’t belong in the same sentence, and Bucky’s confusion shows on his face. Steve keeps going.
“I was ready to fight and die for my country. I was ready to fight and die for this world. Then for the whole universe. I’m finally ready to fight to live. To put down the shield and let someone else pick it up. It’s selfish, but I’m tired of living half a life. You deserve to be selfish, too. And honestly? I know her well enough to know she’d be spitting mad at you for not taking your chance.”
Bucky cracks the faintest grin at the image of her defending his happiness. He remembers trying to call off the engagement before the war, not wanting to make her a widow. Yeah, that had not worked out the way he planned.
“I want it so bad it hurts,” he whispers. “But I’m scared.”
Steve leans forward. “What are you afraid of?”
“Hurting her.” The fear is plain. “What if I scare her off? Am I just supposed to sleep in Peggy and your spare room and be the terminal bachelor your kids call ‘Uncle Bucky’?”
Steve gives him a crooked half-smile. “I don’t think there’s anything you could do that would scare her. She was always in it for the long haul. She put up with your teenage nonsense and you’re a lot easier to handle now.”
Bucky’s mouth stays flat. There’s another thing Steve hasn’t said.
“What about hurting her? She’s strong but not in stature. The triggers may be out of my head, but the nightmares aren’t. I could snap. I could hurt her.”
“What if I promise to live close,” Steve says, voice fierce with the conviction Bucky remembers from a thousand battles, “so I can be there if you lose yourself?”
Bucky laughs, short and incredulous. “You might want to clear that with your girl first.”
Steve’s grin is all boyhood charm and defiance. “Do your research, Buck. Who got her through the deaths she faced? Peggy Carter. Who lived with her for years after the war? Peggy Carter. Who was maid of honor at her wedding? Her. Godmother to her boys? Her. Her best friend until the end? Peggy Carter. I can promise you this, our girls will get along. Besides, how could I possibly stay away from my sister?”
__________________________________________
Bucky tosses and turns all night, haunted by what Steve is proposing. He knows what he should do.
Stay.
Stay here, pick up where Steve left off, try to fill the impossible hole Captain America left behind. He knows he’d fail, but at least he’d be trying. That’s what he should do.
But that doesn’t mean he isn’t tempted. Of course he’s tempted.
If he let himself be selfish, he could see her in two days. He could hold her in two days. He can almost feel her again. Warm skin, soft blonde curls, the faint scent of lavender. Her delicate hands gripping his sides, his back. His chest tightens painfully at the memories.
If he’s honest with himself, he’s jealous of Steve. Steve, so sure in his conviction, so certain he can go back and make Peggy happy. Bucky knows he couldn’t give Elizabeth all the happiness she deserves and she deserves so much.
She’ll be happy with her husband. She’ll get Steve back. Steve will make sure her husband treats her right, and he’ll be the best uncle James and Steven could ever have. That’s the most happiness Bucky can give her.
From a distance.
And yet, he still wants to go back. He wants Steve to walk his sister down the aisle to him. He wants to marry her, travel with her, with Steve and Peggy. He wants to father her children. He wants to grow old beside her.
He wants so many things with her.
He thought that part of him, the part that wanted something simple, something human had died when he fell from the train. He buried her memory deep, sealed it away where it couldn’t hurt him.
Since he and Steve reunited, they haven’t spoken her name once. Not even whispered it. As far as he knows, Steve hasn’t told the others about her. Maybe they know he had a sister, a twin, but nothing beyond that. It’s been too painful for both of them to touch.
And now, he’s jealous that Steve will get her back. That he’ll feel her light again. A voice in the back of Bucky’s head tells him he could have that too, if he weren’t such a stubborn bastard. He tries to ignore that the voice sounds like hers.
But the truth is, her safety isn’t the only reason he hesitates. He’s selfish enough to consider Steve’s offer to stay close, to keep watch, to make sure she’s safe. But the real reason he’s holding back is simpler. He’s scared.
What if she doesn’t want him anymore?
Steve says they’ll return in 1949, once the world has accepted that Captain America and Sergeant James Barnes are dead. It’s practical and it keeps them safe. But between 1943, when he left her, and 1949… that’s a lifetime. She hasn’t seen him in six years, hasn’t heard his voice in four. Steve insists she’ll still love him. But will she still be in love with him?
He’s still in love with her. That much hasn’t changed but how long can someone hold on to a ghost?
He’s not the man she loved. He’s broken, scarred, and good for little but destruction. What right does he have to inflict himself on her again?
He knows that in 1953, she and Peggy will marry in a double wedding. They’ll mourn together, comfort each other, become sisters. Steve wants that bond to form, wants them to have that shared grief before he returns to rewrite it all. Peggy was the one who told Elizabeth they were dead. In a single day, she lost her brother and her fiancé. With no family left, Peggy became hers and Bucky has always been grateful for that.
When he finally looks at the clock, it’s six a.m. Sleep is useless now. He gets up, spots Steve’s notebook on the counter, and an idea strikes.
He’s too much of a coward to face her but he can still tell her he loves her.
Bucky flips to the very last page. It’ll take Steve a long time to reach it, but when he does, he’ll know what to do.
He picks up the pen.
Dear Elizabeth,